Byron Jay Siegal -About

1. HOW RIDERS

GET WHAT THEY WANT

PERSISTENCE

I don’t have a Plan B. I’m not poor but I have to work seven days a

week to keep going. I’m seventy-four, about to be seventy-five. Who

is going to hire me? Through some bad planning and bad luck, I’ve

ended up needing to work every day just to have what I need to live.

I’m an attorney (retired) and I’m a flight instructor, and yet I drive for

Uber to pay the bills.

When I first thought of this book, I was in my car driving an Uber

passenger. She had just told me she did research for a pharmaceutical

company that worked on drugs for deaf people. I had driven a medical

venture capitalist a few days before. They had financed a company

working on an injectable DNA sequence that could allow deaf people

to hear. Of all the Uber drivers driving in Boston, how is it I was see-

ing these two people within a few days. Karma? Destiny? Luck? The

lightbulb went off: I should write a book!

At this Eureka moment, a comic bubble appeared in my head with

the caption, “I’ll write a book, I’ll be rich!” Not so fast, kiddo. On

every project I’ve ever started, I thought because I loved something that

everyone else would too. I started a jazz camp for adults after directing

the Vermont Law School Community Jazz Ensemble for two years. I

thought because I loved jazz and big band that customers would flock

to my camp. I planned five weeks the first year and did two.

I thought a classified ad in Downbeat (a jazz magazine) would

Persistance is required “bring them running!” Four participants signed up. My dad, always

the gambler, loaned me $3,750 to place an ad in The New York Times

travel section. The Times placed it on the wrong page and had to run

it again. I was interviewed, and they wrote an article about the camp. I

finally had twenty participants.

The Jazz Camp has been much like the book—lots of starts and

stops, lots of great ideas that didn’t turn out well. But I kept going. My

sister-in-law talked me out of selling the camp in year seven. I got an

article placed in AARP, and the internet happened, and we were off

and running for thirty-five years.

With my Jazz Camp, I didn’t quit at the first sign of difficulty, and

it’s been the same with this book. I first thought everyone would love

stories written about Uber passengers. Why? Because I was writing

them, and they were interesting to me. Another one of those, “If I love

it, everyone else will too.” Over two hundred agents and publishers

rejected the first version, although I did get some good ideas from a

few of them.

I brought someone in to help me find direction for the book and

I kept bothering him about how we would redo the table of contents.

One of the things I don’t do is research. He pointed me to two articles

about best practices for non-fiction books. From those articles, I learned

how to structure the book in an acceptable way and how to write an

introduction.

Those suggestions forced me into finding a theme for the book that

you have before you now, The Rideshare Diaries: Riders Share Their

Secrets. These stories were always there. I just hadn’t focused on them

in organizing the book. So great, now I had a new template and a new

table of contents and a new organizing theme. I started contacting

agents again.

Two of them sent me back a message: “I like the idea, but the writing

didn’t ‘pull me in.’” So now I had to go back and look at that—the

writing wasn’t good enough. I contacted several friends and rewrote

the introduction. One of my flight students wrote me back, “It’s like

a history book, and the sentences are too long.” I was immediately

depressed, and my heart sunk. He followed up with a suggested reading,

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, by Bill Bryson. I noticed

in reading that book that the author had some funny twist every few

pages, and so I gave that a try: shorter sentences, and some humorous

references every so often.

Resubmitted. My friend the flight student and avid reader liked it!

“Not a history book anymore, reads more like a novel,” he said. It’s a

light at the end of the tunnel. Is the light green, blinking yellow, strobe

white? Regardless, I had to press forward! That’s what I’m doing now. I

keep moving forward, experimenting, modifying, editing, trying other

things. As with the jazz camp, so it is with this book: I’m not giving up.

The Uber passenger stories in this chapter are tales of persistence.

Matt’s Verta Corporation story is up first. When he went to a career

fair at his college, he went to the first table he saw to “get the nerves

out.” He went back three times that day to impress. He got a call back

for a second interview the next day. Persistence pays off.

There is one other story in this chapter that demonstrates per-

sistence and the results that can come from it. It’s about Uber passenger

Dave Sklowdoska, a project production manager at Gingko Bitotech,

whose motto is, “Sometimes you have to jump through flaming hoops

of bullshit to get what you want.” Persistence: it’s not surprising it’s

important. George H.W. Bush has been known to use the expression,

“Ninety percent of life is just showing up.” We need to add to that,

“repeatedly.” After all, that’s what persistence is: showing up over and

over again.

BYRON’S RULES FOR PERSISTENCE

1. Commit yourself to a goal

2. Keep doing things that will lead you to your goal and keep doing them repeatedly

THE RIDESARE DIARIES

5

Matt—Skyscraper Crane

Maintenance Engineer

“I am 5’5”, 145 pounds, and I’m stocky. I’ve got long brown hair

that’s always in a bun and big blue eyes. My eyes are the first

comment I get from new people, especially women.”1

Rider Lesson #1: Insert yourself into situations

that you desire.

Matt grew up in the Iron Range in Minnesota, the biggest deposit of

iron ore in the world. Virginia, Minnesota was a town of about one

thousand. It was four miles to the nearest store and about a one-hour

drive to Duluth, Minnesota. Matt grew up building stuff and working

on bikes. He was an avid dirt bike rider. At sixteen he started going on

road trips and attended the Somerset Festival in Wisconsin. He fell in

love with the freedom of the road. He spent as much time as he could

making money so he could take trips and go camping. When he was

later offered a job that involved nationwide travel five days a week—not

to mention the chance to work at the top of tall buildings—there was

clearly no other choice.

Matt studied mechanical engineering in college. While he was there,

a custom motorcycle shop opened in Virginia, MN named Malicious

Cycles, and he started frequenting the shop, hanging out, talking to

the owner. He would go on a Monday, return Thursday, show up on

the weekend. Every day he had the chance, he just kept going back,

showing up, offering to help, learning what he could about custom bikes.

In his junior year at Minnesota State University in Mankanto, MN,

he had to do an internship. The University offered him an internship

THE RIDESARE DIARIES

7

Byron Jay Seigal

working on a machine that would automatically “debeak” chickens. Matt

was a gearhead, not a chicken-head. Matt went back to the Malicious

Cycles and talked the owner into allowing him to do his internship

there, building custom bikes and traveling all over with a dyno machine

that measured the performance of motorcycles at speed. (A dyno (or

dynamometer machine) is like a treadmill for cars and motorcycles with

attached electronics.) That became his life—traveling on weekends and

in the summer to motorcycle shows and working with bike owners to

improve performance on their motorcycles. His persistent presence

at Malicious Cycles throughout his junior year made his ask for an

internship a no-brainer for the shop. Persistence at work.

When they were not building custom bikes at the shop or going

to shows, they would take scrap metal and weld them into sculptures.

They brought these “sculptures” to the shows and gave them to motor-

cyclists as trophies for the most improved performance of the bikes at

that show. Matt had become a certified welder in the process. Matt

had inserted himself into the Malicious Cycles biz.

In the spring of his junior year there was a job fair scheduled for

an upcoming weekend. The Minnesota State students and their teach-

ers took the job fair seriously. They practiced at mock interviews and

researched the companies they wanted to interview with. In Matt’s case,

that meant library time looking at Caterpillar, Polaris, and Bobcat, all

manufacturers specializing in mechanical vehicles and engines. The

day of the job fair came.

Matt was nervous, but as he walked into the conference center, an

idea bubbled into his consciousness. “I’ll just go interview with any

company to get the nerves out.” As he entered the door, he turned to

his right to be greeted by a large map of the United States taking up

the entire wall of the display space. “Okay, this looks good, I don’t

know who they are, but a good place to start.” He walked to the table.

This was Verta Corp. He spoke with the company representative,

Dan, who told him that if he worked for them, he would be traveling

five days a week, it would be nationwide, and he would work at the

top of tall buildings. Matt’s eyes went wide as saucers. He left the table

thinking, “That’s the job I want!” He proceeded to talk to his previously

researched companies, Polaris and Caterpillar, but came back to Verta

to talk to Dan again.

After the second visit, he thought, “I’ve got this really cool air engine

back in my dorm room, I want to show it to Dan.” (An air engine is

a reciprocating engine powered by air.) He ran back to the dorm, got

the engine, ran back to the conference hall, and showed it to Dan. Dan

thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. Later that day, Matt

went back and helped Dan break down his exhibit.

Matt left the conference hall hoping that Verta Corp. would call

him back. He had done everything he could to not be forgotten. The

next morning, Dan got a call from Verta. They wanted him to come to

Minneapolis to “see how he handles the heights.” The day after, Matt

was on a plane to Minneapolis, and early in the morning he was sent

out with a crew to a seventy-story building. He went up to the roof

with the crew. This building had a crane on it that had an articulating

arm that extended over the edge of the building. The crew strapped

Matt onto the articulating arm of the crane and sent him one hundred

feet out over the edge of the building, seven hundred feet up. (I would

have had a heart attack at that height hanging over the building.)

This crane had two locations that allowed the crane to rotate—one

at its base, and one in the middle. Once the crew had Matt out over the

edge of the building, they rotated the crane from its base three hundred

and sixty degrees to the right, then they rotated it back to center and

three hundred and sixty degrees to the left. They reeled Matt back in.

He described it much like an amusement ride. Matt passed the test.

After the somewhat exciting, somewhat terrifying job interview

for Verta Corp. seventy stories up, Matt accepted the position. He

had returned three times to the Verta table that day and his persistence

paid off. This was a match literally made in heaven—or at least the

heaven Matt experienced seventy stories up. Verta Corporation has

been in the BMU (Building Maintenance Unit) business since 1958.

They maintain the cranes that operate at the tops of skyscrapers all

over the country. Cranes that carry workers on suspended scaffolding

have special requirements. Every crane in this application needs regular

maintenance and must be certified for OSHA (Occupational Safety

and Health Administration) every thirty days. Verta certifies cranes not

only for OSHA but also for insurance as well. Most of the insurance

policies throughout the country are for ten million dollars and in New

York City for twenty million.

At the end of his interview Matt told me that he has photos of all

the views from buildings he has worked on. He told me he wants to

have three pieces of property in his lifetime. He already purchased his

home in Virginia, MN and I interviewed him while he was on vacation

in Idaho looking for a piece of ground that he could develop into a farm.

For his third property, he said he wanted to be someplace in the south

where it’s warmer and the state has “good” gun laws. I asked him why.

Matt, it turns out, was a competitive rifle shooter in high school.

He competed in the three-position and the four-position shooting.

International Rifle events that occur in three positions are conducted

with an equal number of shots fired from the Prone, the Standing, and

the Kneeling positions, always in that order. The four-position compe-

tition adds Sitting. When he was a junior, Matt was the three-position

shooting champion in Minnesota. As a senior, he won in the four-po-

sition competition. He told me, “I just want to be able to go on my

porch and shoot something from there when I retire.”

Matt’s still at it. He’s created an Instagram page documenting all of

his tall building experiences and his travels throughout the U.S. He’s

still inserting himself into situations he desires. His story is proof that

persistence is a key element in manifesting your goals.

Ready to learn the secrets of Rideshare passengers?  Buy the book today!