Transcription
The state of the economy is not like it has been in years past. People are struggling. I think Hollywood is a good representation of how things are going, which is to say that things are going bad. Two of the biggest filmmakers, who are both vying for the best picture nomination this year, admitted to being broke. I'm very emotional today because I've been working on it for 7 years. They admitted to basically making no money off of their movie. The cracks in the armor can no longer be ignored.
One of my favorite YouTubers and online friends bravely admitted to being in over $100,000 of credit card debt, despite having a million followers. And even Justin Bieber had to sell his entire catalog to avoid bankruptcy. So why am I talking about this? I'm someone who relentlessly believes in positivity and just focusing on positive outcomes. Why bring up a conversation about the US debt crisis? It's because I'm making a film. This year I have absorbed filmmaking at a crazy high level. It's to the point now where I think I can genuinely make $30,000 look like a million bucks. I can genuinely do that. And yet, making a film, striving as an artist, is requiring a greater conviction and a greater relationship, a greater perfection of character with money than I have ever had in the past.
And so, in this video, I want to talk about a few ideas in relation to money and pursuing your life's work, and especially when it comes to navigating a national debt crisis. The first idea is this: There is a 2-year lag between the results you experienced and where you're at right now. Whatever is going on in your life right now is more or less the result of what you were doing a year ago, or especially 2 years ago. This is really interesting to see because our brains aren't wired to feel that way about ourselves. If your life isn't going that well right now, you're often susceptible to thinking it's because you suck right now, when in actuality you could be doing a lot of the right things in this present moment, but the results, the tides that are just cascading in front of you, they come from who you were two years ago. Maybe two years ago, many respects of your life were actually going really well; you were doing a lot of things right, but in a few key categories you weren't doing things right.
For me, in February of 2022, my company made $80,000 in a single month gross; it's the most amount of money I ever made inside of Captain Sinbad, and all of that money is now gone. Why? Because even though I was earning a lot, I was not doing a weekly register of checking our finances, looking over the books. We had six employees at the time. And so if you're paying people a couple thousand every month and there's like six of them, that money can run out really quickly. Even if you've had some really substantial months, and we would justify it because it was an expense inside the business, you know, especially in a creative career. A lot of times these expenses, they're hidden. They're hidden as style because style ends up contributing to views. But I didn't look over the books sharp enough.
Let's say you were to go 100 calories over maintenance every day. Over a little bit of time, it still would not lead to substantial fat gain because you need to be 3500 calories over maintenance to gain a single pound of fat. But if you were to go 100 calories over every day for 2 years, in 2 years' time you'd have put on 20 lbs of fat. And this is why we see people who just, you know, they looked great all their life, and then one day you see them a couple years later like, "What the heck? You're so heavy now. You used to look so great." Well, it's like an extra bowl of cereal, or even half a bowl of cereal extra every day. Sometimes people, in the stress of their life, they start accumulating some bad habits. And this can be especially relevant with money. People go into debt because they don't look at the books tight enough. They don't look at the contracts tight enough. It's just about evaluation at the end of the day.
Scott Galloway, in his book, *The Algebra of Wealth*, talks about how none of us is as good as the market, and none of us can really compete with the market. And the market is a good indicator of where your results are coming from. So when the markets are good, it's not that you are so great; you're doing fine. I mean, you're decent. You should keep it up, but you're not like this amazing prodigy. See, for me, 2020 up until 2022, I thought it was me who was pretty good, me who was really solid. And I think I was decent; I was above average. But at that time in the economy, it was easy to get a Salesforce job. So in 2019, I was able to make a great salary with basically like not that much effort. And I was able to buy a house at a 3% interest rate, which was really low at the time because that's what the interest rates were. And then I was making a lot of money off YouTube at the time because I, I suppose the competition was less and my niche was not as saturated. I thought it was me who was doing so great, who was so awesome, who's making, you know, $30,000 a month because I, I was this great filmmaker and a great Salesforce engineer. I was okay; I mean, I was decent. I wasn't bad, but I was being carried by the current that is the market.
Now, even now, I would say I am a higher-level filmmaker than I ever have been. I think in many respects, I'm a better YouTuber than I was back then. And yet, my results are not as good. Is it because I am so bad? It really is because the markets have shifted. In this last iteration of time, I've even gotten several Salesforce certifications. And yet the market for Salesforce—Salesforce itself as a company has spent billions of dollars on technologies that haven't really been picked up in the last year. Across the board, we're seeing tech companies pull back, restrict spending, cut people off, lay people off from their jobs. So it's not so much that we are bad when times are bad. It's not that you suck, even though in that moment you might start telling yourself, you might start feeling, "Oh, I suck." It's not that you suck. It's that now you're finally moving against the current; you are moving upstream, and that is your problem. That is your great undoing.
So effectively, I have now, at 32 years old, gone through one cycle of success and failure, and I've come to realize that good times do not last. Okay, but there is an important caveat to this: Good times don't last, but if you keep doing the work and if you keep an even keel in your mind, eventually they do come back. They don't last, but they do come back. The bad tides cannot stay forever. The good times can also not stay forever. Things are constantly in cycle. And so when the times are good, you need to not be of the mindset that, okay, it's going to be good like this forever. No, that is when you must build your treasury. That is when you must conserve. And especially when times are bad, it is very, very important to keep doing the work. Keep trusting the process—the process that makes your body healthy, the process that makes your company successful. Eventually, the tides will finally return to your favor because none of us can really beat the market.
This brings me to the second idea of the video: subscriptions, aka modern slavery. One day, these companies woke up and they realized that they could exploit us through subscriptions. They could squeeze us for all we're worth. I think the biggest, most obvious example I can think of with this is Microsoft Office. With the software, I am paying for it already. I, in fact, when I was a kid, as long as I bought the Dell computer, Microsoft Office would come with it. Now, for some reason, to get access to Word or all these other programs, I need to pay $99 a year for what? What updates are you making inside the software that demands it to be like a subscription service? Why does Zoom Premium need to be a subscription service? The reason I actually edit on Final Cut Pro and not Premiere is because at least I can respect the fact that with Final Cut Pro I only have to pay for it once. In fact, with a lot of things that I buy off the app store, I can at least respect the fact that I have ownership over the product. But with so many things, you realize these subscriptions, they add up, and it's, it's horrible.
I was spending $20 a month on Loom, 40 bucks a month on Descript, and then $60 a month on Anytime Fitness. Why? On the off chance that I would need to send someone a video with a link, even though I haven't done that in a long time, or perhaps that I was going to go to a different city and at 11 p.m. at night on a random, you know, a random city, I need access to a gym. So it's nice to have that Anytime Fitness membership, even though it's not my main gym that I go to, or Descript, you know, just in case I need auto captioning on my Instagram reels, but I don't even know why I really put out Instagram reels. Suddenly, I realize I'm spending $120 a month on the off chance that I might need something for two years. See, on a long enough timeline, $120 bucks a month can kill you. And these subscription services, they're so insidious. They stack up and they make it very difficult to cancel at times. I mean, dude, trying to quit a gym membership, it's trying to like get out of the mafia. It's like, what the heck? I need to be there in person and present the key fob and also like write you a letter. Why? All you have to do is click a button and turn this whole thing off, but they don't.
So, when it comes to subscription services, the same principle applies: You need to monitor your expenses aggressively every week. And I'm telling you, you need to do this even if you're making a high income. You need to make these companies bleed for their f***ing dollar. In the video game version of *The Last of Us*, Joel tells Ellie, "The way to survive in this world is you make every bullet count." And I think the same applies to your dollar now more than ever. Make every dollar count, regardless of whether times are good or bad. If times are bad for you, then keep an even keel. But if times are good, even still be ruthless with your dollar. Now that I'm working on *Riverrats*, I'm able to go so far and do so much with all of these set pieces because I know where to put the money. I know when to invest in actors and how much. I know when to, you know, spend a little bit more to get a location, but I also know when to pull back, when we can make do, when we can make a shot really kill on 50 millimeters or 35 or on the gimbal and conserve our resources, when I can use guerrilla filmmaking and honestly guerrilla warfare at a high level to make things possible. Save your dollar, dude. F*** Caldera Labs. F*** Ketone IQ. Ketone IQ is 120 bucks for three bottles for what? For ketones. Really? Like, do we really need to be spending money on ketones and all these like minutia? Why not just like focus on getting eight hours of sleep? Uh, Caldera Labs, a skincare routine, which is like a $200 per month subscription service, is this horrific thing that every male influencer on my Instagram and Facebook ads, it's all over it. You know, as soon as you're like a 30-year-old guy, you're now—we're just getting pushed Caldera Labs. I'm sick of it. I'm not going to do it, dude. Keep your skincare routine to yourself. I believe in skincare, right? But I'm not spending 200 bucks on Caldera Labs, no matter how good it is. I know the things that matter.
Subscription services. And to some degree, we can't fight them because it's just the way things are run. But the only way to fight back is to make these companies bleed for it. Just track every expense and try not to spend the dollar.
Which brings me to the last idea of the video: You have to be better than you ever have. In a recession, it's easy to complain. And on YouTube, for a period of time, you know, complaining, the naysayers, just negativity in general, the manosphere, it just gets such great views. You know, it's what the algorithm rewards—just making negative content. It's easy to be a critic, but actually it's a very risky thing to do because even if it feels good to do so or it feels like you're getting something out, what it does is it stops the storyline of your life. Complaining gives you this inner feeling like you're powerless, and you're not. You have a tremendous amount of agency right now. At this very moment, I can reach out and I can touch this camera. I can do things. I can, I can influence. I can sway this world. You have to be better than you ever have.
Right now, in the last 6 weeks, I've gained three Salesforce certifications—three brand new Salesforce certifications. In fact, I went back for a fourth one, platform app developer. That one was a little harder, so I failed that the first time, but I've gained more Salesforce certifications in the last six weeks than I had in like two and a half years' time working as a Salesforce engineer. Why is that? It's because I'm bringing the intensity now. I'm someone new. And the reason that I've been getting these certifications in the first place is that I realized I want to become a technical architect or solutions architect. I want to get to the architecture level in a Salesforce position and perhaps eventually a sales manager. Why? Why? Because if a number of artists and musicians and actors are filing bankruptcy or struggling with money, then I need to respect the money wherever it comes from. I mean, a Salesforce technical architect position, that's an extra 150 grand a year. I want that money, man. I want it. And every time I talk about something like this, I always get some sort of comment saying like, "Oh, I guess the YouTube thing isn't working out, huh?" But that's, it's, that's actually not the case. You know, YouTube is chugging along just fine, but I'm interested in the endeavor. I'm interested in showing what's possible, and I don't want to make my money just complaining online to get views, to make a little bit, little bit of AdSense or to get a new coaching client. You know, that's not the story of my life and that's not the story of this channel. It is about chasing the adventure wherever it comes from.
So, do your best not to complain. The truth is you have a ton of advantage behind you. We don't have to give up. And even if there is a debt crisis, I mean, hey, maybe things are going great for you, but if things are going great or otherwise, this is a lesson in conscientiousness. And honestly, just not letting yourself get exploited financially, which is a lesson that you either preemptively just know or you learn the hard way. And if you learn the hard way, the next time I come across a million bucks, I'm, I'm going to know how to conserve it and make it grow, cuz I've gone through, you know, that time where I don't know how much my company made over the last six or seven years, but it was a substantial amount. You know, this time around, I would not let it slip through my cracks.
Anyway, if you're new here, my name is Nick Hill. This channel features one video approximately every 2 weeks. The production value on these videos, in terms of cinematics, is coming down just a touch for this next season. And that's just because we're putting all of our firepower into *Riverrats*. Here's a few stills from part two for any of you who stuck around to the end. We are very, very excited about this film. We want you to tune in when part two comes out in July and when part three comes out in October. We want you to be there for it. We, we want you to support this project. That's what this season means to me, and I want to in return communicate what it is to go on the adventure that is being a creative entrepreneur and making something happen with your life. So if that resonates with you, consider subscribing. Give me a follow on Instagram @enraap pande, where I put up behind-the-scenes on *Rivera* to film or some of my other pursuits all the time. And lastly, if you like this, you can get a written version of the same video, once again, once every 2 weeks on my newsletter. You can find that on the link below, captainbad.com/newsletter. And with that being said, for those of us who maintain conscientiousness around our finances while we pursue our life's work, to us I say greatness is coming. We'll catch you next time.