How A Fat Computer Geek Became The Jeff Bezos Of The Dark Web

Shaan Puri

Alright let's do some topics what do you got I got I got a couple

Sam Parr

what do you got bunch of good stuff

Shaan Puri

alright let's pick one of yours

Sam Parr

Let's do the Satoshi and the Paul Leroux thing because they're both really interesting. Do you know which one you want to do first?

Shaan Puri

I don't know who paul leroux is I you

Sam Parr

don't know who paul leroux is okay

Shaan Puri

fucking great name though

Sam Parr

dude listen to this

Shaan Puri

How much more would I be worth if I was Sean LaRue? I'm at least triple, right? And how much respect would I get?

Sam Parr

He's also African. He's from South Africa, I think. So, Ben, you're nodding a little bit like you know who this is. Is that true?

Ben Wilson

Yeah, I know who Paul LeRoux is. He's kind of like... who's the guy we were talking about that you knew?

Sam Parr

ross holbrook

Ben Wilson

He's kind of like if Ross had been as crazy as everyone thought, but actually like 10 times crazier. That's Paul Leroux. Paul.

Sam Parr

woah

Ben Wilson

yeah yeah

Sam Parr

I I

Ben Wilson

don't know

Shaan Puri

so let me man who's this guy

Sam Parr

So, he's based... Alright, so Paul Leroux. He's this big, old, fat, disgusting guy. He's like... imagine.

Shaan Puri

like tom on the hood

Sam Parr

Yeah, imagine... have you seen *South Park*? Where they're playing video games and there's that fat guy at the computer who's like eating Cheetos and like, what?

Shaan Puri

yeah yeah

Sam Parr

He kind of looks like a total slob, but he's this computer whiz. Yeah, Google him. I've been doing it. He's like disgusting, and that kind of fits the personality of the whole story. There's this great book that I'm reading. It's called *Mastermind*. It's about him, and basically, this guy always kind of wanted to take over the world. Around 2002, 2003, and 2004, he started this company called RX Limited, which basically sold Viagra and a couple of other Schedule II drugs. So, like, he was able to sell some opioids, but not the famous ones—things that are considered Schedule II, which is just one below Schedule I. He created this company called RX Limited, and in about 3 or 4 years, it netted him $100 million in profit. Do you remember years ago when you would get an email that said, "Hey, we sell prescriptions, click here"? Do you remember that from years ago when you were in high school and grade school?

Shaan Puri

not really but go on let's just let's say let me say yes go ahead

Sam Parr

Well, basic... and then, like, maybe you remember going to these websites that just showed tons of drugs. You'd get texts that say, "Buy drugs online." Well, basically, he created this website, RX Limited. Eventually, he started creating so many domain names that he developed his own domain registration system. Then, as his network grew, he created his own email system because he didn't want anyone to hack into his stuff. At one point, he had like 2,000 or 3,000 employees working at this place, mostly Filipinos, mostly working in call centers. He had operations in the Philippines and in Israel because he saw that the Israeli guys were the hardest working for the cheapest rate. It was wild. He had basically hundreds of different stores selling drugs. The way it worked was he would somehow convince a doctor that he was doing everything by the book. Technically, he kind of was, but it quickly warped into something else. He had all these doctors in America, in places like Minnesota, Kentucky, and Florida—relatively small practices. He would say, "Hey, we're a telemedicine service. Can you fill some of the prescriptions that we're doing? It's all legal, and we'll just send you the prescriptions that we need. 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, Doctor X just called in this prescription. I'm going to ship it to the patient. No big deal." Both the doctors and the pharmacists thought they were mostly following the law. They were 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. That's weird, but I have no reason to believe this is illegal." Eventually, it did become highly illegal, where you didn't need to see any doctor to get these prescriptions.

Sam Parr

He was selling like **80%** of all online drugs in America. It was something large. Ben, am I missing anything? Throughout doing this, this is where things get even crazier. So, like, this story in itself is already interesting. Literally, it made **$400,000,000** in profit in **4 years**. One employee went to his apartment in Manila, in the Philippines, and he said that he saw **$100,000,000** in cash in the house. This guy didn't want the IRS to see anything, so he would just transfer it into gold because this was before Bitcoin was really around.

Shaan Puri

did he live to the philippines

Sam Parr

He was an African guy, so I believe he was born in Cambodia, then moved to South Africa, and later to the Philippines. Or maybe he was from Zimbabwe, something like that. But this guy had this grandiose thinking where he thought, "I owe it to the world to run the world." Very grandiose thinking. So, he hires these ex-Israeli guys to run the call centers. Eventually, he hires these ex-Israeli army guys to be his bodyguards. In doing that, he starts learning a little bit about arms dealing. Eventually, he buys thousands of acres of land in Zimbabwe and Somalia. He was like, "I'm gonna raid an African nation, and I'm gonna set up a country. I'm gonna be the leader of a small African nation and hopefully, eventually, a much larger nation." Like, some crazy idea.

Shaan Puri

shit holy shit

Sam Parr

It expands to the point where he's now an arms dealer. So, he's selling guns to different parts of Africa. He gets in trouble for selling missiles to Iran. This guy gets into some crazy stuff; he's killing people along the way. He makes relationships with the Colombian drug lords and trades drugs—pills for cocaine. He starts selling $100 million worth of cocaine, and he was doing almost all of it behind a computer. Eventually, he gets caught. Now, he was recently, like 3 or 4 years ago, sentenced to 25 years in prison. 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.

Shaan Puri

in the us or he's in the us

Sam Parr

He's in the U.S., but because he's basically a drug lord, they won't say where he is. You can barely find any pictures of him online, other than one picture of his mugshot. That's the only picture that I've really seen of him recently, and the guy... it's just one of the craziest books I've ever read. I started talking to you about Satoshi because a lot of people think, "Well, I don't really... there's not a ton of evidence that he invented Bitcoin." But he was talking about creating a digital currency early on. When he was arrested, Satoshi quit blogging, and you can read a lot of this guy's emails, which is really interesting. That's kind of how I got to the other topic of Satoshi, where you can read all his old blog posts. This guy is incredibly fascinating. He would have been an awesome business person had it not been for, you know, going the wrong route. But it's a crazy book.

Shaan Puri

what was in the emails

Sam Parr

You just see him commenting with people. He was actually a really good writer for a little while. This guy is so interesting; he wrote guest posts, I believe, for the Washington Post under a pseudonym, talking about the future of money and all these weird economic topics. He was somewhat eloquent, but in person, he was brutish. He was an asshole; he was disgusting. They would go to McDonald's, and he wouldn't even talk to his employees. He would kind of tell them to "f off." He wasn't very pleasant to be around. But in the emails, he wrote pretty nicely, actually. What are you going to say, Ben?

Shaan Puri

they found £500 of cocaine on his yacht when it crashed

Sam Parr

Which was worth like $100,000,000. He also owned a logging business in Somalia at one point. He was like, "I'm gonna 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 gonna be the go-between. I'm gonna get money from them, pay the pirates off, and take a little bit of profit. He owned that business. He also was in mining. This guy did a lot. 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 Peter. He was very early in all this; he's kind of in the same ballpark as a lot of the crypto guys. Some of those ideas, even though he was a criminal, were totally on par with the Bitcoin stuff. So it's super fascinating.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, there's an article that discusses the case for why he might be Satoshi. I haven't read it yet, but when you were talking, I just pulled it up.

Ben Wilson

You say he did it all behind a computer, but in my research on this, which is old, I was looking at the story like a year ago. Didn't I remember a story about him throwing someone off his yacht and having people shoot them in the water or something like that?

Sam Parr

Yeah, but in that particular story, he wasn't there. However, he did kill a lot of people; in fact, he killed one. Throughout the investigation, he had hitmen who are now arrested, and they are kind of 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. He did travel; he would go to Africa and other places. The guy had like 3,000 employees, and most of the employees had no idea who he was. There would be times where he’d be managing things. Basically, he had two Israeli brothers running a call center in Israel with about 300 employees, and they had never met Paul. Paul would talk to them via email, you know, as employees. It's kind of interesting because anonymous work is something we've talked about, but that's pretty much how it was. 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.

Shaan Puri

This article I pulled up about it says he's the **Jeff Bezos of organized crime**. It refers to him as the **digital El Chapo** because he was moving so much weight. He was given up for adoption by his birth parents, and that rejection haunted him. It also mentions that he transformed himself into a programming genius who developed encryption software like **E4M** in the nineties. He founded **RX Limited**, which was the black market for pharmaceuticals. He was raking in **$250,000,000 a year** selling drugs, weapons, and murder-for-hire on the dark web.

Sam Parr

Yeah, well, I think that the dark web thing is actually confusing because a lot of the stuff that he was doing was before Tor was even around. So, a lot of the stuff he did wasn't even on the dark web. And like this whole thing about spamming email, he was actually one of the originators of that. He somehow hacked into a pharmaceutical company and stole something like 100 million email addresses. He would spam these guys like crazy. The reason why he bought all these domain names is that when a domain would get banned, he would switch to a new domain. So, it was incredibly complex what he did. Before he turned to the dark side, he founded or built a small open-source product that helped encrypt things. It eventually turned into this thing called TrueCrypt, which I actually think is big. So, like, the guy was pretty genius. He was amazing.

Shaan Puri

It says his first murder was when he took his head of security. He said, "Hey, come to my house in the Philippines and dig a hole. I'm gonna bury a safe filled with $1,000,000." And then the guy dug the hole, and then he shot him with the machine gun right after that. That was his first taste of murder.

Sam Parr

And then there's another story where they took a guy out into the ocean. They said, "Let's have a talk on our yacht," and then they threw the guy in the ocean and drove away. He freaks out, but then he comes back and shoots all around the guy. He says, "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. I need to know, are you stealing from me? If you tell me quickly, I'll kill you. Now, if you don't tell me, I'm just going to shoot you in your leg and drive off." So, like, the guy was really hardcore.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, he makes, you know, whatever "The Wolf of Wall Street" look like a small puppy. This guy's insane! Okay, wow, I've never heard of this guy either. How'd you hear about him? How'd you find out about him?

Sam Parr

Him, so when I tweeted out that I love crime books, I think I had just finished... I forget what I had just finished, but someone suggested this book called *Mastermind*. It's by this journalist that worked at *Wired* magazine. I've been reading this book and it's freaking crazy. Even though what this guy did was wrong, it does actually inspire me to live a more adventurous life. While I'm reading this, I'm like, "Why am I..."

Shaan Puri

I'm the same way I'm the same way

Sam Parr

I'm like, why am I so fascinated by this? This is why I don't like watching *Wolf of Wall Street*. I'm like, why does this excite me so much? 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 I can... I need to have a little bit more adventure. You know, you could use it for good. But I read it and I'm like intoxicated by it. Do you get that way?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think that's why people love movies about, you know, prison breaks or they love movies about bank heists. It's like why people play video games that have violence in them. There's definitely a part of us that this stuff appeals to. If you can get that outlet by just reading a book, watching a movie, or playing a video game, that's good. Because, you know, it didn't translate into that kind of deep-rooted desire for adventure, thrill, power, or whatever it is. It doesn't have to spill into your normal life then.

Sam Parr

Yeah, and it 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...

Shaan Puri

You should just add that to your bio. You know, top inspirations: Pablo Escobar, Paul Le Roux, Ross Ulbricht. Yeah, so, but one of your heroes.

Sam Parr

One of the reasons why this topic is interesting is that the cool thing about criminals online is that you can read their correspondence. When they arrested him, he had his computer open, so they were able to see a bunch of stuff. I really love this era about criminals and how you can see it happening. That got me interested in the Satoshi posts. Basically, if you just Google "Satoshi," you know, the guys who created Bitcoin, you can find Satoshi's blog posts. I was reading all of his blog posts, and what I found to be really fun is that you can go to his first blog post where he talks about introducing Bitcoin. The forum is still up, and I spent about an hour looking at all the people commenting on it, Googling all of them, and seeing what they're doing and what they're up to. You could see them reply, "Hey Satoshi, 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.

Shaan Puri

The first few comments, I think, weren't... like, if I remember correctly, the original comments... 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 happened.

Sam Parr

no it was like this is cute right

Shaan Puri

And so, like, literally the first comment... So, you know, Seth Halsberger says, "Great stuff! This is the first real innovation." 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. Then there are some people who are like, "You know, I have questions about how it works." And then there's Hal Finney, who I think got the first transaction; Satoshi sent it to him. I think he had the most questions about it, which is why some people think Hal Finney was Satoshi Nakamoto. I think he was also the first one to write out the total addressable market for it. I remember reading that one time where he said, "Well, if this got adopted, you know, each one of these coins is going to be worth over $1,000,000," right? And he broke down why, which is, you know, today it's hard to even discuss.

Sam Parr

that now

Shaan Puri

Today, that sounds weird. Imagine in 2009, you're on a forum and someone posts about how they're creating the new world money. 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. Each one of those could be worth $1,000,000. To me, that was really impressive. The people who saw it for what it is—which is a true innovation, something that's great, something that could catch on—I'm pretty blown away by that.

Sam Parr

Me too! I think it's amazing. When I read it, I feel inspired. I think that's why I got a little obsessed with Paul Larew. It's like these people who have the self-belief and vision, even if it's a horrible vision, go out and do it. It's in the depths of the internet, and it's really interesting. I've been reading all of Satoshi's forum posts. You can click and see these guys' profiles; they're wearing fedoras and crocodile dandy hats. They're the nerdy guys who I would dismiss and think, "Oh, what do you like? Okay, nerd. You're smart, but you're just outlandish. I can't believe anything that you're doing." But when you read this, they're incredibly thoughtful and take it seriously right off the bat. I admire that, and it's a really fun thing to read.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think it's on the... you know who I think it was? It was like a forum. It was called the P2P Foundation or something like that. It was the original forum that this was on. It was like a Ning forum or something like that. So, you know, the people who hang out in these types of forums, right? They're obviously pretty hardcore, either into peer-to-peer, into cryptography, or into these different subjects. I gave a talk recently for a bunch of people in the Midwest. They zoomed me in and they were like, "We just want you to talk to our group." One of them asked, "You know, you said something about surrounding yourself with interested people. How do you do that? What do you actually do to do that?" I basically told him, "I go, I'm a pretty normal person. I like catchy songs by Katy Perry. I don't have great music tastes. If something's in the top 40, I'm like, 'Oh, that's pretty good.' You know, it's not like I have this nose for the next big thing." But there are people who have that. That's their superpower. I used to make fun of those people because every time they would do something weird, I'd be like, "Weird." And then I...

Shaan Puri

Out how weird it is, and I would kind of laugh at it. They didn't really care because they weren't trying to be cool anyways. I remember in college, the guy who lived next door to me, this guy Tophic, he was... I walked in, and he was playing a video game, I think Starcraft or something like that. He turned to talk to me, and the game kept going. I was like, "Are you even playing? Are you just... this is a computer?" He was like, "What's that? Yeah, I'm just... no, I'm watching the match from last night in Korea." I was like, "What? You're watching somebody else play video games?" This was back in, you know, it must have been 2006 or something like that. He said, "Yeah, I'm watching a recording of this game, this match that happened on the Korean server." I was like, "Dude, say five more lame things than that! I'll give you $100 if you can tell me."

Sam Parr

me you're a virgin without telling me you're a virgin exactly

Shaan Puri

I was just like, "Oh, okay, I'm never coming in this room again." Then later, you know, fast forward 10 years or whatever, our company gets acquired by Twitch. All of a sudden, my title is like Director of Esports or something like that. He calls me and says, "You motherfucker! Oh, Mister Esports now!" I was just like, "Yeah, dude, it's a big thing. You were on top of it." I was sort of embarrassed because it was so true. I was making fun of that behavior, and then sure enough, that becomes like a multibillion-dollar idea—watching other people play video games. I learned the hard way many times, making a fool out of myself. Now, when I hear something weird, I'm just immediately like, "Let me pull up a chair. Tell me, why do you do this? Do other people do this? How often do you do this?" The weirder it is, the more I want to lean into that phenomenon because I know it's just a matter of time until I discover that this is a totally normal behavior. It's like, "Oh, you only drink Soylent for all your meals? Oh, interesting! Is there a community of people who do this?" "Yeah, we're called biohackers. There's a subreddit with tens of thousands of us." It's like, "Oh, interesting." You start to see that the future is already here; it's just not everywhere. How do you get closer to the future? You find people who already live in the future, do weird stuff, and then you don't judge them. In fact, you have the complete opposite reaction I used to have.

Sam Parr

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

Shaan Puri

ppd patient

Sam Parr

Yeah, so on the very bottom of the forum, it says "About," and you can read who the owner is. He's just a professor in Berlin or something like that. He's just a guy, and it's pretty fascinating. I'm like, man, all these people were... it's kind of weird to say, but they were around when Jesus was around. They saw this thing that potentially changed the next 1,000 years or the next 500 years of history. They witnessed it, and I think that's really fascinating.

Shaan Puri

So, dude, I put this in the Milk Road. I don't know if you saw this thing about Peter. So, the big Bitcoin conference just happened in Miami.

Sam Parr

yeah that was a really that was really good on friday you did that right

Shaan Puri

yeah I did that one on friday that was that highest rated one

Sam Parr

yeah that killed it that was so good

Shaan Puri

But did you... I don't know if you saw the clip. I think I had linked to the clip in there of Peter Thiel. He gives a talk at the Bitcoin conference in 2022. 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. There's this video—I’ve watched a ton of old Peter Thiel videos—of him giving a talk in 1999. He’s talking about the idea of a currency not owned by the government. Basically, there's this two-minute clip of Peter Thiel describing Bitcoin without saying the word "Bitcoin." He didn't know how it would work, but he said, "You know, the world needs a currency that's not controlled by the central banks of different countries," blah blah blah. I think PayPal's original 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. They shifted away from that later. At this talk, he goes, "Yeah, we went to something that was more practical and it kind of worked, but it was less ambitious." You could tell he kind of regretted it, saying, "Before, we wanted to create our own financial system, and then we got..."

Sam Parr

really hard

Shaan Puri

We settled on PayPal. PayPal is a payments network that works with your existing bank, with the existing dollar currency, and allows you to send money to somebody else's existing bank. So, we're just like a funnel to funnel the money through. That was cool, but man, this other thing was the big idea. Bitcoin kind of proved that was the big idea, you know, later on. But him giving that talk in 1999 is so crazy. That's one of the greatest calls I've ever seen—just calling it with what's going to happen and why it's going to happen. In that talk, he's like, "This currency will live on your cell phone outside of a bank. Smartphones are going to be a thing." And then you think about it—1999, man! The iPhone came out in 2007, so he's predicting smartphones. He's like, "We're already seeing the adoption of smartphones in Finland."

Sam Parr

And he also said he gave a 5-year term. And you're like, "He... it was 10," but he got it right.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, he's like a bill. He's like, "There will be a 1,000,000,000 smartphone devices in the next 5 years." It took 10 years, but like a 1,000,000,000 devices... there was never a 1,000,000,000 user product. There weren't 1,000,000,000 people who had computers ever. There weren't 1,000,000,000 people—I don't even think that used televisions. But I think the cell phone was the first thing where it was like a smartphone was the first thing where 1,000,000,000 people had this product. So, of course, if you launch an app that works, your addressable market is 1,000,000,000 people who could download your app immediately. It's kind of an overlooked fact about why mobile was so big. It's just like, well, there was never a 1,000,000,000 people who could have used your product before this. Like, your restaurant could never serve 1,000,000,000 people. Your store could never serve 1,000,000,000 people. Like, McDonald's couldn't even serve 1,000,000,000 people no matter how many locations they opened. The cell phone was really the first thing that was able to do that, you know, that quickly. And so he's, you know, when he was talking about smartphone adoption rising in Finland, I'm like, "Who even pays attention to what's going on in Finland, dude?" Like, if I ask you right now... if I said...

Shaan Puri

To finland on a map could you think you could. To finland on a map right now like me neither

Sam Parr

you mean like finland denmark and like holland and sweden are all the same thing

Shaan Puri

yeah exactly

Sam Parr

yeah like I I don't know dude it's like that's where white people are clean and you're nice

Shaan Puri

I get it. So, I thought about that and I'm like, "Oh, no wonder the people who were hanging out with Peter Thiel went on to do like some..."

Sam Parr

Pretty... hold on. What? Hey, Ma, sorry. There's some... my bad. There's some random guy knocking on my window. Alright, sorry, go ahead.

Shaan Puri

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, people who worked at PayPal went on to create YouTube, LinkedIn, Tesla, SpaceX, Yelp, and Affirm. I think there are over $10 billion companies that came out of the PayPal Mafia. And like Kiva, one of the best nonprofits, came out of that. 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. I remember one of the co-founders of PayPal, Max Levchin, had this thing where he was interviewing somebody. The guy started talking about how, like, he's like, "Yeah, I'd love to play pickup hoops." And Max was like, "We're not hiring this guy." And the guy asked, "Why?" He was like...

Sam Parr

oh my god

Shaan Puri

he's like he's like nope no great program I know plays pickup basketball he was like

Sam Parr

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're out! Like, if your last name...

Shaan Puri

is tucker

Sam Parr

or john they're like you're out like no saint john's

Shaan Puri

Exactly. So, you know, these things... I mean, you get canceled today for being like, "I'm not gonna hire someone who plays pickup hoops." But, like, 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." That's not popular. I think they don't say that stuff in public anymore because now they're, you know, 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 about people who all believe, like, religiously in the mission. Then, there are people who kind of behave in a way that's like they're willing to work way harder, sleep in the office... you know, they're willing to go to bat for this thing because, you know, they're like members of a cult. They sort of have lost their own personal identity to the greater identity of the group. That is like a pretty hard force to bet against and beat.

Sam Parr

Dude, this gets me inspired. How do you think... this was actually a third topic I was going to ask you. How do you think guys like Peter Thiel, who I don't know his background but I think it was pretty modest, how do people like him write so often? I mean, do they just make a ton of guesses and they're only right a couple of times? I don't understand that idea of thinking big. Then I talk to or listen to him, and I'm like, "Oh, I'm nobody."

Shaan Puri

Yeah, dude, when you hear him talk, it's like when you're in a plane that takes off. All of a sudden, the houses start to look like little toys, and the people start to look like ants. The cars look like little flecks. It's like that's how my brain feels when I hear Peter Thiel talk. I'm like, "Oh, I am a small simpleton." You know, I'm a single-cell organism compared to this guy in terms of just where my brain goes and how much conviction I have around my own original thoughts. Because, like, that's his thing, right? He's all about being a contrarian. I think Jeff Bezos said this about Peter Thiel: "Yeah, that's the thing about contrarians; they're usually wrong." And somebody else said, you know, Peter's constantly predicting sort of like the end of the world and the market crash. You just remember the two times he was right in the last 20 years and the four times he was wrong. It just seemed like he was a little bit late on his predictions. So, I think there's definitely something to being wrong a bunch, but it's more like when you're right, you're right in a major, major way. I think he was right about PayPal in a major way. I think he was right about Facebook in a major way. He was the first investor in Facebook; he bought a 10% stake for $500. Alright, so like that was the best investment of the decade, I think, you know, at that time. 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 he was the only guy in Silicon Valley that was publicly supporting Trump. He spoke at the convention and said, "We need Donald Trump to be president." At the time, it was sort of like Donald Trump was the underdog; he was not supposed to win. Peter Thiel picked that horse pretty early. That's outrageous! And like, also, he gets off on it being contrarian; you could tell. The other one that he was right about was when he created the Thiel Fellowship. So, he basically went on stage...

Sam Parr

which was which was laughable at first and he had he had

Shaan Puri

This talk where he goes, "University, you know, college education is a bubble. It's the greatest bubble since the housing crisis." This was right after the housing bubble all popped. He's like, "The next bubble is college education." People are like, "Who goes against education?" Go ask a hundred out of a hundred politicians, parents, anybody who's not pro-education. He was the first guy to be like, "College education is a complete bubble." He explained why it was a bubble. People go for basically this certificate. He goes, "It's an insurance product, partially." He said, "It's insurance for parents to buy for their kids so that they don't fall through the cracks of society." He described it as a certification product. You don't go there to learn; you go there to get your certificate. So, he was calling out college, and then he created the Thiel Fellowship, which was kind of a genius move. He put up, I think at the beginning, $2,000,000, but that $2,000,000 was like $200,000,000 of free publicity for himself. He made it bold, where he's like, "Not just here's an alternative to college for people who don't want to go." He explained what it is. He came out and said, "I will pay you $100,000 to drop out of college." It's like, "Oh shit! Keep this man away from my children!" It seemed like a not good thing to do. Then he explained why. He said, "College is a complete bubble."

Sam Parr

but then how did he get his money back from that again

Shaan Puri

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. It's kind of ironic because he never claims victory on it. In fact, at the Bitcoin conference, he kind of criticized Ethereum, which is a bit weird. So, you know, I don't know why he's... I would think he'd be taking a victory lap because Vitalik, being a Thiel fellow, was like the total validation of the Thiel Fellowship. But I think Figma...

Sam Parr

did not do the owner.com you know owner.com do you ever see that company

Shaan Puri

I know about it yeah

Sam Parr

he's a he's one of those guys I and and about 2 or 3 more I've invested in about 3 of them maybe

Shaan Puri

Yeah, yeah. I've heard kind of mixed things about the Pride program itself, but there's no doubt good stuff came of it. Like, if just Figma came out of it, the program was a win, you know? I'd say $10,000,000,000 [likely referring to Figma's valuation or acquisition price].

Sam Parr

figma came out of it

Shaan Puri

Yeah, damn dude. There are many others; there are a bunch of other winners that have come out of it too. But this guy has been, you know, contrarian and right many, many times. It's very impressive to me. It's more impressive to me than people who are obviously very successful. So it's not even about success. If you just showed me one person who's very successful and then another person who is like an original thinker who's right when they go against the grain... damn! I have a lot more respect and admiration for the person who went against the grain and had an original thought that was right.

Sam Parr

Yeah, and it's inspiring. I was reading today and it said that this is like... kind of a weird tangent, but Jared Kushner. Alright, you know Jared Kushner?

Shaan Puri

yeah so who so who is he he's he's married to to the trump or his brother's married to the trump

Sam Parr

So, there's Jared and Josh. Josh is the younger one; I think he's about 35. He's married to a model and runs Thrive, which is a venture capital firm that's immensely successful. His brother, Jared, I forget his title in the White House, but he was like Trump's right-hand man and he's married to Ivanka. A lot of people think he's evil; he probably is a little bit. He kind of has a skeleton vibe to him, like Skeletor, the villain in He-Man or whatever it was. So, he just announced that a few months after leaving the White House, he founded a $3,000,000,000 private equity fund. Regardless, if you put politics aside, it's crazy that that's just like your thing. When I end a job, I take a vacation. A lot of people take like a three-week vacation and then go start another job that's like 20% higher in salary and a little bit better title. But he just was like, "Oh, you know, I've got some free time now. I'm gonna, you know, beep bop boop, just do this thing." It's a $3,000,000,000 fund, and 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?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. I know exactly what you mean. It does beg the question of... you know, why do I not go bigger? And also, 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?

Sam Parr

There are two reasons. The first is fear. It is scary to raise outside money and potentially mess it up. That's a bad situation. The second reason is something I don't know if Peter Thiel has, but Elon Musk for sure does. Did you read that article in the New Yorker or New York Times where he describes his life? He was talking to the interviewer and he started to cry during the interview. He's...

Shaan Puri

like you don't wanna be me

Sam Parr

Yeah, he basically said: > "I miss my brother's wedding... or I was about to miss it, but I flew in at the last minute. I saw it, immediately got on the plane." He continued: > "There was 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. I had a birthday, but no friends came and said 'happy birthday' to me because I was running around the factory." And then he admitted: > "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.

Shaan Puri

he said all that

Sam Parr

yes and like the

Shaan Puri

the whole

Sam Parr

death thing

Shaan Puri

Might happen, bro. Yeah, like take a nap. Just do it, just try it. A little advice from one brother to another: **take a nap**.

Sam Parr

Well, and it's like... I think there's one aspect where it's like, "Well, I don't want to be this slave to this computer and the machine. Like, f*** that, and I want to live life." But I do think that there... and I haven't formulated this thought entirely... I do think there's a world where you can go big and have some work-life balance, though, actually.

Shaan Puri

so do you think that's true yeah of course of course it's true you just gotta decide your terms right like 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 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 kinda like and 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 of around picking 1 or the other that both is not an option I fall into this trap of misery of around picking 1 or the other right of like lifestyle and and and like you know ambition so so I definitely think you do both I play this game though so I have 2 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 2 questions 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 hang 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 gonna 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 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 there's other way which I think people can relate to which is like if I see you a year from now we're just grabbing a beer hanging out it's like I just let's just presume already it's gone wrong what was the cause of death you know like what do what do you think was the reason that that so that's one the second one the game we played yesterday with the milk road it was it's called the the why the fuck aren't you game and it's basically it's like it's like either why the fuck are you or aren't you which is like what part if I was just an objective person looking at what we're doing would I say why the fuck are you guys doing this like why aren't you hiring somebody to do that it's taking you 5 hours a day and like you should totally you could talk 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 f aren't you which kind of distills it down into like what's the obvious good idea or bad idea like good idea we're not doing or bad idea that we are doing that I would criticize about ourselves and we both came up with a list of like 3 things and it became like oh wow we should just correct those now rather like so

Sam Parr

So then, what's your answer? Why aren't you going bigger? Assuming that you're not going big, which is not a fair assumption, but for the sake of discussion...

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so I wouldn't say, "Why am I not going bigger?" like the Jared Kushner question you mean, or the questions I was asking just now. The Jared Kushner question is because I want to have enough. 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. To me, if you said, "Paint a picture of what winning looks like," it's not just a number in an account or a number in my sales dashboard. It's like, I talk about this all the time—it's this perfect Tuesday. My normal day is perfect for what I want, and that includes, like, right after this, I'm going to go work out with my trainer in my home gym. That's a part of my perfect Tuesday. If my business then requires me to not have time to do that, and I'm getting fat or whatever, or it doesn't provide me enough money to be able to afford that, then it's not winning. It's like being able to take my daughter to swim class—things like that. Those are part of what winning looks like to me. So I'm just not going to deviate from that. The only thing I question is not, "Why don't I go bigger?" It's, "Is this picture the picture I really want, or is it outdated? Do I need..."

Sam Parr

to update it

Shaan Puri

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 figure that out.

Sam Parr

Ben Wilson tweeted out, "It's a superpower to know what you really want," right? Ben? And that was the tweet?

Ben Wilson

yeah

Shaan Puri

I I really think that's what what did you see or hear that made you tweet that

Ben Wilson

So, what I saw is that I have had a bunch of people reaching out to me recently. The people who are like, "Hey, I'd love to connect," I get so annoyed with. I'm like, "You just dumped something on my plate for me to 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'm 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 gladly give you that." 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. But then he says, "Hey, I need $2.50 to get a ride home on the bus. Do you have $2.50?" Alright, I guess I got $2.50. It's a superpower in every way.

Shaan Puri

So, I like that you said that. There's a tweet that my cousin put out yesterday. My cousin, he's on Twitter roughly.

Sam Parr

Dude, who is it? Show her. He's a great guy. According to Twitter, he's killing it. I don't know, I haven't talked to him in forever, but his updates...

Shaan Puri

I'm like dude looking like he's killing it I don't know if he's actually killing it I haven't caught up in a while

Sam Parr

I don't want... I'm not disrespecting him at all. I'm saying, like, his updates are amazing. He just bought like 20,000 square feet or something. He's on top of the game.

Shaan Puri

yeah and actually he did a good job of figuring out what he wanted bro

Sam Parr

you just called out your cousin you should take that back

Shaan Puri

what I love my cousin no he's great but I 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. Information it makes me trust you it makes me think this guy knows what he's talking about or if it's like like our friend nick huber does this too it's like he'll send us a picture of him smoking a cigar you know playing golf at you know 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 pm regularly unless you're doing really well it makes me more likely to invest in nick huber's storage company that I know that he's doing well in life like some people take it as an anti signal like oh why why isn't he working hard to me I'm like no if you're if you're able to like do well in life that means you're doing something right and I'm like I'm not trust so he tweeted something out he goes I'm looking for like a car like a new suv it's like kind of a general vague thing and so he got and he then he like defined it right afterwards so specifically he goes the you know the the user experience of a tesla the size of an escalade the he goes with enough room for 3 car seats and a pair of golf clubs and I was like first of all isn't it just a more fun way to look for a car like just to kind of imagine really what you want and like sink into the vividness of like just having it and not like worrying about the world tesla doesn't make a big car like an escoda 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 alright he's planning ahead like that's good and and I just thought it was a great example of like specificity so to me a lot of people are vague in general when they should really be being specific and then the opposite is also true sometimes people are like 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 gotta 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 right that 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 when do you be when do you be general so he so my trainer I was like well what if I don't know what I want right like if he said what you know what's your body goal right his personal trainer I'd be like well I don't really have a picture like I don't know if I wanna like I could say oh I just wanna 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 he's like cool just imagine satisfaction he goes just just first get to a place of feeling satisfied about it where you don't stress you're not stressed about it anymore he goes he goes you know relief is a very powerful emotion satisfaction is a powerful emotion he goes most people feel relieved one time a day and it's when they poop and 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 gonna have that day he goes so I get good at feeling relief I wanna 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 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 let and so we made a deal it's like I'm I'm gonna be relieved more times than I poop today and it's like that's the goal that's the first goal

Sam Parr

the salt from your trainer

Shaan Puri

yeah what

Sam Parr

A smart-ass dude, by the way. To talk about the real... What your cousin's doing on real estate. I've talked to a bunch of these real estate guys, and I'm friends with a lot of them. Keith Wasserman, Chris Fort... is that his name? Fort?

Shaan Puri

yeah I think so

Sam Parr

Nick Huber, Moses Kagan, your cousin's getting in there, the strip mall guy. So, there are like 10 of them that are really popular, maybe 20. I see the returns; they're really good. The fees that they charge are crazy high, but like, you know, who cares? Nick thinks it's a huge fee, but like, I'm getting good returns. I don't care. This is one of the coolest things that's happening on Twitter right now. These real estate people are just crushing it all through Twitter. It's pretty amazing.

Shaan Puri

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."

Sam Parr

yes

Shaan Puri

Which is like, that means if you're in real estate, do what my cousins do, do what these guys are doing: **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 do 1-hour calls, seminars, webinars, and in-person meetups trying to schmooze for a buck.

Sam Parr

Well, I have no idea how big Nick Huber's portfolio is. This is Nick Huber from Sweaty Startup. 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.

Shaan Puri

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 one reason I haven't invested in a lot of these guys, because of the fee structure. Which might be to my detriment, but one thing I don't fundamentally like about real estate fees is that they all make this like 2-3% acquisition fee.

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

Which, like, you know, you will buy like a $50,000,000 thing and it's like, "Ah, so you just banked $1,000,000 in your pocket just for buying the thing." This leads you to an incentive, which is to go buy **bullshit** instead of being really discerning between a great property and a good property. It's like just go accumulate. I think Nick has a little bit of a different strategy because he's got a kind of template now. He buys some sort of storage thing, cuts out a bunch of the labor, and adds in these automations. It's like he 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 NAIC actually does a great job of that. But, in general, I would say one reason I've shied away is because I dislike this incentive mismatch where you're incentivized to take my money and go buy something because you get money today that's guaranteed. That doesn't link to your returns; it's only linked to your returns over a long period.

Shaan Puri

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.

Sam Parr

And I have no idea if they're killing it because they're skilled. Although many of the people I had named, I've talked to, and they appear skilled, 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 boom in real estate. So, of course, they're killing it. But the numbers are... I mean, I'm an investor of Nick. I see the returns and I'm like, "Oh yeah, dude, I'll give you more if..."

Shaan Puri

And then, by the way, if I was Nick, I would do exactly what he's doing. I'd charge the highest fees I can and be like, "You're still getting a great return, correct? Alright, fantastic. If you can go beat that return somewhere else, I invite you to do it." Which is... you know, he's not as upfront about that, but that's what I would do exactly if I was in his position. I know I could generate great returns, so I don't knock him for that. I think that's what I would do. But on my side, I just hesitate as an investor in that sort of thing. Maybe that's to my detriment, though.

Sam Parr

you wanna do more topics or do you wanna save yours for wednesday

Shaan Puri

Let's do a couple ideas. I think people like ideas if you made it to the end of the episode. Congratulations! Alright, so let me pitch you two ideas real quick: 1. One I'm calling "Copy My Trip" Okay, so I'm booking a vacation right now, taking the family on a vacation...

Sam Parr

great idea I it's a great name

Shaan Puri

Thank you! I came up with it myself. Yeah, I love it! Even the business idea. I just put the idea of a family vacation together. So, I'm like Googling, "Okay, unless I want to go to Hawaii, for example." I'm like, "Alright, I want to go to Hawaii. Which island? I don't know." Okay, which resort? Oh God, here we go! I gotta figure out which resort. It matters; it's going to change my experience if I go to the wrong place or the right place. And then I'm like, "Okay, all the details in between." 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? What I want is for my wife to follow all these influencers on Instagram that are like mommy influencers. When they buy something, she's like, "That's a good thing! I'm going to buy that too." Because she's like, "Look, we have the same taste." These people are promoting things that have a good track record. So, she's bought a couple of the things that look good, and it has paid off. Now she has more trust in them. I don't get why they can't—or maybe they do this, I don't know—but I don't get why they're not just saying, "Copy my trip." If you want to go to Disneyland, literally click this, and here's the full itinerary: 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. I just want their whole trip that I can copy, and they have basically a TikTok or Instagram story version that I could just browse. I could be like, "Oh yeah, this looks fun! I want to do this." Instead, I went on Expedia, and I'm like, "This is an awful experience."

Sam Parr

it's overwhelming

Shaan Puri

Here's an overwhelming list of 100 options ranked in 5 different ways. I clicked the thing, but I don't know if the reviews are real or not. I'm looking at the photos, and they don't have all the photos. It's like a static photo from an airplane above the resort. It's like, dude, I just want to see someone walk into the room and be like, "Oh, this is really nice! The bed's good, there's space over here, and oh, this is cool! They give you breakfast every morning. Check this out!" You know, like an Instagram story. So, I just think there should be a thing called "Copy My Trip" that anyone could do. It would create a profession of basically professional travelers—people who find the best path for how to have a trip to Bali or whatever. For example, Sam, you might follow somebody who has a fitness-oriented angle. It's like, "Oh yeah, they want to go to this place." This person likes Airbnbs versus hotels, so I align with them. Then it's like they went and trained at this gym and got Muay Thai classes when they went to Thailand. That's awesome! That's the type of trip I want to have, so I'm going to just copy their trip.

Sam Parr

dude I'm

Shaan Puri

bored with that springboard

Sam Parr

We could do it. We do it for trips and weddings. Whenever I saw my wife working so hard at 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 was like, "Yeah, just do the exact same thing. It was... we all had a great time, right?"

Shaan Puri

Yeah, bachelor parties... exactly! Birthday parties. I want to copy your work, which is like Pinterest, but just like the whole thing strung together.

Sam Parr

So, how? In my lifestyle, you would just do it where someone uploads an itinerary. Then, people rate it, and you pay them money to buy it.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. So you don't even have to buy the trip. Just by doing the trip, those people get paid mad money from affiliates. Like if I book that resort because this person said, "This resort is awesome," I'm gonna get a kickback of... like all the things that they recommend now.

Sam Parr

that's pretty insane

Shaan Puri

Some perverse incentive, but like everybody kind of offers a kickback. So I think you can basically, through affiliates, monetize this pretty heavily for the creator themselves. What you could do is you could say it's not about the 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 promote them, you know what I mean? I would do something like that.

Sam Parr

Where are you going? Hawaii? Oh, that's cool. And you haven't found...

Shaan Puri

like not a fictional example this is a real example

Sam Parr

and you haven't been able to find

Shaan Puri

I like it. So first, I went on Expedia and I was like, "Oh God, miserable! I don't want to do this." Okay, what else can I do? I could tweet this out, then I'm going to get a bunch of recommendations. Alright, that might work, but that only works for me because I have a big following. I was like, "How do people do this?" Then I thought, let me go look at an Instagram person I follow. But they're not going to happen to post about it that day. So, it needs to be saved somewhere, like a link in the bio or one of their Instagram story highlights, which is like, "Take one of our trips." They always do this with fashion. It's called "I like, I buy," or some shit like that. It's like, if you like my outfits, you can go here and buy any of the items for my outfit, and they get a kickback. So, it's like that for trips. Then I went on YouTube and I was watching a family vlog at one of the resorts. I'm like, "Okay, they're okay," but it's this 8-minute video and it just covers that one aspect. It doesn't tell me about all the other things I could go do when I'm there and all that stuff. So, anyway, I just think that...

Sam Parr

dude that's ball I'm a bore

Shaan Puri

elements of this happening is just somebody should make this like an explicit thing I think

Sam Parr

**Jack Smith** uses VAs [Virtual Assistants] to do stuff constantly, and he's like... at one point? He even had some VAs going into hotels in different countries and taking pictures, sending them to him to let him know what it was like. But on a... on a lighter level, for real.

Shaan Puri

outrageous thing I've ever heard

Sam Parr

it's crazy and on a lighter

Shaan Puri

wait did he pay for them to go on vacation like he found a local va near

Sam Parr

The hotel found a local person. He's like, "Hey, can you go to these three hotels, take pictures, and let me know?" Then he would show them to his wife, like, "Alright, which ones do you want?" It was pretty cool.

Shaan Puri

I'm calling him jack larue from now on that's so jack larue

Sam Parr

is kinda similar to that

Shaan Puri

dude he

Sam Parr

He just sent me a picture, and it was him and Andrew Wilkinson. He's like, "Look, I'm with Andrew," and they have their TED Talk badges on. So they're clearly at TED together, and I was like, "Oh, how funny!"

Shaan Puri

he's awesome

Sam Parr

Yeah, and anyway, he does this all the time. It's actually really interesting. There's this company called Flightfox. Do you know what Flightfox is?

Shaan Puri

Is that like where you'll just... is it like somebody will book it for you? Is it a travel agent, or is it the one where you're like, "I just want something, give me the best deal I can take"? Which one?

Sam Parr

Is it... it's amazing! I have no idea how they make this work. So basically, you go to Flightfox and you always have to click the button that says you're traveling for business. Then, you select options like, "I want to go around this date," and "I want to come back at this time." You could even say, "I want to go around this time." Then, you leave notes like, "I've got a budget of [amount]," or "I only want first class," or "I have to be back for a wedding, so I need to make sure there are backup flights." Someone on the other end pops up and goes, "Hey, what's going on? I'm with [company name], I'm here to help you." It's a real person! They find 5 to 10 different flights that fit what you want. Then, you finally say, "Alright, this itinerary looks good," or you could even reply and say, "Actually, I had a change of plans. I've got to change this, this, and this." They'll go and find flights for you, and they find the cheapest ones. They know where to search for them. They only get paid after you book the flight, and they just take a $50 fee. I have no idea how they make money! When I was in Portugal, my flight got canceled. So, I just logged on and said, "Hey, the flight you booked was canceled. Can you address it, please?" They call for you and 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.

Shaan Puri

get it while it lasts

Sam Parr

it's awesome

Shaan Puri

That's amazing! That's like... I think I told you about this thing I did once: Mopoints. Mopoints.com. It's our good buddy Ramon's good buddy.

Sam Parr

oh yeah yeah yeah yeah

Shaan Puri

Yeah, this was like one of the best things I did. I booked this call with them, and you go to **m0points.com**. Basically, it solves the problem of, "What credit card should I get?" So, you just call this guy, and he's like, "Alright, look, you could just Google 'What credit card should I get?' Guess what you're gonna get? The most SEO-optimized blog post in the world because they can make so much money off referring credit cards. You don't know if you're really getting the real deal." I just called this guy for 30 minutes, and he was like, "Alright, tell me about what you spend on and tell me what you want. Do you want to travel like a baller?" He said, "Look, I travel first class worldwide just off this. I'm not rich; I just use points to do it. Here's how." I was like, "Yeah, I want that." He said, "Cool, get the Amex Gold. You're gonna get 4x points on all your Facebook ads for your e-commerce thing. You're gonna get one for you and one for your wife, so now you're gonna get like 2,000,000 points or whatever in the next year." He continued, "Then to travel, you just do this: you transfer points. Don't book within their points portal because that's what I used to do. I used to go to my points thing and be like, 'Rewards flights? Oh man, I get like half a flight for all my Chase points.' No, you need to transfer to travel partners." Then he said, "Check this out. You use KLM to fly here, here, and here. Just call me when you want to book. For now, buy the Amex Gold, start racking up your points, and when you want to book first class worldwide, just call me again." 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 relief of knowing I'm in good hands." Right? Like the real Allstate, "I'm in good hands" is freaking Moe from Moe Points.

Sam Parr

dude I'm a and so I'm a fan of

Shaan Puri

these businesses

Sam Parr

I'll... and I like the model of these things. They are typically monetized through affiliates, but instead you're just gonna pay and I'll give you a more honest answer. I actually... I like that idea a lot.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. Me too. I think it's great, and people should go sign up for that thing. If you spend a significant amount on your business, it just makes financial sense to optimize that. You're either going to get the best cash back... I found out, "Oh, if I use this Bank of America Platinum Honors cash back card, I get 2.6% back," which is way higher than anybody else gives you.

Sam Parr

does that mean it basically adds 2% to your bottom line

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. I take 2.6%. So, you know, if you're spending $100 a month on ads, which is very common for e-commerce... Let's see, it's a round number here. Now you're getting $2,600 a month back just straight to your bottom line. That just makes sense, where you can reinvest that.

Sam Parr

A 5,000-person company, or like BCG, who sends people all around the world, do they just have a bank full of points?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I don't know what they do. I actually asked my previous startup this. I go, "What do we do with all the points we collect? Who gets to use those?" I think they said that they just cash them. They just do the cash back basically, or they convert them to cash, which is like not the most efficient way to use it. But, you know, for some it's a fair way to do it and they just... like, you know, keep it. I was like, "Who keeps it?" Yeah, you have to come again... where is this money?

Sam Parr

I kept using our points at the hustle, and I flew first class like twice a month. It was sick! Then, when I sold the company, I didn't have that perk anymore. I was like, "Damn, I gotta pay for a flight for the first time in 4 years." It sucks.

Shaan Puri

that's how you gotta negotiate that in

Sam Parr

I kept them. I got to keep all the points. We had like 1,000,000 points, but I didn't get future points.

Shaan Puri

gotcha alright that's it I'll save my other ideas for the next one and

Sam Parr

you got a crying baby

Shaan Puri

yeah I know

Sam Parr

alright thank you