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Dad Was Detroit's Biggest Drug Dealer, Now I'm a Digital Nomad: My Journey from Prison to Freedom · Babes, how did you get here

• 0:00
  The family was struggling coming up.
• 0:03
  My father used to be one of the biggest drug dealers in Detroit.
• 0:05
  Then he went to jail and mother became a teacher in life just.
• 0:09
  So that changed?
• 0:10
  He went to jail for almost 12, 15 years.
• 0:12
  It was 20 cop cars, helicopters.
• 0:14
  My dad had like a lot of machine guns,
• 0:16
  but they just thought that he wasn't going to leave easily.
• 0:19
  And then, yeah, they threw out the years.
• 0:21
  Every year, I would travel around America
• 0:23
  and they kept moving him to a different place.
• 0:25
  We're extremely depressed.
• 0:26
  And yet, when you go back home, that's
• 0:28
  when you're saying that you were depressed.
• 0:29
  Not when you were homeless.
• 0:31
  And I still depressed, did not feel at home in America.
• 0:37
  I started loving myself more when I was in Europe.
• 0:42
  I felt that in America, one of my friends
• 0:46
  almost asked me, why do you like traveling so much?
• 0:48
  I'm like, well, some in these countries.
• 0:50
  Agilon Wallace, a man whose beginning
• 0:53
  is deeply rooted in the soulful grit of Detroit.
• 0:56
  He has lived in Spain, the UK, and as far as Australia,
• 1:00
  traveling to 100 countries.
• 1:02
  But in the last four years, he has chosen
• 1:04
  to make Thailand his home, where he
• 1:06
  runs his business as a recruiter and recruitment coach.
• 1:09
  We will talk about his past, grieving someone close,
• 1:12
  and what it really means to start over again,
• 1:14
  multiple times.
• 1:16
  But before he tells me his life story,
• 1:18
  I have to ask, Bades, how did you get here?
• 1:22
  Thailand?
• 1:25
  I got here through a friend.
• 1:27
  One of my good friends here had recommended Thailand.
• 1:31
  And I was afraid of it at first,
• 1:34
  because I watched a movie to hangover.
• 1:38
  I was like, oh, I don't want to go to Bangkok.
• 1:43
  You know, I came to Thailand, I fell in love with it.
• 1:46
  It was just a beautiful country, beautiful people.
• 1:50
  And most importantly, of course, great value
• 1:52
  for my money at the time, as I was living in America
• 1:55
  before I came over.
• 1:56
  So when was the first time that you arrived here?
• 1:59
  I came here about four years ago, came to Bangkok,
• 2:04
  stayed in downtown Bangkok in Ekamai area.
• 2:07
  And I was living in this luxury apartment,
• 2:11
  and it felt like people always compare Bangkok to New York.
• 2:14
  OK, Bades, real talk, tantrums do not look fun.
• 2:17
  But what if I told you that they don't have to take over your house?
• 2:21
  In my course, managing tantrums like a CEO,
• 2:24
  I'll teach you the strategies that turn
• 2:26
  tantrums into opportunities, no yelling, no bribes,
• 2:29
  no screens, and no chaos.
• 2:32
  You will learn how to understand what's really going on
• 2:34
  behind those meltdowns, how to keep your cool when they lose
• 2:38
  theirs, and how to raise emotionally intelligent children
• 2:41
  without losing yourself in the process.
• 2:44
  Because CEOs don't react to Bades, they respond.
• 2:46
  And you can do the same.
• 2:48
  So if you're ready to bring more calm connection
• 2:51
  and confidence to your home, click the link
• 2:53
  and check out managed tantrums like a CEO.
• 2:56
  Like, you know, a more affordable version of the New York.
• 3:00
  I lived in New York for four years.
• 3:02
  I don't find them so bad.
• 3:03
  Why are people comparing them?
• 3:04
  I think because of how modern, how fast the city is,
• 3:07
  a lot of American businesses are starting to move over
• 3:11
  and come to Thailand, just how innovative it is.
• 3:16
  We just had like the New Louis Vuitton Museum,
• 3:18
  the New York House as a golden castle.
• 3:20
  You got the Iconcm.
• 3:22
  You have, we just opened the Jurassic Park theme park.
• 3:25
  It's open yesterday.
• 3:26
  Oh.
• 3:27
  Yes, so you got to take your order to share.
• 3:29
  And so Bangkok is constantly pushing innovation
• 3:34
  and pushing modernization and also at affordable price.
• 3:37
  Okay.
• 3:38
  You know, when I'm from, I was living in Michigan
• 3:41
  prior to this and I was spending $1,500 a month
• 3:43
  for eight inches of snow and, you know,
• 3:47
  and hose food and $12 organic strawberries.
• 3:50
  Sure.
• 3:50
  You know, because in America, if you put organic on it,
• 3:53
  you got to pay $12 or $20 for it.
• 3:56
  So, so, so coming to Thailand,
• 3:58
  it was just a fresh perspective.
• 4:00
  Everything was fresh, food was fresh.
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  I just love the atmosphere.
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  I just, I was, most importantly, I felt more free.
• 4:06
  Yeah.
• 4:07
  When you came four years ago, did you know
• 4:08
  that you were moving here or were you visiting at the time?
• 4:10
  I was visiting at the time.
• 4:12
  I wasn't loved at the time.
• 4:14
  I got a couple of different love stories,
• 4:15
  but I was a little bit of Brazilian woman.
• 4:17
  So I came my first year and my second year,
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  I moved back to Brazil for her and turns out,
• 4:25
  she wasn't ready to really, for something serious.
• 4:27
  Okay.
• 4:28
  So I came right back to Thailand and, you know,
• 4:31
  and again, I just fell in love with being here more and more.
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  It just made more sense.
• 4:35
  When you first left off the plane in Bangkok,
• 4:38
  can you tell me what you're smelling, hearing, seeing?
• 4:42
  I'm seeing a lot of Europeans,
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  I'm seeing a lot of Russians, a lot of Indians,
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  a very international direct by a diverse range of people.
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  I'm seeing it's a fast life, it's a fast city,
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  but most importantly, convenient.
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  You know, I think that coming from America,
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  I'm from the Motown Detroit, so car city, you know, Ford,
• 5:08
  so you can't get anywhere from around Michigan without a car.
• 5:11
  And being able to have access to public transportation,
• 5:14
  your buses, your BTSs, for as little as 10, 20 bought,
• 5:18
  which is equivalent to 10, 20 cents.
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  You know, you're, you know, I just never had,
• 5:24
  I guess opportunities were convenience like that.
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  I can walk outside my house and be at the mall within two minutes,
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  you know, and funny enough, in America,
• 5:33
  going to the mall is like a, it's a treat, it's a luxury.
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  We go to the mall weekly, monthly,
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  but here it seems that people go to malls every day in Bangkok,
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  because it's over a hundred malls in the city.
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  Asia loves a mall.
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  They love it.
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  Love a mall.
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  Just build a new one here, I think two, three months ago,
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  as well in Bangkok.
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  So it's just constantly building new malls as well.
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  It's funny because I went to visit some family in Malaysia.
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  And the first dinner, they're like,
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  oh, we're going to the mall to eat.
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  And I'm like, I'm not eating at the mall.
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  Like who eats at the mall?
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  I'm doing that.
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  I'm expecting like some Anthony Bourdain,
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  a roadside, and they're like, no, no, no,
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  this is what we do as a family.
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  We go and eat at the malls, whereas from the UK
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  or an American perspective,
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  I would never eat to no shopping center.
• 6:17
  Yeah, not just that.
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  The convenience of the malls, I did my meal prep.
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  I had, you know, so it was a girl, you know, in America.
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  Of course, we have our grocery store separate from malls.
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  So it was just convenient to be able to go to the gourmet market
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  or to get my groceries, and I would do my meal prep.
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  There was a restaurant inside the gourmet market.
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  It never cooked my food for me for the whole week,
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  for as little as $15, and do all my meal prep for a week.
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  So I would be able to shop, do my grocery shopping,
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  and just also the convenience of cinemas and areas,
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  gems, every so one stop shop.
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  You can live at the mall, and especially if you have a family,
• 6:59
  just the convenience of being able to, you know,
• 7:03
  tackle everyone's needs in a family, you know,
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  the wife can get her many in pedigas and massage,
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  the kids can go upstairs to the play area,
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  they have like a bouncing play area,
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  and sound like an M-40-year.
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  And then, you know, for the guys,
• 7:16
  you can just walk around, grab coffee, get, you know,
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  go to the shop, hold the bags, do a shopping.
• 7:21
  Hey, yeah, it's just amazing, it's so convenient.
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  Do you think that that is the main pull
• 7:25
  for you being in Bangkok, the convenience,
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  and the value that you get all to your money?
• 7:32
  Yeah, that's one of it, that's one of them, yes.
• 7:35
  I feel more free here.
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  But when I was, prior to this,
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  I lived in Australia for five years,
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  and I was working seven days a week.
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  Okay.
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  And, you know, I got tired of training my time for money,
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  you know, and I feel like when you're in a country
• 7:51
  where your money is, you know, a third more,
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  or you're able to, you know, balance out your funds,
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  you don't have to work as much, you know,
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  I found myself when I was working so much,
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  I never had time to think, I never had time to ask questions,
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  who I was, what I wanted, or what I really wanted to be.
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  You know, I think sometimes I was in America,
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  we have this pressure in our society,
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  where we're pressuring people to be something important,
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  and be something great, and it's like,
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  well, no one really ever asked themselves,
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  what does that mean?
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  You know, because, you know, yeah, you know,
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  yeah, studying in Oxford, yeah, I'm a master's
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  at the University of Sydney Business School,
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  but, you know, does that mean anything?
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  You know, you know, and it's a experience,
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  and it's a, but the whole, having this brand,
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  having titles centered around, you know,
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  introducing yourself with a title, you know,
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  when you go up to people, you know, say,
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  hey, my name's April, and I'm Miss Universe.
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  You know, and it's just like, and that's how I was raised
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  in America.
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  Okay, to be back to childhood in America.
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  You were raised in Detroit?
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  Yeah, in the rough side of Detroit.
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  What does that mean?
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  I was raised in the ghetto.
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  Okay.
• 8:59
  Family was struggling coming up.
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  My father was incarcerated.
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  So my father used to be one of the biggest
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  drug dealers in Detroit.
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  Okay.
• 9:08
  There's a lot of articles in history.
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  I don't talk about it much publicly,
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  but it is a true situation.
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  So I've been a hustler in my whole life.
• 9:18
  But given his position, you guys were still struggling?
• 9:21
  Yeah, well, no, when he was before jail,
• 9:24
  I had like, minks, I had gold chains.
• 9:27
  Okay.
• 9:28
  Like, look, gold diamond ring.
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  What age are we talking about?
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  Like, oh, like, five, six, I'm gold in diamond
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  out of the name of my mother's in a brand new car.
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  BMW, it was a very luxurious, luxurious lifestyle.
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  And then he went to jail, and my mother became a teacher
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  and life just turned around.
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  So that changed?
• 9:46
  Oh, it shifted dramatically.
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  How old were you when he went to jail?
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  What did you, I think I was seven or eight?
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  Okay.
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  And he went to jail for almost 12, 15 years.
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  Are you able to remember that switch in your life?
• 9:57
  I wasn't, it was on new, it was on TV.
• 9:59
  It was like literally, it was 20 cop cars, helicopters.
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  My dad had like a lot of machine guns,
• 10:05
  but they just thought that he wasn't going to leave easily.
• 10:07
  And you were living with him at the time?
• 10:10
  I wasn't.
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  I was around the corner.
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  I was here.
• 10:13
  We had a separate couple houses.
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  So yeah, but yeah, they thought he wasn't
• 10:18
  going to leave that easily, and then he was arrested.
• 10:22
  They offer him a lot of less time if he
• 10:24
  was with a told on someone, we call it snitch,
• 10:27
  or ratchet, ratting in America.
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  But he didn't believe in that because of the risk
• 10:31
  for the family.
• 10:32
  Right.
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  And then throughout the years, every year,
• 10:36
  I was traveling around America.
• 10:37
  They kept moving him to a different prison.
• 10:39
  So I would have to constantly keep traveling to go see him.
• 10:43
  Right.
• 10:43
  My grandmother would take us every year.
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  So it's first day in prison, so we tried to kill him.
• 10:48
  Really?
• 10:49
  Yeah, he had a lot of enemies.
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  And growing up, I really couldn't even tell people
• 10:52
  who my father was.
• 10:53
  Sure.
• 10:55
  And you know, but so yeah, kept moving him around.
• 10:59
  Interesting enough, the only games that me and my father
• 11:02
  ever played, still to this day, our whole life,
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  the only game we could ever play was chess.
• 11:06
  Really?
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  So that's how I became a chess man at a young age.
• 11:11
  So your dad?
• 11:12
  Through my dad and my grandfather, yes.
• 11:14
  That's incredible.
• 11:15
  Yeah.
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  And in terms of your childhood, and obviously,
• 11:18
  you were experiencing that change,
• 11:20
  other than the traveling to make sure that you could see him,
• 11:23
  was there anything else that you feel
• 11:25
  that it impacted the way you grew up?
• 11:27
  I just came from a family of entrepreneurs.
• 11:30
  OK.
• 11:31
  You know, when I look at my father's situation,
• 11:33
  I know a lot of people may look at it as a negative or a ronding,
• 11:36
  but I look at my father's entrepreneur.
• 11:38
  And I mostly trust that he, so, is not legalized in America.
• 11:42
  And a lot of people are still incarcerated in America
• 11:45
  for selling the drugs that America has legalized.
• 11:47
  So there are people still incarcerated in prison who
• 11:50
  are so lead.
• 11:52
  And the timing was wrong.
• 11:53
  Yeah, the timing was wrong.
• 11:55
  But I don't look at my father.
• 11:58
  I mean, of course, he was smart enough and intelligent enough.
• 12:00
  He got a scholarship.
• 12:01
  I was in high school for acting.
• 12:03
  And he could have done a lot of things with his life.
• 12:06
  Of course, I wish it was a better way and a better route.
• 12:09
  But my father was an entrepreneur in my eyes.
• 12:12
  And I just feel like, even to this day,
• 12:16
  that's the only real way to have control over your life.
• 12:20
  It's to be your own boss, you know, and to be free.
• 12:23
  It's really interesting that you say about business,
• 12:25
  because I say all the time.
• 12:26
  I think there are certain, let's call them professions.
• 12:29
  There are certain professions.
• 12:30
  And people have stigmas against them for whatever reason.
• 12:33
  And they forget to understand the core of that.
• 12:36
  And I say to people all the time that, like you say,
• 12:40
  it's a business that is in a field at the time
• 12:44
  and the place is illegal.
• 12:45
  But ultimately, the principles of business
• 12:47
  are really interesting.
• 12:48
  And the fact that you say that you learn chess
• 12:49
  through your dad kind of says it all,
• 12:52
  because it is strategic.
• 12:53
  It is there are so many lessons that can be learned
• 12:56
  and applied in a positive way, which
• 12:59
  it seems like you have done as you've grown up.
• 13:01
  Would that be fair to you, to say?
• 13:02
  Yeah, very fair.
• 13:04
  So your mom becomes a teacher.
• 13:06
  And then you're living in Detroit until what age?
• 13:09
  I'm living in Detroit until 18.
• 13:11
  While I'm in Detroit, I have a lot of friends
• 13:13
  who are murdered or incarcerated, growing up.
• 13:17
  My house was shot at.
• 13:18
  I was Robbick on point, all through high school.
• 13:22
  And you say this very normally?
• 13:24
  Yeah.
• 13:25
  For you, it's very normal.
• 13:26
  Or do you understand why I'm shocked?
• 13:27
  No, no, no.
• 13:28
  You know, what's so funny is what interesting is,
• 13:32
  I remember the first time when I went off to college,
• 13:34
  and I moved to the suburbs.
• 13:35
  And I asked my mentor, you know,
• 13:37
  I heard the sound of an ambulance sign.
• 13:40
  And I thought about death.
• 13:42
  And he thought about someone being rescued.
• 13:44
  That's crazy.
• 13:45
  And the perspectives were just so different.
• 13:47
  And I didn't realize how normal it was for me
• 13:50
  to just assume that someone was dying.
• 13:52
  Right.
• 13:53
  Because that's just the environment that I grew up in.
• 13:55
  So it gives you a whole different perspective
• 13:58
  at the end of the day.
• 13:59
  So it was normal here.
• 14:01
  But I wasn't a gangster.
• 14:05
  I never point that out to people.
• 14:07
  I was a poet, you know, and I wrote a lot of poetry,
• 14:10
  and I performed a lot of, you know,
• 14:11
  I started writing more on where my grandmother passed away.
• 14:15
  She died from breast cancer.
• 14:17
  And so I started writing more.
• 14:19
  But I was true to who I was.
• 14:21
  Now I dressed gangster.
• 14:23
  You know, I definitely was sagging,
• 14:25
  and I had to pat backwards.
• 14:27
  And, you know, and, you know,
• 14:29
  you were assumed that I looked this way.
• 14:31
  But I was true to who I, you know,
• 14:33
  I knew that I love writing at the time.
• 14:36
  And I owned it, you know.
• 14:38
  I didn't try to be something I wasn't.
• 14:40
  I had three jobs.
• 14:41
  I was in high school.
• 14:42
  I was hustling to make money, you know.
• 14:45
  I probably could have always been great at it.
• 14:48
  But I was just okay with working three jobs
• 14:50
  and earning the right way out.
• 14:52
  Was it seeing your dad's path
• 14:54
  that influencer reason not to get into drugs?
• 14:57
  No, I think they're doing that in social, you know,
• 15:00
  I love the idea of selling drugs.
• 15:02
  But I didn't like the idea of the people
• 15:04
  that I have to work with.
• 15:05
  Okay.
• 15:05
  So I was just like, so I think that if I was in different,
• 15:10
  I think if I grew up in a suburbian area.
• 15:12
  Sure.
• 15:13
  You'd be my local dealer.
• 15:15
  I'd probably be a local dealer.
• 15:16
  But you know, but I think it was just a environment.
• 15:19
  I just looked at the people that I grew up around.
• 15:22
  And a lot of people don't think 10 steps ahead.
• 15:25
  A lot of people are, it's just, it's just what,
• 15:29
  and then you, as I got older, you started,
• 15:31
  I started seeing most of the drugs
• 15:33
  in my neighborhood, good jobs.
• 15:34
  Okay.
• 15:35
  So I started seeing them transition to career.
• 15:39
  Sure.
• 15:40
  And I was like, whoa, it's not even worth it.
• 15:44
  Anymore, not, you know, and people start going legitimized
• 15:47
  and start, you know, getting to real estate.
• 15:50
  So that was an interesting thing growing up as well.
• 15:52
  Do you have a relationship with your dad, no?
• 15:54
  I, it's not the close, not, we're not that close.
• 15:57
  We don't see eye to eye.
• 15:59
  But I did learn a lot from them.
• 16:01
  Funny enough, my father was released for prison.
• 16:04
  And this year he's graduating with his PhD in law.
• 16:09
  No.
• 16:10
  Yeah.
• 16:10
  And he's going to be a professor.
• 16:12
  He just got a job offer as a professor at a university.
• 16:15
  And, yeah, it is, it is.
• 16:17
  So for you to, you know, it's just a true sign
• 16:22
  for a lot of people out there that, you know,
• 16:24
  it doesn't matter how old you are,
• 16:25
  you always can get a second chance.
• 16:27
  You can always start over.
• 16:28
  So, you know, I'm really happy and proud for him
• 16:30
  to make that transition and turn his life around.
• 16:33
  And, you know, he was practicing law for eight years
• 16:35
  while he was in prison.
• 16:36
  So he knows it so well.
• 16:38
  But when you have a felony, you can practice law,
• 16:42
  you can teach it.
• 16:43
  OK.
• 16:44
  And the relationship with your mom?
• 16:46
  Really close.
• 16:46
  My mom was, you know, me and my mother, Sally,
• 16:50
  in a black community growing up as a black child,
• 16:53
  my mom had to play both roles.
• 16:55
  So I, sadly enough, I didn't get much affection
• 16:59
  or there wasn't enough empathy or emotional intelligence
• 17:03
  there growing up.
• 17:04
  My mom felt that she had to be hard
• 17:06
  because of the conditions that we grew up in.
• 17:07
  OK.
• 17:08
  So I grew up in a community where if I got to a fight,
• 17:11
  you know, my mom would say, take your ass back out there
• 17:14
  and go, what is that?
• 17:16
  You know, she, you know, versus, you know, parenting,
• 17:19
  you know, me when I have children in the future,
• 17:21
  it's like, well, why do I even need to fight?
• 17:24
  OK.
• 17:25
  You know, like, you know, and...
• 17:26
  But in her mind, is she thinking,
• 17:28
  people are picking on my son.
• 17:30
  And my son needs to show that he can defend himself
• 17:34
  so that he's protected in the future?
• 17:36
  Yeah, she's thinking, yeah, she's thinking,
• 17:38
  like, you have to make an example out of someone.
• 17:41
  So that person doesn't have to mess with you again.
• 17:44
  You gotta be tough.
• 17:45
  You have to be hard.
• 17:46
  Right.
• 17:47
  And I was completely different.
• 17:49
  You know, I was a poet.
• 17:50
  You know, I was a lover, you know,
• 17:52
  for sighting poems in the ghetto.
• 17:53
  So, but I had to fight.
• 17:57
  I got into a lot of fights when I was younger.
• 17:59
  It was constantly angry as well when I was a kid.
• 18:04
  And I think that just comes from, like I said,
• 18:07
  my mom didn't give me the gentle parenting route.
• 18:10
  I got a lot of whoopins growing up
• 18:12
  from my grandmother and my mom.
• 18:14
  And I think, you know, when I look at the new generation
• 18:17
  today from my community,
• 18:20
  the people who grew up with the whoopins,
• 18:23
  you know, they turned out OK.
• 18:24
  And I feel like the younger kids who didn't get disciplined,
• 18:27
  they turned out really bad.
• 18:29
  You know, they're very lazy.
• 18:31
  My grandparents are from the south.
• 18:32
  So, they came from Arkansas when they moved to Detroit.
• 18:35
  So, I grew up, yes, sir, yes, ma'am, you know,
• 18:38
  every time I addressed the elder person, you know,
• 18:40
  when I saw them getting their groceries,
• 18:42
  I ran down the street to take their groceries in.
• 18:45
  I love the community I grew up in
• 18:49
  because a lot of people had a lot of old fashion traditions
• 18:52
  that you don't see anymore in today's communities.
• 18:56
  How are you?
• 18:57
  Do you think that in your time,
• 18:59
  it was perhaps too far on the end of the spectrum
• 19:02
  and no, in these modern times,
• 19:04
  we've gone too far the opposite way
• 19:05
  and we've lost some of that respect and discipline?
• 19:08
  Yeah, we definitely have lost that respect and discipline.
• 19:12
  And, I mean, I'm still young.
• 19:14
  I'm a 90s baby, but the way I grew up it,
• 19:20
  I just grew up with, you know,
• 19:22
  this level of manners and respect.
• 19:25
  And if someone in the neighborhood found out about it,
• 19:28
  I knew that I was going to be disciplined as well.
• 19:30
  And, you know, so I was always respectful.
• 19:33
  I was always, you know,
• 19:35
  making sure I spoke to someone when I went into my home,
• 19:38
  took my shoes off, I greeted them,
• 19:41
  I did whatever they asked of me as well,
• 19:43
  they asked me to do something.
• 19:44
  So yeah, you know, but the sad thing is,
• 19:47
  is when you get older and you look at all your childhood friends
• 19:50
  and look at how, you know, you get older
• 19:54
  if some of your childhood friends didn't make it,
• 19:56
  didn't make it out of the neighborhood.
• 19:58
  And some turned out to be completely different
• 20:01
  than what I thought they were.
• 20:01
  The ones that I thought was going to go to Harvard, Yale,
• 20:04
  they didn't go.
• 20:05
  You know, they didn't make it just,
• 20:08
  they, you know, got stuck in that environment.
• 20:10
  Okay.
• 20:11
  So they never even went off the college.
• 20:13
  They had a lot of, you know, had a lot of kids
• 20:17
  or they got stuck with the nine to five jobs.
• 20:21
  And these are people when, you know,
• 20:22
  I was younger, they had it all, you know,
• 20:25
  I didn't really have much,
• 20:26
  but I look at my friends who had it all
• 20:27
  and I was a child and I just thought life was going to be
• 20:30
  extraordinary for them.
• 20:31
  And I didn't think that I was going to really
• 20:33
  going to make it out of the neighborhood.
• 20:35
  And I got lucky, yeah, I got lucky.
• 20:37
  So when you're a kid growing up in Detroit,
• 20:39
  what do you vision for your life ahead?
• 20:42
  Well, Detroit, everyone vision,
• 20:44
  working at the plant, you know,
• 20:46
  because yeah, that's the dream in Michigan
• 20:48
  because the plant is the big talk of school.
• 20:51
  You know, like, hey, go work at Ford,
• 20:53
  go work at Chrysler, make 40, 50 dollars an hour.
• 20:55
  Okay.
• 20:56
  And, you know, I moved to, you know,
• 20:59
  years later, I moved to the UK.
• 21:01
  I went off to college and I started seeing people
• 21:02
  make 100 to 500 dollars an hour.
• 21:05
  Talk to me how you ended up in the UK?
• 21:07
  You know, my friend, I got this friend named Ty.
• 21:13
  It was Christmas time, 2010, 2009.
• 21:17
  The study abroad office called me and said,
• 21:19
  hey, we got a kid from the UK.
• 21:21
  He doesn't have a place to stay.
• 21:22
  And I was like, well, I got three beds.
• 21:25
  He could stay with me.
• 21:26
  And Ty comes over in his, like, British coat tight.
• 21:30
  And James was tight and his scarf was all wrapped around
• 21:33
  is, you know, he was super British.
• 21:35
  And then I thought he was so cool and so fly.
• 21:38
  And my mom, you know, when I dressed like that,
• 21:40
  my mom would call me gay.
• 21:41
  I feel like, oh, you gay, you know.
• 21:44
  So, but I thought it was cool.
• 21:46
  And Ty was just, he became my best friend.
• 21:49
  And just, he was hanging out every day.
• 21:51
  And I was like, man, I really want to go abroad.
• 21:54
  And I called the friend up and I asked her,
• 21:57
  she's like, go to Oxford or Darby.
• 21:58
  She said, Darby's not your personality.
• 22:00
  I didn't know what that meant.
• 22:01
  So she was like, I don't know what Darby means.
• 22:03
  Yeah, she was just saying it's more chill,
• 22:04
  it's more relaxed.
• 22:05
  So she was like, go to Oxford.
• 22:07
  So I went to Oxford Share and I went to Oxford
• 22:09
  British University and was in love with it.
• 22:13
  I went over there with an Afro.
• 22:14
  People thought I was, well, I am.
• 22:15
  And, you know, I used to, you know,
• 22:17
  I was working at Topshop, Topman.
• 22:19
  And I just loved it, you know.
• 22:20
  And then I, you know, I was there.
• 22:22
  That's when I started my travel journey.
• 22:24
  So you're 18 and then you're going to university.
• 22:28
  I'm 18, going to university and then I'm around about 20
• 22:31
  when I first started, when I, 2021, when I leave the country
• 22:34
  to go to the UK.
• 22:35
  So you arrive in the UK and your point of reference
• 22:38
  sounds like it's your friend with him tight jeans.
• 22:40
  When you get to Oxford, because for me,
• 22:43
  I think of the UK and I think London, right?
• 22:44
  I don't really have much experience outside of that.
• 22:46
  I did a bit of boarding school in Bath,
• 22:48
  which is about three and a half hours away.
• 22:50
  Nothing like London.
• 22:51
  Tell me what Oxford is like.
• 22:52
  Oxford was, oh my God, it was magical.
• 22:55
  Really?
• 22:56
  Yeah, well, I was still, when I went there,
• 22:58
  I think the Emily, Emma Watson, the Harry Potter.
• 23:02
  Okay.
• 23:03
  And she was still going to university there,
• 23:04
  I think at the time.
• 23:05
  Okay.
• 23:06
  And it was magical, you know,
• 23:10
  a kid from the ghetto waking up the castles every day.
• 23:13
  It was just so much power and beauty in it.
• 23:15
  And because my mind set was just limited to what I saw.
• 23:18
  On my neighborhood, we saw like an old school car.
• 23:22
  We saw the biggest house on their block in my neighborhood.
• 23:25
  And, but for me to wake up the castles,
• 23:27
  I started waking up to Bentley's Ferraris.
• 23:30
  So my imagination and my goals and my dreams
• 23:32
  just started getting bigger.
• 23:33
  Because I was just, I'm always been a person.
• 23:35
  If I could see it, why can't I have it?
• 23:37
  Right.
• 23:38
  And so it was, and then my circle of friends
• 23:40
  started to change.
• 23:41
  People were more touchy.
• 23:43
  You know, I growing up in an neighborhood,
• 23:45
  it was less masculine for a man, you know, in America.
• 23:49
  We have this, you know, we hug, man,
• 23:51
  we put, we put an elbow between our shoulders.
• 23:53
  Because, you know, we say, you know, you know, homo,
• 23:55
  or I don't want to be gay.
• 23:57
  And in the UK, it was a lot of hugging.
• 23:59
  It was a lot of touching.
• 24:00
  Really?
• 24:01
  People were, when I went to school, for me.
• 24:03
  Because I'm from Jamaica, and I'm very tactile, right?
• 24:06
  I hate people when I laugh, I'm very touchy-feely.
• 24:09
  When I was at school in New York, a friend of mine,
• 24:11
  he's from California, and he goes,
• 24:13
  if you're always touching me, but I like it, right?
• 24:15
  And so when I come to the UK,
• 24:17
  I'm like, nobody interrupts.
• 24:20
  Again, it might be a London versus-
• 24:21
  At the college level, yeah.
• 24:22
  Oxford.
• 24:23
  In Oxford, at the college level.
• 24:25
  I was also, it wasn't really that many black guy.
• 24:28
  Black guy, Americans.
• 24:29
  Black Americans at the time.
• 24:31
  And Oxford, you know, it was a lot of Nigerians and guardians.
• 24:36
  And, you know, at the end of, I love, I just,
• 24:40
  I love, I remember I went to a Afro-Bees Club in the UK.
• 24:46
  And the first thing Nigerians should be like,
• 24:47
  where are you from?
• 24:49
  I'm like, America.
• 24:50
  And they're like, no, where are you really from?
• 24:52
  And I'm like, I don't know.
• 24:55
  And so, and I was an interesting question for me,
• 24:59
  because I never really thought about the origins
• 25:02
  or the history of where I'm actually from.
• 25:04
  And I can understand sometimes why there is this
• 25:07
  semi little beef that Africans have with African Americans
• 25:11
  because of the arrogance of us not really knowing
• 25:15
  our history of who we are, you know, even, you know,
• 25:18
  even my name, my last name is Mac Little.
• 25:21
  That's a Scottish name.
• 25:22
  You know, like that's a, most likely was my ancestor's
• 25:26
  slave master, owner's name, you know.
• 25:28
  So the origin of where my name really comes from
• 25:32
  and the history behind it as well.
• 25:33
  So, it was a lot of interesting points
• 25:35
  when I was in the UK, it was amazing.
• 25:39
  How did your dreams change?
• 25:40
  You say that obviously the environment was very, very different.
• 25:42
  And now, presumably, you're not thinking about going
• 25:44
  to the plant, you're not thinking beyond that.
• 25:48
  How does that look?
• 25:49
  Well, yeah, I was, I was, when I first started traveling,
• 25:54
  after Oxford, I brought a Euro pass.
• 25:57
  And I started traveling all around Europe.
• 25:59
  My first destination was Paris.
• 26:02
  And I met a guy named Eric Mayno.
• 26:03
  He's like a senior architect at Microsoft.
• 26:07
  And this is like 2009.
• 26:10
  And, you know, I'm in a, I'm in a couch surfing picnic.
• 26:13
  Couch surfing is where people that just
• 26:15
  stay on a couch are free if people don't know.
• 26:17
  And it's like hundreds of people in Paris.
• 26:19
  And I tell people, I'm from Lundy Twa.
• 26:21
  And Eric is drunk.
• 26:22
  And he's like, Grand Rapids, bro.
• 26:24
  And you know, like from Michigan, it gives me a beer.
• 26:28
  And I start hearing his story.
• 26:29
  I'm 20 years old.
• 26:30
  And I'm like, what do you do?
• 26:31
  And he's like, man, I just traveled a world.
• 26:34
  And I work remotely.
• 26:35
  And I didn't know what remote work was.
• 26:38
  This is like 2011.
• 26:40
  I didn't know, it was, no one was talking about
• 26:42
  did you know Matt's room working around his time.
• 26:45
  And I was like, I don't know what this guy does,
• 26:48
  but this is what I want to be.
• 26:50
  Because of the flexibility or the travel.
• 26:52
  I wanted to travel.
• 26:53
  And I just wanted to travel and make money online.
• 26:56
  So he gave me a book called The For Our Work Week.
• 26:59
  And I finished it while I was on a train to the Czech Republic.
• 27:02
  I wrote, I signed my name and I left it on a train.
• 27:04
  And you know, when I was just saying,
• 27:06
  and I just wrote it to the next person,
• 27:07
  I hope this book inspired you too.
• 27:09
  And I just left it there.
• 27:10
  And then all I could think about while I was traveling around Europe,
• 27:14
  I just started falling in love with so many countries
• 27:17
  that I started going to from Germany to Greece, Turkey,
• 27:22
  started going to all these places.
• 27:23
  And I was just like, I'm not the same guy I was when I left America.
• 27:27
  And when I was wearing tight pants by this point,
• 27:29
  I was wearing the Latin pants.
• 27:31
  I had an African turtle and I had my African bees.
• 27:35
  I was straight up hippie.
• 27:37
  And you know, this is like broke young AJ.
• 27:39
  I'm super broke.
• 27:41
  I'm traveling around on couch surfing.
• 27:43
  Sometimes I didn't have places to stay.
• 27:45
  I would call it sleep on a beach and niche
• 27:47
  because I couldn't afford hostels or at the time.
• 27:50
  It was, I know it sounds crazy,
• 27:52
  but it was one of the best experiences of my life.
• 27:55
  And then I would call the time I went to Turkey.
• 27:58
  It was the first time a man kissed me on the face,
• 28:01
  you know, being from Detroit.
• 28:03
  I'm so masculine, bravado.
• 28:05
  This guy hugs a kiss me.
• 28:06
  I'm like, hold on, brother, hold on.
• 28:08
  And you know, and you know, he was like,
• 28:10
  man, this is how we greet people here.
• 28:12
  And you know, just being open to that.
• 28:15
  It was, it was a, it was a beautiful thing,
• 28:17
  but that was also very uncomfortable.
• 28:19
  Because like I said, I grew up in a community
• 28:21
  where man or just in general,
• 28:22
  people didn't touch people as much.
• 28:26
  And so I started being more open to a lot of cultures,
• 28:28
  more open to how people greeted each other,
• 28:31
  how people welcomed each other.
• 28:32
  And it was just, it was just a beautiful experience.
• 28:34
  I wasn't the same person when I went back home.
• 28:37
  It was extremely depressed.
• 28:39
  And yeah, and I did not fit in in America.
• 28:42
  Hold on.
• 28:42
  Traveling around Europe, very little to no money.
• 28:46
  Yeah.
• 28:47
  And you seem to be so like positive about that experience.
• 28:50
  Like the idea of me not having somewhere to stay,
• 28:52
  I think would find the shit out of me.
• 28:54
  Oh yeah.
• 28:55
  I mean, to thrive and talk about all the things
• 28:57
  that you've learned.
• 28:58
  And yet when you go back home,
• 28:59
  that's when you're saying that you were depressed,
• 29:01
  not when you were homeless.
• 29:02
  No, no, I was depressed when I went back home.
• 29:04
  I went back home and I didn't fit in anymore.
• 29:07
  I didn't dress like that.
• 29:08
  So you've left and now you've finished your degree,
• 29:11
  it was three years?
• 29:12
  I finished a broad program.
• 29:14
  And then I had to go back to my main university,
• 29:16
  Eastern Michigan University,
• 29:17
  for like one more year.
• 29:18
  Right.
• 29:19
  So I had one more year left.
• 29:21
  And then I had a mentor who was very wealthy
• 29:24
  and multi-millionaire.
• 29:25
  And my last year, he offered me a house, cars, clothes,
• 29:31
  and to stay in America and get a job.
• 29:34
  And I still depressed did not feel at home in America.
• 29:41
  I did not want to work a job.
• 29:42
  So I got a job offer as an English teacher in Spain.
• 29:47
  And before you get to Spain.
• 29:48
  Yeah.
• 29:49
  You're back in the States,
• 29:50
  you're finishing your program.
• 29:51
  When you say that you're depressed, what is happening?
• 29:54
  But what are you going through?
• 29:55
  I'm waking up in a society where
• 29:58
  I'm waking up in society where it's all about classism,
• 30:02
  it's all about this society that has these standards.
• 30:07
  You have to dress a certain way.
• 30:08
  You have to look a certain way.
• 30:09
  You have to kiss as I just wasn't that person anymore.
• 30:14
  I started loving myself more when I was in Europe.
• 30:18
  I didn't even love myself before I left America.
• 30:21
  I felt that in America, one of my friends
• 30:26
  almost asked me, why do you like traveling so much?
• 30:28
  I'm like, well, some of these countries,
• 30:30
  I just felt like I was enough.
• 30:33
  And I feel like in America, if you don't have the cars,
• 30:35
  if you don't have the house, if you don't have the money,
• 30:38
  you're not much because a lot of these materialistic things
• 30:41
  are attached to you.
• 30:43
  So when I was traveling, none of that matter.
• 30:46
  I was age eight traveling around Europe, barely
• 30:49
  had a haircut, and all these people were taking me in,
• 30:52
  they were feeding me, they were looking out for me,
• 30:54
  they were taking me to their family homes.
• 30:56
  And I still stand touch with them.
• 30:58
  These people from like 15, 20 years ago
• 31:00
  still got all their contact details,
• 31:02
  reach out to them if they need something.
• 31:04
  But they showed me how to love myself in a way
• 31:08
  that I never loved myself before.
• 31:09
  They showed me how to have fun and how to live life
• 31:12
  in a way that I never lived life before.
• 31:14
  I feel like I grew up in a culture and a society,
• 31:16
  especially growing up in a black community
• 31:18
  where it's centered around so much materialism,
• 31:21
  where you're constantly buying Jordans,
• 31:23
  you're constantly buying name brands,
• 31:25
  you're constantly flashy.
• 31:26
  And you know, some of that is never gonna rub off of you,
• 31:30
  but you start realizing what's important,
• 31:33
  especially the things that you want to teach your children.
• 31:35
  And I start falling in love with the culture and the history
• 31:38
  and I recall the first time I went to the Netherlands
• 31:41
  with the Amsterdam, my grandmother, you know,
• 31:43
  she was like, oh, please don't go.
• 31:45
  They got HIV there, don't go.
• 31:47
  I don't think HIV works that way.
• 31:49
  And so I get to the Netherlands and it's beautiful.
• 31:56
  You have the Anne Frank houses,
• 31:57
  you have the Van Gogh museum,
• 31:58
  you have the beautiful architecture of the city
• 32:01
  and it's just so advanced, it's so modern.
• 32:05
  And you know, and I remember I was trying to recall
• 32:09
  the story for my birthday, I told my mom,
• 32:15
  you know, because I went to Amsterdam for my birthday,
• 32:17
  my mother told the family,
• 32:20
  she told the family where I was at,
• 32:21
  so my uncle called and cut me out.
• 32:23
  He's like, what are you doing in Afghanistan?
• 32:27
  I said, I'm an Amsterdam for my birthday.
• 32:30
  I mean, you're up.
• 32:31
  I'm not, I'm an Amsterdam, I'm not an Afghanistan.
• 32:34
  You know, you know, just the lack of geographic,
• 32:39
  you know, history, it's just really bad in America.
• 32:45
  And a lot of America still to this day,
• 32:47
  affiliate countries with bombing, you know,
• 32:49
  and it's just like they're still afraid to come abroad.
• 32:53
  And I try to speak positive about my experience abroad
• 32:57
  because I think that that's a real secret.
• 33:00
  You know, we grew up hearing the rich travel
• 33:03
  and the rich can afford to do this.
• 33:05
  And I'm like, well, I don't know what rich they were talking about
• 33:08
  because I am not, you know, I'm not a million there,
• 33:12
  but like, you know, you can live within your means.
• 33:14
  And I think that's the secret that a lot of Americans don't know.
• 33:19
  You know, a lot of, seeing a lot of Americans right now
• 33:21
  retiring in America and their social security
• 33:24
  is not able to keep up with inflation.
• 33:26
  They're barely able to afford to pay their bills
• 33:29
  for groceries.
• 33:30
  And then you come to a place like Asia
• 33:32
  where you still can find apartments for $200 a month.
• 33:35
  You know, and it's just like,
• 33:36
  your money goes further.
• 33:37
  Yeah, your money goes further.
• 33:38
  Do you think that you would have been able to fall in love
• 33:41
  with yourself outside of Europe?
• 33:43
  Or was it traveling?
• 33:45
  I'm trying to understand.
• 33:46
  Is it Europe the destination that did it for you
• 33:48
  or just getting away from Detroit?
• 33:49
  I'm this kid from Detroit with cardiac glasses.
• 33:53
  We have these cardiac ears.
• 33:55
  I got like an hour sign.
• 33:56
  I got chains on my neck.
• 33:58
  I got raw oxygen diamonds.
• 34:00
  I'm this super materialistic kid.
• 34:02
  And then I get to Europe and I'm completely naked.
• 34:06
  I mean, like I'm right the first time
• 34:08
  and I was in checker public in Prague.
• 34:11
  And a woman, she walked in a room
• 34:13
  on me while I was naked because she never saw a black person
• 34:16
  before.
• 34:18
  It wasn't sexual.
• 34:20
  She was just curious.
• 34:22
  And she was just like, oh wow, that's your real skin.
• 34:25
  And yeah, and she thought it was beautiful, you know?
• 34:28
  And then I didn't have to brush my,
• 34:32
  I didn't have to look a certain way.
• 34:34
  I didn't have to come with the accolades.
• 34:36
  I didn't have to come with the titles.
• 34:37
  I was just AJ traveling around Europe.
• 34:40
  And people were friendly.
• 34:43
  They were beautiful.
• 34:45
  They were teaching me how to enjoy life in a way
• 34:48
  that I never enjoyed life before.
• 34:51
  I mean, just being able to, I always felt that
• 34:53
  in order to have fun in America, you have to spend money.
• 34:57
  And often while I was traveling around Europe,
• 35:00
  you know, I'm in Greece.
• 35:01
  My culture for hosts were just taking me
• 35:03
  to the beach for the weekend.
• 35:05
  And, you know, just pushing me in a water,
• 35:07
  teaching me how, you know, like how I'm doing.
• 35:10
  No, no, it's very black, very black.
• 35:13
  You know, that depend on me, at all, to save you.
• 35:16
  So, hey, yeah.
• 35:18
  So, yeah, that was, yeah, that was just a beautiful thing.
• 35:20
  I mean, those lessons, you know,
• 35:24
  I learned so much during my time while I was in Europe.
• 35:27
  Remember, even my friend, the relationship he had
• 35:31
  with his mother, him and his mother,
• 35:33
  his name is Taylor, he lives in London.
• 35:35
  But I remember the first time I saw him and his mother,
• 35:37
  they were smoking weed together.
• 35:39
  They're white.
• 35:40
  Yeah, yeah, and they're white.
• 35:41
  And, you know, their mom was like, AJ, you know,
• 35:46
  you know, my kids can tell me anything.
• 35:49
  And I don't judge them.
• 35:51
  I know everything about them.
• 35:52
  All these parents don't know anything
• 35:53
  about their children.
• 35:54
  And I was like, oh, man, that's beautiful.
• 35:56
  I never really had a relationship like that with my mother.
• 35:58
  You know, I never really been able to talk to her
• 36:00
  about everything.
• 36:02
  Even like, you know, as far as sex education,
• 36:05
  we never talked about that in a black home, you know, really.
• 36:09
  So when you move back to Detroit,
• 36:11
  and you've had all of these experiences,
• 36:13
  and you've seen all of these things,
• 36:15
  you've seen relationships, how they can differ,
• 36:17
  how does your relationship with your mom shift?
• 36:20
  It started to shift when I was in college.
• 36:24
  I started opening up more.
• 36:26
  I started to express myself more deeply.
• 36:29
  That's not being more honest, more blunt, you know.
• 36:32
  Tell her about my dating life, how I feel.
• 36:35
  I was sharing a lot of emotions with her
• 36:37
  because I know a lot of people lived in that community.
• 36:40
  I didn't have to have this shale over me, you know,
• 36:44
  anymore as well.
• 36:45
  And it shifted.
• 36:47
  We became really strong.
• 36:48
  We have more of a brother that's just really shook now.
• 36:50
  Like we're really close now.
• 36:51
  Because my grandmother kind of raised,
• 36:53
  my mom had me in a young age.
• 36:55
  My grandmother raised me until I was like the age of five.
• 36:57
  Okay.
• 36:58
  While my mother was still working, you know.
• 37:00
  And so when do you make the move to Australia?
• 37:03
  I make the move, I make college,
• 37:06
  I make school, I make college.
• 37:11
  I'm in college.
• 37:13
  When I come back from the UK,
• 37:16
  my mentors asked me, AJ, what do you want to do after school?
• 37:21
  And I was like, I think I want to get a master's degree.
• 37:24
  And I believe his name was Adam or Matthew.
• 37:27
  He was like a heavier thought about Australia.
• 37:29
  I was like, hey, oh no.
• 37:31
  And I was like, I said, hey, oh no.
• 37:34
  I'm like, sharks and kangaroos.
• 37:36
  You know, place where a black person.
• 37:38
  And I was like, what?
• 37:39
  I don't even know no black people in Australia.
• 37:43
  And, you know, and I was just like,
• 37:45
  no way I'm going to get accepted.
• 37:46
  I applied to three universities there.
• 37:49
  And while I'm in Spain, you know,
• 37:52
  I'm just finished from my first year in Guadalajara
• 37:55
  in Toledo, I had another job offer in Madrid.
• 37:58
  And then I got my acceptance letter
• 38:01
  for the University of Sydney Business School.
• 38:03
  I didn't, I was like, well, this way, man.
• 38:06
  Why was he recommending Australia?
• 38:08
  He used to work for a company at the time.
• 38:11
  And, you know, that he used to help
• 38:13
  of Americans go to universities abroad.
• 38:16
  Okay.
• 38:17
  So it randomly came up.
• 38:19
  I think he just, he knew how much I loved my experience
• 38:23
  abroad in England.
• 38:24
  And how much I was just in love with traveling.
• 38:27
  I did not see it.
• 38:28
  I did not get it.
• 38:29
  I did not understand it.
• 38:30
  And that's why I sometimes, I think,
• 38:32
  the university directs you into a certain direction.
• 38:36
  And so when I was in Spain, I had no choice,
• 38:39
  but to defer the program my first year
• 38:40
  because I needed money for Australia.
• 38:42
  Okay.
• 38:43
  So I went back to Michigan for one year
• 38:45
  and I had to make the money and everything.
• 38:47
  And the money for your tuition and just life at school, then.
• 38:50
  So yeah, so yeah, so I went back to Michigan
• 38:52
  and interested story and I worked at a bank.
• 38:56
  And when I went back to Michigan,
• 38:57
  I told myself that I'm, I'm just gonna work
• 39:02
  and get out of here.
• 39:03
  Sadly enough, you know, we'll say sadly,
• 39:06
  but I fell in love with a woman.
• 39:08
  And, you know, also at the time,
• 39:11
  the bank that I was working at was like the lowest producing bank
• 39:14
  in Michigan and I met more millionaires
• 39:17
  and I turned the bank around to the number one bank
• 39:21
  in Arbor, district area at the time I was there.
• 39:24
  So I was, my sales was high.
• 39:26
  Okay, so you're selling.
• 39:27
  I'm selling and I, you know, I'm selling
• 39:29
  and I met this low producing bank.
• 39:32
  They're like the, they have the lowest sales in the district,
• 39:35
  but I transferred to this location
• 39:38
  because I was just like being downtown in Arbor.
• 39:41
  I was working at the time inside of a grocery store
• 39:43
  and we had this thing where banks were inside
• 39:45
  of grocery stores.
• 39:46
  I'm like, I'm tired of being in the Tampa,
• 39:48
  I'm trying to sell a bank account.
• 39:50
  It just wasn't my style.
• 39:51
  So I wanted to transfer to downtown in Arbor
• 39:54
  and my manager, they all love me.
• 39:56
  They're like, hey, they don't go
• 39:57
  it's the worst branch in the district.
• 39:59
  Don't go there.
• 40:00
  And I ended up going there and my manager was really cool
• 40:04
  and I'm in a meeting this millionaire named Ken
• 40:08
  and what I ended up happening was
• 40:11
  I was building a relationship with him.
• 40:12
  So I called him up one day and he was just like,
• 40:15
  yeah, let's grab breakfast.
• 40:16
  And every week I started getting breakfast with him
• 40:18
  and he should have started getting all timers.
• 40:23
  What's the premise that you're having breakfast
• 40:24
  with him every morning?
• 40:25
  I'm trying to bring going bank accounts for the bank.
• 40:27
  So I'm trying to bring on business for the bank
• 40:29
  but I ended up making a friend.
• 40:31
  And I ended up seeing his guys a mentor
• 40:34
  and as he was starting to lose his memory
• 40:38
  because he was in his 80s already,
• 40:39
  the only thing that he could remember
• 40:41
  was his travel stories.
• 40:43
  Now while I'm talking to Ken every week,
• 40:45
  I'm in a relationship, I'm in with the love of my life
• 40:48
  at the time.
• 40:49
  And I'm looking at someone in their 80s
• 40:51
  who has, who's losing it all, he can't remember anything
• 40:55
  but he can remember every detail from when he was in
• 40:58
  you know, Argentina or the car he drove in Peru,
• 41:02
  the socks the clothes he wore, he can remember every detail.
• 41:05
  And I'm like, oh my god, you know man,
• 41:07
  you know, those memories are just amazing.
• 41:10
  And I'm still young and I'm in love with this woman
• 41:13
  but you know, she's diagnosed with depression
• 41:16
  and it's just a lot going on here.
• 41:18
  How old are you at this point?
• 41:19
  I'm 24, 25.
• 41:21
  Okay.
• 41:22
  I ended up, we can't, I ended up closing
• 41:24
  a couple million dollar deals with him,
• 41:26
  making my branch number one in the district.
• 41:28
  So I got the money that I needed for Australia
• 41:31
  and I had to decide on leaving.
• 41:33
  At the time, my maturity just wasn't there.
• 41:36
  And I left to go to Australia
• 41:39
  and then Sally enough a few years later
• 41:40
  that my girlfriend, she committed suicide
• 41:43
  and my ex girlfriend, she committed suicide.
• 41:45
  And that hit me in a wrong way
• 41:48
  because I just felt like I just up and left.
• 41:51
  But yeah.
• 41:52
  You're with her, she knows that your plan
• 41:55
  is to get the money to go to Australia.
• 41:57
  She knew about it but she didn't think
• 41:59
  that I was gonna go through it.
• 42:01
  Okay, so she's under the impression
• 42:03
  that this is the relationship of her last time.
• 42:05
  Yeah, but I was just like, ah, you know,
• 42:08
  I don't wanna, you know, Ann Arbor,
• 42:10
  you know, the life in Ann Arbor was just she worked
• 42:12
  and you go to the bar, you drink,
• 42:14
  and you go to, you know, K-Mart or Target or RJ.
• 42:19
  And that's toxic.
• 42:20
  And I'm like, ah, just not really,
• 42:22
  my personality, my personality was just too big
• 42:26
  to just be in a small city for the rest of my life,
• 42:30
  especially with everything that I've experienced.
• 42:32
  You know, I just couldn't see myself, yeah, at the time.
• 42:36
  And was there ever consideration
• 42:37
  that you guys would do a long distance relationship?
• 42:39
  You know, I didn't feel, honestly,
• 42:41
  I didn't feel the time don't.
• 42:43
  It was just, it was like 24-hour time difference.
• 42:46
  It was so far away.
• 42:47
  And I'm still a broke college kid.
• 42:48
  You know, I made it enough for Australia.
• 42:50
  So I thought it was best to end things.
• 42:52
  I didn't really give it a try.
• 42:54
  I think if I could go back,
• 42:55
  I wouldn't probably get a little different.
• 42:56
  Okay.
• 42:57
  But when I got to Australia, I mean,
• 42:59
  I'm kinda glad that I didn't pursue it
• 43:01
  because I was very attractive in Australia.
• 43:06
  I was, you know, I didn't know that I would be
• 43:09
  that much in demand when I got there.
• 43:11
  It wasn't any black Americans at the time in Australia.
• 43:14
  So you don't feel that your relationship would have worked anyway?
• 43:17
  I don't feel they would have worked at the end
• 43:19
  because I was so young and yeah, at the time though.
• 43:22
  And how long after you had moved,
• 43:24
  did she choose to take her life?
• 43:27
  After about four or five years,
• 43:28
  kind of right after the whole COVID situation.
• 43:31
  Okay.
• 43:33
  Do you think that is associated her depression?
• 43:35
  You know, I think that,
• 43:37
  and I also think that the fact that,
• 43:39
  you know, when we were together,
• 43:40
  we were with each other every day.
• 43:41
  Okay.
• 43:42
  She moved out of her house because of me,
• 43:43
  you know, like, she was dependent upon me.
• 43:47
  At the time, I really didn't,
• 43:48
  I wasn't educated about dating someone with depression.
• 43:51
  So, you know, I'm just-
• 43:52
  Did you know she had depression when you were doing-
• 43:53
  I knew she didn't tell me to after three months
• 43:56
  into the relationship.
• 43:57
  I didn't know how serious it was.
• 43:58
  I didn't know that she was suicidal in high school.
• 44:01
  I did not know that she was heavily medicated.
• 44:04
  I didn't know that she was in a therapist twice a week.
• 44:08
  I didn't know how serious it was.
• 44:10
  I also didn't know that her parents
• 44:12
  were somewhat in control of the medication
• 44:14
  she was taking as well.
• 44:15
  Okay.
• 44:16
  So, it was a lot to it.
• 44:18
  I was just, I'm young.
• 44:19
  You know, I think 24, you're still a baby,
• 44:22
  you know, so I'm young.
• 44:23
  I don't really know what's going on.
• 44:25
  I don't know how to cater to her when she's in trouble.
• 44:29
  And we were just young.
• 44:31
  We were just having fun dating each other.
• 44:36
  And at the time, like I said,
• 44:37
  I just didn't-
• 44:38
  I think I should have handled that situation a lot more better.
• 44:42
  On a friendship, no.
• 44:43
  I think the way we ended things,
• 44:44
  we, you know, she didn't want to stay in touch
• 44:46
  because she didn't want to see my face.
• 44:48
  Okay.
• 44:49
  I wish I would have handled it a little bit more better, yeah.
• 44:51
  Yeah.
• 44:52
  So, in Australia, you are there for five years
• 44:55
  for your master's program.
• 44:57
  And then you stay to work.
• 44:58
  Yeah.
• 44:59
  Five years is 100 international students.
• 45:03
  I always tell people that I graduated top of my class.
• 45:07
  And I think sometimes people think that,
• 45:09
  oh, he graduated with the best grades.
• 45:12
  I graduated with the most connections.
• 45:14
  Okay.
• 45:15
  Out of 100 students, international students in the program,
• 45:18
  I was the only student to get sponsored
• 45:21
  and stay in the country.
• 45:23
  So a lot of, you know, so I brag about that
• 45:26
  because I see all these international students
• 45:28
  that come to America, they go to Australia,
• 45:30
  they go to the UK,
• 45:32
  and they always have to return back to their homes.
• 45:34
  When I got to Australia, I was working.
• 45:37
  I was working under the table, over the table,
• 45:39
  side of the table, I was working.
• 45:41
  And I was networking, networking, networking.
• 45:43
  So by the time I graduated, yeah.
• 45:46
  I mean, I still graduated with honors,
• 45:48
  so I graduated with honors.
• 45:49
  But even the people who were straight A's,
• 45:53
  they couldn't even get sponsored.
• 45:54
  Okay.
• 45:55
  So I got, it's sponsored by a company.
• 45:57
  I got a visa, I got a high salary,
• 46:00
  as well, higher salary than most of my friends.
• 46:03
  So I think I'm starting off at 100K,
• 46:05
  fresh out of uni,
• 46:06
  and compared to they were starting off with $50,000,
• 46:09
  working at like Deloitte and EY,
• 46:12
  working a hundred hours a week.
• 46:14
  Right.
• 46:15
  So I'm always the one buying the beers.
• 46:16
  And yeah.
• 46:18
  But the thing about it, when I wanted to stay,
• 46:21
  I had my friend was in a house one day,
• 46:22
  and he was a, I didn't know what I wanted to do.
• 46:25
  And he was like, hey, man, you should be a recruiter.
• 46:28
  And I was like, well, what is a recruiter?
• 46:30
  I didn't know when it was looked it up,
• 46:32
  and I had my interview in Australia.
• 46:35
  And I remember my managers,
• 46:38
  with the first day they interviewed me,
• 46:40
  they were like, man, why should we hire you?
• 46:41
  How like, because I'm sexy as fuck.
• 46:44
  And I was like, and they laughed.
• 46:46
  And I think it was the first time
• 46:48
  that they laughed in the interview,
• 46:52
  because everyone is so serious.
• 46:54
  Okay.
• 46:55
  They just liked my personality.
• 46:56
  I was like, yeah, we need this guy in the office.
• 46:58
  And, you know, because everyone was just, you know,
• 47:01
  so, hey, sir, yes, you know, tight tie,
• 47:04
  and everything, I'm like, oh, come on, just relax.
• 47:07
  Right.
• 47:07
  And, but I was a hustler.
• 47:11
  Like, I just came with a 90-day business plan.
• 47:14
  I was super serious about the job.
• 47:16
  I wasn't joking about getting the job,
• 47:19
  but I was just funny.
• 47:20
  And I think they loved the personality.
• 47:23
  I stayed there for two years, went to another company
• 47:26
  because it was paying more money.
• 47:27
  Okay.
• 47:28
  And then, I was starting to lose hair,
• 47:31
  I was going bald, I was stressed.
• 47:32
  Okay.
• 47:33
  And I decided that it was just time
• 47:35
  to work for myself at the time.
• 47:38
  Tell me a bit about life in Australia.
• 47:39
  Your initial impression was sharks, wildlife.
• 47:42
  What is it like when you get there?
• 47:44
  Oh, man, that was beautiful.
• 47:45
  Super, I mean, I often think about how expensive it was.
• 47:48
  But it was super expensive,
• 47:50
  but I was making really good money.
• 47:53
  And, you know, it was, I was suiting time every day,
• 47:57
  you know, very corporate.
• 47:58
  Going to the office downtown CBD, I loved it.
• 48:03
  It was a huge pressure on drinking culture.
• 48:07
  I feel that it's hard to even fit in
• 48:09
  to Australia if you don't drink.
• 48:12
  Okay.
• 48:13
  So, as soon as I got there my first week, you know,
• 48:15
  every Friday they're pulling out beers, free drinks,
• 48:17
  they're taking us out to the clubs.
• 48:19
  Yeah, the CEOs popping a car, you know, we're drinking.
• 48:22
  And then you're drinking afterward and going to the bar.
• 48:25
  It was just constantly drinking.
• 48:26
  Are you working or are you just drinking?
• 48:28
  We're both.
• 48:29
  People were half drunk at work.
• 48:31
  And I'm like, whoa, this is something different, you know,
• 48:33
  to be in a culture like this.
• 48:35
  It was so beautiful, so gorgeous.
• 48:38
  I think that realistically, I mean,
• 48:41
  one of my black friends from Atlanta,
• 48:44
  he's a UX designer, but I remember he was living
• 48:46
  in an apartment for a million dollars.
• 48:49
  He spent the million dollars on an apartment.
• 48:52
  And he had a family of four.
• 48:54
  And I was just thinking to myself, like, this is not realistic.
• 48:57
  You know, like, man, you know, I'm not gonna, you know,
• 49:00
  work so much to the point where I don't even get a chance
• 49:04
  to enjoy life.
• 49:05
  And I saw a lot, I met a lot of millionaires in Australia.
• 49:08
  They were constantly working.
• 49:11
  And then it's just like, okay, they will work, work, work,
• 49:14
  sell their companies, make millions of dollars.
• 49:16
  But then by the time you make all that money,
• 49:18
  you're in your 60s and your 70s, you know,
• 49:20
  and I'm just like, I don't, I don't want to be 60s.
• 49:22
  If life is so good, sunshine, living your best life,
• 49:25
  networking, what's causing the stress?
• 49:28
  I wasn't in control of my freedom.
• 49:30
  I had to go into an office.
• 49:32
  I didn't like offices.
• 49:33
  I, you know, claustrophobic almost being in an office.
• 49:37
  So I like open space environments.
• 49:39
  I didn't like the meetings.
• 49:41
  I didn't like the whole suit and ties anymore.
• 49:43
  I missed that young kid in me who was traveling around the world.
• 49:49
  And also, if not now in, you know,
• 49:52
  I just feel like I had to take a chance on myself.
• 49:56
  I had job offers if it didn't work out,
• 49:58
  but I had to go take a chance.
• 49:59
  I was super serious about going to work for myself.
• 50:02
  And what I was doing was, it's kind of like real estate.
• 50:06
  I mean, you can just do it yourself.
• 50:07
  So I was like, I gotta take a chance.
• 50:09
  So I moved back to America, crying.
• 50:13
  And you know, I sold everything.
• 50:15
  We moved back to America to start my agency at the time to work for myself.
• 50:19
  And this is recruitment agency?
• 50:21
  Yeah, I started my recruitment agency.
• 50:23
  But I had, I needed income before I started, when I started it.
• 50:26
  So I was working at the, went back to the bank.
• 50:29
  The same bank?
• 50:30
  The same bank.
• 50:31
  And I was at the top.
• 50:32
  Yeah, man, bring back the money.
• 50:33
  Bring back the money.
• 50:34
  Bring back to the bank, bank rules completely changed.
• 50:36
  Okay.
• 50:37
  And the key is working at the bank was not hungry.
• 50:42
  And then my manager there at the time, they brought me back in as a system manager.
• 50:46
  She, after a few weeks into the job, she had a stroke.
• 50:50
  Okay.
• 50:51
  And one day, she didn't come into the office for like the whole weekend.
• 50:54
  And I saw the district manager immediately trying to find a replacement for it.
• 50:59
  She'd been in the company for 20 years, didn't even give her a chance to come back.
• 51:04
  Wow.
• 51:05
  And I just felt like, that hit me really hard, because I'm like, I just left Australia
• 51:09
  to, you know, I'm, but I'm, I'm there for a reason.
• 51:12
  I'm trying to get on my feet.
• 51:13
  And I'm also working teacher English to be one of these, these are students.
• 51:18
  I'm like, trying to prep them to get sponsor.
• 51:20
  Okay.
• 51:21
  So I'm teacher English to Japanese or Chinese students.
• 51:23
  So I'm doing that in the morning.
• 51:24
  I'm working at the bank from like seven to seven, and then I'm going to I hop, you
• 51:28
  know, it's like the pancake house in America, because I only have a office.
• 51:32
  So I hop had free coffee and free Wi-Fi, and it was my first class I brought over in
• 51:36
  Australia.
• 51:37
  So I'm working at night to close my first deal.
• 51:42
  And after like three months, I'm doing this for three months, straight, three jobs.
• 51:48
  And I close my first deal for like $22,000, I mean, I mean, I hops crying, you know, the
• 51:52
  shelf's like, man, I know the pancakes, not that bad.
• 51:55
  And, you know, and I was just like, and I just took a chance of myself.
• 51:59
  I was crying because it wasn't about the money at all.
• 52:02
  It was just proven to myself that I can make something without relying on someone.
• 52:09
  And then after that, I made a couple more deals and I started working for myself full
• 52:13
  of time.
• 52:14
  How do you go about making deals in Australia from the States?
• 52:18
  I just had a lot of connections in Australia.
• 52:21
  And I knew I read a new recruiting process.
• 52:23
  I had a lot of candidates already had a lot of clients.
• 52:26
  So I just brought on a client, you know, and pretty much started recruiting candidates
• 52:31
  in Australia on their day, and quibbling job sites.
• 52:34
  Okay.
• 52:35
  And, you know, pretty much we just helped clients find employees pretty much.
• 52:39
  And I helped to find the right employee and I got the paycheck.
• 52:43
  And then after that, yeah, that was, this was during COVID and then when I started making
• 52:48
  money, my friend had told me to come to the Dominican Republic and that's why I full
• 52:53
  of time started becoming a, you know, nomad again.
• 52:56
  So you lived in Dominican Republic before Thailand?
• 52:58
  I lived after leaving Australia, I went back to America for two years because I was stuck
• 53:03
  in America during COVID.
• 53:05
  And then after that, I moved to South America and then went to Asia, Europe and Asia.
• 53:11
  Is this home?
• 53:12
  No, no, no, it's not home, you know, it's not, it's right now.
• 53:17
  I think right now, I think that I like places for timelines in my life because I'm, you
• 53:24
  know, I don't have a family just yet.
• 53:27
  But I think if I have a family, I don't know if Bangkok is going to be the location for
• 53:30
  a family.
• 53:31
  Oh, really?
• 53:32
  Why?
• 53:33
  It's just too busy for a family.
• 53:34
  It's just overpopulated is the trains are at full capacity, it's extremely hot, the
• 53:41
  air pollution, traffic is just too long.
• 53:45
  And, you know, I like convenience for when I have a family.
• 53:48
  I like, you know, I don't, you know, I definitely going to get a nanny, I'm just telling you
• 53:51
  that right now, kind of have two nannies, but, but, but I just want convenience for when
• 53:56
  I have a family.
• 53:57
  So I'm looking at locations like Malaysia, I'm looking at locations like maybe the Philippines
• 54:02
  as well, or Brazil, I love Brazil.
• 54:05
  So I love being around, I just love being around people that look like me more.
• 54:09
  So I don't know, I don't know where that is going to take me.
• 54:11
  I'm still young.
• 54:12
  I'm only 35.
• 54:13
  So, you know, I don't know where that's going to take you.
• 54:16
  Are you dating?
• 54:17
  I'm dating in a relationship right now with a Filipino woman in a relationship for the
• 54:22
  last two years.
• 54:23
  You met here in Thailand?
• 54:24
  We met on the online dating app, okay, okay, a few bit.
• 54:29
  We talked for four months and I think, you know, that's like being a more healthier
• 54:34
  way to, for me, to really have a deeper connection with someone, everything is so fast
• 54:42
  here.
• 54:43
  You know, talking online, you're like going on Tinder, you can meet someone within 10 minutes
• 54:48
  or an hour.
• 54:49
  And I loved the fact that me and her talked for four months and we got to know each other.
• 54:53
  But now we're at a stage right now where, you know, like I said, I'm thinking more so
• 54:56
  about having a family in the future, so now I got to ask more and important and tough
• 55:00
  questions.
• 55:01
  I feel like everyone who lives here, who has dated or got married, everyone meets everyone
• 55:06
  online.
• 55:07
  Yeah.
• 55:08
  Is that the thing in Bangkok, no one meets people in person anymore?
• 55:12
  Asian men are definitely are not approaching women here.
• 55:17
  What do you mean?
• 55:18
  They're not, it's just not culturally a thing that they do, you know, like in America.
• 55:23
  So when I was single and I would approach women, that would just be like, whoa, you know,
• 55:30
  huh?
• 55:31
  You know, I'm like, yeah, hey, I like you, you know, coffee tomorrow.
• 55:36
  And that's considered too forward, aggressive, how is that received?
• 55:40
  So it's considered rare, because it's not done.
• 55:46
  It's just not something people don't do.
• 55:48
  So without online dating, do we know what was happening?
• 55:52
  I think without, I think online dating creates this barrier and this level of confidence
• 55:57
  that you can have because people are not able to see what you look like when you first
• 56:02
  wake up in the morning, you know, and I think, you know, and also it gives you a chance.
• 56:07
  I feel like online dating gives you a chance if you're not the most confident, it gives
• 56:11
  you the chance to win someone over with your personality as well.
• 56:15
  But I think that it depends on your locations and where you're looking at and what you're
• 56:20
  looking for as well.
• 56:22
  For me, with the lifestyle that I have, I had to realize much sooner that I need a partner
• 56:28
  that can move around with me.
• 56:29
  Okay.
• 56:30
  And I need a partner that can work online and open to traveling in the world with me because
• 56:36
  I cannot stop.
• 56:39
  And that scares me as well.
• 56:41
  It's a beautiful thing, but it's a scary thing as well, because it's like, well, do you
• 56:45
  really want to have a family or if you have a family, they just got to come, they just
• 56:49
  got to come with me too.
• 56:50
  So you don't visualize ever settling?
• 56:53
  I can't.
• 56:54
  I cannot see myself.
• 56:56
  I've been looking at purchasing a house for the last two years and I don't even know where
• 57:02
  to buy it.
• 57:03
  You know, like I'm ready, I got the capital and everything, but I don't even know where
• 57:08
  to even put the house.
• 57:09
  Are you running away from something?
• 57:14
  I don't think I'm running away from something.
• 57:17
  I think I'm just, you know, I just find home in the communities that I live in and I
• 57:23
  just feel that I, I don't know, I think I just fear that life is so short and I think
• 57:29
  he has human beings take it for granted and I feel that it's extremely arrogant for a
• 57:35
  lot of people who wake up every day and say, I have next week, I have tomorrow, I have
• 57:41
  six months, I have a year and I'm like, you're crazy and you're lying to yourself.
• 57:45
  If you're telling yourself that when you wake up, when I'm seeing, when I just saw like
• 57:50
  20 of my school friends die last year and they were working at McDonald's, they were
• 57:54
  working at Best Buy, they were working at these, they were not fulfilling their passion,
• 57:59
  they didn't do it what they love, they didn't find love, they didn't have true friendship,
• 58:04
  true relationships, life is too short to be lying to yourself, you know, especially
• 58:09
  when it comes to the things that you want to do and I don't really care about how you
• 58:13
  feel about on the outside or on the inside, but what do you want to do before that clock
• 58:19
  takes and you know, crazy enough, even to this day, like when my mom, I'd be trying to
• 58:23
  talk to her about, like I was trying to, had a conversation with my mom, I was trying
• 58:27
  to ask her like, hey, mom, what coffin are you looking for?
• 58:31
  Were you with me to bury you?
• 58:32
  She's like, what the, what the fuck, do you want me to die?
• 58:34
  So my mom hates talking about death.
• 58:36
  Okay.
• 58:37
  The black family hates talking about death.
• 58:39
  Why do you like talking about it?
• 58:41
  I look at my, my suburbian friends who are prepared for everything, I'm like, I'm
• 58:50
  not prepared for anything.
• 58:51
  I've spoken about it with my dad at length.
• 58:53
  I think I just, I like having a plan.
• 58:56
  I like knowing that it is inevitable and although my dad is my favorite person and you
• 59:01
  don't want to recognize when that time comes, I know that I'll be such an emotional
• 59:06
  wreck that I need to kind of know the plan so I can go into autopilot, but a lot of people
• 59:11
  are really uncomfortable talking about death.
• 59:14
  Uncomfortable and financially not prepared for it as well.
• 59:18
  And it's just like, you know, especially when you have so many other things to handle
• 59:22
  in my mother owns a house, she owns so many stuff and I don't live, I don't live in America
• 59:27
  anymore.
• 59:28
  Are you own a child?
• 59:29
  No, I have a brother.
• 59:30
  Okay.
• 59:31
  But, you know, but I'm the responsible one.
• 59:33
  Is your brother older?
• 59:34
  No, I'm the old one.
• 59:35
  I'm the old one.
• 59:36
  Okay.
• 59:37
  I'm the responsible one.
• 59:38
  So it's just like, you know, so yeah, I just feel like, you know, we don't talk about
• 59:42
  death much, but most importantly, I just feel that, like I say, it's just, it's just
• 59:47
  extremely arrogant when people say maybe next year, maybe in five years and I'm like
• 59:52
  life just don't work, life don't work that way.
• 59:54
  You can't tell life when you're ready, you know, because when your time is up, your time
• 59:59
  is up.
• 1:00:00
  And I think that's why I move around so much.
• 1:00:02
  I feel like I still have even seen, I think I still got things on my bucket list.
• 1:00:06
  I just got so much on my list.
• 1:00:08
  Where do you want to go?
• 1:00:09
  Where do you want to see?
• 1:00:10
  Still haven't been in Norway.
• 1:00:11
  Uh, what the hell is in Norway?
• 1:00:13
  I don't know.
• 1:00:15
  I go to, sometimes, like randomly, I was in Sofia, I was in Bulgaria, I just go to remote
• 1:00:23
  areas and turn and turn the internet off.
• 1:00:26
  Sometimes I'm traveling and people even know where I'm at.
• 1:00:28
  Okay.
• 1:00:29
  And, you know, I just like to get away and I love immersing myself into the culture.
• 1:00:34
  So I like living, I'm not a hotel guy.
• 1:00:36
  I want to live in the Airbnb.
• 1:00:37
  I want to live in like a local.
• 1:00:39
  I want to walk to the corner store, go to the grocery store.
• 1:00:43
  I want to immerse myself there to see if I can really see myself living here.
• 1:00:48
  And I just like those hitting gems, like I love Vienna, I love Austria.
• 1:00:52
  I just, you know, you know, it's not something to brag about, but it's the place that Hitler
• 1:00:57
  wanted to retire.
• 1:00:58
  It's so beautiful.
• 1:00:59
  You know, I'm not bragging about that.
• 1:01:00
  But I'm just saying, you know, this guy was a gangster, evil guy, and he wanted to retire
• 1:01:08
  in this beautiful, beautiful country.
• 1:01:11
  But so many gems and places out there that, and these cities that I go to, they take you
• 1:01:17
  into places or put you in a mine so you never really been at it.
• 1:01:21
  And what I love so much, I think the greatest gift and the most beautiful thing about traveling
• 1:01:26
  is that you can reinvent yourself.
• 1:01:28
  You can be anybody you want to be.
• 1:01:30
  And I think people don't understand the power of that because right now, whoever you are,
• 1:01:34
  you don't like your situation, you don't like your friends, you like your job, you can
• 1:01:37
  start over.
• 1:01:38
  You have a new name, you have a new life, you have new friends.
• 1:01:42
  And I think that's what I love so much about traveling.
• 1:01:44
  When I go to Paris, I'm on a re, you know, and when I go to Italy, I'm rock-o, so I just
• 1:01:53
  like, I like starting over.
• 1:01:55
  Who is AJ in Bangkok?
• 1:01:57
  I'm just, you know, I'm just AJ.
• 1:02:02
  I think I'm AJ here and I'm the kid that enjoys, I mean, I enjoy my freedom.
• 1:02:08
  I enjoy that I'm at peace here as well, especially when I have to speak to my family back home
• 1:02:15
  and look at some of the things that they struggle with, you know, with, like my mom called
• 1:02:18
  me during Christmas time and said her electricity bill was $600 because of the winter time and
• 1:02:25
  I'm like, oh, 30 bucks, mom, you know, like, you know, $30 or compared to a file out
• 1:02:31
  of order bill, but I just love the culture here and I love the community.
• 1:02:34
  I love it.
• 1:02:35
  Well, when I love so much about Asia, there's so many free things to do.
• 1:02:39
  You know, when you, like, walk into like, like the icon CM or the Louis Vuitton Museum,
• 1:02:46
  you would think that that would be like in Miami, hands down, that would be $100, $200.
• 1:02:51
  Yeah.
• 1:02:52
  I went to a museum yesterday.
• 1:02:53
  It's a children's discovery museum.
• 1:02:54
  And I was asking how much is it because I was confused and the lady was like, no, it's
• 1:02:59
  free.
• 1:03:00
  I was like, oh, really?
• 1:03:01
  Yeah.
• 1:03:02
  And that's a, you know, when I was a child growing up, we, you know, growing up poor,
• 1:03:07
  you know, we went to a lot of buffets.
• 1:03:10
  So we went to go to the corrals or, you know, or the olive garden.
• 1:03:15
  You know, that was like a gift or that's the one thing we did as a family growing up.
• 1:03:20
  But it's crazy and it's a beautiful thing when Asia where you can just take your kids.
• 1:03:23
  Like, hey kids, okay, we're going to do activity today.
• 1:03:26
  We're going to take a 10-bott, you know, train ride to the museum and then we're going
• 1:03:30
  to go to the food court and get a full meal for $2 and, you know, we're going to get some
• 1:03:34
  art, we're going to get some history, we're going to get some food culture, we're going
• 1:03:37
  to try a new meal.
• 1:03:38
  And it's just like every day when you're waking up, you're learning something new, you're
• 1:03:42
  trying a new new cuisine, you're trying to get in culture, you get in history, you're
• 1:03:47
  never, you're at a point where you're not going to stop learning or stop growing.
• 1:03:52
  And I just feel like in America, we don't really, in certain cities, we don't really
• 1:03:55
  have access to that level of innovation or, you know, because everything's so much,
• 1:04:02
  everything's centered around money.
• 1:04:04
  So it's just like people are not even going out because you got to spend money as soon
• 1:04:07
  as you walk outside the house where it doesn't sound like you'll ever return to the states
• 1:04:11
  to live.
• 1:04:12
  Is that fair to say?
• 1:04:13
  No, no, no.
• 1:04:14
  I would never, never, just grandma, the only reason I'm going back right now is because
• 1:04:20
  my mother and my grandmother's alive.
• 1:04:23
  That's the only reason I go back to America.
• 1:04:25
  Okay.
• 1:04:26
  You know, after they're passing, most likely won't be returning back.
• 1:04:30
  I don't, you know, I don't, also I don't really believe in, I believe in homeschooling
• 1:04:34
  for my children.
• 1:04:35
  Oh, so I'm a strong believer in that, I don't want my kids to go to school, they could
• 1:04:40
  go off to college, but I'm not, but I think mostly throughout the, while raising them,
• 1:04:45
  when I do have children, they're going to be homeschooled for their mostly.
• 1:04:49
  Why?
• 1:04:50
  Because even one, I mean, I've spent so many years in school and two, a lot of things
• 1:05:00
  that I've learned, I've never used, I have all this debt and I'm just like one, it doesn't
• 1:05:05
  make sense for a child to go to a school in America, spend 60,000 or 100,000 on education
• 1:05:14
  and not have a guaranteed job.
• 1:05:16
  It's like the biggest hustle, the biggest scam, the biggest, you know, I wish that I was
• 1:05:22
  a part of that industry, but it's like the biggest hustle ever, like to tell a child
• 1:05:28
  to go spend 60,000, 70,000 on a career and they don't even have access to a job when they
• 1:05:34
  graduate, you know, a lot of stuff is just not needed.
• 1:05:38
  I believe that I want my children to be more innovative focus, more business focus, more
• 1:05:43
  language focus.
• 1:05:44
  I don't feel that America's going to be the number one dominant economy or country to
• 1:05:51
  live in or work in in the future.
• 1:05:54
  I think places like China, I think places like Japan, places like Brazil are going to be
• 1:06:01
  number one locations.
• 1:06:03
  So I think that it's going to be important for your children to be child-lingual.
• 1:06:07
  I think bilingual is going to be less, like it's not even going to be your bilingual.
• 1:06:12
  But already most people speak more, being monolingual is the minority, right?
• 1:06:17
  And it's funny that you say that because when I was pregnant, I was like, I need bilingual
• 1:06:20
  children and I chose French.
• 1:06:22
  So I only speak French to my kids.
• 1:06:24
  My brain is forever tired, but I also think that more than even just language ability,
• 1:06:30
  I think it shapes the way you see the world.
• 1:06:33
  Someone I met, her mom is French and her dad is British and she said that she has different
• 1:06:38
  personas when she's speaking a different language.
• 1:06:40
  Our French self is more assertive than her British self.
• 1:06:43
  And I find that it's really interesting how just the way we speak can change our personalities
• 1:06:50
  or how we perceive ourselves.
• 1:06:51
  Have you picked up any tie while you're here?
• 1:06:53
  No, horrible.
• 1:06:54
  I mean classes and I be struggling with my teacher and my teacher has this broke camera.
• 1:07:03
  So I barely can hear her on her microphone and I'm horrible at it.
• 1:07:08
  I was good at picking up Spanish and picking up French at the time, but I just think it's
• 1:07:14
  a beautiful thing and I think it's going to be important for our children's future.
• 1:07:19
  I do want my kids to still have access.
• 1:07:21
  I think passport access is going to be the most important thing.
• 1:07:25
  So I do, you know, but if I can start over again, if I can tell my younger self, I think
• 1:07:30
  that I would have went to school in Germany or France.
• 1:07:38
  For someone like me that loves traveling so much and also I can't stay still.
• 1:07:46
  I think that having passport accessibility would have been an advantage for me.
• 1:07:52
  You know, I'm limited sometimes to the country I go to if I don't have a visa or a sponsorship.
• 1:07:56
  With an American passport?
• 1:07:57
  Yeah.
• 1:07:58
  I'm limited to a lot of jobs in America.
• 1:08:01
  I've had sponsorship opportunities for these jobs.
• 1:08:04
  So in France, when you go to school for two years, you're eligible for citizenship.
• 1:08:08
  I didn't know that.
• 1:08:09
  Yeah, if you also have to do a level B testing, but that's the basic skill level.
• 1:08:16
  So if I was younger at 18, if I could do it all over again, I would have went to school
• 1:08:20
  in France or Germany, I would have did my two to four years, did my bachelor's degree,
• 1:08:26
  applied for citizenship and got a European passport and then my American passport on top
• 1:08:32
  of that.
• 1:08:33
  Then I probably would have went to get my master's in Germany or Australia or somewhere
• 1:08:38
  in South America or maybe Portugal to try to get a third one.
• 1:08:43
  Because after five years, you can get your citizenship, you get a passport and Portugal
• 1:08:48
  as well.
• 1:08:49
  I would have focused on getting more passport at a younger age just to have that freedom
• 1:08:55
  to now that I know that I want to travel and work.
• 1:09:00
  I can go to these countries and work full of time as well.
• 1:09:03
  I don't have to worry about the whole visa situation because a lot of companies still
• 1:09:06
  to this day when it comes to sponsorship, they're still going to take as many citizens
• 1:09:10
  over the foreigners as much as possible.
• 1:09:14
  But I think I would have just went about it a different route.
• 1:09:17
  How's your mom visited you here in Thailand?
• 1:09:19
  No, my mom hasn't visited me.
• 1:09:22
  No, she has, she's afraid to go into planes.
• 1:09:25
  So I'm trying to get her over next year.
• 1:09:27
  She doesn't get it though.
• 1:09:28
  A lot of families still don't get it.
• 1:09:31
  What do you mean?
• 1:09:32
  They see me here, they see my lifestyle, one, they think I'm rich.
• 1:09:35
  And two, they don't really get the whole, you know, I feel that it's a cheat code living
• 1:09:44
  here.
• 1:09:45
  And I feel that when people back home are waking up to their lifestyles, they're waking
• 1:09:51
  up to, you know, I was there.
• 1:09:53
  I went to America, I had to wake up before I had to get ready for work, I had to go get
• 1:09:58
  it breathed, spend coffee, spend 30, 40 minutes in traffic.
• 1:10:02
  Be at the office at eight hours, spend another two trying to get home and then you're getting
• 1:10:07
  home watching TV and you're going to sleep, you're not taking care of your health, you're
• 1:10:11
  not able to go out, you could barely keep up with bills.
• 1:10:13
  And it's just like, it's a cheat code because it's just like, you don't have to live
• 1:10:18
  that way.
• 1:10:19
  Are your mom think that your life in Thailand is the same as your life in America?
• 1:10:24
  No, no, she doesn't really get, like a lot of people don't get it, they see it but
• 1:10:33
  they don't get it.
• 1:10:34
  It's like a secret, it's like you're living in the matrix.
• 1:10:36
  You know, it's just like a secret, like they're seeing this lifestyle but they just don't
• 1:10:40
  get how, you know, like there's people in America right now, you know, getting their social
• 1:10:47
  security check for $3,000 but they're spending $2,000 a month on rent, $500 on groceries
• 1:10:52
  and their penny paycheck.
• 1:10:54
  And it's just like, you can, at $3,000, you can come over here and spend $300 a month
• 1:10:59
  on rent, you know, and have savings, you know.
• 1:11:03
  So do you think it's the, that they can't understand how your lifestyle could be a lot more
• 1:11:08
  affordable here or is there a misconception about living in Thailand?
• 1:11:12
  It's a misconception about living in Thailand but I don't think they understand affordability
• 1:11:18
  but I think the most important thing that they don't get is that they can be free more.
• 1:11:24
  There's maybe they don't want the freedom.
• 1:11:26
  Well, Harriet Tubman, she once said, you know, I freed a thousand slaves, I could have
• 1:11:31
  freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.
• 1:11:34
  Can you imagine Harriet Tubman going to the cotton picking fields and saying, yo, let's
• 1:11:42
  go.
• 1:11:43
  And the slaves are like, what do you mean?
• 1:11:45
  We good.
• 1:11:46
  We, we're good.
• 1:11:49
  And then when happens, COVID comes and people who have been at these jobs for 10, 20 years,
• 1:11:55
  just get let go like that.
• 1:11:58
  And now they're like, I don't have nowhere to go, I don't have nowhere to do, I have
• 1:12:01
  a family, I got four kids, I don't know what to do.
• 1:12:05
  And it's like, well, why would you let someone have that much control and power over your
• 1:12:10
  life and over your family life?
• 1:12:12
  So do you think that you would have been able to have the same courage to pack up and leave
• 1:12:16
  had you had a family and responsibilities?
• 1:12:19
  Because working in Thailand, from my understanding, it's not easy to necessarily just get a job
• 1:12:23
  as a foreigner.
• 1:12:25
  And so I appreciate the freedom, however, I do think that age and stage in life has to come
• 1:12:32
  up part of the conversation, right?
• 1:12:33
  Because if I'm at home, wherever home is, and I have to feed my family and I have these
• 1:12:38
  responsibilities, I can't necessarily take a gamble on coach surfing.
• 1:12:43
  No, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not saying take a gamble now, that was young AJ.
• 1:12:49
  But there are a lot of families starting to move over abroad.
• 1:12:54
  But I think that when you're stuck in a job for five, 10 years, I was just telling my
• 1:13:00
  friend when I was working in Australia, I was working 80 hours a week, I didn't have
• 1:13:03
  time to think, I didn't have time to learn new skills.
• 1:13:08
  I started learning real estate, I started learning trading, I started learning dorm recruiting.
• 1:13:14
  You don't even have time to learn new skills.
• 1:13:17
  And a lot of people, I mean, especially with the advancement of technology, some people
• 1:13:21
  haven't even accepted the reality that their jobs are not going to be around within the
• 1:13:26
  next five to 10 years.
• 1:13:27
  There's already a fully automated AI, McDonald's, there's fully automated factories already.
• 1:13:34
  There are packing and delivering issues, like the whole construction industry may be going,
• 1:13:40
  we'll be going soon, the finance industry will be going soon.
• 1:13:44
  So it's just a matter of, okay, yeah, I know some things, it may sound far-stretched to
• 1:13:51
  some people, but there also is a huge reality that you're going to have to do something no
• 1:13:56
  matter what.
• 1:13:57
  You're just going to sit around and wait, because I would not want us to go.
• 1:14:03
  I do think that we may go into a universal income, but a universal income is not going
• 1:14:09
  to be good, because a universal income is going to cover bills, health care, and food.
• 1:14:16
  It's not going to recover, it's not going to cover that flight to Paris.
• 1:14:19
  That flight to Germany, but we could head into a future of a universal income with the
• 1:14:25
  advancement of AI taking over so many jobs.
• 1:14:28
  It's scary the reality that, okay, yeah, if you don't face the reality of leaving your
• 1:14:35
  situation now, you're going to be in a situation where you have no choice eventually.
• 1:14:39
  You don't want to be in that situation.
• 1:14:41
  Is there anything about living in Thailand that you just can't get your head around?
• 1:14:44
  For me, I understand why we can't put toilet paper in the toilet, but it really bothers
• 1:14:49
  me.
• 1:14:50
  Every place I've stayed at, I don't know if this is a Thai thing, but there's no hot water
• 1:14:54
  in the sink at the kitchen.
• 1:14:56
  It's always just one way.
• 1:14:57
  I don't understand how it's also washed dishes and steamed the pot with, I have to boil
• 1:15:01
  the kettle and pour it in.
• 1:15:03
  I'm just wondering, as someone who's lived here for four years, are there any things where
• 1:15:06
  you're just like this is strange?
• 1:15:08
  I haven't really, or you don't cook, because I feel like nobody out here is cooking.
• 1:15:14
  That's why I don't notice the hot water.
• 1:15:16
  Yeah, I'm not cooking.
• 1:15:17
  I'm definitely eating a lot of take out, you know, it's good and is bad.
• 1:15:23
  One thing I would say is, I mean, well, it's just, it's too convenient, let's say that.
• 1:15:28
  And that's a bad thing as well.
• 1:15:30
  You know, I know it's something, it sounds like I'm bragging about it, but sometimes
• 1:15:34
  it can be a bad thing because you can walk outside your house and get a $5 on the
• 1:15:39
  side.
• 1:15:40
  You can have food delivered, you can have your clothes washed, pressed, iron, and delivered
• 1:15:44
  to your house.
• 1:15:45
  Loving the laundry.
• 1:15:46
  Yeah, it's just, it's too convenient to the point where you become this lazy human being
• 1:15:51
  and it's like, well, I don't have to do anything.
• 1:15:54
  So yeah, I think it's, you know, I do miss having to do things in your own little bit in
• 1:16:00
  America.
• 1:16:01
  How has Thailand changed you?
• 1:16:04
  I'm more calm.
• 1:16:05
  I'm more patient, because Thai people are slow sometimes, you know, so I'm where I used
• 1:16:11
  to be super, in America used to be super fast, you know, and I used to eat really fast,
• 1:16:16
  I used to, you know, sometimes even still talk fast, but it calms you down, you know,
• 1:16:22
  when you're interacting with a lot of people here in the community here, you know, so I
• 1:16:28
  mean, also life doesn't move as fast.
• 1:16:30
  I felt like in America, Monday would turn into Friday and I'm just like, but I feel
• 1:16:37
  younger.
• 1:16:38
  I feel that I look younger.
• 1:16:40
  I felt like I was looking, oh, I was looking 41 when I was in Detroit, I was like, whoa,
• 1:16:44
  you know, someone called me Bill Cosby.
• 1:16:46
  I was like, no, you know, so, you know, I feel, I feel energetic.
• 1:16:50
  I feel good, you know, it's sunny here every day, it's beautiful.
• 1:16:55
  But I just feel that time is on my side, like I just feel that I slow down the clock,
• 1:17:01
  because when I wake up, I get to control how my day looks, you know, and I'm not too overwhelmed
• 1:17:08
  about my day.
• 1:17:09
  I used to feel like when you, before this podcast, you kept saying, I'm in my way, I'm
• 1:17:13
  like, I'm just taking time, I ain't got nowhere to be, take your time, you know, and even
• 1:17:18
  if you would've came late, I would've just shouted with you tonight, you know, like, we
• 1:17:21
  could've shoot it, it doesn't matter, you know, and I love that.
• 1:17:24
  I love, you know, I just, it changes you in a lot of ways.
• 1:17:28
  You start doing things that you never would've thought you would do, like, you know, randomly
• 1:17:32
  one time I wanted to go to Vietnam just for some photos, some noodles and I just flew.
• 1:17:36
  I just took a flight to Hanoi.
• 1:17:38
  Yeah, flying within Asia is amazing.
• 1:17:40
  It's great.
• 1:17:41
  It's $50 fly and it's just like, I'm just going to just get a boat of noodles and come
• 1:17:45
  right back.
• 1:17:46
  You know, it's just like, and it sounds like you're in a movie or something, sometimes
• 1:17:49
  the things you do here, and it's just like, oh, I was just chilling with a tiger yesterday.
• 1:17:54
  And I really, you know, it's just like, huh, yeah.
• 1:17:56
  Are you one of these people that are funding this industry of picture taking with tigers?
• 1:18:00
  I'm not, no, I'm not funding this industry with no picture taking the tigers, but I mean,
• 1:18:05
  they say that the tigers are natural, but I've said this in the back of every
• 1:18:10
  taxi and I'm like, what is going on?
• 1:18:13
  And they claim that, don't worry, they've just been used to humans there.
• 1:18:16
  Yeah, that's the, yeah, but I love the elephants, I love the elephants, those are my guys.
• 1:18:24
  If you're a life with a postcard, what would the picture look like?
• 1:18:29
  I think it would be an endless role, yeah, just endless, never stopping.