Guest · 1:00:12
That that winds up yielding people who physically see more through their eyes. Eye tracking software on creative people will show that they see more things and spend more time on them, and that is an act in part of training your perceptions to bring in more information. The more rigid the worldview, the more you put stuff outside your scope and say that's not allowed, the less you're gonna be able to tap into.
Kara Swisher · 1:00:40
Interesting. Alright. We gotta go in a second, but very last question. What can people do to help creativity in everyday lives? One thing.
Guest · 1:00:47
Thing. Thing to give yourself permission not to judge and to do that outside the scope of your day job. It is very hard in a world with rules that you must participate in to do this. Allow yourself to do it on the margins, and it will squeeze its way into the rest of your life.
Kara Swisher · 1:01:13
Matt, please sing your song about sex.
Guest · 1:01:15
So here's the thing. I write a lot of music. Okay?
Kara Swisher · 1:01:17
You do. I recall this. Go ahead.
Guest · 1:01:20
Oh my god. That is so mocking.
Kara Swisher · 1:01:24
Sing your dirty song.
Guest · 1:01:25
This is a song I'm only going to sing the first two verses in the chorus, but the reason I sing this is this is one of those ideas that hits. You know how everybody talks about friends with benefits?
Kara Swisher · 1:01:38
Yeah.
Guest · 1:01:38
I think the real marriages survive, and I got a good one, because we have sex with benefits, sex with friendship. This is called benefits. Don't you laugh yet. I haven't even
Speaker · 1:01:51
got I'm laughing already. Go ahead.
Scott Galloway · 1:01:53
God, even I'm turning red.
Speaker · 1:02:09
I know I'm getting older, and I know I'm getting bold to tell you why I
Guest · 1:02:23
am selling the shit. Sex with benefits. Sex without is the pits. Uh-huh. Sex with benefits. That's not the whole song. What do you think?
Speaker · 1:02:44
Oh, god.
Scott Galloway · 1:02:45
Wow. Well done.
Kara Swisher · 1:02:46
Don't quit your day job is my is my
Guest · 1:02:48
Come in, baby.
Kara Swisher · 1:02:50
Very creative. Creative in
Scott Galloway · 1:02:53
any Inspiring yet uncomfortable.
Kara Swisher · 1:02:55
That was very Awkward.
Guest · 1:02:57
That's usually true. Yeah.
Kara Swisher · 1:02:59
The book is called Inspired but Uncomfortable, Understanding Creativity, Journey Through Art, Science, and the Soul. It's out now. Thank you, Matt, Rick, though. We appreciate Thanks,
Scott Galloway · 1:03:08
man.
Kara Swisher · 1:03:10
Oh, man. White guys who sing. Always love it.
Scott Galloway · 1:03:12
Wow. That puts a new spin on the Caroball. So are you sure you don't smoke a lot of pot?
Kara Swisher · 1:03:18
I don't smoke any How
Scott Galloway · 1:03:19
do you be friends with that guy and not do edibles?
Kara Swisher · 1:03:21
I don't know. Someone handed me mushrooms in Germany and not the not the good kind that I like to eat, the the the druggy kind. Yeah.
Scott Galloway · 1:03:28
And how'd it go for you?
Speaker · 1:03:29
I didn't take them. I just left them there in the hotel.
Speaker · 1:03:31
I actually
Scott Galloway · 1:03:32
think that'd be good for all of us if you had a little shroom.
Kara Swisher · 1:03:34
I don't think so. It's not... Not a shroom. Okay. One more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.
[Ad break]
Speaker · 1:04:19
And what if we added that this magical substance can dramatically lower your cholesterol, improve your mood, and keep your weight stable.
[Ad break]
Speaker · 1:04:33
But what is fiber? How could one nutrient do all those amazing things? And how can you get enough? Is a powder you stir into some water gonna do it
[Ad break]
— Predictions segment begins —
Kara Swisher · 1:04:58
Okay, Scott. I wanna hear some predictions, but I actually asked you to talk about this layoffs thing this week. So one of the things you had talked about was more and more layoffs and among the fleece collar people. And you've done some layoffs at L2. So, I want you to illuminate me on that prediction a little bit more and explain what you guys went through and where you think it's headed.
Scott Galloway · 1:05:18
Actually, I sold l two five years ago, but I'm
Kara Swisher · 1:05:21
just invested in my in
Scott Galloway · 1:05:23
my career. Okay. No. Section four.
Kara Swisher · 1:05:27
So Section four. Well, you have these names. I don't... You know?
Speaker · 1:05:30
Yeah. So I'll tell you what we... I think
Scott Galloway · 1:05:32
we got wrong and we got right. I made the same rookie mistake over and over. And I'm not in management here. I'm just on the board and I teach on the platform. But I'm in a position where I've had a few wins so I can raise capital easily. Yep. I think we probably raised too much capital and I'd made the same, I won't say I, the board and management made a mistake that management makes a lot. And that is we conflated macro conditions for our own talent. And that is an online ed firm in COVID had unnatural gale force wins in our sales. Last year, we had like 13,000 students. We just kind of flipped the on switch and overnight... Mean, I to give you an example, Kara, we were charging people a thousand bucks in the beginning and I would do a class with 1,400 people. So $1,400,000 for an online class that went three weeks. So the margins were crazy, raised a bunch of money. And the general viewpoint was you can't hire fast enough. So just hire COVID begins to wane, demand falls, people don't want to be behind their computer. And we just found, and also, I think one thing I've noticed about remote learning, if you have a team that's worked together before, you can maintain 90% of productivity remotely and give people time back. It's a wonderful thing. I think going from 30 to 120 people, which is what we did over twelve months, it is difficult to maintain a culture and productivity in person, much less remotely. And we found we had diseconomies of scale in that as we quadrupled the workforce not to get a commensurate increase in productivity. I think what we got right was we started seeing this six months ago and said the sooner we do lay off some more, the better. I've always thought, I've always said on any board when they're thinking about cuts, I'm like, go deeper than you think you need to because you don't wanna do this more than once. Right. But yeah, we had, we laid off about 30 people, which was always really painful and difficult, especially for the people who've been laid off. I believe, and I'm seeing this across everywhere, I think it's just getting started. Yeah.
Kara Swisher · 1:07:36
This is what this is dovetailed into your prediction. So I wanted you to explain.
Scott Galloway · 1:07:39
Yeah. So the reality is we screwed up. I've made the mistake over and over, which is the difference between making a mistake and being stupid. I've been stupid. I keep finding firms, finding reasons why we're just awesome and probably over hiring as opposed to measured growth. But you're seeing across, basically across all the the wins from the pandemic in businesses, anything remote.
Kara Swisher · 1:08:01
Zoom.
Scott Galloway · 1:08:01
Have really subsided.
Kara Swisher · 1:08:02
Peloton. Yeah.
Scott Galloway · 1:08:03
And then you have companies, we look modest. The majority of the feedback we've gotten from people is you are ahead of the curve. Because we did start thinking about this a few months ago. I'm like, we're just over hired here. We're not getting the same...
Kara Swisher · 1:08:15
So how does that dovetail into your prediction? Because a lot of people took notice of your fleece, you know, the fleece layoffs, essentially, if you're wearing a Patagonia vest and this and that. Do you... It's going through this process yourself. Where does it go from here? Well, people not returning to the workplace may be returning to the workplace. It's still... We're still in this sort of weird nether period, I think.
Scott Galloway · 1:08:38
I think you're going to see a lot of layoffs. I mean, if you're an engineer, you're pretty safe because those skills are just the demand is so extraordinary for engineers. But the reality is 80, 90% of a tech company is not engineers. It's people doing other stuff. And I think there's gonna be a lot of layoffs. I think it's gonna be the biggest layoff we've had across what I'll call information age companies since probably 2008. I think over the medium and the long term, it's really good. I think that tightening, sending signals to people who are good, that if you're not good, I believe in strategic firing. I know that's not aspirational, but I think people need to look left and right at a company and say, I get it. Maybe I don't like this person, but I understand why they're here. And I think that the hallmark version of companies that everyone has a role and it's not the person's fault, it's the organization's fault. I think that's bullshit that's not capitalist. Also people who get fired, I've been fired, need to recognize that that's okay, that your human capital is gonna be better served somewhere else. Now having said that, it's easy to say when you're economically secure. So I've always said do it sooner rather than later and try and on the side of being generous. You're But not doing anyone any favors wallpapering over a shitty business and keeping people employed when you know eventually you're gonna have to let them go.
Kara Swisher · 1:09:53
Right, as things change.
Scott Galloway · 1:09:55
But I think we're gonna a lot of this over the next six or twelve months. And then in eighteen to twenty four months, I think the entire tech ecosystem is gonna be stronger. I think occasionally you gotta... It's like intermittent fasting. I don't know what the term is, but I think it's healthy. Think this recession is gonna be healthy for us as long as it's not a depression.
Kara Swisher · 1:10:15
Right. A depression. So now I'll let you make a regular decision. I thought it was just important to illuminate on a prediction you made last week.
Scott Galloway · 1:10:20
Yeah. So my prediction, it was gonna be a story. I didn't have a prediction, but I think ESG is going to be I don't know what the term, I think it's just total bullshit. Think these have been weaponized by people to try and use it as some sort of marketing technique to pretend that somehow they should tap into these ESG focused funds. I think Elon Musk was actually correct
Speaker · 1:10:49
Correct.
Scott Galloway · 1:10:49
In calling
Kara Swisher · 1:10:49
Just for people who don't know, Tesla was kicked out of the S and P's 500 ESG Index. This is environment, social, and governance. I'm sorry. It's the do gooders, essentially. ESG index because it doesn't have a climate plan. Tesla's, quote, lack of low carbon strategy codes of business conduct and accusations of racism and poor working conditions were also to blame. Amazon, Apple, and ExxonMobil still made the list. Naturally, Elon tweeted that the SP I had lost their don't think they ever had it. It's like some of these dumb awards that you get for... I hate awards in general. I think Elon was correct here. He acted like a big baby about it, but nonetheless, he's correct. So go ahead, ESG. Go ahead.
Scott Galloway · 1:11:27
Well, it's just, it's basically someone sitting back and saying, I'm gonna decide whether I like you or I think you're good based on my criteria. Then we, I can shove any criteria into three letters, ESG. And what they need to be is they need to be, okay, environmental and very straightforward, non emotional metrics, whether it's carbon emissions or carbon emissions per economic growth, because there is a trade off. Carbon emissions are worth it in some instances. But this has become just so, ESG has been so weaponized as a marketing vehicle for non ESG firms. I think it's become meaningless and it's almost become damaging. I think you're gonna see a lot of warranted scrutiny of firms claiming to be ESG, and we're gonna realize it's all bullshit. It was nothing but marketing to try and create another weapon of mass distraction from shitty businesses because they're quote unquote ESG. And I think, think, I you know, I got it right here. I think this whole ESG thing has become... It's gonna become a useless, weird term. Mhmm.
Kara Swisher · 1:12:29
But there's gotta be a way to do. I read a really good story on carbon trade offs, buybacks, and stuff like that on the plane, again, in The Economist, which is such a good publication. I've forgotten most of the article, but the whole area is still not, there should be companies that are thinking about their carbon footprint how they can become better. And I think that how... Getting rewarded with a little plaque seems to be the stupidest. It should just be at the heart of these companies rather than to be on a list. I can't stand... I'm the same way about journalistic awards or Oscars or things like that. I find them exhausting and tend not to show up at most of them. But I agree with you on this one. This is a great thing to think about. But how do you get metrics where companies just stick them because it's the right thing to do for the society and for their business? I think that's how do you force them without giving them a plaque or something.
Scott Galloway · 1:13:19
Yeah, but there's basically, I mean, there were some households trying to be carbon benign, right, or carbon neutral. Your emissions relative to your shareholder value or relative to the employment or whatever it might be. There's gotta be third parties who don't have a for profit motive coming up or governmental agencies coming up with real metrics. The problem with metrics, there's been a lot of studies now on metrics. And that is the moment you start studying to the test, the metric not only becomes useless, but becomes damaging. And the metric I always use is I think one of the worst things that's happened to higher ed in The US is these rankings. Because we all started studying to the test and we figured out if we reduced admissions rates, we'd go up in the rankings. And it ended up being anti American to become rejectionists. But this is so important. This field is so important that some metrics around how environmentally damaging or, you know, how, I mean, one of the nice things about these tech companies is they are, relative to their economic output, they are not harmful to the environment, but there's different types of environmental damage, right?
Kara Swisher · 1:14:22
Mhmm.
Scott Galloway · 1:14:23
So this is a... This is an interesting field, but ESG, god, it's been weaponized and perverted.
Kara Swisher · 1:14:30
Yeah. I would agree. I think we're we're in agreement. I was gonna note we were agreeing with Elon on this, but it's... It still goes. These things go on all the time. Anyway, that's the very long show. We'll be back on Friday for more.
— Predictions segment ends —
Scott Galloway · 1:14:41
That was a long show.
Kara Swisher · 1:14:42
That's okay.
Speaker · 1:14:43
It was full of interesting things.
Kara Swisher · 1:14:44
And, Scott, read us out.
Scott Galloway · 1:14:45
Today's show was produced by Lara Naim and Evan Engel and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Intertaud engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Mio Silverio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Box Media. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Kara, have a great week.
Kara Swisher · 1:15:04
Thanks. You too, Scott.
