What Social Media Influence Really Gets You — With Nuseir Yassin

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Hello and welcome to the Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed nuance conversation of the tech world and beyond. Recently, we ran a series of conversations from Davos, and today we're going to bring you one more of them that I wanted to get across on the feed, and I think you're going to enjoy it a lot. It's with Nuseir Yassin, who is the founder and CEO of NAS Daily, the chief executive officer at NAS Academy. I find him one of the most interesting speakers about making content on social media and what the social web is doing to it, to us right now. And I think you are going to enjoy this a lot. So with that, I want to welcome Nuseir.

Alex, how are you?

I'm doing well. How are you, man?

Thank you so much for having me. This is gonna be a great conversation.

I'm stoked, as it always is when we get a chance to talk.

Let's get some energy.

I mean, yeah, you, you, you know how to bring it. Where does that come from?

I, I would give you an answer, but this is recorded. It's a joke. It's a joke. But where is this coming from? Um, the world is too exciting to not be excited about it.

Yeah. But okay. Um, so I looked at your LinkedIn bio and I think it's a good introduction to give give to the audience. Let's see. Oh yeah, my real name is Nuseir Yassin, because I feel like everybody calls you Nas Daily.

Nas means people in Arabic.

You say, I grew up a Palestinian Israeli, hated it, went to Harvard. Okay, you didn't say that. Graduated, got a job, hated it, worked at Venmo, right?

Yeah.

Started making videos, loved it.

Loved it. And now I do a podcast with you and I love it.

We love it too, for sure. And so you, you, um, Just to talk about your journey, you started out maybe, what, 7 years ago making a video a day? And you're followed by tens of millions of people on multiple platforms. Can you just share like the stats and the audience?

Yeah, well, look, you know, this has been the biggest surprise of my life. It's really the biggest surprise is, you know, people that look like me are not supposed to have followers. People that scream are not supposed to have followers. But, you know, once I made 1,000 videos in 1,000 days, worked my ass off every single day. To my surprise, people paid attention to the videos and they started watching them. And now we have over 50 million followers in 13 different languages around the world, across, you know, 6 different social media platforms. You know, we've been very lucky and hardworking in trying to put up a positive message in the world at the expense and despite, despite all the negative messages that you see on the internet. And I'm so happy that it worked. Yeah.

And I've been watching your videos, um, from the very beginning, uh, because you were— I think Gavi will be okay with me saying this— uh, you were in an accelerator with one of my friends, Gavi Wolf.

Yes.

And he's like, you gotta watch Nuseir Yassin's videos, he makes one a day.

Yeah.

And, you know, I started watching them and I liked them.

Thank you.

It came up in my newsfeed every day. And, you know, your, your audience was small at the time, and I just watched it grow and grow, and I kept seeing the numbers. I was like, Oh, Nuseir did a million? Nuseir did 3 million views? And it is crazy. And I think that what's nice about it is it is a message of inspiration and truth versus what usually moves on social media, which is outrage.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, you know how easy it is for me to make a million people hate you?

It's so easy.

So easy.

Hey, we might do it by the end of this.

Yeah, this guy, he's Jewish. He's a big tech guy. It's so easy to make people hate you. Making people hate other people is, I think, we can do. But making people love you is much harder. And that's really what I want Nas Daily to be about. How can I make people sympathize and humanize you and care about you? And I think that's why it succeeded is because, you know, I think there's a cap. When you make people hate other people, there's a cap. You cannot really grow much. Like, oh, you see all these anti- establishment, blah, blah, blah stuff. It caps out at 500,000 followers. At some point, people don't want that. People want solutions. What is the solution to my problem? I don't want you to keep repeating the problem. Now there's exceptions like other big media organizations like Fox News or whatever, but I think if you really want to reach massive scales, you have to be solution-oriented.

Right.

You have to be— bring people together, not divide them.

And amazingly, there's a market for it, because you wouldn't know that based off of what you see often, especially in the discussions of social media.

Exactly.

There is a market for being positive.

Huge market.

Yeah, huge. So, you know, one of the reasons why I wanted to speak with you is because, um, I've been always puzzled by the fact that the number one job that kids want to have is YouTuber.

Yeah.

It's, you know, I first thought it was absurd. Now I think it's kind of interesting. Um, obviously I've made my career doing content creation journalism, um, but I wanted to hear from your perspective, what is that job actually like? Because I'm sure we have, you know, young people listening who want to, want to have that job. I'm sure we have parents who have kids who want to be YouTubers.

Yeah.

So what's so appealing about it, and is it all it's cracked up to be?

So that's a great question. So A lot of people may give you the answer of money. I don't think it's money, right? You can make money in many different ways. The number one reason why people want to be YouTubers or Facebookers or Instagrammers is because everybody wants to be heard. That's it. You just want to be heard. We live in a world where nobody cares about your voice. Nobody cares about you as a kid. Nobody cares you as an adult. Nobody cares you as a brown man. Nobody cares about you as a Jewish man, whatever it is. And when you put your content on the internet and you get 50,000 views, that's 50,000 people hearing you. That is a human nature that we all want. That's why being a content creator is the most universal job in the world. And that's why everybody wants to be it.

Does it feel good still when you get those high numbers?

Yeah, it feels good. It feels good to reach people with your message, yes.

And so I guess like I'm trying to figure out, you can get famous, but you can't get unfamous. So how does that feel? Because, you know, I watched you walk around in Davos and saw that you could basically make it 5 feet before someone else says hi or wants to take a selfie.

Yeah.

And, you know, I think that like going into content creation, like that's, you know, kind of the dream. But there's sometimes you can't turn it off. I'm sure every country you go to, you see people who do the same. So yeah, how does that feel?

So unfortunately, well, I'm not going to be complaining.

I love it, right?

Everybody's positive, everybody's so kind. And I, I'm an extrovert, so I steal energy from people. This is why I have energy, because I'm stealing some from you now.

I'm taking—

I stole some from the people on the street who just took a selfie. I steal their energy and then I give it back.

That's interesting. I've never heard extroversion described that way, but it's amazing.

Yeah, that's what it is. I think you think that actually you cannot turn it off, but it's very, very easy to turn it off. I just disappear from the internet. If I don't show up on your newsfeed for 6 months, you will forget that I existed. So really, I can turn off fame. I can change my t-shirt, I can wear a hat, I can get glasses, and I'm anonymous. Yeah, I can go to China where nobody knows me. I'm anonymous. So it is possible to turn it off. Um, I don't want to turn it off just yet. It's getting a little bit difficult, but I don't want to turn it off. I want more people to listen to what we have to say.

What's getting difficult about it?

Um, you know, In life, right, there is different stages. One, the first stage is nobody cares about you. The second stage is everybody loves you because you're growing, right? Nobody cares about you because you're small. Everybody loves you because you're getting bigger. Everybody supports you because— actually, sorry, sorry, the four stages of the following. Uh, one is nobody knows about you, nobody cares about you because you're small. Then everybody supports you because you're tiny and everybody wants to support you, the underdog. Then everybody loves you 'cause you made it. And then everybody fears you 'cause you're too big.

You think you're feared?

Yes, by some people. I think by some people, Nas Daily is feared in the world. And I think we've gone through these 4 stages. I'm not feared in these circles here. I'm not feared in America, that's for damn sure. I'm not feared in Dubai. I'm not feared. Um, but we've gone through these 4 stages, and I think when it comes to the Middle East, people are scared of us, and they fucking should be.

Why?

Because we are the anti-establishment, and, and, you know, we, we do have a different view on how the world should run. And because of the internet, you can't silence us anymore, you know.

How are you the anti-establishment?

So I'm not the anti-establishment in Switzerland. I'm not the anti-establishment in India. I am the anti-establishment in the Middle East because I go and I say Jews are not bad. Just by saying Jews are good people, Israel is a country, Palestine is a country too, just by saying that, you are the anti-establishment.

Hmm.

Can you imagine that? That's how regressive the Middle East is.

Yeah, you had to make a video because people, you, people were getting on you when you said the word Israel. Yeah, people were getting on you when you said the word Palestine. Let's talk about this. Yeah, what's so controversial about that?

So the Middle East, and it is a crash course in the Middle East, in the Middle East, right, there's a lot of populism and there's a lot of like fear-mongering. That's why it's not a rich part of the world. That's why there's a lot of civil wars and killing people, right? Something's not working. And so in that part of the world, the media has always been about, you know, making the enemy of somebody. And if you go and say, well, actually, maybe Jews are not the enemy, you know, what if that's possible? You know, that has not been said before at a public setting because all the public settings were dominated by, you know, large news organizations like Al Jazeera or whatever, Uh, it's, it's, it's a refreshing point of view, and, and it scares some people, and I'm liking it.

Yeah, yeah, it is interesting because, well, I mean, social media does have its problems, but it also has the ability to spread this message outside of the official channels in those countries.

Yep, exactly.

Okay, getting back to the creator— it was a diversion, but I'm glad we went that path. Um, getting back to like the creator lifestyle, Okay, so I wanna know how you were, I mean, you made this video every day. I of course saw the traffic take off. What caused it to grow? I mean, okay, you say positivity, but did you see any, like, were there any inflection points? And then what kind of work goes into it? Because getting, you know, having to put out a video a day for 1,000 straight days is intense.

Do I not look intense? So, so, so actually, you know, when it comes to making content, you have to fail hundreds of times. And I failed hundreds of times. Specifically, I failed 270 times before video number 271 blew up, right? It was a normal travel video in Thailand. And, um, and, and, and, and then on day 650, uh, uh, the algorithms changed. And we blew up even more. So there is some inflection points along the way. You just have to be at the right time, at the right place, with the right format, with the right energy. That's really all it was. And I was there. I was at the right time. So for anybody listening to this, I mean, you can't start a company as a side hustle. You cannot build a channel as a side hustle, right? You cannot start a family as a side hustle. You know, you really need to go all in with these 3 things. And you have to be, you know, ready to do a lot of sacrifices. And, you know, I've done my fair amount of sacrifices, but I've also been rewarded pretty heavily.

Yeah. I mean, you had it, you had a great job at Venmo.

Yeah.

And you left it to do this full-time.

Yeah, I did. I did. And, you know, as a small risk you take, I'd say the bigger sacrifices is that, You know, at some point there's— your priorities changed, right? What's the number one important thing in my life, right? For you, you may say your family. For you, you may say your girlfriend or your wife or your kid. But for me, it's none of that, right? And that's, that's a controversial thing, but that's the truth. For me, the number one most important thing is this mission, the mission of, of Nas Daily, of the mission of Nas, the company, and everything else comes second. Including you.

Well, I mean, I wouldn't want you to prioritize me over Nas Daily.

Including my family, including my girlfriend.

How do they feel when you say that?

Look, I want everyone around me to be confident that everything I say, I mean. So at least I think they appreciate the honesty, right? Because honesty comes very in short supply in the world. It comes in a very short supply. I love you, Mom. But then they disappear for years. I think that's lying, right? Of course I love my mother, but, but I am prioritizing now the mission of Nuseir Yassin because I believe the impact is far greater. Of reaching 500 million views every month, you can make the world far better than if you're just at a beach in Mexico with your family.

Do you think your relationship with your viewers is deeper than your relationship with your family?

So I don't know if I prioritize depth. Oh, I know this is a podcast and you're prioritizing depth.

No, this is good.

Yeah, I, you know, if you want to go deep, go become a fucking post-PhD student at Harvard University. Go be a postdoc student. Go be a researcher, right? That's, that's going deep, and there's nothing wrong with that. If you want to go deep, well, go have one best friend and just hang out with them and build a lifelong relationship. Go spend unlimited with your family. There's nothing wrong with that. It's an amazing way to live life, right? But we must recognize there are different ways to live life, and it's no one's job to say what's wrong and what's not. My— ever since I was 5 years old, I never wanted to go deep. I never wanted to go deep. I never wanted to have 2 best friends. I never wanted to just be in one country. I never wanted to be a postdoc. I have always wanted breadth. I've wanted to reach as many people as possible in the world because I believe if you wanna change the world, you just need a spark. You just need to give somebody a spark of opportunity. That's it. You know, I don't like, you know, if I wanna help a kid in India, right? There's two things you could do. One is you could go and give them $100,000, a scholarship to go to a university and go really deep with them. Or you can give them a spark. That here's a piece of content that could spark the way you think, but my job is done. Now it's your turn to go and figure out how to actually succeed, right? So I want to give that spark to as many millions of people as possible, and that's my job.

Do you ever find it like the pressure to be crushing when you know that millions of people are going to watch your next video?

What's crushing?

Has to be good.

Oh, the pressure to be crushing, intense. Yes, the pressure is intense.

How do you handle that?

Um, you know, the pressure, the pressure, the pressure. The most pressure in my life was making 1,000 videos in 1,000 days. So I don't think this pressure is that big, really.

But when you know— the thing is, okay, of course the pressure is to make those 1,000 videos in 1,000 days, but when you know that so many people are going to see what you're putting out there I'll give you, I mean, I'll give an example. When I'm writing my newsletter and it's a much smaller audience, but I'm like, damn, people are gonna read this thing. And it's intense.

I think instead of, I don't feel pressure, but I feel like I care. Like I really care about the final product. It has to be good. It has to be unifying. So anyway, it's not pressure, but it's just a lot of work. A lot of work. This has to be perfect. Not because of pressure, but because I want it to be perfect. I used to say this, this 1-minute video I'm making, this is the last time I'm making this video. I'm not repeating this video ever again. So when I'm 90 years old, I need to watch that video and it better be damn good. So I want no mistakes because any mistake in a video, I'm gonna be stuck with it for 20 years, 30 years, 50 years.

I read online that you take 6 hours to shoot and 3 hours to edit the 1-minute video.

Yeah, roughly 10 to 12 hours total for—

It's amazing. Yeah. I don't think people appreciate sometimes the amount of work that goes into—

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's mostly the mental effort too.

Yeah. Yeah. So do you ever get burned out? Because 1,000 in 1,000 days, there gotta be days you wake up and you're like, F that.

Yeah. Well, now, now I don't make content.

Right.

My life has changed.

Yes.

Now I'm building a company.

Yes.

Now we are venture-backed, 150 people building technology for the next creators. You know, this is a different challenge. This is what keeps me up at night, right?

You know, did you do it because you got burned out making the content?

No, no, I did it because it's the only realistic next step, okay, to do.

I want, I want to talk about the business in the second half, but I'm going to keep pressing you on the burnout thing because everybody— there, there are— there must have been days where you would wake up and say, I'm not doing this.

So how did you push through that? 600 out of 1,000 days, really.

So So tell me more about that.

It was like 60% of the time I was like, I hate this.

Mm-hmm.

Some people thrive off of stress and pressure and discomfort. Some people thrive off of comfort and ease of life, right? I just happen to be part of the first group. So I do like it. I want to quit. I hate making this. I hate this content. But as I say I hate it, I get energy to keep doing it. It's a weird thing.

It is weird. I mean, I have it too. I actually still enjoy doing the podcast every time I sit down with someone. Do you hate it? Not yet, not the podcast, but I hate to write.

Yeah.

Writing is tough because there is a degree of having to— I like the discovery process, which is what we do here on these shows. But the writing process is painful because you have to clarify your ideas, get them on paper. And if you are slightly off when you write, everyone thinks you're a dumbass.

Everyone thinks you're a dumbass. But you know, when it comes to pain, and let's take it to the crazy next level, right? Some people really enjoy pain, right? Right. In a sexual setting. That's not me.

Okay.

In a religious setting, right? There are some sects in Iran, right, who like hit themselves to feel pain because that feels good or because they want to say, you know, thank you to God or whatever about fasting. It's, it's somewhat—

we were both brought up in religions with fasting.

It's inflicting some discomfort on your body to do something, and people love it. So, uh, pain is not always bad. That's it.

Okay, last thing I want to ask you about this is metrics.

Yes.

When I publish, I'm kind of hooked to the metrics. I want to see, like, for a podcast, I want to see number of downloads. For newsletter, I want to see open rate and views. And again, it's on a much smaller scale.

Yeah.

How do you deal with having to— how do you deal with the fact that basically whether people liked what you did or didn't, whether your message is resonating or it isn't, is just right there and kind of calling to you at all times to check and sometimes even get your self-worth out of it?

So, you know, for me, unfortunately, it translates to like 3 numbers, right? Number of likes. Number of views and actually just two numbers, likes to view ratio, right? So on average, if you get 1 million views, you should expect 50,000 likes, 5%. If the video is bad, then you get 3%, right? So 30,000 likes for 1 million views. That's not good. When I get that, I'm like, ah, people don't like this video. But if you get 80,000 likes for 1 million views, you know, it's a very well-liked video. So these are sort of my metrics.

How do you keep yourself from— do you constantly check and assess your self-worth on it? I mean, it happens a lot.

I was a data engineer before, so I care a lot about numbers. But I'm not the most data-driven person, but—

There's something about this business that instills this unhealthy obsession with how those numbers look.

Yeah, especially if you don't have that many followers, especially if you're around people with like 5 million followers and you have 5,000. It does make you feel inferior. It did make me feel inferior, so I am not denying it, and I agree with it. You know, my recommendation is diversify your baskets in the sense that you shouldn't get all your money or all your views from one platform or one business, right? And you have two businesses, three businesses, three places in which you— revenue streams, whatever. Diversify, diversify, diversify. Um, uh, so that you get self-worth from different things.

Nuseir Yassin is with us. He is the CEO of NAS Daily and the CEO of NAS Academy, both of which we will talk about, especially looking at the business right after the break.

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And we're back here. On Big Technology Podcast with Nuseir Yassin, CEO of Nas Daily and CEO of Nas Academy.

Nas Company.

Just Nas Company. Let's call it Nas Company. That's what it's called.

That's what I've decided that last month.

Nasco.

Nasco.

Like it.

Let's go, baby.

Nasco. What are the odds of people making it and doing what you're doing? Because a lot of people want to be YouTubers, but, you know, there's only— I tend to think that there's only a small fraction that are actually successful.

What's the odds of people making it as entrepreneurs?

Depends how dogged they are.

Yeah, I would say it's the same, right? A unicorn, there are 100 unicorns in India, I believe. No, 16. I actually don't know.

Shit.

Anyway, that's it. I think there's 1,000 unicorns in America, okay? But there's also like a million companies in America or a million small businesses in America. So you're looking at, you know, 1% or 0.1%. As possibility of growth. So it's the same thing when it comes to content creation to make it big, like Nas Daily, maybe that's a unicorn status, right? 50 million, maybe. But actually, you know, there's a million creators out there trying to do it and they've all made it in some way. Some go bankrupt and stop creating, but there's a lot of small businesses in America that generate a little bit of profit, nice little mom and pop shop, and it works. and you can have it for generations. Similarly, there's a lot of creators in the world who also made it, but they made it as a small business. They made it as a mom-and-pop shop, and that's great. We should not be in the business of just unicorns. We need a middle class of creators and a lower class of creators. Um, and, and I think we're getting there.

Yeah.

You made it.

I think I'm in the middle class.

You're in the middle class. You're a success.

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's interesting because, you know, for— I worked in newsrooms for 8 years and never really thought about the idea of starting my own media company, but jumping in, it's been sweet.

It's been sweet.

It's nice.

It's nice. Support him, guys. Click like.

Um, so I also wanted to talk about, um, how you've made money and how that's progressed over the years.

Yes.

So let's talk when you first got a massive audience on YouTube? Was it advertising? Was it platforms paying you? How did, or speaking?

The first time I made money actually was from a video service. Somebody wanted drone shots in Kenya and I was like, here's my drone shots, give me $200. Oh yeah, that was the first money I made. And I was like, huh, it is possible to make money from content. Now after that, the more I started to scream, the more people wanted to have me scream at their conference. So you're like, okay, gimme $1,000 and I'll be at your conference. And it worked. And then Facebook introduced advertising. And every time you get a million views, you make $1,000. Oh, it's amazing. And the more millions of views, the more thousands of bucks. So it's become, you know, it's become, you know, growing steadily as a business. But, you know, our primary goal has never been to make money. Like, do you think I started making videos to be a millionaire? You think that was fucking possible? Like, no, it's a nice side effect. My t-shirt is $10. This is the only jeans I have. And this I clean every day 'cause I don't wanna buy a new one. So money is an amazing side effect of content creation. And we make probably $7 to $8 million a year now.

Wow.

From everything we do. But, you know, I just want more money to be able to hire more people. Yeah, that's all I want.

Yeah, that's the way I think about it too. Like, for me, the money side of things are just so I can keep this going. Yeah, you get— you become— you fall in love with the act of creating this stuff, even though it's painful. Yeah, and the money is a way to just keep going.

Yeah, I'll tell you this, I would have done all of this for free. Yeah, actually, I started Nas Daily and it was free. I didn't make money for the first 2 years, so Some things are better than money. And you can only say that once you have enough money.

Exactly.

So my only recommendation is make enough money, then start talking about how much money doesn't matter.

Right. Well, the alternative is, you know, if you're like, you were a software engineer. So the alternative would be going back to a desk job coding, which is great. But if you have this creative fire in you and you want to share this message with people, that would be pretty crushing.

Yeah, yeah, everybody should.

Sorry, given where you're sitting, I mean, it's not to say that software engineering or a desk job, which I had for a long time, is a bad thing, but if you have this fire burning in you and you start to taste, you know, the ability to get the message across, then you just become obsessed with—

yes—

sustaining the method through which you're able to get that message across.

Yeah, totally. And I think we should normalize obsession. Yeah, we shouldn't call it crazy. We shouldn't call it, you don't care about us. No, you're obsessed. Keep being obsessed. Support the crazy people.

The $7 to $8 million that you talked about, is that all advertising and licensing and speaking revenue, or is it coming from somewhere else?

No, so we, so Nas Company is basically two things, right? One is we run educational communities that we create classes and educational content. And another is content on Facebook or YouTube or whatever about people. So, you know, both lines of business are about bringing people together, either to upskill them or to make them want to travel or want to, you know, humanize others. So we make money from things that make the world better. And I think that's a really important distinction. We don't make money from selling t-shirts. We don't make money from selling plastic. We don't make money from selling you some God knows sugar drink. We don't do that. So it's been really fascinating to be able to make so much money while also making the world better. On the Nas Daily front, you know, there is the production house as well. So we create content for companies, for brands, for governments, for whatever that wanna use our service, our storytelling service to amplify their message. And we give them the videos and they don't go on Nas Daily because Nas Daily, like, you know, we respect the viewer and I'm only making videos on Nas Daily that I would do for free. Um, and, and that's kind of has been like this for the last 5 years.

And what about platforms? Like, are you getting a new thing that's happening? Well, not new, but relatively new, is that the platforms are paying like ad revenue. Not, not only ad revenue, but the actual creator fund, creator fund money that's coming from like places like TikTok and Facebook Reels.

So right now that revenue is roughly 25%.

Oh, so it's meaningful.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's meaningful. It's meaningful.

Yeah, yeah.

So 25% of our revenue probably comes from the platforms, and the 75% comes from everything else.

Um, Nuseir, you, you travel all over the place.

How do you keep like mentally and physically fit?

So that's a, that's a, that's a good question. Uh, my, my recommendation, sorry, you can cut that out. My recommendation, so the first 5 years I only cared about the videos. Now I have a little bit more time, so I spend exactly 60 minutes every day. Exactly. No more, no less.

60 videos?

No, on my health.

Oh, okay.

So 60 minutes, 6 times a week. I spend 6 hours every week, 24 hours every month. So that's one full day, 24 hours, which is 3% of my life. So I spend 3% of my life on my health, and that's all it takes to be healthy, right? So I don't eat meat, I don't eat some crazy stuff. I try to be very careful with food and I work out. So this way I keep myself health, healthy. Uh, when it comes to mentally, uh, I am not mentally stable, if it wasn't very clear. And I'm not trying to be mentally stable. Um, I think it's, it's, it's, uh, you know, let the crazy be crazy.

Interesting. Do you find yourself happy? Are you happy? I—

so if I slap you right now, right here, would you be happy?

I thought I would think it's funny. I don't think there's much you could do to me, honestly, to make me mad at Well, if somebody in the same—

yeah, you'll be unhappy. Yeah, you'll be unhappy for 2 days, and then after that you'll forget about it and you'll be happy again. Yeah, because you'll go out and drink with your friends, right? Happiness is never constant. So when people say, are you happy, it's like me asking a bullshit question. It's kind of a bullshit question. Like, it always changes, right? It's like asking you, what's the value of your stock portfolio? Well, I don't know. Yesterday was different than tomorrow.

Right.

I'm not happy on average. I'm, I'm not trying to be happy either. Um, I'm just trying to do something that actually has value.

Yeah.

And in the process, I'm okay to have some pain.

Okay, I have a quick lightning round to end this thing.

Sorry, make it, make it lighter. This is, this is getting depressing.

No, I think this is great.

Okay.

Um, So, keys to making a great video, if you can throw out some quick tips.

Uh, unlearn English. Speak simple. Speak slow. Uh-huh.

Okay. And I feel like, you know, Simon and I have been talking about this. You got to catch people right at the beginning. How do you do that?

What works for me is scream at them.

Okay.

That works for me very, very, very well.

Just high energy right from the start.

High energy from the start because people will suck that energy from you.

Yeah. Okay, cool. Quick reactions to the state of some of the tech companies right now. What do you think about Facebook at the moment?

Facebook changed my life. You know, whether you hate it or not, Facebook changed my life. Yeah, it enabled a random-ass village kid to actually be heard. I will always support smart people who want to make the world better. In the process of getting there, we will make mistakes. You have made mistakes. The viewers have made mistakes. I have made mistakes. But it's, it's my job to support them, not to disincentivize them.

Twitter?

I have no thoughts. I don't know enough.

You don't use it?

Um, a little bit. I don't, I don't have enough thoughts.

TikTok?

Um, revolutionary. They are on the third stage.

Oh, you mean they're about to get to the point where people fear them?

Yeah. Hmm.

Yeah.

LinkedIn. I love LinkedIn. I feel like LinkedIn is like the easiest social media to deal with, right? It's like, it's just everybody trying to get a job, you know, and just creating content about professional life. So, um, I actually think LinkedIn is, is, uh, really powerful. And I've been trying to make more and more videos about LinkedIn and on LinkedIn.

Yeah. I've enjoyed those.

Oh, really? Thank you.

Thank you.

That's how we connect.

Yes.

Yeah.

YouTube.

I think YouTube is good. I think YouTube has gotten much better. I think YouTube has had its own fair share of going up and down, right? With the YouTuber culture, with the vlogging culture. But I think, again, similar to Facebook, the people at YouTube are freaking smart and they really care. So, so I think that, that they're gonna figure it out and they're figuring it out. It's getting so much better.

If you were gonna start on one platform today, what would it be?

Depend— well, I would ask you, who do you want your viewer to be?

Okay, say more.

Uh, if you want the world to watch you, go to Facebook. If you want the West to watch you, go to YouTube. The Western kids to watch you, go to kid— uh, uh, uh, Facebook. If you want the kids of the world to watch you, go to TikTok. If you want to get a job or hire somebody to build a company, go to LinkedIn. And if you want to be a techie crypto guy Go to Twitter. Simple as— and if you want to be an art— actually, don't go to Instagram. Why? Um, I think Instagram has a fundamental issue in which, uh, discoverability has been a problem for the last 4 years, um, and it will not make you discoverable. If you are starting today, you are a nobody, just like how I was starting when I was there 6 years ago. I am still a nobody, uh, but if you're starting today, you're a nobody. Therefore, the only thing that matters is distribution. Where are you going to get the views? And Instagram right now— Instagram and Twitter are probably the worst at giving you discoverability.

Tell me about the 1-minute videos.

What about them?

Well, before we started, you recommended making the 1-minute videos.

Yes.

That's the way to reach people now.

Yeah. 2022 is the year of the 1-minute videos.

Finally, they caught up to your—

Yeah. Style. I started in 2016. So I'm gonna repeat that same thing so everybody internalizes it. 2022 is the year of the 1-minute videos. This is the year. And so if you make a 1-minute video right now, there are 4 places in which you can upload them. Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels, YouTube Shorts, and TikTok. If you upload on all these 3, you'll get massive distribution. Hmm. Instagram and Facebook are still trying to figure it out, but you'll get massive distribution on YouTube and on TikTok. Do that.

Yep. Um, if you're a— I think it's a great tip, we're gonna start doing it. Um, thank you for that. If you are a kid thinking about going and trying to become a professional content creator, do it.

Um, if you're a kid trying to become a professional content creator, make sure you're not homeless. Make enough money to be able to take this risk or get enough money somehow to take this risk. We are all highly privileged here, including you and me, but I only could start Nas Daily when I had enough savings for a year to live for a year without a job. Get savings so that you can live nice without a job for one year and just spend your savings for that one year. If it works, you're the next Nas Daily. If it doesn't, you'll go back to that job. But spend 1 year of your life, which is exactly 1.2% of your life, to take that risk and see what happens.

Yeah, I was 10 years at a desk job before going out on my own.

Wow.

So, wow.

Yeah. And how much savings did you have?

I had enough for a year. That's it?

After working for 10 years? Well, you're not good at saving money, my friend, or you're not paid enough, or you put enough—

you put enough. Well, I think let's go with the latter. But no, you put enough away that, that you, you, you know, you can't touch it because it's for retirement.

Oh wow. Okay. Okay. Yeah. When I, when I was 24, I wasn't planning for retirement.

Yeah.

So I, I think for me it was like everything I made in a year and a half, I just started with.

Right. Where can people find your work and join the academy?

If anybody is still listening to this, they probably know the work by now.

Right, right.

Um, So it's just type Nas Daily on the internet and then it's all there.

Nuseir Yassin, thanks for joining.

Alex, really always a pleasure chatting with you and thank you so much for caring about the world in a deep way and for being a supporter of what we do.

Thank you so much. Yeah, always great to talk. Okay, well that will do it for us here on the Big Technology Podcast this week.

Sorry, you're still rolling.

Still rolling. Hey, it's good. We, we, we like an active outro. We like an active— thanks again to Nuseir Yassin for being here with us. Thank you, Simon Hipkins from Key Pictures.

I get that right?

Yeah.

For doing the edit here. We appreciate you very much. Um, thank you to LinkedIn for being a partner on the podcast network.

They are a partner.

They are. Nice. Yeah. Great partner. And thanks to all you listeners and viewers. We appreciate you being here and we'll be back next week. On the Big Technology podcast with a new episode. Until then, take care.