Who Scott Mentors (and Doesn’t), the Bankruptcy Double Standard, and the Case Against Marriage and Kids

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Welcome to Office Hours with Prof G.

This is the part of the show where we answer your questions about business, big tech entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind.

If you'd like to submit a question for next time, you can send a recording, a voice recording to officehours at profgmedia.com.

Again, that's officehours at profgmedia.com.

Or post a question on the Scott Galloway subreddit and we just might feature it in our next episode.

First question.

Our first question comes from a low definition 31-86 on Reddit.

They say, Scott, how do you choose which people to champion and mentor beyond the people you have hired?

How do you make sure that at a minimum you don't dilute your personal brand?

I'm grateful that 30 years ago, a college alumnus gave me grace grace when I was late to an informational interview and the referral he gave me launched my career.

I hope I would do the same for my 22-year-old neurodivergent self, but I don't know.

Thanks.

So I try to mentor at any given time two to three young men.

One, I relate to young men.

Two, I believe young men especially, a lot of them are struggling.

And three, I think I'm good at it.

I enjoy it.

I can offer good advice.

And by the way, if you're thinking about mentoring a young man, just do it.

They're everywhere.

Find the single mothers in your workplace and just say, would your son be interested in coming over, washing my car, going to a ball game, hanging out?

And you're just going to find a lot of people very willing to fork their 17-year-old over to you for an afternoon.

And

even if it's your friends who do have a male role model, son, I find they're much more inclined to listen to another dad.

I go out of the way or I go out of my way to make sure my 14 to 17 year old boys spend time with other men because I find the other men say the same thing I'm saying, but they listen to them.

There's a healthy gag reflex where young men are trying to establish their own identity and basically become allergic to their parents.

There was an interesting article in the New York Times on this and boy are we going through that right now.

I am fucking pollen

on top of cyanide in terms of how my kids respond to my advice right now.

The older one left, so he's kind of coming back to me.

Anyways, by the way, I was at a dinner party last night and the woman next to me, single mom, son came over, wanted to go to some party, started cussing her out.

I mean, just, I wanted to stand up and fucking slap this little bitch.

Was that wrong?

Anyways, and she said to me, she said,

she just sat down and said, it's really difficult not having a father figure in his life.

Anyway,

how do I choose these kids?

A lot of it is just situational.

A friend asks, somebody asks, I get an email that I respond to or resonates with me.

Who I don't mentor is actually more interesting.

I don't mentor kids who are just got MIT and are graduating from Google and want to mentor.

Fuck you.

Men are me.

You don't need, you should be mentoring kids.

You're doing just fine.

And by the way, I'm not suggesting you don't need a kitchen cabinet, but those kids don't need help.

I don't mentor kids, or very few of them are in or graduating from college.

I mentor young men who, quite frankly, are struggling.

Look, the easiest thing to do is your friends' sons, they're going to listen to you more than your friend or the dad.

But mostly the kids who I try and spend a little bit of time with are the ones who really need help.

And as I was saying, a lot of times I'm not afraid to call the parent and say, I'm not qualified to coach this kid because I get the feeling there's a lot going on here.

I once had a friend of mine asked me to meet with his daughter and she came over to the office and she was so uncomfortable in her own skin.

And then her, actually her aunt and uncle showed up and there was this like, you could tell this, this visible release of anxiety and like exhale.

And I immediately called her dad and said, I can't mentor your daughter.

I think she's, I'm not an adolescent psychiatrist.

I'm not going to diagnose her.

I'm just going to tell you, I think she is really struggling and needs professional help.

So the kind of the sweet spot for me is a young man, single mom, who is struggling and quite frankly, just needs someone to help him make very basic decisions.

And this goes back to the call-out.

And the call-out is for more men to get involved in Big Brothers programs.

Big Brothers of New York or whatever city you're in.

There are three times as many women applying to be big sisters in New York as men.

And I think a lot of them are intimidated, or they're selfish, or they're not stepping up, or there's a stigma to wanting to be involved in a younger man's life, or you think maybe I'm not a baller, I'm not doing that well, or I don't have my own kids.

Who am I to help a younger?

I can tell you firsthand, it is so easy to add value.

These kids are just making really bad decisions.

And it's not that they don't get advice from their mom or their dad on how to make better decisions, but they immediately just, they just have this natural healthy instinct not to listen.

Anyways, appreciate, very much appreciate the question.

Our second question comes from Ben on Reddit.

He asks,

Prop G, why is bankruptcy seen a savvy financial tool when used by the ultra-wealthy, but treated like a moral failure when used by working-class Americans?

I filed in 2017 when I was broken on food stamps.

They gave me a second chance, and now I run a non-profit called Upsolve that helps others do the same for free.

I've helped over 17,000 people file, and almost all of them had to fight an uphill battle against shame to make a life-changing decision.

It makes me wonder why do we moralize debt relief for some but not others?

It's a really interesting question, Ben.

On the whole, relative to other nations, we actually

stigmatize bankruptcy less.

Keep in mind, many countries used to have debtors' prisons.

They used to put you in prison.

And one of the great things about America is we don't embrace failure.

That's bullshit, but we tolerate it.

And bankruptcy laws are an example of that.

You can declare bankruptcy, be relieved of most of your debts, and kind of start start over.

And that's a wonderful thing.

Now, we tend to stigmatize it for people much more than corporations.

Corporations are inanimate

objects.

And when iHeartRadio, I think, is declared once or paper company, there's also, you know, the two of the three automobile companies declared bankruptcy.

We assume it's not their fault.

We don't hold them personally accountable.

Also, it's a fantastic.

It's a fantastic construct because sometimes companies borrow too much money or make bad decisions.

And they're decent companies.

They just have bad balance sheets or debt structure, meaning they have taken on too much debt for projects that just didn't work out.

And bankruptcy gives them the cloud cover to reorganize, forgive them of their debts, equitize their debt.

Their debt goes, turns into equities such that maybe the debtors get some

of their investment back.

And basically the equity holders who usually get more upside when things are good get wiped out.

But they might say, okay, if you're like retailers are great companies to take bankrupt.

Basically, you could go through, if they declare Chapter 11, you can go through and of their 500 stores, you can pick the 200 that work and you get out of the 300 leases.

You get to liquidate or absolve your obligation to those 300 leases.

And in retail, leases are usually what kills a company or specifically bad leases or stores that aren't paying off.

So it gives the company a recognized company may still have value that people.

you know, can get employment from or shareholders or debt holders can get their money back from or more money.

And it's a fantastic means of of bringing new life to a company.

My best investments have been, my two best investments have been corporations or investors bringing a company out of bankruptcy,

washing out the debtors,

washing out 100% the equity holders, turning some of the debt into equity, and then putting new capital into the company and then using that cloud cover of bankruptcy to create a healthier, leaner company.

One was a yellow pages company called Dex Media.

The other was a consumer company called Enjoy.

Those have been my two biggest, two best investments.

If there was one asset class I would say is the best investment, it's distressed credit, and that is going into companies that are struggling.

Anyways, another talk show,

but we do stigmatize it for individuals.

And I think credit card companies are now trying to pass types of legislation that make it harder for people to be absolved of their credit card debt.

And the most immoral component of this is that student debt is not dischargeable in bankruptcy, meaning a kid maybe comes from middle-class family, is told they need to go to college, goes to college for two or three years, racks up six figures in debt, decides college is not for him or her, drops out, and still has that debt with no degree and no ability to kind of pay it back.

That is the real, I mean, you want to talk about kind of like, you know, fucked at 22.

That's the scenario.

And it's just insane that the one cohort that should be we should have the most grace and the most forgiveness for is the one we decide that the primary debt they deploy or there's leveled on them, student debt, is not dischargeable.

So this is this is the lobbyists from credit card companies and from banks deciding that student debt should not be dischargeable.

So I applaud what you're doing.

I think bankruptcy, there should be some stigma to it.

You don't want people doing it over and over.

I think in the corporate world, bankruptcy, I think those laws are actually really powerful.

I mean, powerful in a good way, a positive way.

The president is known for bankrupting several of his own companies.

After you do that, it gets harder and harder to borrow money.

He was always able to do that.

He was always able to borrow more money and kind of leave a lot of banks holding the bill.

To be clear, he's never declared personal bankruptcy.

So you're right.

We do stigmatize it more for individuals than we do for corporations.

But I do think our bankruptcy laws are a feature, not a bug, of our country, and that there is less stigma.

And generally speaking, that's true of our entire approach to risk.

We're much more risk aggressive.

I've started several companies.

Some have worked, some have not.

And I wonder if I'd been in Europe and an entrepreneur and my first company had failed, if I'd ever would have been able to raise subsequent capital.

So, bankruptcy and our willingness to forgive and move on are key components of what makes America unique and more prosperous and able to attract more capital and more human capital that's willing to take outsized risks, knowing that if it doesn't work, it's not the end of the world.

Thanks for the question.

We'll be right back after a quick break.

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Welcome back onto our final question from Miami Peter on Reddit.

Scott, make the argument for never getting married and never having children.

Just

come spend this afternoon with me and my boys, and I'll make the argument for you.

I'm not one of these people that thinks you have to get married and have kids to be happy.

I just don't think that.

Especially the having kids part.

I didn't want kids.

I liked my life.

I recognized I was self-aware enough to know that I'm pretty selfish and like to have my own weekends and I like to spend a lot of time alone.

That hasn't changed.

And then something strange happens when you have kids.

God reaches into your soul and turns on a switch and you just kind of are in love with these things.

Although the switch is more like a dimmer.

I fell in love with my kids.

I didn't feel love right away when they came marching out.

But I do think that it gives you a certain sense of permanence.

Oh, you wanted me to make an argument for not having kids?

Simple.

Look at gay people.

Typically, gay marriages don't have as many kids, and it seems to work really well for them.

One, they have more disposable income and more time for each other and more time for themselves, which creates an absence of stress and more healthy relationships and more self-care.

I wonder if gay people live longer and, you know, just have more disposable income because they're not taxed with

kids or with this preconceived notion.

of what monogamy is supposed to be.

So I would say that if you decide at some point,

you know, you're just not up for, don't want to have kids, I probably would not be married if I didn't, if I decided not to have kids.

I was, I don't want to say I was forced to get married, but basically my partner, and this is their right, said, if you don't want to have kids, I'm out of here.

And I'm like, okay, I'll have kids.

And now I love it.

It's given me purpose.

Notice how I had to add that in for orthodoxy and virtue signaling.

What I would say, I don't know if you're a dude, Miami Peter.

Look, Miami Peter, what I would tell you is that the statistics show that people live longer, are happier, are more productive citizens, build more wealth when they're in a relationship.

And that I can say I don't know that many super successful, super happy people who kind of die alone.

I just don't, I think it's fun to build your life with somebody.

Up until when my mom died, I needed to call her every time something good happened, such that it was cemented.

And now I share those victories with my partner and my kids, because at the end of the day, what you want and what you need as a mammal is you want, you want someone to notice your life.

You want someone to witness you.

You want someone to share in your victories.

You want to build something with someone.

Even one of my, one of the guys I co-invest with, we had a really, an investment workout really well.

And he said, it's so much more fun to make money with your friends.

It's so much more fun.

It's so much more rewarding to build your life with someone.

And in addition, there's a certain reward and satisfaction that you're here for a reason when you're able to take your intelligence and your grit and your blessings and help take care of others, especially kids, because they are just so vulnerable and so dependent upon you that it gives you a certain sense of strength and

masculinity and pride.

So, yeah,

can you have a nice life without kids?

Absolutely.

Can you have a nice life without kids or getting married?

You can have a series of relationships, but I would argue on a risk-adjusted basis,

boss, there's a reason why most cultures still have the ultimate goal is to have a family.

And in general, most people or most studies have shown that you would be happier.

Having said that, if you want to roll it some time in London or grab a beer, I'm always up for being single for at least a night or two a week.

Anyways, thanks for the question.

That's all for this episode.

If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to officehours at propertymedia.com.

Again, that's officehours at propertymedia.com.

Or if you prefer to ask on Reddit, just post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit, and we just might feature it in an upcoming episode.