SIR THORNEY

The following short story is a parody of the current hustle culture perpetuated on TikTok. This is for comedic purposes (in the bleakest sense), but you might not find it very funny. If you are offended, please send me an email & I’ll reply with pictures of my feet to make it up to you.

Prologue: Becoming the alpha 🐺

I spent four years of working at multiple fast food restaurants, as a delivery cyclist & flipping items I bought from working class communities; all as a college dropout.

I then left my parents home in Reading & bought my first property. With £40,000 from my savings & a mortgage eligibility of £50,000 (following a shady deal with a small failing business to artificially create a salary) I was able to buy myself a stylish studio apartment in Hull at the age of 20.

My peers thought I was crazy for skipping my classes at college to work, but now they send me messages envious of my independence.

No friends, no family, no relationships, no potential distractions from my ultimate goal; have a net worth of £30 million by 30.

Working hard, & then working hard 💰😤

I awake at 4:00am – as I do most Sundays – to the sound of my alarm beeping & the gradual warming glow of my wake-up light. I swing my legs out of bed (no sheets or duvet; there’s no blankets in the wild) & walk to my Juliet balcony naked before starting my morning workout of 100 pushups & 100 sit-ups.

My neighbours are still awake & drinking from the previous night, music & strobe light blaring from their windows opposite mine. This is the difference between them & I; whilst their Saturday is yet to end my grind has begun again, allowing me to lap their performance in the process.

After I finish my workout I walk through my studio apartment to the kitchenette. The apartment is minimalistic, of course, to eliminate all potential distractions.

I make myself a protein shake with nicotine added to help give me an edge: banana, a bag of spinach, eggs, a punnet of blueberries, liver, coconut water & ice.

Whilst it blends I play my motivational video playlist on my desktop; a highlight reel of Mike Tyson knockouts whilst Gary Vaynerchuck, Andrew Tate & Grant Cardone unload their knowledge in the background. It’s like they’re performing knowledge bookaki on my brain.

I then proceed to open my list of the 1,000 highest rated & best selling books about entrepreneurship. I intend to read all of them by the end of the year.

I proceed to search each on Shortform, scanning the synopsis of each chapter to absorb their knowledge in the most efficient manner possible.

Any books I can’t find due to them being too obscure I add to a separate list for my PA in Malaysia to read on my behalf & then create a personalised podcast script of the book summarised, which is then given to an aspiring voice actor to read & record for me to consume in the next month.

The time is now 6:00am, & so I go to my treadmill where I do interval sprinting for 30 minutes whilst watching productivity hack videos.

Whilst I’ve been exercising my PA in Vietnam has been creating graphics using a quote I selected from one of the synopsis I read earlier, & has done a quick draft of a video script for me to explain the quote. The graphic is a screenshot from the movie Steve Jobs with the quote reading over the top of it, “You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction”.

I proceed to post the video and image onto my social media accounts. I send money via PayPal to a social media engagement farm in Russia to provide consistent comments & likes over the next 2 days, whilst also paying the social media sites to increase my posts’ reach.

I now return to the treadmill to do another 30 minutes of running whilst learning about the ultimate diet for performance. Yet again a raw carnivore diet seems to be suggested. I contemplate trying it again, but the previous hospital trip & slow recovery from e. coli puts me off.

I proceed to stand in a cold shower for 30 minutes, occasionally rubbing ice on my body. I would be having an ice bath, but my apartment does not have a tub & I’m still waiting for my bespoke ice capsule to be built.

Finally I get dressed – Gymshark head to toe – & grab a Huel from my glass fronted fridge. The Huels stand side-by-side like an army of tiny monochrome soldiers ready to deploy.

Now it’s back to the treadmill to walk whilst sending some direct messages to anyone who has engaged with my post so far.

It’s 9:00am, & now that I’ve finished messaging prospect clients I’m onto developing my newest step-by-step guide for building a dropshipping brand. After having my PA from Vietnam find bootlegs of every major dropshipping course I now begin transforming the content to make it appear somewhat original.

I cut the fat, add more motivational quotes & find screenshots of Shopify stores I can use as examples. The PDF will take me around 2 weeks to make, but I’ve already sold a handful of copies for £50 & should be able to sell a handful more by the time it goes live.

I look at my own dropshipping store to check its progress: “No sales yet” my Shopify dashboard says in its cool glow. It’s okay, if I had more time I’d be able to boost its revenue I’m sure, but I’m making much more selling these dropshipping courses rather than doing it myself.

Diversification is the name of the game. You wouldn’t build a house with one wall, so why would I build my income with only one source? Dropshipping electric toothbrushes from AliExpress may not have worked, but one of the other 20 concepts I’m working on is sure to land.

I work on the course for a couple of hours before moving to the treadmill for another 30 minutes whilst creating a podcast playlist for the afternoon, in addition to taking a sweaty topless mirror selfie for social media. “Hard work pays off” reads the caption.

I go to the kitchen & microwave the prepped meal my chef prepared.

I go back to my desk & join a livestream discussion of the current crypto market. This goes on for a couple of hours, but by the end any altcoins we discussed have increased in value by 30% – all of which I am invested in. I sell for a £400 gain, before the value inevitably plummets later that day.

Afterwards I go back to sending messages to those that engaged with my post from this morning. Following an hour of doing this & generating another sale I go back to working on the PDF.

Once I’m bored I begin putting together a Google Doc of my ideas for the landing page which will be sent to a web developer on Fiverr.

During the livestream my PA in Malaysia is taking recordings & editing them to be featured on my social media. They’ve created 4 clips for me to choose from, & this then goes across all my social media channels. Again, I send money to the Russian engagement farm & pay for extra reach.

It’s time for my second meal, & then an hour of meditation.

It’s just turned 8:00pm, which means my final spree of messaging. No sales this time due to less people being organically reached by my last post. I make a note to myself that having the specific altcoins mentioned in the clip was a mistake (seeing as they had now crashed in value), & removed the post to minimise damage. One person noticed, but I hide their comments before anyone else sees.

I proceed to watch YouTube videos about crypto & investing for a couple of hours before going to sleep ready to start the next day at 4:00am once again.