Money is the report card of business.
Published December 03, 2021 · 9:28 · 102,874 views
About This Video
The title is a direct quote. Sets up a conversation with entrepreneur Andy Mai of Studying.com that most creative-economy channels would avoid. Van doesn't soften the commercial reality: if you're building something and it isn't generating revenue, the market is telling you something. The artist's instinct to dismiss that signal as philistine is itself a form of avoidance.
What prevents this from becoming a hustle-culture endorsement is Van's own position as a creator who has struggled with the business side. The episode holds the tension between art-for-art's-sake idealism and the pragmatic recognition that sustainability requires revenue. Money isn't the point of the work, but its absence is a diagnostic. A report card, not a grade. That's the distinction worth keeping.
Transcript
this video includes a paid promotion might actually be a paid promotion in and of itself
so i'm going fast but i feel again this spirited man is spending valuable
writing and production time building something he could easily buy
he developed this habit this i can make it cheaper myself habit during the long
oh so long periods in his life when he was broke [Music] in his native land they call this habit yankee thrift but he's beginning to wonder if this
yankee thrift is [Music] i'm supposed to be writing andy mai's video could it be that this spirited man is a money coward
afraid to spend money when he should [Music] or is he simply a money ignoramus who has never taught how to make money after all
they don't really teach you how to make money in school not in the schools he went to anyway
[Music] crowdsourcing is a sort of miracle isn't it kickstarter is a sort of miracle gofundme patreon
miracles they shouldn't work in a capitalist society but somehow they do
it took six months to put together this kickstarter campaign thank you to everyone who contributed
the difficult thing about launching a successful kickstarter is getting the rewards right gotta figure out profit margins and
shipping costs [Music] sizing and production logistics stickers patches hats pencils shirts i apologize for not having the recipe book done and the art piece done i'm working on it it won't be long now
then there's the expensive items at the bottom somebody spent ten thousand dollars on a reward called
nothing an add in an episode five grand who's gonna buy these
this channel was brand new who's gonna buy a 5 000 ad on a brand new channel
brave people that's who people who are brave with money
andy my bought an ad andy my's brave with money andy mye's based in uh sydney so we do
these zoom calls so i can kind of get a better understanding of his business for the ad i gotta make for him and so i say
to andy tell me your story he tells me his story and it's just
he reminds me of very successful people i've known who started big businesses
from scratch and he's been an entrepreneur for 14 years or so he has these stories of successes
and failures and it occurs to me that andy has been through the fire he's been through
the experiences that i don't know how many people go through so i ask him i say
how old are you he's 22. i'll tell you about andy's business in a minute but while i was putting the ad together
i thought about how bravely and intelligently andy spent the money he
and reinvested it in his business in particular he tells me this story he has
twenty thousand dollars and he spends twelve of it on a seminar a five-day seminar
in thailand he's 18 years old and he pays cash this isn't a student loan so he takes
over half of his nut and he spends it on education and the story reminded me of
this wisdom that was imparted unto me by a man named jim
who ended up building a big business empire and jim i apologize for dragging you into my ad but i think this wisdom
bears repeating and jim started from scratch he ground his way up and built up a big business
he put his four kids through elite schools beginning in grade school all the way up through graduate school
and when i asked him why because he made it on his own he said to me this it takes twice as
long to learn through experience what can be learned through education education
cuts the learning time in half versus experience there's a saying experience
keeps a good school but a fool will learn in no other twice as long to learn by experience
andy is 22 years old basically half my age and i don't know this for a fact but i'd be willing to bet 10 bucks that he has more money than me now i've
read some comments from past videos uh basically criticizing me for being after money and
trying to make money and i understand the romance of the legend of the starving artist in the garrett
but i've paid my dues and this channel is also a business it costs money to make these
videos doesn't cost money to watch them but it costs money to make them
so this channel is is a business it's also something else
but it is a business and another friend of mine who built a business empire from scratch who was
the longest running ceo in america before she retired
lillian vernon rest her soul said to me money is the report card of business it's a
very simple metric by which you can measure your business's success okay so
what's the ad for what's andy's business uh it's for his business called
studying.com which is an online education program that teaches you the business of drop
shipping i don't really know what drop shipping is uh i know basically what it is but i don't have any interest in this
business but i do have an interest in andy and i would trust him to educate me about this business because he's 22 and
he is a success in this business of drop shipping when i was 22 i was a waiter and i learned nothing so i don't know if
you're young or you're looking to switch careers this is something worth exploring as far as i can tell
andy is a great mentor in this business and i i trust him okay the mic stand
[Music] i couldn't live with the crappy mic stand that i fashioned out of a bungee cord and chicken jar
[Music] so i spent a few hours building a proper mic stand that i'm that i'm pleased with [Music] this channel allows me to sort of make a career out of my yankee thrift
and i'm profoundly grateful for that [Music] thanks for watching and thank you andy for supporting this channel [Music] [Music] you
Products & Tools Mentioned
- Studying.com mentions — Andy Mai's company referenced
- Kickstarter mentions — platform for channel funding
People Referenced
Andy Mai, Lillian Vernon