December 15, 2025 – Pillow Cube Jay Davis and Top 0.1% Bryant McGill

Intro 0:04
Broadcasting from AM and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration award-winning School for Startups Radio, where we talk all things small business and entrepreneurship. Now, here is your host, the guy that believes anyone can be a successful entrepreneur because entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk, or passion: Jim Beach.

Jim Beach 0:25
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another exciting edition of School for Startups Radio. We’ve got a great show for you today. Here, as we get closer and closer to the holidays, I hope that means that you are done with your work, your to-do list, and we can hold you accountable. The year is over. Did you hit your number? I’ll be there to check in a minute.

Got a great show. First up today, we have Jay Davis. He has invented a better pillow. It’s called the Pillow Cube, and he has knocked it out of the ballpark with this product, with his execution. You are going to learn a lot from listening to Jay. It’s a great story. So thanks, Jay, for being with us.

After that, we’re going to do another Greatest Hits. For those of you who don’t know, our server company, for 10 years, when they went out of business, and instead of buying them, I looked at it, didn’t make sense, they just closed off, closed down. And we all knew that was going to happen. They gave us notice. But anyway, we have a whole bunch of files that we need to load up onto the new server so that you can hear them, because they are great Greatest Hits. We have one of those today. It’s Bryant McGill. He’ll be with us in the second half of the hour. Thanks for being with us. Enjoy the show

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Jim Beach 2:16
We are back, and again, thank you so very much for being with us. I am very excited to introduce my first guest today. Please welcome Jay Davis. He started off running an agency, a marketing agency, very successfully, called Creatively. An idea from there turned into another business that he’s running called Pillow Cube, which is an ultra-high premium, high-tech, breathable, supportive, yet marshmallow-soft, space-age, blow-your-mind block of foam. Jay, welcome to the show. How you doing?

Jay Davis 2:53
Doing great. Thank you so much for having me. Really appreciate it.

Jim Beach 2:56
All right. So let’s start with Creatively. Tell us about the agency, what you were doing, who you were serving, how big it got, and then we’ll segue into the Pillow Cube.

Jay Davis 3:07
Yeah, sounds great. So I started Creatively in 2016. I had been involved in a lot of different kind of marketing campaigns and viral campaigns. I helped start a company in Utah called The Color Run, which was kind of this crazy fun 5K mixed with colored powder, and did a lot of viral marketing there. And so it kind of leveraged that mixed with powder. Yeah, yeah. So every kilometer, people would throw colored powder on you. So kind of a mixture of the Indian festival.

Jim Beach 3:46
It sounds like Indian

Jay Davis  3:50
yeah, yeah. So that’s kind of where I first started doing viral marketing and video marketing, and then left and did a lot of different YouTube campaigns and videos kind of on my own. And then eventually said, I want to start kind of doing this with a team. And so I started Creatively and started hiring people and doing marketing campaigns for a lot of different startups and companies who are trying to get off the ground. Those were some of our early clients. And then as time has gone on, we’ve expanded into a lot of B2B SaaS software companies, but still a lot of consumer brands, and we’ve been able to help launch a bunch of great consumer brands.

And Creatively was something that was really fun. But for me, I’ve always been an entrepreneur and always wanted to create and invent. And so while I was running Creatively, at the time we had about 15 employees, I decided it’s very, you know, we should, yeah, it was good, yeah, yeah. So, so, yeah, it was starting to really grow in scale. So I don’t know why I was, I was like, oh, let’s start another thing, a little bit. The entrepreneur in me always trying to do more things.
And so we started talking about ideas, and I had had this idea for a side-sleeping pillow as a kid growing up. I had a friend whose mom was Japanese, and she slept on, you know, kind of like a cube-shaped box that was wrapped in a towel. And I just thought, like, man, that’d be really great if it was a little more comfortable. And so decided to create something that was really kind of, from the outside, just looks like a block of foam.

But as we started testing foams and trying stuff out, it was a lot harder of a problem to really fine-tune that and get the perfect foam that was squishy yet supportive, you know, kind of that marshmallowy feeling. And so we finally found something that was great, and started testing it with friends and family. And most people, when they saw it, said, “That’s really stupid.” And then they would try it, and they’d say, “Actually, that’s so comfortable. That’s so surprising.”

And so we launched in 2019 on Kickstarter and did pretty good. I mean, it was nothing crazy, but we’ve now sold over a million and a half pillows. We’re approaching 2 million pillows sold. And so, yeah, it’s been a wild ride. It’s been pretty fun. Jim Beach 6:29
Amazing! Congratulations. These pillows on the website, they look like a pillow, but except they’re squared off.

Jay Davis  6:39
yes. Yep, yeah. So that’s kind of the idea: for a side sleeper, I was always kind of collapsing my shoulder, rounding my shoulders to kind of drop my head lower to the bed so that it was closer to the mattress, so that I could, you know, feel support from the pillow. And so the whole idea of Pillow Cube is we have different thicknesses, and you can find something that works for you. Some people, you know, I have friends who are five-foot-eight and they need a super-thick pillow because they have really broad shoulders, and then tall, six-foot-four friends who don’t have as broad shoulders.

And so the whole idea is it’s a pillow that adjusts and is unique to the sleeper. And so you can kind of find what’s for you, but for most people, that’s what they find: they wanted something that’s much thicker than most pillows, and they want something much firmer, and they like the flat surface. It’s, you know, flat, and you can lay your head on it. It’s very similar to a mattress, but just for your head. And so that’s really kind of the difference, is most things are just way too soft.

I was always stacking two or three pillows. I was always trying to fold it in half and just get enough support so that my neck wasn’t at an angle all night.

Jim Beach 7:52
All night. Yes, I’ve done all of those things too. Yeah. Yes, yeah. Ah, the price. I am on the same pillow, Jason, I had in high school, and I’m now in my 50s, and I’ve had the same. It is so nasty. I’ve had people join me in bed and leave because of the nastiness of the pillow. But, uh, or that’s what they say anyway. So I haven’t bought a pillow in a long time. Yeah, I was a little bit price-shocked when I saw this. I’m going to be honest. Yeah, yes. Higher than I thought they would be. Is this price for a pillow?

Jim Beach 8:25
And how is the company doing overall?

Jay Davis 8:38
Yeah, a lot of kind of premium pillows are usually between $102 and $150, which I know sounds a little crazy. So, like, there’s a couple other pillows. A lot of kind of the, like, I would say those are kind of ultra-premium. Then the premium pillows, like, we sell in Walmart, and we’re in the premium kind of category, and that’s anywhere between, like, $45 to $100. And then $45 and under is usually kind of like the more generic brands, not kind of like a specialty pillow.
So we’re very much in the same range as, like, you know, what you’d see from Tempur-Pedic, or Casper, some of those other brands. So yeah. But I think one of the other reasons is we use very high-quality foam. I’ve definitely become a foam snob, where I can tell the difference.

Jim Beach 9:39
You can buy a million square feet of foam for 12 cents, I would guess. And that’s gonna be wrong, I bet.

Jay Davis 9:45
That is wrong. Yeah. That’s very expensive and varies greatly. You can get, you know, really cheap foam that has no support or that has a lot less material. So that’s one of the ways the cheaper pillows kind of will cheat. Yet, if they’re shredded foam, it’s usually scrap foam that they’ve cut up from some other process, like making mattresses. That’s why pillows or bags full of kind of fluff usually is that they would take what was left over from making the mattress, and then they would just take that and put it into a bag.

And so that’s how pillows were created and why they look the way that they look, because it was just all the leftover junk that they would use to make the pillow. And so a lot of times, that’s kind of how pillows are super cheap, is because they’re just taking scrap material and putting it in a bag.

So ours is solid, a solid block. You can’t find scraps to do that. So we cut each one custom, and then we’re using something that has a lot of material per square foot. We’re using a compound or a formulation that doesn’t have a lot of bad chemicals in it. A lot of the really cheap ones, they do something called off-gassing, where it’s like putting gas into the air in your room, and so it’s really bad for you.

And so we’re using what’s called CertiPUR foam, which is like the highest-grade foam. So there’s huge differences between, like, your really cheap, cheap, cheap pillows, and then your high-end pillows. And you can tell as soon as you lay on it, it just feels different. This feels soft and squishy, like marshmallow, like you said.

Jim Beach 11:33
Yeah But it’s almost as good as my pillow. I would say better. Forty-seven years now.

Jay Davis 11:40
Yeah, we might have to get you a new one. We might have to finally make this happen for you.

Jim Beach 11:45
Oh, that would just, too much change. Too much change. All right. Well, amazing. It’s an incredible story. So let’s go back now. How did you find manufacturing? Talk to me about the manufacturing.

Jay Davis 12:03
Yeah. So early on, you know, we were kind of in an interesting time. We launched our Kickstarter in the summer of 2019. We ended up starting to ship in November, December of 2019. And so kind of a wild time to start a product. Our first order, we found a really great manufacturer overseas, but because of COVID, within six months we had to start shifting that to the U.S.

So for the first year and a half, we actually made it here in America, which was awesome. It allowed us to kind of ramp up for all the demand. But over time, we have continued sourcing some of our products from the U.S., but we source overseas as well. And so for us, it’s always finding people who are making something that’s super high quality, that they’re wanting to make sure that it’s, you know, not crappy materials and kind of, as I mentioned earlier, like the solid block of foam is actually the most expensive way.

When I first had this idea, people were like, you know, most people don’t make pillows that way because it’s really expensive to make pillows that way. It’s a lot cheaper if you just fill a bag with crap. And so, but I knew that this provided the experience that personally I loved and really changed the way I slept. And that quality sleep is so important to feel happy and kind of be our best selves. And so, yeah, it was something that I became really passionate about and wanted to make sure that we could give to people. And so we’ve had to work hard and learned a ton of things about manufacturers and suppliers and how to find good ones, and how to build long-term relationships.

Jim Beach 13:47
How did you test someone overseas?

Jay Davis 13:51
So a lot of that was, you know, kind of early on, and still, even today, we usually get samples from them, if at all possible. Especially for where we are now, like we want to go to their factory and take a look, whether it’s here in the U.S. or overseas in China or Vietnam. We want to see how they treat their people. We want to see kind of what their factory looks like. Is it clean? Is it well taken care of? Do they take pride in what they’re doing?

So that’s important for us, kind of no matter where we are. And a lot of it is just building that relationship, seeing how they do on a first order, kind of starting with a smaller order and seeing how they react to some, you know, just the challenges. It’s always hard to make great products. It’s never easy. And so, make sure that you can find a partner.

But a lot of it early on was reaching out to people I knew in the industry and asking people where they were sourcing things. Sometimes it was just finding out where other products were made and kind of going from there.

Jim Beach 14:55
Where do you put them all? I mean, 1,000 pillows are going to take up a lot of space.

Jay Davis 15:00
Oh yeah, yeah. So we have, for a long time, we had our own warehouse, but over time, we’ve kind of dialed all that in. So we have two partners, or it’s one company, but they have two locations here in the U.S. And so they have one here in Utah, where we’re headquartered, and then they also have another location in Tennessee.

And so all of our products go there, and they have massive warehouses, and then, because they serve a bunch of different companies, they split it up from there. And so some of the orders are kept for direct-to-consumer orders from our website. Some are sent to different retailers that we sell with.

And so, yeah, it is a lot of space. That’s definitely— we can press and kind of pack the pillow down to save on packaging costs, and also just not having to take up as much space. But still, 1,000 pillows is a lot of pallets and pillows, so it takes up a lot of rooms.

Jim Beach 16:01
Yes, I noticed you’re in Kohl’s. How did you get in locations and wholesalers, retailers like that? Yeah.

Jay Davis 16:10
So I think one of the things that initially I thought, I kind of imagined— because with the agency, we already always had clients who were doing that and working with retailers, and I didn’t have as much personal experience. And so I always imagined that it was like, you know, you go have this one meeting and they either like you or they don’t, and then you have, like, this one shot.

And I’ve actually now learned that a lot of it is just, again, goes back to relationships. With both Kohl’s and Walmart and a bunch of other retailers, it’s getting to know people, going to industry events, going to trade shows, and we’d meet people. We’d meet the buyer from Walmart and, you know, talk and get to know him, and talk about the vision for the company and what we were trying to do and the products and what we think they did for customers.

And so a lot of times in those meetings, like, I think the first time we met Kohl’s and Walmart and Target, it was probably in 2020, 2021, and we just developed a relationship. And so we’d see them kind of every couple months at things, and you kind of pitch, and they say, “Okay, well, let me think about that.” And so it’s not like a single meeting that you either get it or you don’t. It’s kind of developing that relationship over time and playing the long game. And that really has been crucial for our success, building those good retailer partnerships.

And they bring a lot to the table. People are shopping in stores more than I think most people think. It’s still the vast majority of products are bought in stores. And so it’s been a really great channel for us, and those partners are essential.

Jim Beach 17:57
What kind of marketing do you do?

Jay Davis  18:02
So a lot of our marketing is still, you know, kind of our fun, wacky videos that we started with. We have a lot of creative videos that we’ve come up with. We have one about kind of the origin story. We have another one about how shoulders always get in the way, and so that’s been a big piece.

But we also have added in now influencer partnerships and celebrity partnerships. We’ve given a lot of pillows and gifted a lot to both celebrities and athletes and influencers, but then also tried to do a lot of charity work to really just get it out there and have people try it, but also give back.

A lot of our returns, the vast majority of our returns, go to different charities across the country. And so, yeah, just, I think that word of mouth is something that we’ve always been trying to build on top of some of the other paid efforts that we’ve done. But marketing nowadays, it’s always changing, and it’s a lot of different things that you have to do at the same time. You can’t focus too much on one channel.

Jim Beach 19:10
You should do videos with a guy like a wrestler, a guy with absolutely no neck, and then find an actor with a really long neck and have the two of them standing there talking together or something. You should, one of those muscle guys that has just zero neck. That would be hysterical.

Jay Davis  19:28
Yeah, a lot of times those guys are the ones. They have no neck, but they have super broad shoulders. And so, yeah, it’s always wild. But I love that idea. We’re always looking for, you know, fun, wacky stuff, because it seems to just stand out. Our branding is fun and light. We’re not super, super serious, even though we hope we’re solving a serious problem. And so – I think that’s awesome.

Jim Beach 19:53
Yeah, I would find the weirdest-shaped bodies you could and have those. Just have a freak show, like a Howard Stern show. Just bring the freaks and have all of them go, “This is the best sleep ever.”

Jay Davis  20:10
I think you just – call it “Bring in the Freaks.” I think that’s a pretty great phrase.

Jim Beach 20:13
Yeah, that says it all right there. Yes.

Jay Davis  20:18
That’s Awesome!

Jim Beach 20:20
Did you say that you deflate the pillows— do you shrink-wrap them, in essence? Flatten them? Yeah, pull all the air out with one of those vacuum packs?

Jay Davis 20:29
Yep, yeah. So we can press them with a big weight. It’s a hydraulic kind of press. And so we press them, take all the air out, vacuum-seal them, roll them, and so it comes in, actually, like a pretty small box when you buy it from our website. If you go to the stores, we have them uncompressed, because people want to squeeze them and feel them.

But yeah, so we try and make that package as small as possible. So it’s always funny, because sometimes people get it and they’re like, “Oh, I thought this was like a full-size pillow.” Give it a second. It’ll pop up. Yeah. So it comes almost very similar to how the direct-to-consumer mattresses started shipping mattresses five, six years ago.

Jim Beach 21:18
So that’s such a funny story. Do you know how all of that happened? Did you ever hear this story that Obama had a White House conference and invited a bunch of entrepreneurs, and someone mentioned mattresses, and eight of those people started mattress companies, and now we have— I have not heard that— additive mattress companies that are the exact same.

Jay Davis 21:41
That’s crazy, yeah. That’s really interesting.

Jim Beach 21:44
Someone said “mattress,” and everyone was like, “Mattress is mattress, pillow,” you know? And they just all went bonkers.

Jay Davis 21:52
I was not at that meeting. That was not me. I had a different way to get into the industry. No, that’s fascinating, yeah, because there was kind of that period where all of a sudden it was just like a new mattress company—

Jim Beach 22:04
Every week, that’s right. He actually, you know— and yeah, all the different ideas, yeah. Idiom was still alive. I mean, they’ve all—

Jay Davis 22:16
I think bedding, in general, has gone through that very interesting last five years. COVID— everyone was home, and so everyone was kind of thinking about it.

Jim Beach 22:28
That guy’s name— MyPillow guy— Mike Lindell. Mike Lindell. Yeah, he’s up in your area too, isn’t he? You know him?

Jay Davis 22:42
Yeah, I don’t know him. I’ve never met him, but yeah, very interesting character. So yeah, it’s kind of a wild industry, and it got all this attention. All the DTC people jumped in, and all these e-commerce people. But I think it’s very much pulled back. There were too many people in the mattress game. And so, yeah, we’re kind of, you know, we never want to see other people fail, but it is nice that there’s not as many people in the space anymore, because it definitely got overly crowded.

Jim Beach 23:20
Yes, yes. Get rid of the Japanese block story. Okay, I lived in Japan for a long time, and I know the history of those Japanese wooden blocks. They are a symbol now of the poverty and hardship that everyone endured during World War II. So really, they symbolize to the Japanese person what their ancestors had to go through sleeping on a damn wood pillow. It’s a pillow made out of wood, you know? I mean, let’s be serious. And so—

Jay Davis 23:51
That’s crazy. I didn’t know that. 

Jim Beach 23:56
It’s sort of like – Spam today. Everyone got forced spam during the war, and so nobody really likes spam anymore, because it’s a war memory. That makes sense.

Jay Davis 24:06
Interesting. Yeah, that’s fascinating. I’ve never heard that.

Jim Beach 24:10
Yes. Japanese love pillows. Didn’t you find a body pillow for— especially for the pregnancies— the pillow that you put your leg over the top of? It’s almost like sleeping with another person. Have you seen those?

Jay Davis  24:24
Yeah, yes. We have a knee pillow. We have a knee pillow that you can put between your knees.

Jim Beach 24:34
These be like five feet long. Yeah, it is another person, basically.

Jay Davis  24:41
When you need to feel like someone’s in bed with you. You know, we’ve actually been toying with some ideas around that. It’s a little harder with the block of foam, because, like I mentioned, it’s pretty expensive to do full blocks. And so we’ve been trying to create something that’s unique for pregnant people— especially pregnant women— there’s a lot of pressure on your stomach and a lot of weight.

Jim Beach 25:08
A lot Of pressure on the men, is where you’re going with that, one more of the things, don’t you?

Jay Davis 25:14
I do. I have four daughters.

Jim Beach 25:27
Oh, you want to hear my range? But yeah, I’m like 29, 26, 14, 10.

Jay Davis  25:35
Okay, so you’re still in the game. You still got some— yeah, that’s the 10-year-old. We have a 10-year-old as well. Are your girls?

Jim Beach 25:46
Boys. Boy, girl, boy, girl. 

Jim Beach 25:54
Okay, having boy sex. You know, there’s a book out there on how to choose the sex of your baby 100% naturally. And we were four for four with that. Really, yes.

Jay Davis 26:06
I was zero for two. Once we had two girls, I was like, “Oh, it’d be fun to have a boy.” And I’ll try some of these things. Didn’t work for me, but I guess I’m—

Jim Beach 26:14
Just tried the other stuff, the different positions and time of the month and all that.

Jay Davis 26:19
Tried. It didn’t work for me.

Jim Beach 26:22
But, oh, you should have hired me as a coach. I can coach you— stand right there during the sex. “Not that way, Jay! No, no. Put your hand there. Okay, that’ll go now.”

Jay Davis 26:32
I didn’t know this was an available service. Yeah, sounds awesome.

Jim Beach 26:38
Then I throw pillows at you. Yeah. Right now, we’re— get in touch. Get us a Pillow Cube. God, these look comfortable. Oh yeah, today’s the 15th. So we have 10 days until Christmas left.

Jay Davis 26:56
So go to pillowcube.com, P-I-L-L-O-W-C-U-B-E dot com. We are still shipping. I think the cutoff is the 16th. So you got today and tomorrow if you pay for normal shipping, or just the free shipping that it comes with. If you want to do expedited shipping, we’ll do that probably through the 21st, 22nd. But yes, still plenty of time. It’s a great, great Christmas present.

It’s always the thing that people come up to me, and when they find out I’m the inventor and came up with it, it’s the product that I’ve worked on that— man— people just always relax. “Oh, this has changed my life,” which is pretty wild for a block of foam, but it really is so much more comfortable.

My wife is always the person who is always like— I pitch her new ideas all the time— and this is the one that she sleeps on every night. She’s a tough person to convince, but once I convinced her, she’s 100% bought in. So definitely—

Jim Beach 27:57
Marketing ideas: have pictures. Love it. Have people take pictures of their disgusting pillows, like Nike did with shoes. Oh yeah. Have people send in the nastiest pillow.

Jay Davis 28:12
Give away a pillow for the nastiest.

Jim Beach 28:15
Yes. Pillow. Winner: the nastiest 84-year-old pillow. Pillow that went through college with you. And we will— yeah, I love it. I’m gonna do that. Pillowcube.com. Thanks a lot. You’ve been a great guest— a lot of fun— and I appreciate it. Thanks a lot.

Jay Davis 28:15
Thanks so much for having me.

Jim Beach 28:15
And we will be right back. You. It.

Intro 2 28:48
Well, that’s a, that’s a, that’s— A wonderful question, actually, Jim. Oh my gosh, I love the opportunity to do this. Thank you, Jim. Wow.

That’s, that’s, that’s a great one. You know, that is a phenomenal question. That’s a great question. And I don’t have a great answer.

Great question. Oh, that is such a loaded question, and that’s actually a really good question. School for Startups Radio.

Jim Beach 29:10
And welcome back to School for Startups Radio. I hope you enjoyed. Dr. Andy. I thought that was some fantastic information. And I’m very excited to introduce you to my next guest. His name is Bryant McGill, and he is a best-selling author. He has a new book coming out in May this year called Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life.

And his list of where he’s been published in accolades is pretty impressive. Not only was he, I guess, in one of Oprah’s magazines, he’s been in Deepak Chopra’s publications. He’s been published by Simon & Schuster, Random House, places like that. The Wall Street Journal had a front-page article, and they called him one of the greatest leaders, writers, and thinkers of all time. Oh, I’m sorry, that was in Inc. Magazine, but he is on a full-page, front-page article— on him— in the Wall Street Journal. You really just don’t get any more impressive than that.

He’s also been called one of the brightest minds in human history by the Foundation for a Better Life. And here’s my favorite fact about him: one of his books, I think it’s Voice of Reason, which came out in 2012, he has blurbs. You know how they get blurbs on the back of the book and stuff like that. Not only does he have a blurb from the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, but also Larry Flynt. It’s got to be the only time in history those two people have been on the same page. Welcome to the show. Welcome to the show.

Bryant McGill 30:39
Hey, what an observation. I laugh about that too, about those two coming together. I mean, when is that going to happen in history? But, you know—

Jim Beach 30:51
Only for you, Bryant. Only for you. 

Bryant McGill 30:55
Listen. I’m happy to be here and happy to talk about entrepreneurship.

Jim Beach 30:59
Excellent, excellent. Well, how in the world do you know Larry Flynt?

Bryant McGill 31:04
Well, actually, I’m friends with someone who’s been his personal assistant for many, many years, and he hardly ever, ever does endorsements. But he read my book and he liked it, and decided to go ahead and get behind it. So I really appreciated that he did that.

Jim Beach 31:25
Well, that is an amazing accolade. So congratulations. I’m more impressed by the Mahatma Gandhi one, I have to impress— because I’ve read some of the other things that Larry Flynt has endorsed. There was a magazine, apparently, that he was involved with. Anyway, we’re gonna get really sidetracked.

Brian, well, who are you? What do you do? Tell us about yourself. How in the world do you become the most influential thinker of all time and get quotes like that?

Bryant McGill 31:54
Hey, look, I don’t know what they were smoking over there when they said that. I mean, you know, somebody wrote me up and included my work. They were gracious enough to include some of my aphorisms with some people who probably earned that title more than I have.

You know, I’m just— hey— I’m a product of America, and I’m a product of growing up and believing that America was a meritocracy and that one could distinguish themselves in life if they were sincere enough and worked hard enough. And so at my heart, I am, you know, an entrepreneur and a social entrepreneur and a social change agent.

But I guess, really, if you want to know who I am: anytime you attain a certain degree of success, unless something’s wrong with you, you want to get out there and share it with people. It excites you, and you want to turn other people on to it. And so, really, that’s who I am. What motivates me more than any other thing in the world.

Jim Beach 32:57
Is America still a meritocracy?

Bryant McGill 33:01
Well, America, as you know, I’m sure, is an ideal, and it is nothing more than an ideal. To some people, maybe it is not a meritocracy, and thusly it is so. And to others, perhaps it is a meritocracy, and thusly, it is so.

Now, of course, I don’t want to say that personal responsibility is the end-all, be-all. Certainly, we do have social constructs in place that are unfair, unjust, etc. I think we need a balanced approach. But, you know, I believe in both. We need the social infrastructure that’s good, and we need the individuals to be good and diligent, hard workers as well.

For me, America has proven to be a meritocracy, and so I believe the ideal of America being a place where a person can grow, a business can have individual liberty and freedom— whether that ideal is withering on the vine or not really depends on the individual. So I would say it’s up to us. It’s up to me. It’s up to you. It’s up to every listener right now whether America is going to be a meritocracy today, tomorrow, and forever.

Jim Beach 34:18
Well, I’m scared about that one, I have to admit, Bryant. It just seems like we’ve lost that. But anyway, your book, Voice of Reason talks about the world in crisis and how so many horrible things are going on, and you offer some solutions. Can we hear some of those? Because I’m very concerned about the world that we face.

Bryant McGill 34:39
Well, listen, I am deeply concerned too. And, you know, Voice of Reason was really not a popular book, I’ll just tell you. I mean, you know, it did get up on the bestseller list, stay there for a while, but it’s not the type of writing that people want to read. It’s a little bit heavy. It’s a little heavy, and it’s kind of depressing, to be honest with you, because the state of things out there can be depressing.

I would say that this was my way of exploring some of these deep issues before I went out and made a bunch of money. I wanted to get on the record of what my overarching views were about the state of things and the state of things to come.

And so, I mean, to even suppose or suggest that I have the answers to the problems of the world is ludicrous, even to me. But this was my feeble grasping at trying to grapple with some of these complex concepts and to try to remember the human component of suffering, which is a universal experience for most people, and to be sympathetic to those sufferings that are going on in the world.

Jim Beach 36:03
Well, boy, that’s a challenge. That’s quite an onus you just threw on me.

Bryant McGill 36:12
Well, you know, I mean, I just feel like we do have it. And I heard what you said, that things are looking scary, and I agree. I mean, I agree it is hard. And when you look at where America is now compared to where America used to be, it is a frightening prospect.
There are people who are literally hanging by their fingernails over the abyss of oblivion, paycheck to paycheck. Just, you know, it’s practically subsistence living. It’s very frightening. But, you know, I just still believe in the human spirit. I really, I just really believe that when we wake up, we switch on, and when we start thinking, you know, that brilliance is in every single person. We can just do amazing things. I think people out there are wanting to do good, and they are good, and they’re just looking for an opportunity to do good or believe in something good.

Jim Beach 37:10
So then, is your new book, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life, as positive as the first book was dark? Please.

Bryant McGill 37:21
Yes, it is. Yeah, that’s a good way of putting it. I tried to wrap up all the hard stuff in Voice of Reason with positive endings and have it be balanced. But, you know, Simple Reminders is more of a spiritual book, if you want to call it that. It’s about the psychological and spiritual underpinnings of so-called success— which, you know, a lot of what we call success today is actually a form of slavery, but that’s a whole ’nother story.

But it really is full-spectrum. It’s about full-spectrum success, which means success in your relationships, in your pocketbook, you know, in your personal life. It’s about the psychological and spiritual tools for how to dig yourself out of a pit and get to that place where you are feeling good.

Jim Beach 38:12
All right. Well, I need that after hearing about the first book, I have to admit. Yeah, you do. Probably, yeah. You got me down. I mean, good grief. Yeah.

Bryant McGill 38:22
I’ve been accused of being a demotivational speaker.

Jim Beach 38:28
That’s hysterical. A demotivational speaker. I love it. In Atlanta, we just took down a toll plaza that had been there for 20 years. Unbelievably, they ended the toll, and now we all call it “no-toll plaza,” because the plaza is still there. So I don’t know how that’s relevant, but a demotivational speaker made me think of that.

How can we solve all of these problems, then, as U.S. entrepreneurs? Should I even worry about Egypt and Sudan and ISIS and ice cream melting too fast? Or should I just put my head down and dig in and run my business?

Bryant McGill 39:08
Well, I think it’s just balance. I mean, we need— we’re not informed enough as a society. You know, I catch a lot of flack for telling people to turn off the TV. And, you know, there’s a lot of escapism and mindless entertainment, a lot of programming going on through the television.

And look, I don’t have a problem if you want to watch TV or play a video game or watch a ball game and drink a beer. That’s fine, but don’t make it your whole life. You know, there is something to be said about balance.

I think when people get turned on to information, you know, it empowers them. It courses through you. The more information you get, the more you become a lightning rod of potential and change. And you can never have that quickening and that switch-on if you’re switched off by being anesthetized through an endless glut of fruitless consumerism and mindless entertainment.

So, you know, I do recommend people use their time wisely and educate themselves and learn a little bit about what’s going on in the world. But also, don’t succumb to the fear-mongering. Don’t sink into just believing that the world is only what you see in the headline.
You know, I know for sure those headlines are picked primarily— you know— human interest and social good stories don’t have legs like the blood and the guts do. And so you have to, I believe, seek out alternative media sources. Don’t believe all the negative. Don’t dwell on all the negative. Yes, be as informed as possible, but also get busy in your own life.

Jim Beach 40:46
Where did you come from, Bryant? How did you get to this place where you can have 500,000 people retweet you and repost your messages on Facebook? You’re part of the 0.1% when it comes to social media. Did you grow up knowing that you were a little bit different from everyone else? When did all of this start?

Bryant McGill 41:09
Yes, sir, I would say it started. I grew up in Alabama, and from a very early age— from 10 years old— I knew I wanted to be a writer. And I was kind of a computer whiz kid, as I called it back then. And I was building bulletin boards at 10 years old, which has a social component, there’s a design component, there’s a social psychology component. And I was also using bulletin boards to hunt down obscure information. I was into reading obscure information. I was kind of an info hound.

And so, yeah, I think I kind of grew up as a nerd or a geek, but I had this deep desire to be a writer, and I was very interested in business. I remember when I was just a very young kid, I found a briefcase— maybe I was eight years old— I found a briefcase out in a shed, and I handmade some cards, and I put together some cleaner and a vacuum, a little vacuum and a brochure, and I went door to door in my neighborhood, knocking on doors, and offered a car— a car. And no one taught me how to do this. I just, from a very early age, wanted to assemble ideas, put things together, package things up, and provide value somehow in order to earn my way.

Jim Beach 42:38
Are you a TRS-80 Model II or Model III person? 

Bryant McGill 42:43
Well, I’m probably a VIC-20, and then Commodore 64, and then Amiga, and then off into the PC world type of a person. And you could throw in an Apple IIe somewhere in there, and a Timex Sinclair 1000, if you really wanted—

Jim Beach 43:00
To get— you never had a Radio Shack computer?

Bryant McGill  43:04
Oh, no, I didn’t. I did not have any of the TRS-80s, as they call them. I believe—

Jim Beach 43:10
Hey, hey, hey. Some of us are— Insulted by that. I’m sorry. I’m—

Jim Beach 43:14
Sorry. In 1980— I think it was 1981, Bryant— my father asked for an Apple for Christmas, and instead of giving him an Apple, my mother gave him, like, a $1,000 Swarovski apple. And so the next day, he went out and bought every TRS-80 product made, even the thermal printer, like the two-inch-wide thermal printer. You remember that?

Bryant McGill 43:39
Yeah, I still have it. Wow. Hey, you know, those were some great years for me. I think programming, learning to program, really taught me how to think structurally. Like Steve Jobs mentioned, it structures your brain. It teaches you forward thinking. It teaches you structuring and architecture. You have to really think ahead. It taught me how to think. It sculpted and trained my brain how to use strategy and how to think.

Jim Beach 44:09
Well, for those of you who are not currently on his LinkedIn profile, Bryant was the youngest Tandy Radio Shack employee ever at 16. Could you have saved Radio Shack, Brian?

Bryant McGill 44:21
Oh, I don’t think anything could have saved Radio Shack. But no, I was a mess. I was just irresponsible.

Jim Beach 44:29
But now— could you now— if they put you in charge? Radio Shack now, I think you could save it.

Bryant McGill 44:35
Man, listen, I don’t know if I could save myself. I, you know, I’m like everybody else, trying to get on in life. And whatever goodness I have learned, though, I do want to pass it on.

Jim Beach 44:47
But that’s not fair, Brian, because those of us— people really struggling— when they hear someone like you say that you’re struggling, and then they find out that you won a congressional honor, right? A certificate from the Congress. Yeah, that’s hard for someone who’s out of a job to hear and go, “Well, how the hell am I ever going to succeed then?” Don’t you think?

Bryant McGill 45:13
Well, you know what? Maybe. But at the same time, I just have to reassure people. I mean, I can’t even tell you: I came from nothing, and I have an eighth-grade education. An eighth-grade education. And I pulled myself out of the gutter by realizing that the sewer was in my mind.

I don’t know if you know exactly what I mean, but the sewer was in my mind. I pulled myself out of that gutter. I didn’t have anything. I didn’t have benefactors. I didn’t have wealthy, connected people hooking me up. I had everything aligned against me. And, you know, I went out and got a library card and read books. That’s how I made myself, with a library card.

And, you know, I studied. I invested in myself. I taught myself programming. I got hired by Borland as a software engineer with no degree. I became a chief technology officer. I became a designer and a marketing professional by cultivating myself, by working on myself, by reading, by developing myself.

And the reason that I did those things is because I cared about myself. Those things are self-care issues. And anyone can care about themselves. Absolutely anybody listening to this show can begin to care about themselves and cultivate within themselves the skills and the attitude to move forward.

Jim Beach 46:35
All right, so having done all of this by yourself with so little support, as you say, how does that make you feel when you hear a certain group say, “We are permanently trapped here in America. There’s no chance for me, for us, for advancement. We are screwed by the system.” What do you think of that?

Bryant McGill 46:58
Yeah. Well, listen, I think that there are things that are both true and false at the same time. And, you know, duality gets us in a lot of trouble. And so I think that when you really listen to what people are saying, you can discover that they are right, and you’re right at the same time.

And, you know, I believe that a lot of people are trapped, and I believe that a lot of the systems that are in place are not the types of systems that try to build a person’s confidence up and build them up in the world into that independence that they’re talking about. And there is a lot of unfair practice.

But even with that, what are we going to do? Are we just going to lay down and die? We have to try to still advance forward. That is the human spirit, is to advance forward.

And so I would want to be sympathetic to what they were saying, and I would want to listen, but I would also want to say that the human will can conquer any obstacle, and that the environmental argument is a silly argument— that we defy the environment. We’re one of the creatures on Earth that doesn’t live in homeostasis with our environment. We do defy it. The conscious will defies the environment every single day. If we couldn’t defy the environment, we’d have been stuck in caves forever. How do we get out of the caves?

And so I’m not promoting that it’s just willpower, because that could be insulting to say, “If you work hard enough, you’ll be successful,” because there are plenty of people who work hard and go nowhere. And so that argument is bogus also, in my opinion.

But I believe there is a bit of truth in both sides, and understanding that there is injustice endemic in the system— what we could call structural violence— and that there is also opportunity. And that is what we have to do. We have to grapple with these things on a regular basis.

Jim Beach 48:56
How do I build confidence? So say I am an 18-year-old, and I just think I’m a worthless piece of junk. Yeah. How do I go about the process of learning that I am actually a gift from God, Yahweh, Buddha, Muhammad, and that I have something special to offer?

Bryant McGill 49:18
Well, I think humility is the key. You know, I’m— dude—

Jim Beach 49:21
I have 100% humility. I’m in the garbage can. I have nothing but humility.

Bryant McGill  49:26
You know what? I don’t know. I think a lot of what people call humility is just humility and fear, and I see a lot of arrogance in people’s so-called humility on a regular basis. Just because you’re beat up doesn’t mean you’re humble. You know, if you’re really humble, you’re going to be great. Okay? If you’re truly humble, you’ll be great. You know why? Because it is supremely arrogant to throw away the gift of life.

There’s nothing humble about throwing away the gift of life and all you could be. And so, to me, all I can— from my experience when I was that age— I was complaining and whining and bemoaning everything and blaming everyone. And I could have been in a humble position, but I was not humble. I was delusional. I thought I deserved everything. I thought the forces were aligned against me. I was a big shot, big mouth. I wouldn’t keep my mouth closed. I blamed everybody for my problems.

So for me, one of the things was to start listening, to shut up, and start listening and paying attention to elders and to people who knew better, and just trying to learn a little bit and realizing that, you know, that people have lessons to teach you.

And so I don’t think people listen enough. I mean, and we can’t blame this on the individual, because our system of community has been eviscerated practically. You know, we don’t even have the same types of communities that we used to have, where you could really learn from the elders, right? But for me, listening in humility— and when I say humility, I don’t mean being pummeled and beat to the ground. I mean really, you know, life is speaking to you. Nature is speaking to you. You know your heart is you, but you can’t hear it when you’re just watching TV and playing first-person shooter games all day long, you know, and blowing your body out with all types of terrible foods and things.

I mean, you’ve got to get right chemically as a whole person, with your food, with your consumption. I attribute a lot of the problems to consumption illness, which means what we consume in media, what we consume with our food, what we consume with entertainment. You know, you’ve got to start putting goodness in and kick some of the trash out. Then you’ll start noticing that life is speaking to you, and it’s giving you the instructions on how to move forward.

Jim Beach 51:56
One of the things that I like the most about entrepreneurship, I believe that it’s the number one way to utilize the basket of skills given to you by— via God, Buddha, Mohammed. What do you think?

Bryant McGill  52:12
Yes, sir, I totally, totally believe that. And, you know, entrepreneurship— we don’t even have to get up on that word, because, let’s— it doesn’t matter. Let’s just say you’re— you don’t even like capitalism or entrepreneurship. Could we just call it industry? It doesn’t matter what term you use.

You know, just being an industrious person, just providing a value for people, looking for a problem that needs to be solved, and becoming useful— going out and helping people. I mean, that’s really what it’s about, is helping people.

Now, we know some of these big companies don’t help people. They do the opposite. You know, they try to offer good customer service while destroying the communities in which they practice business, which is impossible. But I think real entrepreneurism is about the spirit of being helpful and good and solving problems.

And I think that that is just something that is in every culture, every society, every people, no matter what type of economic or political construct they live in. I think people feel good when they do good.

Jim Beach 53:12
Brian, how can we get in touch with you? Learn more from you, follow you on Twitter, Facebook, that kind of thing.

Bryant McGill  53:18
Well, just my websites: bryantmcgill.com, also simplereminders.com. And on Facebook and Twitter, just— I’m all over the place, so just come out there and say hello. And, you know, I really enjoy interacting with people.

Jim Beach 53:32
Thank you so much for being with us today, and I hope you’ll come back really soon. Thank you so much, sir. I appreciate the opportunity. I hope you enjoyed that Greatest Hits. We are out of time for today. But you know what we do? That’s right, we will come back tomorrow. Be safe, take care, and go make a million dollars. Bye now. You.