No Mercy / No Malice Turns 10
Episode
17 min
Read time
2 min
Topics
Relationships, Sales & Revenue, Psychology & Behavior
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓Subscription Model vs. Transactional Revenue: Galloway sold L2 for 8x revenue versus Prophet's 2.8x by structuring L2 around annual membership fees and tracking client touch points to predict renewals — demonstrating that recurring revenue models command dramatically higher exit multiples than project-based service businesses.
- ✓Writing as Organizational Advantage: Jeff Bezos banned PowerPoint at Amazon in favor of six-page narrative memos because decks obscure flawed logic while structured prose forces clarity and exposes weak arguments — a discipline Galloway applies by writing out topics before TV appearances as deliberate preparation.
- ✓Creative Differentiation Before Sales: At L2, Galloway and partner Catherine Dillon hired a third animator before their first salesperson and licensed Getty Images for reports, treating research as magazines rather than white papers — prioritizing visual storytelling as a competitive moat over proprietary data alone.
- ✓Writing as Cognitive Practice: Committing to a regular writing schedule with external deadlines builds storytelling skill through repetition, not inspiration. Composition research identifies writing as a full-brain workout engaging physical, visual, and symbolic cognition simultaneously — making consistency more valuable than raw talent.
What It Covers
Scott Galloway marks 10 years of his No Mercy No Malice newsletter, reflecting on how weekly writing practice built a media flywheel, shaped two business exits, and became a personal legacy project for his sons.
Key Questions Answered
- •Subscription Model vs. Transactional Revenue: Galloway sold L2 for 8x revenue versus Prophet's 2.8x by structuring L2 around annual membership fees and tracking client touch points to predict renewals — demonstrating that recurring revenue models command dramatically higher exit multiples than project-based service businesses.
- •Writing as Organizational Advantage: Jeff Bezos banned PowerPoint at Amazon in favor of six-page narrative memos because decks obscure flawed logic while structured prose forces clarity and exposes weak arguments — a discipline Galloway applies by writing out topics before TV appearances as deliberate preparation.
- •Creative Differentiation Before Sales: At L2, Galloway and partner Catherine Dillon hired a third animator before their first salesperson and licensed Getty Images for reports, treating research as magazines rather than white papers — prioritizing visual storytelling as a competitive moat over proprietary data alone.
- •Writing as Cognitive Practice: Committing to a regular writing schedule with external deadlines builds storytelling skill through repetition, not inspiration. Composition research identifies writing as a full-brain workout engaging physical, visual, and symbolic cognition simultaneously — making consistency more valuable than raw talent.
Notable Moment
Galloway reveals his newsletter's true purpose has nothing to do with business metrics — he writes primarily so his sons can read the archive after his death and understand how deeply he loved them.
Episode Transcript
This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at accenture.com/spotify. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18 plus. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed sponsored jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. 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 prop g media. No Mercy No Malice turns 10 as read by George Hahn. Ten years ago this month, I began writing No Mercy, No Malice every Friday. My firm at the time, l two, was a reincarnation of my first business, Prophet, but I wanted to get it more right this time. Prophet 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 l two 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 l two for eight times. Before I sold l two, 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 …
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newsletter
- No Mercy / No MaliceBy guest
by Scott Galloway
“Scott Galloway marks 10 years of his No Mercy No Malice newsletter, reflecting on how weekly writing practice built a media flywheel, shaped two business exits, and became a personal legacy project for his sons.”
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