The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
00:06:24 · Scott Galloway
[00:06:24] S1: to the emergency room. When he got to the emergency room, he was breathing six times a minute. And they said, had we put him to bed, he would have never woken up. He would have had he would have drunk his last breath. So my first message to my son was, you know, you've just gotta know your limits around alcohol. And when you fill your truck, you just gotta stop and you gotta move to water. And no one's, I don't believe, gonna not let you into the fraternity because you refused to drink more and said, don't feel well. I think my son has actually a really healthy relationship with alcohol. And in England, they're just a couple years behind. And that is, it's weird while they can start drinking at 17 with a parent, I think that's a good idea because he just sort of has a beer every once in a while, doesn't really get drunk, doesn't, as far as I know, abuse alcohol. And I think it's sort of slowly but surely kind of eased into alcohol and learned his limits sooner than maybe a lot of kids in America who aren't supposed to be drinking. Then the first time is away at college or they turn 21 and they go crazy. So I've actually found that my boys so far, as far as I know, have a really healthy relationship and that is they have eased into kind of social drinking. And I think that's healthy. And I have found that the approach to drinking in The EU, despite it starting earlier, I would describe as healthier because they kind of just ease into it. Whereas the notion that kids aren't going to drink under the age of 21 is ridiculous. And I find that kids have a tendency to go from zero to 60 much faster in The US. I had not drank in high school and in a weird way I think that was sort of bad and that is when I showed up with all this alcohol, I was in the emergency room and I think this is my second week at college. Not because I got too drunk, I did get drunk and I felt faint. And I ran outside and I tripped and I hit a wall and they decided, you know, see above someone almost died. So they immediately took me to the emergency room where I had two stitches. And the worst part about that experience is I had to send a $320 bill to my dad, who is not loose with the money, not splashing the cash around. And that was an uncomfortable conversation.
00:08:39 · Scott Galloway
But most of my conversations are around knowing your limits and always being willing to say no under the notion of peer pressure and drinking. The events of Cornell have created a different conversation. I actually had this conversation yesterday. And the first is, and I don't know if I get this right. There's nothing I'm more insecure about than parenting. On almost every domain I think I have more confidence than I should and think I have a, you know, I know most of the answer. And around parenting, don't. I've never, I constantly am trying to figure out, is this the right way to approach this whole thing called being a dad? But what I've done is the following. I'm not saying it's the right way, it's my way. I bring up what happened to Cornell and I ask him what he thinks. And you know, I think kids spend less time thinking about this stuff. The ones who do, there's 1% we see on TikTok are the ones all over this. I think 99% of them are just kind of going about their life. And we talk about it and then I give him my viewpoint and I try to keep it fairly simple. And that is the first is just some in a very broad way is just empathy and future self. And that is I say, in a like that, imagine that's your sister at a campus across town. How would you want the men to behave? Two, your future self. Try and put yourself in yourself five, ten years from now when you have a job, a wife, kids, professional standing. How would your professional self want you to behave right now? However, the first time you are physically intimate with someone, I think it's a really good idea that it should only happen when you're both sober or near sober. You just don't want to whether it's being tempted not to use protection, whether it's misunderstanding what is going on, whether it's doing something with someone you're gonna regret in the morning. I'm not saying second, third, or fourth time, but especially on the first time, just as a general rule, you should be sober. It just reduces risks on both parties. The other is, and this is very tactical, I believe personally that multiple partners, specifically one woman and more than one man, I see that as violence. You know, 300 or 400 pounds of man and 120 of woman. And I want to be clear, adults have, consenting adults have the right to do what they want to do.
00:10:57 · Scott Galloway
But I think multiple male partners with one woman, I think that's violence. A lot of young people are also into, from what I understand, into choking. And I told my son, don't ever do that. That is violence. And porn alone starts to treat or train men to engage or blur the line between sex and violence. And I think choking, I think multiple partners, I see that as violence, and you should just avoid it full stop. In sum, future self, what does it mean to be empathetic? Having the courage to realize your limits around alcohol and just saying no. And then I see multiple partners as violence and also first time physical contact, as a general rule, you should both be sober. But again, I don't, you know, that's my way. I don't pretend. I'm not an expert on parenting other than I keep doing it, I keep making mistakes, and I try and learn from them. And I'm very close to my sons. I speak to them every day. But I think the first step is that dads need to talk to their sons about it. And generally speaking, I think the fastest blue line path to a better world is for dads just to be more engaged with their sons. Speak to them every day, bring up stuff, have them roll their eyes, have them pretend to not wanna speak to you. But when I think about these young men at Cornell, what I think about quite frankly, let everyone argue over the DA. Let everyone argue about Cornell's role. Everybody has a fucking opinion on this, on the entire spectrum. If we want better men, if we want fewer situations like this, we need to have more fathers more present in their sons' lives. Thanks for the question. Question number two comes from no membership 9365. Hi, Scott. Love the show. You've recommended diversification a few times to protect yourself in a bubble, But I'm hoping you'll be a little bit more specific. Are you talking about more diversification in your stock portfolio? Or are you including other things like private equity, real estate, corporate government bonds, etcetera? Thank you. Yeah. So look, naturally as a younger person, you kind of there's a saying that you get wealthy through concentration and you stay wealthy through diversification. Most people who are wealthy get their... I mean, essentially, there's like... Unfortunately, there's sort of a small number of ways to get really wealthy in The United States. One is through finance. One is tech.
00:13:18 · Scott Galloway
One is options in a company slowly that's doing really well. And the other is entrepreneurship. And by virtue of doing that, you kind of have to concentrate early. And that is you sort of, you don't have a lot of financial capital early, so you're sort of going all in. To get to a point in a company where you get awarded a lot of options on equity generally means you're working very hard there and you're very good. And you get to a senior level fairly fast and you aggregate options and the market timing is good and you make a bunch of money. Know, if you joined Nike in 2010, and you sold all your, you know, you invested a bunch of options and you were good and became a VP, and in 2022, you exercised your options and you sold them, you made a shit ton of money. If you joined in 2000 and you saw the stock go up, it's now Nike's back to where it was in 2013. Can you imagine how disappointing that is? Anyway, a lot of that's luck in corporations, But you, generally speaking early on, you have to concentrate. You go, you wildly concentrate on a house. If you have $50,000 in net worth and you buy a $400,000 home, you're highly concentrated in real estate. Once you have anything resembling an asset base, once you have anything, call it, you know, 6 figures and above, you want to think about starting to diversify. And there was a study done in the eighties that said you kind of get risk free return. That if you can find a bunch of distinct cash flows, Ray Dalio says that at Bridgewater, all they tried to do is find 12 unique good investments that were distinct cash flows that weren't that correlated to each other. And that was the key to above market returns in terms of him being risk adjusted. I really screwed up. Probably my biggest mistake in terms of wealth creation has been a lack of diversification. I've always raised to believe that I was a baller and individual performance could overcome anything. And the reality is market dynamics trump individual performance. And I've been rich three times, which means I've lost it twice. I lost it in the .com implosion because I was all tech, mostly in my startups. And I lost it again in 2008 after clawing back after seven years, because again, see above, was mostly are all in tech. Now I try not to put more than 3% of my assets in any one stock.
00:15:36 · Scott Galloway
The place I've violated is I own a lot of real estate, but I own it in different regions. I don't have a lot of leverage on it. You can survive a lack of or less diversification without a lot of leverage. If you don't have leverage, it's the way you get caught, the way dumb people go broke, excuse me, the way smart people go broke is through leverage. And that is real estate goes up and down and you may have had real estate in Florida, which ended up being an amazing investment. But in 2008, if you borrowed 80% against your condo and you weren't renting it out, you had to give it back to the bank because it declined. It got caught in value by half or 60%. Now it came ripping back and it's probably up three or five X since then. But with leverage, you couldn't hold on. And without leverage, you can hold on. Anyways, I do have a lot of real estate, but I do it in different regions. I do think diversification is really important. If you're kind of over the age of 40, have some assets, you do really want to think hard about diversifying. And it's not only just the S and P. You think, I'm diversified. I'm an SPY. Actually 40% of the S and P isn't just 10 stocks. So that's not diversification. So I suggest diversifying by asset type, real estate, bonds, stocks. And also where people miss is geography. Now the last kind of seventeen, eighteen years have been an American disco party. And that is nothing has performed like The US because of tech and AI. I still think you need to own some stocks in Asia or own some low cost index funds in Asia and in Europe. That's how you stay rich. And that is diversification is your Kevlar. You can get shot in the chest. And I've been shot in the chest a couple times with companies I started that went out of business, and it has been fatal for me financially. Whereas now when the markets go down... The markets were down, I think, in 2022 pretty substantially or 2023. It hurts, but I get shot in the chest, but I'm wearing Kevlar and I kinda am on the ground and then I can get up again. That's your Kevlar's diversification. So again, but the learning here is diversification not only across asset classes, but also across geographies. You probably give up some upside. It's great to be lucky. You'll hear about people who went, you know, all in Nvidia, good for them.
00:17:55 · Scott Galloway
But what you don't hear about is just a nightmare when you spend too much of your, you spend everything on tech because that's the future and tech was the future. But that doesn't mean it goes through Amazon and Cisco lost 90 plus percent of their value from 1999 to 2001. Can you imagine the mental strain? Oh, Amazon's going to the moon. I'm putting in all $100,000 in my 04/2001 k in Amazon and you wake up and it's worth $7,000 So, low cost index funds diversified across asset classes and across geographies. Appreciate the question.