Ep. 268 | Less Is Now (with Matt D'Avella)

this episode of the minimalists is brought to you by nobody because advertisements suck non-minimalists hello everybody welcome to the minimalist podcast where we discuss what it means to live a meaningful life with less my name is joshua fields milburn and i'm ryan nicodemus and together we are the minimalists today we have a special guest in the studio matthiavella is here aka the italian styling that is true i did not come up with that i just want to make the record clear that was something that you guys gave me as a nickname and i have not forced you to say that okay i confirm that that piece of information thank you your money will be in the mail today we're going to talk about success we're going to talk about habit change we're going to talk about letting go of stuff and of course we're going to talk about our new film yeah which is out this friday woo congratulations matthiavella good work man to you guys what the heck four years later i know it took so long well actually that let's talk about that real quick by the way the new film it's on netflix this friday january 1st 2021 it's called les is now it's a documentary it's a special it's a docu-special it's all of these things it's none of these things and matt when you were editing the film there was a line initially at the beginning the very first line in fact was while we were on the road and it was me talking to ryan or someone and i said you know we've been doing this for the last six years and i and i emailed you like matt we have to like overdub this line or something this film it's ten years now and you're like and you just emailed me back and you said the moment i realized i've been working on a film for four years it definitely catches up to you i think that uh this project was certainly unique in that uh it has evolved so much since the very beginning like i think the core structure of the film like the message and everything that really ended up becoming the film is still there um but we had to kind of have a go at it two or three times before we really found it um i mean i think that i don't think we could have imagined it coming out as good as it did when we first started and i and i think i'm just glad that we didn't settle because it would have been easy to say all right this version is good enough let's just ship it and i think that's difficult for any creative or any filmmaker to really know what the difference is and how to not get stuck in perfectionism but i think we found the right balance and we got the right feedback early on from the right people um and we also just trusted our gut to be able to say all right we need to keep working at this thing until it's right and you know it took four years but i'm glad it did yeah yeah the uh the first two or three versions it was like you know you did an amazing job with the footage we gave you but my gut was like yeah this is this is okay like this will pass this will pass and then you know however many versions later like now i watch it and i'm like oh yeah this is good like i feel really really good about it and we've been through this before yeah the first documentary yeah so it wasn't new territory um and i think any time it's very different from doing the youtube videos or even a podcast like we create all the time where you you create and you ship you create and you ship and you keep going but when you're creating a piece that you want to last hopefully a lifetime hopefully for the next couple decades to impact people's lives it's really worth it to make sure you're doing it in a way that you feel happy with and you feel like is really going to resonate with people yeah it's hard to um compare it to minimalism or first documentary and it's not i don't really compare less is now with minimalism but what i do compare is how i feel about the movie and i'll tell you with with minimalism the very first uh cut that he sent i was like oh man like i don't know how he did it but there's a story here and it's amazing and it was really uh it was just really moving um and that's the feeling that you know i was hoping to get from this film and it wasn't until like these last two or three cuts that i finally started to get that where i'm like oh yes we did it yeah yeah and i would say too that like there was a lot at stake there was a bit of pressure because we are telling your story in a way that hasn't been told before and this is something like a message that you've been sharing for you said over the past decade right and so yeah a lot of that story is in minimalism but this goes deeper into a new level that we haven't yet brought to light and so i think we just really wanted to make sure that we told your story in a way that um was true and accurate and that would actually help people who watch it dude you killed it man bravo i mean i'm really excited for it it was a team effort that's what i say yeah and we'll talk about the whole team because it's not just the three of us for sure there's an entire team behind this whether it's tim and jacob and chris and i mean everyone who worked on sound i want to talk about the the and everything else there's so many people you'll have to see the end credits to see how many people actually worked on this thing i do want to talk about the process though because it started as one thing we we kind of figured like hey you know what this is beginning of 2017. we'll just knock this out in about four months so the first iteration you were actually you came out and we filmed in well all throughout the northeast but ballston at the wilbur theater in particular so let's talk about that first iteration of this film well i think it's funny because in the beginning we started out very similar to how we started out minimalism which was let's grab a camera let's hit the road and let's just see what we capture and that happened to work really well for minimalism but we were planning on shooting a different documentary one that was really focused on this structural monologue this piece where you guys are sharing your story in a very raw way and talking about that journey and so when we went out and hit the road uh it started to feel a little bit too much like the last film and we also wanted to figure out ways how can we elevate this story how can we make it different and unique and so you know part of that was just capturing the talk that you guys gave in these live environments one of them was the wilbur i mean from a very technical perspective i think one of the biggest mistakes was like well one we just didn't really invest a lot into it it was almost as if we spread our investments out over a bunch of different shoots whereas just two of us traveling around yeah for a couple weeks just capturing what we could and that's raw and it's gritty and it works but like if you're doing a film that's really like telling this story in a way that's a monologue where you're delivering a large part of it to the camera it's really it it's better to take all those resources and compact it down to a couple days and as you guys know that eventually led to a couple weeks of really intense production days where we had 12 hour production days for like two weeks straight where we really captured all these stories i mean it was just so cool to be able to rebuild it and i don't know how you guys felt about it but and i don't know how much we can really talk about i'm sure that some of it's gonna be in the trailer but this idea of like the going back and revisiting your past and going back to the corporate offices and going back to like your childhood homes and recreating those elements i don't know how you guys felt about that but i it for me i was like a bit emotional because i've been hearing your guys story for so long and then here we are rebuilding it and retelling that story um it felt very real to me yeah no i totally agree i found that as we were going through that whole process we were kind of uncovering what this film was going to be we had an initial conception maybe not an expectation but that changed considerably over the course of the last four years so we went out we filmed some live events that didn't really work it wasn't our didn't capture the right aesthetic and so we did it again back in 20 it wasn't 19 beginning of 2019 we rented a abandoned warehouse and in south central la we brought 300 people out twice and gave the talk built a stage and gave this talk in a different space and it still it still didn't feel like what we were trying to create in fact the metaphor i've used is because we wanted to use the talk mixed with these documentary aspects i felt really good about what we filmed with the talk it felt to me like a delicious piece of salmon and then the documentary elements felt like this great piece of chocolate cake and you just mixed them together and it was salmon chocolate cake and it just it didn't work how did you eventually figure out the way to make it work i think like anything it takes creating and then iterating you have to make that first version and then really gut check yourself and i think this came from all of us really sitting back and watching the film over and over again and really thinking about how we can make this thing better so yeah the first version was shot with two people in at the wilbur theater in boston and it was really flat and like two-dimensional and there really wasn't a lot there like terrible audio their one camera was a red which the quality looked good but the other cameras were like these like low rate dslr cameras and so that didn't work we eventually shot in this warehouse great cameras but it was very do it yourself and so for me it felt like a cheap special like it didn't feel like it was truly special and so we just you know i think one part of that is is us never really doing something like this before um and also using a very limited budget so there's a reason why comedy specials cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to make right is because like it really takes that much money to hire the right crew to hire the right cameras to really put together a team uh that's going to actually make something that's at that production level and that was different from the first so the first home we had zero budget initially going into the film right and this one we at first we're trying to shoestring it but what we realized is that as you said it requires the whole team to make this and so i think we ended up and i can't divulge the number because of contracts and stuff but we spent more on this film than i've ever spent on anything that we've ever produced yeah at this point um and it none of it was frivolous it was still very frugal with respect to everything we were doing but it required something different because this film is not just the the josh and ryan story it's not that at all you did so much more in terms of expanding it to ryan and i are in it but it applies it feels like everyone's story in a way yeah yeah and i think that uh to go on that trajectory the we had that the film that was shot in a warehouse from us and and it was okay but then that's when we decided like i think that this can be a lot better but we just need the budget we just need the the resources to be able to make that happen yeah um and so then that's when we uh approach netflix and we're like hey this is what we shot we know it's not great but we have a vision for what it could be and if you see the same vision that we do then i think we can really take this to the next level and to their credit they saw the vision through the dust and then we ended up um teaming up and then this that's how it became a netflix original because they bought into this idea and then with that budget we were able to just put everything into these productions to yes to shoot the monologue in a really beautiful warehouse with amazing cameras and lights and all that stuff and a great crew that was just incredible to work with yeah and then on top of that we were able to add these documentary elements where we interview experts and we really dive deeper into this problem than we ever had a chance to with minimalism totally yeah i'm really grateful for netflix how they saw our vision and they helped us bring it to fruition they've been awesome to work with yeah well the film is out january one kick off your new year with less it's called less is now we're going to talk a lot more about it on the maximal episode we're also going to talk to matt about our history together we've got a bunch of questions about the film for the maximal episode as well but i want to dive into some of these audience questions here today our first question is from katherine in san marcos texas i'm a professional singer and voice teacher and i would call myself a minimalist i've already shedded things in my life that don't add any value there are a couple of things that i do need to have in order to teach my students and in order to be a musician in general and some of those things are a full size 88 key keyboard which is quite big and quite heavy and also a collection of song books that i can't really digitize because i need to be able to write in them and my students need to be able to have physical books to work out of to be honest i'm a little frustrated that i can't get rid of these items they absolutely add value to my life i mean i need them in order to do what i do but i'm finding myself getting rid of things right and left and i'm wondering if i'm starting to develop an unhealthy obsession with just getting rid of things what advice would you give to someone who is a minimalist but needs certain things in order to do you know whatever it is that they do maybe a mechanic who has a bunch of tools a musician who has a piano any advice there and am i going too far with wanting to just get rid of everything so matt it seems to me like we often confuse minimalism with asceticism or or or deprivation in a way and i think that's where catherine is right now what would you tell someone like this you get people are commenting like this all the time on your youtube channel they're they're searching they're exploring and they're wondering uh am i going too far yeah i think catherine is not going far enough i think she needs to get rid of the keyboard get rid of the books get rid of the students you call yourself a minimalist catherine um no i mean obviously i go through this as a filmmaker i mean i think if you looked at my gear closet you would say this guy is absolutely not a minimalist he has four cameras and so many different lenses and cards and little pieces of gear it's funny you guys talk a lot about just in case and i think for most people that's absolutely true you you do not need to hold on to just in case items but for plumbers and electricians and filmmakers there's a lot of little gadgets and little pieces of gear that if you didn't have it on the shoot there's so many different problems that you need to solve in the middle of a shoot where oh i need this piece of gear that's going to connect to this and you're often like being very resourceful with the gear that you have and so i think that um sometimes we do need to have those things that we use once or twice a year i mean with the case of the keyboard and with the books and stuff those are absolutely essential like that she needs those to be able to do what she does and same for me i have camera gear that i absolutely need now there are always going to be those things that that are kind of on the fringe right you have the essential you have what you absolutely need for me personally to make a video i need a camera i need a lens i need a memory card a battery a computer editing software and like these are like the physical items that i need to actually make a video but then you have the extra things you have the gimbal you have the drone you have the fog machine you have all these extra things that might make your videos cooler a little bit better and i think it really takes you being honest with yourself about the kind of projects that you want to work on and it does sometimes require you to make mistakes for instance i have a fog machine i bought this fog machine because for a couple videos right like you buy it because oh it's gonna work really well for this and then you also come up with these excuses and reasons for why it's gonna work for every other video that you're gonna work on in the future and so i think it's okay to make mistakes it's okay to buy something that you maybe thought you you were going to need but then you have to revisit that and as you guys say all the time as our lives changes the things that we need change as well and so we need to be able to reassess that in three months or six months and say hey do i actually still need this thing and if not can i find somebody else who can actually get more value from it no you don't confuse what i love about you is you don't confuse the tools with the craft for you those tools they amplify or enhance what you're doing but too often we get really excited about a thing everyone was 18 years old once or 15 they started a business but really they bought a stapler and some file folders and some business cards and they started a business without actually doing the things required to create you create and then you use tools to augment that in fact i would not call those just in case items i would call them just for win items and i'd like to make that distinction because there are some things like you don't buy your toilet paper one square at a time or your toothpaste one nerdle at a time you buy a a a an entire tube or several tubes at a time because that makes sense and you're going to use it just for when but i'm sure there's some film equipment that you have now that you will find out you're not using and then you'll let it go yeah i'm actually in the process of doing that right now and revisiting a lot of my gear you know i've got a couple gopros and a drone there's some things that we think that we need but eventually it turns out that we were fooling ourselves and that's where you have to be honest with yourself um i think it would be helpful i mean there's also hundreds of things that i maybe thought i needed that i didn't buy and i think that that's important because we really want to be responsible when it comes to the environment and the things that we're consuming and think about all the packages that you had to open up and all that stuff that you had to throw away or recycle um and so i i think really it's it's about looking at it in the long run being really smart with our decisions um i understand what catherine is saying too about she said sometimes you just get so excited about that decluttering process and getting rid of things and like having as few items as possible that holding on to a big bulky keyboard or i mean i i sometimes get frustrated with my own thing like i actually had 40 or 50 hard drives all this huge amount of hard drives like it took up so much space in my closet it was probably like 40 probably about 70 terabytes worth of footage and like and also we're talking about this is technology that was 10 years old and so like the two terabyte drives are just as big as the 20 terabyte drives now and so uh i recently went through this process like that's been so frustrating for me as a minimalist to have it and so i recently went through and i'm like all right can i actually start to take these hard drives and put them down onto even smaller drives and consolidate that stuff but over the years you just you can find a place to store it you can find a place to organize it if you absolutely need the thing um and hopefully that takes away from that that uh disappointment of having that extra clutter around the house but truly it's not really clutter if you're actually getting value from it totally no i love uh how your story really speaks to how minimalism is not this like end destination it is this tool that we use to constantly uh uh uh uh what's what i'm looking for i want to say pared down in our life but it's more than that it's it's cultivating a meaningful life so you know catherine yeah like if the stuff that you have right now if it's appropriate for you great but tomorrow it might not be appropriate for you oh and by the way the deck the next day after that you might need to buy something else to uh to enhance whatever it is that you're doing um no i think it's a great story i think often about the red camera that you had yeah about how it was um this amazing camera you were like you know this is it and we used it a lot and then it got to a point where you were like i don't need this red camera yeah it wasn't even red it was black it was a black camera yeah the logo was red though um but yeah it was um you know that's really one of the top of the line cinema cameras that you can buy i spent like 38 thousand dollars on it it was a massive investment and um and it was also a write-off for my business and so but uh that was when i was doing freelance i had a freelance filmmaking business i was working with corporate clients we were making films but then i started a youtube channel and then when i started the youtube channel i realized this is actually slowing me down because the file sizes are so big it's a it's a complicated camera to work and to edit with and i realized if i actually simplified and i got a camera that was a fraction of the price and also i like i want to make it clear any aspiring filmmakers or any creatives like you're going to feel like oh i need that 30 000. that for whatever like the really expensive camera because it's going to make my videos so much better i have seen really no difference in terms of quality from the camera that i quote unquote downgraded to in fact it's actually made allowed me to move a lot quicker and a lot faster and so more expensive isn't always better yeah what i love about that is sometimes what we realized the things we thought we needed the tools that we needed they slow us down they get in the way they're actually preventing us from creating the thing we want to create because we're spending time sort of maintaining this this facade well i've got the red camera that's why you should hire me right as opposed to well no i'm a great filmmaker that's why you should hire me i'm going to help you execute your vision that's why you should hire me and so what what you've identified there is that sometimes the things that we think we need the question i've been asking a lot of not just things but commitments obligations relationships recently is does this bring tranquility or does it increase my well-being and if not we should certainly let it go and the case of the red for you is no it it didn't bring you tranquility it brought you the opposite it was it added stress and so letting go of that is the thing that brought you more tranquility in a way yeah and i think i'm sure that you guys know this firsthand that constraints are often really powerful form of bringing creativity to life and so when you we have constraints in everything we do if you're a freelancer working on a project there is the brief that the client gives you and that's the guidelines that you have to follow and when you limit yourself with the amount of gear that you can have say if you try to only create a video on the absolute essentials just what you need in many ways you'll find out that yes you can move a lot quicker you have to get more creative with certain shots you might not have a crane to do an overhead shot so maybe you have to like gaff tape something up or you need to like rig something together that will work or you just change the angle there are workarounds and there's different things that you can do uh but it really i i'm actually experimenting that with a little bit more myself now as i start to pare down some of my older gear realizing that maybe some of the things that i thought i needed uh or were just wants or they were nice to haves and so i think as any kind of creative these are the the questions you're going to have to deal with on a regular basis yeah catherine um we talked about a couple rules here today the justin case rule the just for win rule those are two separate rules and we've got 16 of those rules in the minimalist rule book it's free you can download it at theminimalists.com rulebook there's an audiobook version available over there as well but if you just want the free download there's 16 rules for living with less the minimalists.com rulebook i think you'll find some value in those rules julio from connecticut has a question i feel like i'm at a fork in the road and i don't exactly know which path to go down i'm 27 single debt free with a nice financial cushion i just moved back in with my parents after living and working in london so i want to pursue acting specifically acting for film the past few years i have been acting in some indie films and i really believe that acting is what i'm meant to do i was a theater major in college but i know that going to grad school on top of that degree would give me the formal training and professional connections that could really propel me forward in my career so one path is a very expensive but rewarding grad school education the other path i see is to pick up and move to another city start over and pursue a career in acting without further education so matt you know what's fascinating here about julia's question is she said so many things here by the way congratulations 27 being debt-free it's incredible amazing that's awesome you because you're not tethered to anything right now so the options you have are good options right now of course you're debt-free and one of those options is you're saying maybe i want to take on some debt now i would think about that i'm going to throw one thing out there matt i want to hear you respond to this she said that she feels like acting is what she was meant to do i don't think you were meant to do anything i don't think you're born to be a filmmaker for example i think greatness comes from a strong desire the reason matt is a great filmmaker and i mean that truly matt you are a phenomenal filmmaker greatness comes from a desire it's not like if you didn't have the desire to tell stories to make films you would you'd become great at something else that you truly desired and so a bunch of practice acting isn't what makes you great it's the desire to act that leads to the practice that makes you great um yeah i think that she is i i i think that she's very fortunate in that she knows where she wants to head in life the direction that she wants to head i think so many people are in this conflicted area where they're looking for purpose and i think especially now during covid if there's one thing that's bringing to light what's truly most important in life obviously relationships are health but finding a purpose and having something that really fulfills us is truly important so it's amazing that she's found that i think that it's yes it's the desire you need the drive to want to do it i think to answer her question whether she needs to take on this debt or not i would definitely say no please please do not go into debt i graduated college with uh 97 000 in student loans and then i bought a brand new car and so then i was about 117 000 in debt and i can't tell you just the amount of weight that put on my shoulders and also how much it limited me in the decisions that i could take going forward there was the anxiety and the stress of every bill that came in i'm talking 700 every month in payments that i had to pay off oh my god and i knew that if if i didn't make a change at that moment then i would have to be paying this off for the next 20 years imagine having those expenses for 20 30 years and so definitely do anything you can to avoid that situation and now it's easier than ever to to be able to get the education you need and make the contacts and the connections that you need um outside of going to college and outside of getting a college degree um i would say even so filmmaking you learn to make films not from what you did in college necessarily but from actually doing the work it's like imagine imagine michael jordan michael jordan going to basketball college yeah yeah it would be like what are you doing oh yeah i need to read the textbook about about how to dribble the history of basketball yeah it's like those things are nice to know the the the history of of what you're doing what you're pursuing but acting or filmmaking or playing basketball it's about doing and the most you've learned from is actually camera in hand doing the work right yeah yeah i was gonna say do you think you could be where you are now if you didn't go to college like hindsight would you have been like oh hindsight do you think like oh maybe i shouldn't have gone and taken that degree i'm just curious you know obviously looking back it worked out right like going to college i i wouldn't wish that kind of debt on anybody i got the college experience which wasn't what it was all cracked up to be and then going out partying drinking and doing all that um you know it was one of those things that i felt like i had to do at the time but uh it certainly now i i could have lived without it and also you can go out party and drink yeah without paying 97 000 exactly yeah like you could do all these things like me making connections i mean the connections that i made while i was in college that allowed me to grow my business initially make the connections that i did that eventually led me to meeting you guys like there's this snowball of connections that you make early on in your younger adulthood that lead as long as you um are genuine and you're open and you're authentic and you are as a creative or a filmmaker whatever it is delivering to your clients those connections will continue to flourish and spread to others if you start cutting off bridges and you start like really disrupting those relationships then you're not going to see as many opportunities in the future but uh yeah like i i i mean there are very few if any obviously i made lots of great friends in college but very few relationships that have stuck through to this day professionally or personal the connections that i did make were that eventually like led to these connections today were all from people that i met outside of school and josh your point earlier uh you know i definitely i always tell people don't let your syllabus dictate like what you learn and what you do like you really have to learn outside of the classroom yeah and i think that early on in college like if you look at those videos especially compared to what i'm doing now he's terrible like he hasn't like he's not going to go anywhere with this thing but compared to a lot of people that were at my age at that time like in schools they weren't um a lot of kids 95 of people weren't applying themselves outside of the classroom they were just following the syllabus what the teacher told them to do that's what they were doing but it was that desire and that drive like i just love to create and if you love to create if you love acting then pour yourself into that there are so it's so much better to do it yourself to find these small productions to work on yeah than to try to follow the traditional route because the traditional route is crumbling like the gatekeepers are falling away right and you need to really make your own path if you really want to make it in the industry and by make it i mean create a sustainable income doing what you love i think that's like the goal for most creatives right whether you're a stand-up comedian or an actress or actor like you just want to do what you love and get paid a decent salary doing it that's a great point so julia uh please don't go into debt because if you do go into debt when you come out of college it's not going to be a get to it's going to be a have to you're going to have to make money from this in order to pay off your debt and that is a really good way to to kill your passion or or to kill your dream one thing i'll add here too julia uh i have a lot of um actor friends um they're you know not major i guess lily gladstone's a pretty major actress um but uh long story short i have talked to them about going to school for acting because i love to act i've been in a couple plays and the way i describe myself as a very good amateur and uh i actually told a director that once uh during a reading i was like i just want to let you know like i'm an amateur but i'm a really good amateur and he laughed and chuckled and then we started getting into the play he's like you're exactly what you said you were like you are a very good amateur self-awareness right exactly exactly but but uh talking to my friends about going to acting school just to um learn how to act they really every i'm not not one of them has said yeah you should do that at some point and uh yeah you should go for four years and get your acting degree or whatever it is uh what they have suggested is finding an acting coach that that i connect with and that's really how uh you can pursue your career julia without going into a crazy amount of debt like f find an acting coach make sure that you two click and then you can certainly uh get better at acting but please don't go in the dead julia i just think we too often we confuse schooling with education and one does not necessarily equate to the other credentials often lead to mediocrity yeah we didn't we didn't become friends tweet that podcast sean we didn't become friends with matt because he's a certified filmmaker right you know it's like that doesn't matter your credentials often just mean that you learn you got the certificate you learned what was in the textbook but it doesn't mean that you did what was necessary to create something that is elite or great yeah and i think that is true with any profession the last thing i'll say for julia and anyone else is if you find the thing that you love that you really enjoy doing that is fun that is not fun to other people that is the place in which you will thrive if it is a game for you to become the best actor right because for me that would be miserable being a a director would would not be the thing i want to do either it's not the game that i want to play so to speak right and so i'm just i would be discontented doing something like that now matt i do want to talk to you about this on the the actually if we have time on the the maximal i think we'll cover it there was a time when i remember you were first started on your own and you're a filmmaker but then you started like blogging and doing these other things that weren't weren't your thing necessarily because you saw someone else's path and you're like i think i'll i'll try this and when we do them we play someone else's game i think it often leads to discontent yeah that was uh i mean really when i made the transition from it was right after we finished minimalism i up until that point i was a freelance filmmaker filmmaker i worked with nothing but clients and amazing clients but i knew i was ready for a change and i'd always want to be an original content creator whatever that was i always wanted to be able to create something myself and hopefully establish an audience that would be happy to pay for it or watch it consume it and so uh yeah the first thing i did was because i was such a fan of bloggers uh and essayists like you guys i was like oh okay like i'm gonna start a blog and that's what i'm gonna do i'm gonna and like it was okay but i i got like four posts in and then i just ran out of fuel and i was like okay actually what am i doing here i this is not who i am or this is not what really drives me the most and that's when i started to lean into filmmaking and i was like all right well let me do some podcasting and make videos and then eventually started making youtube videos and it's funny how like i wanted to experiment which was great and i definitely recommend everybody experiment with different things and tinker around to find out what you truly love to do but i just found my way back to filmmaking because you know call it a call and call it a drive or desire that's just what i love to do um and so i think it's you'll find it and like you'll know like you if you keep giving up within four days of starting something new um then it might not be for you yeah that drive that's pushing you to keep going for sure you started over in a way it wasn't a well it was i mean it was completely different from what you were doing before with the client work the corporate work it was filmmaking but it was a different kind of creating it was creating for you not creating based upon the visions and expectations of of other people necessarily and i love that the starting over thing ryan when you were a kid growing up and and you probably like to build some things with legos or blocks or whatever but was do you remember the most fun part at least for me destroying the legos exactly that that's exactly it and and i think in a way we actually enjoy the destruction more than we enjoy the creation here's what i mean by that we need to find a healthy destruction because many of us destroy things because we will go out and do opioids or we would drink ourselves to a stupor or whatever yeah that's a that is not a helpful destruction but like i think about when you and i walked away from the corporate world yeah we sort of destroyed that old life and in many ways it was more enjoyable than creating that life was right totally and so i think you know julia's at a crossroads right now she's starting over yeah julie i'm gonna send you a copy of our book everything that remains it's my favorite book that we've written and it is a story of me and ryan starting over this five year journey of uh ryan and i be being these suit and tie corporate guys becoming the minimalist first time we met matt is he filmed the book trailer for that back in 2013. dude that was that was so well i mean i just love the story of how we got to be matt's friends we're going to talk about that on the maximum yeah yeah talk about yeah just talk about car making your own path i mean that's such a good story all right i won't spoil it well uh julia i hope you enjoy everything that remains if you like our podcast you'll like the audiobook version of that book or if you want the book book or the ebook we're happy to send those to you as well ryan what time is it you know what time it is it is time for our lightning round where we answer your text messages you can text your questions and comments directly to joshua melbourne's phone that phone number is two four 937-20246 five four those texts actually go to both of our phones um and we do personally respond to as many people as we can we just share a phone cause we're minimalist yes it doesn't have any buttons either make sure you sanitize it i'm sorry i derailed you yeah well so um yeah we use this app called community ryan and i get the text they go right to our phone we respond to a lot of people we also respond to some folks on the podcast now matt you know this during the lightning round this is where we do our best to answer questions with a short shareable less than 140 character response we put the text to these minimal maxims in the show notes so people can copy and share our pithy answers on social media if they'd like and by the way you can find all of our minimal maxims in one place now minimal minimalmaxims.com we have a question from mason mason wants to know what advice do you have for someone that's just starting out that wants to have a successful film career like you like you matt yeah this is me yeah because you you don't actually be piffy you could mom i was just thinking it would be funny like do you guys always put it in the in the show notes even if it's bad because then i'm like just going to say something ridiculous and then you have to quote it and then people who are looking at the website what the heck is this well if it's really if it's really dumb we'll bleep it and we'll say it was profound yeah and we'll make something up yeah we could only share it on patreon oh yeah that's right okay if you want to be a successful filmmaker um if you want to be a success you want to be a successful filmmaker like like you like you that's it yeah are you talking about me yes you know maybe another way to look at this matt is like when you think about that college kid even before you got out of college like what would what advice would you give yourself when you were at that point in your life well i think if you want to find success in any field you need to first define what success is that's that's it that's good no but like really like you you have to figure out what because he's like saying like if you want to be successful like me it really depends like a lot of times what it looks like i do isn't actually what i do because like you see like if you love my youtube videos or you love the um like the films that i make the feeling that you get when when you watch that isn't necessarily the feeling that i have when i'm making it right it's still like a thrill i love doing it it's creative problem solving but you really need to make sure that you actually love the process of filmmaking and whatever part of that process it is whether it's the editing or the directing or the filming i happen to love all of it and so i think you really have to make sure that if you love what you do then i really think that that's success and so i mean it just takes ooh that's a good pity one too if you love what you do that's success yeah yeah that's great it's good well matt let me talk to you about that real quick because i i and maybe it's a generational thing ryan and i are cuspers right we're technically gen x or ryan is the the youngest gen xer i know um or it is true or he's the oldest millennial i know yeah one or the other yeah and or maybe i'm the oldest millennial i just claim whatever is convenient that day is what i claim well here's the thing what i've noticed people younger than me and ryan and the younger it gets especially like like young millennials older gin z folks they they define success by numbers because we have we've created a metric for everything and when andrew schultz was on here he goes i don't understand why jay-z wants to be a billionaire like now you're just the brokest billionaire yeah he's like or if you just convert if you convert those dollars to pounds now you're not a billionaire anymore yeah it also i think it's also like when we see that when we see the numbers and i know i certainly felt this way like when you see somebody who has two million or three million subscribers on youtube you think that that's like a feeling like they have a oh like now i have two million or three but like whatever like you think it's gonna actually solve all of your problems and i think this is like what we hear a lot with people who uh make a lot of money they realize that oh i made all this money and i realized it didn't make me happy yeah so many people say well of course like it's nice for you to say that because you have all the money but jim carrey said like who else is going to be able to say that from somebody who's experienced it and realize it actually doesn't bring happiness right and like i can tell you firsthand uh having zero subscribers and three million yes it allows me certain things it allows me to create videos and like it's amazing but like i don't it doesn't change who you are it shouldn't like maybe there are some people who build up these big followings and then their ego gets inflated but i would say that those people probably had egos to begin with yeah and that that following didn't help them are you any happier at 3 million than you were at 1 million or 2 million no i think that like obviously like over the past couple years though like i've had ups and downs and like i've had to deal with the the struggles of like the pressure of creating for an audience that wants to hear from you and sometimes it's made you i mean just based on your videos it's made you less tranquil yeah it's decreased your well-being because of chasing those numbers right yeah and not even intentionally chase him and i will say matt it hasn't changed you at all and i love that about you who you are as a person but there are you felt some additional pressure that probably decreased your well-being yeah i think that that's like if it did change me it added more stress anxiety and pressure which like that's what uh quote-unquote like the typical measures of success can do and um so i think that uh for me and also like it does come to a degree and i know that you guys feel this as well when you love your work you pour yourself into it and it's hard to find that line of like overworking and then burnout and like how do i manage this and i think the added pressure of people waiting to hear from you maybe made that worse for me and so you know just like we were talking about earlier like minimalism is about you continue to ask yourself these questions about what you need and it changes over time you have to continue to check in with yourself uh as a creator or as somebody who's building an online following to make sure that you're not doing it for the metrics and you don't feel like you have to do it and that you actually want to do it that's one of my favorite things about netflix is they don't share the metrics with us yeah like i know just because of how often people recognize us from the first film i know a lot of people saw it but i i can't tell you whether it was 30 million or 70 million like and it doesn't really matter i don't feel any more successful today in 2021 than i did in 2011 because success for me had involved a certain amount of freedom and and being financially free being untethered to obligations being unattached to the desires desire is great attachment is suffering though right my pithy answer for mason is no one can be a better you than you and i think that one of the problems we seek is like hey how can i be matt diabella well if you want to be an off brand matt diavela you could there are plenty of them out there they come up in my youtube all the time oh it's nice i like it i find it flattering hi i'm i'm that mia the funny thing i see is like someone tries to make videos like matt and they use like our rules without a it so it's like they're taking the minimalist sort of written philosophy yeah they try to mimic matt's style and it just comes off as like it's a great point it's like you're eating at a a fake mcdonald's like a north korean mcdonald's or something it's like what this is i think yeah it's okay to be inspired and i think that some sometimes people confuse what maybe is the thing so whether it's like copying thumbnails and like i certainly pulled tons of inspiration when i started from other people and like what was going to work for the thumbnail and and i think sometimes we confuse what's actually the important part of that the important ingredient and i think if you're just getting started out like copy my style do like whatever it is so then you can learn but you're probably not going to be able to build an audience doing the same thing that i did just like casey neistat or peter mckinnon and other youtubers that i follow like if i did exactly what they did i probably wouldn't be successful well it's interesting it makes me think about how in other countries we have like in portuga and brazil there's a portuguese minimalism website that someone has literally copied and pasted everything that we've done and they just have put it into portuguese and they have called it their own and guess what they're not as successful as us and that's for a couple reasons like one um they're not josh and ryan they're not as awesome as us but no really even if let's say you do mimic someone perfectly then like you said josh when someone notices that oh this person is mimicking the minimalists then they become a bit of an off brand like they don't they don't uh they're not as well regarded as as you and i uh maybe people do read their work and they're great and it's great that it's in portuguese and i'm actually grateful that someone did that just so our work can be you know translated into portuguese but as soon as someone sees like oh this is just an off-brand josh and ryan um that is going to prevent them from i don't know being successful or getting the credit that they could be getting by doing their own work even if they blew up though because i know i know some people who have literally like taken the scripts from my videos and then done it themselves um and then they've even taken the identical thumbnail and like everything they've copied it verbatim yeah and they have like big followings like they're overseas they speak a different language but they have five hundred thousand to a million views on these videos that are my videos that you're recreating but not telling anybody and i think it's dirty i think it's great and i don't think that that's right i don't think any creative should should steal somebody's work um but like like is he happy like were you happy i like you know what i mean like i don't do it for the numbers i do it because like i love making those videos and if you want to steal it go ahead but that's not gonna make you happy at the end of the day yeah i mean you're it's really your own unique creations that are going to make you happy um well here's here's my pithy answer pithy answer for mason success without adding value is failure so focus on adding value and we'll talk about it in the maximal episode but that's matt how i think about your career like you found ways to add value and um you continue to do that and that is why you are so successful the other thing i was thinking too there's something about um there's something about there's something pithy with uh success has nothing to do with metrics it has something to do with a feeling so success is a feeling not a metric yeah yeah i mean it all depends on how we define success and one of the problems is we're chasing happiness and you're chasing happiness there's always a discontent so you're asking if that that guy's happy who's making the you know the mattiavella videos in russian or whatever like he he probably isn't but he's also probably chasing it yeah and that's probably why he isn't actually he's seeing what matt's doing and just copying that's not to say that you shouldn't as matt said be inspired by people and in fact even take their recipe and tweeze out a few ingredients the thing that's worked in ryan and i always go back and credit the people who inspired us early on joshua becker leo about courtney carr for colin wright or even with this podcast we've got yeah we've got the love podcast and we've got rogan and we've got a lot of people who we took ingredients from yeah yeah and so when whenever we we do something you can attribute it and and have your own ingredients but you're creating your own new recipe and that's what matt has obviously done with his filmmaking and i totally agree with you ryan it's really ultimately if you're if you're not adding value you can't be successful you're not going to feel successful yeah speaking of adding value before we get into that added value segment today we have some listener tips but first it looks like we got a bunch more surprise questions this week matt like why did you choose netflix over the other platforms to release les is now is phil if wait if filmmaking had not worked out for matt what would he be doing instead uh what do you plan to do for your next film project i'm imagining matt would uh open up a pasta shop that's an inside joke but we will let you in on it uh during the maximal what are your favorite lines that didn't make the film what are your favorite lines from the film as well why did matt wear the same t-shirt for three years straight plus a million more questions for matt diabella and the minimalist and if you want to hear all that subscribe to our maximal episodes on the minimalist private podcast it's a completely separate podcast and it's the most honest way for the minimalist to earn an income because we don't do advertisements by the way if you're not a private podcast supporter you're literally missing two thirds of our show plus hundreds of hours of past private episodes so try it out for a week or a month it's cheaper than a cup of coffee head on over to the minimalists.com support to subscribe and get your personal link so that our private podcast plays in your favorite podcast app ryan what else you got for us this week here are some voicemail comments and tips from our listeners check them out hi this is rachel richards and i'm from the dallas texas area and i just wanted to give you guys an idea everyone always asks you know what to give for gifts because they don't want to you know add to someone else's extra stuff you know and so um i came up with an idea of making videos for my family and posting them on facebook and they're they're usually funny videos and that's their birthday present from us and they love it they absolutely love it and they could share it with their friends and it's just been a big hit and it's free and it's kind of like how you know giving the experience but especially if you can't be with that family member on their birthday it's really it's cool this is cecilia duffy from geneva ohio i have some tips for helping to minimize your food preparation to keep things healthy yet not taking time daily to cook this opens up time to pursue those things that you value i'm recently widowed and my daughter is away at college so it is only me to cook for most of the time due to my life change and challenges i am working longer hours to support myself and daughter as a chiropractor a core value of mine is to eat healthy and organic but i don't want to take the time to cook on a daily basis like i did when i worked part-time and was feeding my family of three on sunday mornings i put on the newest podcast of the minimalist and head to the kitchen to cook for the week it takes me less than two hours to cook for the week and clean up the kitchen this will work for those who don't mind eating the same thing for a week at a time for breakfast i cook up turkey sausage and have fresh fruit available other breakfasts include my homemade granola with almond milk and nuts for lunch this is where i get my daily greens i use a very large tupperware container and place washed lettuces radishes shredded carrots cukes olives etc all ready to go i top this salad with prepared proteins i cook up lean proteins like chicken turkey and fish enough to last for all lunches and dinners for the week i buy enough to allow four ounces per serving i figure out how many times i plan to eat out that week and adjust accordingly for dinner i make ahead tons of roasted steamed or sauteed vegetables i will make one starch a week to eat with dinner rotating between rice quinoa pasta or sweet potatoes other times i will make a large pot of soup or stew that incorporates all the food types a protein starch and lots of veggies for snacks i make a homemade trail mix with raw nuts raisins dried cherries and apples celery with almond butter and raisins is another favorite nut or granola bars also work for snacks all foods are placed in separate containers in the refrigerator i use a stainless steel container with a bpa free lid called lunch spots i buy only what i need for the week this keeps costs down and i don't have a lot of unused food sitting in a pantry when my daughter is home from school i just increase the amounts that i cook to accommodate feeding her as well all right y'all thanks again to matt diabella for joining us today thank you so much for having me this is fun i don't do a lot of podcast stuff so yeah it's great to have you guys yeah it's awesome happy man you just started something called uh slowgrowth.com slow growth academy can we talk about that for a second oh my god this was my big project for the year it was something that i had been talking about doing for a very long time um you know i make these videos on youtube that are usually around 10 minutes long and they usually dive into different narrow aspects of certain topics whether it's personal finance or habits or productivity and so what i wanted to do with slow growth and i was able to to bring on my brother hire him full time and as well as my wife natalie to help build this company was to create really intentional thoughtful courses um that help dive deeper into these topics that i'm really passionate and interested in and so the first course that we launched was on habits it's called simple habits and it guides people through how to build habits for themselves it really pulls primarily on my experience but also dives into the science of habit change and and how change really works and you know i i'm somebody who grew up like always struggling with being the smallest kid in school always struggling to put on weight build healthy habits build a successful business and i found myself stumbling and stumbling and it was through the trial and error that i was able to figure out what was working and what wasn't working and also just reading a lot of books and and and people who have helped to put me on that right path and so that's the first course the idea isn't to have a course platform like slow growth academy is the course platform and then simple habits is our first course but the idea isn't to have hundreds and hundreds of courses uh it's really probably one or two courses a year but really thoughtful really intentional i wanted to do something different and really bring high production value cinematography to courses in a way that hasn't been done before and isn't done often online and i'm really proud of what we've created and we've been getting some awesome feedback from people so far and for me and i know you guys know this firsthand like the the the biggest feedback that i get is when somebody tells me that it's helped them or that they're hey 30 days in or i'm 40 days in and i've been running every day and i'm building these habits and um you know habit change and lifestyle changes are not a straight line there's so many ups and downs and so um being able to build something that could potentially help people to get where they want to go has been very fulfilling now if i sign up for this will you teach me how to have biceps like yours that's some people people have been requesting this may or may not be working on simple biceps yes that's awesome yeah all right check it out slowgrowth.com for our added value this week uh might as well just talk about matt diabella's youtube channel yeah um man i'm really proud of what you've done man i really am just so proud to see what you've done the last three four five years i'm proud but i'm more jealous than proud that's your own ego yeah absolutely i i it couldn't have happened to a better person and the work that you've put in and you create these beautiful meaningful mini documentaries that are like nine minutes regularly if not every week i mean doing a nine minute documentary a month is in the the quality of your work so i would just encourage folks to check out your youtube channel thank you that really means that it's awesome we'll put a link to it in the show notes uh real quick for right here right now here's one thing that's going on in the life of the minimalist and also in the life of matthiavella go watch less is now go watch matt's film it's on it's on netflix uh you can check it out there we'll put a link to the trailer and the show notes how have you been describing this film to people oh i mean you know since it's changed so much so much we we kind of sometimes get stuck in the original version of it but it really is a documentary and i know that you you might call it a docu-special because there is this element of you guys just telling your story straight to the camera but but really it's it's a documentary that's that's what it feels like it dives so deep into your guy's story but it also talks about the culture that we live in in general and also how to work our way out of this consumer cycle that we're in if i could describe it in one line and we'll expand on this during the maximal it's irwin is in the film or irwin mcmanus and he has this line toward uh well the middle-ish in english and he says i think everyone should be able to etch a sketch their life yeah and if you were to i mean you need a a tag line for the film i think it's that yeah here's how to etch a sketch your life and i mean i love it there's so many lines that didn't make the film that i loved as well because we had so much stuff we'll be talking about that in a moment i before i was sort of treating it as a sequel and a prequel to minimalism it's neither because documentaries don't usually have prequels but like in a way it kind of is that so i encourage you to check it out it's called less is now it's on netflix uh this friday january 1st 2021. you can follow the minimalists on facebook twitter and instagram at the minimalist you can follow matt diavel he's at matt diabella at italian stallion on my space we need to come up with that twitter handle come to one of our live podcast shows visit the minimalist dot com slash tour to find a city near you if you have a question comment or minimalism tip for our podcast email a voice memo to podcast at theminimalists.com you can comment on this episode at youtube.com slash the minimalist and if you want our show notes and your inbox sign up for our email list over at the minimalists.com you'll receive our simple sunday emails as well and if you leave here today with one message we hope it's this love people and use things because the opposite never works thanks for listening y'all we'll see you next time thank you [Music] every little thing you think that you need every little thing you think that you need every little thing that's just feeding your greed oh i bet that you'll be fine without it

Channel: The Minimalists Podcast

Views: 71,089

Rating: 4.9328861 out of 5

Keywords: the minimalists, the minimalists podcast, health & wellness, podcast, minimalists, minimalism, minimal, less, Ryan Nicodemus, Joshua Fields Millburn, JFM, 30 day mins game, 90 90 rule, stuff, clutter, declutter, meaningful life

Id: XLJ3I0W_hq0

Length: 59min 15sec (3555 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 29 2020