Modern Wisdom - #077 - Dominic McGregor - Sobriety And The Future Of Social Media Marketing

Episode Date: June 3, 2019

Dominic McGregor is the COO and Co Founder of Social Chain. Today I'm sitting down with Dom to catch up after we first spoke on Modern Wisdom 12 months ago. We reflect on his continuing journey through sobriety, why he believes that Social Chain may know their users better than they even know themselves and where the future of online advertising is heading. Thank you to Social Chain for letting me use their fantastic studio and Video Guy Ollie for recording everything. I can't wait to go back. Extra Stuff: Listen to Dom's first episode on Modern Wisdom - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/005-dominic-mcgregor-controlling-worlds-social-media/id1347973549?i=1000403107274 Follow Dom on Instagram - https://instagram.com/dpjmcgregor Check out Dom's company Social Chain - https://www.socialchain.com/ Check out everything I recommend from books to products and help support the podcast at no extra cost to you by shopping through this link - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello friends, welcome back to the Modern Wisdom Podcast. Today my guest is Dominic McGregor, COO of Social Chain and Old Time Modern Wisdom Favourite. I spoke to him about a year ago and we caught up about how his experience with sobriety and thoughts on social media were going and today it is time for part two. One year later on we're finding out how his journey with sobriety and growing the UK's largest social media agency, probably one of the largest in the world. They've got offices in New York and all over the place now. But yeah, he's a fascinating guy. I love sitting down with him. This concludes the third of my series of taking over social change podcast studios.

So hopefully they will let me back very soon. As always, if you do have any thoughts, comments or feedback about the episode, feel free to get at me at Chris Wellex on all social media. But for now, please welcome Dominic McGregor of Social Chain Fame. How are you man? Good, thank you, how are you? Very good. Welcome to my studio. Yes, nice, yeah. It's really a lovely year, is it? Very good. It's been almost exactly a year since we sat down.

Yeah, about a year and two weeks. Yeah, almost exactly bang on. How have you been last year? Yeah, been really good. I've messaged you the other week because I was in the gym. A lovely woman called Tracy said to me, I heard you, I heard you on a podcast. I went, oh my god.

Hi, she's like the PT there. I've never seen it, she must be new or something. And she's like, oh, I'll, which one? And she's like, what, what on wisdom? I was like, okay. And she's like, since I've listened to that podcast, I've stopped drinking. I've done it, I've done six months, and, and she's like, since I've listened to that podcast, I've stopped drinking. I've done it, I've done six months and my whole life's changed. I was like,

I remember why I talk about all this stuff so much. Yeah, and I was like, I'm so happy, I'm so happy for you and she was really lovely, had a nice conversation. And then at literary, that was, that was walking out the gym, I picked my phone up, I texted you and said, look. Got to go again. Got to go again. It's been a year because it came up on my time. Memories.

Memories on Facebook, everyone checks out every single morning. What was I doing six years ago? Oh my God, delete that. Seven years ago to delete that. That's all it is, isn't it? It's just a way of moving the window of whatever you've got going on in your life, just like this. So there's nothing after whatever period you've put in. And in seven years time you go, oh my god, I was doing this today, like I've ever done that.

So, some of the comments are the most cringy things I've ever put on. Like, if you don't look at your memories, look at them and just think, who was I? Yeah, you're a different person. You're totally right. But yeah, man, you were... We're getting out on Doom today. No, we're not. However, later on we are going to look at our suggested videos on YouTube.

Do you want to explain what you think about suggested videos on YouTube and how they're a window into someone's soul? So yeah, everything, obviously we social check, working social media, so we do a lot of paid social advertising, so we kind of high kind of hypothesize that we know people better than themselves, but we definitely know we know people better than their spouses or their best friends, no people, because like, you just, the things you do on your phone in the social media,

that gets starred, but no one, you never tell people that you never sit there and be like, oh, last night I did this or, last night I watched that or I really like this picture. So I went home to York and I was talking to my friends and I was just talking about coming to some of the stuff that you can do on social media now because they are working like very traditional worlds. And I said, you know, all that aside, like between adult here, we know it, well we know

it's been friends for 15 years now, but we don't really know each other. Now what do you mean? Well, the way I think you can only really know someone, or the easiest way to really know someone is what they consume on the internet between the hours of 11.30 and 12.30 when no one else is around. That's who you are. That's some of you are a person. It cuts so deep. It really cuts so deep. That history of what you've watched, you know, YouTube, internet, whatever you want to look at it, is who you are as a person. That's your weird thing and that's, that's, that weird thing. And that says more about me and more about Chris, then we can sit here and say in our conversation.

Okay. Mine are really boring. There actually are. You've been well into Brexit and researching that reason. Is it just a lot of political stuff? Number one. It's good. Empire. How Britain made the modern world. There we go. That's pretty normal, pretty normal. Number one for me, little figure, little finger is

the protagonist, Game of Thrones ending. Straight onto the Game of Thrones content. Breaking news, Theresa May's Brexit deal rejected. Oh god, I'll get the breaks on there. Straight on to the Game of Thrones content. Yeah. Breaking news, Theresa May's Brexit deal rejected. Oh god, I got to get the Brexit on there. Yeah. Yeah. I scroll through a couple. Game of Thrones season eight, teaser, white walkers. Yeah.

Game of Thrones in there. Nothing too bad. How China's rise will change the world? I think I've seen that one as well. So I've got some Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan on leaving Neverland. Is it just a image of him and Michael Jackson? She's a bit bizarre. Graham Hancock, ancient advanced technology, technologies of the gods. Graham Hancock's like an Egyptologist.

Now I really don't know how this is on there. So Gary Vee archives is on there. We've, Gary V, Gary V. Archives is on there. We've got a big Gary V. Fun in the house. I could not be further from the truth about Gary V. Now Gary, if you're listening, actually just please, please don't listen, man, because anyone who does a collaboration with Case Whist to put the words hustling grind on the bottom of shoes needs to get in the sea. Like Gary is, I totally get why he is a seductive personality for people at this kind of go get a 21st century thing.

And- American, do you mean? Yes, yeah, yeah. It's a very, very kind of Americanized, make it on your own type approach, which you know for some people that may might be what they want. But there's a few things that Gary's not going to be able to get around. And one of them is anyone who is listening will know Matthew Walker on Joe Rogan number 11 or 9, why we sleep. If you...

Great podcast, by the way. Unbelievable podcast. We'll be linked in the show now to below. If you haven't watched it, you need to watch it, and it will change your life. I watched it about a year ago, and it changed my... It's the only podcast which I've listened to, which let me say straight to sleep. Never.

Yeah, that's a good point. But that was out of desire. Out of desire. And I've always went to a punchline somewhere, you know? You. You're such a nerd. Before we started, so before we've come on, we've like nerded out about Game of Thrones and Warhammer

and all this stuff, and I've had too much caffeine and now we're just going to bounce between different things that make us seem less and less cool. Well, that's fine. But yeah, man, that Gary V thing, like, you can't get around the fact, Gary, that if you're having four hours sleep a night, you're going to die early.

Like, you're just going to die sooner. It's a fact. He, he, he, I don't agree with a lot of things he says, I don't agree with him. I think he's, you know, credit, he's found the niche and a demographic of individuals who follow him You know bit preachy, but when we look at the world now, we're all trying to find some kind of like way to belong And if people find peace in themselves We've supported him and his attitude and they get Pagrest their life

I don't know do I agree with that? Well, it's whether I try and'm trying to find something just to say nice. Something nice about Gary Vaynerchuk. I mean, you've managed to find one more thing than I can, so. But yeah, man, I can't have to dance around it for a bit. You are right. Like, he... If he is giving people some form of a sense of,

I can go and do this. This is... I have the capacity to work hard and achieve things then great. My concern is whether or not people, one of the problems with lumbering people with the sole duty of making themselves successful means that you completely remove any connection

to the bigger picture. Like your failings and your success is app is purely at the behest of your feet. And you're like, well, hang on, that means that anything that I do or don't do is, is my own fault. And you're like, well, fucking hell, there's like an awful lot of randomness in the world and an awful lot of luck. Like you were a perfect avatar for someone who is right place, right time, right skill set. Yeah, I think he, yeah, the net impact it will have will overall be negative because

people will criticize themselves because they will put the hours in, they will put the sleep in, they will put the grinding and they will get anywhere. And now they are going to die early. And I will burn out. But if there is one person who has taken his advice and actually, you know, change his life and then because of him, done something meaningful, that's probably one compulsive thing. You are trying to net. But that's how I approach everything. I've got to try and have that balance. Balance for you. Well, you're a COO, aren't you? So, you know, you need to be diplomatic with everything that you do. So you're another year sober now. How long is it now, two and a half years?

Oh, we are. Yeah, two, two, when it's July, I'm wearing March, so two years and nine months. Wow. Yeah, it's the second, this year is like, like literally this year, it's just been nowhere. It's like, not a, it not a weird one because now it's this, I'm at a point where I don't remember. I really don't remember what it was like to drink. So I'm so past it now that like, I'm just beyond it. It's really hard for me to talk about it now because I just don't recall the feeling. Like a different person. Yeah. Yeah. Again, like I said, I was back home at the week We can't one of the guys who was two years above me from school was there and he said that he's doing gonna do a year

So but because of health because of things he's seen and obviously he said I was big influence on it And I said to him that you don't I think I said last time you don't see an impact until six months It's like the whole dry January but it's like you don't see a difference in the three weeks whatever you're doing in January. You won't see it, you know, for me, the difference like I saw in the first year and then in the second year is completely nominal to what I'm feeling now. So it's like I- Which is bizarre because at the time, you're actually like, oh my God, this is world-changing and then you in a year and a half goes, that's nothing. I know.

So it's like an exponential growth in yourself. Obviously, the start is very rapid because there's such dramatic changes. But you get to a point now where life isn't... It's actually going to sound a bit weird, but people who need to find things like meditation and other aspects to find peace, and who searched that kind of like... In a self? Yeah, I don't feel like I need to do any of that because I've already got it. I've got the balance in myself at the moment already, I don't, I can just, I can just be rather than having to like

subscribe to like, um, quick fixes or other things to try and like focus or relax or, so like I'm just like in a complete state of, okay, Nus. I wonder how long that economically will continue with sobriety because I do think that a lot of that will be due to contrast. I think even though you're not potentially able to remember the specific sensation of what it's like to be drunk or hungover, the second order self-referential thoughts will still probably be there like pretty pretty front and center. Yeah, it's all it's all relative Yeah, so you'll still be just like in this weird

Holy heaven of God like I have so much fucking time. I have so much fucking money I'm able to have so many more calories like Fantastic, that's part of it. Yeah, I was out I went out I did going outside the night about three in the morning Which is it you know if you're drinking the late night. You know, I'm not at the night, about three in the morning. Which is, it's just, you know, if you're drinking the late night, you know, I'm not drinking. Late, finished sober. Late finish.

And I've been, I've been ill since then. So it's all relative, but I'm still going out, but I'm feeling worse. So like my, I've got all I have learnt this year is that drinking does build a slight bit of resilience within

yourself. So when I overexercise, I'm more susceptible to illness. I've got issues with my goal, which I need to manage because taking alcohol out means that you grow bad bacteria. Is it true? So alcohol would clean it out to a degree? Alcohol cleans you out. Obviously like a nominal aspect. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like you create a culture in your gut, which allows you to

have a negative bacteria. Okay. Because you're not putting any toxins in there to rid them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you've got like there's this thing that you know, your your body is such a wonderful thing. That everything is in balance. When you do reach home, you'll stay so safe. Yeah, exactly. And that's the point now, this year, I've been like discovering this, like, other thing that you want to manage.

There's always something to manage. So it's been a bit, again, like, I've been focusing on my sleep. So when I go out to three o'clock, my immune system is like, what are you doing? Like, get that to bed. Like, honestly, if you break through the routine, it really does damage me. In that sense, I think that alcohol has those build resilience, but you can build resilience

of a ways. It's been a fantastic journey. I'm confident now that I'm never gonna drink again. Like that whole idea is completely gone from my mind. So this was something that I wanted to touch on. One of the last questions that I asked you the last time we sat down was something that I'd been pondering for a while about people who choose to go sober to get themselves

around either substance dependency or And a more habitual dependency on the situation and on the feelings that come from that and that There's I think there's an argument to be made that going completely sober Still allows the substance to have some degree of control over you. But the reintroduction of it on your terms is the ultimate completion. And you said at the time that your feelings were, you weren't going to drink for the foreseeable future, for as long as you could see. One of the reasons being a fear about potential relapse

and also just that you didn't want the downstream effect of drinking full stop. Where are you at now with that? So the way I think about it now is that my problem whenever was the drinking, the problem with the drinking was a side effect of what was like inherently wrong with me. So it was an escape mechanism.

So I would turn to that when I needed to funnel my energy and anxieties and situation and escape it. So I can now deal with that feeling elsewhere. So I can deal with it, free going for a walk or I can deal with it, just having 20 minutes of silence to myself and kind of go processing it and getting out of my system. So I don't need the to turn to alcohol to solve that problem anymore, also because it's detrimental when you turn to alcohol and use it to solve them problems.

So I don't need it for what I would use it before. So then it becomes a complete question of health and lifestyle choices because it's, you're not dependent on it anymore, you're not, you're not a substance abuse it. But you make a choice that, why do I need to bring that back into my life? And if you, I get a thing, it's the last time,

if I can ever find a reason why I need to bring back into my life, I will, but I can't. Right now. Right now. And I don't but I can't. Right now. Right now. I can't foresee a situation where I never need to be working to my life. I just can't, there's no, I can do everything I want. I can go out, I can spend time with friends,

I can go to the pub, there's no situation where I feel like I'd ever need to drink. And it's the same way if we were so hit on my cocaine and I said, I'm not going to do cocaine again. You don't question me. Yeah. So I did a podcast with Ed Latimore, who is a very, very clever guy, again, sings from the sobriety hymn sheet, a little bit bit more I think he's maybe six years so but no. And um, release his podcast on New Year's Day this year, uh, and his birthday came up

shortly after wished him a happy birthday and it's like, hey man, I love, love speaking to you about this and I linked him to our last chat, loads of resignation with that as well. And uh, he said this line in it man, uh, fucking hell, like it just hit me so hard in the fields. And he said, alcohol is the only drug where if you don't do it, people assume you have a problem. Yeah. Yeah. No one's going up to you and going, oh man, why are you not taking heroin today? Yeah. I'm like, why are you not like sniffing a big, a big fat line on a morning or like after work or whatever? You're like, but with alcohol, actually someone very clever and contrarian on Twitter piped up and said, coffee.

Coffee, caffeine's probably the same. Yeah. What? You don't drink coffee. Like that's the only one, but then maybe 50 years ago, people would have said the same about smoking. Maybe 100 years ago, people would have been like, well, you don't smoke.

Doctors were prescribing, there was adverts saying, more doctors smoke camels than any other type of cigarette because that was some sort of like accolade for why you should smoke camels. You know, I fought about smoking before, yeah, probably, you're probably right because when it was first introduced it was cool, it was cool, wasn't it? It was chewing tobacco and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, no, I'm not talking about it was cool, wasn't it? It was two-inch backer

and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, no, I'm not sure about that. Yeah, but completely it's the only joke you have to justify, you're not not taking the only thing. Are you getting bored of having to justify it now? I don't need to justify anymore, I think people... Everyone that you're in contact with now just knows. Everyone that is two things I think, I think it's been three years now, So I've gone from 23 to 26. Yep. So when you mention that you don't drink to 26 year old, they get it. So when you do it to 23 year olds, they get it a bit less.

Yeah. That's so, so interesting that there is a line and it is, it is around that time as well. Certainly between the age of 23, I don't think that a exponential growth in your own self-understanding can occur really before 22, 23. There seems to be a moment that it hates. You don't know yourself.

However, for some people, it's that you see people that are 40 and 50 years old who still haven't gone through that. But yeah, it's so interesting that there is the peers to be a big fat, the middle distribution of people who maybe didn't understand and now do. In the space of three years. So when it first, when I first, today I was, people I was like, people were saying, oh, are you so boring? Why, you know why? Now it's like, oh, which I could. And that change is like, it's literally like,

free words, which I could. And that's when you know you're on the right track. And like, I hear that, I even know again, when I meet somebody new, who is, you know, probably I could do. So 25 plus though. Once we finish, I'm gonna take you through a couple of things that we're working on at the moment.

For now, some of the listeners may know that we've got some things going on behind the scenes, but I wrote the equivalent of a manifesto between Christmas and the year, which is a sobriety manifesto. It was 3,800 words, and I did the entire thing on my phone while I was watching Christmas films. Yeah, like my thumbs were wrecked.

That's right there, like a wall. So it was just RSI for days. Wrote the whole thing on my phone, and they were talking about so many of the things that we've brought up, the fact that if I don't drink, I'm gonna miss out on social engagements. What would you say? I want to hear what you would say. If someone was like, if I don't drink, I'm going to miss out on social engagements. What would you say? I want to hear what you

would say. If someone was like, if I don't drink, I'm worried that I'm going to feel like an outcast around my friends when they're out on a night out, or maybe they'll stop inviting me things, or maybe I just won't go. What would you say to that? I'd say take a situation. It take probably of the most top social occasions that we have probably have in our age weddings. Okay, weddings are renowned for drunk, drunkness from family, from people. Imagine going... Even the dog's drunk. Even the dog's drunk or wedding. But, you know, take a situation where you can drive to the wedding, yeah? So you're not in a situation where you're getting, last minute, like, ready, last minute, taxi turns up, taxi's late, or whatever.

You don't have to get that awful mini bus back, so that awful 45 minutes from wherever in the sticks it's been. In two in the morning. You're in complete control the whole time, okay? You get there, the sticks it's been. In two in the morning. You're in complete control the whole time. Okay. You get there, you turn up. It's very awkward because there's so many different people from different backgrounds. So everyone's in the same situation.

Not many people know it, know many people are wedding. You probably know five or six people, you know, and you'll go and meet people throughout the night. So that's why weddings tend to have that kind of collective, you know, always. But it's a bonding process, right? Yeah. Yeah, because we only need to cut the ice because we don't know many people here, so we're going to, we're going to, we're, what we get. It's a bonding process, right? Yeah, because we only need to cook the ice, because we don't need people here, so we're gonna do it.

And that always kind of snowballs and you end up hearing horror stories of people getting drunk and embarrassing. I went to a wedding previously where someone got so drunk that they thought they saw the groom with another girl on the day of the wedding in the toilet. And he brought out to public and it caused the whole issue in his girlfriend was like, like, all things always go wrong, wrong, wrong at writing. Why do you want to be involved?

You know, being sober, you can go there in your own terms, you can enjoy, you can have good food, you can have good experience, you can dance a little bit. And then when it's ready to go, because there are always a time when you need to go. You know, as much people say, I want to stay one more drink. There's always a time when you need to go. You get into your car and you leave. And you wake up the next day and just look at yourself and said, I did enjoy that. I enjoyed that. I had a good time. I enjoyed seeing it. I enjoyed it being chairing a special day with somebody. I can remember it. I can remember it. And you know what?

I'm going to go for a good to the gym now. So you're totally right. You're totally totally right about that. There's a number of things that I wrote in this particular manifesto that kind of trigger off the back of that. I've worked somewhere in the region of a thousand club nights across my career. And I can tell everybody that is listening that nothing worthwhile happens after one in the morning. Like, it is the absolute worst of human behaviour manifest, like

fights and club kissing. Like, no one really wants to be a part of either of those things, even if you're enjoying the club kissing at the time you cringe about it the next day. things, even if you're enjoying the club kissing at the time you cringe about it the next day. Then when it comes to the social engagements thing, I think what happens a lot is, if you're drinking especially heavily, you'll be less picky about your social engagements, because you know that if you've got shit or boring friends or you've got to go to some party that you probably don't want to go to anyway, it Kind of doesn't really matter, because you can just sedate the boredom by getting lashed. Yep. And you're like, okay, so hang on.

What you're saying is all the awkwardness as well. And all of those sort of things, downstream from the awkwardness or what's referred to as approach anxiety and pick apart this brief of both men and women, if the only way that you can go up and speak to someone at a wedding is once you've had a drink, you have never cultivated the capacity to actually go up and speak to someone at a wedding is once you've had a drink, you have never cultivated the capacity to actually go up and speak to somebody. You've outsourced it to this exogenous

version of courage, which is alcohol. And it's so you are so much better learning that skill than relying on alcohol because going sober, that's one thing you do learn. You learn to have the self confidence in yourself and that you hold yourself in a high-sleeve esteem to be able to approach someone and have a conversation with them. And like people are trying to buy that, you know, the whole quick, fixed lifestyle, alcohol is a quick fix in that situation.

Or you could take a step back, investing yourself, grow your confidence, and then be able to hold yourself in any social occasion. Like goes back to what you said about your coping with stresses from work. Where you're like, I've had a hard day, I'm running this business that's essentially like me holding onto a hundred mile an hour speed train, like just with one arm on the final, like the final thing at the very end, like desperately trying to like trying to flapping around in the wind. And one of your coping mechanisms was to use alcohol, but that means that you can't cope.

As a byproduct of that, if you take the alcohol away, it is a question that probably a lot of people are thinking, I don't think we got into it last time. What was coping with stressful situations like the first few times that you weren't drinking, when you were no longer able to sedate yourself on that? You know, you had everyone, you know, the feelings still existed. The feelings still existed. So I was still feeling bad and stressful and I had that emotions inside me. So I had to do something about it. So what I did was I turned to another, I turned to something else. So I focused my energy at first on food. So I'd have like a really more rich meal. Just to forget about like to take you something.

So you've switched the coping mechanism from one to another? Yeah. Oh, I'd, I'd, um, um, go to bed early to forget about it. Hmm. Anything which kind of gave me the sense that's not a scape is in there almost right? Anything to give me that sense of escaping. Yeah. I'll coddle it in one way because you blabbered sleeping does it the other time because you just forget and you go away Yeah, and food does it because you kind of you know completely focused fixed it on the more rich food

And then you kind of do feel a little bit laughter words because you just put crap inside you but you know It's short term and you can use it out of time and go to sleep. It was taking that feeling, that emotion and processing in a different way. And then there must have been a point at which you transitioned from that to it, not actually, you're not needing to use

any of those mechanisms into you actually being able to sit with the emotion. So it's simple cognitive behavior therapy. So take the action reaction, stimulus response, the stimulus was stress, the response was food. Okay, so now you get stimulus response, the food was bad at first, it was, you know, it was pizzas and burgers. Because to interject there for people who are looking at you now, they wouldn't know that you were fat. No, real fat.

Proper fat. Proper fat. Yeah, man. So, JiggyLidge, you go downstairs fat. And now you look fantastic. Like, you've got the perfect runners build, which is good, because that's what you do.

Yeah. So that, then I just swap that to tons of food and tons of healthy food. So I'd have like, four salmon fillets with like, tons of broccoli, with mayo, you know, like shit loads of food. And then obviously over time you can manage that

down the portions, down and bring it down. So I got the point where, first having a bad day, I didn't want to eat something broccoli. But I'd literally be a master in this response. Shit day, feel crap. Salmon broccoli. Fantastic. You imagine how many people would say,

you know, there is a, I had a bit of a dependency on alcohol for a while, a young age, and then I discovered salmon and broccoli, and I was like, fucking sweet. But yeah, man, like, you know, I genuinely believe, and we come at this from two different angles, and I'm now six months into 18. So why 18?

Because I'd completed six without any challenge. I'd done six through winter time, all my stints of sobriety have almost been the same period which has been just after Halloween, until around about May time. And I know that the most challenging period for me is going to be through summer. I don't know whether you still get this, but for me, in a beer garden, British summer, 6 p.m., suns low, good music on, and I just think,

fucking copperberg, like it would be, it's just, there's nothing quite, now copperberg do a copperberg blue, yeah, which is, which is kind of cool. They've only recently brought that out. But there's just something about that where I was like, that's, I don't get it, it's just a drink.

I'm not a big drink, and naturally, but that's one time, and I was like, right, I want to see, first off, I completed six months, I was like, 12 seems like a figure, but 18 seems like a motherfucker, so I'm gonna to do 18. And by doing it, I knew that I'd go through two winters that would be a little bit less difficult, but one summer which would be pretty tough. I feel like there is a replacement for everything, and for copperburg's kombucha.

Like, honestly, you can't go into a British pub. Like, honestly, you can't go into a British pub. Like, as the black bull or something in the old-the-edge. And we're like, excuse me. I see that you've got copperberg on the menu. I wonder if you have any compouture because my micro bio in my gut is saying to me. By the way, have you heard that Lord of the Rings are coming out on Warhammer? Like, you just saw me. No, I just can't believe you've runvulgy.

It's so ruffing. That's what I sound like as well. No, no, it's not. But it gives you that stuff feeling. Like, I was like, and you know what? Like, like, Cumbutra has, it's fermented tea. So it has like a little bit of, it's not alcoholic at any sense of the magic

but it's got fermented tea in it. So it does, it is. Triggers on some form of similar pathway. Yeah, yeah. So it does, it does feel very refreshing, it gets that, like my thing was always a pint after football. Yeah, I'd go for a ball. I'd always want to have a real pint.

And I couldn't, the wrong club beers were crap. So I just changed that for sparkling water because the fizziness is the same. Yeah, I get that. And you get that sense of just chugging it down. I really hate sparkling water, man. It just tastes. A kombucha. Kombucha, I'm fine for it.

So I want to move on to some stuff to do with social media. I was talking to Theo on the way up and We were laughing about the fact. I don't know whether you saw recently, but the UFC There's maybe about three or four months ago now. They put out a tweet and it was a big announcement It might have been a hundredth anniversary of something or whatever they put out this huge tweet that obviously spent a fair bit of time building up to it Big fuck off typo right in the middle of it with a spelling error. And there's no speed at which you can get onto the internet to delete that tweet, like quickly enough. And it just started getting retweeted and like 5K, 10K retweets, a big old fat tweet.

I wanted to know about, you guys have got, was it 600 million reach or something like that? Yeah, yeah, in the million, hundreds of millions. Hundreds of millions of reach online. That means, like, and as much as you can have, the things are prepped in advance and there's a brand design and an architecture and there's briefings and this, that and the other, at the end of the day, there's a person with a button who has to press it. Do you know what I mean? Like all of this funnels down to one person's finger and then they have to just... Like press it once and once it's gone, that's it. Like it out into the world. And I just wanted to ask what it feels like

to have that kind of Titanic responsibility, not only for yourself, but the brands that are behind you. God, what does it feel like? You get nervous before like a big campaign goes out or is that kind of stopped now for you? Is it that man presses a button and there's a typo in it, like, Dom, yeah, mate, I'm really so, yeah, no. It's a straight, it's a straight, Twitter's any platform where you can't edit it.

Yes. So like, Facebook and Instagram, you've got a control in your edit and like, we are, as dependent on Twitter anymore. Right. We don't do much on Twitter. Okay. So like, historically, it was a nightmare. Like, it was like, oh, fuck. Yeah. But like, now it's like, Twitter, like, the products

are there, like, to edit. So you get, like, what happens? It's annoying when you get around it. But with Twitter, you've still got, well, I'm my own person when I tweet and I get a spilling mistake, I'm just devastated. I am like, oh, don't you? You're more bothered about messing it up yourself or for clients or is it equal? I don't do it.

I don't run the client, so it's hard for me to, like, if you see someone who's a representative for your company, it's just that feeling of like, bollocks. It's like, no, in is like, it's just that feeling of like... Bollocks. It's like, no, in the members of this situation, almost like no one's to blame because it's a, everyone makes mistakes, yeah. If it didn't mean to only put one F in effective.

Yeah, no one ever meant to do that. Like, if it was like gross negligence, and I'd be like, that's different story, but... Yeah. I'm in a situation where I'm really bad at spelling. I'm really bad, I'm just like, to like, when bad at spelling. I'm really bad at dyslexic. To like, when people make mistakes, I completely understand it.

Because there's times when I read back things I write, and just words are missing. And I'm sure I put that word in there. Some of the sentences absent. It makes no sense. Moving forward, what do you think is going to happen with social media as we go on? I don't know whether you listened to the podcast that I did with Rory Sutherland, which was about the psychology of advertising, and I asked him the same question.

Over the next five years, do you think that people are going to continue to give away their data for free and their attention for free? What do you think is the future of the social media and the attention economy as we move forward now? Exactly that. So you are competing on the attention. And what will cause the biggest shift is if consumers realize the value of their attention and their value of their time. And then they start choosing to spend that time wisely. I think if you look at the suite of products that exist at the moment, in that world you have entertainment, which is predominantly TV, you have gaming, which is always growing. You have friends and real life interactions

you put in there as well, and then you have social media. You know, they're probably the four, you probably put sport in there as well, it's probably the separate thread. They're probably the five people place where people spend their time. And then it's just the question is

where do people want to spend their time? When you look at some things like entertainment? Is there is there a negative commentations to sit in there watching Netflix series? Probably not you can probably do that and you can probably feel good about yourself gaming probably again and probably more you will indeed get gaming but also some public discriminate of it as well We've kind of this skill that people are learning., some people have got more and more time into gaming. Social media has a lot of negative commentations.

Are they going to be opt-ins to spend their time on social media with the backlash that is coming out now? They will probably be on social media, but when you take the lens of a platform like TikTok, I ask someone, why, what what do you like about TikTok? And she said, and Tanya, how she said, it's the only platform where no one is being arrogant, talk about themselves, bragging, and it's just fun. What's TikTok? Oh, that's TikTok. TikTok is like an endless scroll video. It's like Vine, essentially, but for full screen.

Okay. It's 750 million followers, really big in China and the UK, it's like vined, essentially, but for full screen. Okay. It's 750 million followers, very big in China and the UK, it's really growing, really quite. Okay. Is it the thing where people do memes to like singing? Yeah, that's what it was at first, but it's evolved now. Okay. And it's got no messaging, it's got no, and like pure IG TV.

Yeah, yeah, and people should be nice on it. Okay. So like people like, it's entertaining. It's, again, it's fun. So it hasn't got the, you know, people update them, say it says So like people like it's entertaining. It's again, it's fun. So it hasn't got the, you know, people update them and say it's, it hasn't got any more. Competitive aspects. Yeah.

So people, I feel people now are looking to be there, time in my positive ways, because we were all starting to wake up to the point where I attention is valuable. And we're all starting to understand that we have only have time left. So we have been more wise about how we spend that time. Hence why I think there's this middle part

about spending time with family and friends is growing because there's some key traits, which is key things, which are kind of like, I feel like the world's moving back into connectivity in general. So for the first time in 24 years, physical books else increased. So people are now buying physical books again.

Okay. Because they want that feel. That time away from screen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that entire digitisation is probably not reached peak for all industries, but it's kind of reached a point where people are now starting to value connectivity and touching and physicality again. So people are now spending more time with their friends. And when you go out with your friends now, people are now spending more time with their friends and when you've got with your friends now people are actually saying, get off your phone. Yeah. What do you think that means for yourself, obviously having to trigger on these industries? It means

that as a business, I personally. As a business. As a business, you know, we are competing in the economy, the attention economy. So we have to play where people are playing. So in the gaming space, that's a great market. What we do there, can we grow a gaming publishers, can we work on in gaming products and marketing, entertainment brands want to move into the branded entertainment space, can we produce content which goes straight to Amazon Netflix where people can have peace of attention? So for us, we are a social first business, but it doesn't mean we don't

operate in other areas. What we do is we take the insights and knowledge from social, which can mean social media, but social interactions and social relationships, and then we build a market to come and have a back of that. So the insights, because tell us that we need to do it out of home campaign. So it is, it is, we're not dependent on any platform, not dependent on any product, but what we add depending on is the data that we collect from social media. Which will inform things moving forward. Do we do an experiential campaign? Do we do a whatever campaign? Yeah. So the business model is solid, it's very diverse. It's in a good position and it's not dependent on if Instagram switch off tomorrow, we'll still be here. Yeah. If Facebook turn off tomorrow, we'll still be here. It's this. Might make the next couple of weeks a bit difficult. You'd be like,

oh, I'm sorry, we've got probably worse for clients than us. Yes, you can move between. We can navigate. We can navigate. We can look at new areas. We can lock new services. So we're looking at development obviously helped try out in the studio, podcasting. Yeah. You know, would you say podcasting is a social product? Two years ago probably not. Yes, probably now it fits into that space where we're launching brand new podcast for clients. Pretty lot of thing that podcast is unbelievable. Yeah, yeah. So we're being reactive and we're moving to where the growth in the market is. So that's how mantra, you know, as long as we're ever changing and we keep in

brands before and what's possible will be fine and what's possible can be anywhere. So if you are the someone who does social media either as part of a small company or potentially even just as a consultant on your own, continuing to be adaptive is going to be key over the next few years is the thing to say. I'd say also as well probably take social media out your name because social media I think it puts people in a box. What we're talking to clients now is about the recinerious business problems and how they can use social to solve them. Not just social media, like a wider breadth of social. To solve that business problems, not just looking

at what I think social media manager, I think schedule to eat to the person, press the button. When I think social insights and social strategy, I think how can we use the information from social media to determine where this brand's gonna go? Example, take KFC, KFC, if probably it'd been the best when it comes to social media,

in the fast food space. They're entire campaign to launch a new prize was driven through social. So they were doing social listening and seeing what people said about their fries. And there was tons and tons of trees of people saying that KFC have the worst fries. They do. Or they did. They did. So obviously that's totally insight there. And that conversation with people has informed aural business change. They've gone a KF rise of crap.

They saw people saying about them 30 years ago, if you saw a bad set of fries, someone no one would ever tell you. There's no feedback mechanism. No feedback mechanism. So people have actually been looking at social media, what people say about KFC, this identified a problem,

and then turned it into a market campaign. Do you, or how do you categorize that, then you totally write is that is that using social probably not would a social media agency class itself as that also again probably not because it's not to do with you right I think social media I think the about the guy that schedules the the Facebook post I think the person that sat behind ads manager, I don't think about the person who is using the inherent discourse and direct line of communication between yourself and the customer to inform more typical business activities. Yeah, and that's what I think business, business, and our scientific realizes that the social

media is no longer just a team of two people who run the pages. That's where your insights are coming from. That's where you can actually understand your customer, your product, your future. Also by direction as well. Exactly, exactly. So there's so many instances now where brands are going straight to people on social media, take a context yesterday, a two days ago, a ten-year-old boy wrote a letter to the CEO saying that he's just starting now like a handwritten who's asking for advice from the CEO of Quantess. And CEO replied and he replied saying like a

proper letter. So this is what he did. He did paper. He did paper. I think signed. You put on social media. That takes what 20 minutes of the CEO's time, put on social media. The brand sentiment that generates from them, look at that, that is a nice thing to do. I like you as a brand. The media will get from that, we bigger than any advertisement campaign they could get. And that's from 20 minutes of time,

five minutes of the social media manager to post it, and it's out there. Do you think that moving forward, there is the potential for, well, I know that this is already the case, but do you think that customers and yourself need to be wary about people triggering those mechanisms in a manipulative fashion? Obviously, it's easy for someone to start faking those kinds of situations because it's, we know that this is the sort of thing that will resonate with

our... Yeah, completely. When I saw that, I thought it was a pastime. I've got to get my sketch to go hot on here. I'm pretty sure we've pitched that similar idea before about that to a client because it's what works on social. But I did a little deeper and I'm probably into the top percentile of people who will skepticise around it because I understand social better than most people and understand brands. So when I start hearing people thinking is it's real, I think that's probably a bit concerned. But it's the most important thing now is the two things most important things are authenticity as a brand. Are you offically who you say you are and if you're not people aren't going to bind to you. We did a piece of research which said for the first time ever

brand values and brand causes which they spot like social causes with more important and price point. So literally what the brand says about you is more important price. People pay more money if it means they're buying or seem to be buying from somewhere which has a positive social impact. And then personalization. So personalization, talking to people where they want to be spoken to, talking to people how they want to be spoken to. So I'm an agent now where as a consumer, I shop on my terms, you don't necessarily do the terms that we shop on, I'm not going to follow the full funnel approach. I don't want that, people don't want that anymore. They on. I'm not going to follow the full funnel approach. I don't want that. People don't want that anymore.

They have so many abilities to purchase here, purchase there. They'll just decide where they want to be purchased. And the brand, you have to not think of you're in control and driving people down the funnel. You have to be able to speak to them where they want to be spoken to. So that's why you see in the rise of loads of social commerce

and other areas Personal is take like to taking personal shoppers online because everyone had a different way they want to experience things And that's what the brands that will win with the ones I can cater wide Rather than narrow think about if you have a one-point purchase a shop You're never going to be able to cater for everyone because not everyone will pass that shop and people will not go that way to go to that shop. The whole day is when we were kids and we were like, I really want to go to the Traffins Centre, don't happen anymore. Okay, they're not waking up,

so I want to go to the Traffins Centre. I don't know, it's 16-17, I'm spending the day walking around there. True. Do you think that a younger age bracket, like the five, or I guess the four to kind of 11 age, do you think that it's going to be difficult to replicate that magic of walking around somewhere like Toys I Rose or a large Toist or there must be something inherent that triggers on kids?

Oh, okay, so this is what, this is this is one of my biggest. I am God ties our us missed the opportunity to be the home of toys, okay, they should have They could have gone they stayed as blockbuster, but could have been Netflix. Yeah, they could have turned it into experience Yeah, you go there you play other toys you have games you have plateations everything like Ikea like Ikea If they did that They still be here. IKEA is basically toys are for married couples, isn't it? Yeah.

Yeah, you know, you know, if you see it now in MNS, MNS is putting cafes and stuff into all their shops because they know they don't have a graphic, it wants to come and have a coffee. Right? Man, I go into, there's an MNS right next to me and it is 2pm a 2 p.m. wedding day afternoon, rammed absolutely rammed. You know what you get? Everyone's having salmon. Yeah, you know what you get?

You get in good food. You're gonna have a couple of hours there. You're gonna pick up a... Read a book. Read a book, you know? But they've catered to their audience. Taisa Ruz should have pivoted and created an experience within their start.

Those that will remain, will facilitate experiences. Will make it a place like telebacene, for example, the basings are always ahead because there's so many micro trends. You take dirty martini, how many girls and people do you see with a picture over them on their Instagram saying, get your hair out there? How many people go there just because they want a picture there? It's that experience which physical stores still allow you to have. And again, coming back to the point of people going to turn again, digital aspect slightly.

If you can facilitate an experience, take IKEA, you know, walk around it, you're still going to purchase something. And the best example of this, coming back to what you're saying earlier, Harry Potterland. Unbelievable. You walk through there and you literally threw him money out. Get me to get him. Yeah, I would have, I would have,

You want a bit of butter beer straight away. Yeah, that was the first thing I did. Have you been to the one in LA? No, I've been to one in Florida. Oh man, well, I'm gonna guess there'll be some, I think the one in Florida was first, and then the one in, but so the one in LA is a little bit newer. But man, like, I was seeing before we started,

you were like, how old were you when you went? And I was like, harping on about how much I liked it. And I was like, I was 30 when I went. And my inner 11 year old was just losing its shit. Yeah. But it was fantastic. Like it was, and you're totally right,

it was experiential. And there is, until VR or AR gets to an ungodly degree of fidelity. You're not going to be able to recreate that. So yeah, and again, if I can shout out, club promoters, like the guys at Dirty Martini with the Halo backdrop, for anyone who doesn't know what we're talking about, just search Dirty Martini on Instagram and you will see thousands of girls and guys, some guys posing in front of this particular backdrop. And we've triggered off the same. So we saw that Dubai was using a lot of flower walls, fake flower walls.

A grand later, we've got a flower wall in our club, students are getting photos of every students and I've got a photo in front of our flower wall. Everyone. And that's the thing, like, if you play in that Experience space you're gonna have like you're gonna be stenable You will find a way as long as constantly innovating as well that what that experience is So does that mean that if you're a purely online business? You and you're not prepared to actually make that move into the physical world You're potentially gonna start to run behind a little bit here. No, again, it completely comes down to knowing your audience.

So we were talking about dealing with kids here with Taisa Ruz, so they want to play. When we're looking at something like a boo who are pretty little thing, they understand what their audience wants. They want convenience, they want fast fashion, they want outfits for the weekend. But again, back to the point we're saying, social allows you to

understand your audience and their behaviour. Yeah. You know, you need to need to own that lane and stay in it. So a brand which does both, Holland Barrett, okay. Their mantra is that they want their people who work for them to be experts of health will be. They actually are. Yeah, they're really good. They're really good. Excuse me. Can you tell me what's good for joint health please and then sure enough Five minutes late, you know everything there is to know about Amiga three acids and exactly. So they've got they've got obviously got a wide range of customers They've catered very well for one of my favorite jokes is that Holland Barrett have an agent audience An agent an agent customer which which obviously shows it's working. Yeah, good point. Very good point, man. That's some marketing jokes for you right there.

Yeah, so, but that method of understanding a customer, how are you trying to let that online to a 25-year-old girl who's looking at improving her hormones and getting a balance, better balance? Same I go from, for example, how can she have that same experience? That is the hair or nails or skin or whatever. Have that experience online that she still gets in store. And if them two things can mirror each other, they'll be able to cater for everyone.

So that would that be the advent of things like live chat? Live chat, personalization, WhatsApp. I mean, WhatsApp conversations with them, Instagram DMs. All these areas where you can have touch points with people, yeah, having conversations with them. I tell you what, hilarious. So in between our last podcast and this one, I went to LA last year and I was like,

man, I need to go and see one of these legal weed dispensaries. Oh, there. So for anyone who hasn't seen this, if you can imagine walking into an Apple store, like where at the back there's a genius bar, you go in at the front, you've got to go through a little bit security, and there's a security guy in the door, you've got to go through a little bit security, but then you walk in, and there's iPads everywhere, and there's super futuristic looking things, and you can spring, move a little vent to one

side and smell the particular, I'm not a weed connoisseur, so I haven't got to clear what I was on about. And you can go to the back, and at the back there's a group of like the geniuses, and you're like, oh, well, sometimes I struggle to sleep, and I've got this pain in my knee, and then every so often the dog annoys me. And you're like, yes, sir,

well, what you need is our new sativa hybrid blend, whether this, this, and this. And you're like, I just couldn't get away. But you have a CBD on me. I've got a lot more on my lips, yes and this. And you're like, I just couldn't get away. But did you have a CBD on me? I got off my bullet mario yesterday. Did you? Nice. He was on me, I thought I was gonna pull out

and do a little waving around. Yeah, but it's, you know, that experience you go, you know, you think vape stars, vape stars, I have the other end of it. They've got a guy over time, you know, being in that. He was like, yeah, all right mate. But you take that as a premium aspect, that the way you feel, the customer going through that. Have you been into one of the dispensaries?

I've been into one of them. I've been to one of Vegas. Yeah. The way you walk through it, the way they care for you is of course so special. It's like this is what return needs to be like and coming back to the point, it's on your terms. Yeah. And it's you are the person in control. No one's trying to like, like Tesco's when they hide the bread at the end of the shops, you've got to walk for everything. You know, they're not tricking. No one's, there's no tactics. No tactics. It's just, come on. So yeah, I think that's the key. Is that personalisation of conversation, personalisation of marketing in general and that's not just putting your name on a code can, it's much deeper than that. And the authenticity of who you are as a brand living up to who you say you are is where

people will win. And I think that's when you take that back to how people connect, that's how you win as a person. You're authentically who you are. You're not too faced, you have value, you live by them, and you're personal. What you touched on earlier on is super correct, and the podcast that I actually did with Theo and Eve for you guys on social minds, triggered on a lot of this, which is what we

refer to as social equity in self branding. The fact that that I'm wearing a Nike SB T-shirt, what does that say? Or this says, I can infer X, Y, and Z about Chris due to that. How's that got? How's that got? This is actually from the skate.co.uk. Thank you very much, Lincoln, co-blur. But that says this particular thing about me.

And you're like, OK, we move that forward to club nights. One of the most important things for us is you've got a dirty martini. Like, what does that say about you? Okay, so here are the downstream implications. Yeah, you're doing my warhammer, right? Yeah, I'm gonna come back to warhammer. No one knows about that.

That's your secret warhammer room. And then, you know, all of these different things, and you're totally right, I can 100% believe that brands, values and the causes that they support are more important than price point now because everybody is searching for some degree of meaning. Everybody is held, culpable and responsible due to this always on communication and this kind of serendipitous meeting that happens by people being online and seeing what you do, seeing your purchase history, seeing what you watch, like if you've got a Spotify play, like you can hook your Spotify up to your Facebook so that your Facebook displays what you've most recently been listening to on Spotify, which means that almost your music and your Tinder And your Tinder. Tinder that can link Spotify now. Oh God. So you can go on and be like

if you were to use Tinder, I think these Tinder and Tinge, but you can, yeah, you can build out what people would most listen to and stuff like that as well. I don't think I would do very well on Tinder if I had to spot if I play a list on there. There's some dodgy stuff. But yeah, like, you know, it's amazing. For me, it's all, it's a lot of metal. Like, it's, it's, for me, it's all, it's a lot of metal. Like it's a lot of, bring me the horizon, a lot of architects, because when I tend to be listening to music, I'll either listen to Anjuna Deep, which is my working podcast, which is unbelievable,

shout out to James Grant, who is one of the best producers in the world, or I'm lifting heavy things and running fast. And that means I need some angry music. So those are the two ends, like the opposite ends of the spectrum. I do the angry music for running like a little bit of entershkary. Yeah, how are you, how are you getting on with your running now? Because you were doing like... Did the London marathon? Yeah, last year. How'd you find that? Tough. You're like, you are a long guy to run, right? Like long distance. You're body just like, you realize things like your body that you never knew could happen to like, right? Like long distance. Your body just like, you realize things like your body, like you never knew you could happen to like,

you just get pains, places, you know, you could get pain. Look at the marathon, a full one. Full one, yeah. You just got pains, you know, you could get pain, you could get pains, it was just. What was your worst pain? Did you get any chafing? No, I was fortunate, I've lost.

Chafry. Chafry, I did, I did a marathon like five years ago, so I knew I was gonna come, so I just like, vastly ended up everywhere. Nice. So that was fine. It was a really real weird one there in the kind of calf I've duped to where that comes in. Yeah.

I paint like my shoulder. Yeah, that's bizarre from supporting yourself a little bit. Yeah, just running. Running positive. IT band went. Yeah. So yeah, but it's a fantastic experience and to do the number of things, it's like, it's a bucket list. So yeah, I love it.

And I think it was one of the things which really pushed me and I did it. And I know I could do it. So now I'm like in a really place where I, again, I'm looking for the next challenge, but the problem is like whatever the next challenge is, I want it to be bigger. What do you think? What are you thinking? I'm thinking like a half Ironman at some point, but it is, I wanted to be bigger. What do you think? What are you thinking?

I'm thinking like a half iron man at some point, but it's gonna have to be bigger and that comes with a massive training requirement and it comes with a massive lifestyle shift. So I'm taking a bit of like a year out just to reset body, build, so I was kind of fundamentally issues I've got with my body in terms of like,

I've got my left leg being my right leg, so when I run, I'm a little bit in skew, hence the way I teaband get a bit more flex, a bit more strength and stability, and then have a bit of foundation to say, okay, what do I want to go to next? Really, properly build on it. Yeah, yeah, so I'm at that point now and I'm like, I am anything I do next, the way I am I want to go bigger. That's like, you think COO, a big company, immediately think, it probably races fast cars,

semi-professionally on a weekend. It does Iron Man's, it's probably like a free climb in rock climber. It just appears to be this thing where people at the top of the tree, they have a particular mindset that has hunger attached to it. And one of the byproducts of that is that I don't think that you can switch it off necessarily and it would appear that now that you've removed alcohol and you've relinked, you've got this extra 20 to 30 hours a week, where you're not either drinking or hung over,

you're like, oh God, I really need to do something. Cause even what's hilarious was if alcohol was a sport, you'd have probably been like, at least a national champion. Oh, a national champion. I'd be regional, definitely, best there. Yeah, so I would be the best. So you'd even take an alcohol to the extreme.

How is the best at drinking? Number one drinker. So yeah, like, you know, it's a stream. Yeah, you do. That absolute extremist approach to things. Yeah. It's characteristic. It is, yeah.

And it is. And it is a reason why, again, I'm about to, I don't know if I can go about to alcohol. Because I'm extreme. Well, like, that's why I'm so fortunate that I could just give up. Yeah. I am so fortunate.

Like, my body says, I said to myself, all right, I'm gonna drink anymore. could just give up. I am so fortunate. Like my body says, I said to myself, all right, I'm gonna drink any more, and it was done. Yeah, in, you know, fine print, there's a bit more, but it was a case of, I'm gonna chance myself now. I'm gonna do it. I spoke to Mike Casu about this, and I said that one of the things that I think about people who hit rock bottom or some degree close to rock bottom,

I, they have a sufficiently traumatic experience that springboards them back out of it, is that you are given a degree of motivation due to the pain that you've gone through that does enable you to move forward. What I think is particularly malicious and nefarious and subversive is for people who are maybe a bottle of wine every couple of nights during the week and maybe a bottle one night on a weekend kind of person because that is the silent killer that people don't really see. There's no sufficiently traumatic situation they've gone through. They're waking up with a fuzzy head maybe there's some downstream longevity problems. It's a gradual decline. It's death by a thousand cuts. Day by day you never realize anything. Yeah, by you, you never notice anything but slowly you

are slipping. Decorate, decade, decade. So there was a study done by the Lancet which I will link in the show notes below, which was done over a million people, 26 countries, and it looked at the negative consequences of alcohol consumption on health. And they found that alcohol is an overall mortality risk. And the synopsis to the whole study is there is no safe level of alcohol consumption. Zero. There is no, I'm getting particular downstream benefits from having red wine because of something that comes through from the grapes. There is, you're netting a negative. There is no, I can have one beer a week because wheat does whatever, whatever. Netting a negative. There is no safe level of alcohol consumption. And to

reframe the conversation people are having about alcohol is cool. Like if you want to go out and drink, that is fine, but you have to concede that that drink is either at the best keeping your life the same length or making it shorter. You're like every night out and every drink that you have is bringing you closer to death. And that's a fact. That is a fact. It's not going to extend your life. It may keep it the same or bring it shorter. You're like, when that's the cost that I have to pay, am I prepared to pay? You're going to drink again.

Yeah, so I will do. I genuinely believe that anything taken to an extreme, anything done in excess, it can be an error for some people. Good example was last year I pushed my solitude to excess. I created my version of Carl Jung's Bollinger Tower, which was a deep work space for me to really, really sort of dig my heels in, breaking some habits that I wanted. I've developed a reading habit, which I'm super proud of. I've developed, like, my mindfulness has gone through the roof, which is fantastic. I had to pay a price for that. And the price was moving beyond solitude towards something

that touched on loneliness. And that was a price I had to pay. Most people say, I spent some time with my own doing deep work, like Cal Newport's loving life at the moment, sat in an office on his own, soundproof, like this probably. But I had to pay a price to that. And there is, when it comes to not drinking,

there are certain experiences that I want to have and one of those includes drinking. However, I can genuinely see each time that I've gone sober and gone back to drinking, the window of drinking has got shorter. So first I did six months sobriety, then six months of drinking. Then the second time I did it, I did six months sobriety, then six months of drinking. Then the second time I did it, I did six months of sobriety and three months of drinking, but within that

time I only went out four times. So that was four nights out. And now this time I can see I'll do it. I'll probably touch base with it again. And be like, okay, this is how it feels. This is what it means. It may be once maybe twice and I can see that being kind of the way that it goes. Yeah, and I can come back to the point where I said, I went out the weekend and it's still, I'm still feeling it now. After 18 months, not drinking. Yeah, still didn't drink. No, but after 18 months, you're not drinking that first night out. You're going to kill me.

That's when we're going to do the next podcast. Fantastic. The next day. The next day, we're going to sit here, I'm going to ask you the same question. I'm just going to lay my head on the microphone like this. That's a good point, man. That's when we'll do it, because you know, it's the same G.I. Fire and the first six months, I was kind of like,

I was holding on to something, some experiences. Yeah. And I think it's the next six months, which are probably the most interesting for you to go through. I mean, I mean to that note, so this is nearly one, especially summer. Nearly months seven. So I'm going away, I'm going away a lot this year.

Got a lot of things that I want to do. And, you know, I think I hope that we increase to, increase the encouragement of people like your friend that you met in the gym, you know, to think, do I want to break free of this right of passage, which bizarrely somehow seems to have manifested itself into sight, you wear everybody drinks, and I feel like I have to as well.

And to take the cliches from the world that we live in right now, it's about taking back control. Having been in complete control of you and yourself and your actions at all points, wherever you are. Well, that's the bizarre thing. Again, this is in the manifesto. I promise that I haven't shown it to Don before, but he is almost quoting directly from it. And it shows that we've all, both of us have come to the same conclusions without having actually spoken about it. And it was that what I want to get through to people is that drinking is not normality.

Normality is 100% cognitive control, maximum efficiency, total control of your personality, your actions, and that drinking impedes that. The only reason that people see sobriety as something which you so bizarre is because it's uncommon. But if you want to be at the close to the best in your field, you need to be uncommon amongst uncommon men or women. You got to be weird. You do have to be weird and thankfully we both are. Don't mind, it's been absolutely awesome. I'm going to navigate these microphones.

Thank you so much for your time. No worries. Thank you for having me. We will do number three. Yes, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, make sure that you press subscribe. Give us a like, don and his blog. You still doing their T total run of stuff? Not as much anymore, but I'll just do the Instagram. Through link will be in the show now to below. Thank you very much.