Expelled, Arrested & Somehow Winning At Life - James Smith - #1170

James Smith is a podcaster, author, personal trainer, and co-founder of the world's greatest clean energy drink, Neutonic. Expect to learn why solving your problems never leaves you with fewer of them, why more money buys less happiness than you’d expect, how James got arrested at 13 for shooting a stranger, why it's important to gamify your life, and much more… - Sponsors: Get 35% off your first subscription to the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get up to 20% off Timeline’s leading longevity and cellular health supplement at https://timeline.com/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Get 15% off your first order of my favourite Non-Alcoholic Brew at https://athleticbrewing.com/modernwisdom See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: ⁠⁠https://chriswillx.com/deals⁠ Get ChatGPT to explore ideas, solve problems, and learn faster at ⁠https://chatgpt.com Timestamps: (0:00) Why You’ll Never Have Fewer Problems (5:34) You Can’t Speed-Run Hedonism (8:00) The Danger Of Waiting To Have Kids (12:41) Why You Still Feel Like A Teenager (14:12) Crazy Experiences In Asia (24:25) Manipulative But Loving Dating Advice (30:21) Getting Kicked Out Of School (34:31) When James Shot Someone In The Face (44:36) Mumps, Parties & Dropping Out Of Uni (51:16) Early Outcomes Don’t Predict Your Future (58:28) Why You Can’t Speed-Run Success (1:07:52) Your Worth Is Not About Performance (1:12:37) The 3 Paths For People Who Still Aren’t Happy (1:14:10) Why Life Needs To Be Gamified Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/books⁠ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: ⁠https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom⁠ Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: ⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Goggins⁠ #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: ⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Peterson⁠ #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: ⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Huberman⁠ - Get In Touch: Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx⁠ YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast⁠ Email: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/contact⁠ - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  You can spend your entire life solving your problems without ever feeling like you have fewer problems. And the more successful you become at improving your circumstances, the more absurd the problems you find yourself worrying about can become. So I had Martin Seligman on, positive psychology guy. There's this thing called conservation of dysphoria. So dysphoria, bad feelings, conservation of keeping them at the same level. So as your life gets better, some people look for worries with a bigger magnifying glass. They make small worries bigger so that the same amount of worries that they had in the past are what they have in the future. But because their life is better, there's actually fewer things for them to worry about. So they start inflating small things into big things.

• 0:42Speaker 00

  And I thought that you can spend your entire life solving your problems without ever feeling like you have fewer problems. Thought that was really cool.

• 0:49James Smith?

  It's interesting as well, there's a concept that a single coin in a vase makes the most noise. So as you eradicate the problems that you have in life, if you boil it down to one, it's going to make more noise than all the others put together. So for instance, let's say when you're young, you have your future to worry about, your career to worry about, finding a wife to worry about. You have all of these things to worry about, but then later on in life, when you've only got one issue, it is crippling because it's radiated and all your focus goes on to that. Like the purple elephant, the more you try to stop thinking about purple elephant, the more omnipresent it is. So there's another kind of synergistic thing there that, yeah, even you can have so much in life and it's very difficult because when I was younger, I couldn't sympathize with people that had money.

• 1:33James Smith?

  I was like, oh, you've got money, so you haven't got problems. Now I get a little bit older, I'm like, oh, it's just one of the different categories. You can still be wildly unhappy and have a good income.

• 1:42Speaker 00

  I think one of the problems that people feel is who am I to be upset about this thing when there's people that have got it worse than me? That like velvet prison thing, champagne problems? Because not only have you got the, should have put do not disturb on before I got started, let's ride to war like the great Romans did. Eleven Labs reaction's still coming in. I think people that don't have obvious problems externally don't get that much sympathy and then they feel guilty about having problems, which is a weird one.

• 2:15James Smith?

  It goes both ways as well, right? Well, I love to boil things down and I'm not a neuroscientist, I'm not Andrew Huberman yet. The chemicals that you use in your brain for happiness and sadness, they're the same chemicals irrespective of circumstance now. I try and say to people with happiness, we've spoken about this before, that you don't get an Uber surcharge, like a 1.7 ratio on serotonin or dopamine because you live in a bigger house or you are, you know, in a more privileged side of the world or whatever. Like a student having a laugh with their friends is having the same laugh and the same emotional thoughts, feelings, chemicals that someone as like a billionaire would. But then the same, so we will accept that. We will go, yeah, of course, you know, a happy student and a happy millionaire have the same, same happiness.

• 2:56James Smith?

  But we don't have the same adequate thought processes to sadness or to grief or to agony. You're like, oh, that person has nothing, they're sad, that's terrible. Or this person, although they have so much going right in their life, if they've got anguish, oh, why are you sad for?

• 3:11Speaker 00

  Yeah. I love that Uber surcharge idea that you were talking about the first time you ever made money online. Youssef has this great story. So my friend, who I did a lot of podcasts with early on, he was a doctor and he was working a night shift in a hospital. And while he was there, there was a lady who was having bowel problems. She wasn't able to sphinctally contract to push what was in her bowels out. Lots of discomfort and the family was there saying, look, look at how much pain she's in, this needs to be sorted. There's something called decompacting and decompacting is putting a gauntlet glove on and getting into the rectum and manually pulling this stuff out.

• 3:55Speaker 00

  So he rings the specialist, the specialist, some South African guys and goes, I'm, no, no, no, I'm not coming in to sort that. You can, you can decompact it yourself, it'll be fine. So he does this thing, spends half an hour, the family's shouting at him, he's spent all of this time. He gets out, like pulls the glove off, does all of the sanitary stuff, checks his phone and he sold a PDF that he had written five years ago for seven pounds fifty and realized that net after taxes, he'd made more money from that PDF in the last hour than he had from decompacting this patient. And your idea of the Uber surcharge, I think, where did that come from? What was the first example of that?

• 4:30James Smith?

  So I was saying, for instance, put it very simply, $10,000 a month. I was like, wow, this is going to be amazing, I can't wait till I hit it. And it was amazing. But then the first hundred K month, you would think on a linear basis would be 10 times the enjoyment, but I actually got about a 0.8 surcharge. The 10K made me happier. And I've heard this before on my quote unquote way up and I was like, these people are mental, they are all wrong. And then I experienced it myself and I was like, oh, they're, they're kind of right in some respects and there's almost diminishing returns as you go on. But every person will lie to themselves and go, oh, but the, the next thing will yield to the surcharge.

• 5:05Speaker 00

  You've already achieved goals that you said would make you happy. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's obvious when you see it with money and I think people have got a pretty twitchy relationship. We're talking about money, especially given how completely, I mean, we're in the UK and I think I saw a poll that was put up earlier on, 74% of people in the UK say that they feel like their quality of life is worse than five years ago. 74% of people say that they feel like it's worse. So cost of living, all the rest of it. But like, forget the money thing, just talk about experiences. But the first time that you got to take a trip abroad with your friends, wide eyed, you're so excited, you're having a beer at 6:00 AM in the departure lounge.

• 5:47James Smith?

  Malley O7.

• 5:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, unbelievable. And then.

• 5:50James Smith?

  Did you have the polo shirts with the team, like with the names on the back?

• 5:53Speaker 00

  We couldn't afford polo shirts. I'm from a working class family.

• 5:55James Smith?

  Mine was Jimbo, I had 23 on the back.

• 5:57Speaker 00

  Jimbo.

• 5:58James Smith?

  That was my name until I went to uni.

• 5:59Speaker 00

  Okay. I'm glad that went. And then you go on holiday again and you need this sort of ever increasing dose. This is what habituation is, it's hedonic adaptation. I think talking about it kind of like a drug addict or seeing it like a drug addict throughout your life. Before he made the hard right pivot into professional antisemite, I spoke to Dan Bilzerian about this and he said, I asked him this question because he's like this guy who's maybe speed ran hedonism more quickly than anyone, at least in the public eye, right? Like all of the women, all of the drugs, all of the flights, all of the holidays and the houses and the cars and the guns and everything. And I asked, do you ever feel like you sort of went through it too quickly? Do you wish that you could have slowed down?

• 6:43Speaker 00

  Because once you've bought your dream car or once you've been to the dream holiday or once you've got the house that you've always wanted, but where do you go from there? And the same thing is true at whatever level you're at. You basically want to try and stretch out your achievement of different things and goals. Like for instance, we're in Exeter at the moment, we're on tour. Hello to everyone, by the way, it's a very unceremonious introduction to the tour bus. Look at that, it's raining, fucking brilliant. So for the people that are just listening, James has lifted up the window on the tour bus to expose an enterprise renter van to Peugeot Boxer. That's a 26 model though, that's nice. One, two, three, four.

• 7:23James Smith?

  Four Bifetins.

• 7:24Speaker 00

  Five non-recyclable, non-recyclable though.

• 7:26James Smith?

  Oh.

• 7:27Speaker 00

  Bifetins out there and a yellow parking.

• 7:30James Smith?

  Bollard.

• 7:31Speaker 00

  Bollard thing, that's lovely. It also took, oh, hello, that's someone throwing rubbish out. It also took maybe over a hundred point turn to park the bus here this morning. We got to the parking spot on time and we were late for the rest of our day, not because of traffic, but not because of not finding a parking spot, but simply because of not being able to get into the parking spot.

• 7:56James Smith?

  It's because you've got a trailer in the back full of your tonic. The point you were making before, the hedonism thing.

• 8:00Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 8:01James Smith?

  Permission to be evangelical.

• 8:02Speaker 00

  Run it.

• 8:04James Smith?

  Having kids, and this isn't me trying to say to people they need to have kids. I have done every hedonistic thing to excess, whatever amount, I've done more. Dan Bilzerian, like he had the more, the flashier version, the jet.

• 8:19Speaker 00

  You had the working class version.

• 8:20James Smith?

  Mate, I had the front three seats on EasyJet, that was my jet, you know? So I've run hedonism and never, you know, if you, if we sat here or even when we did the pod where I was laying in bed on a pregnancy pillow and you were at your house in Newcastle, if in that pod you said, do you want to have kids? I go, nah, I was like, not really bothered. Then even at 30, 31, 32, at the books, at the tours, I had one of these buses, not one part of my brain was thinking about kids. Then I had my son since we last had this and I cannot believe the amount of happiness I derived from it. You see me, all I do is moan that I'm too far away from my son. So there's people out there, when you talk about a decline of happiness and I know there's this crying in birth rate, I know the correlation.

• 9:02Speaker 00

  Those two things might be like.

• 9:03James Smith?

  Yeah. And like, obviously it's, you can't point causation, but it's crazy to me how many people in their 30s feel a little bit lost. I've never had that, but having my son has been this like, this homing beacon to something that never experienced. And again, there's got to be a part of it. I've spoken to you about this before, being adopted, I've never seen a blood relative.

• 9:22Speaker 00

  Crazy.

• 9:23James Smith?

  So like never.

• 9:24Speaker 00

  First time you told me that, that when you pick your son up, it will be the first time in your entire. Conscious life, that you touch another blood relative.

• 9:34James Smith?

  Yes, it's mad.

• 9:35Speaker 00

  Insane.

• 9:36James Smith?

  And then when I look at him, I'm like, what, what is, what of this is for me? What is it for my fiance? It's amazing, but like, it's crazy. It's actually made me a lot less ambitious in other areas of my life. And I, I really love it. So I joke a bit, uh, with falling off, joking with these boys. Everyone we talk to, I'm like, oh, I used to be relevant or whatever. But like, success now for me is such a metric of like my son. So, uh, I'm not really speaking about this publicly, but when I had my son, we got pregnant straight away. Boom. No problems, no issues. Now we're going through secondary infertility. Yes, I'm on TRT, but my sperm numbers are good with an IVF clinic. Today's egg count is great. We are in a beta raging paradox where if my sperm quality was worse or her account was worse, we would have started IVF sooner. But because everything's fine, the IVF clinic are like, yeah, just keep going, just keep going.

• 10:21James Smith?

  And, um, so we're now experiencing difficulty in, uh, conceiving. By the time this goes out, it could be different, hopefully. But a lot of my friends now, they're like thirty four, thirty five. They've told me their whole life, they really wanna have kids. And they're like, oh, but I wanna buy a house first or I wanna do this. I want financial security and all of these things, which I, I get, and I'm not saying that their values are, uh, you know, not worthy or whatever. But I said to one of them, if you knew it was gonna take you two years to get pregnant, would you start now? They went, of course. I went, well, you don't know that you're gonna fall pregnant straight away. So why not?

• 10:52Speaker 00

  Talking, talking as a man who's currently going through some fertility complications.

• 10:56James Smith?

  Yeah. And, and now I'm just looking at my friends and I'm like, oh, if, if, if you could relive my life and you could say to me like, what could be the worst thing that could ever happen to me? If we imagine, we do decide eventually to have a child and we couldn't. There is no amount of, and this is coming from someone that was indifferent about having kids.

• 11:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:13James Smith?

  So the reason I'm saying this and kind of being vulnerable and talking about my personal affairs is there'll be people listening to this, potentially teens, twenties, thirties, maybe even forties, who if you're anything like me, felt indifferent to the idea of having children, I'm now telling you is my, and family, I would say is my sole driver of happiness. Everything else is noise. I want to be wealthy for my family, for my child. I want him to be spoiled.

• 11:36Speaker 00

  Well, it gives you a purpose beyond just this like selfish, self-aggrandizing, please me, me, me, fulfill, fulfill me more, fulfill me more. I totally get it. And yeah, uh, it's a a ruthless realization that there might be complications down the line.

• 11:51James Smith?

  Again, we spoke about those brain chemicals. We got dopamine, oxytocin, uh, serotonin, endorphins. Now, those we can get from video games, we can get them from, uh, scrolling on TikTok, we can get them from like a myriad of things. But synthetically, it's never been easier. And I think the people are filling their cup with those things from, and I'm not saying, do you know what? I was having a discussion with Will Store and I kind of said to him like, oh, scrolling on social media at night's bad. He goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, explain that to me. And I tried to explain to him and he goes, do you enjoy scrolling on your phone before bed? I go, yeah. He goes, what's the problem then? What's the problem? And I think that so many people can get so much from their devices, from their phones, from movies, from Netflix, whatever.

• 12:31James Smith?

  Is that the reason that people, if, if you sat in an empty house with just three TV channels and there's nothing else to do?

• 12:38Speaker 00

  You're probably gonna crack on and get some other stuff done. Speaking of that, there's a line that I learned from Dr. K a couple of weeks ago. Growing up is abandoning what works over and over again. Growing up is abandoning what works over and over again.

• 12:51James Smith?

  I've got another one for you.

• 12:52Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 12:52James Smith?

  On this, it's a quote, and I'm probably gonna butcher it because I can't remember it. It was a person looking at a picture of their parents who were the same age they are now and they were a child. They go, now I look at my parents and realize they were just old teenagers that didn't know what they were doing. Because they now as a teenager, or they as a parent now for the exact same. So myself as a father, feel like a teenager plus twenty years.

• 13:18Speaker 00

  We were walking around, we're, I said, we're in Exeter today on tour. This is the tour bus. It's a bit of a shit tip, sorry.

• 13:25Speaker 00

  We were walking around the university today and I look at students and I'm like, yeah, that's me, that's me. But it's evidently not. It's me twenty years ago.

• 13:34James Smith?

  How old do you feel saying that? I remember when I was young, people like, oh yeah, just you wait, when you get older, lad, in twenty years, I'm like, shut up mate, I'm twenty, I'm invincible.

• 13:42Speaker 00

  Quiet, unc.

• 13:43James Smith?

  Mate, I am, do you get a, I get this like weird anxiety now where if I have a pain in my side.

• 13:50Speaker 00

  Cancer.

• 13:51James Smith?

  That's, yeah, I'm, I'm gonna die.

• 13:52Speaker 00

  I'm dead.

• 13:53James Smith?

  Yeah. I get toothache now and I'm like, that's probably a brain tumor. At twenty, anything would happen, I'd be fine.

• 13:58Speaker 00

  Made of rubber and magic, I'll sniff it away.

• 14:00James Smith?

  In Laos, you know, there's people dying drinking the ethanol in Laos. I drank out of a tub with a dead gecko in it. It was pretty much ethanol. I got a free vest. I was buzzing. What are you laughing at? Hey, in Laos, I'd do anything. The whiskey was cheaper than water.

• 14:12Speaker 00

  What are you doing in Laos?

• 14:13James Smith?

  Uh, tubing, you know that tubing?

• 14:14Speaker 00

  No.

• 14:14James Smith?

  Vang Viem?

• 14:15Speaker 00

  What's that?

• 14:15James Smith?

  Oh, I get to teach Chris Williamson something. You go to this town, there's gonna be some old boys nodding along to this. So you, um, usually start in Thailand, then you go into Laos. The best way to describe Laos is instead of chilling their beer, they just put ice in it, right? You've got this, uh, area called Vang Viem, uh, and Luang Prabang, great words. And in Vang Viem, they're this tubing and you see people, they've got like the, the tubing vests on. You get a rubber insert from a tire.

• 14:42Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 14:43James Smith?

  They pump it up, you go downstream, then you jump in the river, the river goes downstream, you're floating in a rubber tire.

• 14:49Speaker 00

  Like a lazy river.

• 14:49James Smith?

  Yeah. Then there's bars, shacks at the side, they chuck out ropes, you grab them, they pull you in, drinking games.

• 14:56Speaker 00

  This sounds great.

• 14:57James Smith?

  Straight arming pints.

• 14:58Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 14:59James Smith?

  You get absolutely smashed, but Australia had to shut it down because too many Aussies were dying.

• 15:05Speaker 00

  I thought you were in Laos?

• 15:06James Smith?

  Yeah, but the Aus, I'm pretty sure.

• 15:08Speaker 00

  How did Australia get and shut it down?

• 15:09James Smith?

  Because the insurance companies, the travel insurance companies, they were breaking their backs, breaking their legs. You're a five hour trip from nearest hospital. There's rope swings, but the river depth changes. So as we're going downstream, I'm catching my ass on rocks. Then the rope swings are massive. So these Aussies are like, yeah, fucking hell, mate, let's go fucking tubing, cat. That, that's what they're like. You see them in Bali, they're just going nuts. They were doing rope swings into shallow water, fucking themselves up. But anyway, as you go down, you look at the prices and like the whiskey was like almost free. But you drank it, the next day you didn't have a hangover, you felt like you'd been poisoned. But genuinely, people have gone blind, they've died from drinking these concoctions.

• 15:46Speaker 00

  Exciting.

• 15:47James Smith?

  You know, like Thailand, when you get the, the bottles with all the same safety tops, it's like that. But no, funny thing you don't know about this town, the town where you're hungover, I don't know if it's the same now. You've got maybe like twenty, thirty cafes and all of them play Friends all day, every day.

• 16:03Speaker 00

  Why?

• 16:04James Smith?

  It's just what they do in the town. And you go in there for breakfast.

• 16:08Speaker 00

  It's like Friends is a national sport.

• 16:10James Smith?

  Yeah, but you, you sit down and then suddenly you're having a bit of food, then you're there. And then someone's like, let's go out. I'm like, it's the Ross Rachel saga. They're like, you've seen it four times. No, I don't care. And then like you're in there, but then the funny thing is all the workers in the restaurants have American accents and they can speak along to it because all day, every day.

• 16:28Speaker 00

  English from Friends.

• 16:29James Smith?

  But then they mime across to it and they sound more like Ross Geller than Ross Geller sounds like Ross Geller. So all the people that have done tubing, so they shut it down because too many people were dying. Uh, you went back and it was a lot more tame. I remember one night I got so drunk, it got dark. I'm going down a river in the dark and these tuk tuk's are like, and you just get scared and you pull in, you pay whatever to get back into town.

• 16:50Speaker 00

  Because you don't wanna be left stranded in the middle of the water.

• 16:52James Smith?

  So, quick story for you here, cool, the new tonic's hit. I was backpacking six months. I did six months in Asia. I spent three thousand pounds. Like it was unreal. And probably spend that in prep on this tour. So.

• 17:05Speaker 00

  We definitely spent it on Nando's.

• 17:07James Smith?

  We get to Luang Prabang and we've got to decide how we get to Hanoi, going to Vietnam for the first time.

• 17:11Speaker 00

  Who are you with?

• 17:12James Smith?

  Uh, an ex, classic, fell in love with a girl from uni. She wants to go back to Asia. I said, I'll come with you. I sold my Renault Megane for this. Got it.

• 17:21Speaker 00

  R twenty six.

• 17:21James Smith?

  R twenty six.

• 17:22Speaker 00

  Oh, no.

• 17:24James Smith?

  Renault Megane R twenty six Formula One edition is the goat.

• 17:26Speaker 00

  We both had the same car, both had the same car. If I can find that in left-hand drive, I would import it to America today. They'll have them in France. I'll be able to get a French one.

• 17:36James Smith?

  That'd be, that'd be the best thing you could do.

• 17:37Speaker 00

  Mate, could you imagine Camaro, R twenty six F one Megane?

• 17:41James Smith?

  Recaro bucket seats.

• 17:42Speaker 00

  Two, yeah, Alcantara though.

• 17:44James Smith?

  I do worry if you went back, it's not the same. So we had to decide whether or not we're gonna go across and you make friends. Uh, funnily enough, one of the friends that I made traveling, sent me a picture drinking new tonic the other day. I was like, this is weird.

• 17:54Speaker 00

  Unreal.

• 17:54James Smith?

  But we decided we're gonna fly, but the flight was fifty one pounds and that's a lot of money for a backpacker. But I was like, let, let's just go. I think it's like a twelve or fifteen hour bus journey. And you get the sleeper buses when you go around, but a sleeper bus can be a nightmare. On the way to Chiang Mai, someone left the door open and all the mosquitoes got in.

• 18:12Speaker 00

  I love Chiang Mai.

• 18:13James Smith?

  You're just getting attacked by the mosquitoes, cooked anyway. So we arrived there and I look at the people that got the bus and I was like, oh, did I make a mistake flying? They look at me.

• 18:22James Smith?

  They go there with these two beautiful French girls, but they had a stomach bug on the bus. Mad diarrhea. They kept shitting in the toilet. They blocked the toilet.

• 18:30Speaker 00

  Not supposed to shit on the bus?

• 18:32James Smith?

  The bus driver comes back, locks the toilet. They had to shit themselves in their seat. And I'm talking for like fifteen hour bus journey.

• 18:39Speaker 00

  Surely you can't keep going. I guess it is Thailand. They don't give a fuck.

• 18:41James Smith?

  Between Lang Prabang and Hanoi, it's like mountain roads. Everyone talks about how dangerous the cliff roads are. The drivers just trying not to get you killed. So he's like, oh, don't give a fuck if you shit yourself. So they had to sit there with beautiful French girls that shut themselves for hours.

• 18:56Speaker 00

  Some people could be into that. I did Chiang Mai to Pai, which is

• 19:00James Smith?

  Best place to learn a moped.

• 19:01Speaker 00

  One of the most northerly cities, towns, I guess.

• 19:04James Smith?

  Beautiful town.

• 19:05Speaker 00

  Did you do Pai? Oh, yeah. So that

• 19:08James Smith?

  That's where you go to learn how to ride a moped because you fall off and then you're in Pai.

• 19:11Speaker 00

  The bus that you take up there, what is it? It's called a vomit alley. Three hundred and fifty turns in a six hour journey. So just hairpins all the way up. And then when you're coming back, you think that the going up would be worse, but it's not because it's slower. It's a coming down in a eighteen person shit house sprinter van, some Thai sprinter van. And on the way back, I was with my business partner's sister. We were going back together. So we were sat together and there were two Chinese students behind us and they were, I could hear

• 19:43Speaker 00

  like that. And all that happened, bus driver sat there. You know, the classic bus driver underhand pose? Like holding the bottom of the steering wheel. You know exactly what I mean? Like this?

• 19:52James Smith?

  Like Donald Trump.

• 19:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, it's like somebody that's got like sauces, giving out hors d'oeuvres, but he's just controlling the bus. All that he did, didn't even look back. He just heard that

• 20:01Speaker 00

  like that. One hand off the steering wheel, just grabbed two plastic bags, just went like that. Just put them behind, we passed plastic bags back and they just threw

• 20:09James Smith?

  How long were you in Thailand for?

• 20:11Speaker 00

  Month and a half.

• 20:12James Smith?

  So there's this rumor when you're there, that the big Chang bottles, to be careful because they're stronger beer. And have you heard this? You heard this, Dean? So I didn't know if it was true, but one day

• 20:23Speaker 00

  Test it.

• 20:24James Smith?

  This girl that I ended up going traveling with, by the way, if you're thinking of going traveling with your girlfriend, absolutely do not do it.

• 20:28Speaker 00

  Destroy the relationship.

• 20:29James Smith?

  My mom told me before I went, she's like, James, you are making a big mistake. I was. I'm sorry, Mum. You're right. So we just argued all the time. So if we're arguing, I just get hammered. So we're in, we're in Thailand. I think we're in Koh Samui and I'm just necking these big bottles of Chang. The next thing, I blackout. But I wake up or I kind of remember, you know, when you blackout, you just, you suddenly just got memory. I'm walking down the side of the road. They found me and the first thing they say to me is you've been in a moped crash. And I'm like, what? And then I look and all the skin is off my shoulder, all the skin's off my leg. They're getting the iodine out, they're rubbing me down. They're like, you've obviously ridden your moped and you've crashed. And I'm like, oh shit. But like, I don't really remember anything. No helmet, nothing. This is crazy.

• 21:12James Smith?

  Then we get back and we find my moped. There's not a scratch on it. And we have no idea where I've been or who I've been with. They just said, you just walked out the hotel. You've been gone like two hours. I must have got

• 21:21Speaker 00

  Came back missing half of your skin.

• 21:23James Smith?

  But the craziest thing, it was kind of scary in Thailand. You go drinking for a bit. I could have broken a leg, lost a leg, got concussed. Crazy. The amount of times I've done stupid shit like that and made it out alive. Then the locals come out with the iodine and get it on you so you don't get infected.

• 21:38Speaker 00

  I had to leave Bali for that. My first time in Bali, I came off a moped after seven days, laid up in a bed, taking Trazodone, which was not Trazodone, Tramadol, which is fucking lovely. That was fun. But apart from the fact that you get really acclimatized to it, I can see why people get addicted to that stuff. Came back and I couldn't get it anymore. I was like, oh, well, that's an easy way to It was like the Vietnam vets that were on heroin while they were away and they came back and they're like, but yeah, I got infected and had to fly home. Momentus just made one of my favorite products significantly better and fifty dollars cheaper. They have reformulated their sleep packs with a better and more research-backed form of magnesium, making the new formula even stronger than before. I have taken these things every single night, whether I'm at home or on the road.

• 22:18Speaker 00

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• 23:04Speaker 00

  A modern wisdom at checkout.

• 23:06James Smith?

  You know, we're like UNC status now, where we were, we were just helping a guy pick his future. We've been walking around with students, giving them life advice for a lot of today. But I now when I'm in Bali, will find people getting on their mopeds and starting to wear a helmet. Where the one time in Vietnam

• 23:21Speaker 00

  You're the least cool person in Bali.

• 23:23James Smith?

  Yeah. The funny thing was, in Vietnam, I'm pretty sure it was, I was turning right, yeah, my driver left in Vietnam. I can't remember, but anyway. I was packing bags to get to a bus to move on in Vietnam. So I'm on my moped, I'm shuttling back and forth. I put all my bags on me and I had to put a bag under the seat and my helmet was there that I never wore. So I was like, oh, for fuck's sake, I'm gonna have to wear my helmet on this run. So I put my helmet on. A local thought I'd left my indicator on, so I'm slowing down to turn. He's overtaking me as I've turned and T-boned me. And I remember just cracking my helmet on the floor. I was wearing all the backpacks as well, which worked out like

• 23:59Speaker 00

  Body armor.

• 24:00James Smith?

  Yeah, like body armor. I get up, I'm screaming at this local guy and these Americans come out and they're like, bro, you're fine. You're fine. My moped was written off, petrol all over the floor, people putting sand on it. The one time I needed a helmet was when I put it on for safe safekeeping. I didn't want to lose the helmet and pay whatever it was. But now every time I go around, I just imagine if there was no helmet on for that, my brains would have been over a road in Da Nang on the Trang.

• 24:26Speaker 00

  Talking about advice for relationships, do and do not do. George from the Tin Men posted this thing, which was asking a bunch of men who've been married for quite a while advice for guys and how to navigate your relationship. And lots of them were quite silly and quite cute. And I thought that one of them was really interesting, which is when you're trying to help your girl decide what to wear for the evening, a lot of the time there might be a fashion show that happens. And after a while, it can delay you to the point where you're late for the meal and that's not good and she might get frustrated. So one of the pieces of advice was when your girl comes out in the first outfit, you say, darling, that looks, you look fantastic. This is, this is gorgeous, but

• 25:10Speaker 00

  I do want to see another one. Like, can I see, can I see what your second choice would be? Then when she comes out in the second one, say, I mean, this is, this is stunning, but

• 25:20Speaker 00

  I did prefer the first one. Save yourself three more outfit changes.

• 25:23James Smith?

  You do realize that every single time a man does that now, they've listened to this podcast. I know what you're doing. You're manipulating.

• 25:29Speaker 00

  Yeah. If you're listening to this in the car, it's not going to work. A lot of couples listen to this either in the car or separately. We hear this a lot at the live shows where they'll come up and they go, we listen to you all the time. Like when I go to work and he goes to work and then we talk about it over dinner on a night time. And if you now try and use this. So basically, boys, if you've listened to this one before your girl has, you need to say, don't listen to that one with Chris and James. It's actually, it's kind of bullshit. They're sat on the bus. It's, yeah, it's a mess. It's a bit of a mess. The Guardian's gonna do an article about it. You don't need to listen to that one. Get her to skip over that. And you can keep that hack for you. But I do think, what was, what was some of the other ones?

• 26:03James Smith?

  My dad, my dad's got one where he said, the key to a long, successful marriage is accepting you're wrong, even when you're right.

• 26:10Speaker 00

  That sounds dismissive though. Chicks don't like it. But then it's not just accepting that you're wrong, even if you're right. It's making it convincing that you actually think that you're wrong. Because otherwise it's, you're just being dismissive.

• 26:22James Smith?

  He got fifty two years married.

• 26:25Speaker 00

  Can't argue with the outcomes.

• 26:26James Smith?

  I had a bit from the last show where I was talking about death row meals, where I was saying it's kind of mad that you do the most heinous crimes of rape and murder and whatever. And when we do execute you, we're gonna let you pick your, your last meal. And I joke that my dad's been married to my mom fifty two years and he doesn't get to pick what's for dinner. So like, why is it the people that, anyway. So like, if we're gonna kill, oh, sorry, mate, we're gonna, we're gonna kill you because you're a heinous murderer. But what do you fancy? We'll make it happen.

• 26:53Speaker 00

  I mean, think about that lady, the one, the first person in history to have had the lethal injection twice in the same session and survived it.

• 27:06James Smith?

  It gives me a good idea of a new way to torture people. So let's say someone's on death row. Let's just inject them with saline and keep doing it and go, goodbye.

• 27:13Speaker 00

  But they're on death row.

• 27:14James Smith?

  Yeah, yeah, but then

• 27:15Speaker 00

  But you're not supposed to torture them.

• 27:16James Smith?

  No, no, no, but it's only saline, Chris.

• 27:18Speaker 00

  Right.

• 27:19James Smith?

  We're just gonna make a psychological trauma to make them feel that they're about to die. They'll be like, ah, I got you. We'll do it again tomorrow. And then they like Russian roulette.

• 27:24Speaker 00

  This sounds like Guantanamo. This is like John Kerry Akau's stuff. You can't be doing that. I'm friends with John Kerry Akau. He's gonna shout at you. Other advice, other bits of advice. If she can't decide where she wants to eat, tell her you've decided, but it's a surprise. Give her one chance to guess where you're going. Whatever she says, say yes and go with it. Ninety nine percent of the time it's where she really wants to go.

• 27:44Speaker 00

  It's so manipulative. I can't work out if this is horribly misogynistic or like actually a beautiful way to just cut through a lot of the mess of a relationship. Here's the final one. Just order fries. She's not hungry, sure, but she'll eat the extra fries. Have you seen those videos where this is so, this is ruthless? You can't do this.

• 28:06Speaker 00

  Guys will ask their chick whether or not she wants a snack. So do you want to go out? Should we, we should go for a drive through? We could get ourselves a little treat. Why don't we go for a drive through? And then when they pull up, so you can order, what is it that you want? She orders. And then when the person asks him, he's like, I'm all right. I'm not eating.

• 28:23Speaker 00

  It drives people. But the same thing is true. In a relationship, you are allowed to gain weight, but only relative to your partner. Like you and your partner's level of fatness or fitness is supposed to oscillate together. When you start to-

• 28:38James Smith?

  It's a massive point of friction. Coaching people over the years, I used to call it the relationship saboteur, where if one party wants to lose weight and the other doesn't, they will not succeed.

• 28:47Speaker 00

  I think that's, I think that's now called a fitness gap relationship.

• 28:50James Smith?

  Look at that. I'm, I'm trying to teach him stuff. I'm learning back.

• 28:53Speaker 00

  When you're ahead, I'm just giving it nomenclature. I come up with a cool name for it. You came up with the concept.

• 28:57James Smith?

  I don't know what it means. But yeah, in essence, they'll, they'll just find ways to sabotage. Oh, I just got us a curry. Oh, but you know, I'm dieting. Yeah, but this one, you know, it's Friday night. Like Friday night.

• 29:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, you've got to be on the same page together. You have to. From a health and fitness perspective, you have to be on the same page.

• 29:11James Smith?

  When do you reckon, this is one for you? Like, you know, the Russians used to have those like umbrella tips with poison in. They should give young people-

• 29:18Speaker 00

  Poke you in the back of the leg. Didn't some guy, that happened in the UK, right?

• 29:21James Smith?

  Yeah, Salisbury.

• 29:23Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 29:24James Smith?

  So I was thinking we'd get those, but we put a tree tied in it, right?

• 29:27Speaker 00

  Just jab, unsolicited jab people with Retta.

• 29:31James Smith?

  They would be fat family members. So they're being-

• 29:34Speaker 00

  So is this, this is an intervention from within the family?

• 29:36James Smith?

  Yeah, Fat Unc.

• 29:37Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 29:38James Smith?

  So Fat Uncle Trevor, he's, he's just a walking bloody NHS heart attack.

• 29:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:43James Smith?

  You get the little umbrella.

• 29:44Speaker 00

  160 over 110.

• 29:45James Smith?

  Yeah, absolutely. Fucking get up to him, give him a little prick. Oh, what was that? Oh, sorry, Unc. There you know, I didn't see you there. Do that once a week. 2.5 milligrams, start off, whatever. But then I'm thinking, we're moving to oral, I think they've got oral Ozempic.

• 29:58Speaker 00

  Oh, you're looking for the Bill Gates solution.

• 30:00James Smith?

  So I'm wondering, imagine in the future, I'm just saying, I'm not saying, imagine your, your wife, you've started training, you're, you're in your fitness, your husband's dragging a little bit behind and he's not losing the weight. Imagine soon there could be just a little je ne sais quoi going into-

• 30:13Speaker 00

  Well, seasoning. You can put it in a grinder.

• 30:15James Smith?

  Yeah. And then he's dropping weight and be like, yeah, do you know what? You know, Trevor's looking amazing. Is that gonna happen?

• 30:21Speaker 00

  What did you think of that guy? So we just managed to finesse our way into Exeter University Gym, University of Exeter Gym, which for a high-class sporting university, was actually a bit of a shitty gym.

• 30:33James Smith?

  Bit mid.

• 30:33Speaker 00

  It was, yeah, not enough machines. I can't get pump on. Everyone in there, probably very fit, probably great at the sports that they do, not massive, right? But also 19. So we brought the average age up by-

• 30:45James Smith?

  And the average free testosterone level.

• 30:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, you did. The average free testosterone doubled just by you walking in. But as we were walking back, this is a question that's been asked a bunch at the live shows and we got to do it in person today with one of the guys who came up and said, I'm a first year, I've been at uni for a month? He's only been at uni for a month. It's the fucking middle of October. He hasn't been at university, he's been at university for-

• 31:08James Smith?

  Maybe flexers, six weeks.

• 31:10Speaker 00

  Been at uni for six weeks and I, I feel like I'm not making any progress and I want freedom. So should I just sack it all off?

• 31:17James Smith?

  Studying business. And he's like, I suppose the dilemma here is you're like, well, if I'm studying business, am I going to learn as much as I would run in a business or being in a business?

• 31:24Speaker 00

  18. You can't go and run a business. Anyway, what, when people ask you that question, because they've asked me it a lot, because I, I do the Q and A. What's your perspective? Because you tried uni. What was, give me your perspective on this?

• 31:41James Smith?

  I told you a little bit about, on that reel the other day that I got kicked out of school. So I got kicked out of school. Technically, I didn't get enough grades to go to sixth form. So went in, spoke to the teachers and they, they didn't want to have me on into the college because I only had four GCSEs, supposed to have five. Eventually they go, right, we'll do it, but you've got to be on your best behaviour. You've not been a great student. Two weeks in and get kicked out.

• 32:02Speaker 00

  What do you do?

• 32:04James Smith?

  So actually, this is gonna be crazy. When I was younger, I wanted to be in the military. So I was in the army cadets, applied to Welbeck College. My dad said, I couldn't join the army if I went in as an officer. So you have to go into like officer training and in essence, usually have to be well qualified, which I wasn't. My school grades weren't good.

• 32:21Speaker 00

  You can go straight to Sandhurst with a degree or you can do OTC.

• 32:26James Smith?

  Yeah. So Officer Training Corps, Welbeck College was where I was gonna try and go. That's pretty much my only way through. And on my interview for that, I had a little police report coming up. I got in trouble when I was younger for shooting someone with an air rifle. But we'll glaze over that.

• 32:37Speaker 00

  Check James's Instagram for the full story.

• 32:39James Smith?

  Yeah. So I go, yeah, I go to sixth form. I had pretty bad behavioural problems. Imagine this. I had a really cool lock knife that I used to use because we used to go off-

• 32:50Speaker 00

  What's that?

• 32:51James Smith?

  Like where you flick a knife out and then it doesn't come back.

• 32:54Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 32:54James Smith?

  So we used to, because we used to go camping as cadets, you like go out, face paint. You get like an assault rifle, the barrel's concreted, but you'll have live rounds on you. If you shoot a live round in someone's face, half their face is coming up. So like, you're, it was super cool, by the way. I don't think people really do. I went Cub Scouts, Cadets, then I went to go into the army. So I could strip.

• 33:12Speaker 00

  How were you such a tearaway? You had all of the guardrails to be highly disciplined and well behaved and you shot someone at 13 and had a police report.

• 33:20James Smith?

  Well, this thing, I was excited to join the army. I just wanted to go shoot someone.

• 33:23Speaker 00

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• 34:31James Smith?

  So the British Army rifle is called an SA80. The ones that we use in cadets is called an L8, L89AIGP cadet rifle. And basically it has an iron sight instead. I could still strip one blindfolded and put it back together. I still remember, yeah, we had to clean the barrel. I still remember you would do drills where even as you're checking the barrels, emptying the weapon, you do a sweep with your hand underneath the magazine cover to make sure there's no magazine in it. Like we, even as cadets, as a 15 year old, you do these drills.

• 34:56Speaker 00

  Become very proficient.

• 34:57James Smith?

  I've been to Arborfield, Pirbright. I've shot on some of the like, the best ranges in the country. I've even used one of the like digital ranges, this was like 20 years ago. So I was like obsessed. I loved it. But one day I was just like, oh, I'm just gonna take the knife to school and show my mates. Got caught. And me as-

• 35:13Speaker 00

  Sixth form.

• 35:13James Smith?

  Now this is 13, 14. It's just after I've been arrested.

• 35:16Speaker 00

  So you shot someone?

• 35:17James Smith?

  Yeah.

• 35:18Speaker 00

  Got out of it?

• 35:19James Smith?

  Yeah. So it was-

• 35:20Speaker 00

  Then took a knife to school.

• 35:21James Smith?

  It's criminal damage.

• 35:22Speaker 00

  It doesn't, the optics.

• 35:24James Smith?

  It would have been actual bodily harm because-

• 35:25Speaker 00

  Do not-

• 35:27James Smith?

  The guy's-

• 35:27Speaker 00

  Looked great.

• 35:28James Smith?

  Seven stitches in the face. And have I told you about the ballistics report?

• 35:32Speaker 00

  Can you just give, let's tell the story from start to finish because I wanted to take the piss out of you on Instagram for this story and I couldn't do it.

• 35:40James Smith?

  So we would, we'd break barrel air rifles, we'd have the pellets, we'd have the shot pellets, me and my neighbour. And we would shoot different things. And then we wanted to kind of raise the stakes. And at 13, you know, a freeway going past with cars driving, moving target, in our heads would be like, oh, that'd be cool. It didn't really occur to us in our brains that we were committing damage on cars. Like imagine you're driving and someone shoots a pellet at your car. That is-

• 36:02Speaker 00

  Would it leave a dent? Would it go through?

• 36:05James Smith?

  Wouldn't go through.

• 36:05Speaker 00

  Wouldn't go through.

• 36:06James Smith?

  Right. Significant damage.

• 36:07Speaker 00

  Right.

• 36:08James Smith?

  But we were just pissing around. And then one day-

• 36:11Speaker 00

  So where were you pitched up?

• 36:13James Smith?

  Outside of the house.

• 36:14Speaker 00

  Outside of your own house?

• 36:15James Smith?

  Outside of our own house.

• 36:16Speaker 00

  Right, cool.

• 36:16James Smith?

  Because my brain hadn't developed. The same time in my life, I took a knife in school to show my friends. The teachers were like, James, you don't understand that you can't bring a knife in school. And I was like, why? They're like, in case you stab someone. I'm not gonna stab someone. They were like, but James, it's school. You can't bring that here. So shooting cars and thought nothing of it. One day I'm playing Age of Empires 2, my mum walks in and she throw, great game, throws like a Yellow Pages. She's crying. She's like, what have you done?

• 36:42Speaker 00

  The Yellow Pages?

• 36:43James Smith?

  Like a phone book.

• 36:44Speaker 00

  Why?

• 36:45James Smith?

  She was obviously trying to call someone when the police came. So-

• 36:47Speaker 00

  Call who?

• 36:48James Smith?

  I don't know. But she's come to the, she was obviously in the middle of doing something. Police are at the front door, said to my mum.

• 36:53Speaker 00

  And the closest projectile that she had to exact her outrage on you?

• 36:57James Smith?

  Was the Yellow Pages.

• 36:58Speaker 00

  She held, so okay. So your first-

• 36:59James Smith?

  All I remember is turning around, it come and she was like, what have you done?

• 37:02Speaker 00

  Did you get to save your game?

• 37:04James Smith?

  I couldn't tell you. The, the adrenal was bum. So go out and there's just two police officers sat in the front room with notepads. And I had to talk to my parents about this afterwards. I was like, what did they say? They said, we're looking for some lads, looking for some kids, maybe they've got air rifles. My mum was like, they'll be my son. She was, she wasn't like, oh, I don't know what you're going about. She was like, they'll be my son, come in. So I come out and then I would-

• 37:24Speaker 00

  She's a good citizen.

• 37:25James Smith?

  What have you been doing? And we'd been pissing around. Like we didn't, we didn't mean to shoot. Oh, kind of. Anyway, he go, my mum's in hysterics. My dad's come home from work. He's like, don't say, don't say anything until you've seen a lawyer.

• 37:38Speaker 00

  Good man.

• 37:38James Smith?

  I've already done everything at this point. And the police officers knew we weren't trying to hurt someone. So they were like, oh, so you were shooting items, you're shooting objects. You, you obviously missed. I'm like, correct. They, they actually were helping because they knew we weren't bad kids. They knew the neighbourhood, whatever. We didn't go out that day to try and hurt someone. So they go, yeah, unfortunately, someone has been shot. Currently at Heatherwood, they have them stitches now. So-

• 38:03Speaker 00

  Hedwood.

• 38:04James Smith?

  Heatherwood. Heatherwood Hospital. It's like Ascot's biggest hospital. So they were like, my mum and dad obviously in hysterics. They go, let's, let's do this tomorrow. Come to the police station, we've done everything there. So I was like, oh, God. Mum and dad were not happy. Next day, go there. And as you get into the police station, I was like, I'm about to get a telling off. And I remember the police officer going, you ready? I said, yeah. He's like, okay, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you do, say thirteen. Maybe used against you in a court of law. I'm there with my mum.

• 38:30Speaker 00

  What does that mean when they say that? You're under arrest?

• 38:32James Smith?

  I'm under arrest now. So I'm going in.

• 38:34Speaker 00

  As a thirteen year old?

• 38:35James Smith?

  Fingerprints, DNA, mugshot, the lot.

• 38:37Speaker 00

  So you can't commit a murder in the UK now?

• 38:39James Smith?

  Interrogation room, interrogation. My friends at school didn't believe I'd been arrested because they were like, oh, you're just lying. So one of my friends who'd been arrested had an ankle tag. He was like, he's like, tell me about the interrogation.

• 38:49Speaker 00

  You grew up in a really nice area.

• 38:51James Smith?

  That's, that's how it begins, mate. He was from Ashford. My school was in Surrey. So anyway. I said, take deck, two tapes, two red buttons. He was like, oh, you did get arrested. So, uh. Yeah, I came back and basically the police officer was like, look, you're, you're going to meet the guy you shot. And you're going to apologize and he's not going to convict you. He's not going to press charges.

• 39:09Speaker 00

  Who was it that you shot? How did the, how did you hit someone?

• 39:11James Smith?

  So before we met him, they took us through a ballistics report. So he went to Edward Hospital. He said, I've been shot. The, the doctors then have to call the police. There's been a shooting.

• 39:22Speaker 00

  If the sentence is proclaimed, I've been shot, all hell breaks loose.

• 39:27James Smith?

  Armed response. So the guys that came to the door didn't have guns, but there were armed response and ask for this. So that would have been worse. My mum and dad had seen them. Full ballistics report. He was passenger. So this is in England. His wife's driving.

• 39:42James Smith?

  Back window was open on the right side, missed his son. Hit him in the face and the passenger's. So the police are like, you could have shot the wife, blinded the wife, killed the wife.

• 39:53Speaker 00

  Who was driving?

• 39:54James Smith?

  Crashed the car.

• 39:55Speaker 00

  Crashed the son and the.

• 39:57James Smith?

  Could have hit the son. And they were like, if you hit the son. Six or seven. They're like, if you, if you hit the son, he's convicting you. He had seven stitches across his face, just under his lip. They needed from the shot.

• 40:10Speaker 00

  Who shot it? You or you me?

• 40:11James Smith?

  We don't know.

• 40:11Speaker 00

  Right.

• 40:12James Smith?

  Obviously. Must have been him. Must have been him. I'll give you everything. Um. But you can imagine the world crushing down you for what seemed like just being idiots, just shooting at a moving object. So go through the ballistics report, have to meet the guy. Like, obviously, I'm so apologetic, but there's nothing you can do at this point. Afterwards, we don't get the conviction. I have a police reprimand until I'm eighteen. So in essence, if I get in any more trouble, I'm fucked.

• 40:37Speaker 00

  Like bringing knives to school?

• 40:38James Smith?

  Yeah. So then, um, we haven't even got to my uni bit yet. So we had that, but then it meant that when I was out drinking, being like a job when I was like fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, you know, and the police pull over and you've got alcohol in you and they're like, you lads got booze? Yep. What have you got? WKD, four Fosters. What did you do? I poured it down the drain right now. I just didn't want to get in trouble again.

• 40:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:57James Smith?

  Where my mates would be like, oh, fuck off, mate. I was like, yes, sir, no, sir.

• 41:02Speaker 00

  Goody two shoes.

• 41:02James Smith?

  Yeah. And, um, so that was a bit rough. Then got my four GCSEs. Then I couldn't even get into sixth form. So then we're pissing around one day in sixth form. We're bunking. I'm already like two weeks in. And still using school in Chertsey, there's a, a school hall. And there's a drama department, all this props are behind the stage. And we thought that'd be a good place to bunk. Smoke cigarettes, we're smoking there. It was less likely to get caught in the drama hall than you would be outside. Anyway, we're dressed up in the props, we're fucking around and I shove my mate, he's on a sofa that's got wheels on it. I shove him off the stage, but he's holding on to the curtain and the curtain's going dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, tipping off.

• 41:40Speaker 00

  It's like a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

• 41:41James Smith?

  I'm pissing myself. I turn around at the back of the hall, cross arms to my head of year. He's just been watching us.

• 41:47Speaker 00

  Smoking and pushing someone off a stage on a wheelie sofa.

• 41:50James Smith?

  At this point, I'm what? Sixteen? Just turned sixteen? So go to my head of year and they make you sit outside. So I'm sat outside and well, oh God, then my mum comes in.

• 42:01Speaker 00

  Another Yellow Pages.

• 42:02James Smith?

  Sitting there. This is like, what, two years after I've been arrested, three years after I've been arrested. And also I didn't get the grades. My mum, dad were like, you need to go get a job. Sixth form was my way to not get a job.

• 42:13James Smith?

  So my head of year was like, we can expel James formally. We have the grounds for it, or you can take him out today. Like you remove him from school today, we don't expel him. Like that, that was pretty much the ultimate.

• 42:23Speaker 00

  It's either leave or we fire you.

• 42:25James Smith?

  Yeah. So, uh, get in the car, drive on the way home. Uh, my mum takes like a slightly different route. We're not going home. She takes me to Bracknell Job Centre. She pulls up and as we're walking across to the job centre, I'm walking behind her and I'm like, my Nokia. And I'm texting my mates like, I've just been expelled. She gets my phone and just smashes it in the road. Just smashes it in the road. I've never seen like my parents like this before. Go into the job centre. She turns to me. Don't come home with that job. That was it. Don't come home with that job. I was like, oh my God. So I went there and I sat down and one of the questions was, do you want to like, keep going in education? I was like, what are my options? There was an agricultural college doing a BTEC in sport. I was like.

• 43:05Speaker 00

  The most canonical.

• 43:07James Smith?

  Like, can I qualify for that? They said, yeah. So I came home and I had to try and barter to my mum that I wanted to remain in college. So then what was good there was all my subjects were PE because of sports coaching. So that went pretty well. But then I get a BTEC and actually I just got on really well with my lecturers, played rugby for the college, I did a lot of sport. Uh, used to give rugby kit that I got from playing for county to my lecturers and they give me extensions on my work. So it was cool. I was like, oh mate, I'm going to Tenerife. I can't do the, uh, coursework.

• 43:37Speaker 00

  Because you need to play sevens or whatever.

• 43:39James Smith?

  That, that waterproof looks quite nice. I was like, I gave you one.

• 43:42Speaker 00

  You were bribing your teachers with good merch.

• 43:45James Smith?

  And, um.

• 43:46Speaker 00

  It's the same as us now. It's the same with you tonic.

• 43:48James Smith?

  Mate, hundred. And the, the college I was at, it's called Berkshire College of Agriculture. They had like a grave digging course onsite. So they were teaching people how to dig graves. Then we had the sports part, then it was equestrian. But then at the end of that, you can top up and do something called a foundation degree. So you can turn your, uh, BTEC into a first year of uni foundation degree, FDSC it goes down as. And, uh, so I applied for that. But my mum and dad originally were like, we're not letting you go to uni. Cause we know you'll fuck it up. We know you'll get in debt. So I actually.

• 44:19Speaker 00

  Literally didn't trust you to go to university.

• 44:20James Smith?

  Yeah. I, I was like, I want to go to Bournemouth. They're like, no. I said, what do you mean, no? I'm eighteen. They're like, no. So I continued at my college.

• 44:27Speaker 00

  Not done. I haven't been arrested for like three years now.

• 44:29James Smith?

  So I did two more, uh, years, technically university, technically Buxton Uni in Buckinghamshire. But it, the campus for it was my existing college. So I did four years at college. Loved it. It was great. Lived at home. Then for my third top up year, to go from a foundation degree to a full degree, you have to do a top up. And that's why I chose Hartbury College. Now Hartbury College is a rugby college. I thought I was pretty good at rugby until I went there. So I was like Berkshire under twenties captain, playing like adults rugby was good. When I get there, they're like, oh, you can try out for the third team. I was like, one of the hardest games of my life. We had like England under twenty boys in the second team. And, uh, when I got there, freshers, a load of us got mumps. You've had mumps?

• 45:09Speaker 00

  I got mumps on one side in my first year of uni. Yeah. Do you want to explain what mumps is?

• 45:14James Smith?

  Uh, I first of all woke up thinking I'd been in a fight because I don't remember the night out and my jaw was killing me.

• 45:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:19James Smith?

  So I'm asking my mates like, did we get a scrap last night? And then I went to go see the nurse onsite and she was like, you've either got glandular fever or I reckon you've got mumps. Now add it in both sides and you look like a hamster. Is it your lymph glands?

• 45:32Speaker 00

  Whatever there's, whatever's under here. I'm sure people in the comments will tell us, but yeah.

• 45:35James Smith?

  So from freshers, I got sent home, but like all the rugby team got done and we said.

• 45:38Speaker 00

  Because it's super contractable.

• 45:40James Smith?

  We said it was from sharing water bottles, but we were just all snogging birds on freshers. You know, it was like, and this is before camera phones. So boys can neck like ten birds and two blokes in the night. And that's, that's a heterosexual male. One time, me and another.

• 45:54Speaker 00

  Sometimes you just miss the target, I suppose.

• 45:56James Smith?

  Yeah. I remember one time me and another bloke snogged each other to prove to the girls we were going to kiss him.

• 46:06James Smith?

  And, and in rugby, that was like, that's, that's just normal. Like just imagine giving someone a smiley shout. I'm really going to kiss him. Prove it. Dave, come here.

• 46:15James Smith?

  Um, not my, not my proudest semi. Uh, but anyway, so I got mumps, had to go home. And, uh, I was home for like three weeks. I lost a lot of weight. I lost maybe like eight or nine kilograms.

• 46:25Speaker 00

  I remember I was in the trenches.

• 46:26James Smith?

  The fevers are terrible. Then just as I got good and it passed, it went to my nuts. And my nuts.

• 46:32Speaker 00

  I've heard about this.

• 46:33James Smith?

  Massive. So I go to Edward Hospital again, same place as the person when they got shot. And, um, they were like, yeah, you, you just got like hold them. So I was worried I was maybe going to be infertile from it. It's really bad for your fertility. So I go back to uni. This is a long story by the way. And I'm looking at like my cohort, my, uh, my year, whatever. And I go to my first lecture, but I've been off campus for three weeks. So I expected when I first walked into that lecture. So I'm good. James, welcome. Where have you been? I walk in and everyone just stares as if I've walked into the wrong room, when I know fully well, this is my lecture theatre.

• 47:06Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 47:07James Smith?

  And they're like, can we help? And I paused for two seconds and just turned around and left because I, I was really embarrassed that it was, it wasn't what I was expecting. So.

• 47:17Speaker 00

  Wasn't as welcoming as you hoped.

• 47:18James Smith?

  We'll deal with this another day. And then I never went to a lecture again. So.

• 47:23Speaker 00

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• 48:07Speaker 00

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• 48:22Speaker 00

  You leave.

• 48:23James Smith?

  Well, this is the thing. At uni, I was told, this may not be true. If you don't hand in your coursework, they kick you off campus. I was living on campus. But someone said, if you hand in a blank cover letter with every bit of coursework, they can't. So I did that.

• 48:35Speaker 00

  How'd that work out?

• 48:36James Smith?

  Well, I didn't get kicked off campus. I, um, so remember I told you earlier that my name was Jimbo? So Lucy Lord, who you met last night, knows me as Jimbo. Uh, so everyone at uni knew me as Jimbo. No one knew me as James Smith. My last week of playing rugby for Hartbury, one of the coaches went, are you James Smith? I went, yeah. He goes, mate, I'm your dissertation supervisor. He's like, none of us know who you are. I only know you as Jimbo from playing rugby.

• 49:06Speaker 00

  You Jason Bourne'd yourself?

• 49:08James Smith?

  Yeah. And he was like.

• 49:09Speaker 00

  At university?

• 49:09James Smith?

  He was like, mate, where have you been? I was like, oh, mate, yeah, I went to my first lecture and like, no one ever let me in. He's like, we've been emailing you. I go, yeah, I never got my logins. I never even got into my student uni account to log into it. And, uh, yeah, that was my one year at uni. And the, the issue was though, did you have to do stats and research?

• 49:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:27James Smith?

  Stats and research was seven AM on a Thursday. The social was on a Wednesday night. So it was never gonna work. I was never gonna pull an all nighter in liquid Gloucester, have my one pound cheeseburgers on the way home and get up at seven AM for stats and research. I didn't even do my foundation degree properly. I swapped rugby stash with people I knew at college to get the first part of the degree. So then that was it. And then I had one year sending it at uni and best year of my life. And didn't get the degree. So that guy backed full circle, half an hour. We pretty much said to him, like, you're away from home, you're building independence. You're learning how to feed yourself from washing your own clothes. That year away from uni for me like accelerated my, oh, didn't do that well, accelerated my maturity.

• 50:13James Smith?

  I say maturity and I've got to backtrack on that. So you ever played Centurion?

• 50:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:19Speaker 00

  You're gonna have to explain for the Americans.

• 50:20James Smith?

  I got banned from the prom. So we had a game, we were bored one day at uni. We're like, right, every minute, on the minute, you gotta do a shot. So we do a shot of beer. So we had like proper decent pint glasses and we've been drinking a bit before. And all I remember is kind of blacking out again. And at Hartbury College, you've got these different campuses and the one we were in was the one they show people around. And so I get woken up by like our head of year at uni knocking on our door where I was, took us to the block we'd been drinking in. I'd been using cans of deodorant to graffiti windows, but I'd been drawing cocks.

• 50:53Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 50:54James Smith?

  That's how everyone noticed me. You know, super bad when they draw cocks and everything. That was me at uni. But, um, I don't even know how I did this. I somehow put a knife in a fridge door.

• 51:04Speaker 00

  Stuck it through it. What is it about you and weapons?

• 51:07James Smith?

  I don't know, mate.

• 51:08Speaker 00

  It seems like a consistent, I mean, you know, we run New Tonic for four years now and I haven't seen you with a weapon once. I'm worried that you're going to turn up one day with a improvised explosive device.

• 51:17James Smith?

  But the good thing is I got this all out the way. So like up until twenty three, twenty three, twenty four. I was a fucking liability. It's the only word. Nothing was impressive I've ever done. Like even on rugby tours, puking on the back of a bus. Neck in a bottle of wine, being a degenerate. Like really, the university for me was learning the skills of drinking.

• 51:37Speaker 00

  It's a really interesting archetype, cause everyone that's gone to school, college, sixth form. And university in the UK knows like that kind of archetype of, of person. I certainly do. And I was facilitating it for much of my time in nightlife. I don't know what the equivalent is in America. I imagine that there will still be that maybe like Greek.

• 51:58James Smith?

  Football joke.

• 51:59Speaker 00

  Life. Yeah, like, but I, they take their sport so seriously. Once you get, if you're talking college, university. You, you're a pro athlete. You're bigger than some pro athletes, right? The following that you have, they've now unlocked all of the sponsorship stuff. So Nike and Gatorade and New Tonic can come in and, and sponsor college athletes. If you're a college athlete that fucking rules, we wanna hear from you. Um.

• 52:25Speaker 00

  That archetype of person that you just think this person should not be allowed near anything requires responsibility.

• 52:32James Smith?

  Can you imagine these people I went to uni with now? They're like, he's, he's.

• 52:35Speaker 00

  That guy.

• 52:36James Smith?

  He's got what?

• 52:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, that guy.

• 52:37James Smith?

  Hundred million dollar drinks business.

• 52:38Speaker 00

  I think, uh, this is one of the things that's been interesting for me to like reflect on the. When you're young, you have no perspective over whether or not you're going to amount to something in future. And I think that we're able to make predictions based on how people perform in school, because that's really the only merit that you have, even in sport. Like you, you knew that kid at fifteen that played for England under seventeens, I did, in cricket, right? Which was my sport. Uh, or there was, because cricket's not a physical sport in the same way that rugby might be or even football. Um, it means that you can speed run the adult game as well. So you can have some superstar, Scotty Borthwick, who plays for, played and I think still plays for Durham County Cricket Club.

• 53:23Speaker 00

  I remember he was fourteen, playing seconds, county seconds, right? This is something that men do full time and he was still in secondary school. So you look at these very precocious young guys and girls and you're like, wow, they've speed ran success. They're so much closer to this. And I think that it can create a sense of helplessness in young people. They go, well, look, this is the time when my future is being predicted by my present. What's happening right now is going to be indicative of where I'm going to end up. And when puberty comes online, one of the things that you do is you start looking around and comparing yourself to everyone that's nearby, because you're getting ready to become an adult in the world. And this is one of the reasons that

• 54:06Speaker 00

  trends seem to, uh, be particularly permeable. Like they seep through groups of especially girls, but also guys. In puberty, through college, through university. And you can think, fuck, like, I'm not gonna amount to anything. Like, how can I amount to anything?

• 54:23James Smith?

  That guy was what, eighteen?

• 54:25Speaker 00

  Eighteen, yeah. He's been at uni for six weeks.

• 54:26James Smith?

  I said to him, I was like, mate, like, not to say that I'm gonna be your role model, but eighteen, I, I was still not allowed to go to uni at your age. I was housebound, I was on house arrest by my parents. Then at twenty, I went to do freshers. Then by twenty one, I was failing my third year at uni, having the biggest booziest year of my life. I was like, then twenty two, twenty three. Still lived in Gloucester, did door knocking. I was twenty two when I did the door knocking. Twenty three, you're in corporate. Then Empower, yeah, there was door knocking for Empower. So I was like, mate, if in three years, you're not door knocking in GL one, something gas.

• 54:58Speaker 00

  You're ahead.

• 54:59James Smith?

  Yeah, yeah, you're ahead. Then twenty four, I didn't become a PT because I wanted to run my own business. I did it because I just hated everything I'd done before. It was a move of desperation. I was like, oh, if I can charge three people thirty pounds and make ninety pounds a day, I could live off that. And I could get that done between nine and one. And then cool, I'll go and play Call of Duty. The, everyone seems to think retrospectively like, oh, it was a strategic move. I was like, no, I fell into it by accident through hating my job. And here's another thing. In corporate, no one really does anything. So for instance, in a sales job.

• 55:28Speaker 00

  There's a lot of input and not a lot of outcome.

• 55:30James Smith?

  I won't name the company, RSA Security, um, part of EMC. There, I was in the inside sales department. And my job was, marketing would bring in the leads. I would qualify the leads on the phone, find out the size, pass it to a distributor or reseller. So similar to our model, you, although we do sell direct, you don't buy Mars bar from Mars. You get it from Costco or you get it from your local corner shop. And I had a set commission amount and I had to make a certain amount of phone calls every day. And I said to my boss, oh, I've hit target, it's, it's April. Is there any way we can expand my commission? She goes, no, I'm sorry. I was like, well, what am I supposed to do for the rest of the year? She was like, look, as your manager, I just need you to take your phone calls.

• 56:09James Smith?

  I was like, and I'm not gonna get anything else. So I would call up Cornwall County Council every morning at the same time. And basically it would have press one, press two, press three, press four. And if nothing happened, it would go back to press one, press two, press three. So I'd leave it off the hook for like fifty minutes. Then at the end of the day, I would just keep putting the phone down and bashing it. So then the statistics.

• 56:29Speaker 00

  Total number of calls, total time on call. So I did something similar when I worked at the AA. So I was doing uh, outbound, warm telesales, upgrading people to get, uh, vehicle cover. So if you got, uh, something broke that wasn't the, uh, engine and wasn't the, um, timing belt. The AA would be prepared to cover it, but it was really specific. It was very hard to actually end up getting it covered. So I realized that when the other person put the phone down, if I didn't close my call off, I could just leave it for fifteen minutes. And they look at your dead time. They look at how much time in between calls that you do, but they don't look at how much time, they weren't able to log that the other person was off the call. So they would see that my ratio, and then someone cottoned on to what I was doing. I worked at the AA for like nine months.

• 57:13Speaker 00

  During my, uh, placement year. And, uh, someone cottoned on to that. All of this together is to say. I don't know whether outcomes in early life, I don't know whether outcomes even in like middle, early life in your twenties are that predictive, like Greg Levecchia, for the people that don't know him, he's the CEO of Bloom.

• 57:32James Smith?

  He's only twenty two, look at the, he's aged a bit.

• 57:34Speaker 00

  The two thousand nanograms per deciliter of testosterone will do that to you.

• 57:38James Smith?

  But the interesting thing here, so with that, with that office job, not only was I like gaming the system, from April to December, I did nothing. So I would just sit at my desk, I had to do forty hours a week, sat at a desk doing nothing. And it was the worst torture. If you gave me the opportunity of going back there, that was worse than my busiest of times now. And I remember we were next to a building that was empty. I was there for a year. And if someone came through maintenance with a ladder, I was like, oh, I'm in my chair. I'm like, this is interesting. After experiencing.

• 58:04Speaker 00

  You just needed novelty so desperately.

• 58:06James Smith?

  That pure boredom actually set me up. And you know, I was saying to you that, you know, I hit target in a job that I hated. If I have this mindset to a job that I love, I can do incredibly well.

• 58:14Speaker 00

  It's one of my favorite, it's one of my favorite lessons from you.

• 58:16James Smith?

  So like, uh.

• 58:18Speaker 00

  If you're achieving it a life that you hate, imagine how good you'd be at one that you enjoy.

• 58:20James Smith?

  So almost that eighteen year old, he, he, he doesn't get to just skip to the successful part because he needs the job that sucks. He needs to be bored. He needs to have the manager.

• 58:27Speaker 00

  Why do you think it is this sort of speed running, trying to skip past it mentality? Is that a social media comparison thing, being able to see people of your age or even people that are outside? Cause your exposure, I don't know, but maybe because you come from an area that was much more affluent than mine. I was never exposed to anybody that had sort of entrepreneurial gumption. I never felt like I was comparing, I was comparing myself to my peers, that they were better at me, better than me at cricket, they were getting more time, they were batting up the order in firsts. Or when I went to university, you can compare your grades with other people, et cetera, et cetera. But it didn't feel like the same fervor. Do you know what I mean? Like this rushy desperate need to speed run childhood and early adulthood into maturity.

• 59:11James Smith?

  I think it's, uh, status signals have changed. So for instance, like I said to you before, came home with the gold Rolex and my dad was like, that's nice. Come home first class and my dad goes, that's nice. Come home to the sun, my mom and dad, like, my dad cried when I told him that, uh, Tay was pregnant. So like, the status signals of their generation, the child was the biggest accomplishment. They would rather have one child than three number one best son looks, I assure you, rather than a thousand. So now I do think that young people, and, and again, I play into this a bit, but young people at eighteen shouldn't know what a Lamborghini Aventador SVJ is. And they should.

• 59:45Speaker 00

  You knew what a Nissan GTR Skyline was like, right? When you were growing up as a fourteen year old.

• 59:49James Smith?

  But I don't think I knew how much it would cost and how much money I needed to earn to then have the revenue to do it. I didn't have ChatGPT to talk to and say, how can I afford this car?

• 59:58Speaker 00

  It feels a little bit more like the dream. It's, it's almost like being a fan of like Harry Potter or a sports team, like having Messi as a poster on your bedroom wall and thinking, I love Messi, not I'm going to be Messi. And the same thing for whatever the fancy car is, because we would have had like Fast Car Magazine and stuff growing up.

• 1:00:21James Smith?

  Pictures of birds from zoo.

• 1:00:22Speaker 00

  It was a great, Fast Car Magazine in the UK, I don't know whether, there must have been equivalents in the US, was a wonderful way to, for a teenager to buy soft core porn under the guise of being interested in cars.

• 1:00:34James Smith?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:35Speaker 00

  That's what that entire industry was based on.

• 1:00:38James Smith?

  But I think this is the crazy thing though, to those, I, I don't know, can't speak on half of eighteen year olds, but I think those metrics have changed so much. The people go, okay, well, if I'm going to have that at this age, like that person does, because there are twenty four year old millionaires that live in Miami. The, Matt Armstrong is rebuilding that car from the Alex FG, the, the, he teaches people at F, Foreign Exchange or whatever. By fixing that car.

• 1:00:59Speaker 00

  How old's he?

• 1:00:59James Smith?

  Twenty three, twenty four.

• 1:01:00Speaker 00

  Right. Iman Gadsi was super young when he did his thing.

• 1:01:03James Smith?

  Twenty four. The hundreds of years. He's twenty four, twenty five. Rome Metmaus is twenty four.

• 1:01:07Speaker 00

  Fucking hell.

• 1:01:07James Smith?

  He's young, bro. He's got, so you think they will set the benchmarks that and go, right, the only way I get access to these signals is not through employment. It must be through having my own business.

• 1:01:17Speaker 00

  Do you think my vaping adds to the ambiance?

• 1:01:19James Smith?

  Uh, yeah, it's like having a smoke machine in the background.

• 1:01:21Speaker 00

  It's cool, isn't it?

• 1:01:22James Smith?

  Especially if I'm talking, they're like, wow, they've got the smoke on.

• 1:01:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:24James Smith?

  So the, the status signals, I think have changed. I think the people now reverse engineer.

• 1:01:27Speaker 00

  It's only a tool thing.

• 1:01:30Speaker 00

  Jared, have you ever considered you might have a drinking problem?

• 1:01:33Speaker 02

  I don't consider a lot, Chris.

• 1:01:34Speaker 00

  Well, you drank an entire case of Athletic Brewing Co. last night.

• 1:01:37Speaker 02

  But they're non-alcoholic.

• 1:01:39Speaker 00

  And that's not a problem?

• 1:01:40Speaker 02

  Sorry, man. I kept chugging, wait for the regret to creep in. Never happened.

• 1:01:45Speaker 00

  Didn't you end up going home with that chick with the lazy eye?

• 1:01:47Speaker 02

  I didn't seem lazy to me.

• 1:01:50Speaker 00

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• 1:02:29James Smith?

  If you're, because I remember a hundred K a year was you made it. That's what I thought growing up.

• 1:02:32Speaker 00

  Fuck it. I didn't know anybody that earned a hundred K when I was growing up.

• 1:02:35James Smith?

  So then I think the, and, and when I was growing up, I was like, cool, if I can get there before I'm thirty five or forty, sweet. And then that's it. I remember my goal was personal training was six hours a day, sixty pounds an hour.

• 1:02:46Speaker 00

  I remember when I saw you do your how to make money as a personal trainer. What was it? Get in at six, do two hours, fifteen minute break.

• 1:02:53James Smith?

  Six, seven fifteen, uh, eight thirty, hmm, nine thirty, then ten forty five, eleven forty five.

• 1:03:02Speaker 00

  And you're done by one.

• 1:03:02James Smith?

  Done, you're done by one. So you do two hours, two hours, two hours.

• 1:03:05Speaker 00

  What's the, what's the meta lesson to all this? Cause it's fun and it's interesting stories, but what, at least for me, trying to, it might feel a bit like needless nostalgia, largely anglicized needless nostalgia as well for people the rest of the world that don't understand it, or at least can't, I directly relate to it. One of the things that at least comes up for me is

• 1:03:28Speaker 00

  a reminder of how unpressurized my childhood and even young business time felt. I didn't feel the pressure really sort of turn the taps on until probably about ten years ago. It was probably twenty fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. Okay. Like this is, this really feels like I am competing with the world. And I didn't have a massive amount of ambition beforehand, but I just, I don't know. I wish that I could gift that young kid that we saw today, fucking young kid, he's eighteen. I wish that we could give, like gift, like all of the freshers that we've seen at these events that have come out to see us. Just the liberation of not feeling like it needs to be done right now.

• 1:04:12James Smith?

  I've got a concept. I've been working on it. I've been trying to explain it a little bit.

• 1:04:15Speaker 00

  Cause you're writing a book at the moment.

• 1:04:16James Smith?

  Yeah, this actually, uh, I actually just said it to someone, giving them advice. And I was like, oh, someone record that. And, uh, we're talking, it was actually Ed Lawrence asked me the most important financial metric to aim for as a business owner. And I call it head above water. So you write down, what's my rent? What's my car finance? What's my, um, holiday fund? What is it? What is that amount? Now, what is that per month? Now, as a business owner, you work towards it. And actually there's a rowing coach that I work with and him and his wife have a glass of champagne every month. They hit the number they need to survive. And sometimes they do it on the twentieth day, but sometimes they do it on the seventh day. And if on the seventh day of the month, they've hit enough money, they're invincible for the rest of the month.

• 1:04:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:52James Smith?

  No matter if they don't.

• 1:04:53Speaker 00

  It's quite a short term window to be thinking.

• 1:04:56James Smith?

  But every month they get sit down and have a glass of champagne and the harder they work, the sooner they have it. And it's like, and then if you have it on the twenty ninth day, babe, we still hit it. And I thought that's amazing. But the head above water thing. A lot of people think that potentially I don't give a fuck online. I do give a fuck. I give selective fucks, but actually, ever since I started my business in twenty fifteen, twenty fourteen, I've made enough money for my head above water and that's made me invincible. So when my first brand deal came to me and I told them to fuck off, it's because I had thirteen hundred pounds in my Monzo. I was like, you can't buy me. I've got thirteen hundred pound in my Monzo, mate. And if people only realize that your head above water level changes of obviously your needs, your wants, the house you're in, whatever. But once you hit that, you are really invincible from the world. And people don't look at that, that line in front of them. They don't look at that line in the sand and go, as long as I hit that, I'm fine.

• 1:05:42James Smith?

  Their line is fucking miles ahead of them, unrealistically far ahead. And they fill that void with depression, anxiety and reasons to be unhappy. We even do that. I don't know why I'm giving this advice. I can't take it myself. But really, if they just looked at that number and said, right, as long as I hit that, I'm fine. That, that's it. And, and as a student, this guy's number for his head above water is a tiny amount. And I say, bro, the, the whole world of business and everything you've got ahead of you, how much work or how much services or how many products you have to sell to hit that number? It's not scary and big and as daunting as you like. Then if you supersede that number, hey, you can have more cool stuff.

• 1:06:14Speaker 00

  Wealth is just reality minus expectations, right? And by that definition, a lot of billionaires are broke.

• 1:06:22James Smith?

  We have to explain that to me again.

• 1:06:24Speaker 00

  Wealth is reality minus expectations. So if you are overachieving what you expect from life, you're wealthy.

• 1:06:33James Smith?

  Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:34Speaker 00

  If you are underachieving what you expect from life or what you want from life, your desires minus what your reality is delivering to you. Everybody always wants to grow. They always want things that are beyond where they're at at the moment. But there's a difference between expecting it from life and desiring it from life. And I think that if you are permanently reminding yourself of all of the things that this other person has got, that's your comparison group. The problem is that our comparison group has been spread out so much more. And it's interesting being around students today. We gave out, unsolicited, gave out a ton of new tonic cans in the middle of the Exeter Student Union today.

• 1:07:08James Smith?

  What did, what did I say to the guy when we left? I went up to him, I went, bro, you're six foot two and blonde? You are, you've won the lottery, brother. I said, mate, you could have been born any country in the world. Statistically, most likely to be born in Africa, followed by Asia, you're in Great Britain. I was like, by the sound of your voice, your parents grew up in an African area, you're six foot two, there's what, three percent of men taller than you? Plus, if you get any taller than six foot two, I reckon you start to see negative returns because then you're too tall. Then you've got bloody knees touching the seats on EasyJet, not that I'd know. And I'm joking. I was like, bro, you, you, you have so much already. I was like, you haven't even accomplished anything. And you've already won the lottery. I was like, so everything from here on in, it's kind of cool. And it sounded like you had a hot girlfriend.

• 1:07:50Speaker 00

  There's it, he did. Uh, there's a line from Joe Hudson. Most people believe confidence comes from being really good at what they do or never messing up. But unshakable confidence comes from knowing your worth isn't tied to performance. And it feels a little bit like managing to detach those two things. That switch of worth being tied to performance, especially in the status realm, which is now being quantified on social media. In the financial realm, which you're now able to compare more easily because of transparency online. All of that being made more obvious and broadcast is what I think the switch that got flicked for me when I was in my twenties.

• 1:08:35Speaker 00

  It's like, ah, I now have a metric to compare myself to and I should be ahead. And we're doing it now. And the, the, the interesting lesson is if you can't unpick that, knowing that your worth isn't tied to your performance. If you can't unpick that, I think you'll always feel lacking because the game just gets bigger. We're going to announce this most recent valuation and raise and all the rest of the stuff that we've done for New Tonic. We're about to announce, we will by the time that this goes out, have announced Walmart, HEB, uh, Morrison's Daily. Look at that. Isn't that cute? We got, for the people that are listening, we're holding up, um, custom woven coasters that we were gifted. We've also got, there's a bunch of Easter eggs that we have managed to slot into this scene. Let's see who picks up on them.

• 1:09:20Speaker 00

  The game just gets bigger and you keep on fighting with harder and harder opponents or, or rivals or whatever it is. It's like, oh, you thought that your Nissan, your Renault Megane R26 F1 was nice. Well, I know a guy who's got, what's Greg's car? What's that stupid thing that I was in? Ferrari.

• 1:09:39James Smith?

  What is it?

• 1:09:40Speaker 00

  Summit two eight.

• 1:09:42James Smith?

  Is it? No, is this, um?

• 1:09:45Speaker 00

  It's absurd. Whatever it is, silly and fast and to like 1.2 million dollars. Smart car. It is a smart car.

• 1:09:51James Smith?

  But you know what's interesting? I'll also have the back of that. As you're saying this, there's a meme in my head where you've got like black and white, two portraits of two people. One guy's got loads and loads of money and he's pointing, no, you've got a person with a family and a wife pointing at a millionaire saying you're rich. And the millionaire is there on his own, pointing at the people with two kids going, you're rich.

• 1:10:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:10:09James Smith?

  Like the, the wealth subjective, we, we always say it's like money, money, money. But when I meet people, sometimes, like you say, people aren't in the career they want. They're not earning the money they want. They're not driving the car they want. But they still have so much. And I think in a world now, we're, we're not really told like, hey, you, you've got a wife that you guys still get on after being together for 10 years. And you've got two kids and despite having the normal struggles that everyone else has and half term being expensive or whatever. Like, I wish we counted that more.

• 1:10:37Speaker 00

  Well, there's a rebellion at the moment, you know, for, for all that this can sound like, like needless nostalgia or, uh, two guys trying to over-intellectualize what just the challenge of being human and, and trying to sort of weave through that. The competing priorities that everybody has, that definitely feels to me to be a rebellion that's coming, at least in part at the moment. Which is as both men and women, men in the past, recent past and women right now, are able to socio-economically get to where they want to. Maybe they don't have the spending power that they wished that they had, but they're able to like achieve a lot of things and I've got a new job position and so on and so forth.

• 1:11:20Speaker 00

  I think that a lot of the backbiting and the scrappiness and, and the sort of discomfort and, and the finger pointing that's happening is people completing things that they thought would make them happy, only to realize that the problem that they thought they were going to solve is still there. Despite the fact that the antidote to it has already been ingested. Like I have got to the place that I thought would be escape velocity from my issues. I've already achieved the goals that I said would make me happy. Fuck, maybe I made a mistake. Maybe I did something wrong. And one of the wonderful, and it's very hard to thread this needle. The original live show that I did, that I wrote to go to Australia with was all about the arrival fallacy. You call it, you have a similar thing, end of history.

• 1:12:04James Smith?

  End of history illusion.

• 1:12:05Speaker 00

  End of history illusion. So arrival fallacy, the view from the top of the mountain is not as good as you think it's going to be when you're on the climb up. If you're at the top trying to tell people who are still climbing, that the view isn't that good. It sounds like a fat guy telling a starving man that food isn't very tasty. That's what it sounds like. It's, it's a luxurious position to be in. No one wants to hear it, et cetera, et cetera. And it's a bit trite and I saw Jake Humphrey talk about it and then it kind of killed the like glamour of it because it doesn't sound contrarian anymore when it's kind of like, you know, really hitting the mainstream. But there is definitely a big group of people who are achieving success in the way that society told them that they should be satisfied. And realizing that it's not scratched the itch that they hoped for. And there's two choices. You're sort of, when you are faced with that thing,

• 1:12:50Speaker 00

  you are offered one of maybe like three routes. One of them is gold medalist syndrome, where you think, ah, it wasn't, it wasn't regional manager, it was national manager. It wasn't, it wasn't getting the bachelor's degree, it was getting the, it was getting the M fill. That was the thing that was missing. So you try and run it back. The dose wasn't sufficient in order to complete that. The second route is to sort of rail against the system generally and say this whole thing is broken. That's when people get really spiky about it, I think. And the third one, which at least at the moment, my bro science brain is telling me is the one that is more accurate is to be more reflective and say,

• 1:13:29Speaker 00

  maybe the whole game of this, beyond what do I need to be able to survive and get myself to where I want to? And you satiate my desire for like status and respect from people because we're a social species, right? We need to be validated by the world through getting some accomplishments. I've closed those loops. I shouldn't run it back. I shouldn't say that someone somewhere is oppressing me and like, like limiting my happiness. I need to actually turn it inward and look at what is the part of me that is always feeling dissatisfied, no matter what the dose is that I get that's in return of this. And, uh, speaking as two guys that are trying to build a billion dollar brand for whatever reason it is.

• 1:14:10Speaker 00

  You know what? Actually on this, to give you your flowers, one of the best frames, and I was so jealous of this when I first heard you say it, it was a long time ago now. You used to talk about success on social media as a game, but it's just game points. And today I like, didn't play the game quite so well. I lost some points and in other days I played the game a little bit better. And, um, that frame of, once you have got yourself to a level of comfort that is accessible for most people. Maybe it's not palatial, maybe it's not, you know, even house ownership, but it's like, okay, like we're, we're moving and we're grooving here.

• 1:14:45James Smith?

  But the, the, the skills here are actually very simple to break down. So for first thing you need to consider, leveling up your character is one of the best messes in a game. So for instance, GTA, you might get access to money, which gives you access to weapons. Uh, when you.

• 1:14:58Speaker 00

  That'd be great for you.

• 1:14:59James Smith?

  When you use the cheats, it's not as fun. So if I could give you.

• 1:15:00Speaker 00

  That was a funny joke.

• 1:15:01James Smith?

  I'm sorry. If I could give you a million followers tomorrow, it wouldn't be as fun because you would use the cheat codes.

• 1:15:06Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 1:15:06James Smith?

  Uh, the second thing is just pure volume and repetition. So if we're doing shoty snipes on Valhalla Halo three, anyone know about that? You ever play shoty snipes on Valhalla? All right. Call of Duty, um, whatever it is, if you want to get a headshot mastery, nothing is going to be pure volume. And everyone could say, I'll get the new controller, change your settings. And yes, you should push your sensitivity up, but nothing beats pure volume. So then you have that as well, where no bit of advice you could give someone on starting a podcast would be doing 400 episodes.

• 1:15:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:15:34James Smith?

  So you've got leveling up your character, which might be getting a better microphone, choosing a better camera, researching before you do a pod, working on hooks, looking at what other competitors are doing. All of these things come from gaming. Then you've got cooperation in gaming. When you work together as a team to work towards the same objective, even though you're separate characters, that can then put you into a team play and, and an organized team in a game of Call of Duty, you're going to win the war zone better than four people playing on their own.

• 1:15:58Speaker 00

  Also tends to be much more enjoyable because you get to celebrate the wins together and you also get to mitigate the losses together.

• 1:16:03James Smith?

  Exactly. And gaming and reality have so much because also if you have a bad day gaming, you don't ruin your day. It was just a tough day. If you die on a level, you get another opportunity to.

• 1:16:11Speaker 00

  That is, unshakable confidence comes from knowing that your worth isn't tied to your performance. And what you're doing with the game analogy is unpicking performance and worth.

• 1:16:21James Smith?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:21Speaker 00

  Right? Unless you're a pro esports player, but again, your worth is tied up in this thing. I love this analogy. When I started doing, uh, speech coaching, a lot of people, I think maybe even you did this, uh, maybe you didn't. Some of my friends said, but what about your lovely natural speaking voice? Like you're not worried that it's going to sort of take that away from you. And I thought he was really interesting. I wasn't really too sure how to feel about it. And then I realized that if you're a pianist, you go and take piano lessons with a teacher, you're an amateur pianist. No one goes, well, what about your lovely natural piano playing? You're not worried that the teacher is going to take that away from you. And what I learned is that there are certain things that we feel is very close to our sense of self. It's very sort of central to who we are as a person.

• 1:17:05Speaker 00

  And then there are other things that we see as like pursuits or augmentations or like presentations of how we put our true self across. Accent, way that you speak and communicate, very close to your sense of self. Way that you play piano, less so.

• 1:17:17James Smith?

  I would challenge this, but only from a pure, um. Giving another point of view to this. So there's an interesting thing there where however, sometimes speaking too perfect could be a reason not to listen because you breach the gap.

• 1:17:30Speaker 00

  I agree, I agree, but that's, that's just another game of mastery.

• 1:17:32James Smith?

  Here's a concept that I've got, another one that I was talking about where in jiu jitsu, we've got our belts, everyone seems to think it's best to learn from a black belt. And yes, I agree, because they've got a plethora of experience and lived experiences, whatever.

• 1:17:43Speaker 00

  Plethora.

• 1:17:44James Smith?

  Good word, thank you. However, sometimes I think as a blue belt, you're best to learn from a purple belt. Because although they do not have the answers to everything, they're much closer to where you were than the black belt. The black belt hasn't been a blue belt for 10 years.

• 1:17:54Speaker 00

  This is model the rise, not the result. Like you don't want to be learning from the person and what they're doing now. You want to learn from the person who knows what they were doing when they were where you are.

• 1:18:02James Smith?

  So to the pianist thing, if you have a grandmaster pianist, yes, they will know so much. But actually, someone that's maybe only two years ahead of you might have more familiarity and memories.

• 1:18:12Speaker 00

  You're still learning, right? You're still making developments.

• 1:18:14James Smith?

  So with the voice thing, I would just make sure that, and I don't know whether you do this, whether or not you might start putting in little idiosyncratic ways of speaking into the perfect text.

• 1:18:26Speaker 00

  So for a long time, episode, if you go back and we'll look at like 200 to 500, I got worse as a communicator. Because I was thinking so consciously about the way that I speak, about tongue position when I was saying S and L. Because I've got a slight lisp, so I need to work on that. I wanted to work, I wanted to get rid of that. I wanted to get rid of filler words wherever I could. I wanted to stop saying, mm hmm, yeah.

• 1:18:45James Smith?

  Who's that Jefferson guy? What's his name?

• 1:18:47Speaker 00

  Jefferson Fisher.

• 1:18:47James Smith?

  That's it.

• 1:18:48Speaker 00

  Great, wonderful communicator. James Sexton, same thing. But they've got idiosyncratic ways of speaking that are still precise. They're not sterile.

• 1:18:57James Smith?

  I feel like he's a witch.

• 1:18:58Speaker 00

  He is a little wizard.

• 1:18:59James Smith?

  Because he's so good at speaking, I'm like, get off my screen.

• 1:19:02Speaker 00

  Scary.

• 1:19:02James Smith?

  Because he's gonna do his NLP and get into my mitochondria and he's gonna, he's gonna make me buy some, yeah.

• 1:19:08Speaker 00

  Medulla oblongata.

• 1:19:09James Smith?

  Satins off, offline. So when he's talking to me, sometimes I'm like, no.

• 1:19:12Speaker 00

  All right, we need to fuck off. I can see all of the boys twitching because we need to go and sound check on stage. Uh, this is the first and maybe final podcast that we're ever gonna do in a tour bus.

• 1:19:20James Smith?

  If you don't drink Neutonic, every person doesn't drink Neutonic, your neighbor's cat will die. Save your neighbor's cat, drink Neutonic, available in the Sainsbury's meal deal, Walmart.

• 1:19:31Speaker 00

  HEB.

• 1:19:32James Smith?

  HEB.

• 1:19:32Speaker 00

  Gelson's, Vitamin Shoppe, GNC.

• 1:19:35James Smith?

  Morrison's.

• 1:19:35Speaker 00

  Morrison's Daily and Morrison's, uh, fuel stations, Motor Fuel Group.

• 1:19:41James Smith?

  If it's a good petrol station, it'll be in there. If it's not, buy fuel somewhere else.

• 1:19:45Speaker 00

  Bingo. All right. Goodbye, my beauties.