He Sold His Company For $15M, Then Got A Job At McDonald’s

Here's the headline. Millionaire working at McDonald's. And actually it's it's actually much more interesting than that. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to This is the story of a guy named Scott. Meetup dot com's probably the most popular

That he made. Meetup is a really cool sign. I used it when I moved to San Francisco, joined a bunch of groups, met a bunch of people. It's basically a way to go from the internet to actually meeting people in real life. And so I knew about meetup. I had even known about Scott. Well what I didn't know is the story that Scott, after he had sold his first company, actually went and worked at McDonald's. Just to kinda reset.

And he did that for a while and now he was going viral because he's kind of doing it again. He didn't tell anybody, but people saw him update his LinkedIn. And it said Amazon Associate or like warehouse associate or something. Basically he's a he's back at a Amazon warehouse now. being a pickpacker kind of minimum wage job again. And people are like, dude, this is not the first time he's done this. He did this with McDonald's like, you know, twenty years ago. And I found this fascinating and I went down a Scott Rabbit hole and I want to talk to you about it. You have some good stuff there, too, right? Is that how

Your eye? Yeah, so basically he grew up uh I think in Iowa or Idaho, somewhere in the Midwest. And he grew up there and he saw that Mark Andreessen Releases Netscape. And he was like, This is amazing. And so he's like, I'm gonna get in the internet. And so in the mid nineties, he starts, I believe, like one of the world's first

Online Internet agencies. I I think it was an advertising agency, something like that. He sells it for around fifteen million dollars. Yeah, which is something like thirty million bucks in today's money.

And he sells it and after he sells it. He was like I've been working for six or seven years at this internet startup. And I work in marketing. But I'm only around like bankers.

And lawyers and other like yuppie people. That's horrible for my position as a marketer, but also like I feel so out of touch with the people. Here, let's use his words. So he he wrote this on his site. You found it. Back in the Internet Archive, which I thought is great. So it says why I got a job at McDonald's. I spend a lot of time with bankers, lawyers, internet freaks, and corporate wonks.

And other people living strange lives. As a good marketing guy, that's a bad thing. And as a practicing anti consumerist, that's a bad thing. So I got a job at McDonald's to help get back in touch with the real world. Also, after six grueling years of the internet whirlwind, I wanted to experience a profitable, well oiled, multi billion dollar machine. And I deserved a break today.

And then he goes and works at McDonald's and he even talks about he shows his application. He goes, I just walked in off the street. It was at like Fifth and Broadway in New York City. I walked off uh off the street and he's like the manager was like, So are you used to like working with teams or something like that? And he and Scott was like in his blog post, he goes, Yeah, I was honest. I said Yes. I am used to that. Yeah, he go he goes, I was truthful in my interview. He asked if I can handle a fast paced, intense environment. I said yes. He looked at my resume And that's about my current part time job as chairman of iTraffic.

I said, it's an internet thing. He said okay and then ask me for my for my waist size for for the pants. And he works there for like six months. And he has this amazing blog post about everything that he's learned. By the way, I don't think he worked there for six months. I think it was like More but more like Three or four weeks, something like that. But Five seventy five ain't much. So he was making five seventy five an hour times forty hours a week times fifty two weeks a year. That's eleven thousand nine hundred and sixty dollars.

Pre-tax. You go, some people said it was disrespectful to me to take a job at McDonalds. I didn't need the money. They thought I was making fun of people that work there. The opposite is true. I gained a bucket of respect for people that bust their butt for such low pay. It's one thing to scan past like statistics you see about how many people make twelve thousand dollars a year or read about them in the paper. It's another thing to sit back there with in a fry heaving, McNugget wielding six hour shift and go home smelling like fries and McNuggets and realize you only made about thirty dollars this day. It's an eye opener. Interpret that as you see fit.

And then what happens is while he's working At McDonald's, Crane's, which is a a business publication. They want to do a story on Scott about like CEOs and post acquisition life. And he's like, Yeah, come and uh See what I'm up to now. And they use this photo of him Working at McDonald's, wearing his McDonald's uniform.

And it's just the greatest photo I've ever seen. And if you scroll through this old blog post, we'll link it in YouTube. You can see some of these pictures of him working. It looks like It it looks pretty wild. Well they sp they spun it like he was struggling, right? It's like Dethroned CEOs is the title. And they're like, How are they handling the dot com crash? This this

Dot com CEO is backworking at a McDonald's. And it's like, wait, that's not one Not even what happened at all, but okay, sure. Now fast forward to today. But by the way, he made fifteen million dollars, I think, in that sale. So he sold his agency for about fifteen million bucks. Who knows? Stock cash. Who knows if this is like but ballpark, right? Let's take it directional. And then he goes from there to working at a McDonald's, um, you know, just to kind of like reacclimate with the real world, which I thought was

Was really good. And fast forward to today, so in eighteen or nineteen, something like that. He sells Meetup dot com to we work. Uh the price was rumored to be two hundred million, but who knows? It's enough that he doesn't have to go and work some place like this.

Turns out He has a job at an at an Amazon fulfillment center. And he doesn't make a big ordeal out of this. He doesn't like tell people about this. He just puts it on his LinkedIn. Someone finds it and shares it. So he ends up and uh does a podcast where he talks about the story of of of why he's at Amazon. It's the same type of thing where he's like, uh, I just like fell out of touch with average people and I wanted to, I wanted to feel that again. And he

Doesn't exactly say this, but he says something like The interviewer was asking him about his experience there. And he's like, uh the interview was like, Isn't that the place where like they just had a big issue with uh them the workers in the warehouse wanting to unionize and he's like, look, I don't want to talk too much about that. But yeah.

That's where it was, and I think it's a good idea. And he sort of insinuates that that he was part of it. That he was part of it. And he was kind of like whispering in people's ears and He doesn't explicitly say that. But the language that he uses where he's like, I don't really want to talk about it. But yeah, like I I was there. I saw it all happening. And

He was like, You know, it's funny, I'm like an entrepreneur And I'm usually the guy who you'd unionize unionize against, but I thought it was a good idea to have a union. And it's it's as if that he's like the one riling people up. And so this guy in a weird way He's like a little horse gump character. Like he's like experiencing all these things in in the background and he's like potentially a pivotal part of the story, but he doesn't really talk about it. It reminds me of you know like movies and there's a

F up analogy, but it's like movies where It's like the the genius nerd gets sent to prison, but then he like does you know, but then he's like the master then he like brings a new angle and and sort of rallies the the crew inside the prison a different way. Right. Uh or like we had Shrelli on the podcast and he was talking about the same thing. He said he went to prison and he started the Bitcoin Club, like the crypto club, and he started all these like learning clubs for technology inside the prison, but then they also taught him a bunch of things. It was just like meeting of the of the of the world. That's what this reminds me of, this uh sort of going into the fulfillment center and and and like stirring up the union at the union efforts. I kn I have a friend of a friend. who was a banker. He was like the really successful Wall Street guy.

And he retired. But he got bored. And so he was like, dude, I'm gonna drive for Uber. So he starts driving for Uber. And he ends up after doing that for a little while, he starts a private driving business where he's like a broker. So for example, when I go to the airport, I I do use a private driver, but it's only like thirty dollars more than an Uber

uh it's not like much more expensive, but it feels a little bit nicer. He started one of these and he ended up being a broker for it and he is now making like a million dollars a year being a broker for some of these drivers when you want a a a car. And It's kind of a similar thing. Would you ever if you had like a break in your career, would you ever want to do one of these kind of blue collar jobs. Yeah, dude, I I when I saw this, I was inspired on three fronts. The first

This is a guy who plays his own game. And if you know anything about me You know, that is what I respect the most. People who have their own viewpoint, they bring their own frame to the game and they say, this is how I want to use my time in life. And this is what I think is right. They don't really follow The hurt, right? Like how many founders who sell their company

Then become a VC, then go from V C oh back to being a founder and advisor and go on podcast. By the way, I did all this after I sold my company too, right? I sold my company, started investing, started a podcast, started doing the the normal path. And so when I see people who Just thought from first principles about what they cared about in life. and decided what they wanted to do and did it even though it sounded weird or unconventional.

Highest level of respect for me. Um, so that's the first thing, inspired by that. Second, inspired by The th the the idea of basically just getting out of your bubble. Um

I do this in a in a different way, not usually by a job, but like You know, uh you told me about that conference farm con, which is a conference for farmers. And I went there and that was the only tech that was the only conference I went to. I didn't go to any tech conference, any investing conference. I went to far a farming conference. Because I knew it would put me completely out of my bubble, exposed to a whole bunch of different people with different thoughts and philosophies and different views about the world right now.

And I knew I would get new ideas and sure enough. A business came out of that. We ended up launching a business, um, Bill Grode out of that. And so Uh there was you know, I I'm I'm a big fan of that. I'm inspired by that. the only thing I would do differently is I wouldn't necessarily just

copy what this guy didn't just go get a blue collar job necessarily. Like it's the lesson for me is Think for myself. What's my version of this? That's fewer that's more Real to me. Right, uh that that I actually do feel compelled to do that I would feel excited to do.

And go do it. Maybe it would be driving Uber, maybe it would be going and working out a warehouse, maybe it'd be something different. I'm not sure, but This will this really like sparked something in me. To to take my to use my time to go do something like that. I completely agree. By the way, you you know one version of this for me? It's either teaching at a school, like I would be a second grade teacher for like a year.

Or Gordon Bombay. And just go coach a team. And go go do my version of the Mighty Ducks. I I've actually been itching to do this to go and just coach like a seventh grade boys basketball team or something. I did this for a while. I I coached at a uh was actually like a school for autistic and Asberger's kids and I I coached their basketball team and it was like one of the best experiences of my life. Just doing that on the side for fun.

Um, and I think I might go back and try to do something like that. That's I think that be would be my version of this. Dude, a few weeks ago I emailed this high school asking if they need like an assistant. Uh track and field coach. And I got and I was so pumped up about it. I'm like, this is so filling, this is awesome. The best is when they're like, You're not qualified for that. Well Yeah, I I honestly was a little nervous about that, but I get like the hours and like what they what they demand uh of me and I'm like Uh that's a lot of work. That's a huge commitment. So like my inspiration like very quickly like lowered down. And so I gotta figure out if I'm gonna do it. Um

Can we can we finish Scott?'Cause there's more in his story that I think is pretty i interesting. So He's born in a big family. And um, like you said, sort of middle of the country, I think Illinois or something. And uh We just named three different I states, by the way. Illinois, Idaho. Sorry. Sorry. I'm from there and I'm going to go. All right. So

He's the youngest of five. His siblings are like twenty years older than him, just kind of the way their family family dynamics worked. And so he's the youngest by like fifteen to twenty years. And um He starts his first business when he's nine. Do you know what it's called? No what Scott's slave service. Which a nine year old can get away with because he's basically saying it's free labor for for sibl for my siblings. And so he's like, Hey, whatever ta whatever tasks you got.

I'm yours. I will do whatever whatever task you have. But he's he gets the entrepreneurial bug there. starts learning to decode. His first job out of college is actually at Sony. And he tells Sony he's like, Hey This is like ninety four, ninety five. He's like the internet's gonna be a thing. And they're like okay, kid, like whatever you say.

He's like, No no, you should have like a website. And like, all right, well, if you want to build one, go for you know have at it. So he he ends up building the first website for like, you know, Sony.com. And he realizes pretty quickly, he's like, Okay This ain't it. He also in ninety three had started one of the first internet shows, so one of the first podcasts, essentially. He started his own radio show on the internet.

Um, which is called advertorial infotainment and he was basically questioning consumer culture. So he's he considers himself sort of a Anti consumerist in many ways. So he he does that. Then he does the first thing which is that that

Business we called iTrappic, which is a media buying agency. And he was joking around, like at the time, there was really no media to buy on the internet yet, but he knew. people are going to wanna advertise on the internet. This will make websites have a business model, so let's do this. He sells that thing for fifteen million ish. Which by the way.

That doesn't I mean, it's so obvious now. Yes, he's right. But that's pretty wild to like be that bold in ninety four, ninety five to make some of these predictions. He he was he nailed them. He was a hundred percent right. He knew that because when he was a teen and again, he's twenty years younger than all the siblings, he's got a lot of alone time and he's basically spending it, you know, programming. Just for fun. And he is just

becomes convinced that like computers and the internet, like this is where it's at. Then he does the McDonald's thing. And by the way, do we want to read a few of his like blog post takeaways from his McDonald's thing that you send me. I thought this was really good. Why did and why I don't you know we we had to use web archive to find his this post. He took it down. I wish he did it. It's fantastic.

Well, we we still got it. We'll show some of the pictures on here. He's got like a picture of like his burn from the font the fry machine and stuff like that on his arm. But like here's one of them. So he goes, Nobody th number four. Uh nobody thanked me. I worked hard. I got paid peanuts. I even ate McDonald's during my food break, deducted from my pay. It was intense. The cash register is complex. The people want their food now. The lines get deep. The McFlurry must be made just right. I was trying hard and I was doing an okay job. Now, I've been a leader and a manager for most of my life. I've had plenty of crap jobs, but I've been the boss for the past few years.

And I faithfully read Fast Company Magazine and my Harvard Business Review, and I've read that countless times. that the value of a leader or manager showing appreciation of people for people's effort. However. My instinct has been often that showing appreciation really isn't too necessary or good for people. They just take pride in a job well done.

And they can read my mind and see the appreciation. Well From day one at McDonald's, I was yearning for someone just to say thanks or you're even doing okay would have been suff sufficient. But no Neither management experience nor reading about management teaches this lesson in the same way as feeling it. being an underappreciated employee. So I read that uh a few hours ago when I was getting ready and I went and messaged a bunch of employees and I said, You're doing great.

You're doing great. You're doing okay. But because uh it it this is everyone should go and read this post. It it is this is awesome. This is a very inspiring thing. Yeah, he talks about the dollar menu and a bunch of things. Okay, so He does that.

By the way, if you look on this page He left his phone number. in the photo of the application. I text I texted him. Uh I'm gonna try it. Well I'll try to get'em on.

Yeah, I would love that. Scott, come on, that'd be amazing. So Then he has his next period where he's like, he's got thirty ideas. He's like, What do I wanna do next? He's got thirty ideas. And Have you read the story about kinda how he narrowed that down to two?

Was it the sept September eleventh story? Yes, exactly. So he lives a few miles away from the Twin Towers. So September eleventh happens. He sees the the planes hitting the building. And I think the story was like he was kind of on the rooftop of his building or he's outside of his building. And it was the first time he had ever met any of his neighbors. Like he'd been living there for a while.

He just didn't know anyone. And this Now that they were all outside and they're seeing this crazy thing, they're all talking, they're meeting. And he was like kinda struck by man, I really Live a pretty like solo life and I'm just on the internet.

And He had had a couple of other experiences that that kind of triggered him in that. So there's the September eleventh thing. A week later he reads his book called Bowling Alone. And I guess this book has big impact on him because he then ends up giving this to every meetup employee. And bowling alone was just basically a book.

uh about statistics. He's honest. He's like, I didn't even read the whole thing, but he's like The beginning of the book makes a very clear that More and more we're doing less things with other people, which is caught which The less interaction you have with strangers. Causes you to

Trust strangers less. Which then causes you to spend less time with them and it's this terrible cycle that we go into. And he's like Then he notices in his own life he's a big fan of this band. A Luna. And he goes to a bunch of their shows and they're a small band and so he's ends up he's like, Dude, I'm in like

Conference centers and a hotel. Ballroom B and he's like, I'm listening to the band play and he's like Yeah, I used to just go alone. I would you know, dan you know, kinda dance or sing alone, I'd go home alone. He's like, but soon enough, you know, I started to see some other faces there. that were the other regulars. Like there weren't many of us who were big fans of this band. But he's like we still didn't talk to each other that much because it wasn't

Clear that it was okay to go talk to each other. So that's where He decides he narrows down his list of ideas from thirty One of them is meetup where he's like Well, what if we made it where the internet could help people meet up in real life and we could solve this bowling alone problem where people

Interact more with strangers, which increases their trust in strangers, which increases the amount of time they're willing to talk to other people. And make it okay to just have these real life interactions, even with the internet. Um the second one, which he hasn't talked about too much, is something called Photolog. Did you see this? It's like a uh A flicker like service. Yeah, he was early, man. He was too early. It was super early. I think he sold it for like ninety million bucks or something. So he did well with it.

Um, it was like the biggest social network in certain countries around the world, but then Flickr came out and Flickr was growing faster, and then then the next wave of social networks came out. I saw him describe it as As Instagram before Instagram, but I didn't know that it was that financially successful. That's amazing. Yeah, so he did really well with that as well. And so he um you know, he sells that company. Does he start meetup and photologue at the same time? That's a good question. I'm not sure if it was the exact same time. I know there were s yeah, somewhat In tandem. Uh there were there were sort of like

you know, either same time or very close to each other. And so he does Meetup. Meetup starts growing. And then he makes a pretty controversial move, which is he decides not to act not to

Business model just adds. He's like, No, I'm gonna charge people for the service, which at the time was like very anti again. He goes counter to the main mainstream of where what everybody else was doing with their websites at the time. And traffic drops off like ninety five percent. But he's like he stays with it. He's like, I believe that this is the sustainable path for this.

He's like the people who are organizing these meetups. They should pay a fee because they're the ones kind of hosting it getting the value, it'll keep the quality bar high. So let's do that. And He survived the big ninety percent drop in

Usage. And meetup becomes a profitable, sustainable business, and it goes on for a long time until they sell for to we work for I don't know, 150 to 200 million bucks. By the way, I have a friend Uh Greg who used to Work at he also got acquired by We Work. And so I texted Greg this morning and I was like, Greg, do you got any stories about this guy, Scott?

Because I got one. So he goes up. I get to We work. And Scott tells me, Hey

Meet me at five five Broadway at six PM. And then I go, Okay, and he he text me be f right before he goes. By the way, um Clear your calendar for the night. Okay, I don't know what's gonna happen here, but like all right, I'm interested, I'm game.

So he shows up. And there's just a white van with five other people in it. He's like all right, I'm gonna die. I don't know what's happening tonight, but I guess tonight's the night I die. And um Scott walks in.

Tells the driver, let's go. And then he says, um, hey, you're you're new here and I wanna um Do something I do with everybody who's new, which is we're gonna go crash Five or six meetups tonight. And you're gonna get to actually like go experience them firsthand, first day. Um, let's go.

And so he was just taking six kind of new people in the company. to go and they crash like a Harry Potter meetup. And then like a women with diabetes meetup and they went to six different meetups that night and they stayed out all night. Basically at this thing. And Greg was like, dude, I'll never forget that. Such a cool founder move to do that.

And to kinda stay in the community, stay like amongst the the the users and the people. And to make that part of the culture for new people that are in the company. How awesome is that? Dude, this guy's amazing. I love him. So good, right?

Yeah, and that he's been in the game for so long and that he's still He's not like a high and mighty executive, you know what I mean? Like he still kinda seems like he seems like he's in it. Well, and then the it takes another twist. Meetup then Gets carved out. Uh

We work. And so this brings up this connects two other data points of Our podcast. So On the episode with Jeremy Giffin, he talked about one of his biggest like underrated opportunities right now is

Messy carve outs. What he meant was that sometimes there's companies that act an acquisition happens. And usually like Either, you know, a year later or so the company realizes that, hey, of all the assets, they didn't really want one of the assets or

That the company that acquires it starts to go south and this good company they bought is embedded inside of a bad company. And this is exactly what happened with meetup. So they buy We Work buys meetup for I don't know, 150, 200 million dollars. But then meetup itself, or sorry, we work itself.

becomes, you know, a dumpster fire. But meetup was still a good asset. inside of this dumpster fire. And so here comes A guest of the pod, Kevin Ryan, who's been on the podcast.

came in and actually bought meetup. For peanuts out of that sale. I remember uh looking I mean, I I didn't have like the finances at the time to be able to afford it, but someone was like, Hey, do you want to on this? And uh I was like, Yeah, this is like super interesting. On the podcast, I think you share the numbers, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and I didn't think that it was gonna be Kevin Ryan. It was a bunch of like

You know I'm not even in the ballpark to be able to afford whatever it was. But I was like, you know, maybe I could throw in just a small amount of money to like a group of people who are trying to buy it. And I thought it was very interesting. And then Lo and behold, the man, Kevin Ryan, comes in and and if he comes in like To me, he's a really good signal something is interesting here.

So he bought it. And then they put in a CEO. They turned it around, it's like profitable, and they just did a great job with it. They got a great it turned out to be a great investment for them. Is it a big business or is it just like a a pretty good business that's just Not automated, but like

It just we'll see what happens, you know, it'll grow fifteen percent a year, maybe. Yeah, so I mean it's all Relative, right? So it's a it's a better business than any business I've ever built. However, in the grand scheme of things, I know what you're I know what question you're asking, which is like is this some sort of rocket ship? type of crazy billion dollar business. I don't know. I don't think so. It looks like it's a flow and steady. Low and steady, profitable, cash flowing.

business that's good for humanity. So in that sense, it's an awesome business. Yeah, I think this guy's the man. I think he's absolutely awesome. Uh you should listen to the podcast. Uh it's called uh Internet Misfits, I think that he was on. And he's the definition of an internet misfit. And he talks a little bit about his time at Amazon. He's a cool guy. This guy's really fascinating. He's a fascinating dude. I and I always I've recognized this guy forever, you know, when you and I were just gonna go in the internet, that was when meetup was in its heyday.

And I would go to so many meetups. I actually started my event, HustleCon, because of Meetup.com. I created a small meetup event on meetup.com. uh I got a lot of free users that way. That's how I built my email list. Uh I love meetup.com. I like this guy, Scott. We gotta we gotta have him uh on board. Yeah, uh explain Internet Misfits, that's a great podcast name. If If we didn't have such a cringe name.

That could have been ours. That would have been a great uh great name for us. Let me uh can I tell you about a different story? Yeah. Sort of actually similar to Scott going to McDonald's. So Have you ever heard of uh

You're weird with your pop culture. I I don't know what you do and do not know because you don't know many things about pop culture. Have you ever heard of Rosie the Riveter? No. So basically in the nineteen four in the early nineteen forties, uh America goes to war.

all the men between like, you know, eighteen and thirty five go off and serve the war. So there's this uh huge uh need for manufacturers or workers in manufacturing plants to go and create like B tw uh B seventeen is like these bombers or whatever we're making. uh not only just what we are making before, but now we have to make all these weapons and all these supplies. Uh they needed to get young women, which Who never worked before.

to come and work in factories and they needed to make it look cool. And so they had these ads like if you can work an electric mixer, You can work uh a drill. And so they would like do all these like things to get young women to entice them to come into the workforce. And then Westinghouse, which at the time was like a huge uh manufacturing company, they created this campaign. called Rose uh the name of the character was Rosie the Riveter and the ad says yes we can And it was like uh yes, young women, you gotta come and do this. You owe it to your country and

You're a strong young woman, you should come and do this. And so at the time before the war, I think something like two million. Women worked. after that campaign went live, it was something like twenty million young women went and got jobs. And so it was very like a women empowerment type of thing, but also like push America forward. And so it was incredibly effective. And by the way, you should see the ads in the nineteen fifties. It's called Back to Normalcy. And it was like, What does Rosie do now that the war is over? And it's very much like, We're gonna sell you this refrigerator. And there's all these ads like What should Rosie do with strawberries on a summer day? And it's like make uh uh make like a strawberry shortcake. So it's like pretty crazy how like so who was paying for these ads? Is this the government or the first part made me think it's the manufacturing companies, both but then

Why would they pay for Rosie back to the kitchen. I don't understand that part. Well, because uh I mean obviously like sexism, but like when the when when the Uh originally it was Westinghouse and a bunch of other manufacturers did these campaigns to to to convince women to come work for them. But then also the government, uh You know

uh it's propaganda is what it is, but it's like good propaganda where they would do this stuff. It's like, you know, we all have to do this together. And so the government did it as well as private companies. And so the company that did Rosie the River was uh it's called Westinghouse. It was a it was a large manufacturer Uh Rosie the River, by the way, is one of the most recognized images uh in American history. It's in the Sm Smithsonian. It's like a big deal because it was like a turning point for American feminism, things like this. Uh but also like the war. Um But uh

Yeah, you should see the ads in the fifties when they're like All right, the men are back. back to normalcy. That was the campaign was back to normalcy. But The reason I'm saying this is uh back then in the forties and fifties, you know, we were kind of booming with manufacturing. In fact, have you heard of the rust belt? Have you heard that phrase the rust belt? I have heard that one.

That refers to where I'm from. Missouri Uh places like St. Louis, Cleveland, Chicago. Things like that. Before it was called the Rust Belt.

In the fifties and sixties, it was called the steel belt. Because that's where we manufactured everything. Uh and then the name changed to the Rust Belt, meaning all these old rusty factories that no one uses anymore. And so that's actually uh how the name came to be. Now. the where I'm getting with all of this.

There's this company that is called uh Blue Forge. They created this ad. That is the best ad that I've seen in years. And they and so the ad is basically all about this gig economy and how it like crushes your soul.

Because when Rosie the Riveter, they so they they call them Rosie the Riveters. That's like the women who are working in these factories, they interviewed a bunch of them when they were older and they were like You know, we built this B This B seventeen, which is a large bomber. And we saw it roll off the the manufacturing line and we were we had so much pride, you know, we were helping America, but also we are working together to achieve this task. We felt amazing about ourselves. Now this ad basically shows like when you're driving Uber and things like that, you feel shitty.

Yeah, people complaining, you're not working towards a common goal. And so this company, Blue Forge, it was put together uh I think in uh I believe the Navy uh funded it. And what they're trying to do is to convince young Americans to go back to manufacturing jobs or Uh, they don't mean to do this, but it sort of does it go back to trade jobs. So basically things that where you work with your hand to rebuild manufacturing in America.

And I saw this ad and I did a little bit of research on what's going on with like the reindustrialization of of America. It's incredibly fascinating. This ad is so good. And it's trying to make these manufacturing jobs, which Don't even exist that much right now, but if they do exist, they're like unsexy as shit. Like they're not cool. And what this company is doing.

is they are trying to make it look cool and they are totally succeeding. And you're seeing this a little bit with um Uh Andril. You know Andril? Yeah. So Palmer Lucky is uh

defense business in uh Orange County. Where It's cool again to work in factories. It's cool again to make stuff. And I one hundred percent buy into this premise. And I think it is so great. And I was thinking about like different ideas and things like that.

Uh but A really simple one. If you refer someone to some of these jobs, you can earn up to five hundred dollars. And so it's actually like a pretty interesting opportunity. If you just Google like trade jobs or manufacturing jobs, you go to the website, they kinda look silly. Uh they're not like that enticing. There's no like sex appeal, which inherently like these jobs I think are quite romantic. Like they are it is

really cool. You can make them sent seem and and appear really cool because I think they actually are. And a lot of them will pay thirty dollars, forty dollars an hour, depending on on what it is, particularly the trades, which are incredibly popular right now with Gen Z on TikTok. But I just thought this ad was so awesome. Yeah, it's an amazing ad.

It just shows kind of like do you want to spend your whole life running around doing tasks for other peop people, basically being a you know, the a delivery person. Or And then the doors open. And the manufacturing is happening and it's like you could or you could step into here and really build something. And uh it's it's a really, really well done ad. Yeah, it's it's badass. And I think originally

So that company Blue Forge I think they're built around the submarine industry. Apparently they couldn't get enough people to work on submarines. And so they won these huge contracts to help them get more submarine workers. And That's something I never even would have thought exist, right? But it does. Yeah, really cool. I hope this happens. I hope America uh shifts back to much more of a

We build things here. culture which I think they're trying to do, you know. Uh Yeah, Tesla SpaceX uh being based here, I think is really awesome. And I think that then there's the Chips Act, which is trying to build a giant chip factory like the you know, instead of being reliant on Taiwan.

So there's a there's a an effort to try to do kind of modern manufacturing here. I really want to do a episode where we go down to what's it called? Like El Segundo or whatever. There's 10 interesting companies all on this like one block. Our buddy John Coogan did an amazing video, uh worth watching, 17 minutes. And it's basically he goes to This area of El Segundo where he's like you got

SpaceX, Radiant Nuclear, Varta, ABL space systems. There's like a whole bunch of companies like all in this one area. And he went and he hung out with them, he took a Camera and a crew out there. Um it's worth checking out. It's I think pretty inspiring and it's You know, there there are these hotbeds, right? There's like AI hotbeds, there's crypto hotbeds, and then it's like where is the kind of like

Hard tech. Hotbed. And it seems like this is the answer. If you're if you're interested in that or you're doing that, or you just want to Just go s fe feel that energy. I think it's cool to Watch the videos or go visit uh a place like this.

And it is happening, by the way, like uh the t toy to tundra tundras are made in Texas. And so if you're in Texas and you see a tundra, a lot of'em have a made in Texas sign. And also when I lived in Nashville, Tennessee. I lived like ten miles from the Nissan plant. And I remember thinking like I used to think like made in America meant I had to get a Ford. It's like this Nissan is just as made in America as anything else. And so like it's definitely happening.

Uh, but I think that there's like an i there's an interesting group of people who are making it seem very sexy and I dig that. You wanna do one more thing? Uh yeah, I got one related one. So There's a thing that Elon um talks about that I think More people should hear. Um

Have you heard Elon talk about his problem solving method is five step problem uh solving method. No. But it's like step four, like have kids or something. He said he's got twelve kids, by the way, which is impressive. So he talks about the I think I don't know. The last one is Lex Friedman talking about it, but he's he's said this many times over the years, which is A good signal'cause it's kind of like more fundamental to his philosophy. They've been talking about it for a while.

Alex asked him, he goes. How do you engineer great things, right? You're building rockets that can land on themselves. You're building the best electric cars on the planet. You just did the Neuralink chip in the guy's brain and now the guy's like playing civilization, using his brain to control the computer game. Like What is your

Is there some like general process you do? That that works us. And Elon said the following five steps. He goes. Step one. Question the requirements.

And uh and all of this was born out of pain, by the way, of not doing this. He goes, So, you know, question the requirements means Um, do we need to do this at all? If we need to do this, how exactly do we need to do this? Like before you go in and just build a solution to the first prompt that people have. of like, oh we need X, we need to do Y, right? He instead of just immediately jumping to it and saying, I can build it, I could do it.

It's you first really drill down and try to make the requirements as True and simple as possible. So you try to figure out what is actually needed. What are the what are the requirements? Why is that the requirement? Oh that's up. So that's the the

Step one. Question the requirements. Step two. is basically uh like delete. And so he's like uh He goes, the biggest mistake that smart people make is optimizing something that shouldn't have existed in the first place. And I thought this was the the best point that he made in this whole thing. He goes. In my companies, we will try to if it's a if it's a machine, we'll try to delete a part.

Can it can we do it without this part altogether? Rather than try to make that part work or lower the cost of the part. Can we get rid of the part and will the thing still work? Um if it's a process inside your company. Instead of trying to optimize the process, what happens if you deleted the process? Or there's a role in the company. Could you delete the role? And what he says is that

Um, just like the government always adds new rules and regulations and that's why the tax code book is this thick. Um and actually it is because we add four than we ever subtract. And this happens in big companies too. And every big company you add people and processes and More requirements.

um to every single thing. It very rarely is there any like trash cleaning function that gets rid of the bottom twenty percent. We're we're willing to add twenty percent. We're r very rarely getting Willing to get rid of twenty percent. So he talks about how When you remove he goes he goes, This is a limbic system override.

He goes because Our brains are wired so that We are kind of hoarders by by nature. We're we're afraid to get rid of something'cause we're worried something bad will happen. And then if you ever get rid of something and One time out of ten

You really needed it and it turns out that r removing was a bad thing when we add it back. our brain basically infames right away and we're like, oh my God, see? And we overcorrect. And then the next time we're way more hesitant to get rid of something just because we all remember that one time that we got rid of that thing and we ended up needing it. And you know, I'm I have by the way, I'm going on a family vacation. My wife is like literally like I told her, I was like, I think you're

Trying to take our house and just bring it with us on vacation, like This is not how packing is supposed to go. And she's like Well, we might need this one thing, or we can't get rid of that. And I'm like I'm watching my wife pack, I'm listening to this Elon thing, and I'm like, This isn't true not just in business, but in life.

Which is that Uh, we will always remember the one thing that we we did we decided to remove that we needed, even though nine out of ten times you could have got away with it. Dude, but I think he removes too much stuff. Like I have a Tesla. Sometimes you don't even need to like switch into reverse. Like it automatically does that. But and you also don't have any buttons. You know, it's just a screen.

I want the damn button. I don't want the damn stream. You know what I mean? He removes a lot of stuff. I mean look at the iPhone, right? Most successful product of all time. When they came out and they removed the keyboard. People were freaking out. Then they removed the home button. I remember being like, You got rid of the home button? Are you nuts? Like this is crazy. And they got rid of the home button. And then they got rid of the port. And then they got rid of this, right? They keep the best companies in the world actually do this. The uh the thing he says, he goes. We measure basically

If we are not adding back At least ten percent. of the time the thing that we removed either a process in the company, a role in the company, or a part of the of the product. feature of the product. If we're not adding back at least ten percent of the time. That means we have not been removing enough.

And so that's his benchmark. And he goes, that is the only like we we set that as a target in the same way That When you set goals and you're any good company, if you set goals You do not want to hit the goals one hundred percent of the time because that means you were being way too cautious with your goals. You were not being ambitious enough. Nor do you want to hit your goals zero percent of the time because that means you were being way too unrealistic about your goals.

And so most people like at Amazon, they were saying when we worked at they were like, You want to hit seventy percent of your goals. Seventy percent of your goals means you're stretching enough. But you're also not over stretching and being unrealistic about what you can achieve and building a culture of missing missing uh Uh disappointing expectations. And so Elone talks about that as like step two is to remove a thing.

You look like you had a reaction to that. I love it. It's hard to do. Like uh not only do I know people react negatively to that at like any company I've been at'cause I've done the same thing, I react sometimes negatively of like, Well, it's it's working. Why break it and remove it, you know what I mean?

I agree fundamentally with it. It's very challenging to to to do. Simple but hard. Exactly. Um There's other steps in the process. So he talks about um Yeah, then you wanna simplify Then you wanna um you know automate

Uh automated is kind of the last step, basically, of the five that he talks about. He's like, you know, I can't tell you how many times I've done this backwards. You know, I start off trying to automate a process. And then I try to, you know, speed it up, then I try to simplify it. And then I try to Basically at the end, I realized I just needed to remove it in the first place. It wasn't even the right thing. I quite I then I finally questioned the requirement.

Uh last. He's like, I got tired of doing that wrong so many times. that I made this as my my process so that I can I make sure I don't I don't fall into that trap again. And there's a famous story of the Tesla manufacturing plant. Where

He tried to create basically a Robo Factory right off the jump. He's like, Oh, why do we need to do all this? We'll just automate the whole thing. And they basically Almost killed the company. by trying to overdo the automation at the start rather than doing that at the end of the process. Dude, that's pretty fascinating. I I'm not a fan of Elon's personality. I'm a huge fan of his work. I I like to read these old books, uh like particularly about the Gilded Age and all these industrialists, and I'm reading one about Andrew Carnegie, who's one of my favorite guys to read about.

And he was a really big deal because back then no business people would ever talk publicly or they would write publicly about this. And He wrote a book and it was considered Groundbreaking that. One of these rich guys actually shared ideas. It's

Compared to now, it's the barrier to entry is so low for sharing ideas. It is pretty awesome that we get to like learn and get all these good insights to people who are doing amazing and big things. Totally. This happens right now in sports, by the way. Like the Olympics is going on and you see uh There's like the Netflix documentary about the sprinters, right? But there's also one about quarterbacks and receivers. And you get to see how these people live, how they prepare, how they recover, right? I'm doing a um an episode or a series of uh this is all right, my new email series called Good Friday. We just did one together, but the next one that's coming out or or in a couple of weeks is with Uh Mike Mancias. He's

LeBron's trainer of twenty years. No way. He met LeBron when Le LeBron J was nineteen years old. He's been his trainer now. LeBron's thirty nine years old. And he's But he has had The best longevity of any basketball player.

Really ever. Like playing at a peak level For twenty straight years. Longevity. Physically and emotionally. I'm shocked that guy has not screwed up. Well yeah, exactly. I mean he's been a model citizen, right? Like since and he's like in many ways a child star, right? A child you know how screwed up most child actors are or child stars are. This guy was on the cover of sports illustrated at like fifteen or sixteen years old.

And it said the chosen one. And somehow did not get all screwed up from that, right? Has like, you know, great kids, great wife, you know, like has a great life. uh never been in trouble with the law, n none of that stuff. So really incredible. And one of the things he talks about is like Or in doing the series, I was like, Man, I'm getting access to information.

that thirty years ago, I feel like people just didn't have access to this, right? You didn't know what the guys did for their pregame. nutrition and for their postgame recovery. And how they train. But now it's filmed. Now it's documented. Now the skills trainers have their own Instagram. And so if you're a young basketball player, the blueprint is there.

The access to information is there now. uh because of the way that everything is is you is document on social media or in in interviews where you now have access to information like you would have never had before. Which by the way, if you watch the Olympics particularly running's the easiest one because it's a very like clear standard where you're like, I just look at the data and I can see we're going faster. Uh When I was like sixteen Like they would just tell you like eat loads of pasta the night before.

You don't need to do that unless you're Like unless you're unless you're intend to burn two thousand calories, like you don't need that many carbs, you know. But there's like all these little things like well This one guy said that See when eat pasta like before. So that's just what we're gonna do.

And like you just hear these like rumors and like well this This one guy said one time in the famous quote, like Don't have sex or don't masturbate like a week before like a big event. So therefore you have to do that. Have you heard that, by the way? Like that's like a thing. It's still a thing and fighting is still a thing. Still hugely a thing. But like By the way, there's no evidence that that like does anything. Uh, but it's like you hear these things, like he's like, Well, I heard this I heard Muhammad Ali did this one time, so I have to do it. And and that's how it was up up until like the you you looked into that? You looked into the research?

You wanted to see like for podcasting what you're supposed to do? You know, chat GPT makes it easy. All right. I think we're I think that's the signal. We're reaching that time. We're turning into eighth grade boys. All right, that's the part. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to

I put my all in it like my day song On the road less travel never looking back

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