Why the Grifter Economy Is Booming, Raising Money-Smart Kids and Forming Your Own Opinions

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Welcome to Office Hours with PropG. This is a 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 voice recording to Office Hours with ProfG Media.com.

Again, that's Office Hours at PropG.me.com, or post your question on the SkyCali subreddit,

and we just might feature it in our next episode. First question.

Hey, Scott. My name's Jonathan. I'm a long-time listener and follower of your work.

Going back to the L2 days and the winners and losers YouTube videos,

you also wrote a really moving piece about losing your mother, and I lost my mom this year,

and I found myself returning to that post several times. It genuinely helps the things a lot.

Here's my question. Lately, it feels like everything is for sale.

Courses, retreats, digital products, life systems, often wrapped in promises of transformation,

friendship, belonging. If you just pay enough, you can get these things. I understand

the need to earn a living, but it increasingly feels like profit is crowding out,

genuine generosity and service. You clearly monetize your work, but it rarely feels

extra-dive or grifty. How do you think about the line between sharing your gifts and talents

in a meaningful way and building a business around them? How do you personally distinguish between

people who are genuinely trying to help others from those who are mostly selling aspiration?

Thanks again for your incredible work and for modeling how to do this without becoming a part

of what feels like a growing grifter economy. First off, Jonathan, hey, man, I'm really sorry

about your mom. I don't care. I knew my mom was dying. I knew she was going to die.

She'd let a pretty good life. She did die too early. She was six-nine, but when it happens,

if you're close to your mom, it sounds like you are. It's just devastating. I joke that I'm a

middle-aged man who hasn't gotten over the death of his mother from 21-22 years ago now, and

I used to think, okay, there's something fucked up about me. Now, I think, well, I hope my sons

feel the same way about me. I hope when they talk about me, they get choked up because I'm

in so much to them. And, you know, anyways, I'm sorry, but that's not what your question is about.

So, you're being really generous. I'm a capitalist. We advertise. I'm very focused on money. I think

it's a great scorecard. I enjoy capitalism. I enjoy building companies. I'm in the really

fortunate position now where it's now my number two priority. It used to be my number one priority.

How do I build enterprise value and sell this company so I have economic security? Now,

I want to do something great that has a positive impact. I do want to make more money. I'm not,

you know, I'm not a selfless person, but I also want to make the people around me. I want to

provide them with economic security. I take a lot of pride in, I think we compensate somewhere

between 50 and 100% above market. And we're able to do that because, quite frankly, we're monetizing

my brand. I make a shitton of money speaking and have a pretty big social footprint. But also,

it's a virtuous upward spiral because we pay people well. They stick around. What kills a company

is constant churn when you're good people leave. If you're best people leave all the time, you're

just fucked. Whenever I talk to a service person, they say, even able to sell companies, I'm having

trouble scaling my company. I'm like, show me your cap table and then what's a cap table? I'm

like, who owns what? I'm like, well, I own the company, but I pay people. Okay, that's your

fucking problem. You want people to act like owners, but you're not giving them equity.

And the only way to hold on to great people is to give them equity and say, okay, this is the

plan and I'm going to sell the company for three or five years. I have a liquidity event and you're

going to make this much money. So I'm not answering the question. We have advertising. We do have

some standards. I'm a capitalist. If we're on the fence, they'll usually take their money,

but we don't do crypto. We try to be some of the stuff that feels really grifty.

So I appreciate you saying that, but I still fall victim to some of the capitalist traps

of other people. And I do think that wanting to make money and help people are not mutually

exclusive. I think there are a lot of people who do really good work and make a really good living

doing it. And capitalism is a series of incentives that says, I can help you while you help me.

And I might be in exchange of services or exchange of money for goods or whatever it is. And that

the butcher and the baker don't trade bread and meat out of philanthropy. They do it because

they're specialized and they can offer each other something like this. So how do you model not being

a grifter? You try to be authentic. You try not to take advantage of people.

Pay your people well. You know, don't sell. I don't know. Too many grifty wellness supplements.

Is that right? I think, well, I think some of the shit's okay. I don't. I'm really flailing

and struggling with this question. I would say just be transparent about your advertisers

in the podcast business. But I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't be too, I don't think I need a

purity test here. I think most people sense if you're trying to help them. And as long as you're

transparent about the cost of something, the benefits or risks of something, I don't see any reason

why you can't make really good money while providing a service or helping other people. As long

as you're genuine about it and you're authentic and it's a product or a service you believe in. I

don't, you know, I think that's the basis of why capitalism works. And I think 95% of businesses

do that. And the incentives of capitalism are you've got to figure out a way to add value to people.

Otherwise, they're not going to buy your product. And you can generally tell when people are bad

actors. So having a set of standards, trying to stick to those standards. And then charity

begins at home, pay your people really well and be transparent about how you're making money.

Maybe that's it. Be transparent about how you're making money and disclose

when you have financial incentives such that if you're in the media business, people don't feel

like they've been had. You weren't transparent about your incentives. And try and build a service

so you think that at the end of the day, your listeners or your readers or your customers'

value, and feel like they're getting a good exchange of value. Appreciate the question.

Question number two. Question number two comes from Goose Tavo 2013 on Reddit. They say,

hey, they're property. How do you go about teaching your kids about the value of money? My oldest is

eight years old and likes to doing extra work and chores around the house for some cash so he can buy

digital money on a game called Roblox. I'd love for him to use his hard earned money on something

better, but maybe I should leave this one up to him and learn on his own. What would you do?

Oh my God. You're tracking. He's eight and he's connecting chores to work to something he likes.

Can I hire this kid? Like at the age of eight, if he's been able to connect, this is what you want.

You want them to connect. I feel like my job is a father as I'm a prefrontal cortex,

right, which is the off-on executive decision CEO of the brain. Okay, you realize you need shoes

to go to school, right? You realize you need this time waits for no man. If you don't get up right

now, you're going to not be able to catch the tube and get to work or get to school on time.

And if I get another tardy notice from your teacher, I'm going to lose my shit, right? I'm

their prefrontal cortex. Also, what I've tried to do is connect

discipline and short-term sacrifices to long-term benefit. Let's study every day for two or three

days an hour a day and then let's we're taking them test on Thursday. Oh my gosh, you got a B-plus

Renee minus. It was the hour we did three days ago. I feel as if everything in our economy

is focused on a media gratification and I'm trying to implement this thing of slope and that is

efforts that provide a dope ahead three days from now when you come home and tell your dad

your quote unquote meeting on your civics or your civilization study. I have these weird

grades here in London. Anyways, trying to do that and also I'm trying to connect

a effort and expertise to money. One of my sons, I'm just so fascinated by this, has been buying

and selling Pokemon cards and uses AI to try and determine the value and then goes online and

tries to connect them and buy cards and I've said, I will finance this. I will, here's 100 pounds,

show me what you can do and then he does it for a few weeks, buys and sells and we add up

the cost to buy, the cost to ship to a seller and how much he made and I'm trying to connect the

effort and then I say, okay, I'm going to take this money and upload your green light card and you

can do more deliverable whatever it is you want to do or you know trying to connect money to

effort and also to connect money and the power of investing and that is I started, I told my son

that for every dollar invested in the market, I'd match it so I think he invested, he got up to about

$800 or $900 and then we check the markets every day to watch it and I'm trying to not to trade to

only buy companies who wants to hold for five or ten years that trading would be, you know, eats up

all his fees. Anyways, I'm trying to connect small acts of discipline every day to long-term

Dopa and also connect investing or connect the long-term mindset with investing and wealth creation

and also make the connection between effort and risk and making money and then being able to spend

money on really cool stuff. I'm trying to make those, I'm a prefrontal cortex and I'm the

connective tissue, I'm trying to make connections if you will but if you have an eight-year-old,

it's already figured out I want to do chores. First of all, they say chores and sports are kind

of the two building blocks of character. If you have an eight-year-old, it's already connected

chores with money and getting to do something they want. I mean, trust me on this,

your kid's going to be mentoring us. Congratulations, you're doing something right.

We'll be right back after a quick break.

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Welcome back onto our final question from Christine Butterfly 961 on Reddit. They say,

hey, Scott, I'm a big fan. As I listen and absorb your thoughts as well as the rest of the

news I consume, I was wondering what your best process is for balancing your own

malleability to people's opinions. I found that the most recent piece that I consume red

listen to, et cetera becomes my strongest opinion towards a topic. I want to be flexible to

opinions, but also the size of a more opinionated myself. I'm a 23 year old male,

recent college grad to give you some background. Thank you. Really thoughtful question. I have

people's brains are like pillows and that is the last person or piece of media that sits on it

they leave that impression. A lot of people say our president, one of our president's biggest

flaws is his decisions are based on the last person you spoke to. So first off, you want to find

multiple media sources. I made a really stupid move the other day. I saw a story on Gavin News

him saying that he agreed with the strikes and I reposted it and then my podcast co-host,

Cara Swisher said, this is fake news. You got to take this down. So I make mistakes on my media

sources all the time. But you want to have multiple media sources. You want to get multiple

viewpoints. You want to challenge viewpoints. If you're about to make a big decision on anything,

I didn't learn this when I was here. I thought my job was to make a quick survey of the

situation and then make a decision and talk people into my position or decision and double down.

And you can almost sort of see when people cross the Rubicon and go so far out on a limb on a

decision that there's no backing down. Be willing to back down. Ask people about their view. Why

do they think that? And real leadership is listening and getting different viewpoints and arguing

at the other way and then making better decisions. So what I do in my class is I have someone take one

side. I set up a situation case studies, so a critic method. I have one person take a position

and I ask someone else to argue against it. And I find the respectful civil dialogue

crafts better solutions. So okay, what are we going to do as a 23 year old?

If you read one thing and you have an opinion, I think it's kind of fun to go with AI and say make

an argument against this. And the argument against it may temper it, may talk you out of it,

or may embolden or cement your views. It's dangerous to have one source. You want multiple

sources. There's a wisdom of crowds. Also, what I have found that I didn't learn when I was

don't make an important personal financial or professional decision without speaking to other

people. People being plural because everybody gets wrong. You don't want to have just one person

talk to if you can, two plus people about really important decisions because it is very hard to

read the label from inside of the bottle. But the fact you're even thinking this way at the age of

23 and you're a recent college grad and you're a male because there's now 40, 60 male to female.

It means my brother, you have an outstanding future and you've already separated yourself from the

pack. Very much appreciate the question. That's all for this episode. If you'd like to submit a

question, please email a voice recording to office hours at prop2me.com. Again, that's office hours

at prop2me.com. Or if you'd prefer to ask on Reddit, just post your question on the

sky calorie sub Reddit and we just might feature it in an upcoming episode.

This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez and Laura Jenner.

Camry Reek is our social producer, Brad Williams is our editor and Drew Burrows is our

technical director. Thank you for listening to the prop2me.com from Prop2MEDIA.