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My First MillionHow A Fat Computer Geek Became The Jeff Bezos Of The Dark Web
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75 min read · 14,675 words- 0:00 – 22:00
Le Roux and Satoshi
- SPSam Parr
[upbeat music] All right, let's do some topics. What do you got? I got, I got a couple. What do you wanna- Dude, I got a bunch of good stuff. All right, let's pick one of yours. Let, let's do the Satoshi and the Paul Le Roux thing because they're both really interesting. Um, do you know, let's do, let's do, which one do you wanna do first? P- I don't know who Paul Le Roux is, I just looked him up. You don't know who Paul Le Roux is? Okay. No. Fucking great name though. Dude, listen to this. Like, d- how much more would I be worth if I was Shaan Le Roux? More. At least triple, right? [laughs] A lot more. A lot more. And how much more respect would I get? [laughs] He's also African. He's from, uh, South Africa I think. Uh, so Ben, y- you're nodding a little bit like you know who this is. Is that true?
- SPSpeaker
Uh, yeah, I know who Paul Le Roux is. He's kinda like, um, uh, who's the guy we were talking about that you knew, um-
- SPSam Parr
Ross Ulbricht.
- SPSpeaker
He's kinda like if r- if Ross had been as crazy as everyone thought, but actually like 10 times crazier, that's Paul Le Roux. Paul-
- SPSam Parr
[laughs] Whoa.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, yeah. I, I don't know.
- SPSam Parr
All right, fill me in. Let's- Who's this guy? All right, so he's bas- All right, so Paul Le Roux, he's this big old fat disgusting guy. He's like, like-
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
[laughs] Imagine- [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
Like Jabba the Hutt?
- SPSam Parr
Yeah. [laughs] 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 playing?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
- SPSam Parr
He kinda looks like that. He's just a total slob, but he's-
- SPSpeaker
Wow
- SPSam Parr
... this computer whiz. Yeah, Google him.
- SPSpeaker
I'm gonna do it.
- SPSam Parr
Um, he's, like, disgusting, and it, that kinda fits the personality of, of, of the whole story, and there's this great book, uh, that I'm reading, uh, it's called Mastermind. It's about him. And basically, this guy always, like, kinda 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 2 drugs. So like no, like, um, he was able to sell some opioids, but not, like, the famous ones, things that are considered a Schedule 2, which is just one below b- between Schedule 1. And he created this company called RX Limited, and in, like, three or four years it netted him hundreds of millions of dollars in profit.
- SPSpeaker
Wow.
- SPSam Parr
And the, do you remember years ago when you would get an email and it said like, "Hey, we sell prescriptions. Click here." Like, do you remember that, like years and years ago when you were in high school and grade school?
- SPSpeaker
Not really, but go on. Let's, let's say I, let me say yes. Go ahead.
- SPSam Parr
Well, basic- And then, like, maybe you remember, like, going to, like, these websites where it, like, just showed just tons of drugs, and, like, you'd get texts that says like, "Buy drugs online." Well, basically, he created this website, RX Limited, and then eventually he started, like, creating so many domain names that he created his own, his own domain registration system. And then eventually his network got so big, he created his own email system 'cause he didn't want anyone to, uh, hack into his stuff. And at one point he had like 2 or 3,000 employees working at this place, mostly Filipinos, mostly working call centers, and he had, in Philippines and in Israel because he said the Israeli guys were the hardest working for the cheapest, you know, the cheap, the, for the cheap rate. And he, uh, it was, it was wild, and he, and he had basically hundreds of different stores selling drugs. And the way it worked is he would somehow convince a doctor that he was, like, doing everything by the book, and technically he kinda was doing everything by the book, but it just really quickly warped into not. But basically, he had all these doctors in America in, like, Minnesota, Kentucky, Florida, like these relatively small doctors, and like, "Hey, we're a telemedicine service. Can you fill some of the prescriptions that we're doing? Um, it's all legal, and we'll just send you the, uh, the prescriptions that we need, and you just sign off, and we're gonna send it to a pharmacy." So he would send it to a pharmacy, and these local mom-and-pop pharmacies would be like, "Oh, okay. Dr. X is, um, just f- called in this prescription. I'm gonna ship it to the patient. No big deal." And so both the doctors and the patient, uh, b- doctors and the pharmacists, they all thought that they were mostly following the law. They're like, "This is kinda weird that I'm now shipping out, I'm like a mom-and-pop pharmacist and I'm shipping out like 2,000 orders a week. Like, that's weird, but I have no reason to believe this is illegal."
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- SPSam Parr
And eventually it did become highly illegal where, like, he, i- it was just like you, you didn't need, uh, to see any doctor to get any of these prescriptions, and at one point he was selling, like, 80% of all online drugs in America. It was something large. Ben-
- SPSpeaker
Wow
- SPSam Parr
... Ben, am I missing anything? And throughout doing this, this is where things get even crazier. So, like, this story in itself is already interesting. Literally, uh, it made, I believe, $400 million in profit in four years. One employee went to his apartment in Manila in the Philippines, and he said that he saw $100 million in cash in the house.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
And he, this guy, like, didn't want the IRS to see anything, so he would just transfer it into gold 'cause this was be- before Bitcoin was really around.
- SPSpeaker
He, he lived in the Philippines?
- SPSam Parr
He was a, an African guy. So I believe he was born in, like, Cambodia, and then moved to South Africa, and then moved to the Philippines, or maybe he was like Zimbabwe, uh, something like that. But this guy had this, like, grandiose thinking where he thought that he, like, he's like, "I owe it to the world to run the world." Very grandiose thinking. And so he hires these ex-Israeli guys to run the call centers. Eventually he hires these ex-Israeli army guys to be his bodyguards, and in doing that, he starts learning a little bit about, like, arms dealing. And so eventually he buys thousands of acres of land in Zimbabwe and Somalia, and he was like, "I'm gonna raid an African nation, and I'm gonna set up, like, a country, and I'm gonna have my own, I'm gonna be the leader of, of, of a small African nation, and hopefully eventually, uh, a much larger nation." Like, some crazy shit.
- SPSpeaker
Holy shit. [laughs]
- 22:00 – 40:30
Peter Thiel at Bitcoin conference
- SPShaan Puri
Peter Thiel goes, he gives this talk at the Bitcoin conference in 2022. Just happened. And he, at the, before he comes out they played on the, on the big screen this video that I had seen before. I think I even talked about it on here once. But there's this video, I, I've watched a ton of old Peter Thiel videos. So there's a video of him giving a talk in 1999, and he's talking about the idea of a currency not owned by, uh, by the government. And basically this, 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, [smacks lips] "You know, the world needs a currency that's not controlled by, you know, the central banks of different countries," blah, blah, blah. And I think PayPal originally that was their vision, was to create... They used to have shirts that said, "One currency to rule them all," or something like that. It was like this i- original idea of PayPal was to create one global virtual currency, and they shifted away from that later. Like, and he sa- he at this talk he goes, "Yeah, we went to something that was more practical and it kinda worked, but like it was less ambitious." And like you could tell he kinda like regretted it, which is like, "We, before we wanted to create our own financial system, and then like-
- SPSam Parr
We settled on PayPal
- SPShaan Puri
... it got really hard and we settled on, oh, PayPal. It's a payments network that like it works with your existing bank, with the existing dollar currency, and with your, to send to somebody else's existing bank. So we're just like a funnel to like funnel money through." And like, yeah, that was cool, but like, um, man, this other thing was the big idea. And Bitcoin kinda proved that that was the big idea, you know, later on. But him giving that talk in 1999 to me is so crazy. Like, that's one of the greatest like calls I've ever seen of just calling it, of what's gonna happen and why it's gonna happen. And in that talk he's like, [smacks lips] he's like, "Uh, you know, the, this currency will live on your cellphone outside of a bank. Um, s- you know, smartphones are gonna be a thing." And you think about it, it's like, oh, 1999, man. iPhone came out in 2007. So he's predicting smartphones. He's like, "We're already seeing the adoption of smartphones in Finland-
- SPSam Parr
And he also said-
- SPShaan Puri
... parts of Japan." [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
He gave a five-year term. And you're like, he, it was 10, but he got it right.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, he's like, "A billi-" He's like, "There will be a billion smartphone devices in the next five years." It took 10 years, but like a billion devices, like there was never a b- there was never a billion-user product. Like, there weren't a billion people who had computers ever. Um, there weren't a billion people I don't even think that used televisions. I think the cellphone was the first thing where it was like, a smartphone was like the first thing where- A billion people had this product, so of course, if you launch an app that works, your addressable market is a billion people who could download your app, like-
- SPSam Parr
Right
- SPShaan Puri
... im- immediately. Like, it's kind of an overlooked fact about why mobile was so big. It's just like, well, there wasn't ever a billion people who could have used your product before this. Like, your restaurant could never serve a billion people. Your store could never serve a billion people. Like, McDonald's couldn't even serve a billion people, no matter how many locations they opened. Like, the cell phone was the really the first thing that was able to do that, you know, that quickly. And, um, and so he's... You know, when he was talking about, like, smartphone adoption is rising in Finland, I'm like, "Who even pays attention to what's going on in Finland, dude?" Like, uh, 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?
- SPSam Parr
No.
- SPShaan Puri
Like, me neither. And so it's like-
- SPSam Parr
To me, like, Finland, Denmark, and like Holland and Sweden are all the same thing.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs] Yeah, exactly.
- SPSam Parr
Yeah. Like I, I don't know, dude. It's like that's where white people live.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah. Why? You're clean and you're nice.
- SPSam Parr
Yeah. [laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
I get it.
- SPSam Parr
Yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
Like [laughs] and so, and so like, I s- thought about that. I'm like, oh, no wonder the people who were hanging out with Peter Thiel went on to do like some pretty-
- SPSam Parr
Wait, sorry. Hold on.
- SPShaan Puri
What? Hey, ma.
- SPSam Parr
Sorry. There's some random-
- SPShaan Puri
Meatloaf. [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
My bad. There's some like random guy, like, knocking on my window. All right. Sorry. Go ahead.
- SPShaan Puri
So I, 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? Like, if you've ever heard of the PayPal Mafia, it's like, yeah, like people who worked at PayPal went on to create YouTube and LinkedIn and Tesla and SpaceX and Yelp and Affirm. And like, I think there's like over $10 billion companies that came out of the PayPal Mafia. And, um, like Kiva, like one of the be- best nonprofits came out of that. And so it's like, dude, why is that? It's 'cause you're hanging out with a bunch of people who are already thinking about the future, living in the future. They're all weird nerds. And I remember the, the, one of the co-founders of PayPal, Max Levchin, he had this thing where he's like, he was interviewing somebody and the guy started, like, talking about how, like, he's like, "Yeah, I love to play pickup hoops." He's like, "We're not hiring this guy." He's like, "Why?" He's like-
- SPSam Parr
Oh my God
- SPShaan Puri
... he's like, he's like, "No, no great programmer I know plays pickup basketball." [laughs] He's like-
- SPSam 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 four out of four. You out."
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Like, like if your last name is-
- 40:30 – 51:00
Why knowing exactly what you want is a super power
- SPSam Parr
uh, "It's a superpower to know what you really want." Right, Ben? Isn't that w- was that the tweet?
- SPSpeaker
Uh, yeah. Uh, I, I, I really do think that.
- SPShaan Puri
Why, why would you tweet that?
- SPSpeaker
I-
- SPShaan Puri
What did you see or hear that made you tweet that?
- SPSpeaker
Um, so what I saw is that I, I've had a bunch of people reaching out to me recently, and the people who are like, "Hey, I'd love to connect," I get so annoyed with. I'm like, you just dumped something on my plate for me to, like, figure out, which I just don't wanna 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 wanna get it to this size. I am having trouble in these two is- areas, and I'd love to talk to you about it." I'm like, "Great. You know exactly what you want. I will, I will gladly give you that." Um, and, uh, it's just, it applies almost everywhere in life. Like, the guy who comes up to you and is like, "Hey, do you have any spare change?" No, I don't have any spare change. "Hey, I need $2.50 to get a ride home on the bus. Do you have $2.50?" All right, I guess I got $2.50. Like, it's a superpower in every way.
- SPShaan Puri
So, uh, so, so I like that you said that. There's a, a tweet that my cousin put out yesterday. My cousin, he's on Twitter, Rohan-
- SPSpeaker
Dude, who, it-
- SPShaan Puri
... Joher.
- SPSpeaker
Uh, he, great guy. According to Twitter, he's killing it. I, I don't-
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah. [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
I haven't talked to him in forever, but, like, he, his updates-
- SPShaan Puri
He's, he's killing it-
- SPSpeaker
... I'm like, dude
- SPShaan Puri
... at looking like he's killing it. I don't know if he's actually killing it.
- SPSpeaker
No.
- SPShaan Puri
I haven't caught up in a while, but like-
- SPSpeaker
No, I don't want, I'm not disrespecting him at all. I'm saying, like, his, like, his updates are amazing. He just bought like 20,000 square feet of something. Like, he's on top of the game.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, and actually, he did a good job of figuring out what he wanted.
- SPSpeaker
Bro, you just called out your cousin. You should take that back.
- SPShaan Puri
What? I love my cousin. No, he's great. Uh, but I, I actually meant that as a compliment. There's a skill-
- SPSpeaker
Okay
- SPShaan Puri
... 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, and it's like a great checklist. It's like, oh, you're just putting out great on-point information. It makes me trust you, makes me think this guy knows what he's talking about. Or if it's like- Like our friend Nick Huber does this too. It's like he'll send us a picture of him smoking a cigar, you know, playing golf at, you know, 1:00 PM. It's like, "Wow, this guy must be killing it." Like, you don't, you don't get to go out and smoke a cigar and play golf, you know, at 1- 1:00 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 like-
- SPSam Parr
But what'd your cousin tweet, though?
- SPShaan Puri
I'm, I'm more trusting. So he tweeted something out. He goes, "I'm looking for, like, a car, like, a new SUV." As, like, kind of a general, vague thing. And so what he go- he, and he, then he, like, defined it right afterwards so specifically. He goes, "The exper- you know, the f- 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." And I was like, first of all, isn't that just a more fun way to look for a car? Like, just to kind of imagine really what you want and, like, sink into the vividness of, like, just having it and not, like, worrying about the, "Well, Tesla doesn't make a big car like an Escalade." No, fuck that. I'm not s- I'm not grounded in reality. I'm living over here in my reality of what I want. And he's only, he's got one kid, so I'm like, you know, three car seats. All right, he's planning ahead. Like, that's good. And, um, and I just thought it was a great example of, like, specificity. So, s- so to me, a lot of people are vague and general when they should really be being specific. And then the opposite is also true. Sometimes people are like, "Man, I don't know what I want specifically," and they get tied up in a knot because of that. And my trainer had a great framework for that. He goes, "You gotta know when to be general and when to be specific." He goes, "If you, uh..." Like sometimes he will tell you, [snaps fingers] "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.
- SPSam Parr
Right.
- SPShaan Puri
That, that, that... What he described as a car is not just a car. It's a lifestyle. And, um, and then the second thing is, like, when do you be va- 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? He's a personal trainer. I'd be like, "Well, I don't really have a picture of, like... I don't know if I wanna..." Like, I could say, "Oh, I just wanna have, like, a 12-pack," but, like, I don't even know if that's true, right? I'm like, "I don't know exactly what I want." And he's like, "Cool. Just imagine satisfaction." He goes, "Just, just first get to a place of feeling satisfied about it where you don't str- you're not stressed about it anymore." He goes, he goes, "You know, relief is a very powerful emotion. Satisfaction's a powerful emotion." He goes, "Most people feel relief one time a day, and it's when they poop." [laughs] He goes, "And now people bring their phone in, and they're not even paying attention. They miss it. They miss out on the one moment of relief they were 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 ha- 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, 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. [laughs] That's the first goal.
- SPSam Parr
That's hilarious.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
This is all from your trainer?
- 51:00 – 1:00:50
Business ides: Copy My Trip
- SPShaan Puri
I wanna do this." Like, well, I went on Expedia and I'm like, this is awful experience. It's like-
- SPSam Parr
It's overwhelming
- SPShaan Puri
... here's an overwhelming list of 100 options ranked in five different ways. Then I click the fucking thing. I don't know if the reviews are real or not. I'm looking at the photos. They don't have all the photo- it's like a photo, it's like static photo from, like, a fucking airplane above the resort. It's like, dude, I just wanna see, like, someone walk into the room and be like, "Oh, this is really nice. The bed's good. The, you know, there's space over here." And like, "Oh, this is cool. They give you breakfast every morning. Like, check this out." You know, like, like a Instagram story, right? So I just think that there should be an Inst- a, a thing called Copy My Trip that anyone could do. P- it would create a profession of basically professional travelers, like people who they go find the best path of how to have a trip to, you know, Bali or whatever. [coughs] And, like, Sam, you might follow somebody who's got, like, a fitness oriented angle-
- SPSam Parr
Right
- SPShaan Puri
... where it's like, oh, yeah, they wanna, like, [clicks tongue] go... They, this person likes Airbnbs versus hotels, so I, like, align with them. And then it's like they went and trained at this gym and got Muay Thai classes when they went to Thailand. Like, that's awesome. That's the type of trip I wanna have, so I'm gonna just copy their trip.
- SPSam Parr
Dude, I'm on board with that.
- SPShaan Puri
Like, use it as a springboard.
- SPSam Parr
We could do it. We, uh... Do it for trips and weddings. Whenever I, like, saw my wife, like, working so hard at this wedding, I'm like, "Dude, just find someone else and just do the exact same thing. No one will know. Who cares?"
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Or her, her, 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."
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
And of course, obviously they don't like that, but I'm just like, "Yeah, just do the exact same thing. It was, we all had a great time, right?" Uh-
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, bachelor parties.
- SPSam Parr
Yeah. [laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
Exactly. Yeah. Birthday parties.
- SPSam Parr
Yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
I wanna, I wanna copy your, I wanna copy your work. Which is, like, it's Pinterest, but just, like, the whole thing strung together.
- SPSam Parr
So how-
- SPShaan Puri
And, like, by lifestyle
- SPSam Parr
... and you would just, you would just do it where, like, uh, someone uploads an itinerary, and then you, and then you people rate it, and you pay them money and buy it?
- SPShaan Puri
Y- yeah, exactly. So, um, so you, you don't even have to buy the trip. Like, just by doing the trip, those people get paid mad money from affiliates. Like, if I book that resort because this person said this resort is awesome, I'm gonna get a kickback of, like, all the things that they recommend. Now-
- SPSam Parr
That's pretty insane
- SPShaan Puri
... it's some perverse incentive, but, like, everybody kinda offers a kickback. So I think you can basically, through affiliates, you could monetize this pretty heavily for the, for the creator themselves. Which, which, which you could do is you could say it's not about... Like, creator, you just recommend what you genuinely recommend. We're gonna 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.
- SPSam Parr
Right.
- SPShaan Puri
You know what I mean? I would do something like that.
- SPSam Parr
Where are you going?
- SPShaan Puri
Hawaii. [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Oh, that's cool. And, and you haven't found like that-
- SPShaan Puri
This is not a fictional example. This is a real example. [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
And you haven't been able to find a, a perfect-
Episode duration: 1:01:03
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