Diary Of A CEO Embarrassing Moment, Selling Feet Pics & Our NEW STUDIO

0:00New surroundings, new spot in the room with us. yeah what do you think i'm overwhelmed by how much i love it yeah i don't know how to tell you but i am in love with it you are usually just whelmed so this is exciting i think also like contextually for us the studio is great here i hope that it looks amazing on the cameras i hope that the audience love it at home but if you were to come to the office the office is also sick the office is awesome so we are talking to you for the very first time at the new secret leaders hq in London Bridge got a awesome office an awesome office sorry I forgot my English there an awesome office a beautiful studio on Bermond Zoo Street it is prime all of it is so nice so if you're listening on audio like make sure you actually go and check out the YouTube because the studio is fucking awesome we're so incredibly proud of it and I think that you're all going to love the content we make here yeah I'd love to see some comments actually about what you think we could do to improve it or what you like about it and it's nice for us as well because i think that if you're ever thinking about making a podcast or you're trying to build on youtube or whatever it is much more work than you think it is like you know you've got to be very present and so we've been moving around studios and whatever it's been yeah very difficult when you're running other businesses and so to have it all here professionally set up means that i think we're going to get some of the best guests in the world who will come here and be like wow this is a proper this is a proper setup so i'm very excited about that yeah i think the first time i ever saw the uh the potential on the inside of this was going on diary of a ceo so i was the first ever video with your hat on yeah i didn't uh obviously can we get that on the screen if i'd if i'd have known that that was going to become the most popular podcast in the uk yeah it may be in the world i was i was the first ever guest are you can you not have you back on yeah i do need to ask don't i um we do have you back on now yeah maybe maybe i'm going to i'm going to cape town next month and he's he's there as well so we're gonna hang out play paddle yeah gonna you know catch up maybe if my story's evolved enough maybe he'll he'll let me come back on either of you good at paddle um i don't think either of us are particularly good at panel so it'll be you know that's okay as well i think i'll be all right i'll be average gamer paddle pat the ball back um exactly welcome back to secret leaders um last week we had dom smales on we talked about the creator economy we talked about the incredible business that he built he's sort of og influencer uh worked with grace beverly worked with zoella back in the day and built this you know mega business and exited the business and we talk about the creator economy so go and watch that episode it was such an interesting conversation uh and then we've just wrapped on uh filming with casper lee and have filmed an incredible episode with him talking about you know his transition from being effectively a big youtuber into now being kind of entrepreneur extraordinaire you know he owns influencer.com best domain name ever that's very good you know massive agency in the influencer space he owns a talent management company a student accommodation company and he owns creative ventures which is his investment arm into businesses he invested in our business lottie Invested in Lottie, turned down heights.

3:15Yeah, that is true. But he can't win them all, mate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah. But he's only 30. Yeah, that is amazing. He's done a lot by 30. He has to be like, he's quite understated these days, but he has to be one of the more out and out successful entrepreneurs around. Probably. He's a very low ego energy, doesn't he? Yeah. Totally. Feels like he's made it. Yeah, yeah, totally. like it's very calm very very present like just a nice person to be in a room with to be honest it was like very relaxing and comfortable actually my takeaway from talking to him i reckon his superpower probably is what he said like he's probably very good at finding incredible people partnering with people leveraging them up you know providing and like he said his hero was richard branson is exactly what he did in all of his businesses right so richard come on the show whichever camera you're watching through um we would love to have you on here um but yeah what an amazing conversation because i suppose so many people are growing up now thinking i want to be a creator i want to be an influencer a lot of entrepreneurs are looking at the space um and talking to him you sort of you get the good and the bad you know you're like he obviously stopped being an influencer which isn't spoken about very much because it is very difficult when you build an audience to maintain an audience and yeah and i'm we we talk about this together i'm way more conscious of uh the pitfalls of fame and notoriety than you are and um and i've seen it through the lens of people like steven for example who you know i've known since uh like we were like i don't over 10 years ago right so when he no one knew him to now it's a very different reality for him um i've known um a bunch of people who you know have big audiences and are objectively famous um it's not great it's really really hard once the genie's out the box getting it back in is very very hard so i've always taken a much more conscious and thoughtful approach to it and i've talked to you a lot about it right because obviously you're just going ham on growing often which sometimes is out of your um out of your control anyway because you create good enough content and it will reach people yeah um but it is one of those things where i you know if I had a criticism for you or like a thing to watch out for, I think that you, um, clearly an optimist and not necessarily thinking about, you know, what is the downside of becoming really famous?

5:38And there is big downsides to it. And he got out of that completely. Right. So he like a long enough ago that kind of the world of that had forgotten about Casper. Right. So he could, he could totally exist quite anonymously. I think throughout. I don't know. I think he's so famous that he was so famous. Maybe, maybe you're right. But taking the conscious decision to remove yourself out of that space is quite hard. And to your point then, he hasn't done it for a long time and you still think that he'd be really famous. So once you're etched in people's brains, you kind of can't get left alone.

6:09He has like fandom. Right. I even think I saw an episode that he actually met his fiance. She was a fan. I think I saw that. I should have asked him about that. But yeah, I think he's got super fandom. And I think a lot of creators intentionally make content, which I do. And I'm so glad that I started doing it at 32 rather than doing it at 22. Because I know exactly what does and doesn't make it onto my... And you'll notice like very little of my personal life gets shared. Like I shared a photo of Louise and I on my Instagram the other day. It's the first time I've ever done that. Really? It's the first photo of my wife that's ever made it onto my Instagram.

6:48And the feedback from my audience was mad. it was you know it was just a story and it was like thousands of people being like so nice to see like you know it's like beautiful wife etc etc but it was i was like wow i've literally never shared my personal life on here which i'm now being very selective about what i do and don't share which is important try and try and use it as much as possible but you know i don't i don't think fame is ever the the goal yes that's sort of the point fame is not the goal yeah fame is kind of well obviously it is for some people but fame can be the accident that can be a really negative thing so our friend Simon Squibb is a really good example he's like objectively famous now yeah but you walk down the street with Simon and he will get stopped non-stop so that's cool he wanted that yes he wanted that but also once it's happening to you it's quite challenging you're trying to get somewhere and people keep bumping into people I literally bumped into three people I knew this is not from fame this is just people that I knew on the way to the office this morning and it pissed me off so much because I was trying to multitask and do things.

7:53I had to stop. I was doing a fucking voice note halfway through and saying hello to someone on the voice note. I have given this thought and I am Simon's biggest fan. I think he's an absolute legend and I love what he does and stands for and all the rest of it. But when you are intentionally trying to be as famous as he is, to then be like, oh, fame is so bad. Which he's not doing that, right? But I'm saying... He has definitely been like, there's downsides to him and all the rest of it. but if you're he has for five years been working at that and I think you knew him before he was famous right but he has intentionally day after day made content with the sole purpose of gaining followers to then be like oh it's bloody awful and he's very honest about it he spent millions of his own money building all the games but do you know what's really important about fame is that if you put a cap on very rarely you know your recognizability goes down by like 75 % that is true just put a cap on but you've got good hair you want to ruin that you want to ruin that No, I just think it's like, I had the first, I had one of the first, like, slightly eerie moments myself the other day where I actually intentionally am building an audience.

8:53So I don't mind people talking to me. I actually love it. I love, and especially when people like your content's helped me or, you know, the bad boss stuff. People like your content gave me the confidence to quit my job. I was in the pub with you when someone came over and started telling you how great your content was. Oh, I forgot about that. But the other day. The short edge after we were recording. Yeah, the other day I was on holiday and I was in, I needed to get an inhaler because I was feeling wheezy. And I went to the doctor in Barbados and he go, and I was wearing a fucking mask because I was in the hospital.

9:20And he was like, oh my God, are you? And I was like, oh no, is this the moment it's going to happen? And he was like, I love your content. And I was like, oh my God, this is so niche. And then it turned out I was trying to get hold of an inhaler, which you can't do without a prescription. He gave it to me without a prescription. And I was like, wow. This has got some benefits, let me tell you. That's hilarious. But it was one of those moments I was like, wow, content can really, you know, really can go a long way. Speaking of creator economy stuff, did you see this OnlyFans? I think they had to file their accounts or whatever.

9:52It went viral. I think it's been like 42 employees that they've got. And the highest revenue per employee company pretty much of all time, like smashing Apple, Microsoft, any of these guys. It's 100 % privately owned by a guy. It's wild business. isn't that english guy but i so my takeaway for everyone listening watching whatever is if that doesn't tell you that the idea of gated content is being slept on at an unbelievable level i don't know what does because at a fundamental level all they're doing is gating content yep with a paywall yeah you're subscribing to people's content yeah i mean personally paying for it rather than ads like they gained insane notoriety off the fact that their their core audience is pornographic yeah but if you were to remove that it's just gated content everyone and so like why does everyone still so obsessed with the sponsorship model when if you can build an incredible community with gated content you're off to the races oh totally and and that is like you're building depth with your audience while monetizing and your audience are along for the ride i just think everyone's sleeping on it and i think there's also the other side of it which is it's really nice right it's right there's a nice dynamic you're being valued by your audience and you've also created a revenue stream where your incentive and intention is to give your all back to your audience totally totally it's totally symbiotic it like makes perfect sense and like we were just speaking to casper about this earlier so the episode will come out at some point soon but we were next week next week we were talking about the idea that if you build a gated community so content behind a paywall that you give value to the audience audience values you that could be sponsored by the perfectly aligned sponsor and so now i had this thing on my channels the other day which is i've i've started posting less of my quite famous bad boss series and the reason i'm posting less of it is that i think that the the stories i'm getting sent are still wild i get sent like 10 to 15 a week it's crazy and but it's quite hard to verify them so you have to verify the stories are real before you read them out and then at the same time like i'm enjoying making other content and it's doing way less well and some of my audience are giving me for it and i'm like but i have to enjoy it at the same time as you have to enjoy it and so when you're just to the you know at the mercy of just views it's actually quite a brutal game but in a gated community you don't have that that's so true and so in the gated community when i whenever i do a talk or i do like a thematic you know q a the feedback is like thank you so much for the high value that you've put into this if I was to do that on my channels despite it being really valuable I'd get loads of shit for it and so it's a very interesting dynamic moving forwards the content I think um this is probably the right moment to ask people to subscribe to our YouTube and obviously are my only dance well check out the YouTube like it's flying genuinely over it's like overjoyed with the feedback we're getting on the channel now yes please do subscribe to our YouTube because actually actually going well and it is bloody hard to get off the ground there so feeling good about that did you see share with your friends did you see lily allen and kate nash who by the way because i can see your face and you look confused are female pop artists no rosie did tell me yeah you know yeah i do know okay fine so they are funding their latest tours by uh lily allen is selling pictures of her feet on only fans and kate nash is selling pictures of her ass or whatever on only fans and that's how they're funding their tours because apparently that's why the billion streams that they have on spotify you know only pays them out about 30p so yeah i mean there's another pretty perfect example of how like the the model that everyone believed works isn't working and if you can productize something which i mean that's mad that they're actually productizing their feet and their asses whatever but it is true like a lot of the like a lot of what i do is train entrepreneurs to get better at profile building but a lot of those people are creators and the thing i get told a lot of the time is people will come in they'll have a million followers they'll be like i don't make any money and then people assume that followers mean money yeah but actually it often comes down to smart productization and alignment with audience rather than size of audience and so that i mean i'm sure you'll see more and more of that i think so i've also recently uh switched from trainers like yours to trainers like mine that are flat that fatten up my feet and the goal really is to sell pictures of my feet on only fans to fund this podcast so um you're flattling your feet out well the barefoot shoes right so my toes spread out like that and it's better for your posture and all this kind of stuff that's why they look so ridiculous the shape of it they do look a bit ridiculous yeah yeah little um little santa shoes exactly yeah they're quite odd but um listen this little elf is going to make money selling uh pictures of his uh flat gorgeous feet on the internet and you will be laughing it's funny isn't it there's this weird thing in society where once you're famous people give you things for free but that's the moment where you can actually afford them in the first place yeah yeah but then i i would say like a lot of brands will reach out and be like we'll give you the thing for free and actually if you're if you're smart i think with how you build your brand you should never do that yeah you should say i'll pay for it and if i want to work with them i'll work it out myself and the brand deals that you get from being more selective means that you will get paid a lot, lot more money over here than getting maybe a free flight over here.

15:19Yeah. And so when you see influencers doing like free flights, they're very rarely ever paid for that. They're just getting the flight. Yeah. Which means that actually that whole piece of content made them like, I don't know, 700, 800 quid or something. Yeah, totally. Do you know who doesn't do this? And it's a perfect example. Stephen Fry. I think the reason why Stephen Fry being Heights' first ever customer and our brand ambassador, testimonials, all of the stuff and still our longer serving customer, um all three products um actually emailed me last week he does usually does about one email my joke is just about one email a year i never know when it's gonna come came last week it's very exciting um and that's very cool it's also he's so nice man he's i just email me to say that he just got back from a flight from new zealand and he couldn't wait his magnesium was waiting for him and he couldn't wait to take them before he goes to sleep because they've been helping so much with his deep sleep i just so nice and he got himself a little eye mask and he was ready to ready to test it he's just so great anyway um he is a perfect example right he won't do brand deals like what's the point but he um you know he'll buy a product that he authentically likes and will use and will give advocacy and testimonial and all of the things in such an authentic way and he actually said to us when he first gave us this testimonial and he said you can have it right like for free forever etc etc what is going to happen we didn't know any of this at the time i know this now what's going to happen is you're going to get contacted fairly regularly by various agencies and they're going to tell you we can't use my image and you can't use me on ads you can't do this you can't do that when that happens just forward it to me and I was like right okay I don't know what this means but sure I'll do that and so every six months you have some talent agent or some rights agent or some um some uh photography licensing agent whatever they will email you and tell you that you can't do this you need to pay a fee etc etc etc and i it's so passive aggressive but i never respond to any of them i just forward them to stephen and then about 10 minutes later because he's so the fastest emailer back ever by the way he is he'll respond being like i've got this and then they will just email within a day and be like never mind sorry all good that is wild it's just the best way to be yeah like you know he obviously there's just so much authenticity about that positioning um and i think that's a perfect example of why he's such a perfect yeah brown ambassador heights because you just don't see stephen fray endorsing stuff so you know that it's real yeah i mean his business model is certainly not endorsing no of course it's not right it's fucking spending 400 hours reading harry potter yeah i was gonna say i go to bed listening to him pretty much every night a lot of people do yeah um that's an amazing person to have in that early for the business as well.

18:01I wonder, could you even put a price on that? No, I mean. No, but it's been exponentially valuable to the business. But still to this day, I mean, that's the thing, how much, you know, they say building a startup, you know, you need talent, resilience, luck, all of these things. How much luck do you need that your first customer is Stephen Fry? And to this day, I think that is still the single most valuable thing that ever happened to our business you know we're approaching 15 million now yeah and that's still probably the most significant thing that's ever happened to our business and we've had still your ads it's it if you do the post-customer research yeah what's like the thing that most you know most inspired you whatever the most common thing is steven fry and whenever i go he's not an investor no he's not an investor but whenever i go to a uh equity but whenever i go to a thing like you know a talk or like a journalist or whatever you have all this science research and like lots of different celebrities and the only thing everyone wants to know is how do you get stephen fry that's the power of stephen fry like that is the power of being such an authentic person yeah totally very authentic yeah yeah so good good feedback for both of us i guess stop uh stop endorsing everything and just uh be more selective like stephen well i think be more stephen fry is great advice anyway yeah i mean you know if you're building from the ground up it's very hard to take the advice of be famous that's true you know spend a whole career being famous and then be choosy at the end um but i think i think i was saying to you outside like i am going to be doing less and less and less and less sponsorship moving forwards yeah because you found a model that is more valuable to you yeah and also i think that the less you work with brands the more you will make the more authentic your relationship will be with big with a big brand exactly and so um but But then I also understand like it's all well and good me sitting here saying that now.

19:54I've spent two years building an audience. At the beginning, I needed to fund the audience build some way. And so, yeah, it's sort of where you are in the journey. But yeah, obviously, I now have new businesses that are audience dependent. And they financially make much more sense, much more alignment and so forth. I think it probably follows a practical reality as well of you need to build trust over time. you can't just go straight in there and start pushing stuff right you need to get people to buy into you and your story before you can start telling them what products to choose yeah i think you know dom was saying that dom smale to check out the episode but he was saying like that people need to become more entertaining as in become more like entertainers rather than just pushing products and i think that's you know that is something that's always on my mind with content is that at the end of the day your content is there to entertain people and i think it's there's a nuance between the platforms but you should be creating the best most entertaining content for your audience and so if you're just shilling stuff the whole time you just won't have an audience i think simon squib actually puts this very well he calls it i'm sure he didn't come up with it but edutainment right you're educating your audience you're entertaining them your average person on tiktok or instagram is not necessarily you know where is that person at that moment probably on their sofa scrolling probably double screening right so second screening so you know they're not there to be learning at that exact moment so unless you can capture their attention with entertainment to make them laugh and then sneak in some education within that yeah you're probably just not going to get their time of day in the first place and obviously talking about shilling products uh and those of you on audio won't uh won't be able to see this but we are we are really promoting heights uh everywhere around oh height sounds great what's that You've got heights here, you've got heights down there, two heights there.

21:46I'm not involved in heights. I stand to gain nothing from this. So, yeah, go heights. We're getting passive-aggressive feedback from producer Jay. Producer Jay is pointing out he's snuck more heights in here. There's more heights. There's a whole fucking box of heights. Yeah? Why do we need that much heights in the studio? I didn't want to say, but you're starting to look anemic, mate. Did you get a little sell in? Did you really go on holiday? I'm just saying that you could do with your vitamins. I know you struggle taking pills, but... I do. I could say, yeah. These are the suppository edition just for you.

22:22I mean, we are basically a Heights sponsored podcast. We're the in-house podcast for Heights. Without the revenue. Yeah. Zero benefit. Yeah, sorry. But go Heights. But go Heights. Yeah, thank you. Amazing. Actually, speaking of revenue. so for any of you that were paying attention at the start of the episode um i was halfway through an excellent story about stephen bartlett and his studio being his first guest and chris cut me off and just intro the episode so if you don't mind i must have lost focus no shit if you don't mind if you don't mind i'm gonna finish part two of my epic story yeah yeah it's more that i he was the first person i ever went into a studio of um yes you were like oh beanie ha ha ha um but in reality it is funny but in reality we get that thing again this was not a strong fashion choice i will admit i didn't know it's going to become the most popular podcast ever anyway um but it was genuinely really cool i'd never i'd been on lots of podcasts i'd never seen someone put so much thought and attention into an actual proper studio set and really thinking about all the little details and all that stuff and it did make you feel like oh this guy's taking it seriously i better like i better take this seriously i better be on my best game because he clearly cares so much of what he's put together um that was in 2020 right it's the end of 2024 november 2024 we're recording this and this studio is a pipe dream so i started secret leaders in 2017 you know there was many photos of me recording it with a microphone under my bed sheet covers so literally under a duvet because to record ads because that was the best way to get sound quality wow because i was sitting in a flat that was like loads of windows and reverberations and all this stuff so to go from you know recording ads under a under a bed duvet bed sheet duvet uh to sitting in a studio with my friend and a new business partner an amazing office here a great team like it feels really really awesome i'm super proud of it and i think it's also a nice story here which is like this started in 2017 it's 2024 yeah this is the perfect example of um not just that good things take time because that's probably too long time that's a long time it's a long time and that's not 25 yeah that's not actually like that part isn't so much necessary but the point is as long as you're doing something you enjoy as long as you like what you're doing that is the way you like staying power at the end of the day most companies fail most businesses fail because people fall out the people that are the creators the people who are in charge of it whatever they fall out of love with it yeah yeah um that was starting to happen to me a little bit really lucky that we got into a great conversation about it at the time working with you has totally re-energized and reinvigorated me to come back to this with more gusto and love it even more but like in general in general this is like a you know a great example for people to understand that so long as you continue to like doing the thing that you do you know you never know when that big uptick's happening that's really happening for us right now i'd also just say i love the convenience of it i feel like if you're going to do something as much as that you know this takes a lot of time a lot of effort a lot of energy there's so many people involved now if you're going to do that has to be easy for you and fun yeah if it's if yeah if it's hard and it's not that fun it will probably come across whereas i'm loving this and i think that for those on audio like check out the photos we have literally built a professional tv set in our office and so we're going to get some of the best guests in the world to come on this show now and we do often give a nice big shout out to uh producer jay who's usually usually in the background trolling us so hey jay but uh just wave your hand over here jay for a second there we go oh let's see a hand hey there we go um but actually big shout out to el jefe our uh our boss tom yeah tom tom has done an incredible job legend decking out the studio i think he said he'd been in here for 30 hours or something i definitely believe that and the details are amazing so tom has not just um thought of all the things that matter in business you know all these different business books that he's put everywhere they've been truly thought out to every single he knows i love tennis so much so he got me an old tennis racket stan smith capri tennis racket that's sweet really yeah i think the attention to detail in here is going to make a huge difference moving forwards for the show how you do the little things is how you do everything and right here we want to show that we care about the details guys fucking talking in clips i need to do some shit like that you should read some of these books mate it starts with an education yeah i've done any of these books i know um where's it play the game no it's all right you're talking to the common man that's fine yeah yeah i'm making content for all the masses so i've just come back from holiday i've been away for a while so thank you for asking how it was i didn't actually you notice you're away in fairness basically the same the same shit going on amazing that uh i was away and i was practicing my new you know be peace with the world don't look at my phone and i was amazed that after a week of looking at my phone you had only messaged me once yeah it's like really respecting the boundaries i i not only only messaged you once i messaged you once to offer you a free health scan yeah that's true that's true yeah i messaged you sorry for interrupting your holiday can i offer you something that there's a massive waiting list for that everyone wants and i was like my friend chris would like this yeah amazing from you yeah so you're welcome but yeah fully fully practiced sort of a tan almost no time a tiny unfortunately just don't have it in me okay yeah i wanted to go away for a whole year traveling and came back the same color yeah it's a little bit redder maybe yeah of course but the holiday was amazing and very much went offline like turned my phone off for 90 of the holiday um and i would say that i now want to do that much much more i'm almost thinking could i go phoneless i bought a touchtone phone but could i go phoneless from friday 5 p.m onwards till monday i'm thinking that might be the thing i'm going to aim to do that is a great ambition yeah um i've actually just used funny enough i've just used black friday to um to try and set myself up simply to not have my phone in my bedroom basically i discussed not having my phones in my bedroom with my wife after we spoke to hector like with unplugged yeah and uh she gave up so many different objections like you know you've got to see the baby monitor and all this stuff so i bought an ipad baby monitor goes on there as i was the alarm i bought a little alarm clock there yeah yeah i just bought things that's like a great point let's see now we just move our phone people always say i need my phone for the alarm buy a clock yeah yeah well i bought nine clocks yeah yeah like crazy that that that we now sleep with like our phones here i just find that man it's actually great though we objection handled it together and i was like right well let's find out what those are and now let's start putting our phones downstairs so i'm quite looking forward to those things arriving and doing so no it was fantastic very nice to be offline um and obviously we had nicola kilner on the show uh we did legend black friday episode with her absolute legend like that company is worth billions and she's ceo and she's a legend um but on that after we did the episode she was like you know you would get along with my husband and then you introduced me to her husband and then i ended up spending loads of time in barbados with nicola's husband went out on a boat for the day together like he was so incredibly generous with my wife and i and also small world i just did an event for him yesterday with fern cotton and spencer matthews yeah i saw the photo yeah he's like the tallest dude in the world he's like seven foot tall yeah unbelievable but he he's an entrepreneur as well which we didn't really talk to nicola about that they're both wildly successful his business thrive is incredible yeah nottingham but he's also had like three or four businesses like very successful guy now owns these pubs he's built like built the town in a small version of the town four kids but like honestly incredible guy so yeah i would say best holder in a long time really yeah that's nice yeah i think that takeaway is i'm not going to be on my phone like i used to be i do feel like that is you know i want to say privilege it's also discipline but i guess why i'm really getting to my emotions is i'm jealous that you probably have a good you have a good enough setup yeah you feel like you could do that i don't feel like my setup's there that i could do that it's it's really comes down to being very very good at the times that you're on and being super organized and boundary setting yes and like when i break it down the reason i would be on my phone outside of work hours is to alleviate some sort of stress or provide information for a work situation now if i say to everyone within within these parameters like decision make i've yeah i mean i've been doing it for a few weeks now and i love the comment when people are like you haven't checked your phone all night um well yeah what's there to check i'm here weird like we're here in this moment so yeah i'm gonna keep i'm gonna keep doing it yeah i think that is a good example i can do that i can be at dinner with someone and not check my phone for hours that's not really the problem it's just during the day like and especially in a work day knowing that things are coming up i need to get into that that level of discipline it's impressive okay so i saw this on joe rogan and this blew my mind i I do enjoy Joe Rogan's podcast, but obviously some of us hit and miss.

31:55He had Marc Andreessen on. Now, for starters, I usually listen to all podcasts and Audible and everything on 1.5 speed. This has been so... Firstly, Marc Andreessen speaks quickly. Secondly... For those that don't know, who is he? He is pretty much the most successful guy in Silicon Valley. He is the founder of Andreessen Horowitz, which is also known as A16Z. It's a giant venture capital fund. And they are pretty much globally known as the best venture capital fund in the world so a very smart guy and there's loads of clips of him going viral on mark on joe rogan's show and this one blew my mind because i didn't know this was happening i was talking about what the democrats were basically doing whilst he was um running a16z and couldn't really talk about it he basically says that um the government were unbanking um out of nowhere they were unbanking uh anyone they didn't like crypto like if you had a business in crypto guns weed or politically exposed people and also some right-wing voices debanking taking away their bank taking away their bank account from one day to the next so you could be running lotty and the next day not have a bank account if you were a government dissenter or your business was in a space that they publicly against the government and they take away your bank account well that's what he's saying or you know who knows the extent of that being true but but but also crypto guns weed so in vice areas but that are legal in those states and if they deemed and these are a16z backed companies he's talking about as well right so he's literally saying these are founders we work with that from one day to the next had their bank account taken away by the government and so they were having to uh run their businesses in cash so like imagine like millions of dollars and in cash and like not having a literal bank account to like know how to run their business anyway i just thought that i came across this clip and i That is mind-blowing to me that the government could do something like that to you, running a tech company or a credible founder.

33:55You found an opportunity space. You're serving customers. You're within the official legal restrictions. It's quite terrifying. It's terrifying. So when you're saying the government, you mean... Yeah, the Biden administration. And he talks about... And he's saying that now because Trump's in. Well, he's saying he's very relieved that Trump's in, actually. And he's another person who's moved from left to right. on the basis he's like you know i had this experience being one of the biggest venture capitalists in the country and they're debanking my startup yeah and he's like lots lots of chat he's saying on on rogan on this episode where he's talking about yeah the biden administration we had lots of meetings with them and they did this and then we had meetings with them and then they did that so it's very much like a they are anti-success and anti-tech and anyway well i sure is wild i mean they are because we know that amazing story where they had like the ev summit where they invited all the electric vehicle companies and they didn't invite Tesla.

34:48Mate, they've just done it again. Did you see this? They've just done it again. They're having another EV summit in California. Yeah. And Tesla are the only EV company that produce and manufacture in California and they haven't invited him or Tesla. And they're the only ones who do it there. Yeah. Mind blown. Politics, man. So basically the most successful person in Silicon Valley is going on Rogan and saying with evidence that the Biden administration were going and taking away successful company founders' bank accounts and unbanking them so they literally can't do business. All right, that's a wrap.

35:25Hope you hold on to your bank account. I hope I do as well. Thank you very much for listening to this week's chat on Secret Leaders. Please do not forget to hit subscribe. On YouTube. On YouTube or follow on your podcast player. We will take what we're given. Yeah. And also, please check us out on Tuesday, we are interviewing Casper Lee for a brilliant episode on his take on the creator economy. Until next week, I'm Dan. I'm Chris. And this is Secret Leaders. Thank you.