Scott Galloway is a professor of marketing at NYU’s Stern School of Business. His company L2 creates some amazingly funny and insightful content, including this video on Scott’s “unsolicited career advice”:

There is a lot of wisdom into what Scott says, and I will incorporate some of these ideas into the core values section in the future. I have taken his advice on many fronts, and I shown this video to direct reports as an example of things to keep in mind.

In particular, developing skills that differentiate you, are key to the success of the business, and your colleagues do not seem to want to do them will make you insanely valuable. One of these for me was focusing on being good at software engineering, project management, and people management. Most engineers are completely uninterested in the latter two which provided plenty of opportunity to shine.

I have marked all of my favorites in bold below.

• Get certified
  • College graduates had half the unemployment rate of those with a high school diploma during the 2008 recession
  • College graduates will, over the course of a lifetime, earn 2x as much as those with just a diploma
• Be remarkable
  • Develop not just one area of expertise, but two skills that don’t always naturally go together
• Invest in variance
  • Look at the six or eight things that are key to your firm’s success, and identify one or two that you can differentiate yourself by becoming an expert in
• Move to a city
  • 2/3rds of economic growth will take place in cities
  • Being in a city forces you to work with the best so you improve
• Boring is sexy
  • The sexiest of careers are hard to get into and may not make you wealthy
  • A lot of money is in things that aren’t sexy
• Delay gratification
  • “The power of compound interest is the most powerful force in the Universe.” ~Einstein
  • This is true not just for money, but for your own efforts
  • Invest in areas of your life where the payoff is in the future, but your efforts aggregate over time
• Demonstrate strength and grit
  • Fortune 500 CEOs exercise every day
• Don’t follow your passion
  • Be passionate about being great at something
• Ignore the myth of balance
  • You are only young once. Take advantage and work your ass off
• Fight unfair
  • What are you willing to do that the majority of the people around you aren’t?
  • What are you willing to do that your colleagues won’t?