The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad


My Chat with Zuby, Rapper, Author, and Motivational Speaker (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_627)

Topics
Namibia hyenas fantasy deadlift tweet creating content from nothing grinding going out there every day enjoying the process
Hosted by
Gad Saad
Mentioned
Kanye West Joe Rogan Zuby Tucker Carlson Piers Morgan Ben Shapiro Stephen K. Back Igbo Milo Yiannopoulos Jordan Peterson Lionel Messi Elon Musk Est-ce Darwin Chris Obama

Episode Stats


Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

10

sentences flagged

Hate speech

11

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode of The Sad Truth, I have a guest who has been kind enough to invite me on his show several times, and as we know from his hospitality, it's a grave violation to not reciprocate. He is a very interesting man, and I'm glad to have him on the show today. He's an uncle, a father, a husband, a brother, a son, a daughter, a step-son, a grand-child, a great-uncle, and a great friend. In this episode, we talk about his life, his family, and what it's like to be an uncle.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.820 Hi guys, this is Gad Saad for The Sad Truth.
00:00:03.740 Today, I have a guest who's been kind enough to invite me several times on his show.
00:00:07.900 And as we know from Middle Eastern hospitality, it's a grave violation to not reciprocate.
00:00:13.700 And he is a very interesting guy.
00:00:15.300 Zubi, how are you doing, sir?
00:00:17.380 I am doing great, Gad.
00:00:18.320 How are you?
00:00:19.160 Very good.
00:00:19.640 Very good.
00:00:20.140 I hear that you were feeling a bit sick.
00:00:23.400 I think it's going around everywhere around the world.
00:00:25.820 You told me that you're feeling better.
00:00:27.280 Things are looking up?
00:00:29.220 Yeah, feeling a lot better now.
00:00:31.380 It happens.
00:00:32.460 My sister and my nephews were sick a couple of weeks ago.
00:00:37.520 I actually went to visit them in hospital because my little baby nephew had to go into hospital
00:00:42.000 for a couple of days.
00:00:43.340 So I think I most likely got it off them.
00:00:46.900 After that, I had an event in Johannesburg.
00:00:49.740 And then as soon as I came back from Johannesburg, I got sick.
00:00:52.120 So I think my body realized that that was when I was allowed to.
00:00:55.120 So I took a couple of days out, but I'm back on it now.
00:00:57.400 Well, I'm glad to hear it.
00:00:59.620 I have been suffering from a very nasty cough.
00:01:02.500 So again, apologies to all the listeners and viewers.
00:01:05.060 If I cough in your ear, it's been about three weeks.
00:01:07.820 And I also had some stomach issues.
00:01:10.020 You know, if I hope one day you have children, you realize that from the age of about when
00:01:15.320 they first go into kindergarten till they get out of elementary, prepare to be perpetually
00:01:21.480 sick because they're just virus machines.
00:01:25.220 And so once they got older, I actually noticed that I was much healthier because I wasn't catching
00:01:31.140 all the bugs that they were bringing home.
00:01:32.680 I'm assuming that it is still within your big plan to have children.
00:01:38.100 Yeah, absolutely.
00:01:39.300 I'm an uncle times 10.
00:01:41.100 So I have five nieces and I have five nephews.
00:01:43.800 So I'm not a father yet, but I have certainly seen I've seen all four of my siblings go through
00:01:50.380 the process and they're all going through the process right now.
00:01:53.440 I'm very close to all my nieces and nephews.
00:01:55.660 So even though I don't have my own children thus far, I absolutely plan to in the future.
00:02:00.760 And I've got a lot of wonderful children in my family.
00:02:03.980 Well, yesterday, I'm not sure if you saw it on social media, I announced that my wife
00:02:09.800 and I were celebrating our 24th anniversary from 1999.
00:02:16.640 And I discussed it in this baby, in The Sad Truth About Happiness, I discussed that one of
00:02:22.460 the most important decisions is choosing the right spouse.
00:02:26.360 Have you made that correct decision so far?
00:02:30.140 Is there a Zuby taken?
00:02:31.600 Are you going to break all the women's hearts or what's going on? 0.91
00:02:35.500 Yeah, I am taken as of about almost seven months ago.
00:02:40.160 So that is all going well.
00:02:42.500 And yeah, I'm happy.
00:02:45.000 Oh, that's wonderful.
00:02:45.960 Okay.
00:02:46.200 You mentioned just a few minutes ago, Johannesburg.
00:02:49.100 I'd love to hear more about that.
00:02:50.140 Now, I've always had a desire to visit Cape Town.
00:02:54.520 I've never been to South Africa, but Cape Town looks like a mix of Lebanon because of 1.00
00:03:00.940 its kind of temperate Mediterranean-like temperature.
00:03:05.580 Also looks like Southern California, where I lived for a few years.
00:03:09.740 Did you get a chance to go to Cape Town?
00:03:12.480 First answer that.
00:03:13.460 And then how was Johannesburg?
00:03:14.660 Was this your first time in South Africa?
00:03:17.480 Yeah, sure thing.
00:03:17.980 So actually, it was my second time in South Africa.
00:03:20.800 I went over there in March.
00:03:22.780 I have a friend who lives in Joburg, and he got married over there in March.
00:03:27.040 And since it was my first time in the country, I decided to stay an additional 12 days.
00:03:31.480 So I spent time in both Johannesburg, and I spent 10 days in Cape Town as well.
00:03:36.160 So I was in Cape Town back in March.
00:03:37.840 I even took the opportunity to climb up Table Mountain.
00:03:41.280 I did a meetup there with some of my followers and supporters.
00:03:44.300 I met a lot of great people.
00:03:46.060 I connected with some people who I'd done podcasts with over the years, but hadn't met
00:03:50.240 before in person.
00:03:52.160 And then when I was just in Johannesburg a couple of weeks ago, that one was just a two-day
00:03:57.020 trip.
00:03:57.800 So I just went there to speak at an event called Psycho Finance Leaders.
00:04:01.780 So it was a financial conference that they had going on, and they invited me to do a couple
00:04:07.080 of panels.
00:04:08.120 But this time, I actually got to see more of Johannesburg.
00:04:10.200 So last time I saw more of Cape Town, this time I got to see a little bit more of Johannesburg.
00:04:15.720 So yeah, they're pretty different cities.
00:04:17.840 Cape Town is definitely more, it's more beautiful and more touristy.
00:04:22.220 It's more of a place that people would sort of visit and spend time.
00:04:25.400 Johannesburg is more of a big city, hustle and bustle, much more urban.
00:04:30.520 It's a very green city, actually, very green, but not as much natural beauty.
00:04:35.780 You don't have the mountains and the seaside.
00:04:37.640 Now, of course, we always hear, oh, how dangerous it is and so on.
00:04:42.360 Oftentimes, those perceptions are overblown.
00:04:48.360 Did you feel safe?
00:04:49.580 Did you feel that there was an ominous threat looming over every corner?
00:04:53.240 How was it like?
00:04:55.280 Yeah, no, I didn't feel that.
00:04:57.040 But at the same time, I'm very aware that there are particular areas of both of those
00:05:02.280 cities.
00:05:02.640 So in Cape Town, for example, there's an area called Cape Flats, which is very notorious.
00:05:07.740 It actually has one of the highest crime rates, I think, of any neighborhood, perhaps in the
00:05:10.980 world.
00:05:12.340 And then in Johannesburg, they have still got many of the, what do they call them, the 0.98
00:05:16.580 townships.
00:05:17.740 And some of those areas are much more dangerous.
00:05:20.020 I've heard downtown Johannesburg itself is actually pretty dangerous.
00:05:23.200 Particularly if you go there at nighttime, many of the apartment blocks are essentially run
00:05:31.320 by gangs.
00:05:31.920 They kind of just take over entire apartment blocks and then run their operations out of
00:05:38.420 there.
00:05:39.080 So I think the potential danger is real.
00:05:42.520 But at the same time, you can avoid it just by being wise and not wandering by yourself
00:05:50.740 into dodgy looking areas at night, if you see what I mean.
00:05:54.120 Yeah, no, I got you.
00:05:55.360 Just one last point on South Africa, then I want to move to Namibia in a second.
00:06:00.000 You'll see in a second I'm making that switch.
00:06:03.960 And I think it was 1987.
00:06:06.240 So I was a very young guy at that point.
00:06:08.780 Were you even born, Zubi, in 87?
00:06:11.140 I would have been one.
00:06:13.540 Oh, my God, I'm old.
00:06:15.600 But anyways, I had gone to see the movie Cry Freedom.
00:06:21.400 Are you familiar with that movie?
00:06:23.020 Do you know what that's about?
00:06:25.780 No, I haven't seen that one.
00:06:28.300 Oh, I highly recommend it both to you and to all our viewers and listeners.
00:06:32.620 It's a movie that recounts the story of the anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko.
00:06:40.240 And as I say it, I'm getting goosebumps because, you know, whenever someone asks me, you know,
00:06:45.840 what are some folks who, you know, inspired you and so on.
00:06:49.820 And so Steve Biko was this, you know, as the term that I use was a real old school honey 0.88
00:06:56.080 badger.
00:06:56.420 I mean, he's speaking out in an environment where it's going to go badly for you if you
00:07:03.960 speak out.
00:07:04.980 And then he wrote a book called I Write What I Like, meaning you're not going to constraint
00:07:11.400 me.
00:07:11.720 You're not going to stop me.
00:07:13.100 I'm going to speak my mind.
00:07:14.380 Of course, eventually he was tortured and killed.
00:07:17.000 But what moved me so much when I was a young guy is it resonated with me.
00:07:24.740 This is the kind of hero that we need.
00:07:28.280 And so anyway, so if you haven't read it, if you haven't read that book, it's a short
00:07:31.680 book.
00:07:31.980 I write what I like and see the movie Cry Freedom.
00:07:34.880 I haven't seen it around.
00:07:36.000 You know, often these movies play, you can catch them.
00:07:38.700 It's kind of disappeared, but I'm sure you can find it somewhere.
00:07:41.660 Now, Namibia.
00:07:42.260 Have you been to Namibia, Zubi?
00:07:45.000 Not yet.
00:07:46.380 Not yet, meaning that it's on your radar.
00:07:50.200 Yeah, I plan to visit at least 100 different countries.
00:07:53.980 I think I'm on 43 right now, 43 or 44, but I'd like to get to 100 within my lifetime.
00:08:01.060 Well, I mean, I guess 100 is just a nice round number, but why 100?
00:08:05.560 Why not?
00:08:06.580 What made that?
00:08:08.160 I don't know.
00:08:08.940 It's a nice number.
00:08:09.780 It's three figures.
00:08:10.840 And I guess I'm approaching the halfway mark of it.
00:08:17.380 So I think, yeah, I just think it's a good number.
00:08:20.620 I think at that point, I could say I've seen about half the countries in the world.
00:08:23.760 Yeah, that is true.
00:08:25.000 I think it's around 203 that are in the United Nations or something around that.
00:08:29.300 The reason why Namibia fascinates me is, well, first, from everything that I've seen,
00:08:35.320 the topography, the landscape is otherworldly, right?
00:08:38.660 You've got these dunes that then break straight into this ominous-looking ocean.
00:08:44.340 So it's a very raw, as I said, otherworldly topography.
00:08:48.940 But the other reason why I love Namibia is because I'm a huge animal lover.
00:08:53.680 And yes, you can love animals and still eat salmon. 0.99
00:08:56.900 Because, you know, I'll get the tofu brigade who'll come after me and say, you're such a hypocrite, right? 0.98
00:09:03.360 You keep talking about loving animals, and yet you haven't gone vegan. 0.97
00:09:06.720 So anyways, there's this very rare hyena called the brown hyena or long-haired hyena that is in the desert of Namibia.
00:09:16.820 And it currently has taken over this old, abandoned ghost town, mining town called Elizabeth Bay.
00:09:25.420 And these hyenas are known as the ghosts of the desert because they just kind of materialize out of thin air,
00:09:32.660 almost like these, well, not almost.
00:09:34.340 They look like mythical creatures.
00:09:36.260 And so it's always been my fantasy to go and actually see these beautiful mythical creatures.
00:09:43.840 Now, I have a sabbatical coming up.
00:09:46.520 And so I'm trying to find a way to fit a trip into Namibia within some professional context.
00:09:53.620 And so I've reached out to a few universities in Namibia to see if we can make something happen.
00:09:59.340 So if I get there before you, I'll report back and let you know how it goes.
00:10:04.220 Yeah, that would be awesome, man.
00:10:05.200 I love seeing the world.
00:10:08.120 I think one of the biggest blessings that I've had in my life is being able to travel from a very young age.
00:10:15.820 And then I think that sort of just put inside of me some type of wanderlust and curiosity about the world.
00:10:24.460 I love maps.
00:10:25.140 I love globes.
00:10:25.760 Anytime I see a map or I see a globe, I'm just staring at it and looking at places that I've been to,
00:10:31.900 places I want to go to, places that spark my curiosity.
00:10:35.200 There's many countries I've been to simply because I didn't know a lot of people who had been to them.
00:10:40.240 So I just wanted to go there and see what it was like.
00:10:44.160 So I've been to the many places that have a lot of tourism, but I've also been to a few countries that are not sort of major tourist destinations just out of curiosity.
00:10:52.980 But yeah, I just think in this lifetime, having that opportunity to learn more about people, there's just so much to see.
00:11:00.580 There's so much to see that I understand that not everyone has the opportunity to travel.
00:11:06.600 But I think that for those who do have the opportunity and have the means, I sometimes struggle to understand how someone can totally be content to just spend their entire life for decades and decades and decades just only seeing a very, very small part of it when there's just so much out there.
00:11:24.620 And to be honest, it's never been so easy and frankly, inexpensive to at least, you know, you don't have to go to every single country in the world, but at least to check out a couple others.
00:11:35.320 Well, that fits very nicely.
00:11:37.940 In one of the chapters of my latest book, I talk about the importance of variety seeking and I talk about variety seeking, food variety seeking.
00:11:45.340 Now, sexual variety seeking is fraught with some problems because if we're in a monogamous union, we may not want to violate that.
00:11:51.780 But we also have a penchant for sexual variety seeking. 0.85
00:11:54.520 I talk about intellectual variety seeking, which is something that, you know, academics try to pretend that they're for, but then they end up being hyper specialists who focus in a very, very narrow area.
00:12:06.140 Whereas I argue that life is too short to not seek, you know, intellectual landscapes, country landscapes.
00:12:14.100 So to your point, and so I think that's, you know, that's a fundamental recipe of happiness at the end of your life when you look back and you say, hey, I've been to 100 countries.
00:12:22.560 That's what wealth is.
00:12:26.180 I mean, people think of wealth as, you know, you know, Elon Musk is the most, you know, wealthy man who's ever lived, but let's suppose that he had never traveled.
00:12:35.900 Well, then one could argue that Zuby, who's been to 100 countries, might be a wealthier guy in terms of the accumulated adventures and experiences.
00:12:43.400 So I think that's wonderful.
00:12:44.620 But so coming back to your trajectory, you said you grew up in several places.
00:12:49.420 So maybe you could tell us about that and then maybe segue into how you've been able to build this incredible platform when, you know, one could argue it's very difficult to build it, right?
00:13:01.820 You're not a journalist.
00:13:04.160 You're not a, you know, a professor.
00:13:07.480 You're not whatever, you know, you're not Joe Rogan somehow.
00:13:10.020 And yet you've been able to be incredibly successful in building a platform that people listen to.
00:13:16.720 You're a motivational speaker.
00:13:17.960 Tell us the whole trajectory of Zuby.
00:13:20.920 Absolutely.
00:13:21.940 Okay.
00:13:22.420 So let's take it way back to the beginning.
00:13:24.440 So as alluded to earlier, I was born in 1986.
00:13:28.840 I am the last of five children.
00:13:31.960 My parents are both originally from Nigeria.
00:13:35.860 They're Igbo.
00:13:36.920 So I'm from an Igbo family.
00:13:38.580 So I was born in the UK.
00:13:40.840 And when I was a baby, my dad got a job offer to work in Saudi Arabia.
00:13:47.720 So all my earliest memories begin in Saudi Arabia.
00:13:52.020 So as I understand it, he got a job offer.
00:13:54.060 He came back home and he told his wife, aka my mother, and his five children, hey, we're moving to Saudi Arabia.
00:14:04.100 And so they went on, you know, on faith and on trust.
00:14:10.960 And they went out there in the mid to late 80s and ended up staying there for about 20 years.
00:14:18.060 My dad is a medical doctor.
00:14:19.480 My mom was working as a journalist at the time, a real journalist, not the type that we have, the activist type that we have today.
00:14:27.960 And so, yeah, I was in Saudi Arabia from a very young age.
00:14:32.060 I went to preschool there.
00:14:33.900 I went to kindergarten up until fifth grade.
00:14:37.140 I was there.
00:14:38.640 I grew up in a small expat community, place maybe about 1,200.
00:14:43.360 I think there were about 1,200 people, 1,200 to 1,400 people from all over the world, all the different Arab countries, European countries, Australia, Canada, USA, UK, just all over the place.
00:14:57.320 So I was in a truly diverse environment, people of different backgrounds, nationalities, faiths, beliefs, everything.
00:15:05.000 And it was a very safe, cordial, harmonious society.
00:15:09.780 When I was 11 years old, I went to boarding school.
00:15:14.840 So I finished fifth grade in Saudi.
00:15:16.380 I went to boarding school at the age of 11 in the UK.
00:15:19.840 So from the ages of 11 to 20, so for seven years of secondary school and then three years of university, I was back and forth between the two countries.
00:15:29.640 I still lived in Saudi, but during the term time, I was in the UK.
00:15:35.000 So I'd be going back and forth.
00:15:36.800 Was that difficult in that you're not surrounded by your parents?
00:15:42.140 Do you miss them?
00:15:42.820 Or is it, thank God I'm free, I can be free of the shackles of parental oversight?
00:15:49.800 Honestly, it was neither.
00:15:50.980 It wasn't difficult.
00:15:52.540 I enjoyed it.
00:15:53.340 I saw it as an adventure, even from a very young age.
00:15:56.540 And perhaps for me, it was a bit normalized because I'm the youngest of five children.
00:16:00.120 And all of my older siblings also went to boarding school.
00:16:02.840 So I know for some people, boarding school, especially going overseas for it, is a very sort of weird and foreign concept to them.
00:16:11.700 But for me and my family and the people I was around, it was very normal.
00:16:16.100 So many of my friends went to boarding school.
00:16:17.860 Their siblings went to boarding school and so on.
00:16:19.580 So I did well in school.
00:16:23.660 I got into Oxford University and I went there when I was 18 years old and I studied computer science.
00:16:30.240 I did that.
00:16:31.380 I got my degree.
00:16:32.460 I graduated when I was 20.
00:16:34.940 And when I was in Oxford, that was a pivotal time for me.
00:16:38.760 So I started rapping when I was in my first year of university.
00:16:43.460 I'd been a hip-hop fan since my early teen years and I was just listening to all of these different artists throughout my teenage years.
00:16:51.860 And then I just started as a hobby.
00:16:56.220 I just wrote down a couple of verses when I was traveling and I kept doing it.
00:17:00.500 I came back to when I was in my first year of university.
00:17:03.700 One of my friends named Chris had a basic recording studio in his dorm room.
00:17:07.860 So I would download beats off of the internet and then I write something down and I would just record some simple tracks.
00:17:16.660 And then I'd email them to people, just share them with my friends and family and people in my college.
00:17:21.480 And I started to build up a little bit of a buzz, right?
00:17:23.740 People started saying, oh, you've got some cool songs going on here.
00:17:28.400 After I'd been rapping for about 10 months, I released my first album.
00:17:32.380 So this was in my second year of university, 2006.
00:17:35.600 I put out my very first album called Commercial Underground.
00:17:39.260 It was just an eight-track album.
00:17:45.460 I remember this is back in the age of CDs, right?
00:17:49.520 This is when everyone was buying CDs.
00:17:51.440 So I actually explicitly remembered making 50 copies.
00:17:55.780 And I sold those 50 copies in about a week.
00:17:57.820 So I think that was a very important moment because that was the light bulb moment where I realized this is something I can do as more than just a hobby, right?
00:18:09.180 When I was making those physical exchanges of I give someone a CD, they give me a five-pound note.
00:18:14.260 And then I started to do some gigs locally.
00:18:18.860 I actually did a couple of gigs in my hometown in Saudi Arabia.
00:18:22.440 I did some gigs when I was back in Oxford.
00:18:24.360 And I got invited to do some performances in London and a few other places.
00:18:29.200 And by the time I graduated at the age of 20, I had actually sold – I think I'd sold about 2,000 copies of my first album hand-to-hand by the time that I had graduated.
00:18:39.760 So after that, I took one year out.
00:18:44.200 I did my music full-time for one year.
00:18:46.120 I released a second album called The Unknown Celebrity.
00:18:49.100 This is going back to 2008.
00:18:51.440 So I put out a second album and I started going out on the street and just talking to people and promoting my music, playing them my stuff, and selling my CDs.
00:19:02.720 Fast forward over the course of time – okay, actually, let me do this in the proper order.
00:19:08.060 After taking a year out, after graduating and doing my music full-time for one year, I already had a job lined up before I had graduated, but I deferred it for one year.
00:19:19.280 So I moved to London.
00:19:20.620 I worked as a management consultant for three years.
00:19:23.600 So from 2008 to 2011, I had a full-time job.
00:19:27.960 I had a corporate job, suit and tie.
00:19:29.800 I was a management consultant working for lots of big, well-known companies in different sectors.
00:19:34.920 And then in early 2011, I made a decision that by the end of that year, I wanted to go full-time with my music.
00:19:42.980 So I made a commitment in January 2011.
00:19:45.420 I remember writing it down that by the end of that year, I was going to quit my job and I was going to be a full-time rapper.
00:19:51.220 And I did it.
00:19:52.040 I set up my company, COM Entertainment Limited.
00:19:55.480 I set that up back in August 2011.
00:19:57.700 I incorporated that with the company's house in the UK and did all the paperwork.
00:20:05.160 And then in September 2011, I resigned.
00:20:10.520 I handed in my notice at my job.
00:20:13.460 Can I stop you there for a second?
00:20:15.360 Please do.
00:20:15.980 Please do.
00:20:16.260 Yeah, I'm trying to imagine the professional Nigerian parents with the medical doctor father saying,
00:20:27.300 next time I see you, I'm going to beat you senseless because you're an Oxford grad in computer science.
00:20:33.500 You've been a management consultant. 0.99
00:20:35.180 You're going to do this nonsense wrapping stuff.
00:20:38.040 Did I roughly cover that properly?
00:20:41.380 That's what you would have expected, but it was the opposite.
00:20:43.980 Oh, my goodness.
00:20:45.000 What great parents.
00:20:46.120 I need to meet them.
00:20:47.760 Yeah, props to my parents.
00:20:49.740 They have been incredibly supportive of me in, honestly, in all of my endeavors.
00:20:55.240 I think there's a couple of things that also help with this.
00:20:57.920 I think the fact that I didn't drop out of university to pursue a music career, right?
00:21:02.440 I'd already got my degree at this point.
00:21:04.600 I already had some years working experience under my belt.
00:21:09.240 And perhaps most importantly, by this stage, I'd already put out three independent releases
00:21:13.780 and I'd actually sold a few thousand albums already.
00:21:16.580 I was already making money from my music, not enough for a full-time income, but I was
00:21:21.560 making, you know, maybe at the time when I quit my job, I was making maybe making about
00:21:27.300 a thousand pounds a month from my music.
00:21:29.960 So I thought, okay, if I give this my all, I'm sure that I can at least double that.
00:21:36.960 And if I can double that, then I at least have enough money to keep myself afloat.
00:21:40.120 So from that moment onward, honestly, Gad, I went on an adventure that hasn't stopped since.
00:21:48.920 So for many, many years, I used to just travel from city to city in the UK and I used to do
00:21:56.420 gigs.
00:21:56.920 I used to just sell my CDs on the street.
00:21:59.760 Eventually I graduated off the street and I started selling my music in shopping centers.
00:22:04.020 So if you, if you ever go to a shopping mall, you'll see, you have the big stores on the
00:22:09.520 side and then, you know, in the middle, you have these small kiosks where you have independent
00:22:13.380 retailers who promote and sell their services.
00:22:16.520 So myself and my friend, um, Shaudo, who's also an independent musician, we started doing
00:22:22.240 pop-up shops.
00:22:22.960 So we were the first independent British artists to open our own pop-up shops in shopping centers
00:22:28.500 around the country.
00:22:29.300 So instead of being outside, getting rained on all day long, we moved it indoors.
00:22:34.460 So we'd be there all day long in different cities, talking to people, promoting our, selling
00:22:39.500 our CDs, selling our t-shirts, hoodies, caps, just all of our different merchandise.
00:22:45.420 And we would normally do that for 10 to 10, 10 days to two weeks per month.
00:22:50.600 And that became enough for us to sustain ourselves.
00:22:54.160 So we did that.
00:22:55.220 That was our main bread and butter from about 2015 until 2019.
00:22:59.300 So every month we were just doing, you know, we did dozens and dozens of these stores and
00:23:04.100 anyone who knew me prior to about 2019, if they knew me, they probably knew me from either
00:23:09.980 meeting me out there on the street or bumping into them in a shopping center somewhere, or
00:23:14.660 maybe they'd seen a video on music video on YouTube or something like that.
00:23:18.000 And then coming into late 2018 is when there was another big transition.
00:23:25.040 And this is simply where, okay, so I often say that the Western world started to really
00:23:31.760 go crazy around, around 2015.
00:23:34.800 And I was starting to notice this myself.
00:23:36.940 I've been listening to, wow, a lot of different people listening to the Joe Rogan podcast.
00:23:43.700 I think perhaps that's around the time I first, I first heard about you.
00:23:46.940 I remember discovering Jordan Peterson in 2016, you and him, you both spoke about, about the
00:23:52.620 Bill C-16 in Canada.
00:23:54.240 I started, yep.
00:23:55.440 I started seeing strange things going on and there's actually something that's a specific
00:24:02.560 catalyst.
00:24:03.160 I don't know if I've told this story before of what the catalyst was that actually caused
00:24:07.460 me to start to speak out more publicly and start to share more of my thoughts, which is
00:24:12.880 what people funnily enough now know me for rather than simply my music.
00:24:17.460 And I remember there was, I won't say his name, but there was somebody I know, somebody I
00:24:23.700 know had met personally, who was the student union president at a university in the UK.
00:24:32.220 So someone who's got, you know, he's, he's a young guy, but he's in a position of power
00:24:35.500 and he's very in modern day terminology, very woke back at the time.
00:24:41.820 We probably would have called him a social justice warrior.
00:24:44.500 SJW has, it's not as popular now as it used to be.
00:24:47.680 And you know, we followed each other on Facebook. 0.80
00:24:49.980 I'd always see his silly virtue signaling posts and whatever. 0.85
00:24:52.820 And I just ignore it, right? 0.63
00:24:54.100 Whatever, you know, everyone's entitled to their ideas.
00:24:56.740 But then he posted something one day, which caught my attention.
00:25:00.740 And it was in relation to the university's debate society.
00:25:04.400 And it basically boiled down to, I support free speech, but that doesn't mean we should
00:25:09.900 allow hate speech.
00:25:11.920 And I was like, hmm, I was like, what do you, I, and I, I responded.
00:25:16.420 I remember I responded to the message and I said, what exactly do you mean by hate speech?
00:25:20.400 What does, who decides what that is?
00:25:22.880 And he responded something along the lines.
00:25:24.920 Keep in mind, this is after him saying he supports free speech.
00:25:28.100 And this is in relation to the university's debate society.
00:25:31.320 And he said something about people should be allowed to speak openly, but they shouldn't
00:25:36.240 be allowed to say things that are hurtful or offensive to other people.
00:25:39.900 And I said, okay.
00:25:43.240 And, and, okay.
00:25:43.920 And anyway, we started having a back and forth on Facebook and we, we both had quite significant
00:25:49.060 following.
00:25:49.520 So it was like quite a public conversation.
00:25:51.940 Several thousand people are able to see this conversation.
00:25:54.660 Anyway, after a lot of back and forth, and I've been very reasonable, he says, and, and
00:26:01.040 I haven't even put forth any of my particular ideas, by the way, but he ended up saying publicly,
00:26:06.100 and I quote, I think I'm pretty much quoting this exactly.
00:26:11.140 People like Zuby are dangerous and have ideas that could get people killed.
00:26:16.720 I don't think people like him should be allowed on university campuses.
00:26:21.760 Yikes.
00:26:22.460 So this is, yes.
00:26:23.660 So this is after I've seen, you know, Ben Shapiro being protested in Berkeley over in California,
00:26:31.480 Milo Yiannopoulos, people setting fire to places and causing hundreds of thousands of
00:26:36.700 dollars of damage, all the Bill C-16 stuff going on in Canada, the transgender craziness 1.00
00:26:42.580 slipping into certain, I I'd been observing all of this stuff for a while.
00:26:46.320 And when this, when this guy said that, that was when I was like, okay, this is real.
00:26:51.160 This isn't just stuff I see on the internet, right?
00:26:53.800 To use your terminology, this is a true idea pathogen that has reached our shores, right?
00:26:59.700 He said that I I'm a pretty moderate person.
00:27:02.360 I'm not some extreme radical, but I thought, oh, wow, a student union president thinks that
00:27:07.320 I, I little old me should be banned from university campuses.
00:27:12.160 I, so I've gone from graduating 10 years ago to being told that I shouldn't even be allowed
00:27:17.300 on a university campus.
00:27:18.760 So I think that triggered something in my brain and it made me say, this is going too
00:27:24.460 far.
00:27:25.520 I need to speak up about this kind of stuff.
00:27:27.460 And so late 2018, particularly on Twitter, I just started nothing crazy.
00:27:33.960 I just started sharing more of my thoughts on what was going on in the world.
00:27:38.920 And at the time I probably would have had about 16 or 17,000 followers on Twitter.
00:27:44.160 And I started noticing that some of the things I was saying were really resonating and particularly
00:27:50.500 resonating in the USA.
00:27:52.300 I was starting to get free retweeted into all these different spheres and people started
00:27:57.400 to be like, hey, like this guy is talking sense.
00:28:00.740 I remember as well at the time, one of the first tweets I ever had go viral before the
00:28:04.700 deadlift one, which I'm sure we'll come to.
00:28:06.660 Yeah.
00:28:07.800 Do you remember in it was the same year?
00:28:11.540 It was 2018.
00:28:12.500 Do you remember when Kanye West came out wearing the mega hat?
00:28:16.840 Yes.
00:28:17.680 You remember that.
00:28:18.640 And do you remember how the media responded and treated him?
00:28:21.520 Yeah.
00:28:21.760 So in a sense, actually, I was going to, you preempted one of my questions, which is, are
00:28:26.200 you, are you trying to go down the trajectory of, well, here is a black man who's not behaving 1.00
00:28:32.740 in the way we expect him to behave?
00:28:35.880 And I was, cause I was going to ask you it and forgive me if this is inappropriate, but
00:28:40.620 I don't think so.
00:28:42.060 You know, do you think that part of the push that made you go more viral is precisely because
00:28:49.060 you are not the black exemplar of the positions that you should be taking?
00:28:55.020 I think, I think it's probably a factor.
00:28:57.060 Um, I think a lot of things sort of factor into my being and my personality and characteristics
00:29:03.960 that have made it sort of resonate with more people.
00:29:07.000 Um, but yeah, I, I was, look, I, I believe that people, obviously people should be allowed
00:29:14.340 to have their thoughts.
00:29:15.640 If you have a democratic society, regardless of your skin color, gender, whatever, you should
00:29:20.460 be allowed to vote for and support the person you want.
00:29:23.780 So what I saw when Kanye was wearing the mega hat, wasn't even him saying, Hey, everybody,
00:29:28.640 you need to go and vote for Trump or vote Republican.
00:29:30.560 He himself didn't even vote for Trump.
00:29:32.060 He was just saying, I'm a free man.
00:29:34.460 I'm allowed to wear this hat.
00:29:35.820 If you can wear, um, you know, if you can wear an Obama t-shirt, why can't I wear a Trump
00:29:40.920 hat?
00:29:41.420 And the media was wow.
00:29:45.600 I mean, I remember, do you remember, which would you remember one of the pundits said that 0.97
00:29:48.960 this is what happens when Negroes don't read. 1.00
00:29:51.540 Do you remember that statement? 0.96
00:29:52.580 I think so.
00:29:53.400 Who was I think on, wow, I don't, I, you know, I don't want to say the wrong name.
00:29:59.220 I think I know who it was.
00:30:00.400 We'll look it up.
00:30:00.900 I think I know who it was, but, um, it was, I think it was on CNN.
00:30:03.620 It was on a main and I was just watching this.
00:30:06.000 Like, this is crazy.
00:30:07.620 I can't believe this, this response, just the way that the, you know, it was, it was very
00:30:12.600 concerning.
00:30:13.100 So one of the first ever tweets I had that went viral in, in the USA was simply saying,
00:30:18.920 um, I think I actually remember exact, the exact tweet.
00:30:21.640 I think I just said, LOL at all these people calling Kanye West lost.
00:30:26.020 Maybe he's not the lost one.
00:30:28.320 That's all I said.
00:30:29.220 And it went, it went viral.
00:30:31.880 It was very polarizing.
00:30:33.100 Some people started attacking me.
00:30:34.540 This, this was, this was like my first time really getting attacked, really getting attacked
00:30:38.340 on Twitter.
00:30:38.780 And then other people were supporting me.
00:30:40.400 And then we fast forward a few months.
00:30:42.660 Um, and of course, February 26, 2019, I have my famous deadlift tweet where I identify as
00:30:51.820 a woman.
00:30:52.180 I post a nine second clip of me lifting 230 kilos and saying that, um, I've broken the
00:30:57.140 British women's deadlift record.
00:30:58.720 I remember very specifically when I posted that I had 19,000 followers.
00:31:02.980 And here's another funny thing about that.
00:31:04.940 When I posted that I was actually at my pop-up shop.
00:31:07.440 So I was still selling my CDs and promoting my music out there, wondering what my next
00:31:13.440 move was.
00:31:14.780 And I had just seen multiple stories of males identifying as women and breaking women's 0.85
00:31:21.000 records and things, you know, I was just seeing crazy things happening mostly in the USA and
00:31:25.060 Canada.
00:31:25.740 So I just posted that tweet thinking that it's going to get a few laughs.
00:31:30.380 Um, a lot of people ask me if I, if I marketed it or if I had some plan, I didn't have any
00:31:36.160 plan.
00:31:36.420 And I just thought, I think this is funny.
00:31:38.900 It's making an important point.
00:31:40.400 Other people might think it's funny.
00:31:42.100 Lo and behold, this is the thing that just of all the things that I put out of all the
00:31:48.020 things I've put out into the world over the past decade.
00:31:50.040 Plus that was the thing that just captured the public imagination.
00:31:53.520 That's how everyone from Joe Rogan to Tucker Carlson, to Piers Morgan, to Ben Shapiro, Candace
00:31:59.820 Oh, that's how all these people discovered me.
00:32:02.360 So within a few months, I find myself on the Joe Rogan experience.
00:32:06.360 I find myself sitting down with Tucker Carlson.
00:32:08.560 I find myself touring the USA and doing all these interviews and podcasts with different
00:32:12.880 people.
00:32:14.080 And I guess from that moment onward, it introduced my personality and my ideas and my story and
00:32:20.760 everything else into the public sphere.
00:32:22.440 So now that we're almost five years past that now, I've been able to maintain that trajectory
00:32:29.900 and momentum.
00:32:31.580 I managed to turn something that honestly could have just been a little flash in the pan, a
00:32:36.740 little two-week viral moment.
00:32:39.060 And I managed to use that to draw attention to all the things that I really do and the
00:32:45.900 things that I really care about and the message that I'm really trying to put out there.
00:32:49.480 So that's an overview of the last few decades.
00:32:55.000 Now, so whatever point you're at now, are you still, given that it probably isn't incorrect,
00:33:04.280 but you'll correct me if I'm wrong.
00:33:05.300 You're now much more known for your thoughts than for your music.
00:33:10.220 Is that something that upsets you because you'd love to be as known for your music as
00:33:15.560 your thoughts?
00:33:16.640 In a dream world, you would be, you know, the world famous rapper and who cares about
00:33:22.720 your thoughts or let's have both of them?
00:33:24.400 Or have you transitioned?
00:33:26.760 And while you may still be interested in music, this is no longer your main interest, whereas
00:33:30.940 now you're a man of ideas.
00:33:34.220 That's a great question.
00:33:35.300 There's many ways to answer it.
00:33:37.480 Firstly, I'd say that I've always been a man of ideas.
00:33:41.320 I just thought that the only way that I should put them out there was through my music.
00:33:46.680 So I think really what happened is that I unshackled myself, if that makes sense.
00:33:50.700 Yeah, no, that's right.
00:33:51.700 So, yeah.
00:33:53.000 So I still make music.
00:33:55.000 I put out several releases since this has happened.
00:33:58.400 And I was initially frustrated that I was getting all of this attention for a silly tweet, whereas
00:34:08.740 I have all these other things that I've really put my time, my energy, my creativity into,
00:34:13.420 which got some attention, but not the same level.
00:34:16.420 And then I changed my mindset around that.
00:34:18.940 I thought, okay, music is, let's say I have a house.
00:34:22.040 I always use this metaphor.
00:34:22.940 I have a house and I want people to come through the front door and the front door is my music.
00:34:28.040 And then I changed my mind to, look, I don't care if people come through the front door,
00:34:32.280 the side door, the back door, whatever.
00:34:34.580 Whatever it's a buffet, I'll put out different things and people can come and pick what they
00:34:40.660 like.
00:34:41.020 If somebody likes my music, that's cool.
00:34:43.260 If somebody likes my podcast, fantastic.
00:34:45.440 They like my fitness book, cool.
00:34:47.360 They want to come to a live event.
00:34:48.860 They just like my tweets or they like my Instagram reels or my YouTube videos, whatever it is.
00:34:53.980 If I can offer some type of inspiration and motivation and ability to nudge people in a
00:35:00.900 positive direction, I don't care whether it's a book, it's this conversation, it's seeing me
00:35:05.920 chatting on TV with Piers Morgan.
00:35:08.180 I don't care what the format is.
00:35:09.640 I'm ultimately a communicator.
00:35:11.660 I can communicate in different mediums.
00:35:13.980 I'm thankful that I have a gift for that.
00:35:16.360 So there's going to be more of everything.
00:35:19.020 There's going to be more books.
00:35:20.040 There's going to be more music, more podcasts.
00:35:22.940 I'm just going to do it all.
00:35:24.720 And I let the chips fall where they may.
00:35:26.800 As long as people like what I'm doing and it's resonating with them,
00:35:30.040 then as far as I'm concerned, it's still aligned with my original music mission.
00:35:34.380 It just means that I'm doing it in some additional ways now.
00:35:37.100 So I'm happy with it.
00:35:38.320 I would use another C word instead of communicator.
00:35:41.240 You're a creator.
00:35:42.320 And the reason why I'm saying that is because in my happiness book, you actually touch on
00:35:48.360 several points.
00:35:48.940 Your career trajectory, in a sense, proves that you don't necessarily need to be reading
00:35:55.740 my book because you're already implementing many of the things that I prescribe to people.
00:36:02.200 Number one, I argue that all other things equal when you're trying to pick the best possible
00:36:09.360 profession for you, immerse yourself within your creative impulse.
00:36:13.500 And then I use example.
00:36:14.520 And I think we might have discussed this the last time I appeared on your show,
00:36:17.180 if memory serves me right.
00:36:18.540 You could be a chef.
00:36:19.460 You could be an architect.
00:36:20.460 You could be a podcaster.
00:36:21.660 You could be a musician.
00:36:22.540 You could be a stand-up comic.
00:36:23.980 You could be an author.
00:36:24.820 You could be a professor.
00:36:25.780 These are very, very different mediums and very, very different domains.
00:36:28.860 But what all of these folks share in common is they create something from nothing.
00:36:33.600 The new dish, the new bridge, the new stand-up routine, and so on.
00:36:38.640 And so that's what you do, right?
00:36:41.220 You're creating content in your podcast.
00:36:44.440 You're creating new music that didn't exist until you came along.
00:36:48.660 You're creating new ideas, new tweets, new humorous moments, whatever it is.
00:36:54.340 And I think there is no more direct way to instantiate your sense of purpose and meaning
00:37:00.040 than to create.
00:37:00.800 The second thing I would say, which I always found from when I first started following you,
00:37:05.360 is you're very comfortable in engaging in marketing of yourself.
00:37:09.880 Now, oftentimes people view that as, you know, it's gauche.
00:37:12.720 It's, you know, I get a lot of my colleagues who apologize 34, you know, lines before they
00:37:19.920 say, oh, you know, here's my latest paper.
00:37:23.780 Well, there's nothing.
00:37:26.340 I mean, there's certainly, I mean, it could be obnoxious if you're promoting yourself in
00:37:30.360 a context where you shouldn't be.
00:37:32.280 But, you know, I'm housed in a business school.
00:37:35.340 I teach consumer psychology.
00:37:37.080 I'm a professor of marketing.
00:37:38.780 What product is there that's more important than yourself?
00:37:42.580 So marketing yourself is a fundamental feature of, you know, the most important product that
00:37:48.660 one can ever market.
00:37:49.740 And so you're very good at it.
00:37:51.320 Is this something that you think you were born with?
00:37:53.640 I mean, you just have that innate talent to hustle, to be persistent, to be resilient,
00:37:58.120 to promote and so on.
00:37:59.600 Or is this something that you learned?
00:38:01.720 Is it something you read a couple of books that says, here are the three steps for marketing
00:38:06.860 yourself?
00:38:07.160 What was that trajectory like?
00:38:10.280 Yeah, absolutely.
00:38:11.100 Well, this is why I think it's important to tell my whole story, because I have sold over
00:38:16.840 30,000 CDs hand to hand.
00:38:19.620 Wow.
00:38:20.980 30,000.
00:38:21.900 Do you know how many people you have to talk to face to face to sell 30,000 albums?
00:38:25.880 I have spoken to over half a million people.
00:38:28.580 I sold my CDs on the street for over a decade.
00:38:31.180 That was my full time job, just going out there and talking to thousands of people a week
00:38:35.060 and promoting my music to them.
00:38:36.780 So over the course of that time, wow, you learn a lot of things.
00:38:40.840 You learn a lot about human psychology.
00:38:42.520 You learn a lot about sales.
00:38:44.020 You learn a lot about marketing, communication.
00:38:45.760 You learn a lot about resilience, grit, handling, rejection.
00:38:50.080 Let me stop you right there. 0.98
00:38:52.360 Forgive me, because I was going to come to a rejection.
00:38:56.680 So it seems for me, when I see salespeople, now you could argue I'm a salesman of ideas,
00:39:05.280 right?
00:39:05.460 I'm proposing my ideas to the world, and hopefully people, quote, buy them.
00:39:09.520 People consume them.
00:39:10.600 But I'm not doing face-to-face, right?
00:39:14.200 Intercepting people in the street where the rate of rejection is going to be astounding.
00:39:21.240 And based on the personality that I know you have, you're probably someone who took it
00:39:27.280 well and kept smiling.
00:39:28.880 What's the secret to that?
00:39:30.060 Because very few people can handle a rejection rate of 95%, if not higher, and keep slugging
00:39:36.560 along.
00:39:36.880 How did you do that?
00:39:37.600 And then you can go on with your story.
00:39:39.480 Yeah, absolutely.
00:39:40.020 Well, I'm glad you asked about this, because it's actually a very fundamental part of my
00:39:43.620 story, which I think a lot of people are not aware of.
00:39:47.040 I think because so many people now discover me online, they sort of missed that whole period
00:39:52.140 from 2006 to 2019, where I was just grinding, like really grinding.
00:39:57.860 And when I say that, I don't mean sending emails.
00:39:59.740 I mean, out there.
00:40:01.440 I mean, I didn't just sell my CDs in the UK.
00:40:03.340 I sold my CDs in Budapest.
00:40:05.180 I sold my CDs in Prague.
00:40:06.660 I sold my CDs in Berlin.
00:40:08.220 I was traveling.
00:40:08.980 I was all over the place.
00:40:10.500 I was a true road warrior.
00:40:12.080 I still am a road warrior, but I now do it on a bit of a different level.
00:40:18.020 So actually, I can probably give you some numbers.
00:40:20.600 I can say that when I was selling on the street, I'd probably say that about maybe about 30%
00:40:27.380 of people would stop.
00:40:29.300 So just stop to engage you.
00:40:32.000 Yes, I'd stop about 30% of people.
00:40:35.480 It could vary.
00:40:36.720 On a very good day, it might go as high as 50% of people might stop.
00:40:40.060 And then I'd say of all the people I stopped, if I stopped someone, there was probably about
00:40:44.540 a one in three chance they would buy an album.
00:40:47.520 Okay.
00:40:48.000 So I had a pretty good conversion rate.
00:40:50.240 That's a 10% chance of people buying.
00:40:53.840 That's higher than I thought.
00:40:55.180 I would have thought that it would be well below 5%.
00:40:57.900 Yeah.
00:40:58.920 No, I'd say it was about 10% in total.
00:41:01.820 So if I wanted to sell 30 CDs in a day, I could pretty much wager that if I spoke to 300-ish
00:41:09.380 people, I attempted to speak to 300 people, I'd get 30 CDs sold.
00:41:16.220 And a lot of this, by the way, is a lot of it is personality-driven.
00:41:20.200 It's about your approach.
00:41:23.240 There's very different ways that you can approach people.
00:41:25.540 There's ways you can approach people where, yeah, you're going to get a 95% rejection rate.
00:41:29.020 But, you know, I'm an amiable guy.
00:41:32.300 I know how to communicate and put my body language in a way to put people at ease.
00:41:38.800 I would never approach someone aggressively or directly asking for a sale.
00:41:44.700 Or it would just be, you know, a very, very friendly, amiable thing.
00:41:50.460 Find out if they have time even to begin with, right?
00:41:53.300 Excuse me, sir.
00:41:54.020 Do you have a moment?
00:41:54.860 Do you have a moment?
00:41:56.540 Do you have a moment?
00:41:57.380 Or, you know, actually, what kind of music do you listen to?
00:42:01.660 A lot of people will stop for that question.
00:42:03.400 What sort of music do you listen to?
00:42:05.240 And then I can introduce them, tell them who I am, tell them what I'm doing.
00:42:09.960 I can show them the music.
00:42:11.480 And I would let people listen.
00:42:12.800 I would never try to sell my music without allowing them to listen to it.
00:42:16.400 I say, if you've got a minute, I can play you a little bit of the music.
00:42:19.320 If you like what you hear and you'd like to support, here's how much it costs.
00:42:23.240 Put the CD in their hand.
00:42:24.240 My CDs are professionally made.
00:42:25.520 It's not a CDR with some scribble on it.
00:42:28.140 It's a properly made album.
00:42:31.300 And so someone would listen.
00:42:32.780 I'd play them a few different tracks.
00:42:34.220 And if they liked it and they had a little bit of money on them, at that point, you've
00:42:39.240 got a pretty high chance that the person is going to buy it.
00:42:42.560 And you learn to interact with different people, young, old, men, women, groups versus
00:42:47.820 individuals, couples.
00:42:49.640 Man, I had some funny moments out there on the street.
00:42:51.800 I had some times where, and by the way, this is also why I got my French and Spanish up
00:42:59.100 to conversational level because I was selling my CDs in the UK and there were so many tourists
00:43:05.260 coming from different countries in certain cities.
00:43:08.500 And I found this was just problem solving.
00:43:11.200 I try to stop people and they look at me weird.
00:43:13.680 And I'm like, oh, OK, I think I think they're French.
00:43:16.940 And so I'm like, all right, I need to brush up on my French.
00:43:20.320 And so next thing, you know, you know, excuse me, guys, what kind of music do you listen
00:43:24.240 to, you know, to give me a blank stare?
00:43:27.480 Excusez-moi, quel type de musique vous écoutez-vous?
00:43:32.720 Right.
00:43:33.060 And then, oh, bonjour, je m'appelle Zubi.
00:43:35.460 Je suis un rappeur indépendant.
00:43:37.200 Je suis ici aujourd'hui pour promouvoir ma musique.
00:43:39.860 Look at you breaking out the French. 1.00
00:43:41.800 Est-ce que vous aimez hip-hop?
00:43:44.420 Tu aimez hip-hop?
00:43:45.540 Right.
00:43:45.860 And, you know, at that point, you know, imagine a group of French teenagers and they've just 0.60
00:43:50.860 met a rapper in the street in the UK.
00:43:52.560 He's now speaking to them in French.
00:43:53.960 And they're like, this is the coolest guy in the world.
00:43:56.380 Right.
00:43:56.820 Boom.
00:43:57.980 Get 10 CDs sold.
00:44:00.240 10.
00:44:00.560 Boom.
00:44:00.940 10 gone.
00:44:01.420 Right.
00:44:01.640 Like, so that's how I had some real adventures out there.
00:44:05.240 There are days actually, in some ways I don't miss it.
00:44:07.940 But in other ways, I actually sort of miss just going out there every day,
00:44:11.460 being an adventure, connecting with all these different people face-to-face.
00:44:14.880 So I learned a lot from that.
00:44:17.400 And I think that a lot of what I'm now able to bring into the online world and the podcasting
00:44:22.380 world and the public speaking and all that, honestly, the seeds for all of that was planted
00:44:26.740 in those days when I was just out there talking to people nonstop, promoting myself, selling
00:44:33.640 myself.
00:44:34.680 And I also have a different view on, it's funny because my whole career, the thing I got
00:44:41.580 the most criticism for was self-promoting too much.
00:44:46.320 Right.
00:44:46.420 I remember there'd be people who, to this day, there's people who complain that I wear
00:44:49.820 my own hats or I wear my own t-shirts with my logo on it or whatever.
00:44:54.360 And the way I always viewed it was, number one, I'm an independent musician.
00:44:57.660 I don't have a record label.
00:44:59.020 I don't have a manager.
00:44:59.980 I don't have big PR budgets and all this stuff.
00:45:02.540 If I don't promote myself, nobody is going to do it for me.
00:45:05.960 If I don't promote myself, I can't make money.
00:45:09.060 I can't earn a living.
00:45:10.100 No one is going to hear about my stuff, let alone buy it.
00:45:12.320 And then I also flip, I also flip sales on its head a little bit.
00:45:17.060 And I have a belief that if you have, if you have a product or a service that can genuinely
00:45:24.600 help people and make their lives better, and you believe in that, I don't just think that
00:45:30.540 you should sell it.
00:45:32.600 I think you have an ethical duty to sell it.
00:45:35.220 I think if you have a book about happiness, if you've spent time researching and writing
00:45:40.520 a book about happiness that can genuinely make, potentially make millions or even billions
00:45:45.840 of people's lives better, I think you have an ethical duty to promote and to sell it,
00:45:52.480 right?
00:45:52.740 If you hide it away, if you're a fantastic musician and you make all of this music and
00:45:58.320 you record it, and then you just hide it, you just hide it away in your cabinet, I think
00:46:03.860 you're doing something that's unethical, right?
00:46:05.960 I think you should go out there and you should share your gifts with the world.
00:46:08.680 If Lionel Messi, I know you're a big fan of him, if he was content to just be the best
00:46:14.880 football player in his little league or school, yeah, in his neighborhood and he never aspired
00:46:21.320 to any more and he never wanted to share his gift with the world, then I think actually
00:46:26.660 you're now withholding something that other people could benefit from.
00:46:31.440 So when I think of sales, I mean, if someone is trying to push something that's harmful,
00:46:35.640 like genuinely bad for people, that's different.
00:46:37.640 We're trying to scam people, that's different.
00:46:39.560 But I think if you have something that's good and that it helps people, it brings joy into
00:46:43.860 their life, it helps them reframe their mind in a better way, it helps them get in better
00:46:47.420 physical shape, whatever it might be.
00:46:49.120 It helps them save money.
00:46:50.460 I think that there's a duty to promote it.
00:46:52.140 So I don't think that there's anything dirty about sales or marketing or promotion or anything
00:46:58.060 like that.
00:46:58.660 I think that salespeople are fantastic.
00:47:00.800 I think that we are actually all salespeople, whether you consider yourself one or not.
00:47:04.560 We're always selling ideas all day, every day.
00:47:07.980 So I think it's best to do it with some intention and do it consciously.
00:47:13.220 And yeah, I totally reject the idea that there's something wrong with selling.
00:47:19.440 I think that selling is a very good thing as long as what you're selling, like I said,
00:47:23.740 is helpful and beneficial to people.
00:47:26.220 Yeah.
00:47:26.360 So I wrote an article, I can't remember how many years ago, maybe five, six, seven years
00:47:30.520 ago.
00:47:30.920 At the time, I had a very active Psychology Today column.
00:47:35.460 I think I published over 300 articles on that site from 2008 to about two years ago.
00:47:42.980 And so I was very, very productive within that medium.
00:47:45.980 And one of the articles that I had written, which I was thinking about eventually turning
00:47:49.020 into a book, I think the title of the article is Marketing is Life and Life is Marketing,
00:47:54.800 where basically I was arguing and what, I mean, the whole point of the book would be to demonstrate
00:47:59.800 the importance of marketing across a bewilderment, because we typically think of marketing of,
00:48:07.000 you know, marketing of Gillette and marketing of Starbucks.
00:48:11.480 But, you know, you engage in marketing in the mating market.
00:48:14.720 You engage in marketing in the labor market.
00:48:17.940 You engage in marketing when you're pitching your ideas.
00:48:20.560 So, you know, animals engage in marketing when they engage in sexual signaling, as per
00:48:26.880 Darwin's theory of sexual selection.
00:48:29.220 So everything is marketing.
00:48:30.900 So oftentimes I get some troll on, you know, on social media saying, you know, you teach
00:48:39.200 marketing, whatever.
00:48:40.300 First of all, you know, marketing, I mean, as I use it, as you know, you know, I apply biology
00:48:45.220 and psychology to study consumer and economic decision making.
00:48:48.560 You know, it's hardly a lot, I mean, the entire world operates on capitalism.
00:48:53.280 All of the apps that we now have are based on an understanding of marketing and the most
00:48:58.580 fundamental drivers of human nature.
00:49:00.680 So it always bewilders me when people, because marketing is a term that can be either used
00:49:07.940 colloquially, right?
00:49:09.800 I'm printing flyers for my local block party, and I'm going to market it.
00:49:17.920 And then they think that when marketing as a scientific discipline, well, it must be the
00:49:22.220 same kind of, whereas, you know, if you just look at the salaries of professors, the ones
00:49:27.720 who are in the business schools get paid the highest bucks precisely because they have
00:49:32.820 very relevant and marketable skills, right?
00:49:35.740 So if you're a economist who studies, you know, you know, something in marketing, or
00:49:42.960 you're an anthropologist who applies their craft in marketing, or you're, in my case, a
00:49:47.300 psychologist who studies consumer behavior, it's hardly something to laugh at.
00:49:51.340 So I love the fact that, you know, without you having had the training in business school,
00:49:57.060 you're a natural born marketer, you understand the dynamics, and you even said it, right?
00:50:02.340 I mean, hey, I learned French, because now I could reach this particular segment.
00:50:07.100 Well, you just got an A on the marketing 101 exam, where we talk about segmenting and
00:50:14.160 targeting, right?
00:50:15.020 You segmented the market, and then you thought, well, what is the optimal persuasion strategy
00:50:20.340 that I can reach that target market?
00:50:22.600 And in this case, simply saying a few words in their language increases your, well, you
00:50:28.300 just passed business school, right?
00:50:30.040 So it's, it's all good.
00:50:31.500 Yeah.
00:50:32.400 Yeah, exactly.
00:50:33.340 And, you know, and the thing is, as well, I think something that's been really core for
00:50:37.500 me, and of course, this is related to your book, which I have read, by the way, I know
00:50:42.620 you said I don't, I don't, I don't need to, but I did anyway, you know, you're very kind
00:50:46.540 new book by the Godfather.
00:50:48.520 Of course, I'm going to buy it.
00:50:49.360 I got to support.
00:50:49.700 You know, I think the thing that sometimes people forget, and I think this is also the
00:50:56.540 reason why many people give up is to both trust and enjoy the process, right?
00:51:04.040 I remember when I was in my twenties and I'd been struggling with my music for a while,
00:51:08.580 trying to make it as an independent artist and keep myself afloat and all that.
00:51:11.820 Um, and one of the things that kept me going, wasn't just belief and knowing that, all right,
00:51:21.080 I'm going to, I'm going to break through on this thing somehow.
00:51:23.480 It was also just genuinely enjoying the process.
00:51:26.080 You know, we all have times where we want to, you, you kind of wish you could fast forward.
00:51:31.200 You wish you could leapfrog it.
00:51:33.040 You wish you could, uh, you know, fast forward.
00:51:35.520 I know you lost a lot of weight recently.
00:51:37.460 You wish you could fast forward the gym sessions and fast forward the cardio and just press,
00:51:41.360 press some button and you've just done it, right?
00:51:44.420 You're trying to learn a language or learn an instrument, any new skill.
00:51:47.920 And you wish you could just download it to your brain.
00:51:51.660 And I don't think that people should really wish for that.
00:51:54.460 I think people should really enjoy, enjoy the process and honestly have fun with it.
00:52:02.380 Treat, treat it like an adventure.
00:52:03.900 Um, I very much live my life, like almost like it's a video game and I'm a character in it.
00:52:09.540 And I'm just sort of going to different locations and meeting different people and
00:52:13.900 taking on different quests and new challenges and solving new problems and puzzles.
00:52:18.200 That that's very much how I view it.
00:52:19.940 And I think that if you, if you take life on that way and you recognize, yeah, it's going 0.93
00:52:25.100 to have, there's going to be moments where it, where it sucks.
00:52:27.420 You're going to, you're going to be happy.
00:52:28.840 You're going to be sad.
00:52:29.640 You're going to have your ups.
00:52:30.760 You're going to have your downs, but in the grand scheme of things, it's also very fun.
00:52:36.880 It's also very fun.
00:52:38.180 And I think if someone perhaps is not enjoying their life, then man, I think they just need
00:52:45.660 to sort of reframe, reframe their thinking and find that sort of childish joy in the
00:52:52.560 little everyday things.
00:52:53.660 Again, I think that as adults, especially once you have a routine, you can, you, you can just
00:52:59.520 feel like you're just repeating things and you don't even know why you're doing it.
00:53:02.960 You're not having fun interactions.
00:53:04.660 And in every day, no matter what city or whatever country I'm in, I, you know, I'll, I'll have
00:53:10.860 random conversations with strangers.
00:53:13.260 I'll have exchange pleasantries with the person at the checkout.
00:53:16.840 I'll, you know, I'll be in the gym and I'll just, I don't know, just engage with someone
00:53:20.780 or just do little things to, to just enjoy, enjoy things that could otherwise be very mundane.
00:53:26.720 Right.
00:53:27.180 When I was out there on the street or in shopping mall, standing around all day long, right.
00:53:30.760 I'd be standing there for hours and hours and hours and, um, I'd give myself little
00:53:34.600 challenges.
00:53:35.060 You were, you were talking before about rejection here.
00:53:38.640 Here's something I would actually do when I was having a day where, um, I was either just
00:53:43.740 getting very tired or I felt like quitting.
00:53:47.540 Do you know what I would do is I would say, I'm going to go get 10 rejections in a row.
00:53:53.360 If I get 10 rejections in a row, I'll go home.
00:53:56.560 Right.
00:53:57.080 I'd normally end up staying out for another two hours.
00:53:59.440 Right.
00:53:59.840 I talked to seven people, seven rejections, and then, ah, that next person stops and they
00:54:04.200 buy something.
00:54:04.940 And that gives me that little bit of motivation to go again.
00:54:07.400 So I'm actually going to people and I'm going in the mindset of, okay, I'm ready for the
00:54:11.600 rejection.
00:54:12.000 Right.
00:54:12.360 I want you to reject me so that I can go home.
00:54:15.100 And it just, I don't know.
00:54:17.360 I just play these little games.
00:54:18.580 I, if I were out selling with one of my friends, we'd, um, we'd sometimes see who could
00:54:22.680 get, who could get the craziest sale of the day.
00:54:25.280 Right.
00:54:25.640 So maybe this might mean approaching someone who's like 75 years old and selling them a 0.86
00:54:30.780 hip hop album.
00:54:31.460 Or maybe this means like, um, I remember once, you know, just someone was stopped at a red
00:54:37.340 light in the car.
00:54:38.600 And I went and I, you know, I got, I, he was listening to hip hop.
00:54:43.040 I heard he was listening to hip hop in his car.
00:54:44.560 And I went to him while he was at the light and I did a quick pitch and he bought my CD
00:54:49.180 out the car window.
00:54:50.340 Right.
00:54:50.720 And I go back to my phone.
00:54:51.580 I was like, yeah, you know, and so, you know, you, you gamify it, right.
00:54:55.420 You, you, you make things fun.
00:54:57.140 And, um, I'd like to think, I'd, I'd like to hope that I can maintain that throughout
00:55:01.800 my life.
00:55:02.580 Um, as I go into, you know, new phases over the next decades, getting married, Lord willing,
00:55:08.980 becoming a father, all of that stuff.
00:55:10.720 I'd like to never lose that, lose that sense of play.
00:55:14.820 And that sense of life is life is fun and it's to be enjoyed.
00:55:19.680 Well, you, you, you've clearly read my book because of course I've got a whole chapter
00:55:24.040 on life as a playground and boy, do you exude that spirit.
00:55:27.840 Uh, you are a joy to chat with.
00:55:30.260 You are a, uh, you're endless positivity.
00:55:34.180 I think that's probably of all the many reasons why people resonate with your message.
00:55:38.820 I think it's that it's, it's you, you know, you're amiable, you're affable, you're just
00:55:44.120 a great guy.
00:55:44.700 And I can't wait to meet you in person.
00:55:46.040 Thank you so much for coming on the show, Zuby.
00:55:48.420 I appreciate it, man.
00:55:49.360 Thank you so much.
00:55:50.080 Stay on the line so we can say goodbye offline.
00:55:52.160 Cheers.