Rideforhire University

Learn about the world while driving for UberX

Uber is an app-based peer-to-peer personal driving service that customers

love even more than they hate traditional taxi services.  Riding with Uber is safe, simple,

prompt, pleasant and creates an ideal, if brief, environment for great conversation. 

As an Uber driver, I get paid in both money and knowledge. 

Give people a friendly, quiet private place to chat for twenty minutes and

you can learn amazing things from a multitude of perspectives. 

 

EPISODE 1:  “The Interconnectedness of All Things”
 

“The Butterfly Effect” is concept from theoretical physics that describes how a small change in a complex system can lead to massive changes over time-- A butterfly flaps its wings, creating tiny vortices that cause other changes that eventually lead to the birth of a hurricane. 

April 11, 2011 a magnitude 7 earthquake struck the Fukushima region of Japan that caused severe damage to a nuclear power facility.  It would take a very large butterfly to create that amount of chaos but even so, Fukushima is waaaaayyyy the heck over there in Japan.  What possible effect could their disaster have on us? 

January 2014, early on a Thursday evening:  I am driving a couple from Arcadia to the Hard Rock Cafe across the street from the US Airways Center in downtown Phoenix—dinner and drinks before the Sun’s game.  They are a very pleasant pair of young professionals.  She works in the healthcare sector.  He is an engineer who designs components for nuclear power plants.  I asked if the nuclear industry was experiencing hard times after the disaster at Fukushima, (as I assumed it was.)  I was right… and wrong.  As the couple explained, the earthquake that struck over 4000 miles west of Phoenix and almost three years in the past had indeed had significant impact on their lives.

• Orders for nuclear components fell in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake while power companies, consumers and government entities remained uncertain about what to do to prevent reactor damage in the future.
• Within a year, nuclear power companies had worked with regulators to establish new, more stringent safety requirements.
• In order to adhere to the higher standards, many plants required equipment upgrades.
• For the past year, the engineer had been so busy keeping up with demand for new products that his overtime and bonuses were able to give the couple’s retirement account a kick start that they estimated would allow them to retire almost a decade earlier than they had been projecting.

Then it was my turn. 

At the time of the Fukushima quake, I was a partner in a young marketing firm in Pittsburgh.  Our firm had grown rapidly in three years, despite the economy.  Then, for a variety of reasons, the sales funnel simply collapsed, despite the best efforts of our talented business development team.  One of our most promising prospects had been a large machining firm that, like my rider, made parts for nuclear reactors.  The uncertainty caused by the earthquakes effect in the nuclear industry forced them to put off our contract indefinitely.  The nail in our coffin was the loss of one of our largest clients—a multi-line family of automobile dealerships.  They too cancelled their existing contract over uncertainty caused by the Japanese disaster.  Not only were their inventory of Toyota and Nissan vehicles threatened but their domestic lines were as well—because most of their electronic components were made in Japan. 

The end result:  My riders are blessed with a decade of extra retirement.  I move to Phoenix, drive for Uber to pay the bills while incubating what I am sure will be a successful Marketing Research and Strategy firm—in part at least, because tectonic plates shifted on the other side of the world.