The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Get to a Platform

Episode Date: May 28, 2020

Scott discusses why the optimism around when life can resume to normalcy is problematic, as well as how vaccination is going to become an industry that creates trillions of dollars in shareholder value. He also shares why he thinks HBO Max is the worst brand move in the last 20 years.  Our guest this week is Bloomberg reporter and author of No Filter, Sarah Frier. She talks about the role social platforms play in our elections and everyday lives. Lastly, an Office Hour question has Scott questioning the three elements to success.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 11. 11! No! 11! Also 11, the name of the lead character in Stranger Things. I am coming out of the closet as someone who does not love Stranger Things. I watched the first two episodes. This supernatural alien kid that gets the bloody noses.

I'm fed up with her. I'm just totally fed up. Also, I can't look at Winona Ryder and not think about her shoplifting. I just can't get past that. That just was a deal killer for me. It's like Pee Wee Herman. I just can't watch Pee Wee Herman any longer. There is a deal killer in there. I won't go into it. Anyways, 11th episode. Today we speak with Bloomberg reporter and author of the book No Filter, Sarah Fryer. Sarah shares how social platforms play a role in elections, the implications of Facebook buying Giphy, and how to determine which platform is worth investing in from a content perspective. Oh my God, bring it on. I also answer your office

hours questions and wrap with an algebra of happiness. A quick reminder, a quick reminder, as I continue to be a whore, that's the bad news. But the good news is I'm a cheap whore. If you've been following yours truly these past few weeks and you know the fourth episode of no mercy no malice is out tonight may 28th at 10 p.m eastern standard time on vice television you can watch on vice television be a cable provider on vice tv.com or the vice tv app or on a roku apple tv Tonight, we break down media's winners and losers. And we also do a tribute to El Santo, the mass wrestler from Mexico. No joke, no joke. Anyways, tonight at 10 on Vice, please tune in, download so I can continue to signal my success and worth

to potential mates and rival males. So a lot going on. This is a bit all over the place, but that's why you're here, isn't it? That's why you're here. But there's a bunch going on this week. It feels as if, according to the Wall Street Journal, the US economy, that the worst might be over. I am, or in the midst of, there's been some tension, some tension. Some like everyone loves Raymond kind of tension. Actually, no. Everyone loves Raymond kind of tension. Actually now, everyone loves Raymond kind of tension as they just fight and it's over. This tension is a little bit more serious than that over distancing. And that is some people in my household who shall remain nameless, they shall remain nameless, feel that it's time to get back to our lives. And it strikes me, it strikes me that most crises, sentiment is the

primary weapon or the vehicle for emergence or reemergence from that crisis. Specifically in war, there's a unified sense of vision. In an economic crisis, sentiment and emotion, specifically consumer confidence, can actually bring you out of the crisis, right? Honey, let's go. Let's plan that trip to New York. Let's take a cruise. Let's buy a new Hyundai. And you can sort of optimize or spend or good cheer yourself or confidence yourself out of a economic crisis. What's different about this, and we don't have a playbook for this, so we don't have any muscle memory around this, is I just don't think the virus gives a flying fuck about our emotions and whether or not we believe it's time to get back to work or back to our modern life.

So even if emotion hits your hoarding, which is instinctual, and you buy 140 rolls of toilet paper, but have decided there's some risks worth taking and you're not wearing a mask, great, your asshole's going to be clean, but you're going to die. I just don't get that we have decided, and this is a larger meta trend, that we have decided our emotions and our political viewpoint and the ideology that we want to find data to support overrides this thing called science. It used to be our base. It used to be the thing we turned to. So I find this all, quite frankly, this optimism, not only a head fake, and I'll get a ton of shit for this, but I find it discouraging that people have decided that, okay, our optimism and our need

to return to normalcy supersedes science. And I wonder, or I worry that it's going to be incredibly damaging. NYU has decided that they're moving forward with classes and they're opening. First off, that's just such ridiculous bullshit to pretend they have any fucking idea what we're going to do is ridiculous. When someone says or people ask me, okay, will NYU open in the fall? I said, well, tell me if we're going to have a vaccine or new therapies and I'll tell you if we're opening or not. But it's kind of tantamount, a bunch of universities, to be fair, have announced that they're reopening. And this is similar to a CEO talking up his or her stock in the midst of a bad earnings report saying, we have a great future,

and we're excited about this, and wallpapering over the bad news in order such that you'll continue to buy their stocks such that they can continue to reinvest in their future and create a better future. And you can see how CEOs basically come right up to the line of lying and sometimes cross that line in order to keep support their stock price such that they have the cheap capital to go build that future. And the same thing's happening here at universities. So if you're a university with 20,000 students and say it's a small liberal arts tier two college with a marginal brand, but high tuition that is basically kind of adult supervision and marination for your fuck up kid, of which two thirds of us are, let's be honest, I was

one of those. Then you have schools, you have a school that is asking for a deposit of half the tuition, call it $25,000 times 20,000, that's 500 million bucks. That's a half a billion dollars in cashflow that this organization has received, call it June 1 or May 15th for the last, I don't know, 50 years, although they've raised their prices dramatically. But they've basically had that cashflow guaranteed in the bank, like a recurring revenue SaaS-like payment. And for the first time, universities all over the nation are thinking,

oh my goodness, oh my goodness, I might not get that revenue. So what should I do? I should be optimistic and tell the entire world that sure we're reopening. What a bunch of bullshit. Wasn't planning to go there. Wasn't planning to go there. Let's get back to the news. Another streaming service, by the way, by the way, the biggest industry that's about to emerge, vaccination. And I don't mean the medical kind. I mean, your ability to provide an experience with it's almost near free or the perception that you're reducing the likelihood that people are going to contract a virus. And what Disney announced with the sports leagues, it's just fascinating. You're going to see an emerging field in vaccination and they'll call it something else. But this is

kind of the biggest and newest industry in history. If you were to take an industry that didn't exist 90 days ago and is now probably worth hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars, whether it's your ability to vaccinate, bring together the protocols, the investments, the training, the compensation such that you can figure out a way to host an NBA game without an audience or figure out a way to vaccinate a day at Disney or figure out a way to vaccinate supply chain such that you can get your Nespresso pods. That is going to be the new skill, the new competence that creates trillions of dollars in shareholder value. And HBO Max is launching. HBO Max is launching. I don't know the difference between HBO Go, HBO Now, HBO Joey Bag of Donuts, HBO The Last Jedi. I teach a session or a couple sessions on brand architecture,

my brand strategy class. And brand architecture is essentially the uniforming principle or portfolio management of your different brands and sub-brands that hopefully creates synergy, right? It's not the Camry, it's the Toyota Camry. It's not Tab, it's Diet Coke. It's Old Navy by Gap, Gap's Old Navy, et cetera. The relationship between these things is hugely important. And the brand architecture, whoever's in charge of brand

architecture at the AT&T Time Warner division of HBO should be fired. I have no fucking ideas how these brands relate to each other. I have no idea how they've carved out distinct value propositions. All I know, all I know is that this is the worst brand move of the last 20 years where HBO was effectively a luxury brand. Vertical, no commercials, could drop F-bombs, and had a reputation and a culture, a culture for attracting and retaining the best talent front and behind the camera. And as a result, as a result, just as when you walk into a Chanel store and think, you know what? I'd look good in everything. When I walk into John Barbados, I'm like, the dog could wear any of this because I have

a raging midlife crisis and want to look like a rock and roll star that makes a shit ton of money. Totally different episode. But my point is, I go into that store and I want everything and I feel confident I would give anything trial. And that's the same with HBO. When HBO announced a new series, you would say, okay, I'll watch that new series. When Starz announces a new series, you're like, okay,

Starz is announcing a new series. But HBO has created an unbelievable luxury brand. And that is their merchandising and their content isn't about what they have. It's about what they don't have. Insight alert. Insight alert. The basis of specialty retail, which added trillions of dollars in value just in the last couple of years, and now it's about to get its turn at the witch in retail, was not about what was in the store, but what wasn't in the store. And that is someone with better taste than you curated those two dual-lit toasters. Not every toaster available on Amazon, i.e. Williams-Sonoma. And the same with HBO. It was very hard to get something greenlit there.

And when something did go into production, it meant it was worth the trial. So what do they do? What do they do? IU Williams-Sonoma, and the same with HBO. It was very hard to get something greenlit there. And when something did go into production, it meant it was worth the trial. So what do they do? What do they do? They take the former CTO of DirecTV, a guy named John Stankey, who can't be all bad because he graduated from UCLA. But I do think he's literally one of the less rational, that's my way of saying fucked up in the head, kind of poor logic executives in charge of a media company right now. And it's decided that to scale HBO, that's like walking into the Louvre and saying, let's scale this thing. And they're adding a bunch of content, including the Big Bang Theory.

Yay, the Big Bang Theory. I mean, they are junking this shit up. It's like they took Hermes and added Brooklyn messenger bags in the store. This is the worst brand move of the last 10 years. this shit up. It's like they took Hermes and added Brooklyn messenger bags in the store. This is the worst brand move of the last 10 years. HBO Max doomed for failure, what I would call an erosion of shareholder value. So what's going to happen? You're going to see Disney Plus continue to absolutely crush it. Apple and Amazon video offerings, Apple TV Plus, Amazon Prime will continue to crush it because they're monopolies and they own the rails and they can take shitty content and get a ton of viewership

because they can put it in your face on your phone in your Amazon Prime offering. And HBO Max will be kind of the, I just don't think it's going to work. I think it's going to be underwhelming and it's going to be the unraveling or the thread that begins to show that Time Warner overpaid, or excuse me, AT&T overpaid for Time Warner. And in three to five years, we're going to see Time Warner spun out again. You heard it here first. Okay. So stay with us. We will be right back. The Capital Ideas Podcast now features a series hosted by Capital Group CEO, Mike Gitlin. Through the words and experiences of investment professionals, you'll discover We're back. today. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Published by Capital Client Group, Inc. We're back. Here's our conversation with Bloomberg reporter and author of the book,

No Filter, Sarah Fryer. Here at The Prop G Show, we like to be supportive of not only first-time authors, but young journalists, as opposed to just going after the famous people. We like to find people before they're famous, before they're famous. Anyway, Sarah Fyre, Bloomberg reporter and author. Sarah, where does The Prop G Show find you? I am in my 800 square foot San Francisco apartment doing a virtual book tour covering social media at a time that people are using it more than ever. So let's talk about Instagram. And I've done a lot of Tristan Harris, moving down the cortex and the addiction. It feels as if it's, I'll ask you, what do you think the biggest impacts on society have been of Instagram? Instagram has become the ultimate benchmark of cultural relevance in our society. It'd be like walking down the street and seeing on someone's

forehead how much money they make. That's the kind of level of judgment that we're able to make about other people. And you've talked about this addiction problem and the behaviors that change as we scroll and as we get deeper into the recommendation algorithms. We have discussed the dark design. We've discussed all those things. It's not just our behavior on the internet and on the app that's affecting us. Instagram is affecting the way we behave in the world at large. And we are becoming metrics obsessed in a very Facebook-esque manner. We are looking at that follower number, the comments, the replies, the likes, and we are using that to measure what we see as our worth. So the kind of wrap on YouTube is there's a small number of people making a very good

living and then 99% of influencers are just working their asses off and not making a lot of money. Are people, are Instagram influencers, is it a good career? Is it something your 20, your 19 year old daughter gets a following on Instagram around fashion or cooking or great hip bars or whatever. Is it a good career or is it a sugar high and you know, just a bunch of, is it like opening a restaurant? It sounds good in theory, but it's generally just a ton of work and low pay. It's a lot of both. I mean, it's a constant churn of content. I would say that

what Instagram allows you to do is bypass the normal gatekeepers in society, right? If you want to be a comedian, you don't have to be, you know, working the club circuit until you get to a bigger, bigger club. And then you end up in, you know, second city, you don't have to do that. You can just start on Instagram and you can just let your content speak for itself. And I do think that there's some good to Instagram and you can just let your content speak for itself. And I do think that there's some good to that in that, you know, we see a lot of people who maybe wouldn't be recognized by Hollywood or by the music industry who are finding their audience on Instagram. And that's a good thing. But I think the flip side of that is the mental health impact, the people who fake it to make it, the people who are sort of thinking that this is a level playing field.

And Instagram is not a level playing field. There are a lot of ways that success on Instagram is influenced not just by the algorithm and things we know about, but by the company's decisions. So let's go broader than this. Let's talk about all the guys or gals. There's Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Snap, TikTok. Which platforms do you see gaining and seeding the most influence and power? If you thought of these as stocks, and let's assume that, okay, I'm not investing, but I have my own finite human capital. I'm a content creator, but I don't have time to post on LinkedIn, Twitter. What should I over-invest in right now? So just as an example, because as I do with everything, I always manage a way to turn it back to me. I over-invested in

YouTube about five, six years ago and started doing these videos, and it was a huge payoff. And I would say sort of over-invested in Twitter, mostly because I enjoy it. I find Twitter very easy for me, but I haven't done TikTok. For some reason, I got very turned off of Instagram because I just thought it was so performative and obnoxious. It's like every time I'm on Instagram, I want to shower. I just feel as if, God, it's just, that's not your life. Who the fuck are you kidding? Stop it. So talk to me about the platforms as asset classes. Where would you over-invest and under-invest? What's on the rise? What's on the descent? As a journalist, I have certainly over-invested in Twitter. That's where if I don't post there, the competition doesn't

see my stories and I don't hear from as wide a base. But I think for most people, that's not the world they're playing in. In fact, more people use Snapchat now than use Twitter, a place that I haven't invested as much. I would say that people should invest where they feel like they can have a voice. Oh, come on. Come on. Don't be such a journalist. You don't have to be fair and balanced here. If you had to pick one to overinvest and one to underinvest, help me out. Prof G, I want to be the most influential thought leader in the history of business. Where should I be focusing my limited capital? If you want a quick trip to fame, invest in TikTok.

If you have a really visual business, then invest in Instagram. If you're funny, go to YouTube. It depends on what you have to offer. If you've got a lot of scoops, go to Twitter. It's similar to brands that have a media plan. Luxury brands are better in print. Beer and movies are better in TV, et cetera. It really depends on, I think that makes sense. It depends on your objective and what you're good at.

Talk to me a little bit about what's happening and what different individuals on different platforms provides insight into the presidential race. And you've written a little bit about President Trump on various platforms. What does this reveal, their presence or lack thereof on different platforms about the race? It reveals the difference in how they've built their audiences. I mean, Donald Trump, one of the things that he got really good at in the 2016 presidential election was asking Facebook for help. He went to Facebook and said, or his team went to Facebook and said, we don't really know what we're doing. And Facebook says, don't worry, there's a formula. They embedded a couple Facebook employees with the Trump campaign. They offered

the same help to the Clinton campaign, but the Clinton campaign refused. And they helped Trump build the kind of campaign that does better on Facebook, which is these direct response ads. And by direct response, I mean ads that ask people to do something. Sign up for this mailing list. Put your name on this petition. Buy this hat. Any ask that has an action that corresponds to it, that's what the Trump campaign was doing while the Clinton campaign was doing brand advertising. So they were saying, look at this candidate. She's so qualified. Look at what she says about these different policy issues. But the thing that works on the internet is that call to action because these companies are so based in data that they are able to optimize

those things. They're able to say, oh, this worked using this kind of ad copy with this demographic. And they're able to quickly iterate on that and say, we're going to be more efficient about reaching this type of voter. We're going to reach more people that look just like this person in other counties. And that's why Trump was able to be so successful. And the other part of it is that he was able to rile people up. The things that work on social media are that which are shareable, that make us angry, that make us... The rage machine.

The rage machine, exactly. The things that are contrarian. Like, why would you share something that you already know? You would share something that is relevatory. So that's another way that Trump was able to win on Facebook. And it's still happening. I was talking with the Biden campaign about Snapchat. Snapchat is potentially the only place that we're going to be able to register young voters in droves in the 2020 election. They're not going to be on college campuses. They're not going to be going to the DMV, but there are hundreds of thousands of people turning 18 every month on Snapchat.

And the Trump campaign has a ton of traction there. And the Biden campaign is just getting started. They have a digital team that's about a quarter of the size of Trump's. Wow. That's discouraging. It's just weird. There's this stereotype that for some reason Democrats would be better at this stuff. And the reality is we're not. It appears that the Republican Party has been much more, has kind of gone early and embraced much in a much more of a bear hug way, the social and also this unholy alliance between a sociopath with control of the algorithms of three and a half billion people and a corrupt president. It seems like that's an alliance that's going to end up going really well. Oh, and Peter Thiel, that adds a nice spin to the

cocktail. That's going to- And the best part is we don't have a shared reality. I mean, just think about what's happening with coronavirus. Some people don't even believe that it's real, that you need to wear a mask, that you need to social distance. People think that it's been politicized, just like everything else. And we have social media to thank for that as well. Well, yeah. And I agree with you. I do think the government's a little bit of fault there for saying, you don't need to wear a mask because they didn't have enough. And then all of a sudden, everyone should wear a mask. It's like, well, fault there for saying you don't need to wear a mask because they didn't have enough. And then all of a sudden everyone should wear a mask. Like, well, which is it, guys? So let's flip back to Instagram.

I'm trying to figure out why I should hate the idea of Facebook buying Giphy. Help me figure out why I should hate them so much. It's all about the data. I mean, that's what Facebook is about. It's with the Giphy buy, they will understand what's trending in our pop culture. You can see where people's activity is going. And Facebook tells me that they will be able to see the amount of API calls for Giphy, Jiffy. And they'll be able to see, are more people posting them on TikTok, more people posting them on Slack?

What kinds of gist are they posting in different places? And they will be able to use that data in a competitive surveillance way, the way that they have with acquisitions like Onavo, with all of their SDKs, where they track what people use beyond Facebook and Facebook's properties. I look at it and go, all right, it's another set of signals that help Facebook figure out who's gaining traction and who they should crush or acquire. They integrate it into Instagram, make Instagram more beautiful, more interesting, more kind of fast, all the better product. And they don't offer those same services to other platforms. It feels like, as usual, it feels as if it's genius for Facebook and good for their shareholders and bad for literally everyone else. Just to cap it off, the most surprising thing you uncovered or you found or encountered when writing this book? It was shocking how much Instagram had a hand in deciding who would become famous.

There's one particular story that really sticks with me. There's this employee at Instagram. He keeps this spreadsheet of the best pet accounts. And one day in 2013, he shares this awkward dog called Tuna. Overnight, this dog's following doubles to about 16,000, doubles again to about 32. And that's the kind of decisions that Instagram is making every single day. They are lifting up certain creators on their platform. They're kingmakers. And they use that to their advantage. They decide to help. I learned a lot. And they use that to their advantage. They decide to help. I learned a lot of stories about helping celebrities behind the scenes, changing their product because of prompting from Taylor Swift or from the Kardashians.

You've heard this over and over from Twitter, from Facebook, that they are neutral platforms, that they're just a reflection of humanity. And with Instagram, that's just not true. Instagram has an opinion about what makes good content on Instagram. Well, even an algorithm that's indifferent is programmed by humans, which are naturally not indifferent. And this is great advice.

I'm changing my nickname to Tuna the Dog. Sarah Fryer reports on social media companies from Bloomberg News from San Francisco. Her award-winning features and breaking stories have earned her a reputation as an expert on how Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter make business decisions that affect our future and our society. Sarah, we appreciate your time. Good luck with the book. Thanks for having me. Bad news. We have some commercials. Good news is we'll be right here when you get back.

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Hello, Scott. My name is Gabriel. I live in Miami, and I'm 56. I have a what would you do question. My investment portfolio is down about 20% since this whole thing started, and I feel trapped in a situation on whether to ride the storm or just cash out. I have no extra income for now, and my numbers were doing quite well until February. Any ideas? Love both of your shows. Please stay safe. Gabriel, thanks for the question. And it's a question that not only a lot of people ask me,

I'm asking myself that. And I'm not an investment advisor. My general advice to anybody is kind of from Aswath Damodaran, who is my yoda of investing, and that is make sure you can sleep at night. And that is figure out diversification and don't leverage too much such that you go to bed not being able to sleep. And some of that is neuroses. I always focus on my portfolio. I always seem to focus on my portfolio, I think, when things aren't going well in other parts of my life, because it's a scorecard. And the worst thing about stocks is you get a scorecard every day, and when they're down, you beat yourself up. In general, if you're diversified and you're in low-cost funds, I think it's dangerous to

react out of emotion. And a lot of emotions surface in crisis and when you're down. And being down 20%, macedown, historic, but it's not. You're and when you're down. And being down 20% may sound historic, but it's not. You're 56, you're probably going to live another 30 or 40 years, and this too shall pass. Now, I don't think it's ever a bad idea to review your portfolio and make sure that, to ensure that you have a good portfolio. And what I mean by that is a healthy portfolio in terms of diversification that reflects the risk that you should be taking at this point in your life, given your income, given your age. But I would be very scared to do what I almost did about two months ago in the depths of all this shit. And I was down 40%, but I'm blessed. I'm economically secure. And I thought, well,

maybe I should just cash out now, sit on cash, sleep at night. And I decided to do exactly nothing. And I just held on and stocks have ripped back. And I wonder if the pain, say the stocks had kept going down, that would have been painful. But the pain of having sold at the bottom and then watch it come ripping back, I don't know. I just think I would have wanted to clone myself such that I could find me, kill me, and then kill myself. I would have been so fucking angry. So in sum, talk to people smarter than me that can do a no mercy, no malice review of your portfolio, but try and avoid selling or buying out of emotion. The market trajectory generally over the longterm is up. Anyways. And like I said, I did not sell and I'm glad I did not. Thank you for the question. Speak to you soon. Next question.

Hey, Prof G, Scott from Fargo. First time, long time, or at least eight episodes, I guess. Wanted to ask about how we increase upside in a job that maybe has a capped upside. So much like you, I was an entrepreneur for a decade and now moved to academia. I want to be one of the 1%, as you mentioned, the professors who really bring a ton of value and are valued by the institution, but would also like to have an upside. It's not just a salary, but maybe write a great book like you, have a podcast, have these other things that are increasing your value externally, but then also bringing value back and increasing your value to the institution. So how can we do that in academia or in other professions where we have a capped income, but maybe have the option to show our value in the market in other ways? So how can a professor expand his or her realm of influence and make some additional cabbage?

You came to the right place, my friend. Oh my God. That's right. I'm the fucking Yoda of this shit. And it creates a lot, I'm boasting now, it creates mostly praise for my colleagues at NYU. It also creates a lot of resentment. The first is you have to make sure that you are bringing a ton of value to the university. And that is most likely if you're not, if you didn't take a PhD track, your value add is teaching. And there's no way they'd put up with my shit if I wasn't putting butts in seats. I think a lot about teaching first and foremost. I'm totally dedicated to excellence in the classroom. I have some talent there, but every semester I sit

down with my TAs and I just try to bring it in class. And I really try to psych myself up before class. I try and surprise and delight them and do interesting things. And I really try to bring it. And one of the things I do to motivate myself is I think about how much money they're paying for my class. But the first thing is you got to be outstanding at home. And home for you right now is university. And if you're a clinical or a lecturer, it probably means you have to be great in the classroom. So then think of the university just as a platform. And universities are amazing platforms. I'm not sure anyone would really care what Scott Galloway thinks, or at least in the beginning. But because institutions

do force some rigor around data, they do force some rigor around pursuing the truth and really thinking through your statements before you say them, which I actually do. Can you imagine me without that freaking filter? Anyways, you get more credibility than you probably deserve. And it's a fantastic platform to other platforms. So books, podcasts, most academics should write a book. If you have anything to say, if you really want to be taken seriously as an academic, I think you have to write. It forces you to show up, do the research, start with articles, try and get a book contract if you can. Writing a book is like serving in the Marines. You're glad you did it. It's a nightmare while you're there though,

but it's an incredibly powerful thing for the rest of your life. If you are fortunate enough to figure out television or get invited on TV, accept all those offers. If not, use other mediums, start doing TikTok. I bet there aren't a ton of professors in Fargo really embracing or increasing their content on TikTok. I embraced YouTube before it was cool as an academic, and it kind of took my career to new places because it gave me additional exposure. And then obviously I went to podcasts, went to television, but it always started with teaching and really trying to think through how do I communicate a concept? How do I taxonomize today's news and business concepts? Or how do I taxonomize business concepts and today's news?

That's the center. And then from there, you write a ring around that of different platforms, different opportunities. I don't want to say I didn't think about money because I think, you know, people always say, oh, I don't think about money. I think about money all the fucking time because I want to live a nice life. And in order to do that or a nicer life, I have to manage and be good about money. By the way, I think people who say they don't think about money are just totally full of shit. That means they're obsessed with money. In sum, in sum, teaching is your home base. Get your shit together at home. Be outstanding at teaching. Develop a very narrow set, go very deep around a specific

part of the world, develop intellectual property, and then be really thoughtful and creative and put in the work around different mediums, around being the prof that really understands TikTok at Fargo or University of Fargo or wherever it is you teach, and then take it from there and wonderful things will start to happen. But at the end of the day, it's like anything else. It's like knowing your shit, doing the work, showing up, being fearless, pursuing the truth without fear or favor. That's one of the wonderful things about being an academic is as long as your heart's in the right place and you have data to back it up, you can say pretty much anything and you'll get protection from your colleagues as I have at NYU. But I would say that really untapped resource or opportunity for academics, and I'll bring it home here, is the embrace of new platforms.

Best of luck to you, Professor. Next question. Hi, Scott. This is Sam from Australia. Now, in the past, you said that there are three things you need to do to find success and satisfaction early in life. They are one, get to a big city, two, get certification, and three, recognizing that balance is a myth. I'm just wondering that in the post-COVID-19 world, do these three factors still apply? And if they still apply, how have they changed? Thank you very much for everything that you do. Stay safe. Cheers. Bye. Sam, what a thoughtful question. And I'm flattered because you clearly follow my stuff. And I am rethinking these things because the world has changed. And I don't think there's anything wrong with changing your mind or changing your view. It's whenever someone says, well,

you liked Spotify stock and now you don't like it or something like that. Or you said Amazon was overvalued and now you say it's undervalued. I'm like, well, brother, when the data changes, I change my mind. And I'm in the midst of potentially changing my mind about a couple of those things. First off, the myth of balance, I don't think that changes. As a matter of fact, this whole work from home trend just means we're all going to work harder. And I don't see any way around, unless you're some sort of crazy genius. Jay-Z, Beyonce works her ass off. She's in the top 0.001% on almost every dimension and still decides that if she wants to be Beyonce, she has to work her ass off. So I just think if you really are committed and really honest about the sacrifice

to be successful, you just have to bring a tremendous amount of grit. And also as you get older, knowing when to work hard, but when you're young, knowing when to work hard is just all the time. Anyway, but the other two, the other two, Sam, I am questioning, get to a city. Rivers can reverse direction. I didn't know this. The Amazon slowly but surely geologically has reversed direction for a variety of reasons that have taken thousands or millions of years. The Mississippi River has reversed direction a couple of times because of these crazy trope-like hurricanes that actually reverse the flow of the river. And I'm thinking, okay, COVID-19 is an accelerant, right? COVID-19 might be a change agent, but what are some industries or what are some trends where the river actually changes direction? And here's a couple, or I'll focus on one and it gets to your question. There has been a massive influx of capital, both human and financial, into cities. Supposedly over the next 30 years, two thirds of all economic development or economic growth was

going to take place in 20 or 30 super cities. So I've always said, get to a city. What happens when a lot of the human capital decides, okay, I can work from home, I can work from anywhere. So the city no longer becomes the magnet of human and financial capital. What happens? And I would say, okay, get to a city. Maybe that's going to change to get to a platform. Maybe that just as a city as a platform, how do you get to and own the platforms that are growing? And it kind of goes to our previous question. How do you take your industry and move it or become the guy or gal that really understands how to put this industry on a platform, if you will. That's kind of a cop-out excuse. In sum, I'm questioning whether get to a city is now

a prerequisite. I think as a younger person, getting to a city is still a good idea because one, I think they're about to get cheaper, which means there'll be a great quality of life for a young person before you start collecting dogs and kids to be in a city. Still think it's going to have a disproportionate amount of activity and opportunity relative to non-cities, but the ratio just won't be as out of the way. I think if you're 23, you got to get to a city right now if you're looking to go big and go large. And I'm not sure that's going to be the case any longer. Let me put it this way. It used to be from 23 to 43. Now it might just be from 23 to 30. And then you have the credibility and the wherewithal to work from home or work from somewhere else. I was commuting to

New York from Delray Beach, Florida, Sunday night to Thursday night for the last 10 years. And now I'm about to go because of COVID-19 Monday morning to Thursday every other week. So I'm going from 16 days a month in the city to eight. So you can just see that's probably going to happen across all types of industries and different levels of professional. So yeah, get to a city, but I'm not as confident. Get certification. You need something that digitally can communicate your differentiation. And that is usually certification. The question is, will there be different forms of certification and who will be the certifiers? Who will the certifiers be, Sam?

To a certain extent, the new form of certification is the number of followers you have on Instagram, right? I'm finding that I get asked to go on media now because of my Twitter following, that there are literally a half a dozen academics in the world that have more than 200,000 followers, which immediately certifies me to speak on topics. So certification, 100% still yes, but the certifications may change. A city? I don't know. I don't know. We're going to see. Thank you for the question. Love the Australians. Everyone would live in Sydney or Melbourne if it wasn't so damn... True story. I went to Australia.

I went out. I met the nicest people at the bar at the W Hotel in Sydney. I had one of the funnest nights of my life. The next day, I went to Bondi Beach and had drinks at this place called, I think it was called the Polar Club. And then I took a water taxi around the Sydney Opera House. And then I met some other really nice people. I went there alone who invited me to dinner with them. And I'm like, that's it. The dog is moving down under. And when he pees on fire hydrants, the dog pee is going to rotate a different way. I don't know where I got that metaphor. Bottom line, I wanted to move to Australia. Algebra of happiness. So I have been, I love the obits. I find them inspiring. I'm a little bit obsessed with death, but in a good way, I think it's a motivator. And I was really moved by the obituary of Annie Glenn, a maiden name, Anna Margaret Castor, who was John Glenn's wife and among other things, was a huge advocate for people with disabilities and communication disorders. disorders, and then was thrust into fame when she married the United States Marine Corps officer named John Glenn, who went on to be the first person to orbit the earth and then was a

senator from Ohio. And I was more moved really not only about Ms. Glenn's life, she passed away at the age of 100 from COVID-19, but their relationship. And specifically, he was asked when he was running for the Democratic nomination for president, he was asked what it was like to run for president with a wife and be in such public view who suffered from such a severe stutter. And he wasn't defensive about it. He was very natural about it. And he said, we've known each other for so long and I've always just loved her for who she is. And that's that. These crises have a tendency, I think, to make us feel as does any bad time to take our insecurities and make them huge sources of self-doubt. If you're not making a lot of money, I think this crisis kind of thrusts this

in your family's face. If you're not getting along or if you have a physical disability, I think not being strong or not being physically capable in an environment like this would seem especially difficult. Having some sort of suffering from mental illness, I think being thrust into a situation that takes you outside of your comfort zone and then having people around you putting more stressors on those and observing those issues, I just think would make you exceptionally self-conscious and insecure about things that you're struggling with. You'd like to think that we all, when we suffer from stuff, can go on to be leaders and be fearless as Ms. Glenn was and serve as an advocate for

other people who are struggling. I think there's a lot of attention, deserved attention to those people, those leaders like Ms. Castor, who go on to be a voice for people who are struggling. What struck me though, is the opportunity for people to recognize other people in our lives that might be struggling or insecure about something. And just because you think it's not something that they should be insecure about, or you don't mind it, I think reminding them on a regular basis that, look, you should know. I love you because you are who you are. I've always loved you. And that's that. I think this is an enormous opportunity to reach out to people in our lives and say that. I love you. I always have. This is who you are. And that's that. Our producers are Caroline Chagrin and Drew Burrows. If you like what you heard,

please follow, download, and subscribe. Thank you for listening. We'll catch you next week with another episode of The Prof G Show from Section 4 and the Westwood One Podcast Network.