BREAKING: This is NOT one of my normal posts.
Don’t skip this.
You wouldn’t leave a dying man alone out in the cold to die, would you?
Dear Permission to Be Powerful Reader,
The hour of my death has finally come.
If you saw the numbers, you’d probably agree.
The savings are gone.
The credit cards are smoking.
The situation is ugly.
I’ve spent almost 2 years fighting this battle.
Drinking one humiliation after another with no chaser.
Fired.
Blackballed.
Unemployment.
Food banks.
Janitor work.
Depression.
ICE immigration nightmares.
Isolation.
Getting betrayed.
Working on projects that went nowhere.
Taking abuse from people I didn’t respect.
Starting.
Stopping.
Quitting halfway.
Getting scared.
Settling.
Watching other people succeed while wondering if I was crazy.
Watching other people have fun while I grinded alone seven days per week.
And after all of that…
I finally arrived.
Funny, isn’t it?
Most people would call this the end.
I call it judgment day.
Because there are no excuses left.
No wife to blame.No boss to blame.No country to blame.No gatekeeper.No mentor.No cavalry.
No imaginary future where everything magically comes together.
It’s here.
Now.
The hour I spent my entire life avoiding.
The hour where I finally have to find out.
Because I have the list.
I have the servers.
I have the offer.
I have the book.
I have the publication.
I have the experience.
I have the scars.
And I have absolutely nowhere left to hide.
Good.
I’m tired of hiding.
People think confidence means certainty.
It doesn’t.
Confidence means betting on yourself when certainty doesn’t exist.
I’ve spent years pretending.
Years bluffing.
Years thinking, “One day.”
One day I’ll finish the book.
One day I’ll take myself seriously.
One day I’ll stop begging for scraps.
One day I’ll stop waiting for permission.
One day I’ll build something real.
One day I’ll trust myself.
Well.
One day has arrived.
And strangely enough, I’m calm.
Not because I’m safe.
Because I’m free.
I’ve finally hit rock bottom.
Thank God.
I’ve already been living through hell.
Rock bottom means there’s nowhere left to fall.
There’s nowhere left to hide.
And strangely enough, I’m grateful.
Not because I enjoy suffering.
Because suffering already introduced itself.
We know each other now.
I’m not scared of it anymore.
I’ve already lost everything.
I’ve already started over.
I’ve already eaten the humiliation.
I’ve already survived being broke.
I’ve already survived loneliness.
I’ve already survived failure.
What exactly am I afraid of now?
Another scar?
Good.
I know what to do with scars.
I’ve collected enough of them.
They heal.
People think they’re afraid of dying.
Most people are afraid of living.
They’re afraid of finding out.
Afraid of discovering whether they actually have what it takes.
Afraid of reality itself.
Not me.
Not anymore.
Reality can vote.
The readers can vote.
The market can vote.
I’m done arguing.
Let’s find out.
My fate doesn’t belong to critics.
It doesn’t belong to enemies.
It doesn’t belong to people who laughed.
It doesn’t belong to people who left.
It belongs to reality.
And reality is honest.
Maybe I’ll win.
Maybe I’ll lose.
But I refuse to spend another decade wondering.
The hour of my death has finally come.
Thank God.
I’ve waited my whole life for it.
Until next time,
Tony V.
Editor-in-Chief
Permission to Be Powerful
P.S. This is a crucial time.
War hardens you.
I planned for the worst.
Being broke forced me to think strategically.
There was a fundamental flaw with my business.
The bigger my list grew, the more expensive it became.
And that motherfucker is BIG.
Here’s what’s happening.
There’s bodies everywhere.
Open war.
Smoke.
Gunshots.
I saw a huge flaw in my business.
The bigger my list became, the more software I needed.
The more money I needed for overhead.
I don’t like doing things the dumb way.
I like smart.
To me, that means owning your assets, not renting them.
Because I knew that if someone could switch off my business at the flip of a switch, eventually they would.
This is late-stage capitalism.
The jungle is undefeated.
Another pet peeve:
Too many service providers telling me what I can and can’t do.
Not your call, homie.
I’m out.
I discovered something amazing.
I love open-source software.
It’s free.
You pay a guy to hook up your servers.
Then your thousand-dollar-per-month MailChimp problem becomes a twenty-dollar-per-month asset that prints money.
I prepaid my servers for an entire year.
So even if I go broke, the lights stay on.
We stay open for business.
The psychological freedom is incredible.
This thing is hard to kill.
I own every piece of it.
Most of the software is free.
And it’s every bit as good as the expensive stuff.
Better, in some cases.
I don’t rent.
I own.
132,000 subscribers.
They’re all mine.
Four servers.
Paid for a year.
Open for business no matter what.
I built the infrastructure myself.
I know how the plumbing works.
No more wondering whether I can keep up with ever-growing bills while trying to get this publication off the ground.
This baby is here to stay.
My mindset on this project has been simple.
This project was not cheap.
Mostly because I had to figure out how to build the machine.
Create a stable environment.
Cultivate my list.
There’s so much work to do.
But things are coming together nicely.
Even though I’m down to my last $3,000…
Even though I maxed out my credit cards…
I’m not scared.
Not with the reach of a small city at my fingertips.
Not after everything it took to build this thing.
Not now.
I had to kill Anton in almost every sense to survive this trip.
His credit is certainly dead.
His old plans are dead.
His excuses are dead.
Good.
He got me this far.
Tony will take it from here.
I put everything on the line.
It forces clarity.
I spent every moment of the last two years thinking about this.
I had to find a way.
So I did.
Where are we now?
132,000 subscribers.
A working offer.
Two new books.
Four servers.
A publication.
A twelve-to-twenty-four-week warm-up period.
Brutal.
I know.
But I chose a hard path.
And I have no regrets.
I built the audience.
Then I built an ultra-secure arena for the audience.
I have a working offer.
I’m launching two new books.
I told myself I might have to go broke building this thing.
I have.
And I don’t care.
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