Scott Galloway on the college cash cow, tech giants & the secret to happiness

Scott Galloway is the kind of thought leader you turn to when you’re seeking uncomfortable truths. He is the founder of several successful firms, including L2, Red Envelope, and Prophet. Scott co-hosts the Pivot podcast with past KindredCast guest Kara Swisher (and if you listen to Episode 40, you’ll understand these kindred spirits very well).

As a Professor of Marketing at the NYU Stern School of Business, he teaches Brand Strategy and Digital Marketing to second-year MBA students and has a lot to say about business trends and the future of education in America. Here’s what we learned:

1. Scott almost never attended college.

Scott often refers to his younger self as “remarkably unremarkable.” Somehow, this wasn’t what we expected from a bestselling author who has become a big draw for NYU. But for an “unremarkable” student who was the son of dropouts, college wasn’t mandatory. “Literally, I was within seven days of not going to college,” Scott said. “I was going to be installing shelving for $18 an hour, and that seemed like a lot of money. My dad coached me not to go to college. He was like $18 an hour, don’t give that up. Right?”

Scott was able to compromise, working a part-time job that paid his way through undergraduate studies at UCLA, a world-class public education system to which he attributes his upward mobility. He laments that students (remarkable or otherwise) today rarely have the same opportunity he did. “I’ll teach 180 kids on a Monday night,” Scott said. “They spend $7000 each. So that’s $1.2 million in tuition for me in front of a slide projector for 12 nights, or $100,000 a night. Most of that is taken on in debt. What does that debt mean? That debt means that people get married later, it means they form households later, it means they’re less likely to start businesses.”

2. The core of Scott’s teaching at NYU is rooted in ‘The Four.’

In 2017, Scott published a book called The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. This New York Times bestseller is a summary of what Scott believes to be essential for any MBA student. “If we were honest, what we would do is we would teach four classes and those four classes the second year would be Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google because to understand those four platforms is to understand commerce, media, economics, the markets,” Scott said.

According to Scott, “The Four” have been wildly successful because they appeal to basic human instincts. Google is like an all-knowing deity we look to for guidance. Facebook reinforces and catalyzes relationships. Amazon is fueled by our hunter-gatherer instinct. And Apple? Well, it’s sex appeal. “As you move down the torso, the margins get better,” Scott said. “The entire luxury industry, probably the most profitable industry, it’s probably more billionaires actually than even tech.” Each giant captures a different part of what makes us human.

3. Scott knows the one thing that brings people genuine happiness.

Delving further into human nature, Scott published a new book called The Algebra of Happiness: Notes on the Pursuit of Success, Love, and Meaning. In the union of equations and short stories, Scott explores what makes a life both successful and happy — two factors that don’t always correlate. “[Students] think they’re at business school to make either develop economic security, which is a key component of happiness,” Scott said. “What they’re really there is to try and get the ink in the pen such that they can write a story of satisfaction and a narrative of satisfaction to their life.”

So what makes for a satisfying and happy life? Meaningful relationships. “Happiness is Love — full stop,” Scott said. “You want to be happier, start investing in other people. Start investing in relationships. That is how you get to drop the mic, the number of deep, meaningful relationships.”

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To listen to our interview with Scott, check out Episode 57 of KindredCast, embedded below, and available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.