From Coder to Cartel Boss - The Jeff Bezos of Organized Crime
All right, let's do some topics. What do you got? I 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 Le Roux thing because they're both really interesting. Do you know? Let's do, let's do which one you want to do first.
I don't know who Paul Le Roux is.
You don't know who Paul Le Roux is?
Okay. Fucking great name, though.
Dude, listen to this.
How much more would I be worth if I was Sean Leroux? At least triple, right? And how much more respect would I get?
He's also African. He's from, uh, South Africa, I think. Uh, so Ben, you're nodding a little bit like you know who this is. Is that true?
Uh, yeah, I know who Paul Leroux is. He's kind of like, um, uh, who's the guy we were talking about that you knew? Uh, he's kind of like if Ross had been as crazy as everyone thought, but actually like 10 times crazier, that's Paul Le Roux.
Paul— whoa.
Yeah.
Yeah. I don't know. All right. So he's based— all right. So Paul Le Roux, he's this big old fat disgusting guy. He's like, like, imagine—
like Jabba the Hutt?
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 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 Unlimited, which basically sold Viagra and a couple other like Schedule II drugs. So like, no, like Um, he was able to sell some opioids, but not like the famous ones, things that are considered Schedule II, which is just one below between Schedule I. And he created this company called Rx Limited, and in like 3 or 4 years, it netted him hundreds of millions of dollars in profit. And the— 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 just say— let me say yes.
Go ahead. Well, basically, and then like maybe you remember like going to like these websites where it like just showed tons of drugs and like you'd get texts that says like buy drugs online. Well, basically he created this website, 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 2,000 or 3,000 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 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 like doing everything by the book. And technically he kind of was doing everything by the book, but it Really quickly warped into 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? Um, it's all legal and we'll just send you the, uh, 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, um, 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, uh, doctors and the pharmacist, 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, it was just like, you didn't need 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, uh, it made, I believe, $400 million in profit in 4 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 he, this guy like didn't want the IRS to see anything. And so he would just transfer it into gold. Cause this was before Bitcoin was really around.
He lived in the Philippines.
He was, uh, 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, uh, 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.
Holy 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. Like, this guy gets into some crazy stuff. He's killing people along the way. He makes relationships with the Colombia drug lords and trades drugs, pills for cocaine, and he starts selling $100 million 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 3 or 4 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 US or he's in the US. 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, uh, the guy, it, it, 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 that shows that he, uh, invented Bitcoin, but he was talking about like creating a digital currency early on, which 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've 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, uh, 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, 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 fuck off. He wasn't very pleasant to be around. And in the emails he wrote pretty, pretty nicely, actually. What do you say, Ben?
They found £500 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, uh, 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, he, his, his, 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, there's an article that says how the case for why he might be Satoshi. I haven't read it yet, but I, 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 was looking at the 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 this, Sean, he had his hitmen. He had hitmen that are now arrested and they like 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. So he, and he did travel. So he would go to Africa, he would go here, but he, 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. Um, 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, uh, you know, as employees. And it's kind of like interesting cause 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, uh, this article I pulled up about him, it says, uh, he's the Jeff Bezos of, of organized crime. And it says he's the, uh, he's the digital El Chapo, uh, 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, um, he was, you know, transformed himself into a programming genius who developed encryption software like E4M in the '90s. He founded 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, that— I think that actually 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 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, uh, somehow hacked into a farm, uh, 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 you would switch a domain. So it was incredibly complex what he did. And he, uh, before he turned to the dark side, he founded a, uh, Or he built like a small open source product that helped encrypt things. And, uh, it eventually turned into this thing called TrueCrypt, which I actually think that thing is big. But, uh, 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, "Wait, let's just have a, 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 gonna shoot you in your leg and I'm gonna drive off." And so like the guy was really hardcore.
Yeah. He makes, you know, whatever, The Wolf of Wall Street look like a small puppy. Um, 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 about him?
So when I tweeted out that I love like crime books and I think I had just finished, uh, 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 like actually inspire me to like live a more adventurous life. Well, I'm like reading this and I'm like, why am I 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 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. I, 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. Cause you know, you didn't, it didn't translate that, that kind of deep-rooted desire for like, you know, either adventure, thrill, power, um, you know, you know, whatever it is, doesn't have to like spill into your, your normal life then.
Yeah. And it, it, 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 Le Roux, Ross Ulbricht. Yeah.
So But one of the reasons why it's interesting is the, the cool thing about criminals 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 these Satoshi posts. So basically, if you go to like Uh, 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 the, what, what, 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, the forum is still up. And you, I, 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, uh, 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, uh, 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 in the vaults, which became banknotes. 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, then 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 got adopted, like, you know, each one of these coins is going to be worth like over $1 million, 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, that could— each one of those could be worth $1 million. 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 Le Roux 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 this, and, and I've been reading all of the, uh, 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 Dundee hats. Like they're the nerdy, the nerdy, 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, uh, it's a really, really fun thing to read.
Yeah, I think it's on the, you know, I think there was like a forum. It was called the P2P Foundation or something like that was the, 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 Zoomed 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, 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 taste. I like something's in the top 40. I'm like, yeah, 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 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 Tawfiq, he was— I walked in, he was like playing a video game, 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? It's back in, you know, it must have been 2006 or something like that. 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 5 more lame things than that. I'll give you $100 if you can say 5 more lame things.
Tell me you're a virgin without telling me you're a virgin.
Yeah, exactly. I was just like, oh, okay, never coming in this room again. And then later, fast forward 10 years or whatever, 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 just like, yeah, dude, it's a big thing. You were on top of it. 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 multibillion dollar idea. I was watching other people play video games. And so I've kind of learned the hard way many times of making myself make a fool out of myself on that. Where 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 they discover that this is 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, 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 already here. It's just not everywhere. And like, 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, 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, uh, what was the forum called? The P, uh, Peer to Patient. Yeah. He, I, 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, uh, 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 1,000 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, 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 that next 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 his talk at the Bitcoin conference in 2022, just happened. And he— 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 videos. There'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, this like this 2-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 something that was more practical and it kind of worked, but like it was less ambitious. And like you could tell he 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, 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 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. 2009, 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 5-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 5 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. Um, 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 like 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 asked you right now, if I said point to Finland on a map, could you think you could point to Finland on a map right now? Like me neither.
And so to me, 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—
you're clean and you're nice.
I get it.
Like, it's— 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—
sorry, hold on. What?
Hey, ma!
Sorry, there's some— my bad. There's some like random guy like knocking on my window. All right, sorry, go ahead.
So I was saying that, you know, 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 Affirm. And like, I think there's like over $10 billion companies that came out of the PayPal Mafia. And, um, 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 Levchin, 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, why?
He's like, oh my God.
He's like, he's like, no, no great programmer I know plays pickup basketball.
He's like, 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 4 out of 4. You out. Like, like if your last name is Tucker or John, like you're out. Like no St. Johns.
Exactly. And so, you know, these things, like, I mean, you get canceled today for being like, I'm not gonna hire somebody who plays pickup hoops. Um, but like, and, 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 that's not popular. I think they don't say that stuff in public anymore because now they're like bigger public figures. But 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 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 they're willing to go to bat for this thing because 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, 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 right so often? Or, I mean, do they just make a ton of guesses and they're only right a couple of times? But it, I, 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 and I'm like, oh, I'm like, I'm, I'm nobody.
Yeah. Uh, 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, little flecks. It's like, that's how, 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 that's his thing, right? 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, Peter's constantly predicting sort of like the end of the world in the market crash. And you just remember it the 2 times he was right in the 20 years and the 4 times he was wrong, it just seemed like he was a little bit late on his prediction.. And, um, so, 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, uh, Facebook in a major way, right? He was the first investor in Facebook. He bought a 500, bought 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, uh, at that time. And so, you know, he was right in a major way about that. Um, 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, 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. Like, that was 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 Thiel Fellowship. So he basically went on, which was laughable at first. And 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. And people are 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. This— he goes, it's a— he goes, it's an insurance product partially. He goes, uh, 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, uh, a certification product. You know, you don't go there to learn, you go there to get your certificate. Um, and so he was calling out college, and then he created the Thiel 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 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 $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— seemed 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, uh, 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. Um, 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, a Thiel fellow was like the total validation of the, the Thiel Fellowship. But I think Figma—
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. I, and about 2 or 3 more, I've invested in about 3 of them maybe.
Yeah, um, yeah, I heard kind of mixed things about the pro— 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, um, 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, uh, 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 going against the grain and had an original thought that was right.
Yeah. And it, uh, it's inspiring. I, um, I was reading today and it said that, uh, 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's 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 Skeletor, the villain in 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 founded a $3 billion private equity fund. And like, regardless, you put politics aside. Um, like it's crazy that that's just like your thing. Like you, you ended that, you, you ended what? Like, like when I end a job, I take like a, a lot of people take like a 3-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 bop 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 ant and you are not that. You know what I mean?
Yeah, exactly. Um, I, I know exactly what you mean. It does beg the question of like, you know, why, why do I not go bigger? And also, um, 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, 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 2, 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 missed 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, immediately got on the plane. He was like, There was like a time a few weeks ago where for 5 days I didn't leave the factory. I didn't see the sunshine. I don't see my children. Uh, I had a birthday, but no friends came and said happy birthday to me because I was running around, uh, 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, uh, like the whole death thing, 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 the slave to this computer and the machine, like F that. Um, and I want to live life, but I do think that there— and I, 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. Uh, you just got to decide your terms, right? Like, um, 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, I am so anti there's one way to win, or there's even one definition of winning. Like, that's— if I, 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— it's like later in life I found the counterfactual. It's like, wait, but this guy doesn't do that. Wait, this, 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 around picking one or the other, right? Of like lifestyle and, uh, and like, you know, ambition. So, um, 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 exec coach myself and I really always ask two questions. I go, I go for the first question is if I ask this to 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, here's what we thought that we turned out, we were, 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 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, which I think people can relate to, which is like, if I see you a year from now and we're just grabbing a beer, hanging out, it's like, 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 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 5 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 yous? And it's like, why the fuck 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, um, that I would criticize about ourselves? And we both came up with a list of like 3 things and it became like, oh wow, we should just correct those now, uh, rather than 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 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 a— 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, uh, it's a superpower to know what you really want. Right, Ben? And that, what was that the tweet? Uh, yeah.
Uh, I really think that's—
what did you see or hear that made you tweet that?
Um, 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 issue 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. Um, And, uh, it's 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, so I like that you said that. There's a, a tweet that my cousin put out yesterday. My cousin, he's on Twitter.
Rohan. Dude, who? Uh, he, great guy. According to Twitter, he's killing it. I don't know. I haven't talked to him in forever, but like, his updates—
I'm like, looking like he's killing it. I don't know if he's actually good. I haven't caught up.
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 wanted.
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're 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 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, 1 PM, 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. Like, some people take it as an anti-signal, like, oh, 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, your cousin—
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, and he, 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, the, um, he goes, with enough room for 3 car seats and a pair of golf clubs. And I was like, first of all, isn't that 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. He's only— he's got one kid, so I'm like, you know, 3 car seats, all right, he's planning ahead, like, that's good. And, um, and I just thought it was a great example of, like, specificity. So to me, a lot of people are vague and 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 it 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, that what he described as a car is not just a car, it's a lifestyle. And, and then the second thing is like, would you be vague? Would you be general? So, 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 of 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 of feeling satisfied about it where you don't stress, you're not stressed about it anymore. 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, 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, look. 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. Hilarious. This is all from your trainer?
Yeah.
What a smartass, 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, um, uh, Chris, uh, Fort— is that same? I think so. Uh, 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. Or, but like, you know, who cares? It's, uh, I, I'm in Nick Huber's thing, it's a huge fee, but like I'm getting good return, so I don't care. It— 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.
Uh, 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 1-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 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 9 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, 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 2-3% 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 $1 million 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, this incentive mismatch where like you're incentivized to take my money and go buy something because you get money today that's guaranteed. That doesn't— it is 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 are skilled, although many of the— all the people I had named, I, I've talked to, they appear skilled, but I'm a novice. But also they just happen to be in the game like starting 6 years ago and we're going through like the greatest like boom in real estate. Yeah. So like, of course they're killing it. Uh, but, uh, the numbers are— I mean, I, I'm investor of Nick. I see the returns. I'm like, oh yeah, dude, I'll give you more.
But by the way, If I was Nick, I would, I would do exactly what he's doing. I charge the highest fees I can and be like, you're still getting a 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— 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 can generate great returns. But like, on my side, I just, I 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, let's do a couple ideas. Uh, 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. Great name.
Thank you. Came up with it myself. Yeah. Oh, you mean the business idea? I thought you meant the idea of a family vacation. So I'm like, I'm like Googling. I'm like, okay, unless 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, they're not like— they kind of are promoting things that they're like, they have a good track record. Like, so she's like bought a couple of things that look good and that paid off. So she's like, now it's 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 can just browse it to be like, oh yeah, this looks fun. I want to do this. Like, I went on Expedia and I'm like, this is awful experience.
Overwhelming.
Here's an overwhelming list of 100 options ranked in 5 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. 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 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, same, 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 Airbnbs versus hotels. So I like align 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. We do it for trips and weddings. Whenever I like saw my wife, like working so hard on this wedding, I'm like, dude, just find someone else and 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. It was— we all had a great time, right?
Uh, bachelor parties. Exactly. Birthday parties. I want to copy your— 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, uh, someone uploads an itinerary and then you— and then you people rate it and you pay them money and buy it?
Yeah, exactly. So, um, 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 book 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, that'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 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—
this is not a fictional example. This is a real example.
And you haven't been able to find a—
no, I'm like, 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. 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 can buy any of the items from 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, watch this family vlog at one of the resorts. And I'm like, they're okay, but it's like this 8-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 the elements of this happening is 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 him know what it was. But on a lighter— for real, on a lighter level, it's the craziest thing I've ever heard. It's crazy. And on a lighter—
wait, did he pay for them to go on vacation? Like, he found a local VA near—
yeah, he's like, he would find a local person. He's like, hey, can you go to go to these 3 hotels and take pictures and let me know. And then he would like show 'em 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 so crazy.
He is 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 at TED together. And I was like, oh, how funny. And, uh, uh, Jack's awesome. Yeah. And anyway, he, uh, does this all the time and it's actually really interesting and there's this company called Tr— Flight Fox. Do you know what Flight Fox is?
It's— is that like where you'll just— is it like somebody will book it for— it's like, 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 to budget a blank, or I only want first class, or, uh, I have to be back for a wedding. So I, uh, 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 5 to 10 different flights that fit what you want. And then you finally say, all right, this itinerary looks good. Or you'll, you could even reply and be like, uh, this one actually, I had a change of plans. I've gotta 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 book 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 them $50. It's amazing. I have no idea how this makes money or how they can make that work.
Yeah, 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.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 M-O points dot 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 posts 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 gonna get 4x points on all your Facebook ads for your e-commerce thing. You're gonna get one for you, one for your wife. So now you're gonna get like 2 million points or whatever, like in the next year. He's like, then to travel, you just do this. You try— 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, uh, 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 Amex 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 Allstate. I'm in good hands is fucking Mo from Mo Points, dude. I'm so I'm a fan.
I like these businesses. I, and I like the model of these things are typically monetized through affiliates, but instead you're just gonna pay and I'll give you a more honest answer. I actually, I, I like that idea a lot.
Yeah, exactly. Uh, me, me too. I think it's great. And, um, and, uh, yeah, people should go sign up for that thing cuz if, 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 gonna 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 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, I take 2.6%.
Yeah. So, so, you know, if you're spending, you know, uh, $100 grand a month on ads, which is like very common for e-commerce, just use a round, round number here, you know, you're getting $2,600 a month back, um, 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?
I, 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, I think they said that they just cash them. They just do the cash, 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 simplicit— it's not the fair way to do it. And they just like, you know, keep it. Uh, 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 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 4 years.
It sucks. That's how you got to negotiate that in.
I, well, I kept them. I got to keep all the points. We had like a million points, but I didn't get to, uh, I didn't get future points.
Gotcha. All right, uh, that's it. I'll save my other ideas for the next one.
And you got a crying baby.
Yeah, I know.
Um, all right, thank you.