Ex Wall Street / current owner of small manufacturing business via ETA. Trying to learn and get better while making mistakes every day
Joined September 2023
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Tough year, but it’s always a nice dopamine hit to give a vendor a large order (this case over 18,300 pounds of film) they bid aggressively on to help you win new business. 🚀🚀🚀
Be careful out there. I connected earlier this year with an ex private equity professional who bought a SMB.
Nice guy and he had tried to save me money as I went through some renewals for my business.
Today I got a random email from him saying “Hey sent you a link, let me know what you think!”
I’m always skeptical of phishing schemes so I replied, “Hey just shot you a DM on LinkedIn and on X to confirm you sent me this link. What is the link about?”
The response: “Stop being stupid by sending so many DMs.” 😂
I called the business owner and told him his email had been hacked. He said his landlord had also called him. He later reached out confirming his email had indeed been hacked.
Don’t click on links!
An old analyst pinged me to see how I was doing after my Dad’s passing (ok thx for asking), and I asked him how he was doing.
I had forgotten the cost of some of these W2 paths only 3 years removed from it. That said, he is happy go lucky / glass half full and is happy w the new job he recently took on. I will always have respect for those in the W2 grind. He enjoys the work and is providing for his family.
Why META may continue to underperform:
1) Going into Q3 EPS, STREET was at 23% expense growth for 2026. On "SIGNIFICANT ACCELERATION" Q3 commentary, STREET went to 28% growth (only 5% higher)
2) When META last said "significant" it was in the context for 2025 capex when Q424 guide was for 65% growth vs 37% in 2024
Not sure what is being said in mgmt meetings and callbacks but buyside prob not comfortable with 2026 numbers right now (ie thinking significant is prob more than 5% higher than previous STREET expectations)
x.com/alc2022/status/1987861…
Pep Guardiola has an estimated net worth of $125mm. @vrexec tweet incoming on how all the below can be achieved with a substack w a paywall, a supportive spouse, a positive attitude and knowing what enough is
🗣️ Pep Guardiola: "After retirement, these are the things I want to do:
- I want to cook at home.
- I want to learn French.
- I want to spend more time with the kids.
- I want to be with my family.
- I want to travel.
- I want to go to concerts.
- I want to go to exhibitions.
- I want to travel the world.
Boomer signing a mortgage with a 2075 maturity date for a second home, pricing out a high income W2 couple looking to buy their first home with their first kid on the way
Imagine having this name and 1) working at a pod and 2) covering oil and not AI heavy TMT during this generational stock market run. I hope he’s having a career year (no reason to think he’s not an awesome person)
RIP shvtco short sellers. We know where this money is likely going if this happens. It probably isn’t groceries
TRUMP ANNOUNCES $2,000 TARIFF DIVIDEND FOR AMERICANS
President Donald Trump announced a $2,000 payment to most Americans, funded by U.S. tariff revenues. In a Truth Social post, he said the U.S. is collecting “trillions of dollars” in tariffs and will use the money to reduce national debt and reward citizens—excluding high-income earners. Trump called tariff critics “fools” and claimed the U.S. is now the “richest, most respected country in the world,” citing record stock markets and 401(k) values.
Blueprintsmb retweeted
In 1997, at the age of 27, Matt Damon won his first Academy Award for Best Screenplay (“Good Will Hunting”).
After Damon won the Oscar, he went home, sat down on his sofa, and looked at the award.
As he looked at it, he was suddenly overwhelmed by a heartbreaking thought:
“I remember very clearly looking at that award and thinking,
‘Imagine chasing that, not getting it, and then getting it finally in your 80s or your 90s with all of life behind you and realizing what an unbelievable waste of your life.’
It can't fill you up. If that's a hole that you have, that won't fill it.”
“My heart broke,” Damon said. “I imagined another one of me [not getting that award until I was] an old man, and going like, ‘oh my god, Where did my life go? What have I done?’ And then it's over.”
Takeaway 1:
Many rich and celebrated people talk about chasing money and recognition, getting it, and realizing that it didn't feel like they thought it would. That it didn't, as Damon said, fill the hole they had.
One of my favorite analogies for this pattern comes from Sam Hinkie.
Hinkie was asked about what he's learned from reading Robert Caro's books—about some very rich and famous people.
“I think of it like the Pacific Salmon,” Hinkie said. “They spend their whole life making this journey upstream to spawn in this one spot. And as soon as they do, they die. That's largely what Caro shows you.”
The outcome is always a tiny percentage of the total experience.
Matt Damon stood on that Oscars stage for eighty-one seconds. That’s 0.0000641% of the four years he spent working on Good Will Hunting. To let 0.0000641% of an experience determine one’s happiness or satisfaction, as Damon said, is an unbelievable waste of your life.
Takeaway 2:
If not things like money, awards, and celebrity, what should we strive for?
“When we were writing 'Good Will Hunting,'” Matt Damon said, “Ben [Affleck] and I always talked about just wanting to love it.
We would say, 'If it's just a tape on our mantel that no one ever watches, we want to love it.' We kind of stumbled into a very wise strategy, which is to try to get most of the rewards from the work itself.”
Since you control the process, the effort, the work more than the outcome, Ryan Holiday once told me,
“The work has to be the win. Ultimately, you have to love doing it. You have to get to a place where doing the work is the win and everything else is extra.”
- - -
“It's such a gift to be able to do something and to love it for the sake of it.” — Rodney Mullen
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Harvard MBA trying to figure out how to make payroll 4 weeks post close on his HVAC acquisition after his vendors put him on COD and he realizes net 30 means net 60-75
First time home buyer is 40. Entitlements are going to bankrupt our country with 65 year old eligibility with life expectancy almost 80. What should we do? 50 year mortgages obviously
Latest on this one is this competitor likely to shut down at end of the year. Other potential buyer has outstanding offer w some cash upfront while I won’t budge from commission structure. This highlights how irrational some of these boomer sellers can be for those considering ETA x.com/blueprintsmb22/status/…
If you are as dumb as me and just keep grinding when things aren’t fun, I do feel sometimes good things can happen.
The New England competitor I’m 100 pct certain will have to shut down if they don’t agree to give me their book of biz on some commission structure reached out to me to see if I was interested in a potential piece of business for a coffee manufacturer that sells into Costco as they don’t want to do the factory audit required to get the business (I would pay them a commission.)
I asked how the “sales” process was going and the owner admitted it wasn’t looking good and they may have go consider my offer. This structure would add $100-300k cash flow day one with no upfront capital. Would be a huge win if they capitulate and agree to my structure.
And below is one of the success stories in ETA. I did 60 pct SBA debt and don’t love how it feels at times if I’m being honest. Anyone looking to maximize short term comp should find another high paying W2 instead of choosing this path. Building equity via debt pay down and investing to make the business more durable long term is a long game that can be a significant wealth creator down the road though. x.com/inclineadvisory/status…
Plenty of these warnings out there. Issue with our self funded search (we did 90% leverage) is that there were days when I felt like I didn’t own the business, but some combination of the bank and employees did. Toxic but productive employees you know are hurting culture are ensuring debt service is paid. Made decisions for short term I knew were wrong for the long term. Managing the biz month to month for survival. To the extent you make investments you are impatient and likely pull it before it has time to properly mature. It’s a difficult cycle to overcome. We’ve since grown out of that stage luckily but certainly was a confusing feeling given we went into ETA for the “freedom” and the idea of controlling our destiny.
