Modern Wisdom - #114 - Sonny Webster - Bad Days, Good Days & Staying Resilient

Episode Date: October 24, 2019

Sonny Webster is a weightlifter and online coach. Some days you're feeling it, some days not so much. All of us have good and bad periods to contend with but it's how we respond which ultimately determines the outcome. Sonny is one of the most resilient humans I know and today we get a fantastic insight into how he overcomes setbacks in life, lifting and everything else. Extra Stuff: Follow Sonny on Instagram -https://instagram.com/sonnywebstergb/ Check out Sonny's Academy - http://sonnywebsteracademy.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

Oh yes, hello friends, welcome back to the show. I'm joined by old-time guest and long-time friend Sonny Webster. Today we are catching up about what's been going on in his life over the last year since we were together. Since then, a lot has changed, not least that he is now on the opposite side of the planet in Australia, but we discuss an awful lot. Principally, his approach to resilience in life, and I have to say that this gets at the heart of one of the things that I think is making sunny such an effective business professional

and such a robust personality online that he is capable of dealing with setbacks whether they be normal day to day things or huge life changes, he's able to roll through them. So getting that insight is really interesting and hopefully going to be a massive benefit to some of you today. Also, expect to learn about a gym that he's building in Africa, I think, in Kenya, perhaps somewhere. Well, he's got going on. Some updates about the Sunni Webster Academy, some principles for lifting, all of that good stuff, and we have a great laugh as well. Sunni, your agent, thank you very much for coming on, for now, please welcome Sunni Webster. I managed to get him all the way from the other side of the planet. It's sunny Webster, IMA.

Hey Chris, how are you doing brother? Yeah, good to see you man. How's life in the future? Because you're in the future right now. I'm not being funny mate, this is a long overdue chat. I can't. When was the last time I was on the podcast? Over a year ago now, so it was that same weekend that we did, was it the same weekend we did L-Row?

Last year, which was also the last years of my life that weekend. Coincidentally, the last time that I drank in the UK, so it's been like 18. incidentally the last time that I drank in the UK. So it's been like 18. Really? Yeah. And that was the last time that I drank in the UK. So it'll be like, what, 14 months or something now, since then, I'm not saying that going out with you,

like, cursed drinking. It was like, I think I've done that to a few people though. So you have to be the first. You are, like, before we even start talking about anything, can we discuss about your ability to drink? Because, like, I've never met anyone who is able to go out, like, on the lash, the way you are, and then get up the next morning and just go and do teach a seminar

in Scotland or something. You've got to put, like, 10 a.m. or 11 a.m. I didn't, I didn't surface until't surface until the middle of the afternoon. By the time that I'd got out of bed, you'd done a seminar in Glasgow or something. You know what, I think it's a thing with weightlifters is part of like the growing up if you have to be able to drink.

You will never become a great weightlifter if you can't drink. I remember right back from a young age, I must have been 14 years old, on weightlifting training camps and the more senior athletes would say to you right on a Friday night after training you're coming to the pub with us and you're having a drink. And you don't really have a choice, you do as you're told because they're much bigger, much stronger than you and you want to fit in and it becomes part of I guess the nature of you know being a weightlifting, especially

the way that we go about competition. You would train really hard for like six weeks, seven weeks, maybe up to six months on end for a competition and you won't drink at all. So then you blow up, your ability to binge drinking becomes extremely good. Yeah, it's definitely something that you capable of. I suppose as well, like, weightlifters, there's a lot of muscle mass in there that can probably metabolize their alcohol pretty quick. And the competitive, you're literally

bred to be competitive. So, you know, competitive drinking, I can imagine, it's pretty bad. But what else is going on, man? Because so the last time that the listeners will have seen you, you were in the UK. You were... Um...

Yeah, I don't think you'd even started... Uh, like... There's a Sony webstra academy by then, so, like, catch yourself over the last year. What's up? Yeah. Well, I guess before I saw you end of last year, I was just sort of planning my tour to Australia. I mean, I was definitely going through a period

at the time after we last chatted of not feeling completely settled in the UK. It took me a long time to really realize that because I was continually going on these trips to Doha, going on these trips to Europe to do seminars. And as much as I was enjoying traveling, every time I came back, the next seminar seemed to act almost as an escape away from being in the UK. And it wasn't until I'd actually left the UK that I began to realise that. I

guess, I don't know if it was more for me wanting to, you know, spread my wings and experience a new country as a kind of a sign there for me, but obviously I went away then on the big Australia tour and it was life changing, you know, I fell in love with the place fell in love with a beautiful lady and it was only fitting then that I moved away there then in January. So towards the end of my tour when I met my new girlfriend, Lindel, we decided to go to Bali for Christmas together and we had the most amazing time, Christmas in New Year. And then she lived in Sydney. I live in England. If we're going to have a go at making this work, one of us has to budget. She sure is how it was in her way to the England. It was quite an easy decision which ended the world we was going to head up in.

But I mean, I obviously just bought my place in Bristol, which I've still got, but it's amazing when you really want to be somewhere else that bad how quick can you can make the change and I think like so many people are scared and fearful of change or something new but I'm kid you know I lived in Bristol for seven years and I managed to pack up my whole life in seven days and move to the other side as well. I mean, you are quite well experienced at packing things up. I've seen you, again, in Bristol, I've seen you pack up after a night out with me to go and do like, I can't remember where you were going. Maybe my beer, or a beer.

A beathor or something like that. Yeah, you move pretty quick. It was all that you had in your suitcase was like two pairs of lifters, a pair of off-white sliders and some shorts, and that was it. And you're like, I'll just get the rest of it. I'll get the rest of it, I'm there. But no, yeah, you're right. One thing that people might not know is you've actually got a Aussie passport, right? Or you've got Aussie's citizenship for some. I've got one better. I've got New Zealand one. New Zealand passport is that it? Yeah, New Zealand one, which

kind of works the same here. It's kind of like having a, you know, an Irish passport, I guess. So I can stay here in Australia on that visa, but you know what I've meant to because I'm still traveling so much, I could come and go on my travel visa, I know it even though. Really? So all of the excuses that people have where they might think, oh, I don't really understand how the visas work or I don't have citizenship in the same way that Sunni does or whatever if there's a will as sort of a way a lot of the time. Yeah, I know, I've got, do you know what, I know so many people living here in Sydney

from back in, back in the UK that have either come here and been sponsored, getting jobs or done the farming. It's not easy, but like anything, if you really want to make it happen, you have to, you put the work in. What's James and Diren doing? Are they doing the farming? I can imagine, I can see those two on a farm. No, so Dyrin, Dyrin actually had a de facto from a previous relationship that he was here. He was with some for seven years from Australia. So he was here a long time ago. All right, yeah. With the next partner of his.

And then James obviously his business is based here. So he is a business visa. So he can stay here on those those times. Fucking red take. I get to avoid embusted. There's just sneaking around, leaving the UK, leaving the rain behind and going out somewhere cool. Those boys, yeah, they run on a different time clock to me. Those boys are embedded like nine and they're in the cafe at 6 which, you know, I'm like more of an upper 7 and work till like midnight. But it does it seems to wake up in the morning then you feel like you're on the back foot and you've got foam already and it's only like 7 o'clock

because they're already done like they're working email especially as you work in the same field. Yeah, James is 20 Instagram stories deep and he's already done his email for the weekend all that bullshit and then there's you still trying to drag your coffee out. Yeah, like that. Pinn in your eyes open. There you go.

So what's been going on recently other than obviously you've got yourself out to was you've managed to find a girlfriend you now moved in with Lindel as well, right? Yeah, moved in with Lindel. It was a birthday this weekend. Happy birthday, Lindel. It was a birthday this weekend. So, I find this. Yeah, she's watching a program in the bedroom. But yeah, for me, I think initially it took me a while to get settled, find my routine here.

Obviously, I just launched the Sunny Webster Academy, which has been amazing. It's been great to be able to help more people. That was the key thing with the Academy was that whenever I'm doing these seminars, I'd travel halfway around the world and I'll be able to impact 30 people's lives on that given day. And yes, I know they'll come away for PBL and they'll have a great experience, but I wanted to be able to offer that to a wider audience. And something that meant that I didn't have to travel so much because it was taking so much away from as much as I love traveling away from my time and my endeavors and enjoyment in my own training.

You know, because it's massively affected every time you travel away, every time you spend time in the air, you fall out your sink, in your routine. Before you know, I'm not improving, and I still love my lifting. So, I had to, with the Academy, find a way of accessing more people without having to move so much. And I've learned so much in a year. I can't believe that, you know, it was only a year ago, pretty much, to this day that I launched the Sunday Webster Academy Proplic and already we've had thousands of customers and we've got you know a lot of customers online now that are on the subscription that I'm able to work with which has been you know it's been great and I've been learning so much more about what people want and how to work with people over the internet

and it kind of is the future now really. It's interesting that it's something both like kind of selfish for your own gains, but selfless as well because it allows you to scale. You are right, we were talking about this with regards to my business which is Club promo, right? If I have to be the person that's stood on the door, there's only ever one of me. I can't scale the business beyond maybe on the door, there's only ever one of me. I can't scale the business beyond maybe at best like one night per week, like every night of the week, and it's like fucking hell, that's so much graft.

But you're totally right, we've got our first online course which is in beta testing at the moment, which is going super well, and I've been able to distill down the same way you have, a lot of things that I've spoken to people about face to face, and then you've condensed it down into a format that is convenient for people, and they you've condensed it down into a format that is convenient for people and they can deal with it that way and you know like you say it's nice that

you've got this opportunity to reach to reach a wider audience whilst not sacrificing the results that people are getting on the back end. Yeah and just and yourself and your own your own your own health, but it's it's so much harder than People think it is like I can't stress that enough like you think being online coach is easy It's no problem. You get a membership site and off you go It's really not that easy. What are the challenges? What are the challenges that you've found particularly? I think Maintaining a high level of service for the people that you work with, keeping up to date with people in different time zones.

You know, that's been a massive thing for me. Like, it's easy if everyone wakes up at 7 and everyone goes to bed at 10. And you know, if you schedule your live at 9 o'clock to interact with everyone as a whole, everyone's going to be up. Right now we've got people from all different parts of the world on the academy. It's very difficult to sync with them. Also different standards of people and people require different levels of coaching. And when you offer an online platform, you kind of speak one language, okay, to your people initially anyway, because you have the

program, but then it's realized like, well, you don't like getting sworn to when I'm teaching you how to live, but some people like that encouragement. And it's kind of tailoring your service to the masses of people, and you need to have different levels, and it's taken me ages and months and months and months of tailoring and refinery the programs and products that we've got online to appeal to everyone. And you're never going to keep everyone happy, but that's definitely one of the biggest challenges I've found and then retaining. Yeah, I suppose that the issue there is you need to have a program which is sufficiently similar that it doesn't require you to write every person's program absolutely individually every single day plus do a 20 minute phone call with them because you couldn't reach enough people. But then you also need to balance

that with a level of personalization which ensures that they're the language that you're using, the sort of communication. Like you've said there, it's something I totally didn't even think about, time zones, and ensuring that people have got access at the right times and stuff like that. So one thing that you've touched on there is your own lifting, your own training at the moment. Obviously, the last time that we spoke, I think you would have probably still classed yourself primarily as an athlete. What do you see yourself as now? Do you see yourself as athlete coach or as a coach?

Has there been a transition there? Yeah, I definitely still love, you know, the competitive side of training myself. So I mean, I'm still in the gym five, six days a week, focusing on my own training, but it's very different now. I aim for doing maybe one or two exercises a day and doing it really well and doing my mixture of CrossFit and Weightlifting. And then yeah, I'd say I'm definitely, I've been coaching now for seven years, so I've been in that coach athlete role for a while now, but I'm definitely putting more of the emphasis.

I'd say 60, 40 between coaching at the moment than I am on my athlete side of things. How have you found relinquishing that thread attached to the balloon? Because obviously, no matter how much you love coaching, there is a particular type of itch that needs to be scratched by competition and you're right now you're unable to do that. Yeah well I mean that was you know a heartbreak in the stage in my life and as you would have listened to James's podcast it was the first time that I'd actually last year felt in the right place to discuss my Dope in Bann and you know how it's affected me moving forward. You know, weightlifting has been the biggest part of my

life ever since I was 11 years old and to have that taken away from you. It's very difficult and I suppose it's, I can only liken it to if there's anyone listening, probably losing a loved one or something very similar because it made up so much of my life and still does. And yes, it is like an itch now for me when I still have that burn desire to want to compete and to be competitive and it's something that I can't do. No. Yeah.

You know, having been around you for quite a while and having been mates with you for quite a while, it's one thing that I do think is impressive is your resilience over the last sort of 18 months. And it's been a number of setbacks, like the first, your first band and then like a subsequent kind of additional, like kicking the balls after that as well.

And that appears to be continuing not just with competition but with like coaching as well. Yeah, I mean, so obviously my initial band was four years. I then received the further three-year band for coaching athletes that compete was what they gave me the second ban for. So that told my ban to seven years. And even so now I mean right back to when I first came to Australia, Australian Weightlifting Federation, New Zealand Weight lifting Federation were putting in the news and stuff like that to say, if anyone attends Sunni's weightlifting seminars, who's a competitive athlete, then you're impeding a doping violation and therefore you could get banned as well.

And it's been the first time that they've ever tried to impact these sort of levels of rules on anyone and for know for myself serving currently a seven year ban one of the longest bans in weightlifting especially for an out of hours out of competition test in which you know I pursued my case and gave it bloody good go at proving that it had come from contamination and wasn't ingested knowingly. And I did everything I possibly could to attempt to prove that and still to come away with that level of its very abam was, you know, it was heartbreaking. But, you know, it's like I said, back on James's podcast, as heartbreaking as that was and it was

a very low point in my life after that. I had to draw a line in the sand if I was ever going to be able to move on with my life and go, yeah, this is the most terrible thing that could ever happen to you. At this point, I'd only had the four years, but I need to continue on with my life. I need to continue to spread my passion and love for the sport and you know who's to say that I would never have come back and competed again but after having spoken out about that last time was when I received the second three years. Do you think that you would have got that or do you think that speaking out

and perhaps publicizing what happened on James's podcast led to that Additional three years at least hastening its arrival or like improving the likelihood of it happening 100% you know, there was nothing that was brought up about it prior to that But I think you know having spoken out about the topic in such detail With James it definitely was put in front of the people probably within UCAD and I definitely think it stimulated that three-year ban going into action. I spoke quite brutally about the circumstances that there are now in the way that you can deal with cases such as Tyson Fury's where he threatened to sue them.

He was caught by an anabolic steroid. He threatened to sue them. He's got more money than you can. And they let him off with it, you know? And it does become a point of if you've got enough money or you're protected by the right people, you don't reap the same judgment. Yeah, you don't, you don't have to deal with the punishment in the same way.

Without going into that with too much detail and yeah, I do believe I had something to do with the three years that continued. That was just a further kicking the nuts. I mean, I had thought about like a set of potentially coming back to competing because you know I'm aware that I'm motivating and inspire a lot of people and I want to continue to do that and I think through competition that was you know a massive motivation for people to see how you know I perform and what I do on the back end that was definitely something that was different between what I did as a weightlifter compared

to a lot of other weightlifters that I did share my training, my bad days, my good days, and tried to always give that to people as a lesson to learn from, you know, what I do when I have a shit training session. And that's the thing that's no different whether you're an elite level athlete or you're just starting your journey in fitness,

is you both have bad days, you'll continue to have those bad days, you'll have days where you miss lifts, you'll have days where you don't feel like training. It's still the same either end of the scale that you're at. And I think there's a lot to learn from experience to athletes in the way they deal that, so it makes that learning curve for new people much smoother.

Yeah, again, coming back to the resilience thing, I have to say, man, like, even from the first time that we made sure that which was body power last year, I've always been quite impressed with your resilience, and that's resilience, like it's kind of a blanket coverage of resilience, right? So it's your resilience to hangovers, your resilience to setbacks,

setbacks, and other bits and pieces professionally, personally, in terms of your sporting career stuff like that. Because one of the first conversations that we ever had, when we were at body power, you'd had quite some vitriol comments by some other people in the weightlifting community. I don't know whether they were like officials or more like athletes or whatever, but there was some people that were in happy...

They were friends. Well, they weren't even. Not after that. But yeah, like, we had these sorts of comments with people and you said this thing to you mean it really stuck with me and it still does now, which was that after you'd had your band, people weren't prepared with just destroying your sporting career, they wanted to be able to destroy

your ability to make money or to have a livelihood as well. And that really fucking hit home to me and I was like, Jesus, like this guy, like, you know, is now trying to splinter off into whatever small sliver of weightlifting he can still involve himself in, you know, with like a high quality of coaching that people obviously resonate with, with a style of social media that is obviously engaging and entertains people. And it's like there's people from within the industry, within the sport, and then also be

recratically at the top of the sport that are kind of really trying to play whack em'al with all of the different routes that you've got to go out. Yeah, it was, I mean, it was difficult. And when it comes to things like that, Chris, like I said, and I learnt my lesson when I went through that period after my band that you know there will always be obstacles and I overcame so many obstacles throughout my career as a lifter that I learnt that you

really got a burning desire to achieve and I never did what I do now to prove anything to anyone else. I've got my own goals and my own drive, and you never want to lose sight of the fact that it is your own journey, and they are your obstacles. And whenever there was another one put in front of me, I found another way around it, and you do have to have that certain element of resilience, because you know, you could take four different routes and get told no every single time. And yes, it's fucking heartbreaking. It hurts every single time, but the quicker and the better you get

at taking the emotional side out of how that makes you feel and going, but I'm angry, I'm frustrated at what's been said, I'm annoyed at the result of that and going, right, what have I learned from that? How can I change what's the next route? And the quicker that happens, the better your resilient skits. And it happens in every day stuff, you get a parking ticket, you go and see that the kind of fuck and you get angry and you can let that ruin your whole day. You can have

your whole day stewing on the fact that you've got to pay 60 pounds. And you won't pay it because you're so frustrated and you'll let it go two weeks and then all of a sudden that 60 pound fines, now 120 pound fine. We've all done it and it's through bitter frustration that stops us moving forward and ultimately ends up in a worse place than where we were to begin with. You know at that point where you've got a parking ticket, if you put your two pound on the ticket, okay it would have taken you, you would add to what the 50 meters down the road to

get the ticket to come back, you would have potentially avoided that 60 pound fine. That is your lesson that you learned. So by paying, ringing up, paying that park and taking it straight away and moving on with your day lesson learned, you're able to achieve so much more of the best that day. And that is a simple, I guess, analogy of the way that I would approach being resilient to any sort of negativity that I've had to deal with. It's as simple as that. There's a really good quote from Sam Harris where he talked about

try and remain angry for more than five seconds without thinking about the fact that you're angry. And it's like the actual fleeting sensation of emotions, they're so short-lived, but the reason that we hold on to them, and this is where a lot of the complications come from, is that it's very rarely about the actual emotion. It's about all of our thoughts and our responses to whatever that particular emotion is. So forget the situation, forget the fact that you got the parking ticket. It's no longer about the parking ticket, it's about how you ruminate over the fact that you could have just walked that 50 meters, or you should have just done this or you should have done that. And there's exactly in the internal. Yeah, it is. And you perpetuate it, which, and then you become the, after that, you get the second order and third order effects, which are where you become angry at yourself for perpetuating the thing that you didn't do in the first

place. And it's so, it's so dangerous. It's a vicious cycle. It really is. There's a man's search for meaning by Victor Frankl. Anyone who's listening and needs an easy read, well, it's an easy read. It's about the concentration camps in Nazi Germany, but it is an interesting read. And this guy was a psychologist, psychotherapist,

who was a Jew, was captured, taken into the concentration camps. And his synopsis to the entire book is that the final thing that people can take from you, which they can never take from you, the thing which can never be taken from you, is your ability to choose your response to any given situation. No one can ever ever take that away from you. And you think of every situation that this guy has been in, he's been stripped from his family, he's watched his wife and child die in front of him. He's had all of these horrific experiences. But the final thing that concentration camp guards couldn't take away from him was his ability to

respond how he chose to any given situation. But that's it, Chris. And it frustrates other people further in the way that you respond. I mean, it's still, you know, for me in it, on a daily basis, the way that I deal with making a stupid mistake. I do stupid stuff all the time. I lose my keys. I lose tickets into

car parks and I deal with it and I pay the fee on final ever and I move on. And it frustrates Lindor. She's like, how can you continually do those stupid things and it not frustrate you? And it's the same with how can you get around you know not being able to do a seminar but yet you'll still go on and do the next one. What do we do next it for a straight people when the way that you respond to your own issues and it's not necessarily I think a bad thing. I think it's just people deal with negativity, positivity, any sort of emotion very differently and it's hard when you know two people don't respond to the same way. Yeah, you're right, I think this probably strikes at the heart of one of the reasons why some of the waitlifters might be trying to make you out to be more of a bad guy than you are,

because they're projecting their own inadequacies. The fact that you have had all of these barriers put in front of you and yet you've still got a flourishing online business, you're still selling out seminars. It's like that, I think is it that Chris Brown song, where the intro to it goes, I don't see how you can hate from outside of the club, you can't even get in.

It's like, if you sell five spots to a weightlifting seminar, how can you hate on the person that's selling out 30, even with all of these barriers in place? It's like don't, but don't try and make your own performance better by bringing somebody else's down. It's like, get on their level. But this happens so much in life, in the fitness industry, instead of people working together and growing together and helping each other cross pollination, it doesn't. People don't like seeing other people do well and one thing that I've always done is never put fuel on the fire.

I get negative stuff that I have to deal with every single day. And the people that probably have to deal with it the most is the people closest to me. The people that around me when I'm at my vote most vulnerable, the people that will see me, like Linda will see me at night when I'm down depressed about something. They're the people that ultimately are the ones that see you,

brunt the sort of, I guess, when you're angry or when you're depressed, because I will never project negativity across my social media, which is what people want you to do. But at the end of the day, I do not use my social media platforms to be negative, to talk about negativity. It is a place to promote positivity and inspire and motivate people. So you tend to, you tend up setting a lot of people because they don't get that keyboard war, that reaction that they're always looking for. Yeah, you're right. There's a thinking about a podcast that did with

George McGill, which was mental models 101. And in that, he talks about what he thinks is the single greatest or the single most valuable characteristic of the 21st century. And he calls it high agency. And the perfect way to think about who your high agency friends are is to do this thought experiment. So imagine that you're trapped in jail and you've got seven days to get out and you have to ring a friend. Like, who is the friend that you're trapped in jail and you've got seven days to get out and you have to ring a friend Like who is the friend that you're going to ring like that friend is the person who's got high agency and People who have an agency you see them you see them on the internet We all know who they are right like James has got high agency. Dyrins got high agency. You've got guys like

Ben and Lucy from my coach school, like these people who don't give a fuck, like don't conform to whatever's expected of them, decide that they're just going to go down their own way. Like, Cam's got high agency as well, the guy that does your stuff on the back end, like he just, like, bollocks to it, I'm just going to jump on a flight, I'll go Bali, I'll go here, I'll do some content, I'll do this. And yeah, that high agency approach is exactly why it allows people to make progress that others think is almost unbelievable, whether it be professionally, personally, emotionally, you know, in terms of their sport or whatever it might be. Yeah,

that, I love that thought experiment. Who'd you reckon you'd call if you needed to get yourself out of jail? Who would you ring? Jeff, that had to go to jail. Jeff, I called Jeff with problems all the time because he is one of the smartest blocs I know. He's one of the best. He is a extremely resilient human and he is, he never takes no as an answer. And that's why I know whenever there's a problem that I can't solve, I put it in front of him and he will, it's a challenge for him. It's a challenge for him to get that computer to say yes. And he's extremely good at it. And that is, you know, but, as you know, huge inspiration and motivation for me because

that is the way it attacks everything and I guarantee that has a massive contribution to why you're so successful in not only in life but in business and career as well. Yeah, high agency, man. Jeff's a high agency guy. Although some of his shirts are like super high agency. Jeff, if you listen to him, man, I'm watching you on Instagram although some of his shirts are like super high agency. Jeff, if you're listening, Manam, I'm watching you on Instagram and some of those shirts are outrageous. Well, he's just recently sent me, I think yesterday sent me some cloth fabrics and douching a manna, which are shades of purple to match a specific paint grade that Lamborghini are doing on their new Lamborghini.

Of course, I mean, why not? Why not, Jeff? Just do it. That's how he rolls. That is how he rolls. Unbelievable. He's not worried about where he wants to go. Absolutely. He just wants a new see through Louis Vuitton handbag that's like first specs or whatever that crazy thing that we saw you with lust. I'm not gonna annoy a lie, yeah, I've still got that in the box. I've got the nose in. Honestly, so yeah, I totally get it man and I think as well what you're talking about this kind of unfaltering positivity, you do show your vulnerability online, that we all do, right? But I think you're right, it really, really grinds on people when they don't get the response

that they wanted. And that response could be something direct from you or the failing of your career or the even just the slowing of your career, right? Like when I met you, I think that weekend at Body Power was when you crossed 100k on Insta and what you at now, like two 50 or something. Two 20. Yeah. Like so that, you know, that's more than doubled in a space of just over a year, which is, you know, this part. I mean, even, even then, Chris, that has slowed, that has slowed, you know, and everyone's noticed it at the moment, and the way that Instagram algorithms are working, it's not how it was. I was at a period where I was making maybe 2000 followers a week to now.

It's more like 250 followers a week, you know, and they say constant battle, but it does play with your, you do psychology a little bit because you put so much effort and time into content and if it doesn't get the right reaction or likes or things that you're engagement that you're looking for, it has an effect on you. And it's mad, you know, how Instagram have been playing around with the likes, I think to combat really people's worry about what's light so much and just post more about what you're passionate about and want to express. But yeah, I mean, it's one thing I've noticed from all the guys that, you know, I'm inspired by in the industry and they're on a business level is consistency.

And if someone doesn't work the first time, don't worry, don't give up, keep on going and doing it, be original and keep doing your own thing. After we get after cool today, I'm going to do my next school of sunny thing to post up. It's probably some of the worst engaged content that I've put online in terms of how many likes and views it gets, but yet it's probably the most valuable in terms of what I offer people in terms of how many likes and views it gets but yet it's probably the most valuable in terms of what I offer people in the videos but it's five minutes long. People don't want to sit there for that long. Isn't it interesting? You have to. You have to. Isn't it interesting that we use, and this is, like everyone knows this, right?

Everyone's seen this before. They've taken ages crafting some beautiful photo and a caption that's really meaningful to them about some moment in their life and they've put it on social media or if you're a content creator maybe you've spent absolutely ages crafting a really difficult video. So I got Joe Delaney Shred Bundy recently randomly did a video that was like He randomly did a video that was like how to do a food shop from Aldi for three pounds a day and this video banged so hard, like one million views in the space of a couple of weeks. And this guy's worked on his YouTube channel for probably about 10 years and he's got to a hundred K subs, right? Then in the space of another month, he's done 50K.

And you just think like, what is it about this? And it is this total random, almost random lottery chance of winners and losers. And you're right, I do wonder moving forward for social media if they were to get rid of the likes, whether that would signal people to post content which would be more valuable. We've all seen it, right?

You take ages doing this thing, put this really beautiful photo up, and you go, oh, that didn't go so well. Then you post like a random, funny thing. If you're falling over in a pool, or if you like looking semi-lean with a bit of a tan. And bang. It goes crazy.

Like there was that one that you'd done that was like, I think it's just a close-feet, a clean grip snatch on a red a red plate back in Bristol. And it did like four of a million views. And then there's some things where you've need, needy taken your own head off. And it's like, nothing. It's, there's a combination of lighting, timing, you know, that everything that, you know, people, people looking for in a video, but it's like TikTok. I don't know if you had to play around with it yet. No, not your home. It's the new sort of, I guess, Instagram. It

used to be musically. Oh, yeah. I know that is. Shout out and about it because it's kind of like the next platform. So I'm playing around on it at the moment. Just more than anything to be ahead of the curve, see what people like, what people don't like, but it's a very young audience on there. And Lindel's done a video on there recently, and she got 3.6 million views on it. And all it is is me and her stood looking fat, like holiday bloke, and then turning around, and then like I'm tensing and she's like doing a model post, 3.6 million views.

She's now at like 25,000 of 30,000 followers on TikTok overnight, pretty much. It's so bizarre. It's crazy. It is. I work like a same, so I get this as well, right? Like some of the times when I'm posting up content, and it's different for me because this podcast

is a passion project, although, you know, increasingly, it's not that. But it's growing, I looked on the channel today, and it's somebody like on YouTube that 10,000 subscribe. Yeah. Because it has probably one when I was on it. Yeah, I think when you came on, we were probably on about two and a half.

And yeah, like it is, we crossed a million downloads the other week, we've just hit 10K subs about it, million views on YouTube. So yeah, but one of the problems is, and everyone will know this, right, with regards to their life generally, and social media is like a very concentrated form of what we broadcast out in our lives in any case, to reflection of real life anyway.

People sometimes do things that they know will receive social reinforcement and will make them feel good because other people will make, it'll be on the surface level quite viscerally satisfying, but might not actually be the most meaningful or the most value adding and that's what you're talking about with the Sunni, what's it called? Sunni school. The school of Sunni, yeah. Sunni, but that's the thing that I know I could post, repost a video from a year ago of me nearly chopped my head off through and there, which will get those views that will make

me sleep happy tonight. However, I'm going to invest, that's going to make me no money, but I'm going to invest an hour instead of doing my school to sunny, which is going to provide a lot of quality education and may result in two or three people signing up to the academy, which is going to make your money. And for a lot of time, for a long long time and it's something that I've definitely started to realize I'm gonna swap yeah, can you still hear me? Yeah, yeah, it's Yeah, it's definitely something I've realized over time that in order to grow you have to start investing in you know

people to help you other staff members investing you know new technology new software because's only so far you can go nowadays on your own back and you've only got so much time to do it. So it's definitely something that over time I've started thinking about doing. Yeah, I mean, we do this business principle series which we've started doing recently and in that one of the ones that we haven't got round to but will probably take a full episode on is outsourcing areas that you're weakened. So I remember one of the first big episodes that I did was with Mike Casu, Guy that owns brute strength two times CrossFit affiliate cup games champion to like in the team in like 2010, 2011. And I remember asking him about like how did you grow because he misses on's wag working against gravity a D and then he owns like brute strength. It's like fucking hell

like how do you have two people that are both CEOs it like such like high-level companies in the same industry and he said that both of them just do the same thing which is they Know exactly where their strength and the weaknesses lie and they employ people ruthlessly to fill in where those weaknesses are. Yeah, well, I've just, I've just tired a videographer, but so why is it for me when it just comes all, when it comes to working with people instead of just paying someone a set of fee, give them skin in the game, give them a steak in, in what you're doing and it is far more motivating for that person To work harder to grow with you and to grow your business especially when you're starting out especially when you don't necessarily Have the cash for the pace and one away, you know, I've just taken on a videographer and

Because I've always wanted to do YouTube and I don't have the time. This is an edit a video So instead of saying look how much does it cost to put together a video, I said, look, you're like 20% of all the revenue that we make on YouTube. There is a lot of scale then for that person to put in time and effort to making that video great. And, you know, I think people then tend to take a lot more time into getting something done well if you give them that sort of incentive. Skinning the games, the perfect analogy for that. So I use that across most of my businesses if not all of them. Good example, video guide, Deen, who everyone that's watching will know it'll be the guy that's in this right now. He takes 50% of all of the revenue that we

make on YouTube. I brought him on board with every project I've just done. We just did our first brand collab with ReBoc UK for the Nano 9 release. We split that straight down the middle. I went and did a Christmas seminar for Communicorp, which is one of the UK's biggest broadcasting companies. They on Smith Radio and Capital Firm and a few other bits. And again, I brought Dean in on that and we keep on going. And you know, now he's got things, he's incentivized to do that. And a lot of people ask about the Club promo and how that ties in a good example of this is when we go and run an event in a nightclub, there's two ways that we can do things. We can

do a dry hire, which is it's 1,000 pounds a night or 500 pounds a night or 2,000 pounds a night, whatever it might be, or we say you're on 20% of the door or 30% of the door or however much percent of the door. And obviously, if you have something which is a percentage, it protects you on the bottom end because if you've got low revenue, which inevitably everyone has, everyone has a low revenue when they first start a business, right? It means that that person isn't this huge liability, which you've got to keep on shelling out, digging into your reserves, which then down

the line mean that you invest your money less effectively moving forward. But what it does for the person who is being offered the deal is, yet maybe they lose a little bit on the bottom end, but on the top end when the business really starts shifting, that's when they get repaid. So it's all well and good. And then you come to us and say, oh, well, we want a thousand pounds a night. And we go, okay, well, let's say that you take 20% of the door. Oh, well, you know, in the midst of December, they might walk away with 500 quid, but on Halloween, they might walk away with five grand.

So you're like, well, there you go. Yeah, is that it? It's good, man. So what's next? You've got Aussie summer but Christmas coming right? I mean, yes, that's it. So for me, I spent so much of this year traveling. I still love doing my seminars. I've started doing retreats now as well, which definitely offer people a lot more than just improvement in their lifting. I get to show people the beauties of Bali in meeting new people. It definitely brings people out of themselves and

takes them out of them comfort zones. Having more of an impact on people than just making them better at lifting, which you know is very fulfilling for me, and something that I very much enjoying. which is very fulfilling for me and something that I very much enjoy. I still love travelling and I still love doing my seminars and that's getting popular and popular again. But moving forward this year, I'm not going to be zigzagging the planet doing seminars. As much as I love doing them, I'm going to be a little bit smarter about the ones I'm doing and try and just spend a little bit more time here up now till Christmas, get into a good routine, get feeling good about myself again, get in shape, get a six pack for the summer, get lifting heavy. I've got one trip to Saudi Arabia to coach someone at their house and a private coaching

session in Saturday, but we're going to be for a week and that's exciting man, you know, it's something new that someone just reached out to me off of me that, so I'm going to be doing that and you know who knows what's going to be coming next, but definitely for the near future, it's just getting back to my routine and yeah, simple stuff brother. Only in Saudi Arabia would someone have the cash to be able to fly you from Oz all the way over there. Oh my god. Lindos gonna have to make sure that you don't come back as that part of an arranged marriage or something like that and you just can't even read, I can't even do you take then.

I couldn't even do take then. I've got to go to the embassy and get all signed off and everything this week. How exciting. Then I think January will start traveling again to do some seminars in the Middle East. January and then I've just today sorted out seminars for Toronto in February and then I've also got another training retreat in Bali in February. So I'm up to February of next year, pretty much planned. So I'm trying to go a little bit further ahead this time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, just spinning the plates all the time.

Toronto in February is going gonna be absolutely freezing. That's what I've heard, but I'm kind of excited for that, because it'll make a nice change after the nice summer. Here, and it means it might be, I'll do some skin. Nice, yeah, that is good, mate. What about you? What have you got on the cards, bro? So we've just had freshers.

Short term, long term. Freshers week, just out the way, which is always a bit of a brutal time of the year, but we've got, we launched a brand new one, half million Pound Superclub in Newcastle, which is great. Then we picked up a new Friday at quite a prestigious club, which is taking over really nicely and then the Thursday is still solid. So the club stuff's taking over. We're doing more brand collabs, which is like really cool and different and kind of not

a direction that I'd seen the channel necessarily going in, but I really enjoy. So Lucy and the guys, Reebok have been really good. I'm now officially tied in with Soaring, which is hilarious. After like, that was your dream. This was my dream sponsorship. You've had some amazing people like on this podcast, man, some really interesting people, which is cool, because that's always what you talked about. That's all I want, man. I just want to have more interesting conversations. That's all Rogan does, right?

Like Rogan does at scale just what everyone would probably want to spend their afternoon doing anyway, which is just sitting down, having a coffee, and having a chat with some guy that's crazy interesting. Ah, that's something. So I was gonna mention this earlier on. When you were talking about resilience and sort of continuing to go past barriers,

the guy that I spoke to last night, his book's down there, guy called Keith Cooper, who wrote the contact paradox. So this guy has been writing this book on enough for 10 years, right? He went through three dozen publishers and lost two agents in the time it took him to write this book. So the book's about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence,

why we should be concerned about Meti, which is outgoing sending messages as opposed to receiving, like it alerts us to other civilizations, which might be out there, and real, just cool as fuck. Big picture thinking shit about what would an alien civilization that's maybe millions or billions of years advanced, what would they look like, how would they react to finding that we're in the universe, right? And this guy's gone through, he's been sacked by or dropped by two agents, he submitted the

manuscript to like three dozen publishers. And then he ends up getting picked up by Bloomsbury, who are the people who ended up doing it. And they'd already rejected it once, like five years previous, but he goes back to them. And when you were talking about, you know, if you have something which you genuinely care about and you keep on doing it and you feel and believe in it enough, it's so wishy-washy, right? Because you see these quotes online, these motivational quotes, like, you know, just keep grinding, this fucking Gary V. Hustle and Grindelgschit, like, but, increasingly, I'm surrounded by people who are living, breathing examples that that is an effective strategy

and this Keith Cooper guy is talking to me and it was the first, the first podcast he's done on the book and he finished with this little segment, he's not like, you know, he's a fucking astrophysicist, right? Like he's not an emotional dude, but he finished with this little segment where he was like, you know, I've been dropped by two agents, three dozen publishers and ended up getting picked up by someone that rejected it the first time. If there's someone out there that's got a project that they believe in, I'm just telling you that if you do keep on grafting at it that, you know, it'll come out the way that you want in the end. And this is actually it, man. You know, if you know, my life's been consumed by this beautiful, wonderful, weird sport of Olympic weightlifting, I've now managed to turn into something that gives me a lively hood and it's still something that I'm extremely passionate about and it's, you know, through

all of that, it's still something that spits out some terrible days for me, some very dark times, some bad news. It doesn't stop me continuing to want to achieve my goals, you know, and give back to the sport, give back to the people that are invested in this sport. And even for me now, we're looking at building a gym in Soweto in February. I'm going to South Africa. What's happening with that? Yeah, so I'm going to South Africa. This guy reached out to me last year, came to my training retreat and said,

look, there's this small gym in Soweto really deprived there in South Africa and they're training and they sent me the photos of the conditions and it was terrible they had broken bars and they said they're doing something great there and they're taking the kids off the streets and getting them into lifting and I spoke with this guy called Katty and he had his dream is to get someone from Soweto to do the big games and I spoke to this guy called Katty and he had, his dream is to get someone from Sueto to do the Olympic Games. And I listened to his story and it just resonated with me so much obviously with my childhood dream.

And I thought I could do something to help these people. And I always like, ride straight back to that moment where I needed help and support to get the Olympic Games and Jeff gave me that support and help that I needed along with other people along the way and you know I'm now in a position where I've got an audience and I've got an income and I want to help you know basically, we're going to be building a gym in Soweto. And hopefully, it's going to be the first one of these charities called Lifting Dreams, the charity.

And we're working for a few different partners to raise money. We've got our first fundraisers in a few weeks. And I'm doing like an open training session in Sydney. We also met a winemaker in Barossa, one of my seminars a few weeks ago. So we're going to produce you be produced in my own wine and all the proceeds from the wine is going to help build the floor at the gym in Soweto and we've got lots of crazy ideas but that's fun too. It's that eventually will be what this will be about when the

Sunny Webster Academy is making enough money for me to live the life that I want. It'll be about doing cool shit and helping other people, you know, achieve their dreams. Mate, that's so cool. Like the opportunity to help a underprivileged community like that's sick. And also the fact that you're making your own wine, like, I have to say it doesn't surprise me. Like, in the nicest possible way, it doesn't surprise me. But man, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on.

I know that everyone will be super, super happy to hear from you again. And we don't, we're not allowed to leave it this long until the next one. I need to get you back on screen. No, course not well we'll have some more updates soon. Yeah it's been a pleasure thank you very much I'm moving back on Chris and thank you to everyone that's tuned back in to listen to this and supporting Chris's Dreaming Chris's channel it's you know I even finally extremely listening to this and do. So thank you Chris. It's a pleasure man, thank you very much. Enjoy and I'll see you the next time you back in the UK.

Take care brother. Cheers man. you