The Truth About Success - James Smith

James Smith is an author, podcaster, online trainer and not a life coach. I just finished a full month of live shows with James. We didn't kill each other but did learn a lot, so today we're reflecting on a month on the road while digging into some of James' biggest realisations of finally becoming an adult. Expect to learn what my first ever live tour experience was like, how to increase your luck in life, what James’ thoughts are on the Male Sedation Hypothesis, how to find true success, why you need to start celebrating your wins, what the future of the fitness industry looks like and much more... Sponsors: Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours with your first box at https://www.drinklmnt.com/mw (automatically applied at checkout) Get $150 discount on Plunge’s amazing sauna or cold plunge at https://plunge.com (use code MW150) Get 20% discount on Nomatic’s amazing luggage at https://nomatic.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Extra Stuff: Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ Buy my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - 00:00 Touring Together 10:38 All Wins Feel the Same 17:53 The Risks of Doing Something You Love 25:31 How Much of Success is Down to Work? 31:20 What’s Obvious to You Isn’t to Everyone Else 36:52 Dealing With a Multiplicity of Options 46:31 Poor Excuses For Not Having Children 53:19 The Male Sedation Hypothesis 1:00:40 Are We Ruled By Midwits? 1:11:39 What James Has Learned About Success 1:24:54 The Future of the Fitness Industry 1:41:43 Where to Find James - 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?

  Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. My guest today is James Smith. He's an author, podcaster, online trainer and not a life coach. I just finished a full month of live shows with James. We didn't kill each other, but did learn a lot. So today, we're reflecting on a month on the road while digging into some of James' biggest realisations from finally becoming an adult. Expect to learn what my first ever live tour experience was like, how to increase your luck in life, what James' thoughts are on the male sedation hypothesis, how to find true success, why you need to start celebrating your wins, what the future of the fitness industry looks like and much more. We're into the new year now and you may be starting a reading habit if you need some suggestions for books to read. My reading list is free and available right now.

• 0:45Chris Williamson?

  100 books that you should read before you die. They're the most interesting and impactful books that I've read, fiction and non-fiction and real life stories. And there's summaries about why I liked them and links to go and buy them. And you can get it right now by going to chriswillx.com/books. It's completely free and waiting for you on the other side of the internet. chriswillx.com/books.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  Instagram teen accounts come with automatic protections that limit who can contact teens, the content they can see and the time they spend on the app. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/teenaccounts.

• 1:26Speaker 02

  Payday bars have a bone to pick with the other candy bars. Enough with the toppings and layers and stuff, kay? Payday bars are just salty crunchy peanuts and sweet caramel. Delicious! Payday Peanut Caramel Bar.

• 1:41Chris Williamson?

  But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome James Smith.

• 2:04Chris Williamson?

  James Smith, welcome to the show.

• 2:05James Smith?

  Nice to do this in person.

• 2:07Chris Williamson?

  We made it, four weeks on tour together.

• 2:10James Smith?

  I'm tired, my voice is a bit deeper, I'm a bit fatter and I need a haircut.

• 2:16Chris Williamson?

  It's been a, it's been a journey, man.

• 2:19James Smith?

  It's been good, you know, like I was, I was maybe expecting that much time together with anyone. There would have been maybe some physical indications, maybe some strong arguments, but actually we got on very well. You're, you know, you're very meticulous to detail in projects that we work on. But as far as a travelling and working a company, you are fantastic.

• 2:40Chris Williamson?

  Sufficient chill.

• 2:41James Smith?

  Yeah, just like you, I could tell when you're tired because the AirPods go in, the eye mask comes on. You have your own way of gesticulating a do not disturb mode.

• 2:51Chris Williamson?

  I'm right, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so. No, you're right, it's been a, I'm trying not to talk about tours so much because I feel like it's, it's all of the things that I sometimes switch off about when I listen to other podcasts. Whitney Cummings taught me this thing, she was sat in that chair a few weeks ago. She said, in order for life to imitate art, in order for arts to imitate life, you have to have a life. And it explains why comedians who just spend all of their time on the road only have road life to talk about. They have airports and dinners and shows and that's it. And I'm trying not to do that, but it's been really formative, it's been really interesting for me to, you know, see kind of what happens in person at these events and these experiences.

• 3:33James Smith?

  Well, it would be very easy for yourself to not, you've created a comfort zone now where you have a microphone, you have some, you know, research you would have done on a, on a guest and you have the routine of seeing that person. The idea of going on the road to a lot of people is, one, something they would be very fearful of. It's absolute chaos and it's just, you know, unpredictableness, you know, you're meeting new crowds, new hecklers, new events, new flight schedules, new airports. You know, like even every day, you've just got the anxiety of your luggage not coming through from the carousel, so.

• 4:08Chris Williamson?

  Not for me, baby.

• 4:10James Smith?

  Hand luggage, Mr. Hand luggage only.

• 4:12Chris Williamson?

  Hand luggage only. Hold luggage is a psyop meant to keep you poor and late. Talk to me, obviously, we've done this one, but you've done five, 10 tours before this. What have you learned from touring in general? You've created content on the internet and spoken to people through the screen a lot, but then you get to speak to them in person. What do people who are existing mostly online not know about what the real world's like?

• 4:37James Smith?

  Well, first of all, I'm sure you've experienced this face to face. When people meet you in the street and they compliment you and say, oh, Chris, I love your podcast. You see that little glimmer in their eye where they actually realize you're real. And sometimes they'll say that, oh, you actually exist. Because whereas, you know, characters in movies or, you know, actresses in certain TV shows, the real person, the person, their imagination doesn't physically exist. But then when they meet you, you do. But then even when they see you online or absorb your content, they kind of know that you're performing for them. So being able to see your, you know, idiosyncrasies or just certain ways that you act or the way that you would engage with them or maybe give them banter in real life, whether it's from the stage or the meet and greet, doing a selfie.

• 5:20James Smith?

  They get to see like a side of you that they've never experienced before. And it's almost, you would hope is, you know, quite charming. You know, they go, oh, you actually exist. Now, doing that as like activation around a different people's towns, like even the way that you would make jokes local to their town, not only makes them feel like you're real, they feel seen, which is like a really nice combination for them to have for someone they might admire online.

• 5:45Chris Williamson?

  Definitely one of the things I've realized is how much more positive the world is in general than it seems through the internet. The internet is very sardonic, it's quite cynical, it's quite cutting. It's kind of a bit standoffish and tries to be aloof and cool. You know, that's what comment sections are. It's always like a, this.

• 6:07Chris Williamson?

  Like, I don't care about you. I don't care about what other people think about me. And in person, people seem to be a lot more prepared to be vulnerable, you know?

• 6:15James Smith?

  We had, we had one bad comment, the whole tour, one bad comment.

• 6:19Chris Williamson?

  What was it?

• 6:20James Smith?

  Uh, where pretty much, she wasn't taking the piss out of you, she's taking the piss out of me. And um, so like, the person that wrote the comment thought that they were gonna get like a a real big breakdown of how I wrote the books, you know, the process of writing and all of these things. The fact that we called the tour the Sea Word should have led off to the level of sophistication and maybe the amount of vulgar that would be in it.

• 6:41Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 6:42James Smith?

  But then you think, so thousands of attendees, one bad comment, you're looking at maybe 0.1% being generous. Whereas you look at any Instagram reel that you put from your best performing podcast,

• 6:53Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 6:54James Smith?

  might be 40% negative. So when you look at that, that comparison between 40% negative to 0.01%, it's vast. And like you say, obviously, it's a bit of an echo chamber because only a red hot audience are gonna come to your event. But yeah, it's good because there are some days where it's obviously like a real, you know, point of privilege to be able to say, oh, you know, so many people watch my content, I get negative comments. But they, they go straight to, there's no one out there that doesn't take it to heart. Unless you're a psychopath, sociopath, like unless you're literally American psycho level, like you have to take it to heart in some respect. So it is so nice to be out there and to

• 7:35James Smith?

  talk to people, engage with people and have those interactions, which is what I think a lot of people that tour, whether comedians, whether music artists, whatever, really cherish.

• 7:45Chris Williamson?

  Well, I think that's one of the reasons why they maybe seem more resilient to criticism that they get online than it appears, you know, some comedians in the middle of some furor, or they've said something that's cringe or uncool, or everyone in the comments section doesn't like them. You go, yeah, like, that might be true. But Friday, Saturday, Sunday, in some City in Massachusetts or something, they're selling out three theatres of 2,000 people, all of whom are there because they love them, because they give them adoration. It's definitely helped me to understand how the internet is not the real world. And a lot of the people that appear in comment sections, and this is the same for, whether you're a content creator or not, if you're just existing within comment sections and going,

• 8:29Chris Williamson?

  wow, the world seems really negative, or the world seems really cynical, or the world seems really whatever. It's not even when you get groups of people together, it's when you get groups of people together with pseudo anonymity on the internet, and there's perverse incentives for them to say a thing which other people are going to find interesting, or cutting, or sarcastically good and funny, so that they can upvote it. Like, that's where the incentives work towards. But in person, people just want to be seen, and they've got an interesting question. And they're around other people that they feel are like them, or maybe they're alone and they're lonely. They think, wow, like, I'm in a room with 400, 500, 600 other people, all of whom listen to the same obscure podcaster or whatever that I do. Like, that's cool.

• 9:08James Smith?

  There's a, someone I've done before where, say, when you get, when you release your book, you're gonna have a day where the reviews are gonna start to come in. And there's the tendency, for some reason, to look at the one-star reviews. And you're like, you're like, oh, you know, I'm trying to, I'm trying to build a great, good idea of, you know, constructive criticism. You do it, you depress yourself for a few hours. But then what I've come to do is go to a book that's revolutionized your life. Let's look at something like, uh, Brian Holiday, Obstacle is the Way, which is anytime any of my friends experiencing like carnage, depression, loss of a loved one, whether through death or breakup, whatever, I'm like, I'm not qualified to help you, but this book will make you feel better. So I'll go to that book or equivalent, I'll look at the one-star reviews.

• 9:52James Smith?

  And people are like, yeah, you know, book got boring, doesn't go anywhere. Um, author's really off the mark or stuff like that. And I'll be like, okay, when you remove yourself from that situation and you actually make it about, you know, someone else's book, and you realize how delusional or sometimes even botish the comments are. Because when it's your work, you take it to heart, but when it's someone else's work, you go, oh, they're obviously full of shit.

• 10:17Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, so interesting to observe that. Well, look, I got you a, I got you a gift to celebrate the end of your first ever America tour, which is a Texas Longhorns jersey with Smith 23 on the back, given that it is 2023. So you can get that framed and take that home.

• 10:35James Smith?

  This is very cool. I like this a lot. I actually also have your gift.

• 10:39Chris Williamson?

  You don't.

• 10:40James Smith?

  I do, yeah.

• 10:41Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 10:41James Smith?

  Um, Etienne, do you reckon you could help us with it, please? We will need to open the door.

• 10:46Chris Williamson?

  That's fine. That's all right. I didn't realise that we were, this hasn't been planned. I've had this planned for ages, but I didn't know that you were gonna re, put me in a vicious regifting cycle.

• 10:56James Smith?

  Can we initiate the gifting protocol? We've got three strippers coming in.

• 11:01Chris Williamson?

  Have we? It's not Luke, is it?

• 11:02James Smith?

  So I was thinking for the future of the episodes in which we'd be doing, I thought it'd be good to get you a new tonic.

• 11:10Chris Williamson?

  You got me a Yeti cooler, a wheel-in Yeti cooler.

• 11:13James Smith?

  And then inside, Etienne, do you mind, uh, we'll soundproof the door one more time?

• 11:19Chris Williamson?

  Okay, you might need to spin it round and do it so that the camera can see the Etienne.

• 11:24James Smith?

  And then, um.

• 11:25Chris Williamson?

  Put your camera down.

• 11:25James Smith?

  If you can open it as well, inside I've got you a toolkit.

• 11:30Chris Williamson?

  A toolkit?

• 11:31James Smith?

  So can you show us item number one, please, Etienne? We've got a three-pack of Lululemon boxes, which are size large.

• 11:37Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 11:38James Smith?

  Now, I know that you might be, from a sponsorship standpoint, in, in very rough waters. You've got two water bottles in here. I know you've got your own one that you carry yourself.

• 11:47Chris Williamson?

  Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 11:48James Smith?

  Um, there's a bottle opener and someone else in there as well. So the way I see it, for many of your episodes, especially ones you'll be doing local in the area, you'll be transporting new tonic on site. Now, I don't envisage you.

• 12:03Chris Williamson?

  Wheel in with one of these, is that what you're saying?

• 12:05James Smith?

  I don't envisage you rolling in with this, but I envisage some member of staff. So you'll be like, where is the cooler?

• 12:12Chris Williamson?

  That's cool as fuck, man. Thank you. I appreciate it.

• 12:15James Smith?

  I appreciate the jersey.

• 12:16Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, we'll pop that back in there. Thank you.

• 12:18James Smith?

  Thank you very much.

• 12:19Chris Williamson?

  Fucking hell. Well, I'm glad that I've got these pants finally.

• 12:23James Smith?

  I've been, I've been bigging them up and we won't go into too much detail because.

• 12:26Chris Williamson?

  Very intimate details around the pants. Yeah.

• 12:29James Smith?

  Just, um, you know, there's, there's not much a man cherishes more than the state of his gooch whilst travelling.

• 12:35Chris Williamson?

  That is true. That is true. Yeah. I've been fighting, I've been fighting with gooch sweat for the entirety. I heard you say on a podcast ages ago, and I never brought it up to you, all wins feel the same. And then you've said it a couple of times on the tour as well during Q and As. What's that mean to you?

• 12:53James Smith?

  So we seem to think that, uh, you know, you get an Uber surcharge when Ubers are really busy. It's like 1.5 times. So we seem to think that we get ascending Uber surcharges on happiness the further we progress. So let's say you, uh, have your first pay slip. There's a thousand dollars. There's $10,000. There's $100,000. Then it's a million dollars. We seem to think that the levels of happiness that we would accrue from those interactions would be ascending in line with the relative increases in money.

• 13:21Chris Williamson?

  So the thousand would be, the 10,000 would be 10 times greater than the thousand would be 10 times greater than the 100,000.

• 13:26James Smith?

  However, it's not that way. And even if let's say you're a jiu jitsu competitor, white belt, purple belt, black belt. Winning a match feels like winning a match. The levels change, the importance of it change. So. You've got Gordon Ryan, best in the world, lives here in Austin. When he wins, let's say, the most prestigious ADCC final. Those emotive, you know, responses from the brain and that chemistry is the exact same to someone listening to this podcast that starts jiu jitsu next week. And in three months' time competes for the first time at white belt, when they get their hand raised, they get the exact same feeling. Only if your mindset is wrong, would you deny yourself experiencing that because you seem to think it wouldn't be at the same level as someone else.

• 14:11James Smith?

  And you maybe starting a business that you love and breaking even in your first year could feel the same as far as a win. As far as someone going to, you know, sell their business for hundreds of millions, like the wins feel the same. And I don't feel like we're ever told that. We, we kind of learn it along the way. And I think a lot of people can feel like they're broken because I know for a fact. You actually didn't feel as happy as a million subs as you did at 10,000.

• 14:38Chris Williamson?

  Correct.

• 14:39James Smith?

  So giving people, you know, there are going to be podcasters that listen to your podcasts that are thinking, oh, I'd be happy when I get 100,000 subs. And you just need to remind them that it's going to feel just as good when they get 10K.

• 14:50Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. Yeah, there's a lot of problems around expectations and, you know, there's an idea where expectations rise more quickly than reality's ability to deliver that to you. And that's dangerous, right? If you think that

• 15:09Chris Williamson?

  as you become better, your belief in yourself to be even better than current better continues to rise. Then yeah, each time that you set yourself a new bar, that is a new minimum that you need to jump over, which can actually mean that large wins are the worst days of your life. You know, speaking to Morgan Housel, who wrote The Psychology of Money, he was telling me a story both about himself, I think, but also another friend who first book, amazing success. All of this, these great things happen. Create a second book. Second book was an amazing success, but the first one was so interstellar. It would be impossible. You know, if you're, if you manage to thread the needle of a once in a generation book in terms of sales, are you really gonna, you really think that you're going to be able to do that again twice?

• 15:52Chris Williamson?

  You can have amazing success, but it's not going to be that one. And in relation, the second book felt like a failure, despite the fact that by every, uh, my friend told me about the, uh, George Michael Wham documentary. I think I told you this story. So, uh, George Michael and the other dude in Wham, the fact that it's just the other dude kind of shows the way that that relationship was done. And the guy that was second had a very different sort of, um, relationship with success. He knew that George was going to be the front man. He was happy for George to be the front man. He was there as a musician, but he was largely kind of the, the backup to what was going on. So they release in the space of one year, they release, uh, Club Tropicana.

• 16:34Chris Williamson?

  They release, what was the other non-Christmas song that they released? Can you remember?

• 16:36James Smith?

  You're asking the wrong person.

• 16:38Chris Williamson?

  They released one other, uh, non-Christmas song and then they release, um, Last Christmas.

• 16:44Chris Williamson?

  Over the Christmas period, George Michael is featured on Do They Know It's Christmas? That huge medley song with everybody else. So he's managed to get debut single number one, second single number one, third single, which is his Christmas single, Last Christmas, debuts at number two and is beaten by another song that he is the singer for, but he feels despondent at Christmas, on Christmas Day, because his song doesn't hit number one for the third time in 12 months. It's beaten by him in a different song, but that song wasn't one. Like, how insane are those expectations?

• 17:23James Smith?

  It is. Do you know what? If I look back at the times I've been like the most disappointed or like even upset, it is based 100% down to my expectations. Not the reality of the world, not the reality of the situation, just the reality of my expectations. So it's a fine line between not setting them too high, but then not setting them too low. Because without adequate expectations, you then hinder your effort. But yeah, we're we're complex creatures. And I think going back to like, the original question is, the point of it is so people don't deny themselves of waiting huge amounts of time or huge amounts of effort before celebrating wins.

• 17:58Chris Williamson?

  You said, uh, some of your clients come to you and say, I want to lose 10 kilos. And you're like, fuck 10 kilos. Celebrate when you lose one. And then celebrate when you lose one. And then celebrate when you lose one.

• 18:08James Smith?

  The same with social media. Uh, there's a six foot five lad outside this room then on a sofa and we would race each other. Every time we grew by a thousand followers, we would race each other to type that number. So I'd wake up at like six, seven, four. I'd be like, fuck, beat me to it. Like, and people would, part of it died when we got to a million because then

• 18:26Chris Williamson?

  You don't see it.

• 18:27James Smith?

  You don't see it. Yeah. So, uh, like I, I, I miss those little wins. And everyone else out there is thinking it's the big stuff. You're like, no, you grow by a thousand. That's amazing. So people need to be better at celebrating those wins.

• 18:39Chris Williamson?

  That's been one of the most common questions that's come up on the Q and A's across this tour. There's been like some really interesting trends. Cause I did my four shows around Ireland and the UK. Then we both did Dubai and then we did Canada, US, Canada, US, et cetera. And, um, some of the most common trends that have come out are all to do with deciding between the multiplicity of options that we have in our lives. I have lots of things that I can do with my time. Which one should I do? That's been an interesting one. But another one has been.

• 19:10Chris Williamson?

  How can I not leave things on the table in terms of how well I perform? And yet, take gratitude in the successes that I've had. And I think there's definitely a fear out there from people that if they congratulate themselves too much, it's going to kill their ambition. Maybe a few years ago, I would have been on board with that a little bit, but largely now I just don't think that it's the case. I think that a lot of people that have ambition, if you tried to throw water and sand in a, you know, metric ton of like fucking fire extinguisher on it. I don't think that those people that are driven would have it slowed down by taking a second to congratulate themselves and give them a pat on the back and get some helium balloons or a water cooler or a printed jersey.

• 19:53James Smith?

  I think it's crazy that you've said this, I've said this, like, there are so many people that have those unprecedented levels of ambition, but some of them have them on miscapts, working on other people's dreams, not their own. And we've both said it, where like, people are, oh, I kind of want to do my own thing, but I'm worried I'll fail. And you're like, yeah, but you're doing so well at something that you don't like, you know?

• 20:14Chris Williamson?

  And that's one of your best insights. I think that's genuinely one of your best insights. If you're succeeding at something that you don't enjoy, imagine how great you'd be at something you love.

• 20:22James Smith?

  And even if you do go down that path and you fail, like, even if you fall flat on your face, even if you move back into your parents, there is going to be a little part of you that's like, well, I gave it a go.

• 20:31Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 20:32James Smith?

  And I think that, I know it's again, another like privileged thing to say, but I think there's some, something quite cool in that. And even, you know, people that are afraid to move jobs, people are more worried about how their CV looks than their life. You know, they're like, oh, if I move now, I've only been in this job a year. You're like, mate, this is about you enjoying your life, not trying to appease a stranger with a fucking A4 piece of paper, you know?

• 20:52Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 20:53James Smith?

  And then, when I, I went traveling a few times when I was younger, and I remember someone saying, oh, it doesn't make your CV look good. I would sit in that interview and go, I didn't want to work anymore. I went to travel. I had the best time, but now I've realized that I want to be back working. I was just straight with them. But imagine saying to someone like, oh, I wanted to give everything I could to something that didn't work out. You know, that's actually more of a reason to be impressed with someone than someone that left a job every two years, perfectly looking for the next progression.

• 21:19Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 21:20James Smith?

  I think there's so much risk in playing it safe. What did you say? You've, we've listened to Shud's Q and As. Tell people about the average American.

• 21:28Chris Williamson?

  Average American is obese, divorced with less than one K in the bank. So by doing what everyone else does, it seems like a safe route, but it's not. It's actually a reliable way to achieve a life that you don't want.

• 21:39James Smith?

  Exactly. Yeah. It, that's literally encapsulated because so many people are fighting to do the normal thing. The normal thing is to play it safe. And I've said this, right? The majority of people are pessimists because the majority of optimist people found their way out of the gene pool. There's going to be some, you know, absolute experts in human evolution. They're going to be like, huh, enters the chat. But ultimately, any single human through hundreds of thousands of years, oh yeah, we'll get across that river, out the gene pool. Oh, it's not that cold out, out the gene pool. Oh, it's only a couple of bears out the gene pool. The evolution is all of the people that are risk averse, worried about things going wrong and avoiding all the opportunities that are around them to the point that they don't take risks.

• 22:20James Smith?

  But now we have this massive primal mechanism of fear that is supposed to keep us alive. And now we're associating that mechanism of fear to really trivial stuff like, how does my CV look? What if I ask the girl for a number and she says no? What if they don't like my first line I use on Bumble? You know, we're using this massive primitive keep us alive mechanism to everyday tasks and it's keeping people from doing the one thing.

• 22:43Chris Williamson?

  It's like in the past, only the paranoid survived, but in the present, only the optimists thrive. Ooh, just come up with that. But it's true because given the fact that you can't predict the future, you have to have some sort of fantasy about how the world's going to go. And that fantasy can either be negative or positive. So why not pick one that's enjoyable? Just pick one that makes the world seem a little bit rosier and assume that the glass is half full. And this is so wild for me to say, because six, seven years ago, I was Mr. like, still am very conservative, very risk averse, all the rest of it. But it wasn't just showing up in my actions. It was showing up in the way that I perceived the world too. Whereas now it's kind of like, uh.

• 23:25Chris Williamson?

  Prepare for the worst, hope for the best is kind of, I guess, how I would set myself up. Still, in terms of actions, very risk averse, but in terms of the way that I see the world, pretty optimistic and pretty hopeful. But you've got another thing that says becoming feels better than being.

• 23:39James Smith?

  Well, it's Carol Dweck's.

• 23:40Chris Williamson?

  Is it?

• 23:41James Smith?

  Yeah.

• 23:41Chris Williamson?

  Well.

• 23:41James Smith?

  Just in case.

• 23:42Chris Williamson?

  You repurposed it, but it's true, right? What was it that Drake says? People don't want you when you have things, only when you're going there, like.

• 23:51James Smith?

  If we were to paint like a, I think it's dangerous to paint a finished product, which makes becoming something very difficult. The, the version or the idea of becoming something, whether, you know, that's always going to morph. One day becoming a father, one day becoming a grand, grandparent, one day becoming a, a business owner, one, one day becoming whatever it is. The, the journey of becoming something, I think is so much sweeter. I even think in martial arts, becoming a black belt, the way towards it is probably a lot more beautiful than when you accomplish it. When you get the black belt, even though it's the most, you know, best achievement in martial arts, it'll feel just like all the belts you had before. Within three months, it was just about, you know, like, it's, it's such a weird way of doing it. But again, it is that thing of saying to people,

• 24:33James Smith?

  the version, you know, stop for a second, you know, you might say, what, what was it Hormozzi said? He said, during my twenties, I wanted to be a millionaire. Now I'm a millionaire. I want to be in my twenties. So many people might want to work towards something so much. And then by the time they get there, they'll just want to be the version of themselves that was working the way towards it. Ricky Gervais as well. He said about the, the amount of times he presented the office to TV production companies, they declined it. They didn't want it.

• 25:01Chris Williamson?

  Tons of times.

• 25:02James Smith?

  He struggled. He, uh, you know, went through all these different phases of his life. And he said, if I could trade all of that effort for the same amount of money, I wouldn't, I wouldn't take it. I, he enjoyed the struggle getting there so much.

• 25:14Chris Williamson?

  But is it only worth the struggle because there was glory in the end?

• 25:18James Smith?

  That's an interesting point, which is, you know, I could never answer that.

• 25:21Chris Williamson?

  There's a survivorship bias there.

• 25:23James Smith?

  Of course, yeah.

• 25:24Chris Williamson?

  Which is, it's how many people have the platform to talk about how grateful they are for the struggle that didn't make it to the point where they have a platform, right? How many people listening to this, this really funny, uh, uh, Boyz Cast episode with Danny, who we partied with in New York and him and Ryan were talking about how, um.

• 25:46Chris Williamson?

  Young kids that want to become creators are kind of being talked out of it a lot of the time by their teachers. And then you hear these rappers talking about like Mr. Henderson in year nine, like you didn't believe in me, but Mr. Henderson, I've shown you now. But he's like, yeah, but how many fledgling rappers did Mr. Henderson save from a life of shit SoundCloud uploads? So the survivorship bias that kind of gets layered in here, I think, is interesting. But the ultimate, the ultimate answer is that Ricky Gervais wouldn't have achieved the success had he have not stuck about. So maybe it's a tail, like a far right tail outcome. But if you get rid of that, you lose all of the tail, right? If you start to bring that in, and if people don't have that hope. Every single morning for over three

• 26:29Chris Williamson?

  years now, I've started my day the exact same way, which is with Element in water. Element contains a science-backed electrolyte ratio of sodium, potassium, and magnesium, and it is the best hydration drink that I've ever found. It tastes fantastic. It's super refreshing. Orange is just the most OP flavor in the world. It's absolutely phenomenal, and it helps to play a critical role in reducing muscle cramps and fatigue. It regulates your appetite. It optimizes brain health, and it helps curb cravings. They're also the exclusive hydration partner to Team USA Weightlifting and relied on by tons of Olympic athletes and everyday high performers all around the world. Also, there is a no BS, no questions asked refund policy where you can buy a box completely risk-free, and if you do not like it for any reason, they will give you a refund during an unlimited duration, and you don't

• 27:14Chris Williamson?

  even need to return the box. That's how confident they are that you love it. Element are giving away a free sample pack of all eight flavors with your first box if you go to the link in the description box below or drinklmnt.com/mw. That's drinklmnt.com/mw. And the other thing as well is because of this cult of despondency and cynicism online, the minimum bar that people are prepared to quit at continues to get higher and higher, right? That people will quit much sooner than they will do previously. And this is one of the things, like I really, I really wanted to bring this up, and I really thought it was important for me and you to talk about this, about how

• 27:55Chris Williamson?

  How much like uncertainty and luck and randomness and like self doubt both of us had during everything, including stepping out on stage like pretty much every single night that in Elon's book at the moment, he kind of goes through Walter Isaacson explains just how hard he had to work. And I think that stories about success coming about due to incredible levels of hard work makes achievements seem more attainable, not less attainable. Because if it was no hard work, you go, where did it come from? Oh, it just came from luck. Oh, well, how the fuck am I supposed to manifest that? Whereas if you say, oh, all I did was just the same thing 750 times over and over again. So, oh, well, like, anyone can do that. It's going

• 28:40Chris Williamson?

  to be hard, but it's not an impossible feat. It's not some ethereal out there in the fucking astral realm like piece of luck. It's not being bestowed by anybody. It's just a thing that happened. And sure, there is luck and randomness on top. But I think being open about the process and the hard work and the self doubt makes things that are incredible seem more achievable.

• 29:01James Smith?

  I'm gonna answer this in two ways. The first part about the survivorship bias, 100% credible. But I also feel now that biases can be used to just counteract someone's points because you might make a really, really important point that makes me think, oh, I need to work harder. I need to be doing more. But what you said might challenge me to the point that I might now pick a bias to use as a Nuno reverse card. So you could say to me, you're like, ah, you know, James, if you want to have a successful podcast, I recommend you do 500 more episodes than what you've done. And I could go, this guy survived ship bias, you know, a lot of people out there fail the podcast, you know, so there's, there's that which I don't like. You're completely right. But at the same time, I don't like it when people use a bias to try and, you know, explain why

• 29:45James Smith?

  that what they're doing is not working. And the second point is, we had two lads at our last event who wanted to get, you know, do well on YouTube, whatever. And they're telling me this, telling me that. I was like, do 100 videos. And they were like, oh, yeah, cool. I was like, yeah, but stop that to make 100 videos. And he asked me something else. I was like, mate, you are not going to learn what you suck at until you do 100 videos. And I said, out one out of 100 of those, one of them is going to do better than the others. And I said, you can now look at that one and go, why the heck did that one do well? And then when you've got 100, you should probably do 100 more videos. And I could slowly see it like settling in with them. And ultimately, people aren't going to learn. Until they start doing the work and that level of work for some people is fine, for others it's not.

• 30:29James Smith?

  But you have to have like a, an unwavering belief that it could work, like you say. And I actually think fantasy is a great word to describe it in the early onset of using social media. I didn't make enough money that I could save it. So instead I was like, okay, I'm going to make a different interest savings account, which depends on effort, not money. And that interest savings account is going to be convincing hundreds and maybe thousands of people. And that's not hundreds of thousands, that's hundreds, maybe thousands of people that trust me as a coach. And I thought I can't make enough money to put away tens of thousands into property or anything else. And instead I was like, I'm just going to work hard to get these people to trust me. And I think that that is such a powerful tool that anyone can really do despite the effort.

• 31:14James Smith?

  Are you going to have a big enough pod to be invited on Rogan? Probably not. But if you put in that amount of effort, could you get a small collective group of people to maybe come to your event, buy your product? Do whatever it is you're working to do. Chances are probably, and again, like, there has also been people at our talks that compare their podcast to yours and you're like, that's, that's not going to set you up, pal. There's no amount of hard work that can really bridge that gap. And I think people do need to become very centric on their own journey. And even if someone else has been incredibly fortunate, what is it? Malcolm Gladwell in outliers speaks about how lucky Bill Gates was to be born, it could be outliers, it could be something else.

• 31:58James Smith?

  To be born at a certain time where if Bill Gates was a little bit older, he would have missed the first computer because he'd be out working somewhere else. And if he was that little bit younger, he would have

• 32:07Chris Williamson?

  It would have already been created.

• 32:08James Smith?

  Yeah. So then I do think there is an element of luck where when I was twenty four, twenty five, I was at a point where I was probably confident enough to speak on camera. Videos were just becoming popular on social media platforms, Facebook, then Instagram came along. I came along at a time where there was a low amount of creators taking advantage of it, but there was a high amount of users on the platforms. So there is a tremendous element of luck to everyone's journey, but if you're not working hard when that wave of luck comes along, who is it that says luck is where preparation meets opportunity?

• 32:44Chris Williamson?

  I don't, I think that's one of those ones that's kind of been repurposed by every, every person now.

• 32:48James Smith?

  It's just got Jay Shetty written on the bottom.

• 32:51Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, maybe. There was a, there's this idea called Churchillian drift, which I think I've taught you about before, which is the phenomenon whereby quotes that are unattributed over time progressively get more and more likely to be attributed to Churchill. Yeah, it's good. Literally, it's a name called Churchillian drift. I think it was Churchill that said, luck is when preparation meets opportunity. It's just one of those guys where you go, yeah, that seems about right. Let's throw it, let's throw it toward Churchill. But no, I don't disagree about the, the timing thing. One consideration I've had in my mind for a little while is, don't assume that something you see as obvious is obvious to everybody else. You know, you seeing

• 33:33Chris Williamson?

  a video creation, well, there's quite a lot of people that watch video and I watch video, but there doesn't seem to be so many creators. That might be to you, if you had the wrong mindset, wow, everybody knows that. Everybody knows that. So what's the point in me trying? If you look at the growth of podcasting per audience over time, it is just continuing to go like that. I think it's maybe last year by a percentage started to tail off a little bit, but still huge, huge numbers. Five years ago, it might have seemed like, well, yeah, everybody's got a podcast. You go, well, yeah, but in five years' time, really, everybody's got a podcast. So I don't think that you can assume something you take for granted. I remember, dude, I, I found out about, this is like my

• 34:18Chris Williamson?

  fucking hundred million dollar exit not manifest. I found out about Bitcoin in 2010. No, 2012. I found out about Bitcoin in 2012, right? Price would have probably been

• 34:33Chris Williamson?

  less than a hundred bucks. I found out about Ethereum in 2016. Price was, I remember it wavered between 19 and 120. And I was like, yeah, but everybody knows about this. Everyone knows about dark web. Everyone knows about like Silk Road. Everyone knows about buying drugs online. Everyone knows about cryptocurrency. And then you see a bull run in 2018, 2019, 2020, and you go, oh, right. No, now it's kind of starting to hit mainstream. And there's still tons and tons of people. But yeah, we just don't have that theory of mind to work out what is obvious to us, but might not be to everyone else.

• 35:08James Smith?

  You know, like, I've never been interested in like Bitcoin, Ethereum, anything like that. Still not really, because you don't have much control over that stock.

• 35:19James Smith?

  Like there's the market. Sure. People have a good understanding. There's going to be a lot of people that always going to know more or have better insights to whatever. But when it comes to creating something yourself, whether a business, because a business can be grown with paid ads or organic effort. Because you can either pay for people to see your stuff, or you can do it organically and do the work yourself. Then, you know, when you really want to go after something, you can pause the Netflix episode. You weren't really watching anyway because you're on your phone. And you can make shit happen. You can get your phone out, you can message people, DM people, get back to people, do a story Q and A, whatever. You can improve, you can manipulate your own stock through effort. Whereas with investments, you can't manipulate your own.

• 35:54Chris Williamson?

  The mercy of the market.

• 35:56James Smith?

  And another point about podcasts and about social media and about video creating content. There'll be some people listening like, oh, but I'm not a video creator. But, you know, even now I see real estate agents. I see people that sell insurance making like TikToks or whatever. We had one guy come to our Chicago event who was like, mate, I make TikToks of the properties that go in. I, I'm one of the people that watches it. When someone drops the hook of this is what 1.2 million dollars buys you in Calgary.

• 36:21Chris Williamson?

  I want to know.

• 36:21James Smith?

  I'm like, what does 1.2 million? So like, there are so many, like when I started being an online coach, people were like, how do you PT people online? It was like saying, I'm an online plumber. That's exactly the look they gave me at first. But another thing that like is really crazy. People go, oh, shall I become a PT? And sometimes I think, no, sometimes I think, yeah. But then I was like, although the space is saturated, I don't think it's that competitive. And I actually think it's the same with the podcast where although everyone's got a podcast, if you want to be one of the best, you actually don't have to do that much work. You need good production, good organization. Here's one thing for you.

• 37:00James Smith?

  One of the reasons that you are very, very good at this is the half an hour you spend before the podcast, putting all your attention into research. There are so many people out there that do podcasts that don't do that. They're willing to do everything, but not that. And that's.

• 37:17Chris Williamson?

  A little bit more than half an hour, but. A little bit more, but Hormozzi says 20 minutes of preparation adds 20 IQ points. So true. If you do 20 minutes of preparation before you go into a meeting, so true, man. 20 minutes of preparation before you go into, it might not be him. This might be, this might be Hormozzi in drift. I think it was Alex Hormozzi who once said 20 minutes of preparation. But it's true. If you sit down before you're about to have a meeting with someone or a sales call or a job interview or whatever. And you say, all right, so where are they from? Or whatever, whatever. And you're like, oh, you're from Hertfordshire. I used to play rugby in Hertfordshire. Do you know the da, da, da, da, da? And you're like, oh my God, this person knows it.

• 37:57Chris Williamson?

  It's exactly the same as what, before we go into Canada, we're texting our Canadian friends going, you know, what, what have we got? Oh, Edmonton is home to the world's second largest mall after Dubai. Right. Have I got any mall jokes that I can come out? Like, have I got any Justin Trudeau jokes? Or we go into Chicago and I start talking about the architecture. It's exactly the same. It seems like, oh my God, how deep does his knowledge run? His knowledge must be so deep because he was just able to pluck this out. It's like, yo, that architecture joke is the beginning and the end of my knowledge about Chicago. But it seems like you've got way more preparation than you do.

• 38:31James Smith?

  And it's crazy that so many people put so much effort into one side of things, but not the other. But even just people resting in shore, like you, you can't make your crypto collection shoot up overnight. But you can improve the level of your research, the level of your production, the level of your video, even just thinking that a little bit more about what you make content about can hugely have a positive trajectory on where it's going.

• 38:54Chris Williamson?

  I wrote a newsletter this week about one of the questions that we got asked quite a lot. Lots of people at the live shows asked about how to decide between the multiplicity of options we all have in our lives. There are more things I can do with my time than time I have to do them in. How do I choose? That was one of the most common questions. And this is from Naval. If I'm faced with a difficult choice, such as should I marry this person? Should I take this job? Should I buy this house? Should I move to the city? Should I go into business with this person? If you cannot decide, the answer is no. And the reason is, modern society is full of options. So this is an interesting reframe to the paradox of choice. Yes, there are lots of things that you can do with your time. There are an unlimited number of options.

• 39:37Chris Williamson?

  This can make it hard to decide on which option to choose. But it also reduces the pressure of all decisions. If something isn't an obvious slam dunk, yes, then it's likely a better option will come along soon. As Derek Sivers says, if it isn't a hell yeah, it's a no. The only caveat to this is it doesn't work with time sensitive things like having children.

• 39:58James Smith?

  So it's interesting. I always thought it was Mark Manson that said, if it's not a fuck, yes, it's a no, which could have been a slight alteration.

• 40:04Chris Williamson?

  Sivers, Sivers was the first one to do it, I think.

• 40:06James Smith?

  Do you know where the most obvious? So I love talking about paralysis of options as being like a real way to negate your ability to make a decision. When you go to shop for aftershave, there is too much going on.

• 40:18Chris Williamson?

  There is if you're in Dubai.

• 40:19James Smith?

  Yeah, and like people come in left, right, center, like, hello, Sergio. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. And they were quite literally, mate, if you walked in and there was someone that just looked at you up and down and then was like, okay. Hmm, I recommend these three. And you know, you've only got three in front of you. It's either yes or no. But the chances for me saying yes, if the options are reduced, I think are a little bit better.

• 40:38Chris Williamson?

  You've seen Barry Schwartz's The Paradox of Choice, that idea about jeans. Have you seen this? Super famous TED Talk. I'll send it to you once we're done. So I think Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice was maybe 15 years ago. I remember where it was, where I was listening to it on YouTube, driving to Scotland down Great North Road in Newcastle. This must have been, this must have been 10 years ago when I was listening to this. So 50 years ago, you want to buy a pair of jeans. You go into a department store and there is one type of jeans, probably blue, right? There's no different options. There are sizes, 30 waist, 32, 34, et cetera. So you go in, yes, you don't have an unlimited number of options, but your ability to make a decision is made much more simple. Now you go into a store and do you want bootcut or straight?

• 41:23Chris Williamson?

  Do you want skinny? Do you want ripped? Do you want bleached? Do you want them to be cropped? Do you want them to be full length?

• 41:28James Smith?

  I don't even know what half this means.

• 41:29Chris Williamson?

  Precisely, right? And since Topman's closed, none of us ever will again. But the point being, previously, you couldn't maximize the utility in economist's terms that you got from each individual decision, because that particular only single pair of jeans you could have bought might not be quite precisely the fit and the look that you were going for. But the other side of this that we don't usually think about is the psychological price that you have to pay to reach a point of decision making. And that is made way harder when there's an unlimited, essentially an unlimited multiplicity of options, because in the past, a suboptimal decision was because of constraint. Now, a suboptimal decision is because of your error at making a right decision. Does that make sense?

• 42:14James Smith?

  Yeah.

• 42:15Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 42:15James Smith?

  Back to the second point of what you said about having children. Having children is this really interesting thing, right? And I think there's almost a plague. You've got people that, we've spoken about ambition. Ambition, incredible thing to be riddled with in life. You know, dissatisfaction with the norm, a dissatisfaction of average, all of these things. And that has a positive correlation on absolutely every area of your life, apart from the decision making process to have children. Because there is a point, and I wonder if you're in this part of your life right now, where the table feels hot. Everything you do goes well. Every episode you do, you, you know, like the Goggins episode, for instance.

• 42:51Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 42:52James Smith?

  Nearly could not have happened, but you persisted. You fought for it. You got in there. It happened. It slapped. It did amazing. It's pretty, I think it's the video you have on your channel.

• 43:01Chris Williamson?

  It is, it's the channel trailer still, yeah.

• 43:03James Smith?

  And you think, oh, if I'd maybe been up all night with a crying baby, would I have had the persistence and the tenacity and the audaciousness to say what I said to lock that in? So now you create this argument in your head between the table being hot, because in some respects, you do need to turn your back on the table a bit to bring up and raise children.

• 43:19Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, decide in advance what you're gonna suck at.

• 43:22James Smith?

  So have you made any decisions in your mind? Do you push it back to an age? Because readiness is a very subjective thing when it comes to children. If you say, I'll wait till I'm ready, you might wait until you're no longer fertile.

• 43:33Chris Williamson?

  Mm hmm.

• 43:34James Smith?

  So then. The second thing I believe people do is they set an age, but then that age seems to be pushed back year by year.

• 43:41Chris Williamson?

  Well, if you, this is when I will have kids is usually this is when I will start to think about having kids. And that is, what if the relationship that you're in doesn't work? What if you decide to start dating, but it takes time to find someone? What if you cycle through multiple relationships? What if your other partner, you know, what if it takes time to conceive? So, yeah, I think, uh, whatever the reverse of a buffer is, like an inverted buffer, like start sooner than you think you need to. If you want to have kids, probably not a bad idea, but you're right. Like, I do think about this a good bit and it's, it's hard to say this without coming across wanky. So I'll try and do it without annoying the internet, but the table does feel hot. Like pretty much anything that I touch at the moment seems to go well. And that's terrifying because it's a very high place to fall from.

• 44:23Chris Williamson?

  And it really does, it, it, it shits me up to think, fuck, like everything's so great. All of my friends are healthy, my family's healthy, I'm healthy, everything's going fine. I haven't been canceled, I haven't stepped foot on some sacred cow or landmine that's going to blow my leg off. Every single month, the show grows more. Every single month we've got better guests coming on. Dude, the fucking Q one for next year is just so insane. Like dream guests that I've wanted for decades are the coolest guys on the planet messaging me on WhatsApp. Like, yo, man, can't wait to get this thing sorted in Miami or in LA or in London or whatever. But it's a high place to fall from and that's like really, really scary. You know, it's the opposite of expectations. It's like you actually got to taste what it was like to be there.

• 45:08Chris Williamson?

  What is it that Will Smith says? Uh, being famous, uh, gaining fame is amazing. Being famous is a mixed bag and losing famous torture.

• 45:17James Smith?

  It's a, it's, I think it's something that I think about a lot. And I think that I've been trying to, I told you I had that ADHD assessment and in it, they told me I had anxiety.

• 45:26Chris Williamson?

  That's not the cool.

• 45:27James Smith?

  I was like, that's not the cool one. I was like, take that back, shut your mouth. And, um, I'm with it, we like tried to get to the bottom of it. And, uh, the way I make tasks important enough to do with them and spend time with them is to catastrophize a terrible outcome. So this is, she was like this.

• 45:41Chris Williamson?

  Fear based motivation.

• 45:42James Smith?

  Yeah, she was like, this isn't a great mechanism to be using, but in essence I, I kind of. There'll be times I'm a bit tired, I'm gonna have a nap and I'm like, oh, you know, you could fall off and no one ever wants to watch your content anymore. And so then I just build up that looming anxiety of falling off and never being relevant. And, you know, even though there's part of me that almost sees going backwards slightly utopian, because I could always go back to fifteen clients on the gym floor, people would be like, oh, my PT used to be known.

• 46:08Chris Williamson?

  Used to be James Smith.

• 46:09James Smith?

  Yeah, he used to be something. Now look at him, you know, like, so there's always that in the back of the mind, but like, it is crazy that you could think about that so much, because the higher you go, the faster you can fall. And it's difficult, because I bet that should you then say you have children, I bet you will say to yourself, wow, this is actually the single most important project in my life that I've cherished, whatever it is. I said this to you on the tour, I was like, I've got friends that have kind of been, what, you know, you've got blue pill, red pill, black pill, what pill would you call it when they've kind of been coerced out of having children because of climate or because of, you know, declinism?

• 46:44Chris Williamson?

  Probably black pill. It's a kind of black pillism, I guess.

• 46:47James Smith?

  So I, a lot of my friends are kind of like, oh yeah, I don't know if I'm gonna have kids. And I'm like, do you have a good life? And they say, yeah, I have a great life. And I went, who stopped enjoying their life so you could have yours? And oh yeah, my parents did. How old were they? Oh, they're about thirty six. Oh, so you know, maybe you could do what your parents did and pay it forward. But there's, declinism is the idea that the world's becoming a worse place. And with social media, I think that's ever growing to make people feel like it is, because think about it, right? We had fucking pandemic, then we had Ukraine, Russia, now we've got Palestine, Israel. Like, some people on social media are like, I'm too crippled by the state of the world.

• 47:24Chris Williamson?

  Now we've got the James Smith Live Tour.

• 47:25James Smith?

  Yeah, so like, but then, women are better educated than ever. Less women die during childbirth than ever. The rates of infants making it to the age of reproduction are higher than ever. World famine is lower than ever. I'm pretty sure even, I'm not trying to, you know, underplay the state of the world as far as war, but when you look at World War Two, when you look at World War One, when you look at the amount of deaths that countries lost to war pre this modern time, surely, you know, even the amount of available tap water to certain nations in the world.

• 47:58Chris Williamson?

  The, the number of climate related deaths has decreased by ninety eight percent over the last hundred years to fifty time, fifty X decrease.

• 48:06James Smith?

  So we could build a pretty strong argument to these black pill. Bankers, the, you know, the, the state of the world is getting better. And I, I really, it's crazy that, you know, if you were to say, if you were to say anything along the lines of to stop a population breeding, it could be considered genocidal. But then when it's you and your own family, it's considered go, you know, you're saving the planet.

• 48:29Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 48:29James Smith?

  What a hero. Well, I hate the fact that there's virtue in the black pill mentality.

• 48:34Chris Williamson?

  Well, there's, when it comes to not having kids, when it comes to, uh, trying to discourage people from having children around climate change, I think a massive amount of that is people's selfishness or fear around life changing, uh, around what becoming a parent will be like, just repurposed into what seems like an altruistic philosophy.

• 49:02James Smith?

  Hmm.

• 49:03Chris Williamson?

  It's their personal motivations being put outward. It's called the inner citadel by Asaya Berlin, which is that you basically repurpose something which is an inward fear into an outward, uh, like social justice campaign. And

• 49:18Chris Williamson?

  you, it's not wrong. Like women get complications during childbirth and you'd sometimes the kids don't make it to term and that's brutal and awful and painful. And that is an absolutely honest fear that women can and do have. But saying that it's because of climate and because you don't want the world to end and because there's too many people, which is fucking horse shit, given the like decline in birth rates at the moment.

• 49:43James Smith?

  Isn't it crazy that even the decline in birth rate, which is, and it's, it's not a subjective opinion. If you look at the objective statistics of repopulous in the U S, which is where the majority of the data is from, you can literally say to people, we are not having enough children.

• 49:59Chris Williamson?

  But we know how many people are going to be around in however many years' time, because as is told, demography is destiny, right? We can't make any more one year olds. We can't make any more two year olds. We can't make any more three year olds. So we can predict with 100% accuracy, the maximum number of people that can be around in future, right? It's one of the very few things that you can have absolute accuracy with doing. You see, Kim Jong Un was, uh, weeping, who's dabbing his tears away as he begged North Korean women to have more children. This happened a couple of weeks ago. So, yeah, I mean, bro, there was this, I spoke about this with Danny from the Boys Cast. This Canadian guy had got a vasectomy so that he wouldn't have kids.

• 50:43Chris Williamson?

  Froze his sperm though, which kind of feels a little bit like a fucking pull ripcord in case of children. Froze, got a vasectomy so that he would not negatively impact the climate. Then spent the next five years flying around Asia with his partner. So he said, it could be argued that the gains that we made for the climate by not having a child were offset by all of the flights we took, living our freedom. And this is the other side, that one of the most common reasons for people not entering relationships and not having kids at the moment is just don't feel ready or enjoying my life too much, basically. That there are so many things you can do right now that are enjoyable, that are right in front of you,

• 51:27Chris Williamson?

  that are convenient and comfortable, from entertainment to travel, to experiences, to time with friends, to all the rest of the things. The standard of living has raised even the worst type of life, so much to a degree of comfort and enjoyment and convenience, that many people look at children and say, well, that feels like a downgrade. Whereas in the past, it's like, what else have you got to do?

• 51:49James Smith?

  1960s, sat there with a book and a glass of wine.

• 51:51Chris Williamson?

  What else are you gonna do?

• 51:52James Smith?

  Darling, should we have some children?

• 51:54Chris Williamson?

  Fuck all else going on. Yeah, exactly.

• 51:56James Smith?

  It's interesting, like, exactly that. One thing, you know, it's quite, it's weird. If you were to worry about men, it can come across as almost like, you know, something misogynist is about to come. Misogyny is about to appear. But I believe, and again, I could be wrong with this, from the observations in my life, that women get to a certain point where they start to really think about family. They start to get maternal instincts. They start to even look at children and be like, oh, broodiness.

• 52:30James Smith?

  I think for men, it's easier for them to medicate their needs with porn, video games. So even you look at something that, and again, I can't speak on behalf of women, but for men. They have sexual desires, which can be fulfilled much easier via porn than it is via women. So they can have access to more vaginas in one hour than prehistoric humans in history, which I believe Jordan Peterson made a good point on. But even if we look into the complexity of male status, men want recognition. They want to be known being good. And even I was thinking about this a few weeks ago, I was playing Call of Duty. And this lad comes into our lobby to play with us and he was level like a thousand. And me and my mates just start nosing him off like, mate, I bet you're a fucking savage.

• 53:14James Smith?

  You know, this guy must be sick, you know, let's have a look at his K D ratio, right? Let's have a look at him. This guy is probably like a 15 year old, right? He, he has got a level of status from playing video games that strangers are giving him credit. Then he was an animal. He got 20 kills in a game of Warzone. And then I was thinking, this is dangerous because he probably gets more recognition, more, you know, compliments, more credit, more everything from a video game than he ever could in his life at 15. And the way we're creating a world that can help people, especially men, medicate their primitive needs without the need to leave their bedroom, exist in society, even work in some respects. You know, I went to sign on the doll when I was 19. I couldn't get a job. I wasn't really looking that hard.

• 53:59James Smith?

  My dad made me sign on the doll, bit embarrassing. And I was like, dad, I'm not going to the job center. And he was like, son, I've paid the highest tax bracket for 40 years. He was like, you make your way to the center. So I got there and for the record, I took a first job before I ever got a payout. But they do this thing where they go, are you better off in work? It's a legit form. You sit there, they're like, oh, how many, uh, how many hours can you work a week? I was like, all of them. They were like, okay. Because if you can only work 20 hours, you earn more money on the state than you ever would get in a job. And you think to yourself that there are going to be people out there that maybe are medicating their needs through porn, alcohol, whatever. And they quite literally have the opportunity and they go, why, why would I work for 40 hours? And be potentially someone of no significance in a, you know, doing this job. Whereas I could have real significance being in

• 54:44James Smith?

  It's virtual world. World of Warcraft or wherever. And video games are only getting better. They're only getting better where there's more cooperation, more teamwork, more strategy, more rank. You know, even the way that social media was designed to give you the gambling effect when you swipe down as like a

• 55:01James Smith?

  What's it called in the casinos?

• 55:03Chris Williamson?

  Variable schedule reward.

• 55:05James Smith?

  That's the one. I knew you'd know the name for it. So like, as we see even gamification of things online being made to the point to really tap into human psychology, I worry to the point that as we kind of touched on before, someone's reality in the online world could be better than their reality outside of it.

• 55:21Chris Williamson?

  Have you heard my male sedation hypothesis?

• 55:23James Smith?

  No, but I'm excited for it.

• 55:24Chris Williamson?

  Okay, well, it's basically what you've just described, uh, which is men are being sedated out of their reproductive and status-seeking behaviour by a combination of porn, social media screens and video games. It's the reason why we haven't got dispossessed groups of men going around and causing riots, because they are literally being sedated out of those things. There's, when you have high groups of sexless men, which you do have at the moment, under the age of thirty, which is high T, high antisocial behaviour typically, there is a question to be asked, where's all of the incel killings? Like, this isn't a request. I'm putting a request in with the DJ, uh, but there's a question, right? You know, you see like stuff like Sandy Hook and these sort of mass shootings and all the rest of it.

• 56:05Chris Williamson?

  But if those things, which they should do, would be moving in line with the degree of dispossession of young men, you would expect to see way more, and we're not. And it's my contention that screens, social media, porn, video games are sedating that behaviour out of guys.

• 56:22James Smith?

  It's interesting as well. I, do you know what? This wasn't even like a legit video. It wasn't a study. It was just some guy rambling on Twitter. He was talking about how in the Roman Empire, they built the Colosseums to keep the, you know, just people occupied. You know, if they didn't, if they didn't get to see carnage, war, murder in the Colosseum, it would allow their thoughts and their thinking about social situation and the amount of food they had and their access to water. It was almost in a bid to entertain them, to keep them occupied.

• 56:49Chris Williamson?

  Amusing them into sedation, yeah.

• 56:51James Smith?

  So when you look at things like, you know, you've got the premiership football, you've got sport, you've got politics, you've got social media, you've got all of these things. It's almost like a puppeteer pulling strings to keep people in a state of sedation, keep paying the taxes.

• 57:01Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, exactly. Don't look over there. Don't look over there. Keep looking over here.

• 57:04James Smith?

  There's another war for you to be outraged about. Oh, look at it. And it is crazy, because if you were to look at this, even the statistics of how many, and of course, you know, the lockdown is a little bit, we tempered towards closers. If you think about the amount of people for every law enforcement officer or every soldier in the country, they're outnumbered vast amounts. And you're always on this like precipice of revolt on all civilizations through history.

• 57:28Chris Williamson?

  Especially being in America, you are.

• 57:30James Smith?

  Especially when they're armed. And one thing that, you know, you think about a lot of the time is, we live in a time where we seem to think our civilization is perfect and it's going to be evergreen forever. So we look through history and every single civilization before us has collapsed. And it's collapsed for loads of various reasons, which I'm just not well educated enough in. And then you look to this like sedation, incel, fertility rates, rebirth rate, and people are like, no, no, no, it's the climate that's going to get us. The sun is going to boil the seas. And you look around, you're like, which one's going to go first? Because if you stop having baby, babies to stop the, you know, temperature going up a couple of degrees, if you guys aren't going to chat to girls because you're wanking in World of Warcraft, and you know, if

• 58:11Chris Williamson?

  There's more immediate problems here.

• 58:13James Smith?

  Yeah.

• 58:13Chris Williamson?

  And well, there's a great book. It's on that reading list I released. I think it's the third book down, The Precipice by Toby Ord, which is a primer on existential risk. It's really great. And this guy has gone to the ends of the earth to try and work out what the risk is of different types of natural risk and anthropogenic risk. So natural risk is volcanoes, asteroids, supernova, et cetera, et cetera. And I think natural pandemic is part of anthropogenic risk, actually, which is kind of strange. But then you've got nuclear weapons, climate change, natural pandemics, engineered pandemics, nanotechnology, AI, et cetera. And it's like, climate change, I think, is one in a thousand or one in 10,000

• 58:54Chris Williamson?

  chance of ending civilization over the next century. AGI is one in 10. Natural pandemics are one in 30, engineered pandemics are one in six. So you have these things that are orders of magnitude.

• 59:09James Smith?

  Mount Vesuvius is worrying me more.

• 59:11Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Well, actually, the supervolcano thing is not too bad, apparently, according to him. He's done the numbers. There's like some stuff in there that's like one in 20 billion. I'm like, that's the cool one. Like, that's the one, that's the one that we want. If I want to go out, I want to go out in a supernova. But, um, yeah, just, I've been singing this song for ages. Climate change is not an existential risk priority.

• 59:29James Smith?

  But now we're going to get labeled climate change deniers.

• 59:31Chris Williamson?

  No, I'm not saying that climate change doesn't exist. I'm saying it's not an existential risk priority. I'm saying that there are things that are more important than that that we need to get on with. And there are ways to fix the climate that are much more and improve the quality of life that are much more important than what we're working on at the moment.

• 59:46James Smith?

  And you know, that boils around to actually the very principles that, because me and you are very different people, but we share very similar values. And a lot of our values are actually, because people are going to go, why are these guys on a tangent, talking about all these abstract things. But the reality is that when you come back to it, where we say that people have more things that they need to be worried about, it actually ties into the very things in which we are telling people to become more mindful of, which is effort, ambition, relationships to failure, and the reality of the situation, not the reality of the information they're fed to it. Like, one of the main parts of my last book was saying to people, the way you see the world is dictated by the information you are fed about it, not the actual situation. I joke about the lottery tickets. Whenever anyone wins the lottery,

• 1:00:29James Smith?

  come on, Trevor, come up here, get up here, come on, fucking hell, mate, hurry up. We're going to give you a cheque so big, the bank doesn't even accept those cheques. The cheque is only printed to that massive bit of cardboard to skew other people's reality. The bigger cheque, it must be more important. Zach, your housemate, actually was showing me a weightlifter. I think he clean and jerked like 210 kg, and they brought him out a massive cheque for $250. And he's like, mate, that cheque must have cost a hundred dollars to make. So like, when we see these little tricks that are played by people to paint the reality of the world around them, such as the big cheque, to make people feel like they're actually going to win the lottery, we need to realise that even just a few friends in your, in your social circle who are pessimists

• 1:01:11James Smith?

  or doubters or whatever, that does influence your, your reality to how you see the world. I mean, you've probably experienced this a lot since moving to Austin, right? So Newcastle, even if you were to go see your friends at the pub, whatever, they're, they're not on the same wavelength as to the level in the place you're at.

• 1:01:29Chris Williamson?

  It's very hard to have that conversation. I've tried to bring this up on stage. And again, that rocket ship analogy, which I've developed whilst being on stage, which has been really cool, to actually have ideas come to you while you're in front of 500 people, which is also scary because you go, wow, I'm treading new ground now. This might be total dog shit. But it ended up being okay. But it's hard to have that conversation without, it's sounding like you're making a value judgment around certain people being better or more worthy or something than other people. And I don't think that that's what you're saying. And certainly not what I've been saying on the live tour. But trying to find people who match your personal growth velocity is really hard. If you're a rocket ship that's taking off at 10,000 metres per second and someone else is moving at 100 metres per second, there's only a small while before you're very far away from them and It's hard to have conversations about things because the things that you're struggling

• 1:02:13Chris Williamson?

  with are different to the things that they're struggling with. And the dreams and the goals that you have have now outgrown the dreams and the goals that they have. That's not to say that they can't even catch you up and then maybe overtake you in future. They very well may do, but it's going to be tough for you to find common ground unless that person's very open and honest, unless you are too, in order to be able to do that. But you always want to try and find people that are ahead of you because they're the ones that are going to bring you along. It's like, show me, what is it? Show me your friend group, I'll show you your future. And I found this earlier on, it's so funny. I read literally as I was in the car on the way here. Are we ruled by midwits? This new blog post, it's brilliant. The people in charge are more stupid than you, basically. And this is from Machiavelli, one of his books. The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.

• 1:03:00Chris Williamson?

  If we look at the men and women around our contemporary rulers, what do we find? Few reasons for optimism, I'm afraid. In 2011, the Royal Statistical Society asked 97 British MPs a simple maths question. If you spin a coin twice, what is the probability of getting two heads? Since the chance of getting a heads on one spin is 50% and two spins are independent, the answer is just 50% times 50%, 25%. Not exactly quantum physics. Shockingly, only 40% of MPs got the answer right. Among Labour MPs, it was only 23%. Most of those who got the answer wrong said 50%, which is obviously incorrect when you think about it. So it just reminds us, the people who are in charge are more stupid than you are and the bar is set unbelievably low.

• 1:03:41James Smith?

  Yeah, I always thought this at school.

• 1:03:45James Smith?

  You know, I remember, I had to go to a religious school. Do you have that?

• 1:03:50Chris Williamson?

  I had to do religious education a little bit, but my thing specialized in technology. So.

• 1:03:56James Smith?

  Mate, I remember like taking the piss a little bit. We'd be in Ari, as we call it in England, religious education. And you'd be learning like, you know, feeding the 5,000, like fish, the fish, the bread, the wine, everything.

• 1:04:07Chris Williamson?

  The fish, that fish story.

• 1:04:08James Smith?

  What was it, the feeding of the 5,000? It was the fish, I believe, there's fish in there. I was always like, wait, I just come from physics, this is bullshit. Be quiet in the back. But yeah, like, I was joking about school. It is like that. I think that a lot of the times, especially working in the corporate world, you know, it was politics, who was arse licking, like so many people. So imagine this, when I worked in the sales department, this is how mundane the corporate world is. So did you ever work in an office that I have to wear a suit and tie?

• 1:04:36Chris Williamson?

  Yes, I didn't have to wear a suit and tie, but I did outbound telesales for the AA in a call centre for six months.

• 1:04:43James Smith?

  Yeah, so this is, this is where the mundane comes in. I worked for the inside sales department of a multi-factor authentication security company. And in essence, I had to look at the inbound leads coming into the business and call them up to quantify them. And this company messaged me and they go, we're taking you out for steak and beers. And I was like, lads, wrong person. I'm like, really junior role. They're like, no, come up, steak and beers. So I met them and they said, basically, if you come across any big opportunities, it's your role to pass it to one of 10 companies. We want them all. And I was like, okay. And he goes, in return, we're going to give you big opportunities that we're going to close anyway, but we're going to put your name on it before it comes through. So I was a bit like, okay, let's give this a go. And I remember at work one day, someone came, the whole team come around

• 1:05:27James Smith?

  me and give me an iPad. They're like, James, 300,000 user deal. That's incredible. You know, can't believe you had this phone call. I don't remember. It was the other company that put it through for me. And I was now in a position to go for a promotion, literally from backhanding deals to the same company that I shouldn't have. Then when I looked around, everyone around me, they were all, they were all dodgy. They were all sitting on their hands. They were all like, not really making the calls. They weren't really like working hard at all. And I was like, this is it the whole way up. This is it. Literally like the people that were in the top roles, no offence to the people there. I was like, this is merely just politics between you. And it, it is, what do you call it? Idiots the whole way up?

• 1:06:02Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:03James Smith?

  And that's not us being there. These guys are stupid. But everyone's just kind of pretending that they know what they're doing.

• 1:06:08Chris Williamson?

  It's reassuring. The, what that has reminded me of is the fact that it's reassuring, that you get pretty much no matter how high you go, no one really has that much of an idea about what they're doing. Everyone is working it out as they go along, especially if you're doing something for the first time, or if you're in a relatively sort of pioneering or new novel industry, podcasting, it's been around for 15 years. There are no rules. There are no rules in podcasting, there are no rules in content creation. People are breaking rules. Sam Sulek, breaking the rules all the time. Unedited, no title and thumbnail fuckery, like outwardly boring titles and like relatively unexciting thumbnails, absolutely destroying the platform.

• 1:06:52James Smith?

  Kill Tony.

• 1:06:53Chris Williamson?

  Kill Tony.

• 1:06:54James Smith?

  Where four people are just gonna get blasted.

• 1:06:56Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:56James Smith?

  Keep a load of comedians in another way.

• 1:06:58Chris Williamson?

  Let's find, let's find the worst comedians that we can and bring them up. Like, so it's, there's elements of it that are existing and work, but there's also new stuff in there that doesn't. So yeah, I am reminding yourself and reminding everybody that it is, there are no experts in, there are very few experts in a bunch of industries.

• 1:07:17James Smith?

  Man, I have days where I do the stupidest stuff. I, I went to a gym the other day, I went to get on a leg extension, it was a hamstring curl. I've been a PT 12 years, right? I get on that and I'm like, that was embarrassing, had to go, I had to do a set to play it off, you know, just play it off.

• 1:07:32Chris Williamson?

  I meant to do hamstring curls.

• 1:07:32James Smith?

  But like, I think it's so good that the, if people can show vulnerability at every level. Like even, even the people in the smartest positions make the dumbest mistakes. I think that it's, it's a lot easier, the higher you climb in life to seem almost un, you know, like perfect.

• 1:07:52Chris Williamson?

  Untouchable.

• 1:07:53James Smith?

  Untouchable, unfathomable, like all of this stuff. But really, I think it's such a powerful point to say to people, like, everyone has the same insecurities, same worries.

• 1:08:00Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, well, I think it's one of the reasons why celebrities, especially celebrities that are kind of in the independent media space, they're sufficiently touchable because you remember when they came up and you know that they're a person, you know that they've got a life and you know that they, they have a dog that they need to walk or a wife that they have to go back to or whatever. Like, what does Brad Pitt do with his day? I don't know, he's actual untouchable stuff. No one's, first off, he's not saying things presumably because he's got a million media people around him going like, don't fuck this up, don't fuck this up, don't fuck this up. There's a whole army of people that require you to not comment on the Ukraine so that everyone can keep getting paid. Whereas for someone like a Peterson, there are fewer filters between him and his fingertips or his mouth.

• 1:08:43Chris Williamson?

  But also, he's in this very strange and interesting position. Rogan's the same, pretty much everybody in independent media, YouTube, podcasting world is the same. They feel just enough reachable for people to be able to say things because they want them to see it, but.

• 1:09:00Chris Williamson?

  Because of the size, and I don't know where it is, I think it's probably about around about sort of five million where this really starts to kick in in terms of follower count. People get to a size where the audience doesn't see them as human anymore. They're not a person. They're a conglomeration of ideas, like a collection of ideologies represented by a person that is manifest as an account. And you say things to them that you wouldn't ever say to an actual person. And this isn't just people say stuff online they wouldn't say to your face. This is people say stuff to big accounts that they wouldn't dare say to small accounts. Because there is something, maybe it's like a

• 1:09:42James Smith?

  He'll never look at this.

• 1:09:42Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, he'll never see it. He's got enough money that he can get away with it. It doesn't matter, whatever. Like, that just seems to happen. And the bigger, the bigger that someone's platform grows, the more virulent and mean and cutting the criticism is. And I think that that's, that's just like a dynamic that I've observed where people are prepared to say really fucking heinous things about people when they're a large account that they wouldn't be prepared to say them, say about them when they're a small account.

• 1:10:11James Smith?

  Was it Jordan Peterson that was saying like 4% of the population maybe are sociopaths? And that 1% of that are psychopaths? So like, when, when you look at even someone that just has 300 followers, right? At least two or three of them are probably not, not quite all there. And then you think about malevolence, autonomy, fake account. Then you think about people that maybe get, I can't remember the complex words, like a little sadist, people that like to see other people upset, like all of these things. So then when you, when you break it down into the numbers, even a very small account or a small podcast with only maybe even a few thousand downloads or whatever, you're still now trickling over the territory for coming across someone who is just an evil.

• 1:10:57Chris Williamson?

  That law of very large numbers thing. When we were in New York on Saturday for SantaCon, eight Million to one odds things happened, eight of them. Million to one odds things happened eight times on average in New York. If you have a sufficiently big data set, sufficiently big sample of people, really crazy outlier events start to happen pretty regularly. And it's the same thing. You have enough people that vote, that have access to Twitter, that know who Elon Musk is, that know that this particular pop star is coming to their town. Think about, dude, I think about this, I think about Taylor Swift more than I should like admit, given that I didn't think about her at all until like three months ago. Think about the security concerns that someone like Taylor Swift has, right?

• 1:11:42Chris Williamson?

  I would guess it's on par with a president where there's so many people and they're so motivated, such a huge bucket of people, and they're so motivated to try and get something out of her. And you filter that down, it's 1% of the world are psychopaths and of those, 1%, let's say 1% of them are people that are motivated and 1% of them are motivated around Taylor Swift.

• 1:12:03James Smith?

  She's got an army of people.

• 1:12:04Chris Williamson?

  Even after you filtered it down from 1% of 1% of 1% of 1%, you're like, that's still like 2,000 people.

• 1:12:11James Smith?

  That can't go, can't go within a mile of her.

• 1:12:13Chris Williamson?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 1:12:14James Smith?

  Do you know what's wild as well, right? So let's say you've got one and a half million on YouTube, you've got 1.2 million on Insta, which is, which is a lot, but then in the population of the world, it's not massive when you've got listeners worldwide. I still can't fully get to grips with the facts that people will say, stop you in New York. Hey mate, love your stuff. Chicago, hey mate, love your stuff. Even today in Austin, Chris and I have this thing where when we're out and about, not in a like a narcissistic way, it's just banter, like if you get stopped and recognized, we're flipping immigration, getting over the US border, I'm like shitting myself a bit because the US border is just a nerve wracking place. 1-0. And I'm like, fuck. But the other person has to be present for it.

• 1:12:55James Smith?

  But earlier on, I was in that Sun Life Organics paying £25 for fucking two smoothies. And this guy's like, love your stuff. And my first reaction was, oh, I wish Chris was here. I was like, for fuck's sake. That was like a.

• 1:13:08Chris Williamson?

  It's a waste.

• 1:13:09James Smith?

  If you spread a million people across the world, it's not a lot of people. How the fuck are we bumping into them every day?

• 1:13:14Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I suppose not everyone's hit subscribe. We're inhabiting places that have people like the people that follow our stuff, which is like one of those. But yeah, the on-street stuff's wild. Like Zach goes to Rogue Invitation, which is-

• 1:13:28James Smith?

  But you know why he goes to them? Because he gets recognised.

• 1:13:30Chris Williamson?

  Of course, of course.

• 1:13:31James Smith?

  Because he's in that Olympic lifting scene. I don't think he likes CrossFit. I think he just likes getting selfies. Because he took me to one of them and he got stopped every corner. I was like, I'm right here, guys.

• 1:13:38Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that was Rogue when you went. One of the things I've been interested in discussing with you is what success looks like to you now. Because you've done a lot of the things objectively. Sold out Sydney Opera House, like 2,000 people. Sold out London Apollo, three and a half thousand people. Three-time bestselling author, all the rest of the things. But still, like, I've spent four weeks with you, unless you're an unbelievably good liar, still like a very normal bloke. What do you, what's your conception of success? Or what have you learned about success, given that you've achieved a level that most people would consider to be pretty high?

• 1:14:13James Smith?

  One thing this year is that I've actually allowed myself to be proud of some of the things I've done. And it was only through, I've got people that followed me for, say, five, six years, and they've said, you've done everything you said you were gonna do. I, for five years, have said, I want to get my residency, I want to find a nice girl and settle down, I want to get a dog and move by the beach. And I literally just went, dun, dun, dun. I did it all in one year. Because I only got my residency last August. So then, there was a time when I completed all of that. And then, I wasn't like, now what? I was actually like, okay, now let's keep this up. Now let's, you know, whatever I've pretended to be to this point, we now need to continue this. So, success for me very much is just about doing the day on my terms. So, I love making content, love waking up, love helping my clients, all of that stuff.

• 1:14:58James Smith?

  And then I just need something to challenge me a bit. So, starting a new book. As long as I can get into something, and like, get my hands dirty with it, that's fine. As far as like- Financial status, recognition, all of those things. I don't know if I really think about it too much, but whatever I, every video I do, I want to be amazing. And then when it doesn't, I'm like, okay, cool. Let's try again. With the book, I have a little bit more time to do it. But really, I've actually built my life to the point that uh the foundations are now really set in stone. I can't even relocate anymore because I have a dog. Right? People think getting a dog is a little thing. Hopefully Kelpie lives 15 years. So I've now, you know, dug my roots into the ground there. But really, as long as everything I do, I do to my best.

• 1:15:43James Smith?

  I'm becoming more process orientated than outcome orientated, which is how I got here in the first place. So success to me isn't about outcome, it's about process.

• 1:15:51Chris Williamson?

  I mean, I said this, I think I answered a question on your behalf at one of the Q and As where

• 1:15:58Chris Williamson?

  something that I've always been very admirable, I've held in high admiration around you is your ability to turn things into a game. Like the follower count was just a game, that piece of content was just a game, that writing a book was just a game. And it's a game that you hope to win, but it's not the end of the world if you lose. Or if you just have like an average performance. And it's not a comment on your self-worth as a human. It doesn't make you more or less of a person. If something does go well or does go badly, it's just information.

• 1:16:29James Smith?

  I think you, it's really important to unassociate from things as being as real as. So for instance, you look at your podcast. I think that every interaction, every conversation you have, of course, it's a great interaction, conversation, but it's also a three hour stint in the game. And if you see it like a game, you can see the amount of listeners, downloads, shares, whatever, as a score of that game, not the reality, because there's no way in hell you and I can sit here and think about a stadium of people sat there watching us do this conversation, right? Say we get a hundred thousand views on this video. Imagine sitting in, that's like one of the biggest stadiums in America. 100,000 people there, we would be a little bit more on edge if that was the reality of it. And I think when it comes to financial, when it comes to physical, when it comes to the outcome of your processes, if it's too real,

• 1:17:13James Smith?

  it can become overwhelming very quickly. And overwhelm is a real killer to anything that you're trying to do. And I think that breaking things down and making them a game, making them high scores is one of the best ways that I can emotionally unattach from things.

• 1:17:27Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:28James Smith?

  Because I don't.

• 1:17:28Chris Williamson?

  You don't want to do that too much, right? Like, you know, we, we did, what was the most people we did? I think we did like eight hundred people to a thousand people in Dubai. And that's a lot of people. The room was so big that it kind of didn't matter because you can see the first three rows. And then every, everything else just feels like it's just three rows and then noise. And there's part of me that thinks in order to be able to not shit myself, I have a panic attack before I go out on stage, treating it like a game and reminding myself that if you can do forty people in Austin, you can do a thousand people in Dubai.

• 1:17:57James Smith?

  All wins feel the same.

• 1:17:58Chris Williamson?

  But all wins feel the same, but you also want to be able to take in this experience. I always use this example of Conor McGregor. He got two cracks at the featherweight championship because he fought Chad Mendes as a step in and he got the interim belt. And then he did Aldo in thirteen seconds. And someone asked him, this press dude at an interview asked, what are you going to do differently this time that you didn't do last time? When he's about to fight Aldo and he says, I'm going to take it all in because he was so preoccupied and fearful

• 1:18:38Chris Williamson?

  and in the zone and doing the things that facilitated his performance. That he didn't actually get to experience what he was going through. And there's this great photo of him stood on stage at the ceremonial weigh in, or it might have even been before the ceremonial weigh ins. It might have been the actual one. And he's got that tattoo running up his back and it's just him with his hands out like this. And it's like forty thousand people in front of them, just everyone stood up and it's electric, right? It's Conor McGregor, peak savant artist of war, just stood there with his hands out. And he wasn't there for it. His mind wasn't there as he was experiencing one of the most profound moments of his entire life. But he got a second crack.

• 1:19:18James Smith?

  You know, a lot of people have got a lot of bad things to say about Conor McGregor, a lot to do because of the fact he's successful. If you watch his documentary, which again, they didn't show the full side of who Conor McGregor is, but his belief in himself is incredible. Like, and there's that point where he's like really early on and he's like, you know, I want my mom to have a mansion. I want my kids and their kids to do well. And he's cause he's like, I'm like Vincent Van Gogh, you know, I'm losing my mind.

• 1:19:47Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 1:19:47James Smith?

  And like, it's actually quite inspiring to see someone with such an unfathomable belief in their outcome. But going back to the point of like, I, for me, when you do Hammersmith Apollo, which you will one day, three and a half thousand people, it's black. Everything in front of you is just dark. You can hear them, you can feel them, but you can't see them. And Darren says this to me, he goes, he noticed this quite early on. He goes, you don't look at anyone. He goes, you'll go out there and talk for an hour and a half. You don't look at one single person. I go, no, I don't. I can't. Because if I look at them, they become real. So I have to try so hard because it is a really weird thing to do. You know, I was personal training for four years, just eight, seven people a day, eight to 10 people a day, eight to 10 people a day.

• 1:20:30James Smith?

  If I get caught up in the reality of it being what it is, not, you know, I imagine trying to think about three and a half thousand people having to buy the tickets, wait for the date, get in their cars, travel, park in parking. Some of them got hotels. Like, this is the hardest thing for me, right? Say someone pays for a hotel or flies somewhere. We had people come from Alaska to our event. If I take that into my mind and actually appreciate that someone drove six hours to come see me, it makes me very uncomfortable. I don't even like presents for Christmas. I don't like compliments. I've become very weird with any praise, to the point, I'm like, oh, thanks. And they're like, you didn't even, you didn't even accept that as whatever. So if I actually think, oh my God, someone's just come six hours, I want to have a panic attack and tell them, why did you do it?

• 1:21:14James Smith?

  Um, we joked to this, everyone met in the Q and A, they would, oh, driven four hours for this. I went, I wouldn't drive four hours for this. So for me, I, I, I like it being darkness. Sometimes I like not taking it in. I like not appreciating until it's over, where I can sit in the green room afterwards and someone goes, that was good. And I can then relax.

• 1:21:37James Smith?

  Otherwise.

• 1:21:37Chris Williamson?

  Are you concerned about, and you know, not everyone is going to try and do a tour of speaking, but many people are achieving goals and fearful of.

• 1:21:50Chris Williamson?

  Realizing the magnitude or the size of the challenge that's in front of them, or dampening down their ambition by taking in that gratitude. Did we not say at the beginning of this that you need to celebrate your wins?

• 1:22:00James Smith?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:22:00Chris Williamson?

  As much as possible.

• 1:22:01James Smith?

  Biggest hypocrite ever. And come to think of it, you know, I've been thinking about this. I think it's that I would rather they had a good evening than I had a good evening. I think that's the reality. So when I come back and someone's like, oh, you didn't even, you didn't even appreciate that you just spoke to a thousand people. I go, um.

• 1:22:16Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, but they had a good time.

• 1:22:16James Smith?

  They had a good time. Yeah. And then people go, oh, you just did Hamish Smith. But I'm too preoccupied about someone else having a good evening. Then.

• 1:22:23Chris Williamson?

  I wonder how much of that comes out of fear. Again, dude, we've said this a lot on the.

• 1:22:27James Smith?

  Massively to do with fear because imagine, imagine the bitter disappointment that you would. I went, I walked out of a film the other day. There, there's such a bitter taste in your mouth when you get in your car.

• 1:22:40Chris Williamson?

  Not good.

• 1:22:41James Smith?

  And you didn't enjoy the film, didn't enjoy the show or like, but it's even worse when you had faith in the person. Whether it was your favorite director or your favorite actor, but it's different because it's your show. Right? And there, there's a part of you inside that you know, if you let them down, the, there's no coming back from that. I don't think there's any.

• 1:23:03Chris Williamson?

  A member of the audience that you've lost forever.

• 1:23:05James Smith?

  Because I know how much this matters to you from how much you've improved over the last few weeks. Like it's night and day.

• 1:23:10Chris Williamson?

  Crazy.

• 1:23:10James Smith?

  If you think from IFS to the, the last event.

• 1:23:13Chris Williamson?

  Wild.

• 1:23:13James Smith?

  Like your mic didn't work the other night and you handled it so well. I was behind stage, I was, I was nodding, I was like, skip this. I was like, I'm glad his mic didn't work.

• 1:23:22Chris Williamson?

  It was better.

• 1:23:23James Smith?

  Because I get to see his, uh, you know, the, almost that slight bit of being vulnerable, but then you were funny. And then you were bantering with the guy, the guy shitting himself, trying to put the mic back on. You're like, you put your like Douglas Murray voice, yeah, take it off. So, uh, yeah, I think, I think that is important, but.

• 1:23:41Chris Williamson?

  That's, I mean, that's definitely something that I've considered and, and a lot, a lot of people that maybe watch guys on stage or girls on stage that are even remotely competent. Just look at them like, oh my God, that must be so terrifying to do. But I've done, I've run the live show that we did 20 times, let's say, in the last three months. I did work in progress shows in the, in Austin, I did my tour, I did our tour and then we did IFS. The skill acquisition, if you just bury yourself in living and breathing one thing, and it's high pressure and you've done an adequate amount of prep with a little bit of like existing skill set, is outrageous. Like how quickly you can pick something up. And again, it goes back to

• 1:24:26Chris Williamson?

  that. People being open about how hard they work is good, I think, because it makes what seem to be incredible achievements seem much more in reach, right? I'd never done public speaking solo four months ago, and then managed to deal with a mic stopping in a sold out show in Vancouver for five minutes while some guy fiddled around in the back pocket of my pants for like forever. And it's just, it's really good. It's been, it's been very reassuring, been very centering for me to kind of go through that.

• 1:25:03James Smith?

  Have you heard of the inverted U hypothesis for sports performance and arousal? And I know some people say sport performance psychology is bullshit. It goes, whatever. So there is like, so if you imagine a U turned upside down, there's a certain level of arousal, not sexual arousal, but arousal, you need to be at optimal performance. Everyone sits slightly differently on this, more like a hill for anyone that's trying to think of inverted U. If you're under aroused, let's say I'm like, hey mate, you're going to be doing a crossbar challenge in a field in the middle of nowhere in Doncaster on a rainy day, you probably just can't bothered, right? But then if I get a hundred thousand people in the stadium, you're probably not going to be even, you're going to be so worried about kicking the ball right. However, if you were at your mate's Sunday league match and there's 30 people watching, that could be the right amount of arousal.

• 1:25:48James Smith?

  And over time, you can increase that amount of arousal to the point of whatever that you do it right. So some people, if we went to do an event, there's only 14 people in the crowd, you'd probably stumble more than if there was, you know, 800, because you're not under aroused. There's not a big enough crowd. But there's no way to train yourself because when arousal is too high, you become stressed. And when you become stressed, you can't think, you can't be clear, whatever. But only by getting in the hot water of doing events can you reduce your arousal response to the situation. It's like, uh, what were you calling it when we're on the road, like a resilience training?

• 1:26:20Chris Williamson?

  Everything's resilience training.

• 1:26:21James Smith?

  But there's no way you can replicate the stage without the stage. There's no way you can replicate a podcast without the podcast. There's no way you can replicate talking to camera without looking at the camera. For so many people, they need to realise the only way they're going to become more comfortable in situations being in that situation.

• 1:26:36Chris Williamson?

  Do the thing.

• 1:26:37James Smith?

  Yeah, same as, you know, ice baths, whatever it is. Like, everyone is so caught up about how they'll be, how they'll perform doing that thing that they don't get into it and get better at that. And there is nothing better for stage time than stage time. There's nothing better for chin ups than chin ups. There is nothing better to prepare for an ice bath than doing an ice bath.

• 1:26:57Chris Williamson?

  What's the future of the fitness industry got in store in your opinion? Because you've been in it for, like,

• 1:27:02James Smith?

  Too long.

• 1:27:03Chris Williamson?

  Publicly, yeah, way too long, but you're like an old hand at this stuff now. And I think what's been interesting since getting to spend time with you and spend time with Luke as well is to kind of hear the origin story of where you came from, which was this no nonsense online P T being a little bit like cussing and swearing and calling people out and making enemies. Kind of being, being a mercenary hitman for ideas in fitness that everyone maybe thought was a bit bullshit. And then saying what everyone quietly was saying internally with a few more swear words in there. But it seems like that degree of scrutiny is now quite widespread.

• 1:27:45Chris Williamson?

  There's lots of people following in your wake, having done that. Where are we at now? Have you got kind of a conception of where the world of fitness is at the moment?

• 1:27:56James Smith?

  It's a bit of a mess. Uh, social media has changed what fitness is. And actually, Zach, your housemate made a good point on this last night where. Fitness is more about a popularity contest. It's more about parading your arse in a pair of leggings, showing someone a workout. It's more about gaming the algorithm than it is about giving advice. You think 90% of fitness content isn't even someone talking to you, where the 100% of personal training industry is someone coaching. Coaching someone is spending time with them and addressing them with their problems. That's not what fitness is now. You know, oh, walk on a treadmill at this height for this long and you're burned belly fat. You know, like, there's more bullshit than ever because that person just wanted their reel to go viral. People just want status, they don't want to help people. So much of like the persona of my brand has come from real conversations I had.

• 1:28:41James Smith?

  I trained this lady once, she was a dog walker and I've been about out there in content, I've been trying some things and she sat down and she goes, you swear a lot, we're gonna get on. And I was like, she was like, I, she was like, didn't say, I think you're a good coach, doesn't say you got good advice. She goes, you swear a lot, I think we're gonna get on. So I said to her, give me a fucking honest food log or I'll never work with you. And she gave me the most honest food log I've ever seen and I was like, wow, that's a lot of food. She goes, she looks at me, she goes, that's why I'm fat, James.

• 1:29:09James Smith?

  The way we got on was amazing and I was like, the only way I can replicate that is to be the guy she wanted to sit opposite from. And even in the gym, there's a PT called Chris, people go, oh, what's he like? I go, he's a bellend. And people are like, that's not a nice way to talk about a trainer. I was like, I don't care, he's a bellend. And then I was like, his clients love him, my clients are hope like me. I don't need his clients to like me because they're with him. So like all of these like approaches that I've had on social media are the exact same ones that I've had on the gym floor. And yeah, the industry now, there's a lot of people trying to copy each other. Mate, there's, there's a community now, probably some of the top 10 creators in the fitness industry. The second one of them does something good.

• 1:29:50James Smith?

  So if I get one viral video, say about Coke Zero and whatever's in it, the next three days, they all do it. So now as banter, I'm doing what they do. Just to, so there's like this little thing in the industry and then, mate, it's getting a little bit frustrating at times because everyone's just copying each other. It's like an incestuous pit of lack of ideas due to saturation. So that does make it some days you wake up, but the crazy thing is like. You just have to go back to helping people with their problems. So like, instead of trying to make viral videos, I just think what someone's struggling with today. But um, people aren't necessarily getting in better shape. And the worrying thing, we actually said this last night, a lot of people can't

• 1:30:31James Smith?

  afford PTing. A lot of people can barely afford their mortgage. So they don't want fitness advice. They don't want to talk about the gym membership. They just had to cancel so they can keep their heating on this winter. You know, the holiday, they can't go on. They used to get in shape for. So suddenly, the state, a lot of people's lives have got worse to the point they're now becoming disenfranchised with fitness. Fitness is becoming, you know, a privilege to a lot of people. Oh, it's okay for you. You can afford to go on holiday. I can't afford the mortgage. It's okay for you. You can afford to go to the gym. It's okay for you. You can afford to do a 12 week challenge. And so I think whereas coming out of the pandemic, so many people were low interest rates, you know, money was cheap, all of these things. I feel like we're in this real rut now where a lot of people don't care. And similar

• 1:31:15James Smith?

  to the inner citadel, if I can't afford online personal training, personal trainers are bad. They're wankers. Therefore, there is no need for them. You should do it yourself. Or so, yes, there's a lot of negativity online at the moment. I just try and empathize with it where I say, okay, for someone to be feeling this way, they must be having a pretty, they must be having a pretty tough time at the moment.

• 1:31:37Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that's a really nice reframe. That's a beautiful reframe around things. I remember Aaron, one of my friends that I play pickleball with, he's Aaron Rodgers, chief of like creative, chief of performance now, which given that he snapped an Achilles, it's probably not that fun. We were playing pickleball at the courts next to mine and we had a speaker on, just listening to some of his like weird tribal fucking dubstep stuff. There's a lady over the far side with a dog who starts shouting about the fact that this is a park. This is a park and it's supposed to be quiet. The fact that she's shouting, obviously, kind of made it a little bit funny. And I would have gone over, me, people pleaser, would have gone over and just turned the music down. Aaron

• 1:32:19Chris Williamson?

  went over and turned the music up and started shouting that he couldn't hear her. But my, I went after that, given the fact that he'd done something that ostensibly was more rude, right, to this lady that was shouting from a hundred yards away, but the fact that it should have been peaceful. When we finished up, I was more vicious about her. I was like, that fucking bitch, like, you know, like, what does she think she's doing? Like, what an idiot, blah, blah, blah. His first place to go to was

• 1:32:46Chris Williamson?

  Imagine how bad her life must be that she feels the need to kick off about two people playing a sport and listening to music at quite a quiet volume that you can barely hear from 50 yards away or 100 yards away. And that's, that's something, I don't know, getting over like bitterness or resentment or like being cutting or mean in response to things is a, that's pretty noble like approach.

• 1:33:10James Smith?

  Man, I was flying back from Dubai in maybe, maybe 2016 and the lady next to me was a big lady, but it was okay. She had her seat, I had my seat, but she couldn't get a tray down for her food. So she had to ask if it was okay to use my tray to eat her food. And I said, yes, completely fine. Whatever. She did it. And as I was going to the toilet, the air hostess said to me like, I'm sorry about that. And I remember saying to her, I was like, if you think that was uncomfortable for me, imagine how uncomfortable that was for her.

• 1:33:38Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:33:39James Smith?

  And she was like, oh, she, she hadn't really clocked it for a second. And I was like, that's one thing I've really been trying for a long time. And I actually, even if someone's super negative on a comment now, sometimes I go, hey, bro, you must be in, you must be on a tough day. I hope you'd say to someone in the comments, I hope your situation improves.

• 1:33:54Chris Williamson?

  Zach replies to those ones with get well soon.

• 1:33:58James Smith?

  Or do you know?

• 1:33:59Chris Williamson?

  Get well soon.

• 1:34:00James Smith?

  You know, some people like, uh, this is, so there are people like, oh, that's really nice, James. And there's the other side of me that if you abuse people in the comments, they can report it or get it deleted or whatever. But I've come to find that, you know, you can, you can just say to someone like, um, yeah, I hope, I hope you get well soon. There's no way they can report that. That's not abusive, nothing like that. Oh, I hope your childhood trauma resolves itself soon. I hope you regain your relationship with your parents.

• 1:34:24Chris Williamson?

  It's true, the people that are so motivated to say super mean things on the internet, it's an indicator that there's a lot of things that aren't going right in their life outside of that. If someone's life is obsessed with politics or obsessed with drama or obsessed with culture wars or obsessed with whatever, you are compensating for not having any control somewhere else in your life. And the first sense that you should feel. After you get rid of the indignation and the sort of mocking sense of superiority, should be empathy. It's like, oh my God, imagine how bad your life must be if you're focused on this.

• 1:34:59James Smith?

  You know, in like 2014, I emailed Joe Wicks and I said to him, like, I was gunning him a lot online. But again, his fans loved him. And at the time, I said, I sent him an email and I said, you never get put down by people above you in life. I just rest him assured of that. I said to him, hey, mate, I've got 13,000 followers. You know, I need this, you know, like, it's like, you know, like when rappers go head to head.

• 1:35:21Chris Williamson?

  They need beef.

• 1:35:22James Smith?

  They need beef. So I just let him know early on. I'm pretty sure he responded as well. I was like, look, mate, and I don't think he cares. He's in his millions of pounds house. He's got all of this stuff. And like, the same goes that, yeah, you, you never get criticism from people above you. And I think that speaks volumes. I've, I've messages to so many creators who are getting, getting shit, or they're trying to explain themselves online, or they're trying to get cancelled. You never get shit on from above, a bit like the layer cake. So like, um, I think that's just a good realisation for a lot of people that when they're getting criticism or like when people are really going in on them, it's very rarely from people above them.

• 1:35:57Chris Williamson?

  You made a series of enemies during your ascendancy, Joe Wicks, keto, veganism. Body, you had a crack at bodybuilding for a while.

• 1:36:08James Smith?

  Well, do you know why? Because bodybuilders don't use my services. So but no bodybuilder, no competitive bodybuilder needs.

• 1:36:14Chris Williamson?

  Coming to you.

• 1:36:15James Smith?

  Yeah. No competitive bodybuilder is going to buy my book. No competitive bodybuilder is going to respect me as a coach because they're probably in better shape than me. They're probably almost test than me. So if you're ever going to go after someone, go after someone who is never, ever going to benefit your life.

• 1:36:29Chris Williamson?

  Would you advise it as a growth strategy now?

• 1:36:32James Smith?

  Yeah, it's good because would you, you know, I'm not alienating them for who they are. I'm mainly alienating their values that don't correlate with the values of the people that I'm trying to help. Because the biggest mistake people make in fitness advice is realising that they are not their client. So I said, there's so many PTs, you're not your client. You know, your client doesn't want to eat chicken broccoli, your client doesn't want a six pack. They've told you they want a six pack because they're telling you what they think they want you to hear. My clients will come to me, I want a six pack, I'm like, no, no, tell them what you want. Okay, cool. So you want to fit in the dress that you fit in three years ago? That's very different to a six pack, especially for a woman. You know, then guys are like, oh, I want big pecs. And I'm like, send me a picture of yourself topless. And I'm like, whoa, let's lose, let's lose thirty pounds. Let's get you running a five K without killing yourself.

• 1:37:15James Smith?

  Then let's talk about pecs, you know, like so many people communicate in the wrong ways. So bodybuilders are like, okay, fasted cardio. Half an hour in the morning, I'm like, bro, that's great for bodybuilders. Who are already on the lowest amount of calories, they're already on the most amount of whatever, whatever. Even little things like the, the mentality of a bodybuilder is so different to the mentality of a normal person. So if I can pick holes at that, as far as a growth strategy, people then feel seen. So, you know, even in like the smartest marketing where you can drill in someone's problems. If you say to someone, hey, do you want to learn how to lose fat without doing thirty minutes of fasted cardio in the morning? Or whatever it is, you can communicate with the people you want whilst expressing a message to the, the chagrin. You said this word the other day, bodybuilders. Did I use that right?

• 1:37:57Chris Williamson?

  Chagrin.

• 1:37:58James Smith?

  Chagrin.

• 1:37:59Chris Williamson?

  Much to the chagrin, yes, yeah.

• 1:38:00James Smith?

  Chagrin, yeah.

• 1:38:02Chris Williamson?

  Chagrin.

• 1:38:03James Smith?

  So, uh, yeah, it's, it is a growth strategy because you need to alienate the things that people have wrong. And some people do want to look like bodybuilders, but the majority of my clients don't. And I don't offer extreme deficits, I don't offer fasted cardio, I don't offer getting people ready for show. And the, the main reason is the values thing because in every sport, on the day you compete, you should be physiologically and psychologically your best. However, when it's down to bodybuilding and physique, the day you compete, you are physiologically and psychologically your worst. That's a massive, I'm like, why are we epitomizing that as fitness when it's clearly not fitness?

• 1:38:40Chris Williamson?

  What do you think's the future of the fitness industry? What would you predict for the next five years or so? Any trends that you can see growing or falling away?

• 1:38:48James Smith?

  Have I got time to have a wee?

• 1:38:50Chris Williamson?

  Well, we're going to finish in five minutes.

• 1:38:52James Smith?

  Okay.

• 1:38:52Chris Williamson?

  Have you got enough? Have you got five minutes in you?

• 1:38:54James Smith?

  Yes.

• 1:38:55Chris Williamson?

  Are you sure? You've been holding it. I'm sorry. I know it hurts.

• 1:39:00James Smith?

  Future of the fitness industry.

• 1:39:06James Smith?

  I think the bodybuilding stuff is starting to dissipate a little bit, but we still have this massive wave of dishonesty and it is led unfortunately by a lot of brand deals. Now, you have brand deals with companies that you actually value. I know full well, like I see you having your AG one every day, having your L M N T like you're not, people are, oh, Chris likes AG one, I personally don't, but like, I actually see it's something that you cherish and use and you're very transparent with people with your blood work, I feel all this stuff, but if you're in the fitness industry, not the podcast industry, suddenly the ethical standpoint of, let's say testosterone, if you can go on test and not tell people that benefits your brand, it benefits your programs, it

• 1:39:50James Smith?

  benefits everything in that little ecosystem of monetary value. And so I would love for that dishonesty to dissipate. I feel like it's slightly kind of is, but then it also slightly kind of isn't. But I think that people are clinging up to the BS a bit more now.

• 1:40:05Chris Williamson?

  Evidence based stuff seems to be coming more to the forefront, like your Mike Israel tells of the world seem to be in a pretty big ascendancy right now.

• 1:40:15James Smith?

  But then there's a lot of ideological people where we've got people in people, if you go to a supermarket and pick something up off a shelf, that's your hook and it's a very effective hook because people are, oh, what's going on here? You know, what's going on here? Where's this going to super? So now any person in a supermarket chatting waffle, picking something off a shelf and going, this is shit. Suddenly people are like, oh, why? Why is it? You know, so we've got all of these people chatting waffling supermarkets, kale's bad for you, fasting's, you know, gonna stop you ever getting cancer, all of these things. And now people are just in this, there's a lot of ideological stuff and you know, veganism had its wave, carnivore is, is actually still alive because of Joe Rogan. And I said to you before, I wish it wasn't as good as it was when I was on it.

• 1:40:57James Smith?

  I felt great, a few explosive shits, but you know, ideology is still pretty rife and unfortunately, a lot of people in a bid to remain active on social media, to get views on social media, because views and interactions on social media is how people are obtaining the levels of self proclaimed status. Status is what all of us are trying to get drunk off. You know, the recognition of you having a standup comic come to a live show and say, you were great on stage, doesn't change your bank account, but it makes you feel fucking good because of the levels of status you've obtained from getting better at that thing. So many people now getting their first taste of status on TikTok, social media, whatever, and they're doing it through being extreme, that being ideological and by tapping into people's pre-existing beliefs that often aren't true.

• 1:41:41Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. We spoke about this while we were away. I never thought of this before, but TikTok is one of the most egalitarian platforms. Follow a account on TikTok means less than it does anywhere else. You put a great TikTok out and it just feeds the for you page and the algorithm sends it to the moon, which means I wonder whether more people will go viral over the next five years than ever have before through TikTok. Do you have the opportunity of not being a big creator, but you can do the right thing at the right time or even the wrong thing at the right time and it just explodes? And I wonder how many people that's going to dangle the carrot of fame and status in front of how many people are going to start chasing that thing? And I wonder what the second, third, fourth order effect of that will be.

• 1:42:22James Smith?

  Have you ever heard of Nicocado Avocado?

• 1:42:24Chris Williamson?

  Of course I have. Gwyneth Boghul's audience capture article about him is the best thing I've ever read.

• 1:42:30James Smith?

  Exactly. Like, that's almost where I see it. Like, not to have a go at the guy, but it was mukbang, right? People like to watch other people eat online. And then I haven't seen his blood work and I could be incredibly fat phobic here, but he's gone from relatively healthy looking.

• 1:42:45Chris Williamson?

  Skinny vegan violin player to someone that wears a CPAP.

• 1:42:49James Smith?

  CPAP, yeah. He's gotten to the front man of this, you know, probably endorsing CPAP. So like, watching someone literally send their health off the rails in a bid for views, he is like the canary in the mine of where I think social media is going to go. Like, whenever there's a fight, phones come out before people break it up. You know, you even see when something really bad happens, people's reaction is if I film this, it will go on TikTok. So that's the despair loop I see that goes with it, where people actually are more inclined to try and go viral from a situation than help. Let's say someone has a heart attack in the street. What's going to happen first, filming or helping? So I worry about that because if people just get thrills from engagement, that can create

• 1:43:32James Smith?

  quite a negative thing because negative news is typically what trends a lot faster than, you know, positive things. Although I do love a good story where someone like adopts a dog from Turkey and brings it home.

• 1:43:43Chris Williamson?

  Soldiers coming home from war to dogs, man. That's my, that's my fucking vibe. Look, James Smith, ladies and gentlemen, James, I really, it's been awesome, man. The last four weeks, I really appreciate your guidance and your encouragement since I've been going out on stage. Where should people go? What do they expect of you 2024? What's coming up?

• 1:43:59James Smith?

  I wish I could answer that more honestly myself, just gonna be trying to improve everything, you know, everything I do to try and get a bit better. White belt mentality, you're always a white belt in everything you do. So yeah, whether that's books, events, whatever, the drink, which we didn't even mention.

• 1:44:14Chris Williamson?

  Didn't even mention it.

• 1:44:15James Smith?

  Which I think is quite cool at the same time.

• 1:44:16Chris Williamson?

  Well, it's just part of our lives now, right? Like, we don't really think about it that much. Also, don't have any stock. So might be a part, might be, might be one of the contributing factors. Where do you want people to go? YouTube? James Smith?

• 1:44:28James Smith?

  Just type in James Smith, wherever you like to absorb content. And just before we finish, like this podcast, I first came on it, what, four years ago? You were doing it from your bedroom. You had some cool funky lighting to see how far this podcast has grown in the last few years. It's incredible. I, I wonder where it will be the next time we sit down and talk on it.

• 1:44:46Chris Williamson?

  Exciting times. James, I appreciate you. Thanks, man.

• 1:44:48James Smith?

  Thank you.

• 1:45:01Speaker 05

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