Modern Wisdom - #727 - James Smith - Do You Actually Need Passion To Be Successful?

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

James Smith is an author, podcaster, online trainer and not a life coach. I just finished a full month of live shows with James. We didn't kill each other but did learn a lot, so today we're reflecting on a month on the road while digging into some of James' biggest realisations of finally becoming an adult. Expect to learn what my first ever live tour experience was like, how to increase your luck in life, what James’ thoughts are on the Male Sedation Hypothesis, how to find true success, why you need to start celebrating your wins, what the future of the fitness industry looks like and much more... Sponsors: Get $150 discount on Plunge’s amazing sauna or cold plunge at https://plunge.com (use code MW150) Get 20% discount & free shipping on your Lawnmower 5.0 at https://manscaped.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get 20% discount on Nomatic’s amazing luggage at https://nomatic.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Extra Stuff: Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ Buy my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. My guest today is James Smith, he's an author, podcaster, online trainer and not a life coach. I just finished a full month of live shows with James, we didn't kill each other, but did learn a lot, so today we're reflecting on a month on the road while digging into some of James' biggest realizations from finally becoming an adult. Expect to learn what my first ever live tour experience was like, how to increase your luck in life, what James' thoughts are on the male sedation hypothesis, how to find true success, why you need to start celebrating your wins, what the future of the fitness industry looks like, and much more. We're into the new year now and you may be starting

a reading habit if you need some suggestions for books to read. My reading list is free and available right now, 100 books that you should read before you die, that are the most interesting and impactful books that I've read, fiction and non-fiction and real live stories, and there's summaries about why I like them and links to go and buy them, and you can get it right now by going to chriswillx.com slash books. It's completely free and waiting for you on the other side of the internet. Chris will X dot com slash books. One of my favorite purchases over the last two years has been my cold plunge from the

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But they also ship to the UK. That's nomadic.com, Slash Modern Wisdom, and Modern Wisdom. Checkout. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome... James Smith. Nice to do this in person. We made it. Four weeks on tour together. I'm tired. My voice is a bit deeper. I'm a bit fat and I need a haircut. It's been a journey, man. It's been good to be. You know, like I was maybe expected that much time together with anyone.

There would have been maybe some physical modifications, maybe some strong arguments, but as you've got them very well, you're very meticulous to detail in projects that we work on, but as far as a traveling and working a company, you are fantastic. It's a efficient chill. Yeah, just like I can tell when you're tired, because the AirPods go in the I'm asked comes on,

you have your own way of gesticulating and do not disturb mode. I'm right, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so. No, you're right, it's been a... I'm trying not to talk about tours so much because I feel like it's all of the things that I sometimes switch off about when I listen to other podcasts. Whitney Cummings told me this thing, she was sitting in that chair a few weeks ago. She said, in order for life to imitate art, in order for art to imitate life, you have to have a life. And it explains why comedians who just spend all of their time on the road only have road life to talk about. They have airports and dinners and shows, and that's it. I'm trying not to do that, but it's been really formative. It's been really interesting for me to, you know, see kind of what happens in person at these events and these experiences.

Well, it would be very easy for yourself to not... you've created a comfort zone now where you have a microphone, you have some, you know, research you would have done on a guest and you have the routine of seeing that person. The idea of going on the road to a lot of people is one, something they would be very fearful of. It's absolute chaos. And it's just, you know, unpredictable ness, you know, you're meeting new crowds, new hecklers, new events, new flight schedules, new airports, you know, like even every day you've just got the anxiety of your luggage not coming through from the carousel. Not for me, baby. Yeah, and like, missed that hand luggage only. Hand luggage only.

The whole luggage is a sigh up meant to keep you poor and late. Talk to me, obviously, we've done this one, but you've done five, ten tours before this. What have you learned from touring in general? You've created content on the internet and spoken to people through the screen a lot, but then you get to speak to them in person. What do people who are existing mostly online not know about what the real world's like? Well, first of all, I'm sure you've experienced this face to face.

When people meet you in the street and they compliment you and say, oh, Chris, I love your podcast. You see that glimmer in their eye where they actually realize your real. And sometimes I say it, they're like, oh, you actually exist. Because where is, you know, characters in movies or, you know, actresses in certain TV shows? The real person, the person in their imagination doesn't physically exist. But then when they meet you, you do. But then even when they see you online or absorb your content, they kind of know that you're performing for them. So being able to see your, you know, idiosyncrasies or just certain ways that you act or the way that you're performing for them. So being able to see your, you know, idiosyncrasies or just certain ways that you act or the way that you would engage with them or maybe give

them banter in real life, whether it's from the stage or the meet and greet doing a selfie, they get to see like a side of you that they've never experienced before. And it's almost, you would hope is, you know, quite charming, you know, they go, you actually exist. Now, doing that as like activation around a different people's towns, like even the way that you would make jokes local to their town, not only makes them feel like you're real, they feel seen, which is like a really nice combination for them to have for someone they might admire online. Definitely one of the things I've realized is how much more positive the world is in general

than it seems through the internet. The internet is very sadonic, it's quite cynical, it's quite cutting, it's kind of a bit stand-office and tries to be a luth and cool. You know, that's what comment sections are. It's always like this, I don't care about you, I don't care about what other people think about me, and in person, people seem't care about what other people think about me. And in person, people seem to be a lot more prepared to be vulnerable. We had one bad comment, the whole tour, one bad comment.

But we're pretty much, she wasn't taking the piss out of you, she's taking the piss out of me. And so like, the person that wrote the comment thought that they were going to get like a real big breakdown of how I wrote the books, you know, the process of writing and all of these things. The facts that we called the tour the seaword should have let off to the level of sophistication and maybe the amount of vulgar that would be in it. But then you think so thousands of attendees, one bad comment, you're looking at maybe 0.1% be in generous, whereas you look at any Instagram reel that you put from your best performing podcast, might be 40% negative. So when you look at that comparison between 40% negative to 0.01%, it's vast. And like you say, obviously, it's a bit of an

echo chamber because only your red hot onions are going to come to your event. But yeah, it's good because there are some days where it's obviously like a real, you know, point of privilege to be able to say, oh, you know, so many people watch my content, I get negative comments, but they go straight to, there's no one out there that doesn't take it to heart unless you're a psychopath, so should path, like unless you're literally American psycho level, like you have to take it to heart in some respect. So it is so nice to be out there and to talk to people, engage with people and have those interactions, which is what I think a lot of people that talk with the comedians, with a music artist, whatever

are pretty cherished. Well, I think that's one of the reasons why they maybe seem more resilient to criticism that they get online than it appears. Some comedians in the middle of some furor, or they've said something that's cringe or uncool, or everyone in the comment section doesn't like them. And you go, yeah, that might be true, but Friday, Saturday, Sunday, in some city in Massachusetts or something, they're selling out three theaters of 2,000 people, all of whom are there because they love them because they give them adoration. It's definitely helped me to understand how the internet is not the real world and a lot of the people that appear in comment sections.

And this is the same for whether you're a content creator or not. If you're just existing within comment sections and going, wow, the world seems really negative or the world seems really cynical, or the world seems really whatever, it's not even when you get groups of people together, it's when you get groups of people together with pseudo anonymity on the internet and there's perverse incentives for them to say a thing which other people are going to find interesting

or cutting or sarcastically good and funny so that they can upvote it. Like that's why the incentives work toward. But in person, people just want to be seen and they've got an interesting question and they're around other people that they feel alike them or maybe they're alone and they're lonely. They think, wow, like I'm in a room with 400, 500, 600 other people, all of whom listen to the same obscure podcaster or whatever that I do.

Like that's cool. There's someone I've done before where say, when you release your book, you're going to have a day where the reviews are going to start to come in. And there's the tendency for some reason to look at the one-star reviews. And you're like, you know, I'm trying to build a great idea of constructive criticism. You do it. You depress yourself for a few hours. But then what I've come to do is go to a book that's revolutionized your life. Let's look at something like a Brian holiday

obviously is the way, which is anytime any of my friends experiencing like carnage, depression, loss of loved one, whether through death or break up, whatever. I'm like, I'm not qualified to help you, but this book will make you feel better. So I'll go to that book or equivalent. I'll look at the one star of views and people are like, yeah, you know, book or boring doesn't go anywhere. Um, authors really off the mark or stuff like that. And I'll be like, okay, when you remove yourself from that situation and you actually make it about, you know, someone else's book and you realize how delusional or sometimes even botish the comments are. Because when it's your work, you take it to heart, but when it's someone else's book, and you realize how delusional or sometimes even botish the comments are. Because when it's your work, you take it to heart, but when it's someone else's work,

you go, obviously for the shit. Yeah, so interesting to observe that. Well, look, I got you a gift to celebrate the end of your first ever American tour, which is a Texas Longhorns jersey with Smith 23 on the back, given that it is 2023. So you can get that framed and take that home. This is very cool.

I like this a lot. I actually also have your gift. You don't? I do, yeah. Why? It's the end, Jack, and you can help us with it, please. We will need to open the door. That's fine, that's all right.

I didn't realize that we were excited. This hasn't been planned. I've had this plan for ages, but I didn't know that you were going to re put me in a vicious, regifting cycle. Can we initiate the gifting protocol? We got three strippers coming in. Have we? It's not Luke, is it? So I was thinking for the future of the episodes in which we'd be doing. I thought it'd be good to get you a new tonic. You got me a Yeti cooler, a wheel-in Yeti cooler. And then inside, you mind, well, soundproof the door all the time. Okay, you might need to spin it around and do it so that the camera can see the Etienne. And then put your camera down. If you can open it as well,

inside I've got you a toolkit. A kit. So can you show us item number one please, that's you. And we've got a three pack of Luleen lemon boxes, which are size large. Okay. Now I know that you might be from a sponsorship standpoint in very rough waters. You've got two water bottles in here. I know you've got your own one that you carry yourself. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. There's a bottle opener and someone else in there as well. So the way I see it for many of your episodes, especially ones you'll be doing local in the area, you'll be transported in Newtonic on site. Now I don't envisage you.

We'll heal in with one of these. Is that what I said? I don't envisage you rolling in with this, but I envisage some member of staff. So you'll be like, where is the cooler? That's cool as fuck. Man, thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. I appreciate the jersey. Yeah, we'll pop that back in there. Thank you very much. Fucking hell. Well, I'm glad that I've got these pants finally. I've been, I've been bigger than I've been going to too much detail because very intimate details around the pants. Yeah. Just, you know, there's not much a man cherishes more than the state of his Gucci, what Gucci

was traveling. That is true. That is true. There's a clip. I've been hiding, I've been fighting with Gucci sweat for the entirety. I heard you say on a podcast, ages ago, and I never brought it up to you, all winds feel the same. And then you've said it a couple of times on the tour as well during Q&As.

What's that mean to you? So we seem to think that, you know, you get an Uber surcharge when Uber's a really busy, it's like 1.5 times. So we seem to think that we get ascending Uber surcharge is on happiness, the further we progress. So let's say you have your first pay slip, there's $1,000, there's $10,000,

there's $100,000, there's $10,000, there's $100,000, then it's a million dollars. We seem to think that the levels of happiness that we would accrue from those interactions would be ascending in line with the relative increases in money. So the 10,000 would be 10,000 would be 10 times greater than the 1000 would be 10 times greater at the 100,000? However, it's not that way. And even if let's say you're a Gigietsu competitor at Whitebelt, Purplebelt, Blackbelt, winning a match feels like winning a match. The levels change, the importance of it change. So you've got Gordon Ryan best in the world, lives here in Austin. When he wins, let's say, the most prestigious ADCC final, those

the most prestigious ADCC final, those emotive responses from the brain and that chemistry is the exact same to someone listening to this podcast that starts to judge you next week. And in three months time, compete for the first time at Whitebelt, when they get their hand raised, they get the exact same feeling. Only if your mindset is wrong, would you deny yourself experiencing that because you seem to think it wouldn't be at the same level as someone else. And you maybe start in a business that you love and break in even in your first year, could feel the same as far as a win as far as someone going to sell their business

for hundreds of millions, like the wins feel the same. And I don't feel like wherever told that, we kind of learn it along the way. And I think a lot of people can feel like they're broken because I know for a fact, you actually didn't feel as happy as a million subs as you did at 10,000. Correct. So given people, you know, there are going to be podcasters that listen to your podcasts that are thinking, oh, I'll be happy when I get 100,000 subs. And you just need to remind them

that it's going to feel just as good when they get to okay. Yeah, there's a lot of problems around expectations and there's an idea where expectations rise more quickly than reality's ability to deliver that to you. That's dangerous, right? If you think that as you become better, you're believing yourself to be even better, then current better continues to rise. Then, yeah, each time that you set yourself a new bar, that is a new minimum that you need to jump over, which can actually mean that large

winds are the worst days of your life. You know, speaking to Morgan Howeswell who wrote the psychology of money, he was telling me a story, both about himself, I think, but also another friend who, first book, amazing success, all of these great things happened. Create a second book. Second book was an amazing success, but the first one was so interstellar, it would be impossible. You know, if you're, if you manage to thread the needle of once in a generation book in terms of sales, you really gonna, you really think that you're gonna be able to do that again twice, you can have amazing success, but it's not gonna be that one. And in relation, the second book felt like a failure,

despite the fact that by every, my friend told me about the George Michael WAM documentary, I think I told you this story. So George Michael and the other dude in WAM, the fact that it's just the other dude kind of shows the way that that relationship was done. And the guy that was second had a very different sort of relationship with success. He knew that George was going to be the frontman. He was happy for George to be the frontman. He was there as a musician, but he was largely kind of the backup to what was going on. So they released in the space of one year, they released a club trap, a carna.

They released what was the other non-Christmas song that they released? Can you remember? You're asking the wrong person. They released one other non-Christmas song and then they released last Christmas. Over the Christmas period, George Michael is featured on, do they know it's Christmas? That huge medley song with everybody else. So he's managed to get debut single number one, second single, number one, third single, which is his Christmas single, last Christmas, debut is at number two, and is beaten by another song that he is the singer for, but he feels despondent at Christmas on Christmas Day because his

song doesn't hit number one for the third time in 12 months. It's beaten by him in a different song, but that song wasn't one. Like how insane are those expectations? It is, do you know what? If I look back at the times that I've been like the most disappointed or like even upset, it is based 100% down to my expectations. Not the reality of the world, not the reality of the situation, just the reality of my expectations. So it's a fine line between not setting them too high, but then not setting them too low,

because without adequate expectations, you then hinder your effort. But yeah, we're complex creatures. And I think going back to like the original question is the point of it is so people don't deny themselves of waiting huge amounts of time or huge amounts of effort before celebrating wins. You said some of your clients come to you and say, I wanna lose 10 kilos. And you're like, fuck 10 kilos,

celebrate when you lose one. And then celebrate when you lose one. And then celebrate when you lose one. The same with social media, there's a six foot five lead outside this room then on a sofa. And we would race each other. Every time we grew by a thousand followers, we would race each other to type that number. So I'd wake up at like six, seven, four, like fuck beat me to it.

Like, and people would part of it died when we got to a million because then don't see it. You don't see it. Yeah. So like I, I, I miss those little wins and everyone else out there thinking it's the big stuff. You're like, no, you grow by a thousand. That's amazing. So people need to be better at celebrating those wins. That's been one of the most common questions that's come up on the Q&A's across this tour.

There's been like some really interesting trends because I did my four shows around Ireland and the UK. Then we both did Dubai and then we did Canada, US, Canada, US, etc. And some of the most common trends that have come out are all to do with deciding between the multiplicity of options that we have in our lives. I have lots of things that I can do with my time, which one should I do? That's been an interesting one, but another one has been, how can I not leave things on the table in terms of how well I perform and yet take gratitude in the successes that I've had?

And I think there's definitely a fear out there from people that if they congratulate themselves too much, it's going to kill their ambition. Maybe a few years ago I would have been on board with that a little bit, but largely now I just don't think that it's the case. I think that a lot of people that have ambition, if you tried to throw water in sand in a, you know, metric turn of, like, fucking fire extinguisher on it, I don't think that those people that are driven would have it slowed down by taking a second to congratulate themselves and give them a pat on the back and get some helium balloons or a water cooler or a printed jersey.

I think it's crazy that you've said this, I've said this, like there are so many people that have those unprecedented levels of ambition, but some of them have the moon miscapped, working on other people's dreams, not their own. And we've both said it, we're like, people are kind of on Dumont thing, but I'm worried I'll fail. And you're like, yeah, but you're doing so well at something that you don't like. You know?

And that's one of your best insights. I think that's genuinely one of your best insights. If you're succeeding, it's something that you don't enjoy. Imagine how great you'd be at something you love. And even if you do go down that path and you fail, like, even if you fall flat on your face, even if you move back into appearance, there is going to be a little part of you

that's like, well, I gave it a go. Yeah. And I think that I know it's again another like privileged thing to say, but I think there's something quite cool in that. And even, you know, people that are afraid to move jobs, people are more worried about how their CV looks than their life. You know, they're like, oh, if I move now, if I've only been in this job a year, you're like, mate, this is about you enjoying your life,

not trying to appease a stranger with a fucking A4 piece of paper, you know? And then when I went traveling a few times, I was younger, and I remember someone saying, oh, that doesn't make you see, you be look good, I would sit in that interview and go, I didn't want to work anymore, I went to travel, I had the best time, but now I've realized that I want to be about working, I was just straight with them. But imagine saying to someone like, oh, I wanted

to give everything I could to something that didn't work out. You know, that's actually more of a reason to be impressed with someone than someone that left the job every two years, perfectly looking for the next progression. I think there's so much risk in playing it safe. What did you say? You've, you've listened to Shudz Q&A to help people about the average American. Average American is obese, divorced with less than one K in the bank. So by doing what everyone else does, it seems like a safe route, but it's not. It's actually a reliable way to achieve a life that you don't want. Exactly, yeah.

That's literally encapsulated because so many people are fighting to do the normal thing. The normal thing is to play it safe. And I've said this right, the majority of people are pessimists because the majority of optimist people found their way out of the gene pool. There's gonna be some, you know, absolute experts in human evolution, they're gonna be like, uh, enters the chat.

But ultimately, any single human through hundreds of thousands of years, oh yeah, we'll get across that river, out of the gene pool. Oh, it's not that cold out, out of the gene pool. Oh, it's only a couple of bears out the gene pool. The evolution is all of the people that are risk-adversed, worried about things going wrong and avoiding all the opportunities that are around them

to the point that they don't take risks. But now we have this massive primal mechanism of fear that is supposed to keep us alive. And now we're associating that mechanism of fear to really trivial stuff like, how does my CV look? What if I asked the girl for a number and she says no? What if they don't like my first line I use on Bumble? You know, we're using this massive primitive keep us alive mechanism to everyday task and it's keeping people from doing the one thing. In the past, only the paranoid survived, but in the present only the optimist thrive. Oh, just come up with that.

But it's true, because given the fact that you can't predict the future, you have to have some sort of fantasy about how the world's going to go, and that fantasy can either be negative or positive. So why not pick one that's enjoyable? Just pick one that makes the world seem a little bit rosier and assumed that the glass is awful. And this is so wild for me to say, because six, seven years ago, I was Mr. like, still I'm very conservative,

very risk of us all the rest of it, but it wasn't just showing up in my actions, it was showing up in the way that I perceived the world too. Whereas now it's kind of like, prepare for the worst hope for the best, is kind of, I guess, how I would set myself up, still in terms of actions, very risk of us, but in terms of the way that I see the world,

pretty optimistic and pretty hopeful. But you've got another thing that says, becoming feels better than being. I lost carol dwecks. Is it? Yeah. Just in case, you repurposed it. But it's true, right?

What is it that Drake says? People don't want you when you have things or when you're going there. Like, if we were to paint like a, I think it's dangerous to paint a finished product, which makes becoming something very difficult. The version, or the idea of becoming something, whether, you know, that's always going to morph one day, becoming a father, one day becoming a grandparent, one day becoming a business owner, one day becoming whatever it is. the journey of becoming something I think is so much sweeter,

I even think martial arts becoming a black belt, the way towards it is probably a lot more beautiful than when you accomplish it. When you get the black belt, even though it's the most, you know, best achievement in martial arts, it'll feel just like all the belts you have before. Within three months, it's just about, you know, like, it's such a weird way of doing it. But again, it is that thing of saying to people, just about, you know, like, it's such a weird way of doing it. But again, it is that thing of saying to people, the version, you know, stop for a second, you know, you might say, what was it, Homozi said. He said, during my 20s, I wanted to be a millionaire, and I'm a millionaire, I want to be in my 20s. So many people might want to work towards something so much. And then by the time they get there,

they just want to be the version of themselves that was working the way towards it. Ricky Gervais as well. He said about the amount of times he presented the office to TV production companies they declined it didn't want it. Tons of times he struggled he went through all these different phases of his life and he said. If I could trade all of that effort for the same amount of money I I wouldn't take it. He enjoyed the struggle getting there so much. But is it only worth the struggle because there was glory in the end? That's an interesting point, which is, you know, I could never answer that. There's a survivorship by the course, right? Which is, it's how many people have the platform

to talk about how grateful they are for the struggle that didn't make it to the point where they have a platform, right? How many people listening to this really funny, uh, uh, boys cast episode with Danny who we partied with in New York and him and Ryan were talking about how, um, young kids that want to become creators are kind of being talked out of it a lot of the time by the teachers. And then you hear these rappers talking about like Mr. Henderson in your nine, like you didn't believe in me, but Mr. Henderson I've shown you now. But he's like, yeah, but how many fledgling rappers did Mr. Henderson save from a life of shit soundcloud uploads? So the survivorship bias that kind of gets layered in here, I think, is interesting. But the ultimate, the ultimate answer is that Ricky Gervais wouldn't have achieved the

success had he have not stuck about. So maybe it's a tail, like a far right tail outcome, but if you get rid of that, you lose all of the tail, right? If you start to bring that in and if people don't have that hope, every single morning for over three years now, I've started my day, the exact same same way which is with element in water. Element contains a signed backed electrolyte ratio of sodium potassium and magnesium and it is the best hydration drink that I've ever found. It tastes fantastic, it's super refreshing, orange is just the most OP flavor in the world, it's absolutely phenomenal and it helps to play a critical role in reducing muscle cramps and fatigue, it regulates your appetite, it optimises brain health, and

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If you go to the link in the description box below or drink LMNT.com slash MW. That's drink LMNT.com slash mw. The other thing as well is because of this cult of despondency and cynicism online, the minimum bar that people are prepared to quit at continues to get higher and higher, right? That people will quit much sooner than they will do previously.

And this is one of the things, like I really wanted to bring this up and I really thought it was important for me to talk about this, about how how much like uncertainty and luck and randomness and like self-doubt both of us had during everything including stepping out on stage like pretty much every single night that

during everything, including stepping out on stage, pretty much every single night, that in Elon's book at the moment, he kind of goes through a Walter Isaacson explains just how hard he had to work. And I think that stories about success coming about due to incredible levels of hard work makes achievements seem more attainable, not less attainable,

because if it was no hard work, you go, where did it come from? Oh, it just came from luck. Oh, well, how the fuck am I supposed to manifest that? Whereas if you say, oh, I did was just the same thing, 750 times over and over again. So, oh, well, like, anyone can do that. It's going to be hard, but it's not an impossible feat. It's not some ethereal out there in the fucking astral realm, like, piece of luck. It's not being bestowed by anybody, it's just a thing that happened and sure there is luck and randomness on top. But I think being open

about the process and the hard work in the self-doubt makes things that are incredible, seem more achievable. You can answer this in two ways. The first part about the survivorship buys 100% credible. But I also feel now that biases can be used to just counteract someone's points because you might make a really, really important point that makes me think, oh, I need to work harder, I need to be doing more. But what you said might challenge me to the point that I might now pick a bias to use as a new no reverse card.

So you could say to me, you're like, ah, you know, James, if you want to have a successful podcast, I recommend you do 500 more episodes of what you've done. And I could go, this guy's above shit ah, you know, James, if you want to have a successful podcast, I recommend you do 500 more episodes of what you've done. And I could go this guy's above shit bus, you know. A lot of people aren't there if they're able to podcast. You know, so there's that which I don't like. You're completely right, but at the same time, I don't like them and people use a biose to try and, you know, explain why they're what they're doing is not working. And the second point is we had two lads that are last event who wanted to get, you know, do well on YouTube, whatever. And they were telling me this, telling me that I was like, do 100 videos. And they were like, I was like, yeah, but stop

that to make 100 videos. And he asked me something else. I was like, mate, you are not going to learn what you suck at in two, do 100 videos. And I said, one out of a hundred of those, one of them is going to do better than the others. And I said can now look at that one and go why not that one do well? And then when you've done a hundred you should probably do a hundred more videos and I could say you see it like settling in with them and ultimately people aren't gonna learn until they start doing the work and That level of work for some people is fine for others. It's not but you have to have like an unwavering belief that it could work.

Like you say, and I actually think fantasy is a great word to describe it in the early onset of using social media. I didn't make enough money that I could save it. So instead, I was like, okay, I'm going to make a different interest savings account, which depends on effort, not money. And that interest savings account is gonna be convincing hundreds and maybe thousands of people, and that's not hundreds of thousands,

that's hundreds, maybe thousands of people that trust me as a coach. And I thought I can't make enough money to put away tens of thousands into property or anything else. And instead I was like, I'm just gonna work hard to get these people to trust me. And I think that that is such a powerful tool that anyone can really do despite the effort. Are you going to have a big enough pod to be invited on Morgan?

Probably not. But if you put in that amount of effort, could you get a small collective group of people to maybe come to your event, buy your product, do whatever it is you're working to do? Chances are probably. And again, like there was also been people that I talked to that compared their podcast to yours. And you're like, that's not gonna set you up, though. There's no amount of hard work

that can really bridge that gap. And I think people do need to become very centric on their own journey. And even if someone else has been incredibly fortunate, what is it? Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers speaks about how lucky Bill Gates was to be born, it could be outliers, it could be saying else, to be born at a certain time where if Bill Gates was a little bit older, he would have missed

the first computer because he'd be out working somewhere else. And if he was that little bit younger, he would have already been created. Yeah. So then I do think there is an element of luck where when I was 24, 25, I was at a point where I was very confident enough to speak on camera, videos were just becoming popular on social media platforms. Facebook, then Instagram came along. I came along at a time where there was a low amount of creators taking advantage of it, but there was a high amount of users on the platforms. So there is a tremendous element of luck to everyone's journey, but if you're not working hard when that wave of luck comes along, who is it that says, luck is where preparation meets opportunity.

I don't know. I think that's one of those ones that's kind of been repurposed by every person now. It's just got Jay Shetty written on the bottom. Did you? Yeah, maybe. There was this idea called Churchill and Drift. I think I've taught you about before, which is the phenomenon whereby quotes that are unattributed over time progressively get more and more likely to be attributed to Churchill. And like, you're... Yeah, it's literally his name called Churchill and Drift.

It's like, I think it was Churchill that said, luck is when preparation meets opportunity. It's just one of those guys where you go, yeah, that seems about right. Let's throw it towards Churchill. But no, I don't disagree about the timing thing. One consideration I've had in my mind for a little while is don't assume that something you see as obvious is obvious to everybody else.

You know, you seeing a video creation, well, there's quite a lot of people that watch video and I watch video, but there doesn't seem to be so many creators. That might be to you if you had the wrong mindset, well, everybody knows that. Everybody knows that. So what's the point in me trying? If you look at the growth of podcasting, per audience over time, it is just continuing to go like that.

I think it's maybe last year by a percentage started to tail off a little bit, but still huge, huge numbers. Five years ago, it might have seemed like, well, yeah, everybody's got a podcast. You go, well, yeah, but in five years time, really everybody's got a podcast. So go, well, yeah, but in five years' time, really everybody's got a podcast. So I don't think that you can assume

something you take for granted. I remember, I found out about this is like my fucking $100 million exits, not manifest. I found out about Bitcoin in 2010. No, 2012. I found out about Bitcoin in 2012, right? Price would have probably been less than a hundred bucks. I found out about Ethereum in 2016.

Price was, I remember it wavered between 1900 and 120. And I was like, yeah, but everybody knows about this. Everyone knows about Darkweb. Everyone knows about like Silk Road. Everyone knows about Buying Drugs Online. Everyone knows about cryptocurrency. And then you see a bull run in 2018, 2019, 2020 happen. You go, oh, right.

No, now it's kind of starting to hit mainstream. And there's still tons and tons of people. But we just don't have that theory of mind to work out what is obvious to us but might not be to everyone else. You know, I've never been interested in Bitcoin, Ethereum, I've never been interested in like Bitcoin, Ethereum, anything like that.

Still not really because you don't have much control over that stock. Like, there's the market sure people have a good understanding. There's going to be a lot of people that are always going to know more or have better insights to whatever. But when it comes to creating something yourself, whether it's a business, because a business can be grown with paid ads or organic effort, because you can either pay for people to see your

stuff or you can do it organically and do the work yourself. Then when you really want to go after something, you can pause the Netflix episode, you won't really watch it anyway because you're on your phone, and you can make it happen, you can get your phone out, you can mess people, DM people, get back to people, just story Q&A, whatever. You can manipulate your own stock through effort, whereas with investments, you can't manipulate your own stock. The mercy of the market.

And another point about podcasts and about social media and about video creating content, that we some people are listening, like, oh, but I'm not a video creator, but even now I see real estate agents, I see people that sell insurance making like TikToks or whatever. We have one guy come to us, Cargo event, who was like, I make TikToks of the properties that I go in, I'm one of the people that watches it. When someone drops the hook of, this is what, $1.2 million buys you're in Calgary.

I wanna know. I'm like, what does $1.2 million? So like, there are so many, like when I started being an online coach, people were like, how'd you PTP people online? It was like saying, I'm an online plumber. That's exactly the look they gave me at first. But another thing that like is really crazy, people go, ah, shall I become a PTP? And sometimes I think, no, sometimes I think, yeah, but then I was like, although the space is saturated, I don't

think it's that competitive. And I actually think it's the same with the podcast where, though everyone's got a podcast, if you want to be one of the best, you actually don't have to do that much work. You need good production, good organization. Here's one thing for you. One of the reasons that you are very, very good at this is the half an hour you spend before the podcast, putting all your attention into research. There are so many people out there that do podcasts that don't do that. They're willing to do everything, but not that. And that's a little bit more than half an hour.

A little bit more. But Holmosey says, 20 minutes of preparation adds 20 IQ points. So true. If you do 20 minutes of preparation before you go into a meeting, so true man. 20 minutes of preparation before you go into a meeting so true man 20 minutes of preparation before you go into it might not be him. This might be this might be a whole movie and drift Oh man, I think it was Alex for Mozie who once said 20 minutes of preparation

But it's true if you sit down before you're about to have a meeting with someone or a sales caller a job interview or whatever And you say all right, so where are they from or whatever whatever and. And you're like, oh, you're from Hertfordshire. I used to play rugby in Hertfordshire. Do you know that, and you're like, oh my God, this person knows it's exactly the same as before we go into Canada. We're texting our Canadian friends, going, you know, what if we go,

oh, Edmonton is home to the world's second largest mall after Dubai, right? Have I got any mall jokes that I can come out of? Have I got any Justin Trudeau jokes? Or we I like, have I got any just in true dough jokes? Or we're going to Chicago and I start talking about the architecture. It's exactly the same. It seems that, oh my God, how deep does his knowledge run?

His knowledge must be so deep because he was just able to pluck this out. He's like, yo, that architecture joke is the beginning and the end of my knowledge about Chicago. But it seems like you've got way more preparation than you do. And it's crazy that so many people will put so much effort into one side of things, but not the other, but even just people rest their ensure like you can't make your crypto

collection shoot up overnight, but you can improve the level of your research, the level of your production, the level of your video, even just thinking that a little bit more about what you make content about can hugely have a positive direction on what it's going to. I wrote a newsletter this week about one of the questions that we got asked quite a lot. Lots of people at the live shows asked about how to decide between the multiplicity of options we all have in our lives. There are more things I can do with my time than time I have to do them in. There are more things I can do with my time than time I have to do them in. How do I choose? That was one of the most common questions.

And this is from Navale. If I'm faced with a difficult choice, such as, should I marry this person? Should I take this job? Should I buy this house? Should I move to the city? Should I go into business with this person? If you cannot decide, the answer is no. And the reason is modern society is full of options. So this is an interesting

reframe to the paradox of choice. Yes, there are lots of things that you can do with your time, with your time, throw an unlimited number of options. This can make it hard to decide on which option to choose, but it also reduces the pressure of all decisions. If something isn't an obvious slam dunk, yes, then it's likely a better option will come along soon. As Derek Sivers says, if it isn't a hell yeah, it's a no. The only caveat to this is it doesn't work with time sensitive things like having children. So it's interesting. I always thought it was Mark Manson that said if it's not fat kisses and though, which could have been a slight. On tourist.

On tourist. Sivers was the first one to do it, I think. Do you know where the most obvious, so I love talking about paralysis of options as being like a real way to negate your ability to make a decision when you go to shop for aftershave? There is too much going on. There is if you're in Dubai. Yeah, and like people coming left right center, like, hello, sir, and they're quite literally mate. If you walked in and there was someone that you looked at you up and down and then was like, okay, I recommend

these three. And you know, you've only got three in front of you. You see the yes or no. But the chances for me saying yes, if the options are reduced, I think are a little bit better. You've seen Barry Schwartz is the paradox of choice, that idea about jeans. Have you seen this? No. Super famous TED talk. I'll send it to you once we're done. So I think Barry Schwartz, the paradox of choice is maybe 15 years ago, I remember where I was where I was listening to it on YouTube, driving to Scotland down Great North Road in Newcastle. This must have been, this must have been 10 years ago when I was listening to this. So 50 years ago, you want to buy a pair of jeans, you go into a department store and there is one type of jeans, probably blue, right?

There's no different options. There are sizes, 30 ways, 32, 34, etc. So you go in, yes, you don't have an unlimited number of options, but your ability to make a decision is made much more simple. Now, you go into a store and do you want bootcurt or straight, do you want skinny, do you want ripped, do you want bleached, do you want them to be cropped, do you want them to be full length? I don't even know what half this means. Precisely, right? And since top man's closed, none of us ever will again. But the point being previously,

you couldn't maximize the utility in economists terms that you got from each individual decision because that particular only single pair of jeans you could have bought might not be quite precisely the fit and the look that you were going for. But the other side of this that we don't usually think about is the psychological price that you have to pay to reach a point of decision making. And that is made way harder when there's an unlimited, essentially an unlimited multiplicity of options because in the past, a suboptimal decision was because of constraint. Now a suboptimal decision is because of your error

at making a right decision. Does that make sense? Yeah. Back to the second point of what you said about having children. Having children is a really interesting thing, right? And I think there's almost a plague. You've got people that we've spoken about ambition. Ambition, incredible thing to be riddled with in life.

You know, a dissatisfaction with the norm, dissatisfaction of average, all of these things. And that has a positive correlation on absolutely every area of your life apart from the decision making process of children. Because there is a point, and I wonder if you're in this part of your life right now, where the table feels hot, everything you do goes well, every episode you do, you know, like the Goggins episode, for instance, nearly could not have happened, but you persisted, it fought for it, you got in there, it happened, it slapped,

it did amazing. I think it's the video you have on your channel. It is, it's the channel trailer still, yeah. And you think, oh, if I'd maybe been up all night with a crying baby, I would have had the persistence and the tenacity and the audaciousness to see what I said to lock that in. So now you create this argument in your head between the table being hot, because in some respects you do need to turn your back on the table a bit to bring up and raise children. Yeah, decide in advance what you're going to suck at. So have you made any

decisions in your mind? Do you push it back to an age? Because readiness is a very subjective thing when it comes to children. If you say, I'll wait till I'm ready, you might wait until you're no longer fertile. So then the second thing I believe people do is they set an age. But then that age seems to be pushed back year by year. Well, if you, this is when I will have kids is usually this is when I will start to think about having kids. And that is what if the relationship that you're in doesn't work, what if you decide to start dating, but it takes time to find someone, what if you cycle through multiple relationships,

what if your other partner, you know, what if it takes time to conceive? So yeah, I think whatever the reverse of a buffer is, like an inverted buffer, like start sooner than you think you need to if you want to have kids, probably not a bad idea. But you're right, like I do think about this a good bit. And it's hard to say this without coming across Wanky, so I'll try and do it without annoying the internet. But the table does feel hot, like pretty much anything that I touch

at the moment seems to go well. And that's terrifying because it's a very high place to fall from. And it really does, it shits me up to think, fuck, like everything's so great. All of my friends are healthy, my family's healthy, I'm healthy, everything's going fine. I haven't been canceled, I haven't stepped foot on some

sacred cow or landmine that's going to blow my leg off. Every single month, the show grows more. Every single month, we've got better guests coming on. Dude, the fucking Q1 for next year is just so insane. Like dream guests, I've wanted for decades or the coolest guys on the planet, messaging me on WhatsApp, like, your man can't wait to get this thing sorted in Miami or in LA

or in London or whatever. But it's a high place to fall from. And that's like really, really scary. You know, it's the opposite of expectations. It's like, you actually got to taste what it was like to be there. What is it, the Will Smith says? Being famous, gaining famous amazing,

being famous is a mixed bag and losing famous torture. It's, I think it's something that I think about a lot. And I think that I've been trying to, I told you I had that ADHD assessment, and in it they told me I had anxiety. I was like, that's not the cool one. That's not the cool one. I was like, take that back, shake your mouth. And with it, we like try to get to the bottom of it.

And the way I make tasks important enough to do with them and spend time with them is to catastrophize a terrible outcome. So she was like this. For your based motivation. Yeah, she was like, this isn't a great mechanism to be using. But in essence, I kind of, there will be times I'm not a ham bit tired.

I'm gonna have a nap and I'm like, oh, you know, you could fall off and no one ever wants to watch your content anymore. So then I just build up that looming anxiety of falling off and never being relevant. And, you know, even though there's part of me that almost sees going backwards slightly utopian because I could always go back to 15 clients on the gym floor, people were like, oh, my PT used to be known. It used to be James. Yeah, it used to be something. Now look at him, right? Yeah, oh, my PT used to be known. Used to be James. Yeah, he used to be something. Now look at him.

You know, like, so there's always that in the back of the mind, but like, it is crazy that you could think about that so much because the higher you go, the faster you can fall. And it's difficult because I bet that should you then say you have children, I bet you will say to yourself, wow, this is actually the single most important project on my life that I've cherished, whatever it is. I said this to you on the tour, I was like, I've got friends that have kind of been, what, you know, you've got blue pill, red

pill, black pill, what pill would you call it when they've kind of been coerced out of having children because of climate or because of, you know, a declineism. Probably black pill, it's a kind of black pillism, I guess. So I, a lot of my friends are kind of like, oh yeah, I don't know if I'm going to have kids. And I'm like, do you have a good life? And they say, yeah, have a great life. And I went, who stopped enjoying their life so you could have yours?

And my parents did, hold it there, they're about 36. Oh, so, you know, maybe you could do what your parents did and pay it forward. But there's, declineism is the idea that the world's becoming a worse place. And the social media, I think that's ever growing to make people feel like it is, because think about it, right? We had fucking pandemic, then we had Ukraine, Russia, now we've got Palestine as well.

Some people on social media are like, I'm too crippled by the state of the world. Now we've given James Coyne to a live tour. Yeah, so like, but then women are better educated than ever. Less women died during childbirth than ever. The rates of infants making it to the age of reproduction are higher than ever. World famine is lower than ever. I'm pretty sure even I'm not trying to, you know, underplay the state of the world as far as war,

but when you look at World War II, when you look at World War I, when you look at the amount of deaths that countries lost to war, pre this modern time, surely, when you look at the amount of deaths that countries lost to war pre this modern time. Surely, even the amount of available tap water to certain nations in the world. The number of climate-related deaths has decreased by 98% over the last 100 years, to 50x-50x decrease. So we could build a pretty strong argument to these black pill bankers. The state of the world is getting better. And I really, it's crazy that if you were to say anything along the lines of

to stop a population breeding, it could be considered genocidal. But then when it's you and your own family, it's considered going, you know, you're saving the planet. What a hero. Well, I hate the fact that there's virtue in the black mentalty. Well, there's, when it comes to not having kids, when it comes to trying to discourage people from having children around climate change, I think a massive amount of that is people's selfishness or fear around life changing, around what becoming a parent will be like, just repurposed into what seems like an altruistic philosophy.

It's their personal motivations being put out, it's called the Inocetadel by Asciable Inn, which is that you basically repurpose something, which is an inward fear into an outward social justice campaign. And it's not wrong. Women get complications during childbirth, and sometimes the kids don't make it to term, and that's brutal, and awful, and painful. And that is an absolutely honest fear that women can and do have. But saying that it's because of climate and because you don't want the world to end and because there's too many people, which is fucking horse shit given the decline in birth rates at the moment. It's an increase, even the decline in birth rate, which is an, it's not a subjective opinion.

If you look at the objectives, statistics of repopulus in the US, which is where the majority of the data is from, you can literally say to people, we are not having enough children. We know how many people are going to be around in however many years time, because as it's told, demography is destiny, right? We can't make any more one-year-olds. We can't make any more two-year-olds. We can't make any more two-year-olds. We can't make any more three-year-olds. So we can predict with 100% accuracy the maximum number of people that can be around in future, right? It's one of the very few things that you

can have absolute accuracy with doing. You see Kim Jong-un was weeping, he's dabbing his tears away as he begged North Korean women to have more children. This happened a couple of weeks ago. So yeah, bro, there was this, I spoke about this with Danny from the Boyzcast. This Canadian guy had got over sector me so that he wouldn't have kids. Frozen sperm, though, which kind of feels a little bit like a fucking pole ripcord in case of children. Um, Frost got a second me so that he would not negative impact the climate, then spent the next five years flying around Asia with his partner. So he said, it could be argued that the gains that we made for the climate by not having a child were offset by all of the flights we took living our freedom.

And this is the other side that one of the most common reasons for people not entering relationships and not having kids at the moment is just don't feel ready or enjoying my life too much, basically. That there are so many things you can do right now that are enjoyable, that are right in front of you, that are convenient and comfortable from entertainment to travel,

to experiences, to time with friends, to all the rest of the things. The standard of living has raised even the worst type of life, so much to a degree of comfort and enjoyment and convenience that many people look at children and say, well, that feels like a downgrade. Whereas in the past, it's like, what else have you got to do? 1960s sat there with a book and a glass of wine. What else are you gonna do? Darling? She had some children Yeah, so it's gonna fuck all else going on. Yeah, exactly. It's interesting like Exactly that one thing you know, it's quite it's weird if you were to worry about men

It can come across as almost like a you know something misogynist is about to come misogynist is about to appear. But I believe, and again, I could be wrong with this, from the observations in my life, that women get to a certain point where they start to really think about family, they start to get maternal instinct, so they start to even look at children and be like, oh, I could broodiness. So they start to even look at children and be like, oh, I could broodiness. I think for men, it's easier for them to medicate their needs with porn, video games. So even you look at something that, and again, I can't speak on behalf of women, but for men, they have sexual desires, which can be fulfilled much easier via porn than is via women.

So they can have access to more vaginas in one hour than prehistoric humans in history, which I believe Jordan Peterson made a good point on. But even if we look into the complexity of male status, men want recognition, they want to be known being good. And even I was thinking about this a few weeks ago, I was playing Call of Duty, and this lad comes into our lobby to play with us. And he was level like a thousand. I mean, my mates just start not shitting was level like a thousand. I mean my mates just thought not shitting him off like mate I bet you're a fucking savage. You know this guy must be sick. You know let's have a look at his KD ratio right let's have a look at him. This guy is probably like

15 year old right. He has got a level of status from one video games that strangers are giving him credit. Then he was in animal he got 20 kills in the game, it was own. And then I was thinking, this is dangerous because he probably gets more recognition, more, you know, compliments, more credit, more everything from a video game than he ever couldn't in his life at 15. And the way we're creating a world that can help people, especially men, Medicaid their primitive needs without the need to leave their bedroom, existing society, even work in some respects. You know, I went to sign on the doll when I was 19. I couldn't get a job. I wasn't really looking that hard. My dad made me sign on the doll, a bit embarrassing. And I was like, Dad, I'm not going to the job center. And he was like, son, I've paid the highest tax bracket for 40 years. He was like, you make your way to the center.

So I got there. and for the record, I took a first job before I've got to pay out, but they do this thing where they go, are you better off in work? It's a legit form you sit there. They're like, how many hours can you work a week? I was like, all of them. They were like, okay, because if you can only work 20 hours,

you'll earn more money on the state than you ever would get in a job. And you think to yourself that there are gonna be people out there that maybe are meditating their needs through porn, alcohol, whatever. And they quite literally have the opportunity. They can buy it, buy it, I've worked 40 hours and be potentially someone of no significance in doing this job, whereas I could have real significance being a virtual world. World of Warcraft or wherever. And video games are only getting better. They're only getting better. Where there's more cooperation, more teamwork, more strategy, more rank, you know, even the

way that social media was designed to give you the gambling effect when you swipe down as like a root, what's it called in the casino, is it? Variable schedule reward. That's the one. I knew you'd know the name for it. So like, as we see even gamification of things online being made to the point to really tap into human psychology, I worry to the point that as we kind of touched on before, someone's reality in the online world could be better than their reality outside of it. Did you heard my male sedation hypothesis?

No, I'm excited for it. Okay, well, it's basically what you've just described, which is men are being sedated out of their reproductive and state of seeking behavior by a combination of porn, social media screens and video games. And it's the reason why we haven't got dispossessed groups of men going around and causing riots because they are literally being sedated out of those things. There's when you have high groups of sexless men, which you do have at the moment, under the age of 30, which is high-t, high anti-social behaviour, typically, there is a question to be asked, where's all of the in-sell killings? Like, this isn't a

request. And I'm putting a request in with the DJ. But there's question, right? You know, you see like stuff like Sandy Hook and these sort of mass shootings and all the rest of it. But if those things which they should do would be moving in line with the degree of dispossession of young men, you would expect to see way more and what not. And it's my contention that screens, social media, porn, video games are sedating that behavior out of guys. It's interesting as well. Do you know what?

This wasn't even like a legit video. It wasn't a study. It was just some guy rambling on Twitter. He was talking about how in the Roman Empire, they built the Coliseums to keep the, you know, just people occupied. You know, if they didn't, if they didn't get to see carnage, war, murder in the Coliseum, it would allow their thoughts and their thinking about social situation and the amount of food they had and their access to water, it was almost in a bid to entertain them to keep them occupied. The music, the minted sedation.

So when you look at things like, you know, you've got the Premiership Football, you've got Sport, you've got Politics, you've got Social Media, you've got all of these things. It's almost like a puppeteer pulling strings to keep people in a state of sedation. Yeah. Keep paying. Don't tax it. Yeah, exactly.

Don't look over there, don't look over there. Oh, yeah. You're looking over here. You're looking over here. Another war for you to be outraged about. Oh, look at it. And it is crazy because if you were to look at the, even the statistics of how many, and of course, you know, the lockdowns a little bit,

we tempered towards closest. If you think about the amount of people for every law enforcement officer or every soldier in the country, they're outnumbered vast amounts. And you're always on this like precipice of revolt and all civilizations through history. Especially when they're armed. And one thing that you think about a lot of the time is, we live in a time where we seem to think our civilization is perfect and it's going to be evergreen forever. So we look through history in every single civilization for us as collapsed.

And it's collapsed for loads of various reasons, which I'm just not well educated enough in. Then you look to this like sedation in cell fertility rates, rebirth rate, and people are like, no, no, no, it's the climate that's gonna get us. The sun is gonna boil the seas. And you look around, you're like, which one's gonna go first?

Because if you stop having babies to stop the temperature growing up a couple of degrees, if you guys aren't gonna chat to girls because you're wanking a world of warcraft, and you know, if... There's more immediate problems here. Yeah. And well, there's a great book. It's on that reading list that I released. I think it's the third book down, The Pressapist by Toby Ord, which is a primer and existential risk. It's really great. And this guy has gone to the ends of the earth to try and work out what the risk

is of different types of natural risk and anthropogenic risk. So natural risk is volcanoes, asteroids, supernova, etc., etc. And I think natural pandemic is part of anthropogenic risk, actually, which is kind of strange. But then you've got nuclear weapons, climate change, natural pandemics, engineered pandemics, nanotechnology, AI, etc. And it's like engineering pandemics, nanotechnology, AI, et cetera. And it's like, climate change, I think, is one in a thousand or one in 10,000, chance of ending civilization over the next century. AGI's one in 10, natural pandemics are one in 30,

engineered pandemics are one in six. So you have these things that are orders of magnitude. Malteseuvius is worrying me more. Yeah, well, actually, the supervolcano thing is not too bad. Apparently, according to him, he's done the numbers. There's like some stuff in there that's like one in 20 billion. I'm like, that's the cool one. That's the one that we want.

If I want to go out and go out and a supernova. But yeah, just, I've been singing this song for ages. Climate change is not an existential risk priority. But now we're going to get labeled climate change to noise. No, I'm not saying that climate change doesn't exist. I'm saying change is not an existential risk priority. But now we're going to get labeled climate change to noise. No, I'm not saying that climate change doesn't exist. I'm saying it's not an existential risk priority. I'm saying that there are things that are more important than that that we need to get on with.

And there are ways to fix the climate that are much more and improve the quality of life that are much more important than what we're working on at the moment. And you know, that boils round to actually the very principles that, because me and you are very different people, but we share very similar values. And a lot of our values are actually, because people are going to go, why are these guys on a tangent talking about all these abstract things? But the reality is that when you come back to it, where we say that people have more things that they need to be worried about, it actually ties into the very things in which we are telling people to become more mindful of, which

is effort, ambition, relationships to failure, and the reality of the situation, not the reality of the information that fed to it. One of the main parts of my last book was saying to people, the way you see the world is dictated by the information you are fed about it, not the actual situation. I joke about the lottery tickets, whenever anyone wins the lottery. Come on Trevor, come up here, get up here, come on fucking L.M. A.O.R.Y.P. We're going to give you a check. So big, the bank doesn't even accept those checks. The check is only printed to that massive bit of cardboard to skew other people's reality. The bigger check, it must be more important. Zach, your house mate, actually was showing me a weightlifter. I think he cleaned and jerked like 210 kg

and they brought him out a massive check for $250. And he's like mate, that check must have cost $100 to make. So like when we see these little tricks that are played by people to paint the reality of the world around them, such as the big check to make people feel like they're actually going to win the lottery,

we need to realize that even just a few friends in your social circle who are pessimists or doubters or whatever, that does influence your reality to how you see the world. I mean, you've probably experienced this a lot since moving to Austin, right? So a new castle, even if you were to go see your friends at the pub or whatever, they're not on the same wavelength as the level in the place you're at. It's very hard to have that conversation. I've tried to bring this up on stage,

and again, that rocket ship analogy, which I've developed whilst being on stage, which has been really cool, to actually have ideas come to you while you're in front of 500 people, which is also scary, because you go, wow, I'm trading new ground now, this might be total dog shit,

but it ended up being okay. But it's hard to have that conversation without it sounding like you're making a value judgment around certain people being better or more worthy or something than other people. I don't think that that's what you're saying. Certainly, not what I've been saying in the live tour, but trying to find people who match your personal growth velocity is really hard. If you're a rocket ship that's taking off at 10,000 meters per second and someone else is

moving at 100 meters per second, there's only a small while before you're very far away from them. It's hard to have conversations about things because the things that you're struggling with are different to the things that they're struggling with and the dreams and the goals that you have have now outgrown the dreams and the goals that they have. That's not to say that they can't even catch you up and then maybe overtake you in future. They very well may do, but it's going to be tough for you to find common ground unless that person's very open and honest and unless you are too in order to be able to do that. But you always want to try and find people

that are ahead of you because they're the ones that are going to bring you along. It's like, show me what is it? Show me your friend group, I'll show you your future. And I found this earlier on, it's so funny. I read literally, as I was in the car on the way here, are we ruled by Midwits, this new blog post? It's brilliant.

The people in charge are more stupid than you, basically. This is from Machiavelli, one of his books. The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him. If we look at the men and women around our contemporary rulers, what do we find? Few reasons for optimism, I'm afraid. In 2011, the Royal Statistical Society

asked 97 British MPs a simple maths question. If you spin a coin twice, what is the probability of getting two heads? Since the chance of getting a heads on one spin is 50% and two spins are independent, the answer is just 50% times 50% – 25%. Not exactly quantum physics. Shockingly, only 40% of MPs got the answer right. Among labour MPs, it was only 23%. Most of those who got the answer wrong said 50%, which is obviously incorrect when you think about it. So it just reminds us, the people who are in charge are more stupid than you are and the bar is set unbelievably low. Yeah, I always thought this is school. You know, I remember, did you go to I had to go to a religious

school? Do you have that? I had to do religious education a little bit, but my thing specialized in technology. So. I remember taking the piss a little bit. We'd be in Aari, so we call it in England, for religious education. And you'd be learning, like, you know, feed in the 5,000, like fish,

you know, the fish, the bread, the white fish. The fish, that fish story. Was it the feed in the 5,000? It was the fish, I believe, there's fish in there. I, that fish story. Was it the feeding of the 5,000? It was the fish, I believe. There's fish in there. I was always like, wait, I'd just come from physics. This is bullshit. Be quiet in the back.

But yeah, like I was joking about school. It is like that. I think that a lot of the times, especially working in the corporate world, it was politics, it was who was asking to look in, like so many people. So imagine this, when I worked in sales department, this is how mundane the corporate world is. So, did you ever work in an office that I have to wear a suit and tie?

Yes, I didn't have to wear a suit and tie, but I did outbound tele sales for the AA in a call center for six months. Yeah, so this is where the mundane comes in. I worked for the inside sales department of a multifact worth of indication security company. And in essence, I had to look at the environment leads coming into the business and call them up to quantify them. And this company message me and they go, we're taking you out for staking beers. And I was like, lads, wrong person, I'm like, really junior role, they're like, now come up, staking beers, I met them.

And they said, basically, if you come across any big opportunities, it's your role to pass it to one of 10 companies, we want them all. And I was like, okay, and he goes, in return, we're going to give you big opportunities that we're going to close anyway, but we're going to put your name on it before it comes through. So I was a bit like, okay, let's give this go. And I remember at work one day, someone came, the whole team come around and give me an iPad, they're like, James, 300,000, use the deal, that's incredible. You know, we can't believe you had this phone call. I don't remember. It was the other company that put it through for me. And I was now in a position to go for a promotion, literally from backhand and deals to the same company

that I shouldn't have. Now, when I looked around at everyone around me, they were all dodgy. They were all sitting on the hands. They were all like not really making the calls. They weren't really like working hard at all. And I was like, this is it, the whole way out. This is it literally like the people that were in the top roles, no offense, the people that. I was like, this is merely just politics between you. And it is, what do you call it, idiots, the whole way out. And that's not us being able to,

these guys are stupid, but everyone's just kind of pretending that they know what they're doing. It's reassuring. The what that has reminded me of is the fact that it's reassuring that you get pretty much no matter how high you go, no one really has that much of an idea about what they're doing. Everyone is working out as they go along, especially if you're doing something for the first time or if you're in a relatively pioneering or new novel industry, podcasting.

It's been around for 15 years. There are no rules. There are no rules in podcasting. There's been around for 15 years. There are no rules. There are no rules in podcasting. There are no rules in content creation. People are breaking rules. Sam Sulik, breaking the rules all the time, unedited, no title and thumbnail fuckery, like outwardly boring titles and like relatively unexciting thumbnails. Absolutely destroying the platform. Kill Tony. Kill Tony. But for people who are just going to get blasted.

Yeah. Keep a load of comedians in the night. Let's find the worst comedians that we can and bring them up. Like, there's elements of it that are existing and work, but there's also new stuff in there that doesn't. So yeah, I am reminding yourself and reminding everybody that it is there are no experts in there are very few experts in a bunch of industries. I have days where I do the stupidest stuff. I went to a gym the other day. I went to get on

a Lego extension. It was a hamstring curl. I put a PT 12 years. I get on that and I'm like, that was embarrassing. I had to do a set to play it off. You know, just play it off. But like, I think it's so good that if people can show vulnerability at every level, even the people in the smartest positions make the dumbest mistakes. I think that it's a lot easier, the higher you climb in life to seem almost, you know, like perfect. Untouchable. Untouchable. I'm fathomballed, like all of this stuff. I think it's such a powerful point to say to people like everyone has same insecurity, same worries. Yeah, well, I think it's one of the reasons why celebrities, especially celebrities that are

kind of in the independent media space, they're sufficiently touchable because you remember when they came up and you know that they're a person, you know that they've got a life and you know that they have a dog that they need to walk or a wife that they have to go back to or whatever. What does Brad Pitt do with his day? I don't know. He's actual untouchable stuff. No one's, first off, he's not saying things, presumably because he's got a million media people around him going like, don't fuck this up, don't fuck this up, don't fuck this up, there's a whole army of people that require you to not come in on the Ukraine so that everyone can keep getting paid.

Whereas for someone like Peterson, there are fewer filters between him and his fingertips or his mouth, but also, he's in this very strange and interesting position, Rogan to Same, pretty much everybody in independent media, YouTube, podcasting world is the same. They feel just enough reachable for people to be able to say things because they want them to see it.

But because of the size, and I don't know where it is, I think it's probably about, run about sort of five million where this really starts to kick in in terms of follow account. People get to a size where the audience doesn't see them as human anymore. They're not a person. They're a conglomeration of ideas, like a collection of ideologies represented by a person that is manifest as an account. And you say things to them that you wouldn't ever say to an actual person. And this isn't just

people say stuff online they wouldn't say to your face. This is people say things to them that you wouldn't ever say to an actual person. And this isn't just people say stuff online that wouldn't say to your face. This is people say stuff to big accounts that they wouldn't dare say to small accounts. Because there is something, maybe it's like, you'll never look at this. Yeah, you'll never see it. He's got enough money that he can get away with it.

It doesn't matter whatever. Like that just seems to happen. And the bigger, the bigger that someone's platform grows, the more virulent and mean and cutting the criticism it. And I think that that's just like a dynamic that I've observed where people are prepared to say really fucking heinous things about people when they're a large account, that they wouldn't be prepared to say about them when they're a smaller count. Was it Jordan P's and them are saying like 4% of the population, maybe a sociopaths, and that 1% of that psychopaths.

So like when you look at even someone that just has 300 followers, right, at least two or three of them are probably not quite all there and then you think about malevolence, autonomy, fake account. Then you think about people that maybe get, I can't remember the comments, but it's like a little sadist, people that like to see other people upset, like to all of these things. So then when you break it down into numbers, even a very small account or a small podcast with only maybe a few thousand downloads or whatever. You're still now trickling over the territory for coming across someone who is just an evil. With that lower of very large numbers thing, when we were in New York on Saturday for Santa Khan, eight million to one odds things happened. Eight of them, million to one odds things happened eight times on average in New York.

If you have a sufficiently big data set, sufficiently big sample of people, really crazy outlier events start to happen pretty regularly, and it's the same thing. You have enough people that vote, that have access to Twitter, that know who Elon Musk is, that know that this particular pop star is coming to their town.

I think about, dude, I think about this, I think about Taylor Swift more than I should, like, admit, given that I didn't think about her all until, like, three months ago. Think about the security concerns that someone like Taylor Swift has, right? I would guess it's on par with the president, where there's so many people and they're so motivated, such a huge bucket of people, and they're so motivated. Such a huge bucket of people, and they're so motivated to try and get something out of her. And you filter that down. It's 1% of the world of psychopaths,

and of those 1% let's say 1% of them are people that are motivated, and 1% of them are motivated or untalented. She's got an army of people. Even after you've filtered it down from 1% of 1% of 1% of 1% you're like, that's still like 2 people that can't go within a mile of exactly exactly to almost wild as well right so let's say you've got 1.5 million on

YouTube you've got 1.2 million in star which is which is a lot but then in the population of the world it's not massive when you've got this in this worldwide I still can't fully get to grips with the facts that people will say stop your New York. Hey mate, love you stuff. Chicago, hey mate, love you stuff. Even today in Austin, Chris and I have this thing where when we're out and about, not in a like a narcissistic way, it's just banter like if you get stopped from recognized, we're flipping immigration, getting over the US border, I'm like shit in myself a bit because the US border is just the nerve-wracking place. One no, and I'm like, fuck, but the other person has to be present for it. But

earlier on I was in that, um, some life organics paying 25 pound fucking two smoothies and this guy's like, love your stuff. And my first reaction was, oh, wish Chris was here. I was like, fuck sake, that was like, uh, it's a waste. If you spread a million people across the world, it's not a lot of people. How the fuck are we bumping into them every day? Yeah, I suppose not everyone's hit subscribe. We're inhabiting places that have people like the people that follow our stuff,

which is like one of those. But yeah, the on-street stuff's white. Like, is that goes to rogue invitation, which is... But you know why ghost him? Because he gets recognized. Of course, of course. Because he's in that Olympic lifting scene. I don't think he likes CrossFit.

I think he just likes getting selfies. Because he took me to one of them and he got stopped every quarter. I thought I'm right here, guys. Yeah, that was rogue when you weren't. One of the things I've been interested in discussing with you is what success looks like to you now. Because you've done a lot of the things objectively,

sold out Sydney Opera House, like 2,000 people, sold out London Apollo, 3,500 people, 3 time best selling author, all the rest of the things. But still, I've spent four weeks with you, unless you're an unbelievably good liar, still like a very normal bloke. What's your conception of success, or what have you learned about success,

given that you've achieved a level that most people would consider to be pretty high? One thing this year is that I've actually allowed myself to be proud of some of the things I've done and it was only through, I've got people that have followed me for say five, six years and they've said, you've done everything you said you were going to do. I for five years have said, I want to get my residency, I want to find a nice girl and settle down, I want to get a dog and move by the beach and I literally just went, I did it all in one year. Because I only got my residency last August.

So then there was a time when I completed all of that. And then I wasn't like, now what? I was actually like, okay, now let's keep this up. Now let's, you know, whatever I've pretended to be to this point, we now need to continue this. So success for me very much is just about doing the day on my terms. So I love making content, love waking up, love helping my clients, all of that stuff. And then I just need something to challenge me a bit. So starting a new book,

as long as I can get into something and like get my get my hands dirty with it, that's fine. As far as like financial status status, recognition, all of those things, I don't know if I really think about it too much, but whenever I put every video I do, I want to be amazing. And then when it doesn't, I'm like, okay, call us try again with the book, I have a little bit more time to do it. But really, I've actually built my life to the point that the foundations are now really set and start. I can't even relocate anymore because I have a doc, right? People think getting a dog is a little thing, hopefully Kelpilips 15 years. So I've now, you know, dug my roots into the ground there. But really, as long

as everything I do, I do to my best, I'm becoming more process orientated than outcome orientated, which is how I got here in the first place. So success to me isn't about outcome, it's about process. I mean, I said this, I think I answered a question on your behalf at one of the Q&As, where something that I've always been very admirable, held in high admiration around you, is your ability to turn things into a game.

Like the follow-up camp was just a game, that piece of content was just a game, that writing a book was just a game, and piece of content was just a game. That writing a book was just a game. And it's a game that you hope to win. But it's not the end of the world if you lose. Or if you just have like an average performance. And it's not a comment on yourself worth as a human. It doesn't make you more or less of a person.

If something does go well or does go badly, it's just information. I think it's really important to unassociate from things as being as real as... So for instance, you look at your podcast. I think that every interaction, every conversation you have, of course, it's a great interaction conversation, but it's also a three hour stint in the game. And if you see it like a game, you can see the amount of listeners download shares, whatever, as a score of that game, not the reality, because there's no way in hell you and I can sit here and think about a stadium of people

sat there watching us do this conversation right? So we get 100,000 views on this video. Imagine seeing in, that's like one of the biggest stadiums in America, 100,000 people there. We would be a little bit more an edge if that was a reality of it. And I think when it comes to financial, when it comes to physical, when it comes to the outcome of your processes, if it's too real, it can become overwhelming very quickly. And overwhelm is a real killer to anything that you're trying to do. And I think that breaking things down and making them a game, making them high scores is one of the best ways that I can emotionally unattach from things. Because I don't. We don't want to do that too much, right? Like, you know, we did, what was the most people we did?

I think we did like 800 people, 2000 people in Dubai. And that's a lot of people. The room was so big that it kind of didn't matter because you can see the first three rows and then everything else just feels like, it's just three rows and then noise. And there's part of me that thinks in order to be able to not shit myself

I have a panic attack before I go out on stage, treating it like a game and reminding myself that if you can do 40 people in Austin, you can do a thousand people in Dubai. Or wins for the same. But, or wins for the same. But, you also want to be able to take in this experience. I always use this example of Conor McGregor.

He got two cracks at the featherweight championship because he fought Chad Mendes as a step in and he got the interim belt. And then he did Aldo in 13 seconds. And someone asked him this press dude at an interview asked what are you going to do differently this time that you didn't do last time when he's about to buy Aldo. And he says, I'm going to take it all in because he was so preoccupied and fearful and in the zone and doing the things that facilitated his performance that he didn't actually get to experience what he was going through. And there's this great photo of him stood on stage at the ceremonial way, or it might have even been before the ceremonial way, and there might be the actual one. And he's got that tattoo

running up his back, and it's just him with his hands out like this. And it's like 40,000 people in front of them. Just everyone stood up and it's electric, right? It's Conor McGregor, peak, Sevant artist of war, just stood there with his hands out. And he wasn't there for it. His mind wasn't there as he was experiencing one of the most profound moments of his entire life, but he got a second crack. You know, a lot of people have got a lot of bad things to say about Chrono McGregor, a lot to do because of the fact he's successful. If you watch his documentary, which again, they didn't show

the full side of who Chrono McGregorist, but his belief in himself is incredible. And there's that point where he's like really early on and he's like, I want my mom to have a mansion, I want my kids and their kids to do well. And he's causing, he's like, I'm like Vincent Van Gogh. You know, I'm losing my mind. Yes. And it's actually quite inspiring to see someone

with such a fathomable belief in their outcome. But going back to the point of like, I, for me, when you do Hamas Smith follow, which you will one day, three and a half thousand people, it's black. Everything in front of you is just dark. You can hear them, you can feel them, but you can't see them.

And Duran says this to me, he goes, he notices quite early on, he goes, you don't look at anyone. He goes, you'll go out there and talk for an hour and a half, you don't look at one single person, I go, no, I don't, I can't. Because if I look at them, they become real. So I have to try so hard because it is a really weird thing to do. You know, I was personal training for four years, just eight, seven people a day, eight to ten people a day, eight to ten people a day, eight to ten people a day. If I get caught up in the reality of it being what it is, not, you know, I imagine trying

to think about three and a half thousand people having to buy the tickets, wait for the day, get in their cars, travel, park and parking, some of them got hotels. Like this is the hardest thing for me, right? Say someone pays for a hotel or fly somewhere. We have people come from Alaska to our event. If I take that into my mind and actually appreciate that someone drove six hours to come see me, it makes me very uncomfortable.

I don't even like presents or Christmas, I don't like compliments. I've become very weird with any praise to the point I'm like, oh thanks, and they're like, you didn't even accept that as whatever. So if I actually think, oh my God, someone just comes to me and I want to have a pack of tech and tell them, why did you do it? We joke to this, everyone met in the Q&A. They would, oh, I've dream four hours for this. I've been an urban

drive four hours for this. So for me, I like it being darkness. Sometimes I like not take it in. I like not appreciating until it's over where I can sit in the green room afterwards and someone goes, that was good and I can then relax. Otherwise, you're concerned about, and not everyone is going to try and do a tour of speaking, but many people are achieving goals and fearful of realising the magnitude or the size of the challenge that's in front of them or dampening down their ambition by taking in that gratitude. Did we not say at the beginning of this that you need to celebrate your wins? Oh, yeah, I'm just going to say possible.

Biggest hip, ever. And come to think of it, you know, I've been thinking about this. I think it's that I would rather they have a good evening than I had a good evening. I think that's the reality. So when I come back and someone's like, oh, you didn't even appreciate that you just spoke to a thousand people, I'll go, I'm, yeah, but they had a good time.

They had a good time. Yeah. And then people go, I just did Hamas with, but I'm too preoccupied about someone else having a good evening. Then I wonder how much of that comes out of fear. Well, again, dude, we've said this a lot on the field.

I'm massively to do with fear because imagine, imagine the bitter disappointment that you would, I went, I walked out lot on the other. Massively to do with fear, because imagine the bitter disappointment that you would, I went, I walked out of a film the other day. There's such a bitter taste in your mouth when you get in your car. Not good. And you didn't enjoy the film, didn't enjoy the show, or like, but it's even worse when you had faith in the person.

Whether it was your favorite director, or your favorite actor, but it's different because it's your show, right? And there's a part of you inside that you know if you let them down, there's no coming back from that. But I don't think there's any coming back. A member of the audience that you've lost forever. Because I know how much this matters to you from how much you've improved over the last

few weeks. Like it's night and day. And crazy. If you think from IFS to the last event, like your mic didn't work the other night and you handled it so well, as behind stage, I was nodding and I was like, this is good this. I was like, I'm glad his mic didn't work. It was better. Because I get to see his, you know, almost that slight bit of being vulnerable, but then

you were funny and then you were banning him with the guy of being vulnerable, but then you were funny, and then you were banning room with the guy, the guy shitting himself, trying to put the mic back on, you're like, you put your like Douglas Murray voice, yeah, take it off. You know? So, yeah, I think that is important, but.

That's, I mean, that's definitely something that I've considered, and a lot of people that maybe watch guys on stage, or girls on stage, that are even remotely competent. Just look at them like, oh my god, that must be so terrifying to do. But I've done, I've run the live show that we did 20 times, let's say, in the last three months. I did working progress shows in Austin.

I did my tour. I did our tour. And then we did IFS. The skill acquisition, if you just bury yourself in living and breathing one thing, and it's high pressure, and you've done an adequate amount of prep with a little bit of like existing skill set, is outrageous, like how quickly you can pick something up. And again, it goes back to that...

People being open about how hard they work is good, I think, because it makes what seemed to be incredible achievements seem much more in reach, right? I'd never done public speaking solo four months ago and then managed to deal with a mic stopping in a sold out show in Vancouver for five minutes while some guy fiddled around in the back pocket of my pants for like forever. And it's just it's really good. It's been it's been very reassuring. Been very centering for me to kind of go through that.

Have you heard of the inverted U hypothesis for sports performance and the rouseball? And I know some people say sport performance psychology is bullshit that goes whatever so There is like an in so if you imagine you turned upside down There's a certain level of rouse or the not sexual arouse but a rouse who you need to be optimal performance Everyone sits slightly differently on this in but it's more like a hill for anyone that's trying to think of inverted you If you're under a rouse, let's say I'm like, hey mate, you're gonna be doing a crossbar challenge in a field in the middle of nowhere,

in Donkastor on a rainy day, you probably just can't bothered. But then if I get 100,000 people in the stadium, you're probably not gonna be even, you're gonna be so worried about kicking the ball right. However, if you were at your mate Sunday, League match in the 30 people watching, that could be the right amount of a rouseball. And over time, you can increase that amount of a rouse

to the point whatever that you do it right. So some people, if we went to an event that was only 14 people in the crowd, you'd probably stumble more than if there was 800 because you're not under arous. There's not a big enough crowd. But there's no way to train yourself because when arousers too high, you become stressed. I mean, you become stressed, you can't think, you can't be clear, whatever. But only by getting in the hot water of doing events, can you reduce to a rouse of response to the situation? It's like, what were you calling it when we're on the road, like a resilience training? Resilience. Everything's resilience training.

But there's no way you can replicate the stage without the stage. There's no way you can replicate a podcast without the podcast, there's no way you can replicate to organ to camera without looking at the camera. For so many people, they need to realize that the only way they're gonna become more comfortable in situations being in that situation. Do the thing. Yeah, same as, you know, ice baths, whatever it is.

Like, everyone is so caught up about how they'll be, how they'll perform doing that thing that they don't get into it and get better at that. And there is nothing better for stage time than stage time. There's nothing better for chin ups than chin ups. There's nothing better to prepare for an ice bar than doing a nice bath. What's the future of the fitness industry got in store in your opinion? Because you've been in it for like, too long. Publicly, yeah, way too long. But you're like an old hand at this stuff now. And I think what's

been interesting since getting to spend time with you and spend time with the Luke as well is to kind of hear the origin story of where you came from, which was this no nonsense online PT being a little bit like cussin and swear in and calling people out and making enemies kind of being being a mercenary hitman for ideas in fitness that everyone maybe thought was a bit bullshit and then saying what everyone quietly was saying internally with a few more swear words in there. But it seems like that degree of scrutiny is now quite widespread. There's lots of people following in your wake having done that. Where are we at now? Have you got kind of a conception of where the world of fitness is at the moment?

It's a bit of a mess. Social media has changed what fitness is. Actually, Zach, your house made me a good point on this last night where fitness is more about a popularity contest. It's more about parade in your ass and apparently leggings, trying someone to work out, it's more about gaming the algorithm than it is about giving advice. You think 90% of fitness content isn't even someone talking to you, where the 100% of personal training industry is someone coaching, coaching someone is spending time with them and addressing them with their problems. That's not what fitness is now. You know, oh, walk on a treadmill, this height for this long and you're burned belly fat. You know, like, there's more bullshit than ever because that person just wanted their real to go viral. People just want status, they don't want to help people.

So much of like the persona of my brand has come from real conversations I had. I trained this lady once, she was a dog walker. And I've been about out there in content, I've been trying some things and she sat down and she goes, you swear a lot, we're going to get on. And I was like, she was like, I didn't say, I think you're a coach, doesn't say you're a good advice, you go, you swear a lot, I think we're going to get on. So I said to her, give me a fucking honest food log, or I'll never work with you. And she gave me the most honest food log I've ever seen. And I was like, wow, that's a lot of food. She goes, she looks at me, she goes, that's why I'm fat James. The way we got

on was amazing. And I was like, the only way I can replicate that is to be the guy she wanted to sit opposite from. And even in the gym, there's a Pt equal Chris. People go, I was he like, okay, he's a bell and and people like, that's not a nice way to talk about a train. I was like, don't care, he's a bell and and they're I was like, his clients love him. My clients are like me.

I don't need his clients to like me, because they're with him. So like all of these like approaches that I've had on social media, are the exact same ones that I've had on the gym floor. And yeah, the industry now, there's a lot of people trying to copy each other. Mate, there's a community now, probably some of the top 10 creators

in the fitness industry. The second one of them does something good. So if I get one viral video, say about coxier and whatever is in it, the next three days, they will do it. So now as banter, I'm doing what they do. So there's like this little thing in the industry and then mate, it's getting a little bit frustrated at times because everyone's just copying each other. It's like an insesctuous pit of lack of ideas

due to saturation. So that does make it some days you wake up. But the crazy thing is like, you just have to go back to helping people with their problems. So like instead of trying to make viral videos or just think what someone's struggling with today. But people aren't necessarily getting in better shape. And the worrying thing we actually said this last night, a lot of people people can't afford peating a lot of people can barely afford their mortgage.

So they don't want fitness advice. They don't want to talk about the gym membership. They just have to cancel so they can keep their heating on this winter. You know, the holiday they can't go on. They used to get in shape for so suddenly this state of a lot of people's lives have got worse to point, they're now becoming disenfranchised with fitness. Fritonus is becoming a privilege to a lot of people. Oh, yeah. So K for you, you can afford to go on holiday. I can't afford to mortgage. It's okay for you, you can afford to go to the gym. It's okay for you. You can afford to do a 12 week challenge.

And so I think where is coming out of the pandemic, so many people were at low interest rates. Money was cheap. All of these things. I feel like we're in this real rut now where a lot of people don't care and similar to the inner Citadel. If I can't afford online personal training, personal training is a bad one because therefore there is no need for them. You should do it yourself or so yes, there's a lot of negativity online at the moment. I just try and empathize with it where I say, okay, for someone to be feeling this way, they must be having a pretty, I must be having a pretty tough time at the moment. Yeah, that's a really nice reframe. That's a beautiful reframe around things.

I remember Aaron, one of my friends that I played pickleball with, he's Aaron Rodgers, chief of like creative, chief of performance now, which given that he snapped in a kill, he's probably not that fun. We were playing Pickleball at the court's next to mine, and we had a speaker on just listening to some of his weird, tribal fucking dubstep stuff. There's a lady over the far side with a dog who starts shouting about the fact that this is a park. This is a park and it's supposed to be quiet.

The fact that she's shouting, obviously, kind of made a little bit funny. And I would have gone over, me, people, please, I would have gone over and just turned the music down. I'm on over and turned the music up and started shouting that he couldn't hear her. But my, where I went after that, given the fact that he'd done something that

ostensibly was more rude, right, to this lady that was shouting from a hundred yards away, but the fact that he'd done something that ostensibly was more rude to this lady that was shouting from 100 yards away, but the fact that it should have been peaceful, when we finished up, I was more vicious about it. I was like, that fucking bitch, what does she think she's doing? Like one idiot blah, blah, blah. His first place to go to was,

imagine how bad her life must be, that she feels the need to kick off about two people playing a sport and listening to music at quite a quiet volume that you can barely hear from 50 yards away or 100 yards away. And that's something getting over like bitterness or resentment or like being cutting on mean in response to things is a, that's pretty noble like approach. Hey, I was flying back from Dubai in maybe, maybe 2016 and the lady next to me was a big lady, but it was okay. She had her seat, I had my seat, but she couldn't get a tray down for a food. So she had to ask if it was okay to use my tray to eat her food. And I said, yeah, that's completely fine. Whatever she did it. And as I was going to toilet, the air who said to me, like, I'm sorry about that. And I remember saying to

her, I was like, if you think that was uncomfortable for me, imagine how comfortable that was for her. And she was like, oh, she, she hadn't really clocked it for a second. And I was like, there's one thing I've really been trying for a long time. And I actually, even if someone's super negative on a comment now, sometimes I go, Hey, bro, you must be in, you must be having a tough day. I hope you, hope you say to someone in the comments, I hope your situation improves. Zack replies to those ones with get well soon. Or do you know, you know, some people like this, so there are people, oh, it's really nice James. And there's the other side of me that if you abuse people in the comments, they

can report it or get it deleted or whatever, but I've come to find that, you know, you can just say to someone like, yeah, I hope you get well soon. There's no way they can report that. That's not abusive, nothing like that. Ah, I hope your childhood trauma resolves itself soon. I hope you regain your relationship with your friends.

It's true, though, man. It's true, the people that are so motivated to say super mean things on the internet. It's an indicator that there's a lot of things that aren't going right in their life outside of that. If someone's life is obsessed with politics or obsessed with drama or obsessed with culture wars or obsessed with whatever, you are compensating for not having any control

somewhere else in your life. And the first sense that you should feel after you get rid of the indignation and the sort of mocking sense of superiority should be empathy. It's like, oh my god, imagine how bad your life must be if you're focused on this. You know, in like 2014, I emote Joe Wicks and I said to him, like, I was gunning him a lot online, but again, his fans loved him. And at the time, I said to him, I said to him, an email and I said, you never get put down by people above you in life. I just rest him short of that. I said to him, hey mate, I've got 13,000 followers. You know, I need this. You know, like, it's like, you know,

when rappers go ahead to head, you know, the new beef. So I just let him know early on. I'm pretty sure he responded as well. I was like, look at me. And I don't think he cares. He's in his millions of pounds house. He's got all of this stuff. And like the same goes that, yeah, you never get criticism from people above you. And I think that speaks volumes. I've messaged just to so many creators who are getting getting shit or they're trying to explain themselves online or they're trying to get cancelled. You never get shit on from above. Bit like the leiraky. So like, I think that's just a good realization for a lot of people that when they get criticism

or like when people are really going in on them, it's very rarely from people above them. You made a series of enemies during your ascendancy, your wicks, keto, veganism, you had a crack at bodybuilding for a while. But you know why? Because bodybuilders don't use my services So but no bodybuilder no competitive bodybuilder needs to use the PT. Yeah, no competitive bodybuilder is gonna buy my book

No competitive bodybuilder is gonna respect me as a coach because they're probably in better shape than me They're probably almost test them. So if you're ever gonna go after someone go after someone who is never ever gonna benefit your life Would you advise it as a growth strategy now? Yeah, it's good because I'm not alienating them for who they are. I'm alienating their values that don't correlate with the values of the people that I'm trying to help. Because the biggest mistake people make in fitness advice is realizing that they are not their client.

So I said, there's so many PTs, you're not your client. You know, your client doesn't want each other, can you broccoli? Your client doesn't want a six pack. They've told you they want a six pack, so they're telling you what they think they want you to hear. My clients will come to me, go, I want a six pack, I'm not know you don't. Tell me what you want.

Okay, cool. So you want to fit in the dress that you fit in three years ago. That's very different to a six pack, especially for a woman. You know, then guys are like, I want big packs. And I'm like, send me a picture of yourself, topless. And I'm like, whoa, let's lose, let's lose 30 pounds. Let's get you running a 5K without killing yourself. Then let's talk about pecs.

You know, like so many people communicate in the wrong way. So bodybuilders are like, okay, fasted cardio. Half an hour in the morning. I'm like, bro, that's great for bodybuilders who are already on the lowest amount of calories. They're already on the most amount of whatever it is. Even little things like the mentality of a bodybuilder is so different to the mentality of a normal person. So if I can pick holes at that, as far as a growth

strategy, people with them feel seen. So you know, even in like the smartest marketing where you can drill in someone's problems, you say to them, hey, do you want to learn how to lose fat with that doing 30 minutes of fasted cardio in the morning or whatever it is, you can communicate with the people you want whilst expressing a message to the the Shagrin, you said this word the other day of bodybuilders. Do I use that right? Shagrin. Shagrin. Much to the Shagrin, yes, yeah. Shagrin. Yeah, so they go. Shagrin. So, yeah, it is a great strategy because you need to alienate the things that people have wrong. And some people do want to look like bodybuilders, but the majority of my clients don't. And I don't

offer extreme deficits, I don't offer a fast-food cardio, I don't offer getting people ready for show. And the main reason is the values thing because in every sport, on the day you compete, you should be physiologically and psychologically your best. However, when it's down to bodybuilding and physique, the day you compete, you be physiologically and psychologically your best. However, when it's down to bodybuilding and physique, the day you compete, you're physiologically and psychologically your worst. That's a mass. I'm like, why are we epitomizing that as fitness when it's clearly not fitness? What do you think is the future of the fitness industry? What would you predict for the next five years or so,

any trends that you can see growing or falling away? I've got time to have a wee. Well, we're going to finish in five minutes. Okay. We've got enough, have you got five minutes in you? Yes. You sure? You've been holding it, I'm sorry, I know it hurts. Future of the fitness industry. I think that the bodybuilding stuff is starting to dissipate a little bit, but we still have this massive wave of dishonesty. And it is led, unfortunately, by a lot of brand deals.

Now you have brand deals with companies that you actually value. I know for a while, like I see you having your AG1 every day, you have your LMNT, like you're not, people are, oh, Chris likes AG1, I personally don't, but like I actually see it's something that you cherish and you use and you're very transparent with people with your blood work, I feel all of this stuff.

But if you're in the fitness industry, not the podcast industry, suddenly the ethical standpoint of let's say testosterone, if you can go on test and not tell people that benefits your brand, it benefits your programs, it benefits everything in that little ecosystem of monetary value. And so I would love for that dishonesty to dissipate.

I feel like it slightly kind of is, but then it also slightly kind of isn't. But I think that people are cloning up to the BS a bit more now. Evidence-based stuff seems to be coming more to the forefront. Like your Mike Israel's of the world seem to be you know a pretty big ascendancy right now But then there's a lot of ideological people where we've got people in

People really if you go to a supermarket and pick something up off a shelf. That's your hook And it's a very effective hook because people are always going on here You know what's going on? It was just going to super so now any person in a supermarket Chattam waffle picking saying off a shelf. going, this is shit. Suddenly people are like, oh, why? Why is it? You know, so we've got all of these people Chattam waffle in supermarkets, Kales bad for you, fast things, you know, they're going to stop you ever getting cancelled, like all of these things. And now people are just in this, there's a lot of ideological stuff. And you know, veganism had its, carnivore is actually still alive

because of Joe Rogan, and I said to you before, I wish it wasn't as good as it was when I was on it. I felt great for your explosive shit. But ideology is still pretty rife. And unfortunately, a lot of people in a bid to remain active on social media, to get views on social media. Because views and interactions on social media is how people are obtaining

the levels of self-proclaimed status. Status is what all of us are trying to get drunk off. You know the recognition of you having a stand up comic come to a live show and say, you were great on stage. It doesn't change your bank account, but it makes you feel fucking good because the levels of status you retain from getting better at that thing. So, so many people now get their first taste of status on TikTok, social media, whatever. And they're doing it through being extreme, that being ideological and by tapping into people's

pre-existing beliefs that often aren't true. We've spoke about this while we were away. I never thought of this before, but TikTok is one of the most egalitarian platforms. Follow account on TikTok means less than it does anywhere else. You put a great TikTok out and it just feeds the for you page and the algorithm sends it to the moon, which means I wonder whether more people will go viral over the next five years than ever have before through TikTok.

Do you have the opportunity of not being a big creator, but you can do the right thing at the right time, or even the wrong thing at the right time, and it just explodes. And I wonder how many people that's going to dangle the carrot of fame and status in front of, how many people are going to start chasing that thing. And I wonder what the second, third, fourth order

effect of that would be. Have you ever heard of Nicolardo Avocado? Of course I have. Gwinterbogel's audience capture article about him is the best thing I've ever read. Exactly. That's almost where I see it. Like, not to have a go at the guy, but it was Mark Bang, right?

People like to watch other people eat on life. And then I haven't seen a blood work, and I could be incredibly fat phobic here. But he's gone from relatively healthy to see. He's just skinny vegan violin player to someone that wears a CPAP. CPAP, yeah. He's gone into the front man of this, you know,

probably endorsing CPAP. So like watching someone literally send their health off the rails in a bid for views, he is like the canary in the mind of where I think social media is gonna go. Like whenever there's a fight, phones come out before people break it up, you know. You even see when something really bad happens,

people's reaction is, if I film this, it will go on TikTok. So that's the despair loop I see that goes with it where people actually are more inclined to try and go viral from a situation than help. Let's say someone has a heart attack in the street. What's going to happen first? Filming or helping? So I worry about that because if people just get thrills from engagement, that can create quite a negative thing because negative news is typically what trends a lot faster than positive things. Although I do love a good story where someone adopts a dog from Turkey and brings it. Soldiers coming home from water dogs, man. That's my fucking vibe. Like James Smith, ladies and gentlemen, James, it's been awesome, man.

The last four weeks, I really appreciate your guidance and your encouragement since I've been going out on stage. Why should people go at what they expect of you, 2024? What's coming up? I wish I could answer that more, honestly, myself. Just gonna be trying to improve everything. You know, everything I do is trying to get a bit better.

Whitebelt mentality, you're always a whitebelt and everything you do. So, yeah, whether that's books, events, whatever, the drink, which we didn't even mention. Didn't even mention it. Which I think is quite cool at the same time. Well, it's just part of our lives now, right? Like, we don't really think about it that much. Also, don't have any stock. So, I'd be a part, maybe one of the contributing factors. Where do you want people to go? YouTube, James Smith. Just type in James Smith, wherever you like, to absorb content. And just before we finish, like this podcast,

I first came on it about four years ago. You were doing it for me bedroom. You had some cool funky lighting to see how far this podcast has grown in the last few years. It's incredible. I wonder where it will be the next time we sit down and talk on it.

Exciting times, James. I appreciate you. Thanks, man. Thank you. Thanks for your time. Thank you.