Traveling to Save Money, Betting on Yourself, and Streamlining Life Decisions And More

00:00:00.000 | I don't feel like I care about flying in a private jet, like as far as if you think of like,

00:00:05.120 | if you could have unlimited money, what would you do? There's not that many different things.

00:00:08.880 | I realize I speak from a place of privilege right now, but there's not that many more

00:00:12.720 | things that I think my money is worth doing anything that I don't enjoy doing to get.

00:00:17.600 | And so should I, if I didn't like doing this job, should I keep doing it? No,

00:00:22.080 | I should stop doing it. Should my wife do her job if she doesn't like it? No,

00:00:25.040 | like we should stop doing the things because we're in a place that we can.

00:00:29.440 | Um, and I think I've been able to not care as much about money as I did, but that doesn't help.

00:00:37.040 | But that actually means you're mentally rich. Yeah. That's what I'm hearing.

00:00:41.120 | Yeah. I, I, I feel like I'm not, I used to feel mentally poor and I don't feel that way anymore.

00:00:48.720 | So the congratulations, you have become, you have, you have, you have, you have defeated

00:00:52.160 | the poverty in your brain because the minute you stop caring about money or fearing about money,

00:00:58.000 | then you are mentally rich and you're living life the way you life is supposed to be lived

00:01:02.080 | without worrying or thinking about money. Hello, and welcome to all the hacks, a show

00:01:06.560 | about upgrading your life, money, and travel. My guest today is none other than Nassir Yassin,

00:01:11.680 | better known online as Nas Daily. He's traveled to dozens of countries that many of us have never

00:01:16.880 | been to, or even heard of, and he's captivated millions worldwide with his daily one minute

00:01:21.600 | videos that bring to life the stories of people from every corner of the globe. He has over 60

00:01:26.960 | million followers and his videos have been viewed more than 20 billion times. Now I've gotten to

00:01:31.920 | know him over the past few years after he made a pretty incredible video about me and credit

00:01:36.400 | card points that I'll link to below. And I'm quite confident it'll make you smile.

00:01:40.720 | We're going to talk about how travel can broaden our perspective on life and how it can also help

00:01:45.440 | us save money along the way. And while our conversation touches a lot on travel related

00:01:49.840 | topics, like the best ways to engage with local communities, underrated countries to visit,

00:01:54.800 | or why he always stays in hostels in a new country, we're also going to talk a bit about

00:01:59.200 | personal development and self-discovery. I'm really excited for this conversation,

00:02:03.520 | but before we jump in, if you could give us a thumbs up, it'd really help the algorithm.

00:02:07.840 | And if you're new here, please consider subscribing. Okay, let's do it.

00:02:11.600 | Thanks for being here. Chris, thank you for having me.

00:02:21.200 | I think not that many people that I meet have a thing they really passionately believe in

00:02:25.680 | that needs to change about the world. What would you say is your kind of life mission

00:02:30.320 | or what you want to bring to the table? Oh, wow. Damn, you're starting strong.

00:02:34.400 | So first of all, I think if you have, imagine if you're an alien and you come to planet earth,

00:02:41.920 | okay? You just come into planet earth for the first time ever, and we introduce you to planet

00:02:46.240 | earth. Some of the things that we're doing for the last 30, 40, 50 years, I'm pretty damn sure

00:02:51.280 | the alien would be shocked by what we do and be like, there's no way you're doing this. So

00:02:57.040 | an example of that is we built a very tall building and then we put a desk and a chair

00:03:04.160 | and we force somebody to sit in that desk and chair for 13 hours every day,

00:03:07.840 | like 50 meters, 500 meters above the ground in a suit and a rope around their neck.

00:03:14.000 | And also we walk around with a rope around our neck, the tie. Like really,

00:03:22.800 | what, why do you have a rope around your neck? So that's fundamentally something's off with it.

00:03:26.720 | Or like the idea that we, what are some of the crazy stuff that we do?

00:03:33.600 | The idea that you can only do what you really like when you're 67, when you're like 70% done

00:03:40.800 | with your life or 80% done with your life, then you can get the freedom you want. That

00:03:46.320 | sounds like ridiculous, right? Or the idea that we're forcing high schoolers and middle school

00:03:52.480 | students to spend the first 18 years of their lives, literally sitting in a classroom, bored

00:03:57.520 | out of their minds. The first 18 years of your life, society literally imprisons you in a school

00:04:03.040 | system that is not the most efficient. That's crazy, don't you think? So anyway, oh, another

00:04:08.720 | thing that's crazy we do. We kill each other because we disagree on something that happened

00:04:13.680 | 2000 years ago, like crusaders and the Shia and the Muslims. And because of that, we kill each

00:04:19.600 | other. And oh, a piece of land, we also disagree on the name of a piece of land. And I'm willing

00:04:24.240 | to literally end your life because this land is mine and it's not yours. A lot of these things

00:04:29.200 | for an alien sound ridiculous. And for us, it's daily life. And I think my mission statement in

00:04:35.440 | life is to recognize what needs to change on planet earth and like spend the rest of my life

00:04:42.160 | contributing to that. And so that's why my mission statement is, you know, bring people together.

00:04:47.200 | I'm from Israel and Palestine and that's a crazy thing. So I'd like to help in that regard. I'd

00:04:54.720 | like to help get people to spend less time wearing ropes around their neck. I'd like people to stop

00:05:00.880 | killing each other because they're a different color or shade over an eye or whatever. That's my

00:05:05.600 | that's my life statement. And what do you think you can do or anyone listening can do to try to

00:05:10.800 | further that? I think it's a noble goal that I would hope that my audience is not. It's not like,

00:05:16.640 | oh, that guy, that horrible idea of bringing people together. I found and please tell me

00:05:22.640 | what you think. Actually, I want to get your opinion on this because I'm I like you. I'm also

00:05:27.760 | like, I think most change starts with media. I don't know if that's right or wrong, but most

00:05:36.960 | real change in the world starts with just making better media information, better information.

00:05:42.400 | That's why whenever a dictator comes to a country, what is the first thing that they do?

00:05:46.400 | They stop the radio, they stop the TV, they take control of the newspapers. So the flow of

00:05:51.600 | information, if you change the flow of information, you change the flow of the way humans think. If

00:05:56.640 | you change the way humans think, you change the world. What would you do? I think that it's very

00:06:02.160 | hard for people to see someone else's perspective without understanding it. The media is able to

00:06:09.600 | just show us the perspective that we believe in and we agree with and all that. If people could

00:06:14.240 | just kind of go spend some time with other people who live different lives in an open-minded way,

00:06:20.480 | I think they have to be open-minded. And so I think you can bring people together,

00:06:24.160 | but you also have to get them to be a little bit more open-minded.

00:06:26.560 | So it seems like it starts with media, but also ends with travel.

00:06:30.080 | Yeah. So I think that's why I love travel. That's why I encourage people to go places.

00:06:33.520 | I don't know how to solve this problem. I haven't thought about this problem as much as you have,

00:06:36.640 | but I just don't think people get to see that perspective enough and traveling has helped me

00:06:40.640 | see it. Which is why I love traveling, which is why I love encouraging travel, which I love talking

00:06:44.640 | about it. I love helping people save money so they can spend money on things they want to do.

00:06:50.320 | Yeah. I mean, I think travel humanizes humans. And I think far too often we look at somebody

00:06:56.800 | in North Korea as a not human. You are just a North Korean. It's like you don't view them as

00:07:03.760 | human and you can kill what you don't humanize. And when you humanize somebody, you cannot kill

00:07:08.800 | them. And that's why- And not even kill, I mean, yes, physically, but also just like

00:07:13.360 | destroy their ideas, destroy their beliefs. Yes, everything about them.

00:07:17.280 | In all ways. That's why people don't want to eat their dog, because the dog is humanized to them.

00:07:21.760 | Oh, my dog has feelings. My dog loves me. But they're okay to kill a cow that they've never

00:07:26.720 | seen because it's not a human. So I guess the more we humanize everything in life, the kinder

00:07:33.520 | the world will become. Now you said kind.

00:07:35.440 | I didn't say nice. You did not say nice. Tell me about why.

00:07:39.840 | You had like a light bulb. Would you say you're a nice guy?

00:07:46.480 | Having seen a video of you talk about this, I will restrain myself from answering that question.

00:07:53.440 | No, I think kindness is important. I don't think niceness is. And maybe this is because I was born

00:07:59.840 | and raised in Israel, which there's a term in Israel called chutzpah. You know what chutzpah

00:08:04.400 | means? I couldn't define it, but I've kind of heard it used. I know how to use it more than

00:08:10.000 | I know how to define it. It's almost like bluntness or like rudeness, straightforwardness.

00:08:14.400 | It's like, I'm just going to say whatever I want to say. I'm going to be truthful. And I'm going

00:08:19.360 | to say it even at the expense of you feeling uncomfortable. And I think niceness means

00:08:27.760 | not doing what you really want to do because you are limited by the fear of offending someone else.

00:08:36.560 | So to be nice, you change who you are to suit somebody else, even if you're not being truthful

00:08:44.400 | to yourself. Does that make sense? So that's why I think this whole idea is like, you have to be

00:08:51.040 | nice. I don't necessarily agree with it. I think you have to be yourself. I'll give you an example

00:08:56.080 | from like work. I have two types of people that I work with, a person that is not nice to me,

00:09:01.360 | but every time I talk to them and they report to me, every time I talk to them, they tell me

00:09:05.760 | exactly how they feel. When I look at their face, when they say you're a horrible CEO or you're a

00:09:11.040 | great CEO, I can pretty much guess that they mean what they say because they're not being nice.

00:09:16.240 | They're being upfront and kind, but they're being themselves. The other type of person would be

00:09:21.760 | like, I love this job. I love this company. I love you. Right. But, but behind your back,

00:09:26.880 | they're like really not happy with you, but they're trying to be nice to you.

00:09:30.800 | I think that's the ultimate form of betrayal is being nice to someone when you don't actually

00:09:39.040 | mean it just because you want to be nice. So I have many problems with the word nice.

00:09:43.920 | And I'd much rather have people be kind, but like super upfront, say what you want to say.

00:09:50.480 | And if it comes at the expense of somebody hating you, then so be it.

00:09:53.600 | Have you found any tactics in a culture like America where this is not okay,

00:09:58.160 | or it's less societally acceptable? An example I'll give where I've been

00:10:02.720 | not nice, but, but purely kind is, I can't remember the circumstances.

00:10:08.400 | By the way, you are too nice. I noticed.

00:10:10.000 | I might be too nice, but there was a moment where my wife and I are at,

00:10:13.360 | we're talking to someone and they were like, we should get together sometime.

00:10:16.160 | And you said yes?

00:10:17.200 | No, no. And almost everyone listening, I'm sure if they met another couple or friends and they said,

00:10:23.920 | oh, we should get together sometime. You'd be like, yeah, let's, let's see if it'll work.

00:10:27.280 | And I remember saying, look, things are really busy. We have a lot going on. I just don't think

00:10:31.680 | it makes sense to try to plan something like let's not plan something. I didn't say like,

00:10:36.240 | I don't want to see you again. Like it was, I was not trying to be unkind.

00:10:39.120 | That was with another couple of friends.

00:10:40.480 | This is just like the people we met, like maybe it was at a park and some kids and the parents

00:10:44.480 | are like, oh, should we do? I don't remember the context. It was before kids. Actually,

00:10:47.680 | it was years ago. But, um, I think I was just like, look, I knew that we weren't gonna actually

00:10:52.560 | want, like, there's only so many people you can have in your life and spend time with. And how

00:10:56.480 | do you want to prioritize? I was like, I just don't think this meets the bar for what I want

00:10:59.840 | to spend my time on. And at work it's, I've gotten better at replying to people back.

00:11:03.840 | I don't have time for this meeting. Really appreciate it. I'm focused on other stuff.

00:11:07.760 | If it could be accomplished via email, send me an email. Otherwise, you know,

00:11:11.040 | feel free to reach out, you know, down the road and we'll see if I have time.

00:11:14.240 | Uh, I'm trying to protect the Maldives, me and you. And I definitely don't want to go to the

00:11:18.000 | Maldives with you. Like of all the things that I could do with the limited amount of time I have

00:11:23.040 | and, and either if it's without kids, it's too far. And if it's with kids,

00:11:26.800 | it's not going to be what I want. It's not fun. Um, and so conceptually, I do want to go to the

00:11:31.440 | Maldives with you. Like if you could create the, yeah, but, but practically, no, I do not want to

00:11:34.960 | go to the Maldives. Thank you for being, uh, upfront. So, but I don't think people like that,

00:11:40.960 | you know, like, I think, I don't know. I love Israeli buntness. Like all my Israeli friends

00:11:46.960 | are like, you know, come over it's and they're like, Oh, why do you, why did you do that thing?

00:11:50.320 | That was dumb. And I was like, Oh yeah, you're right. It was dumb, but everyone else here is so

00:11:53.920 | nice. Um, so how do you survive with American trying to be less nice and not coming across

00:12:03.200 | as unkind? It's so funny that you think Americans are the nicest people on the planet.

00:12:08.000 | Like when you get this idea that like the other questions, how do you survive with

00:12:12.400 | other nationalities that are 10 times nicer than Americans? You know? Um, like I'm trying to think

00:12:18.160 | who's like, uh, like, uh, like Japan, how do you survive in Japan, for example, where you're like,

00:12:22.160 | literally have to be nice. Uh, or else it's like, you know, society, there's so many societal

00:12:27.440 | expectations. I found Americans to be not that nice. I don't know why. I mean, there's a bit,

00:12:35.200 | like there's a bit of shallowness, which is like, Hey, how are you? What's up? Let's hang out. And

00:12:38.640 | nobody actually means it. But if you look at the, the national discourse of Americans on Twitter

00:12:45.120 | and on the media, they're not nice to each other. They're like, they have a lot of freedom to be

00:12:50.080 | who they are and say what they want on a national level. Maybe on a personal level, they're trying

00:12:54.880 | to be nice, but on a, on a national, like, and there's a lot of nice people, uh, in like, uh,

00:13:00.640 | much nicer in Japan. And the national discourse is much nicer. So this is partly why I'm attracted

00:13:06.000 | to America because I actually don't view people as nice. I view them as a bit like Israel.

00:13:12.160 | Sometimes I think once my, my, my read is once you've humanized another person, Americans are

00:13:18.000 | nice. Uh, so like amongst friends, you're like, Hey, do you want to get together? If someone

00:13:23.360 | doesn't want to get together with you, they're probably not going to say no. Right. Like that,

00:13:28.640 | that level of like nice. So you're not nice to strangers. Yeah. We're okay. Being not nice to

00:13:34.240 | strangers, but we were like over, over nice to colleagues and, and friends and family and that

00:13:40.160 | kind of stuff. Um, yeah. Okay. But you did say, do you want to be yourself? I think. Yes. And how

00:13:48.960 | important does being nice or let me ask this again. You said being nice can sometimes get in the way

00:13:56.960 | of acting who you, what you truly are and putting on a facade. How do you think people could be,

00:14:03.200 | or do you think people should be more themselves and how do they do that? Well, it's just, I found

00:14:08.400 | out that, you know how there's some, there's like, um, there's a sixth sense for, for humans. We can

00:14:14.960 | sense, we can sense when somebody is being authentic and we can sense when somebody is not

00:14:19.040 | being authentic. Right. Um, and I think, I think you just want to make sure everybody around you

00:14:27.840 | knows that you're authentic because people just love authenticity. This is why you guys voted for

00:14:32.080 | Trump not to get political, but at least you can probably think that whatever Trump says,

00:14:37.520 | he actually believes whether you like it or not. Right. But the authenticity is so attractive

00:14:43.760 | about humans. And I think it's just like such an underrated feature that many people don't seem to

00:14:50.640 | grasp is the more authentic you look, which means the more you say what you really want to say,

00:14:57.120 | uh, it means you'll actually be loved. It's very counterintuitive. It's very counterintuitive

00:15:02.160 | because everybody is living in this act. We're all acting. You're smiling when you're supposed

00:15:08.480 | to smile. You're shaking hands when you're supposed to shake hands. You're putting a tie

00:15:11.200 | when you're supposed to wear a tie. We're all acting to each other until we die. But at some

00:15:15.520 | point you have to stop acting and just like be who you really are. You know, I once went to this

00:15:20.080 | conference in Switzerland. I'm not going to say the name of the conference, but man, it was the

00:15:25.520 | most boring thing I've seen in my life where everybody pretended to be interested in everything

00:15:31.680 | everybody else was saying. But I know for a fact, for a fact that deep down inside everybody was

00:15:36.080 | bored. But during the conversations were like, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Great point. Great point. Well,

00:15:40.400 | I really love your suit. And it was, it was such an act that made me realize, um, this is not it.

00:15:47.920 | This is not it. Do you think people do that because they, they, they're afraid to be authentic,

00:15:53.440 | not because they're afraid of who they are, but because they're afraid other people will judge

00:15:57.040 | them? Yeah. I mean, you, you, you don't want to rock the boat. I mean, if you're making millions

00:16:01.440 | of dollars in Switzerland, you don't want to rock the boat. I mean, I'll be the nicest guy ever if

00:16:04.960 | I have a million dollars, you know, guaranteed out of it. Right. So I think there's too much to lose.

00:16:10.720 | And, uh, and that's why you have to be nice to each other. But when there's nothing to lose,

00:16:16.560 | then you become who you really are. And you see it when there is war. Oh, I have nothing to lose.

00:16:21.680 | Now I'll just go be myself. I can go loot. I can do whatever I want. But when you have a lot to

00:16:26.240 | lose, like, that's why like rich people's circles, everybody's so nice to each other because one

00:16:30.480 | mistake, you lose millions of dollars. So I think maybe the reason why we're nice is because we're

00:16:34.880 | scared of losing what we have already achieved. And I see it myself, you know, when I have something

00:16:39.760 | to lose, I'm actually a little bit nicer to others. I'm a little bit less myself. Now I've

00:16:45.200 | come to a point where if I lose everything, I still have some money in the bank, so I'm okay.

00:16:49.920 | And that's why I think you see Elon Musk to be so himself so crazy, because he has nothing to lose.

00:16:57.280 | He has the world's money. That's it. Like I like what's the worst thing? He's never going to be

00:17:01.840 | homeless. So in a way, if your livelihood is on the line with what you're about to say, you're

00:17:08.960 | going to say the nicest thing ever. It's interesting. I talked to the, I don't know if you know Bill

00:17:12.800 | Perkins. He wrote a book called Die With Zero. And as an experiment, he decided to go get some

00:17:21.280 | really old clothes and go panhandle for a few days in, I can't remember what city he was in.

00:17:26.080 | And what he did was he realized, wow, if I just sit on the street and beg for money,

00:17:31.440 | I can make, I actually think it was a crazy amount of money. It was like $50,000 a year.

00:17:35.120 | Wow.

00:17:35.760 | And he was like, oh, so I'll never be homeless. I don't have anything to worry about. If everything

00:17:41.200 | gets taken away, I can go live on however much money I can make begging on the street.

00:17:45.840 | And it mentally got rid of that. I'm curious, most people listening here are not at the kind

00:17:52.080 | of wealth that they're getting millions of dollars in conferences in Switzerland. But

00:17:57.040 | they're kind of in this middle ground where they're probably not being their authentic self.

00:18:01.520 | You've talked about having the courage to be disliked. And I think a lot of times in a

00:18:05.360 | conversation, someone's not willing to say something because they're like, oh, maybe

00:18:08.080 | someone won't like it. Oh, maybe I'll offend someone, even though I really feel it. And I

00:18:13.360 | don't think that means intentionally trying to offend people. What would you tell someone who's

00:18:17.600 | like, hey, Nassir, how do I just be more me? I think people should aim to be disliked. And

00:18:24.800 | this is really counterintuitive. Again, very counterintuitive. Very. You should aim to be

00:18:29.600 | disliked. Because the way I've seen the world work is for every one person that dislikes you,

00:18:37.760 | there's an equivalent person on the other side of the world that loves you. And so the more

00:18:43.360 | somebody dislikes you, the more another person loves you. So it's a very polarizing thing.

00:18:50.160 | But if somebody doesn't dislike you, you know what that also means? Nobody actually loves you.

00:18:54.400 | And this is why most politicians in democracies end up with like 50/50 percent. Why is that?

00:19:02.560 | Because politicians need security and everything because there are people who really dislike them

00:19:08.160 | and want to kill them. That's why they need security. And there are people who really

00:19:11.680 | love them and want to vote for them forever. And so I think people should aim to live life

00:19:20.480 | like a politician, which is have some people that clearly dislike the way you live life,

00:19:25.520 | but also on the other side, you'll have your people. And people are just attracted

00:19:30.800 | to big ideas, big opinions. They're attracted to people who are authentic. And, you know,

00:19:37.520 | I hate Gary Vee. Okay. Just to be very open about it. Like, I'm not a fan. I'm not a fan of the

00:19:43.440 | Gary Vee style. But he's a genius for doing it because that same style is why he has a die-hard

00:19:51.440 | fandom. And that's powerful. And I'm trying to emulate Gary Vee as much as I hate his style.

00:19:58.000 | I'm trying to emulate by being who I am and get my fair share of haters. I think I have 30 million

00:20:02.560 | haters or so. But on the other side, I have, you know, 60, 70 million lovers. I love living like

00:20:09.520 | that. And does it make you happy? Very happy. That's probably the only thing that makes me

00:20:14.320 | happy is knowing how much I'm worth hating. Because it also means I'm worth loving for

00:20:24.240 | somebody else. It's because there's something to hate. I mean, you don't like anybody who lives

00:20:30.960 | life without being hated on is not somebody who's done any meaningful change. Most change comes with

00:20:37.200 | resistance. And if you are not getting resistance for your ideas and what you believe in and what

00:20:41.760 | you like and what you want to do in your career, then you're not pushing the envelope enough. And

00:20:45.600 | if you're not pushing the envelope enough, your life is inconsequential. That's how I think about

00:20:51.120 | it. Of course, these are very extreme thoughts. Yeah. Now, Chris, how many haters do you have?

00:20:56.640 | It's interesting. The thing that I think is both great and not great about podcasting

00:21:01.680 | is that there's no comment. There's no like it takes someone hearing me say my email address or

00:21:09.040 | going to a website. So good and bad. I get very little feedback. But I would say in the entire

00:21:17.440 | time I've done this. Well, over 1000 comments in the form of email or in social or anything,

00:21:24.400 | I think I've had one negative reaction by email and not a lot. So I think it's difficult with

00:21:34.640 | podcasts. If you are on like TikTok, I'm sure you'll get a lot more hate. Yeah, it's one thing

00:21:39.600 | that I think makes me not excited about trying to do more on social media. It's just like it seems

00:21:45.680 | like like my perspective on podcasting is a very positive place. People are like, oh, I don't like

00:21:51.040 | what you have to say. Let's listen to something else. And there's no easy way for them to be like,

00:21:55.920 | and I hate what you said. So they just don't. So let's use this as an opportunity. If anybody

00:22:00.960 | here listening to this has any issues with Chris, if you hate what I'm saying, just give me give me

00:22:06.480 | the as you would say, the gratitude of knowing that that people out there hate what I'm saying.

00:22:12.560 | So you're calling your audience to send you hate mail right now and you're giving them permission.

00:22:16.880 | Only if they believe that. Yeah, only if they believe that. Yeah. Yeah. But I guess you got

00:22:20.960 | to balance that with if you also love, you know, if you love what I'm saying, you know,

00:22:25.200 | I got to get to get both. But I imagine that by this many minutes in, if they hate me,

00:22:30.240 | they've already gone somewhere else. It's so easy to read a tweet before you tune it out.

00:22:34.800 | It's so easy to watch, you know, a 30 second video before you tune it out.

00:22:38.240 | I think it's really hard in a podcast to get to the point that something the most controversial

00:22:45.120 | thing is said. That's true. And there's no inherent virality. It's not like if we say

00:22:49.200 | something that is crazy, Apple is not going to like promote the episode because lots of people

00:22:53.920 | listen to it. That's just not how it works. Wow. So it's very easy with YouTube, with social media

00:22:58.880 | to just something that's controversial, blow up with podcasting. It's not, which means slower

00:23:03.280 | growth. Yes. But it also means it's much more positive experience. Like I don't get the

00:23:07.920 | negativity. Yeah. But I can also take you out of context. I can take like 10 seconds of this

00:23:11.520 | podcast and then put it on TikTok and then I can show you like a bad guy. Yeah. Someone will hate

00:23:16.400 | me if you do that, but I just won't be there to listen. We've talked about authenticity. You've

00:23:23.200 | put so much out there. Is there any downside that's come from being so radically transparent?

00:23:27.920 | Zero. And this is, if there's one thing I want the audience to like really, really like understand

00:23:34.160 | is that so far in the last seven years, I've had zero downsides of being public.

00:23:40.160 | Zero. This fear of exposing your privacy is an irrational fear. I've shared how much money I make,

00:23:48.160 | where I live, who I date, how I date, everything about my life and to tens of millions of people.

00:23:56.800 | And every time I share more, I literally get rewarded more. I will get rewarded more. It's

00:24:02.880 | crazy. People love you more. People want to help you more. I think we need to get into this culture

00:24:10.080 | of like over sharing, sharing what you really are going through because you never know who's

00:24:15.840 | listening on the other side that is dying for somebody else to relate with. And this doesn't

00:24:21.360 | have to mean starting a YouTube channel. It could just be more open with your friends.

00:24:25.840 | Yes. Yes. Yeah. Or even with your LinkedIn feed. Just say, "Hey, I hate my job. Sorry boss,

00:24:32.000 | but I don't like my job and I feel like I'm not living the best of my life and this is what I'm

00:24:36.720 | going to do to change it." The outpouring of support is going to be insane. And so now I'm

00:24:46.560 | living my life. So in my company, there's this culture, it's called always share secrets. It's

00:24:51.520 | one of the values of the company. Always share secrets. The world is much better when every

00:24:56.720 | secret is known. Okay. And one of those things has been your relationship. You recently made,

00:25:01.760 | I think your longest video ever. Yeah. Which is probably shorter than every piece of content I've

00:25:06.560 | ever made about your relationship. And you put how many years into it? Six years. Six years it ended.

00:25:16.160 | Yes. And I think you left an interesting message that more people should hear. One, a focus on

00:25:22.400 | finding something that's the right fit. But also, it sounds like you think that it wasn't a waste

00:25:27.840 | of time, which I think so many people often think about a failed relationship. Really? Yeah. Yeah,

00:25:33.120 | you're right actually. They do think about that. I guess maybe I've been lucky in the last six

00:25:39.920 | years because in this relationship, I learned, I felt like I was dating a professor. I was learning

00:25:46.400 | about things I was never exposed to, like vegetarianism, like animal rights, women's

00:25:53.120 | rights movements. These are all things I have not been exposed to as a child from a village.

00:25:58.000 | And so in this last six years, and also I've become exposed to how to have sex

00:26:03.760 | and how to talk. And so I've learned a lot. And I've been exposed to like the Jewish culture,

00:26:12.640 | right? Because my girlfriend was Jewish as well. It's great. I'm so happy I was exposed to this

00:26:19.360 | stuff. So there's this line that says, no growth of the heart is ever a waste. And I just find that

00:26:29.040 | line to be so good. No growth of the heart is ever a waste. And so I guess a simple test is,

00:26:35.920 | I look back at my six year relationship and the person listening can do the same.

00:26:39.360 | Did your heart grow even by 1%? If it did, it's worth it. Because growth of the heart is the

00:26:46.080 | hardest thing in the world. You can grow your muscles, you can grow your net worth, you can

00:26:49.920 | grow your company. But growing your heart is mission impossible sometimes. And you need somebody

00:26:55.440 | to force you to grow it. And my ex-girlfriend did that. And for that, I'm forever thankful.

00:26:59.360 | So traveling exposes you to a lot of things. And I want to go and pretend for a moment,

00:27:05.120 | you have no followers. No one knows who you are.

00:27:07.840 | No one knows I am.

00:27:08.720 | No one. And you're traveling.

00:27:10.400 | Yes.

00:27:10.640 | And I want to know, one of the things I think you're most well known for is building community

00:27:15.600 | and meeting people and connecting the world. How would you go about doing that from scratch

00:27:19.760 | if you were in a new place, a new culture, traveling?

00:27:23.200 | I love traveling. And I happen to have been not famous for like 27 years of my life.

00:27:28.960 | So this is just a recent phenomenon, like five years old, right? So I know how it's like to

00:27:34.240 | travel to like 30, 40 countries without nobody knowing me. But I found out that

00:27:42.160 | the best way to travel is to go to hostels. And I like strategically now, when I didn't have money

00:27:50.240 | and when I had money, strategically would go to hostels and I would check in a hostel,

00:27:54.560 | ideally at a dorm, not at a private room, because you want to have like these random

00:28:00.080 | interactions with people that end up leading to friendships. Let's go explore together.

00:28:04.880 | And then I would spend like a crazy amount of time in the lobby of the hostel in the hopes

00:28:10.480 | of just like randomly meeting somebody. And then you just need that one person that's also in a

00:28:15.840 | very uncomfortable position, just like you and both of you decide, hey, let's go explore this

00:28:20.880 | country together. And when you have one person, it's easier to find the third. And we have three,

00:28:25.280 | it's easy to find the fourth, right? So it's all about getting that one partner to want to explore

00:28:32.480 | the country with you. And so every country I went to, I would literally just go to the hostels to

00:28:37.600 | make the friends, not to stay at the hotel. I don't care about staying in the hostels,

00:28:40.880 | just to make the friends. - So you'd go to a hostel,

00:28:43.040 | potentially even book a room and not stay in it. - Yes, I did that before.

00:28:45.920 | - Because I imagine sometimes, if you were traveling with your partner, what would you do?

00:28:52.240 | - Oh, so the second tip is to not travel with your partner.

00:28:55.200 | - Okay. - Yeah, so when I started traveling,

00:28:57.360 | and I've never enjoyed traveling with a partner, if you are trying to make friends. So the minute

00:29:02.880 | I became self-sufficient in a way, I started traveling with a partner. But I find it actually

00:29:09.120 | really important to travel single. - Okay.

00:29:11.200 | - Is that, do you agree or disagree with that? - No, I think it depends. My wife and I love

00:29:17.120 | to explore places together. So I have that kind of player to go on these trips with.

00:29:21.680 | - But you're never gonna get player three. - Yeah, sometimes.

00:29:24.720 | - It's gonna be weird as a third wheel. - Well, we went to South Africa, and we

00:29:30.640 | wanted to explore by car, and we were cheap. And we were like, "Well, a car holds more than two

00:29:34.640 | people, so what do we do?" And we met these two Swedish guys, and the four of us together bought

00:29:39.760 | a tent, rented a car, bought four sleeping bags, and we drove around for three weeks through

00:29:45.520 | Namibia and Botswana and Zambia and South Africa as a team of four. Those two player twos. We didn't

00:29:52.080 | find the three, but we found the three and the four together. But they were both single guys,

00:29:56.400 | they were not in a relationship. So we had a third and fourth wheel.

00:30:00.000 | - A third and fourth wheel. But that is significantly harder than if you were by

00:30:03.360 | yourself, correct? - Totally. But your strategy

00:30:05.760 | seems to be trying to engage with and meet people who are also traveling. How do you try to engage

00:30:11.440 | and meet people local to the community and learn more about their culture?

00:30:14.320 | - Yeah, so I found that school networks were also very, very helpful. So I graduated from Harvard,

00:30:24.240 | and the alumni network is really global. And Harvard people tend to stick together because

00:30:28.800 | they think they're better than others. So I hope no one's listening to this.

00:30:34.240 | But so I try to check local Harvard clubs. And if I know a friend that is from that country,

00:30:43.600 | like on Facebook, you know, remember the time with the social graph on Facebook,

00:30:47.280 | where you could just search which one of my friends is now in Botswana or lives in Botswana?

00:30:52.560 | And you'd get a couple of people in every one of these countries. And that's really all you need.

00:30:56.560 | It's all about getting the hook, the one person that will open the doors to you for to meet the

00:31:01.360 | next 10 people. It's that's how I think about it. So I just find the hook in the first two days.

00:31:06.160 | And then the hook takes care of everything else. They find me the next 10 people.

00:31:08.720 | - Do you ever find the hook just like at a bar, at a restaurant?

00:31:11.440 | Because I think that's what people assume. They assume I'm going to go to a bar,

00:31:15.440 | and I'm going to randomly talk to a stranger. And now I'm going to go on a...

00:31:18.480 | - That's how you find the hook up. Not the hook.

00:31:22.320 | - Okay. - So I found it very difficult to meet

00:31:24.800 | people at a restaurant because you're sitting down the whole time. How do you meet people at

00:31:28.640 | a restaurant? - Or a bar or an event like that.

00:31:32.080 | Maybe not a restaurant. - Yeah. No, I had no success in this.

00:31:35.840 | - Okay. Is there something every time you go to a new country that you try to make sure you do?

00:31:39.920 | - It was by nature of my job, but I try to make videos as much as possible of every person I go

00:31:46.160 | to. Because I found that when you travel, you're making so many memories, but you'll forget these

00:31:50.560 | memories if you don't take videos of them. For me, travel is a form of archiving. Literally,

00:31:57.840 | I feel like I have my camera with me at all time. Memorize, memorize, memorize, memorize. Because

00:32:02.960 | you want to not forget this experience. So that's how I became a video maker and traveling video

00:32:08.320 | maker. - How do you make sure you're not just

00:32:10.640 | living behind the camera when you're traveling? - I am living behind the camera when I'm traveling.

00:32:14.320 | Who said I'm not? - Okay.

00:32:15.760 | - Do you make content when you travel? - Almost never.

00:32:19.360 | - Almost never? - I make content about the travels.

00:32:22.720 | So I'll go to a country, come back and talk about the experience.

00:32:25.680 | - You're kidding. - But I'm not making them... I mean,

00:32:28.480 | I made a video once in a country talking about how I got there, but I don't know. I want to be there

00:32:35.120 | and I don't want to be distracted from wandering around and seeing things, thinking about, "Oh,

00:32:40.880 | what? I got to go record this thing." For me, that seems like it'd be overwhelming.

00:32:43.760 | - Wow. That's interesting. Well, I guess you and I travel differently. We should

00:32:47.040 | try to travel together one day. - I would like to see what that goes.

00:32:49.440 | Yeah. So I don't know how many countries you've been to, but it's a lot. You've hit off countries

00:32:55.040 | that many people have never been to. What are some places that you think people are just sleeping on

00:33:00.160 | that are really underrated? - So five days ago, I was in Greenland,

00:33:04.560 | and I think it's a really place that a lot of people are sleeping on. Nobody lives in Greenland,

00:33:10.720 | only 57,000 people live in Greenland, and very, very few people visit it. And the people that

00:33:14.880 | visit it are usually the older population. But I'd say Greenland is hard to get to, and that's why

00:33:22.080 | a lot of people are sleeping on it. But generally, I found that Asia is full of surprises,

00:33:30.720 | probably more than Europe and Africa and Latin America. I found Asia to be much more full of

00:33:37.840 | energy, and it has 60% of the world's humans, right? So it is the majority of the world.

00:33:43.040 | So I become a big fan of Asia after traveling there. I'd say Maldives, not a whole lot of

00:33:48.480 | Americans went to the Maldives. It's the only country I went to five times that go back to,

00:33:53.440 | five times, most countries I try not to go back to. But the Maldives just has a special aura

00:33:58.400 | that I just feel like it's missing in the American zeitgeist. It's not there. Why?

00:34:04.560 | - So the feedback I've heard from everyone that's been to Maldives, I'm wondering if you did it

00:34:08.000 | differently, was like, you basically land at a resort, and you stay at the resort the whole

00:34:12.640 | time, and then you leave. - And what's better than that?

00:34:14.960 | - But is that the experience? You described, I think you love connecting with locals and having

00:34:22.880 | these amazing experiences. I look at all your videos, and the Maldives, I think it's like,

00:34:26.800 | you just stayed at an expensive hotel. That's it. It seems antithetical to the thing you would

00:34:30.640 | normally love doing. - That's why when I go to

00:34:33.840 | countries with big populations, it's work. When you're making videos, it's work. But when I go

00:34:38.000 | to the Maldives, it's actual travel for me, because there's no people to make videos about,

00:34:42.080 | there's no videos to make, you're just actually relaxing. So maybe that's why I like, actually,

00:34:46.160 | I never thought about that. That's why I like the Maldives. It is where I relax.

00:34:49.440 | - Yeah, so that's how I travel. I'm not making the videos. You just need to go somewhere and

00:34:53.600 | not make a video. - So you travel, and then

00:34:56.560 | what's your goal when you travel? - I like just learning new things.

00:35:03.280 | I think it would be the broader thing. Learning and eating new things.

00:35:05.600 | - Learning and eating new things. - So like meeting interesting people,

00:35:08.480 | hearing different perspectives, seeing different things, thinking about how those

00:35:12.160 | things came to be, why things happened in a certain way.

00:35:14.800 | - Have you been to Easter Island? - No.

00:35:16.960 | - Okay, you should check it out. It's close. - Okay.

00:35:19.200 | - Easter Island is like, you can learn things, there's people there, and it's like really remote,

00:35:23.280 | like the Maldives. - Okay, yeah. I mean,

00:35:25.440 | don't get me wrong. Our version of the Maldives, because I think you live in Dubai, and I live in

00:35:29.120 | the Bay Area, is Bora Bora. It's like eight-hour flight, super easy, compared to the Maldives,

00:35:34.960 | which is like literally maybe halfway around the world.

00:35:37.040 | - And how often do you go to Bora Bora? - We went twice, and it was super relaxing,

00:35:42.160 | but it didn't really feel like travel in that. There was no... We weren't eating...

00:35:48.080 | There's some local things that the hotel makes, but when we go to Thailand, it's like,

00:35:54.640 | let's go to some back alley night market, let's sit down on a stool and eat something delicious,

00:36:01.120 | and meet random people, and talk about what they're doing, and then find out where that

00:36:06.240 | leads us, and wander and explore. That doesn't happen. Those are the most memorable experiences

00:36:11.600 | for me, and I don't get those. I love relaxing on a beach also, but to me, they're two totally

00:36:18.400 | different things. - I guess it depends on how much

00:36:20.480 | you travel per year, because if you travel for three, four, five months a year, which is how

00:36:23.920 | much I travel, for work and for fun, sometimes I want to relax by doing that, the two-weeks thing,

00:36:30.400 | but most people have two weeks to travel, so you want to do as much crazy things as possible,

00:36:34.720 | drink at a bar in Thailand, and go hopping in Taiwan or Japan, so I understand why that is

00:36:40.640 | appealing as well. - Okay, let's rewind.

00:36:44.240 | - Yes. - I think one of the

00:36:46.560 | interesting things for people who don't know your story, there's a million podcasts they can go

00:36:50.640 | listen to to hear your story, but the one aspect of it I want to focus on that I think is relevant

00:36:55.680 | to a lot of people is taking a big bet on yourself. - Yes.

00:36:59.200 | - And so many people, you quit a job that was, for many people, a dream job,

00:37:05.120 | and you bet on yourself, and a lot of people do that by saying, "I'm going to start a little

00:37:08.400 | side hustle." I sometimes think in order to make something work, you kind of have to go all in on

00:37:12.800 | it and commit. Can you talk a little bit about how you built it? You could tell about the experience,

00:37:18.880 | but how did you build up that conviction, and how did you find a way to make it even more

00:37:24.080 | affordable than, you know, you stretched your dollars way more than most people do when they

00:37:28.000 | quit? - Yeah, and that's what people don't

00:37:29.280 | realize is that living in New York or SF is actually really dangerous because now you are

00:37:35.200 | really enslaved to the daily life costs of living here. And, you know, you're just talking about

00:37:40.960 | this like you need a lot of money every month just to survive. - It's funny because my wife and I had

00:37:45.440 | this conversation because now I'm a creator, and the income of a creator is more variable, right?

00:37:51.200 | It could be very high, but also if the economy collapses and brands stop wanting to advertise,

00:37:56.240 | it could go to zero. - Yes.

00:37:57.280 | - There's an amount of money in my mind that's like we could live on somewhere,

00:38:02.000 | and then there's an amount of money that it's like we could keep living our current lifestyle,

00:38:06.240 | and I think that number is like almost maybe 2x. - Wow.

00:38:10.320 | - I think that if you didn't need to live in the Bay Area, first off-

00:38:15.120 | - But it's in the tens of thousands. - Yeah.

00:38:16.960 | - It's not like $3,000. - No.

00:38:18.640 | - Which is crazy talk if you think about this, like if anybody listening to this,

00:38:22.320 | you need tens of thousands of dollars to maintain a lifestyle here in San Francisco, right? Which

00:38:28.720 | means you will always need- - I wouldn't say that, I'd say it's

00:38:31.600 | maybe me, but I would say when we were living in San Francisco before we had children,

00:38:35.600 | I think our annual burn was under 10,000 a month for sure.

00:38:40.960 | - Got it, got it. - So I would say-

00:38:43.360 | - But that's still high too for two people. - For two people.

00:38:46.000 | - Without kids. - Without kids, definitely under 10.

00:38:48.640 | - So my burn in New York, and this is why I decided to take a bet on myself,

00:38:51.840 | my burn in New York was roughly $3,500 per month. And my salary was roughly seven,

00:38:59.040 | but that still was a little bit too high for my own comfort. And I realized that if I just leave

00:39:03.200 | my job and use my savings and burn $1,000 in India or Ethiopia and learn and work on self-improving

00:39:11.120 | myself, I could extend my runway by two years, three years, four years. And so that's what I did.

00:39:15.840 | I just left my life in New York and I just went to Kenya, Nairobi, Kenya, and I started

00:39:20.800 | learning how to make videos and traveling by making videos and connecting with locals.

00:39:25.120 | And the first two years, of course, it was self-sustained. I was losing money using my

00:39:29.760 | own savings, but I was still saving money from, if I stayed living in New York, I would have spent

00:39:36.880 | more money. So it made sense to travel. Traveling for me was a way to save money. And that's what

00:39:43.680 | people don't realize is that traveling should be expensive. Actually, no, if you leave America,

00:39:50.000 | the world is shockingly cheap. Yeah. If you leave your life for two weeks,

00:39:55.200 | you don't save any money, but if you leave your life for six months, 12 months, you can save money.

00:40:00.560 | In fact, when we left our life for eight months, we traveled around the world and we subletted our

00:40:06.640 | apartment, right? Because we couldn't get out of our lease, but we had all this furniture and we

00:40:10.080 | thought, "Oh, well, we could probably rent it for more than we're paying because it has furniture."

00:40:13.200 | And we almost broke even on the cost to travel. So it was just traveling for free because we

00:40:19.760 | actually made that kind of major change. And you had all these point hacks and whatnot.

00:40:23.520 | Yeah. Back then I didn't have as many, but the number one way to burn money traveling

00:40:29.120 | is to fly on an airplane. The marginal cost to add an extra week to a trip to Thailand

00:40:37.840 | is very low relative to the marginal cost to come back for another week later.

00:40:42.320 | Yeah. So the cost of a one-week trip versus a five-week trip is very...

00:40:45.680 | I would say that... I don't know. I wish I had a rule of thumb, but I would say a five-week trip

00:40:49.440 | is probably cheaper than two one-week trips, is my guess. Just because, at least for us,

00:40:55.920 | the international flight, it's hard to find international flight for less than $1,000.

00:40:59.440 | The way we were traveling at the time, it's very easy to find a place to stay for $10 a night.

00:41:04.400 | Right. Our budget was under $30 a day.

00:41:06.960 | Yeah. But there's just no way... Yes,

00:41:09.760 | points and miles make the flights cheaper, but there's no way if you don't have points to make

00:41:13.920 | the flight less than maybe $800. This is also an American problem because

00:41:18.640 | you're really surrounded by nothing. San Francisco, if you want to get to the next country,

00:41:23.360 | if it's not Mexico or Canada, you're looking at seven hours.

00:41:28.080 | Yeah. That's very far.

00:41:30.320 | And if you live in, let's say, Dubai, you can reach, I think, 60% of the world within seven

00:41:36.960 | hours. Did you know that? So a flight from Dubai to Pakistan is cheap. Pakistan to Thailand, cheap.

00:41:44.880 | Thailand to Laos, cheap. All these flights are so interconnected. The world is much more closer

00:41:50.560 | to each other outside of the American continent. It's just the North American and South American

00:41:55.280 | continents are just way too stretched vertically that it becomes really difficult to travel.

00:42:00.160 | And that's why I find it hard to live here because you cannot travel in an efficient

00:42:06.560 | manner financially and time-wise. Well, I think you could play the points game

00:42:11.440 | and make that work. Yes, that I don't know how to do.

00:42:14.800 | But yeah, we got to work on that. Where are you putting all these expenses for your businesses?

00:42:18.400 | I don't collect points, by the way. I've traveled for three years. I don't collect points.

00:42:23.200 | And I just don't know how to do it. And I think it's the world's biggest fraud.

00:42:25.840 | And I think points is just like a meme coin. It's like a crypto coin. And it's just like,

00:42:32.160 | oh, yeah, I have 100,000 delta miles. And what the fuck is the value of every mile? Do you know?

00:42:37.360 | Like some random executive can like inflate or deflate the whole value of your miles

00:42:41.840 | overnight and you have no control over it. But if you're flying on a Delta flight internationally,

00:42:47.360 | you're not going to put some frequent flyer program number in there?

00:42:50.560 | No, I don't do that. I've never done that. Why?

00:42:53.440 | I just think it's a game everybody plays and I don't see the benefit of it.

00:42:59.520 | Well, there's not a risk though, right? Like you buy a flight from here to Dubai.

00:43:03.920 | What is the risk of putting a frequent flyer number?

00:43:07.840 | So I don't know what the number is. So I mean, just for context, I'm the kind of guy who

00:43:13.680 | has 20 T-shirts that look identical to each other in his entire wardrobe.

00:43:17.760 | So I'm also like scared of like buying a different T-shirt because I don't want to

00:43:22.560 | make the decision of which T-shirt to wear today, you know? So I'm on a mission to streamline my

00:43:30.400 | life in a way that allows me to not think. Let's talk about that.

00:43:35.440 | Yes. What are other ways you do that?

00:43:37.520 | So it's same shoes, two pants, all the same color, 20 T-shirts, all the same design,

00:43:44.800 | same everything, identical. I have no material object that I have any emotional attachment to

00:43:54.640 | in my life other than my laptop. And my laptop is replaceable because it's locked and it's

00:44:00.400 | all in the cloud. So even if I lose my laptop, it's fine. So if anybody gets into my house,

00:44:05.440 | they can steal anything they want, and I don't care. I've never locked my house in three years.

00:44:09.120 | My phone, I guess I have an emotional attachment to my phone. So I'm only emotionally attached

00:44:13.680 | to my phone and my laptop, and that's it. And some servers in the cloud that are

00:44:17.760 | holding all of your important information. Yeah. But nothing else in my life is important.

00:44:22.080 | Okay. What about decisions around what to eat?

00:44:25.120 | Oh, that I also streamlined. So I'm vegetarian, which basically means 90% of food menus are not

00:44:31.200 | relevant to me because they're full of dead animals. And I also try to eat the same thing.

00:44:36.560 | So I try to eat the same thing for breakfast, the same thing for dinner, same thing for lunch.

00:44:41.440 | So eggs, it has a lot of proteins and a salad, egg salad, egg salad, egg salad every single day.

00:44:48.000 | So now I don't have to think about food. What else?

00:44:50.880 | Health, like exercise. Oh, health. Yeah. One hour per day,

00:44:56.240 | that's it. Same exercise. What kind of exercise?

00:45:00.080 | Oh, and also don't have to think about what I exercise because I have a personal trainer.

00:45:03.200 | Okay. So he comes and tells me,

00:45:04.720 | move your hand left, move your hand right. And I said, okay. And so now I've been able

00:45:09.200 | to save my brain capacity to focus on what really matters, right? Building a company,

00:45:14.640 | making videos, furthering my career. And I just, and I don't do laundry. I'm very lucky to,

00:45:20.720 | very, very lucky to not have to do laundry. I never clean after myself. I never cook,

00:45:25.360 | never cook. I just don't want to do things that are like maintenance jobs.

00:45:31.920 | So maintenance jobs, eating is a maintenance job, but cooking is a maintenance job. You

00:45:35.760 | eat today, you poop it in the next five hours, right? And then you have to do it again next

00:45:39.280 | five hours and again and again and again for the rest of your life. So unless you derive joy from

00:45:44.240 | cooking, which I don't, there's no point to cook. And there's no point to clean because it's going

00:45:49.680 | to get dirty the next day. So you need to find, you need to be able to like find somebody to help

00:45:54.400 | you clean. And this way I just don't do any maintenance work and also focus on just building,

00:46:01.840 | like growing on top of what I built yesterday. Okay. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

00:46:07.280 | does it sound conceited or rich people's stuff? I mean, I happen to know that you live in a

00:46:11.280 | country where having someone help you do laundry and cook or clean is significantly less expensive

00:46:18.160 | than it is safe. Yeah. I still pay quite a lot because I'm paying double the market rate. So I

00:46:24.400 | do believe in like fair wage. That's important. But even here, you can get a helper in America

00:46:29.600 | for like two hours. You can get food delivery. Everybody gets food delivery. I get food delivery.

00:46:33.040 | I don't need somebody to cook for me. So it's something I did before I got rich as well.

00:46:38.000 | And I never cleaned my room when I was poor. When I was two, I never did it. Are you kidding?

00:46:42.800 | Why would I? So yeah. Are there maintenance jobs that do bring you joy that you'd like to do?

00:46:49.600 | No. Or how do you like to spend your time for fun? What is fun? I'm joking. I mean,

00:46:57.360 | do you do maintenance? I'm actually more interested in you. Do you do maintenance stuff?

00:47:00.000 | Some things I like for weird reasons enjoy. Like what? We have a hot tub. You got to balance the

00:47:08.160 | chemicals on the hot tub. And like, it's kind of fun. I take my two and a half year old daughter,

00:47:12.480 | we go scoop up a little water, we put it in this thing, and we see the chemicals,

00:47:15.520 | and we measure it out. But it's a five minute job.

00:47:17.200 | Yeah, it's not that long. But it's something that, "Oh, we got to do that this week." So

00:47:21.680 | we could hire someone to come to the house and do it. I really struggle, and it sounds like you

00:47:28.240 | don't, with things where the mental burden or the overhead of thinking about it doesn't quite

00:47:35.840 | equate to the cost. And so you don't factor it in as well. So for someone to come to the house and

00:47:40.880 | put some chemicals in the hot tub, it takes five minutes. I'm sure the cost for that is going to

00:47:46.000 | be more than an average hourly wage times five over 60. It's just going to be much more expensive

00:47:53.440 | than that, I assume. I've looked a little bit. And so it's just hard for me to be like, "I'm

00:47:57.200 | going to pay someone $200 a month to come to my house for five minutes three times."

00:48:00.640 | But you're not factoring your brain cost? No, no. I think it's very hard for many people,

00:48:06.400 | myself included, to factor in that cost of doing all of these other things in life.

00:48:11.280 | Yeah, exactly. So if we add that hidden cost to what we do, I think many people will not do what

00:48:18.800 | they do today. Many people will stop cooking if they factor in the value of one hour of freedom

00:48:25.200 | outside of work in your 20s when you could be building a startup or building a career or

00:48:30.640 | building a whatever or building a family. Now, again, big disclaimers, if you enjoy cooking,

00:48:35.680 | it's amazing. And if you don't enjoy cooking, then that's where the problem is.

00:48:38.960 | And what do you encourage someone to do with that extra time? Not everyone knows,

00:48:44.720 | "I want to start a company." Are there things you think people should be spending more of

00:48:48.880 | their time on if it's not maintenance work? Yeah. So what's not maintenance work? I think

00:48:53.200 | that's a really important question. What is not maintenance? So in life, maintenance is

00:48:57.200 | cleaning your car is maintenance. Doing your bed is maintenance. Cooking food is maintenance,

00:49:02.400 | right? To maintain your thing. What I think is not maintenance is building relationships,

00:49:08.640 | building family. Because if I invest today in my wife or my husband or whatever, in the future,

00:49:14.160 | it results in a nice family. So I don't view that as maintenance. I view that as building

00:49:18.480 | for the future, building a company, building a career, and building your body, focusing on your

00:49:24.400 | fitness and physique. I think those are the four things I've identified as non-maintenance things,

00:49:29.280 | and I'm happy to invest in them. I invest a lot. So because I'm single now, unfortunately,

00:49:34.400 | I invest a lot of my time into fitness and building my business. I have two companies,

00:49:39.760 | so I'm building those. So that's the only thing I view as non-maintenance work.

00:49:44.000 | Everything else is maintenance. So there is one thing about travel that I noticed that's

00:49:48.160 | interesting about you. I have seen you travel to places like the Maldives. You post all your

00:49:52.160 | travels online. Anyone listening can see them. And you would think someone successful like you,

00:49:56.560 | someone with money like you, would travel in a certain way. And even when you're traveling for

00:50:02.320 | work, you're still not staying at the Four Seasons. And I'm curious, what is it about your

00:50:08.960 | style of travel, your belief about money? It seems like you don't think you have enough money,

00:50:15.120 | and you're still in this scarcity mindset. Yeah, man. Just listening to this, I get a

00:50:20.800 | little bit sad. Because I'm mentally poor. There is a thing called mental poverty. And I feel

00:50:28.720 | mentally poor, even though my bank account has millions of dollars. But mentally, I feel poor,

00:50:33.680 | and I don't know why. Maybe because my formative childhood years, I spent obsessing over $2 here,

00:50:41.680 | $3 there, saving $2 there, that I just don't see why I would want to spend $200 extra for the same

00:50:49.600 | bed and the same roof, just because it's the Four Seasons. So now I'm staying at a place called

00:50:54.160 | Axiom, which is like, you know, 100 meters away from the Four Seasons. But it's like, you know,

00:50:58.240 | $250 in San Francisco, not bad, as opposed to $500. So I'm saving a lot of money. But I don't

00:51:05.840 | know why. What do you do? Because we have similar net worth. People don't know this, Chris. But you

00:51:11.680 | and I have the same amount of money, which is crazy, because I have 60 million more followers

00:51:15.680 | than you. And I don't know why I couldn't monetize. But how do you spend money at the Four Seasons?

00:51:22.800 | So this is why I like points, by the way, because I'm just saying, I enjoy nice hotels. But it's so

00:51:31.680 | funny. I talk to people all the time to tell me how much they spend on vacation. And I'm like,

00:51:35.760 | wow, I could never spend that much money. Like it's so, you're gonna spend $1,000 a night on a

00:51:40.240 | hotel. That seems wild. Like, why would you do that? I don't get a ton of value out of some

00:51:46.160 | aspects of travel, and I do on others. So if I was going to try to have some experience, I'd rather

00:51:52.000 | hire the right, you know, the right person to take me through the market to show me all the

00:51:56.240 | interesting things, who's a local who's been there and support that community,

00:51:59.200 | than to pay for, you know, a hotel that has nicer furnishing.

00:52:03.280 | Yes, because you like experiences.

00:52:06.080 | Yeah.

00:52:06.800 | But staying at a hotel can be an experience.

00:52:09.440 | Yeah, I think the experience I want in a hotel might be, you know, I could imagine spending more

00:52:15.120 | money for a hotel that's like, gives you the experience that you describe in, you know,

00:52:18.960 | the Maldives where you're over the water, and you have a bunch of extra things. But if I'm in San

00:52:22.320 | Francisco, like, I don't even know if I'd want to spend... I was in New York. And I was like,

00:52:25.680 | what is the absolute cheapest hotel I can stay at that, you know, isn't like two stars, like just

00:52:32.480 | like horrible reviews. Yeah, I say to the hotel, I don't recommend it. Like, I wouldn't ever tell

00:52:37.920 | anyone you should stay there. It was an amazing experience. I don't, I got checked in at 11pm.

00:52:42.560 | And they're like, your room's not ready. And I was like, how is it not ready to 11pm? Like,

00:52:46.240 | this doesn't even make sense. And I go, it might be a clerical error. And then 20 minutes later,

00:52:49.920 | it was magically ready. And it looked like no one had, like, it looked like a room that they designed

00:52:55.600 | 10 years ago, and then have not repainted any of the things that have chipped off and fallen apart.

00:53:00.800 | And it was also $250, which is crazy expensive.

00:53:04.800 | I've talked to a lot of people on this topic of mental poverty. And the idea that, you know,

00:53:11.600 | you ask anyone how much money they want to get to, and once they get there, they're never done.

00:53:16.000 | They're always want more, they always want more, they always want more. And then I've

00:53:19.520 | talked to a few people that have just completely disconnected from the concept. And they're like,

00:53:22.960 | I just don't care. And I think in the last couple of years, I've kind of stopped caring about growing

00:53:29.840 | network. Doesn't matter. Really? Yeah. And I had this conversation with my wife, where we were

00:53:34.160 | talking about what our goals were. And she was like, I want to get to this net worth target.

00:53:38.240 | And I was like, I don't. She's like, really? You don't want to get there? I was like,

00:53:41.600 | what do we like? Why do we want to have more money saved? Now when we if we have more money,

00:53:46.320 | would we rather spend it? Would you rather give it away? Like what things would we want to do

00:53:49.680 | with our money than just build up this like, you know, Scrooge McDuck pile of money. And I don't

00:53:57.200 | feel like I care about flying in a private jet. Like, like, as far as if you think of like,

00:54:01.680 | if you could have unlimited money, what would you do? There's not that many different things.

00:54:05.440 | I realized I speak from a place of privilege right now. But there's not that many more

00:54:09.280 | things that I think my money is worth doing anything that I don't enjoy doing to get.

00:54:14.160 | And so should I if I didn't like doing this job? Should I keep doing it? No,

00:54:18.720 | it's not doing it. Should my wife do her job if she doesn't like it? No, she's like,

00:54:21.680 | we should stop doing the things because we're in a place that we can. Yeah. And I think I've

00:54:27.760 | been able to not care as much about money as as I did. But that doesn't help. But that actually

00:54:34.560 | means you're mentally rich. Yeah, that's what I'm hearing. Yeah, I feel like I'm not I used to feel

00:54:42.160 | mentally poor and I don't feel that way anymore. So the congratulations you have become you have

00:54:47.440 | you have you have you have defeated the poverty in your brain. Because the minute you stop caring

00:54:51.920 | about money or fearing about money, then you are mentally rich and you're living life the way you

00:54:57.600 | life is supposed to be lived without worrying or thinking about money. I'm still in the mental

00:55:02.160 | poverty side because I have a fear of losing it. I have a fear that the next month it's going to

00:55:08.480 | dry up. I have a fear that I don't have enough. And I have a fear that I'm still enslaved to it.

00:55:13.360 | And even though that you could you've you more than me and more than almost anyone listening

00:55:20.880 | knows how inexpensively you could live somewhere. Yes. And you probably have enough that you could

00:55:24.960 | live in a place for the rest of your life and never think about. So it depends what you want

00:55:29.120 | to do with life. Right. So one of my dreams is to start an airline. I'd like to start a

00:55:33.760 | fucking airline. Why not? You know, and and I want to be able to come up with ideas and see

00:55:40.720 | them happen in real life. For me, that's the ultimate freedom. It's not to stay at the Four

00:55:45.520 | Seasons and it's not to like buy a Gucci bag and it's not to like fly in a private jet is come up

00:55:50.480 | with ideas for projects and have enough money to see them happen. So I'd like to put ten million

00:55:56.880 | dollars into funding a startup that does fake meat, you know, like cell based meat. I would

00:56:02.640 | like to try to buy one plane and see if we can come up with a different airline that's more fun

00:56:07.600 | and more human and more social, compete with Virgin Atlantic or whatever. These are ideas.

00:56:12.640 | I kind of don't want to die without trying them. I want to try a hotel. I want to build a hotel.

00:56:17.680 | Can I build a better hotel than the Four Seasons? That's like really cool. So I think it's the

00:56:23.040 | reason I like money is it enables you to think crazy and do crazy and be crazy. And I just love

00:56:29.520 | crazy. So, yes, I could live in a house for the rest of my life and not worry about money and

00:56:35.120 | just like, you know, live on top of a mountain. But but but then I have so many ideas that I

00:56:39.360 | cannot execute on. And that for me is sadness. That is sadness. So I still can't execute many

00:56:48.720 | of the ideas that I'd like to do because they're simply too expensive. So your relationship is out

00:56:53.040 | there. Your life's out there. What's what's the end goal for you? Is it is it fame? Is it money?

00:56:57.680 | You know, is it building something? Yeah. So fame and money is is is is not an end goal

00:57:03.920 | because people that look like me do not become famous. So it's not something I think about.

00:57:08.560 | But the end goal is to build something out of nothing. I think that is probably the sexiest

00:57:15.120 | thing in the world. Create something of value out of nothing, out of thin air. The United States

00:57:21.680 | government creates money out of thin air. Amazing. Right. But what can you create out of thin air?

00:57:27.040 | Right. You created kids. That's amazing. That's so magical. You've created a company, a podcast.

00:57:33.600 | I just feel like the act of going from zero to one is just better than sex. And I wish everybody

00:57:40.960 | can experience that at some point in their life. The act of creation, of creating either a human

00:57:47.040 | or a project or a startup or a company or a piece of content. And if somebody is not creating enough,

00:57:52.560 | maybe I maybe I'll end with that message is like, try to do something from zero to one.

00:57:58.240 | It'll probably be the most satisfying thing you do in your life. Do you have any advice for someone

00:58:02.480 | who's like, I want to be creative, but I don't know? I don't know. How do they find the thing

00:58:07.360 | that they could go try to create? Yeah. And creative doesn't mean make videos and be artistic

00:58:12.240 | and make a song, right? Creative can be build an amazing family. Creative can be build a company,

00:58:17.840 | build a house, have a sign hobby, whatever. So build an ebook, whatever. So I think the word

00:58:25.680 | creator should not be just limited to you and me. A creator is also a father and a mother.

00:58:32.000 | And so it doesn't have to be public, does it? Like, no, write a book, keep it for yourself.

00:58:37.120 | It doesn't have to be something you publish. Yeah. Seen something go from nothing to something. Yes,

00:58:42.080 | from nothing to something. And this thing exists purely because of you and your efforts and your

00:58:46.560 | sheer determination and will and will. And I just I find that to be so sexy. I don't know if other

00:58:53.280 | people relate to this message. If they do, please message me. Let me know at Yasin@NAS.io. Y-A-S-S-I-N

00:58:59.360 | @NAS.io. N-A-S.io. But yeah, that's just a feeling that I've of the last 30, 31 years. It's the only

00:59:09.040 | feeling that's worth pursuing every single day for the rest of my life. I love it. Well, we're

00:59:12.960 | here creating. Hopefully people enjoy it. I want to hear stories. If people are finding new things

00:59:17.760 | to create, send them in. Yes. And also I did ask people to send you hate messages, right? Yes. Yeah,

00:59:22.960 | yeah. So we got hate mail coming in and whatever they're creating. Yes. Perfect. Awesome. Let me

00:59:29.040 | - Let me know how it goes.

00:59:29.880 | - Nasir, thanks for coming by.

Traveling to Save Money, Betting on Yourself, and Streamlining Life Decisions And More

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