My First Million - From Coder to Cartel Boss - The Jeff Bezos of Organized Crime

Episode Date: April 14, 2022

Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) talk about Paul Le Roux and his possible connection to Bitcoin, Peter Thiel's recent crypto speech, the power of knowing exactly what you want, and much more. ----- Links: * https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/posts/ * https://www.thielfellowship.org * https://mopoints.com * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. ----- Show Notes: (03:35) - Le Roux and Satoshi (26:20) - Peter Thiel at Bitcoin conference (45:35) - Why knowing exactly what you want is a super power (53:30) - Business ides: Copy My Trip ----- Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. ----- Additional episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

All right, let's do some topics. What do you got? I got a couple. Dude, I got a bunch of good stuff. All right. Let's pick one of yours. Let's do the Satoshi and the Paul Leroux thing because they're both really interesting. Do you know, let's do, let's do, which one do you want to do first? I don't know who Paul Leroux is. You don't know who Paul Leroux is? Okay. Fucking great name, though.

Dude, listen to this. How much more would I be worth if I was Sean Leroux? More, a lot more. And how much more. A lot more. A lot more. He's also African. He's from.

South Africa, I think. So, Ben, you're nodding a little bit like you know who this is. Is that true? Yeah, I know who Paul Arru is. He's kind of like, who's the guy we were talking about that you knew? Ross Lover. He's kind of like if Ross had been as crazy as everyone thought, but actually like 10 times crazier, that's Paul Laru.

Paul. Whoa. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. All right, fill me in. Who's this guy? All right. So he's based.

All right. Paul Roo, he's his big old fat, disgusting guy. He's like, like, imagine. Like the top of the hood? Yeah, imagine, like, have you seen South Park where they're like playing video games? And there's that fat guy on the computer who's like eating Cheetos and like, he kind of looks like that. He's just a total slob. But he's this computer whiz.

Yeah, Google him. He's like disgusting. And that kind of fits the personality of the whole story. And there's this great book that I'm reading. It's called Mastermind. It's about him. And basically, this guy always like kind of wanted to. takeover the world. And in around like 2002, 2003, 2004, he started this company called RX

Limited, which basically sold Viagra and a couple other like Schedule 2 drugs. So like no, like, he was able to sell some opioids, but not like the famous ones, things that are considered Schedule 2, which is just one below between Schedule 1. And he created this company called RX Limited. And in like three or four years, it netted him hundreds of millions of dollars in profit. And do you remember years ago when you would get an email and it said like, hey, we sell prescriptions, click here? Do you remember that like years and years ago when you're in high school and grade school? Not really, but go on. Let's say, let me say yes.

Go ahead. Well, basically, and then like maybe you remember like going to like these websites where like just showed tons of drugs and like you'd get text that says like buy drugs online. Well, basically he created this website of RX Limited. And then eventually he started like creating so many domain names that he created his own domain registration. system. And then eventually his network got so big, he created its own email system because he didn't want anyone to hack into his stuff. And at one point, he had like two or three thousand employees working at this place, mostly Filipinos, mostly working call centers. And he had in Philippines and in Israel because he said the Israeli guys were the hardest working for the cheapest, you know,

the cheap, for the cheap rate. And he, uh, it was, it was wild. And he had basically hundreds of different stores selling drugs. And the way it worked is he would somehow convince a doctor that he was doing everything by the book. And technically he kind of was doing everything by the book, but it really quickly warped and did not. But basically he had all these doctors in America in like Minnesota, Kentucky, Florida, like these relatively small doctors and like, hey, we're a telemedicine service. Can you fill some of the prescriptions that we're doing? It's all legal and we'll just send you the prescriptions that we need. And you just sign off and we're going to send it to a pharmacy. So he would send it to a pharmacy and these local mom and pop pharmacies would be like,

oh, okay, Dr. X is just called in this prescription. I'm going to ship it to the patient. No big deal. And so both the doctors and the patient, doctors and the pharmacists, they all thought that they were mostly following the law. They're like, this is kind of weird that I'm now shipping out. I'm like a mom and pop pharmacist and I'm shipping out like 2,000 orders a week. Like, that's weird, but I have no reason to believe this is illegal. And eventually it did become highly illegal where like he is, It was just like you didn't need it to see any doctor to get in these prescriptions. And at one point, he was selling like 80% of all online drugs in America. It was something large.

Ben, am I missing anything? And throughout doing this, this is where things get even crazier. So, like, this story in itself is already interesting. Literally, it made, I believe, $400 million in profit in four years. One of the employee went to his apartment in Manila in the Philippines, and he said that he saw $100 million in cash in the house. and this guy didn't want the IRS to see anything, so he would just transfer it into gold, because this was before Bitcoin was really around.

He lived in the Philippines? He was an African guy, so I believe he was born in, like, Cambodia, and then moved to South Africa and then moved to the Philippines. Or maybe he was, like, Zimbabwe, something like that. But this guy had this, like, grandiose thinking where he thought that he, like, he's like, I owe it to the world to run the world.

Very grandiose thinking. And so he hires these ex-Israeli guys, to run the call centers. Eventually he hires these ex-Israeli army guys to be his bodyguards. And in doing that, he starts learning a little bit about like arms dealing. And so eventually he buys thousands of acres of land in Zimbabwe and Somalia. And he was like, I'm going to raid an African nation and I'm going to set up like a country and I'm going to have my own. I'm going to be the leader of a small African nation and hopefully eventually a much larger nation, like some crazy shit. It expands to the point where he's now an arms dealer.

So he's selling guns to different parts of Africa. He gets in trouble for selling missiles to Iran. This guy gets into some crazy stuff. He's killing people along the way. He makes relationships with Columbia Drug Lords and trades drugs, pills for cocaine. And he starts selling $100 million dollars with the cocaine. And he was doing all of it, almost all of it behind a computer. And eventually he gets caught.

Now he's got, he recently in like three or four years ago was sentenced to 25 years in prison. And that doesn't include what he's convicted for in the Philippines. So after he gets out, if he gets out, he's going to go straight to the Philippines. Is he in the U.S.? He's in the U.S.? But because he's like basically a drug lord, they won't say where he is. And so you can online, you can barely find any pictures of him other than one picture of his mugshot. And that's the only pictures that you, the one where he looks like really big.

That's his mugshot. That's the only picture that I've really seen of him recently. And the guy, it's just, this is, it's one of the craziest books I've ever read. And what I, I started talking to you about Satoshi because a lot of people think they're like, well, we don't, I don't, I don't really, there's not a ton of evidence to so that he, uh, invented Bitcoin, but he was talking about like creating a digital currency early on. When he was arrested, Satoshi quit blogging. And you could read a lot of this guy's emails.

And that's really interesting. And that's kind of how I got to the other topic of Satoshi. where you can read all of his old blog post. But this guy, it's incredibly fascinating. He would have been an awesome business person had it not been for going the wrong route. But it's a crazy book. What was in the emails?

You just see him commenting with people. So he was actually like a really good writer for a little while. And he even, this guy is so interesting. He wrote guest posts, I believe for the Washington Post under a pseudonym, talking about like the future of money and like all these weird economic stuff. But he was somewhat eloquent. and but in person he was brutish. He was an asshole.

He was disgusting. He would just, they would go to McDonald's and he wouldn't even talk to his employees. He would kind of tell him to F off. He wasn't very pleasant to be around. And, but in the emails, he wrote pretty nicely, actually.

What are you going to say, Ben? They found 500 pounds of cocaine on his yacht when it crashed. Which was worth like $100 million. And he also owned a logging business in Somalia. At one point, he was like, I'm going to create a business. that will fend off. So basically all the Western countries

driving through Somalia, if they want the pirates not to talk to them, I'm going to be the go-between. And I'm going to get money from them. And I'm going to pay the pirates off and take a little bit of profit. He owned that business. He also was in the mining.

This guy did, like, at one point, the DA, the District of Attorney of, I believe New York said, we think this is the most dangerous and powerful man in the world. And all of it was done on the computer. And he was very early in all this like he's very kind of in the same ballpark as a lot of the crypto guys and like some of

of his ideas even though he was a criminal were like totally on point with the bitcoin stuff so it's super fascinating yeah there's an article that says how the case for why he might be satoshi i haven't read it yet but when you're talking i just pulled it up you say he did it all behind a computer but and my research on this is old i i was looking at this story like a year ago um but didn't don't i remember a story about him like throwing someone off his yacht and having people shoot them in the water or something like that? Yeah, but in that particular story, he wasn't there. But he did kill.

A lot of people think that he did kill. So throughout this, Sean, he had his hitmen. He had hitmen that are now arrested and they kind of are spilling the beans. He had hitmen that would kill people. And there are a few occasions where they think he actually is the one who fired the bullet. And he did travel. So he would go to Africa. He would go here.

But the guy had like 3,000 employees. And most of the employees had no idea who he was. And even there'd be times where he'd be managing. So basically he had two Israeli brothers running this call center in Israel with like 300 employees. And they had never met Paul. And Paul would talk to them via email, you know, as employees. And it's kind of like interesting because like anonymous work is something we've talked about. But that's pretty much how it was. So some of his employees had no idea who he was.

So in a sense, it wasn't all behind a computer, but a lot of it was behind a computer. This article I pulled up about him, it says he's the Jeff Bezos of organized crime. and it says he's the digital El Chapo because he was moving so much weight he was given up for adoption by his birth parents that rejection haunted him

and then it says he was transformed himself to a programming genius who developed encryption software like E4M in the 90s he found it RX Limited which was the black market for pharmaceuticals

he was raking in $250 million a year selling drugs, weapons and murder for hire on the dark web yeah well I think that The dark web thing is actually confusing because a lot of the stuff that he was doing was before Tor was even around. So a lot of the stuff he would do, it wasn't even on the dark web. And like this whole thing about spamming email, he was actually one of the originators of that. And so he somehow hacked into a pharmaceutical company and stole something like hundreds of millions of email addresses.

And he would spam these guys like crazy. And the reason why he bought all these domain names is a domain would get banned. Then he would switch. So it was incredibly complex what he did. And he, before he turned to the dark side, he founded a, or he built like a small open source product that helped encrypt things. And eventually turned into this thing called true crypt, which I actually think that thing is big. But so like the guy was pretty genius. He was amazing.

It says his first murder was, he took his head of security. He said, hey, come to my house in the Philippines and dig a hole. I'm going to bury a safe filled with millions of dollars. And then the guy dug the hole. And then he shot him with the machine gun right after that. That was his first taste of murder. And then there's another, there's another story where they took a guy out into the ocean and they go, wait, let's just have a talk on our yacht.

And they throw the guy in the ocean and they drive away. So he gets, he freaks out. And then he comes back and he shoots all next to the guy. And he goes, oh, no, no, just so you know, I didn't miss. I'm just trying to keep the sharks away because I want to talk to you. And I need to know, are you stealing from me? And if you tell me quickly, I'll kill you now. If you don't tell me, I'm just going to shoot you in your leg and I'm going to drive off.

And so like you the guy was really hardcore. Yeah, he makes, you know, whatever, the wolf of Wall Street look like a small puppy. This guy's insane. Okay, wow. Never heard of this guy either. How'd you hear about him? How'd you find out about it? So when I tweeted out that I love like crime books and I think I had just finished, I forget

what I had just finished, but someone suggested this book called Mastermind. And it's by this journalist that worked at Wired Magazine. And I've been reading this book. And it's freaking crazy. and even though this guy, what he did was wrong, it does actually inspire me to live a more adventurous life. Well, I'm like reading this and I'm like, I'm the same way.

I'm like, why am I so fascinated by this? Like, this is why I don't like watching a Wolf of Wall Street? I'm like, why does this excite me so much? Like, I'm beginning to normalize this in my head and think this is okay. I can't watch this anymore. But I do think that there is a thing where like I can, I need to have a little bit more adventure. You know, you could use it for good.

But, you know, I read it. and I'm, like, intoxicated by it. Do you get that way? Yeah, I think that's why people love movies about, you know, prison, you know, prison breaks or they love it about bank heists and, like, why people play, you know, video games that have violence in them. It's like, there's definitely, like, a part of us that, you know, this stuff appeals to. And, like, you know, if you can get that outlet by just reading the book or watching the

movie or playing a video game, like, good, because, you know, you didn't translate in that that kind of deep-rooted desire for, like, like, you know, either adventure, thrill, power, you know, whatever it is, doesn't have to, like, spill into your normal life then. Yeah. And it, like, inspires me a little bit in the sense of, like, man, living life on the edge is crazy. I don't want to go to prison. But you should just add that to your bio. You know, top inspirations, Pablo Escobar, Paul Roo. Ross, all right. Yeah. So, but. And one of the reasons why it's interesting is the cool thing about criminal online is that you can read their correspondence. So, like, they got, they, when they arrested him, he had his computer open. And so they were able to, like, see a bunch of stuff. And that's, I really

love that this era about criminals and, uh, how you can like see it happening. And that got me interested in the Satoshi posts. So basically, if you go to like, uh, if you just Google like Satoshi, you know, the guys created Bitcoin, if you go to Satoshi blog post, you can, I was reading all of his blog posts. And what, what, what I found to be really fun is you go to, you go to, you go to his first blog post where he talks about introducing Bitcoin and you can go to the forum is still up and you I spent about an hour looking at all the people commenting on it and Googling all of them and seeing what they're doing and what they're up to and you can see them like reply like hey Satoshi you know this is actually a really good idea I've been tinkering

with this I went ahead and purchased 500 Bitcoins just to try it out you know what I mean it's really fascinating the first few comments I think weren't like I think if I remember correctly. The original comments, like, it's not like this thread blew up and people were instantly like genius, you know, this is a breakthrough. This is a genius idea, right? Like, that's not what. No, it was like, this is cute. Right. And so like literally the first comment. So, you know, there's, you know, SEP Halsberger says, great stuff. This is the first real innovation. So this guy recognized it for what it is. This is the first real innovation in money since the Bank of England started to issue promissory notes for gold in the vaults, which became

banknotes. I believe in open source currency has great potential. A bit like Google has become the default search engine for many of us. And then like, there's some people who are like, you know, I have questions about how it works. And then there's like Hal Finney who, I think how Finney got the first transaction, like Satoshi sent it to him. And I think he had the most questions about it, which is why some people think how Finney was Satoshi Nakamoto. And I think he was also the first one to like write out the like the total addressable market for it. I remember reading that one time where he's like, well, if this got adopted, like, you know, each one of these coins is going to be worth like over a million dollars, right? And he like broke down why,

which is like, you know, it's hard to even discuss that now. Today, that sounds weird. Imagine 2009, you're on a forum and, you know, somebody posts this thing about how they're creating, you know, the new world money. And you're like, well, you know, that means this little random thing that I could go mine on my computer. You could just send me 5,000 of these right now. Like, Yeah, each one of those can be worth a million dollars. And to me, that was really impressive. The people who saw it for what it is, which is like a true innovation, something that's great, something that could catch on.

I'm pretty blown away by that. Me too. I think it's amazing. When I read it, I feel inspired. And I think that's why I got obsessed a little bit with Paul Leroux is like just these people who just have the self-belief and vision, even if it's like a horrible vision and go out and like do it. It's in there in the depths of the internet.

It's really interesting. And I've been reading all of the Satoshi's forum posts. They're just seeing these just like, you can click and see these guys like they're wearing fedoras and like crocodile dundee hats. Like they're the nerdy or the nerd, the guys who like I would dismiss and be like, oh, what do you know? Like, okay nerd, like you're smart, but like you're just outlandish. I can't believe anything that you're doing.

You read this and they're incredibly thoughtful and they like are taking it seriously right off the bat and I admire that and it's a really really fun thing to read. Yeah, I think it's on the, you know, I think it was like a forum. It was called the P to P Foundation or something like that. It was the original forum that this was on. It was like a NING forum or something like that. And so, you know, the people who hang out in these types of forums, right, they're obviously like pretty hardcore either into peer to peer, into cryptography, into these different subjects. And so, you know, hanging out at the fringes, hanging out. I gave a talk. recently for a bunch of people in the Midwest.

They like zoom me in and they were like, we just want you to talk to our group. And one of them asked, they go, you know, you said something about like surrounding yourself with interested, you know, like interested people.

How do you do that? Like what do you actually do to do that? And I basically told him, I go, um, I'm a pretty like normal person. Like I like catchy songs by Katie Perry. I don't have like great music dates.

I like, if something's in the top 40, I'm like, oh, it's pretty good. You know, like, It's not like I have this like this nose for the next big thing, but there are people who have that.

That's their superpower. And so I used to make fun of those people because every time they would do something weird, I would be like, oh, weird. And then I'd point out how weird it is and I would kind of laugh at it. And they didn't really care because they weren't trying to be cool anyways. Like I remember in college, the guy who lived next door to me, this guy Tofiq, he was, I walked in. He was like playing a video game, say StarCraft or something like that. And he turned to talk to me and the game kept going.

And I was like, are you even playing? Like, are you just, he just, this is a computer? And he was like, he's like, yeah, I'm just, he's like, no, I'm watching the match from last night in Korea. I'm like, what? You're watching somebody else play video games? This is back in, you know, in what's not been 2006 or something like that? And he's like, yeah, I'm watching a recording of this game.

This match that happened in the Korean server. And I'm like, dude, say five more lame things. Like, you know, than that. Like, I'll give you $100 if you can say, tell me you're a virgin without time. me you're emergent. Yeah, exactly. I was just like, oh, okay, like never coming in this room again.

And then later, like, you know, fast forward 10 years or whatever, sell our company gets acquired by Twitch. And all of a sudden, my title's like director of e-sports or something like that. And he calls me. He's like, oh, Mr. E-sports now, huh? And I was like, yeah, dude, it's a big thing, you know? You were on top of it. And like, I sort of, you know, I was embarrassed because, like, it was so true.

I was making fun of that behavior. And then sure enough. that becomes like such a, you know, like a billion, it was a multi-billion dollar idea. I was watching other poop video games. And so I've kind of learned the hard way many times of making a fool out of myself on that. We're like, now when I hear something weird,

I'm just immediately like, let me pull up a chair. So tell me, like, why do you do this? Do other people do this? How often do you do this? And the weirder it is, the more I want to lean into that phenomenon, because I know, like, it's just a matter of time

until I discover that this is a, like, a totally normal behavior. It's like, oh, you only drink, soilant for all your meals like oh interesting are there is there community people who do this yeah we're called you know whatever biohackers there's a subreddit with like tens of thousands of us like oh interesting you know you can start to see that the you know the future is is already here it's just not everywhere and like how do you how do you get closer to the future you just find people who already live in the future do weird stuff and then you don't judge them in fact you just like complete have the opposite reaction i

used to have. And this exercise of reading these old blog posts and all the commenters is, I think you just kind of put it in a little more eloquent way, but that's exactly what's happening is like, you're seeing like, I'm trying to pattern recognition is kind of a stupid buzzword, but like you're trying to like see like, well, I know for sure that A, this sounds silly at first and B, it worked. So like what does this like pattern of like people dismissing and like coming up with like and how do I not make that same mistake? The guy that you talked about, what was the forum called? Peap...

Peer to Peer to... Yeah. So on the very bottom of the forum, it says about, and you could read who the owner is. And he's just a professor in Berlin or something. Like, he's just a guy.

And it's pretty fascinating. I'm like, man, like, all these people were... It's... It's like, you know, they... This is kind of weird to say, but they're like...

They were around when Jesus was around. Like, you know, like, they, like, saw all this, like, thing that... potentially changes the next thousand years or the next 500 years of history. And they like saw it. And I think that's really fascinating. So dude, I put this in the Milk Road.

I don't know if you saw this thing about like, so Peter T. So the big Bitcoin conference just happened in Miami. Yeah, that was really good. On Friday you did that, right? Yeah, I did that one on Friday. That was a highest rated one. Yeah, that killed it. That was so good.

But did you, I don't know if you saw the clip. I think I had linked to the clip in there of. So Peter Thiel goes, he gives us talk. at the Bitcoin conference in 2022 just happened. And before he comes out, they played on the big screen, this video that I had seen before. I think I even talked about it on here once. But there's this video. I've watched a ton of old Peter Thiel video.

So it's a video of him giving a talk in 1999. And he's talking about the idea of a currency not owned by the government. And basically this two-minute clip of Peter Thiel basically describing Bitcoin without saying the word Bitcoin. And he didn't know how it would work, but he's like, you know, the world needs a currency that's not controlled by, you know, the central banks of different countries, blah, blah, blah. And I think PayPal originally, that was their vision was to create, they used to have shirts

that said one currency to rule them all or something like that. It was like this original idea of PayPal was to create one global virtual currency. And they shifted away from that later. Like, and he said, he at this talk, he goes, yeah, we went to somebody that was more practical and it kind of worked, but like it was less ambitious. And like, you can tell you kind of regretted it, which is like, we, before we wanted to create our own financial system. And then like, she got really hard.

And we settled on, oh, PayPal. It's a payments network that like, it works with your existing bank, with the existing dollar currency and with your to send to somebody else's existing bank. So we're just like a funnel to like funnel money through. And like, yeah, that was cool. But like, man, this other thing was the big idea. And Bitcoin kind of proved that that was the big idea, you know, later on. But him giving that talk in 1999 to me is so crazy.

Like that's one of the greatest like calls I've ever seen of just calling. it of what's going to happen and why it's going to happen. And in that talk, he's like, he's like, you know, this currency will live on your cell phone outside of a bank. You know, smartphones are going to be a thing. And you think about it. It's like, oh, 1999, man, iPhone came out in 2007. So he's predicting smartphone.

He's like, we're already seeing the adoption of smartphones in Finland. And he also said, he gave a five-year term. And you're like, it was 10, but he got it right. Yeah, he's like a billion. He's like, there will be a billion. smartphone devices in the next five years. It took 10 years, but like a billion devices. Like there was never a, there was never a billion user product. Like there weren't a billion people who had computers ever. There weren't a billion people. I don't even think that used

televisions. I think the cell phone was the first thing where it was like a smartphone was like the first thing where a billion people had this product. So of course, if you launch an app that works, your addressable market is a billion people who could download your app immediately. Like it's kind of an overlooked fact about why mobile was so big. It's just like, well, there wasn't ever a billion people who could have used your product before this. Like, your restaurant could never serve a billion people. Your store could never serve a billion people. Like, McDonald's couldn't even serve a billion people, no matter how many locations they opened. Like, the cell phone was really the first thing that was able to do that, you know, that quickly. And, and so he's, you know, when he was talking

about, like, smartphone adoption is rising in Finland. I'm like, who even pays attention to what's going on in Finland, dude? Like, if I ask you right now, if I say point to Finland on a map, Could you think you can point to Finland on a map right now? Like, I mean, either. And so it's like Finland, Denmark and like Holland and Sweden are all the same thing. Yeah, exactly. Like I don't know, dude. It's like that's where white people live.

You're clean and you're nice. I get it. Like. And so like I thought about that. I'm like, oh, no wonder the people who were hanging out with Peter Thiel went on to do like some pretty. Wait, sorry. What? Hey, ma.

Sorry. My bad. There's some like random guy like knocking on my window. All right, sorry, go ahead. So I was saying that it's no wonder that people hanging out with Peter Thiel ended up going on to do amazing things, right? Like if you've ever heard of the PayPal Mafia, it's like, yeah, like people who worked at PayPal went on to create YouTube and LinkedIn and Tesla and SpaceX and Yelp and a firm. And like I think there's like over $10 billion companies that came out of the PayPal Mafia. And like Kiva, like one of the best nonprofits came out of that.

And so it's like, dude, why is that? It's because you're hanging out with a bunch of people who are already thinking about the future, living in the future. They're all weird nerds. And I remember one of the co-founders of PayPal Max Lutchen, he had this thing where he's like, he was interviewing somebody. And the guy started like talking about how like, he's like, yeah, I love to play pickup hoops. He's like, we're not hiring this guy. He's like, oh my God. He's like, he's like, no great program I know plays pickup basketball.

Dude, well, that's what we said about the guys who were doing ICOs. We're like, dude, if your teeth are really white and you got abs and if you have a Ferrari and if your last name is also a first name, that's, four out of four, you out. Like, if your last name is Tucker or John, like, you're out. Like, no St. John's. Exactly. And so, you know, these things, like, I mean, you get canceled today for being like, I'm not going to hire someone who plays pick up hoops.

But, like, and I think they even said something back then, they go, your goal as a startup is to basically build a cult. And they're like, the more cult like you can make your company, the better. And like, that's not popular. I think they've all, they don't say that stuff in public anymore because now they're like, you know, bigger public figures. but like I think that startup advice is actually fantastic startup advice. Now the cult doesn't need to be all people of the same race or gender or anything like that.

It's like people who are all believe like religiously in the mission. And then people who kind of behave in a way that's like they're willing to work way harder, sleep in the office. Like, you know, they're willing to go to bat for this thing because, you know, they're like members of a cult. They sort of have lost their own personal identity to the greater identity of the group. That is like a pretty hard force to bet against and beat. Dude, this gets me inspired.

How do you think This was actually a third topic I was going to ask you How do you think guys like Peter Thiel Who I don't know his background But I think it was pretty modest How do people like him How are they write so often? I mean do they just make a ton of guesses

And they're only read a couple times But I don't understand like that idea of thinking I think I think big And then I like talk to or I listen to him I'm like, oh, I'm like, I'm nobody. Yeah, dude, when you hear him talk, it's like when you're in a plane that takes off and all of a sudden the houses start to look like little toys and the people start to look like ants, the cars look like, you know, a little flex.

It's like, that's how my brain feels when I hear Peter Thiel talk. I'm like, oh, I am a small simpleton. You know, I'm a single cell organism compared to this guy in terms of just like where my brain goes, how much conviction I have around my own original thoughts. Because like, that's his thing, right? Like, he's all about being a contrarian. And, you know, I think Jeff Bezos said this about Peter Dillel. He goes, yeah, that's the thing about contrarians.

They're usually wrong, you know. And somebody else said, like, you know, Peter's constantly predicting sort of like the end of the world in the market crash. And, like, you just remember it the two times he was right in the 20 years. And, like, the four times he was wrong, it just seemed like he was a little bit late on his prediction. And so I think there's definitely something to, like, you know, being wrong a bunch. But it's like when you're, it's more like when you're right, you're right in a major, major way. and I think he was right about PayPal in a major way. I think he was right about Facebook in a major way, right?

He was the first investor in Facebook. He bought a 500, about a 10% stake in Facebook for 500 grand. All right. So that was the best investment of the decade, I think, you know, like at that time. And so, you know, he was right in a major way about that. You know, the last time he kind of went on tour, he was right about two very contrary in things. One was Trump where all of a sudden, like, he was the only guy in Silicon Valley that was like publicly supporting Trump went, spoke at the, at the convention was like, we need Donald Trump to be president.

And at the time, it was sort of like Donald Trump was the underdog. He was not supposed to win. And like Peter Thiel picked that horse pretty early. That's crazy. That was kind of impressive. And like also he gets off on being contrarian, you can tell. And the other one that he was right about was when he created the Teal Fellowship. So he basically went on stage.

Which was laughable at first. And he had, he had this talk where he got. goes and he goes, a university, you know, college education is a bubble. It's the greatest bubble since the housing crisis. This is right after the housing bubble popped. He's like, the next bubble is college education. People are like, who goes against education? Like, go ask a hundred out of a hundred politicians, parents, anybody. Who's not pro education? And like, he was the first guy to be like, college education is a complete bubble. And he explained why it was a bubble that like, you know, people go for basically this like certificate. He goes, it's a, he goes, it's an

insurance product partially. He goes, you know, it's an insurance for, you know, parents buy for their kids so that they don't fall through the cracks of society. He said it's like a certification product. You know, you don't go there to learn. You go there to get your certificate. And so he was calling out college and then he created the Pitele Fellowship, which was kind of a genius move because he put up, I think, at the beginning, $2 million.

But that $2 million was like $200 million of free publicity for himself because he made it bold where he's like not just like here's an alternative to college for people who don't want to go he's like well explain what it is it was he came out he goes i will pay you a hundred thousand dollars to drop out of college and it's like oh shit you know like keep this man away from my children like you know it was like a seem like a not good thing to do and then he explained why he's like college is you know a complete bubble but then how did he get his money back from that again i think he invested in the projects i'm not sure well for example ethereum came out of that which is a 300 billion product, which is kind of ironic

because he never claims victory on it. And in fact, at the Bitcoin conference, he kind of shit on Ethereum, which is a bit weird. So, you know, I don't know why he's, I would think he'd be taking a victory lap because, like, Vitalik being a teal fellow was like the total validation of the teal fellowship. But I think Figma came out of that too.

I invested in, uh, owner.com. You know owner.com? Do you ever see that company? I know about it. Yeah. He's a, he's one of those guys. And about two or three more. I've invested in about three of them, maybe.

Yeah. Yeah, I heard kind of makes things about the program itself, but like there's no doubt, like good stuff came of it. Like if just Figma came out of it, the program was like a win, you know, like, I'd say $10 billion. Bigma came out of it? Yeah. Damn, dude.

And so, you know, and there's many others. There's a bunch of other winners that have come out of it too. But like, so this guy's like been, you know, contrarian and right many, many times. It's very impressive to me. It's more impressive to me than people, like, obviously he's very successful. so it's not even like that or success. But if you just showed me one person who's very successful and then another person who is like an original thinker who's right when they go against the grain,

damn, I'm more, I have a lot more respect and admiration for the person who was like when it gets the grain and had an original thought that was right. Yeah. And it's inspiring. I was reading today and it said that this is like kind of a weird, a weird tangent. But Jared Kushner, you know Jared Kushner? Yeah, so who is he? He's married to the Trump or his brother is married to the Trump?

So there's Jared and Josh. Josh is the younger one. I think he's like 35. He's married to a model and he runs Thrive, which is a VC thing that's like immensely successful. His brother is Jared who I forget his title in the White House, but he was like Trump's right hand man and he's married to Ivanka. Yeah. And like a lot of people think he's evil. He probably is a little bit.

He kind of has like a skeleton vibe to him, like a Skeletor, the villain and He-Man or whatever it was. So he kind of has like a vibe to him. But he just announced that, uh, like a few months after leaving the White House, uh, he, he, he founded a three billion dollar private equity fund. And like, regardless, you put politics aside. Um, like, it crazy that that's just like your thing. Like you, you ended that. You, you ended one. Like, like, when I end a job, I take like a, a, a lot of people take like a three week vacation and they go start another job. That's like 20% higher. salary and a little bit better title.

And like he just like, oh, you know, I'm like, I've got some free time now. I'm going to like, you know, beep pop, boop, just do this thing. It's a $3 billion fund. And like I find that to be, it's the same thing of like I feel like an aunt and you are not that. You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. I know exactly which you mean.

It does beg the question of like, you know, why do I not go bigger? And also, you know, is there a reason that I don't go bigger? Like, is there a reason, Sam, that you don't go create a $3 billion private equity fund? There's two reasons. The first is fear. So, like, it is scary to do that, to, like, raise, like, for, to raise outside. Failure. Yeah, to raise outside money and fuck it up.

That's bad. But number two, I do think that there is, I don't know if Peter Thiel has this, but Elon Musk for sure has this. Did you read that article in the New Yorker or New York Times where he describes his life? He's like, basically, he was talking to the interviewer and he was starting to cry in the interview. And he's like, He's like, you don't want to be me.

Yeah, he basically said, he's like, I miss my brother's wedding. He was like, I was about to miss it, but I flew in at the last minute. I saw it immediately got on the plane. He was like, there was like a time a few weeks ago where for five days I didn't leave the factory. I didn't see the sunshine. I don't see my children. I had a birthday, but no friends came and said, happy birthday to me because I was running around the factory. And like, I'm lonely and I'm pretty sad, to be honest.

And frankly, death, I look forward to it as a way of relief. That's like what he said. He said all that? Yes. And like like the whole death thing. Take a nap, bro. Yeah. Take a nap.

Just do it. Just try it. A little advice. One brother to another. Well, and it's like, so I think there's one aspect where it's like, well, I don't want to like be this like slave to this computer in the machine. Like, F that. And I want to live life.

But I do think that there, and I haven't formulated this entire, this thought entirely. I do think there's a world where you can go big and have some work-life balance, though, actually. So, do you think that's true? Yeah, of course. Of course it's true. You just got to decide your terms, right? Like, as soon as you decide those terms, watch, you'll figure out a way to make it happen or you'll find people who make it happen. I am so anti. There's one way to win or there's even one definition of winning. Like, if I, if I could just be anti-one thing, that's the thing I'd be most anti. Because I used to fall into a track. I'd see somebody doing something one way or I'd hear advice that makes sense.

And then I'd kind of like, and it's like later in life, I found the counterfactual. It's like, wait, but this guy does do that. Wait, this, this, that lady did both, right? Like, so hold on. If both is an option, then I'm taking both every day or the week. It's only when I accept that both is not an option. I fall into this trap of misery around picking one or the other, right? Of like lifestyle and, like, you know, ambition.

So, so I definitely think you can do both. I play this game, though. So I have two games that I, play about any project that I'm doing. This is kind of like my, I kind of exec coach myself. And I really always ask two questions. I go, the first question is, if, and I ask this other founders too, which is, if I was to meet up with you, you know, if we hung out 12 months from now, we're grabbing a beer. And I'm like, hey, what happened with that thing, man? What happened with trends? That was such a cool idea. Like, what went wrong? What do you think is the most likely thing

you're going to say in that moment where you're like, ah, dude, here's what, you know, here's where we messed up or here's what we turned out. We thought that we turned out turns out was wrong. So it helps you identify the riskiest part of your business, either the riskiest assumption you're making, the thing you need to go validate or the risky path that

you're going on where you're cutting off other options or you're really leaving yourself, you know, one move away from failure. So I always ask that question. And the way, like, if you just ask somebody straight up, like, what's the biggest risk in your business? They answer it one way. It's like, but there's other way with,

I think people can relate to, which is like, if I see you a year from now we're just grabbing a beer hanging out and it's like, let's just presume already it's gone wrong. What was the cause of death? What do you think was the reason? So that's one.

The second one, the game we played yesterday with the Milk Road, it was, it's called the why the fuck aren't you game. And it's basically it's like, it's like either why the fuck are you or aren't you? Which is like, what part,

if I was just an objective person looking at what we're doing, would I say, why the fuck are you guys doing this? Like, why aren't you hiring somebody to that. It's taking you five hours a day and like you should totally you could, could, could you not find somebody to do that part? Or like, why aren't you, like, why aren't you at this Bitcoin conference? Like, aren't you building a crypto product? Like, shouldn't you be at this event? Like, there's just like this series of like, why are you or why aren't you? And it's like,

why the F aren't you, which kind of distills it down into like, what's the obvious good idea or bad idea, like good idea we're not doing or bad idea that we are doing that I would criticize about ourselves and we both came up with a list of like three things and it became like oh wow we should just correct those now uh rather like so then what's your answer why aren't you going bigger assuming that you're not going big which is not a fair a fair assumption but for the sake of discussion yeah um so i i wouldn't say why am i not going bigger like the jared kushner question you mean or the question i was asking just now the jared kushner question um because i want to have you know enough meaning I want to have a I want to be able to know what is enough and I want my vision of success to be bigger than just what's going on in my business.

So it's like to me, if you said paint a picture of what winning looks like, it's not just a number in an account or a number in my sales dashboard. It's like I talk about this all the time. It's this perfect Tuesday. It's like my normal day is perfect for what I want. And that includes like just like right after this. I'm going to go work out with my trainer in my home gym. Like, that's a part of my perfect Tuesday. And if my business then requires me to not have time to do that and I'm like getting fat or whatever,

or it doesn't provide me enough money to be able to afford that, then it's not winning, right? It's like, you know, being able to like take my daughter to swim class, like things like that. Like those are part of what winning looks like to me. And so I'm just not going to like deviate from that. I'm only going to, the only thing I question is not why don't I go bigger? It's is this picture the picture I really want or is this outdated? and do I need to update it? You know, and like, that's the thing I find myself being like,

oh, man, I haven't updated this picture in a while. Or there's just like a gap over here where I don't know what I want. What would it feel like to know what I want? Okay, let me get, let me figure that out. Ben Wilson tweeted out. It's a superpower to know what you really want. Right, Ben? And that was that the tweet?

Yeah. What did you tweet that? What did you see or hear that made you tweet that? So what I saw is that I have had a bunch of people reaching out to me recently. And the people who are like, hey, I'd love to connect. I get so annoyed with. I'm like, you just dump something on my plate for me to like figure out, which I just don't want to do. Whereas the people who are like, hey, I really love what you do. I'm also a podcaster. My podcast is this size. I want to get it to this size. I am having trouble in these two issues,

and I'd love to talk to you about it. I'm like, great. You know exactly what you want. I will, I will gladly give you that. And it applies almost everywhere in life. Like the guy who comes up to you and is like, hey, do you have any spare change? No, I don't have any spare change. Hey, I need $2.50 to get a ride home on the bus. Do you have $2.50? All right, I guess I got $2.50.

Like, it's a superpower in every way. So I like that you said that. There's a tweet that my cousin put out yesterday. My cousin, he's on Twitter. Dude, who, great guy. According to Twitter, he's killing it. I haven't talked to him in forever. but like he's

He's killing it at looking like he's killing it. I don't know if he's actually going I haven't caught up No, I don't want I'm not disrespecting him at all I'm saying like his

like his updates are amazing he just bought like 20,000 square feet or something like he's on top of the game yeah and actually he did a good job of figuring out what he wants bro you just called out your cousin you should take that back

what I love my cousin no he's great but I actually meant that as a compliment there's a skill there's a skill especially in his line of business which is real estate there's a skill to

putting forward your like putting your either your brain on brain forward like sharing ideas like he put out a thing of like how I do diligence on properties it's like a great checklist it's like oh you just putting out great on point information it makes me trust you makes me think this guy knows what he's talking about or if it's like like our friend nick hubert does this too it's like he'll send us a picture of him smoking a cigar you know playing golf at you know 1 p.m it's like wow this guy must be killing it like you don't you don't get to go out smoke a cigar and play golf you know 1 p.m. regularly unless you're doing really well. It makes me more likely to invest in Nick Huber's storage company

that I know that he's doing well in life. Some people take it as an anti-sigma. Like, oh, why isn't he working hard? To me, I'm like, no, if you're able to, like, do well in life, that means you're doing something right. So what's your cousin tweet though? So he tweeted something out. He goes, I'm looking for like a car, like a new SUV.

It's like kind of a general vague thing. And so what do you get any, then he like defined it right afterwards. So specifically, he goes, the experience, you know, the user experience of a Tesla, the size of an escalade. He goes, with enough room for three car seats and a pair of golf clubs. And I was like, first of all, isn't there just a more fun way to look for a car? Like, just to kind of imagine really what you want and, like, sink into the vividness of, like, just having it. And not, like, worrying about the world.

Tesla doesn't make a big car like an escalator. No, fight that. I'm not grounded in reality. I'm living over here in my reality of what I want. And he's only, he's got one kid. So I'm like, you know, three car seats. All right? He's planning ahead.

Like, that's good. And I just thought it was a great example of like specificity. So to me, a lot of people are vague in general when they should really be being specific. And then the opposite is also true. Sometimes people are like, man, I don't know what I want specifically. And they get tied up in a knot because of that. And my trainer had a great framework for that. He goes, you got to know when to be general and when to be specific.

He goes, if you, like sometimes you will tell you need to be more specific with what you want. That means like the type of description my cousin gave about like, you know, the lifestyle. What he described as a car is not just a car. It's a lifestyle. And then the second thing is like, when do you be general? So my trainer, I was like, well, what if I don't know what I want, right? Like if he said, you know, what's your body goal, right? His personal trainer, I'd be like, well, I don't really have a picture.

Like, I don't know if I want to, like, I could say, oh, I just want to have like a 12-pack. But I don't even know if that's true, right? I'm like, I don't know exactly what I want. And he's like, cool. Just imagine satisfaction. He goes, just first get to a place I'm feeling satisfied about it where you, you don't stress you're not stressed about it anymore he goes he goes you know relief is a very powerful emotion satisfaction is a powerful emotion he goes most people feel relieved one time a day and it's when

they poop and he goes and now people bring their phone in and they're not even paying attention they miss it they miss out on the one moment of relief they were going to have that day he goes so i get good at feeling relief i want to practice feeling relieved and satisfied because once you get good at feeling relieved and satisfied you know what things you want you're faster to figure out what things you want that will lead back to that emotion and like you're just better at being satisfied from a meal or a workout or whatever it is, these daily things to your life. He goes, he goes, and so we made a deal. It's like, I'm going to be relieved more times than I poop today. And it's like, that's the goal. That's the first goal. That's hilarious. This is all from your

trainer. Yeah. What a smart ass dude. By the way, to talk about the real, what your cousin's doing on real estate, I've talked to a bunch of these real estate guys. So, and I'm friends with a lot of them, Keith Wasserman, Chris Fort. Is that the name? Fort? I think so. Nick Hoover, Moses Kagan, your cousin's getting in there. The strip mall guy. So there's like 10 of them that are like really popular, maybe 20. And I see the returns. They're really good. And the fees that they charge are crazy high. But like, you know, who cares? I'm in Nick's Hoover thing. It's a huge fee. But like I'm getting a good return, so I don't care. This is one of the coolest things that's happening on Twitter right now is these real estate people are just crushing it all through Twitter. It's pretty amazing.

I think some of them have shared that they bring in like tens of millions of dollars of investor money just off of people who are like, I'm a fan of your Twitter. Yes. Which is like, that means if you're in real estate, like do what my cousins do. Do what these guys are doing. Like up your Twitter game because it is going to lead to more deals and it's going to lead to more investors in your fund that you don't have to go knock on doors for. It's way easier to just tweet out stuff than it is to go like do one hour calls and seminars or webinars and in-person meetups trying to like schmooze for a buck. Well, I have no idea how big Nick Hoover. This is Nick Huber from sweaty startup. I have no idea how big its portfolio is, but I wouldn't actually be

surprised if it was over nine figures. And I bet you, if it is, most of it came via Twitter. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if that's, I don't know exactly, but I agree with where you're headed there. also, that's also the one reason I haven't invested in a lot of these guys is because the fee structure, like, which might be to my detriment, but like one thing I don't fundamentally like about real estate fees is that they all make this like two, three percent like acquisition fee. Yeah. Which like, you know, you will buy like a $50 million thing and it's like, wow, so you just

banked a million dollars in your pocket just for buying the thing, which leads you to an incentive, which is go buy more shit. Instead of being like really discerning. between like a great property and a good property. It's like just go accumulate. And like I think Nick has a little bit of a different strategy because he's got like a kind of like a template now of like he buys the self-storage thing. It cuts out a bunch of the labor.

He adds in these automations. And so he like has a playbook of how to add value that I think not every investor says they have. I don't think they really have it. I think Nick actually does a great job of that. But like in general, I would say one reason I've shied away is because I dislike this incentive mismatch where like you're, you're incentivized to take my money and buy something because you get money today that's guaranteed.

It doesn't, it does not linked to your returns. It's only linked to your returns over a long period of time. And by then, you've already banked these acquisition fees 15 times over by the time we figure out if these were good deals or not. And I have no idea if they're killing it because they're skilled, although many of the, all the people I had named, I've talked to, they appear skilled, but I'm a novice. But also, they just happen to be in the game, like, starting six years ago. And we're going to, like, the greatest, like, boom in real estate.

Yeah, so, like, of course they're killing it. But the numbers are, I mean, I'm investor of Nick. I see the returns. I'm like, oh, yeah, dude, I'll give you more. But I have no way. If I was Nick, I would do exactly what he's doing. I charge the highest fees I can and be like, you're still getting on great return, correct?

All right, fantastic. If you can go beat that return somewhere else, I invite you to do it. Which is like, you know, he's not as upfront about that. But like, that's how I would do exactly what he's doing. So I don't knock him for that. I think that's what I would do if I was in that position where I know I could generate great returns. but on my side, I just hesitate as an investor in that sort of thing. But maybe that's to my detriment.

Do you want to do more topics or do you want to save yours for Wednesday? Let's do a couple ideas. I think people like ideas. If you made it to the end of the episode, congratulations. All right. So let me pitch you two ideas real quick. One is called, what I'm calling, copy my trip. Okay, so I'm booking a vacation right now, taking the family on a vacation.

Great idea. Great name. Thank you. Came up with it myself. Yeah. Oh, you're the business idea. I'm just with the idea of a family vacation.

So I'm like, I'm like Googling. I'm like, okay, listen, I want to go to Hawaii, for example. So I'm like, all right, I want to go to Hawaii. All right. Which island? I don't fucking know. Okay. Which resort?

Oh, God. Here we go. Got to figure out which resort. And like, it matters. Like, it's going to change my experience if I go to the wrong place or the right place. But like, and then I'm like, and then all the details in between. Like, okay. So if I take my kids, do I rent a car, do I get car seats?

Do I take the shuttle? Do we go on this activity? Is that age appropriate? And so what I want is my wife follows all these influencers on Instagram. They're like mommy influencers. And when they buy something, she's like, that's a good thing. I'm going to buy that thing too. And like, because she's like, look, we have the same taste.

And like, these people, they're not, like, they kind of are promoting things that they have a good. They have a good. So she's like, bought a couple of the things that look good and they paid off. So she's like, now it's more trust than them. I don't get why they can't, or maybe they do this, I don't know, but like, I don't get why they're not just saying, copy my trip. You want to go to Disneyland? Literally click this and like, here's the like full itinerary of like, we fly into this airport, we take this transportation to this hotel because it's great for families for these reasons.

We buy this thing, this thing, whatever. And like, I just get their whole trip that I can copy and that they have basically like a TikTok or like Instagram story version that I can just browse it to be like, oh, yeah, this looks fun. I want to do this. Like, when I went on Expedia, and I'm like, this is awful experience. It's overwhelming. Here's an overwhelming list of 100 options, ranked in five different ways that I click the fucking thing. I don't know if the reviews are real or not.

I'm looking at the photos. They don't have all the photos. It's like a static photo from like a fucking airplane above the resort. It's like, dude, I just want to see like someone walk into the room and be like, oh, this is really nice. The bed's good. You know, there's space over here. And like, oh, this is cool.

They give you breakfast every morning. Like check this out. You know, like an Instagram story, right? So I just think that there should be an, a thing called copy my trip that anyone could do. It will create a profession of basically professional travelers, like people who they go find the best path of how to have a trip to, you know, Bali or whatever.

And like, Sam, you might follow somebody who's got like a fitness oriented angle. Right. It's like, oh, yeah, they want to like go. This person likes Airbnb versus hotels. So I like aligned with them. And then it's like they went and trained at this gym and got Muay Thai classes when they went to Thailand. Like, that's awesome. That's the type of trip I want to have.

So I'm going to just copy their trip. Dude, I'm on board with that. We could do it for trips and weddings. Whenever I saw my wife, like, working so hard on this wedding, I'm like, dude, just find someone else to just do the exact same thing. No one will know. Who cares? Or her younger sister's getting married.

And I'm like, dude, just do exactly what we did. It was great. It was an awesome wedding. And, of course, obviously, they don't like that. But I'm like, yeah, just do the exact same thing. We all have great time, right? Yeah, bachelor parties. Yeah.

Birthday parties. I want to copy your work, which is like, it's Pinterest. but just like the whole thing strung together. So how, and like, and you would just, you would just do it where like, someone uploads an itinerary and then you, and then you people rate it and you pay them money and buy it. Yeah, exactly.

So, so you, you don't even have to buy the trip. Like, just by doing the trip, those people get paid mad money from affiliates. Like, if I booked that resort because this person said this resort is awesome,

I'm going to get a kickback of, like, all the things that they recommend. Now, it's pretty interesting. It's some perverse incentive, but like, everybody kind of offers a kickback. So I think you can basically,

through affiliates, you could monetize this pretty heavily for the, for the creator themselves. What you could do is you could say it's not about, like creator, you just recommend what you genuinely recommend. We're going to take the entire pool of affiliate fees and then pay it out based on whose trip got copied,

even if that hotel doesn't have to pay you to like promote them. You know what I mean? I would do something like that. Where are you going? Hawaii. Oh, that's cool. And you haven't found like that. This is not a fictional example.

This is a real example. And you haven't been able to find a, a... No, I'm like it. So first I went on whatever Expedia and I was like, oh God, miserable. Don't want to do this. Okay, what else could I do?

Okay, I could tweet this out. Then I'm going to get a bunch of recommendations. All right, that might work. But that only works for me because I got a big following. All right. I was like, how do people do this? And I was like, okay, let me go to... I was like, let me go look at like, you know,

an Instagram person I follow up. But like, they're not going to happen to post about it that day. So like, it needs to be saved somewhere, like a link in the bio like, or like, you know, one of their Instagram story highlights, which is like, take one of our trips. You know, they always do this. Like, they do this with fashion.

It's called like, I like, I buy like or some shit like that. It's like, if you like my outfits, you can go here and like, you can buy any of the items for my outfit and they get a kickback. It's basically like that for trips. And then I went on YouTube and I was watching like, okay, you know, watch this like family vlog at one of the resorts. And I'm like, and they're okay. I mean, it's like this eight minute video. And it's just that one aspect. It doesn't tell me about all the other shit that I could go do when I'm there and all that stuff.

So anyways, I just think that. There's elements of this happening. It's just somebody should make this like an explicit thing, I think. Jack Smith uses VAs to do stuff constantly. And he's like, at one point, he even had some VAs going into hotels into different countries and like taking pictures and sending it to him to let them know what it was. But on a lighter, for real, on a lighter level. It's crazy.

And on a lighter. Wait, did he pay for them to go on vacation? He found a local VA near every hotel. He would find a local person. He's like, hey, can you go to these three hotels and take pictures and let me know? And then he would like show him to his wife. Like, all right, which ones do you want?

It was pretty rude. I'm calling him Jack LaRue from now on. That's so crazy. He is kind of similar to that. Dude, he just sent me a picture. And it was him and Andrew Wilkinson. And he's like, look, I'm with Andrew. And they have their TED Talk badge on.

And so they're clearly a TED together. And I was like, oh, how funny. Jack's awesome. Yeah. And anyway, he does this all the time. And it's actually really interesting. And there's this company called Flight Fox. Do you know what Flight Fox is?

Is that like where you'll just, is it like somebody will book it for it? Is it a travel agent or is it the one where you're like, I just want something. Give me like the best deal. No, it's amazing. So I have no idea how they make this work. So basically you go to Flight Fox and you always have to click the button that says you're traveling for business. And then a person, you select like, I want to go around. this, I want to go this day and I want to come back on this time. Or you can even say,

I want to go around this time. And then you leave like notes. Like I've got a budget of blank or I only want first class or I have to be back for a wedding. So I have to make sure there's backup flights. And someone on the other end pops up and goes, hey, what's going on? I'm, whatever, I'm here to help you. And it's a real person. And they go and they find five to 10 different flights that fit what you want. And then you finally say, all right, this itinerary looks good. Or you can even reply and be like, uh, this is, one actually, I had a change of plans. I've got to change this, this and this. And they'll go and find flights for you. And they find the cheapest ones and they know where to search for them. And they only get

paid until after you booked the flight and they just take a $50 fee. I have no idea how they make money. And then like when I was in Portugal, my flight got canceled. So I just logged on. I go, hey, the flight you book was canceled. Can you, you know, address it please? And they call for you and they wait on hold for you. And then you just pay them 50 bucks. It's amazing. I have no idea how this makes money or how they can make that work. Get it while it lasts. It's awesome. That's amazing.

That's like, I think I told you about this thing I did once, MoPoint. MoPoints.com. It's our, it's our, it's our good buddy, Ramon's good buddy. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is like one of the best things I did. It's like, I booked this call with them. And so you go to MoPoints.com, just like M0.Points.com. And basically it solves the problem of like what credit card should I get.

And so you just call this guy and he's like, all right, look. Like, again, you could just Google what credit card should I get? guess what? You're going to get like the most SEO optimized blog post in the world because they can make so much money off referring credit cards and you don't know if you're really getting the real deal. And so I just called this guy 30 minutes and he was like, all right, tell me about what you spend on and tell me what you want. Do you want to travel like a baller? Like he's like, look, I travel first class worldwide just off this.

He's like, I'm not rich. I just, but I use points to do it. Here's how. I was like, yeah, I want that. And so he's like, cool. Get the Amex gold. he's like you're going to get 4x points on all your Facebook ads

for your e-commerce thing you're going to get one for you one for your wife so now you're going to get like two million points or whatever like in the next year he's like then to travel you just do this

you transfer points like don't book within their points portal because that's what I used to do I used to go to my points thing and be like rewards flights oh man I get like half a flight for all my chase points

like no you need to transfer to travel partners and then there you need to like check this out you use like KLM to fly you know, here, here and here. And he's like, just call me when you want a book. He's like, for now, buy the MX Gold, start racking up your points.

When you want to book first class worldwide, just call me again. And I was like, dude, I feel so taken care of. This was like the best money I've ever spent just in terms of the, again, the relief of like, ah, I'm in good hands, right? Like the real Allstate I'm in good hands is fucking Mo from Moe points. Dude, I'm a fan of these businesses. And I like the model of these things are typically monetized. through affiliates, but instead, you're just going to pay, and I'll give you a more honest answer. I actually, I like that idea a lot.

Yeah, exactly. Me too. I think it's great. And, yeah, people should go sign up for that thing. Because if you spend a significant amount for your business, it's like, it just makes financial sense to like optimize that. So you're either going to get the best cash back. Like, you know, I found out, oh, if I use this Bank of America, Platinum honors cashback card, I get 2.6% back cash back, which is like way higher than anybody else gives you. Does that mean it basically adds 2% to your bottom line? Yeah, exactly. Like I take 2.6%. Yeah. So if you're spending, you know, 100 grand a month on ads, which is like very common for e-commerce. So you use a round number here. You're getting $2,600 a month back just straight to your bottom line, right? Like that just makes sense.

Or you can reinvest that. A 5,000 person company or like BCG who sends people all around the world, do they just have like a bank full of like points? I don't know what they do. I actually asked my previous startup this. I'll go, I go, what do we do with all the points we collect? Who gets to use those?

And I think they said that they just cash them. They just do the cash back basically or they just convert them to cash, which is like not the most efficient way to use it. But like, you know, for a fair way to do it. And they just like, you know,

keep it. I was like, who keeps it? Yeah, where is this money? I kept, I used our points at the hustle. And I flew.

first class, like twice a month. It was sick. And then when I sold a company, I didn't have that perk anymore. I was like, damn, I got to pay for a flight for the first time in four years. It sucks. So you got to negotiate that in. Well, I kept them. I got to keep all the points. We had like a million points, but I didn't get to, I didn't get future points. Gotcha. All right. That's it. I'll save my other ideas for the next one. And you got a crime baby. Yeah, I know. All right. Thank you.