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Shake the room. Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs On Fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like the MarTech podcast. Today, we'll be sharing a special episode. That is part of a series that we've created of the greatest graduation speeches of all time. There have been some fantastic commencement talks over the past few decades, and we've collected the best of the best for you to enjoy. As soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors.

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Ever considered starting your own business? Helium10 can help with Helium10. You can become a seller on Amazon. The world's largest online retail sites with minimal startup costs. Learn more about Helium10. Plus get 50% off your first month of a Helium10 platinum accounts. When you visit Helium10.com/fire. Ready to finally have repeatable, predictable and scalable operations for your business Trainual can help. Pre-order a free copy of the business playbook, how to document and delegate what you do so your company can grow beyond you. Today at Trainual.com/fire. Welcome to the graduation speech of Maria Bamford.

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Who's an actress and this is at the university of Minnesota in 2017. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. Hello. I completed my degree here in creative writing in 1993, and I hope the following words reflect that education. I am honored to be here. Thank you for listening. Let me begin by talking about the elephant in the room at a liberal arts graduation ceremony that is money as a Minnesota, and I'm ashamed to admit that I love money. I love a fair exchange of goods and services. I love to buy things I love to get paid. Also, perhaps unlike most people of Norwegian heritage, I love full disclosure. I love open book accounting.

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What better way to combine these passions than by telling you the story of how I got paid to be speaking to you today. Let us begin. At the beginning, I will read a section of the email sent to me by the university, inviting me here. I'm paraphrasing for time. There are a lot more outrageous compliments. We feel that as a graduate of the university of Minnesota, Maria is a perfect person to speak at the commencements. Clearly her path has taken her on to great success. This is my emphasis. Normally the college does not pay for commencement speakers. As you can imagine, being a state funded institution, we have to be careful regarding the use of our resources. Well, I thought to myself, but I am a self-funded institution who needs to be careful regarding the use of my resources was my Alma mater.

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Low-balling me. I'm not a sitting governor, the football coach, isn't living paycheck to paycheck. My husband and I, we have two elderly overweight dogs who need eye medication. Three times a day was a university of Minnesota college of liberal arts, suggesting that I couldn't get paid for the exact job that I pay them to teach me how to get paid to do. That's what I meant. Well, of course not. This was just Goldie gopher, giving me a final exam. This is a very important one, a post-graduate course in the art of salary negotiation. I hope I passed. I went to my business advisor, Mr. Elliot Kashian. He is in our medium business man, living in west Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He's an aluminum siding salesman for a 79 year old father of a dear friend.

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Jackie. I told him my story. And he said to one of the best pieces of advice I've ever gotten, which is never say no without a number. I went back to the U and I counteroffered with $20,000, the university went dark two weeks response, nice waiting game, and came back to me with $10,000 Elliot Kashi and wanted me to split the difference at 15. But I'm still from Duluth and filled with shame. I stand before you for the amount of $10,000 after taxes and commissions. That's $5,000. It's the difference between gross and net. It's also important to know gross is a disgusting amount of money that you will never receive. Net is a little bag that you will get to take home. Your sweet little role. I am going to get paid in cash with a gun on the table.

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Afterwards, at this point you may say to yourself, God, her voice is irritating. How can I avoid becoming this crass? Money-grubbing comedian from Duluth with a visible tremor after being on several psychiatric medications? Well, here's a list of very specific don'ts. I just want to let you know, my salary for today will affect you directly later on in the speech. These are things. If you don't want to become what you see before you don't do these things, don't screw up. Don't mess up. Don't waste one minutes. Don't with your bachelor's degree from the fine arts college work only in pizza for five years. Don't busk for change on the streets of downtown LA playing a musical instrument poorly. Don't send your first tax return to the IRS was scrawling letters, sorry.

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Smiley face. Don't get it. Don't do a touring star Trek show in the Southern states of this great nation, where you have to say things like greetings. I am major Lavaca of planet Bazaar. Get the F away from me. All right. Don't date a Vulcan on said, star Trek show and get an STD. One of the most popular STDs you can get, actually I assume 50% of you have it afterwards. Don't go to planned parenthood without STD in Hollywood, where the doctor says, how did you let it get so bad? Don't join me in five different 12 step support groups. None of which are AA. So people have to guess, Hey, what is there besides AA? Don't move to Adelaide Australia for a year in hopes of marrying a clown who is also bisexual and a meth addict, by the way, these are all things I have done.

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And if I haven't made it clear, don't do your own bookkeeping and Quicken and QuickBooks and get audited by the IRS. Five times turns out they owed me $25. Kablam I may be eccentric, but I save my receipts in a buckets, Fire Nation, more value bombs coming at you. When we get back from thanking our sponsors, every entrepreneur knows what it feels like to be wearing too many hats. You're a creator, a visionary and administrator, a finance person, and that can feel overwhelming and get old really fast. That's why I'm excited to tell you about a Trainual, a software that makes it easy to document and delegate the things you do to someone else and be completely sure that the handoff is successful and can scale consistently without you. It's like creating a playbook for repeatable, predictable, scalable operations that all live in one place for your entire team to use.

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Helium10 has all the tools and trainings that guide you on your journey. Right now I'm using Helium10 to help manage our three journals on Amazon. And our team is loving it. Start an e-commerce business that taps into Amazon's massive customer base and shipping expertise today with this incredible offer from Helium10, get 50% off your first month of a Helium10 platinum account when you visit Helium10.com/fire. That's Helium10.com/fire. Don't wait to get 50% off your first month. Visit Helium10.com/fire. Don't move into cockroach infested apartments, where the landlord accepts sex for rent and then not have the money for rent wink. No, I was fine. I moved on to her friend's couch.

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Don't get fired by Warner Bro., Nickelodeon, Supercrown Bookstore, Mark Ridley's Comedy Castle, The Tempe, The Arizona, improv a writing job for Martin Short, the TV show Hot and Cleveland with Betty White and more to come don't leave jobs suddenly in tears. Harrah's improv in Las Vegas an hour before Showtime in Chicago or a TV commercial shoot for target because you are overwhelmed and unable to talk. This is actually pretty difficult. At least it was for me. Don't try to kill yourself either actively or passively do stay alive. Even for spite, if anyone is thinking of suicide, don't do it. It's not the season for it late fall. I'm just telling you the statistics. In other words, don't eff it up. Or if you're like me too, keep trying the cracks are where the light gets in that, which has been our greatest sorrow has been our deepest delight or the historic chance from the movie meatballs in 1980, starring Bill Murray.

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It just doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. Now back to money. Does anybody here have a debt to Sallie Mae? Oh my gosh. That's so exciting to receive an invoice is to know that you are alive as anybody in the theater arts program that has a debt to Sallie Mae you in the front row here. Madame, how about you? Come up. Young lady, young lady. Good hustle. Good hustle. Thank you so much. Come on up here. If you can do, you know, by the way, how much you are in debt for student loans, not clear. Good to know. Good to know. My husband had debt for 17,000 in 1992. And now we just paid it for 53,000. This past year. What I'm giving you is a check for $5,000 written to Sallie Mae. It has the address I could have given you more.

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Madame, what is your name? I'm so sorry. Oh, Elise, Elise. I could've given you more, but I did not negotiate myself a higher salary. Good to know. Good to know. Thank you so much. Congratulations. Have a nice day. Thank you. Thank you so much. Enjoy ever consider starting your own business. Helium10 can help with Helium10. You can become a seller on Amazon. The world's largest online retail sites with minimal startup costs. Learn more about Helium10 plus get 50% off your first month of a Helium10 platinum accounts. When you visit Helium10.com/fire, ready to finally have repeatable, predictable and scalable operations for your business Trainual can help.

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Pre-order a free copy of the business playbook, how to document and delegate what you do. So your company can grow beyond you today at Trainual.com/fire.