How_to_Choose_Which_Foreign_Language_To_Learn_to_Increase_Your

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00:00:30.620 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance,

00:00:32.120 | a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,

00:00:34.000 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need

00:00:36.200 | to live a rich and meaningful life now

00:00:38.460 | while building a plan for financial freedom

00:00:39.900 | in 10 years or less.

00:00:41.460 | My name is Joshua, I am your host,

00:00:42.700 | and today I'm gonna give you part two

00:00:45.380 | of my previous language learning podcast,

00:00:48.300 | although frankly I wish I had released this show first

00:00:51.880 | before the previous show.

00:00:52.940 | In part one, I talked about some practical tools

00:00:55.740 | to help you with learning your next foreign language,

00:00:59.580 | but today I wanna give you some strategy

00:01:02.220 | around the use of languages,

00:01:04.900 | especially as it relates to your financial opportunities,

00:01:08.860 | and I want to share with you a rubric

00:01:13.000 | for deciding strategically which languages to learn.

00:01:17.600 | A few of the ideas here at the beginning

00:01:19.640 | will be a repetition of some of the ideas

00:01:22.940 | discussed in part one,

00:01:24.320 | but I think it's still worth your time,

00:01:26.180 | so I encourage you to give it a shot.

00:01:28.440 | I wanna bring the topic of language learning

00:01:30.680 | all the way back to the very beginning.

00:01:33.280 | The mission that I open each show with

00:01:35.980 | is helping you to live a rich and meaningful life now

00:01:39.920 | while building a plan for financial freedom

00:01:41.400 | in 10 years or less.

00:01:42.500 | That's what I state at the beginning

00:01:44.420 | and opening of every single show,

00:01:47.060 | and yet I talk for hours and hours

00:01:49.840 | about topics that, in my mind,

00:01:53.340 | directly relate to that mission,

00:01:55.700 | but they span across basically the whole world,

00:01:59.980 | all the topics, and I tie them back to those missions,

00:02:03.040 | and that's what I'm gonna do

00:02:05.180 | with the topic of language learning,

00:02:06.280 | because I believe that language learning

00:02:07.620 | is an extremely valuable skill

00:02:10.860 | that will help you to achieve

00:02:12.820 | that dual-fold mission more effectively,

00:02:16.520 | that mission of living a rich life now

00:02:19.540 | and building a plan for financial freedom,

00:02:21.040 | and I wanna explain to you the path of how you get there

00:02:23.360 | so you can see how this applies in so many other areas

00:02:26.700 | of life.

00:02:27.940 | Now, first, back to the radical personal finance framework

00:02:30.580 | for wealth.

00:02:31.580 | All else being equal, we know that one of the best things

00:02:34.180 | that you can do to improve your opportunities

00:02:37.780 | for financial freedom and to live a richer life now

00:02:40.920 | is to increase your income.

00:02:42.880 | All else being equal, the higher your income,

00:02:45.480 | the better your life is going to be,

00:02:47.400 | and the faster you'll achieve financial freedom.

00:02:49.960 | This is true whether you're pursuing

00:02:52.500 | a more traditional model of financial independence.

00:02:55.240 | Perhaps you're planning to work

00:02:56.940 | over the course of a 40- or 50-year career.

00:02:59.000 | Well, if you can earn a higher income,

00:03:00.980 | you will, of course, generate more money,

00:03:03.640 | and you'll be financially free to a higher degree.

00:03:06.480 | It's also true in the shorter-term plans.

00:03:09.220 | If you're pursuing an aggressive path to financial freedom,

00:03:12.060 | the higher your income, the easier it is.

00:03:14.160 | It's much easier to become wealthy

00:03:16.960 | with a $500,000-a-year income

00:03:19.000 | than a $50,000-a-year income.

00:03:20.860 | That should be obvious.

00:03:22.560 | However, I believe that the higher income

00:03:25.320 | can also lead to a richer lifestyle.

00:03:28.400 | One of the things that I think is underappreciated

00:03:31.120 | from those who haven't earned a lot of money

00:03:33.960 | is that if you'll just simply increase

00:03:36.160 | your earnings substantially,

00:03:38.560 | you can do two things simultaneously

00:03:41.360 | that often seem at odds with each other.

00:03:43.160 | You can live a higher lifestyle,

00:03:45.160 | and you can also become wealthier.

00:03:48.580 | Again, perhaps you're earning $50,000 per year.

00:03:51.360 | Well, you may be able to save some money

00:03:54.920 | on a $50,000-per-year income,

00:03:57.480 | but you'll have to be extremely frugal.

00:03:59.420 | But if you increase your earnings

00:04:00.920 | from $50,000 to $350,000 per year,

00:04:04.360 | you can dramatically improve your lifestyle,

00:04:07.720 | and you can dramatically increase

00:04:10.400 | the amount of savings that you have.

00:04:12.320 | So if we walked away from most of the other parts

00:04:16.000 | of technical analysis,

00:04:17.240 | and we just focused relentlessly on increasing our income,

00:04:21.720 | there's a very good chance that that would help you

00:04:24.840 | to live a richer and better life now,

00:04:27.760 | while also reaching financial freedom faster.

00:04:30.820 | You say, "Joshua, what about so-and-so celebrity

00:04:34.720 | "that earned $58 million and now they're broke?"

00:04:37.160 | Yeah, that exists.

00:04:38.800 | There are people who are in that situation.

00:04:40.800 | So it is important that we talk about expenses

00:04:43.400 | and investing wisely, et cetera.

00:04:45.460 | But the number one driver is your income.

00:04:48.600 | And so it should consume perhaps 80% of our attention,

00:04:53.200 | and everything else should be relocated

00:04:55.520 | to perhaps 20% of our time and of our attention.

00:05:00.000 | Well, how do you increase your income?

00:05:01.960 | How do you build a strong income?

00:05:04.320 | My answer to that is you need to develop

00:05:07.040 | economically valuable skills.

00:05:09.780 | Separately, I teach about those

00:05:11.520 | economically valuable skills.

00:05:13.080 | In my career and income planning course,

00:05:14.520 | I go through the five major ones

00:05:16.340 | and talk about how important they are.

00:05:18.320 | And you can apply these in the context of employment,

00:05:22.640 | working for another person, another company.

00:05:24.900 | You can also apply these in the context

00:05:26.380 | of your own business or self-employment.

00:05:28.400 | But you wanna develop these financially valuable skills.

00:05:31.380 | To put things at the most simple level,

00:05:35.160 | you want to develop yourself to be a highly valuable person.

00:05:40.040 | And that's what's at the foundation

00:05:44.200 | of a lot of money and career advice that you have received.

00:05:48.840 | For example, the traditional path,

00:05:51.240 | the first step to developing yourself

00:05:53.520 | as a financially valuable person

00:05:55.400 | has often been the attainment of educational certifications,

00:06:00.400 | finishing your high school degree,

00:06:02.700 | getting a college degree.

00:06:04.400 | And those things are helpful, they're valuable.

00:06:06.640 | It can be part of a credentialization process.

00:06:08.860 | It may even come with knowledge that helps you.

00:06:10.960 | And so that can be extremely valuable.

00:06:13.320 | And especially in difficult economic times,

00:06:15.760 | those additional qualifications stand out

00:06:19.200 | as being much more important.

00:06:21.200 | For example, I believe that you can make

00:06:23.000 | a very strong argument that the economic value

00:06:26.040 | of a college degree is overrated.

00:06:29.080 | It's overestimated in the marketplace.

00:06:32.240 | However, it is certainly true that as a class,

00:06:36.800 | people with college degrees experience

00:06:39.680 | significantly lower level of unemployment

00:06:43.080 | than people without college degrees.

00:06:45.200 | And so when there are times of high unemployment,

00:06:48.000 | you look around and you're grateful

00:06:50.520 | that you can put on a resume,

00:06:52.000 | "Yes, I have a college degree."

00:06:53.720 | And the more degrees you have,

00:06:55.040 | depending on the field, the better.

00:06:57.280 | And so that's one way of enhancing your attractiveness.

00:07:01.580 | But what do you do in a crowded marketplace?

00:07:04.500 | What do you do if you're applying for a job

00:07:07.480 | and there are a hundred candidates

00:07:09.280 | and those 100 candidates all have a bachelor's degree,

00:07:12.680 | they all tick that box and say,

00:07:14.080 | "Yes, I have a bachelor's degree."

00:07:16.680 | Well, you need to stand out

00:07:17.960 | because you have to remember that as a job applicant,

00:07:21.640 | as an employee, you are always competing

00:07:24.760 | against other employees.

00:07:26.940 | One of the most fundamental economic concepts

00:07:28.760 | to master and drill and remember and to teach loudly

00:07:33.040 | is this, employees do not compete with employers.

00:07:40.480 | Rather, employees compete with other employees

00:07:45.480 | and employers compete with other employers.

00:07:49.220 | So there's no need for antagonism in a free society

00:07:53.320 | between employees and employers,

00:07:56.500 | but you are going to have to compete

00:07:58.900 | with other potential employees

00:08:01.480 | who are applying for the same job.

00:08:04.360 | And so thus, you need to stand out.

00:08:07.520 | Now, of course, there are many ways of standing out.

00:08:09.840 | One way might be a certain academic degree or certification.

00:08:14.480 | Another way might be certain professional certifications.

00:08:17.800 | Other ways of standing out

00:08:19.320 | might be excellent interpersonal skills

00:08:21.480 | or excellent work history.

00:08:23.640 | But at its core, what you need to do

00:08:25.500 | is to develop yourself and develop your skills

00:08:28.440 | into a uniquely attractive package.

00:08:32.400 | And this is where languages can come in

00:08:34.800 | because if you are competing against one other job candidate

00:08:39.120 | and both of you have compelling work histories,

00:08:41.800 | both of you interview well,

00:08:43.320 | you have good interpersonal skills,

00:08:46.140 | you're able to build a sense of amiability

00:08:49.960 | and interpersonal connection during the interview process,

00:08:52.760 | you have good writing skills or good technical skills,

00:08:56.040 | you have the appropriate academic credentials,

00:08:59.440 | you need something that's gonna set you apart.

00:09:02.560 | And that's what you're looking for.

00:09:04.720 | One of those some things that might set you apart

00:09:07.800 | is language skills, the ability to speak or to write

00:09:12.800 | or to work in multiple languages.

00:09:15.360 | In the previous show, I used the example.

00:09:17.320 | I find a lot of job listings available

00:09:20.920 | for social media consultants who are bilingual.

00:09:25.520 | And if you're gonna go out and you say,

00:09:27.760 | I wanna be a social media manager, excuse me, I meant manager,

00:09:30.400 | I say, I wanna be a social media manager,

00:09:32.060 | but you only speak English,

00:09:33.680 | well, there are jobs available for you

00:09:35.560 | and that might be an interesting job.

00:09:37.600 | But if you are bilingual in English and Cantonese,

00:09:42.600 | now there's a much more unique set of jobs

00:09:47.720 | available for you.

00:09:48.920 | There's a much smaller candidate pool.

00:09:50.400 | So instead of you're having to compete

00:09:51.940 | against thousands of other people,

00:09:53.600 | perhaps there's a few dozen people

00:09:54.960 | that you're competing against.

00:09:56.200 | And the wages that you'll receive for your work

00:09:58.560 | are most likely going to be higher.

00:10:01.380 | So at its core, languages can provide you

00:10:06.000 | with an opportunity to simply earn more money.

00:10:09.120 | But the benefits of being multilingual don't stop there.

00:10:12.720 | That is interesting and it is important,

00:10:15.080 | but the benefits don't stop there.

00:10:17.160 | What about living a rich life?

00:10:19.440 | Well, I've always found the topics

00:10:21.700 | of intercultural communication

00:10:24.080 | and international living fairly interesting.

00:10:26.320 | My undergraduate bachelor's degree

00:10:27.940 | is actually in international business.

00:10:30.200 | And I've always found the context

00:10:32.040 | of international business interesting.

00:10:33.720 | That's an interesting wrinkle

00:10:36.520 | over the standard day-to-day enjoyment of business.

00:10:41.120 | And I've known a lot of people who've been involved

00:10:42.960 | in international business.

00:10:44.360 | And it can be one way for those who are interested

00:10:46.960 | in such a lifestyle, it can be one way

00:10:48.680 | for people to enjoy a more interesting and varied career.

00:10:53.400 | Now, for some people, they would prefer not to have a career

00:10:56.680 | that involves them going to different countries,

00:10:59.160 | being on an airplane, moving to different places.

00:11:02.580 | But I think there's probably more people

00:11:05.160 | that do like that than not, or at least my guess would be

00:11:07.860 | that more of my listeners would be attracted

00:11:10.400 | to those things than are not.

00:11:12.600 | Why do I say this?

00:11:13.440 | Well, in my experience as a financial planner,

00:11:16.260 | when I would talk with people about things like retirement,

00:11:19.580 | one of the most common dreams that people have

00:11:21.480 | in retirement is to travel more.

00:11:23.500 | I like to travel, but I've always enjoyed

00:11:26.880 | kind of slower travel.

00:11:28.400 | The ability to travel at a different pace

00:11:31.920 | than just a whirlwind one week tour of Europe.

00:11:35.080 | And so that's one of the reasons

00:11:36.620 | why international business has always attracted me

00:11:38.800 | as a person.

00:11:41.040 | If I were to take a job and let's say that I took a job

00:11:43.960 | and I went and worked for a large multinational corporation,

00:11:48.960 | maybe I go and work for Siemens or some global automaker.

00:11:54.240 | Well, if I go and spend five years living

00:11:57.020 | and working in Germany, it's now easier for me

00:12:00.500 | to access the European continent for my leisure travel

00:12:05.460 | than if I have to fly over from New York City all the time.

00:12:08.880 | Similarly, I can relocate from Germany to Singapore

00:12:12.240 | or to South Korea.

00:12:14.560 | And now I can access all of Asia very, very simply.

00:12:18.240 | And perhaps then after that, I go and spend five

00:12:20.920 | or seven years living in the UAE.

00:12:23.280 | Well, now I have low cost air flights

00:12:26.320 | to an incredible portion of the world.

00:12:29.040 | And so financially speaking,

00:12:31.140 | if you're interested in something like travel,

00:12:33.420 | having the ability to work in multiple cultural contexts

00:12:36.520 | and to speak multiple languages is obviously valuable.

00:12:40.420 | It can change things for you.

00:12:42.820 | Even in the retirement phase,

00:12:45.220 | I have openly advocated that internationalization

00:12:49.100 | should be considered as a strategy for retirement,

00:12:53.340 | as a strategy for many things.

00:12:56.780 | Some people recognize that, hey, I can live very well

00:13:00.060 | on a lower cost of, on $1,500 a month if I live in Mexico,

00:13:05.060 | and I can live better on $1,500 a month in Mexico

00:13:07.420 | than I can in the United States.

00:13:09.340 | Or I can live very well in Thailand or the Philippines

00:13:12.740 | or Uruguay or some other place that you're interested in.

00:13:17.240 | And you genuinely can.

00:13:19.060 | But your experience of that lifestyle

00:13:20.900 | will be dramatically different based upon your knowledge

00:13:24.020 | of the local language.

00:13:25.420 | You can live in Mexico and not speak a word of Spanish.

00:13:28.140 | You can live in a gringo English-speaking community

00:13:31.780 | and do perfectly fine.

00:13:33.700 | I know people that do.

00:13:35.340 | But your experience will be dramatically improved

00:13:37.740 | if you are fluent in Spanish.

00:13:39.860 | And so there are many lifestyle reasons

00:13:43.180 | in addition to the personal reasons

00:13:44.580 | I discussed in the previous show,

00:13:45.860 | things like making you smarter,

00:13:48.260 | increasing your mental abilities,

00:13:51.300 | pushing off the advent of chronic degenerative diseases

00:13:54.980 | like Alzheimer's or something like that.

00:13:58.100 | And it just interesting,

00:13:59.140 | opens up a more interesting part of the world.

00:14:01.220 | You get to know people better

00:14:02.460 | when you can speak their language.

00:14:04.700 | And so there are many reasons,

00:14:06.700 | but there are very compelling financial reasons

00:14:09.880 | that you should consider.

00:14:11.260 | Give you just a couple other examples.

00:14:13.280 | I've thought about this strategy

00:14:14.380 | even in the context of my children.

00:14:17.340 | I'm working, I wanna be cautious about what I say publicly

00:14:21.760 | because of course, as a parent,

00:14:23.460 | you're looking at your children

00:14:25.500 | and trying to discern where their interests are.

00:14:27.540 | But my ambition for my children

00:14:29.540 | is that they be multilingual.

00:14:32.020 | What level of multilingualism do I expect of them?

00:14:34.860 | I don't know, I don't know.

00:14:36.360 | In a dream world, they'd speak a half a dozen languages,

00:14:39.940 | but I'm not committed to doing the hard work.

00:14:42.520 | I think that there comes a point

00:14:44.100 | where you can require a certain level of work from a student,

00:14:47.920 | but at some point,

00:14:48.760 | the student has to actually want something.

00:14:50.180 | And even if I wanna speak a dozen languages,

00:14:52.480 | I may or may not transfer that onto my children.

00:14:54.580 | And I think that they should be free

00:14:55.500 | to make their own choices.

00:14:57.180 | But my ambition is that my children be

00:14:59.460 | at a minimum bilingual, if not multilingual to some degree.

00:15:03.820 | And I'm working hard and investing into them,

00:15:05.900 | but with differing levels of results.

00:15:07.980 | One of my children has taken naturally to language learning

00:15:10.980 | and is doing extremely well, others not so much.

00:15:14.820 | So we'll see as the years go by.

00:15:17.160 | But even in terms of my own financial strategy,

00:15:21.580 | multilingualism, as far as I'm concerned,

00:15:24.740 | is a compelling part of it.

00:15:26.900 | I've publicly talked about my distaste for college funds.

00:15:31.740 | The standard, you know, US American open a 529 plan.

00:15:35.100 | Doesn't mean I'm opposed to paying for college,

00:15:36.860 | just means that generally as a financial planner,

00:15:38.620 | I think that something like 529 plans

00:15:40.820 | are relatively overrated.

00:15:43.100 | But that doesn't mean that education is unimportant.

00:15:45.280 | And so I've developed a series of strategies

00:15:47.740 | of what would I do if I really wanted my child

00:15:50.980 | to go to college, but I couldn't,

00:15:53.180 | but I didn't have the money for it.

00:15:55.140 | Maybe I just went totally broke and I couldn't pay for it.

00:15:57.300 | And I was the dumb, dumb father who didn't save any money

00:15:59.820 | in my kid's college plan and I still got to do it.

00:16:02.420 | Well, of course, some of the strategies include

00:16:04.780 | them paying for it.

00:16:06.380 | Some of the strategies include

00:16:08.100 | less expensive degree programs, accredited programs online,

00:16:12.140 | or community school, scholarships,

00:16:13.980 | all those things I publicly talked about.

00:16:15.700 | But there are even just interesting options

00:16:17.380 | with internationalization.

00:16:18.540 | So for example, right now, as things,

00:16:21.380 | as I record this in June of 2020,

00:16:23.700 | if you have a child that wants to go to college,

00:16:25.980 | your child can go to college for free in Germany

00:16:28.580 | and possibly other European countries as well.

00:16:31.800 | But certainly I know in Germany,

00:16:34.340 | Germany wants international students to come

00:16:36.820 | and to get a German degree.

00:16:38.580 | And so they'll offer zero tuition,

00:16:41.700 | access to German universities.

00:16:43.500 | And then you may need to provide for some living expenses,

00:16:47.580 | but possibly even not theirs,

00:16:49.580 | but some level of living expenses is appropriate.

00:16:51.820 | And sometimes those are defrayed by the university as well.

00:16:55.220 | What are the requirements though?

00:16:56.300 | Well, the child's gonna have to have

00:16:57.780 | at least a basic level in German.

00:16:59.660 | And so if I instruct my children in at least basic German

00:17:03.500 | and open up the opportunity, now they can go to Germany,

00:17:06.060 | get a highly regarded university degree

00:17:09.420 | from a German university,

00:17:10.660 | and it can save me a ton of money.

00:17:13.420 | So there are all kinds of little examples like that

00:17:16.740 | where foreign language acquisition can be helpful

00:17:21.220 | for your finances, for your family finances.

00:17:24.060 | This even ignores international tax planning.

00:17:27.400 | I've spoken extensively about international tax planning.

00:17:29.860 | One of the best things that you can do,

00:17:31.020 | if you can arrange it in your financial planning

00:17:34.300 | is to be an international person.

00:17:37.420 | And so for US Americans who wanna go abroad and work abroad,

00:17:41.420 | you can go and you can work abroad.

00:17:43.100 | You can often earn a higher level of income.

00:17:45.740 | You may work in a tax haven and get a favored tax status

00:17:49.620 | that allows you to earn a higher level of income

00:17:52.820 | and save more money and speed up your path

00:17:55.060 | to financial independence.

00:17:56.700 | If you are involved in banking, international banking,

00:18:00.120 | well, you can go and you can live in Dubai

00:18:03.020 | and be an international banker in Dubai.

00:18:04.540 | You can go and live in Singapore

00:18:07.820 | or many other places around the world

00:18:10.180 | and have a much more efficient tax life

00:18:13.220 | by engaging in that kind of career.

00:18:15.820 | Now, do you need to speak anything except English

00:18:17.880 | to be an international banker in Dubai?

00:18:19.860 | Perhaps not, but being proficient in Arabic

00:18:23.500 | is certainly gonna help you.

00:18:24.740 | Or perhaps working for a mutual fund.

00:18:28.180 | One of my dream jobs when I was younger,

00:18:30.180 | on my job list was I wanted to be an analyst,

00:18:34.940 | but an in the field analyst

00:18:36.780 | for an international mutual fund.

00:18:39.420 | So I thought it'd be really fun to go and work for,

00:18:42.100 | I don't know, a big mutual fund company,

00:18:43.420 | maybe like an American Funds or something like that,

00:18:45.980 | and work in their Asian investment fund.

00:18:49.180 | And I'd be the in the field analyst.

00:18:50.580 | And I pictured myself traveling all around Asia,

00:18:53.660 | doing on the ground research on these companies

00:18:55.740 | and trying to figure out where the opportunities were.

00:18:57.940 | To me, that kind of thing sounds like a dream.

00:19:00.180 | Super interesting to me, super fun,

00:19:02.620 | and would take advantage of my skills, my interests,

00:19:06.160 | cross-cultural communications,

00:19:08.400 | the challenges that come with that,

00:19:09.700 | the fun that comes with it,

00:19:11.580 | and mixing kind of the business kinds of things.

00:19:13.580 | So perhaps a career like that might be interesting to you.

00:19:16.420 | Those are some of the financial reasons for you to consider.

00:19:22.460 | Now I wanna pivot and say,

00:19:23.940 | let's assume that you are persuaded

00:19:25.840 | that there is value in learning a language.

00:19:28.660 | What language do you learn?

00:19:30.580 | How do you answer that?

00:19:33.900 | And here I'm gonna do a balancing act,

00:19:36.260 | because the answer is you should learn any language

00:19:38.300 | that you actually wanna learn.

00:19:40.220 | Because the most important factor in language learning

00:19:44.140 | and your ability to learn a language is desire.

00:19:47.700 | Bar none, that is the single most important factor.

00:19:52.940 | If you desire to learn a foreign language,

00:19:55.020 | you'll figure out how to do it,

00:19:56.600 | you'll find the tools and you'll make it happen.

00:19:59.300 | All around the world,

00:20:00.980 | there are hundreds of millions of people who are students

00:20:03.580 | who are forced to study a foreign language.

00:20:07.380 | For those without desire to learn that language,

00:20:11.040 | it's a frustration, an annoyance, and a waste of time.

00:20:15.460 | They go and take two years of Spanish,

00:20:17.120 | or two years of French, or two years of English,

00:20:19.660 | or whatever it is, and they come out at the other side,

00:20:22.460 | and they check the box, they get their high school degree

00:20:24.580 | because they did their foreign language studies,

00:20:26.280 | but they don't speak the language.

00:20:27.700 | They can't take on even a basic conversation.

00:20:30.460 | They can say bonjour, and that's about it.

00:20:34.720 | But for those who want to learn it, and who are motivated,

00:20:38.900 | those language classes can simply provide them

00:20:43.560 | with a foundation that opens up the world

00:20:45.160 | of that language to them.

00:20:46.400 | So if you want the short version,

00:20:50.500 | you should just simply study a language

00:20:51.800 | that you care about.

00:20:52.800 | But what if you're a little bit more strategic?

00:20:54.540 | What if you're interested in choosing things strategically?

00:20:59.540 | And this has been, for me, my motivation a lot of times

00:21:04.500 | with language learning.

00:21:05.700 | I've never been drawn particularly to a small language group

00:21:10.800 | for one specific reason.

00:21:13.080 | My personal interests have always been more strategic.

00:21:16.200 | I think strategically, and even most of my goals

00:21:18.440 | are often strategic goals.

00:21:20.100 | They're driven by a sense of strategy.

00:21:22.880 | I know that's uncommon, but I'll tell you the strategy

00:21:25.200 | in case that's also you.

00:21:27.240 | But if you, you know, there's a Haitian girl

00:21:32.600 | that lives next to you and you say,

00:21:34.620 | she's really beautiful, I'm interested in her,

00:21:36.180 | and that gives you the motivation to learn Creole,

00:21:37.820 | go for it, right?

00:21:38.920 | You engage with something that's interesting to you.

00:21:42.980 | But what are some of the strategic factors

00:21:44.580 | that you can consider?

00:21:45.680 | Number one should, of course, be that.

00:21:48.420 | What interests you?

00:21:50.700 | If you're a Sinophile, you're deeply interested in China,

00:21:55.700 | well, okay, then engage with the Chinese culture.

00:21:58.540 | You're gonna be much more strategic.

00:22:01.260 | You're gonna be interested in it

00:22:02.300 | because you want it.

00:22:04.300 | And so that should be your primary foundation,

00:22:07.380 | what you actually are interested in.

00:22:10.580 | Maybe you really love the beach

00:22:13.060 | and you see your path to living on the beach

00:22:15.380 | is running a surf shop on the beach in Brazil.

00:22:19.380 | Well, Brazilian Portuguese, boom, go for it.

00:22:22.220 | That should be really important.

00:22:23.980 | Moving past that, and don't let my brief treatment of it

00:22:28.860 | cause you to think it's unimportant,

00:22:31.580 | just that that's gotta be your number one thing.

00:22:33.700 | But what about bigger strategy?

00:22:36.500 | I think one of the biggest things you should consider

00:22:38.740 | is where you actually like to be,

00:22:40.420 | where you actually enjoy going,

00:22:41.900 | or where you might actually want to live.

00:22:45.340 | Now, forgive me, I skipped past the,

00:22:49.700 | well, let me not, sometimes my brain gets ahead of my mouth.

00:22:54.700 | Where do you wanna go?

00:22:56.580 | Where do you want to live?

00:22:58.220 | Let's say that you are married to a Filipino woman

00:23:02.620 | and your financial independence plan

00:23:05.300 | involves your moving in retirement to the Philippines

00:23:08.420 | and living in an inexpensive but gorgeous house

00:23:12.180 | on a little tropical island.

00:23:14.780 | Well, if you wanna go and live in the Philippines,

00:23:16.540 | then of course, studying Tagalog or Sabuano

00:23:21.540 | or whatever local dialect is appropriate for you

00:23:24.300 | would be your priority

00:23:25.700 | because you want to go and live there.

00:23:27.500 | And it would, again, it's very important

00:23:29.900 | if you wanna go and live in a certain place

00:23:31.780 | to be able to speak the local language.

00:23:33.780 | I have done a lot of work in the United States

00:23:36.700 | with Spanish speakers.

00:23:38.160 | And when linguists or analysts

00:23:41.180 | are dividing the Spanish-speaking population

00:23:43.860 | in the United States, they often will differentiate

00:23:47.780 | between what are called acculturated Spanish speakers

00:23:51.460 | and unacculturated Spanish speakers.

00:23:53.660 | An acculturated Spanish speaker

00:23:55.380 | is somebody who perhaps they grew up speaking Spanish

00:23:58.540 | in their home, perhaps Spanish is their mother tongue,

00:24:02.600 | but they went to school in English,

00:24:04.500 | they learned English

00:24:05.420 | and they're able to speak English effectively.

00:24:07.460 | Well, they're going to be part of,

00:24:09.380 | they're kind of this dual culture world

00:24:11.440 | where they're Cuban culturally or Mexican culturally,

00:24:16.180 | but they're fully acculturated

00:24:17.460 | into the broader English-speaking American culture.

00:24:20.700 | That's very different

00:24:21.520 | than an unacculturated Spanish speaker.

00:24:23.300 | An unacculturated Spanish speaker

00:24:24.580 | might be a recent immigrant

00:24:26.580 | or somebody who's a poorer immigrant.

00:24:31.060 | Your Cuban grandmother who just lives in Miami

00:24:34.740 | and only speaks Spanish with the Cuban,

00:24:36.700 | only hangs out with Cubans and Spanish speakers

00:24:38.900 | and has no need to learn English,

00:24:40.580 | no desire to learn English.

00:24:41.740 | Or a recent day laborer,

00:24:44.980 | recently immigrated from Guatemala or Mexico or El Salvador

00:24:49.660 | and they haven't been able to learn English yet.

00:24:52.320 | Well, those people are unacculturated.

00:24:53.580 | And having worked in these communities,

00:24:55.820 | I just have time and time and time and time again

00:24:58.800 | seen how limited the opportunities are

00:25:01.260 | for somebody who is an unacculturated Spanish speaker

00:25:04.220 | in the United States.

00:25:05.260 | I do everything possible

00:25:08.620 | when I speak with unacculturated Spanish speakers

00:25:10.940 | in the United States to encourage them.

00:25:12.060 | Your number one job has got to be to learn English.

00:25:17.060 | For anybody living in the United States

00:25:19.580 | who doesn't speak English,

00:25:20.420 | your number one job has got to be to learn English

00:25:24.500 | because it opens up the world to you.

00:25:26.620 | Well, the same thing obviously happens in reverse.

00:25:30.140 | One of the great benefits and blessings and privileges

00:25:33.520 | that we as English speakers have

00:25:35.900 | is we possess a command of the lingua franca of the world.

00:25:39.340 | Lingua franca simply means the common language,

00:25:41.140 | the language that is used.

00:25:42.580 | You can go up to the check-in desk,

00:25:45.020 | the reception of any hotel

00:25:46.740 | or at least any two or three star and up hotel in the world,

00:25:50.860 | and you can just simply speak in English

00:25:52.860 | with no need to have a clue about the local language

00:25:56.580 | and the receptionist will be able to help you and serve you.

00:26:01.580 | It's one of the biggest benefits that we have

00:26:03.760 | as English speakers and most of us native English speakers.

00:26:07.580 | But if you only speak English,

00:26:11.740 | your experience of the local culture is very limited.

00:26:16.720 | And you're gonna be financially

00:26:19.260 | spending quite a bit of money

00:26:20.980 | if your experience of the local culture

00:26:23.860 | is if you only speak English.

00:26:26.560 | The ability to speak at least some of the local language

00:26:30.380 | will fundamentally transform your opportunities.

00:26:34.980 | And especially if you go to places where it's less common,

00:26:38.140 | where English speaking is less common.

00:26:40.040 | Thinking of places that I've gone,

00:26:43.340 | I've traveled a decent amount in Haiti

00:26:46.340 | and there was certainly plenty of English speaking,

00:26:48.580 | but I spent a lot of time traveling

00:26:50.700 | in places that didn't have any English speaking.

00:26:55.700 | And I don't speak Creole yet,

00:26:59.020 | but I do speak some basic French

00:27:01.100 | and I was able to get along in French.

00:27:02.660 | And I remember just simple experiences

00:27:04.300 | like figuring out how to negotiate reasonably with guides.

00:27:06.980 | One of the things that I hated about Haiti

00:27:08.480 | is I felt like I was ripped off on every single corner.

00:27:10.780 | And the ability to argue in French

00:27:12.780 | made all the difference in the world

00:27:14.100 | to my being able to get a fair price for what I was doing,

00:27:17.860 | for my being able to not get ripped off

00:27:20.140 | and saved me a good amount of money.

00:27:21.580 | And it also allowed me to travel in some unique places

00:27:24.580 | that most people don't see.

00:27:27.260 | I remember, this is a little bit of an example,

00:27:31.580 | but in Haiti, if you ever go to Haiti,

00:27:32.940 | there's a cruise port in Haiti called La Badi

00:27:37.940 | where the cruise ships come.

00:27:39.140 | And you can come on a cruise ship

00:27:40.420 | and you can have a certain experience.

00:27:42.860 | But if you go to the same towns, I didn't go to La Badi,

00:27:47.860 | but I went to some of the towns nearby,

00:27:51.540 | there are some incredible things,

00:27:52.980 | just some incredible archeology,

00:27:56.300 | like just history and culture.

00:27:58.540 | The thing that most stunned me,

00:28:00.300 | there's this incredible rundown palace

00:28:03.900 | that was built in Haiti

00:28:05.700 | and this incredible fort up on a mountain.

00:28:07.540 | The palace is called the Palace of Saint-Souci

00:28:09.380 | and the fort is called the Citadel.

00:28:11.820 | And it's this incredible thing built

00:28:13.980 | in the middle of nowhere, Haiti,

00:28:16.660 | that you gotta be a pretty intrepid traveler to go to.

00:28:21.580 | And so I would never have had the confidence

00:28:23.820 | to go and travel around Haiti

00:28:25.300 | and experience some of the incredible experiences

00:28:27.620 | that I had there if I didn't speak basic French,

00:28:30.700 | because English was not widely spoken

00:28:32.340 | in the places where I went.

00:28:34.100 | Now, when I was in Port-au-Prince

00:28:35.820 | and staying at the, forget the name of it,

00:28:38.260 | the big five-star hotel there,

00:28:40.020 | certainly English was all I needed.

00:28:41.580 | But to go out of that,

00:28:43.260 | you need something that will work in the local language.

00:28:46.380 | And so it changes your transformation.

00:28:48.540 | So where do you wanna go?

00:28:49.380 | Where do you wanna live?

00:28:50.660 | Now, part of this,

00:28:51.500 | you need to consider what cultures you fit well with,

00:28:54.020 | what cultures you like.

00:28:55.500 | And I think many of us will have,

00:28:57.140 | if we're actually honest,

00:28:58.580 | we'll have an attraction in a certain direction.

00:29:02.180 | Give me an example.

00:29:03.220 | I've always found a deep level of comfort in Latin cultures.

00:29:07.500 | I grew up in South Florida,

00:29:09.340 | lots of friends from Latin cultures.

00:29:11.300 | And Latin culture for me is a very attractive culture.

00:29:14.500 | It's a very conservative culture,

00:29:15.940 | a very family-oriented culture,

00:29:18.420 | very religious culture,

00:29:19.860 | heavily Catholic, heavily Christian.

00:29:21.860 | And it's always been very comfortable for me.

00:29:26.180 | And so there was a natural fit.

00:29:27.980 | I could live easily in Latin America

00:29:30.740 | and be totally comfortable with it

00:29:32.660 | because of more of a cultural familiarity.

00:29:36.140 | I don't have that same feeling with regard to Asia.

00:29:39.300 | I enjoy traveling in Asia.

00:29:41.660 | Asia is just an incredible place.

00:29:43.820 | I enjoy it,

00:29:44.900 | but I don't have that same level of cultural connection.

00:29:48.340 | Now, part of that, of course, I'm sure,

00:29:50.460 | is due to lack of language ability.

00:29:52.860 | And so I don't have any ability in any Asian language.

00:29:56.140 | I don't speak Mandarin,

00:29:57.300 | I don't speak Cantonese,

00:29:58.220 | I don't speak Japanese,

00:29:59.260 | I don't speak Korean,

00:30:00.100 | I don't speak any of those languages yet.

00:30:02.620 | And so I'm aware that perhaps

00:30:05.660 | my connection with Latin America

00:30:09.300 | is due to having language ability in Spanish and Portuguese

00:30:13.300 | rather than an Asian language.

00:30:18.300 | But I'm more interested in learning Latin languages

00:30:22.940 | than I am Asian languages

00:30:24.540 | because of the affinity,

00:30:27.100 | the sense of cultural connection.

00:30:30.300 | Which comes first,

00:30:31.340 | the language ability or the cultural connection?

00:30:33.340 | No idea, no idea.

00:30:35.260 | But I do know that for me,

00:30:37.220 | it's a higher priority for me

00:30:38.940 | to develop skill in Latin languages

00:30:41.580 | than it is in Asian languages

00:30:44.340 | because I just enjoy the culture more.

00:30:45.980 | I'm more naturally motivated there.

00:30:48.500 | I know that I could happily live in Latin America

00:30:51.020 | if I ever wanted to,

00:30:52.660 | but that's different than Asia.

00:30:57.660 | So perhaps it's different for you.

00:31:01.180 | Perhaps you really love Thai culture

00:31:03.220 | or you really love Japanese culture.

00:31:05.420 | Well, then you should study that, obviously,

00:31:07.980 | because it's incredibly valuable.

00:31:10.540 | Now, what about some of the economic considerations?

00:31:14.180 | I'm convinced one of the great career strategy

00:31:18.060 | is to use languages to open up a path forward for you.

00:31:23.060 | You can do this in your home country.

00:31:26.540 | In the previous show,

00:31:28.580 | I talked about the value of speaking Spanish

00:31:30.500 | as an American, as a US American.

00:31:33.100 | The United States is estimated,

00:31:34.980 | right now the United States is the fifth most populous

00:31:37.900 | Spanish-speaking country in the world.

00:31:40.380 | I think it's, if my memory is right,

00:31:42.020 | correct me if I'm wrong,

00:31:42.860 | but I'm pretty sure the most populous,

00:31:45.020 | where there's the country

00:31:46.020 | that has the most Spanish speakers in it right now

00:31:48.100 | is Mexico, followed by, I think, Argentina,

00:31:51.980 | then Colombia, then Spain, and then the United States.

00:31:55.500 | The United States, I think,

00:31:56.340 | is the fifth most populated country with Spanish speakers.

00:32:00.860 | However, within the next couple of decades,

00:32:04.060 | the United States is expected to become

00:32:05.700 | the second most populous Spanish-speaking country

00:32:09.420 | in the world, and second only to Mexico.

00:32:13.260 | Mexico is projected to have a larger population,

00:32:16.140 | but in the coming decades, I can't remember,

00:32:17.420 | I think it's by 2050,

00:32:18.940 | the United States is projected to be the second,

00:32:21.380 | the country in the world, the second most,

00:32:23.540 | my English is failing me,

00:32:26.220 | the country in the world with the second highest number

00:32:30.380 | of Spanish speakers.

00:32:32.660 | So if you want the ability to improve

00:32:35.620 | your career prospects in the United States,

00:32:37.340 | then the ability to speak in Spanish

00:32:40.300 | will be very interesting to you, very useful to you.

00:32:44.260 | In addition, there might be local cultures.

00:32:46.740 | So there are regions in the United States

00:32:49.100 | with a lot of Haitian immigrants.

00:32:51.060 | That was in South Florida,

00:32:52.140 | there are lots of Haitian immigrants.

00:32:53.300 | And so you might wanna pick up Creole

00:32:55.100 | because it allows you to work effectively

00:32:57.220 | in the Haitian community.

00:32:58.060 | Or maybe you live in the Midwest

00:33:01.100 | where there's a lot of Somali immigrants, right?

00:33:04.100 | So you may study Somali or some other local language

00:33:07.300 | that there's a large population,

00:33:10.140 | that sets you apart in the local area.

00:33:12.020 | But I think a more interesting strategy for a lot of us,

00:33:14.300 | or at least a lot of us who enjoy international relocation,

00:33:17.740 | would be to choose a language of a region

00:33:21.540 | that you want to actually go to.

00:33:24.580 | Because when you leave your home culture

00:33:28.340 | and go somewhere else,

00:33:29.980 | you have the ability to upgrade your status.

00:33:33.300 | You have the ability to move

00:33:35.820 | from an ordinary everyday middle-class person

00:33:39.620 | and move more easily into the upper crust,

00:33:41.860 | upper class of a local society.

00:33:44.500 | I've experienced this many times.

00:33:47.060 | There's a huge benefit to being a white man

00:33:51.100 | traveling around the world.

00:33:52.620 | You can go to many cultures in the world

00:33:54.620 | and you can go to the swankiest of hotels,

00:33:58.860 | and you can be let right in.

00:34:01.260 | You can gain access to the highest crust of society

00:34:06.260 | if you're outside of your home culture.

00:34:09.500 | When you're in your home culture,

00:34:11.220 | for example, if I'm in the United States,

00:34:12.580 | I'm one of about a bazillion.

00:34:14.380 | Now, can I, if I really want to gain access

00:34:17.300 | to the glitterati,

00:34:18.540 | if I really want to engage in the upper crust society,

00:34:21.500 | can I do it?

00:34:22.340 | Of course I can.

00:34:23.180 | I've had friends who've done this very effectively.

00:34:24.660 | They don't move to Washington, DC,

00:34:26.820 | don't know a soul,

00:34:27.980 | but they're very intentional with their networking.

00:34:29.980 | They go to the right places, to the right events,

00:34:31.780 | make the right connections,

00:34:32.740 | and move their way up into society.

00:34:35.020 | You can do that.

00:34:35.860 | For me, it's always been easy in an international context.

00:34:39.740 | If I go into the bar at the swanky hotel

00:34:42.220 | in any city in the world,

00:34:43.300 | any international city in the world,

00:34:45.100 | you meet the most remarkable of people

00:34:46.740 | and open up the most interesting of conversations.

00:34:49.740 | And it very quickly moves you

00:34:52.740 | from just an ordinary common person

00:34:56.100 | into a unique kind of upper level person.

00:35:00.420 | I've recommended this routinely to a number of people.

00:35:03.900 | And so I really think you should consider it.

00:35:05.940 | If you're just an average, ordinary person,

00:35:07.860 | if you're having trouble distinguishing yourself

00:35:10.020 | or setting yourself apart in your home culture,

00:35:13.300 | you should very seriously consider becoming an expat

00:35:15.980 | because the expat community

00:35:17.700 | in almost any country in the world

00:35:19.780 | is by definition smaller than the home country.

00:35:23.420 | And so if you, let's say that you are,

00:35:26.720 | I don't know, Italian, right?

00:35:29.340 | If you're an Italian living in Italy,

00:35:31.880 | you're one of about, not a bazillion,

00:35:34.260 | but one of several million.

00:35:36.700 | It's very hard to set yourself apart.

00:35:38.820 | But if you're an Italian and you move to Miami,

00:35:43.100 | well, now you're very attractive, right?

00:35:44.940 | You're unique, you're exotic, you're interesting.

00:35:48.700 | And if you shore up that basic ethnic difference,

00:35:53.540 | or you shore up that basic linguistic difference,

00:35:57.320 | and you shore that up with excellence and knowledge

00:36:00.540 | and business skills, et cetera,

00:36:03.460 | you'll find that the world opens up for you.

00:36:06.120 | So if you're a US American living in the United States,

00:36:09.220 | then you should seriously consider going somewhere else,

00:36:13.580 | somewhere where you'll be exotic,

00:36:15.020 | somewhere where you'll be,

00:36:16.320 | where you get some benefits for the way that you speak.

00:36:20.940 | You get some benefits for the color of your skin,

00:36:22.860 | get some benefits for that.

00:36:24.420 | And you can very quickly move yourself

00:36:26.780 | into an upper level of society.

00:36:29.540 | I even find this interesting from the perspective

00:36:31.740 | of changing your cultural identity.

00:36:34.140 | If you are part of a mainstream school system,

00:36:38.540 | let's say that, I've often thought,

00:36:40.500 | let's say that I were the parent of a,

00:36:42.740 | I don't know, 13 or 14 year old student.

00:36:45.220 | And that 13 or 14 year old student

00:36:47.300 | were really struggling in the local school context.

00:36:50.060 | And let's assume that I don't have,

00:36:52.740 | the student is actually,

00:36:53.820 | let's just say I'm coaching the student.

00:36:55.460 | One of the things I would say to the student would be,

00:36:57.900 | you should consider just simply dropping out

00:36:59.820 | of the place that you're located,

00:37:01.460 | drop out of the place where you're bullied,

00:37:02.940 | drop out of the place where you're not cool,

00:37:04.960 | go through some set of transformation, right?

00:37:07.520 | Start lifting weights, become stronger, get less fat,

00:37:11.420 | get a haircut, dress differently or something,

00:37:13.980 | and pick yourself up and go to another context

00:37:16.860 | and start over, reinvent yourself.

00:37:19.120 | Well, that would be obviously decent advice

00:37:22.820 | for an open-minded student,

00:37:24.460 | because they can move into a new system,

00:37:26.260 | start a new social group and start over.

00:37:28.940 | But you can do the same thing as an adult.

00:37:31.060 | You can do the same thing.

00:37:32.140 | And you could do this within your state.

00:37:34.200 | You live in Columbus, Ohio, and you're a loser,

00:37:39.460 | life stinks for you, everything is bad,

00:37:42.460 | you're surrounded by a bunch of losers.

00:37:46.300 | Well, pack the car and move to Chicago and start over

00:37:50.500 | and transform yourself along the way.

00:37:53.820 | Get a haircut, change the way you,

00:37:56.180 | change the clothes that you wear,

00:37:57.360 | change the way that you speak,

00:37:59.280 | change the type of people that you build friendships with,

00:38:01.480 | change the types of things that you can do,

00:38:02.940 | and you can totally reinvent yourself.

00:38:04.780 | And it's easier sometimes to do that

00:38:07.700 | if you move into another context.

00:38:11.060 | You can do the same thing internationally.

00:38:12.620 | So if you're living in Columbus, Ohio,

00:38:15.040 | and you are a total loser,

00:38:18.200 | and nothing is going well for you,

00:38:21.100 | maybe what you do is you study Swahili, right?

00:38:26.100 | And you move to Nairobi,

00:38:28.540 | and you get yourself a job working

00:38:31.140 | with an import-export company doing business in Nairobi.

00:38:35.240 | Well, pretty quickly, I can promise you,

00:38:37.620 | especially if you'll be thoughtful and strategic

00:38:39.660 | about the way that you present yourself,

00:38:42.340 | you can be in the very upper crust of elite society

00:38:47.340 | in Nairobi with that move.

00:38:49.820 | So consider it.

00:38:51.120 | This is especially important, I think,

00:38:52.560 | if you are the victim of some form of systematized

00:38:56.300 | oppression or discrimination,

00:38:59.200 | or if you're in great danger.

00:39:01.500 | Maybe you are part of a stigmatized group.

00:39:06.420 | Maybe you're one of the, I don't know,

00:39:10.620 | the outcasts, right, lower castes in India.

00:39:14.460 | If you move outside of India,

00:39:15.420 | and you move to Germany or the United States,

00:39:18.060 | if you can figure out how to make that translation,

00:39:21.000 | which is tough, right,

00:39:22.180 | not easy to immigrate to those places,

00:39:23.780 | but you can very quickly leave

00:39:26.460 | that cultural baggage behind you.

00:39:29.000 | Maybe you are, right now in the United States,

00:39:31.500 | there's all this tremendous racial tension

00:39:34.820 | specifically for black people.

00:39:36.660 | Perhaps you should consider moving

00:39:39.120 | outside of the United States

00:39:40.180 | and moving to some place where that black identity

00:39:43.580 | is not a problem, maybe it is a problem

00:39:45.540 | for you in the United States,

00:39:46.380 | and move somewhere where it's better.

00:39:47.980 | There's a YouTube channel that I've watched called,

00:39:51.140 | I think it's called the Melanin Files

00:39:53.020 | or the Melanated Files,

00:39:54.580 | and I'm super interested in it.

00:39:57.140 | And I listen to all these black people that live in Asia,

00:39:59.600 | and I watched this interview with a professor,

00:40:02.780 | a college professor who had spent,

00:40:05.420 | had been living in Japan.

00:40:06.300 | He grew up in the United States,

00:40:08.420 | then moved to Japan 40 years ago.

00:40:10.220 | And he just talked about how he really appreciated

00:40:13.820 | his freedom as a black man living in Japan

00:40:16.380 | and how for him, it had been a wonderful experience.

00:40:20.540 | And so that might be a strategy that is helpful for you.

00:40:23.900 | And I see those kinds of things

00:40:26.020 | as really, really useful for you to consider.

00:40:29.180 | So if you're attracted in another direction,

00:40:31.740 | then consider where you might wanna go

00:40:34.620 | where you could become exotic and become sought after

00:40:39.620 | instead of being normal or being oppressed

00:40:43.380 | or discriminated against.

00:40:45.300 | Can be extremely, extremely useful for you.

00:40:48.860 | This can be useful on multiple levels,

00:40:51.560 | depending on the kind of discrimination you're facing

00:40:55.220 | or depending on the kind of persecution you're facing.

00:40:57.540 | Perhaps you're a religious minority

00:40:59.780 | in your country of birth.

00:41:01.700 | Well, you may not be a religious minority in another place.

00:41:05.460 | Perhaps you are,

00:41:06.980 | and again, we talked about ethnicity or an ethnic minority.

00:41:10.900 | You might be celebrated in another place

00:41:13.220 | because of your exotic ethnic identity

00:41:17.220 | rather than oppressed because of your ethnic identity.

00:41:21.020 | This can come into play with even with regard to age.

00:41:24.140 | I think of someone like,

00:41:28.100 | I don't know, I think of the climate activist,

00:41:32.140 | Greta Thunberg, right?

00:41:34.780 | Now, of course, she, I think,

00:41:36.140 | is somewhat celebrated in her home culture,

00:41:38.020 | but here's this young woman, right?

00:41:41.220 | Is she a teenager yet?

00:41:42.140 | Very young woman who on the international stage

00:41:45.620 | is this incredibly popular, adored figure

00:41:50.620 | on an international stage,

00:41:53.020 | but if she were to go to her local hometown

00:41:56.300 | and spend time there,

00:41:57.180 | she's just, hey, the little girl next door.

00:41:59.660 | And so you may be able to use that to your benefit

00:42:02.700 | if you're suffering age discrimination for your youth

00:42:05.860 | or even for your age.

00:42:08.100 | You can, let's say you're an intelligent,

00:42:13.100 | retired 65-year-old.

00:42:15.580 | Well, maybe the United States wants to brush you aside

00:42:18.740 | as being over the hill,

00:42:19.700 | but you can take that same identity

00:42:21.700 | and you can move into another culture

00:42:23.420 | and you may be celebrated for your age

00:42:25.380 | and respected and honored for your age

00:42:27.180 | instead of discriminated against for your age.

00:42:29.980 | So if you're facing something like that,

00:42:31.900 | consider is there a strategy of relocation?

00:42:33.860 | Is there somewhere that I can go

00:42:35.580 | that would allow me to be celebrated for who I am,

00:42:37.860 | become an exotic, attractive,

00:42:40.660 | person of special value instead of just a commodity?

00:42:45.620 | Might be very, very useful for you.

00:42:49.460 | What are some other factors that you should consider

00:42:51.340 | specifically with regard to the finances of it?

00:42:55.540 | Well, here, I wanna give you some things I learned

00:42:57.700 | when I was researching this a while ago.

00:43:00.300 | I stumbled upon a report from the United Kingdom

00:43:03.980 | and the report is called "Languages for the Future,

00:43:08.980 | "The Foreign Languages the United Kingdom Needs

00:43:11.500 | "to Become a Truly Global Nation."

00:43:13.300 | This is put out by the British Council.

00:43:15.180 | And thus far, there are two versions of this report.

00:43:17.380 | They first published the report in 2013

00:43:20.060 | and then in 2017, they updated the report,

00:43:24.020 | especially in light of a post-Brexit vote.

00:43:27.140 | And the basic idea is the British Council

00:43:29.500 | is the UK's international organization

00:43:33.500 | for cultural relations and educational opportunities.

00:43:36.780 | So the British Council is active all around the world

00:43:38.660 | to promote British culture and British engagement.

00:43:42.460 | They do English language tests all around the world

00:43:46.220 | and various cultural forms of outreach

00:43:48.380 | run international schools, et cetera.

00:43:50.380 | And I really liked the report

00:43:51.500 | because the report was very strategic

00:43:55.340 | in how it laid out what international languages

00:44:00.340 | UK citizens would need.

00:44:03.620 | Now, I've not found a similar version of this

00:44:06.140 | from the United States, it might exist,

00:44:07.980 | but I thought this was good.

00:44:10.140 | And the huge benefit that you and I have

00:44:13.340 | is being English speakers.

00:44:15.380 | The obvious first, second language

00:44:18.580 | that anybody who is not an English speaker

00:44:23.060 | would want to learn would be English.

00:44:25.380 | And that's where you and I have a huge leg up

00:44:28.020 | being English speakers or being native English speakers,

00:44:31.380 | many of us.

00:44:32.660 | It gives us a tremendous headstart on the world

00:44:36.100 | when you speak the world's lingua franca by its definition,

00:44:40.580 | but naturally or with less effort.

00:44:44.060 | It's a tremendous privilege on a global basis.

00:44:47.700 | If you are not, if you don't speak English,

00:44:50.020 | that would of course be your first, second language.

00:44:53.340 | No matter where you in the world you are,

00:44:55.420 | no matter what you do,

00:44:56.700 | English is the current international language of business.

00:45:01.180 | English is the current international language of diplomacy.

00:45:04.860 | English is the current international language,

00:45:07.180 | the most influential language in the world.

00:45:09.820 | It's the fastest growing language in the world,

00:45:12.260 | both in terms of number of speakers

00:45:15.180 | and in terms of the lexicon of the English language.

00:45:18.740 | It's the largest language in the world with the most words.

00:45:21.780 | English has a bigger lexicon

00:45:23.380 | than any other language in the world,

00:45:24.660 | and it's the fastest growing lexicon in the world.

00:45:27.460 | And so being an English speaker

00:45:29.420 | and being a fluent English speaker

00:45:31.060 | would be without question the highest priority

00:45:34.700 | for anybody who didn't speak English.

00:45:37.420 | But of course you're listening to this podcast in English,

00:45:39.540 | so you of course do speak English.

00:45:41.780 | So where do you go?

00:45:42.620 | What do you do next?

00:45:44.020 | Well, I like the way that this report

00:45:45.900 | from the United Kingdom laid out

00:45:48.020 | some of the points of analysis,

00:45:52.420 | because for me, these points of analysis have always been,

00:45:55.720 | they've been my areas of focus for my personal languages.

00:46:02.900 | For me, the biggest factor has always been,

00:46:06.020 | where do the most people speak it, and who am I around?

00:46:08.660 | I don't deny that you should start

00:46:10.540 | with the language you're interested in.

00:46:11.580 | If you're really interested in Tamil as a language

00:46:15.540 | or Punjab, right, Punjab or Punjabi as a language,

00:46:20.540 | then you would study that because you're interested in it.

00:46:25.060 | But for me, I've always had this dream

00:46:26.560 | of being able to travel around the world

00:46:27.940 | and speak the most spoken languages.

00:46:30.700 | And although English is the global lingua franca,

00:46:33.300 | there are of course languages

00:46:34.700 | that are going to be regionalized languages.

00:46:38.700 | And so a language like Russian is very influential

00:46:43.260 | around the former Soviet Union,

00:46:44.820 | even if the local language is different than Russian,

00:46:47.060 | or Spanish is very influential.

00:46:49.300 | French, the lingua franca of the world before English

00:46:52.540 | is extremely useful.

00:46:54.120 | Tremendous numbers of French speakers all around the world.

00:46:57.700 | You can use it in Africa, you can use it in the Caribbean,

00:46:59.740 | you can use it in, a little bit in South America,

00:47:02.300 | you can use it all across Europe.

00:47:03.340 | It's just a tremendously useful language.

00:47:06.900 | But for me, strategically,

00:47:08.620 | this is where you might wanna consider,

00:47:09.700 | especially if you're interested

00:47:10.940 | in expanding your employment opportunities,

00:47:13.780 | your income opportunities,

00:47:15.580 | perhaps even your business opportunities.

00:47:18.060 | You wanna go and make investments in foreign countries,

00:47:20.700 | or you wanna run a highly profitable

00:47:22.220 | international business.

00:47:24.060 | These languages are languages that you should consider.

00:47:26.820 | And this method of analysis is a method of analysis

00:47:29.300 | that you should consider and apply to your local country,

00:47:32.700 | to your local opportunities.

00:47:34.780 | A quick note on entrepreneurship.

00:47:37.620 | In my travels around the world,

00:47:39.780 | I've become convinced that one of the most reliable ways

00:47:43.140 | of building a fortune is simply to take a concept,

00:47:47.300 | a business, a profession that has been successful

00:47:50.980 | in one region of the world,

00:47:53.260 | and take that to another region of the world and expand it.

00:47:56.740 | You can, if you are from Germany,

00:47:58.980 | you can look around the German culture

00:48:00.260 | and you can find businesses that have been very effective

00:48:02.820 | and you can take those to other places.

00:48:05.420 | Now, these may be bigger businesses.

00:48:08.020 | When I was in college, I considered taking a job

00:48:11.700 | with a cell phone company that was working in Africa,

00:48:14.660 | and they were expanding all around Africa.

00:48:16.180 | I had a friend who was working for them,

00:48:17.620 | and I thought it was interesting.

00:48:19.100 | I chose not to do it at the time,

00:48:21.180 | but that was a phase at which,

00:48:23.700 | if I went and worked with a global telecom provider,

00:48:26.540 | they were just expanding massively around the world.

00:48:29.100 | I don't know if there are still opportunities

00:48:30.660 | in the telecom space,

00:48:32.300 | but I guarantee you there are opportunities

00:48:34.260 | in the real estate space.

00:48:36.460 | I've had several friends of mine

00:48:37.820 | who've been real estate agents in the United States,

00:48:39.180 | and I've told them, I said, "Listen,

00:48:40.500 | "you need to simply leave the United States,

00:48:43.140 | "go to a place that you think you would enjoy doing,

00:48:45.540 | "and take some of the practices

00:48:47.260 | "and some of the standards

00:48:48.580 | "of the real estate business in the United States,

00:48:50.220 | "which is highly developed,

00:48:51.460 | "and take those into the local context."

00:48:54.300 | Just simply doing a good job with online listings

00:48:57.100 | and doing really excellent photos

00:48:59.260 | and providing really good customer service.

00:49:00.980 | You could set yourself apart and build

00:49:02.420 | an extremely successful real estate brokerage

00:49:06.140 | that could be national in scope.

00:49:07.860 | Take a highly successful model,

00:49:10.220 | take a Keller Williams,

00:49:11.740 | and just go and take that concept to another country

00:49:14.540 | that doesn't have a large national real estate brand,

00:49:17.700 | and focus on building that,

00:49:19.380 | and figure out what are the cultural factors

00:49:22.340 | that you can cross over,

00:49:23.940 | and what do you bring that's good from an American model,

00:49:28.060 | and then what do you pick up

00:49:29.000 | that's good from the local culture,

00:49:31.140 | and establish it.

00:49:32.380 | And those opportunities are all around the world.

00:49:34.820 | So, having these language abilities is extremely useful.

00:49:39.820 | Now, I'm just gonna summarize this report for you,

00:49:44.200 | because they give a number of different factors.

00:49:47.220 | First, I'll tell you what the factors are.

00:49:48.740 | I'll tell you the top languages from this report,

00:49:50.780 | and then I'll briefly discuss what these factors are,

00:49:53.300 | because these are factors

00:49:54.240 | that you can apply to your country.

00:49:57.420 | Perhaps you're listening to me in Germany.

00:50:02.420 | Well, you can do this analysis for you in Germany,

00:50:06.920 | different than the United Kingdom,

00:50:08.400 | or any country in the world.

00:50:10.480 | So, here are the factors that this report goes into.

00:50:15.480 | There are three broad organizing themes.

00:50:19.800 | Number one is economic factors.

00:50:21.820 | Number two is non-market factors.

00:50:26.440 | And then number three, balancing factors.

00:50:29.840 | So, the economic factors are, in this case,

00:50:32.160 | again, this report coming from the UK,

00:50:33.760 | the current UK exports.

00:50:36.000 | And specifically what this means is

00:50:39.400 | the countries that the United Kingdom

00:50:40.960 | has the closest trading relationship with.

00:50:44.040 | And this would be something

00:50:46.760 | that would be worth your looking into.

00:50:48.400 | What country does your home country,

00:50:53.320 | or your country of residence,

00:50:54.840 | have the closest trading opportunities with?

00:50:58.600 | And you should look at that.

00:50:59.520 | Number two would be the language needs of,

00:51:01.960 | in this case, UK businesses, but for your local country.

00:51:05.360 | What are the language needs of businesses?

00:51:06.760 | What do businesses say, this is who we're looking for?

00:51:09.880 | Are they looking for a Polish speaker?

00:51:11.760 | Are they looking for a Hindi speaker?

00:51:14.360 | Number three is future trade priorities.

00:51:17.200 | So, what regions in the world

00:51:18.920 | is that country trying to build trade?

00:51:21.400 | If you're living in the United States,

00:51:23.520 | you would not be trying to learn Farsi

00:51:26.920 | for the benefits of trading opportunities.

00:51:29.720 | Farsi, of course, the language from Iran.

00:51:31.960 | And although Iran has a huge population

00:51:35.160 | and has possibly tremendous economic potential,

00:51:38.960 | because of the very difficult relationship

00:51:41.360 | between Iran and the United States,

00:51:42.920 | that's not something where you would expect

00:51:44.440 | to necessarily get a job,

00:51:45.440 | unless, I guess, you wanna be involved with,

00:51:48.080 | be a spy, work for the CIA, or something like that.

00:51:50.440 | Number four economic factor

00:51:51.560 | is emerging high growth markets.

00:51:53.560 | So, which markets are growing the fastest?

00:51:56.280 | Now, what about the non-market factors?

00:51:59.280 | Here, there are four of them,

00:52:00.360 | diplomatic and security priorities.

00:52:02.560 | Again, where are the priorities of this country?

00:52:05.800 | What countries in the world is your country

00:52:08.120 | trying to strengthen ties with?

00:52:10.880 | Because those ties may start with diplomacy,

00:52:14.080 | but business ties are quickly going to grow.

00:52:17.880 | What countries is your country

00:52:19.480 | trying to build stronger business ties,

00:52:21.520 | negotiate trade agreements, et cetera, with?

00:52:24.480 | Next would be the public's language interests.

00:52:27.520 | Is this language growing because it's of popularity?

00:52:32.400 | Here, you would look at a language like, say, Spanish,

00:52:36.280 | which has, what, something like 500 million speakers

00:52:39.200 | around the world.

00:52:40.040 | You would say that this is a very popular language

00:52:42.720 | all around the world.

00:52:43.960 | It's growing in popularity.

00:52:45.640 | It's a very active second language.

00:52:49.280 | And you would compare that to a language that's dying.

00:52:51.600 | I don't know, maybe Maltese, right?

00:52:54.520 | Maltese is an interesting language,

00:52:56.280 | but it's not spoken outside of Malta.

00:52:58.840 | And in Malta, it's not a big priority

00:53:02.640 | compared to the widespread use of English

00:53:04.760 | or other languages.

00:53:05.840 | I think, what, half a million speakers of Maltese

00:53:08.320 | and probably dying in terms of its overall influence.

00:53:12.440 | So, the public's language interests.

00:53:14.240 | Number three, non-market factors,

00:53:15.640 | outward and inward tourism.

00:53:17.160 | Where are their ties?

00:53:18.360 | Where are their connections for you?

00:53:21.760 | Number four would be international educational engagement.

00:53:25.000 | And then the last two are the balancing factors,

00:53:27.040 | levels of English proficiency in other countries,

00:53:29.280 | and then the prevalence of different languages

00:53:31.160 | on the internet.

00:53:32.960 | So, let's talk about what the UK's list of 10 languages are.

00:53:37.960 | And here they are.

00:53:39.720 | Number one is Spanish.

00:53:41.320 | So, the British Council would encourage you

00:53:43.720 | that if you're interested, sorry.

00:53:46.640 | The British Council would encourage policy makers in the UK

00:53:51.360 | to deeply emphasize Spanish as a foreign language.

00:53:56.360 | And their reasoning, if it's sound,

00:54:00.560 | would be good reasons for you

00:54:02.600 | to consider Spanish as a foreign language.

00:54:05.320 | This is true in the United Kingdom.

00:54:07.600 | I think this would especially be true in the United States.

00:54:10.640 | Unless you simply have no interest in Spanish at all,

00:54:15.600 | it's hard to see why, if you are US American,

00:54:18.200 | why Spanish wouldn't be your first, second language.

00:54:22.040 | Because there are so many speakers of it available,

00:54:24.560 | and because the United States ties

00:54:27.520 | with Spanish-speaking countries are incredibly high.

00:54:32.040 | Obviously, Mexico, all of Latin America,

00:54:34.680 | and there are so many Spanish speakers,

00:54:36.840 | immigrants to the United States,

00:54:38.160 | that Spanish would be obvious.

00:54:39.200 | Number one would be Spanish.

00:54:40.720 | Number two would be Mandarin Chinese,

00:54:43.080 | the official language of China,

00:54:44.640 | the national language.

00:54:46.920 | Of course, there are many local dialects,

00:54:48.120 | but Mandarin Chinese would be the number two language

00:54:51.920 | that UK speakers would encourage other people to learn.

00:54:55.280 | And I think that this would be obvious for many people.

00:54:58.640 | Because of the massive population of China,

00:55:01.200 | because of the economic clout of China,

00:55:04.200 | I think many people see the value

00:55:06.080 | of learning Mandarin Chinese.

00:55:07.200 | Among the hoity-toity, kind of upper-level elite

00:55:11.240 | in the United States,

00:55:12.240 | Mandarin Chinese is certainly a high priority.

00:55:16.320 | Number three is French.

00:55:18.160 | Classic language, that would be the United Kingdom's,

00:55:22.680 | the British Council's encouragement

00:55:24.080 | for language to consider.

00:55:25.120 | Number four is Arabic,

00:55:26.440 | and the number five are German.

00:55:29.360 | And so they've assigned a points margin for these things,

00:55:32.960 | and those five are the clear winners.

00:55:37.000 | Now, you could speak all five of them

00:55:38.560 | if you're interested in it.

00:55:40.760 | Spanish, if you're an English speaker,

00:55:42.200 | Spanish, French, and German

00:55:43.560 | will be your easiest languages to learn

00:55:45.280 | in terms of the amount of time.

00:55:47.760 | Maybe not to learn well,

00:55:49.600 | some complex conjugations in those languages,

00:55:52.360 | but you'll have the most cognates across those languages.

00:55:56.440 | So you can learn Spanish, French, and German.

00:55:58.120 | I find that for me, when I learn Spanish,

00:56:00.680 | I can go over as an English speaker

00:56:03.640 | with a very broad vocabulary,

00:56:06.280 | and as a Spanish speaker with a pretty decent vocabulary,

00:56:09.440 | I can go to French and I can read 90% of French

00:56:13.200 | without the need to do anything,

00:56:16.000 | maybe a little bit more than 90%.

00:56:18.720 | Good connection over to German.

00:56:21.120 | Mandarin and Arabic, of course,

00:56:22.800 | much more distant from English and the Romance languages,

00:56:27.400 | but certainly very doable.

00:56:29.400 | Now, the next five languages are Italian, Dutch,

00:56:33.600 | Portuguese, Japanese, and Russian.

00:56:36.640 | So again, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Japanese, and Russian.

00:56:39.320 | Having very high benefits for UK residents

00:56:44.040 | to learn to speak those,

00:56:45.080 | and I'm talking specifically economic benefits

00:56:47.280 | to increase trade, increase job opportunities, et cetera.

00:56:50.800 | And then some good runners up

00:56:52.800 | would include Turkish, Polish, Malay,

00:56:54.800 | and possibly Hindi for the United Kingdom.

00:56:58.440 | So there's your list of languages,

00:57:00.200 | and perhaps there's one or a few of them

00:57:02.760 | that you would consider,

00:57:03.640 | but if you are not living in the UK,

00:57:05.800 | then you should perform this similar kind of analysis.

00:57:08.760 | Although I mentioned the factors,

00:57:12.200 | let me give you the, let me go over them again for you.

00:57:15.520 | The economic factors to begin with.

00:57:17.240 | Number one is be the current exports

00:57:18.800 | from your country to another country.

00:57:21.640 | And this would be obvious.

00:57:22.640 | If you're gonna go and get a job,

00:57:23.800 | let's say you're gonna get a job

00:57:24.960 | as a bilingual social media manager.

00:57:27.360 | There's lots of those jobs out there available,

00:57:29.960 | but it's gonna be much more,

00:57:31.800 | there's gonna be more demand for your services

00:57:34.640 | if you're bilingual in a language

00:57:37.380 | that your country is exporting a lot of business to.

00:57:40.720 | So by this factor, you can just simply look up

00:57:45.360 | where does your country trade the most with.

00:57:47.680 | For the United Kingdom, it's the United States,

00:57:49.200 | Germany, France, Netherlands, Ireland,

00:57:50.720 | Switzerland, Italy, China, the Gulf,

00:57:54.000 | and Arab states, Belgium, Spain, Japan, et cetera.

00:57:56.640 | And then analyze the languages of those.

00:57:59.400 | You don't have to go for the first one

00:58:00.840 | if you're not interested in it,

00:58:01.880 | but if you're interested in Mandarin Chinese,

00:58:05.140 | and China is a very strong trading partner

00:58:07.040 | of a company, that's a good sign.

00:58:09.000 | So what are the companies that your country demands?

00:58:12.000 | What countries?

00:58:19.020 | And also, what's growing?

00:58:21.220 | Where is the, what's growing?

00:58:22.920 | So for example, in 2017, the British Council Report

00:58:27.920 | recommended these languages

00:58:30.640 | in terms of being more interesting.

00:58:35.240 | German, French, Dutch, Italian, Mandarin,

00:58:37.200 | Arabic, Spanish, Japanese, Swedish, and Cantonese.

00:58:40.160 | But there was a big change in Swedish.

00:58:44.160 | Swedish became less important in 2017.

00:58:46.920 | Major change in other analyses in Portuguese

00:58:50.820 | being less important because of the challenges

00:58:52.960 | in the Brazilian economy.

00:58:53.960 | Similar things with Russian.

00:58:55.140 | 2013, Russia was very important,

00:58:57.940 | but Russia declined significantly in terms of,

00:59:00.960 | it actually dropped off that top 10 list

00:59:02.920 | because of the problems in the Russian economy

00:59:04.840 | over the last half a decade to the decade.

00:59:09.320 | So do that analysis.

00:59:11.500 | Indicated number two, the language needs

00:59:13.040 | of businesses of your company.

00:59:14.900 | In the United Kingdom, there are,

00:59:18.160 | the report looks for a study and they say,

00:59:20.800 | okay, what business, what languages do we say that we need?

00:59:23.560 | And in this case, the list was French, German,

00:59:25.560 | Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic, Polish, Dutch,

00:59:27.320 | Japanese, Cantonese, Russian.

00:59:29.080 | But there's a major difference in terms of the demand

00:59:31.120 | for French speakers and German speakers

00:59:33.160 | than there is for Russian speakers.

00:59:36.040 | Third factor, economic factor,

00:59:38.120 | is the government's trade priorities.

00:59:41.080 | So where are the government's trade priorities?

00:59:43.080 | And the way that the British Council analyzed this

00:59:45.760 | was to look at the markets identified

00:59:49.140 | by the UK Foreign Service for international trade

00:59:52.680 | and to identify those specific places.

00:59:55.080 | And it's interesting because this is the area

00:59:57.940 | where you get some of these smaller languages

01:00:00.640 | that don't often reach the top level,

01:00:03.160 | but they are very, very useful.

01:00:05.720 | So let's say that your country is trying

01:00:07.600 | to build connections in Africa.

01:00:10.640 | A good example here, maybe you're living in China

01:00:13.360 | and you speak Mandarin Chinese, possibly a local dialect,

01:00:16.940 | but you recognize that, and you also speak English,

01:00:20.440 | but you recognize that your country, your nation, China,

01:00:25.280 | is working very diligently to expand into Africa.

01:00:29.200 | Well, then you would look at a language like Swahili, right?

01:00:32.880 | Swahili is the lingua franca

01:00:34.240 | of much of Eastern and Southeastern Africa.

01:00:36.520 | And so that would be possibly a good language to prioritize

01:00:41.160 | or possibly French, which would be more common

01:00:43.520 | in Northern and Central Africa.

01:00:45.600 | And if you had a specific local area,

01:00:49.120 | a specific local dialect that were gonna be interesting

01:00:51.920 | to you in a specific country,

01:00:54.180 | then of course you would pursue that.

01:00:55.780 | But Swahili wouldn't be on the top 10 list,

01:00:59.120 | but it might be for you.

01:01:00.800 | So consider that.

01:01:02.360 | The top 10, what about indicator number four,

01:01:05.480 | emerging high growth markets.

01:01:07.480 | So here, the analysis simply, where is growth expected?

01:01:12.480 | And I believe that this is an under-discussed area

01:01:15.880 | where you can look at regions of the world

01:01:20.160 | and you can see where growth is expected

01:01:22.320 | for the UK analysis from the Center for Economics

01:01:27.400 | and Business Research in the United Kingdom.

01:01:29.400 | They would say that these are some of the 10 regions

01:01:32.600 | of the world of the highest growth area.

01:01:34.720 | India, India, official languages of India,

01:01:38.440 | Hindi and English.

01:01:39.440 | Vietnam, language Vietnamese.

01:01:41.340 | Ghana, language English.

01:01:43.200 | Indonesia, language Bahasa Indonesia or Malay.

01:01:46.840 | China, Mandarin.

01:01:48.040 | Malaysia, Malay.

01:01:49.240 | Thailand, Thai.

01:01:50.240 | United Arab Emirates, Arabic.

01:01:51.740 | Turkey, Turkish.

01:01:52.800 | Poland and Polish.

01:01:54.520 | And so I think that one of the most interesting things

01:01:57.280 | you can do with your business,

01:02:00.200 | with your investments,

01:02:03.840 | is to try to get in front of a macro trend.

01:02:08.180 | Try to look at it and say, where is the macro trend?

01:02:11.560 | If you were to compare the Vietnamese economy

01:02:15.840 | to the UK economy or the US American economy,

01:02:20.840 | there's probably a much higher growth potential

01:02:24.240 | in the Vietnamese economy than there is

01:02:27.680 | the American or the UK economy.

01:02:31.160 | That doesn't mean that there aren't good opportunities

01:02:33.200 | in both, but the overall potential of the economy,

01:02:36.080 | there's a lot more room for it to run.

01:02:37.760 | And so in high growth markets,

01:02:40.180 | that might be something really interesting

01:02:42.000 | for you to focus on.

01:02:44.000 | In the United States, a place like Mexico, right?

01:02:47.160 | There's a lot more growth potential in Mexico

01:02:49.320 | than there is in the United States.

01:02:52.760 | In Africa, a place like Nigeria,

01:02:54.760 | you have this huge population and growing population

01:02:57.940 | as compared to the declining population

01:02:59.440 | in many of the countries in the West.

01:03:00.760 | And so you might want to think about that

01:03:04.380 | and figure out where your options are.

01:03:07.320 | So what they do in this analysis

01:03:10.000 | is they assign points to those factors,

01:03:11.520 | they weight those points,

01:03:12.480 | and then they use those to provide a numerical ranking.

01:03:17.480 | What about non-economic factors?

01:03:21.960 | Cultural, educational, diplomatic, and security factors?

01:03:25.600 | Well, you could look at what are the languages

01:03:27.320 | that are of priority for diplomacy.

01:03:29.200 | And so in the United Kingdom,

01:03:33.760 | they did some interviews and found out

01:03:35.360 | that the priority one languages,

01:03:37.800 | which are languages of the United Nations,

01:03:39.080 | involve Arabic, French, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish.

01:03:41.960 | And the priority two languages for UK residents

01:03:44.520 | would be Farsi, German, Japanese, Korean,

01:03:46.280 | Portuguese, and Turkish.

01:03:50.660 | Next indicator would be the public's language interests.

01:03:53.220 | So what languages are the public people most interested in?

01:03:57.260 | Here, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Mandarin,

01:04:00.220 | Japanese, Arabic, Portuguese, Russian, and Polish.

01:04:03.260 | And number seven would be tourism

01:04:04.860 | and other overseas visits.

01:04:06.740 | If you're living in a place,

01:04:09.380 | one of the simplest things that you can do

01:04:10.860 | to differentiate yourself is let's say

01:04:12.380 | that you're living in a place

01:04:13.240 | that has a significant draw of tourists.

01:04:15.700 | Well, you can learn a foreign language

01:04:17.620 | and then market yourself as that tourist services provider

01:04:22.620 | to that specific language group.

01:04:25.200 | And there are tons of tour guides

01:04:27.780 | that make their living in New York City or in Sao Paolo

01:04:31.420 | because they speak Japanese.

01:04:34.060 | And the Japanese tourists that love to come to Sao Paolo,

01:04:36.780 | that's the automatic tour agency that they would use

01:04:39.780 | because they're specialized in that.

01:04:41.820 | And then priorities for international education,

01:04:43.900 | international mobility of students,

01:04:45.460 | and then languages needed for cultural education,

01:04:48.740 | diplomatic and security purposes,

01:04:53.420 | and moving fast for time.

01:04:54.860 | Which brings me to the last one, table 12,

01:04:57.120 | levels of English proficiency.

01:04:58.740 | One of the more interesting balancing factors

01:05:01.080 | that they bring in is how common is English

01:05:05.540 | in these particular languages?

01:05:07.040 | Because if you already speak English

01:05:09.860 | and you want to live in a certain country,

01:05:12.680 | but English is widely spoken there,

01:05:14.200 | you may not need to spend your time

01:05:17.180 | learning that particular language.

01:05:19.040 | So for example,

01:05:20.580 | places of very high English proficiency on this list,

01:05:26.100 | very high, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland,

01:05:29.180 | Singapore, and Luxembourg.

01:05:30.600 | If I wanted to live in the Netherlands, would I learn Dutch?

01:05:34.980 | I would learn Dutch,

01:05:36.660 | but there wouldn't be as nearly of a pressing need

01:05:39.380 | to learn Dutch as if I'm living in Mongolia.

01:05:43.580 | Mongolia has a very low level of English proficiency.

01:05:48.420 | I really need to speak Mongolian if I'm living in Mongolia.

01:05:51.540 | I don't really need to speak English

01:05:53.220 | if I'm living in the Netherlands.

01:05:54.940 | And so, now me personally liking languages

01:05:58.340 | and wanting to really connect with a culture

01:06:00.220 | and wanting to be able to cross those cultural barriers,

01:06:02.060 | I would, but if I'm just learning languages,

01:06:05.380 | I wouldn't encourage my children,

01:06:08.500 | you really need to learn Dutch.

01:06:10.100 | I would choose something more strategically.

01:06:12.700 | So let's go through some of these.

01:06:14.380 | The, again, very high levels of English proficiency,

01:06:16.980 | Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland,

01:06:19.340 | Singapore, and Luxembourg.

01:06:20.780 | Very high levels of English proficiency.

01:06:23.020 | So not a really pressing need to learn the local language.

01:06:26.700 | What about high levels of English proficiency?

01:06:28.900 | Austria, Germany, Poland, Belgium, Malaysia, Philippines,

01:06:32.120 | Switzerland, Portugal, Czech Republic, Serbia,

01:06:34.500 | Hungary, Argentina, and Romania.

01:06:36.840 | Moderate levels, Slovakia, India, Dominican Republic,

01:06:41.780 | Bulgaria, Spain, Bosnia and Herzegovina,

01:06:44.100 | South Korea, Italy, France, Hong Kong,

01:06:45.940 | Vietnam, Indonesia, and Taiwan.

01:06:49.140 | So we're in that moderate range.

01:06:50.800 | This for me has been a language like Hindi.

01:06:52.740 | I'm super interested in the potential for India as a nation.

01:06:57.740 | I think it's one of the met world's economies

01:07:00.660 | is gonna make a huge difference in the coming decades.

01:07:03.960 | I haven't been to India yet, I'd like to go.

01:07:06.220 | I don't have any clue about how to crack the Indian culture

01:07:08.900 | and where the opportunities are.

01:07:10.660 | But one of the reasons why I've often

01:07:13.100 | not been particularly interested in learning Hindi

01:07:15.140 | has simply been that there are huge,

01:07:17.340 | huge widespread levels of English speaking.

01:07:20.340 | English being an official language of India,

01:07:22.660 | it's just seemed like,

01:07:25.220 | oh, it's very hard, harder for me to learn Hindi,

01:07:27.660 | but I could probably get along well in English.

01:07:30.260 | So that's been a reason why even though Hindi

01:07:32.660 | is widely spoken from a numeric factor,

01:07:35.380 | I've never been particularly interested in it

01:07:37.380 | as a foreign language for me to learn.

01:07:40.340 | I think the natural counter argument to that, however,

01:07:43.460 | would be the use of a foreign language

01:07:47.620 | to establish more of a cultural connection.

01:07:50.160 | So if I were working in an industry

01:07:53.400 | with a lot of Indian employees,

01:07:57.260 | then I think I would try to learn at least some basic Hindi

01:08:00.360 | so that I could demonstrate an appreciation of the language

01:08:04.620 | and smooth out my relationships with my coworkers,

01:08:09.120 | superiors, employees that I'm managing,

01:08:13.120 | just to have that bring the cultural barriers

01:08:16.720 | between the Indian culture and maybe the American culture,

01:08:19.600 | the Canadian culture, to bring that down.

01:08:22.120 | Low levels of proficiency in English,

01:08:23.800 | Russia, Japan, Uruguay, Macau, Costa Rica,

01:08:27.400 | China, Brazil, Ukraine, Chile, Mexico,

01:08:30.800 | Morocco, Peru, the UAE, Ecuador, Pakistan,

01:08:34.360 | and then very low levels of proficiency in English,

01:08:36.840 | Colombia, Panama, Turkey, Tunisia, Guatemala,

01:08:39.720 | Kazakhstan, Egypt, Thailand, Azerbaijan, Sri Lanka,

01:08:42.760 | Qatar, Venezuela, Iran, Jordan, El Salvador, Oman, Kuwait,

01:08:46.800 | Mongolia, Algeria, Saudi Arabia,

01:08:49.160 | Cambodia, Laos, Libya, Iraq, et cetera.

01:08:53.000 | So you can consider that

01:08:54.200 | and consider what other factors there are for you.

01:09:00.560 | So from this analysis for the British Council,

01:09:04.280 | the 10 most important languages,

01:09:06.880 | Spanish, Mandarin, French, Arabic, German, Italian,

01:09:11.320 | Dutch, Portuguese, Japanese, and Russian.

01:09:14.920 | I will close this out with two quotes

01:09:18.520 | from this particular report that I'm referencing,

01:09:20.960 | and I will link the report in the show notes

01:09:22.800 | that you can download the PDF and read it yourself

01:09:24.680 | if you're interested in this.

01:09:26.400 | But from the introduction,

01:09:29.640 | the authors of the report write this.

01:09:31.320 | They say, "As the UK embarks on a new era

01:09:34.120 | of cooperation with Europe and with the rest of the world,

01:09:37.080 | the extent to which the country can realize the vision

01:09:39.520 | of a truly global UK in the long-term

01:09:42.480 | will depend on our ability to succeed

01:09:44.320 | in a competitive international environment

01:09:46.400 | and to understand and connect with people across the world."

01:09:50.600 | I took that quote, and I just marked out the UK,

01:09:52.960 | and I put it in for Joshua, right?

01:09:55.200 | As Joshua embarks, you of course insert your own name,

01:09:59.040 | but as Joshua embarks on a new era

01:10:01.400 | of cooperation with the world,

01:10:04.120 | the extent to which Joshua can realize his vision

01:10:06.480 | of a truly global lifestyle in the long-term

01:10:10.720 | will depend on his ability to succeed

01:10:13.040 | in a competitive international environment

01:10:14.720 | and to understand and connect with people across the world.

01:10:17.640 | And one way to do that,

01:10:19.840 | I'll read directly from the report,

01:10:21.440 | "The ability to function in more than one language

01:10:23.520 | is increasingly being seen

01:10:25.040 | not just as enabling a basic transaction,

01:10:28.080 | but as a crucial component of a set of skills,

01:10:30.240 | attributes, and knowledge

01:10:31.360 | required for success in the world today."

01:10:34.040 | One other quote that came from a business leader

01:10:37.120 | in the report, sorry, from the finance editor,

01:10:40.360 | Liana Brindid, the finance editor and the business insider,

01:10:43.840 | who said this, "Speaking German will not only get you,

01:10:47.560 | in general, the highest paid job,

01:10:49.840 | it is also the language that is in highest demand

01:10:52.360 | across job postings."

01:10:54.840 | Now, I think that if we were dealing with people

01:10:57.440 | who were not speaking English,

01:10:58.920 | then English would replace that.

01:11:01.040 | Perhaps there's a region or a country in which it wouldn't,

01:11:05.440 | but I think globally speaking for non-English speakers,

01:11:09.080 | speaking English will get you, in general,

01:11:11.640 | the highest paid job, and it is the language

01:11:13.520 | that is in the highest demand across job postings.

01:11:15.360 | But if you are an English speaker,

01:11:17.280 | you wanna think about that.

01:11:18.240 | What is the language that is in the highest demand?

01:11:20.920 | What is the language that will get me the highest paid job?

01:11:24.160 | And what is the language that is in the highest demand

01:11:26.360 | across job postings?

01:11:27.880 | It's hard work to learn a language.

01:11:31.200 | Maybe enjoyable, may not be.

01:11:32.880 | Some people like it, some people don't.

01:11:34.360 | I think a lot of times,

01:11:35.840 | the reasons people don't like languages

01:11:38.840 | is simply bad methodology, right?

01:11:40.960 | They're sitting in a class being drilled

01:11:43.000 | on grammar exercises, which stink.

01:11:45.440 | But if you can get a great story, get a great novel,

01:11:47.760 | figure out what you're into,

01:11:50.120 | and learn how to read that in the language,

01:11:52.520 | it can be super fun and really enjoyable.

01:11:55.400 | I enjoy my foreign language study.

01:11:58.160 | Right now, I've only studied and am studying languages

01:12:02.200 | that I have a natural connection to the alphabet of.

01:12:05.280 | My next language next year is going to be Mandarin Chinese.

01:12:08.200 | That's gonna be a lot of slog work at the beginning

01:12:11.080 | as I learn to read Chinese characters.

01:12:12.880 | That's gonna be a huge level of just work.

01:12:16.080 | But then once I break through

01:12:17.800 | with the knowledge of the characters,

01:12:19.720 | it's gonna start to be fun again

01:12:20.880 | because I'll find literature and material

01:12:23.480 | that I really enjoy and that I'm really interested in.

01:12:26.080 | And that's the secret to making it fun.

01:12:27.960 | So I think a lot of people who think language learning

01:12:30.080 | is not interesting or not fun,

01:12:32.600 | probably maybe they're studying the wrong language

01:12:34.320 | for the wrong reasons, or they have bad tools,

01:12:36.320 | or bad philosophy, et cetera.

01:12:38.200 | If you're not into it, you're not into it.

01:12:40.840 | Go develop yourself some other way.

01:12:43.360 | But if you are into it, or at least you're open to it,

01:12:46.360 | recognize that proficiency in languages,

01:12:49.520 | another language, a set of languages,

01:12:52.880 | could possibly make you very attractive in the job market.

01:12:57.640 | Minimize your personal unemployment rate,

01:12:59.800 | which is incredibly important,

01:13:03.440 | and possibly open up to you

01:13:04.720 | some of the most interesting jobs you could imagine.

01:13:07.720 | Again, I don't plan to do it at this point in time

01:13:11.640 | 'cause at this point in time,

01:13:13.120 | the travel needed is not on my priority list.

01:13:16.880 | But one of my dream jobs was

01:13:19.840 | that international mutual fund research analyst

01:13:22.640 | or something like that.

01:13:23.640 | Love business, like investing.

01:13:25.800 | And so you tell Joshua that he gets to go to Sri Lanka

01:13:30.160 | and interview the management staff of a local company,

01:13:33.080 | man, I'm in.

01:13:33.920 | I think that sounds awesome.

01:13:36.640 | And languages are a useful component of that.

01:13:40.080 | Hope you've enjoyed this part two of the series.

01:13:42.520 | In closing, I would pitch to you my course

01:13:46.000 | on career and income planning.

01:13:50.400 | If you're looking strategically at your finances

01:13:53.040 | and you're trying to figure out

01:13:54.120 | where do I focus my efforts on the most productive things,

01:13:58.160 | it's got to be your income.

01:13:59.840 | And you wanna do two things.

01:14:01.560 | You wanna make sure that you love your work,

01:14:05.500 | that you love your job.

01:14:06.760 | To the extent possible,

01:14:07.960 | you wanna make sure that you tap dance into work every day,

01:14:11.400 | so famously, pithily described by Warren Buffett, right?

01:14:14.860 | You wanna make sure it's fun, that you enjoy it.

01:14:17.520 | And you can do that.

01:14:19.720 | There are so many opportunities for diverse kinds of jobs

01:14:23.440 | and work available today

01:14:25.080 | that it's one of the best times in the world.

01:14:26.880 | It's the best time in human history

01:14:29.160 | because of just the simple, interesting work you can do.

01:14:33.200 | It's so cool.

01:14:34.580 | And so you wanna do work that's interesting to you

01:14:36.680 | because if it's work that you care about,

01:14:38.640 | that's interesting to you, that you love,

01:14:40.680 | that you believe matters,

01:14:43.880 | then the pay almost doesn't matter.

01:14:45.800 | And then number two is you wanna work in an area

01:14:48.040 | where you can be paid very, very well.

01:14:50.600 | You can be paid very, very well.

01:14:53.920 | And if you'll develop jobs,

01:14:55.360 | work that you can be paid very, very well for,

01:14:58.280 | then you become very, very wealthy very quickly.

01:15:00.540 | You can live a very high lifestyle.

01:15:03.040 | And so if you're sitting in a place

01:15:04.800 | where you're sitting around and you're unemployed,

01:15:07.720 | I would urge you, take the time,

01:15:09.560 | take your chance that you have right now

01:15:12.960 | to, you're unemployed,

01:15:15.240 | and spend your time investing into interesting work,

01:15:19.040 | developing yourself to be qualified for interesting work.

01:15:22.600 | Maybe you're sitting in the United States

01:15:24.240 | and you're in Atlanta, Georgia,

01:15:25.840 | and you're looking around and you're like,

01:15:26.680 | my city's on fire.

01:15:28.160 | And I'm not into this.

01:15:30.920 | Well, why don't you make a plan to move to Paris, right?

01:15:34.920 | Or move to London or move to,

01:15:37.060 | Brazil's hard right now 'cause of coronavirus,

01:15:41.140 | but move to, the whole world is, move to Tokyo, right?

01:15:44.760 | Maybe that's your thing.

01:15:45.600 | Or move to Singapore or wherever you're interested in,

01:15:47.720 | whatever region of the world you, Vanuatu, I don't know.

01:15:50.460 | Something that you think would be really awesome.

01:15:52.880 | And your dream might be to move to Vanuatu

01:15:55.120 | and open a surf shop.

01:15:56.040 | My dream would be more akin to move to Singapore

01:15:58.600 | and become an international banker

01:16:00.080 | or become a business consultant, but you can do it.

01:16:02.800 | You can do it.

01:16:03.800 | And if you've got something that would be interesting to you

01:16:06.480 | and you can trade out working in an office building

01:16:09.560 | in Atlanta, Georgia,

01:16:11.080 | and trade up for being a business consultant

01:16:13.520 | across Europe, across Western Europe, go for it.

01:16:18.520 | And so if you need to get a degree, get busy.

01:16:22.600 | If you need to apply for a job

01:16:24.360 | and you need to learn French or German, do it.

01:16:27.040 | In three months, you can be at conversational level

01:16:30.160 | in some of these languages that are accessible.

01:16:31.720 | In six months, you can be at pretty decent

01:16:34.240 | in a year of hard study, especially if you've got time.

01:16:37.160 | In a year of hard study, you could be very, very conversant

01:16:42.360 | in any of these languages.

01:16:44.120 | Not promising, you know,

01:16:46.160 | fluency is a hard concept to nail down,

01:16:48.080 | but the point is it's available to you.

01:16:50.560 | So if you look around you and the life that you're living

01:16:53.360 | isn't motivating and exciting,

01:16:56.160 | then think about what would be.

01:16:57.760 | And if you're interested in some input,

01:16:59.080 | some advice on how to do that, how to position yourself,

01:17:02.000 | how to think through that analysis

01:17:03.960 | and how to market yourself into a new career or a new job,

01:17:07.100 | go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/store

01:17:09.600 | and buy my guide on career and income planning.

01:17:13.040 | It's the decision, choosing the right career

01:17:15.820 | is the single most important factor for you

01:17:19.600 | in terms of the enjoyment of your work life

01:17:22.520 | and in the amount of money that you earn

01:17:25.320 | and how wealthy you ultimately become.

01:17:27.320 | So go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/store

01:17:29.760 | and buy the "Radical Personal Finance Guide

01:17:31.360 | to Career and Income Planning."

01:17:33.320 | I'll see you in the course.

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