Avatar
West Major
45fd1955f590da87c1fd2edb99d17accf235ec3ebf0afe1d3306ade42693c6e9
On a mission to make western shirts in America.

Okay okay. We up

Big update guys. After drilling 30 holes into this wall looking for studs, I finally got some shelves installed, and a dedicated fulfillment station set up at WM HQ. She's my pride and joy.

It's pretty insane - but I used to print labels, stamp mailers, fold and pack shirts one at a time, all over my office. Big goal this year is to get this part of the business off my plate (it eats up 10-20 hours a week).

Still have some kinks in the process to work out (I need a bigger table, and a new typewriter for thank you notes), but I can smell the finish line.

Once the station is complete, next step is finding someone to do the job. And then we'll be cooking with gas ⛽

https://blossom.primal.net/3d8aead4f4b17b5ae5e40f2716e34250c67ae4f9c6b3674b6343d6a0eff7633c.mov

Replying to Avatar Soak Quest

How do you convince nostr:nprofile1qqsytlge2h6epk58c87jakue69aveu34aslt7zh7r5esdt0yy6fud6gl4heu5 that Bitcoin is important when the returns are higher and more instant on new inventory?

It's all about exiting The Matrix.

What if I like making shirts more than bitcoin 😅

Replying to Avatar Soak Quest

Temu fuckin joggers.

The World of Temu joggers is waiting and hoping for Bitcoiners to fail. And the medium of exchange attack vector is the way to do it.

Wouldn’t it be great for joggers if we have egg on our face from claiming Bitcoin is pristine money but it’s so pristine that we don’t use it ?

“You can’t use it for anything!”

God they love that one. It’s their favorite gotcha. And they’re gonna be right.

They don’t mean store of value.

They don’t understand you are already using it flawlessly as a savings technology.

They mean Temu fucking joggers. They need to see their temu joggers are for sale in Bitcoin.

Until that is happening, the medium of surface area for jogger attack is growing by the minute with each jogger transaction.

As clear as I can possibly be and because it is worth repeating:

This is real. There is a very real threat to the flawless store of value use case and it is the lack of critical mass for the medium of exchange use case.

The joggers are not coming. They are in your houses already. And they are comfortable as fuck.

Temu jogger enthusiasts are 99.9% of the World in this example. And until you’ve seen absolutely zero reaction to jogger faces after SHOWING THEM IN PERSON THAT BEST SHIT YOU OWN IS FROM BITCOINERS, then you will dismiss this very real threat.

The assumption I got wrong on medium of exchange was if I just showed people incredible products purchased in Bitcoin then they’d finally get it.

Terminals accepting stable coins and digital dollars are here. The only thing propping up US Treasuries is Tether. Do you think Temu joggers give a flying fuck about anything else than more Temu joggers? They literally needed their pants to be easier. They were wearing adult pants and then said “ya know what!? I’ve had enough buttoning for a lifetime.”

We must create the flywheels for critical mass here ourselves or joggers are gonna jog on our graves.

We must create the flywheels today. Go buy some shit in sats today. Please. It’s not so scary I promise.

Joggers are gonna be incentivized by stable coins and the US to get more joggers. The businesses that run online or physical terminals in fiat world cannot wait to contribute to shutting up Bitcoiners.

This is how they easily do it.

If you don’t get this then when you lose to the Temu jogger crowd please kindly do not complain to the Bitcoin companies doing the most important work here to win. Don’t complain to those supporting them in sats about their messaging to spend sats.

Do you understand how crazy it is that you might be the source of the flywheel because you bought some fuckin soap in Bitcoin? And that you’re just not doing it?

Not only can you use it but Bitcoin business are making the most incredibly high quality products.

So let’s not be in situation where we have to explain that we could have proven Temu joggers wrong we just didn’t.

That’s not only how they win but how we become punchlines forever.

Buy shit in sats from incredible Bitcoin founders or be ok with the risk to store of value.

Be ok with making the Temu joggers look smart.

On a tear 😂

Or … were you just asking how long does one take to iron? 😂

It’s hard to say… we made roughly 300, in this one short sleeve. I ordered the fabric back in December from a mill. That was it’s own hurdle. Then we had to get it washed at a large laundry facility. Then we have a factory we work with pick up the fabric, and cut and sew them in bulk. The actual sewing is usually 4-6 weeks. But total time spent bringing the whole the thing together stretches over 5-6 months.

Just ironed 100 shirts. Feeling spicy.

Replying to Avatar PDJ

A Poor Man’s Therapy:

Buy a burner phone and give it to emergency contacts.

Leave regular phone behind.

Packing list:

20 pages of computer paper folded in half

10 Blackwing pencils

1 Blackwing sharpener.

(Look up who used Blackwings and why.)

Pack a suitcase of 5 Tolstoy, 5 Dostoyevsky and 5 Charles Bukowski books.

Book a train ticket anywhere in the World that is 8 hours long.

On your train ride, read 30 pages of each book until you can’t put one down.

The goal is to get rid of a book as fast as you can that doesn’t keep your interest.

Stay in a hostel for 2 nights and get drunk one night with hostel mates. Buy the drinks. Ask about their favorite books.

Ask questions that you are genuinely interested in- nothing topical. They should feel slightly uncomfortable but compelled to answer if they’re interesting enough.

Hop around to different coffee shops reading and marking up your book with questions you would want to ask the author.

See how good you can get at asking genuinely interesting questions to strangers that make them glow.

When you figure this one out, you have the key to many doors.

Maybe ask them, “what are you favorite questions to ask people?” Or “how can you tell if someone is lying?” Or “did you ever steal anything as a kid?”

Write on a sheet of paper anytime you feel an original thought.

Never compromise on penmanship.

A hurried thought shows in poor penmanship.

Hurried thoughts are likely contributing to suppressing your uniqueness. Maybe you’re afraid to complete thoughts because there are repercussions at the end of clear thoughts.

Like action.

Sketch anything you see that looks fun to sketch. The shittier your sketches the better. Sketches are a wrestling match with your confidence. Not a drawing contest.

Sketch shitty sketches to completion and laugh at your shitty sketches. You are shitty at things and that is funny.

Write violently in sprints like Charles Bukowski does. Write angrily like Bukowski when it’s warranted.

Bukowski once wrote, “Find what you love and let it kill you.”

Write about love, hate, envy, jealousy and sadness like the Russians would.

Write without expectations that anyone will ever read it.

Terrify yourself with your own thoughts. If you’re terrified to write something then you must write it.

Enjoy the sensation of how easily you disarm your most terrifying thoughts with a sheet of paper and pencil.

Anything that’s angry is signal. Keep writing. Anything that feels lonely, sad or exciting write about it.

Think about purpose and a calling towards humanity. Spend some thoughts thinking of all men and women like they are your brother and sister in humanity trying to laugh a little more than they cry. Think about the power you have to make someone’s day.

Think about this passage and the power of responsibility:

“The wicked flee though no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.”

Get it all out. Write, write, write. Write violently and anytime you feel original. Sketch and sketch but writing away from a screen is the therapy.

Once the feeling of originality and authenticity gain momentum, you’ll know if this is working at making you feel better or not.

You may not be needing meds. You may just need a calling to righteousness for purpose. Not self-righteousness or vindication but the strength from responsibility.

You may just need to feel empowered by the simplest tools contributing to overwhelming peace from writing, breaking current habits and being capable of eliciting a smile in a stranger.

Physical writing helps you feel confident in chaos. Feeling confident in chaos is empowering.

Write a chapter in your book that would terrify you if the World ever read it. Write about why it’s terrifying like you were helping a brother or sister.

It’s possible you don’t need therapy but rather you’re just become uninteresting to yourself and don’t realize it.

You might be the most interesting person that anyone has ever met. But you just haven’t seen your own thoughts on a sheet of paper in awhile.

What is it about you that’s like no one else in the World?

Write about it.

Your originality is desperately necessary to not only make the World a better place but to legitimately fight evil through the contagious originality.

How can you be sad when you’re needed so much for something so important?

Get to it.

Like now.

Looking for train tickets

Replying to Avatar PDJ

About 12 or so years ago I was asked to go to an event in Kelowna, British Columbia to pitch my SaaS company to around 15 prominent venture capitalists and a conference of attendees.

The company was doing ok for a startup with a few thousand paying enterprise customers at $19 per month but to build up the validation drama for the company I mentioned that we already had offers to sell the company (we did but it was an acqui-hire type of offer).

When a VC asked me why I didn't already sell the company then, I told him I'd be bored and just start doing drugs or something.

The vc's mildly smirked, the room laughed out loud, and one person in the third row of the room stared me down deadpanned with beady eyes.

He waited patiently in a line of about 5 people to talk to me after my presentation was over.

He was in a suit which was odd for the startup scene and the weather in BC at that time. He was there to pitch his own company that he helped co-found.

He did not introduce himself when he walked up to me and just said something like:

"You know what's interesting about what you said about drug addiction is that the only thing that works at breaking an addiction is that you have to find something that you love more than the addiction.

Nothing else works.

In the clinical studies we've seen in mice, mice will forego eating, fornicating and eventually die from a cocaine addiction for example once they try cocaine once.

So the studies in the addiction space that are interesting to us are not who's never tried drugs because those subjects just had the discipline not to start. What's interesting to us to study is who has actually beat addictions and what was that thing that they loved more."

For a midwit like myself that was a jaw dropping revelation to me.

For someone who was addicted to pain meds with addiction challenges in my family, it was a revelation that was personal and one that I've obsessed about to this day.

I explained to this guy that what he just said to me was so fascinating that he should post this on Quora. He asked about what Quora was. I explained to him that people invited me to this event not because of my company doing well but because I wrote a post on Quora on what it's like to be a startup founder that went viral.

The next morning at this event, he was the only one sitting by himself at breakfast so I went and sat with him.

He said, "You know what, Paul, I checked out that Quora thing you talked about and wrote something.”

When I got up from breakfast, I saw a friend that observed me leaving the table with him who said something along the lines of, "That guy's fucking out there eh?".

I confidently replied that I found him to be the most interesting person I've met in a long time.

A couple of weeks later I saw a Quora post notification that said, "30 Rules for Life” by Jordan Peterson.

Haha that’s incredible. What a story

Oh awesome! Keep me posted!

Replying to Avatar Ben Justman🍷

If you’ve seen Sour Grapes, you know the story:

A guy sold millions of dollars of fake "fine wine".

The reason his scam worked reveals something deeply engrained in the wine industry.

Most wine drinkers are being fooled. Just in a different way.

Rudy Kurniawan blended cheap wines and passed them off as rare Burgundy.

He wasn’t exposed because something tasted off.

He got caught because some of his labels didn’t match historical records.

That’s how easy it is to manipulate wine.

People trusted the story, not the contents.

Wine is ephemeral.

Every bottle changes every year and every hour after opening.

There is no fixed flavor to test against.

You could open five identical bottles and each one would taste a little different depending on how it was aged.

That’s part of the beauty. But it also makes it easy to hide behind.

The wine Rudy made wasn’t necessarily fake. It was engineered.

He used blending, additives, and packaging to mimic the character of rare bottles.

That same playbook is used across the wine industry.

Only now, it’s considered standard practice.

Most grocery store wine relies on:

- Low-grade grapes

- Oak flavoring

- Sugar

- Concentrates

- Lab-designed enzymes

It’s a formula made in a lab, sold with a story that is designed to make it feel like art.

The same confusion Rudy exploited is what allows commodity wine to dominate.

A wall of bottles, branded with warmth and tradition, hiding a product built through food science.

The wine world keeps you in the dark. On purpose.

How do you avoid this?

You don’t need a cellar or a huge budget to drink something real.

You just need to get closer to the source.

Shake your winemaker’s hand. Ask questions.

No one worth buying from will make you feel small for wanting to understand.

If they do, they’re part of the act.

The wine industry sold its soul.

And most people are still drinking the lie.

I make Unfiltered Wine in Colorado and am happy to answer any questions.

If this helped you understand wine differently, give this post a reNOST, it really helps me keep doing these.

Wild, I had no idea

The messy truth about making a western shirt in America.

When we receive a box of 300 finished western shirts from our factory in L.A. , you’d think - this is awesome. I can throw them on my website, and start selling! Yay!

NOT THE CASE 😀

Woven shirt manufacturing has largely left the U.S. The skilled labor that can do it - isn’t really here anymore. So when you find a factory that “can” do it - you’re often not getting a perfect product back, ready to ship (unless you’re okay shipping an imperfect product - which I’m not).

So instead, we have to inspect each shirt, spec them, trim, iron, fold, bag and tag - ONE AT A TIME - before we can put it on a shelf, and it’s ready to ship to a customer.

A good junk of my time is spent in a room like this, going through shirts, hunched over an ironing board for days. Putting the good ones in one pile, putting the bad ones on the other, with detailed notes, to go back to the factory.

This is one of many reasons why most clothing businesses don’t manufacture here. They don’t want to deal with nightmares like this. Many factories here don't care sadly. You have to grind on them, relentlessly, to improve the product. It's like moving a giant cruise ship from factory hell.

Just getting a perfect quality shirt made, with zero issues, at scale - again and again - isn’t possible today, and what I'm trying to achieve / solve at the moment.

But we’re holding the line. Year after year, putting pressure on our factory to keep improving - and they are.

Two years ago, they struggled with the sides of our pocket flaps. One side would be longer than the other. Now they’re perfect.

This little detail alone is such a huge win. Little by little, we eat the elephant one bite at a time.

The entire business is insane, and often times feels impossible. But the exciting thing is, IF we pull it off, we'll be one of the only ones in the world to make this product here.