“The Setup” by Dan Bilzerian
Published in January 1, 2021
Pages: 360
ISBN-10 : 1737550113
Date Finished: Jan 2, 2022
How strongly I recommend it: 4/10
Find it at Amazon
Forgive me father, for I have sinned…. I read the most famous man in the world without a talent’s biography. I was both entertained and appalled.
My Notes:
The biggest thing I found that we have most in common is the uncommon desire to change the very beings we were in our young lives.
You have to not give a fuck about your chances of success, falling flat on your face or what others may think or say…to look in that mirror and not see exactly what you want to see but still have the confidence to bet on yourself.
Some of us are fine with being that gray man and blending in with the crowd. In my opinion, there are enough average motherfuckers in this world already. What makes this world unique are the people who are willing to go against the grain and say the things that no one else is willing to say.
I went from a guy who was made fun of relentlessly to “the most famous man in the world without a talent.”
I wasn’t trying to save the manatees here. I wanted to get tons of pussy, and I wanted total freedom. I achieved those things and all of my other fucked up, hedonistic goals beyond what I ever dreamed was possible.
After hearing this, I really didn’t believe I was going to graduate, but I also wasn’t going to quit. I looked at him and calmly said, “You’re gonna have to kick me out because I’m not quitting.” This wasn’t because I was some badass, in fact quite the contrary. I was a 160-pound insecure weakling who’d been bullied, shamed, and humiliated for the better part of my life. I just didn’t want to add self-loathing to the list.
“I’m being completely honest with you. You are not going to graduate, the instructors don’t like you, the class doesn’t like you, and no matter what you do, they will not let you graduate."
you will not graduate with this class.”
jabbing me with an eighteen-gauge needle and hammering in two ccs of oil totaling 100 milligrams. I later found out that the massive needle was about twice the size it needed to be, and the Deca dosage was absurdly low. Small dose or not, the shit worked. My body finally started recovering and after a few days felt better than it had in months.
Hormones play a big role in your thought process and mentality. Overtraining lowers your testosterone levels, making you more passive and more willing to tolerate bullshit; the opposite is true when you’re juicing.
If you have naturally low testosterone levels, then have your doctor prescribe you testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) along with Armidex to prevent aromatization (when excess testosterone turns converts to estrogen). If your testosterone levels are normal or high, I would not recommend doing steroids because you can possibly irreparably damage your ability to produce testosterone.
Night sweats, water retention, mood swings, and nipple sensitivity are all indicators that your estrogen levels are too high. Having your hormones elevated or out of balance can cause acne, hair loss, prostate enlargement, and it can even cause a man to grow breasts or a woman to grow a beard.
The heaviest cycle I ever did was: 100 mg of testosterone and 200 mg of Equipoise every three days. 1 mg of Armidex every three days. 3 IUs of HGH every day. 10 mg of Dianabol twice a day.
Testosterone is your base; it is essential for sexual function and mental state. You can add anabolics, but you should never do a cycle of just an anabolic like Deca or Winstrol unless you don’t want your dick to work.
Throughout training I was always looking for an edge. If there was a better, more effective way to do things, I wanted to figure it out.
Steroids seemed to be the ultimate edge. Winstrol was the water-based steroid that got Ben Johnson, the world record Canadian sprinter, busted in the 1988 Olympics. My books said it would offer strength without water retention, leading to very lean muscles. I mixed it with Equipoise, the oil-based horse steroid that I was doing, and injected it into my quad. It was painful, so I just assumed that I’d hit a vein or a nerve. But as the day went on, the pain got worse and worse.
I was shooting 100 milligrams of test and Equipoise every four days while popping twenty milligrams of Novadex every day to prevent estrogen buildup. These were Mexican veterinary steroids, so I’d get abscesses from time to time due to a lack of sterility. It was horrible. Sometimes I’d get flu-like symptoms and feel like I was going to die; but there was nothing I could do other than laugh at the absurdity of my predicament.
I thought about giving up steroids a few times, but I looked good with my shirt off. And no one likes a quitter.
I was starting to figure out that many of the guys going through BUD/S and at the teams were juicing.
Plus, you’ll get into a much better school as a veteran because universities value diversity.
IF ANY OF YOU GUYS READING THIS are about to graduate high school, I would highly recommend going in the military for four years and then going to college.
Then there are the financial benefits: You get your school paid for, you’re eligible for more grants and student loans with zero interest, and you get free medical. Trust me, it’s the move.
Poker requires patience, so it may come as no surprise that a drunk guy on steroids with ADD is not a winning formula.
Moral of the story? Alcohol is a dick killer. Carbs, potassium, and hydration are important and weed is vital.
I never really liked blow; it just always sounded like a good idea, even though it never was. I like to eat, workout, fuck, and sleep—and blow messes all of those things up. I lose my appetite, and coke is a vasoconstrictor, which messes up blood flow, thereby reducing oxygen to the muscles. It keeps you up all night and also makes it tough to get your dick hard, which for a sex addict like me is a deal breaker. It’s honestly the worst drug in my opinion, and it sucks for girls too. They don’t shut the fuck up.
I’d like to tell you that two heart attacks at twenty-seven, hospitalization, and my near-death experience changed me. But the truth is that I stopped taking my prescriptions after a couple of weeks and got right back on the horse. Gambling and fucking.
John was a perfect example of a guy who wanted to get laid and should’ve been getting a lot of pussy but massively underachieved. He had the trifecta of what makes it easy: fame, money, and social status. He is also known for having a big dick, which should also make it easier. The reason he wasn’t getting laid as much as he should have was because of one thing and one thing only: His setup was wrong.
One of my few regrets in life is how much time I’ve wasted talking and hanging out with girls. But that’s the price I pay for being a sex addict who doesn’t like hookers. I always envied the guys who loved hookers and were cool with fucking girls who weren’t into them. It makes life SO MUCH easier: The girl gets money, you get sex, and there’s no jealousy, no mindless conversations, and no wasted time.
Antonio had a fitness trainer called All-American Dave. He was a clean-cut, good-looking guy with morals, so no steroids.
Dave Navarro texted Jessa a naked picture of himself with a hard on. Our on-again, off-again relationship had never been healthy, but celebrities really started coming after her once she became a Playmate.
I wasn’t about to kill her, but I could five-year-old boy copycat her. I grabbed her clothes, her thong, her purse, and her phone. I hurled the entire pile of shit off the balcony. At least her crap could keep my dead phone company. She started punching me, so I calmly picked her skinny ass up, deposited her in the hallway, and shut the door. I must admit, the thought of her having to take the elevator butt-naked to the lobby did bring a smile to my face.
Social media is a tool that allows you to communicate with tons of people at once. It’s more effective than texting every girl in your phone because it accomplishes the same thing without showing interest.
Social media also helped me get into better poker games, and heads-up matches that made me tens of millions of dollars.
I’d been playing with real cash, dollars that I had personally counted and banded up, so it stung more than losing casino chips. Plus, I’d done blow, drank booze, and almost died on the car ride with Sam. I was stressed the fuck out. Gambling was so hard on my body; the stress spiked my cortisol levels, breaking down muscle and fucking up my ability to sleep.
Dan’s resolve was to stop giving a fuck what people thought (loss of ego) and to run an experiment to get famous in order to get girls. We had always theorized that fame was more powerful than money with respect to sex.
Pete, the director, said he was frustrated because Marcus Luttrell, the “lone survivor,” kept changing his story, and they had to reshoot scenes to accommodate his evolving tale. Seemed strange, but I figured maybe the guy just had PTSD or something.
When I later found out that the mission was strictly for surveillance I remember wondering, Is this guy completely full of shit? Nobody forgets the objective of the mission that they write a book about.
Marcus got upset because I didn’t announce to the actor that I wasn’t a SEAL and told Pete he didn’t want me to be in any more scenes. Pete told me that he was in a bind because he needed Marcus to be happy in order to promote the movie. I was pissed, but at the time I believed Marcus was a real hero, so I did the scenes they asked me to do and went back to San Diego.
When he finally threw in the towel, I was up $8 million dollars. He always tipped his dealers hundreds of thousands of dollars when he won, and I didn’t want the dealers to have any incentive to possibly cheat me, so I tipped them $300,000 and walked away with $7.7 million. It’s crazy to think a dealer could make more than the yearly salary of the vice president of the United States for one night of slinging cards, but that was the world I was living in.
Mike said he would give me 30 percent of the profit and agreed to pay 100 percent of the losses. That is what gamblers call a freeroll, and I like freerolls, so I said yes. I had a reputation for being rich, gambling hard, and paying my bills, so it wasn’t hard to get major accounts established.
I remember being in the Rhino trying to take this stripper home, and she wouldn’t go home with me, telling me she was in love with Tampa fucking Dan.
RICK SALOMON High-Stakes Gambler
I remember being in the Rhino trying to take this stripper home, and she wouldn’t go home with me, telling me she was in love with Tampa fucking Dan. I was def horny on some good cocaine,
She was my perfect body type, her face was flawless without makeup, and the sex was some of the best I’ve ever had in my life. She would talk dirty and do anything I wanted. She didn’t have any drinking problems; she was smart and wasn’t materialistic at all. If I were to design a girlfriend in a lab, I would come up with almost exactly her.
Victoria was too submissive. She didn’t have her own opinions or a strong sense of self.
Honestly, if we’d had great conversations, I probably would have just married the girl.
One of the reasons women are attracted to assholes is because assholes project a strong sense of self. Assholes are selfish, and they do what they want, so they always appear confident.
Sam was the embodiment of cocaine; like if cocaine was a human being, it would be Sam. Extreme highs and lows, always seemed like a good idea but never was, started off fun but always ended terribly.
Then it hit me—that crazy motherfucker had thrown all of his household saltshakers and canisters of Morton table salt into the pool. In Sam’s coked-out, convoluted
“Sam, this fucking shark is dead.” “What?” He looked shocked.
Then it hit me—that crazy motherfucker had thrown all of his household saltshakers and canisters of Morton table salt into the pool. In Sam’s coked-out, convoluted brain, he figured that would turn his pool into a saltwater aquarium.
I think it was some form of cocaine-induced psychosis, but Sam had really spun completely off the planet. I didn’t even argue with him; I just left.
pool cleaning company. They reported Sam to the police, but somehow his invulnerability to consequences protected him yet again.
so I put the word out that I was looking to get into acting. Nick Cassavetes was directing The Other Woman starring Cameron Diaz and offered me the part of “handsome man at the bar.” I had to read for the role as a formality, so I showed up at the casting director’s office with my lines memorized.
Diaz asked the prop guy for a credit card and complained when he handed her a shitty Visa. This was back in 2013 before every dentist with a BMW had a black card. So, thinking this was my time to shine, I proudly tossed over my American Express black card, hoping to get some kind of recognition. She couldn’t have looked less impressed. Fuck. This is going to be a disaster, I thought.
Nick was confused; he had watched me fuck tons of girls and knew I got pussy all the time. He’d witnessed superhot girls competing to bang me and must have assumed this role would be like playing myself. What he didn’t realize was, I wasn’t the guy who hits on girls; I’m the guy who gets hit on by girls. My success was due to setup, not my one-liners at a bar.
I did such a shitty job he ended up cutting the entire scene from the movie but didn’t have the heart to tell me until it came out. Thank God he did.
In the first rehearsal run-through, they didn’t have the weights and motors calibrated properly, so I was jerked all the way to the Home Depot roof until my head crashed into the metal. I was lucky that I wasn’t paralyzed.
“This is pretty fucked up,” I told her afterward when the guilt kicked in. “You’re really breaking up, right? I don’t like screwing over guys I know.”
Which is how I ended up with my first handicat that I named Smushball. And I sued Michelle for the veterinary bills. It wasn’t about the money; she had lied to me and stepped on my animal.
Which is how I ended up with my first handicat that I named Smushball. And I sued Michelle for the veterinary bills. It wasn’t about the money; she had lied to me and stepped on my animal. I was beginning to see traits of my father’s principled nature shining through in my actions. Writing this book, I was laughing, thinking what kind of asshole sues a Little League, and here I was being a bigger asshole, suing a girl over a cat.
I learned a good policy from my father. He told me, “Don’t give loans to friends or family. If you are going to help them out, make the money a gift, or you will just end up ruining a relationship and causing nothing but animosity.”
Last time we went to Willow, I hired ten poker girls to be our cheerleaders, complete with pom poms, crop tops, and tiny skirts. We ignored them; they were just there to make the video better.
They didn’t teach porn star tossing in my judo classes, so I wasn’t entirely sure how to go about this.
She said her foot hurt, and we urged her to go to the hospital; I even offered to drive her. But she declined and said she was fine. My buddy Alan posted the video, and it went viral. Every news outlet in the world picked up the story.
Good thing I was poker buddies and racing pals with crazy-ass power attorney Tom Goldstein, Esquire, legal mind extraordinaire, arguer of almost fifty cases before the United States Supreme Court.
Our conversation was repeatedly interrupted by people wanting a picture with me, which was completely new and bizarre. I took the pictures for a few minutes until someone finally asked Ron for one. “Are you sure you want me and not him?” Ron asked the fan jokingly.
We took some European models back to the boat, and I hooked up with one of them and then her friend thirty minutes later. Zero effort.
Even Rick Ross knew who I was, which was wild because I’d been listening to his music for years. It was like I flipped a switch, and all of a sudden, everyone knew who I was.
I walked down the dock with Justin Bieber and watched the paparazzi swarm him. I’d started getting attention, but it was nothing like what that kid was experiencing. The paparazzi were very obnoxious. I didn’t envy that; I felt bad for him. So I gave him a Quaalude and got the boy laid.
People always ask how I fuck so much, and the answer is simple, Cialis and synthetic testosterone.
You will find intermittent positive reinforcement in gambling, and it’s built into social media algorithms, hence why these things are so addictive.
I had officially accomplished all my goals for creating the Instagram profile. I’d gotten big enough that no one could ignore me, even her. In short, I Gatsby-ed her ass.
I never thought of myself as being special because I’m really not outstanding at anything traditional or quantifiable. I’m smart, but there are a million people more intelligent than me. I had no artistic talent; I couldn’t sing, play an instrument, or act worth a shit. Looking back, it felt like I had a list of failures a mile long, hell I didn’t even finish high school.
and have a casual coffee at home with Lance Armstrong. In a life of unadulterated hedonism and spontaneity, Dan’s steadiness is magnetic.
Then Joe Rogan texted me. “Hey, is it okay if I give your number to Lance Armstrong? He wants to help.”
“What’s the optimal drug regiment for this type of training?” was the first question that I asked the guy who won seven consecutive Tour de France events. He didn’t want to go anywhere near that subject.
Lance was super sharp, and in ten minutes, he diagnosed something that took my doctors years to figure out. I mentioned a high red blood cell count, and he said it was from sleep apnea. He was right; I’d wake up frequently while sleeping because I would stop breathing. This would put me in a hypoxic state and signal my body to produce more red blood cells, similar to someone living at altitude.
After a month of training, Lance came to visit with his two sons. He said they were fans of mine, which I found hilarious.
Then Lance and I went for a bike ride, where he gave some pointers. I really just wanted the cyclist drug cocktail, but he refused to talk about it.
even take money from me for his coaching. He just asked that I donate $25,000 to his wife’s charity if I won the Vegas-to-LA wager. He seemed so scared of negative press attention. That was strange to me, and I told him so.
Most journalists were never popular; they probably got bullied as kids, so when they’re presented the opportunity to take down celebrities while hiding safely behind a computer screen, they do so with glee because it makes them feel powerful. It’s their Revenge of the Nerds moment.
I didn’t adjust my drug regimen. I kept doing my standard hormone replacement therapy: 100 milligrams of test every four days and one IU of HGH every day. I completely stopped all weightlifting, put in three to five hours of riding a day, and worked up to two fifty-mile treks in a day. I practiced vehicle drafting and communicating with the chase car.
I learned a few things doing this bet. First, cyclists are pussies. These fitness queens massively overestimate the difficulty of their sport (except Lance—he never doubted me). Second, I learned the importance of target heart rate training and lactic acid threshold knowledge.
Let that be a lesson to you: If you’re in a situation where you think something is near impossible, just remember your body is capable of ten times more than your mind thinks possible, and cyclists are pussies.
Sleeping with tons of women hurts your soul, and not in a religious way. It draws on your energy, your life force. Being pulled in so many directions and having so many relationships isn’t easy; it can really be draining. Finding hot girls to fuck is pretty easy, but finding hot girls who are cool to hang out with for more than a day is a bit more challenging. Hanging with dumb girls is fine for an hour or so, but they’ll drive you crazy if you get trapped with them.
The following day, we took machine guns into the desert and blew up thirty pumpkins for Halloween.
Critics try to downplay it and say, “Instagram famous.” But this wasn’t Instagram. This was real life; in every city and every foreign country I’d been.
T-Pain had just released a song called “Dan Bilzerian,” where he rapped “I got ten Brazilians like I’m Dan Brazarraan.” He said my name wrong, but T-Pain is a legend, and I was honored nonetheless.
Every girl wanted to be Dan’s #1 girl, and you needed to do something to stand out because he had so many options. My tactic was anal sex and it worked!
FRANCESCA FARAGO
And I can say from experience, being his #1 girl—even for a night—is life changing.
Mel had been roasted in the media for popping off to some cop about Jews, and everyone went crazy. I’m part Jewish, and it didn’t bother me. He told everyone to get fucked and made a half a billion dollars on his Passion of the Christ movie, and I respected that.
After traveling as much as I have, I realized that there’s no shortage of shitheads and good people, and I’ve found no correlation with race.
You should take pride in what you have accomplished, what you’ve built, and who you are as a person, not where you were born, what color your skin is, or anything else that you have no control over. That said, it took me some time to figure this out, so I don’t dislike people who are racist. In fact, if they are open about it, I respect their authenticity. I just look at them as being less advanced.
I just ate Cialis, smoked weed, and fucked all night. It never got old because the women were always different, but something was missing.
Looking back, I probably shouldn’t have asked that cop for a spare gun either, but I was a cop and people were being murdered, so it seemed like the thing to do.
I received a text from the Chief telling me Dakota Meyer, a Marine Medal of Honor recipient, was blogging that I was a coward for running away from the shooter. I thought Chief was fucking with me, but sure enough, this fat idiot was online blogging about how I shouldn’t have run away and that I should’ve stayed and helped people.
These journalists who would have been the first to start crying in that situation were now saying I ran away, which was false. But even if I had, criticizing an unarmed man for running during the deadliest mass shooting in United States history is absurd.
A pool of blood stained the snow as they carted him off to the medical center at the base of the hill. They told me Shaun would live but that he had to be flown to a hospital immediately. “Take my helicopter,” I told them. “It’s right there.”
It was time to climb another mountain. I was famous, but the clock was ticking. I knew I wouldn’t be relevant forever, and if I was going to do something with it, the time was now.
Hollywood had begun taking cues from whatever self-righteous hashtag was trending on social media, which brought the label “toxic masculinity” into the mainstream as if acting like a man was now some sort of disease.
I knew what the Playboy Mansion had done for the Playboy brand. The mansion was listed as their most valuable asset when I’d previously offered to buy the company. They were arrogant and their inflated valuation was way too high, so I decided to let their brand die and create a better version of it.
Jordan Belfort, the inspiration for Wolf of Wall Street, came over to the house to discuss talking about Ignite on his podcast. He was pretty animated and exactly what I expected given what I had seen of him in interviews. We talked Quaaludes, and he begged me to give him one; I told him I only had a few left and didn’t want to part with any of them. He then offered $5,000 for one pill, but I declined. We had a lot in common, a couple of adults that still thought like college kids.
I blacked out for the first time in almost two decades and hit my head on the side of the dining room table. Security carried me down to my room and left me on the bed. I woke up covered in my own piss and puke like a freshman in a fraternity.
Of all the places I have visited in my life, Richard Branson’s Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands is the most amazing.
His whole island was a setup, and he had everyone he wanted to meet coming to him and paying for the privilege of doing it. It was pretty genius.
You’ve had too many almosts in your life. You almost graduated high school, you almost graduated BUD/S, and you almost graduated college. You’ve done too much work to not bring this to the finish line, Finish the fucking job.
I sat there thinking about it, knowing I’d done what I’d set out to do. I’d accomplished all of my hedonistic goals. This was the top of the mountain. I soaked it all in and smiled. It was the perfect setup.
You don’t need what society tells you to succeed. You don’t need a college degree to get rich. You don’t have to be good looking to attract tons of women. And you don’t need any talent to be famous. Life is a game, and like any game, you must have a good strategy to win. The implementation of that strategy is called the setup, and it paves the road to success.
Thank you to David Goggins for motivating me to write the book at the perfect time. To Naren Aryal for helping me self-publish, so I didn’t have to give 85 percent of my money to a traditional shithead publishing house. To Neil Strauss for the first edit. To Rob Judge for putting up with my late night calls and helping me with my never ending editing process. To Wayne Marquez for suggesting I add vignettes; they add a great perspective and color to the story.
For more… find it at Amazon