00:55:04 · David Senra
[00:55:04] S0: Which ties to your main mission, which is like if you don't change this incentive structure, you're not going to be able to recruit high quality talented people. And if we keep, let's play this out ten years from now, okay, might not matter to you that what 44% of the workforce, whatever the number is, is 50 or over. Well, it's gonna matter when they're all gone and we have nobody to replace them.
00:55:23 · Scott Kupor
[00:55:23] S1: Yes, that's exactly right. Yeah, so look, everything ties together, right? I'm gonna, I got to go tell people a good story to get them here. When they get here, actually have to have an environment they're excited to do. And if they're excited to do it, then we will actually get modernization because they won't be trapped in the system of not actually trying new things. And look, we have to accept the fact that we're going to screw some stuff up, again, and know, Marc always, always, you know, gets excited about some of these, you know, there's a whole meme in Silicon Valley, right? That Silicon Valley like loves failure, right? And like nothing can be farther than food, nobody fucking likes failure, but what Silicon Valley does recognize is look, if we're gonna innovate, we're not gonna get it right all the time. And again, okay, if we're talking about life and death for people, we should be pretty careful we get it right all the time. But if I can like make the retirement experience 10 times better and there's some risk that's reasonable that I fuck it up quite frankly, it doesn't work, like we got to incent people to take that risk. Like it's crazy that we're not doing that, but it like historically, nobody has been willing to do that because, you know, whenever the person who was in my seat wanted some other political job coming out of this and therefore if they got a bad, you know, congressional hearing that would stop it. Like, I told the president this when he interviewed me in December, after he like asked me why he thought I was qualified for the job. And I was like, look, I'll tell you the other reason why I think I'm qualified is there's not some other job I'm trying to get out of this. Like I've been incredibly blessed, incredibly lucky in my private life. I didn't come to this job because like I'm competing for some other either private sector job or public sector jobs. So it's like, look, I don't really care. Like I'm going to do what I think is the right thing. And then if I get in trouble, like, know, I'm either gonna fight if I screwed up or if it turns out like I did something stupid, that's fine, like fire me, I'm okay with that.
00:57:01 · Scott Kupor, David Senra
But like there's so many people who are in these jobs because it is a stepping stone to something else that it prevents them from being willing to take that appropriate level of risk to try to get stuff done. To me, this just makes no sense and this is why we have kind of stasis for so long. [00:57:14] S0: All right, so let's say somebody's listening to this right now, they wanna help, they're young, they wanna do a few year stint, where do they go? How do they get in touch with you? [00:57:22] S1: We have a whole website, believe it or not, earlycareers.gov, that's one place they can go. We're about to be on like 40 different college campuses. If they're there, they can show up and see us. They can follow me on X. I'm just scooperopm is usopm, like any of those places, but literally like send me a DM if you're interested. Like, I guarantee you, like, we will figure out a way to make Southern Wag. [00:57:48] S0: I love how much you're on this. Thanks for [00:57:50] S1: taking the time [00:57:50] S0: to talk to us guys. [00:57:51] S1: Thanks, David. Appreciate it. Yeah. Alright. [00:57:52] S0: I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please remember to subscribe wherever you're listening and leave a review. And make sure you listen to my other podcast founders. For almost a decade, I've obsessively read over 400 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs searching for ideas that you can use in your work. Most of the guests you hear on this show first found me through founders.