A Physicist And A Boxer Walk Into A Bar | Ed Latimore

Ed Latimore is a writer, Physicist and Professional Heavyweight Boxer. Out of Ed's eclectic mix of interests comes a unique perspective as we discuss his background, the world of professional boxing, his journey through sobriety, alcohol in society and how to be successful on Twitter. Extra Stuff: Ed's Website - https://edlatimore.com/ Follow Ed On Twitter - https://twitter.com/edlatimore - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/modern-wisdom/id1347973549 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0XrOqvxlqQI6bmdYHuIVnr?si=iUpczE97SJqe1kNdYBipnw Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - I want to hear from you!! Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

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

• 0:05Chris Williamson?

  Hi friends. This week I'm sitting down with Ed Latimore. He's an ex-professional boxer who's also a physicist. It's not the most typical combination of characteristics that you're going to find. He's a very interesting guy. Ed and me spoke an awful lot about sobriety, alcohol's indoctrination into modern society, and how it negatively affects a lot of people's lives without them really even noticing it. We also move on to his strategies for being incredibly successful on Twitter, which will be very useful to those of you that are looking to grow your social media followings as we move into the new year. Other than that, I just found him incredibly charming and very likeable guy.

• 0:47Chris Williamson?

  He's obviously got a big message that he wants to get across and it's nice to hear someone who's also singing from the same hymn sheet of sobriety as myself. As always, please share the episode with a friend if you think that they would enjoy it and I wanted to give a special thank you to everyone that helped share the episode for Relationships 103, so we landed in the top 40 worldwide on the Apple Podcast chart, which is ridiculous. So, thank you very much, I really do appreciate it. Here is Mr. Ed Latimore.

• 1:36Chris Williamson?

  Ed Latimore, how are you today, sir?

• 1:38Speaker 01

  I'm fantastic, man, how are you?

• 1:40Chris Williamson?

  I'm very well, thank you. So, an ex-professional boxer who's also a physicist, that's not a combination that you hear every day.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, these things just kinda happen, you know, I didn't, I didn't plan, I wish I could look back like and go, oh man, six years ago, this was the plan, but no, it really, it really just kinda grew and developed as a result of me taking and putting just one foot in front of the other. I didn't really know exactly where I was going, but I knew where I was, where I was leaving, if that makes sense.

• 2:12Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I totally understand. So, I mean, you've got a, you've got a super interesting story, as you say, that those two interests don't often mix. So, would you be able to give the listeners some background to yourself and tell us your story, how you went from wherever you came from to where you are now?

• 2:28Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, no problem. So, so I'll give you the, the abridged version and by abridged, I mean, the version that starts roughly around age twenty seven, twenty six, twenty seven. I was, I was a pretty good amateur boxer and as, as I started inching closer, I was like, okay, I need to make sure I got something else to fall back on. Because I started to really see, you know, the higher you get in the close, you go to being professional, you get to see kind of what the professional ranks are like, business and athletics wise. Plus, you know, plus I was fortunate in the position I was in and that I was, I was getting sponsored and paid pretty well, but by some pretty, um, powerful people.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  So, I got to see that and I said, I need, I need a backup. And I kind of put that on the back burner for a little bit and so I, I moved, I got cut from the program and I moved back from where I moved back to where I lived. I lived in Los Angeles in the United States and I moved back to Pittsburgh and I was working for a while and, and going out partying every night and just really being a fool. And kind of ignoring the fact that I didn't have any real like way to make money other than just showing up and pimping out my time to a customer service rep or as a customer service rep. So I woke up, I said, you know what? I'm gonna join the army and they're gonna pay for school and that's what happened.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  And along the way I spent, I spent twenty two weeks away from everyone. Because of, you know, because of basic training and A I T, I joined the National Guard version of, of the military or the National Guard division. And when I, when I was there, I realized also that I had developed a problem with alcohol because I wasn't around drinking for that, that long and I got to really sit and think, think alone. There wasn't a lot going on in my mind, just what was around me. And so I said, you know, this is crazy. So I think I got out, I went out and celebrated one time, got totally shitfaced and I said, this is not how I want to go and this is not how I want live to be, I mean, life to be.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  So I I got sober then, I joined school. I I when I enlisted, I was three and O as a professional. And then I got out and I just kept going and kept going. I was originally gonna become an engineer and I took my first physics class. And I said, I really wanna study this, not engineering. And that's that's how it how it happened, you know, and I I was fighting and going to school and in the military. All at the same time. And and looking back at it now, I have no idea how I got all the energy.

• 5:04Chris Williamson?

  I was gonna say, that that's a an awful lot to pack into a day.

• 5:09Speaker 01

  Oh, then, you know, my days, I remember, I mean, there was a period of time. And I'm really grateful because I have a great, great girlfriend and she really helped out a lot. But there was a period of time, I mean, I for for at least a year, maybe, I just, I mean, I I mean, I know it happened, obviously, because I'm here. But it was all a blur because I, you know, it was wake up, go practice, go to school. Um, come back, I'll get out of school, practice some more, come back, work on the homework because physics is not some slouch. Subject. There was a lot of studying and homework I had to do. And then some weekends I had to go do military things, so I didn't have that time either. And I was exhausted all the way through.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  And then I'm still trying to be like a reasonable social person, you know. So life is, life life was just just busy, man.

• 6:02Chris Williamson?

  That's, yeah, that's one way to put it. That's definitely busy. So was there a was there a specific turning point where you realized, obviously, you'd mentioned that a a period of isolation away from perhaps access to alcohol and then whatever the influences were that were encouraging you to party as well? That that had highlighted that you you maybe had a a problem with substances. Was there a an aha moment or was it a gradual oncoming and a gradual onset of realization?

• 6:32Speaker 01

  Well, in terms of a specific aha moment, I mean, there were, there were quite a few, I mean, and if you want to talk like real aha moments, I had, I had a real aha moment like, like two years before I stopped drinking. It was just me being in denial for a long time. And what really did it, what made me finally quit, it wasn't like, I was like, oh, man, I'm, I'm in rock bottom, I gotta bounce up. It was having a goal. I said, okay, I am, I'm now in the United States military. So now I'm, I'm subject to their judicial system and the civilian judicial. I'm trying to finish my degree and go back to school so I can make

• 7:14Speaker 01

  sure I have a better way to live. My professional career is developing. And I had just, you know, really started to date my girlfriend, who, who I saw a lot of potential in. And fortunately, I was right. I mean, she's still around today and we're happier than ever. And all of these things, I looked at how far I could go with them. And I knew that the thing that would keep me back was really the only thing that had kept me from making moves in my life before, and that was alcohol. So it was, it was very easy for me to, it was very easy for me to, for me to see that that had to go. And I was really fortunate too, because I had all of that going on. I didn't really feel the, the effects of not

• 7:57Speaker 01

  drinking per se, because I, you know, the biggest thing is, I found talking to people is developing a new life and a new identity, independent of alcohol. I, I mean, obviously there are, there is a point to which you're physically dependent on a substance, but it's been my experience and my observation that a lot of us, we, we fall into the lifestyle and then we miss that. We don't know how to define ourselves. We don't know how to deal with life with our booze. And for, for a while, I mean, I, I think. That was a thing that I thought about quite a bit, but I also said, okay, I got other tasks I gotta do.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  So I didn't even really have, there wasn't time to waste blowing off steam, you know, I was still in that whole like, I don't know, I mean, not, not really in that whole like new relationship phase. But I, but I was really committed to my girl. So I wasn't trying to go out and, and you know, chase women and anything like that. And so all these things kind of kept me away. I had enough things pulling me in another direction that I wasn't, that there was, there was no way to fall back in for at least for the first two years, maybe three, really. I'm coming up on year five this December. And, or rather, I guess in, in, under a month, it'll be five years sober.

• 9:20Speaker 01

  And I, I know that I, I didn't, I was fortunate. I mean, I, I did what I recommend everyone else do, but I did it on accident. I filled my time with so many things different than alcohol and it forced me to develop a different life. So, so I would say my transition off was relatively smooth, but I know a lot of guys don't like that because, because they miss, they miss a life, they miss a purpose, they miss a way to fit themselves. And I was, I was trying to build a new me and I was, you know, balls deep in, into a lot of, a lot of new stuff, man, like.

• 9:56Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I, I get that completely. I think an awful lot of people's reasons for drinking are they're habitual and idiosyncratic rather than dependent. At least in the beginning. And then as you've, as you've alluded to there, the dependency, the physiological requirement for your body to have the alcohol and to keep it going almost comes, that's the second wave effect. Which, which oddly is, is even tougher to break. But then when you layer on top of the fact that that is your life, this is the way that you operate, this is the friendship circles that you've got and the community and what you're used to doing and the places you go and the people you see.

• 10:36Chris Williamson?

  When that is all hooked around a substance which you're also dependent on. I mean, it's a, it's no real surprise that people struggle to get themselves clean from alcohol, I don't think.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  Oh, for sure. And on top of that, man, we, we have a, we have a very alcohol. I, I wish I could just say alcohol friendly, right, society, but we have.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  I'm not full blown conspiracy on this.

• 11:04Chris Williamson?

  The tinfoil hats aren't out just yet.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  But but we really have a culture that promotes excessive drinking for for for teenagers and young adults. And that's a really formative time because that's where everyone is building friendships and really trying to develop. Um, the idea of who they are. And so when we enter 21 such heavy drinking and that in that phase, I mean, to make it part of. Part of your life from 18 to 24 easily just by default. You have you have to try to avoid it at that point. And most people just turn off for it. They want to socialize. They want to have a good time, but they don't realize how out of control it really can get.

• 11:48Chris Williamson?

  I couldn't could not agree more. Um, I've got a couple of stories. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on them. So. The first story is that I did my master's dissertation at Newcastle University in the UK. And my dissertation title was the effectiveness of anti alcohol advertising on students at Newcastle University. And the crux of the the synopsis of what I discovered was that there's pretty much nothing. Which effectively reduces drinking for students. Um, that these terrible stories after a night out are worn like badges of honor.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  Oh, my goodness. I I have a whole section in my upcoming book where I talk about that, where you are. You are treated as a goddamn hero.

• 12:33Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  For being a fool.

• 12:35Chris Williamson?

  Well, if you know, let's say, let's say that me and you were catching up next week and and I've gone on a night out. And you go, so Chris, how was your night out? And I'm like, Ed, man, honestly, it was unbelievable. Jonathan ended up in hospital. He's lost an eye. And you're like, oh, man, that's so sick. You're like, in no other scenario would this be somehow worn as a badge of honor. But it's a rite of passage for young people to go through this excessive drinking phase. And then, you know, you can look to films like The Hangover where the this drinking to excess, the memory loss, the amnesia, all that sort of stuff. It it's totally glorified. And the problem is that because.

• 13:16Chris Williamson?

  Because it's so well established within our society, it's impossible for people to imagine that things could be another way. So this leads me on to the second part of the story, which I'd love to hear your thoughts on. So recently I was doing some, doing a casting for a TV show in the UK. As a part of that, they asked me for a lot of background information from, what was your relationship like with your parents, to where did you go to school? What did you like doing when you were growing up? What sort of girls do you like and blah, blah, blah. And I told them about everything, you know, was as transparent as I was prepared to be. And mentioned, oh, I like to do stints of sobriety. I've been sober for about three months now. I did six months at the start of this year.

• 13:59Chris Williamson?

  I did six months at the start of next year and I'm currently under doing 18 months. I like it as a tool for productivity, et cetera, et cetera. And she goes away, rings me back in a couple of weeks and says, the producers would really like to see you in London, but they've asked me to ask you a question before we bring you down. I'm really sorry, I don't want you to get offended by this, but they've asked me to ask you and they've asked me to be very specific about the way that I bring it up as well. I'm like, okay, I mean, you know, is this, has one of my ex-girlfriends got in touch? Or, you know, like what, what have they got on me here? So she says, look, I need to ask you this outright. So they've, they've brought up the sobriety thing and they've asked me to ask you about whether or not you've ever had a problem with substances or a dependence on alcohol.

• 14:42Chris Williamson?

  And I started laughing down the phone and she was like, why are you laughing? I was like, well, firstly, I can tell you I've, I've never had a dependence on alcohol. I'm not a massive drinker, although I binge hard when I party, as a lot of us do. But what's funny is that TV executives at one of the UK's biggest television stations cannot imagine a world in which someone would elect to not drink without having a dependence on the substance.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  You know, it's like the old saying, right? Alcohol is the only drug where if you don't do it, people assume you have a problem.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  You know, and and nowhere else does that ring true? And and really, sometimes I think about that, like, how bad, you know, was it? I mean, I think my behavior was was just was terrible. I do think that. But in but in terms of like, I mean, I was never like, oh, man, I got a drink today. It just really turned into a habit that was difficult to break. And then I started to build a lifestyle around said habit. So for all intents and purposes, I mean, sure, maybe I didn't have to think about it. But I was put myself in a position to not have to think about it. So I could just go drink whenever I want and drink as much as I want. I bring that up because

• 16:03Speaker 01

  I wondered sometimes, you know, did I have a problem? Or was it just easier to say that? To move into the next phase, right? To go, OK, let's let's treat this like it's a real big deal and attack it as such. And, you know, it'll get people to kind of look and go, you know? Because because I found this out when I say, there are two things you can say, right? And people have a very different reaction to what says the exact same thing. You can say, I'm not drinking tonight, or I'm sober. And people question the first one. They tend to give you a bit of a of a of a of a nod of agreement on the second one.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  In fact, I usually get congratulations, which is weird.

• 16:49Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  Um, but we we really have this this culture, man, like, people don't have an alternative. Because I I really, there's no vested interest in showing people an alternative. I mean, I I crunch numbers for a chapter that I'm not going to include in my book because I don't want people.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  We live in a climate where you can't say a lot of things and you'll see where I'm going with this. And I didn't want that to be the focus of the book, that particular passage. Because I know somebody will rip it to shreds and go after, go for the jugular on it. But I, but I crunched the numbers on, on alcohol abuse and its correlation with sexual assault. And alcohol abuse and the income the universities receive selling it at, at football games, wherever, right? And it's not, you know, on, on the, on the ladder, it's, it's not that great. Uh, I was really surprised by that, actually, mo- mostly because they go out of their way. Uh, the law enforcement kind of gets involved, but on campus, it is very easy.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  To, to get, to get alcohol. And I know over there in the UK, you know, the drinking age is different and this is not an issue. But in, in the United States, many college towns and college campuses, there's a liquor store, a place to buy liquor on every corner. And you gotta run, I, I've seen so many places shut down throughout the years right here in, in Pittsburgh alone. For, for serving underage and eventually getting caught. Because there's just too much money involved. I mean, you, you don't wanna leave that alone. To the other fact, right? I, I, it was rough analysis and I'm a, I'm a physics guy, so my math isn't, isn't bad.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  It, but it just wasn't as rigorous as, as you know, I'd have to make it to hold up in an official publication. But, you know, I, I figured out that if you eliminated the road to alcohol, if you eliminate alcohol from the, from the equation, right? That you would, you would effectively eliminate, and when I say effectively eliminate, reduce to, to below ninety percent or below ten percent. Uh, the amount of sexual assaults.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  On women in the ages of eighteen to twenty-four, the college age group. And no one wants to discuss that because the minute you say that, you get the counter argument, you should just tell guys not to do this, you know, this, that, the other. And I'm like, look, I don't think any guy is walking around thinking, or rather, I will say, if we were to break it down statistically, like one in five hundred thousand, maybe one in one million, guys are walking around going, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna get her drunk and rape her. Like, I don't, I don't think guys are thinking that. What I think happens is that alcohol is supposed to cloud your judgment. We've got tons of studies that alcohol ruins your ability to read and interpret cues that you would normally pick up when you're sober.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  And it ruins, a- a- and likewise, it ruins your ability to, to put out the proper cues that you would when you were sober. And you get two people together in the sexual prime of their lives and they're eighteen and twenty-four, and you mix in a bunch of alcohol, and that's just a, I mean, that's a powder keg. And we see these things happen year after year after year. It's to the point whenever I hear of a soda on campus, my first thought is, well, how much were they drinking?

• 20:19Chris Williamson?

  I wonder how much, I wonder how much alcohol they had in the system, yeah.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then, and then it always comes out that it was at some kind of party or something. Wow, and you can't, it's crazy that you can't talk about that. And that would make a difference. Like, if these people were really concerned about the safety of their children, the safety of their daughters, they would be all over that issue. But we, we were so trained to not talk about, or rather, we're so trained to place a victim, a place of blame on a thing that we can, we can, um, assign like a gender in these wars.

• 20:55Chris Williamson?

  You can, you can personify a person a lot easier than, than you can personify alcohol. And I think what people are looking for in these situations is they're looking for the archetypal roles, the villain, the maiden, you know, the redeemed, et cetera, et cetera. They, they want to be able to personify. I recently went to go and see Jordan Peterson live, and he spoke about this personification of objects within culture. And, you know, why does Thomas the Tank Engine have a face? Like he's a tank engine. He doesn't need a face. He doesn't need a face. Doesn't need a name. But he kind of does because we need to know what sort of a person Thomas is despite him obviously not being a fucking person. Like he's a, he's a, he's a tank engine.

• 21:35Chris Williamson?

  But the same with this, we need, in news stories, there needs to be this personification. And you're totally right with what you say that I think the main problem is that we can't, it's the wood hiding amongst the trees with regards to this alcohol problem.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  Right. You know, it's funny that the, the title of the chapter was the drunk elephant in the living room. And, and I decided that I don't want to put it in because I don't want people to miss the other things that I'm trying to talk about and offer to people, you know, a way to look at their behaviour and, you know, get through the emotional, the emotional distress, I think, of sobriety. Because that was very surprising.

• 22:15Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that is, I mean, that's, it's harrowing that that's the case, but we've all been there. We've all been in a situation where we've had too much to drink. And our judgment has been skewed and we've made a mistake. Now, very few of those situations will result in a sexual assault. But, you know, it, it could have occurred. You've maybe lost your temper at a kebab guy, or you've walked out of McDonald's without paying, or you've stepped out into the road when you weren't looking, but there wasn't any cars coming, or maybe there was some cars. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Like, all of these situations are lapses in judgment. And the reason that they occur and that you continue to drink to excess is because for every drink that you have, it makes not having a subsequent drink more difficult.

• 23:00Chris Williamson?

  Alcohol, alcohol is an inhibition reduction echo chamber, as far as I'm concerned. Like a Bayesian updating gone wrong, if that makes sense.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  No, no, that dude, that's a, that's brilliant. No.

• 23:14Chris Williamson?

  To put it into the physicist's vernacular there for you.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  No, no, I totally agree. And until we can have.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  That conversation and I don't, I don't, I'm not completely giving up on humanity. But I, I do understand and I'm not, I'm not blind to the fact that there is very clearly in a, you know, very real agenda and, and it's hurting people. It's not helping, it's, it's hurting. Now, you know, I'm not, I, I tell people all the time, I'm not anti alcohol. What I am is I am, I'm anti, it's ritual recklessness, man. Like it's just stupid, man. We, we drink to excess.

• 24:01Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  And, and celebrate it. I, I think about all the times that I, you know, I, I'm just lucky to be here. I just wrote in my email. I sent out to my email list today to, in another universe, the coin landed on another side and I'm, I'm doing multiple jail sentences and my name, you know, I just, I'm lucky. That's all I am is lucky.

• 24:22Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  Not everyone else is gonna be so lucky. And that's, and as long as we rely on what, I mean, who, who's here to teach people how to drink responsibly? Because we've created this culture where, you know, you, you gotta sneak and get drinks and then, and then you wanna be crazy and bad with it and then, then the people who don't drink are treated like outcasts and most humans are not equipped mentally or emotionally to deal with that. So they cave and then they, they wanna fit in and it just, it's a, it's a spiral of ridiculousness. That isn't going anywhere. Which is one more reason that the university system needs to die, but it's a, it's a secondary one.

• 25:02Chris Williamson?

  I think, I, I, I think it's, it's interesting to talk about, talk about the fact that there are these unseen consequences, so to speak. And one of the problems I had, so my background, I'm a club promoter. I run club nights. You know, I've had probably near to a million people come through the events that I've run in the last 12 years or so with my business partner. So you could argue that I'm at the tip of the spear when it comes to delivering, delivering this rhetoric to students. But never once in any of the marketing promotions that we put out have we said to drink to excess. We're, we're very, very careful and licensing are also very careful of keeping a watch on what it is that we communicate to these students. So where is this rhetoric of excessive drinking coming from?

• 25:44Speaker 01

  Oh, it's, it's just, um. Here's what I'm not sure about. Um, I don't want to speak for the rest of the world, but I do understand that a lot of the, uh, for lack of a better phrase, the generosity norms are common in the UK and the United States right now. So a- as far as this excess goes, I think is, I think it's a derivative of, of our consumerism, our consumer's mindset. We're very much about more and not just more, but more on display. You know, a lot of these kids don't sit in their dorm rooms

• 26:26Speaker 01

  and kill a six pack alone, right? They go out and they do it with a bunch of other people is, is part of a, of an acceptance ritual. And a lot of that comes from us being, uh, I would argue not trained very well at connecting with other people as well. So i- it's really a perfect storm. I think one, we, we have this incredible display culture and we have tribalism. We want to fit in. We don't want to feel alone. Alcohol started as, as a way to do that and then it just, it just evolved. You know, one, people keep trying to do, we outdo one another to where now every frat

• 27:08Speaker 01

  has some kind of binge ritual and then that spills out into the mainstream. We got money involved. So now there is, there is, you know, you can't come right out and say, go drink a lot and then drink some more. You can't come right out and say that. But, but that just has made the marketers even more clever, you know?

• 27:28Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  It got to, you know, we, we look at the way, I don't know how cigarettes are handled over there, but you can't have cigarette commercials here in the United States anymore. And for a long time, for a long time, right? There was a big deal about Joe Camel. And, and Joe Camel, the cigarette guy made to appeal to children.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  I'm made to appeal to young adults. It's a camel with a leather jacket on and these sunglasses walking around smoking, you know? So, so while we're not telling people, go smoke, we are, we are associating images of coolness. Now, there's a whole media behind it because there's money behind it. I mean, they realize that if we get you to drink this and your movie will pay you. And then the writers make it great because that's what they do to their writers and directors. And so people go, oh, man, that looks like a great time. Let me emulate that.

• 28:16Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I think, I think you're totally right. It's a lot more subversive when you see it delivered through the culture in that kind of a manner. And that, that to me, that almost below the line delivery through popular culture, rather than the sort of top down, above the line rhetoric from the advertisers direct is where it appears to come from. But I can also see, as someone who's interested in creative pursuits, I can also see that if you, if you cast that hangover, but you get rid of the drinking, or if you have like a bad boy biker hero in some film, but he's having like a vegan smoothie before he goes to like shoot someone, it, it kind of loses its edge a little bit.

• 29:01Chris Williamson?

  Like, there's a role, there's a role that alcohol needs to play in popular culture. And unfortunately, again, we're kind of stuck in this echo chamber where there's nothing else that can fit it. You know, it, it changes the character. If you take him from, from saying, well, this particular character who has lost his family and is on a path of revenge, is drinking heavily every night and then waking up in the morning to go and try and gun people down. If you swap, if you swap that for that same guy's microdosing LSD, or like, you know, smoking weed or taking fucking CBD tinctures or something. Like, the dynamic changes too much and it destroys the story.

• 29:43Chris Williamson?

  So there's culpable deniability on the side, and also I think genuine deniability on the side of the people that are writing these rhetorics in. But it's a vicious circle because unless you can step in at some point, that's never going to stop.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, and and so so you know, we we already know what happened. You know, this country had probably ran one of the best natural experiments in history, destructive, but one of the best. We know what happens when you ban alcohol. We we witnessed that. We we had the Eighteenth Amendment and then the Twenty First Amendment. It was that bad that it got put into an amendment. You know, and and it's the only reason why we know people like Al Capone are, the only reason. So we're not gonna ban it. And there's too much money involved. And it's going to continue to subvert culture as a result. So the best thing you can do is, you know, I. I'm a big believer in the top down, you know, from the generation and and working with your kids and showing them a good way to live.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  I have I I have a unique perspective because, you know, I I grew up around a mom that drank a lot and a dad. He was, he didn't drink that much. But I actually have not that much drink. You know, I wasn't around him that much. But but alcohol was very much a part of my life growing up. Um, but not so much in my girlfriend's life. And it's so interesting to see. Little things like she'll she'll have a glass of wine. And when I say she'll have a glass of wine, I mean, she'll have a few sips from a glass and then it'll sit there until I clean it. And I'm like, and I look at it and go, how can you not finish that? That's weird. And it is it is because, you know, she grew up in a household where where they

• 31:21Speaker 01

  they promoted different values and there wasn't this kind of consumerist excessiveness. And certainly there wasn't much alcohol. I mean, what it's gonna come down to if we're gonna do anything about this situation. And most and first people gotta see is the situation, which I don't think they ever they're ever gonna do. Hundred percent. En masse. But it but if they did see it, then the only solution, the one that will not result in a large, severe, negative externality and reaction like like the days of prohibition is that it's gotta start at home with the families, man. It's gotta start with with how you how you raise your children and what you showed them and how you develop their their abilities and discipline and confidence, all those good things.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  But but, you know, we're we're horrible. We live, we that's not, that's not gonna happen. It's probably, I haven't been to a college party. And man, shit man, since I was maybe twenty six, I don't know, twenty six, twenty five. So I don't, I don't know how bad or how crazy the campus has gotten. All I, all I see are the extreme news stories. When, when they hit. And you know, that's like the airplane crash effect, you know, or availability heuristic, I think is the official name. So it's all, I don't know how, how bad it really is. But if I had to take an educated guess based on what I can see and, and the ears I have kind of at that level. Oh, you know, it's, it's certainly a little better than when, when I was in my twenties, probably easily worse. And now.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  Now with social media, man, everybody wants to be a star. Everyone wants to tag a brand. Everyone wants to show off and. You know, you will, when we were, I don't know, how, how old are you?

• 32:59Chris Williamson?

  I'm thirty.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  Okay. So, so you're, you're about, I'm thirty three. So you're, you're roughly at the same era. You know, when we were assholes. We were assholes and then you could forget about it unless you were a really, really big one, like you went to jail or something.

• 33:14Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  Uh, you know, and then later on, you know, kind of, you, you probably were a little more in this than I was. Uh, you know, I sent my fair share of drunk texts, but. That was later into my drinking, like, you know, twenty four, twenty five. Now though, man, you're a fool, man. It is, it's out there and, and not only, but, but it's not treated the way it should be treated. You know?

• 33:38Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  People, but then no one looks at themselves next week and go, oh my God, I've got to stop. They go, holy shit. Like you said, that was awesome.

• 33:45Chris Williamson?

  I mean, the, the, the thing that everyone needs to remember is that you are only ever one email away from TMZ or World Star Hip Hop.

• 33:54Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 33:55Chris Williamson?

  That's it. One email, one email and a couple of million people see what you got up to last night. Um, so you, you're totally right. The, the external accountability and the stakes have been raised an awful lot more. Because of the level of connectivity that, that the world's got, that, you know, what you or me would have had to have done twelve years ago. To have made the news, like it would have reached people. It would have had to have been a. Armageddon level drinking escapade. But now, you know, you can reach an equal number of people that probably the mainstream news reaches with a viral video. Like, we've all got a friend, we've all got a friend that randomly, their cat did something funny and got its head stuck in a piece of bread, or, do you know what I mean?

• 34:38Chris Williamson?

  Like, the fact that you can reach that volume of people is, obviously, it's a platform, but it, on the flip side of that, it's also a real, it's also a real concern. So, on the topic of the platform of social media, we're going to move on to your thoughts on Twitter, which I'm super excited to get into. But I've got one thing that I wanted to bookend the conversation with, with alcohol about. Actually, two things. Firstly, if someone was considering taking a stint of sobriety to see how they go on, have you got any first step tips that you would give them to aid them moving through that, that sort of initial period, that transition phase?

• 35:15Speaker 01

  Man, you, two things. One, you're gonna have to just spend time with different people. I've gone back and forth about this in my mind over, over the past five years. And ultimately, if you're serious and you want to try a different lifestyle, you're not going to get support from the people who are still in said lifestyle. It's just, it's not going to happen. People aren't designed that way. Your existence and your action will force a type of reflection that people aren't ready to make. I think the biggest mistake I made when getting sober was asking my friends what they thought. Of course, they're drinking with me, they're not going to admit they're wrong. I mean, very rarely, they're going to go, you know what, we all are fucked up. We need to, no, that's not happening, no.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  Right? So, if you want to get sober, man, if you want to try it out, you're gonna have to just accept that your friend group for a moment ain't your friends. Go do something else, make a new group, have some fun, explore yourself. And that leads me into the other thing. You gotta immerse yourself in, in the, in the task. The man's energy because it's very easy to say I worked very hard today. I'm gonna go and have a drink. I actually did have that thought quite a bit, but when you're exhausted from working on stuff, plus you know, you got promises and commitments, but really when you're exhausted, even if you tell yourself, when you tell yourself it's temporary, it's very easy to just go, okay, it's over, right? But I mean, I didn't give myself a temporary

• 36:45Speaker 01

  out. It was just, all right, I'm done. But if someone wanted to try and see how it adapt, how they went with it, uh, they, they need to be busy. They, they really need to be busy. Otherwise, it's gonna be very easy to say, oh, I, I did really well today. I'm gonna celebrate with a drink.

• 37:01Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, or I had a bad day and I'm gonna, I'm gonna use it as a, as an anesthetic or as a, as a pill or as the equivalent of, of something to dampen that mood down, I suppose, which again, the, I, I like the idea of having, having a newfound purpose and something to, to put that energy into that. It's a reason to get yourself up in the morning and it's also a reason to put yourself to bed at night without having had a drink. If you know that you got to get up and you got to perform the next day in whatever, whatever value it is that you've chosen is worthwhile. If you know that you need to do that, then you don't want to drink the night before because you want to be fresh because you're excited about performing to you, the best of your ability the next day.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 37:44Chris Williamson?

  So the final thing I wanted to touch on was I had a discussion with, um, Michael Kazu, who is the CEO of Brute Strength. Now, Michael took his first drink of alcohol when he was nine years old, had a very heavy substance abuse, the class A drugs and alcohol by the age of 14, was in and out of rehab and then went on to become the fittest man in the world two years in a row at the CrossFit Games as part of the Affiliate Cup. Now he owns the, probably the biggest CrossFit programming company on the planet, which is Brute Strength. Um, and I talked to him about his, his thoughts on sobriety and it was very interesting to hear that what he said, or one of the things that he touched on was that he feels like

• 38:31Chris Williamson?

  Beating an addiction or beating a dependency isn't simply no longer taking the substance. It's the ability to reintroduce that substance on your terms. Now, I've spoken to Dominic McGregor, who's the COO of Social Chain, which is UK's largest and probably the world's largest social media agency, also had some pretty big substance problems that came on much later in life, much more recently, and now he's in his about two years clean, I think, from all of those. And he wasn't, he didn't fully agree. He felt that you can have control over the substance by still not letting it in. But I'd be interested to hear what your thoughts are on, on that, that the reintroduction of the substance on your terms is.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  Nah, man, you know, here's what I'll say. No one, no one decides to get sober because they had a great experience most of the time and they had a few bad ones, right? That's just a regular night of drinking and learning your limits. Nah, man, my, my thoughts are this, once, you know, I always say, here's what I always say, I say, you know, as far as my privilege of alcohol is concerned, I, I lost that privilege in this life, that, you know, and I want to keep it that way. I, you have to leave it behind. You have, you, you make that decision because you know that bad things happen, you know?

• 39:59Speaker 01

  And you got to remember, it's not even so much a situation of excess. I always say, look, if you start doing dumb shit under the influence, then you know, the alcohol is working. There's no, there's no minimum effective dosage or anything. We, we, we like to tell ourselves that, but we got to remember, we're still at the end of the day, ingesting something that's supposed to alter the way we think and alter our judgment. I don't think, if, if you realize that you cannot do that, to the point where you have to commit yourself to a program, or you have to make a vow of never touching it, there is no reintroduction to that. Like, you know, I, I just, I, I 100% flat out disagree.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  Because if you get to the point where you feel like you need to quit, then, then you, then, then you don't have control. There, there's no control over it. What I will say to that, though.

• 40:56Speaker 01

  Is if you, you know, if you scale back,

• 41:01Speaker 01

  if you think, you know, like I was saying earlier, I'm not sure if I had a, you know, a pure addiction or not. What I knew is that it was severely affecting me. And no more, I don't want those effects. Now, you know, if I, if I made it and I was the man and I decided to go have a drink, uh, you know, what is that, that do, does it, is it good or bad? But at some point, it's just, it depends on a level of commitment. How, how committed are you?

• 41:29Chris Williamson?

  Also, I suppose as well, how, how much of a problem is it? Because, you know, for me, alcohol or sobriety, the removal and the abstinence of alcohol for me is more a tool for productivity. I've never, I've never had a dependency. Uh, very fortunately, I'm around a lot of friends that have been touched by that kind of a problem. But for me, that's never been the case. So when I'm looking at my sobriety in particular, I can see it a lot more through the eyes of someone that's elective rather than uh, necessitive, if that makes sense. It's not a necessity for me to do it. It's me choosing to do it.

• 42:07Chris Williamson?

  In the same way as someone saying, okay, I'm going to make sure I get eight hours sleep a night. Or, okay, I'm going to make sure that I eat five bits of fruit and vegetables a day, or whatever it might be. So I think, I think that maybe, maybe on that side, there's, there's a number of different sort of unique approaches, but I, I think,

• 42:25Chris Williamson?

  what's interesting is that a lot of people will be suffering a net negative from alcohol consumption, but may not be doing it that regularly, may not, that, you know, you could go through your entire life netting a negative from alcohol, but never actually having anything go that wrong.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 42:43Chris Williamson?

  You just end up damaging your health, you waste a bit of time, you kind of don't really develop any passions that are outside of drinking, your weekends get wasted. And before you know it, you're 60 and you're like,

• 42:54Speaker 01

  You know, and for some people here, you know, and that's another thing. That's why I find it really interesting that that particular uh, guy said that because that's, that's really interesting to me. Um.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, my personality was such that, or rather is such that I, I just, I mean, I just wanted more for my life. And, and now at this point in, I think, I just, I couldn't imagine what I would get from it. I mean, I think I'm the coolest person most people are ever gonna meet. And I know that alcohol makes me less cool. Like, I, like, I'm not as sharp, I'm not as interesting.

• 43:30Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 43:30Speaker 01

  I'm not as controlled. And so it comes down to the image that I've kind of learned to develop of myself, uh, independent of the substance. So, so I wouldn't even have, and I'm sure my argument is, is filtered through that, but I wouldn't even have a desire at this point to, to drink again, you know, like, what, what would I get out of it?

• 43:51Chris Williamson?

  Man, I couldn't, I couldn't agree more. So I, I, I announced, I announced a, a little Facebook status. I kept my, my sobriety stints quite quiet for the, for the first two, but did a little bit of a song and dance about it because I know that it, it kind of does inspire other people, or at least make them think about, about drinking. I was interested to hear people's responses. And someone asked me for, um, the reasons why I wasn't drinking anymore. And the number one reason, the very, very top reason that I had was I have nothing left to learn from alcohol.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:22Chris Williamson?

  Like, there is nothing, there is nothing left that the substance has to teach me. And it's like, if you read a book so much that you knew it verbatim, reading the book kind of defeats the object. It's like, I've seen, I know the pages, I know the fonts, I, I understand where the, where this bit's creased. I understand what it feels like when I get to the end and when I start at the beginning. Like, you know, it's, move on to a new book with regards to that.

• 44:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, this is a new phase. I mean, you're, you're right. I mean, in that regard too, may, maybe that's what I needed to put the book down was, was that period. Because now it's, it's just, I look at that period of my life, like, man, I wasted so much time. I learned some lessons, but mostly wasted time, you know, now it's down. Let, let's get on, let's get on with it and get on, you know, and, and be productive, do some cool stuff.

• 45:11Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I think, I think what's, to, to kind of finish on that, what's super interesting is that you've talked about the fact that.

• 45:18Chris Williamson?

  Being sober makes you more interesting person, which is so counter to what most people would would perceive.

• 45:24Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 45:26Chris Williamson?

  On your, on your blog at the moment, haven't you got something about like how to be fun whilst being sober?

• 45:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, it's to the point like, I'm, I just, I have such a, a good, strong, extroverted personality. Um, there, there's no other way around it. I'm just, I'm just, uh, already outgoing and already interested in, in life. So I'm not, I don't, I don't need it. You know, I don't need it anymore. And so I try to build a life independent of it. And, and I have a great time with it.

• 46:05Chris Williamson?

  Well, you know, it's, it's nice to see that someone who, you know, is a, a, a completion is getting things done. I, I think one of the main things that we need to do, if we are going to kind of open up people's eyes to the topic of sobriety for, um, for, you know, elective sobriety, almost we could call it, as opposed to kind of necessitive sobriety. One of the things that we're going to have to do is have people who are in, you know, who are aspirational role models. You don't want to see some guy who's hooked up to a machine with jaundice and fucking liver failure and go, well, look at this guy. He went sober and it saved his life. And you're like, right? Yeah. But first off, I don't want to be in the situation that that guy was in, sorry, is in.

• 46:45Chris Williamson?

  And secondly, I'm not in the situation that he was in. So it's just, there's too much of a, of a gap for people to leap there cognitively. So, you know, hopefully, hopefully this will have opened some people's eyes. I want to move on to Twitter and your, your relationship with Twitter. Would you be able to explain to the, explain to the listeners what your, what your thoughts are on Twitter, please?

• 47:05Speaker 01

  Ah, man, I think, I think Twitter is like magic. I don't, I don't know. I, I have this, this thing I've been thinking about lately, which is that the, the world we live in today is so far advanced. That you couldn't even if you were a writer in like say nineteen hundreds, you couldn't even imagine what like your your science fiction wouldn't create this because you couldn't see this at all, even in your imagination. It's just so crazy and Twitter is one of those things, man. You know, I say a thing, I put a thought out and people share the thought. Like, and then those people share the thought.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  And you can spread a message around the world and like, I mean, and and and under and under thirty minutes. I mean, it's faster than any uh, method of propagation because of the way they set it up. It it it's just one giant, growing, self-sustaining Metcalfe law-abiding network. And it is just cool. I love it. I've spent a lot of time and energy uh, figuring out how to maximize the use of this platform. And then I think I think it shows and and the follower count and the engagement and and now the living I make off of it. I I think it's it's just the best thing ever.

• 48:30Speaker 01

  And you know, if Twitter goes away, somebody will come up with with something because this idea of of sharing across barriers, like you don't have to follow me to see what I say, but if you like what I say, you can follow me. No other platform uh, structure that way. Just just listen. I mean, I write about this. I got a new book coming out and and a sort of and of course, along with it afterwards, where where I talk about this exact thing that makes Twitter so powerful that you can, you can share ideas. No other platform lets you do that. And in sharing ideas, you can motivate, you can inspire, you can draw people in, you can antagonize, you can do whatever you want. I mean, well, you can't do whatever you want, or you know, because they

• 49:16Chris Williamson?

  Terms of service. Yeah, exactly.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  Right, but but my my thought about the terms of service, I mean, people complain about, you know, sensitivity and and you can't say this because of censorship. And and that's never been An issue for me because that's not why I would wanna use something this powerful. You know what I mean? Like, th- th- that's really how I feel about it. I'm not, I'm not saying people should be restricted from saying whatever they want to. What I'm saying is that why would I spend my time on this platform? Just, you know, shitposting and trolling. Th- i- i- it's so much more than that. If I'm one, did I take that over to Facebook and bother some people, you know?

• 49:57Speaker 01

  Here, we, we have, I, I'm sitting here and probably the reason you know about me and so many other people know about me is because I have thoughts and I understand how to craft them and, and I just put them out. I press a button and then I, I can amass a group of people around me. I, I'm, I'm not interested in violating the terms of service because that's not, that's not my stick. I'm not a shock doctor, you know? I'm, I'm not, I don't talk about, I don't even talk about politics, man. I hate politics personally.

• 50:26Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 50:26Speaker 01

  It's just, this, this, this is a very, it's a very powerful tool. It's like, it's like the way I see the Twitter CEO, uh, you know, and these, these bands and putting these words in. Uh, I'm just, th- this is not my, my, I'm more like, I don't think Jack is doing a good or bad job. I think time will tell, but what I do know is that this is a very powerful technology. Probably more powerful than most people realize. Because behind any, any machine are people. And this is the ultimate tool for connecting and finding people.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  So what I, what I think he's doing is, is trying to be a guardian of, of the new magic before we abuse it and like, lose it. That, that's analogy I would go with. Now, whether he's making the best decisions on, you know, on guardian is, is a different debate. But I think that's how he sees his role. Maybe not consciously, but he certainly understands that he is the steward of, of a thing that can, I mean, and will change, change the world. I mean, it's changed individual lives, which means as, as a collective, i- it's gonna change large groups and change the world.

• 51:41Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely. So you touched on that you'd come up with some effective strategies for Twitter. Would you be able to lay out some key elements of that framework for the listeners who might want to, uh, think about growing their Twitter following or look at some principles on what's most effective?

• 51:57Speaker 01

  Uh, right. Above all things, man, you have to give people a reason to want to see your words. Uh, but like, because at the end of the day, that that's all it means. Like, right now, I'm looking at my screen. That that's sixty two point one K underneath my followers. All that means that I've given those people, that many people a reason to follow and listen to me. I provided value. I've given them something that helps them, something that they didn't know, something that helps them, makes them feel a certain way. Or think a certain way that they find favorable. At the end of the day, if you want to grow, you have to give value. And and I can't stress that enough. Uh, many people, when they start out on this platform, they don't, they don't realize that

• 52:43Speaker 01

  that at the, that if you, if you want, it's like, it's like real life. If you want people to follow you, hey, give them reason, you know, why should you be my leader? I mean, well, that's what I mean. They they call it followers, right? But

• 52:55Chris Williamson?

  That's a good point.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  If we want to look at that, right? You know, why should we let you lead us? What, what have you done? What have, what do you say? What have you shown? To be, uh, the, to separate you from the rest of these other jokers out here who are putting up pictures of women and and cats and trolling and stuff like that. What, what, what do you bring to the table?

• 53:15Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  So that's the number one thing. Uh, number one, number two thing is you have to get people to see that you add value and that the only way to do that, I've grown my, my following from scratch. And I did that. I didn't ask anybody to follow me. I didn't. I didn't pay for play, nothing like that, right? This all is a real people and and the engagement shows. I do about twenty five million impressions a month. Let me tell you, I started like every other account starts and I grew because I identified people that that I already looked up to and liked. And then the people who were already following them, I followed a few of them and they were saying something good.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  And then I would quote tweet whatever they, you know, things that they say and add value to it. When you do that, you, and they see that you did it first and then they can decide if it's worth retweeting or not. And then as you re, as they retweet it, assuming you, you have added some great value. Then other people are going to see it. And then it just grows and grows. I have an article, how to grow your total following and I, and I got a screenshot. I don't even remember the program I used on the website. This showed the growth of my, my following from beginning to now. Uh, plotted on a, a time to follower graph and you can see it. It's a nice exponential curve. The way you, you would think it looks. It starts out growing slow, slow, slow.

• 54:40Speaker 01

  And then, then it gradually uh, gets, gets a steeper, steeper slope. Alright, and so now I'm gaining about two thousand followers a month. I was on a streak for, for, for, for eleven months where I gained at least two thousand followers. And I haven't gained less than fifteen hundred or two, less than fifteen hundred followers in a month. I haven't gained less than, than probably over two years. I, I have to go back and see and it will be quite some time. So, and, and, and the, the basic strategy is the same. Add value, add value, add value. Give, give, give people a reason to follow you. Make them think about, they make them feel a certain thing.

• 55:20Speaker 01

  Highlight, highlight a, a part about, about life or your life. Take from your experiences and what you've learned and repackage it and put it out there. There's so many different places to get lessons. That you should not run out of, you should not run out of ways to add value. Really realistically, the only limitation you're gonna have is like. How, who do you, who, who, who's presenting your information to their network? Right? Which means at the beginning, you gotta follow more people, not, not more, but you gotta follow a decent amount of people. You gotta follow more people. Then you then follows you and then they put your stuff out and they go, this guy says some things, let's go follow him.

• 56:04Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  And, and then they keep tweeting out and then you just keep growing and growing and growing. I mean, it's really, it's really beautiful, man. If, if you do it right. Uh, you, you'll just keep sprouting up. I mean, next year this time, I'm on pace to have a little under a hundred and forty thousand followers. That is not insignificant because.

• 56:24Chris Williamson?

  It's a good platform, man. You, you're, you enable yourself to reach an awful lot of people. I think, I think what's cool there is, oh, what's.

• 56:33Chris Williamson?

  What's accurate there is the fact that you focused on the fact that you need to add value. And I think what people need to, or what people want to hear is, well, this is the golden ratio of following to unfollowing, or that all that you need to do is X, Y, and Z. But obviously, the whole point is to come up with content which is engaging and which resonates with people. And that requires you to actually think quite hard and be creative and be original with stuff and add your own flex. That's not an easy thing to write down on a, on a piece of paper.

• 57:11Speaker 01

  You know, there's all kinds. When you look at like, look at influencers and ways to grow Twitter, I mean, people don't like that. They don't, no one really writes about it in the mainstream because it's not easy. It is the hardest platform to grow on because you are judged. I mean, let this be, you know, a commentary on the minds of humanity, however you want to take it. You are judged by the caliber of your words. And, you know, first and foremost, not as other things behind that, that I think are, are equally as important, are like, are very close, particularly the image you put forth in your authenticity. Like, you know, we say I'm the most undoxable man on the internet. You can literally go

• 57:52Speaker 01

  look at my address if you wanted to, with, with the boxing commission. And I regularly give it to people that want to mail me stuff. I'm not, you can't do anything to me. Doxing wise, this time I'm going to get you in prison. Like, you know, you go get my social security number or my, my credit card. Yeah, you go into jail for that though. But everything else, I'm, I'm just not worried about that. And that, that is the authenticity I put forth behind a platform, which I know works to my advantage. You know, people feel like they can talk to me. And then whenever I have a chance, or if I'm in the city, and someone goes, hey, I see you're here, here, here, would you like to meet up? I always take the, uh, because I'm, I'm very grateful. Because when you have, when you can reach so many people, it's impossible to be broke. I mean, you really have to try.

• 58:33Speaker 01

  I'm not saying you know you got a ball out of control. I'm certainly not. I mean, I make a modest living. But but do you know how difficult how does how does a business survive? It sells things and what is it sell things to people and so it needs to market and advertise. I have the I have an incredibly powerful organic platform. Plus, I only give out things that are valuable. I built up such a so much trust only discussing things that are valuable and writing things to help people. That that if we know when I create a thing, it's not really an issue like I don't even I mean I. It's to the point, you know, guys have said like, dude, you know, you make a killing with the paid ads and guys are always trying to get me to.

• 59:15Speaker 01

  To affiliate and promote a thing and I have to be very, very selective because what they don't understand. Is that the moment I affiliate some, I'm putting my authenticity and reputation on the line. If you have a garbage product, not only are you not going to make any money from that. I'm going a little bad for a little like I'm trying to fleece people, you know, there's always going to be people who have a have a problem with you making money that as weird as that is. But I don't want to give those people fuel. I don't plus I don't want to fleece anyone in the first place. I don't want to promote a shoddy product that I turn down. Way more things than I promote and I only promote what there well, yeah, only promote like three things.

• 59:58Speaker 01

  Uh, four occasionally when when a buddy of mine drops something in it because his it would change my life. I use it. It changed my life.

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  So, yeah, uh, but but yeah, aside from all the the the technical stuff which we could get into. Uh, that I am going to put together in in my upcoming book and and course that I'm working on. About, you know, how to write and how to structure things and different ways to weight the words and take your experience and transmute it. To a to a um, highly engaging tweet.

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  At the end of it all, if you do nothing else, you can make a lot of mistakes in your formatting, your word balance, your word choice, but if you deliver value, you'll grow. You may not grow as fast as if you make the tweet perfectly balanced or avoid repetition of words, but you will grow.

• 1:00:48Chris Williamson?

  I think that's, I think that's a good way to put it, that focusing on the small stuff or sweating the small stuff is a surefire way to actually not get yourself off the ground. I like what you said about not compromising and not doing, not choosing to affiliate yourself with products that you don't fully believe in. That's the same for myself. We have a series that all of the listeners will know, which is Life Hacks. And as a part of that, that is, we're not affiliated with anything that we ever feature. And we're just completely transparent about websites or apps or approaches or techniques or products that assist us in our life. And it's stuff that we actually use. And sometimes we'll use it for a bit and then get rid of it.

• 1:01:27Chris Williamson?

  And do you know, but it's genuinely, it's a manifestation of a solution to a problem that we have found. And I think Farnham Street, which is one of my favorite blogs.

• 1:01:39Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, I love that blog.

• 1:01:41Chris Williamson?

  Shane Parrish is an absolute animal. Any of the listeners who want something to read.

• 1:01:46Speaker 01

  He actually had me on the, but he flew down from Toronto for one day, recorded and then flew back.

• 1:01:51Chris Williamson?

  Oh man, he's a monster. So is that out on the Knowledge Project yet?

• 1:01:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's been out for, for a little while, about maybe a little, about a year, maybe? A little less?

• 1:02:03Chris Williamson?

  Well, I'll, I'll make sure that I put the link to that in the show notes below as well. But there's a, there's a really cool media article by Herbert Lu, which says, "Why Farnham Street Optimizes for Loyalty Not Page Views." And that playing the long game, which Shane talks about so much, and focusing on adding as much value as he can, it's, it's such a undervalued way of getting to the top. Because everyone wants, the same as, you know, you were talking before we, before we came on air about how you'd just gone to the gym and you'd hit the heavy bag or whatever, you know, people don't want to have to go to the gym. Gym and hit the heavy bag. They want the five minute abs workout at home and the, and the pill that gives it to them. And in exactly the same way is, this is why I think one of the, one of the major attractions of reality TV at the moment is that

• 1:02:49Chris Williamson?

  it gets people from no platform to huge platform without actually having to cultivate any added, any added value in the interim. You don't have to craft a character or prove any sort of worth. All you have to do is exist. And as a byproduct of that, people, people are interested in your existence. So, you know, operating and optimizing for loyalty and not page views is a surefire way to get yourself a tribe that will follow you. I think what's cool now is we're starting to see things stratify out into different sorts of media. So, you know, if you're good on video, then you go to YouTube. And if you're good with words and short form,

• 1:03:30Chris Williamson?

  bits of kind of maxims and aphorisms and, and that sort of stuff, then you go to Twitter. And if, you know, if you're good with imagery or you're, you know, a good looking guy or a good looking girl, or you have the nice mise en scène or however it is, then you go to Instagram. You understand what I mean? So these, these mediums, these mediums are now, you don't have to be a jack of all trades. You know, most people have got one of each or at least two of the three big, big platforms. But if you're very, very successful, if you're a good, if you're good with words and you can articulate yourself well, then, you know, go on Twitter or start a podcast. If you find that you're particularly good, if you know, if you're ridiculously really, really, really good looking, then you can go on Instagram or you can, if you're a photographer, you go on Instagram, et cetera, et cetera.

• 1:04:13Chris Williamson?

  So it's nice that you've found yourself, you've crafted a, um, an arena for you where you're surrounded by people. I mean, you know, Shane Parrish, like if you follow Shane Parrish, Nicholas Taleb, Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Shapiro, um, you know, if you follow a group of guys like them and yourself, the volume of wisdom that you're getting hit with, it's in the fucking PSIs, isn't it? It's like a 16 bar pressure of wisdom that's just coming at you on a daily basis. And you don't need to look online. You know, if you had Twitter and Medium, I reckon that you'd probably be able to grow yourself into an absolute monster of an intellect in no time at all.

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. Because they add value.

• 1:05:00Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  They're always adding value. So there, there's never.

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  There there's never a dull moment between, you know, you can get on, I I mean, I really love Farnham Street is a result of uh, C and T Lib on on Twitter. I picked up his books, you know, and I'm I'm loving his books. So so what that's what it is, man, but but but think about this. This is what I always point out too. Um. One of the things that really helps you grow is life experience. And you know, the the more you've experienced outside of Twitter, you know, the more likely people are going to follow you. It's it's like, you know, you you can't get famous from social media. That's that's not, we we don't want to play that game, right?

• 1:05:48Speaker 01

  What we want to do is we want to go and develop ourselves and and have a lot built up and a lot to say. And then come and deliver viable perspectives on it. Or just in life in general. I mean, I I know I'm the the beneficiary of the halo effect, you know, people go, oh, this guy. He boxed professionally and he got a physics degree and he wrote some books. I mean, we we got to follow him and and it just it looks it it looks better. I mean, it looked at the very least, you know, people aren't gonna go, what are you doing here? Wow, who cares about you? It's like, well, I'm here because I earned it. Why are you here?

• 1:06:27Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I I couldn't agree more. I think what's cool there is saying that

• 1:06:32Chris Williamson?

  saying that you shouldn't aim to get famous through social media, that the fame should come as a byproduct is exactly the same as saying your body should not be the purpose of your training routine. It should be a byproduct of it. You know, you should train hard, you should do what you like to do, and you should put in the time and the effort. And then when you look in the mirror, it shows. If you reverse it and and you aim for the top of the mountain, then you get lost along the way. Um, there's this cool, a really cool quote that um, you you talked there about why should people listen to you? Um, and everyone wants to be able to expedite their route to success, right? They want to be able to, where's the shortcut? What's the the, you know, Ed Latimore's five quick tips for, you know, Twitter success? They don't want to hear that you need to tweet. I mean, am I right in thinking you've had like,

• 1:07:17Chris Williamson?

  you've you do like a thousand tweets a month, something like that?

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, between one, between 1,000 and 1,500 is generally where we're at for.

• 1:07:26Chris Williamson?

  So, I mean, that's, that's fucking terrible. That's like 30 to 40 a day. That's a massive volume. People don't want to know that they have to put that work in. But, you know, for people to, to talk about, why don't they, why should they listen to you? There's a, a quote by Johann Wolfgang von Golf, which says, "All truly wise thoughts have already been thought a thousand times, but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, until they take root in our personal experience." And what I think this refers to is the fact that there isn't, there isn't a, a shortcut to getting life experience. Like, without context or buy-in, even the most enlightening concepts don't resonate. That's why your life doesn't change when you see one inspirational quote on Instagram. It needs to be part of a bigger narrative. It needs to be part of a bigger picture.

• 1:08:12Chris Williamson?

  And, you know, seeing one out of context quote, it's, it's not enough. It's immersing yourself in good content. Like you say, people who add value, guys like yourself and, and Shane and Nick Taleb and, you know, like, those, the volume of, I can't get over what I look at when I look at my Twitter feed. I actually unfollowed every, I unfollowed everybody on my Twitter and I'm now following 30 people. Um, which was, for me, it's just a much more curated news feed. You know, a lot of the time what my friends are putting on there, that it's retweets, like my friends, my real friends, I have them on Facebook and that's great. But what they put on Facebook is usually stuff that's

• 1:08:54Chris Williamson?

  actually meaningful. I bought a new house. I've got a new car. Me and the missus are getting married. What they posted on Twitter was just like, drop, like fucking, it was just degrade, like dissolving my brain. Because I think for a lot of people, Twitter's kind of the, it's the, the last thought, the bottom of the rung for, for many people, because it's a little bit more nuanced. And the fact you've only got a limited number of characters means that you, you kind of need to work a bit harder as well. So, yeah, man. I mean, I, I am, I am sorry to my friends that I unfollowed, but I've got you on, I've got you on, I've got you on Facebook for a good reason, but you were posting shit. And I'm, you know, I post, I also post shit, but you don't need to follow me. So, um, I, I've

• 1:09:39Chris Williamson?

  absolutely loved today, Ed. When is, you've got a number of projects on at the moment. Tell us the timeline of what's coming up at the moment.

• 1:09:47Speaker 01

  Um, the, the, the big main, uh, I guess two big main things. Uh, one is my book about the transition to sobriety. I call it sober letters to my drunk self. And I wrote that, I mean, as the, as the title suggests, I wrote it just a series of essays that I wish someone had wrote to me. Uh, five years ago and I put it together and now we're, we're really moving along, which is, which is great. The last thing is I just gotta get, I guess two last things. I get the final file to upload to Amazon and I gotta go record the audio book because now I understand, I mean, more people just

• 1:10:31Speaker 01

  do the audio thing and I'd be foolish to not do it that way, especially with this kind of book. So there's that and I want to release that on my sobriety date, which is December 23rd. The other thing I have set to come out is I have an, an ebook on writing tweets. Particularly, you know, how, how, it's called Engagement is the New Cocaine. I'm really, really excited about the cover. It's got a, got that strong marketing look to it. I don't know if you've seen the cover floating around. Haven't yet, no. On, on the internet, but, but it's really cool. And I'm just gonna be talking about how, how I think about writing because what, what's happened is when you write this many tweets,

• 1:11:13Speaker 01

  uh, you, I'm not sitting there crafting a perfect tweet every time. I just, I know, I just think in a certain way, due largely to the influence of the platform and from there I've reverse engineered and I thought about it and looked at some things and, and there are definite patterns. It's to the point now where I like, I can, I'm surprised when a certain tweet does not do well or does really well. And but, but it's happened fewer and fewer. Like I have a pretty good idea of like what is going to resonate and how it's going to resonate based on the topic and the way it's written, the way it looks is important. People don't realize that.

• 1:11:54Speaker 01

  So, so I'm putting all that together. I think people want to get, get a, get a lot out of it. Um. And just like it's a bit of a marketing lesson here on the side. So, so I know what I'm gonna initially price it. As part of a deal with a guy I'm working with, it's gonna be 25 bucks, right? I'll probably pop it up to like 37 or 42 or whatever those weird numbers are. But, but think about this for a minute. I have 62.1 thousand followers. If I get 2% of them to buy that, then, then I, you know, I, I've made more than, and, and, and the, the, the advertising is built in. I have that many people. Obviously, I know what I'm doing.

• 1:12:39Speaker 01

  And that's just the kind of thing that happens when you, when you build a respectable following and you, you've done it. And, you know, I'm, people are gonna see how I think about the platform aside from like whatever I make from it. What's more, more, way more important to me is I just like sitting there crafting words. I'm very lucky that I was born, when I was born, and this technology was created because it really gives me the ability to craft a lifestyle and, and pursue the things that I think are important, which are, you know, knowledge, self-development, health, and really giving something back to people.

• 1:13:18Speaker 01

  You know, what, what good is my life if I accumulate all of this knowledge and I do nothing to, to pass it on?

• 1:13:26Chris Williamson?

  Oh, man, I, I, I couldn't agree more. I think that's a really lovely sentiment, the fact that all of our victories and all of our suffering is they're made greater, both greater and less painful by using them to allow people to avoid the pitfalls and to expedite the successes that we've already encountered.

• 1:13:48Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. You know, there, it's really just, it's just a cool thing, man. We, we got a great, we have a great world. There, there's nothing to be. Nothing to be sad about, man. Gotta be happy.

• 1:14:01Chris Williamson?

  I agree. Well, Ed, thank you very much. Would you be able to tell the listeners where they can find you online? I'll make sure it's in the show notes below, but let's get everything plugged now so I don't forget.

• 1:14:10Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. You know, my website is where I write in my long form essays. That's just edlatimore.com. And my Twitter is the same, where we were just talking about, you know, I put a lot of good stuff out there, I think. And that's Ed Latimore. My Twitter is at Ed Latimore.

• 1:14:25Chris Williamson?

  Fantastic. Well, Ed, it's been absolutely brilliant. Good luck with your final month. You've got just about four weeks to make sure that everything's finished and ready for Amazon. So I I wish you the best of luck in getting all of that completed. And then once the Twitter course is out, make sure that you give me a message and I'll make sure I fire it out to all of the listeners as well.

• 1:14:43Speaker 01

  All right. Thank you.

• 1:14:44Chris Williamson?

  Thank you very much for your time, man. Catch you later on.