MILLIONAIRE GIVES Away MONEY and LIVES in VW Van

Mazzi, like many people, got caught up in the rat race at a young age. His family moved from Brazil to Dubai when he was 14 where he was exposed to the city's hustle culture and extravagance. To him it seemed that everyone who lived there was acutely focused on ways to make more money. Even his father, who was able to retire at the age of 40, influenced him to put his energy into the pursuit of wealth. When he was 23, he set a goal for himself to become a millionaire by the time he was 30 as a way to one-up his father's achievement. It was around this time that he started his first company.

By his 30th birthday, he had surpassed this goal. With a few million dollars in the bank, he decided to buy a ferrari to celebrate the achievement. On the surface, everything seemed to be going perfectly, but only a few weeks later an event would force him to reconsider his values.

Coming out from a party one night after a night of drinking, Mazzi got into an accident with five other cars. It landed him in jail for a night, which brought him to the sobering realization that the lifestyle he was living was forwarding in any way. “I was this guy that you know in my own mind and my own ego I had achieved so much but yet I was in the same kind of cell and everything as everybody else.” It forced him to take a hard look at his lifestyle. This self reflection brought him to the realization that it wasn’t what he wanted. He realized that while there were a lot of ‘things’ he was able to acquire with money, happiness wasn’t one of them.

This made him decide to make a big change in his life. He gave away his businesses and started traveling. He went to Europe, starting out backing and staying in hostels. “It was just strange coming from a 5-star kind of hotel life to, you know sharing dorms with people.” It was this aggressive lifestyle change that made him realize what he wanted in life. He found connections with people on the road to be much more fulfilling than the luxuries that he left behind.

He ended up buying a place in Ecuador to treat as a home base in a small mountain village away from all the hustle and bustle of the city life that he grew up with. It provides him a good jump off point for his continued travels that he partakes in every couple months. While travelling he lives out of a 1985 Volkswagen Adventure Wagon that he bought in San Diego.

It’s converted with a permanent high roof. While this does give the vehicle a higher profile and increase wind resistance when on the road, It allows Mazzi the convenience of standing up inside without needing to pop a roof like Westfalias. It also gives him access to a lot more storage than he would normally have with a pop top.

Like a lot of camper vans, space is conserved through the use of convertible and stowable furniture. The table he uses is able to easily fold away while the bench in the back pulls out into the bed that he sleeps on. While he does have access to a second loft bed in the high roof, he’s decided to use it primarily as extra storage.

The van has a small galley complete with a built in stove, sink and even a fridge. It’s everything that he needs for extended travelling minus a shower, but Mazzi says that finding places to shower while travelling isn’t all that difficult, so the omission doesn’t bother him.

While travelling, Mazzi decided to start a new business called Spice of My People. During his travels, he buys stones, tribal medicines, incense and other things from different parts of the world that he visits and provides access for those who might not be able to access these items ordinarily. Often these are from remote communities that are either relatively unknown, or simply hard to get to.

He is able to connect communities from opposite corners of the world while sustaining a mobile lifestyle. Instead of the sole goal of being lucrative like businesses that he’d started in the past, this latest endeavour is a way to interact with people on a human level, which is something that Mazzi finds a lot more fulfillment in. 

“Right now we have one active center that is in the south of Brazil in this small fishing village and we've set up a little medical clinic for them. We have a full-time doctor and a full-time nurse that is paid by the government. We've donated the house that was on the property and we basically provide services to people completely for free.” All of the businesses that Mazzi runs (Spice of My People and a Falafel restaurant near his home in Vilcabamba) donate fifty percent of their profits to charitable endeavors like this that Mazzi was able to start.

“My secret to happiness is to live in the present. I feel that the more I'm in line with what I'm really here to do, the more I am happy doing it, and then the right people come my way and the right situations happen and everything just becomes great. I am happier than I've ever been in my life. I don't remember ever ever seeing a picture of myself smiling in it and now I can hardly take the smile off my face whenever I'm going around you know.”

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