#42: Paul Millerd — The Pathless Path

Sup nerds, today I spoke with Paul Millard. Paul is the author of The Pathless Path. He got his MBA at MIT and was a fancy schmancy strategy consultant before leaving behind to go down the pathless path. His book was very influential in helping me leave my job in corporate America to go down a life as a creator and freelancer, and of course go down the life of a pathless path. I really appreciated our conversation and I hope you enjoy too. All right, sweet. Well, uh, I know your story, but for those who are kind of unfamiliar with the Pathless Path, um, you know, maybe new listeners who haven't heard of you before, um, how would you describe kind of your story and how you went from the traditional path to the pathless path.

Yeah. So my story, uh, grew up in a pretty humble area of Eastern Connecticut, spent, spent my childhood roaming in the woods, spending a lot of time with family. Uh, was always good at school, really enjoyed it, uh, and ended up in college in the honors program at University of Connecticut. That's when I got my first dose of understanding the world of prestige and success and all these things. And well, when you're a good student, you think, oh, I should go after these things. Really at that age, I was just insecure man, trying to find my way in the world and trying to do things that are impressive and make me feel special. I aggressively tried to break into the strategy consulting world, ended up succeeding, Liked it, actually loved it at first, developed a lot of useful skills. And then over time I just realized this is not the path I want to be on for 40 years. Found a way to walk away and for the past 6 years have been trying to figure out a new way forward that doesn't feel like a job, doesn't obsessively aim at money, success, and doesn't rely on me being a worker. I want to be a human first and fit work around that. So that's, that's sort of my cliff notes.

Nice. 100%. What is America's obsession with work? I mean, it used to be like cool, you know, dandyism and stuff to like not work, to have leisure, right? But now it's, it's almost seen as weird when you want to just chill and take a nap in the middle of a workday.

Yeah, it's, it's interesting. Ben Honeycutt has written a lot about this. He's a professor that sort of studies this leisure movement and and it used to be taken for granted, at least prior to World War II and maybe earlier, that productivity gains would help people have more leisure in their lives. Right? I think what happened is that we spent so much time in like grind mode as a culture that there's this deeply embedded scarcity in people that sort of enables them to keep working. It's funny if you read Max Weber's book, Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. He says the biggest challenge to capitalism was that people would just stop working once they had enough money. Right? So a different consciousness basically needed to emerge that was like, you're not just working to meet your needs, you're working as these like higher order aims in life. Right? And it's really tricky to talk about because work is deeply meaningful. Meaningful for many people. I've found work writing that is deeply meaningful. I, I can tell in like how much better you've gotten with your writing and the, the energy that comes through that writing is something meaningful for you too. But our society has sort of narrowed work as jobs and we see a job as our way of proving how we're good people in society, how we are fitting in, how we're conforming, how we're doing our part, how we're being useful. And I think a lot of what I write about is that's too narrow of a conception for how to live a good life. And a lot of people are resonating with that because people are just feeling that something is off in jobs, right? So yeah, that's, that's kind of what the thread I've been exploring.

100%. So I, you know, read your book when I was working as a data engineer at American Express. I, you know, dropped out of school to do a coding bootcamp, wanted to do the prestigious thing, make more money, got the job, and oh my God, was it awful, you know, just dealing with SQL queries and Slack messages all day. And so I worked really hard to just actually make it happen to be a writer, right? And do the, you know, quote unquote, less prestigious thing. You know, engineer sounds pretty fancy. You know, definitely impressive parents. And then, you know, quit my job after a walk in the park talking to you on the phone. Got the balls to quit my job and go full on with the writing. And yeah, man, it's so much more infinitely meaningful than writing SQL. And it's— yeah, very grateful.

What, what, what percent am I responsible? I'm actually curious about this. Like, I feel like you're headed on this path anyway. Um, yeah, I was trying to figure this out too. Like, I feel like my book is sort of an excuse that's like, oh, this is part of like why I'm gonna leave.

But it was more than the book. It was the conversation where it was like, what's the worst that can happen? Almost. Um, I'm not sure if that was. Exactly what you said, but it was like, you leave, you know, right now it's so much fear. I was experiencing just a lot of fear of what would happen. And so understanding that there is a world and there's a way to make money, there's a way to be happy and like, you know, I don't have to be in that corporate world. I think, you know, it was very helpful. You know, I definitely was trying to go down that path before. But it was, it was the kick in the ass that I needed, you know? And so yeah, it was, it was definitely, I'm curious, something that you've been writing about a bit as well as like figuring out when enough is enough, you know, I guess this is a bit of therapy for me right now cuz I'm, I'm struggling. I, I have more clients than I can handle, which is, you know, obviously a good problem and I'm very grateful for that. But I, I start to work myself into a craze where, you know, um, uh, there's, there's just, I could keep saying yes, keep saying yes. And at some point, like, enough is enough. Right. Um, so how did you figure out like when your enough is enough?

Yeah, I, I think before I dive into that, I think like one other thing worth saying on, uh, what you were saying about leaving your job is I often give very specific advice to certain people. You're somebody that. Clearly showed you were proactive in building relationships, taking action. You had dropped outta school. It's like, oh, this is somebody that already knows how to bet on themselves, take action and make things happen in the world. That I wouldn't give that advice to like somebody that has gone through the prestigious ladder and is like always been applying to companies and sort of we're at a big company, even if they're like quote unquote more successful on paper because they don't have that, like those agency skills. So it's such an amazing time to be alive for people that are willing to like put certain things at risk. And often the biggest thing to risk is our identity and status, because for the most part, even if you're making a lot of money, like your parents will probably look down on you because they can't tell their other friends what you're up to. Right. Ali Abdaal told me once in an interview, he's like, yeah, I'm scared to quit my medicine job. And that sort of shocked me. It was like, oh, he's making millions of dollars on YouTube, but his parents are still like, well, you can't stop being a doctor.

Yeah, right.

But yeah, I sidetracked. I just thought that was interesting, worth pointing out. What, what was the question again?

No, just figuring out when enough is enough, you know?

Yeah, enough. I think, I think there's an age thing too. I think when you're in a job, your upside is constrained. So I never battled this as much. I, I had this young, aggressive ambition to like always be moving jobs, getting pay raises, but I always had a like I always knew if I wanted more money, I would just go work in finance. And so I knew in a sense that I was already compromising upside and like choosing for like more interesting work and things like that. I think it's much harder working on your own and at your age. So for the most part, people learn this by burning out. And I think it's like people just can't help themselves, so they go burn out and then they teach themselves the lesson. The interesting question for me has always been like, how do I, um, never burn out? Like I, I had a job. I haven't come close to burning out in 6 years, but I took a very slow and deliberate strategy, really defined like what's the work I will and won't do. How can I design things for exiting? Which designing things for quitting usually means not being super ambitious at the beginning, right? And yeah, it's really hard. I think one thing I did is actually just write out a big paragraph in my book defining what enough is, right? And for the most part, you have to value things that are non-monetary. If money is the most important thing in life, I don't think money can ever quench enoughness.

Yeah, you know, right? You just want more.

Yeah. So I wrote in my book sort of a mini essay to myself, like telling myself so I can remind myself and come back to it, right? It's, it's hard. I have a daughter now. Which is a little more expensive than just me on my own. And like, I have a wife and my daughter and we're trying to figure out what's the balance of like work and making money and creative projects and all these things. And yeah, I know I have enough though in the moment. Like I have very good confidence I can make about $70,000 per year right now, which is my enough because we design, we sort of like mapped out what's our ideal lifestyle. And $70,000 to $80,000 in the US is probably it, probably much less if we live abroad.

Facts. Um, are you full-time on the book promoting or are you still doing freelance work?

What? Yeah, I'm, so I haven't done any, I mean, the, so the way I set up my life, I've, from the beginning in my path, I said, okay, how can I make money in the most ways possible? I probably have like 12 to 15 income streams. Most of those are trivial amounts, but I optimize for like a range of sources, right? One of those bets early on, and many of the things I tried and launched early on in my path that you've never heard about failed. I've shut them down and I've moved on. One of the things I launched early on was teaching people consulting skills. This was based on an early consulting project I did, and then I was teaching people for fun that were just reaching out. So I created this course, Think Like a Strategy Consultant. That's a self-paced course that runs. I do make some steady money on that. I also do corporate workshops. I've designed the corporate workshops such that it's like high priced. And so I basically just price them really high. I do a great job on them. I put a lot of energy into them. I've designed them. I've worked steadily to like create and productize that over the last 4 years, but It's like I do this high price thing or I do nothing and that's it. So this year I've done 2 workshops for an Indonesian company. I did a 4-week training with them. Each of those was $25,000. So I did 2 of those. I have 1 more lined up this year. I don't actively push that business. I don't know if I'll, make more money from that, but it's sort of just like productized. It runs. I have some steady cash flow coming in from the self-paced course. And then, yeah, a lot of my time and attention goes to my writing because I love writing and a lot of my writing really vibes with promoting my book because it's like I like the ideas I wrote about, so I'm going to continue to talk about them.

100%. Yeah. Didn't mean promoting the book in a bad way. But I'm finding that now it's been really fun writing about memes and I've been writing funnier tweets, had one blow up this weekend, which was really weird. And yeah, just finding things fascinating to do. But every day I'm, it's that struggle, man, of how much client work am I doing versus how much Jason work, how much Jason writing, the things that, I really find meaningful. I'm curious, how did Ali Abdaal find your book and how did that relationship start? It's been really cool to watch and yeah, I, I've just been really happy to see it blossom.

Very serendipitously. It's actually this guy, Chris Anderson, and I can, I can send you the tweet where this happened. He, he actually reminded me of this. He's, yeah, he sent this tweet in June 2020 where he tagged Tamer Abdal. He said, would love to hear you and Ali talk about this on Not Overthinking. It was like my thread on my explorations of my relationship with work. He said, yeah, this is great stuff. Been meaning to do a deep dive in this exact topic for a long time. And then I replied, happy to join the convo. And then they said, awesome, we'll definitely take you up on this. So I scheduled this podcast with Tamer, um, Abdal. He's a founder of a software company. I had no idea who his brother was, uh, until the morning of the interview. And I was like, oh, this guy's a YouTube channel. Um, but I mostly just don't know anyone out of the like Twitter writing world. Um, joined the convo and he started, he was like fascinated with my stuff because I didn't know at the time he was thinking about leaving medicine, right? 'Cause his YouTube business was growing. And honestly, he's just like a generous human. He's super curious. He shares what he's interested in and he's liked my writing, which has been super encouraging. I mean, he's probably made me tens of thousands of dollars on my book because he gave it a bigger audience and that unlocks like an Amazon algorithm boost. But Yeah, I, I'm so grateful for his support. I've never explicitly asked him to share anything. That's the best. Which is like, um, yeah, I, I think I'm somewhat of a purist sometime, almost to a fault. Like I'm really scared to ask for support. I think you're, I should probably learn from you on this. Like I'm really bad at asking for support. There's also like, I think people are willing to support me cuz they're like, why doesn't Paul self-promote? Or share his stuff more aggressively. Yeah, so probably something there, maybe a fear of success, fear of like standing out. I don't know what it is.

Got you. Yeah, I've, self-promotion is always key, but the best kind of shares are when you don't ask for it. Like I had a couple shoutouts this week in like Greg Eisenberg's newsletter. I would just randomly, and then my other friend, you know, saying memes make millions, you know, like, which was weird. They just like, you know, said as Jason Levin said, I was like, wow, like this is cool. Like it's almost like Pathless Path kind of vibe. So it's cool to have something that resonates with people. And I was listening to this interview with Russ. He's like, just bet on your fans, you know, bet on your readers, bet on your audience. Like, They will share your work if it's really good and they really care, like, you know.

Yeah. And that, that's sort of been my strategy, which is I, I think there's a, a tricky balance of like quote unquote making it versus playing long games. And I've sort of framed this as launch energy versus long game energy. Launch energy is like you're gonna go hard, promote, launch something, put a ton of marketing effort behind find it. I'm not wired like that. Like I suck at that, but I can play, I can keep writing and not quit. Like you've probably seen this already. I'm sure you've seen people launch Substacks and they just quit.

They burn out. Yeah. Very quickly. Yeah.

I have 200 and I don't know, 30, yeah, 227 issues. Like I'm gonna keep going for 10 years. And then 90% of the people doing it now are gonna quit.

100%.

Like this, this is my thing. Like I don't need to, I don't need to be in a rush because I have enough in the sense that I have a positive relationship with my work.

Yeah. I, I, I mean, I love writing. I was writing blog posts when I had, you know, 5 readers and there, you know, it's still the same joy of. Of discovering new things and writing. It reminds me a lot of the Danny Miranda story, you know? Yeah, it's been going for 10, 15 years building on the internet, and I've been similar and trying new projects, doing weird shit. And you just keep going long enough and you're going to outlast everyone else who gave up on their crazy, you know, internet dreams. You know, if you, if you just keep going with the weird delusional confidence of your teenage self, then it ends up working out.

It's so true. This is something I've uncovered on so many people's stories on my podcast, which is that a lot of people sharing ideas on the internet now had this same spirit when they were much younger, right? Except they never saw it as a reasonable thing to do. When I was in high school, I had this blog called Paul Says It Will, and I would predict the weather and all my classmates would follow it and do predictions and votes. I, in college, I had a blog called like S4 and all my friends posted on like this blog, this like self-hosted page we had in our engineering server. I created something. I was called myself DJ Popo Shizzle and announced like I had like 5 or 6 mixes that came out when I was a freshman in college. So when I look back now, it's so obvious and I didn't realize this till writing my book. And this is why I can outcompete people, because I'm genuinely channeling that spirit of fun. If you're some, just some hustle bro trying to like build an audience to make money, like you're either going to have to scale it super fast such that you can hire a team and keep it going, or you're going to have to find some deeper relationship with the work that like makes sense. Because if you're good enough to create and make money in this creator economy, you can probably, you probably have the competence and skills to make more money in the knowledge economy in a full-time job.

Yeah. I've seen that. Yeah. Yeah. You see it a lot in, you know, I work startups, VCs. There's a lot of people just building newsletters to sell them. And, you know, I think we, we could both say we're never selling our newsletters. You know, I'm writing mine forever. It's, it's like, I, there's a, you know, the Morning Brew kind of hustle vibe of build, sell, and then there's the Tim Ferriss vibe where you're just building an email list to have for the rest of your life, you know?

Yeah. And people love that. And it's, I had a tweet the other day. It was one of the costliest decisions you can make is decide to get status from people you don't actually want to be friends with. Right. And this is something people don't realize because we think about status and prestige in a full-time job context, right? In a full-time job context, you're willing to get prestige from people you don't care about because like, this is what everyone else is doing, right? And this has been a path people have been doing forever, right? You're going to get the job, you're going to out— you're going to do this work, and then you're going to have like a personal life on the side. If you're creating in public and sharing ideas, you're going to have to interact with people that you're getting status from and are reading your stuff, right? So if you're getting status from a bunch of people you don't like, like, that's huge, hugely risky. I'm making up words. That's incredibly risky because you're going, you're going to burn out. Because you're not going to want to be around those people. And you've seen it like you see YouTubers and Instagrammers that quit. You see it less with writers because it's hard to like write stuff you don't actually care about. Yeah, but yeah, you see a lot of audience capture when people go into like politics and like, what have I done? Yeah, everyone's so angry in my readership. These are not actually the people I want to be friends with.

100%. I mean, I want smart readers, you know, if I wanted dumb readers, I would go make some, you know, hustle porn or whatever. I want, I want smart people. I want people that I'll hang out with. Like, I love it when people message me or, or reply to an email, we become friends. Like that is, that's amazing. Like so cool.

Yeah. I, this is totally underrated. I have some of the best readers on the internet. Um, because my sell is kind of confusing cuz I don't really sell anything. It's just sort of my ongoing contemplations of life and what I'm curious about. Like I got a message a few weeks ago. They're like, you mentioned your book but didn't even link to it. Like, where do I even find it? I'm like, oh, I should probably do that.

That's funny.

But over time, if you just keep channeling your raw curiosity, people are like, this is— this doesn't feel like other stuff on the internet. And like, I do have like amazing followers. It's like people like Ali Abdaal will share my stuff because they're like, oh, this person like genuinely cares about this stuff. It's raw, it's real, it's authentic. It's— and people just don't understand that. Like, there are people with massive audiences But then other influential people or other deeply curious people look at them and are like, this is like so lame. And they mute them. They don't share the stuff, right? They maybe they'll build a successful business, but they miss the opportunity of making friends along the way.

Yeah. I mean, I find that with a lot of people, they're afraid to be vulnerable or, you know, they want to be known as, you know, I make content about X, so they don't post pictures of themselves. They don't, you know, you, they, they don't show their, their life outside of just work, you know?

Yeah.

So that's, that's definitely what I try to do on Twitter as well is, is be a real person, not just a talking head or a profile picture, you know?

I think the mass media has poisoned our brains too, to think, to think that it, and not just with like politics and outrage and clickbait and all that, but I think the mass media has convinced us that you need to sell watered-down generic ideas to massive audiences. I think that is a fundamental mistake at an individual level. It undermines the soul. It undermines the spirit of what makes work meaningful, right? We think that you need to write a book that has these frameworks and these how-tos It's bullshit, right? What resonates with people? Personal stories, powerful stories. I don't want to read about 50 other random people. I want to read about Jason Levin's story and how he felt and when he posted something and how that went and like how he grappled with insecurity, all those things, right? What is the question for you? What's the most like, what are the most memorable books? Like that come to mind? Just list off a couple.

4-Hour Workweek is one of them. Oh, I just read one called Deep Undercover about a KGB spy who moved to America and decided—

Personal story.

Yeah. Yeah. Nonfiction. Yeah. And it was just so cool to read about how he felt, you know, scared in America and trying to become an American and I don't know. I found that really cool, you know, really, really beautiful story. Yeah, those are, those are two of them. Let's see what else I got in my Kindle here. But you're so right, man. You're—

Second question, follow up. What's the framework in Tim Ferriss's book?

Personal stories?

No, no, no. He has a framework in there. What is the framework? What's the acronym?

Oh, I have no idea. I read it a few years ago.

Right. This is part of, this is, this is part of my theory. He has a framework in there called DEAL. I don't think the framework matters. I think it's something a publisher thinks matters. But people remember that book because he wrote about his actual feelings, his actual experiments, his actual raw emotions about what he went through, and he channeled feelings and beliefs that were true to him. That's what people remember, right?

Yeah. It's the same thing with fiction, you know? Um, like Ender's Game. Have you ever read that?

Uh, I have not yet.

Oh, it's so good. Like I read it when I was 10 years old and just reread it for the first time and it was just as good. And the story and the, the character, um, just as beautiful. Um, So treating your own story almost as not as fiction, but telling that a story, you know, I think it's really powerful. You know, Nathan, Nathan Bowe talks a lot about storytelling and it's, it's definitely an underrated skill and definitely the story around yourself and the building that up and telling your story is really powerful.

It's, it is damn hard though. Right. I mean, yeah, it requires an emotional maturity and a self-awareness that is just hard to find in today's world. And I think the internet is a competitive sport, right, for people. People are competing for attention, right? And like young, risk-seeking men love that sport. What do young, risk-seeking men also have in common? They struggle to know themselves and their feelings, right? So for me, I, I've sort of realized this is a competitive advantage where the first few years on my path, I didn't actively try to make money. My income actually went like 30 grand, 25 grand, 20 grand. I lowered my cost of living. I moved abroad. I lived on very little, but I got to know myself. I developed a relationship with the writing that was something I felt I could sustain for a long time. I tried different things. I did lots of experiments. I sat with discomfort. And when I launched my book, I think I had like 3,000 newsletter subscribers. I've sold 28,000 copies. I don't know where that comes from other than it seems like people like personal stories.

Yeah, they, they sure do. I can't wait to Yeah. In my book, Memes Make Millions, I'm telling the stories of all these, you know, meme lords. I did one the other day about a guy named Charlie and about, you know, random dude who lives in Minnesota made $1 million making memes, you know, and that story did so much better than any thread I ever do about how to make memes, how to make money making memes with no stories. And so that's why—

Yeah, no one cares.

No, no.

Some people care. The like 21-year-old who's like into like the marketing Twitter is trying to make like aiming at the money matters to them, but it, it doesn't matter to the people you actually want to reach. And I know I've gotten to know you, you're playing a deeper game.

Yeah.

You're in this for the long run, which means you need to build a life, right? Like, and this is one of the fundamental things with work. Most people are on an escape script. They're working 40 years such that they can escape in retirement. They're trying to build a million-dollar company such that they can sell it and exit. People are trying to aim at financial independence so that they can exit and go work on a beach. Here's the truth. Nobody actually wants that. We want to be useful. We want to do things that matter to us, and we need to find stuff that enriches us and challenges our souls.

Facts. I'm gonna be riding forever, you know. Like, I see, I see my dad even, you know, he's 60, 65, 70, yeah, somewhere around there. He still works a few hours a day, you know. The rest of the day he rides a motorcycle, but he likes working. He likes, he likes helping people, you know. He's a lawyer, which is awesome. Personally, I'd hate, you know, but yeah, he likes it, you know, um, for what he does. And it's, it's just cool. I see You know, in comparison, my grandparents who are retired for 10, 15 years are just bored, man. They're, you know, it's, uh, work can be beautiful. It can give you purpose if, uh, that's what you find about it, you know? Um, like you'll be writing forever, right? Like you'll be writing until you're 95 or whatever.

Well, that's the thing. I think the optimal amount of work for most people is not zero. And it's not 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year. It's somewhere in between and it's probably something that's more cyclical, right? You might sprint for a month and then take a few weeks off. That's the upside of self-employment for me is that I've been able to find my more natural rhythm. Right.

Yeah. I want to talk about a tweet you posted the other day. Self-publishing, self-publishing revolution. I don't have it up in front of me, but I think you said like everybody will be self-published. I'm curious why you think that or why you think, what your thesis is around self-publishing. I've thought about it a lot as well.

I said in 10 years, every self-publishing will just be called publishing. I think this is a broader take on the internet, which is that We look at things as weird, like the digital is like the other at the beginning. It's like we used to have car phones, right? They used to call them car phones. I don't know if you're old enough to remember this, but then now they're phones, right? It used to be like a cell phone or a mobile phone. This is just a phone, just a phone now, right? And the gap between self-publishing and traditional publishing is mostly just this air of prestige. Right now you wouldn't, you'd be shocked at how many people who have traditionally published books have sent me messages and are like, you're right. It sucks. I can't talk about it in public.

Oh, that makes me very happy that I chose to work with Ellen and Altamira.

Right. And the thing is they, they often have good editors. They often have like really good editors, but they have tons of other employees. Who are generally just— they're there for a job. They're not there to create great work. They're there to, like, execute on publishing hundreds of books a year.

Yeah, right.

What a publisher gives you is as long as they can get people to keep opting into their deal and they can scoop up smart people that publish books under them, you look at them and say, like, well, that smart person is publishing under them. They must know something, right? So I have to join them too. And then they all have to support each other because they're in this. But then, like, they don't even promote their book because they're not even making that much on it. Like if they have no chance of earning out the advance after a couple of years, why would you ever promote your book? I'm going to make money on my book till I'm dead.

Yeah, facts.

And I own the copyright. Like I could not deal in the internet age with a publisher owning my copyright. Like what the hell's the point of my path?

Interesting. Interesting. I definitely understand. I, Yeah, I wanted published books since I was a kid, you know, I wanted the traditional name. I wanted to have Jason Levin on a hardcover in Barnes Noble, and I don't see that happening and I'm okay with it, you know, like I'm very happy selling books on the internet and working with, working with Ellen and Altamira and having, you know, a lot of creative control, a lot of fun. And yeah, it's, it's been a beautiful process.

Well, I think people just don't understand creative energy, right? I think people are co— like, even if you're compromising 10% of your creative energy to a publisher to like sell more books, you're giving up something that is so inherently valuable, right? You're giving up the source energy that might sustain you 5, 10 years from now. That's crazy. For me, that's worth everything because I had a job before and I know I don't want to go back. I can't compromise any of that energy that might sustain me in the future. It's worth billions of dollars, right? Because I price my free time and my ability to design and own, like, the structure and creative control of my life at, like, crazy amounts of a reserve price, right? People have this thing of, oh, my time is worth X. So if you want to get access to me, You need— this is my rate, right? That's crazy. I look at it the opposite way. My leisure time, my contemplative time, my wandering time, my time with my daughter and my wife, that's worth $1 billion an hour. You're going to have to offer something so incredible for me to compromise that time for someone else.

That's beautiful. I— yeah, that's amazing. Man, that, that's all the main questions I wanted to chat about. I really enjoyed this conversation. I think I'll be in Austin in October-ish, October, November.

Nice.

To visit Ellen and sign some books and hopefully have a little party or something.

Hell yeah. Yeah, I'm rooting for you, man. I love that you're betting on yourself. You're much braver than me.

I appreciate it, man.

I did college and did safe jobs for 10 years. I went to grad school. Um, but you know what, like, it's taken me way longer to unlearn all that stuff. Uh, I look at people like you and I'm like, man, there's so much possible without all the baggage.

Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's been a, it's been a process that I will, uh, We'll tell the whole story one day and, uh, waiting, waiting my time, but all right, cool, Paul. I appreciate it. It's gonna go live on, uh, Sunday. Um, I'm gonna link it with the blog post and, you know, kind of about my pathless path. Um, sweet.

Love it.

Yeah. Appreciate it, man. Talk soon.

See ya.