Quitting To Teach History to 500k+ on TikTok (Michael McBride, Creator of Idea Soup)

[01:43] Paul: Today I'm talking to Michael McBride, who is a prolific creator on TikTok and other platforms. He has a crazy amount of followers and creates educational videos on TikTok around history and many other topics. However, most of excited to talk to him about his path, his recent leap to self-employment, and what drives him to create all the things he creates.

[02:06] Michael McBride: Yeah, thanks, man. I'm super stoked to be on. Um, yeah, I'm really happy to be here.

[02:10] Paul: So give people a sense of, uh, who we're talking to. Um, you were a former strategy consultant. We share that in common. You, in the last year and a half, your life has kind of accidentally gone in a really interesting direction. What happened and where are we?

[02:26] Michael McBride: Yeah, so I mean, I'm definitely a bit of a kind of professional dilettante and I've done all kinds of crazy different things over my life. But yeah, most recently I was working as a consultant specializing in data analytics and then I started this little thing called Idea Soup where I just started making these little short-form videos on, uh, on history and science and random stuff I was interested in. And that has just exploded in the last you know, year and a half. And now I've got half a million followers on TikTok. I'm a full-time content creator and that's just what I do. And so I kind of fell into it super accidentally.

I started writing on Medium originally, just because I was in the corporate world, was feeling very kind of uncreative, needed an outlet. And I just wanted to keep my thinking sharp more than anything else. So I started writing on Medium, did that for, you know, almost 2 years. Started having some success on there, but I found that kind of a lot of my friends didn't— a lot of, a lot of my friends just don't read, right? You know, like, like, like, I consider myself pretty intellectual guy, but I've got a super diverse and varied friend group. And a lot of them were like, hey, these articles seem interesting, but like, I'm not going to sit there and read a 9-minute long article.

I'm just not going to. And so yes, that's when I kind of said I want to do the same thing, but in video form. And I really went all in on short form from day one. I, you know, my— still my YouTube really, really is hardly anything at all. I started on Instagram, didn't get anywhere for a year, but I really believed that this like short form kind of bite-sized entertainment would do well. And then I got on TikTok and it just hit with people.

And yeah, that's, you know, the rest is history.

[04:06] Paul: Yeah, I went back to your first video on Instagram and you said, I feel pretty darn ridiculous talking to my phone. And these are not going to be good videos, but hang in there. And I love that sentiment because that is really the right approach these days. Still, surprisingly, many young people want permission to do things, or they think they need to be perfect at something before they do it. What— where does that drive or impulse come from?

[04:33] Michael McBride: Yeah, I don't know. I think that— I think it's really hard, and even for me it was challenging at first. I think that one of the most challenging things for content creators that no one ever talks about is how ridiculous you feel taking it seriously at first. So right now, you know, I do a lot of my stuff talking to my phone. I'll do a lot in public while I'm traveling, right? So I'll be traveling and at some, you know, historical landmark and I'll, you know, Mount Rushmore or whatever, and I'll pull out my phone and I'll start talking to myself.

And yeah, it still feels real ridiculous today, but at least there's this like, oh, he's a creator. He's gotta do what he's gotta do, right? He's got half a million followers. Of course he's doing that, you know? But when you're starting out and you have 10 followers, you kind of have to take it just as seriously and pour just as much of yourself into it if you wanna succeed. So for me now to go and, I don't know, buy a nice camera or this or that seems totally normal.

But at first, the people around you will be like, that's so cringy. Like, why are you trying so hard? And so putting yourself in that place where you are vulnerable, really going all in on anything is a challenging place to be. And I think it's really, really tough for content creators that are just starting out. And so I think because that a lot of people half-ass it at first. Oh, I'm not serious about this.

It's just a little side thing. Oh, I don't care about this because they wanna avoid that vulnerability that comes with going all in. And yeah, maybe I was able to look ridiculous. I have a little bit of background in theater when I was a kid. So maybe some of that helped me out. I don't know.

But yeah, it's just this like awful growing pain that you really have to get through that I think every content creator goes through. And I certainly did.

[06:09] Paul: Yeah, I think the switch for me was actually making— like, I went from writing online to sitting at a cafe meeting somebody that resonated with what I wrote that I wouldn't have met otherwise. And before that, it was kind of— I put these things out there publishing on LinkedIn. Like, LinkedIn was the platform in 2014, 2015, and I felt—

[06:29] Michael McBride: still is, I think. I think people, people sleep on LinkedIn, by the way, but I think, I think it still has a tremendous amount of potential.

[06:34] Paul: I just felt such shame putting things out there, but there was still that voice that's like, I need to, I want to say these things. I feel like this is a different way of looking at things. Was that a similar drive for you?

[06:48] Michael McBride: And shame is the right word there. People never talk about creation is the most vulnerable act on the entire planet. You're putting yourself into the world and saying, please judge me. And yeah, and I think you're totally right. I think that, you know, early on, Don't focus on numbers, focus on how much you're impacting each individual person. And then, and then I also think like, you know, you know, my advice for, for smart people starting out is contextualize historically.

If you have 1,000 followers, the ability to talk to 1,000 people, the ability for the average person to reach 1,000 people is unprecedented in history, right? Like, you know, 200 years ago, that would have been almost completely impossible. You've had to like own a newspaper, right, to reach 1,000 people. And now you can press a button and do it. So if you have an audience of 1,000 people, that's amazing, right? Even 100 is amazing.

So yeah, so I felt that. And yeah, you do need to just have this unrelenting drive of like, I have something to say, I have to keep saying it. And I want to keep getting better. Because I'm sure the drop-off after, you know, 3 months of creating is huge, right? Everyone goes in all full of piss and vinegar, but, you know, drops off pretty quickly.

[08:01] Paul: Yeah, so what keeps you going? I know you've kind of tapped into a monetary angle, but you don't— and some people get stuck, right, because the algorithm might send them in a direction where they're creating stuff they actually despise. Like, a lot of early Instagrammers I've met are in this state in which the algorithm has kind of steered them in a very weird direction, basically showing their skin instead of their— what they want to be showing. And it can be pretty terrible on the other side of that for those people. How are you conscious of those traps as you've kind of scaled and oriented towards this?

[08:39] Michael McBride: Yeah, so what keeps me going? An unrelenting and bottomless need for attention. No kidding. Yeah, I mean, what keeps me going is just like, I just feel like I have something to say and I want to be listened to, and I enjoy, I enjoy making content. I think that with regards to getting into a trap, well, what's that, what's that psychological thing? I think it's called a Skinner box, where they would put pigeons in a box and these very simple systems of reward and punishment based on behavior, right?

And it's like, That is, you know, social media is very much a classical conditioning framework where feedback is so visceral and so real. It is post-performance, post-performance, post-performance. There's no ambiguity. If you're a journalist, right, 30 years ago, you don't have that. Like, like you write an article, you don't know how many people read it. You don't know what they thought about it.

You don't know how many of them liked it before, you know, how many of them dropped off halfway through. Um, and so your feedback cycles were long and much more qualitative. And so with it being so short and dynamic like that, I think that, you know, you said the algorithm pushes them in a certain way, but I think the algorithm shows people what they want to see. It's most likely more so that they've trained their audiences— trained is the wrong word— their audiences have become conditioned to expect a certain thing out of them. And the fact is, you do get caught into a cycle where you're giving the audience more of what they want. And And I heard someone say once, like, you know, you remember that your social media profile is— it's not Netflix, it's a TV show.

So if I click on The Office and Parks and Rec comes up, I'm gonna be pissed off, right? And so, so to some degree, it's like people come to you for a type of content and you want to keep giving that to them. Um, on the other hand, that is a trap, both because you have to keep scratching your own itch and you will very quickly go crazy just making content that is consumable, people like. And also because I've seen a lot of content creators, I've seen a lot of early TikTokers death spiral because they have X number of million followers, but just no engagement anymore because essentially they kept doing the same thing. Their audience liked it. They give them more of it, give them more of it, give them more of it.

And as they were doing that, the context around them shifted. The competitive environment shifted. People got bored of it, whatever. And by the time they realized that their one trick was no longer working, it was too late. So I think it's, it's always a balance between give people more of what they want and innovate and give them new things. Like, like any business is like that, right?

You have to balance the kind of Microsoft, I want to click on Outlook and get Outlook, versus the Apple, you know, let's turn an MP3 player into a phone.

[11:23] Paul: What are your, um, like Tyler Cowen calls it, the production function. What, what makes you different is— I can see some background from the strategy consulting, just like synthesizing ideas and knowing how to get to the what matters. Like, I think that is like one of the best skills you can learn in consulting and why I think it's so valuable in today's world. But also, I think there's probably some other secret weapon around your curiosity. Like, how do you think about your skill stack?

[11:58] Michael McBride: Yeah, I think that, um, you know, I mean, Idea Soup is mainly history, then a little bit of science and psychology too. Um, and I'm not a historian, I'm not a scientist, I'm not a psychologist, right? I don't know the most about these topics. There are people out there that know so much more than me. So if I had to say like, why do people watch me, uh, I think, I think it's, it's, it's two pieces. I think the first piece is, um, you know, I think, I think one of my, my real skills is taking something that is, you know, uh, complex and big and large and boiling it down in terms that make it very understandable and digestible and contextual, right?

That's super challenging, especially when I'm doing 1-minute history videos on TikTok or whatever, because I had to cut out so much. And I'm always, you know, people attack me in the comments, you left out this and you, you oversimplified this. And it's so tough because these decisions are like, you know, It's like choosing children, right? But fundamentally, it's like, I'd rather give people this core they can take away and they can always go learn more complex later. And the second piece is like, I think that my— I had this like moment in— when I was in London, right? I used to live in London.

I lived in London for 3 years. And I was just like walking down the street late at night, had a few too many beers or whatever, right? And I was walking home and it was dark. I was walking across the bridge where you see St. Paul's Cathedral at the end of it, and I'm seeing like London, this, you know, ancient, ancient city, you know, older than England itself, right? And I'm— I see St.

Paul's, and like, I just like— I start crying, right? And I'm just so moved by like all the history, the majesty, the beautiful architecture. And I realized like, oh, this is— this is what makes me good at Idea Soup, is I just love this stuff so much, and I find history so crazy and weird and fascinating that, um, I think that that's contagious. And I guess, like, if I had a mission, it's not necessarily to educate people, it's just to make them more interested. It's to make them go like, wait, history is weird. How did Romans wipe their asses?

That's crazy, right? Like, like, like, to me, it's like, it's not, it's not like dates and numbers and this and that. It's all the, like, Like, the history is so crazy and wild. You care. Yeah, exactly, exactly. It's like, I'm just such a crazy nerd.

[14:24] Paul: I think caring is— well, I think caring is so underrated in today's world. It's almost become a very normal thing to be like, ah, whatever, right?

[14:37] Michael McBride: Oh, totally.

[14:37] Paul: This deep nihilistic strand. I think what creating and writing has enabled me to— it basically nudges you into is like, I have to care about things and I have to treat things with a certain— I don't even know what the word is, but just like gentleness of like, okay, I'm gonna try to not fuck things up and try to add something useful in like a very positive and earnest way, which I definitely get that vibe from yours as well.

[15:12] Michael McBride: Yeah, it's hard. I mean, kind of, kind of go back to what I said before earlier, like caring is also something that is very vulnerable. The moment you care, you're vulnerable. You're, you're attached to a topic or an idea or, uh, or, or pursuit. And yeah, I think our world discourages that. I think it's so easy for folks to actively say, I don't care.

Because if you don't care, you can't be argued with, you can't be attacked, you can't be criticized. I don't care. I don't care. So yeah, I think, I think, you know, people are attracted to folks that care, right? The age of the tryhard is ending, I hope. Or sorry, the age of, you know, words like tryhard, right?

Like, what a wild word. Trying hard is amazing. Like, tryhard should be a compliment. Like, you are trying so hard.

[16:02] Paul: Well, I think the root of that though is that people are trying hard towards things they see as pointless, right? I think if we think of trying hard in a large organization, we think of somebody that's kind of trying to like please others, play politics, and like get ahead.

[16:16] Michael McBride: Yeah, totally.

[16:17] Paul: And it's not attached to anything, but that's more of a symptom of kind of specialization and work. I always bring it back. I always bring it back.

[16:27] Michael McBride: No, no, no. I think you're totally right there. I think you're totally right.

[16:31] Paul: We cannot leave the listeners hanging. People want to know how Romans wiped their asses.

[16:39] Michael McBride: Oh, so okay. So they, they use these things that were these like, I like, I mean, in a lot of ways Romans are very clean. They had bathhouses, this, that, but they would wipe their ass with these kind of like long sticks that had like loofah brushes at the end. They use a type of natural sponge. And they would sit in these big buckets of vinegar in like mutual bathrooms and you would kind of like share the brush or pass it around. But they did put it in a bucket of vinegar, which like, considering germ theory wouldn't be invented for another 2,000 years, like not bad.

All right. Not bad. I'll give it to you. So yeah. I love that.

[17:14] Paul: Yeah. If you want more content like that, check out Idea Soup on TikTok, Instagram. You have a lot of great stuff. Like I went down a rabbit hole before, you were talking about this idea of traditional Christmas and how traditional Christmas was just a drunken brawl where rich people were basically forced to open up their homes and like get the public drunk and feed them.

[17:42] Michael McBride: Oh yeah. I mean, they banned Christmas, like Protestants. I think England banned Christmas for like 100 years, something like that. Like, so you want to talk about a war on Christmas? Yeah, they fully banned it because it was so rowdy and so over the top. And, you know, kind of what we associate with Halloween today used to look a lot more like Christmas, actually.

[18:00] Paul: I want— I wanted to dig more into the, the caring and the earnestness because I think it's something I've seen emerge a little in the past couple of years. And I'd be interested to get your take on, like, if you see that emerging, um, but also just like your gen Are you, you're a millennial, right?

[18:20] Michael McBride: Yeah.

[18:20] Paul: But I think you're like a young, you're at the like younger end, right? Like I'm probably like the older millennial that reminisces about the '90s. You're probably a little more reminiscent about the 2000s. So we'll get to that. But you wrote this really powerful article that I'm going to link up and I really encourage people to read it because it not only has a provocative headline, but I think you deliver on it in terms of making people think about things. You talk about this trend of people just casually saying like they want their life to be over.

I think you titled it All My Friends Want to Kill Themselves. And I think it's resonated with other things I've seen too. There's like a mental health crisis. There's just a broader willingness to talk about trauma and thinking about victimhood. And there's just a lot written about this and it's disturbing. Like, what's going on there?

And like, do you see any positivity emerging out of that? Or is this still just something that's not being paid attention to?

[19:26] Michael McBride: Yeah, man, that's a big question. It's funny. It's like my writing is so radically different from my TikTok content, which is probably a big problem for my brand. But my writing is like super serious and focuses on mental health and culture and politics and all that. And so yeah, the article "Why Do All My Friends Want to Kill Themselves?" was basically just exploring this suicidal ideation being kind of a normal form of communication, kind of like the depression meme in our culture, particularly with millennials, and this specific strain of nihilism that is lighthearted but does have a reality to it. There is a very real like trend of suicidal ideation.

Depression memes resonate with people for a reason. And I don't think they're bad. I don't think we need to stop talking like that. I think that actually joking about it and making light of it does a lot of good and can be very cathartic. And depression memes are awesome in a certain sense, but it's complex. And I think that there is a strain of, misery and nihilism that is so real today, especially with younger people.

Millennials for sure, and Gen Z, it is amplified 10x. I'm on TikTok, obviously, so I'm spending a lot of time with Gen Z audience and stuff. I do think there is a misery and a desperation that is very, very real. And I think that it is profound and widespread. I talk about young people and nihilism, and it's really easy to go like, it's social media, and they're just watching hot girls in bikinis and feeling bad about themselves. But I think it's so much more complex and nuanced than that.

I think that is spreading very, very, very rapidly to the boomer generation. I think there is an element of anger and misery, and I would even say nihilism, that is coming to the boomer generation very, very quickly that you are seeing with QAnon, with a lot of these conspiracy theory kind of things. It fills a very similar void that is just anger, this misery. And I think we're absolutely in a crisis of mental health. There's no question. But I think more importantly, we are in a moment where change is happening so quickly and accelerating so fast that it just breeds this toxicity that I think amplifies through society on so many different levels.

You know, that starts economically, workplace, et cetera. That's a big statement and a big topic that we can break down more. Um, because I am not a Luddite. I don't think it's just technology makes people sad and breeds mental illness at all. I think it's much more complex than that.

[22:31] Paul: I mean, it's something I've explored pretty deeply while looking at work. I think we're in some sort of meaning crisis, and I see it play out in a number of ways. You see people doubling down on work to try and get meaning from work, and I think that is probably a mistake for a number of reasons. The labor market has changed such that like most, even married couples, if both partners are working, people are not engaged in the community. So even if you do move to like a town where there's theoretically a community, it's just a little more empty and absent. And then these myths about like, put work hard, right?

Work hard, put your head down, put in your time, you'll be taken care of. Kind of hard to do when you have debt, housing prices are expensive, healthcare's growing exponentially every year. And I talk to young people and I noticed that Gen Z is almost like opting out before they even go into it. Like, it's shifting. Like, I have a lot of friends my age who have opted out after like 10 years in the corporate world. Then I have friends who are your age who opted out after 2 or 3 years.

Now I'm meeting Gen Z people that are like, fuck this system, I'm not even going to follow that. And I think there is some issues with that, but they're also seeing things a lot more clearly because of social media, right? I was a bit blind to how organizations in the real world worked. So there's that disconnect because reality is not going to shift very quickly, but our perceptions of it can get detached or disconnected from that. And it's just an incredibly hard time to be carving your own path and thinking about meaning and connectivity and community, all while just trying to get started in the world.

[24:24] Michael McBride: Yeah, 100%. And I think that there's some, uh, I think that by and large the story of the last 20 years, 30 really, has really been a story of destabilization in a lot of ways. In the sense that we've gone from these very stagnant, stable institutions, right, of, you know, big corporations, work there forever, nothing changes, just completely ossified, to global world, distributed, software eats the world. And that has provided a tremendous amount of opportunity and created this creator class. I mean, I think 70% of elementary school kids say they want to be a YouTuber now. That blew past astronaut.

But I think with that, Matt, just the rate of change is just accelerating and accelerating, accelerating. Globalization has caused massive wealth inequality. I think that people, the white picket fence material, go get a job at a company and work there for 40 years, I think Gen Z is opting out, but I think they also just realized that doesn't quite exist anymore.

[25:32] Paul: And how does that show up? I mean, you're interacting with a lot of these young people through comments and stuff, through your videos. How does that show up? Like, what do you hear from people? Who are the people that, what are the things that surprise you?

[25:48] Michael McBride: I think Gen Z has a lot more optimism than people realize. I think that there is this like very much a, It comes out in weird ways. There's obviously this big revolutionary politics attitude among Gen Z of eat the rich, and we need socialism, and this and that. And not to get political, obviously, some of those ideas have elements of merit. But I think that there is faith that we can build a better future, even if that faith is a bit fantastical at times on certain elements. I think that there is a big sense of community and community building.

And even within a lot of, you know, mental illness is a great example where as there has been this absolute epidemic of mental illness, but there are also now so many more resources, so many more communities built around depression, ADHD, whatever. They all have their little communities of creators and people involved in that. So I think it manifests, you know, in certain ways that are optimistic and positive.

[27:01] Paul: I love this vibe from you that's just like, you seem like you have a deep concern for your fellow human. And like, how are you channeling that or thinking about channeling that just in like creating a video? Because like you literally have the chance to reach millions, right? Some videos can reach millions of people. How do you think about both that responsibility and like what you're orienting towards?

[27:27] Michael McBride: Yeah, so, you know, so I think in my mind, the way that like I try to, I guess, make the world a better place, if that— I wouldn't call myself an activist. I don't think I'm a huge net benefit for the world. But if I had a thesis, it's that education really does work and education really does matter. And I think one of the crises we have today is a crisis of education, where we are raised on an early 20th century education system, if that, right? We are raised on a very industrial age education system, one size fits all, that is so wildly irrelevant for the average person these days that I think that kids are coming out of high school wildly undereducated on what they need to actually be educated on, um, and oftentimes turned off from learning because they've spent all their time, you know, doing trigonometry and this and that, um, learning the wrong things.

And so in my mind, it's like, my favorite comment I ever get is, I hate history, I hated history class, but now because of you, I'm getting interested in it, and I'm so cool, or this or that. That's my favorite comment in the world. I get it all the time. Where you think these folks were taught wrong, they were given an incorrect introduction to it, and it caused people to kind of reject whole fields. And I think that one of the biggest challenges we have today is just this rejection of nuance. Uh, just, just culturally, we just cannot handle nuance in any real way.

And history is the most incredible field for wrestling with nuance. It's the most incredible field for wrestling with nuance. And I think that for folks to, you know, paint— history is not just a jumping off point for politics or to direct our anger. Like, yes, we look back at the past and horrible things happen and good things happen too. And you put all that together and you get this crazy, bizarre, disgusting beautiful mess of humanity, and that is now what we learn from, because that's who we are. We're the same primates, we have the same brains, our DNA has not materially changed in 500 years as our world has radically, radically shifted.

And so we can learn a tremendous amount from— learn. But I think education is changing really quickly, right? I think that, um, I think that when we talk about building new institutions, uh, I do think that The average kid today is served way better by the internet than by his classroom, almost certainly across.

[30:02] Paul: Yeah, every, every college student I talk to, I always ask them, how do you actually learn things? They say, well, I, I go to class, sometimes I just skip class, and then I go to YouTube and figure out how to actually do the thing. Or yeah, 100%, or Khan Academy.

[30:17] Michael McBride: Um, yeah.

[30:18] Paul: Do you see yourself playing a role in the future of education?

[30:22] Michael McBride: I think so, yeah, I'd like to. I mean, fundamentally, you know, I'm an entertainer, but I think first and foremost I am an educator. And I think that, uh, there's this quote— I'm sure I missed the quote exactly— but it's like, there's two ways to build a boat. One is to, uh, you know, gather men together and get wood and planks and this and that and, you know, create plans for the boat. And the other is to find a crowd and teach them to long for the sea. Right, and it's like, it's like I kind of view my role as the latter, where if you, if you spark that curiosity in people and that passion from an early age, that's really tough to snuff out, right?

Um, I think that a lot of kids get set on a path very, very early on, by age 15, based on are they curious self-learners or do they hate school and they want to stop learning? And the earlier you can intervene, the better, but I also think it's never too late. I think, you know, like, you know, don't— you know, I think sometimes— I love the classics. I love reading classics, but like maybe don't give kids The Scarlet Pimpernel and have them hate reading. Give them some awesome book that's, you know, new but really well-written, and they love it. And, you know, you start with— what's the movie with the kids killing each other?

I'm blanking out, and I'm mocking. Hunger Games. You start with Hunger Games, right? Yeah.

[31:43] Paul: Go read the Hunger Games, right?

[31:45] Michael McBride: Okay.

[31:45] Paul: Yeah.

[31:46] Michael McBride: Go read the Hunger Games. And then you develop a thirst for reading and that habit then carries you forward in life.

[31:50] Paul: So yeah, it's funny. I actually developed this at like 21, like very late. I read the book Freakonomics and then I literally was like freaking out. I'm like, oh my God, they flipped everything I knew about these 4 topics. I was like, where can I find more books about this? I think I read like 5 Malcolm Gladwell books within the next few weeks, but that just like opened my world and like, it's really just been a thirst for curiosity since.

[32:23] Michael McBride: Yeah, no, no, it really is. It really is. And a lot of times it is kind of a poison pill that gets it in. Like Freakonomics is ostensibly edutainment, right? I mean, it's analytical, right? And there's a lot of merit to it and the work that it was really interesting, fundamentally they understood that a huge component of teaching is entertaining, and Freakonomics was fascinating and, and, and goofy and, and, and off the walls, and that like, that works, right?

That, that is the poison pill that leads folks on to more complex things, I think.

[32:53] Paul: Definitely. So I'd love to close a little bit about your path and how this experience is for you. Uh, you've recently left full-time employment to pursue this. And I'm wondering, one, like, do you value the corporate experience you had? Do you wish you had left earlier? How do you think about that?

And then we'll dive into how you're kind of like, what is the— what does it feel like to be an independent self-employed person out there right now?

[33:24] Michael McBride: Yeah, 100%. Yeah, I'm happy to spend a little time on this. You know, I don't have a hard stop or anything. Um, so yeah, I worked in the corporate world. I was in analytics consulting for 5 years doing data analytics and data science, um, and I found it tremendously valuable, and I, I don't wish I had left earlier. Uh, I think I, I think I was there for just the right amount of time.

Uh, like 4 or 5 years felt perfect where I really, really got a good, good feel for the corporate world And especially because it was in consulting, so I was able to jump around between several companies, but then more importantly, see that like 3,000-mile view that I think has given me such an insight into corporate culture and like therefore, you know, like middle-class American culture, right? Like middle upper-class American culture. It's like, it is a direct pipe, you know, in a lot of ways. And It was so fascinating to me. I definitely left— disillusioned is the wrong word, and cynical is not even quite the right word either. But like, corporations are so— the biggest thing that I think, I think every consultant realized this is like going in, you start a little bit idealistic and, you know, I want to do big things.

And even before consulting, yeah, I was, I was like a documentary filmmaker before the works. I had a film in South by Southwest before I ever had a corporate job in consulting. So I had a bit of a creative background, but you know, I realized I was like, I call it the 80/20 rule, which is 80% of people at any company would burn their company to the ground for a 20% pay raise. Like mission statements, values, whatever, all that stuff's bullshit.

[35:08] Paul: Oh my God. I'm definitely going to borrow this and give you the hat tip.

[35:14] Michael McBride: And it's just like, I think the biggest surprise every consultant experiences is like, oh, politics is not a part of like corporate culture, it's everything.

[35:24] Paul: It's the part. Yeah, power and politics.

[35:26] Michael McBride: It's the part, yeah. And if they get work done and succeed as an organization, it's usually by accident, right? Like as a byproduct of all this politics happening. And so I think understanding that and seeing how You know, work is not rewarded in most organizations. The appearance of work is, right? Like signaling mechanisms on who's going to be a success in the future, who this— that's why folks fail upwards and this and that, you know, and our, our mechanisms for understanding performance are terrible.

Our mechanisms for understanding who's going to do well in the future are terrible.

[36:00] Paul: Did you ever forget that you were a creator? Like, did you ever— did you own like, I'm this corporate person and then get in the mode of like, I'm going to build out this long consulting career?

[36:11] Michael McBride: Yeah, there was, there was definitely a— so I started off super creative, right? I was a, uh, I was like, I came into school, I went to USC in California, came in as a theater major, right? Then I switched to communication, and then I switched to business. I just like fully sold out, uh, you know, like, um, uh, like crazy stuff happened in college. Like my, um, my ex-girlfriend had cancer, and so I was like, spent a year with her, and her family didn't have a ton of money, and then I didn't have any money at the time, So all of a sudden I was like, okay, money's the most important thing in the world. Like, gotta get money, gotta switch to business, go accomplish something.

And I loved studying business, right? I really did. My ex-girlfriend lived, by the way, she's doing great now. Yeah, I loved studying business, right? And so I, then I got into the entertainment industry for a year or two, pivoted back, got into consulting, right? Moved to India.

And Yeah, there was a period, maybe a year or two in where I was like, you know what? Like, I'm happy. I'm making good money. I'm watching Netflix every night. Maybe this is it. Maybe this is it, right?

Maybe I was never meant to be a creator. That's, you know, endless work for dissatisfaction. Here I am, got a decent salary. You know, I'm just going to watch Netflix and enjoy my, you know, Uber Eats. I don't think Uber Eats was even around then. Enjoy my, you know, dinner down the street.

[37:31] Paul: Uh, but, but then what?

[37:33] Michael McBride: Yeah, then I just like— I don't know, there's just hunger inside of me, I guess.

[37:39] Paul: Yeah.

[37:40] Michael McBride: Um, there's just something in me that just wanted more, and I started writing, and that's where it started. And I was like very convinced, like, this will stay a hobby, this will stay a hobby, this will stay a hobby. Um, and I really— maybe that helps, maybe it helped take the stakes off for me. Because when you say, I'm gonna be a full-time content creator, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that, I think it's so much pressure. Some people never get off the ground. By keeping the stakes low at first, I could continually create even if it was crap.

So I'd put out a lot of crap and then eventually it got good. Um, and then, yeah, and then I, then I just kind of started to see that the world was changing. That social media afforded a lot of opportunities that weren't there before. Um, I had an article go viral, made some money from that, and I was like, oh wait, I can get paid with my ideas. Wait, this is different. Um, so yeah, I definitely had a moment where it was like I, I did not consider myself a creator anymore.

I considered myself like, oh, I used to be this artistic guy, but that's not me anymore. Now I'm just a corporate guy and I want to just rise to the top of this world. For sure.

[38:48] Paul: Yeah, it's, it's interesting. I think that's one of the dangers of the corporate world is that you become overly identified as a worker. And I think I was certainly in this until I went through a health crisis. And then I kind of had this space and I didn't have this like latent creative endeavor that I'd kind of abandoned, but like writing kind of emerged into that gap and is like, I'm here. The writing was like, we're not leaving. You're going to want to keep doing this.

And then it just kind of like slowly expanded. And it wasn't like, this is why I have such a hard time describing my leap is that there was no, there was just a deep sense of like knowing it was time. There was no like moment. There was no plan. It was a terrible plan. I like, it was financially poorly executed, but, um, It was just like time when the creative stuff took over.

Was that similar for you or was the like explosion on TikTok just too much where it was like, well, this is like gonna make me more than my full-time job now?

[39:50] Michael McBride: No, no. I mean, so it's, so I first, at first actually, do you ever miss it? Do you ever miss just fully your identity is the corporate job?

[40:00] Paul: Yeah, I was happy. I've always been a pretty happy person. Yeah, I think there's a certain naivety of youth in which I was happy with kind of the like pleasure and fun. And to be honest, like the community oriented around young 20s corporate world is really fun. I think I started to struggle in my early 30s when a lot of that community drifted away. People didn't orient around fun and being in the city and always being around their friends.

It was more around like, totally moved to the house, started my family and doing those things. So, so I felt a bit more lost at that age. But I miss just showing up and being part of a team. The thing I always remind myself though is like, you can never sustain those teams very long. Like, I was on great teams probably 5 or 6 different times, but they never lasted longer than like 6 months. Yeah, people either move on or go do their, their thing, and I miss that.

Like, some mentors who are just like, you're in the, the grind with for 3 months straight and working on a really hard project, and they're really pushing you and making you uncomfortable, but also like caring about you as a person. I, I was lucky to have a number of those experiences. That's really hard to replace as a solo creator. Um, like someone like me and you, we could say like, hey, let's try to find a way to collaborate. But like, I know it's just gonna be freaking hard and it probably— maybe it will happen, but it's just gonna be— even if you did one thing, it's gonna be hard to sustain that.

[41:42] Michael McBride: Yeah, I, I, I totally agree. Um, I still miss the teamwork for sure. Um, and I almost liken it to people who have kind of like left a religion almost. Where, yeah, you had answers. They may not have been the right answers, but you had answers, and it's really comforting having answers. Uh, and once you leave that, there, there are no answers.

Um, you know, there was never a moment where I, uh, was like, oh my God, I'm making so much money, I have to quit now. So actually, I kind of took a leap of faith. So I quit my job, uh, in February, just before, just before the pandemic. Perfect timing. Um, and, uh And, you know, when I quit my job, I had done like one brand deal maybe. I had made very, very little money from social media.

My writing had made, you know, a couple thousand bucks or whatever, but like nothing crazy. So I just saved my money. That's the one good thing about working a corporate job. I tell that to a lot of creative people. If you can create a financial buffer for yourself, you can increase your risk tolerance tremendously. So I saved up like 2 years of like 2 years of expenses of like pretty, you know, you know, minimal expenses, not like, you know, big house or anything, but like 2 years of expenses.

And I was like, I'm gonna give myself 2 years, just pursue this dream all out. And now I'm in a place where, you know, I pay my bills every month with the money I make from content creation. I've had a couple months that have been as good as my old job, right? But it's not, it's not regular. And so Um, so no, it wasn't just like there's so much money and I now need to go pursue this. And I think folks who wait for that sometimes miss the ball.

I think sometimes you do have to jump a little bit earlier than it feels like you should. Um, that being said, I believe in the side hustle tremendously. I've been reflecting lately how like in some ways I was actually more productive. I produced more content when I was working full-time because I felt so pressured. I was in a pressure cooker. I would walk to work.

[43:46] Paul: That structure and routine is underrated.

[43:49] Michael McBride: So underrated. I would walk to work every day and I had a 15-minute walk to the tube station to take the tube to my job, right? I was like, oh, I don't have time to make TikToks, but I have to make TikToks. What am I gonna do? So on that 15-minute walk, I would record my TikTok. On my 40-minute tube ride, I would edit my TikTok, sitting down crammed between like 7 other people.

And by the time I got to work, my TikTok for the day would be finished. And that was how like 80% of my early TikToks were made. Just like clawing out that time out of the day when I was already super busy. Yeah.

[44:24] Paul: It's, it's that tension of kind of having this thing that matters to you and it's almost like an F you to your job. It's like, I will do this. You can't take this from me.

[44:34] Michael McBride: Totally, totally. And now like, I definitely, I've been thinking a lot lately that I want to rekindle that a little bit. It's so easy to be like, oh, you know what, I'll, I'll take a little longer lunch. Oh, my girlfriend's watching Survivor. Okay, I'll go watch like a Survivor rerun, like, like, you know, and all of a sudden a couple hours, okay, I should get back to work. You know, like that, that intensity, um, you have to manufacture it artificially for yourself.

Yeah. Outside of those environments of intense accountability. And I really thrive in structure and accountability. So I keep trying to generate that for myself. Um, and some days I'm better than others, but It's absolutely a challenge of being a solo creator.

[45:10] Paul: Yeah. And what does success mean to you now?

[45:14] Michael McBride: Ah, yes, good question. Um, I heard someone, um, I heard someone write the other day, maybe I actually— so maybe you retweeted something, I don't know. I heard someone write that, um, there's only, there's only 3 levels of wealth that matter. There is, uh, There is— oh God, what is it? Oh yeah, it was, it was number 1, bills are covered, right? Comfortable life, right?

Number 2 is when you walk into a restaurant, you don't need to look at the price tags on the menu. And number 3 is when you travel, you don't need to look at the price tags. Those are the only 3 levels of wealth that matter. I was like, I was like, there's something to that. So Like, um, but all that being said, I think that's easy to say, but I know a lot of very wealthy people who live very poor lives. Yeah, because they are either very time poor, um, or risk poor, uh, and, and so to me, success is a combination of, for me personally, creating content people care about, right?

And just being heard. Number 2 is definitely freedom. I really, really value freedom of location and geography. I've been to 36 countries now. I love traveling. I really value freedom of location and freedom of schedule.

And I think that I've gotten to the point in life where I do value that a little bit more than raw money. While I would like to get to a point where I'm really, you know, not looking at the price tag for travel or that, I also know people who are, you know, draw these prisons around themselves and they won't fly international unless it's first class. And so they don't make it abroad this year or whatever, right? Like I know a lot of people because they need the best of everything.

[47:13] Paul: Yeah.

[47:13] Michael McBride: They can only actually do something fun once every 3 years or whatever.

[47:17] Paul: Right.

[47:19] Michael McBride: So I think that the hedonic treadmill turns on very quickly.

[47:23] Paul: The transition for me has— it's actually surprised me because I think I used to care. I made enough money where I didn't have to look at the price tags for restaurants in New York. The surprising thing that happened is I realized that going to restaurants didn't add a ton to my life when I had less money because I couldn't go to them anymore. So yeah, my, my second level is really that like time wealth. And when you have more time, you're willing to actually spend more time on inconvenience in a weird way. So you're willing, like if you have time, you spending 3 hours to make a meal is no longer something that's in tension with anything.

It's pretty beautiful. And I think the hardest thing I have is almost like leaving a religion is explaining that to other people because people constantly have questions like, don't you want a house? If you have kids, what about X? If you do this in the future, aren't you worried about X? And it's like, I know it's clear you're worried about those things, but they're not my starting points. Yeah.

And it's really hard to It's surprising. It's— I'm in a place that's very unexpected from where I started 4 years ago. And I really thought I used to care about things, um, that it turns out are more flexible than I thought.

[48:54] Michael McBride: Yeah, no, I think, I think, I think that's really valid. I think that's really, really valid. Um, and, and yeah, then also I guess some element of happiness, satisfaction, right? I think that's illusory, but there's something to that too. I don't want to say that every digital nomad is happy because I do think that like, you know, I don't want that to be like the tone of this conversation. Cause I feel like I hear that everywhere.

And it's almost like cliché now, this kind of 4-Hour Workweek cult. And it's not quite that simple, I think, but, and I don't think the corporate world is like a hellhole either. I do think there's a lot of happy people who live corporate lives is because there's an element of, you know, financial stability does increase happiness up to a point. Absolutely. But man, when I was in consulting, like, I would just be in meetings with all these, you know, VPs and senior VPs and, you know, people that are at the, you know, C-suite people that were at the top of their game. And like, they are just so miserable, man.

They're just so miserable. You see it in their eyes and you're just like, yeah. You know, and it just, it feels like they're just chasing something and they don't even know why.

[50:04] Paul: I think that's what the digital nomads have is they've, they kind of haven't gone far enough. Like they've realized that is not worth it. Right. But they're merely escaping that. I think where I've kind of landed, I've kind of discovered I'm a little more traditional and normie than I expected, basically because seeing myself in tension with a lot of these nomad types who tend to reject everything just out of default. Whereas like, for me, it's like, okay, the things I want are actually the same things that a lot of people have accidentally through the default path.

It just means I'm going to have to be more conscious about creating— how do I insert myself in a community where people are engaged and involved with each other? How do I create a stability such that I can attract others that want to invest in relationships and things like that. Whereas like, yeah, this nomad culture, there's definitely a streak of this like hedonistic nihilism, which is like, do whatever makes you happy. And if anyone makes you uncomfortable, leave them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, no.

[51:14] Michael McBride: Yeah. And there's even an element of like, they're kind of hopping off one treadmill and getting on another one sometimes. Where it goes from, right, I need to have all the money in the world and get a house, to I gotta travel to all these countries and take this off. I'm in Africa. Yes, I need to go to Africa now. And like, all of a sudden you're just substituting one thing that fills a void, another thing that fills the void.

Um, and I've seen that a lot with digital nomad types. I think we're gonna continue to see that, uh, yeah, as, you know, work really radically reshapes the next few years.

[51:44] Paul: I think the digital nomad path is radically underrated for somebody like my age. In like early to mid-30s, um, because it's actually way easier physically.

[51:54] Michael McBride: It's actually way easier, I think.

[51:55] Paul: Well, physically you can't really party all the time.

[51:59] Michael McBride: Yeah, true.

[52:01] Paul: Uh, two, you like don't want to be— you want like a more— like we're in an apartment, we're renting for a month, um, and this is like a stable home base for us rather than like— we don't want to be traveling every 3 days. Um, And it just puts you in tension with living in different places and makes you really just think about all these deeper questions, which I think make my life better.

[52:25] Michael McBride: Yeah, I mean, I think that a lot of people in their mid-30s have so much more in savings. I think, I think where I see digital nomads really go wrong is they go a little too early, they don't quite have a good enough income stream, and they're really, really struggling, really pinching pennies, which don't get me wrong, it's its own adventure too. You know, I like drove around the country with no money. Like, I've been a lot of places when I didn't have money. Um, but I think a lot of people in their mid-30s with no kids can take a year off and travel and come back and have no impact on their career, no impact on their money really, right? Like, if they have, you know, if they're saving up to buy a house or something, a year of traveling is actually nothing compared to buying a house in Escondido or whatever, right?

And so And so, um, I, I totally agree that's underrated. And yeah, and even going digital nomad, because a lot of people are more established careers, which means they can go remote more easily because they've been in the same place for 10 years. So I, I, I totally agree. I do think, you know, remote work is going to reshape our electorate pretty rapidly.

[53:29] Paul: Yeah.

[53:29] Michael McBride: Is—

[53:31] Paul: yeah, I'm very much in a state of not knowing. Um, there's definitely It'd be easy for me to just be like, here's how things are going to happen. Here's— I've been writing about these things for years, but it's like, yeah, I'm just kind of like sitting and observing these things. It's clear something is afoot in terms of how people are working and living, but I'm not really sure which direction it's going to go in. It's really exciting to watch and see what will emerge. And I hope people are more easily able to build life paths that give them meaning.

And I think that's what excites me.

[54:03] Michael McBride: Yeah, yeah, I hope so too, man. I hope so too. Um, I don't know though, you know, like, if putting people in charge of making their own meaning is also a type of curse. Like, I, like, I'm not sure if we move to this world where 80% of the population are gig workers and have their own companies and there's this big middle class of creators that a lot of people theorize right now, I'm not sure if the net happiness is going to be larger than when everyone just showed up at Kodak and filled out paperwork.

[54:41] Paul: I totally agree. I mean, I have a hypothesis around that. I call it the accidental meaning hypothesis, which was that basically the people that accidentally went to work at GE and Kodak and General Dynamics got this accidental meaning because the systems were designed around it.

[54:58] Michael McBride: Yeah, and I think that's real. And I think that sometimes when you ask people to make their own meaning, it leads for them, you know, seeking meaning in unhealthy places. Like, I think, how much of this is responsible for the rise of conspiracy theories, for example? To me, conspiracy theory is this perfect example. They exist in a meaning vacuum, right? When there is a vacuum of meaning, everyone loves conspiracy theories because suddenly it gives order and meaning to the world very, very quickly.

[55:24] Paul: Yeah. It's, um, and I mean, this is what I, I don't think people should, I think people need to be more open-eyed that you probably have to put a little more effort into designing your meaning than you did 30 years ago. And I think that's, um, the thing I try to get to, but yeah, it's, it's freaking hard and like, Digital nomad life isn't the answer either because I mean, me and my wife, we have families from two different countries and trying to design around that is just, it's not a normal thing to solve. There's no good answers.

[56:02] Michael McBride: Totally. Totally. Even just like, where do you get your mail? Because it's no problem.

[56:07] Paul: Send it to my mom and then she takes pictures, you know?

[56:11] Michael McBride: Yeah. Yeah.