Scott Galloway occupies a unique space in the media landscape. The entrepreneur-turned-professor-turned-podcaster covers everything from finance and technology to politics, big business, and self-improvement on his two podcasts, The Prof G Show and Pivot, which he co-hosts with journalist Kara Swisher.
The latter venture began after Galloway appeared on Swisher’s previous podcast, Recode Decode, in 2017. During this appearance, the NYU brand strategy professor correctly predicted that Amazon would soon acquire Whole Foods. When this prophecy was fulfilled around a month later, his aptitude for educated conjecture earned him widespread notoriety in tech and business circles.
Galloway’s podcast audience skews largely male and relatively young. Now in his 60s, he shares insights he’s gleaned from the ups and downs of his career with his younger listeners, who look to the finance buff for guidance on everything from career choices to spending habits to investment strategies.
Through his decades-long journey from a young, struggling entrepreneur to a successful business owner, consultant, author, and podcaster, Galloway managed to cultivate a net worth of $100 million. Along the way, however, he made plenty of mistakes, and he uses them to create teachable moments for money-minded young folks who hope to pave their own paths to financial security and career success.
Scott Galloway: 5 financial missteps young people should avoid
Here, we explain five of the most important money mistakes Galloway admonishes his students and listeners to be wary of as they navigate the choppy waters of adulthood in the American economy.
Mistake 1: Following your passion (career-wise)
Many young people, having listened to their parents lament the dreariness of their own jobs, are attracted by the old adage, “do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Galloway thinks this is a bad move. He advises folks just starting their careers to resist the temptation of the passion trap and instead opt for financial security and solid career-growth prospects.
In a 2024 article, Galloway points out the unlikelihood that following one’s passion will result in financial success, reminding his readers that “only 2% of professional actors make a living from their craft, [and] the 97th percentile of YouTube creators generate enough views to make a mere $15,000 per year.”
He goes on to say that, “making your passion a career will spoil it, turning it into a thing you do for (little) money, not love.”
Rather than attempting to build a monetized social media following around a creative passion, Galloway advises his students and listeners to secure a job doing something they have an aptitude for, explaining that passion will come with persistence.
Galloway ends his article with this imperative: “Your mission is to find something you’re good at and apply the thousands of hours of grit and sacrifice necessary to become great at it … your increasing mastery of your craft, along with the economic rewards, recognition, and camaraderie, will make you passionate about whatever ‘it’ is.”
Mistake 2: Choosing entrepreneurship over a solid job
Many of Galloway’s listeners are university or post-grad students studying business, marketing, or finance. Within this crowd, the draw toward entrepreneurship is strong, especially among those hoping to break into the world of tech by founding the next Instacart, SoFi, or Grindr.
But despite Galloway’s track record as a serial entrepreneur, he warns new graduates to steer clear of trying to start their own businesses—at least at first.
According to Galloway, there really is no substitute for a solid job at a large, successful company. After all, he notes, the U.S. corporation is “The greatest wealth generator in history.”
Putting in a few years of work at an established, successful company allows a recent graduate to maintain health insurance and begin investing at a young age, both through equity grants and through a tax-advantaged retirement account with matching contributions, like a 401(k).
Once someone has built solid career experience and a financial nest egg, Galloway posits, starting one’s own business can be a more realistic and exciting prospect, but he warns the gainfully employed that quitting their job to do so is highly risky.
Mistake 3: Spending money on status symbols
Like most personal finance experts, Galloway also encourages listeners to live below their means. In other words, even if you’re making good money, avoid spending that money on things like lavish meals, luxury vehicles, and other “status symbols.”
In a 2024 interview with New York,Galloway lamented, “If I’d just shown a little bit greater character in my 20s … in terms of my ability to save a little bit of money, recognizing time would go fast and compound interest would take over, I would have been at a much better place much earlier.”
Money spent now to display one’s status is money that doesn’t have the opportunity to grow through capital gains, dividends, and compounding interest.
As younger people become higher earners, it can be tempting to fall into trends reinforced by others in wealthier social circles, like buying tables and bottles at exclusive clubs, flying first-class, or driving a Porsche—all purchases that offer zero returns and can quickly eat into hard-earned savings.
Diverting these funds instead into various passive income vehicles like dividend ETFs can allow a young person to fund a comfortable but more modest lifestyle while also growing their wealth for the future.
Mistake 4: Misinterpreting luck as talent
Mistaking a stroke of good luck for exceptional personal talent or aptitude is another major misstep that Galloway sees younger folks fall into inadvertently.
This psychological mistake, he explains, can build an inflated sense of self-assurance, which can lead people to take big risks that rarely pay off—particularly when it comes to career decisions and investing. For this reason, he recommends being highly vigilant about avoiding this particular false equivalency.
As a guest on a 2025 episode of the On Purpose podcast with Jay Shetty, Galloway remarked (to no one in particular), “You got lucky. You’re in the right place at the right time. You had someone take an interest in you and work and promote you. You had a stock skyrocket. Are you a great investor? No, you’re lucky, and you’re never more prone to a big mistake professionally or personally than after a big win, because you start believing it’s you …”
A big success at work doesn’t necessarily mean it’s time for you to strike out on your own and borrow tens of thousands of dollars to start a company. Similarly, a well-timed purchase of Nvidia stock at the base of the AI semiconductor boom doesn’t make you a stock trader.
Statistically, picking out individual stocks yields worse returns than investing in index funds over the long term. Similarly, most new businesses fail, so working for an established company is a far better way to build wealth than borrowing money to fund an untested entrepreneurial venture.
Luck is nice when it comes around, but according to Galloway, we shouldn’t count on it, and we certainly shouldn’t mistake it for talent. Instead, he recommends sticking with the simple equation for success he outlines in his best-selling book, The Algebra of Wealth: Wealth = Focus + (Stoicism × Time × Diversification).
Mistake 5: Gambling on stocks or crypto instead of diversifying
Speaking of Galloway’s now-famous wealth-building equation, the final variable, diversification, is key, he says. The mistake too many young people make is falling into the FOMO (fear of missing out) trap that leads so many nascent investors to take big gambles on meme stocks, trending tech stocks, or highly volatile cryptocurrencies.
With the advent of prediction markets like Kalshi, it’s now easier than ever to get swept up in social media hype and wager too-large amounts of money on an outcome, whether that’s the future value of an asset or the outcome of an event, like a sports game or political election.
In an interview with New York’s Kevin Dugan, Galloway explains, “the number of people who have made money by buying crypto or buying Nvidia when it was a $10 (now it’s at $800) is small. Even among those few who have managed to do so, a lot give most of it back because they fall under the illusion of thinking it was about skill rather than luck. They double down and start making bigger bets on even riskier assets. The market reminds them in a fairly ugly way that they actually aren’t good.”
Galloway explains in a different interview that, earlier in his career, he invested everything he had in one company—Red Envelope, a company he started himself—rather than diversifying his investments to protect himself from losses. Sure enough, the company failed, and Galloway’s net worth quickly slipped into the negative (to the tune of millions of dollars).
The takeaway? Never go all-in on any one asset—always diversify.
