From wealth transfer myths to smart career moves, NYU Professor Scott Galloway reveals how to build real financial security in today's economic landscape. What We Discuss with Scott Galloway: The wealth transfer from Baby Boomers to younger generations ($18 trillion) is highly uneven and won't solve economic inequality. Many people will inherit nothing or even have to support their aging parents, while a small number will receive substantial inheritances, further widening the wealth gap. "Follow your passion" is dangerous career advice, typically given by people who are already wealthy. Instead, focus on finding something you're good at that can provide economic security — mastery and success will lead to passion naturally. Job-hopping every two or three years often leads to higher earnings, as companies tend to undervalue existing employees and overvalue new hires. However, switching jobs too frequently (multiple times per year) can make you appear unreliable. Economic security isn't about being rich — it's about having enough resources to remove financial stress from relationships and enable focus on what truly matters. In the US specifically, this often requires being in the top 10-20 percent due to healthcare and education costs. You can dramatically improve your financial future through consistent, practical steps: save regularly, understand compound interest, diversify investments, live below your means, and start early. While it may seem slow at first, these fundamentals reliably build wealth over time and anyone can learn to implement them. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1074 If you love listening to this show as much as we love making it, would you please peruse and reply to our Membership Survey here? And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally! This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors: jordanharbinger.com/deals Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course! Subscribe to our once-a-week Wee Bit Wiser newsletter today and start filling your Wednesdays with wisdom! Do you even Reddit, bro? Join us at r/JordanHarbinger!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What is the impact of wealth transfer from Baby Boomers?
Don't say that. Or occasionally, not as often, pull me in a room and go, that was great. Keep doing that. To have the discipline not to get high or drunk every night was really important for me coming out of college.
If I were working for some podcast and I was a producer and I'm just shocked that all of my people aren't walking their dogs all day and trying, you know, ketamine and then going to the movies in the afternoon. That's what I would be doing if I were 23 and working from home. And also people don't like to talk about this. One in three relationships begin at work.
So where are young people supposed to meet other people? They're not drinking as much, so they're not going to bars as much. The attendance at religious institutions is way down. They're not going into work. Where on earth do young people meet? So when I coach young people and they talk about jobs, they'll say, I have one job and I'm like, one's remote, one I have to be in the office.
I'm like, go into the office. That is a fantastic place for socialization training, finding colleagues, mentors, mates is the office.
One thing I should maybe highlight is you mentioned you learned so much at the office from learning from others. I think I also found out that I just was not suited for success in any sort of actual corporate environment. Yeah, 100%. I got my ass handed to me at the law firms that I worked at. It was not good.
HR was like in the room a couple of times like, hey, we're giving you a job offer here, but we just want you to know that you made it by the skin of your teeth and we don't really like you. You know, there was a couple of those. Welcome.
There was a couple of those, not maybe that explicit, but it was like, but you know, a lot of the stuff where it was like, well, you work really hard on things that we told you not to work that hard on, and you have this, and you have this obsessive trait, and you have this thing, and this communicative, and I thought, oh.
And then when I started my own business, it turned out that a lot of the things that they really didn't like about me were quite desirable traits if you are running your own business. That's right. And I was sort of caught in the middle as the owner of a quote unquote media company, which is a fancy inflated name for a podcast that I ended up naming after myself.
I know you can relate, Professor Galloway, host of The Prof G Show. But you really learn a lot about how maybe you are not cut out for one thing and you should try this other thing that no one's telling you about.
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Chapter 2: Why is 'follow your passion' considered bad advice?
These are things that most people sort of figure out, but a lot of people don't. And I'm speaking from history here. I always made a lot of money, but I never really saved any and I didn't diversify. And I ended up 42 with a new kid and broke.
And if I'd just been a little smarter or a little less stupid, a little less arrogant, thinking that a baller like me who's running a company that's about to go public, I should borrow money against the stock and double down because that's the mythology of Silicon Valley. Well, no, Scott, if a great financial recession comes down,
and your company can no longer access credit, and then there's a longshoreman strike and the merchandise gets cut off the Long Beach coast, your company could go chapter 11, despite how awesome you are, and you could end up being worth negative 3 million about the time you have your first kid. That could happen.
And there are a few easy things I could have done to protect myself from that, but I was too arrogant and I hadn't learned the basics of diversification and financial literacy.
There's a lot about that in the book. For those who are interested in learning about that, The Algebra of Wealth, we'll obviously link it in the show notes. And when people use our book links, it helps support the show. One huge insight from the book, there's almost a throwaway line, but you just reminded me of it.
You should talk to your friends and contacts about money, salaries, what you get paid, what they get paid, the job market. Because the only I think you said something like only your employer benefits from your ignorance and lack of connection and knowledge in this area. And I thought that was really insightful. People will talk about their sex life with their spouse in front of their buddies.
But if someone's like, hey, man, what are you guys making? I'm wondering if I'm not making it. No one will have that conversation. I mean, you would have to be blind drunk before somebody throws that one out there.
It is, again, a myth fomented or a zeitgeist encouraged by the incumbents, basically management and shareholders of companies. For some companies, it's a fireable offense to talk about your salary. Some explicitly say, if you talk about compensation, we can fire you. Why? you can bet the senior people know what everyone's making.
But you might find out that Bob down the desk, who's not doing any better, maybe even a worse job for you, is making 30% more because you didn't threaten to leave. If everyone had perfect symmetry of information, then compensation costs would go up and the shareholders and the senior managers wouldn't be as profitable and be able to pay themselves enough money.
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Chapter 3: How can job-hopping increase earnings?
Nine. Wow. And you'd think there'd be an uprising. This is a public good. Yeah. Look what it did for this guy, this son of a secretary who wasn't that impressive. Look what it's done for him. But instead it's like, no, I believe one of my kids are those 9%.
So I think we've sort of lost the script and slowly but surely moved to this rejectionist LVMH exclusionary bullshit strategy that in my opinion is just not what America should be about.
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I am happy to dig up codes for you because it is that important that you support those who support the show. Now for the rest of my conversation with Scott Galloway. I'm looking up University of Michigan, 18%. Oh, that's so much higher than 9%. It's twice as much. This even says on this, whatever, prepscholar.com, this means the school is extremely selective.
So that, I don't know what that says about UCL. Extremely, extremely selective. And these are public schools. Doesn't that mean you should have like a fighting chance at getting in if you also went to a public school? But instead you have to be, I don't know, the son of a diplomat to get in here. That's insane to me.
And it was probably maybe a little higher when I went there, but it should be trending the other direction. We can find out. When did you apply? Gosh, 1998, probably.
Michigan acceptance rate, one nine nine eight. Fifty five percent ish. Okay, it's gone from 55 to 18.
That's crazy, 55 to 18.
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Chapter 4: What are practical steps to build economic security?
The top 200 podcasts make 90% of the revenue. But if you're fortunate enough to be in those top 200, you can pay people really well. I have flipped the script. Now my objective, and I think most of my employees would agree with this, maybe not, is to overcompensate them. is to say, okay, this is market. I'm gonna pay you what I think is about 1.3 market.
And the nice thing about that is that if no one is ever leaving, it means you're paying them too much, but that's fine. But the cost to find new people and train them and train them up especially in a small company, is really difficult. I think the key to a small company becoming a medium-sized company is you identify the stars. People like to think, oh, everybody's great. No, they're not.
I'm convinced 10% of your people create 120% of the value and the other 90% subtract 20%. Those people who you know who are really good, you want to bolt them to the ground. I think you are outstanding. And also try to ignore age. Occasionally, you'll find a 24 or 25-year-old who is outstanding. And the temptation is to think, oh, they're young, we'll pay them well.
You don't pay them what the value they're adding because they're young. You take that person aside and say, you're a star. You know it, I know it. Or this is, I wouldn't even say this is management philosophy, it's my philosophy. I'm going to give you 3% of this company. These are the revenues I plan for the next five years of the company.
This is why I'm going to sell it for between 40 and 60 million, which means you owning 4% means at the age of 28, you're going to get $2.4 million. I am that definitive. And I say, it might be less, it might be more, but I am committed to making you much wealthier, much more successful than your parents were at that age.
And I find that is really powerful because if you find the right, the core, the core of excellence in a company is And you don't worry about them ever leaving or walking in and saying, oh, I got a job at Google or whatever. It makes growing a business much stronger. Compensation, I find, is the hardest part of a business. I serve on a lot of boards.
You know, we have meetings, consultants trying to figure out how to compensate. The CEO is already making 400 times what the average employee is making. It is the most difficult part. And it's probably the most important part is does this person feel appreciated? And the final thing I would say in terms of compensation is I try and have a ridiculously social work environment.
What do I mean by that? I am not a social person. I am paid to be an extrovert. The last thing I want to do is hang out with my employees, but I have a deal with them. We're mostly remote. What's interesting is the young people actually got their own office. If there's any four of them together at any time, whether it's going to the US Open, going to Tulum,
going out to dinner, they have my credit card. Just as long as there's four of them there, they can do whatever they want, and it's my credit card. Because the number one source of retention at a company, I would have never guessed this, is not compensation, it's not the values of the company, it's not the benefits, it's whether that person has a friend at work.
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Chapter 8: Why is discussing salaries important for financial literacy?
that it doesn't pay off, but baby, my numbers are going to work. I mean, this is what happens when you get, my kid is going to be applying to college next year.
And I'm part of this enforcement system of the caste system called higher education, where we artificially suppress admissions rates such that we can raise our tuition faster than inflation, such that we can pay ourselves more as academics and administrators while reducing our accountability. because we've created this scarcity value that's similar to a Chanel bag or an Hermes Birkin bag.
And it is total bullshit. It's totally contrary to the basic notion of public service. And that is, if you're Harvard and sitting on $54 billion and you're only letting in the number of students that would roll through a good Starbucks, you are no longer a public servant and you should have your tax status, your tax-free status revoked.
Harvard could admit and build the resources with a fraction of that $54 billion endowment They could expand their freshman class to 15,000 kids and have no sacrifice in quality. But instead, me and my colleagues stand up and applaud the dean when he or she says we rejected 88% of our applicants. We stand up and think that's a good thing.
In my view, that's tantamount to a homeless shelter saying he or she rejected 90% of the people who showed up last night. We have to get past this notion that we're luxury brands. We're not. We're public servants. So there's this exclusionary rejectionist culture that's evolved in the U.S. because all of us think we're going to be in the top 1%. Our kids are remarkable.
That my investments will pay off. That no, we need to treat rich people better because I expect to be one. And we're not thinking enough about what is the purpose of America, the platform that is America? Is it to identify a superclass of freakishly remarkable kids and rich kids and turn them into billionaires? Or is it to give the bottom 90 a shot at being in the top 10%?
And I look back to where I was when I was a kid. UCLA had an admissions rate of 76%. I was one of the 24% that didn't get in the first time I had to appeal, and then I got in. The admissions rate this year, guess what it'll be, Jordan?
Single digits, something?
Nine. Wow. And you'd think there'd be an uprising. This is a public good. Yeah. Look what it did for this guy, this son of a secretary who wasn't that impressive. Look what it's done for him. But instead it's like, no, I believe one of my kids are those 9%.
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