[SPEAKER_02]: What's up, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls around the world.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd like to welcome you back to the real talk with Zubi podcast.
[SPEAKER_02]: On today's episode, we have got on the founder and CEO of X-Bat Money.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is Mikhail Thorp, welcome to the show.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, Ryan.
[SPEAKER_00]: Much excited to be here.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been following you on Twitter for a very long time.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's really cool to meet you in almost person and very excited about this and hopefully be able to share a little bit of knowledge and answer some good questions and inspire your audience.
[SPEAKER_00]: Should be awesome.
[SPEAKER_02]: Awesome.
[SPEAKER_02]: Miguel, I know from your story that we have a lot of stuff in common and you are someone who has traveled even more than I have, not a lot of people can say that, but you are truly the international man of mystery.
[SPEAKER_02]: So first things first, where are you from and how did you get into your current work?
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so I'm born in southwestern Ontario.
[SPEAKER_00]: Canada, I mean, I got into this at a very young age.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, to explain my backstory, you kind of have to understand all the way back from when I was a child, but I've talked about many programs, so I'll do a really, really abbreviated version.
[SPEAKER_00]: Basically, when I was in grade three, I got pulled out of my neighborhood.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got pulled out of my class at my neighborhood school and the teacher and the principal and the vice principal were there and they sat me down and they said, Michele, something doesn't work quite right in your brain.
[SPEAKER_00]: What we want to do is send you to special school, special school for special boys.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what they did there before three years.
[SPEAKER_00]: I went to a quote unquote special school and took a little white bus across town and
[SPEAKER_00]: Overall, it was a pretty horrendous experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was actually not a special school, it was a special class in a regular school.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I got in tons of fights and I got picked on and this is no, what was me?
[SPEAKER_00]: What was me type of story?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I got hit.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hit back twice as hard if I could.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I absolutely gave it everything I got.
[SPEAKER_00]: But eventually after three years, I got to go back to my neighborhood school and I thought this is going to be amazing and everyone's going to be so excited to see me and I'm going to have all my friends and everything and everybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead started kind of gossiping and whispering and oh, I remember Michele, he went to some retired school.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks guys, very, you know, sensitive.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have children at our.
[SPEAKER_00]: But overall public education left a very bad taste in my mouth and that twelve years old I stopped going to school and at fifteen I officially dropped out and when I dropped out I started traveling internationally and I got to go to all these interesting places and meet all these amazing people and I started to understand that there's actually more than one way to learn or more than one way to do things and this normal life that I grew up with in Canada is actually not that normal.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not the standard anywhere in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I met all these people who really inspired me and I figured out as a teenager that this is what I wanted to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to travel and explore and do all these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that was kind of my way through public education to finding
[SPEAKER_00]: libertarianism and freedom and these types of movements.
[SPEAKER_00]: And aside note, by the way, the learning disability is dyslexia, which we now know.
[SPEAKER_00]: At this time, it's not that big of a deal, but nineteen eighties, you know, horrible thing, I guess.
[SPEAKER_00]: But fast forward to today, I've been traveling the world for twenty five years non-stop.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been to close to a hundred and twenty countries I've lived in nine.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, as I said, I'm Canadian with Danish heritage.
[SPEAKER_00]: My wife is from mainland China.
[SPEAKER_00]: I met her in Germany.
[SPEAKER_00]: We got married in Africa.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our first child was born in the UAE where you are.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, second child in Brazil, third child in Chile, fourth child in Mexico.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is actually we just had our fourth five weeks ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is actually my actually telling it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're really excited.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, super passionate about these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll be traveling and exploring the world, investing internationally.
[SPEAKER_00]: I run a company called Expat Money.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're a consulting firm, seven eight figure business, helping people move offshore.
[SPEAKER_00]: We deal with their taxes, their immigration, all these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it all started with my disdain for the state at twelve years old, ten eleven twelve years old, going through public education, and now at
[SPEAKER_00]: I've built a successful business helping people escape this.
[SPEAKER_02]: Amazing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, that is a very early red-pilling.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have to ask, I'm curious.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, how old were you when you said you went on your first international trip like that?
[SPEAKER_00]: I was seventeen.
[SPEAKER_00]: I went to first island England of Wales, and that I was back in Canada for a little bit, and then at about eighteen, nineteen, I went through
[SPEAKER_00]: Western Europe ran out of money took a ferry over to Tangiers in Morocco and then spent two months in Morocco tried to go into Algeria on a camel took three days on a camel to try to enter into Algeria across the Sahara and then after that was eighteen months in the ski resorts in western Canada eighteen months hitchhiking and backpacking through Central and South America
[SPEAKER_00]: then a year in New Zealand three in Australia year in Singapore year in the Arctic eight in Abu Dhabi and now six in Panama, which is where I am now and then a couple of other random places.
[SPEAKER_02]: What did your parents think?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, my mother has always been very supportive.
[SPEAKER_00]: My mother lives with us.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's lived with us for ten years now, helping care of the kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're very, very close.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I think my father was just scared for me at first.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he traveled a lot when he was twenty five or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember growing up and him telling me that travel was the best thing he ever did with his life.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, it's the best thing you ever did with your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why didn't you do it more?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why weren't you out there more?
[SPEAKER_00]: You did all this cool stuff when you were twenty-five but then you went back to South Western Ontario and then stopped and I just never stopped.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, something I find really fascinating and inspiring about everything you've said and who you are is the fact that you're doing all this with a family.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know a lot of expats.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know a lot of digital nomads and travelers and wanders and I'm one myself.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the vast majority, it's normally single dudes.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not normally guys who have families, multiple children, and so on.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they're certainly a very, very strong idea when these topics are brought up.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's this idea that once you are married and or have children that all of it must stop, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like all of this must cease and you need to pick your one spot and just stay there and grow roots and that is just the thing and this whole digital nomad
[SPEAKER_02]: traveling, multiple residencies, passports.
[SPEAKER_02]: All of this stuff is just like, I don't know, it's sort of like a dream for single young bachelor's who are sort of disconnected from reality.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you are living proof that this is possible.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I am curious as to how you've managed it all with your wife and children.
[SPEAKER_02]: What does that look like in terms of
[SPEAKER_02]: where you spend your time in terms of travel, in terms of education, all of these things that people think makes it impossible.
[SPEAKER_02]: How have you managed that over the years?
[SPEAKER_00]: Great question and probably my most favorite topic right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: My kids are so incredibly important to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: All kids are important to their parents.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's, that's a normal thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what you're saying is absolutely right because I think, I mean, I was getting told twenty five years ago, okay, get this out of your system.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you want to have a family, you have to settle down.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, yeah, we'll see about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I mean, I guess the first thing was my wife was already very much into travel when I met her.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we were both living in the UAE.
[SPEAKER_00]: We met on a flight to Germany.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we were both had a passion for seeing the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: So within the first, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: couple of days or a couple of weeks we you know had a conversation about what we wanted out of life and she wanted to be a stay at home mother and she wanted to be beautiful and we wanted to travel and I was like great sign me up let's have lots of kids you be beautiful you stay at home uh take care of the kids i'll build a business and and that's what we've done
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I mean, it's not easy.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like, oh, this was just so easy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's just, I mean, nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I guess it really just came down to being purposeful and even doing the travel when it's hard or expensive.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we see our children truly as an investment and investing in
[SPEAKER_00]: in the whole family unit our entire family dynasty.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think that what happens especially with a lot of the progressive ideas is they see children as a burden or as a guilty pleasure because children cost a lot of money and people pollute and global warming and all of this stuff that I don't subscribe to whatsoever.
[SPEAKER_00]: We really are very traditional, so I believe in having a large family because I think it will grow the family's wealth and not just capital as in financial capital, but human capital, intellectual capital, spiritual capital, all of these types of things.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when I've taken my daughter to another country, my first born's little girl, she's almost nine years old, she's been to thirty two countries now.
[SPEAKER_00]: When she has memories, she's like, she goes into her wardrobe and she gets assured or something like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she remembers the person that she bought this from when we were traveling in Medaging a couple of years ago or she has these photos and these experiences when she was dancing in Costa Rica or you know, like there's all these cool little things that are just normal parts of her her her knowledge and her memory.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I take her to Europe, we do roughly two months in Europe every year, because I speak on stage at many different conferences and events, I take my kids around with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll do this huge dinner.
[SPEAKER_00]: There'll be a hundred people there, let's say, and she'll be the only kid.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll be like, okay, here's your mission for dinner.
[SPEAKER_00]: you need to go up and approach three people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want you when you come back to know their name, where they're from, do they have any hobbies or do they play any musical instruments?
[SPEAKER_00]: So she'll disappear.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, go talk to strangers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Get out of here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Go have fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: She'll come back in half an hour and she's like, I met
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't remember what the girl's name was Veronica and she was from Russia and she loves playing the piano and she met a German guy who likes weightlifting and you know, she asked all these questions and stuff and she'll be like six, seven, eight years old and she'll just like tug on someone's sleeve and they'll turn around and then look down and there's this little girl and she just starts a conversation with them and I'm like
[SPEAKER_00]: I think this is really cool and we homeschool our kids, you know, our world school, our children.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is like part of their education.
[SPEAKER_00]: The travel is it all fits in exactly what we're trying to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I guess a tip for other families would be
[SPEAKER_00]: don't expect that it's going to be easy, don't expect it's going to be cheap or anything like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But do it anyways because it's good for you, it's good for your children and it's good for you as a family unit because as you build memories together, you strengthen those bonds, you strengthen them with your spouse, you strengthen them with the children, and nothing replaces that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, you know, watching TV or going to the movies or something is going to have that same bond of putting yourself in a difficult situation in the language that you may or may not speak and it's just I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's my style of doing things, but it's it's fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're enjoying it a lot.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's certainly unorthodox, but I think it's absolutely awesome.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I'm very blessed that I grew up being able to travel to a bunch of different countries.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, my family backgrounds from Nigeria, but I grew up in Saudi Arabia.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was born in England by the age of ten.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think I've probably been to at least ten different countries or so.
[SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, it just meant that from very early on the idea of getting on a plane or traveling to different countries, meeting people from different places.
[SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't this sort of strange scary for in concept.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that, naturally, with most people, what they grow up with is what becomes normal.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you grow up and it's normal to just be in your hometown and stay there and, you know, your parents don't even have a passport maybe, you don't have a passport and you're just kind of
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, your entire childhood, you're just in one place and one country, then that's the norm.
[SPEAKER_02]: And for some people, they'd go up like that and they have the wonder list and they're really excited to travel when they get older.
[SPEAKER_02]: But for a lot of people, the concept just seems either pointless or even scary, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: There are a lot of people who are
[SPEAKER_02]: my age, your age, older, younger, and just the thought of traveling to a foreign country.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, even in this age of social media and Google Maps and all this stuff where you can kind of see what places look like, it still strikes fear into a huge chunk of the population, which, you know, people are going to do what they're going to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: Me personally, I think that there's something
[SPEAKER_02]: a little bit sad about that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's unnecessarily limiting.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just think the world is such a big and interesting place that to spend your entire lifetime just in one tiny corner of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like you're kind of missing a lot in the same way.
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like you're missing a lot if you
[SPEAKER_02]: the same food every single day.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you can survive.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's nothing inherently wrong with it, but it's just like you're not interested in even trying any other type of food or cuisine, you know, and, you know, I guess everyone's just, everyone's just wired wire differently on that front.
[SPEAKER_02]: What has been the response?
[SPEAKER_02]: What's the range of responses you get when you do what you do, whether that's online or offline and you're kind of just
[SPEAKER_02]: explaining your life to people.
[SPEAKER_02]: Obviously, I find it fascinating and I can relate to it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I'd imagine that you get a pretty broad range of responses.
[SPEAKER_00]: I definitely do.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, on the newsletter at expat money.com, you know, we do what we affectionately call shaking the tree.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I really don't want people on the list who are, you know, hardcore socialists or commies or anything like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I really have no interest.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, it's true.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I don't have any interest in helping, you know, call me spread their bad ideas around the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you know, when Trump got in, people are like, oh, now that, you know, the right is in, are you going to be helping people from the left?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, God, no, like, that's the last thing I want to do is, you know, like, let's take those ideas and export them to the rest of the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, no, that's, you guys don't need any help there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I leave all of that alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, yeah, I mean, on the newsletter, I've gotten death threats many times.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why would you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because we challenge a lot of people's ideas and people have really deep-seated beliefs about how the world should work.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like we just ask a lot of questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: We just ask questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: We go down Rennie Rabbat Holes.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're just exploring a lot of different things.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm
[SPEAKER_00]: not shy of giving my opinion on things.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not telling people that you need to believe the same as, I believe I'm just telling you how I believe, you know, like what I see in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, at traveling for twenty-five years straight, and I mean straight, straight, straight.
[SPEAKER_00]: It gives you a very different perspective on the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I remember when I moved to the UAE, and I told people I was living in Abu Dhabi, and I swear to God, everybody heard like,
[SPEAKER_00]: Abu Baghdad or something like that like I think they like really had no idea you know what was going on in the Middle East and I'm like dude I grew up in Saudi Arabia like I get it
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, definitely, definitely, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I try to educate people, I try to inspire people, I try to use myself and my life and my case study as a way to show people that you can do.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, hey, if this high school drop out dyslexic kid can make millions of dollars and travel the world with his family,
[SPEAKER_00]: like, what's your excuse?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, why can't you guys go out and do these things?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I didn't grow up from money.
[SPEAKER_00]: By the way, my father was a male man.
[SPEAKER_00]: My parents got divorced when I was twelve years old.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we didn't have any extra money.
[SPEAKER_00]: I started working when I was twelve.
[SPEAKER_00]: I started pulling the weeds out of bean fields all summer long when I left school and then I was working in grocery stores and then I just saving money and doing all these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: and the entire time reading, asking questions looking around, keeping my eyes open, mentoring other underneath other people, and just trying to grow and understand.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the response is not always favorable.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's not like people like everybody likes Mikael, lots of people dislike me a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm okay with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: The people that I work with my clients, they don't like me, they love being because I care about them and I get them and I understand them and I work my ass off and I'm so dedicated to them and I would do anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been over backwards for my clients and for the people that I work with.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I never want to be just like this kind of milk toast like uh Mikhail he's all right or he's okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like you either fucking love me or you hate me like I don't I don't I'm not looking for any of that in between and it's not I'm not saying that
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I'm trying to get a rise out of people.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just the truth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's like if you guys are not interested in this, you don't like any of these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't like the way I speak.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: The internet is a very big place.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's lots of people to talk to.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's lots of different communities.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm very fond of our community.
[SPEAKER_00]: We do live events.
[SPEAKER_00]: We get hundreds of people.
[SPEAKER_00]: We do multiple investors trips.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're making a lot of money together.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got an online community podcast webinars summit.
[SPEAKER_00]: We get six, seven, eight thousand people out of an online summit every year.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a good size community.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got thirty one thirty two staff that work with me at the company.
[SPEAKER_00]: They all understand the vision and the mission that we're on to try to help people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: What is it that draws the most hate I'm curious.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm really venomously opposed to this woke ideology and all this progressive ideas.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really dislike all of that stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's pretty vile to be honest and I don't feel the need to watch my tongue about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't I just
[SPEAKER_00]: All the spade is spade and I mean, these are cancerous ideas.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's someone needs to stand up and say so.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that more people should be standing up and saying so all this virtual signaling on ideas that really are not good for humanity, not good for society.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not serving anybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not helping anybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: These people have never been anywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've never seen anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've never done anything with their life, but they become these social justice warriors online and keyboard warriors and I've just like
[SPEAKER_00]: I just have no time for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just, I just find the whole thing vile.
[SPEAKER_00]: So.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, I did.
[SPEAKER_02]: I, I, I, I, I'm more than get it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, unfortunately our home countries are, are sort of ground zero for it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, Canada is probably the, it's literally the focus country.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's, it's literally the focus country on earth.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: How, you know, I know this is a little bit of a tangent, but now that we're on this topic, why do you think that is?
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not familiar enough with Canada and Canadian culture and history to understand why it should be the case that they seem to be the ones who go the most crazy with every single so-called progressive idea.
[SPEAKER_02]: But why do you think that is?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because the UK is not doing great in this regard.
[SPEAKER_02]: US and Australia are not doing great, but Canada just seemed to take it, take it to an even, I don't know, a crazier level, except Alberta.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's a difficult one.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that Canada and Australia are both testing grounds for a lot of these ideas.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that they're like their own little microcosms that ideas get test out in and they see how people behave and what's going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are Anglo-Saxon countries, population-wise, they're drastically lower than the United States.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that it's just been, push, push, push, little bit of aggressive ideas one after the other.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that they have been taken over by globalists and technocrats or whatever you want to call them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they roll out the ideas and they just censor information.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's so many pieces in Canada where there is no freedom of speech that's long gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, that's not just hypervily.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can see the laws.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can read about bringing in foreign news into the country or podcasts or any type of independent journalism or media or anything like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're censoring all of these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Trudeau was basically in power for ten to eleven years and he was just a monster.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, this is, you know, young global leaders and he was basically groomed into a position like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: His father, Pierre Trudeau, you know, had very progressive ideas and I mean, I think it's just a
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just a family of upper elite people who went to the right school or the right school and the right jobs and the right degrees and the right everything and they've been groomed into these positions for generations to push certain identities and we're seeing it all play out in the last five years.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything's coming to a culmination.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the US had stronger laws and has been able to push back, although if K Malah had a god in, I think that the US would be in just an absolutely terrible position.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think the entire world would be complaining right now about how the US had gone completely crazy and lost their marbles.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I mean, now Mark Carney in from Canada.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he was, I mean, you're from the UK.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you should understand.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he's from Central Bank in the UK.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, he's been groomed for all of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had no political career.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's been transplanted into this position.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Canadians voted for it because it's just a lifetime of brainwashing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw it went at twelve years old when I left school, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: I could, I didn't know what it was, but I knew it was wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: I absolutely knew that the system was wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I knew I had to get out of that system.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did I know that what the word libertarianism was or, you know, all of these ideas, no, but I knew it was wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think a lot of people know it's wrong, but they're just they're closing their eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't want to see anymore because if they see, then they have to admit so many things that they've done in their life is wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that
[SPEAKER_00]: is the challenging of the beliefs that I was hinting at earlier.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just don't think people are ready for that.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's always going to be a minority of people who think, I don't know, think the way you do, think the way I do.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it can be frustrating because I think one of the most normal human things is to like,
[SPEAKER_02]: want other people to see things your way and to kind of like wake people up out of the slumber, get them out of the matrix, try to explain the way they're being sort of exploited and run rough shot over and also it's a various ways.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can only do it to some degree.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, is that famous saying those, you know, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't, you can't make him drink.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you would think that in the age of social media and internet and podcasts and all of that, you know, there'd be the sort of mass global awakening, especially after everything that happened from twenty, twenty to twenty, two, you'd think like,
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, this is it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Surely, surely, people are going to wake up now.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, it just doesn't happen.
[SPEAKER_02]: A small percentage do.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I guess this is just the way that human beings always have been.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the combination of traits that it requires to
[SPEAKER_02]: not just see through the nonsense, but to have the courage and the assertiveness to stick your head above the parapet when other people aren't into voice your opinion and even beyond that to take some kind of action towards it, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's one thing to sit there in Canada or sit there in the UK and complain about taxes, complain about immigration policies, complain about wokeness, complain about, you don't like the election, you don't like the Prime Minister, you don't like this, you don't like that,
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you can do that all day, and people call that quote unquote fighting.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, when you get there, you know, stay and fight.
[SPEAKER_02]: They really mean stay and complain, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, okay, well, we live in a big world.
[SPEAKER_02]: We live in a big world and there's not a vegetable.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not really to the ground.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, you know, there's nothing wrong with, I think patriotism is generally a good thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I understand having pride in where you're from and having roots somewhere and your family and all of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I fully fully understand it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But there's a point where it's like, okay, if you really, really feel that strongly, some way somehow, you know, you've got to do something about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I can only tolerate complaining for so long.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then it's like, okay, you know, well, what are you going to do for you, for your family?
[SPEAKER_02]: If this situation is that bad for you, especially some people, you know, to me it's
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I just became a father a few weeks ago, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And... Congratulations, Mr. Mason.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you very much.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, our fourth child and my first must have been born, you know, probably around a week of each other.
[SPEAKER_02]: And... That's amazing.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I've had people like, because I've been talking like this for years and so many people are like, oh, you know, well, you know, you say this because, you know, you don't have kids yet or you don't have this.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like, and I said, even before I had just, I was like, I'm guarantee, I will feel more strongly about all of these things once I have kids.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because...
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, that's, that's, that's it even greater motivator to think long-term and to be thinking generationally and to thinking, how does this, how does this culture, how do these policies, how does this climb it, how is, how is all of this, not just how's it going to impact me, how's it going to impact my children and my children's children and it very much makes sense to me to put yourself
[SPEAKER_02]: physically and metaphorically in the best position that you can for your family.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't think that I think people are very misguided when they attack or criticize people for doing that.
[SPEAKER_02]: They kind of want you to stay on the sinking ship.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I understand misery loves company, but it's like, well,
[SPEAKER_02]: why would you criticize someone for doing what's best for them and their family for some people that means like staying where you are you know staying in your hometown or moving here or moving there I'm not telling everyone you know you all need to become digital nomads like michael and travel to a hundred plus countries right that's not feasible for most people but at least sit down and work out okay what is the best
[SPEAKER_02]: What's our best option here?
[SPEAKER_02]: Given all of these things, you know, maybe it's moving to a small town in Montana or in Utah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe it's, you know, moving to Mexico.
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe it's going to Dubai.
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe it's going to Panama.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I don't know what it is for everyone.
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: figure it out.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm a big fan of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, if we look at the rental aspect, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're both fathers.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need to set a good example for our children, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So what you were talking about about complaining, do you think it's a good example for the children that the father comes home every day and complains about the situation, complains about the government, complains about everything in the world, but doesn't do anything about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, at least my kids, they can look at it and go, okay, well, first of all, I don't need to complain because I'm super happy with my life and what's going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I live my values, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not telling, I will never ever tell anybody else what their value value should be.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm telling you what mine are.
[SPEAKER_00]: mine are like I don't believe in extortion I think extortion is a really really bad thing otherwise known as taxation so for me like the correct amount of tax to pay is zero point zero zero percent that is that is the correct that's the fair shares who beat the fair share is zero point zero zero percent
[SPEAKER_00]: Anything on top of that is theft is like it's an extortion, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a racket.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you are sitting in Toronto like where I grew up and you're paying fifty five percent or call it fifty percent in income tax,
[SPEAKER_00]: plus carbon tax plus tax on gasoline plus homeowners tax and sales tax GSTPSD VIT and other countries all these things and you're paying fifty sixty seventy eighty percent in taxation and but you're saying that hey one of our families values is freedom you're a hypocrite
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you're a hypocrite.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you know, I'm not judging you, but you just need to understand that you're saying one thing and you're doing something else.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a hypocrite.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I understand, yes, things are hard and yes, we need to make, you know, not everybody can do what Mikhail does or anything like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you can make some changes.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you can do something.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can make little steps towards freedom.
[SPEAKER_00]: The ones that drive me nuts to be are the ones who
[SPEAKER_00]: talk all day long but do nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: You get at least got to be moving towards freedom and this is the problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the problem that we were discussing before, you know, why is Australia or Canada or these countries?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is the UK going this way?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because a lot of people talk and they don't do shit.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like if you actually did something, then we could make a change.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm doing things.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm trying to inspire people.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm trying to help people.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm trying to coach people.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is my small little role in responsibility.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's my mission in life is to try to help good honest ethical families out of this abusive relationship.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have with their government, you know, break this Stockholm syndrome.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have with their governments.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and everybody has their own place, you know, own piece that they can play in moving towards freedom, but sitting around complaining and not doing anything is not going to help you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not going to set a good example for your children.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not going to free your grandchildren or future generations or anything like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's like,
[SPEAKER_00]: Do something, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: You're obviously super passionate about what you do and you speak with such conviction.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm curious to know what's at the root of your belief system, what's at the core of like how and why you see the world the way that you do because it is a typical.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is an interesting question.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the last couple of years we've really transitioned our wealth from just a guy investing internationally to more of a family office setup.
[SPEAKER_00]: And during that process, I've been writing our family governance documents.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a really cool exercise to try to write down your values.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't mean just all on the back of a piece of a paper or a notepad.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you can.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I mean, I did three, fifty, some odd page documents explaining our families' values.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we did our, our,
[SPEAKER_00]: investment proposal like how I invest internationally what is our family constitution and then what is our operational guide like how do things work in our family what are the rules in our family and our family office I mean I have full-time lawyer who works for me I've got a couple of admin staff plus lots of kids my my parents my my my my wife's parents
[SPEAKER_00]: So trying to kind of put everything together.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I was doing the exercise, you know, I did start with just jotting down some some simple little one liners.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, we believe in this, we're the type of family who do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then you start flushing out the idea a little bit and then you start researching.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where did the idea come from?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or what religion?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or what background?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or what culture?
[SPEAKER_00]: Where did this come from?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I think I mentioned before my wife's from China.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, we have a lot of values from Confucianism.
[SPEAKER_00]: Confucianism.
[SPEAKER_00]: which is very interesting when you start reading and understanding you know side note people like hate china at the moment because of the cpp i don't like the cpp but we're talking about a multi thousand year old society that has existed basically unbroken and they have certain ways of doing things which is actually really really interesting when you study it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we take things from Christianity, Christian values.
[SPEAKER_00]: I take from, you know, laissez-faire, free market enterprise, you know, libertarianism, you know, classical liberalism, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: This is, you know, part of our value system.
[SPEAKER_00]: I live in a Latin country.
[SPEAKER_00]: I live in Panama City, Panama.
[SPEAKER_00]: I speak Spanish.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a Latino culture.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is very family-first type of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I borrow a lot of these ideas.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think, as you be, I am on the seventh iteration of these family governance documents.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I have learned so much about myself while putting this together, just thinking about things, meditating on things, writing down ideas, revising them over and over and over again.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got invited earlier this year back to the US to speak at a wealth conference.
[SPEAKER_00]: and talked about family governance documents.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was so interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: The presenter told me, okay, you have an hour to an hour and a half to speak, but then you can have the room and you can keep going because there's going to be other speeches and people can just go to the next one if they're not interested.
[SPEAKER_00]: about two hours into the presentation, they had to pull me off the stage because they needed the room.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then afterwards, so I finished at eleven in the morning, we had lunch and then I sat there until dinner time till five thirty with a group of about thirty people surrounding me in a big circle asking questions, just about the family governance documents, just about family values and how to put these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we probably did seven hours of talking nonstop.
[SPEAKER_00]: And at the end of it, I was like, God, my throat really hurts.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like what's going on?
[SPEAKER_00]: I looked at the clock and it was like five, thirty five or something like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've been basically not stopping for, yes, seven hours straight.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I mean, to go back to your original question, where did this come from?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think I just piecemeal that, you know, one by one by one, you know, over a twenty five year career of traveling around the world, traveling all over Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, almost every country in Latin America.
[SPEAKER_00]: studying history, studying the culture, studying the people and just cherry picking the best of the best of the best and just trying to internalize it, really understand it, meditate on it a lot and just think deeply.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not what everybody does.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, it's just
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just the way that I've done things.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm certainly not saying this is the way that everybody needs to do this or everybody needs to go out and do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I do think it is a valuable exercise though to try to put down your family values on a piece of paper and then, you know, look in the mirror and see, you know, what's written on that piece of paper, is that what you're living every single day?
[SPEAKER_02]: How did you get everyone in the wider family on board with it?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because you mentioned not just your wife and kids, of course, but your parents, your wife's parents, especially with the different cultures.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know much about your wife's family and background and so on.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I'm curious as to how you kind of brought the idea to the table and got everyone on board with the idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: So my wife and I, as I said before, we had agreements right at the very beginning, what we wanted out of life.
[SPEAKER_00]: We wanted a large family.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to homeschool my kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: She wanted to be a stay-at-home mom.
[SPEAKER_00]: We wanted to travel the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to build a business.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we kind of started with those things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we've just gone through this process together.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've built it together.
[SPEAKER_00]: These have become my values, but
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't come up with all of the values.
[SPEAKER_00]: We talked about them.
[SPEAKER_00]: We worked through it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, my mother has always been very supportive, and she's been very awake for a very long time about what's going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: She came to it a little bit after I did.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've certainly helped her along, but she's been very willing to understand different ideas.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think for my wife's parents, they are most concerned that not concerned, most
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I guess concerned that they want to ensure that I treat their daughter with respect, which I always do, that I can care for her and provide for her, which I do, that I'm a present father for my children and I am.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'm not, I'm not out of an office all day.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a whole office, so I have breakfast lunch and dinner with my kids every single day.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, they've been here for four months straight.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have permanent residency for them in Panama.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they spend about four months a year with us.
[SPEAKER_00]: I bought them a house across the street from my place.
[SPEAKER_00]: I bought my mom a house across the street from my place as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're moving in in a couple of weeks.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we'll all be in the same neighborhood right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're in a huge five thousand almost five thousand square foot house right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: A two story penthouse.
[SPEAKER_00]: but soon will each have our own, but it's in its own little compound, let's say.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I keep family close.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think this is a lot of talking, just a lot of discussing ideas and going back and forth with things.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, in ten years of marriage, my wife and I've never had a fight.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've never screamed at each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've never sworn at each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've never just respected each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: don't necessarily always agree on everything, but every single time if we have something that we see differently on, we'll sit down and we'll try to ask questions and why do you think like that and why, you know, how did you come to these conclusions and you know, how does, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: how did your mind decide on this and what was the background and the history and what was the bad experiences that made you think this before what were the good experiences that made you think this from before and sometimes it's a twenty minute conversation and sometimes it's a four hour conversation but we just you know we just stay with it and we just discuss things and we just I mean respect is just
[SPEAKER_00]: So so so important.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if anybody's out there and has an Asian wife or an Asian partner, they will understand the concept of giving face and of respect.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, it's, it's an important cultural distinction that you really have to know what you're getting into if you're going to be with someone from an Asian culture.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is paramount in everything that they do, saving face and giving face.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's so many interesting directions we can go in.
[SPEAKER_02]: How did you decide on Panama?
[SPEAKER_02]: Good question.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I actually hitchhiked and backpacked through Central and South America back in two thousand three, two thousand and four.
[SPEAKER_00]: I took eighteen months and I came through Latin America.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was pre, um, over pre, pre, smart phone, pre, Google Maps, pre, uh, Airbnb and everything like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I just hitchhiked through all Central America and I
[SPEAKER_00]: really liked Panama.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought it was a really interesting place.
[SPEAKER_00]: I tried to actually cross the Darian gap from Panama into Colombia.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: I took a small prop plane.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was basically delivering mail and I think missionaries out to the Darian.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think we did five or six little hops on the small plane.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I got on a four by four.
[SPEAKER_00]: I found someone who had a four by four.
[SPEAKER_00]: We drove into the jungle for four, five hours.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then stayed out there and then got out of motorized canoe and then spent three days going up the river to try to get into Columbia on a motorized canoe.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was pretty intense.
[SPEAKER_00]: Eventually I had to turn around and and head back after several days.
[SPEAKER_00]: I the dairy and beat me unfortunately, but
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I just had a really cool memory of Panama.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we were living in the UAE.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I did not like what was happening with the US and Iran at that time, which funny enough, as we're recording this, things are certainly heating up a lot in Iran, which I will leave alone in this conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I mean, the US were moving in the Amada to the Persian Gulf or to the Arabian Gulf, whatever you want
[SPEAKER_00]: depending which map you're looking at and I looked around and we were in Abu Dhabi not too far from the nuclear power plants that were being built and they have Italian air force bases in US military in the UAE and I was going wow if things heat up with Iran this is not going to be
[SPEAKER_00]: a good place to have kids and you know the UAE summer time is maybe fifty five degrees Celsius and without air conditioned you're going to fry like literally and most the water is desalinated so you need to burn the energy to desalinate the water you don't grow anything there or maybe just you know just have some allen chickens or something like that and eggs and you know a little bit of micro greens but otherwise the UAE doesn't produce too too much food certainly not enough to feed itself
[SPEAKER_00]: So I started looking around and I wanted to be in a tax-free country.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like the UA for being very tax-free.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want it to be in a food, water, and energy independent country.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now Panama doesn't have hydrocarbons like the UAE does, but they have hydroelectric.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we produce all our own electricity here.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we've got twenty one or twenty two hydroelectric dams.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's very good.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't have oil and gas, which
[SPEAKER_00]: builds up wealth for the country.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got the Panama Canal.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's actually a lot of parallels that I could see.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I think, well, two other pieces that I wouldn't normally mention, but I'll mention with you because you're there and maybe you'll find it interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: One was the language.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't think that, okay, so my, my kids speak native level English Mandarin.
[SPEAKER_00]: English and Mandarin, and then for a third language, I didn't think that Arabic for a young lady was going to be as useful as some other languages, not that it wouldn't be useful, but maybe not as useful.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we ended up wanting to her to learn Spanish, so another check in the box for Panama.
[SPEAKER_00]: funny side story a couple of two years ago, my daughter came to me and said, Daddy, where was I born?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, you were born in Abu Dhabi.
[SPEAKER_00]: She said, Oh, what language did they speak there?
[SPEAKER_00]: She said, I said, Arabic.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was great.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to learn Arabic.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, OK, let's learn Arabic.
[SPEAKER_00]: So she has an Arabic teacher and she's been learning Arabic.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So she's she's actually gone back and forth between Russian and Arabic, but now she's into Portuguese.
[SPEAKER_00]: So she's learning Portuguese like crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and then the other thing and then you'll definitely understand this.
[SPEAKER_00]: All of my clients are in North America.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, call it eighty percent of my clients are in North America.
[SPEAKER_00]: We go North America.
[SPEAKER_00]: Time zone.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a big one.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's such a big one.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was fine to start work at five p.m.
[SPEAKER_00]: and work till three a.m.
[SPEAKER_00]: when it was just my wife and I or just me as a single guy.
[SPEAKER_00]: But with a, you know, a little girl at home, I mean, we left the UAE when she was two.
[SPEAKER_00]: and she wants to get up and play and she's up at six in the morning seven in the morning and it's like, no, you're going to be quiet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Daddy's sleeping.
[SPEAKER_00]: Daddy's sleeping and I'm sleeping until one a PM.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not fair for our kid.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was like, all right, I needed to be back on central time or Eastern standard time or something like that for family.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, we love the UAE.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was home.
[SPEAKER_00]: So my best memories of my entire life are in the UAE.
[SPEAKER_00]: I spent a quarter of my entire life, a third of my adult life in the UAE.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, I don't have a bad word to say about the place.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's just fantastic on every level.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it has its problems like anywhere, but I think overall I think it's one of the greatest countries.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's so many cool people there.
[SPEAKER_00]: But at the end, these few things were enough that I decided
[SPEAKER_00]: This was not going to serve my family.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't feel good about the situation in Iran.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't feel good about not having enough water or food.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't sure about the language and I needed to be on Eastern Standard Eastern Time Central Time so that I could serve my family and be awake at the same time.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're awake and you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: be present for those moments of my daughter's life.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like what we were saying earlier, I mean, doing the individual and familial math and working out, okay, like where is best for us overall?
[SPEAKER_02]: I think something that a lot of people kind of struggle with in general, not just on this topic, but just as a world concept is the concept of trade-offs.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that you have so many people who kind of just want
[SPEAKER_02]: You get it all the time, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, Mikael, where's the best place?
[SPEAKER_02]: Where's the best city?
[SPEAKER_02]: What's the best place?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, for who?
[SPEAKER_02]: For what?
[SPEAKER_02]: Who are you?
[SPEAKER_02]: What are you doing?
[SPEAKER_02]: What's your situation?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, there's so many details that go into that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And people have such different preferences.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you know, we talked about the wokeness in Canada, but I mean, just the weather.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, okay, just the weather alone.
[SPEAKER_02]: I would never live in Canada, because even if the policies made sense, I'm just like, I hate winter.
[SPEAKER_02]: I hate the winter.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't even like it in the UK.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the idea of moving to somewhere where I get minus forty Celsius, I'm just like, no.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I know there are people who just the idea of living in Dubai or Abu Dhabi, just the weather alone.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're like, no, no, no, I can't deal with that level of heat.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like fair enough, you know, everyone is just different.
[SPEAKER_02]: And people need to understand that there's no one place or person or situation or policy or anything that's going to give you like every single benefit that you want with no downsides.
[SPEAKER_02]: You just have to kind of weigh it up for yourself individually and make a decision.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is so, so interesting and so insightful because this really ties back to what we were talking about earlier in the conversation on people sitting on their hands and doing nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I see this so many times people are looking for perfection.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're looking for Shangri-La or Heaven, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: And unless they can get perfection, they're going to do nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, do you know how ridiculous that sounds?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, at least take one step towards freedom, one step and then another step and another step.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't need to know exactly where you're going.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to have perfection on the other side.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just move in the general direction of freedom of having a better life of personal responsibility.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just moving that direction will figure out the rest of it as we go.
[SPEAKER_00]: But people disqualify an entire country.
[SPEAKER_00]: because of one small thing that they don't like.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, okay, I mean, like, I like, I actually happened to like hot weather, but I mean, Panama is like super humid.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, it's even for me sometimes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, wow, this is really, really humid.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'll take that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it's, I wish it was five degrees cooler.
[SPEAKER_00]: But am I going to throw the baby out with the bath water?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it's just a little bit too hot.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, that's ridiculous.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's tax-free.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's food water and energy independent.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's safe.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have good medical.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have tons of sports and activities, so specific and the Atlantic.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's mountains, there's beaches.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's like, it's well connected.
[SPEAKER_00]: You got the best airport.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's on central time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, is so many things cool that are here.
[SPEAKER_00]: And somewhere to be like, no.
[SPEAKER_00]: too hot I can't do it okay fine so you're gonna shovel snow for seven months a year and you know take a chance and slip on it and break your hip because you know it's thirty two instead of twenty seven it's like come on guys you and lose and lose eighty percent of your familial wealth over the course of your lifetime to the state I mean it's at the end of the day I really think that it's excuses people are looking for reasons not to take action
[SPEAKER_00]: because not doing something is much easier than going into the unknown.
[SPEAKER_00]: Going into, hey, I don't know how this is gonna turn out.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what it's gonna be like to sit down at a restaurant and have to order something in Spanish.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what it's gonna be like to rent an apartment and I don't know what the LMS system is like or, you know, like there's this, there's so many unknowns.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how to turn on my cell phone in Costa Rica.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all right, mate, you'll figure it out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, it's just piece by piece by piece.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't worry about having everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: They just want to stay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even if it's an abusive place, even if it's terrible, even if the weather is crap, even if they're going to extort, you know, eighty percent of what you have, at least it's familiar.
[SPEAKER_02]: I often say that most people are conservative.
[SPEAKER_02]: And when I say that, I don't mean it in the hard political sense.
[SPEAKER_02]: Although I think globally more people are conservative than certainly any type of progressive.
[SPEAKER_02]: But when I say that, I just mean, you know, most people don't like change.
[SPEAKER_02]: Most people are averse to change.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they have their comfort zone.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they don't like to go outside it, especially once they're adults, they don't really want to learn new things.
[SPEAKER_02]: They don't want to change their mind on anything.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes they don't even want to try new foods or meet new people or anything like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And again, I kind of inherently don't have a problem with this as long as you don't complain about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like yourself, I think I get bugged by people who constantly complain, but like you said, they just don't do anything about the situation.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is slightly off topic, but it's like when I hear a lot about, I don't know, like when I hear stuff about like the loneliness epidemic.
[SPEAKER_02]: and you will have people sadly, normally guys who, you know, will complain about being lonely and not having friends and not feeling community, but will absolutely refuse to like go outside the house or participate in activity or join a gym or do a class or do anything that would actually like put you in front of new people.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, so if we're complaining all down feeling lonely, dot, dot, dot spending seven hours a day online, and it's like, okay, have you tried like going outside and talking to people?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like this is, it would be like me being hungry and I'm just sitting here like complaining, complaining about him hungry and you're just like, why don't you eat like have you got food in your fridge?
[SPEAKER_02]: Why don't you go outside?
[SPEAKER_02]: Go to a supermarket, go to a restaurant like if you're hungry,
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a solution for this.
[SPEAKER_02]: But instead, I'm just, oh, no, I don't like anything in the supermarket.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't want to cook.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't want to order anything.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's like, OK, well, shut up about being hungry then, you know?
[SPEAKER_02]: And some people will think that's like really unsympathetic of me.
[SPEAKER_02]: And maybe it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I often say, like, I'm very judicious with my sympathy.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, there's people in the world I have all this empathy for.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then there are other people who just choose to make themselves miserable and create problems.
[SPEAKER_02]: complain about them, they're fully able body, there's nothing wrong with them, like you're living in a first world country, you've got all these opportunities and still you're just like, I'm just gonna sit here and mull around and be angry and be mad at everyone else and I'm just like, I don't know, I wish I could give those people like a little metaphorical kick and I know that I do sometimes via social media and even this podcast and so on, but for anyone, I don't know anyone who's in that situation, it's just like,
[SPEAKER_02]: I love it when you said just move towards, just move in the general direction of the thing that you're seeking, whether that is freedom, whether that is better health, whether that is earning more money, whether that's finding a relationship, whatever it is, just like,
[SPEAKER_02]: put yourself in a place where something may happen, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: If you just sit in your bedroom all day, you just scrolling, TikTok and Instagram and X, it's not gonna happen.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's just not how anything gets built.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you think about it, these things they build on one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's like, OK, well, I want to not be lonely.
[SPEAKER_00]: OK, so you go outside and you start one conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you also get a little bit of sunlight.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you also get a little bit of exercise.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, now you feel a little bit better.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you have a positive reinforcement mechanism.
[SPEAKER_00]: So now you're going to try it again.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to do it again.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like every time you take one step, you're going to get these additional benefits.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're going to compound.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're going to add on at an exponential rate.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, within six months a year, you can completely transform your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can just, like, anything you want, you're going to be able to do, but you have to start taking action.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're doom scrolling all day long and you're just looking at negative news, that's not going to help.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I mean, just like put away your phone.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I mean, finish our episode here for sure, but I mean,
[SPEAKER_00]: Besides that, put your phone away.
[SPEAKER_00]: Come on, get outside, go and do something.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm very much for taking action.
[SPEAKER_00]: You just need to read and study all day long.
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to be part of the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to interact with people.
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to have conversations.
[SPEAKER_00]: Exercise.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a big one for healthy living.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm very much into getting outdoors.
[SPEAKER_00]: Zooey, I recently took a paddle.
[SPEAKER_00]: If paddle has made it to the UAE or not,
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I'll do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is huge.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's huge.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's now like I'm out for dinner with a client and they're like sitting there.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're chatting stuff like that and I was out a couple days ago and he's like so I recently took up paddle.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like me too.
[SPEAKER_00]: I recently took up paddle too.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's connect.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're gonna go play paddle together.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so and I was on with my Colombian lawyers the other day and we're talking about paddle and so I'm gonna go see him this weekend.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hopefully get in a couple of matches there and it's like
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'd never played, I mean, I played tennis when I was a kid or something like that in Badminton, you know, as a teenager.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it'd been twenty-five years and now in my forties, I'm picking up a new sport and talking to people and going outside and it's like, hey, if I can do it, I mean, literally anybody can do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm just, you know, I'm on the computer all day.
[SPEAKER_00]: So to go outside and move my body, it feels amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like anybody can do these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just pick up something, some activity, just get going.
[SPEAKER_02]: hundred percent.
[SPEAKER_02]: Mikael, I wanted to ask you because
[SPEAKER_02]: I have an idea in my head from my travels, but a question that comes up a lot, or something that people say a lot, when these conversations are going on is the whole, well, where do you go?
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no where to go.
[SPEAKER_02]: People like to say this in the UK, Canada, US, there's nowhere else to go.
[SPEAKER_02]: Can you give a short list?
[SPEAKER_02]: In your mind, in your work, where the world is, the trajectory you see it going, let's say over the next ten years, what are a couple of places?
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: It could be five, it could be ten, however many you want.
[SPEAKER_02]: Can you just give a few places that you think are worth exploring for someone who this is all sounding interesting for?
[SPEAKER_00]: First, I would encourage people if there is somewhere in your heart that you've always wanted to visit.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you've not been there, you've not explored it, maybe it was something you saw on TV or a book you read or a novel or something like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's somewhere in your heart that you're like, wow, I really want to see this place or understand this place.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, whether you've told anybody about this dream or not, if you shared it with your spouse or with your siblings or a friend or something like that, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I would definitely encourage you to go and check it out and don't worry about, you know, moving to the country or what it would be like to be the rest of your life, but just go for like a month or two months or something like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Get an Airbnb, maybe rent a vehicle, go explore and just kind of see what life is like out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that people just need to get some experience and get a little bit of self confidence underneath them.
[SPEAKER_00]: As for where the world is going, I see a massive decline in Western democracies.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that they are weaponizing everything on all fronts against us.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that it is this
[SPEAKER_00]: My friend, her voice calls it a digital ghetto.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that he's absolutely right in this with this technocracy and the ideas of surveillance and AI.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think AI is amazing and there's so many great things that it can be used for, but it's also used in the surveillance state.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think Western democracies are a sinking ship.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that there's a very bright future for us in those countries.
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you include the USA in that?
[SPEAKER_00]: The USA is very much a surveillance state.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's more federal laws there.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's more things to get in trouble for.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have worldwide taxation.
[SPEAKER_00]: The federal government are absolute monsters.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can move to Texas.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can move to Florida.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's great.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you still have to contend with the federal government.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think that's very, very problematic.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you're in California, New York, Illinois, I mean, you screw it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, those places, there's no freedom left in these places.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you need to get out.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're going as bad as Canada is in
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't see a very bright future for them at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I don't think that they will allow Texas or anything to succeed.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if they did, that would be a very interesting one, same with Florida, or if it was a culmination of a few states that were able to succeed.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's kind of a pipe dream though.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that if that happens, you can always move back, but in that interim period, I think you got to get out now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I quite like Latin America because I'm very traditional.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm very conservative background.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to be in a progressive country.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want progressive ideology or have it around my kids at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: they have tried to bring it to Latin America on a number of occasions and they get chased out of town.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they try to bring it into the school systems.
[SPEAKER_00]: The teachers get fired.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, like, with just cause, no one of this transgender nonsense in sexualization of children and things like that, this just doesn't exist in Latin America.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, they'll kill you for stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you don't talk to kids about this or
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, it's, then I'll down to the left.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's just, um, it's unbelievable.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought he actually bringing it up with Latinos because they're like, like, Latinos are like, can't even pronounce it in the language.
[SPEAKER_00]: Doesn't make sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: That doesn't even, like, make sense at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't like, I know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like Panama.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think Panama's a cool place for all the reasons I've already highlighted Costa Rica's amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Costa Rica does have a lot of progressives there because they kind of have this background of, um, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, green tourism and yoga tourism and stuff, but there are some really cool places in Costa Rica and some amazing people down there.
[SPEAKER_00]: You just have to be a little bit more mindful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paraguay is one of my favorite countries in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've put in millions of dollars of investment into Paraguay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've sat down on a couple of occasions with the president of Paraguay and given advice and advice.
[SPEAKER_00]: them on immigration and and what we should do.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know a lot of the ministers there.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are open for business.
[SPEAKER_00]: That country wants for interest investment, lots of FDI.
[SPEAKER_00]: I bring, I mean, we did a trip in February.
[SPEAKER_00]: Actually, on our YouTube channel, you can see the video of the February trip we're going again in September to Paraguay.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to Colombia in December this year to Medellin.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like Northeastern Brazil for investment.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't particularly, well, I don't like the Lula administration at all in Brazil, but there's some cool investment opportunities in Brazil.
[SPEAKER_00]: Europe weighs another good country to look into.
[SPEAKER_00]: They last year had a left-leaning administration, unfortunately, come in.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, their left is like, would be anywhere else's center.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they're not
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not hardcore leftists or socialists or anything like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's a very cool country.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not great investment opportunities because it's quite expensive there.
[SPEAKER_00]: They also have a very high value added tax.
[SPEAKER_00]: By the way, I never understood what is the value that they're adding with these taxes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like this is like a value added tax, but it's like you're just getting in the way, like the fuck out of here.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure what the value that they they.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can actually explain that if you genuinely don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Please, genuinely, I would love to know because it doesn't make sense in my brain at all.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're almost like reading it the wrong way.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not like value adding of the text.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like every stage where there is value added within the chain of the product or service you apply the text.
[SPEAKER_02]: Does that make sense?
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you are every step of the way they want to bite of your apple.
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: So every stage, so between, between, I don't know, the farmer and the whole sailor and then the whole sailor and the retailer and then the retailer and the customer at each stage, it gets hit with the VAT because value is being added each time.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so they tax their value.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a racket.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's like legit the mafia.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know that, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like what you just described is like protection money.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's, that's, that's the mafia.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's one of the least web.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's one of the least bad taxes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the really bad one is all the income taxes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do a presentation.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a group coaching program called First Class and I give a presentation on taxation and we list out every single tax that is out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it takes me like twenty minutes to go through just the types of taxes that are out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the types of taxes, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: But I mean the really abusive ones are the income tax because they're taxing productivity.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're taxing you contributing to society and the more you contribute, the better you do, the more value bring to the world, the more they want to take away from you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they're disincentivizing you for helping society.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's plain evil.
[SPEAKER_00]: At least this sales tax, VAT, you know, PSTGST, these types of consumption taxes are taking away.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that they're encouraging you not to spend.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're really encouraging you to save.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I like saving.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like building up wealth and then using that wealth to invest.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then they hit you with capital gains tax.
[SPEAKER_00]: which is capital gains tax is an income tax, so that goes back all the other side of the margin, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's an income tax.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dividence distributions, capital gains, income tax, corporate tax, those are all in the income tax bracket.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's really interesting when you start studying all the different taxes, and then all the things that are
[SPEAKER_00]: that are taxes, but they don't call taxes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in you start adding it all up and you're like, wow, this is crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like this is absolutely not.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, the most sinister one, one of the most sinister, isn't even considered a tax at all.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's inflation.
[SPEAKER_00]: the invisible tax.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have no central bank in the country of Panama.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we have what's called the Balboa.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the Balboa is a local currency that is packed one to one with the United States dollar.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are no notes for the Balboa, but we have coins.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now for notes, we use US dollars.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what happens is, okay, there is inflation from the United States and the supply of US dollars, but Panama themselves cannot print US dollars, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: They basically
[SPEAKER_00]: Borough, they import the US dollars as our local currency.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if the pandemic and government gets in trouble, if they're not fiscally responsible, they have no options.
[SPEAKER_00]: They can't turn on the printing press and just create more money, which means our financial house is in way better shape here than in most countries in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in twenty twenty four, if you look at all the countries, I believe Panama had the lowest inflation rate.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like a fraction of one percent.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's just, it's a much more stable type of country.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then some people say, well, what about the de-dollarization?
[SPEAKER_00]: What happens if something went to the, you know, happened to the US dollar and it exploded or imploded or whatever?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, we still have the laws in place for the Balbo.
[SPEAKER_00]: We still have our own currency in the back pocket.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you bring in other things like they're now friendly to crypto, you can now pay your, there's very little taxes here.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you needed to pay taxes or property taxes, that can all be done in Bitcoin.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have Bitcoin-friendly banks here now.
[SPEAKER_00]: People are always talking about it only about Al Salvador.
[SPEAKER_00]: Panama is actually coming up huge.
[SPEAKER_00]: We had all these things in together plus it's a tax-free country.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, wow, this is the most libertarian country on earth.
[SPEAKER_02]: How interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: Just a circle back to what we were saying.
[SPEAKER_02]: We've talked about a few spots in Latin America.
[SPEAKER_02]: What about a couple that you think are worth people investigating outside Latin America?
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, yes, I did focus mostly on Latin America.
[SPEAKER_00]: We talked a little bit about the UAE.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really do still like the UAE, but we have to understand what you're getting there.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is not a democracy, and I don't necessarily like democracies whatsoever.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you think that you're going to be able to go out there and run your mouth or criticize the royal family, like that is not the place for you on any level.
[SPEAKER_00]: I live there for eight years.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had no problem with this because the government of the UAE is really great actually what they're doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you kind of understand what where the boundaries are and what you can say and what you can do and if you stay within those, you're fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: By the way, if you don't stay within them, what happens?
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't chop your hands off for any bullshit that you read online.
[SPEAKER_00]: They deport you.
[SPEAKER_00]: you they give you back your passport and they say you got twenty four forty eight hours to leave the country I had this by the way I saw someone there was a guy that I knew in the UAE he decided to throw a party in the middle of Ramadan and invite a bunch of people over and got completely drunk and they started whipping beer bottles off the balcony and smashing on the ground and someone called the police
[SPEAKER_00]: And the police came and arrested them, and they were in jail for, I don't know, a day or two.
[SPEAKER_00]: They released them.
[SPEAKER_00]: They gave them back to the passport.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they said, your visa's been canceled.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have, you know, twenty four, forty eight hours to exit the country.
[SPEAKER_02]: Every country should do that, though.
[SPEAKER_02]: I support every country doing that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, you know what the rules are.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is Ramadan.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the holy month of Ramadan.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're getting wasted and chuck and beer bottles out your window.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you're an idiot.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm not surprised by this at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I mean, just know what you're getting into in a country like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you're, if you have a problem, there's other countries that you can go to.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like the idea of, it's like, there's different places for different types of people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, I think that there should be
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, the most communist socialist, woken transgender country out there in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like great.
[SPEAKER_00]: You guys like this type of stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what you want out of society.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Move to California.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like that's it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you guys can have it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like have the whole state or have a whole country.
[SPEAKER_00]: But like don't try to enforce the ideas on anybody else.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to live in a country with zero tax and
[SPEAKER_00]: you know organic food and don't put monsano on the crops and it's like I just I need a place that I can go and do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is why I like a lot of these free city movements and the work that typically is just doing and all of these kinds of things and it's like I think we should have you know not a hundred ninety three countries but like
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, a thousand countries, ten thousand countries in each one can try out little different forms of governance and styles and political ideologies and just as long as you're not infringing on anyone else's rights, go for gold.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, that concept itself is one of my favorite things about the USA.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that that concept of federalism and having fifty different states with their own jurisdiction and laws and governance.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's super dope.
[SPEAKER_02]: Being from the UK, UK is all like very top down.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like if the UK goes to crap, like the whole thing kind of goes to crap.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can't.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no Texas, there's no Florida, there's no Nevada, there's no Utah, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just like, it doesn't really matter even if you're an England or Scotland or Wales.
[SPEAKER_02]: you're gonna just get hit by whatever crap is coming down the pipeline.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think that's one huge blessing that Americans have, which they should probably utilize more.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's cool that if you are in California and stuff is really sucking, it's like man, you've got
[SPEAKER_02]: you've got forty nine other options within the same nation on the same passport like you can just up and move.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can literally get a you haul or put your stuff in your car and just drive for I don't know a couple dozen hours and you know relocate your family and I think that's cool.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's really cool to have that option.
[SPEAKER_00]: How to present just this federal government's gotten out of control there.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: If more power returns to the state, I think they would be in way better shape.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it would be a lot, a lot better.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that federal government is insane.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hundred percent.
[SPEAKER_02]: Mikhail, Matt, we'll definitely have to have more conversations in the future.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know you're a man that we, you know, there's so much stuff that we could talk about that we didn't even get into.
[SPEAKER_02]: But in the interest of time, where can people find and follow you online?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I mean, the main one would be our website, expatmoney.com, but you can also go on any podcasting app or YouTube and subscribe to us on there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our podcast, the expat money show has been going for eight, nine years now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I started it in the UA.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was another reason I left, by the way, they started banning Zoom right when the very early days of Zoom.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that they let that back in, but that made it very difficult for recording a podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can find our podcast on any podcasting platform.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're on X at my name.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's at Thore, Michele, on X. And yeah, reach out to us.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're happy to help.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're happy to try to take care of your community, your subscriber base, and anything I can do to support you guys.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm here.
[SPEAKER_02]: Michele, thanks for coming on this show.
[SPEAKER_02]: Man, it's been a pleasure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Zubi Pleasure is all mine and congratulations again on becoming a father.