Tesla x SpaceX

Today is my 3 yr anniversary of purchasing a construction company as sole owner. The past 3 yrs have been the hardest of my professional life. I'm both proud to have survived so far and embarrassed that I got myself into this situation in the first place. I purchased in 2023 via SBA 7a, underwritten as a $3M rev business. QofE and my own diligence missed two main things: the seller's second business was floating most cashflow issues and their local reputation was unusable. I rebranded to "Cooper" within 95 days on Jan 1, 2024. This industry runs on relationships and reputation. I instantly became an unknown entity and revenue dropped 95% overnight compared to what was underwritten. There are a lot of stories to tell about 2024, but tl;dr I scratched and clawed back to only $1.7M rev by the end of the year. I emptied my savings and depended on hard money to survive. Throughout that year, I made fundamental changes to our sales and operations. We focused on municipal work because I could personally handle the administrative burden and the playing field felt more fair. But our bid -> sale -> collection timeline ballooned to around 9-12 months. Changes wouldn't bear fruit for a long time. In Q2 2025, our 2024 efforts started to take effect. By EOY, we had grown to $3.65M in rev while improving gross margins. However, we were completely cash poor due to growth capital needs and crazy interest payments. We leaned on MCAs to get through because we couldn't compromise all our new client relationships. This year, we professionalized further, increasing both sales and GM. Our annualized revenue is ~$6m and this will be the first year with substantial EBITDA ($1.2M). We took some less horrible debt and I'm working on a larger refi to stabilize a bit. I am still just trying to maintain overall debt coverage. All this time, I haven't paid myself a cent. My team has remained underpaid. Everything has depended on selling the vision to both employees and clients. Selling the future to fund the present. As I reflect on the last 3 years, I feel optimistic about the future. I am a MUCH better operator than in 2023. My team is lean and loyal. And any further growth should be upside I can capture. But if you asked if it was all worth it, I'm not sure how I'd respond. For the past 3 yrs, I've chronically felt nauseous about paying bills, payroll, potential liability/conflict in our work. I've been less present at home. I've been very boring with friends. My health has taken a backseat to the needs of the business. Not to mention my net worth has tanked compared to pre-purchase levels. Our conservative plan is to hit $8M in '27, $12M in '28, then $19M in '29. I know it will continue to be hard, but I'm excited to outgrow the first phase of ownership and work on a fresh set of challenges. Here's to the next three years.

There was a video going around today of a guy stopping some people from cutting in line at an amusement park and somebody can be heard on the video saying, “this guy is acting like he’s an authority” and it’s just like, yeah, exactly. That’s the thing. That’s the big thing. That’s the big difference. It’s 100 million people all acting like they’re the authority, because they are the authority. Because they know the rules and they’re going to make sure that you follow them. No free riders. The motto in every shitty neighborhood in the country, on the other hand, is that it ain’t your business. Mind your own business. Don’t you worry about me. You hate the Karen’s to the detriment of your society. Of course they’re annoying, sometimes. But every nice place on earth is full of people who don’t mind their own damn business, who are absolutely committed to the idea that you’re going to follow the rules, people who make that their business.

I was in a bar when I met a father who had $10 million in his bank account. He has 4 kids, and all of them are broke. I asked him why he did not help his kids out in life with all this money. But what he said will shock you…

The research behind this is wild. Your kitchen sponge has the same density of bacteria as human stool. German scientists found 54 billion bacterial cells per cubic centimeter inside used sponges in 2017. Yours is sitting right next to your sink. Sponges are the perfect home for bacteria. They are wet, warm, full of food bits, and never fully dry between washes. Across all 14 sponges, the team found 362 different types of bacteria. The most common species include strains that can make people sick. In 2011, the public health group NSF International swabbed 30 things in 22 American homes. The dirtiest object in the entire house was the kitchen sponge. It was dirtier than the toilet seat. 75% of the sponges tested positive for the kind of bacteria that includes Salmonella and E. coli. Microwaving does not clean the sponge. The 2017 study found microwaved sponges had higher amounts of the smelliest, most harmful bacteria. Heat kills the weak strains. The strong ones survive and refill the sponge with no competition for space. A 2021 Norwegian study compared kitchen sponges to dish brushes. In brushes, Salmonella was wiped out within three days because the bristles dry out between uses. In sponges, bacteria climbed to about a billion cells per sponge. The lead researcher told CNN that one kitchen sponge can hold more bacteria than there are people on Earth. Three things actually work. Switch to a dish brush, because brushes dry fully between uses while sponges stay wet for hours. Replace your sponge every one to two weeks. Never leave it sitting wet in the sink. Norway and Denmark already do this by default, but most other countries don't. The detergent is fine. Your sponge is the problem.

If you’d told me a few years ago this is where we’d be on Iran, I’d have said you were high: 1. Nuke program set back years. Enrichment and reprocessing gutted, weaponization sites destroyed, Fordow inoperable, Natanz in ruins, a generation of senior nuclear scientists eliminated. 2. Ballistic missile program crippled. Monthly production down from 100 to near zero. Roughly half the regime’s missiles and launchers destroyed. The IRGC Aerospace Force commander who ran the missile enterprise dead. 3. Air defenses devastated. American and Israeli airpower dominating Iranian skies, with strike aircraft operating over the country with near impunity. 4. Full economic warfare. Not just OFAC sanctions anymore, but military pressure layered on top: naval blockade, near-zero oil exports, choked imports, wrecked steel and petrochemical sectors, triple-digit inflation, and a currency that is effectively worthless. 5. Regime decapitation. Khamenei dead. Larijani dead. Hundreds of senior IRGC, intelligence, military, and Basij commanders dead including the IRGC commander-in-chief, the armed forces chief of staff, and the Aerospace Force commander. Mojtaba Khamenei inheriting a hollowed-out regime with no supreme authority and a gutted command structure. 6. The region turning on Tehran. Gulf states shutting down the sanctions-busting, money-laundering, and financial escape routes the regime has relied on for years. No Arab capital willing to throw Iran a lifeline. China and Russia providing limited support. 7. Proxy network shattered. Hezbollah and Hamas heavily degraded. Houthi political leadership taking direct Israeli strikes. The “Axis of Resistance” and “ring of fire” are now more slogans than real threats. 8. Syrian corridor severed. Assad is gone. The new government in Damascus is actively blocking Iranian arms transfers to Hezbollah: arresting smugglers and publicly declaring Syria will no longer serve as a transit corridor for Tehran’s terrorists. The land bridge to the Mediterranean that took decades to build is effectively closed. 9. Lebanon pivoting west. With Hezbollah battered and resupply choked, Israel and Lebanon have opened direct peace talks for the first time since 1983, aimed at a permanent agreement and Hezbollah’s disarmament. Beirut now asserting that the Lebanese armed forces alone are responsible for national defense. This is a direct repudiation of Hezbollah’s “resistance” claim. TBD. 10. Deterrence exposed as a bluff. Four direct attacks on Israel — April 2024, October 2024, June 2025, March 2026 — failed to impose strategic cost and instead triggered heavy retaliation. Iran couldn’t even use Syria as a launchpad. 11.Economy hollowed out from within. Power shortages, water crises, factory shutdowns, pension unrest, and mass protests. Nationwide demonstrations erupted in December 2025 after a year of economic freefall, with bazaaris, oil workers, and truckers, the regime’s traditional support base, joining strikes across all 31 provinces. Running out of oil storage space. Fuel shortages. The worst crisis since 1979. 12. Scientific and technical brain drain. Beyond the nuclear experts, Iran has lost a generation of irreplaceable expertise in missile design, centrifuge engineering, and weapons development. The survivors are harder to recruit and easier to deter. 13. Naval power decimated. The regular navy shattered, IRGC navy taking growing losses as CENTCOM moves to reopen Hormuz. And against all of this: the regime forced to play its Hormuz card at its weakest possible moment when the U.S. has options instead of when we didn’t: namely, Tehran with nuclear-armed ICBMs, 10,000 ballistic missiles, a Chinese- and Russian-built military, hundreds of thousands of attack drones, a fully operational terror network, and hundreds of billions of dollars to harden its economy. That’s the strategic picture. It’s extraordinary. Much more to do but I can’t comprehend how much has been achieved.