The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Office Hours: Are Young Professionals Leaving New York? Leveraging AI in Your Business, and Should You Hire a Career Coach?

Episode Date: June 7, 2023

Scott gives his thoughts on New York and whether it’s still worth the price tag. He then speaks about how to approach AI to increase efficiency in business. He wraps up with his thoughts on investing in a professional career coach. Music: https://www.davidcuttermusic.com / @dcuttermusic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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cards, savings accounts, mortgage rates, and more. NerdWallet, finance smarter. NerdWallet Compare Incorporated. NMLS 1617539. Welcome to the Property 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 officehoursatproptomedia.com. Again, that's officehoursatproptomedia.com. I have not heard or seen these questions. First question. Hello, Professor G. Mara Gardner here. You often say young people move to cities to find their career and mate. I live in London and New York and worry

it is no longer the case. The New York Times says they're moving out due to the expense and limited opportunities. And now the commercial real estate cliff edge looms over New York City. Are we entering another drop-dead New York era? Is a playground city the answer? Can you please analyze that for us? Thank you. That's a really interesting question, Mara. Every city in the world is competing for number three. Two and one, I think, is a toss-up between London and New York. I would still argue the crown goes to New York, but probably a little bit biased. You can hear it in my accent. But essentially, both great cities. What I have noticed is if you can't lubricate London and New York with

just a shit ton of money, or you can be a young person who sort of dances in between the raindrops and has two or three kids and is super ambitious and has a great high-earning job out of school, you're going to end up where it's just almost near impossible to stay in these cities. I am fascinated by the mating market. But the bottom line is you want to put yourself in a context when you're a young person to have the most professional opportunity and the most well-called relationship opportunity. And the most professional opportunity, economic opportunity, hands down, is in cities. The best and brightest have kind of a few things in common. And one of them is that they get to the biggest city in their country by the time they're 25,

and they get to the biggest city in their continent by the time they're 30. One of the reasons the American economy is so strong and that we've been so prosperous and we don't talk a lot about this is it's built into our DNA to leave and to move. And that is my dad has this. Whenever things didn't get great for my dad, whether he was getting divorced from his fourth wife or got fired, he had no problem moving to Ohio or moving to Chicago or moving to Phoenix or moving to Ocala or moving to Columbus, Ohio or moving to Laguna. If you move from Laguna, that's where he fucked up. That's where we should have stayed. Anyways, longer story. But my point is applying your human capital to the place of most opportunity is absolutely a huge component of prosperity. The reason why humans are so

successful as a species is not because we're stronger, smarter, faster, but because we're more adaptable. Oh, there's no more seals here. We need to move. And the people or the tribes that stay go out of business, so to speak. So your ability to get to a city, getting to London and New York probably means you have done well economically. Now, having said that, you want to know about the kind of marketplace for cities. San Francisco is experiencing what you're talking about, not New York. New York is still singular. New York post-COVID is better. New restaurants, it shed its skin. Some of the tired stuff went away. New York, in my opinion, is worth the additional 13% in taxes because it's

singular. It's doing amazing. People moved out of New York, but they're actually moving back. Even before the pandemic, a trend emerged where an increasing number of college graduates have been leaving metropolitan cities, including New York, Chicago, and L.A. The increase of flexibility through remote work has caused many to relocate to more affordable major metropolitan areas, including places like Phoenix, Atlanta, Houston, and Tampa. This is the market of work. It's amazing and it's good. A study conducted by Smart Asset in 2022 monitored the mobility of individuals referred to as affluent young professionals. These individuals are defined as those under the age of 35 who earn an adjusted gross income of at least $100,000. The data revealed that New York was the state with the highest number of departures by a long shot. Oh my God, I just contradicted

myself. It ends up that people are leaving New York. I thought a bunch of people were coming into New York. Let me back up. Let me back up. I was just at Casa Cipriani because I'm fabulous and a bit of a douchebag, which is this high-end members club at the tip of Manhattan. I don't like the location. It's so far down. Anyways, went down there last weekend and I looked around and it was all a bunch of 30-somethings. And I said to the guy, one of the guys kind of who runs the place, I said, who are these people? Where do they come from? This is so expensive. I said, we just had some appetizers and a few drinks. It was 400 bucks. And I said, who can afford this? And he said, their parents can afford it. It's a lot of rich

kids from New Jersey. None of the women here are paying for anything. And most of the guys here aren't paying either. It's their parents that are paying. And so New York and London, I don't know if this is true of London, but I'm confident saying this about New York. New York is mostly a place where you either have to be very scrappy and making a lot of money for your young person, or your parents are putting you through New York. I was talking to someone the other day who was complaining that he's going to have to leave New York and so it was the worst thing ever. I'm like, no, it's not. The majority of us go to New York for a little while, figure it out for a short term. It's almost like you can't spend your whole life at Disneyland. Some people get to figure it out. But most of us go there for a few years, a couple few years,

work our asses off, get some stripes, maybe make some money, spend a shit ton of money. Maybe you spend more than we make. And then when people leave, the prices go down. They very rarely go down in New York. But I do think you're going to see housing prices come down in the Bay Area. But like any product, it trades on supply and demand and things go up and down. Urbanists Edward Glazer and Carlo Ratti proposed the idea of New York City as a playground city in a New York Times opinion article and said that cities should embrace the shift from vocation to recreation and make cities more fun to live in, and that is a playground city. They look at the low office occupancy in New York City, which is around 50% of pre-pandemic levels. By the way, I loved how the mayor said you had a moral obligation to get back to work. Yeah,

I'm sure you're going to shame people into going back to work. Good luck, mayor. Good luck with that, mayor. According to their findings, get this, 26 Empire State buildings could fit into New York's empty office space. Wow. However, even with the empty office space, the bottom line is the quality of life in New York has come to surpass that of most other places in the U.S. New York is working. It's working. It's a tale of two cities. Take San Francisco, massive amount of wealth creation, a shitty place to live. New York, a massive amount of wealth creation. You're getting your money, New York, a massive amount of wealth creation, you're getting your money's worth. It's a luxury item that costs a ton of money, but you're getting your money's worth. In sum, I think New York continues to thrive. I think New

York continues to be worth it. What would be interesting is to figure out, well, why is it? Why is it that New York continues to thrive and some of these other cities don't? And that's a longer conversation. Maybe we should have Richard Florida on. Anyways, thanks for the question, Mara from London slash New York. Question number two. Hey, Scott, I appreciate your thoughtful and measured reflections on OpenAI so far. For my own business, I see an immediate potential application and benefit of an LLM. That said, I'm not about to start putting proprietary information into one of the existing open AI platforms, even the ones that are starting to offer enhanced privacy protections. What would you say to small and medium-sized businesses that have only ever

used existing tech products and never had to think about developing our own, but who want to jump on this opportunity and leverage this moment in emergent technology. I look forward to hearing your advice. Thanks. That's a really interesting question. And I was introduced on CNN as an expert in artificial intelligence, which could not be further from the truth. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. The last technology I had to learn was voice and then TikTok. And every time I'm presented with one of these things, I realize I'm aging and I'm just having a more difficult time wrapping my head around this stuff. So take this with a grain of salt. According to a report by G2, corporations spent $176 billion on AI in 2021. That's up from $5.23 billion. Think

about that. I mean, this business, it's sort of everything the Web3 was supposed to be. For the life of me, I can't tell you how the blockchain is going to change or affect in any way I could even use it today. But I'm going to Istanbul with my 12-year-old son, and we use AI to plan our weekend. I'm trying to, whenever I write my newsletter and I want data, I ask chat GPT questions. And I spend late night. I used to browse planes because that's the kind of guy I am. I dream about buying a plane. And now I'm on chat GPT just asking all sorts of

questions and trying to come up with a prompt. The way I've sort of, if you will, thought about the exceptional power of AI and the potential is that if you believe software is going to eat the world, that our ability to translate the analog world into zero and one such that we can process stuff faster and turn machinery and people into the $6 million man who can run 55 miles an hour and read a book from a mile away. If you think that software is critical to that, then the question is, well, who has those skills? And there's been different generations of programming languages with a small number of people, probably less than 0.1% of the people max globally understand how to program or speak that language, whether it's COBOL or FORTRAN or BASIC or what have you, right? And now the programming language that is going to power software that changes the world is English. And so all of a sudden about, what is it, about a third

of the world speaks English? We now have two and a half billion people who overnight are sort of mediocre programmers but could become great programmers. And what I'm trying to figure out is how I spend more time becoming a sophisticated programmer by understanding different prompts, you know, in the voice of what additional questions can I answer such that you can provide better answers. Now, as it relates to a small business, I'm not sure I entirely understand your fear around feeding your data into an LLM. I don't know. Are you worried that you'll reveal secrets or that you won't get compensated for it? Because I've always thought that internally people were too focused on confidentiality,

that what we wanted to do, they didn't want to release a product or a beta for fear we'd give the competition a heads up. And my attitude was the key is speed. The key is to do things more quickly and that you overestimate the competition's ability to respond quickly. And that it's more important that we face the enemy and we start doing interesting things and learning than it is keeping our trade secrets. You know, at L2, we had a proprietary research method to assess a firm's digital competence. I'm like, let's publish how we look at this because the bottom line is, you know, as long as we do more of it and do it better, it doesn't really matter. People know that we're measuring currency conversion and engagement. This is how we measure engagement on Instagram.

Anyways, having said that, just some data. A 2022 New Vantage Partners executive survey revealed that nine in 10 Fortune 1000 companies are investing in AI and are continuing to increase those investments. In 2022, according to a report from Stanford, the AI-focused area with the most investment was medical and healthcare, $6 billion, followed by data management, processing, and cloud,

$5.9 billion, so similar in fintech, $5.5 billion. I've always thought that it's healthcare that is the industry that's sticking its chin out and it's gonna be disrupted by AI. What I would do, what I would do is I would first, and I've hired somebody focused on, a contractor focused on AI, I wanna know what tools are out there that could make our existing processes more efficient. There is an AI tool that will look at a video and take the six most interesting video clips,

select them, that will get the most engagement in social. There is something that will read my newsletter and give me the 10 most interesting tweets. And what I have to do is go through and edit them. I pick two or three, and maybe I end up with one or two. It's still not very good, but I'm learning how generative AI can help communicate. I'm learning how generative AI can edit our videos. When I say I, I mean my team. And so I think of it as a tool. I don't think of it as a replacement. And you, as the owner of your, the manager of your small business, want to get really good at it yourself. And when you're on this thing, as opposed to the blockchain, where you're searching for ways to pretend that it'll change the world so you can feel and sound younger, when you start playing with this thing,

your mind just starts racing as to what are the two or three things you could do right away. So, in sum, in sum, I'd be promiscuous in terms of investing my own time and tasking your team with understanding different tools and ask them to come back with two or three different ideas each for how it can improve your current supply chain or processes around how you deliver your product

or your service. AI is not gonna put your business out of business. A business that understands or a business whose employees understand AI is gonna put your business out of business. A business that understands or a business whose employees understand AI is going to put your business out of business. Thanks for the question. We have one quick break before our final question. Stay with us. 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 what differentiates their investment approach, what learnings have shifted their career trajectories, and how do they find their next great idea. Invest 30 minutes in an episode today. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Published by Capital Client Group, Inc. I just don't get it. Just wish someone could do the research on it. Can we figure this out? Hey, y'all. I'm John Blenhill, and I'm hosting a new podcast at Vox called Explain It To Me. Here's how it works. You call our hotline with questions you can't quite answer on your own. We'll investigate and call you back

to tell you what we found. We'll bring you the answers you need every Wednesday starting September 18th. So follow Explain It To Me, presented by Klaviyo. Welcome back. Question number three. Prop G, this is matt from san francisco first off thanks so much for wisdom and insights big fan here i have a question about self-improvement and the potential value of a professional coach i'm a single 30 year old male i'm in a promising mid-level position with a top 10 bank and outside of work I'm very focused on health and wellness,

and I'm always looking to learn and address areas of improvement. Consider getting a professional coach to give myself a leg up, especially as the world's getting more competitive, and I don't have any other significant time or financial commitments at this moment. It's a big investment, though. Could be thousands of dollars per month. And there are other ways to enhance my skills that are either free or inexpensive, such as Toastmasters, connecting with mentors more often, completing certifications, coursework, and more. What are your thoughts on hiring a professional coach, and what else should I consider when looking to increase the odds of success in work and life in general? Thank you. Matt, thanks for the question. First off,

you're just so far ahead of where most 30-year-old males are, where I was. I thought that at your age that I would never have thought to reach out to a coach. I thought, I'm a baller. I don't need advice. It was such a huge mistake. It's really hard to read the label from inside of the bottle. And that's an easy one. Yes, you should have some sort of a coach or a mentor. The question is the format. And I see the advantages of hiring somebody as this is what they do full time or this is their job. By the way, quick digression, I did this thing called Summit at Sea. I must have met six people who were transitioning out of social media something into executive coaching. And I thought,

are there enough executives out there to coach? But clearly this is a trend and there's a lot of demand for it. So someone who's skilled in this, it's like a great friend can give you really good advice around your marriage, but a marriage therapist is kind of sole purpose. Their distance, the fact they're getting paid, the fact that you can lean on them and sit there and tell them about, you know, why you're not listening or why you should be. Whatever it is, is a smart thing. At the same time, if it's a financial strain, is there an opportunity to kind of build what I call a kitchen cabinet? or friends or people who have a little bit more experience than you who are invested or want to see you succeed but aren't maybe too close to you, if you will, that you would feel comfortable

communicating very intimate things about or private things about your work life, including where you're falling short, who would be interested in mentoring you. And I've never had a paid coach. I have a good friend who's the CEO of a very successful tech company that has a paid coach. I've always had a kitchen cabinet, and that is I have probably three or four, maybe even more than that, five as I think about it, people that I just call before I make any major decision, personal or professional, just to bounce it off them, just to hear their view. Most of the time, most of the time, I end up doing the same thing I was

going to do, but it helps me think it through. And occasionally they save me from myself. So a coach, hands down, yes. Mentors, yes. The question is, might you be able to go sort of the old Navy route and get 80% of a professional focus coach, sole purpose coach for 10% of the price or 30% of the price with a kitchen cabinet? Because I do find that people, women and men who are a little bit older, really enjoy mentoring and giving people advice. They've got a lot of wisdom they can share. And I think that they are interested. And it doesn't have to be a big formal thing where you'd be my mentor. Ask them out for coffee and just say, I'd love to get your advice on a couple of things. And if it feels

right, you ask them for more advice again and you say to them, is it cool if I reach out to you for advice on a regular basis? So I think one, it's seeing if you can develop that informal kitchen cabinet and you want to do that regardless of whether you hire a professional coach. And then maybe just try before you buy, buy a few sessions with an executive coach and just ask yourself, is this worth it? Is this worth whatever it is, 100 or 200 bucks an hour? But your instincts are strong at your age. Thinking about getting people who can help you provide a perspective, an outsider's perspective, means that you are tracking towards success and prosperity and you have a degree of self-awareness that most people don't have at your age. Thanks for the question, Matt. That's all for this episode.

If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to officehoursatpropgmedia.com. Again, that's officehoursatpropgmedia.com. Again, that's officehoursatpropgmedia.com. This episode was produced by Caroline Shagrin. Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer and Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the PropGPod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn, and on Monday with our weekly markets show.

Hello, I'm Esther Perel, psychotherapist and host of the podcast, Where Should We Begin, which delves into the multiple layers of relationships, mostly romantic. But in this special series, I focus on our relationships with our colleagues, business partners, and managers. Listen in as I talk to co-workers facing their own challenges with one another and get the real work done. Tune into Housework, a special series from Where Should We Begin, sponsored by Klaviyo. What software do you use at work? The answer to that question is probably more complicated than you want it to be.

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