I received a phone call from a recruiter recently. To those who’ve been reading my work for a while now, this is nothing new. However, these calls have diminished now that I’ve left LinkedIn and deleted my Indeed profile. The call was cordial, albeit a bit underwhelming.
The recruiter asked me if I’d be interested in consulting work. I then mentioned that I’d be interested in going back to work for yet another start-up, provided that the start-up operated in a niche corner of the industry and was offering me a sufficiently fat slice of equity. The recruiter was clearly thrown off of her script (Hey, I never accused recruiters of being particularly bright people!) and then proceeded to ask me to name start-ups that I’d be interested in. No, bitch; market research is your job, not mine…
I got off the call with a renewed sense of validation; leaving The Village was the right call. After I was done tallying up how little the call had benefited me, my mind pivoted. I began to ask what it would take to get me back to The Village? The answer clearly wasn’t we can help you get a job because Allah knows that I’m more than capable of doing that myself.
But eventually, I came up with some desires of mine that a sufficiently networked Village could bring me in order to get me to come back from my mountainous position of Fuck Youand be part of a community again. To be clear, my current situation in life and career grants me the advantage of not actually needing to interact with The Village. Thus, me standing back and doing nothing is actually a legitimate option that I can-and will-weaponize. Framed another way, I don’t actually need a major deal to happen. On the other hand, The Village always seems to be in crisis or to eagerly want something. So, now that we understand who actually has the leverage here, allow me to dictate the minimum requirements for access to Dan Espinola. These are ordered from most important to least; I expect razor-sharp pitchforks.
First; set me up on dates with attractive and family-oriented women under the age of thirty. Yes you read that correctly, and yes I’m serious. Hordes of colleagues and other well-intentioned drones have offered half-hearted words of reassurance in the past. Some have even bragged about having a lot of bachelorettes in their inner circles. Well, I don’t care for your words, I care about actions. If The Village wants me to play ball, then they’ll make some date-nights happen. Seriously: I’m a physically fit, high IQ, career-accomplished man (through the constant admission of The Village, by the way) with a high verbal fluency. If they can’t find a match, then it’s grounds to seriously question how networked The Village truly is.
I can hear Karen screeching from her heated seat SUV way off in the distance. “Dan!” she shrieks in between long sips of her 700-calorie Starbucks milkshake coffee “women aren’t just trinkets to offer up!”. Fine, I’ll bite on her premise and move on to the second most valuable thing that The Village can bring to me: venture capital. This honestly shouldn’t be a shock to anybody who has been paying attention to my blog. My differently working brain has been tossing out ideas left-and-right for years now. Everything from strip-club-based payment apps, to Metal Gear Solid-style gun cameras, and everything else in between. Again, if The Village doesn’t have anybody with enough capital and risk tolerance to invest in my ideas, then it is totally fair game to openly mock sincerely question the robustness of The Village’s network.
In a similar vein to venture capital, I’d also be open to being introduced to someone who could grant me a foot-in-the-door to investment opportunities that I cannot access on my own via Charles Schwab. Whether it’s a real estate investment mentor, a serial franchisee who is willing to take on a rookie as a junior partner in a non-regional chain, or a small business owner looking for local capital. If The Village could furnish these opportunities for me, then that would go a long way in rebuilding the squandered goodwill between us. And if they can’t? Then The Village will have duly earned every bit of high-volume scorngenuine critique that I give them.
Karen stomps her Gucci heels. “So we need deep-pocketed millionaires in order to grab your attention now? Dan, that’s totally unrealistic and you’re arguing in bad faith!” While I reject Karen’s assertion of bad faith (I honestly would play ball if The Village could produce seed capital for me), let’s war-game this out even further. If The Village could produce a literary agent that would advocate for my second manuscript to publishing houses, that would be a powerful Daniel-magnet. Don’t get me wrong; the current status quo is fine by me, but I’ll happily take an upgrade in visibility for my writing. The one requirement is that this literary agent absolutely must be able to withstand the heat of being professionally associated with me and my spicier takes. Not to sound like a broken record, but if The Village can’t produce a single well-networked and ballsy smooth-talker based in NYC, then it’s open season to publicly ridicule cast serious doubt on the networking effectiveness of The Village.
Failing all of that, I’d like to be introduced to a judo instructor who runs a dojo within a not-ridiculous driving distance from me. Ever since I started playing the original Metal Gear Solid, I’ve always thought of the martial art as being just objectively really fucking cool. Ronda Rousey’s UFC title defense run in the early 2010s displayed the artform’s efficacy (even if she couldn’t throw hands). Besides, I can’t bring my pistol everywhere. Honestly, if that’s too much of an ask for The Village, then they deserve to be laughed at in front of everybody.
My higher-IQ readers will notice a common thread between all of these asks. With that said, allow me to spell it out for Warriors fans glue-sniffers. These four demands of mine represent areas of my life where my solo-efforts haven’t yielded the results that I’ve wanted so far. While I’m not saying that I’m not capable of achieving these things by myself, being connected to matchmakers/investors/agents/judo instructors would be a major plus. I’m literally telling The Village what bait to use; let’s see if they actually fucking do it.
Have something I want for fuck’s sake.
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