Chad Zuber – Detailed Biography

Chad Zuber is an adventurer and a popular survival YouTuber.

He has over 2.4 million subscribers on his eponymous YouTube channel.

Introduction

Chad Zuber was born on 30 August 1972 in Los Angeles, United States.

Zuber is a German surname.

His family, along with the 10-month-old Chad, moved to Escondido, San Diego County.

Nature & adventure

The young Chad fell in love with nature and enjoyed spending time in nature. He used to fish, collect things, hunt lizards and snakes.

He used to get excited reading about the experiences of National Geographic photographers and videographers in the wild.

Chad fell in love with adventures at a young age, when he, along with his father and brother, used to travel on adventurous camping trips to Baja California, Mexico.

Chad learnt about the culture in Baja California and was impressed by its simplicity. The young Chad was interested in the indigenous cultures.

As a kid, he wanted to become a millionaire by 30, have either a good job or business, a nice house and car.

The young Chad was short, skinny, unconfident and timid and got bullied a lot.

He started lifting weights in high school but as a junior, he got bullied by a freshman.

Dropping out

Chad was a good student and did his schooling from Orange Glen High School, Escondido.

After graduating high school, in 1990, at 18, he wanted to act in movies and produce them.

After his schooling, Chad joined Palomar College in California to study Spanish, oceanography, native American studies, art, acting and cinema but dropped out of college after two years.

A struggling actor

The young Chad, with his friend’s VHS camcorder, used to make comical movies with his friends.

As he loved the process, he decided to become an actor at 20 but got married at the time, had financial responsibilities and a decent paying job.

Chad had a son at 21 and at the time, his focus was to work in his job and earn.

He also wanted to become a director and make movies. So, he took an acting class and workshops and started pursuing acting.

Over the years, Chad never had much success with acting as he had no connections. He was getting only occasional low-paying, small acting roles.

He felt lost and took another acting class and started doing more background roles in movies.

Chad worked with Dolph Lundgren, Andy Garcia and Mario Van Peebles.

He found the acting career to be difficult and frustrating. He wanted to live in Los Angeles but couldn’t as he had children to support.

At the time, Chad wasn’t able to afford headshots as the photographers were charging exorbitant fees but as he had a camera, he decided to learn photography and take his own headshots.

He fell in love with photography, while learning it and started pursuing it.

Earning with the photography business was easier than that with acting. At the time, he was also working in a full-time sales job.

Chad got his first photo camera, a 35-mm one, at 19.

He started prioritising photography over acting because he felt more freedom in photography and unlike in acting, he didn’t need to spend most of the time looking for work.

Travel therapy

Chad got divorced at 27 due to marital problems and he had two children by the time.

He made some lifestyle changes and started living out of his vehicle to save money and follow his passions.

Chad started training in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and travelling and started experiencing freedom.

He travelled to Cancún, Mexico on a 11-day trip with little money and slept on the beaches and on some nights, he didn’t even sleep at all.

Chad used to eat just a can of sardines and a bell pepper or cheap tacos for dinner.

Even though he felt exhausted, the trip was a life-changing experience.

Chad fell in love with travel and wanted to break free from his job and explore the world.

Thanks to travelling, he started doing more photography.

Perils of recession

After working as a supervisor and shift manager at a manufacturing company, Chad went into a sales job.

He didn’t like the monotonous job but it was flexible and easy and he was earning around $5000 per month.

But the 2008 recession made his sales job tough.

Chad’s photography business was doing well and growing before the recession and he was earning a few hundred dollars per day.

But this changed with recession as it put his regular clients out of business and he was left with no clients and his income plummeted.

Chad had to sometimes take loans for rent and went into a lot of debt.

He learnt about stock photography in 2009 and started selling stock photos.

After his first income, which was $1, which he earned after selling a stock photo of San Felipe, he was hooked and started frequently uploading photos on sites like Shutterstock, Adobe Stock and Dreamstime.

Chad had a library of around five thousand images, thanks to him photographing for many years, which he started selling as stock photos and earning some supplemental income.

Even while working at multiple jobs, he continued working on building his stock photography business on the side.

Eventually, his business grew and he started earning passive income. At one point, he started earning around $1000 from stock photography and he remarried at the time and had another child.

During the recession, Chad was working in low-paying jobs and was unable to find a high-paying job.

He went to the temp agencies after the recession but couldn’t get any jobs.

Chad started working at a telemarketing firm for $10 per hour, which wasn’t at all sufficient. He struggled to work at the job and got depressed. So, he quit it.

Even though he spent long hours applying for jobs, many times, he didn’t even get a call back. Not having a college degree made it difficult for him to get jobs.

Occasionally, he was offered commission only sales jobs where he wasn’t offered a salary. He rejected those jobs.

Chad stuck with his previous sales job for some time, even though he was earning just $50 per day, as it offered him flexibility.

He started doing pizza delivery to make ends meet.

Chad was frustrated as he used to work all day and used to also do some extra work in Los Angeles. He sometimes slept in his car when he had multiple days of work.

He delivered pizzas even on the weekends and never had family time and never travelled with family. Even when his son wanted to play with him, he couldn’t, as he was busy with work.

Chad was doing stock photography in between and it was slowly growing. He was also modelling at the time.

He used to do ultrasound modelling, where he would act as a live human subject for medical training scans of his internal organs. He did this job for over a decade.

Chad did various odd jobs like delivering flyers door-to-door of a cable company, collecting signatures for petitions in front of Walmart, distributing door hangers for Time Warner Cable, numerous sales and telemarketing jobs.

He was earning $3-5 per hour for collecting signatures and hated the job.

Even though he worked at multiple jobs, he never had extra money.

Blessing in disguise

Chad used to deliver pizza and travel to LA for extra work in his car.

At one point, his car’s engine blew and the head gasket got damaged. As he didn’t have $3000 to fix it, he sold his car cheap.

Before selling his vehicle, he calculated his earnings from the car after deducting all the car’s expenses and found that he was earning only $8 an hour, which was the minimum wage at the time.

Chad felt that instead of working hard in multiple jobs for minimum wage, he could either work in a fast-food restaurant or do any other job.

He decided to not work at multiple jobs but instead just focus on the stock photography and modelling jobs.

Thanks to this decision, even though his income didn’t increase much, Chad had more free time and his quality of life increased.

After his mother-in-law passed away and his father-in-law had a heart attack, he got rid of his apartment in the US and secured his stuff in storage. And he, with his wife, who was from Mexico, moved to live in Mexico for a while.

Chad started saving $1350 a month on the apartment rent and started living as a nomad, travelling between Mexico and the United States. He used to occasionally visit the US for modelling jobs.

Thanks to the low cost of living in Mexico, he was able to live on the income of his stock photos and modelling without working 40-hour weeks. Living in that country for $500 a month taught him frugality.

At the time, thanks to his love of videography, Chad also started publishing YouTube videos. He shot some solo adventure and travel videos in Mexico.

He was earning around $800 a month from stock photography at the time.

Chad used to go on trips to Mexican jungles and shoot stock photos, and videos for YouTube.

At the time, his main focus was photography, instead of YouTube, as it used to pay for his trip and expenses.

Also, modelling out of the town gave Chad a lot of travelling opportunities and he used those opportunities to shoot photos and add to his stock photo library.

As his modelling jobs didn’t pay for accommodations, he used to save money on hotels by camping outside and in the woods and sleeping in airports, in parks, under trees and by the Potomac River.

Out of all the places, Chad felt difficulty sleeping in the airports due to noise and disturbances.

His dream was to save up money to buy a small plot of land in the Mexican jungle for around $5000. And if he didn’t make it in life, his plan was to build a hut there and live frugally.

No Gringos Allowed

Chad started a blog, No Gringos Allowed, while in Mexico and started sharing his experiences as an American in Mexico.

He wanted to travel across the country and publish videos and blog posts on Mexico.

His idea was to make No Gringos Allowed a go-to travel website, cover the non-touristy places of Mexico and connect the blog to his YouTube channel.

But Chad had to stop working on his blog after he got infected at a Mexican gym and spent a week in hospital.

Good times didn’t last long

After receiving a few threats from small-town Mexicans, he decided to spend more time in the US.

So, Chad returned to his home country in 2015 and would occasionally visit his family in Mexico.

He rented an office and started living in it. Living there wasn’t an issue for him as he previously lived out of a vehicle for five years.

Chad used to go out to shoot photos and videos and then edit them in his office. Likewise, he lived in the office for three years.

During his last year at the office, his family returned to the US but he couldn’t afford an apartment. So, his wife and son started living at his friend’s house while he started working hard to save for an apartment.

Chad started driving for Lyft for 50-60 hours a week, which sometimes extended to 70 hours.

Driving the vehicle for long hours caused a lot of physical problems and it affected his back and hip. It took him many years to recover.

Chad drove for Lyft for a little over a year and at the time, he also started working as a furniture mover.

Even though the furniture moving job was the better paying one, he tore a bicep, damaged his elbow and back from lifting hundreds of pounds. But he was able to get an apartment at last.

Chad also worked in 16-hour shifts, for six weeks, with zero days off, in a fish processing plant in Alaska, where he daily handled 20-30 pounds of dead fish.

His jobs, at the time, were unsustainable.

Chad was offered a good-paying job by his friend and accepting it would have solved his financial problems. But he turned down the offer knowing that he couldn’t work for long in jobs which didn’t interest him.

Self-reliance

During the recession, Chad became dejected as he couldn’t succeed in his business and job even after working hard.

He dreamt of becoming an adventurer in the wilderness as he wasn’t interested in his job.

As Chad wasn’t able to sustain his family due to the recession, he started working on reducing his expenses.

He stopped taking supplements by which he started saving $100 a month.

Chad started taking trips to the wilderness, exploring it and learning primitive living techniques.

He used to run and exercise in the hills and as he felt vegetables to be expensive, he started taking a bag with him and collecting vegetables in the hills.

Thanks to this, Chad started relying on nature for his sustenance rather than money and this started his journey of self-reliance.

He loved reading books and used to take a couple of guide books along with him on the trails to identify the edible plants and test the plants by eating them.

If Chad couldn’t identify the plants, he used to take their pictures and research them on the internet or in books after returning home.

Soon, he started bringing home a lot of free, organic and healthy vegetables from the hills.

Thanks to this, Chad developed a passion for nature, survival, self-reliance and homesteading.

He loves exploring places like jungles, deserts and islands.

Learning self-reliance gave him self-confidence as he started to stop fearing about not having enough money for his bills and food as he knew that he doesn’t need money to build shelter and acquire food.

The real freedom

Chad became truly self-reliant in nature as he learnt things like collecting food, building shelter, hand making cutting tools and making pottery.

He enjoyed the quietness of nature and found a spiritual connection to nature.

Nature not only gave him food but also peace, balance and an escape from the stress of modern life.

Chad found true freedom in nature as there weren’t many man-made laws.

He previously was a people pleaser but being alone in nature freed him.

He doesn’t go to the gym, instead he exercises in nature by climbing trees, running, swimming, hiking, lifting weights and doing calisthenics.

Chad has an athletic body thanks to being active and having a good diet made of whole, natural ingredients. Also, he doesn’t oversleep.

His inspirations are the strong octogenarians and nonagenarians living in tiny communities in small villages.

YouTube & success

Before starting on YouTube, Chad used to write blog posts, sharing his travel and adventure experiences.

He started his eponymous YouTube channel on 2 December 2011 but published his first video, “Fun Harvest of Prickly Pears (Tunas)”, on 16 November 2012.

He fell in love with producing YouTube videos, thanks to his love for videography.

Chad transferred his desire of becoming a director towards his YouTube channel and started sharing his love of nature and exploration through his videos.

Even though he started working on his channel from 2012, his videos started getting traction only in 2017.

On his third trip to Isla de Culebra, Chad made a 12-part video series, “Snake Island Survival Adventure”. It was a huge success and he started earning from YouTube.

As he realized the earning potential of YouTube, he started seriously working on his primitive survival channel.

Currently, Chad has over 2.4 million subscribers.

He has another YouTube channel, No Gringos Allowed, but is currently not working on it.

Most of the time Chad lives in the wilderness except for the times when he has to return to the city to edit and upload videos and visit his family.

He researches a lot about indigenous tribes and their living methods and puts them into practice and shares a lot of traditional and cultural methods of survival and living on his channel.

He published Wandering Soles: One Step at a Time book on 3 August 2024.

Pushing it forward

At 45, while living in the office, Chad was unsure about his future and was worried as he didn’t have it together.

He decided to learn primitive survival skills to live in the wilderness on his own in case everything else fails.

At the time, Chad felt an urgency to learn these skills as fast as he could as he was 45 by then.

Even though his YouTube channel wasn’t growing as expected at the time, he kept working on it, in his free time, as he enjoyed making videos and felt that he had a message to share with people.

Working in nature caused a lot of strain in his relationship and family as his family members used to think that he went crazy as he was digging dirt to build a hut.

So, Chad used to keep his work secret and only shared it on social media and to a few people in real life.

At the time, he was working at a ridesharing job and moving furniture. He got depressed from working long hours at the ridesharing job.

During the times when Chad wanted to quit YouTube, his online friend Gavin, from England, encouraged him not to quit and keep going. Also, receiving positive comments for his videos helped.

He published the video, “First Primitive Year at the Hut”, in January 2019 and on the day this video went viral, he badly tore his bicep while working out.

Chad couldn’t drive the car for his job and couldn’t lift the furniture due to the bicep injury. It took a full year for this injury to heal.

During the next two days after the video became viral, he got 200,000 subscribers and was earning more than expected.

The hut video got 20 million views in the first two weeks and Chad was able to pay off his debt. Currently, this video has over 92 million views.

After receiving the YouTube Silver Play Button, he started earning well and became a full-time YouTuber.

Inspiration

Around 2018, Chad was walking through a wild, undeveloped land and started playing with the dirt. He mixed it with water and made a small brick and wondered how hard it would get.

He left it to dry in the summer sun and the brick turned very hard after a couple of days. So, he decided to make a wall and started making more bricks.

At the time, Chad was inspired by the John Plant of the Primitive Technology YouTube channel. John was a successful YouTuber making videos of primitive houses.

He was inspired by the popularity of that niche and so, he too decided to build an adobe hut and document it on his channel.

Chad spent a few months working on the hut in between his other jobs and he finished the hut, with his bare hands, just before the rains. Luckily, it survived a heavy rainstorm.

He developed back, hip, wrist and knee pain from working long hours at his driving job. But as he started digging to build the hut, it proved to be a good exercise.

Chad suffered left wrist pain for years but it vanished as he mixed mud with his hands.

Also, carrying the bricks, squatting down and scooting on his feet were good exercises.

Realization

Upon travelling to remote places in Mexico, Chad observed that the people there were connected to nature, hand-making things, spending quality time with their families and all their needs were met and they were very happy despite not being rich.

Thanks to this, he realized that possessing money and material things isn’t the answer. So, he stopped working countless hours for money and material possessions and started spending more time in nature.

Cartoon saves life

While on Chad’s first solo, week-long trip to the deserted Isla de Culebra (snake island) in Puerto Rico, he bought only a little food. So, he foraged on the island and ate coconuts, molluscs and plants and suffered from dehydration at times.

At one dusk, he got severely dehydrated and was stuck on a peninsula with a cliff on the one side and thick thorny cactus on the other.

Chad wasn’t able to call for help, as there was no cell phone reception and he started panicking.

He became desperate and chanced upon a tall cactus but was unsure if it was edible or not.

But at the time, he remembered a cartoon character eating cactus and so he decided to eat it and hydrate himself.

When Chad cut and ate a little piece, it tasted like a cucumber. So, he cut the whole arm of the cactus, peeled off its spines and ate it and got rehydrated.

He regained energy and thinking abilities and was able to crawl under the thorny cactus. He got out of the thick spiny thorny vegetation, found water and quenched his thirst.

This incident not only made him more confident but also taught him about his limitations.

This trip cemented his love to be in nature.

Personal life

Chad is married and has three children.

He knows Russian, Brazilian Portuguese, Mixteco and Spanish and loves learning about medicinal plants and ancient traditional cooking methods.

His favourite food in the wilderness are fruits. He hates technology and loves doing things manually.

Chad loves hiking, camping, fishing, swimming, running, trail running, travelling, making cordage from plants, making baskets, working with clay, cooking, learning about various cultures and learning languages.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Chad Zuber?

Share with me in the comment section below.