Social Media Genius: The Content Strategy To Make People Pay Attention in 2026 | James Smith, Neutonic

35:28And then as you say, if they hop onto that clip and then, you know, I got on the train up here today, like I was fucking all over the shop. One minute I was on Slack and I tried to read a book. Like it was just a cataclysmic ADHD fuck fest. I mean, it was all over the shop.

35:41James Smith:So then if I leave a video to just simmer, it will get less views in the onset, but it's not the same algorithm where we want to get loads of views really fast. We want the people that click and watch that video to be your best fans that are going to sit through it. You want people that maybe in three days' time are going to download it for a flight. You want people that are in the right viewing mindset to do it. Also, when people are browsing on YouTube, the duration of the video is a part in their determination to whether they click or not. If you give them the link and they go straight to the video and then see the video is too long and leave, you're just destroying your own score on that.

36:17James Smith:so it's one of those things where we just don't want to send a subprime audience to it and sometimes it takes and again let's say you're sending people from instagram they could be the wrong people for that so if you just leave that video to simmer youtube will go okay cool these people from these backgrounds are enjoying it and watching it more let's show it to more people like those where it goes these people are actually coming maybe men start watching it and leave straight away but women come and they're really interested because it could be a video on menopause then over time YouTube's going to go cool.

36:45James Smith:Women that are between 40 and 55 seem to be staying longer. Let's show it to more women between 40 and 55. If you just spam people to go towards a video, sometimes you can get people that aren't right for it. And that's going to make it incredibly difficult for YouTube to find the right people for it, which is what they want to do. YouTube wants your video to get a billion views, but the only thing stopping it is the quality level of that video. Because YouTube sharing the monetization with you for every dollar you make, they're making a dollar. so it's in the real good mindset shift to me was every social media platform wants everyone to watch your video but you have to not only make it good enough you have to package it well enough and sometimes that velocity i'll leave a video a week or two sometimes before checking in on its performance so you so it's almost the again right at the beginning of the conversation we said that attention bit and that's how you package it with a thumbnail then i suppose when we're getting more in terms of getting people to the main episode you're having that link that 10 minute clip clip whatever the fire clip you're using many chat to then send that to people because it and you're almost saying look listen to this when you're ready i.e not fucking around on a train they listen to that they're hooked and then that that that will lead them to the full episode imagine um who would you say is one of the most influential people that you're rory sutherland yeah you had a mom right yeah like four times he's coming on again in two weeks i love that guy yeah he's a fucking i was showing my mom and dad him last night yeah he's amazing they're like oh what's this podcast tomorrow I was like mum dad Rory Sutherland's been on it who's that I'm like I'll fucking show you it is so for instance Chris will take the clips of him saying why you want an air fryer wife and in that one minute because I would before I know who Rory Sutherland is I never watched that and actually it was the short that introduced me to Rory it was a 10 minute video that made me go fuck me this guy knows his shit and also made me realise there's a lot of value I can get from that the moment the full episode comes out I'm in but if Chris had just released with you it's so interesting we had a clip go out of um him saying because i've got i've got an irish brand that i used to do a bit of work with and they said there was no uh curry houses in ireland in dublin and i basically said that to rory and he was like oh no no i found one in uh in like in the in the west uh key like or something and he goes and funnily enough all they did was potatoes and the amount of beef i got on there been like you brits like one we don't call them curry houses we call them indian restaurants and there's fucking no it's in dublin but it's absolutely gone ballistic because it's quite controversial but he's just sat there he's he's i think he's he's an absolute um he's an absolute genius how did you and one thing again in your book you talk a lot about um uh in the conference book at least about daniel kahneman who rory's obsessed with um who's like sort of the founding father of behavioral economics i think one of my obsessions is um is kind of creative partnerships and i think he had the guy it was amos toversky who was his the guy he wrote that book with but then amos died and then daniel cardamon won the um was it the noble peace prize but he he'd already died and there was there was a huge amounts of conflict and tension in that i didn't know that yeah yeah yeah so so there there was a guy called amos basically who was doing it they were like a partnership and they came up with all these kind of biases and stuff uh he almost died daniel devoted the uh noble peace prize i think or noble prize to him but there was this tension same again back to the beatles mccarthy lennon you know there's there's constant tension in these partnerships i'd love to get into this uh with you and chris like how how i think the first place to start is how is your sort of curiosity the texture of your curiosity like different and then how when you I know you talked about order and chaos how does it kind of rub up against each other, do you know what I mean?

40:34James Smith:So it's like Luke is the gatekeeper between us my manager Yeah, he's there on one side and he will just keep the oil between the cogs, let's say because it's not that Chris and I don't get on we get on very well, but sometimes we will definitely see things differently and Chris might be really interested in the detail and I'm like, this isn't the most important part, but to him it is. And to me, it's the creative or the framing or how we talk in content. So for instance, the other day, the team said, right, I'm coming into London. I said, let's give out new tonics. Bring 300 cans and we give them out at King's Cross.

41:15James Smith:And they were like, okay, maybe we could do this, this, this. I was like, no, just keep the camera rolling. I'm just gonna give out 300 cans. Then we went through to do a two hour TikTok live shop, TikTok shop live. and they're like okay maybe we could do this do this I was like no we'll just go with it I said let me see the comments and we'll have fun for two hours and they said this is so much different to working with Chris with Chris it's where we are at this time what we're doing what we're saying we need it scripted we need a teleprompter let's do this let's do this and it works very well for him but to me that just seems too organized I want to go have fun with people we set up shop outside a coffee shop and as people are going in I'm like oh you don't want that have a can of this and I much prefer the off the cuff natural stuff same way that Chris I believe goes into his podcasts premeditated with what clips he's going to get from it so really I think every single clip you have is on his iPad so I believe the strategist will go I think this title will do well to get this title to perform we need to ask this question that's mad yeah yeah yeah super strategised whereas me I'll do a podcast with my mates and randomly on the way to the podcast buy like a really hot chip and be like oh who's who's eating this then and you know like dying from the hot chip to me that's entertainment whereas to chris it might be really asking a very intricate question but where we align so much is we're two british guys i hate the term like self-made but chris had a podcast no one listened to for years i had a fitness social media account that barely anyone paid attention to for years it took me four years to get to 10k another four years to a million and both of what we did was very much the same Chris came to my events I've been on his podcast since 2018 and we both kind of emerged through our own means so we're both right in our own respects bringing those together uh it's been very fun at the same time but I wouldn't I wouldn't even say challenging I quite like it where I've had I've actually been the decision maker in everything that I've done so far and actually it gets to the point where I say to Chris the reason I'm not active in the Slack is I'm going to give you creative control over this because you're better than me at this.

43:25James Smith:So where it is between the research-backed dash, I'm not commenting because I know you know the right answer. And then when it comes to creatives, or actually, interestingly enough, a lot of the stuff I was doing for the brand was using chatbots. And for chatbots, at the time, I don't think you can now, you can't collab posts. So you choose either to collab the post or to have the automation. You can't have both. so maybe five newtonic posts in a row were all on my own page not collabed so luke messages me screenshots the home page and goes this looks very much like chris's drink i can't see your face here and i knew that was passive aggressive so as he goes to sleep i'm like right you fucking wanker so i go i go there to the gym and we create this creative where um i pull up in my car and i bought an audi r6 which i love best car in the world i don't know if you're into cars that much but that was the hook and I said I start my day pretty much the same day by getting caffeine in whether it's a cup of coffee a can of white monster or a new tonic and the scenes were pulling up the car me taking out the new tonic me taking out the coffee me taking out the white monster so this meant that I had to go to a pet station get the white monster go to a coffee shop get the coffee go to the gym get this I had to get in and out the car for every single shot with that then we had to drive around with me sipping each one of about 600 milligrams of caffeine this morning but I knew that that creative could be important, then there's another shot in it where I'm walking to the car then away from the car.

44:47James Smith:And I talk about mental health where actually, if I don't train in a day, I'm fine. If I don't eat well in the day, I'm fine. But if I'm not productive in a day, I'm fucking hell to be around. And I've come to realize that being productive on a day is probably the thing that's most sacred to me. So I made that point in the video. And I said, whether or not you have a coffee, this product or a white monster, you'll pretty much get the same benefits. But if you want to get this comment the word restart whatever and within 24 hours it's a million views and that was my way of being like you know fuck you to you guys yeah yeah but it was constructive yes then again chris was moaning at me for not using the slack so i made that a video i said hey guys please buy this drink so chris williamson will stop abusing me for not reading the slap messages and then people in the comments are classic classic chris we're almost creating beef between us because then it looks good as well on the front end so having two founders that are at each other can also potentially benefit the brand but if i presented that to chris and go let's fall out he'd be like why whereas if i said that to luke he goes brilliant you know beef and rappers yeah it's such it's like i had it's such an interest that's what i was trying to get to is that tension and and thanks for kind of detailing that because i think it is this in any you know formidable and forceful creative partnership there is just this this rubbing up against you know i think will still talks about this in the status game where he talks about how even though Lennon had, it was always Lennon, McCartney, and McCartney, and at every record label, even after John Lennon fucking died, Paul McCartney would try and make it McCartney-Lennon.

46:22You know, that just one word switching around, it just shows, even though he passed away, there's that creative sort of tension and ego in there. how does so you're kind of more the chaos and the uh kind of off the cuff creativity he's he's strategy how does uh living in you being in australia him in america because i think one of the things i think you guys have done really well between both of you you've kind of been like kind of you know the uk is just so fucking like quite like sardonic and just a bit like oh ambitions squelched here, right? I think you guys have really, kind of like the Anglo-Saxon high agency, you know, antidote, you've basically said, look, if you fucking put your mind to something, you can go and do whatever the fuck you want to do.

47:06Whereas obviously in America, ambition is like, go getters, go getters, go getters. Whereas I think here it's a bit like, you know, if people are trying to really be ambitious, it's the tall poppy syndrome thing. How has being in Australia versus the US, like how what's that tension like in terms of building a brand uh just the time differences

47:27James Smith:on the calls and to preface what we said before actually what's great is i still learn from chris although i go at him all the time so uh when we did our tour in america last year one night he just got smashed and let his hair down i'm pretty sure a guy in the toilets was like oh i like a podcast he was like cool just took the guy's vape and just went and i was like chris this is my kind of guys so i think i was helping chris relax his shoulders a bit but then recently i listened to a podcast i did two weeks ago and i said the word like way too many times so i've now reached out to chris's speech coach to start getting lessons to help me speak better chris doesn't um he doesn't uh yeah he doesn't say like and there is so much methodic detail behind the scenes that people don't and such as he has a speech coach i'm pretty sure he has someone that helps him protect his voice so if his voice is crackling from doing live events he gets given like a prescription of ginger honey all of these things he's very protective of his energy even we're in vegas i'm like bro strawberry daiquiri we're going out and then 7 p.m his airpods go in he's off to his room stays at home i feel like he's got the weight of his world on his shoulders just through how successful he is becoming which i think could be very difficult so although i quite like the banter between us and being slightly different i still need to take my hat off to him a lot of the times because the way he raises the bar with his intellect and approach to business is sometimes i'm like oh fuck this is impressive so as much as i love to poke holes in his approach at the same time i'm also you know when you rub alongside someone who's doing better than you i definitely feel that and especially when when i see some of the uh some of the numbers that he gets not only his downloads not only his views but some of the financial ones i'm like fair play mate so and you spent a lot of time in the states as well you did i think you did that was it a world tour yeah like i'd love to we've sort of talked about the the flavor of ambition in australia flavor of ambition in the in the uk if we then go on to the other side which is america where it's like let's fucking go baby you know what i mean like what's that like and i suppose the question is It's like, what has the world taught you about the sort of the different flavors of ambition around the globe?

49:42James Smith:So what's interesting with America, have you listened to the George Mack episode with Chris? They talk about how a British accent is a superpower that you can only use if you go to another country. So they don't realize how many British people have this superpower because they don't leave. But then I think that the UK and America pro rata have the same amount of smart, well-educated people coming out of universities. yet the UK produces five times less comedians and they have a theory that if you're a comedian in America you go hey I'm going to be a stand-up they're like man that's fucking great we're going to come to your show man you're doing in America you're doing in the UK they're like get a job mate you know get a fucking real job and George Mack has a theory that the funniest man in the UK is probably in a steelworks factory in Leeds whereas in America he's got his own show but then on the macro level we've all got very good crack in chat because of that Like, you know, one of the most hilarious people in the pubs and the cultures because the weather's so green.

50:35James Smith:He would have had his ambitions squished to the point that they go, don't waste your time being a comedian, just be funny at work. Yes. Where in America, they said, don't be funny at work, you can make something of yourself. And I have a feeling that, you know, say I'm on a train in New York and I'm drinking this, I'm like, hey man, it's a cool looking drink. Like, oh, it's mine. No way, man. Yes. What's it called? I don't drink them, but I'll fucking buy a case. That's what they're like. So much of even, I haven't got the biggest following in America, but the second you tell someone that you're being entrepreneurial they love that go get attitude because in the uk i think they have this kind of zero-sum attitude where if you're doing well it's because you're oppressing other people oh your business made a million pounds how many people were oppressed for you to do that whereas in america they go you've got a business you hire people you employ you pay your taxes god damn man that's that's what we need and there's there's definitely a culture issue in the uk with this where it doesn't mean you can't do great in the UK but certainly people are a lot less happy to see you do well and I think even a lot of maybe even the people that follow me are actually watching to see me fall off to see me you know fail at something see me get cancelled because tearing someone down makes you feel better I think that for a lot of people anyway especially those with maybe more fixed mindsets surrounding success and what it looks like there's a real bitter taste to and I think I think it has got a lot to do with the economy do you know what's crazy since interest rates went up comments have got worse.

51:57James Smith:It could be social media. I can't say this for sure. But when I look at it, I now genuinely see unhappy people. And it makes me sad, even if they're ripping into me, taking the piss out of my hairline, whatever it is. I look at it and I think, fuck, this is just a temperature test of unhappy people. And I think that maybe if our economy was doing better, would they be in a better mindset? Because if you take away someone's amount of pubs closing, nightclubs closing, the amount of people that didn't go on holiday couldn't afford a holiday all the people that's even just financially becoming worse off they're just becoming more cocooned in their home more into echo chambers algorithms are feeding them things they want to see and things they don't they're becoming bitter and resentful a lot of men probably more lonely than ever the dating market is only going to make things worse we have like this perfect recipe for very bitter people not to say they don't have the same problems in america but in the uk it's not like today you're not exactly gonna go for a walk and clear your head it's pissing it down with rain it's freezing and i even my parents have been gaslit september we got all the radiators on my missus from australia she's freezing i'm like it's september they're like so what i'm like i feel like there's someone i should be able to complain to i'm like ibiza still have closing parties for the next month we should not be here in coats and who can i complain to bloody labor government what are they done ruin the weather for us so like uh yeah it's it's one of those things that culturally here it's difficult it's a bit of a slog but it's still fun America as far as markets get into we've our sales are about 50-50 between America and USA at the moment and when we America and Australia sorry no America and UK for Nutonic we can't actually produce in Australia because where is it produced is it so we have factories in the UK and America so we have different how did you because yeah just before we go into that is did you have because that's a really smart move from people like you know dash water yeah that's like jack who's the founder that's my good good mate of mine and they've moved to australia but they've actually built a factory whereas most people try and ship it and it's fucked but who told you to do those two things was it so one of our partners is a company called gem flow yeah and gem flow help creators monetize through products with their supplements whatever so they have pre-existing relationships with the factories in both places which meant that once we had our formulation we could go to america find a good factory work with them that work with some of the biggest brands same in the uk the cans have got to be different in different territories we were hoping to launch in australia as well however the tga the therapeutics goods association are your dickheads so even theanine we have 400 milligrams in australia you're not allowed to have more than 250 so on one nootropic alone boom can't produce the drink there and the shipping is extortionate to get it in.

54:45James Smith:But then when you look at Australia, 27 million people, when you look at America's population, you think, hold on, we could just increase our sales by 10 % in America, and you're not going to lose sleep over Australia. We are going to look to diversify our offering to get into Australia. But America as a territory to get into, into crack, I think is going to be a priority because one, customers, two, culture, three, I also think that there are so many big carbonated, heavily caffeinated drinks for your gym bros, but there's still this massive culture of people editing, scripting, hustling, trying to get people's attention to go after.

55:21James Smith:And even just from a taste perspective, Chris brought a suitcase full of all our competitors' drinks. And the common theme was just how sweet they were. The first sip, you go, oh, that's really nice. But by the time you get to the end of the bottle, you're a bit sickly. We see that with prime hydration as well, right? Prime energy was actually pretty decent. A bit too carbonated, but it was actually a decent product. So where everyone's trying to follow the same footstep of 500 milliliters, 200 milligrams of caffeine, really sweet drinks. We wanted to create something actually that's a little bit more, moreish.

55:50James Smith:And I've been nailing probably two of these cans a day for six months. And I'll be honest with you, even it being my product, there was something in the back of my mind that goes, you're probably going to get sick of this after three months. What I do with every song I find on Spotify is I think I'm going to listen to this song forever. Then I listened to it nonstop for a week and then I hate it. And then I think, how did I used to love this song? I hate this song. But I've been almost abusing this and drinking it far too much. And I'm still not bored of it. And there comes days as well where I won't drink one for a day.

56:22James Smith:I'll probably wake up and for whatever reasons I have three or four coffees and I think I probably shouldn't chase that with a new tonic. And then the next day I'm salivating at having one. I'm actually, I sometimes look at this and forget it's mine. And I'm kind of really glad I'm a part of it. But I think that if we can establish ourselves a bit more in America and just grow that. I've said to the guys, Luke as well, he's a bit crazy in the sense that when we did the book tour, he sent me to Norwich to sign 45 books. It was like two hours there, two hours back. Considering the royalty is a pound a book.

56:54James Smith:He also got us a Viano. He said, I'll come with you. He goes, no one wants to go to Norwich. So I think the Viano was about 1800 quid for the day. We're only making 45 pound on royalties, but to him, what's the Viano? Like the Mercedes V-Class with the seats in. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. More so for him than me. I would have gone in anything. But so we go there, we spend£1 ,800 to sign£45 worth of books and come back. Because to him, he knows how important that is to go meet people, go to towns that people aren't usually there. But we're also the same guys that if we wanted to go to Venice Beach, if they said, James, we're going to send a pallet to Venice Beach, we need you to go give out 3 ,000 cans, I get the next flight.

57:31James Smith:I probably wouldn't even expense it to the business. Me and Luke would be like, let's do it. Let's go out there. let's go give cans to people because we know that out of all those people if one in ten end up drinking it forever or for the next however many months the acquisition of that customer would be so easy and it would look good we can do stuff on social similar to what we did in london we're actually at the point now whatever it takes for us to expand in those u.s territories we're happy to do yeah and having a product that's honestly i believe so good that when i give people a case all i tell them to is to drink it cold i'm not trying to sell them into it i actually I'm not like we've got four nootropics here it's like a brain supplement I'm not just fucking drinking mate you're like it's not one of those things that you know you need to convince people like Athletic Greens like this is good for you probiotics prebiotics loads of vitamins and minerals I'm not getting 20 % on every sale so yeah it's one of those things that I'm just excited to get it into places even when podcasts whatever we send way too much stock because I know it's going to find its way to videographers editors bar staff and I kind of know that we're going to intertwine into society and we're going to get repeat business from it.

58:34Yeah. How are you thinking about building this brand as separate from you and Chris? And I don't want to say the word personal brand, but like, yeah, your two brands in your content, Modern Wisdom and Utonic. Because I spoke to Libby who runs Piper and Piper basically buy brands. They buy brands once you hit a certain level, they buy it. they did Propacorn which is the popcorn brand uh they've done they've been what bike they've done fucking loads really interesting she basically said there's an issue with where the founder's identity becomes too attached to the brand that we can't but prime exactly so how do you how are you sort of seeing this as like right Chris does modern wisdom you do your um your content then how does this thing this this being which is what a brand eventually has to become exist without you there do you know is that something you're thinking about yeah i think

59:34James Smith:i i truly believe and i'm obviously going to say this because mine that there's like a certain r to this so with covid the r0 was above one so there's uh when you look at infectious disease they look at what is the rate in which it becomes so if you have an r0 of 1.1 i'm pretty sure for like every 10 people, sorry, for every one person that gets the disease, they spread it to 1.1 people, which means that it becomes infectious, infectious, infectious. And when you get an R0 beneath one, then the infectious disease starts to shrink. So it's like a really weird way to say that for every 10 customers that we acquire, I feel like they're going to infect even just maybe one or two of their friends.

1:00:13James Smith:And then that's just going to keep on going. I think that the the rates of infection between people say they buy a case their friends go oh what's this or that's on a shelf they go oh that looks interesting i think there's such a stickiness to it i think that there's such a chance that people will then become our advocates like brands like eight sleep eight sleep i can't shut up about it you know what it is yeah it's the ice not the cold temperature control yeah and i'm i promote it in every single podcast they don't even pay me i'm just obsessed so then people will see their friends having a white monster and they go no no no you need to have a little bit of this and what was amazing have you heard of a guy called dylan page he does the news on tiktok he's like a english guy or south african accent but he's got 11 or 12 million followers on tiktok seen him no i haven't seen him no let me uh show you let me show you a second you see his facial name and he messaged me on instagram and he goes no way oh where is it if i put in dylan he'll come up 12.9 million followers.

1:01:15James Smith:Seen this guy? No, I've never actually seen him, no. So have you guys seen this guy? So he pretty much does his own version of the news, but look at the views he gets. 50 million, 11 million. That's absolutely wild. He just overtook the Daily Mail. And whenever anything kicks off, he gets there before anyone else. And instead of being in a studio, he's just in his bedroom. He's like, Hezbollah have just had their things blown up. There's more news incoming. and he just presents the news but to younger generations who don't subscribe to BBC whatever he messages me he goes no way bro I've been drinking your drinks for two weeks I never knew it was you and Chris he said I was on Amazon it came up looked like the type of thing that I'm interested in I read the ingredients like the nootropics it's just up my street bought the cases it's been two weeks later I see you promoting it and now I've realized it's yours and that is exactly high agency, high functioning, young person, ambitious, sees a product, even just through the, similar to the packaging, the inquisitiveness, new tonic, a play on nootropics and tonic.

1:02:14James Smith:They see the eye, which was AI generated. We had so many different. what was the, what were the other sort of, on the cutting table that didn't sort of, the other versions of this? So none of them had eyes in and we were given a page of all different designs. Then there was one eye and Chris and I, and actually all of us went oh we like this can we show us some more designs there were some lazy some more this one was just a trippy ai generated eye and we looked at so many variations and we actually kept it to the very first one that came out again chris has been how far does the eye wrap around the can what is the sizing how does it look and it's almost like a mind control where they see it they're drawn into it they see productivity drinks so then similar to how your thumbnail gets people to read your title on youtube your title here people want the context cognizant rodilla rosea panics ginseng theanine caffeine to there's definitely a lot of work that needs to be done around the education space on nootropics but i think by 2034 they think it's going to be a four billion dollar industry nootropics alone so we think that the brand should have enough stickiness without the founders to do what it needs to do and there is some of that happening anyway i think as well with the landscape of i think that another trend i'm kind of seeing is influencer-based marketing is slowly dying and we're seeing this ugc content even you look at the format of tiktok shop rather than paying you know your mate from love island 10 grand to promote your drink normal people are doing it for four pound commission we don't pay that commission either tiktok are paying it to get people into their ecosystem so now you've got sally from down the road going oh my god i had one of these although although i do struggle to sometimes be sold to with that i saw one the other day of someone selling a coffee machine i was thinking oh i do need i do need i do need a new coffee machine and if the chinese communist party are going to be subsidizing 100 quid off i can buy one so i think the landscape for products in general is changing and to be honest i don't think i'm alone where i was necking six pills and a white monster when I was at my desk and for that to be offloaded for someone to put together a product for you I don't see the incessant need so you do see Logan Paul KSI having to be so fundamentally involved in all the promotion of their business I think that if we can get a certain cohort of people drinking this it could be one of those things that you just leave and it's evergreen it builds on its own and then our own campaigns would just be little bumps in the road that then similar to when you would post on YouTube, your views spike.

1:04:45James Smith:So when you release a new podcast, then you have trickles of people going back to world videos. So I would say that we will always, hopefully, be involved in the brand, but the brand should do a lot for us. It's so interesting. So Jamie Lang and Ed Williams have been on this podcast. Ed's Jamie's co-founder in Candy Kittens. Ed's been on a couple of times. And they were saying for about four years, they actually didn't even have Jamie's name on the brand for Candy Kittens. They wanted it, and you know Candy Kittens is absolutely flying here. They had it right at the beginning, then they kind of took Jamie off and then they've now brought him back in a little bit.

1:05:22But I think it is so interesting, as you say, in terms of letting, there's enough in that sort of early adopters of brand evangelists who are going to just do that treacle effect for you, that you can kind of give it some welly to begin with, ease off and then that's how you get the, get it growing and existing without you having to be so attached to it what do you think went because you know the prime sales absolutely bombed like what from the correct because i think that you know they talk about cpg and i also think there's this sort of creator package goods things happening now especially in the states from the creative creator perspective what where do you think they went wrong with prime

1:05:58James Smith:why did it bomb product it became a status item it was almost a luxury good not an actual genuine product. So what they were trying to do was create a hydration drink. And the problem behind that would have been electrolytes and hydration. Similarly to, we see the gap in the market being people taking nootropic supplements with an energy drink. I see the gap in the market that people don't particularly like having to take all the supplements. Or if you can reduce the supplement regimen that that person's taking and offload some of it to a drink, that's a solution that can remain permanent, semi-permanent, three, six months, whatever the customer lifetime value would be whereas with prime the real problem wasn't really addressed if it was a hydration beverage firstly the solution of sodium and potassium should have been the right way around so when we look at sweat when we sweat the main thing we lose is salt sodium we do also lose a substantial amount of potassium then the other electrolytes calcium and so forth are almost negligible the gatekeeper is magnesium but ultimately we need to replenish salt now glucose Glucose speeds up that absorption rate.

1:07:04James Smith:So when you look at things like Powerade, Leucozade, Prime were trying to virtue signal that they had a superior hydration product. But actually, sugar, glucose, is a very important part of rehydration. If you look at a saline drip, you're pretty much giving someone water, sugar, and salt. That's how you revive someone if you find them in the Sahara Desert. So even if they had 5, 10 grams of glucose, if they had said, hey, this actually hydrates you quicker, the fact they used coconut water and went heavy on potassium goes to show there was no real understanding of what rehydration and hydration beverages look like.

1:07:34James Smith:When you next drink Powerade or Gatorade, if you try and feel for the salt, you'll taste the salt. And they're actually optimized for people at the right times. You might play five a side and afterwards you're like, oh, I need a Powerade. I need a Gatorade. I need a Lucozade. But then even, I actually think the serious market are creating their own electrolytes through powders that are ready to go. You've got Liquid IV. Gatorade have got their own. You've got Momentus. You've got LMNT. You've got all of these companies already dominating in that space. And if you're going to require someone from a hydration standpoint, the sachets are going to be so much better to travel with, to work with.

1:08:09James Smith:You can also then have your, for instance, for jujitsu, I have a big Yeti, it's maybe 2.4 liters. I know that I need to fill it with water, put some ice cubes in. I put my 10 grams of creatine and I put my three scoops, 15 grams of electrolyte mix, done for the day. The company that I use acquired me as a customer and now that is going to be part of my routine forever. If I train jujitsu without my electrolytes, I can feel the difference. Prime, I never saw coming into someone's life and staying a routine part of their life. It's not something that was going to be on a subscription. The electrolyte balance was wrong.

1:08:40James Smith:The tastes were too intense. Some people like it. The demographic, again, was young kids, boys, who aren't really people that are going to buy into a subscription model. They're getting their parents to pay for it. There's going to be fatigue from the parents having to continue. Oh, you're not still drinking that, are you? Yeah, it's almost like it was more like, you know, kids at school, that school and you're like eight to 13, it's a craze. It's not even a trend. A craze is even more fickle than a trend. If you look at some of the other things that they've done, whether it was pumping crypto zoo, like different coins or whatever it is, a lot of these creators look for a pump and dump where they see a trend in the market.

1:09:14James Smith:I know that Logan's had a lot of shit over this crypto zoo thing where people lost millions and invested loads into it. Have you kept up with this? So during the NFT era, you did have the likes of Gary Vee and other people go, oh, NFTs are the future. And most people are like, no. I'm thinking fucking hell. It sounds like a fucking coin. Same with crypto. They were like manipulating crypto markets. They would have made their money and walked. And I think that when Prime came along, they said, hold on, this is almost like a physical coin that we can manipulate, we can pump, we can... Such an interesting point that, yeah.

1:09:45James Smith:It is. And even though it's flopped, those guys have cashed out millions. So even if I was to get Logan Paul and KSI here and go, no one's buying your drink, they'll go, oh, look at my bank account balance. You don't give a fuck. The money's already in the bank, probably already paid tax on it. They've already cleared it. you don't give a shit. You pump something up. The manufacturers, the bottle companies, the people that are left with the stock are probably thinking, oh, we've been, maybe they've been, had wool pulled over their eyes or maybe they haven't. Maybe everyone's cashed in. All of this stock that's in these discount bins in Tesco's has already been paid for and they've had their time in the sun.

1:10:16James Smith:They've had their time. You know, they were selling a lot. There was high demand. Different off licenses were selling them for extreme amounts of money. In Tesco over here, they had on the thing, you can only take one, you can only buy one, which is basically the best marketing of all time because it's scarcity. So these kids got them, they had status when they went to school, it was fucking crazy. So I think for us as a brand, so we didn't take any investment to begin with, so we've self-funded everything ourselves. In the first year, I think we've sold just over two million cans. We haven't actually hit that year mark yet.

1:10:51James Smith:So we've invested our own money and actually when I look around the camp, no one's itching to pull their money out. we're much happier with the slow burn we would quite who is it you luke chris uh and sean who has gen flow is also a shareholder in it yep so we've got chris and i the cog that keeps us well oiled and then we've got sean who uh operates and has the good relationships within manufacturing all the way down from cans formulation ingredients when we need to farm rodillo rosera he knows the person's cool so that's been tantamount because he's got such great staff as well when it does looking to when we do look into advertising spend we can have a team there it means that we didn't have to frantically hire so much in the beginning where we are still expanding the team but that was great for us but for us it's like a slow burn it is that r0 above one where we can grow the customer base move into a subscription model where this can become a part of someone's life i joke with people already that say you were to buy a bundle that would last you say you buy three cases 36 cans to me that is a month supply because people in your house are going to steal it my dad hates fizzy drinks if i said you want a coke zero he'd say that's enough i catch him having a can you're my sister steals them my missus tourism i will go back home to australia where i have to get them shipped from the uk and i go past my front door and i'm shouting up to my missus who's been drinking my new tonics oh sorry dad came around he's had a few oh my sister was around with the boys she's taken a few cans i'm like i'm having to hide them from people in my extended family that to me is you know i'm saying to you offline i can tell what's going on in the world by what my barber's telling me about stuff when i see people stealing them from me people at training keep saying to me can i get some oh i love the drink whatever it is i've even got jiu-jitsu athletes that i train with who are wearing the brand for free they just like the drink they see it's kind of cool they like what chris and i have done and it's almost my observations from our own product, which of course can be biased because it is mine.

1:12:47James Smith:I actually sit back and go, oh, this is better than I expected. It's almost a better than the accumulation of its parts. And although maybe on paper looking at it, someone could go, oh, this has done better. This has done better. We kind of like this slow burn. We would rather not, even with my following over the years, I'm so glad I didn't go on Love Island to get all my followers overnight because you need to grow and adapt with that level of growth. and myself as someone that is a shareholder and founder in a drinks business, I still need to learn the trade. If we sold millions a month, it would be too fast for me to adapt or keep up with it.

1:13:20James Smith:It would be too stressful. And I like the fact that in a few years time, when we do break above it, people go, oh, you know, this drink came out of nowhere. But no, I've been doing this for five years. That teases up nicely for all wins feel the same. I think that's just such a good point. If you could kind of unpack that and how did you actually come to that insight? So I remember, so it's happened so many times in my life. I knew 100 ,000 followers would be a big moment. For 100 ,000 followers, I popped a bottle of champagne in Ibiza, me and my friend high-fiving, we've made it. A million followers didn't really feel any different.

1:13:57James Smith:If anything, it felt worse. Why did it feel worse? I don't know. I'd just been working towards it for a much longer period of time. And then Luke and I, my manager, we would actually every time my following grew by a thousand we'd race each other be like nine six seven nine six eight if you beat me to it i'll be like fuck but then when we hit a million we stopped doing it because you're not going to say a million and one million and two then another thing where in my head i've made it so important to hit that mark so that if people land on my page it's a million i always think how sad it looks at 999 or 998 i also thought then i need to get it to 1.1 million so i can abuse vegans and not have to worry about it dropping below and then every single time it's gone the amount of happiness is really short-lived and i kind of get angry with myself because the first time it felt better same way that um even buying a car recently i bought my dream car and i sit in it and go i think i was happier when i bought my first secondhand golf because actually i think as success goes on the returns and rewards you hype them up more in your mind and they're less they're less they don't feel quite as you expect when you reach them so it's really important for people to realize that if you try and get an uber when it's raining on a friday afternoon you get a surcharge of 1.7 and you gotta pay it because everyone wants an uber but we seem to tell ourselves there's an uber surcharge on happiness the further we go in life it's actually the other way around it's one times when you get it first then it's 0.9 at the next and it's 0.7 and i spoke to someone who sold his business for a few hundred million and i go what did you do he goes i sat in my hotel room on my own i cracked a beer and ate a pizza and he kind of sat there and was like oh everyone i've interviewed on this podcast who sold their business they're always just like the founder of tyrell's crisps who's the you've had tyrell's crisps yeah i'll tell my parents about that as well that's a brand they'll know yeah yeah yeah yeah unreal crisps and he he's got a great little phrase which is when you're in the winner's enclosure you realize that all the fun was in the race that there's not one person i've sat here in front of who's sold their business and they've said and it's that kind of that deflating feeling when all feel wins feel the same what is the sort of antidote to that because a lot of people to listen to this podcast thinking thinking when i get waitrose things will be happy when i get sainsbury's things will be i'll be happy when i sell it things will be happy like all wins feel the same then what is the same reward it's the same hormone it's the same neuroplasticity it's the same serotonin dopamine whatever it is that you're getting just because the size of the things and the numbers and the stakes change it doesn't impact that same way that if you watch a sad film the sadness feels the same in all domains whether it's the notebook or something else when you shed a tear it's not like you're getting 10 times sadness on one film versus another maybe some emotional pause you know every time you get pissed off driving it's pretty much the same the levels of it might change a bit but ultimately you forget about it the next day with wins we just build them up because it's an easy way to motivate ourself it's an easy way to say because even now I need something to make me miserable so I stay motivated so one thing at the moment is my mortgage my parents mortgage my sister's mortgage I kind of see myself in work at the moment that if I was if we were to sell shares in Utonic or any of the other businesses I have they would be the first things that I would look to pay off so I kind of say to myself now James you need to work hard or your parents gonna have to downsize that's kind of the narrative in my mind but i know the second i pay off my parents mortgages my sister's mine whatever they'll come a day ago cool what's making me miserable now what what can i have to make me miserable i know exactly what it'll be haven't got enough cars house isn't big enough i'll move into a bigger house and then there'll be a fucking leak in the wall and i'll go i shouldn't have moved into this fucking big house what i should have done is got more debt moved into a bigger one and can i'll probably continue to do that for the rest of the world It's almost linked to that sort of barbell strategy.

1:17:48You're trying to find things to get pissed off with where there's not enough. And that almost is the antidote to this all wins feel the same.

1:17:56James Smith:Yeah, it's exactly that. Where so much of, but the journey, I know that I'm going to be on this hedonic treadmill nonstop. I know that I'll buy a car that I really want and then I'll get a little bit bored of it. Then I'll get annoyed at myself that I got bored of it. And then this has just continued to happen. But as long as that journey of just constantly being disappointed, motivated, unhappy, satisfied, back to unhappy. As long as that makes lives around me more stress-free, I'm happy to take the stress. I want to talk about marketing and jujitsu. I love learning from things that like cross sections.

1:18:29I think you literally can learn from one thing to another. What's jujitsu taught you about marketing?

1:18:37James Smith:Two things I love saying about jujitsu. One is that you're going to be fucking shit for two years. Like, and maybe that two years might become one year, might be a year and a half might be six months you go all in but ultimately is how many times you turn up and how hard you work when you're not a training that's gonna differentiate that the second thing I like to say people is I'm now a brown belt my next belt will be black but I love it just as much at brown belt as I did a purple and I actually look back and loved it just as much as white belt how good you are at it shouldn't influence how much you enjoy it that's so good so when I was dog shit I didn't know what the fuck I was doing and I was just dangerous to all my training partners, I loved it.

1:19:12James Smith:Now that I'm nearly a black belt, I still love it. I'm still just as nervous at competition because my competitors are just as good as me, but I still love it the same amount. So no matter where you are on the spectrum of competency, that shouldn't impact how much you enjoy it. So if you're doing your first ad reads, you're writing your first scripts, you're putting out your first content, fucking enjoy it because when you're a master at it, you're just going to love it as much or hate it as much than when you're not. So whatever means of marketing you're using email marketing, direct marketing.

1:19:39James Smith:You need to remember to enjoy it at every stage because when you get better, it's not guaranteed you're going to enjoy it more. And then what would you say are sort of the, I think like Rory has these kind of jujitsu marketing moves. Like, you know, I think he has, he said the opposite of a good idea is another good idea, which, you know, at the front of his book, Alchemy, he's got that list. And what he said to me is he goes, the opposite of Starbucks. If I wanted to create the opposite of Starbucks, I'd create a coffee shop in a train station called Flat Whites will fuck off. and I just thought that is just so good.

1:20:09You can imagine the way he said it. But he's got those. He goes, solving problems using only rationality is like playing golf only using one club. He had one which he taught me about food and drink, which is like hips has raised the ceiling and chains raise the floor. So it's like we actually need Wetherspoons because it sets the benchmark, right? Then we can get the next pub comes in and it gets better, better, better, better. What would you say are some of your one or two kind of jujitsu marketing moves that kind of only you know through one years of jujitsu and two years

1:20:40James Smith:of of marketing so if i make a mistake in jujitsu chances are i'm going to end up in a bad position so let's say the bad position would be you mounting me you on my back with your arms around my neck or you having full control of my leg and being able to break it let's say those three scenarios however although that sounds really bad and doom and gloom i now have a perfect opportunity to work my way out of a bad position yeah so if i never made mistakes i would not be very good at the positions that are most important to escape from so sometimes through playfulness i'll get myself in a sticky situation where a white belt is on my back with his arms fully right around my neck trying to choke me out i then need to be grateful for being there because now i've got someone giving all the strength he's got in the world because the higher belts can serve their strength a little bit the white belts try and kill you the white belts are the most dangerous on the mat but then in that very moment I can embrace the mistake because I'm now going to become more competent at escaping a fully locked up rear naked choke.

1:21:39James Smith:When I do make a mistake and someone's got me in a heel hook I now get to practice escaping from a heel hook. If it goes wrong we can tap and start again but if it goes right I can become better at that. So as you become more experienced you're more open to making mistakes because when you make a mistake you then get to a point that you're either ready for or you're not. So I think that in business and marketing people are trying to do so much without making mistakes but if you do that you never get good at the important places so for instance if you try and curate your email marketing to look perfect you might never really realize what works for people and what doesn't the first thing i ever bought from email marketing was a guy who wrote an email drunk at his dad's funeral and he said at the end if you think it's inappropriate for me to sell off my dad's death go yourself oh my god i bought his book it's great i ignored all the emails before that to him was letting someone advance their position somewhere dangerous now if half his email list unsubscribed he's tapped out when you tap out you start again now if he got more sales than ever he's now realized how to escape a very dangerous position so without being vulnerable to letting your situation potentially worse by maybe being polarizing in your content telling people to fuck off you know um imagine some of the things that you know uh with with beer with alcohol with whatever you can actually have a bit of fun with it you could be you could say remember when yorkie had the chocolate bar not for girls yeah yeah yeah little things like that if that campaign completely fucked them in the sales they can always tap out start again with something else it's never really the end of the world even bud light are doing fine now you know yeah yeah yeah they they pulled the vets card and they're back they're probably better than ever and Dana White it was well it sounds like it's all about the money it was a fucking sponsor you dick of course it's about the money so by learning it's so interesting I hadn't thought of it like that so you're almost you're putting yourself in vulnerable and uncomfortable situations because that is where you can learn like you can only learn from those uncomfortable situations and actually I think it also thinks the opposite of a good idea is a good idea no one's trying to fucking do that everyone's just trying to get through in this very, you know, scotch, kind of go through scotch-free without anything bad happening.

1:23:54But by putting yourself in those really weak situations, you're learning something that no one else is going to learn.

1:23:59James Smith:Imagine, say, let's say you've got an IT security company. You should say to your, you know, get all the personal data off there. Go, cool. Take the website down for a second. Let's let people hack us. Let's let ourselves get hacked, right? Then the second you get hacked, you go, cool, go to work. And then you would be in the real situation where you have to do something that would make your IT security infrastructure I'm not saying it's a good idea yeah yeah yeah and that's kind of the premise of it or you know hey um let's let's try a campaign that could be really really bad for the business and if we do lose sales let's recuperate it over the next three months but only by doing those things can you really see if things are going to work better and what are some of the things you've sorry to interrupt what are some of the things you've done where you've put yourself in those really vulnerable situations and what have you learned like any specific examples uh in the onset they probably went a bit too far a few lawsuits but just saying what putting things really straight on content and just being like you know what this post could lose me 10 000 followers it could gain me 10 000 the only way we're gonna know is by doing it i remember i made some mistakes that cost me there was one where someone commented on a post of mine and they said it's okay for you you're a cisgender straight white mail and I replied and screenshotted it and posted it going or I outworked you for a decade and my god there were like news companies messaging me going oh James we just wondered if you wanted to comment on this I'm like Luke should I comment on this he's like no they're about to tear you down in a news piece I was like really he was like yeah and I remember that all kicking off but then I was proud of what I said because it was what I was thinking but then there are other times where someone's chatting shit I'm gonna make a post about it and when I post it I get anxiety or this could go badly and then the next day i've grown by 75 000 followers and my inbox is like oh you were so right that post helped me understand this and this so they again we joke around where luke and i said for a long time we called lawsuits speeding tickets and we said if you're not getting sued you're not moving fast enough and it was kind of that fast and loose approach to marketing that i think helped it's not for everyone it's not for everyone but that's how you become better at those things and for my manager comes from an industry much more cutthroat than mine so he's battle hardened what's what's luke do so he came from nightlife promoting to running festivals and events yeah because i actually met um i was in ibiza at a wedding and met one of my met a promoter out there and i was like talking to him about about newtonic he was like yeah yeah i fucking know luke so he sent in an email when we're at this wedding his name's um my mate's called joe iglesias who's the dj i don't know what the manager's name was and that's kind of how how this sort of linked in um which is super interesting but yeah so he was doing the night life thing nightlife club promoting festivals but then you have artists who you know two weeks before headlining a gig oh we want 50 grand more or when they're signing contracts they'll pull you out through the whole contract signing process then just you're about to put pen to paper or if you give us 10 grand more we'll do it today and as a promoter you're like fuck i've already sold tickets for this yeah cool you have another 10 grand yeah you would have people pull out of events you'd have people say oh you know i'm not doing this if that person's doing it as well you can have people overdose on drugs in your crowd and you'd be liable for manslaughter and people posting stories about oh they weren't real sniffer dogs that was the security guards pet dog and there's nothing you can do to challenge those claims so there's real serious things happening then when you come into the world of having a brand with the drinks business or oh i want a public apology people like oh this isn't serious legitimate lawsuits oh that's defamation it's actually my personal opinion as i said in the post you know so the things in this realm just aren't as serious to what they can be in other places so having someone who's battle hardened and being in those bad situations definitely helps what's he taught you everything i'm pretty sure that he's he's almost the person i go to for like a second opinion but a lot to do with business relationships um and as far as you can get inside your own head a lot and imagine this if i was to ask you to look through your organization or to your friendship group and to point and pick things that maybe your friends or colleagues or employees aren't good at you can do it really easily not being a twat you could go oh he's great a sales copy but he's not too good at speaking in front of camera our dale he's really good at chatting up girls but you know he's awful at driving this person but then when it comes to picking what you're not good at we have blind spots if i was to say if you'd say james what aren't you good at i'll pull a blank or i pull a premeditated answer to it so having someone that can see your blind spots and attribute your strengths and also help you understand your weaknesses i'll probably say that what are your blind spots well this is it i think this would be a premeditated answer but it would definitely be organization short-term memory patience um i would say what i've managed to do over the last maybe 10-15 years is use those probably negative personality traits to benefit my business whereas in corporate i was a fucking nightmare yeah hated it couldn't stand it sitting at a desk definitely rebellious oh you finished work at 5 30 but i finished my work it's 4 30 i'll sit here for an hour fuck off yeah yeah or just corporate chat where i hated the fact that you know in recruitment someone goes james what was your weekend what'd you get up to i couldn't really say that i had a bin bag around my neck and i threw up two bottles of wine into a bin bag and needed a line of cocaine to straighten myself out you know i couldn't say i was like yeah i just went for dinner you know i was lying to people it's peace express yeah yeah ended up getting chucked out of a club in redding at 22 you know i can't can't say stuff like that so yeah it's one of those things that um allowed me to be this chaotic semi-unprofessional because even in some respects now i'm still semi-unprofessional to what some people would think oh you can't be rude to people you can't call people out but it's just on brand i think i saw a post of you rereading will store's book the status game fantastic book unreal book how he's been on this podcast actually he went in on michelin star restaurants basically saying that um chefs are creating uh three-star michelin chefs are creating food to impress other three-star michelin chefs with all the fancy fucking things you put on they don't actually care about the consumer and he goes all i could taste he went to the best restaurant in the world noma and so all i could taste was vinegar wank and it was just like all these super pipettes of things yeah he's just super interesting but I'd love to know how honest marketing links to the status game, in your opinion.

1:30:43How does honest marketing make people feel status?

1:30:46James Smith:I would say it's more so that we're really disconnected. I feel like we're slightly disconnected from reality. A lot of people kind of almost constantly semi-gaslit by state of the economy, politics, everything as a nation. I always feel like we're never really true in being ourselves. we have to put a certain face on around people whether you're on the train catch someone you put your feet up in some strange seat oh fuck you know put my feet down because i'm a i'm a polite young man i don't put my feet on train seats there's no one there that your fucking foot would be on the seat so everywhere we go through life we're putting these facades on and it's just quite i think for most people exhausting i think it's more about energy preservation than anything else and i remember going from the corporate world into personal training i'd wear a polo shirt i would to have an iPad, I would try and be professional and I attracted the wrong people and it was exhausting.

1:31:38It was only when I started swearing, put a black t-shirt on, didn't wear my uniform,

1:31:43James Smith:would sit eating out my Tupperware at the side. So I'd be like, oh, two more reps, you know, like eat my lunch. When I started being myself, I started attracting people just like myself. And to me, that's just a much less exhausting way of doing things. And on social media, even if there were, you know, there are potential, let's say there are buyers, supermarkets whatever potentially listening and they're trying to gauge whether or not this founder is going to be right blah blah blah it would be so inappropriate for me to talk about snorting cocaine doing mdma you know having unprotected sex with strangers or whatever but i know out there somewhere someone could potentially listen to that and go fuck me that's refreshing he's going to get a meet in the sainsbury's you know and not all of them would these bars are sniffed yeah yeah yeah there we go come to the christmas party and while everyone's trying to go one way of being super professional you know oh yes you know our brand is the best oh you should see our return ad spend just coming out and just saying look anyway you send me in the uk i'll give out cans for free don't give a shit how many millions of followers i've got send me to fucking sunderland take me to newcastle put me outside of greg's with a backpack i'll do it because that honesty people aren't really real with some people and founders of drinks because you have to get to almost a certain amount of clout to be in a position to create your own brand a lot of the time especially in the creator market whatever it just so happens to be at the point that people's ego takes over and i just i think that's such a shame for so many people but when you say ego takes over so have you read ego is the enemy by ryan holiday yeah yeah that's i've actually got a question about that yeah yeah so exactly the point that when you start doing well you start telling yourself a story about why things have gone well and you can tell yourself a story it's because of you know your demeanor your charisma your ethos, your work ethic.

1:33:28James Smith:But really, it was the fact that you're a fucking psychopath for three years and got up at 4.30 and drank 15 cups of coffee a day. And you neglected most of the girls you dated and that you barely saw your parents trying to build your business off the ground. If you believe your story, you stop doing the things that made you successful. But if you don't believe your story, you can keep doing the things that make you successful. And so many people that experience success and get to a certain point can sometimes lose connection of the person that got them there how is your ego your enemy um it's interesting my friends say to me that i'm the same person but with just more money and not a huge amount of money by the way a good amount enough that i can bully my friends uh i joke and if my friend hasn't responded for a while i'll like send them 200 pounds on monzo but then i'll often get it sent back but it's the fact i'm i'm doing it or you know i'll just i'll just uh i love doing a thing where say i'm with friends i haven't seen for a while i pretend that i've lost a touch of reality i'd be like oh that dinner was only 300 pounds i can't believe how cheap that was yeah yeah they're like are you fucking kidding me uh i would honestly say i'm still the same person but i quite like the fact that earning better has changed me because it's not in a bad way it is in a sense i'm more playful i'm more fun i like getting dinners um but as far as ego i would say it's probably the only bad thing that i get really annoyed that the things that used to be big to me aren't anymore.

1:34:52James Smith:I flew business class somewhere not too long ago and I got off the plane and I was like, you fucking prick. You were nearly crying the first time you flew business because it was such a big feat to you. I had like six glasses of red wine and I had a moment where I was like, this is amazing. You should be proud of yourself. I was like tearing up on a plane. I flew first class, didn't even have a glass of champagne. I was like, you're a prick. That would say my ego has become an issue only where I lose gratuity of the things that used to be massive to me first time i wasn't an overdraft was amazing but then you take a dividend and you won't feel anything so for me now it's just trying to remind myself what 25 year old james would have done with that thing 25 year old james would have seen that business class and be like oh my god he would have uh you know looked at the dividend you just took from the business and that would have been life-changing the only time my ego kind of really pisses me off at the moment is this kind of lack of emotion towards what were once great achievements and i think that's part of my motivational mechanisms but i beat myself up about it i actually said to my business partner a few months ago we took a dividend from the business and i said to my missus i go this is really annoying that's a good amount of money and i feel nothing and i was so i go i messaged my manager i messaged luke i go look i shouldn't i'm only 35 i shouldn't be feeling numb to this amount of money 10 years ago i would have been fucking ecstatic i would have gone to this bar i would have said everyone's having a fucking drink come on like who knows a dealer and uh i would have just had so much fun with it so then i said to my business partner he goes do you know what we're going to take 10 of this dividend we're going to go to a bar in sydney we're going to put our card behind the bar and we're just going to get shit-faced and anyone we bump into some lad from tiktok was like i follow your stuff i'm like get a drink are these your mates get them a drink cards behind the bar I said how old are you boys 19 I was like get them all a drink you're probably poor at 19 I was and we had the best time on 10 % of it so for me it's still having fun still enjoying the little things so fun almost dissipates the the yeah the the ego thing that annoys me is what has become normal and I never want to lose track of that like I never want to you know there are little things you buy dinner and not even think about it and then I I leave the restaurant, I go, mate, you didn't earn that in a week when you were younger.

1:37:09James Smith:And then you just tap because you can't be bothered for people to split the bill. How's Chris's ego different from yours? Again, on that partnership thing. The only gripe I have with Chris is maybe the odd expense here and there. So it'd be funny if he's listening to this. Say I today, or actually anything newtonic based. yesterday I went to a podcast the new tonic hadn't turned up so I called Luke he ubered four cases there it cost 90 pounds to uber them from Portsmouth to the podcast because to me it was so important that there was new tonic on the table when we chatted we're not going to expense that we're just going to eat that as a cost I have a feeling that if Chris was there he'd be like um guys here's the receipt from the uber and I think it's because he just doesn't want to deal with the admin he's got so much going on that he just doesn't want to deal with the receipt that's to go into the drop box and has to go to the accountant.

1:38:03James Smith:But no, on the whole, Chris is fantastic. He, you know, will pay so much attention to detail. The reason these taste so good is tantamount to Chris. Chris could be a sommelier of drinks. If you ever need anyone to go taste test at different factories, he's like, Ethretol, Sucralose, he literally knows. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, as far as, as far as ego, Chris, Chris is great. He's, he's growing with the growth to his brand and what I like is if I have a pop at him going oh my reel got a million views he'll go oh here's a clip of Andrew Huberman saying he loves our drink I'm like okay fair play yes the a few more things mate then we'll wrap this up the I loved in your book when you talk about declinism and that's basically looking back at the old days thinking those are the good old days right yeah I'm a hypocrite with this I still do that I would love to know how sort of the rise of clapham-based fitness influencers has increased our levels of declines because it fucking has for me but yeah i'd love to this sort of kind of maybe tober church question there but i think it is really interesting how social media there are lots of pros to it but there is this sort of not necessarily clapham other influences are available but like in terms of this fucking perfect life which i think is actually really making people feel um i think social media has made everyone externally more confident than ever before but internally more insecure than ever before because it's just the you're constantly comparing but yeah i'd love to maybe explore that with you yes um intro like uh kleinism people seeing the negative outlook of the future like the world technically hasn't ever been as good as it is now we just don't get that news from media outlets but it's very short clapham influences it's crazy so people have become a product of their environment so for instance you know eddie abu yeah a few years ago his content was really quite sensible and the things he said was really quite reasonable but then he would have portrayed a character and then got feedback from the audience so for instance i had this a little bit where i would say things online and then i'd call someone a fucking twat and people oh yeah fucking twat and then you're like oh cool i'll swear and then you get angry and you do something, you get like a response.

1:40:19James Smith:But then you have to rein it in so that you're not a product of the people. Eddie Abbo is just a product of what people want. He screams at something in a supermarket, he gets more attention, so he does it more. Then he gets a gingerbread man and calls it an obscenity and people like it and they G him up and then he starts wearing disguises and starts going in and starts... You never really want to become a product of the people. However, a lot of modern day influencers are becoming exactly that. They think people want a certain character or persona online, so they try and embody it. so for instance they think they need to be perfect they need to have all of their food prepped so many of them don't realize they're actually alienating themselves from the people they want to do business with because you and i could need maybe a well-educated level-headed coach to help us with our diet nutrition and training but when we see them doing a workout 4 45 in the morning or we see them with their perfectly created meal prep for the week it actually makes us go this person does not understand me but if you saw a pt that was like fucking i've got a hangover i've got seven clients tomorrow how the hell am i going to make it into work it's marketing isn't it yeah you probably go god this is probably the pt for me and i think this is again why maybe my brand did potentially better than uh others because i've been open about all the skeletons in my closet you know guys i did take recreational drugs the whole way through my 20s but the majority of people in their 20s and 30s have done that i mean look at london for instance which is probably one of the best economic climates to go after if you were to say to someone like i drink a little bit too much my diet has room for improvement and you know once to three times a year i'll probably get on the bags of people for a special occasion people go yeah that sounds about right not a pt that goes uh i don't drink i've never drunk because alcohol is a toxin and toxins are you're like fuck off mate this person doesn't understand me and empathy is such a big part of people wanting to improve themselves the person that helps someone improve themselves has to have something in common with them the honest marketing is empathy and what's coming to mind now as i'm thinking of the i think the one to three times a year no no no no no no but the uh the yeah the elbow now but the the when i think you put up a picture of your fucking derby and you're like yeah i'm a bit fat right now you know what i mean and i thought and i was like fuck me that is relatable because i've just smashed a load of maccas on the weekend i was thinking fucking out and then the other day i pulled up a clip um of this like it was yeah clapping based fitness influencer and i was thinking is this fucking society up like genuinely because it was like i think it was a picture of them as a couple and they were so say i had the camera that you had the camera they'd done so say um you're my partner right they were going right we're going to work now kiss and then it goes right she's gone to work and they added this into this uh reel and it's goes I did my run then I had my oats then I did another workout then I did my I had more fucking oats another workout I was like this is fucked because it's like someone's doing a 20 minute hit sesh or whatever or an hours gym sesh like the benchmark for like if you're not doing a sub three marathon now from all these fuckers running around Battersea Park it's like your shit do you know I mean I'd love to know how that sort of influencing declinism do you what i mean it's interesting as well because uh so many people watching are just thinking you better end you're probably just gonna throw out there and then the creator sees that and goes oh that one did twice as many views and people are literally like oh look at this fucking dickhead yes oh yeah oh morning run friends oh run club they're like you fucking idiot like uh bevo for instance one of the classic jbvo no dinner you boys know him so there's a guy on tiktok called beaver you know so he used to eat food in front of camera and there's one video of him choking on a roast potato because he bites his food once and swallows it real weird eating pattern it got like 30 million views so then he became super famous from eating roast dinners he sits there and he goes you know the rules and he starts eating and he just takes one bite and swallows it and sometimes he goes and then then he's getting nightclub appearances now at the moment people are booking him to come in and he's a joke but he doesn't realize he's a joke it's david brent isn't it it's literally david brent it was the other geezer the uh was it you got no fans you know wilson raider like he was doing club nights and so sometimes people can get caught up with the the result of that i very much doubt someone's going to go hey mate i just saw your morning run i want to use you as a coach you know the the transparency thing as well i actually gain and lose weight throughout the year and the crazy thing is i've spoken about this trifecta where you've got business body and relationships only two in my life can go well at the same time so for this trip back home my body's suffering but my business and relationships are doing well i'm spending time with my family and i'm doing a lot of podcasts when i go home i'm gonna give up a little bit of my business and a little bit of my relationships because i'm away from home and i'm not going to be in the podcast sense but then i can work on my body and it's very difficult to balance all three at the same time but then let's say i go home at the end of this month and i'm four kilograms overweight i could just i've made more money this month than i've made in my life cool you know what would i rather have the perfect physique or the well-performing month and i think people just need to understand that we we do go through cyclical seasons not necessarily a cut in bulk but you need periods where you're unhealthily obsessed with work then you don't touch a laptop for two weeks this monotone realist or this monotone expectation of physique of business of relationships it's just unrealistic you need to go through times that you don't drink for three months, then you're a borderline alcoholic around Christmas.

1:45:44James Smith:It's just part of kind of human nature. Sometimes I'm sure we've all done this in the room. You're like, I'm going to start eating better tomorrow. So today I'm going to eat so much fast food. It repulses me. I'm going to Bruce Bogtrot out of the shit out of it and eat so much cake. I can't even look at a chocolate cake for two months. And I think that people need to show the ebbs and the flows because social media, to me, the biggest problem with it is people are showing the best sides of themselves and make it even worse. There's a creator called GoobU2 and he calls out people for editing their photos this week he caught a mr olympia world champion editing his photos this guy quite literally got the top accolade for physiques in the fucking universe and he's editing his photos to make his delts look bigger the what i want to talk about is the um a few more things uh so that quote in your book by daniel kahneman society rewards over confidence why and then why as we talked about earlier like the uk is quite potentially a bit glib and glam at the minute why is that more important than the uk so so important the uk right now uh the first thing for overconfidence you you can see it just when someone there is an element of competence to this though i would say so if you were to look at me talk about something on social media versus 10 other personal trainers i would probably come across more overconfident than the others but that would come from the competence of the amount of repetition I've done making the content.

1:47:07James Smith:Same way that some salespeople, whether it be a secondhand car salesman or a door-to-door gas and electric salesman, they seem so perfect with their approach. It's not so much their confidence in the product, but the amount of times they've knocked on doors or sold cars. So overconfidence most probably stems a fraction from narcissism and maybe some bad sociopathic traits where someone does it, American Psycho. But the rest of the time, I do think there is a trail of breadcrumbs from competence in repetition. So the more times you practice, they say the more you practice, the luckier you get. But I would say as well, to that, society will reward someone because if a guy comes up to a girl in the bar, not one stuttering is, hey, I think you're beautiful.

1:47:51James Smith:I'd love to take you out for dinner. Look pretty chilled. I'm going to give you a number. By the way, if you haven't got a boyfriend, no need to lie or tell me about it. Just never text me back. Cool. Have a good night. Enjoy it. Versus a guy, hi, I never usually, my number, here you go. The guy who's confident probably has done it more times. There probably is an element of competence to it. The woman, and in most business sense, the person that is most confident is probably going to get the sale or probably going to get the message back. I think that confidence can sometimes masquerade competence behind it.

1:48:22James Smith:And I think that often we do want competence with partner. Every single partnership, whether it's business, financial, sexual, you do want some level of competence to whether it is personal finances, sexual performance, whatever it is, we are actually all looking for competence from someone. Maybe even, this sounds probably rather, you know, patriarchal tyranny. When men are choosing a woman, we want there to be some kind of competence and maybe child raising and looking after the house. And that's because I'm from more of a traditional upbringing. We are almost subconsciously sensing competence in all the people we meet, whether it be romantic, professional, you want competence.

1:49:04James Smith:So I think that people that maybe have this facade or allure of overconfidence are actually the ones that are most competent in most cases. Competent confidence is a barbell strategy as well, which is brilliant. But what I think really interesting about the book is you can lean on competence and confidences as sort of like a barbell strategy, but what you say is in terms of life, you can be really fucking confident in one area, but then a shit show in the other. You know, like I'm trying to think of an example, like Tiger Woods, mate. Like Tiger Woods, right? Fucking confident golf, right? His, like, in personal affairs, isn't a fucking, not that he's saying he's not, that's maybe not confidence, but it's a bit of a fucking shit show when he's not on the golf course.

1:49:46James Smith:I did a TED talk, fine. Still used Hinge as a dating app because I wasn't confident enough to prospect or you know there were so many elements i didn't want to get rejected after all the rejections on the gym floor i actually got banned from hinge twice for being me so i'd go on instagram someone would go hey i just saw someone pretending to be you on hinge i've reported them it was me so then i got cock blocked by my following so i was fucking awful mate it was so shit uh that's like my claim to fame hinge blocked me yeah and then the second time i went on i couldn't get matches but it's probably good for the i'm now in a relationship maybe it has something to do with that what have been some of if someone is feeling unconfident in one area of their life but like as you say some they've got the ted talk which is right you know you can do fucking ted talk but you're still on hinge like what is the ways to bring that up so uh for me again action's always the way out of everything and my friend george when i moved to australia he deleted my dating apps on my phone and he literally was like no you're going to start talking to girls and I'd be in a cafe with him he'd be like go on I'd be like oh yeah he's like go on and I'd get my number put it on a bit of paper I'd give it to him and I remember every time I came back this is one of the great things I probably learned this from him when I came back from giving a girl my number he would always joke and go good dog there was like an English guy from southwest London every time good dog and when I got back and sat down he was rewarding me for the effort not the outcome she hadn't messaged me she hadn't gone on a date with me she hadn't anything she just taken a bit of paper from a stranger but he recognized to me he goes good that was the thing you didn't want to do well done because you've done it you're successful now whether you get a text or not is irrelevant you've done the thing you were scared of and i think that's where the kind of setting success metrics is so important in everyday life yeah it's almost you can build the confidence through the process of competence and that's a virtuous circle no one's saying you have to be successful with your endeavor no one's saying this has to go right they're just saying you need to do it i'm not saying she needs to accept a date but you need to go give her your fucking number i'm not saying the video has to go viral but you need to post the fucking video i'm not saying that the email has to be perfect but you've got to send an email to your newsletter i'm not saying the sign-up process has to be perfect but you need to do a call to action today to get perfectionism is really fucking us up we we have to talk about the swimmer's fallacy i was about to say the swimmer's fallacy That's a bit dodgy.

1:52:10But I think that's, you know, you don't pick your sport, the sport picks you. Like that, I think, is just not even for PT. I think that is that kind of being like x-ray for me, the way I view the world. And it's such an important thing. Could you talk about that? Because I think it's really valuable.

1:52:26James Smith:I got a million followers from that video. A million on TikTok from one video. So Swimmer's Body Illusion from a book by Rolf DiBelli. and in it there's this idea that there's someone who's fat wants to get in shape he looks at runners and he thinks they look skinny and miserable looks at bodybuilders and he thinks they look too muscular and stupid so he goes cool looks at swimmers i like that i want that physique so i'm gonna start swimming a few months into swimming he realizes it's all an illusion swimmers don't look the way they do because they swim they swim because the way they look and in essence what that's saying is people who get in a swimming pool with long limbs big hands streamlined body maybe even like a mobile upper back, they glide through the water easily and they get to the end and go, oh, I like swimming.

1:53:08James Smith:But all the people with short levers, maybe small hands, maybe poor bone density to buoyancy ratios, they get to the end and go, fuck this, I'm going back to another sport. Same way that in rugby, if you're fast and agile, you go, oh, I'm probably going to play in the backs. If you're dense and strong and heavy, you get a position in the forwards. If you don't cater to any of these things, you don't get the reward, you don't enjoy the sport. Same way in the gym. I joke that all long distance runners are people that should never build muscle in the gym they go to the gym don't build any muscle they go fuck this I'm gonna try something else and because they've got frames that don't aren't really any good at building muscle they go to start running and they love it and people will say to me are you big and broad because you played rugby I said no I played rugby because I was big and broad you don't pick a sport your sport picks you at six foot and 94 kilograms my sport was almost predetermined for me if I went to private school I probably would have played at a higher level but when we look around at personal trainers people think that their local PT is a PT because of you know their knowledge their empathy whatever they're not most of the time it's because they look like one if you're a friend in your group of say 100 people in your school year a few of you genetically are going to be leaner and more muscular than other people whether it's base levels testosterone in the higher ranges whether it's a reduced appetite whether it's whatever it is parents with certain genetics from different parts of the world which has a real impact on your makeup people go fuck me Dave you should be a PT Why?

1:54:30James Smith:Because you love health. No, you look like one. Get you in a fucking vest, put you on camera, you'll be good, bruv. You know what I mean? Get in there. This is what they did with people like Joe Wicks, right? Joe Wicks, naturally lean guy, good looking lad, great head of hair. His brother's gone, fucking hell, mate. We're going to get you jumping around the front room. We're going to make some fucking money out of this. Why? Because you look like the solution to the UK. He's not a fucking chef, mate, but they've gone, right, let's get you a few recipes. Get there, stand there. Get that pan out.

1:54:54James Smith:Say lean in 15. go on lane of 15 perfect they create the person and with aftershave they pick the smell last so they choose the brand they choose the packaging they choose the bottle they do this might not be true but this is what i've heard yeah and then they pick a smell to match the brand so you would pick an element of your brand that you want to whether you're dior whether you're whatever you would create okay we've got this one the dark bottle we've got the light bottle let's create a gray bottle cool it's going to be a light fragrance it's going to be for masculine men it's going to be a sporty essence cool go make me the smell so with so much of what we see in our world that fitness pleb in clapham doesn't look the way he does because of what he says he says what he says because the way he looks and for that that is one of the biggest red flags in the industry i mean it sounds really bad to say this but there are so many women with an eating disorder and a boob job giving you advice on how to eat and how to train it's just such when i read saw that and read that i watched that video for the first time and i think i've watched one of your YouTube videos about that you kind of as you say it gives you x-ray vision and also it's like you know look I'm a micro toad like if I'm going to try and play fucking basketball it's just not going to happen as much as I'd like to and it's just how does that spill over into other aspects of sort of culture and humanity do you think not just PT?

1:56:08James Smith:I think the majority of CEOs are over six foot I think 60 % of CEOs are six foot and over the majority of them are you know men as well and I don't think that comes from sexist I think it comes from interest but also the fact that often a leader of a tribe or an army or whatever would be one of your biggest and strongest men I think that there's subconscious things to that big people often do go into roles of leadership whether or not that's right or not I don't know I think as well that you know absolute size is another big thing especially in sport it can be a hindrance in some but then also genetically between us we have differences in appetite muscle mass bone density sporting ability whatever it is and we just need to appreciate that when we're looking at a fitness influencer are we looking at someone who knows they can make money from saying a certain thing or are we actually looking at a real person thank you so so much this is the podcast i really really do appreciate it if you like that episode only if you liked it please do give it five stars subscribe tell all your friends families foes next door but one cat dog whatever please tell everyone about this podcast it means the world to me and i really want to understand what your pain points are as the new wave of challenger food and drink brands please do hit me up on linkedin search dan pope and hopefully we can together create a more meaningful and powerful podcast for the next wave of challenger food and drink brands thank you so much