Expelled, Arrested & Somehow Winning At Life - James Smith

You can spend your entire life solving your problems without ever feeling like you have fewer problems and the more successful you become at improving your circumstances, the more absurd the problems you find yourself worrying about can become. So I had Martin Seligman on, positive psychology guy, there's this thing called conservation of dysphoria, so dysphoria, bad feelings, conservation of keeping them at the same level. So as your life gets better, some people look for worries with bigger magnifying glass, they make small worries bigger, so that the same amount of worries that they had in the past are what they have in the future, but because their life is better, there's actually fewer things for them to worry about, so they start inflating small things into big things. And I thought that you can spend your entire life solving your problems without ever feeling like you have fewer problems, thought that was really cool. It's interesting as well, there's a concept that a single coin in a vase makes the most noise, so as you eradicate the problems that you have in life, if you boil it down to one, it's going to make more noise than all the others put together. So for instance, let's say when you're young, you have your future to worry about, your career to worry about, finding a wife to worry about, you have all of these things to worry about, but then later on in life, when you've only got one issue, it is crippling because it's radiated and all your focus goes onto that. Like the purple elephant, the more you try to stop thinking about the purple elephant, the more omnipresent it is. So there's another synergistic thing there that you can have so much in life, and it's very difficult because when I was younger, I couldn't sympathize with people that had money. I was like, oh, you've got money, so you haven't got problems. Now I get a little bit older, I'm like, oh, it's just one of the different categories. You can still be wildly unhappy and have a good income. I think one of the problems that people feel is who am I to be upset about this thing when there's people that have got it worse than me, like velvet prison thing, champagne problems, because not only have you got the should have put do not disturb on before I got started, let's ride to war like the great Romans did. Eleven labs reaction still coming. I think people that don't have obvious problems externally don't get that much sympathy, and then they feel guilty about having problems, which is a weird one. It goes both ways as well, right? Well, I love to boil things down, and I'm not a neuroscientist. I'm not Andrew Huberman yet. The chemicals that you use in your brain for happiness and sadness, they're the same chemicals irrespective of circumstance. Now I try and say to people with happiness. We've spoken about this before that you don't get an uber surcharge, like a 1.7 ratio on serotonin or dopamine because you live in a bigger house or you are in a more privileged side of the world or whatever. Like a student having a laugh with their friends is having the same law from the same emotional thoughts, feelings, chemicals that someone is like a billionaire would. But then the same. So we will accept that. We'll go. Yeah, of course, you know, happy student and a happy millionaire. Same happiness. But we don't have the same adequate thought processes to sadness or grief or to agony. You're like, oh, that person has nothing. They're sad. That's terrible. Or this person, although they have so much going right in their life, if they've got anguish, why are you sad for? Yeah, I love that uber surcharge idea that you were talking about the first time you ever made money online. Yousef has this great story. So my friend who I did a lot of podcasts with early on, he was a doctor and he was working a night shift in a hospital. And while he was there, there was a lady who was having bowel problems. She wasn't able to sphincterly contract to push what was in her bowels out. Lots of discomfort. And the family was there saying, look, look how much pain she's in. This needs to be sorted. There's something called decompacting. And decompacting is putting a gauntlet glove on and getting into the rectum and manually pulling this stuff out. So he rings the specialist, the specialist, some South African guys, and goes, no, no, no, I'm not coming in to sort that. You can decompact it yourself. It'll be fine. So he does this thing, spends half an hour. The family shouting at him. He spent all of this time. He gets out, pulls the glove off, does all of the sanitary stuff, checks his phone. And he sold a PDF that he had written five years ago for £7.50 and realized that net after taxes, he'd made more money from that PDF in the last hour than he had from decompacting this patient. And your idea of the Uber surcharge, I think, where did that come from? What was the first example of that? So I was saying, for instance, put it very simply, $10,000 a month. I was like, wow, this is going to be amazing. I can't wait till I hit it. And it was amazing. But then the first 100K a month, you would think on a linear basis would be 10 times the enjoyment. But I actually got about 0.8 surcharge. The 10K made me happier. And I've heard this before on my quote unquote way up. And I was like, these people are mental. They are all wrong. And then I experienced it myself. And I was like, oh, they're kind of right in some respects. And there's almost diminishing returns as you go on. But every person will lie to themselves and go, oh, but the next thing will yield to the server. You've already achieved goals that you said would make you happy. Yeah, I mean, it's obvious when you see it with money. And I think people have got a pretty twitchy relationship. We're talking about money, especially given how completely horrendous. I mean, we're in the UK. And I think I saw a poll that was put up earlier on. 74% of people in the UK say that they feel like their quality of life is worse than five years ago. 74% of people say that they feel like it's worse. So cost of living, all the rest of it. But forget the money thing. Just talk about experiences. The first time that you got to take a trip abroad with your friends, wide eyed. You're so excited. You're having a beer at 6 a.m. in the departure lounge. Mali R07. Yeah, unbelievable. And then. Did you have the polo shirts with the team, like with the names on the back? We shouldn't afford polo shirts. I'm from a working class family. Mine was Jimbo. I had 23 on the back. Jimbo. That was my name until I went to uni. OK, I'm glad that went. You go on holiday again and you need this sort of ever increasing dose. This is what habituation is. It's a tonic adaptation. I think talking about it kind of like a drug addict or seeing it like a drug addict throughout your life. Before he made the hard right pivot into professional anti-Semite, I spoke to Dan Bilzerian about this. And he said, I asked him this question because he's like this guy who's maybe speed ran hedonism more quickly than anyone, at least in the public eye. Like all of the women, all of the drugs, all of the flights, all of the holidays and the houses and the cars and the guns and everything. And I asked, do you ever feel like you sort of went through it too quickly? Do you wish that you could have slowed down? Because once you bought your dream car or once you've been to the dream holiday or once you've got the house that you've always wanted, where do you go from that? And the same thing is true at whatever level you're at. You basically want to try and stretch out your achievement of different things and goals. For instance, we're in Exeter at the moment. We're on tour. Hello to everyone. By the way, it's a very unceremonious introduction to the tour bus. Look at that. It's raining. Fucking brilliant. So for the people that are just listening, James has lifted up the window on the tour bus to expose an enterprise renter van. It's a Peugeot Boxster. That's a 26 model. That's nice. One, two, three, four. Four biffer bins. Five non-recyclable. Non-recyclable though. Oh. Biffer bins out there. And a yellow parking. Bollard. Bollard thing. That's lovely. It also took. Oh, hello. That's someone throwing rubbish out. It also took maybe over a hundred point turn to park the bus here this morning. We got to the parking spot on time and we were late for the rest of our day. Not because of traffic, but not because of not finding a parking spot, but simply because of not being able to get into the parking spot. It's because you've got a trailer in the back full of new tonic. That is true. The point you were making before, the hedonism thing. Yeah. Permission to be evangelic. Run it. Having kids. And this isn't me trying to say to people they need to have kids. I have done every hedonistic thing to excess. Whatever amount, I've done more. Dan Bilzerian, he had the more, the flashier version, the jets. You had the working class version. Mate, I had the front three seats on easy jet. That was my jet. So I've run hedonism. If we sat here, or even when we did the pod where I was laying in bed on a pregnancy pillow and you were at your house in Newcastle. In that pod you said, do you want to have kids? I go, no. I was like, not really bothered. Then even at 30, 31, 32, at the books, at the tours, I had one of these buses. Not one part of my brain was thinking about kids. Then I've had my son since we last had this. And I cannot believe the amount of happiness I derive from it. You see me, all I do is moan that I'm too far away from my son. So there's people out there, when you talk about a decline of happiness, and I know there's a decline in birth rate, I know the correlation. I think those two things might be linked. Obviously, you can't point causation, but it's crazy to me how many people in their 30s feel a little bit lost. I've never had that, but having my son has been this homing beacon to something that I've never experienced. And again, there's got to be a part of it. I've spoken to you about this before. Being adopted, I've never seen a blood relative. Crazy. First time you told me that, that when you pick your son up, it will be the first time in your entire conscious life that you touch another blood relative. Yes, it's mad. Insane. And then when I look at him, I'm like, what if this is from me? What if this is from my fiance? It's amazing, but it's crazy. It's actually made me a lot less ambitious in other areas of my life. And I really love it. So I joke a bit with falling off, joking with these boys. Everyone we talk to, I'm like, I used to be relevant or whatever. But success now for me is such a metric of my son. So I'm not really speaking about this publicly, but when I had my son, we got pregnant straight away. No problems, no issues. Now we're going through secondary infertility. Yes, I'm on TRT, but my sperm numbers are good with an IVF clinic. Today's egg count is great. We are in a beta region paradox where if my sperm quality was worse or egg count was worse, we would have started IVF sooner. But because everything's fine, the IVF clinic is like, yeah, just keep going, just keep going. So we're now experiencing difficulty in conceiving. By the time this goes out, it could be different, hopefully. But a lot of my friends now, they're like 34, 35, they've told me their whole life they really want to have kids. And they're like, oh, but I want to buy a house first, or I want to do this. I want financial security and all of these things, which I get. And I'm not saying that their values are not worthy or whatever. But I said to one of them, if you knew it was going to take you two years to get pregnant, would you start now? They went, of course. I went, well, you don't know that you're going to fall pregnant straight away. So why not start now? Talking as a man who's currently going through some fertility complications. Yeah, and now I'm just looking at my friends. And I'm like, oh, if you could relive my life and you could say to me, like, what could be the worst thing that could ever happen to me? Can we imagine we do decide eventually to have a child and we couldn't? There is no amount of, and this is coming from someone that was indifferent about having kids. So the reason I'm saying this and kind of being vulnerable and talking about my personal affairs is, there'll be people listening to this, potentially teens, twenties, thirties, maybe even forties, who, if you're anything like me, felt indifferent to the idea of having children. I'm now telling you is my family, I would say, is my sole driver of happiness. Everything else is noise. I want to be wealthy for my family, for my child. I want him to be spoiled. It gives you a purpose beyond just this, like, selfish self-aggrandizing. Please, me, me, me, fulfill me more, fulfill me more. I totally get it. And yeah, it's a ruthless realization that there might be complications down the line. Again, we spoke about those brain chemicals. We got dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins. Now, those we can get from video games. We can get them from scrolling on TikTok. We can get them from like a myriad of things. But synthetically, it's never been easier. And I think that people are filling their cup with those things. Do you know what? I was having a discussion with Will Storr. And I kind of said to him, like, oh, scrolling on social media at night is bad. He goes, well, well, well, explain that to me. And I tried to explain it to him. And he goes, do you enjoy scrolling on your phone before bed? I go, yeah. He goes, what's the problem then? What's the problem? And I think that so many people can get so much from their devices, from their phones, from movies, from Netflix, whatever. Is that the reason that people, if you sat in an empty house with just three TV channels and there's nothing else to do? You're probably going to crack on and get some other stuff done. Speaking of that, there's a line that I learned from Dr. K a couple of weeks ago. Growing up is abandoning what works over and over again. Growing up is abandoning what works over and over again. I've got another one for you on this. It's a quote, and I'm probably going to butcher it because I can't remember it. It was a person looking at a picture of their parents who were the same age they are now when they were a child. They go, now I look at my parents and realize they were just old teenagers that didn't know what they were doing because they now as a teenager, or they as a parent now for the exact same. So myself as a father feel like a teenager plus 20 years. I said we're in Exeter today on tour. This is the tour bus. It's a bit of a shit tip. Sorry. Um, we were walking around the university today and I look at students and I'm like, yeah, that's me. That's me. But it's evidently not. It's me 20 years ago. How old do you feel saying that? I remember when I was young, people like, oh yeah, just you wait when you get older and in 20 years, I'm like, shut up, mate. I'm 20. I'm invincible. I am. Do you get a, I get this like weird anxiety now where if I have a pain in my side cancer, that's the, I'm going to die. I'm dead. Yeah. I get toothache now. And I'm like, it's probably a brain tumor at 20. Anything would happen. I'll be fine. Made of rubber and magic. I'll sniff it away in Laos. You know, there's people dying, drinking the ethanol in Laos. I drank out of a tub with a dead gecko in it. It was pretty much ethanol. I've got a free vest. I was buzzing. What are you laughing at? Hey, in Laos, I'd do anything. The whiskey was cheaper than what we're doing in Laos. Uh, tubing, not tubing. No. Vang Vien. What's that? Oh, I get to teach Chris Williams and something. You go to this town. There's going to be some old boys nod along to this. So you, um, usually start in Thailand. Then you go into Laos. The best way to describe Laos is instead of chilling their beer, they just put ice in it. Right. You've got this area called Vang Vien. Uh, and Luang Prabang. Great words. And in Vang Vien, they have this tubing. And you see people, they've got like the, the tubing vests on. You get a rubber insert from a tire. Okay. They pump it up. You go downstream. Then you jump in the river. The river goes downstream. You're floating in a rubber. Like a lazy river. Yeah. Then there's bars, shacks at the side. They chuck out ropes. You grab them. They pull you in. Drinking game. This sounds great. Straight arm in pints. Yep. Ash, but Australia had to shut it down because too many Aussies were dying. Right. You were in Laos. Yeah, but the pretty good Australia getting shut it down because the insurance companies, the travel insurance companies, they were breaking their backs, breaking their legs. You're a five hour trip from the nearest hospital. There's ropes, but the river depth changes. So as we're going downstream, I'm catching my awesome rocks. Then the rope swings are massive. So these Aussies are like, yeah, fucking hell, Mike, let's get a fucking tubing cat. That that's what they're like. You see him in Bali, they're just going nuts. They were doing rope swings into shallow water, fucking themselves up. But anyway, as you go down, you look at the prices and like the whiskey was like almost free, but you drank it the next day. You didn't have a hangover. He felt like you'd been poisoned, but genuinely people have gone blind. They've died from drinking these. You know, like Thailand for when you get the bottles with all the same safety cups tops. It's like that, but no funny thing. You don't know about this town, the town where you're hung over. I don't know if it's the same now. You've got maybe like 20, 30 cafes and all of them play friends all day, every day. Why? It's just what they do in the town. And you go in there for breakfast. You have like friends as a national sport. Yeah. But you, you sit down and then suddenly you're having a bit of food. Then you're there. And then someone's like, let's go out. I'm like, it's the most Rachel saga that I've seen in four times. And then like, you're in there. But then the funny thing is all the workers in the restaurants have American accents and they can speak along to it because all day, they've learned English from friends, but then they mime across to it. And they sound more like Ross Geller than Ross Geller sounds like Ross Geller. So all the people that have done tubing, so they shut it down because too many people were dying. Uh, you went back and it was a lot more tame. I remember one night it was so drunk. It got dark. I'm going down a river in the dark. And these tuk-tuks are like, and you just get scared and you pull in, you pay whatever to get back into town because you don't want to be left stranded in the middle of the water. So quick story. If you hear caught the new tonics, it, um, I was a backpack in six months. I did six months in Asia. I spent 3000 pounds. Like it was unreal. And I probably spend that on Pratt on this tour. So we definitely spent it on Nando's. We get to the wine for bang and we've got to decide how we get to Hanoi, going to Vietnam for the first time. Uh, an ex classic fell in love with a girl from uni. She wants to go back to Asia. I said, I'll come with you. I saw my friend and began for this. Got it. All 26, 26. Oh, no. Random again. All 26. Formula one edition is the, we both have the same car. Both have the same car. If I can find that in left-hand drive, I would import it to America today. They'll have them in France. I'll be able to get a French one. I'll be, that'd be the best thing you could do. Mate. Could you imagine Camaro? All 26 F one again, Ricaro bucket seats to cut. Yeah. Alcantara though. I do worry if you went back, it's not the same. So we had to decide whether or not we're going to go across and you make friends. Uh, funnily enough, one of the friends that I made traveling, sent me a picture drinking new tonic the other day. I was like, this is weird. But we decided we're going to fly, but the flight was 51 pounds and that's a lot of money for a backpacker. But I was like, let's just go. I think it's like a 12 or 15 hour bus journey and you get the sleeper buses when you go around, but a sleeper bus can be a nightmare on the way to Chiang Mai, someone left the door open and all the mosquitoes got in. So you just get attacked by the mosquitoes cooks anyway. So we arrived there and I look at the people that got the bus and I was like, Oh, did I make a mistake flying? They look at me. They go there with these two beautiful French girls, but they had a stomach bug on the bus. Mad diarrhea. They kept shitting in the toilet. They blocked the toilet. The bus driver comes back, locks the toilet. They had to shit themselves in their seat. And I'm talking flight 15 hour bus journey. It's got, you can't keep going, but I guess it is Thailand. They don't get between the line probang and Hanoi. It's like mountain roads. Everyone talks about dangerous. The cliff roads are. The driver's just trying not to get you killed. So he's like, Oh, I don't give a fuck. Shit yourself. So they had to sit there with beautiful French girls that shot themselves for hours. Some people could be into that. I did, uh, Chiang Mai to pie, which is best place to learn a moped. One of the most northerly, uh, cities, towns, I guess. Did you do pie? Oh yeah. So that's where you go to learn how to ride a moped because you fall off and they're like, you're in pie. The bus that you take up there. What is it? It's called a vomit alley, 350 turns in a six hour journey. So just hairpins all the way up. And then when you're coming back, you'd think that the going up would be worse, but it's not because it's slower. It's a coming down in a 18 person. Shit out Sprinter van, some title tie Sprinter van. And on the way back, I was with my business partner's sister. We were going back together. So we were sat together and there were two, uh, Chinese students behind us. And they were, I could hear like that. And all that happened, bus driver sat there, you know, the classic bus driver underhand pose, like holding the bottom of the steering wheel. You know exactly what I mean? Like this, like Donald Trump. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, it's like somebody that's got like saucers giving out hors d'oeuvres, but he's just controlling the bus. All that he did didn't even look back. He just heard that like that. One hand off the steering wheel, just grab two plastic bags. Just went like that. Just put them behind. Plastic bags back. And they just threw it in Thailand for a month and a half. So there's this rumor when you're there that the big Chang bottles to be careful because they're stronger beer. And have you heard this? You heard this thing? So I didn't know if it was true, but one day test it. The, this girl that I ended up going traveling with, by the way, if you're thinking of going traveling with your girlfriend, absolutely do not do it. I destroyed the relationship. My mom told me before I went, she's like, James, you are making a big mistake. I was, I'm sorry, mom. You're right. So we just, so if we're arguing, I'll just get hammered. So we're in, um, we're in Thailand. I think we're in Koh Samui and I'm just necking these big bottles of Chang. The next thing I black out, but I wake up. Oh, I kind of remember, you know, when you black up, you just, you suddenly you just got memory. I'm walking down the side of the road. They found me. And the first thing they say to me is you've been in a moped crash. And I'm like, what? And then I look and all the skin is off my shoulder. All the skins off my leg. They get an idea. Now they're rubbing me down. They're like, you've obviously ridden your moped and you've crashed. And I'm like, oh shit. But like, I don't really remember anything. No helmet, nothing. This is crazy. Then we get back and we find my moped. There's not a scratch on it. And we have no idea where I've been or who I've been with. They just said, you just walked out of the hotel. You've been gone like two hours. I must have back missing half of your skin. But the crazy thing, it was kind of scary in Thailand. You go drinking for a bit that I could have broken a leg, lost the leg, got concussed, crazy. The amount of times I've done stupid shit like that. I made it out alive. Then the locals come out with the iodine and get it on you. So you don't get infected. I had to leave Bali for that. My first time in Bali. I came off a moped after seven days, laid up in a bed, taking trazodone, which was not trazodone, tramadol, which is fucking lovely. That was fun. But apart from the fact that you get really acclimatized, I can see why people get addicted to that stuff. Came back and I couldn't get it anymore. I was like, oh, well, that's an easy way to care. It was like the, uh, the Vietnam vets that were on heroin while they were away and they came back and they're like, but yeah, I got infected and had to fly home momentous. Just made one of my favorite products, significantly better and $50 cheaper. They have reformulated their sleep packs with a better and more research back form of magnesium, making the new formula even stronger than before. I have taken these things every single night, whether I'm at home or on the road, and it does make a genuine difference. The formula helps you to wind down, fall asleep more quickly and stay asleep throughout the night with no melatonin, so no sleep paralysis demons sitting at the foot of your bed. Plus it's NSF certified for sport, meaning that it is third party tested for dosage accuracy screen for heavy metals and banned substances with every results published on the momentous website. 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The funny thing was, um, in Vietnam, I'm pretty sure it was, I was turning right. Yeah. Do my driving lesson did I can't remember. But anyway, I was packing bags to get to a bus to, to move on in Vietnam. So I'm one of my parents, I'm shuttling back and forth. I put all my bags on me and then I had to put a bag under the seat and my mock, my helmet was there that I never wore. So I was like, Oh, for fuck's sake, I'm going to have to wear my helmet on this run. So I put my helmet on a local thought I'd left my indicator on. So I'm slowing down to turn. He's overtaken me as I've turned and T-bone me. And I remember just cracking my helmet on the floor. I was wearing all the backpacks as well, which worked out like body armor. Yeah. Like body armor. I get up, I'm screaming at this local guy and these Americans come out and they're like, bro, you're fine. You're fine. My moped was written off petrol all over the floor. People put the sound on it. The one time I needed a helmet was when I put it on for safe, safe, keep it. I didn't want to lose the helmet and pay whatever it was. But now every time I go around, I just imagine if there was no helmet on for that, my brains would have been over a road in Danang on the train. Talking about advice for relationships do and do not do George from the 10 men posted this thing, which was asking a bunch of men who'd been married for quite a while, other advice for guys and how to navigate your relationship. And lots of them were quite silly and quite cute. And I thought that one of them was really interesting, which is when you're trying to help your girl decide what to wear for the evening, a lot of the time there might be a fashion show that happens. And after a while it can delay you to the point where you're late for the meal and that's not good. And she might get frustrated. So one of the pieces of advice was when your girl comes out in the first outfit, you say, darling, that looks, you look fantastic. This is, this is gorgeous, but I do want to see another one. Like, can I see, can I see what your second choice would be? Then when she comes out in the second one, say, I mean, this is, this is stunning, but I did prefer the first one. Save yourself three more outfit changes. You do realize that every single time a man does that. Now they've listened to this podcast. I know what you're doing. You're manipulating. Yeah. If you're listening to this in the car, it's not going to work. A lot of couples listen to this either in the car or separately. We hear this a lot of the live shows where they'll come up and they go, we listen to all the time. Like I, when I go to work and he goes to work and then we talk about it over dinner on a nighttime. And if you now try and use this. So basically boys, if you've listened to this one before your girl has, you need to say, don't listen to that one with Chris and James. It's actually, it's kind of bullshit. That's not on the bus. It's a, yeah, it's a mess. It's a bit of a mess. The guardian's going to do an article about it. You don't need to listen to that one. Get her to skip over that. And you can keep that hack for you. But I do think, what was, what was some of the other ones? My dad's got one where he said, uh, the key to a long, successful marriage is accepting you're wrong. Even when you're right. That sounds dismissive though. Chicks don't like it, but then it's not just accepting that you're wrong, even if you're right. It's making it convincing that you actually think that you're wrong. Because otherwise it's you, you're just being dismissive. You got 52 years married. Yeah. I'm can't argue with the outcome. I had a bit from the last show where I was talking about death row meals. Where I was saying, it's kind of mad that you do the most heinous crimes of rape and murder and whatever. And when we do execute you, we're going to let you pick your last meal. And I joked that my dad's been married to my mom 52 years and he doesn't get to pick what's for dinner. So like, why is it the people that anyway, so like, if we're going to kill, I'm sorry, mate, we're going to kill you because you're a heinous murderer. But what do you fancy? We'll make it happen. I mean, think about that lady, the one, the first person in history to have had the lethal injection twice in the same session and survived it. It gives me a good idea of a new way to talk to people. So let's say someone's on death row. Let's just inject them with saline and keep doing it and go goodbye. But they're on death row. Yeah. Yeah. But then you're not supposed to torture them. No, no, no. But it's only saline, Chris. Right. We're just going to make a psychological trauma to make them feel that they're about to die. They'll be like, I got you. We'll do it again tomorrow. And then they like Russian roulette. This sounds like Guantanamo. This is like John Kiriakou stuff. You can't be doing that. I'm friends with John Kiriakou. He's going to shout at you. Other advice, other bits of advice. If she can't decide where she wants to eat, tell her you've decided, but it's a surprise. Give her one chance to guess where you're going. Whatever she says, say yes and go with it. 99% of the time it's where she really wants to go. It's so manipulative. I can't work out if this is horribly misogynistic or like actually a beautiful way to just cut through a lot of the mess of a relationship. Here's the final one. Um, just order fries. She's not hungry. Sure. But she'll eat the extra fries. Have you seen those videos where this is so, this is ruthless. You can't do this. Uh, guys will ask their chick whether or not she wants a snack. So do you want to go out? Should we go for a drive-thru? We could get ourselves a little treat. Why don't we go for a drive-thru? And then when they pull up, so you can order, what is it that you want? She orders. And then when the person asks him, he's like, I'm all right. I'm not eating people. But the same thing is true in a relationship. You are allowed to gain weight, but only relative to your partner. Like you and your partner's level of fatness or fitness is supposed to oscillate together. When you start to, it's a massive point of friction, encouraging people over the years. I used to call it the relationship saboteur, where if one party wants to lose weight and the other doesn't, they will not succeed. I think that's, I think that's now called a fitness gap relationship. Look at that. I'm, I'm trying to teach him stuff. I'm learning back. When you were ahead, I'm just giving it nomenclature. So I come up with a cool name for it. You came up with a concept. I don't know what that means, but yeah, in essence, they'll, they'll just find ways to sabotage. Oh, I just got us a curry. Oh, but you know, I'm dieting. Yeah. But this one, you know, it's Friday night. Like Friday night. Yeah. You've got to be on the same page together. You have to, from a health and fitness perspective, you have to be on the same page. When do you reckon this is one for you? Like, I, you know, the Russians used to have those like umbrella tips with poisoning. They should give you that on people. Poke you in the back of the leg. Yeah. Didn't some guy, that happened in the UK, right? They did, they did. Yes. So I was thinking we'd get those, but we put Retta Trinitide in it, right? Just jab, unsolicited jab people with Retta. They would be fat family members. So there'd be. So is this, this is an intervention from within the family? Yeah, fat uncle. Okay. So fat uncle Trevor, he's just a walk-in bloody NHS heart attack. You get the number one 60 over one 10. Yeah, absolutely. Fuck him. Get up to him. Give him a little prick. Oh, what was that? Oh, sorry. Unc. Yeah. You know, I didn't see that. Do that once a week, 2.5 milligrams, start off whatever. But then I'm thinking we're moving to all. Uh, I think they've got all as MP. Oh, you're looking for the bill. gate solution. So I'm wondering, imagine in the future, I'm just saying, imagine your wife, you've started training, you're in your fitness and your husband's dragging a little bit behind and he's not losing the weight. Imagine soon there could be just a little je ne sais quoi going into seasoning. Yeah. You can put it in a grinder. Yeah. And then he's dropping weight and be like, yeah, do you know what, you know, Trevor's looking amazing. Is that going to happen? What did you think of that guy? So we just managed to finesse our way into Exeter University gym, University of Exeter gym, which for a high class sporting university was actually a bit of a shitty gym. It was, yeah, not enough machines. I can't get pump on everyone in that. Probably very fit, probably great. The sports that they do not massive. Right. But also 19. So we brought the average age up by average free testosterone. Yeah, you did the average free testosterone doubled just by you walking in. But as we were walking back, this is a question that's been asked a bunch at the live shows. And we got to do it in person today with one of the guys who came up and said, I'm a first year. I've been at uni for a month. He's only been at uni for a month. It's the fucking middle of October. He hasn't been at university. He's been at university for six weeks, six weeks, been at uni for six weeks. And I feel like I'm not making any progress and I want freedom. So should I just sack it all off in business? And he's like, I suppose the dilemma here is you're like, well, if I'm studying business, am I going to learn as much as I would run in a business or being in a business? 18, you can't go and run a business. Anyway, what, when people ask you that question, because they've asked me it a lot, because I do the Q and a, uh, what's your perspective? Cause you tried uni. What was your perspective on this? Um, I told you a little bit about, uh, on that reel the other day that I got kicked out of school. So I got kicked out of school. Technically I didn't get enough grades to go to sixth form. So, uh, went in, spoke to the teachers and they, they didn't want to have me on into the college because I only had four GCSEs, supposed to have five. Eventually they go, right, we'll do it, but you've got to be on your best behavior. You've not been a great student two weeks in and get kicked out. What do you do? Uh, so actually this is going to be crazy. Uh, when I was younger, I wanted to be in the military. So I was in the army cadets, um, applied to, uh, Welbeck college. My dad said I could only join the army if I went in as an officer. So you have to go into like officer training and, uh, in essence, usually you have to be well-qualified, which I wasn't. My school grades weren't good. You can go straight to Sandhurst with a degree or you can do OTC. Yeah. So officer training core, the Welbeck college was where I was going to try and go. That's pretty much my only way through. And, uh, on my interview for that, that little police report coming up, I got in trouble when I was younger for shooting someone with an air rifle, but we'll glaze over that. Um, check James's Instagram for the full story. Yeah. So I go, I go to sick form. I had pretty bad behavior problems. Imagine this. I had a really cool lock knife that I used to use because we used to go off like where you flick a knife out and then it doesn't come back. Okay. So we used to, because we used to go camping as cadets, you like go out face paints, you get like an assault rifle. The bow is concreted, but you'll have live rounds on you. If you shoot a live round in someone's face, their face, half their face is coming up. So like you're, it was super cool by the way. I don't think people would do. I went in cub scouts, cadets. Then I went to go into the army so I could strip. How were you such a tearaway? You had all of the guard rails to be highly disciplined and well-behaved and you shot someone at 13 and had a police report. Well, this thing, I was excited to join the army. I just wanted to go shoot. So excited that you shot someone somewhere along the way, low energy just gets accepted as a part of getting older. Turns out there's a reason for that. As we age, our mitochondria, the parts of ourselves that power us become weaker and make less energy, which is why I'm such a huge fan of timeline. 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That's timeline.com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout. So, um, the British army rifle is called an SAAT. The ones that we're using cadets is called an L8, L89 AIGP cadet rifle. And basically it has a nine site instead. I could still strip one blindfolded and put it back together. I still remember. Yeah. Let's clean the barrel. I still remember you would do drills where even as you're checking the barrels empty on the weapon, you do a sweep with your hand underneath the magazine cover to make sure there's no magazine in it. Like we, even as a cadet, as a 15 year old, you do these drills I've been to Arborfield, Perbright. I've shot on some of the, like the best ranges in the country. I've even used one of the like digital ranges. This was like 20 years ago. So I was like obsessed. I loved it. But one day I was just like, Oh, I'm just going to take the knife to school and show my mates got caught. And me as six form now, this is 13, 14. It was just after I'd been arrested. So you shot someone. Yeah. Got out of it. Yeah. So it was like a knife to school. It's criminal damage. It wouldn't be optics. It would have been actual bodily harm. Cause you're not the guides. Look great. Seven stitches in the face. And I've told you about the ballistics report. Can you just give, tell the story from start to finish. Cause I wanted to take the piss out of you on Instagram for this story. And I couldn't do it. So we would, uh, we'd break barrel air rifles. We'd have the pellets. We'd have the shot bullets, me and my neighbor. And, uh, we would shoot different things. And then we wanted to kind of raise the stakes and the 13, you know, a freeway going past with cars, driving, moving target in our heads. We'd be like, Oh, that'd be cool. It didn't really occur to us in our brains that we were committing damage on cars. Like imagine you're driving and someone shoots a pellet, your car that is, would it leave a dent? He didn't go through, wouldn't go through and go through significant damage. Right. But we were just pissing around. And then one day where we pitched up outside the house, outside of your own house, outside of our own house. Right. Because my brain hadn't developed the same time in my life. I took a knife in school, show my friends. The teachers were like, James, you don't understand that you can't bring a knife in school. And I was like, why? They're like, in case she stops, I'm not going to stop someone. They were like, but James is school. You can't bring that here. So I'm shooting cars and thought nothing of it. One day I play an age of empires to my mom walks in and she throw great game throws like a yellow pages. She's crying. She's like, the yellow pages, like a phone book. Why? She was obviously trying to call someone when the police came. So I don't know, but she's come to the, she was obviously in the middle of doing site police at the front door said to my mom and the closest projectile that she had to exact her outrage on you was the yellow pages. She felt so. Okay. So your first member is turning around and come and she was like, what have you done? Not yet. I couldn't tell you the adrenals bomb. So go out and there's just two police officers sat in the front room with notepads and I had to talk to my parents about afterwards. It was like, what did they say? They said, uh, we're looking for some lads, looking for some kids. Maybe they've got air rifles. My mom was out there being my son. She was, she wasn't like, Oh, I don't know what you're going about. She was like, there'll be my son come in. So I come out and they're like, well, he's a good citizen. What have you been doing? And, uh, we've been pissed around. Like we didn't, we didn't mean to shoot. Well, kind of anyway, he go, my mom's in hysterics. My dad's come home from work. He's like, don't say, don't say anything to you've seen a lawyer. I've already done everything at this point. Um, and the police officers knew we weren't trying to hurt someone. So they were like, Oh, so you were shooting items. You're shooting objects. You obviously miss. I'm like, correct. They, they, they actually were helping because they knew we weren't bad kids. They knew the neighborhood, whatever. We didn't go out that day to try and hurt someone. So they go, yeah, unfortunately, uh, someone has been shot. Um, currently at Heatherwood, they're having stitches now. Uh, so Hedgewood, Heatherwood, Hedgewood hospital is like Ascot's biggest hospital. So, uh, they were like my mom and dad, obviously in hysterics. They go, let's do, let's do this tomorrow. Uh, come to the police station. Um, we do everything there. So I was like, Oh God, mom and dad were not happy. Next day, go there. And as you get into the police station, I was like, Oh, I'm about to get a telling off. And I remember the police officer going, you ready? I'll say, yeah. He's like, okay. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you do say 13, maybe used against you in a court of law. I'm there with my mom. What does that mean when they say that you're under arrest? I'm under arrest. So I'm going in as a 13 year old fingerprints, DNA mugshot for law. So you can't commit a murder in the UK now. Interrogation room interrogation. My friends at school didn't believe I'd been arrested because they were like, Oh, you're just lying. So one of my friends who'd been arrested had an ankle tag. He was like, he's like, tell me about the interrogation in a really nice area. That's that's how it begins, mate. He was from Ashford. My school was in sorry. So anyway, I said, take deck two tapes, two red buttons. He was like, Oh, you did get arrested. So, uh, yeah, I came back and basically the police officer was like, look, you're, you're going to meet the guy you shot and you're going to apologize. And he's not going to convict you. He's not going to press charges. Who was it that you shot? How did the, how did you hit someone? So before we met him, they took us to a ballistics report. So he went to Edwin hospital. He said, I've been shot. The doctors then have to call the police. There's been a shooting. Yeah. If the sentence is proclaimed, I've been shot. All hell breaks loose. Armed response. So the guys that came to the door didn't have guns, but they were armed response and ask for this. So that would have been worse. My mom and dad seen them for ballistics report. He was passenger. So this is in England. His wife's driving back window was open on the right side. Mr. Son hit him in the face and the passenger school. So the police are like, you could have shot the wife, blinded the wife, killed who was driving, crashed the car, could have crashed into another car, could hit the son. And they were like, if you hit the son, six or seven, they're like, if you, if you hit the son, he's convicting you. He had seven stitches across his face, just under his lip. They needed from the shop. And who shot it? You or your mate? We don't know. Right. Obviously it must've been him. It must've been him. I'll give you everything. Um, but you can imagine a world crashing down you for what seemed like just being idiots, just shooting at a moving object. So go through the ballistics report, have to meet the guy. Like obviously not so apologetic, but there's nothing you can do at this point. Afterwards, you don't get the conviction. I have a police reprimand until I'm 18. So in essence, if I get in any more trouble, I'm fucked. Like bringing knives to school. Yeah. So then, um, we haven't even got to my uni bit yet. So we had that, but then it meant that when I was out drinking, being like a yob when I was like 14, 15, 16, you know, when the police pull over and you've got alcohol in you and they're like, you lads got booze. Yep. What have you got? That'd be Katie and four fosters. What did you do? I put it down the drain right now. I just didn't want to get in trouble again where my mates would be like, Oh, fuck off my hub was like, yes, sir. No, sir. Yeah. And, um, so that was a bit rough. Then got my four GCSEs. Then I couldn't even get into sixth form. So then we're pissing around one day in six form. We're bunking. I'm already like two weeks in and solution school in Chelsea. There's a school hall and there's a drama department. All this props are behind the stage and we thought that'd be a good place to bunk smoke cigarettes with smoking. That was less likely to get caught in the drama hall than you would be outside. Anyway, we're dressed up in the props. We're fucking around. And I shove my mate. He's on a sofa that's got wheels on it. I shove him off the stage, but he's holding onto the curtain and the curtains going, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't tip it off. It's like a Tom and Jerry cartoon. I'm pissing myself. I turn around at the back of the hall, cross arms, my head of year. He's just been watching us and smoking and pushing someone off a stage on a wheelie. So I think at this point, I'm what, 16, just turned 16. So go to my head of year and they make you sit outside. So I'm sat outside. I'm like, Oh God. Then my mum comes in. Another yellow pages. Sit in there. This is like what, two years after I've been arrested, three years after I've been arrested. And also I didn't get the grades. My mum was like, you need to go get a job. Sixth form was my way to not get a job. So my head of year was like, we can expel James formally. We have the grounds for it. Or you can take him out today. Like you remove him from school today. We don't expel him. That was pretty much the ultimate. It's either leave or we fire you. Yeah. So get in the car, drive on the way home. My mum takes like a slightly different route. We're not going home. She takes me to Bracknell job center. She pulls up and as we're walking across the job center, I'm walking behind her. I'm like my Nokia and I'm texting my mates. Like I've just been expelled. She gets my phone and just smashes it in the road, just smashes it in the road. I've never seen that in my parents' lives before. Go into the job center. She turns me. Don't come home without a job. That was it. Don't go home without a job. I was like, oh my God. So I went there and I sat down. And one of the questions was, do you want to like keep going in education? I was like, what are my options? And there was an agricultural college doing a BTEC in sport. I was like the most canonical, like, can I qualify for that? They said, yeah. So I came home and I had to try and barter to my mum that I wanted to remain in college. So then what was good there was all my subjects were PE because of sports coaching. So that went pretty well, but then I got a BTEC and actually I just got on really well. My lecturers played rugby for the college. I did a lot of sport. I used to give rugby kit that I got from playing for county to my lecturers and they give me extensions on my work. So it was cool. I was like, oh mate, I'm going to the reef. I can't do the coursework because you need to play sevens or whatever. That waterproof looks quite nice. You were bribing your teachers with good merch. It's the same as us now. It's the same with Newtonic. And the college I was at, it's called Berkshire College of Agriculture. They had like a grave digging course on site. So they were teaching people how to dig graves and we had the sports part. Then it was a question. But then at the end of that, you can top up and do something called a foundation degree. So you can turn your BTEC into a first year of uni foundation degree. FDSE it goes down as. So I applied for that. But my mum and dad originally were like, we're not letting you go to uni because we know you'll fuck it up. We know you'll get in debt. So I actually stayed- Literally didn't trust you to go to university. Yeah. I was like, I want to go to Bournemouth. They're like, no. I was like, what do you mean no? I'm 18. They're like, no. So I continued at my college. Not that I haven't been arrested for like three years now. So I did two more years, technically university, technically Buxton Uni in Buckinghamshire. But the campus for it was my existing college. So I did four years at college. Loved it. It was great. Lived at home. Then for my third top-up year, to go from a foundation degree to a full degree, you have to do a top-up. And that's why I chose Hertford College. Now Hertford College is a rugby college. I thought I was pretty good at rugby until I went there. So I was like, boxer under twenties captain, playing like adults rugby was good. When I get there, they're like, oh, you can try out for the third team. I was like, one of the hardest games in my life. we had like England under 20 boys in the second team and When I got there freshers Load of us got mumps You've had mumps. I got mumps on one side in my first year of uni. Yeah, do you wanna explain what mumps is? Uh, I first of all woke up thinking I've been in a fight because I don't remember the night out My jaw was killing me. Yeah, so I'm asking my mates like to be getting a scrap last night And then I went to go see the nurse on site and she was like you've either got glandular fever I reckon you've got mumps now add it on both sides and you look like a hamster. Is it your lymph glands? Whatever there's whatever's under here. I'm sure people in the comments will tell us but yeah, so from freshers I got sent home like all the rugby team got down and we said is it's super contractible We said it was from sharing water bottles, but we were just all snogging birds on freshers You know, it's like and this is before camera phones So boys connect like ten birds and two blokes in the night and that's that's a heterosexual male one time Me and sometimes you just miss the target. I suppose I remember one time me and another bloke snogged each other to prove to the girls, we were gonna kiss him And in rugby that was like that's that's just normal Like just imagine giving someone so many shot. I'm really gonna kiss him prove it Dave. Come here Not my not my proudest semi, but anyway, so I've got mumps had to go home and I was home for like three weeks. I lost a lot of weight. Of course, maybe like eight or nine kilograms I remember I was in the trenches the fevers are terrible then just as I got good and it passed it went to my nuts And my hands I've heard about this massive So I go to Heatherwood Hospital again same place in the first moment when they got shot and then they were like, yeah You just got a hold of them. So I was worried. I was maybe gonna be infertile from it It's really bad for your fertility. Hmm. So go back to uni. This is a long story, by the way, and I'm looking at like my cohort my my year whatever And I go to my first lecture, but I've been off campus for three weeks So I expected when I first walked into that lecture some good James welcome Where have you been? I walk in and everyone just stares as if I've walked into the wrong room when I know fully Well, this is my lecture theater. Yeah, and then I can we help and I pause for two seconds and just turn around left because I was really embarrassed but it wasn't what I was expecting So as welcoming as yeah, we'll deal with this another day and then I never went to a lecture again, so a quick aside You probably heard me talk about element before and that's because I've started every single morning the same way for the last Five years now which is a cold glass of water with elements in it element is an electrolyte drink mix with everything that you need And nothing that you don't it's a science-backed electrolyte ratio of sodium potassium and magnesium. No sugar. No coloring No artificial ingredients. It reduces muscle cramps and fatigue supports brain function and helps to regulate your appetite throughout the day. I Genuinely notice the difference when I take it versus when I don't which is why I don't shut up about it And also why it's used by everyone from dr Andrew human to Olympic athletes and FBI sniper teams the good sniper teams not the bad ones Also, never no questions asked refund policy So if you don't like it for any reason, they'll just give you your money back Plus they offer free shipping in the US right now You can get a free sample pack elements most popular flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below Heading to drink LMNT comm slash modern wisdom. That's drink LMNT comm slash Modern wisdom, when did you leave? Well, this is the thing at uni I was told this may not be true If you don't hand in your coursework to kick you off campus was living on campus But someone said if you hand in a blank cover letter with every bit of coursework, they can't so I did that How'd that work out? Well didn't get kicked off campus. I So remember I told you earlier that my name was Jimbo. Mm-hmm. So Lucy Lord, you met last night. No me knows me as Jimbo So everyone at uni knew me as Jimbo. No one knew me as James Smith my last week of playing rugby for Hartbury One of the coaches when are you James Smith? I went yeah, he goes mate. I'm your dissertation supervisor He's like none of us know who you are. I only know you as Jimbo from playing rugby Jason bond yourself Yeah, and he was a university. He was that mate. Where have you been? I saw my yeah I went to my first lecture and like no one ever let me in. He's like we've been emailing you Okay. Yeah, I never got my logins. I never even got into my student uni account to log into it And yeah, that was my one year at uni and the issue was though. Did you have to do stats and research? Yeah Start some research for 7 a.m. On Thursday The social was on a Wednesday night so it was never gonna work I Was never gonna pull an all-nighter in liquid Gloucester Have my one pound cheeseburgers on the way home and get up at 7 a.m. For stats and research I didn't even do my foundation degree properly. I swapped rugby stash with people I knew at college to get the first part of the degree so then that was it and then I had one year sending it a uni and Yesterday my life and didn't get the degree. So that guy back to full circle half an hour We pretty much said to him like you're away from home you're building independence You're learning how to feed yourself for mushroom clothes that you're away from uni for me like accelerated my or didn't do that well, sorry my maturity I Say maturity and I've got a backtrack on that. So you haven't played Centurion. Yeah I'm gonna have to explain for the Americans. I got banned from the prom So we had a game we board one day you need like right every minute on the minute So we do a shot of beer so you're like proper decent pine glasses and we've been drinking a bit before and All I remember is kind of blacking out again and in Hartbury College you've got these different campuses and the one we were in was when they show people around and So I get woken up like our head of year at uni knocking on our door where I was Took us to the block. We've been drinking in I've been using cans of deodorant to graffiti windows. I've been drawing cocks Okay, that's how I wonder it was me, you know super bad when they draw cocks and everything that was me at uni but um, I Don't even know how I did this. I somehow put a knife in a fridge door Everyone stuck it through it. What is it about you and weapons? I don't know me, but it seems like a consistent I mean, you know We've run you tonic for four years now and I haven't seen you with a weapon once I'm worried that you're going to turn up One day with a improvised explosive device, but the good thing is I've got this all out the way So like up until 23 23 24. Hmm. I was a fucking liability. It's the only word nothing was impressive I've ever done like even on rugby tours puking on the back of a bus Neck in a bottle of wine being a degenerate like really the university for me was in the skills of drinking it's a really interesting archetype because everyone that's gone to School college sixth form and University in the UK knows like that kind of archetype of a person. I certainly do and I was a Facilitating it for much of my time in nightlife. I don't know what the equivalent is in America I imagine that there will still be that maybe like Greek football jock life Yeah, like sorority, but I they take their sport so seriously once you get if you're talking college university You you're a pro-athlete you're bigger than some pro-athletes right the following that you have they've now unlocked all of the sponsorship stuff so Nike and Gatorade and Nutanix can come in and sponsor college athletes if you're a college athlete that fucking rules. We want to hear from you That archetype of Person that you just think this person should not be allowed near anything requires responsibility Can you imagine these people are into uni with now they're like he's that guy he's got what yeah 100 million dollar drinks business. I think this is one of the things that's been interesting for me to let reflect on the When you're young you have no Perspective over whether or not you're going to amount to something in future And I think that we're able to make predictions based on how people perform in school because that's really the only Merit that you have even in sport you knew that kid at 15 that played for England under 17s I did in cricket right which was my sport Or there was because crickets not a physical sport in the same way that rugby might be or even football It means that you can speedrun the adult game as well So you can have some superstar Scotty Borthwick who plays for played and I think still plays for Durham County Cricket Club. I remember he was 14 playing seconds 20-seconds, right? This is something that men do full-time and he was still in secondary school So you look at these very precocious young? Guys and girls and you're like wow, they've speedrun success There's so much closer to this and I think that it can create a sense of helplessness and young people they go Well, look, this is the time when my future is being predicted by my present what's happening right now is going to be indicative of where I'm going to end up and When puberty comes online One of the things that you do is you start looking around and comparing yourself to everyone That's nearby because you're getting ready to become an adult in the world. And this is one of the reasons that trends seem to be particularly permeable like they seep through groups of especially girls, but also guys in puberty through college through university And you can think fuck like I'm not gonna amount to anything Like how can I amount to anything that guy was what 18 18? Yeah, I know you need for six weeks I said to him was like mate like not to say that I'm gonna be your role model But 18 I I was still not allowed to go to uni or age I was housebound I was on house arrest by my parents then at 20 I went to do freshers then by 21. I was failing my third year at uni I'm the biggest busiest year of my life I was like then 22 23 still lived in Gloucester to door knock it was 22 when I did the door knock him 23 power you're in corporate than Empire. Yeah, there was a door knocking for Empire So I was like mate if in three years You're not door knocking in gl1 sign gas. You're ahead. Yeah. Yeah your head then 24 I didn't become PT because I wanted to run my own business I did it because I just hated everything I done before it was a move of desperation I was like, oh if I can charge three people 30 pounds and make 90 pounds a day I could live off that and I could get that done between nine and one and Then cool. I'll go and play Call of Duty the everyone seems to think retrospectively Oh, it was a strategic move. I was like love fell into it by accident through hating my job and here's another thing In corporate, no one really does anything So for instance in a sales job a lot of input and not a lot of outcome I won't name the company RSA security and Part of EMC there. I was in the inside sales department And my job was marketing would bring in the leads I would qualify the leads on the phone find out the size passed it to a distributor or reseller So similar to our model you although we do sell direct you don't buy Mars bar from Mars you get it from Costco or you get it from your local corner shop and I had a set commission amount and I had to make a certain amount of phone calls every day and I said to my boss Oh, I've hit target. It's April. Is there any way we can expand my commission? She goes. I'm sorry I was like, well, what am I supposed to do for the rest of the year? She was like look as your manager. I just need you to your phone calls I was like and I'm not gonna get anything else. So I would call up Cornwall County Council Every morning at the same time and Basically, it would have press 1 press 2 press 3 press 4 and if nothing happened It would go back to press 1 press 2 press 3 So I'd leave it off the hook for like 50 minutes Then at the end of the day, I would just keep putting the phone down and bashing it So then the statistics total number of calls total time on call. So I did something similar when I worked at the AA and so I was doing outbound warm telly sales upgrading people to get vehicle cover so if you got something broke that wasn't the engine and wasn't the timing belt The AA would be prepared to cover it, but it was really specific. It was very hard to actually end up getting it covered So I realized that when the other person put the phone down If I didn't close my call off I could just leave it for 15 minutes and they look at your dead time They look at how much time in between calls that you do But they don't look at how much time they weren't able to log that the other person was off the call So they would see that my ratio and then someone cottoned on to what I was doing I worked at the AA for like nine months during my placement year and someone cottoned on to that all of this together is to say I don't know whether Outcomes in early life. I don't know whether outcomes even in like middle early life in your 20s I'm that predictive like Greg Lavecchia for the people that don't know him. He's the CEO of 22 Look at the aged a bit the 2000 nanograms per deciliter of testosterone. I'll do that to you But the interesting thing here is so with that with that office job Not only was I like gaming the system from April to December. I did nothing. So I would just sit on my desk I had to do 40 hours a week sat at a desk doing nothing and it was the worst torture If you gave me the opportunity of going back there That was worse than my busiest of times now and I remember we were next to a building that was empty I was there for a year and if someone came through maintenance with a ladder, I was like, oh, I'm in my chair How about this is interesting? After just needed novelty so desperately that pure boredom actually set me up And you know, I was saying to you that you know I hit target in a job that I hated if I have this mindset to a job that I love I can do it's one of My favorite it's one of my favorite lessons from you So like if you're achieving in a life that you hate imagine how good you be at one that you so almost 18 year old He he doesn't get to just skip to the successful part because he needs the job that sucks He needs to be bought he needs to have the manager Why do you think it is this sort of speed running trying to skip past it mentality? Is that a social media comparison thing being able to see? People of your age or even people that are outside because your exposure I don't know, but maybe because you come from an area that was much more affluent than mine I was never exposed to anybody that had sort of entrepreneurial gumption I never felt like I was comparing myself to my peers that they were better at me better than me at cricket They were getting more time They were batting up the order in firsts or when I went to university you can compare your grades with other people, etc But it didn't feel like the same Further, do you know what? I mean? Like this rushy desperate need to speed run Childhood and early adulthood into maturity. I think it's a status signals have changed So for instance, like I said you before came home in the gold Rolex My dad was like that's nice come home first class My dad goes that nice come home to the Sun my mom and dad like my dad cried when I told him the Table is pregnant. So like the status signals of their generation. The child was the biggest accomplishment They would rather have one child than three number one best-selling books. I show you rather than a thousand so now I do think the young people and again, I play into this a bit but young people at 18 shouldn't know what a Lamborghini event or SVJ is and they should you knew what a Nissan GTR skyline was like right when you were growing up as 14 year old I don't think I knew how much it would cost and how much money I needed to earn to then have the revenue to do It I didn't have chachapiti to talk to and say how can I afford this car? It feels a little bit more like the dream It's it's almost like Being a fan of like Harry Potter or a sports team like having messy as a poster on your bedroom wall and thinking I love messy not I'm going to be messy and The same thing for whatever the fancy car is because we would have had like fast car magazine and stuff growing up Pictures of birds from zoo. It was a great fast car magazine in the UK I don't know whether there must have been equivalents in the US was a wonderful way to For a teenager to buy soft-core porn under the guise of being interested in cars Yeah, that's what that entire industry was based on but I think this is the crazy thing though to those I don't know can't speak on behalf of 18 year olds, but I think those metrics have changed so much the people go Okay well if I'm gonna have that at this age like that person does because there are 24 year old millionaires live in Miami the Matt Armstrong is rebuilding that car from the Alex FG the the teach people at F for an exchange or whatever By fixing that car, it's how old see 23 24, right? It man gets he was super young when he did his thing for the hundreds. It's 24 25 Well, I met my shoes 24 fucking he's young bro He's got so you think they would set the benchmark as that and go, right? The only way I get access to these signals is not through employment. It must be through having anything adds to the ambience Yes, like I'm a smoke machine in the background. It's cool, isn't it? Especially if I'm talking about they've got the smoke on Yeah, yeah, so the the state signals something you've changed. I think the people now reverse engineer. It's only a tool thing Jared's you ever considered you might have a drinking problem I don't consider a lot Chris what you drank an entire case of athletic brewing coal last night, but they're non-alcoholic And that's not a problem. Sorry, man. I kept chugging wait for the regret to creep in never happened Didn't you end up going home with that chick with the lazy eye? I Didn't seem lazy to me See most people like Jared don't actually want to change what they drink They just don't want the next day to be a complete write-off, which is why I'm such a huge fan of athletic brewing Co They make the best any brews on the planet so you can still have something cold and tasty just without the usual trade-off You can find athletic brewing Co's best-selling lineup at grocery or liquor stores near you or best option get a full variety pack of four flavors shipped direct to your door get 15% off your first online order by going to the link in the description below or heading to Athletic brewing comm slash modern wisdom using the code modern wisdom a check out That's athletic brewing comm slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom a check out near beer terms and conditions apply a drink brewing company fit for all times If you're because I remember 100k a year was you've made it. That's why I thought great Okay, I didn't know anybody that earned 100k when I was growing up So then I think they're great and when I was growing up was like cool if I can get there before I'm 35 or 40 Sweet, and then that's it. I remember my goal was personal training with six hours a day 60 pounds an hour. I remember when I saw you do your how to make money as a personal trainer What was it get in at 6 do 2 hours 15 minute break 6 7 15 8 30 9 30 then 10 45 1145 and you're done by 1 don't worry about them. So you do 2 hours 2 hours 2 hours What's the matter? What's the matter lesson to all this because it's fun and it's interesting stories But what at least for me? trying to It might feel a bit like a needless nostalgia largely Anglicized needless nostalgia as well for people the rest of the world that don't understand it or at least can't I'd directly relate to it. One of the things that at least comes up for me is a Reminder of how Unpressurized my Childhood and even young business time felt I didn't feel the pressure really sort of turn the taps on Until probably about 10 years ago, it was probably 2015 16 17. Okay, like this is this really feels like I am Competing with the world and I didn't have a massive amount of ambition beforehand But I just I don't know. I wish that I could gift that young kid that we saw today fucking young kiddies 18 I wish that we could give like gift like all of the freshers that we've seen at these events that have come out to see us just Liberation of not feeling like it needs to be done right now. I've got a concept. I've been working on it I've been trying to explain it a little bit because you're writing a book at the moment yeah, this actually I actually just said it's someone giving them advice and I was like, oh someone record that and We're talking it was actually Ed Lawrence asked me the most important financial metric to aim for as a business owner And I call it head above water. So you write down what's my rent? What's my car finance? What's my Holiday fund. What is it? What is that amount now? What is that per month now as a business only work towards it? and actually there's a rowing coach that I work with and him and his wife have a glass of champagne every month they hit the number they need to survive and Sometimes they do it the 20th day But sometimes they do it on the 7th day and if from the 7th day of the month they've hit enough money They're invincible for the rest of the month Yeah, no matter if they don't quite a short-term window to be thinking every month They get sit down on a glass champagne and the harder they work the sooner they have it and it's like it and then if You have it on the 29th day, babe We still hit it and I thought that's amazing Water thing a lot of people think that potentially I don't give a fuck online I do give a fuck I give selective fucks, but actually ever since I started my business in 2015 2014 I've made enough money for my head above water and that's made me invincible So when my first brand deal came to me and I told him to fuck off It's because I had 1,300 pounds in my monzo. I was like you can't buy me I got 1,300 pound of my monzo me and if people only realize that your head above water level changes Obviously your needs your wants the house you're in whatever but once you hit that you are really invincible from the world and People don't look at that that line in front of them They don't look at that line in the sand and go as long as I hit that I'm fine Their line is fucking miles ahead of them I'm realistically far ahead and they fill that void with depression anxiety and reasons to be unhappy. We even do that I don't know why I'm giving this advice. I can't take it myself But really if they just looked at that number and said right as long as I hit that I'm fine That's it and as a student this guy's number for his head above water is a Tiny amount and I say bro the whole world of business and everything you've got ahead of you How much work or how much services or how many products you have to sell to that number? It's not scary and big and as daunting as you like then if you supersede that number Hey, you can have more cool stuff wealth is just reality Minus expectations right and by that definition a lot of billionaires broke If you explain that to me again wealth is reality minus expectations So if you are overachieving what you expect from life, you're wealthy. Okay Yeah If you are underachieving what you expect from life or what you want from life your desires Minus what your reality is delivering to you. Everybody always wants to grow They always want things that are beyond where they're at at the moment, but there's difference between Expecting it from life and desiring it from life And I think that if you are permanently reminding yourself of all of the things that this other person has got that's Your comparison group. The problem is our comparison group has been spread out so much more It's interesting being around students today We gave out unsolicited gave out a ton of new tonic cans in the middle of the Exeter Student Union today What did what I say to the guy who left I went up to him. I went bro. You're six foot two and blonde You are you've won the lottery brother I said mate you could have been born any country in the world Statistically most likely to be born in Africa followed by Asia. You're in Great Britain I was like by the sound of your voice your parents grew up in an affluent area. You're six foot two There's what three percent of men taller than you plus if you get any taller than six foot two I reckon you start see negative returns because then you're too tall then you've got bloody knees touching the seats on easy jet No, I Was like bro you you you have so much already I was like you haven't accomplished anything and you've already won the lottery I was like so everything from here on in it's kind of cool and it sounded like you had a hot girlfriend There's a he did there's a line from Joe Hudson Most people believe confidence comes from being really good at what they do or never messing up but unshakable confidence comes from knowing your worth isn't tied to performance and it feels a little bit like managing to Detach those two things that switch of worth being tied to performance, especially in the Status realm which is now being quantified on social media in the financial realm Which you're now able to compare more easily because of transparency online all of that being made more Obvious and Broadcast is What I think the switch that got flicked for me when I was in my 20s It's like ah I now have a metric to compare myself to and I should be ahead and we're doing it now and the Interesting lesson is if you can't unpick that knowing that your worth isn't tied to your performance if you can't unpick that I think you'll always feel lacking because the game just gets bigger We're going to announce this most recent valuation and raise and all the rest of the stuff that we've done for new tonic We're about to announce we will by the time that this goes out of announced Walmart HEB Morrison's daily look at that. Isn't that cute we got for the people that are listening. We're holding up custom woven Coasters that we were gifted, right? We've also got there's a bunch of Easter eggs that we have managed to slot into this scene. Let's see who picks up on them The game just gets bigger and you keep on fighting with harder and harder Opponents or rivals or whatever it is. It's like oh you thought that your Nissan your Renault Megane r26 f1 was nice. Well, I know a guy who's got what's Greg's car? What's that stupid thing that I was in? Ferrari lost what is it? summit to eight as it It's absurd whatever it is, it's silly and fastened to be like 1.2 million dollars Smart car it is a smart car. Do you know what's interesting? I will say off the back of that as you're saying this as a meme in my head Well, you got like black and white two portraits of two people One guy's got loads and loads of money and he's pointing No You got a person with a family and a wife Pointing out a millionaire saying you're rich and the millionaires there on his own pointing at the people between you're happy. You're rich Yeah, like the the wealth subjective. We always say it's like money money money But when I meet people sometimes they say people are on in the career. They want they're not earning the money They want they're not driving the car they want but they still have so much and I think in a world now We're not really told like hey You you've got a wife Do you guys still get on after being together for 10 years and you fucking cool two kids and despite having the normal struggles? everyone else hasn't half-term being expensive or whatever like I Wish we counted that more. So there's a rebellion at the moment, you know for all that this can sound like like needless nostalgia or Two guys trying to over intellectualize what just the Challenge of being human and and trying to sort of weave through that the Competing priorities that everybody has that definitely feels to me to be a rebellion that's coming at least in part at the moment Which is as both men and women men in the past recent past and women right now Are able to socio-economically get to where they want to Maybe they don't have the spending power that they wished that they had But they're able to like achieve a lot of things and I've got a new job position and so on and so forth I think that a lot of the Backbiting and the scrappiness and and the sort of discomfort and and the finger-pointing that's happening is people Completing things that they thought would make them happy Only to realize that the problem that they thought they were going to solve is still there Despite the fact that the antidote to it has already been Ingested like I have got to the place that I thought would be escape velocity from my issues I've already achieved the goals that I said would make me happy fuck maybe I made a mistake, maybe I did something wrong and one of the wonderful and It's very hard to thread this needle the original live show that I did That I wrote to go to Australia with was all about the arrival fallacy You call it you have a similar thing end of history end of history illusion So arrival fallacy the view from the top of the mountain is not as good as you think it's going to be when you're on The climb up if you're at the top trying to tell people who are still climbing that the view isn't that good It sounds like a fat guy telling a starving man that food isn't very tasty. That's what it sounds like It's it's a luxurious position to be in. No one wants to hear it, etc, etc and it's a bit trite and I saw Jake Humphrey talk about it and then it kind of killed the Like glamour of it because it doesn't sound contrarian anymore when it's kind of like, you know, really hitting the mainstream but there is definitely a big group of people who are achieving success in the way that society told them that they should be satisfied and Realizing that it's not scratched the itch that they hope for and there's two choices You're sort of when you are faced with that thing. You are offered one of maybe like three routes One of them is gold medalist syndrome where you think it wasn't it wasn't regional manager It was national manager. I what it wasn't it wasn't getting the bachelor's degree. He was getting them I was getting the M Phil that was the thing that was missing so you try and run it back the dose wasn't sufficient in order to complete that the second route is to sort of Rail against the system generally and say this whole thing is broken. That's when people get really spiky about it I think and the third one which at least at the moment My bro science brain is telling me is the one that is more accurate is to be more reflective and say Maybe the whole game of this Beyond what do I need to be able to survive and get myself to where I want to and you satiate my desire for like Status and respect from people because we're a social species, right? We need to be validated by the world through getting some accomplishments. I've closed those loops. I Shouldn't run it back. I shouldn't say that someone somewhere is oppressing me and like limiting my happiness. I Need to actually turn it inward and look at what is the part of me? that is always feeling dissatisfied no matter what the dose is that I get that's in return of this and Speaking as two guys that are trying to build a billion dollar brand for whatever reason it is You know what? Actually on this to give you your flowers one of the best frames and I was so jealous of this when I first heard you Say it it was a long time ago now You used to talk about success on social media as a game It's just game points. And today I like didn't play the game quite so well I lost some points and in other days, I played the game a little bit better and that frame of once you have got yourself to a level of comfort that is Accessible for most maybe it's not palatial Maybe it's not, you know, even house ownership, but it's like okay like We're moving and we're grooving here But the skills here are actually very simple to break down So for first thing you need to consider leveling up your character is one of the best messes in a game So for instance GTA you might get access to money which gives you access to weapons When you that'd be great for you when use the cheats, it's not So if I could give you that was a funny joke, I'm sorry Okay, if I could give you a million followers tomorrow, it wouldn't be as fun because you would use the cheat codes, right? The second thing is just pure volume and repetition So if we're doing shotty Snipes on Valhalla Halo 3 and wonder about that you ever play shotty Snipes on Valhalla. All right, call of duty Whatever it is if you want to get a headshot Mastery nothing is gonna be pure volume and everyone could say I'll get the new controller change your settings And yes, you should push your sensitivity up, but nothing beats pure volume So then you have that as well where no bit of advice you could give someone on starting a podcast would beat in 400 episodes Yeah, so you've got leveling up your character, which might be getting a better microphone choosing a better camera researching before you do a pod Working on hooks looking at what other competitors are doing all of these things come from gaming Then you've got cooperation in gaming when you work together as a team to work towards the same objective Even though you're separate characters that can then put you into a team player and an organized team in a game of Call of Duty You're gonna win the war zone better than four people playing also tends to be much more enjoyable Because you get to celebrate the wins together and you also get to mitigate the losses together exactly I'm gaming and reality you have so much because also if you have a bad day gaming you don't ruin your day It was just a tough day. If you die on a level you get another opportunity to that is Unshakable confidence comes from knowing that your worth isn't tied to your performance and what you're doing with the game analogy is unpicking Performance and worth. Yeah, right unless you're a pro eSports player But again, your worth is tied up in this thing I love this analogy when I started doing speech coaching a lot of people I think maybe even you did this Maybe you didn't some of my friends said but what about your lovely natural speaking voice? Like you're not worried that he's going to sort of take that away from you and I thought he was really interesting I wasn't really too sure how to feel about it But then I realized that if you're a pianist you go and take piano lessons with a teacher You're a amateur pianist no one goes, but what about your lovely natural piano playing? You're not worried that the teacher is going to take that away from you And what I learned is that there are certain things that we feel is very close to our sense of self It's very sort of central to who we are as a person and then there are other things that we see is like Pursuits or augmentations or like presentations of how we put our true self across Accent way that you speak and communicate very close to your sense of self way that you play piano less So I would challenge this well only from a pure Giving another point of view to this so there's an interesting thing there where however Sometimes speaking too perfect could be a reason not to listen because you agree I agree, but that's that's just another game of mastery. Here's a concept I've got another one that was talking about where introduced we've got belts everyone seems to think it's best to learn from black belt and Yes, I agree because they've got a plethora of experience and lived experiences. Whatever. Thank you However, sometimes I think as a blue belt You're best to learn from a purple belt because although they do not have the answers to everything They're much closer to where you were than the black belt The black belt hasn't been a blue belt for 10 years This is model the rise not the result like you don't want to be learning from the person and what they're doing now you want To learn from the person who knows what they were doing when they were where you are So to the pianist thing if you have a grand master pianist Yes, they will know so much But actually someone that's maybe only two years ahead of you might have more familiarity and you're still learning, right? You're still making developments. So with the voice thing I would just make sure that and I don't know whether you do this whether or not you might start putting in little idiosyncratic ways of speaking and to the perfect past so for a long time episode if you go back and we'll look at Like 200 to 500 I got worse as a communicator Because I was thinking so consciously about the way that I speak But tongue position when I was saying s and L because I've got a slight lisp So I need to work on that. I want you to work. I want to get rid of that I want you to get rid of filler words wherever I could I wanted to stop saying mm-hmm. And yeah, who's that Jefferson guy? What's his name Jefferson Fisher? That's it. Great. Wonderful communicator James Sexton same thing, but they've got Idiosyncratic ways of speaking that are still precise. They're not sterile. I feel like he's a witch He is a little with because he's so good at speaking I'm like get off my screen because he's gonna do NLP and get into my mitochondria and he's gonna he's gonna make me buy some Off-line so when he's talking to me, sometimes I'm like now, all right, we need to fuck off I can see all of the boys twitching because we need to go and soundcheck on stage This is the first and maybe final podcast that we're ever gonna do in a tour bus if you don't drink new tonic Every person doesn't drink new tonic your neighbor's cat will die save your neighbor's cat drink new tonic available in Sainsbury's meal deal Walmart HEB HEB Gelson's vitamin shop GNC Morrison's Morrison's daily and Morrison's fuel stations motor fuel group if it's good petrol station, I'll be in there if it's not by if you're somewhere else Bingo. All right. Goodbye my beauties