When I was around five, I noticed that people behaved differently around my father. They would gaze into his eyes, nodding and then laughing. Women would touch his arm, laughing, and men, when they saw him, would yell, “Tommy,” genuinely happy to see him. He was great with a turn of phrase, funny and clever (i.e., British). The cocktail of articulate, irreverent, and smart chased with a Scottish accent made my dad attractive to women and employers.
My mother explained it to me: “Your father is charming.” At gatherings, inevitably, a semicircle forms around my dad, and he tells jokes and shares his take on things ranging from space (“if it never ends, everything has already happened”) to management (“the key is a good job description”). This charm sustained, for a decade, an upper-middle-class lifestyle for him, my mom, and me as he roamed the western United States and Canada, maintaining, in fifteen-minute spurts, pseudo-friendships with the managers of the outdoor and garden departments at Sears and Lowe’s. In exchange for his company, my dad’s two hundred friends would over-order bags of shit … as he was selling fertilizer from O.M. Scotts & Sons, an International Telegraph and Telegram (ITT) company.
In his late fifties, after the marketplace made it clear a recently laid-off middle manager from ITT was no longer welcome in the Fortune 500, he began giving seminars, open to the public, at a local community college. Cheap fluorescent lighting made the space feel like an operating room in an East German hospital. There were six rows of eight folding chairs, an overhead slide projector, transparencies with smudges, and a table at the back with half-empty two-liter bottles of Dr Pepper, Sprite, and Tab, and lemon squares my stepmom had baked. Around fifteen people, most in their fifties and sixties, would attend. My dad would speak for ninety minutes, breaking halfway through so everyone could venture to the hall and have a cigarette. I attended a few times as a teen. At that age, I found everything involving my parents lame, but this felt especially sad … depressing, even. In exchange for imparting his wisdom on other mostly unemployed smokers, my dad had to pay $10 to $20 for gas and treats.
My dad reflects on these seminars as the happiest he’s ever been. He was where he was meant to be, in front of a group of people, speaking and teaching.
I did not inherit my father’s charm. In fact, being offensive—the opposite of charm—is something I’ve developed a knack for. Not a “speak truth to power” kind of offensive, but a tone-deaf “saying exactly the wrong thing at the exact wrong moment” kind of offensive. I regularly say things and write emails that make good people feel bad, and I know it. No excuse. Because I’m successful, people often recast this offensiveness as honesty or even leadership. No, it’s just being an asshole. I’m working on it.
However, my father did pass on the ability to hold a room of people, as long as it’s a windowless boardroom or conference hall on the fifty-fifth floor of a Midtown building or in the basement of a hotel. Most people become increasingly uncomfortable as the group grows. I experience the inverse. One-on-one, I’m an introvert, insecure even. But as the room fills … other skills kick in. In front of dozens, crisp insights find me. In front of hundreds, humor and warmth. And thousands, a rush of adrenaline and the confidence to reach beyond my grasp and be inspiring. I may be wrong, but my heart is in the right place. I can look each person in the eye and assert I believe what I’m saying to be true.
To hone their craft, comedians do stand-up at clubs. For me, stand-up is class, where I hone the craft of speaking every Tuesday night for three hours in front of 170 second-year MBAs. I’m much more focused, and put more effort into the class, than in front of any board or gathering of gold-circle commercial real estate brokers. I make much less, about $1,000, per podium hour. (Note: This sounds like more than it is, as you spend several hours outside of class prepping or meeting with students for each podium hour.) In addition, the amount of bullshit you endure to get to this platform—advanced degrees, department politics—is substantial.
My dad will only get on a plane for two things, and they aren’t to see his grandkids or spend time with friends. He will only get on a plane to see the Toronto Maple Leafs play or to watch his son teach. He sits in the back row of the classroom. At the beginning of class, we ask any visitors to introduce themselves—we get half a dozen curious undergrads or applicants in almost every class. My dad waits until they’re done and then, really dialing up the accent, says:
“I’m Tom Galloway, Scott’s father.”
There’s a pause, then sustained applause. I see my dad riveted on my every word and movement for the next three hours. I wonder if, at eighty-eight, he looks at me and feels disappointment he didn’t have the opportunities to reach his full potential as a speaker, or if he feels the reward of evolutionary progress, seeing himself, but version 2.0. Seeing my dad in class reminds me that the difference between bribing people to listen to you with lemon squares and being paid $2,000 per minute at corporate gatherings is not talent—my dad has more of that. The difference is being born in America, and the generosity of California taxpayers, who gave the child of a secretary the chance to attend a world-class university.10 The mix of my dad’s talent and the confidence I got from the abundant love of his second wife gave me the skills and opportunity to stand in front of a room full of people, look each in the eyes, and say, “I believe this to be true.”
The wind of our society’s obsession with big tech is at my back, running over my vocal cords. My domain of expertise, big tech, is white-hot, and the economy is strong. These skills, coupled with proprietary data that dozens of overeducated twentysomethings at L2 collect and distill into insight, and a world-class creative team that designs imagery and charts, shot on the screen behind me, all sing like Pavarotti.
My market value, like all things, will fade. People will tire of my topics, and I won’t have access to the resources that make my stuff great, versus just good. Or more likely, my creative juices will just stop flowing. Working with young, creative people and having access to the best and brightest thinkers in business is for me what heroin was to Ray Charles. Once it’s gone, no more hits.
My relationship with NYU, generally speaking: I teach a mess of kids and speak at events. In exchange, they put up with me. Every three or four years a new department chair or administrator asks me to teach more, changes my status, or does something to piss me off. I threaten to go to Wharton or Cornell Tech, and I mostly get what I want. If I sound like a diva or a pain in the ass, trust your instincts. I don’t act like an employee at Stern, but a free agent, and it frustrates them. My star is burning bright right now—I’m good at teaching and I strengthen the Stern brand, so they tolerate me. But when my value begins to wane (and it’s only a matter of time), they’ll drop me like second-period French. I would.