I now find myself in my mid 30’s, aimless, and unemployed.I’ve literally been in the tech industry since I was 14 covering Steve Jobs keynotes in person as a reporter. I dropped out of college to join a startup with two of the former founders of Myspace at 19, watched them burn $50M and fail trying to compete with what is now YouTube / Google; I use to run social media accounts for Playboy, I’ve built and automated the recruiting department at a medical research facility. Launched my own startup, bootstrapped it to $1M in revenue and sold it for an exit.Went into consulting, worked for the former CTO of JP Morgan. Was mentored and taught enterprise sales by a former VP from IBM / VMware, and a former Wall Street executive. I’ve read or learned all the hard lessons of being a founder, advised countless startups, consulted on at least a dozen SaaS products, and most recently was a CMO at an open source competitor to Slack / Teams / Discord.Yet somehow I’m living off a PPP loan, trying to close more consulting contracts yet again, wondering where the fuck I went wrong? If I don’t close a deal soon I’ll be living off my Bitcoin which I’m trying not to do.I really enjoy product marketing, and I’m fucking amazing at it, but the quality of CEOs I’ve worked with lately is at an all time low. Most of them don’t even know what marketing is, and they’re horrible storytellers. As much as I love being a CMO, it is one of the highest turnover positions unfortunately.Meanwhile, I’ve watched my peers like Neil Patel, who I used to partner with, become fucking huge by marketing themselves instead of others. But the reality is there’s nothing Neil does that I don’t know how to do. I just never did it for myself.I foolishly thought we still had free speech in this country and most my social media accounts have been censored because I’m a libertarian. Irony is most my views the majority of people agree with, it’s just the powers that be don’t. I have a massive network in Silicon Valley. Many of the major VC know me and went on my previous podcast, CEOs of major tech companies follow me, but refuse to fund anything I’m associated with or hire me. Frankly, most of them are assholes so it doesn’t bother me that much, but they know I know my shit and still won’t associate with me publicly (although they have no problem DMing or talking to me in private and talking shit).I’ve thought about jumping into Venture Capital, already have deal flow of startups I’m advising, but I’m watching all the founders I’m working with continually getting fucked over, and I just don’t have the heart for it anymore. I would love to raise a VC fund myself but need partners with VC experience and capital connections I just don’t have. I’ve applied to some major VC firms but they’re ignoring me for whatever reason, probably because I have more experience then half the managing partners and they get intimidated by me.I know on one level I need to go back to the basics and probably should have just done what Neil Patel did by marketing myself, on another level I can just keep consulting (I have deal flow and deals likely to close soon, not posting this for deal flow), but I’m exhausted from the cycle of getting hired in, creating value, helping others get to the next level, then I have to move on and help someone else all over again without reaping any of the longterm rewards.I have researched information products extensively. Read all the books. Know all the formulas. But there’s just something in me that just doesn’t want to be that guy. It just feels scammy? Perhaps I just need to get over it.Where the fuck do I go from here? I don’t want to start another startup myself, I don’t want to start another podcast, I don’t want another full time job, and I’m tired of consulting and advising without access to capital to invest.Thanks for listening to my rant.TLDR: I’m getting old, bored, and don’t know where to go from here. I just want to go make a shit ton of money, go start a family, and peace out. ✌️ see hubwealthy.com/wealthy
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