The Truth About Success - James Smith

Chris Williamson 0:00 James Smith, welcome to the show.

James Smith 0:02 Nice to do this in person.

Chris Williamson 0:03 We made it, four weeks on tour together.

James Smith 0:06 I'm tired. My voice is a bit deeper, I'm a bit fatter, and I need a haircut.

Chris Williamson 0:11 (laughs) It's been a, it's been a journey, man.

James Smith 0:16 It's been good. We... You know, like, uh, I was, I was maybe expecting that much time together with anyone, there would have been maybe some physical altercations, maybe some strong arguments. But actually, we got on very well. Your... Do you know, you're very meticulous to detail in projects that we work on, but as far as, uh, uh, traveling and working a company, you were fantastic.

Chris Williamson 0:36 Sufficient chill?

James Smith 0:38 Yeah, just like a... You... I can tell when you're tired 'cause the AirPods go in, the eye mask comes on. You have your own way of gesticulating a do-not-disturb mode.

Chris Williamson 0:47 (laughs) I'm right. Okay, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think so. No, you're right. It's been a... I'm trying not to talk about tour so much because I feel like it's, it's all of the things that I sometimes switch off about when I listen to other podcasts. Whitney Cummings taught me this thing, she was sat in that chair a few weeks ago. She said, "In order for life to imitate art, in- in order for art to imitate life, you have to have a life." And it explains why comedians who just spend all of their time on the road only have road life to talk about, of airports and dinners and shows, and that's it. And I'm trying not to do that, but it's been really formative. It's been really interesting for me to, you know, see kind of what happens in person at these events and these experiences. Um...

James Smith 1:29 Well, it would be very easy for yourself to not... You've created a comfort zone now where you have a microphone, you have some, uh, you know, research you would have done on a, on a guest, and you have the routine of seeing that person. The idea of going on the road, to a lot of people, is one, something they would f- be very fearful of. It's absolute chaos, and it's just, you know, unpredictableness. You know, you're meeting new crowds, new hecklers, new events, new flight schedules, new airports. You know, like even every day you've just got the anxiety of your luggage not coming through from the carousel, so-

Chris Williamson 2:05 Not for me, baby.

James Smith 2:06 Hand lugge- Mr. Hand Luggage Only.

Chris Williamson 2:08 Hand Luggage Only. Hold luggage is a psy-op meant to keep you poor and late. Um, talk to me... Obviously, we've done this one, but you've done five, ten tours before this. What have you learned from touring in general? You've created content on the internet and spoken to people through the screen a lot, but then you get to speak to them in person. What do people who are existing mostly online not know about what the real world's like?

James Smith 2:34 Well, first of all, uh, I'm sure you've experienced this face-to-face. When people meet you in the street, and they compliment you and say, "Oh, Chris, I love your podcast," you see that little glimmer in their eye where they actually realize you're real. And sometimes they'll say it, they're like, "Oh, you actually exist." Because whereas, you know, characters in movies or, you know, actresses in certain TV shows, the, the real person or the person in their imagination doesn't physically exist, but then when they meet you, you do. But then even when they see you online or absorb your content, they kind of know that you're performing for them. So, being able to see your, you know, idiosyncrasies or just certain ways that you act or the way that you would engage with them or maybe give them banter in real life, e- whether it's from the stage or the meet and greet doing a selfie, they get to see, like, a side of you that they've never experienced before. And it's almost, you would hope is, you know, quite charming. You know, they go, "Oh, you actually exist."

Chris Williamson 3:24 Hmm.

James Smith 3:25 Now, doing that as, like, activation around a different people's towns, like even the way that you would make jokes local to their town not only makes them feel like you're real, they feel seen, which is, like, a really nice combination for them to have for someone they might admire online.

Chris Williamson 3:42 Definitely one of the things I've realized is how much more positive the world is in general than it seems through the internet. The internet is very sardonic. It's quite cynical. It's quite cutting. It's kind of a bit standoffish and tries to be aloof and cool. You know, that's what comment sections are. It's always like a, this... Like, "I don't care about you, I don't care about what other people think about me." And in person see- people seem to be a lot more prepared to be vulnerable. You know?

James Smith 4:11 We had, we had one bad comment the whole tour. One bad comment.

Chris Williamson 4:15 What was it?

James Smith 4:16 Uh, where pretty much she wasn't taking the piss out of you, she's taking the piss out of me. And, um, so like, the person that wrote the comment thought that they were gonna get like a, a real big breakdown of h- how I wrote the books, you know, the process of writing and all of these things. The fact that we called the tour The C Word should have let off to the level of sophistication-

Chris Williamson 4:36 Hmm.

James Smith 4:36 ... and maybe the amount of vulgar that would be in it.

Chris Williamson 4:38 Hmm.

James Smith 4:38 But then you think, so thousands of attendees, one bad comment, you're looking at maybe 0.1% being generous. Whereas, you look at any Instagram reel that you put from your best performing podcast-

Chris Williamson 4:50 Hmm.

James Smith 4:50 ... might be 40% negative. So, when you look at that, that comparison between 40% negative to 0.01%, it's vast. And like you say, obviously it's a bit of an echo chamber because only your red hot audience are gonna come to your event. But yeah, it's good because there are some days where... It's obviously like a real, you know, point of privilege to be able to say, "Oh, you know, so many people watch my content that I get negative comments." But they, they go straight to... There's no one out there that doesn't take it to heart unless you're a psychopath, sociopath. Like, unless you're literally American Psycho level, like, you have to take it to heart in some respect. So, it is so nice to be out there and to talk to people, engage with people, and have those interactions, which is what I think a lot of people that talk with the comedians, whether music artists, whatever, really cherish.

Chris Williamson 5:42 Well, I think that's one of the reasons why they maybe seem more resilient to criticism that they get online than it appears. You know, some comedian's in the middle of some furor, or they've said something that's cringe or uncool, or everyone in the comment section doesn't like them. And you go, yeah, like, that might be true, but Friday, Saturday, Sunday, in some-... city in Massachusetts or something. They're selling out three theaters of 2,000 people, all of whom are there because they love them, because they give them adoration. It's definitely helped me to understand how the internet is not r- the real world and a lot of the people that appear in comment sections. And this is the same for whether you're a content creator or not. If you're just existing within comment sections and going, "Wow, the world seems really negative," or, "The world seems really cynical," or, "The world seems really whatever." It's not even when you get groups of people together. It's when you get groups of people together with pseudo-anonymity on the internet and there's perverse incentives for them to say a thing which other people are going to find interesting or cutting or sarcastically good and funny so that they can upvote it. Like, that's where the p- the incentives work toward. But in person, people just wanna be seen and they've got an interesting question and they're around other people that they feel are like them, or maybe they're alone and they're lonely. They think, "Wow, like, I'm in a room with 400, 500, 600 other people, all of whom listen to the same obscure podcaster or whatever that I do." Like, "That's cool."

James Smith 7:05 There's, uh, something I've done before where, say, wh- (laughs) when you get- when you release your book, you're gonna have a day where the reviews are gonna start to come in and there's this tendency, for some reason, to look at the one star reviews. And you're like, you're like, "Oh, you know, I'm tryna- I'm tryna build a gre- good idea of, you know, constructive criticism." You do it, you depress yourself for a few hours. But then what I've come to do is go to a book that's revolutionized your life. Let's look at something like a Ryan Holiday, Obstacle Is The Way, which is anytime any of my friends experiencing like carnage, depression, loss of a loved one, whether through death or breakup, whatever, I'm like, "I'm not qualified to help you, but this book will make you feel better." So I'll go to that book or equivalent, I'll look at the one star reviews and people are like, "Yeah, you know, book got boring, doesn't go anywhere."

Chris Williamson 7:53 (laughs)

James Smith 7:53 Um, "Author's really off the mark," or stuff like that. And I'll be like, "Okay, when you remove yourself from that situation and you actually make it about, you know, someone else's book and you realize how delusional or sometimes even bottish the comments are."

Chris Williamson 8:07 Mm.

James Smith 8:08 Because when it's your work, you take it to heart. But when it's someone else's work, you go, "Oh, they're obviously full of shit."

Chris Williamson 8:13 Yeah, so interesting to observe that. Well, look, I got you a- I got you a gift, uh, to celebrate the end of your first ever America tour, which is a Texas Longhorns jersey with Smith23 on the back, given that it is 2023. So you can get that framed and take that home.

James Smith 8:31 This is very cool. I like this a lot. I actually also have you a gift.

Chris Williamson 8:36 You don't.

James Smith 8:36 I do, yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 8:37 Why?

James Smith 8:38 Um, Etienne, do you reckon you could help us with it, please? We will need to open the door.

Chris Williamson 8:42 That's fine. That's all right. I didn't realize that we were exche-

James Smith 8:45 Gifting.

Chris Williamson 8:45 This hasn't been planned. I've had this planned for ages, but I didn't know that you were gonna re- put me in a vicious regifting cycle.

James Smith 8:53 Can we, um, initiate the gifting protocol? We got three strippers coming in.

Chris Williamson 8:57 Have we? It's not Luke, is it?

James Smith 8:59 So I was thinking for the future of the, uh, episodes in which we'll be doing, I thought it'd be good to get you a new tonic Yeti.

Chris Williamson 9:06 Oh, you got me a Yeti cooler, a wheel-in Yeti cooler.

James Smith 9:09 And then, uh, inside...

Chris Williamson 9:12 All right.

James Smith 9:12 ... Etienne, do you mind? I will soundproof the door one more time.

Chris Williamson 9:15 Yeah. Okay, you might need to spin it round and do it so that the camera can see the Etienne.

James Smith 9:20 And then, um-

Chris Williamson 9:21 Put your camera down.

James Smith 9:21 ... I- if you can open it as well, inside I've got you a tour kit.

Chris Williamson 9:26 A tour kit?

James Smith 9:27 So can you show us item number one, please, Etienne? We've got a three pack of Lululemon boxes which are, uh, size large.

Chris Williamson 9:34 Okay, yeah.

James Smith 9:34 Now, I know that you might be, sp- from a sponsorship standpoint-

Chris Williamson 9:37 (laughs)

James Smith 9:38 ... uh, in- in very rough waters. You got two water bottles in here. I know you've got your own one that you carry yourself.

Chris Williamson 9:43 Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

James Smith 9:44 Um, there's a bottle opener and someone else in there as well. So the way I see it, for many of your episodes, especially ones you'll be doing local in the area, you'll be transporting Newtonic-

Chris Williamson 9:56 Mm-hmm.

James Smith 9:57 ... on site. Now, I don't envisage you wheeling-

Chris Williamson 9:59 Wheel in with one of these, is that what you're saying?

James Smith 10:01 I d- I don't envisage you rolling in with this, but I envisage some member of staff. So you'll be like, "Where is the cooler?"

Chris Williamson 10:08 (laughs) That's cool as fuck. Man, thank you.

James Smith 10:11 Thank you.

Chris Williamson 10:11 I appreciate it.

James Smith 10:12 I appreciate the jersey.

Chris Williamson 10:13 Yeah, we'll pop that back in there. Thank you, Etienne.

James Smith 10:14 Thank you very much.

Chris Williamson 10:15 Fucking hell. Well, I'm glad that I've got these pants finally. Let's-

James Smith 10:19 I've been- I've been bigging them up. And we won't go into too much detail 'cause-

Chris Williamson 10:22 Very intimate details around the pants. Yeah.

James Smith 10:25 Just, um, you know, there's- there's not much a man cherishes more than the state of his goo- w- gooch whilst traveling.

Chris Williamson 10:32 That is true. That is true, yeah.

James Smith 10:34 There's a clip.

Chris Williamson 10:34 I've been fighting, I've been fighting with gooch sweat for the entirety.

Chris Williamson 10:38 I heard you say on a podcast ages ago, and I never brought it up to you, all wins feel the same.

James Smith 10:45 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 10:45 And then you've said it a couple of times on the tour as well during Q and As. What's that mean to you?

James Smith 10:50 So we seem to think the, uh, you know you get an Uber surcharge when Ubers are really busy, it's like 1.5 times. So we seem to think that we get ascending Uber surcharges on happiness the further we progress. So let's say you, uh, have your first payslip that's $1,000, then it's $10,000, then it's $100,000, then it's $1 million, then it's $1 million. We seem to think that the levels of happiness that we would accrue from those interactions would be ascending in line with the relative increases in money. So-

Chris Williamson 11:17 So the 1,000 would be- uh, the 10,000 would be 10 times greater, then the 1,000 would be 10 times greater at the h- 100,000.

James Smith 11:23 However, it's not that way. And even if, let's say, you're a jujitsu competitor, white belt, purple belt, black belt, winning a match feels like winning a match. The levels change, the importance of it change. So you got Gordon Ryan, best in the world, lives here in Austin. When he wins, let's say, the most prestigious ADCC final, those emotive, you know, responses from the brain and that chemistry is the exact same to someone listening to this podcast that starts jujitsu next week and in three months time competes for the first time at white belt. When they get their hand raised, they get the exact same feeling.

Chris Williamson 11:59 Mm.

James Smith 12:00 Only if your mindset is wrong would you deny yourself experiencing that because you seem to think it wouldn't be at the same level as someone else. And-... you may be starting a business that you love and breaking even in your first year, could feel the same as far as a win, as far as someone going to, you know, sell their business for hundreds of millions. Like, the wins feel the same, and I don't feel like we're ever told that. We, we kinda learn it along the way, and I think a lot of people can feel like they're broken. Because I know for a fact you actually didn't feel as happy as a million subs as you did at 10,000.

Chris Williamson 12:34 Correct.

James Smith 12:35 So giving people... You know, there are gonna be podcasters that listen to your podcast that are thinking, "Oh, I'll be happy when I get 100,000 subs," and you just need to remind them that it's gonna feel just as good when they get 10K.

Chris Williamson 12:47 Hmm. Yeah, there's a lot of, uh, problems around expectations. And, you know, there's an idea where expectations rise more quickly than reality's ability to deliver that to you. And that's dangerous, right? If you think that as you become better, your belief in yourself to be even better than current better continues to rise, then, yeah, each time that you set yourself a new bar, that is a new minimum that you need to jump over, which can actually mean that large wins are the worst days of your life. You know, speaking to Morgan Housel, who wrote The Psychology of Money, he was telling me a story both about himself, I think, but also another friend who first book, amazing success, all of this, these great things happen, create a second book. Second book was an amazing success, but the first one was so interstellar it would be impossible. You know, if you're, if you manage to thread the needle of a once-in-a-generation book in terms of sales, h- are you really gonna, you really think that you're gonna be able to do that again twice? You can have amazing success, but it's not gonna be that one. And in relation, the second book felt like a failure, despite the fact that by every... Uh, my friend told me about the, uh, George Michael Wham! documentary. I think I told you this story. So, uh, George Michael and the other dude in Wham!, the fact that it's just the other dude kind of shows wh- uh, the way that that relationship was done. And this, the guy that was second had a very different sort of, um, relationship with success. He knew that George was gonna be the front man. He was happy for George to be the front man. He was there as a musician, but he was largely kind of the, the back-up to what was going on. So they release, in the space of one year, they release, uh, Club Tropicana. They release... What was the other non-Christmas song that they released? Can you remember?

James Smith 14:33 You're asking the wrong person.

Chris Williamson 14:34 Uh, they release one other, uh, non-Christmas song, and then they release, um, Last Christmas. Over the Christmas period, George Michael is featured on Do They Know It's Christmas?, that huge medley song with everybody else. So he's managed to get debut single, number one, second single, number one, third single, which is his Christmas single, Last Christmas, debuts at number two, and is beaten by another song that he is the singer for. But he feels despondent at Christmas, on Christmas Day, because his song doesn't hit number one for the third time in 12 months. It's beaten by him in a different song, but that song wasn't Wham!. Like, how insane are those expectations?

James Smith 15:19 It is... Do you know what, though? If I look back at the times that I've been, like, the most disappointed or, like, even upset, it is based 100% down to my expectations. Not the reality of the world, not the reality of the situation, just the reality of my expectations. So it's a fine line between not setting them too high but then not setting them too low, because without adequate expectations, you then hinder your effort. But yeah, we're, we're complex creatures. And I think, going back to, like, the original question, is, the point of it is so people don't deny themselves of waiting huge amounts of time or huge amounts of effort before celebrating wins.

Chris Williamson 15:54 You said, uh, d- some of your clients come to you and say, "I want to lose 10 kilos," and you're like, "Fuck 10 kilos. Celebrate when you lose one-"

James Smith 16:01 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 16:01 ... "and then celebrate when you lose one, and then celebrate when you lose one."

James Smith 16:04 Uh, the same with social media. Uh, there's a six-foot-five lad outside this room laying on a sofa-

Chris Williamson 16:10 (laughs)

James Smith 16:10 ... and we would race each other. Every time we grew by a thousand followers, we would race each other to type that number. So I'd wake up at, like, 674, I'd be like, "Fuck, beat me to it." Like, and people would, would... Part of it died when we got to a million, because then-

Chris Williamson 16:23 You don't see it.

James Smith 16:23 ... you don't see it, yeah. So, uh, like, I, I, I miss those little wins. And everyone else out there is thinking it's the big stuff. You're like, "No, you grow by a thousand, that's amazing."

Chris Williamson 16:32 Hmm.

James Smith 16:32 So, people need to be better at celebrating those wins.

Chris Williamson 16:35 That's been one of the most common questions that's come up on the Q&As across this tour. There's been, like, some really interesting trends, 'cause I did my four shows around Ireland and the UK, then we both did Dubai, and then we did Canada, US, Canada, US, et cetera. And, um, some of the most common trends that have come out are all to do with deciding between the multiplicity of options that we have in our lives. "I have lots of things that I can do with my time. Which one should I do?" That's been an interesting one. But another one has been, "How can I not leave things on the table in terms of how well I perform and yet take gratitude in the successes that I've had?" And I think there's definitely a fear out there from people that if they congratulate themselves too much, it's gonna kill their ambition. Maybe a few years ago, I would've been on board with that a little bit. But largely now, I just don't think that it's the case. I think that a lot of people that have ambition, if you tried to throw water and sand in a, you know, metric ton of, like, fucking fire extinguisher on it, I don't think that those people that are driven would have it slowed down by taking a second to congratulate themselves and give them a pat on the back and get some helium balloons or a, a water cooler or a, a, a printed jersey.

James Smith 17:50 I think it's crazy that you've said this, I've said this, like,

James Smith 17:53 there are so many people that have those unprecedented levels of ambition, but some of them have their moments capped working on other peoples' dreams, not their own. And we've both said it, where, like, people are, "Oh, I kinda wanna do my own thing, but I'm worried I'll fail." And you're like, "Yeah, but you're doing so well at something."... that you don't like, (laughs) you know?

Chris Williamson 18:11 Yeah.

James Smith 18:11 And-

Chris Williamson 18:11 That's one of your best insights. I think that's genuinely one of your best insights. If you're succeeding at something that you don't enjoy, imagine how great you'd be at something you love.

James Smith 18:19 And even if you do go down that path and you fail, like even if you fall flat on your face, even if you move back in to your parents, there is gonna be a little part of you that's like, "Well, I gave it a go."

Chris Williamson 18:28 Yeah.

James Smith 18:28 And I think that, I know this, again, another like privileged thing to say, but I think there's some- something quite cool in that. And even, you know, people that are afraid to move jobs, people are more worried about how their CV looks than their life, you know? They're like, "Oh, if I move now, I've only been in this job a year." You're like, "Mate, this is about you enjoying your life, not trying to appease a stranger with a fucking A4 piece of paper," you know?

Chris Williamson 18:49 Yeah.

James Smith 18:49 And then when I- I went traveling a few times when I was younger, and I remember someone saying, "Oh, it doesn't make your CV look good." I would sit in that interview and go, "I didn't wanna work anymore. I went to travel, I had the best time, but now I've realized that I wanna be back working." I was just straight with them. But imagine saying to someone, like, "Oh, I wanted to give everything I could to something that didn't work out," you know? That's actually more of a reason to be impressed with someone than someone that left a job every two years perfectly looking for the next progression.

Chris Williamson 19:15 Yeah.

James Smith 19:16 I think there's so much risk in playing it safe. What did you say the- you've s- we've listened to each other's Q&As.

Chris Williamson 19:22 (laughs)

James Smith 19:22 Tell people about the average American.

Chris Williamson 19:24 Average American is obese, divorced with less than 1K in the bank. So by doing what everyone else does, it seems like a safe route, but it's not. It's actually a reliable way to achieve a life that you don't want.

James Smith 19:35 Exactly, yeah. It- that's literally it encapsulated, because so many people are, are fighting to do the normal thing. The normal thing is to play it safe. And I've said this, right? The majority of people are pessimists because the majority of optimist people found their way out of the gene pool. There's gonna be some, uh, you know, absolute experts in human evolution that are gonna be like, "Uh," enters the chat.

Chris Williamson 19:57 Mm-hmm.

James Smith 19:57 But ultimately, any single human through hundreds of thousands of years, "Oh, yeah. We'll get across that river." Out the gene pool.

Chris Williamson 20:04 Mm-hmm.

James Smith 20:04 "Oh, it's not that cold out." Out the gene pool.

Chris Williamson 20:06 (laughs)

James Smith 20:06 "Oh, it's only a couple of bears." Out the gene pool. The evolution is all of the people that are risk averse, worried about things going wrong, and avoiding all the opportunities that are around them to the point that they don't take risks. But now we have this massive primal mechanism of fear that is supposed to keep us alive, and now we're associating that mechanism of fear to really trivial stuff, like, "How does my CV look? What if I ask the girl for a number and she says no?"

Chris Williamson 20:30 Yeah.

James Smith 20:30 "What if they don't like my first line I use on Bumble?" You know, we're using this massive, primitive, keep us alive mechanism to everyday tasks, and it's keeping people from doing the one thing.

Chris Williamson 20:39 It's like in the past, only the paranoid survived. But in the present, only the optimists thrive. Ooh, just come up with that. But it's true, because given the fact that you can't predict the future, you have to have some sort of fantasy about how the world's going to go, and that fantasy can either be negative or positive. So why not pick one that's enjoyable? Just pick one that makes the world seem a little bit rosier and assume that the glass is half full. And this is so wild for me to say, because six, seven years ago, I was mister... Like still am very conservative, very risk averse, all the rest of it, but it wasn't just showing up in my actions, it was showing up in the way that I perceived the world too. Whereas now it's kind of like, uh, prepare for the worst, hope for the best, is kind of, I guess, how I would set myself up. Still a- in terms of actions, very risk averse. But in terms of the way that I see the world, pretty optimistic and pretty hopeful. Uh, but you've got another thing that says, "Becoming feels better than being."

James Smith 21:35 Well, that's Carol Dweck's.

Chris Williamson 21:36 Is it?

James Smith 21:37 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 21:37 Wow, you-

James Smith 21:38 Just in case we'll-

Chris Williamson 21:39 You repurposed it.

James Smith 21:40 ... check quick.

Chris Williamson 21:40 But it's true, right? Uh, what is it that Drake says? Uh, "People don't want you when you have things, only when you're going there." Like...

James Smith 21:47 If we- if we were to paint like a... I think it's dangerous to, to paint a finished product, which makes becoming something very difficult. The, the version or the idea of becoming something, whether... You know, and that, that's always gonna morph. One day becoming a father, one day becoming a grand- grandparent, one day becoming a, a business owner, one, one day becoming whatever it is. The, the journey of becoming something I think is so much sweeter. I even think in martial arts, becoming a black belt, the way towards it is probably a lot more beautiful than when you accomplish it. When you get the black belt, even though it's the most, you know, best achievement in martial arts, it'll feel just like all the belts you had before. Within three months, it'll just, "Oh, it's just a belt."

Chris Williamson 22:24 Mm-hmm.

James Smith 22:24 You know, like-

Chris Williamson 22:24 Mm-hmm.

James Smith 22:25 ... it's, it's such a weird way of doing it. But again, it is that thing of saying to people, the version, you know... Stop for a second, you know, you might say... What, what was it Hormozi said? He said, "During my 20s, I wanted to be a millionaire. Now I'm a millionaire, I wanna be in my 20s." So many people might want to work towards something so much, and then by the time they get there, they'll just wanna be the version of themselves that was working their way towards it. Ricky Gervais as well. He said about the, the amount of times he presented The Office to TV production companies, they declined it. They didn't want it.

Chris Williamson 22:58 Tons of times.

James Smith 22:58 He struggled. He, uh, you know, went through all these different phases of his life, and he said, "If I could trade all of that effort for the same amount of money, I wouldn't, I wouldn't take it." I- he enjoyed the struggle getting there so much.

Chris Williamson 23:10 But is it only worth the struggle because there was glory in the end?

James Smith 23:15 That's an interesting point, which is, you know, I could never answer that.

Chris Williamson 23:18 There's a survivorship bias there.

James Smith 23:20 Bias, of course, yeah.

Chris Williamson 23:20 Right? Which is, it's how many people have the platform to talk about how grateful they are for the struggle that didn't make it to the point where they have a platform, right? How many people... (laughs) I was listening to this, this really funny, uh, uh, Boys Cast episode with Danny, who we partied with in New York, and him and Ryan were talking about how, um, young kids that want to become creators are kind of being talked out of it a lot of the time by their, uh, teachers. And then you hear these rappers talking about like, "Mr. Henderson in year nine, like, you didn't believe in me, but Mr. Henderson, I've shown you now." But it's like, yeah, but how many fledgling rappers did Mr. Henderson save from a life of shit SoundCloud uploads? So the survivorship bias that kind of gets layered in here I think is interesting. But the ultimate, the ultimate answer is that Ricky Gervais wouldn't have achieved the success had he have not stuck about. So-Maybe it's a tail, like a- a far right tail outcome. But if you get rid of that, you lose all of the tail, right? If you start to bring that in, and if people don't have that hope. Every single morning for over three years now, I've started my day the exact same way, which is with LMNT in water. LMNT contains a science-backed electrolyte ratio of sodium, potassium, and magnesium, and it is the best hydration drink that I've ever found. It tastes fantastic. It's super refreshing. Orange is just the most OP flavor in the world. It's absolutely phenomenal, and it helps to play a critical role in reducing muscle cramps and fatigue. It regulates your appetite, it optimizes brain health, and it helps curb cravings. They're also the exclusive hydration partner to Team USA Weightlifting, and relied on by tons of Olympic athletes and everyday high performers all around the world. Also, there is a no BS, no questions asked refund policy, where you can buy a box completely risk-free. And if you do not like it for any reason, they will give you a refund during an unlimited duration, and you don't even need to return the box. That's how confident they are that you'll love it. LMNT are giving away a free sample pack of all eight flavors with your first box if you go to the link in the description box below or drinklmnt.com/mw. That's drinklmnt.com/mw. The other thing as well is, because of this

Chris Williamson 25:31 cult of despondency and cynicism online, the minimum bar that people are prepared to quit at continues to get higher and higher, right? That people will quit much sooner than they will do previously, and this is one of the things, like I- I really, I really wanted to bring this up, and I really thought it was important for me and you to talk about this, about how, how much, like uncertainty, and luck, and randomness, and like, uh, self-doubt both of us had during everything, including stepping out on stage, like pretty much every single night. That, in Elon's book at the moment, he kind of goes through, or Walter Isaacson explains just how hard he had to work. And I think that stories about success coming about due to incredible levels of hard work makes achievements seem more attainable, not less attainable, because if it was no hard work, you go, "Well, where did it come from?" "Oh, it just came from luck." "Oh, well how the fuck am I supposed to manifest that?" Whereas if you say, "Oh, all I did was just the same thing 750 times over and over again." It's like, oh well, like anyone can do that. It's gonna be hard, but it's not an impossible feat. It's not some ethereal, out there in the fucking astral realm, like piece of luck. It's not been bestowed by anybody. It's just a thing that happened. And sure, there is luck and randomness on top, but I think being open about the process and the hard work and the self-doubt makes things that are incredible seem more achievable.

James Smith 26:58 I'm gonna answer this in two ways. The first part about the survivorship bias, 100% credible, but I also feel now that biases can be used to just counteract someone's points. 'Cause you might make a really, really important point that makes me think, oh, I need to work harder. I need to be doing more. But what you said might challenge me to the point that I might now pick a bias to use as a Uno reverse card.

Chris Williamson 27:20 Mm-hmm.

James Smith 27:21 So you could say to me, like, "Ah, you know, James, if you wanna have a successful podcast, I recommend you do 500 more episodes than what you've done."

Chris Williamson 27:27 Mm.

James Smith 27:27 And I could go, (laughs) "This guy's survivorship bias," you know?

Chris Williamson 27:30 Yeah.

James Smith 27:30 A lot of people out there have failed a podcast, you know, so there's, there's that which I- I don't like. You're completely right, but at the same time, I don't like it when people use a biasy to try and, uh, you know, explain why they're, what they're doing is not working. And the second point is, we had two lads at, uh, our last event who wanted to get, you know, do well on YouTube, whatever. And they're telling me this, telling me that, I was like, "Do 100 videos." And they were like, "Oh yeah, cool." I was like, "Yeah, but stop actually make 100 videos." And he asked me something else. He was like, "Mate, you are not gonna learn what you suck at until you do 100 videos." And I said, "Out of one, out of 100 of those, one of them is gonna do better than the others." And I said, "You can now look at that one and go, why on earth did that one do well? And then when you've done 100, you should probably do 100 more videos." And I could slowly see it like settling in with them, and ultimately people aren't gonna learn until they start doing the work. And that level of work for some people is fine, for others it's not. But you have to have like a- an unwavering belief that it could work, like you say. And I actually think fantasy is a great word to describe it. In the early onset of using social media, I didn't make enough money that I could save it. So instead I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna make a different interest savings account, which depends on effort, not money." And that interest savings account is gonna be convincing hundreds and maybe thousands of people. And that's not hundreds of thousands. That's hundreds, maybe thousands of people that trust me as a coach. And I thought, "I can't make enough money to put away tens of thousands into property or anything else." And instead I was like, "I'm just gonna work hard to get these people to trust me." And I think that that is such a powerful tool that anyone can really do, despite the effort. Are you gonna have a big enough pod to be invited on Rogan? Probably not. But if you put in that amount of effort, could you get a small collective group of people to maybe come to your event, buy your product, do whatever it is that you're working to do? Chances are, probably. And again, like there has also been people at our talks that compare their podcast to yours and you're like, "That's- that's not gonna set you up well." There's no amount of hard work that can really bridge that gap. And I think people do need to become very centric on their own journey. And even if someone else has been incredibly fortunate, uh, what is it? Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers speaks about how lucky Bill Gates was to be born. It could be Outliers, it could be something else. To be born at a certain time where if Bill Gates was a little bit older, he would've missed the first computer 'cause he'd be out working somewhere else. And if he was that little bit younger, he would-

Chris Williamson 30:03 Would have already been created.

James Smith 30:04 Yeah. So then I do think there is an element of luck where when I was 24, 25, I was at a point where I was probably confident enough to speak on camera. Videos were just becoming popular on social media platforms. Uh, Facebook, then Instagram came along. I came along at a time where there was a low amount of creators taking advantage of it, but there was a high amount of users on the platforms. (clears throat) So there is a tremendous element of luck to everyone's journey. But-If you're not working hard when that wave of luck comes along, who is it that says luck is where preparation meets-

Chris Williamson 30:39 Opportunity.

James Smith 30:40 ... opportunity?

Chris Williamson 30:40 I don't know, I think that's one of those ones that's kind of been repurposed by every, every person now.

James Smith 30:44 It's just got J Shetty written on the bottom.

Chris Williamson 30:46 (laughs)

James Smith 30:48 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 30:48 Yeah, maybe. There was a, uh, there's this idea called Churchillian drift, which I think I've told you about before, which is the phenomenon whereby quotes that are unattributed over time progressively get more and more likely to be attributed to Churchill. And I-

James Smith 31:01 Stop.

Chris Williamson 31:02 Yeah. Yeah, it's called... Literally it's a name called Churchillian drift. It's like, "Uh, I think it was Churchill that said, 'Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.'" And it's just one of those guys where you go, "Yeah, that seems about right. Let's throw it, let's throw it toward Churchill." But no, I, I don't disagree about the, the timing thing. One consideration

Chris Williamson 31:20 I've had in my mind for a little while is, don't assume that something you see as obvious, is obvious to everybody else. You know, you seeing, uh, video creation... Well, there's quite a lot of people that watch video and I watch video, but there doesn't seem to be so many creators. That might be to you, if you had the wrong mindset, "Well, everybody knows that. Everybody knows that. So what's the point in me trying?" If you look at the growth of podcasting per audience over time, it is just continuing to go like that. I think it's... Maybe last year by a percentage started to tail off a little bit, but still huge, huge numbers. Five years ago, it might have seemed like, "Well, yeah, everybody's got a podcast." You go, "Well yeah, but in five years time, really everybody's got a podcast." So I don't think that you can assume something you take for gra... I remember, dude, I found out about... This is like my fucking $100 million exit, not manifest. I found out about Bitcoin in 2010. No, 2012. I found out about Bitcoin in 2012. Right? Price would have probably been less than 100 bucks. I found out about Ethereum in 2016, price was... I remember it wavered between 90 and 120 and I was like, "Yeah, but everybody knows about this." Everyone knows about dark web, everyone knows about like Silk Road. Everyone knows about buying drugs online, everyone knows about cryptocurrency. And then you see a bull run in 2018, 2019, 2020 happen. You go, "Oh, right, no, now it's kind of starting to hit mainstream." And there's still tonnes and tonnes of people, but yeah, we just don't have that theory of mind to work out what is obvious to us but might not be to everyone else.

James Smith 33:04 You know, like, uh, I've never been interested in like, Bit- Bitcoin, Ethereum, anything like that. Still not really, because you don't have much control over that stock. Like there's the market. Sure, people have a good understanding. There's going to be a lot of people that are always going to know more or have better insights to whatever. But when it comes to creating something yourself, whether a business... Because a business can be grown with paid ads or organic effort, because you can either pay for people to see your stuff or you can do it organically and, and do the work yourself. Then, you know, when you really want to go after something, you can pause the Netflix episode that you weren't really watching anyway because you're on your phone, and you can make shit happen. You can get your phone out, you can message people, DM people, get back to people, do a story Q&A, whatever. You can improve... You can manipulate your own stock through effort. Whereas with investments, you can't manipulate your own stock.

Chris Williamson 33:51 It's the mercy of the market.

James Smith 33:52 And another point about podcasts and about social media and about-

Chris Williamson 33:55 (laughs)

James Smith 33:55 ... video creating content, there'll be some people listening like, "Oh, but I'm not a video creator." But you know, even now I see real estate agents, I see people that sell insurance making like TikToks or whatever. We had one guy come to our Chicago event who was like, "Mate, I make TikToks of the properties that I go in." I- I'm one of the people that watches it. When someone drops the hook of, "This is what $1.2 million buys you in Calgary," I-

Chris Williamson 34:17 I want to know.

James Smith 34:18 ... I'm like, "What does 1.2 mi-"

Chris Williamson 34:19 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

James Smith 34:20 So like, there are so many peop- Like when I started being an online coach, people were like, "How do you PT people online?" It was like saying, "I'm an online plumber." That's exactly the look they gave me at first.

Chris Williamson 34:29 (laughs)

James Smith 34:30 But another thing that like is really crazy, people go, "Oh, shall I become a PT?" And sometimes I think, "No." Sometimes I think, "Yeah." But then I was like, although the space is saturated, I don't think it's that competitive. And I actually think it's the same with the podcast, where although everyone's got a podcast, if you want to be one of the best, you actually don't have to do that much work. You need good production, good organization. Here's one thing for you, one of the reasons that you are very, very good at this is the half an hour you spend before the podcast putting all your attention into research. There are so many people out there that do podcasts that don't do that. They're willing to do everything, but not that. And that's more-

Chris Williamson 35:13 A little bit more than half an hour, but-

James Smith 35:15 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 35:16 ... a little bit more. But Hormozi says, um, uh, 20 minutes of preparation adds 20 IQ points. So true. If you do 20 minutes of preparation-

James Smith 35:24 Oh, I like that.

Chris Williamson 35:25 ... before you go into a meeting... So true man. 20 minutes of preparation before you go into... It might not be him. This might be, this might be, uh-

James Smith 35:31 Churchill.

Chris Williamson 35:31 ... Hormozi in drift. (laughs) Ho- I think it was Alex Hormozi who once said 20 minutes of preparation. Um, but it's true. If you sit down before you're about to have a meeting with someone or a sales call or a job interview or whatever, and you say, "All right, so where are they from?" Or whatever, whatever. And he like, "Oh, you're from Hertfordshire." I used to play rugby in Hertfordshire. Do you know the d- d- d- d- and you're like, "Oh my God, this person knows..." It's exactly the same as wh- before we go into Canada, we're texting our Canadian friends going, you know, "What, what have we got?" "Oh, Edmonton is home to the world's second largest mall after Dubai." "Right, have I got any mall jokes that I can come out?" Or like, "Have I got any Justin Trudeau jokes?" Or we go into Chicago and I start talking about the architecture. It's exactly the same. It seems like, "Oh my God, how deep does his knowledge run? His knowledge must be so deep because he was just able to pluck this out." It's like, yo, that architecture joke is the beginning and the end of my knowledge about Chicago. But it seems like you've got way more preparation than you do.

James Smith 36:28 And it's crazy that so many people will put so much effort into one side of things but not the other. But even just people resting assured, like, you, you can't-... make your crypto collection shoot up overnight. But you can improve the level of your research, the level of your production, the level of your video. Even just thinking that a little bit more about what you make content about can hugely have a positive trajection on where it's going.

Chris Williamson 36:51 I wrote

Chris Williamson 36:52 a newsletter this week about one of the questions that we got asked quite a lot. Lots of people at the live shows asked about how to decide between the multiplicity of options we all have in our lives. There are more things I can do with my time than time I have to do them in. How do I choose? That was one of the most common questions. And this is from Naval. "If I'm faced with a difficult choice, such as, 'Should I marry this person? Should I take this job? Should I buy this house? Should I move to this city? Should I go into business with this person?' If you cannot decide, the answer is no. And the reason is, modern society is full of options." So this is an interesting reframe to the paradox of choice. Yes, there are lots of things that you can do with your chi- with your time, there are an unlimited number of options. This can make it hard to decide on which option to choose. But it also reduces the pressure of all decisions. If something isn't an obvious slam dunk yes, then it's likely a better option will come along soon. As Derek Sivers says, "If it isn't a hell yeah, it's a no." The only caveat to this is it doesn't work with time-sensitive things like having children.

James Smith 37:55 So that's interesting. I always thought it was Mark Manson that said, "If it's not a fuck yes, it's a no," which could've been a slight, uh, alteration.

Chris Williamson 38:01 On Sivers. Sivers was the first one to do it, I think.

James Smith 38:03 Do you know where the most obvious ... So I love talking about paralysis of options as being like a, a real way to negate your ability to make a decision. When you go to shop for aftershave, there is too much going on. There is too-

Chris Williamson 38:15 There is if you're in Dubai.

James Smith 38:16 Yeah. And like, people come in left, right, center, like, "Hello, Serge-" And I'm, "Whoa, whoa, whoa." And there are quite literally ... Mate, if you walked in and th- there was someone that just looked at you up and down and then was like, "Okay, hmm, I recommend these three," and you know, you've only got three in front of you.

Chris Williamson 38:29 Mm-hmm.

James Smith 38:30 It's either yes or no. But the chances for me saying yes if the options are reduced, I think are a little bit better.

Chris Williamson 38:34 You've seen Barry Schwartz's The Paradox of Choice, that idea about jeans. Have you seen this?

James Smith 38:38 No.

Chris Williamson 38:39 Super famous TED Talk. I'll send it to you once we're done. So, uh, I think Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice was maybe 15 years ago. I remember where I was, where I was listening to it on YouTube, driving to Scotland down Great North Road in Newcastle. This must've been, this must've been 10 years ago when I was listening to this. So, 50 years ago, you want to buy a pair of jeans. You go into a department store, and there is one type of jeans. Probably blue, right? There's no different options. There is sizes, you know, 30 waist, 32, 34, et cetera. So you go in. Yes, you don't have an unlimited number of options, but your ability to make a decision is made much more simple. Now, you go into a st- a store and do you want boot cut or straight, do you want skinny, do you want ripped, do you want bleached, do you want them to be, uh, cropped, do you want them to be full length, do you want-

James Smith 39:24 I don't even know what half this means.

Chris Williamson 39:26 Precisely, right? And since Topman's closed, none of us ever will again. Uh, but the point being, previously, you couldn't maximize the utility, in economist's terms, that you got from each individual decision, because that particular only single pair of jeans you could've bought might not be quite precisely the fit and the look that you were going for. But the o- the other side of this that we don't usually think about is the psychological price that you have to pay to reach a point of decision making. And that is made way harder when there's an unlimited, uh, essentially an unlimited multiplicity of options, because in the past, a suboptimal decision was because of constraint. Now, a suboptimal decision is because of your error at making a right decision. Does that make sense?

James Smith 40:10 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 40:11 Yeah.

James Smith 40:12 Back to the second point of what you said about having children. Having children's this really interesting thing, right? And I think there's almost the plague. You got people that ... We've spoken about ambition. Ambition, an incredible thing to be riddled with in life, you know, a dissatisfaction with the norm, a dissatisfaction of average, all of these things. And that has a, a positive correlation on absolutely every area of your life apart from the decision-making process to have children. Because there is a point, and I wonder if you're in this part of your life right now, where the table feels hot. Everything you do goes well. Every episode you do. You, you know, like the Goggins episode, for instance.

Chris Williamson 40:47 Yep.

James Smith 40:48 Nearly could not have happened, but you persisted.

Chris Williamson 40:51 Yeah.

James Smith 40:51 You fought for it.

Chris Williamson 40:52 Yeah.

James Smith 40:52 You got in there. It happened. It slapped. It did amazing. It's pretty ... I think it's the video you have on your channel. It-

Chris Williamson 40:57 It is, it's the channel trailer still, yeah.

James Smith 40:59 And you think, "Oh, if I'd maybe been up all night with a crying baby, would I have had the persistence and the tenacity and audaciousness to say what I said to lock that in?"

Chris Williamson 41:07 Mm.

James Smith 41:08 So now you create this argument in your head between the table being hot. Because in some respects, you do need to turn your back on the table a bit to bring up and raise children.

Chris Williamson 41:16 Yeah, decide in advance what you're gonna suck at.

James Smith 41:18 So, have you made any decisions in your mind? Do you push it back to an age? Because readiness is a very subjective thing when it comes to children. If you say, "I'll wait 'til I'm ready," you might wait until you're no longer fertile.

Chris Williamson 41:30 Mm-hmm.

James Smith 41:30 So then the second thing I believe people do is they set an age. But then that age seems to be pushed back-

Chris Williamson 41:36 Mm-hmm.

James Smith 41:37 ... year by year.

Chris Williamson 41:38 Well, if you ... This is when I will have kids is usually this is when I will start to think about having kids. And that is, what if the relationship that you're in doesn't work? What if you decide to start dating, but it takes time to find someone? What if you cycle through multiple relationships? What if your other partner ... You know, what if it takes time to conceive? So yeah, I think, uh, whatever the reverse of a buffer is, like an inverted buffer, like start sooner than you think you need to if you want to have kids, probably not a bad idea. But you're right, like, I do think about this a good bit, and it's, it's hard to say this without coming across wanky, so I'll try and do it without annoying the internet. But the table does feel hot. Like, pretty much anything that I touch at the moment seems to go well. And that's terrifying, because it's a very high place to fall from. And it really does, it- it- it shits me up to think, "Fuck, like, everything's so great. All of my friends are healthy, my family's healthy, I'm healthy. Everything's going fine. I haven't been canceled. I haven't stepped foot on some sacred cow or landmine that's going to blow my leg off."... every single month the show grows more. Every single month, we've got better guests coming on. Dude, the fucking Q1 for next year is just so insane. Like, dream guests that I've wanted for decades or the coolest guys on the planet, messaging me on WhatsApp like, "Yo, man, can't wait to get this thing sorted in Miami, or in LA, or in London," or whatever. But it's a high place to fall from and that's, like, really, really scary. You know, it's the opposite of expectations. It's like, you- you actually got to taste what it was like to be there. What is it that Will Smith says? Uh, "Being famous..." Uh, "Gaining fame is amazing. Being famous is a mixed bag, and losing fame is torture."

James Smith 43:14 It's, uh, it's... I think it's something that I think about a lot, and I think that I've been trying to... I told you I had the ADHD assessment, and in it they told me I had anxiety. And I was like-

Chris Williamson 43:23 That's not the cool one.

James Smith 43:24 I was like, "That's not the cool one."

Chris Williamson 43:25 (laughs)

James Smith 43:25 I was like, "Take that back. Shut your mouth."

Chris Williamson 43:27 (laughs)

James Smith 43:27 And, um, and with it we, like, tried to get to the bottom of it. And, uh, the way I make tasks important enough to do with them and spend time with them is to catastrophize the terrible outcome. So this is... She was like, "This is not-"

Chris Williamson 43:37 Fear-based motivation.

James Smith 43:38 Yeah, she was like, "This isn't a great mechanism to be using," but in essence I, I kind of... There'll be times I'm like, "Oh, I'm a bit tired. I'm gonna have a nap," and I'm like, "Oh, you know, you could fall off and no one ever wants-"

Chris Williamson 43:48 Yeah.

James Smith 43:48 "... to watch your content anymore." And I... So then I just build up that looming anxiety of falling off and never being relevant. And, you know, even though there's part of me that almost sees going backwards slightly utopian, because I could always go back to 15 clients on the gym floor. People would be like, "Oh, my, uh, PT used to be known." (laughs)

Chris Williamson 44:04 Used to be James Smith.

James Smith 44:05 Yeah. He used to be something, now look at him, right? (laughs) You know, like-

Chris Williamson 44:08 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

James Smith 44:09 So there's always that in the back of the mind. But like, um, it is crazy that you could think about that so much, 'cause the higher you go, the faster you can fall.

Chris Williamson 44:17 Mm-hmm.

James Smith 44:17 And it's difficult because I bet that should you then, say you have children, I bet you will say to yourself, "Wow, this is actually the single most important project of my life that I've cherished," whatever it is. And I said this to you on the tour, I was like, "I've ha- I've got friends that have kind of been..." What... You know you've got blue pill, red pill, black pill? What pill would you call it when they've kind of been coerced out of having children because of climate or because of, you know, uh, declinism?

Chris Williamson 44:41 Oh god. Probably black pill. It's a, it's a kind of black pill-ism, I guess.

James Smith 44:44 So I- I... A lot of my friends are kind of like, "Oh, yeah, don't know if I'm gonna have kids." And I'm like, "Do you have a good life?" And they say, "Yeah, I have a great life." And I went, "Who stopped enjoying their life so you could have yours?" They go, "Oh, yeah, my parents did." "How old were they?" "Oh, they were about 36." "Oh, so, you know, maybe you could do what your parents did-"

Chris Williamson 45:00 Pay it forward.

James Smith 45:01 "... and pay it forward." But there's... Declinism is the idea that the world's becoming a worse place. And with social media, I think that's ever-growing to make people feel like it is because think about it, right? We had fucking pandemic, then we had Ukraine/Russia, now we've got Palestine/Israel. Like, some people on social media are like, "I'm- I'm too crippled by the state of the world to give a "

Chris Williamson 45:20 Now we've got the James Smith live tour.

James Smith 45:22 "Yeah, so like..."

Chris Williamson 45:23 (laughs)

James Smith 45:23 But then women are better educated than ever. Uh, less women die during childbirth than ever. The rates of infants making it to the age of reproduction are higher than ever. World famine is lower than ever. I'm pretty sure even... I'm not trying to, you know, underplay the state of the world as far as war, but when you look at World War II, when you look at World War I, when you look at the amount of deaths that countries lost to war pre this modern time, surely... You know, even the amount of available tap water to certain nations in the world.

Chris Williamson 45:54 The- the- the number of climate-related deaths has decreased by 98% over the last 200 years. It's a 50 time- 50X decrease.

James Smith 46:02 So we could build a pretty strong argument to these black pill bankers that, you know, the state of the world is getting better. And I- I really... It's crazy that, you know, if you were to say- if you were to say anything along the lines of, "To stop a population breeding, it could be considered genocidal-"

Chris Williamson 46:20 Hmm.

James Smith 46:20 "... but then when it's you (laughs) and your own family-"

Chris Williamson 46:22 (laughs)

James Smith 46:22 "... it's considered go. You know, you're saving the planet."

Chris Williamson 46:25 Yeah.

James Smith 46:25 "What a hero." I- I hate the fact that there's virtue in the black pill mentality.

Chris Williamson 46:31 Well, there's... When it comes to not having kids or when it comes to, uh, uh, trying to discourage people from having children around climate change, I think th- a- a massive amount of that is people's selfishness or fear around life changing, uh, around what becoming a parent will be like, just repurposed into what seems like an altruistic philosophy.

James Smith 46:59 Mm.

Chris Williamson 46:59 It's their personal motivations being put outward. It's called The Inner Citadel by Isaiah Berlin, which is that you basically repurpose something which is an inward fear into an outward, uh, like social justice campaign. And it- it's not wrong. Like, women get complications during childbirth and i- it's sometimes the kids don't make it to term, and that's brutal and awful and painful, and that is an absolutely honest fear that women can and do have. But saying that it's because of climate and because you don't want the world to end and because there's too many people, which is fucking horse shit given the, like, decline in birth rates at the moment-

James Smith 47:40 Isn't it crazy that even the decline in birth rate, which is... And it's not a subjective opinion. If you look at the objective statistics of repopulus in the US, which is where the majority of the data is from, you can literally say to people, "We are not having enough children."

Chris Williamson 47:55 But we know how many people are going to be around in however many years' time because as is told, demography is destiny, right? We can't make any more one-year-olds. We can't make any more two-year-olds. We can't make any more three-year-olds. So we can predict with 100% accuracy the maximum number of people that can be around in future, right? It's one of the very few things that you can have absolute accuracy with doing. You see Kim Jong Un was, uh, weeping, was dabbing his tears away as he begged North Korean women to have more children? This happened a couple of weeks ago. So yeah, I mean... Bro, there was this... (laughs) I spro- I spoke about this with Danny from the Boys Cast, this Canadian guy had got a vasectomy so that he wouldn't have kids-... froze his sperm though, which kind of feels a little bit like a fucking pull ripcord in case of children. Um, froze, uh, he got a vasectomy so that he would, uh, not negatively impact the climate, then spent the next five years flying around Asia with his partner. So he said in, "It could be argued that the, uh, gains that we made for the climate by not having a child were offset by all of the flights we took living our freedom." And this is the other side that one of the most common reasons for people not entering relationships and not having kids at the moment is, just don't feel ready or, uh, enjoying my life too much basically. That there are so many things you can do right now that are enjoyable, that are right in front of you, that are convenient and comfortable from entertainment, to travel, to experiences, to time with friends, to all the rest of the things. The standard of living has raised even the worst type of life so much to a degree of comfort and enjoyment and convenience that many people look at children and say, "Well, that feels like a downgrade." Whereas in the past it's like, what else have you got to do?

James Smith 49:46 1960, he sat there with a book and a glass of wine.

Chris Williamson 49:48 What else are you gonna do?

James Smith 49:49 "Darling, should we have some children?" Yes, I was getting-

Chris Williamson 49:50 With fuck all else going on, yeah, exactly.

James Smith 49:52 ... all of these books. It's, it's interesting like, uh, ex- exactly that. One thing, you know, it's quite... it's weird. If you were to worry about men, it can come across as almost like a, you know, oh, something misogynist is about to come... misogyny is about to appear.

Chris Williamson 50:08 Mm-hmm.

James Smith 50:08 But I believe, and again, I could be wrong with this, uh, from the observations in my life, that women get to a certain point where they start to really think about family, they start to get maternal instincts. They start to even look at children and be like, "Oh, I can..." Broodiness, I believe, is the term.

Chris Williamson 50:25 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

James Smith 50:26 I think for men it's easier for them to medicate their needs with porn, video games. So even you look at something that... and again, I can't speak on behalf of women, but for men, they have sexual desires which can be fulfilled much easier via porn than it is via women. So, they can have access to more vaginas in one hour than prehistoric humans in history, which I believe Jordan Peterson made a good point on, but even if we look into the complexity of male status, men want recognition, they want to be known being good. And even though I was thinking about this, a few weeks ago I was playing Call of Duty, and this lad comes into our lobby to play with us, and he was level like 1000. And me and my mates just start noshing him off like, "Mate, I bet you're a fucking savage." You know, "This guy must be sick." You know, "Let's have a look at his KD ratio," right? "Let's have a look at him." This guy's probably like a 15-year-old, right? He, he has got a level of status from playing video games that strangers are giving him credit. Then he was an animal. He got 20 kills in a game of Warzone. And then I was thinking, this is dangerous because he probably gets more recognition, more, you know, compliments, more credit, more everything from a video game than he ever could in his life at 15. And the way we're creating a world that can help people, especially men, medicate their primitive needs without the need to leave their bedroom, exist in society, even work in some respects. You know, I went to sign on the dole when I was 19. I couldn't get a job. I wasn't really looking that hard. My dad made me sign on the dole, bit embarrassing. And I was like, "Dad, I'm not going to the job center." And he was like, "Son, I've paid the highest tax bracket for 40 years." He was like, "You make your way to the center."

Chris Williamson 52:05 (laughs)

James Smith 52:05 So I got there. And for the record, I took a first job before I ever got a payout, but they do this thing where they go, "Are you better off in work?" It's a legit form, you sit there. They were like, "Oh, how many, uh, how many hours can you work a week?" I was like, "All of them." They were like, "Okay." Because if you can only work 20 hours, you earn more money on the state than you ever would get in a job.

Chris Williamson 52:23 Wow.

James Smith 52:23 And you think to yourself that there are gonna be people out there that maybe are medicating their needs through porn-

Chris Williamson 52:28 Mm-hmm.

James Smith 52:28 ... alcohol, whatever, and they quite literally have the opportunity. They're going, "Why, why would I work for 40 hours and be potentially someone of no significance in, uh, you know, doing this job, whereas I could have real significance being in-"

Chris Williamson 52:40 In this virtual world.

James Smith 52:41 ... World of Warcraft or wherever? And video games are only getting better. They're only getting better, where there's more cooperation, more teamwork, more strategy, more rank, you know, even the way that social media was designed to give you the gambling effect when you swipe down as like a roo- uh, what's it called in the casinos when you cha-ching?

Chris Williamson 53:00 Variable schedule rewards.

James Smith 53:01 That's the one. I knew you'd know the name for it. So like, as we see even gamification of things online being made to the point to really tap into human psychology, I worry to the point that, as we kind of touched on before, someone's reality in the online world could be better than their reality outside of it.

Chris Williamson 53:17 Have you heard my male sedation

Chris Williamson 53:19 hypothesis idea?

James Smith 53:19 No, but I'm, I'm excited for it.

Chris Williamson 53:21 Oh, okay. Well, it's basically what you've just described, uh, which is men are being sedated out of their reproductive and status seeking behavior by a combination of porn, social media screens, and video games. And it's the reason why we haven't got dispossessed groups of men going around and causing riots because they are literally being sedated out of those things. There's a... when you have high groups of sexless men, which you do have at the moment under the age of 30, which is high T, high antisocial behavior typically, there is a question to be asked, "Where's all of the incel killings?" Like this isn't a request. (laughs) I'm not putting a request in with the DJ. Uh, but there's a question, right? You know, you see like stuff like Sandy Hook and these sort of mass shootings and all the rest of it, but if those things which they should do would be moving in line with the degree of dispossession of young men, you would expect to see way more, and we're not. And it's my contention that screens, social media, porn, video games, are sedating that behavior out of guys.

James Smith 54:19 It's interesting as well. And do you know what? This wasn't even like a legit video, it wasn't a study, it was just some guy rambling on Twitter. He was talking about how in the Roman Empire they built the Colosseums to keep the m- you know, just people occupied. You know, if they didn't, if they didn't get to see carnage, war, murder in the Colosseum, it would allow their thoughts and their thinking about social situation and the amount of food they had and their access to water, it was almost them in a bid to entertain them, to keep them occupied.

Chris Williamson 54:46 Amusing them into sedation, yeah.

James Smith 54:47 So when you look at things like, you know, you've got the Premiership Football, you've got sport, you've got politics, you've got social media, you've got all of these things, it's almost like a, a puppeteer pulling strings to keep people in a state of sedation-

Chris Williamson 54:57 Yeah.

James Smith 54:57 ... to keep paying their taxes.

Chris Williamson 54:58 Don't... Yeah, exactly. Don't look over there. Don't look over there.

James Smith 55:00 Oh, yeah.

Chris Williamson 55:00 Keep looking over here, keep looking over here.

James Smith 55:01 Oh, there's another war for you to be en- outraged about. Oh, look at the... And it is crazy because if you were to look at this, even the statistics of how many-And of course, you know, the lockdown was a little bit- we tempered towards

Chris Williamson 55:14 Yeah.

James Smith 55:15 ... closest. If you think about the amount of people for every law enforcement officer or every soldier in the country, they're outnumbered vast amounts, and you're always on this like precipice of revolt

Chris Williamson 55:23 Yeah.

James Smith 55:23 Um, all civilizations through history-

Chris Williamson 55:25 Especially being in America, you are.

James Smith 55:26 Especially when they're armed. And one thing that, you know, you think about a lot of the time is, we live in a time where we seem to think our civilization is perfect and it's gonna be evergreen forever. So we look through history and every single civilization before us has collapsed, and it's collapsed for loads of various reasons, which I'm just not well-educated enough in. Then you look to this like sedation, in-cell fertility rates, rebirth rate, and people are like, "No, no, no, it's the climate that's gonna get us. The sun is gonna boil the seas." And you look around, you're like, "Which one's gonna go first?" Because if you stop having baby- babies to stop the, you know, temperature going up a couple of degrees, if you guys aren't gonna chat to girls 'cause you're wanking in World of Warcraft and you know, if the- (laughs)

Chris Williamson 56:08 There's more immediate problems here.

James Smith 56:09 Yeah. And-

Chris Williamson 56:10 But there's a great book. It's on, on that reading list that I released. I think it's the third book down, The Precipice by Toby Ord, which is a primer on existential risk. It's really great. And this guy has gone to the ends of the earth to try and work out what the risk is of different types of natural risk and anthropogenic risk. So natural risk is volcanoes, asteroids, supernova, et cetera, et cetera, and I think natural pandemic is part of, uh, anthropogenic risk actually, which is kind of strange. But then you've got, uh, nuclear weapons, climate change, uh, natural pandemics, engineered pandemics, nanotechnology, AI, et cetera. And it's like, climate change I think is 1 in 1000 or 1 in 10,000 chance of ending civilization over the next century, AGI is 1 in 10, uh, uh, natural pandemics are 1 in 30, engineered pandemics are 1 in 6. So you have these things that are orders of magnitude scarier.

James Smith 57:06 Mount Vesuvius is worrying me more. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 57:08 Yeah. Well, uh, actually, the- the super volcano thing is not too bad apparently, according to him. He's done the numbers. There's like some stuff in there that's like 1 in 20 billion. I'm like, "That's the cool one."

James Smith 57:17 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 57:17 Like that's the one, that's the one that we want. If we wanna go out, we wanna go out in a supernova. But, um, yeah, just I've been singing this song for ages, climate change is not an existential risk priority.

James Smith 57:25 But now we're gonna get labeled climate change deniers.

Chris Williamson 57:27 No, I'm not saying that climate change doesn't exist. I'm saying it's not an existential risk priority. I'm saying that there are things that are more important than that, that we need to get on with, and there are ways to fix the climate that are much more... uh, and improve the quality of life that are much more important than what we're working on at the moment.

James Smith 57:42 And, you know, that boils round to actually the very principles that... because me and you are very different people, but we share very similar values, and a lot of our values are actually... because people are gonna go, "Why are these guys on a tangent talking about all these abstract things?" But the reality is that when you come back to it, whenever you say that people have more things that they need to be worried about, it actually ties into the very things in which we are telling people to become more mindful of, which is effort, ambition, uh, relationships to failure, and the reality of the situation, not the reality of the information they're fed to it. Like, one of the main parts of, uh, my last book was saying to people, "The way you see the world is dictated by the information you are fed about it, not the actual situation." I joke about the lottery tickets. Whenever anyone wins the lottery, "Come on, Trevor, come up here. Get up here. Come on. Fucking hell, mate. Hurry up. We're gonna give you a check so big..." The bank doesn't even accept those checks. The check is only printed to that massive bit of cardboard to m- to skew other people's reality. "The bigger check, it must be more important." Uh, Zach, your housemate, actually was showing me, uh, a weightlifter. I think he cleaned and jerked like 210 KG, and they brought him out a massive check for $250. And he's like, "Mate, that check must have cost $100 to make." So like, when we see these little tricks that are played by people to paint the reality of the world around them, such as the big check to make people feel like they're actually gonna win the lottery, we need to realize that even just a few friends in your s- in your social circle who are pessimists or doubters or whatever, that does influence your- your reality to how you see the world. I mean, you've probably experienced this a lot since moving to Austin, right? So Newcastle, even if you were to go, uh, see your friends at the pub, whatever, they- they're not on the same wavelength as to the level in the place you're at.

Chris Williamson 59:26 It's very hard to have that conversation. I've tried to bring this up on stage and again, that rocket ship analogy, which I've developed whilst being on stage, which has been really cool, uh, to actually have ideas come to you while you're in front of 500 people, which is also scary 'cause you go, "Wow, I'm treading new ground now. This might be total dog shit," but it ended up being okay. But it's hard to have that conversation without it sounding like you're making a value judgment around certain people being better or- or more worthy or something than other people, and I don't think that that's what you're saying, and certainly not what I've been saying on the live tour. But trying to find people who match your personal growth velocity is really hard. If you're a rocket ship that's taking off at 10,000 meters per second and someone else is moving at 100 meters per second, there's only a small while before you're very far away from them, and it's hard to have conversations about things because the things that you're struggling with are different to the things that they're struggling with, and the dreams and the goals that you have have now outgrown the dreams and the goals that they have. That's not to say that they can't even catch you up and then maybe overtake you in future. They very well may do, but it's gonna be tough for you to find common ground unless that person's very open and honest and unless you are too in order to be able to do that. But you always wanna try and find people that are ahead of you because they're the ones that are going to bring you along. It's like, show me, what is it? Uh, show you- show me your friend group, I'll show you your future. And I found this earlier on. It's so funny. I read literally as I was in the car on the way here,

Chris Williamson 1:00:40 um, Are We Ruled by Midwits?, this new, uh, blog post. It's brilliant. The people in charge are more stupid than you basically. And this is from, uh, Machiavelli in one of his books. "The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him. If we look at the men and women around our contemporary rulers, what do we find? Few reasons for optimism, I'm afraid. In 2011, the Royal Statistical Society asked 97 British MPs a simple maths question. 'If you spin a coin twice, what is the probability of getting two heads? Since the chance of getting a heads on one spin is 50% and two spins are independent, the answer is just 50% times 50%, 25%."... not exactly quantum physics. Shockingly, only 40% of MPs got the answer right. Among Labor MPs, it was only 23%. Most of those who got the answer wrong said 50%, which is obviously incorrect when you think about it. So it just reminds us, the people who are in charge are more stupid than you are, and the bar is set unbelievably low.

James Smith 1:01:38 Yeah, I always thought this at school. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:01:42 (laughs)

James Smith 1:01:42 (laughs) No. You know, I, I remember... Uh, did you go to... I had to go to a religious school. Did you have that?

Chris Williamson 1:01:46 Uh, I had to do religious education, a little bit, but my thing specialized in technology. So-

James Smith 1:01:52 Man, I r- I remember, like, taking the piss a little bit. We'd be in RE, as we call it in England-

Chris Williamson 1:01:56 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

James Smith 1:01:56 ... Religious Education, and you'd be learning like, you know, Feeding the 5,000, like fish, uh, the fish, the bread, the wine, everything.

Chris Williamson 1:02:03 (laughs) The fish, that fish story.

James Smith 1:02:04 What was it? The Feeding of the 5,000. It was the fish, I believe. There's s- there's fish in there. I was, I was always like, "Oi, I've just come from physics. This is bullshit."

Chris Williamson 1:02:11 (laughs)

James Smith 1:02:11 Like, "Be quiet in the back." But yeah, like, uh, I was joking about school. It, it is like that. I think that, uh, a lot of the times, especially working in the corporate world, you know, it was politics, it was people's arse licking. Like, so many people... So imagine this, when I worked in a sales department, this is how mundane the corporate world is. So did you ever work in an office that I have to wear a suit and tie?

Chris Williamson 1:02:33 Yes. Uh, I didn't have to wear a suit and tie, but I did outbound telesales for the AA in a call center for six months.

James Smith 1:02:39 Yeah, so this is, this is where the mundane comes in. I worked for, uh, the inside sales department of a, uh, multifactor authentication security company and, in essence, I had to look at the inbound leads coming into the business and call them up to quantify them. And this company messaged me and they go, "We're taking you out for steak and beers." And I was like, "Lads, wrong person." I'm like a really junior role. They're like, "No, come up, steak and beer." So I met them and they said, basically, "If you come across any big opportunities, it's your role to pass it to one of 10 companies. We want them all." And I was like, "Okay." And he goes, "In return, we're gonna give you big opportunities that we're gonna close anyway, but we're gonna put your name on it before it comes through." So, I was a bit like, "Okay, let's give this a go." And I remember at work one day, someone came, the whole team come around me and give me an iPad. They're like, "James, 300,000 user deal." That's incredible. You know, "We can't believe you had this phone call." I don't even remember, it was the other company that put it through for me. And I was now in a position to go for a promotion literally from backhanding deals to the same company that I shouldn't have. And then when I looked around at everyone around me, they were all, they were all dodgy. They were all sitting on their hands, they were all, like, not really making the calls. They weren't really, like, working hard at all. And I was like, "This is it the whole way up."

Chris Williamson 1:03:48 Mm-hmm.

James Smith 1:03:49 This is it literally. Like, the people that were in the top roles, no offense to the people there-

Chris Williamson 1:03:52 (clears throat)

James Smith 1:03:53 ... I was like, "This is merely just politics between you." And it, it is, what do you call it, idiots the whole way up?

Chris Williamson 1:03:58 Yeah.

James Smith 1:03:59 And that's not us being, you know, "Oh, these guys are stupid," but everyone's just kinda pretending that they know what they're doing.

Chris Williamson 1:04:04 It's reassuring. The, w- what that has reminded me of is the fact that it's reassuring, that you get pretty much no matter how high you go, no one really has that much of an idea about what they're doing. Everyone is working it out as they go along, especially if you're doing something for the first time or if you're in a relatively sort of pioneering or new, novel industry. Podcasting, it's been around for 15 years. There are no rules. There are no rules in podcasting. There are no rules in content creation. People are breaking rules. Sam Sulek, breaking the rules all the time, unedited, no, uh, title and thumbnail fuckery. Like, b- outwardly boring titles and, like, relatively unexciting thumbnails. Absolutely destroying the platform.

James Smith 1:04:48 Kill Tony.

Chris Williamson 1:04:49 Kill Tony.

James Smith 1:04:50 Where four people are just gonna get blasted.

Chris Williamson 1:04:52 Yeah.

James Smith 1:04:53 Keep a load of comedians in an alleyway.

Chris Williamson 1:04:54 Let's find, let's find the worst comedians that we can and bring them up. Like, so it's, there's elements of it that are existing and work, but there's also new stuff in there that doesn't. So yeah, I am... Reminding yourself and reminding everybody that it is, there are no experts in th- there are very few experts in a bunch of industries.

James Smith 1:05:14 Man, I have days where I do the stupidest stuff. I, I went to a gym the other day. I went to get on a, a leg extension, it was a hamstring curl. I've been a PT 12 years.

Chris Williamson 1:05:22 (laughs) Mm-hmm.

James Smith 1:05:23 Right? I get on that and I'm like, "Well that was embarrassing." Had to go, I had to do a set to play it off. You know? Just play it off.

Chris Williamson 1:05:28 Meant to do hamstring curls.

James Smith 1:05:29 But, like, it, I think it's so good that there, if people can show vulnerability on, at every level. That even, even the people in the smartest positions make the dumbest mistakes. I think that it's, uh, it's a lot easier the higher you climb in life to seem almost un... You know, like perfect.

Chris Williamson 1:05:48 Untouchable.

James Smith 1:05:49 Untouchable, unfathomable, like all of this stuff, when really I think it's such a powerful point to say to people. Like, y- everyone has the same insecurities, same worries.

Chris Williamson 1:05:57 Yeah. Well, I think it's one of the reasons why celebrities, especially celebrities that are kind of in the (clears throat) independent media space, they're sufficiently touchable because you remember when they came up and you know that they're a person. You know that they've got a life, and you know that they, they have a dog that they need to walk or a wife that they have to go back to or whatever. Like, what does Brad Pitt do with his day? I don't know. He's actual untouchable stuff. No one's... Uh, first off, he's not saying things presumably 'cause he's got a million media people around him going like, "Don't fuck this up. Don't fuck this up. Don't fuck this up." There's a whole army of people that require you to not comment on the Ukraine so that everyone can keep getting paid. Whereas for someone like a Peterson, there are fewer filters between him and his fingertips or his mouth, but also he's in this very strange and interesting position, Rogan's the same, and pretty much everybody in independent media, YouTube, podcasting world is the same, they feel just enough reachable for people to be able to say things because they want them to see it. But because of the size, and I don't know where it is, I think it's probably about r- around about sort of five million where this really starts to kick in in terms of follower count. People get to a size where the audience doesn't see them as human anymore. They're not a person. They're a conglomeration of ideas, like a collection of ideologies represented by a person that is manifest as a account.... and you say things to them that you wouldn't ever say to an actual person. And this isn't just people say stuff online they wouldn't say to your face, this is people say stuff to big accounts that they wouldn't dare say to small accounts, because there is something, maybe it's like a, a-

James Smith 1:07:38 He'll never look at this.

Chris Williamson 1:07:39 Yeah, he'll never see it, he's got enough money that he can get away with it, it doesn't matter, whatever. Like, that just seems to happen, and the bigger, the bigger that someone's platform grows, the more virulent and mean and cutting the criticism is. And I think that that's, that's just, uh, like a dynamic that I've observed, where people are prepared to say really fucking heinous things about people when they're a large account that they wouldn't be prepared to say them, say about them when they're a small account.

James Smith 1:08:07 Was it Jordan Peterson that was saying, like, 4% of the population maybe are sociopaths, and that 1% of that are psychopaths? So like, when, when you look at even someone that just has 300 followers, right, at least two or three of them are, are probably not, not quite all there, and then you think about, uh, malevolence, uh, autonomy, fake account. Then you think about people that maybe get, um ... I can't remember the comment he makes, but it's like a little s- sadist, people that like to see other people upset, liked all of these things. So then when you, when you break it down into numbers, even a very small account or a small podcast with only maybe even a few thousand downloads, whatever, you're still now trickling over the territory for coming across someone who is just an evil.

Chris Williamson 1:08:53 But that law of very large numbers thing, when we were in New York on Saturday for SantaCon, eight million to one odds things happened. Eight of them. Million to one odds things happened eight times on average in New York. If you have a sufficiently big dataset, sufficiently big sample of people, really crazy outlier events start to happen pretty regularly, and it's the same thing. You have enough people that vote, that have access to Twitter, that know who Elon Musk is, that know that this particular pop star is coming to their town, or think about ... Dude, I think about this, I think about Taylor Swift more than I should, like, admit, given that I didn't think about her at all until like three months ago. Think about the security concerns that someone like Taylor Swift has. Right? I would guess it's on par with the president, where there's so many people and they're so motivated, such a huge bucket of people, and they're so motivated to try and get something out of her, and w- you filter that down, it's 1% of the world are psychopaths, and of those 1%, let's say 1% of them are people that are motivated, and 1% of them are motivated around Taylor Swift.

James Smith 1:09:59 She's got an army of people.

Chris Williamson 1:10:00 Even after you've filtered it