When Individuals Eat Companies
Level 1 - NGMI
Welcome Avatar! We hope you planned the year in advance so we could come in here and absolutely destroy all of those plans in a single post (joke!). Instead, we are going to cover where the world is heading and how you should think about the way you meet, earn and learn over the coming decade. We’ve never been the type to jump onto band wagon stuff (like fidget spinners back in the day) and have always operated on longer term time horizons. Some of the stuff we discussed over the past decade has taken a while to play out (the normalization of e-com brands) while other items have gone nuts immediately (big uptick in spirituality industries - this will continue).
Individuals Eat Companies
Over the past two decades the mantra has been “software eats the world”. The problem? With the advancements in crypto and decentralization those same web 2.0 winners are going to face a new problem: what happens when your employees don’t need you anymore?
Pause: Say you were a professional athlete. We love boxing for those that have followed for years, however, it can be anything including baseball, football and more. Prior to the invention of the internet, most up and coming athletes required *distribution and clout*. Getting the contract from Nike was worth more than the contract from Reebok even if it paid a bit less due to network effects, distribution and more over the long-term.
Times have changed.
Now if you look at professional athletes who are well known, they can get more reach and engagement by themselves vs. going on things like CNBC. Yes. Seriously. It has reached a tipping point and if you remember the Mayweather vs. Paul exhibition, Money Mayweather pointed this out saying the following (paraphrase): “how many social media followers Paul got and how many the next biggest boxer got?” It wasn’t even close. Since the game of media/entertainment is just distribution, once you have individuals overtaking companies, there is no need to bother getting on their networks. They should be paying the individual for his valuable time.
Absolutely Hilarious that Insta Followers Was a Stat Line!
Cool But “I’m not Jake Paul”: True. The chances of breaking into the top 0.01% is small. This is how life works. The point is still the same though. You need to reorganize your life and “bite the bullet” as it relates to building your career and future.
Fight fire with fire…. Work multiple remote jobs or start that secondary online income stream… Now!
In fact, there is a HIGH chance that the company you work for today will be disrupted by small numbers of individuals. People like Joe Rogan have crushed the media space. People like Daniel and Vitalik Buterin and SBF have individually caused significant pain to the financial services industry and NFTs which can be made from thin air are going after the entire Art industry (historically a niche/fringe market for the majority of the population).
Even if you’re not in tech you can do this by simply putting your “life online”. If you notice a common thread amongst people with large followers on social media it is that they continuously *try* to live life. They start with small followers and constantly post about what they are doing over and over and over again with their own writing style in there. They don’t write like they went to some Ivy League seminar, they just put up a stream of consciousness. By way of example, we get questions from people who work as plumbers to dentists. The answer is actually still the same.
Instead of *hoarding* all of that information, begin really trying to explain what new things you learned and interesting problems you’ve solved. If you’re authentic in this regard, people will show up even if it is a blue collar profession. Also. We’ve seen this live with multiple cartoon anons (BowTiedSalesGuy and the most recent BowTiedFox).
BowTiedFox had an incredible free write up (4 part series you can follow here) and did not “realize” he was sitting on valuable and useful info. When we got emailed from a Google VP Tech Recruiter we knew that he could go ahead and build a small online business if he wanted to. Will he? We’ll see! There is no way he/she can message us and state that the opportunity isn’t there (hint: the fox has admitted this already). Follow the fox here for tech.
You Don’t Have Limiting Belief’s You’ve Never Actually Tried: Please read that bolded set up. You know it is true. We know it is true. Using the same example above, the first product fox sent us we immediately rejected (Yes really. You can ask fox directly even though it was a private discussion). Most people just look at *other* writing, attempt to summarize and then have those “thoughts” become their thoughts. Some are so blatant you can tell who they took the idea from by simply following the largest VC accounts.
Once you *give up* on that strategy and start producing like you were talking/selling something to your best friend… the results will flow in. Instead of selling like your boss is reading, sell like you’re trying to get a close friend to understand what you do. After that we can all but guarantee you will grow *if* you are skilled in an industry (no you don’t need to be the best at everything, you simply need to be *good* as most people won’t even try).
Autist Note: On Wednesday we will provide some simple biz ideas that we think will do well in 2022. Some similar themes but they are high margin businesses with low barriers to entry. This is in *addition* to simply putting all your skills online in a form of consulting services at minimum. Please. Do not end 2022 with $0 in online income. Make a few grand at minimum before you get hit by a work force reduction due to automation.
Won’t It All Go Back to “Normal”? Highly Unlikely
If we suddenly turned everything back on, it would be an explosion of money velocity = not good for inflation. We all saw what happened after the summer (big price spike).
In 2022, we’re already starting the year off with more supply chain issues (Asia is a mess right now) and a new strain of virus that *isn’t* deadly. These two items create a cocktail for spending once the “fourth wave” of COVID is complete. Assuming this is true it means that inflation won’t get any better and you’re going to get screwed (again) on your pay raise.
Were You Up 30%? In 2021 the S&P 500 was up 28.7%. For people who are already wealthy this is fantastic. You moved so far ahead of everyone that you can’t even see them in your rearview mirror anymore.
What a disaster 2021 was for the middle class. There is just no way to describe it. Even if you were a top 1-5% *W-2* earner, you got smashed. If you read the table above, a rich guy with $10M and an upper middle class guy with $1M both invest in the S&P 500. Since money printer went crazy, the prices sky rocket by 30%. This results in just under $3M and just under $300,000. If we assume they both make the same amount of money (say $500,000 a year which is about $300,000 after tax), it means that the upper middle class guy has to work 8.6 more years just to catch up to the *investment* returns of the rich individual.
Insane Times.
How to Prepare: Well this party can’t go on forever. Eventually people will fight back. We’re surprised it hasn’t happened yet honestly. The playbook is luckily much of the same: 1) assume that your taxes will be going up particularly if you are a high earner or easy to tax - think lots of liquid stock or real estate and 2) make as many high quality friends as you possibly can - the BowTiedJungle is exceptional for this as it has been a life saver to many who get laid off and need niche information to break into Wall Street, Sales or Tech.
Beyond this you should be ditching all high tax states with the quickness. If you’re under 30 you probably want to target Florida and Miami. If you’re over 30 or have a sizable online presence, go to the lowest tax area you can find. You may take a lifestyle hit but the returns will be worth it.
Update on Clown World
We had to do a double take on this but even Melania Trump is tweeting about Bitcoin.
Crypto is pretty much mainstream at this point and the laggards are just catching up. They better catch up fast because the world is changing at a rate that we’ve never seen before. Cannot imagine having zero knowledge of the space at this time, you are effectively putting your future in a coffin by yourself.
We’re jokingly calling this clown world as Trump has been negative on BTC in the past and having Melania tweet about it adds some serious humor to the whole situation. Couldn’t care less about Trump/Biden opinions on crypto, we already explained many times in the past that the most likely countries to adopt it will be small at first… then small/medium… then medium… then it’s over. Game theory is playing out as expected given all the announcements from 2021 (El Salvador).
In quick summary, things are going down the exact same path as 2021. Just because the calendar changed doesn’t mean the direction changed. If you believe we should be looking at a better proxy than the S&P 500 for asset inflation we’d love to hear it but nearly 30% is an absurd number. The other idea we had is real estate which was also up a crazy amount at 20-30%.
Disclaimer: None of this is to be deemed legal or financial advice of any kind. These are opinions written by an anonymous group of Ex-Wall Street Tech Bankers who moved into affiliate marketing and e-commerce.
Daily Reminder: You ARE EARLY. Too much negativity/cope. Everyone reading this is extremely early. If you stay on top of technology, there is always a new opportunity
Before anyone asks no we're not going to be involved with the Melania Trump scam NFT mint
Thank you, incredibly grateful for your mentorship! I'll be sure to put out some more free value to show my appreciation. For now, here is my big guide:
Breaking into FAANG: https://bowtiedfox.substack.com/p/FAANG
> the first product fox sent us we immediately rejected
For anyone wondering, my first post was just a couple paragraphs, a high-level outline of how to get into FAANG–I assumed that people could just fill-in-the-blanks on their own. I've had to self-teach for a long time, so I just assumed others could do the same–just shoot a message to your nearest FAANG recruiter and figure it out from there.
But, now I realize there's enormous value in my years of learning: reading, watching videos, attending international seminars, networking, consulting, doing research, building teams, interviewing and being interviewed, time spent with older mentors, going down rabbit-holes on forums, interesting conversations in video game lobbies, and my unique work experiences. Not to mention being a master at "googling it."
I've made a résumé for a PhD in Artificial Intelligence, helped a caretaker/high-school dropout get into college, and currently teaching a VP at a BB (making at least half a million USD) how to lead engineering teams. It's been a wild ride, and none of this would have been possible if BTB hadn't encouraged me.
T'was written!