My First Million's Origin Story, How to Find Winners, and More
Describe your approach. Like, okay, you're starting a company from scratch. I would say like it's just a question of priorities. And I would say this person's priorities is building an awesome team. They're recruiting like high-level people and then like really setting a cultural foundation around that. So that's like the— that's the non— like non-poking fun way of looking at it is like that's, that's their priority. So what's your priority when you like start an endeavor? Did you see this email I sent you? So I forwarded you, uh, and then like an investor update I got. Uh, did you read— do you see that email?
I said, from who?
Uh, well, I can't say, but because I was sort of like, you know, this person's smart. They actually sold the company before.
Which address did you send it to?
Uh, I don't know, maybe you're like hustle one. I don't know, but just see if you see an email from me. Anyways, I'll just explain to you. You don't even need to read the email. Basically, this is like— I was like, this is so different. Than anything I would do. And I was like, if this person wasn't already successful, like they did, they built a cool company before this. They are a smart person. I've met them before. But they, you know, their company updates or their investor updates are highly like aspirational. Like, so they haven't launched yet. The team is like, it's like, oh, the team is growing. We have like, I don't know, I don't know how many people they have, like 30, 40 people now. 'Um, we did our, you know, a second offsite because remote work, you know, is hard to build our bonds. And on our offsite we played these games and we did this mission statement thing and here's our values. And then like on top of the values, we're thinking about like how to build a culture that's really, you know, transparent and collaborative.' And like they again haven't launched yet, no revenue, no nothing.
Uh, but like professional photographer, but yeah, have, have professional photographer.
The update is like super robust And like, again, on one hand I'm like, when I read this, I'm just like, oh no. Like, this is like, it's like watching a car drive off a cliff. It's like, this is like all the parts of a startup except for the important parts. And like, I know they must be doing the important, they must be building the product too. It's not like they're not, but like, I would never prioritize these things in my own companies. I know you're the same way where we're both a little bit like, you know, brash and like, you know, you're like, no, the office doesn't have cups. Like we use these like—
Use your hands. Yeah, like, can you put your hand Like this, like, what do you think hands are for, dog?
Yeah. Like they don't call me Sam Hosewater Park for nothing. Like grab the hose and suck some down. Like if you need some, I'll bring it to your desk so you don't even have to waste time. He's convenient. The hose is 18 foot. I sprung for the big one. And it's like, and so I know you're like me where like we do this like very bootleg company building and like, you know, oh, like we look up and it's like, oh shit, we have 18 dudes.
Okay.
Diversity. Yeah. Okay. Like we're, you know, we're gonna change that. Or it's like, the company culture is like, oh yeah, come to my house tonight. I'm going to cook for you guys. I don't know what. Like, so can you guys just stop at Safeway and just buy like a bunch of chips? Like, everybody here likes chips, right? It's like, yeah, all right, everybody likes chips. Everybody go buy your favorite bag of chips. That's what we're doing tonight. Like, you know, it's like these kind of company building at the minimum and it's like the as you go style. And then I see this and I'm like, either like either there's just like many playstyles. That's how you can win in different ways. Or they're way wrong or I'm way wrong. I don't know. What do you think about this sort of thing?
I think that for a very particular type of person, I wouldn't be concerned about this type of email. I think that you should most likely assume you are not that person. Not, not even like you, but like anyone, anyone. They should all— they should default to they are not this. Like, if you are, you know, like some like big swinging dick, some big deal.
Here's the analogy. It's like Steve Jobs didn't like, you know, he was like a perfectionist. He would like build it and then release the perfect product. He wasn't trying to iterate. He didn't ask consumers for feedback, you know, like early on, early and often. He was a product visionary genius. Okay. But like to assume that you're Steve Jobs-ish. Yeah. That assume that you're that is like dangerous. It's a dangerous path to go down.
I think this is a horrible idea. You and I have a friend that started a company, and when they were only 2 people, him and the business partner, they hired a CEO coach so they could help with culture building. And, uh, that's another sign. But yeah, I think— and they would go to like retreats, like for like, right, this type of stuff. So no, I think that, uh, this is not a good sign. It's not very good at all.
Have you, um I guess, like, what's your— describe your approach. Like, okay, you're starting a company from scratch. I would say, like, it's just a question of priorities. And I would say this person's priority is building an awesome team. They're recruiting, like, high-level people and then, like, really setting a cultural foundation around that. So that's, like, the— that's the non, like, non-poking fun way of looking at it is, like, that's— that's their priority. So what's your priority when you, like, start an endeavor?
So, yeah. I'm doing that now. So like, I'm going to start getting into it and we can talk about it, but I'm going to start getting into something. And I'm thinking like, all right, is this something that I want to build to sell? Or is this something that I want to run forever? Because that actually kind of matters on how you set up your entity. Um, so I think about like, what do I want personally? What type of life do I want? And how long do I want to operate this for?
So that's what would you do differently? Let's say build, build, own forever, or build to sell. What's the diff— what's the core difference?
Well, if you want to pay yourself from the business as you go, an LLC makes sense. Um, if you want to sell the company and you're willing to not pay yourself a little bit, or you only want to pay yourself as a W-2, then you want to be a corp, um, like a C-corp. And if you want to, um, I guess you could be an S-corp, but if you want to sell your company in 5+ years and take advantage of QSBS, which is $10 million of tax— or sorry, $3 million of tax savings, then you for sure want to be a C-corp because you can't get that on the other two. So I would, I would think about like that, like what type of structure do I want this to be? Of course, I have a history of getting hits. So like, if you don't have a history of like making money, then like I wouldn't even worry about this shit, you know what I mean? Right? Like, I've proven to myself that like if I say I'm gonna do something, I follow through, you know? I'm not— you don't want to be the nerd that just buys business cards before you even have anything done.
Great point. Okay, so that's— well, that's like literally a company structure. But, um, by the way, I, I think I told you this, I One of the kind of like tax slash, um, uh, lawyer people that's like kind of advising us, they gave us a pretty great structure that gives us best of both. They're like, just have a C-corp that owns the business assets, and that's what will be eligible for QSBS down the road. But then, uh, the C-corp will pay your LLCs, uh, you know, your LLCs for each, you, you know, the co-founders, uh, like as a management thing. And so you're gonna get, you're gonna get personally paid out through your LLC. Um, and then, but you still retain the long-term benefits of raising money or selling a C corp. Yeah.
That's, but is the, is the stock owned by the C corp?
Uh, yeah. So the company, well, C corp is the one issuing the stock. It has the stock. That's the stock that we want to— so if you do a stock purchase and we can either, we, and then the LLC doesn't need to own that stock.
It's kind of, that's a management company. That's like savvy shit that I would have to like look into and make sure I'm doing it right. Because there's a, there's a clock, you need to own it for 5 years. Additionally, what you could do is you can issue shares to family members in different trusts. So many, many people could take advantage of the QSBS and other, uh, long-term capital gains, things like that. So I think a little bit about that stuff. Um, and I think like what right now I'm, uh, every business that I'm thinking of, I'm thinking about how many employees do I need to run this and what type of employee am I going to have to hire? Because when you go big with some ideas, you're gonna have to hire these like smartass ex-Harvard, ex-Facebook type of folks. Um, you don't have to, but you know, like that, like that type of thing. Or is this like, no, I could actually hire this like $60,000 a year person, but where are they gonna be coming from? And do I actually want or not want to work with that type of person? Right. So, so I think about who am I gonna have to employ, employ, employ and what the business model's gonna be. And so how stressful will that be? Advertising was really stressful because we had to go out and— well, you're, you're in it now. You got to hunt every single month and that could be a, that can be a bit stressful. And so now I'm looking at what it's a little bit more recurring, which is less stressful. So I'm thinking a lot about business model. I'm thinking about what type of lifestyle I want and I'm thinking about who I'd have to hire.
And you're thinking about these things, but that's not your priority list, right? So like, I mean, like in terms of action, right? So that's thinking and planning. Cool. That'll take you a couple of days to be kind of noodling on that stuff. In terms of how do you like—
that's actually the hardest part is figuring out, because that's what Ben said, that's figuring out what you want. But in terms of the action, I figure out, I narrow it down to what's the one thing that can make this fail or work. And so let's just say that I'm creating, let's say I'm creating, uh, HubSpot. Let's say, uh, I'm HubSpot a few years ago. I'm creating HubSpot. So there's like a few items that could, that need to work, or at least I would think they need to work in order to make happen. So like, can I recruit engineers is probably one. Um, do people want this? Um, and are my engineers even capable enough to create this? And so if I'm HubSpot, I'd be like, well, Salesforce exists. So I actually think that, um, people can build this. Like it's, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm able to build this product. And number 2, I know a bunch of engineers and I'm pretty good at sales. I think I can, um, I think I can recruit engineers. So then the, then it's like, well, but do people want this? So that's like the, the, the, it's like, oh, okay, boom. That's it. That's the thing where it's like, I have to figure that out before I move on to the next steps. And so I go out and try to solve that for a company like HubSpot. I would actually just do tons of phone calls and I would make a judgment call based on that. For this like little small copywriting thing, the trycopythat.com, that thing that— yeah, I, I just know with that I just put a presale on there and I got $5,000 of presales. And I've— with Trends, we had $50,000 of presales. So depending on how easy the transaction is, if it's $1,000 or less in transactional value, I can probably create a landing page and presell it. We presold this $1,000 thing for Trends and we were going to charge $10 grand for it when it came out. We pre-sold, I think we got $100,000. So we got $1,000 from 100 different people to launch it. And so if it's under $1,000, my first step is selling it and giving me, giving me myself one month to pull it off.
Right? Yeah, that's exactly right. I, to me, I simplify it like, how do I make sure, like, how do I figure out, do people want it? Step one. Do people want this? And that's either pre-selling, talking to people, just kind of my own gut. Do, do people want this? Second thing is, where will I get customers? Okay, I think I could probably get the first 10 customers from here, first 100 customers from there. But like on an ongoing basis, do I have like a repeatable way to get customers? And if I know the answer to those two questions, then I just go and I don't do other things besides those two things. I build the thing that they want and I give it to them and see if they want, see if they actually love it. Or if they just kind of like it. And then I see if the way to get customers actually works. And once I do those two things, I don't really want to do anything else besides those two things for like a long period of time. And like all the other stuff— raising money, company culture, hiring, um, you know, corporate structure, naming, branding, uh, packaging, design— all comes after.
Yeah, and you have to— my opinion is not only do you have to not— you have to like say, I'm not going to worry about that at this point, but you also have to say, I'm actively actually going to avoid it. So it's like, yeah, I'm going to like actively not care about it, you know what I mean? Like, you have to like— and you kind of have to like take that stance. Um, and I think there's actually some products where the question is not, do people want this? So like, there's some stuff that I'll create that I'm like, well, I already know people want this. Like, I know they're gonna buy it. The question is like, Can I even get customers to this repeatedly? Um, and then that's actually—
can I tell you a couple tactics that helped me with this? Uh, I wonder if you did something like this. So I have learned that it's actually best to be a little bit what I'll call brutal about this. Okay. So what do I mean by brutal about this? It is very easy. Like when somebody hears that, oh yeah, you, you first figure out, do people want this? And you try to like, you know, pre-sell it or offer it to them and see if they sign up for the waitlist or they, they pre-buy or whatever., and then you figure out where am I gonna get customers repeatedly? And like you test that marketing channel and like those are the only two things you do. You say no to everything else. That sounds so simple. And then you like tell someone, go try to build a startup and they'll do everything else besides those two things.
That's because that's like the embarrassing hard stuff.
Yeah. Cuz it's the hard stuff. And if they, if it doesn't work, the car doesn't move anywhere. Whereas you could do a whole bunch of other stuff and it feels like you're moving, but the reality is you're not moving forward, you're moving sideways. And so, but at least moving feels like you're moving. And so people will gravitate towards those things. So let me give you some examples. Yesterday there was a tweet about Furkan, who's my old co-founder of my last startup. And Furkan is like, you know, a man of action, you know, few words, lot of action. And, you know, like if you ever ask him like, when do you think you could do this? It is rare for him to not be like, I should be able to ship it tonight. Now he only hits the tonight thing, like I would say 30% of the time, like 30% of the time nothing happens. 70% of the time he gets like a crappy version that's like not ready, but like he'll at 2 AM, there will be a message from him, be like, here's where I left it. And you know, like 10 or 20% of the time he actually finishes the thing, but he almost never says anything besides like, yeah, we should be able to do that tonight. Um, and so I learned that from him and every engineer we hired learned that from him. We're like, you can't give him a timeline that's not tonight. He's, if you say something besides tonight, he's just gonna be like, what the fuck are you talking about? So he now has this new like incubator thing, uh, called F.Inc.
Dude, what was that picture of that?
Dude, it looks sexy as hell, right? Like he bought this 10,000 square foot or at least this 10,000 square foot space in Fort Mason. He, it was beautiful when everybody was leaving San Francisco and, uh, and then remote work shut down all the offices and schools and in-person events. He was like the only buyer. He was like, yeah, I want a big space. Uh, I'm in the middle of San Francisco, in the best part of San Francisco. So he is like, You could see the water, the bridge. He got 10,000 square feet. He is like, oh, I'm gonna put a robotics lab, a hardware lab, desks. I'm just gonna have a bunch of engineers come make stuff here. You don't have to pay me rent. Like, just come build stuff.
And it's like beautiful.
Like, it looks— and now he's renovating it. So it's like, yeah, it's, it started with an empty blank shell and now it like looks awesome.
So does he make, does he make money from that or is he just spending money hoping that one of the companies takes off?
No, he's just spending money. He, he, he's like, he's made a bunch of money and he's also just like, I, he invests in the incubator company and the companies that are there. Right. He invests in a bunch of them., and like those are already doing well. So somebody tweeted out, somebody who, who's working outta there, they go, uh, one thing that Furkan does around the office is if a developer spends like more than a day, I think it's like if you spend more than a day on localhost, which is basically just means like you're building your website project, but you didn't ship it to the world. Like nobody else besides your laptop can access the site. Um, if you spend more than a day, he'll just start calling you localhost until you ship it. He'll stop using your name and he'll just call you localhost because you, oh, you're just localhost. Now, right? Like you don't want people to use your product, so you just, all right, localhost, you wanna get lunch? And like, I wanted to tweet this out. I knew people would take it the wrong way, but like that is a style we kind of incubated at our last startup. It's sort of like bully management. And it's not that you're bullying people, it's that you're bullying your values. It's like, how do I like live my values instead of just say, we care about, you know, like building things fast. It's like, No, if you don't build things and get it to customers, you will get ridiculed here because that is not cool in our books. You want cool, you want respect, then you got to do the thing we respect. And like, if you don't, we're going to tease you until you do it.
I was giving a guy a hard time in the Trends group because he posted, hey, so I've got 6 podcast episodes already recorded. Can someone give me an answer on which hosting platform is better? And I reply to go, Well, that's not really the important question. The important question is, why did you record 6? Like, just release one and, and, right, and just post it.
It was like, by the way, so when I started this podcast, when I started this podcast, what did I do? I messaged you on Facebook. I go, hey, I'm starting a podcast that I think, you know, it's gonna be awesome, uh, you know, here's the concept. At that, I was literally making it up as I was— I made up the name, made up the concept right there on the spot. I knew I wanted to do a podcast generally. And I go, I go, um, you know, you have this awesome audience but no audio content. I'll make great audio content if you'll put in front of your audience. And then I was like, I'm gonna send you the first— I'll send you the first episode later today. There was no first episode. I then go book a studio, record the episode, and sent it to you within 24 hours in order for you to like see that I'm like being legit about it.
It was live like, uh, 2 weeks later, right?
Yeah. I was like, okay, this is ready to go. Like, here, it's— nobody's listening to it, but it's in the store. You can go listen to the podcast if you want to.
The guy was like, we got, we got 6 done. And I'm like, but that's not the question that you do. Like, the question is, why do you have 6 done and none, none live? Like, that's just crazy, right? Because people default to— they— it's embarrassing. And it's to post that shit.
So let me give you some other examples of this, of being brutal about it. Uh, at Monkey Inferno, when, when we were working there, we would sometimes let like kind of interesting engineering guys like just hang out in our office and they would— we would just be like, I just work from here. No, you don't need to pay us. It's not a WeWork. It's like It's a sick office. We got extra space. Just come here and work. Just bring some good energy. And so these guys came and they, uh, they were working there. They had this idea that was really cool. And then they were like, they would always ask us questions that were like, that like, oh, this investor is interested. What, you know, we're thinking about raising money. You know, how should we think about this? Can you look at our debt? Can you do this and that? I'm like, and it's like, hey, is your guys, is your guys' product, do you have your product built? Like, do you have users? It's like, it's just like, those are more important than this fundraising stuff. But like, I get it. It's flattering when an investor wants to give you money, but like now that investor just took over your day. Like now your day is all about that instead of like the main thing, right? Like, hey guys, and whatever happened to the main thing? So then, no, so then they get, they get into Y Combinator. They're like, oh, we got into Y Combinator. And we're like, awesome. Those guys will keep you on track. And then over the next 6 weeks it was like, yo, um, You're NYC, like, what's going on? What's it like to be in NYC? I've never done it. Like, heard it's awesome. And they're like, oh yeah, the office hours are great. They're bringing up this and that. And we're like, hey, so how many users you guys got? And they'd be like, um, and they would like, they didn't know the number.
Oh my God.
And me and Furkan just looked at each other like, all right, new rule. If we ask you how many users you have, how many daily active users you have, and you don't know the number, like 10 pushups. And they're like, haha. We're like, no, we're serious about that. And then they, they still didn't know for 2 more days and they had to look up the dashboard and we're like, all right, 10 pushups not working. So we took a marker and we started writing a giant giant zero on the, um, like the, the wall behind them. And we were like, this is the number of users you have according to us, cuz you don't know. So we're just gonna keep putting zero here. And like, it's your job to like change this to be like the number of users you have. Every day when you come to the office, you're gonna see this giant zero above your head until you change that. And like, again, this worked. And like all of a sudden they started thinking about how many users they had. They want, they didn't want that giant zero hanging over their head. And I've just seen many versions of this. I've heard a story about Peter Thiel doing this too. Peter Thiel's values were all about like focus. And so his thing was everybody at PayPal, when he was the CEO of PayPal, would have one thing that they were responsible for. And the list could only be one. They had one big thing to care about. And if you tried to talk to Peter like, hey Peter, um, you know, yeah, the, the market, you know, the, the marketing stuff's going well, but I had this idea around this feature. He would literally just leave the room. If you ever tried to speak to him about the non-one thing you were assigned, he would just ignore you. He is like, oh, That's not— remember we decided what's important. So by definition, this is not important. So by definition, I'm just not gonna talk to you about non-important things. I'm gonna leave, right? Like, I don't know how hardcore, I don't know how real that anecdote is cuz I wasn't there, but like, let's just say like directionally it's true. Um, I think that that is like a really important way to like operate a young company.
What happened to the guys from your office?
They ended up getting into YC. They ended up, uh, getting better. They like, they kind of grew, but then they lost like, like once the growth wasn't like instant, here's my read of it. They pivoted, they pivoted and disbanded. They're all doing different things now. One guy, one guy's like, you know, working on a different company. Another guy's working on a different company. And the third guy, I've never heard. I don't know where he went.
And, um, probably found some cocaine somewhere.
And he had told me something once, which was just like, he was like, you know, he had told me once, he was like, like they were building a marketplace of supply and demand and like they, The reason they— we were all excited about them was because they got this huge amount of supply really quickly. They had just posted on Reddit and like people really wanted the thing. And so they started posting, but the demand side was slow. And he was like, he's like, when I— he's like, with the land— with the supply side, it felt like I stepped on a landmine. I just like did one— I took one step and it just blew up. He goes, I want the demand to feel like that too, dude. So on one hand, I respected that. On the other hand, I was like, dude, sometimes you gotta like figure out how to get that to work.
I don't respect that. And the reason why is you know, we're taught like, you know, people could change, we can evolve. And I have actually, I think last year I actually made the decision, I'm actually going to assume people don't change. The way you are is the way you are and you're never changing. And that, that way of thinking.
How hopeful of you.
It's actually been amazing because like, I'll meet someone and I'm just like, oh, you are a loser and you're always going to be a loser. You say you're going to do something, you don't do it. You don't have big dreams, you don't work hard, like innocent. Don't follow through.
Yeah, yours is guilty until proven innocent.
100%. And then I meet someone who's just like a baller, like Steph Smith. I'm like, oh, well, you're just a winner. So just like maybe sometimes you're going to swing and miss, but you're always going to swing. Therefore, I'm on board forever with anything you do because I know exactly how you are and people never change and you're just a winner. You win consistently. Whereas there's a bunch of other people. There's this great article. It's called Losers Exist. Avoid Them., and it's the founder of Bleacher Report, Brian Greenberg, or Goldberg. And he writes a blog post about how he interviews people. He's like, yeah, see, I just think that losers do exist and like, not everyone's a winner. And I'm just going to try really hard to avoid those types of people. And his way of doing it is he would say, I ask you about the bottom fourth of your resume. So where you went to school. So if I'm interviewing a candidate and she can't tell me like passionately about something that she studied for 4 years, it's like, oh, you're just a loser. Like, you're not— you don't care about philosophy even though you studied that for 4 years. You're uninteresting and thus are a loser. But you interview this other woman and she could like passionately tell you a story about something and it's like, well, I don't even care about philosophy, but because you entertained me, like you clearly you are curious, you're a winner. So anyway, my way of thinking as of late is just people never change.
My sister has a great phrase on this. She goes, people will say that people don't change. They change for the worse. So her default is even worse. Like, yeah, this person will change over time. They're going to get worse. They're going to decay, basically. And like hardened in these like bad patterns until proven otherwise. Um, and I think that's actually a pretty good way of thinking about things, dude. Can I tell you about this last thing? Like this experiment I'm doing that I think relates to this, which is like losers exist, how to avoid them.
So here's my— that's a good line, right?
It's brilliant. Here's my, my inversion of that. Winners exist. Here's how to attract them. And so, um, I put out this thing the other day. I tweeted out this.
I was like, hey, the $50,000 thing.
Yeah, I was like, yo, we just made $25 grand. Uh, like a wire just came in for Milk Road for $25 grand.
I did not think that was going to work.
I want to give it all. I want to give it away. And I said that, you know, crypto is full of speculators. There's too many speculators, not enough builders. So if you want to build something, here's the deal. I will give away, uh, 1 ETH, which is like $3,000. I was like, I'll give you $3,000, no strings attached, no equity to build whatever you want. Like, you scratch your itch. And, um, I just want to give it to builders. Here's a link to apply. Um, go. And two kind of amazing things happened of how, like, winners exist. Here's how to attract them. First, a bunch of people who are winners were like, hey, great idea, I'll put in money too. It was just an excuse to touch base with like a bunch of these winners. So the prize pool is more than doubled already. And like, now we're giving away more money to more people because people are like, oh, this is cool.
It was like the KOM guy. It was Furkan.
Yeah. The founder of KOM, Furkan, was like, we'll match it. And then like, there was more people, but we were like, hey, let's just give away this first batch. And then like, if this is cool, we're gonna like, we'll do more. We can just grow this into a self-sustaining like builder grant. It's philanthropy, but like, I don't— instead of charity, I'd rather give to like people building shit. And like, I'm sorry to, you know, people who are like, no, there's people suffering out there. I'm like, yes, but also like, this is where I want to give money to, is something like this. Um, and by the way, the whole like a wire came in today, that was all bullshit. Like, that was just like for the story. Like We just— I was just like, I want to give away this. I'm willing to give away this much money.
And the people need to realize that lying for the sake of a story is actually okay. Have you remembered the book that we read about storytelling?
Yes. Which one?
Storyworthy. Story— Storyworthy. And he was like, he's like, just lie. Like, for example, if you're talking about like, yeah, so I was in the car with my teacher and she started flirting with me, like, and he was like, well, there's actually like 3 people in the backseat.
But like, I couldn't say that because I think his thing was like, uh, don't lie to add, lie to omit details.
Yeah, omit details.
Just omit details that don't add to the point of the story. And, um, and so yeah, but mine was like, yeah, I kind of just framed it as like, oh, a wire just came in. And because a wire could have came in, oh, it could have came in, and it did come in in pieces. Like, the money did come to me somehow.
You received a wire that day.
And so like, so basically I told, like, this came on a whim. So I told you we hired that new guy, Safwan, and I was like, Safwan, Safwan's 22, I think. And he's awesome. And I just like having winners around me, like young, awesome, energetic people who want to like make shit happen. And I was like, yo, I want more people like you around. I'm not going to hire all of them, but like, how do I just get more? Like, you know, when there was Peter Thiel did that thing where he like took like young people's blood and like put it in his body. I want to do that. A legend, man. I want to put, yeah, I want young, young blood in my body. How do I, how am I gonna do that? So I was like, all right, let me just put out a grant for builders. This will attract people who A, can build things, B, like know what one ether, one ETH is and like want one ether, like, and the $3,000 like means something to them that this could like unlock like a month worth of like, it's like an excuse to go build that thing, right? So what happened? Almost 1,000 applications came in in a week.
And how long is an application?
It was like a form that was like, you know, uh, who, what's your, I was like, what's your story? I was just like kind of open-ended. And it was like, uh, what do you want to build? Give me the tweet pitch of it. Why do you want to build it? Um, you know, what's your handle? What's your address? What's your email? What blah blah blah. And so people wrote in and I'll share the Airtable with you. It's kind of amazing. All right. So there's like a bunch of junk. We shortlisted, um, like about 150 people out of the, like close to 1,000 as like strong, like this person's kind of like either their story or their idea is strong.. And then we like kind of got to the finalists, which are like these 35 people that are like, okay, these 35 people, they all seem like kind of worthy of getting this. And we're ultimately gonna pick like, I don't know, 15 or something for the fund for this, this batch of grants. And, and I think doing this, like this whole thing is gonna take me, I think maybe 3 days total to like of attention to pull off. But what it's gonna create is like just a bunch of young, awesome energy, young being just like, not your literal age, but like more like people who like psychographic, somebody who, yeah, it's like somebody who has an idea, has energy, has optimism, um, and like doesn't think of all the reasons they shouldn't do it. Instead they like, yeah, fuck yeah, apply. I'm gonna do this. And so they're gonna be around me and I like, I, I think this is gonna be so ROI positive in the long run that it's like insane, dude. I've just to have that.
I've done these things before and I think you did it before when you gave a business to someone, right?
Yeah.
And I've never had it work out. Like, yeah, it just kind of like went on the back shelf or they, and they just kind of forgot about it.
Yeah, it could be. Uh, and like, you know, that's why the main filter is like, are you gonna actually do anything or are you just talking about it? Or like, is your day job or your, you know, your student status, whatever, gonna just trump this and you never get around to like actually making shit happen? That's the number one criteria here. Um, But dude, the, the stories are like amazing of like who writes in. It's like, it just reminds you of like, oh wow, the world is way bigger than the, like the amount of people that I interact with on a day-to-day basis.
Are you giving the money all to one person?
No, no, no.
There's gonna be like 15 people who get the grant and it's like a few grand each.
Yeah.
All right. Well, I'm eager to see what's gonna happen. When are you gonna decide?
Uh, we'll decide like in the next 5 days who gets it. And then we're just like setting up Like, we're just gonna run the whole thing, you know, just like a Telegram group or something like that. And, uh, and yeah, we'll see what happens. But I think, guys, my point is do things that create— that like attract winners to you. Um, is that— which is the opposite lesson of like losers exist and how to avoid them. That's great advice. I think actually slightly less great advice is winners also exist. Here's how to get near them, get around them, get them around you, and like figure out different ways to like get them around you. This is one that like, you know, I know not everybody can afford to like do a grant program or whatever, but like, yeah, but if I had no, if I had no money, I could have hustled and created this grant program instantaneously. I could have said, I could have emailed, you know, 50 people and been like, hey, will you put up $1,000, um, for this? Here's all the benefits you're going to get. And you know, which is how, by the way, I hired Safwan. He initially emailed me saying, hey, you should do a grant program. Here's 5 reasons why. And I was like, oh, that's actually a great idea. Will you do all the work? He's like, yeah. I'll do all the work.
Did you ever read San Francisco subreddit? No. All right. So I used to go to the subreddit for San Francisco all the time, and there was this guy. It started like 5 years ago. He just said, hey everyone, and he posted a picture of himself holding a beer. He goes, I'm at this bar. I forget what it was in Haight-Ashbury. I'm at this bar. Come down and your first drink's on me. And he just posted that and like people made fun of him. And then he did it again the next week. And he did this for literally like 60 weeks in a row. And then he like became famous for the guys like, oh, you need it. You want to have a good time. This guy seems really nice. Everyone goes to talk. So he's a really cool dude. It'll buy your first drink, whatever you can. If you do that with like building cool shit, it actually works out quite well where it's like, hey, I'm building this thing. Tag along for the ride. It tends to work well. The guy does it all the time. It's great. It's— he like became famous for like, oh, come have first drinks on me. I'm down here. I wonder. How much he spent. Dude, we used to do these mixers, these roommate mixers, uh, in San Francisco, and we would like only spend $500, but we were like the man. Like, we were like the most popular people for a long time. We did it every week for like 2 years.
Well, and what were you doing? $500 went to doing what?
I bought everyone beer at a bar. Or at a bar, we'd host them at a bar, and I would just be like, hey, can I get $2 beers? And I just come every week and I'll spend at least $500. And like, all right, cool.. And so I was like, all right, here's my card. Stop it at 500. It was pretty sick.
Can we turn the ship around? We need to circle back. Business term.
Let me tell you about a cool company that I just discovered and the guy told me to tell you, hey, so do you, I don't know if you know, I don't know if that was like he's a fan or if it, if, or if he actually knows you, have you, it's called, uh, so I, I am, I'm linking to it in here in the doc. I'm highlighting it right now. It's called, um, Getcyberleads.com. Have you ever seen this? No.
So who's the guy?
Okay. Uh, yeah, I don't think I know this person.
He said, tell Sean I said hey. Alex West is his name. I didn't know if he was saying it as like a way that he knows you. He must just be a fan.
All right, let's get Cyber Leads.
The reason it's cool is it's just him and Basically what it is, is you pay, let's see, how much is it? Is it, so like you pay between $100 and $1,000 a month for a different, a bunch of different versions, but basically you, every month, just one time every month, he sends you 1,000+ handpicked companies that just raised a lot of money and are highly likely to go and look and, uh, look to outsource, uh, whether it's technology or, uh, uh, design, they're looking to outsource stuff. And if you're an agency owner, You sign up to this and every month you just get a bunch of new leads. And the lead list, it includes the CEO's name, the CEO's contact information, what this person is likely to outsource, where they're located, how big they are, and how much, or how much money they just raised. And the reason why this is cool is because it's so freaking simple, very clear value. It's just one person. It's making $300,000 a year. So, or sorry, yeah, $300,000 a year. So it's making, um, in March he said he did 20, He did $20,000 a month with a net profit of $17,000. It's now gone up to like $30,000 a month, but I just thought this was unique. And I love these types of businesses because the value proposition is so clear. If you just— one of these things closes a deal, it's worth it. And I actually think that you could do this for a bunch of different verticals. You've never seen this before?
No, I've never, never seen this. How does he do the, like, what they're likely to outsource? Is he just guessing based on experience or something?
I go, are you doing this handpicked? He goes, yeah, every report takes me an hour, uh, 100 hours to do the whole leads list. And he sends one email per month. And if you go to the website and you click live demo, uh, you can basically see what he sends you. It's, it's just like an Airtable, an Airtable table, uh, and you could kind of see all the information.
Wow. That's kind of cool. All right. I like this.
This is pretty cool, right?
Yeah. Good. Good for him.
Um, and I, it's just him and he's like, I was like, can this scale? He goes, I think I can get $1 million a year pretty soon. And I'm not sure what I could do after that, but I think just me, this could get $1 million. And honestly, I totally agree. I think this is a beautiful business. I think this is really, really cool.
So he said, okay, let's just look at his March numbers. All right. So he said March revenue, $20,000, cost $3,000 a month, net profit $17K. Profit margin 85%. Last March, for example, he was basically 5 times less. So revenue was $4,000 and now it's $20,000. And so this is pretty good. I mean, this is what basically, basically one guy and a VA can run this. Um, yeah, one guy and one guy and a VA can run this thing. And it's providing, like you said, it's providing clear value in the sense that like, if I pay for this, I'm likely to get more customers and make more money. So it's like it pays for itself. And like, it pays for itself is actually like a pretty valuable thing, which is like, there's a bunch of things in my businesses that I'm like, oh yeah, I want to do that. But you know, I kind of have these other priorities. And it was like, well, I really do just need to look at all these things as like, can I hire somebody and it be immediately value, like, you know, accretive in the next 6 to 12 months? Because that job that I'm hiring them for is not to just make my life easier, It's to literally generate revenue and profits. And so like, there is no way that if I hire this person, if they are competent, this has to be an ROI positive thing to do. And you know, the only thing I need to consider is like, do I have the, do I have the bandwidth to hire this person? And so, um, and so to me, you know, like that's, and then there's products like that too. This is a product like that where it's like, yeah, I paid $99 or whatever, $199 a month, whatever this thing costs. And like, if I can't make more than $199 off this, like that's just my own incompetence at that point.
It's sick, man. It's really sick. And so it says, it says there's 1,000 leads. If you go to pricing for the prices range from $200 to $2,000, and it says, let's see, it says you get, uh, 1,000 leads. Maybe that includes like all the past months. Uh, it, it's pretty, this is pretty cool.
By the way, check out this tweet I put in the chat. Uh, this is a good example of like, content that's not like, um, it's like this is the easy, easy mode of creating content that people resonate with. So this is just like a beautiful tweet. All right, so this guy tweeted out December 21st. He goes, one year ago, one year ago today, I was fired from my job making $2,000 a month. Today I'm making $6,000 a month with my own business. And they post, more importantly, he posts a screenshot of his like calendar's planner and it says, fired! Exclamation point. Last day at work. That's like on the 21st. On the 22nd, day one, a self-employed man! Exclamation point. And it's just like you kind of root for the person. Um, and you know, what's in this content? It's nothing, but it's like by showing the raw like planner, uh, and like what I wrote to myself that day, like these are like, these, these have like an emotional impact on people. And I think that's one thing that most people get wrong in content is that content is about emotion, not information. And something like that, it generates like a feeling of like rooting for the person that is like most people I know are really smart, and so they try to like outsmart everybody on content. And it's like, you don't need to outsmart everybody. You need to trigger an emotional response, whether it's outrage, it's like compassion, it's like, um, you know, awe-inspiring, whatever it is. And this is a great simple example of how you can make somebody root for you, is, you know, a little tweet like this.
This guy's a good find. I think he kind of— so there's this guy that, for context for the listener, there's a guy named Peter Lovells who I've been begging to get on the pod and he keeps like saying yes and then goes and yes. So, but anyway, this guy, Peter Lovells, he's not exactly a one-man operation. I think now he's got contractors, but he's got like 4 or 5 different businesses. They're basically all the same thing, like job boards collectively doing like $4 million or so in revenue. And he posts like cute, cool, insightful content on Twitter and blogs. This guy, Alex West, is kind of like in the same ballpark as that, as that guy, Peter Levels.
Right.
Like he's, it's like cool, well-designed. It looks like he's like a, like a nomad as well. Uh, but, uh, yeah, by the way, somebody needs to make the list.
I feel like Steph Smith needs to do this. She needs to make the definitive list of these like solopreneur freelancer, digital nomad, basically it's like the Peter Levels, this guy where it's like, yeah, this person's on some journey. They're trying to get to $100K a month in like personal revenue., but they have these principles. Like they're not trying to raise money, they're not trying to build a big team. They live nomadically. They're like just good enough engineer and just good enough designer and just a good enough copywriter to make it happen. And they're like doing it all in public. And like, there's like 20 of these people that I found on Twitter. All of them are entertaining to me. And I feel like most people just don't know who those people are. And like, actually like a good service would be to just aggregate them and put it in a newsletter. Be like, hey, I'm following all these people doing this thing. Check this out. This guy posted an update about this thing and like you can just make a newsletter following their work and probably like, you know, build an audience of 50,000 to 100,000 people following you, following them, which is sort of, you know, meta.
Do you ever read IndieHackers?
I don't personally go there much, but I have for sure in the past.
IndieHackers is awesome. It started by these two guys, Courtland and Channing. I'm twins, right? They're twins. Yeah. I've become friends with Channing over the years. Basically Indie— it was like a forum for this weird genre of entrepreneurs called Indie Hackers, but they sold it to Stripe. And I have a feeling that each brother will make in the world of $20 million when Stripe goes public. I wouldn't be surprised if it were a little more, but I can't— I, I actually think it's above $20. They've never told me. I just am guessing because, because of when they sold to them. Um, and if they sold for $1 million, it would've gone up by like that much. So anyway, uh, I, on their website, they list interviews and they list all the revenue of the companies and it's pretty amazing. And you could sort by revenue and you can just find like a list of companies that basically you wanna like get inspired by or copy.
Right. Yeah. That's cool. Uh, and by the way, just look at their traffic. Like their traffic shows about a million, million to a million and a half monthly visitors. So, you know, good, good job by them of like, This is like real scale. And in fact, this is probably like, like for Milk Road, I should go tell our story on IndieHackers and Product Hunt. I could probably add 10,000 new subscribers with one day of, one day of like just crafting a story that goes on, that just posting on both of these.
I completely agree. I've done it both times. We, we did it for trends and we made a lot of money.
I like it. HubSpot allows all our teams to work together seamlessly, so no one's fallen overboard unless we want them to. OK, what else you got?
I don't know, you tell me, what do you got?
I see what I mean.
Wait, I have a question. All right. Yeah, let's—
let me ask. I think I see this question you're about to ask me.
All right. You ever seen those movies where they are— it's about like drug lords and shit. And do you find— and you see just like a normal guy in a boat off the coast of Florida and he finds like a brick of cocaine. Yeah, I've never like seen that, like, premise. My question to you is, if you— because I'm reading this book, have you seen the movie No Country for Old Men? No. So it's like a movie.
I know, I've heard of it. You know what it is? That name to me sounds so boring that I will never click on that.
No, it's not a boring one at all. It's like a thriller. But I'm reading the book and basically the premise is this guy like comes across a drug deal gone bad. Everyone's dead at the scene and there's $2.5 million as well as a truck full of cocaine. He takes the $2 million. The drug guys look for him and that's the, that's the book. And my question is, if I came across that cocaine, what would I do? And what would you do if you came across, like, I have no idea how cocaine is measured, but like that movie scene where you come across like a brick. Yeah. Or many bricks, I guess. What do you, what do you do with it?
Take a picture, put it on Instagram, be like, oh my God, get the social clout and get the hell out of there. I am not picking up the cocaine. I'm not becoming a drug dealer. I'm not going to figure out how to flip this. You could also replace that with like, oh, I find a, you know, a large supply of copper wires which have a decent market value. I don't know. I've actually been down this path before once. I think I talked about this on the pod where we met a guy who had this giant comic book card collection.
Yes.
And like, we had this opportunity to buy it for like probably like 10 cents on the dollar of what it was like, what the individual, like, sum of all the parts would have been. But we had to like figure out like what the hell to do. It's like, here's a warehouse, you now have the cost of this warehouse, and then you have all this stuff and none of it's graded and none of it's like categorized, none of it's inventoried. It's like, you know, you gotta go do that like, you know, American Pickers style, like junkyard flip type thing for this stuff. And when I kind of like, I got excited at first because it was like it would have been a like multimillion dollar flip if we had done it.
How did that end?
It ended with me realizing this is not worth the time and energy to go do this. Like, this is so much energy.
But so the story was basically you came across a guy who owned a warehouse and you said that had a really old guy, really old guy who was like finally ready to like sell his thing. He'd been collecting for 30 years, like tens of millions of like baseball cards or something.
Yeah. Like he had millions of cards, most of which are useless, but for sure some of it is valuable. And like the question is like, and you had to buy the whole lot. You had to buy the whole, like, thing. And then what do you do with it? Deal with it? I think you did. I know nobody bought it because, again, nobody wants this headache. And like, even the discount— like, I was like, okay, let's say this is discounted, you know, based on our estimates, this thing's discounted like 90%. Even at a 90% discount, the, like, mental overhead, the literal overhead— and like, some people out there like, dude, I would have done it. And like, you should go do it if you have no better options. You should go do this.. But for me, I was like, wow, this is a lot of work. So I would not, I wouldn't do it in the legal case, let alone the illegal case of figuring out how to flip these bricks of cocaine is kind of my answer. What's your answer to that?
It depends what stage of life I'm in. Um, like, all right, so let's, let's take it by decade.
You're 20.
I'm 20. And like, one of these bricks, if could they be worth like $2 million?
Let's, let's say the whole thing is worth, uh, you know, $6 million if you, if you, you know, sold it all at, at like street value.
So let's start at the end of you having all this cash.
Let's say, you know, as you know, we do, we do move straight to the end.
I'm moving straight to the end. Assuming that I had $6 million in cash, I wouldn't even know what to do with that. If you buy a, if you buy a, if you buy property with $6 million in cash, how can you even do that? Are you even allowed to do that? I mean, where would you keep that money?
Yeah, I don't know what you would do. You'd have to like figure out how to like launder it basically to like legitimately own it, or you'd have to figure out a way to like do some, you know, off, off over-the-counter transaction of like gold bars or something else.
Or do you just live a cat— like a cash life forever? Yeah, you go under the mattress, you just pay for everything with tens of twenties.
This is Breaking Bad, right? This is the plot of Breaking Bad, basically.
So what would I do if— all right, if I was 20 and I found it, I don't even think I'd take it. I don't even know what I would do. I would not be Maybe when I was 20, maybe I wouldn't be opposed to trying something, but I literally would have no idea where to start. Where would you even start? I don't know people who do. I don't even know. I don't know people who do cocaine. I don't hang out with anyone.
But you're in the moment. You have to make a split decision in the heat of the moment. I would have to bet— I would have to—
we'll figure it out. No, I'd have to call the cops. I think I would call the police. I wouldn't know what to do. I wouldn't even know how to execute this.
Yeah. Okay, so that's one. If you're not going to do it in your 20s, you're not going to do it in your 30s. Yeah. So I don't think it matters what stage of life you're in. Uh, there is a couple other, you know, methods here, right? So like, let's say you're in this— what was the, the Old White Country for Old Men or something like that? Like, you know, basically the guy finds the briefcase. If I find that briefcase, I'm taking 15% of the cash out. I'm leaving the rest there because who's really going to chase me down for the 15%? So I think I get like, you know, 80, you know, I get like really— none of the work.
That is the Easy. So I did the math. So the book was set in 1979 and it was $2.5 million, which is the equivalent of like $8 million today. So finding $8 million today, and this is set in El Paso, Texas, and the guy lives in a trailer, like a mobile home. So $7 million might as well be $700 million. It's just a world-changing thing. If I'm that guy, like, that's easy. You just find it, you get the car, and you just never go back home and you just, you're just gone.
Yeah, but I'm— what am I gonna do, sleep, you know, with one eye open every night wondering what's gonna happen? I, I— if I see that $2 million, I'm taking $247,000 out.
No way.
They're never gonna— they're gonna not even understand why $247,000— it was $247,000 short, and I'm living a happy, calm lifestyle just as my life was, but with an extra $247,000. That's my— that's my move.
That's so funny. I, I don't think I could take 15%. I would— yeah, I would definitely take the whole thing.
I was thinking about this the other day. This came up, uh, I watched Survivor. Yeah, I'm like still watching, you know, season 48 of whatever Survivor that's, that's going on. And, and shout out to the Survivor casting directors. I'm, I'm getting in shape so that I can go on Survivor soon. Um, but they have this new twist where they have this thing you find. Normally it's like Survivor, you go out in the wild and they have this, this little prize called the immunity idol. If you find this thing, you're safe from the vote. You won't get voted out this week. So people always want that thing and they, when they find it, it's this joyous moment. They unroll, unscroll the scroll and they're like, yes, I found the thing. But they added a twist this time, which it says on the top of the scroll, it says beware. Like this is called a beware advantage. Like, you know, there could be something good. This, this comes with power, but also, you know, some drawbacks. And they say you could just put this down right now and you can go on with the game as it is. Or if you open this, you have to, you know, you get the power, but you get the disadvantage as well. You get the advantage and disadvantage. 100% of the time they open up the scroll. And I'm just thinking there, I'm like, you know, the game theory here is that this is going to put me in a sticky spot. They're not giving me something that's going to give me like, it's mostly great with a tiny downside. It's going to be like potentially great later with a downside today, right? Like if I'm the game, that's how I'm organizing this game. But everybody picks it up and everybody opens it. And I thought, what are the things in life that are like this? Which is like, you pick it up, you know, you shouldn't do this. You know, this has drawbacks, but you can't resist. You just do it anyways because, you know, YOLO. And I started thinking about what that is in real life, right? Like, there's that with food. Like, most junk food is that way. Pleasure now, pain later. But what are the other areas of life? What is the career version of this? This is like that you got that really great job, but now you were thinking about maybe you wanted to start your own business or do your own thing. But then you get this like, you know, job at McKinsey and you're tempted to take it cuz it has the prestige and it has the money, but it also comes with the sticky trap of like, this is for sure gonna set you on a path for multiple years in a direction that you don't think you want to be your end goal, but you do it anyways. And so I'm now looking out for these, what I'm calling the beware, the beware advantages, uh, of life.
The big takeaway here though is with you wanting to go on Survivor. So let me tell you about something. So, There's this podcast called Dead Eyes. Do you know what Dead Eyes is? No, never heard of it. All right. So years ago, Tom Hanks was the producer of Band of Brothers. You know, it was like the TV show on HBO about World War II. And there was this one comedian who was like an extra of one of the guys who was shooting or something. And Tom Hanks like looked at him and then whispered in the producer or whispered in his assistant's ear and said like, hey, Hey, man, you got to go. Tom Hanks apparently said that he had, quote, dead eyes and he wanted him off the set like he just didn't like him as an extra, something that probably happens all the time. He just thought—
and so just the flicks.
Yeah, it wasn't working out. And so this guy created a podcast called Dead Eyes, and the whole podcast was questioning why he got kicked off like Bad Brothers.
That same guy.
Yes. And so the whole podcast, the whole premise is like He's interviewing people on Band of Brothers, like asking, like, why do you think I got kicked off? Like what? Like, let's talk through this, dude.
How did you find this? Sounds like the most obscure of the obscure.
Well, eventually Tom Hanks goes on it.
Oh my God, that's amazing.
And he lands Tom Hanks and he comes on as a guest and he explains like what, what was happening from his perspective and what we need to do with you.
But wait, hold on. What was the explanation? What did he say? He was just like, I don't remember.
He— yeah, he was like, I don't— like, I'm sorry, it wasn't— let me see.
He's like, this has haunted you for 24 years.
Yeah, he was like this. I guess it just— it just wasn't even like a— he didn't really think about it, I believe. And apparently he said that like it maybe even it was like a mistake, like maybe he said the wrong thing to the wrong person, but like it was just— it just dismissed him like it wasn't even like an issue in his life. And this guy has this whole podcast called Dead Eyes. You've not heard of this? It's hilarious.
No, that's, that's hilarious. What were you gonna tie that in? You said I should do something?
Well, so with you wanting to be on, on Survivor, we need to like have you go through the whole process, and you're likely going to get turned down at the audition, but we gotta like do like a whole series of episodes of you going through this process of getting on Survivor and documenting it and getting all—
that's a great idea, that's a great idea.
And we, we like What you need to do is comment, get the person who does casting for Survivor and act like you want them to come on as a guest. And we could do it just to like humor them, but like on air, be like, so like, can Sean audition?
Can I get on? Yeah, I have auditioned before already, so I've been rejected once, so I already got that under my belt now.
Oh no, we got to have him on there and we'll do it like funny. Like, you know, I think I said this earlier, like, wouldn't it be funny if we just started kissing right now? Like, wouldn't that be hilarious? Like, that's got to be— what if I was on? Yeah, like, it's just hilarious. Can you imagine if I came on Survivor and if I— What would happen?
Yeah, is that allowed?
Yeah, would it be funny?
Dude, though, what is the exact line though? Wouldn't it be funny if we— What would happen if we just kissed right now? Would it be funny if we kissed? That's so funny to me, dude. That tickles my funny bone at the like deepest, deepest level. I don't know why it's so funny. There's that, there's that one, and then there's the other one that gets me so bad is like, you've heard— have you heard this joke where it's like, and then everybody started clapping?
No.
Okay, so basically this is all— it's like a recurring joke that comes in when like, if you tell a story, yeah, like it's like when somebody tells a story and by the end of the story you're like you're sort of like, wait, what was the point of the story? And then you realize the point of the story was them saying, them just saying how cool they were in a way that was like, not even like the story's kind of exaggerated or not really believed. It's like, yeah, we were at the restaurant and then this guy was choking and then like, but like nobody heard him. But I, I just saw it. I was on my way to the bathroom and I just kind of like, you know, whatever, just did the Heimlich. But I'd only ever watched a video and like, you're like, what is this story? Where is this going? Why are you telling me this? And then, and then you basically like, it's an awkward silence at the end of that story. And they're like, and then they basically, they realized the story didn't do it. And so they have have to one-up it and just say, then everybody started clapping. And so it's this, it's this genre of stories, these, the, and then everybody started clapping stories. My version also cracked me up when that happened. When I see someone get stuck in a story like that, I'm like, oh yes, it's happening. They got themselves trapped in a, and then everybody started clapping story, and they're about to start exaggerating because the story itself didn't hit, and now they're stuck.
My version of that is, and then I found $5.
Yeah, exactly, dude. Okay, so I have a crazy story like this. Somebody tweeted this at us.
They loved your Orlando Bloom story, by the way.
Oh, that's— I mean, that's the one where I didn't want to get stuck in that, that spot, but that story is all true. So, so somebody tweeted at this, this at us, and they go, this, this seems like it's up your alley. And that's when you know you're winning, when somebody sends you something really weird and they say, I think this is up your alley. And it's 100% up my alley. This is my home address. My PO box is in this alley. And so He sent me this post and it's like a forum post and he goes, what I'm doing is insane. So here's what it says. It goes, I have a bot running 24/7 that is buying and selling for zero target profit just to waste the IRS's manpower and money. I print and send to the IRS all the documentation about every one of these trades in paper form so that they can't automate it or just get through my report in an easy way. He goes, I will sometimes mix blank pages, double print, ghost print, use mark— use black and white. I will number the pages and put them in out of order. I will have people randomly scribbling drawings of dicks into the, into the pages. Um, I will send it as a whole pallet of paper trades. I even— to send this pallet, I have to hire a guy with a forklift just to send it. Um, and I want it to be in a pallet so that is maximal— maximally like troublesome for them. And then it says like, you know, um Is this real? Yeah, I don't know if it's real or not. This is like some forum post. He goes, this cost me thousands of dollars every year, and I make sure to send them an invoice so that they know that I'm paying real money on top of the pallet that I've sent them. Um, so whoever's in charge of this knows that I'm wasting the equivalence of 2 months of their wage on this asinine behavior, on top of wasting their time. And I was just like, this needs to go to petty court. It's like, who are you? Why are you so troubled? And like Okay, you know, if you just wasted a little bit of your own time, that's offensive to me. But if you waste all of your time and money, at this point it turns into respect from my point of view. And like, I don't know what your mission is, I don't even really understand it, but I respect the mission-drivenness of this, like, of this initiative where there's, there's no game, it's just mutually assured destruction on both parties.
It's like, have you seen our, uh, South Park where Cartman is dressed up like Steve Jobs at the keynote and he's walking around and he goes, instead of saying thank you, he just says, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. And the whole presentation is ways that they're wasting money. And he's sitting around walking around the stage and he goes, but we didn't just stop there. You see, we moved the couch from the left part of the room to the right part of the room. And the whole presentation is just how they just reorganized the furniture in his office that quarter. That was all they did with all their money. And this is a good example of that.