How To Succeed When The System Is Rigged Against You - Patrick Bet-David (4K)

Patrick Bet-David is an entrepreneur, founder of Valuetainment, podcaster and author. Given that the world is in chaos, we would usually turn to our institutions and news organisations to make sense of what's happening. But trust in these institutions is as an all time low, so what can we do about it? Expect to learn why it’s actually important to have enemies, Patrick's thoughts on Ben Shapiro's new Snow White movie, what he thinks about Dana White's life philosophy, what it takes to actually impress people, why immigrants have such a strong work ethic, who actually runs the world, whether Tucker Carlson is going to break the internet and much more... Sponsors: Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours with your first box at https://www.drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom (automatically applied at checkout) Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period from Shopify at https://www.shopify.com/modernwisdom (automatically applied at checkout) Get $500 discount on Fountain Life at https://fountainlife.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Extra Stuff: Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom #patrickbetdavid #valuetainment #media - 00:00 Why You Need an Enemy 09:03 The Importance of Using Your Pain 17:13 The Difference Between Competitors & Enemies 32:57 Reacting to Ben Shapiro & Daily Wire 46:07 Why Current Dating Culture is a Mess 52:38 Is Society Focusing on the Wrong Things? 1:02:33 Patrick's Opinion on Dana White 1:09:32 How People Deceive Themselves 1:16:19 Is Chris Obliged to Have an Opinion on Everything? 1:27:50 Rising Scepticism of Institutions & Media 1:41:01 How to Grow Out of a Lazy Mentality 1:49:30 Giving Your Child the Best Opportunities for Success 1:59:10 Are the Benefits of Paranoia Worth it? 2:03:35 Who Really Runs the World? 2:13:30 Desire For More Vs Self-Love 2:21:47 Where to Find Patrick - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic here - https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

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

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  You say that you're useless to the world if you're not competing and you need enemies to drive you. Why?

• 0:09Speaker 01

  I think most people who say they don't have enemies, they probably don't want to tell others they have the enemy or they don't want to disclose it. They're great poker players. I don't know a single person that doesn't have an enemy. Everybody does. We're very good at concealing our insecurities, our emotions, our fears, our wildest desires, our enemies or comments that rub us the wrong way, that wire us. We are very good actors, incredible actors, right? Now, if you have a long time of talking to somebody and you kind of watch them closely and the more they talk and then eventually you're gonna find some leaks. You're like, oh, I just found one right there.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  Boom, I found one contradiction right there. Boom, I found one. And you're like, okay, interesting. We all have a little bit of that. But I do think that when you study the people that do something very big, I'm not talking about small, I'm talking really, really big. We're talking about some interesting people today. You and I have somebody we both respect a lot, Robert Greene. His books, I'm sure you love his books, I love his books. Thirty Three Strategies of War, I couldn't put it down for two years straight. I listened to that book every day in my car, straight, every day. It was on repeat for two years straight. Why though? Because I innocently got into sales and I had a good time in sales and business after I got out of the military.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  And I wanted to be a bodybuilder and then I realized I'm 6'4", it's not gonna work for bodybuilding to win Mr. Olympia because everybody's 5'8", 5'9", 5'10", maybe 5'11" or Ronnie Coleman, but the 6'4" days are behind us. Even Lou Ferrigno didn't win at that height. Arnold did. And then when I got into sales and everybody was a fan, then I started competing. Still a little bit of fan, but when I started the insurance company and then I started growing market share, really. Then a lot of those people that were fans then started undermining. And I said, got it. This is how it works. You can't be this naive. You can't be this innocent. Competition's out there. If you want to kind of go out there and take market share from others and you want to get bigger, you can't expect for people to sit there and like everything you're doing. That's when I realized you got to choose your enemies wisely.

• 2:20Chris Williamson?

  People want you to do well. They just don't want you to do better than that.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 2:25Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's interesting. There's this story of Churchill and he's showing a young MP around the House of Lords in the UK. This is before World War Two. You can imagine that they're wandering through these dusty hallways. Over there's the toilets and over there's where we have a cigar and blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, they go into the chamber, they go into the House of Lords, right? The difference, actually, the distance between the two front benches is the same distance as a long sword held out at arm's length from both sides. She's a kind of a funny vestige of evidently what they were worried about in the Middle Ages. And they've just continued to update, but they've never changed the distance of the front benches. Anyway, about this young guy who's probably full of testosterone and you know, he's finally, he's here with Winston Churchill.

• 3:08Chris Williamson?

  You go in and this young MP starts gesticulating at the other side. He keeps referring to them as the enemy. Churchill turns to him and he says, that's the opposition, dear boy. The enemy's behind you. And I love that story. And the reason that I love that story is that it often reminds us that symbolically we believe that the biggest obstacle we have to overcome is out there. And many times the call is coming from inside of our own house. I think that the worst enemy that many people have is the voice that's inside of their own head. Now, this voice has probably maybe come from the outside world, but we've now internalized it. You know, we have become our own worst enemy in some regards.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. And by the way, that's one of the enemies. That's one of the enemies. And there isn't one, it's the famous Matthew McConaughey speech that he's given. Hey, one guy asked me who's the greatest actor in the world? And he says, hey, you know, I'll tell you. And then you're like, I want to meet the 35 year old version of me. And hey, when I get to 35, you know, I want to end up at 45. It's always looking forward to what that next better version of you is going to be. But. At the end of the day, even Alexander, one of his famous quotes is, I have met the enemy, it is I, right? And although that is one element of an enemy, that's great, we need that. Uh, Michael had it, Brady had it, Kobe had it, but

• 4:30Speaker 01

  there's a, there's a crazy psychologically, you can call it, you know, psycho competitor that they're constantly in the search of recruiting their next enemy. It's, it's like, you know, life is boring if I don't have my next target. You know, I'm, I'm almost, you know, bad for myself if I don't have the next target, the next enemy. And if I choose it the right way, then I'm able to bring out a side of me I've never seen before.

• 5:03Chris Williamson?

  What's the function of an enemy?

• 5:05Speaker 01

  What is the function of an enemy? What is the function of, uh, falling in love? Why do you need to fall in love? Why do you need to have a wife?

• 5:13Chris Williamson?

  It's enjoyable, it's pleasurable, it's fulfilling.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  But what does it do to you though, when you're in love? You know, you know how they say when, when a person is in love? And they go and test their brains and it's like somebody that's on drugs, you've seen this before, you probably read this before, right? Okay. So, but what's the risk of love? Heartbreak, losing years of, maybe you love the wrong person, maybe they don't love you in return as much as you love them. Maybe you're gonna give more than they're gonna give you, maybe a betrayal, maybe it's an act. Maybe it's just good for the season, maybe they're gonna change their minds if they're really find out what you're all, there's a lot of risk to love. But why do we love? You know, it's a very unique relationship, that risk is exhilarating, it's exciting.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  You know, maintaining it, it's a lot of work, it's not easy. It's why nowadays, most people don't wanna get married. Nowadays, there's a movement of, I don't wanna get involved to getting married, I don't wanna have kids, it's too risky. I wanna live for myself, I don't wanna have the responsibilities, I don't wanna be heartbroken. Okay, great. I think, you know, one time a friend of mine and I, Arash, were in Italy. And I rented this place in uh uh Tuscany, Italy. This is like ten years ago. And we're staying there and Arash and I, when we're together, we like to debate. And we debate about anything. It doesn't matter what the topic is, anything, okay? He's like the Middle Eastern Bradley Cooper. Too good looking of a guy, one of those guys, kinda like you're a good looking guy. He's a good looking guy.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  So we have a three hour drive to Cinque Terre, okay? It's a beautiful place you go to and it's a long drive to go to it. You know what we're debating about? Love. Here's what the question was. Can you love somebody? You know, define love for me. He says, love is a feeling. It's emotion. It's this. It's a great. I said, say you're in jail. Your wife is somewhere else. How does she know you love her? How do you show her love? Is love a verb? Is love a feeling? Is love a noun? We're having this conversation, right?

• 7:14Speaker 01

  And then you realize the risk of loving is worth it. I can't imagine living life without having that love. It introduces you to a person you've not met before. Man, a great enemy does that as well. A formidable enemy is gonna introduce you to a person you've not seen before. By the way, it could be ugly, could be scary, could be, oh my God, who is this person? Why are you acting like this? Why are you thinking like this? So most of us, when we see, it's almost like that uh the movie Venom. It's one of my son's favorite movie, right? The venom comes inside. There's a, there's an ugly side to it if you lose control of it, right? And you become reckless and you hurt people around you. Then you're actually not good for yourself. You're destroying your own life. That's why the key word is what?

• 7:58Speaker 01

  Choose your enemies wisely. It's not, it's not have an enemy. It's choose your enemies wisely. If I choose the right enemy and then I have this relationship with this enemy. Sometime it's a one month enemy. It could be a one week enemy. It could be a one day enemy. It could be a lifelong enemy because it's yourself, because that's a permanent enemy.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  And just like a love affair, there is an affair with this enemy. It's actually a beautiful thing.

• 8:26Chris Williamson?

  I love the idea of it bringing out a side of you that you didn't know. Bringing out a person inside of you that you want to where existed. So I think there's a um.

• 8:37Chris Williamson?

  There's definitely a function to, get that into you, go and crack it in. There's definitely a function to uh to people looking to be well balanced.

• 8:47Chris Williamson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:50Chris Williamson?

  Delicious. Good. Wow, fantastic. That's what I want to hear. Six months of taste testing, so I'm glad that it takes to fly to Liverpool to do that. There is definitely a culture on the internet of people wanting to ameliorate all of their difficult and uncomfortable emotions, to transmute them into something closer to equanimity, right? Balance, peace, sanity, and I've said this a lot. And I think that I'm quite averse to conflict by nature. That's the way that I tend to operate. I often just bow out, opt for peace. And then, two things changed. First off, I realized that I am leaving an awful lot of motivation on the table.

• 9:35Chris Williamson?

  Okay. By not utilizing a very specific, very potent kind of fuel, because I was aware that over a long enough time span, I think it can be toxic. I think that if you're fueled by hate and distaste and fear and scarcity for long enough, it becomes something that damages you more than it helps you win. But it's unbelievably potent, especially in times of war. The second thing that happened was I became a little bit more of a target for people's ire and distaste. And that meant that the underdog, loving support that everybody has for the person that's on the come up dissolved a little bit and started to evaporate because people

• 10:19Chris Williamson?

  don't mind you doing well, they just don't want you to do better than them. You know, when you're on the way up, everyone roots for you because you remind them of their dreams. And when you're at the top, everyone tries to tear you down because you remind them of what they gave up on. So those two things changed. I had a great conversation with Alex Hormozi that really drove this home to me, said use what you have. And a lot of people have more pain than they do pleasure. Don't use it for too long. Ten, fifteen, twenty years, like that's how you end up having a breakdown or some sort of dependency or addiction or vice. But it's potent, so use it. And I think that the insight of enemies can bring out a side of you that you are not aware, you weren't aware even existed, is kind of like alchemy, right?

• 11:01Chris Williamson?

  It's turning something that is both toxic and useless into something which is golden and your choice.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  Yes. And by the way, your eyes, okay, I'm looking at your eyes right now. Your eyes don't tell me a guy that is just doing this to just have fun. Okay. Your eyes have a lot of fire in them. Okay. A lot of fire in them. Your eyes tell a story of maybe you have a crazy side, a side inside of you. Okay. A side that maybe you keep inside. Okay. Where very few people maybe see. But that's why you're doing as well as you're doing. I walk into this place, I do a lot of podcasts, I walk into this place, you chose, I walk in, I'm like, Sam, where are we? He says, honestly, I don't know, but I think we're at the right place. We walk in and I see why you do

• 11:48Speaker 01

  what you do and the amount of time and resources and your team putting into hand selecting a different set. We don't do that. So what does that tell me? You're maniacal, you're detail oriented, you got, you're moving up right now on the podcast, across the board, competing with everybody. You have a vision, maybe some of it we know, probably all of it we don't know. Okay. Some of it's kept even the smiles telling the story right now. You're a perfect example of this, right? If you and I sit down, we get the benefit, I don't know if you read Elon Musk's recent book or not.

• 12:18Chris Williamson?

  Right, not yet. No, I've heard from every single person that's even glanced at the blurb that you need to read it.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  You need to read it. You're gonna flip out. You're gonna love it. You'll appreciate it for a guy that's wired like you. We get to judge Elon from the outside. Okay. Why would somebody, you sell a company for $180 million, you take $100 million, you put it in a Solar, whatever you take seventy in Tesla, you put ten in, you know, another company, vice versa, whatever the structure, no, you put hundred million in SpaceX, seventy million in Tesla, and ten million, you put it in solar. Then you're a billionaire. Then you want to do what? You want to go to the next thing? Then boring company? Then you got Twitter? What for? And you read a story in the book about his father, on how his father was? Are you kidding me?

• 13:07Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, if you, some of the biggest people that we read about, we watch movies about, it's one of their two parents that did something to them. I'm with Tom Brady a month ago, we have him at the event. And the formula I see with a lot of people that do something big is three things. One, at one point in their lives, they experience unconditional love, because you need it, it's fuel, you have to have it, even if it's just from one person, okay? Unconditional love means what? You screwed up, you went to jail, you got a DUI, you got kicked out of school, you got expelled. Everybody ousted you and said you're a nobody, you're not going to amount to anything, you're a loser, you're this, but that mother there always said, honey, I love you.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  You can do anything to lose this one person's love. One person, that's all you need, you don't need fifty of them, just one, unconditional love. Number two is you need somebody who brought unbelievable pain in your life that you loved. This is a person you and I loved, that they destroyed our heart. We couldn't do anything to gain love from this person, nothing. Perform, tell them we love them, go above and beyond, give them money, buy them gifts, give them incredible experiences, become buff, have a six-pack, drive a Ferrari, have a Lambo, own a penthouse, have a yacht, be best friends with the best athletes, with billionaires, no matter what you do.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  This person brought you so much pain, you can never win this person over. It is a battle your entire life, try to win this person over, you're never going to do it, it's not going to happen, but you need that person as well. And you know what the last one is, obviously, choosing your enemies wisely. You take a person that has those three combination, by the way, Very rarely will they ever tell you the entire reason. Very rarely will they fully disclose everything. Some of them will take it to their grave with them. We will never know about it. But for someone to have the kind of a fire that goes years beyond 99% of people would have stopped. What's the reason for it? What else do you need? How many more accolades? How many more tens of millions of dollars? How many more cars? How many more houses?

• 15:24Speaker 01

  How many more top charts on podcasts? Number one, this. What's the reason for it? You know, it's a, again, we're not talking about everybody. Most people will listen to this whole concept of choose your enemies wisely. And they'll say, that's hate. What a miserable life. What a this, what a that. No, most people chose the wrong enemies. The enemies they've chosen is about being entitled, is about being victims, about feeling sorry for themselves. And it's destroyed them, stolen, stolen years away from their lives. So yeah, the, the way you're describing what you're saying, you know, you'll typically see a pattern with those three things of people who do something big. They experienced those three.

• 16:06Speaker 01

  And unfortunately, the, the reason why I like Musk's book is when you read it, you see the pattern with all three. Unconditional love, mom and Kimball, his brother. Unconditional pain, father. Choosing his enemies wisely. Industry, traditional, you know, guys who are like, this is the way we do with NASA. You know, governmental agencies, censorship, you know, establishment. He's just recruiting new enemies for himself every day. It's like bored. He needs more enemies and more enemies. But guess who's talking about him around the world? Everybody is. And a hundred years from now, our kids, our grandkids will look back and say, man, who was this Elon Musk guy? Unfortunately, we're not going to be around to talk about who it was, how, how, how we viewed him.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  But they're going to be watching plenty of documentaries and movies about a guy like that because he chose his enemies wisely.

• 16:55Chris Williamson?

  Feels to me, I've got in my mind, the image of Pac-Man. You know, when he is able to eat the ghosts?

• 17:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:01Chris Williamson?

  And the ghosts since were previously a threat to him now become fuel. And that to me is a. I learned the three most common traits of elite performers and it was a crippling sense of insufficiency, a superiority complex and maniacal focus.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 17:22Chris Williamson?

  And I think that those three things map on to what you were just talking about there.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  Have you read this book?

• 17:27Chris Williamson?

  I've read the first half.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Just so you know, that part from your podcast is in the book. You're in the book. Did you know this or no?

• 17:34Chris Williamson?

  No.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  You're in, your podcast is in the book. Those three things you just talked about.

• 17:37Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  It's in the book.

• 17:39Chris Williamson?

  Hell, yeah.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:40Chris Williamson?

  Well, so those three things, right? I'm scared that I'm not enough. I believe that I can do more.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 17:46Chris Williamson?

  I have the impulse control to be able to keep me focused and keep me moving forward.

• 17:51Chris Williamson?

  What would you say to the people that say, what you're describing sounds an awful lot like a competitor?

• 17:56Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah.

• 17:57Chris Williamson?

  What's the difference between a competitor and an enemy?

• 17:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not a competitor because to me, uh, so, so in the last 20 some years, I have worked my tail off to figure out a way of writing a business plan that I can teach others how to write a business plan. So when you go buy books on business plans, it's all boring, technical. It's for a Fortune 500 company or somebody that wants to go raise capital and it's so complex and dense, you will not think about a business planning book that you're going to walk away saying, here's how I can write a business plan that's simple, that I can look at it over and over and over again. Great, I'm good to go, right? There isn't something like that out there. This is supposed to be a business planning book that turned into an enemy's book.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  So when I'm talking to the CEO, the publisher of a portfolio, okay?

• 18:47Speaker 01

  Adrian, and we're going back and forth, we had five hour zooms, five one hour zooms just on the title. And in many cases, we would sit there for 15 minutes, no one's talking.

• 18:58Chris Williamson?

  Who wanted what?

• 18:59Speaker 01

  Who won what?

• 19:00Chris Williamson?

  Who wanted what?

• 19:02Speaker 01

  So they wanted to figure out a title that was a straight up title. Like, you know, it's a well, how to think and grow rich, you know, how to just a very much of a business planning.

• 19:11Chris Williamson?

  Better business.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  Exactly, something like that. And then eventually I'm selling Adrian. I'm saying, but that's not what it is. This is much deeper than that. It has to do with enemies. And eventually, on the fifth time of choosing the title, guess who finally says the title of the book has to be choose your enemies wisely? Adrian does from portfolio. And I said, that's the title.

• 19:30Chris Williamson?

  You won. It was a battle of attrition.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  It was a battle of attrition. A few hundred of them, right? But but it's it's an interesting concept when you're saying competition.

• 19:39Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  To me, the 12 building blocks that I talk about in this book, you know, we have different categories because one side of the building block has to do with emotion. The other side of the building block has to do with logic. And you read this when you were going through the book. So on the emotion side, you know, it's going to move us. So for example, what skill sets do I need to learn? Well, I need to learn how to do a podcast, how to ask questions, how to do research. You told a Churchill story at the beginning with the sword, the size. And hey, your enemies are not ahead of you. They're behind you. Okay, you have to go find that story. That's content, right? Okay, so that means you're constantly reading. Why is this guy so good at what he does with content? Okay, he's very detailed. Look at the lighting. Look how he does it. Look at his sets. He's intentional. He's not winging it. Everything you're doing, for the most part, 95% of it

• 20:24Speaker 01

  can be replicated by somebody else. But the 5% is your wit, is your interest, is the curiosity. Either the person has it or they don't have it, right? Okay. So, yes, I can pick up those skills, but do I have your willpower? That's emotional. Yes, I can go study the competition. Let me see the top podcasters out there, what they're doing. What is a category for politics, for business, for sports, for comedy? Yes, but enemy is bigger. Study competition all you want. But enemy is a completely different criteria that you're talking about. You can have all the money in the world. Fantastic. That's finances. That's money. You can go raise money. There's plenty of companies that raise money. Quibi a few years ago raised 2.3 billion dollars. From who? All the big money guys. Everybody gave Quibi money. What happened to them? Katzenberg, McWhitman, everybody behind it went out of business. In 1962,

• 21:11Speaker 01

  1962 was a super savings center, which is the year where Target came out, Walmart came out, and Costco came out, all the same year, 1962, okay? In 1962, when these companies came out. Kmart goes and raises a ton of money. Five years later, Kmart has 250 locations. Walmart has nine locations five years later. Kmart on a leader's bulletin within five years, guess who's winning? Kmart's dominating. All logical, all numbers, spreadsheet, et cetera, et cetera. You couldn't tell me the founder of Kmart, who he is. If I ask who's the founder of Kmart, you're not gonna say Mr. Kmart, right? That doesn't make any sense. What happened to Kmart a few years ago? Kmart goes out of business.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  They're no longer around. You know how many employees Walmart has around the world? 2.3, 2.5 million employees. Do you know Sam Walton? One of the best books you can ever read is Made in America. It's 200 pages. He walks you through how he built Walmart. Do you know what his poorest kid is worth today? Poorest kid is worth $50 billion today. He's got four of them. Can you imagine these guys at Thanksgiving? They're like, hey Johnny, I noticed, man, you're only at 50 billion. Do I need to, you know, GoFundMe, you know, raise some money for you? Ah, it's gonna be alright, you're gonna make it through. What's the moral of the story? The moral of the story is, one is logic, the other one is emotion. Emotion brings out a different side. If it can be controlled madness, controlled emotion, it's gonna go into a different gear that a normal person's not gonna have.

• 22:41Chris Williamson?

  We'll get back to talking to Patrick in one minute, but first I need to tell you about Element.

• 22:47Chris Williamson?

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• 23:29Chris Williamson?

  or heading to drinklmnt.com/ModernWisdom. That's drinklmnt.com/ModernWisdom.

• 23:39Speaker 01

  Let's start competition. You were saying competitors, right? Okay, no problem.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  In high school, you can see somebody who was the best basketball player, super competitive at that level. Say they're tall, they're 6'6", they can jump 40 inches. They have a quick first, you know, step. They're very athletic in every way. They're the best athlete in the county, even in the state for that position. No problem. They go to college, they can compete, but maybe they're coming off the bench averaging 7.2 points a game, three rebounds, two assists. No problem. They may not make it to the NBA, but let's just say he makes it to the NBA. Plays a year, two years, then he goes to Puerto Rico, then he goes to Spain, then he plays in Turkey, then he plays in China. 10 years later, never comes back to the NBA. He's out. Now he's an assistant coach in Puerto Rico or somewhere else. Then there's a guy that comes to the NBA, he competes.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  He's talented, he shows into work, he's a very good worker, stable guy, doesn't do the drugs, doesn't do the alcohol. He hooks up with a lot of girls, but he doesn't get in the way. He doesn't respect, he respects his teammates' wives. He doesn't do anything. He plays for 15 years, makes 200 million dollars. Good for him. Then you have the psycho competitor, who counts the 55 kids ahead of him that were chosen as the best high school basketball player, and he's ranked number 56. And one by one by one, he targets every one of them until he takes them out. His name is Kobe Bryant. Then you have Michael Jordan in 1984, where the number one draft pick is Hakeem Olajuwon. Fair, good selection for the Rockets. Number two is Sam Bowie.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  I think Portland picks him up, or Seattle picks him up. Number three is Michael Jordan. You pick me number three? Yes, what happens to Michael? See, these guys, Michael was never the highest paid guy in the NBA. The only time Michael was the highest paid guy in the NBA was the last year, he made 33, 30 million dollars. Scottie Pippen made more money in the NBA than Michael Jordan ever made. Michael Jordan today's worth 3 billion dollars. Scottie Pippen is not. What's the difference? It's a very different mindset. Scottie's a competitor, but he's not on Michael's level. By the way,

• 25:44Speaker 01

  It's very easy to criticize a guy like you who wants to compete. And maybe internally, you don't want to compete. You want to dominate. Maybe internally, you want to show everybody, no, I'm going to be number one. Let's just say within because professionally, you want to do this. Totally cool.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  But there's a lot of other competitors out there that have good podcasts and they're doing a good job. It's just a different mindset when you have that enemy. By the way,

• 26:10Speaker 01

  very rarely will those guys ever truly again reveal their top driver and a top enemy.

• 26:19Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 26:22Speaker 01

  Because it's it's it's an element of insecurity.

• 26:25Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's a signal of low status.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  It is. It's it's and it's also, I don't want to give the other person credit.

• 26:31Chris Williamson?

  Power. Yeah.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  I don't want to give that other person more power than the person thinks they have. You don't have power or because somebody may be like, oh, I'm your enemy. I control you.

• 26:41Chris Williamson?

  Exactly. Well, when it's a part of the come up story.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:45Chris Williamson?

  It's romantic, right? It's it's uh it's grassroots. It's what's keeping you going. Look, look at how I was mistreated by my first high school coach. They didn't see the time. I'm going to prove it to them. That's a beautiful origin story. Age 20. Age 45, that just sounds like someone who can't get the chip off his shoulder.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:08Chris Williamson?

  So, yeah, I think it's it's interesting how the tools that got you here aren't the ones that will get you there. And how the strategy, this is again, one of the reasons why continuing to rely on resentment and bitterness and the chip on your shoulder and enemies for too long becomes a very toxic fuel. And it's also importantly, optics are very, very important to signal of low status.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  Okay, you brought, I don't disagree. Well, you brought up a story of Churchill, right? Okay. The world is weeks away from all speaking German.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  Okay, if we lose the war, the guy wins. No problem. Chamberlain cannot hold it together. And the story about how the only way Churchill said he was gonna come back is for Chamberlain to come and beg him. The only way. Does it sound like something Churchill would do, by the way? Absolutely.

• 28:01Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  Churchill sat there and said, okay, he has to come and ask me. Cause Chamberlain sent other people. He said, no, no, no, no, no. Only one person has to come look at me face to face and say, you can do a job I can't do. Come back and help us. Think about, think about that now.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  Visualize that scene. We can see it in a movie or we can read in a book. And by the way, say fifty percent of it is true. The other fifty percent is true, right? The other fifty percent is a lie and it's like buildup mythical over generations, right? I believe that Churchill would wanna hear it from a Chamberlain.

• 28:38Chris Williamson?

  Have you heard of Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare?

• 28:43Speaker 01

  No.

• 28:43Chris Williamson?

  So this is a phenomenal book that everybody can go and read. Before the Second World War, it was considered ungentlemanly to use guerrilla style tactics. And in fact, one of the British politicians said something to the effect of, if this is what it takes to win the war, I am prepared to lose. They were, the Brits saw anything shy of gentlemanly conduct in war as a loss, even if it resulted in a win. And Churchill came in and changed that. He was the one that changed that culture. So he puts together this crack squad of eccentric weirdos. One guy invents the limpet mine, right? Which you can descend to depths and then it'll attach using magnets and it'll build things up.

• 29:26Chris Williamson?

  Another group develop what is the predecessor to the SAS. Another group are working on disguises and guerrilla tactics to disrupt infrastructure as the German advances trying to move forward. So yeah, Churchill was prepared to play dirty. But, you know, you look at the tactics that we used, they only came about because of one man who legitimated it and he said, we will do whatever it takes to win.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  Now, here's the thing, when you hear a story like that, somebody may say, well, you know, what a, what a, what a cold-blooded bastard. Oh my God, no wonder people hate him. No wonder he is who he is, where many president moved the bust of Churchill in the White House away and said, take this out, so I don't represent what he represents. Everybody acts all hard, right? We can hate a Churchill during peacetime, but during wartime, you beg for Churchill to rise up. Wartime leaders like Churchill, you only appreciate during wartime.

• 30:27Chris Williamson?

  There's a really interesting insight from evolutionary psychology here. There's two types of leadership. One is from dominance and the other is from prestige, right? One is more authoritarian, it's tyrannical, it's very aggressive. The other is more altruistic. It's the, the rise to power is denoted, it's spread through the group. Everybody chooses together that this is someone who we all believe has the skills and the dominance is not the same. And there are specific times when you want dominance and when you want prestige.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 31:02Chris Williamson?

  And in times of conflict, you want dominance.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  Sure, sure. You could say it in business, it's startup versus when it's more established, right?

• 31:08Chris Williamson?

  Precisely.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  But here's also the thing, like the part where you gotta give a lot of credit to Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs had a startup mentality and then he took that to the company and then he hires, you know, his Scully that comes in from Pepsi and he says, you wanna sell sugar cane, you know, water for the rest of your life or you wanna change the world? He brings him in, then he ends up being the reason to fire Jobs. Jobs leaves, goes builds Pixar, sells it to Disney. Most of his wealth is tied to Disney, not at Apple. Then he comes back and he realizes that style of leading is not gonna work to take the company to the next level. When he comes back to Apple, the first phone call, he says, he says, the idea of thinking Microsoft is the enemy is behind us. We can't think like that anymore. This is what Steve Jobs says.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  And he goes to Microsoft and he gets $300 million from Microsoft to invest into Apple. And these guys hated each other. Microsoft came out in 76, Apple came out in 77, a year apart. And everybody was always comparing the two together. Bill Gates ended up being much richer than Steve Jobs, but Steve Jobs was admired way more than Bill Gates. So what does this mean?

• 32:15Speaker 01

  The individual has to evolve. Like you have to also recreate yourself as you're going through this. The same enemy that drives you when you're twenty two years old should not be driving you at thirty two years old, or else you haven't matured. You should also out mature that enemy. And then thirty two, something else should be driving you, then forty two, then fifty eight, then sixty three, then seventy five. But you are gonna have those love affair with those enemies. Let's say love affair. You had an affair with this enemy over an eight year span, over a thirteen year span, over a six year span, over six months span. But you know, there is truth in the idea of you still being driven by that enemy eighteen years after you beat that enemy, thirteen years after you beat that enemy.

• 32:57Chris Williamson?

  Someone who I think is particularly good at creating enemies from modern pop culture and our industry is Ben Shapiro.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 33:04Chris Williamson?

  What do you think about what he's doing at Daily Wire from a enemy perspective and generally?

• 33:09Speaker 01

  You talking about recently with his feud with Tucker Carlson or period generally?

• 33:12Chris Williamson?

  Everything overall.

• 33:13Speaker 01

  Um, I think Tucker's a true believer. I think Tucker is not somebody that if he's doing it intentionally to get under your skin, let's say that's twenty percent, let's say it's ten percent because he's witty and he's smart and he's sharp.

• 33:29Chris Williamson?

  Tucker or Ben?

• 33:30Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, Ben Shapiro is who you're talking about, right?

• 33:32Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  Let's say Ben is doing that ten or twenty percent intentionally to get under your skin, okay? But this guy at a young age wanted to be Supreme Court just, you know, he's been wanting to be that for a long time. This is not a regular guy. I think at twelve or thirteen years old, he performed in front of a couple thousand people. His level of intelligence of how early on he got a degree, he went to college, fifteen, sixteen years old, did all the stuff that he did. So he's a one hundred percent true believer. Does he have an element that he can talk to somebody and say, I can murder you in a debate right now if you really want to go there? Yes, he has that element as well.

• 34:05Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  Does he have a side of him that's a maybe a bully type a little bit? Sure.

• 34:10Chris Williamson?

  Well, don't forget during school, he was very heavily bullied himself, very heavily bullied.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  But that's what happens typically to people like him. But that may be the number one driver.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  That he's continuing because he wants for the rest of his life for those bullies to talk about that Ben Shapiro used to be a classmate. What makes him go at the pace that he goes? You think it's just all these other guys that we see? There's no way. You think he would ever tell us? You think his own family knows that? Highly doubted. It's to himself, many of these people that he has in his life. Anybody that goes at that pace, like Tucker Carlson today, I don't know if you saw the approval he got. I think they got a hundred fifty million dollars today from some organization.

• 34:47Chris Williamson?

  Who did? Tucker's organization.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, so finally today, the word is out that he raised money. It's a hundred, it's a big amount of money that he finally raised today. Who's his enemy? He's got a very easy enemy. He's got Fox News, former employer as an enemy. He's got a lot of political people as an enemy, people who silicate him as an enemy. You know how many enemies Tucker has got? You think Tucker needs another three hundred million dollars that he has in a bank account? I highly doubt so. He's doing it for a completely different reason because he wants to give the middle finger to five, ten, fifteen different people in his life. You just sense it with Tucker. And by the way, you know what's wild right now? Ben Shapiro went after Tucker this week.

• 35:22Chris Williamson?

  What happened?

• 35:23Speaker 01

  Because of Israel, Tucker's position where he says we should focus on a hundred thousand people in America that are dying from fentanyl, not focus on what's going on in Israel and Gaza. And Ben Shapiro says, you know, we can chew gum and walk at the same time specifically from the moral standpoint. We can handle two different moral issues, but you know, they're going back and forth. Whether it's a seasonal thing or not, that's a completely different, you know, competition that we're talking about.

• 35:48Chris Williamson?

  Well, I suppose, uh, how would you say? Enemies of convenience are sometimes good for optics. You know, what have we just seen? Dylan Dennis, Logan Paul, KSI, Tommy Fury, Jake Paul, Tommy Fury, Logan Paul, Jake Paul, and uh, who's the jujitsu guy? Stockton Slaps.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  Diaz.

• 36:10Chris Williamson?

  Thank you, Nate Diaz.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  Love that guy.

• 36:12Chris Williamson?

  Enemies of convenience.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:13Chris Williamson?

  You know, like, nothing gets people's tongues wagging more than you creating a little bit of a feud on the internet. Do you see, uh, they announced yesterday, speaking of feuds and speaking of Disney, that the Daily Wire are going to do that own version of Snow White with Brett Cooper starring as Snow White.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  I saw that. I saw that.

• 36:34Chris Williamson?

  I mean, that to me is, you know, largely a declarative statement of culture war on what's happening with children, with children's movies. You know, it's synthesizing down all of the little tangential issues that have been included. Is it anything to do with the push toward the sort of books that are in school? Is it us, you know, denying this, Rachel Zegler, Ziegler throwing Snow White under the bus? Like, she doesn't have a Prince Charming, she has a stalker. We don't need that.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  What do you think about that?

• 37:01Chris Williamson?

  I think that it is a very dangerous lesson to teach young girls that boys that show interest in them are dangerous and to be avoided. I think it makes for a generation of fragile, narcissistic, fearful young girls that I wouldn't want as a daughter and that I don't want as a mother.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  You know what a perfect example that is?

• 37:22Speaker 01

  The movement of feminism is the ultimate example of not choosing your enemies wisely. You chose men as being the enemy. Forty years later, fifty years later, you're sixty five years old, single, not married, no kids. You're living in an apartment or condo with a dog or a cat, that that's all you ever talk about, and you're lonely and you're sitting there saying, I was wrong. Men are not the enemy. But guess what? That movement stole fifty years of your life. And how painful that is. What she's doing right now with the messaging she's given and then getting out there and saying, well, I don't want to be able to have to do this. No, you know, what the, it's not necessarily going to be that way nowadays. You know, women don't need that anymore. It's a completely different

• 38:07Speaker 01

  era right now we're talking about. And to do this at a hundred year anniversary of Disney?

• 38:11Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  Really? With what Walt and many of us, I remember living in Iran, watching Disney cartoons translated in Farsi, literally in Farsi. It's very weird when you watch it in Farsi because the language is a rough language, you know, you watch Pinocchio in Farsi, it's not as appealing, right? But we grew up with this stuff, you know, we grew up with watching these cartoons to see that taking place. Is if you ask me, it's absolutely pathetic, but you're seeing how many back to back to back flops Disney has right now.

• 38:42Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  And it's not a good look. By the way, the buyers who want to buy Disney, they're loving this. Apple's one of the most qualified buyers. They they hope Disney makes five more flops. Apple's sitting there saying, make five more flops, Iger, please. By the way.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  Have you read The Ride of a Lifetime by Bob Iger? Okay. Another interesting guy. What he did with his thirty eight career at ABC. Obviously, he's been there a lot longer, but when you read the book, the first thirty eight run. To be one of the best power brokers. Then to finish your career up the way you're doing right now. Very. Very bad way of finishing it up.

• 39:17Chris Williamson?

  He's not an idiot, Brian. You don't have the excuse of not knowing.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  He is for sure. What a point you just made. He is one hundred percent not an idiot. This guy was about to run for president. Bob Iger was gonna, he was one of the guys that everybody was trying to get to run for president. Him and Oprah, they were supposed to be this. Literally, this was the conversation. So. He also ended up choosing the wrong enemies. And. The wrong allies. Not realizing your best allies are parents. You're losing parents who have been watching this for years. You're losing the people that this is a legacy product. It's another example of a complete screw up that's going to come at a discount for somebody else like Apple.

• 39:56Chris Williamson?

  I mean, look at, to go back to Ben and what Jeremy are doing over at Daily Wire.

• 40:02Chris Williamson?

  Hershey's do a campaign that they don't like. Within five days, they've released their own chocolate bar. That shaving company does something they don't like. Within twenty four hours, maybe they filmed a video with a McLaren for Jeremy's razors. They don't like the way that.

• 40:18Speaker 01

  Fantastic commercial, by the way.

• 40:19Chris Williamson?

  Well done. Jeremy's got, Jeremy's got skills. I remember I listened to him and Shapiro talking about the fact that originally Jeremy was the talent. And Ben was the money man and the the the data guy behind the scenes.

• 40:30Speaker 01

  Do you know Zach Levi? I think his name is Zach Levi, the actor who played the what is the movie? The the the the superhero for kid movies. What is the guy's name?

• 40:41Chris Williamson?

  Ben Ten.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  What is it?

• 40:43Chris Williamson?

  Ben Ten.

• 40:43Speaker 01

  No, no, it's a recent movie.

• 40:44Chris Williamson?

  You're the one with like.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:46Chris Williamson?

  Four kids.

• 40:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, trust me. I've seen this movie a couple of times. He he played Kurt Warner, a recent movie that came out, the American underdog. He played Kurt Warner. Him and Jeremy used to have a production company, apparently ten fifteen years ago. And Zach ended up being a big time actor in Hollywood, doing very good for himself. And by the way, Jeremy is another great example of a guy that's got enemies. Just look at his eyes. When you talk, when you hear Jeremy speak, you see the fire.

• 41:13Chris Williamson?

  Built for enemies.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  He's got enemies and he wants to take those enemies out.

• 41:16Chris Williamson?

  But that's why I thought the Daily Wire was an illustrative example because they are, as far as I can see, largely a company built on identifying enemies. You know, they're very much in opposition to ideas that they don't like, to movements they don't like, to people that they don't like. And yeah, man, I mean, it's you have to be built for that. You really, really do need to be built for it. And it certainly seems to me that what Ben and what Jeremy are doing over there is purpose built to be the anti this, the anti that. And a lot of the time, it's new movements that they don't just, they don't agree with.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  The market's going to prove if the concept is going to work or not, and if it can sustain it, because if it's a built to assault concept, they're going to be, they're going to succeed. But can somebody else come and pick up that concept and continue with that with the same level of fire? It's going to take a couple of decades to figure that part out.

• 42:09Chris Williamson?

  It's interesting to think, you know, from from our side, when you see those Rachel Zegler interviews and she's saying courting is stalking. A girl doesn't need to be saved by a prince. You know, she's busy thinking about how she can fulfill her own dreams and becoming the woman that she always knew that she could, so on and so forth. You think a lot of people are. Is that really the highest manifestation? Is that real self-actualization for young women nowadays? That's the question they ask. And you're totally right that, look, ultimately, the market will choose.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  There's no question about it.

• 42:42Chris Williamson?

  The market will choose.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  The market is brutal. You know, you know, it's a great thing about.

• 42:45Chris Williamson?

  It's always right.

• 42:46Speaker 01

  It's always right. You know, you can, you can say, well, let me tell you, I'm the best bodybuilder in the world. Yeah, okay, look at your calves. Yeah, good luck to you. Go put those little skimpy, you know, shorts on and see what your, you know, legs look like. No, you're not as good as you think you are. You're full of it.

• 43:02Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  Market is brutal. Podcast, business, concepts, investments, drinks, you know, alcohol, books you write. When we first wrote, when I first wrote Your Next Five Moves and we launched it August of 2020, so during the peak of COVID, my publisher, Simon and Schuster, asked and said, so how do you think the book's gonna do? How are you gonna judge the book? Me and Greg Dinkin are talking. I said, if the book is doing well three years from now, it was a good book. You can have a great marketing campaign, the book does well the first 30, 60, 90 days. But is the book selling three years later? If it is, that's a great book because the market will tell you that.

• 43:39Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, very interesting to think about how optics and there are ways to game the system. And I think people are very, they're hyper aware of this. They understand that there are people who have managed to use tactics and hacks to get themselves into a position that they maybe didn't quite deserve, that the legitimacy of the product, the book, or whatever it is, the person who, maybe when Meghan Markle's autobiography comes out, perhaps people would accuse her of doing something like this, right? It's not to do with the actual product, it's to do with the positioning.

• 44:16Chris Williamson?

  And sometimes that does work. But ultimately.

• 44:21Chris Williamson?

  Form is temporary and class is permanent. Naval's got this great quote where he says karma is just people repeating their beliefs, actions and behaviors until they finally get what they deserve. You just roll the dice, you keep rolling the dice, right? Every single time, every single thing you do, the way that you interact with the Uber driver, the way that you pay or don't pay the bill or invoice that you've got. Every tiny little thing each time is an opportunity for your true nature to come out. And people just keep on rolling the dice, keep on rolling the dice. And then every so often, someone hits double one and you go, oh, there we go.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  But it's temporary, you can't do permanently. Meghan Merkel, whether her motives are really because she loves the prince and it's like hairy, she's in love with him, or she's using the power to bully and get what she wants out of it. The market is brutal. Look what happened to Amber Heard. For how many years did everybody think, you know, Johnny Depp was a bad guy? For how many years, oh, Johnny Depp was an abusive, you know, relationship, all this stuff? And then they start showing the clips, the videos, and Johnny's comfortable with it being public. And all of a sudden, 180. The world is like, what an asshole she is, not him. I love Johnny.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  The next thing you know, the love affair was like, how many more men are going through it like Johnny is? And then how many women said she ruined it for women who were actually abused?

• 45:46Chris Williamson?

  Correct.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  So, yeah, for longest time, oh my God, crying, it's such a, so difficult time. What he was so, when he hit me, we fell for it. But we will only fall for it temporarily, not permanently. The market will reveal eventually, hopefully.

• 46:01Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, again, man, form is temporary, class is permanent, and people will ultimately get what they deserve. When it comes to the courting is stalking culture that we have at the moment. You've got a daughter, you've got young sons. You also spend some time under valutainment talking about intersexual dynamics and what's going on between the sexes. What do you make of the current dating scene for men and women? And why do you think it's being demonized in some ways?

• 46:28Speaker 01

  From what perspective?

• 46:29Chris Williamson?

  From? I think that there is an anti-dating culture at the moment.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 46:33Chris Williamson?

  I think that men and women are being encouraged to be treated as equals, sorry, as adversaries, not as equals.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  Right, right. I think it's transactional today. I think it's easy today. I think the swipe right community is it's Friday night, 11 o'clock, let me swipe right, I'm gonna use 20. Someone's gonna get back to me if they swipe right and they so and typically I would go after an eight and a half, nine, but it's Friday night, I'm gonna go do a six and a half, seven, no one's gonna know. I'm gonna invite her back to my place, she knows if she's on Tinder, I'm not on Bumble, whatever these dating apps are. And so it's transactional, strategic, no one's gonna know. And literally, not a lot of people are gonna know. You can really run through 20, 40, 50, 100 nowadays, and it's not a big deal. Okay. So what does that do? Whatever's too easy to come, you devalue it, you don't value it that highly.

• 47:23Speaker 01

  You know, my era, you had to court, you had to prospect, you had to have scripts, you had to build relationship, you had to follow up. We didn't have these types of things to do. We had MySpace, the last time I was single, there was MySpace. Okay. I DM'd my wife on MySpace, my wife and I knew each other for five and a half years. Eventually, we're in Palm Springs for the first time, she's single, I'm single, ever. For five and a half years, we're both single.

• 47:51Speaker 01

  And, you know, we go on a date, first date, PF Chang's, December 29th of 2007. This is when PF Chang's used to be good, when they had their noodle soup, they don't have it anymore, used to be, they took that away, phenomenal item on the menu. I'm convinced they fell apart after that. So anyways, we go to PF Chang's, by the way, if you're watching, bring it back, it was actually a very good item on the menu. So we go on a date, there's magic, she's smiling, I'm smiling, you know the smile, that's kind of like I'm happy to see you. And then it's midnight, we're the last people left at PF Chang's. You know, waiter comes up to me and he says, what's going on? I said, you know, my wife wants to file a divorce, she doesn't want to be with me anymore. So, your wife, why?

• 48:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I come from a different religious background and her family's convinced we gotta split up. And he has no clue, we're not married, we're just on our first date. He sits down for fifteen minutes convincing her to stay with me. If you love him, stay with him. It was a beautiful, you know, scene that we have. We go in the car, she goes home, the next day I take her, we go do Stairs in Santa Monica. We go to church, we go to Earth Cafe in Santa Monica. Then we go to Borders, I buy her a book on our second date called A Hundred and One Questions to Ask Before You Get Engaged, on our second date by Norman Wright. She's like, what's this? I said, I'm not looking for a girlfriend, I'm looking for a wife. I'm twenty eight at the time. Uh, I said, I know exactly what I want, I've already done this exercise with three other girls. If you wanna go through it, great. You need to answer the questions, let's meet up when you're ready and let's go through it.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  Week later, six hours at her place, one by one by one, each question we go through. I said, this is somebody I can date. And by the way, it's ugly because you gotta talk about everything in a book. So today, that's not it anymore. Today it's too risky, today it's you don't have access to that anymore, today percentages are coming out where marriages from dating sites have the least chance of working out versus marriages where you meet somebody through a referral, where you say, Pat, I've known Mary for seven years, I think you and her should talk, now I don't know what's gonna happen, let me set you guys up. Let's take our girls and do a double day. Cool, hey, I kinda like her, this is good, but you're telling me seven years. I've only seen her be with one guy Larry, five years, he was an asshole, then she's been with this other guy two years, but she's single now. Now I have some kind of a history I'm dealing with, right?

• 50:02Speaker 01

  So it is a different climate. Now, with kids, it's a different story on how you raise them. Uh, my uh, ten year old son, he's, he's been, he's had a girlfriend since he was five years old, literally at a birthday party at five years old, he's making out with this other girl at this Damon Bus- Dave and Buster's, I'm like, babe, what is gonna, mom is asking me, you know, her kids are kissing, I said, well, I got a son, you got a daughter, you may wanna stop your daughter, but I'm not gonna stop my son. And so she's like, well, guys, guys, no, stop, stop, they don't even know what's going on. So there's, you need to have the conversation with kids early today. Uh, I remember having a conversation with my boys when they were six and five in the shower and I said, okay, we need to have this conversation together. What's that? Okay, stand up.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  That's your dangling, that's his dangling, this is my dangling. Only you get to play with your dangling. One day, you're gonna find a girl that's gonna play with your dangling. Till then, God gave you that dangling for only you to play with your dangling. Now, you gotta see how they're looking at me, by the way. They're looking at me like this, and my wife leaves quickly. She's like, babe, this is on cost, so babe, you can leave. So we have that conversation. I think you need to have the conversation today because most parents are on Middle Eastern. They don't have those types of conversations. No one's talking about sex and condoms and all this kind of stuff. You need to start early, but the dating scene today, very, very different than what it was when I was single. Uh, I, if I wanted to go day to day and find a wife, my approach would be very different than what most people are doing today.

• 51:31Speaker 01

  Very different.

• 51:31Chris Williamson?

  We'll get back to talking to Patrick in one minute, but first I need to tell you about Shopify. Shopify is the e-commerce platform, revolutionizing businesses all over the world. Whether you're a garage entrepreneur or IPO ready, Shopify is the only tool that you need to start, run and grow your business online without the hassle. Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce in the United States. And if they are good enough for huge brands like Jim Shark, they are good enough for you too. Shopify puts you in control of every sales channel. So whether you're selling satin sheets from Shopify's in-person POS system, or offering organic olive oil on Shopify's all-in-one e-commerce platform, they've got you covered. And once you've reached your audience, Shopify has the internet's best converting checkout to help you turn browsers into buyers.

• 52:12Chris Williamson?

  If you are someone who is looking to start a business online, Shopify is the only place to go. They are a one-stop shop to create your business. So if you're looking to take your business to the next level, you can sign up for a $1 per month trial period right now by going to the link in the description below or heading to Shopify.com slash modern wisdom in all lowercase. That's Shopify.com slash modern wisdom. You say to be impressed by the right things. And you just suggested that as well. What are the right things? What should people be impressed by?

• 52:45Speaker 01

  In what area? In relationship?

• 52:46Chris Williamson?

  No, in life. In life, what is it that people are miscellaneously being impressed by?

• 52:51Speaker 01

  Okay, so your guy Chase, right? Wherever Chase is, okay, right there. And then your, where's?

• 52:58Chris Williamson?

  Dean.

• 52:59Speaker 01

  Dean, where's Dean at? Dean is in the back.

• 53:00Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 53:01Speaker 01

  Okay. You're telling me about Dean and what Dean does. He's been with you two years, three years. What, you said 2,500 episodes? And how many?

• 53:08Chris Williamson?

  700 episodes, two and a half thousand videos.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  Two and a half thousand videos, 700 episodes.

• 53:13Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  Okay. What does that say about you? A lot. Okay. If somebody works with you for six years, what are they gonna learn about you? Your temper, your expectation? Hey, boys, are we ready? This is all standard and expectation that you have. That is a reflection of he likes working with you. Why does he like working with you? I don't know, but you do something right for him to wanna work with you. And then you told me what you're doing with them, structure. That's private stuff that you told me. So you watch people. You watch values, principles. You watch how they treat people. You watch how people treat them. You watch how people respond to them. You watch how they are with powerful people. You watch how they are with regular, average, day-to-day people. You.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  You look for that. Today, it's not the cars, the Lambos, the Ferraris, the houses, all that stuff. By the way, I'm a capitalist and I love all that stuff. But I like that stuff because different reasons. I enjoy the game. I'm a kid. I'm turning 45 tomorrow. I'm 44 today for the last day. Tomorrow I'll be 45. But there's an element of childlike stuff that brings out the 14-year-old kid. When I look at a baseball card, I'm a kid. When I look at a baseball card, the average person is like, who cares about baseball cards? That's a different element, but. The relationships, the way they treat people, values and principles, what they value,

• 54:36Speaker 01

  you look for those types of things and eventually enough will be revealed the more you pay attention.

• 54:42Chris Williamson?

  That's one of the byproducts, I think, that is dangerous sometimes of people who play the game, that they get captured by the game and they forget that it is a game and they see the game as reality. They don't realize that there is something which is supposed to be deeper, which is hidden below the surface. So I did Rogan's show last year and I listened back to the episode. He said something on it that I really wanted to dig into and he listened back. I listened back and pulled this, this really, really powerful insight for me. It was one of the most powerful things I learned last year. And he said, just because something is hard to obtain does not mean that it is valuable.

• 55:18Speaker 01

  Just because something is hard to obtain doesn't mean it's valuable.

• 55:21Chris Williamson?

  Correct. Yeah. Just because it's difficult to get, doesn't mean that it's valuable. Look at the car he's driving, look at the watch he's wearing, look at the girl he's with. These things were hard to obtain, so you presumed that they were valuable, but you didn't realize that what's genuinely valuable are friendships and relationships and a comfort and a confidence in yourself and peace of mind and sanity and being able to positively impact the people around you. So it got me thinking, I've been really sort of reflecting on this over the last year. And I did some research into the history of the pineapple. So fourteen ninety-two, Christopher Columbus lands on the island of Guadalupe and for the first time ever, a Westerner sees a pineapple, right? And you look at it and it's kind of a royal fruit that's got this stupid crown on its head. And he writes in his journal, he describes the taste of a pineapple.

• 56:05Chris Williamson?

  If you've never had a pineapple before, it'd blow your head off, you know, if you haven't got processed.

• 56:09Speaker 01

  Oh, I remember the first time I had a pineapple.

• 56:10Chris Williamson?

  So sweet. It's insane.

• 56:12Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 56:12Chris Williamson?

  Anyway, they take a shipload literally back to the Prince of Spain, Prince Aragon the second. Take this entire shipload back, one of them makes it that isn't rotten and the prince is allowed to eat it. And again, almost gets this sort of mythical quality to it, the pineapple. Very quickly, the British, quite rightly so, they, they start to see it as this symbol of opulence, right? They see it as this symbol of wealth. So they would parade pineapples around at dinner on a platter and they would use them over and over and over again. You could rent a pineapple, right, for the evening. This is the sort of house in which you might be able to see a pineapple, right?

• 56:57Chris Williamson?

  Castles had pineapple statues on the top of them. There would be fountains with pineapples at the front of someone's estate. All of this occurred because of the scarcity of a pineapple. It was eight thousand pounds to get one pineapple.

• 57:09Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 57:10Chris Williamson?

  Right. That was the equivalent back then. Eight thousand pounds. It was a symbol of of privilege and opulence and wealth. And what it meant was that people really looked up to this one object. Then the French, a couple of hundred years later, they invent greenhouses. And that allows us to grow tropical fruits at higher climates, higher latitudes. Price drops. And guess what? No one starts parading the pineapple around anymore. The scarcity of it was largely determining the value of it. And that story and what I called Rogan's value difficulty conflation, just because something is hard to obtain, does not mean that it is valuable.

• 57:53Chris Williamson?

  Now, I would argue that a pineapple is valuable, no matter how hard or difficult. It's like a dialed fruit, no matter how good or how difficult it is to get a hold of. But I really love that insight because I think that it shows how non valuable, but difficult to obtain things get slipped into our desires. I see that particular expensive possession that intrinsically I don't actually care about. Maybe I've never been a watch guy. Maybe I've never been a shoes guy. Maybe I've never been a car guy. But I want it. I want it because it's hard to get. Okay. Well, what if there is a quicker route toward fulfillment? What if there is a more direct path? Because there are some people out there for whom keeping up with the Joneses and materialism is an inbuilt part of their life.

• 58:35Chris Williamson?

  But I can say as someone that doesn't have that bone in my body particularly, that for me, material possessions, they don't make a massive difference to my quality of life. I like nice things. I like to fly business. I like, you know, I like a nice house and blah, blah, blah. But there's people who are tuned into that, right? Maybe it's their upbringing, their genetic predisposition, whatever, whatever, whatever. But I think that people should be very cautious. Why is it that I'm chasing this thing? Am I chasing this thing because it's something which is valuable? Or am I chasing it simply because it's something that's difficult to get?

• 59:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a, by the way, very good story and a great quote. I remember in Iran, pineapple is ananas. That's how we say it. We say ananas. And anybody in Iran who had pineapple, you were rich. Two things, pineapple and banana in Iran. Only rich people have pineapple.

• 59:16Chris Williamson?

  Two good fruits.

• 59:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, two good fruits. And then I go to Germany. And bananas are everywhere. But the first time I had pineapple, I had it in the States. I couldn't believe we were having pineapple. I thought we were rich when we had pineapple. I said, Mom, are we finally rich here? We made it.

• 59:32Chris Williamson?

  We retired on a pineapple.

• 59:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was on and on. And I remember I was in ninth grade. First time ever, we went and ate at Sizzler's. I thought we had made it. I'm like, guys, you will not believe what restaurant. I don't know if you know Sizzler's, but Sizzler's in U.S. is not a fancy restaurant. I thought we made it because we ate at Sizzler's. Yeah, you know, I would say, I used to think, um, and you know, this whole concept of people who are too much about fancy things. It's kind of like, wow, look at this guy. All he cares about is money. All he cares about is fancy things. All he cares about is these cars and life with the rich and famous and all this other stuff. Eventually, I realized not everybody is driven by the same thing. All I care about, that's something that drives you. Okay, my oldest son could care less. You know what he wants for a car?

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  His favorite car, a Jeep. That's his dream car. My daughter says, I want a white Ferrari. Okay, and I said, who do you think is gonna buy that for you? Well, Daddy, you're gonna buy. I said, I'm not buying you a white Ferrari. You're gonna buy yourself a white Ferrari. Dylan wants a completely different car. My oldest son, you know what? You know what is absolutely a great day for him? Outside, in the dirt, playing with lizards, catching animals, playing with dogs and cats. That's an incredible day. By the way, he's been locked down since eight months, nine months. My youngest son, 10 years old, first time I take him to my barber to get a haircut, and one of the girls at this place, they give massages at the end when you get the haircut. My oldest son says, don't touch my back. Don't, don't touch me. He would go like this.

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  He's like, no, no, Dad, I don't tell her not to touch me, right? But my 10-year-old son, it was five at the time. She's like, can you also massage me over here?

• 1:01:10Chris Williamson?

  Oh, he liked the finer things in life.

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  He liked the finer things in life, right? My oldest son loves dogs. He loves animals. My youngest son? Don't get on my bed. Get off my bed. My oldest son wants a dog right next to him. The youngest son doesn't want any of the dogs next to him. And his dad loves dogs. I love animals, right? So, I'm not, I'm not, you know? I think, uh, Joe specializes in doing the hard. If there's anybody that specializes in doing the hard is Joe. You kidding me? Like Joe's, uh, uh, enamored by doing the hard. But also Joe's learned to be so self-aware of himself, to know what he likes. I said, Joe, what do you think about sports? He's, uh, I know nothing about sports. I don't watch sports. The only thing I watch is UFC. Joe, now that you're getting all these eyeballs, what's your vision? What if we can do this, Pat?

• 1:01:56Speaker 01

  The only thing I want to do is, I just want to do podcasts.

• 1:01:58Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  I want to go hunt. I want to be my family. I want to do UFC. And this is all I want to do. The level of clarity he has of where he's at? Props to him. Now Dana White? Slightly different. Dana's now worth a few hundred. So he's worth a half a billion dollars today. Why is he still driving? Why is he still pushing? Why is he still competing? Why is he still wanting to be number one? Who's his enemy? He drives around in nice cars, likes to go to the casino, likes to be around with people, having fun late night. Two different dynamics, two different personalities. Look at the organization they built with UFC.

• 1:02:31Chris Williamson?

  Well, I mean, thinking of someone who chooses their enemies tactically, Dana is not someone who's shy of a fight.

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  He loves it.

• 1:02:38Chris Williamson?

  You know, if you were to think of a C-suite level fighter? Dana White is, is pretty well.

• 1:02:43Speaker 01

  He's the crap.

• 1:02:44Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, you've, you've spent a good bit of time sort of orbiting that, that whole crew of people. What have you learned from your, uh, insights about the UFC and, and sort of what that says about Dana?

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  Oh, uh, uh, listen.

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  What I'm about to say about Dana is.

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  Some people are not gonna like it, but I'm I'm gonna say it anyways. UFC is what UFC is because of Dana White. You can sit there and talk about all these fighters and yeah, but you know, if it wasn't for this guy, if it wasn't for that guy, if it wasn't for what this person did and that, but totally get it. Listen, different players come and go, right? Totally understand. Uh, Dana has made it about the sport. He never made it about the fight. Uh, he never made it about one fighter. He is very quick to call out anybody. It doesn't matter if it's the number one guy in the league, he'll call him out, John Jones. He'll call out Connor if he screws up, but he'll back him up to the highest level. He'll say that was some stupid shit he did. He'll sit there and straight up tell you what he likes, what he doesn't like.

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  But everybody learned during COVID, he was the number one commissioner in all of sports. Every commissioner in America caved. NBA caved, NFL caved, MLB caved. Every commissioner caved except for one guy who had brass balls called Dana White, who said, I don't give a shit. We're going to find a place to do the fight. So during COVID, you know, it's the only sport the world watched. We watched UFC. No one's watching a fricking football game with no fans out there and cardboard. What am I gonna do with cardboard? Oh no, we're gonna watch, hey, you can buy this seat for your face to be on the, you know, basketball game. Who gives a shit? It was the most boring finals Lakers won ever. They shouldn't even deserve to have won that final. There was no audience, nobody booing against you.

• 1:04:30Speaker 01

  But everybody realized, here's Dana as a commissioner, then it's everybody else. You're not at his level. He's a wartime leader as well as a peacetime leader. He's learned how to balance both.

• 1:04:41Chris Williamson?

  Dominance and prestige moving together.

• 1:04:42Speaker 01

  He said something in an interview, it says, listen, man, maybe it's just the fact that I'm getting old and I'm getting soft, but I have a hard time seeing what's going on with some of these guys and, you know, in the way his personal life, when he went through that crisis and the way he put it, he says, you want me to be embarrassed? How much more embarrassed do you want me to be? You know how embarrassing it is to talk to my wife and my kids? You know how embarrassing that is? This is nothing compared to embarrassing to have to face my kids.

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  You respect that. You love that.

• 1:05:08Chris Williamson?

  There's a degree of clarity, especially to Dana, that is very right. And I think that one of the things that UFC has done is make boxing particularly feel so antiquated and pedestrian.

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  And the fact that KSI almost beat Tommy Fury, you know how bad that would have been for boxing?

• 1:05:26Chris Williamson?

  That's not good. That's not good. But KSI does not represent UFC either.

• 1:05:31Speaker 01

  He doesn't, but what would have happened if a YouTuber would have beaten a professional boxer with the last name of Fury? It's humiliating.

• 1:05:39Chris Williamson?

  Correct.

• 1:05:39Speaker 01

  And many people would have said he could have won on the points, but.

• 1:05:42Chris Williamson?

  What was it that you said? You made some comparison about jockeys and horses to do with Dana White?

• 1:05:52Speaker 01

  Yes, I made the analysis with Elon Musk, where you had to bet on the, the same goes with Dana White as well, though. So you got the jockey and the horse, okay?

• 1:06:02Speaker 01

  You got Dana White is the jockey. The horse is UFC. Elon Musk is a jockey. Tesla is the horse, okay? So if tomorrow Elon Musk resigned from Tesla, Tony do Twitter, what happens to Tesla? It's going to be disturbing for a lot of investors because a lot of people bought Tesla because it's Elon Musk. A lot of people are selling Tesla and getting rid of their cars like AOC.

• 1:06:30Chris Williamson?

  Because it's Elon Musk.

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  It's Elon Musk ever since he bought Twitter.

• 1:06:33Chris Williamson?

  Double edged sword.

• 1:06:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a double edged sword. But you know, to me, in a perfect world, is if you can have both. I think UFC is a great product. Phenomenal product, addicting product, okay, viral product. Uh, but Dana White is an incredible jockey.

• 1:06:50Chris Williamson?

  Do you remember someone brought up, I think it was Israel Adesanya had been using the N word? And it's at the press conference. I mean, it must be fun for the press, you know, to sit down and Dana sits down and goes, all right, guys, what's going on? The gate tonight was da, da, da, da, da, da. We broke this. He was the fight of the night. And then he just looks up and someone asks him a question and he just says what he thinks. You know, he doesn't say something that the media team has prepped him on, although I'm sure he's got training and he understands the boundaries. But nothing feels prescribed, manufactured, conceited, uh, nothing contrived. Nothing feels like that. It just feels like this is what the guy thinks. Uh, someone, I, I saw this on the internet, someone had talked about.

• 1:07:34Chris Williamson?

  Many organizations and YouTubers at the moment are trying to speedrun authenticity. Right? They're trying to growth hack relatability. How can I make myself seem more authentic and relatable than I actually am? And obviously, it's kind of a self-defeating prophecy, which is that the only way to be authentic is to be authentic. And there's a degree of trust, you know, I mean, Dana, dude, the start of this year was rough for him, that him and his misses got into a scuffle and it got videoed and it was maybe like New Year's Eve or something like, oh, January 1st, guess I was starting 2023, the worst way possible. And he comes out and you have faith that you go, yeah, this guy meant what he said. There's, I don't think that there's any demons lurking in the closet because I may

• 1:08:20Chris Williamson?

  regret saying that at some point in future, but I don't think that I'm going to need to because I just have faith that I'm not Dana White, I don't have stock in Dana White. I just, I'm a good judge of character and I see in him someone that seems to tell the truth more often than not and seems to be very open and honest and own his mistakes. And people love that. People really, really like that. So yeah, it makes him incredibly likable.

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  Authenticity at the highest level. That brand is a very authentic brand. He's had his, you know, his enemies, he's had the people that have challenged him and given him a hard time, but Dana in a past life could have been a gangster. Maybe he was, but he could have been a gangster. He could have ran a family. That's how Dana is. He could have been, he's Dana is almost not a mob boss, you know, of a Gambino family or Genevieve or Colombo. Dana's more the guy that ran the commission, like a Luciano. That's Dana. And to be that guy,

• 1:09:21Speaker 01

  there is no book you can read to be that. You can read 40 Laws of Power 100 times, you can't be that guy. You either are that guy, you're not that guy.

• 1:09:26Chris Williamson?

  Big boss energy.

• 1:09:27Speaker 01

  Dana is that guy. Dana's that guy.

• 1:09:30Chris Williamson?

  One of your quotes is, "When you're winning, you're not as good as you think you are. When you're losing, you're not as bad as you think you are." What's that mean to you?

• 1:09:39Speaker 01

  Both of them lie. You know, both of them is exaggerated. You know, both of them are... When you're winning, everybody's telling you how amazing you are. "Oh, my God, let me tell you, dude, you know what? You're the best. You're amazing. You know, you're just better than that guy, and you're better than this guy." And it always takes me back to that quote of Marcus Aurelius, who had a slave that would sit behind him and always whisper to him, "Hey..."

• 1:10:07Chris Williamson?

  "You're just a man."

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  "You're just a man."

• 1:10:09Chris Williamson?

  "You're just a man."

• 1:10:10Speaker 01

  That's right, "Forty laws of power," right? "You're just a man, you're just a man, you're just a man." And then he would get up, and he became the best emperor, what, sixty-two A.D. to sixty-nine, whatever the time is. And he becomes who he becomes. And we read about him now. You know, you pick up the book Meditations, you're like, this is like mandatory reading for anybody. What is this all about, right? You know, a simple book, not that big, you can read it in one hour. No, it's not, it's not. And you're going through it, saying, "What was this about?" Then you Google, "What did he mean by this?" "Wow, I didn't think about it that way." So, and then when you're losing, everybody tells you, "I told you shouldn't have done that. I knew you weren't gonna make it. Yeah, I told you, it wasn't for you. You weren't that guy."

• 1:10:55Speaker 01

  And you believe that as well. So, both of them are lying. For me, politically, politically, I'm a capitalist, hardcore capitalist. I fully am a capitalist to the core. I think the free market will create solutions to problems. I think the free market's gonna filter out all the fakers in pharma, in finance, in podcasting, in sports, in real estate, in insurance. It takes two decades, but it'll filter people out. It's not, it's got zero sympathy for you. It doesn't care to befriend. You can give capitalism as many compliments as you want, he doesn't feel it, he has no emotions. You can't flatter capitalism. All he's interested in is results. Are you good enough? Can you last? Can you recreate yourself?

• 1:11:40Speaker 01

  Great. But when it comes on to politics, I want to hear both sides. Okay, I'm a Christian, but I held a podcast four weeks ago. I brought two Muslims and I brought two Christians. And I had them go at it for two hours, discussion. Because my conversation was more about, okay, if we agree on seven different things, we disagree on seven different things, but you agree on 23 different things. Can we figure out a way to make this work? Why do you feel the way you do? Why do you feel the way you do? And they go back and forth and you're sitting there saying, okay. Interesting. Today, Israel, Palestine, with what's going on with Hamas. Complicated, lots of issues.

• 1:12:19Speaker 01

  You know, on one end, the question is where pro-Israel, where folks are going back and forth. You know, I'm a pro-Israel guy. I'm from Iran. When I lived in Iran for 10 years, Iran was safer when Reza Pahlavi was there because they were strong and they had allies with everybody. And Israel was safe. The Middle East was safe. You could go and say, you know what, Patrick? Next week, you know where I'm going? Where are you going? I'm going to Tehran, Iran. Because Frank Sinatra is performing there and I want to do a podcast with Frank Sinatra. I said, you're doing a podcast with Frank Sinatra in Tehran, Iran? Sick. You would have been able to say that in 76, in 75. So the Middle East was fairly peaceful, not perfect, but it was peaceful.

• 1:13:02Speaker 01

  But at the same time, it, you know, you got to ask the question. How did Israel with the best intelligence, Mossad, not know that for one year Hamas was training for this? How did you not know that they went and built a city similar to the one that you have and trained on how to break into homes and take hostages? You didn't know that? You really didn't know that? And intelligence gave you a report from here, from Egypt, but you didn't know that? It's a fair question to ask, but when you ask that question, guess what people say? What kind of a question is that? This is not the time to ask that question. Do you realize what they're doing to kids? I don't support it. I'm not supporting any of that stuff. Then I got another question. Because Palestinians say, that's exactly right. This was intentional by Israel.

• 1:13:47Speaker 01

  They know what I ask Palestinians? And they also don't like this question? Here's a question. If you're so peaceful, who knows more about Palestinians? Us, who live in America, or UK, or your neighbor? If you live in a condo, or if you live in a house? And you've been living in this house for five years or 10 years. You have a neighbor on this side, you have a neighbor on this side. You know, when they do barbecues, you know how much they drink. You know who, which in-laws comes in, you know, the son, when he sneaks in the girlfriend at one o'clock in the morning. You know, the daughter, when she sneaks out and changes her skirt and gets into a car with that bad boy and goes out and does what she does. And she comes back at four o'clock. You know your neighbors, you see all their mess, okay?

• 1:14:30Speaker 01

  If, if Palestine and Gaza is filled with so many peaceful people, why is Egypt not taking them? As refugees to go to Egypt? Egypt knows a lot about you. Why is it only 800 people? Why are they not letting a million people come to you? So somebody may say, what a shameful question for you to ask. How dare you ask the question? I think both questions need to be asked. What you do with it is up to you, okay? So for me, this whole concept of when you're winning, don't believe the hype. When you're losing, don't believe the hype. Whatever story even your own side is saying, why don't you be skeptical a little bit? Question it for yourself and see if you can entertain both ideas.

• 1:15:09Speaker 01

  I, I wanna find ways to entertain both ideas as much as possible because I find myself becoming sharper when I do that. And I eliminate blind spots. Anytime I'm 100% one side, I have way too many blind spots.

• 1:15:21Chris Williamson?

  We'll get back to talking to Patrick in one minute, but first I need to tell you about Fountain Life. Here's a crazy statistic, nearly 70% of heart attacks occur without any prior symptoms. Simply put, the human body is really good at hiding disease. And this is where Fountain Life comes in. They provide top of the line health snapshots, vetted therapeutics and a team of longevity physicians. So that you can live a longer, healthier and more vital life. In seemingly healthy adults, Fountain Life's initial results have shown 2% have cancer. Two and a half percent have a potential ruptured aneurysm looming in their future. And over 14% have a critical life-saving finding.

• 1:16:01Chris Williamson?

  Right now, you can get the exact treatment that I got by going to the link in the description below or heading to fountainlife.com/ModernWisdom. Using the form on that page to get $500 off their Apex membership. That's fountainlife.com/ModernWisdom. Do you think that we're obliged to have a take on everything? Because I haven't. Got involved in the Israel Palestine conflict. And there's a lot of people that are very unhappy. The silence is violence, crowd. Your silence is deafening. Why haven't you come out in support or against this group or that group? Is it an obligation for us all to have a take on everything?

• 1:16:39Speaker 01

  If if the background has to do anything with you, I think you are obligated to talk about it. Meaning if you're a Jew, I think you have to. If you're Palestinian, you have to. If you're a Muslim, I think you have to. Because it's your community, it's your pride, it's your background. If you're a political show and you've spoken about Ukraine and Russia, and you've touched that topic, why are you not touching this topic? Now, I don't know if you have.

• 1:17:07Chris Williamson?

  No, no, no, no to all of the above.

• 1:17:08Speaker 01

  Then guess what that means? Then you're consistent, so no, you don't have to. If you've been consistent with all of it, you don't have to talk about it. That's not what the show is about. You could simply say, you want to hear that show? Go to Ben Shapiro.

• 1:17:20Chris Williamson?

  Well, what people are saying, they're not saying, why haven't you commented? Specifically what they're saying is.

• 1:17:24Speaker 01

  Position is what they want.

• 1:17:25Chris Williamson?

  What they're saying is, why haven't you said the thing that supports the stance that I want you to take?

• 1:17:31Speaker 01

  Why haven't you?

• 1:17:32Chris Williamson?

  For each of them?

• 1:17:33Speaker 01

  No, why haven't?

• 1:17:34Chris Williamson?

  Why haven't I commented on it at all?

• 1:17:36Speaker 01

  I mean, listen, there there's a lot of events in the world that if you want to have to comment on all of them, we don't have a life. You would have to do 12 hour podcasts to cover everything on a daily basis. No. But this is a once in 50 years type of crisis that could lead to a World War III. Numbers came yesterday where Ray Dalio, I don't know if you've sat down with Ray Dalio. Okay, so you know who Ray Dalio is? He's a $20 billion man, built an incredible company. I had him on as well. Ray Dalio yesterday said, the chance of World War III is officially at 50%. And Jamie Dimon yesterday said, these are the most dangerous times we're living in decades.

• 1:18:15Speaker 01

  Okay, so one may say, well, you get tens of millions of eyeballs. You're no longer somebody that gets, back in the days, your first show when you did where 220 people watched it, and mom and dad didn't watch it, your siblings didn't watch it, and best friends didn't watch it. No, now you're getting.

• 1:18:33Chris Williamson?

  Well, that's the interesting question, right? Whether somebody with a sufficiently large platform is obligated to comment on things simply because they have a large platform? And you ask why, whether I have and why I haven't, if I haven't? I found out about the incidents that were going on in the Middle East on Twitter two days after they happened and I wondered why hammers was trending. And I thought, what the fuck's hammers? Oh, fuck, that's Hamas. That was two days after everything had happened. By this time, I'd already had texts from people saying, dude, like, are you gonna get, are you gonna do an episode on this? And I was like, bro, the requisite amount of understanding for me to be able to add an educated opinion to this topic is not one that I have time to do. I mentioned to you earlier on, we've been traveling, we were in LA.

• 1:19:17Chris Williamson?

  We were there for two days. All I did, all I've done for the last week is travel, sleep, research and record. And I've researched very specific guests. I haven't been researching stuff about the Middle East, right? So that's all I've had time to do. Is it not the precise problem that people who do not know what they're talking about have given cod psychology insights way outside of their domain of expertise and just added to the noise rather than adding to the signal? And yet, there is a group of people on the internet that would say, no, but this is so important to me that it's something that should move aside the other things that you're doing in life. And I think a final element of this is people who are chronically online cannot understand

• 1:20:02Chris Williamson?

  what it's like to not be chronically online. I am chronically online for periods and then I'm chronically traveling around and researching and recording and going from hotel to hotel, coming out to Florida. This is one of those periods during which there's a lot of reading that needs to be done to make a comment, to contribute to something that lots of people who are better educated than me can do. It's the same reason I didn't comment on COVID. COVID was something that was happening. We did a couple of episodes explaining how we felt people could better work from home, some mental health tools that we thought that they could use, some strategies that they could do to improve their time blocking and some stuff like that. Here's how we would design your homework station. I'm like, if you want me to comment and just throw horseshit at the wind.

• 1:20:49Chris Williamson?

  I can do it, but I don't think that it's going to benefit anything. So yeah, there's this compulsion, this obligation, I think, that certain groups on the internet feel anybody that comments on things should get themselves involved with. And it's just.

• 1:21:05Speaker 01

  Are you surprised?

• 1:21:07Chris Williamson?

  No, not at all, because what they want, but again, they don't want you to comment. They want you to support their side.

• 1:21:12Speaker 01

  No, that's a different story. That that's a different story. There's a difference between commenting and supporting, right? I'm not, if I comment, I'm giving you my thoughts. And I'm going to share with you my

• 1:21:28Speaker 01

  you know, opinion, thoughts on my life experience on what I think is going on. And then from there, agree or disagree.

• 1:21:36Chris Williamson?

  For the people who are asking you to contribute, if your thoughts and your life experience led you to implicate one side rather than the other, sound like you were being more generous to one side rather than the other. They would very quickly say, I wanted you to comment, but I didn't want you to say that. They would very quickly have an issue.

• 1:21:53Speaker 01

  Is that your brand though? Is your brand

• 1:21:57Speaker 01

  of 700 episodes, 2,500 clips? You know, is your brand given opinion on current events? Have you done that in the past? Because here's what happens. So in the market, you know how in Hollywood, they say this guy's a triple threat. What's a triple threat? Act, sing, dance. Okay. In podcasting, there's also triple threats. Okay. What's a triple threat? A great interviewer, which you are, but that's one of three. Two is perspective and opinion, which Joe Rogan is, people want to hear what Joe has to say about this. And then three is entertain.

• 1:22:38Speaker 01

  Can you entertain me while you're giving me your perspective or asking questions where I'm kind of like, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. Man, I was funny as hell. So Joe, the reason why Joe is number one is because Joe's great host. We want to hear his perspective, agree or disagree. He has the, he has the conviction and the confidence to give a side and be willing to change. Hey, one minute you're voting for Bernie Sanders. Four years later, you're saying to save America, you got to vote for Trump and Republican. What? What are you talking about, right? So then three is he entertains you, he makes you laugh. Your brand.

• 1:23:17Speaker 01

  You have to take the risk whether you wanna go to two.

• 1:23:21Chris Williamson?

  I don't think you need to comment on absolutely everything. If Joe was to be asked, what do you think of Aaron Rodgers' most recent Achilles rupture? As you said earlier on.

• 1:23:29Speaker 01

  But that's not, that's not a, but there's a different story with that.

• 1:23:32Chris Williamson?

  You asked about consistency earlier on. Ukraine, Russia didn't comment on, COVID didn't comment on.

• 1:23:35Speaker 01

  And COVID, then that's your brand then. But, but by the way, what you just said is your perspective.

• 1:23:43Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely, but it's a meta perspective on what's going on, right?

• 1:23:45Speaker 01

  You're not gonna please everybody. They'll look, I'm Armenian and Assyrian, okay? So I was born in Iran. So here's where I'm screwed. I'm a half Armenian, half Assyrian, born in Iran, and I'm an American, okay? So.

• 1:23:56Chris Williamson?

  Full horsemen of the apocalypse.

• 1:23:57Speaker 01

  Oh my God. So whenever something happens with Armenian genocide, I have to within a second comment on it, okay? And I do, but not within a second because I don't have intel. So when you're talking about your days, what it looks like, research, all that stuff, you're telling the truth. But I'm running nine companies and I got a wife and I got four kids and I'm transitioning with another company and I'm doing research on a podcast and I'm doing the interviews and I'm running a tech startup and I'm running a consulting firm with clients that are traveling worldwide to come to us. And I'm doing our, my, our best to kind of see what's going on with stories. Yeah, there's gonna be days. You just don't have time. And the audience can understand and cannot understand it, right? That's a decision they gotta make. So Assyrians, hey, did you see what happened at that theater?

• 1:24:41Speaker 01

  When are you gonna come in at this wedding that just took place and a hundred people were dead and a place caught on fire and these people? Okay, great. Let me get some intel and then I'll comment on it. And then I did, you know, or Iran or, you know. But, but the natural part where I would take it as a compliment is the audience is leaning on you to see how you would assess this issue and they trust the way you reason. And nowadays, there's not enough people who are able to reason to give a different perspective because they simply don't trust mainstream media. But then the next step is, do you wanna take the risk of going in that side? If your brand is not on COVID, not on Ukraine, not on this, then you're staying consistent.

• 1:25:23Chris Williamson?

  I think largely the main lesson I learned, I learned this from Douglas Murray, is that there are a lot of people in the online space who do not have expertise within a particular domain and have it in another one. They have expertise within psychology or climate change or whatever it might be. And then they start thinking to themselves, well.

• 1:25:42Chris Williamson?

  Why, why shouldn't my thoughts on the Ukraine be important to people? Well, everybody thinks that my insights about climate change are absolutely wonderful. And they start to get out over their skis outside of their domain of competence. If you want to talk about my domains of competence, I'll comment on it. For me, there are people out there who are capable, prepared to do the work, have the time and have the expertise. I don't think that the internet needs more noise. I think it needs more signal and I would be contributing nothing short of noise if I did that. I'm also just not passionate about learning about this topic. And I understand that in order for me to give the,

• 1:26:21Chris Williamson?

  for me to meet the bar of evidence and insight that I would want to, to feel proud about my opinion. I need to be passionate about it, right? I need to be compelled to learn about it.

• 1:26:30Speaker 01

  Are you passionate about life?

• 1:26:32Chris Williamson?

  Of course I am.

• 1:26:33Speaker 01

  Would you like to live to 100 years old?

• 1:26:36Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 1:26:36Speaker 01

  Okay. So do many of your listeners, because the feedback you give has to do with living a great life. Because people are watching the life you're living. The only thing I would encourage you to consider from the audience side is this is a different crisis. This crisis, if reasonable people like you can find a way to lower the overreaction that people are having with everything that's out there, I would say you would actually contribute to lowering the overreaction community. So I'm, I'm simply complimenting you to consider the fact that people are looking to see how a reasonable person like you that can give a logical perspective, because that's what's missing today.

• 1:27:21Speaker 01

  And when a Ray Dalio, when a Jamie Dimon, when many of these guys are saying 50%, and you with your millions of people who listen to you can, and it's not a niche audience where it's in one country or two countries, your audience is worldwide, 100 plus countries, you've got people listening to you.

• 1:27:40Speaker 01

  I think maybe from that level, the feedback from the audience could be, this is not a regular issue. We'd like to hear your thoughts. And then whether you choose to do it or not, it's your prerogative and we move on.

• 1:27:51Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, you've got a, you mentioned there about this sort of loss of faith in our institutions, right? The previous gatekeepers, the people that we would have relied on to tell us what's what in the world.

• 1:28:04Chris Williamson?

  What do you think about this rising skepticism? There is also a degree of conspiratorial thinking, heterodox cynicism around what we're being told. Is this leaving a vacuum where people's uncertainty is making their lives worse? What is going to happen from a sense-making? How do people make sense of the world when we can't trust the information communicators?

• 1:28:31Speaker 01

  Well, that's why they want to hear from you. So what you're saying is validating their point. So in America today, we are at the lowest levels we've ever been for Americans trusting mainstream media and trusting the government. Not one or the others, the lowest in both. We don't trust the government, we don't trust mainstream media. The last time the people trusted mainstream media and the government the highest was right before Kennedy died. After that, that was at 72%. It's gone from 72, 65, 60, down to today 27%. People simply don't trust the mainstream media to give feedback on what's really taking place. There's a reason why Rogan gets more eyeballs on his show than all these guys combined. And people are watching to see what he has to say.

• 1:29:16Speaker 01

  There's a reason why Shapiro gets the eyeballs he gets. There's a reason why you get the eyeballs. There's a reason why all these other guys get the eyeballs. It's because they want to hear a different perspective. You know, we're going back to the story where, you know, and this quote's been criticized many times. It's not really true, you know, amateurs build, you know, professionals built the Titanic, amateurs built the ark. You know, this whole story that they go back and forth. Professionals run mainstream media, amateurs run podcasting. But the world is trusting amateurs running podcasting more than the people that build the Titanic. Because a lot of people think mainstream media is about to sink like the Titanic did. Now, whether they did or not, who knows? But people want to talk to somebody who's just a regular guy. Says, what's your story? What do you think about this?

• 1:30:01Speaker 01

  What are your thoughts on this? Do you really agree? Do I, does anybody else feel, I kind of feel that way as well. I'm a little bit skeptical. I'm a little bit worried about this. What's going on? Is it really as big as they make it out to be? Should I trust these guys? So I'm not surprised this is taking place. By the way, you know what's the only thing that's keeping mainstream media in business? It's only a couple of things that keep a mainstream media in business. Number one is. Seventy five year olds, seventy, seventy five year olds are keeping mainstream media in business. Okay, so that's another ten to fifteen years before that generation is no longer here. That audience is gone. Number two is big pharma. If two countries in the world that allow big pharma companies to advertise, it's US and New Zealand. Every other country in the world, you cannot advertise.

• 1:30:46Speaker 01

  The only two countries in the world where pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer that can advertise is US and New Zealand. Everywhere else, there is no commercials on TV. Do you realize what would happen if a president did an executive order, got Congress, everybody in it to say moving forward? Big Pharma can no longer advertise on mainstream media. You know what happens the next day? Every one of them goes out of business and all these talented guys at ESPN or at CNN or Fox or ABC that are getting the five, ten, fifteen, twenty million dollar contract? Gone, eighty percent of revenue is gone. And a lot of these guys now have to go and try to make it in the world that you're making it. And this is all, what you're doing is hard. There's not a teleprompter behind me.

• 1:31:30Speaker 01

  There's nobody whispering in your ears what to say, follow up with this question. This is all you doing it, right? To them, hey, ask him this, follow up with this, we just found data, sixty three percent, he's lying.

• 1:31:41Chris Williamson?

  Did you watch, did you watch any of the late night hosts when they tried to do a podcast between them?

• 1:31:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:31:46Chris Williamson?

  What did you think from a professional's, a amateur professional's perspective?

• 1:31:51Speaker 01

  There's a reason why they can't do anything without writers. You know, I mean, don't get me wrong, to me Fallon is a very talented guy, a very talented guy. And you're not going to get to that job without having talent. These guys got a lot of talent. They're workers, but the moment writers are done, you mean to tell me from May twelfth? You guys can't do an episode until what? October, which they just started with two weeks ago? You realize writers control this world. Now, the writers are worried that chat GPT can write the jokes of what's going on. And what if AI can pop out these, you know, jokes and what could take place? No, this game is a very, very hard game. This is not an easy game. Think about what Spotify did. What other president in the last twenty years has been as popular as Obama?

• 1:32:36Speaker 01

  And let me get this straight, Obama and another guy named Bruce Springsteen started podcasts and Spotify drops him? What?

• 1:32:44Speaker 01

  Who else has been more popular in the last 20 years on television than Kim Kardashian? With 300 million followers on Instagram? Spotify signs a podcast with her, then they drop her? What? Who else has been more on TV and every magazine, newspaper than Harry and Meghan? But Spotify dropped their podcast and hasn't fully, it's like, we're not renewing the contract? And then they give Rogan a few hundred? Wait, what? So let me get this straight, just being famous doesn't help to have a podcast? No. Wow. I thought it was just about fame. No, this is hard. This is an art. This is very difficult to do. It's not easy to do.

• 1:33:25Speaker 01

  So if mainstream media sinks like the Titanic, 90% of that talent is going to disappear. And they're not going to know what to do. 90% of them. It's not an easy game.

• 1:33:38Chris Williamson?

  Does this mean, or does this contribute to

• 1:33:43Chris Williamson?

  complicity or those commentators and all of the other people whose wages ultimately are paid for by those adverts?

• 1:33:53Speaker 01

  Does this?

• 1:33:53Chris Williamson?

  Does this create a perverse incentive for them?

• 1:33:58Speaker 01

  In what way?

• 1:33:59Chris Williamson?

  That they may be prepared to compromise something they truly think to not jeopardize the people that ultimately pay their wages? That there is a risk to them saying something out of turn, which may?

• 1:34:11Speaker 01

  I mean, are you really asking that question? Or you know the answer to that question? You already know the answer. You're a smart guy. Yeah. No, of course, they, they, they have to. They don't have a choice to take that position, right? I'll give you an idea. Chris Cuomo was on CNN for God knows how many years and he was the number one guy for two or three years. What does CNN do to Chris? Fired. His brother, Andrew Cuomo governor, fired. And then he's got 125 million dollar pending lawsuit against CNN. And now CNN, folks can't talk to Chris. I had him on the podcast. And for the longest time Cuomo was hated by a lot of people on the right. Absolutely hated because of the stuff you would say, where is Jesus? Is Jesus going to come and save you with COVID? What's Jesus going to do for you? And all this stuff you would say, right?

• 1:34:55Speaker 01

  Well, he came on a podcast and I'm with one of my partners in Dallas. He's a billionaire himself in the insurance space. He's the number one power player in insurance. We're at his uh uh office, corner office on the top, one of the sickest offices you'll see in your life, like 68th floor. He's overlooking all of Dallas, Brian, and he says, you know, it's kind of weird watching Cuomo on your podcast. I said, why? He says, he sounded different, you know? Those moments where I kind of liked him when I was watching this. And this is not a guy I can say something like that with. You know how many people said that? What happened to him? He's now a free agent. He's got a shirt he sells that's called Free Agent.

• 1:35:35Speaker 01

  He's got a podcast that says, you know, uh uh uh, you know, uh uh with something Cuomo project that he's got a podcast. And how does he dress? Like you? We're with him a couple of weeks ago in uh, what do you call it? In uh uh Sag Harbor in uh up in uh that entire area, whatever that area is, I forget the name. Uh Sagaponix, Sag Harbor, all that stuff. And we go to his house. My kids are running around the back. He says, hey Pat, somebody wants to talk to you. I said, who is that? Face time. It was like this, like, oh shit. What's up, Robert Downey Jr.? How you doing? So I'm having a conversation with him. But forget about talking to Robert Downey Jr. I wanted to see my kids' reaction, especially my two boys.

• 1:36:20Speaker 01

  Cause my boys, when he died, my kids were devastated. When he dies, Iron Man dies in, you know, in the.

• 1:36:27Chris Williamson?

  Do you know what today is in the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Today is the canonical death day of Tony Stark, when he clicks his fingers. Today is the day, the date.

• 1:36:39Speaker 01

  Get out of here.

• 1:36:40Chris Williamson?

  Today is the date.

• 1:36:41Speaker 01

  I did not know that. What is the chance of me bringing up the story? And I don't even know that story. So I said, Dylan, Tico, come here. So daddy, we're running around with the dogs. I said, trust me, come here. And Chris turns the camera around. He goes like this. My son goes, oh my God.

• 1:36:58Chris Williamson?

  Iron Man.

• 1:36:58Speaker 01

  I know you. And then the other son, Tico, his reaction, Dylan's reaction. You know, you love Robert Downey. He's one of those guys that you absolutely love. When you go back to his journey, I was talking about the movie that my dad and I watched 30 years ago, Only You. And the only movie I've ever watched, four hours, two hours and two back to back in a row was Judge. It's by Robert Downey Jr. What's the moral of the story? The moment Chris Cuomo was free.

• 1:37:22Speaker 01

  And he didn't give a shit.

• 1:37:25Speaker 01

  He just kind of told you what he was kind of going through. Whether you like it or not, you may not agree with everything, but he's finally free. A lot of these guys working on mainstream media, they're not free.

• 1:37:33Chris Williamson?

  And we now see Tucker's transition.

• 1:37:36Speaker 01

  And guess what? He's killing it. Okay? Love him or hate him, when Tucker puts on a show, everybody's watching what this guy's got to say.

• 1:37:44Chris Williamson?

  So I found out from the guys that light and tech, all of this stuff that we're doing here, who understand very, very, very closely what's going on. But was it anamorphic lenses? Is that what they shot Tucker's first thing in his garage with?

• 1:37:59Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, so anamorphic lenses, a very particular type of lens, very particular type of shooting, very short, wide. So it has the image of, maybe it was his garage or something like that, or a living room with the background behind him. Make no mistake, that is lit and shot in cinema quality, right? With the facade of it being a sort of low budget thing, right? So it's this beautiful.

• 1:38:28Speaker 01

  On an iPhone.

• 1:38:28Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, precisely. It's this beautiful blending of both. And that's exciting. I think it's exciting to see what these guys do. And also, you know, I love this about, given that we spend so much time talking and people have this concern about whether or not someone's gaming the system, are they trying to growth hack relatability, right? Or authenticity? Seeing, I would be lying if I said that I didn't take an amount of pleasure to see late night hosts that have got massive platforms struggle to hold a conversation together for an hour over Zoom. Because that is ultimately the battle place of ideas, right? It's not how well can you read a script from a teleprompter? I mean, there is skill, absolutely skill in being able to do that, and I couldn't.

• 1:39:12Chris Williamson?

  I couldn't do the writing. I couldn't do the performance. I couldn't do the bits and the blah blah, the music. But largely you are a marionette, right? That's being ventriloquized by a handful of writers and execs.

• 1:39:27Chris Williamson?

  Ultimately, seeing what you can do when the gloves are off is more interesting to me.

• 1:39:31Speaker 01

  This is very hard. This is very hard because how long is your average podcast?

• 1:39:37Chris Williamson?

  Hour and a half.

• 1:39:38Speaker 01

  Okay, so an hour and a half of keeping people's interest with no breaks and nobody talking to you and touching up the makeup? To them, what are you talking about? That is absolutely insane to do something like that. No, this is very hard. And the market has proven that this isn't for everybody. The market has proven you cannot keep my attention for that long. This is very, very difficult. When when people started saying, I remember I hired a marketing expert, you know, 13 years ago, 14 years ago, he came in and said, well, studies have shown. You're making one of the mistakes you're making on YouTube. Your videos are about 12 minutes long. And the only videos that do well is 12 minutes. After 12 minutes, I said, no, man, I'm doing 42 minutes, 28 minutes, hour and 20 minutes.

• 1:40:22Speaker 01

  That's a mistake. Number one thing we have to do is no video can go past 13 minutes. Like, dude, okay, maybe this guy's the expert. He sold his company for a couple of million. You know what happened? The day we fired him, 60 days later, our first video goes viral and gets 40 million views. Today, it's got a half a billion views. Okay, for the life of an entrepreneur, 90 second takes off, right? And we start making other clips and other videos and other stuff. And you see Joe takes it to a whole different level. Three hours. And you got Lex Friedman takes it to a whole different level. Four hours, three hours and 48 minutes, you know. What Lex does.

• 1:40:54Chris Williamson?

  He did seven hours with Balaji.

• 1:40:58Chris Williamson?

  Glutton for punishment. Yeah, you tweeted something that I thought was quite interesting. You said, why do so many people who come to the America from other countries with little to no money at all? Within 10 years, outpace the average person who was born here.

• 1:41:17Chris Williamson?

  What is going on where Americans who have all of the, I'm an immigrant to this country, right? Many people who are given from the very beginning, all of the benefits of being from this country. Why is it that they are outpaced by people who weren't born here?

• 1:41:36Speaker 01

  So six, seven months ago, I'm sitting with my state planner and one of the fears I have for the last 10 years is what I'm going to do with my kids, with the wealth, with money. Am I raising them in a way that they're not going to turn out being the, you know, the snobby, arrogant kid that, you know?

• 1:41:53Chris Williamson?

  Silver spoon.

• 1:41:53Speaker 01

  Oh man, I cannot, I never liked those kids in school. Those are the kids I got into fights with. I never liked those kids. So I don't want to raise those types of kids. And then you go and read these books about which families generationally created a wealth that state, like Vanderbilt raised a bunch of snobs. So Vanderbilt's money only lasted one generation. Generation later, there's no money left. So when you read the story about that Anderson Coopers of Vanderbilt, but his mother said, even though we're Vanderbilt, don't expect any kind of trust fund. Baby, you ain't got no money here. Nothing's coming over to you. You gotta make your money. You know, and but you look at the Medici family and what they did, five, six, seven generation. What did they do differently? You look at Rockefeller still has the money. You look at some of these other families that kept the money within the family. What did they do? What did they structure?

• 1:42:37Speaker 01

  And there's estate planning, we can go to, you know, 10, 15, 20, $50,000. Then there's guys you can hire that's 100,000, quarter million, a million dollars. But those estate planners, when you hire, you know what they do? They interview your kids. So they go sit down with your kids and after they talk to you and they'll say, how do you want to set this up for the money with your kids? Who gets money? What do they need to do? What's the criteria? Are you okay if they get this? What kind of cars do you not want them to buy to waste the money? Who do you want them to work for? What happens with this business? Can they lose all the money? Are you given equally? Here's what this family, and they give you all these suggestions on how to properly set it up. Once you and your wife agree on what you want to do with that wealth, these guys have

• 1:43:22Speaker 01

  meetings with all your kids without you there. And they'll record it so you can see how the meeting went, went, but they're setting it up with them. So they'll say, okay, kids, this is a. On behalf of your parents, here's a few things you need to know. Number one, um, the good news is your parents are very prepared on what they've done with you. And here's what you can get. Your parents have worked very hard and they have made a lot of money. And if you do it right, some of that can be passed over to you. But if you don't, you're not going to get it either. Let me go through some of these criteries.

• 1:43:54Speaker 01

  These three things you do, you're not going to get anything. These two things you do, ba ba ba ba ba. If you do this, here's what's going to happen. This is what they want us to use the money with. And then they kind of break it down to them. Now, you know how many families actually do that? Very few. Those conversations, most people don't have. Most people are so much about go, go, go, go, go, go, go. And then you die unexpectedly. Oh, we didn't even set up the state planning, let alone the detail to state planning. No. Okay, now your kids are spoiled rotten doing what they're doing.

• 1:44:20Chris Williamson?

  I've had this conversation with a number of friends. Uh, Ben Francis, who is the CEO of Jim Shark, his net worth is triple Drake's.

• 1:44:27Speaker 01

  He's a stud of a guy, by the way. I had him on the podcast a couple of years ago. Stud.

• 1:44:31Chris Williamson?

  Serious dude.

• 1:44:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:32Chris Williamson?

  Uh, I was talking to him and I think that it's the same with you. One of the things that you value the most in your upbringing have been the hard times, the spit and sawdust. Uh, lessons and rules, the hardened, the school of hard knocks, right? It's given you the work rate that has permitted you to be able to achieve the success that you have and reverse, uh, locally reverse entropy, right? So you've been able to wrangle your reality in a way that you want it to. And yet, you have worked so hard to be able to give your kids opportunities that you never had. And yet, you know that they need to go through the hardships and that those are where the lessons are learned that are going to prepare them. This to me seems like a very, uh, interesting tension, right?

• 1:45:17Chris Williamson?

  I want to give my kids opportunities that I've worked so hard for. If I don't, what the fuck was the point in me working so hard?

• 1:45:23Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:45:24Chris Williamson?

  And yet, they need to go through the difficulty they need to do. How have you found this tension between the two?

• 1:45:31Speaker 01

  Well, that's a great question, but I want to finalize by making a point when you ask the question about why is it that so many people come to America within 10 years to have more money than the people that were born in America? Because unfortunately.

• 1:45:44Speaker 01

  The way we've ran America, if the American-born kids

• 1:45:51Speaker 01

  are kids of these families, they're the kids of the families that spoiled them in America. There's no more earning things in America, just hand it out to them. We're printing money left and right. We're giving away income to people left and right. We're making life easier. We're incentivizing the wrong things. Do you know in 1940 in America, what percentage of kids were born to single mothers? In 1940, in America, what percentage of kids were born to a single mother who's not married with no father in the household? 4% is the number. Did you know the number or no? It's 4%. You know what that number is today?

• 1:46:27Chris Williamson?

  Over 50.

• 1:46:28Speaker 01

  It's over 40%, shy of 50%. You're right there at the number. You mean to tell me we went from 1944% to today? So what happened there? First of all, policies by FDR, social security and incentives of taking care of single mothers. Then Lyndon Johnson in 1965 took it to a whole different level. Mothers are sitting there saying, the more kids I have, the more entitled programs I get. Great. Why would I get married? If I get married, I lose those benefits. The incentive programs America set up totally screwed everything up. It incentivized the bad behavior. It's like telling a kid. Can you imagine if you're in estate planning, you say, for every kid you have not married, I'll pay you $700.

• 1:47:10Speaker 01

  Whose fault is that? Parents' fault. Bad policies have consequences. Yeah, you create a bad policies. What person in the right state of mind, when they have their wealth, America's a family, it's a corporation. What person in the right mind would incentivize, what parents would incentivize kids to say, I'm gonna have more kids and I'm gonna give you money out of the living trust? Nobody in the right mind would do that, but America did. So what happened to us? Now we got all this crime? Now we're paying the price for it because all these years, there's no father in there to put them in their place, to challenge them, to straighten them up. That's not in place. You know, so that is a missing piece that these kids don't have in America. So to me, if we looked at America as a family, as a corporation, estate planning matters.

• 1:47:54Speaker 01

  You know, living trust matters, the right policies matters. Listen, I even think to the point where, you know how in America, voting starts at 18 years old?

• 1:48:05Speaker 01

  I would much rather, this is a very strange policy I'm gonna share with you. When I posted this on YouTube, a lot of people very upset with me. I would much rather have somebody who's fourteen and a half years old, who's had a job and paid a thousand dollars in taxes, vote than a twenty-eight-year-old kid who's never had a job, never paid taxes. I don't want that guy to vote.

• 1:48:32Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 1:48:33Speaker 01

  Because he contributed to society. The fourteen-and-a-half-year-old kid, the fifteen-year-old kid contributed to society and realized how hard it is to pay the taxes into whatever they're spending money on. You wanna spend a hundred billion dollars to Ukraine? We could have built twenty walls. We could have built twenty walls with that money that was sent. You're not saying Ukraine, I'm saying it, so you're safe. Don't worry, they're not, they're not gonna come after you, they're gonna come after me. So, all of these things that you look at, we're going away from earning. When an immigrant comes here, all they're looking at saying, wait a minute, I can go work this and do this and do this and do this, and I'm gonna earn this, yes. I'm going, I'm going town, all day, I'm good with this. Many Americans don't have that mindset because bad policies have consequences.

• 1:49:16Speaker 01

  We're suffering the negative impact of that. But you asked a follow-up question, right, with kids? And your question is how to balance it with challenging them, yet still having the opportunity? What was the question you were asking?

• 1:49:28Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, the tension between you affording your kids the benefits that all of your hard work has allowed them to do.

• 1:49:35Speaker 01

  So I'm greedy, I'm very greedy. And here's what I mean by I'm very greedy. I want my kids as close to me for the rest of my life. We have a family that lives in our community. Messi just bought a house right next to our house, and he just moved into the community, he caused a lot of mayhem. It's all over the place, cops are coming in. Every week we have, you know, what do you call it? Paparazzi craziness that's going on. But one of the families that lives in our community, they're, they run a medical company with six, seven thousand employees. So the, the founders, the mom and dad, their house is here, right next door to the house, they have two sons. The other son lives here, who's the chief marketing officer. Their oldest son's house is here. Each son has four kids. Each son has four kids. Both sons are doctors.

• 1:50:20Speaker 01

  Both sons married someone who's a doctor. And they each have four kids. They have a structure on what they do Monday nights. Every Tuesday night, they have dinner together and they talk about God. Every Wednesday, there's a system to everything they do. He'll call me and say, hey, we went fishing this morning. I got a bunch of fish. Can I drop it off to you? I am enamored by how those parents created that kind of a structure where their kids are respectful. Their grandkids are respectful. We're going to Halloween. We're walking in Halloween, doing trick or treating. And the son comes by, seventeen year old son comes by. And he says, yeah, he doesn't have his iPhone with him. I said, how does he not have his iPhone with him? He says, in our family, standard is very easy. You want your phone? You got to have straight A's. He's got to be.

• 1:51:05Speaker 01

  I said, well, let me get this straight. Your seventeen year old son doesn't have a phone because he doesn't have one. Cause he has one. He says, yeah, it's our standard. I said, what are you talking about? It's just very simple. You just got to make sure you got straight A's. You'll get a phone, you get the car, you get this. Now, somebody's going to listen to this and say, what? What a freaking extreme set of standards.

• 1:51:23Chris Williamson?

  That's tyranny.

• 1:51:24Speaker 01

  That's tyranny. That's exactly the type of kids that end up becoming da, da, da, da. No problem. It's called standards and expectations. And for a family who has the ability to use money and waste it and do whatever they want to keep that kind of standards, I respect that even more. And guess what? The son loves his father, loves his mother, loves their grandparents, respectful kids. So it's not easy to do. But if it matters to you, eventually in my life, when I say I'm greedy, I would love to create a proposition for my kids where twenty years from now, they want to run one of the companies. They want to be within the company. They want to work with one of the companies. And I like them to live close to me. Will it happen? It's gonna take us thirty years to find out because.

• 1:52:03Chris Williamson?

  Dude, pan generational housing, I'm seeing in Austin, right? Commune or ranch where someone's buying up a ton of land. And then there's another one of those puppies down there if you want it. They're buying up a ton of land and we're gonna not just have us, we're gonna have somebody else come and live with us as well. We're gonna have grandma and grandpa and they're gonna be that this is the way that it was. This is the way that it was. And here's another thing to consider, right? Would you rather have?

• 1:52:27Speaker 01

  Drinking too gonna do anything to me or no? What's?

• 1:52:30Chris Williamson?

  You're gonna survive. You're gonna be dialed in. You're gonna survive, I promise. Whatever, whatever the internet throws at you, you'll survive. So what is the?

• 1:52:41Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, so we've got, that's citrus, that one's orange.

• 1:52:43Speaker 01

  Orange sunrise, okay, interesting.

• 1:52:44Chris Williamson?

  Wild citrus. So.

• 1:52:47Chris Williamson?

  One of the interesting questions that you have here would be,

• 1:52:53Chris Williamson?

  would you rather have a parent who pities you more than they believe in you?

• 1:52:59Chris Williamson?

  You didn't do well. It's okay. That teacher doesn't understand. Let me pat you on the back. Come here, little Timmy. We'll take you for ice cream. Or would you rather have a parent who says, I believe in you more than I pity you?

• 1:53:14Speaker 01

  I mean, look, I'll tell you, my dad, very annoying man, okay? Because never sympathized, never felt sorry for anything, never. It was always standards and expectation, but he always loved me. So when I was six years old and my teacher asked me, what do you want to be when you grow up? I said, I want to be a father. Why? I said, because I want to be like my dad. I had a very good dad. My dad's still with us. He was in a hospital this week, but he's out. He's doing good. He's at the house. Kids love him. Everybody loves him. My kids all have a relationship with him. He's 81 years old.

• 1:53:45Speaker 01

  It took a lot to please my dad. My dad wasn't impressed by anything. He wouldn't be there and say, oh, my gosh. And by the way, he's a Middle Eastern father, which means I've never played catch with the guy. We've never thrown a football. We never played anything.

• 1:53:58Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 1:53:59Speaker 01

  He was a worker. Since eighth grade, he dropped out in Iran and he started working to take care of his mom and dad. Their family was very, very close. You know, but again, remember how earlier on, when we're talking about, you know, choosing your enemies wisely? We talked about how the the top performers have a person that gave them unconditional love and one that brought a lot of pain, and then they chose their enemies wisely. I think

• 1:54:27Speaker 01

  the role of a person that is gentle

• 1:54:31Speaker 01

  and another one that nothing's ever good enough is a great combination. I think if both parents are gentle, that's a problem. And I also think if both parents are, nothing's ever good enough, is also a problem.

• 1:54:45Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 1:54:46Speaker 01

  I think you need a little bit. There's a reason why the Creator, God, created the dynamics that He created. You know, I have one of our guys, we're spending, our photographer's with us. And he's holding his daughter while we're doing a photo shoot this Saturday. And she keeps asking for mom. She keeps asking. I said, is she daddy's girl? I was just, no, it's all mommy. I said, when does she want you? Whenever she's scared, she comes to me. So the kid runs to daddy when she's scared, but goes to mommy when she's hurt. That's an interesting dynamic, how it is. She feels safer by dad when there's a risk, but feels safer by mom when she's hurt because she's going to be pampered and taken care of.

• 1:55:29Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:30Speaker 01

  I think that's very healthy combination. There was a quarterback Brett Favre many years ago. I don't know if you know Brett Favre. He's a famous texter. That's an inside joke if you know who he is. But uh, he has his quarterback. He has his coach. So tough on him. So tough on him. Nothing was ever good with this quarterback. Kicking his ass, talking shit to him in the sideline. How could you throw that interception? What the fuck was that all about? What was that all about? And he's afraid of the coach and he's always escaping the coach. But there was a guy that was, I think his name was Mariucci, Steve Mariucci. And he would always put his arm around and listen, he believes in you. Why don't you prove him right? Deep down inside, he believes in you. Go through the past that you know, he knows he can throw.

• 1:56:13Speaker 01

  Show him exactly what we got. Let's go win this game for him. Let's get it. So that dynamic worked incredibly well for Brett Favre as well as many other players out there. So I think, you know, one without the other is a problem. If you got both, it's a great combination.

• 1:56:28Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, there's a lot of problems with fatherlessness in homes. Melissa Carney just wrote a new book called The Two Parent Advantage, Two Parent Privilege, sorry. And dude, it's terrifying. Just the raw data, the raw outcomes that you get.

• 1:56:43Speaker 01

  Did your mom and dad stay together?

• 1:56:44Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 1:56:45Speaker 01

  Okay. Married till today?

• 1:56:46Chris Williamson?

  Yep. Only child. So.

• 1:56:48Speaker 01

  Only child?

• 1:56:49Chris Williamson?

  Only child.

• 1:56:49Speaker 01

  So do you have the only child syndrome?

• 1:56:51Chris Williamson?

  Yes. What? Do you mean the guy that's the center of all of these lights and stuff? In some regards, in some regards, yes, but I think I had quite a stern upbringing. I was held to incredibly high standards. I was very non rebellious as a kid.

• 1:57:05Speaker 01

  Non rebellious?

• 1:57:06Chris Williamson?

  Very non rebellious, very, very non rebellious. You know, wasn't going out, wasn't sneaking out. And I don't think I ever got grounded once.

• 1:57:13Speaker 01

  Did God play a role or no?

• 1:57:14Chris Williamson?

  No.

• 1:57:15Speaker 01

  Standards and expectation, was it tough standards?

• 1:57:17Chris Williamson?

  High. Very high.

• 1:57:18Speaker 01

  What did your mom and dad do?

• 1:57:20Chris Williamson?

  Uh. Dad is an engineer. Mum stopped working for probably ten to twelve years to raise me while dad was out working. Uh. But this isn't, you know, dad was on the working class of most working class. We live in a a city in the UK that was famous only for having the highest teen pregnancy rating in the UK. And then it lost that. So it didn't even have that as a, as a title anymore.

• 1:57:39Speaker 01

  At least you could brag about it. Now we got nothing to talk about.

• 1:57:42Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, exactly. We haven't even got that.

• 1:57:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:44Chris Williamson?

  So, but it was, it was very formative and, you know, I'm just thinking more and more about this tension between success making people soft. Uh. I spoke to David Goggins about it on the podcast, you know, he's this guy who can command millions of dollars for speaking gigs. And he's choosing to go smoke jumping. Have you seen this thing that he's doing? So smoke jumping is when there's a wildfire in the middle of nowhere and they need to airdrop in the firefighters. So they parachute in with a, a pack around their waist with all their stuff on. And they also put water, huge, uh, water bucket things that they'll attach their hoses to separately, parachute them in, and they just live in the fire until they put it out. Sometimes they're out there for a week. Pretty sure he makes,

• 1:58:29Chris Williamson?

  it's either seven or twelve dollars an hour that he makes for doing this smoke jumping, as it's called. It's in Canada for the most part. Instead of going and doing this speaking tour. And I asked him about success making you soft. And he says, I see it way too much. And that's why I, I don't like it. I'm not about the flash. I'm not about any of that.

• 1:58:47Speaker 01

  One of the best books in business was written by a legend, legendary CEO in Silicon Valley who ran Intel. I think he's the only guy that for a decade straight, he grew the company a hundred percent every year. Unheard of what this guy did. Andy Grove, Hungarian guy. Okay. You know what the book's title is? Only the paranoid survive. Only the paranoid survive.

• 1:59:09Chris Williamson?

  Heard you say that before. So I had a question to you around only the paranoid survive.

• 1:59:15Chris Williamson?

  I don't disagree that paranoia is an unbelievable competitive advantage. It's a very useful performance enhancer, right? You are paying more attention, you are more detail oriented, you're more fearful, all the rest of it. Ultimately, is it worth it, do you think? Is paranoia worth it as a life strategy?

• 1:59:34Speaker 01

  You are protected by those who take that seriously. Okay, you know, burden is not something that's a sexy sell. You know, there's a lot of things that you and I can sell that's very sexy. Okay, work from home, very sexy. Yet the loneliness epidemic in America right now is record breaking numbers we've never seen before. Right on what people are doing, how lonely they are, numbers on depression is off the charts right now compared to what it was just 10 years ago. So, yeah, you can sell work from home. You can sell three and a half day work week. You can sell laptop entrepreneur. You can sell, oh, these are all sexy things to sell, right?

• 2:00:17Speaker 01

  You can sell, set up a funnel and make 20 grand a month and don't have to do anything. These are all very interesting, easy things to sell. Try selling burden. Go ahead and sell burden. Oh, it's the incredible honor of having burden of the responsibility of a nation or a state or a military or freedom. Try selling it. It's not an easy sale, it's a hard sale.

• 2:00:42Chris Williamson?

  Responsibility isn't sexy.

• 2:00:43Speaker 01

  So why are so many great leaders turned on by that burden? Why? Because someone's got to do it. So it all depends, you know, in the book, Your Next Five Moves, I talk about how the most important question you got to answer in life is, who do you want to be? What type of life do you want to live? That's simple. Okay, so what does this mean? Do you want to be a founder? Yeah, you sure? Yeah. Positive? I think so. It's kind of cool, right? Want to be a founder entrepreneur? You sure you want to be a founder? You sure you want to be the number one guy? Tom Ellsworth, who was my business partner, said one of the best things to me. This guy was at the, talk about the legendary interview of all time. It's the last interview of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates in Silicon Valley.

• 2:01:27Speaker 01

  Okay, wherever it was, 300 people were invited at this meeting. Tom was one of them. Was it recorded? It's recorded. You gotta see it, by the way. Sick. It's the red chair. When you see the red chair, you're watching the right one. Steve Jobs is super skinny. Tom Ellsworth tells me, says, Pat, it took me 50 years to realize I don't make a lot of money when I'm the number one guy. The most money I ever made is when I was number two through number six. Think about saying that. Think about taking 52 years to realize, 50 years to realize the most money you ever made was when you were the number two guy or number six guy. Because there's a burden with number one. Number one has got to sell the dream. Number one has got to sell the vision. Number one has got to seem like even though we're about to go out of business, they're at peace, they're calm, they carry the burden, sleepless nights.

• 2:02:12Speaker 01

  Your finances, you can't reveal to people if you're about to run out of money. We're going to make the expenses, we're going to make salaries, we're going to pay payroll. That's the number one. Who wants that burden? Nobody wants that burden. So, no, if the idea is to sell that, no, it is not an easy sale. But if you want to know why you right now are here and we are able to do this podcast at a pretty unstable time in the world today, it's probably because around 500 people have the burden of making sure nobody messes with you and I where we are right now. And those 500 people have 1,000 people underneath them or 500 people underneath them while you and I are able to sit here.

• 2:02:56Speaker 01

  So it's not the most sexy, attractive thing. Like in Smithsonian, I don't know if you've been to the Smithsonian in DC. There's a part where you go and it shows, you walk this way, it shows how Lincoln aged over, it's an incredible thing to see. And there's a quote they buy by Lincoln about burden. Okay, the being a president is the greatest burden a person can ever have, right? Some quote like that, I'm paraphrasing. So it's not for everybody and it's not a sell.

• 2:03:24Chris Williamson?

  Look at Obama before and after his eight years.

• 2:03:29Speaker 01

  He still looks good though.

• 2:03:30Chris Williamson?

  Oh, he's still got swagger, but I mean, that was 20 years in eight years.

• 2:03:34Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 2:03:34Chris Williamson?

  So this is something I wanted to talk about. You have spent a lot of time reading about and researching and speaking to powerful people. Who do you think really runs the world?

• 2:03:48Speaker 01

  You're gonna go there with the question, who do I think runs the world? So I used to ask the question, I said, who's got the most power in America? Is it Congress? Is it president? Is it the CEOs of virtual governments? We're talking Google, Twitter, Facebook, you know, those guys, Amazon, you know? Or is it billionaires? Okay, you know, the most richest man in the world, who's got the most power? And you'd be amazed how few people say president. Cause they come and go, you know? The famous quote with Putin that he says, you know, American presidents, you don't have to worry about it. They're gonna be there four to eight years. Some suits are running, you know, and run the country behind closed doors. And he's got a very good point when he says something like that, Putin.

• 2:04:29Speaker 01

  But to me, there are a lot of alliances being built. So if you and I were to think about aspirational type of people, okay? You know how they say, you know, well, Michael Jackson eventually got to a point where he got so many different girls that he started trying with this and he started trying with this. And a lot of these people in Hollywood have so much sex with so many different people that they become creative and they do dumb things, right? Okay. Tiger Woods, the reason why he got these girls, because what do you know what it is to be the greatest golfer in the world? Then everybody throws their panties at you. You want to judge a guy like that? Why don't you go be the greatest golfer and see what it feels like to be one out of eight billion? You don't know what it's like. So they're kind of trying and experimenting with all this stuff, right? It's almost like I'm so much in a prison jail. Everybody's watching what I'm doing. I want to break the rules a little bit to see what I'm capable of doing.

• 2:05:14Speaker 01

  Okay. So, so let's go process and dissect some of these guys that make all the money in the world. Okay. You become a billionaire.

• 2:05:23Speaker 01

  And you're still dangerously ambitious, not from a good place, but more selfish place.

• 2:05:31Speaker 01

  Okay, you took over an industry. Now you're worth five billion dollars. Now you're worth ten. If you're a billionaire, you're the best at what you do in your space for the most part. Or you helped build the best in that space for the most part. Okay, cool. So maybe your marriage didn't work out. Maybe you're not the best father in the world. And you're like, well, I want more control. I want more power. I can't be a president. I don't want to be a president because if I run for president, they're going to reveal the things that I've done in my life and God forbid, if that gets all the light, I don't want that. That's embarrassing. But you know what I'm gonna do? What if I can take over the world?

• 2:06:13Speaker 01

  Aren't there other people like me that are driven by wanting to take over the world? What if we could make the world one place and we make all the decisions for everybody? Because I'm probably one of the smartest people in the world. And you know, that conversation is taking place again. You really start having that godlike figure, like I don't know if you're familiar with George Soros. You know, in one of the interviews he gave to LA Times, he says, I always fancied myself with being a god. Fancied myself with being a god. This is an LA Times interview 20 plus years ago. If you type in George Soros, LA Times, god, it's the most disturbing interview to read about this guy.

• 2:06:50Chris Williamson?

  A lot of people are very skeptical about him, right? He's like the boogeyman of a number of conspiracies.

• 2:06:55Speaker 01

  How many, how many people have you heard say, I always fancied myself with being a god? He says, but what's great about where I'm at right now is it's no longer a dream. It became a reality.

• 2:07:09Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I have a friend who has spent a lot of time with super, super powerful people. And he told me about a meeting that he had with one individual in particular, who spoke about being an apex predator. He said that apex predators don't care about prey. And even though the prey that he was referring to is still his own species. It was really haunting the story, the way that that was told to me, because you had someone who not only had the motivation to be able to go and enact whatever nefarious malicious plan, but also had the actual resources to be able to go and do it, right? Those two things together are, they're scary. And that was something that really opened my eyes.

• 2:07:54Chris Williamson?

  I'm very non-conspiratorial in the way that I think I always lean toward, you know, do not attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity, do not attribute to coordination, that which can be explained by coincidence.

• 2:08:07Chris Williamson?

  And yet, the more that I read and the more that I learn about things, the more there there seems to be there, right?

• 2:08:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, people are offended by different things.

• 2:08:23Speaker 01

  Some people being offended in their deepest insecurities.

• 2:08:32Speaker 01

  They're willing to use their ambitions to go to certain levels that at that point, they're not thinking about the consequences of ruining a lot of people's lives. That's not something they're thinking about at that level. So Hitler was offended. When you read Mein Kampf or you study what Hitler did, he was simply offended. Somebody offended him. So his entire life was about doing what he did just because he was offended. Now, most people who are offended, they do what? They forget about it and they move on. Some of these guys want control. Some of these guys want to make decisions for you. Some of these guys on the money side, at least they go and make money to get power. Some people don't go make money to get power. Some people, Klaus Schwab, they're like, no, I'm not going to go make money to get power.

• 2:09:14Speaker 01

  I'm going to get power by creating laws and thinking I know what's best for you. So there's a lot of different people that you can put in these types of organizations. You just have to think, like, if you were to think about the commission of the mob, always go back to it. Lucky Luciano created a commission with the five families. He was the one that ran the commission, right? Of the five families, okay? When you think about what meetings in the world happens where all the powerful people show up, you get the G20. You got the UN, you got the World Economic, you got Davos, you got all these guys that come together. You got NATO, you got, so NATO could be like, well, NATO is original. When the 12 or 14 countries were part of NATO, what was it really all about? To fight USSR, there is no USSR.

• 2:09:58Speaker 01

  Why are we still funding it? What's the outcome now? Are we still fighting communism? So.

• 2:10:02Chris Williamson?

  What a lot of people might say is that those organizations are so obvious that they can't be the ones where the real shit's happening. Right? That's just the smokescreen. The real shit is the shit that's behind it and the shit that's behind that and so on and so forth. In your opinion, do you think that NATO, WEF, WHO, that's those people, there's no further up set of strings that are playing the ventriloquized game behind those ones? Do you think that that's where a lot of power actually lies?

• 2:10:32Speaker 01

  I don't know. What I will say, listening to you, is with the questions you're asking. I think there's a reason why the audience wants to hear what you think about what's going on right now. Because you're asking some heavy questions right now, which means you're curious. And if I'm the audience, I would like to know what you can come up with if you took a deeper dive and really wanted to get into these types of, you know, informations, but, you know.

• 2:10:58Speaker 01

  Think about what things people are most addicted to. Okay, addictive personalities, video games, porn, sex, cocaine, ecstasy, weed, steroids, partying, all of that stuff. But what's one of the most addicting things? That many of those guys can't get, power. Are you kidding me? Power is like, power porn? The porn of having a lot of power? And getting to look in people that look at you that are afraid of you? Some people love that. Some people love that, you know, the quote, like, if you really want to test someone's character, give them power?

• 2:11:39Speaker 01

  I mean, some people really love having power. Take a company and see some of the guys that they hired, they hired the wrong person at the top. The guy was all driven by power, what happens? Take a president that becomes a president and he realizes he can use the justice system against his opponent, what happens? They got that power. It's a lot of power to give to somebody, right?

• 2:12:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you you know, those people I believe are out there. Some of them are a hundred percent money people because money talks and you can have a lot of influence with them.

• 2:12:10Chris Williamson?

  You need funds to do anything, right?

• 2:12:12Speaker 01

  You do. It's it's gonna be the money people. But there's also the other power players behind closed doors that, you know, in the in the movie Moneyball, Jonah Hill plays, I don't know if I'm saying his name correctly, he plays the role of the guy that Brad Pitt is sitting there saying, why is this GM of Cleveland Indians keeps looking at the guy?

• 2:12:35Chris Williamson?

  Doesn't get on base.

• 2:12:36Speaker 01

  Who the hell are you? Right? In in John John Maxwell or or Dale Carnegie wrote about this in a book saying the law of E F Hutton. E F Hutton was in the room that every time the guy was making a decision, he wouldn't make a decision until he asked about E F Hutton. So so here's where we're going. So yeah, so a proposal. Okay, great. Hey, E F Hutton, what do you think about it? Okay, we're not gonna be doing it. Great. The world is filled with, like, Henry Kissinger. I don't know how much you know about Henry Kissinger. That guy's an E F Hutton, if there ever was one. There's a lot of those guys that are the brains behind the faces that we see. And most of the times, the best E F Huttons, no one ever finds out who they were.

• 2:13:21Speaker 01

  No one ever finds out who those guys are.

• 2:13:24Chris Williamson?

  One of the other tensions that I've felt when learning about you and also when watching your content, you've spoken about this specifically to do with Kobe, but I think it also probably plays a role in almost everybody's life, is this tension between self-love and high standards. Right? It's the desire to maximize everything you can and to not leave more on the table than you need to, and also the ability to enjoy the moment and to be able to actually take some some pleasure in that. And there was a something that came up from a friend that I wrote about this week, so I wanted to explain this to you. He did a psilocybin journey in Australia and a question came to him and the question was, do people love you for who you are or for what you do? This is uncomfortable to consider.

• 2:14:06Chris Williamson?

  People loving us for who we are feels more real, genuine, caring, empathetic and robust. It feels like we're less fickle and more difficult to lose. On the other hand, people loving us for what we do feels transactional and transient. The love that we receive becomes contingent on what achievements and successes we can offer in return. And the obvious fear is that if a point came where we no longer had anything to offer in return, would our love be taken away? So here's an even more uncomfortable question. Do you love you for who you are or for what you do? This highlights our hypocrisy. You see, we want the world to love us for who we are, a balanced, caring view of our true value, independent of our accomplishments. Meanwhile, our own self-love is largely determined by what we do.

• 2:14:49Chris Williamson?

  If we fall short, even though we know we tried our best, we still castigate ourselves for being insufficient, unworthy creatures. So we want the world to show up for us in a way that we are often not prepared to show up for ourselves. You demand more than this, demand it of yourself.

• 2:15:04Speaker 01

  Powerful.

• 2:15:07Chris Williamson?

  Do you see that resonating, this tension in high performers? Desire for more, requirement for self-love?

• 2:15:13Speaker 01

  Yes, but for me, there's a part of it that's also honest. Because, again, the relationship between a man and a prostitute, what is that relationship? Each side is getting something in return. The prostitute is getting what? Money. What's the man getting? Pleasure, okay? And they walk away, it's done. It's a very honest relationship, right? There's no depth in that relationship. It's straight up, it's honest, done, we move on, okay? Working at a company. Say you work with a company and he helps the YouTube channel go to the next level,

• 2:15:56Speaker 01

  doing all the work behind closed doors, all this stuff. Would he do that job for free? Or would he do it because you're offering something back to them? How many of my employees would be with me if it was working for free?

• 2:16:11Speaker 01

  That nonprofit would be kinda weird. Guys, what we're doing is very important, but I need you to work for free. What do you mean? Are you gonna make money? I am, but I want you to work for free. It's kinda weird, right? There needs to be an exchange. Again, it's honest. Exchange. Okay.

• 2:16:29Speaker 01

  If I go above and beyond everybody else and I work, should I deserve the right to get paid more? Yes. Okay. Is it beneficial for me to work with somebody like you? Of course. Why? Cause you're driven. So should I hang on to your coattail? Because if I go with you, big things are gonna happen in my life? Absolutely. Is that a selfish decision? Yes, but it's also a wise decision. Do you know that? You know that. Do they know that? They know that. Do they also know that you have options? Because now you're at a point that a lot of people would love to be working for you. Of course, they know that. They're not dummies, right? They know that. Okay? But you still choose to stay with them and they still choose to choose to stay with you. Is there benefit of somebody hiring your person that's helping with your podcast and paying twice as you pay to go with them? There is.

• 2:17:14Speaker 01

  If he chooses to take that just for the money, that's his loss. If you're doing your part, he was never in it for believing in you. It was only about the money part. So these are all, and the reason why this is so interesting, what you're reading about self-love and all these other things, is when you look at some of the people that make it at the highest of the highest of the highest level, they typically have been backstabbed so much that in the back of their mind, sometimes they're just waiting to see who's gonna backstab them next. So the desire to have a straight-up relationship is no longer the same. Okay? There's a difference between you dating somebody who falls in love with you and you're making 22 bucks an hour working at Bally's and she loves you and she stays with you.

• 2:17:58Speaker 01

  There's a difference between you getting married when you're making $300,000 a year and then there's a difference between you marrying somebody when you're worth half a billion dollars. How do you know the girl that marries you at the end is worth, you know, is with you because she loves you versus she loves what you offered them, right? And is that a sin? Yeah. Is she making a mistake? You know,

• 2:18:20Speaker 01

  I think in an ideal world, I am very comfortable knowing that other people are also there in your life to get what they can out of you.

• 2:18:31Speaker 01

  I'm very comfortable with that because there's a chapter in the book here where I talk about choosing running mates. And I put a clear criteria on how to choose a running mate. You know, what they bring to the table, their level of trust with you, all these ways of scoring people in your life to see, hey, is this a person because the whole concept with choosing your enemies wisely, you also need to choose your allies wisely. So somebody like you, you need true believers in your life. You can't have 50 true believers. That's just naive to think that. You can't have 10 true believers. Can you have two to five true believers? Yes. How valuable is that? A lot. So, no, I, you know, the more and more I moved up, the more I realized almost everybody, like, and I'm talking 99% of people,

• 2:19:17Speaker 01

  listen to the radio show W I I F M, what's in it for me? And a part in this book that we dissected your question, which is fascinating question, is in the company, I've been running a sales organization for 20 something years. And when I started the insurance company in 09, we grew it from 66 agents. Today we have 50,000 agents. We've licensed nationwide. We have a few hundred offices nationwide. But my idea of looking at who's got the biggest upside to contribute to the company has also changed. It used to be, man, that guy's so selfish. All that guy cares about money. I mean, this guy's the nicest guy in the world. And then I realized the nicest guy in the world,

• 2:19:59Speaker 01

  who had no selfish desires, was happy making $5,000 a month. And so then I created a scoring system. What percentage of you is selfish and selfless? And what's the good balance? If you're 100% only you and everybody else zero, well, guess what? You're still a bigger net positive to society than the person at the bottom. That's what? Zero percent selfish and 100% selfless. If a person is 100% selfless, they probably don't eat well. They probably out of shape. They're probably not healthy. They're probably going to have to go to the hospital. It's going to cost you money and taxes. They probably smell because they don't take a shower. They spend their money on everybody else. So then you'll see the profile. Good people to give you counsel are around the fifty fifty range.

• 2:20:44Speaker 01

  You can always trust them to give you counsel. Drivers of a company or somebody like you doing what they do seventy thirty is a good split. Okay, eighty twenty is a little bit problematic. Cause eighty twenty sometimes will compromise to beat everybody. So you want the sixty five seventy. So you're asking a technical question. And I've just come to a conclusion that, you know, both parties, if they want to selfishly be pleased, if we can please each other and one of us takes the lead and we're getting mutual love and benefits out of the relationship. You're in a good situation. Every once in a while, you'll find somebody that's gonna be a writer that they're gonna say, Chris, dude, no matter what you do, I'm with you till the day you die.

• 2:21:28Speaker 01

  And you think they're telling the truth. A year goes by, they're still there, even more. Five years go by, they got married like when he gets married and ask it's gonna change, still there. Ten years later, still there, you're like, this guy's really a true believer. Wow. But it's not gonna be that many people. That's a very short list of people.

• 2:21:45Chris Williamson?

  Patrick Bat David, ladies and gentlemen. Patrick, I appreciate the hell out of you. I appreciate how much you pay attention. Very detail oriented and I love that. I really, really do. Uh, thank you for today, man. It's been a long time coming. So where should people go? They wanna keep up to date with everything you're doing.

• 2:22:00Speaker 01

  Ah, I mean, you, you can go to Amazon and search choose your enemies wisely. Uh, or you can find our podcast, PBD Podcast or Valuetainment. We're all over the place, you'll find us.

• 2:22:09Chris Williamson?

  Thank you, man.

• 2:22:09Speaker 01

  But this has been a blast, man, talking to you. I've been watching you for a long time and it's very obvious why you're climbing the way you are.

• 2:22:16Chris Williamson?

  I appreciate you.

• 2:22:17Speaker 01

  Anytime. Thank you.