Dating, Finances & Happiness - James Smith | Modern Wisdom Podcast 362

James Smith is a PT and not a life coach. It's a weird time to be alive. The rules are completely out of the window for dating, finding a balance between socialising and work is basically impossible, there are a million different ways to organise your personal finances and that's before you even start to throw Tinder into the mix. Expect to learn why James is actually glad to be back from Australia, the optimal approach for getting a kangaroo to tap out in BJJ, what's interesting about being a guy in your 30's without kids, why James doesn't want to invest his money into property and much more... Sponsors: Get over 37% discount on all products site-wide from MyProtein at http://bit.ly/modernwisdom (use code: MODERNWISDOM) Get 20% discount on Reebok’s entire range including the amazing Nano X1 at https://geni.us/modernwisdom (use code MW20) Extra Stuff: Order Not A Life Coach - https://amzn.to/30VkVdb Join James' Academy - https://www.jamessmithacademy.com/ Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom #dating #finances #fitness - 00:00 Intro 01:15 Humans Fighting Animals 07:42 James’ Thoughts on the Vaccine 22:22 Dating in Modern Society 41:49 Guys Over 30 Without Kids 58:52 Why James Loves Australia 1:03:50 Personal Finances & Property 1:17:29 International Fitness Summit 1:23:40 Where to Find James - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00James Smith?

  My body clock and my broody nature has become a lot more intense since the pandemic.

• 0:06Chris Williamson?

  Correct, same.

• 0:07James Smith?

  But at the same time, the freedom to roam meets fall in love and all of that has never been more shattered and separated and digital and soulless and it's got so much worse.

• 0:23Chris Williamson?

  James Smith, welcome to the show.

• 0:26James Smith?

  Thanks for having me back.

• 0:27Chris Williamson?

  Difficult second album today.

• 0:30James Smith?

  Why do you say that?

• 0:31Chris Williamson?

  Well, the difficulty, you have a good debut and then the second one, you've got to keep up with the talent, you know?

• 0:36James Smith?

  Dave, you're thinking about films as well. Often the second one is never as good as the first, but I've got faith because we were saying just off air now, I've got a proper setup. I'm sat at a desk, I feel professional, I've got a professional microphone, I'm ready.

• 0:52Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. So even if what you're saying is bollocks, at least it looks the part.

• 0:55James Smith?

  As long as I've got good hand gestures for people watching on YouTube and I can command the conversation using those, we should.

• 1:01Chris Williamson?

  Like a guy doing the weather, like a weather guy. So we've got a cold front moving in from the north and some interesting points coming in from the south. So obviously you are now subscribed to my newsletter, like everybody else should be. And in it this week, I identified the percentage of Britons that thought they could beat different animals in a fight. So 45% of Brits think that they could beat a goose, 38% think that they could beat a medium sized dog, 18% thought that they could beat an eagle and then 5% thought that they could beat a kangaroo. What do you think's the largest animal that you could realistically beat in a fight?

• 1:36James Smith?

  Before we do that, we need to set the ground rules of what victory is.

• 1:40Chris Williamson?

  The animal either runs away or it's dead or it's immobilized.

• 1:45James Smith?

  Okay, because I'm a purple belt in jiu jitsu. So, you know, if I take the back of a kangaroo and I've got a seatbelt, under over, I've got, you know, control over that. I've got two hooks in behind the legs, no rotational control of the kangaroo, there's not going to be a verbal tap. So.

• 2:01Chris Williamson?

  Kangaroo's dead.

• 2:03James Smith?

  I wanna, no, no, no, I've just got control, just got control. I want to look at the adjudicator and be like, have I won? Because if you want me to kill this kangaroo, then, you know, there's going to be a conflict of interest there. I don't think many people have been really looking at the rule set, being a BJJ practitioner, I need to know the rules, where am I, where am I going to accumulate points? With some animals, like a goose, I might pull guard, slide in on my bum, you know, take away the threat. Then that goose steps into the guard. Next thing you know, half guard, deep half, get a sweep, end up on top.

• 2:35Chris Williamson?

  I think that most of these animals, the advantage comes from behind, but the problem is, especially with a goose and a kangaroo, their reach, you're going to have to try and fight the reach because kangaroos do that sort of double, like the drop kick thing. And that's going to be, that's going to be challenging for you because you're not going to be used to striking at BJJ.

• 2:53James Smith?

  That's okay, because I'll, I'll catch the leg that they kick with and then we'll do a run the pipe, which is a wrestling move to sit them down. So, you know, I reckon I could have a few animals.

• 3:03Chris Williamson?

  What about an eagle?

• 3:05James Smith?

  Again, the size discrepancy, I wouldn't really know how to go about it and I wouldn't want to hurt the eagle either. So, you know, when it comes to altercations, I still think I'd probably end up running away, but I'm not sure if I'm honest. I probably want, you know, if I could fight any animal, actually no, I'd say a monkey, but they're way too strong. So I, I don't know if I'm honest, I'm really not sure.

• 3:26Chris Williamson?

  66% of Brits think that they could beat a house cat, which means that 34% think that the house cat would win. That, that really concerns me. Like a cat is literally designed to be drop kicked over a fence. It's the exact size, it's the perfect distance off the ground. If you can get it laterally, how far do you reckon you could kick a cat?

• 3:46James Smith?

  20, 20 metres.

• 3:47Chris Williamson?

  Easily. Yeah.

• 3:49James Smith?

  Have you heard, have you heard of the saying that a dead cat still bounces?

• 3:53Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I don't know what it means though.

• 3:55James Smith?

  So like, uh, when people are on their way out of success, right? They, they say like, you know, you could still book them for an event. You know, let's say you find someone from, uh, a hit TV, what was Too Hot to Handle, right? The first season, you could still get one from someone from season one, put them in a nightclub in Windsor and they would still sell tickets. They're a dead cat, a dead cat, it would still bounce if you drop it from enough height.

• 4:22Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 4:23James Smith?

  So how far it falls is still going to bounce. And the, the kind of adage, as I believe it is that, uh, yeah, you can still get a dead cat to bounce if you drop it from enough height.

• 4:32Chris Williamson?

  Did you know that the terminal velocity of a cat is non-fatal?

• 4:38James Smith?

  That's a, that would make a lot of sense seeing as they've jumped from buildings and it's mad. Have you seen, there was a video on the internet today of a guy jumping out of a window of like a fourth, fifth story floor, hit the deck hard and just got up and legged it. How he, how he-

• 4:54Chris Williamson?

  What did he land on? Like grass or pavement?

• 4:56James Smith?

  It was like grassy, grassy, kind of slippery slope onto concrete, but his butt hit the ground. Like if he broke his tailbone, it wouldn't have surprised me.

• 5:04Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 5:04James Smith?

  But the adrenaline, he just got up and ran. And the police officers come around a few minutes later and they're like, no way. No one could have survived that. It was like some park horse shit, you know, when you see him leap from buildings and then just land and roll. Um, but yeah, getting back to your question, if it was first blood, then a cat could win versus a human quite quick.

• 5:22Chris Williamson?

  Um, I actually- Little needle claws.

• 5:25James Smith?

  Yeah, I've, I've invented something called Dog Guard, which is when I sit on the floor and I try and take a dog's back. Uh, because of the nature of them having four legs, uh, it is, and you don't want to hurt the dog. There is certain techniques you need to use when fighting with animals, but-

• 5:38Chris Williamson?

  What different breeds of dogs have you tried this on?

• 5:41James Smith?

  Uh, Labrador mostly. I know RSPCA, they're, they're ready right now.

• 5:45Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 5:46James Smith?

  Ready to get us incriminating ourselves. The thing is, if you drive your car later and accidentally hit a cat, they'll come for you.

• 5:54Chris Williamson?

  But-

• 5:55James Smith?

  And they'll, they'll say this was premeditated.

• 5:58Chris Williamson?

  Okay, but if, if, if you, if you submit a Labrador, as long as it's adjudicated and the Labrador's signed a form of consent, then it's actually fine?

• 6:09James Smith?

  Yeah, absolutely fine.

• 6:11Chris Williamson?

  Cool. I think that, I actually think that there's probably a potential future for this sport. All right. So you're back from Australia now. How are you finding it in the UK?

• 6:18James Smith?

  Do you know what? One of the, uh, things that I'm celebrating about being back is the caliber of great guests that I can talk to on podcasts.

• 6:27Chris Williamson?

  You're saying that Australia doesn't have any interesting people in it, James?

• 6:31James Smith?

  I've just been through them all. No, I'm not, I'm not saying that like-

• 6:33Chris Williamson?

  Well, yeah, but then there's the guests as well.

• 6:35James Smith?

  In Australia, in Australia, there's certainly a more limited pool, let's say, especially of people that really interest me. Um, and-

• 6:45James Smith?

  It's very great to be in London where I see that someone's in London. Hey, can we do a podcast? You know, in the last four days, I've had two black belt world champions come on the podcast. Broly Osteamer and then this morning, Fion Davies. I was like, in what world can you just message two world champions to come on and have a chat? So that I'm very grateful for the fact we're fully open. Australia's now in full lockdown. It's great. And yeah, it's good to be back and see family as well. Do you know what's really bad? People say from a psychological standpoint, when you're asked to answer a question in like bullet points, often it's in the hierarchy of importance in your mind.

• 7:27James Smith?

  James, James obviously likes his podcast guests a lot more than he likes his family.

• 7:33Chris Williamson?

  That's funny. What about Australia? Cause you'll have friends and how ex housemates and stuff that are still over there. What are they saying it's like?

• 7:41James Smith?

  Pretty miserable at the moment where obviously we're only ever shown like the behind the scenes kind of highlight reels of what's actually going on there. So people are going to be like, oh, we're down the beach, sunny day, blue skies or whatever. But for a lot of them, there's, they can't train, they've got no sport. They're confined to their houses. There are helicopters going around saying, go inside. Military have been deployed to Sydney to keep people inside. The fines have gone up to like two and a half thousand pounds.

• 8:07Chris Williamson?

  I saw some bulleted list the other day saying that you can get huge fines for lying about your whereabouts, lying about contact tracing.

• 8:14James Smith?

  Yeah. And there's even, you're not allowed within a five kilometer radius of where you live. So even if you go to exercise and do.

• 8:20Chris Williamson?

  Not allowed outside of a five kilometer radius of where you live.

• 8:23James Smith?

  Yeah. So like.

• 8:24Chris Williamson?

  Within a five kilometer radius would be very difficult because then you'd never be able to go home. You just have all of these different people like circling apartment blocks.

• 8:32James Smith?

  Yeah, they, they, they can do that. But like, if you're going to say a shop or Woolworths that's really far away, they'll go, that's not within five kilometers where you live. That's not permitted. So it's very draconian and it must be quite upsetting to know that you're 18, 19 months into a pandemic and you're effectively at day zero. I mean, the vaccine uptake is about 25% at the moment.

• 8:54Chris Williamson?

  Why do you think that is?

• 8:55James Smith?

  I think that Australia didn't feel enough pain from the pandemic, if I'm honest. I think that pain is one of the most powerful motivators to, you know, once you experience trauma and pain, some people fold from it, but other people grow from it. And in the UK, there was so much pain, trauma, lockdown. The vaccination was, you know, understandably, the way out. The people took it. They didn't want to exist in.

• 9:20Chris Williamson?

  Do you see the vaccine as folding or being or growing from it?

• 9:24James Smith?

  In what sense? What do you mean?

• 9:26Chris Williamson?

  Well, you said that there's two ways that people respond to pain. One of them is folding and one of them is growing. And you mentioned that the vaccine is one of the outcomes of that. Do you see the vaccine as somebody folding from the trauma or somebody growing from the pain?

• 9:36James Smith?

  I actually think it's growing because it's a risk. People are saying, okay, you know, even I thought my perspective on the vaccine and the criticisms of it, I thought that gave us a position to be quite valiant with it. Hey, you've got something that you're saying is going to get me out of this. Everyone else is unsure. Put it in my arm. And I mean, the people that participate in those trials, like that is extraordinary. You know, nobility from people to go there and say, you know, I don't care what you say and put that on my arm. We can get out of this pandemic. Half of them got a placebo. And I think it's very valiant, just the way that these communities have come together to go do it. I was nervous getting the vaccine because of the misinformation that is touted. And I'm, I'm rather evidence based with my, my thinking, I believe, anyway.

• 10:22James Smith?

  And I was still nervous going there and I was looking at the sheet of potential side effects. And I'll never forget, I had a client in the gym, a very wealthy guy, and he was overworked, stressed. And his wife said to me, you will never train my husband unless he has a heart attack. Then he has a scare. He comes in the next week, he goes, all right, I had a bit of a heart attack. I'm going to start training.

• 10:43Chris Williamson?

  A bit of a heart attack?

• 10:44James Smith?

  Bit of a heart attack or at least a bit of a scare. And he trained with me, but he didn't really sort his life out. And as a consequence, he suffered Bell's palsy, where the side of his face collapsed. And he comes in, he goes, I've got two million pounds in my current account, but I can't fix this. And that resonated with me so much that you can't buy your way out of, you know, poor health isn't always visible, but something like that, which can happen to healthy people. Don't get me wrong. That was, you know, randomly for that to happen. He was like, doctors weren't sure exactly what the causation was. But I was thinking, imagine if that had happened today and he's about fifty, sixty, so he would have been vaccinated. One hundred percent, he's going to go, look what the vaccine did to my face.

• 11:27James Smith?

  And we've suddenly lost all logical thought processes surrounding bad things happening to people pre vaccine. You know, while was pause occurs, adults randomly die sometimes. Some of the stuff going on online of people having like seizures. This happened before vaccines exist. And then people go, she was perfectly fit and healthy. She went and got the vaccine. Two weeks later, this is what's happening. And celebrities are sharing it. I'm seeing it and I'm shitting myself. I'm like, oh no, my vaccine's booked in in two days.

• 11:55Chris Williamson?

  I've had friends who've had to go for therapy before they've got their vaccine. They've had to go and sit down with a therapist so that they wouldn't be so nervous, they wouldn't have an anxiety attack going in to get it. But that's a really interesting narrative that no one, but very few people have been talking about. Everyone that's been very anti vaccine has seen themselves as standing up to the man that this is the courageous, valiant thing to do. But what you highlighted there, there's something called the tragedy of the commons that you get with the free rider problem. So herd immunity is required for us to reach it in order for the economy to be opened back up. If the deaths and the cases were linked the same as they'd been a year ago, the UK would still be in lockdown. The only reason that we're now back open is because the deaths have reduced. The reason that the deaths have reduced is because everybody's vaccinated.

• 12:40Chris Williamson?

  That's what's decoupled cases from mortality because you get a lower infection load, so on and so forth. So you were totally correct. If you are someone that says, okay, I understand that in order to get this country back moving, in order to make other people who maybe can't get the vaccine to get their lives safe. I need to do something which I know has an associated risk with it and I'm going to take on that cost. But what you get is this free rider problem where the person who decides to just hold out and not get the vaccine and not get the vaccine and not get the vaccine, ends up benefiting from herd immunity just as much as the person who does. But they don't have to take on some of the potential risks that come associated with the side effects of it. So that free rider problem turns a lot of the narratives that people have had upside down. It's like, okay, so who's the valiant one?

• 13:25Chris Williamson?

  Like if I'm scared of taking the vaccine, if I know that there are some potential health risks, the same ones that you do, but I'm prepared to go, okay. I'm going to stick this in my arm so that we can get the country back moving, so that we can get the economy back working, so that people who can't get the vaccine can actually feel a little bit more safe. But my cleaner, my cleaner can't get the vaccine because she's got some like ongoing health concerns. So the only way that she could have come back to work in my house is if everybody in this house had got the vaccine. I didn't just get it for the cleaner, but that's an example.

• 13:53James Smith?

  There's also a lot of virtue signalling that's going on from people not getting the vaccine. And you're like, oh, you're not, you're not better than people because you've stood up to the man. But in Australia, it's very interesting because when I left Queensland, so you look in Brisbane, Gold Coast, New South Wales, maybe 200, the entire pandemic.

• 14:16James Smith?

  The whole time. New South Wales, maybe 200, the entire pandemic. We had 70, 80 days with no cases in transmission. So like, we were like, oh yeah, COVID, you know, you, you wouldn't have any, the statistical chances of me getting COVID in Australia were so small because no one had it. There were no transmissions in the community. I actually got a really bad cold. And when I got a really bad cold, I was like, I don't know why I'm getting tested. Because if I get tested, and it turns out I'm one of five million people that have got COVID, I'm done. I'll get cancelled.

• 14:50Chris Williamson?

  Out of the, out of the country, yeah.

• 14:51James Smith?

  Yeah, like James Smith, dirty COVID bastard. It's almost like shaming, like, over here, you get tested, find it's normal. It's like, you know, anything, it's just like, oh, Dave's got COVID. Oh, I see. I thought you had it already. In Australia, when I got the sniffles, I was like, it's best not be COVID. You know, and I joked around and said to people like, if chlamydia went away in two weeks, you'd never get tested. You just do your own thing, keep your dick in your pants, and you'd be fine. Right. And someone was like, give me a commitment. I didn't. Don't know what you're on about. You got it from someone else. And so I think because of that, because the problem wasn't so severe, you didn't know anyone that died of COVID in Australia, your friends, your family, very rarely. Some people are going to go, oh, what about the old people? I'm a 30 year old that lives in Sydney. I

• 15:33James Smith?

  don't know any 90 year olds. My family are all in the UK. So there wasn't enough trauma for people to be motivated to do it. And the Premier of Queensland actually came out and said, I'm not anti-vax, but so far, I think the AstraZeneca is causing blood clots in one in 10,000. If you put that across the population of Queensland, and the fact we've only had six or nine deaths. Statistically, we're going to have 20 more deaths from the vaccine than we will COVID.

• 15:58Chris Williamson?

  Fucking hell.

• 15:59James Smith?

  And she was completely right. So you've got that as far as a political kind of problem. Australia is still aiming for a zero COVID, you know, country, which is very difficult with the variants, hotel quarantine, the draconian nature of that. Olympians coming back from Tokyo, if you live in South Australia, you've had to quarantine twice. Two weeks in Sydney, fly to Adelaide and two weeks in South Australia. 28 fucking days. And now, am I mental here? Are we not in a position where we can get 100% COVID test in a quarantine environment within a shorter period than 14 days?

• 16:41James Smith?

  And some people are like, oh, but some people don't have symptoms until day 10 or whatever. Take a pint of my blood, right? Do what you need to do. But if you can determine I've not got it, let me the fuck out. You know what I mean?

• 16:53Chris Williamson?

  Well, I had a couple of friends who were comedians that went over to go and do tours. And they had to do the same thing. And you just watch someone slowly descend into madness as they went over and spent all of their time in this hotel, being delivered sort of pre prefabricated meals that were already made there. Thankfully, they've got, a few of them have got quite big following. So they'd managed to get fans to come and throw weed onto the balcony from a park that was down below. So people were going, throwing like bags of weed and sweets and like cans and other stuff up onto the balcony. But um, yeah, I don't know, man, it's.

• 17:30James Smith?

  You can deliver food to the actual place and say, can you take this up? So for instance, you get Uber Eats and Deliveroo. So that comes into the reception, it goes straight up. So if you have a food delivery for a friend, you could put weed brownies, so I've heard, in a bag. So I've heard, and the hotel will take it right up to their rooms.

• 17:49Chris Williamson?

  Imagine that, just 14 days, absolutely baked out, if you mind. You just come out as a vegetable, no COVID though.

• 17:55James Smith?

  Darren went in and he did 14 days to come out for Australia shows. He grew 70,000 followers. He became the, everyone wanted to know what, how he was losing his mind. And for him, he's a very disorganized person. Being in the same room for two weeks was perfect for him. He really enjoyed it.

• 18:12Chris Williamson?

  Constrained all of the things that he was getting wrong in his normal life.

• 18:16James Smith?

  Two of my friends were literally, day 13, they were like, I'm not sure I'm ready to leave. You know that.

• 18:22Chris Williamson?

  Got Stockholm syndrome. Keep me in here.

• 18:24James Smith?

  Exactly. Yeah. They actually genuinely felt like that. For me, like going back and I'm sitting in a hotel room for two weeks. As long as there's like Australia on the other side and I get to go out and jump in the beach at Bondi. That's fine, but the people having to do it come back to the UK, having to do it like an Ibis in Heathrow. Not the most glamorous of kind of scenarios, but it is, it's quite depressing. I know that some people in Australia wanted to travel to New Zealand where their parents were very in poor bits of health. There was a case of one girl who asked if she could go back and see her mum because her mum was dying. And while she, New Zealand said, you've got to quarantine. And as she was quarantined, her mum died. So she said, can I come out and go see her? They said, no, there was a chance she was going to miss her mum's funeral.

• 19:09James Smith?

  But they managed to push the funeral back a little bit later. And then she went to her mum's funeral and then had to do two weeks on the way back. So she was a month away from her partner. You've got people suffering with bereavement, loss of loved ones. And so many people forget that isolation, isolation is the worst punishment given to human beings. If you go to prison and you like Charles Bronson, Charles Bronson, does it sound like the most amount of solitary confinement? If that, if you, if you are the worst treated person or you're the worst person on the planet, you are solitary confined. And now we are dishing out months and years of solitary confinement to people in prevention of spreading a virus that's already in the country.

• 19:50Chris Williamson?

  But the alternative is to let it run rampant, right? It's difficult from a policy perspective to just say, oh, well, we'll let it out. People don't need to do the quarantine because you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. Like this is one of the situations, the only people apparently that knew exactly what policies should have been done. Are the press commenting on something that happened four weeks ago, like perpetually. Over the last 18 months, they always had the right answer, but not at the time. They had it in retrospect after a month. You're like, well. Do you really think that the people in charge of your country want more people to die? But how, yeah, I'm sure that some of the people at the top, probably psychopaths and sociopaths and people that don't have empathy have snuck through. But like, en masse, like the entire global leadership is just trying to decimate their own countries?

• 20:36James Smith?

  It's more so the fact that there's no kind of lateral thinking with this. Like, I would happily wear an ankle tag and be on house arrest. I would happily have, I would pay a security, a very good wage for two weeks to stand at my front door and to make sure I don't fucking leave. I'll pay, I'll pay that guy £200 a day. She let me be in a home. She let me have a garden. Let me have somewhere to sit. Let me employ someone to make sure I don't leave the house. You know what I mean? Put cameras out, put a tag on me, whatever, but let me live like a human, you know? To not get fresh air is one of my weirdest concerns. We did an event in Leeds last week and there was a room between the backstage area and the main stage area and it had no ventilation and it was a really old building.

• 21:20James Smith?

  And I felt claustrophobic in it and it was a big room. And I said, there's no one else bothered that there's no fresh air in here. Like, there's no ventilation. I panic in those kind of environments. And when you get into hotels where there's no window to open for a few hours, fine, to sleep, fine. But two weeks without having fresh air come in, I already worry what that's going to make me feel like. And some celebrities, if you go, there was some Geordie Shore cast that went out and they had outdoor balconies, seating areas, their rooms were next to each other so they could see each other. Poor Charlotte from Geordie Shore flew out for two weeks, quarantined, then the show got binned because of their outbreak and had to come back.

• 21:59Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, fully fucked it.

• 22:01James Smith?

  Yeah. So it's quite annoying that it's a rule for one and different rule for another. And you've kind of got to have contacts in TV if you want to have a balcony. Who have I got sucked off to get a fucking balcony? Let me know.

• 22:12Chris Williamson?

  If you can't do it, no one can.

• 22:14James Smith?

  Exactly. The SAS boys got rowing machines on their balconies. I'd like that, but just, I probably wouldn't use it.

• 22:22Chris Williamson?

  Another thing that I've been really fascinated by recently is sort of modern dating dynamics, especially in the era of Love Island and Instagram and Tinder. Relationships seem so interesting to me, especially as women start to be more educated and outperform men in employment. What have you been thinking about to do with this? You noticed anything interesting?

• 22:43James Smith?

  From a dating dynamic, do you know what, I know you've had him on the podcast before, Jordan Peterson, the kind of insight that he has about intelligent women being harder to settle up, they're less inclined to get married because for a woman, it is often a prerequisite to have a husband who is more intelligent. That's what they would like and what they would seek. And the more intelligent a woman, the smaller the pool for potential partners as a counterpart. However, for men, they do not have that same prerequisite in the other direction because they have this macho kind of, you know, sense of providing and looking after. Now, there are going to be some people that disagree with that. You're going to have outliers, but that's pretty much it. On average.

• 23:29James Smith?

  On average, yeah. So now that, you know, that's something, a dynamic I never really thought about before. Do you know what, since we've last spoken, I actually read a book called Attached. Have you read this? No. So my, one of my ex-girlfriends told me to read it. Fantastic. And I left it unread for a very long time. One of my housemates had the physical hard copy. And when I got back, I said, right, okay, I'm gonna listen to it. I listened to it, started running. And it, it's been criticized for not having enough categories. But you have secure, then you have avoidant, then you have anxious. So you've got these three broad categories. And when the traits were explained, I knew straight away I was avoidant, straight away. And I, I've never felt like I've been spoken to in a book before,

• 24:14James Smith?

  all my traits. And secure people aren't very omnipresent in the dating scene because they're in relationships, because they're secure. So if you go onto a dating app, I've now come to realize the majority of people are either anxious or avoidant. Now, if I start chatting to an avoidant person, we're probably not even going to kick off because we're both avoidant, there's not enough there. Now, if I end up finding a secure person, often there's not enough fireworks and you think they're quite boring, and you go straight past a partner that would have been a good idea. And I'm now come to realize that a lot of people that I know that are in successful, long-term relationships, the beginning of their relationship was never special. They were friends, or they went on a few dates, or they hung out, or they played on the same, they played at the same rugby club. And then over time, it's only month, two, three, and four, they realize how perfect they are for each other.

• 25:00James Smith?

  Then you've got this poisonous, avoidant and anxious connection where if you put an avoidant and anxious person together, there's fireworks in the onset. And I've realised so many of my previous relationships, I've dated anxious women and it's like two ends of a magnet that shouldn't be together. And I spot this now when I look at my friends. If an anxious person is feeling unloved, this is my understanding anyway, they partake in something called protesting behaviour. And when they partake in protesting behaviour, they cause an argument out of something that never had grounds for an argument. And they create this kind of protest because they want to feel loved by the other person. They need reconfirmation of the other person's love them. But as an attached, as an avoidant attachment style myself, when I see that protesting behaviour,

• 25:44James Smith?

  I distance myself from it. Like, whoa, you're acting a bit crazy, you know, I'm like, whatever, you know, what are you doing? So the avoidant person becomes more detached, the anxious person becomes more crazy trying to get the reaction and you kind of drift further apart. And then the avoidant person just disconnects, disconnects, disconnects and the relationship goes to shit. And that is literally probably the last four serious relationships I've had. And I read this book and I was like, oh shit, I've been dating the wrong type.

• 26:10Chris Williamson?

  It was all here. Yeah, but people confuse the, that sort of flirtation and the little bit of energy at the start for a spark, right? That the, the fact that you have a little bit of friction that can cause heat. This person's interesting, they challenge me, there's something different about them. And then down the line, you think, well, this is fun for dating, but do I actually want to roll this into a long-term relationship with someone that we're constantly each other's throats?

• 26:36James Smith?

  It's a really difficult pill to swallow to realise that the onset of a relationship of someone who's not right for you is amazing. And then it dies out. And often the onset of a relationship where someone's amazing for you feels quite dull. And people, if they're in a stage of their life where they're dating, they might just cast them aside and move on to something that feels better. And a friend of mine called me this morning, really angry about like a disagreement it had with a girl he's seeing. And I said, You're, I said, you're an anxious person, you're partaking in protesting behaviour. And I said, you haven't got the reaction you want from her and now you're mad and venting to me. I go, the fact you're speaking to me is because you're so annoyed she hasn't given you the reaction you want.

• 27:18James Smith?

  And I was like, fuck, I've read one book about dating and I'm already now seeing things differently. You know, like when the first time you find out about macros, protein, carbs, fat. It's like I look at things like that now. I'm like, I see the code, I see the numbers.

• 27:30Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, the red pills, pure red pill shit.

• 27:33James Smith?

  Like, so that, that helped me understand a lot about myself, really. And the dating scene where I am avoidant and I have a theory that being successful in whatever line of work you do, gives you a permit, a permit to be extra avoidant because if something's not working out or there's an argument or I start distancing myself from someone because they're protesting or they're annoying or there's no compatibility, similar to yourself, we have work we can fall back on. A constant variable that's always there supporting us. And you're seeing someone right now, right?

• 28:06Chris Williamson?

  Correct.

• 28:07James Smith?

  Let's say she starts making her life hell. The demons occur in your head going, fuck you, if I get rid of you, I could do an extra podcast every day. I can develop my business, what I do and my legacy if I eradicate you and replace it with work.

• 28:22Chris Williamson?

  But there's a comfort zone there, right? There's always this fallback plan. There's always something there that you know that you've got going on. It's actually kind of like being in two relationships at once.

• 28:32James Smith?

  It is.

• 28:32Chris Williamson?

  It's being in a relationship with the person that you're seeing and also being in a relationship with your work. And knowing that if that one starts to piss you off, that you've got something that you can put your love and your energy and your attention into and you will get love and energy and attention back. And yeah, I, I, I think that it makes for a very interesting dynamic when you have somebody that doesn't need the partner. And I suppose that a lot of attachment probably comes from a place of insecurity. And also if your ego gets hurt a little bit and you don't want to swallow that, you can just quite quickly, even if it's, even if it's not an insecurity, you can just think, well, fuck it.

• 29:13Chris Williamson?

  I'm just going to focus on something that I actually can predict because that was completely irresponsible of them to say.

• 29:18James Smith?

  Yeah, then you can, such as myself, go and put out good content, make video. And you can get your almost addictive dopamine serotonin hits from a digital device, which is fucked.

• 29:31James Smith?

  Now in a position where, you know, I could go cold shoulder on the person who's giving me grief. Where really in a relationship, argument should be a time where, you know, a bit like training a muscle. You create damage, it comes back stronger, create damage, come back stronger and you're progressively overloading. And that trauma that occurs is a part of the growing process. But it becomes so easy when you are, you know, successful in your own right, when you're working for yourself, let's say, actually. Because that's probably the metric of success I'm using. So easy to just turn your way on that and go to the other relationship. And then you go, oh, and this is the dangerous assumption. You're like, if I do that and make more money and get more successful, I can set up for my future life, my future wife, my future this.

• 30:14James Smith?

  And having, talking about a utopian version of a future wife is a classic trait of an avoidant attachment style. And I was like, when I was at that, I was all, fuck.

• 30:24Chris Williamson?

  Wanting to move back to Australia, build the business, get the family, buy the dog, do the this thing. They're all justifications for why you don't need to put up with difficulties in the now.

• 30:35James Smith?

  And that is classic avoidance style. And I thought that was just me. And then I realized that everyone of the same attachment style is the exact same. And I was like, fuck. And I've actually used that sometimes to create distance between former lovers where I think, oh, my future wife, I think, gonna act like that. She isn't gonna say that. She isn't gonna behave like that. Go and get out of here. You know what I mean? So I've realized that a lot of these kind of flaws that exist in my, in my thinking towards relationships is based on how I am. And that apparently is governed from how you're brought up. But you need to have variation in attachment styles as part of like evolutionary kind of traits. You need these kind of outliers who, if I, I always think as if I was a primitive human.

• 31:18James Smith?

  I was like, I'll be out killing wildebeest and shit, bringing back legs of meat and pillaging through all the women in the, in the camp. You know, like, I, I probably would quite like to just go hunt on my own. And I was like, that's probably why I, you know, I like working on my own. I like, I'm very much an ambivert. I have my extrovert moments, I have my introvert moments. And in the digital age with social media, it's never been easier to be, you know, introverted and avoidant and still yet hit quotas and all the things that.

• 31:49Chris Williamson?

  But you get to be extroverted on your own terms. You get to pick when it is that you do it. And this is one of the reasons why I love doing the podcast that if I was, I'm good buddies with Mike Thurston as an example, and he's pretty much constantly vlogging. If he wants to put out two or three videos a week, he actually needs to capture quite a lot of content, needs to do shit. You can't just sit down, have a conversation. He actually has to do shit. He has to go on a boat or go to the gym with Larry Wheels or fucking do whatever, buy a new car. So he has to do stuff and he's constantly on, always, always on. But that suits his personality type. He's sort of this quite gregarious outgoing sort of like dude who's super extroverted and always has buddies around him. I'd be like, fuck, man, like I need. So last week

• 32:34Chris Williamson?

  I was in London and I did Rebel Wisdom on Wednesday. I did Lotus Seaters podcast on Friday. I spent a full day with my buddy Alex O'Connor, Cosmic Skeptic, on another day. And then on Saturday I did GB News. It's like, I literally, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I spent four days and maybe like an hour a day waking was on my own. And the rest of the time was around other people. And I came back on Saturday night and I was completely wrecked. Like this is, I mean, it was awesome and fun, but I needed that time to sort of rest and recuperate. And yeah, designing your life and whatever your creative pursuits are and the job that you have and the sort of partner that you're with around, okay, where do I get my energy from? Do I have

• 33:18Chris Williamson?

  a partner who constantly needs me? If I'm someone who actually enjoys their time on their own, then that's not going to work because I'm always going to feel like they're pushing and they're being needy when I actually just require a bit of space.

• 33:28James Smith?

  I think that reading that book and really thinking about what I'd learned, I've realised that the real issue is that I've never communicated my requirements and needs to be on my own. And if I'd communicated that better, when I had gone to that place and needing to be on my own, the partner I was with wouldn't have felt unloved because they would have justification.

• 33:50Chris Williamson?

  This is why it's happening.

• 33:51James Smith?

  Yeah. So I think the next time I'm in that kind of place, I need to say to someone, hey, look, I need time on my own now and then. Do you know what? A lot of the times that my relationships have combusted is when I've spent too much time with people, trying to please them. You know, letting them stay around all the time because it's convenient for their gym routine, letting them stay around because, you know, whatever it is. And then I've realised that I've been neglecting my own attachment style in a bid to make someone else happy. And because of that, it's just blown the relationships up. And now, in retrospect, I can see that my most successful relationships are when my girlfriends live further from me. And I was like, fuck, I need some fucking good therapy if I'm gonna move in with someone.

• 34:32Chris Williamson?

  I know, man. Well, there's a few things that I've been reading about recently. One of them is the cohabitation effect, which you may be familiar with. If you live with somebody who you are intending on getting married with for more than six months before the marriage, there's a statistically significant increase in the chances of divorce. So most people, this goes against what most people would think. You move in together, you work out if you're compatible, and then you make the relationship down the line more likely to work. But there's something going on, and there's a bunch of different theories. One of them is this open door policy. The presumption is that if you decide to live with somebody before you've committed to them legally and made it marriage material, you're basically saying you're good enough for now, you're good enough right now, but I'm not going to commit just yet. We're living together, but I'm not going to commit just

• 35:16Chris Williamson?

  yet. And that there's this sort of subtext that comes through. There's a whole bunch of other suggestions, but that's one of them. Another one that I've read about is that in a relationship where the woman out earns the man, there is a 50% increase in chances of divorce. There is also a 25% increase in the chances that the man needs to use sedaphenil or Viagra to perform in bed. And the fuck, the fuck, I know. And the final one was if you have a master's level education versus a bachelor's, there's a 93% increase in right swipes on Tinder.

• 35:56James Smith?

  Really?

• 35:57Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, one, so one year, one year of your life, just lads, if you're listening, if you're 21 and considering going on to do a masters, increase, even if you're not bothered about the degree, 93% increase in right swipes on Tinder, or just lie about it. I mean, that's an alternative.

• 36:10James Smith?

  Is that in the profile where it talks about education? Or is that just from how the person dresses persona?

• 36:16Chris Williamson?

  No, it would be in the, I think it would be stipulated in the profile description.

• 36:20James Smith?

  Oh, then fucking lie about it. I lied about having a BSc for fucking four years in the corporate world. They, they just wanted someone with a BSc. They wanted someone with that attitude. And I, I had that attitude when I was at work, but I only got a foundation degree, uh, which is degrees. But then I think that men hugely underestimate the sapio sexual nature of women as well.

• 36:43Chris Williamson?

  What's that mean?

• 36:44James Smith?

  Women that, or no people that are sexually attracted to people with intelligence. Sapio sexual. That's if I, if I, uh, when I'm presenting a talk and I do something that's really kind of profound and there's silence as they're absorbing it, I'm like, yeah, ladies, the term is sapio sexual. If you're finding me attractive right now.

• 37:04James Smith?

  But I, I guarantee that the women, I think, uh, and again, people, people say, oh, why is a man explaining how women feel? And if you do feel that way, fuck off. Um, I've dated women for fucking 15, 16 years. I think I have an insight to it.

• 37:20Chris Williamson?

  I've made a lot of mistakes. I have a very, very good insight into what women do and don't like in relationships.

• 37:24James Smith?

  Dated more women, the most women. So relax. All right. And then I would say that women are attracted to wit and banter and all of this. But I think it's because if you look across the, the scale of things, funny people are intelligent, very intelligent. I think the people that have got witty, quick banter, even the fact that you could get a joke around quick, people see that as a source of intelligence.

• 37:45Chris Williamson?

  It's an immediate demonstration of intellect. Correct.

• 37:48James Smith?

  And that must be, uh, you know, an element of sexual attraction because not only do you want the kind of physical, you know, uh, traits in, in someone and testosterone profiles, androgens, growth hormone, reproductive, whatever, you also want someone who's intelligent and the same goes. More so for women than men, men go for women. But then again, that's often misconstrued that men obviously then don't find intelligence attractive and they just want tits or ass or whatever fucking middle England likes to put in your questions box, you know. Hey guys, ask me anything intellectual level tits or ass, you know, fucking hell.

• 38:25Chris Williamson?

  That was something I found really weird. So when I went on Love Island first season and they said, what's, what's your type? What they were asking was, do you like petite girls? Do you like brunettes? Do you want green eyes or brown eyes? Do you want it to dress like this? They weren't asking, what are the fundamental characteristics that are going to never change across time? They were saying, what are the physical characteristics that are going to fade within the next eight years? That's what they were asking.

• 38:49James Smith?

  That's a very dangerous kind of question as well. When you put it like that, fade over the next eight years. And another phenomenon is the amount of people that I've met and found them very sexually attractive after a couple of hours. And thought, wow, if I'd only seen a screenshot of you, I might not have swiped right on you. Alternatively, the polar opposite, where I've swiped right on someone based on their picture and met them and there's been nothing.

• 39:14Chris Williamson?

  So this is something that the incel community has a huge problem with at the moment. So recently we had that shooting in not Newquay, in Plymouth. Uh, I got shouted at for putting Newquay in the newsletter by someone from Plymouth, uh, by someone from Newquay and said that I'd offended their entire town.

• 39:33Chris Williamson?

  One of the problems that the incel community has is that online dating platforms like Tinder has allowed women to constrain their potential dating pool with what are essentially arbitrary metrics. So they can say on certain dating platforms, apparently you can put in your height and then you can also restrict your matches by height. So if you're a five foot eight guy and the woman says nobody before below five foot 10, you let, you do not get a look in with that woman. But what it misses off and the argument from the incel community is that.

• 40:05Chris Williamson?

  There are X factors, grace, you know, the way that somebody moves, like the fact that they have good body language, all of these things that you cannot put your finger on, and these aren't quantified on an app. Now, something tells me that the incel community isn't exactly swimming in X factor and, and grace, but the argument still makes sense.

• 40:26James Smith?

  When I first started online personal training before I had an app, I would get my clients, they, as soon as they paid, I would send them a video. I go, hey, thank you very much for joining my online personal training platform. Really excited to get working with you. I require you to send me a video back. For the first six months, I just started chatting to them, but I didn't know them. That one video that they would send me, they'd be like, hi, my name's Tricia, or whatever it was. I could see their level of anxiety, their way that they held themselves, the way they spoke. And that gave me a good idea of building their program. And if they seemed like very anxious and very, their hands shaking, no camera presence, I was like, probably not going to have a squat rack in their first phase of programming. Because if they are nervous holding up a phone to me, I'm not sending them into the depths of the squat rack. And then alternatively, if

• 41:10James Smith?

  someone was probably like, hi, James, yeah, so I do group classes every week. I'm like, she's going to be fine going in. It was amazing that just 45 seconds of someone on camera, I could develop an assumption for who they were and what they were like. And where I have used dating apps before with caution. One of the first things I do when I take the conversations to WhatsApp, I want to see you speak. I want to, I just want to, I want to see you. And there's often an unfair fucking balance if they follow me on Insta. Because I was like, hey, here's 400 hours of me chatting shit. I just want a fucking 30 second WhatsApp video to make sure that you're not face tuned and fucking, you know what I mean?

• 41:47Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's an interesting one. We were talking as well before we recorded about the interesting lack of a stereotype or an archetype for a young guy in his 30s who isn't married, doesn't yet have a family, but can't wait to be a dad. I'm fascinated by this. I think it's such an interesting time for men who perhaps have freedom and liberty to do what they want with their life. Maybe they've got more resources than they actually need. And

• 42:16Chris Williamson?

  From the outside, you look at those guys and it would be the Dan Bilzerians of the world. That's like the archetype of the guy in his 30s or 40s who's still sort of got it all. But I think both me and you agree, like, I can't wait to be a dad. I actually cannot wait to become a father. I think I'm going to be an awesome father. I think I would have sucked as a dad at 23, 24 years old. I would have been like just awful. Like, there should be some sort of license that you need or like some sort of test that you have to pass, and I would not have passed.

• 42:45James Smith?

  You have to fucking test to drive a car. Why can't you do it?

• 42:49Chris Williamson?

  To have a kid.

• 42:50James Smith?

  It could do a lot more damage to the community with the family than with the car.

• 42:53Chris Williamson?

  Correct. And yeah, I just think it's it's such an interesting sort of time to be alive where you've got these sort of dynamics, this sort of freedom and no archetype for a man. A woman hits 30 and everybody sort of starts side eyeing her about, oh, sort of TikTok, biological clock, when you're going to get married. But for men, it's like, oh, go on, mate. Like, you must be loving it, still being free and liberty and stuff like that. And you're like, well, kind of. But on the flip side, I also want a family.

• 43:20James Smith?

  Yeah, I think there's another interesting statistic that I always keep in mind that the average guy marries a woman four years younger. The average woman marries a guy four years older, another Peterson one. I'm so glad I hadn't read his stuff before I wrote my books. It would be so Peterson leaning. But yeah, it's so interesting you kind of say about that. And I did a psychedelic trip earlier on this year and did some mushrooms, sat on the edge of a cliff in North Bondi and just thought about life, listened to some Hans Zimmer. And when you take psychedelics, a lot of your ego is stripped away because I find that having a certain amount of money, certain amount of recognition, success in whatever fields really shrouds your vision from often your values that sit underneath it.

• 44:04Chris Williamson?

  What actually matters, yeah.

• 44:05James Smith?

  Yeah, and I was thinking, strip that away, what have I really got? And I had this conversation with Paul Lima a few weeks ago where I said, I sat there, the first thing I thought about with this, I fucking love psychedelics. The first question that my mind put onto me was, do people like you for who you are or what you do? And I had to sit with that. And I was like, well, if you took away everyone that likes me for what I do, how many people like me for who I am? As a percentage, point, fractions of a percent, right? And I was like, oh, it's quite a tough pill to swallow. Sat with it for a few hours, went through the playlist. And then the second one was my family's biggest. If I was to say to my mom and dad, what are you most proud of in life? I think they would say me and my sister.

• 44:51James Smith?

  I'm no question about it. And I thought, huh, I've come through that door, the family house, a lot of times in the last 10 years. And I'm sure they're chuffed to pieces with Sunday Times bestseller. You know, chuffed to pieces that he did this, came back first class from Sydney. I was like, and actually I bought my dad a Porsche or bought my family a Porsche earlier on this year. My, uh, my dad picked me up from the airport in a rented van. And I was like, we've got to sort this out. So, um, I went, I bought him a Porsche and he was chuffed to pieces. And he, he messages me on WhatsApp, he goes, son, I've never been so happy behind the wheel of a car. And I was like, that makes me feel proud. But I reckon the day I come home with the wife and kids, that's when they're going to be like, you've done it. Made it. Done it.

• 45:32James Smith?

  And I, I was sitting back with that and I was like, my parents are quite similar to me in the sense where they don't really care about flash items or, or big things. And my mom and dad don't travel. I can't even really take them on holiday, you know? Even if I was taking them somewhere, Posh, it'd be like down the south coast in the UK, which you can't do in the pandemic. So everything's booked, you know? They're, the happiest things for them in life is seeing my nephew, going to see my sister at work, going out for a Sunday roast or whatever. I was like, fuck, if I really want to impress the most important people in my life, I'm probably going to have to have a family. And I was like, the fuck, what I'm, what am I doing? If I was to, you know, look at a spider diagram of my life, there are some parts of it, they're extremely successful, but other parts of it, they're extremely lacking.

• 46:16James Smith?

  That psychological experience really got me thinking. And when I do talk to people that are like, oh mate, you must do so much shagging, bet you get loads of birds. I'm like, hey, I'm actually trying to work and develop an area of my life that I'm lacking in.

• 46:28James Smith?

  I'm trying here, I'm trying. And yeah, it's tough because you do get pulled in so many directions and your mind wanders and you're like, oh, maybe I do want that. And then part of your mind goes, maybe you don't. Maybe you're designed not to, maybe you're not going to get on with it. My track record of relationships is dire.

• 46:47Chris Williamson?

  Mine's not fantastic either, no.

• 46:49James Smith?

  For some reason, there's this illusion in my mind, I'm just going to meet the one. And then everything changes. But is that probably an illusion? Is that a utopian desire? Is, you know, am I, am I so hardwired and programmed? I'm thirty two.

• 47:07James Smith?

  My life revolves around my work, my routine and my training. It's going to take a lot of effort for me to change that up. And it's quite concerning. Like, we all just see our few years time with our family, wife and kids. There's a lot of work that needs to happen before that becomes a reality. And I think I'm quite negligent of giving enough mental attention to that amount of work required.

• 47:30Chris Williamson?

  I think one of the challenges that everyone is going to have to come up against that's in that situation, you know, the the PTs that are listening, the people that work for themselves, that run their own businesses, that do whatever, feel liberated, you're going to have to concede that your performance at work will likely have to take a hit in order for you to have a family. Like, there is a price for you to pay. You know, if you want to court the goal of your dreams, if you want to start the family, if you want to, you're going to have to take time off work. Like, what happens? Vast majority of people, anyone that's read The E-Myth by Michael Gerber, like, most people don't have a business. They have a highly leveraged solo pursuit. Like, if they left their business for two weeks, all hell would break loose. Like, that means you don't have a business. It's just you, but you're just leveraged a little bit more. And you're going

• 48:14Chris Williamson?

  to have to deal with that. You're going to have to deal with it existentially. You're going to have to deal with the ego. Like, okay, I'm not going to be able to post videos as frequently because I'm up at four in the morning looking after the kids, or I've got to support the wife, or we're in hospital, in labour for fucking forty eight hours, or whatever, whatever goes on. Like, these are things, these are prices that you need to pay. And if you've attached such a sense of self-worth, and you've wrapped your ego around your success, your externalities of your success.

• 48:46Chris Williamson?

  I wonder how many people without the right amount of self-work will end up low-key resenting their family for taking away from them something that they previously used to get a sense of fulfillment from.

• 48:58James Smith?

  That's exactly the word I was about to bring in is I'm worried about maybe a future self of resentment, you know, before this I did more, I had more, could afford more, had more freedom. I haven't freedoms taken away. We've had a lot of that in the last couple of years. You know, this utopian desire of having a family on my, oh, you know, could I flip a coin and be the other way around? I did a dangerous poll on Instagram once saying, if you could go back and have kids, would you? It was 50/50. 50% yes, 50% no. I was like, fuck.

• 49:29Chris Williamson?

  Thanks. Thanks for helping.

• 49:32James Smith?

  I was like shit the bed. I was like, maybe I'll just be a solo warrior my whole life. But you know, the funny thing is that we talk about Dan Bilzerian in my most recent, I won't give it way too much, in my most recent talk, a differentiate pleasure and happiness. I think Dan Bilzerian fills his life with tremendously high amounts of pleasure to fulfill just a speck of happiness. Whereas, you know, other people have no fucking pleasure at all. Their kids wake them up and they fucking resent their wife. They fucking tired all the time, but they're happy. And there is going to have to be a trade-off at some point for a lot of people. I've done PT seminars before where people will say to me like, oh, I wish I had what you had. I wish I had the free time. Wish I had

• 50:17James Smith?

  this. And I'm like, you're married and you've got kids. So like, yeah, I'm like, well, I've won some things, you've won others. I was like, you probably wouldn't trade yours for mine. At this stage, I wouldn't trade mine for yours. None of us is a winner. There's no scale here. It's not like 100 grand in the bank equals the same pleasure as one kid.

• 50:34Chris Williamson?

  But that's the thing, man. Like, most people don't see the prices that you have to pay for success. And you said it earlier on, certain areas of your life have hypertrophied and other areas have sort of atrophied or maybe never even existed. And um. Yet you don't see like, I always use this example of Tiger Woods. Like, you don't know the price that Tiger Woods had to pay to be Tiger Woods. On the golf course, an absolute animal, perhaps one of the best ever. But I wouldn't take relationship advice from him. But I don't think that he's, you know, he's got such low self-worth that he's been pulled over at the side of the road for falling asleep at the wheel as he's on his medication. He recently rolled his car. I'm going to guess that he probably wasn't fully sober when he did that. And that snapped both his legs. He spent nearly half a decade out of the sport because he's had injuries.

• 51:17Chris Williamson?

  Because he's pushed himself so hard, because that's what was drilled into him by his father. All right, do you want that? Like, do you really want that? Because everyone looks at him and thinks, oh, great. I'd love to be Tiger Woods, travelling the world, playing golf, night contract, all this money, adoration. Okay. Do you want to not be able to look yourself in the mirror? Do you want to not be able to love a wife? Do you want to not be able to stay faithful to one woman? Those are the prices that you have to pay. But because we applaud success and we put it on such a narrow domain, such a narrow channel, and we put it on such a high pedestal. You think, right, that's what I want. Because that's what everybody else seems to think is cool to want. So therefore, everyone just starts memetically copying whatever it is that's on the top of that. But the grass is always greener with this stuff.

• 51:56Chris Williamson?

  You know, me and you, two, two guys who could go anywhere in the world, could work from anywhere in the world, are both saying, oh, isn't it interesting thinking about families? Like, wouldn't it be, I wonder if I'm going to be a good dad? Like, I wonder what sort of fucking, like, family SUV I'm going to, like, do you know what I mean? Like, what sort of stroller should we get? And, um, the grass is fucking greener with this stuff. Like, to look at you and say, you've got it sorted, mate, is just, it's narrow-minded.

• 52:24James Smith?

  It's also, uh, here's a, a plus four Uno card. Uh, I'm adopted as well, so I've never seen or been with or touched a bloodline relative. So if I have a kid, that is going to be the only relative that's in my bloodline.

• 52:42Chris Williamson?

  That's crazy.

• 52:44James Smith?

  Yeah, so like, that's another really crazy, like, plot twist on that where... People look around at their family, they can see their features and their parents and their sisters and everything. But I've never had that. So that's another kind of layer to it. And sometimes

• 53:00James Smith?

  men right now are not in the best place they've ever been for fertility and for sperm count and for environments. Like, I'm pretty sure that as we go through the next 20, 30 years, where I think there'll be a natural decline of population due to the fact of women being more educated, contraception, all these things, more likely to be in professional work life. I think we're also seeing generations of less and less healthy men and more obesity, more lack of sunlight, all of these things. And I sometimes worry about fertility, you know, like it's a weird thing that when I'm 32, I got hit in the nuts in jiu jitsu the other day. I was like, I was like, fuck, I was like, don't do that again. I was like.

• 53:42Chris Williamson?

  I haven't had kids yet. I was seriously thinking the other day, because someone had commented and said that the quality of male sperm decreases. So not, well, also the volume, but the quality in terms of fertility decreases in your late 30s. And I was thinking, I was going to Google it. Where can I freeze some jizz? Like, where can I freeze some, just in, you know, just in case, just as an insurance policy?

• 54:09James Smith?

  It's a, it's a valid thing. It's a hundred percent a valid thing. And like, yeah, like, because then I was thinking, I was like, if I was infertile, which people think is really rare, well, my mum and my mum and dad couldn't have kids. So I've lived and grown up with perfectly normal human beings that have got no ill bits of health. For the amount of wine they drink and the fact they've never been to a gym, they're fucking amazing.

• 54:31James Smith?

  And they couldn't have kids. And I was like, fuck. And then I was like, imagine if I was in a position where I couldn't. That means that my bloodline would never, ever continue. And there would be, it's not like I could branch through, you know, my sister or anyone else or my parents or whatever. I was like, that's it. That's it done. The lone gene pool that existed through myself that never, ever.

• 54:51Chris Williamson?

  Four billion years of unbreak, unbroken survival and reproduction.

• 54:55James Smith?

  We're dying and ending.

• 54:56Chris Williamson?

  Done, full stop.

• 54:58James Smith?

  Yeah. And I was like, I'll be shit. And then Paul Alima, one of my favourite people, I had him on the pod a few weeks ago. He nearly died of Covid, quite literally nearly died. And he has two daughters, loves them to pieces. And he said, there was like a little bit of solace when he thought, when he's laying on the floor, waiting for the ambulance to come get him. He was like, it's okay, they'll be, they'll be fine.

• 55:22Chris Williamson?

  The genetic prodigy has continued, yeah.

• 55:25James Smith?

  Yeah. And I was like, there's something about that that I don't think is really discussed about. It's not, it's not quite macho to really talk and epitomise reproduction. And there definitely is something in the body clock since thirty to thirty two, which annoyingly, my body clock and my broody nature has become a lot more intense since the pandemic.

• 55:45Chris Williamson?

  Correct, same.

• 55:47James Smith?

  But at the same time, the freedom to roam meets fall in love and all of that has never been more

• 55:57James Smith?

  shattered and separated and digital and soulless. And it's got so much worse. And for me, I have a great fucking fantastic life and I'm very worried about other people that would be in this exact same existential anxiety of where the world's going and when things will be back to normal. And, you know, how many people that would have been on fate's path to meet each other and fall in love and go on romantic trips and meet backpacking in Thailand, bump into each other in Split in Croatia, meet each other on a fucking boat at Yusei Week. How many of those have just been squandered and ended up sitting on their fucking sofa watching Netflix instead?

• 56:36James Smith?

  It's crazy that this, the dynamism of the human kind of Petri dish has been frozen for two years. And I feel like I'm in the middle of it and I feel like age is ticking away. I was thirty when this pandemic started, I'm now thirty two and I don't like that.

• 56:57Chris Williamson?

  Hormones are a hell of a drug, man. I was saying this the other day to Carl Benjamin down south. He's got three kids and like a fourth on the way. My business partner's misses is three days overdue on her, on their third, their first daughter. They got two boys. The first daughter is on like literally fucking in the oven, ready to, ready to be taken out now. And um, for years, kids were the things that stopped my friends from seeing me on a Saturday when I wanted to, to go out and have breakfast and I was hungover or whatever. They made too much noise when I was on a plane and I was trying to sleep and they were just sort of icky and they got in the way. And now I look at young kids, toddlers or babies and I'm like, bet you're cool.

• 57:41Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. You do like, I bet you do like fun. I bet you do like quite fun stuff. I'm like, whoa, who's this? Like, who's this existing inside of this head? Like, get out. Like, you weren't, you weren't here before. I don't know who you are.

• 57:55James Smith?

  It's, uh, it's interesting as well. Then you've got this huge kind of utopian picture of meeting the woman and there being a perfect time for it to be the mother of your kids or your wife. And this is a gray area as well. Anyone you meet that's happily married or has kids. There was never a right time. If you were to ask me about business and ask me when the right time is, I'm like, there's never a right time. Just fucking do it. Correct the course along the way.

• 58:19Chris Williamson?

  Again, in relationships, you're unable to take that same advice. Yeah, but I'm just, well, just hang fire. I'll just hang fire for the next one. I'll just hang fire for the next one. Maybe the problem's her again.

• 58:30James Smith?

  Yeah, it's, and it's relationships, I'm very fixed. Business, I'm very growth. So I've got similar mind, completely different mindsets. And like, if anyone says things and launching a business, I'd say if you're ready for the business, you launch too late. But then in a relationship, whoa, whoa, whoa.

• 58:47Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, hold on, boys.

• 58:48James Smith?

  And like, I don't, I suppose to add on top of that, I know that myself and probably thousands of British and Irish people in Australia. Are struggling with visa status and

• 59:00Chris Williamson?

  You don't even know if you're going to be able to go back properly, right?

• 59:04James Smith?

  Yeah, I'm in limbo at the moment and for four years now, four years, which is over 10% of my life. I feel like a plane circling, ready to land. That's how I felt because I want to live in Australia. I do not want to live in the UK. I do not want to have a serious relationship in the UK. So that's another thing. So if someone here was like, James, let's go on a date. I'd be like, well, I really don't want this to work out. I've already decided in my head, I don't want this to work. And then someone goes, oh, but if you like him, you can take him to Australia. I'm like, I can't get myself in. You know, I can't get myself in, you're fucked. It could be another year before I even hear back from my decision on PR, which might not even be a yes, takes me to 33. So there are so many British people and Irish people in Australia.

• 59:50James Smith?

  But aren't sure where they live. They, they, they go to bed in Australia, but they have limited amounts of time before they might have to come back. And if you're the type of person like me that goes there and you go, this is where I want to be home. Nothing else really cuts it. People go, oh, you might like America. You're like, well, I don't want to live in America. Oh, I'm sure you'll love it. The beaches are amazing in LA. You're like, yeah, but I don't want to live in LA. Oh, you should just go to Europe. You're like, what? And have no friends and somewhere nice in Europe like. So this whole kind of limbo at the moment, I'm not giving myself permission to be happy in the UK because it's not where I want to be.

• 1:00:21Chris Williamson?

  You do know that that is a very good coping mechanism though. That's a very, very good get out of jail free card that allows you to continue your avoidant behavior.

• 1:00:30James Smith?

  Oh yeah, it's the classic trait of the avoidant. But for me as well.

• 1:00:33Chris Williamson?

  Because it's justified. It's justified by something which genuinely exists. Like this is a, it's a compelling narrative. It genuinely is.

• 1:00:42Chris Williamson?

  But on top of that, it's a very convenient narrative for you, given your particular attachment style.

• 1:00:46James Smith?

  Oh yeah, yeah, I'm aware of that, but I'd rather be wrong in Australia than right in the UK.

• 1:00:53James Smith?

  So like, yeah, and to be fair, like, you're always in this constant battle where like, I was hungover the other day, I go see my parents, I was like, this is nice. But there's, John, I'd love to be wrong. I'd love to go to Oz, move there for three, four years and go, I had it wrong. I'd love to be wrong, I want to come home. But for the time being, as far as quality of life, there's just like, I never appreciated how much I love blue skies. Sounds like such a weird thing. I'm sat here now, I'm looking at a grey sky, it's August, it's in the UK, it's freezing today, absolutely fucking freezing. And I've never, John, I discovered a lot about my values in Australia and how much I love wholesome activities.

• 1:01:34Chris Williamson?

  Give me, give me some of your favourite wholesome activities.

• 1:01:37James Smith?

  So like, I would nap in the afternoon, which I do here, but then I'd have a cup of instant coffee, a bowl of cereal and wait for my housemate Cam to come home and we'd go swim in the sea and go down and I'm my happiest. It's cold in the sea.

• 1:01:50Chris Williamson?

  Dog wagging its tail, yeah.

• 1:01:52James Smith?

  Yeah, go jump in, piss about, like jumping through the waves, getting beaten up, come home, like in the morning, hey lads, 6am, sunrise dips. No one can deny a sunrise dip. The only thing getting in the way of a sunrise dip is you not wanting to get out of bed. So then we'll just fucking pull you out of bed. And like, I lived in a budget house in Australia, my rent's like 200 pounds a week. I lived in a bit of a shit old part of Sydney, but I was happy. Whereas in London, I need to live somewhere nice. I'm living in Richmond, living on my own, living in a posh area because I need to get my happiness from that because I'm not getting it from outside the house.

• 1:02:28Chris Williamson?

  Have to compensate, yeah.

• 1:02:29James Smith?

  Yeah, Richmond Park's lovely, but I don't want to be there. After I'm in there for an hour, going for a jog, I'm bored of this now, get me home. I watch so much more TV here. And like, although there's just so many kind of wholesome parts to me that are unfulfilled here, like I haven't swum in the sea now for like two months.

• 1:02:44Chris Williamson?

  So here's something that I think a lot of entrepreneurs need to realise about being in the UK. If you are in the UK, if you're somewhere else that you just don't like where you live. One way to look at that is I am not being fulfilled externally in some of the ways that living somewhere better, quote unquote, would facilitate me. But on the flip side, it's a forcing function that permits you to spend more time on work. Like if you need to front load the amount of effort that you put into a business or growth or your skill development or whatever it is, living somewhere shit is actually a really good forcing function for that because there are fewer things to distract you. Now, the argument would be, what is the end goal reason of you being good at the business? It's to have a life which makes me feel happy, so why not just shortcut it and live somewhere

• 1:03:29Chris Williamson?

  good in the first place? But there is also, I think that you would agree too, there is like a, there's an entry requirement, right? There's like a buy-in that you need to get. Like you need to get to a minimum level of income and security with the business. And if you can front load the work that gets you to that more soon, this is one of the reasons I really wanted to talk to you about. I know you are a little averse to buying property, that buying property is something that you're not a huge believer in. And I was really interested to dig into that. What's your reasons for that?

• 1:03:59James Smith?

  So, first of all, a lot of people can't really afford to buy houses. They can't. Majority of people can't afford to buy houses. The majority of people in their twenties should be figuring out who they are and what they want to do. Instead, they get sidetracked. So they get into a job that pays 20K, then it pays 25, then it pays 30, and they're now working a job they don't really like for 30K. They then start eyeballing a house. They end up then buying a property somewhere they don't want to live. It's someone they probably don't want to spend the rest of their life with, so they can get a mortgage to appease their parents. They then remain working a job they don't like, to live in a house in a place they don't

• 1:04:41James Smith?

  want to live, to afford a mortgage with a partner that they don't want to be with. And suddenly, they're not only trapped by the partner, they're now trapped by their job. They can't just leave their job and go start a career, can't go turn a hobby into a passion. They now have the pressure of if I break up with my partner, I'm gonna have to take on the mortgage payments myself that I can't afford. Cause I'm not earning enough money to do so. So I think a lot of people are living in this existential fuck up. Where even if they do break up with their partner, they now need to sell the house. And any money they did make on the house is now got to go stamp duty, fees, fucking legal, all of this shit. Right. I think a lot of people fall into that trap, not everyone. But when I'm giving advice to people, it's to those people.

• 1:05:24James Smith?

  You know, living an hour away from your fucking job, I've got friends now at the moment, I think they're fucking crazy. They're thirty two and they're living with the parents of one of the couple. An hour and a quarter outside of London to save money for a house. I was like, you guys are in the prime of your fucking life. And you are living in the middle of fucking nowhere to save money. Why not just buy a house in a few years' time when you can afford it? Why not just live near your fucking office, enjoy your life, you'll get promoted in a few years' time. You'll be all right. It breaks me that people are prioritizing. The agreement on a bit of paper. Over their life, because at the end of the day. Buying a property is just changing the belief system in who that property belongs to.

• 1:06:09James Smith?

  If I buy the property I'm in right now. Nothing really changes. I still sit here. I still pay money out each week. I still sleep on that sofa, go upstairs into a bed. But for me to buy this, I need to give up one and a half million pounds. Or step into debt for the rest of fucking my mad old life until I pay it off. For me, if I had one and a half million pounds, I'd go, I'll just buy this. Cool. I'll just buy it, it'd be worth a bit more in a bit of time. When I go to Australia, I probably will buy something. Because I've got money that I'm not using. That makes sense. But for people to, you know. In your twenties, my mom and dad never ever said to me to get a mortgage, this is why I stand like this. Like, go enjoy yourself. They said, actually, you know.

• 1:06:54James Smith?

  My mum and dad still haven't paid off their mortgage, but they said when we die, we leave some money you can put it down and buy a house. Don't worry about it. Enjoy your twenties. I enjoyed my fucking twenties. I played rugby in New Zealand. I went to Thailand on two weeks' notice. I went to Australia at twenty seven. I lived the best life ever and living my best life put me in a position to follow my passion. And now because of that, I'll probably buy a house outright and it won't sting when I buy it. I won't need a partner forced into that position to help me buy it either. People go renting is a waste. Renting is not waste. Renting is freedom. Renting is deciding you want to fucking move next week. Fine. Renting is not worrying about mortgage payments. Renting is not staying with a partner that you don't want to be with just to fucking cover the costs.

• 1:07:37James Smith?

  You pay the price whichever way you go. And for me, I love the idea that I might go, I'm going to America tomorrow. The border's open. I don't want to worry about them to fill it. Tenants, tenants calling me at four in the morning when I'm in America. James, the boiler's gone. Oh, fucking hell, let me get someone out. There are different people out there that want different things. If you want to buy a house, you're just going to ignore what I'm saying. But for a lot of people, there are way better things to be doing in your twenties than saving for a house. And if you do what you want in your twenties, you might just have the money to buy one outright in your thirties or even your forties.

• 1:08:11Chris Williamson?

  There's a stat in the happiness hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt that says the single biggest determinant of happiness or the single tightest correlation that he could find was the commute to work. So the longer that your commute to work, the lower your life happiness. That was the tightest correlation that he was able to find throughout his entire research in a book on happiness. So I, I, I think that you are right. When people buy houses for the wrong reasons. I would posit that for people at the lower end of the income bracket and people at the absolute top end of the income bracket, renting for both of those people makes sense. But for people who are in the middle, who are, they're going to be able to make maybe ten thousand pounds plus

• 1:08:54Chris Williamson?

  per year over the top of what they need to live so that they would be able to save that. For me, there's no better place for you to put your money because you're going to turn cash into an asset that is going to generate money over time. So the house that I'm in right now, I have two of the housemates that live in this with me and they pay the mortgage, the electricity, the water, the rates, the tax, the cleaner, the internet. And you go, okay, so now I live rent free. So I live rent free, plus all of the money that was going into rent goes into bricks and mortar, and that's equity that's owned by me. And all I've done is rinsed and repeated that. So I've just bought house number five, which is completing this week. And it's just buy to let, find 35 grand-ish, put it into a three bed house.

• 1:09:38Chris Williamson?

  That generates about 800 and something pounds a month. And you go again, and you go again, and you go again. And over time that compounds. So I understand that for somebody that really wants freedom and doesn't have the cash that sits over the top of that in order to give them the extra leeway that they need, that that would be a bad piece of advice. If you have tons and tons of money, then fuck it, it doesn't matter because you don't need the extra income afforded by letting properties or by assisting yourself to reduce your living costs. But for somebody that sits in that middle bracket, I actually think that it's a really smart potential. Now, this being said, you need to do it in a city where you're able to buy properties where the yield is sufficiently okay. London is not this place. The amount of money that you need to put down on a property versus the amount of money

• 1:10:21Chris Williamson?

  it's going to earn you back in terms of your rent is essentially pointless. Like, you might even lose money on that property. But outside of that, somewhere like Newcastle, somewhere up north, I think it's a, it's a good potential.

• 1:10:34James Smith?

  So I completely agree with what you're saying there and what you're doing is incredibly smart. But then the second caveat point comes in that that doesn't interest me. And that's not to say what you're doing is bad, it's to say that that doesn't interest me. So that people go, well, you're a fool because you could be making this, this and this. And for me, when we could sit in armchairs when we were 65, and you could sit back with more money than me and go, I've got 45 houses. And I could sit back and go, I could have had 45 houses, but I didn't do anything that never interested me. And I would be proudly sat back on that little armchair going, I had plenty of opportunities to invest my money and do smart things with it, but it didn't interest me. And I could

• 1:11:15James Smith?

  be wrong. I could change in five years. But ultimately, I love doing talks, meets, writing books. I would rather, say you go, James, you know, I bought this house for 35 grand and then a mortgage, whatever. I'd say, I'm going to the Maldives. Uh, how long does thirty five grand get me? I'll get you a twelve weeks, sir. Cool. Right. I'm gonna take ten hardbacks with me and I'm gonna write a new book. And I'm gonna get the advance from that. And you know what I mean? And for me, financially, that is a worse decision. But over the next year of my life, or going away and doing random shit like that, I'm, I could be wrong with this gamble. I could be so wrong, but I can't wait to just invest in myself. And one day when I have a family home, I will buy it.

• 1:11:59James Smith?

  So that when I die, someone has it. And again, this, disagree me on this, right? My mom and dad created a comfortable life for me, but they never gave me money. Um, because they never gave me money, I was in the job center when I was nineteen, knocking on doors for a living. I worked in a pub on a caravan site when I was sixteen. That was excellent. When I look at people that are given too much by their parents, they don't have the work ethic they should. So like, again, I have this kind of mentality in my mind of just wanting to spend it all. I joke around with my, uh, my business partner saying, uh, inheritance tax should be a hundred percent. The state gets-

• 1:12:36Chris Williamson?

  Forces you to finish it by the end of your life.

• 1:12:39James Smith?

  Yeah, spend it, do it, live a life, get rid of all of it. And then your kids don't get anything at the end of it. So you have to bring up your kids with that.

• 1:12:47Chris Williamson?

  I think that the same mentality for me, coming from a working class background, not really having money, you know, being like literally skint, bones of my ass, couldn't drive myself home from my placement year at uni, back to uni when the placement year went kaput. But I didn't have the money to put the petrol in my car to get home. And that was twenty, twenty years old. And then thirteen years later, you know, being able to afford five houses and, and, and have varieties of income and stuff like that. But I think that the, coming from that background of no money has actually lent me to have like ambient monetary anxiety. So for me, I require a greater sense of comfort.

• 1:13:27Chris Williamson?

  I need to know what is coming in each month and the position at which I feel, right, fine, I'm now liberated to fuck off to the Maldives and drop thirty five grand. Like, it's only getting toward this, the place now where that's something that I would feel comfortable doing because- The prudence and the conservatism financially that has kind of been quite pervasive, especially if you've come from never having money. I do think that we've got sort of two different role models going on here. One of them is never came from money, it's fine. Even if I don't have any, it doesn't matter. And the other one is never came from money. Fuck, I've now got some, hold on to it at all costs and make it earn more for me.

• 1:14:06James Smith?

  And they're both correct because they're both, they're both in line with our values and what we find happy. Do you know what, man? Sometimes I wish I could love Newcastle, someone like that. Do you know how lucky you are to be in a part of the world like that and to love it? You love it, right?

• 1:14:19Chris Williamson?

  It's good. It's good, man. It's, it's a small city that's easy to, that's easy to win at. And that was something that I really, really enjoyed. I wouldn't say that it's the best place to live in the UK. I've been to, you know, I do enjoy London. I enjoy being in cosmopolitan cities and stuff like that, but it is fun.

• 1:14:37James Smith?

  It's good nightlife, you get flights in and out of it, you know, why I like, I almost wish I never became such a fucking snob for the good life.

• 1:14:48Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:49James Smith?

  Because like, I remember Sonny Webster, good friend of mine, pretty sure you know him, like the Olympian lifter. He calls me up one day, he goes, I'm having a bad day. Like, come round, we're going for a walk. And we'd walk and I could see the sea and there's blue skies and there's sun and everything like that. I can't go back from that. I can't step backwards from that life. And like, if I, I probably will be hypocritical when, or will be a hypocrite when I do buy in Australia. But then I think it's slightly different values. When I go, you've been to us?

• 1:15:20Chris Williamson?

  No.

• 1:15:22James Smith?

  There's a, there's an area called Gold Coast and it's on the beach and you get a lot for your, for your money there. And I actually want to keep living in Sydney, but I actually want to buy a big four bedroom house in Gold Coast on the water, not too far from the beach, because then I want to have an open invite for all of my friends to come to Australia and to stay in that house. So even if I'm living in Sydney, I'm like, right, guys, this weekend, come, here's the key code for the front door, come stay with me. And if my friends have got families, they've got kids, they've got whatever, they'll stay in that house. Even if I'm in the UK, hey, go stay in my house over there. I'd love to create that like, community environment where there's like a cinema room and something for this and that, a barbecue outside. And for me, the idea of buying that is amazing because then I get to part my money and other people get to use it. And they don't, they don't

• 1:16:06James Smith?

  get to feel like they're getting a handout. I'm like, yo, come stay with me. But that, that excites me. Outside of that. My freedom is so important to me. And like, I'm not saying that you jeopardized any of yours. And I always think in the back of my mind as well, did you ever think that like during, when the pandemic started, I was like, if we lose 25% of the population, property prices are going to fucking, that cryptocurrency is going down. All right. If we get another SARS COVID three, just saying, it comes out with a, with a higher fatality rate. I mean, what was the, the plague? It's like 25 million or something, something stupid. No, maybe not 25 million, maybe 25 million. Maybe just something, someone come out like that, Chris, mate, them houses, right? Tenants gone, everyone else gone.

• 1:16:49James Smith?

  More houses than we know what to do with. It's going to be like the problem in China, having too many men for the amount of women. Just saying, mate, you know, it bricks and mortar, they say it and it goes one way until it doesn't.

• 1:17:01Chris Williamson?

  Well, it's only gone one way throughout all of history and whatever it is, past performance is not an indication of future returns. Absolutely right. That being said, man, fucking the people that trade cryptocurrency and stuff like that, they have balls of steel. That's something that I absolutely could not do. Um, yeah, I mean, the last year, house prices in the UK have risen by the, the highest percentage ever.

• 1:17:23James Smith?

  That's what they want you to believe.

• 1:17:26Chris Williamson?

  I've just paid for one. I know that it's gonna, I know that it's gonna sell a lot. We've got, um, we've got IFS coming up this weekend. What are you doing there?

• 1:17:32James Smith?

  Uh, weekend after next, that's going to be.

• 1:17:35Chris Williamson?

  No, no, no, no, no. When this releases, it is this weekend in podcast world.

• 1:17:40James Smith?

  Okay. Yeah. Sorry. I've, I've only just started doing that. Uh, whenever I do a podcast, I'm like, let's release it. They're like, don't fucking release it. Uh, yeah, IFS this weekend. Uh, in essence, uh, I went to a fitness expo, body power, no names, whoops, a few years ago.

• 1:17:56Chris Williamson?

  Sorry, Nick Orton.

• 1:17:57James Smith?

  I was like, I was like, fuck, this has potential to be so amazing. Like we go to one area, they were like evidence based speakers in the smallest little tent. And then you got, you know, just supplements down, supplements down, supplements down, topless bodybuilders, topless bodybuilder. And I was like, this is fucking disgusting. And I remember joking around with my events team and saying something like, look, there's so much scope for this to be better. And they were like, well, let's do it. So I sat down with the organizers. I was like, look, these are the kind of people we need to have to attend it. And then they're like, okay, what about a party? I'm like, yes, I have a big party. So 2019 went Barcelona, Charlie Sloth on the DJ set. Like, it was lit. It was amazing. But the core component of it is business to business for personal trainers.

• 1:18:40James Smith?

  Because there is not enough support or education for PTs to run a good business. You can be the best PT in the world, but if you, if you're not charging good money and growing your business, you will die out. Because even if you're a really enthusiastic 24 year old, charging £50 an hour, if you do not learn how to master commoditization and demand, or bill money online, you're going to have a family soon, and your family are only going to be home in the most in-demand hours as a PT. And if you do not learn how to work around that, you're, you're pretty much fucked. And to be able to host an event where you get to upskill personal trainers and teach them how to run a business with the best minds in the world. And most people go, I haven't heard of the other five people. And I go, yeah, they're the ones I fucking learned it from. So, you know, you got that.

• 1:19:25James Smith?

  And then this B to C element on the outside where people can come along. Me and you, you're going to be at the bar having a gin and tonic. Someone comes over, hey, guys, love your podcast. You're like, which one? And then, you know.

• 1:19:35Chris Williamson?

  Classic.

• 1:19:37James Smith?

  And like going around having like drinks to people. I think Budgie Smuggler were like trying to do a Ninja Warrior course, Grenada bringing a hot air balloon. Like, there's panels inside where people can talk. There's a mental health panel. There's a panel on whether or not the fitness industry's sexist. Like, we got all these juicy things. And it's not expensive to come down for the weekend. A lot of people haven't had a proper festival vibe in quite a while. And yeah, it's just exciting. And my events team have done fucking an amazing job. They've got a background of like music festivals and events. So the production is lit. You go to some places and they've got like a DJ set on fucking shit production and shit speakers. Uh, so yeah, Mr. Jam's playing in the evening. And I don't know if you've seen Mr. Jam live.

• 1:20:19Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, we've booked him a couple of times. He kills it.

• 1:20:22James Smith?

  He is unreal. The energy that guy brings.

• 1:20:24Chris Williamson?

  Insane. Yeah.

• 1:20:25James Smith?

  Insane. So like, I'm buzzing. I'll be pulling out the yellow tint glasses, up and about the dance floors. No selfies after 10pm.

• 1:20:35Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, man, I'm gassed for it. I'm gassed. I'm hosting the podcast panel 3pm on the Saturday on whatever the fuck stage that is. So if anyone is listening, I was supposed to have a link, I was supposed to get some sort of a link. If they just Google International Fitness Summit.

• 1:20:51James Smith?

  Yeah, dot com.

• 1:20:52Chris Williamson?

  It'll come up and get your tickets this Saturday and Sunday. And then is there a thing on the Friday? Are you guys doing a meetup on the Friday?

• 1:21:00James Smith?

  No, on the Saturday, the first hour on Saturday is a meetup for solo travellers. So we're gonna get name tags for all people that are travelling on their own. I'm trying to get coloured name tags. So you can get green, amber, red. I don't want a traffic light.

• 1:21:12Chris Williamson?

  Dating one, right, okay.

• 1:21:14James Smith?

  Taken, I'm not sure.

• 1:21:17Chris Williamson?

  Not sure. Anyone that wears the amber one, it's so funny. So what are you doing?

• 1:21:22James Smith?

  Playing hard to get.

• 1:21:22Chris Williamson?

  What are you here for? Avoidant behaviour.

• 1:21:25James Smith?

  Yeah, yeah. Apparently, club nights at the moment, that's a big no-no. The traffic light systems.

• 1:21:31Chris Williamson?

  Well, we do it only on Valentine's Day. We do it every year on Valentine's Day at our events.

• 1:21:36James Smith?

  So there's some controversy about that. People saying that, oh, you can't do that anymore. It's fucking degrading or something like that.

• 1:21:42Chris Williamson?

  Not in Newcastle, man. Newcastle doesn't, it doesn't fold to this woke stuff. Like, it's just such salt of the earth people. When you have lads that wear rigor boots and use the plaster dust from the work that they've done during the day to chalk up the bar before they lift in the gym on an evening time, and they've still got like their work overalls on and a high vis t-shirt, like they're not, they're not bothered about gender neutral bathrooms and whether or not traffic light parties are racist, yeah.

• 1:22:08James Smith?

  I just got, I just got out of London.

• 1:22:10Chris Williamson?

  I know.

• 1:22:10James Smith?

  I went, I went for a coffee earlier and it's like, this toilet is gender neutral. And I was like, fucking hell, just be like, just have a sign saying use whatever one you want, or just toilet. You know, if they just.

• 1:22:21James Smith?

  If you want to cater for all genders, all 72 of them, and you've got two toilets in a building that you don't mind people using, just take the M and the F sticker off, right? And just have toilet. Like the overreaching of the woke stuff, fuck me, Newcastle's never sounded so appealing.

• 1:22:37Chris Williamson?

  I know, man. I know it really does help. But yeah, so international fitness summit.com. If people want to go and get the tickets, Saturday is the more, that Sunday's the more sort of PT side one, right? It's a more businessy side one.

• 1:22:49James Smith?

  Saturdays for everyone, party vibes, go around, you know, panels, gin and tonics, big party in the evening. Probably active wear by day and then party gear by night. Then we're all going to meet up about nine, nine thirty on Sunday, hungover. We've got over 500 personal trainers doing the E to B on the Sunday where Darren, myself, Phil Graham, Paul Moore, Mark Coles, Jay Alderton are doing these, yeah, business to business talks. They're going to be like TED Talks about things that probably people are getting wrong, things you can work around it, interactive Q and A, then by Sunday night we can all die and maybe end up going for a beer.

• 1:23:27Chris Williamson?

  I love it, man. I'm sick. I can't wait to go. I'm coming down on the Saturday morning, I think. So I'm going to be like caffeinated on the train and pushing myself straight onto the stage. It's going to be fun.

• 1:23:37James Smith?

  Sick. I'm buzzing for it.

• 1:23:38Chris Williamson?

  I'm gassed. James Smith, ladies and gentlemen, people want to check out your stuff, where should they go?

• 1:23:43James Smith?

  Just to, just type in James Smith. It was tough at first, right? When I started, I'd had to say.

• 1:23:47Chris Williamson?

  Very normie name, isn't it? There's a lot of them.

• 1:23:50James Smith?

  Yeah, but I'm now top of the algorithm.

• 1:23:51Chris Williamson?

  Number one James Smith in the world. Imagine that. Imagine being the number one James Smith in the world.

• 1:23:57James Smith?

  There's a singer who won't be too happy about that, but.

• 1:24:00Chris Williamson?

  But there's a, there's a very anti Semitic Labour MP called Chris Williamson from Derby, who I'm desperately trying to beat in Google rankings. I've got him on pretty much everything except for just like the, the top three on Google soon.

• 1:24:12James Smith?

  Well, they give us a year, lads. Give us a year and we'll be, we'll be top of that. But yeah, type in James Smith, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, everywhere. I'm everywhere.

• 1:24:22Chris Williamson?

  Peace, man. See you on Saturday.

• 1:24:24James Smith?

  Thank you, mate.