Glenn Sayers (6:51)

My name is Glenn Sayers. I'm currently living in Johannesburg in South Africa. I'm 23 years old and I studied supply chain management. My question is one around risk. I worked unnecessarily hard during my time at Varsity, where I was balancing my degree on top of trying to put together a rough draft for a novel, which I've managed to finish. I'm currently employed with an international company. It's a career company. They're based all over the world. It's an incredibly fortunate position. I work with some really good people. So my question is this. Given my unique position in terms of having a rough draft that needs to be polished and then can be handed to an editor, what Time frame should I be looking at and how aggressive should I be? Be trying to accomplish this project, but it's too soon, like 23. I've only just been employed, and I'd like to save up some capital for a little while first. And then if the book is moderately successful, I'll hand it over to a publisher, and the royalties from that would likely go towards down payment on a home wedding, things like that. I'm not currently in a romantic relationship, but I would very much like to be in one soon. So thank you and have a wonderful day.

Scott Galloway (8:08)

Glenn. So, first off, you're clearly an impressive young man. Let's review. You graduated from university in that time. You managed to write a novel and secure a job at a good company. So you're doing really well, and I hope you take time to pause. And you said you worked unnecessarily hard. Okay, it sounds like you did well at university or well enough to get a good job, and you managed to write a novel. So that hard work and some of the sacrifice that came along with that hard work has paid off so far. And even if that novel never gets published, the fact that you can walk into any job application or if you decide to go to grad school, you can say, well, they'll say, well, what do you enjoy doing? Well, by the age of 23, I'd written my first novel. Do you want it? I mean, that's just impressive. One of the things I've noticed about going on when I go on TV after I've written a book, they're very inclined. Almost every TV station, when you have a published book, lets you come on. And one, I have some credibility, and I've written some books that have sold well. But two, there's a general recognition that writing a book is just really fucking hard and that you probably know a decent amount about that specific domain and they're willing to let you come on and talk about it. And I think some of it is just pure goodwill because from an economic standpoint, is it the lowest ROI thing I do? I don't know. It's the hardest thing I do. I put out a newsletter, I do podcasts, I go on tv, I speak all over the world. I make investments. And a lot of it is difficult, but nothing is as hard as trying to write a book. So you have done something incredibly hard at a very young age. I wrote my first book at 49, and I'm being generous. That's when I started writing it. I don't think it. When I got published till 51. And I'm jealous of you because I wish I had started much earlier, because the written word, let's assume it doesn't get published. One, it's super impressive. Two, it gives you incredible insight into something. Writing, learning and writing about something gives you insight into something. And also it's going to make you better at everything you do, specifically communicating. I think the key, the one skill I think has the greatest likelihood of surviving and always being a point of differentiation is your communication skills, your ability to tell the story and compel people to action. And for me, storytelling all begins with writing. And that is, if you can have the discipline to string together your thoughts in written form, you're probably going to be a decent communicator. And I would bet less than 1%, maybe generously, 2% of the public can write well. One of the first things I did as a consultant was I started writing the speeches and doing the board decks and memos for CEOs who would hire me as a consultant. I would say, do you want me to take a stab at it? And they say, please, because at that point, maybe it's changed. In the 90s, I would say a good 80% of CEOs couldn't write their way out of a paper bag. This is a big accomplishment. Now in terms of when, if and when. It sounds like you're thinking of when I should focus more on my writing, if even contemplate leaving your corporation, I would not do that. I don't see any reason. If you're able to produce a book while you're at university, you should be able to continue to edit, draft a second one, write a book proposal, call on agents while you have a job. And it's very easy for people to tell others to chase their dreams when they don't have to pay your rent. And I have said often that people telling you to follow your passion are already rich. So I would continue to try and make progress with your corporation and on evenings and weekends, to the extent you can, try and find a book agent and see if you can get published. Now, there is some light in between having a draft and getting published by a major author or a major publishing house. And that is taking excerpts of your book and publishing it on substack, pushing out a newsletter, taking bits of it. I don't know if it's B2B or if it's a novel, fiction or nonfiction, putting it on LinkedIn, but by the time I write a book, I have just leveraged the shit out of that that big block of salami. I chop it up into slices that are worth more in aggregate than the whole block of salami by posting it on LinkedIn, talking about excerpts on my podcast, having a newsletter. But don't let your manuscript just sit in a drawer somewhere. Get the digital copy of it and start slicing and dicing and putting it out there. And be aggressive around. Get a list of the top 1,000 book agents in the world and write as you should be able to do a compelling cover letter and then start sending that bitch out everywhere. When I say bitch, I mean your manuscript. Very much appreciate the question. And again, you are clearly a very impressive young man. We'll be right back after a quick break. 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Scott Galloway (16:16)

Welcome back onto our final question from Prism on Reddit. Hi Scott, I recently saw your segment on hiring and interviewing. Your biggest point was that you need your employees to get along, or all to get along. Given that diversity is the golden word in corporate America these days, how do you balance diversity and everyone getting along? As it is common for cultural differences to cause conflict within teams and it has been shown people perfectly prefer to hire like minded candidates. I've always more accidentally had pretty diverse teams and some of that was because I was building companies in San Francisco I can take some credit for in the 90s. I recognize that if you gave women with young kids at home some flexibility, you had access to this incredible untapped talent pool. This wasn't the 90s. They weren't giving people six months off from maternity leave and then figuring out there wasn't, you know, there wasn't remote work as far as diversity around ethnic backgrounds. Living in cities, you just get a lot of applicants from different backgrounds. But I never had affirmative action in the sense that I never thought, oh, we need to hire a Latino or we need more gay people or more people from low income backgrounds. We ended up with in some ways a fairly non diverse workforce and that is almost everyone who works for me is young and went to an elite college. So I would argue that to a certain extent that represents a lack of diversity that's more dangerous than a lack of diversity across ethnic groups. I think that the problems have not been solved, but they've gotten a lot better. There are now more women in full time employment in the US which is a wonderful thing. But if you really want to advance society, you would hire kids who come from low income backgrounds. You would much rather in today's America be born non white or gay than poor. Anyways, back to your question. That's never really been an issue. We try to let everybody, or almost everybody interview the candidate. We've been pretty good at screening out, which is Latin for firing or people who other people are starting to resent. I've had people that are outstanding, that I've worked with for a long time at other companies and they come in and they're just not a cultural fit and we move them on. We've had other people who are very good with senior management, but it's clear the team doesn't like them and they feel that they're not working as hard and we screen those people out. What we do to help people get along is that I spend a lot of money and time and effort, especially in a world of remote work, thinking about fun things for them to do together. My first company, profit. I used to take the entire firm to Cabo. The entire firm, no spouses, bunch of young people in Cabo San Lucas. They have my credit card, do whatever they want. And no, no spouses. And also I used to tell Senior Management at 11pm we go home. That way they can just go fucking crazy and have a great time. And they did go, they did go crazy. Including what I found out later were some late night jail visits. Anyways, we take the kids out. At Prop G Media, we have about 20 people now on a regular basis. And not only that, we encourage them without Catherine and I kind of the old folks who run the company, we encourage them to take vacations together and do things together, which we sponsor and pay for. And it creates a certain level of camaraderie and an esprit de corps that I think is really bonding and it's the right thing to do. It's nice. It's compensation. If you give somebody a trip worth $5,000 that is psychologically much more accretive than paying them another $5,000, they just love it. They brag about it to their friends. It also is a smart thing to do from a retention standpoint. And that is the number one source of retention in a company isn't compensation, although that's very important, or the culture. It's whether or not the person has a good friend at that job. When you walk into your work and you have a good friend, those hormones release and you just feel really good and you go grab coffee with that friend or you catch up with them. So trying to get an environment where people can establish friendships at work I think is really important. We send the kids at Prof. G. On vacation at least twice a year, maybe three times a year, or I'll take them with me to a great conference. And they love going away together. And even though they may not have a ton in common in terms of their backgrounds, is that true? See above all kids from elite colleges. But it creates a certain camaraderie. I also, in a world of remote work, pay for a fairly nice co working space. And what's interesting is that the young people are the ones that show up to the co working space. It's me and Katherine that engage in remote work. Anyway, sorry for the ramble here, but create an environment that makes it easy for people to establish friendships. And in terms of diversity moving forward, I think anyone who has hiring responsibility has an obligation to try and reach into communities that aren't as economically blessed, which is now the primary arbiter of opportunity or lack thereof in the United States. Appreciate your question.