Office Hours: Should I Short Meta? The World Cup in Qatar, and How to Acquire New Customers

Scott takes a question about shorting stocks like Meta and Twitter. He then shares his opinion on the ethics of attending the World Cup in Qatar, and suggests methods for acquiring new customers. (Note: this episode was recorded prior to Elon Musk taking Twitter private). Music: https://www.davidcuttermusic.com / @dcuttermusic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Scott Galloway?

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• 0:48Speaker 01

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• 1:26Scott Galloway?

  Welcome to the Prof G Pod's Office Hours. This is the part of the show where we answer your questions about business, big tech, entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to [email protected]. Again, that's [email protected]. First question.

• 1:42Speaker 02

  Hi, Prof G. This is Matt S. in Taos, New Mexico. Recently on Pivot, you heavily criticized Meta and its overbetting on the Metaverse play. With that being said, do you feel that shorting Meta stock would make sense? On that same theme, with your premise of Twitter stock really being worth $13, but trading around $50 per share, would shorting Twitter also be a good move?

• 2:02Scott Galloway?

  Matt from Taos, New Mexico. Thanks for the question. It's an easy one on Twitter because you're not going to have or be able to short it. My guess is it's going to close on Friday, the deal, and it'll no longer be a publicly traded stock with options that you can buy or sell. So let's focus on Meta. I believe they're estimating they're going to spend somewhere between 60 to 70 billion dollars trying to reinvent the world or a three dimensional version of the web in the world or cross work, entertainment, education, and I just don't think it's going to work. And there's a lot of evidence that it isn't working. Having said that, I would not want to short. In general, I don't like shorting stocks. Occasionally, I write calls, which I guess is the same thing as shorting stock, but I have the financial capacity to

• 2:45Scott Galloway?

  absorb a large hit. If you're going to short a stock, I think you want to make sure that you plan for a black swan event and that it wouldn't take too much of your wealth, if you will. So I think it's something that, and I don't mean to infantilize lower middle income households, but it's a very risky strategy. It's kind of low probability, high severity outcome if things go wrong. And generally speaking, I think the right investment strategy is to buy stocks long that you think are good companies, diversify, maybe even buy low cost ETFs or index funds and just ignore them for a long time. The cohort that's outperformed the S and P is dead people because they weren't trading their stock. So I worry that when I hear a young man talking about shorting a stock, that he's going to be spending too much time investing his human capital staring at a phone. Also, I think Meta is probably,

• 3:30Scott Galloway?

  and I hate to say this, I think it's probably a buy right now. I think it trades at a price earnings multiple of around 11. And the core business is just an exceptional cash, you know, spigot. I mean, it's just Meta's business or its core business, even though it's no longer growing or growing as fast, is an incredible business. And the kind of fever dreams of Mark Zuckerberg around reinventing the world such that he can become our scientific god and start pelting us with Nissan ads when we roam around some weird version of the earth without legs. The stock has been taken down, in my view, probably too much. I would argue, and I sold my Meta stock about four or five years ago because I realized how hypocritical it was for me to shitpost them every day and still own the stock.

• 4:12Scott Galloway?

  But I would not want a short Facebook stock right now or Meta stock. I think it's probably, and I hate to say this, I think it's probably a buy. But again, you sound like a young thoughtful man. And unless you're in this business and hedging a portfolio or have PhDs on staff and supercomputers and 40 accounts at Bloomberg, you're competing, you're on the wrong side of a trade as a retail investor usually, unless you go long term and invest in good companies and have a long enough time horizon such that you can ride out any kind of economic cycles because everybody gets it wrong. And I think that playing the options game is fun and it feels it's an interesting Dopa hit. But I just, I think it's not a good idea unless you're in that business or you have

• 4:55Scott Galloway?

  enough wealth to absorb a shock. You don't want to lose sleep thinking about whether Meta's earnings are going to be good or bad. Anyways, long-winded way of saying, just say no.

• 5:10Scott Galloway?

  Twitter, you know, whole different talk show. But again, that thing probably closes in a few days after, a couple of days after we hear this, so you won't have the opportunity there. Anyways, Matt, thank you very much for the question and congratulations on living in such a beautiful part of the world. Question number two.

• 5:27Speaker 03

  Good morning, Professor G. My name is Juan from Vancouver, Canada. My question is, I love soccer and I am a huge fan of it, but I do feel that I'm being kind of hypocrite on how the World Cup is going to be held in Qatar and all the issues they've had. And to be honest, I'll be the first ones to say that I'm going to watch every game and to a certain extent, look the other way. Would you say that we are complicit allowing this to happen? And also, what do you think about it?

• 5:57Scott Galloway?

  Juan from Vancouver, thanks for the thoughtful question. Qatar is notorious for human rights abuses, whether it's violence against women, gay people, minorities, restrictions on freedom of expression, not to mention the, you know, what could probably be accurately described as slave labor of migrant workers. The Guardian broke the news that more than 6,500 migrant workers have died in Qatar since it won the rights to the World Cup. Qatar is partaking in sports washing. You could argue trying to distract from their human rights abuses by bringing attention towards popular sports, that is, the World Cup, which to a certain extent, you could argue legitimizes a corrupt authoritarian regime, similar to what Saudi Arabia has done with the live golf tournament. Also, I'm going. I went to the World Cup in Russia.

• 6:42Scott Galloway?

  I think that, so let me be honest, the reason I'm doing it is because my desire to have that type of life experience and engagement with my boys who are 12 and 15 wins for me versus some of my concerns around participating in this wallpapering or this sports washing. So I don't, if you're looking for moral clarity here, I definitely don't have it. But where does it stop, right? I mean, we all have to have our own line. Should we not, the World Cup in 2026, I think, or I forget when it is, is coming to America. Do we not go to the Games in Texas because of their restrictive abortion laws? I mean, where does it, where does it stop?

• 7:26Scott Galloway?

  And what I think you should do is have your line, but what I don't like is when people try to shame other people. And I think people have to make their own decisions around this. I also think that America can be accused of being somewhat hypocritical when we try and get all righteous and at the same time, we seem to be normalizing antisemitic comments and normalizing misogyny in this nation. So, look, here's where I am. I think you have to make your own decision and just say, okay, what are my values here? Am I having a problem? Am I really uncomfortable going? Then make that decision, but try and ignore, or not ignore, but, you know, don't do it because you're worried about getting sanctioned by some orthodoxy. And at the same time, if you don't want to spend that money and you want to spend it

• 8:11Scott Galloway?

  somewhere else, good for you. I think everyone has to have their own code around this stuff. And just being very blunt, I don't like the way these nations behave. I think there's real issues here and I would like to see America bring pressure on any nation that treats people in vulnerable groups the way that these nations or some of these nations treat those people. At the same time, my desire to have, you know, once in a lifetime experiences with my boys wins here. Judge me. We have one quick break before our final question. Stay with us.

• 8:52Scott Galloway?

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• 9:36Scott Galloway?

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• 10:09Scott Galloway?

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• 10:52Scott Galloway?

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• 11:21Scott Galloway?

  Welcome back. Question number three.

• 11:23Speaker 04

  Hi Scott, my name's Jack and I'm from Nottingham in England. I enjoy your books, The Four and Post Corona, and I love the podcast. My question is about B2B marketing. I co-founded a company which sells optimization software, and our product is proven to outperform the competition, but we're still looking for our first customer. As we're unestablished, I'm struggling to get prospective customers to give me the time of day. My main strategy so far has been to contact managers on LinkedIn, but my message usually gets ignored. We could spend money on adverts in industry magazines or hire stores at exhibitions, but I feel all I really need is the opportunity to demonstrate our software directly to customers. Can you offer any advice? Thanks for listening. I'm a Chelsea fan like you, so maybe I'll see you at Stamford Bridge one day.

• 12:07Scott Galloway?

  Jack from Nottingham, England, welcome to the world of entrepreneurship where those first, that first couple of clients are just so incredibly difficult.

• 12:15Scott Galloway?

  Most small businesses take two to three years to turn a profit, software even longer. It can take up to two years before consumers trust your brand. According to Sprout Social, 55% of consumers learn about new brands from social media. You mentioned LinkedIn. LinkedIn is actually an incredibly effective place to market a new product. According to data from LinkedIn, it was rated as the top platform for B2B lead generation. Brands have seen a 33% increase in purchase intent from ad exposure on LinkedIn, and 40% of B2B marketers surveyed indicated LinkedIn as the most effective channel for driving high-quality leads. I feel like I need to disclose that LinkedIn sometimes advertises, but this was, this was data we put together and I don't, I'd like to think that, I don't, there wasn't any influence from LinkedIn on this. This is not a paid ad, if you will.

• 13:01Scott Galloway?

  So at L2, the way we got leads was through content marketing. We'd put out white papers or research or rankings and then only give them a taste of it and they've wanted the full, to download the full report, they'd have to give us their email. We had biz dev people who would just smile and dial and call people off of LinkedIn. One of my closest friend's sons just literally has done this his entire career for software companies. He pings people on LinkedIn and tries to set up meetings. You should be able to, I would think. Given the strain in the growth part of the market, find a biz dev person or just a very hungry young woman or man who is willing to smile and dial, if you will, or ping people on LinkedIn with a little bit of support with

• 13:42Scott Galloway?

  some paid ads to get enough meetings where you should get some feedback from the marketplace. So it doesn't make sense to me that you can't find a way or can't find any introductions. I also just leverage my personal network. Granted, I'm blessed because I went to business school, so there are a lot of alumni. So can you tap in any sort of professional networks or pony up and spend the money to go to a conference and see if you can get a speaking slot or maybe buy a booth or what have you? But again, I want to be clear, it's like fucking hand-to-hand combat. It is hard, especially those first half a dozen or dozen clients. So leverage every contact you can, try and get meetings, try and get introductions,

• 14:24Scott Galloway?

  go to conferences, a little bit of advertising with very, very granular metrics on social and on Google, Google keywords, some stuff on Meta. I think LinkedIn sounds perfect for this. And don't spend a lot of money, don't do advertising. That's just, that makes no sense for a small business. You want to throw around nickels like they're manhole covers. If you're frustrated and depressed and questioning every decision you make, there's a word for that, entrepreneurship. Anyways, Jack, keep on keeping on and best of luck to you and your firm. That's all for this episode. Again, if you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to [email protected].

• 15:16Scott Galloway?

  Our producers are Caroline Shager, Claire Miller, and Drew Burrows. Sammy Resnick is our associate producer. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod. From the Vox Media Podcast Network, we will catch you next week.

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• 16:00Speaker 06

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