Our CFO noticed we spend $65K a month on a proprietary cybersecurity platform called Sentinel Protocol. She scheduled a meeting with me to discuss our enterprise software expenditures. She wanted to know why our licensing fees had increased by 15% year over year. I told her Sentinel Protocol is the only thing standing between our corporate data and a highly coordinated North Korean ransomware syndicate. I explained that it uses a polymorphic encryption manifold to dynamically scrub our inbound packets. She asked if she could get a Zoom meeting with their customer success team to discuss a volume discount. I told her I'd set it up immediately. The problem is that Sentinel Protocol doesn't exist. It's an LLC I registered in Delaware 4 years ago. I'm Sentinel Protocol. My entire cybersecurity platform is just a batch script I wrote in 2018 that restarts our routers every Sunday at 3 AM. The script took me 14 minutes to write. I realized very early in my career that executives will never question a line item if you use the word quantum or heuristic. But now the CFO wanted to speak to the vendor. I went on Fiverr and hired a struggling voice actor from Chicago for $45. I told him his character was a high-powered Silicon Valley tech bro who just drank 3 Celsius energy drinks. I wrote him a 4-page script composed entirely of weaponized IT buzzwords. He showed up to the Zoom call wearing a Patagonia fleece vest and introduced himself as the VP of Customer Success. He was absolutely phenomenal. When the CFO asked about lowering the cost, he scoffed. He told her that downgrading our service tier would expose our legacy endpoints to asynchronous tunneling attacks. He leaned into the webcam and asked if she was prepared to explain a catastrophic data breach to the shareholders. She apologized for questioning the infrastructure. Before the call ended, my Fiverr actor successfully up-sold her on a $12K biometric redundancy package. I don't even know what a biometric redundancy package is. I tipped the actor $100 and told him I'd need him again next quarter. The CFO sent me an email thanking me for managing such a crucial vendor relationship. I just used the new budget increase to buy a pontoon boat.