Speaker 2
You know, it's interesting as well because obviously Netflix just released this series quarterback. And it's interesting seeing like the behind the scenes of Patrick Mahomes. And like because obviously the the chiefs do like some of these crazy plays, right? Like these underhand passes or like just these weird kind of off the wall plays. But they're like practicing that stuff. And they they might not even have practiced it really for that week, but something that they've just put a ton of preparation in and tried and like done extra reps after practice. It's it's useful for like one moment in one specific game. But sometimes that's the difference. That's the difference between making it through like the divisional round and getting we're getting through the AFC Championship to get to the Super Bowl and not making it. Like it's fine lines, especially at the elite level. Yeah.
Speaker 1
You were you were talking about one of your other podcasts, how you're a big LeBron James fan. I think it was what I was you were talking about like that finals loss against the Mavs. But like when they won against the Spurs that Ray Allen three, I don't know if you've seen the interviews where he's talking about like how many times he practiced that exact very just random scenario of like catching the ball off a rebound and being able to set his feet behind the three point line without having to look. But that ends up like winning them in the NBA championship because it's one of those very niche odd like probably never going to happen in a game, but it could. And yeah, it's just like that with my homes and with the quarterback series. Like it's it's insane how much work goes into things that probably won't happen because they could.
Speaker 2
Man, it's this interesting because like that is really what separates like the best. Yeah. Is that they're kind of ready for every scenario. And I think a lot of it comes back to what we were saying at the beginning is they just love the game. So for Patrick Mahomes to do like a few extra plays at the end of practice is easy because he loves playing football for LeBron to like practice some weird niche like scenario and set a play in basketball. He loves playing basketball. So it's like natural for him to do that. And that that's just going to play out when you get to those like those marginal moments. Okay, here's where I want to go because I think one thing I like about your story is it combines two things, right? You're doing the thing that you like and showing up as your authentic self, which is nice. And it's like it's refreshing to see that on the internet. Behind the scenes, you are still able to monetize to a certain degree. And like, I don't know if you're living like the baller ass lifestyle that like you dreamed of yet, but like you're living in Manhattan and like things are happening. And so we've kind of spoken about how your content creation journey and like even the way that you show up in producing that content, I want to talk about the other side of it, which is like the monetization piece and how you make it work in your life so that you can you can be patient with the content. So speak to me, obviously, we spoke about like the first three or four months, you're kind of figuring out the content stuff. At what point did that monetization piece on the writing start to come into play? So I had a like looking back pretty ignorant idea of how easy it would be to make money with this. There's I'm pretty good friends with him now that packing McCormick has a popular newsletter, not boring, where he writes like a
Speaker 1
couple of pieces a week on like all sorts of it's stuff ranging from like breakdowns about companies he thinks are interesting to just trends and like technology and business and whatever like and it stuff's good. Like I've been reading his newsletter not boring for a couple of years now, but maybe a year and a half ago he had like 35,000 subscribers like a little bit smaller than mine is now and companies are paying him like pretty good money. I remember reading on another newsletter or like in an interview seeing what rates he was charging for ads and he was making like I don't know like 2,000 or 2,500 dollars per ad on like 30 something thousand readers and I was like it seems like a lot and then companies were also paying him. I don't know if it was like and I might have the numbers wrong on this but like five or six thousand dollars for like a sponsored deep dive article where a startup that has like an interesting story wants to get some publicity and also have a piece put out that they can then reshare with their networks and they would pay him to write a piece about them. He would disclose the whole thing and he was very open that like he wouldn't write about a company that he wouldn't personally invest in and he did invest in a lot of these companies like there wasn't there wasn't anything nefarious about it and he wrote that there's a very thin line between like taking money for content and keeping it authentic but he did a very good job of like being very open with everything. But he was making good money from those like sponsored pieces and I was like okay if I can get a newsletter to like I don't know 10,000 readers like I could probably make a thousand dollars an ad at that point two times a week that's like a hundred thousand maybe somebody would pay me to do like sponsored content and then it'd be like maybe three or four thousand dollars a piece for doing one of those a month that I'm like 10,000 readers maybe I'm making like a hundred forty thousand dollars. Yeah. That's not how that works at all. Yeah. That's what I thought when when the blog started going I was like people are doing this right now. What I missed like with him for example was he had built this audience of people very interested in like tech and startups and all that. So like companies were going to pay him for this type of content because they knew his audience were also the type of people who would invest in these startups or use the products or whatever. Well I have a much more just general audience interested in my content but it's not like all these guys are like venture capitalists and this and that. So I completely just didn't even look at the context of that and like there's there's no value in me publishing like a business breakdown of a company on young money because that's not what people are reading my stuff for. It might it just wouldn't fit but I did think that that's what I was going to do and honestly that ignorance was probably what got me through the first six months because I was like like I'm not making money yet but once I get like 10,000 readers it's going to be a cash cow. But I did. The one thing that helped was liquidity which is this big finance meme page that started on Instagram and Twitter that has like probably 1.5 million followers between Instagram and Twitter at this point. It was just an anonymous meme page started by this guy who was working for like an investment bank or private equity firm and his content was funny. It was very niche finance humor but it was good like people who worked in finance loved it and we had just been messaging on Twitter randomly because I found a Spotify playlist called Happens Day Sauce and I was playing at a pool party like two years ago. Message him, told him playlist was good and then he was like thanks you have any song recommendations. I said yeah here's like 10. And then we just were literally chatting about Spotify playlist songs for a pool party playlist for like a month. I launched my blog again not knowing where I was going to go with it. I see that he has this big finance newsletter called exec sum and I'm looking at it and it has like venture capital, mergers and acquisitions, deal flow like all the big news headlines from Bloomberg and Reuters, earnings recaps and some memes at the bottom and I figured it was probably pretty big and I had also just gotten the client from his job offer with Morning Brew. So I figured Morning Brew is like a fully established company. Liquidity is a finance meme page who has a newsletter but I see he has ads on it so it must be a business. So I messaged him and I was like hey do you want help with your newsletter? And he was like what do you mean? And I was like maybe I can write like weekend pieces, I can help edit it, I can do whatever. And he was like yeah I mean I'll pay you like 500 bucks a week to help edit this. And at that point I was just hostile hopping in Europe. So 500 bucks a week that covers when I'm spending $15 a night on like bunk bed or room with 10 people that works. So that that can cover my cost of living. So I was like yeah I'm down. And when I started working for him I got to see kind of the inside look on how he's negotiating ad contracts and making this much money and this and that. And that's when I saw like really saw how the business worked from the inside and I was like okay my idea of basically copying Pachim McCormick isn't going to work. But if I get a big enough audience I can still monetize with ads. I can also keep working with him and doing stuff with him. And I ended up pitching this idea of doing these business deep downs. Like Pachim was doing on execs because his audience made sense. Execsim had a bunch of bankers, people working in finance reading it where the company would probably pay decent money to get the exposure to that audience. We've done like we just published one on this like asset management platform called Gridline that lets you invest in like private assets, non-public assets. And like I like I write that piece I get like a 30% revenue cut for those from doing the writing. We published on his platform. But I pitched the idea that like I was going to do on mine to him because it made more sense. He didn't have the time to bandwidth to write these but it was a pretty easy sell. It's like hey you're going to keep the majority of the money. I'll still get decent money for it. It's valuable for your audience because they're going to learn about like cool interesting company and it gets exposure for the sponsor. So it all works. So as far as the business side like I'm still editing that newsletter, still occasionally doing those like sponsored long form pieces. And then I'm also monetizing young money with ads. But I'm not making like living in Atlanta I would be fine. But like living in New York going out traveling a good bet. I literally need both to like or I would just spend too much money. So that's like that's the thing that gets missed. Most creators probably have some other revenue stream that isn't their main image. Like exec sum is my version of a day job where I do a lot of administrative stuff, help negotiate the ad stuff. And like I'm making I'm making about 60k from that plus like whatever upside I get from spots or stuff or ads that I sell that I'm selling ads on my newsletter for like 12 or 13 hundred dollars a pop. And I've slowed down to doing one a week. But between both of those that's like I don't know like 120. And then there's a lot of other random variable stuff that bumps up on top of that. But having multiple revenue streams makes it where it's a lot more sustainable. Like I have good enough paying job between all of it. So like a for my lifestyle. But it's because I'm doing a lot of different stuff. And I would say most people early on are doing a lot of different stuff. Like any creator that isn't just like already like a best selling author or has a podcast with hundreds of thousands of downloads a month probably is doing like one off project work or something to like make more money. Because it's hard to make money on
Speaker 2
this stuff. Yeah, you know, um, oh no, I like this a lot. And and the I remember when I when I left my job, he's come on the podcast. And he's also just like a friend and like he gives me advice as well. Aim and al Abdullah. So he was the former CEO of AppSumo. Okay. And I remember when I told him I left my job, he told me he gave me a piece of advice, which is so true. He was like in this like first year or two, your, your only thing you're trying to do is just survive. Yeah. Like once you leave your job, the thing that you don't want to do is have to go back to your job. So you just need to like find little creative ways to like, okay, can make like a thousand bucks doing this. And he was basically saying, you want to focus on doing things that are kind of like adjacent to your main thing. So obviously your main thing is podcasting. Like what are some like adjacent services or like some holes that you can fill maybe for other podcasts so that you can just survive long enough. Yeah. And the whole framework of it is kind of like, this content thing is going to be a really like long game. Yeah. Like even though we spoke into like quite a few content crates at this point, I feel like the tipping point is like five years minimum. Yeah. For them to like really be making like a lot of progress with just content, it is like five years of consistently putting stuff out. And obviously it depends on the medium as well. Like if you go podcasting might even be longer because of like the growth cycles that happen there. But it's so important just to like be surviving and be like scrappy in that time. I think the second piece of what you said, which is interesting, is the fact that you kind of learn from these other people, like you kind of learned the business of newsletters. And I guess like, I'm kind of interested to go deeper into how someone can even kind of get those opportunities or start to get those relationships where like, because I feel like with creators as well, a lot of the time you don't actually hear a ton of information about how they're really making their money. Right. Like you don't really hear like how they're negotiating deals. And maybe you'll hear like how much they made, but you won't hear why they were able to charge that much and like what went into it. So maybe you can kind of you can kind of speak to that because I think there's a lot of people who will be listening and they want to do something creative that they care about. But they also want it to be realistic in the sense of like, I'm still making money. Like I'm not just like living in my mom's basement typing newsletters or like recording podcasts. So what was kind of, what do you think were some of the keys where like you even managed to get those opportunities to even like sit next to someone that's like kind of running a successful newsletter? I
Speaker 1
mean, for me, it was tell somebody like their Spotify playlist started chatting, but it's it really is like that's a very niche anecdote. But like, honest, just being friendly and putting yourself out there, like you never know in real life when you're just going to start talking to someone who's doing something interesting. And then it builds on top of something you're doing. For example, like with my scenario with talking to liquidity, if I hadn't already been writing a finance blog, I wouldn't have gotten that because he asked me he's like, do you have any experience like publishing stuff online? And I was like, yeah, like I'm writing this finance blog, I've done some freelance articles like I didn't know the business out of a newsletter per se, but like I knew how to like produce clean content was well organized and put it out. So that you could say it was lucky finding that opportunity, but I still don't get it. If I wasn't already in a spot, he would have been willing to take a shot with me like I was a very low risk person because I already knew at least how to publish stuff online. Like I wasn't completely starting from zero. So it's one of those things where if you have an interest, you just need to go ahead and start doing it. Like people want to map out a perfect plan. It's much better to start doing that thing. And then when opportunities come up, you just have to take them. But I do think you can kind of like manufacture luck a little bit by where you put yourself. Like for me, being very active on Twitter, I'm more likely to see an opportunity where I can reply to somebody's tweet or message somebody when somebody needs help with something and get my foot in the door. Living in New York City, you are much more likely to have those like encounters that turn into something because there's just so much going on here. If you were trying to like climb the ladder in politics, you should live in DC and be around Capitol Hill, start up seeing you in San Francisco. For the content thing, like you have to start producing content, even if you're getting literally like no listens, no views, whatever, because if I see the somebody has published 100 blog posts, even if they have like 100 readers, I know that they can put stuff out where say like, I'm not I'm not looking to bring anyone on to help me right now. But if I was, if somebody had proven that they could put that much content out and their stuff was clean, as long as I like them as a person, I'm probably down to work with them. If somebody has all these ideas, but they don't have any proof of work, it's a massive red flag. Like I don't want to see a resume, I want to see stuff that you've actually done. And that's how it was with me with liquidity, it's like here, like read these three blog posts, tell me what you think, he was like, you're in. So yeah, it really is like it's, you have to like do some of the work first, and then you just have to throw yourself out there at opportunities. And like, I, I probably applied to like 15 writing jobs and didn't get any of them. But this thing with liquidity stuck, and then it just turned into more and more and more. But yeah, it's a combination of just putting yourself out there and actually like just producing content. Yeah, you
Speaker 2
know, you know what I was thinking is actually so interesting, because we started this conversation by talking about like the traditional work game. And if you think about the structure of that, right, like even if you wanted to get a job, say in investment banking or consulting, you go through, you do like a bunch of preparation. So when I was doing consulting, you do like all of these case interviews, it's almost like you're practicing like theory of like how to be a good consultant. So you'll just spend a lot of time like preparing, and then you get into the interview. And I guess it's like your chance to show that you can do more of the theory or that you understood it. But they don't actually know that you're good at the job until you're literally in there. I think this reverses, it's almost like a 180, like it's the complete opposite. You need to put a ton of work and actually like show the proof that you can do the thing a bunch of times before you get any opportunity. But then when your opportunity does come, you're going to be one of the few people that can actually capitalize. Because thing is, even in your situation, like how many people on the internet, your moat was in your consistency. Yeah. And in your in the work that you've done. Like how many people on the internet would have been able to reach out to that person and be like, oh yeah, I've been publishing blog articles on the exact topics that you would want. For months and months. Like there's probably like hundreds or like there's there's so much work that you can look at. And that's your moat. That's your differentiator. That's how you get your foot in the door. Nah, I think that's such a good I think it's such a good like lesson for people. Here's where I want to go next. So you're like, your post like crush it on LinkedIn. I'm just curious like what's your what's your thoughts on LinkedIn? And then also, why do you think that like your style is just like kind of tearing it out
Speaker 1
there? So I this whole thing started as a joke for context for anybody who has no idea what we're talking about. I basically just posted satirical content on LinkedIn a few times a week and it tends to blow up because there's a if most most people are on LinkedIn, pretty much everybody has an account because if like if you're trying to apply for a job, everybody looks at your LinkedIn for your employment history, like you have to have a LinkedIn to be like professional, especially in any kind of white collar role. But nobody can post anything with any kind of personality on LinkedIn because God forbid you post something a little bit controversial and that prevents you from getting hired. So every single post on there is just people congratulating people for jobs or posting stuff directly related to work. Except for the like serial, what I call like hustle bros that are acting like this whole entrepreneur mindset, but they're really trying to sell you something. It's either like a supplement or a pyramid scheme like coaching business type of course. My favorite one is the ones who are like coaches who tell you how to be an entrepreneur. So you can go coach other people. It's like the it's like the male version of like when like a lot of women were doing the Herbalife stuff like when that was big a few years ago. And it's just annoying. It's like you have to escape the nine to five grinds this or that or people giving like there's a weird amount of people on LinkedIn that'll like just do anything they can to get LinkedIn clout. I talked about missing their kids birthdays because they're trying to provide for their family and it's like you're not like you're not a tougher worker. You're just a bad father. Like come on. But people have no shame on there. So after I put my job, I had no like grand plan with it. I just thought it would be funny to start making fun of those type of posts. So like I posted this long one about how I was applying for this was like two years ago. It was the first time I did this. Yeah, it was I think I copy and pasted it from somewhere else. But how I was like going to a job interview and I saw a dog hit by a car and I took the dog to the vet and saved his life. And then I had to call the office and say that I was late for the interview because I had to save this dog and I walk in guess who's interviewing me the dog. And it's like just it was so stupid. But it kind of blew up. And then I was just sporadically doing stuff like that. Like I was saving money on my water bill every month by showering with my clothes on. So I didn't have to wash clothes separately. It was so stupid. But when it became a thing where it's like wait, there's actually a little bit of value in doing this other than just entertaining myself. Some of my friends had started like I had a pretty big network of people on Twitter going in the last fall. And then a few of them were like, Hey, we would all just rag on LinkedIn. Like we hated LinkedIn. We thought it sucked. Like it was the butt end of every joke on Twitter. And a couple of them were like, there's no good content on LinkedIn. And it is really easy to grow a following there and leverage that to get people to buy your products, read your newsletter, do whatever. Because Twitter has so much noise. Everybody's going for engagement on Twitter. There's just not much content on LinkedIn. And I was like, shit, that makes sense. This guy Daniel Murray, I went on his podcast, marketing, and his like, like podcast LinkedIn page has like 100,000 followers. And he's just posting like, it's like a lot of us just screenshots of his tweets, right? Like it's not like it's taken that much time to do this. So then I was like, all right, I want to get big on LinkedIn. I don't want to do the cringe thing. Maybe if I can just be sarcastic enough, I can still get a big following just off of being funny, which there's going to be like long term effects of that where I might get like 1000 new followers from a funny post. But then those people are following me. And when I post like blog posts or actual like real stuff later, that's more eyeballs that we'll see that stuff too. So there's like a lot of long term value in building an audience from anything. And if it's sarcastic content, they already start getting introduced to my voice where while the blog posts might not be sarcastic, it still sounds like me. So I say all that to say I've now been just ripping the most ridiculous scenarios. Like I put one on LinkedIn yesterday that ended up with me saying, like asking them, like thinking it's ridiculous that I have to pay a tip at Starbucks, telling the barista, I don't think I should tip them, but they should come up with what the tip amount would be. And they tip themselves $15,000 because it would make me work harder if I paid that much. It was stupid. And it blew up, I put a screenshot of it on Twitter, and it's got like 10,000 likes and people in the comment section like this definitely didn't happen. Like no shit, this didn't happen. Like you were completely missing that you were part of the joke in this. But it all works to get more eyeballs and my stuff without me having to just like, I think humor is a very high level of thinking because if people get it, they almost automatically like you because they think you're funny because you made them laugh. And if people don't get it, and then they reply on it, a lot of their networks going to see it through them getting angry about it. So it just really accidentally became a phenomenal engagement growth tactic. But then like the whole like point of it is I now have like 30,000 LinkedIn followers. And I get a decent amount of newsletter subs from LinkedIn now. I've gotten to the point that I have people emailing me asking if I will write a sponsor in LinkedIn shitpost that like promotes their company, which I'm thinking about, I'm going to start doing I never thought that would be a business thing. But it's somebody wants to pay me $1,000 to do a LinkedIn post. And it's funny. It's there's no difference between that and Barcelona sports doing like funny videos that are advertising for like high noon or something like that. So yeah, I mean, if I can monetize my LinkedIn account directly, that's just another positive thing. Yeah, you know what? That
Speaker 2
is actually that is actually a skill set that like business is one, right? Because I'm even thinking even if you think about like Wendy's, like I think I see like all of their social media. Oh,
Speaker 1
they're funny. Yeah. Yeah. Ryan, Ryan, Eric is one of my favorites. Yeah. And Eric Twitter account is insane. Yeah.
Speaker 2
But to be honest, you know, what's interesting as well, actually, because I think some of the best marketers online, they've kind of realized that kind of the nature of the internet is like people like to like dunk on other people. Oh, yeah. So they realized that and then they figured out how to like use that almost. It's like a growth engagement hack. And I remember someone was actually talking about Drake and how he does this, like even with like his album covers or like some of his dancing and like stuff he'll do, it will be like kind of cringy, corny, and then people will just be like posting it or they'll make memes on like his album cover. And it's like free distribution. Oh, yeah. And everyone's like, Oh, like he's like a dork or whatever. Like he just looks like it just like lame or whatever. But he's getting all of this like publicity, like you're promoting his shit. Um, I think the thing is, I think the thing with you, like you really understand like the internet and kind of like how to make things go viral and like to create pieces that people will talk about in a good way or a bad way. But people are going to talk. Um, I'm curious, take me behind the scenes of that process. Like when it even comes to the barista post, like how are you even like brainstorming that idea? Like what's
Speaker 1
going on behind the scenes? It's not really like like an active strategy. Like I don't really have a brainstorming session, but there's this stuff that I'll see. It's a combination of like, I'm either terminally online or I'm just on Twitter or LinkedIn 24 seven, or like I'm out and about in the city. Like I don't have unless I am sitting down actively writing stuff. Like I'm not just chilling my apartment that much. So I'm just seeing a lot of stuff. And like I've noticed over the last really post COVID, everything has a tipping option now like stuff that didn't use to it started as a business is slow. We should tip more. And then it just kind of stuck like three years ago, you weren't tipping to walk up and grab a coffee and leave from Starbucks. Like tipping was kind of a service thing. It's like now like sometimes you get an option to tip in McDonald's. You know what I mean? Like that just wasn't a thing. And it's become like a joke where like where like I've seen stuff where it said, wow, like I just got the option to tip on the screen on the back of my airplane scene for like like being able to like watch movies on it like stuff like that. It became a thing where people are just joking about it. Or my landlord just gave him this iPad and said to tip him for rent. So that whole idea of like making jokes about tipping culture going crazy, it's just kind of a thing online right now. And then on LinkedIn specifically, there's there's just it's an evergreen like really bad personal finance advice that people try to pause it as good personal finance advice. And I just kind of combine both of them. But you think it's going to turn into this thing where I don't tip them or I leave like a negative tip to keep more money or something like that. But then I put a twist in it where they tip themselves $15,000 to make me grind harder. So it almost it wasn't like an active thing. I just started riding it. And it was like, Oh, this could be a funny plot twist. What can I do with this? And somebody's probably going to believe this anyway, even though it's so ridiculous. I really think it's just I've done like probably a hundred of these and I've just kind of gotten in a groove of like, I just kind of know what stuff goes viral on LinkedIn. And then I know if I push the screenshot of it on Twitter, everybody on Twitter loves to just shit on LinkedIn, which just makes them blow up on Twitter. So it's a win-win. Yeah.
Speaker 2
Yeah. I'm curious. Like in the, when the like the first few ones you did, were they just completely like bomb? Like did you have any that were like, I
Speaker 1
wouldn't say they bomb, but it's just when you have like 500 LinkedIn followers, and it's people you know, you'll get 20 likes and people screenshot and say, this is funny. But what is this? But once you get to about five and 10,000, I mean, stuff can go nuclear because there's just enough touch points that can blow up. But I think the first time I did one, I think I actually still had a job. I had a normal nine to five job at UPS. And I think I posted the thing about, I think I was still working when I did the one about the dog interviewing me. And my actual boss called me and she was like, this is hysterical. But also like, what is this? And are you applying for other jobs? And I was like, no, I just, I just got bored and thought this is funny. I just never really had any shame in it. Like what the weird thing about the internet is, once you have a big enough audience, you can really get away with anything. Like, as long as I don't just tweet something that's literally just like misogynistic or racist or something like that, like I can say some edgy or just weird stuff. And it's like, oh, it's a bit like it's part of this thing. Yeah, if you have 500 followers and you do that, it's like, wow, this guy's really weird. But if you have 55,000 followers, it's like, I don't get what he's doing. But there must be a method to the madness. Or he wouldn't have this many people following him. So I just kind of had to get through that like cringe valley of where it's like, what is he doing to, oh my God, it worked. Yeah, there's no bridge across that. You just have to go all the way down and all the way back up. Yeah, you know
Speaker 2
what, you know what, that's an interesting point. And I think you know what it is, it's things change when you're doing it for like an audience or you're doing it for a crowd. Then it's entertainment. Yeah, if you're just doing it, no one is responding. Then it's like, oh, no, this is what this guy actually thinks. Or like this is what he's actually saying. It's no longer entertainment because no one's being entertained. Yeah. Okay, you know what, there's two things I want to touch on before we go. The first is, and it's kind of funny. So like, obviously, those two articles, so like kind of the five career things, and then the category of one, when I read those, I was like, okay, I need to talk to this guy. And then like, that's almost like the basis of my research and like my understanding of what you've done. But then I'll just start going down a rabbit hole on YouTube and like seeing like little shorts and like fits and like podcast stuff that you've done. And one of the videos I saw was you talking about losing $150,000. Oh, yeah, that's my favorite story. Well, since you're so fond of it, let's get into it. How did you lose $150,000? It was $150,000 in a day, right?
Speaker 1
Yeah, it was the specific number was like 100. I think it was $152,872 in like four seconds. I mean, it was like the market opened and it was gone. But I knew it was going to happen. Like, I knew it was like watching a countdown. And I knew I was about to get massacred. Yeah. The backstory to that was a lot of people traded stocks during COVID because like, I mean, there was just so much stuff going crazy from tech stocks to crypto to GameStop to whatever. I found these things called SPACs. And I'm not going to do like a whole five minute super detailed breakdown on the mechanics of them. But they were their own little bubble. And they were basically an alternative method for companies that were private to go public versus doing a regular IPO or something like that. And there was there was there was a bubble there. And a lot of these were just like going up 100 200 300% for no reason. And I just called on that trend really quick. Like we were talking about these newsletter trends and stuff like that. It was the same thing. I was really early on it and was willing to put some money behind it. I was like, okay, I've said I did this in my retirement account. I was like, I have $6,000 my Roth IRA. If I lose $6,000 like, yeah, I mean, that sucks. But that's not going to like kill me. It's whatever. This that was a gamble I was willing to make. I turned that into like 20. And I was like, all right. And then 40 60 100 150.