Having Dave take the packages to the post office every day would help, but in reality, it only saved about an hour of my time. With the amount of work I had, and facing the reality that my order volume and client base would continue to expand, I would require a lot more help. In the past, when I had attended Phoenix House, an inpatient rehab, the residents were given certain responsibilities, or jobs, to ensure the seamless operation of the community. As residents proved responsible, they rose up the ranks, and were given more and more responsibility. As residents rose to a coordinator position, they managed more people, representing corporate structure to teach delegation of responsibilities. As I rose to “House Coordinator”, the top position in the house, I was forced to delegate all tasks as a lesson in management. It is not as easy as it sounds. If you want something done correctly, it is usually best done yourself. However, you can’t do everything. To teach management skills, you have to learn how to effectively delegate responsibilities. The irony is, this inpatient rehab, an institution created to teach me how to avast my criminal thinking and criminal behaviors, taught me how to create and manage, what would turn out to be, the largest black market anabolic steroid operation in U.S. history.
As much as I wanted to do everything in my business, I had to delegate responsibilities. If someone could package the orders and ship them out, that would ameliorate hours of workload. I heard Dave walk in the door and make his way back to my office, where I was working. As he grabbed the packages, I pulled a hundred dollars out of my money clip.
“I appreciate your help,” I said as I handed him the money. “I have some additional responsibilities of which I could use some reprieve, if you would like to generate more income. I was thinking I could pay twenty dollars per shipment to have you come package each order and take it to the post office.”
“I was thinking about that,” he responded. “I don’t know if I would have time to come over here for long periods every day. Furthermore, I have to keep this furtive, because my girlfriend is not aware of what we are doing, and I don’t know that she would approve. I was thinking Little Steve would be a good employee. He has an eBay business, so he already knows how to package and ship products. He would be perfect. Do you want me to ask him?”
“Yes, see if he’ll do it. Thanks.”
We called him Little Steve because several of our friends were named Steve, and he was the smaller in stature than the rest. I knew him as an acquaintance, and he seemed competent enough.
“Additionally,” Dave continued, “I will create another business email, prices@bdsupplements.im, for people who just need a product and price list, I will keep that updated and send people pricelists throughout the day. I will post this new email, and when it should be used, on the website. That should cut down on the traffic to your email. Just give me two hundred a week and I will take care of that for you.”
“Thank you,” I ingratiated. “That will be pragmatic.”
I thought of Gene, how he ran his business, and how I wanted to emulate his business model. To implement Gene’s business model, I would have to delegate compete control of certain aspects of the business to others, and manage their function from afar. As much as I did not want to give up control of any aspect of my business, this was a necessary step to scale. Moreover, it would free up some of my time to spend a portion of this money that was pouring in to my house. Additionally, there was a part of me that thought surrendering control of certain aspects of the business may shed liability for me, although I was aware that conspiracy laws would make that improbable.
I would ask Little Steve to take control of the shipping operation. I was reticent because this meant I would have to allow him to take all of the products, probably one hundred thousand dollars’ worth, to his house to package and ship from there. Thinking about how this would work, I could not pay him hourly, for there would be no way for me to keep track, and there would be no incentive to work quickly to get every package out in a timely manner. I would have to pay him by volume of work he completed, which would incentivize fast and efficient production. I would offer to pay him twenty dollars per package shipped. For an average of ten to twenty packages per day, he would make two hundred to four hundred dollars a day, which was well over one hundred thousand a year. There was no way he was going to make more than that on his own, and hence, there was no way he could say no.
By outsourcing the shipping, I was free to concentrate on aspects of the business that I enjoyed, such as customer service, collecting money, and expanding the business. When a customer sent me payment information, they included their shipping information. I would aggregate client data including the name, shipping address, and order into an email account created solely for this purpose. At the end of the day, I would then send this email, which included the entire days’ worth of orders and aggregated data, to Little Steve, the shipper. Little Steve had until the post office closed the next day to package all of the orders and get them out to be shipped.
NEXT >> Episode 20 (Money Collectors)
Memoirs of a Steroid Kingpin (Table of Contents)
Start reading from the beginning or browse the table of contents for summaries of each episode of “Memoirs of a Steroid Kingpin”.
Ryan’s Root’s real-life autobiographical story is a must-read account of his rise and fall as one of the largest anabolic steroid dealers on the Internet.
“Memoirs of a Steroid Kingpin” is published online for the very first time in a serialized format exclusively for MESO-Rx readers. We plan on publishing 3 to 4 new episodes every week.Stay tuned and enjoy the ride!
@bdsupplements thank you sir for putting this together. It is a very intriguing read.
Sometime back I got a source to open up to me a little behind the scenes about how his empire came to be. Being that I’m a guy that falls a sleep every night to a good documentary and that this topic hits close to home being that I’ve been a member of these boards a decade, this is a truly fascinating topic to me. I’ve often let my mind wander off and picture a night sitting around a camp fire with big sources of the past and present and just sitting back and listening to their stories. Although there is no camp fire, thank you very much for sharing and opening up. Much respect for over coming everything and turning this into a legal business. I look forward to the next installments.
Thank you very much for your support B Ware. I really appreciate you. Interestingly enough, the movies and stories I enjoy the most are documentaries as well, especially tales of rags to riches. I was so captivated by movies such as Wolf of Wallstreet and War Dogs, that I began framing my own story in this fashion in my head, and thought about it the whole time I was in prison. When I was finally released from prison, and I began opening up on some of these boards, Millard asked me if I would be interested in writing my story. I had been writing it in my head for years. It was a no brainer. Putting it on paper, it just flowed. When I commenced delving back into the intricate details, I began remembering aspects that were forgotten. I have had fun recounting everything, and candidly, this story has come out better than I expected. Thanks again for reading.
I'm really glad you agreed to do this. There hasn't been any other former source who has been so open and prolific in describing their experience, success, downfall, and rebirth. Thank you.
Thank YOU Millard. I had a client today, whom I was helping design a treatment protocol, tell me that he has been reading the story on MESO. He said it was fantastic, and he couldn't wait to read the rest of it. Thanks again for helping tell this epic story.
I’m hoping somebody in Hollywood has picked up on the story, and wants to make the movie - and don’t want it fully publishing before they get their hands on it!!
It’s a awesome story, if I was a producer I’d be jumping right on it with him.
I’m just listening/watching to some podcasts with him, he look the part too - he’s like a cross between the ‘rock’ & what Vin Diesel always wanted to be!! Seems like a top guy, I hope he makes a (another) fortune from it - and he deserves every penny!
Thank you very much for your kind words GMC! I really appreciate you. I am not sure what happened to the rest of the chapters, there is a lot more left. I am guessing that Millard became busy, and hasn't had the time to release more chapters. Perhaps I can speak with him.
In our community, we have been plagued with the cynicism that reportrs of people putting on 30lbs of muslce or more lack veracity. Another concept that I have noticed plagues our community is people's inabilty to see outside their own self centricity. Prople believe that whatever reactions happen to them or a couple of their gym buddies, is exactly how everyone else reacts; whether it be exercise regimens or hormones. This narrative fallacy that no one can put on 30lbs of muslce or more stems from a subset of cynicists who aren't able to put on that kind of muslce mass themselves, so, not only do they claim that no one else can put on 30lbs of muslce or more, but they make fun of those who make this claim. Of course, others who cannot put on that type of muscle mass jump on this band wagon. The cynics have also convinced people who do gain more than 30lbs that it is not muscle, but they are given a facile explaination that weight gain is due to water weight and/or glycogen.
When we talk about not being able to see outside your self-centricity; I am a biochemist who has guided approximately 20,000 people through the use of hormones. A thousand of those were professionals I helped put on stage. I have aggregated as much, if not more, empirical and anecdotal data than almost anyone in the county. I only say that to illuminate my credentials and vast experience.
Certainly, anabolic steroids can cause edema in the form of water retention in the dermis. For some, very little water is retained in the dermis, for others, significant water is retained in the dermis. For some, water retention is not a significant source of weight gain. Muscle gain is a function of fluids enlarging the muscle cell. A significant portion of that fluid is water. But, that is a part of muslce gain. The increased size from fluid in the muscle cells allows for myosin to have a stronger dipole action on actin, increasing the strength of the contraction.
Glycogen is a back up instant energy source to glucose. Glycogen is located in the liver and in muscles. One of the reasons muscles increase in size is to accomodate more glycogen for more energy and more strength. Gaining glycogen weight in the muscles is a function of gaining muscle weight, and is one of the reasons you get stronger. Even so, muslce glycogen doesn't weigh much. On average, about 500g of glycogen exists in the human muscles. Even if you double the size of your muscles, you only gain about a quarter pound of glycogen weight.
For those who believe it is impossible to gain 30lbs of muscle or more; bullshit. Granted, it is a small subset of hyper responders than can gain that much muscle mass. I am a hyper responser. I have seen some genetically gifted guys take a moderate dose of testosterone and dbol, lose fat and gain 30, 40, even 50lbs and still be so lean they could immediately step on stage. One thing you realize when you accrue a vast array of data in this field of study, is that you cannot put everyone in a box. You cannot indicate certain limits and certain ranges for everyone. There is a massive disparity in the way each individual reacts to certain hormones, certain compounds, and certain protocols. Admittedly, I have been a victim of disbelief in the past. But I have seen, with my own eyes, bodybuilders go on drug benders, get fat, lose muslce to atrophy, clean up and put on 50 pounds of muslce, and look ready to step on stage in two months. It is not common, but some people are genetically gifted, and to deny that is to deny some pretty incredible stories and some pretty incredible truths.
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