EP 006: How the Speculative Attack Works

And a few major choices made.

Like any good student, we first review.

Over the last few weeks our progress has looked like the following:

1. Define the Principles we want to build around.

2. Begin to research locations.

3. Begin to research/define support infrastructure (Team).

4. Begin to generate our personal needs for a property, and our long term vision/model for that space. (See: Last week on the Wife Index of Livability)

A few of the above have been roughed out, if not finalized, and we’re edging closer to mapping out a clear strategy with clear goals.

But for the time being, it’s fine to have the edges rough, so long as we know we’ll go back and clean everything up in the final version.

Take a seat and let’s review:

1. Principles:

   • Defend: (i.e. Location)

     1. Water

     2. Food

     3. Energy

     4. Housing

     5. Medical

   • Advance: (i.e. Speculative Attack)

     1. Production

     2. Connection

     3. Community

2. Locations have been finalized in Southeastern Wyoming.

   • Specifically: Platte, Albany, Laramie, and Goshen Counties.

3. Team Assembly:

   • Mentors: Found

   • Agent: Found

   • Lender: Found

   • Builder: NEED

   • Manager: Possibly NEED

4. Long Term Vision:

   • This still needs to be worked on. After the Wife Livability Index conversation last week, my wife and I have been tossing ideas back and forth about setting up the space. A lot in the hopper here that is contingent on how we model out and cashflow the land. Stay tuned.

With those elements defined, let’s talk strategy:

We need to think like we’re starting a business (because we are).

We want to first consider our Assets and Liabilities.

Our assets should generate us cashflow in excess of what our liabilities require of us. In short, this is what having a profitable business looks like. We want a profitable business.

The exact same strategy for our Citadel applies. We need to build a model around generating cashflow out of our assets (the land itself, a business on the land, growing, ranching, government subsidy, whatever that may be) in excess of our liabilities (a mortgage, taxes, operational costs.)

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It’s here that I’d caution you on avoiding the first major error in business.

1. Getting too worked up on the numbers and not getting worked up on the model.

If you start a company with your own money (called bootstrapping), you may take pride in being cashflow positive and not carrying any debt.

I know… I’ve done it before.

In a former life I grew a multimedia production company from a single desk in a co-working space to a multi-office setup with 12 employees executing 40-60 photo and video projects a month.

We were growing, we were excited, we had no debt and many happy customers.

And then we fell out of the sky like a rock.

What happened?
We were in the final weeks of an accelerator program and ready to begin a pre-seed funding round for $500,000, when my business partner and I realized we wanted precisely opposite businesses.

He wanted a lifestyle business where he could work 20hrs a week and make $120,000/yr.

I wanted a high growth, venture funded startup we could expand to other cities ASAP.

Within 3 months I had to let 10 people go and was splitting up $75,000 in photo/video assets.

No fun.

But what could be expected? We had no debt, yes, but we also had no clear and scalable growth model that we could rally around.

We knew our margins, our growth and our profitability, but without a clear sense of our growth model, rallying a team, raising money, and scaling became impossible.

We spent so much time working IN our business (Owner/Operator), we failed to work ON our business (Owner).

Let’s avoid that mistake and talk model/strategy.

Our simplified WY Bitcoin Citadel Strategy looks like the below.

1. Get Cheap Money, Acquire Asset(s)

   • Meet lending qualification requirements (minimal requirements at potentially max leverage)

2. Push our Costs to the Floor

   • Stack incentives using land conservation, land regeneration, Agricultural status, to minimize liabilities.

3. Generate Cash, (And Stack Sats of course)

   • Cashflow secured property with minimal overhead via:

     • Agritourism?

     • Energy production/mining?

     • Agricultural goods?

     • TBD

Because the government loves giving out free stuff, especially in rural America, we should avail ourselves of all of the potential opportunities to both increase our potential upside, and decrease our downside.

Here are a few ready examples:

• Lending for Farm Loans can get you up to $600,000, at sub-3.3%, for 40 Years with 0% down. (See: This Government Explainer Booklet)

• Ag Status (Read: Farm Status) gets you a 90.5% reduction in your property taxes.

• WY has NO State Income Tax and is Highly Deregulated for business.

With these principles, team, and resources lined up, we’re approaching the time to begin modeling out various versions of our Bitcoin Citadel based on size and what is available on the land.

If you want to do a bit of research yourself, I suggest looking HERE to explore rural lending programs in your area. Be aware that if you go this route, you’ll need to find a lender that is approved to work with these Federal tools.

Next week we start to talk models and will map out a few potential setups.

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I hope you enjoyed this update! I’m really enjoying the process of getting my thoughts down and hope you’re getting excited to build your own Citadel (or are actively in the process.)

It would mean a lot for you to subscribe to this newsletter, to share it with those who you believe can benefit, and to tell me what you think in the comments.