The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
The Future of General Motors, How to Be a Good Manager, and Advice to a High School Senior
Wed, 15 Jan 2025
Scott discusses GM’s outlook and then gives advice on transitioning into a management role in your company. He wraps up with more advice, to a high school senior gearing up for an exciting new chapter. Music: https://www.davidcuttermusic.com / @dcuttermusic Subscribe to No Mercy / No Malice Buy "The Algebra of Wealth," out now. Follow the podcast across socials @profgpod: Instagram Threads X Reddit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the current outlook for General Motors?
automakers as they deal with slow growth in EV sales and consumer demand that still lags behind pre-pandemic levels. Ford and Stellantis are among the other major car manufacturers that did major layoffs last year, letting go of 750 and 2,200 Michigan-based employees, respectively. The good news, GM recently overtook Ford as the second largest seller of EVs in the US behind Tesla.
Last quarter, Ford reported an 8% annual decline in their EV sales, while GM reported a 60% increase. GM chose to ease into the EV business slowly, opting to develop standardized battery pack technology before coming out with the new EV models.
Chapter 2: How is General Motors adapting to the EV market?
Because of this, GM can now tap into an economy of scale and use the batteries across many different models, all while being able to bring their manufacturing costs down. GM's cheapest model starts at $35,000 with a $7,500 tax credit, while Ford's is $40,000 and does not qualify for any tax credit. So basically, I mean, it just makes sense, right?
If you can put out a similar product at a lower price, you're going to you're gonna capture share. General Motors stock price is actually up 45% in the last year, while close competitors, including Ford, Honda, and Nissan are all in the red. So look, GM is doing pretty well. In the past year, Ford's down 17%, Honda down 7%, Nissan down 24%.
So I would argue General Motors is actually doing pretty well. I just think it's easy to kind of shit on Detroit right now.
And I think these companies, while they leaned in too heavily to EVs trying to follow the leader, not acknowledging they didn't have access to the cheap capital that Tesla has, so they couldn't play in traffic, and the fact that hybrids have surprised to the upside, while EV has kind of surprised, I think, a little bit to the downside.
But I would argue that General Motors is actually holding its own. Thanks for the question.
Question number two. Hey Scott, I'm a 28 year old living in Southern California. I've been listening to your podcast for about two years now, and your advice has been extremely influential on me, so thank you. Like I said, I'm 28 years old.
My friends and I have found some early success in our careers, all making about $250,000 a year or more, and also enjoying our jobs at the same time, which I think makes us pretty lucky. I listen to your podcast, so I'm pretty bought into the notion that this is a lot of luck, timing, and privilege.
I would say coming out of college, my approach was to listen, learn, assume that others had the answers over me and kind of take those things that they're doing well and try to apply it to my own work style. I'd say now it's a bit of a transitional period where I'm seeing myself move into leadership roles. People are looking to me for answers.
And I'm also reading the direction of the team in a lot of instances, actually. So my question to you is this. What advice would you give to a 28-year-old in this transitional period in a corporate role? How do you strike the balance between humility and open-mindedness while also being decisive and steady while leading a team? It's a really exciting time in my career.
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Chapter 3: What advice does Scott have for transitioning into management?
Work with each of your employees to set up a series of reasonable but somewhat aggressive goals and then hold them accountable. Don't be mean. You're not going to berate people. You want to publicly praise, privately provide feedback. But you don't need to like everyone in your company, but you need to be able to look left and look right and say, I get it. And when people aren't held accountable...
and you create a culture of mediocrity, people that you're high performers stop working as hard because they don't see an incentive to do it when the guy left or right of them isn't working as hard or isn't as good and is getting similar types of compensation. So number two, hold your team accountable. And then three, and I didn't learn this till later in life, Demonstrate empathy.
What do I mean by that? I'm not saying be nice or a pushover. I'm saying try and understand their specific objectives and what is important to them in a professional setting. What do I mean by that? I assumed everybody, like me, wanted to be awesome and rich. That's it. Everybody wants to do what I want to do, right? No. Some people want more flexibility. Some people want to coach Little League.
Chapter 4: How can one balance humility and decisiveness as a leader?
Some people want to see their name in lights. I found out that some people loved some sort of public praise. So I would, on a regular basis, when we got an inbound inquiry from the media company, I'd say, I'm gonna hand you over to our analyst, Colin, who understands this better than me. And that was so rewarding to them.
Some people wanna manage others, figure out a way to put them in charge of something where they manage other people. Try and figure out what is important to that person and then demonstrate that you heard them and you are making an effort. You are making an effort to provide them with what is important to them. Loyalty is a function of appreciation.
The key to a great company in my view is retention, specifically retaining the few employees that really drive a lot of value. And loyalty is a function of appreciation. So how do you appreciate them? There's economic appreciation, which is obviously very important, but there's also psychological appreciation. And that is, I get you and I know what's important to you.
And I'm gonna try and provide that because I understand I'm invested in your success. One, you demonstrate excellence. Two, You hold people accountable. You're a player, coach, manager. Pull up the chair next to them. Show them how to be better at their jobs. And three, demonstrate empathy specifically.
Show a willingness to learn what is important to them and then foot your actions against what is important to them. We have one quick break before our final question. Stay with us.
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Chapter 5: What role does accountability play in effective management?
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Welcome back. Question number three.
Dear Professor G, I love your podcasts and have definitely learned a lot from them. My mom always sends them to me when she thinks I would be interested in the topic, so I usually listen to them during my workouts. I'm currently a senior in high school in Boca Raton, Florida. My choice of major is media management, and my dream school just deferred me.
Although I understand that's not rejection, it was still very upsetting, and I'm doing everything I currently can to get accepted in April. What is your advice for a senior in high school like me pursuing a career in media management? And does the choice of college matter? I would like to remain in Florida as I love the beach and staying close to my family.
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Chapter 6: How important is empathy in leadership?
If you can also provide feedback on the best ways to land a good internship in this field, since unfortunately I am not a Nepo baby and don't have any prior experience other than my usage with my own devices and the content I help create in my current job. Respectfully, Chloe Shapiro.
Okay, Chloe. So first off, you're going to do really well. I mean, you're clearly very articulate. You're clearly very organized. You're clearly very intelligent. So- For the time being, I'm going to sideline the internship and professional. It's great that you think you know what you want to do. And I'm not suggesting everybody needs to at some point have a plan.
You have a plan and you should foot your internships and your efforts against that plan. Most likely, you're going to end up in something totally different. At the age of 15, I thought I was going to be an athlete to make a living. At the age of 19, I thought I was going to be a pediatrician. At the age of 22, I had no fucking idea what I was going to do.
At the age of 23, I thought I was going to be an investment banker. At the age of 25, again, I had no idea what I wanted to do because none of those things had worked out. And at the age of 27, I thought I might be a healthcare consultant. I'd accepted a job with a company called APM, a healthcare consulting firm. And I thought, Jesus Christ, I don't want to go back into the corporate world.
I started a brand strategy firm, ended up in academia, ended up advising hedge fund. You just don't know, but you're doing exactly the right thing. You're thinking about it and you're trying to find the right platforms. College is a platform. Two, forgive yourself. I got rejected from the University of Indiana. My dream was to go to UCLA, and I got rejected when they had a 76% admissions rate.
I ultimately ended up getting in. But here's where you want to go. You want to go to college. It's an amazing experience. And what I would suggest is—and I don't know the exact situation you're in— but be open to other schools. You're gonna have a great time. You're gonna learn a lot. The brand matters. I'm not gonna lie.
The prestige of the school does attract a certain level of employer or a different level of employer. But what I would suggest is not getting into a school while at the time seems devastating. Trust me on this. When you're a little bit older, you're not gonna be upset about not getting in. You're gonna be upset about how upset you were. So if there's time, apply to other schools.
Obviously, keep demonstrating your ambition and your want for that school, following up. But recognize, if you don't get into that one school, as long as you get into a school and you go, you're going to have a great time and you're going to do really well. In terms of getting internships, it's a numbers game. It's reaching out to people.
It's trying to be innovative, sending them voice recordings, sending them videos, whatever it might be, using AI to develop a media strategy for a company and sending it to them with your own spin on it and saying, hi, I'm Chloe Shapiro. I'll work for you. I want an internship and just being very aggressive, very persistent and willing to endure rejection. But let me just finish where I started.
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