Good morning Hank, it’s Tuesday.

So one thing people might not know is that over 100 people work full-time with us, between our educational media company Complexly and our e-commerce company dftba.com. And these people range from 20-somethings to grandparents, from warehouse managers to customer service representatives to sound designers. 

So until recently, all these people were ultimately led by CEO Hank Green. But then, Hank, you got fired by cancer. One day cancer called and was like, “hey, for the next several months, you’re not going to do anything but undergo rigorous and grueling treatments to deal with me.”

And you were like, “okay, but I’m still going to make ads for the Awesome Socks Club and for the Crash Course coin, and sometimes I’m gonna want to shoot SciShow just because like that’s the mood I’m in. And I’m going to tweet 72 times per hour, and call my brother daily to pitch new business ideas, and make astonishingly brilliant Vlogbrothers videos even when I don’t feel well, and write long and beautiful emails to my brother about why I believe that humanity is basically worth it, all while experiencing a bunch of novel and extremely unpleasant varieties of pain.”

So anyway, you got fired, and then as a result I kind of got hired as the CEO, a prospect that nobody was excited about. You know, like historically I’m not great at meetings. Usually when I attend a meeting I’ll just kind of stare at my socks, which are awesome by the way. And then eventually I might say something like, “you know, if 10 people attend a 30-minute meeting, it’s actually a 300-minute meeting, which makes me think about how human life and attention are overwhelmingly the most valuable resources in the history of our planet, and that’s like 300 minutes of human soul life just…gone.” 

And that, it turns out, is like not the vibe for most meetings. Also, I can't really read a spreadsheet, which significantly limits my business capacity. And I wouldn't say I'm renowned for my leadership skills, like there's a reason that most of my career has been spent here, in the basement, alone, typing. 

Also, and this turns out to be critically important, I wasn't familiar with any of the TLAs, the Three-Letter Acronyms of business. Like CAC, which is Customer Acquisition Cost, or LTV, or ROI, or ROE, which turns out to be something different than ROI. 

And yet, Hank, I kind of love being the part-time, temporary, reluctant, marginally competent CEO of these two extraordinary companies. Like I would say this regardless, Hank, because I don't want to make you feel bad while you're going through cancer treatment, but I genuinely don't resent having this opportunity to be unexpectedly promoted for a brief period of time. 

Now I will be very happy to hand the reins back to you and eventually to other CEOs, who can lead these companies better than I ever could, but I love this. Like I really love the people we work with, and I love the stuff they make. I love Eons, I love Journey to the Microcosmos, I love Crash Course and SciShow. These are all things I watch every day on YouTube, but now as a result of this promotion, I actually understand a little bit about how they happen. 

And I love the stuff we make at DFTBA. Nathan Zed's Good Enough hoodies, and Ariel Bissett's I'm Thinking About Books shirt. And Tyler Thrasher's Cicada Plushie, and Kurz Gesagt's Timeline of Complex Life. This stuff is awesome. And not to sound like a CEO, but I am so grateful to the team at DFTBA, who on a recent visit taught me how the warehouse works and how to pack up Awesome Coffee for subscribers. 

Right, that reminds me. The Awesome Coffee Club is accepting new members right now, it's the best coffee in the world. But also, the Awesome Socks Club is open right now, which only happens like twice a year. It's open for a week- game-changing socks. 

And I think we all know I can't sell socks like Hank can. But oh my god, they're so comfortable. You don't even feel the toe seam. Style, impeccable fit, incredible mission: charitable. 

But the biggest reason I've been able to embrace and enjoy this job despite its many meetings, is that I love our whys. Every company has a why, right. A problem they're trying to solve, a hole in the marketplace they're trying to fill. And our whys are, in my opinion anyway, the best. We're trying to connect creators to fans, we're trying to lower barriers to education, and we're trying to expand access to healthcare. 

And having those great whys makes me feel fired up. It understands why I have to go to meetings. It makes that human shared time not feel wasted, but well-used. We are working, albeit in small and insufficient ways, on the injustice that college costs in the United States are so high, and on the injustice that global maternal mortality rates are so high. 

So yeah, I'm not going to say, like "thank you for the job, Hank," because you don't want me to have it and I also don't want to have it. But I am really grateful to you and the people you work with for building such extraordinary companies that have such wonderful whys. 

And my biggest conclusion from this whole affair so far, Hank, is that being the tail to your comet is the world's best job. 

So thank you. And Hank, I happen to know that you pre-made a Vlogbrothers video because you knew that you were going to be too sick this week to make one. Which is unnecessary, but I also know that no matter how many times I and all of Nerdfighteria tell you that you don't have to make a video every week, you respond by saying, "Stop telling me that I can't do what I love doing and want to do." So thank you for doing what you love doing and want to do, and I will see you on Friday.