The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Facebook’s Oldest Intern: How a 60-year-old fitness trainer reinvented himself with the most unlikely of companies by Howard Waldstreicher

Episode Date: April 20, 2023

Facebook's Oldest Intern: How a 60-year-old fitness trainer reinvented himself with the most unlikely of companies by Howard Waldstreicher Maybe it was a sign to switch careers? That’s what I thought when the pandemic hit and I was struggling to pay the rent at the gym I owned. I had created HalfHourPower, a proprietary training system for athletes and had taken my method on the road opening studios. I was burnt out from the business after so many years anyway. At age 60, could I really get back into tech? I was twenty-plus years out of this industry and corporate work in general. But I had been keeping myself biologically young and strong with diet, training, lifestyle and some genetic good luck. I knew I had things to offer, if only I could prove myself an asset to these companies (and to myself). I just needed one shot, and as my mother always told me, “It only takes one.” I started applying. Nothing – no acknowledgements, no responses, no signs of life. I applied everywhere. I applied for programs set up for people re-entering the workforce. I tried to use whatever connections I had. I networked. I got certifications for data science and data analysis and practiced regularly. Crickets. My wife was my biggest champion though and encouraged me to apply for a job posting at Facebook. “There’s no way,” I said incredulously. “Facebook? The best of the best?”

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Today, we're going to be talking about Facebook's oldest intern. This is going to be an interesting discussion. And one of the things that is something people love in life and human nature and human being, let's put it that way. People who can reinvent themselves, who can go through cathartic times and become something new and challenges and all the things that go into that. And we're going to be talking about one, uh, one, uh, author who's put out his newest book and we're going to talk to him about his journey through that experience and what we can learn from it. Howard Waldstreicher is on the show with us today.

He's the author of the hottest, latest book to come to Amazon, wherever fine books are sold. It's called Facebook's oldest intern how a 60 year old fitness trainer reinvented himself with the most unlikely of companies and his book is now you can get it wherever fine books are sold uh but stay away those alleyway bookstores because uh you know they got cockroaches in them uh there's no cockroaches on amazon last time i checked actually you can probably order those somewhere for feeding to your lizard or something. I don't know.

You figure it out. It's not my problem. Anyway, Howard was first a programmer. Then after the dot-com implosion, he went with his passion and he opened up a fitness studio called Half Hour Power, the leader in 30-minute interval training. During the pandemic, he needed to shut down his studio and reinvent himself again. He became a data engineer at Facebook after 20 years as a fitness trainer. And as you can guess from the title of the book, a 60-year-old fitness trainer reinventing himself and going to work in Silicon Valley.

Some people say there's some ageism in Silicon Valley, but somehow he pulled it off. So we'll get a story. Welcome to the show, Howard. How are you? Oh, I'm great, Chris. I really appreciate you having me on. I really appreciate you coming. So this is going to be a great story and an interesting discussion.

So give us your dot coms or wherever people you want people to stalk you on the social media. Yeah, I mean, I don't really have the.com. I mean, you can find me on LinkedIn. Search Howard Wallstriker. And, you know, for some reason, I still keep up my halfhourpower.com website. I don't do anything with it. I just keep it because it's something I did for 20 years and just reminds me of what I did.

Let's give it a plug. You want to give it a plug? It's up to you. Give it a plug. Sure. I mean, it's your plug. I don't know the.com. Oh, it's halfhourpower.com. Oh mean it's your plug i don't know the dot com so oh it's half hour power dot com okay there you go that was easy half hour power hour duck or wait

did i say that right half hour power hour at half hour power dot com half hour power i think the half hour power hour i was referring to you know the mornings that i sit in the toilet without uh fiber from the night before i don't know getting old that was a joke people um so anyway howard uh what motivated you want to write this book it seems obvious but the audience likes to hear it from you yeah you know it's a story that i think just needs to be told because it's a story of inspiration and there i mean think about it there are so many people right now i'll say even even over 40, maybe over 45, but even over 40 that want to change careers or maybe get laid off and need to change careers, not happy with what they're doing. So, and most people are like, I'm too old. I can't do this.

Right. How am I going to do it? I don't even know how. I want to be a programmer and say, I've never done it before. How am I going to do it? So I feel my story gives people hope that yes it can be done look it's not easy you got to put in the work but it can be done and you're i mean you kind of have something that's kind of a challenge even more so you know i've always worked for myself since 18 uh i just don't get along with others. That's pretty much it.

We've seen. But no, it's very hard if you go the entrepreneur route and spend 20 years like you did building your fitness trainer company and then wanting to go back into corporate world. They don't look nicely on that sometimes. Is that correct? I mean, Chris, come on. Six years old, 20 years out of corporate work. I mean, I didn't even answer to a boss i mean i answered to myself yeah now i'm gonna have to answer to a boss i mean let me tell you this i sent out resumes right so i got my skills back up to where they needed to be right i took courses nothing crickets literally nothing and i had

connections yeah so is that ageism? At the time, I was thinking, maybe, you know, I mean, look, if I was the boss and I got a resume from someone that's 60 years old, 20 years out of corporate work, and now all of a sudden wants to go back to programming, would I hire him? I don't know. That's true. I mean, it kind of is one of those things. I hire people all the time. And, you know, I used to have people too that had left the business. And sometimes us entrepreneur types can have trouble with, you know, being bossed around a little bit because we're used to being our own bosses.

You know, I imagine after 35 years, if I tried to go back in the corporate world, they'd look at my resume and say, you're not qualified to live under the viaduct so there's that but that's just a personal thing i think towards me um and who can blame them really when it comes down to it so give us a little bit of origin story tell us about how you grew up kind of some of the past you took that got you down this road and and then we'll get into some of the details of the book yeah yeah so you know before the first job i had out of college was with r Perot. Oh, wow. Right. Yeah. Yeah. A little guy with the ears. Exactly. Ran for president, the whole deal. Now, the reason I wanted to work for him so bad, do you remember the book, Ken Follet on Wings of Eagles? Did you read that? No, I didn't. That's a great book. And in that book is where we had hostages in Iranan and some of the hostages were ross perot's

people oh yeah well he sent his own team in there to get them out and i was like i want that's the guy that i want to work for right and then one day there was a huge ad in the paper for eds so i applied and i'm telling you this story because it's a story of perseverance which you must have within your whole life so So what happened was I applied and I got through the first section of there and I went for my final interview. I go for the interview to make a long story short. I didn't get it. And I was like, why, why didn't I get it? I'm a perfect fit here. You know, I'm going on and on. Tell me why I wouldn't leave the room. I mean, I wanted it that bad. Wow. And yeah. So he told me that, well, number one, your hair's too long.

Now, my hair's too long. I don't know how much it could have grown in a week since I just saw the recruiter a week ago. He said my tie was too loud. I wore the same tie that I wore to the recruiter a week ago. And then he asked me some technical questions and some other stuff. I was like, really? Okay. But nothing more.

I could see there was nothing more I can do. So I go back to the recruiter and I tell him, he goes, what? I just saw your week ago. How could your hair have grown that much? And I wore the same tie. He says, if I can get you another interview, will you take it? I said, of course. So here's what happened. They get me another interview. They fly me down to Atlanta. I go to Atlanta, true story. I go into the office and the guy says, so you want to work for EDS? I go, yes. He goes, you know, you want to work that bad for EDS? You're hired. And that's how I got on it. That would never happen today. So was the persistence of going back the second time? He's like, this guy really wants to work for us. Yeah. No, I mean, I kept, yeah, I wanted

to know why I didn't get it. And that's a lesson learned there, right? That's persistence. So that paid off. I had my gyms. Then the pandemic hit, as you know. And everything changed. I mean, look, I had two gyms going. I did demos with Serena Williams at the University of Georgia. I trained Wes Welker, the Denver Broncos, DeMarcus Ware. And they brought them to my gym.

I did a video with the greatest doubles team of all time. If you play tennis, you'll probably know who they are, but the Bryan Brothers. We did a workout video. Yeah. So things were going great. Then the pandemic hit. What am I going to do?

Well, I looked backwards to look forward. Sometimes that's what you need to do. I looked backwards because that was the skill set I had. I was a programmer, classically trained by Perot. So I started to get my skills back up, right? I started, you know, I was in training again, basically, right? Learning what I had to learn. I mean, things don't change that much.

Let's be honest. You just have to learn the new syntax and what they do. So to make a long story short, I started sending out the resumes, nothing. And I had connections and nothing. And as far as connections, like my cousins, the chief medical officer at Johnson and Johnson, and they knew my name, but they would not talk to me. Wow. You shouldn't talk to your cousin either. Don't invite him for barbecue. No. Well, first of all, I probably haven't talked to her in over 20 years.

Well, she deserves it. No, I'm just kidding. And then I reach out. So I found out that they had this thing called the Return to Work Programs. Yeah. Right? So it was started by this woman from IBM, right? Because they would leave to raise a family. And they felt, you know, there's a great resource. Let's get them back in.

So that's how it started. And then they opened it up to everyone. So you could have went off to start a business. You could be taking care of a sick relative. Whatever it is, but you had to be out of work for over two years. Okay. So I fit that. And I'm looking at all these return to work programs.

IBM has it. Johnson and Johnson, like I said, Moody's, I mean, all the big companies. Oh man. And I was a perfect fit. Nothing. Wow. Yeah. I mean, you can imagine the depression and how hard it is.

Yeah. I mean, you've, you've lost your, you know, when you're in a self-employed person, I mean, this is really important to establish.

When you're a self-employed person, this has been your identity for 20 years. It's your heart, your soul, your baby. It's your identity. And I know what it's like to lose a business. And,

and, you know, I lost a few of mine in 2008 with the, with a great thing. Our biggest company was a mortgage company and that, that didn't go well for anybody owned a mortgage company. And so you're losing your identity as well. So it's not just like you lose a job. I mean, I, I don't want to discount what people feel when they lose a job because they do put their identity into it, but being self-employed that's a whole new level of identity loss and so it's it's uh there's an emotional toll there i think that's much bigger oh you you hit you hit the nail right on the head

on the head on the nail both both both i mean i lost my identity that was me i was the half-hour power guy i mean it was great so what was I going to do now? My wife had a business. So we talked about possibly doing that. But I don't think that would go over well. Yeah, she doesn't like you that much. No, no, no. So I'll never forget this, Chris.

To this day, I remember this. I was lying in bed. It was a Sunday morning. And I'm scrolling through my phone. And my wife looks over to me. And what are you doing? What do you think I'm doing? I'm looking here for job stuff here.

There's a position here that I'm like, man, I'm like two, I got two out of the seven things they want. Number one, barely have it. And it's the best of the best. It was Facebook, right? So she nudged me to apply. So the lesson learned here is you have to have somebody in your corner, whether it's your wife, your your husband a support

group someone because she didn't nudge me i never would have applied good wives are good at that there's a lot of nudging that goes on a lot a lot of nudging a lot of and if not then there could be violence i'm just teasing no no but you i i understand she might she might wave that uh she might wave that uh you know the old the comics where they wave the, anyway, the roller pin at you. Oh, boy. It's a little joke. People are like, we don't remember that in cartoons. I remember it.

So I applied. And I didn't think I had a chance in hell, right? The next day, I get an email. We'd like to set up a an interview with you okay first one ever and it's the best it's facebook now understand this the difference between facebook and eds it was polar opposites oh yeah right so think about it eds was you know dress code you know suit and tie ibm sort of material material the old ibm black suit or tie sort of thing exactly and then listen to this if you went to the bathroom without your jacket on it was

grounds for termination are you shitting me i'm not sure it is the old idea if you ever anytime really anytime you left your desk you had to have your jacket on wow i don't know if anyone got fired but that's what i heard wow Wow. If your hair got too long, there was a barber in the basement. Oh, serious? Oh, yeah. At the main headquarters. If your tie wasn't the right tie, you had to go out and get another one. It was very strict.

Those were the old IBM days. It was a culture. Yeah, totally. That's what he wanted. I mean, that's why he built such a great company. And Facebook is the complete opposite. You wear whatever the hell you want. You show up in a blanket and pajamas and nobody cares. So I make it through that.

They set me up for this next interview. And now this next interview is hard. Chris, you got five questions for programming and you have 20 minutes to answer them. You got five questions for the database stuff and you got 20 minutes to answer it. So do the math on that. That's not a lot of time. And as I was practicing, man, I was slow as hell. I would get it right, but it would take me half an hour just to get one.

So the day comes, I was so nervous. I was shaking and I don't get comes, I was so nervous. I was shaking and I'm not, I don't get nervous. I was so nervous. If you asked me how to, you know, two plus two, I'd have to use my fingers. That's how nervous I was. I was sweating. It doesn't happen. So to give the guy props, he calmed me down. I took a breath, right? Got myself calm. And I made it through that. I got like three out of the five, right? With his help. but then i got same thing on the other side so i thought ah come on you know no way it's probably like a c right you know if you remember you know like from math class something like that so i thought i don't got it i got f so you got f yeah well we'll get to that in a bit

so i told my wife i gave her the play-by-play. Yeah, what are you going to do? Next day, I get another email. We'd like to move forward. The final interview. Wow. And I'm thinking, well, I'll tell you after this. So we're moving forward. Now, this one's almost four hours, right? Four different people. I have two technical, three technical

and a behavioral. They always ask you, tell me about a time when you blah, blah, blah. So I did really well on the first two technical. I just got it. I got lucky. The behavioral, they always ask you, tell me about a time when you blah, blah, blah. So I did really well in the first two technical. I just got it. I got lucky. The behavioral, so-so. Could have went either way. The last one, I had no clue what the guy wanted me to do.

I was terrible. And I thought I blew it right then and there. I can hear the frustration in his voice. I was this close, Chris, to just say, man, it's not for me. But I didn't. Thank God. So that ends. I go take a shower just to relax. And of course, in the shower with the

water on me, I was like, oh, that's how you do it. Oh, you remember what the question was? Yeah, I remember what it was. I wrote it down after I wanted to see if I can do it. And again, that's the perseverance. That's the lesson here that I'm bringing out. Right.

So the next day, again, my phone rings. I don't answer it because I have a habit of not answering my phone. My wife hates that, by the way. It could be right next to me. Well, you're looking for a job, eh? Yeah, but I still don't answer it. It could be why you were struggling. I'm just kidding. It could be. you were struggling. I'm just kidding.

It could be. So I listened to the message, and it was the recruiter. She said, Howard, I need to talk to you. Call me tomorrow. Okay, so I'm assuming that she's not leaving me a message to tell her to call or tell me that I'm not getting it. I call her up the next day. Howard, you were very interesting. This has

never happened before. You had, yeah, you had two people that were very strong hire. One that was, I can go either way. And one that was extremely very weak, do not hire. We talked to the managers and we said, you know, based on the circumstances, the pandemic, and it's a long day, we'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt. We'd like to make you an offer. Not only an offer, a sign-on bonus as well. For me, I couldn't believe it. I had a smile from ear to ear. My mother-in-law was here at the time too. I came out and I said, I got it. But this is the return to work program. right? So I'm the intern now. Yeah.

Okay. So I'm not an employee yet. Now this is going to be a 16 week program. And during this program, you do real work, they train you, and then hopefully show that you can do the work and then they make you an offer as a full-time employee. So, and now here I have a mentor, right? Who, by the way, was like 26 years old. And the big joke was, can you be with my wife was, you know, can you believe I'm training this old guy? I mean, I deal with that.

Did you just run around and say, hey, get off my lawn? Yeah. Or maybe he texted to his wife. That's what I do. Yeah. Yeah. And then you have a buddy and you have a you have a cohort group. But what was interesting was in this cohort group, there was 13 people in the cohort.

Right. So other people, you know, in this return to work program. I was the only male and I was the only American born. Oh, so a lot of those, what do they call those? The 103s or the, where they, you know, they have the visas? They have the visas, yeah. Well, a lot of, most of them were, some had the visas, but most of them were American citizen, but they were born born in you know like we have india and other countries and i'll never

forget this just to kind of put me into the whole facebook communications so we had this orientation everyone had to go to it doesn't matter if you're vp or program whatever you do and they split us into groups of 10 and you had to tell everyone about yourself you know the job you're doing would etc etc and they wanted to use you the month you yourself, you know, the job you're doing, et cetera, et cetera. And they wanted to use you the month you were born, you know, January,

February to go to see who goes first. So we all come up and it was 10, 10 of us in that square where you see everyone's faces, nothing, no one said a word. And I hate that. So I took the lead and I said, okay,

I took the lead. I told, I talked about myself first. I said, who anyone, January, February, March. Oh, wait, said, okay. I took the lead. I talked about myself first. I said, anyone January, February, March? Oh, wait, wait, wait. I'm February. I'm February. Okay, go ahead.

People forgot their birthdays? Of the month. You know, look, these people are brilliant, but they're not. Their communication skills aren't the best. I'm 55, and I can remember the month. I just can't remember the years. I know. Maybe they weren't paying attention.

Maybe I'm not wanting to remember the month. I just can't remember the years. Right. Maybe they weren't paying attention. Maybe I'm not wanting to remember the year. Yeah. But to go back, so they put me in this group called The Chats. You've been on Facebook, right? Yeah, yeah. I'm on it every day. You're on it every day.

I take it off regularly too. Right. So I'm in this place called The Groups. You have the movie groups, those type of groups, songs, things like that. So that's what I was a part of. So to make the long story

short i had to do i did all the work i had to get all this data for them for zuckerberg and executives to look at then we created this is what my job was and then i created from that data i would create visualizations to show them you know dashboards line charts bar charts things of that nature and that and that was the whole deal there, the problem is it's very difficult there because you can't Google anything. You can't. It's their own tools. I'm wondering if I should be rolling on the ground at that joke. That's funny.

That's got to be the most hilarious thing I've ever seen. So let me just clarify that because I want to understand that. You can't Google anything. You have to use the internal search things you can't is can you use google at any point yeah it's not because you can't use google okay that's i think i know that's what you were coming from it's because they have their own proprietary tools okay can you bring it no i'm just kidding yeah so you have to learn you have to learn their stuff okay so time goes on and i talk to my manager every week right we had these one-on-one meetings and i kept asking how am i doing any red flags i want to make sure and

you know i'm telling you right now they it was i was they wanted me to succeed without a doubt they wanted me to succeed there was no there was wanted me to succeed. There was no ageism. They didn't care. They really didn't. I got no vibe about that at all. In fact, I really think the reason they brought me on to try me out was because of my entrepreneurial background. Think about that. You're a problem solver.

You're a leader. I mean, there's a lot of qualities that come from being an entrepreneur. You're a heavy alcoholic. No, I'm just kidding. Possibly. I think it's me. Um, are you me? I don't know. Not anymore. You don't sleep. You know, you don't sleep. Yeah. You, you slave 24 seven over all of your work. Uh, you lose all your hair. Um, yeah, yeah. You eat bad food. You know, it's all the things you do in a working environment and then in addition to that you think of things differently that's true i i asked different questions so maybe that was the reason that they you know i was the outlier there a total outlier and uh i'll tell you about that when we get to this first meeting that i had so i'm talking with my manager and then it comes to the end of the program. I have to give a presentation. This is it. This is the final thing there. And I kicked ass in the presentation, right? And I led it with this.

See if you know the, you probably know the answer. Maybe you'll see if you're listening to this. It was a very famous quote. And it went like this. Who said, you know, young people are just smarter? Do you remember that? I don't. In fact, it's not true anyway i'm just kidding youth is

wasted on the young no i'm just kidding so it was mark zuckerberg that said that i led my presentation with that and did an awesome job in that and i agreed with him because i looked around these people they were they're brilliant absolutely brilliant Absolutely brilliant. But what they don't have was the life experience that I was bringing to the table. And which is what I thought possibly why they brought me on there. Because I had a huge thing of imposter syndrome. Why me? Because I was the oldest by far. So I'm waiting to hear if I can become a full-time employee.

I'm getting, oh, come on, man. He keeps, oh, we don't know yet. We don't know yet. Finally, I get a text from my manager. We have a meeting. And we get on. And I look right at him. I said, don't torture me.

Yes or no? I swear to God. I just want to know. Don't give me any back talk. Yes or no? Howard, congratulations. I'd like to make you offer as a full-time employee. And that's how I became a full-time employee. There you go. Well, that's awesome.

Yeah. And there's more to it because now he didn't have a spot for me on his team. Oh. So they had to put me on another team. And I ended up going on what they called the newsfeed team. So when you go on Facebook, the first thing you see, that's the newsfeed, right? You put comments in, you put your posts in, you see all the ads, that's the newsfeed. And what I did there was what was called meaningful social interactions. So say there's a comment and someone puts a like to your comment, that's worth a certain number of points. Maybe you put in two words, certain number of points maybe you put in a you know two words certain number of points the most is five words or more so i would get the data for that and uh and worked with that

but i want to and then and then so what happened was i was there for a while and i was doing really well i really was i was working hard you know in fact i felt I was teaching them things. Well, that's good. Well, like communicating and talking and pushing back a little bit when needed be, not just taking everything and saying, okay, okay, okay, okay, which I felt that they needed. Yeah. It came time for my performance review. That's almost a year. And the way they do it there is very interesting. Your manager has to defend you

right yeah i mean you could be doing a great job i hope he likes you because otherwise it's gonna go bad i hope he likes you i think everyone liked me i really did i got i got along with everybody there so i said to the guy i said look i should have a redefines expectations the highest one because you have no one to compare me with who you're going to compare me with these other 25 to 30 year olds wizards i mean come on of course he laughed and said no no and then went on like that but i want to tell you we talked about james khan earlier and i'm going to tell your uh oh there is yeah yeah well i want to tell your audience the difference like the age gaps and how things happen. So remember when James Caan passed away, right? So we have a chat group.

So I put up a picture of James Caan, and I said, rest in peace, Sonny Corleone, the part that he played. So this guy, kid in the group, responds to it and says, wow, I thought the only thing James Caan was famous for was Elf, elf elf the movie elf i don't know what to say you don't know elf i'm so no no i know elf i know elf but i i'm so disappointed in the youth now i i've just given up really so well i i responded back and i said

uh i said your homework over this weekend is to watch godfather part one and part two right and then it was and then it was all about my eyes it was always my eyes they they put documents up and i can never see oh yeah make it bigger a little more vocals and shit exactly a little more a little more i mean call an elderly person's right elderly person's right, but I got so sick and tired of doing that. But when we have these meetings, I had a habit of looking people up just to compare. Like I said, I felt I was an outlier when I had imposter syndrome. And I'm looking at these people's colleges. One guy, PhD from Harvard, three degrees from Stanford, computer science from Cal Berkeley, MBA from UCLA,

and then me. It took me four schools to get my degree. I'm the outlier possibly that they wanted. So the lesson here is that I hope people can get from is the fact that I just didn't give up and I just kept going. And even though they didn't have Google, what taught, what it taught me was I can do it. Yeah. You know,

this brings up a good point too. Um, you know, that's what entrepreneurs do. We just keep pushing through. We just keep looking for resources and, and, uh, things.

And so we push through, but it's also a great metaphor for, you know, people to, uh, who struggle with stuff, you know, just keep trying, just keep coming back, you know, trying to make it work. That's exactly it. And that's the bottom line.

You know, thick skin, keep trying, keep pushing. You know, my mother always said nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? It only takes one. You got to keep going, which brings me to my next point is so then i was thought i was doing well but i don't know maybe i wasn't because now all of a sudden they want me to i'm not basically claim my manager claims i'm not doing the work at the level that they brought me in at okay well you knew what you were getting when you brought me in i mean i may not be the fastest but i get everything done right you can count on me all the time. Okay. Howard, we're going to give you this list that you have to do.

You have to accomplish and you have a week to do each one. So I said, is this a performance improvement, improvement plan? That's what they call a pip. He said, no, no.

You would have heard from HR. That's never good. I was worried about that. Right. Yeah. Those, those aren't good when you get good. So anyway,

to make a long story short, I did really well. And then they put me on this new project called Avatars, right? You know, you create an image of yourself. Yeah. And the data scientists were my partners and the product managers and all that. And they gave me great reviews because I was really working hard and doing great. I thought, okay, man, I'm going to get this meat's all at my next review. So time goes on.

And I said to my manager again, because we had this talk, I said, why do I have to go for meat's all? I like to shoot higher. Because being an entrepreneur, I always wanted to give more to the customer, right? Always leave them happy. He goes, Howardard think of it this way he goes you own the gym right i go yeah he goes when someone comes in to lose weight do you automatically have them lose 20 pounds or five pounds okay we'll stop we'll start from the bottom

i get you and work and work and work our way up yeah that makes sense yeah so i'm doing great doing all that then of course the whole uh layoff happened. So I never had a chance to find out if I would have made that meets all requirement, right. That they wanted, but something else that they did there, Chris, and a couple of things I forgot to,

forgot to mention was they gave me a coach from better up. And cause my wife is getting sick and tired of listening to me every day. I mean, that, that ended the first night of that, that ended the first week of your marriage so that ended this week someone else to talk to man so i had someone else to talk to now i had this better up coach and you know what she told me it's a very interesting lesson and it helped me tremendously she said howard make believe this is your business you know you had your business you had your gym

you're running your business right now you didn't know everything from doing that like you mentioned you figured it out and i was like yeah you know you're right let me this is my business i'm i'm let me run it like that and that just made my whole what they call the sage take over instead of and got out of my whole imposter syndrome like i shouldn't be here I'm not smart enough. Things of that nature. You know, is that, is that some good advice do you think for people? I mean, we, we've had authors on the coma on the show that have talked about imposter syndrome. I know there's a lot of people that talk about it, write about it.

A lot of women that I see women coaches that coach on it. Is that, is that the way to resolve that and some of your advice on it i don't know if it's the way to resolve that but for me it worked there you go no i had a business and that's and that's what she went with the fact that like you like we talked about the fact that i did all this stuff because i didn't have the things that i did i had to learn to running a business constant marketing constant this constant that and that was the mindset that I put myself in when I had to do something. I was like, okay, I'm the boss here. I'm the owner now.

Right. And I'm going to do it. Like I'm the boss. You know, if I don't get this done, the lights get shut. Something of that nature. And I'm very disciplined like that. I mean, you remember we talked about perseverance, but the reason I say that all the time, you remember Jim Valvano?

No. Jim Valvano was the basketball coach for North Carolina State. Oh, okay. And he died just a couple of years after coaching, and he gave this great speech, and he always talked about perseverance. That was the bottom line, and I've always kept that with myself. Perseverance. It's all the same thing for reinventing yourself.

Yeah. Improving. Because everybody wants to give up and you you you got to have this number for me the number one thing was my wife you got to have a support group it's just like if you want to lose weight there's no difference right yeah and i had a gym the number one thing i would tell people when you want to lose weight you must be in a support group whether it's people other people in the gym a friend whatever it is because that will help

you you're working out with somebody okay you have you have someone that you're working out with you're going to work out harder you're going to continue to move you can't do things by yourself yeah you and they provide an accountability to you as well where um you know they keep you accountable they go hey you know you're getting off your thing and how you doing and checking in you know because we slide sometimes we're all like yeah i'll eat a off your thing and how you doing and checking in, you know, cause we have slides sometimes we're all like, Oh yeah, I'll eat a big Mac today. And, and you just like, Oh, well, you're going to see results tomorrow. So that's important. Right.

So, yeah, exactly. So you go through the, you go through these mass layoffs that they did, where they really kind of seem from my understanding is they overhired a lot of people. A lot of companies kind of overhired and hoarded people. And, uh, you go through the mass layoff and then you decide to write the book yeah so i wanted to write the book because you know it was just the experience that other people are going to have right like we talked about you whether you're over 45, I think even over 40 already, that's getting up there as far as companies are concerned. And maybe you're not happy

with what you're doing, or you get laid off, you want to do something else. Whatever it is, you're going to be getting another job, possibly changing careers. And I wanted to show people that it can happen. I mean, if I can do it at my age and over 20 years, don't forget, I was working for myself.

You can do it. It's motivation. It's inspirational. And of all companies, Facebook, of all places. Yeah. I mean, they notoriously hire young people. So, I mean, just getting a job there and selling is... Yeah, but they're getting better on that. They're trying to go a little older. Obviously, I put the age up there a little bit. But look, Chris, if it was some other company, some Bozo company, ABC company, I never would have written a book.

Hmm. But Facebook... Why is that? Because everyone knows Facebook. Facebook is notoriously known, like you said, for bringing in young people. And the average age there was 35, maybe 34, something like that. They don't go with the older people. And the fact that Zuckerberg gave that quote, younger people are just smarter. I mean, they just don't hire the older people. But I bought them something different.

And they saw that. Yeah. I'm a big proponent of this. We've had, uh, we've had, you know, we've seen a lot of different things out there,

um, with people, uh, you know, it, there's a life experience that you have. Like, you know,

anytime I see a 20 year old life coach, I giggle a little bit because I know how little life you've lived that's right 20 years old i don't want to knock you too hard but uh i mean come on man life coach like you know you haven't lived yet uh you live 20 years so i don't know what are you going to do tell people you pooped in your diapers and how not to i don't know i'm just being a shit but you know to me a life coach is someone who's been through at least a good portion of their life. But, you know, we need to not take people for granted and realize that people that have life, people that have survived for a long time in life, have some pretty good life skills

because we wouldn't be here if we didn't. And there's things that you can learn. You know, there's a reason we treat people that are older and if we're smart, we look to them for wisdom and experience because history tells us what the future is going to be. History is destiny a lot of times. And so if you don't talk to people who know history and been through history, well, you're probably not going to know how the future is going to turn out. You're probably going to fumble the ball and make us go through it again. So there's that. But you got a lot of great reviews on the book in fact you inspired a lot of people which i think i thought was amazing on some of the reviews i was reading oh nice nice but also

i want to bring up the point of you know you have to take care of yourself if you need to lose weight lose weight look you can look look young don't don't act Don't be old. Because it's all in the mind. It's all a mindset. And that's how it is. In fact, my daughter, my kids, I mean, everyone, when I would tell people I worked at Facebook, the reactions were, you? That's hilarious. They were shocked. So one time we went to play tennis, uh she's working for this company and she

had to tell the company something about herself that you know no one else knows so she looks at me with that mischievous grin that she always has and she said what she said was my dad and she was very proud is the old oldest employee at facebook and i was so proud i don't know if i was the oldest but i'm definitely definitely was top five there you go i mean that's that's that's an awesome story and you know you've done something else that's quite exemplary that a lot of people aren't able to do you sat down and wrote a book and you publish it so that by their uh deserves some clapping as well trust me i know what that's like yeah no i appreciate it it's not easy it's not easy but it's a story that i i think was great you saw

the movie i mean you've seen that movie uh it was made up of course with the facebook movie now the google one owen wilson and vince vaughn i didn't i skipped the internship anyway but on the real life yeah this is this is this is what was happening there. And Chris, I had a teammate and he said to me once we got the layoff, he goes, Howard, I'm going to miss our team meetings. You made our team meetings so much better. So I felt I taught them something as well. I mean, communicating and talking and not just taking everything for granted and doing just because you someone tells you to do it doesn't mean you you have to do it yeah it's it's uh it's it's something that you know we're i think we're more comfortable on our skin than young people and i say that because i was that person who when i was young i was very uncomfortable being in my skin and everything. And, you know, you're kind of self, you worry about yourself, you think about yourself,

you know, you're kind of really into yourself. And so I think that, you know, as someone who's older, we're a little more comfortable in our skin, or maybe we just think we are, one of the two. No, I think you're're right because you're right when i was younger i probably wouldn't have said things i would say now right i mean yeah that's true you're like age comes with age yeah you got that age going for you so that makes all the difference in the world so uh what's the future for you right now i mean you've like i say you've crossed the rubicon and become an author one of the things i loved about becoming an author was i found out how hard it is and why the bar is so high for people to cross it

and why people hold you in regard. They go, you're an author? I'm like, yeah. It was hard, but it wasn't that big of a deal, really. They're like, I've tried so much. It's kind of a new thing. Are you going to write any new books or what's

the future for you? Two things, potentially. Number one is I thought potentially I might look at possibly getting, you know, speaking and giving motivational talks to people that are in this situation, telling them my story and lessons learned. The second part is, well, now I'm looking for another job again. I'm back in the same position I was in. But the big difference is that I have Facebook on my resume. And that opens doors. It does. And you're an author too. Trust me.

That author shit. That author stuff opens up. And I was thinking of a second book. Potentially. I'm not so sure. I was thinking about doing the first book. But maybe the second book. More of like the lessons learned.

Or something of that nature. Lessons I learned learned while working at facebook the things that facebook taught me yeah there you go that people can really use a roadmap that people can use plus it's got you know the word facebook has got a real uh you know seo search engine optimization yeah yeah i mean you know they go by i'm you know look they go by the name Meta now, right? You know that. Maybe you could try and interview Zuck and talk to him about lessons you learned and how it was integral to his company. And it would be a good PR thing for them, too. I would. So let me tell you, now that you brought that up, I forgot about that.

So I was writing some articles first when I was first there for a little bit over a year. And I sent them to the lady who was in charge of the return to work program. She was like, Howard, these are incredible. Oh my God, they wanted me to be the face for the return to work program. So then they sent it off to the higher executives, right? And everyone loved it. But then of course, it kind of was shutting down everything, but it's good. It would be like you just said it's good pr for them because i have nothing nothing but great things to say yeah company and my experience yeah draft it and draft it see me you know send them a thing and see if mark will uh come on there or uh

you know one of the other people cheryl sandberg i think left sandberg left sandberg left and so i might send them the book, actually. I'll send it to Zuckerberg, you know, to the whole, let them read it. Yeah, maybe, come on. I mean, he does some cool things every now and then with just about anybody or something, it seems. Yeah, he was on Joe Rogan. Maybe he can show up on the Metaverse and you can talk on the Metaverse.

Huh? Has he been on your show? I don't think we've ever invited him. Maybe we should invite him. Has he put out a book? I don't think so. I don't know. But I don't think we've ever invited him maybe we shouldn't invite him has he put out a book i don't think so i don't know but uh i don't know i i've been suspended so many times on facebook it's funny funny i don't know how that crap works man believe me i don't know how people don't blame you for nothing you get suspended yeah i've i had a friend suspended the other

day for saying happy birthday the bot the ai automation thing is crazy uh you know but that's another story right now they have more layoffs coming in you know more tech people will be laid off at the end of april oh wow i'm a whole bunch and some people from my team i guess more because they let go of everyone in the return to work that's done and then of course i'll have some more in may so maybe you can uh write a book on how to uh start your own business because a lot of those people a lot of those people that are brilliant that got laid off from facebook's and twitter you know those guys in times like this they go build the next facebook and twitter right those guys are smart and and they and they know how you know the shit that they got to work on facebook

or twitter pick your tech company to work And those guys usually go start something better. Right. And so this is the great time. Even VCs know that. Well, I'll tell you this, though, is a lot of the tools that are out there have been created by people that worked for Facebook. Yeah. Yeah.

I thought maybe, who knows, man, maybe this could be a great movie as well, in my opinion. It might be. 60-year-old fitness trainer goes to work for Facebook. You just got to – You got the whole backstory. James Caan's sadly passed away, so you'll have to find somebody else to play you. I know. Al Pacino's still around.

Yeah, but he looks really old. Oh, wow, man. You know who'd be good? That's some cold shit right there, man. You know who'd be good i think paul rudd would be the perfect perfect paul rudd there you go people like paul rudd you know a couple days ago um we had on the show uh one of the guys who wrote the original movie uh the devil's advocate he wrote the book for it love that he's written a few uh others in fact

he's written 150 books he's been pretty prolific um maybe you could get uh you know al pacino i mean he still played great in that movie the thing is my wife wants me to get another job first that's true well that's how wives work um they don't like you sitting around the house you bother them um and i'm still in training man i'm keeping my skills up there you go keeping myself ready there you go and you put on a book i mean seriously it is hard to put out a book it is hard it was hard i was there's the editing part i mean the editing i had to have an editor then you have this that but like i told you i i kept the journal the whole time oh that's smart i mean i didn't

tell you that i kept the journal every week i would write and i would write about my experience in the journal yeah maybe you should publish the edits of that and kind of walk through the experience and you know maybe yeah okay so okay all right because i mean you could there's more to it that i don't say and i'm not telling everything to everyone because i got to be careful of what i said yeah you don't want to i can't say some things that happen there yeah um so and you want to make it fun it's a quick fun read you'd like it yeah i definitely would well it's an hour read but it takes like an hour and it's a it's a fun read there you go so yeah you just need to figure out who's going to play in the movie and maybe now you should write the screenplay because you need a screenplay for the movie yeah i talked to a high school friend of mine who's in hollywood

and does screenplay and then we're talking about that i said why don't you write the screenplay man you know you could even make it a good comedy like you do it like that thing where yeah comedy drama you bring on wilson and those guys are funny and it's like it's like the movie wedding crashers with uh on wilson owen wilson and vince vaughn same thing vince vaughn great actor yeah yeah brilliant funny yeah yeah and you just make it like old school and it's uh facebook old facebook or something i don't know you could be you could be the old school character blue in the movie i don't know don't be that guy he dies but he dies happy um so when does. When does this go live now? We'll go live in about four or five days, but we'll cover that in the green room.

So as we go out, give us your dot coms, wherever you want people to find you on the interwebs, please. Yeah. So the best place to find me is going to be LinkedIn, Howard Wallstriker. If you want to see what I did in my past when I was a fitness trainer i have i still keep my website up it's called half hour power dot com and of course you can always search facebook's oldest inter there you go let me ask you do you ever think about going back and doing the fitness thing again or are you gonna stick on this path so what i didn't say was um so chris the pandemic for me actually was almost a constant i mean i hate to say that but let me say why i was really getting burnt out yeah of the gym i had all those gyms going and i

was trying to franchise and it was so much i was really getting burnt out with it and so this happened and you know i'm a kind of believer in fate i mean mean, there's a reason I got the job. It's your fault. There was a pandemic. No, no, but I won't go back to it. You're just living your fate, buddy. It's so, especially today. It's so hard. Constant marketing. There's a gym on every corner, like a restaurant.

That's true. There's my dogs have one in the backyard. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the kids, I mean, people that don't, everyone thinks they're a trainer. Yeah. I have to pay them just to go back there. The dogs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the kids, I mean, people that don't, everyone thinks they're a trainer. Yeah. I have to pay them just to go back there. The dogs.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What kind of dogs? Everyone's got one. They're Siberians. Two? Two.

Yeah. Siberian Huskies. Nice. Yeah. And they, they, they, I mean,

if I don't pay, then I get bitten. So it's, it's motivating though to work out. Anyway, go ahead. You go through the cathartic thing of the crisis. You find a better self?

Is that? No, it was just, I don't know. I mean, look, like you said, entrepreneur, you know how you have your ups and downs. I love being my own boss, doing my own thing. I train people in Mexico. I go to the spa, and I go there once a year. I do all that stuff. I must have been in one of my moods.

Who knows? But, I mean, you know. All right. I had investors. I mean, whatever. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work.

I got to tell you, I did my company for 20 years and then I moved to Vegas and a company said, hey, we'll pay you to build a mortgage company here. And I was like, this is kind of nice, man. I don't have to lose sleep at night. This is kind of cool. And I had all my other companies, so I did that for them. But yeah, it was kind of nice.

I'm like, hey, man, I can actually go to punch out a five and go home for a day. So there you go. Vacation. You can take vacation. Yeah, vacation. And I have to pay my train days. Sick days and stuff. What's going on there? I mean, you know how it goes. Yeah. I mean, take a look at the website so you can take vacation. Yeah. Vacation. And I have to pay my sick days and stuff. What's going on there.

I mean, you know how it goes. Yeah. I mean, take a look at the website so you can see what I did. I mean, it's an old website, but you could see.

There you go. Well, it's been wonderful. You have in the show, uh, Howard inspiring and some lessons learned. People should order your book, wherever fine books are sold or up today.

It just came out March 6th, 2023 Facebook's oldest intern, how a 60 year old fitness trainer reinvented himself with the most unlikely of companies. And, you know, you can even get it for free on the Kindle Unlimited program if you want. You have to pay Amazon for that. Or you can buy it on paperback and get it as well. I recommend the paperback. You do anything to, can people get autographs for you if they send you a copy of their book and stuff? Yeah, I'd love to.

There you go. That would be pretty nice. So Howard is wonderful to have on the show. Thanks for inspiring people and giving people hope for the future. And we'll look forward to your work in the future that you'll do. I appreciate that, Chris. And I really do. I really hope I gave people some inspiration and motivation to make that next step if that's what they want. Perseverance is the key. Thanks, my audience, for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Voss, YouTube.com, Fortress Chris Voss, the big 130,000 LinkedIn group, the big LinkedIn newsletter. That thing just grows like a weed over there.

And you can check out some of the fun stuff that we publish over there. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. And we'll see you guys next time. And that's.