Jon McMahon

Full transcript: Jon McMahon on London Real

0:05 I am here with Mr Jon McMahon, graduate of the London Real Business Accelerator. Jon, tell us about you. Well, we’ll use the term “graduate” loosely, we’ll get to that, but tell us where you’re from, what do you normally do? Well, I was born in Sydney, Australia, and you can tell by my Australian accent, right?

0:28 But no, I was raised in California, been there since I was like two, and I’ve spent most of my life moving around. I’ve moved probably, I think it’s around almost 60 times in my life since I was born. I quit counting. One time I counted up, I think I lost track at about 54, so I don’t know why that’s in my genes, but I move around a lot. But mostly California, US.

1:01 And spent some time when I… about three, four colleges, did my degree in computer science, got out and I got a great job with Sprint Communications right at the height of the telecommunications boom, when Sprint was laying its fibre optic cable. And I was in network operations. It was a group of like 76 people in that organisation, and in 18 months we’d laid like 23,000 miles of fibre optic cable.

1:29 We had actually, we blew up our radio RF network, sold, you know, in a show, in a saying, you know, “Sprint is the first 100% fibre optic cable network”, before AT&T and anybody else. DARPA net, the internet, AOL, they were all on our backbone. It was a very, very exciting time. And this was in the late 80s, and we sold our RF equipment to China, and it was just fun to be part of that.

2:03 And I kind of got hooked on that, and I think that awoken an entrepreneurial spirit in me that continued to become a pattern in my life and then extend into my personal life as well, for growth. Wow, that sounds like a rock and roll time to be in that industry. Oh, it was incredible, yeah. And then I caught the next wave, which was in the late 90s, in that internet boom, and I also participated in the bust. Okay.

2:29 And if you had to summarise your involvement in the internet boom and bust in like a minute, what were you doing, in one minute? Yeah, flying around with Enron on their flagship jet that Bush used to fly on, wheeling and dealing, basically architecting the equivalent of their electrical arbitrage onto the internet with some technology that we had developed.

2:58 And then participating, basically being a core of the executive team that built InterVU, that sold to Akamai for 2.8 billion, which has become like the caching background network that’s, you know, for today, that holds all, you know, streaming and Netflix and all of that. That was the height. Wow. And then when was that sale to Akamai? That was in January 2000. Okay, right, right before the bust.

3:23 I remember I had a meeting with Akamai in New York. I was at a dotcom startup, and like, they were the big thing. They were the marketing big thing, yeah. Right, the meat, what gave them the meat was the InterVU network that they bought. Okay. ‘Cause that was what CNN and Microsoft had invested in us, $50 million.

3:41 And so all that CNN streaming, all the pioneering that they did during the Monica Lewinsky trials, where that was all streamed live over the internet, that was all on our network. And, you know, it was a network that, you know, I was the executive director of network architecture and operations, and brought in from Sprint. There’s three of us that kind of took a dream that we had for streaming media at Sprint that we couldn’t get funded.

4:06 You know, it was a $100 million budget, you know, and just Sprint didn’t want to move forward. We would have built Netflix in 1992 on the Sprint backbone, because we had put fibre optic cables into a couple hundred homes, right to the set-top box, in like 1991 in Pacifica, right outside of Burlingame, which is where the Sprint Labs were, which is, you know, like the AT&T Labs. Ours were in San Francisco.

4:37 And we were streaming and doing a lot off of laser discs. Oh yeah, remember those? Yeah. So that was, you’ve done, that was the height. And then it was coming off of that, with hubris and arrogance and everything, that the spirit of Enron, of just disloyalty, and it just brought out some of the worst… the best in me and some of the worst.

5:00 And doing another startup, raising, you know, millions of dollars and going up and down Sand Hill Road, coming to London, Korea, raising money. And we were just getting in the final due diligence, like the fifth round of final, you know, dotting i’s and crossing t’s with JP Morgan for 20 million for WorldStreaming.net, you know, which I was a founder and CEO, CTO.

5:34 And then that’s when it hit. Everything that was in series B, pre-revenue, all the funding stopped, everything shut down. It was like within 60 days that whole venture capital bubble burst. This is like what, ’07, ’08? No, this was the ’01, the first one, the big explosion. Right. So that fell out, the big venture capital washout, right? You know.

6:01 And what happened after that, and then what was the last five years like for you? It was like, the last 10 years since then, it’s been like Moses in the wilderness, trying to reshape and get rid of the worst parts of ego and that kind of hubris that was going on at that time. ‘Cause you had so much success so early on, do you think? Oh yeah.

6:27 I remember walking down Fifth Avenue, going from some different investment banks and meetings around Wall Street, and just thinking, “Man, I didn’t think making a billion dollars was going to be this hard.” You know, you’re sitting on 5 million shares of founder stock, and you know, you just walk out of a $120, you know, opening with InterVU just before Akamai buys them, and you know, it’s just, it was so insane, it was so unreal.

6:55 That in coming back down to earth is just like reshaping, reshaping me. And okay, and what was the challenge that brought you to us? What was going on in your mind to come join us on this course? A rebirth, really. You know, you can have a lot of talents and do things, but it was your interview with Phil McKernan that really…

7:26 All of your interviews were so inspiring, and everything that you bring to the world through your portal, but Phil really, really spoke to me. And you’ve had him in focus groups two or three times, the Vancouver Real guys interviewed him again, and it was just something. And then I heard him speak in Las Vegas as well, okay, at another group.

7:50 And it was that message of just being in alignment with your story. And it’s what you do in the Business Accelerator, is just get into your story. You may be good at a hundred different things, but there’s one thing that’s really particular to your hero’s journey, right? Yeah. That goes back to your core. And that’s really what drew me to your group and this process, because it just like awoken, awoken something in me. So that’s why I started that with you.

8:23 Okay, and so you were going through some external and internal challenges, like “Where am I going to go?”, trying to get to the next level, trying to figure out… Clarity. I wanted clarity. There’s these competing things in my head of what I wanted to do and not want to do. I want to stay in this comfortable little place where I’ve withdrawn from the world, you know, gotten rid of all technology.

8:48 You know, gotten rid of just kind of… I can just enjoy the day, and I’m happy just walking down the beach, or so, creating so much space in my life. But, and quiet, but it’s too isolated. I need to interact with the world, I need to connect. And what you really awaken in this process is that we have a value, we have something that we need to contribute to the world.

9:14 And it’s almost a moral responsibility that we have to wake that up and polish that. And we’ve got to do that through, we’ve got to interact with our peers, we’ve got to interact socially, we’ve got to refine our gift, whatever that may be, and get over the fact that “I’m not good enough, I could do… who am I? Who am I to tell anybody anything about,” you know, whatever topic it may be, masculinity.

9:38 You know, “I’m this fat, balding 52-year-old guy, you know, dropout loser from the internet boom of 15 years ago that nobody cares about,” you know, that didn’t pick up the pieces afterwards, just kind of, you know, living on a beach in Mexico and just swearing off the world, you know.

10:00 Basically putting my thumb on my mouth, say, “Ah, if I’m not going to, you know, make it, you know, I’m not going to give the universe anything if you’re not going to make me this billionaire.” And it was just that whole journey. It took a long time. I’m a stubborn fool. Which is probably why you were so successful in the past.

10:17 But yeah, I can see that in you now, to where you’re like, “Okay, my big plans didn’t work out, so, you, world, and now I’m not going to engage.” Right, I’m not going to engage. Comfort zone, it’s fear, you know. “Am I relevant? I’m old, I’m this, I’m that.” And so what’s a guy who’s had, you know, meetings with Wall Street investment banks, flying on the corporate jet of Enron, doing all these huge things, joining the London Real Business Accelerator?

10:49 It doesn’t seem like an obvious move for you. What made you… Presenting to the Intel board on Sand Hill Road, and Soros Group, and all those guys. And for people, that Sand Hill Road is where all the smart VC money is in Silicon Valley. Oh yeah, and you get the personal introductions from the partners at Wilson Sonsini, you know, one of the biggest law firms. Yeah, yeah.

11:13 And so why join our accelerator? Because it’s not just about content, it’s not about information. There’s so much information on the internet. You can figure out, you can educate yourself for free on the internet. What you can’t do is connect with a community, and you can’t be successful alone. And that is the key, to connect with like-minded people.

11:38 The quality and the frequency of the people that you attract in your organisation and your message is extraordinary. And it was your authenticity that first attracted, because I didn’t know the people that were involved. Then it was the academy. Your whole funnel, it works, and it’s not a gimmick. The funnel, mixing with the people in the Academy.

11:55 It’s like, oh, the first time I touch the academy funnel, it’s, “Oh hey, it’s Emily, how can I help you?” Da, da, da, da, and you get in there, and right out of the blue a bunch of these people want to friend you, and they’re like-minded, and you see what they’re doing. And they all just have this beautiful… it’s not entrepreneurial from a business standpoint, it’s life entrepreneurship. They want to be entrepreneurs of their life, taking responsibility, creating.

12:18 I mean, and there was the next step, then there’s the Business Accelerator. And well, yeah, that’s awakening, reawakening this ambition from a much cleaner, more rooted and aligned place. And then I’m in the accelerator, and then beyond all my expectations, you know, you get these 90 people and these groups of 10 or 15, and all these awesome coaches, and all this personal touch, and these relationships building.

12:50 That’s worth more than any content that you could pack into those eight weeks. But you took us from soup to nuts. All the tools were there, and it was a lot of, hey, there wasn’t handholding. It wasn’t, you know, here’s an over-the-shoulder of how to open an account at, you know, this or that, or how to set up this, you know, just the little bits and pieces.

13:12 And, “Hey, go figure this out,” because part of the challenge is you… part of the teaching, and I finally got this, is for you to figure some of this stuff out on your own. And that’s a nuance, that’s a real nuance in education, and I didn’t really fully appreciate it even until now, when I’m trying to articulate it.

13:34 What was the biggest challenge the whole time for you? The resistance. Not feeling worthy. Having to face just my own internal low self-esteem. “Can’t, you know, just starting over, can’t do it.” You know, fear of fail, fear of success even, probably more than anything. That, wow, if I’m successful, all of a sudden it’s going to take up all this time.

14:07 Look at Brian, he’s talking to us, it’s Sunday night, he’s in his house, it’s 7 o’clock his time, he’s going to be there till 8, probably rapping till 8:30 with his team, you know. And then I know he’s doing a Super Focus Group that Friday night. What? I don’t want that kind of lot. I don’t want to be doing 20, 60 tweets and going about Instagrams and video interviews, then supporting my team once I get my funnel full.

14:31 But that’s part of living. It’s letting that life energy flow through you. So it’s waking up. It was a fear of success, that I would have to actually work. That’s really well articulated. You know, but it’s living, not… it’s, there was, I realised there’s no stagnant. Where I was at, being isolated with this open expanse of free time, I was dying. I was in a downward spiral.

14:56 You know, I was losing, you know, through social interaction, I was getting stuck in my head most of the time. I didn’t have, it wasn’t an outlet. And that’s what being in the Business Accelerator woke up and said, “Hey, you got to get busy and engage, re-engage with life.” Because there’s no comfort zone. You never equilibrium. You’re going slowly down or you’re going slowly up, but you’re always moving.

15:18 You’re decaying or you’re growing, you’re expanding or you’re contracting. And I realised, and I was afraid, I was contracting, I was dying. Yeah, yeah. We really push the people to kind of get out there and re-engage, and there’s a lot of resistance in there. You know, people are uncomfortable to do a lot of that stuff, and yeah, we kept pushing quite a bit.

15:41 But like weeks into the course, you just said now, you’re like, “Brian, the people here and the energy here is something that’s powerful.” And I really appreciate you saying that. Sometimes I forget, you know, what we have around us. And like you mentioned these things, like we were at that focus group last night and you saw those people and all those students, and then we’re here this morning, first thing.

15:57 But like, about a year ago I had this realisation that, like, I don’t have to do London Real, I get to do London Real. So for me, I get like 10x back with energy of all that stuff. Now, if this was a job it would be different. You couldn’t do it. Yeah, I couldn’t do it. I would be grumbling, I’d be like, “Oh, I have to wear a suit on a Saturday, that’s crazy.” But now, no, now it’s like I get the awesome pleasure of talking to you right now, which is, you know, a gift.

16:20 That’s what I told a couple last night at the Super Focus Group, was asking me about the accelerator, and I told him what you said. I told him the story of, “Hey, look, this is Brian’s Friday night, he’s going to be working Saturday, you know, and if he was in the Business Accelerator he’d have another call Sunday night.”

16:43 And the only thing that’s going to push you through to do something like that is if you’re really aligned with something that’s your story, that you own. You know, you are the brand. What, it’s got to come from deep inside. And that’s the difference between this accelerator program. It taps into that. It doesn’t say, “Hey, you’re an accountant, you’ve got this, you have this intellectual property, you have this knowledge.”

16:59 You have many, many talents, but there’s one that’s like a chiropractor, puts you into alignment, and all of a sudden, man, your spine gets straight, your energy flows, and you’ll push through those nights, you’ll work those long weekends, and it’s just because you can’t do anything else. You care about it so much. Yeah.

17:15 Biggest win for you at the end of this course? When you’re looking back, what’s the thing that you feel proud of? Doing those video logs, yeah. Getting feedback from somebody in West Bengal, in Siliguri, at the foot of the, you know, Himalayas, going up to Darjeeling, and, you know, sending me a Skype message and say, “Jon, man, that really, you really touched me, you really inspired me with that.”

17:42 And going, you know, just the humility of it, and thinking, “Wow, maybe I have something to offer other people.” And then you get attend to that, that responsibility. Well, you know, I’d better get my… together. Yeah. I kept pushing you the whole course, Jon, you remember? And I was like, “Jon, man, we need this message,” ’cause you’re such a passionate guy, man, I could see that in the first week or two.

18:06 And, you know, you got all these things you want to get out there and tell the world, and you got a lot you want to… you want to fix a lot of things, you know, a lot of things you think are wrong. And then sometimes you’re like, “But I don’t know if they’re ready, I don’t know if I’m ready to be that guy.” And so I still want more of you out there, on, you know.

18:28 And I think you’ve done a lot, but I hope you keep going forward with this thing. What are your plans? I will. With this community, to stay connected, to stay connected with this community and like-minded people like this. It’s lifeblood. What was it like meeting a bunch of your fellow grads last night? Oh, the Super Focus Group was amazing. It was amazing. What did you feel there, or see there?

18:52 I was surprised by some of their stories, ’cause I’m so… I love being around these kind of people. Their stories of how they are having a hard time out in the world with other people that don’t get it, that are asleep consciously. Like your story of when you’re in the park and the police coming, and just that, you know, you’re just trying to engage in a conversation and them kind of freaking out, you know.

19:26 When you’re trying to do the Wim Hof… Yeah, I was doing the active meditation. Yeah, the active meditation. And just to try to interact with the police, and you’re just in the park doing active meditation and they’re all freaking out because you’re outside of this socially conditioned bubble. But it was nice for you to know there’s other people getting that same feeling out there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

19:49 And they’re all together and they’re all doing this active meditation together, and growing and expanding. That’s got to stay connected to that. And if you had to explain the community in our accelerator, how would you do it? I mean, like you said, 90 people from around the world. I mean, this weekend you rented that house, around the world. So how can you be friends with all these people that speak different languages, that you never met before?

20:12 Oh, easily, easily. It’s like being with brothers and sisters, you know. Just like, did you get… you saw Julie last night, from Paris? Yeah. Her whole thing of bringing scent back into your life and kind of reviving, you know, our nose, and little things like that. And, you know, Claus from Switzerland doing all this stuff in Africa.

20:43 And then, you know, you got these geniuses like Max coming up here, you know, young, just full of energy and brilliant. Of course. What are you, where else are you going to go? Yeah, yeah. I’m inspired, man. I love this class. I have a challenge for you. I want you to interview Aubrey de Grey. I already have. You did? I did. He drank a beer during the show. My only guest ever do that. Oh, that’s awesome.

21:08 How do you like that? So how long, have you ever mapped out your life to live like 140 or 150? Do the, how many days left? I used… There’s like, Kevin Kelly has a timer on his computer that says like 12,000 days left, just to remind him every day that, you know, there’s not much time. I have to do the opposite. Yeah, yeah.

21:25 You know, Aubrey says the first person to live to a thousand years old has been born on this planet already. He’s powerful, man. And if you, like I just said, I for a long time thought, well, you know, I just had this feeling I was going to live at least to 140. And then, where things are going with technology and longevity, the ability to dial us back to our prime, in our late 20s, early 30s, is right around the corner.

21:56 We’re like within a decade of that, and once the first thing hits, you know, it’s going to be a logarithmic growth to more technology and more things and more things happening. And you map out your life to just to 140 years, to say, “At 140, what will I have done?” It changes your entire perspective during the day of how you approach the day when you have that much time. Like, wow, I could carve out a decade to study music. I’m gonna do that.

22:21 Final thoughts on the course, if people don’t even know what we’re talking about, and, you know, where you go from here? The course? Yeah, like an outline, or just final thoughts on, you know, you’ve been through this now. You know, what do you take from this course and the people here going forward? And, you know, what would have happened if we didn’t have you on this course?

22:45 Oh, if I didn’t do this course, I wouldn’t have gotten out of my head and gotten done and hit the track running with what I need to give, with what I need to do. The business course takes you from the idea, gets you aligned, that’s week one. Then you’re getting your… together with your journey and your story, week two. And then you’re implementing. It’s all about execution.

23:10 And at the end, you know, you keep up, you have the stuff, and people are making sales, people are generating revenue. They’re out there, from before they were scared to get in front of the camera. That’s 8 weeks. It just happened like that. And you get feedback. Jon, it was awesome having you as part of our community. You got to stay in this community. I just think you’re just beginning.

23:35 So promise me that you’re going to keep executing on this, so like end of next year when you come over here for New Year, we can be talking about all this huge change you effected in the world, ’cause we need you, Jon. I will. It’s an inspiration. Well, we need you. All right, well, let’s keep both doing it. Okay, yeah. All right, man, thanks, Jon. It’s a deal. Okay.