What I’m Doing And Why I’m Doing It
“The difference between winning and losing is most often not quitting.“
Walt Disney
I’m struggling with how to start this, so I guess I’ll just dive right in.
Everything I do is based on two fundamental questions:
- How do we obtain complete financial freedom?
- How do I have the biggest positive impact on the world before I hit the grave?
Since the first question is really the main issue at hand, that’s where we’ll focus. Though by the end you’ll understand how the second question is the main driver.
But First, Read This Disclaimer:
Nothing that I’m doing is “made up” or “delusional”. In fact, I haven’t created, built, or innovated anything new. I’m just using proven tactics and strategies in new ways to get different results.
Every single thing that I’m doing is based off business models that have repeatedly worked in hundreds of industries, for thousands of people, making them insane amounts of money.
They put the machine together, got it to work, and set themselves up for life. People who don’t have a tenth of the talent that I have.
The truth is that I’m excellent at everything that I do. Not because I’m anything special, but because I’m willing to do whatever it takes to become excellent.
Playing baseball I wanted to be able to smash the ball out of the park, so I went to the batting cage until my hands bled.
As a bartender, I wanted to become the best so I hit myself in the head with a thousand bottles and practiced until I could literally pour an ounce of liquor with my eyes closed.
Whether it was learning to code websites, doing graphic design, video production, installing telecommunications, or anything else I applied myself to.
I want to win. So I do what I have to do so that I can win.
But some games of excellence are more complex than others. It’s not that they’re complicated, just that they have infinitely more moving parts that need to be understood.
The game of business is one of those games, which is why sometimes it’s hard for me to simplify what I’m doing and why I’m doing it.
But without simplification, it cannot be understood. And without understanding, it cannot be believed. Without belief, it cannot be supported. Because who wants to support a crazy person?
So I’m going to do my best here to pave that path of belief. I’m much better written than I am spoken, and the medium also minimizes any back and forth conflict that comes with spoken dialogue.
This is just a logical series of steps, from where we are to where we want to be. Steps that are merely based on cause and effect, with results that have been proven millions of times by thousands of people. I’ll give you examples of these people as we go so that you can judge for yourself the probability and possibility of the results in question.
But first we need to understand:
How And Why This Works
What I’m about to explain is about as basic as it gets, because it’s just simple math. Math that Jack could do in his sleep.
Companies that grow incredibly fast use something called a “self-liquidating” offer which results in profitable marketing and acquisition of customers. Just stick with me because I promise it will make sense by the end.
The formula only has 2 variables:
- Customer Acquisition Cost
- Initial Transaction Value
If you can get the initial transaction value to be greater than the amount that it cost you to get that customer, then you win the game of money for life.
Because if you spend $1 on marketing, and you make $2 back (and it works reliably every single time), what’s your marketing budget?
- If you spend $1 you make $2…
- If you spend $100 you make $200…
- If you spend $10,000 you make $20,000…
- If you spend $100,000 you make $200,000…
- If you spend $1,000,000 you make $2,000,000.
You no longer have a marketing budget, because every dollar you spend just makes you more money. The only thing slowing down your growth, is your ability to scale the delivery of the product. Basically, just hiring as many good people as you can, as fast as you can, to help you service as many customers as you can, so you can make as much money as possible.
There are only 3 parts that need to be put in place for this rocket to take off:
- Paid Advertising (Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Google, etc.)
- An Irresistible Front-end Offer (Something that makes the buyer feel stupid if they saying no to it)
- A Back-end Value Ladder Of Additional Products (Because existing customers have a $0 acquisition cost)
The first two are the only ones needed to start and scale the machine. The third one is the propane tank in the fire that makes it the business explode.
So there are now 3 problems that must be solved:
- Exactly who am I targeting, and what is the best way to get their attention?
- What are the easiest and cheapest high-value solutions I can deliver to solve their problems?
- What products/services can I keep selling them, that are increasingly more expensive, and solve bigger problems?
The first two are initially the most important when it comes to gaining momentum. Because if you don’t have a customer who is in pain, and wants that pain to go away, you don’t have a business.
Which brings us to the beginning of our journey together…
So let get started:
How We’re Doing What We’re Doing
There are many different sectors and industries that we’ll be targeting, as you’ll soon see, but the first is the construction industry. Because I know it incredibly well.
I spent a decade watching thousands of people suffer in pain. Working themselves to death in an industry where everybody is the same, and therefore price is the only differentiating factor.
People who are working as hard as they can, trying to make a better life for themselves, and for their families. But according to the statistics, almost all of these businesses will fail, and out of the few that survive they will barely get by. Only a tiny sliver of these people will ever build the dream life that they had hoped for.
The reason why is simple. They know how to do the work, because that’s what they’ve learned how to do. But they have no idea how to run a business, because they’ve never learned how.
One of the best selling business books of all time is called “The E-Myth” by Michael Gerber. The main premise of the book is that most businesses fail because the people who start them aren’t entrepreneurs. They’re technicians having an entrepreneurial seizure.
They think that because they know how to do the work, they can operate a business. This innocent ignorance lands them in a world of hurt, because they require two entirely different skillsets. Delivering the product is only one part of the machine that must be built.
The 5 parts or the machine that you must have to succeed are the following:
- Generating Leads (getting people’s attention)
- Nurturing Leads (forming a warm relationship with them)
- Selling Products/Services (solve a problem so they give you money)
- Delivering Products/Services (deliver what you promised)
- Upselling/Retaining Client (solve as many problems as you can for them)
Processes for all 5 of these areas must be successfully developed for use both externally and internally. For finding not only the best customers, but also for finding the best employees.
But unfortunately, the majority of business owners in the construction industry only focus on delivery of product, because it’s all they know. Any growth in their business usually only comes from occasional word of mouth or circumstantial luck.
Ask any trade company owner what their two biggest pain points are and they will say the following:
- “I hate sales and marketing and I don’t know how reliably get enough work so we can grow.”
- “There are no good employees out there. Everybody applying sucks.”
What’s sad about this is that the owner of a business should only have two areas of focus:
- Business Development
- People Development
The very two areas they say they hate the most. Which is understandable, because they suck at them. Simply due to the fact that nobody ever showed them how to get good.
But realistically, their job isn’t even to do these things. It’s to make sure the systems and processes are in place so these things get done predictably in a way that allows the company to grow and scale.
In other words:
Strategic Execution Is The Only Thing That Matters
The only thing stopping any business owner from building their dream life, is their ability to strategically execute. To figure out exactly what they need to do, in order to get to where they want to go.
Which is really quite simple when you break it down. It’s just a matter of deciding out what you want, and understanding what you need to do to get it. Then you just need to figure out what you need to know, in order to do those things.
Then you just learn what you need to learn, so you can do what you need to do, so you can get what you want to get.
Or in military terms, you determine the desired end state, and isolate what’s standing in your way. These obstacles become your targets. Your targets determine your weapons, and your weapons determine your movements. You destroy the targets, and secure the objective.
The reality is that the US military, and more specifically special operations, have perfected the art of strategic execution. The Art of War is simply the art of getting things done.
When I realize this, I started to wonder if the military’s methods of strategic execution could be applied to business. After all, they’ve spent over $20 trillion dollars on figuring it out, so why reinvent the wheel.
It turns out, that their methods are actually perfect for strategic execution in business. Which isn’t all that surprising since “business is war”.
As cliche as that saying is, it’s actually true. Because when you go through all of the military doctrine, you come across a reoccurring statement and theme…
“Every war is fought for the same reason. To bring a future we wish to see into reality.”
And that’s all building a business is. We have a vision of what we want it to be in the future, and we fight to make it happen. Isolating the problems, and strategically executing to make them go away.
In order to succeed in business, you must have something that makes you stand apart from everybody else. A reason why people should listen when you speak. If you’re just selling the same thing as everybody else, then you have no value. And without any differentiation, you’re dead in the water.
You must have something unique that makes you different. Something that people have never seen, that gives them hope for a better future. Something that has the ability to make their pain go away, and helps to make their dreams come true.
Strategic execution is the biggest pain point for these business owners, and the military’s special operations are the best in the world at strategic execution.
By mixing the two I found my unique mechanism of differentiation, that I can now easily sell to people:
Entrepreneurial Warfare
Commandos aren’t the best in the world because of who they are or what they’ve done. They’re the best in the world because they have an army of world-class people who have shown them exactly what they need to do to become the best.
But image if a Navy SEAL had to figure it out on their own. How ridiculous would that be? The military recruits them and then just says “Hurry up and figure it out…”.
But that’s exactly what it’s like being a small business owner. Every one of them starts their business and then has to “hurry up and figure it out” before they go bust. But why?
There’s an army of over 4,000,000 construction companies and trade contractors just in the US & Canada. Every single problem when it comes to building a business in this industry has already been solved.
But all of these people have to reinvent the wheel, because they don’t know any other way. They don’t have access to the army of people who can ensure that they succeed in their mission to win the war.
But they desperately want and need help, because they are dying to have that sense of pain go away.
Before I go deeper into this, we have to look at:
The Big Picture
The construction industry is just the tip of the iceberg. A jumping off point that will allow us to start collecting the resources we need to accomplish bigger things (and allow me the privilege of buying my own Mr. Noodles).
When I was studying filmmaking there was one screenwriting book that stood out from all the rest. The reason why, is that the author encouraged writing the story backwards.
Determine where you want to end up, and then just reverse-engineering a series of cause and effect events that will get you there. But first, you need to know where it is that you’re going.
One of the reasons why what I’m doing is so hard to articulate is because of the complexity. It’s not complicated, but it is complex.
Imagine Walt Disney trying to explain all the moving parts of Disney. It’s not complicated, but explaining the complexity is a lot more difficult that telling you about a rollercoaster, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, or the latest movie they made.
I contemplated starting with the end, the final vision, and working backwards to the present. Explaining exactly where we’re going, and then how we’re going to make it happen. But I feel that it would be too overwhelming. That a methodical step-by-step roadmap is probably a lot easier to digest.
Like they say, “How do you eat a whale?”… one bite at a time.
So let’s dive into it…
Building An Army
Material Overflow (the marketplace I built) is a super viable idea and it solves a major problem. It helps business owners inject and keep much needed cash in their business.
But to build, launch, and scale this site right this second, would require raising millions of dollars in funding. Just like all the other companies like this had to do. Something that is definitely doable, but takes a stupidly long time to get accomplished, and brings with it many nightmares that I want to avoid.
Luckily there’s a better way… so stick with me.
Russell Brunson is a Mormon kid from Boise, Idaho. I say kid, but he’s a year older than I am. He went to university on a wrestling scholarship, and just barely squeaked by. School didn’t matter to him, as his real love was direct-response marketing.
To cut a long story short, he was incredibly frustrated with how hard and expensive it was to build sales funnels (websites) online. So he found a way to create a platform for building websites that is just point, click, drag, and drop. He completely revolutionized the entire industry.
There were a ton of companies that tried to compete with him, by doing it better or cheaper. But his company (Clickfunnels) absolute crushed them, because he realized something that they didn’t.
He realized that nobody wants a website. They’re only building that website, because they want to build an online business that enables them to have the financial freedom to live a life they love.
When he realized this, it was suddenly simple for him to develop insanely loyal customers. His pitch was no longer “Hey, use my software.”… it was now “Hey, want me to show you exactly how to make a profitable online business that will give you freedom and make you rich? Oh and by the way, I made this cool new software that makes it easier.”
Their pain wasn’t in the fact that they couldn’t figure out how to build a website. It was in the fact that they needed help building their business. So instead of just selling the software, he sold courses, coaching, and mastermind events that people flocked to in an absolute rabid fashion. Because they finally had the only thing they truly wanted. They had help.
Using profitable, self-liquidating marketing, this business model enabled Russell to scale to $100 million dollars a year, with zero outside funding or investors, in just three years. His biggest competitor had $128 million in funding, and he destroyed them.
Russell doesn’t care about his software, he cares about helping his customers. Which is why his company is now worth billions. And his programs are a big part of how and why I do what I do.
Construction company owners don’t care about selling their excess tools, material, and equipment. They care about building a successful business, to create the freedom and financial abundance that allows them to live the life that they truly want to live.
This whole process is less about what I know, and more about how I make them feel about themselves and their ability to figure it out. One thing Russell Brunson said that stuck with me is that “As the CEO of Clickfunnels, my only job is to make my customers believe in themselves. Because if they don’t believe they can succeed, they never will.”
But in order to help people, they must first like me, trust me, and believe that I can help take them to where they want to go. Which means we have to start off by delivering them something of insanely high value, with extremely low risk on their end. An irresistible offer that is self-liquidating.
So the first thing that we’re offering is a workshop based on the principles of entrepreneurial warfare, and how to use special operations strategies and tactics to execute efficiently and effectively. Because it’s unique, which means that people will pay attention, and commandos have an aura of cool around them that make people want to be associated.
The workshop is 4 hours and held on the weekend. It takes place on Google Meet (same as Zoom) and cost $20 to participate. The initial customers will have to come organically through social media posts, comments, messaging, and email, since we have no budget for paid advertising.
The sales page for this is what I’m working on now. It’s only about 60% done, but you can get an idea of how it’s being sold after they get invited. Here’s the link: https://hypersonic-ventures.com/warfare-workshop/
This sales page has been modelled after 3 different campaigns that collectively did millions in sales.
The point of the workshop is two-fold. The first reason, is so we can start producing revenue that can fund advertising (and buy Mr. Noodles). The second reason, is to create a solid and warm relationship with people, so they that want to take that relationship to the next level.
The next level being:
The Hypersonic Trade Alliance
The last 15 minutes of the workshop is all about get people to join our higher level mastermind and coaching program. Because I just spent 4 hours with them, delivering an insane amount of value and explaining all the benefits, almost no actual selling will need to be done. It’s just the offer, and either they want it, or they don’t.
If they don’t sign up, we then email them a webinar that explains in much greater detail what they’re getting, and why they should join. You can watch that webinar here: https://hypersonic-ventures.com/the-underground-90-minute-webinar/
Though I highly recommend watching the whole thing, to get a really good understanding of what I’m doing and offering, if you just want to see the actual offer you can skip ahead to the one hour mark.
You’ll notice the program has two things included that are placed very strategically.
The first, is a free one year membership to the Material Overflow marketplace. So they have the ability to buy and sell things, before anybody else. This gives us the ability to start building out inventory while operating the site on a very bare-bones basis, to get it started and established.
The second strategic thing that they’re getting is access to our affiliate program. This means that if they get somebody else to sign up to the platform, they get a commission on that person’s membership dues, and on all of the items that person sells.
So by creating a self-liquidating offer (where we basically get paid to get more customers) this turns into a snowball that just gets bigger and bigger the further it rolls. The more customers we get, the more money we make. The more money we make, the more advertising we can buy. The more advertising we buy, the more customers we get. Which starts the process all over again. It’s a classic business “flywheel” effect.
So we’re recruiting an army of customers, and once that army gets big enough, it will allow us to launch the marketplace quickly. This will be much easier than a cold start, as we will already have eager customers in every city waiting and willing to sign up and spread the word.
The webinar that I created (to sell the coaching and mastermind program) is modelled off of a webinar that Russell Brunson did that pulled in $3 million dollars worth of sales in 90 minutes.
If you want to see that webinar you can check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O3tDgC64wQ
So that is how we are starting. Now let’s talk about where we’re going:
Social Impact Entrepreneurship
Social impact entrepreneurship at its core is very simple. Use a portion of your revenue to do good in the world, and use the good you’re doing in the world to exponentially gain exposure and attention for your business and cause.
The original example of this was TOMS shoes. Blake Mycoskie was backpacking in Argentina when he noticed that there were large quantities of children on the streets, who should have been in school. When he asked somebody why, it turned out that the children needed a uniform to go to school. But the most expensive part of the uniform, was a pair of shoes. Their families just couldn’t afford it, so they couldn’t go to school.
Blake was baffled by this. He lived in LA, and if somebody got so much as a scuff on their shoes, they threw them out and just bought a new pair. Which gave him an idea.
He went back home and did a shoe drive, collecting more than fifteen thousand pairs of shoes. Then he took a bus across Argentina with friends, finding kids who needed shoes. But he soon realized that there was another problem.
Kids grow. Which means their feet grow. Which means they need different shoes. But again, being a savvy entrepreneur, Blake came up with a solution.
In Argentina, they wear a shoe that’s called an alpargata. It sort of a feminine shoe, almost like a slipper. But it’s worn by everybody, from stay at home mom’s to doctors and lawyers.
The dots connected and Blake started TOMS (originally “Shoes For A Better Tomorrow”). The premise was simple. Sell alpargatas in the US, and for every pair sold, we’ll give a pair of new shoes to a child, so they can go to school. It was the original “one-for-one” model.
This model of business enabled Blake to build a $600 million dollar shoe company, agains industry giants like Nike, Reebok, and Adidas, with ZERO advertising dollars spent. Because of their story, they didn’t need to spend money for exposure.
TOMS got billions of dollars in free publicity, because of their story and why they exist. Blake ended up on every major talk show and late show, and every news outlet wanted to interview him. Because of this, the company exploded.
As of 2020, TOMS had given away 88 million pairs of shoes, which cost them $75 million dollars. A drop in the bucket, compared to the billions that it would have cost them to generate the same amount of exposure and growth through traditional marketing.
But then Blake made a mistake…
A private equity company came knocking on the door with a bright flashy smile. Which was the beginning of the end. Bain Capital bought half the company for $300 million dollars. Then proceeded to destroy it, in typical venture capitalist fashion.
I was on a Zoom call with Blake a couple months ago. He’s living in Costa Rica licking his wounds. Said it was the worst mistake of his life.
A company that is all about helping people, can’t jump into bed with people who just want to make as much profit as they can no matter what the cost. Which is why I’m doing everything that I can to avoid raising money until absolutely necessary, and on my terms.
Russell never had to raise money, because he knows how to print money.
But the reality is, the business model that Blake created worked extremely well. With a little intellect and creativity it can be replicated in almost any industry. Taking a commodity business and giving it a competitive advantage.
If you look at the Hypersonic Ventures website (https://hypersonic-ventures.com/), you’ll see that’s exactly what we want to do. But on a massive scale. Creating businesses in a studio fashion, like Hollywood creates movies. Once again, not my idea. It’s a proven model that works.
The inspiration:
The Rocket Internet Curse
During the dotcom boom, Oliver Samwer decided he wanted a piece of the action. So he grabbed a plane ticket, flying to San Francisco from Berlin to grab onto the madness.
But as hard as he tried, he was never accepted. Always treated as an outsider because he wasn’t American (the german accent didn’t help). So he learned everything he could from everybody he could, and then he flew back home to set up shop.
He knew that he couldn’t compete with Silicon Valley on imagination and creativity. He didn’t have the luxury of having patient (or delusional) investors that were willing to watch him burn through millions of dollars, while he tried to figure out what his business should actually do.
So he decided that he would just focus on relentless execution. He would copy existing businesses, but operate and scale those business better than the original creators. This is where the integrity went out the window, and why Oli and his two brothers are hated by Silicon Valley.
The first company they created was Alando, which was an eBay clone. But they didn’t just model it, they copied it pixel for pixel. Everything was the exact same, except for the name.
The brothers focused on scaling quickly, in areas that eBay didn’t yet have a presence. Places like Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America. By the time eBay found out, it was too late.
Oliver’s attitude was one of simple logic…
“We did all the work setting this up for you. Do you really want to waste hundreds of millions of dollars trying to sue us, or do you just want to buy us out for $50 million?”
So eBay cut him a check.
The plan worked so well that Rocket Internet did the same thing to dozens of other companies. Every time a new business would get off the ground, Oliver would quickly dominate the secondary markets.
But it’s not his billion-dollar successes (or his lack of integrity) that interests me. It’s the systems and processes that he put in place to be able to do it. The framework they engineered on how to establish, build, and scale companies at lightning speed.
Rocket Internet has perfected their processes, to the point they can now repeatedly launch massively scalable companies, step by step, in 100 days flat. Something that takes most entrepreneurs years to accomplish.
I have their entire process sitting in a binder on my floor. Once again, an incredibly effective business model that has already been proven to work. But instead of using it to rip other people off, I want to use it to build and scale social impact companies.
I turned Datamax into a social impact company before the pandemic. The goal being to eliminate poverty by accelerating technology into developing countries.
When people get access to technology and the internet, they get access to education. Education that enables them to acquire skills. Skills they can sell online to people all over the world, bringing money into their local economy.
Literacy is a huge issue, which was solved by the Global Learning Xprize, until they hit a problem they didn’t know how to solve.
The 6 year contest was established in order to recruit companies to solve a major problem. There are too many illiterate people, and not enough teachers or infrastructure to solve the problem.
So they decided that technology was the solution. They wanted a piece of software that could take somebody from complete illiteracy to full literacy in 18 months. All you had to do was hand people a phone or tablet, and walk away. No outside instruction needed.
Two teams tied for first place, and were able to get the timeline down to 15 months. They deployed the software in Swahili to 5000 people in Tanzania, and it work phenomenally.
But in 2019, I was in San Francisco for a conference and I got a chance to talk to Devon, who was the guy who headed up the project for the Xprize Foundation. He said they ultimately considered the project a failure. I was dumbfounded.
He said that they never thought up a next step. Okay, so they’re literate. Now what?
To me the answer was obvious. Because I outsource work all over the planet. Why would I pay $100 and hour for graphic design in Vancouver, when I can get the exact same thing in the Philippines for $3 an hour. Great money for them, and a great deal for me. It’s a win-win all around.
But I can’t do the same business with somebody in Uganda, without the technical infrastructure. You have to get them the technology, get them literate, and get them a skill set. Only then will they have the ability to take part in the global economy, and pull resources into their local economy.
Providing this technology, was the exact purpose of pivoting Datamax into a social impact enterprise. The work for Starbucks, is what pushed me over the edge.
We replaced all of their network infrastructure, which really didn’t need to be replaced. Somebody just did a really good sales job. All of the stuff we took out was almost brand new. But when I asked what they wanted me to do with it, they said “Just chuck it out or recycle it. We’re not doing anything with it.”
Millions of dollars worth of equipment, and they were just tossing in the dumpster. I pulled out enough network gear in each store to power an entire school in a developing country. It was frustrating to say the least.
But in time, what I realized was that the social impact business model only really works on a large scale. Because a small impact doesn’t get people talking. Only a world-changing impact will gain you the exposure you need to exponentially grow the company.
Which is why Datamax got stuck on the shelf.
This brings me back to where we are, which is with the construction industry, and the 4,000,000 companies that are all trying to reinvent the same wheel. By helping them to grow, we can then capitalize on having a network of businesses that all run the same way, across an incredibly wide geography.
This is a dream for massive retailers, as one of their biggest problems is finding reliable contractors, in all of the thousand of cities in which they operate. Millions of dollars are spent trying to manage, mitigate, and deal with this problem. Quality control is an absolute nightmare.
So as we help to grow and scale these companies, we then have the ability to capitalize on economies of scale. Which basically just means that the bigger a company gets, the smaller the percentage of revenue that has to go to paying for certain things.
I’ll give you the most basic example I can think of. If two $5 million companies merge, they don’t need the accountant from both companies, They only need one. So their relative accounting cost just got cut in half, and the savings go right into profit, which makes the company more valuable.
The bigger the numbers, the more economies of scale exist. Again, if you take ten $10 million companies, and you merge them, you now have a $100 million company that still only needs one accounting department. You will probably need a couple of people by this point, but you’ll still be able to get rid of 80% of the cost.
Why this matters, is due to how it works when people value a company. They will use a multiplier, either of profit or revenue. But I’ll keep it super simple. A $1 million, $10 million, $50 million, and $100 million dollar company will have average multipliers of 3.4x, 5x, 8x, and 12x respectively. A billion dollar public company will be valued at around 36x, just because it’s much easier to sell the shares.
Which brings us to the actual point. Let’s go back to the previous example of ten companies doing $10 million in revenue each. At a 5x multiple each company is worth $50 million.
But if you merge them into a single $100 million company, and get rid of the redundancies, the company will then be valued with a 12x multiplier. Which would then be valued at $1.2 billion.
Divide that $1.2 billion by the ten owners, and suddenly everybody is getting a check for $120 million, instead of $50 million. An extra $70 million each, just due to the economies of scale.
Now let’s get into why this actually matters, and how it works into the plan.
It’s actually pretty simple, so I’ll just lay it out in point form:
- Recruit business owners to join the Hypersonic Trade Alliance.
- Coach them, give them support, and access to the help they need.
- Help these companies grow to $10 million in revenue.
- Align them around a social impact cause.
- Option companies in each city for purchase (or if the owner doesn’t want to sell we give them equity).
- Create a foundation around the cause.
- Establish an executive team for the new company.
- Merge/acquire the companies
- Reduce redundancies and allow the impact to help scale the company.
Complex? Yes. Complicated? No.
This entire thing is just based off of models that have already been proven to work. I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel. I just want to build something that’s actually worth building.
Okay… I’m tired of writing now. And I’m sure you’re tired of reading.
Ultimately, I want the model of social impact entrepreneurship to be the one that wins. Humanity is currently a joke. So we need to fix it. Will this be the magic cure all? Almost definitely not. But it’s a step in the right direction. And like the say, “A journey of a thousand miles, begins with a single step.”
There’s one last video that I want you to watch. It’s less than 2 minutes long, but it paints a picture of the vision, the strategy, and what I ultimately want to do to get people involved. The dollar value presented in the video is massive for an individual, but for nations and governments, it’s nothing.
Okay… I’m done. Tired and hungry. But if you’ve gotten this far, hopefully it’s given you some insight into what I’m doing. Obviously, there are a million variables that I couldn’t include, and a million more that I still need to figure out.
If you still think I’m crazy, it’s okay. As they say, “Before you’re successful, they’ll call you crazy. But after you’re successful, they’ll call you a genius.”
Marc Randolph’s wife thought that Netflix was the dumbest idea in the world. Hence why he quoted her and called his book “That Will Never Work”.
But what she didn’t realize, was that it didn’t matter whether or not she thought it would work. The only thing that mattered is whether Marc was willing to figure out how to make it work, and if he was relentless enough to keep going until it did.
Lucky for us, he did and he was.
As a final thought, I just want to reaffirm how much I love you, and how much I truly appreciate everything that you’ve done for me. Not just in the past couple of years, but throughout my entire life.
I have no idea what it’s like to have kids. Therefore as much as I try, I can never truly see things from your point of view. Not yet at least. Maybe in the future some drastically unlucky woman will get stuck with the burden of having my children.
But until then, I can only gauge what it’s like by the looks of frustration and disappointment that I see, and the words that I hear. All of which, even though they break my heart and crush me to the core, I can completely understand.
But there’s nothing more painful than seeing that look of “I’m not mad at you, I’m just disappointed.” It’s one thing to be a kid, and for that disappointment to be linked to an individual action. But to have it linked to your entire life, is something totally different. Much more of a lingering pain, that’s incredibly difficult to to shake off or ignore.
But like Churchill said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” Which is all I can really do. Because I am who I am, and I do what I do for a reason. I believe that it’s the most important thing that should be done, in order to get the results I want, and to win this game of life.
All I want to do, is to make you proud. To have you look at me again and smile. To annihilate all of the resentment for good, and to show you that the sacrifice was worth it.
There was a lot for me to figure out. But I figured it out, and now it’s time to get it done. Like I once told Natalie, all I want is for you to be my biggest cheerleaders.
I’m reading Jeff Bezo’s biography right now. When his parents were asked why they invested in Amazon, they said “We definitely didn’t believe in the idea. But we weren’t investing in the idea. We were investing in Jeff.”
Now they already had a ton of money in the bank, and that part has absolutely no bearing on why I mention it. It’s the part where they had faith that he was smart enough to figure out how to make it work.
I’m amazing at everything that I do. But some things are much harder than others to figure out and put together. If becoming successful was easy, then everybody would be filthy rich. But it’s not. It’s really fucking hard. Elon Musk says that it’s like chewing on glass, and staring into the abyss. But I’d says it’s worse.
It’s incredibly lonely, and insanely frustrating. But I wouldn’t be doing it, if I wasn’t absolutely sure that I will succeed. Because lesser have done it. I just want to do it better, and the only thing that will stop me is if I become incapacitated or die. I’ve come too far to quit. It would be a waste of what I have to offer the world.
I’m sorry if I get frustrated, but as you can see, explaining what I’m doing isn’t something that can be done in just a few words. I mean unless I just say “saving the world”. But that’s pretty much guaranteed to get an eye roll every time. I doubt I can save it, but maybe I can just make humanity suck a little less.
I love you, and appreciate you taking the time to read this and trying to understand.
Here’s the link to that last video: https://youtu.be/4AX7Ny1c3Ds
“Every person in the world is only one movie away from being a superstar.”
Tom Hanks