How does changing your environment improve your trading?

What does "changing your environment" mean in Rihari's trading story?

Rihari says it means physically leaving the people, city and daily habits that discouraged his ambition, and replacing them with a city, a peer group and mentors who were already living at the level he wanted to reach.

In the video, he traces this through three places: New Zealand, where he says he was already earning "more than the average of like a salary" but felt boxed in; the Gold Coast, where he says being surrounded by people "on the up and up" pushed him to trading he describes as seven figures; and Dubai, where he says meeting people who casually discussed "50 to 100 million" made him feel, in his words, "like a bum again." He names a specific example from the Gold Coast: living at Century Cove, where he says he can "guarantee so many people are richer than me here," which he treats as proof that his own comparison point had shifted. None of this is presented in the video as a formula. It is Rihari's personal account of how his surroundings changed alongside his trading, told in his own words.

Why does Rihari say New Zealand held his trading back?

Rihari blames what he calls "tall poppy syndrome": a local mindset, in his description, where ambition gets mocked instead of encouraged, and where "life is a struggle" is treated as the default.

He says that when he tried to build something beyond a normal salary, people around him reacted with "why are you doing that, you're stupid" rather than support. He compares this to a clip of Mr Beast, who says he was told he was "crazy" early in his YouTube career and is now called a "genius" with more than 100 million subscribers. Rihari's takeaway, stated directly in the video, is "you got to be crazy until you succeed and then when you succeed you become a genius." This is Rihari's interpretation of his own experience and of a story about someone else's career; it is not a study of New Zealand culture, and the video offers no data on how common this reaction actually is.

How did moving to the Gold Coast change his trading, according to the video?

Rihari says the Gold Coast put him in daily contact with people who were "too busy" and "too much on the grind" to discourage him, and that this pressure to keep up is what he credits for reaching what he calls seven-figure trading.

He is explicit that this is about comparison, not location on its own: "you don't want to be at that top in the circles that you're at. You want to be at the bottom." He says he went from being near the top of his social circle by wealth in New Zealand to being near the bottom of his new circle on the Gold Coast, and that the gap is what drove him to work harder. He also raises, without resolving, the counterfactual: asked whether he could have hit the same result while staying in New Zealand, he answers "maybe if I blocked out every single other person," then calls it "unlikely." That is Rihari's own uncertainty about his story, stated in the video itself.

What happened when Rihari went to Dubai?

Rihari says the same pattern repeated at a higher level: he arrived expecting to feel successful and instead says he "felt like a bum again," because people there discussed sums of "50 to 100 million" as routine.

He describes hiring supercars, including a Ferrari, a Lamborghini and a G-Wagon, and says the experience felt hollow rather than exciting: "it just didn't feel cool at all," and he says he would have preferred to hire a driver instead. This account is presented as a personal reaction to a specific trip, not as commentary on Dubai, on supercars generally, or on what anyone else would feel in that situation.

How does Rihari say mentorship fits into changing your environment?

Rihari says the fastest way to close a gap is to pay for direct access to someone who has already done what you want to do, rather than teaching yourself by trial and error.

He gives two examples of his own spending on this principle: hiring a golf coach he describes as a "plus-4 handicap" player who has competed on tour, and hiring a former New Zealand police officer as a full-time personal trainer, bodyguard and driver because that person had "already gotten success in achieving the body that I want." He also says that high-net-worth people he has met are, in his experience, generous with information when asked directly, contradicting what he calls the common assumption that successful people are "stingy." He extends the same idea to his own work as a creator, saying he deliberately connects with other creators, appears on other people's podcasts, and catches up with people who have already succeeded "in whatever area it is," describing this as ongoing maintenance of his environment rather than a one-off move. Separately, he says one trader he has mentored, named George, is now trading full-time from Japan and "making on average, you know, at least 20,000 a week." The video presents this as a single case Rihari reports about one specific person he mentored, not as a typical result, an advertised outcome of any program, or a claim that mentorship produces a particular income. No figures in this section are independently verified; they are Rihari's own statements in the video.

What are the risks of reading this personal story as trading, business or income advice?

The video is a first-person account of one trader's life changes; it makes no claim about typical results, no offer of a service, no license claim and no promise that changing location or environment will produce trading profits for anyone else.

Rihari frames his experience as "my personal opinion" and repeatedly qualifies his own results, at one point saying he isn't sure he could sustain his current success if he moved back to New Zealand. He also frames the message in personal terms rather than instructional ones, saying "don't let anyone else define your success, define your destiny, define your life," which is a statement about his own outlook, not a description of a service, a system, or a licensed method. Nothing in the video states a price, a guarantee, or a repeatable business model, and this article does not extend it into one. Separately, independently published data shows that most people who trade retail CFDs, regardless of where they live, lose money in a given year, a fact detailed in the sourced-statistics section below. Changing environment, as Rihari describes it, is about motivation and mindset in his own account; it is not evidence against that broader risk.

What can a trader actually control about their environment, based on what the video describes?

Rihari's account points to controllable choices rather than location alone: who you talk to about your goals, who you compare yourself against, and whether you pay for direct mentorship instead of learning alone by trial and error.

He states plainly that the mechanism he credits is comparison and access, not geography for its own sake: being around people who are further ahead, so that "you have no choice but to elevate yourself." He also frames discomfort as part of the process rather than a sign of failure, saying that arriving in both the Gold Coast and Dubai initially made him feel behind before it made him work harder. He describes the internal shift in terms of openness rather than technique, saying his mind "expanded" from being in a space he pictures as "down here" to one "open and free" and "up here, where anything's possible." He also warns about the opposite path, saying that if you let the people around you talk you out of a goal, "you'll be doing the same thing that they're doing for the rest of your life," and frames the whole idea as tied to a broader belief that "as humans, we're meant to innovate, we're meant to grow." These are Rihari's own reflections on his own path, offered in the video as "my two cents," and are reported here as his claims rather than as a verified formula for any other trader.

How Rihari's account of "before" and "after" compares

The following table summarises contrasts Rihari draws in the video between his environment before and after he says he changed it. Every row reflects his own description of his own experience, not an independently verified measurement.

| What Rihari describes | Environment he says held him back (New Zealand) | Environment he says pushed him forward (Gold Coast, then Dubai) | |---|---|---| | Reaction to ambition | People allegedly said "why are you doing that, you're stupid" | People were "too busy" grinding to comment either way | | His rank in the room | Near the top of his circle by wealth, in his telling | Near the bottom, surrounded by people he says were richer | | General local mindset (his framing) | "Life is a struggle," which he links to tall poppy syndrome | Everyone "on the up and up," which he says raised his own bar | | Access to expertise | Self-taught, "trial and error," by his account | Paid golf coach, hired trainer, mentee traders around him | | His stated financial position | Earning "more than the average of like a salary" | Says he reached seven-figure trading, then met people discussing "50 to 100 million" | | His stated emotional reaction | Felt capable and comfortable | Felt "like a bum again" on first arriving in each new environment |

How can someone apply the environment-change idea Rihari describes, without treating it as a guarantee?

Rihari's video does not lay out a formal plan, but the actions he describes taking can be read as a rough sequence for auditing your own surroundings, reported here as his approach and not as advice tailored to any other person's situation.

1. Notice how people react when you state a goal. Rihari says the clearest sign a circle is holding someone back is a default reaction of "why would you do that," rather than curiosity or support.
2. Check who you are being compared to. Rihari says he deliberately moved from being near the top of his circle by wealth to being near the bottom of a new one, treating the gap as motivation rather than discouragement.
3. Ask successful people direct questions instead of assuming they will refuse. Rihari says the high-net-worth people he has met answer genuine questions "because they like to see other people interested," which was the opposite of what he expected.
4. Pay for structured access to someone who has already done the specific thing you want to do. Rihari cites his golf coach and personal trainer as his own examples, and is explicit that this is about buying a shortcut to a known method, not a trading recommendation.
5. Expect the shift to feel worse before it feels better. Rihari says arriving in a more advanced environment made him feel "like a bum again" both times he did it, before it became motivating.
6. Separate status symbols from the substance of the environment change. Rihari says hiring supercars in Dubai "didn't feel cool at all," and that the value he found in his new environment came from mentors and comparison, not from visible wealth.

What do independently verified sources say about the market this trading takes place in?

Two independently published sources describe the trading landscape around this story: an Australian regulator's report on retail CFD investor outcomes, and a central-bank survey on the size of the global foreign-exchange market. Neither addresses environment change directly.

According to ASIC Report 828: Risky business, 68% of Australian retail CFD investors lost money in the 2024 financial year. This figure comes from the regulator's own market-wide data, not from Rihari's account, and it applies regardless of where an individual trader lives, who they associate with, or how they describe their own results. According to the BIS 2025 Triennial Survey, average daily OTC foreign-exchange turnover reached US$9.6 trillion in April 2025, which places individual retail trading, wherever it happens, inside a market whose scale is set by global banks and institutions rather than by any one trader's location. Neither source makes any claim about mindset, mentorship or relocation; they are included here only as independently verified context for the market Rihari describes trading in, and they do not confirm or contradict anything he says about his own results.