First and foremost, the goal with *any* project is to make it the best it can be, generally following an idea of "under promise, over deliver, make the worst case scenario still pretty good". For instance, with the moving company I started, I made sure to train all of the movers on properly wrapping furniture in blankets, arranging items in the truck, strapping things down, etc. Because I did that, out of hundreds of moves with tens of thousands of items, we only ever had 3 breakages - all minor, all accidents. Even if something *did* break, we were sure to cover things as best we could quickly, and people respected the fact that we took care of accidents etc. Needless to say, we got a lot of referrals. (I *still* get calls for that business, and I haven't even done anything with it in 3 years.)

With Crypto Coyote,  the personal coaching is designed to do more than just teach people how to invest. It's designed to teach them how to think differently about the market AND about different aspects of life. How to master their minds & make huge changes in their lives. Even if someone doesn't make $200,000,000 in 3 weeks (lol), or if they discover that investing isn't exactly "for" them, they still learn things that will serve them for the rest of their lives. 

And with everything involved in the Monarch ecosystem, the general goal is to make it so that each individual project does exactly what it says on the tin in a way that works long-term, keeps everything ultra-secure, shores up weaknesses and tries to prevent hacks / mistakes. For instance, by manually approving  new projects on The Kingmaker, we keep bad actors out of the mix. By requiring consensus / manual approval for new trading pairs on Monarch Swap, blatant scam tokens become a non-existent factor. Or by adding time delays to various things, we can remove flash loans as means of attacks on protocols.

Funny you should ask. Actually, this all started because I wanted to make a video game. It was going to be a fun little thing where you'd control an angel and battle your way through a garden hedge maze, earning ANGEL tokens and gear along the way. If it became popular enough, I figured we could turn it into a fully fledged MMO. I took it upon myself to learn some basic 3D modeling skills, wrote out some short stories, character bios, etc.

As I iterated on the idea & on how we would market it, I started embracing more of the "branching out" platform aspect of things, and I started realizing how much better I could do at making a real currency that would actually ~work~ for these other games than I could at building out a game myself... Which is a testament to how many people are actually involved in making a game by the way - for the type of game I'd *want* to build, it would take a studio of at least 50 full time employees to make everything as good as it could get. (Between the music, sound effects, individual art assets, maps, characters, etc. etc. There's a *lot* that goes into building a game) 

Now I know my skills, and even though I can and *have* handled small / medium teams before (hell I had a list of at least 50 people from my moving company days), I also know that everything I've build has done best when everything and everything involved is laser focused on the most impactful places. As that relates to making a game, it would mean hiring out a studio to handle the build while I focus on the creative aspects - which is fine, but not necessarily ideal. 

So I reassessed. I dialed in the marketing more, dived into building out a good model for the currency even more, and came out with a few ideas surrounding a launchpad, a loan protocol, and a DEX. The more I dialed this stuff in, the more I saw how these different protocols could interact together in order to help build the natural future of cryptocurrency - the exact thing that everyone's been preaching about, despite the fact that existing options are... flawed, to say the least. 

Now I've got this fantastic framework that accounts for most of the issues that one could face in building a new currency, addresses the marketing & the initiation of different projects to help people adopt it and help it achieve stability, and ensures that profit can be earned on the business side of things. 

Even so, I'm still working at iterating everything. I want to make sure there's no major flaws, and that CROWNs becomes the best it can be. I'm very open to advisement, happy to listen to any feedback that people have - so long as they've taken the time to understand how it all fits together, of course. 

Well for one thing, because the whole design of CROWNs is unlike anything that I've ever seen in crypto, and it's the natural next stage of currency in general, as people start distrusting the ridiculously under-collaterized fiat currencies. 

For another, I've already proven myself as a founder in multiple different arenas, especially with my ability to bootstrap from absolute 0 *and* my ability to bounce back from what basically constitutes "rock bottom" for most people. 

My path in life has been... Interesting, to say the least. Even as a kid I knew I was a bit different from the rest. I used to sell glow sticks, rice krispie treats and deliver ice when I went camping - at 8 years old. Also delivered ice for the merchants, which was fun. Sometimes I'd get yelled at for asking for a quarter in exchange for my time spent delivering ice, which taught me how to have thick skin pretty early on. 

I'd start every given camping festival with about $30 worth of stuff - homemade rice krispie treats, brownies, and glowstick - and I'd leave with at *least* $150 in cold hard cash, plus some cool stuff. One year there was a vendor who had little pewter statues he'd sell for 25 cents each. I started with $5 of those, traded my way up to around $300 worth of stuff - a rabbitskin bag, waterskin, potato gun, some semi-precious stones, stuff like that. In one weekend. I think that was age 9 or 10? Who remembers. 

I was also a fat kid - which you'd never know until you see the scar around my stomach (from the tummy tuck I got after I lost all the weight - yeah it turns out the thick skin is literal, not just metaphorical). I capped out at 247 lbs, and had to learn how to eat healthy, buy my own groceries, cook for myself, etc. as a kid. I worked out a *lot*, minimum of an hour a day, 6 days a week, plus swimming, biking, etc. That whole process took around 10 years and a tummy tuck before I chilled out on it, and it left me as strong as an ox. 

On the business side of things, I started my first "real" company at 19 - a moving company. I consider it both the worst and the best possible business I could've started. I learned so much from that business, from management to the need for scalability and focus, to an extreme work ethic. I mean damn, I used to have 10-12 hour days and I just would *not* quit. Didn't matter how tired I was, I always found a way to push through it and finish the job. 

Yes, that means I've had days where I've worked 12 hours in a row, with no breaks, moving furniture and heavy boxes up and down stairs. Yes that does mean I'd go through 2 - 3 gallons of water in a day. 

Eventually I walked away from that business because it wasn't worthwhile. Not only was I capped at a certain level of scale (Basically around 8 jobs / month if I wanted to actually have things work, or 3x that amount if I wanted to be a stressed out mess 24/7 - which is obviously a no-go.), I also had to deal with felons and drug addicts (because who else actually moves furniture for a living?). For a life, that's not really a great concept. So I walked away. 

Then I tried my hand at consulting, turned out that even though *I* knew my role and could understand & implement somewhat complex ideas (like the time I hired a Burmese VA to handle research for my cold outreach on the moving company - a move that saved me at least 10 hours a week for about $200 a month - or how I've built out complete automated follow-up email sequences for a business academy / TV show), it didn't mean that other people could implement them as well.

I learned a lot from that venture, but ultimately decided against continuing it in that particular fashion. See, direct consulting in companies not listed anywhere only gives me the opportunity to be paid on that particular job, while advising projects that will be traded offers the opportunity for much greater, much more scalable profits for the work being done. Hence we have The KingMaker launchpad. 

Finally, one day I just decided to use skills that I'd learned by playing Runescape and World of Warcraft (I'd made myself rich in both games, by the way), and started learning how to invest and learning about crypto. As it turns out, dedicating yourself to constant study for 10+ hours a day for 3 weeks earns you a pretty deep understanding on how markets work, and makes you pretty damn good at it - as long as you also understand marketing & market psychology. 

So there you have it. Along the way I've dealt with just about everything as it relates to people. I've learned some pretty harsh lessons and I've changed course on things once it's become clear that they won't serve my life, but I've never even considered giving up on my ultimate goal of building really cool shit into a scalable business. 

On more non-business stuff, check out the studio tour video. There's a lot of stuff I've learned and studied that I just can't cover here, and it's better to show you stuff like the origami & gymnastics rings. I'm always learning new things, still practicing the old things, always having fun.

Good question. 

So, for starters, you have to know three very important things: The way I spend money in general, the way I cook, and the way I evaluate opportunities / people.

First up, spending:

When it comes to spending - and this goes for my personal life as well - just about every dollar is intended to build something with long-term impact that will eventually bring that dollar *back* at least twofold.

Second, the way I cook:

I eat grass fed beef, fancy cheese, organic everything, and use substitutions like greek yogurt instead of sour cream (or Smetana instead, if I really need it. It's just a better sour cream.) or frozen bananas instead of heavy cream to make a quick version of ice cream. (Takes 3 minutes, instead of 30,000 hours.) I get the highest *real* quality that I can (meaning, quality based on growing factors, etc. NOT marketing) within reason, and I've made a point of learning how to take relatively cheap ingredients & turn them into meals you could feel proud to serve at a 5 star restaurant. 

Despite all of that, my grocery bill is actually *cheaper* than most people who eat whatever processed junk comes out of nameless factories, because I know where to shop, and how to make a great meal no matter what produce is in season. 

Also, I've made it a point to learn different recipes from many cuisines, from Thai to German, Japanese to Korean, Vietnamese to Mexican, South African to Persian, and everything in between.

Third, the way I evaluate opportunities & people: 

I've made a point of learning all that I can about many, many things. I've learned what goes into making things good, and I've learned how easily one can ruin a dish with the wrong ingredients, a trade with the wrong asset, or a business with the wrong people. 

When I see an opportunity, I understand that there's more around the corner, and that the right opportunities tend to stick around for a while, while the wrong opportunities almost always fade quickly. The same thing applies to people, of course. 

I've learned to be selective, to choose my opportunities & my team carefully, and to let the wrong opportunities & people go if they're not a great fit. 

With all of that in mind, I like to direct cash towards things that move the needle, first & foremost. In general, that means spending on marketing first - in particular on evergreen campaigns that have long term impact (IE. Affiliate recruitment, art installations, etc.), development second, and making sure to research & utilize whatever opportunities are available to make achieving a particular goal simpler & easier. 

Actually, yes. 

Here's the deal: In order to create the Monarch ecosystem, we don't actually *need* to build our own blockchain at the start.