Eric Bennett stuck his body out of the car again, shouted a few wild curses, then sat back inside. “Brian, did you plan this all along, wanting to make money off these medicines, so you stopped studying?”

Without waiting for a reply, Eric Bennett excitedly slapped the steering wheel. “Insulin, insulin... damn...”

There’s an exchange rate between Hong Kong dollars, RMB, etc., but this is only 1990—using Hong Kong dollars to buy US dollars for shopping? Foreign exchange certificates are still in the market.

Chapter 3: Calm Down, I’m Still Young

That afternoon, Eric Bennett couldn’t be bothered to deal with all the company’s messes, and just took Brian Carter straight back to Guangzhou. Lately, he’d been obsessed with pushing an electronic bug machine—a virtual pet game console.

He wanted to design and develop it himself, manufacture it in the mainland, and get ready for the upcoming electronic toy expo, hoping to make a big sale.

He often traveled to the mainland.

Arriving in Guangzhou for market research, he focused on type 1 diabetes patients who needed to inject insulin every day—sometimes several times a day for severe cases. Each vial was 400 units, 10ml, retailing at 6 yuan.

In top-tier cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, the price was about 6 yuan, but in remote areas like the northwest and southwest, the retail price could be as low as 3 yuan per vial.

This was all regulated by the authorities.

Eric Bennett thought it over. He only had 50,000 yuan left, which he needed for payroll. After setting aside money for two plane tickets, he spent the rest on insulin.

Brian Carter’s 5,000 yuan went the same way—they bought over 800 vials, each 10ml, with packaging weighing about ten kilos in total, which could be checked in as luggage.

Ordinary mainland citizens or patients wanting to buy such a large batch of insulin from hospitals or pharmacies would need to go through all sorts of procedures, but Little Brian and Eric Bennett were Hong Kongers.

In 1990, Hong Kong people and businessmen were super popular in the mainland! The perks were next-level. Shopping with US dollars? Bringing goods back to Hong Kong was ridiculously smooth.

It was during this process that Eric Bennett also made contacts in North America, in Canada and Mexico.

He checked all the retail prices. Mexico actually had the highest profit margin, but it was so damn chaotic there—you might not make it back, or you might come back in pieces!

Canada, on the other hand? In the 80s and 90s, tons of Hong Kongers immigrated to Canada.

Before the handover, Hong Kong ID holders didn’t even need a visa to fly to Canada—they could stay for months.

When they flew over and contacted a former Hong Kong immigrant, Brian Carter’s 5,000 yuan definitely couldn’t turn into a crazy 175,000 like the big pharma profits of Eli Lilly and the like.

But even patients who drove to Canada on weekends and holidays to buy medicine found it much cheaper than in North America...

Brian Carter’s 5,000 Hong Kong dollars turned into 20,000—a 300% net profit.

If he’d staked out the groups coming from North America to buy medicine, the profit would have been even higher than 300%. But those patient groups dealt directly with pharmacies—Brian Carter and Eric Bennett had nowhere near the credibility of a pharmacy, and didn’t even have a license to sell medicine.

They could only sell to pharmacies at a relatively low price, letting the pharmacies make easy money.

The two one-way plane tickets cost 15,000 Hong Kong dollars, and Eric Bennett’s remaining 35,000 was magically turned into 140,000 Hong Kong dollars.

If Brian Carter had tried to do this alone, he couldn’t even have bought the plane ticket, let alone contacted overseas Chinese immigrants or negotiated with pharmacies about selling and pricing.

But you can’t ignore the fact that Eric Bennett, at around 30 years old, was already a mature business professional—not fully evolved, but when it came to running routes and building networks, this guy had been a social butterfly since he was thirteen or fourteen.

For Eric Bennett, acting as the fixer and runner to make this kind of money was pretty smooth.

When he bought the return ticket to Hong Kong, he couldn’t help but laugh excitedly at the airport. “Brian, you’re something else! If you hadn’t heard about this from a friend’s relative, how would I have ever stumbled on such an easy way to make money?”

Flying back and forth at will—can you believe this insane profit margin? It’s just like the scalpers in the early 80s bringing goods from Hong Kong and Macau back to Beijing.

Brian Carter’s expression grew animated too. Coming up with the plan was one thing, but actually pulling it off was another. Before time-traveling, he’d just complain about the heartless, shameless big pharma companies and how tough it was for the “Medicine God” crowd.

But now that he’d really traveled back and made real money, this was basically as efficient as printing cash.

When the two of them flew back to Hong Kong, the moment they landed, Eric Bennett’s brick phone started ringing like crazy. He answered, chatted for a few seconds, then hung up and complained, “It was John, asking where I’d taken you, little bro.”

“Don’t worry about him, let’s make a few more runs.”

“I’m not going home. I’m going to find Mr. White to borrow some loan shark money, borrow a big sum, and go on a buying spree. Are you in?”

Brian Carter raised his thumb in astonishment. “No wonder you’re you!” He was the honest type, still thinking about turning 20,000 into 80,000. Without his idea, how would Eric Bennett have made tens of thousands in just a few days? In the early stages, he was short on cash, so he just quietly tagged along for the plane tickets.

But after this real-life experience, Old Bennett was clearly getting bolder, wanting to make even more!