The Four Quotes

“Don’t follow your passion, follow your talent.”
― Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

“teach 120 kids on Tuesday nights in my Brand Strategy course. That’s $720,000, or $60,000 per class, in tuition payments, a lot of it financed with debt. I’m good at what I do, but walking in each night, I remind myself we (NYU) are charging kids $500/minute for me and a projector. This. Is. Fucking. Ridiculous.”
― Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

“People who received a great deal of attention for their looks at a young age are more likely to opt for cosmetic procedures when older. It’s the same in business.”
― Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

“Failure and invention are inseparable twins. To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment.”
― Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google

“Expect that a certain amount of failure is out of your control, and recognize you may need to endure it or move on.”
― Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

“The ultimate gift, in our digital age, is a CEO who has the storytelling talent to capture the imagination of the markets while surrounding themselves with people who can show incremental progress against that vision each day.”
― Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

“Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity,” said Coco Chanel.”
― Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

“It is conventional wisdom that Steve Jobs put “a dent in the universe.” No, he didn’t. Steve Jobs, in my view, spat on the universe. People who get up every morning, get their kids dressed, get them to school, and have an irrational passion for their kids’ well-being, dent the universe. The world needs more homes with engaged parents, not a better fucking phone.”
― Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google

“it seems impossible until it isn’t.”
― Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

“Don’t follow your passion, follow your talent. Determine what you are good at (early), and commit to becoming great at it. You don't have to love it, just don't hate it. If practice takes you from good to great, the recognition and compensation you will command will make you start to love it. And, ultimately, you will be able to shape your career and your specialty to focus on the aspects you enjoy the most. And if not—make good money and then go follow your passion. No kid dreams of being a tax accountant. However, the best tax accountants on the planet fly first class and marry people better looking than themselves—both things they are likely to be passionate about.”
― Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

“luxury is irrational, which makes it the best business in the world. In 2016 Estée Lauder was worth more than the world’s largest communications firm, WPP.9 Richemont, owner of Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels, was worth more than T-Mobile.10 LVMH commands more value than Goldman Sachs.”
― Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

“No one has been able to aggregate more intention data on what consumers like than Google. Google not only sees you coming, but sees where you’re going. When homicide investigators arrive at a crime scene and there is a suspect—almost always the spouse—they check the suspect’s search history for suspicious Google queries (like “how to poison your husband”). I suspect we’re going to find that U.S. agencies have been mining Google to understand the intentions of more than some shopper thinking about detergent, but cells looking for fertilizer to build bombs. Google controls a massive amount of behavioral data. However, the individual identities of users have to be anonymized and, to the best of our knowledge, grouped. People are not comfortable with their name and picture next to a list of all the things they have typed into the Google query box. And for good reasons. Take a moment to imagine your picture and your name above everything you have typed into that Google search box. You’ve no doubt typed in some crazy shit that you would rather other people not know. So, Google has to aggregate this data, and can only say that people of this age or people of this cohort, on average, type in these sorts of things into their Google search box. Google still has a massive amount of data it can connect, if not to specific identities, to specific groups.”
― Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

“three platforms: Amazon, Google, and Facebook. Registering, iterating, and monetizing its audience is the heart of each platform’s business. It’s what the most valuable man-made things ever created (their algorithms) are designed to do.”
― Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

“If you want to work for Vogue, produce films, or open a restaurant, you had better get immense psychological reward from your gig, as the comp, and returns on your efforts, will likely suck. Competition will be fierce, and even if you manage to get in, you'll be easily replaceable, as there are always younger, hipper candidates nipping at your heels. Very few high-school graduates dream of working for Exxon, but a big firm in a large sector would give you a career trajectory with regular promotions a sexy industry won't.”
― Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

“The digital age is Heraclitus on steroids: change is a daily constant. In almost every professional environment, we are expected to use and master tools that did not exist a decade ago, or even last year. For better or worse (and frankly, it is often for worse), organizations have access, essentially, to infinite amounts of data, and what might as well be an infinite variety of ways to sort through and act on that data. At the same time, ideas can be turned into reality at unprecedented speed. The thing Amazon, Facebook, and no less hot firms, including Zara, have in common is they are agile (the new-economy term for fast).”
― Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them they’ve been fooled.”
― Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

“In early 2016, Amazon was given a license by the Federal Maritime Commission to implement ocean freight services as an Ocean Transportation Intermediary. So, Amazon can now ship others’ goods. This new service, dubbed Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), won’t do much directly for individual consumers. But it will allow Amazon’s Chinese partners to more easily and cost-effectively get their products across the Pacific in containers. Want to bet how long it will take Amazon to dominate the oceanic transport business? 67 The market to ship stuff (mostly) across the Pacific is a $ 350 billion business, but a low-margin one. Shippers charge $ 1,300 to ship a forty-foot container holding up to 10,000 units of product (13 cents per unit, or just under $ 10 to deliver a flatscreen TV). It’s a down-and-dirty business, unless you’re Amazon. The biggest component of that cost comes from labor: unloading and loading the ships and the paperwork. Amazon can deploy hardware (robotics) and software to reduce these costs. Combined with the company’s fledgling aircraft fleet, this could prove another huge business for Amazon. 68 Between drones, 757/ 767s, tractor trailers, trans-Pacific shipping, and retired military generals (no joke) who oversaw the world’s most complex logistics operations (try supplying submarines and aircraft carriers that don’t surface or dock more than once every six months), Amazon is building the most robust logistics infrastructure in history. If you’re like me, this can only leave you in awe: I can’t even make sure I have Gatorade in the fridge when I need it.”
― Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

“Hrănim, cu bună-știință, mașinăriile corporatiste cu foarte multe informații despre viețile noastre - trasee zilnice, e-mailuri, apeluri telefonice, toate cele - și apoi ne așteptăm ca acele firme să le folosească cu intenții bune și în același timp să le protejeze, chiar să le ignore.”
― Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

“A study found that on Facebook, the top descriptors to complete the phrase “My husband is . . .” are “the best,” “my best friend,” “amazing,” “the greatest,” and “so cute.” On Google, under the cloak of anonymity, one of the top five ways to complete that phrase is also “amazing.” The other four: “a jerk,” “annoying,” “gay,” and “mean.”10”
― Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

“My experience in traditional firms is that anything new is seen as innovative, and the people assigned to it, like any parent, become irrationally passionate about the project and refuse to acknowledge just how stupid and ugly your little project has become.”
― Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

“What’s clear is that we need business leaders who envision, and enact, a future with more jobs—not billionaires who want the government to fund, with taxes they avoid, social programs for people to sit on their couches and watch Netflix all day. Jeff, show some real fucking vision.”
― Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

“One way to appreciate the brilliance of this acquisition is to look at Instagram’s “Power Index,” the number of people a platform reaches times their level of engagement. This social index reveals Instagram as the world’s most powerful platform, as it has 400 million users, a third of Facebook’s, but garners fifteen times the level of engagement. L2 Analysis of Unmetric Data.”
― Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

“Entrepreneurs are usually enamored with the preciousness of their product vs. something that can scale.”
― Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

“History favors the bold. Compensation favors the meek. As a Fortune 500 company CEO, you’re better off taking the path often traveled and staying the course. Big companies may have more assets to innovate with, but they rarely take big risks or innovate at the cost of cannibalizing a current business. Neither would they chance alienating suppliers or investors. They play not to lose, and shareholders reward them for it—until those shareholders walk and buy Amazon stock. Most boards ask management: “How can we build the greatest advantage for the least amount of capital/investment?” Amazon reverses the question: “What can we do that gives us an advantage that’s hugely expensive, and that no one else can afford?” Why? Because Amazon has access to capital with lower return expectations than peers. Reducing shipping times from two days to one day? That will require billions. Amazon will have to build smart warehouses near cities, where real estate and labor are expensive. By any conventional measure, it would be a huge investment for a marginal return. But for Amazon, it’s all kinds of perfect. Why? Because Macy’s, Sears, and Walmart can’t afford to spend billions getting the delivery times of their relatively small online businesses down from two days to one. Consumers love it, and competitors stand flaccid on the sidelines. In 2015, Amazon spent $7 billion on shipping fees, a net shipping loss of $5 billion, and overall profits of $2.4 billion. Crazy, no? No. Amazon is going underwater with the world’s largest oxygen tank, forcing other retailers to follow it, match its prices, and deal with changed customer delivery expectations. The difference is other retailers have just the air in their lungs and are drowning. Amazon will surface and have the ocean of retail largely to itself.”
― Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

“Booking travel the same day? You must be a business traveler, please - bend over.”
― Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

“Recent research from the Johns Hopkins University Center on Aging and Health found that caregivers had an 18 percent lower mortality rate than noncaregivers.”
― Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

“Invest aggressively into your strength(s) and spend modest effort to get your weaknesses to average so they don't hold you back.”
― Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

“Facebook—at Google the defining factors were the elegantly simple homepage and the fact that advertisers weren’t allowed to influence search results (organic search).”
― Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

“the words of Silicon Valley marketer Tom Hayes, who did just that for Applied Materials, “When the news is negative, you want to be perceived as a good company to which a bad thing has happened.”
― Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

“The definition of rich is when your passive income exceeds your nut (what you need to live).”
― Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google