¶ Intro / Opening
I'm the owner and founder of a luxury skincare brand called Golden Tallow Natural Skin Care. There are so many people who are using something today. If they flip that bottle over, they would not be able to name half of the ingredient. They wouldn't be able to name three-fourths of the ingredients. I feel like it's just shocking to look at just all the quality of everything down to like clothes you're buying. You know, there's plastic center clothes you got to start thinking
about. What led you to recognizing tallow for its health benefits for skin? Because you mentioned offline, you've sort of broadly eaten a carnivore diet for several years. What led you down that rabbit hole? Was that Bitcoin? Was that something else? Learning that the U.S. dollar is corrupt and devaluing, that's a lot to handle, especially when you start realizing it affects every single aspect of your life.
hey everyone michael here with the bitcoin way podcast thank you for tuning in today on the show i have kit from golden tallow you've probably seen her on x if you are there kit is awesome she is building a business we talk about that we talk about how she went carnivore her health journey we talk about bitcoin we kind of cover a little bit of everything fantastic conversation
¶ Introducing Kit from Golden Tallow
you're gonna love this one hey everyone like i said in the intro i've got kit here with me kit Welcome to the Bitcoin Way podcast. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thank you for taking some time. This will be fun. So first of all, why don't you tell people who you are, give a little bit of a background, how you found Bitcoin, and then we'll get into more about Bitcoin and the product that you're working on and everything else that we can possibly talk about.
Perfect. Yeah, so my name's Kit. I'm Kit underscore stats on Twitter. I tweet out about Bitcoin a lot. I'm the owner and founder of a luxury skincare brand called Golden Tallow. Currently, I just have two products, a face cream, and I just rolled out soaps in the last month. So if you are interested in natural skincare, people are loving it. There's lots of reviews on my website and on Twitter as well, too.
¶ Kit's early Bitcoin discovery on the Silk Road
And I found Bitcoin back in 2014 at a party in my hometown. my friend was buying off of the Silk Road. And I was like, what are you doing? And he's like, no, no, no, it's fine. You're just, you know, some simple drugs, like some weed or whatever. And I was like, you probably shouldn't be doing that. But I was curious about it. I was
like, that's really interesting. Because at the time, I was learning about Tesla and like Netflix and seeing how they were taking over their industries for like cars and like cable TV.
so I was like oh that's interesting maybe money will move over into this digital currency that my friend is talking about because my friend is very smart he goes he went to like UVA and like worked at Google so I have high regards for my friends so I was like wow that's really smart um so yeah that's kind of how I got into it I didn't buy it at that time I sat down I got on a bunch of forums and was like how do how do I get into this but I was too busy with a
lot of life things going on at that time. So I tried, but it wasn't as easy as like a quick glance. Had I figured it out, though, I'm sure I could have gotten some free Bitcoins off of those certain websites, which have been fun. But as people say, who knows if I would have held it or what would have happened. So I try not to think about it too much. And then fast forward to like 2019, I moved out to Colorado to try to figure out finances. So I started
learning more about the stock market and different aspects of money. And I was on Robinhood and I, it popped up at the bottom. At that time on Robinhood, you can't take your keys off. I didn't even know like really what Bitcoin was at that point in 2019. So, you know, I was just trying to
figure out more about stocks and different things like that. I got on Twitter, started to get into like the you know the crypto space and seeing what different people were saying about different stuff um i only ever bought like a bunch a little bit of doge i think i made 800 on it and by that time i had found the bitcoin maxis on twitter and i was resonating with a lot of the things that they were saying and i was like okay maybe i'll just do bitcoin only so i think i might be one of the
only few bitcoiners who didn't get wrecked on ship coins and have that period of their life where they like just got scams. So I'm very blessed in that scenario. But it was like, you know, spending hours on Twitter, reading all these posts kind of earlier. So there was more signal back then too. Nowadays, it's so different on Twitter where people are just posting for like attention more so because Twitter's monetized.
We can still get on like Damus or Noster, the protocol, and still find some really signal Bitcoiners out there. Yeah. Yeah. Good for you. Good for you for avoiding the shitcoin rabbit hole. I think that's sort of a logical jumping off point for a lot of people before they figure out what the signal is and what the noise is. So so what year what year was your conviction like set in stone where you said, OK, I get this Bitcoin thing.
And then you mentioned at the time you didn't really know what Bitcoin was when you were like looking into the stock market. Could you maybe give your definition or your working understanding of what you think Bitcoin is? Is it money? Is it an investment? Is it some combination of things? How do you view it?
¶ Defining Bitcoin after reading "The Bitcoin Standard"
Yeah, so I feel like I got really lucky with this as well, too. I read the Bitcoin standard by Safety and Amu's like really early on, probably at the end of 2021.
or like I'd have to go back and look but I went 90% all in after reading that book I was like oh my gosh like this is really eye-opening and really crazy obviously like 10% of my net worth I do trade options with and now I've been trading options for like five or six years so that's kind of like what I do mostly other than my skincare business but that book really laid it out I have a technical background too so a lot of the tech at the I don't know four or five of the ending chapters really
made big sense to me um I feel like the beginning of that book is just kind of diving into the history of money and what money is properties of money and things that you just don't really learn in school or anywhere from anyone so it was very eye-opening to like have it all together I also read or I I didn't read it I listened on audiobook from beginning to end on a road trip from Virginia to Colorado. So I just like listen the whole way through. And I think that that also hit me kind
of differently than like taking bits and parts pieces of it. And so, yeah, back then I went all in. And since I was tweeting a lot on Twitter, getting on to the community and all these, you know, have fun, you know, the toxic chains, I was networking. I ended up working at Bitcoin magazine in the conference for a while because I was blowing up on in the space and a lot of people were like retweeting me and commenting on my Unmarked profile. This is actually my second
Twitter account now. I deleted that other one a while ago, but it was fun working at the conference and getting to meet people in person. I would go to like local Bitcoin meetups in Colorado a lot.
I went to Bitblock Boom. So conviction came from a lot of that as well, too, that I just, you know the more you learn about it the more you're like thinking about it long term where this is going to go um so for your second question i think it's going to just replace the u.s dollar in my mind um i think they'll keep printing money and bitcoin's price will keep going up um bitcoin you know uses energy to gain its value um you can mine it and it's a store of value in
that sense and i feel like it's just a better money because you can hold it yourself um it's easy to transact without third parties you don't have to worry about like venmo or paypal taking fees from you um i mean you pay like a little bit of miners fee to send um but like lightning it's very cheap and fast so there's a lot there's different layers of bitcoin um you know there's
three different layers of Bitcoin. So layer two is where you can do a lot of those applications like lightning and different things like, you know, if you there's the mill person who like escrow. Yeah. Like those kinds of applications. Like if you're like buying something from someone and it's like a lot and you don't want to just directly send it to them because the money's gone at that point, there's no way to get like a refund back from a credit card system or somebody like that.
There's no, you know, back way like that. So applications are coming out to make it easier to use in that sense. Things like not being able to get your money back. There can be like an escrow middle section that helps you. So, yeah, I think it's really early still. I think people don't think it's early because of the price right now, but I think that it's a very early technology. I do believe it's going to work out in the end. I don't see anything else being better like gold or silver.
It's a lot to like have to carry onto a plane and then the TSA is going to steal it from you anyway. Yeah. No, I'm firmly in the Bitcoin is money camp and couldn't agree more. So you when did you you said you had I didn't realize you'd had a previous account on I guess maybe it was Twitter back when you had that account. When did you start this account? and like I was looking through your feed as I was preparing to chat with you.
I don't even know how you come up with things to say as often as you say them. I find that admirable. I, you know, every once in a while, I'll have something that I think seems smart and I'll just throw it out there. And it probably isn't as smart as I feel. When did you start the nonstop tweeting about Bitcoin? And it seems like you've gotten a lot of traction here in a considerably short period of time.
Yeah, so my other account, um I'd had it for a while I was blogging back in another lifetime so I had a lot of followers from that maybe 3,000 and I feel like when you do have enough followers people follow you just because you have a lot of followers in a sense so I grew my other one I was um more outspoken and just like I didn't have a structured about that other account per se um it was definitely more of like a raw
my opinionated self on that one. I deleted after I got laid off with Bitcoin magazine. And I just was like taking a break from everything. There's a lot of other personal things going on in my life at that time, too. So I created this one March 2023. I think one of my friends, Neil Jacobs, who runs FOMO 21 merch story, convinced me to like, create it again. So big shout out to Neil. It helped me. He was like, you should do it. You know, It'll help your sales for Golden Tallow.
And now Twitter is monetized. So I'm also getting paid for a lot of it as well, too. It's not a lot yet, but as I improve my content and get more dialed down into viral tweets and such, that helps. I've noticed you're either tweeting about Bitcoin or you're tweeting about how you can make money tweeting. And that's something that more people need to be aware of. Yeah.
¶ Orange pilling friends and family
I'm always curious with folks like yourself who are, you're talking about Bitcoin all the time. I mean, I view you as someone who people with, at least on Bitcoin Twitter, would probably recognize your account. Whether they follow you or not, like they've probably seen your tweets or seen someone reshare something that you've said. I'm always curious, like in your personal life, you obviously have a very strong conviction. Have you orange-billed friends and family? What's been your success rate?
What's worked? What hasn't? just anything about like offline, like what are you doing with this? Yeah. So I'm a pretty like introvert, like maybe workaholic. So like I don't go out too often. I don't party or like go to events. And right now I'm very like toned, like locked into growing
golden tallow. And I also day trade. So like I don't go out and drink or party or do all that other kind of stuff you have to have like everything really dialed in to be like that that one percent where it's like making it work like you have to get really good sleep if i don't get good sleep i'm not gonna like go trade options or whatever that day um so like i feel like my circle is small that's where i'm kind of getting that like for my family no one owns bitcoin um
no one i feel like my dad likes gold i don't know i try to explain it to him i've shown him some videos and things like that. My mom, when she was around, I got to show her a Michael Saylor video. She's passed two and a half years now. Thank you. Yeah. But she got to see the Michael Saylor video with Tucker. That was a really good one. So she's she understood it and she understood like why I was going so crazy and worked at Bitcoin magazine and things because I wanted her to
understand. So it was nice that she at least had a level of understanding there. And then, yeah, friends i did orange pill one of my friends one of my best friends we might actually go into business together with golden tallow we used to work on my blog and he's my photographer he's one of my best friends of course now we've known each other for eight years and i feel like just since he knows me and like we're very similar we're both infjs which is funny because like the whole bitcoin community
talks about like the personality profiles which i don't i don't want to take credit for it but it might have been something I started in like 2021 or 2022 and it blew up from there everyone was taking a profile or personality test or whatever but yeah he's INFJ too my other friend my gal pal she um she's also INFJ and I don't I don't know she's kind of on the fence about Bitcoin and other people I talk to about it they just don't they haven't done all the required required reading I
feel like it takes i don't know like 100 hours to really understand every aspect of it and like how it bleeds into other aspects of life um it just really shakes up your belief about what you've been taught and you thought the government was gonna like be there for you and your your retirement and now you're learning that that's not the case at all so it shakes you a lot and it takes takes some time to like absorb that in um so yeah it's an uphill battle you know i've got i've been
unfortunate I've gotten my entire immediate family. Well, I've got a wife and young kids and like they're they don't have a choice but to be on board. But the rest of my immediate family has all purchased Bitcoin. None of them have gone down the rabbit hole. I think they've all said, OK, Michael's, you know, maybe crazy, but he's not a complete idiot. Let's have like an allocation
to Bitcoin. But my brother's the only one who is like really open minded to all of it. He's just He's kind of focused on his own stuff and I'm going to keep on kicking him until he reads, you know, the big print, the Bitcoin standard. And he'll get there. He's the most heavily into it and the most aligned with me on everything else. But what I found is I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.
I found like yesterday I was meeting with a church A friend of mine is a pastor at a small church And I went and I said I want the church like with the capital C to be an institution of influence into the future. I'm tired of the entertainment, education, Hollywood, all of these, you know, sort of pillars of society being the influential ones. And I think Bitcoin is a mechanism by which, you know,
more positive influences in society can, we can alter that, the trajectory. And I basically told them it because it's not my church i felt like i could put stipulations on me giving to them and so i said i want to like seed your bitcoin uh treasury and but you have to sit down with me and and let me explain this to you why i think this is so important and you've got to hold it for five years like those are the two stipulations so i met with this guy my sort of friend acquaintance and his
finance team. And I just laid out why Bitcoin made sort of a moral case, sort of a practical macro case for Bitcoin. And they're going to proceed with accepting my gift, which, you know,
why wouldn't they? But I think it got them thinking. And so what I've found is maybe the way to force people into this is to offer them something, you know, even if it's just a small amount, but like, you've got to listen to me or you've got to read this book and just like, kind of drag them kicking and screaming if you have to into owning some amount of Bitcoin.
Um, and so I'm wondering if maybe moving forward, that's just my, my sort of MO on how I approach orange filling people is, uh, is giving them a little bit of Bitcoin and making them read a book or something, you know? Yeah, I agree with giving people a little bit of Bitcoin. I gave one of my other girlfriends, um, some Bitcoin and she just was like, wow, that was so fast and easy. And it got her interested. And now she's going to local events where she's at. That's awesome.
Yeah. Yeah. I think that that's a great way to do it. Yeah. Yeah. And unfortunately, I think number go up is going to be, you know, the best marketing tool. It's fine. It's part of the part of the deal. I hope number goes up over time. It's just the thing I'm less interested in. But I bet over the next 12, 18 months, we get a lot. You and I start getting text messages from friends and family. Hey, can you what book did you say to read? Where
should I buy? So we'll get some of that. OK, let's let's talk about Golden Tallow before we jump into
¶ Kit's carnivore diet and discovering tallow
the company and the product. This is going to so we're going to take this conversation a couple of ways. I have a feeling because I think we both share an affinity for healthy eating, lifestyle, that kind of thing. What led you to recognizing tallow for its health benefits for skin? Because you mentioned offline, you're you've sort of broadly eaten a carnivore diet for several years.
What led you down that rabbit hole? Was that was that Bitcoin? Was that something else? What was the impetus yeah it was bitcoin bitcoin just wrecked everything no more oreo cookies for me um also safe a dean he he's car more diet and his brother is um a doctor as well that that tweets out about this stuff i've met them in person multiple times but yeah i would see them tweet out about it other people in the space too on twitter um i guess in 2020 or whatever i was just
interested in it. I didn't really think much about it for like a year or two or whatever, seeing those tweets. But then I like I mentioned, I used to be a blogger. I did like travel and lifestyle, but I also just like ate out at all these restaurants. So I can only imagine all the seed oils and things that I was eating. I used to think I was eating healthy at home. I would do like
hummus sandwich wraps, which I'm sure that that wasn't too bad with vegetables. And I would do a lot of oatmeal and like sometimes I would go off and have like honey buns or things that weren't so good for me. But I just didn't, you know, think too much of it. I was never really super overweight ever in my life, ever once, any point in time or anything. But I got I just went to the doctor. I don't ever really go to the doctor ever. So it was strange that I did. But I was just like, why not?
I just go get a yearly checkup. And they did a blood draw. And I saw in my blood test that I had pre-diabetes just like slightly in by like point zero one or whatnot. And I reversed it with carnivore diet within like six months or so. I went back to the doctor and it was just, you know, reversed. I don't have it anymore.
but I do believe that a lot of the things that we're eating is impacting that all those immune disorders or disabilities or whatever um I think it definitely came from the seed oils that are in the in everything even in our skincare yeah what what did the doctor did you tell the doctor when you went back that you had been eating a carnivore diet and if so what would they say No, she just she told me to like eat less carbs and, you know, lose. I don't know.
She that's pretty much I think that's like, you know, less sugar kind of thing. What she told me she was smart. It was a doctor in Colorado. Not all doctors even tell you that. And I feel like anyone that I've known that have gotten this diagnosis, they don't mention, oh, you should be in ketosis or like 40 grams of carbs is what you should be aiming for. They don't give you any nutritional direction whatsoever. They're just like less sugar and carbs. Like, what does that mean?
You know, you're just going to. In what kind? I think, you know, I do consume carbohydrates. And but the nature of my carb sources are very different than the standard American diet. Right. It's great. I think sweet potatoes are the only non fruit or honey carbohydrate that I consume. And like it's it isn't. So it's interesting to me, your doctor said eat fewer carbs because when I went to the doctor, I don't have a, actually my doctor now is Seyfedean's brother, Dr. Amada Moose.
So I'm going to visit with him once a year or as needed. And when I went to my mainstream, you know, traditional doctor who I no longer see, my LDL was high and I was doing like a strict carnivore diet for 18 months or a couple of years. And I mean, it was literally the fattiest ground beef and steak I could find, eggs, tons of butter. It was a beautiful, glorious time in my life. And my cholesterol was like, I don't know, 215 or something.
It's supposed to be sub 200 or sub 190 or something like that. And he's like, if you were a little bit older, like, you know, maybe if you were like 40, 45, I'd put you on a statin. And I was like, no, I was like, not going to happen, man. So he told me I needed to start eating more of a vegan diet and stuff. And of course, he's bald in and overweight and everything. So I was like, I'm probably not going to follow dietary advice from you.
But that's that's amazing that you had a normal doctor who told you fewer carbs. So, yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's very unconventional. So I assume then you're, as you went down the health rabbit hole and you started to learn about the nutrient richness of meat, of tallow, beef fat, that that was a part of the inspiration for what you're doing now with Golden Tallow. Is that fair to say?
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, being on the carnivore diet, I was very open to trying tallow. I, Clara and Fritz is the company I tried their tallow from. I ordered some like face cream and chapstick. And I'd already been pretty aware of like seed oils and all this stuff. Plus with carnivore diet, it just, it made sense. I don't know, maybe I would have tried it before. I did a lot of beauty blogging.
A lot of people worked with me like Neutrogena, a bunch of people in Sephora, like those kind of brands would send me things to try out. So I tried out almost everything on the market. And Tala is my favorite. Like it makes my skin feel really different compared to a lot of those other ones. Like I'd say Korean skincare still is really good.
But a lot of the other brands and things I was trying, it just it sits on the top of your skin and doesn't really do too much i'd say um i'm also living in virginia most of my life so it's very humid here so i don't know maybe if you're out west and you have really dry skin some of these things would help you a little bit more but for me um a lot of the skincare free products i was getting wasn't doing much but talo just makes your skin feel really silky um you could
your hydrates a lot if i don't use it my skin craves it like the next day I think it's it's awesome we need we need more products I mean not even just you know creams and lotions uh like I told you offline candidly I it's pretty rare that I'm putting you know anything on my skin when I do though I've got a tallow product I promise you that yours will be the next one that I buy it's just lasted me like two and a half years or something so yeah I feel like
I mean I feel like a a chick having this conversation but I think this is like good This is good stuff, though, because there are so many people who are using something today. And what they if they flip that bottle over, they would not be able to name half of the ingredient. They wouldn't be able to name three fourths of the ingredients, which is a pretty good sign. It's probably not something you want in the largest organ in your body, absorbing everything that it touches or that touches it.
¶ Golden Tallow: Wagyu beef and luxury skincare
So your your tallow is a bit different. So it's Wagyu beef. Is there so why don't you talk about why that is significant? And then are there other ingredients in your product or is it 100 percent? Yeah. So when I first got interested in the space, I did a little bit of research. What was out there? I saw that there was lacking of luxury brand out there. And so I was trying to think there's a lot of cow logos on everything.
It may look silly. I don't want to think about cows when I'm putting it on my face or my skin in that sense. I mean, it's OK, but like it's just not what I wanted to do. So I saw that gap in the market. And so I was like, how could I differentiate it to be a higher quality product that, you know, isn't a luxury niche? So knowing like just that Wagyu is, you know, better steak, the fatty profile is more dense with nutrition. And, you know, it's harder to source.
I only have a few farmers that I work with, but I think that also just adds to the scarcity of it.
as well too but i put olive oil and essential oil in my face cream that i have right now it's just lavender scented right now i'll probably expand that later on but every time i add a product i have to buy a barcode and get more products like i have to get another jar that has just the scent on it it's really involved when you think about it um when i first started doing that i didn't think about that because when you order in bulk you have to order a certain
amount maybe like 800 or 500 jars or something and um I probably could have split it up into like different scents at that time but I didn't um I did do that with my soap so I just launched those this past month and that comes in four different scents one's unscented and then there's lavender eucalyptus and then sandalwood and the sandalwood's really popular of course because that's like a more expensive scent um but yeah that has a little bit more it's more involved in making it um you mix
you have distilled water and you put lye into that and mix that up and then you have all your oils so the wagyu tallow um i put coconut oil in it um and then there's also you know all the essential oils are in it um i also put oatmeal to soothe the skin and castor oil to make it more bubbly I love castor oil just in general, too. I'll just sometimes put that on my skin as well.
And yeah, you mix the two together. But when you do it, you have to have a thermostat that I have a thermostat gun that I measure the temperatures of it with. So you have to wait until it cools down to like 100, 105, 110 degrees.
and then it starts to mix and um emulsulate and like I've been kind of you know changing my recipe up a little bit better because the molds that I got are very detailed with my logo so right now I'm having to hand um pour in like the first half of it and like you know make sure that the logo has enough of the soap in it that it's going to like come out properly so it's it's not a very quick and easy process so i think the soaps will probably be more um i'll have to figure out how to
make it a quicker process for me because right now it's it took like two weeks to create the soaps that i have now and it takes about 24 hours for it to sit in the mold and then you unmold it make sure it's all good and if not then you know you have to melt it down again and like put it in the mold again and make sure the logo comes out perfectly um and then it's for four weeks to your home like do you have a lab or something or is this all in the kitchen like what where are you
where are you doing all yeah it's all in my kitchen right now um i have looked at renting out kitchens and things like that in dc i've found a few that i could go and do it there probably will eventually do that next year and film it there and everything but for now then i'm just starting out um no one in my family's ever done anything like this none of my friends this is all just like self-taught off of like any you know youtube videos and things like that or i did go
to school for entrepreneurship and business so a little bit of that is like you know coming up but for the most part i'm just like yellow yeah that's awesome so do you you've got two products now i think i saw i was looking at your your site the soap is at pre-order stage is that yeah yeah because I'm it's take since I just came out and I'm making it I'm shipping those first batches of soaps at the end of January it takes four weeks to cure them so the next batch we'll see will be you can
order it now but it probably won't ship until the end of March is what I was thinking because so what what comes besides potentially other scents do you have like a longer term vision for product lines, things like that, that you would add? Because to me, like, this is the sort of stuff I really, I really do think about, like, for my wife, having like, hey, this is just like the soap. This is just the cream, the whatever that we order for you, because I know it's high
quality. I know. And I'm like, I love supporting Bitcoiners, you know, what, like, what else do you see in the pipeline? And obviously, I understand that you're earlier and each product is a huge pain to get off the ground. But if you were to imagine the future.
Yeah. So I get feedback from everybody. I posted a poll on my Twitter, my Golden Tallow Twitter or X account. And that's how the soaps came about. Because in my mind, I feel like the next thing that I was going to like attempt to do was going to be more like a shaving cream.
I had gotten some requests for that but the way that I want to do that is in those aerosol cans and I looked into researching it and the type of facilities I'd have to go through and it seemed very expensive that would be like more later on down the road when you have more capital to put
into that first batch because you have to you have to sell out at something like that pretty quickly and then then eventually maybe down the third or fourth fifth batch then you making money off of it But yeah that would be a hefty lift in the beginning I would think I still need to research into that a little bit more So yeah I got feedback. I'll probably continue to get feedback from what people are interested in. There are
definitely certain things I don't want to do, like the chapstick. I don't really feel like tallow was
good for my lips per se. Maybe I would do something different or maybe just the one that I bought wasn't formulated well um do you mind if i ask what what brand you bought because i i tried some uh some tallow chapstick a while back that uh the winter like you know kills me for obvious reasons i don't want to throw anyone under the bus i can't remember the brand i got it was fine the thing for me the the one complaint i have with
tallow is just at least what I've tried. It has a smell. And so like getting in bed at night, you know, I feel bad like smelling like a cow, you know, I'm laying next to my wife. Some of them are like, you know, I understand to be less strong than others or you're diluting with, you know, coconut oil or something like that. But I'm always conscious of that. That was one of the things when I bought some tallow to try. I was like, this smells weird. Like I want it. That's one of the
main things I want to make sure that my brand doesn't have. So my face cream doesn't smell at all. And when it's unscented as well, too, it's good to go because my farmer renders it down like really, really good. She's got a whole process and like equipment to do that on her farm. So it's not like rendering in your kitchen. I feel like you basically melt down the tallow and then you let it solidify and you like scrape off all of the impurities and you do that process over
and over again. So she, she triple renders it. She might even do it more. But yeah, it just kind of is in that process of rendering it down to get rid of that smell. That's, that's awesome. Yeah. Cause I think that's one of the sticking points for a lot of people probably is that I, you know, I, I imagine there's some people who like the concept, but they don't want, they don't want the essential oil, not because of, you know, a health concern, but just, I don't want my face
to smell like this. So they go unscented and then they end up smelling like beef towel. So it's, you know, not quite what they're looking for. That's great though, that you've put in the time that you found the right supplier to help you do that. So what's been the hardest thing about running this business? If I were to guess, it sounds to me like just product development, like producing this, perfecting the actual creation of the physical product. But is there
something else that's been more difficult for you? I guess I'd say like I've gotten really lucky with a lot of it like finding the right vendors that could have like totally you know wrecked it um I store it in a very you know good way I like freeze some of the tallow and makes it last longer um because I'm I'm doing everything on my own and I'm starting it from scratch usually people that go into business buy businesses that are already like cash flowing um they'll buy something
that's already profitable like a laundromat or something this and that or i don't know what they're doing dropshipping or something where it's like they're not even making a brand so making a brand and doing all of it while also having to do sales i feel like that's the biggest thing right now is learning sales on top of like all this other stuff like i learned i'm really good at marketing that's why my twitter account is so good because basically like that account
people try to tie it to me personally a lot but it's it's more like entertainment for what people want to see and that's why i'm growing big because i know what people want to hear so i'm entertaining them with like things and ideas that they want that i know that they're gonna find funny not necessarily like tied to me a lot of it does overlap with what i think obviously i love bitcoin and different things but i'll joke about other stuff about like like i i forgo therapy to buy
more Bitcoin. Like I don't go to therapy. I mean, like I didn't buy groceries. I didn't, I didn't buy groceries because I bought Bitcoin instead. Like I didn't do that. That's just like, you know, that's just sarcasm and you know, whatever.
Are you, is your working assumption that Bitcoin has been a cheat code for your business that a lot, that most of your business is coming from Bitcoiners or, cause, cause again, like all I know of you is what I see on on X this conversation today are you thinking that most of the people coming and buying your product up to this point have been Bitcoiners so I spoke at the DC Bitcoin conference a couple months ago about this a little bit and so 10% of my sales come
from Bitcoin right now like paid in Bitcoin and obviously other Bitcoiners pay with fiat dirty fiat and so i use open node right now but i've also accepted it by just sending a voicemail not a voice like an invoice through through whatever and um so the thing with bitcoin is that since we're not at adoption per se like we need to get rid of capital gains tax on it because it's hard for me to like go use it to buy supplies right now i'm just holding it and my
strategy is going to be to loan against it in the future, which will give me a leg up on all of my competitors for sure. And especially when I'm cash flowing and I'm able to pay off that loan, that's going to be just like a flywheel effect. But right now I can't really touch it or use it to pay for anything, which is what I need as like a startup. Cause I'm very, um, like sale to sale, like this sale comes in. Okay. Now I can buy more castor oil. This sale comes in. I'm paying
through my Shopify fee. You know, like it's very like I have a buffer now because I've been in three years or so. But really, it's honestly like that when you're a startup company and you're putting your own capital in it. I don't even know. It probably has taken me probably 15K to start up this brand for all of the supplies and everything else. Maybe maybe a little less, maybe like maybe like 10K. Like the first batch of supplies was
like four or five K. Um, and so, yeah, it's, it's a, it's a lot to get started. I mean,
¶ Bitcoin as a cheat code for small businesses
you got it cause you ended up praying into costs. You didn't realize that you were going to have, and you forget about just, you know, running a website and, you know, uh, transact and cheese, those sorts of things that come with it. Yeah. There's been a lot of shipping fees that like, I didn't, um, foresee, especially in the summer, everything tallow melts. So I had to learn about
dry ice. I had to get stickers for dry ice. I had to get boxes that were insulated for dry ice that were very expensive and so i just you know absorb those costs per you know and that's the luxury part of it right it's going to get to your door in the right like consistency um but now now i charge like a flat fee of like 9.99 for it but shipping it in the summer was like 50 dollars yeah yeah you gotta do all your product development over through the winter and then uh
take a break and just try selling all of it through the summer. That's brutal. It's all the little things. So if Bitcoin were to continue to appreciate and purchasing power perpetually, what kind of advantage does that give you as a small business? I feel like I can get out more products. I can have more inventory. I can spend more money on
marketing and ads. So just getting your voice out there more, you just already have a advantage because you're going to make more sales in that sense as well too and going faster than other people um because like if bitcoin appreciates then i could get ahead of someone by like a year or two three or four or five years where they're just still like hustling because they're on us dollar that's depreciating against them as well it's like running up a hill right um so i can get
out more products um i can hire people faster and this is you know bring on more help and then that just fly wheels off of it. Like it takes a lot off my plate so I can focus on being more of like
a CEO than like running every single little part of the business. Yeah. I'm especially in a business like that, that's, that is that hands-on, I would imagine just having someone to manage a portion of that would open up a lot of opportunity for you to focus on sales and marketing and all the things that you probably wish you could be spending your day on, but just isn't entirely a possibility.
of this stage when did you when did you launch the product again like how long has golden taliban in march 2023 23 okay so it's coming in its third year now okay i think i interrupted you what were you gonna say i was gonna say it's kind of relaxing to make the soaps i don't do any other hobbies really like i said i don't go out i don't really i guess i play some golf here and there but other than that it's really like i'm working all the time so it's nice to kind of um get out of my head
and make soaps and do all this stuff it helps therapeutic i love i love it yeah and um okay so i want to ask you something that i'm i'm cautious of how i ask this so there are not a whole lot of
¶ Women in Bitcoin and the importance of diverse voices
women in bitcoin that are very public um like there are some great ones we have you know natalie Brunel. I think, you know, folks like yourself, I think are very public on, on X people have their different, different channels. Um, but I, I was, I w so I was fortunate. I got to go on a couple of podcasts with a, with a handful of women who have partnered with the Bitcoin way. And, um, I remember, I can't remember who it was after one of them. Uh, they were talking about, they're just
kind of kicking things off, figuring out how to do this podcasting thing. I was trying to really encourage her that, you know, like Natalie Brunel, for example, great voice for Bitcoin, very professional. She's an experienced journalist. But I told this gal, I said, you know, not everyone is going to resonate with Natalie, just like not everyone's going to resonate with me. And we need more of the, we need other voices because how you say things and the questions you
ask are going to resonate differently with different people. Do you have, maybe a concern isn't isn't the right way of framing this but are you um i'll just say concern do you have concerns that at the moment it feels like a very male dominated industry which i personally i don't have like an issue with that it's just the people who have latched on to it and been most interested but it feels like there are there's a whole cohort of of probably women in particular who
aren't probably hearing the bitcoin message from someone that they relate as well to is that something you perceive to be the case or am I just reading too much into it as a guy or is that something you're working to overcome what's your take so I follow most mostly women on twitter if I see a bitcoin lady I'll immediately follow her so I feel like there's there's definitely more than there was when I first came in in 2019 in the space and also being like I mentioned I day
trade options. I'm seeing a lot more women come into the trading space as well. So I think those women are eventually going to come to the realization that Bitcoin is outperforming a lot of stocks and other things and that they should have like a long term investment in Bitcoin.
And I feel like it just it just is kind of that way, like women kind of lean on men more so in relationships for being the provider but there it's definitely more so in modern day society today i feel like women are taking control of their finances by themselves and i think they'll eventually just come to it everyone gets bitcoin at the price that they find it at or whatever this saying is right so um hopefully hopefully they realize it sooner than later yeah it's it's
interesting because i so there's sort of there are a lot of men in bitcoin who i hear this all the time they're like how do i get my wife on board and it's like the challenge that they have is just getting their wife to read a book or like to take enough interest like their wives it's at least it's it appears like their wife has an opinion like it's magic internet money it's you know it's nonsense it's a scam whatever but they probably aren't following someone like you on on
X. They're probably not listening to Natalie's podcast. They probably haven't read the Bitcoin standard. And there seems to be this this gap. And what bothers me about that is I agree,
like everyone gets Bitcoin at the price they deserve to some degree. But there are probably families in particular with very much untapped potential for what they could be doing, building the Bitcoin space, adding to the Bitcoin circular economy, you know, raising their kids on, you know, on a Bitcoin standard, educating their kids about things that you kind of, it's optimal to have both, you know, parents on board for that kind of thing, or, you know, both,
uh, husband and wife, um, in lockstep. And so, uh, I, I feel like this is a, like, I'm not like a, a diversity equity include an inclusion guy, but I am cognizant of the, the impact of not having people who everyone can relate to. And I feel like that's kind of the gap I felt maybe taking place. Yeah, I can see that. It's kind of a mixture in my mind of like, you know, if you're thinking about gender roles, like the man should, or, you know, typically,
traditionally, man take care of the finances in that sense. But now things have changed, Obviously, like women are working more now, making their own money. So they should definitely start to understand it as society changes and they have more responsibilities. And, you know, it's just kind of stressful to learn about money, to be honest. Like learning that the U.S. dollar is corrupt and devaluing.
that's a lot to handle, especially when you start realizing it affects every single aspect of your life down to like, you know, they're putting fillers in food because it's cheaper to make and the buildings are, you know, cheaper supplies. Nothing is as good quality anymore. I don't know if women want to take on that stress on top of all the other stresses that they have. It's a lot.
Terrible. Yeah. yeah yeah i think i think you're probably onto something and yeah again like every every family is is unique like when i was with my wife's family over thanksgiving and uh i was talking to one of her cousin's wives and this gal like she and i were on board like on the same page on everything like she was uh she was surprising me with some of the the crazy things she said which you know i
would not ever say online and uh and but she's not a bitcoiner but like she's perfectly primed to be a bitcoiner i was like i see a lot of that online too yeah i was like you you are so close like you you just need a nudge like order the bitcoin standard right now order the big print go to a little bit of reading like she she'll i'm if she's not already a bitcoiner you know at christmas time or just past christmas time i'd be very surprised uh i i haven't circled back but I probably should.
I think it's just a lot of people need the right nudge. And that why that why I want to encourage people who if you have any sort of propensity toward starting a podcast writing a book starting a blog a newsletter do it because you just have no idea if maybe your voice is going to be the voice that someone needs. And, you know, it's, it's going to be like a wildfire at some point. Like we've got like the spark burning, you know, that, that is Bitcoin and we just need
families. We need communities, everyone getting on board. So I appreciate that you're, you know, you're doing your part in all of this and you've got a Bitcoin business and you're not, you know, telling people to put crap on their skin. It's all the it's all the little pieces. So are there any other things that you so you've you've opted out into better money,
¶ Opting out of the fiat system: Clothing and career
you've opted out into better diet? You know, you've opted out into running your own business
and not working as a fiat slave. Are there other ways that your life has been changed radically or even in small ways since finding bitcoin i feel like those are definitely the bigger ones um i feel like it's just shocking to look at just all the quality of everything down to like clothes you're buying you know there's polyester and all this other stuff and like recycled things plastics in our clothes you got to start thinking about so that's kind of probably the next round
wave for me. I've been getting rid of clothes and figuring out what to keep and what not to keep. I've lost a lot of weight the last year or so. I'm down like 26 pounds, which is kind of crazy. I had some personal things, so it gained a little bit of weight, but yeah. Thank you. And so that's probably the next wave is clothes. I've started down that rabbit hole. So I'm wearing, I wear cotton, you know, pretty much all day. Yeah, I still have, you know, some of my workout
clothing is still polyester. I can probably there are some good brands that seem to be out there that I could migrate away from any synthetic materials. It's sort of a work in progress, because I want to just dump everything and spend a bunch of money on, you know, a whole new wardrobe. But I'm like piece by piece putting that together. So you're sort of the early stages of that. I'm in the early stages of that still kind of working through the clothes that I had.
I had a lot of clothes from the blogging days and they're not great quality, but it's just like a lot. So I'm just kind of going through that, getting rid of some things. And I guess like the next portion is that like once I found Bitcoin, I just and you're thinking about money, how the U.S. dollars are valuing. You can buy these assets and and live off of those and different things.
I just don't feel like I could go back to a nine to five unless it was something like like a Bitcoin company or like something very unique, helping a friend, this and that kind of thing. I couldn't go back to a traditional corporate nine to five ever knowing that like how money devalues over like 20, 40 years. And I tweet about this a lot and that those tweets definitely make me laugh for sure, because like it just wrecks your brain.
it kind of ruins your life from like having a stable income thank god the price goes up i think i saw was it one of your tweets you like took a picture of a it was like a picture of a cubicle or something or a couple cubicles yeah what was your tagline on that i i remember seeing that it was something like a bit i look it up i tweet so much my entire bitcoin thesis is never end up here. Yeah. Yeah. And the funny thing is I spent 10 years of my life working in that
environment. Never really crossed my mind at the time. And now as a Bitcoiner, I feel like I've, you know, the veil has been lifted and I'm like, oh my, that looks brutal. I can't believe people have to go spend, you know, eight hours a day, you know, working in that environment.
There's so many aspects of it too, because you're working there thinking you're going to be able to buy a house and have a family and all this other stuff and you're just realizing that the math isn't mapping and you're like why don't I just go do what I want to what I want to do and be creative have like a podcast or like create a product or do like anything it might suck in a little while like but you can you know convince yourself that okay these three years are gonna suck but
at least it's not 60 years of doing this that sucks and I don't have anything at all and I'm not gonna retire I could do this thing that I enjoy for a couple years and if it fails I'll
just go back to that anyway. Right. Yeah. I'm, I'm really grateful that I found Bitcoin after I'd started my own company, was working from home and I was out of that environment because I think like, I think the switch would have flipped and I would have been banging my head against a wall every day, like screaming in agony because I've, because I'd finally have awakened, awoken to what it was I was
doing with my life. But again, I understand though, there are a lot of people in that environment who, first of all, many people who thrive, they're very good at their work, very competent, smart people, and many providing real value to society. There are a lot of people though, unfortunately, by virtue of the corruption of our monetary system, who maybe don't realize just how dystopian the blue-lit cubicle life is, but they realize that what they're doing is not fulfilling,
but they have to make ends meet. Like their only option is to stick with it. And I'm like, what I, what I hope to do is not make those people depressed that they could have opted out for so long, but to give them hope that there is an opt out that didn't exist, you know, 10 years ago when they started that journey, but better late than never that you start down this path toward, you
know, a better future. And I think that like, to me, that's what Bitcoin represents. And we're fortunate to be at a point in time where we really are early and people have that opportunity because someday the only someday your only option is going to be to go to work and hopefully it's better type of work that people have but to go to work and earn bitcoin because you can't exchange fiat for it at some point in the future because fiat isn't a thing so at least that's my thesis i'm curious
if you agree with that yeah i think so 100 and i feel like they'll have to work less years because bitcoin will go up in value and they'll be able to like retire and then that money will also be going up as well instead of like people's retirements now if you don't have a pension that's just like cash flow coming in you're living off of you know a 401k or a Roth IRA and those aren't working like people are seeing now that was one of the first things I read the book
unshakable by Tony Robbins and that he was kind of calling 401ks out in there and I was like wow the 80s that's crazy I thought that these were around for forever um and so yeah I feel like if you're working a job right now, like for me before, when I was working in corporate, I was kind of investing here and there, but not really. I didn't know much about it. That's why I went and moved to Colorado when I started buying courses on technical analysis and
like things like that, which, you know, you have to find the right one. That first one was not as
great. My second one was pretty good. And like, even if you don't day trade or something, you still need to learn how to invest and find good companies that are undervalued and like do a bunch of research to take your paycheck that you're working at that nine to five and put it into something because you can't just do the nine to five right now with how everything is devaluing you have to do something else and i don't think having you know doing a nine to five and doing
uber or like a side hustle like that's great but you still have to know how to invest it it still has to be gaining value and compounding throughout the years if you want to like live comfortably and retire at a decent age yeah i think of i think of bitcoin is like the the dummy proof way of doing that yes and if you're someone who like i think i think everyone's primary savings vehicle should be bitcoin i like i don't like like options trading some of the stuff
you've talked about not interesting to me first of all because i like i'd suck at it i i view like what I've come to view every aspect of my life to be is an opt in or an opt out of the fiat system. And to the best of my ability, I just want to opt out 100 percent of the time. That said, I understand that there are that, you know, if you're a professional investor, if you have a lot
of experience, you might say Bitcoin is my savings vehicle. And I see opportunities that exist beyond just stored Bitcoin to, you know, go make additional money and, you know, hopefully then put it back into Bitcoin and, you know, continue to store and preserve your value there. But I think I've softened. I was kind of just hardcore, like 100 percent Bitcoin.
I've softened my stance to there needs to be capital in the economy going toward productive things and investing in businesses and startups. And, you know, I mean, someone needs to build homes for people to live in. And then, you know, like all of those things require capital. And so there are opportunities, I think. I just think I think a lot of it feels just like noise to me right now. And someday on a Bitcoin standard, it'll be much more clear to me.
What are the real investment opportunities? Exactly. And all the speculation will kind of be washed by the wayside. Yeah, because you'll be like trading in Bitcoin, but you'll be buying like Microsoft shares with Bitcoin and you'll get Bitcoin back. You're not going to be trading with the dollar and getting dollar back in a sense. But like right now, if you think about what most people do is most people are buying an index fund.
They're buying the S&P 500 and they know nothing about 490 companies in that fund. They know nothing about them. And the only thing they know about the top 10 are Microsoft makes software and Apple makes computers and Tesla makes, you know, EVs. And like, that's it. They don't know anything about the underlining fundamentals, what the market cap potential is. They know nothing about, you know, not reading their quarterly reports. I mean, nothing.
And to me, I used to think like, oh, investing is, you know, the S&P 500. No, like that's speculating. You know nothing about any of the companies. Like maybe it's worked historically, but, you know, past returns are no indication of a future return. So it's speculating in my view. And Bitcoin to me, once you learn enough about it, just isn't that. So I'm like, I'm just, you know, I'm just comfortable and happy saving in Bitcoin.
And until, you know, until it becomes very evident to me that there's another opportunity that could exceed the potential of Bitcoin from an investment perspective and I think would add value to the world. I'm just I'm not particularly interested. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So I'll let you run with this subject because we're about at time.
¶ Unpopular opinion: Not 100% in on Bitcoin
So my final question for everyone is what is an unpopular opinion that you have? Bonus points if you offend some Bitcoiners. Why don't you I know what you're going to say. So why don't you carry on with this discussion? Yeah, it is kind of tying into like what we were just talking about. I'm not like 100 percent, 100 percent in Bitcoin. I have a little bit that I day trade with. I don't think everyone should day trade.
It's very it's like mastering yourself in the psychology and being patient after you've learned like the basics of trading. So it's not for everyone. But like, I do feel like it's important to learn how to invest in some aspects. And especially if Bitcoin is so volatile right now, you know, you have to do your risk tolerance. And some people are like, oh, my risk tolerance means everything in Bitcoin.
But for some other people, like going from 126K down to, you know, right now we're, we've bounced back up. But I know we're going to go up forever.
but like you know if it goes down to like 50k some like in 2021 when that happened it went up to like 69 and then went down to maybe 15k that was shocking for me um i knew i had a high conviction so i wasn't worried and i bought the dip but like for people who got into it because someone told them to buy it that's a lot they probably would have freaked out probably sold and um so i feel like for like for bitcoiners they need to come towards people in the sense of like understanding
their situation, not just like, oh, put all your money in Bitcoin. There's different aspects of things like going on in people's lives. Like I need money for a golden tallow. Like I have to use US dollar for that right now because of the capital gains tax. And eventually it won't be an issue when I can hire an accountant to do a lot of that kind of stuff, figuring out capital gains
on all the different transactions. But it's kind of messy right now in that sense for me. And yeah, that's kind of that's kind of my off the wall i feel like it's okay to spend money on different things that aren't bitcoin i know a lot of people are like oh stocks are shit coins and this and that but they're companies that produce good stuff they're not like nfts nfts are scams and definitely some of those projects are definitely scams but you know microsoft does
make the software it's good i agree i i think where i tend to land at this stage uh and by the Great unpopular opinion. You'll piss some people off with that. I would rather at this point find something close to home where I can meet the founder. They have an interesting idea.
I can put my weight behind it, certainly contribute capital if that's what they need, but also make any connections I can for them in any way that I can not just invest capital, but I can sort of invest myself and really take the time to understand what it is and have conviction that not only is this possible, but it's also a net benefit to the world. It's something I align with.
And to me, like that's the best kind of investment. If it's not a business that you're going to start yourself, like what are the, you know, who are the people around you who you could support as well? But I do agree with you, obviously, Microsoft, NVIDIA, they're making real world tools that people actually use or providing value, whether you like everything that the companies do or not, that's sort of beside the point that they're providing value in sort of their domain.
So Kit, I think you nailed it. I'll wait to see what the comments look like when we publish this. So Kit, thank you so much for your time. It's been a blast talking with you. Why don't you tell people where they can find you? Tell them again where to get Golden Tallow and anything else you want to share. Yeah, you can find me on X on Kit underscore sats, kind of like on the username right there. And then you can go to goldentallow.com and check us out there. Perfect.
Kit, thank you so much for your time. I look forward to staying in touch with you. Thanks for having me on. And likewise. Bye. And that's a wrap again. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Kit. Go check out Golden Tallow. Follow her on X. She's a lot of fun to follow.
¶ Closing remarks and where to find Kit
And of course, if you would do me a huge favor, if you enjoy this podcast, give us a like, subscribe, comment, reshare it with someone that you think might be interested. We would really appreciate any effort to help us feed the algorithm and get our message of self-sovereignty out to the rest of the world. And of course, you can go to thebitcoinway.com slash podcast. You can schedule a free 30-minute consult with a member of our team.
Talk you through how we can help you with proper Bitcoin self-custody, doing it the right way with no counterparty risk. How we can help you with setting up a privacy phone, protecting your privacy online. We even have a plan B residency option. Everything you need for self-sovereignty in your life. Again, that's thebitcoinway.com slash podcast. Until next time, stay safe, stay sovereign, and remember, the yield on Bitcoin is freedom.
