EMOTIONAL DAMAGE | The Unbelievable Story Of Steven He

Today we're talking with the one and only Steven He, who you probably know from these two words. Emotional damage. Even though you might recognize him from his wildly popular comedy skits and TV series, behind the scenes, he's an incredibly shrewd businessman, entrepreneur, and comedian who's about to share his secrets of success, money, and the realities of living in China. If you do not pass this exam, we're talking about 13-year-olds, 14-year-olds here, you were basically like shackled to a life of labor. On this episode of Subscribe if you haven't done that already. Although before we go into that, we got to thank our sponsor. Now, thank you very much, Graham, for that wonderful intro. Before we get onto that, I'm sure a lot of you guys are college students that want to build your credit, but you're either scared you're going to overspend or you're like Dave Ramsey and don't want to take on any debt. 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Fizz partners directly with MasterCard and Lead Bank, and also international students can apply without a social security number. So, sign up using our link down below and start building your credit in a safe and accessible way. Again, the link is down below in the description, and now with that said, let's get to the podcast. How many waters do you need, Jack? Uh, just two. Just two. This guy's in actually incredible. He will go an entire podcast without a beverage, which to me is just maniacal, to be completely honest, because I don't understand how you can talk for that long without needing to Oh, you're right, but yes, your mouth gets so like dry when you talk. Yeah. He doesn't want to spend money on the water consumption. We should totally talk about cheapness, cuz I take pride at how cheap I am. I have such a cheap person. favorite conversation topic. Okay, let's let's see who's cheaper. You know, his frugality is actually real. Like a lot of people are surprised when you hang out with him. He's not joking. He's actually that frugal. It's incredible. I think it's reasonable. I bet it is. No, I believe you, because I I think it's something to be proud of, you know, I am as well. Did you grow up in a in a household that was cheap or like like I very like conservative financially? much. By the Are we rolling? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, great. Oh, wow, nice. I like that. Just roll right in without an intro. That's awesome. Um, I grew up in China and and the mindset was very different. Like, I didn't know anything about investing at all. I didn't understand like financial intelligence or inflation or anything like that. Like, I remember growing up my um my concept of money was I make money and I save it. Like, if you were if you were a smart person where I come from, you saved it. Um, the not so purpose of make money and spends it and they they get in trouble for not having money. Um, and so uh the the saving kind of mentality was really a part of my childhood, like my upbringing. Um But, that's the culture as well, I feel like in a lot of Asian countries is just to save. Yes, always saving, yeah. Yeah, really? Oh, yeah. That's the For well Did you not know this, Jack? No. Okay, so I have a very biased perspective and I'm not stereotyping or anything. That is not what I want to be doing here. But, in college I was at UCSB. Now, the people that drove the Porsches, the people that drove the Camaros, the people that drove the Mustangs, the people that wore the Louis Vuitton, I noticed were the foreign exchange students, usually from the Asian countries. And I always like kind of figure like, okay, what's like the trend here? You know, cuz I can't be oblivious to something like that. Like, do they all have money? Oh, I can give I can give insight to that. So, yes, during that time, like the recent maybe 20 years, and my my lifetime is very much within this. China had a massive massive boom. Like, China went from I'd say my grandparents you know, there there was not an abundance. Like like people were hungry a lot for for my experience. Not I can't speak for the whole country, but just my family's experience. And then my parents' generation were born, and when they hit adulthood, that's when like China exploded. All of a sudden everything was made in China. So, all So, these businesses started popping up, and as you can imagine, like anything in manufacturing, you know, logistics, where we would make the stuff that you see in like Walmart. That put a lot of wealth in China, and all of a sudden people who weren't used to having wealth would gain wealth very very fast. Like become millionaires in a year and so by opening up a factory or, you know, the entrepreneurs who would take advantage of that massive boom. And then, this is funny, in my generation, when I was born, which funny, I was born in the in the one-child policy. So, I didn't know a single person like a classmate with a sibling. Not one. Like maybe would happen if you ended up having a second kid? I don't know. Because you can't just stop that baby. My my understanding is that isn't there a tax? So, it costs money or I think I don't know if we can talk about that on here. Does the baby go bye-bye? I believe I believe so if it's female. I think I think the males were I don't know if we See, no, this is this right here. I've heard the exact same thing. Now, I don't know if this is true or not, but this is just like a lot of Americans' perception of what happens. I'm sure a lot of viewers can relate. Maybe a lot can't. But like a lot of people think that like the the women babies less desirable because Yeah, they like go up for adoption or something like that. the less desirable yes, I have heard of that. Um well, the the answer is I actually don't know. I never I was never told the actual rules. Okay. Um but yeah, you could only have one child. And there was this pressure that your whole family's lineage kind of rested on your shoulders. And so, you can imagine, right? The the pressure. This is This is where the whole you must get an A, you know, all that all that uh culture of uh being extremely tough on your children kind of comes from. Um is that you don't have anyone else Interesting. on the lineage. And that plus the the big pressure in China at the time of the economy and what kind of careers you had access to. Yes, the opportunities. Um it was a much like tougher competition than it is here. Um let's just from some personal experiences, when I was 13 years old, we were about to do this thing called zhongkao. And that is where uh it's like the deciding point of if people continue on education or don't. Uh and my experience growing up was it was largely accepted that if you do not pass this exam uh and and get into a school because if you didn't get into a school, that was the end. You went out, you got a job, you didn't continue education. We're talking about 13-year-olds, 14-year-olds here. Wow. Um Okay. Uh that's the impression that everyone around was uh kind of having was if you didn't continue, you were basically like shackled to a life of labor, to being a delivery person forever, or a farmer. Um you know, you would have a bad life, basically. We were told that. Our parents would beat it into us. The school, the society would beat that into us that you have to pass this exam. Um and uh the the passing rate was not high. From what I know from my city back home, it was less than a half. Less than a half get to continue on education where you would have a a hope of a a good career, you know, like a good income where you could raise a family and things like that. Um that was my experience growing up. I I don't know about other parts of China, but I'm from Shenzhen. Um and so you can imagine that the massive uh stress and pressure that society puts on and the family puts on to a child, which they're definitely children. 13-year-old is definitely a child. Um and and yeah, that was the concept. That like I I never learned or understood financial intelligence in the way of like investing and how to make money work for you. Um it was just rather simple of uh you get money, you save it because likely, you know, you're not going to be able to get money in the future or or things will happen that will cost money. Um a lot of concepts were stranger to me when I was coming to the West. And I take responsibility, this might be my individual experience because I am particularly uh uneducated in this field. Like I it took a while for me to understand medical insurance and why the hell people have it. Canadians feel the same way. Yeah, don't worry. It's not just you. Yeah. Yeah, so like in China, you you get sick, you go to the hospital, you get what you need, and that's it. That was the end. And you paid like I don't know, the price of a pizza for a regular visit. So it was never anything you consider. Um It's all subsidized by the government, though? Oh, I don't know. I don't know how it no way you can pay the price of a pizza for some actual medical The government really owns everything, though. So of course they're going to provide health care to their citizens. Citizens make a lot of uh business. They're very productive. The government wants to help these people survive and keep working. You also I I fully admit I am very uneducated in in politics in China. Um but yeah, the reason I brought up like kind of the field was um well, that was a long tangent. Um people like that's what people in my parents' generation got wealthy um when no one was being no one was used to being wealthy in China. And as a result, they kind of gave their children everything that they didn't have. And I knew many like children who was either my classmate or close to me, friends, who were like this. And that's where you see the Louis Vuitton-wearing kids outside. Because we kind of growing up anyway, now it might be different, but growing up we considered coming to the West to mostly England, America, Canada, you know, these countries uh is considered like the best place to send your kids for a good career and a good life. Um and when those very rich Chinese people send them over, they just give them everything they want. So that that that represents a very small number of children. Um and we actually have a name for them. We call them fu'er dai, which translates to rich second generation. So that that is exactly what you were describing earlier. And I I know I've seen many of them myself. I was not one of them, unfortunately. Yeah, I had quite a few Japanese and Korean friends. Uh they were very much like their families were very much don't show, don't no flash, very modest, save, and be it like very frugal. And like that was really important. Yes, it was. Uh wow, that's that's fun to think about back then. Like growing up in China, there a lot of experiences I'd love to share with you guys. Like uh Please, please do. I'm so I'm so curious. Oh, oh, like going to school, everything was cash by the way. When I was a kid, everything was cash. I I barely I didn't really know about bank accounts. Like, my parents probably had them. I probably had. Uh but for me it was cash. Like, you would get your allowance. And uh I I'd probably get like 100 yen every week. And I'm I'm living through such a happy memory thinking was What's the conversion? What would that be like? A few dollars American, I believe. I I Yeah, probably less than $10, maybe. Okay. Um and what you could buy with it. Yeah. That's pretty good. Pretty good. A $10 allowance a week? $20. What is it? 40 yen a month? Yeah. My allowance was $2 a week. And this is back then, too, so with inflation now, that's pretty pretty decent. a a better reference is probably what it could buy rather than, you know, the dollar exchange. Like, what it could buy, I remember um oh man, I'm so happy when I'm thinking about this. On the way to school every morning, it was like 7:00 a.m. and I was the monitor, so I had to get there extra early to take care of all the all the responsibilities. Um I would stop by like a a rice noodle stall. And these were all hole-in-the-walls, literally. Like, they didn't even have a have a wall front wall. It was a building with a with a room cut out of it. Uh let alone not having a door, they didn't even have a wall. Um and uh it would surely be like one person running the whole stall, you know, making rice rolls and uh uh and uh serving people, making financial transactions in cash, which now I think is probably not very sanitary thinking back on it. Um and I remember a rice roll would cost like five yuan uh going to school in the morning. And I would maybe get like a an extra soy milk or an extra xiaolongbao. And that was that was everything. Um and I particularly remember as well the the people that I saw were very happy. Like, I remember this one guy who ran a rice roll stall. He would He would knead the dough and make the food and he would dance to it every day. So, I'd go get my food and I'd watch him like like working away dancing and I always like remember that because I like to think he he was that was his dream, you know, I like to think he probably came from somewhere much worse and he's just so happy to have his own stall and to have his own business and to be able to feed kids on their way to school. You know what? Before we go into that though, I've seen a lot of people try to get into businesses and I've seen firsthand just how difficult getting funding can be, which is why our sponsor Fund and Grow wants to help. 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And now with that said, let's get back to the podcast. Oh, and then yeah, and then like bubble tea swept over I remember the summer that all of a sudden everyone went from drinking Coca-Cola to bubble tea and it was it multiplied like more than Starbucks's today. Just took over the whole the whole city. Um I remember that. Uh and so yeah, it was the cash and the things that we would kind of flex or be happy about was, "Oh, look, I got the new snack. I got the new That's cool. Uh yeah, that was awesome, dude. There always be stalls outside the school in like a a cart that could be wheeled away in a second, you know. And they would sell the strangest things. Now that I've come to the west, I I've realized that a lot of the things they were doing were taken from the west. Like there was this year in school. It must have Wow, must have been like 11 or 12. Yeah, 11 or 12. Where all of a sudden hash browns became the thing. No. Like Like Like the McDonald's hash browns? Like they come in the thing? hash browns they have at McDonald's. The exact shape. Yes. And I I wonder where did they get them? Cuz I got to Later on I realized they were the McDonald's hash browns. Like is this a Is like an off brand or someone figured out how to buy it or just go to the supplier that McDonald's goes to? Like those were the stuff like growing up what I remember. Wow. Off brands was huge. Oh my god, I love this topic. I genuinely love this topic because I've made a lot of videos uh skits about off brand products, you know. That's like my childhood growing up. So every chip bag I brought was off brand. Every like Like give us an example. Like do we have Doritos and then you would like what's Yes. The product would be sometimes pretty close, sometimes way off. Like you'd go to you go to a stall um and these would be like shacks, you know, they're part of a building. Products just laid upon like a like a wooden board with with ledges so you'd put bags of stuff on the wooden board. And I used I remember I drank stuff. I drank uh this lemonade drink that was that I thought was Sprite. I didn't even know what Sprite was. Uh but it tasted completely off. But we're like oh well, this is what you drink, you know. This is what we grew up here. This is what's available. Um we had off brand versions definitely of potato chips, lots of potato chips. Pringles. Pringles would be an easy one to know off. Yeah. many. Yeah. Uh Rest Oh my god, DON'T GET ME STARTED ON RESTOS, BRO. DUDE, WHICH ONES? RESTOS. OH. I swear, where I grew up, this was Shenzhen Luohu District, Shenzhen. Um there must have been like five OFF-BRAND KFCS THEY WOULD COPY THE exact items KFC sells. Like KFC would come out with a wrap, they would come out with a wrap, and they were like five times cheaper. I have no idea how they managed to swing that kind of prices. Uh and that was not in China? It was. It was in China. There were So they just copy it. Was there no like legal issue between I'm just Oh, bro. The I bet Good luck trying to shut that down. Yeah, I bet at this moment there are shops with my face just plastered on the front, and I don't know anything about it. Oh my god. Yes, I bet. I bet. I bet. I bet. Yeah. That's Yeah, you shut one down and five more will open up like the next day. That's a That's a quick Yeah. real thing. Like for for no reason, you just see someone's someone's pineapple juice stall with like Tom Cruise's face slapped on it going like this. I swear, you see that everywhere you go. It's probably still happening today. Um so I love that stuff. The off-brand uh uh Jack brought up a question though. Legally, can they ever I mean, I know they're not they they maybe can't shut them down. So, what's the strategy? Is it just to open up and like just do as much business as possible? I think I think it was such a common thing that people took it for granted. Like I don't think KFC ever went, "Oh, let's close them down." I I doubt that. Well, being an American company, I assume they they would probably want to do that. Um but culturally, no one went around going like that's not supposed to be here. We kind of just enjoyed it. It's just a part of it all. Um but copyright does have a a bit of a different um Oh my god. Like but like how exact were they in their copying? Like KFC, do people know, "Oh, that's KFC"? Was the you got to KFC? was very, very similar. They copied They copied the art. They would draw exactly the same, but they might swap out, like, instead of a What do you call that thing? It's a bow tie, or it's a regular tie. They would swap out little bits. They were I remember, Alex, they were so similar to the real one. It really take you a second to to see, oh, there was an extra dot on the the wording, or, you know, oh, this one has an extra line at the bottom. Could it be named Kentucky Fried Chicken, like KFC? I bet there was. Like, most of the time, I would see them switch up one word, or one syllable, even. But, I I'm quite confident there were a few that straight up pretends to be. Not even hiding. They're straight up saying, we are KFC, when they're absolutely not. So, did you pass that exam when you were 13? I was wondering that. I didn't do it. I actually immigrated. Before? Yes, right before. Literally, right before. I immigrated from Shenzhen to Ireland, and I became an Irish person through immigration. In China, I So, if you immigrate as a Chinese person, you do have to forfeit your Chinese citizenship. So, that's what happened. I came over, and I joined the Irish system. And that was a whole other world. It was, you know, throwing myself into a very different social structure with different language, different manners. All of a sudden, everything I knew was it was different. So, I was very much thrown in the deep end. And What were some of the differences between the two? Oh, I thought of two things. Let me say these two things before we continue. Oh my god, it's going to be so funny. This is like this is like a stand-up bit, you know? Everything we talk about is great. There's two two off-brand things that I remember specifically growing up that when I came to the West, I was like, oh my god, this is how things worked. First one was movies. Oh, this is this is terrible, because I am in the film industry. This is terrible. This is what it was like in China. Growing up to watch a movie you went down your building out to a stall that would that had essentially a cupboard box with like 200 DVDs inside it. And they were all rip-offs. None of them were licensed or anything. They were all have like a These were didn't have boxes. They were like a envelope printed with the movie poster. You would take out and you'd be like, "Oh, this is this movie." And you'd pay like something ridiculous like two yuan, like nothing, cents for it. And you brought it home and usually it was a different film It wasn't what it was advertised as. Usually they rip you off. I bought one in New York, thought it was Harry Potter, put it on and it was a video recording of so like some other movie. Someone was in the movie theater with the camera recording. get that all the time. YES, YES, YOU WOULD. AND you'd hear someone like coughing in the back. Yeah, in fact, you would feel lucky if you didn't get that. If I bought like a film, put it on and it wasn't a secret like recording in the cinema, it would have been a special moment for me. We saw like someone's head in front of the thing like blocking up part of the bottom of the screen. Uh same with video games. Oh my god, you'd buy a video games and and plug into computer, it'd be a completely different video game. And that's the another big I want to share this experience cuz it's going to be so funny to you guys. Um growing up there was this game everyone played. It was like the Oh, it You talked about it in school, you know, it's the popular thing. Um it was a racing game. Like a like Need for Speed, like that kind of But in a cartoony style. Mario Kart. Uh dude, let me tell you. We So it would be have you like practice on the weekends to get better and all of that. And you'd pay for the newest skins, the best cars. It was the cool thing. Everyone did it. And then I remember I came to the West and and I kind of stopped playing that. And I lived in the West a while for, you know, a couple of years and then occasionally one person just brought up this game. Hey, Hey, let's play Mario Kart. I was like, oh, okay. They flipped on the game and I went, they copied the game I used to play when I was back in China. No. I legit thought Mario Kart copied the off-brand game that we used to play. And it took me like a month to convince me, no, Mario Kart is the original. Wow. That is such a funny experience. You grow up thinking that's the thing. And you see this, wait, wait, the controls are the same. You can drift, too. Wait, what? You can get items that you could use on people. They copied No, but it was the other the other way around. So, oh, that's the story I wanted to tell. It's so funny. Gosh. That's crazy. How So, how were some of the customs different then when you moved out from China? uh, I I got a very hard kind of experience because my mom put me into an Irish school right off. It's literally the day I've told the story before. The day we landed in the airport in the morning at 8:00 a.m. Um, we went to this new home that I'd never been and and my mother had married an Irishman. And and she's like, this is your new father. I was like, wow, you know, everything's so disorienting. 8:00 a.m. we landed, 11:00 a.m. I was in school. And my mom said, here's the principal, here's Steven, good luck, goodbye. How was your English or Irish or what? speak a word. What What language they speak there? Uh, in Ireland, English. They speak English. Don't laugh, Graham. Don't laugh, Graham. You look more Irish than me. You probably have Look, I'm not the most cultured guy. I've been trying to leave the country. so funny? Jack was asking what I thought his IQ was before this. THAT'S NOT AN IQ QUESTION. That's a trivial knowledge question that has proven to have no correlation with IQ. I agree. I agree. You're Yeah. trivial knowledge, Graham. That's so funny. That is completely detached, okay? I'm just uncultured. That's simply what it is. I've never left the country, never left my own country, too. This guy locked me in Vegas in my cell and I can't leave. Not until you get the podcast done. leave when we have to shoot a podcast. I go right back into the cell right afterwards. Dude, that is so funny. That is exposed. Okay, they speak English in Ireland, but you didn't know it. It's got to be okay. I thought Irish was a language. Oh, it is. It is a language. Okay, all right. No. Oh, it is a language. Yes, it's a language called Gaelic uh that only about I I remember the message I heard. We went to Limerick. My mom kind of moved the whole moved myself uh to Limerick. And I remember in the school, there was one other Asian person and he was Filipino. So, within miles, there was no one who spoke Mandarin and I didn't speak a word of English. Uh so, it was sink or swim. Uh my days were miserable. The only way I could cope was to copy people. Like, if I saw people sit down on the chair, I would sit down on the chair. If they took out a red book, I would take out of my red book, but I had no idea what anything meant. How did they put you in class? Wouldn't they test you in and realize that you don't speak the Well, they know I don't speak. So, why would they put you in there? What does it not make sense? do you sit and listen to It kind of is like that. It I sit there and I just wondered to myself, "What's going on today? How is training outside? How is it?" expect you to sit through class on that? I don't know what they expect. I guess they just But you couldn't have possibly learned anything. No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. I I guess um I I the first time I moved to Ireland, I was eight. Uh so, a little bit earlier. I went back in like chunks. China, Ireland, China, Ireland. Um so, the first time eight-year-old me probably was more malleable. Is that Is that the word to use? I I picked up language faster. Um so, first year, jeez, I I could not I just could not understand anything anyone would say to me. Um and I it developed like a a defense or coping mechanism well where I would just play dumb. Um like if someone if the teacher is speaking to me, dude, what else am I going to I'm just going to stare at you not understanding a single word you said. Uh when people brought me places, I would just go with them. And uh and I remember they they put me in the special needs class as well with other mentally challenged children. Uh probably because they thought I was mentally challenged. For for good reasons, yes, I did very much behave very dumb. Uh that was like the first year. And then just through living, I started to pick up uh what words meant. Like occasionally I'd know what food meant or what big large activities when meant what riding a bike meant. Um and then by 2 years, I was able to communicate like kind of normally. I would I would be able to communicate but with many holes. Like this is so embarrassing. I wouldn't no one teach me this stuff cuz no one spoke Mandarin, so um I would say things to a group of Irish kids like, "Hey, uh can I read your bike?" And then everyone would laugh at me and I'd be like, "What what what's what's so funny?" And they'd be like, "It's ride not read." I was like, "Oh, okay." Uh yeah, it was a it was a lot of that experience hundreds and hundreds of times. And that's kind of where where I developed the the defense mechanism to play stupid. Wow. Cuz when you first went there, you had no idea like how to speak English. Were you effectively just mute? Did you just not say things or did you like Yeah, I didn't say anything. of sat there. Yes, I just sat there. How would you do tests and uh pass anything? No, I wouldn't pass anything. The only thing I had This is kind of funny actually. The only thing I understood was numbers. So to the Irish kids, here's a guy that is completely silent that doesn't understand anything, but he would like know math better than the teacher. And so they thought I was kind of some some kind of savant, you know. Uh but in reality, I just didn't speak the language. And my math was very advanced. Um so I would I I would know quite often actually um math topics better than the teacher does. So that created a funny little perspective that to other kids might have been entertaining. I mean the the teacher wouldn't call on you though because they knew like they learned I'm sure after time like don't call on Steven because he won't speak back. that is true. Yeah, they did call on me and ended up what I always failed cuz I would stand up and I was like, I don't know. And I just sit back down. Would you ever just speak Mandarin though? Like just like explaining something? it didn't make sense to me to speak Mandarin. Really? Yeah, yeah, I didn't. I I suppose it was such a social like subconscious hit that I developed a shell and I developed like a coping mechanism to to dissociate in a way. Um and that I believe that kind of made me really introverted as you can imagine. And so I spent the vast majority of my childhood, even my uni days, in my room. I I would play video games. I would not go see a single person. Uh and I feel that about Ireland that I I'm a little sad that I missed out on that whole experience. I've never went to a single party. I never went to the bar which all the kids as soon as they're 18 they went to. Um I had like one friend who would occasionally come play FIFA with me. Uh and that was it. And even in my uni days I spent the whole time in my room. It was only after that when I went to like acting training that I began to open up in terms of personality and actually be able to talk to people and share a connection, tell stories, like learn how to interact. Um so yeah, that was quite the experience. I'm glad I'm the way I am now. It's the it's very I I enjoy company, you know, I enjoy talking to people, I enjoy hearing their stories now. Uh and it's much better than like playing video games in my room. Yeah. When did you come to the US? About 5 years ago. I came here because of an acting school called the Neighborhood Playhouse. Uh so I wanted to become an actor when I was 13. And now being like after understanding a lot more, um I understand the reason I kind of started was because I I needed validation cuz I felt lesser. I felt really lesser. Like everyone else had you know, what they had and and their their parents came and picked them up from school when I had to walk home alone. Um kids other kids could have that. I couldn't. You know, there was there was many situations where like I'd be I'd be in a living situation where another kid would for dinner, for example, would get the fresh bowl of rice. I get the leftover bowl of rice. It's just a lot of experiences in distilled that lesser feeling in me. And because I felt lesser than people, I craved, you know, for people to tell me I'm important and I and I deserve to be here. And so for that result, unconsciously, um that's why I wanted to become an actor. Uh and now now that I know that, I have much more power over that and like, "Oh, I don't kind of crave validation as much as the child version of me did." Uh and so it's because of that I did a lot of theater. Uh I went to London to do a bachelor's degree in acting. And then I was 20 years old when I graduated my bachelor's degree. I went to New York to the Neighborhood Playhouse, which um to my knowledge is one of the best acting schools on the planet with many Oscar-winning alumni who are actors as well. Uh so that's why I came. And then I finished the acting school. It really changed me as a person because a lot of the a lot of the defenses I built up um I wasn't aware of before, but through that process I learned more about myself, about what made me the way I am. And that's actually the reason I I can change myself now because I understand. Oh, so I feel this way because of an experience lives inside me from when I was 12. Um and that has helped big time. So then went into the industry, uh did a did a bunch of stuff. I was in like Comedy Centrals and Showtime. Uh I did a bunch of movies where they weren't huge, like not many people saw them. Uh but I was the lead and stuff. But But was not a career. That's a whole other story. How did you How did you even get into that? Like Comedy Central, like some of these things are pretty big. How did that Where did that come from? it was just an audition process. At the time, uh I did a lot of theater. I did 61 stage shows, and I haven't done one since. It's been a while. 61 stage shows since I was 13 years old in Shenzhen, in Limerick, in London, Edinburgh, and uh New Jersey, and New York. So, I've done a good amount of theaters through like my journey that I've built up. Um and then I entered the film industry. And at first, it was waking up every morning submitting to 20 acting jobs. And I was really hungry. I had drive like crazy. So, I would uh actively lose money to beg for a job. I was like, "I I will fly to Illinois to do a Shakespeare play at my own expense, flight and lodging. And they'll probably pay nothing anyway." Um I was that hungry. I just wanted a career. But I I was also very uh I was unaware of how uh kind of difficult it was to have a career in acting. Like, I didn't know the stats. Or or rather, I might have known the stats, but I was I was emotionally disassociating myself from it. I was delusional thinking, "Oh, I'm the one in a million, you know. I'm going to be the lucky guy." Well, how were you doing all this when you didn't know English? Oh no, I knew Well, it took me this point. Yeah, at this point I'm I'm like 10 years old. Oh, I thought you said from 13 to whatever age you were 17. Yes, from 13 to 17 I did a bunch of theater. And then 17 I went to university. you do English fairly fluently? Yes, I did. I did. Because I started when I was eight. So, I could speak well, maybe with a strong accent. Prob- Yeah, probably with a strong accent. Uh and then 17 went to train 20 years old train again, 22 graduated, went into full-time. And the way you I got into these um roles was to wake up, submit to 20 jobs. And out of those 20, like maybe uh a week, I'd probably do three auditions, five auditions. And a lot of them were by myself in my room, so I'd set up the camera, I'd perform, I'd send them the tape, or going into the room. So, I I was in New York at the time, I'd travel to the place, the whole experience every actress is familiar with this. Um and occasionally I would land. My landing rate is very very very low. Very low. How low? Like what's What's the ratio on that? So, I have applied to about 3,100 jobs. And it wasn't just me, it was also I had an agent who would apply on my behalf as well. So, with the two of us together, we we'd apply to like every chance. And I was hungry enough to not care about money at all. Um Out of the 3,010 3,100 applications, I landed, I'd say, seven. Wow. So, it was terribly bad. typical? Oh. Like what percentage is typical? When you look at stats, so I I I I will specify as well, landing a job is barely anywhere close to a career. Because like, I was on Comedy Central for one day, and uh Well, how should I dis Like, okay, here's a here's an idea. Of the seven jobs I landed, and if I was like flexing my acting achievement, they would be pretty strong. You know, people would go, "Oh, you were in Comedy Central's Awkwafina is Nora from Queens." They'd be, "Oh, yeah, cool, good for you." But, I have never made a month's rent. So, as an actor, you're expected not to make enough money to to to live. Um and there's many stats to back me up, like SAG-AFTRA actors, I remember it's about 96 or 97% of SAG-AFTRA actors, that is the professional union here in America, um 96, 97% need another job because their acting cannot they cannot live on their acting. So having a career is like rare, extremely rare to just earn I don't know 40k, 50k a year. And then being the one in a million obviously that is a lot lot rarer. Yeah. Right, right. So how were you supporting yourself through that time? Oh, that was my mom and dad. That was all my mom and dad. Supporting actors says they made a joke about this at the Oscars. Yeah and it's the serial time and like my mom and dad supported me big time and it was because of them I had the time to and the energy to go at it as hard as I did. So if they didn't support me I would have to like wait tables which I actually did for a short period of time but I'm really fortunate in that in that rent was covered. My mother and father paid for that and most of living was covered. Yeah, for like 2 years and we did have some we did have some hard like conversations there because of the reality of it, you know, I was Right. I began really starry-eyed and really delusional. And I remember like this was the moment that changed everything for me and it's kind of when I started to go into content creation as a strategy. It wasn't a passion. It wasn't it was me trying to use new media as platform as a strategy to leverage against traditional. Where do you find the inspiration for a lot a lot of your videos? A lot of the comedy. How what's the what's the process like? there is a real Wow, that's a great point because there is a struggle there. Um the struggle is this this question of are you an artist or you're a professional? And for my whole career up until now I've chosen the professional. And the difference between artist and a professional to me is an artist expresses, a professional delivers. The difference is the direction. An artist makes what they want to make. A professional makes what the audience want to see. And I've always taken that route and that's lead to a lot of burnout. I'll give you this clearest example. Um, I came up with the Asian Dad character maybe 200 and some videos in. And and it was a hit. It was a massive hit. And I was like, "Oh dude, this is so exciting, bro. I have so many ideas cuz I grew up with this. I could joke about that." I had like 20 ideas and then I made all 20. And I ran out of ideas. You could just repeat the ideas though. Like that's where you go back to idea one and then you just add a few sprinkles in there. I had to So, I had to do that. I had to do version twos of things that I'd already done. I had to repeat jokes that I I maybe add a little bit, but it was the same joke. You know, how many times can you joke about getting B in math? I've I don't I've I've done it maybe five, six times now, seven times. Yeah, but you could do A- minus. Oh my god, it's so bad. Hey, why not A-plus? this goes back to the a little bit of the a little bit of the experience thing, the audience experience. I would hate to see my favorite YouTuber do the same thing over and over again. I'll get bored in three, four times. Um, and so I care about that for my audience. I always try to bring fresh out of content and never uh, redeliver the same value. If I do make the same thing again, I try to add all brand new value in there. Um, so I made 20. I ran out of ideas. I was like, "But it's not about what I want to make. It's about what they want to see." And the viewership was very, very, very obvious. Asian Dad video, 10 million views. Asian Dad video, 10 million views. Skit about my acting career, 100K. Asian Dad video, 10 million views. So, it was very, very clear what the audience wanted to see. So, I I sucked it up. I forced myself to come up with the ideas anyway. I made another 20 and I was burnt out, but I made another 20. I was burnt out, but I made another 20. And now we're like 80 skits into this character now. Um, and uh, yeah, it still that question. Do I make content I want to make, or do I make content people want to see? I make content people want to see. Great. That's been my approach. When you say exactly that, I look at what are people watching right now on YouTube, what are the trending topics, and I'm going to talk about that. Okay. Cuz at the end of the day, I make content for other people. And of course, like I like to interject my own little jokes and my own thoughts into it, because that's where I have fun. But at the end of the day, it's like I'm doing it for the audience. And so, I'll talk about whatever people want to hear about. That's great. I admire that. And like that discipline. Like, for me, side hustle and passive income videos are my least favorite. I can't stand making these videos. I've watched a lot But but they consistently do well. Like, over the course of a year, they're my most viewed videos by like two to three times. But I just can't stand making them. And a lot of it's repeated. Yeah. for whatever reason, I don't want to watch the video you made a year ago on. I want to see the new video today. Even though it's the same info. I see it because, you know, I I've seen the same sort of skits that you've done, and I'm like, I don't want to watch the old one. I want to watch the new one, cuz you grow as you you know, your audience is going to grow. They're never going to look back the old videos. They only get recommended what's in the last like few weeks. Okay, that's very fascinating. So. So, anyway, it is that perspective. And I guess the best kind of advice I've heard about this this topic is from my friend Ian. And he mentions the way kind of he does it is he'll make two for the audience, and one for himself. Um, and I feel like that could really help in terms of creative burnout. Because I got to admit, like the the writing is the hardest part. If I get scripts every day, I can make 100 videos, you know, a month. That's easy. Shooting is easy. Performing is easy. Coming up with the jokes is hard. And in the way I work as well, it is more complicated, because one of my advantages that that took me a past my peers is how fast I deliver value and how often I deliver value. My content is comedy skits. That is my my main content. And of course, the value that I deliver is comedy. Laughs, basically. Where Key and Peele would deliver two laughs in 3 minutes, I would deliver 30. And that was my advantage in becoming Steven He and outgrowing all of those channels that I studied before. So, if I have an idea, it's not really worth anything because an idea Asian dad goes to grocery store, I still have to write 30 jokes. And that's where I have difficulty. Oh, we've already joked about the rice five times, you know? Yeah, have you thought about hiring a a writer? I have I have tried. Jesus Christ. I have never found a person who who who can do it in the way this channel has been doing it. Okay. Yeah, so very difficult. Walk us through your creative process. You come up with a video Asian dad goes to a grocery store. How do you like What's the first step? Okay, like what is like an Asian something that happens at a grocery store? easy. I write jokes. So, if I have that we'll take that idea. Asian dad goes to grocery store. I sit down on my computer and I write about 30 jokes. Which often times is writing like 50 and deleting 20. Um So, I would write Hey, what's funny? The fish. Oh, there's always fish at Asian stores. Let's make a joke about SeaWorld. Hey, you always wanted to go to SeaWorld, eh? There you go. That's good. Yeah. Let's go. Like that's a joke. And then I go on and write another joke, another joke. And then after I write all of the jokes, I curate them in like a You string it together to create some sort of narrative. do Yeah, and there's actually a massive skill in the curating as well because it's not about narrative at all. It's not about narratively stringing them together. First, we go to this section, then we go to that section. The curation is actually about the experience. Um so, this is where I've developed very advanced kind of ways um to optimize for making the experience good. So, it's not random. It's not like I'm doing a banger, banger, banger, mediocre joke, mediocre joke. No, I'm actually curating them in a way that's essentially like a DJ. I'm not giving you all the beat drops up front. I'm not giving you all the beat drops up front. Um I want the experience to be a way that I want, which is also a a um tactic for the algorithm as well. You can call it a retention tactic. Uh yeah, and then I put the jokes in the order that I want them by selection of value. What value did it give? Is it a big laugh? Is it a small laugh? Is it a chuckle? And then, once I have the list of 30 jokes, I use narrative to string them into a coherent uh script. Mhm. And I put in the characters I need to put in. I I write the dialogue, and uh that's the script done. How long would that take you to do? I have found a I found a hack recently. Usually, that take me uh it'll take me like 15 minutes or 3 days, because I I'd often uh try to force jokes out of my head. And I have a really hard time. It's like, no matter how hard I squeeze, I'm staring at the paper, and I just can't think of a joke. Or other times, like the emotional damage video took me 15 minutes to write. I was like, "Oh, this will be cool. Wouldn't that be cool? That'll be cool." And it's done. Yeah. Walk us through that video. That video Oh, okay. All right. Uh this is going to get all the views. Let's go. This is what we're here The emotional damage video is called when Asian is a difficulty mode. Um initially, I had uh I I was playing uh Dark Souls. That was it. I was playing Dark Souls. And uh and I loved how the characters died. You know where the it's called ragdoll physics, right? When you get hit, the character kind of like falls as if they have no bones. I was like, "Dude, that's funny. I want to imitate that in real life. I wonder how how that will look." Um and so I was like, "Okay, so let's write a skit where um let's write a skit where the character would like die 20 times. And uh and for for the sake of, you know, delivering the audience what they want, let's put Asian Dad in there." Um and I the the difficulty mode I came up with was "What if like being Asian was a difficulty mode? Because it's really damn hard, you know? A lot of things are particularly hard about our culture. Um not that we're harder than anyone else, but being called your fat every day by your mom is emotionally damaging and and moments like that." Um and so I went on to, "Okay, so we need like 20 deaths. All right, let's try something that's funny that a character can die from. A character can die from being hit by a leaf falling from a tree. Write that down. A character can die from stepping on a stone. Write that down. Um and one of them was "What else can a character die from before besides physical damage? Oh, I know. Someone roasts them and he dies of emotional damage. Write that down." And I wrote like I don't know how many you got to count on the video, and many didn't even make it. So, probably 20 deaths. String that together, how am I going to put Asian Dad in this video? Obviously, he's not the character that dies cuz it's a video game. Let's put him as the reactionary character. He's the one playing. Uh so, the main footage happens in game, but each death I'm going to add the punchline by cutting to his reaction shot. Uh he plays the game, character in game dies, uh on screen we put the death, emotional damage, whatever, and we cut back to him. He is mad. He is screaming at this game because he's so annoyed. Um and one of them was emotional damage. So, that's how that video came about. You you have to say it. Emotional damage! OH MY GOD. VIEWS FOR DAYS. Let's go. He said it. No, it's about the experience of my fans. That's lovely. It brings so much joy. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I've been waiting for you to say it. Is that one of your like most highly requested things during fan encounters? Like, "Hey, can you say it?" Oh, not that much actually. Not that Sometimes people will ask that, but mostly it's for a selfie or mostly I like this about my fans. Because I I I've really put a lot of effort into building a connection with them, they actually have conversations with me. Like, I appreciate that more than anything because I've seen the other side. I've seen when a celebrity is viewed as a product and then every interaction was, "Hey, can I get a selfie? Hey, can I get a selfie?" You get a selfie, thanks, bye. Um and you know, when you're looked at as a product, it doesn't feel so great. But, thanks to you know, the the connection that we have, every conversation is intimate. They come up, they go, "Oh my god, Steven, you have to make this video again because my friend I was just talking about this and this blah blah blah." That's a real human connection. I love that. I feel like if people looked at me like a product like they do a regular A-lister, then uh it would I would be starved of human connection. about doing Asian Dad doing cheap life hacks? Like extreme cheap skates sort of thing. Like that would be hilarious. I've Oh, I'll tell Like using like garbage bags as like trash bags and like that. One of my garbage bags is trash bags. It's common. Yeah, it's common in a lot of cultures. Garbage bags is trash bags. I didn't know this. I did that all the time. And then people reached out from bags? Sorry. Grocery bags is trash Yeah. Grocery bags is trash bags. I did that in a CNBC video and everyone is commenting on it like, "Yo, he does it like my culture does that too." I didn't realize how common that is. One of the first Grocery bags is trash bags. Yeah, one of the first, uh, Asian culture skits I've ever made was this, uh, this parody shopping channel where an Asian mother advertises used plastic containers as if it was like Gucci. It was like, "Come get your used Olive Garden container that can contain three lunches for your child." And it's just like a used tub of or a tub of, um, cheese puffs, but you finished the cheese puffs, so it's just It's like the the grandma thing where you have the tin of biscuits, but instead of biscuits it's knitting things. Yeah. You know you know that's the other time. Yeah, it's exactly that. So, that's a great idea. Uh, I've done a lot of skits about the being cheap. That that's, of course, one of the biggest laughing points. Well, I've I've written hundreds of jokes about that. Um, and also the off-brand. I love I still to this day love making off-brand related skits. Graham has some great things that you can take away for some skits you're making yourself. He reuses He reuses the same floss or like those dino flossers, you know? He reuses that. You have WHY WOULD YOU HOLD IT? THAT'S DISGUSTING. I'LL PUT IT BACK IN YOUR POCKET. It's fine. These are new pants. No, no, no, hold on. Take it out. Take it out. Take it out. Why? Get a close-up cuz that thing is it's hanging on for dear life, to be honest. It looks clean. Look at Why is it all fringed, man? Don't touch it. At least he's sanitary. Don't touch it. That's all you can do, right? I always keep like one on me somewhere. I love that. How many times do you use that today? Yeah. Like after the Chipotle. Okay. Let me Let me add a cheap life hack of my own cuz I literally did this like two days ago. When you go to Oh my god, you're going to hate this. I'm going to love it. Wait, wait, hold on. I'm taking I'm taking notes. When you go to Starbucks to get your latte. Yeah, that's why I said you're going to hate it. I'll put my phone away. All right, my phone's away. This is what I sometimes do. You ask for a large iced latte, right? And then you you get the latte first. You wait till you get the latte and then you say, "Oh, can I have a cup of milk?" I do the same thing. And they just give you Yeah. Yeah, you can ask for just cream on the side. They just give it to you. And then you mix it and then you have two lattes effectively. even better. You get a regular black coffee. Okay. They give it to you and then you say, "Oh, by the way, can I get a cup of ice?" Yes. Pour it over the ice and then you say, "Oh, can I get like a little thing of cream?" Or whatever you might need. Or so you get three cups, basically. No, the little cream is like a little thing. Oh, it's in a little container. See, that's crazy cuz you're basically getting 300% the amount of coffee. Exactly. The ice takes up like 70% pour the ice in that, yeah, you're really only getting half a drink. Yeah, the other half's water. So, just get the normal coffee, pour it over ice, which is free. Uh-huh. Uh there was a TikTok, too, that I've seen before that tells you how to get all of the same Starbucks drinks for cheap by ordering them like differently. Wow. Yeah, like there's a way to order a macchiato by like getting one thing and something on the side. You know what I did with Alex? Uh-huh. Here's the thing. We went to a sushi restaurant. Okay. And I noticed the um Philadelphia roll was $15. But you could get a salmon roll for nine. Okay. at that and I'm like, wait a second. So, they're charging $6 just to put cream cheese on the on the inside of the roll. That doesn't make any sense. Yeah. So, I said to Alex, "I wonder if I could just get cream cheese on the side." And I asked, "Can I get a salmon roll Mhm. and just get cream cheese on the side?" I'm like, "How much is the cream cheese?" And the guy was like, "I've never been asked that before." Yeah. A dollar. And I'm like, "Okay, cool, a dollar." So, he brings the cream cheese and brings the roll. So, I'm in $10. Um. And I just take the cream cheese and I put it on the top of the roll. Oh, it's the same thing. same thing. I saved $5. I never even see you ordering Philadelphia rolls. I like the Philadelphia Yeah. This one Yeah, I do like the cream cheese. This one made sense cuz it was a a filling roll. I didn't want to spend the $20 on a Yeah. fancy one. It was like get the I wanted that like for $10. I thought that was a good deal. Yeah. But they don't but they're not doing the math on that. Like someone should really It's a I think they should have charged $12 for that not 15. wouldn't a restaurant like try to get whatever they can, you know, they'll they'll up the charge. Yeah, he said it was the first time he'd been asked that so I guess it Nobody's thinking about it. It's like that IQ, Jack. When your IQ goes over 150 start thinking start thinking of ways to You saw that the Chipotle thing though, right? Cuz there was a huge Chipotle exploit where you go in and you get a taco and you basically load up the taco with everything they have there so you get like the rice, the beans, the the veggies, meat in there and everything and then you ask for a side of tortilla which is like 50 cents and you just pile the entire taco into the burrito tortilla and you overload the taco. You can get double beans, double rice, double everything. You can even get double chicken and it turns out to be like three bucks. Wow. Are you talking about you're getting one taco? One taco, yes. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. everything cuz double rice is free, double beans is free, double lettuce is free, double cheese is free, double all of that is free. Did they both Did they patch it? There's no way to patch it. I don't know if I don't know if they patched it but like I think like they still do it but it's highly discouraged for people to go there because like I think cuz so this girl she posted this Tik Tok it got like 20 million views it went super viral and then there was this huge controversy because everybody started going to Chipotle using this exploit. And they haven't I don't think they patched it cuz I don't know how they would. But I think you can't get double rice maybe. it would have to be at their discretion to say no you that that's too much. But that that's going to get you know, $3 burritos or whatever it was and So I tried a life hack recently. Panda Express apparently used to if you show up 15 minutes before closing give you discounted food or you would be able to get like multiple meals for the price of one because otherwise they throw it out. So I went to a few Panda Expresses. One of them offered, I think it was like 15% or 20% off on the meal as just a courtesy sort of like, "Well, you know, we don't really do this, but if you want to." Uh the other one, the lady ended up watching the channel and she sent me a message afterwards on Twitter saying, "Hey, I couldn't really explain this in the store, but we used to do this and it we ended up having issues because people would show up right at closing and we we'd have to cook food right before closing. A lot of it would go to waste. Or a lot of employees would purposely like cook up extra food just to be able to take it home. So, they stopped that. But, they used to do it. Interesting. Oh, yeah, cuz I do know about the the waste thing. At the end of the day, yeah, they they throw the food away. Yeah, bakeries as well. Like, that must be terrible. Bakeries are incredible. There's this bakery in my hometown. All the high schoolers knew about it. You can go in and ask for the day-old donuts. It was just like drive-thru donut restaurant and you you go in and they give you like a box of like 16 donuts. Whatever they have. It's like a mixture of donuts in a bag, donuts in a box. It's just like this huge like the leftovers Exactly. It's like this donut cone of cornucopia. They just like give you like Smart. I'm fine. and you go and you give them and you're like, "How much today?" And they're like, "Uh four bucks." Like, you know that they're just pulling that number Yeah, exactly. Out of nowhere. And you go and you get like 16 donuts. It's crazy. That's a great deal. Yeah, it's amazing. I love it. Yeah. I would love to see more restaurants and places doing that. Of the food that they're going to throw away anyway. I thought I I have heard like Pret, for example, when I was in London, uh they used to fresh make all the sandwiches in the morning and at the end of the day they would give anything left to a homeless shelter. That's awesome. Yeah, yeah, completely free. Everything. That's good. And so, they never have leftovers essentially after closing. with the high-end restaurants feel like it devalues their food because I remember when Who was it that we had on? Joshua Weissman said that he was all, "You wouldn't believe the amount of waste in some of these restaurants." Like, I saw that short. I've actually seen that short. Yeah, because I mean, if you're cutting like some crazy baseball steak cut, right? Like all of the trimmings that go around that, they just get tossed. And this is on like super nice meat, too. They just Yeah, it's just a cost of doing business. it in any other No. Nothing. No. Damn. Oh, sometimes you see them in side dishes. it and do Yeah, side dishes. a lot of the times the food just goes to waste. Yeah, all the trimmings. Yeah, that's crazy. Okay, let's go back to comedy cuz I have a question. Sure, sure. What do you think about the current climate of comedy? People kind of trying to tiptoe around certain jokes and everything cuz I notice you you very much lean into like the whole Asian stereotype and everything. Do you ever feel like you could be like talking about something that's like really sensitive or I don't know, like being insensitive towards Asian stereotypes, which Well, it's um people are cautious about. It's intention. Intention is the most important thing. What are you trying to do? Are you trying to uh lightly satirize in a in a friendly way, in a loving way, and to share your culture with the rest of the world? Or do you have negative intentions? That is the answer to your question. It's intention. Um because I come from China, I I don't have the upbringing of an American where I've noticed, and I respect this because I know it comes from a place of protecting yourselves and hurt. I have seen the the Asian accent I have seen the Asian accent being kind of villainized by experiences of bullying, of racism, of people who would use the way we are against us, who would do that the kind of um racist making fun of Asians in a negative way. And as a result, I see in the United States This obviously is not in China, but in the United States that is where the negative rep for our accent comes from. Um, but it would be an absolute shame to let the bullies take that from us. It would be an absolute shame. The real loss here would be if we are convinced that we are lesser because of the way we are. No, no, no. We should wear ourselves wear our culture proudly. We should it's totally fine to be who they are, to speak the way we speak. Don't let the bullies take that from us. If you're Asian, wear it proudly. Cuz damn, I love being Asian. So, intention. It's intention. What if, let's just say hypothetically, right? There's a guy, he goes, he understands Asian culture, he's super excited, he thinks like all these are funny juxtapositions, this like Asian stereotype to this like white American stereotype or whatever. But he's white. And he goes and he makes a joke. What do you think about that? Oh, then now now Because his intention, what if his intention is good, like he just thinks it's a funny thing and maybe he'll take bashes on one side and bashes on this side. Yeah. Now we're talking about different cultural moments now. Um I am very new in the United States and I'm not fully educated on the culture here, but I can tell you this. If that white guy went to China and told that same joke to Chinese people from China with fully positive intent and it's an actual funny joke, we'd love it. But I'm not going to comment on American culture because that I'm not fully educated in. I know Americans can be very sensitive. There was this like YouTube short that was scrolling. I deleted TikTok, I'm not on TikTok anymore, but of course I kind of migrated to YouTube shorts. I got to shut that down, spending way too much time on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. YouTube short and it was this guy and he was walking around to it was like a a university campus and he was wearing like a like a Asian or Chinese like, you know, like the hat Yes, like the little I I've actually seen the exact video you're talking about. I've seen the video. He goes around so he I'll show you the video and he goes around to these people he's like a just a normal looking white guy but he's what do you call like a kimono or something? Oh well the female version is called a qipao. I don't know what the the male version is called. But he's wearing the the the rice farmer hat. yeah the the rice farmer hat yeah you could call it a rice farmer Yes. Is that bad to say? People No it's not really people do wear it to farm rice. That's what I thought. Okay okay. So he's going around to university campuses and he's like he's all do you find this offensive to to American students none of which are Chinese and they're all like are you Asian and he's all no and they're all like yeah I would say so because you don't understand their culture you don't understand what they've been through that's highly offensive that you'd be wearing their clothes when you're white. Yeah. And he does this and then he goes to Chinatown where like he's speaking to people that hardly know English like very Chinese people you know like they probably migrated here in the past like 15 20 years and he's all do you find this offensive and they're like no I love it this is great I we love to see that you're you're experiencing our culture you're trying to immerse with us and yeah. Um one thing I would hate to do here is to throw a negative view on anything because I with my limited view of American culture I must respect those who are who come from a good place and and I there are many people not Asian people who may like do that who may say oh you can't do that out of a place of love and respect and that is I I very very much appreciate that. Um Yeah whereas how we think versus how they think it may be different like if I don't know if you know about this in China Chinese people love white people who can speak Mandarin as well as we can. Oh we met up with Jia Ma Yes. Oh yeah yeah in New York. They're like on TV there we went to Chinatown and we yeah we And I'm like Joe do the thing. Do the thing. And he orders it and you just see her face. She lit up. She was so happy. The same reaction in person as you see in his videos. Cuz I was like no cameras were on. It was a great moment. a highlight of my trip to see her face light up when he spoke. I think it was Was it Mandarin? Yeah, it was Mandarin. And on top of that she was like I thought I knew you cuz she RECOGNIZED YOU. OH, NO WAY. YEAH, it was awesome. Yeah. It was so cool. But it was it sounded amazing. It was a beautiful language and he was just like going back and forth with her. I was just like oh man. Yeah, of course we love that. We love that. And then this is the opposite perspective is true as well. I I came here and um out of absolute love and respect I assimilated to the United States. I even changed my accent to speak the way I do now. And I think if one comes from a place of respect and love and absolutely no negativity, I don't think there's anything wrong with myself. Yeah. That's what I think. I think I'm similar to you in that. It's like although I'm a pretty insensitive person, I don't take offense to many things personally, whatever. Things I subscribe to, religions or you know, based off my physical appearance and stuff like that. I'm generally not very sensitive. But I respect the people that are sensitive to those things because I'm a firm believer it's all about intention and not outcome. And if their intent is to protect certain people, that's totally fine. Do I think it's a an effective solution to it? Maybe not. But I respect their intention there. Indeed. Indeed. I think sometimes like to be completely fair and honest, if you're like defending certain people that you're not a a part of whatever like you're also kind of in a sense like agreeing that there is an issue there in the first place. You're kind of validating the stereotype. That is I'm very new to that. I haven't seen that in any other nation before. Yeah. Not not It's like you can't make fun of this certain group of people because like the when you make fun of them like they the the strikes or whatever the cuts they dig deep. And it's like okay, well you're kind of only the person here that's assigning validity to the statement. This is clearly an exaggeration of a stereotype. That's where the comedy comes in. It's not like you're just saying something is blatantly the way that it is and that's funny. No, you have to exaggerate a stereotype, you know. that is uniquely to the United States. Like there are there are few occasions of that coming from the heart in other countries. Like the UK, like Ireland where I was. Um but I do see I do see like for example people who comment on my videos calling me racist. I don't quite understand that. That is a different story. who? Exactly. Towards myself? That doesn't make any sense. What? No. So yeah, it might be as you described. They have kind of taken something that could be originally good intent into something that is a bit overboard. But but then again, I must admit I don't know much about American culture to form a a valuable opinion. Especially I don't know enough about the the experience of an Asian American because I I you know, I respect everything they went through. And now I I might even immigrate and become Asian American myself. Um even though the way we are with some PC culture with the way we are here now, it could have come from a place of heart. It could have come from a place of protecting themselves. And and for that reason I I don't know enough to comment at the moment. I just respect their experiences and I'll learn more about it. What's the oddest thing that you find about American culture that you think is weird? Oh, ah. Oh, so on the large scale and on the small scale. Let me think. Well, okay. So, on the small scale, individual things like like American health insurance. Okay. That's fair. Yeah. Uh How How much meat people leave off of chicken bones? How a chicken wing bones, that bothers me. That bothers me. Yeah. Well, I take offense to that. I do not leave any meat. You know you know what's funny that that I'm that person. I leave a lot of meat on those bones. That is very uncharacteristic. Exactly. It's not though because I get weirded out anytime a meat's on the bone. It it looks too much like the animal and I get weirded out by that. So, I will eat only like the the if I see like a vein or anything going through that, I can't eat it. Oh, I see. He doesn't like eating stuff that is connected to bones. Yeah. Yeah. Or in okay. Veins, tissue, fat, I can't, skin, I can't eat it. Yeah. It's got to be the pure meat itself removed from the bones. Nugget or a cut or a cut of meat. there's probably some word for people like that cuz I that has to be some sort of a common thing, right? Scared of eating meat attached to bones. I'm not scared of it. I get weirded out. I I I do relate in some cases. I do relate. I I like I remember what I remember once um I was eating crab and it was the whole crab. Oh, yeah. And you had to break the legs off. I I could deal with that, believe it or not. I did feel a bit weirded out. So, I do I do understand you. Yeah. Um yeah. Soft shell crab is kind of freaky if you've ever had that. Oh, you know what? I got that last night. I went to all you could eat sushi. They brought it for free and so I couldn't not eat it. And how was that? Dude, I have Uh the It was um It weirded me out because you could see the the pincher at the front. Mm, yeah. And it was like the arm to the pincher. Uh and I was just like Mm, I don't like the idea of it. I don't like it, but I ate it. It tasted good, but it's a little too crunchy and it's the idea. It feels like the animal. Yeah. For me, it's sad because you're like eating the entire being. You know what I mean? Whereas other things like Well, sure, but when I eat like a piece of salmon nigiri, I'm like, "Wow, this is, you know, 2% of a salmon, so I'm probably fine." You know what I mean? But like this is like the entire existence of this animal is in my mouth. You know what I mean? Oh my god. the it's it's a very fleeting thing. Like the it's just gone after a couple bites. Like salmon you can enjoy it more. Oh, that's a that's a different experience from I remember growing up in the in the local home that we used to be at, where my grandma and grandpa were farmers. Not in the modern sense with all the machines. Like they were they were you know, hoeing things in the in the yard. And as kids, we often went to visit the grandma and grandpa and we played with the chickens that ran around and then we ate it for dinner. No. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Yeah. How was that for you, man? Was that sad? Is it harder for you to connect with animals because you like play with them and then eat them? I know that sounds awful. Yeah. Dude, it's That's what we do. We eat animals. It's it's strange putting it in a different perspective. But I But But we don't play with them. I feel like that I I have a connection and a bond. Yeah. And I don't want like if I if I play with an animal I can't. That's That's It's an interesting perspective. Yeah. You do you do like this is also a little bit after food security and things like that. But you know, if we went back to days where you had to hunt to eat, then I suppose you would connect more with the act of hunting or the act of farming and raising animals. So yeah, like for example, I bet my next generation, if I have kids, and they grew up in like this environment where they don't have to kill a chicken, they would probably be squeamish as well. So yeah, it's I think it's a matter of um the the security of the food if you need to do that, if it is normalized by your culture, um things like that. Mhm. Yeah, so that's totally cool. It's totally cool for for everyone. Wow. Well, going back to you, how is your business broken down now? Uh wow, this is such a great question. My my business now is mainly YouTube. Uh the videos the comedy skits we make are like the the front-running IP. They're the most important thing. I have other channels that make reactionary content uh where I repurpose things into short-form content. Um they aren't huge. They aren't They were not huge. Uh especially the reactionary content, that's actually currently losing money. Mhm. And we do have to put in a lot of uh research into all right, how do we So, what's the What's the point of it if it's losing money? It serves to build that connection for those who want it, and that's very important to me, you know. Okay. Um and also, I do want to make it a profitable uh event or a profitable side of the business. So, I will invest time and a lot of research like this week, um I'm doing the research. I'm asking people who are who are specialists in the the realm of algorithm and making videos um how I can optimize in order to get enough views to not lose money. Um so, I am making making that uh that advancement there. But, the bigger picture is I I have a like a journey that I want to take on of making cinematic content fully profitable in-house. So, I have been a part of the traditional industry like film and TV for for a while, and I I kind of understand how things work. Um I have pitched shows to executives, and that's the part I didn't like. You know, you're at the mercy of a couple of people, um and they get to decide what gets made, what doesn't. And so, I took that like, "I'm tired of begging for a job. I'm tired of begging to make what I want to make." Let's see if I can do it myself. So, essentially becoming the studio that funds it, and becoming the distributor that monetizes it. Obviously, our YouTube videos, every every YouTube has a career, we already do this with our videos. But, there are very few who can do it in the form of cinematic filmmaking. You know, when we when we look at this Bismol, we we think of Mr. Beast and all of that, and that's because of all their tactics work extremely well in competing for the algorithm. So, if I bring on cinematic filmmaking, I'm at a massive disadvantage. I do not have access to those tactics and devices that they use. So, how do I innovate? How do I create something that can compete so that my piece of cinematic filmmaking content can get your eyes as opposed to a Mr. Beast video, or as opposed to a cat video, or one of those. Uh, so that's the innovation. We've had two tries so far. The first try is a big collaboration back in April, and the the collaboration was a large part of it of what tactics can I use to um, to elevate this beyond my regular videos. I invited a lot of my friends who are huge creators in the in the Asian community of YouTube. Um, together we shot three comedy sketches in one day, which is amazing. The set was run incredibly well, and it was a traditional production. We did employ 15 people. We did put a budget into this, it was my personal budget. Um, we ended up being quite successful. We took a unique achievement of holding trending 6, 7, and 1 simultaneously in the United States. Till this day, I believe I'm the only one who's ever done that. Wow. Three spots on top 10 trending including number one. Did you release them all like right at the same time? Yes, I gave one video to Oh, I I I gave the set to uh my friends as well so that the three comedy skits would be on three different channels launching at the same time. And we basically sent our viewers to each other's channels. Uh financially it worked out. It It really did work out. Uh and that's what showed me, "Okay, so I can employ 15 people um use cinematic con- equipment like cinema cameras, cinema lenses, and do things that look good, you know, uh have a lighting team, have all that, and be able to make profit if I innovate on the retention tactics, on the things that matter in the algorithm, um and a bunch of other tactics that are just surrounding it as well. Like outside, you know, like um using our uh using a promotional strategy that is very rare. Like when you think of YouTuber videos, we don't really promote our videos. And most will share a story about it, but when nine of the biggest in the community come together and make beautiful content that kind of let people know we're we're coming together, we're doing this this massive thing, it's amazing, um then that drew more people to the thing. And so the next attempt is currently still ongoing. It's a show called Gianormal. Gianormal play on the word ginormous, yeah, and it is a parody of a 1970s Japanese Kaiju show. Kaiju show being Godzilla, Power Rangers, big monsters fighting big mecha. Um and we're a parody of it. So we're making fun of how how bad those were back then, basically. Uh and this we are um innovating again with a lot of new tactics and going much much bigger. Now it is a six episode actual scripted narrative series um with nine amazing creators who are who are great friends of mine and who happen to be more professional than most actors I've ever worked with. So, I got really lucky there. Um Um and now the challenge is how do we take that property and we have invested a lot of our own money into it and make it profitable and not lose money. Um yeah, so this try we'll see what happens. If we manage to succeed, I can go bigger and bigger until I achieve that business model to be able to be the whole operation in-house. What's the cost of like the budget for that first film when you shot the three different skits? was $10,000 for the day. So, it wasn't That's not that bad. It's not that bad for three full-on videos, a camera of team of 15 people, collaborations with the town why? It's because we did a lot of innovating. We did a lot of okay, let's take a look at the way a traditional set has been done. How do we save time on lighting? How do we save time on sound? In fact, I ran I single-handedly ran the entire sound department. Oh, wow. So, you're you're you're a good audio guy. Uh I'm not a People are going to watch the video now and go, "Jesus, it sounds terrible." It's because I ran it. No, I'm not an audio guy, but I do have that I do have the the scrappiness of no matter what it is, let's get it done. I'll get it done. I don't know a thing about audio. The night before I was up till 3:00 a.m. sorting the mics that I just rented that I had no clue how to use and reading the manual. Um so, yeah, how do we create like 50K worth of value with 10K? That is a very key part of the business model. And then on J'en ai marre, I learned a lot as well and we used Uh we used things that are never seen in traditional Hollywood. We were very behind and I think in the last 3 days we needed to shoot a lot we needed to shoot like 80 pages. I need to check if if that's the specific number, but we needed to shoot way more than was possible. If you look at if you ask any traditional set, that's ridiculous. 80 pages in 3 days. Um we ended up effectively tripling our productivity by building and operating three sets at the same time. Mhm. And we had I'm not a director on the show, but I'll go direct the green screen set. You know, you go direct this. That person will take care of that. Um so with tactics like this and a couple more, uh we managed to get it done. And that's a very large part of the business model. I feel like in the future I'll have a lot more to innovate so that I can deliver you a product that looks like it cost $10 million for 400k. And it can I bet it can be done. I already own the cameras that shoot Oscar winners. Uh so it I know it can be done. It just has to, you know, someone has to come and figure out how. Wow. So what's your team look like now? My team is very small. Uh My team is very small. I have two editors that work with me all the time. And um most others on my team are like the management level. So they negotiate deals, they procure opportunities, things like that. And that's my team. Yeah, I have I hope people very small. Um I do have that spirit of YouTuber I'll do everything myself. You know, I don't know how to edit, I'll figure it out. I don't know how to write, I'll figure it out. What percentage of humans do you think are good-natured? All of them. Uh and Every single And that is a that is a really dangerous statement. Uh But I have There there's this old Chinese proverb which I really began to understand recently. And uh and it means a lot to me. And it's called "Ren zhi chu xing ben shan, xing xiang jin, xi xiang yuan." And it describes I'm just laughing at all of the way people could like uh people could judge me. But it means um all humans are born kind. Even though the experiences of humans can be different, our nature is the same. Uh there's a very, very thousands of years old Chinese proverb. Um and it's kind of like this this concept that we are what the world has shaped us to be. Um and a lot of the times it's it's not people's fault the way they are when, you know, a world the world could have put something on them and made them into something that we can receive as negative. Um and it has helped me to go a long way to understand. That is one thing uh I've had a a growth as a person. Like before I obviously like with my experiences, I faced bullies and there are many moments where I where I would um hate people. Mhm. Uh but after understanding that proverb, it's it's like an acceptance. It's like you sure you might have caused me harm, but you are the way you are because of every moment you have lived, because of where the world put you. Um so I can't really blame you for what you harmed me. You're you know, a victim of your surroundings, too, if it's bad. Uh so yeah, that is my answer to that question. So you don't think that there could be someone out there, though, that's born just naturally evil? Uh that's a really good question because uh that's that's a line between belief and science. Uh and uh I I kind of I I sway a little bit towards science. So the second you ask that, my brain goes to hormones, chemicals, that kind of Chemicals, yeah. Certain people are born, obviously, with like different mental disorders, disabilities, stuff like that. Just certain synapses not firing in their brain. I'm sure that there are some that probably can are somehow commingled with human nature, right? Yes, that that are or are differently to how we consider as kind. Oh, well, when you put it in that perspective, then it does make sense to me that certain humans or certain humans can be born with a biology that is different. Uh I accept that, yeah. I accept that. I I'm a firm believer that like 99% of the people that we consider evil or like bad doers aren't actually like a part of that population that are born evil. Mhm. But they're just people like you said that are subjects to their surroundings or victims to their surroundings, right? And that has kind of crafted them into who they are. Yes. Um but I do definitely think that there is a statistic there that are probably just naturally born Oh, I can see. I know what you mean now, yeah. But I think it's a very very very minute group of people, right? And of the amount of people that we ascribe the word evil to, I think it's like hardly even a statistic within that. Got you, yeah. Oh, yeah, then then I see what you mean that that the the biology of a person can be born with a difference that we consider evil, yeah. I can understand that. I love the perspective though, the open-mindedness perspective. That's kind of an epiphany I've been having over the past probably at this point 6 months. Where I'm like trying to understand why people that I just inherently disagree with do the things that they do. And I kind of have come to the realization, similar to what you said, that they're just a product of whatever the environment that they grew up in. Mhm. And I grew up in a completely different environment and I'm a product of that environment and I just have to understand that similar to what Tom Bilyeu was saying, um you see life through a lens. And the longer you live your own life, the more obscured your lens gets and your perspective of reality is more obviously twisted. Right, with your unique view. Exactly. And you just have to understand that everybody has a lens. Yes. That understanding helps a lot, helps a lot. It dissolves the anger I used to have, you know. Yeah, it dissolves the negativity I used to have, you know, the the way that you can look at world very negative the world very negatively because things have happened to you and because other people have harmed you. Um, but now with the understanding of Oh, it's an understanding in general. With understanding, um, it helps you be a better person where you are. It helps you make decisions that are not to give hate back to someone, but to improve yourself and to bring value to the world. Yeah, so that's very helpful thought. Interesting question. Mhm. And very deep. I don't mind that. What do you think is the biggest threat to humanity? Wow, there are too many. There are too many. Oh. Just right off the top of my head, uh, disease, um, uh, a part like like weather and and the earth and there's there's just so many things that could go wrong with our environment, you know. Uh, from extremely quick things like a meteor to Yeah. to to longer things like resources running out or if just if something just change we no longer have sunlight, we're in trouble. If we no longer if we lost water, we're in trouble. There's so many things that go wrong there. Um, I'm very fascinated by the whole AI thing. That is a very popular answer for the end of humanity. I don't know how it would lead to the end of humanity, but I like this one. the films all the films basically go Terminator. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Terminator will think they're better than humans and end humans. That's like everyone goes there. Uh, I I don't know if that'll ever be true. Um, AI what what could it do that would I can understand the film perspective, right? Cuz cuz it kind of makes sense. If if we craft AI to be the best living life form it can be and it goes, "Ah, humans are are are are dragging it dragging us back." Then yeah, fair. I can see that. But I wonder how else AI can affect human can affect humans. That That might be the answer. I've had this I've had this mental thought for a while. I'm intrigued by the concept of evolving into a being that is like an AI, that is immortal, that is not a a um that is not in this mortal coil, but can live as long as we want, and can uh improve ourselves by adding, you know, capabilities. Um and and the the thought is like how do we integrate with machine? Uh and I and the thought was kind of like, yeah, if you copy your brain, sure, you have another version of you that's running around and you you can pretty much say it is you, but your fleshy brain is still going to die like regular. And I came up with this idea, hey, what about if you replace it one by one? Because then you're in the grandfather's ship paradox, right? Each year, you just swap out 1% of your brain for a machine. And then next year, 1% next year, 1%. So, you never really stop being you, and you never really start being the machine. You're always you. Then you wonder what defines humanity at that point, you know? going to be a big question. 50% 50% There we go. The grand answer is right smack in the middle, 50% robot. That's it. That's it. If you're more If you're 51 one way or another, then It's like you get a passport. I'm still human. Yeah, exactly. 51% still counts. Yeah, yeah. That's crazy. I I like to think that um it can be what we want it to be. We have the power of the choice. We can decide to to go back into what humanity always was, or we can decide to change humanity into a new thing. I I like to I like to believe that's our decision. Very fascinating thoughts. Very fascinating thoughts. Is there anything else you want to discuss? I wanted to tell all the off friend stories of going back in China. Please do. They will be When Whatever you want to revisit. Yeah. Oh yeah oh yeah I did I told a lot of stories and I think they would be the the the clips that go viral you know. You could always roast me as the Asian dad. I don't have my costume I didn't bring my costume. You could just go in heavy on me. That was good I actually I'm actually very impressed by by your frugalism. Um because uh I oh there's a weird perspective now. Um well growing up as a kid even I felt this that that you would look down on frugalism right? Because you have this whole nation of people who's not used to having money suddenly has money and now there is the insecurity of I don't want to be seen as poor and that insecurity kind of manifests into uh if someone is frugal you might look down upon them. Like I had this personal experience that very very very much regret now but back then you know I was a product of my my society as well. Where uh we go to make my my grandma and I uh you know wait actually I should tell that story. I'm going to tell one story and this is where the sound bites would be great. So I remember uh I was young I was like five I was like four or five with my mom in China at the time um and my mom all of a sudden this was like right when things blew up. My mom said uh hey we're going to take uh we're going to take you guys to a five star experience. Yeah and me and my friend it was a like a play date me and both of us uh and she was like guys we're going to go to this like amazing this is we're going above the budget this time okay? And then we were hype we were hype and we went to this restaurant um that was so new and we were told like this is uh this is the international exotic this is the American stuff right? This is from America. And to us I was like oh my god that's amazing America's great because we really look up to America you know. Uh and so like wow we're experiencing what is what things are like there." And I remember I had like the best meal. I had I enjoyed it so much and I never eat any food like it. It wasn't rice. It wasn't, you know, the things I'm used to eating. And then there was a playground and we'd like going on a swing. I don't know if I've ever been on a swing before. And we had a blast of a time and it was a McDonald's. But you know what? If you haven't had it before, it's delicious. I think it was the first McDonald's in Shenzhen and I remember it so fondly, so fondly. I'm surprised it wasn't an off-brand. There are many came up immediately afterwards, but I always had McDonald's instead. Yeah, McDonald's, McDonald's. McDonald's. I've probably reviewed like 10 in my channel. And I always kept that experience. Then KFC came in. Oh my god, it was the best thing ever. We would go hang out there if you weren't even eating. Even if like a hangout spot? Yeah, even if like you had lunch, but you still go you get like an ice cream sundae. You were the cool kid, you know? It was the spot. And then I remember this such a visceral experience. My first time coming to the United States, I came into Penn Station, New York, and I saw the KFC sign. I was like, "Ah, there's my place. Let's go." I was so disappointed, bro. Aw. I was so dis- It was dirty. The floor was greasy. There was one person running the shop and it was stained and rusted. And the food didn't taste nearly as good as I remembered. So that was a massive paradigm shift. I had always had this idea. And then Penn Station crushed it for me. I'm sorry, man. You've gotten it since then, right? I got to be It's not any KFC or McDonald's I've had in the United States is nothing like the experience I had in China. KFC's also gone all downhill to be completely honest. I ate it a little bit as a kid and it was really good, but I've gone recently. It's just It's not as good as it on. Bring bring it back, man. In fact, I'll go to back to China just to have KFC. It's so great over there. That would be actually really interesting. Comparing the difference of like It's staggering, bro. of KFC there and KFC here and also off-brand KFC there. That would be interesting to go review an off-brand KFC. That would be hilarious. That would be a really good video. Yeah. People would be very curious to see what the differences are. Yeah. Yeah, they some of them are so good, though. Some of them are so good, you might as well go to that rather than the real one. Was there like elitism when it came to like being a consumer of a real KFC versus a fake one? Like if you go to school with a fake one Not fake. No, no, okay, sorry. Like a replica KFC. Yeah, like a replica KFC because you were saying there's a lot of off-brands. So, when you show up to school, like does someone go, "Oh, you have A MCDONALD'S BURGER?" OH, YOU HAVE YOU HAVE ILLINOIS Fried Chicken. I got Kentucky Fried Chicken. From my experience, everybody loved the off-brands. Okay. It might we might have even loved it more than the actual thing. Okay. Yeah, we loved it. There was an intimacy there, you know. KFC felt corporate, which isn't a bad thing. We still enjoy the experience, but the off-brand KFC was run by like a mom and pop, you know. They were in the back frying the chicken and they came to the front to do your order. Um, so everyone loved it. I definitely loved it. That's cool. Yeah. So, stories from China. Oh, jeez. Makes me happy just telling these stories. How hard would it be to visit revisit China? Would it be easy for you now? Is it I believe so. I believe so because I am going back to see family this year, later this year. I haven't been in a while, actually. I I do feel Chinese culture moves really fast. I've noticed this uh, since I came to the West. Like I'll leave for 2 years and then I'll I'll get in contact with my Chinese friends and all of a sudden, I don't know what people are saying. There's new catchphrases coming up, there's new expressions, uh, the new hot thing has changed. You know, people wear different clothes now, people play different games now. So, I have felt like you can lose touch very fast. Mhm. Um, and now I do I do feel it when I go back to China, I don't know any of the popular movies, I don't know any of the, you know, popular activities people do. Um, there that's there's a weird like feeling like I'm an outsider now. Uh, but oh well, I I'm an immigrant, so I guess that that kind of that's fair. As a kid growing up in China, how was the general quality of life there? Because it Oh. You said there all the the pressures that the kids see. I also heard, I don't know what it was from, but I think it was like a a clip from a podcast where they were saying that I don't want to say the word, but like when you uh, end your own life, those rates are extremely high. I don't know if the statistic is true, uh, in certain situations where the child is facing a ton of pressure from their parents to perform well and they feel inadequate. Was the general quality of life and consensus amongst kids in China good, positive? Yes. Yes, because when I think back on my life and I don't know, I guess you could call me an average kid until I until I immigrated. My memories are good. Uh, I could also be lucky in the way that I academic thing easy to me, like math and all that came easy to me. Um, but I do remember things were very good. I remember appreciation was the thing. That's a very interesting concept I've I've, uh, kind of realized talking to other peoples of international, uh, origins. Um, and it's kind of like the glass half empty, glass half full question. It's there is a definitive answer. It is the journey from where you came. So, like the the answer to that question is if you have a full glass and you pour half it out, it is now half empty. If you have an empty glass, you fill half of it, it is now half full. So, how that relates to us is for my grandpa, grandma, my mom and dad, and me to come from a a time where it was difficult to eat to a time where everyone had clothes and we're like we got school to go to and we got books to read and we can eat whenever we want. To me being born uh and my life was absolute luxury. I could eat meat every day. Like this is Oh, people understate this, but it was a big deal. It was a very very big deal that I can eat meat every day. And the fact that I got some mass on me, I'm not skinny. Um that was a great thing that we very very much appreciated. So, my memory growing up is my grandma would sing songs in the kitchen about the government because, you know, she had food and all of these great things that um like people in a better situation may take for granted. Uh and so I I think that answers that question. It's because we have seen such great growth and such great progress that we really appreciate everything we had and we were happy. I was happy anyway. Um yeah, of course my experience doesn't doesn't speak for everyone's experience, but I was happy. analogy. Yeah. It's where you come from. Yeah. Cool. I like it. Well, thank you so much. Appreciate it, man. much enjoyed this. This is legendary. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, man. I can't believe I'm going to be on your channel. Wow, that's crazy today. Yes, we did it. All right, man. Thank you. No emotional damage. Thank you guys so much for watching. If you've made it this far, feel free to add me on Instagram. Also, check out, of course, Steven Spike. All of his links are going to be posted down below with that said, you guys public.com/graham when you make a deposit. See you. Cheers. Oh, man. I love that. Thank you so