I barely have a high school diploma.

I lived in a shack in the woods for 17 years. Collected rainwater. No furnace. Walked to the library to use the internet. Didn't own a cell phone until 2011.

I had a shitty job and did woodworking as a hobby. Then I learned computers so I could sell what I was making.

That shitty job forced me to solve my most expensive problem.

I was broke. Grew my own food. Cut my own firewood. No running water. Couldn't afford the life I was working forty hours a week to barely have.

So I started solving it.

I taught myself the internet at the library. Built a way to sell my woodworking online. Did research on a product I was curious about, reached out to the company on social media, asked some questions.

A few days later the CEO called and offered me a job.

That's how I got here.

No degree. No connections. No application. No HR. Just curiosity in public and a person on the other end who recognized it.

That's also when I learned the lesson the rest of the site is built on.

Expensive problems get you paid when you solve them.

Mine was being broke. Other people's are different. The skill is the same.

I worked in private equity. Then I had every title marketing has to offer. Media manager. Marketing strategist. Brand manager. Partnership marketing manager. Senior marketing strategist. Business development manager.

The titles don't matter. I solve problems. That's the whole job.

I get dropped into a business with a laptop and figure out where the money is leaking, where the leverage is buried, and what to build to fix it.

Sometimes that's a marketing system. Sometimes it's an automation that replaces a $4K/month tool. Sometimes it's a complete rebrand. Sometimes it's a new product line. Sometimes it's an internal app that didn't exist yesterday.

I don't care what the problem is called. I care what it costs and how to make it cost less.

That's it. That's the value.

Because the shack story is the entire argument for the site.

If a guy who grew his own food and cut his own firewood can DM a CEO from a job he hated and end up running multiple businesses, the old game is over.

Education was the moat. Credentials were the moat. The right schools, the right titles, the right LinkedIn timeline.

That moat is empty.

What replaced it is the ability to solve expensive problems cheaply, in public, where the right people can see you doing it. That's the only skill that matters now. Everything else is decoration.

If you like wasting money, go to college. If you want to be useful, solve expensive problems.

You either use it or you get replaced by someone who does.

People freak out about this. They've always freaked out. They freaked out about cars. They freaked out about airplanes. They freaked out at the end of the bronze age. The same people who asked if the internet was “still going to be a thing” after the dotcom bubble are the same people asking if AI is a fad now.

It's a pattern.

Three years ago these tools didn't exist. Today three billion people use them every month. Workers using them well save 10+ hours a week. That's a quarter of a workweek you're either gaining or losing every Monday.

Most people use AI like a worse Google. Then they conclude it's overhyped. They're not wrong about their results. They're wrong about whose fault that is.