Speaker 1: If you're not breaking stuff, it means like you're not
Speaker 1: really testing the limits. And then when you fail, you
Speaker 1: don't internalize it like home a failure, it's like, oh great,
Speaker 1: we just learned one more way not to do a thing.
Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, welcome back to on Purpose, the place you
Speaker 2: come to become a happier, healthier and more healed. My
Speaker 2: guest today is Mark Roba, engineer, YouTuber and one of
Speaker 2: the most creative minds online, whose experiments and inventions have
Speaker 2: inspired millions to fall in love with science and curiosity again.
Speaker 2: In this episode, we explore how to stay creative, turn
Speaker 2: failure into fuel, and reconnect with the sense of wonder
Speaker 2: we often lose as adults. Please Welcome to on Purpose,
Speaker 2: Mark Roba. Mark, it is great to have you here.
Speaker 2: Congratulations on your incredible success. Thank you, and I'm excited
Speaker 2: to dive into your mind.
Speaker 1: So good to be here. Let's do it. Are you
Speaker 1: going to make me cry?
Speaker 2: Jay? Are you a crier?
Speaker 1: I can't get emotional.
Speaker 2: I'm the crier in my relationship with you the crier
Speaker 2: in your real I am well, we both kind of.
Speaker 2: How long have you been together now?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Over a year overy, but that feels like relationship wise,
Speaker 1: we it happened fast. I mean as an adult you
Speaker 1: know what you want, right, and so it feels like
Speaker 1: seven years and dog years relationship. It's been seven years
Speaker 1: for the one.
Speaker 2: I love it. I love it well. If you're allowed
Speaker 2: to cry here, definitely, but no, no pressure. No, we
Speaker 2: don't want any acting too.
Speaker 1: I'm a terrible actor, So your luck.
Speaker 2: I love it. I want to start off just by like,
Speaker 2: the first question I have for you is what's the
Speaker 2: earliest childhood memory you have that you feel defines who
Speaker 2: you are today. Is there a moment, a friend, an
Speaker 2: experience from school growing up that you're like, that is
Speaker 2: why I am the way I am.
Speaker 1: I think it's a finding moment, one that sticks out.
Speaker 1: I feel like, so my mom was was out of
Speaker 1: the gate. You're gidding me talking about my mom. My
Speaker 1: mom was like had the biggest influence on my life
Speaker 1: by a very comfortable margin. And she was like a
Speaker 1: stay at home mom, Like she barely graduated high school.
Speaker 1: But she was just so encouraging of us and like
Speaker 1: trying to turn us into like good humans. And so
Speaker 1: she would encourage just being creative and like out of
Speaker 1: the box thinking and just I remember one time, you know,
Speaker 1: and we did chores like as to raise a good human,
Speaker 1: Like we had a list of chores from the time
Speaker 1: I was five years old, right, So I was helping
Speaker 1: prepare dinner and I was in charge of doing the salad.
Speaker 1: I was cutting the onions and I was like crying
Speaker 1: because I was like, oh, this is a thing. I
Speaker 1: don't like this. So it's like, well, I should go.
Speaker 1: I remember upstairs we had these swim goggles. So I
Speaker 1: ran upstairs, got the goggles, not thinking anything of it,
Speaker 1: and just kept cutting with onions on. And now I
Speaker 1: know that's like a hack, like people know about this,
Speaker 1: but I was like five years old. This was like
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six, and I just remember her react to that,
Speaker 1: just like she laughed and she's just like no way,
Speaker 1: and like the encouragement. She took a picture. We have
Speaker 1: a family picture of it, right, and that's twenty four
Speaker 1: pictures in those days, so if you're taking a picture,
Speaker 1: you mean it right, it's on film. And it just
Speaker 1: felt really good to be in this environment where like
Speaker 1: that kind of thinking was encouraged that it is always
Speaker 1: stuck with me. And then you know, just growing up,
Speaker 1: you know, if I took a part the remote control
Speaker 1: and I couldn't quite get it back together, and like
Speaker 1: I didn't get in trouble for that. It was like, oh,
Speaker 1: what are you up to now? Right, it's like what
Speaker 1: are you up to? But it was more celebrated as
Speaker 1: opposed to something that was just overlooked.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's special.
Speaker 1: And I feel today like that same feeling of like
Speaker 1: creating content and sharing people and like getting that reaction
Speaker 1: of other people being like, oh man, why did I
Speaker 1: think of that? Like I love hearing that because that
Speaker 1: means it was kind of obvious and he took things,
Speaker 1: you know, things especially if I do a build, if
Speaker 1: I could do a junk you have line around your house,
Speaker 1: that's so much better than just like all these technical
Speaker 1: solution right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so that feeling of coming up with an idea
Speaker 1: of sharing with people and getting feedback on it is
Speaker 1: just like it's kind of addictive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's beautiful and it's amazing when your parents encourage it.
Speaker 2: When when was the last time you shared that story
Speaker 2: with your mom?
Speaker 1: So interesting story on that Jay, which is that like
Speaker 1: like six months before I made my first YouTube video,
Speaker 1: she passed away from als, which I think is like
Speaker 1: kind of a beautiful thing in the sense that you know,
Speaker 1: we can all disagree on what happens when you die, right,
Speaker 1: but this idea that like you never know the true
Speaker 1: measure of your impact in this life, right you do?
Speaker 1: You know, you interact with other people, even if it's
Speaker 1: just like what do you say when the guy opens
Speaker 1: the door for you, you know, or you open the
Speaker 1: door for someone like with her, You know, the channel
Speaker 1: now reaches you know, if seventy two million subscribers and
Speaker 1: like billions of views a month, and none of that
Speaker 1: was on her radar. And like my mission is to
Speaker 1: get kids, you know, everyone, but especially the young folks
Speaker 1: stoked about science and education and curiosity because that's what
Speaker 1: she did to me. And this is also how I
Speaker 1: feel about like teachers. They're like seed planners, right, and
Speaker 1: just nobody knows the measure of the full measure of
Speaker 1: their impact. And yeah, so I just think it's really
Speaker 1: sweet that, like, you know, when she passed away, I
Speaker 1: think she felt really good about like the kids she raised,
Speaker 1: but like she just didn't know like her direct like
Speaker 1: how she raised me and my siblings is now like
Speaker 1: impacting so many kids and people across the world. So
Speaker 1: it's really beautiful, Like that's her version of living on
Speaker 1: and living forever regardless of what you think what happens
Speaker 1: after we die.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, thank you for sharing that, man, it's so
Speaker 2: it's so beautiful to hear that as someone who's my
Speaker 2: mom who's still with us, but the impact she had
Speaker 2: on me as well, Like I feel like my mom
Speaker 2: showed me how to love and if anyone ever feels
Speaker 2: loved by me or feels I can create a safe,
Speaker 2: loving space for other people, it's because my mom did
Speaker 2: that for me the most difficult of situations and always
Speaker 2: made me feel like I had a shield of love
Speaker 2: around me, and so I've never really had to question
Speaker 2: whether I'm lovable or not, which is just an insane superpower.
Speaker 2: And then all that love that you were given just
Speaker 2: spills onto other people, and then I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: how are you so loving and thoughtful? And I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's my mom. Like it was like my mom just
Speaker 2: gave me so much that it had to spill out
Speaker 2: and spill over into other people. It's actually not me
Speaker 2: and it's something that I hold very deeply as well.
Speaker 2: And I think moms, dads, teachers, mentors, guides, spiritual leaders,
Speaker 2: whoever your family turns to for support of such a
Speaker 2: big impact. And now YouTubers like now you like there
Speaker 2: are so many kids and parents that turned to you
Speaker 2: for your content to inspire their children to think differently.
Speaker 2: How do you get a job at NASA? Like I
Speaker 2: just when I when I saw that, when I was looking,
Speaker 2: I was like, how do you get a job at NASA?
Speaker 2: Like that sounds like made up stuff?
Speaker 1: I mean, you get lucky first of all, like you know,
Speaker 1: my resume was just in a stack of resumes.
Speaker 2: And yeah, the interview, What did you do at college?
Speaker 1: So I studied mechanical engineering. Okay, so you had that, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so for sure you gotta with an engineering degree, I'll
Speaker 1: give you that. Yeah, and from a good school, from
Speaker 1: a good school, yeah, I did undergrad a UYU grad
Speaker 1: school at USC. Yeah, mechanical engineering. Yeah. I remember going in.
Speaker 1: There's this old engineer there, Don Bickler, And when you
Speaker 1: interview there, you know, you go into his office, shut NASA, NASA.
Speaker 1: This guy's a legend invented like the Rocker Bogy system
Speaker 1: on the rover. And then you just you stay in
Speaker 1: that room for like an hour and he hands you
Speaker 1: a whiteboard, a whiteboard marker, and he just drills you
Speaker 1: on questions and at the end of that he comes
Speaker 1: and kind of offers the verdict. And when I left,
Speaker 1: he's like, he's good. Hire him.
Speaker 2: So, you know, tell me what the questions are, like,
Speaker 2: like what is that? How's that interview? Because I imagine
Speaker 2: it's so different from any.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean they're like technical questions, right, Like
Speaker 1: here's a good one. If you have a fishing boat
Speaker 1: and you have an anchor, and then you take that
Speaker 1: anchor and you throw it overboard, and what happens to
Speaker 1: the water level on the rate lake? Does it go
Speaker 1: up or down? And so it's kind of like a riddle.
Speaker 1: But the point is you write out the equations on
Speaker 1: the board, the buoyancy equation, you know, you solve for this,
Speaker 1: and then the answer is pretty obvious if you can
Speaker 1: do that. So it's kind of like questions like this,
Speaker 1: technical questions, but they're just like rapid fire, one after another.
Speaker 1: And so then yeah, so I worked at NASSA for
Speaker 1: a decade, ten of those or seven of those working
Speaker 1: on the Mars Curiosity rover. So I have hardware that's
Speaker 1: like on the jetpack that lowers it the ground and
Speaker 1: then also on the top deck of the rover. So
Speaker 1: you designed that, I designed, built, tested, integrated.
Speaker 2: How many of you are working on something like that
Speaker 2: at the same time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like it's like probably three thousand people all told,
Speaker 1: like have a hand in creating something like the Mars
Speaker 1: are over.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's cool like to you know, just be
Speaker 1: in the backyard, you know, and you see that one
Speaker 1: thought in the sky that has like the reddish tint,
Speaker 1: you know, so you know that one's Mars, and you're
Speaker 1: just like, I've like I've touched something that's like on
Speaker 1: that planet and built it and it's it's still working
Speaker 1: ninety million miles away.
Speaker 2: And where are you based? Do you?
Speaker 1: This was in This is a jet propulsion laboratory, so
Speaker 1: out in Pasadena here, okay? Yeah?
Speaker 2: And how many people work out of there, like.
Speaker 1: About five thousand give or take. Oh. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: so cool. It's like a college campus, just like a
Speaker 1: free exchange of ideas, you know, talk about creativity. Just
Speaker 1: like everything is on the board and it's just this
Speaker 1: engineering mindset of like, you know, we don't know the
Speaker 1: right answer, but heck, we'll just run a ton of
Speaker 1: and figure out what it is.
Speaker 2: What was the mindset you think you learned from working
Speaker 2: at NASA and the people there that you don't think
Speaker 2: most of us would come across in our daily life.
Speaker 1: I think this concept of like thinking like an engineer,
Speaker 1: what does that mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had that before. I've also had like think
Speaker 2: like a rocket scientist. I'm like, what does that mean?
Speaker 1: So me? I, in fact, I have a toy company now,
Speaker 1: Crunch Labs, where you know, basically it's like a really
Speaker 1: fun toy you get every month and the kids can
Speaker 1: put it together and it teaches the engineering principles what
Speaker 1: makes them work. And on this side of the box,
Speaker 1: it says think like an engineer, and the idea there
Speaker 1: is like it means that, like you're not afraid of failure,
Speaker 1: and you know you're resilient because you know the failure
Speaker 1: is part of the process, Like the point is to
Speaker 1: break stuff and test it. If you're not breaking stuff,
Speaker 1: it means like you're not really testing the limits. And
Speaker 1: then when you fail, it's you don't internalize it like
Speaker 1: oh I'm a failure. It's like, oh great, we just
Speaker 1: learned one more way not to do a thing. You're excited. Right,
Speaker 1: it's like, let's try something different. And so I think
Speaker 1: that philosophy applies to life and the challenge. Like toddlers
Speaker 1: are like this, right, Like when they fall, they're not like,
Speaker 1: oh I look so dumb, I'm never going to try
Speaker 1: and walk again. Right, It's like they just get up
Speaker 1: and try again, and they're excited to try again. You
Speaker 1: know the kid who's just tinkering his garage and doesn't
Speaker 1: care and it's trying stuff like, that's the kid that's
Speaker 1: just like learning so much. Right, and again, this is
Speaker 1: how you put a rover on Mars. You just break
Speaker 1: stuff and test it and test it and test it
Speaker 1: so you know the limits and now you know exactly
Speaker 1: what will work when you go.
Speaker 2: To Mars and what was the purpose of the robot.
Speaker 1: So essentially it's just like to go to you know,
Speaker 1: we want it's good for humanity if we are a
Speaker 1: multiplanetary species. And so it's like this is the precursor
Speaker 1: to like humans going and living on Mars. So basically
Speaker 1: it goes there and says like what's the soil? Like
Speaker 1: could you plant asparagus there? It turns out you can.
Speaker 1: Is there water there? Yeah? It turns out there is
Speaker 1: so all these things that we would want to have
Speaker 1: on Mars if we were living there, Like the rover,
Speaker 1: you know, how much radiation is there here, So it
Speaker 1: can do a bunch of let us learn the history
Speaker 1: of this planet so that a we can potentially live
Speaker 1: there someday, but b it helps us learn about ourselves.
Speaker 1: Part of what we know about global warming is by
Speaker 1: studying Venus, which is basically like runaway global warming. So
Speaker 1: by like studying other areas in the Solar System, we're
Speaker 1: able to learn like more about you know, how Earth
Speaker 1: even came about informed, which helps us to know how
Speaker 1: do we protect it in the future.
Speaker 2: Wow, And so wait when you started to get this
Speaker 2: information and data back that you can grow asparagus, there's
Speaker 2: water there. What was the big discovery that the rover
Speaker 2: felt like it achieved that you all walked away with
Speaker 2: and said, oh wow, this was mission accomplished.
Speaker 1: I mean with science, like your objectives are always smaller
Speaker 1: than that of like we just want to go there
Speaker 1: and answer whether or not there's water. You know, life
Speaker 1: is always the big one. Like if you can find
Speaker 1: life on another planet, like that's pretty wild because if
Speaker 1: life came to exist twice in our own solar system.
Speaker 1: You know, then like there must like the universe must
Speaker 1: just be teeming with other forms of life. It's just
Speaker 1: like really fascinating question. Right. Sometimes you don't. You just
Speaker 1: go there to gather the data and then you just
Speaker 1: look for something interesting to come from the data. But
Speaker 1: you don't necessarily know ahead of time. You can have objectives, right,
Speaker 1: but I think us just getting closer to live there
Speaker 1: and studying if life did exist there or like always
Speaker 1: some Andea's water they're currently flowing. Those kinds of questions
Speaker 1: are like really interesting with Mars.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The reason I'm mining it is for two reasons.
Speaker 2: These questions to you is one is I'm fascinated because
Speaker 2: it's so different from any world I've ever lived in,
Speaker 2: and so I'm like a kid in a candy shop
Speaker 2: right now, like this yeah cool. And then the second
Speaker 2: side of it is because I think it's a mindset
Speaker 2: thing too, the idea that all of these really smart
Speaker 2: people are building something and there isn't this big goaler objective.
Speaker 2: There's this idea of we're going to learn and we're
Speaker 2: going to grow, and we're going to figure it out
Speaker 2: and we'll discover something is such a beautiful mindset for life.
Speaker 2: Like I think about even with what you were talking
Speaker 2: about with crunch Labs, teaching kids at early age to
Speaker 2: just experiment, play, break live without the goal of like,
Speaker 2: oh I have to build I'm sure they I'm sure
Speaker 2: crunch slubs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, you're totally right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's like that's a great mindset because I feel
Speaker 2: like if you think about all the companies that we
Speaker 2: all use today, they didn't start off saying we're going
Speaker 2: to build a billion dollar company. They just built something
Speaker 2: that helped people and figured it out and pivoted and
Speaker 2: gave us another option. Then one day they were valued
Speaker 2: at billions of dollars. But today there's a pressure I
Speaker 2: feel that people have where it's like if I build
Speaker 2: an app, it has to be a billion dollar app.
Speaker 2: If I build a products company, it has to sell
Speaker 2: one hundred million the first year. If I sell apparel brand,
Speaker 2: I have to make a million dollar Like I feel
Speaker 2: like we put these goals and objectives and you're actually saying, well,
Speaker 2: when we're going to Mas, we're not thinking about those things.
Speaker 1: I mean, I completely agree with you, Like, I don't
Speaker 1: love when people expect you to know what you want
Speaker 1: to be when you grow up when you're like sixteen
Speaker 1: years old, Like, nobody ask any adult and if you
Speaker 1: ask them, you know what they're doing. If they knew,
Speaker 1: they'd be doing what they're doing now. If they say yes,
Speaker 1: they're totally blind. You Like, nobody knows. And that's just
Speaker 1: the way life is. It's like a river that meanders right.
Speaker 1: So it's like my advice if you don't know what
Speaker 1: you want to be and your you know, a teenager
Speaker 1: or something, is like, what do you love to do?
Speaker 1: Do you love to draw? Doesn't just dominate it? Just
Speaker 1: draw like crazy and get so good at it. Right,
Speaker 1: Maybe you love to write or to tell stories, like,
Speaker 1: just do that and then when you do that, like
Speaker 1: then more doors will be open to you. So like
Speaker 1: this is kind of my philosophy with life too. Like
Speaker 1: I've had a lot of left and right turns to
Speaker 1: get me sitting across from you right now. And what
Speaker 1: I do just like whatever is in front of me,
Speaker 1: I just give it every single thing I have, and
Speaker 1: I just try and just crush it and learn as
Speaker 1: much as possible. And then when you're done with that,
Speaker 1: it's like, all right, now, what are my next options? Right,
Speaker 1: and it's usually pretty clear, to be honest, Like, it's
Speaker 1: never like I've honestly never had a moment in life,
Speaker 1: even quitting NASA to go do YouTube stuff where it's
Speaker 1: like is this the right decision? Is it not? It
Speaker 1: feels pretty clear if you've really committed yourself and then
Speaker 1: you have all the new facts in front of you, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, before we get to that what did you want
Speaker 2: to be when you were a kid, and when people
Speaker 2: ask you that question, that you I want it.
Speaker 1: I want it to be. My first job I wanted
Speaker 1: to do was to design play places at McDonald's, you.
Speaker 2: Know, like thea I used to love that.
Speaker 1: It's like an architect of those I remember, I have
Speaker 1: all these drawings. All right, we're gonna start with the
Speaker 1: ball pit. We're gonna go to the nets and now
Speaker 1: crunch slabs. Which is this like actual place I have?
Speaker 1: It's like this WILLI Wonka Factory for Engineering is sort
Speaker 1: of the embodiment of that dream because we have like
Speaker 1: secret passageways. You know, a coke machine opens up into
Speaker 1: a claw machine that you gonna like take a Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have like fied like pistons that you slide down.
Speaker 2: From basically center.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, Like I'm like Willy Wonka free engineering,
Speaker 1: Like it has that vibe. Right, It's like a rock
Speaker 1: paper scissor machine that it's a robot that beats you
Speaker 1: every time. A staircase that's an infinite slinky staircase. The
Speaker 1: slinky just goes. So it's like, you know, if you
Speaker 1: can dream it up, then you can build it. Like
Speaker 1: that's the beauty of being an engineer. Is like, if
Speaker 1: something doesn't exist and you want it to exist, you
Speaker 1: could just will it into an existence. What is superpower?
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's this, there's this amazing I mean, this is
Speaker 2: I'm going totally the opposite way, but you're reminding me
Speaker 2: of something beautiful. There's this beautiful verse in Eastern spirituality
Speaker 2: that says the mind moves faster than the gods. And
Speaker 2: the point of it is this idea that the mind
Speaker 2: can create and build and you can visualize. And it's
Speaker 2: based off of this character in Vedic history called vishrak
Speaker 2: Karma who's the architect of the gods. So he builds
Speaker 2: flying palaces and flying cities, but he visualizes it all
Speaker 2: in his head before it becomes manifest. And it's that
Speaker 2: same idea of just like we but you know what
Speaker 2: so interesting is we're talking about that, but we all
Speaker 2: know that it's so natural as a parent to go, okay,
Speaker 2: but get a real job, right, So, like you, you
Speaker 2: have this dream of I want to design McDonald's playhouses
Speaker 2: or whatever, and then family, friends, expectations, school, everyone goes, yeah,
Speaker 2: but get a real job. Like I remember, I was
Speaker 2: a kid who loved graphic design and I love art
Speaker 2: direction and I loved juxtaposition and imagery like that was
Speaker 2: always my I love that. It's always been a passion
Speaker 2: of mine, and my family encouraged it was a good hobby.
Speaker 2: Was like, get a real job though. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: engineering is such a great skill and such a great job.
Speaker 2: But how do you encourage young people and how do
Speaker 2: you think about when you're making content to encourage people
Speaker 2: to live their passion but be pragmatic and what does
Speaker 2: that look like? Because you, yeah, you've kind of pursued
Speaker 2: so many things.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's a yesam situation. Right For example,
Speaker 1: for me, like I worked at NASA for a decade,
Speaker 1: then I worked at Apple for five years doing product design.
Speaker 1: I didn't quit Apple till I had ten million YouTube subscribers.
Speaker 1: So like this idea of like I had to choose
Speaker 1: one or the other. Right, you can kind of do both.
Speaker 1: You can moonlight as your passion and then when that
Speaker 1: becomes big enough, then it's like, oh, and that isn't
Speaker 1: always the case. But I think there's a lot of
Speaker 1: situations there's a middle of that Venn diagram where it's
Speaker 1: like you do the passion and pursued as much as
Speaker 1: you possibly can while also having the real job, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's like practical advice. Sometimes it does come
Speaker 1: to a point, you know, you hear these great stories
Speaker 1: of actors or something where it's like I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: really go for it and then they land. But that's
Speaker 1: also you know, the scientist of me wants to say, well,
Speaker 1: there's survivorship bias. So you only hear the stories are
Speaker 1: the ones that worked, and for the one that does,
Speaker 1: there's a thousand that don't. So you know, I think
Speaker 1: when parents say that they generally have their best interest
Speaker 1: in mind for the kid. They want them to be
Speaker 1: happy and have a life that they can. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, the kid knows what they're passionate. So
Speaker 1: I think it's a very healthy a very healthy like
Speaker 1: you know, Yin and yang there. I don't fault parents
Speaker 1: for saying that. I think there's a lot of times
Speaker 1: you could still pursue the thing. You can pursue both.
Speaker 2: Yeah, i'd agree with you. So my life's the same story,
Speaker 2: and I'm that to me is the to me, that
Speaker 2: is the best and most likely path for most people,
Speaker 2: which is you're going to have a steady job, You're
Speaker 2: going to figure out something on the side, and you're
Speaker 2: going to wait for the thing on the side to
Speaker 2: outpace the thing you're doing right now. And then and
Speaker 2: it became and it actually proves to you as an individual,
Speaker 2: whether you really love it, if you're doing your evenings,
Speaker 2: you're doing your weekends, you're you're doing it when it
Speaker 2: makes no money, you're doing it when it's inconvenient, and
Speaker 2: you're like, oh, well, if I could do it when
Speaker 2: I was inconvenient, then when it's my full time thing,
Speaker 2: I'm the luckiest person in.
Speaker 1: The world, one hundred percent. And when I started YouTube,
Speaker 1: like in twenty eleven, no one you you could like
Speaker 1: make money off of it, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: It was like you just did it. Really, it's just
Speaker 1: a passion like I wanted to share these cool ideas
Speaker 1: with people. Now it's like the game has changed so much.
Speaker 2: What was the pivot from NASA to Apple? Why did
Speaker 2: that come about? Why leave NASA?
Speaker 1: Well, actually, for two years I was at a halloween
Speaker 1: costume company Jay before then going to Apple.
Speaker 2: So that's like halloween costume. Yes, the wait, how do
Speaker 2: you get from NASA to a Halloween.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's the better question, which is so my first
Speaker 1: ever YouTube video I went to like a Halloween party
Speaker 1: and I had an iPad on front, an iPad in
Speaker 1: back of me. And if you cut a hole in
Speaker 1: the shirts and you do a FaceTime, gold looks like
Speaker 1: have a hole in your body.
Speaker 2: So you win.
Speaker 1: You wave your hand in the front and the camera
Speaker 1: in the back shows it and that's cool. Again, it
Speaker 1: felt like being five years old cutting onions. People at
Speaker 1: the party were like, this is such a cool costume.
Speaker 1: What a cool idea? How did I not think of that?
Speaker 1: So I went home, I put it on YouTube. And
Speaker 1: my life goal is to be on the Gizmoto, which
Speaker 1: is like an old tech blog.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I remember it.
Speaker 1: And so I made it on the covering his Moto
Speaker 1: and then quickly realized I need more life goals, and
Speaker 1: so I was like, I have more ideas, Like I
Speaker 1: should just do one video a month, And for fourteen
Speaker 1: years now, I've basically uploaded one video a month about
Speaker 1: an engineering build or an idea, and the channel's just
Speaker 1: grown from there.
Speaker 2: How did you get that outfit on the cover of Gizmodo, Well.
Speaker 1: So the YouTube video went up and it went viral,
Speaker 1: so it was on the front page of CNN, like
Speaker 1: it was like on all these outlets covered it, including Gizmoto.
Speaker 1: Got it from there. The one complained was that cool idea, bro,
Speaker 1: But I don't have twelve hundred dollars for Halloween costing
Speaker 1: two iPads, right, And so I was like all right,
Speaker 1: So I came up with an idea for next year
Speaker 1: where it was like a design printed on the shirt,
Speaker 1: like a guy's face or something that was like kind
Speaker 1: of his eye was pulled open and then if you
Speaker 1: cut a hole out for the eyeball and then there's
Speaker 1: a free app an eyeball that moved around her or
Speaker 1: I would have worked great, Jay, then you had a
Speaker 1: really cool Halloween costume for like the price of a
Speaker 1: T shirt called digital DNS. So I've launched that company
Speaker 1: nights and weekends, working all week while making YouTube videos
Speaker 1: and while working at NASA, and it did pretty well.
Speaker 1: So then that did well enough that I sold it
Speaker 1: to some guys in the UK and I went and
Speaker 1: worked for them for two years. Wow, And it's like,
Speaker 1: it's such a right. This is my example. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is this is exactly what I was talking about.
Speaker 1: I have this idea. I thought it was cool, so
Speaker 1: I moonlit nights and weekends, basically bootstrapped the company. And
Speaker 1: then when I launched the video the next year to
Speaker 1: explain what it was that T shirt idea, you know,
Speaker 1: we made our money back in eight hours and then yeah,
Speaker 1: so very meandering.
Speaker 2: Want to make a real difference this giving season this
Speaker 2: December On Purpose is part of Pods Fight Poverty podcast,
Speaker 2: teaming up to lift three villages in Rwanda out of
Speaker 2: extreme poverty. We're doing it through give Directly, which sends
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Speaker 2: need most. Donate at GiveDirectly dot org, forward slash on Purpose.
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Speaker 2: dot org, forward slash on purpose. Did you always have
Speaker 2: the ability to turn an idea into action? And how
Speaker 2: what have you learned about that? Right? Like, there's a
Speaker 2: big A lot of people have good ideas, and I'm
Speaker 2: sure you hear all hear them all the time. I
Speaker 2: hear them all the time. People come up to me
Speaker 2: and be like, Joe, I've had this incredible idea on
Speaker 2: build this thing, but then it stops there, it doesn't
Speaker 2: get somewhere. What have you learned about turning ideas into action?
Speaker 2: What's worked for you?
Speaker 1: My superpower is my naive optimism. Like I'm just an
Speaker 1: idiot that thinks I can do it and I don't
Speaker 1: see Like I just feel like, oh, this is so obvious,
Speaker 1: Like I can totally do this. If I knew the
Speaker 1: amount of work it actually would end up being, i'd
Speaker 1: be very discouraged. But I'm just like an idiot. It's like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, I could do this, Like I think this
Speaker 1: makes sense, Like I see the end goal and so
Speaker 1: then any pitfall that comes along the way, Like I'm
Speaker 1: so focused on this end goal and like that matters, right,
Speaker 1: Like the attitude you have and whether or not you
Speaker 1: believe you think you can do it. So then if
Speaker 1: I think I can do it, then the next step
Speaker 1: is like, let me break this down into all the steps,
Speaker 1: and step one is this, and I'm just going to
Speaker 1: dominate that step and then you know, just kind of
Speaker 1: step through it. It's literally the engineering design process. But
Speaker 1: for ideas and businesses.
Speaker 2: We'll go through the engineering design process. For anyone who
Speaker 2: doesn't know what that is, is like, break that down
Speaker 2: for us, make it simple.
Speaker 1: But I think the idea, it's just like you have
Speaker 1: an end goal, an objective, and break it down into
Speaker 1: the steps and know what you don't know and test
Speaker 1: what you don't know. Is kind of like, you know,
Speaker 1: give your best shot at it. You kind of in
Speaker 1: the engineering Let's say, if I'm designing a piece for
Speaker 1: the Mars Rover, I think, okay, I think it needs
Speaker 1: you know, maybe it's the wheel for the Mars Rover.
Speaker 1: I think it needs to probably look like this. I'
Speaker 1: when design it and CAD I analyze it analytically with
Speaker 1: computer programs, but that's not what I fly to Mars.
Speaker 1: I take that and then I build it, and then
Speaker 1: I test it to see if it matches, and then
Speaker 1: sure enough, Oh it does match up. All right, Now
Speaker 1: it's good enough. I've tested it. Now I can fly
Speaker 1: it to march. So I think it's this idea of
Speaker 1: like building iteratively and breaking things like part of designing
Speaker 1: that is, I would make one and I would smash
Speaker 1: it with a bunch of stuff, so I know the
Speaker 1: limits of the wheel. Right. So again we call that
Speaker 1: a failure and others outside of engineering, but we embrace
Speaker 1: that and it's like great, now we know. Now let's
Speaker 1: tweak it and we're gonna. We're gonna now now we
Speaker 1: could build something better. Right. But I think a lot
Speaker 1: of times in life, if you get a bad grade
Speaker 1: on a test, then you internalize I'm not good at math.
Speaker 1: Or a relationship fails. You're like, I'm just not good
Speaker 1: at this love thing. Or a business fails, you're like,
Speaker 1: I guess I'm not a good businessman. But if you
Speaker 1: if you look at it like an engineer, or even
Speaker 1: like a video game, I think is like a good
Speaker 1: way to do it. Like if you if you frame
Speaker 1: your challenges like a video game, no one no one
Speaker 1: picks up a controller to play a video game and
Speaker 1: falls in a pit let's say Super Mario Brothers or something,
Speaker 1: and thinks I'm a failure, Like I'm embarrassing, I'm terrible
Speaker 1: at video games. No, You're immediately like, oh, shoot, what
Speaker 1: I just learned from that. Now I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: jump a little faster. I'm gona run a little faster.
Speaker 1: Jump at You're excited to try again, right, So just
Speaker 1: the framing of it, it turns from fear to curiosity
Speaker 1: where you're like, you want to get up and try
Speaker 1: it again. So if it's like and you know you
Speaker 1: asked me like oh, when you have ideas like I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of it like a video game where it's like
Speaker 1: I want to rescue Princess from bowser. So when I
Speaker 1: get the sliding green turtle shell, which could look like
Speaker 1: a lot of different things, I don't internalize that I'm
Speaker 1: a bad player. I'm like, got it. I know the
Speaker 1: shell comes right here. I'm going to jump a little faster, right,
Speaker 1: And that is a life hack. Like truly, this happens
Speaker 1: to me all the time on just whenever we want
Speaker 1: to do a big video. We just filmed the video
Speaker 1: where I made a soccer goalie robot that goes back
Speaker 1: and forth at like eighty miles an hour, and then
Speaker 1: Christiano Ronaldo tried to score on it. Right. It took
Speaker 1: us like a year to bill so we tracked the
Speaker 1: ball and in the first six milliseconds, when the ball
Speaker 1: has gone from like here to here, I just moved
Speaker 1: it like maybe an eighth of an inch. We know
Speaker 1: exactly where the goalie needs to be to stop that ball.
Speaker 1: So it's hilarious to see, you know, he tries to
Speaker 1: do it and of course he misses. No, there's no
Speaker 1: way he can score. It's way too fast from the
Speaker 1: penalty kick area. Yeah, I said eighty miles an hour,
Speaker 1: and the robots is like, what just goes.
Speaker 2: And it's oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: So the point is, though, with that video, I mean
Speaker 1: there was tons of sliding green shells and setbacks and
Speaker 1: you know, and and that doesn't mean it doesn't sting.
Speaker 1: By the way, failure still can sting. This isn't some
Speaker 1: fake Pollyanna attitude, right, but it's this idea of like,
Speaker 1: oh dang it, but I'm okay, here we go. We're
Speaker 1: going at this again, right, yeah, And I think that
Speaker 1: can help you accomplish so much more in life. And
Speaker 1: and just have honestly better relationships even right, because it's
Speaker 1: just like the way you approach it is like, Okay,
Speaker 1: what did I learn versus internalizing that it's something about me?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well said, really well said. I love the video
Speaker 2: game analogy because you're so right. You die, and even
Speaker 2: though it says game over, you don't feel that way. No,
Speaker 2: you're like next next player. You know you want to
Speaker 2: get another life, you want to play again like you
Speaker 2: never ever. And it's so crazy because I'm like, it
Speaker 2: actually says game over and you don't care. And whereas
Speaker 2: if someone says game over and life where you get
Speaker 2: rejected or you don't get a job and you apply
Speaker 2: for one, that hurts much worse, and I guess because
Speaker 2: it feels like he has real stakes.
Speaker 1: I think it's more like you internal you think that
Speaker 1: makes you, yes, unemployable, Yes, you internalize what that means
Speaker 1: about you, But you don't do that in video games.
Speaker 1: You don't say I'm a bad video game player. And
Speaker 1: I think the same is true in life. Like anyone
Speaker 1: who's got to somewhere in life, they started out sucky
Speaker 1: at that, right, and then they just learned and iterated
Speaker 1: and overcame. It's the same thing he said with companies
Speaker 1: like No Fortune one hundred company today started out doing
Speaker 1: what they do now they've pivoted fifteen times, right, And
Speaker 1: so I think it's this ability to just like not
Speaker 1: internalize what it says about you and just almost flip it.
Speaker 1: Like I'm a person who who embraces failure and celebrates it,
Speaker 1: lets it sting. Just like in a video, it sucks
Speaker 1: to miss that key jump on level eight one on
Speaker 1: Super Mario Brothers a little platform, but it's like, dang it,
Speaker 1: we're going back because you're focused on the end goal.
Speaker 1: You're focus on what that would feel like, not the
Speaker 1: pits and the mistakes.
Speaker 2: What's a failure that you ever experienced in life that
Speaker 2: you did internalize? Did that ever happen?
Speaker 1: I got married pretty young and then it's very amicable.
Speaker 1: But like five years ago I split with my wife
Speaker 1: for you know, I'm pretty private with my private life
Speaker 1: for like reasons and stuff. But and I was like
Speaker 1: really cautious to get out and like date again. It
Speaker 1: just it took me a year to even like start
Speaker 1: And I don't know, it felt like I was just
Speaker 1: very protective, like I didn't I wanted if I was
Speaker 1: gonna find my person, like I wanted them to love
Speaker 1: me and not the thought of me, or you know,
Speaker 1: you just want it to be authentic, right, and so
Speaker 1: like I never I just wasn't. I was being very
Speaker 1: very cautious about everything. I did find someone that I
Speaker 1: thought was like this was this was it, and I'm
Speaker 1: for the first time, like really opened my heart, right,
Speaker 1: like being really really open, and like the worst possible
Speaker 1: situation happened where it was like it was it felt
Speaker 1: it was like a betrayal. Something happened that it was
Speaker 1: like it was essentially this the worst case where it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to do this, I'm going to really lean in,
Speaker 1: and then it happened, and it was absolutely the worst
Speaker 1: pain like I've experienced as adult. It was like really
Speaker 1: really hard, and it was hard to feel like I
Speaker 1: would ever find this thing that I felt like other
Speaker 1: people have found and I'd never felt it my whole life,
Speaker 1: and so taking a beat after that was like I
Speaker 1: think it was hard. That was like a really really
Speaker 1: difficult period for me. But then I honestly, eventually I
Speaker 1: came around to this supermart thing and I'm like, you know,
Speaker 1: what like it's just a number. Like I just got
Speaker 1: to put in the reps. I gotta like put the
Speaker 1: work in and so I did that and then again failed.
Speaker 1: I did like I was like, I'm gonna in thirty days,
Speaker 1: I'm going to like try and this. I'm such an engineer.
Speaker 1: I basically made a goal where it's like I'm going
Speaker 1: on thirty FaceTime dates in thirty days and just like
Speaker 1: twenty minutes just to get a feel because you know,
Speaker 1: in the first three minutes if there's a connection or
Speaker 1: not right. And I did that and it was again
Speaker 1: Jay and these are like amazing, accomplished, attractive, lovely human beings,
Speaker 1: lovely women right, and I felt nothing, And I was
Speaker 1: like damn, like I think is this me? So I
Speaker 1: was like, you know what, I'm going to do one
Speaker 1: more and then I did one more and that's my
Speaker 1: partner and she's my life partner. It's like it and
Speaker 1: it was it was a matter of like it was
Speaker 1: like half hour in It's like yep, this is it,
Speaker 1: like and it feels like coming home. It's like when
Speaker 1: you I'm the right person, it feels like home. It's
Speaker 1: just like yeah, and it's just like no, reservations and like,
Speaker 1: we're both the same way, and she she's wondering, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you met her and she's had the same experience
Speaker 1: where she just never felt like she'd found it and
Speaker 1: immediately was just like this is it cool? Done? Close
Speaker 1: the spreadsheet.
Speaker 2: I deleted it, So you did engineer your way to love.
Speaker 1: Which because she's the opposite, she's more like you j
Speaker 1: and she just puts it out to the universe. So
Speaker 1: she's the she's the dreamer and I'm the thinker. And
Speaker 1: we try and take credit for us getting together, Like, look,
Speaker 1: I put it out to the years. I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: I put in the worst.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, I love that. I mean to me,
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm I'm actually people know less about I'm
Speaker 2: a bit of both as well. There's a there's an
Speaker 2: engineer in me, not not in the way you are,
Speaker 2: but in that practical, pragmatic approach to what it really
Speaker 2: takes and getting the reps in and and I like
Speaker 2: that that it even applied to love, that doing thirty
Speaker 2: FaceTime calls and thirty dates, that is what it takes
Speaker 2: to figure out if you have a connection with someone
Speaker 2: and to speed it up. I always I do what
Speaker 2: I call for myself immersion weekends, and so if I'm
Speaker 2: really fascinated by something, I will find a coach, find
Speaker 2: the book, find the ted talk, find the course, and
Speaker 2: do it all in one weekend to figure out whether
Speaker 2: I care or not. And I do these immerging weekends
Speaker 2: all the time. I'll literally obsess over something for forty
Speaker 2: eight hours, and if I really like it, then it
Speaker 2: becomes a part of my consistent schedule. And if I
Speaker 2: hated it, I won't go back again. And I'm okay,
Speaker 2: And I've loved doing that over time where I'm like,
Speaker 2: I'm fascinated by this. I don't have time to go
Speaker 2: on a weekly course. I don't know if I want
Speaker 2: to invest that time. I don't want to commit to
Speaker 2: a retreat. Who knows. But I could do it for
Speaker 2: a whole weekend. Yeah, it works, It works wonders for me.
Speaker 1: And that goes back to kind of what I was
Speaker 1: saying before too, just like whatever's the step in front,
Speaker 1: dominate it dominated, and if you really immerse yourself like
Speaker 1: it will be very clear at the end of that
Speaker 1: weekend if this is something you want to do more versus.
Speaker 2: Like just dabbling it dabbling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's an example. I'm going to turn the tables
Speaker 1: like you No, what's the last thing you did? Like that?
Speaker 1: Like an immersion weekend?
Speaker 2: The immersion weekend? Yeah, I'll be honest, I just did
Speaker 2: it this weekend. It was acting.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 2: Now, I've been getting all these opportunities to like audition
Speaker 2: for like TV and film, and I've just been kind
Speaker 2: of going back and forth. I've spent a lot of
Speaker 2: time on movie sets with actors that I coach, not
Speaker 2: in acting in my work, and I've spent a lot
Speaker 2: of time on movie sets, but I've never been the
Speaker 2: person doing it. I've done a few cameos here and there.
Speaker 2: And because I was getting all these opportunities, my question
Speaker 2: always is do I love the process I'm not interested
Speaker 2: in the result? Or is it cool? I'm like, do
Speaker 2: I actually love doing the thing? And so this whole
Speaker 2: weekend had an acting coach. I was with them for
Speaker 2: three hours a day who I was doing all the
Speaker 2: reading pre of the scripts that they sent me. I
Speaker 2: was doing the reading of books outside of it, around
Speaker 2: acting and writing, just to see if I enjoy the process.
Speaker 2: And I was like, worst case, I'm going to hate
Speaker 2: the process and learn some skills case, I'm going to
Speaker 2: love it and it's going to open up new opportunities.
Speaker 2: I loved it at a great time.
Speaker 3: Really yeah.
Speaker 2: I was reading scripts, I was learning about characters. We
Speaker 2: were doing scene study and analysis like it was. It
Speaker 2: was almost like just reading material and discussing it with
Speaker 2: someone and then trying to figure out what the actors'
Speaker 2: objectives were and what their tactic is and what their
Speaker 2: motive is. It was fascinating.
Speaker 1: Really, yes, I love it. So you're going to do more?
Speaker 1: Then it was I'm going to do more coaching.
Speaker 2: I'm going to take more classes because it was just
Speaker 2: so it was so fun and if it becomes something
Speaker 2: that I enjoy enough, I would pursue it professionally. But
Speaker 2: even if I don't, it's just something that i'm currently
Speaker 2: immersed in.
Speaker 1: I feel like you would be great. It's like you
Speaker 1: have to, yeah, putting yourself in the shoes of the person,
Speaker 1: Like I don't even know what to do it, Like
Speaker 1: my face, it's like I'm supposed to be sad that
Speaker 1: I really was just like yeah about my life. But
Speaker 1: it's like, apparently that's not what you're supposed to.
Speaker 2: Do, but that's what was so that was what's so
Speaker 2: fascinating about it? And I think we're both talking about
Speaker 2: this idea of learning something was when you're sitting down
Speaker 2: with a professional, the way they talk about it, and
Speaker 2: he was talking about like there's Stanislav method and the
Speaker 2: Chekhov method and there's all these there's there's systems of
Speaker 2: why the best of the best like they're not they're
Speaker 2: not just the best because they have it. They've studied
Speaker 2: systems and they've worked at it. And so to me,
Speaker 2: it was just like there's this method where it's called
Speaker 2: to act as if so you can't relate to what
Speaker 2: the character is going through, but you have something that
Speaker 2: happened in your life that makes you feel that way
Speaker 2: that the character is feeling and you channel that. And
Speaker 2: so to me it was just I was just fascinated
Speaker 2: by the empathy that actors have to have, the compassion
Speaker 2: the connection to embody characters. But that was my most reason.
Speaker 1: I love that my thing right now again, like I'm
Speaker 1: kind of with you, I love mastery, Like finding mine's
Speaker 1: public speaking. I hate public speaking, Yeah yeah, heat it,
Speaker 1: but my goal is just be really good at it
Speaker 1: in like a year. So I'm currently working up I'm
Speaker 1: actually doing a TED talk in April. Actually, this is
Speaker 1: cool to actually mention to you because I haven't really
Speaker 1: talked about this publicly much. But we're doing so through
Speaker 1: the YouTube channel. We've learned how to like hide the vegetables, right,
Speaker 1: basically teach science. You don't even know what's happening, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So we're taking all the learnings we've taken from that,
Speaker 1: Like because kids can watch or people can just watch
Speaker 1: whatever they want to on YouTube, but they choose to
Speaker 1: watch this, and they're making a full science curriculum that's amazing,
Speaker 1: third to eighth grade. It involved, you know, it has
Speaker 1: my fellow YouTube friends. You know, I just got Christiano
Speaker 1: Ronaldo and we're feeling in he's part of it. Just
Speaker 1: a bunch of people in it. But then you know,
Speaker 1: resources for the teachers, really cool hands on activities. They
Speaker 1: can class everything. And then it's gonna costs about it's
Speaker 1: gonna cost us about like fifty five million dollars to make,
Speaker 1: and that would make it free forever for all the.
Speaker 2: Way able to go online, so you don't have it
Speaker 2: won't be in your school.
Speaker 1: No, it's like a it's like online teachers can use
Speaker 1: it it's a full It adheres to all of the standards, right,
Speaker 1: because teachers will tell you, like, they can't teach a
Speaker 1: kid if they don't have their attention. And I've learned
Speaker 1: to do on YouTube is getting there to for example,
Speaker 1: the electricity and magnetism lesson. We just filmed this. There's
Speaker 1: an MRI machine. I put a watermelon inside it. I'm
Speaker 1: holding like a ten pound hammer and then you essentially
Speaker 1: flip on the MRI machine and but you know, the
Speaker 1: hammer just flies out of my hand destroys this watermelon.
Speaker 1: And now, Jay, I've got your attention. And now I
Speaker 1: could say, you know, there's some visible magnetic fields all
Speaker 1: around us that exist? Yeah, right, And.
Speaker 2: So teachers can use these in school. They could play
Speaker 2: that video.
Speaker 1: And it has you know, the whole lesson. What they
Speaker 1: say back to the kids. It will replace their science curriculum, right, Wow.
Speaker 1: And it's gonna cost it's gonna take us like three years.
Speaker 2: Why is it gonna cost you fifty five million dollars?
Speaker 1: It's it's a huge undertaking. There's like forty six different units.
Speaker 1: Like it's science, it's all six through eighth grade science,
Speaker 1: and then also third grade through through fifth grade.
Speaker 2: So and you're funding.
Speaker 1: It yeah, and I mean yes, and there are already
Speaker 1: some generous people who are coming out and helping it fun.
Speaker 1: But like regardless, I was weird started funding it myselves
Speaker 1: anyways with the profits we had from Crunch Lambs. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna announce that at the Ted talk and like that.
Speaker 1: I really want to nail that presentation, so.
Speaker 2: I'm having to help. Man, Okay, I was lucky my
Speaker 2: parents forced me to get a public speaking in drama
Speaker 2: school when I was eleven. Oh really, so all my
Speaker 2: state speaking skills from having studied it for seven years,
Speaker 2: eight years.
Speaker 1: And so, yeah, you're a man one of my favor Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll record the rehearsal and I'll send it to you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Happy. I mean they have pros there obviously, Ted
Speaker 2: have such a great script they do and a great
Speaker 2: pro speaking team they're not that's going to be now,
Speaker 2: that's going to be amazing. I'm excited to see it.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty so I feel like it's the most important
Speaker 1: thing I'll do my whole life.
Speaker 2: But I love that you're doing things that scare you,
Speaker 2: Like even at this point having had so much success
Speaker 2: and having you know, being you know, the spokesperson for
Speaker 2: science across the world. It's incredible to see you say
Speaker 2: I'm still scared of this and I'm going to do it,
Speaker 2: not like I.
Speaker 1: Crave it, Jay, Like I also like, uh, I started
Speaker 1: like going to the gym to your years ago, same
Speaker 1: thing where it's just like I just love an opportunity
Speaker 1: for mastery. It is this video game thing, right, I
Speaker 1: think a lot if you say that I've seen success
Speaker 1: in my life, a lot of it comes down to
Speaker 1: this mentality. It's like, I just love working on something
Speaker 1: and the feeling of incrementally getting better. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: how our brains work, right, You're a lot of studies
Speaker 1: have showed if you get a huge raise and then
Speaker 1: and then your salary's flat for ten years versus incrementally
Speaker 1: go up to that ten years, like you're much happy.
Speaker 1: You have way more dopamine your brain if you incrementally
Speaker 1: level up. This is again how video games even work.
Speaker 1: You start the video game with a wooden sword and
Speaker 1: three heart containers because they reverse engineer. You love just
Speaker 1: like little levels up, so opportunities that life provides you
Speaker 1: to just find something like that and then get better.
Speaker 1: At the end of a couple of years or months
Speaker 1: or whatever decades nothing better.
Speaker 2: How do you keep the childlike fun energy, playful energy
Speaker 2: that you have that your work requires and at the
Speaker 2: same time run businesses Because to me, that's the balance
Speaker 2: that young entrepreneurs, seasoned entrepreneurs everyone runs into where it's
Speaker 2: like running the business is a serious business, yeah, but
Speaker 2: then the business is all about play, curiosity, fun, crazy experiments. Right,
Speaker 2: and we'll get into some of the videos that that
Speaker 2: you love the most. But how do you think about
Speaker 2: the curiosity creativity part of the business and then the
Speaker 2: running of a business?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's good. There's been studies that look
Speaker 1: at like successful mid range companies are companies worth say
Speaker 1: fifty to five hundred million dollars or something, or even
Speaker 1: tended five hundred million dollars, And what all of them
Speaker 1: have in common is there's one person who is like
Speaker 1: has the swim lane of being the creative, the big thinker,
Speaker 1: you know, the ten next thinker, and then one person
Speaker 1: who's logistics. Right, so you know, one person who can
Speaker 1: build the thing and one person who can run the thing.
Speaker 1: And I was very lucky a buddy of mine, Jim,
Speaker 1: you know, we're to Google I knew he had a
Speaker 1: very anamical brain, and I said, hey, I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: starting this company, crunch Labs, you know, make me a
Speaker 1: model financial model to see if it works. And he
Speaker 1: did and educating me on how they work. It's still
Speaker 1: the model we use today and the company's doing very well.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So he's been the one to, like, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: make all the all the boring stuff I don't want
Speaker 1: to look at. J oh we have to have like
Speaker 1: a warehouse that ships out this stuff, like I don't
Speaker 1: just find a good one, you know, and he'll geek
Speaker 1: out over it, and he has them, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. And I'm thinking about like, oh this is
Speaker 1: we could do this, you know, but we could do this.
Speaker 1: So I think truly, if you're starting a business and
Speaker 1: you're the creative one, just don't try and do the
Speaker 1: other thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the good news is if you're the creative one,
Speaker 1: the other one's a lot easier to find. Like the
Speaker 1: creative like the good that that's more of a rare talent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so just find someone help you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, it's great advice.
Speaker 1: Yeah. At some point, if you're small, if you're doing
Speaker 1: something small like Halloween T shirt company, Like you can
Speaker 1: be both, but at some point it'll just get way
Speaker 1: too hard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I fully agree with you. We did the same.
Speaker 2: And I remember when I bought on one of my
Speaker 2: partners in the early days, everyone was like, you don't
Speaker 2: want to give away a percentage, Like, don't do that,
Speaker 2: you know it's all your creativity. And I was like,
Speaker 2: you have no idea how much time? Because I said, Tom,
Speaker 2: when I'm am, I said, all I want to do
Speaker 2: is think, study and teach and create, Like that's that's
Speaker 2: where I want to live, Like that's my strength, superpower,
Speaker 2: that's my fascination. Like I love reading and studying and
Speaker 2: learning about psychology and ancient wisdom and science and behavioral science,
Speaker 2: and that's what I love reading, studying, learning, observing humans
Speaker 2: and then turning into stuff that people can use to
Speaker 2: make their lives better. But I don't want to run
Speaker 2: any of the other stuff.
Speaker 1: And there's something knowing that and owning that like as
Speaker 1: a key to staying happy and honestly fighting burnout. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of times people feel burnt out and
Speaker 1: a creative endeavor, it's because they lost sight of what
Speaker 1: got them in it in the first place and they're
Speaker 1: managing fifteen people and they're a manager now they're not
Speaker 1: a creative and they're like, why am I doing this?
Speaker 1: I'm not getting the satisfaction. It's like, oh, because you're
Speaker 1: not doing what you started doing.
Speaker 2: What did you learn at What did you learn at
Speaker 2: Apple that you didn't learn at NASA?
Speaker 1: Apple? I would say, like NASA, I feel like a
Speaker 1: lot of smart people at Apple. You had to be
Speaker 1: pretty smart, but a very good communicator, which is like
Speaker 1: a I just keyed in on this and communication and
Speaker 1: sharing ideas and like telling stories matters a lot in
Speaker 1: you know, people think I'm a good engineer, you know,
Speaker 1: like I could build cool stuff. But it's like I'm
Speaker 1: okay engineer, Jay, I'm a pretty damn good storyteller. Like
Speaker 1: and in the videos you're telling stories right, like this
Speaker 1: video with Christiano Ronaldo, he said, with the goalie robot
Speaker 1: going back and forth, Like it starts out like, you know,
Speaker 1: this is my childhood dream. I want to do this thing.
Speaker 1: And I even Landon Donovan takes me out and he's
Speaker 1: like a coach and he's like, dude, you suck, you know,
Speaker 1: and so it's like, okay, well if I can't do
Speaker 1: with my athletic power. It's not going to do with
Speaker 1: my brain. So now I'm going to make this goal
Speaker 1: it right, you case the whole thing in a story, right,
Speaker 1: And I think at Apple I learned that there are
Speaker 1: some very very good engineers who are also incredible communicators
Speaker 1: of like explaining ideas. And you know that's what really
Speaker 1: makes a special as a species ability to cooperate on
Speaker 1: large scale And we do that through telling stories. Right,
Speaker 1: that's we've evolved to tell stories long before you could
Speaker 1: write stuff down. We communicated through telling stories. It makes
Speaker 1: somebody feel something, That's exactly that's how you make a
Speaker 1: viral video. You just you have to evoke a visceral response.
Speaker 1: And if you can do that, that helps you at
Speaker 1: work because it convinces everyone else like, hey, this is
Speaker 1: a good idea, let's all do this helps you in
Speaker 1: your relationships, Like if you can really create that visceral
Speaker 1: response by connecting with the human, then you know your
Speaker 1: partner will, your child or friend will accept your apology, right, Like,
Speaker 1: it'll help you. Yeah, just personal life, business, anything tapping
Speaker 1: into the ability and owning the ability of Like I
Speaker 1: need to say this in a way that connects heart
Speaker 1: to heart, not brain to brain, whereas it you know,
Speaker 1: NASA was like, well, you know, our rover is twenty
Speaker 1: percent faster on the gigars, like nobody cares. Right, Apple,
Speaker 1: I feel like is a very good example of this,
Speaker 1: right Like air pods is an example. Like the advertisers
Speaker 1: for airport, they're just technically, there's better than any other head.
Speaker 1: You know, yes, there any like you're in your product
Speaker 1: out there. But the commercials are like the dance, It
Speaker 1: focuses on the feeling, right, like what does it feel
Speaker 1: like to have these things, not like here's the text
Speaker 1: back of why it's better. Yeah, And as a result,
Speaker 1: I think they're like if they were a standalone company,
Speaker 1: it would be the market cap would be like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's something crazy, like just for the just
Speaker 1: for the air it's like fifty billion dollar market cap
Speaker 1: just for the AirPod.
Speaker 2: It's crazy.
Speaker 3: It's crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's such a hearing you say that is fascinating
Speaker 2: because yeah, I read it study years ago. It was
Speaker 2: early days, but New York Times did a study on
Speaker 2: seven thousand pieces of viral content and the output was
Speaker 2: the seven thousand piece of viral content they made people
Speaker 2: feel five things one of five things. The first was adventure,
Speaker 2: which yours your content does all the time. Humor your
Speaker 2: content does that too, or comedy obviously. Uh. The other
Speaker 2: the third feeling was negativity, but the news anger rage
Speaker 2: Yours does not do that. The fourth was inspiration, so
Speaker 2: you felt inspired after watching it, and the fifth was surprise.
Speaker 2: And so those were the five emotions and they were
Speaker 2: all feelings. And I always share that with people because
Speaker 2: I'm like, your content's trying to teach me something. It's
Speaker 2: trying to tell me something, and you're talking about adding value.
Speaker 2: But when you're trying to add value, you're not making
Speaker 2: me feel anything. And what you were saying about hiding
Speaker 2: the vegetables, it's like, if you're making people feel entertained,
Speaker 2: then you're learning about engineering and process and designed and everything.
Speaker 2: But if I'm like, I'm going to teach you engineering now,
Speaker 2: I'm feeling bored. Yeah, and that's not on the top
Speaker 2: five list, And so I'm not feeling anything I wanted
Speaker 2: to ask you about. I want to get tactical with
Speaker 2: you because you're also a YouTube creative genius. It's like,
Speaker 2: what was the journey from zero to a thousand subscribers.
Speaker 2: What does that look like for someone if someone's trying
Speaker 2: to do that as stage one.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of really good reasons to start a
Speaker 1: YouTube channel or to be a creative. There's only two
Speaker 1: bad ones tell us to get rich and to get famous.
Speaker 1: And I think that's like the mistake a lot of people,
Speaker 1: especially now that you know you can get rich and famous.
Speaker 1: And I think we both started in this game. It
Speaker 1: just wasn't the same, Like you didn't realize that was it?
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Our passion was like we love this, right.
Speaker 2: I thought it was going to be I thought I
Speaker 2: was gonna because I was a consultant at the time. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I was at Accentia rightly. Yeah, I thought I was
Speaker 2: going to be a consultant by day and just to
Speaker 2: upload videos by night and weekends because I was like,
Speaker 2: this is a fun hobby. It was. It was just
Speaker 2: a creative outlet for me. I was like I was
Speaker 2: doing live events, teaching wisdom and teaching classes and meditation,
Speaker 2: and I was teach at my local gym. I would
Speaker 2: teach it in my local college or whatever. And I
Speaker 2: loved it. But I was like, oh, I'd like to
Speaker 2: share that with more people. I would just upload some videos.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I had no idea that any of this
Speaker 2: would ever happen. So and yeah, we started. I started
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, you start twenty eleven.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but ultimately twenty I mean, like to your point,
Speaker 1: like it takes forever to get a thousand subscribers. So
Speaker 1: I think the trick is just to make content, just
Speaker 1: to do it, don't overthink it. You know. The temptation
Speaker 1: is you want to make the perfect thing. And again,
Speaker 1: going back to an engineer, you build prototypes. Like the
Speaker 1: biggest mistake when you want to make something is like
Speaker 1: I want to build the final thing. Any object in
Speaker 1: this room was not built, Like this was not the
Speaker 1: final form. This was not the initial version of this microphone.
Speaker 1: Like it started very simply and then it iterated, iterated.
Speaker 1: And so it's the same thing with like creating content
Speaker 1: or making things or trying anything like set a low bar.
Speaker 1: You know. I like to say, like make your goal
Speaker 1: to fail ten times, like flip it. Make the goal,
Speaker 1: like I want to make ten videos and my goal
Speaker 1: is that they don't get more than one hundred views
Speaker 1: in a sense of like don't make your metric. But
Speaker 1: I'm not rich yet, and I'm not famous yet, therefore
Speaker 1: I'm a failure. Like make your like, destigmatize the failure
Speaker 1: and just go for it and make that. So make
Speaker 1: the goal, you know, maybe a better way to say
Speaker 1: is make the goal to just upload ten videos in
Speaker 1: ten weeks. That's my goal. I don't care about metric,
Speaker 1: I don't care about views, and you will learn so
Speaker 1: much more through that by then and then iterating and
Speaker 1: seeing what worked. Back to a video game. Okay, I
Speaker 1: said this thing. I started this way. Aha, the algorithm
Speaker 1: seemed to really like that, you know, and that's what
Speaker 1: the audience wants. And now I'm going to lean into that, right,
Speaker 1: So it's like just gamified in that sense and it
Speaker 1: will be great. Don't do it to be your meritual famous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's great advice. I remember I got to I
Speaker 2: got my first thousand subscribers in a month on YouTube,
Speaker 2: and I was over the moon, Like I was so excited.
Speaker 2: I couldn't believe it. Like I was like, this is
Speaker 2: I'd never stood in front of a I'd maybe done
Speaker 2: one talk which was a work event which had a
Speaker 2: thousand people in the audience, but I'd never done my
Speaker 2: own event with a thousand people i'd mostly if I'd
Speaker 2: done my own event, maybe fifty was the most I'd
Speaker 2: ever had in my own live events. So a thousand
Speaker 2: subscribers this is insane. And I remember saying to my
Speaker 2: friends and they were like, yeah, it's probably cool, like
Speaker 2: you know, good for you, like you know, and it
Speaker 2: felt like a failure because to them, not to me, yeah,
Speaker 2: because they were just like, oh, that's a thousand, Like
Speaker 2: I guess it's gonna you know, now out here. And
Speaker 2: it was just so interesting for me to see, like, oh,
Speaker 2: it was good. I didn't feel that way because I
Speaker 2: would have stopped. Yeah, but a thousand to me was
Speaker 2: a huge one. What's the difference between getting from a
Speaker 2: thousand to one hundred thousand? Like what is changing in
Speaker 2: skill set? Mindset ability?
Speaker 1: You start to get like a process down, You start
Speaker 1: to be able to figure out your own voice. I
Speaker 1: think like from about ten thousand to one hundred thousand subscribers,
Speaker 1: you start to understand who you are, you know, and
Speaker 1: a good place to start, by the way, just copying
Speaker 1: other channels that you like, like don't be ashamed at
Speaker 1: the beginning just to copy someone else's style. And you know,
Speaker 1: if you don't know where to start. If you don't
Speaker 1: have something, and you'll start doing it. You'll try something
Speaker 1: one time and it works and it sticks, and then you,
Speaker 1: you know, you start to find what your own voice is.
Speaker 2: You've only ever you said, you've only ever made one
Speaker 2: video a month. Yeah, how did you not get sucked
Speaker 2: in to the landscape when it was like people were
Speaker 2: making a video a day, people were making three videos
Speaker 2: a week. People will make you know how did you
Speaker 2: stay true to Was it just that you'll create a
Speaker 2: vision so big that you could only ever do one
Speaker 2: a month?
Speaker 1: Partly that and just like again, I wasn't doing it
Speaker 1: to chase the views. And you're absolutely right. There was
Speaker 1: a time in the YouTube algorithm were daily vlogs is
Speaker 1: how you got all the views. And I said great,
Speaker 1: like great for everyone else, Like I am enjoying it
Speaker 1: this way. This is what I like. This is like
Speaker 1: the pace I'm comfortable with. Like I'm very protective, I'm
Speaker 1: very good at saying no, like that's my superpower. And
Speaker 1: just like I can have that restraint. And you know,
Speaker 1: I've got a nice comfortable jogging pace on my treadmill
Speaker 1: and I'm going to stick with that. So and even
Speaker 1: today you know good at saying no.
Speaker 2: What was the hardest thing you ever said no to?
Speaker 1: You know, early on there was some opportunities to do
Speaker 1: some like Discovery Channel shows that I would have loved
Speaker 1: as a kid. But then it's like when I had
Speaker 1: everything else going on, Like I don't know, you just
Speaker 1: get opportunities that come by that you don't. It's almost
Speaker 1: not hard to say no because it's like unless it's
Speaker 1: an absolute hell yes, I don't even consider it, right,
Speaker 1: And I think that is that can be a superpower,
Speaker 1: is like laser focus. Like I don't often like pick
Speaker 1: something that I'm just like, I'm on it. But like
Speaker 1: if I do choose something that it's like I want it,
Speaker 1: Like I can be like a pit on it where
Speaker 1: it's just like I will not fail, Like I don't know.
Speaker 1: At some point, if it's not work, you need to pivot,
Speaker 1: and I do. But it's like I just get so
Speaker 1: obsessed with accomplishing the thing that I can just exclude
Speaker 1: everything else, so I don't have this temptation of like
Speaker 1: and I try this, I don't try this. I'm don't
Speaker 1: try this and I try this, and now you're just
Speaker 1: diluted across the board. Right, because that applies not even
Speaker 1: for business, but in your relationships right in life. If
Speaker 1: you are stretching yourself thin, you know, I'd much rather
Speaker 1: give like five people in my life, like very deep
Speaker 1: depth and have that richness of human connection then to
Speaker 1: spread that thin across fifty Yeah, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, it's yeah, there's almost like there's the
Speaker 2: experimenting phase where you're trying lots of things out. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but then when you know who you are and you
Speaker 2: know your voice and you know what you're building, you've
Speaker 2: got to stick to that and it does make all
Speaker 2: the difference, and you've got to know when to let
Speaker 2: something go. Like the videos I used to make on
Speaker 2: Facebook when I first started as a creator, I don't
Speaker 2: make them anymore. And it's not because they weren't amazing
Speaker 2: and they didn't change my life. It's just that's not
Speaker 2: who I wanted to be forever. And they would have
Speaker 2: been really successful now if I carried on making them,
Speaker 2: but I wouldn't have felt happy, and so I chose
Speaker 2: what I wanted to do, which was this and telling
Speaker 2: stories in a certain way that's allowed my life to
Speaker 2: also be fulfilling as well as successful. Rather than keep
Speaker 2: doing something because the algorithm wants it, that's right, and
Speaker 2: it doesn't. That gets really dry, It gets really tiring,
Speaker 2: I think, and creators get burnt out chasing the algorithm,
Speaker 2: which I think we've both seen probably a lot of.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right. I think when you crank
Speaker 1: up that treadmill speed to a sprint paste, that's exciting
Speaker 1: at first and it's like, whow all these opportunities are coming,
Speaker 1: but you know, the dopamine wears off and you're still sprinting.
Speaker 1: And to me, that's the definition of burnout when you're
Speaker 1: not getting like the positive feedback and you're like really
Speaker 1: really going for it so that you could just like
Speaker 1: keep your treadmill at a jogging speed. In creating, in
Speaker 1: in life, I think like that's that's the power of
Speaker 1: saying no and being okay with saying no and not
Speaker 1: feeling guilty about it.
Speaker 2: What was the I'm looking at your most popular videos
Speaker 2: and obviously world's largest jellopool? Can you Swim in Jello?
Speaker 2: Two hundred and three million views? Six years ago? That video?
Speaker 2: What went wrong trying to get that video?
Speaker 1: I lost ten pounds making that video. I'm not kidding,
Speaker 1: because because we were making I get when I get stressed,
Speaker 1: I don't eat it. We were making it in my
Speaker 1: brother's backyard because to make jello, no one's ever done
Speaker 1: this on the internet. By the way, to this day,
Speaker 1: I'm the only person who've ever made like an actual
Speaker 1: jellopool because jello, as you know, you have to get
Speaker 1: it really cold. You got to first of all boil it,
Speaker 1: and then it's got to put it in the refrigerator. Right,
Speaker 1: So we had like six, you know, fifty five gallon
Speaker 1: drums that we boiled jello and basically drained it in
Speaker 1: this pool that we'd built. And then he lived in Utah,
Speaker 1: so it was like the perfect temperature. It didn't freeze
Speaker 1: over night, but cold enough. And so it took a
Speaker 1: full week and it failed eight different ways, and we'd
Speaker 1: have to tweak and and change it. A storm came,
Speaker 1: we're covering it with a tarp. But eventually we got
Speaker 1: that money shot of like a kid belly flopping on
Speaker 1: this pool of jello and like me swimming in it,
Speaker 1: and it felt really good. That's like, actually, it turns
Speaker 1: out a very technically difficult problem. Again, my naive optimism
Speaker 1: was like, oh, I got this, I can do this right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it was very, very tricky, but we pulled it off.
Speaker 2: What was the hidden vegetable in the egg drop from
Speaker 2: Space video one hundred and forty million views two years ago? Like,
Speaker 2: what was the what was the hidden vegetable there?
Speaker 1: Yeah? There? Again, that video had so many failures in it, Jay, Like,
Speaker 1: we tried originally to put a basically a model rocket
Speaker 1: on a hot air balloon or on a weather balloon
Speaker 1: and then guide it over a mattress and where it
Speaker 1: would let go and drop the egg on the mattress.
Speaker 1: We tried that three different times and this was costing
Speaker 1: me like thirty thousand times a drop. And eventually I
Speaker 1: called up one of my buddies at NASA. He's the
Speaker 1: lead when we try and land something on the other planet,
Speaker 1: and I was like, Adam, how do we do this?
Speaker 1: And he's like, Oh, what you're trying to do is
Speaker 1: create a guided missile. And there's like one hundred people
Speaker 1: in the United States who know how to do that,
Speaker 1: and they've all signed a very large attack of papers
Speaker 1: saying they won't tell anyone. So we're like, oh, we
Speaker 1: shouldn't try and guide this rocket down. Then well, let's
Speaker 1: go one hundred thousand feet up you know, basically to
Speaker 1: space drop this thing and then we landed it like
Speaker 1: the Mars rover. So in that video, we learned about
Speaker 1: terminal velocity, and we learned about like space environments.
Speaker 2: But kids love I love how you bugging a NASA friend. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's dealing with like solving like discovery and.
Speaker 1: It's literally the man who like invented how you land
Speaker 1: on Mars and it's like my phone a friend.
Speaker 2: You're like, can you teach you how to drop an egg?
Speaker 1: Yeah, on on a mattress and he was like, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that's called a missile.
Speaker 2: That's amazing. Well, who have you met through doing all
Speaker 2: of this work that you've just been so like you've
Speaker 2: learned from what you've been inspired by, or someone that
Speaker 2: you met through this crazy journey that you've been on
Speaker 2: that has kind of left a mark on you, or
Speaker 2: someone that you always look forward to getting to know
Speaker 2: and you've got to meet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say, I don't know. Weirdly, like a
Speaker 1: mentor for me actually has been Jimmy Kimmel, Like, you know,
Speaker 1: he saw one of my videos like a decade ago
Speaker 1: and said we should get this guy in the show
Speaker 1: and his staff was like, after like one or two
Speaker 1: times going on to show that he really likes you,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, you say that to everyone, but like
Speaker 1: the fourth time, I was like, I think he does
Speaker 1: really and so now he's like it was his idea
Speaker 1: even to start crunch Labs the company, because people will
Speaker 1: tell me all the time, like you need to do
Speaker 1: a podcast, you need to write a book, you need
Speaker 1: to go on tour, and when I double click on it,
Speaker 1: because again I'm good to saying no, it always came
Speaker 1: back to like, oh, so you can make more money.
Speaker 1: That's like, oh, good, great news. I don't spend a
Speaker 1: lot of money, so I've got enough money. I don't
Speaker 1: need to do that, right, And his point was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you could reach more brains deeper, and that's the
Speaker 1: idea with crunch Labs. It's like you're in the trenches.
Speaker 1: You're not just passively watching a video. It's a really
Speaker 1: fun toy and you're in the trenches and you get
Speaker 1: him every month. And he was totally right. Like the
Speaker 1: noun of letters we get from parents saying like this
Speaker 1: has changed the way my kids sees the world sees themselves. Right.
Speaker 1: They love it. They go out to the mailbox every
Speaker 1: month waiting for it to come. Makes a great Christmas present.
Speaker 1: By the way, Jay, there we go Christmas pressure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was about to say it's no, it sounds
Speaker 2: like the perfect gift. I mean, I think I'll have to.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna I'm gonna get something my niece and nephew. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think I think they'll love it because I can
Speaker 2: see my nephew's like ten years old, and his brain's
Speaker 2: like that, like he wants to build stuff, he wants
Speaker 2: to break stuff, he wants to figure things out. My
Speaker 2: niece is more into like Gabby's doll house. Well, the
Speaker 2: good news, Jake, we just know have you got Gabby's
Speaker 2: doll house right more.
Speaker 1: It's called Creative Kit. So what I do is creative engineering.
Speaker 1: The engineering part we've got covered billbox is the toys
Speaker 1: I was saying, And then we have like a robotics one.
Speaker 1: But like the creative part we never so we like
Speaker 1: studied what creativity is. And now there's a version called
Speaker 1: Creative Kit that it's like six years old, en up,
Speaker 1: and it's a little bit of a trojan horse to
Speaker 1: get more girls in STEM. But also it's for boys
Speaker 1: as well, but they get a whirl every every month.
Speaker 1: It's a different part of a little town they build.
Speaker 1: And the important part is like it's within guide rails.
Speaker 1: If you tell a kid give them a piece of
Speaker 1: paper and say come up, you know, draw something, they're like, uh.
Speaker 1: But if you say, like drawn animal doing something, really
Speaker 1: doing their hobby, you know, in a place you wouldn't expect, Well,
Speaker 1: now they have like a seed. Right, So it's this
Speaker 1: idea of like the first one is a treehouse, but
Speaker 1: then you name it's a little animal's friend that comes
Speaker 1: with it. And then we're getting there within guidelines to
Speaker 1: think really creatively. And what the research shows you could
Speaker 1: watch these alpha brain waves and you're in is the
Speaker 1: more time you spend in this space, the easier it
Speaker 1: is to do it. So it's just like a muscle
Speaker 1: that you develop. So it's basically giving kids time in
Speaker 1: this space to be more creative.
Speaker 2: Do you always want your work and your products to
Speaker 2: help kids?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Was that the goal for the YouTube channel from day one?
Speaker 2: Was it like I want to help young people figure out,
Speaker 2: young kids figure out?
Speaker 1: I don't think so, to be completely honest, like I
Speaker 1: think it was more just like I love sharing ideas
Speaker 1: like I love the aha moment when you learn something new,
Speaker 1: and I love even more is like giving that to
Speaker 1: someone else, Like here's something I was just talking about
Speaker 1: with my partner the other day, which is such a
Speaker 1: cool thing to do. I don't know if you've ever
Speaker 1: done this, If you ever laying underneath a tree, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you just look up or anything where there's like
Speaker 1: a bunch of little things and you close one eye
Speaker 1: and all the leaves feel like they're kind of our branches,
Speaker 1: kind of feel like they're at the same plane because
Speaker 1: with one eye you don't have three dimensional you know,
Speaker 1: three D. But when you open both thighs and realize, like, oh,
Speaker 1: now I know which leaf is in front of me
Speaker 1: and which one is farther, Like if you've never done this,
Speaker 1: you should do it, and it's remarked and it's just
Speaker 1: it's immediately just like a teachable moment that shows like, oh,
Speaker 1: like our brain, because the right eye is a little
Speaker 1: bit different from the left, I sees the brain does
Speaker 1: all this incredible math to tell you how far and
Speaker 1: close something is, and just to get that moment and
Speaker 1: then now once you know that, you're like wait with animals,
Speaker 1: I have noticed like predators, you know, a hawk or
Speaker 1: a lion, they have eyes on the front of their
Speaker 1: face so that they could see three dimensional. But if
Speaker 1: generally speaking, if you're a prey, a zebra or deer,
Speaker 1: your eyes are on the side. They don't have the
Speaker 1: depth reception. But now they can avoid the thing that
Speaker 1: has three dimensions that's trying to get them right. So
Speaker 1: it's like idea, Like when you just learn something cool
Speaker 1: like that, just that nugget, and now you've updated your
Speaker 1: framework for the natural world around you, is so exciting
Speaker 1: and beautiful and addictive to me. And I love to
Speaker 1: give that to other people. And what I found, I
Speaker 1: especially love to give that to the to the young folks.
Speaker 2: What are you doing to constantly learn things like that?
Speaker 2: Like where are you coming across statistics, facts, human behavior,
Speaker 2: animal like where are you exposed to this? Where are
Speaker 2: you finding it and discovering it in a way that's
Speaker 2: helping you feel like you're always on the cusp of
Speaker 2: something cool everywhere?
Speaker 1: Truly, Like I think the answer to this question, I
Speaker 1: think what you're driving at is it kind of starts
Speaker 1: with a curiosity, right just and observing and being like
Speaker 1: even if there's like a weird on the side of
Speaker 1: a building or something. It's like a pipe that comes out.
Speaker 1: I'm like, why is that pipe there? Like, I've never
Speaker 1: seen a build a pipe come out there on a billy,
Speaker 1: and it'll drive me crazy, to be honest, and I
Speaker 1: have to figure it out. But the step one with
Speaker 1: the scientific method too, is just observation. Right, the most
Speaker 1: interesting thing to hear in science isn't like Eureka, like
Speaker 1: I found it. The most interesting thing in science to hear,
Speaker 1: Like the one thing you want to hear is like,
Speaker 1: that's interesting, Like hold on a second, right, Like that
Speaker 1: wasn't expected. Let me double click on that and see
Speaker 1: what's going on there. So I think part of learning
Speaker 1: a bunch is just having a curiosity mind just asking
Speaker 1: the question, yes, yeah, right, And I think that's what
Speaker 1: I try and do, is like I am a fire starter.
Speaker 1: My videos are not going to teach you everything you
Speaker 1: need to know about the natural world. But what I
Speaker 1: can do is I can like I can I'm a
Speaker 1: fire start. I'll start that fire in their brain and
Speaker 1: then they get addicted to this feeling. Right, I'm like
Speaker 1: the Gateway drug dealer, this aha feeling, and then they
Speaker 1: want to go out and learn more, right, and like
Speaker 1: that that's beautiful and that's a gift that you can
Speaker 1: give someone that will last their whole life long.
Speaker 2: How do you come up with creative ideas? Having made
Speaker 2: a video a month for ten years, how are you
Speaker 2: coming up with new ideas? How what's your creative process?
Speaker 2: Do you sit down in a room lock away? Are
Speaker 2: you on your laptop? Are you talking to people? Are
Speaker 2: you with a team? What's your process?
Speaker 1: Can I tell you one that you bleep out on this,
Speaker 1: but you could play it, But then I want your
Speaker 1: reaction on camera.
Speaker 2: That's so good, that's so good, that's so good.
Speaker 1: I love that, that's so good.
Speaker 2: Why do I have to believe that I love that?
Speaker 1: Because I don't want someone to steal it? Oh right,
Speaker 1: Oh yes, it's such a simple thing. I could tell
Speaker 1: you what you're like, Bang, yeah, I love it. I
Speaker 1: want to know what is right?
Speaker 4: That is amazing, so good, it's so good. So it's
Speaker 4: just like when I can get that reaction. Like the
Speaker 4: ideas list is long. I always thought you'd run out
Speaker 4: of ideas, but it's like always to be a hell yes,
Speaker 4: it has to be a hell yes.
Speaker 1: But I always tend to have like a year and
Speaker 1: a half worth of idea, So like we have every
Speaker 1: single video we're making in twenty twenty six already like
Speaker 1: planned out and in process, so.
Speaker 2: You're never trying to react to what's happening in that
Speaker 2: world or you're not. Yours is evergreen content?
Speaker 1: Evergreen?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Never, I want it to be ever.
Speaker 2: You're not trying to react to Like, everyone loves AI
Speaker 2: right now, so we're going to do AI. Everyone loves robotics,
Speaker 2: so we're doing right.
Speaker 1: We can't, I mean all the videos now costs. We
Speaker 1: don't do a video that costs less than half a
Speaker 1: million dollars.
Speaker 2: Well every video is five yeah, because we're just like.
Speaker 1: You know, we're doing stuff that's never been done before.
Speaker 1: So there's like a lot of R and D that
Speaker 1: goes into making a soccer robot that moves it in
Speaker 1: an hour.
Speaker 2: That's that's why we're the best goalkeeper that Ronaldo's ever faced.
Speaker 1: Too, for sure.
Speaker 2: It is. Yeah, that's crazy. I can't wait to see
Speaker 2: that video.
Speaker 1: Funny, he's very competitive.
Speaker 2: Of course, I'm obsessed with a Renaudo since I was
Speaker 2: fifteen years old because I was a United fan. So
Speaker 2: when he came to United when he was seventeen. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I've been a big fan for like twenty three years.
Speaker 2: So watching I know how competitive he is, and I'm
Speaker 2: like watching him fail is going to be an interesting Uh.
Speaker 1: His team warned us, They're like, he doesn't in the end,
Speaker 1: like there was a way we kind of had a
Speaker 1: built in weakness he could exploit. Yeah, and he did
Speaker 1: a pretty good job finding it. But between you and me, Ja,
Speaker 1: we might have like we made sure there's a weakness.
Speaker 2: You should just you just now, what you have to
Speaker 2: do is create robots that look like humans, that are
Speaker 2: designed like your email pro goalkeeper and sell them to
Speaker 2: these that's the next thing. And you pull off selling
Speaker 2: an AI computer to Barcelona Real Madrid or that's a bang, right,
Speaker 2: So what's the creative process then? Now you planned out
Speaker 2: that far ahead. I love the idea you just gave
Speaker 2: me that we'll bleep up. But what how how does that?
Speaker 2: Obviously that one makes sense, and you're like, the thing
Speaker 2: about good ideas is when you hear them, you go,
Speaker 2: of course, but coming up with it is not that easy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say, and I don't have a good
Speaker 1: answer for this, no, But except to say because I
Speaker 1: get asked this a lot. Right, It's like, I think
Speaker 1: it goes back to just like my brain is always
Speaker 1: on right. The inspiration for ideas can come, you know,
Speaker 1: and and it's just from a conversation I'm having with someone,
Speaker 1: or I just read something on Reddit, or I'm driving
Speaker 1: down the free when I'm like, or I did this,
Speaker 1: you know for I'll give you two examples. One, I
Speaker 1: did this obstacle course for squirrels in my backyard that's
Speaker 1: kind of popular on the channel right around COVID, and
Speaker 1: I was, you know, they were stealing my bird seed
Speaker 1: or so it's like all right, but they were stealing
Speaker 1: my bird seed. So it's like, you know what, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna make them earn it. So I made an eight
Speaker 1: part in Ninja Warrior Ops of course, and put the
Speaker 1: bird seed at the end, and sure enough they solved it.
Speaker 1: It was very entertaining, but like the idea for that
Speaker 1: came for me just laying in bed and hearing them
Speaker 1: on the roof and knowing this my birthday, I was like,
Speaker 1: hold on, I just do like man versus Animal, Engineer
Speaker 1: versus Animal or another one. I made this glitter Bomb
Speaker 1: series where like someone legitimately stole a package from my porch.
Speaker 1: I felt really sad. It was a sliding green shelled
Speaker 1: Super Mario Brothers. It's stung. And then I was like,
Speaker 1: hold on a second, like if anyone could do something
Speaker 1: about these porch pirate punks, It's like, I hope put
Speaker 1: a rover on Mars. I could design something. So then
Speaker 1: it's like four phones, cup of glitter, we track it,
Speaker 1: there's fart spray. It's like a whole thing, right, And
Speaker 1: eventually that one took us all the way to we
Speaker 1: shut down like three scam call centers in India by
Speaker 1: tracking them down and glitter bombing them and doing all
Speaker 1: these other pranks and then putting that video out in
Speaker 1: the world. It gets one hundred million views with like
Speaker 1: a bright spotlight and we shut them down. So it's like, again,
Speaker 1: I couldn't have predicted you would land there. Ye, if
Speaker 1: you just follow the natural steps, it just happens.
Speaker 2: Is there a video that you did? Could you throw it?
Speaker 2: But you did it because you just had to put
Speaker 2: something out on you Like it's a terrible idea, but
Speaker 2: then it turned out to be amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I did a video on bedbugs because I just thought,
Speaker 1: they're fascinating, like, what is up with bedbugs? They like
Speaker 1: suck human blood and if you if you see bedbugs,
Speaker 1: they have to be fed like every three days. If
Speaker 1: you see a bed bug in your house, that means
Speaker 1: they fed on you. All they can eat is blood.
Speaker 1: And so it's like there's just a lot about them
Speaker 1: that's fascinating. And my team was like, this is going
Speaker 1: to kill the channel. No one's gonna watch this, And
Speaker 1: I was just so curious about it, right, so I
Speaker 1: just went down the rabbit hole deep and it turned
Speaker 1: out to be, like, I think, an interesting piece of
Speaker 1: content that has like I think eighty million views a something. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's so I think if you just approach it with
Speaker 1: curiosity and legitimately, like you know, I don't pre write
Speaker 1: my videos. If I have an idea, I go learn
Speaker 1: about it, and then once we have the footage, it's like,
Speaker 1: all right, what's the story here?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And I think if you have the right attitude, there's
Speaker 1: always a really cool story to find.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely absolutely. What's a question that you still don't
Speaker 2: have the answer to but you can't stop thinking about.
Speaker 2: Do you ever get into that loop of like I
Speaker 2: wish I understood how this worked.
Speaker 1: I don't know. There's like kind of unanswerable questions like
Speaker 1: where is all the life in the unit? Like if
Speaker 1: life exists here? Especially if so NASA's there's a moon
Speaker 1: call and sell it us in our in our solar
Speaker 1: system that has a molten lava core and the outside
Speaker 1: is ice, right, water water, frozen water. So somewhere between
Speaker 1: the molten lava core and that and that surface, there's
Speaker 1: a seventy degree ocean. It's warm, it's water, it's that's
Speaker 1: where life form. We know that's where life form on
Speaker 1: this planet. So NASA's building a probe to go out there. Essentially,
Speaker 1: we're gonna drill through the ice. We're gonna put a
Speaker 1: submarine down there and basically see what eats it, right,
Speaker 1: and if if something is there for life to exist
Speaker 1: twice in our own solar system kind of independently, then
Speaker 1: it's like, where is all the rest of life in
Speaker 1: this huge, huge, huge universe? Right, there's I think something
Speaker 1: like there's a million times more stars. Then there are
Speaker 1: grains of sand on the whole planet, the bottom of
Speaker 1: the ocean. I mean, think about the net. The last
Speaker 1: time you picked up a handful of sand. Every one
Speaker 1: of those sand pieces represents a million stars. I'm talking
Speaker 1: bottom of the ocean.
Speaker 2: How unfastable, completely unfamal.
Speaker 1: It's unfathomable. So but then like it's called Fermi's paradox,
Speaker 1: but there's a few hypotheses of like, well, then why
Speaker 1: don't we see other signs of life in the universe?
Speaker 1: And it's a very fat If you want a fascinating
Speaker 1: rabbit hole, look up Fermi's paradox.
Speaker 2: What if you learn so far is it that life
Speaker 2: form looks different? We can't see it? Is it?
Speaker 1: Well, we don't know. But like some of the hypothets,
Speaker 1: some of the hypotheses on why we don't know is
Speaker 1: like it could be there's like super predator civilization. There's
Speaker 1: super predator organisms out there that as soon as you
Speaker 1: get past a certain point, then like, okay, now this
Speaker 1: is a problem. We're going to go take care of
Speaker 1: these people. So they extinguish life if it gets too high,
Speaker 1: because it could be a threat. It could be. Another
Speaker 1: one is like intelligence is get to a glass ceiling
Speaker 1: where they destroy themselves. When you have the energy that
Speaker 1: can take you to interstell or to another system, well
Speaker 1: you could probably use that energy on yourself. And you
Speaker 1: know when we a lot of organisms fight each other,
Speaker 1: and you know, that could be a pretty darn good
Speaker 1: thing for us to be looking at as a as
Speaker 1: a civilization ourselves. Right, Like where you just get too
Speaker 1: hard and then it just it collapses in on itself
Speaker 1: is another hypothesis. One is like they know about us,
Speaker 1: but it's we're kind of like an endangered species, like
Speaker 1: an unconfident tribe in the Amazon. So they're like, sh
Speaker 1: just like leave alone. We're like so basically in a
Speaker 1: zoo over here.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So there's all these like really fun hypotheses on what
Speaker 1: could be the explanation as to why.
Speaker 2: So that's good. Yeah, that's what keeps you up and night.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's a fun Those kinds of things
Speaker 1: are like fun to think about.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, But next time you are near sand, truly think
Speaker 1: of me, Jay, take a scoop of that sand and
Speaker 1: just look at how many grains of sand that each
Speaker 1: one of those is a star with planets, Like the potential.
Speaker 1: I don't know, that's just such a it breaks your brain,
Speaker 1: but it's such a beautiful thought of like the potential
Speaker 1: of life.
Speaker 2: You've been to space yet, right, not yet Yeah, okaya.
Speaker 1: No, Yeah, there's some plans on the horizon. You'll go
Speaker 1: to space too, Like I think it's gonna come pretty commonplace.
Speaker 1: Like you can get to Australian like I think ninety
Speaker 1: minutes through space. So that's there's there's a financial incentive
Speaker 1: to travel quickly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, nineteen minutes to Australia from La Yeah. Wow.
Speaker 1: You basically just go up, go over fast and the
Speaker 1: Earth also moves a little bit and you come back down.
Speaker 2: That's crazy, that's crazy nineteen minutes. Yeah, we had someone
Speaker 2: done that yet.
Speaker 1: No, but like that that's the math, right, I mean
Speaker 1: we don't have the ability southwest for space hasn't been invented,
Speaker 1: but like essentially that wherever there's like a lot of
Speaker 1: financial incentive to do a thing like innovation will be
Speaker 1: placed towards that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So what do you get excited about with what's
Speaker 2: happening with technology with AI with discuss is there anything
Speaker 2: that you get super excited about right now? And what
Speaker 2: do you get scared about on the other end or
Speaker 2: things you get worried about.
Speaker 1: There's a famous sort of one of the early thinkers
Speaker 1: and this in twenty fifteen, I was talking with all
Speaker 1: my buddies about this about AI. Nick Bostrom wrote this
Speaker 1: book about superintelligence and his the beginning analogy to the
Speaker 1: book is like, imagine there's some sparrows and they find
Speaker 1: the egg of an owl. Just so you know, owls
Speaker 1: eat sparrows, right, so we're all clear. Then they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: we're going to raise this owl. We're gonna put raise
Speaker 1: them in our nest, and it's gonna love us, and
Speaker 1: then we can use the owl to like go hunt
Speaker 1: for us. We're going to use the owl to do
Speaker 1: you know, all these things that will be really useful.
Speaker 1: And you know, of course if you just carry that,
Speaker 1: if that actually happens, the owl is born thanks to
Speaker 1: the sparrows for incubating it. But it doesn't end well
Speaker 1: with a sparrow. That's a real concern. I share that
Speaker 1: concern with like a lot of people. That could be
Speaker 1: an outcome of AI. I do think it the best
Speaker 1: case scenario, though I think there are some upsides where
Speaker 1: it's like it solves a lot of the scarcity thing,
Speaker 1: a lot of the wars and terrible things that have
Speaker 1: happened in you know, our history of civilization is a
Speaker 1: scarcity thing. So if unlimited energy and resources and stuff
Speaker 1: and something that helps allocate those resources, that could be good. Right,
Speaker 1: It could reduce human suffering a lot. So I mean,
Speaker 1: nobody really knows, Jay, Like I don't know. I'm curious
Speaker 1: where you like where you land on this.
Speaker 2: The question I get a lot is do I think
Speaker 2: AI will ever have a soul? And my response is,
Speaker 2: I don't know if AI will ever have a soul.
Speaker 2: I just hope that people building it have a soul
Speaker 2: because ultimately, to me, it's the Frankenstein piece of anything
Speaker 2: we make becomes us, and there's a part of us
Speaker 2: that's within it. And so if we're scared of an
Speaker 2: ability that humans have, then we'll be scared of the more, bigger,
Speaker 2: powerful thing that we create that has more of it
Speaker 2: in it. And so to me, it's more about again,
Speaker 2: I think we've I think there's that beautiful statement by
Speaker 2: Mark Dwain where he said that history never repeats itself,
Speaker 2: but it always rhymes. And I think we've had enough
Speaker 2: experiences in history with technology, Like let's take social media
Speaker 2: for example. It started, we didn't really care about how
Speaker 2: it was going to affect us. Everyone had it, and
Speaker 2: now we're talking about mental health kids, phones, not just
Speaker 2: social media phones technology early on in life, right, and
Speaker 2: it's like, we know that that's how everything goes. So
Speaker 2: scare mongering doesn't work because AI's here to stay. It's
Speaker 2: not disappearing tomorrow. So trying to scare everyone from it
Speaker 2: is not going to help because it's going to be here.
Speaker 2: So I don't love the fear factor piece because it
Speaker 2: doesn't solve the problem. But the fear factor piece should
Speaker 2: lead us to being more informed and prepared for what
Speaker 2: do we do about it when? So, for example, hindsight
Speaker 2: is twenty twenty. If we could go back to two
Speaker 2: thousand and four when Facebook was created, and YouTube in
Speaker 2: twenty ten or two thousand and nine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think they acquired it or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah Google, Yeah, so yeah, yeah, so you have all
Speaker 2: of that and then. But my point's like, if you
Speaker 2: could go back then and go, okay, let's make some guardrails.
Speaker 2: Kids shouldn't be allowed a phone by this age, social
Speaker 2: media should have verified access. I'm making up things right now,
Speaker 2: but the point is, how do you prepare for the
Speaker 2: things that to come? Rather than go all right, we'll
Speaker 2: just deal with the whole fact that generations have mental
Speaker 2: health issues now and now we're dealing with the reactive
Speaker 2: way I think humans are. We kind of set ourselves
Speaker 2: up for failure every time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's just so hard without the evidence
Speaker 1: right to convince someone at Facebook when money's to be made, right,
Speaker 1: Like I completely agree with you. Yeah, but like there's
Speaker 1: just so many unknowns, unknowns.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's like how do you not how it's
Speaker 2: not about reducing innovation or doing something, it's how do
Speaker 2: we protect the vulnerable? And so if we're saying that
Speaker 2: kids under a certain age are vulnerable to X y
Speaker 2: Z in the same way as you know, like cigarettes
Speaker 2: or alcohol or you know, whatever it is, it's like
Speaker 2: we agree, we all agree that until this point your
Speaker 2: brain has not developed yet. What should we allow and
Speaker 2: not allow? You know, Like kids are watching you having
Speaker 2: the best time ever, Like it's amazing. I wish more
Speaker 2: people watching you, And but how do you regulate the
Speaker 2: things that are not doing what you're doing?
Speaker 1: I would say though, Like I think for people listening,
Speaker 1: I think it could feel very doomsday. You hear really
Speaker 1: scary things, and it's like, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: it's such a life hack to just control what's in
Speaker 1: your sphere of influence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course.
Speaker 1: And it's like I think, you know, when I get
Speaker 1: like that and I get nervous, like, well, what can
Speaker 1: I do to move the needle in my own sphere
Speaker 1: of influence? And you know, I'm not creating an AI company,
Speaker 1: so it's like it's a little bit out of my
Speaker 1: hands in that sense.
Speaker 2: But it's like, well, I think you I mean, I
Speaker 2: was going to bring this up anyway, and it connects
Speaker 2: to what you're saying right now. I mean, I know
Speaker 2: you and Jimmy have partnered multiple times and doing incredible
Speaker 2: things for our planet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which thank.
Speaker 2: You for being just such. You know, whenever people are
Speaker 2: like we made the right people famous, I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we did. Like you know, it's it's amazing to see
Speaker 2: you guys using your platform to do the thing that
Speaker 2: inspiring all these kids and families and parents, and it's
Speaker 2: all young people that following you know, both of you,
Speaker 2: and for you to galvanize, whether it's Kai and you know,
Speaker 2: all the guys who are in the space and all
Speaker 2: the biggest creators and celebrities jumping in and you know,
Speaker 2: I think this year you raised what forty million.
Speaker 1: Forty million, Yeah, so the first year we did this
Speaker 1: is mister BC, right, we did Team Tree, so we
Speaker 1: did twenty million dollars to plant twenty million trees. And
Speaker 1: then a few years later we did Team Water thirty.
Speaker 2: Million dollars to cleaning up the beaches.
Speaker 1: Thirty million pounds of trash from the oceans. And then
Speaker 1: this year the audacious goal of forty million dollars to
Speaker 1: give two million people clean drinking water for decades, and
Speaker 1: we did it. But what's the cool thing about that,
Speaker 1: Jay is the median donation was like five dollars.
Speaker 2: It's amazing.
Speaker 1: So that's that's tooth fairy money, that's big sale money. Right.
Speaker 1: There were some big donors in there, but like on
Speaker 1: average it was five dollars. And what's so cool about
Speaker 1: that is then you know they're thinking like global citizens now,
Speaker 1: Like they could have spent that on five dollars on
Speaker 1: candy on Pokemon cards, but they spent it on someone
Speaker 1: else to get clean drinking water for five years again
Speaker 1: kind of planting seeds. It's like someone who now thinks
Speaker 1: that way, who you know, picks up trash now because
Speaker 1: they see it because they're on Team Ce's right, they
Speaker 1: don't they don't litter. They take care of the environment
Speaker 1: because they're on team trees like that that kind of impact.
Speaker 1: This is why I love working with young people. It's
Speaker 1: like it's the same thing with like going to another planet,
Speaker 1: like the trajectory you have. In fact, there's motors we
Speaker 1: have on these on these on these spacecraft were call
Speaker 1: the mouse fart motors where it's like it's the tiniest
Speaker 1: little poof because that difference in trajectory ninety million miles
Speaker 1: away is the difference of hitting a planet and missing
Speaker 1: by one hundred million miles, right, So it's like the
Speaker 1: same might be like a sort of with life. And
Speaker 1: this is why I love young folks. Like the clay
Speaker 1: isn't hardened yet and so they're impressionable. And at that age,
Speaker 1: I think we've evolved to think our parents are dumb,
Speaker 1: like that's so you leave the tribe like that's in
Speaker 1: our brain. So to be a voice that can be there,
Speaker 1: to be like hey, you know, to guide in a
Speaker 1: way that even parents can't because they're willing to listen
Speaker 1: and to me is kind of a big responsibility and
Speaker 1: one that you know, I love opportunities to flex that muscle.
Speaker 2: I love that. Man, it's amazing. It's incredible watching you
Speaker 2: both do it, and the fact that you keep taking
Speaker 2: on a bigger challenge every year and killing it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's saying such a beautiful example. It's awesome to see
Speaker 2: you know, you guys could be doing anything as well,
Speaker 2: and to see you both focus on meaningful challenges in
Speaker 2: the world and issues in the world and helping galvanize
Speaker 2: so many.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's it, galvanize a bunch of other creators. I mean,
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, it only works because
Speaker 1: so many y.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, but you guys heading, No, for sure.
Speaker 2: I love that you get everyone involved, but you need
Speaker 2: a couple of people of Spearhead and you guys do
Speaker 2: an amazing job of that. So Mark, it's been amazing
Speaker 2: getting to know you more to Yeah, it's been I
Speaker 2: feel like I've I've laughed, I've nearly cried, I've definitely
Speaker 2: you definitely got me thinking and you definitely got me
Speaker 2: even just it's It's what I love is when you
Speaker 2: meet someone in this format where they're not on screen
Speaker 2: in their world and you totally have an infectious energy
Speaker 2: about the world and curiosity and science and like you
Speaker 2: got me excited, like I'm like I need to be
Speaker 2: I need to be reading more of what you're doing.
Speaker 2: And that's the best feeling for me where I'm like,
Speaker 2: oh no, you live, you breathe it, you sleep it,
Speaker 2: it's it's who you are. And then when someone's around you,
Speaker 2: it's like I'm inspired by everything you're fascinated by and
Speaker 2: it's you know, let as spark as you were saying,
Speaker 2: like lighting a fire.
Speaker 1: Like I love to hear it. My favorite thing. I
Speaker 1: love that feeling. I love giving that feeling to others.
Speaker 1: So thank you for the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Mark. I end every episode of On Purpose with
Speaker 2: the final five. We ask these every guest. The questions
Speaker 2: have to be answered in one word to one sentence maximum,
Speaker 2: So Mark Robert, these are your final five. Question Number
Speaker 2: one is what's the best advice you've ever heard or received?
Speaker 1: This too shall pass like, which is like it's it,
Speaker 1: it will get easier, but also you're not as good
Speaker 1: as if things are awesome, like it will come back
Speaker 1: down as well. So the regression to me, I have
Speaker 1: to answer in like a sentence you.
Speaker 2: That's fine, that's why. Sentence question number two, what's the
Speaker 2: worst advice you ever had? Or receive, like.
Speaker 1: Don't go to bed angry, like you're just the idea,
Speaker 1: like go to bed, just go to bed. You're an
Speaker 1: emotional mind frame, like let it pass with anything, not
Speaker 1: even with the partner, just like let it pass and
Speaker 1: hit it when you're not thinking with your lizard brain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah it's true. Actually yeah it's And also sleep
Speaker 2: is good for you, So if you're gonna stay up angry,
Speaker 2: it's like probably not gonna help. Question number three, What's
Speaker 2: something you learned recently that blew your mind?
Speaker 1: That spider's legs are hydraulic, which is why I didn't
Speaker 1: know that. This is why when they die they're curled up.
Speaker 1: It's because there's no more pressure in the system. Basically
Speaker 1: they put fluid into it. So you can actually take
Speaker 1: a syringe and put into a spider's back and put
Speaker 1: air into it and their legs will open and expand.
Speaker 2: Wow. No, no, what's something you've recently learned about yourself?
Speaker 2: Question number four that like.
Speaker 1: If I'm having a thought that's not productive, like rumination
Speaker 1: or like perseverating on a thing, I want to think
Speaker 1: it away and you aren't. Your thoughts like your mind
Speaker 1: is the sky, not the weather. And if you just
Speaker 1: don't give it life like it'll pass. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: don't have to think about it, right, that's hard to do.
Speaker 1: But like I mean, you know this with meditation, Like
Speaker 1: you know this better than anyone as an engineer. I
Speaker 1: had to learn this, you know, on my own.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, it's a beautiful thing to remember though that
Speaker 2: don't believe everything you think and your thoughts are not true.
Speaker 2: And absolutely you're the sky not the clouds. And yeah, no, beautiful.
Speaker 2: Fifth and final question, we asked this that every guest
Speaker 2: who's ever been on the show, if you could create
Speaker 2: one law that everyone in the world had to follow,
Speaker 2: what would it be, Apart from buy crunch Labs.
Speaker 1: For christ, Before you can share a piece of social
Speaker 1: media information that makes you angry, you have to explain
Speaker 1: what a reasonable, thoughtful person on the other side of
Speaker 1: that argument.
Speaker 2: Would say, Oh, that's good.
Speaker 1: And if you can do that and put that into
Speaker 1: the prompt, then you're allowed to hit share.
Speaker 2: That's good.
Speaker 1: I think that would solve like ninety nine percent of
Speaker 1: the world's problems.
Speaker 2: I love that. I was giving a presentation recently. Kerry
Speaker 2: Washington invite me to speak at her Day of Unreasonable conversations,
Speaker 2: which is all about sparking better conversation. And I had
Speaker 2: to do a presentation on how do we have healthier
Speaker 2: conversations online? And there was a statistic I did some
Speaker 2: research that found that when people had to read before
Speaker 2: they retweet, it dropped shares by up to seventy percent. Wow,
Speaker 2: because people don't read what they share, so you're going
Speaker 2: even one step further to comprehend and to actually understand
Speaker 2: a different perspective. But even read before retweet, like it
Speaker 2: just dropped shares, you know. And so yeah, I love
Speaker 2: your lawyer. It's a great one. It's a really really
Speaker 2: great one because yeah, it would change so much. Mark,
Speaker 2: it has been amazing talking to you today. For the
Speaker 2: two people who have never seen a Mark Robot video,
Speaker 2: make sure you go subscribe to Box Channels. I am
Speaker 2: definitely getting some of the gifts for my crunch Labs.
Speaker 2: I am definitely getting some of the crunch Labs for
Speaker 2: my niece and nephew this Christmas. I think they're going
Speaker 2: to love it. I can't wait. And Mark, thank you
Speaker 2: for so much for how you show up your creativity
Speaker 2: coming on the show today and sharing so openly and
Speaker 2: vulnerably and I look forward to getting to know you better. Man.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. If this is the year that
Speaker 2: you're trying to get creative, you're trying to build more,
Speaker 2: I need you to listen to this episode with Rick
Speaker 2: Rubin on how to break into your most creative self,
Speaker 2: how to use unconventional methods that lead to success, and
Speaker 2: the secret to genuinely loving what you do. If you're
Speaker 2: trying to find your passion and your lane, Rick Rubin
Speaker 2: episode is the one for you.
Speaker 1: Just because I like it, that doesn't give it any value,
Speaker 1: Like as an artist, if you like it, that's all
Speaker 1: of the value. That's the success comes when you say
Speaker 1: I like this enough for other people to see it.