Did you smell it this morning? There’s something familiar in the air, like the smell of your mom’s cooking. Like an old friend. Someone you haven’t seen in a long time. Yes. It has to be.
Fall is coming.
Gather round, all you earth-tone loving basic bitches. It’s our time to shine. Hot people, you’ve had your fun. Summer is coming to a close and we’re onto sweatpants, spooky szn, various cheese delivery mechanisms and football.
Summer is great. It’s the second best season. But fall? Fall is the KING of seasons. I’m going to be permanently in sweatpants and hoodies at home the minute it drops below 60, just like I’m going to be in shorts and golf polos the minute it gets over 70 in April. That sweet spot between 60-70 where Mother Nature is trying to play “just the tip” is just torturous. Let’s get it going. Just a few more weeks of summer then we’re into 70 degree days and 50 degree nights. I’m talking windows down on the drive into work weather.
I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s go ahead and hit the subscribe button if you haven’t already.
That’s enough. Let’s get into it.
Underrated Monday Move of the Week
Big salad for dinner. Highly recommend Chrissy Tiegen’s Cobb Salad with homemade honey mustard dressing. It’s a process to make, but honestly, you won’t find a summer salad better than this one. I know I just told you to get ready to stuff your face with dips and pizza, but honestly, you just gotta know when to keep it in third gear.
Have I recommended this before? If I have, I don’t care. Make Chrissy Tiegen Salad.
Regional Fantasy Football Advice of the Week
Skyy Moore, Mecole Hardman and Isaiah Pacheco are going to eat this year in Andy Reid’s offense. Good mid-round value.
YouTube Ambience Video of the Week
From the description: Iroh is a powerful sorcerer with incredible abilities and also the keeper of the Magic Forest. His Bookstore contains some of the rarest books in the world. He is also the wisest man on earth and people from everywhere come to his store to seek answers but they all get told - “Your answer is in this book”. Then he hands them one of his books and tells them to go in the Reading Cage and stay there until they find their answers. The more they read, the wiser he gets as the magic flows throughout the pages. Once they finish it, they return the book and leave the place with a sense of gratitude and relief, for they have found their answers.
The “Reading Cage” sounds an awful lot like prison, but honestly some peace and solitude and a good book seems like a good remedy to many of life’s problems.
YouTube ambience videos that incorporate world building? Sign me up for this trend.
TFM/PGP Story of the Week
Note from Brian: I have debated many times whether or not to write about Catie Warren. Full disclosure, it’s not right for me to do so. She tragically passed away in November of 2020. Out of respect for her and her family, I am going to keep that private.
Let’s talk about how I ended up at Grandex in the first place.
I started writing for TFM in 2012 as a washed up 25 year old former frat guy who was very much terrified of aging out of his prime (Spoiler: I had). TFM was a way for me to keep the glory going and it was a lot of fun. Rob Fox recruited me after reading my Royals blog and reached out to me because he thought I was funny. Fair enough. They didn’t pay. Whatever. As a guy going through a quarter-life crisis, the delusion of being a 25 year old frat star would be just as fulfilling as a living wage. Eventually, they started paying me. $50 a column and $100 for 25 Rowdy Gentleman tweets. Do enough of those each week, you were doing alright.
I had been grinding out columns and Rowdy Gentleman tweets for about a year and a half when Ryan asked me if I wanted to head up their new project, PostGradProblems.com on a part time basis. They gave me a $500/month stipend manage the content and collaborate with PGP’s founder Dave Ruff. Dave and I hit it off, but he had just graduated from law school and taken a job in Lubbock, so I was being groomed to head up the site’s content while Dave very smartly went off to the brown wastes of West Texas to pay off his law school loans.
I knew the PGP twitter account was massive and I knew that Grandex was hiring a ton of full-time staff. I was aging out of TFM’s demographic. This was going to be how I carved my path. Rob was hired full-time in 2012. Veronica Ruckh got the call later that year. Joe Nullet got a full-time offer to start after he graduated from Florida in the spring of 2013. I knew I was next up on the depth chart if I just kept my head down and kept hammering away.
I got this email from Ryan Young after they hired Joe that spring:
I wanted to fill you in on the state of Grandex since you are such an important part of our team but not in our office. I also guess you wonder about future opportunity with us. For the immediate future, we will be continuing to push forward with our current 8 man (and 1 woman) team.
(Insert business jargon and long-winded excuse why they couldn’t hire me yet)
In summary, if all growth strategies keep panning out for us we will be expanding and there could be an opportunity for you. I really like what you bring to the team in many areas. I encourage you to just keep doing what you are doing. I hope the supplemental income is a great perk for you personally and I hope to find ways for you to earn more and get more involved from your current freelance position. I want to reiterate that I cannot promise anything because anything could happen in the future and we have many key skill positions to fill first (web development, graphic design, etc). So keep bringing the heat and hopefully one day you can be a Longhorn season ticket holder.
I kept “bringing the heat.” I kept going and I never gave up on PGP. I refused to be demoralized. I didn’t have a full-time job. I was trying to live off the ~$1500/month I was making on freelancing for TFM, PGP and SB Nation (who paid me an insulting $100/month to complain about Mizzou once a week).
Ryan and I had hit it off. He called us “spirit brothers” because we both loved Rush and the Attitude Era. We talked on the phone every now and then and he filled me in on the battles he was having with the business brains (I use both of those terms loosely) of the company and how he was frustrated the business wasn’t going all in on creative and worry about admin when the time came. We legitimately became good friends. He never promised me anything, but I knew that an offer would be coming. I just had to convince myself (and my parents) that what I was doing was worthwhile.
Three months later, it came. The day after my 27th birthday I got this from Ryan:
Brian,
I am very fortunate to finally be writing this email. You have dominated for us for some time now. All signs point to huge growth at Grandex. I would like to make an official job offer.
The position includes content creation and curation across the Grandex network of sites with a majority of the emphasis on PGP. The position also includes Rowdy Gentleman marketing.
-35k base salary
-1k signing bonus/relocation allowance
-Participation in the Content Team Monthly Bonus
-Full bennies (Health, Dental, Vision)
-Retirement IRA with up to 3% employer matching
Get in on the ground floor. The company is only 3 years old. Come on and kick ass and the opportunities are endless. Hope you join us!
Like an idiot, I didn’t even negotiate or leave him hanging. I responded four minutes later.
“I accept.”
I didn’t even try to finagle more money out of him. Any decent businessperson would have likely had another $5-10k in wiggle room for a lowball offer like that. I didn’t care. I had been waiting two years for this email.
I couldn’t tell you what I was feeling in that moment and in the months to follow. I’ve never felt more validation or had hard work pay off like that. The next day I talked to my parents and told them I’d be moving to Austin to go write for a company whose, at that point, entire business was built on dick jokes and tank tops. They were supportive, but I wouldn’t say they were enthused.
A month later, I boarded a plane from KC to Austin with two suitcases and roughly $2,300 to my name. That was all I took with me to Austin.
My wish for every person reading this is for you to have just one moment in your life where you feel like you have the world in your hands, because that is what I felt in that moment. It’s the most potent drug. Full serotonin release.
Maybe you’ve already had that moment. If you have, you’re lucky. If you haven’t, I hope it’s coming. Whether that’s landing a dream job offer, the first time she says “I love you”, a connection with your parents later on in life, the birth of your children, your wedding day or a perfect 14 oz. ribeye that you cooked yourself. Those are the moments you live for. I’m going to keep living for those, but that one will be hard to match. That’s the shit that keeps you going. It’s never too late to chase that feeling.
“Having dreams is what makes life tolerable.” -Rudy’s best friend Pete’s dad
That’ll do it for this week’s MMPD. Hope y’all enjoyed it. Go get ‘em.
-B
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