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Welcome to The Property Pods office hours. This is the part of the show where we answer your questions about business, big-tech entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind. Hey, Prof. G. Hey, Scott and team. Hey, Scott. Hi, Prof. G. Hey, Prof. G. Hi, Prof. G. And last week's office hours, we answer your questions surrounding the defense industry, where greatness is in the agency of others.
And how to act if your partner makes more money than you. The world is becoming, it feels like increasingly insecure, and all of that leads to increased military spending. I also think you're going to see Japan and Germany traumatic, and increased military spending. I both thought my confidence is storytelling, but my superpower is the ability to attract and retain talented people who bring scale to what we do here.
More women are attending college now than met, and two-thirds of jobs now require a college degree. The highest paying industry is generally wants someone with a college degree, and you do acquire certain skills and context and college. So women, quite frankly, deserve to be making more money than met. Today, we'll speak about the Chinese EV market and how we run our prof-G media business and how to rich. So with that, first question.
Prof. Galloway, this is Jonathan from Philadelphia, Melon Town listener, and first-time coder. Thank you for all your thoughtful and funding sites in the podcast. I recently visited Shanghai China for the first time in the last 10 years. One thing that kind of shocked me is the number of EVs on the road. I see two or three times more taxless than Shanghai, sending Philadelphia or New York City. Furthermore, there are many domestic EV brands that I never heard of.
I talked to the drivers and seemed like EVs are just much cheaper there. Tesla models' recourse may be 30K, and the domestic ones cost close to 20K. Combined with the high gas pressure, it just makes more sense for people to get EVs. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think the US will be able to keep the lead in the EV market without government help?
I know we have tariffs against Chinese cars, so we probably will not see any of their costs here. But will that also make our market less competitive and stagnant? Looking forward to your answer. Thank you. That's a really thoughtful question, Jonathan, from Philadelphia. So first off, just some data. IEA's Global EV Outlook 2024 report shows that China accounted for 60%.
60% of all EV sales last year. So let's be honest, China is dominating EV production. EV growth in China is projected to continue with one in three cars on Chinese roads expected to be electric by 2030. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, China invested 231 billion in its EV industry from 2009 to 2023.
Data from counterpoint research reveals that in Q1 of this year, China continued to leak globally in EV sales growing sales by 28% year on year, while US sales grew just 2% year on year. Think about that. Our economy is growing faster in there. They're supposedly in a low growth part of their history with huge unemployment and they're growing that industry by 28% versus 2% in the US.
Now, if we branch out a bit, the EU plans to impose tariffs on Chinese EV imports due to subsidies, while Biden announced a 100% tariff on Chinese EV imports. What about the US? Currently, the US is pumping up support for EVs through government regulations, including the Afflation Reduction Act, which will offer certain EV car bars at $7,500 credit for comparison. China offered a $4,600 credit per EV purchase in 2023.
So why does China have an advantage in the EV race? Simply put, the same reason they have an advantage across anything else. Cause the IEA report that we previously referenced estimates that more than 60% of electric cars sold in 2023 were already cheaper than their average combustion engine equivalent when compared to Europe and the US.
As a consequence, Chinese consumers are largely inclined to purchase a domestic model, as you mentioned. So where does this go? China, when you're talking about bringing together products and then assembling them and creating a complex supply chain that sources materials brings together, confident labor at a reasonable price. No one, no one does China like China.
And so I got to think that they're going to dominate the low and mid-range EV market globally, unless we put up even more tariffs, which I just think is a bad idea, which is nothing but attacks on consumers, especially EVs, young people, I think need EVs. And the B-wide EV that's supposed to have a pretty good car that could sell for $12,000 if it didn't have tariffs on it.
I say no tariffs. I say let the Chinese come in and compete on EVs. Now, what will probably happen is that the American EV market, specifically Tesla will continue to do well while I think it's stock is vastly overvalued. I think that's an enduring company because of one thing and that is America still has the best brands in the world name a global brand, an aspirational global brand that's come out of China.
I'm still waiting. For whatever reason, the American culture, European culture still produces the best brands in the world. And when you start paying $40,000, $80,000 for a car, you're not buying steel wrapped around four tires with a battery. You're buying something that says something about you.
You want people to know that you're wealthy and care about the environment, which means you should have sex with me. That's effectively what you're saying when you buy a Tesla, and that's why so many guys in mid-life crisis were sort of the first owners of Tesla. When you buy the first electric Ferrari, you're going to say I have a very small penis and a lot of money. Anyways, just sort of kidding. But at the high end, you have self-expressive benefit aspirational brands.
And the reality is the US and Europe pretty much have a monopoly on everything from, you know, but take a Vanetta to Nike. We're just better at it. But there's no doubt about it when it comes to really hardcore, deep manufacturing supply change, driven manufacturing. It's China and the Seven Dwarves, and that's including in the EV market. Thanks for the question. Question number two. It's got your head from Hampshire and the UK.
I've been following your content since the early days of YouTube back in 2017. At that stage, I was leaving the army, and I found the work that you were producing really helpful at educating me on the world of business that I was moving into. The second question, which is about the prof do you show as a business itself? I'd be fascinated to understand a bit more about how you operate the business.
How do you select the content you're going to be talking about? How do you pick the advertisers that you're going to work with? What role does Vox media play in things? And why, for instance, have you not moved to a freemium model or even a subscription based, given your well-known views on the ad supported economy?
Again, thank you for all of your work. I'm really flattered as a Brit that you've been willing to endure the media, the food, and even more media, whether the London has to offer all the best to you and yours. Thanks so much for the kind words. I disagree. I think actually London has finally world-class food. I think any time you have this level or this concentration of wealth, you're going to attract good food.
I do agree with you, however, on the weather. Go to England. Let's start there. Go to England. Okay, so ProvG Media. I sold L2 to Gartner in 2017. And I kind of hit my number and I sat down and I was planning to raise a private equity fund. And I thought I'd really like to be wealthier, maybe even someday aspire to be a billionaire.
And then I thought, why the fuck do I want to be or aspire to be a billionaire involves another 20, 30 years of really hard work putting at risk the capital I have because you have to take tremendous risk to have to register that kind of wealth appreciation because I am far from being a billionaire.
But I was about to just ramp up and get off the hamster wheel long enough to take some performing enhancing drugs and get back on the hamster wheel. And I made a conscious decision that I was going to slow down. I saw a lot of tread left on my tires, but I thought I want to spend the rest of my life, at least professionally having more of a positive influence on issues I'm really passionate about.
And that's the wrong word that I think I bring some talent to and that I think our overlook specifically struggling young men, teen depression, some of the externalities around big tech.
And at the same time, I want to make good money. I want to work with a group of people that I really enjoy. And I wish I had figured out earlier that my core confidence story telling so this all sort of bubbled up to a media company, but I didn't want to take outside capital because I didn't want to have the pressure of trying to get a return on other people's capital.
So I started profgy media, profgy media is a small niche media company. We have several lines of business. For me, it begins with writing that's home based for me. I think writing is really, really hard, but I think it creates a certain halo, certain heft of intellectual rigor and intellectual capital. So for me, it starts with the newsletter we put out every Friday, no mercy, no mouse, which is free.
It goes to half a million people. I think of the fortune 190 of the fortune 100 have at least 100 subscribers. That is sort of a petri dish for chapters and themes and a narrative arc around the books. I try and write a book every 18 months. I make money there. I average between one and a one and a half million dollars per book. That is the hardest thing I do writing books. It's also probably the most rewarding.
And then that feeds into some very profitable businesses, specifically speaking. I do between two and a half and five million dollars a year and speaking fees. So that's an incredibly lucrative business. I enjoy it. It is perfect example of greatness is in the agency of others. And that is people think that I just get up there and talk for an hour. I don't.
A great team of analysts that will assemble 120 140 slides. We spent a ton of time thinking about narrative arc and humor and visuals and had the pace and the flow. I see it is almost like a one man.
57 minute Broadway show and I try to bring the level of production value to it because no one's going to pay that kind of money just to show up and talk about how fucking awesome you are, which is what I see the majority of speakers doing this day who just left, you know, an office or a job in Hollywood or in the
corporate world and think they can just get up there and tell war stories about how awesome they are. And then the core business from a revenue standpoint is the podcast and I kind of fell into this. I have a face for podcasting. I had five TV shows that are all canceled. The podcasting just took off. And been doing that about seven years. These podcasts combined will produce somewhere between. Call it three and a half and five million years so call this about a $10 million business.
12 or 11 or 12 full time people three or four contractors. That's exceptionally high revenue per employee for a media company. I purposely want to keep it small. I love the people that I work with. It's a group of kind of I let a misfit toys of people I worked with in the past.
Kind of my rock or my anchors woman and Catherine Dillon who I've worked with the better part of 15 years and brings real creative depth and really great management skills. So I can just focus on what I'm okay at, which is storytelling.
And these things are all a flywheel right you sell more books you get more speaking gigs more speaking gigs more podcast revenue more podcast revenue or more people listening to the podcast more newsletter downloads and you know and so the will spins if you will now box is essentially. Our content and distribution partner there more distribution partner for me because we produce everything a property there are employees at pivot the producer but for the most part.
It's pretty much the property show we do all the production and we throw. The podcast over to Vox and then we pay them a fee to sell the ads and work on audience development although I've never quite figured out exactly what that means other than we're supposed to be great at what we do. And create word of mouth but they're a good partner they have a great out sales team the reason why we didn't go behind the wall and this is a conversation we have serious about every 24 months.
Is that money is meaningful to me but it's not profound what's profound for me is I want to have reach an impact specifically on young men. I want people to especially men to feel more in touch with their emotions I want to educate people about business.
And to go behind a wall of if you're really successful you get 4 to 8% of your of your listener base to go subscription meaning that I would immediately lose a minimum of 90 to 95% of my reach also I kind of like the ads I don't mind the host readovers I meet advertisers I like them it doesn't really bother me and if you want to press skip you can get through the ads.
But this is the most fun I have ever had professionally but it's a niche media company the specific crowds out the general and finally figured out a flywheel and I'm doing something I absolutely love and making good money at it so thanks for the opportunity and the excuse to talk about my favorite subject me thanks for the question. We have one quick break before our final question stay with us.
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Grammarley comes in Grammarley is a trusted AI writing partner that saves your company from miscommunication and all the wasted time and money to goes with it but it's more than just a grammar check Grammarley can help generate AI prompts or even help you strike the right tone and personalize your writing based on audience and context we hear the property team use Grammarley and all I have to say as it makes our writing better and more efficient plus Grammarley integrates seamlessly across a half a million apps and sites no cutting or pacing of context switching.
Personalize on brand writing help is built into your docs messages emails everything so why not join Grammarley to work faster hate your goals while keeping your data secure learn more at Grammarley dot calm. Welcome back question number three.
Hey Scott first of all love the pot of course but more importantly I let how transparent you are about your finances both practically and let's say psychologically so here's the question how do you rich and what I mean by that is what would you do if you had a sudden influx of wealth or what
what advice would you give to someone who has a sudden influx of wealth and I want you to break that down based on how old that person might be and how much money they might have gotten in that sudden influx so you know between someone in their 20s to 30s someone in their 30s to 40s someone over 40 years
something with whether they got 5 million 10 million 50 million 100 million whatever numbers you think are most interesting for how you would break that down with different advice for different people different age groups different amounts of money thank you thank you keep up the fun work. It's a really thoughtful question I'm not sure I have time to go through all those segments but let's assume you're in your 20s 30s or even so 20s or 30s and you come across 5 or 10 million dollars.
So for example one of 10,000 in video employees that have woken up in the last 12 months realize that a 31 year old product manager now has 13 million and you can talk this is an easy one maybe by house maybe you take a nice vacation but for the most part you immediately take a lot if not all of that off the table pay your taxes and invest in low cost index funds such that when you're my age you're just done and you can always have that piece of mind look at your debt
what debt do you have and I'm not saying eliminate all that if you have good debt you have student loan debt at 3% or you were smart enough to get a mortgage when rates really low so you don't pay that off but any debt that is say higher than 6 or 8% or what you could get in the market I want you to go and pay off that debt you just don't want this haunting you and following you around and then you're not going to buy anything I mean maybe go out for a nice
center maybe take a vacation fine if you really if you're going to with an striking distance of home and you need that for a down payment okay but be thoughtful about what is the monthly payment going to be but what I really want you to do with that is I want you to put it into a low cost index
fund because even 150 to 2 and if you're in your 20s or 30s that is literally if you're smart enough and discipline enough to put it away diversified and index or ETF and never look at it again until you are my age you're going to be fine you're going to really be happy
that you demonstrated that kind of character and the kind of discipline maturity that I didn't have if you get real money I mean if you get really lucky and I got really lucky later in life in my kind of late 40s say 50 7100 million I think you do two things
one I think you spend like a fucking 50s gangster that just been diagnosed with the ask can't so you spend a shit ton of money mostly I think and most of the research shows that the greatest happiness return you're going to get is spending it on experiences
and then anything above that I think you just give it away I think it's really important that we maintain this wonderful American brand of generosity money is a transfer of time and work and there's so many people that would just a little transfer of your time and work to them in the form of money
just make some so much happier there's so many wonderful causes that need that can do just incredible good with a little bit of resources so this is what you call a great problem when you're younger put aside capital stop don't fall into the delusion that you making that money
meant you're really talented yeah maybe that means that but more than anything you're really talented and really lucky take some luck off the table de concentrate put it into low cost index funds and if you're my age and you come into money you have more money than you need then brother spend it all or give it away that's all for this episode if you'd like to submit a question please email a voice recording to office hours at PropG Media.com again that's office hours at PropG Media.com
this episode was produced by Caroline Shagrin Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer and Drew Burrows is our technical director thank you for listening to the PropG pod from the box media podcast network we will catch you on Saturday for no Mercino Malice
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