AI transcript
0:00:02 Here’s the headline, millionaire working at McDonald’s.
0:00:05 And actually it’s actually much more interesting than that.
0:00:07 ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪
0:00:10 ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪
0:00:12 ♪ I put my all in it like the days off ♪
0:00:13 ♪ On the road let’s travel ♪
0:00:16 – This is the story of a guy named Scott.
0:00:19 Meetup.com is probably the most popular thing that he made.
0:00:21 Meetup is a really cool site.
0:00:22 I used it when I moved to San Francisco,
0:00:24 joined a bunch of groups, met a bunch of people.
0:00:26 It’s basically a way to go from the internet
0:00:28 to actually meeting people in real life.
0:00:30 And so I knew about Meetup.
0:00:31 I had even known about Scott.
0:00:33 But what I didn’t know is the story that Scott,
0:00:35 after he had sold his first company,
0:00:37 actually went and worked at McDonald’s,
0:00:39 just to kind of reset.
0:00:40 And he did that for a while.
0:00:41 And now he was going viral
0:00:43 because he’s kind of doing it again.
0:00:44 He didn’t tell anybody,
0:00:46 but people saw him update his LinkedIn
0:00:48 and it said Amazon associate
0:00:49 or like warehouse associate or something.
0:00:52 Basically he’s back at a Amazon warehouse now,
0:00:55 being a pickpacker, kind of minimum wage job again.
0:00:56 And people are like,
0:00:57 “Dude, this is not the first time he’s done this.
0:01:00 “He did this with McDonald’s 20 years ago.”
0:01:02 And I found this fascinating
0:01:03 and I went down to Scott Rabbit Hole
0:01:04 and I wanna talk to you about it.
0:01:05 You have some good stuff there too, right?
0:01:07 Is that how it caught your eye?
0:01:08 – Yeah, so basically he grew up,
0:01:10 I think in Iowa or Idaho,
0:01:12 somewhere in the Midwest,
0:01:13 and he grew up there
0:01:17 and he saw that Marc Andreessen releases Netscape.
0:01:18 And he was like, “This is amazing.”
0:01:19 And so he’s like, “I’m gonna get in the internet.”
0:01:21 And so in the mid ’90s,
0:01:22 he starts, I believe,
0:01:26 like one of the world’s first online internet agencies.
0:01:29 I think it was an advertising agency, something like that.
0:01:32 He sells it for around $15 million,
0:01:36 which is something like 30 million bucks in today’s money.
0:01:39 And he sells it and after he sells it,
0:01:41 he was like, “I’ve been working for six or seven years
0:01:43 “at this internet startup.
0:01:45 “And I work in marketing,
0:01:48 “but I’m only around bankers and lawyers
0:01:50 “and other yuppie people.
0:01:53 “That’s horrible for my position as a marketer,
0:01:55 “but also I feel so out of touch with the people.”
0:01:56 Let’s use his words.
0:01:58 So he wrote this on his site.
0:02:00 You found it back at the internet archive,
0:02:01 which I thought was great.
0:02:04 So it says, “Why I got a job at McDonald’s.
0:02:06 “I spent a lot of time with bankers, lawyers,
0:02:08 “internet freaks, corporate wonks,
0:02:10 “and other people living strange lives.
0:02:12 “As a good marketing guy, that’s a bad thing.
0:02:14 “And as a practicing, anti-consumerist,
0:02:15 “that’s a bad thing.
0:02:17 “So I got a job at McDonald’s
0:02:19 “to help get back in touch with the real world.
0:02:21 “Also after six grueling years of the internet whirlwind,
0:02:23 “I wanted to experience a profitable,
0:02:25 “well-oiled, multi-billion dollar machine.
0:02:27 “And I deserved a break today.”
0:02:29 And then he goes and works at McDonald’s.
0:02:31 And he even talks about, he shows his application.
0:02:33 He goes, “I just walked in off the street.
0:02:35 “It was at Fifth and Broadway in New York City.
0:02:37 “I walked off the street.”
0:02:38 And he’s like, the manager was like,
0:02:40 “So are you used to working with teams?”
0:02:41 Or something like that.
0:02:42 And Scott was in his blog post.
0:02:43 He goes, “Yeah, I was honest.”
0:02:46 I said, “Yes, I am used to that.”
0:02:47 Yeah, he goes, “I was truthful in my interview.
0:02:50 “He asked if I can handle a fast-paced, intense environment.”
0:02:51 I said, “Yes.”
0:02:52 He looked at my resume
0:02:53 and asked about my current part-time job
0:02:55 as chairman of iTraffic.
0:02:57 I said, “It’s an internet thing.”
0:02:57 He said, “Okay.”
0:03:00 And then asked me for my waist size for the pants.
0:03:02 (laughing)
0:03:06 Marketing used to be fun.
0:03:07 Content was simpler to create.
0:03:09 The leads were easier to capture.
0:03:11 And now with HubSpot’s new marketing and content hub,
0:03:13 you can generate more content, more leads,
0:03:14 and next-level results.
0:03:15 So marketing can be fun again.
0:03:18 With content tools like Content Remix,
0:03:19 which will turn your existing content
0:03:20 into all new assets.
0:03:22 Lead scoring, which shines a light
0:03:24 on which leads are most likely to purchase.
0:03:25 And the analytics suite,
0:03:26 which will give you out-of-the-box reports
0:03:28 and a goldmine of AI-powered insights.
0:03:29 It’s quick to get your results.
0:03:32 It’s easy to use, and it connects all your data.
0:03:35 So put the fun back in your marketing funnel with HubSpot.
0:03:38 Visit hubspot.com to get started for free.
0:03:40 And he works there for like six months.
0:03:42 And he has this amazing blog post
0:03:43 about everything that he’s learned.
0:03:45 By the way, I don’t think he worked there for six months.
0:03:48 I think it was like more like three or four weeks,
0:03:49 something like that, but he did it.
0:03:50 $575 ain’t much.
0:03:53 So he was making $575 an hour times 40 hours a week
0:03:54 times 52 weeks a year.
0:03:58 That’s $11,960 pre-tax.
0:03:59 Here you go.
0:04:00 Some people said it was disrespectful
0:04:01 to me to take a job at McDonald’s.
0:04:03 I didn’t need the money.
0:04:04 They thought I was making fun of people that worked there.
0:04:05 The opposite is true.
0:04:06 I gained a bucket of respect.
0:04:08 People that bust their butt for such low pay.
0:04:11 It’s one thing to scan past like statistics you see
0:04:12 about how many people make $12,000 a year
0:04:13 or read about them in the paper.
0:04:15 It’s another thing to sit back there
0:04:18 in a fry heaving McNugget-wielding six-hour shift
0:04:20 and go home smelling like fries and McNuggets
0:04:22 and realize you only made about $30 this day.
0:04:23 It’s an eye-opener.
0:04:25 Interpret that as you see fit.
0:04:28 And then what happens is while he’s working
0:04:32 at McDonald’s, Cranes, which is a business publication,
0:04:34 they want to do a story on Scott about like CEOs
0:04:35 in post-acquisition life.
0:04:40 And he’s like, “Yeah, come and see what I’m up to now.”
0:04:44 And they use this photo of him working at McDonald’s
0:04:46 wearing his McDonald’s uniform.
0:04:48 And it’s just the greatest photo I’ve ever seen.
0:04:50 And if you scroll through this whole blog post,
0:04:51 we’ll link it in the YouTube,
0:04:54 you can see some of these pictures of him working.
0:04:56 It looks like, it looks pretty wild.
0:04:58 – Well, they spun it like he was struggling, right?
0:05:01 It’s like, “De-thrown CEOs” is the title.
0:05:03 And they’re like, “How are they handling the dot-com crash?
0:05:07 This dot-com CEO is back working at a McDonald’s.”
0:05:09 And it’s like, wait, that’s not what happened at all.
0:05:11 But okay, sure.
0:05:13 – Now fast forward to today.
0:05:15 – By the way, he made $15 million, I think, in that sale.
0:05:18 So he sold his agency for about 15 million bucks,
0:05:20 who knows, stock cash, who knows if these is like,
0:05:21 but fall apart, right?
0:05:23 Let’s take it directional.
0:05:27 And then he goes from there to working at a McDonald’s,
0:05:29 just to kind of like re-acclimate with the real world,
0:05:31 which I thought was really good.
0:05:32 – And fast forward to today.
0:05:35 So in ’18 or ’19, something like that,
0:05:38 he sells meetup.com to WeWork.
0:05:41 The price was rumored to be 200 million, but who knows?
0:05:42 It’s enough that he doesn’t have to go and work
0:05:44 some place like this.
0:05:48 Turns out he has a job at an Amazon fulfillment center.
0:05:50 And he doesn’t make a big or deal out of this.
0:05:51 He doesn’t like tell people about this.
0:05:53 He just puts it on his LinkedIn.
0:05:55 Someone finds it and shares it.
0:05:57 So he ends up and does a podcast where he talks
0:06:00 about the story of why he’s at Amazon.
0:06:02 And it’s the same type of thing where he’s like,
0:06:05 I just like felt out of touch with average people.
0:06:07 And I wanted to feel that again.
0:06:10 And he doesn’t exactly say this,
0:06:12 but he says something like the interviewer was asking him
0:06:14 about his experience there.
0:06:15 And he’s like, the interviewer was like,
0:06:18 isn’t that the place where like they just had a big issue
0:06:21 with them, the workers in the warehouse wanting to unionize?
0:06:23 And he’s like, look, I don’t want to talk too much about that.
0:06:25 But yeah, that’s where it was.
0:06:26 And I think it’s a good idea.
0:06:29 And he sort of insinuates that.
0:06:30 – That he was part of it.
0:06:31 – That he was part of it.
0:06:33 And he was kind of like whispering in people’s ears.
0:06:35 And he doesn’t explicitly say that,
0:06:37 but the language that he uses where he’s like,
0:06:38 I don’t really want to talk about it.
0:06:40 But yeah, like I was there.
0:06:42 I saw it all happening.
0:06:43 And he was like, you know, it’s funny.
0:06:45 I’m like an entrepreneur.
0:06:48 And I’m usually the guy who you’d unionize against.
0:06:50 But I thought it was a good idea to have a union.
0:06:53 And it’s as if that he’s like the one riling people up.
0:06:55 And so this guy, in a weird way,
0:06:57 he’s like a little horse-gump character.
0:07:00 Like he’s like experiencing all these things in the background.
0:07:02 And he’s like potentially a pivotal part of the story,
0:07:03 but he doesn’t really talk about it.
0:07:05 – It reminds me of, you know, like movies.
0:07:08 It is a F’d up analogy, but it’s like movies where
0:07:11 it’s like the genius nerd gets sent to prison,
0:07:13 but then he like does, you know, then he’s like the master.
0:07:16 And then he like brings a new angle and sort of rallies
0:07:18 the crew inside the prison in a different way.
0:07:19 – Right.
0:07:20 – Or like we had Shkreli on the podcast
0:07:21 and he was talking about the same thing.
0:07:25 He said he went to prison and he started the Bitcoin club,
0:07:26 like the crypto club.
0:07:29 And he started all these like learning clubs
0:07:30 for technology inside the prison,
0:07:32 but then they also taught him a bunch of things.
0:07:34 It was like meeting of the world.
0:07:36 That’s what this reminds me of this.
0:07:37 Sort of going into the fulfillment center
0:07:40 and like stirring up the union efforts.
0:07:43 – I have a friend of a friend who was a banker.
0:07:46 He was like the really successful Wall Street guy
0:07:48 and he retired, but he got bored.
0:07:50 And so he was like, dude, I’m gonna drive for Uber.
0:07:53 So he starts driving for Uber and he ends up,
0:07:54 after doing that for a little while,
0:07:57 he starts a private driving business
0:07:58 where he’s like a broker.
0:08:00 So for example, when I go to the airport,
0:08:01 I do use a private driver,
0:08:04 but it’s only like $30 more than an Uber.
0:08:05 It’s not like much more expensive,
0:08:07 but it feels a little bit nicer.
0:08:10 He started one of these and he ended up being a broker for it.
0:08:12 And he is now making like a million dollars a year
0:08:13 being a broker for some of these drivers
0:08:15 when you want a car.
0:08:17 And it’s kind of a similar thing.
0:08:20 Would you ever, if you had like a break in your career,
0:08:21 would you ever want to do
0:08:25 one of these kind of blue collar jobs?
0:08:28 – Yeah, when I saw this, I was inspired on three fronts.
0:08:31 The first, this is a guy who plays his own game.
0:08:32 And if you know anything about me,
0:08:34 you know, that is what I respect the most.
0:08:36 People who have their own viewpoint,
0:08:38 they bring their own frame to the game.
0:08:40 And they say, this is how I want to use buy time
0:08:41 in life and this is what I think is right.
0:08:43 They don’t really follow the herd, right?
0:08:46 Like how many founders who sell their company,
0:08:48 then become a VC, then go from VC all back
0:08:51 to being a founder and advisor and go on podcasts.
0:08:54 By the way, I did all this after I sold my company too, right?
0:08:56 I sold my company, started investing, started a podcast,
0:08:58 started doing the normal path.
0:09:02 And so when I see people who just thought
0:09:04 from first principles about what they cared about in life
0:09:05 and decided what they wanted to do
0:09:07 and did it even though it sounded weird
0:09:10 or unconventional, highest level of respect for me.
0:09:12 So that’s the first thing, inspired by that.
0:09:16 Second, inspired by the idea of basically
0:09:17 just getting out of your bubble.
0:09:21 I do this in a different way, not usually by a job,
0:09:23 but like, you know, you told me about that conference,
0:09:26 FarmCon, which is a conference for farmers.
0:09:28 And I went there, that was the only tech,
0:09:28 that was the only conference I went to.
0:09:30 I didn’t go to any tech conference,
0:09:33 any investing conference, I went to a farming conference
0:09:35 because I knew it would put me completely out of my bubble
0:09:36 exposed to a whole bunch of different people
0:09:38 with different thoughts and philosophies
0:09:40 and different views about the world right now.
0:09:41 And I knew I would get new ideas
0:09:43 and sure enough, a business came out of that.
0:09:44 We ended up launching a business,
0:09:46 Milk Road out of that.
0:09:50 And so there was, I’m a big fan of that,
0:09:51 I’m inspired by that.
0:09:53 The only thing I would do differently
0:09:55 is I wouldn’t necessarily just copy what this guy did
0:09:58 and just go get a blue collar job necessarily.
0:10:00 The lesson for me is, think for myself,
0:10:04 what’s my version of this that’s more real to me, right?
0:10:06 That I actually do feel compelled to do
0:10:08 that I would feel excited to do and go do it.
0:10:09 Maybe it would be driving Uber,
0:10:11 maybe it would be going and working at a warehouse,
0:10:12 maybe it’d be something different, I’m not sure,
0:10:16 but this really like sparked something in me
0:10:18 to use my time to go do something like that.
0:10:19 – I completely agree.
0:10:21 – By the way, you know one version of this for me?
0:10:23 It’s either teaching at a school,
0:10:25 like go be a second grade teacher for like a year
0:10:29 or Gordon Bombay and just go coach a team
0:10:31 and go do my version of the Mighty Ducks.
0:10:33 I’ve actually been itching to do this to go
0:10:35 and just coach like a seventh grade boys basketball team
0:10:36 or something.
0:10:37 I did this for a while.
0:10:40 I coached at a, it was actually like a school
0:10:42 for autistic and Asperger’s kids
0:10:43 and I coached their basketball team
0:10:45 and it was like one of the best experiences of my life,
0:10:47 just doing that on the side for fun.
0:10:50 And I think I might go back and try to do something like that.
0:10:51 I think that’d be my version of this.
0:10:54 – Dude, a few weeks ago I emailed this high school
0:10:57 asking if they need like an assistant track and field coach.
0:11:00 And I got, that I was so pumped up about it.
0:11:02 Like this is so filling, this is awesome.
0:11:03 – The best is when they’re like,
0:11:04 you’re not qualified for that.
0:11:06 – Well, yeah, I honestly was a little nervous about that.
0:11:09 But I get like the hours and like what they,
0:11:10 what they demand of me.
0:11:13 And I’m like, that’s a lot of work.
0:11:15 That’s a huge commitment.
0:11:19 So like my inspiration like really quickly like lower down.
0:11:21 So I got to figure out how I’m going to do it.
0:11:22 – Can we finish Scott?
0:11:24 Cause his story that I think is pretty interesting.
0:11:28 So he’s born in a big family.
0:11:30 And like you said, sort of the middle of the country,
0:11:32 I think Illinois or something.
0:11:35 – We just named three different I States by the way.
0:11:37 Illinois, Idaho, sorry, sorry.
0:11:38 I’m from there.
0:11:40 – Somehow we offended all of them
0:11:41 by grouping them all together.
0:11:43 All right, so he’s the youngest of five.
0:11:46 His siblings are like 20 years older than him,
0:11:48 just kind of the way their family dynamics worked.
0:11:51 And so he’s the youngest by like 15 to 20 years.
0:11:54 And he starts his first business when he’s nine.
0:11:55 Do you know what it’s called?
0:11:57 – No, what?
0:11:58 – Scott’s slave service,
0:12:01 which a nine year old can get away with
0:12:03 because he’s basically saying it’s free labor
0:12:05 for my siblings.
0:12:09 And so he’s like, hey, whatever tasks you got, I’m yours.
0:12:11 I will do whatever tasks you have.
0:12:13 But he gets the entrepreneurial bug there,
0:12:14 starts learning to code.
0:12:16 His first job out of college is actually at Sony.
0:12:20 And he tells Sony, he’s like, hey, this is like 94, 95.
0:12:22 He’s like, the internet’s going to be a thing.
0:12:24 And they’re like, okay kid, like whatever you say.
0:12:26 He’s like, no, no, no, you should have like a website.
0:12:27 And they’re like, all right, well,
0:12:29 if you want to build one, go for it, you don’t have at it.
0:12:31 So he ends up building the first website
0:12:33 for like, you know, sony.com.
0:12:36 And he realizes pretty quickly, he’s like, okay,
0:12:37 this ain’t it.
0:12:40 He also, in 93, had started one of the first internet shows,
0:12:42 one of the first podcasts, essentially.
0:12:45 He started his own radio show on the internet,
0:12:47 which is called Advertorial Infotainment.
0:12:49 And he was basically questioning consumer culture.
0:12:52 So he considers himself sort of an anti-consumerist
0:12:53 in many ways.
0:12:56 So he does that, then he does the first thing,
0:12:58 which was that business we called iTraffic,
0:13:01 which is a media buying agency.
0:13:02 And he was joking around like, at the time,
0:13:04 there was really no media to buy on the internet yet,
0:13:07 but he knew people are going to want to advertise
0:13:08 on the internet.
0:13:10 This will make websites have a business model.
0:13:11 So let’s do this.
0:13:13 He sells that thing, 15 million-ish.
0:13:15 – Which by the way, that doesn’t, I mean,
0:13:17 it’s so obvious now, yes, he’s right.
0:13:21 But that’s pretty wild to like be that bold in 94, 95,
0:13:22 to make some of these predictions.
0:13:24 He was, he nailed them.
0:13:25 – He was 100% right.
0:13:26 And he knew that because when he was a teen,
0:13:28 and again, he’s 20 years younger than all his siblings,
0:13:29 he’s got a lot of alone time.
0:13:31 And he’s basically spending it, you know,
0:13:32 programming just for fun.
0:13:35 And he’s just becomes convinced that like computers
0:13:37 and the internet, like this is where it’s at.
0:13:38 Then he does the McDonald’s thing.
0:13:40 And by the way, do we want to read a few of his like,
0:13:43 blog post takeaways from his McDonald’s thing that you sent me?
0:13:44 I thought this was really good.
0:13:47 – Why did, I don’t, you know, we had to use web archive
0:13:48 to find his, this post.
0:13:49 He took it down.
0:13:52 I wish he didn’t, it’s fantastic.
0:13:53 – Well, we still got it.
0:13:54 We’ll show some of the pictures on here.
0:13:56 He’s got like a picture of like his burn from the fire,
0:13:58 the fry machine and stuff like that on his arm.
0:13:59 But like, here’s one of them.
0:14:02 So he goes, nobody, number four, nobody thanked me.
0:14:04 I worked hard, I got paid peanuts.
0:14:05 I even ate McDonald’s during my food break,
0:14:06 deducted from my pay.
0:14:07 It was intense.
0:14:09 The cash register was complex.
0:14:10 The people want their food now.
0:14:11 The lines get deep.
0:14:12 The McFlurry must be made just right.
0:14:14 I was trying hard and I was doing an okay job.
0:14:16 Now I’ve been a leader and a manager for most of my life.
0:14:17 I’ve had plenty of crap jobs,
0:14:20 but I’ve been the boss for the past few years.
0:14:21 And I faithfully read Fast Company Magazine
0:14:22 and my Harvard Business Review.
0:14:25 And I’ve read the countless times that the value
0:14:27 of a leader or manager showing appreciation
0:14:28 for people’s effort.
0:14:30 However, my instinct has been often
0:14:32 that showing appreciation really isn’t too necessary
0:14:33 or good for people.
0:14:35 They just take pride in a job well done.
0:14:37 And they could read my mind and see the appreciation.
0:14:39 Well, from day one at McDonald’s,
0:14:40 I was yearning for someone just to say thanks
0:14:43 or you’re even doing okay, it would have been sufficient.
0:14:45 But no, neither management experience
0:14:46 nor reading about management teaches this lesson
0:14:48 in the same way as feeling it,
0:14:50 being an underappreciated employee.
0:14:54 – So I read that a few hours ago when I was getting ready
0:14:55 and I went and messaged a bunch of employees
0:14:58 and I said, you’re doing great.
0:14:59 – You’re doing great.
0:15:00 – You’re doing okay.
0:15:04 – Because everyone should go and read this post.
0:15:05 It is, this is awesome.
0:15:08 This is a very inspiring thing.
0:15:09 – Yeah, he talks about the dollar
0:15:10 and a bunch of things.
0:15:12 Okay, so he does that.
0:15:15 – By the way, if you look on this page,
0:15:18 he left his phone number in the photo of the application.
0:15:21 I texted him, I’m gonna try it.
0:15:23 Well, I’ll try to get him on.
0:15:24 – Yeah, I would love that.
0:15:25 Scott, come on, that’d be amazing.
0:15:27 So then he has this next period where he’s like,
0:15:28 he’s got 30 ideas.
0:15:29 He’s like, what do I want to do next?
0:15:31 He’s got 30 ideas.
0:15:33 And have you read the story
0:15:35 about kind of how he narrowed that down to two?
0:15:37 – Was it the September 11th story?
0:15:38 – Yes, exactly.
0:15:41 So he lives a few miles away from the Twin Towers.
0:15:43 So September 11th happens.
0:15:46 He sees the planes hitting the building.
0:15:47 And I think the story was like,
0:15:49 he was kind of on the rooftop of his building
0:15:50 or he’s outside of his building.
0:15:53 And it was the first time he had ever met any of his neighbors.
0:15:55 Like he’d been living there for a while.
0:15:56 He just didn’t know anyone.
0:15:58 And this, now that they were all outside
0:15:59 and they’re seeing this crazy thing,
0:16:01 they’re all talking, they’re meeting.
0:16:03 And he was like kind of struck by men.
0:16:07 I really live a pretty like solo life
0:16:09 and I’m just on the internet.
0:16:12 And he had had a couple of other experiences
0:16:14 that kind of triggered him in that.
0:16:15 So there’s the September 11th thing.
0:16:18 A week later, he reads this book called “Bowling Alone”.
0:16:20 And I guess this book has big impact on him
0:16:21 because he then ends up giving this
0:16:23 to every meetup employee.
0:16:25 And “Bowling Alone” was just basically a book
0:16:26 about statistics and he’s honest.
0:16:27 He’s like, I didn’t even read the whole thing.
0:16:29 But he’s like, the beginning of the book
0:16:32 makes a very clear point that more and more
0:16:34 we’re doing less things with other people,
0:16:38 which the less interaction you have with strangers
0:16:41 causes you to trust strangers less,
0:16:43 which then causes you to spend less time with them.
0:16:45 And it’s this terrible cycle that we go into.
0:16:47 And he’s like, then he notices in his own life,
0:16:50 he’s a big fan of this band, Aluna.
0:16:52 And he goes to a bunch of their shows
0:16:52 and they’re a small band.
0:16:53 And so he ends up, he’s like,
0:16:57 dude, I’m in like conference centers at a hotel, Ballroom B.
0:16:59 And he’s like, I’m listening to the band play.
0:17:01 And he’s like, you know, I used to just go alone.
0:17:04 I would, you know, kind of the answer saying alone,
0:17:05 I’d go home alone.
0:17:06 He’s like, but soon enough, you know,
0:17:08 I started to see some other faces there
0:17:09 that were the other regulars.
0:17:11 So like there were many of us who were big fans of this band,
0:17:13 but he’s like, we still didn’t talk to each other that much
0:17:16 because it wasn’t clear that it was okay
0:17:17 to go talk to each other.
0:17:19 So that’s where he decides.
0:17:21 He narrows down his list of ideas from 30 to two.
0:17:24 One of them is meetup where he’s like,
0:17:25 well, what if we made it where the internet
0:17:27 could help people meet up in real life
0:17:29 and we could solve this bowling alone problem
0:17:31 where people interact more with strangers,
0:17:33 which increases their trust in strangers,
0:17:34 which increases the amount of time
0:17:36 they’re willing to talk to other people
0:17:38 and make it okay to just have these real life interactions
0:17:40 even with the internet.
0:17:43 The second one, which he hasn’t talked about too much,
0:17:44 is something called photo log.
0:17:45 Did you see this?
0:17:47 It’s like a flicker like service.
0:17:48 – Yeah, he was early, man.
0:17:50 He was too early.
0:17:51 – He was super early.
0:17:53 I think he sold it for like 90 million bucks or something.
0:17:55 So he did well with it.
0:17:56 It was like the biggest social network
0:17:57 in certain countries around the world,
0:18:00 but then flicker came out and flicker was growing faster.
0:18:02 And then the next wave of social networks came out.
0:18:05 – I saw him describe it as Instagram before Instagram,
0:18:08 but I didn’t know that it was that financially successful.
0:18:09 That’s amazing.
0:18:11 – Yeah, so he did really well with that as well.
0:18:14 And so he sells that company.
0:18:17 – Does he start meetup and photo log at the same time?
0:18:18 – That’s a good question.
0:18:19 I’m not sure if it was the exact same time.
0:18:22 I know there were, yeah, somewhat in tandem.
0:18:24 There were sort of like either same time
0:18:26 or very close to each other.
0:18:29 And so he does meetup, meetup starts growing.
0:18:31 And then he makes a pretty controversial move,
0:18:36 which is he decides not to make meetup business model just ads.
0:18:38 He’s like, no, I’m gonna charge people for the service,
0:18:39 which at the time was like very anti,
0:18:42 again, he goes counter to the main mainstream
0:18:43 of what everybody else was doing
0:18:45 with their websites at the time.
0:18:47 And traffic drops off like 95%.
0:18:49 But he’s like, he stays with it.
0:18:51 He’s like, I believe that this is the sustainable path
0:18:54 for this is like the people who are organizing these meetups,
0:18:56 they should pay a fee because they’re the ones
0:18:57 kind of hosting it, getting the value.
0:18:59 It’ll keep the quality bar high.
0:19:00 So let’s do that.
0:19:04 And he survives the big 90% drop in usage
0:19:07 and meetup becomes a profitable sustainable business.
0:19:09 And it goes on for a long time until they sell for,
0:19:11 to we work for, I don’t know, 150 to 200 million bucks.
0:19:15 By the way, I have a friend, Greg, who used to work at,
0:19:17 he also got acquired by we work.
0:19:18 And so I texted Greg this morning and I was like, Greg,
0:19:21 you got any stories about this guy, Scott?
0:19:22 He goes, I got one.
0:19:26 And so he goes, I get to we work and Scott tells me,
0:19:30 hey, meet me at 555 Broadway at 6pm.
0:19:34 And then I go, okay, he texts me right before he goes,
0:19:37 by the way, clear your calendar for the night.
0:19:39 Okay, I don’t know what’s going to happen here,
0:19:41 but like, all right, I’m interested, I’m game.
0:19:44 So he shows up and there’s just a white van
0:19:45 with five other people in it.
0:19:47 He’s like, all right, I’m going to die.
0:19:48 I don’t know what’s happening tonight,
0:19:50 but I guess tonight’s the night I die.
0:19:54 And Scott walks in, tells the driver, let’s go.
0:19:57 And then he says, hey, you’re new here
0:20:00 and I want to do something I do with everybody who’s new,
0:20:03 which is we’re going to go crash five or six meetups tonight.
0:20:04 And you’re going to get to actually like,
0:20:08 go experience them firsthand, first day, let’s go.
0:20:10 And so he was just taking six kind of new people
0:20:12 in the company to go and they crashed
0:20:14 like a Harry Potter meetup
0:20:16 and then like a women with diabetes meetup.
0:20:17 And they went to six different meetups that night
0:20:20 and they stayed out all night basically at this thing.
0:20:22 And Greg was like, dude, I’ll never forget that.
0:20:24 Such a cool founder move to do that
0:20:26 and to kind of stay in the community,
0:20:29 stay like amongst the users and the people
0:20:30 and to make that part of the culture
0:20:31 for new people that are in the company.
0:20:32 How awesome is that?
0:20:34 Dude, this guy is amazing.
0:20:35 I love him.
0:20:37 So good, right?
0:20:39 Yeah, and that he’s been in the game for so long
0:20:43 and that he’s still, he’s not like a high and mighty executive.
0:20:44 You know what I mean?
0:20:47 Like he still kind of seems like he’s in it.
0:20:48 Well, and then it takes another twist.
0:20:52 Meetup then gets carved out of WeWork.
0:20:53 And so this brings up,
0:20:56 this connects two other data points of our podcast.
0:20:58 So on the episode with Jeremy Giffin,
0:21:01 he talked about one of his biggest
0:21:05 like underrated opportunities right now is messy carve outs.
0:21:07 What he meant was that sometimes there’s companies
0:21:09 that an acquisition happens
0:21:13 and usually like either, you know, a year later or so,
0:21:16 the company realizes that, hey, of all the assets,
0:21:18 they didn’t really want one of the assets
0:21:21 or that the company that acquires it starts to go South
0:21:24 and this good company they bought
0:21:26 is embedded inside of a bad company.
0:21:28 And this is exactly what happened with Meetup.
0:21:30 So they buy, WeWork buys Meetup for, I don’t know,
0:21:34 $150, $200 million, but then Meetup itself,
0:21:37 or sorry, WeWork itself becomes, you know, a dumpster fire.
0:21:41 But Meetup was still a good asset inside of this dumpster fire.
0:21:44 And so here comes a guest of the pod, Kevin Ryan,
0:21:46 who’s been on the podcast,
0:21:49 came in and actually bought Meetup for peanuts
0:21:50 out of that sale.
0:21:54 – I remember looking, I mean, I didn’t have like the finances
0:21:55 at the time to be able to afford it.
0:21:57 But someone was like, hey, do you want to get it on this?
0:21:59 And I was like, yeah, this is like super interesting.
0:22:00 – Yeah, actually on the podcast,
0:22:01 I think you shared the numbers, right?
0:22:02 – Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:22:05 And I didn’t think that it was going to be Kevin Ryan.
0:22:06 It was a bunch of like, you know,
0:22:09 I’m not even in the ballpark to be able to afford
0:22:11 whatever it was, but I was like, you know,
0:22:12 maybe I could throw in just a small amount of money
0:22:14 to like a group of people who are trying to buy it.
0:22:15 And I thought it was very interesting.
0:22:18 And then lo and behold, the man, Kevin Ryan, comes in
0:22:22 and if he comes in, like to me, he’s a really good signal,
0:22:24 something is interesting here.
0:22:28 – So he bought it and then they put in a CEO,
0:22:31 they turned it around, it’s like profitable
0:22:32 and they just did a great job with it.
0:22:35 They got a great, it turned out to be a great investment
0:22:35 for them.
0:22:37 – Is it a big business?
0:22:39 Or is it just like a pretty good business
0:22:42 that’s just not automated, but like, it just,
0:22:43 we’ll see what happens, you know,
0:22:45 it’ll grow 15% a year maybe.
0:22:47 – Yeah, so I mean, it’s all relative, right?
0:22:49 So it’s a, it’s a better business
0:22:50 than any business I’ve ever built.
0:22:51 However, in the grand scheme of things,
0:22:53 I know what you’re, I know what question you’re asking,
0:22:55 which is like, is this some sort of rocket ship type
0:22:57 of crazy billion dollar business?
0:22:58 I don’t know, I don’t think so.
0:22:59 It looks like it’s a-
0:23:01 – Flow and steady.
0:23:04 – Flow and steady, profitable, cash flowing business
0:23:05 that’s good for humanity.
0:23:07 So in that sense, it’s an awesome business.
0:23:09 – Yeah, I think this guy’s the man.
0:23:11 I think he’s absolutely awesome.
0:23:12 You should listen to the podcast.
0:23:16 It’s called internet misfits, I think, that he was on.
0:23:18 And he’s the definition of an internet misfit.
0:23:21 And he talks a little bit about his time at Amazon.
0:23:22 He’s a cool guy.
0:23:23 This guy’s really fascinating.
0:23:24 He’s a fascinating dude.
0:23:27 And I always, I’ve recognized this guy forever, you know,
0:23:28 when you and I were just getting going the internet,
0:23:30 that was when meetup was in its heyday.
0:23:31 And I would go to so many meetups.
0:23:33 I actually started my event, HustleCon,
0:23:35 because of meetup.com.
0:23:38 I created a small meetup event on meetup.com.
0:23:39 I got a lot of free users that way.
0:23:41 That’s how I built my email list.
0:23:42 I love meetup.com.
0:23:43 I like this guy, Scott.
0:23:45 We gotta have him on board.
0:23:47 – Yeah, by the way, internet misfits,
0:23:48 that’s a great podcast name.
0:23:51 If we didn’t have such a cringe name,
0:23:52 that could have been ours.
0:23:54 That would have been a great name for us.
0:23:56 – Let me, can I tell you about a different story?
0:23:57 – Yeah.
0:23:59 – Sort of actually similar to Scott going to McDonald’s.
0:24:03 So have you ever heard of, you’re weird with your pop culture.
0:24:05 I don’t know what you do and do not know,
0:24:07 ’cause you don’t know many things about pop culture.
0:24:09 Have you ever heard of Rosie the Riveter?
0:24:10 – No.
0:24:15 So basically in the early 1940s, America goes to war.
0:24:19 All the men between 18 and 35 go off and serve the war.
0:24:24 So there’s this huge need for manufacturers
0:24:25 or workers in manufacturing plants
0:24:28 to go and create like B-17s, like these bombers
0:24:30 or whatever we’re making.
0:24:32 Not only just what we were making before,
0:24:34 but now we have to make all these weapons
0:24:36 and all these supplies.
0:24:37 They needed to get young women,
0:24:41 which who never worked before to come and work in factories
0:24:43 and they needed to make it look cool.
0:24:44 And so they had these ads,
0:24:46 like if you can work an electric mixer,
0:24:48 you can work a drill.
0:24:50 And so they would like do all these like things
0:24:52 to get young women to entice them to come into the workforce.
0:24:53 And then Westinghouse,
0:24:56 which at the time was like a huge manufacturing company,
0:24:59 they created this campaign called Rosie,
0:25:01 the name of the character was Rosie the Riveter.
0:25:03 And the ad says, yes, we can.
0:25:05 And it was like, yes, young women,
0:25:06 you got to come and do this.
0:25:07 You owe it to your country
0:25:09 and you’re a strong young woman.
0:25:10 You should come and do this.
0:25:12 And so at the time before the war,
0:25:15 I think something like two million women worked
0:25:17 after that campaign went live.
0:25:19 It was something like 20 million young women went
0:25:20 and got jobs.
0:25:23 And so it was very like a women empowerment type of thing,
0:25:25 but also like push America forward.
0:25:26 And so it was incredibly effective.
0:25:29 And by the way, you should see the ads in the 1950s.
0:25:31 It’s called back to normalcy.
0:25:35 And it was like, what does Rosie do now that the war is over?
0:25:36 And it’s very much like,
0:25:37 we’re going to sell you this refrigerator.
0:25:38 And there’s all these ads like,
0:25:41 what should Rosie do with strawberries on a summer day?
0:25:44 And it’s like, make like a strawberry shortcake.
0:25:45 So it’s like pretty crazy how like-
0:25:47 – So who was paying for these ads?
0:25:48 Is this the government
0:25:51 or the first part made me think it’s the manufacturing companies?
0:25:52 – Both.
0:25:55 – But then why would they pay for Rosie back to the kitchen?
0:25:56 I don’t understand that part.
0:25:59 – Well, because, I mean, obviously like sexism,
0:26:02 but like when the, when the,
0:26:03 originally it was Westinghouse
0:26:04 and a bunch of other manufacturers
0:26:08 did these campaigns to convince women to come work for them.
0:26:10 But then also the government,
0:26:12 you know, it’s propaganda is what it is,
0:26:14 but it’s like good propaganda where they would do this stuff.
0:26:15 It’s like, you know, we all have to do this together.
0:26:18 And so the government did it as well as private companies.
0:26:20 And so the company that did Rosie the river was,
0:26:21 it’s called Westinghouse.
0:26:23 It was a large manufacturer.
0:26:24 Rosie the river, by the way,
0:26:27 is one of the most recognized images in American history.
0:26:28 And it’s in the Smithsonian.
0:26:30 It’s like a big deal because it was like a turning point
0:26:32 for American feminism, things like this,
0:26:34 but also like the war.
0:26:36 But yeah, you should see the ads in the fifties
0:26:38 when they’re like, all right, the men are back,
0:26:40 back to normalcy.
0:26:41 That was the campaign was back to normalcy.
0:26:43 But the reason I’m saying this is,
0:26:45 back then in the forties and fifties,
0:26:46 you know, we were kind of booming with manufacturing.
0:26:48 In fact, have you heard of the rust belt?
0:26:49 Have you heard that phrase, the rust belt?
0:26:50 – I have heard that one.
0:26:52 – That refers to where I’m from.
0:26:56 Missouri, places like St. Louis, Cleveland, Chicago,
0:26:57 things like that.
0:27:00 Before it was called the rust belt in the fifties and sixties,
0:27:02 it was called the steel belt
0:27:04 because that’s where we manufactured everything.
0:27:07 And then the name changed to the rust belt,
0:27:09 meaning all these old rusty factories
0:27:10 that no one uses anymore.
0:27:13 And so that’s actually how the name came to be.
0:27:15 Now, where I’m getting with all of this,
0:27:19 there’s this company that is called Blue Forge.
0:27:22 They created this ad that is the best ad
0:27:24 that I’ve seen in years.
0:27:28 And so the ad is basically all about this gig economy
0:27:31 and how it like crushes your soul
0:27:33 because when Rosie the Riveter,
0:27:35 so they call them Rosie the Riveters.
0:27:37 That’s like the women who are working in these factories.
0:27:39 They interviewed a bunch of them when they were older
0:27:42 and they were like, we built this B17,
0:27:43 which is a large bomber.
0:27:46 And we saw it roll off the manufacturing line
0:27:48 and we had so much pride.
0:27:49 We were helping America,
0:27:51 but also we were working together to achieve this task.
0:27:54 We felt amazing about ourselves.
0:27:57 Now, this ad basically shows like when you’re driving Uber
0:27:59 and things like that, you feel shitty.
0:28:00 You have people complaining,
0:28:01 you’re not working towards a common goal.
0:28:04 And so this company, Blue Forge,
0:28:06 it was put together, I think in,
0:28:09 I believe the Navy funded it.
0:28:12 And what they’re trying to do is to convince young Americans
0:28:14 to go back to manufacturing jobs.
0:28:16 Or they don’t mean to do this,
0:28:18 but it sort of does it, go back to trade jobs.
0:28:20 So basically things that where you work with your hand
0:28:24 to rebuild manufacturing in America.
0:28:26 And I saw this ad and I did a little bit of research
0:28:28 on what’s going on with like the reindustrialization
0:28:29 of America.
0:28:31 It’s incredibly fascinating.
0:28:32 This ad is so good.
0:28:35 And it’s trying to make these manufacturing jobs,
0:28:38 which don’t even exist that much right now.
0:28:41 But if they do exist, they’re like unsexy as shit.
0:28:43 Like they’re not cool.
0:28:44 And what this company is doing
0:28:46 is they are trying to make it look cool
0:28:48 and they are totally succeeding.
0:28:51 And you’re seeing this a little bit with Andrew.
0:28:52 You know Andrew?
0:28:53 – Yeah.
0:28:58 – So Palmer Lucky’s defense business in Orange County,
0:29:00 where it’s cool again to work in factories.
0:29:02 It’s cool again to make stuff.
0:29:05 And I 100% buy into this premise.
0:29:06 And I think it is so great.
0:29:08 And I was thinking about like different ideas
0:29:10 and things like that.
0:29:11 But a really simple one,
0:29:13 if you refer someone to some of these jobs,
0:29:16 you can earn up to $500.
0:29:19 And so it’s actually like a pretty interesting opportunity.
0:29:22 If you just Google like trade jobs or manufacturing jobs,
0:29:24 you go to the website, they kind of look silly.
0:29:25 They’re not like that enticing.
0:29:26 There’s no like sex appeal,
0:29:28 which inherently like these jobs,
0:29:29 I think are quite romantic.
0:29:31 Like they are, it is really cool.
0:29:34 You can make them seem and appear really cool
0:29:35 because I think they actually are.
0:29:39 And a lot of them will pay $30, $40 an hour,
0:29:41 depending on what it is, particularly the trades,
0:29:43 which are incredibly popular right now at Gen Z on TikTok.
0:29:47 But I just thought this ad was so awesome.
0:29:48 – Yeah, it’s an amazing ad.
0:29:50 It just shows kind of like,
0:29:51 do you want to spend your whole life running around
0:29:53 doing tasks for other people?
0:29:56 Basically being a delivery person.
0:29:58 Or, and then the doors open
0:30:00 and the manufacturing is happening and it’s like,
0:30:02 you could, or you could step into here
0:30:03 and really build something.
0:30:07 And it’s a really, really well done ad.
0:30:08 – Yeah, it’s badass.
0:30:11 And I think originally, so that company, Blue Forge,
0:30:14 I think they’re built around the submarine industry.
0:30:16 Apparently they couldn’t get enough people
0:30:17 to work on submarines.
0:30:19 And so they won these huge contracts
0:30:22 to help them get more submarine workers.
0:30:25 And that’s something I never even
0:30:26 would have thought exists, right?
0:30:27 But it does.
0:30:28 – Yeah, really cool.
0:30:28 I hope this happens.
0:30:32 I hope America shifts back too much more of a,
0:30:35 we build things here, culture,
0:30:36 which I think they’re trying to do,
0:30:40 Tesla Space X being based here,
0:30:42 I think is really awesome and real.
0:30:44 I think that then there’s the Chips Act,
0:30:45 which is trying to build a giant chip factory,
0:30:49 like the, you know, instead of being reliant on Taiwan.
0:30:51 So there’s an effort to try to do
0:30:53 kind of modern manufacturing here.
0:30:56 I really wanna do an episode where we go down to,
0:30:58 what’s it called, like El Segundo or whatever.
0:30:59 There’s 10 interesting companies
0:31:01 all in this like one block.
0:31:04 Our buddy, John Cougan did an amazing video,
0:31:06 worth watching, 17 minutes.
0:31:09 And it’s basically, he goes to this area of El Segundo,
0:31:11 where he’s like, “You got SpaceX,
0:31:13 “Redeon Nuclear, VARDA, ABL Space Systems.”
0:31:14 There’s like a whole bunch of companies
0:31:16 all in this one area.
0:31:18 And he went and he hung out with them.
0:31:21 He took a camera and a crew out there.
0:31:22 It’s worth checking out.
0:31:23 It’s, I think, pretty inspiring.
0:31:26 And it’s, you know, there are these hotbeds, right?
0:31:27 There’s like AI hotbeds.
0:31:28 There’s crypto hotbeds.
0:31:30 And then it’s like, where is the kind of like
0:31:32 hard tech hotbed?
0:31:33 And it seems like this is the answer.
0:31:35 And if you’re interested in that or you’re doing that,
0:31:38 or you just wanna just go feel that energy,
0:31:39 I think it’s cool to watch the videos
0:31:41 or go visit a place like this.
0:31:42 – And it is happening, by the way,
0:31:46 like the Toyota Tundras are made in Texas.
0:31:48 And so if you’re in Texas and you see a Tundra,
0:31:51 a lot of them have a made in Texas sign.
0:31:53 And also when I lived in Nashville, Tennessee,
0:31:56 I lived like 10 miles from the Nissan plant.
0:31:57 And I remember thinking like,
0:31:59 I used to think like, made in America, man,
0:32:00 I had to get a Ford.
0:32:02 It’s like, this Nissan is just as made in America
0:32:03 as anything else.
0:32:06 And so like, it’s definitely happening.
0:32:07 But I think that there’s like,
0:32:09 there’s an interesting group of people
0:32:10 who are making it seem very sexy.
0:32:11 And I dig that.
0:32:16 – So here’s the deal.
0:32:19 I made most of my money from a newsletter business.
0:32:20 It was called The Hustle.
0:32:22 And it was a daily newsletter at scale
0:32:23 to millions of subscribers.
0:32:25 And it was the greatest business on earth.
0:32:29 The problem with it was that I had close to 40 employees
0:32:32 and only three of them were actually doing any writing.
0:32:34 The other employees were growing the newsletter,
0:32:37 building out the tech for the platform and selling ads.
0:32:39 And honestly, it was a huge pain in the butt.
0:32:42 Today’s episode is brought to you by Beehive.
0:32:46 They are a platform that is built exactly for this.
0:32:47 If you want to grow your newsletter,
0:32:48 if you want to monetize a newsletter,
0:32:50 they do all of the stuff
0:32:52 that I had to hire dozens of employees to do.
0:32:57 So check it out, beehive.com, that’s B-E-E-H-I-I-V.com.
0:33:02 – You wanna do one more thing?
0:33:04 – Yeah, I got one related one.
0:33:08 So there’s a thing that Elon talks about
0:33:12 that I think more people should hear.
0:33:15 Have you heard Elon talk about his problem solving method,
0:33:17 his five step problem solving method?
0:33:20 – No, but it’s like step four, like have kids or something.
0:33:25 – He said he’s got 12 kids, by the way, which is impressive.
0:33:27 So he talks about the, I think, I don’t know,
0:33:28 the last one was Lex Friedman talking about it,
0:33:30 but he’s said this many times over the years,
0:33:32 which is a good signal,
0:33:34 ’cause it’s kind of like more fundamental to his philosophy.
0:33:35 He’s been talking about it for a while.
0:33:37 And Lex asked him, he goes,
0:33:38 how do you engineer great things, right?
0:33:40 You’re building rockets that can land on themselves.
0:33:43 You’re building the best electric cars on the planet.
0:33:45 You just did the neural link chip in the guy’s brain
0:33:47 and now the guy’s like playing civilization.
0:33:50 Using his brain to control the computer game.
0:33:55 Is there some general process you do that works this?
0:33:58 And Elon said the following five steps.
0:34:03 He goes, step one, question the requirements.
0:34:06 And all of this was born out of pain, by the way,
0:34:06 of not doing this.
0:34:09 He goes, so question the requirements means,
0:34:11 do we need to do this at all?
0:34:13 If we need to do this, how exactly do we need to do this?
0:34:15 Like before you go in and just build a solution
0:34:18 to the first prompt that people have of like,
0:34:20 oh, we need X, we need to do Y, right?
0:34:22 He, instead of just immediately jumping to it
0:34:24 and saying, I can build it, I could do it.
0:34:26 It’s your first really drill down.
0:34:28 And you try to make the requirements
0:34:30 as true and simple as possible.
0:34:33 So you try to figure out what is actually needed.
0:34:34 What are the, what are the requirements?
0:34:35 Why is that the requirement?
0:34:36 All that’s up.
0:34:39 So that’s the step one, question the requirements.
0:34:43 Step two is basically like delete.
0:34:46 And so he’s like, he goes, the biggest mistake
0:34:48 that smart people make is optimizing something
0:34:50 that shouldn’t have existed in the first place.
0:34:51 And I thought this was the best point
0:34:53 that he made in this whole thing.
0:34:55 He goes, in my companies, we will try to,
0:34:58 if it’s a machine, we’ll try to delete a part.
0:35:00 Can we do it without this part altogether?
0:35:01 Rather than trying to make that part work
0:35:03 or lower the cost of the part,
0:35:06 can we get rid of the part and will the thing still work?
0:35:09 If it’s a process inside your company,
0:35:10 instead of trying to optimize the process,
0:35:11 what happens if you delete the process?
0:35:13 Or there’s a role in the company.
0:35:14 Could you delete the role?
0:35:17 And what he says is that just like the government
0:35:20 always adds new rules and regulations
0:35:23 and that’s why the tax code book is this thick.
0:35:25 And actually it’s because we add
0:35:27 far more than we ever subtract.
0:35:28 And this happens in big companies too.
0:35:31 And every big company, you add people and processes
0:35:34 and more requirements to every single thing.
0:35:37 Very rarely is there any like trash cleaning function
0:35:39 that gets rid of the bottom 20%.
0:35:40 We’re willing to add 20%.
0:35:44 We’re very rarely getting willing to get rid of 20%.
0:35:46 So he talks about how when you remove,
0:35:49 he goes, this is a limbic system override.
0:35:52 He goes, because our brains are wired
0:35:55 so that we are kind of hoarders by nature.
0:35:57 We’re afraid to get rid of something
0:35:58 because we’re worried something bad will happen.
0:36:00 And then if you ever get rid of something
0:36:03 and one time out of 10, you really needed it.
0:36:06 And it turns out that removing was a bad thing.
0:36:09 When we add it back, our brain basically inflames right away.
0:36:12 And we’re like, oh my God, see, and we over correct.
0:36:14 And then the next time we’re way more hesitant
0:36:16 to get rid of something just because we all remember
0:36:17 that one time that we got rid of that thing
0:36:19 and we ended up needing it.
0:36:22 And by the way, I’m going on a family vacation.
0:36:24 My wife is like, literally, I told her,
0:36:26 I was like, I think you’re trying to take our house
0:36:29 and just bring it with us on vacation.
0:36:30 This is not how packing is supposed to go.
0:36:33 And she’s like, well, we might need this one thing
0:36:34 or we can’t get rid of that.
0:36:36 And I’m like, I’m watching my wife pack.
0:36:37 I’m listening to this Elon thing.
0:36:39 And I’m like, this is true, not just in business,
0:36:43 but in life, which is that we will always remember
0:36:46 the one thing that we decided to remove that we needed,
0:36:48 even though nine out of 10 times,
0:36:49 you could have got away with it.
0:36:51 – Dude, but I think he removes too much stuff.
0:36:53 Like I have a Tesla.
0:36:56 Sometimes you don’t even need to like switch into reverse.
0:36:57 Like it automatically does that.
0:36:59 And you also don’t have any buttons.
0:37:01 You know, it’s just a screen.
0:37:02 I want the damn button.
0:37:03 I don’t want the damn screen.
0:37:04 You know what I mean?
0:37:05 He removes a lot of stuff.
0:37:06 – I mean, look at the iPhone, right?
0:37:08 Most successful product all the time.
0:37:10 When they came out and they removed the keyboard,
0:37:11 people were freaking out.
0:37:13 Then they removed the home button.
0:37:14 I remember being like, you got rid of the home button
0:37:15 or are you nuts?
0:37:16 Like this is crazy.
0:37:17 And they got rid of the home button.
0:37:19 Then they got rid of the port.
0:37:20 And they got rid of this, right?
0:37:23 They keep the best companies in the world actually do this.
0:37:26 The thing he says, he goes, we measure basically,
0:37:30 if we are not adding back at least 10% of the time,
0:37:33 the thing that we removed, either a process in the company,
0:37:36 a role in the company or a part of the product,
0:37:37 a feature of the product.
0:37:39 If we’re not adding back at least 10% of the time,
0:37:41 that means we have not been removing enough.
0:37:42 And so that’s his benchmark.
0:37:45 And he goes, that is the only, like we set that as a target
0:37:48 in the same way that when you set goals
0:37:51 and you’re any good company, if you set goals,
0:37:53 you do not want to hit the goals 100% of the time
0:37:55 because that means you were being way too cautious
0:37:56 with your goals.
0:37:57 You were not being ambitious enough.
0:38:00 Nor do you want to hit your goals 0% of the time
0:38:01 because that means you were being way too unrealistic
0:38:02 about your goals.
0:38:04 And so most people, like at Amazon,
0:38:05 they were saying, whenever we worked out there,
0:38:08 like you want to hit 70% of your goals.
0:38:11 70% of your goals means you’re stretching enough,
0:38:13 but you’re also not over-stretching and being unrealistic
0:38:14 about what you’re going to achieve
0:38:18 and building a culture of disappointing expectations.
0:38:21 And so Elon talks about that as like step two,
0:38:22 is to remove a thing.
0:38:24 You look like you got a reaction to that.
0:38:25 I love it.
0:38:26 It’s hard to do.
0:38:30 Like, not only do I know people react negatively to that,
0:38:32 like any company I’ve been at ’cause I’ve done the same thing,
0:38:34 I react to sometimes negatively of like,
0:38:35 well, it’s working.
0:38:36 Why break it and remove it?
0:38:38 You know what I mean?
0:38:39 I agree fundamentally with it.
0:38:42 It’s very challenging to do.
0:38:44 – Simple but hard, exactly.
0:38:46 There’s other steps in the process.
0:38:50 So he talks about, you know, then you want to simplify,
0:38:54 then you want to, you know, automate.
0:38:55 Automate is kind of the last step, basically,
0:38:57 of the five that he talks about.
0:38:59 He’s like, you know, I can’t tell you how many times
0:39:01 I’ve done this backwards.
0:39:03 You know, I start off trying to automate a process
0:39:05 and then I try to, you know, speed it up.
0:39:07 Then I start to simplify and then I try to,
0:39:09 then he’s like, basically at the end,
0:39:11 I realized I just needed to remove it in the first place.
0:39:12 It wasn’t even the right thing.
0:39:16 And then I finally questioned the requirement last.
0:39:19 He’s like, I got tired of doing that wrong so many times
0:39:22 that I made this as my process so that I can,
0:39:24 I make sure I don’t fall into that trap again.
0:39:27 And there’s a famous story of the Tesla manufacturing plant
0:39:30 where he tried to create basically a robo factory
0:39:31 right off the jump.
0:39:32 He’s like, oh, why do we need to do all this?
0:39:33 We’ll just automate the whole thing.
0:39:36 And they basically almost killed the company
0:39:38 by trying to overdo the automation at the start
0:39:41 rather than doing that at the end of the process.
0:39:42 – Dude, that’s pretty fascinating.
0:39:44 I’m not a fan of Elon’s personality.
0:39:46 I’m a huge fan of his work.
0:39:48 I like to read these old books,
0:39:50 like particularly about the gilded age
0:39:51 and all these industrialists.
0:39:52 And I’m reading one about Andrew Carnegie,
0:39:55 who’s one of my favorite guys to read about.
0:39:57 And he was a really big deal because back then
0:39:59 no business people would ever talk publicly
0:40:01 or they would write publicly about this.
0:40:04 And he wrote a book and it was considered groundbreaking
0:40:07 that one of these rich guys actually shared ideas.
0:40:11 It’s compared to now it’s the barrier to entry
0:40:12 is so low for sharing ideas.
0:40:14 It is pretty awesome that we get to like learn
0:40:16 and get all these good insights to people
0:40:20 who are doing amazing and big things.
0:40:22 – Totally, this happens right now in sports, by the way,
0:40:25 like the Olympics is going on and you see,
0:40:26 there’s like the Netflix documentary
0:40:28 about the sprinters, right?
0:40:30 But there’s also one about quarterbacks and receivers.
0:40:32 And you get to see how these people live,
0:40:34 how they prepare, how they recover, right?
0:40:37 I’m doing an episode or a series of,
0:40:38 my new email series called Good Friday,
0:40:39 we just did one together,
0:40:41 but the next one that’s coming out
0:40:44 or in a couple of weeks is with Mike Mancias.
0:40:46 He’s LeBron’s trainer of 20 years.
0:40:47 – No way.
0:40:50 – He met LeBron when LeBron was 19 years old.
0:40:52 He’s been his trainer now, LeBron’s 39 years old.
0:40:56 And he’s had the best longevity of any basketball player
0:40:59 really ever, like playing at a peak level
0:41:01 for 20 straight years is insane.
0:41:04 – Longevity, physically and emotionally.
0:41:06 I’m shocked that guy has not screwed up.
0:41:06 – Well, yeah, exactly.
0:41:08 I mean, he’s been a model citizen, right?
0:41:09 Like since, and he’s like,
0:41:11 in many ways a child star, right?
0:41:13 You know how screwed up most child actors are
0:41:14 or child stars are.
0:41:16 This guy was on the cover of sports illustrated
0:41:17 at like 15 or 16 years old.
0:41:19 And it said the chosen one
0:41:22 and somehow did not get all screwed up from that, right?
0:41:23 Has like, you know, great kids, great wife,
0:41:25 you know, like has a great life,
0:41:28 never been in trouble with the law, none of that stuff.
0:41:29 So really incredible.
0:41:31 And one of the things he talks about is like,
0:41:33 or in doing the series, I was like, man,
0:41:36 I’m getting access to information that 30 years ago,
0:41:38 I feel like people just didn’t have access to this, right?
0:41:41 You didn’t know what the guys did for their pre-game nutrition
0:41:44 and for their post-game recovery and how they train.
0:41:46 But now it’s filmed, now it’s documented.
0:41:49 Now the skills trainers have their own Instagram.
0:41:50 And so if you’re a young basketball player,
0:41:52 the blueprint is there.
0:41:55 The access to information is there now
0:41:58 because of the way that everything is documented
0:41:59 on social media or in interviews
0:42:01 where you now have access to information
0:42:03 like you would have never had before.
0:42:04 – Which by the way, if you watch the Olympics,
0:42:06 particularly running is the easiest one
0:42:08 because it’s a very like clear standard
0:42:09 where you’re like, I just look at the data
0:42:11 and I can see we’re going faster.
0:42:15 When I was like 16, like they would just tell you
0:42:18 like eat loads of pasta the night before.
0:42:20 You don’t need to do that unless you’re like,
0:42:22 unless you’re intend to burn 2000 calories,
0:42:24 like you don’t need that many carbs, you know?
0:42:25 But there was like all these little things like,
0:42:30 well this one guy said that he would eat pasta like before.
0:42:31 So that’s just what we’re going to do.
0:42:33 And like you just hear these like rumors and like,
0:42:37 well this one guy said one time in the famous quote,
0:42:39 like don’t have sex or don’t masturbate
0:42:41 like a week before like a big event.
0:42:43 So therefore you have to do that.
0:42:44 Have you heard that by the way?
0:42:44 Like that’s like a thing.
0:42:45 – Of course, yeah.
0:42:47 The posture is still a thing and fighting is still a thing.
0:42:48 – It’s still hugely a thing.
0:42:50 But like, by the way, there’s no evidence
0:42:52 that it does anything.
0:42:53 But it’s like, you hear these things.
0:42:54 Like he’s like, well, I heard this,
0:42:56 I heard Muhammad Ali did this one time.
0:42:57 So I have to do it.
0:42:59 And that’s how it was up, up until like-
0:43:00 – You looked into that.
0:43:02 You looked into the research.
0:43:04 You wanted to see like for podcasting
0:43:05 and what you’re supposed to do.
0:43:08 (laughing)
0:43:10 – You know, chat, GBT makes it easy.
0:43:12 (laughing)
0:43:13 – All right.
0:43:15 I think that’s the signal we’re reaching that time.
0:43:18 We’re turning it to eighth grade boys.
0:43:18 – All right.
0:43:19 That’s the part.
0:43:21 ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪
0:43:24 ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪
0:43:26 ♪ I put my all in it like no days off ♪
0:43:30 ♪ On the road let’s travel never looking back ♪
0:43:38 [BLANK_AUDIO]
0:00:05 And actually it’s actually much more interesting than that.
0:00:07 ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪
0:00:10 ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪
0:00:12 ♪ I put my all in it like the days off ♪
0:00:13 ♪ On the road let’s travel ♪
0:00:16 – This is the story of a guy named Scott.
0:00:19 Meetup.com is probably the most popular thing that he made.
0:00:21 Meetup is a really cool site.
0:00:22 I used it when I moved to San Francisco,
0:00:24 joined a bunch of groups, met a bunch of people.
0:00:26 It’s basically a way to go from the internet
0:00:28 to actually meeting people in real life.
0:00:30 And so I knew about Meetup.
0:00:31 I had even known about Scott.
0:00:33 But what I didn’t know is the story that Scott,
0:00:35 after he had sold his first company,
0:00:37 actually went and worked at McDonald’s,
0:00:39 just to kind of reset.
0:00:40 And he did that for a while.
0:00:41 And now he was going viral
0:00:43 because he’s kind of doing it again.
0:00:44 He didn’t tell anybody,
0:00:46 but people saw him update his LinkedIn
0:00:48 and it said Amazon associate
0:00:49 or like warehouse associate or something.
0:00:52 Basically he’s back at a Amazon warehouse now,
0:00:55 being a pickpacker, kind of minimum wage job again.
0:00:56 And people are like,
0:00:57 “Dude, this is not the first time he’s done this.
0:01:00 “He did this with McDonald’s 20 years ago.”
0:01:02 And I found this fascinating
0:01:03 and I went down to Scott Rabbit Hole
0:01:04 and I wanna talk to you about it.
0:01:05 You have some good stuff there too, right?
0:01:07 Is that how it caught your eye?
0:01:08 – Yeah, so basically he grew up,
0:01:10 I think in Iowa or Idaho,
0:01:12 somewhere in the Midwest,
0:01:13 and he grew up there
0:01:17 and he saw that Marc Andreessen releases Netscape.
0:01:18 And he was like, “This is amazing.”
0:01:19 And so he’s like, “I’m gonna get in the internet.”
0:01:21 And so in the mid ’90s,
0:01:22 he starts, I believe,
0:01:26 like one of the world’s first online internet agencies.
0:01:29 I think it was an advertising agency, something like that.
0:01:32 He sells it for around $15 million,
0:01:36 which is something like 30 million bucks in today’s money.
0:01:39 And he sells it and after he sells it,
0:01:41 he was like, “I’ve been working for six or seven years
0:01:43 “at this internet startup.
0:01:45 “And I work in marketing,
0:01:48 “but I’m only around bankers and lawyers
0:01:50 “and other yuppie people.
0:01:53 “That’s horrible for my position as a marketer,
0:01:55 “but also I feel so out of touch with the people.”
0:01:56 Let’s use his words.
0:01:58 So he wrote this on his site.
0:02:00 You found it back at the internet archive,
0:02:01 which I thought was great.
0:02:04 So it says, “Why I got a job at McDonald’s.
0:02:06 “I spent a lot of time with bankers, lawyers,
0:02:08 “internet freaks, corporate wonks,
0:02:10 “and other people living strange lives.
0:02:12 “As a good marketing guy, that’s a bad thing.
0:02:14 “And as a practicing, anti-consumerist,
0:02:15 “that’s a bad thing.
0:02:17 “So I got a job at McDonald’s
0:02:19 “to help get back in touch with the real world.
0:02:21 “Also after six grueling years of the internet whirlwind,
0:02:23 “I wanted to experience a profitable,
0:02:25 “well-oiled, multi-billion dollar machine.
0:02:27 “And I deserved a break today.”
0:02:29 And then he goes and works at McDonald’s.
0:02:31 And he even talks about, he shows his application.
0:02:33 He goes, “I just walked in off the street.
0:02:35 “It was at Fifth and Broadway in New York City.
0:02:37 “I walked off the street.”
0:02:38 And he’s like, the manager was like,
0:02:40 “So are you used to working with teams?”
0:02:41 Or something like that.
0:02:42 And Scott was in his blog post.
0:02:43 He goes, “Yeah, I was honest.”
0:02:46 I said, “Yes, I am used to that.”
0:02:47 Yeah, he goes, “I was truthful in my interview.
0:02:50 “He asked if I can handle a fast-paced, intense environment.”
0:02:51 I said, “Yes.”
0:02:52 He looked at my resume
0:02:53 and asked about my current part-time job
0:02:55 as chairman of iTraffic.
0:02:57 I said, “It’s an internet thing.”
0:02:57 He said, “Okay.”
0:03:00 And then asked me for my waist size for the pants.
0:03:02 (laughing)
0:03:06 Marketing used to be fun.
0:03:07 Content was simpler to create.
0:03:09 The leads were easier to capture.
0:03:11 And now with HubSpot’s new marketing and content hub,
0:03:13 you can generate more content, more leads,
0:03:14 and next-level results.
0:03:15 So marketing can be fun again.
0:03:18 With content tools like Content Remix,
0:03:19 which will turn your existing content
0:03:20 into all new assets.
0:03:22 Lead scoring, which shines a light
0:03:24 on which leads are most likely to purchase.
0:03:25 And the analytics suite,
0:03:26 which will give you out-of-the-box reports
0:03:28 and a goldmine of AI-powered insights.
0:03:29 It’s quick to get your results.
0:03:32 It’s easy to use, and it connects all your data.
0:03:35 So put the fun back in your marketing funnel with HubSpot.
0:03:38 Visit hubspot.com to get started for free.
0:03:40 And he works there for like six months.
0:03:42 And he has this amazing blog post
0:03:43 about everything that he’s learned.
0:03:45 By the way, I don’t think he worked there for six months.
0:03:48 I think it was like more like three or four weeks,
0:03:49 something like that, but he did it.
0:03:50 $575 ain’t much.
0:03:53 So he was making $575 an hour times 40 hours a week
0:03:54 times 52 weeks a year.
0:03:58 That’s $11,960 pre-tax.
0:03:59 Here you go.
0:04:00 Some people said it was disrespectful
0:04:01 to me to take a job at McDonald’s.
0:04:03 I didn’t need the money.
0:04:04 They thought I was making fun of people that worked there.
0:04:05 The opposite is true.
0:04:06 I gained a bucket of respect.
0:04:08 People that bust their butt for such low pay.
0:04:11 It’s one thing to scan past like statistics you see
0:04:12 about how many people make $12,000 a year
0:04:13 or read about them in the paper.
0:04:15 It’s another thing to sit back there
0:04:18 in a fry heaving McNugget-wielding six-hour shift
0:04:20 and go home smelling like fries and McNuggets
0:04:22 and realize you only made about $30 this day.
0:04:23 It’s an eye-opener.
0:04:25 Interpret that as you see fit.
0:04:28 And then what happens is while he’s working
0:04:32 at McDonald’s, Cranes, which is a business publication,
0:04:34 they want to do a story on Scott about like CEOs
0:04:35 in post-acquisition life.
0:04:40 And he’s like, “Yeah, come and see what I’m up to now.”
0:04:44 And they use this photo of him working at McDonald’s
0:04:46 wearing his McDonald’s uniform.
0:04:48 And it’s just the greatest photo I’ve ever seen.
0:04:50 And if you scroll through this whole blog post,
0:04:51 we’ll link it in the YouTube,
0:04:54 you can see some of these pictures of him working.
0:04:56 It looks like, it looks pretty wild.
0:04:58 – Well, they spun it like he was struggling, right?
0:05:01 It’s like, “De-thrown CEOs” is the title.
0:05:03 And they’re like, “How are they handling the dot-com crash?
0:05:07 This dot-com CEO is back working at a McDonald’s.”
0:05:09 And it’s like, wait, that’s not what happened at all.
0:05:11 But okay, sure.
0:05:13 – Now fast forward to today.
0:05:15 – By the way, he made $15 million, I think, in that sale.
0:05:18 So he sold his agency for about 15 million bucks,
0:05:20 who knows, stock cash, who knows if these is like,
0:05:21 but fall apart, right?
0:05:23 Let’s take it directional.
0:05:27 And then he goes from there to working at a McDonald’s,
0:05:29 just to kind of like re-acclimate with the real world,
0:05:31 which I thought was really good.
0:05:32 – And fast forward to today.
0:05:35 So in ’18 or ’19, something like that,
0:05:38 he sells meetup.com to WeWork.
0:05:41 The price was rumored to be 200 million, but who knows?
0:05:42 It’s enough that he doesn’t have to go and work
0:05:44 some place like this.
0:05:48 Turns out he has a job at an Amazon fulfillment center.
0:05:50 And he doesn’t make a big or deal out of this.
0:05:51 He doesn’t like tell people about this.
0:05:53 He just puts it on his LinkedIn.
0:05:55 Someone finds it and shares it.
0:05:57 So he ends up and does a podcast where he talks
0:06:00 about the story of why he’s at Amazon.
0:06:02 And it’s the same type of thing where he’s like,
0:06:05 I just like felt out of touch with average people.
0:06:07 And I wanted to feel that again.
0:06:10 And he doesn’t exactly say this,
0:06:12 but he says something like the interviewer was asking him
0:06:14 about his experience there.
0:06:15 And he’s like, the interviewer was like,
0:06:18 isn’t that the place where like they just had a big issue
0:06:21 with them, the workers in the warehouse wanting to unionize?
0:06:23 And he’s like, look, I don’t want to talk too much about that.
0:06:25 But yeah, that’s where it was.
0:06:26 And I think it’s a good idea.
0:06:29 And he sort of insinuates that.
0:06:30 – That he was part of it.
0:06:31 – That he was part of it.
0:06:33 And he was kind of like whispering in people’s ears.
0:06:35 And he doesn’t explicitly say that,
0:06:37 but the language that he uses where he’s like,
0:06:38 I don’t really want to talk about it.
0:06:40 But yeah, like I was there.
0:06:42 I saw it all happening.
0:06:43 And he was like, you know, it’s funny.
0:06:45 I’m like an entrepreneur.
0:06:48 And I’m usually the guy who you’d unionize against.
0:06:50 But I thought it was a good idea to have a union.
0:06:53 And it’s as if that he’s like the one riling people up.
0:06:55 And so this guy, in a weird way,
0:06:57 he’s like a little horse-gump character.
0:07:00 Like he’s like experiencing all these things in the background.
0:07:02 And he’s like potentially a pivotal part of the story,
0:07:03 but he doesn’t really talk about it.
0:07:05 – It reminds me of, you know, like movies.
0:07:08 It is a F’d up analogy, but it’s like movies where
0:07:11 it’s like the genius nerd gets sent to prison,
0:07:13 but then he like does, you know, then he’s like the master.
0:07:16 And then he like brings a new angle and sort of rallies
0:07:18 the crew inside the prison in a different way.
0:07:19 – Right.
0:07:20 – Or like we had Shkreli on the podcast
0:07:21 and he was talking about the same thing.
0:07:25 He said he went to prison and he started the Bitcoin club,
0:07:26 like the crypto club.
0:07:29 And he started all these like learning clubs
0:07:30 for technology inside the prison,
0:07:32 but then they also taught him a bunch of things.
0:07:34 It was like meeting of the world.
0:07:36 That’s what this reminds me of this.
0:07:37 Sort of going into the fulfillment center
0:07:40 and like stirring up the union efforts.
0:07:43 – I have a friend of a friend who was a banker.
0:07:46 He was like the really successful Wall Street guy
0:07:48 and he retired, but he got bored.
0:07:50 And so he was like, dude, I’m gonna drive for Uber.
0:07:53 So he starts driving for Uber and he ends up,
0:07:54 after doing that for a little while,
0:07:57 he starts a private driving business
0:07:58 where he’s like a broker.
0:08:00 So for example, when I go to the airport,
0:08:01 I do use a private driver,
0:08:04 but it’s only like $30 more than an Uber.
0:08:05 It’s not like much more expensive,
0:08:07 but it feels a little bit nicer.
0:08:10 He started one of these and he ended up being a broker for it.
0:08:12 And he is now making like a million dollars a year
0:08:13 being a broker for some of these drivers
0:08:15 when you want a car.
0:08:17 And it’s kind of a similar thing.
0:08:20 Would you ever, if you had like a break in your career,
0:08:21 would you ever want to do
0:08:25 one of these kind of blue collar jobs?
0:08:28 – Yeah, when I saw this, I was inspired on three fronts.
0:08:31 The first, this is a guy who plays his own game.
0:08:32 And if you know anything about me,
0:08:34 you know, that is what I respect the most.
0:08:36 People who have their own viewpoint,
0:08:38 they bring their own frame to the game.
0:08:40 And they say, this is how I want to use buy time
0:08:41 in life and this is what I think is right.
0:08:43 They don’t really follow the herd, right?
0:08:46 Like how many founders who sell their company,
0:08:48 then become a VC, then go from VC all back
0:08:51 to being a founder and advisor and go on podcasts.
0:08:54 By the way, I did all this after I sold my company too, right?
0:08:56 I sold my company, started investing, started a podcast,
0:08:58 started doing the normal path.
0:09:02 And so when I see people who just thought
0:09:04 from first principles about what they cared about in life
0:09:05 and decided what they wanted to do
0:09:07 and did it even though it sounded weird
0:09:10 or unconventional, highest level of respect for me.
0:09:12 So that’s the first thing, inspired by that.
0:09:16 Second, inspired by the idea of basically
0:09:17 just getting out of your bubble.
0:09:21 I do this in a different way, not usually by a job,
0:09:23 but like, you know, you told me about that conference,
0:09:26 FarmCon, which is a conference for farmers.
0:09:28 And I went there, that was the only tech,
0:09:28 that was the only conference I went to.
0:09:30 I didn’t go to any tech conference,
0:09:33 any investing conference, I went to a farming conference
0:09:35 because I knew it would put me completely out of my bubble
0:09:36 exposed to a whole bunch of different people
0:09:38 with different thoughts and philosophies
0:09:40 and different views about the world right now.
0:09:41 And I knew I would get new ideas
0:09:43 and sure enough, a business came out of that.
0:09:44 We ended up launching a business,
0:09:46 Milk Road out of that.
0:09:50 And so there was, I’m a big fan of that,
0:09:51 I’m inspired by that.
0:09:53 The only thing I would do differently
0:09:55 is I wouldn’t necessarily just copy what this guy did
0:09:58 and just go get a blue collar job necessarily.
0:10:00 The lesson for me is, think for myself,
0:10:04 what’s my version of this that’s more real to me, right?
0:10:06 That I actually do feel compelled to do
0:10:08 that I would feel excited to do and go do it.
0:10:09 Maybe it would be driving Uber,
0:10:11 maybe it would be going and working at a warehouse,
0:10:12 maybe it’d be something different, I’m not sure,
0:10:16 but this really like sparked something in me
0:10:18 to use my time to go do something like that.
0:10:19 – I completely agree.
0:10:21 – By the way, you know one version of this for me?
0:10:23 It’s either teaching at a school,
0:10:25 like go be a second grade teacher for like a year
0:10:29 or Gordon Bombay and just go coach a team
0:10:31 and go do my version of the Mighty Ducks.
0:10:33 I’ve actually been itching to do this to go
0:10:35 and just coach like a seventh grade boys basketball team
0:10:36 or something.
0:10:37 I did this for a while.
0:10:40 I coached at a, it was actually like a school
0:10:42 for autistic and Asperger’s kids
0:10:43 and I coached their basketball team
0:10:45 and it was like one of the best experiences of my life,
0:10:47 just doing that on the side for fun.
0:10:50 And I think I might go back and try to do something like that.
0:10:51 I think that’d be my version of this.
0:10:54 – Dude, a few weeks ago I emailed this high school
0:10:57 asking if they need like an assistant track and field coach.
0:11:00 And I got, that I was so pumped up about it.
0:11:02 Like this is so filling, this is awesome.
0:11:03 – The best is when they’re like,
0:11:04 you’re not qualified for that.
0:11:06 – Well, yeah, I honestly was a little nervous about that.
0:11:09 But I get like the hours and like what they,
0:11:10 what they demand of me.
0:11:13 And I’m like, that’s a lot of work.
0:11:15 That’s a huge commitment.
0:11:19 So like my inspiration like really quickly like lower down.
0:11:21 So I got to figure out how I’m going to do it.
0:11:22 – Can we finish Scott?
0:11:24 Cause his story that I think is pretty interesting.
0:11:28 So he’s born in a big family.
0:11:30 And like you said, sort of the middle of the country,
0:11:32 I think Illinois or something.
0:11:35 – We just named three different I States by the way.
0:11:37 Illinois, Idaho, sorry, sorry.
0:11:38 I’m from there.
0:11:40 – Somehow we offended all of them
0:11:41 by grouping them all together.
0:11:43 All right, so he’s the youngest of five.
0:11:46 His siblings are like 20 years older than him,
0:11:48 just kind of the way their family dynamics worked.
0:11:51 And so he’s the youngest by like 15 to 20 years.
0:11:54 And he starts his first business when he’s nine.
0:11:55 Do you know what it’s called?
0:11:57 – No, what?
0:11:58 – Scott’s slave service,
0:12:01 which a nine year old can get away with
0:12:03 because he’s basically saying it’s free labor
0:12:05 for my siblings.
0:12:09 And so he’s like, hey, whatever tasks you got, I’m yours.
0:12:11 I will do whatever tasks you have.
0:12:13 But he gets the entrepreneurial bug there,
0:12:14 starts learning to code.
0:12:16 His first job out of college is actually at Sony.
0:12:20 And he tells Sony, he’s like, hey, this is like 94, 95.
0:12:22 He’s like, the internet’s going to be a thing.
0:12:24 And they’re like, okay kid, like whatever you say.
0:12:26 He’s like, no, no, no, you should have like a website.
0:12:27 And they’re like, all right, well,
0:12:29 if you want to build one, go for it, you don’t have at it.
0:12:31 So he ends up building the first website
0:12:33 for like, you know, sony.com.
0:12:36 And he realizes pretty quickly, he’s like, okay,
0:12:37 this ain’t it.
0:12:40 He also, in 93, had started one of the first internet shows,
0:12:42 one of the first podcasts, essentially.
0:12:45 He started his own radio show on the internet,
0:12:47 which is called Advertorial Infotainment.
0:12:49 And he was basically questioning consumer culture.
0:12:52 So he considers himself sort of an anti-consumerist
0:12:53 in many ways.
0:12:56 So he does that, then he does the first thing,
0:12:58 which was that business we called iTraffic,
0:13:01 which is a media buying agency.
0:13:02 And he was joking around like, at the time,
0:13:04 there was really no media to buy on the internet yet,
0:13:07 but he knew people are going to want to advertise
0:13:08 on the internet.
0:13:10 This will make websites have a business model.
0:13:11 So let’s do this.
0:13:13 He sells that thing, 15 million-ish.
0:13:15 – Which by the way, that doesn’t, I mean,
0:13:17 it’s so obvious now, yes, he’s right.
0:13:21 But that’s pretty wild to like be that bold in 94, 95,
0:13:22 to make some of these predictions.
0:13:24 He was, he nailed them.
0:13:25 – He was 100% right.
0:13:26 And he knew that because when he was a teen,
0:13:28 and again, he’s 20 years younger than all his siblings,
0:13:29 he’s got a lot of alone time.
0:13:31 And he’s basically spending it, you know,
0:13:32 programming just for fun.
0:13:35 And he’s just becomes convinced that like computers
0:13:37 and the internet, like this is where it’s at.
0:13:38 Then he does the McDonald’s thing.
0:13:40 And by the way, do we want to read a few of his like,
0:13:43 blog post takeaways from his McDonald’s thing that you sent me?
0:13:44 I thought this was really good.
0:13:47 – Why did, I don’t, you know, we had to use web archive
0:13:48 to find his, this post.
0:13:49 He took it down.
0:13:52 I wish he didn’t, it’s fantastic.
0:13:53 – Well, we still got it.
0:13:54 We’ll show some of the pictures on here.
0:13:56 He’s got like a picture of like his burn from the fire,
0:13:58 the fry machine and stuff like that on his arm.
0:13:59 But like, here’s one of them.
0:14:02 So he goes, nobody, number four, nobody thanked me.
0:14:04 I worked hard, I got paid peanuts.
0:14:05 I even ate McDonald’s during my food break,
0:14:06 deducted from my pay.
0:14:07 It was intense.
0:14:09 The cash register was complex.
0:14:10 The people want their food now.
0:14:11 The lines get deep.
0:14:12 The McFlurry must be made just right.
0:14:14 I was trying hard and I was doing an okay job.
0:14:16 Now I’ve been a leader and a manager for most of my life.
0:14:17 I’ve had plenty of crap jobs,
0:14:20 but I’ve been the boss for the past few years.
0:14:21 And I faithfully read Fast Company Magazine
0:14:22 and my Harvard Business Review.
0:14:25 And I’ve read the countless times that the value
0:14:27 of a leader or manager showing appreciation
0:14:28 for people’s effort.
0:14:30 However, my instinct has been often
0:14:32 that showing appreciation really isn’t too necessary
0:14:33 or good for people.
0:14:35 They just take pride in a job well done.
0:14:37 And they could read my mind and see the appreciation.
0:14:39 Well, from day one at McDonald’s,
0:14:40 I was yearning for someone just to say thanks
0:14:43 or you’re even doing okay, it would have been sufficient.
0:14:45 But no, neither management experience
0:14:46 nor reading about management teaches this lesson
0:14:48 in the same way as feeling it,
0:14:50 being an underappreciated employee.
0:14:54 – So I read that a few hours ago when I was getting ready
0:14:55 and I went and messaged a bunch of employees
0:14:58 and I said, you’re doing great.
0:14:59 – You’re doing great.
0:15:00 – You’re doing okay.
0:15:04 – Because everyone should go and read this post.
0:15:05 It is, this is awesome.
0:15:08 This is a very inspiring thing.
0:15:09 – Yeah, he talks about the dollar
0:15:10 and a bunch of things.
0:15:12 Okay, so he does that.
0:15:15 – By the way, if you look on this page,
0:15:18 he left his phone number in the photo of the application.
0:15:21 I texted him, I’m gonna try it.
0:15:23 Well, I’ll try to get him on.
0:15:24 – Yeah, I would love that.
0:15:25 Scott, come on, that’d be amazing.
0:15:27 So then he has this next period where he’s like,
0:15:28 he’s got 30 ideas.
0:15:29 He’s like, what do I want to do next?
0:15:31 He’s got 30 ideas.
0:15:33 And have you read the story
0:15:35 about kind of how he narrowed that down to two?
0:15:37 – Was it the September 11th story?
0:15:38 – Yes, exactly.
0:15:41 So he lives a few miles away from the Twin Towers.
0:15:43 So September 11th happens.
0:15:46 He sees the planes hitting the building.
0:15:47 And I think the story was like,
0:15:49 he was kind of on the rooftop of his building
0:15:50 or he’s outside of his building.
0:15:53 And it was the first time he had ever met any of his neighbors.
0:15:55 Like he’d been living there for a while.
0:15:56 He just didn’t know anyone.
0:15:58 And this, now that they were all outside
0:15:59 and they’re seeing this crazy thing,
0:16:01 they’re all talking, they’re meeting.
0:16:03 And he was like kind of struck by men.
0:16:07 I really live a pretty like solo life
0:16:09 and I’m just on the internet.
0:16:12 And he had had a couple of other experiences
0:16:14 that kind of triggered him in that.
0:16:15 So there’s the September 11th thing.
0:16:18 A week later, he reads this book called “Bowling Alone”.
0:16:20 And I guess this book has big impact on him
0:16:21 because he then ends up giving this
0:16:23 to every meetup employee.
0:16:25 And “Bowling Alone” was just basically a book
0:16:26 about statistics and he’s honest.
0:16:27 He’s like, I didn’t even read the whole thing.
0:16:29 But he’s like, the beginning of the book
0:16:32 makes a very clear point that more and more
0:16:34 we’re doing less things with other people,
0:16:38 which the less interaction you have with strangers
0:16:41 causes you to trust strangers less,
0:16:43 which then causes you to spend less time with them.
0:16:45 And it’s this terrible cycle that we go into.
0:16:47 And he’s like, then he notices in his own life,
0:16:50 he’s a big fan of this band, Aluna.
0:16:52 And he goes to a bunch of their shows
0:16:52 and they’re a small band.
0:16:53 And so he ends up, he’s like,
0:16:57 dude, I’m in like conference centers at a hotel, Ballroom B.
0:16:59 And he’s like, I’m listening to the band play.
0:17:01 And he’s like, you know, I used to just go alone.
0:17:04 I would, you know, kind of the answer saying alone,
0:17:05 I’d go home alone.
0:17:06 He’s like, but soon enough, you know,
0:17:08 I started to see some other faces there
0:17:09 that were the other regulars.
0:17:11 So like there were many of us who were big fans of this band,
0:17:13 but he’s like, we still didn’t talk to each other that much
0:17:16 because it wasn’t clear that it was okay
0:17:17 to go talk to each other.
0:17:19 So that’s where he decides.
0:17:21 He narrows down his list of ideas from 30 to two.
0:17:24 One of them is meetup where he’s like,
0:17:25 well, what if we made it where the internet
0:17:27 could help people meet up in real life
0:17:29 and we could solve this bowling alone problem
0:17:31 where people interact more with strangers,
0:17:33 which increases their trust in strangers,
0:17:34 which increases the amount of time
0:17:36 they’re willing to talk to other people
0:17:38 and make it okay to just have these real life interactions
0:17:40 even with the internet.
0:17:43 The second one, which he hasn’t talked about too much,
0:17:44 is something called photo log.
0:17:45 Did you see this?
0:17:47 It’s like a flicker like service.
0:17:48 – Yeah, he was early, man.
0:17:50 He was too early.
0:17:51 – He was super early.
0:17:53 I think he sold it for like 90 million bucks or something.
0:17:55 So he did well with it.
0:17:56 It was like the biggest social network
0:17:57 in certain countries around the world,
0:18:00 but then flicker came out and flicker was growing faster.
0:18:02 And then the next wave of social networks came out.
0:18:05 – I saw him describe it as Instagram before Instagram,
0:18:08 but I didn’t know that it was that financially successful.
0:18:09 That’s amazing.
0:18:11 – Yeah, so he did really well with that as well.
0:18:14 And so he sells that company.
0:18:17 – Does he start meetup and photo log at the same time?
0:18:18 – That’s a good question.
0:18:19 I’m not sure if it was the exact same time.
0:18:22 I know there were, yeah, somewhat in tandem.
0:18:24 There were sort of like either same time
0:18:26 or very close to each other.
0:18:29 And so he does meetup, meetup starts growing.
0:18:31 And then he makes a pretty controversial move,
0:18:36 which is he decides not to make meetup business model just ads.
0:18:38 He’s like, no, I’m gonna charge people for the service,
0:18:39 which at the time was like very anti,
0:18:42 again, he goes counter to the main mainstream
0:18:43 of what everybody else was doing
0:18:45 with their websites at the time.
0:18:47 And traffic drops off like 95%.
0:18:49 But he’s like, he stays with it.
0:18:51 He’s like, I believe that this is the sustainable path
0:18:54 for this is like the people who are organizing these meetups,
0:18:56 they should pay a fee because they’re the ones
0:18:57 kind of hosting it, getting the value.
0:18:59 It’ll keep the quality bar high.
0:19:00 So let’s do that.
0:19:04 And he survives the big 90% drop in usage
0:19:07 and meetup becomes a profitable sustainable business.
0:19:09 And it goes on for a long time until they sell for,
0:19:11 to we work for, I don’t know, 150 to 200 million bucks.
0:19:15 By the way, I have a friend, Greg, who used to work at,
0:19:17 he also got acquired by we work.
0:19:18 And so I texted Greg this morning and I was like, Greg,
0:19:21 you got any stories about this guy, Scott?
0:19:22 He goes, I got one.
0:19:26 And so he goes, I get to we work and Scott tells me,
0:19:30 hey, meet me at 555 Broadway at 6pm.
0:19:34 And then I go, okay, he texts me right before he goes,
0:19:37 by the way, clear your calendar for the night.
0:19:39 Okay, I don’t know what’s going to happen here,
0:19:41 but like, all right, I’m interested, I’m game.
0:19:44 So he shows up and there’s just a white van
0:19:45 with five other people in it.
0:19:47 He’s like, all right, I’m going to die.
0:19:48 I don’t know what’s happening tonight,
0:19:50 but I guess tonight’s the night I die.
0:19:54 And Scott walks in, tells the driver, let’s go.
0:19:57 And then he says, hey, you’re new here
0:20:00 and I want to do something I do with everybody who’s new,
0:20:03 which is we’re going to go crash five or six meetups tonight.
0:20:04 And you’re going to get to actually like,
0:20:08 go experience them firsthand, first day, let’s go.
0:20:10 And so he was just taking six kind of new people
0:20:12 in the company to go and they crashed
0:20:14 like a Harry Potter meetup
0:20:16 and then like a women with diabetes meetup.
0:20:17 And they went to six different meetups that night
0:20:20 and they stayed out all night basically at this thing.
0:20:22 And Greg was like, dude, I’ll never forget that.
0:20:24 Such a cool founder move to do that
0:20:26 and to kind of stay in the community,
0:20:29 stay like amongst the users and the people
0:20:30 and to make that part of the culture
0:20:31 for new people that are in the company.
0:20:32 How awesome is that?
0:20:34 Dude, this guy is amazing.
0:20:35 I love him.
0:20:37 So good, right?
0:20:39 Yeah, and that he’s been in the game for so long
0:20:43 and that he’s still, he’s not like a high and mighty executive.
0:20:44 You know what I mean?
0:20:47 Like he still kind of seems like he’s in it.
0:20:48 Well, and then it takes another twist.
0:20:52 Meetup then gets carved out of WeWork.
0:20:53 And so this brings up,
0:20:56 this connects two other data points of our podcast.
0:20:58 So on the episode with Jeremy Giffin,
0:21:01 he talked about one of his biggest
0:21:05 like underrated opportunities right now is messy carve outs.
0:21:07 What he meant was that sometimes there’s companies
0:21:09 that an acquisition happens
0:21:13 and usually like either, you know, a year later or so,
0:21:16 the company realizes that, hey, of all the assets,
0:21:18 they didn’t really want one of the assets
0:21:21 or that the company that acquires it starts to go South
0:21:24 and this good company they bought
0:21:26 is embedded inside of a bad company.
0:21:28 And this is exactly what happened with Meetup.
0:21:30 So they buy, WeWork buys Meetup for, I don’t know,
0:21:34 $150, $200 million, but then Meetup itself,
0:21:37 or sorry, WeWork itself becomes, you know, a dumpster fire.
0:21:41 But Meetup was still a good asset inside of this dumpster fire.
0:21:44 And so here comes a guest of the pod, Kevin Ryan,
0:21:46 who’s been on the podcast,
0:21:49 came in and actually bought Meetup for peanuts
0:21:50 out of that sale.
0:21:54 – I remember looking, I mean, I didn’t have like the finances
0:21:55 at the time to be able to afford it.
0:21:57 But someone was like, hey, do you want to get it on this?
0:21:59 And I was like, yeah, this is like super interesting.
0:22:00 – Yeah, actually on the podcast,
0:22:01 I think you shared the numbers, right?
0:22:02 – Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:22:05 And I didn’t think that it was going to be Kevin Ryan.
0:22:06 It was a bunch of like, you know,
0:22:09 I’m not even in the ballpark to be able to afford
0:22:11 whatever it was, but I was like, you know,
0:22:12 maybe I could throw in just a small amount of money
0:22:14 to like a group of people who are trying to buy it.
0:22:15 And I thought it was very interesting.
0:22:18 And then lo and behold, the man, Kevin Ryan, comes in
0:22:22 and if he comes in, like to me, he’s a really good signal,
0:22:24 something is interesting here.
0:22:28 – So he bought it and then they put in a CEO,
0:22:31 they turned it around, it’s like profitable
0:22:32 and they just did a great job with it.
0:22:35 They got a great, it turned out to be a great investment
0:22:35 for them.
0:22:37 – Is it a big business?
0:22:39 Or is it just like a pretty good business
0:22:42 that’s just not automated, but like, it just,
0:22:43 we’ll see what happens, you know,
0:22:45 it’ll grow 15% a year maybe.
0:22:47 – Yeah, so I mean, it’s all relative, right?
0:22:49 So it’s a, it’s a better business
0:22:50 than any business I’ve ever built.
0:22:51 However, in the grand scheme of things,
0:22:53 I know what you’re, I know what question you’re asking,
0:22:55 which is like, is this some sort of rocket ship type
0:22:57 of crazy billion dollar business?
0:22:58 I don’t know, I don’t think so.
0:22:59 It looks like it’s a-
0:23:01 – Flow and steady.
0:23:04 – Flow and steady, profitable, cash flowing business
0:23:05 that’s good for humanity.
0:23:07 So in that sense, it’s an awesome business.
0:23:09 – Yeah, I think this guy’s the man.
0:23:11 I think he’s absolutely awesome.
0:23:12 You should listen to the podcast.
0:23:16 It’s called internet misfits, I think, that he was on.
0:23:18 And he’s the definition of an internet misfit.
0:23:21 And he talks a little bit about his time at Amazon.
0:23:22 He’s a cool guy.
0:23:23 This guy’s really fascinating.
0:23:24 He’s a fascinating dude.
0:23:27 And I always, I’ve recognized this guy forever, you know,
0:23:28 when you and I were just getting going the internet,
0:23:30 that was when meetup was in its heyday.
0:23:31 And I would go to so many meetups.
0:23:33 I actually started my event, HustleCon,
0:23:35 because of meetup.com.
0:23:38 I created a small meetup event on meetup.com.
0:23:39 I got a lot of free users that way.
0:23:41 That’s how I built my email list.
0:23:42 I love meetup.com.
0:23:43 I like this guy, Scott.
0:23:45 We gotta have him on board.
0:23:47 – Yeah, by the way, internet misfits,
0:23:48 that’s a great podcast name.
0:23:51 If we didn’t have such a cringe name,
0:23:52 that could have been ours.
0:23:54 That would have been a great name for us.
0:23:56 – Let me, can I tell you about a different story?
0:23:57 – Yeah.
0:23:59 – Sort of actually similar to Scott going to McDonald’s.
0:24:03 So have you ever heard of, you’re weird with your pop culture.
0:24:05 I don’t know what you do and do not know,
0:24:07 ’cause you don’t know many things about pop culture.
0:24:09 Have you ever heard of Rosie the Riveter?
0:24:10 – No.
0:24:15 So basically in the early 1940s, America goes to war.
0:24:19 All the men between 18 and 35 go off and serve the war.
0:24:24 So there’s this huge need for manufacturers
0:24:25 or workers in manufacturing plants
0:24:28 to go and create like B-17s, like these bombers
0:24:30 or whatever we’re making.
0:24:32 Not only just what we were making before,
0:24:34 but now we have to make all these weapons
0:24:36 and all these supplies.
0:24:37 They needed to get young women,
0:24:41 which who never worked before to come and work in factories
0:24:43 and they needed to make it look cool.
0:24:44 And so they had these ads,
0:24:46 like if you can work an electric mixer,
0:24:48 you can work a drill.
0:24:50 And so they would like do all these like things
0:24:52 to get young women to entice them to come into the workforce.
0:24:53 And then Westinghouse,
0:24:56 which at the time was like a huge manufacturing company,
0:24:59 they created this campaign called Rosie,
0:25:01 the name of the character was Rosie the Riveter.
0:25:03 And the ad says, yes, we can.
0:25:05 And it was like, yes, young women,
0:25:06 you got to come and do this.
0:25:07 You owe it to your country
0:25:09 and you’re a strong young woman.
0:25:10 You should come and do this.
0:25:12 And so at the time before the war,
0:25:15 I think something like two million women worked
0:25:17 after that campaign went live.
0:25:19 It was something like 20 million young women went
0:25:20 and got jobs.
0:25:23 And so it was very like a women empowerment type of thing,
0:25:25 but also like push America forward.
0:25:26 And so it was incredibly effective.
0:25:29 And by the way, you should see the ads in the 1950s.
0:25:31 It’s called back to normalcy.
0:25:35 And it was like, what does Rosie do now that the war is over?
0:25:36 And it’s very much like,
0:25:37 we’re going to sell you this refrigerator.
0:25:38 And there’s all these ads like,
0:25:41 what should Rosie do with strawberries on a summer day?
0:25:44 And it’s like, make like a strawberry shortcake.
0:25:45 So it’s like pretty crazy how like-
0:25:47 – So who was paying for these ads?
0:25:48 Is this the government
0:25:51 or the first part made me think it’s the manufacturing companies?
0:25:52 – Both.
0:25:55 – But then why would they pay for Rosie back to the kitchen?
0:25:56 I don’t understand that part.
0:25:59 – Well, because, I mean, obviously like sexism,
0:26:02 but like when the, when the,
0:26:03 originally it was Westinghouse
0:26:04 and a bunch of other manufacturers
0:26:08 did these campaigns to convince women to come work for them.
0:26:10 But then also the government,
0:26:12 you know, it’s propaganda is what it is,
0:26:14 but it’s like good propaganda where they would do this stuff.
0:26:15 It’s like, you know, we all have to do this together.
0:26:18 And so the government did it as well as private companies.
0:26:20 And so the company that did Rosie the river was,
0:26:21 it’s called Westinghouse.
0:26:23 It was a large manufacturer.
0:26:24 Rosie the river, by the way,
0:26:27 is one of the most recognized images in American history.
0:26:28 And it’s in the Smithsonian.
0:26:30 It’s like a big deal because it was like a turning point
0:26:32 for American feminism, things like this,
0:26:34 but also like the war.
0:26:36 But yeah, you should see the ads in the fifties
0:26:38 when they’re like, all right, the men are back,
0:26:40 back to normalcy.
0:26:41 That was the campaign was back to normalcy.
0:26:43 But the reason I’m saying this is,
0:26:45 back then in the forties and fifties,
0:26:46 you know, we were kind of booming with manufacturing.
0:26:48 In fact, have you heard of the rust belt?
0:26:49 Have you heard that phrase, the rust belt?
0:26:50 – I have heard that one.
0:26:52 – That refers to where I’m from.
0:26:56 Missouri, places like St. Louis, Cleveland, Chicago,
0:26:57 things like that.
0:27:00 Before it was called the rust belt in the fifties and sixties,
0:27:02 it was called the steel belt
0:27:04 because that’s where we manufactured everything.
0:27:07 And then the name changed to the rust belt,
0:27:09 meaning all these old rusty factories
0:27:10 that no one uses anymore.
0:27:13 And so that’s actually how the name came to be.
0:27:15 Now, where I’m getting with all of this,
0:27:19 there’s this company that is called Blue Forge.
0:27:22 They created this ad that is the best ad
0:27:24 that I’ve seen in years.
0:27:28 And so the ad is basically all about this gig economy
0:27:31 and how it like crushes your soul
0:27:33 because when Rosie the Riveter,
0:27:35 so they call them Rosie the Riveters.
0:27:37 That’s like the women who are working in these factories.
0:27:39 They interviewed a bunch of them when they were older
0:27:42 and they were like, we built this B17,
0:27:43 which is a large bomber.
0:27:46 And we saw it roll off the manufacturing line
0:27:48 and we had so much pride.
0:27:49 We were helping America,
0:27:51 but also we were working together to achieve this task.
0:27:54 We felt amazing about ourselves.
0:27:57 Now, this ad basically shows like when you’re driving Uber
0:27:59 and things like that, you feel shitty.
0:28:00 You have people complaining,
0:28:01 you’re not working towards a common goal.
0:28:04 And so this company, Blue Forge,
0:28:06 it was put together, I think in,
0:28:09 I believe the Navy funded it.
0:28:12 And what they’re trying to do is to convince young Americans
0:28:14 to go back to manufacturing jobs.
0:28:16 Or they don’t mean to do this,
0:28:18 but it sort of does it, go back to trade jobs.
0:28:20 So basically things that where you work with your hand
0:28:24 to rebuild manufacturing in America.
0:28:26 And I saw this ad and I did a little bit of research
0:28:28 on what’s going on with like the reindustrialization
0:28:29 of America.
0:28:31 It’s incredibly fascinating.
0:28:32 This ad is so good.
0:28:35 And it’s trying to make these manufacturing jobs,
0:28:38 which don’t even exist that much right now.
0:28:41 But if they do exist, they’re like unsexy as shit.
0:28:43 Like they’re not cool.
0:28:44 And what this company is doing
0:28:46 is they are trying to make it look cool
0:28:48 and they are totally succeeding.
0:28:51 And you’re seeing this a little bit with Andrew.
0:28:52 You know Andrew?
0:28:53 – Yeah.
0:28:58 – So Palmer Lucky’s defense business in Orange County,
0:29:00 where it’s cool again to work in factories.
0:29:02 It’s cool again to make stuff.
0:29:05 And I 100% buy into this premise.
0:29:06 And I think it is so great.
0:29:08 And I was thinking about like different ideas
0:29:10 and things like that.
0:29:11 But a really simple one,
0:29:13 if you refer someone to some of these jobs,
0:29:16 you can earn up to $500.
0:29:19 And so it’s actually like a pretty interesting opportunity.
0:29:22 If you just Google like trade jobs or manufacturing jobs,
0:29:24 you go to the website, they kind of look silly.
0:29:25 They’re not like that enticing.
0:29:26 There’s no like sex appeal,
0:29:28 which inherently like these jobs,
0:29:29 I think are quite romantic.
0:29:31 Like they are, it is really cool.
0:29:34 You can make them seem and appear really cool
0:29:35 because I think they actually are.
0:29:39 And a lot of them will pay $30, $40 an hour,
0:29:41 depending on what it is, particularly the trades,
0:29:43 which are incredibly popular right now at Gen Z on TikTok.
0:29:47 But I just thought this ad was so awesome.
0:29:48 – Yeah, it’s an amazing ad.
0:29:50 It just shows kind of like,
0:29:51 do you want to spend your whole life running around
0:29:53 doing tasks for other people?
0:29:56 Basically being a delivery person.
0:29:58 Or, and then the doors open
0:30:00 and the manufacturing is happening and it’s like,
0:30:02 you could, or you could step into here
0:30:03 and really build something.
0:30:07 And it’s a really, really well done ad.
0:30:08 – Yeah, it’s badass.
0:30:11 And I think originally, so that company, Blue Forge,
0:30:14 I think they’re built around the submarine industry.
0:30:16 Apparently they couldn’t get enough people
0:30:17 to work on submarines.
0:30:19 And so they won these huge contracts
0:30:22 to help them get more submarine workers.
0:30:25 And that’s something I never even
0:30:26 would have thought exists, right?
0:30:27 But it does.
0:30:28 – Yeah, really cool.
0:30:28 I hope this happens.
0:30:32 I hope America shifts back too much more of a,
0:30:35 we build things here, culture,
0:30:36 which I think they’re trying to do,
0:30:40 Tesla Space X being based here,
0:30:42 I think is really awesome and real.
0:30:44 I think that then there’s the Chips Act,
0:30:45 which is trying to build a giant chip factory,
0:30:49 like the, you know, instead of being reliant on Taiwan.
0:30:51 So there’s an effort to try to do
0:30:53 kind of modern manufacturing here.
0:30:56 I really wanna do an episode where we go down to,
0:30:58 what’s it called, like El Segundo or whatever.
0:30:59 There’s 10 interesting companies
0:31:01 all in this like one block.
0:31:04 Our buddy, John Cougan did an amazing video,
0:31:06 worth watching, 17 minutes.
0:31:09 And it’s basically, he goes to this area of El Segundo,
0:31:11 where he’s like, “You got SpaceX,
0:31:13 “Redeon Nuclear, VARDA, ABL Space Systems.”
0:31:14 There’s like a whole bunch of companies
0:31:16 all in this one area.
0:31:18 And he went and he hung out with them.
0:31:21 He took a camera and a crew out there.
0:31:22 It’s worth checking out.
0:31:23 It’s, I think, pretty inspiring.
0:31:26 And it’s, you know, there are these hotbeds, right?
0:31:27 There’s like AI hotbeds.
0:31:28 There’s crypto hotbeds.
0:31:30 And then it’s like, where is the kind of like
0:31:32 hard tech hotbed?
0:31:33 And it seems like this is the answer.
0:31:35 And if you’re interested in that or you’re doing that,
0:31:38 or you just wanna just go feel that energy,
0:31:39 I think it’s cool to watch the videos
0:31:41 or go visit a place like this.
0:31:42 – And it is happening, by the way,
0:31:46 like the Toyota Tundras are made in Texas.
0:31:48 And so if you’re in Texas and you see a Tundra,
0:31:51 a lot of them have a made in Texas sign.
0:31:53 And also when I lived in Nashville, Tennessee,
0:31:56 I lived like 10 miles from the Nissan plant.
0:31:57 And I remember thinking like,
0:31:59 I used to think like, made in America, man,
0:32:00 I had to get a Ford.
0:32:02 It’s like, this Nissan is just as made in America
0:32:03 as anything else.
0:32:06 And so like, it’s definitely happening.
0:32:07 But I think that there’s like,
0:32:09 there’s an interesting group of people
0:32:10 who are making it seem very sexy.
0:32:11 And I dig that.
0:32:16 – So here’s the deal.
0:32:19 I made most of my money from a newsletter business.
0:32:20 It was called The Hustle.
0:32:22 And it was a daily newsletter at scale
0:32:23 to millions of subscribers.
0:32:25 And it was the greatest business on earth.
0:32:29 The problem with it was that I had close to 40 employees
0:32:32 and only three of them were actually doing any writing.
0:32:34 The other employees were growing the newsletter,
0:32:37 building out the tech for the platform and selling ads.
0:32:39 And honestly, it was a huge pain in the butt.
0:32:42 Today’s episode is brought to you by Beehive.
0:32:46 They are a platform that is built exactly for this.
0:32:47 If you want to grow your newsletter,
0:32:48 if you want to monetize a newsletter,
0:32:50 they do all of the stuff
0:32:52 that I had to hire dozens of employees to do.
0:32:57 So check it out, beehive.com, that’s B-E-E-H-I-I-V.com.
0:33:02 – You wanna do one more thing?
0:33:04 – Yeah, I got one related one.
0:33:08 So there’s a thing that Elon talks about
0:33:12 that I think more people should hear.
0:33:15 Have you heard Elon talk about his problem solving method,
0:33:17 his five step problem solving method?
0:33:20 – No, but it’s like step four, like have kids or something.
0:33:25 – He said he’s got 12 kids, by the way, which is impressive.
0:33:27 So he talks about the, I think, I don’t know,
0:33:28 the last one was Lex Friedman talking about it,
0:33:30 but he’s said this many times over the years,
0:33:32 which is a good signal,
0:33:34 ’cause it’s kind of like more fundamental to his philosophy.
0:33:35 He’s been talking about it for a while.
0:33:37 And Lex asked him, he goes,
0:33:38 how do you engineer great things, right?
0:33:40 You’re building rockets that can land on themselves.
0:33:43 You’re building the best electric cars on the planet.
0:33:45 You just did the neural link chip in the guy’s brain
0:33:47 and now the guy’s like playing civilization.
0:33:50 Using his brain to control the computer game.
0:33:55 Is there some general process you do that works this?
0:33:58 And Elon said the following five steps.
0:34:03 He goes, step one, question the requirements.
0:34:06 And all of this was born out of pain, by the way,
0:34:06 of not doing this.
0:34:09 He goes, so question the requirements means,
0:34:11 do we need to do this at all?
0:34:13 If we need to do this, how exactly do we need to do this?
0:34:15 Like before you go in and just build a solution
0:34:18 to the first prompt that people have of like,
0:34:20 oh, we need X, we need to do Y, right?
0:34:22 He, instead of just immediately jumping to it
0:34:24 and saying, I can build it, I could do it.
0:34:26 It’s your first really drill down.
0:34:28 And you try to make the requirements
0:34:30 as true and simple as possible.
0:34:33 So you try to figure out what is actually needed.
0:34:34 What are the, what are the requirements?
0:34:35 Why is that the requirement?
0:34:36 All that’s up.
0:34:39 So that’s the step one, question the requirements.
0:34:43 Step two is basically like delete.
0:34:46 And so he’s like, he goes, the biggest mistake
0:34:48 that smart people make is optimizing something
0:34:50 that shouldn’t have existed in the first place.
0:34:51 And I thought this was the best point
0:34:53 that he made in this whole thing.
0:34:55 He goes, in my companies, we will try to,
0:34:58 if it’s a machine, we’ll try to delete a part.
0:35:00 Can we do it without this part altogether?
0:35:01 Rather than trying to make that part work
0:35:03 or lower the cost of the part,
0:35:06 can we get rid of the part and will the thing still work?
0:35:09 If it’s a process inside your company,
0:35:10 instead of trying to optimize the process,
0:35:11 what happens if you delete the process?
0:35:13 Or there’s a role in the company.
0:35:14 Could you delete the role?
0:35:17 And what he says is that just like the government
0:35:20 always adds new rules and regulations
0:35:23 and that’s why the tax code book is this thick.
0:35:25 And actually it’s because we add
0:35:27 far more than we ever subtract.
0:35:28 And this happens in big companies too.
0:35:31 And every big company, you add people and processes
0:35:34 and more requirements to every single thing.
0:35:37 Very rarely is there any like trash cleaning function
0:35:39 that gets rid of the bottom 20%.
0:35:40 We’re willing to add 20%.
0:35:44 We’re very rarely getting willing to get rid of 20%.
0:35:46 So he talks about how when you remove,
0:35:49 he goes, this is a limbic system override.
0:35:52 He goes, because our brains are wired
0:35:55 so that we are kind of hoarders by nature.
0:35:57 We’re afraid to get rid of something
0:35:58 because we’re worried something bad will happen.
0:36:00 And then if you ever get rid of something
0:36:03 and one time out of 10, you really needed it.
0:36:06 And it turns out that removing was a bad thing.
0:36:09 When we add it back, our brain basically inflames right away.
0:36:12 And we’re like, oh my God, see, and we over correct.
0:36:14 And then the next time we’re way more hesitant
0:36:16 to get rid of something just because we all remember
0:36:17 that one time that we got rid of that thing
0:36:19 and we ended up needing it.
0:36:22 And by the way, I’m going on a family vacation.
0:36:24 My wife is like, literally, I told her,
0:36:26 I was like, I think you’re trying to take our house
0:36:29 and just bring it with us on vacation.
0:36:30 This is not how packing is supposed to go.
0:36:33 And she’s like, well, we might need this one thing
0:36:34 or we can’t get rid of that.
0:36:36 And I’m like, I’m watching my wife pack.
0:36:37 I’m listening to this Elon thing.
0:36:39 And I’m like, this is true, not just in business,
0:36:43 but in life, which is that we will always remember
0:36:46 the one thing that we decided to remove that we needed,
0:36:48 even though nine out of 10 times,
0:36:49 you could have got away with it.
0:36:51 – Dude, but I think he removes too much stuff.
0:36:53 Like I have a Tesla.
0:36:56 Sometimes you don’t even need to like switch into reverse.
0:36:57 Like it automatically does that.
0:36:59 And you also don’t have any buttons.
0:37:01 You know, it’s just a screen.
0:37:02 I want the damn button.
0:37:03 I don’t want the damn screen.
0:37:04 You know what I mean?
0:37:05 He removes a lot of stuff.
0:37:06 – I mean, look at the iPhone, right?
0:37:08 Most successful product all the time.
0:37:10 When they came out and they removed the keyboard,
0:37:11 people were freaking out.
0:37:13 Then they removed the home button.
0:37:14 I remember being like, you got rid of the home button
0:37:15 or are you nuts?
0:37:16 Like this is crazy.
0:37:17 And they got rid of the home button.
0:37:19 Then they got rid of the port.
0:37:20 And they got rid of this, right?
0:37:23 They keep the best companies in the world actually do this.
0:37:26 The thing he says, he goes, we measure basically,
0:37:30 if we are not adding back at least 10% of the time,
0:37:33 the thing that we removed, either a process in the company,
0:37:36 a role in the company or a part of the product,
0:37:37 a feature of the product.
0:37:39 If we’re not adding back at least 10% of the time,
0:37:41 that means we have not been removing enough.
0:37:42 And so that’s his benchmark.
0:37:45 And he goes, that is the only, like we set that as a target
0:37:48 in the same way that when you set goals
0:37:51 and you’re any good company, if you set goals,
0:37:53 you do not want to hit the goals 100% of the time
0:37:55 because that means you were being way too cautious
0:37:56 with your goals.
0:37:57 You were not being ambitious enough.
0:38:00 Nor do you want to hit your goals 0% of the time
0:38:01 because that means you were being way too unrealistic
0:38:02 about your goals.
0:38:04 And so most people, like at Amazon,
0:38:05 they were saying, whenever we worked out there,
0:38:08 like you want to hit 70% of your goals.
0:38:11 70% of your goals means you’re stretching enough,
0:38:13 but you’re also not over-stretching and being unrealistic
0:38:14 about what you’re going to achieve
0:38:18 and building a culture of disappointing expectations.
0:38:21 And so Elon talks about that as like step two,
0:38:22 is to remove a thing.
0:38:24 You look like you got a reaction to that.
0:38:25 I love it.
0:38:26 It’s hard to do.
0:38:30 Like, not only do I know people react negatively to that,
0:38:32 like any company I’ve been at ’cause I’ve done the same thing,
0:38:34 I react to sometimes negatively of like,
0:38:35 well, it’s working.
0:38:36 Why break it and remove it?
0:38:38 You know what I mean?
0:38:39 I agree fundamentally with it.
0:38:42 It’s very challenging to do.
0:38:44 – Simple but hard, exactly.
0:38:46 There’s other steps in the process.
0:38:50 So he talks about, you know, then you want to simplify,
0:38:54 then you want to, you know, automate.
0:38:55 Automate is kind of the last step, basically,
0:38:57 of the five that he talks about.
0:38:59 He’s like, you know, I can’t tell you how many times
0:39:01 I’ve done this backwards.
0:39:03 You know, I start off trying to automate a process
0:39:05 and then I try to, you know, speed it up.
0:39:07 Then I start to simplify and then I try to,
0:39:09 then he’s like, basically at the end,
0:39:11 I realized I just needed to remove it in the first place.
0:39:12 It wasn’t even the right thing.
0:39:16 And then I finally questioned the requirement last.
0:39:19 He’s like, I got tired of doing that wrong so many times
0:39:22 that I made this as my process so that I can,
0:39:24 I make sure I don’t fall into that trap again.
0:39:27 And there’s a famous story of the Tesla manufacturing plant
0:39:30 where he tried to create basically a robo factory
0:39:31 right off the jump.
0:39:32 He’s like, oh, why do we need to do all this?
0:39:33 We’ll just automate the whole thing.
0:39:36 And they basically almost killed the company
0:39:38 by trying to overdo the automation at the start
0:39:41 rather than doing that at the end of the process.
0:39:42 – Dude, that’s pretty fascinating.
0:39:44 I’m not a fan of Elon’s personality.
0:39:46 I’m a huge fan of his work.
0:39:48 I like to read these old books,
0:39:50 like particularly about the gilded age
0:39:51 and all these industrialists.
0:39:52 And I’m reading one about Andrew Carnegie,
0:39:55 who’s one of my favorite guys to read about.
0:39:57 And he was a really big deal because back then
0:39:59 no business people would ever talk publicly
0:40:01 or they would write publicly about this.
0:40:04 And he wrote a book and it was considered groundbreaking
0:40:07 that one of these rich guys actually shared ideas.
0:40:11 It’s compared to now it’s the barrier to entry
0:40:12 is so low for sharing ideas.
0:40:14 It is pretty awesome that we get to like learn
0:40:16 and get all these good insights to people
0:40:20 who are doing amazing and big things.
0:40:22 – Totally, this happens right now in sports, by the way,
0:40:25 like the Olympics is going on and you see,
0:40:26 there’s like the Netflix documentary
0:40:28 about the sprinters, right?
0:40:30 But there’s also one about quarterbacks and receivers.
0:40:32 And you get to see how these people live,
0:40:34 how they prepare, how they recover, right?
0:40:37 I’m doing an episode or a series of,
0:40:38 my new email series called Good Friday,
0:40:39 we just did one together,
0:40:41 but the next one that’s coming out
0:40:44 or in a couple of weeks is with Mike Mancias.
0:40:46 He’s LeBron’s trainer of 20 years.
0:40:47 – No way.
0:40:50 – He met LeBron when LeBron was 19 years old.
0:40:52 He’s been his trainer now, LeBron’s 39 years old.
0:40:56 And he’s had the best longevity of any basketball player
0:40:59 really ever, like playing at a peak level
0:41:01 for 20 straight years is insane.
0:41:04 – Longevity, physically and emotionally.
0:41:06 I’m shocked that guy has not screwed up.
0:41:06 – Well, yeah, exactly.
0:41:08 I mean, he’s been a model citizen, right?
0:41:09 Like since, and he’s like,
0:41:11 in many ways a child star, right?
0:41:13 You know how screwed up most child actors are
0:41:14 or child stars are.
0:41:16 This guy was on the cover of sports illustrated
0:41:17 at like 15 or 16 years old.
0:41:19 And it said the chosen one
0:41:22 and somehow did not get all screwed up from that, right?
0:41:23 Has like, you know, great kids, great wife,
0:41:25 you know, like has a great life,
0:41:28 never been in trouble with the law, none of that stuff.
0:41:29 So really incredible.
0:41:31 And one of the things he talks about is like,
0:41:33 or in doing the series, I was like, man,
0:41:36 I’m getting access to information that 30 years ago,
0:41:38 I feel like people just didn’t have access to this, right?
0:41:41 You didn’t know what the guys did for their pre-game nutrition
0:41:44 and for their post-game recovery and how they train.
0:41:46 But now it’s filmed, now it’s documented.
0:41:49 Now the skills trainers have their own Instagram.
0:41:50 And so if you’re a young basketball player,
0:41:52 the blueprint is there.
0:41:55 The access to information is there now
0:41:58 because of the way that everything is documented
0:41:59 on social media or in interviews
0:42:01 where you now have access to information
0:42:03 like you would have never had before.
0:42:04 – Which by the way, if you watch the Olympics,
0:42:06 particularly running is the easiest one
0:42:08 because it’s a very like clear standard
0:42:09 where you’re like, I just look at the data
0:42:11 and I can see we’re going faster.
0:42:15 When I was like 16, like they would just tell you
0:42:18 like eat loads of pasta the night before.
0:42:20 You don’t need to do that unless you’re like,
0:42:22 unless you’re intend to burn 2000 calories,
0:42:24 like you don’t need that many carbs, you know?
0:42:25 But there was like all these little things like,
0:42:30 well this one guy said that he would eat pasta like before.
0:42:31 So that’s just what we’re going to do.
0:42:33 And like you just hear these like rumors and like,
0:42:37 well this one guy said one time in the famous quote,
0:42:39 like don’t have sex or don’t masturbate
0:42:41 like a week before like a big event.
0:42:43 So therefore you have to do that.
0:42:44 Have you heard that by the way?
0:42:44 Like that’s like a thing.
0:42:45 – Of course, yeah.
0:42:47 The posture is still a thing and fighting is still a thing.
0:42:48 – It’s still hugely a thing.
0:42:50 But like, by the way, there’s no evidence
0:42:52 that it does anything.
0:42:53 But it’s like, you hear these things.
0:42:54 Like he’s like, well, I heard this,
0:42:56 I heard Muhammad Ali did this one time.
0:42:57 So I have to do it.
0:42:59 And that’s how it was up, up until like-
0:43:00 – You looked into that.
0:43:02 You looked into the research.
0:43:04 You wanted to see like for podcasting
0:43:05 and what you’re supposed to do.
0:43:08 (laughing)
0:43:10 – You know, chat, GBT makes it easy.
0:43:12 (laughing)
0:43:13 – All right.
0:43:15 I think that’s the signal we’re reaching that time.
0:43:18 We’re turning it to eighth grade boys.
0:43:18 – All right.
0:43:19 That’s the part.
0:43:21 ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪
0:43:24 ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪
0:43:26 ♪ I put my all in it like no days off ♪
0:43:30 ♪ On the road let’s travel never looking back ♪
0:43:38 [BLANK_AUDIO]
Episode 615: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) tell the story of Scott Heiferman, the reindustrialization of America, plus Elon’s Problem Solving Method.
—
Show Notes:
(0:00) Millionaire working at McDonalds
(11:40) Scott Heiferman’s path to $15M
(17:32) Building Meetup.com to $156M exit
(24:20) Rosie the Riveter 3.0
(34:32) Elon’s Problem Solving Method
—
Links:
• Get our business idea database here https://clickhubspot.com/mfm
• Meetup – https://www.meetup.com/
• Bowling Alone – https://tinyurl.com/23etxxdp
• Careers Built To Last – https://www.careersbuilttolast.com/
• BlueForge Alliance – https://www.blueforgealliance.us/
• Gundo Deep Dive – https://x.com/johncoogan/status/1741512539979325733
—
Check Out Sam’s Stuff:
• Hampton – https://www.joinhampton.com/
• Ideation Bootcamp – https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/
• Copy That – https://copythat.com
• Hampton Wealth Survey – https://joinhampton.com/wealth
• Sam’s List – http://samslist.co/
—
Check Out Shaan’s Stuff:
Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it’s called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd
My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano