This week I was fortunate enough to sit down with Mr. Gary Fox and pick his mind for an hour in what turned out to be an incredibly entertaining conversation.

Gary is a seasoned entrepreneur and host of the Entrepreneur Experiment- one of Ireland's leading business podcasts. 

Gary is a million-ideas-a-minute kind of guy and so this episode was an absolute blast and is full of valuable insights. In this wide-ranging conversation, we touch on everything from Nassim Taleb's 'Skin in The Game' concept to subscription podcasting. 

Selected Links:

* The Entrepreneur Experiment 

* David Perrell's Blog 

* HostButlers

* Skin in The Game by Nassim Taleb

* Farnam Street Blog 

Show Notes:

@06:20 Gary's Background

@11:19 The dichotomy between what school incentivises Vs real life

@13:46 Curation

@16:15 Gary's first start-up

@21:33 Failure is a teacher

@23:19 Learning by doing

@25:06 Avoiding the lure of safe corporate jobs

@27:38 Building HostButlers

@28:27 The Entrepreneur Experiment

@29:59 The importance of being a good communicator

@33:40 The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed yet

@35:37 The lack of skin in the game for tenured lecturers

@37:34 The internet broadens the scope of potential careers

@39:44 The Leaving Cert

@40:46 Consistency is king

@42:50 Income Share Agreements

@45:02 Opportunities helping people to reskill for their 'second act'

@50:21 The impending podcast revolution

Here are some of my key takeaways:

On Mastering The Basics

“You're always looking for the new thing, where's the secret sauce? And again, it's just the basics, isn't it? Daily, getting your regular sleep, getting up at the same time just sets the day. I'm focused. I'm clear on what I'm doing. That’s it”

On Photojournalism

“It's very, very addictive because it has that thing that entrepreneurs love. It has the immediate reward. You get, you go out, you take a great image and the next day it's on the front of the Irish Times . . . I just loved it. I kind of got hooked on that. So when I finished the journalism masters, I just started doing that. I'd literally zero background in it, zero experience, so I just got some photo gear and just started . . . and learned by doing.”

On The Dichotomy Between What’s Tested in School and What’s Needed in Life

“It (testing) was designed for a different time when we didn't have access to that information. Your information was power. And, if you had that information and I didn't, well, I couldn't access that. It was in your head. I was like, Oh, Will's a genius. Okay. I'll work for will. Whereas now it's more learning how to learn, I think is going to be the skill. So how do you learn in terms of what are the systems you need? How do you access information? How do you process it and how do you store it? So in six months time, when you're thinking about, Oh, is that unbelievable lesson about SEO? Okay, let me go back and find that because you go back and Google it and, it's gone, it's in the ether, there’s 6 million results about SEO. And so I think that's going to be the new, super power- people who are able to digest information quickly, scan it and go ‘reliable, unreliable.’”

Everything Big Started Small

“That's how all great entrepreneurs start . . . like I’ve done nearly 60 episodes of the entrepreneur experiment now. All of them Just start with a tiny idea. Just start with one thing and it'll often not even resemble what you end up with . . . whatever you start with, it won't be your finished product. So don't stress out about it. Just start, just start something, just whatever you're into, just start some little tiny business.”

SpaceX, for example, started out as the Mars Oasis Project.

On The Lure Of Comfortable Corporate Jobs

“You'll get it's like the tiger in the zoo. You'll get used to the cage and you won't want to go back out. You'll get fed every nine, one and six. You'll get fed your meals . . . The Googles, the Facebooks of the world, you know, they're so good. They cater to people's every need. You're paid very well . . . it's hard to be hungry when you're sleep sleeping in silk sheets.”

On The Importance of Skin in The Game

“There's a lot of lecturers who are just passing the time and cashing the check. They've never been in the area that they're teaching . . . they've never actively engaged in it . . .

Nassim Taleb talks about this in Skin In The Game . . . Like I can read all these books, but I can't enact all the information enough because I'm not doing it.

. . . You wouldn't go to a driving instructor and if you saw them get off the Bus and get into the car to teach you. You just wouldn't, you'd be like, what are you doing?”

These are just a selection of the counter-intuitive ideas explored by Gary and I in our wide-ranging conversation. For more conversations like this, check out the Beyond Signal Podcast.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit infinitereach.substack.com