I love you Scott

I’ve written this post for the friends who haven’t yet heard of Professor Galloway aka ‘Gallo’ or rooster in my mother-tongue -slang for ‘cool kid’.

I never thought of writing about Scott but his latest business is trying to address a problem close to my heart. For the occasion I thought I’d kill three birds with one stone:

🐓 #1 clarify my thoughts on the dynamics that enable the business
🐓 #2 talk about the impact that Scott had on my career
🐓 #3 implicitly pay homage to a ‘passive mentor’

Let me take you down the rabbit hole 🐰

I remember when back in January 2015 I first watched the clip that propelled Scott Galloway in the upper-echelon of social media stardom.

Over the last five years ‘the prof’ went from a keynote speaker at DLD to a by-weekly podcast with famed Kara Swisher (that’s twice a week!). From zero to top dog of the digital social scene in no time yet for good reasons.

Scott Galloway career is the textbook definition of digital-media. The last firm he co-founded, L2, got acquired by Gartner for $134mm after raising $16mm from General Catalyst, investors in Stripe, Snap and Airbnb.

The firm built an aggregator to collect data points around consumer brands’ digital performance. L2 research gave Scott the content and the platform to launch two books, a weekly newsletter and his very famous ‘Winners & Losers’ YouTube series.

Some L2 content alongside what later became cc.partners fueled a thesis around the future of media I wrote as an application for a masters program to the Oxford Internet Institute. I didn’t get in and instead decided to invest the MBA money into my consultancy firm which eventually served as the foundations to my career in growth. In short without L2 I wouldn’t be here writing this blog.

A fundamental principle that I’ve learned from Scott is that one thing that scales well through the internet is content. A fully digital product that is easy to produce with localized resources yet possible to distribute at global scales thanks to commoditized platforms that can aggregate an infinite long tail of demand. I’m not saying he ever said this to me or anyone else, I was inspired to understand the idea by studying his materials.

If we were to take this even further and apply this same principle to education (as in the practice of delivering information for the purpose of teaching something to someone) we could aggregate enough demand for MBA style content without the price-tag of the degree nor the need to show up to class.

Enter Section 4 a weird freak show where Zoella style vlogging meets business school professor. Scott is using Section 4 content to teach about business principles through the use of real-life examples that lean into the public discourse using a variety of formats that span video, audio and written word and a business casual tone.

This business has the potential to pioneer a new education paradigm targeting a growing audience who’s not interested in getting an MBA but still would love to learn about business dynamics through contextual examples (cases).

Section 4 and others are the beginning of the end of the education industrial complex. It’s very fitting of for a Business School Marketing Professor that too often references how education is a sector that is ripe for disruption to be one of the first ones to make a move.

Ok that’s it. Rant’s over. Thank you Scott for being a positive influence on my career without even knowing me. If you are reading this, I’m all for taking time off, pay for flights and sleep on my in-law’s couch just to shadow you for a day. Text me 😙