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

And here's the headline, millionaire working at McDonald's. And actually it's, it's actually much more interesting than that. This is the story of a guy named Scott. Meetup.com is probably the most popular thing that he made. Meetup is a really cool site. 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 hadn't even known about Scott, but what I didn't know was the story that Scott, after he had sold his first company, actually went and worked at McDonald's just to kind of 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, he's back at an Amazon warehouse now being a pick packer, 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, 20 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 it caught your eye?

Yeah. So basically he grew up, I think in Iowa or Idaho, somewhere in the Midwest. And he grew up there and he saw that Marc Andreessen releases Netscape and he was like, this is amazing. And so he's like, I'm going to get in the internet. And so in the mid-'90s, he starts, I believe, like one of the world's first online internet agencies. I think it was an advertising agency, something like that. He sells it for around $15 million, which is something like $30 million in today's money. And he sells it. And after he sells it, he was like, I've been working for 6 or 7 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 wrote this on his site. You found it back at the Internet Archive, which I thought was 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 6 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 5th and Broadway in New York City. I walked off, 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 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 asked about my current part-time job as chairman of iTraffic. I said, it's an internet thing. He said, okay, and then asked me for my waist size for the pants.

And he works there for like 6 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 6 months. I think it was like more, more like 3 or 4 weeks, something like that. But he said $5.75 ain't much. So he was making $5.75 an hour times 40 hours a week times 52 weeks a year. That's $11,960 pre-tax. He goes, some people said it was disrespectful to me to take a job at McDonald's. I didn't need the money. They thought I was making fun of people that worked 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 $12,000 a year or read about them in the paper. It's another thing. To sit back there in a fry-heaving, McNugget-wielding 6-hour shift and go home smelling like fries and McNuggets and realize you only made about $30 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, Cranes, which is a business publication, they want to do a story on Scott about like CEOs in post-acquisition life. And he's like, yeah, come and 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 whole blog post, we'll link it in YouTube, you can see some of these pictures of him working. It looks like— it looks pretty wild.

Well, they, 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 back working at a McDonald's. And it's like, wait, that's not what It's not even what happened at all, but okay, sure.

And now fast forward to today.

By the way, he made $15 million, I think, in that sale. So he sold his agency for about $15 million. 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, you know, just to kind of like reacclimate with the real world, which I thought was really good.

And fast forward to today. So in '18 or '19, something like that, he sells Meetup.com to WeWork. The price was rumored to be $200 million, but who knows. It's enough that he doesn't have to go and work someplace like this. Turns out he has a job 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, I just like felt 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, the interviewer was like, isn't that the place where like they just had a big issue with 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 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 is like, I don't really want to talk about it, but yeah, like 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 against, but I thought it was a good idea to have a union. And it's as if he's like the one riling people up. And so this guy, in a weird way, he's like a little Forrest Gump character. Like he's like experiencing all these things 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, this is a fucked up analogy, but it's like movies where it's like the genius nerd gets sent to prison, but then he like does, you know, then he's like the master. Then he like brings a new angle and sort of rallies the crew inside the prison in a different way.

Right.

Or like we had Shkreli 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 worlds. That's what this reminds me of, this sort of going into the fulfillment center and like stirring up the union efforts.

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 going to 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 $30 more than an Uber. 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 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. 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 herd, right? Like how many founders who sell their company then become a VC, then go from VC, oh, back to being a founder and advisor and go on podcasts. 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 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. So that's the first thing inspired by that. Second, inspired by the idea of basically just getting out of your bubble. I do this in a different way, not usually by a job, but like, you know, you told me about that conference FarmCon, which is a conference for farmers. And I went there. 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 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 that built, that grew out of that. And so there was, you know, 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 did and 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 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 at a warehouse, maybe it'd be something different. I'm not sure, but this, 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 go 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 7th grade boys basketball team or something. I did this for a while. I, I coached at a, it was actually like a school for autistic and Asperger'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. And I think I might go back and try to do something like that. That's, I think that'd be, be my version of this.

All right guys, really quick. So back when I was running The Hustle, we had this premium newsletter called Trends. The way it worked was we hired a ton of analysts and we created this sort of playbook for researching different companies and ideas and emerging trends to help you make money and build businesses. Well, HubSpot did something kind of cool. So they took this playbook that we developed and we gave to our analysts, and they turned it into an actionable guide and a resource that anyone can download. And it breaks down all the different methods that we use for spotting upcoming trends, for spotting different companies that are gonna explode and grow really quickly. It's pretty awesome that they took this internal document that we had for teaching our analysts how to do this into a tool and are giving it away for free that anyone can download. So if you want to stay ahead of the game and you want to find cool business ideas or different niches that most people have no idea they exist, this is the ultimate guide. So if you want to check it out, you can see the link down below in the description. Now back to the show. Dude, a few weeks ago I emailed this high school asking if they need like an assistant track and field coach. And I got that. 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 honestly was a little nervous about that, but I get like the hours and like what they, what they demand, uh, of me. Me and I'm like, that's a lot of work. That's a huge commitment. So like my inspiration, like very quickly, like lowered down. So I got to figure out if I'm going to do it.

Can we finish Scott?

Oh yeah.

His story that I think is pretty interesting. So he's born in a big family and like you said, sort of middle of the country, I think Illinois or something.

And we just named 3 different I states, by the way, Illinois, Idaho. Sorry. Sorry. I'm from there. And I should know.

Somehow we offended all of them by grouping them all together. All right. He's the youngest of 5. His siblings are like 20 years older than him, just kind of the way their family dynamics worked. And so he's the youngest by like 15 to 20 years. And he starts his first business when he's 9. Do you know what it's called?

No. What?

Scott's Slave Service.

Oh.

Which a 9-year-old can get away with because he's basically saying it's free labor for, for, for my siblings. And so he's like, hey, whatever, whatever tasks you got, I'm yours. I will do whatever task you have. But he gets the entrepreneurial bug there, starts learning to code. His first job outta college is actually at Sony. And he tells Sony, he's like, hey, this is like '94, '95. He's like, the internet's gonna be a thing. And they're like, okay kid, like whatever you say. And he's like, no, no, no, you should have like a website. And they're like, all right, well if you wanna build one, go for it, you know, have at it. So 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 '93 had started one of the first internet shows, one of the first podcasts essentially. He started his own radio show on the internet, which is called Advertorial Infotainment. And he was basically questioning consumer culture. So he considers himself sort of an anti-consumerist in many ways. So he does that. Then he does the first thing, which was that business we called iTraffic, 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 want to advertise on the internet. This will make websites have a business model. So let's do this.

He sells that thing $15 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 '94, '95 to make some of these predictions. He, he was, he nailed them.

He, he was 100% right. And he, he knew that because when he was a teen, and again, he's 20 years younger than all his siblings, he's got a lot of alone time and he's basically spending it, you know, programming. Just for fun. And he 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 sent 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 didn't. It's fantastic.

Well, 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 fry machine and stuff like that on his arm. But like, here's one of them. So he goes, nobody— number 4, 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 was 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 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 could 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've been 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 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.

Because it, this is, everyone should go and read this post. 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 him on.

Yeah, I would love that. Scott, come on. That'd be amazing. So then he has this next period where he is like, he's got 30 ideas. He's like, what do I wanna do next? He's got 30 ideas. And have you read the story about kind of how he narrowed that down to 2?

Was it the September 11th story?

Yes, exactly. So he lives a few miles away from the Twin Towers and so September 11th happens. He sees 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, kind of 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 11th thing. A week later, he reads this book called Bowling Alone. And I guess this book has a big impact on him because he then ends up giving this to every Meetup employee. And Bowling Alone was just basically a book about statistics. And 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 point that more and more we're doing less things with other people, which is called, 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 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 this band play. And he's like, you know, I used to just go alone. I would, you know, d— you know, kind of 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. So 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 30 to 2. 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 doesn't talk about too much, is something called Fotolog. Did you see this? It's like a, uh, a Flickr-like service.

Yeah, he was early, man. He was too early.

He was super early. I think he sold it for like $90 million 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 the next wave of social networks came out.

I saw him describe it 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 Fotolog at the same time?

That's a good question. I'm not sure if it was the exact same time. I know they were, yeah, somewhat in tandem. Uh, they were, they 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 make Meetup's business model just ads. 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 mainstream of what everybody else was doing with their websites at the time. And traffic drops off like 95%. 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 survives the big 90% drop in usage and Meetup becomes a profitable, sustainable business. And it goes on for a long time until they sell to WeWork for, I don't know, $150 to $200 million. By the way, I have a friend, Greg, who used to work at, he also got acquired by WeWork. And so I texted Greg this morning and I was like, Greg, do you got any stories about this guy Scott? He goes, I got one. And so he goes, I get to WeWork and Scott tells me, hey, meet me at 555 Broadway at 6:00 PM. And then I go, okay. And he texts me right before, he goes, by the way, clear your calendar for the night. He's like, okay, I don't know what's going to happen here, but like, all right, I'm interested. I'm game. So he shows up and there's just a white van with 5 other people in it. And he's like, all right, I'm going to 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 5 or 6 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 6 kind of new people in the company to go and they crashed like a Harry Potter meetup and then like a women with diabetes meetup and they went to 6 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 kind of stay in the community, stay like amongst 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 kind of seems like he seems like he's in it.

Well, and then it takes another twist. Meetup then gets carved out of WeWork. And so this brings up, this connects two other data points of our podcast. So on the episode with Jeremy Giffen, 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— WeWork buys Meetup for, I don't know, $150, $200 million. But then Meetup itself— or sorry, WeWork 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 looking, I mean, 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 get in on this? And I was like, yeah, this is like super interesting.

Yeah, actually on the podcast, I think you shared the numbers, right?

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I didn't think that it was going to be Kevin Ryan. It was a bunch of like, 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 had, they, 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 pretty good business that's just not automated, but like it just, we'll see what happens, you know, it'll grow 15% 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 slow 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 getting going on 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. I got a lot of free users that way. That's how I built my email list. I love meetup.com. I like this guy Scott. We gotta, we gotta have him on board.

Yeah. By the way, 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've been a great, great name for us.

Let me, 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 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 1940s, in the early 1940s, uh, America goes to war. All the men between like, you know, 18 and 35 go off and serve the war. So there's this, uh, huge, uh, need for manufacturers workers in manufacturing plants to go and create like B-17s, 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 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, manufacturer manufacturing company. They created this campaign called Rosie. 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 got to 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 2 million women worked. After that campaign went live, it was something like 20 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 1950s. 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 going to 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 a, make like a strawberry shortcake.

So it's like pretty crazy how like, so who's, so who was paying for these ads? Is this the government or the first part made me think it's the manufacturing companies, 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, 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. And it's in the 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 '50s 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 '40s and '50s, 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 '50s and '60s, 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, where I'm getting with all of this. There's this company that is called, uh, Blueforge. They created this ad that is the best ad that I've seen in years. Hi.

Thank you. The most she can ask for is $2 million. Do you have a charger?

Okay, ring me later.

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Blue coins, thank you.

Yum yum!

I'm sorry, I'm sorry! No, no, no, no! I'm moving my car right now!

I sincerely apologize. Yes, we are too. We're taking your feedback very seriously. Hey, what do you do here?

Get a gig that's built to last.

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 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-17, which is a large bomber, and we saw it roll off the manufacturing line and we were, we had so much pride, you know, we were helping America, but also we were 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. You have people complaining, you're not working towards a common goal. And so this company, Blueforge, 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 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, Anduril, you know, Anduril.

Yeah.

So Palmer Luckey's, 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 100% 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 $500. And so it's actually like a pretty interesting opportunity. If you just Google like trade jobs or manufacturing jobs, you go to the websites, they kind of look silly. 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 seem and appear really cool because I think they actually are. And a lot of them will pay $30, $40 an hour depending 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 people, basically being a, you know, 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 a really, really well done ad.

Yeah, it's, it's badass. And I think originally So that company, Blueforge, 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've thought exists, 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, Tesla, SpaceX being based here, I think is really awesome. Anduril. 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 an effort to try to do kind of modern manufacturing here. I really want to do an 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, Varda, 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. And if you're, if you're interested in that or you're doing that, or you just want to just go feel that energy, I think it's cool to watch the videos or go visit a place like this.

And it is happening, by the way. Like, uh, the Toyota Tundra, Tundras are made in Texas. And so if you're in Texas and you see a Tundra, a lot of them have a made in Texas sign. And also, when I lived in Nashville, Tennessee, I lived like 10 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 a, there's an interesting group of people who are making it seem very sexy. And I dig that. You want to 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, his 5-step problem-solving method?

No, but it's like step 4, like have kids or something.

He said he's got 12 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 because it's kind of like more fundamental to his philosophy. They've been talking about it for a while. And Lex 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 this? And Elon said the following 5 steps. He goes, step 1, 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 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 the 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 you 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? All that stuff. So that's the step 1, question the requirements. Step 2 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 trying to make that part work or lower the cost of the part, Can we get rid of a part and will the thing still work? 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 just like the government always adds new rules and regulations, and that's why the tax code book is this thick, it actually is because we add far more than we ever subtract. And this happens in big companies too. In every big company, you add people and processes and more requirements to every single thing. Very rarely is there any like trash cleaning function that gets rid of the bottom 20%. We're willing to add 20%. We're very rarely getting willing to get rid of 20%. 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 afraid to get rid of something because we're worried something bad will happen. And then if you ever get rid of something and one time out of 10 you really needed it, and it turns out that removing was a bad thing, when we add it back, our brain basically inflames 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, 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 is 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 9 out of 10 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 screen. 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. Then they got rid of the port. Then they got rid of this, right? They keep— the best companies in the world actually do this. The thing he says, he goes, we measure basically if we are not adding back at least 10% of the time, the thing that we removed, either a process in the company, a role in the company, or a part of the product, a feature of the product. If we're not adding back at least 10% 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 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 100% 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 0% 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 there, they're like, you want to hit 70% of your goals. 70% of your goals means you're stretching enough, but you're also not overstretching and being unrealistic about what you can achieve and building a culture of missing, missing, uh, disappointing expectations. And so Elon talks about that as like step 2 is to remove the thing. You look like you got 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, because 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. There's other steps in the process. So he talks about, you know, then you want to simplify, then you want to, you know, automate. Automate is kind of the last step basically of the 5 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, then he's like, 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, then I finally questioned the requirement. It last. He's like, I got tired of doing that wrong so many times that I made this as my process so that I can, I make sure 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 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, um, 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, my new email series called Good Friday. We just did one. Together. But the next one that's coming out, or in a couple weeks, is with Mike Mancias. He's LeBron's trainer of 20 years.

No way.

He met LeBron when LeBron James was 19 years old. He's been his trainer now— LeBron's 39 years old, and he's had the best longevity of any basketball player really ever, like playing at a peak level for 20 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 COVID of Sports Illustrated at like 15 or 16 years old and it just 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. Never been in trouble with the law, none of that stuff. So really incredible. And one of the things he talks about is like, Or in doing this series, I was like, man, I'm getting access to information that 30 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 is documented on social media or in interviews where you now have access to information like you would've 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. When I was like 16, 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 intend to burn 2,000 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 he would eat pasta like before, so that's just what we're going to 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.

Of course. Yeah. You never— still a thing in fighting. It's still a thing.

It's still hugely a thing. But like, by the way, there's no evidence that that like does anything. But it's like you hear these things, like these, like, well, I heard this, I heard Muhammad Ali did this one time, so I have to do it. And that's how it was up until like the end.

You looked into that? You looked into the research? You wanted to see like for podcasting what you're supposed to do?

You know, ChatGPT makes it easy. All right.

I think we're, I think that's the signal. We're reaching that time. We're turning into 8th grade boys.

All right.

That's the pod.