(mellow music)
- Good morning from a country I never thought
I would ever go to in my entire life.
Good morning from Saudi Arabia.
Yesterday was a super long travel day,
almost 20 hours of travel.
And now I'm here for six days
with the Tourism Board of Saudi Arabia and Formula 1.
I am here to shoot Formula 1, which is like,
if you know me, if you know this channel,
you know I love cars.
This is like a dream trip.
This is literally like once in a lifetime, top dream trips
of all time.
Go to the Middle East, go and explore
and then go and shoot cars,
the best cars in the entire world.
So in today's video is basically,
I thought I would take you along on this trip
and also tell you the story and moments
that led up to me being able to do this for a living,
getting paid to travel the world
and work with tourism boards,
and my favorite car companies in the world,
and different companies that I've dreamed about working with
and leave you with some tips
so that hopefully you will be able to do this too
at some point in your career.
So let's go and get some breakfast
'cause I think I have a half an hour
until I'm supposed to be downstairs and debriefed
for the next part of our trip.
(mellow hip hop music)
All right, this might be the craziest buffet
I've ever been to.
Ever.
(mellow hip hop music)
All right, so just finished breakfast.
It was amazing, and now I'm doing a quick Instagram story
to tell everybody that I'm here,
but also I'm contractually obligated to do a story.
So I quickly made one in Lens Distortions,
which I'll show you what it looks like right here.
And then I gotta run upstairs and grab my bags,
and then I will tell you
a little bit about how this all started,
because it's kind of Ben Brown and Casey Neistat's fault,
to be honest.
Four seasons breakfast buffet, like a 14 out of 10.
That was- (Chris joyfully murmuring)
Oh, there's a juice.
(mellow hip hop music)
I'm doing the Arabic coffee.
It's like a tea, coffee mix.
Not bitter, a little sweet.
Okay, so I kinda blame Ben Brown for all this.
If you guys don't know who Ben Brown is,
he's a YouTuber.
He kinda shifted his content recently,
but about four years ago,
he was making travel content and daily vlogs.
And I was obsessed with his work
and he released this one video called "Visual Vibes Canada".
And I distinctly remembered
sitting in my parents' basement watching this video
and it blew my mind.
I had never resonated with a piece of content
so much in my entire life.
It inspired me so much
that I wanted to start doing the same thing.
So I blame you, Ben.
You made that video and it changed something in me.
And after I saw that video,
I was going on a trip with my parents
and I bought a whole bunch of new gear,
and I was I'm gonna film my Arizona trip,
and then I'm gonna try to sell this
to the Arizona Tourism Board.
I made this video called "Show Me Arizona."
I edited the whole thing
and then I remember sending it
to the Tourism Board of Arizona, being like,
do you wanna buy my video?
And they were like, no, but we will share it on Twitter.
And that was my first piece of leverage.
I didn't even realize how important that was at the time
'cause I was like, oh, I'm not getting paid.
No, I had my first piece of leverage
getting shared on Twitter by a tourism board,
which means they saw value in that video.
So that year, I had a goal to travel once a month
out of every single month for the entire year,
'cause I was trying to just have life experiences
and go and see the world, and start making more content
'cause if I wanted to be a travel vlogger
or a travel cinematographer,
I had to travel and make those types of videos.
So my next trip was Ireland.
Our group is going right now,
so I will finish the story in just a second here.
(multiple people talking over each other)
If you guys don't know North Borders, you gotta go,
just go and check out his channel right now.
Mike and I have been chatting over DMS
for like two years. - For like two years?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, two years.
- We met at the airport in Frankfurt,
and we've just been carspotting the entire time right now.
If you're into car photography,
definitely go check out his channel.
(energetic electronic music)
Okay, so the next trip was Ireland.
So basically what I did is before the trip,
I searched the internet and I found a contact
at the Tourism Board of Ireland
and I sent them my video from Arizona.
I said, look,
the Tourism Board of Arizona shared my video on Twitter.
I didn't hear back from them for like a few weeks.
And then eventually I got an email back
from the Tourism Board of Ireland
and they're like, hey, Chris,
we saw your video, we really liked your content.
Here's a letter that you can show people
and businesses around Ireland
that will hopefully get you into certain places
and get you certain experiences.
The letter essentially said something along the lines of,
we are the Tourism Board of Ireland.
We support Chris Hau's video.
If you can do anything for him
to make his video more interesting, please help him out.
It will actually increase the tourism in Ireland.
So I had this letter, super excited, and I went to Ireland.
We landed in Dublin.
And one of the first things that we went to, obviously,
is the Guinness factory.
So we entered the Guinness factory
and I go to the front desk and I'm like, hi,
I have this letter here.
Is there anything that you can do for me?
And they're like, just one second.
We gotta make a few calls.
And as this is happening, my friend's family is like,
come on, we gotta get going.
Like, we want to do this tour, we have to get home.
And I'm waiting there.
I'm impatient.
I'm like, these guys want to go, okay.
Should I even bother waiting for this phone call?
Hopefully the marketing
will even want to do something with me.
They have a call come down and they say, hey, Chris,
we just saw your note.
We'd love to offer you a free tour of the Guinness factory
and a free beer.
Are you interested?
And of course I said, yes.
And in that moment,
I realized that there was an actual value exchange.
A company in the world,
the Tourism Board, and the Guinness factory
saw value in what I was producing, my content
in exchange for a free beer.
So that free beer meant so much to me.
(upbeat hip hop music)
Okay, so we are at our first stop here, Diriyah.
I might not be saying that right.
But look at this behind us.
(upbeat hip hop music)
Okay, so after I made that Ireland video,
I got my free beer, the next location, I was like,
where should I go to next?
And someone was like,
why don't you make a video about Toronto?
So I did that.
I made a "Show Me Toronto" video.
And I remember when I was done with the video, I was like,
well maybe I'll send this to a few media outlets and blogs
'cause that was a big thing at the time.
Huffington Post was like the thing
that everybody was looking at at that time,
and Facebook was kinda just releasing videos.
People were starting to go viral on Facebook.
I was like, you know what I'm gonna try to do?
I'm gonna send my video to Huffington Post,
see what they say.
And I got an email back from Huffington Post
saying, we shared your video.
And that day the video started going viral in Toronto.
It got 10,000 views in like three hours.
And the next day it had a 100,000 views.
It got shared by our mayor.
It got shared by our prime minister.
And I was like, all right, so this is a thing.
I should start making videos about cities in Canada,
so I made the Toronto video.
The next video I made was Ottawa.
That video got a million views.
And then my friend Phil was like,
why don't we go to Montreal and Quebec City,
which are these other amazing cities in Canada.
And I started upgrading my equipment.
I moved to the Sony A7S 'cause I was like,
you know what, let's start making better quality videos.
Maybe that will help me land more jobs,
and I'll be able to pitch tourism boards
and potentially get paid to do this more often.
So I made that entire portfolio.
I paid for it myself.
And that was the beginning of establishing content
to be able to start pitching brands
to hopefully just get paid to do this.
(uplifting music)
Good morning.
It is- (Chris laughing)
It is 4:50 AM.
We got in at 1:00 AM 'cause I went and shot this photo
last night of the place that we're staying at here in AlUla.
So we're up at 4:50 AM to catch sunrise
at this one location, and it's going to be epic.
(bright electronic music)
It's too early in the morning.
Morning.
Okay, we just arrived and we're here for sunrise.
We're gonna get amazing photos.
I'm just hyped.
As a photographer,
it's been so long since I've gone out and shot photos.
Almost two years 'cause of COVID.
Super remote area.
I am friggin' stoked.
(bright electronic music)
So cool.
Okay, you guys want to come meet
one of the best photographers in the entire world?
Bro, I can't wait to see the photos that you take here.
- This is insane.
- [Chris] Right?
(bright electronic music)
Okay, so going back to the story
about how I actually turned this into a full-time job,
and how I'm even here, and lack of sleep,
and everything else.
So the next location that we are going to,
we booked a trip to this place called the Azores.
There's literally these islands
in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean.
I went on kayak.com.
They have this like little option
where you can look at a world map
and see what the cheapest flight is anywhere in the world
at a certain month.
And it was literally a ticket for $325 round trip
in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean
to this place in Portugal.
I was like, whatever.
I'll book some flights there with my friend, Kyle,
and we'll go and have a good time.
And I'm going to email the tourism board
and see if they can do any support for us at that time,
'cause I kind of had this portfolio at this point,
we had a couple of viral videos.
We had some press, I feel like I had some good leverage.
I felt like I was in a good position
to potentially get a paid tourism board trip.
So again, I searched the internet,
went to visitazores and I found a contact there
and I emailed them the pitch.
(crickets chirping) And I waited.
So it's the day before the trip.
And I'm like, oh, I guess they can't do anything,
which is fine.
I was fine to pay for the trip.
But at that point I was like,
this was everything to finally get a tourism board trip.
I get an email back
literally the day before we were supposed to take off.
And they're like, hey, Chris, we want to support your trip.
And essentially what you're gonna do
is when you land in the Azores,
you're gonna have a full itinerary.
You're gonna be flying to different islands.
You're gonna eat food cooked in a volcano.
You're gonna go on a bike ride.
You're gonna go to abandoned hotels.
You're gonna see the best landscapes you've ever seen.
And it all came together.
Literally one year after watching Ben Brown's video,
I got my first PR experience,
my first paid travel experience
where all my expenses were covered in the Azores.
And I remember distinctly looking out
and feeling like I got so emotional in that moment,
like I wanted to cry
because I realized that it was actually a possibility
to do this for a living.
That moment sits with me so strong.
I'll never forget that moment 'cause it was so powerful.
And now, look at us,
it's been four years of literally doing this.
And now, I'm in Saudi Arabia.
Having these experiences,
going to epic locations, meeting incredible people.
If you have a dream like this, it's absolutely possible.
I'm just like a normal person.
I was just somebody who liked making videos.
I was like, I want to travel the world,
made that my goal, and found a way to work backwards
and just kept working at it and that was my only focus,
and it actually happened.
We just pulled over to the side 'cause we saw camels.
We're like, oh, are those wild camels?
He's like, yeah, yeah, don't get too close,
they'll bite you.
We're gonna go and shoot the camels over here.
Oh, it's so cool.
(ethereal hip hop music)
All right, just quick camel content there.
I also wanted to mention, for the last year,
I have been working on writing and producing a course
on how to actually get paid to travel,
how to get your first free travel experiences.
Essentially, if you put in the work to get to this point
where you could be working with tourism boards
and getting paid and this is your full-time career.
I've been working on this with Bright Trip.
The links are below.
Johnny Harris is part of the course.
Nathaniel Drew is a part of the course.
We've got is Iz Harris.
They all have information that they want to share.
I have put my blood, sweat, and tears into this thing.
There is so much value.
So if you guys want to go check that out, links are below.
This is all the information that you need
to literally start doing what I am doing in this video
as a job.
That's it.
So if you guys liked this video, please press like.
It actually makes a difference.
Subscribe and hit the bell to be notified for future videos.
And we will catch you guys in the next one.
I have a couple more Saudi videos coming out.
I love you.
Thanks for coming along on this trip.
Catch you in the next one.
Bye.
Actually, I want to show you something real quick.
Look at this place.
This is where I'm staying.
Like, what?
Here, let me show you inside.
Okay, let's bring this up.
Just
so grateful that this is a thing.
Okay, bye.