Andrew Yang on the Decline of Entrepreneurship and Enduring Through Hard Times | Impact Theory

[Music] how can someone right now where we may not be able to make the systemic changes that we need to make as rapidly as we need to make them how does an individual bulletproof themselves against what's going on in the economy right now I hope you enjoyed this episode brought to you by our sponsors at blinka study welcome to impact theory today's guest is Andrew yang he's an entrepreneur and former presidential candidate turned philanthropist and CNN political commentator the Obama White House named him a champion of change in 2012 and his fresh take on the faults in the current model of capitalism paired with his data-driven human first approach to business saw him enlisted as a presidential ambassador for entrepreneurship in 2015 now despite having suspended his 2020 bid for the presidency he is nonetheless providing a vision for how we move forward through his podcast yang speaks and his philanthropic initiatives including his most recent project humanity forward Andrew welcome to the podcast man oh thanks for having me Tom I appreciate it dude I'm super excited to have you on the show watching you go through the process of running for presidency I was really excited I was really excited by the way that you think by the way that you let data drive your decisions I'm so obsessive about that here in my company I will say that well I understand the impulse as an entrepreneur because there is something very very particular and important to starting a business running a business making payroll being responsible for an organization it is its own process and it certainly defined me as an adult really when when I was the CEO of my company I felt like I was the head of a family or head of a really big household no question it when you really stop and take on that kind of responsibility and you take on the fact one that I've said about being an entrepreneur is when your house is on the line and that those were really the stakes for Lisa and I when we first started quest was you know we had been in this other company we've been doing fine and when we transition to starting quest was such a huge question mark and obviously we didn't know if it's going to work it was like alright if we do this we have to face honestly that we could lose our house and there was something clarifying about that all of a sudden for me ego went out the window and it was just what is the data thing what's working what's not working and then as you begin to take on employees what you really do feel like the head of a family you're like yo these people either have a roof over their head or a great Christmas or they're able to you know make sure that their family is eating healthy food based on whether I can keep this company running or not and whether I make the right decisions or not and so that was going through that process was part of what gave me sort of this halo glow around capitalism around entrepreneurship running companies and it's been really sad for me to see how dysfunctional it's become and that there are so many people and in fact this is there's a couple things I want to talk about one why you're doing the podcast which I think is interesting and what sort of the core thesis is now that you're not running for office and then like as we think about fixing the system you know capitalism was a system that treated me very well so I came up middle-class maybe lower middle class work my way up became very successful [ __ ] brutally difficult did not feel like things were handed to me and and so I'm looking back like yellow this is possible this is amazing and to see so many smart people say no there is a deep and fundamental flaw and unless we overcome that people won't be able to to change classroom I sort of did yeah so what do you see as as the thing capsulate sort of the broken part as it relates to um you know the the average kid coming out of college right now which is probably my default which I know is a little bit different than the default that you think from but I'd be interested to hear what you think and then how you plan to get that message out to the podcast well I say Tom everything you said I can relate to very very directly and in my mind two things are fundamentally true one is that entrepreneurs had to work themselves to the bone in order to build any kind of quality business or organization that's successful and I take it from big company CEOs and entrepreneurs down to the person who just like open that food truck that food truck with so much work but you're gonna focus like the corner deli or whatever it was like so much went in like you know like that they put their heart and soul into it a lot of them have their savings or future on the line like those things are it's totally the case that if you're an entrepreneur you work your heart out if you were successful and then the other thing that's also true now when I'm a numbers guy is that entrepreneurship went off a cliff over the last number of years for young people for eighty percent of the country geographically where we've consolidated away a lot of the opportunities that would have existed at another point in time and so it's funny to balance this tension between being like hey go out kick ass take names build something awesome which I love I mean I spent years of my life trying to help people do that and also oh by the way I've looked at the numbers and we are making it progressively more difficult for anyone to do what I just said and one of the examples I use tom is like if you were to rewind a couple generations ago what business would someone have started in Indiana or you know it'll Mississippi or Weber and they would have started a flower shop a hardware store a kid's toy store like you know some kind of business that like serves people in the community like now those opportunities don't even exist it's like you know you have to be an idiot this is like like a kid's toy store at like Main Street Indiana like this is dumb because they were just gonna like hit a few buttons and we like get the toys delivered to them so that the nature of the opportunities has changed and it's made it so that specific types of people are more able to capitalize on the opportunities that do exist so let's talk about that what are those opportunities and the I don't know if I'm using this term right but the circle that I'm trying to square is that when I think about the journey that I went on so I graduated from college with a degree in film not exactly very helpful I didn't you know it's not like I have a degree in finance I have no entrepreneurs in my background I started at the very first company that was the startup that I worked at I started as a copywriter and I worked my way up through that company and then ultimately founded other companies multiple companies but founded those from scratch with equal partners and built those up and it we quest was started right at the sort of beginning of the great recession so we started that company in 2009 it was officially launched in 2010 but we were conceptualizing of it in 2009 at the height of all the problems and we bootstrapped it so it was like all of the things that I think about like I'm not the person that should have succeeded right and go to an Ivy League I didn't go learn finance I don't have rich friends so how what what is the sort of core that's fallen out that makes this now so difficult for like me are you saying if I were to do all of that now well your your story actually feels very familiar to me time and at this point you know probably dozens of entrepreneurs who've done things in different lines of work the fact that you were a film major or a creative or an artist is actually a very common theme and a lot of entrepreneurs you remind me frankly of many people I know who went on to become successful entrepreneurs you know you're like self disciplined data-driven really clear thinking like no nonsense it's like someone like you would find ways to succeed in a myriad of organizations just like we've started out of the copywriter and everyone around you was like you know what like if you give Tom [ __ ] to do she gets it done and it good and it's actually even better than whatever the heck you like you gave them originally because he like improved on whatever the heck that the project was and then you just can't keep on accruing responsibilities you climb up and then you get to a point where you're like you know what like I am actually as capable of anyone that's like starting a business running a business and then you go out and do it yeah so all of those things are actually achingly familiar to me it's like if a young Tom like shows up an organization I get so psyched because you can just like dump stuff on that person's like epod like end up building a whole department and eventually build a company so there are people that are built like you and if you had like 100 use lined up now it's like many of them would still find success really in any circumstance but there there are some people that would not and the ratio of people that would find success because I'm like a data to serving on like almost like pattern matching where like so if there were like 100 years like split up among the 50 states like you know now it would be a very very different picture than it would have been a generation ago I can say that without the confidence because like I just looked at the numbers and the bottom has fallen out in terms of small business formation in most of the country and the bottom has fallen out for this generation behind us like the folks who are in their 20s and 30s are starting businesses at multi-generational Lowe's so talk to me about what the bottom is what what exactly has fallen out and all again I'll contextualize where I come from so I'm like imagine me for a decade saying to everybody around me yo pull yourself up by your bootstraps it's amazing like you could do this you got it gets killed that's my obsession gets killed and so I had to build up the sort of mental and emotional resilience was not voted most likely to succeed like this is all about the all science seems to say 50 percent of you is just hardwired fifty percent is malleable so I've always counted the vast majority of my success to the 50 percent that's valuable not all sure some of it is a level of intelligence and all that but so what why is that like a dirty word the notion of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps if this is such a fun conversation because I think they're parallel tracks and I think that they're both necessary so number one is to the extent that someone can take that 50% of themselves as valuable and improve upon it in ways that make them healthier happier more productive like more successful better to work with a better partner because I know that just like you work on yourself for businesses like you working yourself in your marriage and partnership like those things are all awesome and we should be encouraging people to do that in whatever way we can and I know you've done a lot of that it helps many many people you know I'd like to think I don't help some people too and then simultaneously you look up and you say wait a minute like what has gone on with our economy where you have so much talent energy going to problems that are not actually productive you know you have really talented entrepreneurs who are just saying my goal is to get it gobbled up by the tech majimak and then get cashed out and then you know even if they end up squashing whatever it is I was working on like well you know that's just the the process now like my investors will be happy I'll be rich then maybe I'll like leave and do it again like you have at this point like in an economy that is not actually lining up market driven rewards with like people's success and then things that are beneficial for lots of folks like that the three things are now kind of split into the second try didn't or like they're heading in different directions so I'm all for helping people kick ass in every circumstance but then you look up and say wait a minute like how things really kind of lost the thread like do we live in the most dramatic winner-take-all economy in the history of the world the corner numbers yes like do we have greater consolidation in certain industries and we've ever had yes does that have like really demented effects yes one example do you and Lisa have kids Tom now so what's the one thing that's happened to me as I became a dad you know like seven years ago so we have two boys seven and for the seven year olds autistic and like now I'm very sensitive to the fact that we are seeing record levels of dysfunction among young people that are hand-in-hand with smartphone adoption and social media use like just like the curves just go straight up the same like you know exactly thank you when you say dysfunction what do you mean what kind of dysfunction like high levels of depression anxiety antisocial behavior it's particularly pronounced among teenage girls and so one of the things you would say or this is sort of like a cousin to like a pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is like hey parents like figure it out like don't you notice like this happened but then you have 40% of American children who are born to unmarried mothers which is much higher than it was when I was growing up and so if you imagine a household where there's like one parent and a person's working and then there's a kid and the kid like this is getting mesmerized by technology and then we can see population-wide that it's like having a negative effect on their mental health then you look at it and say okay like there probably should be a role somewhere for us to try and improve that these kids development environment if we're actually seeing systemic problems with their mental health and one reason I'm passionate about this tom is that I love entrepreneurship so much and the fact that we've seen entrepreneurship plummet to multi-generational loads among young people is related to some of these things I'm talking about better system-wide that we've created this environment where someone's not going to come out and kick ass and start a new business instead they're going to be depressed and miserable and indebted and can we tease that out a little bit so the the thrust of my life is going to be - I've always saw it as a mindset thing just not not that that solves the entire problem but what is my particular skill set where do I think that I'm insightful so by no means am i saying this is all you need to do I'm just saying this is my area of expertise in the small piece that I'll be able to contribute so I've always saw I'm imagine me so I let me give you a little bit of background on myself anybody that's watching now and doesn't know who I am I for an extra credit assignment in college I was asked to go in and help a kid in South Central Los Angeles one of the worst school districts in the country to go in and just help him like mentor him a little bit for eight weeks help him get his homework done so I go and do that supposed to be eight weeks and he's a wild problem and of course they're trying to get him out of class which is that exactly why they pick him throwing tantrums and all this and he says to me or one day I say you're supposed to tell him at week six I'm only coming for two more weeks I tell him he freaks out nuclear explosion the kid is going bananas five I'm 18 at this point I've never seen a human act like this ever in my life I was beside myself and I finally get him to calm down and said look at this because I said I was only coming for two more weeks he says yes I said cool look man I will make you a deal if if you will do your homework the second that I get here because he used to like delay and end up keeping me for longer than I was supposed to if you don't do your homework the second I get here as long as I live in Los Angeles I will help you with your homework is it a deal he says yes becomes an eight and a half year relationship okay now that plan to feed my soul I'm watching this kids struggle but I'm young and stupid I don't know how to help them so I'm like all right my mission is to show them that beautiful things exist and show them that somebody loves them so I'm dirt poor at this time but I take him to see movies in Beverly Hills because I'm like movie cost the same no matter where you see it but in one place you're surrounded by green palm trees is beautiful and so I would do that and then long story short he gets sucked into foster care move farther and farther away we lose contact flash-forward 15 years later I now have 3000 employees a thousand of them grew up just like this kid did and so I know how this plays out and I'm devastated I'm like whoa this is crazy like how do I get them to think in a way that's going to propel them forward and I start getting obsessed with this notion of skill set and getting them to build a skill set and to be able to go out so okay this becomes my mission I'm going to help people think in the right way that will lead them to acquire the skills that's going to be necessary to move forward then people hit me with the learn to code meme right like telling people to improve and get better is like [ __ ] so I'm like okay i something is is making people feel some kind of way and it's stopping them from taking what I think are acts of self-preservation so my thing is hey the system might be broken and I'm glad you're doing it that's not my interest I'm never going to get [ __ ] involved in politics I cannot tell you how much that does not interest me I'm very glad people like you were doing it but that didn't suck me in so what I want to do is go if I'm gonna help people Raja Bullett talk well unfortunately I may have dodged that bullet because you're willing to stand in front of it so my thing is I was I say your wife would say what I said my wife would say the bullet hit me pretty good yeah that that seems pretty clear so I it is so important to me if I'm going to make a meaningful contribution with my life to understand why I'm trying to plant a tree right the tree of think this way gain these skills so that you can control your life okay that's that's my punch line to leave the fulfillment by the way not money but that's my thing but it's like I feel like the soul that like the soil that I keep trying to plant this into has a problem that I don't understand even after researching the [ __ ] out of you I'm still having a hard time like what is the floor that's dropped out a kid is entering the workforce right now what has gone wrong it's a winner-take-all but I don't understand why that's a problem unless the playing field has become unfair they can't start a local business that's one thing that you said but I understand well that's the problem I didn't start a local business so is it debt load is it fear is it education is it all of those like what if you had to say like the top three things we need to solve these three things that would then make this soil fertile for individual responsibility which to me ultimately is the punchline what would those three things be I love this question so much because I think you've hit the nail on the head which is you're trying to play the trees and you're like why is this soil not fruitful why why am I having so much trouble playing these streets and so this would be like a personal question like what kind of family did you grow up in Tom my dad to bounce back and forth between white collar and blue collar for the most of my life he was a purchasing manager and then was an auto mechanic for a while and then my mom stayed at home for most of my life but then went into the workforce when I was like eleven uh what part of the country was that to come Washington cool so number one I would say is the environment these kids are just reared in growing up in where again I mentioned a fact where 40% of American kids are born to single moms that statistic was around 15% when I was growing up in the 70s or 80s so so what I saw that it went from 15 to 40 percent I was like that can't be right and I triple-checked didn't like yeah that's right you know it's more than doubled since I was a kid so you look up and say okay what does the data say then about growing up with a single parent and 90 percent or so of single parents are single moms so then you look at the kids outcomes with single moms and again we're talking about 40 percent of American kids how much higher in certain communities you know like so so the data says that if you're a little girl who grows up to a single mom things are okay like you graduate from high school at normal levels and there are a number of reasons for this you have a strong female role model if you're a little girl growing up you see mom she's super mom and little girls tend to be faster to mature they're good at school they don't have the same behavioral problems they graduate from high school and go to college and add like relatively normal rates if you have a little boy growing up to a single mom then unfortunately the outcomes are significantly worse where apparently little boys have higher sensitivity to parental time input and so if parents spend less time with a little boy they struggle more they have higher behavioral problems they mature more slowly they have economic problems they have academic problems and there less likely to pursue higher education and so you're looking at like the like you know almost a new normal for like half of America like you know 40% of American school kids so then if you were to go to that K didn't say like hey you know like you show up to them and and this is probably the sort of experience you had with your mentee when you showed up in LA with the person you imagine that person multiplied out you said you had like a thousand employees who might have been from similar backgrounds like that is the soil and then you look and say well why did the American marriage rate go off a cliff and there are a number of reasons for this so marriage and childbearing have both fallen to historic lows in the United States if you are a non college graduate man you have a less than 50/50 shot of ever being married in your life a high school educated do you think that's my choice or what's driving that I've never heard that said that's terrifying I guess if people want it and can't have it it's less worrisome that people just aren't choosing it well you know you can project how much of it is like it I want to suggest that most dudes probably want to at some point settle down you know there's like a period when they don't but then eventually they do so you rewind a generation or two and you say okay it's the 1970s you're a high school educated man and you should know that the the majority of Americans are high school graduates like you know the proportion of Americans who will graduate from college is about 35% so you're looking at about two-thirds our high school graduates another like 10 percent of that 65 percent are essentially community college two years associate's vocational but you're looking at majority high school grads so if you were to rewind a couple generations ago and you were a high school graduate what kind of work might you do you might have worked in manufacturing there were 17 million manufacturing employees in the United States of America up through the 70s and 80s and the majority of them were men so that's one of the major employment sectors for you and there were ways you could deliver fine middle-class life in Michigan as like an autoworker or whatever one never need to go to college we eliminated five million of those 17 million jobs and again vast majority of them were blue-collar men at that same time than the marriage rate starts to decline so imagine if you were a blue-collar high school graduate man you now do not have a steady income and then it's very very hard for you to propose to a woman and say hey marry me because oh by the way I don't have a city job I don't have any future like I'm you know it's like I'm not exactly a great prospect and so that then marriage rate declines you still occasionally procreate procreation rate Oh like the rate we're having kids it has declined but it hasn't declined as much as a marriage rate so you have tons of these kids growing up in single-parent households generally single moms and it's lockstep with the fact that we have decimated the opportunity set for men who do not have college degrees if you want to dig even deeper the the academic out performance for girls is systemic and it's not just here it's everywhere but approximately 58 percent of college saying it's its global it's a global issue um generally speaking girls are better at high school than boys everywhere including the United States of America so so you're looking at approximately 58 percent of college graduates the United States are women and so you know so you have this like shrinking group of men that like if you're a high school grad again less than 50/50 chance you'll ever get married and then if you never get married I mean you might have had this experience with Lisa so I'm going deep into this one set of factors but you said like hey what are the three top things where you would say like things are why is the soil not working number one is family we have done a number on the family unit and kids are growing up in really really adverse circumstances and can I can I say what you just said in different words just to make sure that I understand it because this is really profound if if I'm understanding it correctly so hey everybody you had a job first of all you have a world where there's a lot of people that all call um under voiced maybe that's the right way to think about it it's not that they're invisible or they don't have a voice but they don't have as big of a voice or megaphone as a more highly educated person so their high school graduate they're going on to the workforce we've automated a lot of their jobs away and this creates sort of an emotional death spiral for these guys are not able to make the middle-class income which means they have insecurity around whether they could support a family or not and I've and you now I'm putting my own words to it I'm curious to see if you agree now that level of financial and security becomes sort of emotional insecurity becomes a lack of confidence and either they don't actively pursue a relationship for emotional reasons insecurities or they're financially they don't feel that they could support a family and so they don't pursue it for that reason or and that is navigating the time is that maybe they do pursue it but women are like hey like you know go get a J OB that I could go out yeah word and so now you have the family instability created from this shift in the economy dude that that is if one is that accurate that's what you're saying yeah that's not good you know Geoffrey Canada yeah yeah sure dude you're the first person that I think I've ever had say yes so Geoffrey Canada you're I am officials oh you've got guys a superhero a hundred percent I'm so desperate to get him on the show because I have a memory that I can't I'm not sure if it's true but my memory of his assessment of the situation is you have to give up on adults you need to focus on women who are pregnant or about to become pregnant because if I remember correctly his analysis was that the big thing that separates kids who grow up in the inner city so his what's wrong with the soil is that basically your ability to deal with language and to communicate so we said the average number of words that the kid growing up in the inner cities hears is like 2 million words by the age of five and the ratio positive negative 70 percent negative 30% positive and the ratio in the middle income brackets is exactly flipped so it's 30% negative 70 percent live and they also here about five million words by the time they had five and he was like the impact that that has on their language centers and their ability to process in a communication environment that you would need to get a good career he said it cannot be overstated how important it is to have that additional access to those language skills and I was like can it really be that simple and so hearing you talk about the the weakening of the family through the weakening of a certain part of the economy rings very true so if that's one the weakening of the family what are some other things that you think have depleted the soil so number one is family number two is our educational system and the number three is the nature of the marketplace right now and what returns your labor can command so I'm happy to dig into number two but I just want to talk a little bit about the Geoffrey Canada I is the research is really compelling you know it's like when you look at the number of traumas that a lot of these kids experience it makes them incapable of learning it makes them really really averse to like certain types of stresses and environments and then when you show up and you're like hey like let's let's fix it's like you know you need a time machine you need a time machine you need to go back to the city feel like what that kid was in the womb like like just talking about yeah so not number two is our schooling system like our educational system is designed for an agrarian / industrial economy and you you have social promotion by age and you're preparing kids for a world in the economy that stopped existing a long time ago really and so one of the things that breaks my heart is that we have systematically under invested in vocational education only six percent of American high school students are in technical or apprenticeship tracks in Germany that's literally 50 percent whoa so what we have done is we've essentially said we're going to pretend that every kids going to kind of go to college oh by the way that's not true for the majority of you and if college is not a good fit for you we're not going to actually in best in getting you kind of hard technical skills that might lead to gainful employment why I don't know like why we under invested in it I think it's because it's more difficult and expensive to have shops and tools and garages and trainers and and you know like actual skills than it is just to throw the kids in a classroom with some old textbooks they'll be like you know let's just pretend I'm going to go to college so we need to be investing massive levels of resources in technical education I would want to team up with micro dirty jobs and be like look these jobs are awesome we have a massive shortage of people to fill those jobs and then what do we have is we have an overabundance of people who are going to college and oh by the way we made college you know four to a fifty thousand dollars a year or whatever that I get is like depending upon what type of school you go to but why has college gotten two and a half times more expensive than when I went or I suspect you went did it get two and a half times better no I said did they did they hire two and a half times more professors no but like what they did is they hired 150% more administrators not academic and then they said hey colleges now a few thousand a year or 60 or whatever it is and oh if you want to go don't worry about it like will give you loans and so you have these kids showing up going to school they have no business going to this fix your graduation rate for these kids showing up to college nationwide is around fifty nine percent so you have forty percent of these kids show up not graduating within six years and so imagine ending up with like a debt load and no degree does the school ever forgive you if you like if it wasn't a good fit like of course not they're like hey you almost anyway and so so we have this completely unresponsive out of date educational system that is not actually preparing our kids with real skills it's just pretending and then they've also just ginned up the price tag because of essentially bureaucracy and overweight lack of accountability just you know it's institutional incentives like if you're a school you just hire more people and then you just pass the price on to the families and students and then the students look up and say I don't have a choice which is why the school get away with this because like you know there was a choice and then the family then turns to the government who then gives them loan that may or may not be the right idea yeah there's there's a lot of stuff going on in education that freaks me out so number one what I like what you're talking about with a vocation and that to me is a there I think there's a lot of baggage to that word at least where I grew up it was just drummed into me that you know you didn't want to end up that in color job man that's the stigma it's like if you do that stuff you're a loser I like going to go to college but then meanwhile like we have a total shortage of skilled work so here's my obsession I'm glad you're calling it skilled work so my obsession is to get people to understand skills have utility so right now maybe partly because of the way the school system is rigged it's like you just need to get the great you don't have to think about what you're actually going to do with this information if you ask your trigonometry teacher why am I ever going to need to stay active them cannot answer you so you get this sense of okay I'm being shuttled into the system I need to get good grades to please my parents and society and begin to school and to sort of follow the paths okay that's what I'll do and and so my path just so you know in high school I just cheated so it seemed very easy like oh cool I get it I see what the game is here I will play it very well I will use my charm to charm the teacher to turn a blind eye I will charm my fellow classmates to give me their works what I can cheat and then when I went to college I was like whoa hold on a second I actually want to be a good filmmaker so what purpose would cheating serve me and I'm going to be taking out tens of thousands of dollars in debt like this is crazy so when I started college I made myself a promise a RF sink-or-swim I wasn't gonna cheat not a little bit nothing and I was gonna see how well I did because I knew if I didn't actually learn what I wanted to learn the whole rest of my life would be problematic so now I'm like when I when I have employees I'm like listen you're learning this thing not to check a boxer to please meet your learning because it lets you do something better than somebody else this is and I just think in competitive terms though I think you may point out that this is sort of systemically a problem but it's like this is a winner-take-all game homies like this is not everybody gets to win like we're either going to be the industry leader and we're going to get what we want and we're going to be able to outperform and stay in business or we're not and so I was liken it to building a bridge it's like you learn architecture because actually lets you go to [ __ ] bridge like an actual physical bridge and getting people to understand that [ __ ] would crumble if somebody hadn't taken the time to learn a skill that allowed them to build that thing and so that that is definitely part of what freaks me out about the education system the other one is just the crippling people with debt that's the one that's always freaked me out you graduate with $100,000 in debt you're gonna play it safe you're not starting a business no I yeah completely and we've done that to millions of kids at this point we're up to one point six trillion dollars in student loan debt this is a third leg of the tripod so number one families have disintegrated number two our system of education has not actually tried that use not even trying to keep up with realities has gone up in cost and it's been like we don't really care we're not accountant doesn't matter it's like this is about us was like what happened to you like you know like we already got paid and the number three is the marketplace has changed fundamentally and and so this brings us back to that you know the evisceration of manufacturing jobs yes but if you look up the majority of the jobs that are getting created now are temp gig or contract jobs in the economy so the marketplace has gotten systematically more punitive and it's hard it's harder to find a path forward and define punitive for me you know so the set when I said the majority of jobs that are being created are gig Temper contract jobs I don't know how your organization functions but you know if you are in those roles then you have very little security you often have very little noia benefits there's massive income volatility for a lot of these workers where they can make some money one weekend and very little the next week and the massive stressor that's what I mean by punitive I want to talk about that for a second so one of the things that I love about you is dude you're so even keel and I feel like you really look at things through the lens of what humans are really like and what the reality of the situation is so help me with this one one thing that I think is in going back to education so my mom and her husband work in in education ish they work for a school district that's why the right way to said and when I hear some of the stories about how impossible it is to fire somebody I'm always telling you you you can't run a business like that you under no circumstance and so I get why you want to reduce or eliminate volatility but without that you're not going to get to a players like I would much rather be in a company where I've got a thing for my supper to keep you because you have options to go wherever you want to go but I know that I can get rid of you if you're underperforming so that I can put together a dream team now to keep people they have to know like I always tell my employees I want you to retire here like I get I'm bucking the trend I'm not interested in 18 months I'm interested in 40 years now to do that I've got to create tremendous opportunities I've got to give you autonomy and we won't go into all the things that I think are that secret recipe for success but I want to be in that position where if you underperform I'm not obligated to keep you and make sure that you have no volatility but if you're killing it I want you to be winning with me how do you you think about that I my organization was very similar to yours in the sense I wanted to keep people want to invest in them and that that is that your mom's experience in the school district like I would very much struggle in many of those types of environments because if someone does a bad job I just want to be like look you're doing a bad job like someone needs to change or we got to go but that's not the way school districts operate you know like teachers are often unfavorable after three years so you should know my operating DNA is similar to yours and the fact that many of the folks that are like working environments they're not working environments like yours where if they kick ass they're going to be invested in and then have a path forward and then be given to grow an autonomy and then and the organization itself is growing because that's how you have to create these opportunities because you keep bringing people in like that that's one of the things that was a massive imperative for me is like if I'm going to create opportunities for these people like the top line has to grow but you can create a virtuous cycle because if you get in the right people they can go to the top line and so it's like oh this is great it's like I just make this thing happen but then if you get into an environment like let's call the school district that school district is not growing and so then like how can you create it's awesome opportunities for like different people it's very hard that's why you wind up with it so deserve a zero-sum game where it's like hey you know those environments where someone needs to die for you to get promoted you know I mean but like there's no promotion at but it looks like and so you've been like I could wait ten years for that like that is not unusual in a zero-sum environment your organization is unusual and unusually awesome I always try to create unusually awesome organizations to it used to be that people would go even like straight out of school they go work for a company that had like some mild reliable growth and then they could grow with it and they have opportunities but now you're looking at more of these zero-sum environments or contracting environments where the example I just used I think was like you went I like my dad worked for GE like GE had growth in the 70s or whatever like what happened GE since then I mean most like the entire plant stuff like closed down like you know in many parts of the country and so you're seeing obviously some pockets of explosive growth in our economy but most of the economy you're seeing something closer to a plateau or even a decline and then if someone's going to work in those environments they're just trying to cut costs or like control costs and then if they bring in new people they're like hey I'm just going to treat you like an interchangeable part all right let's talk about the context of where we're at right now the economy talk about contracting the economy is for sure going to contract for some period of time may be short may be very long time how can someone right now where we may not be able to make the systemic changes that we need to make as rapidly as we need to make them how does an jool bulletproof themselves against what's going on in the economy right now right now is a very very very difficult time the most difficult time in the generation and you should adopt a very lean operating style for yourself like that this is the time to really batten down the hatches you have to be very very realistic that this economy is not going to snap back like a rubber band millions of the jobs that have been lost are not coming back I have heard from CEOs who said that there permanently essentially automating and downsizing and that they don't plan on hiring back to previous levels even if things do reopen we are not rubber bands it's not like if the government says hey you can go outside again that's all of a sudden the bars and restaurants and concert halls and convention centers and I'll be teeming with activity like of course not you know everything is going to be at a diminished rate for a long time so you should just imagine that it's going to be a really really disastrous environment for the foreseeable future plan accordingly and then if it's better than that then we can be surprised positively so one thing that people talk a lot about with you is you've got a sort of pessimistic dystopian view the world but you present it so optimistically so that's sort of the downside right batten down the hatches restrict your spending sort of stay safe if you will understand that you may be weathering a very long term storm now what are things that you know people can be doing proactively my prescription to everybody is one get your head right so you can stay clear most people are going to panic even if you lose your job panicking is not going to help you so do whatever you need to do right now to learn to stay calm in the middle of the storm number two understand if you can make money for somebody you will always be able to find a job so focus on skillsets right what you might refer to as a vocation so focus on getting so good at something that you can help somebody else make the money because maybe now really isn't the time for you to start your business maybe it is there's a whole subset of people for whom that will be the right solution but just sort of speaking to the broad people those are my two things that you're going to be in in a constricted economy which means that it's going to be an employer's market they're going to have the pick of a lot of people coming to them so now the way to rise up is to have a deeper skill set than other people and some of that interpersonal some of that is just the the vocational skills of the job some of it is getting good at interviewing but the the sort of trifecta so are those who thinks Plus learning that the punchline of all this isn't money its fulfillment it's a stable sense of emotional well-being that should be ultimately what you're aiming for and so those are the three things that I think people should be sort of obsessively focused on now is the economy contracts so beyond battening down the hatches what are other things that you try to focus people on I think your advice is very similar to the advice I'd give where you have to focus on yourself first if you're not right you're not going to be able to contribute a lot of value in a lot of different environments and it's a really hard time to even stay positive and healthy oneself you know like you need to have rituals you need to give yourself victories you need to create a sort of like an environment of positive reinforcement and even when you're alone in your house and that's not easy to do for days or weeks on end for most people now but that's job one you can't help someone else you're in bad shape yourself I agree with you about trying to develop skills this is the time to try and dig into something that you have not traditionally had time to do so that could be listening to podcast like this one are interviews reading books I'm a reader myself maybe try and develop a skill that you've wanted to develop in some dimension whether that's some coding discipline or some skill with like a particular program or a creative endeavor even I think if you can do something that's creative in this time it might keep you balanced and positive but it might end up making you stronger in some way and I agree with you on relationships where it doesn't feel like it but just trying to help someone and just by helping someone it will end up making you stronger you know you'll end up building connections and and it sense of value because you know if you have a position where you feel like you can add value and the environment like you said then someone will sense that about you and then the opportunities will be there so I advise is very very similar to yours hopefully that that lived up to my like dystopian yet uplifting reputation so far so good man so one thing I want to know your ability to assimilate data and turn it into a real world hypothesis how to make things better it's pretty extraordinary you talked about you like reading what are some things that you're reading where do you find your information are you just good at remembering things you have a process for that oh I right now I just started a podcast which has been great for reading because a lot of the people I have on I've written a book and then being a you know like like you know like a reasonably diligent type I'm like who I should read this person's book so my new podcast yang speaks just launched this week number eight on Apple very exciting congratulations by the way that's extraordinary um thank you and so then I've been reading the books that the guests have written so I can actually flash a couple of them for you because they're near nearby so so this one's a this is like politics book it's a populist guide to 2020 by crystal ball and I saw your enginee and then if you were if you're a parent out there and you want to read that research on like what technology is doing your kids this book I Gen box by gene 22 PhD talking about like what's happening with with kids mental states so you know like I'd love to read and having these guests on has been a great excuse to read now people learn in different ways like you know my brother-in-law's of all about watching videos in like tutorials but yeah I just find like a way to learn that you enjoy and then try and go deep podcasts I mean like I know Tom's got this awesome podcast I love what you're about man like I hope that people sense that it is okay to be maximizing your skills and self-improvement and sense of responsibility in your control of your life your universe while also saying there are systemic problems that we can objectively improve on and I'm very passionate about trying to do both frankly I love your focus on individual improvement because it's it's about the individual and the world both simultaneously yeah man that's that I think it's really well fed a and B is super important I had historically just I don't know I wasn't turning a blind eye to it I just wasn't it wasn't the thing that I paid attention to but now is I really hold myself accountable to results and I say okay I really feel like I know what people need to do at the individual level but you know like I said at the beginning so many people that I think are just unreasonably good at taking in the data and I try not to say intelligent cuz I don't want to dismiss all the hard work that goes into informing you know that opinion but you Eric Weinstein Sam Harris like there are so many powerful thinkers that I've had on the show that I've had a chance to just imbibe their information and I see it changing the way that I think and so then it's like okay well cool if the analogy holds what I'm trying to do is you know plant these seeds that will grow into something I do have to understand the system which is the soil understand what's working what's not working so I think it's a pretty powerful one-two punch man I'm so glad like I'm super conflicted I really hope you run in 2024 I don't know if that's on the agenda for you or not but having you as a part of the discourse I was attracted to you like a moth to a flame dude just the way that you analyze the situation your background as a debater the way that you stay super calm do you actually seem open to new ideas I am haunted by a quote and I'm sure you've heard this before but it's Niels Bohr if I'm not mistaken or plank one of the two and said you know science doesn't progress with each new discovery it progresses when the old guard dies and the new guard comes up recognizing the truth is self-evident that sucks not a lame way for things to make progress right like I want to be fundamentally changed by the interaction you have gotten me to fundamentally rethink like how sick is the soil here like is there such a fundamental problem that it has to be address and and I think it has become obscenely clear through covet 19 that the answer is yes that we were always sort of teetering on this precipice of a just catastrophic problem and weren't doing the things we needed to do so that was a lot of words around thank you for what you're doing thank you Tom I mean I respect people who are both open and flexible also just awesome at what you do and you know it's like you're clearly awesome at helping people get stronger and I think it's beautiful it's like I was an operator an entrepreneur if anything actually it's just been a learning process for me like interacting with people and different types of organizations where I'm like what the hell's going on if you shook it off did you'd be like what what's happening here it's one reason why I think that we were able to compete and contend is that we had a different way of doing things than other people in politics in this industry and I think that niels bohr quote itself is a source I mean it's very apt unfortunately like you know we you don't have like a contest of ideas we're like the best ideas win like there's actually something of an order and then you you need to upend the order it's one reason why we feel so far behind in the public sphere and one reason why someone like you saying I don't pay attention that [ __ ] I a hundred percent respected appreciate because it's like it's actually entirely rational not to pay attention but I will say that some of the problems were facing with the coronavirus we're going to need our government to improve and accelerate in ways that it never has in our lifetimes or we're going to be facing a really really difficult challenging time for like years and years to come yeah well said man well dude where can people connect with you learn more stay engaged where do they get the new podcast yang speaks oh thanks man yang speak wherever you find your favorite podcasts you can follow me on social media I'm at Andrew yang or interviewing twenty twenty depending upon the network what would certainly love to stay in touch with everyone we have to dig out of this we have to make it so that we can plant beautiful trees that become awesome pillars for like companies families communities and build a future that we deserve I love a man last question if you had to put into a sense what is the impact that you want to have on the world right now I'm focused on eradicating poverty I genuinely do not think that there is any reason for people to be poor in the most abundant society in the history of the world you know we're at 21 trillion dollars right now like we can't afford to improve people's lives and give them like decent soil essentially and it's not going to work for everyone you can't make it system-wide but there are some kids growing up right now that just literally have like zero chance you know and like you can see it very clearly and that's something that we can change I love it did brother thank you so much for coming on the show man I really appreciate it everybody out there it does not matter your political affiliation it is about good ideas if you want to move your life forward if you want to move the lives of other people forward I promise you it's going to be an idea centric approach and not a personal centric or you know what your tagline is not right and left it's forward which i think is brilliant and it's how everybody should be looking at data should drive decision all right speaking of good decisions if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care thank you Tom everyone there is no way to build an empowering mindset or get ahead in business without constantly learning and accessing new information and today I want to share one of my secret weapons in the battle to learn new things and get ahead for all of us who are ambitious and busy it's almost impossible to find enough time to sit down and just read but thankfully there is a practical app that solves that problem and I highly recommend it the app is called blink 'us blinka condenses powerful nonfiction books into bite-size text or audio you get the key takeaways the need to know information from the 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