Billionaires tend to offer one particularly bad piece of career advice, according to self-made millionaire and best-selling author Scott Galloway: “Follow your passion!”
Galloway—a serial entrepreneur and marketing professor at NYU—said in a June 3 episode of his LinkedIn video series The Path:
“The worst advice billionaires give is 'follow your passion.' The person telling you that is already rich.”
Born in Los Angeles to a single mother, Galloway said his family’s income during his childhood never exceeded $40,000 a year. He once believed that sports were his ticket to financial freedom. But after realizing a professional sports career was out of reach, he graduated from UCLA and got a job as an analyst at Morgan Stanley.
Soon, he discovered he lacked the necessary skills for that role. After trying out different ideas, he decided entrepreneurship suited him better than working in a large firm. In 1992, he co-founded the marketing firm Prophet, which he eventually sold in 2002 for $33 million, according to LinkedIn.
Later, he co-founded the research company L2 in 2010, which was acquired in 2017 for over $130 million. His career path shows that success doesn’t come from blindly following passion or chasing the most profitable industry.
“Instead,” he said, “find the intersection of what you’re good at and what can make you money—seize the opportunity to pivot.”
Galloway added:
“I applied to 29 jobs after graduation and got one offer. The key to my success is rejection—or rather, my ability to endure it. Because if you don’t get said ‘no’ a lot, you’ll never get to a truly great ‘yes.’”
Galloway’s view echoes similar comments by Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach, who often advises young professionals to look beyond passion when choosing a career. Early in his career, Miebach realized he had a gift for leadership and a passion for helping others. That combination led him to serve on the boards of companies like IBM and the Metropolitan Opera, and to spend nearly 16 years at Mastercard, according to CNBC.
In a recent interview with LinkedIn Editor-in-Chief Daniel Roth, Miebach told interns:
“I love that you’re following your passion but also focus on what you’re really good at. What makes you stand out? Find the overlap between your passion, what truly matters, and what you can become excellent at. Combine all that.”
Discovering your strengths doesn’t happen overnight—it often takes refinement, and even failure. Suppose you’re a former news producer who was recently laid off. You start making documentary films to stay active. Now, you realize your true strength lies in long-form storytelling, not in breaking news or short segments.
According to Yale psychology professor and happiness expert Laurie Santos, setbacks can become learning opportunities if you adopt a growth mindset—the belief that you can always improve your abilities.
“This allows us to learn more about how to get better in the future,” she says.
With this mindset, when failure or rejection happens again, you’ll know what steps to take—or avoid—to keep moving forward in your life and career.