2024-04-15_Andrew_Henderson

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to Radical Personal Finance.

00:00:01.240 | My name is Joshua Sheets and today I'm joined

00:00:03.040 | by Andrew Henderson of Knowbad Capitalist.

00:00:04.600 | Andrew, welcome.

00:00:05.440 | - It's good to see you here in Bogota, Colombia.

00:00:08.160 | - Absolutely.

00:00:09.160 | Andrew, I am an enormous admirer

00:00:11.480 | of your entrepreneurial journey.

00:00:13.960 | I was a financial advisor for years

00:00:15.520 | and I had this idea that somehow,

00:00:17.260 | if I could just teach people to buy stocks

00:00:19.240 | and fund their retirement plans, they would become wealthy.

00:00:22.360 | And then over time, I learned that that wasn't actually true

00:00:24.860 | but in reality, the people who became wealthy

00:00:27.880 | were those who built either a large income

00:00:30.800 | or a large business.

00:00:32.200 | And having been a close follower of yours over many years,

00:00:34.760 | you've done exactly that.

00:00:36.200 | I'd love to hear a little bit of background

00:00:38.560 | on your entrepreneurial journey,

00:00:40.800 | especially how you've grown over the years to run,

00:00:43.620 | how big is Knowbad Capitalist now?

00:00:45.820 | - We've got about 70 people.

00:00:47.360 | - Amazing.

00:00:48.200 | - We got into the, I mean, I guess, multi-figure company.

00:00:51.560 | And what I'm really excited about now

00:00:53.240 | is we put in place a vision,

00:00:55.280 | not to reduce the number of Americans and North Americans

00:00:57.840 | that we have as clients and as guests of the event

00:01:00.280 | that I know you're gonna be speaking at,

00:01:01.400 | Knowbad Capitalist Live,

00:01:03.160 | but to focus all of our efforts

00:01:05.040 | on growing all the other markets.

00:01:06.640 | And so the big thing we've been doing in the last,

00:01:09.040 | probably close to 12 months,

00:01:10.520 | is getting people from Turkey, getting people from Brazil,

00:01:13.600 | getting people from Vietnam and like all over the world.

00:01:16.920 | I mean, clientele from all over the world,

00:01:19.160 | from race car drivers to tech startup guys who IPO'd,

00:01:22.440 | to people who sold businesses.

00:01:24.560 | And it's been incredible.

00:01:25.760 | And it shows me what's been really exciting

00:01:27.680 | is you have guys in Vietnam

00:01:29.520 | with a hundred million dollars, self-made guys.

00:01:31.320 | - Amazing.

00:01:32.160 | - And they're much, what's very interesting

00:01:34.080 | for our point of view is they're much more in demand

00:01:36.760 | with banks and investment opportunities

00:01:40.040 | because they're from places that are much less regulated

00:01:42.200 | than let's say an American.

00:01:43.840 | And so for me, the journey is I come from the United States.

00:01:47.920 | I left the United States long ago.

00:01:49.140 | I haven't been back.

00:01:49.980 | And fortunately we're here in Bogota

00:01:51.680 | where there's lots of construction and things are happening.

00:01:55.120 | But no, that's been the journey.

00:01:58.000 | And I ran a business,

00:01:59.480 | a couple of businesses in the United States

00:02:01.000 | for close to a decade before I left.

00:02:02.720 | And that was instructional.

00:02:04.700 | But I think that 100X the experience

00:02:07.760 | when you're hiring across different cultures,

00:02:09.880 | when you're doing business across cultures,

00:02:11.560 | when you're working while traveling

00:02:13.000 | and you have different homes,

00:02:14.920 | this is like learning how to run a business on steroids.

00:02:18.180 | - When you began in business,

00:02:19.380 | you were an entrepreneur from a very early age.

00:02:21.440 | Went to college, dropped out to run a business.

00:02:24.760 | What was your primary motivation

00:02:26.920 | in pursuing the entrepreneurial path?

00:02:29.440 | - I never liked the backstory idea.

00:02:33.280 | A lot of people have the backstory.

00:02:34.720 | It seems very well-tuned.

00:02:36.760 | I think that some of the great entrepreneurs,

00:02:40.580 | it's a calling, it's almost a sickness, really.

00:02:45.980 | And I think that you're gonna see that eventually come out

00:02:50.280 | with this kind of new generation.

00:02:52.000 | I don't know about you, but when I was growing up,

00:02:53.960 | it's like, you wanna be an entrepreneur?

00:02:55.600 | Girls looked at you weird,

00:02:57.120 | and guys kind of made fun of you.

00:02:58.840 | That's kind of like, what?

00:03:00.480 | Like, you're gonna be like Bill Gates or something?

00:03:02.040 | That guy's weird.

00:03:02.980 | Now it's cool.

00:03:05.520 | And I think that too many people are doing it

00:03:08.120 | because they have this idea that it is what it's not.

00:03:10.500 | It's tough.

00:03:11.760 | And I was just watching Howard Schultz over the weekend

00:03:13.840 | on an interview, a founder of Starbucks.

00:03:15.080 | I was watching the guy who basically formed

00:03:17.880 | all the hotels that became Marriott.

00:03:20.040 | They even, as multibillionaires,

00:03:21.520 | have some very serious issues.

00:03:23.060 | If you're gonna get past that,

00:03:24.720 | you've gotta be nuts to a certain extent.

00:03:28.160 | And I don't know that I ever thought about it.

00:03:30.360 | I don't look at a lot of things as risky as most people do,

00:03:33.700 | but I never even considered the risk profile

00:03:35.720 | of starting a business at 19 years old.

00:03:37.360 | I just didn't.

00:03:38.200 | I just said, I have to do.

00:03:39.360 | Do, do, do.

00:03:40.200 | My father says, American football.

00:03:41.640 | Analogy is to block and tackle.

00:03:45.400 | And that's what I did.

00:03:46.800 | - You began in the radio business, right?

00:03:49.620 | How, was that something that you had contact with,

00:03:51.800 | or how did that idea come to you?

00:03:53.040 | - My father was in business,

00:03:53.940 | but his side hustle was on the radio.

00:03:56.440 | So we had a show when I was between eight and 13.

00:03:58.880 | He was like the guy after Rush Limbaugh, where we grew up.

00:04:02.360 | And he had the money show.

00:04:03.840 | Back in the day when radio stations

00:04:05.640 | were more of a public service,

00:04:06.680 | you'd have one company that went on eight radio stations,

00:04:09.040 | two in Cleveland, two in Milwaukee,

00:04:10.560 | two somewhere else, two somewhere else.

00:04:12.760 | And he got 500 clients for his financial services business

00:04:18.760 | from a radio show.

00:04:20.300 | They paid him to do the radio show.

00:04:22.100 | Well, over time, radio consolidation came into play.

00:04:24.480 | You had more licenses issued.

00:04:25.700 | There's something like 13,000 radio stations

00:04:27.660 | in the US, the peak.

00:04:29.160 | And so you had a lot of radio stations that were failing,

00:04:31.340 | like little AM stations that didn't have the great power.

00:04:33.780 | They didn't have this historical thing.

00:04:35.780 | And they went into kind of the paid programming model.

00:04:37.780 | And so I found an opportunity.

00:04:39.260 | I kind of did some work at night

00:04:41.060 | for some guys who were doing that locally,

00:04:42.700 | kind of learned their systems.

00:04:43.900 | They had a pretty good marketing system.

00:04:45.700 | And they said, how do I expand this

00:04:46.740 | on a more national basis to work with radio stations

00:04:49.060 | that are in the dumps?

00:04:50.980 | So we'd go into somewhere in California,

00:04:53.300 | they're making $10,000 a month.

00:04:54.680 | They can barely pay the rent.

00:04:56.060 | They go up to $60,000 a month.

00:04:57.720 | We kind of change things around.

00:04:59.780 | And so we did that all over the country.

00:05:03.100 | That's where I kind of got the, I still love radio.

00:05:05.220 | I'm still, I'm probably the foremost.

00:05:08.100 | I probably think more than any other living human being

00:05:10.220 | about American radio legal IDs and imaging.

00:05:13.220 | I still think about it to this day.

00:05:14.500 | And it's taught me a lot about marketing

00:05:16.180 | and branding and all that,

00:05:17.620 | and just kind of what things look like.

00:05:19.580 | But that's how I get into it.

00:05:21.580 | And ultimately it's a dying business,

00:05:23.140 | but it was something that ultimately,

00:05:24.260 | I mean, you went on to work with some very big names

00:05:26.820 | in the direct marketing space, televangelists,

00:05:29.620 | people selling health products.

00:05:31.020 | I mean, it was nice to help out struggling stations.

00:05:35.660 | I enjoyed being in the business,

00:05:37.480 | even though it's kind of like these stations

00:05:39.700 | are not putting out the best programming.

00:05:41.740 | But ultimately I just said to myself,

00:05:44.060 | I don't want to be in the US.

00:05:46.340 | And I just, I mean, radio is a sinking ship now.

00:05:48.580 | It's just, I mean, it's terrible.

00:05:50.460 | I had a friend who just bought a radio station

00:05:51.940 | for $50,000 in Chicago.

00:05:54.540 | - You were still running that business

00:05:55.940 | when you started expatriating

00:05:57.540 | or your process of expatriating?

00:05:59.180 | - I pretty much got out of it in like 2012.

00:06:02.580 | So I've been traveling a lot.

00:06:04.180 | And so my initial thought when I started,

00:06:06.620 | block and tackle, 2006, I had a Vonage phone.

00:06:09.900 | Remember Vonage, this voiceover IP phone?

00:06:12.620 | And I said, I could just take this phone with me

00:06:14.660 | and plug it in anywhere in the world.

00:06:16.220 | Why am I here?

00:06:17.940 | And I think a year or two later I started traveling

00:06:21.820 | and it just became a lot, a lot, a lot more

00:06:23.620 | to where I was often traveling.

00:06:24.820 | I remember one time I went to Beijing for three weeks

00:06:26.900 | and I had a partner on a project.

00:06:28.860 | And I said, I'm gonna go and like see if he notices

00:06:30.820 | that I'm not even there

00:06:31.660 | 'cause I'll just work at night and all that.

00:06:33.820 | And so I had been traveling a lot.

00:06:35.920 | I kind of saw like, you know,

00:06:38.180 | this radio business is gonna get tougher.

00:06:40.260 | I had got a side hustle business.

00:06:41.820 | I had a couple of side hustles.

00:06:42.820 | The biggest, most successful was a swimming pool business

00:06:45.260 | that was kind of like, I need this service.

00:06:47.020 | I'll just, all right, sell me a business.

00:06:48.340 | I'll build it up and I'll sell it.

00:06:50.540 | And so everything was kind of like,

00:06:51.500 | I wanted to get in everything

00:06:53.300 | and I wanted to move full time.

00:06:54.340 | I think I had the same problems

00:06:56.060 | that a lot of entrepreneurs have

00:06:57.620 | where they have a business they don't have to be there for,

00:06:59.820 | but they kind of feel compelled.

00:07:01.380 | Even now, what I've had to avoid with Nomad Capitalist

00:07:04.580 | is I'll feel compelled to sit in front of the laptop

00:07:06.820 | for 14 hours a day, like waiting for the next email.

00:07:09.180 | You just feel that kind of sense of anxiety,

00:07:11.460 | like something could need my attention.

00:07:13.700 | And I think that was probably,

00:07:17.140 | other than the aforementioned reasons,

00:07:18.340 | why I just kind of wanted to get out of those

00:07:19.780 | and kind of start fresh.

00:07:21.500 | I saw the potential of having a business

00:07:23.740 | that did not rely on the United States.

00:07:25.740 | And so in 2013, I kind of left for good.

00:07:30.580 | And that's kind of when I was writing Nomad Capitalist.

00:07:33.820 | So I would write articles about my experiences

00:07:35.500 | and the rest is history.

00:07:37.420 | - Didn't you begin doing articles before that though?

00:07:40.220 | - End of 2012.

00:07:41.220 | So I think I left shortly after

00:07:43.540 | I started writing the article.

00:07:44.620 | - Nothing in about 2009 or so?

00:07:46.340 | - No.

00:07:47.180 | - Okay.

00:07:48.020 | I thought that I had first come across your brand then,

00:07:49.900 | but I first came across your brand when it was very early.

00:07:52.820 | But at that time, it wasn't a business.

00:07:54.740 | It was a personal passion project, right?

00:07:57.020 | - Yeah, and it was, honestly,

00:07:58.500 | a reflection of living in the US.

00:08:00.100 | And I think this is probably would be even worse now.

00:08:02.700 | There was more anger.

00:08:03.920 | There was more kind of, to the entrepreneurial point,

00:08:08.420 | I worked in radio.

00:08:09.760 | I had all these talk radio stations that I dealt with.

00:08:11.940 | They would invite me on the listener cruise

00:08:15.500 | or come and meet Bill O'Reilly and Laura Ingraham

00:08:19.420 | kind of thing.

00:08:20.260 | They're giving a speech where the station, whatever.

00:08:22.540 | And you'd see a lot of these people

00:08:24.620 | and you'd see like 65 year old people

00:08:27.780 | who maybe they accumulated some money.

00:08:29.280 | Maybe they were like your clients.

00:08:30.300 | They made some good,

00:08:31.140 | they built up their wealth in the stock market kind of thing.

00:08:34.460 | But there wasn't a shred of happiness in their lives.

00:08:38.620 | If they had more construction in their lives,

00:08:40.080 | they probably would have been a lot happier.

00:08:41.880 | But I said to myself, some of these talk radio listeners,

00:08:45.720 | these kind of libertarians,

00:08:47.600 | I might agree with the libertarians,

00:08:49.340 | but honestly, the worst thing that could ever happen to them

00:08:52.160 | is that they become happy.

00:08:53.880 | And I just said to myself,

00:08:55.760 | that was kind of the frame that I was in to some extent,

00:08:59.500 | maybe a little bit more self-aware of it.

00:09:01.380 | But it was like, yeah,

00:09:02.220 | the US government does a lot of bad stuff

00:09:03.720 | and they're nasty.

00:09:04.560 | Like, why do you want to support them?

00:09:05.700 | And why do you want to live there?

00:09:06.540 | And why do you want to travel on their passport?

00:09:08.000 | And I think that it was, I mean,

00:09:09.800 | certainly I've had some cultural clashes

00:09:12.160 | in some places that I've gone.

00:09:14.480 | I'm still a pretty intense person.

00:09:17.040 | I'd say I'm a relatively demanding person

00:09:19.600 | by everyone's standards.

00:09:21.880 | But I think there's a lot more peace

00:09:26.060 | being able to say that for me,

00:09:27.400 | it was a place I didn't feel comfortable.

00:09:29.400 | And now I'm not there anymore.

00:09:30.800 | And I think there's a lot of people

00:09:31.900 | who are sitting in the US

00:09:32.880 | or maybe other Western countries.

00:09:34.160 | There's young men that feel like

00:09:37.600 | just being a man is toxic.

00:09:39.560 | And listen, there's some stuff that men have done

00:09:41.040 | that is toxic, but just being a man's not toxic.

00:09:43.640 | And I would imagine it's a hell of a lot worse now

00:09:47.600 | to be sitting in a Western country

00:09:49.120 | and feeling like I don't feel at peace here.

00:09:51.800 | And to me, the answer was,

00:09:53.520 | and you can see it over the course

00:09:54.720 | of how I've evolved over time,

00:09:55.840 | maybe I've just gotten older too,

00:09:57.200 | but there's been a lot more nuance to that

00:10:01.520 | where you realize if you want to be successful,

00:10:03.720 | you're not gonna do it by sitting around

00:10:04.880 | and complaining about the government.

00:10:06.520 | And if you want to be happy,

00:10:08.680 | you're not gonna do it by sitting around

00:10:09.680 | and complaining about the government

00:10:10.580 | or complaining about the soup you're sitting in.

00:10:12.400 | Now more than ever,

00:10:13.440 | you can change the soup that you're sitting in.

00:10:16.600 | - Yeah, I noticed that I was an early consumer

00:10:18.800 | of your podcast.

00:10:20.640 | And back in about 2016, 2017,

00:10:24.600 | I listened to your back catalog

00:10:27.120 | on both of the audio podcasts that you used to have.

00:10:29.800 | So I heard the transition

00:10:31.560 | from the frustrated, angry version of Andrew Henderson

00:10:34.960 | to the peaceful, more relaxed Andrew Henderson.

00:10:37.880 | In my own expatriation journey,

00:10:40.000 | I had a similar experience

00:10:42.640 | that when I was in the United States,

00:10:44.760 | I felt enormous frustration, enormous anger.

00:10:47.880 | As I started leaving the country systematically,

00:10:51.520 | I felt more relaxed.

00:10:52.640 | When I first got my first, second passport,

00:10:54.920 | I felt enormous peace when I realized I could,

00:10:59.480 | I haven't done it,

00:11:00.320 | but I could separate myself from this country

00:11:05.000 | and it brought me an enormous amount of peace.

00:11:07.120 | - And I try and tell people that.

00:11:09.240 | We've made 2,600 videos.

00:11:11.160 | Even people, again, Nomad Capitalist Live is coming up.

00:11:14.800 | Even if you come to that,

00:11:15.720 | even if you spend four days with us,

00:11:17.520 | this year in Kuala Lumpur again,

00:11:19.240 | I don't know that you'll entirely get it

00:11:20.880 | until you've done something,

00:11:21.880 | which is why I tell people,

00:11:22.760 | if you wanna experience this,

00:11:24.440 | one thing you can do is just get a bank account

00:11:26.200 | in a country like Georgia with $1

00:11:28.400 | and then you're like six months later,

00:11:30.560 | oh yeah, I have that dollar somewhere.

00:11:31.800 | Oh, it's still there.

00:11:32.840 | Like, oh, it's not only my country where the money's safe.

00:11:34.960 | Like doing something gives you that sense of fulfillment.

00:11:39.880 | But yeah, no, I think there's been

00:11:41.720 | tremendous personal growth

00:11:44.920 | because if you go to a therapy setting,

00:11:48.800 | what is anger?

00:11:51.320 | It's the response to a feeling of powerlessness.

00:11:54.400 | I think a lot of people feel powerless these days

00:11:56.320 | for different reasons.

00:11:57.680 | Now, for people like us who just wanna be left alone

00:12:00.880 | and we think that we've worked hard

00:12:03.080 | and built something and created value,

00:12:04.720 | we don't wanna give half our money away

00:12:06.080 | to a certain government.

00:12:07.400 | There's other people who feel powerless

00:12:08.640 | that some of the opportunities,

00:12:11.000 | I mean, you can't live in the United States.

00:12:12.480 | Everyone talks about it.

00:12:13.360 | It's not the '80s.

00:12:14.360 | You have one job.

00:12:15.920 | Guy only graduated high school.

00:12:17.720 | Spouse stays at home.

00:12:18.800 | Three kids, nice house.

00:12:20.600 | Three cars.

00:12:21.680 | It's not really doable anymore.

00:12:23.800 | Some of those people feel powerlessness.

00:12:25.960 | I don't think the answer is take a bunch of money

00:12:27.840 | from people who are already paying half their income,

00:12:29.600 | but they feel powerlessness.

00:12:31.280 | That's the reaction.

00:12:32.160 | I think that guys like us have felt that in some regard.

00:12:35.000 | So how do you do that?

00:12:36.360 | Number one, you have to be attuned to the power

00:12:37.800 | that you have and understand what that is.

00:12:39.920 | But number two, you find a way to take back the power.

00:12:42.760 | And I don't care if it's a dating situation.

00:12:44.360 | I don't care if that's a business situation,

00:12:46.680 | a tax situation, any kind of situation.

00:12:49.400 | You find a way to take that back.

00:12:51.600 | And I think that geographical solutions

00:12:53.760 | are some of the most easily implemented

00:12:55.800 | because you're not waiting for anybody else to change.

00:12:57.520 | You're just going where you're treated best,

00:12:58.880 | as I would say.

00:13:00.200 | - I'd like to talk about your investment journey

00:13:01.640 | because you not only have experience in the United States,

00:13:05.320 | your father was a financial advisor.

00:13:07.200 | You also have experience looking for investments

00:13:09.780 | around the world.

00:13:10.620 | You've invested in real estate

00:13:11.440 | in at least half a dozen countries.

00:13:12.920 | You've invested in many markets.

00:13:15.280 | And then you also have an enormous amount

00:13:16.760 | of business experience and business success,

00:13:19.680 | which has been, as far as I can tell,

00:13:21.360 | what you've shared publicly,

00:13:22.280 | your largest source of revenue.

00:13:24.280 | And you've developed a unique investment model

00:13:27.400 | based upon that.

00:13:28.880 | So when you think about investing,

00:13:31.960 | how do you guide people through that process?

00:13:35.300 | Given that you have four distinct opportunities,

00:13:37.160 | put money in my IRA,

00:13:38.720 | buy a piece of real estate in another country,

00:13:40.580 | build a business, build,

00:13:42.480 | even recently you spoke about a dividend stock portfolio.

00:13:45.600 | What is your model for the progression

00:13:47.680 | through that wealth building plan?

00:13:50.840 | - I think the first thing I did was I realized

00:13:52.400 | that here's a problem that entrepreneurs have,

00:13:53.880 | maybe other people have too,

00:13:54.880 | but entrepreneurs have, I'm good at this thing,

00:13:56.800 | so I'm good at everything.

00:13:58.320 | When we first started the services at Nomad Capitalist,

00:14:00.720 | 'cause people started asking me for help,

00:14:01.800 | I put a little package together.

00:14:03.080 | You can buy a plan, we'll make it.

00:14:04.160 | And that plan's evolved.

00:14:05.000 | I think it's the best service of its kind now.

00:14:07.320 | But back in the early days,

00:14:08.480 | we got a lot of kind of the hotshot young guys

00:14:11.040 | who could barely afford it,

00:14:12.440 | but they were very confident.

00:14:13.680 | Like, I don't really need your help.

00:14:14.760 | I'll figure out this company.

00:14:15.760 | And then they call you back a year later,

00:14:16.940 | like, oh, I got the company open,

00:14:18.240 | but now I can't process credit cards.

00:14:19.680 | And I've basically done nothing.

00:14:21.120 | And it's cost me half a million dollars in taxes.

00:14:22.920 | And I probably should've just hired you.

00:14:25.240 | In the same vein, I said to myself,

00:14:28.120 | I think I see macro trends

00:14:30.200 | because I'm divorced from the dogma of any country.

00:14:32.640 | So, you know, Bank of Georgia stock,

00:14:34.480 | it's up like 109% in the last year.

00:14:36.820 | I got in somewhere in the middle of that

00:14:38.480 | because I said, you know,

00:14:40.000 | this is a good dividend paying stock,

00:14:41.520 | but it's a great growth stock as well.

00:14:43.400 | You know, like all the metrics.

00:14:44.800 | This is a company that's gonna do well.

00:14:46.380 | I know it.

00:14:47.220 | Kind of a Peter Lynch philosophy.

00:14:48.480 | I know it.

00:14:49.320 | I think it's the best bank in Georgia today.

00:14:51.220 | It'll do well.

00:14:52.360 | And, you know, I'm not a stock picker.

00:14:55.040 | We don't help people pick stocks.

00:14:56.680 | But anyway, so the point is I'm an entrepreneur first.

00:14:59.840 | I'm an investor because I have investments,

00:15:01.540 | not because I'm a great investor.

00:15:02.860 | I have friends who are the exact opposite.

00:15:05.240 | They're not great entrepreneurs.

00:15:06.400 | Maybe they started a business,

00:15:07.320 | they hire one or two people,

00:15:08.720 | but they're great traders.

00:15:10.280 | I think you have to pick one or the other.

00:15:12.680 | So for me, I looked at it as my growth stock is my business.

00:15:16.520 | That's the ultimate growth stock.

00:15:17.640 | I mean, we can bring in certain people

00:15:19.680 | and they'll figure out,

00:15:20.680 | unfortunately in our business, maybe not to huge scale,

00:15:23.560 | we can get a 20-fold return on $10,000 a month

00:15:26.960 | and spend on something.

00:15:28.080 | And then you can go over there

00:15:28.960 | and do something a little bit different.

00:15:30.120 | You can get 15 X on 20 grand.

00:15:31.600 | Like, that's better than buying Nvidia

00:15:33.160 | 'cause you're in control.

00:15:34.280 | Right.

00:15:35.120 | And that scales a lot better.

00:15:37.240 | So that was the growth stock.

00:15:40.640 | For me, you know, for any stocks, I look for yield.

00:15:45.520 | I look for tax-friendly yield.

00:15:46.720 | I'm not a US citizen.

00:15:47.800 | So if I go to Hong Kong or Singapore

00:15:49.360 | and there's no dividend tax

00:15:50.520 | and there's no capital gains tax,

00:15:51.840 | I don't have dividend tax or capital gains tax.

00:15:54.520 | So, you know, 6% on DBS Bank

00:15:57.360 | looks better than, you know, 5% on a US REIT

00:16:00.200 | where I'm paying 30% because of my structure.

00:16:02.480 | And so I think that, you know,

00:16:07.000 | I think you're gonna see,

00:16:07.920 | I believe you're gonna see a lot more growth

00:16:09.480 | in other parts of the world.

00:16:10.880 | I believe in owning personal real estate.

00:16:13.160 | So I have a number of properties around the world.

00:16:14.760 | To me, it's like a nice hedge.

00:16:16.280 | It's not zeros and ones on a computer.

00:16:18.480 | It's property in the ground.

00:16:20.160 | It's more secure.

00:16:21.240 | You know, I'm a believer to some extent in gold,

00:16:24.600 | have some Bitcoin.

00:16:25.680 | I mean, I think it's kind of a whole diversification play

00:16:28.040 | because, you know, Warren Buffett would say,

00:16:29.800 | "Don't diversify."

00:16:31.320 | I was never interested.

00:16:32.160 | Maybe you can help me explain.

00:16:33.120 | Berkshire Hathaway is a very diversified

00:16:34.960 | collection of companies.

00:16:36.440 | I mean, just say, "Oh, I buy Berkshire.

00:16:37.680 | "I have one stock.

00:16:38.520 | "I don't diversify."

00:16:39.800 | I think you have to diversify

00:16:42.880 | because who knows what could happen in any one country.

00:16:45.120 | The US might ban TikTok.

00:16:47.480 | If your entire life is based around

00:16:49.120 | I make money off of TikTok, guess you're screwed.

00:16:51.440 | Maybe you should have diversified, all right?

00:16:53.720 | And so my investment philosophy is

00:16:56.600 | I don't trust any one country.

00:16:58.000 | I trust the government of St. Lucia

00:16:59.640 | more than I trust the government of the United States.

00:17:02.720 | But I want to have property that I can use

00:17:04.640 | and I can enjoy that funds me being comfortable

00:17:07.160 | and working in my business and doing well.

00:17:08.760 | I want to have, you know, dividend stocks

00:17:10.160 | that allow me to eat

00:17:11.000 | so I don't have to dip into my business,

00:17:12.040 | which is the ultimate growth stock.

00:17:13.120 | And then I'll have some stocks and other growth assets

00:17:16.120 | that are well diversified around the world.

00:17:17.720 | 'Cause I think that the story of the 21st century

00:17:20.160 | is going to be away from the West, I do.

00:17:22.440 | - When you think about the business culture

00:17:26.200 | that you grew up in, I have five children

00:17:28.040 | and my eldest is 10.

00:17:30.040 | The thing that I'm most obsessed with at the moment

00:17:33.200 | is trying to understand how do I impart a positive culture?

00:17:37.200 | And one component of that is a business culture.

00:17:39.240 | Not the only component, but it's an important component.

00:17:42.680 | In traveling the world,

00:17:44.480 | do you think that it's easier for people who grow up

00:17:47.280 | in the affluence of the United States

00:17:49.920 | to absorb the business culture and then be more successful?

00:17:54.000 | Or do you think that those, do you think otherwise?

00:17:57.560 | Do you think somehow those experiences are now universal

00:18:00.820 | and a child growing up in another context

00:18:03.520 | can be just as successful?

00:18:06.680 | - Well, personally, what I've always said

00:18:09.840 | is if I were to have children,

00:18:12.480 | I think if you can afford it,

00:18:14.520 | the worst thing you can do is to send your kids

00:18:15.980 | to the public school system

00:18:17.040 | or even a private school system.

00:18:18.080 | I went to private school for three years.

00:18:19.240 | They were the worst three years of my schooling.

00:18:20.680 | I was treated the worst in those cases

00:18:23.000 | because they're smaller private schools.

00:18:24.580 | You're more of an outlier if you come in later.

00:18:26.880 | I've always said, you have tutors.

00:18:29.000 | And I saw an article, I forget,

00:18:30.240 | maybe the Wall Street Journal recently,

00:18:32.000 | where that's a trend.

00:18:33.140 | There's people, 100,000 bucks a year

00:18:36.160 | and they follow you around the world.

00:18:38.120 | And it's like, yeah, I've been saying that.

00:18:39.480 | And I met a pretty famous entertainer last year.

00:18:41.840 | He's like, "Yeah, that's what I do."

00:18:45.240 | So if you do that, you're giving your children,

00:18:47.840 | in my opinion, speaking as someone

00:18:49.980 | who doesn't have children, the best experience

00:18:51.480 | because when you send them off to school

00:18:53.340 | and they make friends, who knows what they could be?

00:18:55.640 | I have three adopted sisters.

00:18:57.600 | And there was a time in high school

00:18:59.080 | when two of the younger ones, the twins,

00:19:01.960 | they went to a new school and they got in with a crowd

00:19:04.600 | that could have had some damage to them.

00:19:07.160 | How do you control that to some extent?

00:19:08.520 | You can give them all the values

00:19:09.800 | and you can give them all the morals

00:19:11.000 | and you can give them all the things to look for,

00:19:12.280 | but you don't control that.

00:19:14.200 | I think, in a sense, you wanna,

00:19:17.120 | I would say you want social interaction with kids

00:19:19.840 | that you understand how those kids are,

00:19:22.600 | but that there's more about shared values

00:19:26.100 | than about shared geography.

00:19:27.720 | I mean, if I grew up in Avon Lake, Ohio,

00:19:30.360 | like that's the thing that ties us together?

00:19:32.520 | We're all from Avon Lake, Ohio.

00:19:33.880 | We must all be the same.

00:19:34.880 | It's like, maybe in some ways we're more similar

00:19:37.020 | than someone in Bangladesh or something,

00:19:38.640 | but like, do we really all have that much in common?

00:19:41.240 | I think, and I was asked recently,

00:19:45.520 | are you grateful for the United States?

00:19:46.840 | And I said, no, I'm grateful for certain people

00:19:49.160 | who are from there who helped me.

00:19:52.680 | I also think that if you're a great entrepreneur,

00:19:57.200 | and again, just listening,

00:19:58.040 | I've listened to tons of interviews at the time.

00:19:59.440 | It's very cathartic.

00:20:01.000 | I haven't heard a single great entrepreneur

00:20:02.840 | who didn't have some kind of personal trauma in their lives.

00:20:04.760 | They may have grown up wealthy, but they were bullied,

00:20:07.040 | or maybe they grew up poor and people made fun of them,

00:20:09.000 | or some rich guy said, "You can't date my daughter,"

00:20:12.080 | and something that drove them.

00:20:13.640 | I think the affluence part,

00:20:17.760 | I don't know why people tie that to the geography.

00:20:21.920 | I've said recently, if I had the choice

00:20:24.320 | to give my child one citizenship, US or Mexican,

00:20:27.000 | I'd choose Mexican, okay?

00:20:28.840 | 18 years from now, they'll be an adult.

00:20:30.880 | Think Mexico's gonna be in a better place.

00:20:32.440 | Are they gonna be wealthier on an individual basis?

00:20:35.620 | Maybe not yet, but it's moving in the right direction.

00:20:38.320 | Everything's moving in a direction.

00:20:40.080 | The US is moving in the wrong direction.

00:20:41.560 | Mexico, for all of its problems,

00:20:43.200 | I think is somewhat positive,

00:20:45.580 | but I think I'll probably always be an affluent person.

00:20:51.040 | To your point, I'm gonna teach them the lessons

00:20:52.880 | that I learned, which are geography agnostic.

00:20:56.120 | It doesn't matter if I teach them in Avon Lake, Ohio,

00:20:58.080 | or if I teach them in Mexico,

00:21:00.040 | or if I teach them in Ireland,

00:21:01.120 | or here in Columbia, or anywhere else.

00:21:02.760 | Those are my lessons.

00:21:03.760 | That's part of me.

00:21:05.700 | But anyway, my child is gonna have those attributes.

00:21:10.220 | They're gonna get that training.

00:21:11.660 | They're gonna be able to go to schools,

00:21:12.980 | or whatever it is that they need.

00:21:14.940 | And I think people push back on that as,

00:21:17.180 | like, "Oh, that's stupid.

00:21:19.700 | "The US is so much wealthier."

00:21:21.460 | But I'm wealthier than the average American.

00:21:23.700 | So therefore, that's not gonna change.

00:21:26.380 | That's why I have the dividend stocks and everything else.

00:21:28.220 | I'm not putting it all on red.

00:21:29.740 | I wanna make sure to some extent

00:21:31.980 | the business gets to grow as much as it can,

00:21:33.500 | but there's a thing like,

00:21:34.920 | I'm not going back to working at a supermarket.

00:21:37.240 | Nothing wrong with that, by the way,

00:21:38.320 | but I'd like to stay at some certain level

00:21:40.520 | so that I can give any children that.

00:21:43.520 | And by the way, I'd rather have my children,

00:21:45.380 | I think I'd like to have my children

00:21:46.720 | out in the street selling something

00:21:48.160 | and learning real lessons,

00:21:49.360 | like the kind of forced entrepreneurship

00:21:50.880 | you have in some of the cultures,

00:21:51.980 | like here in Columbia, or in Mexico, or anywhere else,

00:21:55.040 | than kind of this coddled upbringing

00:21:57.000 | where they're playing video games.

00:21:59.240 | From everything I hear, the US is very toxic these days.

00:22:02.120 | And I just think if you bring things to your family,

00:22:05.360 | they're always gonna have that.

00:22:08.420 | And people are so wrapped up in

00:22:10.620 | being American brings them something,

00:22:12.660 | I guess because they don't have anything else

00:22:14.300 | to be proud of.

00:22:15.940 | If you have something else to be proud of,

00:22:17.220 | what does it matter?

00:22:18.220 | Really, what does it matter?

00:22:20.180 | I think you want to have a little bit of that friction

00:22:24.540 | where you're not just with everybody else

00:22:26.500 | who you think is kind of like you,

00:22:27.500 | but really they're not.

00:22:28.340 | I mean, how many people from where I'm from

00:22:29.940 | did anything like what I did?

00:22:31.900 | Nothing wrong with that,

00:22:32.780 | but how were we at all alike to grow up together?

00:22:36.600 | - Right.

00:22:37.600 | I'd like, your business, Nomad Capitalist,

00:22:41.200 | is positioned as a high-end bespoke service

00:22:45.880 | that serves six and seven,

00:22:48.480 | or seven and eight figure entrepreneurs,

00:22:50.360 | high end of the market.

00:22:51.960 | As you mentioned, there's lots of people

00:22:53.840 | that came to you years ago who were just getting started

00:22:56.240 | and wanted simple advice.

00:22:57.480 | And there's many people who try to help people

00:22:59.480 | go be digital nomads and make a few thousand dollars.

00:23:03.060 | I would imagine that learning to serve the wealthy

00:23:06.180 | and the very wealthy has required you

00:23:09.540 | to learn some new skills.

00:23:10.760 | You grow up in, not poor, but in a humble way

00:23:14.820 | as a scrappy entrepreneur,

00:23:16.340 | and yet you've developed this bespoke high-end business.

00:23:20.500 | How have you learned to deal with the psychology

00:23:23.340 | of that growth process?

00:23:25.180 | And how have you learned to serve those clients

00:23:28.740 | in the way that they most appreciate?

00:23:31.100 | - I think my family was somewhat successful.

00:23:33.060 | We were not living in mansions,

00:23:34.580 | or we didn't have connections.

00:23:36.380 | Maybe my dad, from being in the radio,

00:23:37.820 | knew the congressman or something.

00:23:39.180 | But we lived in a very nice neighborhood,

00:23:42.420 | but we lived in the cheapest house,

00:23:43.460 | 'cause that's what my parents wanted.

00:23:44.500 | And they were very clear.

00:23:45.340 | Like, my dad's like, "I'm not giving you my business.

00:23:47.420 | "We're not giving you, like, you have to start from zero."

00:23:50.020 | So I got the lessons, and I got the security

00:23:52.620 | of like, okay, you live in a nice neighborhood,

00:23:54.180 | and I get that.

00:23:55.020 | And I did learn a lot.

00:23:55.980 | I worked in restaurants as a kid,

00:23:57.220 | and I look back, and I say, "Yeah, you know,"

00:23:59.140 | 'cause, you know, maybe I knew something

00:24:01.340 | from that upbringing about how to, like,

00:24:02.700 | take care of people.

00:24:03.780 | I think what Nomad Capitalist has been built for,

00:24:08.580 | I mean, I don't care how wealthy I am,

00:24:09.940 | I would never call KPMG.

00:24:12.140 | And we've worked with billionaires.

00:24:13.020 | I sat in the living room with a guy.

00:24:14.740 | He said, "Yeah, I hired KPMG."

00:24:16.340 | And, okay, that's interesting.

00:24:17.900 | He's like, "The first thing they asked me was,

00:24:19.200 | "'Have you heard of Switzerland?'"

00:24:20.620 | He's like, "I'm a billionaire.

00:24:21.460 | "Of course I've heard of Switzerland."

00:24:23.620 | He's like, "I think you bring something

00:24:24.460 | "that the other firms don't.

00:24:25.680 | "It's okay, like, they have their thing.

00:24:26.760 | "You can kind of tell, like, this person wrote that,

00:24:28.320 | "and this person, they kind of jammed it all together.

00:24:30.740 | "It's okay."

00:24:31.580 | He calls KPMG.

00:24:32.740 | I just, I don't, I'm not a guy who ever could,

00:24:35.820 | 'cause I still have that scrappy entrepreneur.

00:24:37.140 | I think there's a lot of people like me,

00:24:39.060 | even in what they call the ultra-high-net-worth segment,

00:24:42.860 | the $30 million and up.

00:24:44.260 | There's about 600,000 known people

00:24:46.580 | who have $30 million liquid in the world.

00:24:51.580 | And I don't think that they're all,

00:24:53.700 | I mean, it's not what you'd expect.

00:24:55.740 | And I'll tell you, when you go to Eastern Europe

00:24:57.600 | in particular, I've had some friction on this,

00:24:59.000 | and it's been good friction, 'cause you learn something.

00:25:02.480 | I got in an argument with a guy at the burrito place once.

00:25:04.800 | I like to get a burrito.

00:25:05.640 | I like, I'm a frugal guy.

00:25:07.120 | I go to the burrito place.

00:25:08.120 | The guy's nasty.

00:25:08.960 | I kind of snap back at him.

00:25:10.480 | He's like, "Well, who are you?

00:25:11.640 | "You're broke.

00:25:12.780 | "You're eating a burrito."

00:25:14.080 | It's like, have you seen Michael Bloomberg

00:25:16.520 | eating a hot dog at 57th and Fifth Avenue?

00:25:19.240 | Like, that's their mentality.

00:25:22.360 | And I think it's the mentality of a lot of people right now

00:25:25.080 | is, if you go on Instagram,

00:25:26.980 | oh, do you fly in private jets?

00:25:30.460 | Well, by the way, okay, I did a couple times.

00:25:34.260 | Do I like talk about it?

00:25:35.700 | You know, I just didn't tell anybody about it.

00:25:38.300 | Like, can you take one picture?

00:25:39.420 | I felt embarrassed.

00:25:40.260 | Like, okay.

00:25:41.260 | But like, I don't make it my entire ethos.

00:25:43.860 | And so, I imagine there's plenty of people out there like,

00:25:46.540 | oh, how successful can he be?

00:25:48.140 | Like, here's what people do.

00:25:49.500 | They eat caviar and everything.

00:25:50.860 | No.

00:25:51.820 | There's a lot of people who have 30, 50, $100 million

00:25:54.820 | that's just like, I just want good service.

00:25:57.160 | I want to know I'm taken care of.

00:25:58.320 | You know who the best clients are?

00:26:00.440 | Are the ones who they went somewhere else

00:26:03.000 | and maybe they did the process

00:26:04.720 | or maybe they aborted the process.

00:26:06.360 | And they're like, you know what?

00:26:07.860 | These guys didn't know anything.

00:26:09.000 | I went to a private bank not so long ago.

00:26:11.440 | They want a million dollars minimum.

00:26:13.260 | They talk about, we do your tax and global tax and all this.

00:26:16.460 | And I said, what do you know about U.S. Citus Assets?

00:26:19.720 | You know, can you help me with that?

00:26:20.720 | Because, you know, I'm a non-U.S. person.

00:26:21.960 | I don't want to have U.S. Citus Assets

00:26:23.400 | as an estate tax implication, other things.

00:26:25.600 | And he gave me the most fluffy non-answer

00:26:28.080 | I've ever heard in my life.

00:26:29.320 | You come to know my capitalist.

00:26:31.480 | We've got a network of people all around the world.

00:26:33.440 | We actually tell you what to do.

00:26:35.160 | And our guys tell you what to do.

00:26:36.360 | But, you know, if we're not maybe giving you the tax advice

00:26:39.480 | in the memo, we have the professionals for that,

00:26:41.500 | but we're bringing it all together.

00:26:43.640 | So a lot of people say they provide the service,

00:26:46.080 | but they don't.

00:26:46.900 | And so I think that to a certain extent,

00:26:49.960 | if you are new money, maybe not quick money,

00:26:53.680 | you know, if you just went from a dollar

00:26:54.800 | to a hundred million dollars yesterday,

00:26:56.160 | you're probably going to not have understood the journey.

00:26:58.680 | But if you've understood the journey as you have or I had,

00:27:01.240 | and you got to a certain level of success,

00:27:03.120 | I think what you want most,

00:27:04.960 | yeah, you want to be taken care of,

00:27:06.160 | but you don't want to be screwed around.

00:27:07.760 | And I can't tell you how many private banks and lawyers.

00:27:10.920 | And I got a friend, I was talking to a guy,

00:27:12.400 | we call him the coach.

00:27:13.800 | He says, you call these guys,

00:27:14.920 | they can't even answer a question about their own country.

00:27:17.720 | He's like, I'm moving to Indonesia.

00:27:19.760 | I call the Indonesian immigration lawyer.

00:27:21.520 | He's like, oh, you know, I need to get back to you on that.

00:27:23.800 | It's like, you don't know, like just, you know what I mean?

00:27:27.640 | I think people like the approach of multi-jurisdiction.

00:27:32.240 | They like being taken care of.

00:27:34.440 | I love like unreasonable hospitality.

00:27:36.320 | I love doing all that kind of stuff.

00:27:37.720 | That's been, I think we've done a good job

00:27:40.840 | because I think that my kind of natural,

00:27:43.320 | I guess what they would consider

00:27:46.480 | in some of these countries, low self-esteem,

00:27:48.640 | where like, you're not constantly pumping your chest,

00:27:50.560 | you admit your mistakes.

00:27:51.760 | Like in a lot of countries like that,

00:27:53.520 | they see you as a weak person for admitting mistakes.

00:27:56.600 | No joke.

00:27:57.880 | Like a woman in some of these like countries would be like,

00:28:00.920 | he's not a strong man.

00:28:02.920 | Like this, he's a weak man.

00:28:04.600 | Like the, not the sophisticated ones,

00:28:07.200 | but just, you know, kind of your everyday person.

00:28:09.640 | Because they just know like people who are always,

00:28:12.960 | I'm right, I'm the best.

00:28:14.560 | And so I think what they've taken from that,

00:28:17.640 | that was good was,

00:28:19.120 | hey, let's be really open to helping people

00:28:21.520 | because they've, in their mind, okay,

00:28:22.840 | like we don't have as many boundaries.

00:28:24.360 | We don't have as much self-esteem.

00:28:25.720 | We're now going back and kind of fixing that.

00:28:27.160 | Like, yeah, let's have some boundaries.

00:28:28.800 | And occasionally, you know, it's created a couple issues.

00:28:31.400 | But I think like it worked well from that.

00:28:34.440 | It kind of worked a different way than I would have expected

00:28:37.480 | that people really took care of the clients.

00:28:40.120 | But now it's like, okay, let's have the boundaries.

00:28:42.000 | Let's think very high of ourselves.

00:28:43.320 | A lot of people love it.

00:28:44.160 | Just saw a guy next door coming to this interview.

00:28:45.560 | Oh, I love your stuff.

00:28:47.640 | But let's do the unreasonable hospitality

00:28:51.280 | and let's just help people do whatever they have to be done.

00:28:53.720 | And I think, you know,

00:28:54.920 | I think when you do that, you succeed.

00:28:57.840 | - It seems obvious to me that you could retire today

00:29:03.360 | and live your lifestyle for a long time,

00:29:05.480 | whether or not you sold Nomad Capitalist

00:29:07.600 | and if you sold the company,

00:29:08.960 | then certainly you could retire at a fairly young age.

00:29:12.760 | You have an enormous team,

00:29:16.280 | enormous pressure, enormous stress.

00:29:19.400 | Why do you do it?

00:29:20.480 | What drives you now?

00:29:21.480 | - I go back to the, what's the other option?

00:29:26.960 | I think, you know, if you're wired a certain way,

00:29:29.400 | what do you do?

00:29:30.240 | I just heard, saw Dave Ramsey clip the other day.

00:29:33.840 | Someone's calling, should I sell my business

00:29:35.160 | for $12 million?

00:29:36.000 | He says, I don't know a single person

00:29:39.480 | over all the decades who sold their business,

00:29:41.200 | who kind of didn't go back and regret it.

00:29:42.680 | And they talked about the good old days.

00:29:44.800 | I know people who have sold businesses

00:29:46.320 | and I think that they're happy about it.

00:29:49.160 | But I think there's probably a lot of people

00:29:50.240 | like what Dave is talking about.

00:29:51.840 | I would imagine, the point when I said,

00:29:56.520 | maybe I would do that, was a time of great frustration.

00:30:00.040 | And there's an Arabic phrase that I'm told,

00:30:03.200 | maybe someone will correct me in the comment section.

00:30:05.680 | But it's like, if someone says, you know,

00:30:07.200 | I wanna die, I wanna kill myself.

00:30:09.640 | You don't wanna kill yourself.

00:30:10.600 | 'Cause if you threw yourself in the ocean,

00:30:12.200 | the middle of the ocean, you try and hang on,

00:30:13.960 | like you would instinctively try and grab onto something

00:30:16.920 | or figure out a way to save yourself.

00:30:19.360 | You're trying to kill a part of you inside

00:30:22.000 | that you don't want anymore.

00:30:23.400 | And I think that probably, I would guess

00:30:25.360 | that some people who sell their businesses,

00:30:26.720 | like there's just something that frustrates them.

00:30:28.080 | It's, well, why don't you just sell that?

00:30:30.680 | And you know, that's something that I went through.

00:30:32.680 | It's like, okay, like how do you keep leveling it up?

00:30:35.680 | We can talk about, you know,

00:30:38.160 | maybe there's a sense of complacency.

00:30:39.720 | I don't know, overseas, I don't know.

00:30:41.680 | But first of all, I enjoy what I do.

00:30:45.200 | If I weren't doing this, I'd be doing the same thing,

00:30:47.360 | trying to figure out like,

00:30:48.560 | how does that Egyptian deal work?

00:30:50.600 | But now I wouldn't have the people to help me.

00:30:52.240 | And like, no one would care.

00:30:53.280 | Like, who are you?

00:30:54.120 | Like, Henderson, I'd never heard of, like, ah.

00:30:57.560 | You know, so why not, you know,

00:30:59.760 | have the resources to do all this stuff?

00:31:01.120 | 'Cause I am the living embodiment.

00:31:02.920 | Like, and that's why I keep mentioning it, you know,

00:31:04.680 | our live event.

00:31:05.600 | There's people not in this exact space,

00:31:08.400 | but they kind of do like the doom and gloom, get out,

00:31:10.280 | maybe a little bit of it's like the second passport.

00:31:12.840 | They're telling Americans how to do that

00:31:15.040 | with an event in Miami.

00:31:16.880 | How authentic is that?

00:31:18.680 | Listen, if you want to learn what I'm doing,

00:31:20.600 | I want to actually put you in the water for a little bit.

00:31:24.760 | Our event's in Kuala Lumpur.

00:31:26.920 | Come and see it.

00:31:27.760 | You'll be impressed.

00:31:28.720 | You're going to love the quality of healthcare.

00:31:30.040 | You're going to say, wow,

00:31:30.880 | this is much better than I've expected.

00:31:32.200 | I'm not going to Miami.

00:31:33.320 | First of all, I got people in all countries

00:31:34.680 | all around the world who cost a lot less

00:31:37.160 | and have a lot better attitudes.

00:31:40.080 | They're not going to get a visa to go to Miami

00:31:41.600 | 'cause the U.S. government's, you know,

00:31:43.800 | is prejudiced against them.

00:31:45.920 | But why would I go there and do that, right?

00:31:48.080 | I'm the living embodiment of this.

00:31:50.040 | And so it's almost like the business kind of grew

00:31:52.960 | out of my own personal interest.

00:31:53.960 | And other people said, hey, can you help me with that?

00:31:56.200 | Oh, you're doing that?

00:31:57.240 | Oh yeah.

00:31:58.640 | And I'm like the banker who just goes home at five o'clock

00:32:01.840 | or probably earlier.

00:32:03.040 | I actually want to know how U.S. CITUS tax works.

00:32:06.720 | So that really, that keeps me up at night.

00:32:08.280 | Like I'm worried about it personally.

00:32:10.200 | I didn't want to give up U.S. citizenship

00:32:11.920 | and then let them take 45% of my U.S. stocks when I croak.

00:32:15.880 | So I think it's just a calling.

00:32:17.880 | And honestly, I think that that's why

00:32:20.760 | just from a relationship standpoint,

00:32:23.520 | you have to have someone

00:32:26.560 | and maybe dating all over the world opens this up for you

00:32:29.360 | who understands who you are.

00:32:30.840 | 'Cause I bet a lot of spouses are like,

00:32:33.880 | yeah, you have enough.

00:32:34.720 | You got 50 million.

00:32:35.880 | What else do you need?

00:32:38.000 | I'm 39 years old, my grandmother's 95 this year.

00:32:42.280 | If I live that long, that's a lot more to live.

00:32:44.760 | To do what?

00:32:46.520 | I think there's a passion about it.

00:32:50.560 | That's what it has.

00:32:52.000 | And I think, and I often ask myself like,

00:32:55.280 | okay, he's not the business owner.

00:32:56.520 | What is Bob Iger come back to Disney?

00:32:58.400 | He should do a Seinfeld, go out in the high note.

00:33:02.480 | He left that place like in pretty good shape.

00:33:04.600 | And then maybe some of his policies you can argue

00:33:06.320 | like kind of came through like the wokes.

00:33:08.120 | I don't know.

00:33:08.960 | But like, you could have just pinned that.

00:33:10.760 | What was the other guy's name?

00:33:12.320 | Lonnie Donegan.

00:33:13.160 | Who came in?

00:33:14.000 | Chapic, right?

00:33:15.680 | Long, so soon gone, so long forgotten.

00:33:18.200 | Why did he come back?

00:33:20.000 | I would guess the guys are obsessive about it.

00:33:22.360 | Why does Howard Schultz come back?

00:33:23.600 | Why do these guys come back?

00:33:24.960 | They can't live without it.

00:33:26.320 | And I just, I don't know how else you can describe it

00:33:30.080 | but that.

00:33:31.560 | - A few rapid fire questions.

00:33:33.080 | In my experience,

00:33:34.800 | going international was not something

00:33:36.600 | that I could do all at once.

00:33:38.400 | It was something that every stage I had to try

00:33:41.240 | and then discover how that felt.

00:33:43.120 | Remember the first offshore bank account I went and opened,

00:33:46.080 | I felt like a total weirdo going and doing it.

00:33:49.040 | And then a few weeks later, I'm like,

00:33:50.360 | but that was totally normal.

00:33:51.520 | It wasn't a big deal.

00:33:52.800 | So what are the first three steps that somebody should take

00:33:57.800 | that are simple and easy to start getting exposure

00:34:00.640 | to an international context?

00:34:02.240 | - If the goal is you're in plan B, you're not moving yet,

00:34:04.600 | I would challenge why you're only at plan B.

00:34:07.400 | I don't care if you have kids, I don't care.

00:34:09.120 | You can move as you've proven,

00:34:10.720 | which is why I'm excited to hear your speech.

00:34:13.560 | I think having the bank account,

00:34:14.760 | having some kind of a residence permit,

00:34:16.080 | having a place to go.

00:34:16.920 | Robert Kiyosaki said it,

00:34:18.000 | our very first Nomad Capitalist Live,

00:34:19.560 | where can you be in three days?

00:34:21.120 | When it hits the fan, when the first starts flying,

00:34:23.920 | residence permits there.

00:34:25.280 | The next step really depends.

00:34:28.560 | But I think a passport's also good.

00:34:30.000 | If you have ancestry, check that out.

00:34:32.560 | Those are things that you can do pretty quickly.

00:34:35.160 | If you have gold, move some gold overseas.

00:34:36.920 | It doesn't matter, just any of the things

00:34:38.000 | that I would talk about, do it on a small level.

00:34:40.960 | Buy a property overseas.

00:34:42.360 | If you wanna live somewhere that's tax-friendly perhaps,

00:34:46.440 | and you wanna go there in the summer,

00:34:47.480 | maybe look at buying a property.

00:34:48.920 | Just get some connections to start to break the dogma

00:34:52.440 | that hey, things only work here.

00:34:55.680 | And I would say maybe the very first thing to do

00:34:59.120 | is to be surrounded by people who are of that mind.

00:35:03.160 | My father now spends six months in Mexico,

00:35:06.400 | and he wants to get the other six months in the U.S.

00:35:08.280 | down to a lot less.

00:35:09.900 | Why?

00:35:10.740 | He saw me doing it.

00:35:11.560 | That inspired him.

00:35:12.400 | He wouldn't have gone to Mexico 15 years ago.

00:35:15.140 | But he saw it.

00:35:15.980 | Okay, people are doing it.

00:35:16.800 | They're not dying.

00:35:17.640 | They're enjoying their lives.

00:35:18.920 | Their wealth isn't all gone.

00:35:20.660 | Hey, maybe I should do some of that.

00:35:22.720 | So I think maybe that's the first step,

00:35:25.900 | then some kind of bank account,

00:35:27.040 | then some kind of immigration permission.

00:35:29.320 | - For an English-speaking audience,

00:35:31.440 | especially someone who hasn't traveled the world,

00:35:34.360 | what are three countries

00:35:36.000 | that from your experience with your clients,

00:35:38.080 | you would suggest that somebody go for a visit?

00:35:40.520 | Places that seem to have wide appeal

00:35:42.760 | to an English-speaking audience.

00:35:45.080 | - It really is so different.

00:35:46.400 | I mean, Mexico has gotten widespread appeal.

00:35:48.640 | I was saying eight years ago.

00:35:50.000 | Move to Mexico, not Canada if your guy doesn't get elected.

00:35:53.680 | There's a certain kind of person who wants to go there.

00:35:55.280 | Time zones, by the way, for entrepreneurs are a big thing.

00:35:58.120 | So I talk about Malaysia would be my second choice.

00:36:00.840 | It is a terrible time zone

00:36:02.040 | if you're working with North America.

00:36:04.700 | I think Malaysia is one that really resonates with people

00:36:06.820 | if you're open-minded.

00:36:07.840 | I mean, it's not the name brand.

00:36:09.440 | It's not Thailand,

00:36:10.760 | but I would argue it's better from a tax,

00:36:12.520 | lifestyle, English-language perspective.

00:36:14.760 | There's places in Mexico where English is spoken.

00:36:16.680 | Spanish is easy enough to learn.

00:36:18.880 | So those are two that jump out to me.

00:36:20.520 | I mean, Georgia, I've talked about for so many years.

00:36:23.040 | I think that it's not near as affordable as it once was,

00:36:25.760 | but there's a lot of potential there.

00:36:28.280 | So Georgia's one.

00:36:30.280 | Here in Colombia is interesting.

00:36:31.440 | I don't know if it's a full-time place to live.

00:36:33.180 | I mean, there's something for everybody.

00:36:34.800 | I'll even tell you.

00:36:35.620 | I know there's people who watch Tucker Carlson

00:36:38.800 | and that's where they get all their news.

00:36:40.000 | And I'm sure Tucker Carlson and I agree on plenty of things,

00:36:42.440 | but I think Ireland is an interesting place

00:36:46.720 | because it's pretty close.

00:36:47.760 | I would argue there's places in the United States

00:36:49.240 | that are culturally more close to Ireland

00:36:51.200 | than to wherever you're moving to save taxes

00:36:53.020 | and escape some crazy Democrat governor.

00:36:55.820 | And so that's a tax-friendly place

00:37:00.920 | where they speak English and the government's more efficient.

00:37:03.880 | It does have some of the Western problems,

00:37:05.560 | but not nearly as many.

00:37:06.880 | It's a pretty neutral country and they're pretty efficient

00:37:09.440 | and the government smiles at you.

00:37:11.080 | So, I mean, those are some that I think are on the radar,

00:37:13.040 | but heck, I mean, there's people who go to Mauritius

00:37:14.840 | and they like it.

00:37:15.680 | I mean, it's 252 countries and territories.

00:37:19.520 | - For somebody who wants to move some money

00:37:23.340 | to another jurisdiction,

00:37:24.800 | what are three of the most useful banking jurisdictions

00:37:28.480 | that you find are really helpful

00:37:30.220 | for your clients right now?

00:37:31.500 | - Singapore's, I think, the kind of high-level transaction,

00:37:34.620 | even in our company, we were like,

00:37:35.700 | okay, let's have a treasury management account

00:37:37.460 | in Switzerland.

00:37:38.340 | They really put you through the ringer.

00:37:39.540 | I say to myself, like, did I become successful

00:37:42.540 | to prove myself to Claude?

00:37:44.820 | It's not even Claude, by the way.

00:37:46.180 | Like, they don't even have any Swiss guys working there.

00:37:49.300 | You know, they're, you know, listen, give me credit.

00:37:53.480 | Like, I'm pretty transparent.

00:37:55.340 | Like, I hire people all over the world

00:37:57.500 | and we pay some of them pretty well,

00:37:59.100 | but I mean, like, you know, I'm not sitting here like,

00:38:02.700 | no, we're fancy, we're Swiss, we're in the Rococo,

00:38:05.300 | building from the Rococo period,

00:38:06.820 | you didn't pay us very high fees.

00:38:08.740 | I'm like, listen, I hire, if someone from Georgia,

00:38:11.380 | it's 24, they did the best job, I'm hiring that person.

00:38:14.400 | That's what they do, but they pretend they don't do it.

00:38:16.800 | So, for all those reasons, I'm not a big fan.

00:38:19.220 | They don't, you don't even know how much money

00:38:20.340 | you need to open a Swiss account.

00:38:21.900 | Like, you just go in and they kind of like look around,

00:38:24.340 | like, you're a 5 million kind of guy to me.

00:38:26.580 | It's like, okay.

00:38:27.980 | No, I think Singapore is vastly superior to Switzerland

00:38:30.580 | or really most of the European.

00:38:32.140 | I went to Monaco and I was like,

00:38:34.700 | if I wanted to get residency, you get a bank account first.

00:38:37.420 | And they're like, I had a weird tax residence.

00:38:41.420 | They're like, we kind of don't like that.

00:38:43.540 | And I said to myself, like,

00:38:44.780 | why are there so many hoops to jump through here?

00:38:46.540 | Like, well, that's just how it is.

00:38:48.220 | I said, well, that might've worked in 1962,

00:38:51.420 | but not when a growing number of those 252 places

00:38:54.700 | in the world are trying to bring in business.

00:38:57.500 | So, I think Singapore is the high level one.

00:38:59.140 | The problem is Americans can't really invest there.

00:39:00.860 | You can just put your cash there.

00:39:03.180 | There's a couple of Swiss banks that target Americans

00:39:05.340 | that are more laid back.

00:39:06.540 | You know, the Caymans, I guess, is okay,

00:39:10.160 | but you have to have a connection there.

00:39:12.540 | It depends how much money you want to put.

00:39:14.260 | I mean, Portugal, I guess, in the EU

00:39:16.620 | for five-figure sums works,

00:39:18.100 | Georgia for any kind of sum works.

00:39:20.900 | They're shrinking by the year.

00:39:22.260 | They really are.

00:39:23.220 | I'm a fan of having residences and citizenships

00:39:25.500 | and properties that facilitate that.

00:39:27.780 | So, you know, you can get a bank account in the UAE,

00:39:30.460 | by the way, probably the most dreadful banking service

00:39:32.900 | I've gotten on planet Earth or planet Zutron.

00:39:35.980 | You can't, it's very hard to function.

00:39:38.180 | Honestly, try to run a company there without being there.

00:39:41.180 | Forget it, can't do it.

00:39:43.060 | So, anyway, but if you get a residence permit there,

00:39:45.260 | it makes the bank account opening process easier.

00:39:47.020 | I'm not saying the banks aren't strong.

00:39:48.820 | Put your money there, forget about it.

00:39:50.900 | Break glass in case-

00:39:51.740 | - Not even you can use it.

00:39:53.020 | - Break glass in case, you got to fly there,

00:39:55.340 | you got to talk to some guy for four hours

00:39:57.220 | and shout at him and then,

00:39:58.060 | "All right, fine, we'll give you your money."

00:40:00.780 | But if you get other residence permits in Singapore,

00:40:02.940 | I think banks in Malaysia are pretty strong.

00:40:06.380 | You know, if you have a residence permit,

00:40:08.860 | you can bank there.

00:40:09.700 | So, I mean, I think the number one is Singapore.

00:40:12.440 | If you're just starting out with like little,

00:40:13.860 | you know, small amounts, George is a good one.

00:40:16.180 | There's some, there's plenty in between,

00:40:17.900 | but I think that where you have a connection

00:40:19.460 | can really drive where you want to bank

00:40:21.660 | because a lot of places that are stable don't allow that.

00:40:25.900 | Singapore, it's big three banks,

00:40:27.180 | 12, 13, and 14 safest banks in the world yet again.

00:40:30.460 | Probably the most accessible on that list.

00:40:32.460 | - You didn't mention the Channel Islands, the UK.

00:40:35.720 | Do they still have value, do you think?

00:40:37.340 | - It's tough, that's tough.

00:40:39.420 | It's, they're going to be,

00:40:41.620 | if you go to Singapore and say, "Hey, listen,

00:40:44.180 | I just gave up my U.S. citizenship.

00:40:46.100 | I'm a citizen of, you know, whatever.

00:40:47.980 | I'm St. Kitts and Nevis, for example.

00:40:50.240 | And, you know, I have a tax residence in,

00:40:54.140 | you know, wherever.

00:40:55.500 | Georgia or Antigua, right?

00:40:57.420 | Get into places that are more flexible.

00:40:59.620 | They don't really judge you on that.

00:41:00.780 | Like, that's what I love about Singapore.

00:41:01.980 | I went in, but I've got an African passport.

00:41:03.900 | I got kind of like on a lark.

00:41:05.200 | Someone kind of sponsored me.

00:41:07.700 | And Singapore, it's a visa-free country.

00:41:10.380 | I go in, and it's just, it's like so Singaporean,

00:41:13.900 | so German, the guy's like, "I don't see, you know what?

00:41:17.700 | 30 days, okay, 30 days."

00:41:19.340 | It's not like, "What is this country?

00:41:22.300 | Like, I don't understand."

00:41:23.780 | You know, they're not judgmental.

00:41:26.220 | And so I think that in the Channel Islands,

00:41:27.980 | I mean, we looked at kind of putting part

00:41:29.500 | of the corporate structure in the Isle of Man.

00:41:30.940 | I think the Isle of Man offers a lot of benefits.

00:41:32.660 | But again, the answer to the question

00:41:34.700 | of why it's so much more bureaucratic,

00:41:36.660 | that's just how it is.

00:41:39.660 | Get that's just how it is out of your mindset.

00:41:42.180 | Like, why?

00:41:43.420 | It doesn't have to be.

00:41:44.260 | It isn't anymore.

00:41:45.700 | That's how it is there.

00:41:47.140 | And if you live in the Isle of Man your entire life

00:41:49.460 | or Jersey your entire life, you're like, "Oh, okay, great."

00:41:51.740 | For me personally, by the way,

00:41:53.500 | there were one or two companies

00:41:54.960 | in one of the industries that we work in

00:41:56.760 | where Jersey kind of went to them and was like,

00:41:58.780 | "Yeah, we don't want any problems with the EU

00:42:00.940 | with selling passport.

00:42:02.220 | Why don't you move out?

00:42:03.380 | Get out!"

00:42:04.420 | So it's like, for me, for that reason,

00:42:06.220 | I wouldn't be as appealing.

00:42:08.180 | So, I mean, I think you want places where they're like,

00:42:11.140 | "We don't care who you are or where you're from,

00:42:13.900 | as long as you love us, come on in."

00:42:17.100 | Whereas I think there's a lot of kind of judgment

00:42:20.000 | and a lot of other places.

00:42:21.300 | - Two more questions.

00:42:24.300 | I saw your interview with Jim Rogers

00:42:26.580 | where you spoke quite a lot about Uzbekistan.

00:42:29.300 | - He likes that.

00:42:30.140 | - For, in your opinion, for a young aggressive man

00:42:34.180 | who wants to go to a frontier market

00:42:36.780 | where there's room, et cetera,

00:42:38.500 | what are two or three places that you think have good bones

00:42:43.500 | and good growth opportunities?

00:42:45.620 | - I mean, if you look at,

00:42:47.260 | you're the driver of your success.

00:42:48.980 | I imagine, listen, you can go to the U.S.

00:42:50.740 | People are still starting billion dollar businesses

00:42:53.180 | in the U.S.

00:42:54.260 | I think the kind of person who looks at an emerging market,

00:42:57.500 | if you're young, is maybe I'm not gonna build the next,

00:43:01.380 | you know, meta or open AI or whatever,

00:43:03.460 | but I just wanna build a nice business, make some money,

00:43:05.380 | and maybe grow it out.

00:43:06.780 | You're gonna have an easier time building businesses

00:43:08.980 | that maybe don't exist yet.

00:43:10.580 | Africa, we've had people who go there.

00:43:12.580 | I mean, it's like playing on cheat mode

00:43:14.500 | in one of those countries.

00:43:16.100 | In simple businesses, I sell cement.

00:43:18.340 | You know, I make 100% returns every month or something.

00:43:22.100 | Like, you know, I like Southeast Asia.

00:43:26.620 | I think there's a good consumer culture there.

00:43:29.460 | I think you can build teams more easily there.

00:43:32.420 | So Cambodia's been a place I've liked.

00:43:33.940 | I've got a friend who's working there

00:43:35.780 | and building a property fund.

00:43:37.460 | I think we look at Bangladesh and, well, Bangladesh

00:43:41.020 | and maybe Nepal as kind of the two of the next ones.

00:43:44.620 | Uzbekistan is opening up, which makes it interesting.

00:43:47.180 | I mean, look at Georgia.

00:43:48.020 | You could have done real estate.

00:43:49.060 | You could have done a lot of things in Georgia

00:43:50.380 | five, 10, 20 years ago and had a proportion of return.

00:43:53.260 | I think here in Latin America, it could be good.

00:43:56.700 | More bureaucracy, I think, in Latin America.

00:43:59.540 | But what you have to go in understanding is the culture.

00:44:01.620 | You have to be ready for that.

00:44:02.900 | I think we all have this idea.

00:44:04.700 | This is where I've kind of lacked

00:44:06.500 | some of the support over the years

00:44:08.380 | is when I'll call one of my friends in Canada

00:44:10.140 | who did someone's business for $100 million

00:44:12.380 | and I'll tell him an issue I had

00:44:14.220 | with someone who works for me.

00:44:15.100 | He'll be like, "Oh, you're probably just seeing it wrong."

00:44:17.620 | It's like, no, it's a cultural difference.

00:44:19.180 | Like, you know, that culture functions differently.

00:44:21.660 | And maybe some cultures aren't as nice as other cultures.

00:44:24.380 | Like, you have to go in kind of understanding that

00:44:27.300 | and be prepared for that and being able to adapt.

00:44:30.540 | I mean, as we said, if you...

00:44:32.220 | I remember one of our countries, the people said,

00:44:34.500 | I would go in, I was there for three months

00:44:35.860 | and I would go into the office every day

00:44:36.860 | and say, "Good morning."

00:44:37.700 | They would never say, "Good morning," ever.

00:44:40.060 | After a while, I started to get

00:44:41.020 | like really kind of angry/depressed.

00:44:43.500 | And I'm like, "What the hell is wrong with you people?"

00:44:46.900 | And someone kind of pulled me aside.

00:44:48.140 | They're like, "Listen, here in our country,

00:44:50.180 | "the CEO is a nasty a-hole.

00:44:52.340 | "He thinks that you're a worthless piece of crap.

00:44:54.340 | "He doesn't want to talk to you.

00:44:55.180 | "He doesn't want to know your name.

00:44:56.540 | "He doesn't even want to know you exist.

00:44:58.780 | "That's what we're used to."

00:45:00.620 | And I'm like, "But that's not how I..."

00:45:02.220 | Yeah, we get that, but we also don't get it.

00:45:05.260 | And so you have to be prepared to kind of...

00:45:07.340 | Now, listen, that's not every country.

00:45:08.860 | You go to Malaysia, you go to Cambodia,

00:45:10.180 | this guy, the people are too nice to him.

00:45:11.420 | That's the problem.

00:45:12.260 | It's like, "Give me some strength."

00:45:13.860 | Or like in some of these Asian countries,

00:45:15.140 | like, "We're waiting for our instructions."

00:45:16.980 | Like, you know, nuance, like, you know, get it.

00:45:19.900 | So, but you've got to understand what you're going into.

00:45:22.140 | I think it's gonna build incredible character.

00:45:24.380 | It's gonna help you understand yourself

00:45:25.860 | in a much better way.

00:45:26.780 | It's gonna build self-awareness incredibly faster

00:45:29.580 | than staying around people who are very similar to you.

00:45:32.060 | And I'm not trying to like unsell it.

00:45:33.540 | I'm just saying like,

00:45:34.380 | don't think it's gonna be like the U.S.

00:45:35.940 | Now, you go back to the U.S.

00:45:37.860 | Every once in a while, I think,

00:45:38.740 | "Oh, maybe hiring in the U.S., maybe that's the answer."

00:45:41.340 | And then you go and everybody's fat and happy

00:45:43.260 | and everybody's like, "When is my siesta?"

00:45:46.940 | And like, you know, okay.

00:45:48.700 | But I think that Southeast Asia, Central Asia,

00:45:53.860 | you know, Georgia's pretty easy to navigate.

00:45:56.860 | Latin America is very bureaucratic,

00:45:58.820 | but I think that like immigrants

00:46:00.180 | are very well accepted in Latin America.

00:46:02.220 | Yeah, those are all places you can do stuff.

00:46:04.900 | I personally like the asset-light business

00:46:08.060 | where you just go overseas

00:46:09.620 | and you can run it from anywhere and you can pivot.

00:46:11.980 | And I can say, "Hey, this year I've got more Americans,

00:46:13.660 | "next year it's more Brazilians."

00:46:15.460 | But if you want to do something on the ground,

00:46:16.700 | there's still incredible opportunities,

00:46:17.860 | Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America, Central Asia.

00:46:20.460 | - You've made a public statement in the past.

00:46:24.060 | You said, "If I had to do it all over again,

00:46:26.020 | "knowing what I know now,

00:46:27.940 | "I could do in a year what took me five years

00:46:31.060 | "or 10 years to figure out on my own."

00:46:33.060 | - Most of it.

00:46:33.900 | - Obviously you built the knowledge,

00:46:38.180 | but what is it that you could do in a year now

00:46:42.700 | with the knowledge and experience you have

00:46:44.300 | from an international perspective

00:46:45.860 | that you couldn't do when you were just starting out?

00:46:47.820 | - Well, part of it's just the comfort level, right?

00:46:50.060 | Remember when I got my St. Lucia passport,

00:46:52.780 | I was dating a girl at the time and I was discussing like,

00:46:54.700 | "It's $100,000, a little bit of fees, okay.

00:46:56.780 | "I'm the nomadic capitalist.

00:46:57.780 | "Someone's gonna kind of help me out with the fees,

00:46:59.220 | "but I'm paying the 100 grand."

00:47:01.300 | And I'm like, "Should I do it?"

00:47:02.340 | No, in my case, she's like, "Listen,

00:47:03.340 | "it's good for your brand.

00:47:04.180 | "It's good for your mastery."

00:47:05.940 | But she's like, "You're probably not gonna look back

00:47:08.700 | "and regret it 'cause you're gonna be more successful."

00:47:11.060 | And I think that the same thing

00:47:12.140 | that drives you to become successful perhaps,

00:47:14.060 | where you maybe don't entirely believe in yourself,

00:47:16.140 | you're trying to prove somebody wrong,

00:47:17.940 | makes you think like, "Hey,

00:47:20.140 | "I've fought for most of my life.

00:47:22.860 | "Maybe that's the last 100 grand I'll ever make.

00:47:24.460 | "Maybe my talents will evaporate tomorrow.

00:47:26.180 | "And maybe you think like,

00:47:27.020 | "maybe I'm not even that talented."

00:47:29.060 | So I think if you get over that,

00:47:30.820 | that's what you're getting over.

00:47:32.140 | I see it now, Bitcoin is doing very well.

00:47:35.500 | And I say to myself, if you wanna be safe,

00:47:38.220 | if Bitcoin goes to the roof and it becomes a big news story,

00:47:41.420 | I think politicians aren't gonna attack that.

00:47:43.380 | They're not gonna, "Oh, let's make sure

00:47:44.500 | "we go after that for the taxes."

00:47:46.180 | Or, "Bitcoin people can't do this."

00:47:49.300 | They're gonna start regulating it and taxing it more.

00:47:51.860 | And they have billions of dollars.

00:47:53.180 | I'm sorry, they're gonna outsmart you.

00:47:55.740 | You're not smarter than the IRS.

00:47:57.300 | They're gonna eventually, it might take them five years.

00:47:59.980 | Eventually they're gonna figure it out.

00:48:01.940 | But some of the people like, "Well,

00:48:05.060 | "I bought it for 10 grand, now it's 70 grand.

00:48:07.420 | "But what's with 270 grand?"

00:48:09.420 | Take 2% off the table and just be done.

00:48:11.700 | And just, okay, that 2% is gone.

00:48:13.220 | But it's gonna protect the other 90%

00:48:15.180 | when it triples or 10Xs or whatever it's gonna do.

00:48:18.460 | And I don't know that I entirely understood that going forward

00:48:20.300 | which is why I'm kind of passionate about talking about it.

00:48:23.700 | So that's a big part of it.

00:48:25.780 | Understanding the cultural piece.

00:48:27.900 | Maybe not going to certain places that weren't a fit.

00:48:30.540 | You know, just getting everything in order.

00:48:34.900 | And I think knowing, and I'll tell you something.

00:48:36.580 | I remember the first time we had a bank

00:48:38.700 | where they didn't entirely understand our business.

00:48:41.140 | And we just opened it and they're like,

00:48:42.700 | "What's this payment for?"

00:48:43.900 | I'm like, "Oh, give the guy company, whatever else."

00:48:46.420 | And they're like, "Well, we have people

00:48:47.260 | "who sell offshore companies."

00:48:48.500 | It's like, "No, our service is different.

00:48:49.740 | "It's a different kind of service."

00:48:51.260 | And they're like, "Okay."

00:48:52.940 | And I kind of got frustrated.

00:48:54.620 | I used to get frustrated with people more.

00:48:56.740 | And, you know, they didn't like that.

00:48:59.180 | And they're like, "All right, well, you know,

00:49:01.700 | "you're gonna make your life difficult."

00:49:03.540 | And so, you know, now I've got a finance team

00:49:07.740 | and they just like, they think like that.

00:49:09.020 | They kind of empathize with the banks almost.

00:49:10.660 | I'm like, "No, see it from my perspective.

00:49:12.740 | "Like, we understand the banks have a lot of questions."

00:49:16.300 | And so they handle that.

00:49:17.140 | It's like, I would have put some

00:49:17.980 | of that infrastructure in place.

00:49:19.420 | I took way too much on on my business

00:49:21.900 | which prevented me from doing some of this stuff.

00:49:23.540 | Like we didn't have good HR until not that many years ago.

00:49:27.540 | We didn't have a finance team.

00:49:28.740 | It wasn't that long ago I was making the payroll.

00:49:30.700 | Like it wasn't yesterday, it wasn't last year,

00:49:32.540 | but like sooner than I wish it would have been.

00:49:35.500 | And, you know, I think that that's kind of stuff

00:49:41.060 | all gets in the way.

00:49:42.180 | You know, you should understand that like HSBC in Hong Kong,

00:49:47.180 | they have plenty of money in Hong Kong.

00:49:48.740 | They don't really want foreign customers

00:49:50.460 | who have Hong Kong companies.

00:49:51.540 | They're gonna de-risk.

00:49:52.940 | Like all that kind of stuff I would have known.

00:49:54.820 | I would have just, you know, avoided.

00:49:56.260 | So what I did many years ago is I just kind of over-corrected

00:49:59.860 | by saying we're gonna have 12 bank accounts.

00:50:02.340 | And now we've been going through kind of in the last year,

00:50:04.060 | I just closed like six personal bank accounts recently.

00:50:06.380 | Like why do I need three accounts in Armenia?

00:50:09.060 | You know, but I've been closing a bunch of accounts

00:50:12.620 | in the business too.

00:50:13.460 | 'Cause you build the relationships

00:50:15.020 | and that can only happen over time.

00:50:17.180 | But obviously if I was working with myself

00:50:20.540 | and I already had the guy here and the guy there

00:50:23.020 | who was the good banker or the good whatever,

00:50:25.220 | you would get the stuff done.

00:50:26.500 | So there's just so many mistakes.

00:50:28.020 | Even I remember it was in Nicaragua

00:50:29.340 | that I tried to get residence like 11 or 12 years ago.

00:50:32.060 | And I made the mistake in some,

00:50:33.780 | like I gave the guy the payment in full

00:50:35.660 | 'cause it was so low.

00:50:36.900 | And someone's like, you should never do that in Nicaragua.

00:50:38.860 | The guy's like, he has no more incentive now.

00:50:42.020 | You know, so I never got that done.

00:50:43.380 | I just kind of gave up.

00:50:44.420 | You know, it's all those little things.

00:50:46.660 | At times a thousand, you know.

00:50:49.460 | - You have an enormous wealth of content

00:50:50.700 | at nomadcapitalist.com.

00:50:52.780 | You have over 2,600 videos on YouTube.

00:50:55.260 | I don't know if your podcast is still out there.

00:50:56.820 | It's probably a little dated at this time, but.

00:50:59.100 | - They put the, I think they put the YouTube up

00:51:00.780 | as like the Nomad Capitalist audio experience.

00:51:03.700 | - There you go.

00:51:04.860 | You have thousands of articles

00:51:06.660 | and Nomad Capitalist Live in September.

00:51:09.380 | I'll be there speaking in Malaysia.

00:51:10.860 | Really looking forward to that.

00:51:12.100 | Two years ago in Mexico, I spoke there

00:51:13.940 | and it was a great experience.

00:51:15.820 | - Yeah.

00:51:16.660 | - Is there anything that you just wish people

00:51:18.300 | would ask you about as we close?

00:51:19.660 | Anything that you would love to talk about

00:51:21.660 | that doesn't fit your brand

00:51:22.580 | and your media team says, no, don't talk about that Andrew.

00:51:25.820 | - Listen, I think unfortunately I'm still like

00:51:27.660 | the media team, but we have some great people.

00:51:30.620 | Listen, the five magic words are go where you're treated best

00:51:33.620 | and I think you have to take an entrepreneurial approach.

00:51:35.460 | You've got to take action.

00:51:36.620 | You know, how do you move overseas?

00:51:37.940 | Like how do you make money overseas?

00:51:39.740 | You just do it.

00:51:42.340 | And that's why Nomad Capitalist Live, Kuala Lumpur.

00:51:45.460 | I live there.

00:51:46.300 | It's the longest base that I've ever had.

00:51:49.180 | One of the first places I went in my tour around,

00:51:52.020 | I went to every country in Southeast Asia.

00:51:54.740 | Not to backpack, but like I interviewed, you know,

00:51:57.420 | the president of Standard Chartered Bank Vietnam

00:52:00.260 | to like, you know, what's going on in these countries.

00:52:02.060 | I just connected with Malaysia.

00:52:03.980 | And I, and listen, to your question of where's people go,

00:52:08.340 | you have to go and feel it.

00:52:09.740 | You know, I'm here in Columbia.

00:52:12.140 | I'm walking around with one of my guys the other day.

00:52:13.460 | He's like, you can just feel it.

00:52:14.780 | Yeah, this feel.

00:52:15.820 | I go to Panama City.

00:52:16.700 | I don't feel it.

00:52:17.900 | I'm like, I don't get it.

00:52:19.580 | If you feel Panama City, you should go to Panama City.

00:52:22.340 | But I want to show people Kuala Lumpur.

00:52:26.260 | Prince Court Hospital, one of the best hospitals.

00:52:29.660 | I took the entire staff who was there in time.

00:52:32.500 | I think we paid like a couple grand

00:52:33.740 | for like 12 people to get screened.

00:52:35.700 | Soup to nuts.

00:52:36.780 | Amazing, amazing service.

00:52:40.260 | Amazingly affordable real estate there.

00:52:43.020 | We do it because you have a five-star hotel.

00:52:44.980 | It's like 130 bucks a night, you know, tip to toe,

00:52:48.300 | everything included.

00:52:50.260 | And I just think like people should look

00:52:54.100 | at places that are off-brand.

00:52:55.540 | Malaysia has not spent as much time,

00:52:57.900 | at least in the Western world,

00:52:59.500 | building that brand that Thailand has, for example,

00:53:02.340 | or that Singapore has for different reasons.

00:53:04.620 | I'm a big believer in being a little bit of a contrarian,

00:53:10.980 | but I think that, you know, once something gets saturated,

00:53:13.300 | to me, it just kind of goes the wrong direction.

00:53:15.780 | So anyway, I think that's something people should consider.

00:53:20.420 | And that's why we decided to do it

00:53:21.700 | for the second time, our live event there.

00:53:23.580 | I'll tell you the other thing I'm really,

00:53:24.420 | again, it's really been a thing in my life in the last year.

00:53:27.420 | I clung a little bit to like,

00:53:30.180 | okay, let's have American clients.

00:53:31.180 | 'Cause I like talking to them.

00:53:32.460 | I don't do all the client work anymore,

00:53:34.060 | but like, you know, they're fun to talk to.

00:53:36.780 | It's harder to talk to somebody from certain countries.

00:53:40.100 | But we found some great people from all around the world.

00:53:42.420 | And the same thing for the event.

00:53:43.820 | I think only like 40% of last year's audience

00:53:46.700 | was North American, which is still a pretty big number,

00:53:49.500 | considering it's so far away.

00:53:50.540 | But like, it was great to have people

00:53:51.900 | from like so many other countries and you learn something.

00:53:55.140 | And I think that even for me,

00:53:56.460 | sometimes it's just easy to kind of like cling on to like,

00:53:58.620 | okay, I'm overseas, but like,

00:53:59.660 | let me keep all the Americans.

00:54:01.860 | And I think there's gonna be a lot of changes.

00:54:05.820 | I mean, look at this TikTok thing.

00:54:07.540 | I think that's a slippery slope.

00:54:10.540 | I think you wanna be diversified outside of your country.

00:54:13.380 | And I think you wanna go to the places

00:54:14.780 | that aren't as well known.

00:54:16.380 | And if you're saying, oh, I'm an American,

00:54:17.980 | I went to the UK on vacation and they're no better.

00:54:20.140 | Yeah, they're kind of the same in some ways.

00:54:23.300 | You wanna go somewhere that's different.

00:54:25.100 | That's why I talk with the places that I talk about.

00:54:26.860 | It's not because, you know,

00:54:28.140 | it's not because I'm scraping by on two grand a month.

00:54:30.900 | It's 'cause I enjoy being in Columbia, not full time.

00:54:33.500 | Like I genuinely enjoy it.

00:54:35.180 | And I generally watch all the construction

00:54:37.540 | that we've been hearing.

00:54:38.380 | Like they're building stuff.

00:54:39.540 | You know what I mean?

00:54:40.380 | Like are they building anything in San Francisco?

00:54:42.140 | No.

00:54:42.980 | So I don't know.

00:54:44.860 | I mean, all that to say,

00:54:45.820 | obviously I wanna, you know, promote the events.

00:54:47.500 | Now you're gonna be there

00:54:48.340 | and I think it's gonna be a lot of fun.

00:54:50.420 | Look at the CEO of AirAsia.

00:54:52.020 | What a success story that's been.

00:54:53.820 | A million dollars he took that over for.

00:54:56.220 | It's like the biggest airline in Asia.

00:54:58.020 | You wanna hear, like who's heard of Tony Fernandez

00:55:00.780 | in the Western world?

00:55:01.820 | - No.

00:55:02.660 | - A million to billions to your point.

00:55:05.740 | Now listen, no one gets rich doing the same thing twice.

00:55:08.020 | You're not gonna start a search engine

00:55:10.020 | and become a multi-billionaire.

00:55:11.140 | Like that ship has sailed.

00:55:12.820 | But learn the lessons from a Tony Fernandez, for example.

00:55:16.580 | And I'll give you one more point.

00:55:18.220 | I'm trying to go more capitalist,

00:55:22.220 | a little bit less nomad.

00:55:23.580 | I'm a little bit more sedentary.

00:55:25.060 | I think the nomad people associate also

00:55:26.980 | with some of the doom and gloom stuff.

00:55:28.980 | Capitalist, guy built an airline

00:55:30.740 | from a million dollars to billions of dollars.

00:55:32.860 | I wanna hear from that.

00:55:33.700 | I don't, you know, God bless Jordan Peterson.

00:55:36.260 | We know what Jordan Peterson's gonna say.

00:55:39.540 | Why don't we learn how we can actually do something?

00:55:42.540 | 'Cause I think optimizing for happiness

00:55:44.020 | is kind of the core of the second half of my life.

00:55:46.700 | That's a key thing for me.

00:55:49.620 | And I think that all that together helps you get there.

00:55:52.700 | So there's a lot of different kind of points there,

00:55:55.220 | but I think people need to get in the comfort zone.

00:55:59.500 | It's what I'm trying to do.

00:56:00.860 | And I hope that our live event will do that.

00:56:05.660 | - Andrew, thank you very much.

00:56:06.500 | - Pleasure.

00:56:07.340 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

2024-04-15_Andrew_Henderson_Interview