YouSaid · the spoken record

Miguel McKelvey

lines on the record: 78
first: 2018-09-03
most recent: 2018-09-03
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Brooklyn, so I convinced him to move there. And so then he was just down the hall for me where I was working at the firm on the American apparel projects.”
2018-09-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · WeWork: Miguel McKelvey (2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no baby. I don't understand where the whole baby thing comes from. We'd have to ask him to remember. But he was interested in succeeding in business, and he thought that was a good idea. And so he was pursuing it. And that's actually the way we became closer friends was he was looking for a new office for his baby clothing company. And he was looking at spaces in Manhattan. And I was like, look, you're going to get double the space for half the price in Dumbo, you know, in my building where I am.”
2018-09-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · WeWork: Miguel McKelvey (2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So he had a couple of startups. One of them, both of them I think were baby clothing companies. And he had sort of an idea for innovating in baby clothing by putting knee pads in baby's pants to protect their knees. They were called crawlers.”
2018-09-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · WeWork: Miguel McKelvey (2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and that sounds weird because it doesn't really make sense. I mean, aside from the fact that we're both tall, we don't have that much in common. I mean, we're totally different people for whatever reason. We just connected. There was something between us that just sort of made sense.”
2018-09-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · WeWork: Miguel McKelvey (2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, what I didn't know that at the time though, because I didn't understand, like it wasn't like I had been pre-introduced or knew the situation or what I was coming into, but sort of on that elevator ride, it was all explained to me along the way.”
2018-09-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · WeWork: Miguel McKelvey (2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, Adam Newman, and he's got his shirt off, I think, which just to walk into a New York condo building, a rental building elevator with no shirt is one kind of statement. And then two, I remember as we're like, you know, going up in the elevator. He's starting conversations with people who are on the elevator, and then he's like holding the door as the person get off and then continuing the conversation. And I don't know Israelis at all. So first of all, I'm coming from Oregon. I've never met an Israeli before. So I don't even know this sort of abrasiveness which I've come to love. But there's that. And then there's Adam who just has like a really exuberant sort of personality. Was he just a guy who would like to look at?”
2018-09-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · WeWork: Miguel McKelvey (2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, he was an architect working on American imperial projects, and we became friendly, and I remember he invited me over to his apartment one weekend, and I went over there. And as we're walking into the building, I think in walks this other dude, and we get introduced, and it's Adam.”
2018-09-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · WeWork: Miguel McKelvey (2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So there was definitely an expiration for me in terms of, I think really the learning curve. When the learning curve expires, that's when I start looking for other things. So I think once we've done a whole bunch of American apparel projects and I'd sort of seen it before, I started thinking, well, what else am I going to do? And this is kind of starts the wee work story is that while I was working for the Formatted Co-Worker, this Israeli guy named Gil, and I became friendly with him and we, you know, were also in our architect.”
2018-09-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · WeWork: Miguel McKelvey (2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But it was like once you've been through that, it's sort of like, well, what's going to come up that will be worse? What's more intense than having this person scream at you at the top of their lungs and to respond to it in like a positive way and say, hey, I'm going to take this experience and know that I can learn from it and do something with it.”
2018-09-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · WeWork: Miguel McKelvey (2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I definitely had the attitude that this feeling that every potential thing that's going to come up is something I'm going to use in the future. And so the American Apparel projects were tough. I mean, we were under really tight time frames, and Dove was really intense. And, you know, there was times, I remember a day Black Friday was on, obviously the Friday after Thanksgiving, and I remember him calling me and saying like, we have to have this store open. There's a problem in Denver. We're not open. I'm going to kill you. Something to that effect. And he was like, this is the most important. I remember one of the things that he said, this is the most important moment of your life right now. You have to get on a plane right now to Denver and make sure the store opens on time.”
2018-09-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · WeWork: Miguel McKelvey (2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so it was a great timing because one, getting there at that time when American apparel was just starting out was great. But two, my background being in business actually was applicable to this new idea of retail rollout. And so what ended up happening was over the course of starting out in more of project management role of like, okay, now we have two American apparel American apparel stores. Now we have three, now we have four, now we have five. It turned from that, which was actually managing a project to now we've got in the office we have 10 Now we're doing twenty, now we have forty concurrent projects”
2018-09-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · WeWork: Miguel McKelvey (2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was, but also American apparel. This was their first retail, right? So they were a wholesale company and they were just exploring could they do retail?”
2018-09-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · WeWork: Miguel McKelvey (2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. And so originally when I first went there, the project that they had was an American apparel store and it was in Lower Manhattan. There was one they had already done and then they were working on the second one.”
2018-09-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · WeWork: Miguel McKelvey (2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So what happened there, which was really cool, is that the Jordan Parnass had grown up with Dove Charney in Montreal. So Dove is American Apparel.”
2018-09-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · WeWork: Miguel McKelvey (2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, because I think one, it was I get to move to New York, which was the big picture goal, and that was getting my foot in the door. But two, what did I have to lose? It's like I didn't have anything to my name. I didn't have any money. There's just nowhere I was going down. You know, worst case scenario, I moved back to my mom's house in Eugene for a while and figure stuff out.”
2018-09-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · WeWork: Miguel McKelvey (2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I wasn't a certified professional architect, right? I was a junior level draftsman. Like I was the lowest on the totem pole. That's what they wanted. They wanted a person they could pay little who would do odds and ends jobs, which is.”
2018-09-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · WeWork: Miguel McKelvey (2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I'm like, because I had said I lived in New York, right? So literally I have nothing with me. I'm like, well, can I have a week, you know? Because I was trying to make up a lie on the spot of like, why can't I start tomorrow? And we negotiated and basically let me start Monday instead of Thursday. And so I basically went back to Portland. I literally packed up my entire apartment. I called my mom. I'm like, mom, take all my stuff. She packed it up and put it in her back of her car. And I moved to New York with a duffel bag on Sunday night. I remember I landed.”
2018-09-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · WeWork: Miguel McKelvey (2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I got, I think, three interviews. So I flew out. And I think it was a Wednesday. And I met with one firm. They were all super chic architects and like they're all black and like cool glasses and super slick office and all that. And I was like, I know I don't fit in there. Like, that's not for me. And then the other one I went to was in Dumbo in Brooklyn. And it was just two guys in this tiny little office. And they were in jeans and t-shirts. And, you know, they had like a really relaxed vibe. And, you know, I talked to them. And basically this guy, Jordan Parnass, who was the owner of the firm, he was like, okay, great. We like you. We need you. We're really busy. Can you start tomorrow?”
2018-09-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · WeWork: Miguel McKelvey (2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, first of all, this is something for everyone to learn, at least in my experience, is that in New York, no one's going to reply to you if your address on your resume is not in New York. Because who cares? Like, who wants to deal with it, you know? So I learned at a friend, my friend's brother who was living there, and he was like, you can use my address. And I changed my address to his address in Queens. And immediately I got responses. So just that one switch.”
2018-09-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · WeWork: Miguel McKelvey (2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Six foot eight, yeah, on a good day. Yeah, and actually I can still dunk. I'm proud of that. I tried a couple days ago. That's a good skill to have it this height.”
2018-09-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · WeWork: Miguel McKelvey (2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I played basketball, but never, I didn't play it seriously until I was really in high school. So, you know, I was like a kid just hanging out with a ball, but not like I didn't have any skills until much later.”
2018-09-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · WeWork: Miguel McKelvey (2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And I mean, looking back on it, it was weird in the sense that I didn't have. Like, I look at it now in terms of, say, my own son and the role that I play in his life, and I realize things that I didn't have at all. You know, my mom did develop, say, a love for sports over time, but when I was younger, she had no knowledge or interest in sports at all.”
2018-09-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · WeWork: Miguel McKelvey (2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do you want to do? What do you want to do? I don't know. I would say, I want to go to New York. And for some reason, I started saying that when I was a kid, and I think it became more and more of a thing the more I said it and the more it became real. And it wasn't from a, oh, I hate this place, I've got to get out of town. It was more just aspiration, you know, for something bigger. Wow.”
2018-09-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · WeWork: Miguel McKelvey (2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, there was a hippie vibe amongst the smaller community there, and there was, you know, kids with funny names, you know, like I remember a kid named Wynd, you know, and another, there was Morningstar and Evening Star. So that made you feel not too weird. I think not until I was older and I realized that there was people who kind of had money that it became an issue, like things that I didn't have and the fact that we always had super crappy cars that were always breaking down and like billowing big clouds of smoke. I would say it was more like the sort of like being poor than the being weird from a family, you know, sort of scenario. But at the same time, I wouldn't say I wanted to get out, but I did from a very young age have a dream of something bigger. So for some reason from the time I was a kid, when it would be like, say, a really boring summer day, I would be like, you know, you're what.”
2018-09-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · WeWork: Miguel McKelvey (2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly, and we all had, you know, all the holidays together from Thanksgiving to Easter to Christmas. Like, that was our family. Everyone was pretty disconnected from their other biological family. And that was, you know, that's who I grew up with, and I considered them my moms, my aunts, you know, whatever you want to call it, and my brothers and sisters.”
2018-09-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · WeWork: Miguel McKelvey (2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There were five women who were all really good friends, you know, best friends for a long time. They had all pretty much decided to have children without the fathers in the picture just because it was a time when they wanted to break free from normal sort of arrangements and configurations. And they all depended on each other for everything, sort of like we were a family, the five women and then their children. So me plus four girls. And then 10 years later, a little brother who showed up.”
2018-09-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · WeWork: Miguel McKelvey (2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, basically because we had been challenged with what are you going to do? And we have no credibility, right? So my thought was, if I do all this stuff and come back tomorrow, it'll seem like we were planning it for weeks in advance, right?”
2018-09-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · WeWork: Miguel McKelvey (2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So they showed it to us. I'm like, wow, for me as coming from a design background, I'm like, this is sick. This is as good as it gets. And they're basically like, okay, here's the building. What would you do with it? So basically I go home and I start thinking of a concept of a name, I buy the domain, I build a website, I design some floor plans, really simple, do like a quick business model. I stayed up all night.”
2018-09-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · WeWork: Miguel McKelvey (2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT