Adriel Lubarsky: Founder of Riveter - Helping Americans Thrive In Unemployment

Adriel: 85% of jobs come from networking. There's this hidden job market people like to talk about, which is things that are not posted there's even the jobs that are posted are almost always going to go to the person who reached out to the hiring manager or someone else at the company or whatever. You've got to network and you've got to do it on both cylinders.

Kyle: Hello, and welcome to the Louis and Kyle Show. And there'll be podcasts for Louis and I are documenting our journey while we're learning about entrepreneurship, investing self-education and fitness through interviews of inspiring mentors. Today, we have somebody who's covered all of those four topics really well. Adriel Lubarsky. Louis. Why don't you introduce them a little bit?
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Louis: Our friend, Joe Puccio, who we brought on an Episode 16, the creator of Coursicle, we asked him if he knew anybody and we should be talking to he right off the bat he said we got to talk to us for an Adriel because he's met probably more people than anyone else Joe's ever known.

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Adriel was unemployed, and he knew that, you know, more often than not jobs come from people, not from just applying to millions of things on the internet.
So he figured if he could be as many people as possible through fulltime networking as an unemployed person, you'd be more likely to have access to cool opportunities and that, um, And that period of unemployment for him made him realize that other people would probably benefit from being inspired to take on similar projects.
And that's what led them to start the company he talks about in this interview Riveter, which basically is exactly that a company that provides resources and education and discounts to personal development resources for people who are unemployed to grow themselves and to be more likely to get exciting opportunities.
Kyle: And you can really feel through this interview and through his passion, just how much she cares about this period of time and how he believes that it can be something that's transformative for or unemployed people. You know, most of the time people think about being unemployed as a horrible. Time. It's like, you don't have any money, you

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really scrambling, but he believes that it can be a time of growth and a time for you to be able to make yourself the person that you can be in order to, to get the job that you want or be the person that you want.
And that's what Riveter is trying to do is to supply these people that are unemployed with the, uh, opportunities to make that happen. And it's, it's really cool conversation and I'm excited for you all to listen to it.

Louis: Hey, Adriel. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm super excited to chat with you.

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Adriel: Hi, the Louis and Kyle Show. This is fun.

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Louis:  so first question, and this is the first time I've opened the show with someone's Instagram bio as a question. Um, really liked your bio and I was hoping you could explain it for us.
Uh, it sometimes I believe in as many as six impossible things before breakfast, what do you mean by that? Like what does, does that mean? What is that your like your tagline on social
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Adriel: Oh, we're getting into this earlier than I would have expected it did. It's Alice In Wonderland Louis. It's Alice In Wonderland

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Uh, of my favorite quotes from my all time favorite book, I believe in as many as six impossible things, right. For breakfast. If we were in my

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home in California. Yeah. You'd actually see an engraved piece of wood where I carved that and I keep it next to my desk at all times. I think to me, I believe in as many as six impossible things before breakfast means.
There's very little that, you know, for sure.

Uh, very little that is set in stone. There's very little that you cannot accomplish if you really want to do it. And a little bit of whimsical illness, a little bit of adventure, a little bit of mystery, a little bit of shooting for the stars takes you a long way.
And, uh, it's a quote that stuck with me for a very, very long time. Since the first time I read that book and. Um, I will, preach it and shattered off the rooftops until I'm blue in the face. Well, I
Louis: Was, I was willing to give you credit for that quote, but
Adriel: Not, not as clever as Louis Carroll, unfortunately.
Louis: Okay, well, that's interesting the way your friend got in terms of kind of the first set of questions we want to ask you about uncertainty and possibility. And a lot of that is related to unemployment, which is where we want to spend. The first section of this Show is talking about, you know, the company you

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started going through, what you are our experience was that led you to create this company.
And then some of like,
Adriel: You know, the content and the actual ideas that you're
Louis: Promoting to the company, but could you walk us
Adriel: Kind of, to.
Louis: What Riveter is and how it got started and related, starting at, you know, your join journey being unemployed.
Adriel: Sure. So Riveters HR for the unemployed, we negotiate, discounted and free access to resources that help people turn unemployment into the most positive and productive period of their lives, where it started.
There's a few different ways. So approach the Jonah journey, um, slightly, slightly shorter version, uh, fact that my last job was in self driving cars. I loved it. I thought it was most interesting work in the world. We were building self-driving delivery cars. We were really good at it. And we had the first big commercial deals in the entire autonomous vehicle industry.
Um, cars on the road actually making money before anyone else in the industry. And it was a lot of fun. I once got a call from somebody who left the message and the message was when I listened to a later is, Hey,

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Adriel, uh, is John. I've been a ups driver for 30 years. I saw your car on the road, yourself, driving delivery car.
And I wish you guys all luck, but I gotta let you know. It scared the shit out of me. And I hope you guys succeed. Hope everyone does well, but I want you to know you're going to take away a lot of jobs. Good luck. And he left me that message. Uh, really, it really shook me. This was in the spring of 2018.
I called them back. We talked on the phone, I actually offered him a job to come work for us. Uh, very anti robot and they didn't want to, but it led me down a path of eating a lot, learning a lot, talking a lot about, yeah. Silicon Valley, favorite of automation, the future of work. Uh, question of, well, what happened when a factory in Eastern Michigan, where cars are made is an 8,000 people used to work is shut down because all of a sudden you could do that same job with 80 people and a bunch of robots.
What

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happens to those jobs? What happens to those communities? What happens to those people? Because those jobs aren't coming back, those are all of a sudden done by robots and more and more will be done faster and faster by automation. So learning about all this late last year, um, of books, the most influential, one of which was AI superpowers by Kai Fu Lee.

Uh, started thinking about, well, how do you take care of these people who are being impacted by automation at a rate faster than that? Anybody can adapt to at a rate faster than you could just rescale for at a rate faster than you can make the argument that, Oh, it's okay. Like a truck driver whose job has automated away by autonomous trucking company.
They'll just learn to be a UX designer or they'll have to rescale and work in customer service.
Louis: I think
Adriel: That's the most ridiculous thing. I don't know if you guys have ever met a truck driver, but you're not going to put them into a customer service job. You're not going to retrain them to be a tech sales person.
You're just not going to do that. These people are being impacted and they're not going to

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adapt as quickly as techno utopia might say so early this year and about January. We started talking to a lot of unemployed people before COVID believe it or not started talking to a lot of unemployed people. A lot of people who jobs were automated away talking about their problems in early March, still before COVID we said, all right, let's do this.
Let's find a company that helps the people most impacted by AI and robotics. By connecting them to the companies and people who are most benefited by AI and robotics. And we're going to do that by negotiating a lot of discounts by making life cheaper for unemployed people, by giving them access to better resources, by giving them a positive community by redefining, um, value that they bring in a society.
And we started doing that in March. The day we launched or the day we got have agreed. COVID was not a thing about a week later, there are rumors of COVID and about two weeks later, a million people
Louis: Were laid off
Adriel: And that number only continued to go
Kyle: Well, it's

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certainly a good time to start a company for unemployed people.
Uh, that, that exponential graph that you can look at for the March and April unemployment. The fact that you were right before, that is crazy. Um, agree. You know, like automation is coming and going from coal to code is just not a realistic thing that's going to happen. But you had a period of unemployment before your job with, um, self driving car company.
Right. And that a very, uh, very impactful for you. So can you tell us a little bit about that period of time and how you maximize your time being unemployed and maybe how, um, when that guy called you and told you that you're going to change the role for a lot of people's, like they might be unemployed because of the work
Louis: That you're doing.
Adriel: Yeah. So, um, four years ago, um, on a startup. Yeah, failed and I moved

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back into my parents. And well, first I traveled around South America for about five weeks. And then I moved back in with my parents and I told myself that I'm not going to get a job for six months. I just made that promise to myself.
I finished the startup in June. We wound it down on it's almost. So I'm not getting another job in that year. And the reason I did that is because I've noticed a lot, my friends, especially those who took more traditional paths out of college and finance or consulting or graduate schools, a lot of them went from thing to thing to thing.
And didn't speak with the same enthusiasm that I would like to be speaking about my work, about my impact, about what mattered to me. They had a lot of other things going for that. Um, of shit from my friends fairly often for talking like this, but they weren't quite speaking in the way I want it to be speaking about things.
So I told myself I'm going to be unemployed, uh, gainfully unemployed, uh, months. And in that time, all I did was learn and talk to people. I had a podcast just like you guys, and every single week, I'll try to release it.

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Um, just started taking classes, picked up skills, started a little, wouldn't even call it a company, a little project marketing for comedy clubs.
Cause I was loves comedy and it was fun. And I, I want it to help now and wants to learn to use WordPress over the period that first four months when I was doing probably 30 hours a week of networking. I, I just try to understand myself more. I tried to figure out what my impact should be. I try to figure out what was important to me.
And it was some days was fantastic. You know, I had a great day where I'd, I'd wake up, buddy breakfast. I'd exercise. I'd read. I'd go to an event. I'd meet cool people. I put out a podcast. I felt great. I I'd read good books. It was awesome. Some days were brutal. I mean, some days you just wake up and you're like, shit, I don't really know what to be doing on my time, but I tell myself I got to keep going.
And in that period of time, I was able to narrow what it was. I want it to work on next as much as possible. I set very clear parameters for myself. At that time when I'd sat because of,

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I told myself I wanted to work in transportation, ideally self driving cars. I'd been in some really bad car accidents before, too.
That almost killed me a couple more that I left a couple of bruises and I told myself transportation's important. Startups are important. Making an impact on people's lives is valuable. And the best way I can do that is by finding a job in New York or in San Francisco. And transportation, ideally self driving cars at a startup that has fewer than 20 people and more than $2 million raised, I was very specific.
And when you're that specific, you've only got a couple of options. Uh, I very fortunate enough to get a job purely through networking with one of those options and moved out to the Bay area in early January to work on that. What I take from that experience. Is that. And I should also admit, I mean, I have a much higher risk profile than, than many others.
Um, I there's some receptors missing in my brain for what makes sense in life. But what I take from that as patients leads to a lot of good things that

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understanding yourself and taking the time to really know what it is, you do value and you care about is one of the best investments you can make for your career.
Because my. Professional life really, really began to take a positive turn after this period of time in which I got you say, what matters to me? What should I be spending my time on? So, you know, now that I work in the unemployment space, trying to figure out how can I help people figure out what matters to them?
How can I help people spend this period of time of unemployment, which in good economies often lasts four to six months. Anyway,

uh, answer needs to be that patient's matters. That introspection matters. That the people around you matter and trying to create the infrastructure for people to be able to navigate this period of time.
A lot more cleanly, a lot more successfully than I ever did, um, is, a task that both from my own experience personally, and also from more academic things, just learning, watching, reading, I'm proud to be doing.
Louis: That's awesome. I liked that whole story

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beginning to end. It was just a really motivating and Showed us some of the clear reasons why you're the right person to be in this situation and give some explanation. So, you know, you didn't just come up with this out of thin air and it wasn't because of COVID.
And obviously we debunked that hypothesis just with the chronology of things. Otherwise, you would just be doing very, very well as a predictor of the impossible, but, so how do you kind of translate some of those ideals or those practices through your company to encourage people to engage in productive introspection and identify those best fit opportunities for them in those next steps that are logical for them to be taking, to maximize their unemployment the same way as you did it.
Yeah,
Adriel: Well, one of the first important things, just taking a step back and talking about startups is the eagerness of founders to do too much. And I fall into this trap as often as anybody else. Um, passionate about something, you think you have every idea about how to fix that thing. You think you've got the answers and we've got a couple of, hopefully, otherwise you're working on

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something wrong, but stretching yourself too thin and fixing too many problems at once.
All driven by passion and enthusiasm. And, uh, know, customer feedback is dangerous, is risky. You're going to stretch yourself too thin and people will come to you. You're only going to be, you know, you're you a founder or a tail, uh, raise any money, even when you raise it money, maybe, I don't know, a couple of people, people need to come to you and they need to know what they're going to get from you.
So there's a lot of ideas that we have that we're not doing. We're not going, we need to be doing, but we really want to be doing among them. You know, we want to create a Google calendar for the unemployed, which has to click and drag boxes away to spend your time. We want to create accountability circles where people can get together for daily standups and support each other through unemployment, find
Louis: Positivity, things
Adriel: Like that.
All these different products series that we love to work on, but we're not the one thing we do. The one message we want to get across to anyone considering becoming one of our users is that we negotiate free and discounted access to

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resources that will help you, uh, employment into a positive and productive experience.
The way we do all the things that I want to be doing. The one way we do that is when you log on, you see these four categories. Wellness education, finance, and career. We say these are the four pillars on employment. And along that foundation of actually your unemployment basic, did you apply for unemployment?
Did you get health insurance? You know, you can't be successful unless you've taken care of the basics. So you've got this foundation of unemployment or health insurance, but then you've got these four pillars, wellness, education, finance, and career. And in each one of those we're working with the best companies in those spaces.
To get our members, unemployed people, a discount or free access to their services. We go to better help the top therapy company in the country. And we said, Hey, employ people need your service, but they can't, they shouldn't be paying for it. They need you to help them out. So they said, okay, great. Any Riveter member gets a month free, plus a 30% discount for

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eternity because we're here to support you.
In education. We want to you to meet the top online, uh,  And we said, Hey, education isn't as important for anyone as it is for somebody, the unemployed who trying to prove themselves. So trying to upscale is trying to change career paths, but they can't afford your high prices. So they took 85% off dozens and dozens of courses.
And same thing with a bunch of other educators and stuff. I think in the finance space, we have budgeting app that you normally have to pay for every month that are free. Uh, financial advisors who will work with you and give you a free two hour consultation that only costs hundreds of dollars in the career space from resume writers to a networking event, which costs 80 bucks a month.
But we went to them and said, nobody needs you more. Nobody can benefit more from you than unemployed people, but you've got to support them. You got to help them out so that they can get themselves out of this top situation using your resource. And they all said, yes. So that's the approach we're taking.
We're saying there's a million things we

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want to be doing. But the one thing we do is we're going to get unemployed. People discounts to things that'll help them live more positively and productively.
Kyle: So are you actively. Um, these things work together, cumulatively to try to get them back into the workforce?
Adriel: The hope is yes. So actually, uh, know, I was two minutes late to this call and that's cause I was on the phone with a user and the user was telling me, Hey, I love your site. Cool resources used one of them. I'm confused. Where do I add my resume? Right. Where do I, where do I get in touch with the recruiter?
Who's going to get me a job. And my answer was, Hey, we don't do that yet. We're not actively trying to help you get a job. There's a million companies that do that. And that's super counter-intuitive Kyle. And I don't know if it's right or wrong. Yeah. I'm still waiting to be proven wrong on this one. But my thought was this.
Every tech company in the recruiting space and the world has a box that says, upload your resume will be shared with a thousand recruiters at leading companies. We work with Google, Dropbox, Facebook, and, and they do that. And you upload your

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resume and you never hear back because 50,000 other people uploaded their resume this week and 50,000 other people haven't heard that.
So we said, we are not going to be doing that. We're going to be doing the exact opposite. Everyone's zigging. We're going to Zack and. So when you asked the question of do all these things, help people get a job, all these things, we're not going to put your name in a box, that'll be get a job, but we're saying this Kyle, if you're unemployed and you come to us, you know, or we are telling you that if you take care of your wellness, if you take classes and certify and tell your story, if your finances earn a good position, and if you do, what's important for your career, which is networking, networking, networking.
And mean do in a lot of groups and you take care of you, fix your resume and you do that. Well then yeah, you'll be in a position to get the job. But if you go talk to a recruiter and you pay a thousand bucks for a recruiter, you're distracted. Cause you're sick. You're not sure if you're gonna make next month's rent.
You have the same skillset you had a year ago

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and you haven't met anyone because you've just been sitting there in front of your computer, applying to jobs. You're also not going to get a job. So we're letting all the other companies focus on that interaction, that interface with companies, putting a candidates in front of companies, and we're going to take care of the foundational.
How do you live your life? How do you spend your time when you're unemployed? It's a, it's a bet. It's a bet. And we'll see if it's the right one or wrong one.
Louis: I really like that name. It's identifying a potential bottleneck in the space and not, there's no value in providing the same value as everyone else.
You know, you can just as easily find the best companies that do recruiting in a way that you're ideologically on the same page with, and just have that become a partner or a referral or something like that. So that makes a ton of sense.
Adriel: Your previous guests, West cow, who, uh, awesome. Kao West kale, I think, uh, was talking on your podcast about being spiky.
Right. You gotta be spiky. You gotta have a one thing. That's like, what the heck is that spike sticking out of their head?

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You're well rounded. That's not super helpful. Cause everyone's well-rounded and people are just gonna, you know, water's gonna work, but if you're spike, if you've got this one weird thing, at least you'll attract somebody.
Yeah, at least you're going to get somebody's attention. The self driving car thing was the same thing. I joined the self driving car industry rules frothier than ever. Everybody was raising a billion dollars. Everybody said self-driving for general motors, Chrysler Volkswagen, Google, Amazon, Apple, everyone says self driving cars actively on the road by 2020.
We said, we are not going to be a self driving car, moving people. We are not moving people. We're never moving people. Everyone said what? You got to move people. We said, absolutely not. We are moving boxes. We are moving things.
Louis: And even within things,
Adriel: We got spiked here. We said, we don't move anything. We're not moving food.
We're not doing burritos. We did groceries for a little bit and decided we don't like it. We're not doing that. We moved auto parts. We are a self driving delivery company for the auto parts industry. We had a one spike. We said, all

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we do is this. And that's where we found success. Everybody else. It was the well-rounded where the self-driving everything company, our AI stack is going to be better than your AI stack.
We said, we're not fighting that fight. Everyone else is going to have their blood bath over here. We're going to be this one person. Saying, there's one message of read. It are the self driving delivery car company. And I hope to be able to do the same thing I hear with Riveter, which is everybody is fighting this bloodbath of can we get people jobs and get people jobs, which is incredibly important and incredibly challenging.
So we're saying we're not going to win there. We could be clever. We could win a couple of customers, but we're never going to be companies who have been trying to do it is for decades. We got to do something different. And if we do that different thing well enough. Then eventually we'll be able to branch out into the other stuff, but our goal is not to be better.
It's to be different.
Louis: So, so what does the longterm vision look like for that? Because, I mean, it sounds like you've done a fairly good job in the short term of past six, to say six to eight months of landing. Some very

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clearly positively beneficial discounts in those four pillars of wellbeing and productivity during unemployment.
But what's the longterm goal look like for that like five years out, let's say.
Adriel: Yeah. Um, there's
Louis: That we're not in a pandemic five years from now.
Adriel: Okay. Fingers crossed, man. Um, sides of the spectrum there. On the one hand I want our employee to be almost like being a student or a generator.
I want you to be able, you know, when you're in college, you Show your student ID to any restaurant or any museum, and they're going to give you 10% off. They're going to give you the student discount. You'll get a bus pass on the student discount, all that stuff. Why students are terrible customers, students have no money.
Students, students are the worst customers in the world. The answer is not because we like students. The answer is because students have potential the answers, because if you take care of students at a time when they have zero kinetic energy, Cause they're crappy little customers or liney and don't have any money.
But there are all potential because they're going to grow into these amazing citizens. We'll have

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salaries. If we take care of them, now, then they'll come back to us later. I want to imply it to the same thing. And people would recognize people were unemployed. They're working their hardest to be reemployed.
They need a hand for this period of time and they should be able to walk into any museum, any theme park, any restaurant, any coffee, shop flash, their Riveter ID and say, I need a hand. And you agreed to give me a hand because I am a citizen in your community because you want my business now and you want my business in the future because we're all in this together and they get 10, 20, 50, 50% off of the product.
Uh, the one hand and I want that to be a local coffee shops. I want it to be a museums. I want that to be everywhere. You can think. On the other hand, I want the biggest companies in the world. To record I want at and T Google. I want Spotify on Netflix. I want Disney to recognize that all the technology that they're working on is incredible as valuable as freeing up our time in ways we've never had that,

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but society does not evolve as quickly as technology does.
People who are going to be affected by AI and robotics are not going to all of a sudden find this new society. That's understanding of that. The fact that it's getting harder and harder to get their next job, because their skills need to develop faster and faster at rates that a system cannot actually support.
I want those massive companies to do two things. The first is I want every single one of them to exhibit discounts on employed people I want at and T to tell all of their customers that, Hey, if you are a customer, not if you're a new customer or some sort of new customer acquisition strategy. Now, if you are an at and T customer and you lose your job, we've got your back.
You get three months off of our service. No questions asked. We're taking care of you because we know we need you. That's the first I want Spotify to give you three months free. I want Netflix does that. Hey, relax, man. I know you got a tough time. I know there's a lot of them negativity watch some free movies.
It's our treat. Thanks for

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being our customer for the last five years. More importantly, thanks for being our customer for the next 20 years. And that's how that's how companies and the brands when immense loyalty. So that's the person brands give discounts, ton, play people. The second thing is that you started a conversation in this country around a value in a way that does not tie to GDP.
Value in a way that is not tied to employment numbers, that in a way that is not tied purely to your economic give back. Right. And listen, my parents come from, ran away from communist Russia. I was born in artists and raised in Ardennes capitalist. I'm not sure for a kibbutz
Louis: To all live
Adriel: On. I'm arguing that as technologists, capitalism moves faster than society and he can handle, we need another way to value people.
One of my all time favorites, it's from Bobby Kennedy.

Uh, is younger cooler brother, and he's talking about GDP and talking to how GDP is not enough. Of a metric for what

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matters in a country GDP. He says GDP. Um, a measurement of yo are the carnage, our highways and air pollution and cigarette advertising.
That's all going into GDP. The number of rifles sold in the country, the number of big Macs, Eden, that's going into GDP, but you know, it's not going into GDP. Not the health of our children or the quality of education or the joy of their play, the beauty of our poetry, the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debates, uh, it means to be a parents.
Uh, says neither a wit nor a courage or wisdom, nor a learning our compassion nor devotion to our country. That just everything except that, which makes life worthwhile. So Louis, when you say, what is our goal in five years, maybe that's broad of a goal, but I want to make sure we are at the forefront of our conversation that says what matters for our country.
What matters for us citizens? What matters for our world? Besides what is your salary, Kyle? How much money did you make this year? Louis? It is. How are you as

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community members? Where have you volunteered? Where have you given your time? Are you a good parent? What have you done to be a good neighbor? What have you done to bring art into the world?
What have you done to share the story that is part of the conversation we want to be in over the next five to 50 years.
Kyle: Oh, that's, that's beautiful angel like for real, I think that it's important. And I think that, uh, is a, is like a metric that was created, I think during war time too. Um, made up and it's like a production function.
But it's increasingly less, um, prescriptive of what our society actually looks like in today's world. And that's something that Andrew Yang talks about when he kind of preaches, um, a similar thing just along the lines of UBI, but, um,
Adriel: Said it was made up. I think that's so important.
One, like thing that's been is always existed in my life is the recognition that everything is made up. Everything. Everything is made up by people. Have you had saved

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by Yuval Noah Harari? Yeah, add it to the list. Kyle Louis, I'm glad you have. His whole point is everything we have is this story, religions, a story, an important story.
Economics is a story and important story. Uh, are a story, a relevant story. Everything is a story. So everything is a story and we all admit that prosperity or career goals or, uh, a brand name jacket. All of that is a story. Well, then we can continue. To write different stories. We can continue to write stories that matter in different ways.
You saying that GDP is made up is exactly right. And it's relevant. It's not a, it's not an irrelevant number, but it also means we can make up other metrics. We can make up other things that matter to us. I don't know how to have all the answers about what those other things are, but I know they need to be made up or we're in big
Kyle: Trouble.
And I think the realization that, you know, things are made up kind of empowers people. They'll be able to think that they can make things up too. And the, you know, they can change the

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role around them. It's like the Steve jobs quote about like, once you realize that when you poke the world, things change, you know, everything changes for you.
But I wanted to ask you let's say tomorrow I'm unemployed and I I'm trying to, you know, get my life in order. What did you think? The one thing that I can do that by doing which everything else becomes easier or irrelevant that I should do as an unemployed person.
Adriel: Join Riveter. There you go.
Too easy, too easy. I think I'm going to answer that in two things you need to do, because I think it's important. The first is you got to take care of the basics. You've got to apply for unemployment. You got to figure out your health insurance, and you've got to figure out your financial plan. So that's one, that's take care of the basics, like too many people.
Why talk to forgot about their uninsurance expiring their health insurance expiring. They, I don't feel like applying for an employment cause I didn't even know if they qualify. The

[00:30:00]

answer is yes, you qualify. The answer is yes, you've earned that money and the right to that money. The answer is yes, health insurance is important and complicated and shitty in America, but you've got to figure it out.
So that's number one is take care of the basics. But the second thing, if I were just to say broadly, the one thing you need to be doing is you need to be figuring out what is going to make you stand out. And how are you going to tell that story? The answer is not work on your resume. The answer is sort of network.
The answer is sort of take care of your health and sort of take classes. But more than anything, the answer is what is going to make Kyle a different and a better applicants and person and citizen than anyone else. For some people I've taught this to be a million things. One person I talked to the side of that her passion is sports and she wants to give her time to sports related nonprofits.
So she works every day, volunteering at sports related nonprofits. Some days she's coaching a little league. Other days

[00:31:00]

she's working on a marketing campaign, someone else I talked to, it's a start a podcast and he's turning like video games into stories, via podcasts, and he's learning to edit the whole thing.
And that makes them different. That's the guy who is going to talk about, Hey, what'd you do in unemployment? I learned to edit audio. I learned to tell stories. I learned to, uh, questions and interview people. So the one thing you need to do is figure out what is going to make me different. What's your side project.
Somebody I was just talking to today. One of our users. I started volunteering for code for America. And he's now working with the LA brigade volunteer for code America. And that makes them different because he is building skills cause he's giving relevant skills cause he's giving back to his community and he knows that he does not long enough.
He's going to stand out an entry interview because he's going to have an interesting story. And the second aspect of that is you got to learn to tell that story of what's making you different. So you could volunteer. You could start a company, you could start a podcast, you could, you could learn the

[00:32:00]

break dance, all that is awesome, but you've got to be able to tell that story.
You've got to say, Hey, when I was unemployed every single day for two hours a day, I took a break dancing classes and that is fine, but you gotta make sure you're on LinkedIn. You're on Twitter, you're on Facebook and you're posting videos of yourself. Break dancing. You're saying why it's important.
You're saying what it's given to you, and you're saying, this is why, uh, great candidate. I'm a great person. I'm a great value add because I was able to commit to something on my own. I was able to put something on my own shoulders and I was able to be a different candidate than anyone else you've seen.
How's it back to what I said earlier. It's, don't be better, be different.
Louis: You spoke to so many good points at one point I really want to emphasize. And this is something that I've thought about recently as, since I've been putting a lot of attention into, uh, physical challenges, you know, whether that's neurons running or training for calisthenics or something.
Cause there are, it doesn't have to be, you know, your professional story. That's interesting in a job interview or whatever, it doesn't have to be. That you spent all this time pursuing a

[00:33:00]

very specific, relevant, professional skill you editing in your audio to be in your phone. And. It demonstrates a lot of these similar skill sets and character traits to have had the discipline to follow an 18 week training plan and then fall through and like finish the race at the time you set out, especially, and again, framing it in terms of stories, right?
As yourself as the unlikely hero at the beginning of the story, being that person who no one would have thought, you know, you had no experience, you're never an athlete or again, you've never danced in your whole life happens to me in front of you. So you're like, well, I've got nothing going on. Riveter hooks me up at the dance studio.
I'm going to learn how to do flares and like this, which is I'm going to get back to you if you're like a couple of months. Cause I'm working on my flares. I'm gonna get there. Eventually.
Adriel: I feel like you've got potential. I see some menus.
Louis: No, I mean, I'm the middle split. Once I got the middle split down, then I'm going to focus on flares because it's kind of pointless to focus on it until, until that point.
But again, Riveter got you in the studio. You've taken break dancing classes. You've amassed a small following on Twitter. You got 5,000 people that look to you as the authority and the break dancing space.

[00:34:00]

Adriel: That demonstrates a lot of really
Louis: Benefits, little things about you that no matter what the position are certainly going to make you the candidate that's remembered after the interview.
And
Adriel: There's also the flip side of that is whatever you do. You know, we're talking about breakdancing facetiously, but I'm serious. That's the passion. That's the thing that got you pumped then that's fantastic. And just because you started break dancing doesn't mean you can't get another VP of sales job at a tech company.
It just means you're going to have a different story to tell about how you. Yeah, your version of the story needs to be how you grew your Instagram following 10 K or whatever, right? So the thing you should be doing when you, when you first lose your job and you do all the basics, and you've gone through the 12, 12 step program of emotions, and you're thinking you're sitting there with a cup of coffee and you're journaling, you're saying, what is the thing that I'm going to commit myself to?
Because this is up for me. This is going to last three to six months. You've got to admit that you can't say, Oh, I'll be done in two weeks because we're not done in two weeks and you're not done in a month. You're gonna, you're gonna, you're going to be upset.

[00:35:00]

You're going to be near depression. You need to say for me, this is going to last three to six months, and this is how I'm going to kick ass in those three to six months.
This is my goal. This is my endurance running goal on my podcast and goal my break, dance and goal. And what is it that matters to me? What do I want to learn? What do I want to do? What? Not, not what does a job want me to do? But what do I want to do? Because this should be an opportunity. You know, this period of time is almost like a God given sabbatical.
That is just an opportunity to say, here's what I care about and I get to do it. And fortunately enough, I get to get paid to do it because you get unemployment benefits, not a lot. And certainly not for many people, not enough to really live on and to thrive on on certain States. It's particularly bad.
But if you're in a certain position, again, unemployment is different for everybody. You got a million. Yeah. Who's decided to retire was unemployed. And you've got, you know, a single mother of six who's who working two jobs and COVID hit and she's unemployed two very, very

[00:36:00]

different experiences. So I don't speak for all, but for many in the middle, the answer is what matters to you?
What are you going to commit to? Like you said, Louis, what is it is going to be the thing you really keep too, and you prove to the world you can do. And how are you going to tell that story?
Louis: That's fantastic. Well, you can stay calm.
Kyle: I was going to say like, you were given that God given sabbatical and you took it and you ran with it.
And like, I think that it's interesting that you've kept that same mindset about this period of time. And you look at it in like a positive light as something that people can take advantage of. And, you know, that Shows through that Shows through what you've done. And I just think it's really cool that you're.
Working on this product for those people in a position where usually people look at it as a negative, well, you know, like that's not right, or whatever, but something that you look at as a good thing. And that's interesting. And one of the things I think that you did to develop your spike while you

[00:37:00]

were on that sabbatical is, is networking and is meeting as many people as you could, and going to conferences and getting podcasts.
Um, podcast. So what do you think about Netflix as being that spike? And, and what advice would you give to someone who is starting from not knowing anyone like, like how do you practically go about meeting as many people as possible and making it as impactful as possible?
Adriel: So, uh, back, uh, mandatory, you started the question you said, uh, uh, then most at it.
This is a really negative time, and I'm looking at this as a positive time. Uh, and, his book zero to one, Peter Thiel talks about how he asks every candidate who joins any of his organizations. One question. And that question is what do you believe about the world that nobody else believes? What do you believe to be true?
My belief is very simple at this period of time is that unemployment is a really good thing. For many people. Unemployment is a really big opportunity. So that's my different belief. And that's where that

[00:38:00]

comes from to answer your second question about networking.

Uh, knows nobody. You said, what if you're starting from nowhere?
The answer is you're not, it doesn't matter where you are. It doesn't matter if you, if you're an 18 year old who, uh, worked at a mechanic for the last couple of years and. You're trying to get into a new industry. You've got a client, you've got a boss, you've got a random, your neighbors.
Everybody knows somebody. The second thing you said is networking as the spike. Networking is not the spike networking, right? The way to either define what your spike will be, or to share the story of your spike, going around saying I'm the world's greatest. The networker is not a spike. Going around saying I am using my network to share something or learn something helps you this bike.
So in terms of networking, I think there's a couple things. The first is you've got to give in order to get,

uh, our great users names. It's dog Eller, Brock. He's awesome. He's so positive. Numerous people have solid. Really told me how positive has been

[00:39:00]

for them. Uh, time well spent. We have this video series called time.
We'll spend where we interview on flood people about their experiences. And he talks about it. How every single day, almost he's reaching out to people, right? Sending of calls with people being released, never heard of people. Who've never heard of him. And they set a 30 minutes
Louis: And they
Adriel: Just chat. And his question is always, what are you looking for?
And how can I help this guy has been out of work for five or six months. He's spent 27 years at bed bath and beyond 27 years at one company as a senior manager now covert head they'd restructured. They did a bunch of layoffs. He didn't take it harshly. You just say, that's what happens. He's he's, you know, I guess in his life at these early sixties, 27 years at one company, and he is going around to people saying, what can I do for you?
That was a very powerful question. Well, the, the question of, uh, the realization that it is not about you is a very important realization. He has that. So when you're networking, trying to figure out what is it that you can do for other people. That's why personally, I use my podcast as

[00:40:00]

a cheat code because my hand, it was, what can I do for you?
Well, I'm going to put you on a podcast. I'm going to share your story with at
Louis: Least so dozens of people who are
Adriel: Listening, uh, maybe occasionally a hundred, um,  
Uh, was, that was my, what can I do for you for other people? It's a little bit different for some people that doesn't really go anywhere, but starting with that question is really important.
So that's that one to one side, you know, reach out. Don't be afraid. My, a friend was telling me about a colleague who just reached out to like, or even thinking about reaching out to an executive at their company. And, uh, said, this is the bravest thing I've ever done. And I don't know, maybe I have responded to harshly, but that shouldn't be the bravest thing you've ever done.
You should reach out to anybody and everybody that piques your interest and you should say hi, mr. Or mrs. Crazy executive who I would never even imagine whatever. Talk to me. Here's what I can do for you. I would love 15 minutes and see what your hit rate is.

Uh, on the individual side. Then you've got groups, organizations, there's a

[00:41:00]

million organizations that devoted their entire company to making networking possible very well and very in a group.
The two that we work with closely at Riveter are Ivy, the social university and brunch work. Um, put together incredible events with CEOs, with leaders of all of these people. And then you put together these events and make it very easy. To connect with other people in a group setting. There's a million others there's lunch club, AI there's local groups.
If you're at Dallas there's career, DFW, if you are maybe more of a blue collar worker, you go to your city workforce development group, and they'll put you in networking groups. So you can network individually, or you can animate your
Louis: Groups, but
Adriel: 85% of jobs come from networking. There's this hidden job market people like to talk about, which is things that are not posted there's even the jobs that are posted are almost always going to go to the person who reached out to the hiring manager or someone else at the company or whatever.
You've got a network and you've got to do it on both cylinders, individually. One-to-one message. Somebody who seems cool, ask them for 15 minutes,

[00:42:00]

tell them what you can do for them. And in a group setting where you're learning about a lot of people you're identifying, you've got your eye on the people who matter to you.
And then you go get her and make them your team. Another option. One thing that I did, you know, a few years ago, When I was unemployed is I started the newsletter and everybody, I met, I added to my newsletter and it was my personal newsletter. My podcast is called Audrey. I was curious city. The newsletter had the same thing and those here's what's going on with me.
Here's what I found interesting this week. Here's why I would love if anybody, it helped me with this. She has a good book I read and the engagement was incredible. I mean, it was, it started with my friends and family. It grew into a few people I worked with by the end of it, there were like 300 people.
Most of them, I met once at a conference or something who are opening at a rate of 70% reading and responding to me. And they're all on my sort of like personal cheer squad. They were there for me. And that's just another option for you to

[00:43:00]

make your, your networking successful.
Louis: That's awesome. And I think another point that, uh, bring up there is how intentional you were about it.
So, and I'd read this article. You put on LinkedIn where you kind of told the story in greater detail, but you made it like a goal to set
Adriel: 30 hours a week
Louis: Of networking. You had a specific target. So whether that's, you know, five of them, those 15 minute coffee dates a week, or one podcast interview per week, or one long form interview or one group event, setting those specific.
Metrics is a way to do it. And this is something I wanted to bring up earlier when we were doing that discussion about, you know, what should you be doing while you're unemployed at to increase your value to the world and get that unique skillset. And I think, you know, unemployed means you're not formally employed, but it doesn't mean you can't to like apply some discipline and rigor to your pursuits of whatever that alternative thing is.
So, you know, for you when you're telling that story and what your thing was was 30 hours a week of very intentional, this amount of coffee dates, this amount of

[00:44:00]

group activities. If it's to bring it back to, you know, if it's the break dancing, if it's the art, if it's the cooking Show, you're starting, you know, holding yourself accountable and learning to work as your own boss.
In the sense of, you know, like being accountable to putting out a set amount of intentional effort towards whatever pursuit was. Going to be a great way to increase the success of any of those. And that's reflected in the strategy you took and some of the things you're talking about. So again, in terms of reframing unemployment, as a period of time, I would like to add a two, you know, from positive or negative to positive, but also like unemployed doesn't mean not working.
It just means not working a job for someone else.
Adriel: Oh yeah, absolutely. And you talked about rigor and discipline. You gotta imagine. I don't know, 40 50% of the people who lose their jobs at any given point are type a personalities are go getters they're career people they're crushing in at the office.
And then all of a sudden that disappears finding that discipline is incredibly, incredibly important to their self esteem, to their ability to succeed in this

[00:45:00]

period to a lot of different things. There's two. Yeah. So basically say the same thing and basically from the same kind of person to apply, uh, Doerr, venture capitalists who backed Google and many others, uh, wrote a book, but it's called what gets measured, gets managed.
His book is called measure. What matters is quotas? What gets measured gets managed. The things you write down that you are going to measure your ability to meet. That's what's going to get managed. The other one is from Paul Graham, the founder of Y Combinator. And, uh, of a paraphrase, but he says, it's amazing how you can watch a Metro grow just by watching it.

Meaning if you're not looking at something it's going to be stale, it's not gonna be great. But all of a sudden, when you start, I'm writing it down saying every week I need to do two, I have to network with two people, have to. Just by saying that I never put two people or not. Yes or no. All of a sudden you're going to find that you're going to start networking with two people, you know, and that's a startup thing to like where we do this at Riveter where we've had one goal, it's been the most

[00:46:00]

important goal.
And our one goal has the growth, three user groups. And we started measuring this maybe. That was six weeks ago, seven weeks ago, six weeks ago. And we went all the way back and we've looked at our user growth and it was all over the place. One week, it was 8%, one week. It was 3% when we go, it was all over the place.
And we said, what we're gonna do is we're gonna measure it. And we're going to go for 10% growth every single week. The last five weeks since we launched that we've been growing an average of 14% week consistently. This was 11, the highest was 17 and measuring it all of a sudden it became a focus, but now we're not measuring other things.
And other parts needs to be improved. Our email open rate has gone down because it hasn't gotten enough love. We haven't had enough partners that, so now we need to measure those things. Are we adding one partner per week? Our email, open rates over X percentage. What gets measured gets managed is true in business.
It's true in personal, personal business, unemployment, uh, true. And pretty much it's doing diet

[00:47:00]

and exercise. And what gets measured gets managed is an important system, uh, anybody trying to improve at anything.
Louis: Yeah. The other thing I'd add there in terms of, you know, and those personal KPIs. But the other thing is about like the lifestyle.
So one thing I've kind of adopted in the core and gene, cause there's a lot of similarities between quarantine and unemployment, where it's a great period of unexpected bursts of free time. And it's like, how do I use that productively? And one thing I've been saying to myself, that's been really helpful is, you know, if I can wake up early to work for someone else, I can wake up really to work for myself and do things I want to do.
So it's an, now you have a job and you have no issue. No. I was working at a vehicle manufacturing plants, Mercedes plant in Tuscaloosa, building cars. I wasn't building cars. That's what happens there. Waking up at 5:00 AM to work there. Uh, know, I was excited to work. There is a great opportunity, but it wasn't, you know, what I most want to be doing in that moment.
And then it's like, I went back to school, lived the rest of my life a year later. It's like, if I I've now started realizing, you know, I did something. I was not like it was a day in and day out

[00:48:00]

job. I didn't want to be there with my whole heart every day versus doing something like this podcast where it's like one of my favorite things to do.
I can. It's a project.
Adriel: I chose that I got
Louis: To make the rules for, and if I can wake up to do something, I'm not eager to do a, I can wake up to do something I've designed for myself and like living day in and day out like that, it's extremely productive for me.
Adriel: What's one of the hard things for you about doing that.
Cause I find that if someone else told you, you do it, it's great. Someone else told you to do it. You kind of know you gotta do it. You're getting paid for it. Yeah. Or somehow measured and you'll go do it when it's your own thing. It's is this right? Really? Am I right? That I choose the right thing. And I, my spending in the right way, what's difficult for you guys about doing what you said, you know, either you wake up and work for someone else or you wake up and work on your own thing.
What's the challenge was the flip side of that. Kyle's
Louis: Got something that
Kyle: My problem is, is just, that is just that, that I may, if I make the rules,
Adriel: Then
Kyle: I can wake up four hours later. If I want to, like, there's no penalty, so why not just do it when I want to do it because I make the rules and

[00:49:00]

that's why this is a good thing.
You know? Like that's why making the own rules, your own rules to get things, because you can do what you want, but. That doesn't end up being true because when you only ever do what you want, you end up not getting things done and you have to, you have to play the game in every domain, kind of the same way.
I think,
Adriel: Where you're
Kyle: Constantly doing things that you're not eager to do in the moment. And if you're not doing that, then you're not growing. And I dunno, I think you're, you're not on the path to where you want to be. If you're not doing things. That you're not eager to do all the time.
Louis: Yeah. I'd say for me the toughest part, the, the social basis.
Uh, you know, I'm living with the same group of roommates. I was at that job two years ago. Uh, apartment, same city, whatever singer guys. And they'd see me going to bed 8:00 AM. It's like, alright, eight o'clock brush my teeth, go to sleep. Uh, I was waking up four 35 to go and work out, do work, whatever.
And they're like, we understand that that's fine. And now it's like a weeknight or whatever it is.

[00:50:00]

And I'm, I'm like, well, I gotta wake up early tomorrow. Cause that's the schedule I want to work at. And they're like, well, like, you know, this podcast, that's not making any money yet, uh, to work on my classes, which, you know, whatever, it's just lifestyle I've found that has led me to be most effective at dealing with things that, you know, we do at the moment that are high impact and move the needle in terms of making progress on it.
On longterm goals and like, why are you going to bed? Then we want to do something fun. It's like, well, this is as important to me as that was like, there's no immediate consequences of failure. You know, I'm not going to get a call from a man and lose like a highly sought after position at a company. Uh, gonna feel like crap about myself and I'm going to probably have less things get done and not in the longterm, like have aggravated the net output I've wanted to put together.
And they've gone, honestly, that was a very temporary, I mean, it's still some friction, but seeing me do it like day in and day out for a couple of weeks, they're like, okay, that's clearly important to you. And like, they, they come to respective for sure. But that's still the most difficult piece of it.
Adriel: Yeah.
I mean, for each one of you, the response is

[00:51:00]

slightly different, I guess, for Kyle. Totally get it, man. It's.
Louis: Well,
Adriel: I set an alarm for seven bullets, 10, like really? What's what's what was going to stop me like Louis is going to yell at me cause I told them I got it done by noon. It'll be two o'clock no one
Louis: Cares
Adriel: Setting.
You talked about setting rules and setting those rules saying those parameters is super important. Right saying, it's my thing, but I gotta be my own manager and shit. I'm going to be a strict manager. I'm going to say if my deadline was, was Tuesday at noon, I better get it done by Tuesday at noon. And if not, I'm in some sort in trouble, I'm not getting dessert tonight or whatever the thing is, like you got to set your own rules and Louis that never I've man.
My friends are all, I had a very controversial LinkedIn post this week where I, cause we had a debate this weekend about whether it's, uh, Whether, whether it's, we're talking about work life balance, they all work in a, you know, big law or in like really big, difficult, strenuous jobs. And they're working.
I got a friend who's working

[00:52:00]

insane hours and Saturday nights, Sunday nights, people are calling him, sending him emails. He's got to check it every second and got up, leave a dinner, like he's working incredibly hard. Um, he enjoys that like super
Louis: Rigorous
Adriel: Lifestyle. And I'm working in a different way, but certainly not the same number of hours.
Certainly not the same number of rigor or the same stakes. But for me, it's like, if I'm with friends, I'm going to be 110% with friends. Cause this is my lifestyle that I designed and on my own manager and I said, Hey, I got my stuff done for the day I get to be with friends. And the debate is always the same thing that you're having Louis.
A Dre, Alec, you're not really working. No, one's paying you. Yeah. You're your own boss. So why don't you just come hang out? Cause right now great. And the answer needs to be well, I'm not, cause I set a rule for myself and you're always going to get trash talked. I had this LinkedIn post where I wrote. I had an interesting conversation with my friends and they work at big law and they said that, uh, you gotta work these crazy hours and it's okay to do it for somebody else because by the time

[00:53:00]

you get to your thirties or forties, then you'll be able to be someone else still.
But like at a much chiller pace. And I said, well, That's not for me, they're doing really well at it and they love it and I'm sure there'll be wealthier and more successful than I in that capacity. Um, me for me. It's I like going for it welcome to the afternoon, or I like, you know, when I'm with him random, I don't want to check my email and I don't want to worry about checking my email.
So I had this post that said, like, which one is right. What do you guys think of that? And one of them saw it, sent it in our group thread got really mad at me, facetiously, uh, called me a bunch of names. And then we talked about whether or not it's it's okay. Okay. To pick a lifestyle, which lifestyle is right.
People on the LinkedIn post commented on the one hand, like, Nope, you've got to be doing your 80, 90 hour weeks and your twenties because you got to put in the time, then some other people said like, It's all right, craft your life, work on your priorities. Figure out what the three things are. The three levers you need to pull in order to have the best life possible.
Make sure you pull those and make sure they're your own levers. Not somebody else's. So it created an interesting debate

[00:54:00]

and, and uh, this is anywhere near the lifestyle you choose, you're going to be having your friends do anything else. You're going to be having similar debates for a very long time to come.
Louis: Perfect.
Adriel: Uh,
Louis: Will, um, I we'll get into it in this Episode, but Kyle, I I've been playing around with another tool developed by the same guy as the 75 part who, which has that fitness challenge, uh, has been really helpful for managing these kinds of things for us. Uh, should get into it now or not.
Uh, called the powerless. No, probably not. Don't
Kyle: Tease it. Just say what it is
Louis: We're going to get into, like in long form at some point, I'm just like, I know I'm gonna hit down
Adriel: On the edge of my seat,
Louis: Like at the
Adriel: Hundred day streak, and then we're going to have to do a long
Louis: Four Episode on it. So we'll do a little teaser here.
So calm. I just released on Tuesday of this week. So that will inform the viewers of the discrepancy between me making less comments and them hearing the sentence that I want us to publish and learn our lead time behind the scenes. But.

Uh, art was that 75 days fitness, mental toughness challenge. You do six things every single day.
If you missed one of that and you start back at the zero designs by podcast or Andy Frisella,

[00:55:00]

he puts out another system. I explained it super quickly because we've explained it in a lot of content, uh, the
Adriel: Powerless,
Louis: Which is. Borrowing the same concept of 75 hard, where, you know, you have a list of things that you do every single day.
It's a successful day. If you do them all, it's a fail day. You have a permanent record of your temporary laziness. If you do not do those things and you write down, you know, a list preferably the day before the five things that you need to do that day, the following day, do all five things. And then it's a win, or if you don't get them all done before you go to bed, it's a loss.
You know what I mean? And if you want to quote unquote win at life, you know, it would make sense that you'd expect a winner at life to win more days than they lose, because in any game where there's a concept of winning loss, Winners win more than they lose. They score more points than the other team.
The number of wins outpaces the number of ELLs three versus two, four out of four versus three out of a week of seven days videos. You know, if you can just win the day, it's a successful, it's a successful way. And you know, Utalia at the end of the year, how many of the days did I

[00:56:00]

win? And he put out this other one,
Adriel: Like called the
Louis: Last thousand days.
And he's like, are you at where you want to be at, in life? It's like, okay, well, look at the past thousand days, how many of those. Knowing that your capacity, knowing what your goals were, were days where you would consider them wins, you know, was that two days a week, you met capacity produced that a reasonable level of production based on where you want to be in life.
Was that one day a week was that five days a week. And if it's not something kind of towards that more than half, well, more than half range, like why are you at all surprised that you're where you're at? And. It's also like, well, looking forward, you know, going where you want to go a thousand days from now, like if you're not planning on winning five days a week, you're not actually planning on achieving the things you were planning on achieving.
So I've been following this for, I guess, 23 days now in a row, five things every day. And again, it doesn't have to, it's not about doing the more, this is what inspired me bring this up was, you know, the conversation with roommates and social pressure. It's not about doing the more of this list. Isn't about, uh, me.
Get more things done than I was already

[00:57:00]

doing. It's about prioritization, right? The one finding that, those one thing. So what are the things that are most likely to lead to moving the needle on the projects I'm working on and like actually higher packs? So if Kyle and I don't have any, uh, lined up that some of those things would definitely be cold outreach networking to try to get more interviews on the schedule.
Uh, those things can be things you're already doing and just lead it need a little bit more motivation. So the workouts I've been doing, the stretching towards the middle split has seen an appearance on a couple of the days, and then just whatever else needs to get done. So however you need to structure it too.
Make progress towards your life, but it's been a very helpful framework for me. And then
Adriel: It's a version of it. It's a version of archimedes' lever with a long enough lever. You can move it, you back it up, define what your lever is or what your five leavers are. And you're not moving the world. You're moving yourself in the direction.
You want to do it, but picking your one thing, your five things, your whatever things, saying, these are my things. And I'm going to kick ass at these things. And everything else is noise.
Louis: Yep. And then with, with my roommates, you know, I

[00:58:00]

explained that I've explained the concept. Uh, it's like, if I get all my things done, it's pretty much like, okay, it's whatever five o'clock, let's go do something fun.
And if it's not, I'm like, okay, well I have this list. You understand how this works list is. And Tanya and so on is the list isn't done. And they kind of let me finish my stuff. And on the days where it is, they're excited to like go do something fun and have me be a part of it. So that's, that's my tip for the day.
What was his monologue in this Episode?
Adriel: I like it. I think there's a lot to gain from it. I actually took a note. I think, uh, that. It'd be really awesome for an employed people. You know, we talked about managing your time and the answer is you have got to do certain things every day. You got to network, you got to take a walk, you got to connect to somebody, whatever else there is.
It's a,
Louis: It's a cool tool. It's been a helpful framework for me. And then you don't necessarily necessarily have to apply that same framework of failure. Fear of, okay. You're out of 23 days three. Like if you go to zero, you go to zero, but I've kind of, you know, that's how I usually take things. And it's like, if I don't hit a hundred, I mean, this is
Kyle: Just crazy.
Everyone

[00:59:00]

also like today, one of my things is water. Oh, I want to drink out of water. I've been sick. I need water. Um, it's not a hard thing. It's not something that like I'm going to fail at, or like I'm not setting the bar too far, you know? But at the end of the day, when I have drank a gallon of water and I know that I completed that and I checked that off, like that means something to me that I set something.
I said, I'm going to do something. And then I did it and doing that day in and day out with different things, like. It's just, it's very powerful. It really is
Adriel: Now called way of life, where it was the same thing. I paid three or $5 for it. And I said, these are the things I want to do on a drink. Eight cups of water a day.
I want to sweat every day on our weed every day, whatever else there was. And then you just checked him and saw you saw your metrics over time.
Louis: Completely. Yeah, I think we should transition out to the bonus round some kind of free form discussions, some quick, quick questions for you

[01:00:00]

about, uh, topics.
Uh, I to start out by asking you about kind of this upcoming trip. You have plans, you've kind of set yourself on this adventurous course. With over the next six to eight months. Could you explain what that is?
Adriel: Sure. So, uh, fiance and I, her name is Abby. We live in the San Fran Kobe area and she works at Pinterest Pinterest recently announced that they are going to be working from home until August.
A Riveter basically follows Pinterest's HR dictums, uh, told me. So we worked from home until next August as well. Um, we thought it'd be very, very fun to take advantage of this time and go, yeah, little adventure. So we're going on a road trip and we are going to is six to eight different cities for a month.
Each for six to eight months at a time we're starting off in Los Angeles. Uh, San Diego, Arizona, Austin, new Orleans, and depending on if we want to keep it going and make our way home, what are the Carolinas

[01:01:00]

going North to Michigan, Wyoming, whatever else. Uh, I'm, I'm very excited for it. I think it'll be interesting, fun, great way to spend time, but this to sort of my singular perspective and COVID, which is the following, uh, crazy time for everybody.
And this is a time that our children will be writing book reports about, and they will have a history assignment in fourth grade where they come home to you and they say, Hey daddy, uh, we're learning about the great pandemic. It's 2020.

Uh, about it for my book report? And can I record you on my neuro micro device or whatever?
And. They're going to ask questions, like, where were you? And you're going to say Tuscaloosa or San Francisco, or moved in my parents, whatever the answer they're gonna say, what did you do? And some people are just going to answer it. Well, it was really terrible. I, you know, maybe I lost my job. Maybe I was sick.
Maybe I, I, uh, somebody I know was a love got sick. Maybe I was depressed. A lot of bad things. And your kid's going to write that up in a book report and say, my

[01:02:00]

daddy was in pet grape had debit of 2020, and it was the shittiest part of his life. Or this is important. Or you're going to say yes on really shitty.
It was really hard, but here's what I did. Here's the interesting thing that I. Took this time and turn myself into I, my buddy and I, we started a podcast and we had a full Ted listeners, an Episode or whatever, whatever, again, to 10 million listeners, an Episode, somewhere in between my, my fiance and I, we traveled the country and I started a company.
Uh, was laid off and I cleaned up gosh, in my neighborhood, every single freaking day. And then all of a sudden one person, then five people, then 20 people for Forrest gum to me, and they followed me around the city cleaning up trash. I don't care what it is, but your kid, when they asked you, what did you do in the great pandemic?
It's funny, it's funny. I'll read a history report on it. You better have a good answer. So in that framework, when Abby and I were talking about what are we

[01:03:00]

doing matters to us? What do we want to make out of this time? Uh, supposed to have there's great Euro trip, trap plan. We were supposed to be in Russia and France, and then use that as an opportunity to.
Basically quit our jobs to explore Europe that was canceled. So we said, you know what? We are going to have an amazing time. We are going to do something interesting. We are going to explore the country and we are going to tell that to our children and their book report, let's
Louis: See the all American digital
Adriel: Nomad let's live in living the life, man, and listen, fortunate enough to be able to do so.
Uh, enough to have the means to have the health, to have. Everything you need to have to be lucky enough to be able to spend your time in that way and, and count my blessings every day on it, but also recognize that all a lot of other people are similarly fortunate are similar, gnarly enabled, or similarly capable some even more so.
And they will not. And then travel is not for everyone. Not everyone needs to do my thing, but many people will not. And their book report, their kid's

[01:04:00]

book report is going to read my mommy or my daddy had the worst fucking year.
Kyle: And, you know, I think that that people who have interesting biographies think like that, you know, so what are some of the most interesting biographies
Louis: That you've ever read?

Adriel: Uh, first biography graphical series I ever read was everything. Richard Branson put out. Uh, Virgin and losing my virginity, like his whole Virgin series, Richard, Branson's a maniac. He's a weirdo. He does. He's all about different, not better. Um, everything that he puts out is kinda my first exposure to biographies and in middle school and high school.
Um, favorite of the last few years was the biography of Andy Grove. Uh, grow was one of the founders of growing up. Grov was one of the founders of Silicon Valley. He's got a crazy story. Um, Hungarian refugee, uh, pled Nazis, came with nothing, paid his way through Brooklyn college and moved out to Canada.

[01:05:00]

Fornia started Intel. It was one of those famous taxi as all time. One of the busiest people all the time, and always, always, always taught as a professor. Fascinating story, uh, incredible persona. I'm so hot. It's very long, very thick, but really incredible book that I gifted to numerous people. And then on the slightly lighter side, uh, call me Superman is the biography, the autobiography of chef Gordon, chef Gordon.
His basic story was he was a long Island Jewish guy. Basically a bomb would like to do drugs and listen to music. Moved out to California in order to do drugs and listen to music, selling drugs to everybody, the hotel, he was at one day, he's downstairs at the pool and he's smoking pot with Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin.
And they go, Hey, you're Jewish, right? But we're looking for a manager. Will you be our manager? You said, yes. And that led him to become more of the most influential celebrity music and chef managers, uh, the history of the industry. And he's, it's a weird book as a funny

[01:06:00]

book. Uh, you know, it's all about being different, saying yes to opportunities and it's a much, much lighter read.
Mike Meyer is also for those who don't like to read. Mike Myers made a documentary called the same thing. They call me. Supermensch about his story.
Louis: Yeah. Speaking of saying yes to opportunities and being willing to do a, to do with stuff like that.
Adriel: I, uh,
Louis: Advised since our last call about a week ago, signed up for a marathon.
My first one, seven weeks out. I had a buddy who I've been running with casually on his short runs of his training plan. He was like, you know what, you're a similar shakes. Me. You sure you don't want to do the whole thing. And I'm like, you know what? My kids are going to ask me what I did during the court.
And yeah,
Adriel: We're on a marathon.
Louis: You do have some background. I brought some props for this question from, from the size of all the tall, the things around me. Uh, tips do you have for endurance
Adriel: Running
Louis: As a former Ironman? The completer.
Adriel: So the. I remember going for a run with a friend he started right.
Maybe five years ago was very overweight. Did a couch to five K program,

[01:07:00]

like loved it, fell in love with the running, did five Ks, 10 Ks. Then I ran his first half marathon with him and we went on some training, runs about the gray area and he always listened to music. He always had headphones and I've never run with music.
Always just ran, uh, in my own head and were on a run once. And he's listening to whatever he is listened to. Probably just a Mario soundtracks on repeat, knowing him. And he's like a drill, like aren't you bored? Like you're doing eight, 10, 13 mile runs. You're running a marathon, half Ironman or an Ironman.
Yeah. It's like, you know, seven hours a week. Aren't you bored? And what I told them was I just used that as a time to check in on myself, to breathe a lot, to work on a problem through my head. So my tip that doesn't work for everyone. I think for most people it doesn't work, but it's the try to do it without music and without books.
It's a use that time, where it's you and your body pushing yourself to an extreme that most people do not touch to understand your physical body better. And to also build the ability to long form,

[01:08:00]

think on a problem. Now I had to stop running recently due to a knee injury, but for the decade that I loved running and I wasn't great at it, but I loved it.
I loved going far. I would try to assign myself a problem for that run. And as much time as I could, I would focus on that problem. And it's very difficult because all of a sudden your mind goes somewhere else, or you think you solved it or, or you got bored or whatever. But, so my advice would be. See if it works for you, but build the ability to work on a singular problem on your own in the long form, because that'll help you when you're just sitting at your desk, working on a problem, not get distracted, that'll help you.
When you're working, reading a book or having a conversation with somebody, the ability to long form singularly focused is a very important skill. And I think running is a great opportunity to work on that. Alrighty.
Louis: Well, I'm doing a half marathon tomorrow. So, uh,
Adriel: Half marathon people? Are you like just running 13 miles?
Yeah. Tracking it kind of thing.

[01:09:00]

Louis: Yeah. Yeah. Nice. So no, no support group right before this call, I went to Dixon bought $20 worth of Google. So yeah.
Adriel: Oh, the other, the other tip is make sure actually, is there any race you cool down properly? After my Ironman, I crushed my goals. I was so happy with my time and they didn't.
Did she give you like a heat blanket or something after that? They just didn't have that. So whenever my friends are there, we hang out. I were having a good time. We go out to eat. We drive home for three hours. Uh, and I lay on the couch. I'm just so like exhausted. And after laying on the couch, we're watching a movie.
Uh, off, she gets up, I get up my leg freezes and then all of a sudden, the span of 15 seconds, my body goes into shock. And for about seven to 10 minutes, I was convinced I was going to die. My body temperature drops so low. My body was shaking. And that period of like laying on the couch, I bought at a shot.
She was on the phone with the hospital. We were trying, it was awful. And it was all because he didn't cool either they're cooled down properly.

[01:10:00]

So through my last, the advice about being a long form thinker, that was nonsense. Cool down problems.
Louis: So just take like a long slow walk for like a couple of 25 minutes or
Adriel: Walk put on sweat pants, change out of your sweaty clothes, basic stuff.
Don't be an idiot. Like your pal. Adriel don't do it. Check.
Kyle: I won't be running 13 miles tomorrow, so I'll do the warm. I'll do the cool down in the warm up from my workout.
Louis: So the question I have for you is
Adriel: In the last call we had, you brought up how
Louis: You've in the past, which people have learned a little bit about your past from listening to this far kind of juggled a lot at once versus now you're really singular focused.

Uh, explain kind of what that dynamic has been like and why you're doing listen to now the benefits of when to be kind of that multifocal versus when you think that singular focus and
Adriel: Your experience.
Sure. So I think there's so in the past, as I always did a lot of things, uh, after college, I was working on two startups. I was teaching at the university. I had a podcast

[01:11:00]

and I was working my last job at the self driving car company. I had the job, I had a podcast and I was leading an event series and I was heavily training in athletics.
I always had a lot of things going now. I'm singularly focused on revenue and it's the first time in my life. It kind of had this podcast that they on the side, but I'm singularly focused on Riveter. And that's new to me. And my thinking is this. I think there's two times in life in which you need to do, you need to juggle.
And the first is when your main thing is for somebody else. When your main thing is making somebody else's dream come true. You should have things happening on the side that are all your own. They don't have to monetize it all. They don't have to be startups. They can be just a coloring book that you want to finish.
I don't care what it is, but being committed to things that are all your own while most of your time is being spent on somebody else's dream is very important. The second time is I think, in, in youth or in later, but in the exploratory phase of your life, when you're not sure of your direction, When you're

[01:12:00]

not convinced of what you want to be doing, being able to have multiple long term experiments happening at the same time, it was really valuable.
And for me, that was incredibly helpful because in the beginning, shortly after graduate in college, which I wasn't sure exactly what I would be doing, it was it's important to me to have one foot in the door, transportation delivery space, which obviously paid off because. I later worked in transportation, self driving, cars, and delivery.
I had one foot in the outdoor space, which became incredibly important to me start over your work. And I was super, super passionate about it. I was teaching at a university. Which was incredibly important to me and interesting. And I learned how to teach, how to speak, how to communicate, how to plan a lesson, all that stuff, and doing it and all these different things as I was exploring, and I wasn't 110% committed to anything made me better at all of them.
They all overlap. I would teach, or I would, I have a problem in the startup. I was working on. I would talk about my problem in the class I was teaching, they would help me solve it or to my second startup would help me solve the problem.

[01:13:00]

My first or the podcast I was doing. I get to interview someone. I want it to be a customer and investor.
They all overlap. The reason I decided to cut that stuff out is that now I've found something that is all my own, I believe in passionately. And I want to jump off the cliff without a parachute and see how it'll go. And if I, every minute I take away from making Riveter come true in the way I want it to is a minute I'm taking away from my future self, because this is the thing I'm fully dedicated to.
And I finally found that it took a lot of experimentation to get there. So that's why I think juggling convenience incredibly valuable. And even now I'm sure I would benefit if I was still, you know, hosting events or had a podcast and then it'd be people I'm sure it would be a benefit, but I want to make sure everything I do is in the benefit of Riveters solely.
Cause I'm taking a big swing here. If I miss that's okay. I'll you know, a year from now forever, it doesn't work out. I'll reset. I'll think it through, I'll go back to juggling. So I'm ready to understand the next thing, but if

[01:14:00]

I hit, it's going to be a big hit. I'm putting all my weight behind it.
Kyle: Yeah, good answer.
I think that's a good place for us to end. Uh, where would you send people to, to find you, to support you, to learn more about you? What's your, what's your call to action
Adriel: For you? Yeah. So I, uh, easy. I am at a Labarsky too, to anywhere on the internet, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, whatever email as well.
A Riveter is Riveter works anywhere on the internet, our website  dot com, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, or Riveter, where it's everywhere. My call to action is not about me. It's not about Ritter, but it's about you. Take this time after you listen to this, take five minutes, do it on a walk, do it with a cup of coffee, do it talking to her friend, but take five minutes and think about what are you going to do to make yourself spiky?
What are you going to do to stand out? What is the thing that you care about that nobody else cares about that is uniquely your own and make your plans to try to do it? Okay.

[01:15:00]

Louis: Fantastic. Well, I really enjoyed this. Thank you so much for coming on
Adriel: This was fun.

Kyle: That was a great conversation with Adriel Lubarsky, learning from him about, um, doing at Riveter, trying to help people while they're unemployed to gain access to the benefits, kind of the HR department for unemployed people. I think it's a really cool idea. And it's a great time that started that, right, right.
In the middle of the
Louis: Pen. Absolutely. I completely agree. It's super fun guest to have on. I'm going to, I was looking through some of this stuff. I need to list in the Show notes. He made a lot of great recommendations of books to check out some cool frameworks for you. Now, when you should be juggling multiple projects or when you should just be focusing on one thing.
Um, going to have to re listen to it myself when I edit this. And, uh, just a lot of value to impact. So I'm super grateful. We were able to have him on it. I hope you all enjoyed listening to it. And if you did, and you want to support Kyle and I encourage us to make more content like this and connect with more people like Adriel, please give us feedback in the form of a rating or review on iTunes, or send us a message on social media.
You can find us on all major

[01:16:00]

platforms and likely will respond. So thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you in a week with the next Episode.
Kyle: Thank you.

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