#159: Nuseir Yassin – The price of growing Nas Daily to 12 million subscribers

It was roughly half the time where I was like, why make the video? No one is gonna watch it. It's gonna suck. I don't feel like it.

That's Nuseir Yassin. Nuseir started the channel Nas Daily with a mission of highlighting incredible people and places on the planet. He set a goal to post a video every day for 1,000 straight days. 1,000 straight days. And he did it, amassing 12 million subscribers, 6 billion views, and starting two multi-million dollar companies along the way. He's living out every YouTuber's wildest dreams, right?

People see the benefits of what you get because the benefits are very public, but the price is very private. I just lost my 6-year relationship, you know, and in all honesty, that is the price I'm paying, you know, in which I committed more to my work than to my relationship. And that is not something to be proud of, but it is something that happened. And life is not just beautiful.

So in this episode, you'll learn how Nuseir manages outside distractions, why you need to listen to your inner voice, the sniper versus machine gun creator philosophy, and the actual cost of success. I spent the one minute this morning looking at your website and reviewing, remembering the whole story of your journey. And man, it seems like so much work. It doesn't leave a lot of time for scrolling Twitter, answering Instagram DMs, things like that. And you have a large following now. I'm sure even at the time you had a large following relative to most people listening to this show. So, how did you manage your relationship to outside distractions that were not the work themselves?

So, it's very simple, right? The first thing, I freed myself from material distractions. What are material distractions? Clothing, accessories, shopping. All that stuff became unimportant to me, right? So, I wear the same thing. I have the same t-shirt, I have the same shoes, I have the same look. I don't ever need to go change my looks. So that helped a lot. I don't have any material objects in my life. I didn't have a home, I didn't have anything in my home, nothing that I own. Nothing's important to own. So that helped a lot. Second thing is I was single when I started. I have nobody that I can commit to, nobody that requires time from me, nobody that requires my attention, and that really helped a lot. Third is I made sure I don't have any financial hurdles. So I made sure to save enough money, so that I don't have to worry about money. So, as you can tell, I'm freeing myself. Oh, and fourth, friends. I definitely did not stay in touch with friends. I basically just disappeared off the planet, and I said, "I'm going on a trip around the world. I'll see you when I'm back." Now, no friends, no girlfriend or boyfriend, no financial strain, no objects, no clothing, and no Twitter. For some parts also, there was no drinking, no caffeine, No drugs, just me and a camera. Perfect.

So I love that you're talking about this. People don't talk about this. Like, there are probably people out there who are looking at your life, your channel, the things that you have and saying, I want that. And they have an incomplete understanding of the tradeoffs you made, the singular focus you had to achieve that. I wish more people would think about that when they're comparing themselves to others because we do it all the time. But we don't— we don't ask ourselves like, Am I willing to take the same path? We don't reverse engineer it, see what that path is.

Totally. People see the benefits of what you get because the benefits are very public, but the price is very private. The price that you pay is very private. So, the price I paid I think is lower than the benefit I got, so I'm good, but I still paid a price. I don't have any close friends. I'm not very close with family. I just lost my 6-year relationship. And in all honesty, that is the price I'm paying in which I committed more to my work than to my relationship. And that is not something to be proud of, but it is something that happened. And life is not just beautiful. So yeah, I continuously pay the price, but the benefits are astronomical. Not financially, but the benefits are astronomical in terms of meaning, impact, joy. Not everybody's willing to pay the price. For some people, hanging out with their friends is better than anything in the world. And it is, and there's nothing wrong with that. Everybody has different, uh, judgments.

The second point in the timeline after day 1 of your 1,000-day journey is day 230, almost quit. And I want to talk about that moment a little bit because I think that's something a lot of people can relate to. And at that point, you created 230 videos, which is still almost twice as many videos as I have on my channel having started YouTube a year ago. And so I'm halfway to almost quitting in, in, in your journey's terms. So I'd love to hear what that moment was like.

You know, I put day 230 as a day I almost quit, but in reality it was day 230, 229, 227, 222, 222 to 190. It was roughly half the time where I was like, why make the video? No one's going to watch it. It's going to suck. I don't feel like it. And so I put that day as a reminder that there were days in which I wouldn't be here talking to you. And I just feel so goddamn lucky to be here talking to you and being worthy of a podcast because there was a possibility of me just going back, finding a job, and ditching this whole video thing. And I guess the reason why I didn't do that, the question is why did you not quit? Not why, everybody feels quitting, but why did you not quit? And I think there's always that intuition You know, there's the outer voice and there's the inner voice. The outer voice is the news, it's your friends, it's your family, it's society. That's the outer voice. And there's the inner voice that tells you, this is wrong, this is right, keep going or stop, invest in this relationship or don't. And a lot of us listen to the outer voice. Not many of us listen to the inner voice. So I've learned, I'm learning slowly for the last 10 years, I'm learning how to mute the outer voice and how to amplify the inner voice. Oftentimes, the inner voice is more right than wrong, and the outer voice is oftentimes more wrong than right from my experience. So, that's kind of like why I kept going.

The next point on the timeline that kind of blew my mind, on day 1,200, so 200 days after you finished your 1,000-day challenge, You launched a book. You're saying, I worked really hard. I had 25 days to write this book. That seems like such a huge effort that a lot of people listening to this would be like, 25 days to write a book? I'm not sure I could write a book in, in 25 months, 25 years. So tell me more about the narrative in your head that allowed you to take that project on and complete it in that period of time.

It's called Parkinson's Law, not Parkinson's disease. Parkinson's Law, which is something that has really transformed the way I look at life, which basically says work expands to the time allowed for it. If you allow 2 years to write a book, most likely you will work on it for 2 years. It does not guarantee the quality to be 10 times better than if you worked on it for 1 month. And so, I gave myself 25 days to write this book. That is my deadline. And so, all my work must fit into this deadline. And I am very obsessive about hitting deadlines. So with the 1,000-day videos, I had 24 hours to create a video, right? That's my deadline. So my work can only expand to 24 hours to make the video. So the same concept of 24 hours to make a video, now 25 days to write a book. Work expands to the time allowed for it.

Do you do like a day-by-day planning in that period of time to be like, okay, if that's 25 days, I have this goal of this many pages, is that gonna break down what each goal for each day is? How did you mark your progress through that period of time?

With the book, I wasn't as anal about marking progress and whatnot. It was just like you feel it when you're almost done or you're not. But with the videos, I'm very anal about it, right? Which is, okay, by 11:00 AM, I must have a video idea. By 2:00 PM, I must have a script. By 5:00 PM, I must shoot it. By 11:00 PM, I must have it edited. That's really the work that must not expand beyond the time allowed for it. And so, it was very, very, like it was very systemized. It was very like, basically, all I'm trying to say is what I did is nothing special. Yes, making videos is hard. Creating content is hard. And 10, 12 hours a day spent on making videos is hard. But actually, you know, Muslims pray 5 times a day for 50 years. My mom prays 5 times a day for 50 years. She has to wake up at 5:00 AM. She has to pray, be clean 5 times a day. It's really, really impressive, the ability to consistently create output, which in this case is praying. So what I'm trying to say is in the world today, we have billions of people that are highly committed to their craft. It's just, it's called religion. Basically, my work is a form of religion. Is I view it as a form of religion. And because I view it as important as religion to me, then I have no problem committing to it. And I think the reason why people don't commit is simply because they don't believe this thing is religious. They don't believe it. They don't believe this thing is important. Because if they truly believe this thing is important, the human body is capable of incredible things.

I love drilling into this, and thank you for humoring me, because one of the most common things I hear from creators is like they lack consistency, they feel demotivated, like they let things expand, they're, they're looking for the muse and, and whatever. So it's really helpful to actually talk to somebody who is so able to set deadlines, hit deadlines, stick to a schedule, and see it as the work. And I like talking about this so other people start to expand their thinking on it and see that they are also capable of doing this type of thing.

Right. I mean, it's a very simple question. It's a very simple way to understand this better, which is, Jay, if this podcast does not get uploaded, will somebody die?

No.

Okay. So, that's why sometimes it becomes very difficult to assign value to what you're doing because you don't believe it's life and death. And maybe it's irrational from my side, but for every video I was making, I assigned in life and death value in which if this video does not get created, somebody will die, whether it's me or whether it's the viewer or whatever, because this video could help them so much. It will change their life. Yes, it's irrational. Yes, it's very self-absorbed and self-centered, but assigning importance to my work has helped me achieve it.

How do you think about the goal line? Because I feel like a lot of people in your position and my position, we have this tendency to move the goalposts just as soon as we get to the goalposts.

Always.

What's your relationship to the goalposts?

I feel like I'm never gonna touch the fucking goalpost. And it really bothers me because it's the reason I'm so distressed. But it is, have you seen the Arnold documentary?

No, no, no, I haven't seen that one.

No, okay, so it's a new one. It's an Arnold doc winner, right? But basically, like, Arnold lived his life in 3 categories: as a bodybuilder, and then he became an actor, then he became a politician. So he has 3 chapters in his life. And I thought that was really interesting because I'm also trying to build 3 to 4 or 5 chapters in my life. So every time you close a chapter, there's a new chapter that comes out, and that chapter becomes as unreachable as ever because you start from zero. So, yes, I've hit my goalpost of 1,000 video challenge, but then immediately the day after, my new goalpost was a 1,000-person company. And then I'm like, fuck, I'm at zero. I'm back to zero. So, I'm humbled. I'm embarrassed. I'm making mistakes as an entrepreneur. I still make mistakes as an entrepreneur. So, you have a 1,000-person thing. So, you reach a goal. And then, shit, there's another goalpost. So now I'm in the middle of my second act. My first act as a creator is done. I spent 6 years on it. I'm done with it. My second act now is an entrepreneur. And here I feel still as a beginner. And that's basically the source of my distress.

Sometimes I ask myself, like I get in these moods where things in the business feel easy and then I get uncomfortable because I've just trained myself to believe that Everything should be hard if it's worth doing. Why is this not hard anymore? So I go and create some new hard thing. And there's another part of me that says, well, why don't I just enjoy the fruits of my labor for a little bit? It's tough. It's a tough balance.

Very tough balance. Yeah. There's something about humans. We're attracted to challenges. We're attracted to hardships. And, uh, maybe that's a good thing at the end of the day. You know what's hard? Making a car electric. I'm glad we're doing it.

After a quick break, Nuseir Yassin and I talk about his technology company and what his days actually look like. It may surprise you, so stick around. We'll be right back. I'm declaring the month of April the month of revenue experiments. And so what that means for you is I encourage you to design and run an experiment in April to help you increase revenue in some specific area of your business. Maybe that's product sales. Maybe it's sponsorship, maybe it's affiliates, maybe it's speaking, maybe it's services. Pick one, design one experiment that the purpose is to increase revenue in that area and run that experiment. See how it goes. We're doing this inside the lab in the basic tier and standard and VIP and all levels of the lab. We are running experiments in April to share them with each other and give each other inspiration. I invite you to participate in the month of revenue experiments. And if you wanna join the lab and do that, with community, I think that'd be great for you too. You can learn more at creatorscience.com/lab. That's creatorscience.com/lab.

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And now please enjoy the rest of my conversation with Nuseir Yassin of Nas Daily. Okay, so we're moving into the next chapter of the Nas universe. First it started with Nas Academy, Today you have NOS.io, and you said that you are the CEO of the technology company as well. So you are focusing on running a technology company, running the academy, running the YouTube channel. How does, how does your day look like now split across those three massive efforts all in their own right?

It looks bad. It looks really bad. A lot of times people, the outer voice tells me that you should be only CEO of one company. The inner voice tells me it's possible to do it with 2. So, I'm doing it with 2. I'm very lucky to have strong people with me. I'm very lucky to have chief operating officers that push the envelope and help me achieve much more than I could possibly achieve as myself. I think when people think of a CEO at a company, they think the CEO is doing everything in the company. Actually, the CEO does nothing. The CEO just like, the only thing that I should do is Always think about how to push the envelope forward and ask people to do the work and find the money and find the people. That's it, 3 responsibilities. I don't need to code, I don't need to edit, I don't need to travel, I don't need to even book my flights, somebody does it for me. So I do save a lot of time by not having to do this stuff, and I just need to become a better decision maker. Equally hard.

I mean, you still show up on the channel, you're still talent as well. Like, you're not, you're not, you're not removed from that. And that's, that's not a small thing, right? Because I'm sure you have to prep for that, you have to get in the mind space for it. Maybe you're naturally just good at getting in front of the camera and going, but I imagine like even being the talent in the creator side of the business takes something.

Ah, yeah. So that's the thing that other CEOs don't have. Which is that, that's the extra thing, is being the on-the-screen talent and having to go to Greenland and make that video, 'cause that consumes a lot of time. Like yesterday I had a shoot, today I had a shoot, tomorrow I have two shoots. I have four brand deal shoots this week, which is a bit over the top. I'm trying to reduce that. I've kind of come to the conclusion that, you know what? I don't need an extra follower. I don't want an extra follower. Like I think we're done. I think we're good with 65 million. That's enough. I don't want another selfie. I don't want another viral video. That's not my— So, it's like with creators, there's 3 things you can index on. There's 3 things you can focus on, and you need to decide what they are. Attention, impact, money. So, for the last 7 years, and I'm being very frank, right? The first 2 years, I focused a lot on attention and impact. The last year, I focused a lot on attention. So attention and impact, no focus on money. What does that mean? Like I don't need ads, no brand deals, nothing, and I don't care, right? I just want to make videos that change the world. So I did that for 4 or 5 years. Then the last year, I said I'm going to focus on attention a bit more. So I'm going to make 1-minute videos, I'm going to make a lot of them about anything, and of course, we think everything is impactful, but still, let's just increase the quantity. So I focused a lot on attention, we got a lot of views, but then I realized, wait a minute, there's no money and there's not as much impact. This is actually kind of useless. So now I don't care about attention. Impact, I am impacted out. I want to take a 1-year break from impact and just be like, let me just be an entrepreneur and just build a technology business that has good investors and that's profitable. So forget that. So now I'm really focused on money. Because you need to find a way to pay 100 people every month. And so, now, my focus really for the end of the year is money. But those change and people need to ask themselves. You need to go from one to another. Nothing is forever. And then, by the end of the year, I'll probably be done with money. I'll go back to attention or impact. That should be a calculation in everybody's brain every single month.

[Speaker:BEN] I love the concept of seasons. And a season doesn't have to be 3 months or 4 months. The season is like, hey, right now focus needs to change, and you can choose when to end that season when you want, you know. But it's, it's, it's really freeing to think in terms of going in a new season, things are changing.

Yeah, exactly.

I listened to your interview on the Mindvalley podcast, and you were, you were using this analogy to compare how some people are snipers and some people have a machine gun, uh, and you said that you are a machine gun person. Can you talk about that?

Yeah, so snipers are the people who disappear for 3 years and come up with a Netflix documentary and make it to number 1, and then they go disappear for another 5 years. That's a sniper. You just became successful from one chance, one try. But a machine gun is somebody who makes 1,000 videos in 1,000 days and 700 of them are failures and 300 of them are mediocre success. That's the definition of my life, creating a lot of small things and hoping that something sticks because I'm not smart enough to point and shoot. I need to just continuously shoot to try to get lucky. And I think people need to decide what kind of personality they are, whether they're snipers or whether they are machine guns.

Do you ever aspire to be a sniper?

It depends on the kind of battle you're going for. If you're going— if If you have 500 enemies coming at you at once, you don't want to be a sniper because it's not effective. You want to be a machine gun. So, I actually enjoy being a machine gun because I have 500 interests. I have 500 challenges. I have 500 problems I want to fix. And I just, I cannot, I think I'm not lucky enough to have one big problem in my life. I have many small problems. So, I do enjoy building small things for many problems. You know that famous saying, right? Would you rather fight a horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses? You know? What's your answer, Jay?

Oh, man. I think I would probably try to fight the horse-sized duck, but I don't know that I'm an effective sniper. I think that, I think a lot of people delude themselves into thinking they're an effective sniper and try to play a sniping game, which actually slows them down from getting the outcome that they want because they aren't there yet. It's hard to come out of the gates as a sniper, I feel. It seems like you need specialized training.

Totally. Yeah, totally, totally. I think we're born machine guns.

A lot of people look at people in your position and think that it's still just you and you're Shooting the videos and you're editing the videos and you're pocketing $11 million and everything is just gravy. And I love shedding light on the fact that there's a big team here, there's a big plan here, there's a big goal here. There are also struggles here, there are big trade-offs here. These are all interesting nooks and crannies of the creator world that we just don't talk about enough.

Totally, totally. And, and to get here It was not a straight line. And if somebody is listening to this and they have doubts in their brain, if they have fears in their brain, if they think they're not a good manager, if they think they're not a good creator, if they think they're like not making enough money, trust me, I felt that yesterday and today and tomorrow and the last 7 years and the last 70 years. It is the most normal thing to fail. And I failed so many times building this company, and I'm still not sure this company is going to succeed. So you're not alone in those thoughts. Those thoughts are in every creator's brain and entrepreneur's brain.