EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,038 words- 0:00 – 10:38
Touring Together
- CWChris Williamson
James Smith, welcome to the show.
- JSJames Smith
Nice to do this in person.
- CWChris Williamson
We made it, four weeks on tour together.
- JSJames Smith
I'm tired. My voice is a bit deeper, I'm a bit fatter, and I need a haircut.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) It's been a, it's been a journey, man.
- JSJames Smith
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.
- CWChris Williamson
Sufficient chill?
- JSJames Smith
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.
- CWChris Williamson
(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...
- JSJames Smith
Well, it would be very easy for yourself to not... You've created a comfort zone now where you have a microphone, you have some, 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-
- CWChris Williamson
Not for me, baby.
- JSJames Smith
Hand lugge- Mr. Hand Luggage Only.
- CWChris Williamson
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?
- JSJames Smith
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."
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- JSJames Smith
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.
- CWChris Williamson
Definitely one of the things I've realized is how much more positive the world is in general than it seems through the internet. The internet is very sardonic. It's quite cynical. It's quite cutting. It's kind of a bit standoffish and tries to be aloof and cool. You know, that's what comment sections are. It's always like a, this... 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?
- JSJames Smith
We had, we had one bad comment the whole tour. One bad comment.
- CWChris Williamson
What was it?
- JSJames Smith
Uh, where pretty much she wasn't taking the piss out of you, she's taking the piss out of me. And, um, so like, the person that wrote the comment thought that they were gonna get like a, a real big breakdown of 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-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- JSJames Smith
... and maybe the amount of vulgar that would be in it.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- JSJames Smith
But then you think, so thousands of attendees, one bad comment, you're looking at maybe 0.1% being generous. Whereas, you look at any Instagram reel that you put from your best performing podcast-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- JSJames Smith
... might be 40% negative. So, when you look at that, that comparison between 40% negative to 0.01%, it's vast. And like you say, obviously it's a bit of an echo chamber because only 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.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, I think that's one of the reasons why they maybe seem more resilient to criticism that they get online than it appears. You know, some 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."
- JSJames Smith
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."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JSJames Smith
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."
- 10:38 – 17:53
All Wins Feel the Same
- CWChris Williamson
I heard you say on a podcast ages ago, and I never brought it up to you, all wins feel the same.
- JSJames Smith
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
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?
- JSJames Smith
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-
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- JSJames Smith
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.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- JSJames Smith
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.
- CWChris Williamson
Correct.
- JSJames Smith
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.
- CWChris Williamson
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?
- JSJames Smith
You're asking the wrong person.
- CWChris Williamson
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?
- JSJames Smith
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.
- CWChris Williamson
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-"
- JSJames Smith
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... "and then celebrate when you lose one, and then celebrate when you lose one."
- JSJames Smith
Uh, the same with social media. Uh, there's a six-foot-five lad outside this room laying on a sofa-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JSJames Smith
... 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-
- CWChris Williamson
You don't see it.
- JSJames Smith
... you don't see it, yeah. So, uh, like, I, I, I miss those little wins. And everyone else out there is thinking it's the big stuff. You're like, "No, you grow by a thousand, that's amazing."
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- JSJames Smith
So, people need to be better at celebrating those wins.
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- JSJames Smith
I think it's crazy that you've said this, I've said this, like,
- 17:53 – 25:31
The Risks of Doing Something You Love
- JSJames Smith
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?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JSJames Smith
And-
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- JSJames Smith
And even if you do go down that path and you fail, like even if you fall flat on your face, even if you move back in to your parents, there is gonna be a little part of you that's like, "Well, I gave it a go."
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JSJames Smith
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?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JSJames Smith
And then when I- I went traveling a few times when I was younger, and I remember someone saying, "Oh, it doesn't make your CV look good." I would sit in that interview and go, "I didn't 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.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JSJames Smith
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.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JSJames Smith
Tell people about the average American.
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- JSJames Smith
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.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JSJames Smith
But ultimately, any single human through hundreds of thousands of years, "Oh, yeah. We'll get across that river." Out the gene pool.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JSJames Smith
"Oh, it's not that cold out." Out the gene pool.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JSJames Smith
"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?"
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JSJames Smith
"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.
- CWChris Williamson
It's like in the past, only the paranoid survived. But in the present, only the optimists thrive. Ooh, just come up with that. But it's true, because given the fact that you can't predict the future, you have to have some sort of fantasy about how the world's going to go, and that fantasy can either be negative or positive. So why not pick one that's enjoyable? Just pick one that makes the world seem a little bit rosier and assume that the glass is half full. And this is so wild for me to say, because six, seven years ago, I was 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."
- JSJames Smith
Well, that's Carol Dweck's.
- CWChris Williamson
Is it?
- JSJames Smith
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Wow, you-
- JSJames Smith
Just in case we'll-
- CWChris Williamson
You repurposed it.
- 25:31 – 31:20
How Much of Success is Down to Work?
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- JSJames Smith
I'm gonna answer this in two ways. The first part about the survivorship bias, 100% credible, but I also feel now that biases can be used to just counteract someone's points. '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.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JSJames Smith
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."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- JSJames Smith
And I could go, (laughs) "This guy's survivorship bias," you know?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JSJames Smith
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-
- CWChris Williamson
Would have already been created.
- JSJames Smith
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-
- CWChris Williamson
Opportunity.
- JSJames Smith
... opportunity?
- CWChris Williamson
I don't know, I think that's one of those ones that's kind of been repurposed by every, every person now.
- JSJames Smith
It's just got J Shetty written on the bottom.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JSJames Smith
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
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-
- JSJames Smith
Stop.
- CWChris Williamson
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
- 31:20 – 36:52
What’s Obvious to You Isn’t to Everyone Else
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- JSJames Smith
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.
- CWChris Williamson
It's the mercy of the market.
- JSJames Smith
And another point about podcasts and about social media and about-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JSJames Smith
... 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-
- CWChris Williamson
I want to know.
- JSJames Smith
... I'm like, "What does 1.2 mi-"
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- JSJames Smith
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.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JSJames Smith
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-
- CWChris Williamson
A little bit more than half an hour, but-
- JSJames Smith
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... 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-
- JSJames Smith
Oh, I like that.
- CWChris Williamson
... 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-
- JSJames Smith
Churchill.
- CWChris Williamson
... 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.
- JSJames Smith
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.
- CWChris Williamson
I wrote
- 36:52 – 46:31
Dealing With a Multiplicity of Options
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- JSJames Smith
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.
- CWChris Williamson
On Sivers. Sivers was the first one to do it, I think.
- JSJames Smith
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-
- CWChris Williamson
There is if you're in Dubai.
- JSJames Smith
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.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JSJames Smith
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.
- CWChris Williamson
You've seen Barry Schwartz's The Paradox of Choice, that idea about jeans. Have you seen this?
- JSJames Smith
No.
- CWChris Williamson
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-
- JSJames Smith
I don't even know what half this means.
- CWChris Williamson
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?
- JSJames Smith
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JSJames Smith
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.
- CWChris Williamson
Yep.
- JSJames Smith
Nearly could not have happened, but you persisted.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JSJames Smith
You fought for it.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JSJames Smith
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-
- CWChris Williamson
It is, it's the channel trailer still, yeah.
- JSJames Smith
And you think, "Oh, if I'd maybe been up all night with a crying baby, would I have had the persistence and the tenacity and audaciousness to say what I said to lock that in?"
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- JSJames Smith
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.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, decide in advance what you're gonna suck at.
- JSJames Smith
So, have you made any decisions in your mind? Do you push it back to an age? Because readiness is a very subjective thing when it comes to children. If you say, "I'll wait 'til I'm ready," you might wait until you're no longer fertile.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JSJames Smith
So then the second thing I believe people do is they set an age. But then that age seems to be pushed back-
- 46:31 – 53:19
Poor Excuses For Not Having Children
- JSJames Smith
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- JSJames Smith
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
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-
- JSJames Smith
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."
- CWChris Williamson
But we know how many people are going to be around in however many years' time because as is told, demography is destiny, right? We can't make any more one-year-olds. We can't make any more two-year-olds. We can't make any more three-year-olds. So we can predict with 100% accuracy the maximum number of people that can be around in future, right? It's one of the very few things that you can have absolute accuracy with doing. You see Kim Jong Un was, uh, weeping, 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?
- JSJames Smith
1960, he sat there with a book and a glass of wine.
- CWChris Williamson
What else are you gonna do?
- JSJames Smith
"Darling, should we have some children?" Yes, I was getting-
- CWChris Williamson
With fuck all else going on, yeah, exactly.
- JSJames Smith
... 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.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JSJames Smith
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.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- JSJames Smith
I think for men it's easier for them to medicate their needs with porn, video games. So even you look at something that... and again, I can't speak on behalf of women, but for men, they have sexual desires which can be fulfilled much easier via porn than it is via women. So, they can have access to more vaginas in one hour than prehistoric humans in history, which I believe Jordan Peterson made a good point on, but even if we look into the complexity of male status, men want recognition, they want to be known being good. And even 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."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JSJames Smith
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.
- CWChris Williamson
Wow.
- JSJames Smith
And you think to yourself that there are gonna be people out there that maybe are medicating their needs through porn-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JSJames Smith
... 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-"
- CWChris Williamson
In this virtual world.
- JSJames Smith
... 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?
- CWChris Williamson
Variable schedule rewards.
- JSJames Smith
That's the one. I knew you'd know the name for it. So like, as we see even gamification of things online being made to the point to really tap into human psychology, I worry to the point that, as we kind of touched on before, someone's reality in the online world could be better than their reality outside of it.
- CWChris Williamson
Have you heard my male sedation
- 53:19 – 1:00:40
The Male Sedation Hypothesis
- CWChris Williamson
hypothesis idea?
- JSJames Smith
No, but I'm, I'm excited for it.
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- JSJames Smith
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.
- CWChris Williamson
Amusing them into sedation, yeah.
- JSJames Smith
So when you look at things like, you know, you've got the Premiership Football, you've got sport, you've got politics, you've got social media, you've got all of these things, it's almost like a, a puppeteer pulling strings to keep people in a state of sedation-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JSJames Smith
... to keep paying their taxes.
- CWChris Williamson
Don't... Yeah, exactly. Don't look over there. Don't look over there.
- JSJames Smith
Oh, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Keep looking over here, keep looking over here.
- JSJames Smith
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
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JSJames Smith
... 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
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JSJames Smith
Um, all civilizations through history-
- CWChris Williamson
Especially being in America, you are.
- JSJames Smith
Especially when they're armed. And one thing that, you know, you think about a lot of the time is, we live in a time where we seem to think our civilization is perfect and it's 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)
- CWChris Williamson
There's more immediate problems here.
- JSJames Smith
Yeah. And-
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- JSJames Smith
Mount Vesuvius is worrying me more. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
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."
- JSJames Smith
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- JSJames Smith
But now we're gonna get labeled climate change deniers.
- CWChris Williamson
No, I'm not saying that climate change doesn't exist. I'm saying it's not an existential risk priority. I'm saying that there are things that are more important than that, that we need to get on with, and there are ways to fix the climate that are much more... uh, and improve the quality of life that are much more important than what we're working on at the moment.
- JSJames Smith
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.
- CWChris Williamson
It's very hard to have that conversation. I've tried to bring this up on stage and again, that rocket ship analogy, which I've developed whilst being on stage, which has been really cool, 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,
- 1:00:40 – 1:11:39
Are We Ruled By Midwits?
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- JSJames Smith
Yeah, I always thought this at school. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JSJames Smith
(laughs) No. You know, I, I remember... Uh, did you go to... I had to go to a religious school. Did you have that?
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, I had to do religious education, a little bit, but my thing specialized in technology. So-
- JSJames Smith
Man, I r- I remember, like, taking the piss a little bit. We'd be in RE, as we call it in England-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- JSJames Smith
... Religious Education, and you'd be learning like, you know, Feeding the 5,000, like fish, uh, the fish, the bread, the wine, everything.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) The fish, that fish story.
- JSJames Smith
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."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JSJames Smith
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?
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- JSJames Smith
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."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JSJames Smith
This is it literally. Like, the people that were in the top roles, no offense to the people there-
- CWChris Williamson
(clears throat)
- JSJames Smith
... I was like, "This is merely just politics between you." And it, it is, what do you call it, idiots the whole way up?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JSJames Smith
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.
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- JSJames Smith
Kill Tony.
- CWChris Williamson
Kill Tony.
- JSJames Smith
Where four people are just gonna get blasted.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JSJames Smith
Keep a load of comedians in an alleyway.
- CWChris Williamson
Let's find, let's find the worst comedians that we can and bring them up. Like, so it's, there's elements of it that are existing and work, but there's also new stuff in there that doesn't. So yeah, I am... Reminding yourself and reminding everybody that it is, there are no experts in th- there are very few experts in a bunch of industries.
- JSJames Smith
Man, I have days where I do the stupidest stuff. I, I went to a gym the other day. I went to get on a, a leg extension, it was a hamstring curl. I've been a PT 12 years.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Mm-hmm.
- JSJames Smith
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.
Episode duration: 1:42:54
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