The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Why the Grifter Economy Is Booming, Raising Money-Smart Kids and Forming Your Own Opinions

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

Scott Galloway answers listener questions on the rise of the grifter economy, how to teach kids the value of money, and how to think for yourself in an age of constant noise. 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

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Tune in now at Project Swagger, wherever you get your podcast. Welcome to Office Hours with Prop G. This is a 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 at PropggeMedia.com. Again, that's Office Hours of Propggymeda.com, or post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit, and we just might feature it in our next episode.

First question. Hey, Scott. My name's Jonathan. I'm a longtime listener and follower of your work. Going back to the L2 days and the winners and losers YouTube videos. You also wrote a really moving piece about losing your mother, and I lost my mom this year, and I found myself returning to that post several times.

It genuinely helps the things a lot. Here's my question. Lately, it feels like everything is for sale. Courses, retreats, digital products, life systems, often wrapped in promises of transformation, friendship, belonging. If you just pay enough, you can get these things. I understand the need to earn a living, but it increasingly feels like profit is crowding out genuine generosity and service. You clearly monetize your work, but it rarely feels extradive or grifty.

How do you think about the line between sharing your gifts and talents in a meaningful way and building a business around them? And how do you personally distinguish between people who are genuinely trying to help others from those who are mostly selling aspiration? Thanks again for your incredible work and for modeling how to do this without becoming a part of what feels like a growing grifter economy. First up, Jonathan, hey man, I'm really sorry about your mom.

I don't care. I knew my mom was dying. I knew she was going to die. She'd had a pretty good life. She did die too early. She was six to nine. But when it happens, if you're close to your mom,

as it sounds like you are, it's just devastating. I joke that I'm a middle-aged man who hasn't gotten over the death of his mother from 21, 22 years ago now. And I used to think, okay, there's something fucked up about me. Now I think, well, I hope my sons feel the same way about me. I hope when they talk about me, they get choked up because I meant so much to them. And, you know, anyways, I'm sorry, but that's not what your question is about. So you're being really generous. I'm a capitalist.

We advertise. I'm very focused on money. I think it's a great scorecard. I enjoy. capitalism, I enjoy building companies. I'm in the really fortunate position now where it's now my number two priority. It used to be my number one priority. How do I build this? How do I build enterprise value and sell this company so I have economic security? Now I want to do something great that has a positive impact. I do want to make more money. I'm not, you know, I'm not a selfless person, but I also want to make the people around me. I want to provide them with economic security. I take a lot of pride in, I think we compensate somewhere between 50 and 100 percent above market. And we're able to do that because, quite frankly, we're monetizing my brand.

I make a shit ton of money speaking and have a pretty big social footprint. But also, it's a virtuous upward spiral because if we pay people well, they stick around. What kills a company is constant churn when you're good people leave. If your best people leave all the time, you're just fucked. Whenever I talk to a service person, they say, you've been able to sell companies. I'm having trouble scaling my company. I'm like, show me a cap table. And then I'm like, what's a cap table?

I'm like, who owns what? And I'm like, well, I own the company, but I pay. I'm like, okay, that's your fucking problem. You want people to act like owners, but you're not giving them equity. And the only way to hold on to great people is to give them equity and say, okay, this is the plan and I'm going to sell the company for three or five years. I have a liquidity event, and you're going to make this much money. So I'm not answering the question.

We have advertising. We do have some. standards. I'm a capitalist. If we're on the fence, I'll usually take their money, but we don't do crypto. We try to be, you know, some of the stuff that feels really grifty. So I appreciate you saying that, but I still fall victim to some of the capitalist traps of other people. And I do think that wanting to make money and help people are not mutually exclusive. I think there are a lot of people who do really good work and make a really good living doing it. And capitalism has created a series of incentives that says, I can help you, while you help me. And it might be an exchange of

services or an exchange of money for goods or whatever it is. And that, you know, the butcher and the baker don't trade bread and meat out of philanthropy. They do it because they're specialized and they can offer each other something like this. So how do you model not being a griff? You try to be authentic, you try not to take advantage of people, pay your people well, you know, don't sell, I don't know, too many grifty wellness supplements. Is that right? I think, well, I think some of the shit's okay. I don't know.

God, I'm really flailing and struggling with this question. I would say just be transparent about your advertisers in the podcast business. but I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't be too, I don't think you need a purity test here. I think most people sense if you're trying to help them. And as long as you're transparent about the cost of something, the benefits or risks of something, I don't see any reason why you can't make really good money while providing a service or helping other people, as long as you're genuine about it and you're authentic and it's a product or a service you believe in.

I don't, you know, I think that's the basis of why capitalism works. And I think 95% of businesses do that. And the incentives of capitalism are you've got to figure out a way to add value to people. Otherwise, they're not going to buy your product. And you can generally tell when people are bad actors. So having a set of standards, trying to stick to those standards, and then charity begins at home, your people really well and be transparent about how you're making money. Maybe that's it. Be transparent

about how you're making money and disclose when you have financial incentives such that if you're in the media business, people don't feel like they've been had that you weren't transparent about your incentives and try and build a service that you think that at the end of the day, your listeners or your readers or your customers value and feel like they're getting a good exchange of value. Appreciate the question. Question number two. Question number two comes from Gustavo 2013 on Reddit. They say, Hey there, Prop G, how do you go about teaching your kids about the value of money? My oldest is eight years old and likes to doing extra work and chores around the house for some cash so he can buy digital money on a game called Roblox.

I'd love for him to use his hard-earned money on something better, but maybe I should leave this one up to him and learn on his own. What would you do? Oh, my God. You're tracking. He's eight, and he's connecting chores to work to something he likes. can I hire this kid? Like at the age of eight, if he's been able to connect, this is what you want. You want them to connect. I feel like my job as a father is I'm a prefrontal cortex, right? Which is the off-on executive decision CEO of the brain.

Okay, you realize you need shoes to go to school, right? You realize you need this time waits for no man. If you don't get up right now, you're going to not be able to catch the tube and get to school on time. and if I get another tardy notice from your teacher, I'm going to lose my shit. Right? I'm their prefrontal cortex. Also, what I've tried to do is connect discipline and short-term sacrifices to long-term benefit. You know, let's study every day for two or three days, an hour a day, and then we're taking

them test on Thursday. Oh, my gosh, you got a B plus or an A-minus. it was the hour we did three days ago. I feel as if everything in our economy is focused on a media gratification, and I'm trying to implement this thing of Slopa, and that is efforts that provide a dope-ahit three days from now when you come home

and tell your dad your, quote-unquote, meeting on your civics or your civilization study. They have these weird grades here in London. Anyways, trying to do that. And also I'm trying to connect effort and expertise to money. One of my sons, I'm just so fascinated by this, has been buying and selling Pokemon cards and uses AI to try and determine the value and then goes online and tries to connect them and buy cards. And I've said, I will finance this. I will, here's 100 pounds. Show me what you can do.

And then he does it for a few weeks, buys and sells, and we add up the cost to buy, the cost to ship to a seller and how much you made. And I'm trying to connect. the effort, and then I say, okay, I'm going to take this money and upload your greenlight card, and you can do more deliveroo or whatever it is you want to do. Or, you know, trying to connect money to effort and also to connect money and the power of investing. And that is, I started, I told my son that for every dollar invested in the market, I'd match it. So I think he invested, he got up to about $800 or $900. And then we check the markets every day to watch it. And I'm trying to teach him not to trade to only buy companies who wants to hold for

five or 10 years that trading would be, you know, eats up all its fees. Anyways, I'm trying to connect small acts of discipline every day to long-term dopa and also connect investing or connect the long-term mindset with investing in wealth creation and also make the connection between effort and risk and making money and then being able to spend money on really cool stuff. I'm trying to make those I'm a prefrontal cortex and I'm the connective tissue.

I'm trying to make connections, if you will. But if you have an eight-year-old that's already figured out, I want to do chores. First off, they say chores and sports are kind of the two building blocks of character. But if you have an eight-year-old, it's already connected chores with money and getting to do something they want,

I mean, trust me on this. Your kid's going to be mentoring us. Congratulations, you're doing something right. We'll be right back after a quick break. Support for today's show comes from IM8. It's not easy to get all the vitamins and minerals you need in a day. And IM8 wants to keep things simple with their daily ultimate essentials drink. My colleague Ed Ellson, another user experience from someone who signs the back of checks. It is living off daddy. I tried it.

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Basically, paying your rent or your mortgage can feel a whole lot better with built. Join the loyalty program for renters at joinbuilt.com slash prop G. That's J-O-I-N-B-I-T dot com slash prop G. Make sure to use our URL so they know we sent you. Support for the show comes from ShipStation. When your company is growing fast, order for filming can make or break your success. But with Ship Station, everything you need to manage

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Hey Scott, I'm a big fan. As I listen and absorb your thoughts as well as the rest of the news I consume, I was wondering what your best process is for balancing your own malleability to people's opinions. I found that the most recent piece that I consume, read, listen to, et cetera, becomes my strongest opinion towards a topic. I want to be flexible to opinions, but also decisive and more opinionated myself. I'm a 23-year-old male, recent college grad to give you some background. Thank you.

Really thoughtful question. I have, you know, people's brains are like pillows, and that is the last person or a piece of media that sits on it, that they leave that impression. A lot of people say our president's, one of our president's biggest flaws is his decisions are based on the last person he spoke to. So first off, you want to find multiple media sources. I made a really stupid move the other day. I saw a story on Gavin Newsom saying that he agreed with the strikes, and I reposted it. And then my podcast co-host, Kara Swisher, said, this is fake news. You got to take this down. So I make mistakes on my media sources all the time. But you want to have multiple media sources. You want to get multiple viewpoints. You want to challenge viewpoints. If you're about to make a big decision on anything, I didn't learn this when I was very much.

I thought my job was to make a quick survey of the situation and then make a decision and talk people into my position or decision and double down. And you can almost sort of see when people cross the Rubicon and go so far on a limb on a decision that there's no backing down. Be willing to back down, ask people about their view, why do they think that? And real leadership is listening and getting different viewpoints and arguing it the other way and then making better decisions. So what I do in my class is I have someone take one side, I set up a situation, case studies, Socratic method, I have one person take a position, and I ask someone else to argue against it. And I find that respectful civil dialogue

crafts better solutions. So, okay, what are we going to do as a 23-year-old? If you read one thing and you have an opinion, I think it's kind of fun to go to AI and say, make an argument against this. And the argument against it may temper it, may talk you out of it, or may embolden or cement your views. It's dangerous to have one source. You want multiple sorts. There's a wisdom of crowds. Also, what I have found that I didn't learn when I was your age, don't make an important personal, financial, or professional decision without speaking to other people. People being plural. because everybody gets it wrong. You don't want to have just one person.

Talk to, if you can, two plus people about really important decisions because it is very hard to read the label from inside of the bottle. But the fact you're even thinking this way at the age of 23 and you're a recent college grad and you're a male

because there's now 40, 60 male to female, it means my brother, you have an outstanding future and you've already separated yourself from the pack. Very much appreciate the question. question. That's all for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to Office Hours of Proptumedia.com. Again, that's Office Hours of ProptoMedia.com. Or, if you'd 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 Jinnar.

Camryk is our social producer. Brad Williams is our editor. And Drew Burroughs is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Propgee pod from Propgeu Media. Thank you.