Modern Wisdom - #258 - Paul Evans - Living An Alternate Reality During A Coma

Episode Date: December 14, 2020

Paul Evans is an entrepreneur and author. Out of body experiences during operations are bizarre but at least semi-common, living an entire new life in an alternate reality for two years during a seven month coma is something else entirely. Expect to learn how childhood bullying can set the tone for your entire life, what it was like to live through the Arab Spring revolts in Egypt, the mind bending detail that Paul can remember his "other life" in and much more... Sponsors: Get 20% discount on the best coffee in Britain with Uncommon Coffee’s entire range at http://uncommoncoffee.co.uk/ (use code MW20) Get 83% discount & 3 months free from Surfshark VPN at https://surfshark.deals/MODERNWISDOM (use code MODERNWISDOM) Extra Stuff: Buy When I Woke Up - https://amzn.to/2KfDJPm Follow Paul on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/pauljohnevs/  Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/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, hello friends, welcome back. My guest today is Paul Evans. Entrepreneur and author, I had the fortune of meeting him while I was out in Dubai. Paul has, without a doubt, one of the most intense, insane, unbelievable stories that I've ever come across. Out of body experiences during operations are bizarre, but at least semi-common. You may have heard of them before. However, Paul's story of living an entire new life in an alternate reality for two years

during a seven-month coma is something else entirely. So today, expect to learn how childhood bullying can set the tone for your entire life. What it was like to live through the Arab Spring revolts in Egypt twice, the mind-bending detail that Paul can remember his other life in and much more. I really, really loved this story. Paul's got such a fantastic tale to tell. Also, this is part of the Dubai episode, so there may be some calls to prayer in the background

as we're on the 25th floor of the Dubai marina Overlooking a beautiful view but with some slightly odd sounds But for now it's my home. That's my office. It's your flat. My home. Next flat. My home.

I'm not sure if it's my home. I'm not sure if it's my home. I'm not sure if it's my home. I'm not sure if it's my home. I'm not sure if it's my home. I'm not sure if it's my home. I'm not sure if it's my home. I'm not sure if it's my home.

I'm not sure if it's my home. I'm not sure if it's my home. I'm not sure if it's my home. I'm not sure if it's my home. I'm not sure if it's my home. I'm not sure if it's my home. I'm not sure if it's my home. I'm not sure if it's my home. I'm not sure it's my town but yes my it's my home that's my certainly yeah it's your flat my home. Next flat, next my podcast studio your town I hope yeah that's how I was feeling didn't I that I get it so we're gonna go through a lot today but where do we start where does the genesis of your story in

terms of making you who you are today? Where does that begin? I probably begin somewhere around the age of 13 or 14 when I was a trouble little school kid who was extremely misunderstood and considered to be quite stupid. And then the relentless journey to prove all those teachers wrong, which at 45 years of age, I'm still trying to do today, I guess. That's still in the source code. Definite motivation there for that, even today. Even though probably all those teachers have rest their souls have passed on and there wouldn't be one of them I can say, look, I told you, I was going to be somebody. So that's something that I was considering thinking about this last night,

that what happens to you as a child lays down foundations infinitely for the rest of your life and I think that there's a really interesting implication for bullying that because bullies maybe they get some recompense in the time maybe they got to do some detention maybe they got to do whatever but consistent bullying throughout school, which is something that I dealt with as well, it sets a ton for the bully ease life, the victim's life, for the rest of their debt, unless they do an ungodly amount of deprogramming and self work. Or they use it to motivate themselves in the right manner. So, I would imagine that you're the size you are and you have the ability

to train like you do and you build yourself into a human that can't be bullied because you didn't enjoy being bullied. And then I would imagine that also you're a personality traits that when you see whatever the bully it may be obviously in later life it's a different style of bully but if you see somebody being bullied today be the first guy to step forward and say be at yourself. It makes me very very very uncomfortable. So one of the few things that I'm incredibly passionate about. Yeah. What individuals bully or be bullied and whether it's in the workplace, whether it's in a venue, on a night experience, I'm also the to say I absolutely love it. I love

teacher bullies who are bullying my children at the moment. So there are authoritarian manners. When I see people in our venues trying to dominate other customers it's yeah it's in my DNA that I don't tolerate that and I don't like it and I'll stand in front of anybody. I see being bullied and I try to create an environment in our company today that is absolutely the opposite way. Bullying can be perceived from multiple angles, whether it's a senior colleague bullying down the track. I can't have that, I can't stand it.

And that all stems from being kicked around a school playground when I was 12 and 13, I guess. So what did that move into bullying school yn ymwch i'n gweithio'r gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio yn ymwch i'n gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r

gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r And then I became an arrogant prick who just decided to Nobody anybody that got in the way on my journey to become successful. I would walk through I wasn't a bully, but I didn't I didn't consider people's opinions or people's feelings or people's

Projection of how I was being to be concerning for me Because I success became way more important and personal perception, but I didn't know what success was then. I was just a 22-23-year-old kid thinking that success was at paycheck at the end of the month. How did you define success? Money. Money, growth, progression, perception. at 22, 23 years of age. What did you learn working for Jack Welch? Pfff. Pfff. The best 10% get promoted, the bottom 10% get fired.

Every month. Every month. Where was that? G capital. And what is that? It was General Electric Corporate Finance, I worked for those that I was doing. So what do you do?

I would lend people money. Okay. Or lend companies' money that would then go off and use that money to lend to other people. So I ran the Manches to Sales Centre office at 26 years of age and I just you know, indulge myself in that culture of success is a possessional financial reward until I reached a point where I really really didn't like myself anymore, I didn't like it, I'd become at the pendulum of insecure, sad, unmotivated, scared little schoolboy had become arrogant. I am this, I am that, I am the best, I am look how successful I am, look at my numbers, look at my sales, look at my car, look at my houses, or house, you know, it had gone the other way.

So I'd gone from being timid and frightened to being an arrogant dick. And then suddenly I'm like, yeah, this is not cool. What was that point? Was there something? Was there an incident? Was it compounding over time? Yeah, that was, I was, I was the best way to phrase this. I was caught cheating. I was not, I was not traditionally good.

The one or one boyfriend versus girlfriend, so I was messing around and getting carried away with the, the life in London. Um, and then I decided that that wasn't the right, the way I wanted to live my life. I didn't want to be that individual. And then I needed to change. So I resigned from GE. I jumped on the airplane, flew to Egypt, and went to be a diamond instructor for a year. Completely got out of that corporate, successful, doggie dog world.

Isn't it interesting how our behavior and relationships often is like a distilled version of other stuff that's going on. It sometimes identifies areas that were not quite going right in our life. Yeah, you know, I began to believe the hype. I began to believe my own bullshit. I began to believe that I was this rock star of a salesperson and you know, all the things that or what you perceived to be the glory that comes with that, the bars, the clubs, the women, the cash. And I had to break that mold, and that's what I did. And you know, went and jumped under the sea,

went and played with nature, and got out about at five o'clock in the morning, grew my hair long, got in good shape again, and got into it with nature and diving and the retie. So let's think about the different ways we've gone so you've gone from like this timid, bullied bottom of the pile, to a very brush, very projecting,

overtly successful top of the pile. To now this kind of monastic lifestyle, very in touch with nature very spiritual so it's kind of bouncing around. It is different. Oh part of the journey of trying to find yourself you know I hadn't I hadn't found myself then I just realized that I didn't want to be this timid schoolboy that had then catapulted itself into this wolf on wolf street arrogant do whatever a one money grabbing individual and I didn't want to be that guy. So come as far away from that guy as I can possibly be earn $600 a month

as a dive instructor. That couldn't be any further away and that was all part of the process of building the guy who I eventually would become and I'm still on that journey and I'll stop that journey when my time is done It will never ever be the final version of me will just be a continual path of I've tried that I like that I'm gonna take that from it that stuff I'm not gonna take that's that's not cool. I'm leave that there and then you know I can't be a diving instructor Unfortunately, it doesn't it doesn't generate enough to look after the family that I want to look after. But the idea of it and some of the mythologies of being a diving instructor, I quite like. So I'm going to take those. Now what I'm going to do, I'm going to get drunk in a bar one night and invest in a nightclub.

Take us there, so you've been diving for a while. Yeah, I've been a... My plan was to be a diving instructor for three years, figure my shit out, and then decide what I was gonna do. In Egypt, in Red Sea. Why did you choose that? My father was building a safari boat over there, so that was an easy gig. And randomly enough, I mean, that's another journey of a story.

My father was a sales and marketing consultant for 35 years. Hit his 40th birthday and decided he'd had enough and was gonna sell up up and go and build a dive into the Follyville. He's probably on a single little, a simple thought process to me. So that was an easy fit. Then I met a Dutch guy called Freck, around five o'clock in the morning, I must have told the story a thousand times, agreed to lend him $10,000 to finish a beach club and I got into the bar business at that moment there and that took me to completely, you know, I'd re-circle back to the type of individual I was in GE to a certain degree, way more partying, drank my ass off for 18 months, put myself in a coma,

flatline, they're operating tables, three times, and completely change my life. Take us through that 18 months. Oh, yeah, a lot of fun. A lot of fun. I was learning a completely new industry. I brought a sales and marketing thought process to a bar business in Egypt.

There was lots of hotels coming up, I saw lots of opportunity. I started to see, I decided to work for myself, that started to manifest itself in me where I'd learn from these massive corporate conglomerates like GE. I wanted to be my own boss, but I didn't know what I wanted to be my own boss in. What a lifestyle, you know, waking up every morning, I wanted to be my own boss, but I didn't know what I wanted to be my own boss in. What a lifestyle, you know, waking up every morning, bit of a hangover, go to the office, design a flyer on clip art, I'm not shitting you, that's how we did it. You know, a poster in the toilet advertising, a band, you know, that was how we marketed

our venues. All these hotels were starting to crop up, you know, how do we talk to the hotel, how do we get the guests out of the hotel. It was that whole process in the daytime, and then at night time, you know, 8.30 and I would start drinking, and we'd finish it about six in the morning, and we'd go again, and we'd go again, and we'd go again, and that just continued to go around and around until the 27th of July, when it all stopped.

What happened? I woke up in the morning, my stomach looked like the biggest piece of blue cheese you've ever seen alive. I looked nine months pregnant. I was 118 kilos, which was what? 20 odd still. To pay for? I was using it. I'll show you some fixes. I'll show you some fixes. So then they took me to the hospital. Within 12 hours my lungs were collapsed.

I was in intensive care within a day. I was given four days to live. My father had to try and raise the money to get an air ambulance and get me out of that country. The doctors had said we can't keep them alive. Just not sufficiently sophisticated. It just they couldn't deal with the she was going on. Alongs the collapse I had a co-lie. I was dying and I was dying fast. I had a cute pancreasitis which has a pretty much 80% mortality rate and I was deep on that process.

I doubt managed to convince four friends to lend in the money, 28,000, or 25,000, for air ambulance to get me home. And there was some processes in that where I was very lucky to get an air ambulance. They're not sitting on them, waiting to fly idiots home, but drank themselves into a stupor. But eventually, you know, the big man looked after me, I got managed to get on an aeroplane. I was flown back into Manchester,

I was taken to Lain Hospital, and the number one pancreatic surgeon on the planet was in that hospital. My dad finally got them to admit me and he promised to look after me and try and save my life and six months later I left the hospital. So you go in, what's the operations, what are the procedures that need to be done? I don't know, I was in a coma, so I got no clue. Induced or medically induced a coma, yes. or medically induced akumia. Yes. That was put, I was put into that, I think, on the 29th of July, and I woke up from that

on my birthday, so it's first of August, and then went back to sleep again, and woke up again in, on the 9th September. Can you remember the journey? 18 years ago. You remember the flight? No, from Egypt. Were you induced during that time as well?

Yeah, now I was gone. I didn't from the moment. So the last memory I have was being away when they banged a 12 inch metal spike into my ribs and give me a long puncture. You still got the scar? Yeah. Yeah, I was awake for that. Is that the worst pain of the... No, that was the weirdest thing actually. It was like a red hot poke had been shoved into you, but it meant I could breathe.

So that, that, that... So this time... I couldn't talk. So you've got this doctor coming towards you with this thing, and you know, the fuck you're going to do with that? What, that's not good, is it? There's only a few places that that can go and I don't know where to go in any way of that. What that's not good is it? There's only a few places that that can go and I don't need to go in any way of that. Yeah exactly what are you planning to do with that? But you know I'm there was nothing you know both both lungs would fill with fluid. Pancras of weld up lungs

would fill with fluid and this thing had to go into me or there was no option going in. So when he banged it in, you know, it was a moment of letching or your life. Okay, so you put into this medically induced coma and you take us through what happened next? I woke up in Singapore and I had a full-time job. I got up in the morning, lived in an apartment similar to this in Singapore and I remember the colour of the shower, the registration plate on my car, the suits I used to work, where to work and I ran a sales team at Soul Virtual Reality Games and I did that for two years. How fine are the memories, how fine-grained are the memories from that time?

That I can remember the spelling that was on your top if I went to dinner with you that night. The most, not like a holiday when you were 14, no, like a significant career that you had in your life. What do you think was happening there? Is this common for people that are in induced comas to live another life? Yeah, look, you have to have a load of psychiatric treatment when you come out of a coma. They have to, they have to help you through that process. You know, I went to sleep with hair short and yours and I woke up with hair longer than mine.

I mean, seriously, I bite my nails. I woke up with things like that. I like one of those Instagram girls. Yeah. So yeah, I had to have some treatment and you know you asked the questions. What the hell was that? I'm still not sure today that we can get into some really deep rabbit holes on that one, whether that was something else or whether that was simply my mind keeping me super busy while the doctors had the chance to fix me. You know, it's four months, just under four months I was away.

So, you know, that's the days I shitloaded at time. And how long did it feel being there? Two years. So you were working a job selling people's memories via... No, what this via I was was I could buy your life. So I would go and buy your life story and I would plug it in, I'd put the headset, I'd go into this pod and I would wake up in the morning, I would be you. And whatever you do, I would do and I would live your life. So you could buy my Hamid Ali, you could buy my Tyson,

you could buy Pele, you could buy, I don't even think round I was out there. So you could buy famous people's lives and then you would go into a virtual reality experience, come into his life or her life and then you would live that life and we were testing the latest version of this software and I was the kid who tested it and it got blocked and locked and I got taken into this black room plastic membrane, I spent six months in this room trying to find my way out. And as I went into that room, the computer software people were talking to me. Don't worry, we'll patch it, we'll fix it. I'm just stuck in this black space. I can't find, I can kind of feel the size, but I couldn't find the edges. If you know what I mean, it was like a black membrane. And then slowly over time, their conversations changed from talking me through the code

that they were going to fix, they were going to change, to telling me the sports results, and talking to me about what's happening in the news. I started to realize that the only way I was going to get out of this room was if I got my out, these people, these programmers were not going to get me out of this room, it was going to be me. And what I know now is it was not computer programmers, it was my parents and my family and my friends around my hospital bed just talking to me. My dad sat there every single day reading the newspaper to me, reading the sports rules. In my virtual world, this was the computer as losing faith that they could fix this problem

and I'd be stuck here forever and I started to realise that the only way I was going to get out of this was if I started to get out of it. If I found a way, so instead of sleeping all day in this room I was awake and I was looking, I was picking, I was trying to find some way of breaking through this membrane. And then after six months of picking away, I eventually got a finger through, and then another finger through, and then I opened my memory and stick my head out, and I woke up in the hospital, bed on my birthday, and the entire family were. And that was me out of coma.

It sounds unbelievable. I've heard the story before, but it sounds insane. It was nuts. It sounds like some inception. I sit and look, have you seen the Matrix? Yeah. So I saw it like that.

That's how I sort of kind of put some place to it after. You come out of that shit and lose form into your life. I did, I've lost chunks of my life for different purposes, for different reasons, whether it I'n gwaith, ac yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn And some of them were for things that were not my fault. This was my fault. I drank myself into that position. I put myself in real harm's way. But I massively believe that it was a wake-up call that I talk about regularly today of, you know,

shit, adversity, it happens. What do we do with that? And how do we use that to fuel the person that we become? That's the powerful stuff. There was a reason I went through that experience. There's a reason I watched them operate on me and take it all out. Somebody was showing me that I screwed my life up so badly that I shouldn't wake up and that should be the end of it and I'm going to make you watch it. But actually I'm going to make you wake up. I'm actually going to give you another chance. Do not fuck you up again. That's why it was so clear to me that I was awake

to a nine-time coma, while I was given an experience, like I was given, while I buried my father in my dream, he died and we had to go through that whole thing and I can I remember crying. My family remember me in the coma crying. Weeping in real life fucking breaking down. That was at my father's funeral. My family remember me waking up and sort of on the birthday and sort of looking at the end of the bed and there was my dad and I kind of looked at everybody and I just stared at him like you shouldn't be it because it was so real that I'd lost him in my dream in my virtual world, in my job in Singapore, he'd gone.

Is dad still here now? Yeah, there's in England. He's alright. How do you think you'll feel inevitably at some point you are gonna have to say goodbye to him twice? That's a pain that no one really should go through. Look, it demolished me. But that will be the toughest thing have to say goodbye to him twice. That's a pain that no one really should go through. It'd be always me. But that will be the toughest thing I've ever had to go through.

Black, I would imagine with 95% of the children that wore this planet. Yeah, but you had to do it twice. Yeah. Yeah, it did kind of. It was and still is today, an incredibly powerful experience that keeps me true to being the person I want to be. When there's moments where I have doubt, I have questions and COVID at the moment in the

situation that we're all faced with this incredible thing that's happened to the world in the last eight or nine months. You know, I always look back to that point in my life where I was able to come through that and I was able to gain so much from it. I just have to think about this as the same thought or process. There is a reason why this is happening.

Every single road we ever go down, no matter how painful it is, there is a purpose to that road. Why have we been presented with it? Why are we going to go down it and why are we going to come out the other side of it? The key to Paul Evans today and who I've become is finding the purpose of all of those adverse roads, whatever they are, whatever the reason is, there's a reason I have to deal with that. What am I gonna learn from it? How can I use that?

And then how can I pass that knowledge on to others? What did you learn from being in that other than stop drinking? That I had a greater purpose in life and the purpose was not me, it was others. If I made my journey about everyone else, then by default, my journey would become so enlightening. When it's only about me, it's selfish, it's self-centered, it's egotistical. Then it's worthless really. What are you doing it for?

Today I have two children and I never want children prior to that. They are my absolute everything. I have a team of 500 people today. If I make the journey about them and their path and their career and their growth and their redevelopment and their becoming the best version of themselves, 500 people. Suddenly becoming better than they were yesterday and I'm fortunate enough to sit with those people. Their power and their energy will drive me to become, wow, where's that, that's limitless. And that was the big change that become that did for me. It made me understand

it's nothing to do with me. It's about everyone else. And if I am being given a second chance to project that message and to help that, then by default my life is going to be absolutely amazing because I'm 500, 600, 800, 2000, 10,000, 20,000. Why, after being in the coma, did you go back into night life with these insights? I, because it became, it became a business, not a lifestyle. I didn't realize that at the time. I didn't invest in the nightclub because I wanted to be an owner or a business not a lifestyle. I didn't realize that at the time. I didn't invest in the nightclub because I wanted to be

an owner or a business owner or a mentor or a CEO eventually. I wanted to have a bit of a riot. I wanted to have a bit of fun. I wanted to be excitables, understand that it was the glory hunter. You know, in our industry today and you're in our industry, there are two types of guy that operate in the food and beverage industry. There's guys like me who love what we do. i'n gweithio'r ymwch chi'n gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r

gweithio. Mae'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r everything that sits around it. My equivalent insight from 14 years of running nightclubs is that some people realise that you can quickly acquire capital and have influence in quite low barriety entry industry. And other people love to drink and party and realise they can monetise it.

And professional partly boys will, they're able to move fast and break things very quickly, which is impressive. And if you can weaponise them as a good businessman, they're incredibly powerful. But there's a glass ceiling on how much they can scale, because there's only one of them and they can only drink so much. And there's a lifespan on it. Like the promoter that you know that's still doing it at 30 years old, at 35 years old, it's a depreciating asset. That person by health, coma, wife, family, lack of energy, just sheer demotivation,

is on that trajectory. It's scalable to do it the way that you have spoken about that. Well, we've had those guys that were worthless and they've been incredibly valuable for us. Still need them, right? They're your foot... they're your foot shot. They're not the foot soldiers. They're the SAS operatives that you send them. I think the industry has changed, and especially when you have a scalable business, and you've got one venue, you can have the guy who sits on the table and invites whoever he invites to come and have a drink with him.

You can have the guy who sits on the table and invites whoever he invites to come and have a drink with him. When you have multi-site, multi-purpose, multi-location, global desire, then you have to have a strategy at the top at how that Guy on the table becomes the Digital way of advertising the consumer and in all honesty you use a great terminology. You weaponize them. Weapons explode and you can't use them again. True, absolutely. Push the button, bang, there's my impact and you're the one. Yeah, thank you. I can't do it. Someone send in the roleplay. I can't keep doing that to these 28 year old kids because I was the 28 year old kid and that ruined me.

How did you... Or it made me. One of the other. How did you reintegrate after this experience? Because you've been, what do you bench press now? 140 kilos. Well, right. At my peak I was 120 and I'm banging them out and then I went into my coma And then I went into my coma and then I became this so from 120 kilos to 70 kilos You could put your hand around my leg. I couldn't even lift a bar, I never mind 120, 140. Full space as well. We'll touch on that leg. I just became this little timid mouse of vulnerability and shit, I break. I didn't realize I broke. You know, I was like every 25-year-old kid,

I mean, destructible, I'm gonna do it. How old you at this point? I was 29. Right. 29. So all of a sudden you realize you can get sick, you can get ill, you're not indestructible, you need to be careful how you treat your body.

No 15 year old kid today is running around thinking, I get hurt, you don't give a shit, he'll jump off a multi-story car park because he had a few too many beers, because he doesn't care. He made a rubber on you. He made a rubber on you. He did.

Yeah, exactly. So all of a sudden I realized that I can break and if I don't take care of myself and Be careful how I move forward then I could have a problem on the flip side The birds were singing everything smells beautiful and the sun was shining. It was the most humble embracing Part of my entire life. I've never been more thankful, even now today,

with all the wonderful people around me, that year of feeling insecure and feeling vulnerable and feeling broken, but also feeling like, wow, I've got a second chance. And I'm going to I'm going to maximize that to the absolute most. So they helped me through that process of feeling vulnerable and gradually rebuilding myself. And probably realizing that I said, I don't need to lift 100 and 20 kilos. I don't need to stand on the door and stop people coming in. There's somebody bigger and stronger than me.

You can do that. I'll stand behind you and train you. So you never have to stop people coming in. And it was just that gradual process of believing believing wow, I have a second chance and That's the most powerful thing in the world. That's probably the most powerful thing This ever ever happened to me that absolute feeling of this is your second chance Do some good and how's that impacted beyond wanting to serve and facilitate other people? How's that impacted the way that you live your day-to-day life

or see day-to-day life? The stuff doesn't matter. So whatever that stuff may be, the flashcard, the big house, the fancy watch, I don't care about it, I'm not interested in it. It's a byproduct of doing what I love well. I really value relationships today. I have so many people in my life that really, really mean something. You talk about having friends that you can count on one hand and I'm blessed to have people that can count on two hands because I put a lot of time and effort into relationships and having real purposeful relationships.

Not like that before. Not as much as I am now, you know, I have a partner in my life. Dom who is, you know, my absolute film I took me a long time to find that level of person where I believed in a certain level of relationship and how Inhancing your partner makes you a better version of yourself. There are so many people today that run around relationships De-stabilizing their partner because they're afraid that they're going to leave them or, you know, if I'm if I big them up too much, they'll leave me. So I'll just keep them on balance. I also used to be that guy where today I want that person on the absolute mountain of this world because they pick me. And if I can put them there, whoever that may be, my best friend, my girlfriend, my children, make them feel amazing, the fact that they choose

to spend time with me by default makes me feel amazing because if they're so amazing and they want to hang out with me, I must be so amazing. So that was a big step of how I evolved my outside of work activity. I do a lot of diving to there, a lot of work activity. I do a lot of diving to there, a lot of experience stuff that sucks out if you like as everyone else perceives it. Allows you, in my opinion, the facility to do the stuff, that's good stuff that's wholesome stuff that I get to live in Dubai. It's amazing country that gives you the limitless opportunities.

And if you give to Dubai, it will give you back what you give it. And I talked about this a long time ago. Put my foundations here, this is my home, this is where I'm gonna live. I'm gonna dedicate myself to this place. Devices, thank you. There you go. There's your opportunities.

There's no jealousy here, there's no, or I don't get to see a lot of that. I only see people being encouraged to do well. You don't hear about people keying cars in Dubai. If you have a Lamborghini in England, someone's gonna care. That doesn't happen any. Somebody goes, well, full smash. When Nick's let me into this apartment to record,

just by leaving the door open. Yeah, no. I couldn't believe I was like, this is really expensive and it's, you know, it's right on the marina. And he's like, no, mate, you don't understand like this is to buy. This is to buy. What a beautiful statement. We are safe, proper, safe. Well, great place to bring up a family. What a great place to bring up cheerleon.

I was blessed that my, both my children had a good six year seven years here. So moving forward now you come back you do your recovery you've started to grow an awful lot of venues 18 venues or something in in 18 months something like that. No a bit longer than that, but overall we did, we probably did 20 for the was, when I went into the coma there was three, we had three venues by the end. I did it before Molly were in. Kim, don't know, actually I never really asked that question. I just let everyone get on with it. That could have been the first thing that you'd done, if my business partner went into

a coma, the first thing that he would do would be show me the excel sheet, I want to see the balance. Yeah, it's probably a bit stronger than I was. Inau'r gwybod yw'r gwybod yn ymwch i'r gwybod yn yna, ac yw'r gwybod yn yna. Mae'r gwybod yn yna, ac yw'r gwybod yn yna. Mae'r gwybod yn yna, ac yw'r gwybod yn yna. Mae'r gwybod yn yna, ac yw'r gwybod yn yna. Mae'r gwybod yn yna. Mae'r gwybod yn yna. Mae'r gwybod yn yna.

Mae'r gwybod yn yna. Mae'r gwybod yn yna. Mae'r gwybod yn yna. Mae'r gwybod yn yna. Mae'r gwybod yn yna. Mae'r gwybod yn yna. this process and I have a great team of people that take care of the obviously they took care of stuff when I was in a coma and even today we're going through some very challenging moments now, I'm not around all the time, I have a team of people that look after it, so I guess they did okay, I managed to come out of it, so in the end we built about 25 across

Egypt over a eight to nine year period. What separates you and your particular working process, that's a non-typical result, right? That's not what most, even the best of the best promoters, don't tend to have that much aggressive growth. What is it that you're doing that's causing that to occur. If I don't keep building this business, there's no opportunity for the people are in this business. Everybody wants growth. Everybody wants to become the, I believe, or I try to create an environment where everybody wants to become the best version of themselves.

So I have a responsibility to all of those people to provide them with the next opportunity. Not you or not somebody else or not one of the different operators in this city. It's my job to make sure that you're you as a bartender has got the opportunity to become a bar manager. And you as a bar manager, I've got the opportunity to become a floor manager and you as a floor and blah blah blah. So that appetite of the team that I'm trying to build to become the best version of themselves drives me every day to get out there and go and find the next opportunity. So by default that energy that they push me to create more opportunities gives me the opportunities to do what I love and I love to build whatever that

may be, build you, build a team, build my children, build a son, build a house, build a tree outing, lock down, whatever it may be I just love to build stuff I love to create something I talk about you know whatever you're doing you should be building something I don't mean you should build a bar should be building you you're finally whatever it may be somebody something growth is a fabulous thing in the air. You know, we today have, however many venues we've got, every single one of those general managers that runs the show, started at least two positions lower, some of them started in three or four positions lower.

That's the cool shit. I've got 26 year old GMs. In any other business on the planet, there shouldn't be GMs. I pushed them and I let them make mistakes. I want them to make mistakes because I want them to learn, I want them to grow and they drive me. You know, the second I hear one of my GMs is looking at somewhere else.

I'm like, right where can I move that kid? I put years into that boy, I'm not losing him, I need to find something else. So, in COVID, when dressed the world is sort of, what we're gonna do, I'm out there looking for opportunity. So, we're gonna do five more as it's yesterday and I'll probably find a little couple over the next few months. So when the world wakes up again we've got some footprint and it was the same in Egypt. Great opportunity, great brands, great

reputation and it's exciting stuff, normally I still do the same stuff every day and every deal that you do is slightly different. The negotiations differ, the personnel are different, the projects differ, the venues differ, the demographics differ, and the consumers differ, and it's a variety. That keeps me engaged. Take us through what happened toward leaving Egypt, towards the back end, you had some more adventures there. Here we did. I got involved in a huge marina development where I was asked to come in and do the sales on the marketing and leasing and every opportunity that came with that. And I grabbed all of it with everything I had. We built this marina, rented out 140 odd shops, built 10 of our own, did all the sales, all the marketing, all the entertainment,

launched the opening weekend with like 50,000 visitors, biggest tourist attraction, outside of the pyramids, it was amazing. Because we did it so bloody fast, certain things got forgotten along the journey and one of which was permits. So I get a phone call from my company GM at the time saying, can I take, I need to take some money to car on and pay for the license for one of your venues? I said, yeah, of course you can have much of it. So it's three grand for the guy at the Ministry of Tourism. I said, okay, cool, take it from the safe. That call was recorded and that was apparently a bribery case. So internal affairs started needed me. I'm like, well, I haven't done anything. He said, well, you're probably government official.

I didn't bribe anyone. I just said yes to my J.M. asking me for money. Would he need to come to Cairo and admit that you were the beneficiary? So I know, but I might do that. Bring your passport on a toothbrush. I would only need a toothbrush for it. We have to go in jail for four days.

I'm not going in jail for four days. Would you have to do that so it works? We'll arrest you. You'll say you did it, and then we'll release days. I'm not going to jail for four days. We have to do that so it works. We'll arrest you. You'll say you did it and then we'll release you. I'm fine. No chance. I'm a dad and I'm diabetic. You're not putting me in a car or a jail for four days.

So the guy said, well then we'll come and get you. And because I was pretty well connected in that country, I was, I mean, I won't go into that level of detail, but there was not a lot I couldn't have got solved in that country. So I said then come and get me, knock yourself out. So we did. So I went out on the run and ran all my friends and all my powerful people in that country to say, look, I need to solve this problem. Every one of them was saying this is bullshits ridiculous. We'll fix it for you. Just stay out of the way. So everyone gave me the keys to different apartments around Egypt,

and I spent four months avoiding being grabbed, hiding in alleyways and waking up in the middle of the night, because they were coming for me. So you said what's the closest call you had? Three o'clock in the morning, the no way you are. Get out of bed, go now. But throw all your phones. I was working with Ad Burner, it's an everything, man.

Brilliant. Yeah, I'd watched the James Bond movie, and thought I got away with it. You know, it's done. I thought I knew I was done. Those had a smart, way smarter I thought they were. So in the end, some dude grasped me up. So I was some bullshit story. We know the judge who's going to try the case. He'd be coming interview, if you come and tell your stories to him, give him your passport, he'll release you into his custody, and you don't have to go into a jail. I'm like, alright cool, I'll do that.

Walked into this room, and as I walked in, there was just him, sat on his own, I'm like, fuck it, and then bang, and they came MP5 through me in the back of a van, and then proper abuse me for a while to remind me of,'m just a British kid and we won't have that arrogance. And then I got thrown in a caro jail which was an extremely unpleasant experience. How long for? I did 12 days in the darkest places you can imagine. Are there many jails in Cairo? Just one. I don't know. I only saw one. I only saw one. Yeah, not something I would wish on my worst enemy.

That's probably why that. Lawless inside. Yeah, pretty much. Read about it in the book. So then eventually my biggest friend in Egypt and in the book he's known as MBF, my big friend, flew in and intervened, met the head of the district attorney and said, what's going on? Why do you need this kit? What's the big situation? And it turned out that the guy who was after me, it was his brother who was the guy in the ministry of tourism. And he didn't I'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r i'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweith that I was, that really upset me. I'd given so much to that country. You know, at one point, we employed over 1,000 people. You know, and I worked so hard to do great stuff

in that country. I gave it way more than it gave me. And I felt betrayed. I hadn't done anything wrong. The way I was treated was bang out of order. I was a good person. I was doing good things in that country. I was introducing Nightlife.

I was the first guy to bring house music into Egypt. I, you know, we brought the ministry of sound, we brought a head candy. We were doing some really cool stuff. And we were doing it properly. We were doing it right. And that was just a shitty experience. So I'd kind of said to myself,

you know, I'm, I'm, I don't really want to be here anymore. I don't feel safe any longer. And once you don't feel safe somewhere, that's a scary place to be. But then, I'm, revolution happened, so that we didn't really get a chance to plan our exit or strategize how we were going to move. 18th of January everybody went into the streets and started protesting against the president and seven days later I had lost 85% of my business and I was done, that was the end of it.

It became, how would you say, kind of repatriate in private businesses became just repatriated towards the government right people just came and took Businesses and then they released criminals into the street. They opened every single prison and we had we had a I remember one night when I'd money to get all of the all of the foreign Workers that of employees team members that we had to my villa and Mae'n gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweith And we'd heard about this, hit that coastal, that compounded it, that one, it didn't, I only come into hours, and we're sitting there with looking baseball bats waiting to protect our homes.

I mean, that was the most frightening 40 hours of my life. I remember. There was two revolutions, is that right? Was that, yeah. Yeah, well, how did that work? So they didn't like the existing government. And so he stood down and that panned out the way it didn't end in Cainham, Muslim Brotherhood.

And they didn't like that. So they went back and did it again. And they went back and I was gone by then. I was gone. So I left everything. What we had, you know, we had 18 operating places in January. By February we had six. That was it. So I moved here with 20,000 bucks.

And we had a business that was doing millions still in a month, half a million still in a month. It was gone. Then you're riding to buy? Yeah, you're riding to buy and bought some soul cars on the bushel for 18 months to put my kids through school and pay the rent and convince some investors. Mae'n gweithio'r gweithio yn gweithio. Yn ymwch i'n gweithio'r gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweith Q43 and that was it. They do only began then. Then we spent the next six years. We've done 14 venues, 15 venues now. It's been incredible, absolutely. I couldn't have wished it in my wildest dreams. It would have been as enjoyable and successful

and fruitful as it has been. Happy and divine and you were at the happiest in Egypt. Happy and happier today that I've ever been in my entire life, even in COVID. This is the happiest I've ever been, and tomorrow I'll be a little bit more happy. What's that built around? Other than serving other people. The ability to deal with, the ability to know that you can come through pretty much anything. We talked about this off the camera that unchosen adversity is actually one of the greatest gifts you'll ever be given. The real understanding of what the body can deal

with when it has to deal with it, what the mind can deal with when it has to. You know, you talked to Donna, you know, whether it's a triathlete or a marathon runner who chooses to take himself and eat water, the reward at the end of that is amazing. You know, whether it's a triathlete or a marathon runner who chooses to take himself and eat water. The reward at the end of that is amazing. You know, I chose to do a marathon speaking of the third person, I can't do it for a marathon. I have no desire to do an ultramarathon. And at the end of it, you've done it.

Wow, boom, amazing. But you chose to go there. You chose to put yourself through that and you choose to feel the reward of that. When something happens to you that absolutely slaps you at the side of the head and is relentless in its pursuit of demolishing you and you're able to come through it,

the foundations and the strength that that gives you to overcome whatever this globe you can throw at you and believe me now, your ankle is not the only shit that's coming your way. Your ankle will show you I can deal with this shit, I never thought it could. So whatever you're going to give me, I believe today whatever you're going to give me is just a puzzle that I need to start fixing. No, I have not, and this sounds, and I mean this in the most humble of manners. I have not flimed once in COVID, not once. Not once have I sat there and gone, oh my God.

How am I gonna, no. Hmm, this is the chance for me to prove how good I really am. I think I might be very good at this by my business, my lucky. Now's my chance to prove it, because when it's easy, and they're just all walking in, yeah, it doesn't need a guy like me to run it.

Any one of us can run it. These are the moments when you get the opportunity to really shine. How do I navigate through the most challenging food and beverage market place ever? And when I do, wow, look at the version that's going to come at the end of that. That's how I see it. And I was able to see that because of all the other shit. I'm hiding in it, alleywaying, carol thinking, shit, what's going to happen to me? Nothing. Really? Okay, what happened was horrific. But I'm still able to sit in your beautiful apartment and you're, you want to talk to me about it.

So what came of it? I became more interesting, I became more able to help individuals come through that bullshit because I proved it, I've come through it. I'm a, I am the, the living, sleeping, breathing, proof that a 13 year old boy who's never going to do anything in his life can become a guy today that you need to have to say, listen, shoot you to the far a little bit. Wow, there's too much caffeine in us. Couple of things I've got in my mind. First one being my newsletter that I parted this week was spending some time with ultra-angirian satellites. And one of the realizations that I got was that this is why

you're here is a very good sense to tell yourself when things get challenging. We can start to flinch and turn away when discomfort comes in, right? Discomfort naturally is uncomfortable. But that discomfort is a sign of growth, whether it's building a relationship, building a business, learning a new skill in the gym, whatever it might be. The discomfort is a feature, not a bug. That is the reason that we're doing the thing that we're here for, so lean into it, because the time's going to pass in any case. So you might as well spend it well.

So that's one of the lessons that I'll certainly be taking away from Dubai, that there are, I spoke to Marcus Smith a guy who hit a wall at 54 kilometers an hour, a snap of seven ribs, punctured a lung, and ripped his sca scapular off and had to focus on just keeping himself alive by breathing until he got picked up by ambulance three hours later and then ran for the shake last year, 30 marathon in 30 days. Like hearing people who go through that level of adversity, we were talking before we started about how brilliantly it would be for everybody if there was an inverted Instagram where instead of seeing the best of everyone's lives you get to see the worst.

The real? What is the absolute worst scenario that you can imagine a person who lives some weird form of like panic room torture, inception movie with their father dying and then wakes up having lost a third of their body weight and then you know like that that's a story that people need to hear and I think that contrasting effect is so important. The other thing that I've got in my mind is especially this year all of our problems in the 21st century are problems of abundance and not scarcity. We have too much stimulus, we have too much convenience, we have too much food and what that leads to is people who are

inexperienced with adversity, inexperienced with discomfort. One of the reasons why sports like CrossFit and Ultra Injurance Races have an attraction is that it gives people the opportunity to do that. endurance races, having a traction is that it gives people the opportunity to do that. But I think that this for a lot of people, especially in the West, COVID will be the first real adversity they'd ever faced. My friend asked me about probably about a year ago, he said, one was the last time you failed at doing something. And I was like, bro, I really don't know. Like I haven't failed up until about 30 years. Stuff hadn't gone perfectly. And there would have been businesses

that started that kind of fizzled out or whatever. But no big catastrophes, no major failures. And it was a man, I think that you are missing out on valuable learning opportunities. I don't know how you can make yourself fail, but there is something to be learned through failure. And this year, for a lot of people, will be their first experience of failure.

Now, I've happened to get a double hit of it in the, of experience COVID, and ruptured my killies during COVID, which is, okay, like that's two things. But very quickly when that happened, especially with the Achilles, that's always COVID, I dealt with that fairly easily. I was so surprised at the resilience and the fortitude that my system was able to create, that I didn't even know as there. It was like opening a door inside of a house I'd lived in my entire life to a room that I didn't even know existed. And that was very a very very interesting experience. And I wonder I wonder how many people can reframe the experience of 2020 in a way that makes them better than

if it hadn't happened, that brings them closer together with their family. That's the key. The key is to take from this what it's giving you. You talk about failure. When was the last time you failed? It's a fabulous question. I've never failed. I'm still practising. You only fail when you quit. And then if you go back at it again, then you remove the failure. So I'm going to I'm gonna do, I'm gonna, I'm gonna learn to run a marathon, right? And I'll forgot training marathon, training to train, to train, to train. And I get to seven in-clombers and I quit, right? Then I've quit, then I've failed. And until I start that journey again, I still have the failure ticked.

The second I go on, I'm having that, and I start again. I've just rubbed out failure, not failed, because I'm still at it, I'm still going, and at some point in my life I'll run that marathon, I never ever failed. I've had bars that didn't work, could be considered failures, I consider them to be educational messages to make sure I never build a bar like that again, not fail. I don't need to fail. What I need to do is figure out the solution to what's pointing for everyone. I think one of the biggest messages of people that have platforms that are growing like you yourself is the ability for people and why people are watching it because they want to get hope.

They want to get answers to questions they don't have. So many people are asking, when is this thing over? I'm asking that. I can't control that. So why focus on it? What I can control is what I do in the moment. I'm not chasing down that vaccine. That, how can I possibly, possibly make a difference

to a vaccine process? I might be able to sell a few of them when I get here. But don't focus on the end of it. You're in the middle of it. Focus on now. How are you gonna deal with it now? Don't focus on when I'm gonna come out of it. We all wanna come out of it. We all want it to be over.

But we let the people who are busy with that be busy with it. You'd be busy with what you can control. You won't hate me asking the question, you know, shit, I can't wait till this thing's over. That's so obvious. Of course we all want to go back to normal. Quite not.

That impressed by normal. Not that impressed by instant gratification. Earn it. I have that challenge with my children, you know. They want it so easy. I had to fight with every tooth and nail to get to where I am today and I've enjoyed that process. Today we knock on a door of our neighbour and we go, what do you think? And there we go, what are you talking about? What's just Instagram really? It's the same thing,

but I just want that personal interaction because this photo of me in this t-shirt only got 120, seven likes. This one got 100, 200, 500, whatever the number may be. When I was a kid, there's the same as knocking on your neighbor's door and going, what do you think? In everything you're lunatic. In today's world we want the now. We're not prepared to do the graft. COVID is the graft. This is the world showing us, the universe showing us, ain't meant to be easy mate, it's meant to be hard because if you work at it and it's hard, it has a value. Easy money, easy gum. You know, easy gum, you go and gamble, you put $500 on red and it comes up and you win a grand, you go and spunk the grand and a pair of shoes

because you just want it. You want to buy a have bought a grand shoes prior to winning it. If you've earned that thousand, it has a value. And I've said that from our bar business, be busy with the guy who spends the 50-year-in on a pint. Because he earns his money and it means something to him. So say thank you to him. The guy who comes and spends a million deers on a certain check at the moment, he doesn't give a shit about you. He's got no loyalty to you whatsoever and he's got no value to money. Don't be busy with him. Be busy with the normal man. The understand how hard it is to earn that money because he'll be your guy who's in your bar four times a week. He's your guy who comes to you in COVID. Because he remembers what you were like in

the good days. The dude spending a million didn't give a shit about money, you didn't know it. Never, you've got no comprehension of what it takes to earn a million dirils. That's why it's prepared to spunk it on a jet. It's disgusting. The after the guy that's earned it, COVID should teach us all, let's earn it a little bit.

Whatever it may be, earn the right to run the triathlon, earn the rights or on the marathon, earn the right to go from 50,000 to 70,000 to 90,000 to 400,000 followers. You've earned it. I asked you how many shows you did at the beginning of this. Two and a half thousand shows, 250. 250 shows.

How many hours is that? It's only a few hundred or thousand. Plus research, plus reaching out, plus convincing someone to come on the show plus the editing You know you have grafted to get 80,000 92,000 whether the number may be you've earned it So it feels like you've been getting it feels like you got it. You didn't go on by night a thousand followers. Did it? You went grafted you went only

That would be my message to anybody who's looking to what can you take from from this Covid experience. Take the fact that it's not actually meant to be easy. It's meant to be tough because tough is worth something. One of the concerns that I have, especially with Covid, that's been weaponized by social media, I've seen it increasingly with my dad, with all of my friends. Anyone that posts on Facebook, less so on Twitter, but Facebook seems to be the social media of choice for speculation in 2020. You know what I mean. And I worry about how much of people are externalizing their locus of control. So our locus of control should always be as close to ourselves as possible. So you have social media which prioritizes socialised metrics of success. This is something that you can see easily, it's outward facing.

Yeah. There's no chart above your head where I can see your peace level or your happiness level. There's no happiness counter. And sadly, I worry that the primary impact COVID has had on people are those socialised metrics of success. The 25-year-old, 30-year-old, 35-year-old guy or girl who harnessed a lot of their self-worth from being in the right place with the right people, with the right car, with the right shoes, with the right friends, the right follow account on Instagram. Now no longer can use that. They've had to focus if they pivot correctly on internal measures of success. Does he not scare the shirai? That our world today genuinely values that level of matrix as a barometer of success.

that level of matrix as a barometer of success. So famous for being famous. I don't like it. I've got strong opinions about it. But state-assigneling has been around for millions of years in biology. And the fact that it's now being weaponized and being given a metric by some companies like Twitter and Instagram, Facebook. Yes, the war for our dopamine and our ability to see what's truly going on has the power of the weapons has swayed now away from us and that

locust of control is outside a little bit more but the game is the same. When you're 14 year old girl so it's dark and have an Instagram account, why are you gonna tell her? No. No. The only other industry, the only other industry that causes their customers, users, a drug dealers and social media is that one. We both do the same documentary.

Yes. So Tristan, how is the guy that's on that? I've been a fan of him for three years. Tristan, if you're listening, and some of you may, and I've been a fan of him for three years and I went deep, deep, deep down the rabbit hole within a long time ago. And the other insight, which I thought was really really interesting from that was looking at how Steve Jobs didn't let his kids have an iPad. What does that say? Says everything that says nothing. Yeah, no. Says it's a great bit of a PR tool. It's a

great story from a man who's probably one of the greatest corporate leaders of our generation at least, like him, loathing. You've got to respect him. It's a great story, whether he's kids or liepams or not, you'll never know. We don't know any. We know what people want us to know. My son has an Instagram account. He's not posted a single thing. Why is he busy with Instagram? It's the root to the quickest success rate of what's being busy within the moment.

He didn't give a shit whether he gets likes or not likes, he's not in it for that. He's in it to see pretty little girls dressed up, looking nice, gives her 15 or a handful of testosterone. I get it. The second he starts posting and then he starts changing the type of post that he posts to see the level and that's when Dad will step in and say, listen mate, I did it for a purpose. I mean in industry where

fortunately or unfortunately it's a requirement of what we do. But I know what it is, I don't count like someone bothered by it, it doesn't matter to me. But I did what it is. I don't count likes. I'm not bothered by it. It doesn't matter to me. But I did count followers because the more followers the bigger the message, the louder the message, the more you know when I woke up the book and can get out there and help people. I will not make a single pound out of when I woke up but I've made so much from personal growth of first of all going through the experience of writing it and going deep in those In a dark moment that I had to go through to become who I was and then to tell people that you know That is some enlightening shit. For example, I won't dance on the stage because I'm petrified of people laughing at me From when I was 13 called up in a ball being kicked in a playground

I still won't dance because I can't stand the thought process that you laugh at me because the echoes of the children laughing at me when I couldn't spell library still ring true in my head. The ability to release that was something I was never prepared to do. I'm going to keep that inside of me. That's my demon. When I released it into a book eventually I was like wow that's wow that's amazing show my vulnerability show my me I'm not this hard-do covering toes I'm actually I cry I cut I bleed I'm a normal decent human being that was a process that I went through everybody that reads the book and writes me one comment is worth way more than any money I'll ever make out of it. Way, way more.

So I needed a following, I needed people to listen, so I could help. That was my thought process on it. I've kind of backed off that. In COVID, I went completely away from it. The only thing I shared during COVID was the little projects of the things I was building with the kids in the garden. But an interesting thought process that you wouldn't let you for in your old girl garden. Would you let your 15-year-old boy go on it? So, yes, probably 15 to 16, I think, would be the line.

And it would be older for girls, and it would be for boys. There's some interesting insights from the cobbling of the American mind by Jonathan Hate. And any parents or fledgling parents with teenage children should probably consider reading it and it looks at stats to do with depression, anxiety, etc. You can tally the line to when Instagram became popular and you just see a hockey stick of an increase in anxiety and depression, self-harm. And one of the reasons that they give is that boys or males tend to fix problems

with physical violence, which isn't facilitated by social media. So you might call someone out on social media, have a rubbish scrappet school with them the next day, shake hands and be best mates, whereas girls tend to enact violence more verbally, and that is weaponized by social media. So yeah, I think there is definitely a lot that we still need to kind of work out and oaring on the side of caution probably seems like a smart way to go.

Man, thank you so much for today. People want to check out your stuff. Where should they go? Paul John Ebb's, I think is my Instagram website when I work up.com. Everything will be linked in the show and not to below, including the fantastic content I work up the book. Thank you. Thank you, ma. I'm right, easy fat.