Mark Rober: Feeling Stuck in a Rut? Use THIS Simple 3- Step Method Engineers Use to FINALLY Turn Your Ideas Into Reality!

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you're not breaking stuff, it means like you're not
really testing the limits. And then when you fail, you
don't internalize it like home a failure, it's like, oh great,
we just learned one more way not to do a thing.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey, everyone, welcome back to on Purpose, the place you
come to become a happier, healthier and more healed. My
guest today is Mark Roba, engineer, YouTuber and one of
the most creative minds online, whose experiments and inventions have
inspired millions to fall in love with science and curiosity again.
In this episode, we explore how to stay creative, turn

(00:34):
failure into fuel, and reconnect with the sense of wonder
we often lose as adults. Please Welcome to on Purpose,
Mark Roba. Mark, it is great to have you here.
Congratulations on your incredible success. Thank you, and I'm excited
to dive into your mind.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
So good to be here. Let's do it. Are you
going to make me cry?

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Jay? Are you a crier?

Speaker 1 (00:55):
I can't get emotional.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
I'm the crier in my relationship with you the crier
in your real I am well, we both kind of.
How long have you been together now?

Speaker 1 (01:05):
Yeah? Over a year overy, but that feels like relationship wise,
we it happened fast. I mean as an adult you
know what you want, right, and so it feels like
seven years and dog years relationship. It's been seven years
for the one.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
I love it. I love it well. If you're allowed
to cry here, definitely, but no, no pressure. No, we
don't want any acting too.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
I'm a terrible actor, So your luck.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
I love it. I want to start off just by like,
the first question I have for you is what's the
earliest childhood memory you have that you feel defines who
you are today. Is there a moment, a friend, an
experience from school growing up that you're like, that is
why I am the way I am.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
I think it's a finding moment, one that sticks out.
I feel like, so my mom was was out of
the gate. You're gidding me talking about my mom. My
mom was like had the biggest influence on my life
by a very comfortable margin. And she was like a
stay at home mom, Like she barely graduated high school.

(02:11):
But she was just so encouraging of us and like
trying to turn us into like good humans. And so
she would encourage just being creative and like out of
the box thinking and just I remember one time, you know,
and we did chores like as to raise a good human,
Like we had a list of chores from the time
I was five years old, right, So I was helping

(02:33):
prepare dinner and I was in charge of doing the salad.
I was cutting the onions and I was like crying
because I was like, oh, this is a thing. I
don't like this. So it's like, well, I should go.
I remember upstairs we had these swim goggles. So I
ran upstairs, got the goggles, not thinking anything of it,
and just kept cutting with onions on. And now I

(02:53):
know that's like a hack, like people know about this,
but I was like five years old. This was like
nineteen eighty six, and I just remember her react to that,
just like she laughed and she's just like no way,
and like the encouragement. She took a picture. We have
a family picture of it, right, and that's twenty four
pictures in those days, so if you're taking a picture,
you mean it right, it's on film. And it just

(03:14):
felt really good to be in this environment where like
that kind of thinking was encouraged that it is always
stuck with me. And then you know, just growing up,
you know, if I took a part the remote control
and I couldn't quite get it back together, and like
I didn't get in trouble for that. It was like, oh,
what are you up to now? Right, it's like what

(03:35):
are you up to? But it was more celebrated as
opposed to something that was just overlooked.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
Yeah, that's special.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
And I feel today like that same feeling of like
creating content and sharing people and like getting that reaction
of other people being like, oh man, why did I
think of that? Like I love hearing that because that
means it was kind of obvious and he took things,
you know, things especially if I do a build, if
I could do a junk you have line around your house,
that's so much better than just like all these technical

(04:03):
solution right.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
And so that feeling of coming up with an idea
of sharing with people and getting feedback on it is
just like it's kind of addictive.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yeah, that's beautiful and it's amazing when your parents encourage it.
When when was the last time you shared that story
with your mom?

Speaker 1 (04:18):
So interesting story on that Jay, which is that like
like six months before I made my first YouTube video,
she passed away from als, which I think is like
kind of a beautiful thing in the sense that you know,
we can all disagree on what happens when you die, right,
but this idea that like you never know the true

(04:41):
measure of your impact in this life, right you do?
You know, you interact with other people, even if it's
just like what do you say when the guy opens
the door for you, you know, or you open the
door for someone like with her, You know, the channel
now reaches you know, if seventy two million subscribers and

(05:02):
like billions of views a month, and none of that
was on her radar. And like my mission is to
get kids, you know, everyone, but especially the young folks
stoked about science and education and curiosity because that's what
she did to me. And this is also how I
feel about like teachers. They're like seed planners, right, and
just nobody knows the measure of the full measure of

(05:26):
their impact. And yeah, so I just think it's really
sweet that, like, you know, when she passed away, I
think she felt really good about like the kids she raised,
but like she just didn't know like her direct like
how she raised me and my siblings is now like
impacting so many kids and people across the world. So

(05:49):
it's really beautiful, Like that's her version of living on
and living forever regardless of what you think what happens
after we die.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
Yeah, no, thank you for sharing that, man, it's so
it's so beautiful to hear that as someone who's my
mom who's still with us, but the impact she had
on me as well, Like I feel like my mom
showed me how to love and if anyone ever feels
loved by me or feels I can create a safe,
loving space for other people, it's because my mom did

(06:17):
that for me the most difficult of situations and always
made me feel like I had a shield of love
around me, and so I've never really had to question
whether I'm lovable or not, which is just an insane superpower.
And then all that love that you were given just
spills onto other people, and then I was like, oh,
how are you so loving and thoughtful? And I'm like, oh,
it's my mom. Like it was like my mom just

(06:38):
gave me so much that it had to spill out
and spill over into other people. It's actually not me
and it's something that I hold very deeply as well.
And I think moms, dads, teachers, mentors, guides, spiritual leaders,
whoever your family turns to for support of such a
big impact. And now YouTubers like now you like there

(07:01):
are so many kids and parents that turned to you
for your content to inspire their children to think differently.
How do you get a job at NASA? Like I
just when I when I saw that, when I was looking,
I was like, how do you get a job at NASA?
Like that sounds like made up stuff?

Speaker 1 (07:17):
I mean, you get lucky first of all, like you know,
my resume was just in a stack of resumes.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
And yeah, the interview, What did you do at college?

Speaker 1 (07:26):
So I studied mechanical engineering. Okay, so you had that, yeah, yeah,
so for sure you gotta with an engineering degree, I'll
give you that. Yeah, and from a good school, from
a good school, yeah, I did undergrad a UYU grad
school at USC. Yeah, mechanical engineering. Yeah. I remember going in.
There's this old engineer there, Don Bickler, And when you

(07:47):
interview there, you know, you go into his office, shut NASA, NASA.
This guy's a legend invented like the Rocker Bogy system
on the rover. And then you just you stay in
that room for like an hour and he hands you
a whiteboard, a whiteboard marker, and he just drills you
on questions and at the end of that he comes
and kind of offers the verdict. And when I left,
he's like, he's good. Hire him.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
So, you know, tell me what the questions are, like,
like what is that? How's that interview? Because I imagine
it's so different from any.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
And yeah, I mean they're like technical questions, right, Like
here's a good one. If you have a fishing boat
and you have an anchor, and then you take that
anchor and you throw it overboard, and what happens to
the water level on the rate lake? Does it go
up or down? And so it's kind of like a riddle.
But the point is you write out the equations on

(08:35):
the board, the buoyancy equation, you know, you solve for this,
and then the answer is pretty obvious if you can
do that. So it's kind of like questions like this,
technical questions, but they're just like rapid fire, one after another.
And so then yeah, so I worked at NASSA for
a decade, ten of those or seven of those working
on the Mars Curiosity rover. So I have hardware that's

(08:56):
like on the jetpack that lowers it the ground and
then also on the top deck of the rover. So
you designed that, I designed, built, tested, integrated.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
How many of you are working on something like that
at the same time.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
Yeah, Like it's like probably three thousand people all told,
like have a hand in creating something like the Mars
are over.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (09:14):
Yeah, but it's cool like to you know, just be
in the backyard, you know, and you see that one
thought in the sky that has like the reddish tint,
you know, so you know that one's Mars, and you're
just like, I've like I've touched something that's like on
that planet and built it and it's it's still working
ninety million miles away.

Speaker 2 (09:32):
And where are you based? Do you?

Speaker 1 (09:34):
This was in This is a jet propulsion laboratory, so
out in Pasadena here, okay? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (09:40):
And how many people work out of there, like.

Speaker 1 (09:42):
About five thousand give or take. Oh. Yeah, it was
so cool. It's like a college campus, just like a
free exchange of ideas, you know, talk about creativity. Just
like everything is on the board and it's just this
engineering mindset of like, you know, we don't know the
right answer, but heck, we'll just run a ton of
and figure out what it is.

Speaker 2 (10:01):
What was the mindset you think you learned from working
at NASA and the people there that you don't think
most of us would come across in our daily life.

Speaker 1 (10:10):
I think this concept of like thinking like an engineer,
what does that mean?

Speaker 2 (10:14):
Yeah, I had that before. I've also had like think
like a rocket scientist. I'm like, what does that mean?

Speaker 1 (10:19):
So me? I, in fact, I have a toy company now,
Crunch Labs, where you know, basically it's like a really
fun toy you get every month and the kids can
put it together and it teaches the engineering principles what
makes them work. And on this side of the box,
it says think like an engineer, and the idea there
is like it means that, like you're not afraid of failure,

(10:40):
and you know you're resilient because you know the failure
is part of the process, Like the point is to
break stuff and test it. If you're not breaking stuff,
it means like you're not really testing the limits. And
then when you fail, it's you don't internalize it like
oh I'm a failure. It's like, oh great, we just
learned one more way not to do a thing. You're excited. Right,

(11:01):
it's like, let's try something different. And so I think
that philosophy applies to life and the challenge. Like toddlers
are like this, right, Like when they fall, they're not like,
oh I look so dumb, I'm never going to try
and walk again. Right, It's like they just get up
and try again, and they're excited to try again. You
know the kid who's just tinkering his garage and doesn't
care and it's trying stuff like, that's the kid that's

(11:23):
just like learning so much. Right, and again, this is
how you put a rover on Mars. You just break
stuff and test it and test it and test it
so you know the limits and now you know exactly
what will work when you go.

Speaker 2 (11:34):
To Mars and what was the purpose of the robot.

Speaker 1 (11:36):
So essentially it's just like to go to you know,
we want it's good for humanity if we are a
multiplanetary species. And so it's like this is the precursor
to like humans going and living on Mars. So basically
it goes there and says like what's the soil? Like
could you plant asparagus there? It turns out you can.

(11:57):
Is there water there? Yeah? It turns out there is
so all these things that we would want to have
on Mars if we were living there, Like the rover,
you know, how much radiation is there here, So it
can do a bunch of let us learn the history
of this planet so that a we can potentially live
there someday, but b it helps us learn about ourselves.
Part of what we know about global warming is by

(12:17):
studying Venus, which is basically like runaway global warming. So
by like studying other areas in the Solar System, we're
able to learn like more about you know, how Earth
even came about informed, which helps us to know how
do we protect it in the future.

Speaker 2 (12:32):
Wow, And so wait when you started to get this
information and data back that you can grow asparagus, there's
water there. What was the big discovery that the rover
felt like it achieved that you all walked away with
and said, oh wow, this was mission accomplished.

Speaker 1 (12:47):
I mean with science, like your objectives are always smaller
than that of like we just want to go there
and answer whether or not there's water. You know, life
is always the big one. Like if you can find
life on another planet, like that's pretty wild because if
life came to exist twice in our own solar system.

(13:07):
You know, then like there must like the universe must
just be teeming with other forms of life. It's just
like really fascinating question. Right. Sometimes you don't. You just
go there to gather the data and then you just
look for something interesting to come from the data. But
you don't necessarily know ahead of time. You can have objectives, right,
but I think us just getting closer to live there

(13:28):
and studying if life did exist there or like always
some Andea's water they're currently flowing. Those kinds of questions
are like really interesting with Mars.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
Yeah. The reason I'm mining it is for two reasons.
These questions to you is one is I'm fascinated because
it's so different from any world I've ever lived in,
and so I'm like a kid in a candy shop
right now, like this yeah cool. And then the second
side of it is because I think it's a mindset
thing too, the idea that all of these really smart
people are building something and there isn't this big goaler objective.

(13:59):
There's this idea of we're going to learn and we're
going to grow, and we're going to figure it out
and we'll discover something is such a beautiful mindset for life.
Like I think about even with what you were talking
about with crunch Labs, teaching kids at early age to
just experiment, play, break live without the goal of like,
oh I have to build I'm sure they I'm sure

(14:21):
crunch slubs.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
Yeah, No, you're totally right.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
Yeah. It's like that's a great mindset because I feel
like if you think about all the companies that we
all use today, they didn't start off saying we're going
to build a billion dollar company. They just built something
that helped people and figured it out and pivoted and
gave us another option. Then one day they were valued
at billions of dollars. But today there's a pressure I
feel that people have where it's like if I build

(14:45):
an app, it has to be a billion dollar app.
If I build a products company, it has to sell
one hundred million the first year. If I sell apparel brand,
I have to make a million dollar Like I feel
like we put these goals and objectives and you're actually saying, well,
when we're going to Mas, we're not thinking about those things.

Speaker 1 (15:02):
I mean, I completely agree with you, Like, I don't
love when people expect you to know what you want
to be when you grow up when you're like sixteen
years old, Like, nobody ask any adult and if you
ask them, you know what they're doing. If they knew,
they'd be doing what they're doing now. If they say yes,
they're totally blind. You Like, nobody knows. And that's just
the way life is. It's like a river that meanders right.
So it's like my advice if you don't know what

(15:24):
you want to be and your you know, a teenager
or something, is like, what do you love to do?
Do you love to draw? Doesn't just dominate it? Just
draw like crazy and get so good at it. Right,
Maybe you love to write or to tell stories, like,
just do that and then when you do that, like
then more doors will be open to you. So like
this is kind of my philosophy with life too. Like

(15:45):
I've had a lot of left and right turns to
get me sitting across from you right now. And what
I do just like whatever is in front of me,
I just give it every single thing I have, and
I just try and just crush it and learn as
much as possible. And then when you're done with that,
it's like, all right, now, what are my next options? Right,
and it's usually pretty clear, to be honest, Like, it's
never like I've honestly never had a moment in life,

(16:09):
even quitting NASA to go do YouTube stuff where it's
like is this the right decision? Is it not? It
feels pretty clear if you've really committed yourself and then
you have all the new facts in front of you, right.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
Yeah, before we get to that what did you want
to be when you were a kid, and when people
ask you that question, that you I want it.

Speaker 1 (16:28):
I want it to be. My first job I wanted
to do was to design play places at McDonald's, you.

Speaker 2 (16:35):
Know, like thea I used to love that.

Speaker 1 (16:37):
It's like an architect of those I remember, I have
all these drawings. All right, we're gonna start with the
ball pit. We're gonna go to the nets and now
crunch slabs. Which is this like actual place I have?
It's like this WILLI Wonka Factory for Engineering is sort
of the embodiment of that dream because we have like
secret passageways. You know, a coke machine opens up into
a claw machine that you gonna like take a Yeah,

(17:01):
we have like fied like pistons that you slide down.

Speaker 2 (17:04):
From basically center.

Speaker 1 (17:05):
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, Like I'm like Willy Wonka free engineering,
Like it has that vibe. Right, It's like a rock
paper scissor machine that it's a robot that beats you
every time. A staircase that's an infinite slinky staircase. The
slinky just goes. So it's like, you know, if you
can dream it up, then you can build it. Like
that's the beauty of being an engineer. Is like, if

(17:27):
something doesn't exist and you want it to exist, you
could just will it into an existence. What is superpower?

Speaker 2 (17:34):
Yeah, there's this, there's this amazing I mean, this is
I'm going totally the opposite way, but you're reminding me
of something beautiful. There's this beautiful verse in Eastern spirituality
that says the mind moves faster than the gods. And
the point of it is this idea that the mind
can create and build and you can visualize. And it's

(17:55):
based off of this character in Vedic history called vishrak
Karma who's the architect of the gods. So he builds
flying palaces and flying cities, but he visualizes it all
in his head before it becomes manifest. And it's that
same idea of just like we but you know what
so interesting is we're talking about that, but we all

(18:15):
know that it's so natural as a parent to go, okay,
but get a real job, right, So, like you, you
have this dream of I want to design McDonald's playhouses
or whatever, and then family, friends, expectations, school, everyone goes, yeah,
but get a real job. Like I remember, I was
a kid who loved graphic design and I love art
direction and I loved juxtaposition and imagery like that was

(18:39):
always my I love that. It's always been a passion
of mine, and my family encouraged it was a good hobby.
Was like, get a real job though. Yeah, I mean
engineering is such a great skill and such a great job.
But how do you encourage young people and how do
you think about when you're making content to encourage people
to live their passion but be pragmatic and what does
that look like? Because you, yeah, you've kind of pursued

(19:00):
so many things.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
I mean, I think it's a yesam situation. Right For example,
for me, like I worked at NASA for a decade,
then I worked at Apple for five years doing product design.
I didn't quit Apple till I had ten million YouTube subscribers.
So like this idea of like I had to choose
one or the other. Right, you can kind of do both.

(19:21):
You can moonlight as your passion and then when that
becomes big enough, then it's like, oh, and that isn't
always the case. But I think there's a lot of
situations there's a middle of that Venn diagram where it's
like you do the passion and pursued as much as
you possibly can while also having the real job, right.
I mean, that's like practical advice. Sometimes it does come

(19:44):
to a point, you know, you hear these great stories
of actors or something where it's like I'm just gonna
really go for it and then they land. But that's
also you know, the scientist of me wants to say, well,
there's survivorship bias. So you only hear the stories are
the ones that worked, and for the one that does,
there's a thousand that don't. So you know, I think
when parents say that they generally have their best interest

(20:04):
in mind for the kid. They want them to be
happy and have a life that they can. But at
the same time, the kid knows what they're passionate. So
I think it's a very healthy a very healthy like
you know, Yin and yang there. I don't fault parents
for saying that. I think there's a lot of times
you could still pursue the thing. You can pursue both.

Speaker 2 (20:22):
Yeah, i'd agree with you. So my life's the same story,
and I'm that to me is the to me, that
is the best and most likely path for most people,
which is you're going to have a steady job, You're
going to figure out something on the side, and you're
going to wait for the thing on the side to
outpace the thing you're doing right now. And then and
it became and it actually proves to you as an individual,
whether you really love it, if you're doing your evenings,

(20:44):
you're doing your weekends, you're you're doing it when it
makes no money, you're doing it when it's inconvenient, and
you're like, oh, well, if I could do it when
I was inconvenient, then when it's my full time thing,
I'm the luckiest person in.

Speaker 1 (20:54):
The world, one hundred percent. And when I started YouTube,
like in twenty eleven, no one you you could like
make money off of it, you know what I mean,
It was like you just did it. Really, it's just
a passion like I wanted to share these cool ideas
with people. Now it's like the game has changed so much.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
What was the pivot from NASA to Apple? Why did
that come about? Why leave NASA?

Speaker 1 (21:16):
Well, actually, for two years I was at a halloween
costume company Jay before then going to Apple.

Speaker 2 (21:23):
So that's like halloween costume. Yes, the wait, how do
you get from NASA to a Halloween.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
Okay, that's the better question, which is so my first
ever YouTube video I went to like a Halloween party
and I had an iPad on front, an iPad in
back of me. And if you cut a hole in
the shirts and you do a FaceTime, gold looks like
have a hole in your body.

Speaker 2 (21:44):
So you win.

Speaker 1 (21:45):
You wave your hand in the front and the camera
in the back shows it and that's cool. Again, it
felt like being five years old cutting onions. People at
the party were like, this is such a cool costume.
What a cool idea? How did I not think of that?
So I went home, I put it on YouTube. And
my life goal is to be on the Gizmoto, which
is like an old tech blog.

Speaker 2 (22:05):
Yeah yeah, I remember it.

Speaker 1 (22:06):
And so I made it on the covering his Moto
and then quickly realized I need more life goals, and
so I was like, I have more ideas, Like I
should just do one video a month, And for fourteen
years now, I've basically uploaded one video a month about
an engineering build or an idea, and the channel's just
grown from there.

Speaker 2 (22:26):
How did you get that outfit on the cover of Gizmodo, Well.

Speaker 1 (22:30):
So the YouTube video went up and it went viral,
so it was on the front page of CNN, like
it was like on all these outlets covered it, including Gizmoto.
Got it from there. The one complained was that cool idea, bro,
But I don't have twelve hundred dollars for Halloween costing
two iPads, right, And so I was like all right,
So I came up with an idea for next year
where it was like a design printed on the shirt,

(22:52):
like a guy's face or something that was like kind
of his eye was pulled open and then if you
cut a hole out for the eyeball and then there's
a free app an eyeball that moved around her or
I would have worked great, Jay, then you had a
really cool Halloween costume for like the price of a
T shirt called digital DNS. So I've launched that company
nights and weekends, working all week while making YouTube videos

(23:14):
and while working at NASA, and it did pretty well.
So then that did well enough that I sold it
to some guys in the UK and I went and
worked for them for two years. Wow, And it's like,
it's such a right. This is my example. I mean,
this is this is exactly what I was talking about.
I have this idea. I thought it was cool, so
I moonlit nights and weekends, basically bootstrapped the company. And

(23:38):
then when I launched the video the next year to
explain what it was that T shirt idea, you know,
we made our money back in eight hours and then yeah,
so very meandering.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
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(24:20):
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dot org, forward slash on purpose. Did you always have

(24:46):
the ability to turn an idea into action? And how
what have you learned about that? Right? Like, there's a
big A lot of people have good ideas, and I'm
sure you hear all hear them all the time. I
hear them all the time. People come up to me
and be like, Joe, I've had this incredible idea on
build this thing, but then it stops there, it doesn't
get somewhere. What have you learned about turning ideas into action?

(25:06):
What's worked for you?

Speaker 1 (25:07):
My superpower is my naive optimism. Like I'm just an
idiot that thinks I can do it and I don't
see Like I just feel like, oh, this is so obvious,
Like I can totally do this. If I knew the
amount of work it actually would end up being, i'd
be very discouraged. But I'm just like an idiot. It's like,
oh yeah, I could do this, Like I think this

(25:28):
makes sense, Like I see the end goal and so
then any pitfall that comes along the way, Like I'm
so focused on this end goal and like that matters, right,
Like the attitude you have and whether or not you
believe you think you can do it. So then if
I think I can do it, then the next step
is like, let me break this down into all the steps,
and step one is this, and I'm just going to

(25:50):
dominate that step and then you know, just kind of
step through it. It's literally the engineering design process. But
for ideas and businesses.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
We'll go through the engineering design process. For anyone who
doesn't know what that is, is like, break that down
for us, make it simple.

Speaker 1 (26:02):
But I think the idea, it's just like you have
an end goal, an objective, and break it down into
the steps and know what you don't know and test
what you don't know. Is kind of like, you know,
give your best shot at it. You kind of in
the engineering Let's say, if I'm designing a piece for

(26:22):
the Mars Rover, I think, okay, I think it needs
you know, maybe it's the wheel for the Mars Rover.
I think it needs to probably look like this. I'
when design it and CAD I analyze it analytically with
computer programs, but that's not what I fly to Mars.
I take that and then I build it, and then
I test it to see if it matches, and then
sure enough, Oh it does match up. All right, Now

(26:44):
it's good enough. I've tested it. Now I can fly
it to march. So I think it's this idea of
like building iteratively and breaking things like part of designing
that is, I would make one and I would smash
it with a bunch of stuff, so I know the
limits of the wheel. Right. So again we call that
a failure and others outside of engineering, but we embrace

(27:05):
that and it's like great, now we know. Now let's
tweak it and we're gonna. We're gonna now now we
could build something better. Right. But I think a lot
of times in life, if you get a bad grade
on a test, then you internalize I'm not good at math.
Or a relationship fails. You're like, I'm just not good
at this love thing. Or a business fails, you're like,
I guess I'm not a good businessman. But if you

(27:27):
if you look at it like an engineer, or even
like a video game, I think is like a good
way to do it. Like if you if you frame
your challenges like a video game, no one no one
picks up a controller to play a video game and
falls in a pit let's say Super Mario Brothers or something,
and thinks I'm a failure, Like I'm embarrassing, I'm terrible
at video games. No, You're immediately like, oh, shoot, what
I just learned from that. Now I'm gonna I'm gonna

(27:48):
jump a little faster. I'm gona run a little faster.
Jump at You're excited to try again, right, So just
the framing of it, it turns from fear to curiosity
where you're like, you want to get up and try
it again. So if it's like and you know you
asked me like oh, when you have ideas like I'm
thinking of it like a video game where it's like
I want to rescue Princess from bowser. So when I
get the sliding green turtle shell, which could look like

(28:11):
a lot of different things, I don't internalize that I'm
a bad player. I'm like, got it. I know the
shell comes right here. I'm going to jump a little faster, right,
And that is a life hack. Like truly, this happens
to me all the time on just whenever we want
to do a big video. We just filmed the video
where I made a soccer goalie robot that goes back
and forth at like eighty miles an hour, and then

(28:32):
Christiano Ronaldo tried to score on it. Right. It took
us like a year to bill so we tracked the
ball and in the first six milliseconds, when the ball
has gone from like here to here, I just moved
it like maybe an eighth of an inch. We know
exactly where the goalie needs to be to stop that ball.
So it's hilarious to see, you know, he tries to

(28:52):
do it and of course he misses. No, there's no
way he can score. It's way too fast from the
penalty kick area. Yeah, I said eighty miles an hour,
and the robots is like, what just goes.

Speaker 2 (29:03):
And it's oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
So the point is, though, with that video, I mean
there was tons of sliding green shells and setbacks and
you know, and and that doesn't mean it doesn't sting.
By the way, failure still can sting. This isn't some
fake Pollyanna attitude, right, but it's this idea of like,
oh dang it, but I'm okay, here we go. We're
going at this again, right, yeah, And I think that

(29:26):
can help you accomplish so much more in life. And
and just have honestly better relationships even right, because it's
just like the way you approach it is like, Okay,
what did I learn versus internalizing that it's something about me?

Speaker 2 (29:39):
Yeah, well said, really well said. I love the video
game analogy because you're so right. You die, and even
though it says game over, you don't feel that way. No,
you're like next next player. You know you want to
get another life, you want to play again like you
never ever. And it's so crazy because I'm like, it
actually says game over and you don't care. And whereas
if someone says game over and life where you get

(30:01):
rejected or you don't get a job and you apply
for one, that hurts much worse, and I guess because
it feels like he has real stakes.

Speaker 1 (30:09):
I think it's more like you internal you think that
makes you, yes, unemployable, Yes, you internalize what that means
about you, But you don't do that in video games.
You don't say I'm a bad video game player. And
I think the same is true in life. Like anyone
who's got to somewhere in life, they started out sucky
at that, right, and then they just learned and iterated

(30:30):
and overcame. It's the same thing he said with companies
like No Fortune one hundred company today started out doing
what they do now they've pivoted fifteen times, right, And
so I think it's this ability to just like not
internalize what it says about you and just almost flip it.
Like I'm a person who who embraces failure and celebrates it,

(30:52):
lets it sting. Just like in a video, it sucks
to miss that key jump on level eight one on
Super Mario Brothers a little platform, but it's like, dang it,
we're going back because you're focused on the end goal.
You're focus on what that would feel like, not the
pits and the mistakes.

Speaker 2 (31:07):
What's a failure that you ever experienced in life that
you did internalize? Did that ever happen?

Speaker 1 (31:13):
I got married pretty young and then it's very amicable.
But like five years ago I split with my wife
for you know, I'm pretty private with my private life
for like reasons and stuff. But and I was like
really cautious to get out and like date again. It
just it took me a year to even like start

(31:37):
And I don't know, it felt like I was just
very protective, like I didn't I wanted if I was
gonna find my person, like I wanted them to love
me and not the thought of me, or you know,
you just want it to be authentic, right, and so
like I never I just wasn't. I was being very

(32:00):
very cautious about everything. I did find someone that I
thought was like this was this was it, and I'm
for the first time, like really opened my heart, right,
like being really really open, and like the worst possible
situation happened where it was like it was it felt

(32:20):
it was like a betrayal. Something happened that it was
like it was essentially this the worst case where it's like, Okay,
I'm going to do this, I'm going to really lean in,
and then it happened, and it was absolutely the worst
pain like I've experienced as adult. It was like really
really hard, and it was hard to feel like I
would ever find this thing that I felt like other
people have found and I'd never felt it my whole life,

(32:44):
and so taking a beat after that was like I
think it was hard. That was like a really really
difficult period for me. But then I honestly, eventually I
came around to this supermart thing and I'm like, you know,
what like it's just a number. Like I just got
to put in the reps. I gotta like put the
work in and so I did that and then again failed.

(33:09):
I did like I was like, I'm gonna in thirty days,
I'm going to like try and this. I'm such an engineer.
I basically made a goal where it's like I'm going
on thirty FaceTime dates in thirty days and just like
twenty minutes just to get a feel because you know,
in the first three minutes if there's a connection or
not right. And I did that and it was again

(33:30):
Jay and these are like amazing, accomplished, attractive, lovely human beings,
lovely women right, and I felt nothing, And I was
like damn, like I think is this me? So I
was like, you know what, I'm going to do one
more and then I did one more and that's my
partner and she's my life partner. It's like it and

(33:50):
it was it was a matter of like it was
like half hour in It's like yep, this is it,
like and it feels like coming home. It's like when
you I'm the right person, it feels like home. It's
just like yeah, and it's just like no, reservations and like,
we're both the same way, and she she's wondering, yeah,

(34:11):
and you met her and she's had the same experience
where she just never felt like she'd found it and
immediately was just like this is it cool? Done? Close
the spreadsheet.

Speaker 2 (34:21):
I deleted it, So you did engineer your way to love.

Speaker 1 (34:25):
Which because she's the opposite, she's more like you j
and she just puts it out to the universe. So
she's the she's the dreamer and I'm the thinker. And
we try and take credit for us getting together, Like, look,
I put it out to the years. I'm like, no,
I put in the worst.

Speaker 2 (34:40):
Yeah, yeah, no, I love that. I mean to me,
I mean, I'm I'm actually people know less about I'm
a bit of both as well. There's a there's an
engineer in me, not not in the way you are,
but in that practical, pragmatic approach to what it really
takes and getting the reps in and and I like
that that it even applied to love, that doing thirty

(35:02):
FaceTime calls and thirty dates, that is what it takes
to figure out if you have a connection with someone
and to speed it up. I always I do what
I call for myself immersion weekends, and so if I'm
really fascinated by something, I will find a coach, find
the book, find the ted talk, find the course, and
do it all in one weekend to figure out whether
I care or not. And I do these immerging weekends

(35:25):
all the time. I'll literally obsess over something for forty
eight hours, and if I really like it, then it
becomes a part of my consistent schedule. And if I
hated it, I won't go back again. And I'm okay,
And I've loved doing that over time where I'm like,
I'm fascinated by this. I don't have time to go
on a weekly course. I don't know if I want
to invest that time. I don't want to commit to
a retreat. Who knows. But I could do it for

(35:46):
a whole weekend. Yeah, it works, It works wonders for me.

Speaker 1 (35:49):
And that goes back to kind of what I was
saying before too, just like whatever's the step in front,
dominate it dominated, and if you really immerse yourself like
it will be very clear at the end of that
weekend if this is something you want to do more versus.

Speaker 2 (36:01):
Like just dabbling it dabbling.

Speaker 1 (36:03):
Yeah, what's an example. I'm going to turn the tables
like you No, what's the last thing you did? Like that?
Like an immersion weekend?

Speaker 2 (36:08):
The immersion weekend? Yeah, I'll be honest, I just did
it this weekend. It was acting.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (36:14):
Now, I've been getting all these opportunities to like audition
for like TV and film, and I've just been kind
of going back and forth. I've spent a lot of
time on movie sets with actors that I coach, not
in acting in my work, and I've spent a lot
of time on movie sets, but I've never been the
person doing it. I've done a few cameos here and there.
And because I was getting all these opportunities, my question

(36:35):
always is do I love the process I'm not interested
in the result? Or is it cool? I'm like, do
I actually love doing the thing? And so this whole
weekend had an acting coach. I was with them for
three hours a day who I was doing all the
reading pre of the scripts that they sent me. I
was doing the reading of books outside of it, around
acting and writing, just to see if I enjoy the process.

(36:56):
And I was like, worst case, I'm going to hate
the process and learn some skills case, I'm going to
love it and it's going to open up new opportunities.
I loved it at a great time.

Speaker 3 (37:04):
Really yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:05):
I was reading scripts, I was learning about characters. We
were doing scene study and analysis like it was. It
was almost like just reading material and discussing it with
someone and then trying to figure out what the actors'
objectives were and what their tactic is and what their
motive is. It was fascinating.

Speaker 1 (37:21):
Really, yes, I love it. So you're going to do more?
Then it was I'm going to do more coaching.

Speaker 2 (37:25):
I'm going to take more classes because it was just
so it was so fun and if it becomes something
that I enjoy enough, I would pursue it professionally. But
even if I don't, it's just something that i'm currently
immersed in.

Speaker 1 (37:36):
I feel like you would be great. It's like you
have to, yeah, putting yourself in the shoes of the person,
Like I don't even know what to do it, Like
my face, it's like I'm supposed to be sad that
I really was just like yeah about my life. But
it's like, apparently that's not what you're supposed to.

Speaker 2 (37:53):
Do, but that's what was so that was what's so
fascinating about it? And I think we're both talking about
this idea of learning something was when you're sitting down
with a professional, the way they talk about it, and
he was talking about like there's Stanislav method and the
Chekhov method and there's all these there's there's systems of
why the best of the best like they're not they're
not just the best because they have it. They've studied

(38:15):
systems and they've worked at it. And so to me,
it was just like there's this method where it's called
to act as if so you can't relate to what
the character is going through, but you have something that
happened in your life that makes you feel that way
that the character is feeling and you channel that. And
so to me it was just I was just fascinated
by the empathy that actors have to have, the compassion

(38:38):
the connection to embody characters. But that was my most reason.

Speaker 1 (38:42):
I love that my thing right now again, like I'm
kind of with you, I love mastery, Like finding mine's
public speaking. I hate public speaking, Yeah yeah, heat it,
but my goal is just be really good at it
in like a year. So I'm currently working up I'm
actually doing a TED talk in April. Actually, this is
cool to actually mention to you because I haven't really
talked about this publicly much. But we're doing so through

(39:03):
the YouTube channel. We've learned how to like hide the vegetables, right,
basically teach science. You don't even know what's happening, right, Yeah,
So we're taking all the learnings we've taken from that,
Like because kids can watch or people can just watch
whatever they want to on YouTube, but they choose to
watch this, and they're making a full science curriculum that's amazing,
third to eighth grade. It involved, you know, it has

(39:25):
my fellow YouTube friends. You know, I just got Christiano
Ronaldo and we're feeling in he's part of it. Just
a bunch of people in it. But then you know,
resources for the teachers, really cool hands on activities. They
can class everything. And then it's gonna costs about it's
gonna cost us about like fifty five million dollars to make,
and that would make it free forever for all the.

Speaker 2 (39:44):
Way able to go online, so you don't have it
won't be in your school.

Speaker 1 (39:48):
No, it's like a it's like online teachers can use
it it's a full It adheres to all of the standards, right,
because teachers will tell you, like, they can't teach a
kid if they don't have their attention. And I've learned
to do on YouTube is getting there to for example,
the electricity and magnetism lesson. We just filmed this. There's
an MRI machine. I put a watermelon inside it. I'm
holding like a ten pound hammer and then you essentially

(40:10):
flip on the MRI machine and but you know, the
hammer just flies out of my hand destroys this watermelon.
And now, Jay, I've got your attention. And now I
could say, you know, there's some visible magnetic fields all
around us that exist? Yeah, right, And.

Speaker 2 (40:24):
So teachers can use these in school. They could play
that video.

Speaker 1 (40:28):
And it has you know, the whole lesson. What they
say back to the kids. It will replace their science curriculum, right, Wow.
And it's gonna cost it's gonna take us like three years.

Speaker 2 (40:36):
Why is it gonna cost you fifty five million dollars?

Speaker 1 (40:39):
It's it's a huge undertaking. There's like forty six different units.
Like it's science, it's all six through eighth grade science,
and then also third grade through through fifth grade.

Speaker 2 (40:49):
So and you're funding.

Speaker 1 (40:50):
It yeah, and I mean yes, and there are already
some generous people who are coming out and helping it fun.
But like regardless, I was weird started funding it myselves
anyways with the profits we had from Crunch Lambs. So
we're gonna announce that at the Ted talk and like that.
I really want to nail that presentation, so.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
I'm having to help. Man, Okay, I was lucky my
parents forced me to get a public speaking in drama
school when I was eleven. Oh really, so all my
state speaking skills from having studied it for seven years,
eight years.

Speaker 1 (41:21):
And so, yeah, you're a man one of my favor Okay, Yeah,
I'll record the rehearsal and I'll send it to you.

Speaker 2 (41:26):
Yeah. Happy. I mean they have pros there obviously, Ted
have such a great script they do and a great
pro speaking team they're not that's going to be now,
that's going to be amazing. I'm excited to see it.

Speaker 1 (41:35):
I'm pretty so I feel like it's the most important
thing I'll do my whole life.

Speaker 2 (41:39):
But I love that you're doing things that scare you,
Like even at this point having had so much success
and having you know, being you know, the spokesperson for
science across the world. It's incredible to see you say
I'm still scared of this and I'm going to do it,
not like I.

Speaker 1 (41:53):
Crave it, Jay, Like I also like, uh, I started
like going to the gym to your years ago, same
thing where it's just like I just love an opportunity
for mastery. It is this video game thing, right, I
think a lot if you say that I've seen success
in my life, a lot of it comes down to
this mentality. It's like, I just love working on something

(42:14):
and the feeling of incrementally getting better. I mean, that's
how our brains work, right, You're a lot of studies
have showed if you get a huge raise and then
and then your salary's flat for ten years versus incrementally
go up to that ten years, like you're much happy.
You have way more dopamine your brain if you incrementally
level up. This is again how video games even work.
You start the video game with a wooden sword and

(42:36):
three heart containers because they reverse engineer. You love just
like little levels up, so opportunities that life provides you
to just find something like that and then get better.
At the end of a couple of years or months
or whatever decades nothing better.

Speaker 2 (42:51):
How do you keep the childlike fun energy, playful energy
that you have that your work requires and at the
same time run businesses Because to me, that's the balance
that young entrepreneurs, seasoned entrepreneurs everyone runs into where it's
like running the business is a serious business, yeah, but

(43:12):
then the business is all about play, curiosity, fun, crazy experiments. Right,
and we'll get into some of the videos that that
you love the most. But how do you think about
the curiosity creativity part of the business and then the
running of a business?

Speaker 1 (43:26):
Yeah, I think it's good. There's been studies that look
at like successful mid range companies are companies worth say
fifty to five hundred million dollars or something, or even
tended five hundred million dollars, And what all of them
have in common is there's one person who is like
has the swim lane of being the creative, the big thinker,

(43:47):
you know, the ten next thinker, and then one person
who's logistics. Right, so you know, one person who can
build the thing and one person who can run the thing.
And I was very lucky a buddy of mine, Jim,
you know, we're to Google I knew he had a
very anamical brain, and I said, hey, I'm thinking about
starting this company, crunch Labs, you know, make me a
model financial model to see if it works. And he

(44:10):
did and educating me on how they work. It's still
the model we use today and the company's doing very well.

Speaker 2 (44:14):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (44:15):
So he's been the one to, like, in my opinion,
make all the all the boring stuff I don't want
to look at. J oh we have to have like
a warehouse that ships out this stuff, like I don't
just find a good one, you know, and he'll geek
out over it, and he has them, you know what
I mean. And I'm thinking about like, oh this is
we could do this, you know, but we could do this.
So I think truly, if you're starting a business and

(44:37):
you're the creative one, just don't try and do the
other thing.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:40):
And the good news is if you're the creative one,
the other one's a lot easier to find. Like the
creative like the good that that's more of a rare talent. Yeah,
so just find someone help you.

Speaker 2 (44:49):
Yeah, Okay, it's great advice.

Speaker 1 (44:51):
Yeah. At some point, if you're small, if you're doing
something small like Halloween T shirt company, Like you can
be both, but at some point it'll just get way
too hard.

Speaker 2 (44:58):
Yeah, no, I fully agree with you. We did the same.
And I remember when I bought on one of my
partners in the early days, everyone was like, you don't
want to give away a percentage, Like, don't do that,
you know it's all your creativity. And I was like,
you have no idea how much time? Because I said, Tom,
when I'm am, I said, all I want to do
is think, study and teach and create, Like that's that's
where I want to live, Like that's my strength, superpower,

(45:22):
that's my fascination. Like I love reading and studying and
learning about psychology and ancient wisdom and science and behavioral science,
and that's what I love reading, studying, learning, observing humans
and then turning into stuff that people can use to
make their lives better. But I don't want to run
any of the other stuff.

Speaker 1 (45:39):
And there's something knowing that and owning that like as
a key to staying happy and honestly fighting burnout. I
think a lot of times people feel burnt out and
a creative endeavor, it's because they lost sight of what
got them in it in the first place and they're
managing fifteen people and they're a manager now they're not
a creative and they're like, why am I doing this?
I'm not getting the satisfaction. It's like, oh, because you're

(46:00):
not doing what you started doing.

Speaker 2 (46:02):
What did you learn at What did you learn at
Apple that you didn't learn at NASA?

Speaker 1 (46:06):
Apple? I would say, like NASA, I feel like a
lot of smart people at Apple. You had to be
pretty smart, but a very good communicator, which is like
a I just keyed in on this and communication and
sharing ideas and like telling stories matters a lot in

(46:29):
you know, people think I'm a good engineer, you know,
like I could build cool stuff. But it's like I'm
okay engineer, Jay, I'm a pretty damn good storyteller. Like
and in the videos you're telling stories right, like this
video with Christiano Ronaldo, he said, with the goalie robot
going back and forth, Like it starts out like, you know,
this is my childhood dream. I want to do this thing.

(46:49):
And I even Landon Donovan takes me out and he's
like a coach and he's like, dude, you suck, you know,
and so it's like, okay, well if I can't do
with my athletic power. It's not going to do with
my brain. So now I'm going to make this goal
it right, you case the whole thing in a story, right,
And I think at Apple I learned that there are
some very very good engineers who are also incredible communicators

(47:10):
of like explaining ideas. And you know that's what really
makes a special as a species ability to cooperate on
large scale And we do that through telling stories. Right,
that's we've evolved to tell stories long before you could
write stuff down. We communicated through telling stories. It makes
somebody feel something, That's exactly that's how you make a

(47:30):
viral video. You just you have to evoke a visceral response.
And if you can do that, that helps you at
work because it convinces everyone else like, hey, this is
a good idea, let's all do this helps you in
your relationships, Like if you can really create that visceral
response by connecting with the human, then you know your
partner will, your child or friend will accept your apology, right, Like,

(47:55):
it'll help you. Yeah, just personal life, business, anything tapping
into the ability and owning the ability of Like I
need to say this in a way that connects heart
to heart, not brain to brain, whereas it you know,
NASA was like, well, you know, our rover is twenty
percent faster on the gigars, like nobody cares. Right, Apple,
I feel like is a very good example of this,
right Like air pods is an example. Like the advertisers

(48:19):
for airport, they're just technically, there's better than any other head.
You know, yes, there any like you're in your product
out there. But the commercials are like the dance, It
focuses on the feeling, right, like what does it feel
like to have these things, not like here's the text
back of why it's better. Yeah, And as a result,
I think they're like if they were a standalone company,
it would be the market cap would be like, I

(48:40):
don't know, it's something crazy, like just for the just
for the air it's like fifty billion dollar market cap
just for the AirPod.

Speaker 2 (48:47):
It's crazy.

Speaker 3 (48:48):
It's crazy.

Speaker 2 (49:06):
Yeah, it's such a hearing you say that is fascinating
because yeah, I read it study years ago. It was
early days, but New York Times did a study on
seven thousand pieces of viral content and the output was
the seven thousand piece of viral content they made people
feel five things one of five things. The first was adventure,

(49:29):
which yours your content does all the time. Humor your
content does that too, or comedy obviously. Uh. The other
the third feeling was negativity, but the news anger rage
Yours does not do that. The fourth was inspiration, so
you felt inspired after watching it, and the fifth was surprise.

(49:50):
And so those were the five emotions and they were
all feelings. And I always share that with people because
I'm like, your content's trying to teach me something. It's
trying to tell me something, and you're talking about adding value.
But when you're trying to add value, you're not making
me feel anything. And what you were saying about hiding
the vegetables, it's like, if you're making people feel entertained,

(50:10):
then you're learning about engineering and process and designed and everything.
But if I'm like, I'm going to teach you engineering now,
I'm feeling bored. Yeah, and that's not on the top
five list, And so I'm not feeling anything I wanted
to ask you about. I want to get tactical with
you because you're also a YouTube creative genius. It's like,
what was the journey from zero to a thousand subscribers.

(50:31):
What does that look like for someone if someone's trying
to do that as stage one.

Speaker 1 (50:36):
There's a lot of really good reasons to start a
YouTube channel or to be a creative. There's only two
bad ones tell us to get rich and to get famous.
And I think that's like the mistake a lot of people,
especially now that you know you can get rich and famous.
And I think we both started in this game. It
just wasn't the same, Like you didn't realize that was it?

Speaker 2 (50:56):
Right.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
Our passion was like we love this, right.

Speaker 2 (51:00):
I thought it was going to be I thought I
was gonna because I was a consultant at the time. Yeah,
I was at Accentia rightly. Yeah, I thought I was
going to be a consultant by day and just to
upload videos by night and weekends because I was like,
this is a fun hobby. It was. It was just
a creative outlet for me. I was like I was
doing live events, teaching wisdom and teaching classes and meditation,
and I was teach at my local gym. I would

(51:22):
teach it in my local college or whatever. And I
loved it. But I was like, oh, I'd like to
share that with more people. I would just upload some videos.
And yeah, I had no idea that any of this
would ever happen. So and yeah, we started. I started
twenty sixteen, you start twenty eleven.

Speaker 1 (51:38):
Yeah, but ultimately twenty I mean, like to your point,
like it takes forever to get a thousand subscribers. So
I think the trick is just to make content, just
to do it, don't overthink it. You know. The temptation
is you want to make the perfect thing. And again,
going back to an engineer, you build prototypes. Like the
biggest mistake when you want to make something is like
I want to build the final thing. Any object in

(52:00):
this room was not built, Like this was not the
final form. This was not the initial version of this microphone.
Like it started very simply and then it iterated, iterated.
And so it's the same thing with like creating content
or making things or trying anything like set a low bar.
You know. I like to say, like make your goal
to fail ten times, like flip it. Make the goal,

(52:22):
like I want to make ten videos and my goal
is that they don't get more than one hundred views
in a sense of like don't make your metric. But
I'm not rich yet, and I'm not famous yet, therefore
I'm a failure. Like make your like, destigmatize the failure
and just go for it and make that. So make
the goal, you know, maybe a better way to say
is make the goal to just upload ten videos in

(52:46):
ten weeks. That's my goal. I don't care about metric,
I don't care about views, and you will learn so
much more through that by then and then iterating and
seeing what worked. Back to a video game. Okay, I
said this thing. I started this way. Aha, the algorithm
seemed to really like that, you know, and that's what
the audience wants. And now I'm going to lean into that, right,
So it's like just gamified in that sense and it

(53:07):
will be great. Don't do it to be your meritual famous.

Speaker 2 (53:10):
Yeah, it's great advice. I remember I got to I
got my first thousand subscribers in a month on YouTube,
and I was over the moon, Like I was so excited.
I couldn't believe it. Like I was like, this is
I'd never stood in front of a I'd maybe done
one talk which was a work event which had a
thousand people in the audience, but I'd never done my
own event with a thousand people i'd mostly if I'd

(53:31):
done my own event, maybe fifty was the most I'd
ever had in my own live events. So a thousand
subscribers this is insane. And I remember saying to my
friends and they were like, yeah, it's probably cool, like
you know, good for you, like you know, and it
felt like a failure because to them, not to me, yeah,
because they were just like, oh, that's a thousand, Like
I guess it's gonna you know, now out here. And
it was just so interesting for me to see, like, oh,

(53:52):
it was good. I didn't feel that way because I
would have stopped. Yeah, but a thousand to me was
a huge one. What's the difference between getting from a
thousand to one hundred thousand? Like what is changing in
skill set? Mindset ability?

Speaker 1 (54:05):
You start to get like a process down, You start
to be able to figure out your own voice. I
think like from about ten thousand to one hundred thousand subscribers,
you start to understand who you are, you know, and
a good place to start, by the way, just copying
other channels that you like, like don't be ashamed at
the beginning just to copy someone else's style. And you know,

(54:25):
if you don't know where to start. If you don't
have something, and you'll start doing it. You'll try something
one time and it works and it sticks, and then you,
you know, you start to find what your own voice is.

Speaker 2 (54:35):
You've only ever you said, you've only ever made one
video a month. Yeah, how did you not get sucked
in to the landscape when it was like people were
making a video a day, people were making three videos
a week. People will make you know how did you
stay true to Was it just that you'll create a
vision so big that you could only ever do one
a month?

Speaker 1 (54:54):
Partly that and just like again, I wasn't doing it
to chase the views. And you're absolutely right. There was
a time in the YouTube algorithm were daily vlogs is
how you got all the views. And I said great,
like great for everyone else, Like I am enjoying it
this way. This is what I like. This is like
the pace I'm comfortable with. Like I'm very protective, I'm

(55:14):
very good at saying no, like that's my superpower. And
just like I can have that restraint. And you know,
I've got a nice comfortable jogging pace on my treadmill
and I'm going to stick with that. So and even
today you know good at saying no.

Speaker 2 (55:31):
What was the hardest thing you ever said no to?

Speaker 1 (55:33):
You know, early on there was some opportunities to do
some like Discovery Channel shows that I would have loved
as a kid. But then it's like when I had
everything else going on, Like I don't know, you just
get opportunities that come by that you don't. It's almost
not hard to say no because it's like unless it's
an absolute hell yes, I don't even consider it, right,

(55:54):
And I think that is that can be a superpower,
is like laser focus. Like I don't often like pick
something that I'm just like, I'm on it. But like
if I do choose something that it's like I want it,
Like I can be like a pit on it where
it's just like I will not fail, Like I don't know.
At some point, if it's not work, you need to pivot,
and I do. But it's like I just get so

(56:17):
obsessed with accomplishing the thing that I can just exclude
everything else, so I don't have this temptation of like
and I try this, I don't try this. I'm don't
try this and I try this, and now you're just
diluted across the board. Right, because that applies not even
for business, but in your relationships right in life. If
you are stretching yourself thin, you know, I'd much rather

(56:38):
give like five people in my life, like very deep
depth and have that richness of human connection then to
spread that thin across fifty Yeah, right.

Speaker 2 (56:47):
Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, it's yeah, there's almost like there's the
experimenting phase where you're trying lots of things out. Yeah,
but then when you know who you are and you
know your voice and you know what you're building, you've
got to stick to that and it does make all
the difference, and you've got to know when to let
something go. Like the videos I used to make on
Facebook when I first started as a creator, I don't
make them anymore. And it's not because they weren't amazing

(57:09):
and they didn't change my life. It's just that's not
who I wanted to be forever. And they would have
been really successful now if I carried on making them,
but I wouldn't have felt happy, and so I chose
what I wanted to do, which was this and telling
stories in a certain way that's allowed my life to
also be fulfilling as well as successful. Rather than keep

(57:29):
doing something because the algorithm wants it, that's right, and
it doesn't. That gets really dry, It gets really tiring,
I think, and creators get burnt out chasing the algorithm,
which I think we've both seen probably a lot of.

Speaker 1 (57:41):
Yeah, I think that's right. I think when you crank
up that treadmill speed to a sprint paste, that's exciting
at first and it's like, whow all these opportunities are coming,
but you know, the dopamine wears off and you're still sprinting.
And to me, that's the definition of burnout when you're
not getting like the positive feedback and you're like really
really going for it so that you could just like
keep your treadmill at a jogging speed. In creating, in

(58:04):
in life, I think like that's that's the power of
saying no and being okay with saying no and not
feeling guilty about it.

Speaker 2 (58:11):
What was the I'm looking at your most popular videos
and obviously world's largest jellopool? Can you Swim in Jello?
Two hundred and three million views? Six years ago? That video?
What went wrong trying to get that video?

Speaker 1 (58:23):
I lost ten pounds making that video. I'm not kidding,
because because we were making I get when I get stressed,
I don't eat it. We were making it in my
brother's backyard because to make jello, no one's ever done
this on the internet. By the way, to this day,
I'm the only person who've ever made like an actual
jellopool because jello, as you know, you have to get
it really cold. You got to first of all boil it,

(58:44):
and then it's got to put it in the refrigerator. Right,
So we had like six, you know, fifty five gallon
drums that we boiled jello and basically drained it in
this pool that we'd built. And then he lived in Utah,
so it was like the perfect temperature. It didn't freeze
over night, but cold enough. And so it took a
full week and it failed eight different ways, and we'd

(59:07):
have to tweak and and change it. A storm came,
we're covering it with a tarp. But eventually we got
that money shot of like a kid belly flopping on
this pool of jello and like me swimming in it,
and it felt really good. That's like, actually, it turns
out a very technically difficult problem. Again, my naive optimism

(59:28):
was like, oh, I got this, I can do this right, Yeah,
And it was very, very tricky, but we pulled it off.

Speaker 2 (59:34):
What was the hidden vegetable in the egg drop from
Space video one hundred and forty million views two years ago? Like,
what was the what was the hidden vegetable there?

Speaker 1 (59:42):
Yeah? There? Again, that video had so many failures in it, Jay, Like,
we tried originally to put a basically a model rocket
on a hot air balloon or on a weather balloon
and then guide it over a mattress and where it
would let go and drop the egg on the mattress.
We tried that three different times and this was costing
me like thirty thousand times a drop. And eventually I

(01:00:05):
called up one of my buddies at NASA. He's the
lead when we try and land something on the other planet,
and I was like, Adam, how do we do this?
And he's like, Oh, what you're trying to do is
create a guided missile. And there's like one hundred people
in the United States who know how to do that,
and they've all signed a very large attack of papers
saying they won't tell anyone. So we're like, oh, we

(01:00:26):
shouldn't try and guide this rocket down. Then well, let's
go one hundred thousand feet up you know, basically to
space drop this thing and then we landed it like
the Mars rover. So in that video, we learned about
terminal velocity, and we learned about like space environments.

Speaker 2 (01:00:41):
But kids love I love how you bugging a NASA friend. Yeah,
he's dealing with like solving like discovery and.

Speaker 1 (01:00:48):
It's literally the man who like invented how you land
on Mars and it's like my phone a friend.

Speaker 2 (01:00:53):
You're like, can you teach you how to drop an egg?

Speaker 1 (01:00:55):
Yeah, on on a mattress and he was like, yeah, no,
that's called a missile.

Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
That's amazing. Well, who have you met through doing all
of this work that you've just been so like you've
learned from what you've been inspired by, or someone that
you met through this crazy journey that you've been on
that has kind of left a mark on you, or
someone that you always look forward to getting to know
and you've got to meet.

Speaker 1 (01:01:17):
Yeah, I would say, I don't know. Weirdly, like a
mentor for me actually has been Jimmy Kimmel, Like, you know,
he saw one of my videos like a decade ago
and said we should get this guy in the show
and his staff was like, after like one or two
times going on to show that he really likes you,
and I'm like, you say that to everyone, but like
the fourth time, I was like, I think he does

(01:01:38):
really and so now he's like it was his idea
even to start crunch Labs the company, because people will
tell me all the time, like you need to do
a podcast, you need to write a book, you need
to go on tour, and when I double click on it,
because again I'm good to saying no, it always came
back to like, oh, so you can make more money.
That's like, oh, good, great news. I don't spend a

(01:01:59):
lot of money, so I've got enough money. I don't
need to do that, right, And his point was like, yeah,
but you could reach more brains deeper, and that's the
idea with crunch Labs. It's like you're in the trenches.
You're not just passively watching a video. It's a really
fun toy and you're in the trenches and you get
him every month. And he was totally right. Like the
noun of letters we get from parents saying like this

(01:02:21):
has changed the way my kids sees the world sees themselves. Right.
They love it. They go out to the mailbox every
month waiting for it to come. Makes a great Christmas present.
By the way, Jay, there we go Christmas pressure.

Speaker 2 (01:02:32):
Yeah, I was about to say it's no, it sounds
like the perfect gift. I mean, I think I'll have to.
I'm gonna I'm gonna get something my niece and nephew. Okay, yeah,
I think I think they'll love it because I can
see my nephew's like ten years old, and his brain's
like that, like he wants to build stuff, he wants
to break stuff, he wants to figure things out. My
niece is more into like Gabby's doll house. Well, the

(01:02:54):
good news, Jake, we just know have you got Gabby's
doll house right more.

Speaker 1 (01:03:00):
It's called Creative Kit. So what I do is creative engineering.
The engineering part we've got covered billbox is the toys
I was saying, And then we have like a robotics one.
But like the creative part we never so we like
studied what creativity is. And now there's a version called
Creative Kit that it's like six years old, en up,
and it's a little bit of a trojan horse to
get more girls in STEM. But also it's for boys

(01:03:21):
as well, but they get a whirl every every month.
It's a different part of a little town they build.
And the important part is like it's within guide rails.
If you tell a kid give them a piece of
paper and say come up, you know, draw something, they're like, uh.
But if you say, like drawn animal doing something, really
doing their hobby, you know, in a place you wouldn't expect, Well,
now they have like a seed. Right, So it's this

(01:03:43):
idea of like the first one is a treehouse, but
then you name it's a little animal's friend that comes
with it. And then we're getting there within guidelines to
think really creatively. And what the research shows you could
watch these alpha brain waves and you're in is the
more time you spend in this space, the easier it
is to do it. So it's just like a muscle
that you develop. So it's basically giving kids time in

(01:04:04):
this space to be more creative.

Speaker 2 (01:04:06):
Do you always want your work and your products to
help kids?

Speaker 1 (01:04:10):
Like?

Speaker 2 (01:04:10):
Was that the goal for the YouTube channel from day one?
Was it like I want to help young people figure out,
young kids figure out?

Speaker 1 (01:04:16):
I don't think so, to be completely honest, like I
think it was more just like I love sharing ideas
like I love the aha moment when you learn something new,
and I love even more is like giving that to
someone else, Like here's something I was just talking about
with my partner the other day, which is such a
cool thing to do. I don't know if you've ever
done this, If you ever laying underneath a tree, yeah,

(01:04:37):
and you just look up or anything where there's like
a bunch of little things and you close one eye
and all the leaves feel like they're kind of our branches,
kind of feel like they're at the same plane because
with one eye you don't have three dimensional you know,
three D. But when you open both thighs and realize, like, oh,
now I know which leaf is in front of me
and which one is farther, Like if you've never done this,

(01:04:57):
you should do it, and it's remarked and it's just
it's immediately just like a teachable moment that shows like, oh,
like our brain, because the right eye is a little
bit different from the left, I sees the brain does
all this incredible math to tell you how far and
close something is, and just to get that moment and
then now once you know that, you're like wait with animals,

(01:05:19):
I have noticed like predators, you know, a hawk or
a lion, they have eyes on the front of their
face so that they could see three dimensional. But if
generally speaking, if you're a prey, a zebra or deer,
your eyes are on the side. They don't have the
depth reception. But now they can avoid the thing that
has three dimensions that's trying to get them right. So
it's like idea, Like when you just learn something cool

(01:05:41):
like that, just that nugget, and now you've updated your
framework for the natural world around you, is so exciting
and beautiful and addictive to me. And I love to
give that to other people. And what I found, I
especially love to give that to the to the young folks.

Speaker 2 (01:05:57):
What are you doing to constantly learn things like that?
Like where are you coming across statistics, facts, human behavior,
animal like where are you exposed to this? Where are
you finding it and discovering it in a way that's
helping you feel like you're always on the cusp of
something cool everywhere?

Speaker 1 (01:06:14):
Truly, Like I think the answer to this question, I
think what you're driving at is it kind of starts
with a curiosity, right just and observing and being like
even if there's like a weird on the side of
a building or something. It's like a pipe that comes out.
I'm like, why is that pipe there? Like, I've never
seen a build a pipe come out there on a billy,

(01:06:34):
and it'll drive me crazy, to be honest, and I
have to figure it out. But the step one with
the scientific method too, is just observation. Right, the most
interesting thing to hear in science isn't like Eureka, like
I found it. The most interesting thing in science to hear,
Like the one thing you want to hear is like,
that's interesting, Like hold on a second, right, Like that

(01:06:55):
wasn't expected. Let me double click on that and see
what's going on there. So I think part of learning
a bunch is just having a curiosity mind just asking
the question, yes, yeah, right, And I think that's what
I try and do, is like I am a fire starter.
My videos are not going to teach you everything you
need to know about the natural world. But what I
can do is I can like I can I'm a

(01:07:17):
fire start. I'll start that fire in their brain and
then they get addicted to this feeling. Right, I'm like
the Gateway drug dealer, this aha feeling, and then they
want to go out and learn more, right, and like
that that's beautiful and that's a gift that you can
give someone that will last their whole life long.

Speaker 2 (01:07:34):
How do you come up with creative ideas? Having made
a video a month for ten years, how are you
coming up with new ideas? How what's your creative process?
Do you sit down in a room lock away? Are
you on your laptop? Are you talking to people? Are
you with a team? What's your process?

Speaker 1 (01:07:51):
Can I tell you one that you bleep out on this,
but you could play it, But then I want your
reaction on camera.

Speaker 2 (01:08:01):
That's so good, that's so good, that's so good.

Speaker 1 (01:08:05):
I love that, that's so good.

Speaker 2 (01:08:07):
Why do I have to believe that I love that?

Speaker 1 (01:08:09):
Because I don't want someone to steal it? Oh right,
Oh yes, it's such a simple thing. I could tell
you what you're like, Bang, yeah, I love it. I
want to know what is right?

Speaker 4 (01:08:17):
That is amazing, so good, it's so good. So it's
just like when I can get that reaction. Like the
ideas list is long. I always thought you'd run out
of ideas, but it's like always to be a hell yes,
it has to be a hell yes.

Speaker 1 (01:08:32):
But I always tend to have like a year and
a half worth of idea, So like we have every
single video we're making in twenty twenty six already like
planned out and in process, so.

Speaker 2 (01:08:40):
You're never trying to react to what's happening in that
world or you're not. Yours is evergreen content?

Speaker 1 (01:08:44):
Evergreen?

Speaker 2 (01:08:45):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:08:45):
Never, I want it to be ever.

Speaker 2 (01:08:47):
You're not trying to react to Like, everyone loves AI
right now, so we're going to do AI. Everyone loves robotics,
so we're doing right.

Speaker 1 (01:08:52):
We can't, I mean all the videos now costs. We
don't do a video that costs less than half a
million dollars.

Speaker 2 (01:08:59):
Well every video is five yeah, because we're just like.

Speaker 1 (01:09:02):
You know, we're doing stuff that's never been done before.
So there's like a lot of R and D that
goes into making a soccer robot that moves it in
an hour.

Speaker 2 (01:09:09):
That's that's why we're the best goalkeeper that Ronaldo's ever faced.

Speaker 1 (01:09:11):
Too, for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:09:12):
It is. Yeah, that's crazy. I can't wait to see
that video.

Speaker 1 (01:09:15):
Funny, he's very competitive.

Speaker 2 (01:09:16):
Of course, I'm obsessed with a Renaudo since I was
fifteen years old because I was a United fan. So
when he came to United when he was seventeen. Yeah,
I've been a big fan for like twenty three years.
So watching I know how competitive he is, and I'm
like watching him fail is going to be an interesting Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:09:33):
His team warned us, They're like, he doesn't in the end,
like there was a way we kind of had a
built in weakness he could exploit. Yeah, and he did
a pretty good job finding it. But between you and me, Ja,
we might have like we made sure there's a weakness.

Speaker 2 (01:09:47):
You should just you just now, what you have to
do is create robots that look like humans, that are
designed like your email pro goalkeeper and sell them to
these that's the next thing. And you pull off selling
an AI computer to Barcelona Real Madrid or that's a bang, right,

(01:10:21):
So what's the creative process then? Now you planned out
that far ahead. I love the idea you just gave
me that we'll bleep up. But what how how does that?
Obviously that one makes sense, and you're like, the thing
about good ideas is when you hear them, you go,
of course, but coming up with it is not that easy.

Speaker 1 (01:10:38):
Yeah, I would say, and I don't have a good
answer for this, no, But except to say because I
get asked this a lot. Right, It's like, I think
it goes back to just like my brain is always
on right. The inspiration for ideas can come, you know,
and and it's just from a conversation I'm having with someone,
or I just read something on Reddit, or I'm driving

(01:10:58):
down the free when I'm like, or I did this,
you know for I'll give you two examples. One, I
did this obstacle course for squirrels in my backyard that's
kind of popular on the channel right around COVID, and
I was, you know, they were stealing my bird seed
or so it's like all right, but they were stealing
my bird seed. So it's like, you know what, I'm
gonna make them earn it. So I made an eight
part in Ninja Warrior Ops of course, and put the
bird seed at the end, and sure enough they solved it.

(01:11:20):
It was very entertaining, but like the idea for that
came for me just laying in bed and hearing them
on the roof and knowing this my birthday, I was like,
hold on, I just do like man versus Animal, Engineer
versus Animal or another one. I made this glitter Bomb
series where like someone legitimately stole a package from my porch.
I felt really sad. It was a sliding green shelled
Super Mario Brothers. It's stung. And then I was like,

(01:11:43):
hold on a second, like if anyone could do something
about these porch pirate punks, It's like, I hope put
a rover on Mars. I could design something. So then
it's like four phones, cup of glitter, we track it,
there's fart spray. It's like a whole thing, right, And
eventually that one took us all the way to we
shut down like three scam call centers in India by

(01:12:03):
tracking them down and glitter bombing them and doing all
these other pranks and then putting that video out in
the world. It gets one hundred million views with like
a bright spotlight and we shut them down. So it's like, again,
I couldn't have predicted you would land there. Ye, if
you just follow the natural steps, it just happens.

Speaker 2 (01:12:19):
Is there a video that you did? Could you throw it?
But you did it because you just had to put
something out on you Like it's a terrible idea, but
then it turned out to be amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:12:25):
Yeah. I did a video on bedbugs because I just thought,
they're fascinating, like, what is up with bedbugs? They like
suck human blood and if you if you see bedbugs,
they have to be fed like every three days. If
you see a bed bug in your house, that means
they fed on you. All they can eat is blood.
And so it's like there's just a lot about them
that's fascinating. And my team was like, this is going

(01:12:47):
to kill the channel. No one's gonna watch this, And
I was just so curious about it, right, so I
just went down the rabbit hole deep and it turned
out to be, like, I think, an interesting piece of
content that has like I think eighty million views a something. Wow,
that's so I think if you just approach it with
curiosity and legitimately, like you know, I don't pre write

(01:13:08):
my videos. If I have an idea, I go learn
about it, and then once we have the footage, it's like,
all right, what's the story here?

Speaker 2 (01:13:15):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:13:15):
And I think if you have the right attitude, there's
always a really cool story to find.

Speaker 2 (01:13:20):
Yeah. Absolutely absolutely. What's a question that you still don't
have the answer to but you can't stop thinking about.
Do you ever get into that loop of like I
wish I understood how this worked.

Speaker 1 (01:13:31):
I don't know. There's like kind of unanswerable questions like
where is all the life in the unit? Like if
life exists here? Especially if so NASA's there's a moon
call and sell it us in our in our solar
system that has a molten lava core and the outside
is ice, right, water water, frozen water. So somewhere between

(01:13:54):
the molten lava core and that and that surface, there's
a seventy degree ocean. It's warm, it's water, it's that's
where life form. We know that's where life form on
this planet. So NASA's building a probe to go out there. Essentially,
we're gonna drill through the ice. We're gonna put a
submarine down there and basically see what eats it, right,
and if if something is there for life to exist

(01:14:17):
twice in our own solar system kind of independently, then
it's like, where is all the rest of life in
this huge, huge, huge universe? Right, there's I think something
like there's a million times more stars. Then there are
grains of sand on the whole planet, the bottom of
the ocean. I mean, think about the net. The last

(01:14:37):
time you picked up a handful of sand. Every one
of those sand pieces represents a million stars. I'm talking
bottom of the ocean.

Speaker 2 (01:14:47):
How unfastable, completely unfamal.

Speaker 1 (01:14:50):
It's unfathomable. So but then like it's called Fermi's paradox,
but there's a few hypotheses of like, well, then why
don't we see other signs of life in the universe?
And it's a very fat If you want a fascinating
rabbit hole, look up Fermi's paradox.

Speaker 2 (01:15:04):
What if you learn so far is it that life
form looks different? We can't see it? Is it?

Speaker 1 (01:15:09):
Well, we don't know. But like some of the hypothets,
some of the hypotheses on why we don't know is
like it could be there's like super predator civilization. There's
super predator organisms out there that as soon as you
get past a certain point, then like, okay, now this

(01:15:30):
is a problem. We're going to go take care of
these people. So they extinguish life if it gets too high,
because it could be a threat. It could be. Another
one is like intelligence is get to a glass ceiling
where they destroy themselves. When you have the energy that
can take you to interstell or to another system, well
you could probably use that energy on yourself. And you

(01:15:51):
know when we a lot of organisms fight each other,
and you know, that could be a pretty darn good
thing for us to be looking at as a as
a civilization ourselves. Right, Like where you just get too
hard and then it just it collapses in on itself
is another hypothesis. One is like they know about us,
but it's we're kind of like an endangered species, like
an unconfident tribe in the Amazon. So they're like, sh

(01:16:13):
just like leave alone. We're like so basically in a
zoo over here.

Speaker 2 (01:16:16):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:16:16):
So there's all these like really fun hypotheses on what
could be the explanation as to why.

Speaker 2 (01:16:22):
So that's good. Yeah, that's what keeps you up and night.

Speaker 1 (01:16:24):
Yeah, I think it's a fun Those kinds of things
are like fun to think about.

Speaker 2 (01:16:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:16:27):
Absolutely, But next time you are near sand, truly think
of me, Jay, take a scoop of that sand and
just look at how many grains of sand that each
one of those is a star with planets, Like the potential.
I don't know, that's just such a it breaks your brain,
but it's such a beautiful thought of like the potential
of life.

Speaker 2 (01:16:47):
You've been to space yet, right, not yet Yeah, okaya.

Speaker 1 (01:16:50):
No, Yeah, there's some plans on the horizon. You'll go
to space too, Like I think it's gonna come pretty commonplace.
Like you can get to Australian like I think ninety
minutes through space. So that's there's there's a financial incentive
to travel quickly.

Speaker 2 (01:17:07):
Yeah, absolutely, nineteen minutes to Australia from La Yeah. Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:17:11):
You basically just go up, go over fast and the
Earth also moves a little bit and you come back down.

Speaker 2 (01:17:16):
That's crazy, that's crazy nineteen minutes. Yeah, we had someone
done that yet.

Speaker 1 (01:17:21):
No, but like that that's the math, right, I mean
we don't have the ability southwest for space hasn't been invented,
but like essentially that wherever there's like a lot of
financial incentive to do a thing like innovation will be
placed towards that.

Speaker 2 (01:17:36):
Yeah. So what do you get excited about with what's
happening with technology with AI with discuss is there anything
that you get super excited about right now? And what
do you get scared about on the other end or
things you get worried about.

Speaker 1 (01:17:48):
There's a famous sort of one of the early thinkers
and this in twenty fifteen, I was talking with all
my buddies about this about AI. Nick Bostrom wrote this
book about superintelligence and his the beginning analogy to the
book is like, imagine there's some sparrows and they find
the egg of an owl. Just so you know, owls
eat sparrows, right, so we're all clear. Then they're like, hey,

(01:18:09):
we're going to raise this owl. We're gonna put raise
them in our nest, and it's gonna love us, and
then we can use the owl to like go hunt
for us. We're going to use the owl to do
you know, all these things that will be really useful.
And you know, of course if you just carry that,
if that actually happens, the owl is born thanks to
the sparrows for incubating it. But it doesn't end well

(01:18:30):
with a sparrow. That's a real concern. I share that
concern with like a lot of people. That could be
an outcome of AI. I do think it the best
case scenario, though I think there are some upsides where
it's like it solves a lot of the scarcity thing,
a lot of the wars and terrible things that have
happened in you know, our history of civilization is a

(01:18:52):
scarcity thing. So if unlimited energy and resources and stuff
and something that helps allocate those resources, that could be good. Right,
It could reduce human suffering a lot. So I mean,
nobody really knows, Jay, Like I don't know. I'm curious
where you like where you land on this.

Speaker 2 (01:19:10):
The question I get a lot is do I think
AI will ever have a soul? And my response is,
I don't know if AI will ever have a soul.
I just hope that people building it have a soul
because ultimately, to me, it's the Frankenstein piece of anything
we make becomes us, and there's a part of us
that's within it. And so if we're scared of an

(01:19:30):
ability that humans have, then we'll be scared of the more, bigger,
powerful thing that we create that has more of it
in it. And so to me, it's more about again,
I think we've I think there's that beautiful statement by
Mark Dwain where he said that history never repeats itself,
but it always rhymes. And I think we've had enough
experiences in history with technology, Like let's take social media

(01:19:53):
for example. It started, we didn't really care about how
it was going to affect us. Everyone had it, and
now we're talking about mental health kids, phones, not just
social media phones technology early on in life, right, and
it's like, we know that that's how everything goes. So
scare mongering doesn't work because AI's here to stay. It's
not disappearing tomorrow. So trying to scare everyone from it

(01:20:16):
is not going to help because it's going to be here.
So I don't love the fear factor piece because it
doesn't solve the problem. But the fear factor piece should
lead us to being more informed and prepared for what
do we do about it when? So, for example, hindsight
is twenty twenty. If we could go back to two
thousand and four when Facebook was created, and YouTube in

(01:20:38):
twenty ten or two thousand and nine.

Speaker 1 (01:20:40):
Yeah, I think they acquired it or something.

Speaker 2 (01:20:44):
Yeah Google, Yeah, so yeah, yeah, so you have all
of that and then. But my point's like, if you
could go back then and go, okay, let's make some guardrails.
Kids shouldn't be allowed a phone by this age, social
media should have verified access. I'm making up things right now,
but the point is, how do you prepare for the
things that to come? Rather than go all right, we'll

(01:21:05):
just deal with the whole fact that generations have mental
health issues now and now we're dealing with the reactive
way I think humans are. We kind of set ourselves
up for failure every time.

Speaker 1 (01:21:15):
Yeah, I mean it's just so hard without the evidence
right to convince someone at Facebook when money's to be made, right,
Like I completely agree with you. Yeah, but like there's
just so many unknowns, unknowns.

Speaker 2 (01:21:29):
Yeah, yeah, it's like how do you not how it's
not about reducing innovation or doing something, it's how do
we protect the vulnerable? And so if we're saying that
kids under a certain age are vulnerable to X y
Z in the same way as you know, like cigarettes
or alcohol or you know, whatever it is, it's like
we agree, we all agree that until this point your

(01:21:50):
brain has not developed yet. What should we allow and
not allow? You know, Like kids are watching you having
the best time ever, Like it's amazing. I wish more
people watching you, And but how do you regulate the
things that are not doing what you're doing?

Speaker 1 (01:22:01):
I would say though, Like I think for people listening,
I think it could feel very doomsday. You hear really
scary things, and it's like, at the end of the day,
it's such a life hack to just control what's in
your sphere of influence.

Speaker 2 (01:22:14):
Yeah, of course.

Speaker 1 (01:22:15):
And it's like I think, you know, when I get
like that and I get nervous, like, well, what can
I do to move the needle in my own sphere
of influence? And you know, I'm not creating an AI company,
so it's like it's a little bit out of my
hands in that sense.

Speaker 2 (01:22:30):
But it's like, well, I think you I mean, I
was going to bring this up anyway, and it connects
to what you're saying right now. I mean, I know
you and Jimmy have partnered multiple times and doing incredible
things for our planet.

Speaker 1 (01:22:40):
Yeah, which thank.

Speaker 2 (01:22:40):
You for being just such. You know, whenever people are
like we made the right people famous, I'm like, yeah,
we did. Like you know, it's it's amazing to see
you guys using your platform to do the thing that
inspiring all these kids and families and parents, and it's
all young people that following you know, both of you,
and for you to galvanize, whether it's Kai and you know,

(01:23:01):
all the guys who are in the space and all
the biggest creators and celebrities jumping in and you know,
I think this year you raised what forty million.

Speaker 1 (01:23:09):
Forty million, Yeah, so the first year we did this
is mister BC, right, we did Team Tree, so we
did twenty million dollars to plant twenty million trees. And
then a few years later we did Team Water thirty.

Speaker 2 (01:23:19):
Million dollars to cleaning up the beaches.

Speaker 1 (01:23:21):
Thirty million pounds of trash from the oceans. And then
this year the audacious goal of forty million dollars to
give two million people clean drinking water for decades, and
we did it. But what's the cool thing about that,
Jay is the median donation was like five dollars.

Speaker 2 (01:23:36):
It's amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:23:36):
So that's that's tooth fairy money, that's big sale money. Right.
There were some big donors in there, but like on
average it was five dollars. And what's so cool about
that is then you know they're thinking like global citizens now,
Like they could have spent that on five dollars on
candy on Pokemon cards, but they spent it on someone
else to get clean drinking water for five years again

(01:23:58):
kind of planting seeds. It's like someone who now thinks
that way, who you know, picks up trash now because
they see it because they're on Team Ce's right, they
don't they don't litter. They take care of the environment
because they're on team trees like that that kind of impact.
This is why I love working with young people. It's
like it's the same thing with like going to another planet,
like the trajectory you have. In fact, there's motors we

(01:24:21):
have on these on these on these spacecraft were call
the mouse fart motors where it's like it's the tiniest
little poof because that difference in trajectory ninety million miles
away is the difference of hitting a planet and missing
by one hundred million miles, right, So it's like the
same might be like a sort of with life. And
this is why I love young folks. Like the clay

(01:24:43):
isn't hardened yet and so they're impressionable. And at that age,
I think we've evolved to think our parents are dumb,
like that's so you leave the tribe like that's in
our brain. So to be a voice that can be there,
to be like hey, you know, to guide in a
way that even parents can't because they're willing to listen
and to me is kind of a big responsibility and

(01:25:04):
one that you know, I love opportunities to flex that muscle.

Speaker 2 (01:25:08):
I love that. Man, it's amazing. It's incredible watching you
both do it, and the fact that you keep taking
on a bigger challenge every year and killing it. Yeah,
it's saying such a beautiful example. It's awesome to see
you know, you guys could be doing anything as well,
and to see you both focus on meaningful challenges in
the world and issues in the world and helping galvanize

(01:25:28):
so many.

Speaker 1 (01:25:29):
Yeah, that's it, galvanize a bunch of other creators. I mean,
at the end of the day, it only works because
so many y.

Speaker 2 (01:25:33):
Yeah, I mean, but you guys heading, No, for sure.
I love that you get everyone involved, but you need
a couple of people of Spearhead and you guys do
an amazing job of that. So Mark, it's been amazing
getting to know you more to Yeah, it's been I
feel like I've I've laughed, I've nearly cried, I've definitely
you definitely got me thinking and you definitely got me

(01:25:53):
even just it's It's what I love is when you
meet someone in this format where they're not on screen
in their world and you totally have an infectious energy
about the world and curiosity and science and like you
got me excited, like I'm like I need to be
I need to be reading more of what you're doing.
And that's the best feeling for me where I'm like,

(01:26:15):
oh no, you live, you breathe it, you sleep it,
it's it's who you are. And then when someone's around you,
it's like I'm inspired by everything you're fascinated by and
it's you know, let as spark as you were saying,
like lighting a fire.

Speaker 1 (01:26:27):
Like I love to hear it. My favorite thing. I
love that feeling. I love giving that feeling to others.
So thank you for the time.

Speaker 2 (01:26:33):
Yeah, Mark. I end every episode of On Purpose with
the final five. We ask these every guest. The questions
have to be answered in one word to one sentence maximum,
So Mark Robert, these are your final five. Question Number
one is what's the best advice you've ever heard or received?

Speaker 1 (01:26:47):
This too shall pass like, which is like it's it,
it will get easier, but also you're not as good
as if things are awesome, like it will come back
down as well. So the regression to me, I have
to answer in like a sentence you.

Speaker 2 (01:27:02):
That's fine, that's why. Sentence question number two, what's the
worst advice you ever had? Or receive, like.

Speaker 1 (01:27:11):
Don't go to bed angry, like you're just the idea,
like go to bed, just go to bed. You're an
emotional mind frame, like let it pass with anything, not
even with the partner, just like let it pass and
hit it when you're not thinking with your lizard brain.

Speaker 2 (01:27:25):
Yeah, yeah it's true. Actually yeah it's And also sleep
is good for you, So if you're gonna stay up angry,
it's like probably not gonna help. Question number three, What's
something you learned recently that blew your mind?

Speaker 1 (01:27:38):
That spider's legs are hydraulic, which is why I didn't
know that. This is why when they die they're curled up.
It's because there's no more pressure in the system. Basically
they put fluid into it. So you can actually take
a syringe and put into a spider's back and put
air into it and their legs will open and expand.

Speaker 2 (01:27:56):
Wow. No, no, what's something you've recently learned about yourself?
Question number four that like.

Speaker 1 (01:28:06):
If I'm having a thought that's not productive, like rumination
or like perseverating on a thing, I want to think
it away and you aren't. Your thoughts like your mind
is the sky, not the weather. And if you just
don't give it life like it'll pass. Yeah, and you
don't have to think about it, right, that's hard to do.

(01:28:26):
But like I mean, you know this with meditation, Like
you know this better than anyone as an engineer. I
had to learn this, you know, on my own.

Speaker 2 (01:28:34):
Yeah. No, it's a beautiful thing to remember though that
don't believe everything you think and your thoughts are not true.
And absolutely you're the sky not the clouds. And yeah, no, beautiful.
Fifth and final question, we asked this that every guest
who's ever been on the show, if you could create
one law that everyone in the world had to follow,
what would it be, Apart from buy crunch Labs.

Speaker 1 (01:28:55):
For christ, Before you can share a piece of social
media information that makes you angry, you have to explain
what a reasonable, thoughtful person on the other side of
that argument.

Speaker 2 (01:29:09):
Would say, Oh, that's good.

Speaker 1 (01:29:11):
And if you can do that and put that into
the prompt, then you're allowed to hit share.

Speaker 2 (01:29:15):
That's good.

Speaker 1 (01:29:16):
I think that would solve like ninety nine percent of
the world's problems.

Speaker 2 (01:29:20):
I love that. I was giving a presentation recently. Kerry
Washington invite me to speak at her Day of Unreasonable conversations,
which is all about sparking better conversation. And I had
to do a presentation on how do we have healthier
conversations online? And there was a statistic I did some
research that found that when people had to read before

(01:29:40):
they retweet, it dropped shares by up to seventy percent. Wow,
because people don't read what they share, so you're going
even one step further to comprehend and to actually understand
a different perspective. But even read before retweet, like it
just dropped shares, you know. And so yeah, I love

(01:30:01):
your lawyer. It's a great one. It's a really really
great one because yeah, it would change so much. Mark,
it has been amazing talking to you today. For the
two people who have never seen a Mark Robot video,
make sure you go subscribe to Box Channels. I am
definitely getting some of the gifts for my crunch Labs.
I am definitely getting some of the crunch Labs for

(01:30:22):
my niece and nephew this Christmas. I think they're going
to love it. I can't wait. And Mark, thank you
for so much for how you show up your creativity
coming on the show today and sharing so openly and
vulnerably and I look forward to getting to know you better. Man.
Thank you so much. If this is the year that
you're trying to get creative, you're trying to build more,

(01:30:43):
I need you to listen to this episode with Rick
Rubin on how to break into your most creative self,
how to use unconventional methods that lead to success, and
the secret to genuinely loving what you do. If you're
trying to find your passion and your lane, Rick Rubin
episode is the one for you.

Speaker 1 (01:31:02):
Just because I like it, that doesn't give it any value,
Like as an artist, if you like it, that's all
of the value. That's the success comes when you say
I like this enough for other people to see it.

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