The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Trump’s Toxic Leadership, How to Stop Underselling Yourself, and Firing Bad Clients

Episode Date: April 10, 2026

Scott Galloway reflects on Robert Mueller as a role model for masculinity, explains why pricing is a signal and how to charge what you're worth, and weighs in on whether firing bad clients is a luxury or a necessity. Want to be featured in a future episode? Send a voice recording to [e-mail], or drop your question in the r/ScottGalloway subreddit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Recommendations can be great. Maybe someone recommended this podcast, and here you are. But home projects are a little different. If the podcast isn't your thing, you might lose a few minutes from your day, but if you hire your cousin's neighbor to mount your TV, you might end up with a lopsided screen and wall damage. I know a guy isn't a good strategy for your home. That's why Thumbtack works so well.

It matches you with top-rated local pros with photos, reviews and credentials, all in one convenient place. For your next home project, try Thumbtack. Hire the Right ProPtie. Welcome to Office Hours with ProPtDh. 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 Office Hours atproptuMedia.com. Again, that's Office Hours at Propertymedia.com, or post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit, and we just might feature it in our next episode. episode. What a thrill? You're welcome. Okay. Question number one. Our first question comes from Jackie on Hudson on Reddit. They ask, hi Scott. This is not a question about politics or policy or markets or stocks. It's a question about civility. Donald Trump's post after the death of Robert Mueller is so

heinous and cruel. I don't know what to say to my two sons. How do we move through society today when the president's comments are just evil? His comments do matter. Thank you for all you do. Well, Jackie on the Hudson word, I couldn't agree with you more. Robert Mueller, captain, I'm constantly asked for roles of masculinity, and I think there are a few better role models or people who epitomize masculinity than Robert Mueller. So, captain of his lacrosse, hockey, and I believe baseball teams. So not only an exceptional athlete, but his colleagues felt that he was the right one to lead those teams, went to Princeton, clearly a scholar, and then enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. No bonespurs, no deferments, no draft dodging, decided to go where he was called, to serve his country, where he served honorably, was awarded the bronze star for bravery and a purple heart for injuries registered during the Vietnam War. contrast that with someone who was born into wealth, dodge the draft, and then consistently is about

himself, not about service, not about just doing the work, not about fidelity. Robert Mueller, I personally, as someone who has been married and divorced, quite frankly, Robert Mueller was married for 60 years. Sixty years. Imagine the kind of work and commitment and loyalty. Married his high school sweetheart. When he was asked to engage and lead what was a very politically charged investigation, the quote-unquote Russia report, just did the work, didn't make it about him.

Contrast that now with many of the people young men would naturally look up to as role models, whether it's the president of the United States, the most powerful man in the or Elon Musk, the wealthiest man in the world. What are these people have in common? I don't know, five marriages, 22 children, constantly punching down, mocking people, including the disabled. And this has, I think this registers huge damage. If you're a 21-year-old male, you've essentially had your brain wired through puberty focusing on people who are more certain than incompetent who pursue popularity, not principle. This has to have taken a toll on young men. So I think this is, I think the damage here is just so lasting. I think we're, again, creating,

I talk about the fact that we're evolving a new species of asocial, asexual males. I worry that we're just evolving millions of assholes who believe that masculinity correctly is a wonderful thing to be exhibited, but that masculinity, is total performative bullshit, and that our discourse should get increasingly coarse. So I hope and believe that a lot of people, and there's been a lot of pushback from both sides of the aisle, that say Robert Mueller was an outstanding role model

in contrast to the very small person who was criticized. And some, I think Robert Mueller had pieces of better men in its crap than the president. So when he is buried, he will be laid, arrest with full military honors, which he absolutely deserves. Captain Robert Mueller, United States Marine Corps, rest in peace. Question number two also comes from Reddit. Lewis asks, Hi, Scott, I'm coming up on my fifth year running a custom furniture and furniture restoration shop. My primary customers are individuals with furniture that has sentimental value, for example,

mom's desk or the jewelry box my father gave me. I started the business with the of serving the every man, but I quickly realized that the price required to do the work properly isn't an every man price. As a result, I still find myself struggling with the instinct to underpriced my work, which often means I under profit. Do you have any advice for how to break the reflex of undervaluing my own work? Well, I don't know. Boss, you know the answer here. Charge more. I mean, you can always lower the price, but I'd have, first off, I immediately go to like a YouTube video, a time lapse video, where you'd say someone came in looking at, to recreate their mom's desk.

And then it shows you over the course of a month building this thing and getting online, buying some keywords, and boss just double or triple your prices. And if someone says, I love it, but I can't afford it, decide to discount it. I don't, I would imagine for something like you're doing, you're absolutely probably underpricing it. Now, at the same time,

the way you know you're underpricing it is that your demand exceeds your supply. So if you're not getting a lot of business, it means you aren't underpricing it. But I think this is about, what you're doing was literally at a central casting for time lapse, videos on YouTube that are well done that will go viral, and then you will get inbound offers to refurb or recreate people's furniture, and you should charge a real price for it. And the way I would think about is, how many hours does this take?

What is your time worth? And then double it because you're going to have overhead and marketing costs or maybe even triple it. And, you know, price yourself like a true artisan. Also, pricing is a signal. And that is, I've found that as I have raised my prices in consulting, I actually, I did get more clients. You can always lower your price or I got higher prestige clients because pricing is a strong signal in an artisanal business. Consulting is artisanal.

I'm saying my brain is smarter than yours and it's been crafted by smart cells, if you will. So I think this is a business where you want to send a pretty strong signal in terms of your pricing. So look, boss, the answer is simple. If you're getting more business than you can handle than raise your prices, and I would do a great deal of marketing and time-lapse video around the process to inspire some inbounds. And don't be afraid to throw out a big number. You can always take it down. And scarcity is the key to marketing what you're doing.

I'm in the business or one of my business lines is speaking. I charge between $150,000 and $250,000 to speak somewhere. my prices are zero or crazy. If it's a nonprofit or someone I know, I won't charge anything. But if it's a corporation, I charge them a crazy amount of money. And for everyone that says, no, that's marketing. Because they see my prices and they go, Jesus Christ, and they'll tell people, that dude, that crazy professor costs a quarter of a million dollars.

By the way, I charge more for that if I have to use a passport and go to go abroad. Go abroad, if you will. Anyways, it sends a very strong signal. Now, granted, you can't just triple your prices and expect revenue to, flow in. But you should have an assessment. You also, I hate to say this, you may want to use AI, may want to upload everything about your business and ask it about pricing strategy and marketing strategy. But I find the hardest thing about business is pricing. I've always struggled with pricing around what to charge people for what service. But it does sound like innately you understand

that you are underpricing your product and pricing is a signal. Anyways, not a lot of insight there, but I very much enjoyed the conversation. Thanks very much. And congrats on your job and just skill you have. I'd love to have a skill. I can't change a fucking light bulb. Seriously, I can't, I can't, literally can't build anything. Useless. I'd be dead a hundred years ago. Instead, I'm living large. Thanks for the question. We'll be right back after a quick break. Support of the show comes from Quintz. Sometimes we buy clothes we know aren't going to last. So if you're looking to reset your wardrobe this spring with clothes that actually last, look no further than Quince. This season, Quince is offering 100% European linen and they're super-sarked.

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Hi, I'm Bray Brown. And I'm Adam Grant. And we're here to invite you to The Curiosity Shop. A podcast that's a place for listening, wondering, thinking, feeling, and questioning. It's going to be fun. We rarely agree. But we almost never disagree. And we're always learning.

That's true. You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursday. Welcome back. Paul from Toronto emailed us. Hi, Scott, longtime listener here. I'm a partner to a small design firm where we've adopted a no-asshole rule for clients. We've realized that the stress and friction of difficult clients far outweigh the revenue they bring in.

From a scaling perspective, do you view firing bad clients as a luxury or a fundamental requirement for a young company to grow? Best to you and your team. Oh, dude, that's easy. It's a luxury item. I mean, I'd work with fucking arsonists when I'm starting a company. I'm about to take on an advertiser that I am totally morally conflicting on because I'm want to grow the revenues of the company. and I want to pay my people well. Yeah, great. Firing bad clients, good for you.

That means you have more business than you know what to do with is a services firm, which means that you're in the top 10%. So, yeah, it's great to be a purist, but you know what sucks is a purist is going fucking hungry and not being able to pay your rent.

So if you're in a position that you can fire your clients, do it. I can't think of a moment where I had some of the, oh my God, when I started profit, you should have seen the Joey Bag of Donuts clients I was bringing on.

They weren't bad people, But I had this one guy in San Francisco, South of Market, who was selling something called the Spirit Flag, which was this cheap flag that people would buy. And he paid me, I think, $8,000 to do the marketing strategy for the fucking Spirit Flag. I had another guy that built just a plastic screen that you put in front of a fire and it made colors. And you wanted advice and he paid me, I think, $2,000 to help him market it. Now granted, I ended up selling profit for $33 million, about, I don't know, 10 years, eight years later. What was it? How long?

Eight years later. And by that time, we'd have big clients, William Sonoma and Levi's and the like. When you're starting out, Christ, short of, I would work with anybody that had a pulse and their check cleared. So if you're in that position, have at it. But, you know, I was willing to put up with assholes. What's the definition of an asshole? there's a term for it. What's the synonym of asshole? Client. They're paying you. They get to be assholes. Now, if they're extraordinarily difficult and it's no longer worth the effort and it's just toxic, then fine, resign the client.

But this is the mother of all good problems, but don't make the mistake of thinking that you have the luxury of building a small firm while avoiding all assholes. I love the services business except for the clients and the employees. By the way, I've worked with assholes in my company and I've put up with them because they're talented and I need people in a small business. It's hard to recruit people. My last company had just such a fucking enormous asshole and we had to deal with this person because this person was that talented. Am I proud of that? Would I have loved to absolutely fire this person? Yeah, but guess what? Assholes have a tendency to recognize their value and recognize why they can be. Why are people assholes? Because they can be. Why am I so worked?

up. Why am I so worked up? Anyways, it's situational. If you're blessed with more business than you need, then fine. Fire the ones that either aren't paying very well or are hard to get along with. But yeah, this is the mother of all good problems. But yeah, if it's a choice between growing the firm and being able to pay people well and having health insurance, then yeah, work with assholes. There's a word for that. Work. Thanks for the question. That's all for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to office hours ofprovitymedia.com. That's office hours ofproptuymedia.com.

Or if you prefer to ask on Reddit, just post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit, and we just might feature it in an upcoming episode. This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez and Laura Jenaire. Kami Rika is our social producer. Brad Williams is our editor. And Drew Burroughs is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the PropgyPriott. from Prophecy Media.