0:06
All right, let's do some topics. What do you got? I got I got a couple.
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0:08
What do you Dude, I got a bunch of good stuff.
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All right, let's pick one of yours.
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Let let's do the Satoshi and the Paul Le Roux thing because they're both really interesting.
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Um Do you know let's do let's do which one do you want to do first?
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I don't know who Paul Le Roux is.
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I just know who Paul Le Roux is? Okay.
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[ __ ] great name though. Dude, listen to this.
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much more would I be worth if I was Sean Le Roux? At least triple, right?
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And how much respect would I get? He's also African.
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He's from uh South Africa, I think.
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Uh so Ben, you're nodding a little bit like you know who this is. Is that true?
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Uh yeah, I know who Paul Le Roux is.
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He's kind of like um Uh who's the guy we were talking about that you knew Ross Ulbricht.
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He's kind of like if 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 I don't know. So let me fill me in. Who's this guy?
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So he's base All right, so Paul Le Roux, he's this big old fat disgusting guy.
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He's like like Imagine Like Jabba the Hutt?
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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.
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He's just a total slob but he's this computer wiz. Yeah, Google him. I'm Googling him.
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He's like disgusting and that kind of fits the personality of of of the whole story.
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And there's this great book that I'm reading called Mastermind. It's about him.
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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.
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So like no like Um he was able to sell some opioids but not like the famous ones.
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Things that are considered schedule two which is just one below between schedule one.
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And he created this company called RX Limited and then like three or four years it netted him hundreds of millions of dollars in profit.
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And the Do you remember years ago when you would get an email and it said like hey we sell prescriptions click here.
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Like do you remember that?
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Like years and years ago when you were in high school and grade school? Not really but go on. Let's say let's say it. Let me say yes. Go ahead.
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Well, basically and then like maybe you remember like going to like these websites where like they just showed tons of drugs and like you'd get texts that says like buy drugs online.
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Well, basically he created this website RX Limited and then eventually he started like creating so many domain names that he created his his own domain registration system.
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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.
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And at one point he had like two or three thousand employees working at this place.
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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 with the cheap rate.
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And he uh it was it was wild and he and he had basically hundreds of different stores selling drugs.
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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.
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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.
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Can you fill some of the prescriptions that we're doing?
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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.
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So he would send it to a pharmacy and these local mom and pop pharmacies would be like okay, Dr.
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X is um just called in this prescription.
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I'm going to ship it to the patient. No big deal.
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And so both the doctors and the patient uh doctors and the pharmacists they all thought that they were mostly following the law.
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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.
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Like that's weird, but I have no reason to believe this is illegal.
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And eventually it did become highly illegal where like he it was just like you you didn't need it to see any doctor to get any prescriptions.
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And at one point he was selling like 80% of all online drugs in America. It was something large.
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Ben, am I missing anything?
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And throughout doing this, this is where things get even crazier.
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So like this story in itself is already interesting.
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Literally it made I believe $400 in profit in 4 years.
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One of them employee went to his apartment in Manila in the Philippines and he said that he saw $100 million in cash in the house.
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And he this guy like didn't want the IRS to see anything, so he would just transfer it into gold cuz this is before Bitcoin was really around. in the Philippines?
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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.
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Or maybe he was like Zimbabwe, something like that.
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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.
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And so he hires these ex-Israeli guys to run the call centers.
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Eventually he hires these ex-Israeli army guys to be his bodyguards.
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And in doing that he starts learning a little bit about like arms dealing.
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And so eventually he buys thousands of acres of land in Zimbabwe and Somalia.
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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 of of a small African nation and hopefully eventually a much larger nation.
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Like some crazy [ __ ] and it it expands to the point where he's now an arms dealer.
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So he's selling guns to different parts of Africa.
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He gets in trouble for selling missiles to Iran.
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Like he this guy gets into some crazy stuff.
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He's killing people along the way.
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He makes relationships with Colombian drug lords and trades drugs pills for cocaine and he starts selling a hundred million dollars of cocaine and he was doing all of it almost almost all of it behind a computer.
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And eventually he gets caught.
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Now he's got he recently in like three or four years ago was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
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Uh and that doesn't include what he's convicted for in the Philippines.
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So after he gets out if he gets out he's going to go straight to the Philippines.
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US or he's 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 can The one where he looks like really big that's his mugshot.
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That's the only picture that I really seen of him recently and uh the guy it's just this is 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 invented Bitcoin but he was talking about like creating a digital currency early on.
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When he was arrested Satoshi quit blogging and you can 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.
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But this guy it's incredibly fascinating.
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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?
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You just see him commenting with people.
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So he was actually like a really good writer for a little while and he even This guy is so interesting.
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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.
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He was an [ __ ] He was disgusting.
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He would just They would go to McDonald's and he wouldn't even talk to his employees.
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He would kind of tell them to F off.
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He wasn't very pleasant to be around.
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And uh but in the emails he wrote pretty pretty nicely, actually.
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What are you going to say, Ben?
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They found 500 lbs of cocaine on his yacht when it crashed.
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Which was worth like a hundred million dollars.
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And he also owned a logging business in Somalia.
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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.
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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."
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He owned uh he owned that business.
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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."
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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.
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And like some of his ideas, even though he was a criminal, were like totally on point with the Bitcoin stuff.
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So, it's super fascinating.
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Yeah, there's an article that says how the case for why he might be Satoshi.
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I haven't read it yet, but I when you're talking I just pulled it up.
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You say he did it all behind a computer, but and my research on this is old.
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I I was looking at the story like a year ago.
8:53
Um but didn't don't I remember a story about him like throwing someone off his yacht and having people shoot them in the water or something like that?
9:00
Yeah, but in in that particular story he wasn't there.
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But he did kill A lot of people think that he did kill So, throughout this Sean he had his hitmen.
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He had hitmen that are now arrested and they like kind of were spilling the beans.
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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.
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So, he and he did travel.
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So, he would go to Africa, he would go here.
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But he the guy had like 3,000 employees and most of the employees had no idea who he was.
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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.
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And they had never met Paul.
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And Paul would talk to them via email uh you know, as employees.
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And it's kind of like interesting cuz 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.
9:48
This this article I pulled up about him it says he's the Jeff Bezos of of organized crime and it says he's the 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
10:07
he was you know transformed himself to a programming genius who developed encryption software like E4M in the 90s he founded RX Limited which was a black market for pharmaceuticals he was raking in $250 million a year selling drugs weapons and murder for hire on the dark web. Yeah well I think that actually the dark
10:22
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 Tor was even around so a lot of the stuff he would do it wasn't even on the dark web and like this whole thing
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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
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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 a 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
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product that helped encrypt things and eventually turned into this thing called TrueCrypt 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
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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.
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And then there's another there's another story where they they took a guy out into the ocean and they go "Hey, let's just a uh a on our yacht."
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And they throw the guy in the ocean and they drive away.
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So, he gets He freaks out and then he comes back and he shoots all next to the guy and and he goes, "Oh, no, no, just so you know, I didn't miss.
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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?
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And if you tell me quickly, I'll kill you now.
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If you don't tell me, I'm just going to shoot you in your leg and I'm going to drive off." Wow.
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And so, like he the guy was really hardcore.
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Yeah, he makes, you know, whatever, the Wolf of Wall Street look like a a small puppy. Um this guy's insane. Okay, wow.
12:01
Never heard of this guy, either.
12:03
How'd you hear about him?
12:04
How'd you How'd you find out about him?
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So, when I I tweeted out that I love like crime books and I I think I I just finished uh I forget what I had just finished, but someone suggested this book called Mastermind.
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And it's about this journalist that worked at Wired magazine and I've been reading this book and it's freaking crazy.
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And even though this guy what he did was wrong, it does like actually inspire me to like live a more adventurous life.
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Well, I'm like reading this and I'm like Why am I like way. I'm the same way.
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I'm like, why am I so fascinated by this?
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Like, this is why I don't like watching Wolf of Wall Street.
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I'm like, why does this excite me so much?
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Like, I I'm beginning to normalize this in my head and think this is okay.
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I can't watch this anymore.
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But, I do think that there is a thing where like I can I need to have a little bit more adventure.
12:47
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?
12:55
Yeah, I think that's why people love movies about, you know, prison you know, prison break or they love it about bank heists and like why people play you know, video games that have violence in them.
13:05
It's like there's definitely like a part of us that, you know, this stuff appeals to.
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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 cuz you know, you didn't it didn't translate in 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.
13:30
Yeah, and it it it like inspires me a little bit in the sense of like, man, living life on the edge is crazy.
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I don't want to go to prison, but just add that to your bio.
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You know, top inspirations Pablo Escobar, Paul Le Roux. Ross Ulbricht, yeah. So Who are your heroes?
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And one of the reasons why it's interesting is the this the cool thing about criminals online is that you can read their correspondence.
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So like they got they they when they arrested him, he had his computer open.
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And so they were able to like see a bunch of stuff.
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And that's I really love that this era about criminals and how you can like see it happening.
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And that got me interested in these Satoshi posts.
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So basically, if you go to like if you just Google like Satoshi, you know, the guy who created Bitcoin.
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If you go to Satoshi blog post, 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.
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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.
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And you could see them like reply like, "Hey Satoshi, you know, this is actually a really good idea.
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I've been tinkering with this.
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I went ahead and purchased 500 Bitcoins just to try it out." You know what I mean?
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It it's really fascinating.
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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.
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This is a genius idea, right?
14:58
Like that's not what No, it was like, "This is cute." Right.
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And so like like literally the first comment.
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So so so you know, there's you know, Sep Hasberger says, "Great stuff.
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This is the first real innovation."
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So this guy recognized it for what it was.
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This is the first real innovation in money since the Bank of England started issue promissory notes for gold in the vaults, which became banknotes.
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I believe an open source currency has great potential.
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A bit like Google has become the default search engine for many of us.
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And then like there's some people who are like, you know, I have questions about how it works.
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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.
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Which is why some people think Hal Finney was Satoshi Nakamoto.
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And I think he was also the first one to like write out the like the total addressable market for it.
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I remember reading that one time where he's like well, if this got adopted like you know, each one of these coins is going to be worth like over a million dollars, right?
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And he like broke down why which is like you know It's hard to even discuss that now. Today that sounds weird.
15:58
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
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just send me 5,000 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.
16:24
I'm pretty blown away by that. Me too. I think it's amazing.
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When I read it I I feel inspired.
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And I think that's why I got obsessed a little bit with Paul Le Roux 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.
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It's and they're in the depths of the internet.
16:43
It's really interesting and this and 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 Dundee hats like they're the nerd the nerdy the nerd the guys who like I would dismiss and be like, oh, what do you like okay nerd like you're you're a smart but like you're just outlandish.
17:02
I can't believe anything that you're doing.
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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.
17:15
Yeah, I think it's on the you know, who I think it was like a forum and it was called the P2P Foundation or something like that.
17:21
It was the the original forum that this was on.
17:23
It was like a Ning forum or something like that.
17:26
And so, you know, the people who hang out in these types of forums, right?
17:29
They're obviously like pretty hardcore either into peer-to-peer, into cryptography, into the these different subjects.
17:35
And so, you know, um hanging out at the fringes, hanging out I gave a talk recently for um a bunch of people in the Midwest.
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They like zoomed me in and they were like, "We just want you to talk to our group."
17:48
And one of them asked, they go, "You know, you said something about like surrounding yourself with interested, you know, like interested people. How do you do that?
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Like what do you actually do to do that?"
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And I basically told him, I go, "Um I'm a pretty like normal person.
18:01
Like I like catchy songs by Katy Perry.
18:04
I don't have like great music taste.
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I like If something's in the top 40, I'm like, yeah, that's pretty good.
18:07
You know, like it's not like I have this like this nose for the next big thing.
18:13
But there are people who who have that. That's their superpower.
18:14
And so, I used to make fun of those people cuz every time they would do something weird, I'd be like, "Oh, weird."
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And then I'd point out how weird it is and I'd kind of laugh at it.
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And they didn't really care cuz they weren't trying to be cool anyways.
18:25
Um like I remember my in college, the guy who lived next door to me, uh this guy Tofiq, he was I walked in and he was like playing a video game like StarCraft or something like that.
18:35
And he like turned to talk to me and the game kept going and I was like, "Are you even playing?
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Like are you just Are you just Is this a computer?"
18:41
And he was like He's like, "Yeah, I'm just wa- He's like, "No, I'm watching uh the match from last night in Korea." I'm like, "What?
18:48
You're watching somebody else play video games?"
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This back in, you know, this must have been 2000 and uh six or something like that.
18:55
He's like, "Yeah, I'm watching a recording of this game this match that happened in the Korean server."
18:58
And I'm like, "Dude, say five more lame things uh like, you know, than that.
19:03
Like I'll I'll give you $100 if you can say Tell me you're a virgin without telling me you're a virgin. Exactly.
19:09
I was just like, "Oh, okay."
19:11
Like never coming in this room again."
19:13
And then later, like, you know, fast-forward 10 years or whatever, sell sell our our company gets acquired by Twitch, and all of a sudden my title's like director of e-sports or something like that.
19:23
And he calls me, he's like, "You motherfucker." He's like, "Oh, Mr. E-sports now, huh?"
19:27
And I was just like, "Yeah, dude, it's a big thing, you know?
19:31
You you were on top of it."
19:31
And like, I sort of, you know, I was embarrassed cuz like it was so true.
19:34
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, was watching other people play video games.
19:42
And so I I've kind of learned the hard way many times of making my making a fool out of myself on that.
19:47
Or like, now when I hear something weird, I'm just immediately like, "Let me pull up a chair.
19:51
So, tell me, like, why do you do this? Do other people do this?
19:54
How often do you do do you do this?"
19:55
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.
20:04
It's like, "Oh, you only drink Soylent for all your meals?" Like, "Oh, interesting.
20:10
Are there Is there a community of people who do this?"
20:11
Yeah, we're called, you know, whatever, biohackers.
20:14
There's a subreddit with like tens of thousands of us. Like, "Oh, interesting."
20:17
You know, you can start to see that the, you know, the future is is already here, it's just not everywhere.
20:23
And like, how do you how do you get closer to the future?
20:25
You just find people who already live in the future do weird stuff, and then you don't judge them.
20:29
In fact, you just like complete have the opposite reaction I used to have.
20:34
And this exercise of reading these old blog posts and all the commenters is I I think you just kind of put it in a little more eloquent way, but that's exactly what's happening is like you're seeing like I'm trying to pattern recognition is kind of a stupid buzzword, but like you're trying to like see like, well, I know for sure that A, this sounds silly at first, and B, it worked.
20:52
So, like, what does this like pattern of like people dismissing and like coming up with that like and how do I not make that same mistake?
20:58
The guy that you talked about What was the forum called?
21:01
The P uh Peer to peer nation.
21:05
Yeah, 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.
21:13
And it's pretty fascinating.
21:16
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 they were around when Jesus was around.
21:28
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.
21:40
So, dude, I put this in the Milk Road.
21:40
I don't know if you saw this thing about like So, Peter Thiel the big Bitcoin conference just happened in Miami.
21:47
Yeah, yeah, that was a really that was really good.
21:48
On Friday you did that, right?
21:50
Yeah, I did that one on Friday.
21:50
That was the highest rated one. Yeah, that killed it. That was so good.
21:55
But did you I don't know if you saw the clip I think I linked to the clip in there of So, Peter Thiel goes he gives this talk at the Bitcoin conference in 2022 just happened and he the the before he comes out, they played on the on the big screen this video that I had seen before.
22:08
I think I even talked about it on here once.
22:09
But there's this video I I've watched a ton of old Peter Thiel videos.
22:13
So, there's a video of him giving a talk in 1999.
22:16
And he's talking about the idea of a currency not owned by by the government.
22:21
And basically there's like this two-minute clip of Peter Thiel basically describing Bitcoin without saying the word Bitcoin and he didn't know how it would work, but he's like, you know, the world needs a currency that's not controlled by, you know, the central banks of different countries, blah blah blah.
22:34
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.
22:41
It was like this original idea of PayPal was to create one global virtual currency.
22:44
And they shifted away from that later.
22:47
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.
22:54
And like you could tell he kind of like regretted it.
22:57
Which is like we before we wanted to create our own financial system.
22:59
And then like We settled on PayPal.
23:03
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.
23:10
So we're just like a funnel to like funnel the money through.
23:13
And like yeah, that was cool, but like um man, this other thing was the big idea.
23:17
And Bitcoin kind of proved that that was the big idea, you know, later on.
23:21
But him giving that talk in 1999 to me is so crazy.
23:24
Like that's one of the greatest like calls I've ever seen of just calling it what's going to happen why it's going to happen.
23:32
And in that talk he's like he's like uh you know, the this currency will live on your cell phone outside of a bank.
23:39
Um you know, smart phones are going to be a thing.
23:42
And then you think about it, it's like oh 1999 man, iPhone came out in 2007.
23:45
So he's predicting smart phone, he's like we're already seeing the adoption of smart phones in Finland and also in Japan.
23:54
He gave a five-year term and you're like he it was 10, but he got it right.
23:58
Yeah, he's like a bill he's like there will be a billion smart phone devices in the next five years.
24:01
It took 10 years, but like a billion device like there was never a there was never a billion user product.
24:09
Like there weren't a billion people who had computers ever.
24:11
Um there weren't a billion people, I don't even think that used televisions.
24:15
I think the cell phone was the first thing where it was like a smart phone was like the first thing where a billion people had this product.
24:21
So of course if you launch an app that works, your addressable market is a billion people who could download your app like immediately.
24:28
Like it's kind of an overlooked fact about why mobile was so big.
24:31
It's just like well, there wasn't ever a billion people who could have used your product before this.
24:34
Like your restaurant could never serve a billion people.
24:37
Your store could never serve a billion people.
24:38
Like McDonald's couldn't even serve a billion people no matter how many locations they opened.
24:42
Like the cell phone was the really the first thing that was able to do that, you know, that quickly.
24:46
And and so he's you know, when he was talking about like smart phone adoption is rising in Finland, I'm like who even pays attention to what's going on in Finland, dude?
24:55
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.
25:02
And so it's like like Finland, Denmark, and like Holland, and Sweden are all the same thing. Yeah, exactly.
25:09
Yeah, like I I don't know, dude.
25:09
It's like that's where white people and you're nice. I get it.
25:11
Like It's It's so like I thought about that.
25:16
I'm like, oh, no wonder the people who were hanging out with Peter Thiel went on to do like some pretty hold on. What? Hey, ma. What's going on? What's going My bad.
25:27
There's some like random guy like knocking on my window. All right, sorry. Go ahead.
25:32
So, I was saying that you know, that it's no wonder that people hanging out with Peter Thiel ended up going on to do amazing things, right?
25:36
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-dollar companies that came out of the PayPal Mafia.
25:53
And um like Kiva, like one of the best nonprofits came out of that.
25:55
And so it's like Dude, why is that?
25:58
It's cuz 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.
26:03
And I remember that 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.
26:13
He's like, we're not hiring this guy. He's like, why? He's like Oh my god.
26:16
He's like, no no great programmer I know plays pickup basketball.
26:20
Dude, well, that's what we said about the guys who were doing ICOs.
26:21
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.
26:30
Like Like if your last name is Tucker or John or like you're out. Like no St. Johns. Exactly.
26:38
And so, you know, these things like I mean, you could get canceled today for being like, I'm not going to hire someone who plays pickup hoops.
26:45
Um but like and and I think they even said something back then.
26:47
They go, your goal as a startup is to basically build a cult.
26:51
And they're like, the more cult-like you can make your company, the better.
26:52
And like, that's not popular.
26:54
I think they've all They don't say that stuff in public anymore cuz now they're like, you know, bigger public figures.
26:57
But like, I think that startup advice is actually fantastic startup advice.
27:00
Now, the cult doesn't need to be all people of the same race or gender or anything like that.
27:05
It's like, people who are all believe, like, religiously in the mission.
27:09
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 they're willing to go to bat for this thing because, you know, they're like members of a cult.
27:19
They sort of have lost them their own personal identity to the greater identity of the group.
27:23
That is like a pretty hard force to bet against and beat.
27:27
Dude, this gets me inspired.
27:27
How How do you think This was actually a third topic I was going to ask you.
27:32
How do you think guys like Peter Thiel, who I I don't know his background, but I think it was pretty modest.
27:38
Uh how do people like him Like, how are they right so often?
27:46
Or I mean, do they just make a ton of guesses and they're only right a couple times?
27:49
But it I I don't understand like that idea of think 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.
28:00
Yeah, dude, when you hear him talk, it's like when you're in a plane that takes off and all of a sudden the houses start to look like little toys and the people start to look like ants.
28:07
The cars look like, you know, little flecks.
28:09
It's like, that's how That's how my brain feels when I hear Peter Thiel talk.
28:12
I'm like, oh, I am a small simpleton.
28:13
You know, I'm a single-cell organism compared to this guy in terms of just like, where where my brain goes, how how much conviction I have around my own original thoughts.
28:24
Because like, that's his thing, right?
28:25
Like, he's all about being a contrarian.
28:26
And um you know, I think Jeff Bezos said this about Peter Thiel.
28:32
He goes, yeah, that's the thing about contrarians. They're usually wrong.
28:34
You know, and somebody else said like, you know, Peter's constantly predicting sort of like the end of the world and the market crash.
28:39
And like, you just remember the two times he was right in the 20 years.
28:42
And like, the four times he was wrong, it just seemed like he was a little bit late on his prediction.
28:46
And um so so I think there's definitely something to like, you know, being wrong a bunch.
28:50
But it's like when you're it's more like when you're right, you're right in a major major way.
28:53
And I think he was right about PayPal in a major way.
28:56
I think he was right about uh Facebook in a major way, right?
28:59
He was the first investor in Facebook.
29:00
He bought a 500 about a 10% stake in Facebook for 500 grand. All right?
29:04
So like that was the the best investment of the decade, I think, you know, like at that time.
29:10
And so, you know, he was right in a major way about that.
29:12
Um you know, the last time he kind of went on tour, he was right about two very contrarian things.
29:18
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."
29:28
And at the time it was sort of like Donald Trump was the underdog, he was not supposed to win.
29:33
And like Peter Thiel picked that horse pretty early.
29:35
And that's I was kind of impressive.
29:39
And like also he gets off on it being contrarian, you can tell.
29:42
Uh and then the other one that he was right about was uh when he created the Thiel Fellowship.
29:47
So he basically went on stage which was laughable at first.
29:53
And he had he had this talk where he goes and he goes uh university, you know, college education is a bubble.
29:57
It's the greatest bubble since the housing crisis.
29:59
This is right after the the housing bubble had popped.
30:02
He's like, "The next bubble is college education."
30:04
And people are like, "Who goes against education?
30:05
Like go ask 100 out of 100 politicians, parents, anybody, who's not pro-education?"
30:12
And like he was the first guy to be like, "College education is a complete bubble."
30:16
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.
30:24
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.
30:31
He said it's like a uh uh a certification product.
30:34
You know, you don't go there to learn, you go there to get your certificate.
30:37
Um and he He's he's he's 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.
30:49
But that $2 million was like $200 million of free publicity for himself cuz 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."
30:58
He's like Well, explain what it is for It was he came out and he goes, "I will pay you $100,000 to drop out of college."
31:05
And it's like, "Oh [ __ ] you know, like keep this man away from my children."
31:09
Like, you know, it was like a seemed like a not good thing to do.
31:11
And then he explained why.
31:12
He's like, "College is is, you know, a complete bubble."
31:16
But then how did he get his money back from that again?
31:18
I think he invested in the projects. I'm not sure.
31:20
Well, for example, Ethereum came out of that, which is a $300 billion product.
31:24
Uh which is kind of ironic cuz he doesn't he never claims victory on it.
31:27
And in fact, at the Bitcoin conference, he kind of [ __ ] on Ethereum, which is a bit weird.
31:30
Um so, you know, I I don't know why he's I I I would think he'd be taking a victory lap cuz like Vitalik being a a Thiel Fellow was like the total validation of the the Thiel Fellowship.
31:42
But I think Figma came out of it. in owner. com. You know owner. com?
31:48
You ever see that company? about it. Yeah.
31:50
He's a he's one of those guys.
31:50
I I and about two or three more.
31:52
I've invested in about three of them, maybe.
31:55
Yeah, um 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.
32:00
Like if if just Figma came out of it, the program was like a win, you know, like I'd say a $10 billion company. Figma came out of it? Yeah. Damn, dude.
32:09
And so, you know, and there's many others.
32:10
There's there's a bunch of other winners that have come out of it, too.
32:12
But like So, so this guy's like been uh you know, contrarian and right many, many times.
32:17
It's very impressive to me.
32:19
It's more impressive to me than people like obviously he's very successful, so it's not even like that or success.
32:25
But if you just showed me one person who's very successful and then another 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 went against the grain and had an original thought that was right.
32:39
Yeah, and it it's inspiring.
32:39
I 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?
32:51
Uh Yeah, so who so who is he?
32:51
He's He's married to to the Trump or his brother is married to the Trump?
32:56
Uh so there's Jared and Josh. Josh is the younger one. I think he's like 35.
33:01
He's married to a model and he runs Thrive, which is a VC thing that's like immensely successful.
33:06
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.
33:15
Yeah, and like a lot of people think he's evil.
33:16
He probably is a little bit.
33:18
He kind of has like a skeleton vibe to him, like a Skeletor, the the villain in He-Man or whatever it was.
33:22
So he's like kind of has like a 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.
33:35
And like regardless, you put politics aside, um like it's crazy that that's just like your thing.
33:42
Like you you ended that you you ended one 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.
33:53
And like he just like was like, "Oh, you know, I'd like I've got some free time now.
33:56
I'm going to like you know, beep boop just do this thing.
34:01
It's just a $3 billion fund."
34:01
And like I find that to be with It's the same thing of like I feel like an ant and you are not that. You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly.
34:10
Um I I know exactly what you mean.
34:12
It does beg the question of like you know, why why do I not go bigger?
34:18
And also, um you know, is there a reason that I don't go bigger?
34:22
Like is there a reason, Sam, that you don't go create a $3 billion private equity fund?
34:28
There's There's two reasons. The first is fear.
34:29
So like it is scary to do that, to like raise like for to raise outside Yeah, to raise outside money and [ __ ] it up. That's bad.
34:37
But number two, I do think that there is I don't know if Peter Thiel has this, but Elon Musk for sure has this.
34:42
Did you read that article in the New Yorker or New York Times where he describes his life?
34:45
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.
34:53
Yeah, he basically said he's like I missed my brother's wedding.
34:54
I or he was like I was about to miss it, but I flew in at the last minute.
34:57
I saw it, immediately got on the plane.
34:58
He was like there was like a time a few weeks ago where for 5 days I didn't leave the factory.
35:04
I didn't see the sunshine. I don't see my children.
35:05
Uh I had a birthday, but no friends came and said happy birthday to me cuz 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.
35:18
That's like what he said. He said all that? Yes. And uh Jesus Christ.
35:23
Like the the whole death thing might Yeah. Take a nap. Just try Just try it.
35:32
A little advice from one brother to another. Take a nap.
35:36
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.
35:44
machine. Like F that. Um and I want to live life, but I do think that there and I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I
35:52
I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I So, Do you think that's true? Yeah, of course. Of course it's true. Uh Yeah, of course. Of course it's true.
36:00
Uh you just got to decide your terms, right?
36:03
Like um and 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.
36:09
I I am so anti there's one way to win or there's even one definition of winning.
36:15
Like that's what If I if I could just be more anti one thing, that's the thing I'd be most anti because I used to fall into the trap.
36:21
I'd see somebody doing something one way or I'd hear advice that makes sense.
36:25
And then I'd kind of like it's like later in life I found the counterfactual.
36:28
It's like, wait, but this guy doesn't do that.
36:29
Wait, this this this that lady did both, right? Like so, hold on.
36:34
If both is an option, then I'm taking both every day of the week.
36:36
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?
36:43
Of like lifestyle and and and like, you know, ambition.
36:45
So, um so, I definitely think you can do both. I play this game though.
36:49
So, I have two games that I play about any project that I'm doing.
36:52
This is kind of like my I kind of exact coach myself.
36:56
And I really always ask two questions.
36:56
I go I go for the first question is if and 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?
37:10
What happened with trends?
37:11
That was such a cool idea. Like, what went wrong?
37:14
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 was we turned out here's what we thought that we turned out we were turns out was wrong.
37:25
Um so, it 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.
37:39
So, I always ask that question.
37:41
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.
37:47
It's like, but this other way with I think people are going to relate to, which is like, if I see you a year from now, we're just grabbing a beer, hanging out, and it's like, I just let's just presume already it's gone wrong.
37:55
What was the cause of death, you know?
37:58
Like, what do what do you think was the reason that that So, that's one.
38:00
The second one, again we played yesterday with the Milk Road, um it was it's called the the why the [ __ ] aren't you game.
38:08
And it's basically it's like it's like either why the [ __ ] 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 [ __ ] are you guys doing this?
38:18
Like, why aren't you hiring somebody to do that?
38:20
It's taking you 5 hours a day and like you should totally you could talk Could you not find somebody to do that part?
38:25
Or like why aren't you like why aren't you at this Bitcoin conference?
38:29
Like aren't you building a crypto product?
38:31
Like shouldn't you be at this event?
38:32
Um like there's just like this series of like why are you or why aren't yous?
38:35
And it's like why the F aren't you?
38:37
Which kind of distills it down into like what's the obvious good idea or bad idea?
38:43
Like good idea we're not doing or bad idea that we are doing um that I would criticize about ourselves?
38:48
And we both came up with a list of like three things and it became like oh wow, we should just correct those now uh rather than like let the So so then what's your answer?
38:56
Why aren't you going bigger?
38:59
Assuming that you're not going big, which is not a fair a fair assumption, but for the sake of discussion.
39:05
Yeah, um so I I wouldn't say why am I not going bigger like the Jared Kushner question you mean?
39:09
Or the questions I was asking just now?
39:12
The Jared Kushner question?
39:14
Um because I want to have, you know, enough.
39:18
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.
39:23
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.
39:31
It's like a like I I talk about this all the time.
39:36
It's this perfect Tuesday.
39:36
It's like my normal day is perfect for what I want.
39:42
And that includes like just like right after this, I'm going to go work out with my trainer in my home gym.
39:45
Like that's a part of my perfect Tuesday.
39:47
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?
39:58
Um it's like you know, being able to like take my daughter to swim class. Like things like that.
40:02
Like those are part of what winning looks like to me.
40:05
And so I'm just not going to like deviate from that.
40:08
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?
40:15
And do I need to update it?
40:16
You know, and like that's the thing I find myself being like, "Oh man, I haven't updated this picture in a while."
40:21
Or there's just like a gap over here where I don't know what I want.
40:24
Hmm, what would it feel like to know what I want?
40:25
Okay, let me Well, let me get let me figure that out.
40:28
Ben Wilson tweeted out uh it's a superpower to know what you really want, right Ben?
40:33
And And that what Was that the tweet? Uh yeah.
40:35
Uh I I really think that's What did you see or hear that made you tweet that?
40:40
Um So, what I saw is that I I've had a bunch of people reaching out to me recently.
40:46
And the people who are like, "Hey, I'd love to connect." I get so annoyed with.
40:50
I'm like, "You just dump something on my plate for me to like figure out, which I just don't want to do."
40:57
Whereas the people who are like, "Hey, I really love what you do. I'm also a podcaster.
41:02
My podcast is of this size.
41:05
I want to get it to this size.
41:05
I'm having trouble in these two issue areas, and I'd love to talk to you about it."
41:10
I'm like, "Great, you know exactly what you want.
41:12
I will I will gladly give you that."
41:13
Um And uh it's just it applies almost everywhere in life.
41:18
Like the guy who comes up to you and is like, "Hey, do you have any spare change?"
41:21
No, I don't have any spare change. "Hey, I need $2.
41:24
50 to get a ride home on the bus. Do you have $2. 50?"
41:26
All right, I guess I got $2. 50.
41:28
Like it's a superpower in every way.
41:32
So, uh so so I like that you said that.
41:34
There's a a tweet that my cousin put out yesterday.
41:36
My cousin, he's on Twitter, Rohan Gunatillake. great guy.
41:40
According to Twitter, he's killing it. I don't I don't know.
41:42
I haven't talked to him in forever, but like he his updates I'm like, "Dude, he's killing it."
41:47
Looking like he's killing it.
41:48
I don't know if he's actually killing it.
41:49
I haven't caught up in a little while, but like want I'm not disrespecting him at all.
41:52
I'm saying like his like his updates are amazing.
41:55
He just bought like 20,000 square feet of something.
41:57
Like he's on top of the game.
42:00
Yeah, and actually he did a good job of figuring out what he wants.
42:03
Bro, you just called out your cousin.
42:04
You should take that back. What? I love my cousin. No, he's great.
42:07
I mean, I I actually meant that as a compliment.
42:09
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.
42:19
Like he put out a thing of like how I do diligence on properties.
42:23
It's like a great checklist.
42:25
It's like, oh, you're just putting out great on point information. It makes me trust you.
42:27
It makes me think this guy knows what he's talking about.
42:29
Or if it's like like our friend Nick Huber does this too.
42:32
It's like he'll send us a picture of him smoking a cigar, you know, playing golf at, you know, 1:00 p. m.
42:36
It's like, wow, this guy must be killing it.
42:38
Like you don't You don't get to go out smoke a cigar and play golf, you know, 1:00 p. m.
42:42
regularly unless you're doing really well.
42:44
It makes me more likely to invest in Nick Huber's storage company that I know that he's doing well in life.
42:51
Like some people take it as an anti-signal.
42:52
Like, oh, why why isn't he working hard?
42:54
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 have more trust.
43:01
So he tweeted something out.
43:01
He goes, I'm looking for like a car, like a new SUV.
43:04
It's like kind of a general vague thing.
43:05
And somebody got and he then he like defined it right afterwards so specifically.
43:08
He goes, the exper- you know, the the user experience of a Tesla, the size of an Escalade, the um he goes with enough room for three car seats and a pair of golf clubs.
43:19
And I was like, first of all, isn't there just a more fun way to look for a car?
43:23
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 like, well, Tesla doesn't make a big car like an Escalade. No, [ __ ] that.
43:32
I'm not I'm not grounded in reality.
43:34
I'm living over here in my reality of what I want.
43:38
And he's only he's got one kid.
43:38
So I'm like, you know, your three car seats.
43:41
All right, he's planning ahead. Like that's good.
43:42
And um and I just thought it was a great example of like specificity.
43:46
So to me, a lot of people are vague and general when they should really be being specific.
43:51
And then the opposite is also true.
43:54
Sometimes people are like, man, I don't know what I want specifically and they get tied up in a knot because of that.
44:01
And my trainer had a great framework for that.
44:02
He goes, you got to know when to be general and when to be specific.
44:03
He goes, if you uh like sometimes it will tell you you need to be more specific with what you want."
44:09
That means like the type of description my cousin gave about like, you know, the lifestyle.
44:12
That That What he described as a car is not just a car, it's a lifestyle.
44:15
And and then the second thing is like when do you be when do you be general?
44:19
So he So my trainer I was like, "Well, what if I don't know what I want?" Right?
44:22
Like if he said, "What you know, what's your body goal?" Right? He's a personal trainer.
44:27
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."
44:31
But I don't even know if that's true, right?
44:32
I'm like I don't know exactly what I want. He's like, "Cool.
44:36
Just imagine satisfaction."
44:39
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."
44:44
He goes He goes, "You know, relief is a very powerful emotion.
44:47
Satisfaction is a powerful emotion."
44:47
He goes, "Most people feel relieved one time a day and it's when they poop."
44:52
He goes, "And now people bring their phone and they're not even paying attention. They miss it.
44:54
They miss out on the one moment of relief they were going to have that day."
44:57
He goes, "So I get good at feeling relief.
44:59
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 you're faster to figure out what things you want that will lead back to that emotion.
45:10
And like you're just better at at being satisfied from a meal or a workout or whatever it is these daily things in your life."
45:15
He goes, "Let's He goes let And so we made a deal.
45:18
It's like I'm I'm going to be relieved more times than I poop today."
45:22
And it's like that's the goal.
45:22
That's the first priority. The self-relief trainer? Yeah. What a smart ass dude.
45:27
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.
45:36
Keith Wasserman, um uh Chris uh Ford Is that his name? Last Ford? Yeah, I think so.
45:43
Uh Nick Huber, Moses Kagan.
45:43
Your cousin's getting in there. The strip mall guy.
45:48
So there's like 10 of them that are like really popular, maybe 20. And I see the returns. They're really good.
45:55
And the fees that they charge are crazy high or but like, you know, who cares?
46:00
It's a I'm in Nick's Huber thing It's a a huge fee, but like I I'm getting good returns, so I don't care.
46:04
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.
46:15
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.
46:23
which is like That means if you're in real estate, like do what my cousins do.
46:26
Do what these guys are doing.
46:27
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.
46:34
It's way easier to just tweet out stuff than it is to go like do 1-hour calls and seminars, webinars, and in-person meetups trying to like schmooze for a buck.
46:44
Well, I have no idea how big Nick Huber This is Nick Huber from Sweaty Startup.
46:48
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.
46:57
I I I don't know I don't know if that's I don't know exactly, but I agree with where you're where you're headed there.
47:01
And also, um that that's also the one reason I haven't invested in a lot of these guys is because the fee structure.
47:07
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.
47:20
Which like, you know, you will buy like a $50 million thing, and it's like wow, so you just banked a million dollars in your pocket just for buying the thing, which leads you to an incentive, which is go buy more [ __ ] Instead of being like really um discerning between like a great property and a good property, it's like just go accumulate.
47:35
And like I think Nick has a little bit of a different strategy because he's got it like a kind of like a template now of like he buys the self-storage thing.
47:41
He cuts out a bunch of the labor.
47:44
He adds in these automations.
47:45
And so he like has a playbook of how to add value that I think not every investor says they have.
47:51
I don't think they really have it.
47:51
Um 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 incent this this incentive mismatch where like you're you're incentivized 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.
48:07
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.
48:17
And I have no idea if they're killing it because they're skilled, although many of the all the people I named I I've talked to they appear skilled, but I'm a novice.
48:24
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.
48:30
Yeah, so like of course they're killing it.
48:32
Uh but uh the numbers are I mean I I'm an investor of Nick. I see the returns.
48:37
I'm like, oh yeah, dude, I'll give you more of but I have no idea.
48:41
way, if I was Nick I would I would do exactly what he's doing.
48:43
I charge the highest fees I can and be like, you're still getting a great return, correct? All right, fantastic.
48:47
If you can go beat that return somewhere else, I invite you to do it.
48:50
Um which is like, you know, he's not as upfront about that, but like I would do exactly what he's doing.
48:55
So I don't knock him for that.
48:56
I think that's a it's what I would do if I was in that position where I know I can generate great returns.
49:01
Um but like on my side I just I hesitate as an investor in that sort of thing, but maybe it's that's to my detriment.
49:08
Do you want to do more topics or do you want to save yours for Wednesday?
49:11
Let's do let's do a couple ideas.
49:11
I think people people like ideas.
49:13
If you made it to the end of the episode, congratulations.
49:17
All right, so let me pitch you two ideas real quick.
49:21
One is called what I'm calling copy my trip.
49:26
Okay, so I'm booking a vacation right now, taking the family on a vacation. Great idea. I Great name. Thank you. Came up with it myself. Yeah.
49:36
I'll even the business idea.
49:36
I just want the idea of a family vacation.
49:41
So So I'm like I'm like Googling.
49:41
I'm like, okay, listen, I want to go to Hawaii for example.
49:45
So I'm like, all right, I want to go to Hawaii. All right, which island? [ __ ] it, no. Okay, uh which resort? Oh god, here we go.
49:50
Got to figure out which resort. And like, it matters.
49:54
Like it's going to change my experience if I go to the wrong place or the right place.
49:57
But like, and then I'm like and then all the details in between.
50:00
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?
50:06
Uh, do we go on this activity? Is that age appropriate?
50:08
And so what I want is my wife follows all these influencers on Instagram that are like mommy influencers.
50:14
And when they buy something, she's like, that's a good thing.
50:16
I'm going to buy that thing, too.
50:17
And like cuz 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 that are like they have a good track record.
50:25
Like so she's like bought a couple of the things that look good and like paid off.
50:28
So she's like now has more trust in them.
50:30
I don't get why they can't or maybe they do this, I don't know.
50:32
But like I don't get why they're not just saying copy my trip.
50:35
You want to go to Disneyland?
50:37
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 cuz it's great for families for these reasons.
50:46
We buy this thing, this thing, whatever.
50:49
And like I just get their whole trip that I can copy and that they have basically like a Tik Tok or like Instagram story version that I can just browse it to be like, oh yeah, this looks fun. I want to do this.
51:01
Like when I went on Expedia and I'm like, this is awful experience.
51:05
Here's an overwhelming list of a hundred options ranked in five different ways then I click the [ __ ] thing.
51:09
I don't know if the reviews are real or not.
51:10
I'm looking at the photos.
51:12
They don't have all the photo It's like a pho- it's a static photo from like a [ __ ] airplane above the resort.
51:16
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.
51:20
The you know, there's space over here and like oh, this is cool.
51:24
They give you breakfast every morning. Like check this out.
51:26
You know, like like a Instagram story, right?
51:27
So I just think that there should be an a thing called copy my trip that anyone could do.
51:31
It'll create a profession of basically professional travelers.
51:34
Like people who they go find the best path of how to have a trip to, you know, Bali or whatever.
51:43
And like Sam, you might follow somebody who's got like a fitness oriented angle.
51:46
It's like, oh yeah, they want to like go they this person likes Airbnbs versus hotels.
51:50
So, I like align with them.
51:50
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.
51:56
That's the type of trip I want to have.
51:57
So, I'm going to just copy their trip.
51:59
And you can use that as a springboard.
52:02
We could do it we do it for trips and weddings.
52:03
Whenever I like I saw my wife like working so hard on this wedding, I'm like, dude, just find someone else to just do the exact same thing. No one will know. Who cares?
52:11
Or her her younger sister is getting married, and I'm like, dude, just do exactly what we did. It was great.
52:15
It was an awesome wedding.
52:16
And of course, obviously they don't like that, but I'm like, yeah, just do the exact same thing.
52:21
It was we all had a great time, right? Yeah. Bachelor parties. Exactly. Birthday parties.
52:25
I want to 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.
52:32
So, how and you would just You would just do it where like someone uploads an itinerary, and then you and then you people rate it, and you pay them money and buy it? Yeah, exactly.
52:41
So, so you you don't even have to buy the trip.
52:44
Like, you just by doing the trip, those people get paid mad money from affiliates.
52:46
Like, if I booked that resort because this person said this resort is awesome, I'm going to get a kickback of like all the things that they recommend.
52:53
Now, it's some perverse incentive, but like everybody kind of offers a kickback.
52:57
So, I think you can basically through affiliates, you can monetize this pretty heavily for the for the creator themselves.
53:02
What you what you what you can do is you can say it's not about like, creator, you just recommend what you genuinely recommend.
53:08
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?
53:18
I would do something like that. Where are you going? Hawaii. Oh, that's cool.
53:23
And and you haven't found like a fictional example. This is a real example.
53:27
And you haven't been able to find a 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.
53:34
Okay, what else can I do?
53:36
Okay, I can tweet this out, then I'm going to get a bunch of recommendations.
53:40
All right, that might work, but that only works for me cuz I got a big following. All right.
53:42
I was like, how do how do people do this?
53:43
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.
53:47
But like, they're not going to happen to post about it that day.
53:50
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."
53:56
And it's like, you know, they always do this like they do this with fashion.
54:00
It's called like I like I buy like or some [ __ ] like that.
54:04
It's like, "If you like my outfit, you can go here and like you can buy any of the items from my outfit." And they get a kickback.
54:09
So something like that for trips.
54:11
Um 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.
54:19
And I'm like, and they're okay, but it's like this 8-minute video and it's just that one aspect.
54:23
It doesn't tell me about all the other [ __ ] that I could go do when I'm there and all that stuff.
54:26
So anyways, I just think that I think the elements of this happening is just somebody should make this like an explicit thing, I think.
54:35
I Jack Smith uses VAs to do stuff constantly.
54:38
And he he's like at one point he even had some VAs going into hotels in the different countries and like taking pictures and sending it to him to let him know what it was.
54:47
But on a on a lighter for real, on a lighter level thing I've ever heard. It's crazy.
54:54
And on a lighter Wait, did he pay for them to go on vacation?
54:57
Like he found a local VA near every hotel?
55:01
he would find a local person.
55:01
He's like, "Hey, can you go to these three hotels and take pictures and let me know?"
55:03
And then he would like show them to his wife like, "All right, which ones do you want?"
55:07
Uh it was pretty it was him Jack LaRoux from now on.
55:09
That's the most crazy kind of similar to that.
55:12
Dude, he just sent me a picture and it was him and Andrew Wilkinson and he's like, "Look, I with Andrew."
55:17
And they have their TED Talk badge on.
55:19
And so they're clearly at TED together.
55:21
And I was like, "Oh, how funny." And uh Jack's awesome.
55:28
Yeah, and anyway, he does this all the time and it's actually really interesting.
55:31
And there's this company called Tr- Flightfox.
55:33
Do you know what Flightfox is?
55:37
It's Is that like where you'll just Is it like somebody will book it for you to get Is it a travel agent or is it the one where you're like I just want something.
55:43
Give me like the best deal I can get. Which one is it? amazing.
55:46
So, I have no idea how they make this work.
55:49
So, basically, you go to FlightFox and you always have to click the button that says you're traveling for business.
55:54
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.
56:00
Or you can even say I want to go around this time.
56:01
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 I have to make sure there's backup flights.
56:11
And someone on the other end pops up and goes, "Hey, what's going on? I'm with whatever. I'm here to help you."
56:17
And it's a real person and they go and they find five to 10 different flights that fit what you want and then you finally say, "All right, this itinerary looks good."
56:25
Or you you can even reply and be like, uh "This one actually I had a change of plans.
56:28
I've got to change this, this, and this."
56:29
And they'll go and find flights for you and they find the cheapest ones and they know what to search for them.
56:34
And they only get paid until after you book the flight and they just take a $50 fee.
56:38
I have no idea how they make money.
56:40
And then, like when I was in Portugal, my flight got canceled so I just logged on and go, "Hey, the flight you booked was canceled.
56:47
Can you get you know, address it, please?"
56:48
And they call for you and they wait on hold for you and then you just pay them 50 bucks. It's amazing.
56:52
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 That's amazing.
57:02
Um that's like I I think I think I told you about this thing I did it was Mo Points. mopoints. com.
57:05
It's our It's our It's our good buddy Ramon's good buddy.
57:09
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
57:11
This was like one of the best things I did is like I booked this call with them.
57:14
And so you go to Mo mopoints. com. Just like m o points. com.
57:19
And basically it solves the problem of like what credit card should I get?
57:22
And so you just call this guy and he's like, "All right, look."
57:25
Like again, you could Google what credit card should I get? Guess what?
57:28
You're going to get like the the SEO optimized blog post in the world because they can they can make so much money off referring credit cards and you don't know if you're really getting the real deal.
57:37
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.
57:40
Do you want to travel like a baller?
57:42
Like he's like, look, I travel first class worldwide just off this. He's like, I'm not rich.
57:47
I just but I use points to do it. Here's how.
57:51
And I was like, yeah, I want that. And so he's like, cool. Get the Amex Gold.
57:57
He's like, you're going to get 4x points on all your Facebook ads for your e-commerce thing.
58:02
You're going to get one for you, one for your wife.
58:03
So now you're going to get like 2 million points or whatever like in the next year.
58:06
He's like, then to travel, you just do this. You transfer points.
58:09
Like don't book within their points portal cuz that's what I used to do.
58:13
I used to go to my points thing and be like, uh rewards flights.
58:16
Oh man, I get like half a flight for all my Chase points.
58:18
He's like, no, you need to transfer to travel partners and then there you need to like check this out.
58:24
You use like KLM to fly, you know, here, here, and here.
58:27
And he's like, just call me when you want to book.
58:29
He's like, for now, buy the Amex Gold, start racking up your points.
58:31
When you want to book first class worldwide, just call me again.
58:33
And I was like, dude, I feel so taken care of.
58:37
This was like the best money I've ever spent um just in terms of the again, the relief of like, ah, I'm in good hands, right?
58:45
Like the real Allstate I'm in good hands is [ __ ] Mo from Mo Points.
58:48
And so I'm a fan of I like these businesses.
58:50
I 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.
59:00
I actually I I like that idea a lot. Yeah, exactly. Uh me me too.
59:03
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 flight for your business, it's like it I mean it just makes financial sense to like optimize that.
59:16
So you're either going to get the best cash back like, you know, I found out, oh, if I use this Bank of America Platinum Honors cash back card, I get 2.
59:22
6% back cash back, which is like way higher than anybody else gives you.
59:28
Does that mean it basically adds 2% to your bottom line? Yeah, exactly. Like I I think 2.
59:31
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 around round number here.
59:40
You're getting $2,600 a month back um just straight to your bottom line, right?
59:47
Like that just makes sense.
59:47
Or you can reinvest that.
59:49
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?
59:58
I yeah, I don't know what they do.
59:58
I actually asked my previous startup this.
1:00:01
I was like, I go, what do we do with all the points we collect? Who gets to use those?
1:00:05
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 simple it's the fair way to do it and they just like, you know, keep it.
1:00:16
I was like, who who keeps it? Yeah, let me get that. Where is this money?
1:00:21
I kept I used our points at the Hustle and I I flew first class like twice a month. It was sick.
1:00:25
And then when I sold the company, I didn't have that perk anymore.
1:00:27
I was like, damn, I got to pay for a flight for the first time in four years. It sucks.
1:00:31
Yeah, so you got to negotiate that in. I well, I kept them.
1:00:33
I got to keep all the points.
1:00:35
We had like a million points, but I didn't get to uh I didn't get future points. Got you. All right. Uh that's it.
1:00:39
I'll save my other ideas for the next one.
1:00:43
And you got a crying baby. Yeah, I know. Um all right. Thank you.