From Love Island Star to Podcast Philosopher - Chris Williamson

Chris Williamson 0:00 What I realized there was that there are particular modes of existing that we get in our early 20s, many of which are kind of the lowest common denominator, um, limbic hijack route to success that we can find, right? Like, quite a base transactional transient route to success. As you grow up a little bit more, you realize, hang on, perhaps this isn't serving me quite in as much of a holistic broad view as I want. That's what I saw with fitness. What I think you see with specifically guys, maybe with girls as well, the manopause is someone realizing that as you get toward the end of your 20s, the values that you had when you were younger aren't serving you

Ali Abdaal 0:35 Hello, and welcome to Deep Dive, the podcast that delves into the minds of entrepreneurs, creators, and other inspiring people to uncover their journeys towards finding joy and fulfillment at work and in life. My name is Ali, and in each episode, I chat to my guests about the philosophies, strategies, and tools that have helped them along the path to living a life of happiness and meaning. In this week's episode of Deep Dive, I sit down for a chat with my friend Chris Williamson. Chris is a club promoter, TEDx Speaker, YouTuber, and podcaster. His podcast, Modern Wisdom, shares life lessons from the smartest people on the planet, including the likes of Jordan Peterson, Ryan Holiday, and James Clear, and was born out of Chris' curiosity for self-discovery and after his existential crisis after appearing on the TV show Love Island.

Chris Williamson 1:16 While I was on Love Island, I got to observe people that were that person, the pinnacle party boy, right? 'Cause I was playing this role. I thought I was, but it kinda turned out that I wasn't really, and I had this fatal dose of contrast as I lived in a villa with no distractions for four weeks, watching these people and being with them, but really still feeling on the outside.

Ali Abdaal 1:38 In our conversation, me and Chris discuss how he shed the party boy persona in favor of intellect and meaning before discussing topics like masculinity, role models, and the dating market.

Chris Williamson 1:47 Almost two-thirds of women say that they would not be in a relationship with a man who is less educated, less wealthy, and lower in status than them.

Ali Abdaal 1:54 So please feel free to grab a cup of tea and enjoy the conversation. Chris, welcome to, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing?

Chris Williamson 2:00 My pleasure, man. Thanks for having me.

Ali Abdaal 2:01 So we've spoken a few times. Uh, I think I was on your podcast maybe, oh, a year or two ago, something like that.

Chris Williamson 2:05 About a year ago maybe, I think, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 2:07 Yeah, and then we kinda kept in touch ever since. But one thing I didn't realize, uh, when we were doing research for this, I, I, I just did not know anything about your former life

Ali Abdaal 2:14 as a professional party boy.

Chris Williamson 2:15 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 2:16 And I saw that that's, that's, like, the third thing on your Twitter. You've got YouTuber, podcaster, and profe- former p- professional party boy.

Chris Williamson 2:22 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 2:22 And I feel like you and I have a few things in common on the YouTuber and podcaster front, but I know literally nothing about the world of a professional lad.

Chris Williamson 2:29 Okay.

Ali Abdaal 2:29 And I wonder if you can, like, what-

Chris Williamson 2:31 Are you not a professional lad, Ali? I could have sworn.

Ali Abdaal 2:33 Well, I want, I wanted to be a professional lad, which is why I ended up making YouTube videos about productivity, but [laughs] it kind of-

Chris Williamson 2:38 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 2:39 ... kind of took me in a different direction. What was, what was your life growing up, and, like, what was the kind of professional party boy stuff that you used to do back in the day, like pre-2015?

Chris Williamson 2:47 Cool. So I'm a club promoter by trade. I still own one of the biggest events companies in the UK called Voodoo Events. I've run about 1,000 nightclubs, uh, events in my entire life. I've seen a million people go in and out of them, so I've met about a million people in my life, stood on the front door of nightclubs between 10:00 PM and 3:00 in the morning, which is a fascinating, uh, insight into human nature because when people ha- are... their inhibitions have gone and they've had a little bit to drink, it's a pretty interesting Petri dish for things to occur. Uh, and that happened at uni. So I was skint at uni. I started flyering, and I was, like, the best flyerer, then I was the best halls flyerer, then I was the best junior event manager, and I picked up a franchise when I was 19. That was called Carnage, which was a T-shirt bar crawl.

Ali Abdaal 3:26 Okay.

Chris Williamson 3:26 Anyone who's probably 30 or older will remember it.

Ali Abdaal 3:29 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 3:30 You wore a T-shirt, and you ticked off tasks on the back as you went around different bars. So we did really well with that, and then I started doing weekly club nights, and then you pick up more club nights, and then you get managers, and then you get guest listers, and now we have a bar in Leeds, six nights a week in Leeds, four nights a week in Newcastle. We've got m- over 1,000 staff. We have a shots company that do shot girls, and-

Ali Abdaal 3:50 Sorry, what?

Chris Williamson 3:51 So shot girls, girls who go around and sell-

Ali Abdaal 3:53 What are shot girls? [laughs]

Chris Williamson 3:54 So they sell shots.

Ali Abdaal 3:55 Okay.

Chris Williamson 3:56 So you want a Jägerbomb, but you can't be bothered to go to the bar.

Ali Abdaal 3:58 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 3:58 Good-looking girls go around and sell shots to people that can't be arsed to leave the dance floor.

Ali Abdaal 4:04 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 4:04 They charge you a little bit of a premium. We take the premium, um, and pay the girls a little bit of a cut. So we have a bunch of different sort of nightlife related businesses, and that was the formative years, man. That was until 2017, 2018. That was the bulk of what I did.

Ali Abdaal 4:22 So, okay. So I think, I think th- this is an interesting kind of divergent, uh, sort of divergence of our paths 'cause when I was at uni and I was like, "I need to make money," I decided to make websites, whereas when you were at uni and you needed to make money-

Chris Williamson 4:33 Got a different route

Ali Abdaal 4:33 ... you decided to... So how, how, how, how does that work? Do you just, like, give flyers to students, and, like, how, how do you make that work?

Chris Williamson 4:39 You must have gone out while you were at uni.

Ali Abdaal 4:40 Uh, twice.

Chris Williamson 4:41 Twice?

Ali Abdaal 4:42 Yes.

Chris Williamson 4:42 In all of uni. You are-

Ali Abdaal 4:43 In all of my uni, yeah. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 4:43 You are precisely the sort of student that I hate.

Ali Abdaal 4:46 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 4:46 You are precisely the sort of one... No, I need someone who is desperately lonely and wants to go out on a night out three or four nights a week with their friends.

Ali Abdaal 4:53 Got it.

Chris Williamson 4:54 Um, it's a very interesting way to look at marketing because what you're playing off the back of is mimetic desire, status, and cool.

Ali Abdaal 5:06 Okay.

Chris Williamson 5:06 What makes something cool-

Ali Abdaal 5:08 Yeah

Chris Williamson 5:08 ... is really, really difficult to define. So what we try and do as event promoters is we create brands. Um, for instance, Wiki Woo in Ibiza is this sort of pastel and pink flamingos, very girly, sort of girl power, but it's a bit retro and chic as well. So we came up with Paradiso, which is this flamingo neon sign, and that was a Friday that we launched. It's all girly. Girls get pink shots, and there's different types of music and stuff, and we've dressed the venue in pink.

Ali Abdaal 5:35 Okay.

Chris Williamson 5:35 That creates a image to market.

Ali Abdaal 5:38 Yep.

Chris Williamson 5:39 We put DJs on that are the right. We price it correctly. We deal with a venue that's a, that's sort of appropriate, uh, location for this. And then people hopefully come. And then once you've got them, you network to them, you get networkers, guest listers that go and say, "Hey, you coming out tonight?" They build up their networks. They make a commission on the people that come in.

Ali Abdaal 5:55 Oh.

Chris Williamson 5:56 Uh, it's a pretty sophisticated... For- when you look at a nightclub and you go, "Oh, it's just people getting drunk in a room to music-"

Ali Abdaal 6:01 Yeah. It's like a whole operation behind the-

Chris Williamson 6:02 There's a lot going on behind the scenes, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 6:03 Okay. And so were, were you one of the kind of networkers?

Chris Williamson 6:06 Originally, yes.

Ali Abdaal 6:07 Okay. So you would kind of make friends with... Because, like, on my, on my college's Facebook page, there would be a guy [laughs] uh, his, his name was Sam Thumb- Sam, Sam Mellor, I think, and people used to call him the Spam [laughs] Mellor, Mellor-

Chris Williamson 6:19 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 6:19 ... because he would just go around, like, spamming people being like-

Chris Williamson 6:21 Correct

Ali Abdaal 6:21 ... "Hey, are you coming out tonight? Are you coming out tonight?"

Chris Williamson 6:22 He's one of mine. So he would be one of mine.

Ali Abdaal 6:23 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 6:24 He would be one of the little agents that we send out into the world. Uh, but, yeah, I mean, the guys make good money, and they have a sense of belonging, and they can move their way up. So I mean, we've got full-time members of staff now. We've got guys that do placement years that have come and done graduate stuff with us.

Ali Abdaal 6:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 6:39 And yeah, it's, it's fun, man. It's really good fun.

Ali Abdaal 6:42 So what were you like in, in school to end up as that being your side hustle rather than me ending up as website design being my side hustle?

Chris Williamson 6:49 I was probably a lot more like you in school than you think.

Ali Abdaal 6:52 Really?

Chris Williamson 6:52 Oh, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 6:52 Interesting.

Chris Williamson 6:53 So I-

Ali Abdaal 6:53 I, I'm imagining you were a professional lad in school, on all the football teams, all the girls interested, that kind of vibe.

Chris Williamson 6:57 No. No, no, no, no.

Ali Abdaal 6:58 Okay. Interesting.

Chris Williamson 6:58 Very much a late bloomer.

Ali Abdaal 6:59 Okay.

Chris Williamson 6:59 So school was, uh... I played cricket at quite a high level-

Ali Abdaal 7:03 Mm

Chris Williamson 7:04 ... and for a long time, throughout pretty much all of school. I went to a state school, state primary, state Stockton sixth form college. Stockton being a town that was only famous for having the highest teen pregnancy rating in the UK, and it recently lost that, so it's not even the best at that anymore. And [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 7:20 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 7:20 Um, yeah, very much an unpopular kid in school, like wildly unpopular.

Ali Abdaal 7:24 Okay.

Chris Williamson 7:25 Um, really on the outside looking in, didn't really fit into any particular groups.

Ali Abdaal 7:29 Hey, that was not like me [laughs] for the record. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 7:31 Okay. Okay. Um, and then I think that what that, one of the advantages it gave me was when I came to be a club promoter, when you're on the outside looking in, you can see how groups, um, coalesce.

Ali Abdaal 7:43 Okay.

Chris Williamson 7:43 And it means that you can actually look at what it is that they want from different things, and you can observe group dynamics for, uh, markets in slightly different ways.

Ali Abdaal 7:53 Okay.

Chris Williamson 7:53 So what we're manipulating as club promoters is group dynamics, cool trends, uh, how to bring people together.

Ali Abdaal 8:00 Okay.

Chris Williamson 8:01 Uh, and it's... I think it's far easier to do that from the outside than from the inside. If you look at most top, top level club promoters, guys that are of my level, they are not people directly in the middle of the popularity group. They're ones that are slightly actually on the outside-

Ali Abdaal 8:15 Mm

Chris Williamson 8:15 ... uh, because I think it gives them a bit more perspective.

Ali Abdaal 8:17 Okay. So as a club promoter, you figure out, like, who the cool kids are. You get them to come to your nightclub. You get them to build hype around it. The cool kids are going to Paradiso, therefore the slightly less cool kids are like, "We wanna be like the cool kids are going to Paradiso."

Chris Williamson 8:30 Precisely. You could be a club promoter.

Ali Abdaal 8:32 Sick. [laughs] Okay. Um, so you started off doing this as a side hustle. How did things, like, escalate beyond that point to where, where, where you are now?

Chris Williamson 8:41 Uh, so we just launched a Saturday night in Newcastle that was very, very successful. We timed it correctly with the market, and that became one of the biggest events in the country. It was just as Geordie Shore had started. So the first ever episode of Geordie Shore, season one, episode one, they're in Voodoo, which was our Saturday night.

Ali Abdaal 8:58 Okay.

Chris Williamson 8:59 And we ran that for six or seven years. Probably did quarter of a million people through that one event, uh, in that time, maybe even more. And that gave us a foundation that we could build on top of. We could recruit managers. We learned our processes. So we very much structured and made a procedure out of club promo as best we could to try and have a formula for how you release an event, how you do pre-build up to things. And yeah, that informs a lot of the things that I do now. So to give you an example, whenever I release anything to do with my podcast or, uh, a new lead magnet or courses that I do, I take huge advantage of long lead times and teaser campaigns-

Ali Abdaal 9:40 Mm

Chris Williamson 9:40 ... because that is my club promotion heritage-

Ali Abdaal 9:43 Right

Chris Williamson 9:43 ... showing through. I know for a fact that if... Th- we are, uh, teleological beings, right? We look forward to something occurring, and we actually enjoy the anticipation often a lot more than we enjoy the event itself. So by having, um... I'm releasing a new lead magnet in seven days' time. It's the Modern Wisdom reading list. Uh, here's a countdown timer on Instagram. Here's some teaser pages of it coming out. This is why people have asked me to do it. This is what it's gonna look like, but you can't get it yet.

Ali Abdaal 10:10 Yeah. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 10:10 This is what it's gonna be like. And it's just different things. Maybe I'll talk about it on the podcast. Maybe I'll bring it up on Instagram. Maybe I'll release it a little bit on Twitter. And then on that day, you get... I, I think that you end up with a overclocked amount of demand and interest because people have just been, like, waiting in the wings for it.

Ali Abdaal 10:27 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 10:27 And we do the same thing with club nights. We release a teaser video for the teaser video, then release a teaser video. Then we do a countdown. Then we finally get the event out.

Ali Abdaal 10:34 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 10:34 And you turn up outside, and there's 2,000 people because they've just-- they're just curious about-

Ali Abdaal 10:39 Wow

Chris Williamson 10:39 ... what, what's going on here? Why is this happening? So yeah, long, drawn-out teaser campaigns is a, a great hack.

Ali Abdaal 10:44 Interesting. So when you say "we" put on, like, a, a club night, like what does, what does the, the structure of this organization look like?

Chris Williamson 10:51 Cool. So, uh, myself and my business partner, Darren.

Ali Abdaal 10:54 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 10:54 Uh, there's two partners that are the parent company that work with us in Leeds, Matt and Dave.

Ali Abdaal 10:59 Yep.

Chris Williamson 10:59 Below us, we have about 12 managers. Below them, there are about four or five trainees/junior managers, and below them there's about 500 guest list staff. So each manager has a team.

Ali Abdaal 11:11 Yep.

Chris Williamson 11:11 And they, similar to a sales team, they recruit them, they find them. So they'll be on a night out, and they'll see some girl that's really hot or some guy that's really cool or some, like, girl that's got chat or whatever it might be.

Ali Abdaal 11:21 Yep.

Chris Williamson 11:22 They'll say, "Hey, why are you in our event? You should be working for us." And then you get in for free, and you get to drink for free, and you get to earn money. Do you wanna come work for us? They usually, um, sometimes they say yes. They bring them on board, and then that person starts bringing their friends down. Guest lister makes commission from their friends attending.

Ali Abdaal 11:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 11:38 Manager makes commission from all of their team's commissions.

Ali Abdaal 11:41 Yeah. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 11:41 And then we take the door, the door entry money over the top.

Ali Abdaal 11:45 We're gonna take a very quick break to introduce our sponsor, Brilliant. Brilliant is a fantastic online platform for learning maths, science, and computer science with interactive and engaging courses that I've been using for many years. But to be honest, I wish I'd had the lessons in maths to hand when I was preparing for my BMAT when applying to medical school. A lot of the time when we're taught maths at school, the focus is on empty memorization of formulas that we can apply in our exams. But the great thing about Brilliant is their courses teach you how to actually understand concepts from a first principles approach and develop the intuition to solve problems. Also, their computer science series is absolutely sick. They've got some fantastic courses on algorithms, on learning to program with Python. They've got a whole series about cryptocurrency and understanding exactly how things like Bitcoin work from the ground up, which is genuinely fascinating. So if you wanna give their lessons in maths a try, or even science or computer science, then head over to brilliant.org/deepdive, and the first 200 people to sign up via that link will get 20% off the annual subscription to the website. So thank you so much, Brilliant, for sponsoring this episode. So you're, so you're managing a, a pretty large team.

Chris Williamson 12:38 Yeah, it's huge.

Ali Abdaal 12:39 While-

Chris Williamson 12:39 But it's distributed.

Ali Abdaal 12:41 Distributed as in?

Chris Williamson 12:42 You've got everybody's accountable to someone-

Ali Abdaal 12:44 Yeah

Chris Williamson 12:44 ... and no one's team is actually that massive. So the, the largest single, um, amount of responsibility that any one person will have-

Ali Abdaal 12:51 Yeah

Chris Williamson 12:51 ... will probably be about 30 to 40 people, and that would be one of the managers looking after a big team of guest listers. But they don't need managing every day.

Ali Abdaal 12:59 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 12:59 It's just, "Are you coming out tonight?"

Ali Abdaal 13:01 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 13:01 "Have you sent your guest list in? You did shit last week. You did well last week. You won an award. Here's a bottle of vodka," whatever.

Ali Abdaal 13:07 Nice. Like, if you're, if you're this sort of professional networker, professional party boy, uh, do you form, like, real friendships through that? Or, or like how, how does, how does the social dynamics for your, like, your personal life work when you're living the same-

Chris Williamson 13:19 Do you end up with transactional friendships-

Ali Abdaal 13:20 Yeah

Chris Williamson 13:20 ... from doing this? Yeah, absolutely. But you know the ones that are.

Ali Abdaal 13:24 Okay.

Chris Williamson 13:24 And people know why you're there as well.

Ali Abdaal 13:25 Okay.

Chris Williamson 13:26 You transcend the friendships, especially with the people that you work with. So we have a voodoo old boys group, which is the guys that have graduated and moved on. Some of them are being finance people out in China now, or some of them are running stuff in London or-

Ali Abdaal 13:39 Yeah

Chris Williamson 13:39 ... Manchester, and we all keep together, and we bond really, really closely. So my business partner's wedding, 50% plus of the people that were there were people from nightlife. Mostly they were the ones that we'd worked with.

Ali Abdaal 13:50 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 13:50 There is very much a them and us type-

Ali Abdaal 13:52 Oh

Chris Williamson 13:52 ... uh, kind of like a, um, what's it called in con artistry? Is it like a mark and a con or something?

Ali Abdaal 13:58 Oh, yeah. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 13:59 Uh, there's the marks that are the people that are going out, and sometimes you make good friends with those.

Ali Abdaal 14:03 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:03 But for the most part, you bond with the people that you work with.

Ali Abdaal 14:05 Okay.

Chris Williamson 14:05 But those friendships, you know, you're going through really intense experiences together.

Ali Abdaal 14:10 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:10 If you'd stand on the door of an event and run 2,000 people trying to fit in on Halloween, so we've got Halloween coming up. Um, 2,000 people trying to get into a venue, and it will be chaos, and people are drunk. People are throwing up. People are having fights. There's... Someone spilled something on the floor. Some girl's fallen over and twisted her ankle. We need to get the whatever, whatever. It's a really strong bonding experience with some people, so you end up with a small tight-knit group of friends-

Ali Abdaal 14:35 Yeah

Chris Williamson 14:35 ... and then a very, very sort of disparate group of acquaintances.

Ali Abdaal 14:39 Interesting. So I guess it's sort of like how, as a YouTuber, you're not really friends with the audience. You're friends with other, other YouTubers. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 14:45 Precisely.

Ali Abdaal 14:46 Um-

Chris Williamson 14:46 Precisely correct.

Ali Abdaal 14:47 And there is this kind of parasocial relationship between the audience and the YouTuber where-

Chris Williamson 14:50 Exactly the same

Ali Abdaal 14:51 ... uh, b- both parties know it's somewhat transactional, but also-

Chris Williamson 14:55 We both know what this is.

Ali Abdaal 14:56 Yes. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 14:56 Okay?

Ali Abdaal 14:56 [laughs] That's so interesting. Okay. Um, I... So how... So you spent three years at uni?

Chris Williamson 15:04 Five.

Ali Abdaal 15:05 Five years at uni. Okay.

Chris Williamson 15:05 Uh, did bachelor's with a year in industry-

Ali Abdaal 15:08 Yeah

Chris Williamson 15:08 ... which was doing club promo for ourselves.

Ali Abdaal 15:10 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 15:10 We wrote ourselves a recommendation letter and got awarded placement students of the year off our own letter.

Ali Abdaal 15:14 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 15:15 Um, then, uh-

Ali Abdaal 15:16 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 15:17 ... went to do my master's in, in national marketing.

Ali Abdaal 15:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 15:20 The reason I did that was because I was told that it would be the easiest master's to do 'cause it was mostly my bachelor's-

Ali Abdaal 15:25 Yeah

Chris Williamson 15:25 ... just bundled into another year.

Ali Abdaal 15:27 Okay.

Chris Williamson 15:28 Uh, I paid for that in cash. Um, so I went and paid £8,100-

Ali Abdaal 15:32 What, like in a- actual cash?

Chris Williamson 15:33 ... in, in cash.

Ali Abdaal 15:34 Oh, wow. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 15:34 Uh, because I'd saved up this money from, uh, running club nights.

Ali Abdaal 15:37 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 15:38 And then paid-

Ali Abdaal 15:39 Okay

Chris Williamson 15:39 ... cash to the ladies. Uh, and they said, "Oh, the, the safe's only rated for £500."

Ali Abdaal 15:44 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 15:44 I was like, "Well, the bank's still open. You can... I'm not taking it back. You've got it."

Ali Abdaal 15:47 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 15:47 Um, so that felt r- quite nice.

Ali Abdaal 15:49 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 15:49 I was able to self-fund my own master's from-

Ali Abdaal 15:51 Oh

Chris Williamson 15:51 ... from running e- events. That, that was, like, really, really satisfying to me. Um, uh, and then, yeah, five years at uni. Take Me Out, Love Island, YouTube.

Ali Abdaal 16:00 Yeah. Okay. Hang on. So [laughs] what... So, so Take Me Out was your first-

Chris Williamson 16:05 Foray into TV

Ali Abdaal 16:05 ... foray in- Yeah.

Chris Williamson 16:06 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 16:06 How, how, how did that happen? And what, what is Take Me Out for, for the uninitiated?

Chris Williamson 16:11 It's a modern-day version of Blind Date. It's a very fluffy dating show here in the UK. Guy walks out on stage. There are 20 girls sat behind or stood behind podiums, and they can keep their light on, which is "I'm interested," or they can turn their light off, which is "He's not for me." And you go through different rounds where you expose different pieces of information about yourself. So there'll be a VT about your life. There'll be, uh, an explanation of what you do for work. They'll maybe interview one of your friends. And whatever's left at the end, whoever has their lights on, the guy then has the power to choose who he wants to go on a date with. You're then flown off on holiday for a, a day with the girl, and you spend a day date, uh, dating her. Y- that's all televised as well, and then you decide whether or not you want to keep in touch or not, and then you go home. So it's, it's actually quite... The filming thing's quite condensed.

Ali Abdaal 17:03 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 17:03 But, um, that was fun. And I'm a, so I'm a male model. I've been... Alongside club promo and doing YouTube, I've been a model since pretty much I was 18.

Ali Abdaal 17:12 Okay.

Chris Williamson 17:13 Uh, and I DJ'd as well. So it was just anything that was kind of like... It was the archetypal fuckboy life. Anything that made me look like a fuckboy and would earn me easy cash, that was for me.

Ali Abdaal 17:26 So you decide to do the male model

Ali Abdaal 17:29 thing, and then the, the, the Take Me Out thing comes about.

Chris Williamson 17:32 Correct. Yep.

Ali Abdaal 17:33 What... If, for example, I got an email saying, "Do you wanna be on Take Me Out?" Actually, I have. I, a, a few, a couple years ago, I got an, uh, some person messaged me on Instagram saying, "Hey, I'm a producer for, like, ITV something, something, something." Probably one of the legions of them. "Would you be interested in coming on Take Me Out, like, a sort of doctor special edition?"

Chris Williamson 17:49 Yep.

Ali Abdaal 17:50 And I was like, "Hell no."

Chris Williamson 17:51 Why?

Ali Abdaal 17:51 "Obviously not." Because... It's a good question. Why? Because it seems, like, cringe and scary and, like, uh-

Chris Williamson 17:59 I think you'd do amazingly well. I think you'd do phenomenally well on Take Me Out, especially as someone... You have to imagine how little time most people have spent in front of a lens, and how poorly most people deal with the pressure of being on camera, which is something that you literally do for a living. If you came down the stairs and you understood your positioning-

Ali Abdaal 18:18 Mm.

Chris Williamson 18:18 Like, you know who you are-

Ali Abdaal 18:19 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 18:19 ... you know what your offer to the market is overall-

Ali Abdaal 18:21 [laughs] Yep

Chris Williamson 18:21 ... and you just leaned into that a little bit-

Ali Abdaal 18:23 Yeah

Chris Williamson 18:23 ... and were like, "Hey, guys, I'm Ali. I came first in Cambridge at this, this, and this thing. I'm a tech reviewer. I do this, that, and the other. And actually, on the side, I can play guitar." And you pull the guitar out and you start doing that, or you did your freestyle rap.

Ali Abdaal 18:34 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 18:35 Dude, you've nailed it.

Ali Abdaal 18:36 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 18:37 I promise you, that's, that's gold. That is absolute money.

Ali Abdaal 18:41 Okay. But ju- just as you're, as you're describing it, just even, even the thought of that is filling me with this sort of, like-

Chris Williamson 18:47 Dread [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 18:47 ... dread, like, you know. I'm kind-

Chris Williamson 18:50 Why?

Ali Abdaal 18:50 ... I'm kinda sweating. I'm kinda thinking that I don't want to be that guy. I, I think it's a fear of what other people will th- other pe- people who I know and people at large will think of me, because they'll be like, "Oh my God, what the hell is this?"

Chris Williamson 19:02 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 19:03 Um, did you have any of that when you went on it, or were you just like, "Screw it. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go on Take Me Out?"

Chris Williamson 19:07 Yeah, so that's a, that's a good point. Um, when you do Take Me Out specifically, that's in front of a 400-person live audience, which is really, really scary. Doesn't matter that it goes out to about four million people on TV.

Ali Abdaal 19:19 Yep.

Chris Williamson 19:19 You don't think about them.

Ali Abdaal 19:19 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 19:19 But 400 people in the audience, that's pretty scary.

Ali Abdaal 19:22 Okay.

Chris Williamson 19:22 Um, and also when you come down, there's a... It's called the Love Lift. When you come down the Love Lift, that is the most rickety piece of shit-

Ali Abdaal 19:30 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 19:31 ... that has ever been created. The fact that that's got past health and safety blows my mind. So you're st- [laughs] you're stood on this terrifying contraption as it slowly lowers you to the floor to be judged by a group of 20 girls and watched by a group of 400 people while Paddy McGuinness is next to you. For people that don't know, Paddy McGuinness is, like, a ex-TV guy that now does, uh, Top Gear, doesn't he?

Ali Abdaal 19:52 Does he?

Chris Williamson 19:52 He-

Ali Abdaal 19:53 No idea

Chris Williamson 19:53 ... probably. Seems like he do.

Ali Abdaal 19:54 I know him because he's a person in Articulate, the board game, and I never know who he is. [laughs] It's like Paddy, that's like the... [laughs]

Chris Williamson 20:00 I love how that's your reference into popular culture.

Ali Abdaal 20:03 Yeah, it's like first name So- Like, first name something Power, that, like, betting company, and then, like, the next one is, like, a, some kinda alcohol. [laughs] We're like, "Oh, Paddy McGuinness."

Chris Williamson 20:09 Wow.

Ali Abdaal 20:10 That, that would be how I describe it. Anyway, so-

Chris Williamson 20:12 Yes

Ali Abdaal 20:12 ... uh, how... Yeah, how, how do you get over that? How did you get over that, like, severe... I imagine anyone, 99.99% of people listening to this, if they imagine themselves on a reality TV show where they're being judged by 20 girls and broadcast to four million people at a 400 li- live person, live audience, would think, "Never in a million years am I doing that."

Chris Williamson 20:29 Yep.

Ali Abdaal 20:29 How, like, what was different about you, your mindset, your approach that made you be like, "You know what? This is legit." [laughs]

Chris Williamson 20:35 This lesson-

Ali Abdaal 20:36 Yeah

Chris Williamson 20:36 ... isn't as satisfying as it should be, but it, it happens so much. You just end up doing it.

Ali Abdaal 20:41 Okay.

Chris Williamson 20:41 Once you're stood at the top of the lift and you arrive at the bottom, your feet end up walking forward and you go-

Ali Abdaal 20:45 Okay. But at that point you will. But, like, the point where it's like you have to sign up for this thing, and you're kinda visualizing, you're imagining, you're thinking-

Chris Williamson 20:50 I probably just didn't think about it enough.

Ali Abdaal 20:52 Okay. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 20:52 I didn't think about the fact that I was going to be in front of...

Ali Abdaal 20:54 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 20:54 Honestly, dude, I think that one of the underrated productivity tools or life tools that far few people use than should do is YOLO. Just the fact that you can, "I'm just gonna try this and see what happens."

Ali Abdaal 21:06 Yep.

Chris Williamson 21:06 And just jump feet first and learn to fly on the way down. Like, I'm, I've been asked to go on this TV show. Am I gonna be any good? Am I gonna totally blow it? Ah, YOLO. And then you just do it. Like, that is... It's such an effective route for living a varied life, because you, you'll probably be fine.

Ali Abdaal 21:27 Yep.

Chris Williamson 21:27 You'll almost definitely be fine.

Ali Abdaal 21:29 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 21:31 So just have faith that the future version of you will sort it out. And sure enough, that happens. So yeah, it's a bit nerve-wracking before you're gonna go on, and you think, "Oh, should I do..." I was 24. I was, I didn't know anything about breathing techniques. I wasn't meditating. I wasn't doing cold plunges to try and control my parasympathetic balance.

Ali Abdaal 21:46 Yep.

Chris Williamson 21:47 I just thought I'll have a Corona and hope for the best. So I had a beer backstage, and then before you know it, you're stood in front of girls and you're talking, and you're saying things, and you realize, "Wow, I s- didn't totally blow it."

Ali Abdaal 21:57 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 21:57 "It was just normal, and, and I survived and didn't-"

Ali Abdaal 22:01 Okay

Chris Williamson 22:01 ... turn into a puddle of anxiety on the floor." And then you go, "Oh, it was fine. Maybe I can do something else like that."

Ali Abdaal 22:10 You know, it's e- it's either a good time or a good story.

Chris Williamson 22:12 Correct.

Ali Abdaal 22:13 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 22:13 Correct.

Ali Abdaal 22:14 And occasionally both. Um, so that was, that was the Take Me Out career. At this point, you're, you're, you're 24. Um, how... What was happening next in your life, and where did Love Island come into things?

Chris Williamson 22:24 So that was just pure party boy mode, trying to build up the events business.

Ali Abdaal 22:30 So at this point, did you start your own events business?

Chris Williamson 22:32 This was... We'd started

Chris Williamson 22:33 that when we were 22.

Ali Abdaal 22:34 Okay.

Chris Williamson 22:34 Um, 23, 24.

Ali Abdaal 22:34 So through three, four years into uni you were like, "You know what? Let's do this thing ourselves."

Chris Williamson 22:38 We'll do it properly ourselves. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 22:39 Okay.

Chris Williamson 22:39 So we-

Ali Abdaal 22:39 And you started your business with, with your business partner?

Chris Williamson 22:41 Correct, yeah. So we'd done a little bit of work, uh, for other events companies previous to that, and darted around, but it'd always been me and my business partner. I sat next to him in my first-ever seminar, and we're still together 15 years later, still haven't got rid of each other. And that has always been the single consistent throughout, which is, again, trying to take, give some takeaways beyond YOLO for this podcast. Finding someone that you trust absolutely 100%, implicit total trust is such a competitive advantage.

Ali Abdaal 23:16 Mm.

Chris Williamson 23:16 I get far, far more than the 50% of the money that we make that he takes from our split from him.

Ali Abdaal 23:22 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 23:22 Because I just, we, we know each other inside out. And, and finding a business partner that's like that, it, it really makes the solo entrepreneurs even more impressive to me because I think, God, like, for you to be able to be that person, all of those decisions, there's no way that I would've been able to do that with our business. So- We're running our events. Uh, I'm DJing a couple of nights per week. I've done the Take Me Out thing, which was just Yolo and Clout. And we start launching other events. We pick up more and more networks so that we can branch out. We start to bring in some more managers. We learn to relinquish control-

Ali Abdaal 24:00 Mm

Chris Williamson 24:00 ... which is something that every young businessman struggles with.

Ali Abdaal 24:02 Yep.

Chris Williamson 24:03 You've got this baby that you've built. You understand exactly how it's supposed to work. I know exactly where the inflatable's supposed to go, which railing it's supposed to be tied around, and what the sort of knot is that's supposed to be used for it, where the cable ties go to put the banners on the barriers that go outside to control the queue. No, no, no, no, the, the cable tie's supposed to go on that rung, not that rung, 'cause there's a little bit of a crease.

Ali Abdaal 24:24 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 24:25 You just, you, you know it inside out.

Ali Abdaal 24:27 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 24:28 And then you need to learn, "Okay, if I want to scale this business, I need to relinquish this control."

Ali Abdaal 24:32 Mm.

Chris Williamson 24:32 And that's very difficult. And we did that more slowly than was optimal.

Ali Abdaal 24:37 Okay.

Chris Williamson 24:38 I held onto control for longer than I should have done. And, but over time, we got used to it. We started to bring in more and more guys that we trusted that could come in underneath us, and we started to outsource more and more of that workload.

Ali Abdaal 24:52 Mm.

Chris Williamson 24:52 Picked up more nights, more events, more entries per night, more staff, more managers-

Ali Abdaal 24:56 Yeah

Chris Williamson 24:56 ... to manage the staff. And you just slowly build and build and build over time.

Ali Abdaal 25:00 How did you kind of, uh, how did you learn to relin- relinquish, uh, relinquish control? Was there like a book? Was there like a pivotal moment? Was it just sort of-

Chris Williamson 25:09 So at this-

Ali Abdaal 25:09 ... trial and error?

Chris Williamson 25:09 ... at this period, man, I, I'm a really good avatar for the bro businessman-

Ali Abdaal 25:14 Okay

Chris Williamson 25:15 ... up until about four years ago.

Ali Abdaal 25:17 Okay.

Chris Williamson 25:17 And sometimes, I, sometimes I think that with the podcast that I do, Modern Wisdom, it does not, it doesn't speak to the person that I used to be-

Ali Abdaal 25:26 Mm

Chris Williamson 25:27 ... quite so much. Because I wasn't reading books. I wasn't bothered about personal development. I was bothered about effectiveness in business, and I was happy to develop my own business strategies, but I was quite just in the moment doing my thing, and there wasn't this sort of metacognizant step back-

Ali Abdaal 25:42 Yep

Chris Williamson 25:43 ... to look at it. And yeah, that's a strategy. So Jordan Peterson was on the show, and he talked about this, a- a- about the ability to step back and, and look at yourself. I can give you the link to put in the show notes if you want. But the, the ability to step back and look at it is something that I only developed far later in life. And when you're in it, the thinking, "I am going to let go of this baby which is mine," it feels like someone's pulling something out of you.

Ali Abdaal 26:10 Mm.

Chris Williamson 26:10 Like pulling a, a child away from you, and it's incredibly difficult. But what we realized was, if we want to scale and grow the business, I have to learn to do this. Had I have read Michael Gerber's The E-Myth Revisited-

Ali Abdaal 26:22 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 26:22 ... that would've been fine.

Ali Abdaal 26:23 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 26:23 But I didn't.

Ali Abdaal 26:24 Right.

Chris Williamson 26:24 And I didn't even know that existed, right?

Ali Abdaal 26:25 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 26:25 And even if I had known that it had existed, I would've probably been eating Domino's and drinking Budweiser, so I probably wouldn't have been able to focus. So I wasn't in the right place to receive the message even if I'd seen it.

Ali Abdaal 26:35 Mm.

Chris Williamson 26:36 The other thing, so two things, right, that businessmen, young businessmen and women really, really need to remember. The first one is you can relinquish far more control of your business than you think. The second one is you can raise your price far more than you think.

Ali Abdaal 26:49 Mm.

Chris Williamson 26:50 Almost everyone is undercharging for their product. Almost everybody is doing that because they err on the side of terror. Imposter syndrome comes through in the way that you market yourself and you put your products out there. You don't think that they're worth as much as they are because you want to have demand as opposed to profit sometimes. That's-

Ali Abdaal 27:09 Mm

Chris Williamson 27:09 ... until you can have the equanimity to see it from a bit more perspective, right?

Ali Abdaal 27:12 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 27:12 But I was just so terrified of doing it. So yeah, you can outsource far more of the work that you're doing than you think because you're holding onto it too much, and you can raise the price far more than you think because you're terrified of people not buying your product.

Ali Abdaal 27:24 I have, I have a lot of conversations with people about those two exact points. Uh, when it comes to the, uh, the, the outsourcing thing, when it comes to your usually creators or kind of creative businesses where they would, they were the technician. They were doing everything by themselves. And then the thought of outsourcing editing, "Oh my God, no one can edit like I can. I have my unique style of editing." Um, therefore kind of the, the fear of outsourcing it. Um, but every, every single person I've spoken to who has managed to outsource editing says, "Oh my God, I've freed up 30 hours of my life every single week to be able to make more content, or do the things I wanna do, or spend more time with my friend, friends and family, rather than sit on Final Cut-"

Chris Williamson 27:58 Yes

Ali Abdaal 27:58 ... cutting out pauses and ums and ahs and adding B-roll here and there. Um, and on the pricing thing as well, I really had this fear when we first launched our YouTuber Academy, and initially it was gonna be like a $200 product, self-paced. I was like, "All right. I'm not, I'm not gonna suffer the risk of a single person saying this is not worth it or that I'm selling snake oil. Therefore, I'm gonna overload them with value and charge very, very low, low, basically no money for it." Um, and I was speaking to a, a few of our mutual friends, uh, Thiago Forte and David Perell, who talked me into not having this fear of selling and recognizing that actually you can raise the prices. You can do it as a more high touch thing, and that provides a specific service to people. It doesn't target everyone. It's not gonna target the bulk of your audience, but that's okay. And just fe- that, that feeling of like, "Oh shit, what are people gonna think when I start charging real money for something?"

Chris Williamson 28:41 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 28:42 Really scary, but-

Chris Williamson 28:43 Serious.

Ali Abdaal 28:43 So you, you've, you're finishing uni, you're building up this business, scaling.

Chris Williamson 28:47 Yep.

Ali Abdaal 28:47 What, what were the, what was the motivation there? Was it a kind of money thing, a status thing, a prestige thing? Like why, why trying to scale a business?

Chris Williamson 28:55 Yeah, good question. So I think for a long time, I found my sense of self-worth in success in business. This was probably not having tons of success socially when I was-

Ali Abdaal 29:06 Yeah

Chris Williamson 29:06 ... younger, and me wanting to prove to the world that I'm worth something, that I, I can have... People need me, that I have monetary success, that I have accolade, that I have renown, prestige, status, that I'm being, I'm sleeping with the right girls, that I'm spending time with the right friends, that I'm standing on the door of the correct clubs. Like these were the things that were giving, that were making me feel like I was worth something in the real world, and that was... I mean, don't get me wrong. Like it's pretty satisfy- It's pretty good at satisfying you on a surface level.

Ali Abdaal 29:36 Okay.

Chris Williamson 29:36 And it can go for a, a fair while, and I like rode that until the wheels came off.

Ali Abdaal 29:40 Okay.

Chris Williamson 29:40 But then I did Love Island, and that was when I was 28. 27. And, um, the same casting director that worked on Take Me Out also worked on Love Island.

Ali Abdaal 29:54 Okay.

Chris Williamson 29:54 Did exactly the same thing. "Hey, man, I need someone for this new show. Can you come and just screen test for me?" "Yeah, sure, I will." And before I knew it, I was in a pair of swim shorts in the back of a Jeep about to go into a villa.

Ali Abdaal 30:05 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 30:05 That's literally how it worked. "Hey, man, can you come and stream, screen test in Newcastle? I just wanna ask you some questions." "Yeah, whatever, mate." Like, we, we became friends.

Ali Abdaal 30:12 Mm.

Chris Williamson 30:12 Uh, "I'll do that." And then I had the most [laughs] thorough sexual health and psychometric evaluation that you've ever seen in your life, uh, in Harley Street, somewhere in London. And then literally before I knew it, I was like, um...

Ali Abdaal 30:24 Okay, so what is Love Island for the uninitiated? [laughs]

Chris Williamson 30:26 Uh, it is kind of like a cross between Big Brother and The

Chris Williamson 30:30 Bachelor. Uh, The Bachelor in Paradise, if you watch the American version. It's a dating show. People get thrown into a villa, and there is usually about 14 to 20 guys and girls. Uh, 10, between 10 and seven of each. And you have half the number of beds that you do people, so everyone has to couple up. You couple up with a partner, and then you swap, and then there's eliminations, and there's tasks. And it's all about people that are trying to find love, supposedly. And every so often there's eliminations, and you get to the end, and then there is a prize for the people that win of £50,000 or something like that. Uh, and I d- I was the first person through the doors of season one, so the first ever person through on this particular iteration of the, of the series. And that was just another YOLO. I was like, "Right, this will get me clout. This will get me accolades."

Ali Abdaal 31:14 Clout, clout as in?

Chris Williamson 31:16 Clout, uh, renown.

Ali Abdaal 31:17 Okay.

Chris Williamson 31:17 Status. And I thought, "It'll be fun, free holiday."

Ali Abdaal 31:20 Okay.

Chris Williamson 31:21 "Good tan."

Ali Abdaal 31:21 Yeah. Why not? [laughs]

Chris Williamson 31:23 Uh, why not do it? Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 31:24 Okay.

Chris Williamson 31:24 Uh, so I did.

Ali Abdaal 31:25 So these days, Love Island is, like, ridiculously huge.

Chris Williamson 31:27 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 31:27 Uh, at least in the UK. I don't know, I don't know about internationally.

Chris Williamson 31:29 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 31:29 But, um, the people who are on Love Island then, and the 50,000 is nothing compared to the millions of followers they'll get on Instagram overnight.

Chris Williamson 31:36 Endless. Endless brand deals.

Ali Abdaal 31:36 You don't have to work for probably five to 10 years-

Chris Williamson 31:39 Okay

Ali Abdaal 31:39 ... after you've been on, if you're on for a couple of weeks. So what, what was it like back in the day, kind of season one? What was that experience like?

Chris Williamson 31:43 Very different, yeah. So, um, and they were focusing, the first season they focused on Snapchat a lot, whereas now it's all Instagram.

Ali Abdaal 31:49 Mm.

Chris Williamson 31:49 Which was great because it means that you can monetize your Instagram off the back of it. We didn't know if it was gonna be like Geordie Shore or Ex On The Beach, where you were gonna be getting drunk every night and going on nights out, or if it was going to be like Big Brother and there was going to be tasks and you were gonna have food taken away from you and your sleep pattern was going to be... It ended up being quite fluffy.

Ali Abdaal 32:05 Mm.

Chris Williamson 32:05 But we didn't know that. I also didn't know that you could have someone manage your social media while you were inside. So I just had my Instagram locked off s- so people could follow me or whatever, but. So anyway, uh, very different. Don't get as much attention as you do now. Uh, now if you're on for as long as I was, you would come out with probably one or two million followers. And if you can correctly monetize that, that, you're sorted.

Ali Abdaal 32:28 Yeah, like-

Chris Williamson 32:29 Like, it blows my mind. Here's a, here's a thing.

Ali Abdaal 32:30 [laughs] Yeah.

Chris Williamson 32:30 It, for the people that may have been on Love Island that are watching, that were on season two to three or after, and were on for more than a couple of weeks, if you haven't built a business off the back of that and you wanted to, that's a you problem.

Ali Abdaal 32:43 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 32:44 You had what every marketer, every internet marketer desires, which is free clicks for a long time.

Ali Abdaal 32:52 Mm.

Chris Williamson 32:52 And a huge amount of edge rank, and just didn't monetize it. But for us, it, we d- I think the person that won came off with 100,000, so, uh, followers on Instagram. Which now, even if your name gets mentioned, even if someone says, "Oh, do you watch that Ali Abdaal on YouTube?"

Ali Abdaal 33:06 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 33:06 That's, that's 100,000, that's 100,000 followers there. Um, so yeah, it was smaller in terms of viewership, smaller in terms of footprint digitally.

Ali Abdaal 33:14 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 33:14 Um, but was a, a really interesting experience. Uh-

Ali Abdaal 33:18 Yeah, what, uh, what was the experience like?

Chris Williamson 33:20 Uh, it's actually quite boring-

Ali Abdaal 33:21 Okay

Chris Williamson 33:21 ... to be honest, 'cause you, all that you're allowed to talk about is stuff that's happened in the villa.

Ali Abdaal 33:27 Okay.

Chris Williamson 33:27 So you can't actually talk about th- that mutual friend you've both got that's outside.

Ali Abdaal 33:32 Mm.

Chris Williamson 33:32 Or that place that you both like to go to to run or to go for coffee or for almond croissants or whatever.

Ali Abdaal 33:37 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 33:37 Can't talk about that. And they will come over the PA and say, "Islanders, can you please stop talking about the outside world?" Because they can't publish that content. Because who that's watching the show gives a shit about the fact that me and you both like almond croissants?

Ali Abdaal 33:49 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 33:49 No one cares. What they care about is the fact that me and you are fighting over Katie, and she totally mugged you off last night, bruv. Like, that's what they're bothered about.

Ali Abdaal 33:56 Okay.

Chris Williamson 33:56 So that's what they try and push. They're constantly asking you to create content.

Ali Abdaal 33:59 Okay.

Chris Williamson 34:00 And that's fine. They don't finesse or finagle the storylines too much. They try and catalyze them a little bit.

Ali Abdaal 34:05 Okay.

Chris Williamson 34:05 But they don't really, uh, impose themselves in terms of what's happening.

Ali Abdaal 34:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 34:10 But it's pretty boring. You've got no friends, no phone, no family, no contact with the outside world, nothing to distract you. No books, no nothing.

Ali Abdaal 34:16 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 34:16 It's just you and some people that are trying to have sex with each other, constantly talking about who's having sex with who. That's it. That's what the show is. And it's, it, it was kind of, I guess it was an in- an interesting thing to watch, but this was the pinnacle of me getting toward the end of my 20s. And the guys that are listening may feel this as well. It's what I call the manopause.

Ali Abdaal 34:38 Ooh.

Chris Williamson 34:39 Which is-

Ali Abdaal 34:39 Okay, what is that? [laughs]

Chris Williamson 34:41 Toward the end of your 20s, if you've grown up living quite a bro-y life.

Ali Abdaal 34:44 Mm.

Chris Williamson 34:45 What I think a lot of guys find is that the values that served them when they were in their early 20s, maybe 21, are not going to serve them when they're 31. And they realize this quite profoundly sometimes. So you see this, I first noticed it with training. So guys would do, uh, bodybuilds, bodybuilding style training because it's the lowest barrier to entry. It gives them confidence, it makes them bigger and more muscular, and it makes them feel attractive. But as they get towards 28, 29, they realize that they get out of breath going up a set of stairs, and that they can't touch their toes, and they haven't really been that functional. And maybe they get back into playing football with some mates, and they realize that they've just got no cardio and they're not very functional. So then you see guys that, uh, toward the len- end of their 20s, they'll go and do CrossFit.

Ali Abdaal 35:21 Mm.

Chris Williamson 35:22 Or they'll go do Brazilian jujitsu or fighting or yoga. Or girls might go back and do dance that they haven't done since they were a kid. They might start doing ballet again or go and do those, um, uh, Pilates classes, group Pilates classes, spinning. What I realized there was that there are particular modes of existing that we get in our early 20s, many of which are kind of the lowest common denominator, um, limbic hijack route to success that we can find, right? Like, quite a base transactional transient route to success. I want a training methodology that's gonna make me look good. I will do the one that makes me look the most good.

Ali Abdaal 35:57 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 35:58 But does it fulfill you and make you feel good? I don't care if it makes me feel good, I just want to look nice.

Ali Abdaal 36:02 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 36:02 Okay? As you grow up a little bit more, you realize, hang on, perhaps this isn't serving me quite in as much of a holistic broad view as I want.

Ali Abdaal 36:10 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 36:10 That's what I saw with fitness. What I think you see with, specifically guys, maybe with girls as well, the manopause is someone realizing that as you get toward the end of your 20s, the values that you had when you were younger aren't serving you. So me realizing that the girls that I was sleeping with or the money that I was making or the club nights that I was running, is that really the highest calling that I have for myself? Is the fact that I've been on a reality TV show going to be my crowning achievement? Is this what I'm bringing to the world? Oh, well, you know, the world was pretty bad before he came.

Ali Abdaal 36:41 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 36:41 But after he left at least he went and unloaded reality TV shows.

Ali Abdaal 36:44 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 36:44 Like, come on. So while I was on Love Island, I got to observe people that were that person, the pinnacle party boy, right? 'Cause I was playing this role. I thought I was, but it kinda turned out that I wasn't really. And I had this fatal dose of contrast as I lived in a villa with no distractions for four weeks watching these people, and being with them, but really still feeling on the outside. So I was like, right, there is a problem here.

Ali Abdaal 37:11 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 37:11 I thought I was this. I thought I was this party-going, fun-loving, extroverted, big name on campus, big dick around town guy, and I'm not. There's something up here. So after that was when I thought, right, I really need to do some self-inquiry and kind of work out who am I, what are my values, why am I here? Now I feel like because of the proliferation of podcasts and self-development and personal growth YouTube and stuff like that, people are getting exposed to these sorts of messages at a much younger age. But it took me until I was 27 for me to actually really think, probably need to work out, like, who I am and that. And then got to coming out of Love Island, and the final night, came out after about a month, um, looked up at the sky in the south coast of Mallorca, uh, which is one of the, uh, s- astronomy, um, spots of the world, low light pollution, high visibility.

Ali Abdaal 38:07 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 38:08 Uh, no moon, and I saw the full Milky Way for the first time, and that was quite a profound experience 'cause I'd been in this really intense emotional thing, and I hadn't seen anyone or spoken to anyone. Stepped outside, first night on my own without cameras on me for a month. Looked up at the sky and saw the Milky Way, and I'd had this weird sort of existential discordant thing going on where I thought, "Who am I? I'm not this per-," looked up, I thought, "Fuck. Right. Okay. Like, I just need to do some self-work here."

Ali Abdaal 38:34 Okay.

Chris Williamson 38:34 So that was kind of the, uh, kick toward my manopause.

Ali Abdaal 38:39 So what happened then?

Chris Williamson 38:40 Uh, I did some self-work. Spent a lot of time just crushing amounts of content. School of Life by Alain de Botton, Sam Harris, Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson. This was when all of these people were coming to the front. And didn't really know what I was looking for, but just thought, if I watch enough of it something'll come out of it.

Ali Abdaal 38:59 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 38:59 And it kinda did, and then a year and a half later I'd been asked on a bunch of different podcasts, 'cause people had said, "Oh, you've been on this reality TV thing. Can we ask you about that?" And I was like, "Oh, yeah, what's a podcast? Cool. I, uh, I'll, I'll come and do that." Really enjoyed the process. Enjoyed it so much that I realized I wanna do this more. The best way for me to do it as much as I want to is to start my own. So started my own, and that was start of 2018.

Ali Abdaal 39:23 In that one-year gap between being on Love Island, uh, sort of when you were consuming all this content and stuff, what were the, like, what were the learnings from that? Like-

Chris Williamson 39:32 Tell the truth was the first one.

Ali Abdaal 39:33 Okay.

Chris Williamson 39:33 The most important one. I'd spent a very long time playing a persona on the front door of this nightclub, right? Or a lot of nightclubs. In Manchester and in Newcastle working about 1,000 nights and being Chris, the club promoter. Being the guy that sorts them out with guest list and, oh, he, he shagged my mate and blah, blah, blah. Being that guy. And what I realized was that that was a role that I was playing. That wasn't a genuine representation of the person that I was. I was being the person that I thought other people wanted me to be.

Ali Abdaal 40:05 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 40:06 Because it was effective, and it was. I, I was world-class at playing Chris Williamson on the front door of a nightclub. Like, literally Oscar-winning performance, but it wasn't me. That wasn't the person that I genuinely was. So I needed to unearth and sort of scrape away all of the different personas that I had that were lying over the top of the person that I genuinely was, and that involved turning over tons and tons of different stones and looking at what was underneath and going, "Okay, here's a belief that I have about the world. Here's something that I think. Is this true?" And I'd spent so long lying to myself and to other people about what I genuinely wanted and what my values were. "Yeah, mate, mint tonight, mate. Yeah, there's a load of birds in there, mate. Yeah, see you later on, mate." Like, all of that for, for a decade when that wasn't really, uh, my logos speaking forward, right? That wasn't my truth coming out of me. That was me just doing something. I needed to get past all of that.

Ali Abdaal 41:00 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 41:00 So I'm doing this archeology thing, going like, "Right. Am I gonna hit something that's solid as I try to unearth all of the different behaviors and the thinking patterns and the beliefs that I've got?" Uh, and that eventually I got to something that felt a little bit more stable, which was intellectual curiosity, a desire to learn and improve myself, a, a desire to sort of connect with people around me, a genuine desire to be open and vulnerable, uh, and to show other people that being open and vulnerable and truthful is something that can help them and makes them feel good. Um, but it took over a year. It took 18 months for me to even start to really glimpse

Chris Williamson 41:36 that.

Ali Abdaal 41:36 What sort of questions were you asking yourself? Like, well, what do you mean by, like, what does this unearthing process look like in practice?

Chris Williamson 41:42 A lot of it was just thinking about, how do I spend my time? Does that... I- is that the way that I want to spend my time?

Ali Abdaal 41:51 Right.

Chris Williamson 41:51 Does that serve the person that I want to be? So I wake up at different times every day. Like, is that the sort of... Does the Chris that I want to become wake up at different times every day?

Ali Abdaal 41:59 Okay.

Chris Williamson 42:00 I- pay, uh, I, I take a high amount of self-worth from the amount of people that go into my club night. Should I be hinging my self-worth on what the market does? Probably not. That's probably a bad idea. But it took me a long time. It sounds so dumb looking back and going like, "Uh, obviously, mate." Like, you, you and the performance of your event and business are not the same thing. It is not you, and its success or failure does not, um, make any sort of change to your worth as a person. But that's the world that I'd created for myself.

Ali Abdaal 42:37 That's a h- that's a, a hard realization. Um, I remember when I was in school where I was equating my personal self-worth to how well I did on exams, and then at university to how well my business did. And then even now, uh, I, I, well, I, I had a, I had a whole, like, five hours of soul searching, typing, journaling on Apple Notes four days ago, where I was like, "Oh my God, I take too much self-worth away from how well my videos do." Like, I think this... I, I love how kind of open you're being about this, but I, but, but I think this, this journey of, like, dissociating our self-worth from these other random bullshitty external metrics, it's, it's not an easy one.

Chris Williamson 43:12 No.

Ali Abdaal 43:12 And it's, I think, I think it's a lifelong journey for all of us. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 43:14 Here's a question for you, man.

Ali Abdaal 43:15 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 43:16 Do you think that people love you for what you do or for who you are?

Ali Abdaal 43:21 I've been... So over, over the last few months, I re- uh, I really thought it was for what I do, especially when it came to friend- friendship and stuff. Um, I thought that... I j- I just didn't quite... I thought it was the things that I was doing, um, that were the reasons why people wanted to be friends with me, and it was, it was surprising when I mentioned this to a few friends and they were like, "No, you actually don't need to do any..." Like, because if I think about the people I'm friends with, I'm not friends with them for what they do, I'm friends with them for who they are. And it took other people pointing out to me that, "Well, that's how other people feel about you," for me to think, "Oh, my God." And that was quite, like, a, a profound realization for me, and made me realize that I can just sort of be myself. But in the-- but before I'd been like, "Ugh, be yourself, it's all just BS," because, like, choose yourself and, and all that kind of stuff.

Chris Williamson 44:13 I got another question.

Ali Abdaal 44:14 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 44:15 Do you love yourself for who you are or for what you do?

Ali Abdaal 44:18 Oof, good question. I think I love myself for what I do.

Chris Williamson 44:21 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 44:21 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 44:21 So here's the problem, right?

Ali Abdaal 44:24 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 44:24 We want the world to love us for who we are, not for what we do.

Ali Abdaal 44:26 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 44:26 We don't want people to love our achievements, we want to feel like we're worth something ourselves.

Ali Abdaal 44:30 Yep.

Chris Williamson 44:31 However, we love ourselves for what we do, not who we are. So we're asking the world to do something that we don't do ourselves.

Ali Abdaal 44:37 Mm.

Chris Williamson 44:38 I want you to love me for who I am, not what I do. Meanwhile, I'ma love myself for what I do, not who I am, because I feel like when I achieved something that I feel like I'm worth something more to myself. When I hit that next subscriber count-

Ali Abdaal 44:50 Yeah

Chris Williamson 44:50 ... when I get that gold plaque, diamond plaque, when I hit a new best, uh, number of plays, when I get more people on my academy, when I put more people into my club night, when I sleep with a more popular girl, when I hit a new number of s- uh, followers on Instagram. All of these different metrics are things that are hiding the fact that we don't want to give ourselves self-love for what it is that we... who we genuinely are.

Ali Abdaal 45:13 What do you, what do you mean by love yourself?

Chris Williamson 45:16 Feel comfortable and feel like you are sufficient independent of how you perform day to day in the world.

Ali Abdaal 45:26 Mm.

Chris Williamson 45:26 The fact that you, stripped of all of your achievements, YouTube channel's gone, podcast's gone, degrees are gone, all of that stuff. Are you isolated and stripped bare still worth something to the world, and do you feel like people would still love you and still care about you?

Ali Abdaal 45:42 That's a good question. I don't know. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 45:44 It's a difficult one. It's a very difficult one. So I got that realization from Aubrey Marcus, another... This-- anyone that's resonating with this, I'll give you the link for this episode with Aubrey. He's just sold Onnit to Unilever for a huge undisclosed number, like hundreds of millions of dollars, right? The link will be in the show notes below. He said he bolstered his entire life with sex and money. So he'd spent his entire life chasing women and trying to earn. He's just sold his company for a hundred, hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, and he's just got married. What's left for him?

Ali Abdaal 46:16 Mm.

Chris Williamson 46:17 All of the things that he used to be chasing, now he's completed them, and he had an existential crisis. Because he said, "All of these things that I thought would fulfill me, I've now done it, so who am I? I'd wrapped up so much of my self-worth in the fact that I was chasing this dream dragon of a woman and of a, a figure in my bank account, and now it's got to the stage where, actually, who am I without all of that?"

Ali Abdaal 46:41 Mm.

Chris Williamson 46:41 "Or who am I once all of that's been completed?" And this comes back to what happened when I first started a business. And again, this is another element for young business people. If you attach your sense of self-worth to the success of the business, you are on a path toward misery. The reason is that you don't get to control the fucking market, right? The market will do what the market will do, and it does not give one single shit about you. It doesn't care. So why would you say that your self-worth is based on trends in the market? You're literally externalizing your sense of well-being to other people. That's the same as, that's the same as people that leave notifications on their phone.

Ali Abdaal 47:26 Mm.

Chris Williamson 47:26 It's exactly the same.

Ali Abdaal 47:27 Okay.

Chris Williamson 47:28 You're allowing the entire world, anybody on the planet, to intrude on your day whenever they want. This is the same with your business. You're allowing the response of the market to determine your self-worth every time that you put a product out or run an event or release a YouTube video. If you feel crap when your YouTube video underperforms but feel amazing when your YouTube video overperforms, that's fine. That's realistic. You care about performing well. But if you genuinely feel like you are worth more or worth less-

Ali Abdaal 47:56 Mm

Chris Williamson 47:56 ... that's a different step. You've crossed a line there. And this is something that I still fight with all the time. I still struggle with it. This is me understanding the path, but not having completed the path.

Ali Abdaal 48:07 So you're on this kind of, uh, 12 to 18 month journey of self-discovery, and you said that one of the things that helped is asking yourself, "Is this thing that I'm doing consistent with the person that I want to be?"

Chris Williamson 48:17 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 48:17 Um, well, what were some other things that you figured out about yourself along that, that path?

Chris Williamson 48:23 Not telling the truth was a, was a huge one.

Ali Abdaal 48:24 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:24 Um, that I'd just been... People would ask me my opinion on something, and I would tell them what I thought they wanted to hear-

Ali Abdaal 48:30 Okay

Chris Williamson 48:30 ... not what I genuinely believed, because I presumed that that would make them like me.

Ali Abdaal 48:34 Mm.

Chris Williamson 48:34 Because I just wanted to be liked. And this was funded or fueled by being a club promoter, which is very transient and transactional, and there is a degree of performative, uh, nature on the front door of a club night. If someone says, "All right, mate, how are you?" And you go, "Well, actually, man, my dog just died," and blah, blah, blah.

Ali Abdaal 48:48 Yeah. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 48:49 They're like, "No, I just wanted you to say yes and give me a stamp, and go, 'Let me in.'"

Ali Abdaal 48:52 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:52 So there is... That was reinforced by work. Some of the other things were mostly to do with opening up and being, being vulnerable because I was in a hyper-masculine, very cool guy world.

Ali Abdaal 49:06 Mm.

Chris Williamson 49:07 And it wasn't, it wasn't, uh, ca- how would you say, conducive to having a bad day and opening up to someone about it. It's another challenge as well for anyone that's a business owner or at the top of the tree that's listening. You can feel like because you are the head of your business, that showing any form of weakness shows a weakness in the business.

Ali Abdaal 49:32 Mm.

Chris Williamson 49:33 That if you underperform or you have a bad day, that the people who look up to you, your subordinates and your employees within the business, will see you as less, will see you as unworthy of leading them. Because whose, whose leader would spend a couple of days in bed 'cause he's feeling down about whatever might have occurred? Um, another thing that I realized was working, working so hard that you have a miniature breakdown, which for me manifested as being in bed for a couple of days, and I just couldn't be bothered to get out, and it felt like depression, but I think it was just s- like smaller key breakdowns.

Ali Abdaal 50:11 Mm.

Chris Williamson 50:12 It always happened around freshers week, so one month of constant buildup, constant buil- And this is when I'd stopped partying so much as well. Releasing event after event after event, all on social media, then going and working on the night, four or five hours sleep, then get up the next day, go to the office, make sure that everything was sorted, run another event, fill it, cash the tills, go home, do the next thing. "Oh, is this working? This DJ's canceled," blah, blah, blah. Just constant intensity. Start of October every single year, I would always spend a couple of days in bed.

Ali Abdaal 50:41 Mm.

Chris Williamson 50:41 Like, "Why? Why is it that I always end up feeling a little bit sort of shitty after this?" Because going so hard that you end up snapping is not a sustainable work-

Ali Abdaal 50:52 Mm

Chris Williamson 50:52 ... protocol. Just doesn't... It, it, you can't keep doing that and expect to get consistent results. And punishing yourself because you don't have the tolerance, it's like having eyes that are bigger than your stomach. It's like having a, an appetite for work which is bigger than your capacity for work.

Ali Abdaal 51:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 51:10 And this is something in a productivity world, "Look, I'll get more. I'll just get more done." Um, that is a route toward disaster. For Chris Sparks says, "In order to pick something up, you have to put something down." And the presumption is, "If I want to be more productive, I will just down-regulate my sleep or up-regulate my efficiency until I fit this new thing in."

Ali Abdaal 51:31 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 51:32 But you're already working close to your maximum capacity-

Ali Abdaal 51:36 Mm

Chris Williamson 51:36 ... because if you weren't, you would be doing more.

Ali Abdaal 51:38 Mm.

Chris Williamson 51:39 Most people that are driven type A personalities are already working close to their capacity.

Ali Abdaal 51:43 Mm.

Chris Williamson 51:43 And then when you... Because you see all of your own inefficiencies, right? You think, "Yeah, but I spent 30 minutes a day on YouTube. So if I add this new thing in-

Ali Abdaal 51:50 Yeah

Chris Williamson 51:50 ... I'll just get rid of that 30 minutes a day." It's like, no, the 30 minutes a day on YouTube is there because you need a fucking break from all the work you're doing. That's going to stay.

Ali Abdaal 51:57 Mm.

Chris Williamson 51:57 When you add this in, the place it's going to come off of is going to be optional things that really matter, like spending time with friends and family, like chilling out on a weekend, like getting more sleep. That's what's going to really, really sting.

Ali Abdaal 52:08 Mm.

Chris Williamson 52:09 So those were some of the realizations. Work less, open up more, be truthful, realize that you have curiosities and intellectual desires and stuff that maybe don't align with the person that you thought you were. And a final one was

Chris Williamson 52:24 I'd never really connected with any of the success of the business.

Ali Abdaal 52:27 Mm.

Chris Williamson 52:27 Not in a meaningful way, not in an existential way. I'd felt proud that we'd achieved a lot and had tons of people come to the event, and that felt mint, but I never, I never really, really felt it. And I think the reason for that was if you're playing a persona, I was Club Promo Chris, um, you don't feel like your achievements are yours. You feel like they're people applauding a character that you're playing.

Ali Abdaal 52:51 Mm.

Chris Williamson 52:51 So the same way that we don't love Russell Crowe, we love Gladiator, we don't love Chris Hemsworth, we love Thor, you're always one step removed from the things that you're doing if you're not being truthful and open. Whereas if you do something that is genuinely you-

Ali Abdaal 53:05 Mm

Chris Williamson 53:05 ... putting yourself out into the world, when someone says, "Ali, I really love what you've done with this," and that's your truth, you go, "That's me."

Ali Abdaal 53:12 Mm.

Chris Williamson 53:13 As opposed to, "Ali, I really love what you've done with YouTuber Ali over here."

Ali Abdaal 53:16 Mm.

Chris Williamson 53:16 You go, "Yeah, well done, YouTuber Ali," like, "Pat on the back for you." And that's the difference between doing something that feels fulfilling existentially-

Ali Abdaal 53:24 Yeah

Chris Williamson 53:24 ... and doing something that just feels like pride.

Ali Abdaal 53:26 Mm. So interestingly, on that, on that point, um, yesterday we put out a video, uh, the first one in a while on the channel where I felt it was, like, authentically me. And I didn't really have a script, just had, had a few talking points. 45 minutes long of me just rambling about stuff. And the response to that video was just insane. And I was going through all the comments, and the comments were really nice. And I woke up early this morning, uh, I did the thing that you shouldn't do and grabbed my phone. And I was like, you know what? Let's see how the comments are doing. I was just like, oh, this is so nice, hearting every single one. And I haven't read YouTube comments in months because I've... Uh, and, and hearing you say that made me realize that the videos that I think we've been putting out over the last few months haven't really felt particularly authentic. It felt like I was playing a character, whereas this one I was like, all right, you know what? Let's just do it basically uncut. [laughs] ... felt so much more authentic, and so the comments really resonated with me more than a comment on a video that I felt, "Ugh." I mean, I had the idea, but, like, someone else wrote the script for it, kind of vibes.

Chris Williamson 54:18 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 54:18 Um, I wanted to talk to you about masculinity. This is something that I struggle with, and I think you're an interesting person to talk to about this because you seem to not worry about coming across as woke or, like, you know, saying the right thing, you know. S- saying, saying things that fit into the Overton window of acceptability and, you know, some of the stuff on the podcast some people say is somewhat controversial. Um, and so I'd love to hear your take on, like, what, what's, what, what's the deal with, like, masculinity? Like [laughs] just a broad, broad open question, and I h- I

Ali Abdaal 54:50 have a few kind of sub-questions that I'd like to ask, but can we... What, what, what's your thesis on masculinity?

Chris Williamson 54:54 It's an interesting one. I think it's a word that has been co-opted to mean a lot of different things now. You're right. With some of the people that I have on the show, uh, on Modern Wisdom, which is my podcast, um, their views perhaps go against a progressive orthodoxy that exists at the moment. That being said, I don't think that they're tremendously controversial. I've never ever been on the verge of any sort of cancellation or... Really, I don't get negative comments-

Ali Abdaal 55:22 Mm

Chris Williamson 55:23 ... on the videos. The vast majority of people that watch the show, they understand that I'm coming from a place of in- genuine intellectual curiosity and trying to understand things.

Ali Abdaal 55:33 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 55:33 That being said, I think that it is very difficult to have a wholesome role model as a young guy at the moment. I don't think that young men know what they should grow up to be, and by that, I mean what sort of a man, what sort of values they should have. I wholeheartedly agree that the Me Too movement was a long overdue reckoning for men in positions of power that used those positions in order to get sexual access, in order to manipulate women. That was something that had to happen. That being said, you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater and say that any masculine traits are part of a cisheteropatriarchal construct that runs below the surface of everything that we see, and these are oppressive patriarchal ideas to do with gender and misogyny and gender roles and blah, blah, blah. What you end up there with is men, who make up 50% of the entire world's population, not knowing what the fuck to do with their life. They don't know what they're supposed to do, how they're supposed to exist in the world. We've already got rid of religion, so some of the things that gave us a sense of meaning have gone. We've got rid of jobs for life, which meant that our craft, we might have been a, a stonemason or a builder or a farmer or something that worked with our hands where we could see our physical creations in front of us, and this is for women as well. Those things have gone for everybody. And then when you say, okay, and the things that you used to rely on to do with masculinity, things like competence, hard work, courage, bravery, trustworthiness, industriousness, conscientiousness. When these things are also perhaps lambasted and labeled negatively, that doesn't really give men much of a place to stand. You go, "Okay, so what, what am I supposed to... W- what, what is a man now?" We're not getting into the gender debate. What is a masculine portrayal of somebody's personality? Like, what are the characteristics that make someone masculine that are positive? And that's a kind of a difficult question to answer. So when it comes to masculinity from my side, I just know that I'm an only child, right? So I had no older brother. Um, our generation's gap to our parents' generation is quite large. A lot of the rules and the procedures that our parents had don't really work for us. So role models in terms of your parents-

Ali Abdaal 57:53 Mm

Chris Williamson 57:53 ... you're also a little bit of a distance away from that. There's a delta to work there. And I didn't know what I wanted to be, and you've just heard a story about how most of my 20s, as someone who did two degrees at uni, who can be an idiot but isn't a complete idiot, was lost. Really, really lost. So I think, right, I, I, I wanna try and give young guys the advice that I wish that I'd had when I was younger.

Ali Abdaal 58:16 Mm.

Chris Williamson 58:16 And this isn't real social dynamics, pickup artists, that weirdo stuff. It's not negging and, and neuro-linguistic programming to get girls to go to bed with you. It's how are you a confident person in the world as a man that feels proud about yourself, that's proud about m- your masculinity, that's proud about the achievements that you've got, that doesn't mind about being vulnerable, but doesn't identify with being vulnerable. You know, uh, finding somewhere to stand, I think, is, uh, has been a difficulty.

Ali Abdaal 58:43 Why do we need concepts like masculinity and femininity? Why can't we just say, "You know what? Courage, bravery, confidence, being in- integrity, honesty, these are all universally good qualities, and therefore we should strive for, for these universal good qualities and not label them some of them masculine and some of them feminine," for example?

Chris Williamson 59:01 Because men and women aren't the same. They're not the same. Uh, for all that deconstructionist ideology may wish that they were the same-

Ali Abdaal 59:09 Mm

Chris Williamson 59:09 ... they're not. There are certain things that men have a proclivity toward, and there are certain things that women have a proclivity toward.

Ali Abdaal 59:15 Okay.

Chris Williamson 59:15 On average. On average. It does not mean that you cannot get masculine women and feminine men. It does not mean that this girl that I know is really, really masculine, and she's more masculine than you are. Yeah, I'm sure that they very well may be, but those are outliers if you are to throw them across.

Ali Abdaal 59:30 Sure.

Chris Williamson 59:31 We also need them because we live our life through archetypes. We look to people as examples, and for the most part, we model ourselves on stories. We model ourselves... Why when you watch The Big Bang Theory do you immediately know what each character is?

Ali Abdaal 59:45 Mm.

Chris Williamson 59:46 The hero's big-chested and muscled and has a large jaw, and the nerd always wears glasses, and there's the damsel and the villain. The villain's always in black, or he's got a fringe or something. It's because we need to be able to shortcut our way to understand what people are about. And when we're trying to design our own lives as well, we also look to archetypes from history. I think that it's an important ... learning procedure for both men and women to have role models that they can look up to. And I don't know at the moment that there are very many well-accepted role models-

Ali Abdaal 1:00:20 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:00:20 ... for men to look up to. For all that Harry Styles is an awesome singer, I don't know that every man wants to be Harry Styles. Not every man wants to be like The Rock either, but you have to have some role models for guys to look up to. So there also needs to be a synthesis. What is the average... On average, what is a good principle for men to try and achieve? The same thing goes for women. Um, and my concern is that we've thrown a lot of baby and bathwaters out. It's easier for me to, to make an example with girls than it is with guys-

Ali Abdaal 1:00:55 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:00:55 ... for this. So for instance, women being encouraged to have careers over families-

Ali Abdaal 1:01:01 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:01:01 ... is something that absolutely should be a choice for them, and if you are a go-getter girl, that is... That's sick. More power to you. However, I think that you need to be an incredibly unique woman to make it to 50, look back without a family and say that it was a good decision. That is not to say that there are not women out there for whom it is the perfect decision, but I think that you need to be quite a unique woman for that to be the case. Great. Pushing every woman should have a career, should prioritize their career. You don't need no man. You shouldn't settle for less. Clap back. You're a boss bitch. And almost creating an environment in which women who do prioritize families over careers are seen as compromising toward a archaic view of what a woman should be when a lot of women take very, very high, large amounts of pleasure from raising a family. I don't think that that's tremendously respectful to the women that want to go and do that.

Ali Abdaal 1:02:04 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:02:05 There is a, a framing to the situation that presumes that going and getting a career is the thing that everybody should, should endeavor to achieve, and that's not to say that men can't stay at home and be the, the primary, uh, how would you say, childcare. But in relationships where the man is not the primary breadwinner, they are 50% more likely to end in divorce. In relationships where the man is not the primary breadwinner, he is statistically more likely to need to use erectile dysfunction medication. Almost two-thirds of women say that they would not be in a relationship with a man who is less educated, less wealthy and lower in status than them. If this seems like it's a bizarre set of statistics, think about if you're a girl, think about would you date a man that's shorter than you? Maybe. Okay. Would you date a man that is 10 inches shorter than you? Well, probably not. Well, okay. That is just the same but ported across onto status and wealth and education as well. I think overall a man needs to be three of four from taller, richer, smarter and more status. You can get away with being a short guy who's rich, smart, with high status, or you can get away with being a tall guy with status who's maybe not rich yet but is well educated. If you're only getting two of those four, you're starting to struggle.

Ali Abdaal 1:03:24 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:03:24 This isn't to say that women are callous resource extractors, right? What it's to say is that women like men who are on average trustworthy, hardworking, conscientious. They're the sort of man that you can depend on that will get things done. And if you have status, intelligence through education and wealth, that is a signal that you have these things. But what we've been told is that if a man is to try and achieve status, wealth or education, he shouldn't go and do it. That is him sticking to, uh, an out-of-date, uh, personality type that men no longer sh- needs, need to adhere to.

Ali Abdaal 1:04:01 There's like a few things going on here. There's number one, that, um, men and women are different, and while both men and women exhibit all traits across all the spectrums, spectra, whatever, um, men are on average higher in a... in some traits and women are on average higher in other traits.

Chris Williamson 1:04:19 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 1:04:19 And are we saying that it's those traits that are... that we can broadly label with all the caveating that goes with broadly la- trying to label anything based on like-

Chris Williamson 1:04:29 Yes

Ali Abdaal 1:04:29 ... large numbers as like masculine traits and feminine traits?

Chris Williamson 1:04:32 I would say so, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:04:33 So for example, masculine, like men are on average higher on trait aggression or-

Chris Williamson 1:04:37 Correct

Ali Abdaal 1:04:37 ... or conscientiousness I guess.

Chris Williamson 1:04:38 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 1:04:38 Um, less so on empathy, less so on caringness.

Chris Williamson 1:04:41 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:04:41 More so on competitiveness, um, less on warmth. Uh-

Chris Williamson 1:04:46 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:04:46 ... and so, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:47 Men are interested in things. Women are interested in people.

Ali Abdaal 1:04:49 Mm. And so when it comes to... I guess with the role model, role model discussion, um, yeah, for some reason it like, uh, no one bats an eye at the fact that people want role models of their own race. You often hear people say that, "Oh, there are no Black X in whatever," or, "There are no Pakistani whatever," or that, "There are no Chinese people in, in films and therefore Asian people lack a role model of that, of that particular type." And I guess what is... I guess when it comes to role models in general it's, it's, it's, it's very hard for someone to have a role model who's not like them. Like I guess the anti-gender, anti-masculinity, femininity brigade would say that if I'm looking for a n- role model I should be just as likely to choose a female role model as a male role model, which is just unlikely. [laughs] Um, similarly a woman is very unlikely, like I don't know, a white woman is very unlikely to have a Black man as their, as their role model.

Chris Williamson 1:05:49 Or you.

Ali Abdaal 1:05:49 For ex- for example. Or me as their role model. Yeah. And so is what you're saying that as a, as a dude it's hard to find... 'Cause I guess w- if we think about like who c- who, who would be in the running as like a role model? James Bond famously, but then the whole misogyny stuff which means that James Bond is not allowed as a role model. The Rock potentially if you're into-

Chris Williamson 1:06:07 The Rock, The Rock's a pretty good shout, man.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:09 The Rock's, The Rock's a guy who is able to tick a lot of boxes.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:13 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:06:13 Like when you're the guy that's simultaneously able to be Top in an action movie-

Ali Abdaal 1:06:21 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:06:22 And potentially president of the United States

Ali Abdaal 1:06:24 Yeah. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:06:24 Like, there's a campaign to make The Rock the president of the United States. Like, you've done a lot right. You got a lot right.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:29 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:29 Um, yeah, you're correct with The Rock. You know, he's in touch with his own emotions, but even that sort of thing, I, I, I haven't seen any criticisms of The Rock.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:37 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:37 Maybe he's, like, the outlier that proves the rule. I'm not sure.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:40 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:40 I, I think that the challenge is if you don't have any role models, people get lost.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:45 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:06:45 I think that there are a lot of role models for how girls should behave at the moment, and there's a lot of support for girls, and rightly so. For a very, very long time, there wasn't.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:52 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:06:53 Girls weren't encouraged to do whatever they want. But it feels a little bit like men are not being encouraged to do whatever they want now, and that's not whatever they want. That is to, uh, try and achieve in the world in a way that they think is gonna make them feel fulfilled.

Ali Abdaal 1:07:07 We've talked a little bit, a, a little bit about, like, about the dating marketplace, and you've touched on the thing, the, the traits that women on average look for in men are different other than, uh, you know, the, the traits that women on average look for... uh, men on average look for in women.

Chris Williamson 1:07:23 Correct.

Ali Abdaal 1:07:24 And I guess

Ali Abdaal 1:07:25 what's your... Uh, given that you've have sort of experienced the professional party boy lifestyle, you've been on Take Me Out, you've been on Love Island, what's your, what's your take on, like, what are... We... What are the things that men in general seem to like in, in women and, and, and vice versa?

Chris Williamson 1:07:40 Cool. On average, this is before every single sentence, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:07:46 Of course, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:46 On average.

Ali Abdaal 1:07:47 We can caveat everything in this episode with on average, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:48 With, with on average.

Ali Abdaal 1:07:49 Sure.

Chris Williamson 1:07:49 Um, on average, men are interested in youth and fertility from women. On average, women are interested in resources from men. This is shown out in a number of different ways. Why is it that throughout all of time, the, uh, optimal weight for women in terms of what's culturally been seen as attractive does fluctuate? So across different cultures and across different ages, it fluctuates. However, the waist-to-hip ratio always remains the same at around about 0.8. Why is that? Well, it's because a high waist-to-hip ratio is a signal of fertility. Why is it that girls who have, um, bigger eyes and flusher cheeks tend to be seen as more attractive? Well, it's because bigger eyes and flusher cheeks are associated with youthfulness, and youthfulness is associated with fertility. Women who have more symmetrical faces are more fertile, which is why we are attracted to symmetry. It's also more costly in order to be able to grow a symmetrical face than a non-symmetrical face, which is why we're attracted to that as well. Spin it around in the other direction. Um, men's, uh, body sizes have changed, uh, over time exactly the same, but the optimal shoulder-to-waist ratio for men almost exactly stays the same. Why is that? It shows that you can get excess calories on top of what you need. Well, who cares about excess calories? We have more calories than we need. Yes, but not for almost all of our evolutionary past. For almost all of time, men were underfed, not overfed, and if you could show that, look, I have so much access to resources and food that I can sustain this stupid big body with these big shoulders and this small waist, that is... that's good sign. Um, the dynamics and the way that this bears out is so interesting, and it's difficult to not sound like you're trying to make prescriptions for people's relationships, which is not what I'm doing.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:37 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:09:37 I find it fascinating, endlessly fascinating, to look at the dating market and to look at why people like the things that they do. The difference in right swipes on Tinder for a man with a bas- bachelor's degree versus a master's degree is the master's degree gets 90% more right swipes. That's all that you need to do. So if you're thinking about doing a master's degree and you wanna get more right swipes on Tinder as a guy-

Ali Abdaal 1:09:58 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:09:58 ... just do it. Um, for every 15 IQ, or for every standard deviation that a woman's intelligence increases over about 110 to 115, every standard deviation, which is about 12, her chance of getting married goes down quite significantly. It's about 20% to 30% for each standard deviation. Chance of marriage continues to drop. And w- why is this?

Ali Abdaal 1:10:21 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:10:21 Well, it's because women tend to want to date a man that is richer, smarter, and more successful than she is. They date up and across. It's called hypergamy. So if you are atop your own dominance hierarchy, quite rightly so, you as a woman should be able to go and achieve as much as you want, start your own business, be as educated with a PhD, and, and 1,000 people that work for you, make a billion pounds. But if your fundamental attraction is to men that are higher in status, wealthier, and more intelligent than you are, how are you going to date across and above a dominance hierarchy if you sit on the top of your own? If you're the richest, smartest, best statused woman on the planet, who's above you that's a man? There's no one. So high-performing women narrow their own dating pool, sadly, and this is a real difficulty. It's like being the tall friend. If you have a girl friend who is six foot two, she's probably stuck looking at professional athletes if she wants to date. On average, women like to date a man that's about 20, 20 centimeters, uh, taller than them. That seems to be the optimal height difference. If you're six foot two as a girl, y- you've narrowed your own dating pool because you are so tall. The equivalent happens with earning. The equivalent happens with education because typically you want to date someone that is above and across.

Ali Abdaal 1:11:36 Yeah, I think the height example is interesting because I think when you say... Uh, I've, I've, I, I've had these sorts of conversations so, so often with people, and when you use things like intelligence or IQ... Well, oh, but, like, oh, oh, you know, IQ's, IQ's been debunked, and intelligence is not really a thing 'cause it's all a social construct. When you use things like, um... When you use any kind of personality trait, it's like, oh, but that's socially predetermined. Like, obviously that's not a thing. But as soon as you use the height example, people are like, "Oh, shit." [laughs] Like-

Chris Williamson 1:12:03 Rubber's met the road now.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:04 Yeah. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:12:04 Yeah, really. Well, I mean-

Ali Abdaal 1:12:06 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:12:08 For the people who don't believe in gender differences to do with personality and to do with attraction, I'm not speaking to those people. Um, th- this may be interesting to them, uh, but the, they're not- On the same, uh, plane of talking that I am right now.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:28 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:12:28 Um, there's some asymmetries that occur in the dating market that are really unfair. Uh, one of them is the fact that men are allowed to be as sexually liberal as they want when they're young, and the women aren't. That sucks for women, uh, not so much for men. Um, but the single biggest predictor of extramarital sex is premarital sex. Single biggest predictor.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:55 Uh, probably confounded by the fact that v- very religious people [laughs] wouldn't have premarital sex and...

Chris Williamson 1:13:00 Yep.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:01 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:13:01 Good point.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:01 In fairness.

Chris Williamson 1:13:02 Um, but with that in mind-

Ali Abdaal 1:13:05 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:13:06 ... what you see is a myth that's unfortunate also being reflected in reality in terms of what your preferences would have been. So most people don't want to be with a partner that's going to cheat on them. That means that you have a, a- an awkwardness when you're in your youth because you need to think, "Okay, like, o- over my shoulder is someone kind of watching to see how many people I sleep with? Am I, am I judging my sense of self-worth on how many, how many people I sleep with?" That's something that I think that w- it would be great to get past-

Ali Abdaal 1:13:36 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:13:36 ... for women. I think that that would emancipate women from it. But the problem is the desire's still going to be there. Like, if you found out that your girlfriend had slept with a number of people, or 10 times that number of people, it's very difficult for you to not feel some sort of a difference to that. But I don't know if the same thing happens in reverse from girls with guys.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:58 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:13:58 So for all that something may be a social construct, and we may be able to do some, some good work to deprogram this and to be able to help liberate women, like, when the rubber meets the road, it's going to be hard to actually stop that from happening.

Ali Abdaal 1:14:12 Yeah, I think, I think you and I share a, an, an academic interest in the dating market because it really is where preferences are realized.

Chris Williamson 1:14:24 Great way to put it.

Ali Abdaal 1:14:25 And you can, you can talk all you like about how you don't care about looks, you don't care about height, you don't care about weight, you don't care about number on a bank account. I think there's, like, two things here. There's, like... Obviously, no one is gonna disagree with, you know, someone's height does not reflect at all on their value as a human being. Someone's money does not reflect on their value as a human being. There is, like, a sense of that, that hopefully-

Chris Williamson 1:14:45 These are arbitrary measurements.

Ali Abdaal 1:14:46 Yeah. Hopefully does not need to be stated. [laughs] These arbitrary measurements correlate with someone's actual worth as a human being and... But that's not the market that we're talking about. We're talking about a market which is different to that, which is the dating marketplace, which is very s- sort of a specific interesting use case where as much as you would like for there to be no differ- as much as I would love to be equally attracted to women of all insert trait here, X here, in reality, I'm attracted to women who are more on a particular end of the spectrum of whatever trait we're, we're, wh- whatever trait we're thinking about, and there's very little I can actually do to change that. Um, uh, but whereas obviously if women are on one end of a spe- a spectrum of trait X compared to another end, I'm not valuing them any more or less as a human being.

Chris Williamson 1:15:35 Yeah. So that's a, that's one of the problems that we've had, is that, um, preferences have been conflated with some sort of value judgment about-

Ali Abdaal 1:15:41 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:15:41 ... people's worth, and that's not the case. Um, but you can't deny the fact that if you prefer something to something else, that's simply your biology bearing it out. Now, we can, we can have some sort of, uh, ch- judgments around our, around our preferences, but the vast majority of this is limbic as hell.

Ali Abdaal 1:16:01 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:16:01 Like, it's just some bit of the brain-

Ali Abdaal 1:16:04 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:16:04 ... back here. You're not consciously choosing the things that you're attracted to. If you're a girl and you like Black guys, like, did you choose the fact that you like Black guys, or do you just tend to like the construct, the way that those people look? Do you tend to like artists or musicians or whatever it might be? Who chose that? Did you choose it, or did something else choose it from you? And you're right, it's where preferences really get borne out. So you see the same thing in the marketplace. There's two things that you can't really defeat. One of them is desire, and the other one's money. So people can virtue signal all they want. But there's been... To bring it back to the Love Island example, there has been, uh, criticisms around, uh, lack of diversity, uh, in terms of, uh, sexual expression, uh, in terms of race, in terms of a bunch of other things. Um, if, uh... Is it ITV's job to make a show which is diverse, or is it ITV's job to make a show which is successful? Because the market will reward the one which is successful.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:03 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:17:03 So people should vote with their feet or their eyes if they want to change something in the market. If you don't want Love Island to be the way that it is, then stop watching it and decide to try and campaign to get something else made, or make something yourself. The same thing goes for in the dating market. Like, desire will always win out. The person that will be campaigning for why gender's a social construct and why masculine traits are completely arbitrary, and look at the person that that person is dating, and they will almost definitely have some of the predictable traits that someone is looking for in a partner.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:36 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:17:37 Again, it's, it, it's... I don't understand why it's controversial to bring up the fact that people have preferences, and those preferences are not just ones that we've chosen. They're ones that have been embedded in us for quite a while. It makes sense that men want women that are fertile because that's what we're here for. We're here to survive and reproduce. It makes sense that women want men who can get access to resources. Status gave you access to resources. Money is a proxy for resources. Education is a predictor of future ability to attain resources. Why would this be a surprise? But the last few years has, uh, kind of turned things upside down a little bit like this.

Ali Abdaal 1:18:19 So we've talked a lot about... And I, I, I think when having these sorts of discussions, uh, this is the stuff that my brother and I of- often talk about on our podcast as well, and we find that when we get emails about it afterwards from people who are upset with the way- A certain thing was discussed. There's, uh, one thing, one, one thing which they point out very, very recently actually, and I, and I agree with this, is that there's a difference between talking in broad general, generalities about averages and how those averages bear out for a specific individual, and then a step further, how the knowledge of the averages should dictate the behavior of an individual. And so what I mean by that is, um, so to, to, to use a personal example, women are on average attracted to men that display more alpha male tendencies. It's probably not a particularly controversial point. Like, you know, traits like, uh-

Chris Williamson 1:19:16 Assertiveness

Ali Abdaal 1:19:16 ... assertiveness, confidence, aggression, borderli- um, bordering on aggression. Those sorts of kind of things that you would expect if you see, if you, if you think alpha male, for example. On average, women are attracted to those, and there's very little they can actually do about it. I actually re- recently read, um, My Secret Garden by Nancy someone, which is, like, th- a book that was released a few decades ago, the first time women's sexual fantasies was published in, in-

Chris Williamson 1:19:42 Okay

Ali Abdaal 1:19:42 ... in writing. And apparently that book had, like... I was, I was doing a bunch of research on this. It took the world by storm and became a instant bestseller because people were like, "Oh my God, like, this is what women's sexual fantasies are?" And all the women were like, "Oh my God, I didn't realize other people were like this too."

Chris Williamson 1:19:55 Wow.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:55 And a lot of them, the vast majority are around, um, the thing- things that, you know, [laughs] um, you know, things that, uh, display overly alpha male tendencies on a man's part. Um, it's not to say women want these things to bear out in real life, but on average we can, like... Let's assume women are more attracted to those sorts of traits. Then when it comes to be like, okay, cool, that's fine. That's an a- that's a, an academic point based on maybe a average, maybe 51% of women are more attracted to that, say, but there's still a, a vast proportion of women who are not. And so for someone like me reading about this stuff, I think the danger is then I can start to think that, okay, if women are more attracted to alpha male traits, and that is not really the sort of person who I am because of various reasons, the way that I... Maybe some nature, maybe some nurture, the way that I was raised is a very sort of feminized kind of culture where alpha male traits are sort of considered to be downtrodden, and, uh, this is, this is, like, not a good way to be. But given that I'm not particularly having success in the dating marketplace, hypothetically, um, then, um, should I try to adopt such as these alpha male traits, and should I mold my personality in a way that makes me more attractive to women? Because, you know, I've gotta find a wife, you know, for the first half [laughs] , for the first X number of years of my life. There was a good quote from someone who said that, um, life is always in two stages. The first stage is when you're trying to find a partner, and the second stage is when you actually do. [laughs] Once you've done that, you realize, "Okay, who the hell am I and what do I do?" And so given that I'm competing in this dating marketplace, should I try and get that master's degree? Should I try and be more domineering, be more confident, be more aggressive? Should I try and go to the gym and get more hench because, you know... Should I put a topless picture on, on Tinder that shows me smiling without my teeth because that's considered a higher... I don't know. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:21:43 So this is one of the-

Ali Abdaal 1:21:43 What do you reckon? Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:21:43 ... this is one of the problems, like, generally with dating. And I appreciate, you know, all of the people that, that send in their thoughts. My mind isn't fixed on these things, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:21:52 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:21:52 Like, I, I just have a, a real perverse curiosity around all of the things to do with the dating market, and I hope that that comes across in good faith, 'cause that's genuinely how it is.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:03 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:22:03 There's two things going on. One of them is how much, how much can you play the game without compromising who you are truthfully.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:09 Yep.

Chris Williamson 1:22:09 Um, and the other one is how far do you go before you basically play persona, which is what we spent the first half-

Ali Abdaal 1:22:15 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:22:15 ... of this conversation talking about, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:22:16 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:22:16 You don't want to, you don't wanna make someone fall in love with a version of you that you're not. But also, like, maximizing your attractiveness, understanding the rules of the game.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:24 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:22:25 Like, you can't pick the ball up in football, but you can run faster with it.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:29 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:22:29 You understand that if there's a good tactic, that means that you can score a bit more if you have this particular set piece. That's not too bad.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:34 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:22:35 What happened and the problem with pickup artistry, and this is something that I really, really got icked by, the whole negging and, and you've gotta... If people don't know what pickup artistry is, it was sort of during the early 2000s and the mid 2010s where men had found particular neurolinguistic programming tricks that allowed them to bed women by, um, utilizing different cognitive biases. Basically, it was kind of like tricking women, psychologically tricking women into bed or tricking women into being attracted by them, and that's kind of been really thrown out of the window. That being said, there are certain rules and procedures that will make you more attractive to a woman. The first thing that I would do is go to the gym. Like, it is the most robust way to make... It's more attractive than having a beard or having a low voice, which are two other signs of high testosterone. So this is Rob Henderson's work looked at this, that it's the most robust way to become more attractive as a guy, is to be in good shape. This doesn't mean single-digit body fat at 220 pounds. This just means that, you know, slightly visible abs and probably a medium-sized T-shirt or above. That is... You are top probably 5% of physiques on the planet if you, if you're able to get yourself to sub 14% body fat with a little bit of vascularity on your, on your arms. Like, and that's not... Oi, oi.

Ali Abdaal 1:23:59 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:23:59 Um, so it's a difficult question, man. Like, how far are you supposed to push yourself in the effort to become attractive to the o- opposite sex?

Ali Abdaal 1:24:06 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:24:06 It's a really difficult question. You don't want to make someone fall in love with you for something that you're not.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:10 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:24:10 And this is for guys and girls. So a good question to ask yourself is, am I the sort of person that the sort of person I'm attracted to would be attracted to?

Ali Abdaal 1:24:20 [laughs] Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:24:22 What's the sort of person that I want to get? If I really, really, really love guys that go to the gym, but I'm a chick that has never been to the gym, you gotta go to the gym, because he's probably gonna want a partner that goes to the gym as well. If you're a dude who really loves music And really wants a partner that's into music. You need to start going out to gigs and trying to find girls that are there. Stop looking for them in the library. So Models by Mark Manson, have you read this?

Ali Abdaal 1:24:47 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:24:47 Yeah, phenomenal.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:48 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:24:48 So that's, as far as I'm concerned, it's the one-stop shop for men on dating, um, how to become a more confident human. Yes, you should take the knowledge that you know around the dating market as men and as women, and you should utilize it to inform the way that you try and date. But there has to be a point at which you go, "Okay, I, I can't compromise myself too much."

Ali Abdaal 1:25:10 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:25:10 And a final piece of framing that actually I did take from, um, pickup artistry, but that is as ethical as you can get, is to control the frame. So you are the prize in the interaction. This doesn't mean that you don't think that the other person's important or interesting or valuable, but entering a frame of a conversation saying, "I am an inherently valuable, interesting person. This person is fortunate to be going out for a walking date with me and to grab a coffee. Like, how cool. Like, I'm gonna get to find out about them, and they're gonna get to find out about me. If I was them, I would be about to have a really cool afternoon." Like, that is a great way to enter a frame, I think, for dating. High value, you're controlling the context, you're coming across confident and competent. Like, those are good ways to step into things. Certainly better than like, "Oh, I'll start speaking to her friend, and then I won't look at her."

Ali Abdaal 1:26:01 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:26:01 "And then when I do look at her, I'll tell her that her hair looks shit and..." Like, that was, that was never gonna be a sustainable strategy.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:08 I like this way of approaching things. Like, um, understand the rules of the game and use those rules of the game to inform, to maybe inform what you're gonna do to maximize your chances in the game. Um, but don't do it in a way that, uh, feels to you inauthentic to who you truly are. That makes a lot of sense. Um, ah, and on that, on that note, we did have a, a comment on one of the, one of the videos that I did with, with my brother where I was like, "Oh, these guys are acting as if finding love is a game." It's like, okay, no, it's just a metaphor. Um [laughs] just like life is a game in a way. Um, but, uh, yeah, I think that's interest- So the, the kind of one specific example that I, I, I often think about, um, a few, a few months ago, I was, I was on a date. And afterwards we went out, driving to the Mc-

Chris Williamson 1:26:54 What's a typical Ali Abdaal date? Give me, give me the, like, quintessential Ali's taking you out for a date. Where does he take you, and what does he do?

Ali Abdaal 1:27:02 Um, uh, I feel like a date in three parts is ideal, where kind of, you know, the whole, again, from the, from the world of pickup artistry, where I think this is actually a good, a good shout, uh, bouncing from one location to another.

Chris Williamson 1:27:13 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:14 So starting off with maybe grabbing a coffee, then going for a walk, and then you've gone for the walk, had a bit of a chat, then go for food somewhere. And then after the food somewhere, like a third part, maybe go for a drive or go for another walk or go for dessert or, you know. Just something that allegedly the way, the way the dating thing works, like if you've, if you've been sitting each- uh, sitting at dinner talking for three hours, that's psychologically a less, um... It feels like you're less close than if you've been talking for one hour at three different venues, which is just how we experience memories. Um, but one thing I like to do is go for a drive afterwards, especially if it's a place I've driven to, and-

Chris Williamson 1:27:47 In the Tesla.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:47 In the Tesla, of course, [laughs] with the heated seats. Uh, and we were driving to the McDonald's drive-through, which is again, one of my favorite spots because I like, I love, I love McDonald's drive-throughs. And I think weirdly, going on a McDonald's drive-through on a date is like very me. And if someone doesn't like that, then great. That's like a perfect filter. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:28:04 I like that.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:05 Um-

Chris Williamson 1:28:05 It's a stress test.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:06 It's a stress test. Quite, yeah. But then on, on one of these dates a few months ago, en route to the, to the McDonald's drive-through, um, we put some music on and, uh, played Drivers License by Olivia Rodrigo. Banger song. Basically or, or let's or, uh, imagine like a Disney song.

Chris Williamson 1:28:22 Okay.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:23 That, that, that kind of vibe.

Chris Williamson 1:28:24 Okay, cool.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:24 And I knew all the lyrics to actually Drivers License and Good 4 U by Olivia Rodrigo, which are like... I knew all the lyrics to this Disney song. And I was thinking to... At that point, I, I could make a choice. Do I be myself and sing along to this Disney song? Um, or do I recognize that, ugh, girls are more attracted to masculine traits? This, me love, fricking loving Olivia Rodrigo and Disney songs and knowing all the words to Good 4 U is not a particularly masculine trait, at least by traditional definitions.

Chris Williamson 1:28:51 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:51 Maybe, it's, it's only date number two. Maybe I'll just like tone that down a bit and, and, and, and weave it in. And I made the decision at that point to be like, "Screw it. Let's sing the songs." And turns out she also freaking loves singing Disney songs and Olivia Rodrigo, and we're just singing along together, and it was great. But I was kinda thinking that, "Hmm, have I in a sense shot myself in the foot by revealing this aspect of me?" And then afterwards I was like, "Nah, it's fine." Like, "This is who I am authentically."

Chris Williamson 1:29:14 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:14 "This is, this is my true self. It's all good."

Chris Williamson 1:29:16 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:17 If it turns out the girl is not into guys who like singing, singing Disney songs, she's not gonna enjoy being with me because I sing Disney songs all the time, all day, every day.

Chris Williamson 1:29:24 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:24 Um, but the fact that I had that thought process made me wonder, "Oh, have I drunk too much Kool-Aid of like red pill-"

Chris Williamson 1:29:30 That's a-

Ali Abdaal 1:29:30 "... rational male type shit?"

Chris Williamson 1:29:31 Dude, that's, that's a really, really good-

Ali Abdaal 1:29:33 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:29:33 ... a really, really good insight that you get a, um... It's the midwit meme, man.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:38 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:29:39 It's the midwit meme.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:40 [laughs] Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:29:40 It's like the idiot and the genius do the same thing. Just, I just be myself. I just be myself. I will optimize my red pill pickup artistry so that I understand the negging of the blah, blah. Like, no, no.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:51 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:29:51 Just be yourself.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:52 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:29:52 But you are right. Like, understanding the dynamics I think is different to making, letting them change you. Um, I think that you did the right thing. I think that just being yourself with somebody-

Ali Abdaal 1:30:02 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:30:02 ... is a really good way to, to try and do that. Now, if yourself is becoming a more competent, more trustworthy, more hardworking, more attractive human over time, that's a win. But trying to... This is one of the reasons why all of the pickup artist guys, if you look at them now, they're all wrecked. Like, look at, uh, Neil Strauss-

Ali Abdaal 1:30:23 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:30:23 ... who's gone total awakened, like, hmm, DMT guy. Why? Tucker Max. Tucker Max is a perfect example, man.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:32 Wh-

Chris Williamson 1:30:32 The guy did-

Ali Abdaal 1:30:33 Was, was he a pickup artist?

Chris Williamson 1:30:34 Well, he wrote... He created the fratire genre, didn't he?

Ali Abdaal 1:30:37 Oh, did he? Oh, I didn't realize that. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:30:38 He, he, he-

Ali Abdaal 1:30:39 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:30:39 ... all of his New York Times bestsellers-

Ali Abdaal 1:30:40 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:30:42 Throwing up in bathrooms after drinking and having sex with women-

Ali Abdaal 1:30:45 Oh, interesting

Chris Williamson 1:30:45 ... that's all he did. He wrote-

Ali Abdaal 1:30:46 I did not know that. I just know him from being the publishing guy.

Chris Williamson 1:30:47 He wrote What Women Want with Geoffrey Miller, the evolutionary psychologist.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:51 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:30:51 Oh, dude, his entire back catalog of books is just him having sex and partying.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:55 Oh.

Chris Williamson 1:30:55 That's all it is.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:56 I've got a lot of reading to do. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:30:57 Yeah, precisely. Um, and he's done a thousand sessions of psychotherapy, MDMA-assisted psychotherapy.

Ali Abdaal 1:31:04 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:31:04 Now this, like, fully awakened human talking on Twitter about real mean- deep and meaningful things. Why? I think it's because when guys in their youth, in their, in their 20s, tried to be the sort of man that they thought women wanted to be attracted to, they ended up realizing how far that was from the person that they truly were-

Ali Abdaal 1:31:27 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:31:27 ... and it made them feel really, really unhappy and uncomfortable, and they relapsed after a lot of self-work-

Ali Abdaal 1:31:32 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:31:32 ... to a much more virtuous, much more aligned and awakened place-

Ali Abdaal 1:31:36 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:31:36 ... which is them just fully being themselves. Neil Strauss, now incredibly vulnerable online. Tucker Max, incredibly vulnerable online. Why? Because for a long time he wasn't. For a long time, he was doing the things that he thought he was supposed to do. And I think that you've played it right. I think that the way to go about things is to have confident competence that this is you, and own it.

Ali Abdaal 1:31:54 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:31:54 And be like, "Look, yeah, maybe this isn't, whatever, typical masculine trait 101. The red pill guys say that you shouldn't do this." It's like, all right, but also if you want to try and be your version of someone else, the best that you can hope for is being the second-best in the world at it.

Ali Abdaal 1:32:10 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:32:10 Like, if I want to do my podcast like Joe Rogan, the best I can hope for is being the second-best Joe Rogan on the planet.

Ali Abdaal 1:32:17 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:32:17 And when you're going into a dating environment, uh, just setting the tone in that way is going to be bad. That being said, if you have more extreme quirks, if it was... I can't think of any that are PG-13.

Ali Abdaal 1:32:30 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:32:30 But if you had something that was a little bit more out there than you singing Disney songs-

Ali Abdaal 1:32:36 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:32:36 ... perhaps you do slowly introduce people to that.

Ali Abdaal 1:32:40 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:32:40 But the prospect of never bringing that up, I don't think that really works.

Ali Abdaal 1:32:44 Interesting. So I guess if I had a strong... If, for example, it was just part of my, a p- part, part of the way I live life, that I never have a shower and I don't believe in washing, that's a, you know, a thing that a future partner would, would want to know, but it's probably the sort of thing I shouldn't mention on date number one. Let's just... Dude. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:33:00 Well, I think that what you would be aiming to do, and what everyone's aiming to do, is to try and construct a world in which they are the sort of person that the sort of person they're attracted to would be attracted to.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:10 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:33:11 That's what you want. This is, this is the, the sort of quick fix to dating problems. It's like, okay, what, what sort of partner do I want, genuinely? What are their interests?

Ali Abdaal 1:33:22 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:33:22 What are the non-negotiables that I want from a partner? They have to... And choose three things, non-negotiables, they have to be like this. They have to be... Pick them. And then all of the other things, you can just kind of learn to love people around them.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:40 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:33:40 That doesn't mean that you need to settle, but it does mean that I think you end up in a situation where you have the things that really matter being there, and then you're starting to love people for their quirks. Like, a lot of the times when you fall in love, you end up falling in love and going, "I can't believe it was you. It was never going to be you. You. You, with all of your you-ness and all of the different things that you have. How is it you? It was supposed to be her, but it's you," and you can't believe it. Why? Because you are absolutely shit at predicting what you're gonna be attracted to.

Ali Abdaal 1:34:09 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:34:09 You know some things that you will not compromise on, and then the rest of them you end up falling in love with the way that he drives the car, or you end up falling in love with the way that she, uh, makes the bed or the way that she looks on a m- like, all of the things that you wouldn't have thought it was going to be. Like, this is where love seems to come out, and it's those quirks and those uniquenesses that give you a competitive advantage in the dating market. So you not utilizing the fact that you do sing Disney songs and you do know the, the words to them, that puts you at a disadvantage because you're just being like Ali nor- version 0.9.

Ali Abdaal 1:34:43 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:34:43 You're the beta tester version of that because it's... you're not fully utilizing all of the different features you have.

Ali Abdaal 1:34:49 Mm. Yeah, I think... I guess, I guess it is that everyone has to make that decision for themselves, what is the balance between I am doing this thing to become more attractive versus... Uh, and, and to not... it... and it not bordering into territory of this thing is straying far from who I am. For example, I'll hand, hold my hands up and say, the reason I go to the gym is to be more attractive. [laughs] Um, but the sort of person I want to be is the sort of person who takes their health seriously.

Chris Williamson 1:35:14 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:14 And it just so happens that the proximal reason, like the main reason, is currently to look m- more attractive, but it's also a sort of life that I would like to lead, and therefore I think... [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:35:22 Oh, dude, if you can win on multiple, if you can win on multiple different domains, like, take it.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:26 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:35:27 Take it. It's like saying, um, "My YouTube channel gets plays which means that I have access to making new friends, but it also earns ad revenue, but I should feel bad about the ad revenue because I'm supposed to be here for the friends." It's like, no. Like, just take them all. Like, if there's a ton of wins to get out of something.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:42 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:35:43 But to come back to what we said at the... for the first half of the conversation about being yourself and about trying to kind of work out who it is that you are, I think that coming at something from a place of I'm already enough but I want to be better is very different to I am insufficient unless I have this.

Ali Abdaal 1:36:01 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:36:01 Unless I get 8% body fat and massive set of arms and I can out-bench everybody in the gym. Unless I get there, then I am not worthy of having a partner is very different to I am already worthy of having a partner and I know that this will make them happier.

Ali Abdaal 1:36:16 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:36:16 Like, and... or this will improve my chances of finding someone who is going to be attracted to me and I'm gonna be attracted to as well.

Ali Abdaal 1:36:22 How, how do you think about the balance

Ali Abdaal 1:36:24 between be yourself versus choose yourself?

Chris Williamson 1:36:28 Uh, elaborate. Sink into them further.

Ali Abdaal 1:36:29 'Cause... So, so we've talked a lot about how you're... you know, you went on this journey trying to uncover your true self. Um, one school of thought is that, well, we don't really have a true self, that true self is just a result of the accidents of our... um, the accidents of the way that we, we were brought up, and it just so... and the traits we got from our parents and from our friends at school. And you can- And do a lot to change who you are if that's what you want, want, want to do. For example, when I was in school, I wasn't particularly outgoing or, or particularly charismatic or particularly confident. And I recognized that, you know, uh, me being myself would have been me just continuing on that route. I decided, you know what? I'm gonna make an active decision at university to change myself to become someone who's more confident and more charismatic. Wh- And someone who is a little bit more outgoing. And although those-- that was not a natural transformation initially, it felt, it felt uncomfortable. Like any change, which always feels, feels uncomfortable. I am now much more confident, charismatic, open in social settings, that kind of stuff. But if I'd been told, "Um, oh bro, just be yourself," it would have probably-- that probably wouldn't have happened. And so I'm curious as to what, what your thoughts are on that.

Chris Williamson 1:37:36 So I believe that your life should be lived by design, not by default. That you should be intentionally doing things.

Ali Abdaal 1:37:43 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:37:44 Because the default quite often is actually a bit shit.

Ali Abdaal 1:37:47 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:37:47 The, the default setting that you would go to would be the Netflix and bag of chips-

Ali Abdaal 1:37:52 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:37:52 ... and not doing hard things and not having new experiences and all of the biases. Or you would just be ruled by your biases, right? Which is definitely not what you want.

Ali Abdaal 1:38:00 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:38:01 That being said, we are not infinitely malleable. We are not complete blank slates. There are predispositions that you have that I do not, and there are predispositions I have that you do not. 50% pretty much of everything you are psychologically is genetic, on average. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:38:19 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:38:20 And what that means is that you are inclined towards certain things more than others. For s- By hook or by crook, you haven't ended up being an artist-

Ali Abdaal 1:38:29 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:38:29 ... or a painter or a-

Ali Abdaal 1:38:34 A club promoter. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:38:35 ... club promoter-

Ali Abdaal 1:38:36 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:38:36 ... or a reality TV guy.

Ali Abdaal 1:38:37 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:38:37 Like, there is something inside of you that has caused you to lean toward the particular life that you do. Now, understanding yourself and saying, "Right, I'm going to play to my strengths. I'm going to enhance it." So one of your strengths is being able to learn things quickly, right? So you have a meta power that permits you to be more malleable than most people.

Ali Abdaal 1:38:57 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:38:58 But it's not unlimited. You can't learn to be anything that you want. You can just learn to be... You can manipulate certain areas of you to enhance some and to down-regulate others. The difference between be yourself and choose yourself is interesting. But especially as you grow up, your life paths, they do start to get closed off more, right? Because you have less and less time. Presumably, most people will want to start a family of some kind, which again, is something that you're working toward as you grow up. And yeah, it, it's an interesting one. I think, um, I think that choosing yourself has a beauty to it and a sense of achievement once you've completed it.

Ali Abdaal 1:39:41 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:39:41 I think that's really, really nice, and you can feel proud of the person that you are. But that needs to come from a place of inner truth, or else you're just going to end up playing a role.

Ali Abdaal 1:39:49 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:39:49 You're not going to be... So if you decided tomorrow that you wanted to wake up and be a PT in a gym and just be some super alpha, go out, sniff a bag with the boys on a weekend, like five pints and watch the footy. "Oh, did you see the West Ham game last night, mate?"

Ali Abdaal 1:40:02 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:40:03 Like, if you decided to be that guy, I'm sure that you could probably fo- well, you absolutely could force yourself into it. If someone held a gun to your head and said, "Right, you gotta be the biggest lad that you can for the next year," you could do it, but it wouldn't be you.

Ali Abdaal 1:40:14 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:40:15 So you can't fully choose yourself. You could act yourself, but the difference between choose and be is basically, does this feel like it's cohesive with my inner desire?

Ali Abdaal 1:40:28 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:40:28 And what you're trying to do is you're trying to remove the distance from what you would do and what you want to do. So what would I do if I woke up this morning? I would maybe do some meditation and do some walking. It's can I get something from system two to system one? And the more that you get the things that you want in system two to system one, that's you creating yourself to be yourself. Does that make sense? Like, if you can choose the things that you want to have in life-

Ali Abdaal 1:40:55 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:40:55 ... and you can make them so much a part of you that they actually end up embodying you and you embody them-

Ali Abdaal 1:41:00 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:41:00 ... that feels like, that feels like you've managed to merge the two together.

Ali Abdaal 1:41:03 Yeah. It's sort of like habit formation, but for personality traits, I guess.

Chris Williamson 1:41:05 Yeah. And also for the values that you have.

Ali Abdaal 1:41:08 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:41:08 For me, I was a guy that took a lot of pride from the success of his club night and from the way that he was seen and blah, blah, blah.

Ali Abdaal 1:41:15 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:41:15 And don't get me wrong, I probably just transmuted them into other different, like, desires-

Ali Abdaal 1:41:19 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:41:19 ... and wants and, and shit.

Ali Abdaal 1:41:21 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:41:21 Um, but I got rid of those ones because I didn't want them anymore. So yes, you can choose yourself, but you're not infinitely malleable.

Ali Abdaal 1:41:27 Amazing. I think that's a, a good place to end this. Uh, we still have so much to talk about, about your podcast, about your journey, about your, uh, the whole weirdness stuff, authenticity, wanting to want things. I think we'll save that for a part two because this is officially the longest episode we've ever recorded on The Deep Dive.

Chris Williamson 1:41:41 Shit.

Ali Abdaal 1:41:41 Um, I have a few, uh, rapid-fire questions for you-

Chris Williamson 1:41:43 Hit me

Ali Abdaal 1:41:44 ... to end with that we're asking everyone. Um, what advice-- Number one, what advice would you give to your younger self?

Chris Williamson 1:41:50 Fear less.

Ali Abdaal 1:41:51 Fear less?

Chris Williamson 1:41:52 Fear less.

Ali Abdaal 1:41:53 Okay. Who has had the biggest influence on your career?

Chris Williamson 1:41:55 Dave, my older business partner, the guy that is the CEO of the company that we're twinned with.

Ali Abdaal 1:42:02 Okay. What was the influence that he had?

Chris Williamson 1:42:04 He was the first boss that I ever had. He was the first role model that I ever had. He's about four or five years older than me, and he is just a very, very shrewd guy-

Ali Abdaal 1:42:13 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:42:13 ... when it comes to business. Almost all of the business acumen that I have can be attributed, the genesis of it can be attributed to that guy.

Ali Abdaal 1:42:18 Nice. What's one tip for someone looking for success?

Chris Williamson 1:42:22 Sleep more.

Ali Abdaal 1:42:22 [laughs] Nice. What does the first and last hour of your day look like?

Chris Williamson 1:42:28 Upon waking, element salt in water, walk for 15 minutes, journal, meditate, breathwork, read, cook, and then at nighttime, usually watching some sport or whatever with my flatmate in the living room or re- and then some sort of reading, probably half and half.

Ali Abdaal 1:42:52 Nice. I need to ask you more about your morning routine next time we speak. Um, [laughs] what material item under £100 could you not live without slash that's added the most value to your life in recent memory?

Chris Williamson 1:43:01 Under £100. Steel shaker.

Ali Abdaal 1:43:04 Oh.

Chris Williamson 1:43:04 Just, just steel protein shaker.

Ali Abdaal 1:43:06 Nice.

Chris Williamson 1:43:06 About 15 quid.

Ali Abdaal 1:43:07 Cool. Uh, what book would you recommend to anyone?

Chris Williamson 1:43:11 The Almanack of Naval Ravikant.

Ali Abdaal 1:43:12 Nice. If you lost everything, how would you start a business again?

Chris Williamson 1:43:15 Fill a club night. Easy.

Ali Abdaal 1:43:17 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:43:17 Piece of piss.

Ali Abdaal 1:43:18 Yeah. [laughs] What quote or mantra do you live by?

Chris Williamson 1:43:22 Don't practice what you do not want to become.

Ali Abdaal 1:43:26 Nice. Um, and finally, a journey or destination?

Chris Williamson 1:43:30 Journey.

Ali Abdaal 1:43:32 Very nice. Chris, thanks for coming on.

Chris Williamson 1:43:33 Thanks.

Ali Abdaal 1:43:33 Links to all of, all of your things in the video description. Uh, anything in particular you'd like to plug quickly?

Chris Williamson 1:43:38 Uh, yeah, those episodes that we mentioned-

Ali Abdaal 1:43:40 Yep

Chris Williamson 1:43:40 ... uh, will be linked in the show notes below, Modern Wisdom, wherever you listen, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Chris Williamson. And if you want a list of 100 books, we've talked about a lot today, uh, chriswillx.com/books is a free list of 100 of the most impactful and interesting books that I've ever read.

Ali Abdaal 1:43:55 Nice.

Chris Williamson 1:43:55 Thanks for having me on, man.

Ali Abdaal 1:43:56 And we'll link, uh, my appearances on your podcast as well in addition to those-

Chris Williamson 1:44:00 Which were awesome.

Ali Abdaal 1:44:00 Oh, thank you. [laughs] Um, great. Thanks for coming on, and see you later, everyone.

Chris Williamson 1:44:05 Cheers.