Mike Evans is the Founder of GrubHub, and the author of “Hangry: A Startup Journey.” Mike founded GrubHub in his spare bedroom and grew it into a multi-billion dollar food delivery business that’s a household name. After leaving GrubHub, he founded Fixer.com, an on-demand handyperson service focused on social impact, and providing full-time work for well-trained tradespeople. Mike shares what he learned from raising a startup to IPO, biking across America, and writing “Hangry.” He believes it is necessary to create a business not just to make a profit, but to be powerful levers for social change.     Key Takeaways [2:27] Mike loves cycling and getting around places by bike, but not quickly. After the GrubHub experience, he rode his bike across the country. Later, Mike and his wife rode across Austria. They hope to ride across another country soon with their daughter. Mike tells what he likes about electric bikes. [4:41] As GrubHub grew from a few employees to 2,500 employees over 12 years, there were two things that increased his anxiety and made it challenging to live. [5:14] The first challenge was the fact that there are a lot of competing interests: shareholders, employees, diners, and restaurants and it was hard to balance them all. There’s no scenario where everybody wins 100%. There are tradeoffs. It was a tightrope walk to do. Mike started seeing the company making different choices as it grew beyond him. That was challenging to see. [6:09] The second challenge was hiring. As a business leader, you either hire your friends, or the people you hire become your friends. Sometimes you have to make decisions that are not the best outcomes for your employee-friends. When you have to let people go that you like, you cannot recover those friendships. They’re gone. You can’t fire somebody and then go hang out with them. [6:37] It should be hard to fire someone. You can’t be good at firing people and be a good leader. It should never get easier. You should care a lot about the people you work with. The competing interests, and having to fire friends took a toll on Mike over the course of a decade. [7:53] Contentment is fleeting, especially for entrepreneurs who start from a place where “something is broken in the world and I’m really annoyed by it.” Mike doesn’t think contentment was ever in the cards for him. An entrepreneur has to see the world with an expectation that it could be better than it currently is, which is not a good recipe for contentment. [9:45] Mike believes it’s important to have a personal definition of success that other people or factors don’t define. Other people won’t necessarily agree with it. Mike tells how he defined success all the way up through GrubHub’s IPO. Other people told him the IPO was his success, but that wasn’t Mike’s definition. Your definition of success gives you a North Star for one aspect of your life, business. [11:11] You also need personal definitions of success for your relationships, family, faith community, and civic community. Then you need to do the hard step of making tradeoffs between them. Work/life balance is elusive because it’s impossible to achieve. You have to make tradeoffs. The best you can do is say “I have a clear-eyed picture of what I want from a family perspective,” and make choices explicitly. [12:03] If you don’t choose explicitly, things happen to you instead of you making choices. That’s what causes imbalance, frustration, anger, and disappointment. Your definitions of success change during your journey. As you approach your goals, the goalposts move. It’s a destination and a journey. It’s not one or the other. As we do hard things, we change, and therefore our goals change. [12:54] Sometimes we fail. If you’re not going to be able to accomplish a goal, continuing to have it as a goal is only an exercise in frustration. Be able to say “This isn’t working; I’m going to go try doing something else.” Whether you succeed or fail, your goals change. Success is a larger concept; it’s the accumulation of goals over decades. [13:54] Mike compares how he feels about goals today with what he might have felt at age 24. One of the themes in his book is Think Bigger. Don’t set your goals low. When Mike launched GrubHub, he just wanted to pay off his student debt. He missed the opportunity to embed the value of “Do right by restaurants, no matter what,” in the DNA of the company. At 24, he only wanted to make money. [14:37] If Mike had struggled at age 24 with the decision about doing right by the restaurants, there might have been a better outcome over the decades. [16:17] Starting GrubHub and taking it through the IPO involved thousands of decisions of Mike letting go. On Day 1, Mike owned 100% of GrubHub with 100% of the responsibility for it. On the day Mike kicked off on his bike ride across the country, he had 0% of the responsibility. He had a few shares in GrubHub for six more months. His hack was to give up first the thing he hated most — scanning menus! [18:14] Mike’s first hire, a graphic designer to scan menus, went on to create the brand which ended up in two Super Bowl ads. He started scanning menus but had an opportunity from being in a high-growth startup. He ended up having to delegate. Once you hire your first employee, you get your first investor. Lean in on that and enjoy it! [19:31] Accepting reality is a paradox for an entrepreneur. You have to have enough arrogance to say “The world is broken, it needs to be fixed, and I’m the only person who can do it,” and you have to have the humility to listen to your customers and employees about what you’re doing right and wrong, and how to adjust. Arrogance and humility do not “play nice” together. Mike doesn’t always get it right. [20:28] If you put a document in front of five people, they’re all going to start editing it. Don’t put a press release in front of anybody but the people who have the responsibility of doing the press release. One way to keep micromanagement from happening, to allow people to delegate, is don’t put the work product in front of them before it’s done. Don’t give people editing access. [20:54] Not micromanaging starts with not being in there to edit things. Trust people to do their work. Tactical things like that help you to let go of the small decisions. [21:33] Mike’s book has a humble tone, but the exclamation point at the end is, “I had a fricking IPO, folks!” Mike captures in the book the paradox of arrogance and humility needed to run a startup well. [23:18] Mike had done week-long backpacking trips and liked being out in nature. On one of those trips with his wife, he went to Grand Tetons National Park and camped. He saw people riding in on bikes and setting up tents. It was the TransAmerican Trail cross-country bike tour going through the park. Mike thought biking and carrying a pack on a rack was a way better idea than hiking with a backpack! [24:14] The bike tour sounded like a very accessible adventure. It was accessible because he did it in 90 fifty-mile bike rides, not one 4,500-mile bike ride. His first day was just 25 miles. One thing Mike learned is that it starts with the first mile. The best training for Week Two is Week One. The best training for Week One is to go slow. Don’t try to eat up the miles in your first week. [24:54] Anyone physically able can ride 10 miles on a bike. You can do that and you can take lunch and you can do that again. And that can be your whole first day. You build up until you’re riding 100 miles in a day. The decision for Mike was just following something he was interested in doing. He quit his job to ride his bike across the country. It was a very clear decision for his life. [26:18] Mike kept a journal of his bike ride, on MikeEvans.com. He used those notes in Hangry to write about his bike trip. The trip reinforced something for Mike: the idea that you don’t do it all at once. When he looks back, yes he did a 4,500-mile bike ride. Day to day, he woke up every morning and made the decision to start pedaling a mile. [26:51] Long-haul hikers say, “Don’t quit at the end of a long day. Wait till the morning, when you’re fresh.” A lot of people feel like quitting when they’re tired. When you wake up in the morning you see you can do another day. That was true for Mike in business, as well. He kept at it because he had a bigger mission he was trying to accomplish. [28:14] Mike’s purposes for his bike trip were to reflect on what he had accomplished, how he did it, and how he felt about it, and to consider what he was going to do next. That led to the creation of Fixer, the on-demand handyperson business. The handypersons are full-time employees, trained from scratch. He wanted to create a business with social benefits built-in: great employment with a path into the trades. [29:11] Mike’s first decision for the bike trip was to buy a recumbent bike because he wanted to look at the horizon instead of the ground. He already had a tent. He rented a van and drove it down to Virginia Beach. One thing that helped is that the Adventure Cycling Association publishes TransAmerica Trail bike route maps so he ordered a set of maps and joined their online community to talk about the ride. [31:51] Starting a business is ugly and hard. It’s filled with self-doubt and recriminations. To succeed, you have to make tough choices and a lot of people judge you for those choices. Mike also judges GrubHub and where it went after he left from the IPO and how it became a poster child for the gig economy and not great for restaurants. That is frustrating to Mike. [32:21] It felt to Mike that it was important to tell the whole story and how businesses are huge levers for social change, whether you want them to be or not. When Mike was intentional about that at GrubHub, it was beneficial for restaurants. When that intentionality left the business, it was not as good for restaurants. [32:40] Mike’s goal with Hangry is to show the idea of changing the world by creating a business. He wanted to make it accessible and he wanted to elevate the importance of being intentional about creating the change you want to see in the world through the business. It’s not a thing you can do after the business is done, through charity work. You have to create the business as a lever for social change. [33:21] Hangry is mostly about trying to take what Mike learned and letting other people learn from it and live their lives, whether as an entrepreneur, a business leader, or an executive in a company and do their work in such a way that the communities in which they operate benefit from what they’re doing. [34:11] The book is called Hangry, so Mike isn’t happy and pleasant the whole time. He’s snarky about exclusionism. Silicon Valley is great at drawing circles and saying “You can’t come in.” Cyclists do it, too! There are lots of groups that draw a circle and say, “You’re not allowed inside this circle.” Mike says that Silicon Valley is particularly good at excluding anybody who’s not a white male. There’s a better way. [34:52] Democratizing the startup culture, democratizing the process, and demystifying the hero narrative that people use sometimes, make it more accessible to people. There’s an urgency to making our world a better place for our children and grandchildren that sort of raises the bar for what success looks like at a business. It can’t just be making money anymore. [36:27] The catalyst for creating Fixer.com was trying to get a handyperson and having to use “the phone app” on his phone. He wondered who uses that anymore! He started looking into it. The work that tradespeople do in the economy right now is typically great. Scheduling, communication, and billing are not done well. They’re inaccessible. [37:23] It’s hard for people to enter the trades unless they have an uncle or father who shows them how to do things. It continues the bias against women entering the trades. Entry-level handyperson jobs are good-paying jobs. They’re also stepping stones to becoming an electrician, a plumber, a roofer, or a mason. It was the same problem he saw with food. You can’t order things online and it’s annoying. [37:54] He wanted to make handypersons more accessible, but he found there just aren’t enough tradespeople. So he figured that by training people from scratch, they would get quality and wrap it in modern packaging. You schedule online and ask for someone to be there at 11:00 a.m. and the handyperson shows up by 11:00 a.m. They’re highly trained, and they clean up after the job. [38:45] Mike uses the service himself, even though he’s pretty handy. [40:00] Fixer.com has hundreds of applicants for every job position that they open. They target people who are working in food service, grocery, and retail and invite them to have a career instead of a job. Fixer.com pays people while training them. It’s easy to get people on board. People in the service field don’t have the flexibility to set their hours and schedule, which is hard in this job climate. [40:48] The adoption of working from home as a norm is damaging to people who don’t have that flexibility and it creates a two-class society. Seventy-five percent of the people at Fixer.com are tradespeople, not office workers. At some point, they will have 10,000 tradespeople as full-time employees. Mike is concerned about issues of equity and expectations around time. [42:34] Mike explains why he picked a business model that’s hard and hard to copy. It is intentional and it makes his company the competition that everyone else worries about. He’s building a multi-billion dollar business that will be hard to compete with. [43:51] Mike’s listener challenge: “I would love it if everybody would buy the book. … If you want the summary line, it’s this idea that businesses affect the communities in which they work, and being intentional about what that impact is, is really, really important.” You’re going to be juggling competing priorities, but it’s still useful even if you're considering a socially beneficial impact for every decision. [45:19] Closing quote: Remember, “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work.” — Daniel Burnham   Quotable Quotes “I’m not like one of these fast people who are always racing along the Lake Path in Chicago. Seeing the country; getting places at 10 mph is great. … After the GrubHub experience, I rode my bike across the country.” — Mike “Electric bikes are great. They really create access for people who might not otherwise physically be able to do it. And so I think they sort of democratize our bike trails. I’m a big fan of electric bikes.” — Mike “It should be hard to fire people, anyway. … You can’t be good at firing people and be a good leader. I think those two things are totally mutually exclusive. It should always be hard. It should never get easier. You should care a lot about the people you work with.” — Mike “The difference between an entrepreneur and a miserable grump is that the entrepreneur actually does something about it. So, I’m not sure it was ever in the cards for me to be content.” — Mike “[An entrepreneur] has to see the world with an expectation that it could be better than it currently is, which is not a good recipe for contentment.” — Mike “I think it’s really important to have an internal, personal definition of success that’s not defined by some external factor.” — Mike “Sometimes we fail. If you’re not going to be able to accomplish a goal, continuing to have it as a goal is only an exercise in frustration and self-punishment. So being able to say, ‘This isn’t working, I’m going to go try something else,’ is also important.” — Mike “People often ask me ‘What’s the most strategic hire that you can do first?’ … Forget that! Hire somebody to do something that’s the most annoying thing to you. And then you start to get the benefit of ‘I don’t have to do every little thing.’” — Mike “Don’t put a press release in front of anybody but the people who have the responsibility of doing the press release. One way to keep micromanagement from happening, to allow people to delegate, is don’t put the work product in front of them before it’s done.” — Mike “The tone of the book is humble. I tried to be self-reflective in the book, but the exclamation point at the end is, ‘I had a fricking IPO, folks!’ which is not a humble thing. I’m kind of bragging.” — Mike “Anyone physically able can ride 10 miles on a bike. You can do that and then you take lunch and you can do that again. And that can be your whole first day. And then by the time you hit the Rockies, a 100-mile day is like, ‘Oh, yeah, I’ve been doing this for weeks!’” — Mike “There’s an urgency to making our world a better place for our children and grandchildren that sort of raises the bar for what success looks like at a business. It’s not just making money anymore. It can’t just be that.” — Mike “Picking hard business models, that are necessarily hard, to create value for customers is a really good defense against competition. What we’re doing is hard and so it’s hard to copy. And that’s very intentional.” — Mike “The thing that really sucks about competition is it’s not in your control. But … you can choose to pick a business model where you have to have some grit and some hard work and some thoughtfulness and some talent to make it work. … And then you are the competition.” — Mike “Businesses affect the communities in which they work, and being intentional about what that impact is, is really, really important. … it’s still useful even if you can’t make every decision toward a socially beneficial impact if you’re considering it for every decision.” — Mike   Resources Mentioned Sponsored by:  

Mano Watsa is the President and Owner of PGC Basketball, the largest educational basketball camp in the world. PGC Basketball has taught over 125,000 players and coaches how to be leaders on and off the court. Mano brings his sports and business experiences to the podcast with stories and advice on thinking like a coach, communicating, and making a difference in people’s lives. Listen to learn how to focus on the thing you can do best.    “Part of the beauty of the game is your individual contributions combined with working together as a team … where five players become like a fist, not five individual fingers … and they play together as one.”  - Mano Watsa     Key Takeaways [2:51] Mano’s journey has been a joy, but anytime you’re pursuing a vision, there are all sorts of challenges along the way, as well as opportunities. It’s often the challenges that don’t surface publicly. Mano has never seen a successful team or individual that has not had to overcome adversity, and he is no different. [4:20] PGC Basketball's founder, Dick DeVenzio, who played college basketball at Duke University and went on to play and teach the game across the world, created the Point Guard College with the point guard in mind. The point guard has to be the coach on the floor. They have to be able to run the show for their team and get their team to work together and play together. They have to “think the game.” [5:01] PGC teaches players to be the smartest player on the floor by equipping them with how to think like a coach, how to make good decisions that lead to winning basketball, and how to lead their team. Jan and Jim recall guest Sam Walker’s book, The Captain Class, on how the greatest sports teams in history have one thing in common, captains who were the coach on the floor. [6:13] Mano says PGC teaches players not only how to lead by example but to be effective communicators, inspire their teammates, hold teammates accountable, challenge them, and raise the standard for their teammates. Anyone leading a company, team, or family, is the point guard for that company, team, or family. [8:23] Jeremy Lin came to the NY Knicks and started the Linsanity era. Overnight Jeremy Lin was on the cover of nearly every magazine and was a household name as the first Asian-American in the NBA. Suddenly he’s scoring 38 points against Kobe Bryant at Madison Square Garden. He had a successful 10-year NBA career. [9:08] Toward the end of Jeremy Lin’s NBA career, Mano had the privilege and opportunity to support him in the realm of mindset and his approach. Mano has been inspired by Jeremy Lin’s story, his passion, and his commitment to the game, giving back to the game and making a difference in the world. Jeremy Lin is now playing professionally in China. [10:18] John Wooden won 10 national championships at UCLA and was named Coach of the Century. John Wooden epitomized what it means to be a coach and make a difference in the lives of young players. Mano and his business partner at the time, Dena Evans, had the privilege once of spending a remarkable morning with Coach Wooden. They immediately wrote down all they had learned from him. [12:30] Jason Sudeikis revealed that having John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success on the wall of Ted Lasso’s office is purposeful. [13:30] Five players that work together can be more effective than five talented individuals who don’t work together. Individual performers can significantly influence the outcome of the game, but they also depend on the performance of their teammates to determine the outcome of the game. It’s a beautiful thing to see players willing to pass up a good shot for themselves for a great shot for a teammate. [15:38] Michael Jordan was the best player in the world. His teammates said they found it difficult to play with him because his standards were so high. He had competitive greatness. He was at his best when it was needed the most. It’s helpful on a team to have a player that drives everyone toward winning. You need others who complement that person’s nature to make sure everyone gets along. [19:30] Mano helped the Mully Children’s Family organization in Kenya build a sports gymnasium. There are over 2,000 children under their care. Mano has been over there with them multiple times and loves their work. When he sees where these kids have come from and their optimism, even with what they lack, it gives Mano a perspective of gratitude and wanting to make a difference in the lives of others. [21:05] Denny Crum, former coach of the University of Louisville, was honored recently. One of his players stated that they never saw him get upset. He never yelled at his players. They called him Cool Hand Luke. He was always encouraging and supportive. He was a teacher to his team. [22:01] PGC founder Dick DeVenzio taught to use a six-to-one ratio of encouragement to constructive criticism. It’s a lofty standard. As a coach or leader, it’s so easy to see where others may be falling short but people thrive off encouragement. Connect with team members before correcting them. Always make deposits before you make withdrawals. As leaders and parents, think about the “bank account.” [24:15] Great coaches don’t try to make everything a priority. If you try to make everything a priority, nothing is a priority. You can’t be great at everything, on the court or in business. But you can be great and world-class in something. You have to let some things go and focus on others. [25:02] Great coaches don’t single players out unnecessarily. This goes for leaders and parents, too. Praise publicly and criticize privately. Good coaches and business leaders do a good job of not embarrassing and humiliating their people. They praise publicly and if they have to give criticism, they do so quietly and privately. [25:43] Great coaches don’t hold back when they’re wrong. They’re willing to admit mistakes. That takes humility and vulnerability, in practice and games. Get beyond your ego. Be willing to admit you don’t have it all together. [26:56] At PGC, they follow a commitment-based culture. Part of Mano’s commitment statement is that he’s a joyful work in progress. Accepting himself as a joyful work in progress allows Mano to admit mistakes and admit that he will always be a work in progress. [27:38] Past guest, Michael Bungay Stanier, told of a Legos bridge-building problem. Most people added pieces to solve the problem but the most expedient solution was to remove a piece. What’s on your plate? What are you going to take off your plate? Mano notes that when we say “yes” to something, we say “no” to every other alternative. That helps him to be discerning about what he says “Yes” to. [29:18] Mano decided recently that if it’s not a “Hell, yeah!” it’s a “No.” One of the mistakes Mano made in the early years of growing PGC was wanting to pursue every opportunity. In attempting to pursue every opportunity, they didn’t maximize any given opportunity. Mano learned as he grew as a leader to stop good things to focus on a great thing. [31:54] As coaches or business leaders, you can’t give all the encouragement that your players or staff need. To fill the gap, PGC introduced celebrations. Every staff meeting, no matter how many meetings are in a day, starts with 60 to 90 seconds of gratitude. It’s an opportunity for somebody to acknowledge a thing or project that the team or an individual has done well. People encourage each other. [34:50] Mano frequently tells his staff, “If you’re winning at work but losing at home, you’re losing.” Mano and PGC care about the staff as human beings and want them to win at home. If someone is not winning at home, their work will be compromised because everything bleeds over. When you’re at home, shut off work, slow down, and be present with family. [36:04] After reading In Praise of Slowness, Mano stopped college coaching to focus on PGC. He wanted to be present for his family. Another decision he made with his family was to limit the participation of their children in sports and activities. Their highest value was in spending dinner time together as a family and playing together. They prioritized family time over competitive sports. [39:02] Mano’s listener challenge: As business leaders, we must ensure that we’re doing everything possible to support our employees and teams. One of the ways we can do that is by helping to ensure that they’re able to bring their best possible selves to work each day. [39:24] For employees to bring the best version of themselves, they need to feel cared for, supported, and encouraged, and they need to be given space because if we’re just driving them hard all the time, we’re going to wear them down, especially in this world where many people just don’t feel settled. We can create a good environment while pursuing goals and lofty objectives and still helping our people. [41:21] Closing quote: Remember, “Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” — John Wooden   Quotable Quotes “I’ve never come across a winning team, or anyone who’s been highly successful in anything,  that hasn’t had to overcome significant adversity. And I’m certainly no different than that, in terms of adversities.” — Mano “We like to think that a point guard isn’t just a position on a basketball court. Somebody leading a company is the point guard of their team. A quarterback is the point guard of their football team. … If you’re leading a family, you are the point guard of your family.” — Mano “The point guard has to be able to influence behavior in order to get desired outcomes. They have to be able to lead and communicate effectively.” — Mano “The beauty of the game [of basketball] is that five players who work together can be more effective and more successful than five talented individuals who don’t work together.” — Mano “In basketball, it’s a small enough team that you can significantly impact the outcome of the game by your individual performance but you can’t entirely impact the outcome because you have to be dependent on your teammates.” — Mano “Part of the beauty of the game is your individual contributions combined with working together as a team … where five players become like a fist, not five individual fingers … and they play together as one.” — Mano “There are so many life lessons that come out of the game when players are willing to put aside their individual agendas for the betterment of the team.” — Mano “You need a range of diverse personalities to really make a team as effective as it can be. But to have somebody that drives winning and drives outcomes is really, really valuable.” — Mano “People thrive off encouragement. No one has ever received too much appreciation or too much encouragement. And one of the principles that we teach to coaches … is connect before you correct.” — Mano “Every good leader … looks for opportunities to celebrate, to acknowledge, to praise, to encourage, and appreciate far more often than they do providing any constructive criticism.” — Mano “It actually builds trust when we’re willing to be vulnerable when we’re willing to demonstrate that level of humility. It’s hard because it requires getting beyond ourselves and it requires getting beyond our ego.” — Mano “One of the things I’ve realized, both in business and in my personal life: I just don’t have it all together.” — Mano “When we say ‘yes’ to something, we’re actually saying ‘no’ to every other possible alternative.” — Mano “If it’s not a ‘Hell, yeah!’ it’s a ‘no.’” — Mano “What gets scheduled gets done.” — Mano   Resources Mentioned Sponsored by: