396 Look Forward with Casey Neistat

"Living in retrospect is a really bad idea." - Casey Neistat If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at http://lewishowes.com/396 Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is Five Minute Friday.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  I mean, hunger is a very, very powerful motivator. And when I was living in that trailer park with the kid, I grew on welfare for a while. I was a dishwasher. I worked in a crappy seafood restaurant as a dishwasher. Which now, just sort of parenthetically, my favorite piece of advice to give to young people saying, "I don't know what I want to do with my life," I say, "Get a job doing something you hate." Because the fastest way to figure out what you love and where you want to be in life is by spending a lot of time doing something you hate.

• 0:40Lewis Howes?

  So it's miserable.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, you know, spending 50 hours a week scrubbing pots and pans was like, I was just in my head the whole time fantasizing about what I want to do in life.

• 0:49Lewis Howes?

  It's brilliant. I was a truck driver for three months, driving from Columbus to Cincinnati and back every day. And I could only go 55 miles an hour, pedal to the metal, and it was so loud and obnoxious, and I couldn't do anything. It was just like the most draining time of my life.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  But it got you thinking.

• 1:04Lewis Howes?

  It got me thinking. I was like, "What do I need to do to get out of this?"

• 1:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, and for me, at that time in my life, it was sort of, I mean, I guess you could say I was making okay money. I was making enough to like feed my kid and pay my, I think it was 300 bucks in rent, 300 bucks a month rather than mortgage on my trailer. But my biggest fear was not being broke, because like, when you're at rock bottom in your own welfare, you can still like afford food.

• 1:31Lewis Howes?

  Get by, yeah.

• 1:32Speaker 01

  Get by might be a, like, I could afford food and I could afford my trailer. So it was like, we weren't homeless, we weren't starving. So to me, that was absolute destitution. Wasn't really like that bad. There's no dignity in it, but still, it wasn't-

• 1:46Lewis Howes?

  You weren't on the streets.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  That's right. So with that, like, my, it's like, what is it, Laszlo's Hierarchy of Needs?

• 1:52Lewis Howes?

  Laszlo's-

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Laszlo's Hierarchy of Needs, like, so like-

• 1:55Lewis Howes?

  Basic needs were met.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  Basic needs were met, then I started to look around. I realized, like, the greatest fear for this like beautiful little baby boy was that he would grow up and see his dad as a loser. And that is a, once those basic needs are met, that's an incredibly powerful motivator.

• 2:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  Because, you know, my dad, who's absolutely not a loser, but I watched my dad to provide for his family of six. I watched him work 60 hours a week, hating every minute of it. And he came home from work just hating his job. And

• 2:30Lewis Howes?

  Or feeling trapped probably.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  I'm sure, yeah, he had a family to take care of. He struggled. Um, now he does what he loves. He has a coffee shop now and he's never been happier.

• 2:37Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  But I watched that and like I just saw myself going down that trajectory and it wasn't just a job that I hated. It was a job that I hated that that didn't provide. It was a job that I hated that did nothing but cover those basic needs. And that was the motivator. That was when, that was the motivator. The catalyst for me giving up and moving to New York and going for it was, I still look back and I don't know what that, what that was. Like I, there are only like two times in my life where I genuinely have no idea what I was thinking. And I moved to New York City in June of 2001 with $800 and a three, a place to stay for three months and that was it.

• 3:16Lewis Howes?

  Where'd you move from?

• 3:17Speaker 01

  Uh, Connecticut, like three hours outside the city.

• 3:20Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha. So you'd probably been in the city a number of times.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah, yeah.

• 3:23Lewis Howes?

  Take the train and.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  But I knew one person there and I had, uh.

• 3:26Lewis Howes?

  And they let you stay for three months?

• 3:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's exactly right. Three months and 800 bucks. No job, no prospects, no education, no, no skills.

• 3:34Lewis Howes?

  And how old were you then?

• 3:35Speaker 01

  Uh, 19.

• 3:37Lewis Howes?

  19. And what was the dream to do?

• 3:40Speaker 01

  I mean, I wanted to make movies.

• 3:42Lewis Howes?

  But you didn't have the skills yet. You were kind of doing a little bit.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  I knew how to edit an iMovie.

• 3:46Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  No, I didn't have any skills. Nothing.

• 3:49Lewis Howes?

  Okay. So you wanted to make movies in New York City, but you had no clue, no connections.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  I knew one thing and I knew that I would never be able to do it in Connecticut.

• 3:58Lewis Howes?

  Right. You knew you had to be there to see what was possible.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:01Lewis Howes?

  Okay. And what, what happened? What was the turning point?

• 4:05Speaker 01

  I mean, it was tough. I bounced. I was a bike messenger. It's a horrible job.

• 4:09Lewis Howes?

  That'd be miserable.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  I was a bike messenger and this is back, this is 15 years ago, but it was back when you paid for your cell phone minutes. Remember those days?

• 4:14Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh, yes.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  And they would call me on my cell phone to let me know where I had to deliver and pick up packages. And at the end of the first week, my pay was $280 and my cell phone bill for that week was 350.

• 4:24Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  So it cost me $70 to be a bike messenger.

• 4:27Lewis Howes?

  A week. Oh my gosh.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Miserable. I also got hurt. It was a nightmare.

• 4:31Lewis Howes?

  By a taxi or a car?

• 4:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. I got dorked.

• 4:34Lewis Howes?

  So you're not making, you're losing money working for people.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  No health insurance. Yeah. Um, but you know, like I've. Eventually, I met this artist guy and I did some grunt work for him. And when I say grunt work, I mean grunt work. Right. And showed him some of my movies and kind of met some other people. And showed my movies to anyone who would listen, anyone who would watch. And eventually, the first paid gig I got was I was hired by this guy who was an art collector. And he's like, I want you to make a movie for my husband for his 50th birthday. And I was like, great, I would love to make a movie for your husband for his 50th birthday. I would take any job. Sure. Like bar mitzvah videos, wedding videos. And he was like, okay, here are a list of people that we were gonna want you to interview for his wedding, his birthday video. And it was like, no joke, like Hillary Clinton, Mario Cuomo, President Bill Clinton. What?

• 5:21Speaker 01

  And I was like, oh my god. Living in retrospect is a really bad idea. Sure. I say this about everything. Like, I look forward with a laser focus because to pay too much attention to the past and what could have been is just a tremendous exercise in futility. And instead, looking forward and saying, where do I want to be? Just having all the momentum be there, I think, is what the best practice is for me. I know that if given an opportunity to go back and change anything, I would change nothing because I'm incredibly happy right now. That's great. And I love it. And I think if it wasn't for those hardships, even really terrible things happening, I don't know that it would have added up to where I am right now.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  But I work as hard as I can every day to always make the best decisions I can to contribute to that.