He Sold His Company For $15M, Then Got A Job At McDonald’s

**Sam Parr** (0:00)
Here's the headline, Millionaire Working At McDonalds. And actually, it's actually much more interesting than that.
This is the story of a guy named Scott. meetup.com is probably the most popular thing that he made. Meetup is a really cool sign. I used it when I moved to San Francisco, joined a bunch of groups, met a bunch of people. It's basically a way to go from the internet to actually meeting people in real life. I knew about Meetup. I even known about Scott. But what I didn't know is the story that Scott, after he had sold his first company, actually went and worked at McDonalds just to reset. He did that for a while and now he was going viral because he's doing it again. He didn't tell anybody, but people saw him update his LinkedIn, and it said Amazon warehouse associate or something. Basically, he's back at a Amazon warehouse now, being a pickpacker, minimum wage job again. People are like, dude, this is not the first time he's done this. He did this with McDonalds 20 years ago, and I found this fascinating and I went down to Scott Rabbit Hole, and I want to talk to you about it. You have some good stuff there too, right? Is that how it caught your eye?

**Shaan Puri** (1:07)
Yeah. Basically, he grew up, I think in Iowa or Idaho, somewhere in the Midwest, and he grew up there and he saw that Mark Andresen releases Netscape. He was like, this is amazing. He's like, I'm going to get in the Internet. In the mid-90s, he starts, I believe, one of the world's first online Internet agencies. I think it was an advertising agency, something like that. He sells it for around $15 million, which is something like 30 million bucks in today's money. He sells it, and after he sells it, he was like, I've been working for six or seven years at this Internet startup, and I work in marketing, but I'm only around bankers and lawyers and other yuppie people. That's horrible for my position as a marketer, but also I feel so out of touch with the people.

**Sam Parr** (1:55)
Here, let's use his words. He wrote this on his site. You found it back at the Internet Archive, which I thought is great. It says, why I got a job at Mcdonalds. I spent a lot of time with bankers, lawyers, Internet freaks, corporate wonks, and other people living strange lives. As a good marketing guy, that's a bad thing, and as a practicing anti-consumerist, that's a bad thing. I got a job at Mcdonalds to help get back in touch with the real world. Also, after six grueling years of the Internet whirlwind, I wanted to experience a profitable, well-oiled, multi-billion-dollar machine, and I deserve the break today.

**Shaan Puri** (2:27)
Then he goes and works at Mcdonalds, and he even shows his application. He goes, I just walked in off the street. It was at Fifth and Broadway in New York City. I walked off the street, and the manager was like, so are you used to working with teams or something like that? Scott was in his blog post. He goes, yeah, I was honest. I said, yes, I am used to that.

**Sam Parr** (2:45)
Yeah, he goes, I was truthful. In my interview, he asked if I can handle a fast-paced, intense environment. I said, yes, he looked at my resume and asked about my current part-time job as chairman of iTraffic. I said, it's an internet thing. He said, okay, and then asked me for my waist size for the pants.

**Shaan Puri** (3:02)
And he works there for like six months, and he has this amazing blog post about everything that he's learned.

**Sam Parr** (3:07)
By the way, I don't think he worked there for six months. I think it was more like three or four weeks, something like that. But 575 ain't much. So he was making 575 an hour times 40 hours a week times 52 weeks a year. That's $11,960 pre-tax. He goes, some people said it was disrespectful to me to take a job at McDonalds. I didn't need the money. They thought I was making fun of people that worked there. The opposite is true. I gained a bucket of respect. People that bust their butt for such low pay. It's one thing to scan past like statistics you see about how many people make $12,000 a year or read about them in the paper. It's another thing to sit back there in a fry heaving McNugget wielding six hour shift and go home smelling like fries and McNuggets and realize you only made about $30 this day. It's an eye opener. Interpret that as you see fit.