Note: This is the first of the new types of video blog posts I’ll be doing that I mentioned earlier. Obviously this isn’t my new blog yet (that’s coming shortly) but this is an example of what I’ll be doing soon, a more detailed video with a transcription as the text. If you like to read rather than watch videos, the good news for you is that this format tends to create longer text blog articles than I’ve usually done in the past. Anyway, I’m still experimenting with the format so this is probably not precisely how I’m going to do it. Any non-nitpick suggestions are welcome.
I’ve talked a lot about location independent income; making money wherever you are in the world regardless of where you’re located. The next level beyond that is to actually make money from other countries outside of your own. It’s one thing to have an Alpha 2.0 business to make money from distant cities, provinces, or states from the city you live in, but it’s an entirely different deal to make money from outside of your country, perhaps even from countries that don’t even speak your language!
Before I get into that specifically, I have to reiterate what we’re talking about. Location independent means you are making money regardless of your physical location. You can go wherever you want, whenever you want, whenever you feel like it, and stay there for as long as you want, even months at a time. Regardless, the money keeps coming in because your income is not tethered to your city.
If you are forced to stay in a particular city in order to pay your bills you are not free.
But Caleb! I love my city!
Great. That’s wonderful. Will you always love your city for the next 47 years? What if you change your mind? What if something happens to your city?
The closest city I live to is Portland, Oregon. 20 years ago, I loved Portland. It was one of the most beautiful cities in the whole world. Today, Portland is a shithole. Today, downtown Portland is non-stop full of trash, homeless people, tents, and drug addicts. It’s awful. It’s dangerous. It’s disgusting. It’s not sanitary.
So now I have to leave. But the point is I can leave because I have location independent income. If I were stuck in Portland I’d be fucking pissed (and you would be too).
There are all kinds of reasons why you want to have location independent income. It’s a core part of the Alpha Male 2.0 lifestyle to have the ability to go wherever you want, to live wherever you want, to travel wherever you want, to vacation wherever you want, and the money keeps coming in regardless of where you are located.
Now add another layer to this. It is also important to diversify your income sources. I’ve talked about in my business materials how you don’t want to sell one type of thing to one person or company. You want to sell multiple things to have multiple income streams that sell to the same niche (or multiple niches ideally). I have three different companies in three completely different industries, and I have 14 different income streams from those companies. I’m very diversified. However, I also want to diversify where the money comes from.
I don’t want all of my location independent money coming from the United States, or the UK, China or whatever. I don’t want all of my income or the vast majority of my income to come from one country. I don’t want to be reliant on any one country, especially today when the Western world is in a slow state of collapse. That is not very safe nor very smart.
One of my long-term business objectives is to make sure that 60% of my grand total income from all my income streams from all my companies does not come from the Collapsing Trifecta that is the United States, Canada, and Europe. (Does that mean Eastern Europe too? Yes. I’m sorry but Eastern Europe is in Europe. That’s why they call it Eastern Europe.) I only want those three regions to represent 40% of my income at the most. The other 60% I’d like to come from places like Asia, Southeast Asia, South America, the non-insane parts of the Middle East, Africa, and so on. I want my income to come from these locations because these locations are outside of the collapsing Western world.
But Caleb, if the Western world collapses those locations will also take income hits!
Yes! We’re not talking about what is perfect. As usual we’re talking about what’s least bad. Here’s a very difficult question for you. Who is in bigger trouble when the United States collapses? The typical American with the typical location dependent income living in the United States or an American who is living in Vietnam who has Alpha 2.0 business income, most of which is coming from outside the United States? Which person is in the least amount of trouble if and when the United States collapses?
The answer is the guy in Vietnam.
Now you could argue the guy in Vietnam is also going to have a big dip in income and you’re probably right. No matter what you do if the United States collapses tomorrow the entire world obviously would feel it and obviously there would be some problems all over the place. However, there’s a difference between being completely fucked and having a manageable decrease in income that eventually you can recover from in 6-24 months. I’d rather you be in the latter category.
Here are the five aspects you need to be aware of.
1. Language
What if you’re selling to countries where they don’t speak your language?
I was shocked to notice when I started traveling the world 15-20 years ago that if you speak English you’re kind of covered. Most of the planet speaks English, or broken English at least, so if you speak English in many cases that’s really all you need. Obviously, this depends on the country. There are 196 countries in the world, and I can’t list all of them and their English compatibility, so you need to do your own research on that. Regardless, if you speak English it’s not as big of a hurdle as you think.
I only speak one language: English. I can understand German if it is spoken very slowly. I can kind of pick up a little bit of Spanish, and I know a few phrases in Mandarin. Other than that, I speak English. I have been all over the world, including as a business consultant, where I’ve actually worked in foreign companies where a lot of people did not speak English and I made money from those companies without any major problems. I’m an example of a big, dumb American who only speaks English and yet does international business on a regular basis and does just fine.
I know international business owners who only speak English but yet live in places like China and they have never learned Chinese. They just completely rely on translators. It works fine.
Another aspect is if you are selling something online and it is more of an insular culture where they don’t want to speak English. I know two Alpha 2.0s, one lives in the USA and one lives in Eastern Europe, who both sell stuff to people who live in France. Neither men speak French. They hire translators to translate their websites into French.
Yes, if you do this you’ll have to spend money on translators and translation services but in the modern era these kinds of services are very cheap.
I have not experienced any major problems doing business internationally, doing banking internationally, dating women internationally, and investing internationally while only being able to speak English. I have had many meetings both in my woman life and my business life abroad where I use Google Translate on my phone using conversation mode to translate our voices in real time. It’s a little clumsy but it works.
2. Culture
The next aspect that you should be aware of is the culture of the country, which I think is actually more important than language. There are certain things that you can sell that will do well in other cultures, and there are other things that will do very poorly in other cultures.
I will give you a very easy example from my business life. One of the projects I have on my to-do list is to encapsulate Alpha Male 2.0 for the Chinese man living in China (or a Chinese diaspora like Taiwan, Singapore, or Hong Kong). I want to design an entire Alpha Male 2.0 structure specifically configured to Chinese guys living in China. This presents a few problems. One of the things I talk about is about how college is complete bullshit, which it is. How’s that going to fly in a Chinese culture? I’ve talked about how you shouldn’t get traditionally, monogamously married. How is that going to fly in China?
So, either I don’t market that stuff to the Chinese, or I have to modify that lifestyle content to be more compatible with that culture. So whatever culture you’re going to target with your product, service, or information, obviously you need to be aware of the things you can and cannot say.
On the flip side, there are the things your foreign niche would be very excited about that people in your culture wouldn’t care about. My favorite example is The Smurfs. The Smurfs existed in Germany for years and they were really big in Germany. One smart American visited Germany one day, saw how popular the Smurfs were, and all he did was license The Smurfs and sold them in the United States. He made a gazillion dollars.
3. Growth
Try to sell to the parts of the world that are growing fast economically instead of the parts that are going down. The number one fastest economically growing region right now is Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia is going to explode over the next 20-25 years. It is the only overall region in the world that is actually going to do really well.
Another good country is Colombia, probably the best country in South America. Another very good growth region is Africa. It will be a longer time for Africa to get their shit together but the population in Africa is going to explode over the next several decades. If you are clever and you have some balls, you will make a lot of money selling things to Africans, including basic things like water reclamation systems, cell phones, and cryptocurrency services.
China is also good. True, China is not exploding like it was; it has dropped to “only” 8% growth instead of double-digit growth. But! Compared to the United States’ 2% growth or Europe’s negative growth, China’s pretty fucking good.
Be aware of the growth aspects and long-term prospects of the countries in which you’re going to sell. Obviously, it makes a lot more sense to sell to the countries on the way up instead of countries that are stagnating like Australia or Japan, or countries/regions that are actually dying like the USA or Europe.
4. Status
This is a little tip that will help you get to high income much faster when you’re doing business internationally, particularly if you are a Westerner. This is to use your status as a foreigner in your branding and marketing. Different countries have different opinions about other people in other countries. While some of those opinions are bad, sometimes they’re good.
When I do consulting in Australia I am immediately perceived as a more effective consultant. The reason for that is the Societal Programming in Australia (whether true or not) is that Americans are better businesspeople. So it’s easy for me to use my status as an American if I’m offering business services to Australians.
Here’s a crazier example. Over the past this has happened many many times. There have been Americans who were performers (actors, comedians, and so on) and they sucked. They didn’t make any money and went nowhere in their careers. Then they moved to Japan, in some cases learned Japanese, and started performing over there and BOOM! They became millionaires. They became famous in Japan. Why? Because what’s the perception of American culture in Japan? “American culture is awesome.” So, the fact these people were white Americans who spoke English (and perhaps because they spoke Japanese with an American accent) propelled them to higher levels because they used their status as Americans as part of their branding and marketing.
You can do the same thing. In terms of researching the culture, what is the perception of your culture in that country as it relates to your race, nationality, or your country? Try to use any positives there in your branding and marketing (if there are any).
I would recommend that you set some kind of goal like my 60%. What is the minimum income you would like to come from outside of your country? Part of the flexibility you have with Alpha 2.0 business income is that you can choose what parts of the world you make money from.
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Well done!
Honestly, I was a bit skeptical at first but this transcription is very well-done, it just feels like your usual article. I like that you cut out some minor, unnecessary parts from the clip to keep the words flow smoothly instead of dumping it all out like some other blogs. Kudos to your transcriber!
I would have kept the French cuisine example in part 5 though, it’s a great example. I’m not a white American so I’m more concerned about how to cope with ”low status” stigma instead of benefiting from a good one. Let’s say your expertise is in cuisine and you want to sell to France, how do you overcome that, or it’s really a bad idea?
Seeing you constantly and effortlessly putting out quality clips after clips really make us appreciate how highly productive you are. We already know you’re a public speaker but do those clips take much effort and time? I would be interested in an article where you talk in detail about your ”video clip routine” and how you make them.
Thanks. The transcriber in this case was mostly me + some automation, but I’m working with a guy for future posts like this.
Incorrect. Focus on the positives, not the negatives. I believe you’re Asian (please correct if I’m wrong). What are the positive stereotypes of Asians? Smart, good at math, etc. If I was an Asian I would lean into those stereotypes hardcore and make them part of my personal branding, very similar to what Andrew Yang does.
I don’t know the French cuisine market well enough to answer that question. I just know the French are xenophobic as fuck. (Not racist, but xenophobic; two different things.)
I am a machine.
I cannot be reasoned with.
I cannot be bargained with.
And I absolutely will not stop.
If you add that work to all the other content and work I crank out, yes. But I’m highly motivated, highly organized, and a time management expert, so I make it work.
Good idea. Added.
This is gold! Thank you.
One suggestion: you have lots of videos on your Youtube channel, however, it’s kinda unorganized and hard to find for the one we want to watch/listen to. I suggest you put them in playlists, like 1 for your podcasts and webinars, 1 for collab works with other channels (I love your collab with the guy from Entrepreneur in Cars btw), 1 for dating tips, 1 for business tips, 1 for your live seminars…
Sometimes we just want to listen to dating tips and would like it to auto-play from one to the next, sometimes just business tips. Some other times like at the weekend we would have time for longer clips like podcasts and webinars… you get the idea.
Already on the to-do list.
I think there’s a quite a bit of resentment toward Americans in France, which is sad when you know the role the French played in the American revolution or if you consider that the statue of Liberty was originally a gift from the French people to the American people or the role American played during both World Wars.
Things like Americans choosing to believe the lies of the Bush administration regarding Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction and renaming French fries to”Freedom fries” did not help, I must say. Probably you did not feel much xenophobia as an American in Britain, while I did felt it as a student from continental Europe. I was once forbidden to leave school because England had lost a soccer match to Germany and armed hooligans were chasing foreign students in the streets! (I don’t think many realize that the French replaced the Americans as the enemy in Master and Commander, by the way!)
Regarding cuisine, the French eat a lot of foreign food. Surprisingly, McDonald’s does very well in France, even though they had to adapt to the French market. (Look it up!) I once read that the French eat more pizza than anyone else. Asian food is very popular here too.