i’ve noticed “infighting” among marketers who can’t help but pitch their speciality as Mother Superior.

one guy says SEO is “where it’s at,” another 10x-d his last client’s revenue using Facebook ads.

should you play the long game or short game? do you have to choose?

sweat

say your company blog has 25 posts that rank page 1 and collectively drive 50,000 organic visitors to your content every month.

you could calculate 50,000 visitors * $0.50 CPC and claim $25,000 in “free” marketing, but how much did you spend to write and grow those posts?

a full time content marketer plus a little paid promotion to encourage social shares means you’re really spending $5-10k /month on labor + tools and it took you 8 months to write those 25 posts.

this assumes you wrote 6 posts per month and about half of them (24/48) immediately took a slot on Page 1. doubtful. now it’s $5-10k /month * 8 months thus you’ve spent at least $40,000 on content. not $0.

next, consider that driving 50,000 visitors to your homepage is probably going to convert a lot more product signups than 50,000 blog visitors. sometimes my own blog posts get 15k+ views in a day and… 15 new email subscribers.

drive 15,000 people to Fomo.com? 100s of registrations with a credit card.

time

another popular strategy charlatan marketers use to mischaracterize CAC (customer acquisition cost) is claiming that if you build a personal brand you can sell things on your “reputation alone.”

speaking as someone with a teeny tiny personal brand, i can confirm my public nature and amazing tweets help sell products and content.

BUT, i also spent 9 years sharing nothing but value (free stuff) before i ever tweeted a single “buy now” URL.

assuming i spent just 45 minutes per day on Twitter, for 9 years, with 2 weeks off per year for funerals and long flights, that’s 45 mins * 50 weeks * 9 years or 337.5 hours of free labor.

obviously i’ve invested a lot more than 337 hours on Twitter, but the point is while i have sold thousands in goods and services through direct messages, a junior sales person could beat this in 8 weeks (337.5 hours / 40 hour week) with cold email.

social capital

finally, and this one is dedicated to ecommerce bros, it’s intellectually lazy to claim referral programs are the easiest path to new customer acquisition.

besides some solutions being unshareable, this conviction ignores the second-order consequence of a given referral moment.

if i enjoy the taste of a burger at Joe’s Burger Shack, but the service was slow and it was expensive, i might still recommend it to you but if you don’t love the experience it will cost me social capital.

there is X volume social capital between any two people and it’s only replenished when a prior outflow pays itself back with interest.

many people, marketers included, specialize in expending the social capital of their customers and never “pay back” the net trust lost by referrals made under duress.

do the math

however you acquire customers, there’s a cost in achieving their attention. but instead of calculating just the dollar amount, consider the currency, too.

The post All Acquisition is Paid appeared first on Ryan Kulp.

Warren Buffet popularized “moats” as competitive differentiators. if nobody crosses your moat, you win.

here are a few moats to consider developing at your company, and my predictions on their sustainability.

capital

in real estate, the cash to start (e.g. buy a building) is where most aspiring property owners get stuck. but once you own a home or 10, it’s relatively easy to:

• acquire customers (Airbnb, Zillow, Craigslist)
• repair damages (property management services)
• scale (debt / leverage)
• stay compliant (inspectors, back office tools)

real estate is not a tough industry to be in, per se, but it is a tough industry to get into, thanks to the capital moat. if you’ve ever heard the phrase “the rich keep getting richer,” they do! thanks in part to real estate.

Ryan’s warning: access to capital is increasingly democratic. REITs also provide entry to real estate ownership at competitive returns with no cash minimums. within minutes of setting mine up i was a co-owner in 74 buildings.

intellectual property

there are a couple types of IP. a patent, trademark, or copyright is a legally enforced variant that makes it annoying for competitors to clone what works. at Fomo we have a few dozen pieces of such IP.

another type of IP is a trade secret, like the formula to Coca-Cola or an algorithm that increases a system’s efficiency.

the IP moat affords its creator “best at something” status by lending its creator “only at something” credentials.

Ryan’s warning: the essence of IP is innovation. thus the logical conclusion of protecting an “innovative way to do X” is someone else creating an even better way to do X. historians began documenting the fastest mile run in the 1850s. for 100 years, nobody could break 4 minutes. then Roger Bannister did it in 1954, followed by John Landy who beat Bannister’s record just 46 days later. will your invention defend you for 100 years, or 46 days?

operations

society will pay credence to Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and a handful of others for another millennia.

these entrepreneurs exemplify the operator moat, capitalizing on rare outlier abilities to execute on visions that change the world.

this strategy works because it relies on things that don’t change:

• most people are lazy
• most people are unwilling to delay gratification
• most people don’t believe in themselves
• most people procrastinate

when a software developer builds an app, they’ve immediately established a moat around 5 or 6 billion people who will never learn to code. not because they can’t, but because they won’t. too much negative self talk, too much inequality, too much circumstance.

innovation that spites expected human behavior is an unfair advantage because it bakes itself directly into the solution’s existence.

Ryan’s warning: an old saying about ancient empires is the “Sun never sets.” although we live in a post-conquest world, Amazon is arguably the new Roman Empire and legislators are beginning to notice.

someday, regulators may attempt to “correct for” asymmetrical operators by breaking up global corporations and catalyzing a return to localism. if that happens, it won’t matter if some one is capable of building a monopoly.

why moats matter

first, take a step back. moats don’t matter unless an enterprise intends to last.

the average company lifespan is 10 years, enough to take care of a family for a generation and make a few founders rich, with cash or stories or otherwise.

but if your enterprise intends to exist in, say, 50 years, a moat is not a nice to have. it’s a pre-requisite. look no further than Coca-Cola.

a layman says, “they just sell sugar water.” and they do sell sugar water. but they don’t “just,” and that is the entry point to understanding their moat. i won’t attempt to articulate Coke’s brand here, but a few things stick out:

• first to market (Pepsi will always be derivative)
• linked to American culture (most sought after “tribe” in the world)
• recipe is a secret (allegedly only 2 executives know it)
• enough capital to acquire would-be threats (which they’ve done 11+ times)

still think the strategy to beat Coke is with better quality sugar?

how to choose a moat

to find a focal point for your competitive advantage, work backwards.

1. what barriers did you overcome to succeed in your industry?
2. are those barriers becoming more or less relevant for new entrants?
3. can you create a new barrier?

most people start at #3, throwing capital at the problem, filing thousands of patents, or hiring wunderkind talent.

but maybe you just need to be first. maybe you should align with a shift in the culture. or maybe just stockpile cash, earn interest, then bet the farm when a market is vulnerable.

you can also refactor the above mentioned moats.

at Fomo, for example, we think customers == IP. we’re betting that humans are loyal creatures (things that don’t change), high quality customer service builds great relationships (scarcer than money), and a bold vision makes operators interchangeable.

we don’t need the best pricing, the most funding, or a famous Gary Vaynerchuk figurehead to win market share, because we have a moat.

what do you have? choose wisely.

The post Choose your moat wisely appeared first on Ryan Kulp.

in a past life i was a musician. i performed 100s of times. this year i’m revisiting my passion as i travel.

in Chiang Mai i recorded Juvenile. in Dubai i wrote 90’s Kid. and last month i produced 2 more songs in Madeira Island, Portugal.

today, my new EP Me Me Me debuts.

warning: the music isn’t very good. but i’ll walk through each song to pitch another kind of appreciation.

90’s Kid

this was a fun track. my friend CJ murdered the bridge and made it 10x better.

i never appreciated “nostalgia” until Don Draper articulated it so well. it’s a Greek mash up of ‘homecoming’ and ‘pain,’ thus the pain of old, secure memories.

after wrapping my head around the feeling of nostalgia, i felt comfortable unleashing it in a song.

in pre-writing i jotted down the following:

• MMMBop
• early curfew / digital stopwatch
• Pokemon
• Carson Daly / TRL
• slow internet, no Wikipedia

using these reference points, the song sort of wrote itself.

since i’m traveling with a ukulele, i used beach-y sounding chords and improvised the bass, drums, and keys while in the studio.

for more 90’s Kid lyrical analysis, go here.

Insomniac

in 2018 i bought two, 10-lesson packages from a local piano instructor and missed 1 of my appointments.

after 19 lessons i began tinkering with a few riffs. one is pop, the other is this thing, whose ending is reminiscent of Something Corporate.

what i’m trying to communicate in this song is not that i’m depressed (i’m not), but simply that i’m wired differently from most people.

Insomniac is a “take it or leave it” overview of my decision tree framework. it actually echoes this essay, highlighting the downsides (vs the perks) of sociopathic tendencies.

for more Insomniac lyrical analysis, go here.

Mediocre Man

this song isn’t the first time i’ve shared my life story in verse format.

anyone who’s listened to my albums over the years knows a few things:

• i began learning guitar at age 13
• i practiced for hours, mostly while home alone
• i tried to get famous

of course, none of this worked out and i’m not alone. most guys who know guitar, started as a teen and hoped to get famous.

so what i put together in this track was not so much a unique story, but an insight i’ve drawn from my otherwise average upbringing: i’m mediocre.

sounds country, right? gross. i hate country.

the point this song is trying to make is: if i can do it, anyone can. where “it” is make more money than i need, marry up, get ripped, and travel.

i also attempt to highlight man’s “God-shaped hole.” religion aside, we’re all subject to this phenomenon, and it’s worth examining how you fill yours. typical side effects include workaholism, lust, alcoholism, and prestige.

on a lighter note, the ending of this song attempts to pay homage to an old Matchbox Twenty single.

for more Mediocre Man lyrical analysis, go here.

Me Me Me

enlightened listeners will spot a pattern… this album is about me. aesthetically i use language “I’m …” in every song to make the theme as painful as possible.

Me Me Me is introspection, self deprecation, and self-aggrandizement wrapped up in 1 orange clickable square on iTunes, Spotify, etc.

it’s also true. for better or worse, every limerick in Me Me Me is real.

most great songwriters, write fiction. i haven’t figured out how to do that yet. but i’m hoping Me Me Me is the final chapter in my volume of overly personal, mediocre music.

my next studio session is this October in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. maybe i’ll do a better job. maybe i’ll call the next album Other People.

to listen to all my music, go here.

The post Introducing “Me Me Me” appeared first on Ryan Kulp.

a simple tune for a simple idea.

while in Kuala Lumpur this week, reading about the greatest financial heist in Malaysian history, i’m reminded we can do anything we put our minds to.

i recorded this song at Greenhouse Studio. between sessions i ate with my bare hands at Ipoh Old Town, because that’s what Malays do.

listen

click play and follow along below. or get it on iTunes, Spotify, Bandcamp, etc.

read

verse 1
i’m a man
father taught me: work as hard as i can
said son you’re mine
make me proud or die trying
so i told my hands
bare it all ‘til you understand
why i’m on this earth
long enough to write this next verse

sippin’ on port
20 years aged on a weekday morn’
thinking ‘bout monkeys on Mount Batur
surfin’ the coast of Portugal
rooftop dinner in Shanghai
desert safari in Dubai
these are the fruits of my work
now it’s time to get yours

pre chorus
somebody asked me
how do you do it
when you say all the thoughts in your head
deleted their message
here’s what i say

chorus
we don’t make excuses
regrets are just for losers
give us a problem
we’re bound to work it out
trying to distract us
we just keep our focus
gotta remind them
we make our own luck

verse 2
excuse me for trying to rap right now
i’ve just got a lot to say, got some facts right now
if you think you can’t do something, man you’re probably right
if you’re bold and believe in yourself you get spite
from the haters and ‘negators we can call ‘em now and laters
they don’t achieve a single thing, they just sit around and dream
if you’re losing they’ll give up on you
when you’re winning wannabes will cuddle up on you

cuz here’s the thing: nobody wants to face their own fallacies
chase a dream over guaranteed salary?
like “are you crazy?!” guess what, i’m retarded
OCD, Tourette’s, insom– don’t get me started
yeah i never took a guitar lesson, here we are
bob your head to the short B section
higher pitch raise the energy that’s my confession
class dismissed this concludes our music theory lesson

pre chorus
when somebody asks you
how do you do it?
achieve all the goals in your head
ignore the message
you know what to say

chorus
we don’t make excuses
regrets are just for losers
give us a problem
we’re bound to work it out
trying to distract us
we just keep our focus
gotta remind them
we make our own luck

outro
we make our own luck
and we don’t give a F****

go forth

this song is dedicated to sociologists, psychologists, liberals, and everyone else who spends their lives convincing the unfortunate that they are victims.

you are not a victim — you are a champion.

The post We Make Our Own Luck appeared first on Ryan Kulp.

let mental prison be any conviction that has a negative impact on our lives.

whenever i’m asked how i accomplish X or Y, my answer (“mindset”) rarely satisfies the inquirer because mindset is not a checklist of errands.

in this piece i’ll reach into my black box^[2] and share principles that produce results people seem to want to emulate.

always / never

if you’ve ever been fat and then skinny, lazy and then hard-working, or late and then on-time, you are acutely aware of the power of habits.

everyone has habits, good and bad, like brushing our teeth or going to the strip club. and some habits are easier to form (or break) than others.

as we age, our tolerance for habits we like and don’t like decreases. we’re more annoyed that we are fat and single at say, 34, than when we were 21 and “would get in shape after graduation.”

and here’s what we do about it: we attempt to break (or form) new habits with tools like Always and Never:

• i’m never going to drink again
• i’m going to work out every morning
• i’m never going to forgive him
• i’m always going to read before bed

but since humans are fallible, we are incapable of leveraging these tools correctly. so when the system inevitably breaks, we go back to our old ways, eating Snickers and watching re-runs of Lost.

i personally battled with this mental prison through a temporary embargo on my drinking. for 4 months in 2019 i didn’t have a drop of alcohol, and didn’t miss it either. i got in great shape, lost ~28 pounds, and wrote a book about it.

then i spent a month in Italy. suddenly my “never drink” habit was challenged by two objective truths: Italian wine is cheaper than bottled water, and i love Italian wine.

if i were a masochist, i could have ignored objectivity and abstained from alcohol in the same way i abstain from hookers. but a trick called “moderation” afforded me the ability to indulge in something i enjoy, still improve my personal fitness, and remain married.

the pseudo science behind the Always and Never toolbelt is it helps us demonize things we don’t want in our lives, and Infatuate with things we want more of. but is demonizing a glass of fermented grapes, reasonable? is pretending to obsess over a smelly gym, 7 days a week at 7am, normal?

to build (or break) habits that stick, lean into your inadequacies. this is why 1x /week “cheat days” work. it’s not so much about your body being “shocked” by extra carbs or sugar as it is about maintaining your sanity.

conditional thinking

a couple months ago i began teaching myself to speak Korean. i don’t have specific reasons to pursue this endeavor, but i wrote a few down in my notebook anyway:

• help the intelligence community, e.g. by hacking a North Korean website
• give a presentation at a Korean tech conference
• watch Old Boy without subtitles
• be interviewed on a Korean talk show as one of those weird white guys who speaks Korean

between my daily vocabulary and grammar studies i watch YouTube videos by peers further along than me, describing their journey and sharing tips. then i skim a garbage pail often referred to as the comments section.

“no WONDER you learned to speak so well, you took an immersive class… i wish i knew Korean but i don’t have anyone to practice with where i live… well YEAH you learned quickly, you got to fly to Korea for 4 weeks!!”

and on and on.

these YouTube warrior losers are practicing what i call conditional thinking by deflecting blame (for their lack of learning) on circumstance.

“IF i could solve X (difficult external circumstance), THEN i would Y (easy personal responsibility).”

there is no magic spice in the air that teaches you a language simply by being in the target country. i would know, as i’ve been to 30+ countries and can only say “thank you” in 3 of them.

to avoid conditional thinking, first allow the thought to express itself: “if i didn’t have to work long hours, i would have time to go to the gym.” then attack, or ignore, the circumstance (long hours):

• attack by quitting your job, getting a new one, telling your boss “no,” hitting the gym at lunch time, etc.
• ignore by having coffee after dinner, exercising before work, or finding contentment in being fat

the only guarantees in life are death, taxes, and sub-optimal circumstances creating friction between you and your goals. the only option is to do something about it.

titles

i’ve been called a class clown, musician, inmate, CEO, marketer, product manager, worship leader, person, cracker, f-ing retard, writer, bad computer programmer, founder, volunteer, and many other titles.

most people choose their favorite title and then build an identity around it. they constrain themselves to specific behaviors, zip codes, accents, political leanings, and diets that they believe match up with the fake title they’ve chosen.

but why live in a tiny NYC apartment because you are a “starving artist” when you could live on a ranch and paint the sunset every evening? why vote democrat or republican just because you’re insert skin color?

i have never allowed myself to be defined by a title. i am not a marketer, developer, or anything. i am a guy who enjoys iced coffee. and that bothers people who prefer i fit into a box, because they are in a box and misery loves company.

explore a cross-section of disciplines, ideas, and environments, lest titles ban you from their entry.

conclusions

releasing yourself from these mental prisons will probably take more than 20 minutes. i spent years thinking i was a loser, that i was unlucky, that i was genetically inferior.

i still believe i’m unlucky and mentally ill. but i also don’t allow those circumstances to prevent achievement, and neither should you.

to begin your jail break, investigate recent thoughts or convictions that negatively impacted your life. just by doing this you will be more mindful than most of your friends.

next, figure out the prison to which these thoughts belong:

• always / never (extreme demonization or infatuation)
• conditional thinking (blaming circumstance)
• titles (suppression of identity)

finally, deconstruct why you feel that way.

is being a “new dad” (title) just a coping mechanism to avoid pursuing your entrepreneurial dreams? do you want to learn to code, but can’t afford the education? or maybe you miss your estranged mother, but promised to “never” talk to her again and it’s killing you.

i don’t know your burdens, but these lenses can help release yourself from them. be free.

The post Mental Prisons appeared first on Ryan Kulp.

in March 2016 we acquired Notify. over the next five months i learned how to write technical specs through trial and error, for a dev team that worked while i slept.

the essence of a good spec? minimal ambiguity.

today i’m shipping a course to help non-technical marketers and business people manage their technical counterparts.

if you:

• work on a team alongside developers
• founded a company or side project with developers
• already hired a developer but aren’t managing them well

this course may help.

developer lingo

in rapid fire i describe 30 important pieces of software terminology. when you speak the same language as your developer counterparts, you get more done.

spec writing

this is the holy grail of developer communication. articulate what you want clearly and your product ships. if you don’t it goes over budget or doesn’t get finished at all.

data modeling

since this is a large subject, i merely introduce it in v1 of the course. as students submit feedback i’ll add more lectures outlining how to think about database architecture and how to illustrate it for developers.

wireframing

one of my favorite aspects of product planning, wireframes are a high leverage tactic to visually explain what you want, further reducing ambiguity from your vision.

hiring and negotiating

i walk through the pros and cons of paying developers hourly vs flat-rate, and how you can lock in the latter arrangement. we also discuss what development needs warrant full time employees or agencies vs contractors.

management

how do you keep a developer on track daily, weekly, monthly? we’ll walk through a few tools and techniques to stay on the same page while also reducing distractions so developers can do their best work.

scaling and empowerment

over time, the ROI of great engineers compounds: they become an expert at your product, and an expert at your personal tastes. in this section we talk about how to keep developers motivated to stick around and unlock this benefit.

check out the course and enroll here.

The post How to manage developers appeared first on Ryan Kulp.

let learning be the process of making something difficult, easy.

to test this, think of a skill you have. whether playing guitar or typing on a computer, you’ll probably agree you can do it effortlessly. but when you learned to type, your brain hurt. so what happened?

it starts with temporal vs permanent memory stores. in nerd terminology this is our RAM vs hard drive. first we insert something to our RAM, say a 4-digit code for the cafe’s bathroom door. if we recite that code enough times — perhaps because we have diarrhea — it transitions to our hard drive.

for the last few months i’ve experimented with methods to optimize this recitation step, to learn new skills as efficiently as possible, without repetitive bowel problems.

following are premature insights.

memorization

in Korean the word 공격, pronounced “gong-gyuk,” means attack.

i could move it to my permanent memory store through recitation alone, say 1-5x /week for a few months. this is the essence of SRS, or spaced repetition systems.

but since i need thousands of words for a basic-level vocabulary, i can’t afford to spend 5-10 minutes learning each one:

7,500 words * 7.5 mins => 937.50 hours (~1 hour /day for 3 years)

realizing this early in my language learning journey, i started playing with mnemonic devices. this is the association of imagery with a concept to make it “stick.”

here’s my device for 공격:

1. in 2016 listened to a sermon in Dallas, Texas from a guy named Pastor Joe
2. he talked about how, whenever he has a serious conversation with someone, he pre-empts the chat with “this is gonna’ get awkward” in Southern drawl where “go-” in “gonna” is pronounced “go”
3. my device for the Korean word, 공격, becomes “gon’ git awkwerd” in my memory store (because attacks are awkward?)
4. the “공” (gong) syllable matches Joe’s phrase just enough to trigger my recall for the second half of the word

although silly and nonsensical, my 공격 link is unshakeable, and i learned the word in fewer than 10 recitations over 3 months ago.

7,500 words * 2 minutes => 250 hours (< 1 hour /day for 1 year)

this optimization cannot be overstated. as of this writing i’m on pace to know 8,295 – 9,069 words by December 31, 2020:

i began studying 111 days ago, learning 1,329 words, for an average of just 11.97 words /day. in the last week i averaged 18 words /day, thanks to the next concept.

local maxima

laypersons enjoy debating a so-called “space” limitation of our brain. empirical evidence demonstrates humans have a lot more room than we give ourselves credit for, however, making the argument a moot point.

so how does this contend with the very real feeling that our brain is fried after just 1 hour of intense study?

in my opinion this is explained by our local vs global maxima. your local [learning] maxima, or daily limit, may require you to stop studying after learning 1 new chord or writing 50 lines of code. but someone else’s local maxima enables them to comfortably learn 5 new chords. so how can we increase our local maxima?

i have two suggestions.

first, instead of assuming only the information you want to absorb is sucking up your quota, imagine that every touch point in your life takes a cut:

• effort you exert choosing an outfit to wear
• advertisements you read
• conversations you have
• calories you consume

the quick judgement here is to consume “less,” but a better answer is to “consume the right amount.” eat too much, sluggish. eat too little, low energy. talk to nobody, depression. talk too much, you’ll be worked up emotionally.

i’ve increased my language learning local maxima by swapping English entertainment (movies, shows) with Korean media. by living in Korea to practice and hear my target language in the background all day. and by dividing my study into reading, listening, writing, typing (not the same as writing), and speaking.

reviewing vocabulary, then switching to grammar, for example, is like instantly making room for dessert at the end of a meal when we are otherwise too stuffed to eat more of the main course.

instead of 40 mins of every subject => brain fry, i can spend 30 mins (vocab) + 30 mins (grammar) => 60 mins of learning, or a 50% increase in my local maxima ((60 - 40) / 40). do this switch-up few times per day and you learn 3x faster than the average person.

my second suggestion is exercise, more often called practice. if you learn 1 word a day for a week, you can probably learn 2 words a day starting the week after. i’m not sure how this works exactly, but our brain seems to condition itself for whatever input we feed it, so long as that input’s frequency is consistent.

maybe it’s also a self-preservation technique. seeking pleasure over pain, our brain paves a “highway” to make learning easier. sometimes i look at a new word in my flash cards just once or twice and it already feels like it’s in my permanent memory store. this did not happen just 100 days ago.

increasing recall

if someone asks your birthday, you respond immediately. if someone asks your dad’s birthday, it might take a couple extra seconds to recall.

let latency be the delay in this request/response cycle of information retrieval. all of us have latency, and all of our latencies are different on a topic by topic basis.

i’ll posit we truly know something when our latency is near zero. early guitar learners, while switching between chords, need more moments than the BPM of a song allows. because they can’t play along in-rhythm they give up, even though every great guitarist experienced this latency in the beginning.

latency is thus a better indicator of learning progress than volume. would you rather be able to switch between chords G, D, Em, and C quickly, or know 12 chords but need 3 seconds to reconfigure your left hand?

messy linear

there’s an expression: “if X were easy, everyone would do it.” let’s extend this to learning: “if X were linear, everyone would do it.”

the reason most of us know how to ride a bike, but don’t know how to wakesurf (barring obvious reasons), is because in bicycling there is a generally flat road and a bike. in wakesurfing there are millions of combinations of wakes, waves, wind, and boat speeds. each permutation significantly complicates the learning experience.

whenever this happens… a seemingly endless collection of variables is present in a discipline… we classify that skill as “difficult.” the recorder is an easy instrument to play, and the violin is difficult.

a more accurate distinction between these skills is that one can be learned linearly, and the other is learned non-linearly.

if you want to learn SQL (structured query language), for example, just spend a few hours on SQLbolt.com going through the lessons in order.

when i learned to code, on the other hand, i did so through a mix of 4am server crashes, accidentally overcharging customers, and punching my wall. there is no book that tells you to do any of these things to learn programming, but doing them was part of my experience nonetheless.

a master teacher is one who creates a simulation — better yet a “mirage” — of linearity to something that is actually not linear at all. this is why whenever you intend to learn a “difficult” skill, drafting a linear-looking study plan is a useful step toward smacking that b**** into place.

summary

here are some skills i’ve learned since childhood:

• riding a bike (linear)
• typing on a keyboard (linear)
• playing guitar, violin, ukulele, mandolin, piano (non-linear)
• programming (non-linear)
• public speaking (linear)

the most recent skill i picked up, programming, took approximately 18 months between September 2015 and spring 2017. my most objective takeaway from that experience was learning how to learn.

now that i’m studying Korean, i’m conscious about “how” i’m learning. doing so will help me replicate what works in future skill-building exercises. i also want to pass along these findings to others.

i’ve created a name for this project: building a conveyor belt to my brain. stay tuned for more insights as i work out the kinks in my learning factory.

The post On learning appeared first on Ryan Kulp.

New Yorkers are entitled to 4 hours per year with the NYPD.

the application lets you specify a borough, so naturally i chose the Bronx. i want to see s*** go down, not tourists jay walking in Times Square.

on February 28, 2014, i went to the 49th Precinct in Pelham Bay.

after waiting 30-40 minutes, i was greeted and equipped with a kevlar vest. basically they said, “don’t say anything, don’t DO anything. we are working, and we will pretend you are not here.”

oh, and you are absolutely not allowed to take any photos whatsoever.

after strapping up we began cruising Eastchester, listening to Beyonce. this went on for 2-3 hours, not the 4 hours promised in the application, but it was sufficient.

what did i witness? a couple traffic violations. but in each case the cops, in quintessential New York style, simply rolled down their windows and yelled at the other driver. no tickets.

i suggest all New Yorkers take advantage of the Ride-Along program. you’ll probably respect the police more afterwards.

The post NYPD Ride-Along appeared first on Ryan Kulp.

between 2010-2019 i aged 19-29. here are the ups, downs, and insights.

2010

sophomore in college at Georgia State University. after barely getting out of high school i had a 4.3 GPA and was living in my grandfather’s extra bedroom about an hour north of Atlanta.

i chased opportunity and worked for Red Bull and Microsoft as a campus rep. i chaired the student programming board and helped spend millions of dollars producing concerts, murder mystery dinners, parties, etc.

on the side i pursued music, writing and collab-ing on songs with Matt Musto who is now known as blackbear. got arrested for the first time.

sentiment: “maybe i can work for a big corporation and buy a house.“

2011

my then-girlfriend booked a surprise dinner at Fox Bros BBQ for my 21st birthday. my friend Marianne came and bought me a gin & tonic. this was the first drink of my life… i waited till i was 21 to try alcohol.

while i never missed school or work because of it, i probably had 1-2 Kraken (rum) + DDP (diet Dr Pepper) daily after class and more on weekends. took my first and last programming class and thought it was impossible.

at work i continued the hustle, now interning at CampusMovieFest and Teach for America. i also started a couple small companies, Mylar Designs and Partipig.

sentiment: “i need a full-time job.“

2012

in February i co-opened a Vietnamese restaurant, We Suki Suki (long story). in May i graduated from school with a marketing degree.

throughout 2010-2012 i moonlit with a few marketing agencies and did over 100 “activations” for dozens of brands like Coca-Cola, Samsung, Paul Frank, Disney, Frito-Lay, and Cartoon Network.

i needed to make a decision: continue the experiential marketing path, transitioning from boots on the ground to office worker, or explore new pastures. i chose option 2, and had exactly two interviews.

interview 1 was with MetLife, to be a financial advisor. they’ll hire anyone for this role, because your job is to squeeze money out of your personal network. how did i learn this? because my “homework” following our interview was to fill out a worksheet with everyone i know and their contact information. i passed.

interview 2 was with athenahealth, to be a traveling implementation specialist. my friend Greg hooked it up, and he ended up working for them for awhile. after a few rounds i was rejected. i don’t recall why. but it stung.

my friend Ty had a birthday in the fall, so a few of us booked a cabin in north Georgia. while there i drafted a short manuscript, Professionalism in Flip Flops, then raised $1,500 on Kickstarter to commission an editor, cover designer, and barcode.

around Thanksgiving 2012 i published the book on Amazon, and heard about a new site for startups called AngelList. i had just heard about startups from a guy named Sanjay who i met at 200 Peachtree where i ran audio-visual.

anyway, Angellist seemed kind of like LinkedIn so i made a profile and applied to some jobs. one of those companies saw my recently published book, hired me, and a few weeks later i moved to NYC to work at a Techstars funded startup, ShuttleCloud.

sentiment: “i am an adult.”

2013

i was team lead on a Windows phone campaign for around 10 weeks and they paid me something like $1,800 /week between Nov-Dec 2012. i saved most of this and invested in Tesla stock around $35 /share in early 2013.

for a few months i lived in Bushwick, Brooklyn and was at the office from ~9a – 8p, learning the ropes and adjusting to life in a new place where i didn’t know anyone. i actually wrote a song about it.

around my birthday (March) i moved to Harlem. since i kept in touch with marketing agencies i worked for in Atlanta, they threw me more Coca-Cola gigs, which i did on weekends in the Upper West Side.

one early morning i was running a ~100 person PR stunt that E! Network hired me to manage, to promote a new reality show about olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte.

our task was to make a bunch of signs with phrases like “swim to me, Ryan” and hold them up outside 30 Rock’s iconic Today Show. we were ready to rumble, until breaking news came in that the Boston Bomber brothers were on the run and a live manhunt was underway. it was April 19, 2013. our stunt was cancelled and i made it to my office by 9am.

months later i had lunch with a guy i worked with at CampusMovieFest and asked him, should i quit my job? he said no. so i stayed.

sentiment: “making money is hard. NYC is expensive. is this real life?“

2014

i quit my job the first week of January, on day 366. i did not have another job lined up. so i learned to freelance and got really good at it.

in March i moved again, to my own studio on 25th / 3rd avenue. my local train station had a bodega inside it so i felt like i made it.

i began working in San Francisco and renting my spot on Airbnb. whenever someone booked it for 7+ days (my requirement) i booked a roundtrip JFK <> SFO flight and slept at the office.

sentiment: “to move up in life, move laterally.“

2015

early year, same deal as before. i quit the new job and began freelancing again, this time with friends. we put a “bow” on it, calling ourselves Sprinkle Labs and operating like a marketing agency.

we peaked at $50k MRR and threw a 3-day hackathon in Detroit. we started building our own products. after i got upset with my co-founder about a feature delay he said screamed “you don’t know s*** about technology!” he was right.

so i left the company, it imploded, and went to Thailand to learn to code. shortly after i was recruited to a VC firm in San Francisco.

sentiment: “one step forwards and two steps backwards.“

2016

my SF apartment had a desk, a monitor, a chair, and a bed. before and after work i studied programming and made no friends beside Justin, thanks to Scott.

we started Fomo in March and launched in August. although it was growing we paid ourselves $0. i continued working full-time for the fund and then for a portfolio company.

i let my 1 year lease expire and moved back to NYC. deleted LinkedIn.

sentiment: “liftoff.”

2017

year was a blur. not sure why. all companies growing, getting smarter and richer. in love with my new apartment. sort of retired.

did a “friend tour” around the country. recorded a new album and performed around the country. spent 6 weeks in Los Angeles at a bootcamp for music production. deleted Instagram.

sentiment: “i should get married.”

2018

proposed to my girlfriend. eloped. decided to travel the world together before settling down in Austin, her hometown.

stopped hanging out with friends. cancelled my cell phone plan and told no one. stopped checking my personal inbox.

sentiment: “what do i want to be when i grow up?“

2019

started a scholarship program, admitted 3 candidates. read dozens of books. started a personal FAQ.

went to a bunch of places, recorded in 4 studios, wrote a book, got richer, launched several new apps and courses. was arrested again.

began studying Korean because most work stuff is no longer challenging. got in shape. started thinking in decades vs years.

sentiment: “i miss NYC.”

2020-2030 (bonus)

i’ve always shared (and then achieved) goals publicly. this year is no different. a few from my library:

• sell Fomo
• invest in more real estate
• draft manuscript for my next book (on competition)
• 1 new “muse” business (Korean board game, course, etc)
• write/record my best song (25+ done, all mediocre)

these aren’t all my goals but they’re the ones i’m willing to share today.

on thinking in decades… by 2030 i want to retire (again), stay in one place for at least 3 months per year, continue not having a phone number, never check email, and speak more languages.

professionally i’m mostly baked. i don’t want to manage > 10 people and i don’t need to make > $1mm /year.

i’m lucky, owe all my success to God, and life is a game. go play

The post A decade in review appeared first on Ryan Kulp.

one of my scholarship candidates took his first 3-day “think week,” inspired by Bill Gates’ off-the-grid solo retreats.

he told me how at first, with no phone or computer to distract him, he was a little stir-crazy. but then he started reading. writing. recording himself. writing some more. getting fired up about his career.

all of us have a little chef inside, an inventor. and it wants to make things. but every time we scroll a news feed, we starve it the resources (headspace) it needs to create.

humans are meant to build, not consume. it’s just easier to consume. few understand this.

The post The itch to create appeared first on Ryan Kulp.

six years ago i ranted that features aren’t buttons, then down-spiraled into some drivel about marketing and specialization.

today we revisit the “build more features” anthem that plagues technology creators everywhere. we start with arguments and counter-arguments.

i want to grow my company, should i build more features?

• yes, because the competition has them
• no, it will make the product too complicated
• yes, because users are asking for it
• no, because users don’t know what they want

the problem with heuristical advice? all of it is true.

good judgment is not the memorization of heuristics, but the ability to pick and choose which ones to apply to a given situation.

here’s another lens with which to examine feature proposals.

magic

these are features that “just work.” users don’t even know they exist.

suppose you build a photo sharing app. by compressing image uploads, users will see images faster, and perhaps spend more time in the app because the experience is smooth.

the more time they spend in the app, the more advertisements they see, the more money you make. image compression is a magic feature.

configuration

these are features users can customize.

extending our photo sharing example, a studio tool with color filters, cropping, rotation, etc utilities is a configuration suite.

when a product lacks the expected configuration options, users bounce to something else.

how to build features

let’s ignore where feature ideas come from… users, dreams, abstractions, whiteboard sessions, ayahuasca.

feature spec in hand, you need to determine whether it should be magical or configurable. put another way, you need to decide if the feature should be visible or invisible.

here are a few ways to think about it.

user profile

if you build an API, your user is a developer. they probably prefer configurations, and will read documentation to learn how to use them.

if you build a camera, you should offer a button to snap photos and focus on hardware. Apple and Samsung have done this for years; their cameras are now 10x better but the user experience is the same.

job to be done

is the feature intended to increase signups? decrease churn? accelerate new user onboarding?

magical features and default configs help onboard new users, but hackable configurations and granular controls help keep them long-term.

i’ve signed up at least a dozen Google Ads accounts, and my PPC readers will nod that the simplified “express” onboarding is a 100% different interface from the regular campaign dashboard.

root cause or symptom

let us assume your feature solves a problem. but how close is it to the metal? does it fix a root problem, or address the symptoms?

at Fomo one of our biggest complaints is, “i made changes, but don’t see them on my site.” this is a caching issue. but should we build magical cache-purging functionality (root problem), or provide users a “purge my cache” button (symptoms)?

it’s easy to say, “always fix the root problem.” but there’s a reason hospitals give patients a morphine drip, even if clicking the button doesn’t do anything.

utility tradeoffs

when you launch a new app, the first 5 features will be adopted by every user. the next 10 will be adopted by most. the next 20 will be adopted by a smaller group. and so on.

at Fomo we’ve launched 200+ features, and we’re lucky if 5-10% of our customer base leverages any given new one.

sometimes building a feature “for the 1%” makes sense, because that 1% could fund 20% of your revenue. other times it’s not worth cluttering the the interface and usability for the other 99%.

in this case you can return to our magic vs configuration approach… build those killer features for the 1%, but make them invisible. everyone wins.

conclusions

i wrote this advice for myself. as a “product marketing” guy i prefer pleasing existing customers (who share us with friends) over bothering strangers on the internet.

that said, i do believe a product can be fully “baked,” and maturity is nothing to be ashamed of. look at Craigslist, reddit, et al.

The post Magic vs Configuration appeared first on Ryan Kulp.

i finally figured out why i hate email.

it’s not as simple as “your inbox is someone else’s todo list.” this implies someone else’s inbox is your todo list. equilibrium.

no, i hate email because nobody’s inbox is my todo list.

here’s my daily email volume:

• send 0-2
• receive 30-50

i’m expected to do 48 things for others that are never reciprocated.

same goes for my Twitter DMs, so today i pulled this trigger:

besides the obvious — less mental clutter — deleting Twitter DMs closes the all-you-can-eat line of communication i once had with 100s of people i don’t know.

what is email?

a lot of apps try to reinvent, replace, or optimize, email. from Superhuman to Slack, Inbox to Mailplane.

but these tools address the symptoms, not the problem. the problem is doing work for free, with time i don’t have.

charging people to send messages… no, to receive an opinion, has been a successful experiment. i’ve donated a nice chunk of $$ to Black Girls Code through this link alone.

but that service is shutting down. what’s next?

fixing email

a few months ago i hired an assistant to help me process email from several inboxes. our current setup: every day she handles what she can, and on Wednesdays she forwards me “Ryan” stuff.

it’s time to increase the intensity.

going forward my assistant will forward me content just 1x /month. i will make an exception for emails from team members. our portfolio has 4 support colleagues in place for daily customer conversations.

my goal: inbox zero less email no email no inbox.

how you can help

question? FAQ me so everyone can read it.

want an opinion? tweet me so everyone can read it.

something else? try my products so i can make more of them.

The post Tyranny of email appeared first on Ryan Kulp.

watching Mad Men would have one believe that marketing, better defined as “anything that attracts customers,” is the byproduct of marketing campaigns.

these campaigns are large-scale, strategically thought-out, brilliantly executed, and sort of “bet the farm” style maneuvers.

well i call BS. a business that grows predictably and sustainably owes its formidability to the accumulation of 100s of tiny tactics that compound.

following are just a few examples from my own portfolio of apps, in the style of Christopher Nolan’s Memento (reverse chronological).

100s of SEO backlinks

every month we see thousands of hits from small blogs, YouTube videos, and social media posts about our products. for years i commented on dozens of these posts with a quick “hey, thanks for featuring us! i’m Ryan, founder of X.” i wrote these comments after receiving a Google Alert. i set up the alerts in ~5 minutes in 2016.

weekly podcast interview requests

i say no to 50% of interview offers. i’ve been on dozens of shows, from EOFire to lifestyle, sales and marketing, technology, micro PE, whatever. got the gigs through friends’ warm referrals. interesting people make interesting podcast guests. i used to drink a lot with friends in the city (SF, NYC) and have a fun personality.

winning “comparison shopping” bakeoffs

one of our growth channels is disenfranchised ex-customers of our competitors. we’re highly visible in “alternative to” search queries. asking for inclusion in a roundup list takes 30 seconds. i believe the best type of customer is a savvy one who does research before buying.

100s of 5-star customer reviews

we’re overflowing with 100s of gushing testimonials. one blog alone has 94 case studies. we publish ~1 case study per week. the system is automated and predictable. a team member learned SQL to find good candidates. a trigger email asks customers for reviews on day ~85 of their subscription. we tested various review-request messages and timing. we paid ~$99 for BetaList to create a bunch of 3rd party review app profiles. we didn’t have time to create profiles on launch day, August 9 2016. i knew customer reviews are important.

free word of mouth

daily signups from people who don’t remember how exactly they heard about us, except “somewhere, maybe a friend idk.” built buzz by sponsoring and hosting Meetup events, even buying pizza in exchange for logo placement in a speaker’s PDF deck. going to startup events with guys from New Jersey instead of relaxing at home. networking from a single dedicated desk at a coworking space. not being afraid to say “hi i’m Ryan, and i work on X. it’s X.com if you want to check us out,” 1,000s of times.

launching in the Korean market

potentially (crossing fingers) speaking [in Korean] at the 2020 digital content marketing summit in Seoul. experimenting with dedicated country partners. our product being taught in a popular marketing course. our product being used by a Udemy competitor in Korea. having dinner with the partner. sending customer a sticker (brand swag). deciding in 2018, “let’s write a blog post and send random people free, Honest Marketer stickers.”

managing a team of autonomous, remote, killers

our VP Engineering, Chris, is incredibly talented and my business partner on ventures outside our “day jobs.” i hired Chris 3.5 years ago. i liked Chris because he submitted a PR on my 2016 open source side project, Pushup Metrics. Chris found the side project on reddit. i saw a “share your side project” mod post late one evening and pasted the link.

11x-ing a sales channel

our Ecwid integration monthly revenue jumped from $38 to $419. Ecwid is just 1 of ~90 Fomo integrations with 10-2,000 customers /each. got featured on the Ecwid marketplace for a full month. scored a single five-star review by personally emailing ~7 customers. asked Ecwid marketing team via 1 sentence email, “how can we get more exposure, we integrated 2 years ago.” one day in August 2017 i was bored; assigned a developer to build Ecwid “just to have it.”

$54k sales while partying on a yacht

offered a lifetime plan daily deal with a private Facebook group that sold ~350 licenses ($54k) while partying with my team on a yacht, racing in the Adriatic’s Barcolana 50. our signed deal with AppSumo got cancelled. built new subscription technology solely to support a daily deal. wanted to raise money for a team retreat. AppSumo was always back of mind. years ago i wrote my first book and submitted it to AppSumo; never heard back.

ranking page 1 for our keyword

around July 2018 we jumped from 10k to 300k monthly impressions for one of our brand names, Fomo, as we moved from Page 2 to Page 1 on Google. a month prior, acquired Fomo.com domain for an undisclosed amount. previous owners rebranded their company. nagged previous domain owners for 2 years. before launching in 2016 we bought “usefomo.com” because it was $10, determined to one day score the real thing.

====

today our brands generate ~$1.5mm in annual sales, investor-free. we count dozens of daily customer signups and spend just ~$450 /month on search ads, ~$100 /month on retargeting, across 6 projects.

we invest profits into new ventures, open source, social commentary, and experiments. i do not know how to execute a large scale campaign.

the so-called butterfly effect is not so much a phenomenon but the observation of compound tactics’ outcomes. my 10 examples above barely scratch the surface; i could easily point to 30 more.

in marketing there is no sword. there is a 4″ blade. start stabbing.

The post Marketing is compound interest appeared first on Ryan Kulp.

breaking news, these ideas are now cancelled:

• masculinity
• identity
• cultural appreciation
• being physically capable
• patriotism
• body language
• jokes
• words themselves
• fairness
• food

masculinity
going to the gym, building muscle, and having confidence used to be applauded. now it earns one the prefix of “toxic,” and is to be avoided. to be an “ally” requires a disgusting body type which (ironically) no female wants to touch.

identity
while race is still immutable (good), the other once-innate characteristic, gender, is now fluid. you may identify as a man, woman, or alien. “boys will be boys” assumes pronouns, thus is transphobic.

cultural appreciation
at my grade school’s cafeteria, Taco Day and Pizza Day were a treat. now they are cultural appropriation. in NYC, white people are not allowed to open a Chinese restaurant. this is racist. (although it is perfectly fine for a Chinese person to open a burger restaurant; simple calculus duh)

being physically capable
although most physically handicapped people seem to not let their ailments get in the way of their life, Thoughtful Liberal Women have determined that even hustling is hateful; a form of ableism.

patriotism
a non-scientific study by me found that everyone with a flag emoji in their Twitter bio is conservative, therefore racist. global citizen is now the only acceptable form of pride in one’s origin.

body language
with the exception of Beyonce, Oprah, Obama, and anyone else who is liberal, the “A-OK” hand gesture is officially a symbol of white nationalism. these are the rules.

jokes
one of our generation’s funniest comedians, Dave Chapelle, went too far in his Netflix special with a metaphorical joke involving gay, trans, and straight people in a car together.

seventeen critics decided his words are “violent” and definitely not funny. millions of audience members are too stupid to understand.

words themselves
“whitelist” and “blacklist” as terms to describe permissions are now racist. the technical acronym “PoC” (proof of concept) is also racist, and perhaps even homophobic. free speech is dead. long live hate speech.

fairness
the closest thing to “fair” is equal application of the law, but evidently that is also not fair. if you haven’t achieved everything you wanted, it is someone else’s fault. for sure. and the government should intervene on your behalf.

food
if you want to murder a defenseless child, “your body is your choice.” but if you want to eat, say, a burger, it better be filled with estrogen. turns out steak and almond milk — not terrorists with nuclear weapons — will end the world.

how did this happen?

the rules above were created by the Tolerant Left, a tribe of social justice activists that fantasize about putting people like me in gulags. it’s impossible to identify them by their physical appearance but spiritually they are often atheist, depressed, and full of hatred.

someone smarter than me once said that the Left depends on a “villain” in order to survive. if there is no shared enemy, they lose the power to unite others around a shared cause. and with the rate at which our world keeps improving, these causes are harder and harder to find.

let’s review just 4 of the world’s biggest problems, each in rapid decline.

world poverty is plummeting

literacy is skyrocketing

infant mortality rate is dropping

average lifespan has doubled

humans are richer, smarter, and living longer than ever before. and we are doing it by working together, innovating, and respecting one another’s differences.

this is all bad news for the Leftist narrative, however, which depends on us believing we are helpless without intervention from The Man. who is definitely Much Smarter than us, and should decide what jokes are funny and what food is OK to consume.

ergo our present state: a fuss about nothing, because everything is amazing.

when does it end?

i do not know, dear reader. i will probably be dead before i’m thrown in a gulag, but i can’t say the same for my next-of-next-of kin.

the Thought Police get stronger every day, willing themselves into positions of power with riots, boycotts, and fake news.

we like to think Truth prevails, but unfortunately dear reader, Truth is also now cancelled. it hurts too many feelings.

how to cope

first, subscribe to Hanlon’s Razor: never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

next, acknowledge that your life and your success and your happiness depend on you. only you. specifically, how you choose to let neurons fire between your ears.

finally, don’t be silent about what you believe in. by writing, talking, thinking, joking, debating, going on a carnivore diet, or respecting biological differences between men and women, you are fighting back. not with violence, but with peace.

the Left will never win, so long as there is no enemy.

The post Politicization of everything appeared first on Ryan Kulp.

we’ve all read at least 2 or 17 blog posts by someone who is leaving San Francisco for greener pastures.

sadly i failed to write my own retrospective when i left in 2016 after a year of working in venture capital, then a portfolio startup, and then founding my own company.

but recently these posts have become… overplayed? obligatory? even self-loathing at times, in that authors seem to feel guilty about writing them.

this weekend i decided to explore what’s happening through a Very Unofficial and Statistically Insignificant meta study. here goes.

methodology

first i found public blog posts written by someone either in the process of moving from San Francisco, or recently moved. no “my friend moved” heresy or “i think i want to move” speculation.

to find these posts i used Google’s Site Search feature to dig into 3 popular publishing platforms: Medium, WordPress.com, and Quora.

site:medium.com "leaving san francisco"

i used a free Chrome extension, MozBar, to download 24 pages of results for keywords including:

• leaving san francisco
• left silicon valley
• goodbye san francisco
• moving away from silicon valley
• etc etc

for good measure i swam into the deep end of search results, aka Pages 5-10, for self-hosted posts by tech-bro.com/ciao-sf.

sample size

after merging ~250 results into a Google Sheet i confirmed which stories were relevant by manually clicking each link. some posts were just vacation recaps or students reflecting on a semester abroad.

after scrubbing we hit n=137. for a copy of all the data go here.

leaving silicon valley metadeta

before we can analyze “why i’m leaving San Francisco” stories for interesting patterns, we need more context.

i decided to grab a few things from each post:

• title
• meta description
• language
• published at (timestamp)
• word count

oh, and every single word, minus “5.3k claps” or “182 comments” type junk.

to do this i first considered HTTP parsing libraries like Mechanize and Nokogiri, however Quora and increasingly Medium use JavaScript to plant elements, e.g. article timestamps, after DOM ready.

Ruby Watir FTW. i wrote a ScraperOfLove utility that spun up a headless browser, visited each url, extracted the attributes above, and spit it out into a new CSV (“stories_clean” tab in data dump).

assumptions

for White Claws and giggles i made 3 predictions before crunching the numbers:

1. people leave San Francisco because it’s expensive, dirty, and dangerous
2. people leave because they get burned out at work
3. people leave because they fail to build a big company

take a moment and make your own predictions before moving on, or just keep reading because this is not that serious.

stats about leaving San Francisco

i don’t know anything about math. let’s start with a few basics.

“custom” == custom website, e.g. a self-hosted WordPress. i tried more CMS site searches like “ghost.io” but it appears they don’t index non-vanity URLs.

this is unfair (correlation vs causation) because blogging, particularly on Medium, has exploded since 2016. still makes me snicker.

“keyword” == search query by which i found the post on Google. there is obviously some overlap here.

trend analysis

the basics suggest two things:

1. people are increasingly leaving San Francisco
2. Medium.com, an unofficial non-profit, is the best place to write “your truth” for maximum exposure

but what else can we infer? i want to know why people are leaving.

i combined all 127,252 words (raw here) and with another line of Ruby created a word frequency map:

{"the"=>5162, "to"=>3880, "and"=>3657, ...}

to remove filler words i eyeballed a sorted version and extracted only those words with 5-125 occurrences. i plugged them into MagicCloud and created this totally useless illustration:

a better solution would be some ML or sentiment analysis that scans entire phrases. or at least some regex. but i ain’t got time fo’ dat.

so i threw the frequency map in a Google Sheet and looked for patterns the old fashioned way: with my bare hands (+ =SUMIF()).

i grouped my queries by theme:

• cities – where are people going to, or coming from?
• states – same as cities
• regions – (Northwest, East Coast, etc)
• titles – what roles did these people have?
• topics – lifestyle preferences, current issues

here’s what that looks like… word on the left, # mentions on the right.

cities / states / regions
without Real Data Science it’s impossible to understand where people are moving to, but Portland’s disproportionate mention count && smaller population suggest San Franciscans have a soft spot for the “city where young people go to retire.”

NYC most popular mention by far
anecdotally the SFO > NYC move is quite popular, and exactly what i did in 2016. for the bored my entire career: ATL > NYC > SFO > NYC > ATX.

jobs and roles
i was surprised at how seldom “junior” was written, e.g. “jr developer.” either employees stick around awhile before calling it quits on San Francisco, or they lie about their job title.

reasons people leave San Francisco

here we look at just the “topics” results from our frequency word map. after reading at least 20 of these posts as a normal human, i observed they usually go something like this:

1. moved here to do Y
2. Z happened which changed my Y
3. tried A and then B but now i’m C
4. going to try and do Y somewhere else

by consolidating the topics into categories i think we get a peek into narratives #2-3. here i’ve done just that.

check how i’ve grouped each topic into 1 of 4 categories here (visuals tab).

now, leaving SF on account of it being expensive is obviously a sound reason. but according to Investopedia, NYC is still the #1 most expensive city in the USA. yet with NYC as the leading “city” mention in our story collection, it sort of makes you wonder…

if you’re leaving San Francisco because it’s expensive, why would you move to NYC, where it’s even more expensive?

this didn’t sit right with me.

caveats to “goodbye San Francisco” stories

my personal opinion, backed by absolutely no data, is that social issues like homelessness, poor sanitation, harassment, and lack of safety is the real culprit to San Francisco’s mass exodus. but when i tried to find this in the content (searching “piss” or “dirty”, for example) i got near nil.

maybe techies don’t want to speak poorly of a city that made their career. or maybe we’re in denial. you decide.

another insight from category aggregation is how highly “politics” and namely, Trump, were included in someone’s written decision to leave San Francisco.

by no means am i claiming anyone needs to like the president, but California and San Francisco in particular are run by some of the most progressive democrats in our nation’s history. thus i’m curious how conservatives or Trump have anything to do with one’s departure.

finally, failure. i grouped “funding” and “unicorn” and “equity” (among others) into the success at work category. given 90% of startups fail, i find that just 15% of leave-reasons being related to professional success to be a little low, slash unbelieveable.

that said, i’ve also met engineers (moreso than marketers) who’ve lived in the valley 10+ years, jumping from startup to startup, each running out of money on a near perfect 18 month schedule.

summary

if there’s one thing magical about San Francisco it is this: you can move there, fail over and over again, never “make it,” and never leave either.

if you are smarter than me and want to do something with the data, please go ahead.

to add an article i missed to the index, tweet at me. to complain about my arithmetic, leave a comment.

The post Why I’m Leaving San Francisco (meta study) appeared first on Ryan Kulp.

as a kid i went to church every Sunday. around age 12 i learned something… the pastor’s kid is usually f*cked up.

at church, their dad is patient and forgiving. at home, he yells and holds grudges. the English word for this is “hypocrisy” but the sentiment is universal: betrayal.

observing man’s fallibility is just one of many milestones on a child’s journey to adulthood. realizing “things aren’t always as they seem” describes this gap between naiveté and maturity.

but now we must invert. things aren’t always as they seem… to seem.

reasons, not excuses

in The Effective Executive Drucker writes:

There are indeed no great men to their valets. But the laugh is on the valet. He sees, inevitably, all the traits that are not relevant, all the traits that have nothing to do with the specific task for which a man has been called on the stage of history.

Steve Jobs was not put on this earth to be a rockstar father to Lisa Brennan. nor Warren Buffet to be monogamous. or Trump to model humility.

nobody argues that Gandhi should have been a religious guru or MLK Jr. an actor. yet we’re quick to prescribe feel-good behaviors on ourselves.

without excusing hypocritical pastors we ought to wonder, in every scenario: who is the joke on, really?

avoiding purposelessness

it’s impossible to know our purpose, but by borrowing Carl Jacobi’s inversion technique we can avoid that which is definitely not our purpose.

a few things i was not created to do:

• shave (don’t own a razor)
• play sports
• feed homeless grownups (donate only to children)
• rescue animals
• enjoy hot tea
• metabolize carbohydrates (fuel the beef economy)

these plus 100s of other items on my non-purpose list unlock the ability to pursue whatever is my purpose. specifically they give me at least 15 hours per week to figure out why i exist.

what would you accomplish with thousands of extra hours per year?

content with rough edges

for years i maintained a martyrish identity of being “equally wholesome to everyone” (#EWTE).

Uber driver wants to chat? fine, i’m a conversational guy. new acquaintance is 25 minutes late to our meeting? no worries, i’m a patient zen master.

so what if it ate me alive sometimes? i’m Ryan Kulp! i am (checks notes) friendly, outgoing, energetic, kind, goofy, and don’t take things too seriously.

but here’s the rub. i am each of these things, just not to all people.

you can’t un-see it

sometimes i wake up at 4am and take a taxi to the airport for a 12 hour flight. in this haze i am not a jerk to ignore my driver’s questions; he is the driver, not my wife. our relationship does not merit a chat.

in fact it is by taking the 4am flight instead of the 2pm flight that i arrive early to my Airbnb. which means i can sleep well before delivering a presentation.

now let’s highlight a single word from Drucker’s riff: “he sees, inevitably, all of the traits that are not relevant.”

it is inevitable i leave Impression A on the Uber driver in order to leave Impression B on the audience. a layman finds this duplicitous; a rational man calls it the theory of constraints.^[1]

following are more examples.

in the 2010 Korean thriller The Housemaid, a young au pair compliments her rich clients’ daughter for being so polite. the daughter replies, “my father told me to always be polite. it’s considered good, but is actually the most self serving.”

some department stores have “70% off ” signs that never go away. the product sells out, then it’s restocked.

a street vendor in Thailand thinks she “tricked the stupid Americans” for accepting her 150 baht ($4.80 USD) price instead of negotiating.^[2]

the joke, dear reader, is on the maid. it’s on the bargain shopper. it’s on the artisan. and it’s on you, me, and everyone else who isn’t in touch with their purpose.

choose the right battles

by employing your talents on that which only you are uniquely capable of, you honor yourself and others.

i’m glad Steve Jobs didn’t repent to Lisa and become a stay at home dad. the world is a better place for their sacrifice.

footnotes
1. the driver is a bottleneck to performance.
2. in 2015 i bought a leather, hand made business card holder in Chiang Mai for $3 USD. it’s been my only wallet ever since. negotiating with the unfortunate is evil.

The post The joke is on the valet appeared first on Ryan Kulp.

today i’m releasing my new book, Fitness for Hackers. it’s for men in technology who struggle with their health. i wrote it for me.

in college i hit a record low, err high, when i broke 238 pounds as a 5′ 11″ idiot with shaggy hair and no future. this was painfully clear when a YouTube video i created with my girlfriend, went viral for a day.

i moved to New York City a year later and told myself i’ll do better. in Harlem i joined a gym for $9 /month, ran Central Park 2-3x /week, and lost 62 pounds in 6 months.

(i actually lost ~55 pounds, then had an allergic reaction to a dental cleaning and couldn’t chew food for a week, which yielded a short-lived 7 pound drop.)

then what happened? i slowly gained it all back.

excuses

for a long time i made excuses about why i couldn’t keep the weight off.

• travel too much –> inability to have a routine
• twentysomething New Yorker –> drinking culture
• career ambitions –> networking events with finger foods

then a fit friend of mine, Scott, wanted to hang out. he said: “let’s get a protein smoothie.” i had never been asked to meet for protein, only liquor and pizza.

this began a sequence of “aha” moments and experiments. the winning end result of those experiments is this book.

why me?

i know little about omega-3 oils, lactic acid, and all the other stuff your neighborhood personal trainer likes to talk about.

instead i’ve taken an empirical approach: does this behavior lead to strength gain, or loss? does this type of food give me more energy, or less?

since all my readers have already read 10 fitness books, and are still fat, i realized something is missing. that something is the tie-in to what we do every day… building products, measuring outputs, and using our brains.

the program

Fitness for Hackers is a 3 month program you can run on loop. just like software, iterations and tweaks are expected.

first, pick a diet. the “seafood” strategy (see food and then eat it) doesn’t work.

second, learn to spend the minimum viable time in the gym so you don’t burn out. but lift to failure, and track everything. i show you how.

third, measure gains and losses to adjust your regimen as needed. from lipid panels to body scans, i share my own results.

sounds simple, right? that’s the first rule: simplicity.

most fitness programs don’t work because they’re too complicated. or they take too much time. or they rely on voodoo science like taking cold showers when you wake up. Fitness for Hackers is the antithesis to these advices.

get started

this is the first approach to fitness with a hacker mindset.

we’ll use kanban, mobile apps, and spreadsheets to turn our body into a test tube, and become our best selves in the process.

join me.

The post Code, Lift, Repeat appeared first on Ryan Kulp.

in light of car-owning hypocrites who complain about carbon footprints, today we discuss a Much More Actionable endeavor: increasing your excellence footprint.

to understand how this works, first imagine behaviors and traits that decrease one’s excellence:

• listening to audio in public without headphones
• being fat but ordering a Frappuccino
• having kids without enough money to afford them a good life

according to Tony Robbins we can only effect positive change when our energy level is in a “peak state.” here are a few more catalyzing ideas in case your feathers aren’t ruffled yet:

• getting jealous when your friend becomes successful
• thinking Steve Scalise deserved to be shot by a Bernie Bro
• believing you are a victim for any reason

start with empathy

one of my favorite Seinfeld moments is when George says “I can sense even the slightest human suffering.”

like George, it doesn’t please me to point out flaws in human nature. i want all of us to achieve our potential. but getting better starts with admitting we have a problem.

let’s put excellence into practice.

first steps to personal betterment

the easiest way to become more excellent is to be less of a Piece of Sh*t.

do you snort cocaine? hit your wife? steal from your employer? stop doing that. you’ll immediately be a better person.

second step to personal improvement

James Altucher has spent years articulating the compounding effect of improving 1% every day. from his blog:

what does this mean for you and me? some ideas:

• wake up earlier, or work longer (5p, 5:15p, 5:30p, etc)
• less alcohol, then only on weekends, then 1x /month, etc
• 2 bench press sets, then 3, then more weight…
• tip 20%, then round up a dollar

personal excellence is a function of addition and subtraction. but not all at once, just a little bit each day.

7 billion losers

maybe this is harsh. after removing kids and retirees there are probably closer to 6 billion losers.

“to have what others don’t, do what others won’t.”

i’ve invested wasted a lot of time trying to help people help themselves, only to realize my effort was making me a worse person.

for this reason i’ve retracted a handful of ways people were previously able to get in touch:

• email → auto replies, personal assistant, liberal use of Archive
• social media → disabled Direct Messages, deleted accounts
• networking → say “no” to every coffee, attend only 1-2 events /year
• relationships → changed my phone number, disabled iMessage

some of these changes are a year old; i finally disabled iMessage 3 days ago. a man who does not take his own advice is a charlatan.

what’s on your tombstone?

Tombstone frozen pizza ran this campaign for awhile. in advertising this is called a big idea, alongside Got Milk and Think Different.

just two questions:

1. do you want to have a big idea?
2. will you get it at brunch?

yesterday i granted ~$75,000 in scholarships to my growth course. not because i’m nice, but because i’m sick of reading excuses.

here is what will not be on my tombstone: lazy, quiet, took advice from people who don’t read books.

i will never apologize for pushing, testing, improving. i will never apologize for suggesting you do the same.

The post Your excellence footprint appeared first on Ryan Kulp.

today we check out personal finance strategies for couples.

my opinions are predicated by 1 assumption: neither you nor your partner are addicted to heroin.

merge, or not merge

United States marriage laws afford couples the ability to merge finances and legally spend all the money earned by the other person.

couples may also choose not to merge their finances, keeping legal and potentially even visible access (passwords) to oneself.

what’s right for you may not be right for me, but in this essay i’ll explain why my wife and i chose Option A: merge baby merge.

table stakes

giving advice on money and relationships is not my forte, so the least i can do is first outline inherent difficulties in the subject at large.

here are a few realities you’ll encounter no matter what personal finance strategy you implement:

• one spouse will always have more expensive “tastes”
• one spouse will consume more food, alcohol, fashion, subscriptions
• one spouse will be more generous
• one spouse will be a better saver
• one spouse will worry more about money
• one spouse will earn more money

while by no means exhaustive, this list illustrates the endless combinations of Money Sentiment. more importantly, it stresses that you and your spouse will never subscribe to the same one.

going forward i’ll use the term Money Sentiment to refer to this unfortunate truth.

separation breeds resentment

a married couple with separate finances — whether they’ve been together 1 year or 50 — make money decisions as if they’re dating. spouse B pays for dinner, maybe you split the rent, occasionally spouse A buys spouse B a gift.

in a financially siloed couple, if Spouse A earns more but spends less, Spouse B will fantasize about income reversal. if Spouse A buys a nicer car but drives less, Spouse B will resent the under-utilization. if Spouse A earns more but is less generous, Spouse B will label them miserly. and so on.

left unchecked this “mine and yours” mentality can spiral into “mine vs yours,” which i think happens 100% of the time on a long enough horizon. it also prevents couples from achieving at least one dimension of intimacy: The Red Button.

my red button

before marrying my wife we had a lot of conversations about “what love is.”

my definition is giving someone a big red button, with instructions that pushing it would destroy you, then saying “please don’t push it.”

put another way, my definition of love is Vulnerability; complete and utter surrender to your partner.

as non-married couples we gradually ease into this subconsciously. a few months into dating you might share how much your rent costs, then how much money you make, what debts you owe, your hopes and dreams, and maybe even online passwords.

humans are simultaneously addicted to increasing and decreasing our level of vulnerability to others. such is the magic of falling in love.

but couples who don’t share financials, don’t experience this aspect of vulnerability. which is crazy, because money is the most important driver of our lifestyle. (not happiness, self worth, or goodness, but our lifestyle)

merge

combining personal finances instantly makes you more vulnerable to one another. it’s also kind of exciting.

first, your bank account gets bigger. if you’re like me and live below your means, seeing that imaginary number get higher, faster, is great for peace of mind.

merging finances also intensifies your cash flow. those 5-10 subscriptions you were used to seeing hit your account have now doubled. suddenly you won’t recognize every charge, and you’ll swear the new items are more expensive than stuff you paid for on your own.

this is all part of the increased vulnerability process. now let’s explore the benefits.

24/7 teamwork

if your finances are separate, you only get to collaborate on money decisions a few times per month. maybe even less often. what caliber vacation should we take? how much can you invest in a new home down payment?

when your finances merge, every decision is made together, even if you don’t have an actual conversation about each one.

it’s like when a company’s co-founder takes the day off, but the other co-founder is still working to increase their share value. being part of a married couple that combines finances feels like that, except 10x better.

but what about…

some people think Money Sentiment differences are irreconcilable. in my “household,” for example, i can attest to being a bigger spender. my wife is more interested in investing.

by combining my go-big mindset with her “buy boring assets” attitude, we benefit from our Money Sentiment differences. couples who share, don’t achieve this synergy.

another concern of the “mine vs yours” crowd is that the lower earning partner will take advantage of the higher earning partner.

to smash this one in the face: if you don’t trust your partner to not F*** you financially, you should not marry them.

you know what’s worse than your partner buying a Bentley, without running it by you first, while you’re at work? it’s your partner buying a Bentley, without running it by you first, with “their money,” and you’re not allowed to be upset.

seek forgiveness, not permission

separate finances explicitly bans concepts like permission or endorsement, which also nullifies forgiveness when taken to its logical conclusion.

there is simply no recompense if your spouse spends “their” money on what “they” want, so long as they pay their portion of the rent. in other words, couples in this paradigm must support a rule that neither partner needs support to follow the rule!

a shared finances couple, however, has a toolbelt of solutions: compromise, negotiation, tradeoffs, and utility. by Utility i mean “pain” and “pleasure” points as described by scientist Dan Ariely.

shared finances increase net pleasure

imagine a group of 4 friends who meet weekly for dinner. according to Ariely’s research the net pleasure is greater if 1 person pays for the entire meal, on an even rotation, than if all 4 group members pay 25% of the bill each time.

this is based on evidence that the pain of pulling out your credit card to acknowledge the inevitable dinner bill has a minimum threshold of say 10 pain points. but whether the bill is $20 or $50, your total pain may increase to just 12 or 15 points, not 20 or 30.

similarly, a couple with different earning vs spending habits may find that a $5 latte makes Spouse A equally as satisfied as a new $50 t-shirt for Spouse B. yet if Spouse A earns more than Spouse B, the net pleasure will be lower in the separate finance couple than the shared.

in both cases Spouse A and Spouse B will “cap out” their pleasure, but in the separated finance scenario there will be extra unused utility on Spouse A’s side of the ledger.

combining differing Money Sentiments unlocks the opportunity to maximize pleasure and reduce pain.

who are you kidding?

when a young couple ties the knot, it may at first appear simpler to keep things separate. not for lack of trust, or differences in spending habits, or fear of being taken advantage of. just because.

but here’s the thing: what if you get divorced?

unless you sign a prenuptial agreement, a divorce in the United States triggers a 50/50 split of everything. which means being married with separate finances is like playing a cruel joke on yourself.

the joke is called Running Around All Day, Thinking You Have A Backup Plan (RAADTYHABP).

there is no Plan B

beginning a new friendship with healthy skepticism that it may not work out, is smart. signing a marriage contract with the same position is asinine.

in exchange for tax, legal, and medical benefits, governments ask married couples to stay married… forever. if you don’t, reversal will be painful and expensive.

akin to the Observer Effect — the act of measuring it changes it — married couples who kick off a permanent relationship with temporality in mind are almost destined for financial drama.

plan B, aka divorce with a few of your own coins, is a distraction to plan A, aka being happy together. in either case, as stated before, you’ll be giving the other side half your coins anyway.

dating vs marriage

i already mentioned how decision-making with separate finances is like dating. following are perks that married couples with merged finances enjoy.

equality
it’s no question that one partner will earn more than the other. but if a marriage is 2 halves coming together, why should one partner live a better lifestyle?

pride
my wife and i operate several businesses, each with their own bank account. we also freelance, have “passive income” projects, and own various equities. recently i found out that one of the accounts she manages had a lot more money in it than i thought, which led to celebration instead of jealousy.

shared burdens
when your money is “your money,” a loss is 100% your loss. if a car breaks down, a family member needs help, or you just plain want to do something nice, merging finances means each hit is only half as painful.

long-term planning
i can’t imagine what it would be like to make 5- or 20-year plans using the calculus of “but my partner will only have $X to spare by then.” one master pot of gold means the future is our oyster, and we share in the joy of creating it.

parenting
i don’t have kids YET, but as a former kid myself i know they’re experts at detecting which parent is likely to say yes to a given proposal. shared finances means my kids won’t be able to favor the “richer” or “more generous” parent.

how to get closer, with money

married couples with separate finances usually get set up that way by the higher-earning partner. the lower earning partner goes along with it because hey, who are they to “take advantage” of the person they love?

ironically, sometimes it is the higher earning partner who is taking advantage. as a southerner once told me, these people “want all the milk without having to buy the cow.”

the question we must ask ourselves, then, is why we’re afraid to commit.

because we can always make more money. we can always trade in our expensive cars or cancel the lease on an overpriced apartment. what we can’t do — at least in the same number of clicks — is reverse a marriage.

letting someone sleep next to you for 50 years, with a drawer full of knives in the next room, is a lot more risky than letting them buy a latte with your paycheck, no?

be vulnerable and grow.

The post Marriage and Finance appeared first on Ryan Kulp.

on Friday i’m moving to Korea.

this will bookend a 14 month, twice-around-the-globe journey i’ve been on with my wife since leaving NYC in January 2019.

why Korea?

i was first introduced to Korean people in 6th grade orchestra. you can speculate as to why that is.

i played violin throughout middle school and high school, becoming first chair my sophomore year but occasionally being demoted to 2nd chair due to “behavior” issues.

by senior year there were no more than 10 non-Asian students in my orchestra class, and most of my peers were Korean. they taught me popular phrases like “do you want to die?” (죽어래) and “idiot” (바보) and “you’re crazy” (이상해).

this, plus dating a Korean girl at the time, got me interested in the culture. i also really like beef, and gal-bi (갈비) is a gateway drug to Korean BBQ.

in college i took 2 Korean classes. i recall nothing except hangul (한글), the Korean writing system. this takes about 90 minutes to learn.

after graduation i tried to investigate Korean culture once more, but a night in jail killed that dream. so i forgot about it, moved to NYC, and went full blast on startups.

fast forward 6 years to March 2019. i was finishing a late night dinner in Bangkok when 2 Korean guys sat down at a nearby table. my wife said something like, “Ryan speaks Korean,” and they insisted i sit with them to chat.

i couldn’t say anything. this created a little pressure, a little tension, in the back of my mind. then i promptly forgot about Korean, again.

until September. i was hiding out in Romania after overstaying my Schengen visa and being detained on a train from Budapest to Vienna. my wife decided to watch a famous Japanese tv drama, Boys Over Flowers, remade into Korean. begrudgingly (at first), i watched it with her.

random vocabulary words came back into focus. even that funny phrase i learned in high school, “do you want to die?”, was screamed 10x per episode by the Very Dramatic High Schoolers.

after a 10 year hiatus, i was hooked on the language once again.

Korean MVP

before committing to something you should test it.

for the past 7 months i’ve spent 2-4 hours /day studying Korean. i only missed one study session, on the evening of a 7-9pm Thanksgiving dinner i attended in Seoul that lasted until 5am at a karaoke bar. i threw up a few times when i got home.

i took a 2-week intensive course in Gangnam and spent another month bouncing between apartments in Seoul neighborhoods Hongdae and Itaewon. i visited Busan on the southern coast, living in Haeundae Beach and working out at Dallas Fitness.

somewhere along the way my wife got interested in the language too, and now our “how was your day” pillow talk includes vocabulary and culture notes. leveling up in language is like playing video games, for adults.

for more of my thoughts on living and working in Korea, see here and here.

what i’ll be doing in Korea

i’ve been subtly and not-so-subtly dropping hints that i will soon exit from the startup world.

although i may never sell a company for a billion dollars, i do feel like i’ve “made it.” all the Jobs To Be Done at a tech company — coding, marketing, biz dev, fundraising, support, management — i get it. and i’ve done it.

in Korea, as i continue to wind down personal day-to-day involvement in our portfolio, i’ll pursue ventures in new industries altogether.

currently i’m exploring:

• selling large (size 13+) shoes to ex-pats
• Mexican food truck
• building more courses
• documentary filmmaking
• writing / recording more music
• niche SEO content sites
• making covers of Korean pop songs

i also intend to double my daily study time, and real-world immersion is an excellent way to pull that off.

why i’m sharing this

despite this blog’s purpose as a marketing journal, Google Analytics and newsletter subscribers prefer personal content.

today’s personal update is that even in the midst of a global pandemic you can make bold decisions and level up.

here’s the best tweet of 2020:

does this sound like you?

still very American

i love Korea. i love Medellin. i love Porto, Portugal. yet the USA is still the greatest place on earth. it’s a literal experiment turned global superpower in a couple hundred years.

once a Marine American, always an American.

HOWEVER.

i think the USA is flopping hard. social justice and identity politics and modernity and intersectionality are ruining everything. and there is a non-zero chance it all burns down in my lifetime.

so while the country may never recover, the spirit lives on. a spirit of individuality, respect for capitalism, and a shared belief that we are all created equal by God.

i take this spirit wherever i go, and Korea is about to get a booster shot.

The post I’m moving to Korea appeared first on Ryan Kulp.