I MADE $1,000,000/MO AT 29 AND LOST MY MIND.

Lose, lose, lose, lose, lose. Then you find some sort of job. You find a wife that you tolerate, and she doesn't really. Respect you, then your kids don't listen to you, and then, you know, once a week you meet with your friends, you have drinks, and you meet with them more and more rarely. And then eventually you, you have to decide. Do you choose to settle, or do you choose to go back in the arena? Oh, my ass. Yeah. Aura Farm. No, that was— nice to meet you. Bye. You eat that well. Get another one. Oh, nice. The best things in life are free. Actually, that's not true. We paid 100 dirhams. Basically, we work with like NASA, US Air Force, Oxford, Cambridge. With that one, basically we help them like manage internal logistics. The second company is a media company, and we basically do like all of the media for Silicon Valley. We get tech companies viral basically. There's a rule: man should never drink from straws. What about Bananas. We eat bananas. We eat them sideways. Okay, that's technical. Why did you start all of that? I was broke. But are you still broke? Definitely not. Touch wood, bro. Once I finished university, man, I cut myself off from my parents financially, and I was a fucking broke kid, basically. And my account went to minus 666. It's just that there's a no man's land here with landmines. Now we're in Marrakesh, after which we're driving to Essaouira. And then after that, we're going back to Kassa, complete the triangle. So we're going from Kassa then to the second triangle. So we're going to go to Mauritania. We're spending a few nights here. And then where are we going? Where's the— No, one night. Then our contact will get us at our place. This is the oasis we're going to. Here there are dunes. There's dunes and shit. Yeah. My vocabulary is very elaborate. Dunes and shit. Orange zone, reconsider your need to travel, and the red zone is do not travel due to the high risk of kidnapping and unexploded landmines right next to the train. It's basically like a disputed territory area we're going to. Yeah, even the guy who told us how to do it, he was like, you have to be careful because there's cops you need to bribe, there's marauders on the train who are going to try to rob you at night. Yeah, and in case some of you guys get your leg cut, tourniquet, we got this. So you intentionally put yourself in a shit situation? Yeah. Knowing that this will make you go up? Yeah. The white hair I have is because of that one month in like November when my clients were not paying me on time. I had just enough revenue in the business where I could potentially pay myself. And the thing is, I knew at that moment, like, I have to put myself in a difficult position in life Before life puts me in the difficult position. You have to step into the darkness before the darkness steps into you, and then you have to fight your way out of it, and you have to create that for yourself. So a lot of people who come from, like, good backgrounds, like, you know, they live with their parents, their parents are giving them money, they don't really have any reason to push that hard, right? When it's 1 o'clock in the morning and they have to choose between going to bed or sending out those extra emails to close the deal, they really don't have that much of a reason to send out those extra emails. And that's why at Atomic we hire PhDs. Poor, desperate, and hungry. Should we play some football? Just to go back to the idea of obsession, like when I started doing business with Parcel Tracker, my obsession was business in itself. Like the vehicle to achieve it didn't matter, right? So I wanted to get success from just winning, making money. Like the whole process was really fun for me. Then when you hit a certain financial outcome of it, right? You actually kind of find it hard to work just for the money side of things, right? When you start closing a $100K deal, you can't be bothered closing a $10K deal. Now, if you work on something which is really an obsession, the money doesn't matter and you just love closing deals. You love the love of the game. So in the start, you know, just being driven and obsessed by business itself, it's okay. But you will hit a point where that transition changes, right? When you start yourself feeling more kind of numb to the money and you actually want to do something a bit bigger, or you want to go into the bigger money numbers, basically. Just pick a game that you're obsessed about. And you don't choose what you're obsessed about. Obsession just comes from your like inner personality, right? You know, people go through phases of life. It's very unlikely that you're going to play the right game from the start. He wants to be professional player. Do you want to? Do you want to play football because you make money or yeah? Have you heard about business? Yeah. They all want to play football. They all want to play football. Ten K views, baby. Oh, that was a good one. Good dab. Ten K views on the first myth of India. Hundred K on the next time. Do you want a coffee? How do you say coffee again? Hiwa. Hiwa. Hiwa. Hiwa. Please, please. Hiwa. Regarde où on va, parcours inespéré comme les Lions du Rokhna. Joue, joue smart. Observe, t'auras la vérité. Les médailles, elles sont méritées. Les combats, ils sont mérités. J'préfère être détesté qu'avoir de l'amour sans le respect. Si t'es né pauvre, c'est pas ta faute, le seul reproche c'est de le rester. Fucking insects! What did you know? Insects stay when you keep your light on, motherfucker. You turn off, they leave. The most dangerous creature here is the Moroccan woman. You're getting your braids done here. C'est qui qui veut faire? Looks maxing is a sign that our society is like you know collapsing because men are preoccupied by looks. Yeah. In the Roman Empire, you know, when men wanted to be beautiful, that's when the empire was falling apart, yeah. Look at all this bread, they're not even taking the bread. They're like, bread? Nah, man, this is for pigeons. I've got one actually about humility. I think it's, you know, like the best founders operate in cognitive dissonance. They believe they're both better than everyone at the same time as they believe they're worse than everyone. Because if we couldn't hold these 2 opposing thoughts, which are in direct opposition, I don't think we could build the myths which allow us to work together to build the civilizations and the societies we've built. Because you need to believe that everybody is superior to you so you can learn from them, and you need to believe that you're above everyone else to actually dare. And we're off to Casablanca. Oh dis-moi gazelle, c'est où ton désert? Dis-moi demoiselle, je supporte pas l'hiver. J'ai fait un long voyage, j'ai soif, j'ai sommeil. J'ai vu ton palace au pays des merveilles. Je suis venu de loin, d'une autre citadelle. J'ai dans mes bagages des fruits mûrs au goût de miel. Audite-moi, princesse, vous qui êtes si belle. So what happens if you fall off the train? Well, first thing is you might be fucked. We need to learn how to use satellite calling on our phone just in case, but we should try to be in the middle of the train. Yeah, that's for sure, because at the end of the train there's, uh, more orders at night. Really? Yeah, like I talked with the Italian guy who did it, he told me don't go in the last Wagons, because at night there might be people trying to steal from us. So I, I read that there might be a detachment of the train in the middle of the desert. Yeah, yeah. Then you just— what, you just wait? Yeah. Bro, that is actually sus. Tourniquets, knife, MRI, MRI. Let's get going. Inshallah, we come back. Once we step on that plane, it's too late. Guide and driver. Oh, we got a guide and a driver. Like, how are we all gonna fit in it? We basically got stopped by the X-ray and they were like, do you guys have a drone? We're like, uh, yeah. And then they basically took the drone from us, scanned the passport, said you guys need to get authorization from the civil aviation authorities. Have you noticed everyone is trying to derail us? And then also the other question is, what the fuck is happening with the Helix? I'm outside the auberge now. I'll wait for you until you're back and then we will figure it out. Let's do it. The most important thing this guy can do is get us on the train on time. I mean, he might come from a good place, but like, dude, like, how are we gonna all fit in the fucking van? Like, that's the question. We still haven't got our drone. We're getting SIM cards so we have a bit of internet and it's a fucked process. Like, we need the ID card of A local guy, our driver now, in order to get a SIM card, and we're still figuring out with who and how we're gonna get to the desert. I see that. I'm gonna try with the hotel. I don't know where. Last time, hidden place. So basically official channels. The drone does not work, so we managed to source another one, a smaller drone. Pulled up into the gas station, the guy's waiting there, he's like, yo, bro, bro, bro, come here. Boom, package passed, we got the goods. Feels like we just did a drug deal. Dude, if you're in these environments and you're trying to control everything and you're trying to like bend reality to your will, it's good, but you've got to use that energy in a very controlled manner because everything is going to somehow be going out of, out of the planned parameters. So you got to really be deciding, Putting effort into, and what am I just being like? It is what it is. Okay, down. It's good. Last mission: get the driver and the guide. Naqib. Naqib. Yeah, I'm from Afghan. Afghan. Ah, nice to meet you. Naqib. And you? The car we have is too small. Our drone is gone. But we got a new one. We got lots of driving to do, but fuck it, we bomb. How's it going? Man, but it is all about flipping expectations on the head, you know? And turning the bugs into features. Exactly. I visualized this after I was like, okay, we got a pickup truck. Fuck it, let's do it. The one thing that does kind of keep me up at night is the fact that we are in, in like a boom cycle right now. Well, everything is going very well, and because of that, we are printing cash. But the quicker things come, the quicker they go. And I'm very worried that as quickly as we built this business, we could see it crumble away. The struggle after that is coming back to where you were before. Doing the same amount of effort to make less money is not worth it. And the thing is, if we had to start over again, it would be really hard if we were just driven by the money. And that's the one thing I'm curious, like, what is the thing that people couldn't pay me to stop doing? Welcome to Iraqis. The Iraq War train, it's far from here? Uh, it's 3 hours from here. 3 hours from here. But at night, uh, it's gonna be cold there. Well, I don't think these days it's gonna be cold. Yeah, there's no way. Why didn't we get gas there? There is none because the crisis and the war. Tanks are empty. They sold out everything. That's what the desert is. Gamify life. But man, what if you don't find the next game to play and you just world max and then you can't find the use you have for the world? You might not find use for the world, but you can find use for your sphere of influence, like your tribe. So maybe create a tribe, right? Get married, have kids. Yeah, but in order to, I think, properly get married, you need to really be the guy who is at the right point. You're playing the right game. You're not necessarily on top of your game, but you're in the right trajectory. You have momentum. That's basically what attracts a good partner as well. They don't want to bet on someone who's searching for himself and still lost. Oh boy, so cool. You're really on your shit. Like, the actual, like, steps I would take if I was basically in a rut as a guy— you're not allowed to be sad Double text a chick or gets out of her business if you've not been to the gym for 2 days straight. And I think that if you start there as a guy who's in a rut and you start chiseling away your body, like working on things you do control and bringing discipline around that, life will just kind of structure itself around it. And the other thing I would say is being around people who have mission and vision can give you mission and vision. As iron sharpens iron, One man sharpens another. I heard that we should not be in the last wagons because at night there might be some people trying to loot us. No, that will be like on the whole train. I have been jumped on, uh, like they always like be on Three to four a.m., but like we're in the middle of the desert. No service. You can make no call, and also it's late at night, and you just be sleeping, and you wake up on you know the train crew. But then it's authentic. Tourist. Tourist. You want to be a tourist? You want to be a tourist? I'm curious why does he want to be a tourist when he gets older? I don't know. I just want to see. تميز بلادنا بالجسم. He wanted to visit places that he never visited before. You don't want to go Afghanistan? Why laughing, bro? You could go. He doesn't want to be shot, he said. Even in Mauritania, they're scared. You got to use unfair advantages if you can. The world is already cruel and hard. You don't want to just make it harder. I'm trying my best. Well, you're already living life on hard mode, you know? Yeah. It's not easy to live in Mauritania, man. You can't pull out cash. There's no fucking petrol. We don't have Wi-Fi in most places, you know? Like, you're already playing on hard mode. So wherever you can use your advantages, use them. Use it. What time are we waking up tomorrow? 5? 5:24 AM. Nothing like a good scroll. To start the day. Yeah. Let him cook. The Harry Potters. Let him cook now. That's us. Let him cook. I said let him cook. Did they give any coffee anywhere? So. We have no time. Fuck. I've become so anal-retentive on time now. Time is the most precious asset. I don't know if it's that bad. The one thing you can't replenish is your time. Wasting it on brain rot and procrastination is not fun. The only way around that is just to do shit. Pack your time. Pack it wisely and with good people, you know? If I was 18 again, I'd take my brother, or I would find myself some brothers, repeat what I've done, travel the world, or max, and actually try to maximize places people haven't been, and just be a bit more intense with my time. And honestly, man, if I was some kid, you know, a bit disillusioned with life, a bit feeling like there's nowhere for me to go, broke, no money, no nothing, I'd just find myself one or two 2 homies, lock in in my parents' house, get like a cheap-ass laptop, and just learn how to leverage all of these AI tools. We're here in the desert, man. We're driving through some buttfuck middle-of-nowhere village. You've got nothing to do, yet you see people on TikTok. You mention to them 6767 and they understand it. Reach is there. It's everywhere. Everyone is getting exposed to this stuff, but they're getting exposed We're exposed to it at a higher frequency, quicker, quicker, quicker. So if you're young, unless you're studying something very, very technical, I would probably skip university or maybe go for a year, meet your peers, drop out. It's really hard to program yourself. It's much easier to program your environment, and then the environment will program you. Like, let's use Dune as the example, right? The 2 strongest forces in Dune military are the Sardaukar And the Fremen. So the Sardaukar are the imperial forces. They're like the troops of the empire, and they are brought up on the prison planet, basically. It's a planet which has super hard survival conditions, and those who survive become very strong and weathered. The Fremen, they live on the desert planet of Arrakis, and they have to be extremely disciplined and extremely rugged because, again, it's a super hard survival environment. Because they grow up in such hard environments, war to them does not feel so difficult. And the Sardaukar, for example, they bend the Imperium to the Emperor's will, and they're so successful that because of all their success, they become complacent. They get glory, they get fame, they get a reputation. They don't put their skills to the test, and they become basically complacent. And as you become complacent, you become soft. That's definitely Don't be so sweet they swallow you. Don't be so hot they spit you out. It's actually good. Tastes like like yogurt. I'm not gonna drink too much because I have a white boy stomach, so you never know. Oh wow! He's rotting in the shit. Plan for tomorrow: we'll meet around nine a.m. in the hotel. We'll go. To the groceries and take whatever we need. By then, I will know when the train is going tomorrow. No train for today. Really? Yeah. He's joking with us. He's fucking with us. He's fucking with us. I wish I am. Really? Are you? I swear to God. So let's extend the rooms. Our planning is too good, to be honest. Unlimited money solves almost all of the problems, basically. And then we find the right people, and then we we like plan shit correctly. So, you know we have a day. We're wondering what are we gonna do today? Let's do a camel pizza. Let's get a tuna and a camel. How is the camel pizza? What are the chances you think we can ride on one of those? Whoa! It's fucking fast! Okay. Okay, I'm gonna actually drain all of the tuna cans now because I'm gonna get dirty. The sink doesn't have fucking pipes, bro, so I've just been pouring tuna sauce down the cupboard. Oh shit, bro, what the fuck? Core ingredients: bread, harissa, tuna. We're making it Moroccan style, baby. You know, I'll be in Monaco on a yacht in like 2 weeks. The key in life, guys, is high dynamic range. You got to go from the ghetto shit to the bougie shit and enjoy both of it. Hold on, we can open, pop it out, because we transformed this room into the fish market. From this point There's no going back. Execute, execute, execute! All right, we have a problem. We were supposed to be catching the train from a specific spot. Today's train is extra long, and we just found out about it now, and we actually had to cop a ride really Really quickly and blitzing it right now to the alternative location where we can catch it. Now, an extra problem we have is we'll have even less time to catch the train from this spot. You know that reel which goes, and I would stick the hydrogel explosive against the wall, and I would look behind me, and all I would see is green eyes, and then at the moment I would call out execute. Execute, execute, execute. And when I click that button, all hell broke loose. So, welcome to our podcast. My first question to you, is it okay for a straight man to ride another man's train? That's a good question, man. As a straight grown-up man, would you delegate that responsibility to another man? I would say that on the first time, it would be more on the gay side. Troll in the sea. Ending a war. Life on the sand. Dreaming a land. Sight of a man. Fantasies and dreams. A nightmare. A thought. Night tells a scheme. I nailed the trick. Those spells were sick. A lost You see that light? That's the top. Let's go. Is it too far? Go, go, go. No, that might be too far, bro. I'll give you guys 10 minutes. Okay. I'm gonna go downstairs looking, guys. All right, basically we're running out of water, so the boys went sprinting to get some more. One second, I'll get down. And we have to avoid being spotted at this point because this is one point we could be kicked off. I reckon 50-50 chance we end up leaving without them, and that would suck because none of us have 3G. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. We have 15 minutes. Just water. Let's go. Oh, terrible! Jesus! Are you okay, Teddy? Yeah, I'm fine. Holy shit, dude! You guys arrived right on time, bro. The train just got my finger because the moment I climbed, it moved, so I fell on my finger. Yeah, I've been on the train for six and a half hours. The longest a train ride has been twenty-two hours maximum. So okay, so sixteen more hours max. Yeah. Does he work on the train? Yeah. Ah. Did they just stop the train to shake down people? They said join Arthur's team; it will be fun. Where are you right now, bro? Dude, I'm in the middle of the desert in Mauritania. Just another day at the office. Wait, let me clean my boy's eyes. Do you consent with me touching you? Well done, well done. Here we go. You said you didn't want to go back to Australia, right? It's more so I don't want to go back to the environment that I'm in when I'm in my hometown, because I think when you go out and you get a taste of what your potential can be, you realize just how much the bar Bubble you're in when you're in that old environment back home. And I think it's hard going back because you go on these trips and these journeys and you get such a taste for that life and that you really feel like you're on the path to exploring what your potential could be. And then It's almost like when you go back to the old environments, you slowly, if you're not careful, you can slip back into old habits and old ways of thinking. People's previous preconceptions of you kind of drag you back to the person you used to be. Exactly. Rather than the person you're striving to be. Exactly. And one interesting thing about travel is as well, over the last 4 years, every 3 months I would change cities. And I would always try to learn or work on a new thing of myself in those 3 months, right? And then if I returned back to my hometown, people would have— would react to me and behave towards me based on the person I was, not the person I've been trying to become. So you don't know if the things you've worked on are actually working or not. But the thing is, when you change to a new city where no one knows you, you are that new prototype of yourself, and then you can see how people respond to it, iterate on it, and then change again. And when you iterate and change that person you are every 3 months and bring that person to a new environment, you get much clearer signal. Yeah. In terms of, are you doing things right or not? It's because the further you go on your own personal journey to achieve your dreams or goals, the further the gap becomes of the people you left from your old environment. 100%. You also gotta be like a bit careful not to kind of get in this mindset of like everyone has to do this because— Everyone cannot do it. Everyone cannot do it, and some people are just happy living that kind of life, and that's fine. But when, when you want to go out and achieve something, truly achieve greatness, it's a powerful thing. And greatness doesn't even mean changing the world. Which means living like a great life that you want for yourself. Yeah. We're a bit of a pickle right now because we were filming with the drone and then the train picked up speed and then there was too much wind, so we couldn't get it back. And then we just crashed-landed, is it? And then Karim and Amadou went after the drone, but like, I don't see them anymore, man. And the train has been jerking around quite a bit, so I really hope that they didn't fall through the path. I'm not sure if we're gonna make it. 17 hours and 59 minutes and we're in Nouadhibou. What a journey. This is one of the cars. We are currently on our way to a street drift event that we organized today. An hour ago. An hour ago, as we hopped off of the iron ore train. We put down a bounty, said show up to this location. Let's go! Six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Wait, I think I did. I don't know. Did I count? Whether you're winning and you're feeling demotivated because you've been winning too much, or if you are really down on your luck and you feel demotivated because you feel like everyone else has a head start in life, I want everyone to actually just get into the arena and do shit. That's what I feel right now. I just want to get back in the arena. I just want to build. I've got like that energy coming back. And honestly, if Ahmedou can start a business with Instagram, meet us, and build things out The goal in life is to play the right game, a game that even if people paid you to stop playing, you wouldn't stop. That is when you know you will outlast everyone and you will win. I'm Arthur Zargaryan. Never kissed a girl, actually. Yeah, me too, bro. It's haram. Exactly.