Ryan Roslansky’s Post

Transcript

- The worst advice that billionaires give is follow your passion. Anyone who tells you to follow your passion is already rich. People mistake their hobbies for their professional career. - Welcome to "The Path." I'm Ryan Roslansky, the CEO of LinkedIn. Today my guest is Scott Galloway. Scott is a bestselling author, entrepreneur, and NYU professor known for his bold takes on business, tech and society. He's one of today's most influential voices and a trusted advisor to leaders of the world's top companies. But Scott's story didn't start with confidence or credentials. He was raised by a single mother in LA, had few college prospects and very little money, and yet his voice has come to shape some of the biggest decisions in business. Here's how Scott Galloway paved his path. We want to go way, way back to the early days of a young Scott Galloway and what you can remember about what you first wanted to be when you grew up. - When I was in high school, I thought I was going to make my living as an athlete, and then I got to UCLA where there were real athletes and figured out that wasn't going to my future. Then I thought I was going to be a pediatrician. Organic chemistry disabused me of that notion. I went back to my high school reunion and I couldn't find a teacher that remembered me. There weren't that many students that remembered me. I think I was like most kids. - Was going to college kind of always the thing you knew you were going to do or did you ever consider just this skipping college altogether? - I was raised by a single immigrant mother who lived and died a secretary. Neither of my parents graduated from high school, our household income was never over $40,000, so it wasn't a given I was going to go to college, but my two closest friends were going to college. I thought, okay, I'm going to college. - [Ryan] Scott didn't map out his college dreams. He took the practical route and chose the school that was closest to home, UCLA. He got rejected. - When UCLA rejected me, I remember coming home one day and literally breaking down. I just didn't have the confidence or the sophistication to be scrappy and start applying to other colleges. People just don't understand. When you grow up without money, it's like you have this ghost following you around, whispering in your ear, "you're not worthy" and you start to believe it. - [Ryan] With no backup plan, Scott took a job installing shelving for $18 an hour. Nothing close to the future he had imagined, but then just days before the semester started, he got a call from UCLA offering him a spot. He became the first person from either side of his family to go to college. - I was remarkably unremarkable, but the difference was back then America loved unremarkable people and I got into UCLA, which had a 76% admissions rate. I rewarded their generosity with a 2.27 undergraduate GPA, I spent the majority of my college years watching Planet of the Apes. - The college experience, do you think it's worth it for people today? - It was a no-brainer back then. Now it's not a no-brainer. You have to weigh off your economic situation, the value of the degree. If you could go out and make more money on your own, like you get into Princeton, you go. But if you get into some of these mediocre schools that are charging you a huge price and you don't have the money, I don't know. These are tough decisions and I don't pretend to have like the secret sauce other than talking to a bunch of smart people and getting advice because sometimes it's very hard to read the label from inside of the bottle. - [Ryan] Scott's first job out of college was as an analyst at Morgan Stanley. It was prestigious, it was high paying, and he hated it. He said he felt like an outsider in every room. So at 25 years old, he quit. - The reason I left the corporate world was I literally recognized I don't have the skills for this. I was too insecure. People would go into a conference room at Morgan Stanley and I would assume they were talking about me. I couldn't handle people getting promoted that I didn't think were smart. I was a jamble of nerves and insecurity and I realized I am not cut out for the corporate world. I'm just not good at it. It wasn't because I thought, I'm so awesome I need to let my freak flag of entrepreneurship fly. I just knew I wouldn't be successful at a big company. - [Ryan] Scott started selling bootleg VHS tapes door to door. He was getting kicked out of buildings, scraping by, and he came home one day to find all his tapes had been stolen. Scott ended up moving to Berkeley with his girlfriend. He enrolled in business school, graduated and launched a profit, a marketing firm that quickly landed clients like William Sonoma, Levi's and Apple. 10 years later, he sold it for $33 million. Still, he tells students the startup dream isn't always what it seems. - A ton of kids come to my office hours and they'll say, I have offers with from Google, the Salesforce, but I really want to start my own business. And I'll say, don't be a fucking idiot. Go to work for Google. And they don't expect to hear that from me. We have a tendency to romanticize entrepreneurship. I mean, just ask yourself, are you willing to risk public failure? Are you willing to be emotionally stressed? Are you willing to strain your relationships? Are you willing to borrow money from your in-laws with the prospect you might have to show up at Thanksgiving having lost it. Are you willing to sell everyone all the time? - In 1997, he founded Red Envelope, one of the earliest e-commerce companies. He took it public and thought he had made it, but then with a labor strike, a software glitch and the credit crisis in 2008, the company suddenly went bankrupt. What's your framework for people thinking about failure in their careers? - The key to my success is rejection, or specifically my ability to endure it, to mourn and move on. I've never been afraid to approach strangers and ask them for money to invest in my companies. I've never been afraid to ask talented people to come work with me because if you don't get to no a lot of times, you're never going to get to wonderful yeses. - [Ryan] In 2002, Scott started teaching marketing where he created the "Digital IQ Index" to measure how well brands use digital tools. He turned that research into a company called L2. In 2017, he sold L2 for $155 million. By then, he had found his voice, blunt, smart, and unafraid to call things as they are. That voice led to five bestselling books, a hit newsletter, multiple top podcasts and a loyal following. His latest project, it's a bit of a pivot, a book on masculinity. What made you write that book at this moment in time? - No cohort has fallen further faster than young men, four times as likely to kill themselves, three times as likely to be homeless, three times as likely to be addicted, 12 times as likely to be incarcerated. There's a lack of empathy for young men, and empathy is not a zero sum game. We can still recognize the huge challenges women face while recognizing there's something going on with our young men. And I wonder if masculinity or more aspirational form of masculinity can serve as a code for young men. It's not only for young men. I'm hoping that it's really for moms, specifically single moms who are struggling with their sons. And this book is really not just the hero story of me, it's about all the shortcomings I have demonstrated in my journey to trying to become a man. - I normally end these, Scott, by asking people what's their best career advice. This conversation's been littered with amazing career advice. So maybe let me flip it and ask, what common advice do you hear given to young people that you just really disagree with? - The worst advice the billionaires give is follow your passion. Anyone who tells you to follow your passion is already rich. People mistake their hobbies for their professional career. You want to be in sports, modeling, restaurants, nightclubs, art, acting, you better get bright green lights from an early time that you're in the top 1% 'cause those industries generally have a 90 to 99% unemployment rate. What I would say to anyone in their 20s is, your job is to workshop. If you're one of those people who knows exactly what you want to do and gets traction and right away, that puts you in kind of the 2% most fortunate. Most of us just don't know. I think the key is just to keep trying, be resilient until you land on something you think you could be great at. - [Ryan] So here's my takeaway. Scott started with no money, no connections, and no clear plans, but he kept showing up. He tried, failed and still moved forward. Along the way, he learned to question the easy answers and to reject the traditional wisdom we're often told about success. Scott's real gift isn't just clarity in a noisy world, it's the courage to speak hard truths, even when they're uncomfortable. For anyone figuring out their path, his story is a reminder. You don't need to have it all figured out. You just need the nerve to keep going. (upbeat music)