Scott’s Thoughts on Joe Rogan, Year-End Reflections, and Hiring Great People

Scott Galloway answers listener questions on whether he’d ever go on The Joe Rogan Experience, what went right (and wrong) this past year, and how small businesses can attract great talent in a competitive job market. Want to be featured in a future episode? Send a voice recording to [email protected], or drop your question in the r/ScottGalloway subreddit. 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:01Speaker 02

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• 1:31Scott Galloway?

  Welcome to Office Hours of Prop G. 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 for next time, you can send a voice recording to officehoursofpropgmedia.com. Again, that's officehoursofpropgmedia.com or post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit and we just might feature it in our next episode. Our first question comes from SpongeBobSpacPants. That's what we love about Reddit. And they say, Scott, have you entertained or been approached about going on Joe Rogan? I think your message would actually resonate a lot with him and his audience. What are your thoughts on Rogan?

• 2:07Scott Galloway?

  So my first thought is that everybody in podcasting should probably send a royalty to Joe every time we do a podcast because I do think he blew open the medium. So, and also he's enormously successful, good at what he does. I give him credit for, I don't think he's a bad actor. I don't think he is purposely malicious. The other thing I like about Joe is that he has He's sort of set a vibe for podcasts and that is podcast culture, I think is a little bit more gentle and I try and practice this and that is I don't try to play gotcha with who are my guests. I try to present them in their best light. I'll occasionally push back and it's a fine, it's a fine line, but I want to let people run and give them the benefit of the doubt and then push back enough to challenge stuff that my listeners

• 2:51Scott Galloway?

  are probably asking, but I don't, I don't want to be a food fight. I don't want to be Abby Phillips or Fox and like trying to call people out for a TikTok moment. I don't, I don't do that. I'm not looking for sparks. And I think Joe kind of set the tone there. I think he's generally speaking, pretty, he, he attempts to position people in their best light. I think it was a huge mistake for Vice President Harris not to get down there. She should have taken the bus down there if needed and it would have saved her three weeks of going on CNN, MSNBC and Fox for three hours. This is actually legitimate. It would have taken her, she would have had to go on those programs, three hours a night on cable news for two weeks to match the exposure that Trump got on Rogan. Now, this

• 3:31Scott Galloway?

  is the problem though, and this is quote unquote, my issue with Rogan is that he will bring on Sanjay Gupta to talk about the COVID vaccine and then he'll bring on some fucking quack and create a false equivalence and create a scenario where people start questioning the legitimacy of whether or not, or the veracity of the statement that this quack who's been debunked and basically had his licenses removed of saying that mRNA vaccines alter DNA. And I feel Spotify and Joe didn't match the size and influence of his platform to fact checking. And the reason I have not gone on Rogan, nor will I go on Rogan, nor

• 4:12Scott Galloway?

  will I ever be invited on Rogan. Basically, everyone like me has been invited on Rogan. And the reason why I have not been invited on Rogan and will not accept an invitation, which is not coming, is during COVID, I pulled down all of my podcasts from Spotify. And the reason for doing that was I lost someone who I cared a great deal about to COVID and. They had decided along with their girlfriend that they were part of this anti-vax narrative. I think they were misinformed. I think they were influenced by media that was spreading misinformation. And I think the manosphere did an especially good job of hip checking or creating as false equivalents or not being very honest about what the science said.

• 4:55Scott Galloway?

  And also, we got it wrong. When I say we, America got it wrong. There was some narrative that was just false or just it became that you couldn't trust institutions anymore for saying that, no, you don't need masks. Oh, no, everyone has to mask. Oh, you won't get COVID with this vaccine. No, you would get it. You were just likely not going to die from it if you got it. Anyways, this person close to me was an anti-vaxxer, came down with COVID. Series of really unfortunate circumstances. I don't know if it was poor healthcare. But this was someone who should not have died of COVID at this age. And long story short, was on a ventilator, took him off the ventilator, thought he was getting better, crashed and died.

• 5:38Scott Galloway?

  And then approximately seven months later, his girlfriend killed herself and left an orphan boy. And this has been obviously difficult for a lot of people. And I want to be clear, I don't hold any platform or any podcast or responsible for the death of an individual around COVID. But I do hold Spotify and Joe responsible for not, again, matching their fact checking and their fidelity to the truth around really sensitive issues as their platform has grown. Anyways, for me, it's very much a mixed bag. I don't think he's a malicious person. I think everybody on the media knows him a great deal.

• 6:21Scott Galloway?

  But I do think Spotify and Joe were reckless with other people's health and created unwittingly greater death, disease and disability than was necessary. Well, that got serious fast. Question number two also comes from Reddit. NaturalSwimming294 asks, hi Scott, with the year coming to an end soon, what would you say are some of your highlights and what didn't go as planned? That's a really generous question and it took me a minute off mic to just sort of ponder on it. So I'll start with professionally, what went really well. My book came out as the number one New York Times bestseller. Notes on Being a Man, that was very exciting.

• 7:05Scott Galloway?

  It was a lot of work and it culminated in that and that was very rewarding. I had never hit number one before, I've hit number five, but I'd never hit number one. So that was really exciting. The live tour for Pivot was really rewarding. We did seven cities and seven nights. A live podcast, who would have thunk it? I wouldn't have thought people would show for a live podcast, but it was really nice to meet people and quote unquote engage with the fans. We hosted about 15,000 people across seven venues. So those were sort of, I think, the professional highlights. We've hired some really good people. Our business is strong, so professionally things are going well. On the downside professionally, I didn't make that much money this year. I usually make a bunch of money from investments and this year I invested in a Bitcoin treasury

• 7:48Scott Galloway?

  company and some, most of my stocks have just been flat. So I think I got spoiled making a lot of money and it feels like this year everyone's making money but me. So that's kind of disappointing, although why the fuck do I care? I have enough money, it doesn't change my life, but still it weighs on me mentally when I'm not making good money. See, I'm addicted to money. So that's sort of, I guess, the net net of my professional life. Personally, look, the worst thing that happened, my father passed away a few months ago. Not surprising, 95, lived a very robust, kind of the American dream. But like, you know, I had like many people, a kind of a complicated relationship with my father and him passing stirred a lot of those emotions and I was just sad for him.

• 8:33Scott Galloway?

  But that was obviously now, you know, my only family really is my, my sister by my dad's third marriage, other than my own kids. So that was, that was difficult as it should be. The best thing, I'm trying to think, the highlight personally for the year was I did a college tour with my oldest and it was just me and him. And over like 10 days, we went to seven cool little towns ranging from Evanston and Madison to Chapel Hill and Charlottesville. We just had, it was just so nice. We'd check into these little weird hotels, grab dinner,

• 9:14Scott Galloway?

  and then do a school tour in the morning. And it was just really rewarding for me to spend that much time with him and also very, what's the term, this melancholy or not sad, but this little kid who used to bomb into my room in the morning on the weekends and crawl in bed with me and then wake up and say, Dad, let's make a plan is now, you know, six feet one and walking around, you know, Northwestern's campus, asking questions about their biology department. It's just, it's both incredibly rewarding and quite frankly sad. And I like the notion that kind of grief and anxiety are the receipts for love. And I'm feeling

• 9:57Scott Galloway?

  some of that. But that was the best. I had a great summer. I lead, I lead a life of privilege. I did amazing things. I've gone amazing, you know, places and stuff, done cool stuff. I spend most of my money on experiences, not on things. But anyways, but that was the highlight was the college tour with my son. What a nice, what a nice question. Thank you. We'll be right back after a quick break.

• 10:29Scott Galloway?

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• 11:11Scott Galloway?

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• 11:30Scott Galloway?

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• 12:15Scott Galloway?

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• 12:40Scott Galloway?

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• 13:25Scott Galloway?

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• 13:50Scott Galloway?

  Welcome back. Our final question is from Dan.

• 13:53Speaker 05

  Hey Scott, Dan here from Melbourne, Australia. You often say that greatness is in the agency of others and I was wondering if you could share some advice on how to find those others. I imagine you have no shortage of high quality applicants wanting to join your teams now, but what advice would you have for small businesses that are just starting out? In a saturated job market, how can a small business without much reach attract truly great people? Thanks for all your work.

• 14:18Scott Galloway?

  Oh, hey, Dan from Melbourne. I just decided I'm going to be the mayor of Melbourne, Australia. I think I could move, I think I'd be big in Melbourne, Melbourne. So, look, it's easy to say that the team is everything, right? Team with best players wins, greatness is in the agency of others. And then the question becomes, well, how do you find great people? And what I have found is you're constantly posting, telling people you're looking for people when you are looking for people. And my approach to hiring, and I'm not sure it's the right approach, but it's my approach and it's worked.

• 14:47Scott Galloway?

  Is I tell people, everyone I know, do you know anyone smart, really good? And it doesn't matter if they're looking, but I'll say to people, especially we have a strong kind of referral system in our company. Who are really smart people you know in your peer group? And let's bring them in and tell them about our company and see if they'd be interested in joining us. I do not really believe in the power of interviewing. I mean, that kind of bottom and top 10%, the tails of people in interviews. Occasionally meet somebody, you're like, okay, this is obviously not a fit. And occasionally meet somebody, you think, Jesus Christ, this person is just so impressive. Anyway, I'm pure about reference hiring. And that is, and I always tell the story, but Ed Elson, who's my co-host at Prop G Markets, or now that he's hosting five days away, I should say, I'm his co-host.

• 15:31Scott Galloway?

  But essentially this woman, Joanna Coles, called me and said, you must hire Edward Elson. And that's my British, my woman's British impersonation. And I said, well, for what role? And she said, it doesn't matter, you idiot. She basically said, you gotta hire this guy. And if somebody I trust calls me and says, you gotta hire this person, I'll hire them. I, I find reference hiring is absolutely the way to go. But I'll, I'll make it clear to the person, all right? This isn't a friend or someone you want to do a solid for. This is someone you think, you know, that if I hire, pretty much side unseen, they're gonna be, they're gonna work out. Now, I, everyone has to interview them. Everyone has to agree that they would like to work with them. But for the most part, if someone, if I get a really strong reference hire from someone

• 16:16Scott Galloway?

  who either works with us or someone I trust, that person has got kind of an 80, 90% lock on the job. Because I find reference hires are absolutely the way to go. So what do you do? You spread the word that you're looking for people. You don't wait for people to call you. You find really good people and then you ask to meet with them and you just get on their radar. Hey, this is what we're up to. If you ever want to know more, we have a lot of respect for you. We've heard you're great. And also, when you do find good people, the only way to get them to act like owners is to make them owners. I usually give away equity. And then I will plot a path for them. I think young people want to come to work to be, to learn and to develop economic security for them and their families.

• 16:57Scott Galloway?

  So the best reference hires for people looking to join, whether I should join this firm, is they'll talk to the people at the firm or the people who used to work there. And I'll sit down with an employee after they've, you know, they've worked out for a year and I'll say, okay, this is the strategy for the company. This is our strategy for you. This is where you'll be in three years professionally, from a position standpoint, a responsibility standpoint, and also a financial standpoint. And just be very explicit. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But they, knowing that A, you demonstrate excellence and that you want them to win, is very intoxicating for them. At Prop G Media, I think we have 25 or 30 people now, and I think we've had maybe one or two people leave voluntarily.

• 17:39Scott Galloway?

  Anyways, thanks for the question. That's all for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to [email protected]. Again, that's [email protected]. Or if you prefer to ask on Reddit, just post your question on Scott Galloway's subreddit and we just might feature it in an upcoming episode. This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez. Our assistant producer is Laura Janer. Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod from Prop G Media.

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• 19:19Speaker 08

  This podcast is supported by Anthropic, the public benefit corporation behind Claude. Everyone's got a hard question about AI. Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way, because there's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/spotify and keep thinking. That's claude.ai/spotify.