Living Intentionally After "Enough" - Bilal Zaidi on leaving Google, emigrating to the US, the intensity of New York, writing poetry and spoken word, and travel vs. vacations (Pathless Path Podcast)

[00:59] Paul: Welcome to The Pathless Path. I'm Paul Millerd, and in this podcast, we examine the invisible scripts that run our lives and dare to imagine new stories for work and life. Today I'm talking with Bilal Zaidi, a fellow podcaster and creator who I'm pretty excited to talk to. I think he shares a lot of a sort of similar stance in how he's approaching self-employment. And he's been working on his own for about 4+ years now. He also has created a podcast called The Creator Lab.

It's an amazing podcast, very similar to this one, just diving deep into the stories of people taking unconventional paths and daring to put their creations into the world. He also is a co-host of Not Investment Advice. I don't even know if the name really—

[01:51] Bilal Zaidi: Yeah, it doesn't mean anything.

[01:53] Paul: Describes what it is, but I love listening because it's sort of hanging out with 3 fellow curious, self-employed, unconventional pathers that are trying to figure it out as they go. Highly recommend that podcast. He's doing a bunch of other stuff. Spent 7 years at Google, born in London and grew up in England and eventually moved to the US. So much to talk about. Welcome to the podcast, Bilal.

[02:20] Bilal Zaidi: Thanks for having me, man. I just want to say up front, I just mentioned before we started recording, you didn't pay me to say this, but I really did love your book. Like, a lot of people come on my show and they'll, you know, their PR people will send me the book. And to be frank, I don't get to read all of the books, right? Because you don't really get time. It takes me ages to read.

But your one I actually listened to, and you were reading it yourself, which I love. And I listened to it in one day. It was when I was packing for my recent trip. And I listened basically in one sitting. I was walking around Brooklyn packing my bag, and it felt— yeah, it was kind of in prep for this as well, obviously, but I'd had it on my list for a while to check out. So yeah, loved it enough to listen to it in one day.

So great, great stuff, man.

[03:04] Paul: Appreciate it. Yeah, it means a lot when other people on similar paths say they enjoy the book, so I really appreciate that.

[03:12] Bilal Zaidi: Cool, man.

[03:13] Paul: The, the question I start with, uh, for everyone on this podcast is around the scripts. And the scripts are the stories in our head about what we're supposed to do in life. So I'd love to hear a bit about the stories and scripts you grew up with, growing up in London with a Pakistani family. Uh, what was that like?

[03:33] Bilal Zaidi: And you said like money scripts, or specifically like work as a whole, you mean?

[03:37] Paul: It could be anything. It's really what were the I should be doing these things in the world that you grew up with. I've found most people have something. Sometimes it is money, but oftentimes it's broader than that.

[03:50] Bilal Zaidi: Yeah, well, it's interesting that my mind went to money, even though nowadays I'd say that's one of the things I don't think that much about, as much as I used to. But yeah, so growing up for us, I think money was quite important because we grew up kind of like middle to working class. I mean, we're middle class in the UK, uh, which is kind of like, you know, my family's income was like £38,000 a year, which for context, and that was just above the amount where you get kind of benefits, uh, but like low enough that you're not balling out, you know, sort of thing. Um, but also, you know, my parents were incredible. They, you know, immigrants from Pakistan. My dad literally worked in a factory, my mum worked in retail, and they all, they both like worked their ways up into different worlds.

So they lived the equivalent of the American dream, but in England. So they've done very well for themselves. But I think just with that as context, the stuff we were talking about in the house, like money was important to us because every month we were in an overdraft. I remember doing like a spreadsheet, looking at a spreadsheet with my dad every month, and that was one of the first scripts. It was be responsible with money, save up money. And thankfully, invest money was also eventually in there as well because he eventually started buying real estate and that was his form of investment.

But I remember that looking at the spreadsheet with him and seeing like every month he earned this amount, the mortgage went out, and there was this allowance for the kids. And every single month it went into the red. And that was kind of one of the first kind of scripts, I guess, or context for a script of we don't have enough to have abundance yet. So it was— it kind of created this scarcity mindset. I've now kind of have words to describe it in hindsight. But so that was kind of one of the first ones.

The other one I'd say that was really prominent was this kind of underdog script of we are immigrants, we are brown people in the UK. Um, and again, nowadays you listen to my podcast, I don't really talk about race that much. It's not as prominent in my life as it was growing up, but growing up it was really kind of like something at the forefront. I went to a school with like 5 brown guys and mostly white people. And the only reason I mentioned that was 'cause there was like kind of like a lot of racism there, you know, a lot of name-calling and a lot of othering. And because of that, that was kind of the next script, which was you are not like everyone else.

You need to find your own path. Prove to everyone how good you are, and one day you'll be able to show everyone, you know, like they didn't understand you, that sort of vibe. And I obviously interviewing a lot of entrepreneurs, you hear that kind of othering quite a lot, or— and it's not always a race thing, obviously, right? It's normally just a, you're just interested in things a lot of people aren't interested in. So I think that was another kind of script. And then the last one is just a very typical immigrant story script, which is, you know, safety, right?

Like, that's all my parents ever wanted, and rightly so, right? Like, they were struggling, so all they wanted for their kids was to have a better life than them. They wanted us to do the typical— what you describe in your book— get a safe job. You know, in the, you know, Pakistani Indian community, a lot of Asian people will say be a doctor, a lawyer, engineer is kind of like the trifecta. And the reason they always said that was because, one, they're respectable jobs, but also because they pay you enough that you can get a house, get a mortgage, get a wife, or get a husband, or whatever. And so that was just, you know, I'm sure everyone listening to this had some form of that in their, in their childhood as well.

So those are probably the three most prominent ones.

[07:34] Paul: Yeah, that, that's fascinating. When, when did you, uh, first start playing family accountant? I find that pretty interesting. You're running the spreadsheets for your family.

[07:46] Bilal Zaidi: Yeah, well, I would say my dad was running it and I was just a keen observer sort of thing. I wasn't necessarily like making the spreadsheet, but that was from a very young age. I'd say like 8 years old, 9 years old, maybe 11. I can't remember exactly, but very young. And then the other kind of role I played very quickly was the technologist. And that, that was— I was the one asking for a computer, right?

Like, in my— I was the youngest of 3 kids. My brother's 10 years older. He actually was really into computers too. My sister studied computer science as well. Uh, but really it was my brother who— he started learning web development eventually, and that's how I got into the internet. Um, but I was the one saying, hey, Mom and Dad, I've seen this at school, there's computers, I want to like have one at home.

Can we save up for that? And we had to like save up for a long time to be able to afford to get that eventually. Um, so I would say that was actually interesting because my mom was doing like a— she was a mature student at university because she like dropped out of school when we were born and she went as an adult. And so she actually studied IT as well. And at 11 or 12, I was kind of helping her with— I remember her coursework because I just loved computers. So I was kind of more like the family help desk more than the accountant.

So that was kind of the other role I played.

[09:06] Paul: You said you felt pressure to sort of carve your own path early, sort of standing out from the people around you. Were there any sort of interesting curiosities you look back on that seemed so obvious that showed up later in your life, or early interests which sort of stuck around?

[09:27] Bilal Zaidi: Yeah, I mean, kind of what I was just mentioning there with the technology was the prominent one, mainly just because I loved, you know, playing around with the computer, hacking. I'd like download all the different software, and it sounds really sad now, but I literally would like mess around and for hours make presentations on PowerPoint or learn Macromedia Flash, if you remember that. Oh yeah, the animation stuff. Dreamweaver, when that came out. Photoshop, all that. So kind of whatever I could get my hands on.

I was never like an expert in any of them, to be honest. I just kind of knew enough to figure my way around it. So that was definitely the early one. And then the second one, which is actually again in hindsight quite an interesting one, is there was— you probably know I'm a massive sports fan and a massive football soccer fan. So there was a game called Championship Manager, which anyone in the UK listening to this will probably have played on, have heard of. And that was actually my first foray into, like, I would say a form of strategy, but also just numbers, because it's, it's a management game.

It sounds like you're doing work, right? But you're managing a football team, you're selecting the tactics, you're buying and selling players. But basically what I would do for about 10 to 12 hours a day, I'd come home from school and I would stay up all night basically playing that game. and you're basically scanning numbers because you'd go to player profiles pages and they would have like 20, 30 numbers for their attributes. So I just got very used to scanning, you know, thousands and thousands of players, and I'd quickly scan around the page— acceleration, finishing, off-the-ball movement, all that sort of stuff. And again, now in hindsight, that sounds like, you know, what, this silly kid just playing a game.

But if I now look back at the things I still enjoy doing, like I still watch every single Arsenal game, and I'm a massive football fan. Uh, I ended up starting an Arsenal website like 3, 4 years later after that, at 16 years old. That became one of my first big projects on the internet. Um, like, it was a blog essentially, but became like a bit bigger than that, uh, like a fan site. Um, and then, yeah, so I— and then even now later when I went to Google, half of my job was just looking at numbers and trying to understand insights from numbers. And later when I got— went to Charity:Water and I did, uh, I was more of like a leader there, but I kind of tried to really bring that data-driven decision-making attribute to, to the organization because they were more of like a creative soul.

And my approach has always been both creative but also ground yourself in numbers where possible. And so yeah, I think that was another form of curiosity that led me in a certain direction. Um, and then, you know, like I said, I started that website and that got me onto the next road of making websites. And eventually I sold websites and eventually I created the e-commerce business. And so it was just all very incremental. It was no real big plan with it.

Um, but yeah, I think that's a common thread I've found, is just naturally following those curiosities that I've had. And now, as you've probably heard, I've got a bunch of others that I've got into as an adult, and I don't think I'm ever losing that curiosity for stuff. So yeah, I don't know if that answers your question, but that's the one that stands out.

[12:40] Paul: I meet so many people, especially sort of in our age group, which we're all— we were all hanging out on the, uh, on computers basically. We didn't have like the social networks to find each other when we were teenagers. It's funny you mentioned Dreamweaver because one of my first, uh, sort of like side gigs, maybe you call it, was I bought these Dreamweaver templates on eBay, maybe like 2000. And yeah, I would— I took the template files and I burned CDs and I started just reselling the same file I bought on eBay.

[13:19] Bilal Zaidi: Yeah, that one-to-many approach, killing it.

[13:23] Paul: Yeah, I know, I was ahead of it.

[13:25] Bilal Zaidi: But fixed cost.

[13:26] Paul: Yeah, at that time I was just screwing around. I never saw it as like, oh, this is a start of a path. Um, I went to college and it was like, okay, you need to get serious, you need to get a real job. Uh, did you have a similar sort of loss of some of those interests or side experiments? I know you, you had the street, um, vibes thing that started when you were 16.

[13:49] Bilal Zaidi: Yeah, no, that's a great point because at some point— well, like now I'm 35 and I've now— I'm, I'm basically going back to a lot of those things that I loved as a young person. That's a common theme I found as well. Um, but it required me to kind of professionalize first, because if you think I was, you know, even the way I speak now, like, this is how I speak. But if you met me in '21 going to Google in Dublin, like, people couldn't understand what I was saying half the time because I had a really thick East London accent. I used a lot of slang, even though I'd been, you know, in university and you kind of learn to communicate with normal people. There was just this natural twang that I still have a little bit, but, and I'm not like ashamed of it.

I actually really like my accent and my voice, but I think it's also important for people to understand what you're saying, right? So it was naturally, especially when I moved to the States, I kind of just, you know, my voice probably evolved a bit. But to answer that question, the stuff that I actually kind of had to drop, so I got to a crossroads when I got to university. I guess it's 18, 19, I had both Arsenal Review and Street Vibe still going. Um, but so I could handle StreetVibes and Arsenal Review as an A-level student, which is before university, mainly to be honest because I wasn't really going to the class that much because I was prioritizing the business stuff I'd set up and I was just naturally more interested. But by the time I got to that university, they don't really mess around there.

You, you really, you know, you can't get away with not working as much. And plus I'd spent all this time and energy and money to get to that good university. I wanted to make the most of that. So at one point I had to just say, I can't do this anymore, I need to stop, because I've reached that point many times in my life. And that was the first time. And I kind of just asked myself, have I learned what I wanted to learn from this?

Is there more that I can gain from it, or am I getting to my next chapter? And that's kind of what I decided. But again, like I said, many years later I would come back to that. And even like Street Vibes, That was the foundation of knowledge I've made in e-commerce and retail and stuff like that, which eventually was for a big part of my job at Google. That was my focus as well. I even did my thesis on it at university.

So it's always kind of like been a building block to the next, next step. And then I was, I was at that young age where you're still listening to other people a lot more than I would now. And, you know, my parents are saying get a job like this, and I'm in university where most of the people are trying to get into banking or consultancy, um, you know, because I also studied probably similar stuff to you because I know you worked in consultancy, right?

[16:31] Paul: Yeah.

[16:31] Bilal Zaidi: So I was the same with that. I was like, okay, that's the job I'm going to apply for. Let me— I would go on the graduate sites and apply for job at, you know, Accenture, McKinsey, banks, like investment banks. And I didn't know— I don't know why I really did that because I didn't actually really have that much of an interest. It just seemed like the obvious thing I was supposed to do. Um, and so in hindsight, it was great that I didn't do that.

Like, I respect that world a lot. It's just it wouldn't have been a good culture fit for me. Um, so yeah, eventually I think Google was actually the good middle ground between, you know, a real company where you learn real skills, but I was also learning about technology, learning about the internet, and then working initially with small to medium-sized businesses, which I loved. Eventually I worked with like really big companies, but in my first job there was all about small to medium-sized businesses, people I would speak to like founders of companies. And as a 21-year-old, I'm just learning and absorbing all that information. So that was kind of a nice middle ground in the end.

But eventually I always knew I was going to go back to doing— working in smaller teams, smaller companies, and that sort of stuff. Yeah.

[17:40] Paul: Is there a part of you that sort of looks back and says, what if I had just stayed with those things early on.

[17:47] Bilal Zaidi: Yes. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I don't really regret it necessarily, but I definitely think, I mean, I'd be a completely different person, right? I mean, so I do think maybe I would've figured out a way to, maybe I would've been financially more successful, to be honest, because I think if I'd stuck with, let's say, the e-commerce, I was pretty much not doing any ads. I was doing like a small amount of ads, I didn't really understand ads at the time. And if I had really put the fuel on the fire there, that was the Wild West.

It was just like 2004, right? So it was, there was no, I think there was maybe Google AdWords, but it was, I, it was very early. I don't even remember properly. So stuff like that, I definitely have thought many times like, okay, I've met so many successful e-commerce founders and friends of mine now who've built really successful companies. Um, and I did think, oh, did I have the skills? Did I have the drive to do that?

And I think I did, but the curiosity was leading me elsewhere. And I think I'm quite at peace with that, you know. I, I'm not really someone who's like, oh, that person did that and I feel jealous or something. It's just I'm like happy for them and I'm kind of happy for myself because I'm in a peaceful place. Um, and I've done, done fine as well, so I can't really complain. I think more importantly though, what happened when I went to Google, especially at that age, this was 2009, '10, you know, it's very different to the Google of today, and especially the Google Dublin office.

Like, I was just at a wedding in Italy with, you know, half the people there were from Google Dublin. There were these old friends I've known for 13 years. We were at a bachelor party, 14 guys, 12 different nationalities, and so that, Beyond just money, right? And like what sounds impressive, like to me the experience I've had meeting those people, learning about their backgrounds, going and visiting their families, traveling around the world, experiencing stuff with people like that, like I couldn't have done that on my own, you know? So I mean, maybe I would have done it in some ways, but there's certain things that you learn and you absorb in those environments that you just can't do in a 1 or 5-person ecommerce company.

And I think especially in our corner of the internet, on Twitter and stuff, I think a lot of people just have a very black and white view of, you know, small companies are good, big companies are bad, or startups are great, startups are bad. And it's just, it's not like that, right? Like, there's so much more nuance to it. And similarly, the way I think about Google today is very different to when I got there. It was this, it still felt like an upstart-style company where you were encouraged to do projects on your own, 20% projects. You were allowed to kind of dream up stuff and go and work in little teams.

And like, some of the most successful people I know came from that office. So, um, yeah, again, we're probably— I'm probably not fully answering your question there, but that's kind of how I feel about it now. I'm not— I don't really regret it, but I, uh, yeah, I have definitely thought about it, of course.

[20:48] Paul: Yeah, it's— I, I think I'm sort of like the quit your job guy or at least people think that, but I always try to highlight that I actually loved my path early on. I loved working at a consulting firm, and I think similar to you, I grew up sort of like working class mindset. Like I got exposed to ideas, I got to travel. It really expanded my imagination of the possibilities for my life. I think over time—

[21:16] Bilal Zaidi: That's the most important thing, right? Yeah.

[21:18] Paul: Yeah, and I think over time, a lot of that faded, And it became much more about promotions, money, and politics. And I just suck at that stuff. And I was just a bit slow at recognizing that. But I did a tweet last week around how McKinsey was a great experience for me. And a lot of people just haven't—

[21:40] Bilal Zaidi: McKinsey is a great example of that as well, right? Because I think I read that tweet. And I feel like a lot of people still, obviously, even in the corner of the internet we're in, do respect McKinsey, but in the whole world, McKinsey is the most respected consultancy company in the world, right? Like one of the most respected brands, if not the most respected brands in any industry. So it's just a weird— I think there's just a lot of, uh, chip-on-the-shoulder people in like internet tech world who like, honestly, a lot of them like wouldn't have even gotten in a place like that, and they kind of have a little resentment to it in a way. And some of them just don't understand it, right?

But you'll see these threads and like jokes made about, oh, like, pay McKinsey to come in and spend $10 million to like get these— this tweet of insights. And they're obviously, you know, I'm sure there are parts of it that do land like that in a lot of consultancy companies, but like there's a reason those people are sought out, you know. It's a lot of smart people, a lot of smart training.

[22:38] Paul: Yeah, and I think that there's probably another aspect of— I, I was looking at this when I joined McKinsey. There are about 9,000 global employees Now there's apparently 4 times as many. Like, it's literally a different firm. So 90— exactly, 90% of the people probably joined after I left. And probably similar to Google, like, this— Google has become so big that it's completely different.

[23:06] Bilal Zaidi: Similarly, my— when I joined, there were like 18,000 employees, and when I— now I think it's like 200,000 or 150,000 to 200,000. So it was— and then when I left, there was a thing you could type in the browser, go slash percent. It was like all these Go links, and it would tell you how much of the company joined after you. And I think it was like 99.2% or something like that, which is crazy because I was there for 7 years, which is a long time, but it's not 20 years, right? I mean, obviously at that age, I don't think it had even been around for 20 years. So it was, um, yeah, it was.

And you saw the changes, and I saw the change in culture. When I left, I still think it was an incredible company. But like you said, it is a completely different company when you join early as well.

[23:51] Paul: When did the sort of glow of being at Google and the excitement and all the positives start to fade a little for you?

[23:59] Bilal Zaidi: I think really just when I would stop learning, to be honest. I think originally it was beyond learning. You're joining because of the brand name, the prestige, the idea of what it could be. Also, for me, genuinely was always about learning. Like, I, I've— my plan originally was to go there for 1 or 2 years, make a bunch of contacts, and leave. That was actually one of my initial motivators when I was at that age, because at that age I think it was more about opening doors.

And again, that comes from that early childhood thing of I'm from this place in East London where you don't meet rich people, right? Like, you rarely meet really rich people. So then As I got older and I went to university, my university had lots of rich people. So I would like see what are they like. I almost had this fascination with, oh, that's like the other world that I don't know. And then similarly at Google, I mean, really great people, but most of the people there have gone to private schools, really smart people, come from a lot of good backgrounds a lot of the time.

And so I think that was my initial motivation, to be honest. It was just like, go learn and go meet good people and see how it goes from there.

[25:06] Paul: When did the sort of curiosity energy start to fade?

[25:11] Bilal Zaidi: Yeah, I think it was really— so I was there for 7 years. It was probably around— it happened twice. Once at 3 years in, uh, because I was, I was actually leaving, planning to leave Google. I was working on a company outside of Google that I was going to leave for, but then in that time my team got shut down. In that week they basically offered me a job either in London or in New York for basically the similar team. And so at that moment I decided, do I stay or do I go?

And that was the first time I decided, actually, there's more I can do here, there's more I can learn. And beyond the job, it was more about life experience. Like, you know, to move to America from the UK is not easy. Like, just to get a visa alone is hard, it's expensive. So that was the first time. And then I'd say in 2015, I was ready to leave again, but I didn't have a green card.

So that was a little bit of an issue. So I kind of— that's actually when I started Creator Lab. Um, that was in the process of getting a green card. I needed to— my brain was starting to slow down at work. It was just kind of starting to get boring in terms of learning. I was still having a pretty good time, like my lifestyle was great, the client work was fun enough, but I wasn't being challenged in the work itself.

Um, and I just kind of knew by that point I wasn't gonna stay there forever, you know, I was gonna have to leave and I was also really wary of the golden handcuffs problem where, you know, the longer you stay, the more stock you get, the more it vests, the more the stock price goes up. You on paper are worth X amount of money and you never want to leave for that reason. So that was another reason why I was kind of a little bit scared of becoming one of those people that stays there forever. And again, it was, it was partly because the company had changed, I had stopped learning, and I was ready to move back in a direction I'd always wanted to go to, which was a smaller organization. And by that point, I didn't really know what that would be. But in 2015, I started Creator Lab and started interviewing people, and that was kind of my escape.

It was a way for me to go and find interesting people who were doing interesting things outside of my world. And, you know, what you're doing here, right? Like, just being curious, understanding people's paths, asking questions. And I was already kind of doing that outside of work, but I thought if I formalize it and just record it, other people could gain from it too. And selfishly, you get to have, you know, the guy I worked with at Charity:water, he was really— he could go on pretty much any podcast, and I got him before I even launched the podcast, right? So I worked with him for 2 years after that, and even though I was, you know, dotted line reporting into him, I spent more time there was never another time I spent 2 hours just talking to him, asking him about his childhood, like anything I ever went to ask him, problems he's had, like that level of depth.

And I even like worked with him, you know. So, um, obviously I did spend like hundreds of hours with him in different ways, but it was not like the dedicated conversation you get in a podcast. So that's kind of what drove me out. And when I started the podcast, I realized, oh wow, there's so many paths here. There's so many cool things out there that I'm not going to experience if I just stay at this big company. And then something I saw, you actually tweeted a clip from NIA, Not Investment Advice, the other podcast I do, of me talking about like prestige and people's reluctance to leave a lot of the time is that prestige and the brand that they've now associated with their name.

And that is something that I was, I was, you know, guilty of that as anyone else. But then I started recognizing it in myself. Like if I was going to work and not fully happy, but I felt okay at cocktail hour or going home for Christmas and talking to my friends, like, was I just telling this story about Google or was it still a reality? You know, and for a lot of the time I was there, that was, it was a reality. But eventually it started becoming just like you said, the politics, like you're spending 80% of your time convincing people that you're doing great work instead of just doing great work. And that's like my least favorite thing to do.

So, um, yeah, that's kind of what laid the foundation for why I eventually did and what I do today.

[29:21] Paul: Yeah, it's when the work becomes the performance of work, and exactly, that's the worst for people that thrive in learning environments or with curiosity. Um, so exactly, it sounds like—

[29:35] Bilal Zaidi: yeah, I just hate— I hate that feeling of like faking it, you know? Like there will be times where I remember the day after— without getting political— the day after the first Trump election. You can imagine most of Google is very liberal and so am I, but regardless of that, I went into the 9 o'clock team meeting after that night where everyone's been up all night watching this. And we just went into a room and no one talked about it. And everyone's had this face of being upset or just shell-shocked or whatever. I just remember thinking like, we're all like friends, we've all like gone out together, hung out together, done all these things, we've been to each other's houses.

And for some reason, we're all now just sitting here trying to pretend like we're not gonna talk about this thing that has just happened at work, that was something in the country we live in. And, you know, it was just kind of this weird, I know that's a politics thing and people don't like to talk about politics, which I get. But it was just like this weird feeling of feeling fake. And I like, that's my least favorite thing. I'm like, what? Life is too short to be not talking about things you actually care to talk about, you know?

So that's kind of how I felt about it.

[30:44] Paul: I'd love to hear more about the move to the US. It seems like moving to the US, which I know you did in 2013, also sort of coincided with a challenging period for you. Were those two related or was it also just timing and part of your life?

[31:00] Bilal Zaidi: Yeah, it was a bit of both because, well, the first, the motivation for moving here was really more business and career focused. I mean, I did love New York as a city. I'd visited quite a few times. I'd visited like maybe 2, 3 times as a kid, like once when I was actually a kid, once at university, and then once, once I started at Google, I came for work, and then I had a friend who lived here, and I, you know, stayed with him, and it was— I saw another part of the city that I'd never seen before as a tourist, as I'm sure you've experienced as well. So that was one of the motivating factors as like a 24, 25-year-old, I thought, what about like all this growth that's going to happen as a person? Because I had already moved to Dublin, Ireland by that point and moved away for university.

So I knew how much comes from just putting yourself in a new environment. But they all felt like warm-ups for like this massive move of moving to the States, moving to New York. And also like my job was to travel around, right? So I went to LA and San Francisco and all over the country. Meeting people, and I just thought, okay, what's the worst that's going to happen here? I'm going to move, going to learn a bunch, I'm going to probably make decent money, make some new friends, and if I don't like it, I can leave.

And if I like it, then maybe more stuff will come from it. Um, but like you said, it did kind of coincide with this kind of down moment or period for me. So not straight away. You lived in New York too, right? So you, you spent a few years here?

[32:24] Paul: Yeah, I was there from 2015 to 2017. I actually joke about that period. It's like a lot of my friends now were in the city at the same time, but none of us knew how to find each other yet.

[32:35] Bilal Zaidi: Yeah, yeah, exactly. But we never met. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. But there's, um, but that— so you kind of know this as well as anyone, right? Like, there's these high highs and low lows here.

I feel like that I'm sure you get in other places, but there's just the intensity with a place like New York. And I'm sure there are like a handful of places that are like this, but even coming from London, you know, 10, 12 million people Crazy stuff happens there. You can do anything you do in New York pretty much there as well. But there's a 10 out of 10 intensity here which brings these high highs and low lows. And so in one week I could have literally the best night of my life, best day of my life, and then in the same week have a terrible day, right? And like the worst and just feel shit and just say, oh man, what am I doing here?

Did I move all the way here for this reason? Was it just to have a good time? You know, and you start questioning all these different things. It probably doesn't help that you're out partying all the time, not sleeping, not looking after your health, because now, you know, again, in hindsight, that was probably a contributing factor to that feeling. But I probably— I've been careful to use this word because I have like family members and people close to me that are really, truly depressed, like 10 out of 10 depressed, where they can't do, you know, normal things that people in society would deem normal. Um, so I don't know if mine was full depression, but I would say now in hindsight, it's probably a form of depression, right?

It was like a few years of just, you know, masking, um, you know, wearing a mask essentially, and, and still having a lot of fun. And like, if you met me at that time, I was like the most fun person you'd meet, right? Like, I was having an incredible time, but it was all very low-level stuff, and I needed to experience that, you know, as I was 25 to 30, um, to get that— I don't want to say out of my system, but to have had those experiences that I thought about as a kid growing up, right? Um, but after a while you realize like that's obviously not depth, right? It's, it's like the— I was talking about it last two nights ago with a friend, um, even just from a relationship standpoint, right? Like you can compare a one-night fling to a deep meaningful relationship right?

And there's pros and cons about each, and often the grass is greener for a lot of people. But to me, I compare that to exercise, right? Like, you can— or like the feeling you get from exercise versus drugs, right? If you take, uh, insert X drug here, you can get a massive dopamine hit, you can get, you know, this surge of energy or mellow feeling, whatever it is, this euphoric feeling, right? And a lot of people you know, do that and good for them, whatever. I have in the past but don't anymore.

Um, and there was a feeling of, oh, right now I'm having the best time of my life. But then often for several days you feel like shit, right? Like, and so for 4, 2, you know, 1 to 4 hours of fun, you feel terrible for another day or two. Um, you know, you could say the same for drinking alcohol, right? Like, that is a lot more people nowadays are not drinking for that reason. Because you, you trade a few hours of fun for, you know, 24 hours or more of just not being your best self.

And I would compare that to like a relationship. Like I said, like you can have this euphoric feeling for a short period of time, or you can have this deep, meaningful relationship with someone that you truly love and know everything about and support each other for all the good and bad times. And you can't compare that to anything, right? Versus like You know, when you work out in a similar way, like that, that hour you spent running or lifting weights or whatever, playing a sport, you kind of earned that feeling. And then for the rest of your day, you feel so much better. So that's kind of how I try to, I try to remind myself of those, you know, longer-term positive effects when I'm choosing the things I do.

And, and so to answer your actual question, I just had this low moment in 2013 to Well, I'd say like closer to 2015. And that's when I started seeking out like, what else is there outside of my work? And I started questioning, are the things that I thought I cared about actually the things I care about? And so it's a bit of an existential crisis in a way, because you come in it with these stories like you mentioned, or these scripts about what makes you happy and what is important in life. And at that stage in my life, it was really about, you know, progressing in my career, making money, having fun, you know, doing all the things a 25-year-old would be doing in New York, um, who's earning a good living. And so, but after a while, when you do all those things and you're not truly happy, you then say, well, is there real happiness?

You know, like, what do I need to do to, to get to this feeling that I've been seeking out? And that's when I think the depression comes in, because you realize, damn, I've done all the things, you know, that I thought would make me really happy and they're not working. And, you know, and so like that's kind of set me on a path of really trying to understand myself, my past, other people's paths as well, and doing that kind of like that deep work to figure out, are there these, these things I haven't dealt with from my past, which is probably what, what it was. Or secondly, are there things that are super basic that we all know to do that I'm not doing, like looking after my body and my mind. And that was obviously a massive contributing factor to it as well.

So yeah, it was a combination of my philosophical problems and also just like, like you mentioned, America, like that is also a part of it, right? Because the culture of pure capitalism in America is different to Europe, right? And so there's this conflict. I came here thinking I'm a capitalist like anyone else because I love entrepreneurship and business. As much as anyone I know. But at the same time, I grew up in a place where you get free healthcare, and, and which has its problems, but if you can't afford something, you can still get healthcare, you can still get good education for free.

And so those were some of those big questions that I was, you know, messing around with in my head. And for someone who can overthink, that can cause you to be a little bit depressed about the world, right, in the state of the world.

[38:47] Paul: I love that so much. It's— we really should have met in 2015 because that's when I moved. Yeah, that's when I moved to New York. And I think the first 3 to 6 months for me were very exciting. It was like, I love this place. There's so much to do.

I was going out, I was doing stuff nonstop. And the next year and a half was just so hard for me. I think New York in some ways sort of shows you who you really are. I think a certain type of person can thrive there. And I quickly realized I wasn't one of those people. And even moving from Boston to New York, Boston's just like, everything's like 20% chiller than New York.

It's still like a big city. People are driven. But if the most driven people would never live in Boston, they're just going to move to New York. So it was a real wake-up call for me. And I think that tension of sort of waking up to, oh, I am not this hardcore gung-ho person, at least not in my current path. And it was really hard for me.

And I think I went through some similar things and started to take action, but I don't think I took action fully until I left New York. It sounds like for you, you sort of decided, okay, I'm just going to like do stuff, do random things, go to bars. You, you tried spoken word stuff and a little bit of writing. Maybe talk to me about, like, was that a sudden realization? Did you get that from someone, a podcast you listened to or something? Like, what inspired you to just change your behaviors all of a sudden?

[40:24] Bilal Zaidi: No, it was a combination of all those things. I think a lot of, you know, there's this kind of cliché old phrase which I'm probably going to butcher, but, you know, you're the combination of the 5 people closest to you, or, you know, summation of those 5 closest people. And I started looking around, and I had— I still have incredible friends that I was around, and I still love those people, and I think they're, they're great people to have around me. But I was saying they weren't filling that curiosity void of being interested in business, understanding how people create things. And honestly, the pure creative part too, like the poetry writing side, is nothing to do with business, right? It's like actually the complete opposite.

Um, in a way. I mean, they're both creative in their own ways, so there is an overlap. Um, but so what I've looked at was my situation. I said, okay, I can either just sit here and be down and keep doing the same stuff over and over again, um, and, and I kind of could see where that was going because I was already feeling dissatisfied. Like, you know, I'd go out on a night out with my friends, and if you do it all the time, you're just like really bored after a while. And I still enjoy that once in a while.

Now I do it like once in a month right? Like I used to do that 2, 3 days, sometimes more a week. And after a while you'd say, okay, well, this is just boring now, it's default. And everyone else was saying the same. They were like, what else can we do apart from go to a bar, go to a restaurant? And then no one does anything else.

And so that was the kind of— and then you kind of just have this default way of living. So that was one part, was accepting that isn't what I want to do all the time. And I'm not going to demonize it. I'm still going to do it once in a while, but I need to change my focus. What are the things I can control? And again, the biggest domino would have been leaving my job, but I couldn't leave the job and stay in the country without the green card.

So that was a constraint. So I said, okay, well, that's a constraint. I can't do much about that for the moment. All I can do is work on the green card application. Hopefully that comes through. In the meantime, what can I do?

2, 3 things I could do. Before I started CreateLab, I said, what is— I started just doing things naturally that I was in interested in. So I used to write for a long time, right? Like, I wrote about Arsenal every day for many years, basically. Um, so I always wrote on the side. I used to write yearly plans for myself.

I used to write random thoughts and stuff like that just in my Evernote since I was a kid. Um, so I always had this kind of writing in me. But for some— I don't know where the poetry stuff came from. I, I always liked spoken word poetry. It was kind of being like a hip-hop fan, there's like an overlap with, you know, real lyrical lyricism heavy hip-hop like Nas and people like that from back in the day that I loved growing up to spoken word. Spoken word is just, you know, that sort of rapping is basically spoken word with music on it, right?

It's just, and so I always grew up with that. And then now as I'm older, I realize in my background, Pakistani background and Muslim background, that was a massive part of our culture too. And I just didn't really realize, right? Like, my dad was into it, my granddad was into it. They would literally be reciting stuff in the house verbatim from there, like, from the top of their head. And just— and it'll be like a group of guys there talking about and saying these lines to each other, right?

And like, in my Western culture friends, that's not something you do, right? Like, you're not sitting there dropping poetry lines. And it's actually quite an interesting dynamic, because I think of the word poetry as it's not respected almost in the same way, or what you think of it in the West is kind of like an artsy student who's studying poetry, whereas in the Eastern cultures, those were the philosophers of the day, you know, like they were the people passing on messages and creating, you know, beautiful ways to describe things that were hard to describe. And so you have that in the West, obviously, but I'm saying in modern times, you don't really think of those people, whereas Nowadays, even in the Eastern culture, you still have that, I think. So I just, I think it was late at night one time after traveling. I was jet-lagged and I woke up and I had this idea.

The first one I ever wrote was called Pomegranate Juice. And it was about this idea of me describing me standing on a roadside in Lahore in Pakistan, looking down at this pomegranate juice, this beautiful cup of juice with this purple, beautiful color. And the thoughts I had in my head. And it was me describing all my worlds, like the Islamic Muslim background, the background in London, the worlds coming together, the philosophical part of me, the religious part of me that I might have lost, now the part of me that's moved to the States. So it was kind of this like description that I just kind of like started writing. I don't know where it came from.

And for months I started doing— I started having other ideas like that and I just did it for fun. And then one time I was home for Christmas and I was sitting there with my dad and I just like mentioned it to him and he was kind of not really listening. He was like watching TV. And then he was like, yeah, you can like show it to me or something like that. And then I just started like reading out to him and he like stopped and he just like paused the TV and he was like, oh my God, like this is actually really good. Can you start again?

And then the whole family came over and that was the first time I like read something of my own writing out loud. And it was actually quite a powerful moment. And I was like, oh, there's something here. And I went back and wrote more. And then I started getting the courage to go and perform. So at one point I was performing 4 or 5 days a week in the city.

I ended up doing competitions and stuff like that. It was kind of fun. But it was really just following this natural curiosity. I don't even know where it came from. And the part that I did hear on a podcast was probably from like a Tim Ferriss thing where it was, where I was thinking about, you know, do something that's really, really hard. And, you know, like if you go late at night in the East Village performing this in front of like hundreds of people, and the next morning you go to a meeting with 10 people, even if they're like executives at a big company, like that felt so easy because the night before you're, you're bearing your soul to strangers, you know what I mean?

So that kind of like forced me to start doing stuff that was, a little bit harder and, and getting out of my comfort zone. And then that kind of spiraled into the next thing, which was let me go and travel on my own for the first time solo. And then it was let me start this podcast. So it was just that, that kind of was the first bit of courage that I got of, you know, what you're doing, something really scary like that. You, you start losing that side of you, which is what do people think of me, right? And 'Oh, I'm going to mess up on stage and I'm going to be embarrassed.' You get used to that very quickly because you're going to mess up, right?

Um, and so yeah, that, that really, really, really helped me, man.

[47:09] Paul: That's such a powerful experience. Thanks, thanks for sharing.

[47:12] Bilal Zaidi: Of course.

[47:13] Paul: And I think it's, it's also, it's so special that you had that. I think so many people I talk to actually don't have the active support of family and things like that. It's not that they're not supporting them. It's just that there's sort of a silence or a distance. I think sometimes unconventional paths can make people uncomfortable. It sounds like they're sort of like— that moment sort of shifted things for you and enabled them— enabled you to realize, oh, they want me to head further down this path.

Was, was that the sort of permission you felt to keep going? Yeah.

[47:51] Bilal Zaidi: Interestingly, I don't know if I was looking for permission. It was more like a nudge, a gentle nudge, because when I wrote the stuff in the first place, I wasn't writing it to share with anyone. I was just kind of writing for fun. And I didn't even think, "Oh, I'm gonna go and perform this." That wasn't even in my head. I'd been to shows and seen other people, but honestly, that style, I don't even love that style a lot of the time because it becomes very, it's like a musical thing, which I like watching, but I don't perform in that way. I just perform like, you know, it is closer to like a little bit of theater, but it's not like the style that you've seen in a traditional spoken word setting.

So I wouldn't say permission necessarily. It was more like a gentle nudge. And I think what my brother said about that literally changed my mood. And that to me was like, wow, that's the power of words if done in a certain way. And in a similar way with the podcast, like podcast is not as moving as a piece of poetry obviously, but it was that same idea of I can record this once I can spend, you know, or write this once and that can impact, you know, one person, 100 people, hundreds of thousands of people in case of podcast, right? So that is kind of how like it's planted the seed of, oh, my proactive action can change someone's mood or it can change someone's path.

And that is a really powerful thing and it can help someone. And because that— and it sounds really cheesy, but that is all I've ever really wanted to do with my career was always like I want to be successful myself for my own, you know, selfish needs. But I also have always just loved seeing other people succeed. Like even now, especially when you become happier and fuller yourself, you just like this. Like I was listening literally to Theo Von this morning, right? Like the comedian, if you've seen his stuff.

Like he's like my favorite, you know, podcast comedian right now. He's just such a funny dude. But I like genuinely listen to him and I'm like, I'm just so happy this guy has blown up over these years. And I'm just so happy he's touring the world. I'm like really internalizing the happiness he must be going through doing that. And on the flip side, I could— I was watching something where he was being asked about, you know, basically does he— what— how he feels about himself.

And you could see he kind of deflected the question. And in a similar way, that like kind of made me sad because I was like, this guy's bringing so much joy to millions of people, including me, and like Similar to a lot of comedians, like a lot of them have a lot of demons, you know, and they, that they haven't been able to deal with. And that's how they get into comedy in the first place. And I think that's just always been something. I don't know where that's come from. I've just always felt that with people.

So when I'm with people or I speak to people, I just, I'm a little emotional with how they're feeling, you know? And so especially when I think someone's a good person. If someone's not a nice person, I don't really care, you know? Or I'm a little bit, like I will give them benefit of doubt and think maybe they're being a bad person for, for these reasons. And I do feel a little bit bad, but most of the time most people's intentions are pretty good and they just lose their way. So yeah, I don't know if it was necessary to come back to your question if it was about permission per se, but it was a nice gentle nudge to say, oh, that's a nice feeling and you can feel good yourself and other people can feel good from this art.

Like, why don't you go and explore that? Um, but yeah, so that, that's probably how I thought about it.

[51:17] Paul: Yeah, I love that. I, I've started to think on paths like these, when you do find a path you're meant to be on, it becomes obvious that no one else could be on your path. So you sort of lose the sense of envy. Like, I similarly, I get so pumped when I see people on their own succeeding. It's like, hell yes, this is another sort of portal in the universe that's been opened up.

[51:42] Bilal Zaidi: Yeah, exactly.

[51:43] Paul: Which means And it's, it's so exciting. And I think it's been so cool to listen to your journey. I've listened to a lot of NIA episodes, and one word I think about a lot when I think of you is wonder. It seems like leaning into showing up in different ways, your creative side really opened up this sense of awe and wonder for the world. Is that something that resonates?

[52:10] Bilal Zaidi: Yeah, that's a nice— I've never described it it like that myself, but I think that's a beautiful way to put it. Um, I think, yeah, the way I see Not Investment Advice versus Create Lab— I still do Create Lab, I just don't do it as much as I, uh, used to. I used to do it every single week for a long time, and now I'm still doing— I'm recording episodes right now that I'll be putting out. Um, but with NIA, I kind of thought, well, there's this world of podcasts which are more about fun than just learning. And I wanted learning and fun, but this, that kind of feeling, I wanted people to listen to and feel good.

So I don't know if that is the same thing as wonder, but they're probably like close cousins, you know, like there's a certain feeling you get from wonder, but there's a feeling of just like, you know, having a laugh with someone or feeling like you're hanging out with someone is a really nice feeling. And I think especially in the pandemic, where we all stuck at home, you know, really worried about the world and worried about ourselves and our families. Podcasts helped me so much, you know, and they really have, like people like Theo Von and other comedians and, you know, people that I listen to, they just, listening to that replaced the thing that I would have got with friends a lot of the time because we didn't have that for a while. And yeah, so that's kind of how, I don't know if wonder is the one word I would pick out, but I think it definitely does resonate in its own way.

[53:36] Paul: Talk to me about eventually leaving your job. I know, yeah, it looks like you left in 2019. Yeah, it sounds like you wanted to do it for a while, but, um, the green card, I know, sort of prevents that. Um, yeah, talk to me about eventually taking that.

[53:51] Bilal Zaidi: So what it was, so I stayed at Google till 2017, and in 2015, episode 3 of Creator Lab is with a guy called Scott Harrison, founder of Charity: Water, which is like a best-in-class social enterprise nonprofit, kind of like the tech company of that world. Um, half— and long story short, I loved him so much that I left my job at Google to, to join their team, uh, in 2017. So it was like a year or so after we had met. Um, maybe I met him in 2016, sorry, and then we— I left it in 2017, April. So it was kind of this— that was my first step outside of Google of getting another job But it was, I had a green card by then. And I was looking at that stage in my life, I was looking for more impact and more purpose.

Like a lot of millennials, you know, we're looking for more impact with the time we're spending in our days. And so that was the first big jump. Loved that job. It's still probably, you know, my favorite job I've had. But again, after 2 years, it kind of got to a point where I said, again, am I staying here for another 3 years or am I leaving right now? And it just naturally came to, the right time for me to leave.

So I still have incredible memories there. I literally just went to one of those people's weddings like a few, like a month ago, was with them yesterday. So I have really good friends from there. But I was at the stage again where I was ready to kind of move back to my original kind of 16-year-old, closer to my 16-year-old self, which was me working on my own in a room figuring stuff out. And so I didn't really know exactly what I was going to do, but I, I still had Creator Labs going because I was doing it on the side. And I thought, okay, well, why— even if I just take a break for a little while and interview interesting people, travel— I was planning to travel because that's another thing I'd started to do a lot more of, was these long-term trips.

I've traveled a lot before that even, but now every year I generally spend several months a year in in one place or a few places at once. And that's just— I probably got that from Tim Ferriss's book, like 4-Hour Workweek, a long, long time ago, like a lot of us did. But that kind of feeling of— yeah, yeah.

[56:05] Paul: But I like to joke that The Pathless Path— he wrote the 4-Hour Workweek so I could write.

[56:11] Bilal Zaidi: Exactly. Yeah. And I could—

[56:12] Paul: he walked so we could run.

[56:13] Bilal Zaidi: Yeah, exactly. And I think that's a nice way, but his was such a long time ago, it needed a bit of an update. So I think, um, your, yours definitely served a lot of that purpose there. But yeah, so that was the reason I eventually left. And so since, uh, I guess 4 or 5 years now, I've been doing, you know, combination of my, all my own stuff. And it's not just one thing.

I have the two podcasts, I have my consultancy, digital marketing business. I've set up deals with small SaaS companies where I can refer them people and I take a percentage of revenue. Like, there's a bunch of stuff that when you're going from, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in salary to zero, you figure out ways to make money in weird ways, you know. And that— and in a way, like, there were— that satisfaction I got from making, let's say, $1,000 or $5,000 in a referral deal— oh yeah, was so much more. Even better, actually, Creator Lab sponsorship. Like, I'll charge a few thousand dollars for a sponsorship, but originally it was you know, a few hundred, or like, I think it was 500 or something like that.

And to get that, the first one, I remember actually signing my first sponsorship deal for CrateLab at Google lunch with a friend of mine who started a company. I was telling him I was doing this, and we brought him in for lunch. We signed the contract there. And that, you know, I would have made— not in a boastful way, but I made more than that that day in my job, right? Like, sitting there But that feeling of someone's paying me for something I created in my head, and I spent hundreds of hours working and building this thing and putting on internet, that is a completely different feeling. And so, and that's when I realized, as much as I love money like anyone else, I'm not strictly motivated by money.

I, I want money, and it's a part of the things I choose to do, but it has to be interesting, it has to be intellectually stimulating. And generally it has to be positive. Like, I want good to come out of it. I want people to be happy listening to us or learn from what we're, we're talking about. And when I have my consultancy company, I want the companies I work with to thrive and grow and hire more people, serve more customers, and do that sort of stuff. So that's kind of how, um, I thought about it, man.

But yeah, that, that first check you get outside, I'm sure you've had the same thing selling your books, man. Like Also congrats on that, man. Like that, just to sell 1,000 books is crazy. I think, what have you done, 30,000 now? Is it even more now?

[58:39] Paul: Yeah, it's like 31 or 32,000. It's wild. Like, yes, I think I'm very wired similar to you. Like, I just love creating.

[58:47] Bilal Zaidi: Yeah.

[58:48] Paul: And it was a success at zero sold because I had so far— that's the way it's fun writing and creating.

[58:53] Bilal Zaidi: That's beautifully put. Yeah, because that's how I often will see is 'Even if I just put out these episodes, I already won. And if one person listens or a million people listen, it's all upside from there.' And yeah, I think that's a beautiful way to put it. But it is nice when people want to buy it, right? Because it validates that what you created was valuable in the world and it spread naturally and organically. And just for people who don't know, I'm sure a lot of people listening to this do, but 30,000 books, like I've worked on campaigns of people that got in the New York Times bestsellers list that sold that amount, right?

So to put it in perspective, that's a lot of books. Um, and so yeah, huge congrats for you, to you for that, man.

[59:33] Paul: Thanks, man. Yeah, I, I think it's— I mean, I would have wrote for free for the rest of my life. Yeah. And it— that was basically like what I was sort of committed to. I, I didn't really think I could make money from writing, and I made money doing sort of consulting work and other stuff.

[59:52] Bilal Zaidi: Yeah.

[59:53] Paul: And yeah, I think this is the beauty of long games and you're probably starting to experience some of this now too. Like how have some of these things compounded for you over time?

[01:00:06] Bilal Zaidi: Yeah. I mean, so you're saying some of the things I've created that have become like, there's the kind of, you're waiting a long time for like, similarly I would do Creator Lab for free forever, right? Like I gained so much out of it. And I did actually make money from day one. But the amount I charge now, let's say, for sponsorships is way more than I did originally. But that took so many years of it compounding and the amount of hours I spent doing outreach, spreading the word, doing one-on-one outreach to people.

And even NIA as an example would just not exist unless I had done CreatorLab because it was— I learned all this stuff. I met Jack through CreatorLab. I met Trung through CreatorLab. And I one day said, hey guys, have you thought about doing a podcast and let's do this together? And, and so like the long game there is really honestly the, the podcast itself, but just like the friendship I've created with those two. They're now like my lifelong friends, right?

Like no matter what happens, we speak literally every day for like 2 years. We, we record for an hour a week. And so I think sometimes you think of long games as just money. I know that's probably not what you're thinking of, but a lot of people think of these business-centric things. But to me, what is more important? Me making some money, which I can make unlimited amount of in my life, or two friendships I've now created and memories and experiences with these guys that have been un— you know, you— we couldn't pay money to do the things we— like, the feeling we've had, like, when we all three of us were interviewing Michael Saylor after the crazy stuff that happened in the Bitcoin world.

Yeah. And it was just so much fun. It was literally just three kids having fun on the internet. And we, we make zero money from, uh, NA, right? Like, we don't do any sponsorships. We in fact pay money.

We have an editor we pay, uh, to do that. So, and, you know, we could probably turn on advertising and make some money, but it's just not necessarily why we're doing it. So that's, that's kind of a common theme I found as well, is people— some things you need to get paid for. Like, I don't think everyone should be working for free, but pay is not always financial, right? Like, you, you can get paid through experience, through your, um, you know, your enjoyment for doing something. I'm talking about like something you're doing yourself, right?

Like, if you're working for someone else, you should be getting paid. Uh, that's, that's a different story. But yeah, so that there's, there's a lot of those. Yeah, I don't know if that's answering your question on long-term games, but to me, everything I do is really about would I do this for a long period of time, and can I keep doing this for a long period of time? And can I set it up so it's easy enough for me to do this for a long period of time? And some— then that comes with sacrifice.

Like, for example, Creator Lab, I'm not doing every week anymore because it was taking over my life. And it would be, you know, like the amount of prep I did for it and the, you know, the amount of energy I put into it, which I loved doing for a while, it just wasn't warranting— it wasn't serving me anymore, right, in that way. But I still love doing it. I just said I'm going to keep doing NIA every week, and like, I was away for 6 weeks and we didn't miss one episode. I don't think I've missed one episode pretty much like the whole time we've been doing it for 2 years. And that can only happen if you really love like doing that, turning up every week and making it easy enough for yourself.

So getting an editor, making sure you accept— like, for example, we're using Riverside right now, but I had issues with it when I used it for my podcast. So we went back to Zoom, and I know Zoom is like an 8 out of 10 sound quality-wise, But if it makes it easy for us, I'm happy to just kind of lean into it. But again, that's for everyone to figure out their balance of what makes something worthwhile for them to do. Um, but anyway, yeah, so that's kind of, um, a few of the ones that come stand out for me, man.

[01:03:47] Paul: Yeah. Self-employment is such an interesting thing. The longer you're on a path like this, the more opportunities emerge. I mean, there are probably 100 different ways to make money. So you quickly have to determine why are you doing these things and what are the games you actually want to play.

[01:04:03] Bilal Zaidi: Yeah.

[01:04:03] Paul: How have you thought about defining enough and choosing between all these opportunities that emerge over time?

[01:04:11] Bilal Zaidi: Yeah, that's probably been the central question of my last, you know, 5 years is what is enough. I keep— I literally ask myself this like probably several times a day in many different, uh, functions, not just money but food, exercise, relationship stuff, like just being better at not always wanting more, because my natural way of being is to always want more, right? Like, I'm a growth-oriented person, I'm a business person, I'm a capitalist in many ways. And so in that system, you are generally programmed to want more growth, unlimited growth, unlimited money. And again, I'm not against any of those things, but after a while I started looking around and interviewing a lot of these people, I started saying, well, okay, they've had every success under the sun business-wise, which we all respect them for, but what are they like as people? What is their character like?

What, what would their friends and family say about them? Not in a care about what other people think about you way, but more like the truth about that person, I mean. Um, and so I started widening this map of what is, what is important as a person And obviously we all do that in our own ways, but just being more intentional about it and writing about it to myself. And one of the things I realized was, okay, money is incredibly important, but let's say my money situation now is very different to 10 years ago. I have a lot more money now than I did 10 years ago, right? So my prioritization has changed to say, okay, now I value not working on stuff I don't want to work on.

Making sure I still earn X amount of money, but I'm okay with not earning more if it means I don't have to do XYZ. And if that means I don't have to go and pretend in meetings that we're doing work when we're not really, or, you know, sitting at my desk at a certain time and leaving at a certain time. That is stuff that I care about and other people don't care about as much. And therefore I'm okay with trading off that, that money for more freedom. And so I still think it's important to make enough money because, for me anyway, because when I've, um, you know, gone— when I went from making a really good, you know, salary to zero for a few months even, I had saved up for that. But man, like, every month in New York when my bank account was going down $5K or whatever it is every single month, it still gets to your head, right?

And again, maybe that comes from my scarcity mindset growing up and having that to deal with. But it does, it does hit me. And I could feel viscerally I started becoming more defensive and being more like, oh, I can't do this, or I can't even see my friends today and whatever. And that— I don't love that feeling. So I think there's a balance of not having so much lifestyle creep that you're buying stuff and spending money on stuff that you don't actually need, but also making sure you're comfortable. Because people who say money doesn't make you happy at all, or it doesn't matter, like, don't know what it's like to be poor.

Like, when you don't have money, it makes a big difference when you can pay your rent on time or your mortgage on time and you can buy your kids shoes to wear at school so they don't get bullied. Like, those are all very, like, important things. And as much as I wish the world wasn't like that, that is actually the world we live in. So I think that's kind of where I've landed, is defining what that amount of money is for myself and saying If I make more than this, this is great, but this is the minimum I need to have. And that just comes from also living, you know, frugally enough. Like, frugal is the wrong word, but because I'm definitely not very frugal, but I'm not extravagant is probably a good way to put it.

I spend money on stuff that I really value, like travel. I spend whatever I want to spend because I love it and I think it's one of the best things to enjoy in life. Food, similarly, I really value it. I think it's one of the best things to do is having a meal with friends or with your girlfriend or loved ones. I'm happy to do that. But if it's like bottle service in a club, I could not give two, you know, whatever, right?

But someone else cares about that. And so I'm like, okay, good for you. It's not for me to judge. And so I think it's just being very intentional about what you actually care about. And I think a lot of it comes from these money stories that we all grow up with, which is I need to buy a house, I need to buy this to, um, this is the best investment of my life, which is like one that I've resisted being in New York. If I lived in Nashville or I lived in somewhere else, I probably would have bought a house.

But in New York, when I run the numbers, it doesn't make any sense for me to buy a house here because I'd be spending more money than I am on rent, and I don't get all the flexibility and the peace of mind that I can leave and move if I want to do that as well. So again, that's a personal decision, and It comes down to being intentional and granular about the things I actually care about. And so that's kind of how I've tried my best to be more intentional about is just constantly asking what is enough. I think the other area of my life has made a big difference is in kind of health. The last year or two really have been focused on getting my health back in order because that was the part of my life when I looked at my kind of review of the year, every year I was struggling with my health and I kept neglecting it and kept prioritizing work and other stuff.

And so that's another area where I said enough is me earning X amount so I can pay for the things I need to pay for. But if that means 6 hours a day I get to do anything I want to do, and that means I can go to the gym for 1 or 2 hours and go for a bike ride and go for a run in the park and go and play tennis or pickleball with friends, that is the stage of my life I'm at where I need to make that number one priority. And for someone else, they can't do that, right? Which I completely respect. But that is kind of the balance I'm talking about, is really being quite an extremist with prioritizing the things I need to prioritize. Um, and so that's, that's how I think about enough, because I think more people could really probably benefit from that.

[01:10:01] Paul: Yeah, I love that so much. It's— it very much resonates with my story. We, I mean, we rent an apartment, um, we just had a newborn, and a lot of people have said things—

[01:10:12] Bilal Zaidi: congrats, by the way.

[01:10:13] Paul: Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's been amazing. Um, and the thing you realize when you have a kid, a lot of people have these deep scripts, like you have to have a house when you have a kid. And so many people have said this to me. Um, but my wife and I have been so intentional with, like, similar to you, what is the life we actually want to live? If we buy a house, it basically changes the calculus of everything because it's just a lot more expensive, especially with the the interest rates and prices in the US now.

And yeah, I think a lot of people just don't actually calculate the price of freedom, the price of their health, and sort of test these things. So it's, it's amazing to hear somebody else going through a similar journey. Wanted to ask you about travel versus vacation. I know over the past couple of months you've been on what I might deem like travel or vagabonding in the more Ralph Potts sense, but in the last 6 years I haven't really done like a 1-week vacation. I actually did one last week with my cousin, um, just so our kids could all hang out. But like, I only wanna go places for like a month now and I realize that's very privileged, but, um, would love to hear how you think about that too.

[01:11:30] Bilal Zaidi: Um, yeah, so yeah, that's a great kind of distinction and it definitely came from You've probably heard me say this on Not Investment Advice. It was like the Ideas That Changed Our Lives episode. Dramatic title purposely as a kind of a joke. But, but the idea I shared was walk until the day becomes interesting. And that was from Ralph Potts, who's got this really cool book called Vagabonding, classic book, one of the only two books I think Tim Ferriss used to travel with when he would be on these long trips himself. And, uh, yeah, it was— that book really opened my eyes to the difference between the mindset of traveling versus just, you know, a checklist of a, of a break or a vacation.

And now, like, to clarify, I take both, and I like a vacation too, right? Like an actual relaxing trip or, um, you know, like a 5-day-a-week thing. Like, I think those are important. And like you said, like, a lot of people don't get the flexibility that we do, right? Or that we've kind of design for ourselves. Um, so I completely respect that.

But I think even in a week trip, you can have this different mindset, which is more about— less so about here's 17 places I need to go and see and take a selfie in front of, versus like, what am I actually trying to get from this experience? And for some people, it is going to all the museums and, you know, looking at the art and whatever it is they care about. And that's— I'm not here to judge what you care about. It's just being more, again, intentional about what you actually care about versus what you think you're supposed to do. And a lot of that just takes experience, experiencing new places and even hearing a different mindset on it. So, you know, if you've only gone on these one-week trips with your parents or as an adult and you've got a job you hate and you turn up there and you just like need to shut off, it's understandable.

That's how you're going to kind of travel forever. But this idea of, you know, exploring and not necessarily having a plan is especially great with long-term travel because you can kind of go and be a local for a day or for a week or a month. And so like the first one I really did, I mean, I did a month trip to Southeast Asia and Japan, and that was kind of my warm-up when I was still at Google. I kind of saved up all my vacation days and it was towards the end of my time and I basically just took off that time Um, and I kind of didn't— I asked for forgiveness more than permission there, sort of thing. Uh, but it was, again, it was like my vacation days, right?

It wasn't like I got more vacation days than anyone else, but there was still this weird— like, I remember my manager at the time joked that I was going on sabbatical, and I kind of hated her for saying that because it was already— I was like the European coming to America where the culture was very much like you get 2 weeks vacation, right? And I— everyone in Europe, yeah. Exactly. And everyone goes on vacation. Again, I'm generalizing here, but you— a lot of people will go on vacation and they'd say they would apologize that they're going, and they would say, oh, but don't worry, I'll be online, I'll be checking my email, I'll be available if you— here's my phone number for emergencies. And look, for certain jobs you might need that, right?

Like, if you're saving people's lives, like, and someone's life might change because you weren't able to answer a, you know, 1-minute text, I get, like, fair enough. You might choose that to be your life, but we're not doing that, right? We were selling clicks for a living. So that's what I've kind of had to convince myself, like, we're not that important, like, relax everyone. And, and it was just pretending. It was this thing of like, I'm so busy that I can't even take off time.

And to me, that was probably again a Tim Ferriss thing of saying I'm busy all the time is just laziness. It's lazy thinking and lazy action. It's like not You're not prioritizing the things you need to prioritize. And again, this is for most people, not necessarily someone who is, you know, on welfare, broke with 3 kids to support. Like, I'm not trying to judge every single person here. I'm just saying for the people I'm thinking of who have, you know, multiple 6-figure salaries in Google where they have a very good culture of, you know, general well-being, like, you don't need to pretend you're so important.

You're selling ads. Yeah. So that's kind of what— that's how I felt there. Uh, and so when I've done this since, it was obviously a lot more accessible when I started working for myself. And that was kind of part of the design of working for myself. I said, if I'm going to do this— and my girlfriend's the same, we both were doing this at a similar time period, we both love travel, um, and we said, well, what are the sorts of jobs that we can integrate in this sort of lifestyle?

And, uh, and that's kind of what we chose to do. So we went to Argentina for 2-3 months went to Mexico City for a month or two. Now we were in Europe for a couple months. And so that, to me— we're going to try to do one in Asia hopefully later in the year or early next year for maybe even longer. And so that, that to me just really opened up my eyes to like the difference when you go to Buenos Aires and you stay in one place, like one Airbnb for a month. Like, it's a very different experience, right?

Because you, you go to the grocery store, you make your own food a lot of the time, you Yeah, you go to the same, uh, you know, coffee shop, you start speaking to people, you make kind of friends for a little while. I actually think one month is not the best because one month you're just kind of getting warmed up, right? And like, you're, you're finally starting to build those connections with people and then you kind of leave. But it's, again, it's like whatever you can do. Um, and so that this, this Europe trip was a mix of some fun, some work, um, but it was actually more moving around than I would like. I don't usually do that.

It was just because there were certain events I needed to go to. So it kind of— those were the constraints there. But again, it was like the attitude of, well, we're going anyway. We could either just choose to go to one event, or we can go to both and make the most of this trip and go and work from there. I can do some interviews. I can go and do podcasts and make a full trip of it.

And that's kind of like been my attitude, especially since I don't have kids at the moment. It just is the thing that I can afford to do more than when you do have kids. Again, lots of people do it with kids too, but it obviously becomes a lot harder because you have another person to look after. So yeah, that's kind of one of the big things. And there's this— I had this executive coach at Charity Water I worked with for a little while. He really changed my life in many ways.

He helped me through a lot of stuff. And he talked about this adventure hat. It sounds like a cheesy thing, but He literally made me— he was asking me about my values and moments in my life recently from that time that I had, like, felt great. And I told him about a trip. I was in Italy at one of my best friend's weddings. My girlfriend was there.

It was the first time she was meeting a lot of my closest friends, and the sun was shining and all this stuff. And, and he kind of made me— he could see that sense of wonder, like what you described earlier, that wonder that comes out of me with travel and with that kind of putting myself in a new environment. And, um, and he kind of made me like— he made a joke and it kind of stuck with me, like this, this adventure hat he talked about. He's like, get a physical hat and when you go, like, wear the hat. And it was like kind of a joke, but now me and my girlfriend say it and it's just always like a bit of a funny— like, even since we've been back, both of us individually have gone on our own into the city, and I've been here for 10 years and I still had that adventure hat on my head, right?

So I was coming back and I went for like a doctor appointment and instead of just coming straight home, I was like, well, you know, I've done the work I need to do for today. I've got plenty of time. Why don't I just go for that walk that I always talk about? And I just, I didn't have a plan. I just kept walking. I started, then I ended up in the West Village.

I walked past my old apartment. I found this little garden I used to meditate in like 10 years ago. And then I went to the West Side Highway, went up to Google, and then I was reliving all these memories. I went into the High Line, which is like one of the most touristy things to do, but it was kind of fun to do it, like as someone who lives there for 10 years. Then I walked on the Brooklyn Bridge and it was like all these things that I thought I stopped doing because I said, oh, I live here now, I don't go to these places as much. Like you realize like you can still have that travel, you know, vagabonding mindset, adventure mindset in the place you live.

And I've— my parents are a great example of this. They love travel and they live in London, one of the best cities in the world. And they for ages would just book a trip when they wanted to have fun. And I would say, Mom and Dad, like, there's so many fun things to do in the city you live in and you just don't make the most of it. And I— when I was there, I took them out. I was like, hey, let's go to Brick Lane, let's go to here.

And they— my mom is always like, well, I lived on Brick Lane, like, I don't need to go there. And she went there and she's like, wow, I can't believe it's changed so much. I'm like, of course it's changed, it's 2023, what are you talking about? So it's just like that sense of wonder you can get in your day-to-day life. Like even if it's just going to a doctor surgery, like you, there are moments in that interaction with the person at reception, if you choose to like see it in that way, it can be a little adventure, you know, and it can have that sense of wonder in a way. Sounds cheesy, but I think that's a genuine like makes a massive difference to my life, thinking of it like that.

[01:20:40] Paul: No, that's— I love that so much. I actually spent the morning yesterday wandering and doing a similar thing.

[01:20:47] Bilal Zaidi: I saw that. Were you on the bike going through campus, or was that a few days ago?

[01:20:51] Paul: Yeah, it was yesterday. I was riding through UT, and me and my wife sort of like take turns where we go do like our me days, and we just sort of wander because we got to watch the Gotta watch the kiddo now, but it's so vital to keep that energy alive.

[01:21:05] Bilal Zaidi: It's important, man. Yeah.

[01:21:07] Paul: So I know you're running up with time. We have been wandering the— we've been taking a walk with words until it gets interesting. This has been a great convo, but I wanted to close with a couple rapid-fire questions. One is, do you have any PATH role models?

[01:21:27] Bilal Zaidi: Like life path role models, you mean?

[01:21:29] Paul: Yeah, yeah, it could be anything.

[01:21:32] Bilal Zaidi: I'd say, I mean, it's a combination, obviously not like one I want to follow exactly what people do, but like Richard Branson was for a long time the person I was like really, you know, it's the first real autobiography I read. Uh, he was a British guy, entrepreneur, and had that sense of wonder and adventure. Like, it all makes sense now, right? Like jumping out planes and riding hot air balloons around the world. And look, more importantly, just having a fun time. Like, always seemed like he was finding ways to make life fun and memorable.

And just seems like a good guy. I obviously don't know, maybe he'll be in some newspaper one day. I'm like, oh my God, I can't believe I was, uh, talking about him. But hopefully not, because he seems like a great dude. So I'd say someone like him. And then honestly, it's obviously very cliché by this point, but Tim Ferriss definitely made a massive impact the way he always kind of forged his own path, writing, the travel side, starting businesses, investing, being curious, the podcast obviously.

So I'd say like those two combined, um, and then honestly, I get, you know, I think there's probably a few people. Yeah, let's just stick to those two because I think those two probably capture it for now.

[01:22:41] Paul: Yeah. Anything, uh, that's inspiring you right now that's helping you reshape how you're thinking about your path?

[01:22:47] Bilal Zaidi: Hmm, I'd say the— I mean, interesting, my girlfriend is taking a sabbatical right now. So she just started, and she's basically quit her business, not just job. Well, I mean, not completely quit, but she's, um, putting on pause. She basically had to fire her clients sort of thing, you know. And she tried her best to like make sure the employees were set up with the clients, and that was like quite a process. And in a way, that's been quite inspiring in a way, because You know, I've been like, obviously, we're supporting her through that and trying to help her figure out what to do.

But that idea of it's going to be okay when things need to change, let me take a drastic change, like, just because that's happening right now, I think that's been quite a nice reminder of that. Because again, I've, I have done that myself in the past, but I'm, I'm always a little bit more scared to do that because You know, I still probably have a little bit more of that, not scarcity, but I want the money coming in because I feel that sense of ease. So that's probably one. And then, yeah, I think there's actually a group of friends I just saw. It was kind of a work slash social thing, a lot of entrepreneurs. So a friend of mine who started a company called Four Sigmatic was there.

We were in Lisbon and another guy, Hassan, who started Gaia, he was on my podcast. Another really cool company in Mexico City. There are a few other guys and just all 3, 4 of them have all just basically left their companies at a similar time. And they're now like traveling through Europe and they're basically just doing all this fun stuff. And I was like, again, I'm doing that as well in my life, but I think there is a nice thing about actually stopping the work for a certain period of time. And I'm not doing that at the moment because I want to keep earning the money while I can.

But there will be a natural point where I take an actual break in between my next thing and what I'm doing right now. And yeah, I've been feeling that for a while and I've just been making the most of, you know, the stuff I've already set up is working. So I don't, you know, just want to throw that all away. But at some point that will— less so the podcast, more like my consultancy business, the agency I have. So yeah, I think those guys, seeing them do that has been pretty inspiring as well, just to actually say that is enough. I've, I've had a good run here, but I need to, you know, prioritize other stuff right now.

[01:25:13] Paul: That's beautiful. Uh, I'll link up to Creator Lab, Not Investment Advice.

[01:25:18] Bilal Zaidi: Yeah, thank you.

[01:25:19] Paul: Your Twitter— where else do you want to send people?