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

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. He makes relationships with

Columbia drug lords and trades pills for cocaine, and he starts selling a hundred

millions of dollars worth of cocaine. And even though this guy, what he did was wrong,

it does like actually inspire me to live a more adventurous life. I've been watching your Instagram

content. You came back strong on Instagram with great content from the ranch. What? Which one?

People need to follow you. What's your Instagram handle? TheSampar? TheSampar.

People should follow you. You're good at that. I would think that you would suck at Instagram,

but you're great at Instagram, actually. Thank you. That surprises me. What are you referring to?

All right, quick break to tell you about another podcast that we're interested in right now.

HubSpot just launched a Shark Tank rewatch podcast called Another Bite. Every week,

the host relived the latest and greatest pitches from Shark Tank, from squatty potty to the

mench on a bench to ring doorbell. And they break down why these pitches were winners or losers.

And each company's go-to-market strategy, branding, pricing, valuation, everything.

Basically, all the things you want to know about how to survive the tank and scale your

company on your own. If you want to give it a listen, you can find another bite on whatever

podcast app you listen to, like Apple or Spotify or whatever you're using right now. All right,

back to the show. Uh, like I was watching the thing of you, like you were like at the ranch,

whatever you're, you go, oh, yeah, I'm fixing up this, like this is like the empty barn area

or whatever. And you're like, I'm fixing up this part. Uh, it's going to be like a gym over here.

And then like, not the whole thing of gym there. Like it'll be a gym for like the parents. If you

come stay over here and like over here, I'm going to bait some, you know, stuff for kids,

like arcade games, like Pac-Man, kids with Pac-Man. You're like, I don't know. I don't know

about much about kids. He goes, you know, you know me, love kids. That's why my screen name is

kid lover. A great joke. Amazing joke. I think I said, that's why, you know, my screen name is

usually little kid lover. You know me. I love kids. That's why my screen name is little kid lover.

I was, is that an original? You get that from like the sentence. I think I stole it from South

Park. Yeah. Yeah, it was good. I was, it was so good that for the rest of the weekend I was just

waiting for like, I was hoping the opportunity would come up that I could say that joke to somebody

and like it just never came up. And then I ended up just telling, I was just telling Sonia about,

about your joke. And then it was like, you know, I was watching this Instagram story and then

Sam said this thing. Dude, I'm trying, man. Instagram's fun. It's a new challenge. So I'm

trying to use it to do some stuff. It's fun to document like the farm stuff. But that work is

like done. Like the way that up there, dude, Airbnb's are kind of boring. Like I set it up. It's

ready to go. Now what do I do? Like I just do nothing. What is the stress? Set it and forget

it. I want to set it and stress about it every day. Yeah, there's like, I'm like, all right,

that was a great dopamine rush getting it set up. But it's like, it works. People are going. I have

someone running it. I don't know what to do. I got to do it again, I guess. Yeah, that's exactly

how that's how it goes. You got to do it again. All right, let's do some topics. What do you

got? I got a couple. Dude, I got a bunch of good stuff. Like let's pick one of yours. Let's do

the Satoshi and the Paul LaRue 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 LaRue is. You don't

know who Paul LaRue is? Okay. Fucking great name though. Dude, listen to this. How much more would

I be worth if I was Sean LaRue? A lot more. And I would respect what I get. 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 Paul LaRue is. He's kind of like, who's the guy we were talking about that

you knew? Ross Holberg. He's kind of like, if Ross had been as crazy as everyone thought,

but actually like 10 times crazier, that's Paul LaRue. Paul. Whoa. Yeah, yeah. I don't know.

So man, who's this guy? All right. So Paul LaRue, he's this big old fat disgusting guy.

He's like, imagine. Like jumping a 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 take over 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 two drugs. So like no, like he was able to sell some opioids, but not like the famous

ones things that are considered schedule two, which is just one below between schedule one.

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 texts 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 his own email system because he didn't

want anyone to hack into his stuff. And at one point he had like two or 3000 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 the for the cheap rate. And he 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 like 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 and 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

we 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 2000 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, it was just like, you didn't need it to see any doctor to get

any 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 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 like

didn't want the IRS to see anything. So he would just transfer it into gold because this is 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. And 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. Like this guy gets into some crazy stuff. He's killing people along the way.

He makes relationships with the Columbia drug lords and trades drugs, pills for cocaine. And

he starts selling a hundred millions of dollars worth of cocaine. And he was doing all of it almost,

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. In the U.S. or 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 could own 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 really seen of him recently.

And the guy, it's just, this is one of the craziest books I've ever read. And what I,

I start 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 of shows that he 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 like read all of his old

blog posts. But this guy, it's incredibly fascinating. He would have been an awesome business person

had it not been for, you know, 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 suit of them, talking about like the future of money and like all these weird

economic stuff. But he, 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 them to f off. He wasn't very pleasant to be around.

And, but in the emails, he wrote pretty, 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 a hundred

million dollars. 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, he owned that business. He also was in the mining. This guy did like,

at one point, the DA, the district 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 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 the computer, but, and my research on this is old. I was

looking at this story like a year ago, 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 one. So throughout the shunt, he had his hit men. He had hit men that are now

arrested and they like kind of are spilling the beans. He had hit men that would kill people.

And there are a few occasions where they think he actually is the one who fired the bullet. So he,

and he did travel. So he would go to Africa. He would go here, but he, the guy had like

3000 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, he was given up for adoption

by his birth parents that rejection haunted him. And then it says he was, you know, transformed

himself into a programming genius who developed encryption software like E4M in the nineties.

He founded RX limited, which was the black market for pharmaceuticals. He was raking in 250 million

dollars a year selling drugs, weapons and murder for hire on the dark web. Yeah. Well, I think

that actually the dark web thing is actually confusing because a lot of the stuff that he was

doing was before tour was even around. So a lot of 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 farm, 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 a domain.

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 it 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 the first, his first taste of murder. And then there's another, there's

another story where they, they took a guy out into the ocean and they go, well, 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, how'd you find out? 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 fricking crazy. And even though this guy, what he did was

wrong, it does like actually inspire me to like live a more adventurous life. Well, I'm like

reading this and 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 am 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, it didn't translate in that kind of

deep rooted desire for like, you know, either adventure, thrill, power, you know, 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 Rue,

Ross Albright, yeah. So, but in your heroes. And one of the reasons why it's interesting is

the cool thing about criminals online is that you can read their correspondence.

So like they get, 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 how you

can like see it happening. And that got me interested in the Satoshi post. So basically,

if you go to like, if you just Google like Satoshi, you know, the guys who created Bitcoin, if you

go to Satoshi blog posts, you can, I was reading all of his blog posts. And what I found to be

really fun is you go to his first blog post where he talks about introducing Bitcoin,

and you can go to the forum is still up. And 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 could 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, like literally the

first comment. So, so, you know, there's, you know, Sepp 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 and the vaults,

which became bank notes. I believe an 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

Hal 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 Hal 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 guy 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

year 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 5000 of these right now. Like, yeah,

that could each one of those could be worth a million dollars. And to me, that was really

impressive. The people who saw it for what it is, which is like, you know, 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 LaRue is like, just these people who just have this 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 this and I've been reading all of the

Satoshi's forum posts and just seeing these just like, you can click and see these guys

profiles. Like they're wearing fedoras and like crocodile duddy hats. Like they're the nerdy,

the nerdy, the nerd, the guys who like, I would dismiss and be like, oh, what are you 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 P2P Foundation

or something like that 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 interest, 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, I'm a pretty like

normal person. Like I like catchy songs by Katy Perry. I don't have like great music dates. I like

something's in the top 40. I'm like, Oh, that'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'll 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 my

in college, the guy who lived next door to me, this guy, Tophique, he was, I walked in, he was

like playing a video games like 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,

are you 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 is back in, you know, it must have been 2006 or something like that. And he's

like, yeah, I'm watching a recording of his game, this match that happened in the Korean server.

And I'm like, dude, say five more lame things than that. Like I'll give you $100.

Tell me you're a virgin without telling me you're a virgin. 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. So, so our company gets acquired by Twitch. And all of a sudden my title

is like director of esports or something like that. And he calls me, he's like, you motherfucker.

He's like, oh, Mr. Esports now, huh? And I was like, yeah, dude, it's a big thing. You know,

you, 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 play

video games. And so I kind of learned the hard way many times of making myself, 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? Like, 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 soylent for all your meals. Like,

oh, interesting. Are there, is there a community of people who do this? Yeah,

we're called, you know, whatever bio hackers. 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 elegant, 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 buzz

word. 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? Yeah, I, so I, on the very bottom of the forum, it says like about,

and you could like 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, it's like, you know, they, they, they, this kind of weird to say, but they're like,

they were around when Jesus was around. Like, you know, like they like saw this like thing that

like potentially changes what 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, so the big Bitcoin conference just happened in

Miami. Yeah, that was a really, that was really good. On Friday, you did that, right? Yeah,

I did that one on Friday. That was a Irish 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 Teal goes, he gives us talk at the Bitcoin conference in 2022,

just happened. And he, before he comes out, they played on the, on the big screen of 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 Teal videos. 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, by the government. And basically,

there's like this two minute clip of Peter Teal 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 something that was

more practical and it kind of worked, but like, it was less ambitious. And like, you can tell

you kind of like regretted it, which is like, we, before we wanted to create our own financial system.

And then like, we settled on PayPal, and we settled on 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 with 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 then 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, he 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 use 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

right 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

their 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 open. Like the cell phone was really the first thing that was able to do that, you know,

that quickly. 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

asked him 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 it's only 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

why you're clean and you're nice. I get it. Like, it's, it's so like, I thought about that. I'm

like, no wonder that people hanging out with Peter Teal 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 Affirm. 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 and living in

the future. They're all weird nerds. And I remember that one of the co-founders of PayPal, Max

Lifton, 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 pick up hoops. He's like, we're not hiring

this guy. He's like, oh my God. He's like, he's like, no, no great program I know plays pick up

basketball. Dude, well, that's what we said about the guys who are 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, like if your last name is Hucker

or John to 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 them 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, how do you think this was actually a third topic I was going to ask you?

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your business at HubSpot.com. 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 right so often?

I mean, do they just make a ton of guesses and they're only right a couple of times? But

I don't understand like that idea of thinking. I think I think big and then I like talk just

or I listen to him. I'm like, oh, I'm like, I'm nobody. Yeah, 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 little flecks.

It's like that's how my brain feels when I hear Peter Thiel talk. I'm like, oh,

I am a small simpleton. 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 I think Jeff Bezos said this about Peter

Thiel. He goes, yeah, that's the thing about contrarians. They're usually wrong. And somebody

else said like, you know, Peter is 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 like 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

contrarian 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 was sort of like,

Donald Trump was the underdog. He was not supposed to win. And like Peter Teal picked

that horse pretty early. That's kind of impressive. And like, also, he gets off on being

contrarian, you could tell. And then the other one that he was right about was when he created

the Teal Fellowship. So he basically went on, which was laughable at first. And he had, he had

this talk where he goes and he goes, 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 like, who goes against education? Like,

go ask 100 out of 100 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 that 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's, he's was calling out college and then he created the Teal 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,

he made it bold. But he's like, not just like, here's an alternative to college for people who

don't want to go. He's like, well, he came out, he goes, I will pay you $100,000 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 is that college is,

is, you know, a complete bubble. But then how do you 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 doesn't, 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 invested

in owner.com, owner.com. Do you ever see that company? I know about it. Yeah. He's one of those

guys. And in about two or three more, I've invested in about three of them, maybe.

Yeah. Yeah, I heard kind of mixed things about the project, the program itself. But like,

there's no doubt like good stuff came of it. Like if, if just Figma came out of it, the program

was like a win, you know, like I'd say $10 billion came out of it. Yeah. 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 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 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, he's married to the Trump or his brother is married to the Trump?

Yeah. 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 skeleton or the villain and he

man or whatever it was. So he's like kind of has like a vibe to him. But he just announced that

like a few months after leaving the White House, he, he, he founded a three billion dollar

private equity fund. And like regardless, you put politics aside, like it's crazy that that's

just like your thing. Like you, you ended that you ended one, like, like when I end a job, I take

like a, a lot of people take like a three week vacation and they go start another job. That's

like 20% higher in salary and a little bit better title. And like, he just like was 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 three billion dollar 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 what you mean. It does beg the question of like,

you know, why, 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 three billion dollar private

equity fund? There's, there's two reasons. The first is fear. So like, it is scary to do that,

to like raise, like for the 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 Teal

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. I, or he was like, I was about

to miss it, but I flew in at the last minute. I saw it. He 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 the whole death thing. Take a nap, bro. Take a nap.

Just try it. A little advice. One brother to another. Take a nap. 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 the slave to this computer in the machine like F that and I want to live life.

But I do think that they're, 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. So 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, and 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 that's if I could just be the anti one thing,

that's the thing I'd be most anti because I used to fall into a trap. 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 doesn't do that. But this, this,

that lady did both, right? Like, so hold on. If both is an option, then I'm taking both every day

of the week. It's only when I accept that both is not an option. I fall into this trap of misery

of around picking one or the other, right? Of like lifestyle and, and, and like, you know, ambition.

So, so I definitely think you 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 exact coach myself. And I

really always ask two questions. I go, I go for the first question is if I asked 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,

we messed up or here's what we turned out. Here's what we thought that we turned out. We

turned 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 not, you know, you're really leaving

yourself, you know, one move away from failure. So I always ask that question. And the way, I don't

know why, 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 this 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. It's like, and just,

let's just presume already it's gone wrong. What was the cause of death? You know, like, what do

you think was the reason that, so that's one. The second one, the game we played yesterday with the

Milk Road, it was, it's called the, 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 do that? It's taking you five hours a day and like, you

should totally, you 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's? 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, 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. So I wouldn't say why am I not going bigger, like the Jared Kushner question,

you mean, or the questions I was asking just now, the Jared Kushner question.

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,

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 it 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, was that the tweet?

Yeah, I really think that. What did you see or hear that made you tweet that?

Um, so what I saw is that I, I've had a bunch of people reaching out to me recently. And the

people who were like, Hey, I'd love to connect. I get so annoyed with, I'm like, you just dumped

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 am also a podcaster. My podcast is this size.

I want to get it to this size. I am having trouble in these two issues areas. 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 just, 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, uh, so I like that you said that there's a tweet that my cousin put out

yesterday. My cousin, he's on Twitter. Great guy. According to Twitter, he's killing it.

There's a skill, especially in his blind 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're just putting out great on point information. It makes me trust you. It makes me

think this guy knows what he's talking about. Or if it's like, like our friend Nick Huber does this

too. It's like, he'll send us a picture of him smoking a cigar, you know, playing golf at, you

know, 1pm. It's like, wow, this guy must be killing it. Like you don't, you don't get to go out smoking

a cigar and play golf, you know, 1pm 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. Like

some people take it as an anti-signal, like, Oh, why, why isn't he working hard? To me, I'm like,

no, if you're, if you're able to like do well in life, that means you're doing something right.

And like, I'm more trust. 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 he got any, that he like defined it right

afterwards. So specifically he goes, the experience, you know, the, the user experience of a Tesla,

the size of an Escalade, the, it goes with enough room for three car seats and a pair of golf clubs.

And I was like, first of all, isn't it 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 Escalade. No, fuck that. I'm not,

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, and I just thought it was a great example of like specificity. So, 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 they.

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, 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.

That what he described as a car is not just a car. It's a lifestyle. And, and then the second

thing is like, when do you be, when do you be general? So he, so my trainer, I was like,

well, what if I don't know what I want, right? Like if he said, what, 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, 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, just first get to a place of feeling satisfied

about it where 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. 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 in your life. He goes, let's, he goes,

and so we made a deal. It's like, I'm, I'm going to be relieved more times than I poop today.

And it's like, that's the 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 same as Fort? I think so. Nick Huber, 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've been Nick's Huber 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 cousin's doing,

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, webinars and in-person meetups, trying to like schmooze for a buck.

Well, I have no idea how big Nick Huber, this is Nick Huber from sweaty startup. I have no idea

how big his 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. And also, that's also the one reason I

haven't invested in a lot of these guys is because the fee structure, 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, 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,

he 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 yours,

your incentivize to take my money and go buy something because you get money today that's

guaranteed that 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 real estate. Yeah. So like,

of course they're killing it. But the numbers are, I mean, I'm investor of Nick and I see the

returns. I'm like, Oh yeah, dude, I'll give you more of, but by the 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

it's what I would do if I was in that position where I know I can generate great returns.

But like on my side, I just, I hesitate as an investor in that sort of thing. But maybe

so that's my detriment. Do you want to do more topics or do you want to save yours for Wednesday?

Let's do, let's do a couple ideas. I think people, 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. It's a great name. Thank you. Came up with it myself.

I love the business idea. I just put 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, what do I do? 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 that are 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 are not,

like they kind of are promoting things that they like, they have a good track record. Like,

so she's like, bought a couple of the things that look good and they paid off. So she's like,

now is more trust in 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 could just browse it to be like, oh yeah, this looks fun. I want to

do this. Like what I went on Expedia and I'm like, this is awful experience. It's overwhelming.

Here's an overwhelming list of a hundred 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 photo. It's 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. The, 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, like an Instagram story, right? So I just think that there should

be a thing called Copy My Trip that anyone could do. It'll 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 and it's like, oh yeah, they want to like go. This person likes Airbnbs 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. We could do it. We do it for trips and

weddings. Whenever I like saw my wife like working so hard at 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 sisters get 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 yeah,

just do the exact same thing. It was, we all had a great time, right?

Yeah, batch of parties, birthday parties. I want to copy your work, which is like,

it's Pinterest, but just like the whole thing strung together. And you would just do it where

like someone uploads an itinerary and then you people rate it and you pay them money and buy it.

Yeah, exactly. So you don't even have to buy the trip. Just by doing the trip,

those people get paid mad money from affiliates. 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, 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, which is 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, 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, this is not a fictional example. This is a

real example. And you haven't been able to find a trip. So first I went on whatever Expedia and

I was like, God, miserable. Don't want to do this. Okay. What else can 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,

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 of like, or like, you know, one of their Instagram story

highlights, which is like, take one of our trips. And it's like, 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 could buy any of the items for my

outfit and they get a kickback. So I said like that for trips. And then I went on YouTube and

I was watching like, okay, you know, watch this like family vlog at a, at one of the resorts.

And I'm like, and they're okay, but 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 is just somebody

should make this like an explicit thing, I think. I, uh, Jack Smith uses, uh, uh, VAs to do stuff

constantly. And he, 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 him know what it was. But on a,

on a lighter, for real, on a lighter level, outrageous thing I've ever heard. It's crazy.

And on a lighter, wait, did he pay for them to go on vacation? He found a local VA and yeah,

he would find a local person. He's like, Hey, can you go to these three hotels that take pictures

and let me know? And then he would like show them to his wife, like, all right, which ones do you

want? Uh, it was pretty, I'm calling him Jack LaRue from now on. That's kind of similar to that.

Dude, he just sent me a picture. Uh, and it was him and Andrew Wilkinson. And he's like,

look, I, uh, 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 and, uh, uh, yeah. And anyway, he, uh, does this all the time and

it's actually really interesting. And there's this company called flight fox. You know what flight

fox is? It's, is that like where you'll just, is it like somebody will book it for, is it a

travel agent or is it the one where you're like, I just want something. Give me like the best deal.

Like 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. Um, and then you like leave like notes,

like I've got a budget of blank or I only want first class or, uh, 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 in, 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 could even reply and be like,

uh, this one actually, I had to change the 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 what a

search form 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 and I go, Hey, the flight you booked 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 him 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, mopoints.mopoints.com. 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 mopoints.com. And basically it solves

the problem of like what credit cards should I get? And so you just call this guy and he's like,

all right, look, like again, you can just Google what credit card should I get? Guess what you're

going to get? Like the most SEO optimized blog posts in the world because they can make so much

money off preferring 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 MX 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 is like then to travel, you just do this,

you try to get 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 to 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, I'm in good hands, right? Like the real

all state I'm in good hands is fucking mo from mo points. Dude, I'm a fan. I like 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,

and yeah, people should go sign up for that thing. Because if you spend a significant amount on

like for your business, it's like, I mean, it just makes financial sense to like optimize that.

So you're either going to get the best cashback. Like, you know, I found out, oh,

if I use this Bank of America platinum honors cashback card, I get 2.6% back cashback,

which is like way higher than anybody else gives you. Does that mean it basically adds

2% to your bottom line? Yeah, exactly. Like 2.6%. Yeah. So, so, you know, if you're spending,

you know, a hundred grand a month on ads, which is like very common for e-commerce,

just to use a round number here. Now you're getting $2,600 a month back. Just straight to your

bottom line, right? Like that just makes sense where 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?

Yeah, 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 simpleton,

it's not that fair way to do it. And they just like, you know, keep it. I was like, who keeps it?

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 the 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.

That's how you got to negotiate that in. 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. Got you. All right. That's it.

I'll save my other ideas for the next one. And you got a crime, baby. Yeah. All right. Thank you.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.