No Mercy / No Malice Turns 10

**Scott Galloway** (0:01)
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**SPEAKER_2** (0:48)
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**SPEAKER_4** (1:27)
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**Scott Galloway** (1:49)
I'm Scott Galloway and this is No Mercy, No Malice.
We often say storytelling is the most valuable skill, the superpower I'd grant my boys if I could grant them anything. Every Friday for the past decade, my storytelling practice has included writing this post, No Mercy, No Malice. It's the laboratory at the center of our books, podcasts, and Prof G Media. No Mercy, No Malice turns 10, as read by George Hahn.

**George Hahn** (2:26)
Ten years ago this month, I began writing No Mercy, No Malice every Friday. My firm at the time, L2, was a reincarnation of my first business, Profit. But I wanted to get it more right this time. Profit was, and is, a good firm. But it was trapped in a transactional service model versus a recurring revenue model. This created a more fragile revenue stream with a greater cost of sales, as there were only so many weekends I could play golf.
We conceived L2 around an annual fee membership model, and we tracked touch points, how many times the client interacted with our product, which predicted renewal. Note, this strategy paid off, twice. I sold Profit for 2.8 times revenue and L2 for 8 times. Before I sold L2, we'd launched a series of media products to create more engagement. Winners and Losers was a video series exploring innovation in the consumer sector, and No Mercy, No Malice was meant to be a newsletter exploring, well, whatever was on my mind that week. In addition, I enjoy writing. I pen a book every 18 months, believing it's effectively exercise for the brain. I've convinced myself that I'm less prone to early onset dementia when I'm struggling to fix that last sentence. No Mercy, No Malice was too salty for Gartner, the acquiring company, and they said it could not be affiliated with the firm. But I could have the IP. A decade later, we have 430,000 subscribers, and the newsletter is the center of the flywheel for Prof G Media. The tone and aim of No Mercy, No Malice is simple. Provide insight and be fearless.
The oldest surviving No Mercy, No Malice post dates to November 18th, 2016 It's only 288 words, roughly 20% of a typical post these days. A few things stand out. The post, Warby Snarker, was about Snap's new camera-equipped glasses known as Spectacles. A decade later, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel continues to pursue his wearable white whale, despite erasing 95% of the company's market cap over the past five years. The 2016 post contains an early example of Prof G Media's visual storytelling. In this case, a chart comparing Nike's performance on Instagram's new-at-the-time stories feature to its performance on Snapchat. Also, there's a prediction from L2 co-founder Maureen Mullen. It proved to be correct, highlighting a No Mercy No Malice commitment to making bold calls that catalyze conversations. Finally, the post links to my message about the 2016 election. As I noted at the time, every CEO and founder felt compelled to say something to their troops about the political earthquake that was sending and continues to this day to send shock waves through our society and the world. In the subsequent decade, however, most of those leaders have gone silent. I've grown louder, consistently writing about the topics I believe matter most. Hint, I believe Trump Inc. is a criminal enterprise and a stain on the American experience. Another hint, accusing me of Trump Derangement Syndrome has no effect.