The Prof G Media Team Answers Your Questions

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0:01:55 Welcome to Office Hours with Prof. G.
0:01:57 Today’s a special episode.
0:01:59 Scott’s on holiday vacation.
0:02:01 And so the team is stepping in.
0:02:04 I’m Jen, one of the producers here.
0:02:10 And I’ll be guiding us through questions for the people who make the Prof. G. Media universe run every day.
0:02:14 As always, if you’d like to submit a question for next time,
0:02:18 you can send a voice recording to officehours at profgmedia.com.
0:02:21 Or drop it in the Scott Galloway subreddit.
0:02:23 We really do read them.
0:02:28 First up, we’ve got Mia, research lead at Prof. G. Media.
0:02:30 Welcome, Mia.
0:02:32 Thank you for having me.
0:02:37 Before we dive right in, can you share how long have you been working for Scott?
0:02:39 Yeah, since 2019.
0:02:43 So six years now, which is kind of crazy.
0:02:47 I worked at L2 before this.
0:02:48 Nice.
0:02:53 So we’re going to move on to our first question from Joseph, who emailed us.
0:02:55 And he says,
0:02:56 Hi, Prof. G. team.
0:02:59 Please enlighten me on how your research is done.
0:03:02 I’m curious as to where so many of your stats come from.
0:03:04 What is that process like?
0:03:05 And how long does it take?
0:03:07 Hi, Joseph.
0:03:09 Thanks for the question.
0:03:20 I would say that our research process, the timing is really constrained by the fact that we record podcasts daily.
0:03:25 So it could really take much longer than it does.
0:03:34 But for our longer Monday episode that we record on Thursdays, we start talking about the topics that we’re going to cover on Wednesday.
0:03:46 And then we have kind of half of Wednesday, Wednesday evening if needed, and then Thursday morning to finish up research for the Monday episode.
0:03:51 And then for the dailies, it’s obviously less time than that.
0:03:55 It’s really just like a morning, so a couple hours.
0:03:58 And then in terms of process, it’s really collaborative.
0:04:11 We have a great research team, and we all kind of pitch in ideas and collaborate to decide what is the most interesting, what would fit the podcast best.
0:04:15 And yeah, and then sources.
0:04:18 We use all the main sources that you would expect.
0:04:22 So Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Financial Times is one of my favorites.
0:04:26 And then I follow a lot of great sub-stackers.
0:04:29 So Derek Thompson, I really like Noah Smith.
0:04:32 I read Ben Thompson’s newsletter.
0:04:37 And then I also follow a lot of great people on Twitter.
0:04:44 I think Twitter can obviously be a cesspool, but if you follow the right people, I think it can be a great source of ideas.
0:04:54 And then finally, on the research front, I would just say it’s, I think one of the most important things is, one, knowing what stats to include.
0:05:02 Like what, I think there’s boring data and cool data that makes you think and makes you like feel something.
0:05:06 And then also just like being curious.
0:05:15 And sometimes great ideas and great analysis can come from, you know, reading a fantasy book or like reading a biology paper.
0:05:18 And so I think our team does a great job of that.
0:05:23 And how many people make up the research team now?
0:05:33 You know, we, we all kind of pitch in, but I would say like main research squad is probably six people.
0:05:37 Before we let you go, a few rapid fire questions.
0:05:40 This one is actually, I lied.
0:05:42 I think this one’s not that quick, maybe.
0:05:43 But how did you get this job?
0:05:45 Or how did you start working for Scott?
0:05:49 It’s actually kind of a random story.
0:05:57 I, I went to Georgetown and I went to a career fair there and no one, I feel like no one ever gets jobs from career fairs.
0:06:00 And I went to a software engineering one.
0:06:04 I’m not a software engineer, but I went because I wanted to practice my elevator pitch.
0:06:07 And I was like, great, no one will hire me because I’m not an engineer.
0:06:08 So like there’s no pressure.
0:06:18 And so I was going around doing my pitch and I was talking to this table and they said that they had just acquired this company called L2 and I might be a good fit for it.
0:06:19 So that’s why I got that job.
0:06:26 And then I just connected with people who knew Scott and, and followed them to section and then now Prof G.
0:06:27 So it’s kind of random.
0:06:28 Oh my gosh.
0:06:30 I don’t think I knew that story.
0:06:31 That’s so funny.
0:06:32 Yeah.
0:06:32 Yeah.
0:06:33 I was kind of crazy.
0:06:33 I was like.
0:06:34 That is crazy.
0:06:35 Career fair.
0:06:36 Yeah.
0:06:37 I know.
0:06:40 Like first person ever to get a job from a career fair, probably.
0:06:43 We’ll end with what’s your favorite Scottism?
0:06:50 I really like when he says that San Francisco is expensive, but bad.
0:06:55 Because despite not having lived there, that’s also my opinion.
0:06:58 But I would say my, my overall favorite.
0:07:03 I love life is so rich because we see it all the time.
0:07:10 And so I think like, it’s easy to just almost not even read it because it’s a sign off everywhere.
0:07:12 But it is really true.
0:07:15 And yeah, that’s, that would be my favorite.
0:07:17 I love that one too.
0:07:18 All right.
0:07:19 Thanks, Mia.
0:07:20 Thank you.
0:07:25 Next up, we have Claire, senior producer of Prof G Markets.
0:07:28 Claire, the people want to know, what’s your backstory?
0:07:34 I grew up in Oak Park, Illinois, which is just outside of Chicago.
0:07:41 I got really into photography in middle school and in high school.
0:07:45 I was in yearbook and it was my favorite thing about school.
0:07:53 And when I was looking at college, I was trying to replicate what my favorite thing was when
0:08:02 I was looking at a major and I found the magazine program at the Newhouse School at Syracuse.
0:08:07 And I figured magazine journalism was going to be a huge hit for my career.
0:08:12 And it would be, it would, it would be similar to yearbook.
0:08:18 So that’s what I went for very quickly, fell in love with that school, ended up there.
0:08:26 Turns out it’s very much not a major for photography or design or visual arts or anything like that,
0:08:28 but it’s a lot of writing.
0:08:35 But luckily, it turns out I was a very good writer and it really suited me.
0:08:41 So I loved Syracuse, loved Newhouse, and loved writing.
0:08:46 I started working for a student-run magazine there called Jerk.
0:08:57 And actually, the person who hired me there was Caroline Shagrin, our former senior producer,
0:09:02 no longer at the company, but onto big things at Google.
0:09:05 But I was basically a sophomore.
0:09:10 She was a senior and my professor recommended me to be a fact checker on their team.
0:09:17 Caroline hit me up, met with me for 10 minutes, hired me on as a fact checker.
0:09:18 She graduated.
0:09:26 I went to an internship at Fast Company Magazine where I kind of got my start in business journalism.
0:09:31 I had no interest in business journalism at all before that.
0:09:33 Didn’t know what to make of it.
0:09:36 Never even really read it.
0:09:44 But when I was there, I realized it was a way—like, writing about business is kind of a way to write about anything.
0:09:52 And I also realized that when I told my peers in journalism that I was doing business journalism,
0:09:55 they also had no interest in it.
0:10:01 And it was a pretty clear field competitively for other internships.
0:10:06 No one was going for the business journalism internships because everyone thought it would be boring.
0:10:10 So that’s where I focused after Fast Company.
0:10:21 I applied to the Bloomberg internship, and I did that internship just after graduation in 2020 in COVID.
0:10:30 So I was at home in my childhood bedroom on the Bloomberg terminal writing about stocks, which I knew nothing about.
0:10:41 But I would wake up at 5.30 and start writing about analyst notes on these stocks that I just had no way to make heads or tail of.
0:10:44 But somehow I figured it out on the fly.
0:10:56 After Bloomberg, I went straight to NPR for another virtual internship from my parents’ house, writing for their business desk.
0:11:01 And I was mostly just doing stuff for the digital side, writing for pieces for online.
0:11:12 But I also had the opportunity to work on a couple radio pieces for Morning Edition and All Things Considered.
0:11:14 So I did two pieces on my own.
0:11:22 I was the voice on those pieces, and I got to edit them as well, which was really my foray into audio.
0:11:27 I’d never even considered it before, but I really enjoyed it.
0:11:31 And I felt like I actually had an ear for it.
0:11:36 But that happened right at the end of the internship, right as I was about to leave.
0:11:41 And I thought, you know, like, how do I take this and bring it to my next experience?
0:11:56 And just at that moment, Jerk Magazine reached out to me on Instagram and asked if they could post a photo of me with a little bio on where I was now.
0:11:58 I was a little self-conscious about it.
0:12:01 I didn’t really want them to, but I said, go for it.
0:12:02 Like, put it out there.
0:12:05 I’ve just done these two internships since I graduated.
0:12:22 And sure enough, Caroline Shagrin saw that post and slid into my DMs on the last week of my internship at NPR and said, I’m hiring for an assistant producer.
0:12:24 Do you want to come work with me?
0:12:27 So that’s how I got the job.
0:12:29 Yeah, it was a wonderful timing.
0:12:31 That’s how I got the job at Prof G.
0:12:34 I had never heard of Scott Galloway.
0:12:39 I had no idea what it was all about, but I knew I wanted to work with Caroline again.
0:12:46 And so I took the job, and I’ve been here now for going on five years in May.
0:12:48 Wow.
0:12:49 What a story.
0:12:50 Okay.
0:12:54 Let’s move on now to a question from one of our listeners.
0:13:02 Frida Blugs on Reddit asks, Claire, what’s the production schedule for the Prof G Markets Daily Show?
0:13:05 Okay, you ready?
0:13:06 Buckle in.
0:13:07 Take us through it.
0:13:08 I’m ready.
0:13:10 All right.
0:13:12 Okay, we wake up Monday.
0:13:19 I send a Slack message to our research team with the plan for the day.
0:13:25 Usually I have someone booked as a guest for that night.
0:13:36 So I’ll say, I have this person booked, say, if we know the unemployment report is going to come out the following week, I book Catherine Ann Edwards for that night.
0:13:42 So come Monday morning, I say, okay, team, we’ve got Catherine Ann Edwards on tonight.
0:13:44 What else do we got?
0:13:48 And then I just send them looking for stories.
0:13:50 The team starts sending pitches.
0:13:52 They send headlines.
0:14:01 They send ideas, and Ed and I sort through them all, and we decide what our slate of stories is going to be for the night.
0:14:07 Once we’ve decided, we send assignments for our researchers.
0:14:11 They all kind of tackle one story and own that.
0:14:13 They write up the script.
0:14:15 They do data research.
0:14:21 They answer any and all of Ed’s questions on what he needs to know about for each story.
0:14:34 By 2 o’clock, we have a script draft ready, and that’s when we jump in and start editing the script.
0:14:38 Allison Weiss, our associate producer, she starts with a line edit.
0:14:39 Then I jump in.
0:14:42 I give the final sign-off on the script.
0:14:46 And at 5 o’clock, we record with Ed.
0:14:52 We record for about 45 minutes, usually one or two guests.
0:14:58 And then, oh boy, after that, it’s 6 o’clock.
0:15:06 And my editor, Joel Patterson, takes the audio, cuts it into an episode.
0:15:12 Our video editor, Brad, he takes the video, cuts it into an episode.
0:15:16 The audio episode is done by about 8 o’clock.
0:15:25 And at that time, I’m writing the title and description for the episode and signing off on that.
0:15:30 And then Brad is working till, I don’t know, midnight on that video.
0:15:33 He’s still up in a different time zone.
0:15:37 Then the episode goes out in the morning, and we do it all over again.
0:15:41 And that’s just the daily.
0:15:44 So easy.
0:15:45 Easy peasy.
0:15:47 Yeah, so easy.
0:15:50 Then Tuesday, we also record our interview episodes.
0:15:57 That gets edited Tuesday and Wednesday during the day while we’re doing the same process from Monday.
0:16:05 Thursday, we have the big main episode that we’ve always done, which we prepare for also on Wednesday.
0:16:07 So it’s a constant cycle.
0:16:08 And that one goes out on Monday.
0:16:09 That one goes out on Monday.
0:16:10 Yeah.
0:16:14 So it’s a lot of plates in the air at the same time.
0:16:16 But we’ve kind of got it down at this point.
0:16:18 That’s awesome.
0:16:19 All right.
0:16:24 And before we let you go, Claire, a few rapid-fire questions.
0:16:25 Where do you like to get your news?
0:16:28 Any newsletters, publications?
0:16:32 A lot of newsletters.
0:16:43 Axios newsletters, Semaphore, The Information, Morning Brew, even though they’re a competitor, still have to look at what they’re doing.
0:16:51 And then in terms of homepages, it’s Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Financial Times.
0:17:00 Financial Times is great to get a less U.S.-oriented picture of what’s going on in business.
0:17:04 But those are the three I’m cycling through all day long, just refreshing.
0:17:07 Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Financial Times.
0:17:08 Nice.
0:17:11 And lastly, what is your favorite Scottism?
0:17:16 This is a—okay, this is a less known Scottism.
0:17:17 It’s not—it’s not super common.
0:17:24 But he—one thing I love that he says, he calls people individuals.
0:17:25 Oh, yeah.
0:17:26 And I’ll give you an example.
0:17:41 So we—when we were in Munich with him, he was at—we were at dinner, and he was telling us this story about a former employee of his at a totally different company.
0:17:56 This is not anyone that I know, but he was just telling us this insane story about one of his employees and just kind of how they attempted to get one over on his company at that time.
0:18:06 And he told this huge story, and then the punchline was like, this individual is a grifter.
0:18:10 And it’s—it’s just—it hits so hard.
0:18:12 I love that line.
0:18:16 And I think about it—this individual is a grifter.
0:18:18 It’s so cutting.
0:18:20 I just love it so much.
0:18:22 And I use it all the time.
0:18:28 I literally—like, we were talking about David Zaslav the other day and this bidding war he started for Warner Brothers.
0:18:32 And I was like, this individual is a grifter.
0:18:36 So that’s my favorite Scottism.
0:18:37 I love that.
0:18:43 Mine will always be—it’s nothing he says, but when he’s, like, sitting down before he records and he goes.
0:18:45 Oh, yeah.
0:18:47 I started doing that.
0:18:47 Yeah.
0:18:49 Or, like, sometimes it’s like, is he in the studio?
0:18:53 And all of a sudden I hear, in the background.
0:18:54 That’s his.
0:18:56 And then Ed’s is a whistle.
0:18:57 He comes into the studio.
0:18:58 He’s like—
0:19:01 I love it.
0:19:03 Well, thanks so much for joining us, Claire.
0:19:06 We’ll be right back after a quick break.
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0:22:40 Welcome back.
0:22:44 We’re now joined by MJ, Chief of Staff for the one and only Scott Galloway.
0:22:47 MJ, we’re just going to dive right into it.
0:22:52 This question comes from Dan from New York, who emailed us, and he says,
0:22:54 What’s Mary Jean’s origin story?
0:22:58 We’ve heard that she’s been with Scott for over 25 years.
0:23:01 What does a day in the life look like for her?
0:23:04 Does she live in London or just keep London hours?
0:23:08 And most importantly, does she get to fly on Scott’s jet?
0:23:09 MJ?
0:23:14 Thank you for the question, Dan, from New York.
0:23:17 I feel like the question’s a little hingy.
0:23:20 It feels like very dating site questions.
0:23:29 So, my origin story is I am a first-generation Cuban girl born in Connecticut.
0:23:36 And I met Scott 25 years ago through a mutual friend of ours.
0:23:41 I was working at Wilhelmina Models, booking male models.
0:23:44 And Scott had just moved to New York.
0:23:47 And we’ve known each other ever since.
0:23:54 And about six years ago, after we ran into each other at Soul House in Miami,
0:23:57 I told Scott that I wanted a better job.
0:24:02 And he remembered when his Chief of Staff position came available,
0:24:07 he reached out to me and offered me the position.
0:24:11 And it was December of 2019.
0:24:14 It was pretty much the best Christmas present ever.
0:24:23 And a day in the life for me is I have the luxury of working from home, which I love.
0:24:27 And occasionally I do keep London hours.
0:24:32 But for the most part, Scott is very considerate.
0:24:38 And he actually operates on Eastern Standard Time because his team is based in New York.
0:24:42 Most importantly, he does let me fly in his jet.
0:24:51 And when my Puck, my dog of 17 years, was alive, Scott used to let me and my dog fly.
0:24:55 And when JetBlue and American Airlines were really mean to us and didn’t let us,
0:25:02 didn’t let Puck fly in the cabin once, Scott let me fly by myself with my dog up to New York from Florida.
0:25:04 Oh my gosh.
0:25:05 That’s amazing.
0:25:10 And I call him a superhero often and he gets annoyed by it, I think.
0:25:14 I love that.
0:25:20 Okay, MJ, before we let you go, a few rapid fire questions.
0:25:22 Where’d you go to school?
0:25:27 I probably took like two classes at Western Connecticut State University and quit.
0:25:35 And I moved into New York to work for a photographer at his, running his studio on the Upper East Side.
0:25:36 He had a carriage house.
0:25:37 His name was Henry Wolf.
0:25:42 He used to shoot Harper’s Bazaar covers back in the day.
0:25:44 And lastly, what’s your favorite Scottism?
0:25:52 My favorite Scottism is, I don’t know.
0:26:02 I like when, I don’t know, he says a lot of funny stuff, but I like when he says nice things.
0:26:08 Like he’s, you know, when he’s very complimentary, I find it very endearing.
0:26:10 I don’t think people give enough compliments.
0:26:13 And so I really like it when he does it.
0:26:14 And he does it quite often.
0:26:17 I think it’s a nice quality to have in a boss.
0:26:18 All right.
0:26:20 Well, that’s all we need, MJ.
0:26:21 Okay.
0:26:22 Thank you so much.
0:26:27 That’s all for this episode.
0:26:30 Thanks for a great 2025 and see you in the new year.