#688 - Steven Bartlett - 17 Raw Lessons About Human Nature

23:04It would modify myself story. The commitments we keep to ourselves and what we do when no one's watching is the most persuasive evidence that governs everything we then do every day thereafter. And this is for me, it was a huge revelation in my life because you know, you can look at certain people in your lives that are struggling in certain situations and oftentimes it's a result of continually unkept commitments to themself. Yeah. I don't know anybody who has done and extraordinary things that isn't keeping their word in that way, right? There's consistency doesn't guarantee that you're going to be successful, but not being consistent will guarantee that you're not successful.

23:43Let me unsuperman. Let's like the mess of this is some people are remarkably good at keeping commitments in some areas of their lives and hopeless in others. So they'll have kind of dual self -esteem. They'll be incredibly confident and secure in their work, but in relationships or whatever ever else, there'll be a ground zero. And I'm very much one of those people. That has areas of my life where I have immense commitment and you'd say, oh, you're such a disciplined person. And then there is of my life where I was able. It should be hypnotized out of sugar. Yeah, I mean, I actually haven't eaten sugar since as well as it did kind of work.

24:17I've no desire to have sugar anymore. Hell yeah. So I know exactly what you mean. And this is something, how you do anything is how you do everything is a lovely quote and a lovely idea. But it piles an awful lot of pressure on you, right? And it's very easy, especially as we said, it's more socially acceptable to be our biggest critic than our biggest complimentary. Given that, if you mess up a little bit, that can quite quickly spiral. Oh, I, Chris said that I shouldn't check my phone before I go for a walk in the morning. Therefore, it means that I might not as well go to the gym and I might as well like break my alcohol streak and I'm, you know, all of these other things.

24:54Finding this balance of being robust enough and delicate enough with yourself to say, okay, I know that you tried. Well, let's get back on the horse again tomorrow. Right, it's a delicate balance, right? Holding yourself to high standards whilst also being sufficiently supportive. And this is the same in business. So it's not, you don't break trust when you don't do what you said you were gonna do. You break trust when you don't do what you said you were gonna do and you don't own up to it. Take responsibility for it and point it out. So in business, there's often times where you say something to a team and for whatever reason, mitigating circumstances, that thing can no longer happen.

25:30Trust isn't broken at that point. Trust is broken when you then don't sit in front of your team and say, this is why this didn't happen. And at the same, I think, applies to yourself, you're going to miss some things in life. But taking responsibility for it, staying in power, and not saying, oh, I couldn't do that because, or I needed to do, no, it was your priorities. It was the priorities and the decisions you made. So when I missed my commitments, The saving grace for me is I go, I did that. That was me. That was a choice that I made. And if it's a choice I made, or didn't make, it's a choice I can make in the future.

26:01What you see in that chapter is you see obviscation of responsibility. You see blame, you see excuses, and you see disempowerment in the form of language like I couldn't because, you know, or I needed to, which I think is scary language. What's the difference between parrots and practitioners? Just something I've been thinking a lot about. I've observed the most successful, intelligent, creative, innovative, apparently original people in my life, and people that aren't even in my life. And the consistent thing amongst all of them, and in my businesses, is that those that are truly exceptional, and that over any extended period of time when you zoom out, achieve disproportionate levels of success, start with this kind of boring drudgery of obsession over their craft, driven by this deep passion and curiosity.

26:52I mean Jimmy Carter prime example of that. Leaving his potentially lucrative career to go and tell jokes for no money for 10 years, down in brown, left a great potential career and pathway to becoming very, very successful in a sort of typical sense, to go and do card tricks on a table in Bristol. Everyone's story, the people that I admire that are the masters of their craft, with these deep practitioners. And then you have this other type of person, which I call kind of the parrots, where they observe these people and the learnings that these people have given them. And they kind of just regurgitate what they're hearing, but they never do the time to practice.

27:26So they never get to that deeper level of understanding. And as they say, you know, to learn something, you read about it, they often say to understand something, you write about it. For me, I think to understand something in this context, you do it. And you do it in this iterative pattern for many, many years. And you'll depth of understanding what you've done something is unparalleled. And that's the foundation for great creativity. You see it with Fred again. He's a what a guy man. He's an absolute in my mind. He's an absolute genius. He's a fucking savant for the people that don't know who we're talking about.

27:58Fred again is a classically musically trained DJ who's put turned his hand to like tech and house music, I suppose, but we'll also happily get up on the roof of his flat in Hackney or wherever it is and play a completely solo set But, classically, on piano keys. You see the conviction of that, and you see the first principal nature of his work, where he's doing something we've apparently never seen before. Of course, he's taken inspiration points, and he's using equipment that was already made before he was born. But he's pulling the pieces together in new ways, and that's what creativity is. That kind of creativity belongs to people that have gone right down to that first principal level.

28:33You're talking Elon Musk. You're talking Echania's of the world. And Fred again. Where he's pulling things together in different ways and expressing himself without the constraints of convention. That's what that's what pioneer's and practitioners do and parrots could never do that because they don't understand the sea floor They just play with the boats on top of the water. There's a quote that I've fallen in love with the magic you are looking for is in the work you're avoiding Fuck dude. The magic you are looking for is in the work you're avoiding it every single time that there is something in front of me that But I feel like things aren't coming my way sufficiently quickly.

29:10I'm not making the progress that I want. It's because I'm dicking about over here and there is a large frog in front of me that I need to eat. I need to spend another half day reading a book. I need to spend some more time researching online and upping my skills in this particular area. I need to do whatever it is. Can I? Do you know what's interesting? It's the most intelligent people I've met. No. The most successful people I've met as entrepreneurs and practitioners never read, never really read books. Like even in Elon Musk of the world, I know he watches movies and stuff, he gets his inspiration points from many areas, but thinking about the great CEOs that I've met and the great founders and the great artist I've met, there's almost a, you know, I think I said this to you early on that knowing too much can be a real disservice to innovation and creativity, like knowing too much innovate information, whereas the sort of practitioner pathway where you naively stumble through new territories seems to be more conducive with the real pioneers.

30:08I wonder whether that's the curse of knowledge. In a way, you're familiar with this, yeah, Stephen Pinker's idea of the curse of knowledge, that when you start to learn things, you can't understand that other people don't know it. And you also lose the learner's mind in some regard, which is you're not lucky, you said about you come into this room and there's a million bits of information that you could be focusing on, but you're not focusing on those, you're focusing on the ones that matter. And I think that when you start to kid yourself that you know what you're talking about, you're no longer quite as open to these new ideas.

30:33I would say the difference for, you know, our industry, what we largely traffic in, are anecdotes and insights, right? And they can come from experience, but I also like exposing myself to new ideas from other people. And the quickest way to do that, actually, you know, this is a lie. The quickest way to do that would be to permanently be going for dinner with interesting people. But that's like an unsustainable life. It would be like two hours of dinner with Douglas Murray, then Jimmy Carr, then Stephen Bartlett, then that would just be my existence. And I'd just hear, oh yeah, and that's cool.

31:05And oh yeah, what about that? And oh, I've never thought about this before. Like that would be the way I do it. But in lieu of living this perpetual dinner life, reading books is a good second for me. Yeah, it's a good second. I just think about the things that I couldn't even express in words with my vocabulary that I know about the art of marketing and human psychology and why people do what they do. And the deep experiences that are all fundamentally intertwined in the mistakes that I made and the journey of getting there. Now in a book I might give you the four paragraphs, but the rest of the iceberg is the foundation of the thing that sits on top of it.

31:40And you think about podcasting, we both came into this industry, I'd say fairly late, compared to the rest of the industry, right? Yeah, for. Because if that's there's a naivety to it, which allowed us to do new things because we didn't read the book. Yeah. Um, but I think some of the radio industry are struggling with with that transition. Dude, I mean, you're seeing it in America. The late night show hosts are trying to pivot from heavily scripted, heavily supported by writers and a production team and research isn't all this stuff. And then you put them down in their garage with a MV7 bus -powered microphone in front of them and you realize, oh, like, these people don't have any skills beyond being able to be very good at reading the script.

32:20And that's a massive skill. I couldn't do that. You put the script in front of me. I'm going to fall to the floor. But yeah. It's the takeaway here though. If someone's listening to this now and they're a young person and they're at the start of their career, or even if they're not, if they're necessarily young person, for me, the takeaway is to go and fail at something that's high value in the future as soon as you can with the least amount of potential cost to yourself. It's like to go in practice. If I had kids now, I would tell them to go and join an AI startup. That's well funded. That's what I tell them to do.

32:56Small group of people, whether they're going to be close to the information and the evidence. I'd tell them to go fail in a high value future industry. That's the thing I would do. If you want to be a master, but then I can't, they have to pick an industry that they are innately passionate about because You don't go for a decade with Fred again or Jimmy Carr or Darren Brown's curiosity. If you're not innately captured by that thing, but I think we are looking for cheat codes. I think much of the reason why people probably listen to our stuff is where we want the three tips. How can I growth hack my personal development?

33:25You meet anyone, like Jimmy or you meet Darren, you go, oh, 15 years. It's a long time. No money and busking. Think about this. I wonder, and I ask myself this question a lot. I wonder how much of the development that we really value in ourselves isn't because of our own Agentech highly sovereign approach to marshaling our own life. I Wonder how much of it just comes along for the ride as a byproduct of getting older You're just this was gonna happen anyway, and maybe I sped it up a little bit and maybe I can you know create a nice story about why it happened But the most wise people I know So it's very rare that I meet somebody who is much older than me that doesn't have wisdom that's come along with it, which suggests that wisdom is just there for the ride as a byproduct of aging.

34:11But yeah, I would say takeaways from this aim to focus on executing. So the four disciplines of execution, really interesting analogy that's used, the word strategy is in the top 10 of all linked in words in bio descriptions and execution and executioner aren't even in the top 1000, right? Because it's much easier to strategize than it is to execute. But if you, this is a term that's, you can tell people that really no business when they use it one of a few terms, talking about someone being a real operator, right? That's you go, oh, okay, say no more. Like I know there's someone that will get things fixed, right?

34:49That they're able to take charge of whatever the challenge is that's in front of them. And our mutual friend, George Max, got this beautiful idea. I'll ask you this one actually. So the way to work out who the highest agency person in your life is you had him do this before? No fucking brilliant. Okay, so You are trapped in some South American jail, right? And you're about to be transported somewhere where no one's going to be able to get you back Let's fucking Columbia Argentina somewhere, right? You have 24 hours and you only have one phone call to ring somebody to come and get you out Who's that person that you ring?

35:25Oh Oh

35:38Prince William

35:42Right, okay, I feel like you've broken the game a little bit I don't think that was that was pretty much fair So my framework though was find someone that is both smart and influential. And that can't be. And that can't be. And that can't be. And that can't be enough about my predicament. Yeah. But the framework that you come up with there, if you don't know the future king of England, is someone that is able to think on their own that doesn't need instruction, that he's going to be able to solve problems at a very high level under pressure very quickly. And just all of the things that you want in a front.

36:14Yeah, you're so true. It didn't. You willed it down to five people instantaneously in my head. and that's deciding between them, but I thought I didn't know if they can pull enough levers. Fucking Prince William. Yeah, you've got an idea that's kind of similar. You must become a Plan A thinker. Yeah, and just on that last point, it just pops into my head then that, I think what I'm saying here is that, no matter what you're aiming at over the next 10 years in your life, I think this horrible realization that bucks the trend of every Instagram quote you'll ever read or every course you'll ever buy, is that the farce way is the slow way because the slow way is the only way.

36:43Like I stood behind Fred again this weekend as he did his show in Ali Pali to 10 ,000 people or whatever it was. And I'm looking at this guy going, I want to do that. I want to be able to do that. But my better sense from interviewing all these smart people knows that it's not a case of me doing a call. It goes, my brain now goes, are you willing to put 20 years of silent, boring, drudgery and obsession into doing that? My brain goes now. So separate out the aspiration from that. I got to show you this. I got to show you this. So Mark Manson put this quota a few months ago and I've not been able to stop thinking about it.

37:17The most important question to ask is what pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for? Anything worthwhile is going to require some degree of pain and struggle. So if you're oriented toward the pain and the struggle, you're probably going to be more aligned with what you're capable of accomplishing rather than if you just orient toward the pleasures. So good, because we say find the thing which you enjoy the most, but really what you're finding is what is the pain you're prepared to swallow the most. Nothing worthwhile is going to come without discomfort. You know, even for me and you, love doing the show, love speaking to all these interesting people, get to fly around the world, but I would be lying if I said I love writing show notes or doing research in Guatemala airport at three in the morning because I'm on a delayed flight and I've got a flight, I've got an episode tomorrow.

38:09Like, it's grind. It's grind that I care about, and it's grind that I can do that other people couldn't do, but it's not grind, right? This goes to the discipline equation. Which I mean, yes, yes. You might be familiar with. I'm glad to hit it, hit it. Because that really embodies it. That Mark Manson quote about the pain you're willing to encounter. I was trying to figure out why there's some areas in my life where I'm disciplined, and other areas of my life where I seem to lack discipline, kind of what I was saying earlier about being a dualistic type of individual. And I came up with this discipline equation that I'd love to interrogate with you because I've not thrown out enough people to know that if it's true or not.

38:42So discipline equals the importance of the goal. Plus let's just say the importance of the goal to you. So the subjective importance of the goal. How much does that goal matter to you? Plus the psychological enjoyment you get in the pursuit of the goal, right? So as you pursue the goal, how psychologically enjoyable and reinforcing is that for you? Minus the psychological cost of the pursuit of the goal. So I'll run you through some examples. Simon Semic said to me, well, Steve, I take the bins out at 7 a .m. in the morning yesterday. I didn't want to do that, but I did it. So I go, okay, let's run that through the framework.

39:21What would happen if you didn't take the bins out? That sort of underpins and defines the importance of that goal. Well, he'd get a fine and then he'd have an overflowing bin out the front of his house. So the Y is high. The psychological enjoyment of pursuing taking the bins out is very low, right? And the friction of getting out of bed at 7am is high. But thankfully, the Y is so strong that regardless of the fact that the pursuit, the enjoyment of the pursuit is low and the friction is high, the behavior still occurs. Going to the gym, learning to DJ, in all areas of my life, I can run it through that equation and go, okay, so in the pandemic, the reason I've been going to the gym for three years straight now is because my why surged, the perception of the importance of that goal surged, I saw how our existing health correlates to our health outcomes.

40:02And I realized for the first time in my life, this clear thought that I couldn't unshake that my health is my first foundation. It is this table that everything I love and care about sits upon. So that has to be my number one priority reflected in my schedule. So that changed, that went up. The psychological pursuit of going to the gym is kind of enjoyable. There's a bit of a dopamine release there and it's fun to do. that feels good for myself as team and the friction associated with it is low, in less. And as I go to a gym where people know me, I spend the whole time talking. Then what happens if I'm putting that situation so I don't go to gym?

40:34The discipline equation changes. So part of the reason I made a big investment in a company called Untill is because I can have somewhere I can work out and focus on the work out genuinely. And that's one of the things that actually changed my relationship with the gym and nearly threw me off the habit was that psychological cost. So how does that sit with you? It does, you've got the discipline equation, death, time and discipline. Yeah. What's the death part? So like, when I started writing that particular chapter in my book, to understand discipline, you have to understand this guesty of time.

41:03Because, you know, so I started because I was going to write a chapter about time management. People want to know how to manage their time. And as I went through the hundreds of available time management techniques, I realized the promoter technique, the time blocking, all this one, two, three, four, the ABC, the reason why there's so many time management techniques is because none of them work unless you have this underlying thing called discipline. It's the same in the Fad Diet industry. That industry will always turn out new things because there's an underlying issue which is discipline. So it's kind of a mirage industry.

41:30So the chapter pivoted and started focusing on discipline. Well, the next thing was time. Why is time important? Round the numbers, if you're, how old are you now? 35. Okay, so you have, if you reach the average age of an American, you have just over 17 ,000 days left to live. And I think all of that goes to show that time is the currency we're playing with in every moment of our lives. It's a sense point of our influence. I talk about the roulette table of my life. It's a frame I think through where we wake up in the morning with these 24 chips. If you spend eight hours sleeping, you wake up with six, 16 chips left.

42:04And how you place those chips on this roulette table that sits in front of us just before the wheel spins every day determines all of our outcomes in our lives. So I've chosen now to put to allocate two chips to this little piece here called fitness the roulette table spins And I get my returns as I went down that chapter I realized that in the context of time and death And time management the most important question to answer the fundamentalist discipline How can I allocate more of these chips to the things that are in line with my values? Where does this to think or discipline come from if it underpins everything we do?

42:34It even underpins what you just said there with Fred again in that Mark Manson quote the reason why Fred again is doing that is because his discipline equation is in line. If for whatever reason you just tipped any part of that equation, you could knock him off that discipline. With Jimmy Carrin, with all these people that go do that decade of dedication to become masters in their craft. If you look to their discipline equation, you'll see moments where the friction came up and they fell off or they got right his block or whatever it might be called in their context. And then so you can influence your discipline if you understand that equation.

43:04When my DJ equipment was on the floor of my spare room, I did not need to use it. The minute I put put it on my kitchen counter and had it one button away from being able to practice at any given moment. I put it right in front of me. Same thing for any creator. If you're starting to do a YouTube channel and this is a life hack here, you remember you might have had this in your house when you were younger, radio, infrared socket, turner oners. It's like a single remote. It's like 10 bucks on Amazon. And you leave the wall socket on it all times and you run it through one of these additional sockets and then you plug your shit into that thing.

43:37Oh yeah. And it's like 10 bucks, right, on Amazon. My entire studio at home is run through one of these. So I go in and I just press one, two, three, four, and everything comes on. Because when I was first starting out, it was super effortful for me to set up the camera and I'm gonna do the thing and I'm already trying to learn to do YouTube and it's terrifying and I'm looking into this black lens and it stares back at me. Friction. Precisely, same as you. DJ Kit can't be on the floor. If you want me to practice as much as possible, get it in the way, put it in the way of things, right? It's almost harder for me to DJ than it is for me to avoid it.

44:09It was only kitchen counter, so I would sometimes be going into the kitchen to eat something and just, oh, press the button and just, I'm off four hours later, I've just done a four hour DJ practice. If you think about, give me something in your life you're disciplined at and we'll run it through the equation. Something you've shown great discipline at, recording the podcast, recording the podcast. Does it really matter to you? Yes. Is there psychological enjoyment from the pursuit? Yes. Is the friction high? What's the level of friction? for out of ten. But if we added up the first part of the equation, how much does it matter to you?

44:39Out of ten. And how much, what's the psychological enjoyment of the pursuit? Nine. So I'd say we're about 19 takeaway four. And because it's positive, the behaviour will occur. You can do that as a minus four, right? The behaviour will occur. If at any point the friction gets really high, and for whatever reason, if the pursuit of it or the why behind, you know, the subjective meaning behind it falls, the behaviour will not occur. I've heard you do this with your meditation practice. Yeah. Which is why you're not meditating. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, my why isn't strong enough? I don't I don't I haven't quite had the the Trinsic enjoyment as well.

45:12Sometimes we need a little bit more pain, right? It's a robust in way to to frame it. I guess if Alex was sat here he would say we might say a lot of people are driven by pain rather than pleasure, right? 100 % and And that's the why part. The chip on your shoulder accounts for so much, it can account for so much, right? Somebody who had a really bad period of mental health, they suffered with anxiety attacks and it lost them something or somebody scorned them and they go, oh, okay. And then they decide to commit themselves to mental health and improving the texture of their own mind. That's coming from a place of wanting to prove other people wrong.

45:53Well, whether someone is driven or dragged is impossible to tell on the surface. And I've sat in my podcast over and over again and asked people, are you driven or you've been dragged by something? When I say dragged, I mean some kid on the playground at 70s old told you, you're a scumbag and you'll never be anything in your poor. And then that's dragged you, that insecurity in that shame has dragged you to entrepreneurship into becoming a millionaire. Driven is what Gary Vaynerchuk describes to me where he says his mother loved him so much and she encouraged him so much that he had that drive to kind of like proof her right.

46:22Whatever force it is, it comes down to why, which is the start of the equation. And even in my case, super, tons of shame as a kid. The only black kid in an all white area pretty much. The poorest family in our street definitely, dilapidated house in the context of a wonderful area. Deep shame and insecurity about not being enough. Drove me like you've, like I was an obsessed hungry dog for it's still doing it now in the back room somewhere, you know? One of my favorite quotes that I've heard from you recently is this, I was riddled with fake ambitions. My ambitions were fake. They weren't ambition, they were insecurity.

46:58Most of our lives are dragged by insecurity and shame. They're not driven by ambition and it's a tragic truth that most of us are going to have to have. Our ambitions and our narratives fail us before we realize that there are illusions and mirages and their false. 100 % and it's... I have believed sometimes that a lot of people disagree with. But I think this is typically one of them, because people want to take control over their success. They want to have that sort of power over it. But if I remember sitting with Eddie Hahn and I remember what Will Smith said, and they all describe, they can all very clearly articulate the reason for their motivation and their drive.

47:37They live in a world where every media reporter will say, oh, you're so amazing, like tell me how you're motivated every day, it's not the case. I actually, I question how much choice they have over that motivation. In the case of Eddie Hahn, he lived in the footsteps steps of his father, Barry Herne, who pulled up to school in these roles, Royces, and he was known as Eddie Herne's son. He's competing with his father. He'll say it. I'm driven. I'm dragged by the insecurity of being Barry's Herne's little son. I want to outdo him. It's the same with some of my other billionaire friends, and it's the same with Will Smith.

48:06He's being dragged by an insecurity in shame. So the key thing, because that's not always a bad thing, right? In every context of life, it might make you arrive at financial freedom sooner than others, but you just want to make sure that you're cognizant of it at least. In my life, I realized that about 24 years old when we had an offer from a very big company to sell the business, and I went home that day and I googled mansions and Lamborghini's on auto trader, and I looked into that screen and felt deep sense of emptiness, like I'd been betrayed by somebody, like someone had lied to me. And it was true, someone had lied to me.

48:3818 year old, 12 year old Steve had told me that that would fix everything. And as I played out it arriving on my realized that I would be poorer if I bought it. I'd lose something. I'd lose my company and the community and the love I had, but I'd lose something else. Then I went through this six months of sort of existential crisis. If I, okay, so if it wasn't for that, if we weren't obsessing, I could talk, what the fuck was I doing it for? And my fear, this woman came into my office one day and she said to me, just imagine for a second you have everything you've ever wanted. She goes, because the truth is, you do.

49:09There's no goal that you haven't completed that you need to complete to be worth more. And I'm a more walking away and thinking, what a load of rubbish, two years of dwelling on that thought. And I arrived at this conclusion, I think because I was scared of this idea that losing my drive would lead to no ambition. But it's very much the opposite. Losing your, losing your insecurities and your shame, that's dragging you, doesn't dissolve your ambition. It dissolves your fake ambition and creates room for your real ambitions that are entirely intrinsically motivated. So instead of wanting a Lamborghini in a mansion, I wanted this whole set of other things when I realized that the Lamborghini in the mansion would never going to make Steve Bartlett worth more than one Steve Bartlett.

49:53Deeply in me, I genuinely think part of me thought that if I got a Lamborghini in a mansion, Steve Bartlett would be worth two or four Steve Bartlett's. But your currency is one of one. And so in that moment, once I'd realized that nothing was going to change the intrinsic value of me, I could focus on things that I do regardless of that perception of value fluctuation, like starting a podcast or learning to DJ or doing a musical up and down the country or joining a psychedelics business, just to learn for a year about mental health and psychedelics. And the funny thing is if we think about Fred again and Darren Brown and all of those people that achieved mastery from a decade of natural dedication is that's also the path to real mastery when you're not being dragged.

50:34The thing that's interesting to fold in here that I think is useful, most people have more pain than they do anything else, especially when they're starting out. I don't think when you very, very first beginner pursuit, you've got this perfectly balanced desire to maximize your eki guy and show up in the way your logos being spoken forward is supposed to. It's not. People took the piss out of you from being different in school or Your parents didn't believe in you or they coddled you too much or you don't feel like you were given the opportunities that you should have got or you failed yourself or other people failed you That's fucking power.

51:12That's fuel, right? And you know what it can be as well. It can be a tiny thing. Oh, throw away comment throw away comment the one lunch money Oh, yeah, and that's what you a story going back to what we said about evidence about money and other people and that has just dominated it yourself story for the next three decades. A story you learn about money, you know? So I think that that fuel is toxic, especially when used for a long period of time. But I reckon you can get a good five or ten years out of it. And I think that to get yourself past the activation energy to go and do something in the very, very beginning, it's all well and good for you or me to sit here and say, you know, you can find the balance in the way that everything works.

51:57Like, we've been through that fire. Let's neither of us kid ourselves about what got us here in the first place. It was fucking resentment, right? I had a desire to prove everybody that had ever picked on me in school, every person that had thought I wasn't going to amount to anything. Everyone that had ostracized me socially, I wanted them to regret that decision. Don't get me wrong. And it's only been after a long, long, long time of realizing that actually if it wasn't for the fire that they'd given me, I wouldn't have got to where I am now, which is a place that I'm incredibly proud of, so I should thank them.

52:32Oh, that's a fucking interesting realization. And here's the risk though, and what I came to learn is it will take you somewhere that drive, but it's not guaranteed to take you to happiness. And the obsession of being dragged by an insecurity like the one you've described in the ones that I describe is so overpowering that it might mess up your priorities. And I think at a deeper level, humans, regardless of their term, we do need these fundamentals to be happy. We need that sense of connection. We need relationships. We need all of those things. And in my case, I work seven days a week in that bloody office.

53:08I would come in, even when I didn't have anything to do, because there was a deep sense of sort of self -esteem associated with my work. The cost was I didn't speak to my family for two years. The cost is like even as I sit here to I haven't spoken to my mom for months like we've fallen out the cost is I have very small group of friends and the cost is I've spent years struggling in relationships and I'm not 31 I've managed to get a relationship and reprioritize my life urgently but the cost I see in a lot of people I meet is okay they're successful in one of nine metrics of happiness and I sit there with I've sat there with some of my close billionaire friends.

53:44They got all nine cars that I've ever dreamed of running outside and they tell me at 4 a .m. by their indoor pool that they're deeply unhappy and asking me to sleep in their bed with them that night because they're lonely. I don't disagree. I don't disagree that if you scale this for long enough, it's not good for you, right? But it is so potent at getting that activation energy in the beginning and I just don't know. If you were to take me back and say you can dispense with your fear of insufficiency, the chip that's on your shoulder, all of those things, I don't know if I would have done anything.

54:16I think that I would have been significantly less motivated to go and to be able to deal with the uncertainty of the lonely chapter. So I came up with this idea with a whole mosey a couple of weeks ago called the Lonely Chapter. I fucking love it. So there is a period in everybody's journey where they are so different because they've started to do new things that they no longer fit in with the old set of friends, but they're not sufficiently developed that they've gained their new set of friends. And they're unsure, should I go back, should I lean back into getting a bag in with the boys on a weekend?

54:51Is that the highest, you know, way that I can live my life passion forward? That's what everybody else does. And all of my friends are taking the piss, oh, not drinking again. Too good for us, are we not going out again this week? Oh, okay. Well, like enjoy staying in home and reading, fucking nerd. So you're going to feel the pain of being ostracized from the group of friends that you used to have. But you're stuck in this messy middle where you haven't yet worked out who you are on the other side of this. And that lonely chapter that's in the middle is something that I would say almost nobody that I've ever met who has gone from a place where they are to a place where they want to be hasn't gone through.

55:29Are you out of the lonely chapter? Yes. Yeah, 100%. It's difficult for me to find it. It's difficult for me to find it again. Facilitated largely by being an Austin. But that being said, most of the work that I do is on my own. You know, I spend hours sat at my desk researching, sorting stuff for episodes, dealing with the team, making sure that everything is set for this trip or the next trip or whatever we've got coming up. I think high performers actually, they do exactly what you've described there. They leave the comfortable tribe that is social expectation and their childhood friends whatever else.

56:10And once they leave there, there's that initial point of resistance. And then I think they, to some degree, live forever in the loneliness chapter. The start of it is much more difficult. But there's so few people that can relate to their experiences once they come out of the crowd anyway. that they're always going to live to some degree in a heightened sense of sort of loneliness. They can find a tribe at home and with family and with a partner, but it's never the same as having, you know, what you see other people have from your hometown. Well, that's, you know, look at any bell curve, right?

56:41Fatus bits right in the middle. Yeah. To move yourself out to the edges is to accept being alone in some regard. The Atlanta buttons got this quote where he says, loneliness is a kind of tax we have to pay to a tone for a certain complexity of mind. Yeah, there's two things we don't want to be. Not enough and different. That's what a therapist said to me recently, that came on my podcast. She said, there's two things that fundamentally, I interview billionaires and CEOs and royalty. So she goes, I'm a therapist for billionaires, CEOs and royalties. She goes, the two things that people struggle with fundamentally are feeling different.

57:16We don't want to feel different. That's a rejection from one's tribe, which used to mean back in the day through a process of self -preservation. We're die earlier as you've heard about in the studies that they did at Harvard, we'd get more ALI immune systems, we'd break down, and the second one is not feeling like you're enough, which means you're not valuable to the tribe. So not being part of the tribe or of good use to the tribe causes a bunch of signals in our body, which then manifests as physiological disease and psychological disease. So at its core, sometimes I think when I'm feeling in that such a way, maybe I'm feeling lonely or I'm feeling really different, or I've got some feedback, which makes me feel like I'm different in a fundamental way.

57:50I just ground myself in the understanding that even the fact that I feel that makes me like everybody else. And in terms of loneliness, I've had to kind of carve out my own new tribe in my life. A very small group of the Prince William. Oh yeah. But no, moving to Austin was a big part of that for me because I was around it's a city of cultural immigrants. Yeah. Right. Everybody has gone from one place to this place. So that is the selection effect. And that's why, again, another great way to work out whose high agency in your friend group is, are they living in the same town that they were born up in or in a new one?

58:27Are they living in the same country that they were born in or a new one? Have they decided to do something on their own and take risks that they were the only people who they were responsible for? In relation to your riddled with fake ambitions thing, this great quote from Alex that says, you've already achieved goals that you said would make you happy. Yeah. And that encapsulation of the hedonic treadmill in a single tweet, I think is so interesting. But it also calls you to reframe what you're pursuing. And this is why the part of the discipline equation, the psychological pursuit, is actually really a nice thing to focus on because we both know in all of our lives, even though the podcasting game you're playing now, there's not a finish line here is there.

59:09Every day is the finish line. So I think it reframes what we're aiming at because they are mirages that move off into the distance as we approach them. And if you become too, think about unhappiness coming from unmet expectations. If you're too focused on the podium, giving you pleasure, when it doesn't, the expectation that it would could lead to unhappiness. What happened when you hit a million subs? How did you feel? I mean, I'd sit down my team, I know, I know none of you really care. But the reason why we should celebrate is because, and then I give them the reason. And it's same with 3 million, when we hit 3 million subs, it's the same thing.

59:41Walked into the background of our studio, I go, listen, I know this doesn't actually matter. What matters more was that old lady that came up to me when I went to pink when you the day and said that was almost crying in the lobby. That's what we all care about. We care about the Chris Kamara thing where he came on the podcast and his former football club put banners up in the stadium about it. We care about impact. And this is just a trailing metric of impact. So it's important, you know, I've done a lot of research over the last 10 years about how to build a company in such a way where you don't get those moments of burnout or anti -climax.

1:00:10and Simon Sinek talks about building things as if they are infinite. So how would you set up you in this podcast team through the frame of, we're going to do this for a hundred years? You design the system to be sustainable over the long term, your aim at consistency, you try to optimize intensity but not at the cost of consistency. And the whole system of how you treat the people and how this everything and how you treat yourself would be set up in such a way, that's what I think about now. I'm actually thinking about our podcast through the lens of heavily inspired by what Joe Rogan's done sticking out that for like 15 years.

1:00:43How do we run this game for 50 years? And I think that's a huge competitive advantage to think through that frame because there will be a lot of people that would have designed their systems in a way that is not sustainable. And I see it with podcasts as all the time. I see it where they've, you know, they've got four mates who are all on the podcast and they're doing it twice a week. Well, then what happens when Jerry, you know, has a divorce with his wife and has to leave and then it was the system was never designed for longevity. So all facets of my life, my companies, my teams, all designed for longevity.

1:01:1390 % of podcasts don't make it past episode three. And over the 10 % that do, 90 % of them don't make it past episode 20. So by making 21 podcasts, you were in the top percentile of all podcasters ever in history. And how many get past 10 years of fucking hell? Yeah, that's the game I want to play. I want to do a 20, 20, 30 year. I sit to my team all the time. Multi -decade systems. long -term games with long -term people. So my team can move through the chapters of their life, right? They're going to be fathers and mothers. They're going to have certain moments in their life where they have health risks.

1:01:46And is our system designed to guide them through that, but retain the talent that we want to retain? Is it designed for a changing world that's going to get AI -centric? Do we have enough fast acting feedback loop so we know when the next thing's coming? Would you not just lot people in and move people out? but like the differences and the challenges that you're going to encounter at 10 million subs is gonna be different to what you encountered at 10 ,000 subs. So, I mean, I get that and there will usually be a core group of people, but really the only core thing is you. Right? Ultimately, if you want to start doing stadium, edge, sheeran, style productions, the people that did the first Stephen Bartlett tour, don't know what the people that can do that, right?

1:02:28You need new people. You need a different cinematography team And you need people that can do live broadcasts, and they need to be able to do switching on this huge fucking desk, camera three, camera four. Like, I don't disagree, but fundamentally, what it seems to me it comes back to is, how can you make sure that it's your infinite game? Yes, it trickles down to the rest of the team, but ultimately the team are gonna come and go. The only thing that's gonna remain is you. Because if you go, it's fucking done. You're not selling Diary of a C, like, Diary of a CEO, and now presented by fucking Jimmy Carl.

1:02:57Like, it's not happening. So in that sentence, there was a key thing I said, which is the talent you want to retain. And in building businesses, I've booked businesses from zero to 700. I always know that the first phase one people, the cult, we call it the cult, the growth and then the enterprise phase, three stages in business, and then you have the decline, which is inevitable for all companies. In the cult phase, the people that can wear multiple hats and that are fired up and sleeping under the desks are not always the people that thrive in the enterprise phase, where there's your job description is very, very narrow.

1:03:23You need to be very process orientated and fit into a bigger system. They're not always the same people, but the people you want to retain that have a decade of information capital in their heads about who we are, the disciples. If you think about Alex Ferguson, there's a reason why he kept Gary Neville on the pitch. Gary Neville's told me this directly. I've seen the conversation he had with Saralix Ferguson where he asked him the question, gaffle, why did you keep me around like three or four years after I had, I clearly couldn't kick up all anymore. And it was because of he represent he knew the culture, he knew the values and you need disciples.

1:03:53All of those players, all those many night players said to me, how many times do you reckon Saralix Ferguson came into the training ground dressing room in 26 years. I said, I don't know, for 2000, they went twice. Good, why? Because my disciples were in there. I didn't need to go in. When cultures are strong, they're self -policing. Sorry. When cultures are strong, new people become the culture. When a culture's weak, the culture becomes the new people. So in my teams, I want as many people that were there from the jump if they have the capacity to move through those phases of growth. And the key sentence was the talent I would retain.

1:04:24Yeah. You must sweat the small stuff. Why? I just think it's the most important thing. I remember one of the most important books I ever read was The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson when I was 18 years old because it helped me understand the importance of marginal gains and the tiny things in life and how they're compounding for or against you invisibly in every aspect of your life. Your teeth, your skin, your finances, your relationship. The tiny things are compounding for her against you and the analogy I give to help sort of illuminate this is, if you didn't brush your teeth today, no one in this room would know.

1:04:59If you didn't brush your teeth every day this week, you might. I might because I'm not in close proximity. If you didn't brush your teeth every day this week, really, a couple of people might notice but they wouldn't say anything, no real costs. If you didn't brush your teeth every day for five years, your teeth would fall out. You'd be on a dental chest screaming and the question becomes, when did that happen? It happened today. It was that small, seemingly invisible decision, which was easy to do and easy not to do, as they always are, that you chose not to do that compounded and visibly against you.

1:05:28And as they say in compounding returns, which they call the eighth wonder of the world, according to Warren Buffett, it's slow than it's fast. And that's why it's so difficult and so easy to overlook the smallest things. It's easy to save one pound, so it's also easy not to. I believe that most people in any discipline I'm competing in will not sweat the small stuff. They'll overlook the small things, which gives us a great competitive advantage by obsessing over the smallest things. And also, as we talked about earlier, we talked about the frame, and how it's hard, it's really hard to make huge steps forward in reality, but much easier to make them in psychology.

1:06:03It's very difficult to find big steps forward in business. It's very difficult. Like, think about us as podcasters. Is there really like another platform we could go on to? We're both on airlines now, I think. We're both on YouTube Spotify and Apple. Is there like a breakthrough through step forward. With, if there was, we'd all be doing it, right? They're hard to find. Small things, though. I can stack 100 of those and make 100 % gain as Sir David Brelsford said. And the unobvious thing that no one thinks about is the psychological impact on a team when you stack small things. This is what we call the progress principle.

1:06:34Harvard Business Review interviewed thousands of people in work and said, when was your most enjoyable day in work? And they all pointed out in their diaries a day when they had a sense of progress, even small, a tiny little game they made. Sir David Brelsford, who's known for his marginal gains theory and has written about in the first chapter of James Clears book, Atomic Habits, said to me, yeah, the small gains that making the water bottle just a little bit bigger in the pillow softer mattered, but the thing no one gives us credit for, thing no one talks about is I took over a team that were depressed psychologically.

1:07:02They were down and out, they didn't want anything. And by finding tiny little gains, quote, we felt like we were going somewhere. That psychology of momentum is the greatest forcing business. I can tell you in all my companies now which ones have that feeling of momentum and the impact in 6, 12, 18, 24 months that'll have on that their Excellence in their work and they're delivering in terms of bottom line And I can point at the companies now that don't have that I call it it's I say it's in the air They don't have the momentum in the air The collective don't feel like they're going somewhere the easiest way to jump start this like I said about keeping commitments to yourself is to go and find tons of small things and share them with the group.

1:07:43So David Brostford said to me, we started finding all these small things and what you'd find was people were staying till 2am. He goes, we were in the shops making the tires a little bit bigger and people were fired up, we felt like we were going somewhere. How do you apply this to your personal life? There's the small stuff. I just see it goes back to what we said about letting the demons in. I see the small things that I do is they're all compounding for her against me. So this morning when my girlfriend got out of bed and walked out of the room, I remember thinking like we've developed a habit and we're developing a habit now where we don't interact first thing in the morning.

1:08:14We didn't say good morning to each other. We used to always, this sounds a bit soppy or whatever, but it's a truth. When we first met, when we woke up, we'd cuddle just for a bit. We kind of tied with cuddle. We moved out of that. And I can see if I just zoomed out over the last three years, how our behavior, like our interactions in the morning are just veering off. So this morning she got out of bed and she was walking off and I go, hey, come back. come back. I said, let's have a cuddle. And we laid in bed for about 20 minutes and just cuddled. That's that course, that subtle course correction, which they talk about in aviation.

1:08:43This was a 61 one rule where for every 60 miles you fly, if you're one degree of target, you'll miss the airport by one mile. That need for that's also why the small stuff is so important. It's that continual course correction of that compounding curve that's dominating areas of your life you're not thinking about. And if I just give you that lens of every area of your life, your relationship, your health, your teeth, your skin, your money is subtly compounding in one direction based on the tiny decisions that you're choosing to make or not make. And the way that you can change that trajectory over the next 10 years is by saving that pounds, brushing your teeth, taking care of that relationship, checking in with that friend.

1:09:21And if you zoom out and you look at Warren Buffett and how he made his millions, it's all that. It's all this obsession with the compounding returns, which he calls the eighth wonder of the world. So his business partner, Charlie Munger, says, the first rule of compounding is never interrupted unnecessarily. So that, so this is the other side, right? You must sweat the small stuff. But when you are sweating the small stuff, stop fucking about with it, right? Are you on a path? It's the same for me, like a lot of the questions and stuff that we've had over the last year is like, what are you going to do next?

1:09:53What are you going to change? What's the next project? A big part of me is like, everything is so vertical, like line go up and to right, right? Which I know that you know the feeling of, I really don't want to touch too much. This doesn't mean that we're not looking at different ideas, you know, got this, this is a different way of shooting things. It's in a much smaller room. I'm actually trying some different angles with shooting on different cameras. Blah, blah, blah. But it's not a massive change, right? The first rule of compounding is never interrupted unnecessarily. And so many people, I think, because there is an allure in the novelty of doing something new, I'm like, oh yeah, maybe I'll try it.

1:10:28Like, I'm sure I could start a fucking VC firm or some bullshit. I'll like start it with a friend. I'll like be like, Stephen, how should I begin to do this thing? It's like, one thing, the thing that you've said is already most important is going up and to the right, stop fucking about with it. Right? Compounding us on your side. So it's, temptation is highest when we're unsuccessful and when we're successful, it's not high in the middle. Because when we're unsuccessful, there's so much of luring us away. My mother started 25 businesses before the age of me being 25 because when her business was struggling, someone would walk in and tell her that a state agent's down the road and making loads of money.

1:11:00So my mum literally started in a state agent, she couldn't access the internet, she couldn't read her right, so she started that. And then someone walked into the shop six months in and said, where houses that do furniture down the road is selling lots of money. So I watched my mum start 25 different businesses at that. And then at the top, let's look at the top. So when things are going really well, and temptations optimal as well, if you think about the biggest podcasters in this country, previously, I won't name them because I don't want to. But the thing that took them off their throne was diversion.

1:11:29Even, true Jody the other day did a tweet where he said, somewhere along the way, I lost track of what my job was, which was to give value to my audience. London Real. Fucking hell. He changed his YouTube channel to run for mayor and he posted, at times it looked like 30 video, iPhone videos a day. I'm still the same. Temptation was high. The temptation of becoming London Mayor. So I think when I'm an optimal temptation, focus. Stop fucking about. Focus, don't interrupt the process as Charlie Munger would say. I fell in love with an essay by Strangest Loop. And it is a list of things that are not doing the thing.

1:12:09So here is a list of things that are not doing the thing. Preparing to do the thing isn't doing the thing, scheduling time to do the thing isn't doing the thing. Making it to do list for the thing isn't doing the thing. telling people you're going to do the thing, isn't doing the thing, messaging friends who may or may not be doing the thing, isn't doing the thing, writing a banger tweet about how you're going to do the thing, isn't doing the thing, hating on yourself for not doing the thing, isn't doing the thing. Hating on other people, who have done the thing, isn't doing the thing. Hating on the obstacles in the way of you doing the thing, isn't doing the thing.

1:12:38Fantasizing about all of the adoration you'll receive once you do the thing, isn't doing the thing. Reading about how to do that thing, isn't doing a thing reading about how other people did the thing, isn't in doing the thing. Reading this essay isn't doing the thing. The only thing that is doing the thing is doing the thing. And I love this insight that you can dress it up however you want. The work just needs doing. And you can fluff it and you can change it and you can talk about compounding. But ultimately it comes down to sitting at the desk and answering the email, opening the word document, recording the podcast.

1:13:11And one of the things that I've found is a really great hack for me. I would have none. I would have no success as a YouTuber that I've had being a podcaster because I work well when I have someone else in front of me. Like I would clean my room at home if mum came and sat and like just watch or talk to me, right? Because I just didn't want to fucking do something that sucked on my own. Being a YouTuber and staring down the lens. Hi guys, welcome back to the channel. Today we're gonna fucking do whatever we're gonna do. I really, really struggle with that. Sitting down with someone else in front of me, that makes it easy.

1:13:44So there are ways that doing the thing can become more easy, but ultimately the work just needs to do. Really hard. It's a discipline equation, but also all of those things in the essay really pointed out procrastination and there was hints of trying to realign one's cognitive dissonance by announcing to the world that you are something that is not consistent with your actions. But one of the things that I really got from that was people think were motivated by pleasure. And if you, when I sat with near I L, who wrote the book on distraction and procrastination and why people do it, one of the really key messages I took away was that we're actually motivated by the avoidance of discomfort.

1:14:21And it's like, I quized him on it. I was like, really? Okay, so sex. He goes, yeah, horning us is a form of discomfort. So you're motivated to relieve yourself of the horningness. And if you look at any aspect of your life when you're procrastinating, cleaning the house or you're procrastinating doing the essay, so you end up cleaning the house, it's because that's the path of less discomfort. We're motivated by the avoidance of discomfort. This is really useful because if you want to understand why you're procrastinating in some area of your life, the most important question is heightening your self awareness on the thing that's causing the discomfort.

1:14:51Because in most areas where we procrastinate, we have no idea. We're just avoiding it. Do you think, do you ever think about the weird shit that you do when you're procrastinating from the thing you're supposed to do? Like, I have an essay or an email to write that I I don't want to write. I need to reply to someone and it's an awkward conversation or something like that. And guess what? Now my cupboard sources are perfectly aligned. Like you will find the most inventive ways to not do the thing. I noticed this about myself. I flew to Bali to write my latest book. And as I was in the jungle, I noticed this pattern where every time I picked up my phone, like just seemed needlessly, was because I was at a hard point in the book.

1:15:32Yeah. So every single time I'd get to a point and I was trying to summarize it or find some research to back it up within 30 seconds as if I'm possessed by this puppet master above me. Pick up the phone, start swiping. And I'm on Instagram, and I get fat, of course, I'm avoiding the discomfort. And it's so important to get clear on that because you need to understand the forces that are pulling and pushing you. And then you can say to yourself, okay, why am I avoiding this chapter? What is it? Well, I don't feel researched enough on the subject matter. Okay, well, I'm gonna step away from the computer and I'm gonna read that book or watch that YouTube video as opposed to just banging my head against this word document.

1:16:08If you become aware of the discomfort, you can counteract it, but if you're not aware of it, it's just an object you just can't hit. So that changed my life, that question. What is the psychological discomfort I am avoiding right now? You must make pressure your privilege. So pressure is a privilege, is on a lot of t -shirts by Chris Bumsted, who is the current Mr. Olympia classic physique champion, He was on the podcast a little while ago. He made t -shirts with pressures, he got privilege on it. Turns out that one of my best friends in Austin, his godmother first came up with that. The tennis player.

1:16:44Yeah. And sued Chris. No. And I was like, oh. Yeah, her book is called Pressure. Pressure is a privilege. This is awkward. Yeah. That the guy, and it was the first question I asked him. And then I spoke to Sky, and I was like, have I been, has this recreated some trauma inside of the family is Thanksgiving dinner going to be ruined because I brought it back up again. But yeah, you must make pressure your privilege. Why? You look at any aspects of our lives where we experience growth that's under pressure. There's an old cliche adage about how diamonds are made, which I think although is cliche speaks to this and such profundity.

1:17:19And even we think about the comfort crisis we're living in and all of the health outcomes and predicaments that we're facing through our obsessive pursuit of comfort and how the body has started to break down and we've got all of these mismatched diseases, they call it where the world we're living in and the way we behave within it isn't aligned to who we are. It's the avoidance of pressure. And it goes back to what you said earlier about avoiding that difficult conversation or that difficult piece of work. If there is an antithesis to pressure, it is in my mind, it is comfort, it is ease. And that means that today is great and tomorrow is bad.

1:17:51And anyone that has the foresight to move that discomfort and that pressure into the current moment yields much greater returns in terms of happiness and health in the long term. And in the book I go through tons of examples from hell, from sports to Everest climbers who understand and that famous tennis player who was the best in the world and I still think she is the best female tennis player in the world. It was her mantra. It was that what is your relationship with difficulty? And everybody including people in my family who have a adverse reaction to difficulty just defer it into the future in a big way.

1:18:22It compounds against them to make their future harder than their present. So everyone's relationship with difficulty, whether it's difficult conversations or difficult workouts or difficult physical, psychological exertion, those individuals, I think, are setting themselves up for a brighter future. How do you deal with the discomfort that comes along with pressure, though? The fact that I have pressure means that I care about something, it means that it's fulfilling to me. There are people that go through their entire life and don't ever have anything that approximates It's like important, right?

1:18:59And I have it. But the felt sense of pressure isn't that. The felt sense is overwhelmed and chaos and concern and... And there's a story below those words you've just used that really is the problem. It's, I'm not good enough, I'm going to be kicked out of the tribe, I'm different. All of those things, right? That's the base layer. The interpretation, you're right, there's a story we tell ourselves about our pressure, which determines how we experience the pressure. I actually did, if you look at that famous TED Talk on stress and pressure, what they found found out is that stress and pressure don't actually kill people unless you believe it will.

1:19:33You have a negative interpretation of your pressure in your stress. Then it shows up in your physiological response. You get more diseases. But in that famous TED talk, which I think has like 30 million views, she found out that pressure in itself isn't the problem. It's the story we tell ourselves about our pressure that causes us to be unhealthy. And we will have different stories about our pressure. And if your story is that it is X, Y and Z, it's going to get me kicked out of the tribe, it's going to expose myself and not being good enough. If your story about difficult situations is I'm an imposter versus this is a growth moment, not only are you going to show up worse, you're going to perform worse, and the physiological impact and psychological impact is going to be detrimental.

1:20:08And that's what this whole argument about imposter syndrome is so confusing to me, because if I asked anybody, would you like a life where you were never outside of you, where you never did anything that challenged you or pushed you? Would you choose that, no? So why are you complaining about your life being full of that? I think anyone who has a healthy relationship with pressure goes in search of continual imposter syndrome. Like, you know what I mean? Like, and they would be, they would be dismayed at a life without it, without that pressure and feeling out of your depth. Well, the presumption would be that you're never doing anything you haven't done before, right?

1:20:38There are people that have imposter syndrome, which I call imposter adaptation, which is your imposter syndrome persists despite the fact that you've disproven it at this very thing. It would be like every single time that you did a podcast, you being adamant, it was going to be terrible and you were going to fluff your words and and shit yourself and say something racist, right? It would be like, everything's going to go wrong. Despite the fact that you've got 300, 400 fucking bits of proof that that's not the case. But imposter syndrome should show up in someone who's healthily moving forward into new areas that they haven't been in before.

1:21:09Like imposter syndrome largely is a very realistic assessment of, wow, I've never, I have no proof that I can do the thing that I'm trying to do. What did you expect? Do you have blind faith? And over time, what you end up with, what really good robust confidence is, is when analogous situations start to bleed into other ones. You've spent a lot of time during social chain doing on stage speaking, which presumably gave you even just a tiny little bit of a base that, oh, well, like podcasting's kind of not a million miles away from being on stage and being on YouTube's not a million miles away from being answer, okay, so it starts to sort of bleed into these other things.

1:21:51And that's when it's really cool. And that's when you get real compounding of confidence. Confidence, evidence. Yes, yes. It's what we said earlier. Talking about criticism, you've moved from like being rich in an independent media way to now being famous in a very sort of normal traditional media way. As soon as you accept the dragon's den deal, that is you allowing yourself to be noticed by the Guardian and BBC and all of the rest of these people. What have you learned about the differences in scrutiny and tenor between these two worlds? When I was a podcaster or CEO, I wasn't of public interest at all.

1:22:33That's actually the legal definition, the way public interest. When you become and you become part of the BBC show, you legally become public interest. What does that mean? Means that people can write certain things about you that they couldn't otherwise. That's the actual, it's a legal term. So if you were to, for example, sue a newspaper, they would make a case that we could say that about them or we could reveal his private business because it's of public interest. They wouldn't be able to do that for someone that wasn't on the BBC. So all of that stuff changes, the things that you have to keep the same, and I think this is the same for everybody, is you need to keep your circle of information, your circle of feedback, tighten close and small.

1:23:11You have to put systems in place, and I think this is actually the case, this is what your organ's done really well, and I've heard him speak about it a great length, is you can't search your name online, I try never do. I don't search my name on anything, not TikTok, not Instagram, not YouTube, nowhere. Because it's for me, like the, there's a set of principles and there's a set of principles which are more important, which is like me being up to to myself and delivering in my way, the feedback can be really distorting because it's not necessarily like always helpful. So someone could comment on something that I produce and say, this is terrible, this is dreadful, you need to do this, this, this in this.

1:23:50Now, if I take that feedback, violate my principles, we end up in a place which we talked about earlier where you lose focus. To go for the decade, which I talked about the systems I'm setting up in my life, you have to limit the amount of feedback you get, which is not easy. But you've had a few periods where the press have been a bit bulky and the keys at tree and attacking. how have you dealt with the felt, and what's that been like? You've got to be rich and largely anonymous, although you weren't totally anonymous, but relatively now very much changed. How do you deal with that as a felt sense of system?

1:24:26It's systems and processes again. It's like even my friends, right? So if my friends see something on TikTok or Instagram or if it's like about my gulf, whatever, do not send it to me. I will not see it. And again, I've actually took a lot of advice from Rogan's system. Rogan's the same. None of his friends can send them anything. I don't see that stuff because it's not useful information. And the truth is, and again, I speak to Simon Sinek about this, you don't want to start aiming at ghosts. You don't want to start exerting energy on trying to counteract public perception, which isn't necessarily based on even their own perception of reality anyway.

1:25:06You don't want it's not a useful it's sort of way to allocate your chips I talked about this 24 chips you have 16 F when you wake up It's a really inefficient use of your time doesn't bring you forward in any way So it all comes down to systems and processes You need these principles in your life which take you right back to your caveman days when there was 20 people and you're all Your survival led to the survival of the other 19 people So in my hardest moments when I'm being criticized or scrutinized or whatever for me That's what it comes down to it's like keep my circle super small focus on what I'm doing I mean, the Rogan solution was heavy kettlebell workouts, five minutes of cold therapy and three grams of magic mushrooms.

1:25:42Oh, really? Yeah, as he is. I heard him say that on the Spotify, yeah. Correct, yeah. And that's, I mean, that's his system. He's built up like a social network as well to guard him from, you know, news and articles and feedback and stuff. And he's kind of retracted from like social media as we know it. I don't think he was ever a huge part of it. I understand why. What would you say, you know, people from the outside looking in at somebody that gets the accolades and can hang with Prince William and make breakfast in a pret or whatever, what do people not realize about the reality of the sort of scrutiny that comes along with big platforms, especially mainstream platforms?

1:26:22I would probably draw more on other people's experiences than my own from like interviewing people that have dealt with like real fame because I didn't consider myself to be really famous. I think it's maybe just, maybe there's a, you probably experience this as well, but there's like an ongoing, always on paranoia, which I think is just this numbing paranoia in the background and also this realization, which is actually something I learned from that one day, by the way, where I was with Prince William, we're not friends he doesn't know who I am. But when I spent that day with him and I posted, I've just been with Prince William, we did this business initiative.

1:26:55Every single message I received was amazing. How is he? Amazing, is he nice? Amazing, is he nice? Amazing, was he sociable? It's this realization that everyone you meet, you're meeting everyone they know. Mmm. And that's a lot of pressure to never have a bad day in public. And it actually gives me huge empathy for someone like Justin Bieber, who is actually famous, who goes out in public on his worst days and tries to pick up a counter milk, and there's 74 paparazzi following him down the street and thousands of fans. Literally outside his front door in New York City and he's literally going, please can you not come to my home?

1:27:31I watch the video of him going, please can you not come to my home, please? And I go, how mad? It's no way to live your life, is it? That ambient anxiety, there's sort of sense that you're being followed or that that something could go wrong. Yeah, I get you with that. And I'm like, I'm nowhere near some of these people that live that like a drake or even a rogan or a Justin Bieber. I can't imagine. I teach you a lesson that I learned from Ben Francis that didn't happen on the podcast. So we went for Nando's in Manchester, at Jim Shark Lift LA weekend, and he'd got his EA to text me and say where it was gonna be in wine, or maybe he'd text me or whatever.

1:28:14And I walk in and he sat down reading something on his phone or watching or whatever. And I think his EA and his EA's assistant are something that sat on a different table. He was just there. That's that down and we got talking. For the people who don't know, Ben Francis is the CEO of Jim Shock, and his net worth is three times what Drake is worth. Triple Drake. And then I thought, what would the experience have been like if I tried to come to this Nandos with Drake? And Drake wouldn't have got within two miles of this. It would have been mobbed, it would have been swamped, it would have been chaos, it would have been, you can even do this thing, there's like a law, right?

1:28:49where if a normal person, if like a super, super famous person turns up in a very crowded place, that they can be, it's like inciting violence, like, ariously through fame or some bullshit. And it made me start to think about the price that people pay for the wealth that they have. Right? Ben Francis is managed to accumulate an awful lot of wealth. And the felt price that he has to pay is at the very least three times less than Drake. right? Because he doesn't have to have security with him. He has like five foot six hundred pounds of cost of in Ben's case of not being as famous of the game he's chosen to play which is business versus I suppose that he's he's not going to be get the public accolade as much.

1:29:36He won't get access to as many cool things because people aren't going to be constantly looking for him. He's not like the the hot girl on your arm that you can trot out at some event. He's very rarely going to be sat front seat at a Lakers game and it pan and going, here's the CEO of Jim Shark, Ben Francis. For me, that's like, Pucks, he's not going to get, but the cost he's going to encounter is seven days a week. He's got thousands of people who are relying on him to pay them orages. How many people's Drake got relying on him? Honestly, on the business side of things, probably directly not that many, Ben's the CEO, which means that when the markets go down and when they go public, which I'm sure they'll public when that stock price dips, as you've seen from Matt Molding at the Hutt Group, Matt Molding said to me, again, not a famous, not a Drake, right?

1:30:21So it's a sea of the Hutt Group. He said, on stage actually at the, um, at event we did it, so how farmhouse he says, sometimes at night, I just lie on that cold kitchen floor at 3 a .m. because it's just cold and it's calling me down. Like the, the chaos of what's going on in that company means that he's lying at 3 a .m. on the kitchen floor because it's just the coldest surface he can feel to cool his body. That level of like the hardest times of my life were running business. They weren't like dealing with journalists. It was like the pressure of knowing payroll is tomorrow and looking at the bank balance and knowing there's nothing in there and then looking up in the office and seeing 200 people in our HQ that are joyous and celebrating because they think it's paid a tomorrow.

1:31:01And me knowing in my head that I have 24 hours to persuade Natalie our bank to put money in our account or else they're not getting paid. The pressure of that is much worse than any article or getting mobbed at Nandos. And that's what Ben will be encountering. He'll do it. He doesn't with such grace as a lot of CEOs do. But you've had about Elon Musk talking about the pain of trying to save Tesla and SpaceX, being out in the street on Christmas Eve, like crying, he says it's the deepest pain he's ever felt. Then he got that phone call that someone was going to lend him 20 million to save Tesla and SpaceX.

1:31:29It's a different level of pain, a different game they're playing. So all things in life have a cost. This is my conclusion. Drake's thing has a cost which is privacy and all of those issues. Ben's thing has a cost as well which is, I'm even thinking about it gives me goosebumps because I know the feeling of like the angst of a business, a ship. They're two different costs and it goes back to what you said is with the Mark Manson quote, which cost are you willing to incur? Which rewards? You've got an interesting idea. Deep expertise is often a recipe for rigidity. It goes back to what we said a second ago and those were the words I was actually looking for when we were talking about how knowing too much about a thing can make you unable to be agile and innovative and think from first principles.

1:32:11And that when we think about the real innovators over the years that disrupted the incumbents. It's very rarely an incumbent that disrupts itself. It's so often a couple of kids in a basement that didn't go to university that have seen the introduction of a new technology and that thought let's fuck around with this. And they've been able to display a century old incumbent because they are not not encumbered by the rigidity of convention. Yeah, from a personal perspective, I came up with a name, the vestigial pattern bias. It turns out it's also got, it already existed before I came up with it called the Einstein -Stelling Effect.

1:32:43So the successful deliberate approaches that we learned during our development can become a prison, which stops us from being more free -flowing in data ease when we are developed. The tools that got you from 0 to 50 are not the same ones that get you from 50 to 90 on 90 to 95. But we found success with this approach in the past, so we cling on to an overly rational, deliberate approach. We hope that applying pure cerebral horsepower to a situation will fix it, without realizing that our subconscious has aggregated the thousands of hours of experience that we've clocked up now. And not using that experience is keeping us in the same league we've always been in.

1:33:16It's so interesting. It's a prison you've built around yourself that you don't know is there. And I reflect on that video. Have you ever seen that video of the ant in the pen? No. They get an ant on a piece of paper, plain A4 piece of paper, and the guy on YouTube, it's like got millions of views on YouTube, just with a biro, draws a circle around the ant. And the ant runs to the edge of the circle and believes it's trapped, and it will not cross that line. It will not cross that line. Looking down on it from a bird's eye view, you go, oh no, it's just a figment of its imagination. They do the same with a spider.

1:33:49They get a piece of paper, there's a little spider on it, they draw a circle around it with a biro. It will not cross that line. As the guy's drawing the circle smaller and smaller, he accidentally draws it so close to the spider that the spider steps over the bireau and then it can never ever in its life be trapped by the bireau again. And you watch it just run off the page and he's trying to trap it again and it can never, because it realizes that that's just a wall it's built in its mind. And I reflect on that always in my life and go, there was this time I was in Boston and I was running on a tread machine and I always do 10 kilometers on this tread machine.

1:34:18And when I do 10 kilometers, I get this physiological signal that I'm tired, like my muscles break down. I landed in Boston. I've got a talk later that day. The tread machine doesn't have the kilometer dial on it So I can't see how fast I'm running. So I think I'll do it the other way round I'll wait for the signal in my body telling me I'm tired and then I'll get off. I run and I run and I run and I run I run and I run and I'm not getting tired. I keep running run and I look up at the time I'm gonna have to get off at this treadmill at some point. I hit the button 21 kilometers I was perplexed absolutely perplexed Every time I run 10 kilometers, I feel mackered.

1:34:52I ran 22 when I couldn't see the thing and I don't. It was just a limiting belief, a wall I'd built, and I told myself that I wasn't, that was my limit. And you, me, we have drawn circles around ourselves and those circles are determining how far we push, how far we aim, the things we decide to do. But they are just figments of our imagination. Have you seen, there was a very famous study where they put rats into water and they let them tread water, tread water, tread water to see how long they would do it until they just gave up. So first iteration of the study, they put rats in and I think they last around about 30 minutes, something like that, not long.

1:35:26Second iteration of the study, new rats, obviously, unfortunately. Rats go in for 28 minutes, then they pull them out, they dry them off, and they let them calm down. Then they put them back in, and they tread water for like 12 hours, right? Because their belief is, I'm going to be saved. That's a learned helplessness, right? You've heard about the dog where it pushes the button to stop itself from being electrocuted on the floor. It's the same sort of thing. But yeah, I do wonder where are the lines that are drawn around us that we've drawn around ourselves? And especially since moving to America, my ambition has changed so much.

1:35:57I don't have a massive amount of ambition intrinsically or I didn't. And then I start to hang around with guys like Bill Perkins, right? Or Rogan or Mark Normand or people that are really like moving very, very quickly. And it's like through fucking Osmosis, man. You just can't not start to have bigger goals and dreams. And it's scary, it's scary when you realize, especially for me because I know what it's like to not have ambition. I don't know that it doesn't come from me, but for some reason I hadn't lit the fire that went underneath it. And then after a little while you realize, oh, hang in a second, it's like this is really fucking potent.

1:36:36And it's a powerful for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. On that point about the limitations we both have that we probably don't realize there, the best place to research, I think, is in the labels we've given ourselves. Like, what do you label yourself as when you introduce yourself? Podcasts. Yeah. And if you think about labeling theory, what we said earlier about grades or telling kids certain things, that is building a wall around you in your own mind that you're a podcaster. And this happens in all of our lives. The last thing we achieved becomes the identity that we embody and it traps us in a cage.

1:37:06So I'm super careful all the time, especially when I left my last marketing company to not define myself with a particular label because I would become the label. I would act in service of the label and move in that direction. You are not a podcaster. In fact, like podcasting, it wasn't even a thing when you were born. So how can that be who you are? You are someone that is curious. And this is what I mean by resisting the labels. You are curious. You like intellectual conversations. You like self -improvement and forward motion. And if those are your labels, think about all the things you can apply that too.

1:37:37Business and creativity and you're doing shows soon, right? And I think that's a free and you look at why people get middle -life crises when they hit, you know, 40, 30, 40 years old, when they look at how the hell did I get here? I'm working in the city. Well, you embodied a label and lived that label for 15 years. It wasn't even something you particularly enjoyed. You were just good at it. That resisting of labels I think is so important for long -term happiness. So part of the reason why I went and worked in psychedelics, part of I don't see myself as social media marketing CEO. Social media didn't exist when I was born.

1:38:10There must be something more fundamental to who I am. And it's staying attached to that and resisting at all costs, societies, prepet, temptation to put you in a box so we understand you and we understand why you fit. Don't get in the box. More difficult at a cocktail party. But yeah, I understand. I know I don't disagree. I don't disagree. I like Contrappinac because it's brilliant. It means you create stuff. Yeah, creative writer, et cetera. All those things are great. Your skills are worthless, but your context is valuable. Yeah, just a really interesting observation I've had from observing some of the most, the people that have made huge pivots in their life, but also my own experience of being a social media marketing CEO for 10 years, and then upon leaving that business, where I sold, you know, I did marketing for big fashion brands and big consumer electronics brands, six months to a year after I left there, I moved my skill set to the biotech industry because one of my friends built one of the biggest psychedelics companies in the world.

1:39:10And my skill set of social media and marketing was in such low supply in that industry that the offer he made me to join his business was outstanding. And I often think about, you know, we think the way to get ahead in life is to get promotions or to ask our boss for a pay rise. But if you think about your core skill set and the market in which you're selling your skill is it in low supply in that market and is the upside for the person that is hiring me, tremendous, you can get paid so much more. They offered me $8 million in options for nine months of work. There's no fast -fashion brand that would have offered me that because the return for the fast -fashion brand would have been 20 ,000 more dresses sold.

1:39:51In the biotech industry, it was moving that IPO price from potentially one billion to three billion. So they could off 8 million as a flash in the pan. One of my best friends spent a long time in Manchester designing nightclub flyers getting paid 50 quid, a hundred pounds per flyer. Yeah, probably employed himself. You probably did. Yeah. And I remember in COVID being in his house and the guy was like really down and out. He was like something needs to change in my life. I'm 35 now. I'm still doing the same old thing and his talent objectively, his talent for design. Incredible, incredible. But he was selling that skill of design in the wrong market.

1:40:23Nightclub flyers where you might get a couple more people coming through the door. and an industry where it was abundant in terms of supply of that skill. So we made this big wall in his house and we put up a few things. Where is your skill set going to be in the least supply? And where is this luxury design style you have going to be in the highest demand? And also looking at industries that were coming into sure where his design skills could yield the greatest returns. Should be quite obvious as I say this. Dubai and NFTs. Artists suddenly came into fashion. The web three community moved to Dubai.

1:40:57So he picked up his life from Manchester two years ago and he moved to Dubai. And this guy is making millions now selling the exact same skill to a different market where it's in low supply but it's yielding a great return for those that hire him. And I think and I went through in my book all the different industries from writing, to acting, to creative pursuits where if you just moved yourself from a different market, from the market you're onto a different market you'd get a yielded greatest return. And lastly, where I noticed this most is when our company went public, we went public on a fairly small redundant German stock exchange.

1:41:30And in those rooms in Frankfurt, when I sat with Barclays and a variety of different banks, the thing they kept on saying is, if we uplist over to the NASDAQ, the company will both be worth three times more. And I remember thinking to myself, the same business just moved to a different stock market, the market cap would multiply by three. That's kind of a metaphor for this idea that maybe your skill set is currently existing on an in lucrative and un lucrative market. And all you need to do is find the market where it's in lowest supply and yields the greatest return for those that need it. And honestly, biotech is one of them.

1:42:05Well, I mean, since moving to America, it's the first time that I've ever been in another country where I've spoken the language, but I've also somehow been considered exotic. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, it's the same thing. I'm the same person, they can understand me, like, you know, going to Belarus or somewhere, you're different, you're different, but where you speak the same language, you're the same, but somehow still exotic. No one that's ever been British has been called exotic, right? But apparently... You could be doing this exact same thing in the Salford radio station to 77 listeners.

1:42:37And there's so many, the exact same thing, the exact same podcast, the exact same talent that you have, but in the wrong market, where the economics of the business that you're applying your skill set in aren't there to give you the greatest returns and the ceiling because of the constraints of radio and the time constraints just aren't there to get the best out of your talent and the value from your talent. So I think it's just a different lens to look through because so many people want a nicer house or a faster car and they're thinking, okay, so I work here for three years and I get a promotion and I get there, but there's another lens to look through which is my core skill set, what is it?

1:43:12And where can I get the greatest return for it and where is it in the least supply? It's a different frame to think through, but I... Yeah, it's life changing for the right people. Kevin with this idea called monofinking this week after I read a quote from a friend, you can gauge someone's ignorance by the number of phenomena they explain with the same answer. Those who blame many different issues like war, poverty and pollution on just one cause, capitalism, are recycling explanations because they're demand for answers outstrips the supply. And I like the idea of calling it monofinking. It's another explanation for me about why people who are not extremist cookie cutter ideologues get criticized not a lot.

1:43:56So if I know one of your views and from it I can accurately predict everything else that you believe. They're not your views. You're not a serious thinker, right? You have adopted a one Z whole sale and you've decided to put this on. Now, the disadvantage is you haven't thought for yourself and you don't actually know what you're talking about. The advantage from a grouped scenario is that I can very accurately predict what you're going to think about the next thing because it's what everyone else is gonna think about the next thing, right? And you're tribe. Precisely correct. Now, the problem that you encounter is that it makes you an unreliable ally If your particular set of views doesn't fall into this cookie cutter design, like there is no reason why your view on abortion should relate to your view on immigration, or on economic policy, or on healthcare, or on gun control, or on Joe Biden, or on whether January 6 was a thing, and whether aliens are actually happening, and yet for a lot of people it does, and there will be some skew, right?

1:44:58Some people will be more likely, but it shouldn't be that you have the cookie cutter ideology of this particular group. The disadvantage of being someone who doesn't take their ideology wholesale like that. And this is the term that I loved about it was you basically become an unreliable ally. Yeah, sure, you're with us on abortion, but what about Donald Trump? You weren't with us on that. So what about when the next thing happens? I don't actually know. I don't actually know if we should trust Stephen so much. And it's not a, it's not an actual thought, but he's just something that sits in the back of their mind.

1:45:30And it It really, I think it's comforting to people who maybe sometimes feel like they are ostracized from a group. They're a rugby player. And they're there with the boys and they do the training and they do all the rest of it, but they're not that bothered about going out and getting smashed on a Saturday night. And they feel like they're a little bit outside of the group because, but I do the main thing with you. I do the thing that we're supposed to be together for. And yet, I'm made to feel outside of the group in the main thing because I don't do the other thing. Why is the other thing a part of the main thing?

1:46:02Do you know what I mean? Does that make sense? I mean, it goes back to what we said earlier about one of the issues in our psychologists that we don't want to be different in any way. And there's a real comfort in the conformity of the crowd. So it's much easier in life to not realize that most truth is in the middle somewhere. It's much more comfortable in creates that sense of belonging in the same way that identity enables to fit into the crowd and accept 95 % of what my, of the people that wear the same football kit is me where if the socks are different, someone's going to point it out. Sitting in the middle is, there's just no home there.

1:46:36There's no team. There's no safety in the middle. But the truth is in the middle. And so it's a decision you have to make about your strength of conviction and what you care about, what your KPIs success is, it truth or is it conformity. But it's tough. That's why I love so much about podcasting, is we've created a bit of nuance in the medium. It's not just echo chambers and algorithms them separating left and right. There's a diversity of opinion stretched over two hours. So there's context. And I think people that gravitate towards this medium and shows like yours appreciate nuance. They're not looking for a left wing podcaster or an alt -right podcast or whatever.

1:47:11It's tricky. It's really, really tricky in this day and age. Really tricky. It takes a certain, a certain strength that most of us can't embody an opposite of finding our tribe and fitting in and avoiding self -preservation and not being kicked off the island. If you literally have led to death if you didn't have a clear tribe. Like if you didn't have a tribe, you would have been kicked off the island, would have led to death. So it's no wonder that we were so quick, especially with the aid of algorithms to fall into these tribes and say in swear allegiance to everything they believe. Yeah, the other interesting thing is that an absurd ideological belief is less about what you believe in and more about showing fealty to the ideology overall.

1:47:52I learned this from the same guy, Gwinda, that did that quote. You basically said that if you have a really crazy ideological belief, let's say it's to do with the well -being flat, pick whatever it is that you want, it's kind of like a canary in the coal mine. It's like this is so counter to your rational thought that if you're with us on this, we can probably reliably say that you're going to be with us on all of this other stuff, right? It's a show of fealty. That's what's important about it. And when people don't adhere to that, they're seen as uncommitted by the opposition and unreliable by their own side.

1:48:32And also in their own view of who they are, it causes dissonance. So if I say I'm left leaning and then I encounter a policy or a theory or some kind of idea that is typically belongs to the right, my sense of identity on a psychological level will be challenged and threatened in a really unhelpful way. So in order to alleviate the dissonance of who I think I am, I have to reject that idea, or else it throws you into this state which psychologist called dissonance, where you have like, there's something's contradictory, what contradicting, what I think I know about myself and who I am in the world.

1:49:05So we have to throw it out. This is why most people can't even have a conversation with someone that they know disagrees with them. So are they unfollowing block people? Because it's causing dissonance, the truth popping up on their timeline, and being something that challenges their sense of identity or their ability to be as far on the left as far on the right as possible. It's not nice for ourselves. I think much of it is actually the threat it poses to ourselves in our own mind, the identity threat. It's like a psychological protection mechanism. I said I was on the left. I said I was a labor supporter.

1:49:32That's who I am. That's the friendship group I've built. That's how I understand myself. This new piece of information, okay, that's a right -leaning thought. If I entertain that, I have to entertain dissonance, cognitive friction. So the easiest thing to do is shoot at the person who said it, discredit them, or find some way to just, you know, kill it on site. And that's the thing, can you deal with dissonance? I think many of the greatest thinkers in our world are able to sit in dissonance for long enough to interrogate something for its merits. Yeah, being able to hold two contradictory thoughts in your mind at the same time is like very valuable but increasingly rare.

1:50:05Do you follow people that disagree with you? And not even further, do you follow people that really piss you off when they tweet? because of their ideas are so far from your own. Me personally know, I keep my Twitter following below 100, which means that it's difficult to get in there. But certainly on Instagram, yes, a bunch of my friends have extolled to me the importance and the virtue of exposing yourself to content that you purposefully disagree with. I actually listened to a number of different podcasts that are typically wouldn't be the sort of thing that I would listen to, but it really gives me an interesting insight.

1:50:42So, decoding the gurus, conspiratuality, QAnon Anonymous. Interesting. Those are three of them. And they're like, sort of center left or left leaning, like debunking kind of shows. There's a lot of criticism of, like, I've been criticized on those shows. There's criticism of people that are in my industry, that are my friends, but I find it really interesting to observe what someone who isn't me sees, and that's been very illuminating, really, really illuminating. It's not so easy to hear it when it's about you, but yeah, I find that very interesting. Do you also interested in when you see how someone on the other side, let's just say on the other side, of the belief system, feel so strongly about something that you just think is absolutely absurd, like the flat earth or whatever, you know.

1:51:33It also tells you a story about your own beliefs. And one that if you observe closely is probably the most important thing you can learn, which is like my beliefs are also based probably on the same fundamentals, like I heard something from somewhere. It confirmed the way I wanted the world to be. It probably came from people that I agreed 95 % of things on otherwise. And the fragility of belief. So the fragility of all the beliefs you have about you and what you're capable of and who you are. If that person over there is so clearly completely wrong, maybe I am too. I'm really fundamental. I've actually been thinking that's been creeping into my mind over the last couple of weeks that like maybe the person I think I am, as could be kind of said earlier, is not actually who I am.

1:52:21And it's just a bunch of beliefs that I've like, I'm living by like those disciples on the left and right do. And like, how do I unpack all of that and find out who, who I can be and who I really am? What would I have to do? What's the journey I'd have to go on?

1:52:37So, this is why, and we're all deleted. We're all deleted, so fundamentally, you know? We both speak about this a good bit, I think, and I wonder why the part of it's because we're from the UK. And for the American people that are listening, it might not make quite as much sense, although if you're from some small town in the Midwest, maybe it does. There is such a strong pull for people to conform in the UK. Perfect example, look at the vaccination rates. I think it's like 93, 94 % of people in the UK got the first dose. It's like sort of high 80s, second, and then like low 80s, third. I think America maybe scraped the bottom of the dick of 50 or 60 for the first dose.

1:53:17But who are the Americans in the room? They're a nation of people who said, yeah, fuck it. I'll get on that boat, right? The British people, I don't know, maybe there's genetic predisposition, maybe it's cultural imposition, probably a part of both. But I certainly see in the UK a fear of breaking out and very, very strong criticism when people do. And if I could bring back, if I could export from my life in the US and import to the world of the UK, one thing, it would be a lack of cynicism. Like it would be less cynicism around people doing different things. Because I think that it's stifling happiness, flourishing innovation, people leading a life that's different to the one that they would do.

1:54:02Being more experimental, being more motivated, I really wish that I could sprinkle a little bit of that motivation. You know, first, that's moved to the LA that works especially in the creative industries. That has said that to me. You're not the second, you're not the third, you're not the fourth, you're not the fifth. So I hear it all the time. And you hear it even when you think about innovation and we even sit on the loan stock market now, the public company CEOs that I know that float on the stock market are just being destroyed. They're like personal characters being destroyed and the stocks are in the bin.

1:54:34You think about some of the big unicorns we've had from the UK. Being the founders of those is just an awful experience. If they were in the US, they would be applauded and clapped on the front cover of whatever. Fuck out, we thought you could change that. They're torn to pieces here. They are. They're just torn to pieces. It's terrifying. One of the things that I've really, really been fascinated by recently is this sort of, what happens when people gain status or fame rapidly, what it does to people. And it feels like there's a little bit of something going on here too. Lewis Capaldi, you watch his documentary?

1:55:09Yeah, I'm feeling now, I think it's called. I'm in the podcast as well, so I just... Yeah, I really enjoyed that. He's got this one line in it that I just fucking can't stop thinking about. Lewis Capaldi writes this first album, Songs that he was singing since 2017 when he was playing them in Working Men's pubs all around the northeast of Scotland. And then he blows up trillion Brazilian streams. And he's asked to write a second album during COVID, WME or CAA or whoever is recording company. How's the album coming along? And he's feeling this pressure and he develops this tick because he's under all of this anxiety.

1:55:47And he's noticing he has stayed the same, right? He's still the same person that he was from before. And he's noticing the world treating him in a different way. and he's scared and he's uncertain about his own abilities and about what the world wants from him and he can't work out why are the people are treating him differently? Is this fucking one line in the middle of the documentary? He says, fame doesn't change you. Just changes everybody around you. And it seems to be as far as I can tell the truth that a lot of people feel, especially someone like Lewis, the same songs, literally the songs that he wrote from before.

1:56:24And when you see the CEO, the business owner, the rugby player that's trying to break out and do things differently, as you ascend in status, as you change the world around you, as you start to become more competent as the texture of your own mind improves, other people will notice the difference in you more quickly than you do. And in poor versions of culture, they won't respond nicely to it. They won't respond well. And I wish that we could somehow just fucking get rid of that in the UK. And you'll even probably would have observed this as a podcast, but speaking to Daniel Pink, who's the great motivational speaker, I guess, researcher, he talks about how when you're incentive structures of performing a behavior change and it becomes about making sure the people at your record label can pay their mortgages.

1:57:17The enjoyment of the pursuit of the thing itself decreases. Think about the discipline equation. Friction goes way up. The psychological enjoyment of the pursuit is no longer you in the corner of the pub in Lysk Pahalis case where he said to me, I want to go back to the pub. Like that's basically what he's saying. Sometimes I just wish I could go back to the pub where no one knew my name and I had to shout over people as they were drinking their beers and ignoring me. Less pressure, more psychological enjoyment, less friction. So you've got to be careful. I think this is what Rogan has done so unbelievably well.

1:57:43We think about building decade -long systems that will endure in the face of status and temptation. Rogan has said, I'm going to stick to my principles and I'm not going to do a podcast. One single episode that I don't love. A conversation I don't want. I'm not going to do a single conversation I don't want to have. Whether it's my boy from the comedy store talking about ant hills or whatever, I'm going to stay true to my principles. Incredibly difficult to do. You know, he's done it perfectly. Keep his circles small, try and stay away from those red carpets as much as he possibly can, and keep his principles laser focused.

1:58:15Why did I start this? And I can't imagine the pressure he's had. Why didn't you have more of these people on? Why didn't you have more of this type of person on? You should all the articles writing, you change your principles, change what they, that's a motivation threat. And he's managed to stave off that motivation threat for 15 years. Would you know why it's so important to not damp that down is because your instincts are so idiosyncratic and personal to you And if you try to reverse engineer What you think you should be doing the only thing that you have which was your instincts are gonna be eroded away Yeah, that's all that you've got ultimately like you your show and mine despite the fact that we traffic in very similar circles We're friends with a lot of the same people we even cross over in terms of guests listen to the fucking episode It could not be a better person to be crossing over with me in British podcasting because our then diagram circles of how we have our conversations are fucking completely different.

1:59:13And that's perfect, right? Because I couldn't do your show. You're interested in stories, right? You fundamentally love stories. You love the passion behind people. You love the emotions that are driving them. You want to understand why they are the way they are. I want ideas, right? I want to understand what's the framework that they've seen. How does this apply in a different setting? Right? That's fucking great. So Douglas Murray tells me the story, right? One of my favorite stories. Douglas, one of the first newspapers that he works at, he has this boss who's like a legendary savant of the journalism industry.

1:59:43And he decides he's gonna release a West End show about the life of Prince Charles in rhyming couplets. And this guy's like at the zenith of his career. So he says, big dog and there's gonna be loads of scrutiny and he's been in the journalism industry So he's probably made a shit turn of enemies as well. Anyway, opening night by the halftime interval There was no one left in the entire auditorium including the cast So this guy's Disponded egg on his face Articles upon articles upon articles about how embarrassing it was And Douglas asked him he said, are we thinking fucking show in the west end of London about the life of Prince Charles in rhyming couplets He said well Douglas I trusted my instincts and instincts.

2:00:23They may sometimes lead you wrong But they're the only thing that's ever led you right. I was like, holy fuck, that's true. And if you don't listen to your instincts in that regard, you can actually get yourself to the stage where you've eroded them away and you've pushed them away so much. They can't really hear them anymore. And then you're no better than the guys on the late night show TV who don't actually run their own show. They're the mouth puppet of whatever the big exact and the big company and their agenda is that sits behind them. And if you want to feel a great regret in life, it's making a decision against your instinct and then it failing.

2:00:58Making a decision in line with your instinct and then it failing is much less of a place to fall from. They're making a decision against your instincts and then it fails. And I've sat with so many people in the media industries who've done daytime talk shows, actually had one on my podcast. And she said to me, you know, the part that hurts the most is I knew the show sucked. And I didn't speak out and say it. And I always say to my team, and I've said this to my manager who's in the room now, I said, we're doing a new TV show, right? And I said to him, I want to fail at something that I believe in.

2:01:27Because failing at something that I didn't believe in both will suck more than any pain in my life. So if I fail, if I do something and I believed in it and it was in line with my instincts and I fail, you go, cool. Right? Okay, I've learned something here. But God, can you imagine the regret of acting out against your instincts and then it going badly? Like... So, we're not all facets of my life. That's like my thing going forward is, fail at something you believe in. You can't predict the output. You can't predict whether there's product market fit in most walks of life. But the input of you being glad that it was in line with your principles, your instinct and your values.

2:02:06You just got a hope on the outside that it resonates with someone else. And typically the truth is, they say when you're building products or businesses, don't create for someone you haven't met, create for your best because there'll be lots more people like you and your best friend and you know your best friend best. And I always think about that when we're making like the trailers for the podcast that we're doing pieces of content for Client, I think which one of my friends is good. I hear say this to people. I say, I say, we'll say to my team, tell me now which one of your friends is going to share that in the WhatsApp group.

2:02:36And that's not a rhetorical question. I want to know his name. Because if there's one of them, there'll be millions. So they'll go, okay, my friend Dave, he's going through this divorce at the moment and did it actually, I need to change this bit. Because in Dave's, through the lens of Dave's life, I'd actually probably need to take out this little part and emphasize this. And when you create stuff through that lens, you make stuff that's resonant at scale. It's a nice frame to run whenever you make something. Name the friend that this is for and why they're going to pick it up and put it in the WhatsApp group or share it on their story or love it or buy it or click or care.

2:03:09How beautiful frame. Stephen Bartlett, Ladies and gentlemen, Stephen, I appreciate the hell out of you man. But you do next. Great question. Loads of meetings back to back. Hopefully we go for dinner tonight here in London. Yep. Yeah, that'll be great. Just working out, probably in about an hour's time. Lots of things. What about you? What are you up to next? We're going to do some interesting stuff back here in London at the end of October. I'm really excited for this. I'm going to try and do a new, I can't say it yet because if it doesn't happen, it's going to be disappointing. I'm going to try and do something relatively new in podcasting that I don't think has quite been done before.

2:03:46It's at least it's not been done for quite a while. And then... My shirt? Like a live thing? No. No, no, no. A round team. I'll tell you what fair, when I can't get held to a count if it doesn't happen. I'm looking forward to that live tour. You can island at the end of this year, then US and Canada. I'll be doing a little bit of work around there with James Smith. I forgot to show him Dubai, toward the end of November. And that I need a break, man. I need a Christmas. I'm working toward December now. How do you know you need a break? Actually, I don't. I don't know that I need a break. I just feel like it would be rejuvenative.

2:04:20I haven't seen Mum and Dad much this year. But yeah, resilience is a strange thing. It creeps up on you. You don't mean to build it. And then it just appears. You don't really know. Dude, I appreciate you. I really do. I appreciate the fact that we support each other throughout what it is that we're doing. I really want to give you a big compliment because there's very few people you encounter in this game that it's so abundantly clear that they're acting in line with their principles, like they're leading with their curiosity, and it shows in the consistency of what you do, that you're someone that is like creating from first principles, you're led by what you actually care about, and that's, it's really inspiring for me to see.

2:04:54It's really inspiring. That's why I was so in awe of Fred again, because I was like, this is a person that's acting on his own curiosity in first principles, and I see that in you, and I know how that plays out. It's an amazing, amazing thing. Game recognises game man. Thank you for the thank you. Thank you.