During the few days off I came across two striking stories, both having to do with youth and the dilemma of whether to follow your passion or follow the money. And of the two — the passion and the money, which one brings more joy and is more worthy of pursuit?
Young And Depressed Millionaire
First, there is the unbelievable story of a 28-year-old depressed self-made millionaire. Seems like a total oxymoron right? For many people, there’s no freaking way they could be depressed at the age of 28 if they had a million dollars in their bank account.
Anyway, so here’s how it goes. The original story is on the /r/entrepreneur subreddit. Here’s the gist of it:
- Guy started out with $50 buying and swapping games on Steam. He made $60,000 in 15 months. This was a boatload of money for a university student.
- The e-commerce scene began to pick up. He had the system figured out and made a fortune. He hired employees to do most of the work.
- At one point, he was making $30,000 a month basically doing nothing. He had the whole process automated.
- He began to feel empty. His original goal was simply to make money. Now that he’d done it, he wasn’t sure what to do next. He was absolutely not passionate about e-commerce.
- He began to drink and smoke weed heavily.
- He distinctly recalled the moment he checked his bank account statement and saw he had crossed one million dollars. He shrugged and went back to watching Netflix and smoking weed. At this point, he was desensitised. Money was just numbers to him.
- He was desperately looking for a sense of meaning and joy in life. He tried travelling: went backpacking, travelled the world for a year. Ended up feeling nothing but even more burnout. It does seem like the sense of joy and wonder in him has been greatly depleted.
- Now he’s depressed and not sure what to do.
Most of the people who comment on the thread say that he should dedicate the money to helping others in need, or perhaps to his hobbies. Others are very displeased about his attitude, considering how many people are living paycheque-by-paycheque and would happily trade places with him.
Either way, I think his is absolutely a legitimate problem. When you have no sense of enthusiasm or passion about your work, money just becomes a number. It’s even worse when you find no joy from anything, when all you do for fun is smoking weed and drinking booze. Many suggest that his problem might be his loneliness, which I think may very well be true.
So, we have this young self-made millionaire who is depressed because he finds everything to be meaningless. Money or travelling do not solve his problems.
CahoiTV, Amateur Filmmaker
On the other end of the spectrum, there is the story of CahoiTV, an amateur filmmaker and YouTuber from Hải Phòng. He intentionally chooses a frugal and relatively poor lifestyle so that he can follow his passion.
I first knew about the guy back when I was still frequenting webthehinh in 2013 or 2014. Cahoi (his Internet username) made a thread showcasing his incredible physical prowess — his numbers on the barbell was mad impressive, and he also mastered highly advanced bodyweight movements such as the planche or clapping handstand.
Besides his physical abilities, what also caught my attention was his quirky style of video editing. He puts a lot of effort into making the right cuts and picking the most fitting music, sound and visual effects. Cahoi also writes, directs, acts, and edits his own videos. Though he often employs a crass and tacky — sometimes intelligent, sometimes downright offensive — style of humour, viewers can clearly sense the passion and care Cahoi puts into his videos.
So I’ve been following and occasionally binge watching his videos the past couple of years. Always have had a good laugh.
On Monday he put out a lengthy Q&A video in which he answers all of the 390 fan questions he had received. I actually watched the entirety of the 80-minute video. I really enjoy how frank and down-to-earth the guy is throughout the video. Afterwards I even struck up a chat with him on facebook to ask some further questions.
Some key takeaways about Cahoi (all of this publicly shared in the Q&A video):
- He loves making videos. This should come as no surprise.
- Even though his videos are creative, funny, and has a strong appeal to a niche audience (young teenage guys), his subscriber number is relatively poor compared to other comedy channels. I think it’s a problem of a lack of mass appeal as many people can be turned off by the vulgarity.
- Which means, unsurprisingly, he does not make much money from his videos. His videos average 10 – 15k views each I think? And he makes less than 300,000 VND a month from YouTube.
- His filming equipment is low quality because he cannot afford professional grade cameras and microphones.
- Cahoi insists he is not a YouTuber, but someone who enjoys making videos and he just happens to post them to YouTube. If YouTube no longer exists he will simply post his videos to other platforms.
- Cahoi also makes commercials and writes scripts to supplement his income. Right now he has some health problems, so he no longer takes video commissions. He’s doing various odd jobs as a builder, personal trainer, and maths tutor. At one point he says he earns at the highest 10 million a month, and the lowest 3 – 4 million? Around that I think.
So a pretty clear picture is painted: Cahoi is living a rather frugal lifestyle and does various side jobs to fund his hobby of making videos.
Later I asked Cahoi why he doesn’t do a regular 9 – 5 job and makes videos in the evening or weekend? He responds that he did try that once, and after work he was exhausted. Couldn’t do much else.
I asked him why not turn his hobby into a living, i.e. work for a video production company? He says that Hai Phong (his hometown) has zero market for filmmaking, so he’d have to move to Hanoi or HCMC which he cannot do now out of family obligations. Pretty tricky situation.
A bit later he posted a screenshot of a small sum of money (100,000 VND) someone had sent him via bank transfer as a thank-you gesture. I decided to sent him 500,000 VND too, as a way to show support and gratitude for all the laughs he has given me.
So we have this man who does what he does purely for the love of it. He loves thinking of new ideas, writing scripts and turning them into videos. Money comes as a bottom priority for him. Though he does say that if by the end of this year he cannot make a sustainable living from making videos, he will have to go find a normal job.
I’m not close to Cahoi at all — I’m just a guy who consumes his content and has brief facebook conversations with him. I cannot say how content or happy the guy is with his life. From the look of it though, although he probably has certain financial worries, he is definitely having a blast with his everyday work of making videos. I do sincerely hope he will reach his goal of 1 million subscribers and can make a comfortable living off of his passion.
Final Thoughts
The question of what our passion is, how to find it, and how to find a sense of meaning with our life, is a persistently lingering question we all have during our youth. It really is interesting — the choices people make, they path they take and the sense of enjoyment and happiness they get out of what they do. Money can give you choices, but it is far from the panacea that grants you happiness. It is possible to be young, rich, physically healthy, attachment-free, and still depressed.
On the other hand, there are people who make little money but are deeply satisfied with what they do. The man behind CahoiTV is the example here.
What I get out of these two stories is, again — back to old man Felix Dennis’s advice: it’s always wise to develop a hobby you’re passionate about from a young age. Something that you can always enjoy and get a kick out of no matter what happens in life. This will be far more worthwhile an investment and will bring you far more joy than any amount of money will.
Also, I think it’s just sensible to not follow your passion, but rather follow the money (the practical) and bring your passion along with you. Perhaps one day your passion can flourish into something worthwhile? But always be real: do what makes money — what there is market demand for first — and keep your passion merely as a companion and hope that it can make you money one day.
I don’t agree with the politics of PragerU, but this video is excellent advice.
In our case I guess the wisdom rings quite true. We started out as two young and dumb guys following our passion (fitness), without a molecule of practical knowledge about business, marketing, or how to run a company in general. Doesn’t help that we had zero start-up capital either. It was a disaster: we made almost no money at all after almost 3 years of struggling, pivoting and changing business models, while our friends were collecting steady paycheques from their jobs. Looking back now I’m not even sure how we maintained our enthusiasm through all the failures and embarrassment, but we just kept at it.
Then we decided to say fuck it — just do what makes money first; let’s bring our passion with us and hopefully there will come a time for it. It pains me a lot having to practically abandon the early Fit.n.Grit project because I love working out, and I’ve always wished to make an impact with it by helping people find the joy of fitness. Don’t get me wrong — I love teaching immensely too and I’m kind of good at it, but teaching just does not feel like a calling to me. We just do what we’ve got to do.
The rest is history: we started an English centre, worked our butts off, made steady revenue from it, and now we’re gradually back in the fitness game with far more experience and a bit more capital. I’m very excited about the fitness projects we have coming up in the near future.
I guess in the end everybody has to figure out their own answer since there’s no one-size-fit-all formulae. But what should perhaps be the rule of thumb is (again): follow the money first, and bring your passion along.