Pod Insights Modern Wisdom Sobriety And The Future Of Social Media Marketing | Dominic McGregor About this episode Dominic McGregor is the COO and Co Founder of Social Chain.
Today I'm sitting down with Dom to catch up after we first spoke on Modern Wisdom 12 months ago. We reflect on his continuing journey through sobriety, why he believes that Social Chain may know their users better than they even know themselves and where the future of online advertising is heading.
Thank you to Social Chain for letting me use their fantastic studio and Video Guy Ollie for recording everything. I can't wait to go back.
Extra Stuff:
Listen to Dom's first episode on Modern Wisdom - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/005-dominic-mcgregor-controlling-worlds-social-media/id1347973549?i=1000403107274
Follow Dom on Instagram - https://instagram.com/dpjmcgregor
Check out Dom's company Social Chain - https://www.socialchain.com/
Check out everything I recommend from books to products and help support the podcast at no extra cost to you by shopping through this link - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom
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Transcript 13,459 words · 2 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Chris Williamson? I'm joined by Dominic McGregor of Social Chain.
0:02 Speaker 01 The way I think you can only really know someone is what they consume on the internet between the hours of 11.30 and 12.30 when no one else is around.
0:12 Chris Williamson? So you're another year sober now. How long is it now? Two and a half years?
0:15 Speaker 01 Two years, nine months. I've gone from 23 to 26. So when you mention that you don't drink to 26 year olds, they get it.
0:21 Chris Williamson? Hmm. So when you do it to 23 year olds, they get it a bit less.
0:24 Speaker 01 There's no situation where I feel like I'd ever need to drink. It's the same way if if we were sat here talking about cocaine and I said, I'm never going to do cocaine again. You wouldn't question me.
0:32 Chris Williamson? If you're drinking, especially heavily, you'll be less picky about your social engagements.
0:36 Speaker 01 Yep.
0:36 Chris Williamson? Because you know that if you've got shit or boring friends, or you've got to go to some party that you probably don't want to go to anyway, kind of doesn't really matter because you can just sedate the boredom by getting lashed. Like if you want to go out and drink, that is fine, but you have to concede that that drink is either at the best keeping your life the same length or making it shorter. Every night out and every drink that you have is bringing you closer to death and that's a fact.
1:02 Chris Williamson? Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. I'm joined by Dominic McGregor of Social Chain fame. How are you, man?
1:07 Speaker 01 Good, thank you. How are you?
1:09 Chris Williamson? Very good. Welcome to my studio.
1:10 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's nice. Yeah.
1:11 Chris Williamson? It's really lovely here, isn't it?
1:17 Chris Williamson? It's been almost exactly a year since we sat down.
1:19 Speaker 01 Yeah, a year. Yeah, about a year and two weeks.
1:22 Chris Williamson? Yeah, almost exactly bang on. How have you been last year?
1:25 Speaker 01 Yeah, been been been really good. I was messaging you the other week because I was in the gym and a lovely woman called Tracy said to me, oh, I heard you on a podcast. I went, oh, hi. She's like the PT there. I've never seen her. She must be new or something. And she's like, oh, um, well, which one? And so, um, Modern Wisdom was like, oh, okay. And she was like, since I've listened to that podcast, I've stopped drinking. I've done it. I've done six months and my whole life's changed.
1:58 Chris Williamson? Shit.
1:58 Speaker 01 I was out there like, ah, I remember why I talk about all this stuff so much.
2:04 Chris Williamson? Sobriety.
2:04 Speaker 01 Yeah. And I was like, I'm so happy. I'm so happy for you. And she was really lovely. Had a nice conversation. And then literally that was as I was walking out of the gym, I picked my phone up, I text you and said, look.
2:14 Chris Williamson? Got to go again.
2:15 Speaker 01 Got to go again. It's been it's been a year because it came up on my time.
2:18 Chris Williamson? Memories.
2:19 Speaker 01 Memories on Facebook, you know, everyone checks it every single morning. What was I doing six years ago? Oh, my God, delete that. Seven years ago, delete that.
2:27 Chris Williamson? That's all it is, isn't it? It's just a way of moving the window of whatever you've got going on in your life, just like this. So there's nothing after whatever period you've been in. And in seven years' time, you go, oh my god, I was doing this today. Like, get rid of that.
2:38 Speaker 01 So some of the, some of the, some of the comments are the most cringiest things I've ever put on. Like, if, if, if you don't look at your memories, look at them and just think, who was I?
2:48 Chris Williamson? Yeah, you're a different person. You're totally right. But yeah, man.
2:51 Speaker 01 You think we should get him out and do him today?
2:52 Chris Williamson? No, we're not. However, later on, we are going to look at our suggested videos on YouTube. Do you want to explain what you think about suggested videos on YouTube and how they're a window into someone's soul?
3:05 Speaker 01 So, yeah, everything, everything, obviously, we, social change work in social media, so we do a lot of paid social advertising. So we know, we kind of hypothesize that we know people better than they know themselves. But we definitely know we know people better than their spouses or their best friends know people. Because like, you just, the things you do on your phone, in the social media, that gets stored. But no one, you never tell people that. You never sit there and be like, oh, last night I did this, or last night I watched that, or I really like this picture. Um, so I went home to York and I was talking to my friends and I was just talking about some of the stuff that you can do on social media now. Because they all work in like very traditional worlds.
3:45 Speaker 01 And I said, you know, all that aside, um, like between us all here, we, we, we know each other. Well, we've been friends for, for fifteen years now. We don't really know each other. Okay? And they're like, what do you mean? It's like, well, the way I think you can only really know someone. I thought, oh, the, actually, the easiest way to really know someone is what they consume on the internet between the hours of eleven thirty and twelve thirty, when no one else is around. That's who you are.
4:17 Speaker 01 That sums you up as a person.
4:18 Chris Williamson? It cuts so deep. It really cuts so deep.
4:22 Speaker 01 That, that history of what you've watched, you know, YouTube, internet, whatever you want to look at it, is who you are as a person.
4:29 Chris Williamson? Let's get it out.
4:30 Speaker 01 That's, that's your weird, that's your weird thing and that's, that's, that says more, that'll say more about me and more about Chris, than we can sit here and say in our, our conversation.
4:39 Chris Williamson? Okay.
4:40 Speaker 01 Mine are really boring. They're actually are.
4:43 Chris Williamson? You've been like well into Brexit and, and researching that recently. Is it just a lot of political stuff?
4:48 Speaker 01 Um, number one.
4:53 Speaker 01 Empire, how Britain made the modern world.
4:55 Chris Williamson? There we go.
4:56 Speaker 01 It's pretty normal, pretty normal.
4:58 Chris Williamson? Mm hmm. Number one for me, little figure, little finger is the protagonist, Game of Thrones ending.
5:08 Speaker 01 Straight onto the Game of Thrones content.
5:10 Chris Williamson? Yep.
5:11 Speaker 01 Um. Breaking news, Theresa May's Brexit deal rejected.
5:15 Chris Williamson? Oh, gotta get a Brexit on there.
5:17 Speaker 01 Yep. Yep. Um, I'll scroll through a couple. Um.
5:24 Speaker 01 Game of Thrones, season eight teaser, White Walkers.
5:26 Chris Williamson? Yep.
5:26 Speaker 01 A bit of Game of Thrones in there.
5:28 Chris Williamson? Mm hmm.
5:28 Speaker 01 Nothing, nothing too bad. How China's rise will change the world.
5:33 Chris Williamson? I think I've seen that one as well. Uh, so I've got some Jordan Peterson.
5:36 Speaker 01 Yep.
5:36 Chris Williamson? Joe Rogan on Leaving Neverland. Uh, is it just an image of him and Michael Jackson? She's a bit bizarre. Graham Hancock, uh, ancient advanced technology, technologies of the gods. Graham Hancock's like an Egyptologist guy. Uh, now I really don't know how this is on there. So Gary, Gary V, Gary V archives is on there.
5:54 Speaker 01 We've got a big Gary V fan in the house.
5:55 Chris Williamson? I could not be further from the truth about Gary V. Now Gary, if you're listening, um. Uh, actually just please, please don't listen. Please don't listen, man, because anyone who does a collaboration with K Swiss to put the words hustle and grind on the bottom of shoes, needs to get in the sea. Like. Gary is, I totally get why he is a seductive personality for people that this kind of go get a 21st century thing. And
6:25 Speaker 01 Americans, you mean?
6:26 Chris Williamson? Yes, yeah, yeah. It's a very, very kind of Americanized, um, make it on your own type approach, which, you know, for, for some people that may, might be what they want. But there's a few things that Gary's not going to be able to get around. And one of them is, anyone who is listening will know Matthew Walker on Joe Rogan, number 1109, Why We Sleep. If you, um,
6:49 Speaker 01 Great podcast, by the way.
6:50 Chris Williamson? Unbelievable podcast. We'll be linked in the show notes below. If you haven't watched it, you need to watch it. It will change your life. I watched it about a year ago and it changed mine.
6:57 Speaker 01 It's, it's, it's the only podcast which I've listened to which sent me straight to sleep.
7:02 Chris Williamson? That's a good point. But that was like out of desire.
7:07 Chris Williamson? And
7:08 Speaker 01 I'm always worried to drop that punchline somewhere, you know?
7:11 Chris Williamson? He's such a nerd. Before we started, so before we've come on, we've like nerded out about Game of Thrones and Warhammer and all this stuff. And I've had too much caffeine. And now we're, we're just going to bounce between different things that make us seem less and less cool. Well, that's, that's fine. But yeah, man, like that Gary V thing, like. You can't get around the fact, Gary, that if you're having four hours sleep a night, you're going to die early. Like you're, you're just going to die sooner. It's a, it's a fact.
7:39 Speaker 01 He, he, he, yeah, I, I don't agree with, I don't agree with a lot of things he says. I don't agree with, with him. But I think he's, you know, credit, he's found the niche and a demographic of individuals who follow him.
7:55 Speaker 01 You know, bit preachy, but when we look at the world now, we're all trying to find some kind of like way to belong. And if people find peace in themselves with supporting him and his attitude and they get, progress their life.
8:11 Speaker 01 I don't know. Do I agree with that?
8:13 Chris Williamson? Well, it's whether or not.
8:15 Speaker 01 Am I trying to find something just to say nice?
8:17 Chris Williamson? Something nice about Gary Vaynerchuk. I mean, you've managed to find one more thing than I can, so. But yeah, man, like.
8:22 Speaker 01 I had to dance around it for a bit.
8:23 Chris Williamson? You are, you are right. Like, he, if he is giving people some form of a sense of, I can go and do this, this is, I have the capacity to work hard and, and achieve things, then great. My concern is whether or not people, one of the problems with lumbering,
8:41 Chris Williamson? lumbering people with the sole duty of making themselves successful, means that you completely remove any connection to the bigger picture.
8:51 Speaker 01 Yeah.
8:52 Chris Williamson? Like, your failings and your successes are purely at the behest of your feet. And you're like, well, hang on, that means that anything that I do or don't do is, is my own fault. And you're like, well, fucking hell, there's like an awful lot of randomness in the world and an awesome awful lot of luck. Like, you, you, you are a perfect avatar for someone who is right place, right time, right skill set.
9:14 Speaker 01 Yeah, I, I think he, yeah, he, he, the net, the net impact it'll have will overall be negative because people will criticize themselves because they will put the hours in, they will put the no sleep in, they'll put the grind in, they still will get anywhere.
9:26 Chris Williamson? And now they're gonna die early.
9:28 Speaker 01 And they'll burn out. But if there's one person who's taken his advice and actually, you know, changed his life and then because of him done something meaningful. That's probably one positive.
9:39 Chris Williamson? You are trying to net, net.
9:40 Speaker 01 I, I, but that's how I approach everything.
9:43 Chris Williamson? I couldn't agree more.
9:44 Speaker 01 I've got to try and, I've got to try and have that, like, balance.
9:47 Chris Williamson? Balance for you. Well, you're a COO, aren't you? So, you know, you need to be diplomatic with everything that you do. So you're another year sober now. How long is it now? Two and a half years?
9:56 Speaker 01 All the way on, yeah, two, two, when it's July and we're in March, so two years, nine months.
10:03 Chris Williamson? Wow.
10:04 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's the, the second, this year is like, like, literally this year has just been a weird, it's not, it's, it's a weird one because now it's, it's, it, the, I'm at a point where I don't remember. I really don't remember what it was like to drink. So I'm so past it now that, like. I'm just beyond it. It's it's it's really hard for me to talk about it now because I just don't recall the feeling.
10:29 Chris Williamson? Like a different person.
10:30 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah. And again, like I said, I was back home at the week weekend and one of the guys who was two years above me from school was there. And he said that he's doing, gonna do a year sober because of health, because of things he's he's seen. And obviously he said I was a big influence on it. And I said to him that you don't, I think I said last time, you don't see an impact until six months. It's like the whole dry January buzz, like you don't, you don't see a difference in the the three weeks, whatever you do in January. You won't see it, you know. For me, the difference like I saw in the first year.
11:03 Speaker 01 And then in the second year is completely nominal to what I'm feeling now.
11:09 Speaker 01 So it's like.
11:09 Chris Williamson? Which is bizarre because at the time, you're actually like, oh, my God, this is world changing. And then you in a year and a half goes, that's nothing.
11:17 Speaker 01 I know. So it's it's like an exponential growth in yourself. Um, obviously the start is very rapid because there's such dramatic changes. But you get to a point now where like life isn't like, it's actually gonna sound a bit weird, but people who need to find things like uh meditation and other other aspects to find peace and who search that kind of like.
11:42 Chris Williamson? Inner self.
11:43 Speaker 01 Yeah, like I don't feel like I need to do any of that because I've already got it. I've got the balance in myself at the moment already. I don't, I can, I can just, I can just be rather than having to like subscribe to like um quick fixes or other things to try and like focus or relax. So I'm just like in a complete state of
12:05 Speaker 01 okayness.
12:06 Chris Williamson? Hmm. I wonder how long that equanimity will continue with sobriety because I do think that a lot of that will be due to contrast. I think, even though you're not potentially able to remember the specific sensation of what it's like to be drunk or hungover, the. Second order self referential thoughts will still probably be there like pretty, pretty front and centre.
12:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's all, it's all relative.
12:34 Chris Williamson? Yeah, so you, you'll still be just like in this weird holy heaven of God, like I have so much fucking time, I have so much fucking money, I'm able to have so many more calories.
12:46 Speaker 01 Oh, that's fantastic, that's part of it.
12:48 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
12:48 Speaker 01 I was, I went out, I did go, I went out Saturday night till about three in the morning.
12:51 Chris Williamson? Mm hmm.
12:52 Speaker 01 Right, which is, which is, you know, if you were drinking till late night, you know, I'm not drinking.
12:55 Chris Williamson? Late finish, so.
12:56 Speaker 01 Late finish and I, I, I've been ill since then. So like, it's all relative, but like, I'm still going out, but I'm feeling worse.
13:06 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
13:06 Speaker 01 It's like my, I've, all I have learnt this year is that drinking does build a slight, a slight bit of resilience within yourself. So I am more, when, when I over exercise, I'm more susceptible to illness.
13:18 Chris Williamson? A hundred percent, yeah.
13:19 Speaker 01 Um, I've got issues with my gut, which I need to manage because taking alcohol out means that you grow bad bacteria.
13:28 Chris Williamson? Is that true?
13:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
13:29 Chris Williamson? Alcohol would.
13:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
13:30 Chris Williamson? Clean it out to a degree.
13:31 Speaker 01 Alcohol cleans you out, obviously like a nominal aspect.
13:34 Chris Williamson? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
13:35 Speaker 01 But like you, you, you create a culture in your gut, which allows you to harbor negative bacteria.
13:42 Chris Williamson? Okay.
13:43 Speaker 01 Because you're not putting any, any toxins in there to, to rid them.
13:45 Chris Williamson? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
13:46 Speaker 01 So you've got like, there's, there's things that you've, you know, your, your body is such a wonderful thing and that everything is in balance. I mean, you do.
13:53 Chris Williamson? You'll reach homeostasis eventually.
13:54 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly. And that's, that's the point now this year, I've been, I've been like discovering there's like other things that you've got to manage. There's always things to manage. So it's been a bit, it's again, like my, I've, I've been focusing on my sleep. So when I go out till three o'clock, my immune system's like, what are you doing?
14:10 Chris Williamson? Mm hmm.
14:10 Speaker 01 Like get back to bed. Like honestly, it's, it's, if you break the routine, it really does, it really does damage, damage me.
14:17 Chris Williamson? Hmm.
14:17 Speaker 01 Um, so in that, in that sense, like, I think that, you know, alcohol has, does build resilience, but you can build resilience other ways.
14:25 Chris Williamson? Hmm.
14:26 Speaker 01 So, yeah, it's been, it's been, it's been a fantastic, it's been a fantastic journey. Um, like I'm confident now that I'm, I'm never gonna drink again, like.
14:35 Chris Williamson? Okay.
14:36 Speaker 01 Like that whole, that whole idea is completely gone from my mind.
14:38 Chris Williamson? So this was something that I wanted to touch on. One of the last questions that I asked you the last time we sat down was, um, something that I'd been pondering for a while about.
14:48 Chris Williamson? People who choose to go sober to get themselves around either substance dependency or a more habitual dependency on the situation and on the feelings that come from that. And that there's, I think there's an argument to be made that going completely sober still allows the substance to have some degree of control over you. But that a reintroduction of it on your terms is the ultimate completion. And you said at the time that your feelings were you weren't going to drink for the foreseeable future for as long as you could see.
15:29 Speaker 01 Yep.
15:30 Chris Williamson? One of the reasons being a fear about potential relapse and also just that you didn't want the downstream effect of drinking full stop.
15:38 Speaker 01 Yep.
15:38 Chris Williamson? Where are you at now with that?
15:40 Speaker 01 So the way I think about it now is that my problem never was the drinking. That my, the problem, the drinking was a side effect of what was like inherently wrong with me. So it was an escape mechanism. So I would turn to that when I needed to funnel my energy and anxieties and situation and escape it. So I can now deal with that feeling elsewhere. So I can deal with it through going for a walk or I can deal with it with just, you know, having 20 minutes of silence to myself and kind of going, processing it and getting it out of my system. So I don't need the, to turn to alcohol to solve that problem anymore. Also because it's detrimental when you turn to alcohol and use it to solve
16:23 Speaker 01 them problems. So I don't, I don't need it for, I would use it before. So then it becomes a, then it becomes a complete question of health and lifestyle choices because it's, you're not dependent on it anymore. You're not, you're not, you're not a substance abuser. But you make a choice that why do I need to bring that back into my life? And if you, again, I think I said last time, if I can ever find a reason why I need to bring it back into my life, I will.
16:50 Chris Williamson? Hmm.
16:51 Speaker 01 But I can't.
16:52 Chris Williamson? Right now.
16:52 Speaker 01 Right now. I I and I can't foresee situation where I never need to bring it back into my life. I just I just I can't. There's there's no there's no I could do every like I said, I do everything I I want. I can go out. I can spend time with friends. I can go to the pub. Like, there's nothing. There's no situation where I'd feel like I'd ever need to drink. Um. And it's just like I said, it's the same way. If if I if if we were sat here talking about cocaine. And I said, I'm never gonna do cocaine again.
17:21 Chris Williamson? Mm hmm.
17:22 Speaker 01 You wouldn't question me.
17:23 Chris Williamson? Yeah. So I did a I did a podcast with Ed Latimore, who is a very, very clever guy. Again, sings from the sobriety hymn sheet, a little bit more. I think he's maybe six years sober now.
17:32 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:33 Chris Williamson? And um, released his podcast on, it was like New Year's Day this year, uh, and his birthday came up shortly after. I wished him a happy birthday. And so, hey, man, I loved loved speaking to you about this. And I linked him to our last chat. Loads of resonation with that as well. And he said this line in it, man, uh, fucking hell, like, it just hit me so hard in the feels. And he said, alcohol is the only drug where if you don't do it, people assume you have a problem.
17:58 Speaker 01 Yeah. Yeah.
18:00 Chris Williamson? Like, no one's going up to you and going, oh, man, like, why why why are you not taking heroin today?
18:03 Speaker 01 Yeah.
18:04 Chris Williamson? Uh, like, why are you not, like, sniffing a big a big fat line on the morning or like after work or whatever? You're like. But with alcohol, actually, someone very clever and contrarian on Twitter piped up and said, coffee. Like caffeine's probably the same.
18:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
18:21 Chris Williamson? What? You don't drink coffee? Like, that's the only one. But then, maybe fifty years ago, people would have said the same about smoking. Maybe a hundred years ago, people would have been like, you don't smoke. Doctors were prescribing, there was adverts saying, um, more doctors smoke camels than any other type of cigarette. Because that was some sort of like accolade for why you should smoke camels.
18:44 Speaker 01 Yeah, I've not thought about smoking before. Yeah, you're probably you're probably right, because when it was first introduced, it was cool. It was cool, wasn't it? It was chewing tobacco and all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, no, I've never thought about it. Yeah, but completely, it's the only drug you have to justify you don't not taking. The only thing.
19:00 Chris Williamson? Are you getting bored of having to justify it now?
19:02 Speaker 01 I don't need to justify anymore. I think people.
19:04 Chris Williamson? Everyone that you're in contact with now just knows.
19:08 Speaker 01 Everyone that uh is uh two things, I think. I think it's been three years now. So I've gone from twenty three to twenty six.
19:14 Chris Williamson? Yep.
19:15 Speaker 01 Um. So when you mentioned that you don't drink to twenty six year old, they get it.
19:20 Chris Williamson? When you do it to 23 year olds, they get it a bit less.
19:22 Speaker 01 Yeah.
19:23 Chris Williamson? That's so, so interesting that there is a
19:27 Chris Williamson? a line and it is, it is around that time as well. Certainly between the age of 23, I don't think that a
19:38 Chris Williamson? exponential growth in your own self-understanding can occur really before 22, 23. I just, there seems to be a moment that it, that it's, that it hits.
19:46 Speaker 01 You don't know, you don't know yourself.
19:47 Chris Williamson? Yeah. However, for some people, it's that you see people that are 40 and 50 years old who still haven't gone through that. But yeah, it's, it's so interesting that there is, there appears to be a, a big fat, the
20:02 Chris Williamson? middle distribution of people who maybe didn't understand and now do.
20:05 Speaker 01 Yep.
20:06 Chris Williamson? Between, in the space of three years.
20:07 Speaker 01 Hundred percent. So when it, when it first, when I first did it, I was, people were saying, oh, were you so boring? Why? You know, why? Now it's like, oh, I wish I could.
20:17 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
20:18 Speaker 01 And that change is like, is literally like three words, wish I could. And that's when you know you're on the right track. And like you, I hear that over and over again when I meet somebody new. Who is, you know, probably.
20:30 Chris Williamson? Wish I could do.
20:31 Speaker 01 So 25, 25 plus though.
20:33 Chris Williamson? Once, once we, once we finish, I'm going to take you through a couple of things that we're working on at the moment. For now, some of the listeners may know that we've got some things going on behind the scenes, but I wrote the equivalent of a manifesto between Christmas and New Year, which is a sobriety manifesto. It was 3,800 words and I did the entire thing on my phone while I was watching Christmas films. Yeah, like my thumbs were wrecked. So just RSI for days. Wrote the whole thing on my phone and they were talking about so many of the things that we've brought up. The fact that if I don't drink, I'm going to miss out on social engagements. What would you, so I want to hear what you would say if someone was like, oh, if I, if I don't drink, I'm worried that
21:17 Chris Williamson? I'm going to feel like an outcast around my friends when they're out on a night out. Or maybe they'll stop inviting me to things or maybe I just won't go. What, what would you say to that?
21:26 Speaker 01 I'd say, take a situation, okay, take probably one of the most the top, the top social occasions that we probably have in our, our age, weddings. Okay, weddings are renowned for drunk, drunkenness from family, from people. Imagine going.
21:44 Chris Williamson? Even the dogs drunk at a wedding.
21:45 Speaker 01 Even the dogs drunk at a wedding. But you know, take a situation where. Um, you can drive to the wedding, yeah. So you're not, you're not in a situation where um. You're getting last minute, like ready last minute, taxi turns up, um, taxi's late or whatever.
22:03 Chris Williamson? You don't have to get that awful minibus back for forty five minutes from wherever in the sticks it's been.
22:08 Speaker 01 In two in the morning, you're in complete control the whole time, okay. Uh, you get there, you turn up. It's very awkward because there's so many different people from different backgrounds. So everyone's in the same situation. Not many people know, know many people at the wedding. You probably know. Five or six people, you know, and you'll go and meet people throughout the night. So that's why weddings tend to have that kind of collective, you know, always.
22:29 Chris Williamson? It's a bonding, it's a bonding process, right?
22:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, because we, you know, we only cut the ice because we don't know many people here, so we're gonna, we're gonna do it. And that, that always kind of snowballs and you end up hearing horror stories of people getting drunk and embarrassing. I went to a wedding previously where. Someone got so drunk that they thought they saw the, the um, the groom with another girl on the day of the wedding in the toilet. And he, and he brought it out to public and it caused a whole issue and his girlfriend was fine. Like, all things always go wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong at wedding. Why do you want to be involved in that?
23:03 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
23:03 Speaker 01 You know, being sober, you can go there on your own terms. You can enjoy it. You can have good food. You can have good, good experience. You can dance a little bit. And then when it's ready to go, because there always is a time when you need to go, you know, as much people say, I want to stay one more drink.
23:16 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
23:16 Speaker 01 There's always a time when you need to go. You get into your car and you leave.
23:21 Chris Williamson? Hmm.
23:21 Speaker 01 And you wake up the next day and just look at yourself and said, I didn't enjoy that.
23:25 Chris Williamson? Hmm.
23:25 Speaker 01 I enjoyed that. I had a good time. I enjoyed seeing it. I enjoyed it being, sharing a special day with somebody.
23:31 Chris Williamson? I can remember it.
23:32 Speaker 01 I can remember it. And you know what? I'm gonna go for a, go to the gym now.
23:35 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
23:36 Speaker 01 So.
23:37 Chris Williamson? Uh, you, you're totally right. You're totally, totally right about that. There's a, a, a number of things that I wrote in the, in this particular manifesto that, that kind of trigger off the back of that. I've worked somewhere in the region of a thousand club nights across my career and I can tell everybody that is listening. That nothing worthwhile happens after one in the morning.
23:55 Speaker 01 No.
23:55 Chris Williamson? Like it is the, the absolute worst of human behaviour manifest, like fights and club kissing. Like, no one really wants to be a part of either of those things, even if you're enjoying the club kissing at the time, you cringe about it the next day. Um, then when it comes to the social engagements thing. I think what happens a lot is if you're drinking, especially heavily, you'll be less picky about your social engagements.
24:24 Speaker 01 Yep.
24:24 Chris Williamson? Because you know that if you've got shit or boring friends, or you've got to go to some party that you probably don't want to go to anyway. Kind of doesn't really matter because you can just sedate the boredom by getting lashed.
24:34 Speaker 01 Yep.
24:34 Chris Williamson? And you're like, okay, so hang on, what you're saying is.
24:37 Speaker 01 All the awkwardness as well.
24:38 Chris Williamson? And the, yeah, and all of those sort of things downstream from the awkwardness. Um, or what's referred to as approach anxiety and pick apart history for both men and women.
24:47 Chris Williamson? If the only way that you can go up and speak to someone at a wedding is once you've had a drink. You have never cultivated the capacity to actually go up and speak to somebody.
24:56 Speaker 01 Yeah.
24:56 Chris Williamson? You've outsourced it to this exogenous version of courage. Which is alcohol.
25:01 Speaker 01 And it's so, you are so much, so many, so much better learning that skill than relying on alcohol. Because going sober, that's one thing you do learn. You learn to have the self-confidence in yourself and that you hold yourself in a higher safe esteem to be able to approach someone and have a conversation with them. And like, people are trying to buy that, you know, the whole quick fix lifestyle. Alcohol is a quick fix in that situation. Or you could take a step back, invest in yourself, grow your confidence and then be able to hold yourself in any social occasion.
25:31 Chris Williamson? Like goes back to what you said about your coping with stresses from work. Where you're like, I've had a hard day, I'm running this business that's essentially like me holding on to a hundred mile an hour speed train. Like just with one arm on the final, like the final thing at the very end, like desperately trying to like, I'm flapping around in the wind. And um, your, one of your coping mechanisms was to use alcohol, but that means that you can't cope.
26:00 Speaker 01 Yep.
26:00 Chris Williamson? Like as a byproduct of that, if you take the alcohol away. So it is a question that probably a lot of people are thinking, I don't think we got onto it last time. What was coping with stressful situations like the first few times that you, um, that you weren't drinking?
26:23 Chris Williamson? When you were no longer able to sedate yourself on that.
26:27 Speaker 01 You you know, you had everyone, you know, the feeling still existed.
26:32 Speaker 01 The feeling still existed, so I was still feeling bad and stressful and I had that emotions inside me. So I had to do something about it. So what I did was I turned to another, I turned to something else. So I I focused my energy at first on food. So I'd have like a really mo- moorish meal.
26:51 Chris Williamson? Hmm.
26:52 Speaker 01 Just to to forget about, like, to take yourself.
26:54 Chris Williamson? So you've switched the coping mechanism from one to another?
26:58 Speaker 01 Yeah. Or or I'd or I'd um um go to bed early to forget about it.
27:06 Chris Williamson? Hmm.
27:06 Speaker 01 Anything which, anything which kind of gave me.
27:08 Chris Williamson? That's that's escapism there almost, right?
27:10 Speaker 01 Anything to give me that sense of escaping.
27:12 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
27:12 Speaker 01 Alcohol does it in one way because you blathered, sleeping another time because you just forget and you go away.
27:19 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
27:20 Speaker 01 And food does it because you're kind of, you know, completely focused, fixated on the moorish food and then you kind of do feel a little bit afterwards because you just put crap inside you, but you know, it's short term and then you you are tired and go to sleep. So um it was taking that feeling, that emotion and process it in a different way.
27:39 Chris Williamson? Hmm. And then there must have been a point at which you transitioned from that to it not actually, you're not needing to use any of those mechanisms and you actually being able to sit with the emotion.
27:49 Speaker 01 So so it's simple, simple cognitive behaviour therapy. So take the the action, reaction, um stimulus response. The stimulus was stress, the response was food. Okay, so now you get stimulus response, the food was bad at first. It was, you know, it was pizzas and burgers.
28:05 Chris Williamson? Hmm. Because to to interject there for people who are looking at you now, they wouldn't know that you were fat.
28:10 Speaker 01 No, real fat, real fat.
28:12 Chris Williamson? Proper fat.
28:12 Speaker 01 Proper fat. Yeah. So.
28:14 Chris Williamson? Jiggle as you go downstairs fat. But now now you look fantastic. Like you've got the perfect runner's build, which is good because that's what you do.
28:23 Speaker 01 Yeah. Um so then I just swapped that to tons of food and tons of healthy food.
28:28 Chris Williamson? Mm hmm.
28:28 Speaker 01 So I'd have like four salmon fillets with like tons of broccoli, with mayo, you know, like shit loads of food.
28:36 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
28:37 Speaker 01 And then obviously over time you can manage that down, then portions down and bring it down. So I got to the point where if I was having a bad day, I didn't want to eat salmon and broccoli. That had literally been my stimulus response. Shit day, feel crab.
28:47 Chris Williamson? Salmon and broccoli.
28:49 Speaker 01 Fantastic.
28:50 Chris Williamson? Can you imagine how many people would say, do you know what it is? I had a bit of a dependency on alcohol for a while at a young age. And then I discovered salmon and broccoli and I was like, fucking sweet. But yeah, man, like, you know, I genuinely believe, and we come at this from two different angles. And I'm now six months into eighteen. So.
29:14 Speaker 01 Why eighteen?
29:15 Chris Williamson? Because I'd completed six without any challenge. I'd done six through winter time. All of my, all my stints of sobriety have almost been the same period, which has been just after Halloween.
29:28 Speaker 01 Yep.
29:28 Chris Williamson? Until around about May time.
29:30 Speaker 01 Yep.
29:30 Chris Williamson? And I know that the most challenging period for me is going to be through summer. I don't know whether you still get this, but for me, in a beer garden, British summer, six P M, sun's low, good music on, and I just think, fucking Copperberg. Like, it would be, it's, there's nothing quite, now Copperberg do a Copperberg Blue.
29:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
29:52 Chris Williamson? Which is, which is kind of cool. They've only recently brought that out. But there's just something about that where I was like, that's, I don't get itches to drink.
30:00 Speaker 01 Yeah.
30:00 Chris Williamson? I'm not a big drinker naturally. But that's one time. And I was like, right, I want to see, first off, I completed six months. I was like, twelve seems like a figure, but eighteen seems like a motherfucker. So I'm gonna do eighteen. And by doing it, I knew that I'd go through two winters that would be a little bit less difficult, but one summer, which would be pretty tough.
30:21 Speaker 01 The, the, I feel like there is a replacement for everything. And like for Copperberg's kombucha.
30:28 Speaker 01 Like, honestly.
30:29 Chris Williamson? Man, you can't go into a British pub, like, as the, the Black Bull or something in, older the edge, and be like, ah, excuse me, I see that you've got Copperberg on the menu. I wondered if you have any kombucha, because my microbiome in my gut is saying to me, by the way, have you heard that Lord of the Rings are coming out on Warhammer? Like.
30:52 Speaker 01 You've just summed me up.
30:54 Chris Williamson? No, I've completely rumbled you.
30:56 Speaker 01 Summe your thing.
30:59 Chris Williamson? That's what I sound like as well. No, it's not.
31:02 Speaker 01 But that, that, it gives you that feeling. Like, I was like, and you know what? They like, like kombucha has, is fermented tea. So it has like a little bit of, it's not alcoholic in any sense of the magic, but it's got, it's got fermented tea in it. So it does, is.
31:18 Chris Williamson? Triggers on some form of similar pathway.
31:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah. So it, it, it does, it does feel very refreshing. It gets that. Like, my thing was always a pint after football.
31:30 Chris Williamson? Yep.
31:30 Speaker 01 I'd play football. I'd always want to have like a real pint and I, and I couldn't, the alcohol, their alcoholic beers were crap. So I just changed it up for sparkling water because the fizziness is the same.
31:42 Chris Williamson? Yeah, I get that.
31:43 Speaker 01 And you get that sense of just chugging it down.
31:44 Chris Williamson? I really, I really hate sparkling water, man. It just tastes.
31:47 Speaker 01 But kombucha.
31:48 Chris Williamson? Kombucha, man, I'm, I'm fine for it. So I want to move on to some stuff to do with social media. I was talking to, uh, Theo on the way up. And we were laughing about the fact, um, I don't know whether you saw recently, but the UFC, it was maybe about three or four months ago now. They put out a tweet and it was a big announcement. It might've been a hundredth anniversary of something or whatever. They put out this huge tweet that obviously spent a fair bit of time building up to it.
32:13 Chris Williamson? Big fuck off typo, right in the middle of it with a spelling error. And there's, there's no speed at which you can get onto the internet to delete that tweet.
32:22 Speaker 01 Yeah.
32:23 Chris Williamson? Like quickly enough. And it just started getting retweeted and like 5K, 10K retweets, a big old fat tweet. I wanted to know about, you guys have got, was it 600 million reach or something like that?
32:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, in the million, hundreds of millions.
32:38 Chris Williamson? Hundreds of millions of reach online.
32:39 Speaker 01 Yep.
32:40 Chris Williamson? That means like, and as much as you can have, the things are prepped in advance and there's a, a brand design and an architecture and there's briefings and this, that and the other. At the end of the day, there's a person with a button who has to press it. Do you know what I mean?
32:56 Speaker 01 Yeah.
32:56 Chris Williamson? All of this funnels down to one person's finger.
33:01 Speaker 01 Yep.
33:01 Chris Williamson? And then they have to just.
33:05 Chris Williamson? Like they press it once and once it's gone, that's it. Like it's out into the world. And I just wanted to ask what it feels like to have that kind of Titanic responsibility, not only for yourself, but the brands that are behind you.
33:20 Speaker 01 What does it feel like?
33:24 Chris Williamson? Do you get nervous before like a big campaign goes out? Or is that kind of stopped now for you?
33:31 Chris Williamson? If that man presses a button and there's a typo in it, like Dom, yeah, mate, I'm, I'm really sorry.
33:38 Speaker 01 It's frustrating. Twitter is the only platform where you can't edit it.
33:41 Chris Williamson? Yes.
33:42 Speaker 01 So like Facebook, Instagram, you've got control and you edit and like we aren't as dependent on Twitter anymore. We don't do much on Twitter.
33:50 Chris Williamson? Okay.
33:50 Speaker 01 So like, historically, it was a nightmare. Like it was like, oh.
34:00 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
34:02 Speaker 01 But like now it's like Twitter, like the products are there like to edit. So you get like, if it happens, it's annoying, but you get around it. But with, with Twitter, you've still got, well, on my own personal, when I tweet and I get a guess, but I'm just like, I'm just devastated. I'm like, oh.
34:18 Chris Williamson? Are you more bothered about messing it up yourself or for, for clients? Or is it equal?
34:22 Speaker 01 I don't do it. I don't, I don't run the clients. So it's hard for me to like.
34:25 Chris Williamson? If you see someone who's a representative.
34:27 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's like, it's just that feeling of like.
34:31 Chris Williamson? Bollocks.
34:32 Speaker 01 It's like, no, like in those situations, almost like no one's to blame because it's, it's, everyone makes mistakes. Yeah.
34:39 Chris Williamson? They didn't mean to only put one F in effective.
34:41 Speaker 01 Yeah. No one ever meant to do that. Like if it was, if it was like gross and excellence, like people would like, that's a different story. But I, I'm, I'm a situation where I, I, I'm really bad at spelling. I'm really bad. I'm dyslexic. So like, when people make mistakes, I completely understand it because there's times when I read back things I write and just words are missing.
35:03 Speaker 01 I'm sure I put that word in there.
35:05 Chris Williamson? Some of the sentence is absent.
35:06 Speaker 01 It makes no sense.
35:09 Chris Williamson? Moving forward, what do you think is going to happen with social media as we go on? I don't know whether you listened to the podcast that I did with Rory Sutherland, which was about the psychology of advertising. And I asked him the same question. Over the next five years, do you think that people are going to continue to give away their data for free and their attention for free? What do you think is the future of the social media and the attention economy as we move forward now?
35:37 Speaker 01 Exactly that. So you are competing on attention. Okay. And what will cause the biggest shift is if consumers realise the value of their attention and their value of their time. And then they start choosing to spend that time wisely. I think if you look at the suite of products that exist at the moment, in that world, you have entertainment, which is predominantly TV. You have gaming, which is always growing. You have friends and real life interactions you put in there as well. And then you have social media. You know, they're probably the four. You probably put sport in there as well.
36:21 Speaker 01 It's probably as a separate thread. They're probably the five places where people spend their time.
36:28 Speaker 01 And then it's just the question is where do people want to spend their time? When you look at some things like entertainment, is there a negative commentations to sit in there and watch a Netflix series? Probably not. You could probably do that and you could probably feel good about yourself.
36:43 Speaker 01 Gaming, probably again, probably more evils in gaming, but also some positives coming out of it as well with kind of the skills that people are learning. So people are putting more and more time into gaming. Social media. Has a lot of negative commentations. Are they gonna be opting to choose to spend their time on social media with the backlash that is backlash that are coming out now? Um, they will probably be on social media, but when you take the emergence of a platform like TikTok, I asked someone, what do you like about TikTok? And she she said, and handed her hand, she said, it's the only platform where no one is being arrogant, talking about themselves, bragging, and it's just fun.
37:23 Chris Williamson? What's what's TikTok?
37:24 Speaker 01 Oh, TikTok.
37:25 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
37:25 Speaker 01 TikTok is um, like, it's like an endless scroll video. It's like Vine, essentially, but for full screen.
37:30 Chris Williamson? Okay.
37:31 Speaker 01 Uh, really big, seven hundred fifty million followers, very big in China and the UK. It's really growing.
37:35 Chris Williamson? Okay. Is it the thing where people do memes to like singing?
37:38 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's what it was at first, but it's evolved now.
37:41 Chris Williamson? Okay.
37:41 Speaker 01 And it's it's got no messaging, it's got no, um.
37:45 Chris Williamson? And like pure IGTV.
37:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah. And people have just been nice on it.
37:49 Chris Williamson? Okay.
37:49 Speaker 01 So like people like it's entertaining. It's again, it's it's fun. So it hasn't got the, you, uh, people updating their states. It hasn't got any.
37:56 Chris Williamson? Can additive aspects and stuff.
37:58 Speaker 01 Yeah. So people, I feel people now are looking to spend their time in more positive ways because we're all starting to wake up to the point that our attention is valuable.
38:06 Chris Williamson? Hmm.
38:06 Speaker 01 And we're all starting to understand that we have only have time uh, left. So we are being more wise about how we spend our time.
38:12 Chris Williamson? Hmm.
38:12 Speaker 01 Hence why I think there's um, this middle part about spending time with family and friends is growing because there's some key traits which, key things which are kind of like, I feel like the world's moving back into connectivity in general. So for the first time in twenty four years, physical book sales increased. So people are now buying physical books again.
38:31 Chris Williamson? Okay.
38:32 Speaker 01 Because they want that that feel.
38:34 Chris Williamson? That time away from screen.
38:36 Speaker 01 Yep, yep, yep. So that entire digitalization, I've, it's probably not reached peak for all industries, but it's kind of reached a point where people are now starting to value connectivity and touching and physicality again.
38:48 Chris Williamson? Hmm.
38:49 Speaker 01 Um, so people are now spending more time with their friends. And when you go out with your friends now, people are actively saying, get off your phone.
38:55 Chris Williamson? Yeah. What do you think that means for yourself, obviously having to trigger on these industries?
39:02 Speaker 01 Mm hmm. It it it means that as a as a business or personally?
39:05 Chris Williamson? As a business.
39:06 Speaker 01 As a as a business, you know, we we are competing in the economy, uh, the attention economy. So we have to play where people are playing. So in the gaming space, that's a great market. What we do there?
39:17 Chris Williamson? Hmm.
39:18 Speaker 01 Can we grow a gaming publishers? Can we work on in in gaming products and marketing? Um, entertainment?
39:26 Speaker 01 Brands want to move into the branded entertainment space. Can we produce content which goes straight to Amazon Netflix? Where people can have peace of attention. So for us, you know, we we are a social first business. But that doesn't mean we don't operate in other areas. What we do is we take the insights and knowledge from social, which can mean social media, but social interactions. And social relationships. And then that we build a marketing campaign off the back of that. So that the social insights could tell us that we need to do a out of home campaign. So it is. Um, we're we're we're not dependent on any platform, not dependent on any product. Um, but what we are dependent on is the data that we collect from social media.
40:07 Chris Williamson? Which will inform things moving forward. Do we do an experiential campaign? Do we do a whatever campaign?
40:12 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah. So the the the business model is is solid. It's very diverse. Um, it's it's in a good position and it's not dependent on if Instagram's switched off tomorrow, we'll still be here.
40:26 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
40:27 Speaker 01 If Facebook turns off tomorrow, we'll still be here.
40:29 Chris Williamson? It's might make it might make the next couple of weeks a bit difficult. You'd be like, bollocks.
40:35 Speaker 01 Probably worse for clients than us.
40:36 Chris Williamson? Yes. Well, you you can move between.
40:39 Speaker 01 We can navigate. We can we can navigate. We can look at new areas. We can launch new services. So we're looking at development, obviously helped to arrive in the studio, podcasting.
40:47 Chris Williamson? Yep.
40:47 Speaker 01 You know, would you say podcasting is a social product? Two years ago, probably not. Yes, probably now. It fits into that. Uh, space. We're launching branded podcasting for for clients.
40:56 Chris Williamson? Pretty little thing that podcast is unbelievable.
40:59 Speaker 01 Yep, yeah. So we're we're being reactive and we're moving to where the the growth in the market is. So. Um, that's that's our mantra, you know, as long as we're ever changing and we're keeping brands at the forefront of what's possible, we'll be fine. And what's possible can be anywhere.
41:12 Chris Williamson? So if you are the someone who does social media, either as part of a small company or potentially even just as a consultant on your own.
41:22 Chris Williamson? Continuing to be adaptive is is going to be key over the next few years.
41:28 Speaker 01 Yeah.
41:28 Chris Williamson? Things you'd say.
41:29 Speaker 01 I'd say also as well probably take social media out of your name because it it it social media, I think it puts people in a box.
41:36 Chris Williamson? Hmm.
41:36 Speaker 01 You know, the the what we're talking to clients now is about seniorist business problems and how they can use social to solve them. Not just social media, so like a wider, wider breadth of social to solve their business problems, you know, not just looking at. When I think social media manager, I think schedule tweets to the person who presses the button.
41:54 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
41:55 Speaker 01 When I think social insights and social strategy, I think how can we use the information from social media to determine where this brand's going to go.
42:02 Chris Williamson? Hmm.
42:03 Speaker 01 Example, example, um, take KFC. KFC have probably been the best when it comes to social media um in the fast food space.
42:12 Chris Williamson? Mm hmm.
42:12 Speaker 01 They their entire campaign to launch um new fries was driven through social. So they were doing social listening and seeing what people were saying about their fries. And there was tons and tons of tweets of people saying that KFC have the worst fries.
42:26 Chris Williamson? They do, or they did.
42:27 Speaker 01 They did. So obviously that social insight there and that conversation with people has informed natural business change.
42:32 Chris Williamson? Hmm.
42:33 Speaker 01 They've gone, okay, our fries are crap. This is what people are saying about them. Thirty years ago, if you sold a bad, bad, bad set of fries to someone, no one would ever tell you.
42:40 Chris Williamson? There's no feedback mechanism.
42:41 Speaker 01 No feedback mechanism. So people have actually been looking at social media, what people say about KFC.
42:45 Chris Williamson? Hmm.
42:45 Speaker 01 This identified a problem and it turned it into a marketing campaign.
42:49 Chris Williamson? Do you, or how do you categorize that? Then you're totally right. Is that, is that using social? Probably not. Would a social media agency class itself as that? Also, again, probably not because it's not to do with, you're right, I think social media, I think about the guy that schedules the Facebook posts. I think the person that sat behind Ads Manager.
43:10 Speaker 01 Yep.
43:10 Chris Williamson? I don't think about the person who is using the. Inherent discourse and direct line of communication between yourself and the customer to inform more typical business activities.
43:23 Speaker 01 Yep, yep. And that's what I think big businesses now starting to realise is that social media is no longer just a team of two people who run the pages. That's where your insights are coming from. That's where you can actually understand your customer, your product, your future.
43:37 Chris Williamson? Also bidirectional as well.
43:39 Speaker 01 Exactly, exactly. So there's so many instances now where brands are going straight to people on social media. Take Qantas yesterday, Qantas, two days ago, a 10 year old boy wrote a letter to the CEO saying that he's just starting an airline, handwritten, he's asking for advice from the CEO of Qantas. And CEO replied, and he replied saying, like a proper letter, said this is what you do.
44:02 Chris Williamson? Headed paper.
44:03 Speaker 01 Headed paper, everything signed. You put it on social media, that takes what? 20 minutes of the CEO's time, put it on social media, the brand sentiment that generates from them looking at that like, that is a nice thing to do. I like you as a brand.
44:18 Chris Williamson? Yep.
44:18 Speaker 01 That, the media they'll get from that will be bigger than any advertisement campaign they could get. And that's from 20 minutes of time, five minutes of the social media manager to post it.
44:29 Chris Williamson? Yep.
44:29 Speaker 01 And it's out there.
44:30 Chris Williamson? Do you think that moving forward, there is the potential for, well, I know that this is already the case, but do you think that customers and yourself need to be wary about people triggering those mechanisms in a manipulative fashion? Obviously, it's easy for someone to start faking those kinds of situations.
44:50 Speaker 01 Yeah.
44:50 Chris Williamson? Because it's, we know that this is the sort of thing that will resonate with our.
44:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, completely. And when I saw that, I thought it was past them. You know, I'm wearing Mr Skeptical Hat on here. I'm like, I'm pretty sure we pitched that similar idea before about, about that to clients because it's what works on social. But I did go a little deeper and, you know, I'm probably in the top percentile of people who will sceptisise around it. Because I understand social better than most people. I understand brands. So um when I start hearing people thinking is it's real, I think that's when I'll probably be a bit concerned.
45:24 Chris Williamson? Hmm.
45:24 Speaker 01 Um but i- it's the most important thing now is the two thing most important things are authenticity. As a brand, are you authentically who you say you are? And if you're not, people aren't going to buy into you. We did a piece of research which said for the first time ever, um brand values and brand um causes which they supported, like social causes, was more important than price point. So literally what the brand says about you is more important than price. People will pay more money if it means they're buying or seem to be buying from somewhere which has a positive social impact. And then personalization. So personalization, talking to people where they want to be spoken to, talking to people how they want to be spoken to. So I'm I'm at an age now where as a consumer, I shop on my terms. You don't determine the terms that we shop on.
46:10 Speaker 01 I'm not going to follow the full funnel approach. I don't want that. People don't want that anymore. They don't, they they have so many abilities to purchase here, purchase there, they'll decide where they want to be purchased. As a brand, you have to you have to not think of you're in control and driving people down the funnel. You have to be able to speak to them where they want to be spoken to.
46:27 Chris Williamson? Hmm.
46:28 Speaker 01 So that's why you're seeing the rise of loads of social commerce and other areas. Uh personal is take like taking personal shoppers online because everyone had a different way they want to experience things.
46:39 Chris Williamson? Hmm.
46:39 Speaker 01 And that's what the brands that will win will be the ones that can cater wide rather than narrow. Think about if you ever at one point purchased a shop, you're never going to be able to cater for everyone because not everyone will pass that shop. And people will not go that way to go to that shop. The whole days when we when we were kids and we were like, I really want to go to the traffic centre.
46:59 Chris Williamson? Mm hmm.
47:00 Speaker 01 Doesn't happen anymore. Kids are not like waking up saying I want to go to the traffic centre.
47:03 Chris Williamson? I don't know.
47:04 Speaker 01 At sixteen seventeen and spending the day walking around there.
47:06 Chris Williamson? True. Do you think that um at a younger age bracket, like the
47:13 Chris Williamson? Five or the, I guess the four to kind of eleven age. Do you think that it's going to be difficult to replicate that magic of walking around somewhere like Toys R Us or a large toy store? There must be something inherent that triggers on kids.
47:28 Speaker 01 Oh, okay. So this, this is what, this is, this is one of my biggest, I, oh god. Toys R Us missed the opportunity to be the home of toys.
47:37 Chris Williamson? Okay.
47:38 Speaker 01 They should have.
47:39 Chris Williamson? They could have gone, they stayed as Blockbuster but could have been Netflix.
47:42 Speaker 01 Yeah, they could have turned it into an experience.
47:44 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
47:44 Speaker 01 You go there, you play all the toys, you have games, you have Playstations, everything.
47:48 Chris Williamson? Like Ikea.
47:49 Speaker 01 Like Ikea. If they did that, they'd still be here.
47:53 Chris Williamson? Ikea is basically Toys R Us for married couples, isn't it?
47:56 Speaker 01 Yeah, take, take, yeah, take, you know, you, you, you know, it's, if I, you know, you see it now in M and S. M and S are putting cafes and stuff into all their shops because they know the demographic wants to come and have a coffee.
48:06 Chris Williamson? Mm hmm.
48:07 Speaker 01 All right.
48:07 Chris Williamson? Man, I go in, there's an M and S right next to me and it is two P M, Wednesday afternoon, rammed.
48:13 Speaker 01 Good food.
48:13 Chris Williamson? Absolutely rammed. Everyone's having salmon.
48:16 Speaker 01 Yeah, you know what you're getting, you're getting good food. You're gonna have a couple of hours there, you're gonna pick up a.
48:20 Chris Williamson? Read a book.
48:21 Speaker 01 Read a book, you know, but they've catered to their audience. Toys R Us should have pivoted and created an experience within their shop store.
48:28 Chris Williamson? Hmm.
48:28 Speaker 01 Those, those that will remain will facilitate experiences, will make it a place, like, take the bar scene, for example, the bar scene's always ahead because there's so many micro trends. You know, you take Dirty Martini.
48:39 Chris Williamson? Hmm.
48:40 Speaker 01 How many girls and people do you see with a picture over them on their Instagram saying, get your hair day?
48:44 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
48:45 Speaker 01 How many people go there just because they want a picture there?
48:47 Chris Williamson? Yep.
48:48 Speaker 01 You know, it's, it's that, it's that experience which, which physical stores still allow you to have.
48:54 Chris Williamson? Mm hmm.
48:54 Speaker 01 Uh, and again, coming back to the point of people going to turn against digital aspects slightly. If you can facilitate an experience.
49:01 Chris Williamson? Hmm.
49:02 Speaker 01 Take Ikea, you know, you walk around it, you're still gonna purchase something. And the best example of this, going back to what we were saying earlier. Harry Potter land.
49:11 Chris Williamson? Unbelievable.
49:11 Speaker 01 You walk through there and you literally throw money out.
49:15 Chris Williamson? Yeah, I would, I would have, I would have.
49:16 Speaker 01 You want a bit of butter beer straight away?
49:17 Chris Williamson? Yeah, that was the first thing I did. Have you been to the one uh in LA?
49:21 Speaker 01 No, I've been to one in uh Florida.
49:23 Chris Williamson? Oh man, well, I'm gonna guess they'll be similar. I think the one in Florida was first and then the one in, but so the one in LA is a little bit newer. But man, like it, I was, see, before we started, you were like, how old were you when you went? And I was like, harping on about how much I liked it. And I was like, I was thirty when I went and I, my inner eleven year old was just losing its shit.
49:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
49:44 Chris Williamson? Um, but it was, it was fantastic. Like it was, and you're totally right, it was experiential and there is, until VR or AR gets to an ungodly degree of fidelity, you're not going to be able to recreate that. Um, so yeah, and again, fucking shout out club promoters, like the guys at Dirty Martini with the, the halo backdrop. For anyone who doesn't know what we're talking about, just search Dirty Martini on Instagram and you will see thousands of girls and guys, some guys, posing in front of this particular backdrop. And we've triggered off the same. So we saw that uh Dubai was using a lot of flower walls, fake flower walls. A grand later, we've got a flower wall in our club. Students are getting photos. Every student's now got a photo in front of our flower wall.
50:28 Speaker 01 Everyone. And that's the thing, like, if you, if you play in that in experience space, you're gonna have like, you're gonna be sustainable.
50:36 Chris Williamson? Mm hmm.
50:36 Speaker 01 Right. You will, you will find a way, as long as you're constantly, constantly innovating as well about what that experience is.
50:41 Chris Williamson? So does that mean that if you're a purely online business, you, uh, and you're not prepared to actually make that move into the physical world? You're potentially gonna start to run behind a little bit here.
50:54 Speaker 01 No, again, it completely comes down to knowing your audience. So we're talking about dealing with kids here with Toys R Us, so they, they want to play. When we're looking at something like a boohoo, a pretty little thing, they understand what their audience wants. They want convenience, they want fast fashion, they want outfits for the, the weekend.
51:08 Chris Williamson? Yep.
51:08 Speaker 01 But you know, again, it comes back to the point we're saying, social allows you to understand your audience and their behaviour.
51:15 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
51:15 Speaker 01 You know, you need to, you need to own that lane and stay in it. So a brand which does both, Holland Barrett, okay? Their, their, their mantra is that they want their people who work for them to be experts of health, wellbeing.
51:29 Chris Williamson? They actually are.
51:30 Speaker 01 Yeah, they're really good.
51:31 Chris Williamson? Excuse me, can you tell me what's good for joint health, please? And then sure enough, five minutes later, you know everything there is to know about omega three acids and.
51:39 Speaker 01 Exactly. So they've got, they've obviously got a wide range of customers. They've catered very well for. Um. One of my favourite jokes is that um Holland and Barrett have an aging uh audience.
51:51 Speaker 01 An aging customer, which obviously shows it's working.
51:54 Chris Williamson? Yeah, good point. Very good point, man. That's, that's some, that's some marketing jokes for you right there.
51:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, so um but they're, they're, that, that, that method of understanding a customer. How are you translating that online to a twenty five year old girl who's looking at um improving her hormones and getting a better balance?
52:12 Chris Williamson? Hmm.
52:12 Speaker 01 Say my girlfriend, for example, how can she have that same experience?
52:16 Chris Williamson? Hair or nails or skin or.
52:18 Speaker 01 Have that experience online, but she still gets in store. And if them two things can mirror each other, they'll be able to cater for everyone.
52:23 Chris Williamson? So is that, would that be the advent of things like live chat?
52:26 Speaker 01 Live chat, personalization, WhatsApp, I mean WhatsApp conversations with them.
52:30 Chris Williamson? Mm hmm.
52:31 Speaker 01 Instagram DMs, all these areas where you can have touchpoints with people.
52:34 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
52:35 Speaker 01 Having conversations with them.
52:36 Chris Williamson? I'll tell you what's hilarious. So um in between our last, uh our last podcast and this one, I went to LA last year. And I was like, man, I need to go and see one of these um legal weed dispensaries.
52:47 Speaker 01 They are.
52:49 Chris Williamson? So for anyone who hasn't seen this, if you can imagine walking into an Apple store. Like where at the back, there's a genius bar. You go in at the front, you've got to go through a little bit of security and there's a security guy in the door. Got to go through a little bit of security, but then you walk in and there's iPads everywhere and there's the super futuristic looking. Things and you can spring uh move a little vent to one side and smell the particular, I'm not a, like a weed connoisseur, so I haven't got a clue what I was on about. And you can go to the back and at the back, there's a group of like the geniuses and you're like, oh, well, sometimes I struggle to sleep and I've got this pain in my knee. And then every so often the dog annoys me and you're like, yes, sir. Well, what you need is our new sativa hybrid blend with a this, this and this. And you're like, I just couldn't get away.
53:32 Speaker 01 I think she had my CBD on me, that I got from Holland Barrett yesterday.
53:36 Chris Williamson? Did you? Nice.
53:37 Speaker 01 It was on me. I thought Paul was gonna pull out and do a little.
53:39 Chris Williamson? Wave it around.
53:40 Speaker 01 Yeah, but it's, you know, um, that, that experience you go, you, you know, you think vape stores, vape stores at the other end of it, they've got a guy with a tattoo and a beard and it was like.
53:50 Chris Williamson? Yeah, all right, mate.
53:51 Speaker 01 Yeah, but you take that as a premium aspect, that the way you feel as a customer going through that.
53:56 Chris Williamson? Have you been into one of the dispensaries?
53:57 Speaker 01 I've been to one of them, I've been to one in Vegas, yeah. The way you walk through it, the way they care for you as a customer.
54:02 Chris Williamson? So special.
54:03 Speaker 01 It's like, this is what retail needs to be like. And coming back to the point, it's on your terms.
54:08 Chris Williamson? Yep.
54:09 Speaker 01 They, they, and it's, it's, you are, you are the person in control. No one's trying to like, um, like Tesco's when they, they hide the bread at the end, the end of the, the shops, you've got to walk through everything and, you know, they're, they're not tricking you. No one's, there's no.
54:23 Chris Williamson? Tactics.
54:24 Speaker 01 No tactics. It's just, come on. So, yeah, I think that's, that's, that's the, the key is that personalization of conversation, um, personalization of marketing in general. That's not just putting your name on a, on a, on a Coke can. It's much deeper than that. And the authenticity of who you are as a brand, living up to who you say you are. Um, is where people will win. And I think that's, when you take that, when you take that back to how people connect, that's how you win as a person. You're authentically who you are. You know, you're not two-faced. You, you, you have value. You live by them and you're personal.
54:59 Chris Williamson? You, what you touched on earlier on is super correct. And the podcast that I actually did with Theo and Eve for you guys on Social Minds triggered on a lot of this, which is what we refer to as social equity and self-branding. The fact that I'm wearing a Nike SB T-shirt, what does that say? Or this says, I can infer X, Y and Z about Chris due to that.
55:18 Speaker 01 Hashtag add.
55:18 Chris Williamson? Hashtag add. Um, this is actually from the skates, uh, skate hut.co.uk. Thank you very much. Link in code below. Um, but
55:27 Chris Williamson? um, that says this particular thing about me.
55:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
55:30 Chris Williamson? And you're like, okay, we move that forward to club nights. One of the most important things for us is you've got a dirty martini. Like, what does that say about you? Okay. So here are the downstream implications.
55:40 Speaker 01 My Warhammer, aren't you?
55:41 Chris Williamson? Yeah, I'm going to come back to Warhammer. No one knows about that. That's your secret Warhammer room. Um, and then, you know, all of the, all of these different things. And you're totally right. I can 100% believe that brands' values and the causes that they support are more important than price point now.
55:57 Speaker 01 Yeah.
55:58 Chris Williamson? Because everybody is searching for some degree of meaning. Everybody is.
56:03 Chris Williamson? Held culpable and responsible due to this always on communication and this kind of serendipitous meeting that happens by people being online and seeing what you do, seeing your purchase history, seeing what you watch, like if you've got a Spotify playlist, like you can hook your Spotify up to your Facebook so that your Facebook displays what you've most recently been listening to on Spotify, which means that almost your music.
56:28 Speaker 01 And Tinder as well.
56:29 Chris Williamson? And your Tinder.
56:30 Speaker 01 Tinder that can link Spotify now, yeah.
56:32 Chris Williamson? Oh God, so you can go on and be like.
56:34 Speaker 01 If people still use Tinder, I think they use Tinder and Hinge, but you can, yeah, you can build out what people are most listening to and stuff like that as well.
56:41 Chris Williamson? I don't think I would do very well on Tinder if I had my Spotify playlist on there. There's some dodgy stuff, but yeah, like, you know.
56:46 Speaker 01 What were you last, what you talked, someone's too far, isn't it? Mine's at eighteen.
56:50 Chris Williamson? For me, it's all, it's a lot of metal, like it's a lot of Bring Me The Horizon, a lot of architects, because I'm, when I tend to be listening to music, I'll either listen to Anjunadeep, which is my working podcast, which is unbelievable, shout out to James Grant, who is one of the best producers in the world, or I'm lifting heavy, heavy things and running fast, and that means I need some angry music. So those are the two ends, like the opposite ends of the spectrum.
57:14 Speaker 01 I do, I do the angry music for, for running, like a little bit of Entish Kari.
57:18 Chris Williamson? Yeah. How are you, how are you getting on with your running now? Cause you were doing like.
57:21 Speaker 01 Did the London Marathon, yeah, last year.
57:23 Chris Williamson? How do you find that?
57:24 Speaker 01 Tough.
57:25 Chris Williamson? You're like, you are a long guy to run, right? Like long distance.
57:30 Speaker 01 Your body just like, you realise things like your body that you never knew could happen to like, you just get pains places, you know, you could get.
57:35 Chris Williamson? London Marathon, a full one?
57:37 Speaker 01 Full one, yeah, yeah, yeah. You just got pains, you know, you could get pains, you get pains, it was just.
57:41 Chris Williamson? What was your worst pain? Did you get any chafing?
57:43 Speaker 01 No, I was fortunate, I was.
57:45 Chris Williamson? Chafing?
57:46 Speaker 01 Chafing, I, I did, I did a marathon like five years ago, so I knew that was gonna come, so I just like vaseline'd up everywhere.
57:50 Chris Williamson? Nice.
57:51 Speaker 01 So that was fine. It was a really, real weird one there in the kind of calf, I ducked to where that comes in.
57:57 Chris Williamson? Yep.
57:58 Speaker 01 Um, like my shoulder.
58:01 Chris Williamson? Yeah, that's bizarre from supporting yourself a little bit, maybe.
58:03 Speaker 01 Just, just running.
58:03 Chris Williamson? Running posture.
58:04 Speaker 01 IT band went.
58:05 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
58:06 Speaker 01 So, yeah, but, but it was fantastic experience and to do London Marathon, it's a bucket list. So, um, yeah, I love it. And I think. It was one of the things which really pushed me and I did it and I know I could do it. Um. So now I'm like in a really place where I again, I'm I'm looking for the next challenge. But the problem is like, whatever the next challenge is, I want it to be bigger.
58:31 Chris Williamson? What do you think? What are you thinking?
58:33 Speaker 01 I'm thinking like a half Ironman at some point.
58:35 Chris Williamson? Mm hmm.
58:35 Speaker 01 But it's gonna have to be bigger and that comes with a massive training requirement.
58:39 Chris Williamson? Yep.
58:39 Speaker 01 And it comes with a massive lifestyle shift. So I'm taking a bit of like, um, a year out just to re- reset body.
58:46 Chris Williamson? Mm hmm.
58:46 Speaker 01 Um, build, sort out some of the kind of fundamental issues I've got with my body in terms of like, I've got my left leg being my right leg. So when I run, I'm a little bit in skew, hence the IT band. Get a bit more flexible, get a bit more strength and stability.
58:59 Chris Williamson? Mm hmm.
58:59 Speaker 01 And then have a better foundation to say, okay, what do I want to go do next?
59:02 Chris Williamson? Really properly build on it.
59:03 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah. So it's, it's, I'm at that, I'm at that point now and I'm like, I am, I am. Anything I do next, I am the way I am, I want to get bigger.
59:12 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
59:13 Speaker 01 Um.
59:13 Chris Williamson? That's like, just, you think, COO of big company, immediately think, he probably races fast cars semi professionally on a weekend. He does Ironmans, like, he's probably like a free climbing rock climber. It just appears to be this thing where people at the top of the tree, um, they have a, a, a particular. A mindset that has hunger attached to it. And, and one of the, one of the byproducts of that is that. I don't think that you can switch it off necessarily. And it would appear that now that you've removed alcohol. And you've relink, you've got this extra twenty to thirty hours a week.
59:52 Speaker 01 Mm hmm.
59:52 Chris Williamson? Where you're not either drinking or hungover. You're like, oh God, I really need to do something. Cause even, what's hilarious was if alcohol was a sport, you'd have probably been like, at least national, national champion.
1:00:04 Speaker 01 Yeah, I'd be region, definitely best there.
1:00:06 Chris Williamson? Yeah. I do, I was the best. Taken alcohol to the extreme.
1:00:09 Speaker 01 I was the best at drinking.
1:00:11 Chris Williamson? Number one drinker. So yeah, like, you know,
1:00:13 Speaker 01 It's a stream, yeah.
1:00:14 Chris Williamson? That absolute extremist approach to things.
1:00:17 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:00:18 Chris Williamson? Is is characteristic.
1:00:19 Speaker 01 It is, yeah, and it is, and it is the reason why, again, going back to alcohol, I can go back to alcohol.
1:00:23 Chris Williamson? Hmm.
1:00:24 Speaker 01 Because I I'm extreme. I will, like, that's why I'm so fortunate that I could just give up.
1:00:30 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
1:00:30 Speaker 01 I am so fortunate. Like, my body says, I said to myself, all right, I'm not going to drink anymore. And it was done.
1:00:35 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
1:00:36 Speaker 01 It it it, you know, in, you know, fine print, there's a bit more, but.
1:00:39 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
1:00:40 Speaker 01 It was a case of, all right, I'm going to challenge myself now. I'm going to do it.
1:00:43 Chris Williamson? I spoke to Mike Kazu about this, and I said that um one of the things that I think about people who hit rock bottom or some degree close to rock bottom, i.e. they have a sufficiently traumatic experience that springboards them back out of it, is that you are given a a degree of motivation due to the pain that you've gone through that does enable you to move forward. What I think is particularly malicious and nefarious and subversive is for people who are maybe a a bottle of wine every couple of nights during the week and maybe a bottle one night on a weekend kind of person. Because that is the silent killer that people don't really see.
1:01:27 Chris Williamson? It's there's no sufficiently traumatic situation they've gone through. They're waking up with a fuzzy head, maybe. There's some downstream longevity problems.
1:01:36 Speaker 01 It's a gradual decline.
1:01:37 Chris Williamson? It's death by a thousand cuts.
1:01:39 Speaker 01 Day by day, you never realise anything. Year by year, you never notice anything, but slowly you are slipping.
1:01:44 Chris Williamson? Decade by decade.
1:01:45 Speaker 01 Decade by decade you do.
1:01:46 Chris Williamson? So there was a study done by The Lancet, which I will link in the show notes below, which was done over a million people, twenty six countries, and it looked at the negative consequences of alcohol consumption on health. And they found that alcohol is an overall mortality risk. And the synopsis to the whole study is there is no safe level of alcohol consumption. Zero. There is no, I'm getting a particular downstream benefits from having red wine because of something that comes through from the grapes. There is, you're netting a negative. There is no, I can have one beer a week because wheat does whatever, whatever, netting a negative.
1:02:30 Chris Williamson? There is no safe level of alcohol consumption. And to reframe the conversation people are having about alcohol is. Cool, like if you want to go out and drink, that is fine, but you have to concede that that drink is either at the best, keeping your life the same length or making it shorter. You know, every night out and every drink that you have is bringing you closer to death. And that's a fact, that is a fact, it is not going to extend your life, it may keep it the same or bring it shorter. You're like, when that's the cost that I have to pay, I'm prepared to pay it.
1:03:11 Speaker 01 You're gonna drink again?
1:03:13 Chris Williamson? Yeah, so I will do, I will do. Um, I, I genuinely believe that anything taken to an extreme, anything done in excess, it can be an error for some people. Good example was last year, I pushed my solitude to excess. I created my version of Carl Jung's Bollingen Tower, which was a deep work space for me to really, really sort of dig my heels into breaking some habits that I wanted. I've developed a reading habit, which I'm super proud of. I've, I've developed like my mindfulness has gone through the roof, which is fantastic. I had to pay a price for that and the price was moving beyond solitude towards something that, that touched on loneliness and that was a price I had to pay.
1:03:58 Chris Williamson? Most people say, and you know, I'd be, I spend some time on my own, doing deep work like Cal Newport's loving life at the moment, sat in an office on his own, soundproofed like this probably.
1:04:09 Chris Williamson? But I had to pay a price for that and there is.
1:04:15 Chris Williamson? When it comes to not drinking, there are certain experiences that I want to have and one of those includes drinking. However, I can genuinely see each time that I've gone sober and gone back to drinking, the window of drinking has got shorter. So first I did six months sobriety, then six months of drinking. Then the second time I did it, I did six months of sobriety and. Three months of drinking, but within that time I only went out four times.
1:04:43 Speaker 01 Mm hmm.
1:04:43 Chris Williamson? So that was four nights out. And now this time I can see I'll do it. I'll probably touch base with it again.
1:04:49 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:04:49 Chris Williamson? And be like, okay, this is how it feels. This is what it means.
1:04:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:04:53 Chris Williamson? It may be once, it may be twice. And I can see that being kind of the way that it goes.
1:04:57 Speaker 01 Yeah. And I can come back to the point where I said I went out at the weekend and it's still, I'm still feeling it now.
1:05:02 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
1:05:02 Speaker 01 Eight, after eighteen months of not drinking.
1:05:03 Chris Williamson? Yeah, still didn't drink.
1:05:05 Speaker 01 No, but after eighteen months of you not drinking that first night out.
1:05:07 Chris Williamson? It's gonna kill me.
1:05:08 Speaker 01 That's when we're gonna do the next podcast.
1:05:10 Chris Williamson? Fantastic. The next day.
1:05:10 Speaker 01 The next day. We're gonna sit here and I'm gonna ask you the same question.
1:05:14 Chris Williamson? Just gonna lay my head on the microphone like this. That's a good point, man.
1:05:19 Speaker 01 That's when we'll do it. Cause you know, it's the same journey I followed in the first six months. I was kind of like, I was holding on to some things, some experiences.
1:05:25 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
1:05:27 Speaker 01 And I think it's the next six months, which are probably the most interesting for you to go through.
1:05:32 Chris Williamson? Mm hmm. Well, I'm into, I'm into that now. So this is nearly months.
1:05:34 Speaker 01 Especially summer, especially summer.
1:05:36 Chris Williamson? Nearly month seven. So I'm going away, I'm going away a lot this year. Um, got a lot of things I want to do and, you know, I think, I, I hope that we increase to uh, increase the encouragement of people like your friend that you met in the gym.
1:05:49 Speaker 01 Mm hmm.
1:05:50 Chris Williamson? Um, you know, to think, don't want to break free of, of this rite of passage, which bizarrely somehow seems to have manifested itself in society where everybody drinks. And I feel like I have to as well.
1:06:02 Speaker 01 And it, you know, to, to take the cliches from the world that we're living in right now, it's about taking back control.
1:06:07 Chris Williamson? Mm hmm.
1:06:08 Speaker 01 You know, and having been in complete control of you and yourself and your actions at all points, um, wherever you are.
1:06:14 Chris Williamson? Well, that's the, that's the bizarre thing. Again, this is in the manifesto. I promise that I haven't shown it to Don before, but he is, he is almost quoting directly from it. And it shows that we've all, we've, both of us have come to the same conclusions without having, um, actually spoken about it. And it was that, what I want to get through to people is that drinking is not normality. Normality is 100% cognitive control, maximum efficiency, total, um, uh, total control of your personality, your actions, and that drinking impedes that. The only reason that people see sobriety as something which is so bizarre is because it's uncommon.
1:06:59 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:07:00 Chris Williamson? But if you want to be at the, close to the best in your field, you need to be uncommon amongst uncommon men or women.
1:07:09 Speaker 01 You've got to be weird.
1:07:10 Chris Williamson? You do have to be weird, and thankfully we both are. Dom Mann, it's, it's been absolutely awesome. I'm gonna navigate these microphones. Thank you so much for your time.
1:07:17 Speaker 01 No worries. Thank you for having me.
1:07:18 Chris Williamson? We will do number, we will do number three.
1:07:20 Speaker 01 In a year's time.
1:07:21 Chris Williamson? Ladies and gentlemen, make sure that you press subscribe. Give us a like. Dom and his blog, you still doing the T Total runner stuff?
1:07:27 Speaker 01 Not as much anymore, but I'll, um, just do the Instagram.
1:07:30 Chris Williamson? Through. Link will be in the show notes below. Thank you very much.
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