The Truth About Success - James Smith

James Smith welcome to the show 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 fatter and I need a haircut it's been a it's been a journey man it's been good but you know like uh I was I was maybe expecting that much time together with anyone there would have been maybe some physical appications maybe some strong arguments but actually we got them very well you're do you know you're very meticulous to detail in projects that we work on but as far as a a traveling and working a company you are fantastic sufficient chill yeah just like uh you I could tell when you're tired because the airpods go in the ey mask comes on you have your own way of gesticulating a 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 it's all of the things that I sometimes switch off about when I listen to other podcasts Whitney Cummings taught me this thing she was satting 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 and 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 uh you know research you would have done on a 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 unpredictableness you know you're meeting new crowds new hecklers new events new flight schedules new air ports you know like even every day you've just got the anxiety of your luggage not coming through from the carousel so not for me baby hand lug Mr Hand luggage only hand luggage only hold luggage is a SC up meant to keep you poor and late um talk to me obviously we've done this one but you've done five 10 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 uh 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 little glimmer in their eye where they actually realize you're real and sometimes they'll say it they're like oh you actually exist because whereas you know characters in movies or you know actresses in certain TV shows the real person or person 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 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 in 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 sardonic it's quite cynical it's quite cutting it's kind of a bit standoffish and tries to be aloof and cool you know that's what comment sections are it's always is like a this like I don't care about you I don't care about what other people think about me and in person see people seem to be a lot more prepared to be vulnerable you know we had we had one bad comment the whole tour one bad comment uh where pretty much she wasn't taking the piss out of you she's taking the piss out of me and um so like the person that wrote the comment thought that they were going to get like a a real big breakdown of how I wrote the books you know the process of writing and all of these things the fact that we called the tour the c-word 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% being generous whereas you look at any Instagram real that you put from your best performing podcast might be 40% negative so when you look at that 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 a red hot onance 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 they go straight to there's no one out there that doesn't take it to heart unless you're a psychopath sociopath 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 t whether comedians whether music artists whatever really cherish well I think that's one of the reasons why they maybe seem more resilient to criticism that they get online than it appears you know some comedians in the middle of some fural or they've said something that's cringe or uncool or everyone in the comment section doesn't like them you go yeah like 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 cycal 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 where the 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 Al like 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 a something I've done before where say when you get 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're like oh you know I'm trying to I'm trying to build a great good idea of you know 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 life let's look at something like uh Ryan holiday obstacle is the way which is anytime any of my friends experiencing like Carnage depression loss of a loved one whether through death or breakup 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 onear reviews and people are like yeah you know book got boring doesn't go anywhere um author's 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 bitish the comments are because when it's your work you take it to hot but when it's someone else's work you go they're obviously full of [ __ ] yeah so interesting to observe that well look I got you uh I got you a gift uh to celebrate the end of your first ever America 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 you a gift you don't I do yeah why um at the end j can you could help us with it please we will need to open the door that's fine it's all right I didn't realize that we were this hasn't been planned I've had this planned for ages but I didn't know that you were going to re put me in a vicious regifting cycle can we um 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 uh episodes in which we' be doing I thought it'd be good to get you a new tonic yet you got me a Yeti cooler a Wheelin Yeti cooler and then uh inside at end you minder we'll soundproof the door more time okay you might need to spin it round and do it so that the camera can see there etan and then um put your camera down if you can open it as well inside I've got you a tour kit a tour kit so can you show us item number one PM we've got a three pack of lemon boxes which are uh size large okay now I know that you might be from a sponsorship standpoint uh in in very Rough Waters you got two water bottles in here I know you've got your own one that you carry yourself okay yeah yeah yeah um 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 transporting newtonic on site now I don't envis wheel in with one of these is that what say I don't envis 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 [ __ ] man thank you I appreciate it I appreciate the Jersey yeah we'll pop that back in there thank you much [ __ ] hell well I'm glad that I've got these pants finally that's I've been I've been biging them up and we won't go into too much detail because very intimate details around the pants yeah just um you know there's there's not much a man cherish is more than the state of his go gu whilst traveling that is true that is true I've been fighting I've been fighting with gu sweat for the entirety I heard you say on a podcast ages ago and I never brought it up to you all wins 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 uh you know you get an Uber sear charge when Ubers are really busy it's like 1.5 times so we seem to think that we get ascending Uber Sur charges on happiness the further we progress so let's say you uh have your first pay slip that's $1,000 it's $110,000 it's $100,000 then it's a million dollars we seem to think that the levels of happiness that we would acre from those interactions would be ascending in line with the relative increases in money so the Thousand would be the 10,000 would be 10 times greater than the Thousand would be 10 times greater at the 100,000 however it's not that way and even if let's say you're a jiujitsu competitor at white belt Purple belt black belt winning a match feels like winning a match the levels change the importance of it change so you got Gordon Ryan best in the world lives here in Austin when he wins let's say the most prestigious ADCC final those emotive you know responses from the brain and that chemistry is the exact same to someone listening to this podcast that starts Jiu-Jitsu next week and in three months time competes for the first time at white belt 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 starting a business that you love and breaking even in your first year could feel the same as far as a win as far as someone going to you know sell their business for hundreds of millions like the wins feel the same and I don't feel like we're ever told that we 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'd 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 10K yeah there's a lot of uh problems around expectations and you know 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 your belief in yourself to be even better than 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 wins are the worst days of your life you know speaking to Morgan howel 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 this 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 manag to thread the needle of a once in a generation book in terms of sales are you really going to you really think that you're going to be able to do that again twice you can have amazing success but it's not going to be that one and in relation the second book felt like a failure despite the fact that by every uh my friend told me about the uh George Michael Wham documentary I think I told you this story so uh George Michael and the other dude in Wham the fact that it's just the other dude kind of shows the way that that relationship was done and this the guy that was second had a very different sort of um 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 the backup to what was going on so they release in the space of one year they release uh Club P 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 release um last Christmas over the Christmas period George Michael is featured on do they know it's Christmas that huge medal 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 debuts 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 wam like how insane are those expectations it is do you know what that if I look back at the times I've been like the most disappointed or like even upset it is based 100% down to my expectations not the reality of the 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 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 uh some of your clients come to you and say I lose 10 kilos and you're like [ __ ] 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 uh there's a 6' five lad outside this room laying on a sofa 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 674 I'd be like [ __ ] beat me to it like and people would part of it died when we got to a million because then you don't see it you don't see it yeah so uh like I I I miss those little wins and everyone 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 um 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 and sand and a you know metric ton of like [ __ ] fire extinguisher on it I don't think that those people that are driven would have it slown down by taking a second to congratulate themselves and give them a pant 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 them more Mis capped working on other people's dreams not their own and we've both said it where like people like oh I kind of want to do my own 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 at 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 your parents 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 privilege thing to say but I think there's some 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 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 [ __ ] A4 piece of paper you know yeah and then when I I went traveling a few times I was younger and I remember someone saying oh it doesn't make your CV 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 I want to be back working I was just straight with them but imagine saying to someone like oh I wanted to give everything I could to something it didn't work out you know that's actually more of a reason to be impressed with someone than someone that left a job every two years perfectly looking for the next progression yeah I think there's so much risk in playing it safe what did you say the you've we've listened to each other's q&as tell people about the average American average American is obese Divorced with less than 1K 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 it that's literally encapsulated because so many people are 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 going to be some uh you know absolute experts in human evolution they're going like enters the chat but ultimately any single human through hundreds of thousands of years oh yeah we'll get across that River out the Jee pool oh it's not that cold out out the Jee 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 ask the girlf for a number and she says no yeah 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 tasks and it's keeping people from doing the one in the past only the paranoids survived but in the present only the optimists 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 POS so why not pick one that's enjoyable just pick one that makes the world seem a little bit Rosier and assume that the glasses are full and this is so wild for me to say because six seven years ago I was Mr like still am very conservative very risk averse 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 uh 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 adverse but in terms of the way that I see the world pretty optimistic and pretty hopeful uh but you've got another thing that says becoming feels better than being car DX is it yeah well just in case you repurposed it but it's true right uh what is it that Drake says uh people don't want you when you have things only when you're going there like if if we were to paint like a I think it's dangerous to to paint a finished product which makes becoming something very difficult the 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 grand grandparent one day becoming a business owner one one day becoming whatever it is the the Journey of becoming something I think is so much sweeter I even think in 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 had before within three months it would it's just the belt you know like it's 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 what was it hosi said he said during my 20s I wanted to be a millionaire now 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 would just want to be the version of themselves that was working the way towards it rookie jaas as well he said about the amount of times he presented the office to TV production companies they declined it they didn't want it tons of times he struggled he uh you know 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 wouldn't I wouldn't take it I 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 bias of 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 this really funny uh uh boyscast 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 uh teachers and then you hear these rappers talking about like Mr Henderson in year n 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 [ __ ] 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 Jas wouldn't have achieved the success had he have not stuck about so maybe it's a taale like U far right tail outcome but if you get rid of that you lose all of the taale right if you start to bring that in and if people don't have that hope every single morning for over 3 years now I've started my day the exact same way which is with element in water element contains a science-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 optimizes brain health and it helps curb Cravings they're also the exclusive hydration partner to Team USA weightlifting and relied on by tons of Olympic athletes and and everyday High performers all around the world also there is a nobs no questions asked refund policy where you can buy a box completely risk-free and if you do not like it for any reason they will give you a refund during an unlimited duration and you don't even need to return the box that's how confident they are that you love it element are giving away a free sample pack of all eight flavors with your first box if you go to the link in the description box below or drink LM nt.com MW that's drink LM nt.com 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 would do previously this is one of the things like I I really I really wanted to bring this up and I really thought it was important for me need to talk about this about how how much like uncertainty and luck and Randomness and like uh self-doubt both of us had during everything including stepping out on stage like pretty much every single night that in elon's book at the moment he kind of goes through a Walter Isaacs and 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 retainable not less attainable because if it was no hard work you go well where did it come from just came from luck oh well how the [ __ ] am I supposed to manifest that whereas if you say oh all I did was just the same thing 750 times over and over again it's like 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 [ __ ] 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 I'm going to answer this in two ways the first part about the survivorship bias 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 Nuno 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 than what you've done and I could go this guy surviv [ __ ] bias you know a lot of people aren't there failed to podcast you know so there's there's that which I I don't like you're completely right but at the same time I don't like it when people use a biy to try and uh you know explain why they're what they're doing is not working and the second point is we had two Lads at our 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 cool I was like yeah but stop that to make 100 videos and he asked me something else I was like like me you are not going to learn what you suck at until you do 100 videos and I said out one out of 100 of those one of them is going to do better than the others and I said you can now look at that one and go why on Earth did that one do well and then when you've done 100 you should probably do 100 more videos and I could slowly see it like settling in with them and ultimately people aren't going to 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 a 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 going to 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 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 going to 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 Rogan 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 has also been people at our talks that compare their podcast to yours and you're like that's that's not going to set you up well 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 and what is it Malcolm Gladwell in outliers speaks about how lucky Bill Gates was to be born it could be outli could be something 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 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 probably confident enough to speak on camera videos were just becoming popular on social media platforms uh 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 I think that's one of those ones that's kind of been repurposed by every every person now it's just got J shett written on the bottom dude yeah maybe there was a uh there's this idea called churchillian Drift which I think I've talked 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 like yeah it's literally it's a name called churchillian drips 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 let's throw toward Churchill but no I I don't disagree about the 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 uh 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 5 years ago it might have seemed like oh yeah everybody's got a podcast you 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 Grant I remember dude I I found out about this is like my [ __ ] hundred million exit not manifest I found out about Bitcoin in 200 10 no 2012 I found out about Bitcoin in 2012 right price would have probably been less than 100 bucks I found out about ethereum in 2016 price was I remember it wavered between 1990 and 120 and I was like yeah but everybody knows about this everyone knows about dark Webb 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 20120 happened you go oh right no now it's kind of starting to hit mainstream and there's still tons and tons of people but yeah 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 like uh I've never been interested in like bit 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 always going to know more or have better insights to whatever but when it comes to creating something yourself whether 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 you know when you really want to go after something you can pause the Netflix episode that you weren't really watching anyway because you're on your phone and you can make [ __ ] happen you can get your phone out you can message people DM people get back to people do a story Q&A whatever you can improve you can manipulate your own stock through effort whereas with Investments you can't manipulate Your Own St the mercy of the market and another point about podcasts and about social media and about video creating content there be some some people listening like oh but I'm not a video creator but you know even now I see real estate agents I see people that sell insurance making like Tik toks or whatever we had one guy come to our Chicago event who was like M I make Tik toks with the properties that I go in I I'm one of the people that watches it when someone drops the hook of this is what $1.2 million buys you in Calgary I 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 do you PT people online it was like saying I'm an onlineer that's exactly the look they gave me at first but another thing that like is really crazy people go ah should I become a PT 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 a podcast where although 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 but a little bit more but H MOSI says um uh 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 it might not be him this might be this might be horos and drift I think it was Alex hosi who once said 20 minutes of preparation um but it's true if you sit down before you about to have a meeting with someone or a sales call or a job interview or whatever and he's like all right so where are they from or whatever whatever and you're like oh you're from hartfordshire I used to play rugby in hartfordshire do you know the d d and you're like oh my God this person knows it it's exactly the same as what before we go into Canada we're texting our Canadian friends going you know what what have we got oh uh Edmonton is home to the world's second largest mall after Dubai right have I got any mall jokes that I can come out like have I got any Justin Trudeau jokes or we go into Chicago and I start talking about the architecture it's exactly the same it seems like oh my God how deep does his knowledge run his knowledge must be so deep because he was just able to pluck this it'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 put so much effort into one side of things but not the other but even just people rest in inure light you 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 trajection on where it's going I wrote a newsletter this week about one of the questions that we got asked quite a lot lots of people at the 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 how do I choose that was one of the most common questions and this is from Naval 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 this 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 CH with your time there are 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 civas 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 MK that said if it's not a [ __ ] yes it's or no which could have been a slight alteration C cers 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 a real way to negate your ability to make a decision when you go to shop for After Shave there is too much going on there is there is if you're in Dubai yeah and like people come in Left Right Center like hello Ser I'm whoa whoa whoa and there are quite literally mate if you walked in and then there was someone that just looked at you up and down and then was like okay h I recommend these three and you know you've only got three in front of you it's either 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 Schwarz is the Paradox of choice that idea about jeans have you seen this super famous Ted Talk I'll send it to you once we're done so uh I think Barry Schwarz the Paradox of choice was maybe 15 years ago I remember where it 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 is sizes 30 waist 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 a store and do you want boot cut or straight do you want skinny do you want ripped do you want bleached do you want them to be uh cropped do you want them to be full length do you want I don't even know what half this means precise L right and since topman's closed none of us ever will again uh 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 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 yeah back to the second point of what you said about having children having children is this really interesting thing right and I think it's almost a plague you got people that we've spoken about ambition ambition incredible thing to be riddled with in life you know a satisfaction with the norm a dissatisfaction of average all of these things and that has a a positive correlation on absolutely every area of your life apart from the decision making process to have 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 you know like the Goggins episode for instance y nearly could not have happened but you persisted you fought for it you got in there it happened it slapped it did amazing it's pretty 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 would have had the persistence and the tenacity and the audaciousness to say 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 MH 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 so yeah I think uh 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 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 [ __ ] like everything's so great all of my friend friend are healthy my family's healthy I'm healthy everything's going fine I haven't been cancelled I haven't stepped foot on some sacred cow or land mine 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 [ __ ] q1 for next year is just so insane like dream guests that I've wanted for decades are the coolest guys on the planet messaging me on Whatsapp like yo 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 uh being famous uh gaining Fame is amazing being famous is a mixed bag and losing famous torture it's uh 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 and I was like that's not the cool one I was like that's not the cool one I was like take that back shut your mouth and um I'm with it we like tried to get to the bottom of it and uh the way I make tasks important enough to do with them and spend time with them is to catastrophize a terrible outcome so this is she was like this is fear based motivation yeah she was like this isn't a great mechanism to be using but in essence I I kind of there'll be times I'm I'm a bit tired want to have a nap and I'm like oh you know you could fall off and no one ever wants to watch your content anymore and 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 be like oh my uh 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 um 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 I've got friends that have kind of been what you know you 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 declinism probably black pill it's it's a kind of black pism I guess so I 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 I have great life and I went who stopped enjoying their life so you could have yours oh yeah my parents did how old was they oh they're about 36 oh so you know maybe you could do what your parents did and pay it forward but there's declinism is the idea that the world's becoming a worst place and with social media I think that's ever growing to make people feel like it is because think about it right we had [ __ ] pandemic then we had Ukraine Russia now we got Palestine Israel like some people on social media are like I'm I'm too crippled by the state of the world to James Smith live tour yeah so like but then women are better educated than ever uh less women die during child birth 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 you know even the amount of available tap water to certain nations in the world the the number of climate related deaths has decreased by 98% over the last 100 years it's a 50 time 50x decrease so we could build a pretty strong argument to these black pill Bankers that you know the the state of the world is getting better and I I really it's crazy that you know if you were to say 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 is considered go you know you're saving the planet hero I hate the fact that there's virtue in the black po mentality well there's when it comes to not having kids when it comes to uh trying to discourage people from having children around climate change I think a massive amount of that is people's selfishness or fear around lifechanging uh around what becoming a parent will be like just purposed into what seems like an altruistic philosophy it's their personal motivations being put outward it's called The inoc Citadel by Ain which is that you basically repurpose something which is an inward fear into an outward uh like social justice campaign and you it's not wrong like women get complications during child birth and you 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 [ __ ] horeshit given the like decline in birth rats at the moment isn't it crazy that even the decline in birth rate which is an it's it's not a subjective opinion if you look at the objective statistics of repop populace 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 2-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 uh weeping was dabbing his tears away as he begged North Korean women to have more children this happened a couple of weeks ago so yeah I bro there was this I SP spoke about this with Danny from the boyscast this Canadian guy had got a vasectomy so that he wouldn't have kids froze his sperm though which kind of feels a little bit like a [ __ ] pull rip cord in case of children um fro got a as sectomy so that he would not negatively impact the climate then spent the next 5 years flying around Asia with his partner so he said it could be argued that the uh 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 uh 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 1960 sat there with a book and a glass of wine what else are you going to do darling should we have some children yeah Fu all going on yeah exactly it's it's interesting like uh 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 oh something misogynist is about to come misogyny is about to appear but I believe and again I could be wrong with this uh 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 instincts they start to even look at children and be like oh broodiness M 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 it 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 though 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 leveled like a thousand and me and my mates just start noshing him off like mate I bet you're a [ __ ] Savage you know this guy must be sick you know let's have a look at his KD rati here right let's have a look at him this guy is probably like a 15y old right he he has got a level of status from playing video games that strangers are giving him credit then he was an animal he got 20 kills in a game war zone 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 could in his life at 15 and the way we're creating a world that can help people especially men medicate their primitive needs without the need to leave their bedroom exist in 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 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 pcket 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 ever got a payout but they do this thing where they go are you better off in work it's a legit form you sit there they were like oh how many uh 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 earn more money on the state than you ever would getting a job W and you think to yourself that they're going to be people out there that maybe are medicating their needs through porn alcohol whatever and they quite literally have the opportunity they're go why why would I work 40 hours and be potentially someone of no significance in you know doing this job whereas I could have real significance being 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 r uh what's it called in the casinos Ching 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 have you heard my male sedation hypothesis no I'm I'm excited for it okay well it's basically what you've just described uh which is Mana being sedated out of their reproductive and stateus seeking Behavior by a combination of porn social media screens and video games 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 te High antisocial Behavior typically there is a question to be asked where's all of the incel killings like this isn't a request and putting a request in with the D DJ uh but there's a 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 I 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 bids to entertain them to keep them occupied amusing them into sedation yeah so when you look at things like you know you got the Premiership football you got sport you got politics you got social media you got all of these things it's almost like a a puppeteer pulling string to keep people in a state of sedation keep paying taxes yeah exactly don't look over there don't look over there keep 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 this even the statistics of how many and of course you know the lockdown was a little bit we tempered towards close this 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 slight precipice of revolt on all civilizations who especially being America you are especially when they're armed and one thing that you know 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 and every single civilization before us has 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 incel fertility rates rebirth rate and people are like no no no it's the climate that's going to get us the Sun is going to boil the Seas and you look around you're like which one's going to go first because if you stop having baby babies to stop the you know temperature going up a couple of degrees if you guys aren't going to chat to girls because you're wanking in World of Warcraft and you know if there's more immediate problems here yeah and well there's a great book it's on on that reading list that I released I think it's the third book down the precipice by Toby OD which is a primer on existential risk it's really great 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 uh anthropogenic risk actually which is kind of strange but then you've got uh nuclear weapons climate change uh natural pandemics engineered pandemics nanotechnology AI Etc 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 is 1 in 10 uh natural pandemics are 1 in3 engineered pandemics are 1 in six so you have these things that are orders of magnitude vvus is worrying me more yeah well actually the the super volcano 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 like that's the one that's the one that we want if we want to go out I want to go out in a supernova but um 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 deniers 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 around 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 uh relationships to failure and the reality of the situation not the reality of the information they fed to it like 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 [ __ ] H mate hurry up 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 to skew other people's reality the bigger check it must be more important uh Zach your housemate actually was showing me a weightlifter I think he cleaned and Jack 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 in your Social Circle who are pessimists or doubters or whatever that does influence your your reality to how you see the world I mean you've probably experienced this a lot since moving to auson right so Newcastle even if you were to go uh see your friends at the pub whatever they they're not on the same wavelength as to the level in place you're up 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 is been really cool uh to actually have ideas come to you while you're in front of 500 people it's also scary because you go wow I'm treading new ground now this might be total dog [ __ ] but it ended up being okay but it's hard to have that conversation without it's sounding like you're making a value judgment around certain people being better or or more worthy or something than other people and I don't think that that's what you're saying certainly not what I've been saying on 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 m/s and someone else is moving at 100 MERS per second there's only a small while before you're very far away from them and 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 uh show 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 um are we ruled by midwit this new uh blog post it's brilliant the people in charge are more stupid than you basically this is from uh mackelli in 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% time 50% 25% not exactly quantum physics shockingly only 40% of MPS got the answer right among lab RPS 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 at school you know I remember did you go to I had to go to a religious school did you have that uh I had to do religious education a little bit but my thing specialized in technology so man I I remember like taking the piss a little bit we'd be in re as we call it in England religious education and you'd be learning like you know feeding the 5,000 like fish the fish the bread the wine everything the fish that fish story what was it the feeding of the 5,000 it was the fish I believe there there's fish in there I I was always like o i just come from physics this is [ __ ] be quiet in the back but yeah like uh was joking about school it it is like that I think that uh a lot of the times especially working in the corporate world you know it was politics it was who was ass licking like so many people so imagine this when I worked in a sales department this is how mundane the corporate world is so did you ever work in an office like have to wear a suit and tie yes uh I didn't have to wear a suit and tie but I did outbound Tes sales for the AA in a call center for six months yeah so this is this is where the mundane comes in I worked for uh the inside sales department of a uh multiactor authentication security company and in essence I had to look at the inbound leads coming into the business and call them up to quantify them and this company messaged me and they go we taking you out for stake and beers and I was like Lads wrong person I'm like really Junior Ro they're like now come up Stak and 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 a go and I remember at work one day someone came the whole team come around me and give me iPad they're like James 300,000 use a deal that's incredible you know 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 backhanding deals to the same company that I shouldn't have then when I looked around everyone around me they were all they were all dodgy they were all sitting on their 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 up this is it literally like the people that were in the top rolls no offense the people there I was like this is merely just politics between you and it it is what do you call it idiots the whole way up yeah and that's not us being there oh 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 sort of pioneering or new novel industry podcast it'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 suck breaking the rules all the time unedited no uh title and thumbnail [ __ ] like outwardly boring titles and like relatively unexciting thumbnails absolutely destroying the platform kill Tony kill Tony where four people are just going to get blasted yeah keep a load of comedians in let find let's find the worst comedians that we can and bring them up like it's 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 man I have days where I do the stupidest stuff I I went to a gym the other day I me to get on a a leg extension it was a hamstring car I've been a PT 12 years right I get on that and I'm like that was embarrassing had to I had to do a set to play it off you know just play off do hamstring but like I think it's so good that there if people can show vulnerability on at every level like even even the people in the smartest positions make the dumbest mistakes I think that it's a it's a lot easier the higher you climb in life to seem almost un you know like perfect Untouchable Untouchable unfathomable like all of this stuff I'm really I think it's such a powerful point to say to people people like everyone has same insecurities 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 they have a dog that they need to walk or a wife that they have to go back to or whatever like what does Brad Pit 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 [ __ ] this up don't [ __ ] this up don't [ __ ] this up there's a whole Army of people that require you to not comment on the Ukraine so that everyone can keep getting paid whereas for someone like a 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's the 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 round about sort of 5 million where this really starts to kick in in terms of follow count 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 a 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 stuff to Big accounts they wouldn't dare say to small accounts because there is something maybe it's like uh he'll never look at this yeah he'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 that's just like a dynamic that I've observed where people are prepared to say really [ __ ] heinous things about people when they're a large account that they wouldn't be prepared to say them say about them when they're a small account was it Jordan Peterson that was saying like 4% of the population maybe are sociopaths that 1% of that are psychopaths so like when when you look at even someone that just has 300 followers right at least two or three of them are are probably not quite all there and then you think about uh malevolence uh autonomy fake account then you think about people that maybe get um I can't remember the com but it's like a little sadist people that like to see other people upset like all of these things so then when you when you break it down into the numbers even a very small account or small podcast with only maybe even a few thousand downloads or whatever you're still now trickling over the territory for coming across someone who is just an evil low of very large numbers thing when we were in New York on Saturday for Santa Con 8 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 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 at 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 a president where there's so many 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 psychopath and of those 1% let's say 1% of them are people that are motivated and 1% of them are motivated around she's got an army of people even after you filtered it down from 1% of 1% of 1% of 1% you're like that's still a like 2,000 people they can't go can't go within a mile of it exactly exactly Jo's wild as well right so let's say you've got one and a half million on YouTube You've Got 1.2 million on Insta um which is which is a lot but then in the population of the world it's not massive when you've got list in this worldwide I still can't fully get to grips with the facts that people will say stop you in New York hey mate love your stuff Chicago hey mate love your stuff uh even today in Austin uh Chris and I have this thing where when we're out and about not in a like a a narcissistic way it's just ban to like if you get stopped and recognized we're flipping immigration getting over the US border I'm like [ __ ] myself a bit because the US border is just the nerve-wracking Place One n and I'm like [ __ ] but the other person has to be present for it but earlier on I was in that um life Organics paying 25 [ __ ] two smoothies and this guy's like love your stuff and my first reaction was I wish Chris was here I was like for [ __ ] sake I 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 [ __ ] are we bumping into them every day yeah I suppose not everyone's hit subscribe um we're inhabiting places that have people like the people that follow our stuff which is like one of those but yeah the the on Street stuff's wild like Zach goes to um uh Rogue invitation which but you know why it goes to him because he gets recognized of course of course of course because he's he's in that Olympic lifting scene I don't think he likes CrossFit I think he just likes getting selfies CU he took me to one of them and he got stopped every cor I was like I'm right here guys yeah that was that was Rogue when when you went one of the things I've been interesting in uh 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 and a half thousand people three-time best-selling author all the rest of the things but still like I've spent four weeks with you unless you're an unbelievably good liar still like a very normal bloke what what do you 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 uh people that followed me for say five six years and they've said you've done everything you said you were going to do I for 5 years have said I want to get my residency I want to find a nice girl and settled down I want to get a dog and move by the beach and I literally just went D I did it all in one year cuz 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 um 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 recognition all of those things I don't know if I really think about it too much but whatever I every video I I do I want to be amazing and then when it doesn't I'm like okay cool let's 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 uh the foundations and I really set and St I can't even relocate anymore because I have a dog right people think getting a dog is a little thing hopefully kelpy lives 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 if that makes I mean I said this I think I answered a question on your behalf at one of the q&as uh where something that I've always been very admirable I've held in high admiration around you is your ability to turn things into a game like the follow account was just a game that 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 your selfworth 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 you 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 downloads shares whatever as a score of that game not the reality because there's no way in Howell you and I can sit here and think about a stadium of people sat there watching us do this conversation right say we get 100,000 views on this video imagine sitting 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 the reality of it and I think when it comes to financial when it comes to physical when it comes to uh 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 I can emotionally unattach from things yeah we don't want to do that too much right like you know we we did what was the most people we did I think we did like 800 people to a th000 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 every 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 [ __ ] 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 th000 people in Dubai all winds feel the same but all winds feel the same but you also want to be able to take in this experience I always used 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 fight 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 weighin or it might have even been before the ceremonial weighs it might have been 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 svant 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 um a lot of people have got a lot of bad things to say about Conor 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 Conor McGregor is but his belief in himself is incredible like and there's that point where he's like really early on and he's like uh you know I want my mom to have a mansion I want my kids and their kids to do well and he's calls he's like I'm like Vincent Van go you know I'm losing my mind and like it's actually quite inspiring to see someone with such an unfathomable belief in their outcome but going back to the point of like I for me when you do Hammer Smith Polo 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 Darren says this to me he goes he noticed this quite early on he goes you don't look at anyone he goes you 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 8 to 10 people a day 8 to 10 people a day 8 to 10 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 3 and a half thousand people having to buy the tickets wait for the date get in their cars travel parking parking some of them got hotels like this is the hardest thing for me right say someone pays for a hotel or flies somewhere we have people come from Alaska to our event if I take that into my mind and actually appreciate that someone drove 6 hours to come see see me it makes me very uncomfortable I don't even like presents at Christmas I don't like compliments I become very weird with any uh praise to the point I'm like oh thanks and they're like you didn't even you didn't even accept that as whatever so if I actually think oh my God someone's just come six I want to have a panic attack and tell them why did you do it um we we joked with this everyone met in the Q&A uh they would oh driven four hours for this I went I would drive four hours for this you know so uh for me I I I like it being Ness sometimes I like not taking 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 are you concerned about and you know not everyone is going to try and do a tour of speaking but many people are achieving goals and fearful of realizing the magnitude or the size of the challenge that's in front of them or dampening down their ambition by taking that gratitude did we not say at the beginning of this that you need to celebrate your wins as biggest hypocrite ever and come to think of it you know I've been thinking about this I think it's that I would rather they had 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 you didn't even appreciate that you just spoke to a thousand people I go yeah but they had a good time they had a good time yeah then people go just said H Smith I'm too preoccupied about someone else having a good evening then I wonder how much of that comes out of fear but again dude we've said this a lot uh on the massively to do with fear because imagine imagine the bitter disappointment that you would I went I walked out of a film the other day there 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 there's a part of you inside that you know if you let them down there's no coming back from that I don't think there's any coming back remember 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 if you think from ifs to the the last event wild like your mic didn't work the other night and you handled it so well I was behind stage I was I was nodding 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 uh you know the almost that slight bit of being vulnerable but then you were funny and then you were bannering with the guy the guy's [ __ ] 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 uh yeah I think I think that is important but that's I mean that's definitely something that I've considered and and a lot 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 work in progress shows in the 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 seem 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 soldout show in Vancouver for 5 minutes while some guy fiddled around in the back pocket of my pants for like forever and it's just just it's 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 you hypothesis for sports performance and arousal and I know some people say sport performance psychology is [ __ ] they go whatever so um there is like a an so if you imagine a you turned upside down there's a certain level arousal not sexual arousal but arousal you need to be at Optimal Performance everyone sits slightly differently on this in more like a hill for that's trying to think of inverted you if you're under aroused let's say I'm like hey mate you're going to be doing a Crossbar Challenge in a field in the middle of nowhere and Doncaster on a rainy day you probably can't bothered right but then if I get 100,000 people in the stadium you're probably not going to be even you're going to be so worried about kicking the ball right however if you were at your mate Sunday League match and there's 30 people watching that could be the right amount of arousal then over time you can increase that amount of arousal to the point whatever that you do it right so some people uh if we went to do an event there's only 14 people in the crowd you probably stumble more than if there was you know 800 because you're now under aroused there's not a big enough crowd but there's no way to train yourself because when a Rous is too high you become stressed and when 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 Rous or response to the situation it's like a what were you calling it when we're on the road like a resilience training everything's resilience training but there's no way you can replicate the stage without the stage there's no way can replicate a podcast without the podcast there's no way you can replicate talking to camera without looking at the camera for so many people they need to realize the only way they're going to 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 is nothing better to prepare you for an ice bath than doing an ice bath what's the future of the fitness industry got in store in your opinion because you've been in it for what like too long publicly 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 Luke as well is to kind of hear the origin story of where you came from which was this non nonsense online PT being a little bit like cussing and swearing and calling people out and making enemies uh kind of being being a mercenary Hitman for ideas in Fitness that everyone maybe thought was a bit [ __ ] 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 Wick 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 uh social media has changed what Fitness is and actually Zach your housemate made a good point on this last night where Fitness is more about a popularity contest it's more about parading your ass in a pair of leggings showing someone a workout 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 the 100% of personal training industry is someone coaching you 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 [ __ ] than ever cuz 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 train this lady once she was a dog walker and I've been a bit out there in content I've been trying some things and she sat down she goes you swear a lot we're going to get on and I was like she was like she's like didn't say I think you're a good coach doesn't say you got good advice she goes you swear I think we're going to get on so I said to her give me a [ __ ] 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 was a PT called Chris people go oh what's he like I go he's a bellend and people like that's not a nice way to talk about training I was like I don't care he's a bellend and then I was like clients love him my clients are hope 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 meder 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 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 kzer and whatever is in it the next three days they all do it so now as banter I'm doing what they do just to so there's like this little thing in the industry and then M it it's getting a little bit frustrating at times because everyone's just copying each other it's like an incestuous 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 I just think what someone struggling with today but um people aren't necessarily getting in better shape and the worrying thing we actually said this last night a lot of people can't afford ping 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 had 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 the state of a lot of people's lives have got worse to the point they're now becoming uh disenfranchised with Fitness fit Fitness is becoming you know a privilege to a lot of people oh yeah it's okay for you you can afford to go on holiday I can't afford the 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 12we challenge and so I think whereas coming out the pandemic so many people were low interest rates you know 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 trainers are bad they're wankers therefore there is no need for them you should do it yourself or so yeah 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 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 um Aaron one of my friends that I play pickle ball with he's uh Aaron Rogers chief of like creative chief of performance now which given that he's snapped in ailles is probably not that fun we were playing pickle ball at the courts next to mine and we had a speaker on just listening to some of his like weird tribal [ __ ] 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 it a little bit funny uh and I would have gone over me people pleaser would have gone over and just turned the music down Aron went over and turned the music up and started shouting that he couldn't hear her um but my where I went after that given the fact that he' done something that ostensibly was more rude right to this lady that was shouting from 100 yards away about the fact that you should have been peaceful uh when we finished up I was more vicious about her I was like like that [ __ ] [ __ ] like you know like what does she think she's doing like what an 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 that's something I don't know getting over like bitterness or resentment or like being cutting on mean in response to things is uh it's pretty noble like approach man 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 the toilet the aost 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 yeah yeah and she was like oh she she had really clocked it for a second and I was like that'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 hope you say to someone in the comments I hope your situation improves Zach uh rep appes to those ones with get well soon what you know get well soon you know some people like uh this is so there are people oh that's really nice James and then 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 you can just say to someone like um yeah hope 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 man it's true the people that 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 emailed Joe Wix 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 I sent him an email and I said you never get put down by people above you and life I just rest him me 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 like when rappers go head tohe be they need beef so I I just let him know early on I'm pretty sure responded as well I was like look mate and I don't think he cares he's in his millions of pounds house he's got his all of this stuff and like the same goes that yeah you you never get criticism from people above you and I think that speaks volumes I've messaged this to so many creators who are getting getting [ __ ] or they're trying to explain themselves online or they're trying to get counseled you never get [ __ ] on from above bit like the layer cake mhm So like um I think that's just a good realization for a lot of people that when they're getting 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 ascendency Jo Wix keto veganism body you had a crack at bodybuilding for a while well you know why because bodybuilders don't use my services so but no bodybuilder no competitive bodybuilder needs yeah no competitive bodybuilder is going to buy my book no competitive bodybuilders is going to respect me as a coach because they're probably in better shape than me they're probably almost test than me so if you're ever going to go after someone go after someone who is never ever going to benefit your life would you advise it as a growth strategy now yeah it's good because would you you 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 to eat chicken and broccoli your client doesn't want a sixpack they've told you they want a sixpack cuz they're telling you what they think they want you to hear my clients will come to me go I want a six I'm like no you don't tell me what you want okay cool so you want to fit in the dress that you fit in 3 years ago that's very different to a six-pack especially for a woman you know then guys are like I I want big pecs and I'm like send me a picture of yourself topless and I'm like whoa Let's Lose let's use 30 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 ways so bodybuilders 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 whatever even little things like the 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 then feel seen so you know even in like the smartest marketing where you can drill in someone's problems you say to someone hey do you want to learn how to lose fat without 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 way the other day of bodybuilders did I use that right Sharin shagin much to the shagin yes yeah shagin yeah so there you go shagin so uh yeah it's it is a growth 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 fasted 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'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 have I Got Time time we well we're going to finish in five minutes okay have we got enough have we got five minutes in you yeah yes are you sure you've been holding it I'm sorry I know it hurts um future of the fitness industry I think the the bodybuilding stuff is starting to desate 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 I know for well like I see you having your ag1 every day having your lmnt like you're not a the people are oh Chris likes ag1 I I personally don't but like I actually see it something that you you cherish and use and you're very transparent with people with your blood work he all 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 of monetary value so I would love for that dishonesty to desate I feel like it slightly kind of is but then it also slightly kind of isn't but I think that people are clowing up to the BS a bit more now evidence-based stuff seems to be coming more to the Forefront like your mic israels of the world seem to be in a a pretty big ascendency right now um but then there's a lot of ideological people where we've got people in people real if you go to a supermarket and pick something up off a shelf that's your hook and it's a very effective hook cuz people like oh what's going on here you know what's going on why is this going to Super so now any person in the supermarket chat and Waffle picking something off a shelf and going this is [ __ ] suddenly people are like oh why why is it you know so we've got all of these people chat and waffle in supermarkets Kale's bad for you fastings you know going to stop you ever getting Cancer all of these things and now people are just in this there's a lot of ideological stuff and you know veganism had its wave carnivore is is actually still alive because of Joe Rogan and I said you before for I wish it wasn't as good as it was when I was on it I felt great uh few explosive shits but you know uh ideology is still pretty Rife and uh 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 standup comic come to your live show and say you were great on stage doesn't change your bank account it makes you feel [ __ ] good because of the levels of status you've attained from getting better at that thing so so many people now getting their first taste of status on Tik Tok social media whatever and they're doing it through being extreme being ideological and by tapping into people's pre-existing beliefs that often aren't true we spoke about this while we were away I never thought of this before but Tik Tok is one of the most egalitarian platforms follow account on Tik Tok means less than it does anywhere else you put a great Tik Tok out and it just feeds the for you page and the the algorithm sends it to the moon which means I wonder whether more people will go viral over the next 5 years than ever have before through Tik Tok 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 will be have you ever heard of nicardo avocado of course I have Ginder bogle's audience capture uh article about him is the best thing I've ever read exact like that's almost where I see it like not to have a go at the guy but it was mukbang right people like to watch other people eat onl and then I I haven't seen his blood work and I could be incredibly fat phobic here but he's gone from relatively healthy looking skinny vegan violin player to someone that wears a c CPAP yeah he's gotten to 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 here is like the canary in the mind of where I think social media is going to 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 Tik Tok 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 then 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 you know positive things although I do love a good story where someone like adopts a dog from turkey and brings it home soldiers coming home from war to dogs man that's my that's my [ __ ] Vibe look James Smith ladies and gentlemen James I really 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 where should people go what do they expect of you 2024 what's coming up I wish I could answer that more uh honestly myself just going to be trying to improve everything you know everything I do to try and get a bit better white belt mentality you're always a white belt in everything you do so uh 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 might be a part might be might be one of the contributing factors uh 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 what four years ago uh you were doing it from your bedroom you had some cool funky lighting to see how far this podcast has grown over the last few years it's incredible I 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 if you enjoyed that episode then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks and don't forget to subsscribe