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Welcome to Office Hours with Prop G. Today we're wrapping up our special two-part series all about careers, navigating them, advancing them, maybe even surviving them. I'll be sharing my best advice. I don't know if it's the best advice, but it's my best advice. No corporate speak. No BS. That's right. NC-17. R-rated advice. That's why we're here. I have not read or seen these questions. Let's bust right into it. First question.
Hey Scott, my name is John and I'm a recent college graduate based in Florida.
I'm pursuing a career in financial services, specifically wealth management for households with a net worth between one and five million dollars. Like many white-collar professionals, I'm concerned about the impacts that AI could have on my industry. While I see AI as a valuable tool, I worry that the chatbots could offer potential clients a faster, more knowledgeable, and ultimately free service, posing a pretty big challenge for myself.
Wealth management has always faced issues from robo-advisors, fee-cutting firms, but fortunately, compliance has always saved us. What advice would you offer a young professional like myself to future-proof my business against AI-driven disruptions, all while continuing to grow and provide value to clients, especially as a 20-something year old with a young face? I appreciate your time.
That's a really thoughtful question. And I think kind of information intensive white collar industries that to a certain extent, trade and complexity, there's a lot of regulation, there's a lot of different assets. People have taxes. It's complex once you get above any reasonable set of assets. And so people want to feel... security, they want an absence of fear, they want someone nice and young and attractive and bright such as you to show up.
And actually, to a certain extent, youth is a bit of a disadvantage here, but give them a sense of confidence that they're doing the right thing with their assets. And in exchange... Sometimes, or many times, people are willing to pay 1% to 2% of their assets. My mom paid this guy 1.5% a year to basically buy a bunch of shitty stocks for her. And I looked at it and said, okay, this makes no sense. Invest in Vanguard. This guy can't pick stocks.
some 65-year-old sitting in a bad office somewhere in Las Vegas, and he's underperformed the market, but he's really expensive. The majority of wealth managers in that weight class could be best described as expensive but bad. They're high EQ. They make you feel better. They come over to your house. Anyone who takes you to dinner or to a sports event means their fees are way too fucking high. You know who will never take you to a Knicks game? Vanguard.
And you are in kind of ground zero, I think, unfortunately, for disruption around AI. What do you do? First, let's look at some data. According to Brookings, those in business and financial operations occupations are at the third highest risk level for disruption from large language models. Additionally, Citigroup believes that over 50% of jobs in the financial services industry
be replaced by AI. Pew Research found that 62% of Americans believe that AI will have a major impact on workers, but just 28% believe that it will have an impact on them personally. Recent data suggests that AI adoption rates are just 5% in some industries, creating an enormous opportunity for those who do decide to utilize the new technology.
So my kind of saying around this, if you're going to go into this industry, you have to go in with your eyes wide open. And that is you're going to have to get to scale within three to five years. And that is if you're just managing. a bunch of like $100,000, $500,000 million portfolios. At some point, they're going to figure it out and just go to Vanguard.
What you need to do is get to a certain amount of scale such that you can charge low enough fees such that, quite frankly, you're worth it. And what does it mean? What is value? It's fees over the services you're offering. Or maybe it's the opposite. Anyways, you get my point. And in money management, the bad news is it's as difficult or as easy to manage 10 million as it is a million. But the good news is it's as easy to manage 10 million as 1 million. So financial services.
is a lot like being a real estate broker. It's a shitty business for the first 10 years. It's going to every fucking event. It's giving your card to people. It's doing a lot of free work. It's doing a ton of work and finding out that no one has.
you know, they don't really have assets. But once you have a stable of clients, it turns into a really good business. Now, the first thing is you are going to have to acknowledge the following or really adopt the following as religion if you want to be successful. AI is not going to take your job. Someone who understands AI is going to take your job. And that is AI still hallucinates and the majority of people still do not want to use an AI robo-advisor to figure out which funds they allocate.
across, right? Even if they decide to go all Vanguard, there's still some decisions to be made. There are robo-advisors, but most people don't want to do that. You are also going to have to become exceptionally talented around the integration of how to make money.
and how to keep it. Now, what do I mean by that? Taxes. I would say the majority of my value add, Goldman Sachs manages my money, but really they don't manage my money. What they do is they manage my personal finance. What do I mean by that? I have several entities. They coordinate my lawyers when I'm creating LLCs. They give me tax advice, which is really their kind of value add. And that is, I'll say, okay.
I am thinking of buying this or I'm buying a home. Should I put it in an LLC? If I put it in an LLC, It might trigger a increase in taxes because the home gets reappraised. But if I put it into an LLC, I can depreciate it at 2% a year. And if I hold onto it for two years and make some money off of it, it qualifies for 1031 exchange.
If you sound confused, trust your instincts. It is really fucking confusing. Keep in mind that essentially the tax code has been weaponized by very wealthy people. It's gone from 400 pages, I think, to 4,000. I read somewhere it's gone to 7,000. And those additional pages are basically loopholes for the rich or essentially an effort to transfer wealth from the lower and middle income households to the wealthy who have aggregated a disproportionate amount of the spoils.
over the last 40 years. But in that complexity is your value add. And that is you can understand the difference between, all right, I'm going to help you allocate your assets. We're going to go into low cost funds, but I'm going to help you pick them and help you diversify. I'm going to do the hard work. understanding where you're too concentrated. I'm going to establish a relationship with you. I'm going to do a lot of work for you kind of off the clock.
And I'm really gonna think thoughtfully and come to you proactively with different tax ideas or ways to essentially become more tax efficient. It was like Wayne Huizenga, the founder of Blockbuster used to run those ads. for the state of Florida, talking about Florida's zero income tax or zero state income tax. And he used to say, it's not what you earn, it's what you keep. So to a certain extent, a financial advisor, in my view,
It's going to have less value add on how you make money. How do you make money? You diversify and you're going to low cost index funds. All right. But how do you keep money is understanding their specific personal situation and how they figure out and navigate the incredibly complex tax code. And you're going to have to also be the one to cut your own fees as their assets grow.
Ritholtz Management, my friend Barry Ritholtz and his partner Josh Brown of CNBC fame, they run a, I wouldn't even call it a hedge fund, I'd call them a wealth advisory fund. And as they have grown their assets, they have lowered their fees. And they are very thoughtful and give personalized advice to their clients, which Vanguard, they may claim to do it, but they really don't.
And as a result, people decide, okay, Vanguard would be less expensive, but these guys are worth it because they know my personal situation. They're willing to meet with me. They walk me through ideas. They're proactive. So you are going to have to become an AI warrior, my friend. You're going to have to figure out a way to get people's financial complexion, upload their credit cards. Christ, figure out a way.
go to that app where it tells them how many subscriptions they have. The first thing we're gonna do, we're gonna focus on saving you money. Give me your taxes. And then you're going to upload it to different LLMs and try and generate ideas for tax savings. You are going to be an AI warrior. This is what you want. This is what you want. When your competitor walks in to pitch them on managing their money,
You walk in with a panzer tank and that panzer tank is knowledge. It's willingness to do good work, understand their personal situation and understanding of how it all dovetails with the tax code. And you understand how to use AI. That is your panzer tank.
tank and the guy next to you or the gal next to you who shows up after you, they're showing up fighting on horseback because you understand. You're one of the 5% that understands how to use AI. Let me finish where I began. AI is not going to take your job. Somebody who understands AI is going to take your job. Question number two. Hi, Scott. I'm a big fan.
I'm a 23-year-old living in suburban New York. I work at a mid-size physical goods supply company, maintaining and developing some of their warehouse and logistical operations software. I'm curious about starting my own distribution-type business, and I wanted to talk to real-life people about this.
What advice would you give to find and talk to actual people in an industry that you're curious about entering, especially if you're a little introverted and scared of sounding stupid? So anonymous, so you're a 23-year-old, and my understanding is you're thinking about... starting your own type of distribution business i always thought so i started my first business i've been starting business in my whole life but
Essentially, my entire professional career has been entrepreneurship, except for a two-year stand at Morgan Stanley that I was awful at and only confirmed that I should be an entrepreneur. But anyways, a couple of things. One, the way you start a business. I mean, it's good that you're talking to people and I'm not suggesting you don't, but the way you start a business is by getting a client. A mistake I have consistently made, consistently made, I still make it, is believing that spending money
is building a business. No, it's not. It's making money that builds a business. So the best way to test this idea is to see if you could get a client. And I'm not sure, I don't know about the competitive dynamics here or the situation with your current company. but I would try and find a client or pitch a potential client. Yeah, talk to people, get some advice. If you're an introvert,
and you aren't comfortable selling, then you need to either find somebody who can sell and make them your partner or you shouldn't be an entrepreneur. Let me be clear. Entrepreneur is a synonym for salesman.
or salesperson. You know what being an entrepreneur is? It's getting out a big spoon every day and eating shit. You're constantly selling. I'm not talking about just selling clients, selling investors. The most selling I have ever done i always had good products at my firms and i felt like more than selling i was closing because i would create content marketing to try and create content
that we then get inbound leads. I used to tell our sales team, you're not selling, you're closing, because we did a really good job of content marketing. The biggest sell I ever did was trying to find really talented people and then convince them to join my firm when they had offers from Google and Salesforce or... trying to convince people to stay, that we would get to a liquidity event and they would get economic security with me as opposed to see above.
Going to fucking Meta where they were awarded options that were already $300,000 in the money, you are always selling. And if you are not comfortable with that or you can't get comfortable with that, then you need to find a partner. who is comfortable with it. There are some people that are so good at what they do that they can build a business without selling. My landscaper is this really charming guy who will bring me out and show me.
He's very emotionally manipulative. He'll come out and show me this bougainvillea that he's helping us drape over our garage. I absolutely love bougainvillea. It reminds me of my childhood in Orange County, and my dad's super into them.
And he just picked up on the fact that I love Bougainvillea, so occasionally he drags me out and he shows me this thing and he literally goes over and kind of hugs it like he's in love with it. That is selling. That is developing a relationship with a professor slash podcaster that has a... you know, an affection for bougainvillea, if you're not comfortable maintaining those sorts of relationships,
you're going to have to find someone who is. So absolutely go out and talk to people. But again, the way you start a business, what builds a business is revenues, not expenses. At 23, it sounds like you are doing incredibly well. The other thing I would ask yourself, or maybe get a kitchen cabinet together and ask them, is would you benefit from another couple years experience at your current firm? Are you learning? Do you have senior level sponsorship?
If you have those things, you may want to think about sticking around for a while. Is there an opportunity to grow at that company if they find out you're thinking about leaving? What always really upset me was when there was young, talented people who left and I'd say, where are you going? And I think...
That is just the worst fucking job ever. What are you doing? And they think, well, I want to be in a position where I can manage people. Well, why didn't you come ask me? I'd have you manage some people. Is there an opportunity at your current firm? Develop a kitchen cabinet.
Think about whether you might benefit from staying a year or two years and think about how you get that first client. And if you are not comfortable selling, then you need to find someone to bring in the organization pronto. that is comfortable selling because that's what it means to be an entrepreneur, my brother. But again, 23 thinking this way, you're doing really well. We have one quick break before our final question. Stay with us.
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Welcome back. Question number three. Hi, Prof. G. I've recently transitioned to academia after spending about 25 years in industry. While I truly enjoy my new roles with teaching, student advising and research. I still enjoy staying connected to industry through consulting and professional advising. I've heard you talk about the importance of becoming a domain expert in your field, and I was curious, where do you see efforts best spent for maximum impact?
Should I focus on podcasting, writing, industry presentations, or any other options? You seem to excel at doing all of these. What do you think has the biggest impact and what do you personally enjoy the most? Lastly... I just wanted to say that I really appreciate the insights and thoughts you put into your work. Your perspectives are not only fascinating, but also make me sound much more knowledgeable than I really am. I'd love to buy you a drink to thank you the next time you're in Colorado.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts. So first off, anonymous, you shouldn't be anonymous. You're not saying anything that would threaten your job. And you sound like such a lovely guy. And also, you have more confidence. than i did when i was your age you're able to express admiration for other people i had this up notion of masculinity when i was your age you sound like your 20s or 30s
that if I was impressed, especially with another guy, it somehow took away from how impressive I was. I didn't have the confidence to... to express admiration or heat praise on other people. So you're already well ahead of the game and you got a nice voice. Anyways, it sounds to me like you're just set up really well for success. Now, transitioning to academia.
So first off, I think academia is underrated as a career. It is wonderful. It attracts a lot of lone wolves because you can do a lot of stuff on your own. There is some problems with academia right now. One, it's become morally corrupt based on an exclusionary rejectionist bullshit culture of not letting in kids, despite the fact we have the capital to double, triple or quintuple our freshman class. That's another talk show. And there's too many.
Too many old people who refused to leave that were the man or the woman in Gap 1 accounting or understood the difference between Blackwater and Bluewater economics in 1978, and now they're 80. and won't leave, and basically just show up to faculty meetings and are hugely disruptive. I work with what I think is probably the best faculty in America at NYU Stern, and 10% of any faculty are just so inspiring.
These are people who give up a dramatic amount of compensation because they love teaching and they are just so good at what they do and their relentless pursuit of the truth, especially in this age. It's just inspiring and they're great storytellers and they care about people. Anyways, but the downside of academia is there's just a third of the people at any institution that, quite frankly, just shouldn't be there, aren't pulling their weight.
And because of tenure, which is essentially a guild for the unproductive, tenure is nothing but student debt in my viewpoint. Anyways, I don't know how I got here. What mediums? would be best for you. You've got an amazing platform. One thing I've really benefited from at NYU, I say a lot of provocative aggressive things. I think without the halo of the NYU brand, people might just think I was an asshole.
Or maybe a creative asshole or maybe an interesting asshole, but mostly just an asshole. But I think people take what I say more seriously because I do try and show some fidelity to the institution and to academia. By having a team of people that research things, we fact check, we go over stuff, we try and marinate in data. You know, I do have an approach to teaching. Anyways, I do think it's a very powerful platform.
What mediums? All strategy comes down to one thing. What can I do or what can we do that is really hard? That's all strategy is. What can we do? That is really hard. We have an amazing story about scale in e-commerce or scale around streaming. So we can raise so much cheap capital that we're going to spend more money on warehouses and planes.
or on original content. We're going to spend $18 billion a year on original content, which is more than we spent on the entire film or television industry, the decade of the 80s. That is really hard to do. So they lean into their advantage. of just overwhelming the competition with capital via great storytelling and access to cheap capital. That is really hard to do. You need to decide, all right, what would be really hard to do? And the way you figure that out is you ask yourself first,
What am I really good at? Could I start a podcast? And if I do a podcast, am I good at it? Do I have the ability to get good guests? Do I have a good voice? Am I compelling in this medium? Do I find that people want to listen to me? Do you write well? Can you go on LinkedIn and start writing about your specific domain and immediately get people subscribing and following? Are you really good on TikTok? You want to figure out what is your medium.
right? And the way you figure out what is your medium is you pick one or two and say, I need to be in the top 10% in terms of followers. This is an assignment I give my class in brand strategy. I tell them that they must pick a medium that can be
threads, it can be X, it can be Twitter, it can be PowerPoint. And then they need to figure out a metric that says by the end of the class, I'm going to be in the top decile. And you can figure out those numbers. What is the number of followers you need on Instagram? on reels to be in the top desk aisle and it'll tell you this is how many followers you need. So you need to figure out what is your medium. What I enjoy the most is writing because it's the hardest.
But when you write something worthwhile, it moves people. There's something about the written word that when it's done well and you've taken the time and the energy to fact check, to proof it, to make it sound elegant, to have a good twist of phrase, to make people feel something. It really resonates. It sticks with them. If I go on Morning Joe or The View and I kill it, it gets a huge sugar high on YouTube and it's fun and it's rewarding, but there's nothing like writing something.
that where you took the time, you were up, you proofed it, you fact-checked it, and it resonates and it moves people, moves their emotions, or it highlights something that other people were thinking but not saying. That for me is... I want to say it's the most enjoyable. It's the most rewarding because it's the hardest thing to do. So the first thing is, can you write well? Oh my gosh, if you can write well.
Your brand immediately says to people you're smart and you're educated, which is a good chocolate and peanut butter in not only academia, but in a professional world. Is that your medium? Or are you really good at presentations? Do you want to figure out a way to start speaking in groups? Do you want to call people, conferences, and say, hi, I'm a professor of X. I want to come talk about this. I didn't get...
98% of my time on stage, I don't get paid. I've returned all my compensation to NYU so they don't pay me. And the majority of the talks I gave for the first 30 years of my career, I wasn't getting paid for. Is that true? Well, consulting, I guess I was getting paid a lot. But I did a lot of free speaking gigs. Now I charge 50K for a virtual, 200K for an in-person, and 400K if I have to go to the Gulf or Asia. I don't get a lot of those, but I do get some of those.
Now, I am boasting, but there is a reason. It is taking me 20 or 30 years of deciding that, okay, speaking is probably what I am best at, and I'm going to get fucking amazing at it.
I have a team of people pulling together 150 slide presentations. I go through it like it's a Broadway show. I rehearse it. I think of video. I think of sound. I think of emotional highs and lows. And every time I give one of these presentations or talk... and I do about 40 or 50 a year, I immediately right afterwards go back to the team and say,
We hit a narrative arc here that just didn't feel right. This joke didn't land. This was really good. Let's get data on this. Let's compare this to this. It's like I'm putting on a Broadway show or a movie, but every time I run the movie, I get the audience's reaction and I get to recut. the film. I'm okay on Threads or Blue Sky. I like to think I'm a good podcaster. I'm not sure I'm great.
I like writing. I'm good. I'm not sure I'm great. But I aspire to be world-class in front of an audience. And it lends itself really well to my strengths. the larger the crowd the more charming and engaging i am i'm not very good one-on-one one-on-one i come across as insecure yet aloof i'm not good on the phone
And you want to figure out what mediums you're not good at and then find one where you think, could I be the best in the world and really lean into that medium? In terms of the content, in terms of the content, the specific crowds out the general. I was in the field of brand strategy. That's a pretty specific area. It wasn't design. It wasn't marketing. It wasn't media planning. It was managing your brands as if they were assets, like a portfolio in a mutual fund.
And then I went even more specific. I started collecting data on the digital footprint of luxury brands. Not the digital footprint of all consumer brands, but the digital footprint.
of luxury brands and i started doing rankings out of nyu on which luxury brands were the most digitally competent and i parsed it into five areas genius gifted average challenged and feeble by the way rankings are incredibly powerful when they come out of an academic institution because you have to do the work, you have to fact check the shit out of it, and then you put it out.
And wow. And the thing about a ranking is it's not about who comes first. It's about who comes last. And that's what I was willing to do. Most rankings from institutions list the top 10 and give out awards. No, I was going to do a ranking that said, OK. Whoever it was, David Yerman, you're literally the worst brand in jewelry as it relates to digital footprint. Anyway, don't be afraid to go very niche. Pick your medium and commit to being in the top 10, if not the top 1%.
And don't be afraid to switch mediums in terms of your focus, but you do create a flywheel. I do all of it because I find it's reinforcing. Long-winded way of saying the specific crowds at the general. Find your medium, commit to being in the top 10% within a year, the top 1% within two to three years. Don't be afraid to switch mediums. But my friend in academia, if you write well,
that is probably gonna be your go-to. That is the hardest thing I do. It is the most rewarding. And quite frankly, I believe it's the most impressive. Also, also in 50 years, it's unlikely people are gonna be watching your videos. It's unlikely people are going to see your social, but your kids will likely read what you have written. And I find that nice to think about and very comforting. Congratulations on your transition to academia. I think it is a wonderful way to make a living.
Thank you, Anonymous from Colorado. That's all for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to officehours at propgmedia.com. Again, that's officehours at propgmedia.com. This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez. Our intern is Dan Chalon. Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn.
And please follow our PropG Markets pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday and Thursday. Meet Klaviyo, the only CRM built for B2C. Join 167,000 companies like Paul Smith, Castor, MixTiles, who choose Klaviyo for better customer relationships and faster growth. Grow with Klaviyo B2C CRM at klaviyo.com forward slash UK.