E105 - This Video Will Force You To Take Action Before It's Too Late | Hardest Geezer

0:00People are nine times out of ten way more capable than they actually think they are. After you do something hard, you just have this confidence in yourself knowing, okay, well, I've done that. Well, essentially, I was picked up on a motorbike and driven seven hours into the jungle. British ultra runner, Russ Cook. Nicknamed the hardest geezer, completed a 9 ,941 mile run along the entire length of Africa. Take me back to when you were coming up with the idea of doing this African thing. I was vomiting for about three days, couldn't eat anything. One of the difficult parts about Africa is that there's just, you know, someone's overthrown a government or there's some kind of military coup or there's a border closed or you know i was the first white guy in this village for 10 years what was that feeling like when you've actually achieved it must be the highest of the highs i could see them now before we jump into today's episode i just want to mention that this podcast is brought to you by me and everything that i have built to help you guys level up if you want to transform your physique build muscle lose body fat build strength then you have the thirst app this has everything inside that you could possibly need to get yourself in shape to hold yourself accountable as well.

1:04I also have the digital playbook, which is a step by step guide to help you guys build a following, monetize the following and also build a strong personal brand. This is everything which I have done over the past nearly 10 years to allow myself to live a life of financial freedom and also geographical freedom. I can basically do whatever I want. Life is good. And I also have my newsletter, which has been revamped, where I'll share exclusive podcast insights my raw thoughts on business fitness and much much more so if you're interested about any of those check out the description you'll find the links to all of them let's get cracking with the episode what's up guys welcome back to first things first we are in the ends we're in london with the hardest geezer that i have ever come across thanks for having me thanks for having me how you doing all good i'm good i'm good it's it's always good to come back every so often i don't like to stay here for too long but you know in the summertime particularly it's a vibe the summer's a vibe mate yeah i would say i'm keen for a bit of uk summer it's just a shame about the winter yeah which is like nine months you can never really predict if you're gonna have a summer or not yeah true because i think last year it was not good it wasn't great was it but you know with the sun is here we make the most of it skin season in the uk happy days yeah it's Where are you originally from?

2:24Worthing, down south, next to Brighton. Okay. Yeah, yeah. It's quite a sleepy little town, to be fair, but it's my home. I love it. Where do you get the name Hardest Geezer from? Hardest Geezer. Okay, so that name originally came, me and my mate had a boxing match for it down the park, and I won. So I took the title Hardest Geezer, and we've been running with it ever since. He became the Worthing Weasel, and I was the Hardest Geezer. So that was, we must have been about 20. it's about eight years ago i was having i was on a family holiday i was having a discussion with my cousin's husband and we were trying to figure out where geezer came from yeah so i don't think that's a northern term i think geezer is a southern yeah yeah i think it's a southern thing i don't i don't haven't heard norther people use it very much no no it's a good name though yeah yeah yeah it's got a nice little ring to it in it like geezer yeah yeah i like it what was uh What was it like growing up then in those areas?

3:20In Worthing? Yeah. So Worthing, the population is about 120 ,000 people. So quite a decent sized town next to Brighton. Mate, it's pretty cut and paste like most small towns in England, I would imagine. I had a good group of mates there, loved sport growing up, was banging into my football and running and all that kind of jazz. and uh i mean i had a pretty uneventful normal childhood until i was a little bit older to be honest um so yeah i enjoyed it man like i think as i've got older and i've seen a bit more of the world i've realized how much of a blessing it actually is to grow up in a place like that um you know got access to a pretty decent level of education for free free health care um you know my my parents worked really hard um they you know we we weren't hard up necessarily like never having to like worry about whether we're gonna eat tomorrow or something like this when we're growing up so you know when i compare it to a lot of places i've seen around the world i'm like do you know what i was pretty you've probably seen amazing you know i've won the lottery on that one yeah you know yeah i loved uh growing up in leeds i'm so glad that i i had the friendship group that i had yeah particularly i think it's probably still the same i don't know if it's a british thing but you know all the boys would just take the piss out of each other yeah big time there was no escape from that yeah even if you were the guy that would like with the best at sports was the best in class like you'd still get yeah you still come in with a like slightly like dodgy haircut one time and you're getting it you know yeah um no i i really enjoyed i like i thrived in that kind of setting like i really i love it with the boys even even to this day you know we just went on a stag do last weekend and it's much the same um just constantly ripping each other and it kind of character building yeah well that's that's the thing especially because of the path which i've taken doing a lot on social media you got to be able to handle criticism and some negativity you can tell some people who grown up with friends who've just like said yes to them and just been like never thrown insults at them or never said no to them and then they get a taste of what the real world is like what reality is like and then they just they crumble yeah i'll tell you what though i don't know if it would have been like this for you but if so if i came into school at any point up until the age of 16 and i was like oh boys i've started a youtube channel getting it get whatever it is doesn't matter i'm getting it yeah um no i got that when i started going to the gym yeah yeah there was a there was a little gym in my school like tiny and i'd been basically playing rugby for like nine years and i was like you know what this was during the the summer kind of season when the rugby season kind of finished yeah so there was nothing else to really do so let me go to the to the gym and then a few of the lads would see that i was in the gym just by myself yeah and then the moment i started to like you know put on a little bit of size they'd just be like oh you've got enough protein there like yeah yeah to me yeah like i was like the only one that was interested in it and bothered it and everyone was just laughing at me yeah it's funny how like you that when you're younger that really like well i don't know about you but for me that i would be like pranging about it yeah about getting roasted from boys and then like you get a little bit older and you're just like i couldn't i couldn't give a toss anymore i'm doing especially because i never really gave it out yeah like i i there was there was the guys that would give it and they they weren't as good at taking it yeah i was always the one that would i would kind of take it and then just laugh but then you know it was all good it's so interesting those um those like teenage boy dynamics in it because it's like if you don't give it out then you make yourself a bit of a target so you need so you you need to give it out a bit so people know that if they're going to give it to you then they're going to get some back but then if you give it out too much then that can cause you dramas as well so it's like all of these little intricate social dynamics going on at school which like when you when I look back on as an adult I'm just like oh that's quite funny how old are you now 28 28 yeah yeah yeah because I don't know what it'd be like being a teenager or early 20s now it's completely different because I came up without social media all we had was I remember coming home after school and I'd just go straight on to MSN Messenger.

7:42Yeah. And then we had phones. I'd have had an MSN way. Yeah. Just giving a little nudge. Yeah. But we never really had the social media on the phone, so it was a different time. Like now it's... Yeah, it was just coming in when I... So when I got to like 13, Facebook was a thing. So it was just kind of coming in, but it was all very new. Yeah. Whereas I don't know, now with the whole with snapchat and tiktok and all these things i'm like oh spit i don't know about all of that no but we'll find out the consequences in a few years i'm sure yeah when did you get into running so i i um i did a lot of cross country in sport and football and things when i was younger at school and then stopped kind of exercise altogether about 16 17 i was just working all the time left time pretty young and then I was just working non-stop um drinking and doing gambling a lot and things like this so just exercise completely just off the radar wasn't really on my uh on my agenda and then when I got to about 20 um I've kind of had a few years where I was really struggling and uh that's when I've discovered running again and mate my twisted me into doing a half marathon so then I went out training with him then we did the half and then we ran a full marathon a few weeks later and it was like the process of probably similar to when you got into the gym it's like you can you're putting your effort into something and you're seeing that reward come back and you know I'm feeling good for it it's one of the first things for a long time I've been putting my effort into and it made me actually feel good about myself so I just kind of doubled down tripled down um marathon after marathon after marathon and then and he's like here we are did it is one of those things where you're like oh i'm actually quite good at running or is it just is running something you got to work at because i know with what i do yeah this the success of how good your physique is going to look is realistically down to the genetics yeah or how many freaking steroids you're willing to pump into your body yeah whereas with running i wonder if it's one of those things where you know a lot of people could be good at it yeah it's just one of those things where it's uh it's practice but also like it's very much mental as well yeah i think it depends on the type of running you know so like if you're looking at 5k 10k athletes uh or anything under that in the olympics you know a lot of them have very specific kind of body type like that ectomorph you look at like the mo faras of this world like super long limb very skinny um it's like even down to like having like thin ankles and things like this uh and i'm a bit naturally i'm a bit more stocky than that so i would genetically i just don't think i would have ever been able to get into that sort of like olympic level crowd well no matter what i did from whatever age um but the type of running that like i've become good at is more of a for me it's more of a it's more of a mental game yeah because it's you know 352 days running in africa for example it's like genetically don't get me wrong injuries play a huge part and if you can have a genetic setup where you're less likely to get injured then that's going to take you a long way but uh you know when i think about what was the biggest kind of reasons i was able to that is because it's mostly desire and i was just like so you only get their mindsets where you're like i'll fucking die for this game yeah like i will die for the game that's like that level of desire i had was up with that you know i said i'd run after court die trying so yeah i would say like my type of running is more upstairs which is good for me because if it was genetic then i would have and farts is there anyone that you like proper look up to because i know there's i was trying to think of people who i know of that have that like mental mentality when it comes to running there's obviously goggins yeah there's one of my friends he came on the podcast william gooch go he's love gooch i didn't realize how good he was at running oh yeah and how he's i mean he's got some demons i reckon he's yeah well i don't think i even really asked to be honest until when I saw that Australia thing, his last Australia run, I was like, oh, levels, Gouge.

12:07Like, he's, he's taking it somewhere. So yeah, like, massive, massive kudos to Gouge, I think. There's Ross Edgley as well. Ross Edgley, another unit. He's like the science, the science guy as well, and he's very all in the, all in the science. He thrives in the water. Yeah, yeah. I know there's loads of people with a space like that, like Gouge, Ross Edgley's one, obviously Goggins is, is one of the OGs of that kind of thing. Ned Brockman, I think, is a proper gangster.

12:41There's definitely others. I just can't remember off the top of my head. But yeah, I mean, everyone kind of puts their own spin on it, doesn't they? Yeah. But I love it when I see someone taking on, when Gucci's like, yeah, I'm going to go and smash that Australian record. I'm like, because he's doing 115k a day and i just know that to get that done you're going to the pits every day for the whole whatever it was 35 days every part of your body is screaming like the inflammation going through his legs would just be nuts you're saying like couldn't even sleep properly yeah totally you probably had that as well yeah yeah i mean i know the longest sort of average days i was doing it and towards the last month was about 75k.

13:27So, you know, that's still about, what is that, 30k short of what Guji was doing every day for the 35 days. So, mate, absolutely twisted up different. I'm sure he was like, but the fact that he just woke up and went, fuck off, I'm doing it anyway, you know. Massive, yeah, unreal. So take me back to when you were coming up with the idea of doing this Africa thing. Yeah. so how do you how do you even think about doing something like that yeah it's a journey to even get to it to be fair so um i when i was when i was about 20 or 20 21 i'd got just got into running started running some marathons and it gave me this kind of new lease on life and i decided i was going to quit all the jobs i was doing i was doing loads of cleaning jobs at the time so i was like cleaning pubs and nightclubs and all this just shitty work yeah like dogs the dogs work yeah and I was like right yeah mate use condoms like mate I've seen it all yeah so I was like I've had enough of this cleaning cleaning literal shitholes for minimum wage I'm gonna do I'm gonna do something in my life and I didn't have an awful lot of money but I was like I'm just gonna buy one way tickets until I run out of money so I kind of I went all over the world in the end ended up in Australia but on my way I went to Kenya and I was like I spent a bunch of time with like these, in this place called E10, which is like a high attitude running camp, loads of like mad dog Kenyan runners that are unreal.

14:58And they're just whipping me up good. But I met an Italian man when I was there, had been cycling around the world for six years. And he just had a few of his possessions in a pannier bag on his bike. And he was literally just cruising around the world. And I was like, that's the sickest thing I've ever heard of. Like, you know, when I was growing up, it's like you get to 17, everyone's going to college and then people was talking about going to uni and doing this job and that career and I was like every time I heard people talk about it I was like it sounds kind of boring man like what's I want to do something that's like meaningful and like going to make me feel like I'm living and I met this guy and he was probably one of the first people I've met at that age where I was like I want to do what you're doing because that sounds unreal How old were you then?

15:44About 20, 21 So So I was like, the only thing is I don't like cycling, but I like running, so I'm going to run. I'm going to run across somewhere. And I timed out perfectly with the weather and I did Asia to London, so I've got a one-way ticket. Did that guy give you any advice specifically? Because I know you see now on social media there's all these people giving advice and telling you how you should live your life. But a lot of times it's like, look, if you don't want to live that person's life, then why should you really think in what it is that you're saying you should really be paying attention to people who are living the life that you want to live 100 so i'd imagine this person living this very unique lifestyle which you were quite interested in did he say anything he do you know what like the great thing about he wasn't one of these advice type guys he's not going to sit there and go oh you see this you see that he just he has an aura because and he's living the way he wants to live like truly authentically to him so instead of him just giving me advice i was just observing him and just asking him like oh like how did you do that how did you do that he was not bothered about giving me advice he's doing his own thing you know which i really like i'm really right i was just like he doesn't even you know he's just off in his own lane doing his own dance um so yeah like meeting him was was really sick and then i ran home from from asia after that which took about 60 well 66 days to get to london um around a marathon every day where in asia did you start istanbul so yeah um did like 11 countries through europe and after i finished that journey that was so hard by the way it was like the hardest at the time it was the highest thing i'd ever done and i was like i was absolutely brutal i was running marathons every day and i had a hammock in my bag and at the end of the day i just find two trees anywhere i was and just sleep in a hammock and then just and then get off and run again but there was obviously quite a few you just did this by yourself yeah yeah yeah I had no money really so I just wanted to do it purely for the adventure purely because I felt like I was gonna put myself in a uncomfortable situation and I was gonna roll around in there and figure it out and come out the other side and then you know what came out of that was a bunch of confidence and this kind of mindset that was like I know what it's like to just roll deep in to unknown territory and just figure it out yeah and uh that that pretty soon after that was when this idea for Africa came around but it was a lot more complicated to make Africa happen so it took a few took like three years to to get it going were you were you doing any of the social media stuff when you did the Asia so not really like I'd um I was just uploading photos and things on Instagram uh but mostly it was just my boys like I'm following me and I was just doing it because it was like oh yes that's like i mean you know i'm camping to serbia tonight or i'm you know i'm running through austria at the moment like shit's getting loose out here um so yeah there's any because i don't know anything about this yeah yeah because i couldn't you probably weren't documenting it so anything funny oh mate so much stuff like when you when you're by yourself you just for me as well like i you know i'm 22 i think now at this point um i'm pretty naive to I've never travelled really that much.

19:01I've obviously done this around the world thing, like buying one-way tickets, but I ain't really done that much. And I'm just bowling through countries and just trying to sling my hammock up in trees and just getting myself into worlds of trouble. I was obviously getting stopped by the police all the time. What, whilst you were sleeping? Yeah, like whilst I'm setting my hammock up. Imagine like you're rolling through London and you see it's like 7pm, some geese got a hammock in the street. What are you doing, geese? So, I mean, London is probably quite normal now. Yeah, but... Yeah, no. Yeah. but yeah I was doing that and I remember actually one night I got stopped by these these policemen I was just about to go to sleep I'd run I'd run a marathon it was 40 degrees it was a heat wave in Bulgaria and I was just absolutely cooked right so I've gone I need to sleep immediately and the police have stopped me and said to me you can't sleep here because there's loads of wolves in the area and you're just going to get like munched basically you know I was like no but I was so tired I didn't even care yeah so I had to put my hammock in my hand Yeah, yeah.

20:00I was that knackered. I wasn't even bothered. So the police moved me on. I trotted down the road about one more kilometre and then I found a farm and I just camped in this geezer's farm, which added the extra danger of waking up to some angry Bulgarian farmer with a shot in my mouth. But yeah, I spent that whole night just hearing wolves howling and running about, shitting myself. So I didn't really sleep that much that night. And, you know, there was loads of things that happened. there was a Bulgarian no Hungarian I was in Hungary this time there was a prostitute that I um that found me just at the end of the day I was I was looking for a campsite and she found me she started walking next to me and uh I've rolled into this campsite and then by the time I've got to this campsite they've seen that I've got this prostitute with me and they think I'm trying to bring a prostitute to the campsite and I'm struggling to communicate to them in fucking hungarian that i'm not so they wouldn't let me in and then it got dark she was just trying to get a bit of dough yeah she was trying to get a bit of dough off me yeah so she's um they kicked me out and this vulgarian hungarian girl sorry is staying with me and then she's like to me she's like you um she said to me like this man actually like me good fuck and i went oh girl give it up i'm tired yeah i know you're desperate because the state of me right now is shocking so this is crazy chat um but i said to her no i showed her a photo of my friend and told her it was my girlfriend and then she got really pissed and she started getting on the blower to i thought i was like this is pimps yeah and i was like oh this is bad news for me so i need to get out of here quick time so i ran down the road and ended up camping underneath a motorway with my hammock, ran out of phone battery, woke up in the morning, didn't know where I was, didn't have any way, didn't know where my phone was.

21:48How the hell did you charge your phone in these? Just petrol stations mostly. I had a power bank, so I'd bring my power bank and just charge it at petrol stations basically. Yeah. And I guess get food from the petrol stations. Petrol stations, yeah. So I did mostly ice cream and peanuts was my diet for that one. So rough gig. Yeah, it's not terrible. Like got a bit of protein in there. Yeah, but certainly not optimal. not optimal nah but this is what i mean when i say that uh a lot of my running is more mental than it is physical would you run in silence or music a bit of both yeah a bit of both depends on when my mind's good i um i'm happy to run in silence when my mind's not good then i need something on in some kind of distraction yeah so podcasts or music or something because i remember when it was like mandatory for us to do cross country at school yeah and uh you had to do that in silence i remember you you really are just alone with your thoughts yeah especially if you're doing a long run yeah and then you just hear like the rhythm of your breathing yeah that's it it's quite nice though do you like it or not do you know what i was actually i didn't plan to be good at it yeah but i ended up being one of the better ones in my year so then they were like oh you're quite good so you're gonna represent the school now and you're gonna compete and i was like I don't want to do this.

23:06So I did it a little bit, but then when I was competing against other schools, like, you know, there's hundreds of people doing a race. And I was doing, I would end up in the top third. Yeah. But I wasn't, I was not pushing myself or good enough to be in like top 10. Yeah. I think you're probably one of these guys though, that you do just have like a baseline level of gifted in like physical pursuits. Yeah. so i think it's like if were you getting roped into like play cricket and all types i tried yeah everything literally everything um so i was probably one of the reasons why i was always in like decent shape because i was just so active yeah i played golf cricket did tennis did basketball did everything rugby was the one that probably stuck with me just because it was like okay grab the ball and run yeah and just smash into other people like my favorite thing was like tackling people yeah but if I would line someone up and like time it so that as soon as they caught the ball I would like if I did one big hit in a match I was like my worst is done yeah because everybody would talk about it afterwards yeah you fucking smashed that guy yeah that was my favourite part I was terrible at football I'd like no coordination but if the ball came to my feet it would be gone yeah or I'd try to kick it at the goal different direction oh that's interesting because football I don't know what it was like growing up but football was a huge part of like boys culture yeah yeah so it's like i was like decent footy which helped a lot socially because i feel like you're like i was like a small little ratty ginger kid people will be chirping now i'm like give me the football yeah i think that's if you are like if you're at school and you're finding hard to make friends just join a team yeah get good at a sport and then that's like i think doing the rugby like not only was i representing my school but i was also part of a club as well so i had like two solid uh group of male friends yeah from like different places so sick i mean i'd yeah i don't like a lot of friends growing up and you just obviously with the with the rugby culture there's a lot of drinking associated with that as well like we i think the culture is different now i feel like in the uk people are not drinking as much i think people are more educated don't hey like when i was growing up it was heavy heavy drinking like it was there was nothing else to do it's like okay let's before we could go out before we had fake ids we just go to each other's houses have house parties and just get like literally as drunk as possible and see do you think people are still doing that then or not or do you think that we've just aged out of this you don't hear about anymore i think i think people are probably doing more drugs less alcohol really i think but i think also people are a lot more educated with the downsides of alcohol yeah it's bad it's bad because there was nothing i remember when i was growing up i didn't even think twice and there wasn't really there was no podcasts there was no there was nobody talking about how bad alcohol was for you so you can't just do it no one even to explain that it's like oh like the reason that you feel so bad on a hangover is because like you basically just stolen your like serotonin from from the night before and now you're on like effectively a calm down yeah whereas like i view this just pranging like they are through a big one like why do i feel so bad like i'm so bad now i don't i barely even drink anymore yeah i can in in my teenage years and 20s early 20s i could shake it off pretty yeah but now it's like i literally need an ambulance or like an iveadro and i have to cancel my plans for like a few days so do you know already you know already drinker anymore you're all every now and again it's usually for like special occasions it's either special occasions or if i'm celebrating something yeah like if i've if i've set myself a goal and i've achieved something i'm like okay let's let's go celebrate yeah let's go do something i mean there's obviously different ways to celebrate you don't have to get absolutely off your nut but yeah um it's good to go have a little party no i agree i'll do occasionally do it probably like you know once in a while um so last time was new year's eve and then there was an event in dubai where i had a couple of drinks but you know like you know when you're at a table and they they pour the the glasses for you they end up being like doubles yeah yeah at minimum yeah yeah but yeah just wrecks me the next day it's it's more so i think i realize now like i love the gym so much i enjoy performing at my best i know what i'm capable of when i am performing at my best and when you go out and you drink for me like i just can't lift as heavy yeah the performance is down massively i can still look good maybe the amount of muscle mass i can hold on to will dip but i can still be shredded yeah if anything when i drink it suppresses my hydration the next day look better but i also just suppresses my appetite so i would use i would end up consuming probably fewer calories if i were to go out and drink and you'd move more as well because you're like dancing or whatever yeah so it was funny because when i would go on these trips to ibiza yeah like i'd be having like one meal a day and like being very active like dancing and moving around and like there would be maybe after three or four days the physique would just look crazy like just veins going up everywhere wear and i'd still held on to a bit of size but then you a few more days of doing that and then your physique really starts to like decline drop off yeah oh that's interesting yeah so when did you start gyming how old 17 17 yeah and you've just been on it ever since yeah i i don't think i realized how much like i loved it until kind of like recently because i always used to try and figure out why people just couldn't stick with it yeah and a large a large thing is just down to the fact that they don't enjoy it yeah like if it's a real struggle for some people to do like for me doing other types of activities whether it's like forcing myself to do stretching yeah or forcing myself to do some cardio like that feels like real effort to me and i'm like this must be how it feels for normal people to just go to the gym because like my style of training is it's so repetitive it's even probably got more repetitive because my exercise choice is lower than ever i just literally have my favorite few exercises per muscle group yeah do that on repeat yeah and it's just changing like the weights that i'm lifting maybe manipulating the tempo a little bit so repetitive so do you have like a goal like for it or is it just to maintain now now it's to maintain i mean it's like it's always like this kind of canvas which is an unfinished picture you're always trying to like tweak little things it's very rare that you would see a bodybuilder look in the mirror and be like do you know what happy day really happy with everything that's crazy yeah there's always something that you're trying to like bring up yeah which you can take it too far and like get really weird about it and not be happy with yourself which is ridiculous like i look at myself and i'm like i'm like i like the way i look yeah and um you know i'm kind of happy that i was blessed to be this way um but there's always that there's always room for improvement yeah i mean that's kind of a good metaphor for life though in general isn't it like there's there's always room for improvement yeah but like if you prang out on that room for improvement you can just miss the fact that you were blessed to start with I competed twice.

30:48And that was when I, my mentally things got really weird because. What competing as in? Like a bodybuilding show. Yeah, yeah. I did WBFF and I was probably looking the best that I'd ever looked in my life. Yeah. Yeah. I looked in the mirror and just was so unhappy and stressed out because I was like, I'm too, I'm too fat. I'm holding too much fat. Really? Yeah. Like I'm not. What body fat percentage were you at the time? I was easily under 10%. Yeah. It was. It was. because when you're cutting like it's it's so gradual every day that you don't really see the change yeah but when i look back at pictures when i was the leanest i was like why the hell was i not happy with that yeah like that was i would kill to go back to that condition now it's it's it's weird but but after that i realized because when you when you take things to the real extreme with like uh restricting calories excessive cardio having less energy to train all of a sudden it's not fun anymore it's like it's not work yeah so i've found like a happy medium where i can be flexible with the things that i eat i'm eating enough i'm not killing myself with any kind of cardio i'm not killing myself with the training but i push myself hard but not overdoing it yeah and then you can kind of enjoy everything in life and also look good maybe you're not going to look the absolute best you could possibly look yeah but things are all kind of balanced out do you struggle with that with other in other areas of your life like this kind of sense of um this balance between trying to kind of be happy with where you're at and also looking at like what else you think you could be doing well especially you get that we're living in dubai yeah you're always comparing yourself to other people and like in terms of like career finances doing pretty good yeah but then you know you'll see people around you who are making like crazy money per month like you know easily over six figures a month some people like seven figures and just like oh my god yeah there's just levels but so how do you like how do you wrestle with that in your own mind like well i look at a lot of these people and they are on paper doing very well but i don't want their life like they really are they're working their ass off yeah but they have no freedom i've always been big on the freedom like there's so many business opportunities and money making avenues i could have gone down but i've said no because i know it would take away from my freedom have you said yes to them before and then worked out that they cost you your freedom so you don't want to do it right so you've got like the wisdom i can it's like a lot of things i do now it's like envisioning the future i'm like okay so what is this realistically gonna look like yeah and if it means i'm going to be stuck at my desk or doing calls like i could do like go back to doing one-to-one coaching yeah yeah charging a lot and i would make me a lot of money but then you know i'm stuck doing calls a lot of time and i'm like i don't really like doing that yeah yeah yeah Tim and the podcast is enough talking for me yeah no I hear it man now that's interesting because I think that's like something that I've been trying to wrestle around with my own head like you know at what point do you just wake up and smell the roses and go like that's all right you know like let's just try and enjoy it at this point whereas but I find that there's this constant thing in my head that's always like yeah like further harder you know like and it just doesn't it's just like this voice it just doesn't seem to quite yeah so that's that's that's but that's this voice is also a blessing because i wouldn't have done anything that's that's the ambition and i would have just carried on being a cleaner and i'm just going to nightclub toilets if that if that voice didn't exist you know so it's like trying to understand that that voice isn't just to it's not just like the devil in my ear that's like you know that's a good thing because i did i think it was like late late 20s early 30s where i'd i'd worked my ass off and got myself to this position where i didn't really have to do a whole lot to keep money coming through yeah it was just very much i'd set up the systems and all i had to do was make content yeah and i'd branched away from doing purely fitness content to more like entertainment travel vlogs so i could literally just go anywhere and make a video and like that's work and it would just generate revenue for like things which i was selling so i started to like work less party more and just enjoy life it's very hedonistic style of life which you would think especially when you're younger you think oh that is the life that is the dream so i tried it and the reality is after a while at least for me it gets very boring you do all the things you want to do and you kind I just like, what is this?

35:43This is life. Yeah. Like I felt like I was wasting a lot of my potential. Like I'd got myself this really great position where, you know, there was a lot more to achieve and a lot more things to do. And I was just like, no, I'm just going to purely enjoy my life selfishly for me. Yeah. And, um, just didn't make me very happy. And I think a lot of people who are kind of, especially if you built an audience, you have a duty and a responsibility to be a good role model and to help them and to educate them and i moved away from that like it was more like hey look how good my life is now yeah instead of let me continue to try and help you if that makes sense yeah so i i got that that feeling and it's like one of those things that someone could have told me that and i would have been like yeah fuck off i'm gonna do it anyway yeah you do it it's like people who have this dream of like i want to have all these supercars but then when you have all the supercars you probably find out there's just a headache like trying to maintain them and it's just like not it doesn't really make you that happy and you're like you know i'll sell them yeah but you have to do it to experience yeah no i get yeah i still i know i still have a little thing a few things in my head where i'm like no no i want to do that or i want to i want to get that god what are some of them what are some of them still i think there's there's i know there's some there's definitely a lot of places which i want to go to but i feel like that's probably not a bad thing i think that's just still an experience in places which i need to go to and see for myself in terms of i feel like there's still some cars i want to get yeah just to know what it's like to drive around in those cars but i know i'm gonna get used to it yeah very quickly there's not like and i had a thing with like watches as well like i was i was thinking about i'll let me go and like i'm gonna accumulate a couple of different watches like fancy watches yeah and then i got one and then i'm just looking around at everybody else like showing off their watches and i was like this is means nothing yeah now i've never like the cars and the watches and things like aren't really out my street for me i'll tell you what the biggest and i'm not like a well wealthy man or anything like i've done a a lot better in the last couple of years than I had done before.

37:57But the best level up for me, I don't know if you can relate to this, but when I'd go and do my food shop in years gone by, I would check the prices of everything and I'd work out, like, all right, I'll get the chicken, but that means I can't really get this. I'll just be going around the shop in my room, looking for reduced stuff and everything like this. And now, I don't do that. And I'm like, do you know how sick that is? yeah that's actually unreal yeah and that I can't tell I'm still riding the high of that of just walking into a shop and going like I quite fancy a protein shake so I'm going to spend three pound on a protein shake yeah done that's like that's a good position to be in when you don't have to check yeah it's just like tap tap tap you know everything's going to be okay yeah so I think like you think there's a certain amount of money you need to earn per month for you to for you to be good I know it's relative depends what good yeah depends what good is for you and I guess like I would say generally like my lifestyle is not very expensive for me to enjoy I don't even like having things I just moved out of a house and I had I did manage to accumulate loads of things over the last year and it just pissed me off because I just like having one suitcase of basics that I can just take anywhere and that's me so for me like I wouldn't I bet you were getting gifted so many things after that.

39:25Yeah, yeah. And don't get me wrong, people are well nice with it. And obviously you get, people keep you well nice with it. But I'm also like, there's a little part of it. It's like, I hate things. Stop giving me things. I said that. I remember at one point I said to all my family, like if it was my birthday or Christmas, I was like, look, just don't buy me anything. Yeah, yeah. I don't, don't, I know it's a nice gesture. Yeah, yeah. But I'm not going to use it. It's just going to sit there. Yeah. Like either keep the money or just like, If you need to give me something, just give me some cash.

39:54Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how much money, it depends what comfortable it is, I guess. London's expensive, to be fair. Especially, yeah, the past few years as well, it's gone up big time. It's kind of crazy, actually. Where were you before? Where did you move from? I was in West Sussex in a little village called Henfield. Okay. um so i was there for last year and then just moved out of there and now i'm and i'm in uh why are you there because i finished africa and i spent about a month in london after with loads of like different work things and blah blah blah and i was like oh this is all a bit hectic for me like and it was such a mad change up because i came back and i was getting recognized a lot and i was just like i remember i remember i remember a message you trying to get in touch and I was like, I'm probably the 500th person who's reached out to you.

40:47I'm already terrible. I was terrible on my phone pre all of this as well. So now it's like, I'm just like, I'll give up, you know? But yeah, so I wanted, so I went, lived in the countryside just for a bit of peace and quiet really. But then it's been a year and everything is in London. So it just, it makes more sense to be here. Yeah. Like all the work and stuff's here. So it's what it is. And you've come back. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Whoop. The all new Whoop is here. The only wearable that turns your health and fitness data into personalized guidance. Now, 7 % smaller with 14 days of battery life.

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42:03It's the only wearable that gives you a truly comprehensive view of your body designed to help you improve your performance longevity and overall health so you can join now at join whoop.com forward slash first things thirst to get your first month for free let's get back to the episode talk to me about the um obviously the whole africa experience yeah first of all how did the idea come into your head and like how do you even go about planning something like that oh the planning was a madness so So obviously it came into my head after the Age of London thing. And it first came into my head about probably three years before it even started.

42:40And, you know, the planning phase basically just get a map up. And I started just looking at potential routes. Did all the options, sort of west coast, east coast, through the middle. And obviously one of the difficult parts about Africa is that there's just, you know, someone's overthrown a government or there's some kind of military coup or there's a border closed or, you know, you can't travel there as a UK citizen. in various different countries. So plotting a route is actually just really difficult in itself. Where are you definitely not supposed to go? Definitely not. So my information might be a little bit out of date because things are always changing on the continent.

43:19But a lot of those Sahel countries are super dangerous at the moment. So Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali's a bit touch and go depending on where you are in Mali. And then you've got Central African Republic, most people say that's a big swerve um sudan south sudan dodgy at the moment uh even like northern ethiopia is quite quite sketchy libya again tricky one um algeria most people were saying a bit dicey depending on where you're going i ended up being absolutely fine nigeria is pretty pretty sketchy um you know i could i could go on um yeah so a lot of you've you've figured out a route figured out a route so i figured out one potential route and it was the only one that was just about doable but the only problem with it is that it involved crossing from mauretania to algeria through the desert where there's no roads and uh no westerners have crossed on foot and they don't uh let people cross there so i was like that's a little bit of a problem but it was genuinely that was the best out of all of them so started trying to make all the relevant uh contacts with the algerians to try and get a visa granted uh they said no and it was you know big big problem really but i was so just like driven for this project that i was like right I'll figure it out.

44:45Yeah, let's just start in South Africa because we're going to start at the north and head down. So let's start in South Africa and then we've got this whole time for me it takes to run from South Africa to Algeria to figure out a plan for how we're going to get into Algeria. So get to South Africa. I've got 10 grand left in my bank. Who's the team at that point? So the team at that point, well, the team we started with was a guy called Stan, Harry and Jared. so three pretty like uh young people in filmmaking that i just sold this vision to i was like right i'm going to be the first person to run the fair half cut we're going to document the whole thing we're going to make a documentary we're going to post it two episodes a week on youtube we're going to do all this stuff on instagram we're going to raise a million pound for charity uh it's going to be sick like it will be one of the coolest projects to ever work on you know downsize boys are that you have to sleep in a van in a school minibus that we've converted with me there'll be four of us in one van um i've got barely any money so i won't be able to pay you for until we start making money and i'll also like we've got to go through some of the most dangerous places in the world but yeah sweet if you're cool if you're cool with that you're in um wow they really had to believe in you yeah yeah so that you know that everyone was fully invested in i believe it had to be that way because i think you know it kind of creates this sort of us versus the world mentality that i don't think it would have been really hard to create that without all of those circumstances of like we've got no money it's backs against all i didn't even have a following at the time even like really small following so it's like we've got to build a following then get some money and then make this all happen but it's like there's always an opportunity and everything and i was like even though all the circumstances are shit the opportunity is that we could have the an unbelievable story arc here if we managed to pull it off yeah that's the sell yeah and like it's a bit different when it's like young millionaire yeah exactly but i still to this day i think you know a great story arc is also an opportunity to give someone a rite of passage to give someone meaning in their life which for me is and for us people of a certain mindset is like more of a powerful sell then we'll pay you a bunch of money and this and this and this and this it's like usually when people are doing like big things there's a lot of sponsors behind them yeah nothing yeah we started nothing so um yeah i had 10 grand in my bank and we were going to run out of money within 28 days if i didn't get a sponsor and then 16 days in i got a message from steven bartlett who was like love what you're doing let me know how i can help i was like fucking yeah that's a good one i was like come on um so yeah then he all came on board perfect tech came on board and then we were sort of like looked after after that was your what was the other one perfect ted like energy drinks okay yeah um they do match energy drinks yes like they came on and then yeah because i remember you when you it was in the early days the you know how instagram sometimes suggests yeah i think some of the people who i follow they were liking your stuff yeah and you were like day four day five yeah yeah of running the entire length of africa i was like what yeah like no way and you were just like yeah just the way you were just you just talking to the camera yeah it was like it was nothing fancy it was just like right i'm doing it this is the update for today yeah kind of thing yeah a great way of doing it yeah i mean yeah i remember um like someone said to us like that because i i was doing these day little update videos and some i think it was zach one of my mates said to me like start posting them as an instagram reel it start doing really well and then that's like basically what built the whole traction for the project it's just me like we had all these cameras and everything filming documentary it's just me with a fuck go fucking hell boys like yes we're out in south africa like day four let's go baby you know um at what point did it start to get really hard on that what filming and content just like everything where you were like oh what the fuck have i done why have i done this i think you know those moments come every so often like fairly frequently the first one was probably when I got pretty bad food poisoning oh was that the plastic bag omelette oh that was another time I got food poisoning a lot bro the first time I got food poisoning I'm not actually sure what it was but I ended up I was vomiting for about three days couldn't eat anything but I decided to carry on running marathons because I was like you know still in this no rest days let's go and then I ended up pissing blood for about five or six days after that it was pretty bad this would happen like every month for planning it was just different gravy out there like you know i was just eating stuff on the side of a plastic bag omelets we ate monkey in a restaurant in cameroon got served that ate snake ate worms honestly just i love africa for so many reasons but food ain't one god yeah just because you can't exactly go around with like an unlimited amount of food can you you got like nah you know we had yule that did help it helped a lot about two months into the project day came and sorted us out a bunch of stuff which really did help but obviously i'm still eating stuff off the side of the road i can't eat 5 000 calories of fuel a day is that what you were trying to hit about five six thousand yeah sometimes more i mean i wasn't happening but yeah i was trying to yeah because then you cut it's not like you can be selective you gotta just eat anything yeah i can't i literally cannot imagine how bad that must be because whenever i get food poisoning or you know you've eaten something dodgy and it's just wiped out your energy or you've got like those cramps where it feels like stabbing you yeah yeah your insides for you to just be like yeah gotta carry on yeah so you you wake up that's all happening you've probably barely slept I've been shitting myself all night or something and then it's like cool I gotta go and stare at that like 35 degree sun all day in the time and just like just you know those are a headphone That's a music on day.

50:40I'll tell you that. That's a music on day because it's like, nah, bro. You're pretty burnt as well. Yeah. Oh, man, I was pretty good with the Factor 50. I'm getting burnt more in the UK than I was. Really? Yeah. Yeah, because that was probably about a month in and I was like, it's time to stop playing around with this sun business. Yeah, I'm a ginger boy in Africa. Like, let's get that Factor 50 dialed up all the way, you know. So, yeah, yeah. I mean, it was a mad trip. Like, so many things went wrong throughout the whole thing. but that's kind of what makes it you know yeah well it's good job you documented everything yeah i mean yeah things things like that it's never gonna i remember seeing the the the part which i thought was going to ruin it all where you weren't getting lends algeria where they're just like no you can't come yeah yeah i mean didn't elon musk get involved musk tweeted yeah we had like loads of people support there was like uh British MPs were helping.

51:34Alistair Campbell emailed to help out as well. So people really rallied behind it. And, you know, that whole project was basically a bunch of perfect storms because it was like, I wouldn't have been able to get into Algeria without like a following online that would push that message so far that it ended up landing on the president of Algeria's desk. So it's like that in order for that to happen, And all of this content that we've made before and has to get seen. So that was a perfect storm in terms of like, we managed to get it seen and we were getting robbed at gunpoint. You know, we robbed a gunpoint.

52:12We lost a load of stuff. I was about to run out of money and it's like, then Stephen Bartlett messages and then, and then I signed a book deal. But so it's like all of these things just happening in time. Yeah. It, it was like, it was a total man. You signed a book deal whilst you were doing it. I signed a book deal whilst I was out there after I was held hostage in the jungle so that we could buy a four by four. so that this foot we had a vehicle that could go down mud mud paths so it's like all of these things were just you know just in time happening what was an hostage thing oh congo tough gig that congo um don't know do you know much about congo wild yeah it's pretty wild um yeah i mean what just like a group of guys came up to you and they were like you need to give us this uh well essentially i was like picked up on a motorbike and driven seven hours into the jungle um it was a bit of a miscon with all of my team and me and they couldn't get to me because of all these mud paths and we were in a minibus but yeah I ended up on this motorbike driven seven hours.

53:10Do they know what you were doing? Like who you were? No. No I don't think so anyway. Yeah I ended up in this village. You think you were going to die? Yeah I thought it was games for me. I was sending my prayers off. I was like shit sahanara, c 'est la vie. I've tried my best. But yeah I ended up in this village and then it was pretty scary to be fair and stayed the night, stayed a couple nights in this little shed thing with this fine mattress and there's like rats rolling around and I was really thirsty, really hungry. It was like, I was the first white guy in this village for 10 years. So like, it was quite an experience, man.

53:49But then eventually the boys managed to, after a lot of, you know, they got... Could you even figure out what it is they wanted from you? it's all these things get smoothed over with money in the end you know yeah so what do they want dollars uh yeah dollars yeah they're not they ain't speaking much english probably no no no barely any but and that is part of my fault is that i didn't learn any other language could learn french would have helped a lot but i didn't and they're speaking dingala mostly out there yeah but yeah I mean live to tell the tell so happy days is there any country that you would like to go back to or are you kind of done no I've gone back I've gone back to went back to Western Sahara which the Sahrawi people have a refugee camp in Algeria got really good connections there they're some of the most hospitable nice friendly people that I've ever met so I'll go back there I went back this year I'll go back next year I'll go back every year really there Tanzania I went back to Tanzania last year there's so many countries that I loved there and most of the experiences were unbelievable really friendly chatty people very hospitable Ghana I had a great time in Mauritania, Algeria South Africa is obviously beautiful Namibia Angola was good as well there's loads of good ones in there what was that feeling like when you've when you've actually achieved it because that must be the highest of the highs yeah yeah i guess it

55:30it's like um but it's really hard for me to put into words to be honest but like running over so i remember running over that hill in tunisia i could see the Mediterranean and obviously I've been running towards this thing for 352 days now and I've got about 400 people something running with me and I see I look at the sea and I just think of like everything that I've gone through and the people that love me around me that have gone through to get here and it's like the deepest level of fulfillment because it's like we did it all baby you know everything that came knocking head by straight through that motherfucker and it's um yeah it was special man it was one of them things where for for me to experience that one time in my life i was like you know huge blessing um do you ever feel like you want to have that experience again like that sensation because i know some people you know if they are i don't know if they're performers or singers you know they're on stage and like the whole you know audience is like just loving them and they're getting this high the same with people who play sports and whatever when they have to retire they miss that that feeling yeah i get for for me because it's not like that you know i was running with a bunch of people but it's not like there was a stadium full of people they'd like cheering me or anything like for me that a moment like that it only felt so good to me because I because it was earned like you can't fake them kind of moments you you you they only feel good because you you grafted your absolute bollocks for it yeah and um I wouldn't really want it unless I was unless I put that same level of effort in again or more yeah uh but also again with you know you talk about like a story up like at the start of that project I was skinned I I was sleeping in mates' spare rooms, on sofas and things like this.

57:42Yeah, totally skint, couldn't pull. No one knew who I was. No one knew me for running, nothing like this. And I just sold a few boys a dream that were like to help me do it. And we built this whole thing and then we raised a million pounds for charity. I was the first person to run late for Africa. All of this stuff happened. And it's like... You completely transformed your life in like a year. Yeah, yeah. and it's like now you know I wore Grand Tesco and don't even have to look at prices when I pick up a sandwich like get in um so whatever happens in my life from here on out I'm like it would have to be a one hell of a leap for there to be another story arc yeah that was as momentous as that yeah so yeah I'm kind of kind of like maybe that was the one that maybe that was that moment in my life and I'll always there'll always be that part of my brain that's striving for a bit more and you You know, I'll always try and do stuff, but maybe that was the biggest kind of leap forward that I'll make.

58:39Because recently you did New Zealand, didn't you? Yeah. Yeah. What was that like in comparison? Oh, like so much nicer, easier, you know, comfort. We were with the tourism board out there. We're staying in hotels all the time. We've got a really nice souped up camper van. You know, I'm never getting gun pointed or robbed out there. It was, you know. Visually as well. It was beautiful experience, beautiful country, lovely people um obviously nowhere near the the challenge that africa is yeah um but yeah still a great time great time out there well i even i was even thinking like how do you even do something more challenging to them running after like what is that i don't even know if there is anything for me and would you would you want to well this is this is the other thing so the last the last big project that i've really that's that's been in my head for a long time is pole to pole so you start the south pole you run to the edge of the peninsula in in antarctica then you swim drake's passage about 500 miles to get to the most southern tip of south america run through the patagonia desert through the andes mountain range through the amazon rainforest through darien's gap like that cartel controlled bit in columbia all through central america through Mexico, USA, Canada and then it freezes over in the winter so you can run straight to the North Pole.

1:00:01So that's the last one that I've looked at, right? It's two or three years minimum if nothing really goes wrong. Cost a few million quid probably. What's the most expensive part of that? The poles. The poles are just super expensive. Getting to the poles, managing that whole process. Because you would either start or finish on Antarctica. yeah yeah which is very difficult to get to super difficult yeah it costs a bunch of money yeah no one's really there so that would just cost a fortune two or three years and um and to be honest more than any more than all of that i just have to assess whether i have the desire yeah because when i started africa it was run africa diatrina i fucking meant it right and if i was going to do pulse power i'd have to really mean that as well and right now if I'm honest with myself I don't want it like run to the North Pole or die trying, I don't want it that bad maybe I will at some point because I'm still only just over a year out from Africa, I'm still a bit fatigued it's like sometimes you've just got to you know let life flow for a bit before you really build up that grit and maybe it'll come but maybe it won't and if it does then I'll do it and if it doesn't then I won't You think you'll be alright with the swimming part?

1:01:21probably figure it out if I if I wanted that bad like Drake's passage is like really yeah sketchy as yeah it's like the most dangerous part of seeing the world yeah no one's ever swam it it'd be well dangerous so I don't know is the honest answer but if I if I've got the level of desire that I started Africa with or more then I'm then I think I could figure it out yeah that would be that would be huge yeah yeah But yeah, as you said, like, have you got a partner right now? Have you got a missus? Nah. Nah. Yeah, because I was imagining it probably wouldn't be too good for your relationship if you had a relationship doing that.

1:01:59Yeah, it's tricky, yeah, with all this bit. Well, I mean, I did have for a long time. She's really nice, like, great girl, obviously, but, you know, it's tricky with these things. Do you have a missus now? No. Nah. Have you had, like, relationships and things? Oh, I've had my fair share, yeah. Yeah. But it is, that's a difficult one. Yeah. you know if you really want to go all in on something if it's a a challenge or a goal or if it's a career like i think sometimes things have to give yeah especially if your life is a mess like if you can't even look after yourself how do you think you can kind of look after a partner and be there for your partner i think if if you really need do need to sort yourself out just be like right okay right now is not a good time for me to be in a relationship yeah because i know you if you obviously women are different but you have to dedicate a certain amount of time and attention to your partner 100 some more than others yeah and it is a lot of time which can be put towards you just sorting your shit out like i've gone through my phases i remember when i i'd left everything behind when i was a i had a gym in newcastle i was coaching all my clients in newcastle i moved to london yeah i was like i need to start from from fresh i had like no i had like a ehp lab sponsor a thousand dollars a month and i was like i need to start making money because otherwise you know i'm gonna get kicked out my apartment and um you know taking a step backwards is always pretty it was embarrassing for me yeah yeah so i just locked myself away and just that was when i just went all in on youtube and um you know a year so how old were you then it's 26 26 yeah but i'd i was filming and editing everything myself really yeah i guess i'd i didn't need to but there was it was like i needed to do it my way yeah yeah and then you know after a year or two of putting the graft in then i started yeah and then then you know you can have time for the relationship or whatever but it is even now uh and i was speaking to you know my friend chris williamson about this it's like would he have been able to achieve all the things that he's achieved with his podcast if he had been in a relationship before if he'd had kids probably not because he can devote and put everything into this mission that he's on and it's the same thing with me i still feel like there's certain would i be able to travel as much as i travel would i be able to like collaborate with all the people i'm collaborating with like i go do all these like fun videos with girls and stuff yeah when i was in a relationship there was a lot of things i said no to because i knew i would get an earful yeah yeah but you know me doing a training video or maybe even a podcast or just hanging out with a hot girl yeah like even though it's work i know there's gonna be some i get like the trade-off though i guess is like at some point in your life do you want a family and kids yeah you do yeah and i do as well like i really want to have that i think like there's nothing more in my life there's nothing i could achieve career-wise that would top that i don't think yeah but there's at some point you've got you've got i've seen what it's like you know my brother's just had a kid yeah and i've been observing that like how your life changes and how you know you you do have to be there i know some parents or like the fathers for example if they're very busy you know sometimes they just go they kind of just carry on living their life and going to work and they have like the nannies you know helping out at home but i don't want to be an absent father so i want to be in a position where the systems are in place where i have i have time to kind of be there and not be super stressed out like oh yeah i need to be at work doing this matt does fitness i think is great role model oh yeah i've seen he's got a bunch of kids right he's got two two little boys yeah yeah it'd be interesting to chat to him see how he kind of like manages all that yeah he still looks pretty busy yeah he's kind of built this like dream home yeah he's got his gym there got swimming pool there by the coast he can work from home so he's the kids are there he lives very close to his family so the family come around and help out but like just good role model i think there's like there is a lack of good role models particularly of people who've had kids there's a lot of a lot of guys or women you know they get divorced and then they just go off and like act like they're young and single again it's like you know even i've been out and about at parties and you know i bump into a girl and i know she's got some kids i'm like like i understand like you got to go out and have fun every so often but she'd be out a lot i wouldn't want to be out going to nightclubs if i got free kids at home i don't think that's i wouldn't want to do that no i mean yeah i think you know when that time rolls around for me i'd like to be like you present present dad but i guess it's just working out like because there's also a bunch of other responsibilities that come with being a dad like you got for me i'm thinking i gotta be able to like provide certain things so it's like kind of got to get my career in order and steady for a while before i start just yeah i was tired i was speaking to james smith about this because like we were talking about money and how like we've done all right and then the the moment he's got a partner and he's obviously he's had a kid yeah you start thinking differently because you're like oh hang on now i'm not just looking out for me you know you you know expenses go up they go up massively yeah yeah because now you're looking at houses yeah now you're looking at you know feeding another two mouths yeah there's all these we start looking at schools now you want to travel yeah yeah it was all right you fly in business class but now you've got like three people to fly business class or whatever so like that's one thing i've noticed like yeah i want to continue to have my lifestyle but i want everyone to be enjoying it as well yeah and i i've got a nice little bachelor pad little eagle's nest in dubai which is like great for me two bedroom live by myself yeah i don't really need i don't need a villa yeah it would be a waste but you know if i if there is a partner if there's there's kids that place ain't big enough yeah so how have you um this might be a personal question but like how have you negotiated like compromising your relationships before because obviously you got i think you have to be upfront to begin with and be like hey this is my life this is what i do yeah so do you want to come along and you know be a part of that or contribute help a little bit um and most of the time you know they get it there's there's obviously there will like i've come to the realization there is never going to be this perfect relationship where you never get any headache yeah yeah there's always it's usually a sign that they care yeah like if they are giving you a bit of uh headache or there's an argument it's because they really like you yeah and they're just a bit worried and they need reassurance that everything's going to be okay and that you you know you're not cheating you love them yeah um but yeah i think i do i've also realized that there's certain things with my life i would need to change to be a better partner for sure yeah yeah but what have you have you just not found someone you're willing to make those compromise or compromises for you're just not i have i've met some great people but yeah i've honestly i think so far i feel like i've been generally happier just being single yeah that the especially when i if i really like someone i don't like it because i'm vulnerable yeah and i don't like that it sucks to get hurt yeah and i don't like as much as it's a great feeling to really like someone because you get those feelings of butterflies and everything and you're like in la la land yeah yeah but like yeah when the hot when when the when the good times are good life is really good you're on cloud nine but when things are bad you have an argument or you know things aren't going well it's like it's bad like i hate that that feeling yeah so there's like very uh very highs highs lows lows but when you're single it's like more stable and i prefer this stability to be honest and i i also don't like being the person who is responsible for making somebody else unhappy yeah you know what i mean like if my me living my lifestyle is causing you to be unhappy because this happened before where someone was like been really into me or they'd been in love with me yeah i'm just living my life doing my thing and then they just want more of me they want to be with me more they're annoyed that i'm not communicating with them as much and then it kills them because that all they want to they want to be with me and i'm like well i'm doing my thing i can't be with you all the time yeah yeah and then they're upset and then i'm upset because they're upset i'm like look well probably i'm not the right person for you to be with yeah so it's uh it is weird because i'm like i will be turning 35 and i'm like i should you know i should be having kids soon but i also realize at this point in my life right now is quite a unique point in my life which is not going to last forever yeah so i'm really just trying to bask in it and be like hey i know i'm gonna look back at this point in time and be like that was sick this was a very good point in time so fucking enjoy it because it's gonna change so i'm at that that point right now nice man but the thing is you'll always when you least suspect it someone will come into your life and completely like shifting like this happened last year i met someone i was like oh fuck like i caught feelings i was like damn i wasn't expecting that yeah but it's just it's this life yeah I'll make relationships are a tricky one eh yeah you staying single for the foreseeable I would expect so yeah but you know you never say never um but yeah I'd imagine so yeah um I've got a lot of work on for the next few months I'll be starting an adventure company and um yeah I think I'm just gonna have a season of being selfish which was my time and and just all guns blazing get back on training properly again what's what's this business venture venture oh so we're um it's called hardest adventures we're starting an venture company we did we actually did the first one uh this year we just took a bunch of people to kiloband drive for free but we're going to be free yeah yeah we took a bunch of people free uh make content and stuff out of it um so we're going to be running a bunch of free tours throughout the year and then we're going to be setting up like paid for charity charity fundraising tours corporate ones take people all over the world on pretty life-changing adventures i think it's one of them like because i've done my africa one and that was like you know whether i'll ever be able to top that is and is up for debate but what i love doing is taking people on like their adventures and seeing that kind of that story arc in them that development and then chucking them in a situation where they're like oh don't know and then they and then they push through and they do it so i'll get buzzed off like that energy so people pay good money for that i think yeah especially i've found a lot of people who have been very successful and made a lot of money and they've accumulated a lot they're like oh this is this is worthless like i want to i want to pay for the experiences yeah they quite like to push themselves yeah so they're probably you know they pay good money for like imagine how many people would pay to go and do some mad stuff with Goggins yeah yeah yeah like so I think that's and especially now like you have you built the brand you built the following yeah like there's a lot of different things that you can now do yeah no it's just trying to narrow down it's like what what do I want to do yeah I mean because there's so many that like I'm actually saying there's so many options but it's like in a lot of ways all of these options it's like it can make it harder to go just like tune into but actually what do I want?

1:14:06So I've been like, I think the adventure stuff's like, no, I do want that. So you like to see the look on other people's faces when they go? Well, I like to see someone that's like, maybe there's something in them and the adventure or the challenge that we take them on is like a vehicle for them realizing who they are or realizing the potential within themselves and like seeing that development happen within them and like you know the climbing the mountain or whatever that's just that's just our little way of showing that person that you're capable way more than you ever thought because i do generally i do believe that when i see people i'm like people are nine times out of ten way more capable than they actually think they are i know it's like a really cringe thing that everyone says yeah but sometimes it's just unlocking that kind of vision within their own brain that they can that they have that view of themselves yeah and i think these challenges and adventures and stuff is like a really good way of yeah of getting that yeah i think definitely it's like especially today as the world gets more comfortable if you're not doing hard things that's that's a problem a little soft jelly baby yeah yeah like i think it's only going that way as well you know even even for me like i'm in a pretty comfortable position where i am in dubai and i'm not really doing things which are challenging me or making me uncomfortable and i notice whenever i do do these things maybe just like little things like for me it would be doing like a high rocks thing or doing a long distance run something i wouldn't really enjoy yeah but when after you do something hard you just have this confidence in yourself knowing okay well i've done that and i thought i wouldn't be able to do it and now i feel like okay well i'll go do this thing as well yeah yeah it's like a positive spiral in it yeah it goes keeps going keeps going keeps going no i'm a big believer and like i've probably last year since africa i've been like i've really slacked in so many ways been like really fucking soft on myself it's been like oh no russ life goes so hard you can take it easy you take it easy to and that that also goes into a negative spiral downwards as well because it's like you let yourself off here you let yourself off there your word means nothing there doesn't mean anything there yeah you just that is a never-ending pit of bullshit um so like yeah it's been good even for me to like get back into this mindset of like reminding myself who i am yeah yeah but but how do how do you do something that would be hard for you after doing something like that now oh there's so many things one of the you know one of the simplest things that i do like basically every day uh i've been doing at the moment which is like a nice little daily reminder that you can still go and get it is uh just intermittent fasting just 20 hours or 18 hours a day just because that means like at some point throughout the day i'll be hungry and i'll have to say no yeah so it's like i've got the power to eat but i'm saying no because i know it's good for me yeah and that's just like discipline and it's building that is just like yeah you can do something you say no yeah so that's like quite a nice little easy one for me to just get that ticked and then it just builds in my head it's like no remember us you're fucking yeah you're gangster bro come yeah you have to be quite specific with it don't you have to be like okay i can't eat anything until this yeah instead of you being like oh i'm gonna be healthier yeah it's too vague yeah you need to have like a a specific thing or goal and then just do that thing like if you were going to say like okay i'm not allowed to have any like processed or refined sugars yeah i can only eat these set of foods that's like more specific instead of being like i'm just gonna be more healthy yeah no yeah it's gotta be yeah that's like any goal it's gotta be specific right like for me it's like my brain just loves having that kind of that little mini goal of like you can't eat till 3pm you can't eat till 5pm and then it's like right whatever I'm doing I'm not eating till 5pm done set not happening yeah well the problem is for you as well because if you have been doing all that running and you're used to consuming like 5000 calories yeah yeah you caught me out big time because I just like love eating food and in Africa I'm scranning all the time no problem still just dropping weight like nothing come back and I'm just like yeah sweet scranning loads of food did you actually gain like yeah loads man I got up to like 85kg of like like mostly just body fat.

1:18:38Yeah. And then even now I'm still trying to slim down. I need to cut down a bit more. But yeah, I was like, this is quite out of hand now. You know, I've actually let it go a bit. So yeah, but these things happen. Have you had times where you've like blown up a bit or? Yeah, yeah. You have, yeah. Yeah. And it tends to be, I think there was one time, this was when I'd actually, I'd moved to London and I was just completely focused on work. Yeah. But then I sacrificed my social life. And because I was unhappy with just my life in general because it was so mundane and repetitive, there were so many things missing that I would look to food for that sort of pleasure.

1:19:19Yeah. Like even though I was earning more money than I'd ever earned, like things were going well with my career, my social life was terrible, relationship like non-existent and just didn't really have any friends. Haribo's on the way out. Yeah. so i would just like i would always get like a domino's pizza that's my crocs man i would get like the cookies as well like cheesy garlic bread man just order like these big bags of fries from like somewhere else yeah and then i would just sit there like once i do my work eat myself into a coma and then just pass out yeah and then be like oh i'll wake you in the morning but i can't do that again yeah i'd have a healthy morning yeah and the same thing would happen again in the evening and then uh yeah i realized that was happening because there was things in my life that were missing and i was not getting that enjoyment and satisfaction elsewhere like the moment i started traveling and meeting people spending more time in the sun yeah i was like oh i'm not craving these things anymore yeah interesting how it's like it's all that it's all so complex all linked together and it can some people have it with like work if they're if they're stressed with work their go-to thing is like food and as well sleep is a massive one like if you're underslept you'll make terrible food choices yeah like the best thing to do if you're underslept is just try crack on with the day just go to bed as early as possible if you try stay up in the evening you'll just eat a load of garbage you just not like i do that as well if I'm if I've had to get an early flight or I just usually I don't like waking up early especially if I've gone to bed late so if I'm sleep deprived the day is tough yeah it's really tough yeah man I'm terrible I'm like caffeine now these days it's just terrible things though can't even that's I like the coffee as well I'm a bit of caffeine addict but yeah I just don't like being too reliant on anything yeah but if I don't have caffeine I'm in a world of trouble mate yeah yeah what is it like what you're doing now um for your runs and your cardio just go around Hyde Park uh yeah uh Victoria Park around a quarter from me um so I'm out there pretty much every day in the summer it's lovely mate yeah honestly I love it it's the winter those winter months I find really tough in the UK but um yeah man I'll be back on the training pretty pretty religiously um my body's pretty pretty recovered from New Zealand so back on it and then we'll see what's on the horizon.

1:21:52Yeah. Is it worth something? Will's in town as well. He should do a run with him. Oh, I need to see Guji. I haven't seen him in so long. Yeah. But I want to hear about his Australian. Are you getting him on the pod? He's already been on. Oh, is he? Yeah. Oh, sick. It was a good one. I think it was, I can't remember if it was earlier this year. He's a champ as well. He just rolled, he'd had an overnight flight, not slept, and just showed up in the morning. Did the podcast No Sleep. I was like, bro, if I tried to do a podcast No Sleep, it'd be a disaster. Yeah, yeah, yeah, same. so he's an absolute trooper sick but yeah I appreciate talking to you thank you for no worries man thanks for having me on and yeah anything happening the rest of this year or are you just getting back to the training everything yeah back to the training we'll have this Highest Adventure stuff all kicking off and then there will be stuff happening but we'll wait and see what's around the corner and your book is out say again your book is out oh yeah my book is yeah my book is out Mind Over Moss you can go get it on Amazon or anywhere nice awesome man sick thank you you