Dr Sol Rogers on defining enough, what success actually looks like, and the values we pass on to our children

0:00Welcome to Six Degrees of Purpose, the series in which we explore the trends shaping our relationship with wealth, money and meaning. You can find us on Apple, Spotify and YouTube, and we would love to hear your feedback, thoughts and comments.

0:14Sol Rogers:Today we welcome Dr Sol Rogers, one of the UK's most established figures in immersive technology. A university lecturer for 15 years before co-founding Rewind in 2011 with Matthew Allen, which then went on to be acquired in their 10th anniversary by Magnopus. Sol shares with us his journey from childhood to having his twin boys, including the lessons, purpose and passion throughout that journey. This is not to be missed. Hi Sol, thanks for joining us today. Pleasure. So I'm going to go straight in with you were a university lecturer for 15 years and then you moved into rewind how did that journey evolve i was i got really lucky i think i started very young as a as a lecturer at university and wrote four degrees in 2d 3d games art and visual effects and then worked in emerging tech and filmmaking and i just realized that after about 10 years i was living a little bit of groundhog day and the passion that i'd put in when i started my career was fading a little bit and i'd always thought you know how hard can it be to start a company so i thought i'd do it it's really hard like really really hard like and in fact if i'd probably go back and give myself advice it might have not been take a swing honestly it was just when running a business is super easy when it works when the wind's in your sail anybody could do it but when the wind drops like you wouldn't wish it on your worst enemy especially it's founder led especially when it's like the future of your family so we um so i moved across co-founder and i started the business and we just started small do some work get paid for it make sure you get paid more than it costs you to do it it's not in quotes difficult and then we hit our stride with emerging tech with ar and vr and now into ai that we always got known to be the company doing the next stuff which was really fun how helpful was it having a co-founder especially when those that wing got knocked out your sails yeah i think i think it's a stronger relationship than a marriage in some ways if you find the right ones like and you have to be yin and yang you can't both be exactly the same personality type otherwise you won't be able to support each other so my you know being quite extrovert i my job was to go and find out what we do next get out front get out there find opportunity find partnerships and his job was after i've hunted and killed something throw it back through the door his was skin it cook it deal with it and i was my job go back out and find what's next and so actually we worked really really well but yeah in the tough times we're with we've got a deeper bond than family like we are brothers more than anything else and it sounds like a nice division of labor as well between you both it sounds quite clear what your both expertise looks like and skill set not in the beginning the beginning we just did everything because you do and i would say uh we flipped a coin at one point and i lost so i had to do the business bit so i had to stop being creative and stop doing like making the things on the box but i managed to pivot it being into like the company is a big game like you can solve it you know how do i make this happen how do i do that but my job then became spreadsheets and phone calls as exciting as it sounds the phone calls are very exciting like find figuring out what a company's trying to do and how you can help them do it very much at the beginning of the business was service-led making projects and things and content and movies and interactive installations so you're always trying to figure out what helps a brand communicate what they're doing as quickly as you can and then what new tech can you apply to it to help them like expand their message a bit so it's really fun because you always think it can be like well this plus this plus this yeah case in point my um my little brother's started a he's carrying on the tradition of like this super fast ridiculous projects he's just installed a four meter high robot at Wimbledon, which takes the telemetry data from Court 1 and then replicates it within one second.

4:16You are taking serves from Djokovic or whoever from Court 1 and you can see how you could do against 130 mile an hour serves. Sponsored by Vodafone, powered by 5G, but ridiculously interesting, difficult projects. That's fascinating. Think about immersive experiences and that's being able to replicate with great accuracy real life yeah that's something that a lot of people would love to experience yeah immersive is a is an interesting term it's kind of moved away from it was stolen by everyone in virtual reality say immersive experiences means vr headsets and now it's kind of blended back to being more like experience economy so lots of things can be immersive a restaurant can be immersive a theater can be immersive a headset can be immersive but really it's storytelling where you are participant and you're part of you know what's being told to you what got you into the love of this you're clearly very creative what got you into in the first place um i so i was always surrounded by like very uh free-form creative artists i grew up as a new age hippie so i lived up and lived in a bus until i was almost I was 10 years old, moving between Glastonbury Festival and Greenpeace marches.

5:33And all my parents, you know, musicians and circus performers and installation artists. So when we settled down, I started going to school. I rebelled and went really straight. No drink, no drugs, no rock and roll. I'm going to start a tech company. Yeah. And they're so disappointed in me. And I didn't think I was rebelling, but, you know, all teenagers rebel at some point. but um i'd always had that entrepreneurial spirit when you're running market stores or you're putting on shows or making bands happen i didn't only till recently realize that that upbringing had given me quite a broad view of reality and a broad view of creativity and so as i went through university and then had a broad selection of skills from filmmaking to games to interactive when the company kind of came together it just kind of made sense to use those new tools and the first VR headset came out in 2014 and we got a good relationship with Oculus I was kind of had the first new medium in my opinion for a long time to help people have you don't have to have a suspension of disbelief like when you make a movie you're trying to make people forget they're in a movie theater well this headset makes you believe what you're seeing is real in case of the point

6:41Sol Rogers:walking along planks or high skyscrapers I literally was an acrobat it's like tightrope walking along I'm actually going to fall I mean it's incredible you had a go not really not with a proper like a good quality headset I've tried some basic ones but the headset is important but the thing you're seeing is important if you watch a crappy B movie it's still going to be a crappy B movie if it's incredibly well made it's going to be incredibly well made and I think the quality of what's getting produced now is moving on everyone's moving beyond traditional headset into what they call mixed reality headsets where you you're wearing a headset but it looks like we're in our world right now like the apple vision pro and then you can add things into that reality so we can add someone sitting across the desk from us or we can add a dragon or we can add a tv on that wall of any size or you can replace the windows with instead of a basement view with the penthouse view so i think there's a future where the headsets become glasses like these and mixed reality becomes almost the future of humanity everyone will have them on to enhance their world and it's going to disrupt just as much as everything else it's going to disrupt so much of the standard businesses that we have and the standard products we have you're not going to buy another tv if you could have a screen on any surface of any size samsung and sony i'm going to sell you one of those they'll sell you the glasses instead yeah and talking to you at the same time with the ai looking out what you're seeing and it telling you the information about it i mean that'd be incredible yeah that's kind of where they are at the minute so the screen stuff is taking a step back and the AR glasses from Meta and HTC and Samsung are all very much headphones with a camera if you think about it but that then link to your phone gives you access to be able to talk to it and ask it questions about your reality what am I looking at how do I cook this how do I fix that you kind of have it in your phone anyway it's just moving it to somewhere a bit more tangible but that is a enhancing human intelligence or augmenting it and changing it there's a lot of challenges ethically at the moment about where the data goes who stores it who else is looking at it do i consent to being filmed um which all need to be wrestled with so we love thinking and talking about how people's childhood experiences influence them as adults yeah and it sounds like you had a very non-traditional upbringing yeah possibly a non-traditional education um no education bus education for 10 years so when did you first realize that your upbringing was different from other children you started associate with and what did that feel like it's really difficult when i started school the the tribe is the best way to think about it was a village raised and i feel so lucky to have it but family were all there parents were all there uncles and aunties all there and the group of kids kind of rolled around as a and you all kind of looked after and most of the traditional upbringings we have now where that family unit is pretty spread apart we're almost an island on our own we are now family all live far away uncles and aunties live far away so i feel really lucky to have had that upbringing where it was really really like mom and dad were there all the time um but starting school was tricky i was miles ahead in some things and miles behind in others i didn't really understand the laws of the playground if i was honest and so i'd get in trouble with teachers because i'd question them like what do you mean why have i not got a gold star they got a gold star and so i was always getting a bit of trouble so it took me a while to kind of assimilate into society that way um but i feel that the benefits of more of a free-form childhood is that really kids just need to play a lot and if you look at what finland have got and denmark have got where they hold back traditional school for a lot lot later before putting them into the rigors of it before making them you know tested and judged and put through a process and given like hard and fast ways of learning they're incorrect they are they have a better outcome and they're they're happier people that was it denmark's still on the highest happiest index for 10 years in a row or something crazy so i think there's um there's something about being given allowing children to be children and allow them to play more and allow them to be practical.

10:57I'm being very cognizant at the moment with my twins, who are seven, to try and make sure that they don't have full access to technology. It's going to come like a tidal wave, but they have one games console, but it's a Nintendo Wii from 15 years ago. And they've only got two DVDs, like Mario Kart and Mario Brothers. But I think that you need to have access to it, but you also need to go climb a tree, get muddy, start fires, throw sticks, like go and play. How would they describe what you do for a living? Have you tried to describe that? They, what do they think they say? I got an honorary doctorate last summer and they consider me a doctor of cartoons, which is a good title.

11:43I think that's exactly, I am a doctor of cartoons. but no i am you know they know i make computer games and they were designing little like 2d paper games the other day and saying can we talk to one of the people at work so we can make this into a game yes so i think they know it um but i'm yeah it's really funny i did this school assembly on internet safety day a couple of months ago and he talked about our fortnight work and our wizard of oz project for the sphere and all of our tv commercial stuff and i said well the reason i'm here today is to say that internet safety is also about understanding that the internet is incredibly addictive and we live in an attention economy where most of the people smartest people in the world are writing the algorithms to keep your attention and make you play more make you watch more and the buffet approach to streamers so netflix and disney and anybody else it's not about quality anymore it's about quantity so they want you to watch 12 hours of something instead of one movie even though it's the same story they've just made it last longer so you lose 12 hours of your humanity to it so i told all these kids that and then this 12 year old from the school sat me down for like a little q a like this and he said so how how do you you know you make one hand you tell us you make all these amazing movies and games how do you balance the commerciality of understanding the stuff you're making is really bad for kids oh i loved it jeremy paxman that it's brilliant 12 year olds i was like one that's why my kids are coming to this school two you're absolutely right you know juggling the realities of this is is really important we can't stand by when we know something isn't right and you have to start standing up for it and making changes and the thing that i'm doing fundamentally for for seven theo and for as many as others is just to say we're not going to get away from technology we're not going to get away from doom scrolling we're not going to get away from social media it's going to be there and even you know this recent thing of doing a banning for under 16s they'll just make their own platforms they'll just vibe code something into their own way and we'll we'll lose access to to like um understanding what they're talking about but you've got to understand and talk to them like it's alcohol and drugs and anything else bad for you that exists in our society and they they are going to bump into at times like how much is it where did you get it from are you in a safe place are you doing too much of it do you want to do like you don't drink it all at once but same with internet like some of it's good some of it's bad do you know who's on the other end of that messaging board do you know who you're playing with on fortnight do you you know it's just educating them instead of making instead of hiding it away have you found that your values have been

14:23Sol Rogers:tested and changed from when you were 10 to where you are today and thinking about the boys um yeah Yeah, absolutely. We, you know, I'm having very little, if less than almost nothing growing up, but feeling happy and content with the environment I was in. It's really hard being alternative, actually, especially when the rest of society doesn't want you to be. They're kind of, are you saying we're doing it wrong? No, we're just, we're doing it our way. In fact, we're kind of ahead of the game on climate change and you know veganism and vegetarian and anti-war you know um my dad's often says that um but when your view of the world is this broad you can choose what you want to do within it and there's a lot of flexibility in it so i've chosen like this part whereas my partner as well was kind of very regimented and so she's been well say that you know she was coming down i was coming up and we found a nice middle ground where we are too but there's definitely having sold my business for kind of four or five years ago there's definitely a tonal shift in the idea of you know we were working hard to build a foundation for our for ourselves and now with a little bit of financial freedom we can build a foundation under my broader family and so i try my hardest to kind of balance that out but knowing full well that the money doesn't equal happiness the money doesn't equal contentment it is a tool to be used in the right ways but however much you think is enough the society in capitalism doesn't want you to be happy with what enough is um so i did a thing a few years ago trying to figure out that especially with my partner going what's enough where are we aiming for like i could be happy in a year in a field like what do you think we should be having so when we we know where we're aiming for and when we get there we could stop what about that was enough like problem is when you get there you go be nice to have a bigger house be nice to have a bigger car be nice to have the newest shoes but you don't need any of them at all if you're honest about it they're just additional ways of like keeping consumerism moving forward you have to find out what enough is and i think it's one of especially for uh founders and business owners and even for families give yourself a position in time describe what your house looked like your car looks like your holidays look like add that all up and then know when you get there give yourself a pat on the back and say do you want to do you want to keep going and one of the things i'm really hot on now is just making better use of our time so not losing it to the internet for one but secondly don't work fridays anymore if you can earn 20 less have 20 less income in your life take 20 less holidays 20 % less expensive shoes, whatever it is, just take 20 % off, but have a whole extra day of your own humanity under your own control.

17:24You can work again if you want to, but try and be a four-day-a-week person instead of a five-day-a-week person. Have three days of flexibility and freedom, but everyone fills up. Everyone thinks they have to have that extra 20%, but if you flipped it down, take one room off your house. Instead of having a five-bedroom or four-bedroom, go for a three-bedroom, and you'll be fine but you'd have this whole extra day of humanity have you successfully achieved that yeah i have recently okay um i have flexed so yeah don't work fridays okay um how's that felt how's that transition been you know i've always had a lot of flexibility of what i do um but the best thing was i've um when my partner went for a new role um i just asked her i said when you're going through the front door just say you don't work fridays so i won't get the job i I said, well, don't take it then.

18:12Like they'll get a full week's work out of you anyway. And she said, but what would I do on the Friday? I'm like, whatever you want. Like we've burned bright for 20 odd years of our careers. It's just, you know, raise children. We're in this new stage. The next stage of life is not about working harder. It's about working smarter. And I think like, I mean, it's tonally what I think everyone should be doing anyway. It's just really take stock of what you want. and what enough is i think that and i know well working in the advertising space we try and make you not actually happy so that you want to buy a new pair of shoes or to have a bigger car because then you'll be a happier person yeah but actually you don't need any of it so if you if there's a good hypothetical experiment a buddy of mine gave me he's like think about all the stuff you've got but if you lived on an island with your family everything you want would be utility none of it would be to do with status he said i bet you everything in your life is to do with status i'm like no it's not he's like try it yeah yeah yeah i did buy a slightly more expensive i did buy that brand because i you know it's not about utility it's all about positioning the few things you have which are truly utility even then i bought the samsung washing machine instead of the other basic washing machine i could have halved the price but the brand had convinced me that if I got them it was better for the planet or whatever else so I think there's something about positioning what you do and why you do it and finding the way of group getting time back

19:47Sol Rogers:so has being acquired enabled you to take that approach having the 20 % and having that day back or have you had to stay in and what's that look like and felt like through that period uh it's it's only recent so that the you know not oversharing but the the earn out was a long one and through that you're trying to hand over the business and make sure it's stable because they've acquired a whole best there's a bunch of people they need you to be around if you haven't got an ip-led company where there's a thing that they've bought they don't need you anymore but if it's a bunch of humans and it's built on founders they kind of they want to make sure you're there to see it through so they buy it in the right way and you work really hard to make sure that it really really works but moving from hippie kid with nothing to you know stable family living in Hertfordshire to now you know exited founder with a little bit of financial freedom there is a different shift on it and I've been really trying to figure out for me what my purpose is through that shift of the purpose was raise my first child which is the company to then having actual children.

20:55Now I have three. And then to being like, no, my child's left home. It's not mine anymore. It's its own grown-up. It's running itself. It doesn't need me anymore. Like, oh, yeah, it doesn't need me anymore. And what am I going to do next? And that's why this next phase is about, you know, helping founders thrive, helping other people on their journeys, you know, help them climb the mountain. We think a lot about, purpose and how people find their purpose. And it's a difficult journey, right? And it can take time. And a business exit can mean different things to different people. We find founders go through a business exit and feel a huge pride in what they've built and achieved.

21:37We find business owners who feel a bit lost and identity has suddenly gone. And often we find people who have a mix of a whole range of different feelings. How did it feel when the acquisition went through? It feels really good at the start. It's incredible. Oh my God, we made it. Got across the finish. It's really hard. It's like a big old process and it's difficult. And then the second year, you kind of go, oh, yeah, it's all changed. I don't have control. It's not my toy anymore. I'm sharing. And the third year, you get kind of into a rut going, the things I want to get done aren't getting done in the way I want to do them.

22:14And you have to try to find your own route through and find the things you find purpose for. for me at that point at the moment you thought how many years in are you oh five now so i'm on i'm on the upswing again because i've found my purpose which is you know helping other people thrive and survive and i really there was a you know there's a uh a book about finding your life's razor like what is the thing you can cut through everything with and i think mine is building communities that thrive and it has been that since you know hippie kid to school to university to first company to helping other people and it's like you know no that's what i've always done whether it's for a business or for the local college or for universities that i'm helping out with at the moment i'm on the board for four different universities to try and figure out how they adapt to the changing world of ai um so finding purpose is hard so but i started doing i started writing a book to help me find my purpose again and it was started off as something I called 52 lunches but basically once a week I just buy someone lunch I thought was smart and interesting nothing to do with biz dev or sales other than just oh yeah that person's smart tell me about your life and how you got here and why you do what you do and people kept going sounds like a podcast it's not a podcast it could definitely be a podcast but it's not and then my buddy said what what is it then that's well you know it's a collection of stories he's like that's a book it's like oh it could be a book so it's turning into a book about success and the changing definition of it through our lives or everyone's stories the people you think are the most successful often feel not for various reasons and it's really interesting to unpack where our ideas of success have come from some people often you know it's running away from a life they didn't have to try and build something new others they're trying to um uh they had a great foundation but they need to climb mount everest to prove mom and dad right or wrong they don't do their own thing but through that i found a new purpose which i realized is if i can collect all these ideas and all these stories that the short version is the book's coming out next year i don't ruin it but the short version is when you're young it's about money and career when you're older it's about contentment and in the middle it's about agency and control of time and that that change is natural sometimes it's a big parabolic arc from a to b sometimes it's linear sometimes it's inverse sometimes it's binary me me me me kids oh time time time time dad died it's all about family like and to know that that change is normal and is coming means that you can sit with what is success and what you know what does it mean to you and understand that it's going to change and your definition is yours where you are at your moment in life is your definition but that's allowed to change and i think some often people hook on to like i must always have it as one thing and whatever my thing is you know if i tell someone else oh that's silly you know what do you mean yours is about money what is it some points you've got to build your own reality and money helps you get there and then later in life it means nothing no one on their deathbed goes i wish i'd worked more i wish i'd earned more money they go i wish i had a better relationship i wish i saw my kids more often the it's interesting that framing and my brain's Sorry.

25:32Imagine that, but a whole book. I can't wait to read it. So money, first stage, time, and then contentment. Those are the three stages. Yeah. Agency in the middle. And are there trigger points or catalysts that move you from one to another, do you think? Yeah. So the first one is leaving home. So when young people, it's, like I said, running away from a lot. Like I need to prove myself. I need to build my own foundation where I'm not reliant on parents. so i need to earn money and i need to have a career and i to get some momentum into me and then the middle is usually around when you start thinking about having children or having children in that midlife where you've done you know 10 to 15 years maybe 20 years of a career and you're like oh i'm halfway through my career time is this all i'm gonna do every day the same job in the same way shit like i like what i do but i don't want to do this for the rest of my life So there's a, there's a tectonic shift and some people it's like, have kids makes you move.

26:34Some people it's like change career. Some people it's like entrepreneurial seizure. Like, Oh, I must start a company. You know, some, some people are here may have like, Oh fuck, we should do our own thing. But you, you, you make a big change. And so that middle, and then that's your controlling your time. I want to use my time to make my own company. I want to use my time to go to my kids every sports day and every recital. I want to be able to have flexibility to see my dad more often or do more cycling or whatever the things are that you care about. And often if you're in a very regimented job, you start thinking about how to change your career or change your job to give you a bit more flexibility of your time.

27:14And I think time is the only thing of true value. and everything else is kind of wrapped up by humanity making making like rings and gold and diamonds and crypto important when it really isn't a finite amount of humanity is all we've got and then the contentment thing is just we as we begin to fade out we had to begin towards the end of it you begin to realize that all the stuff that is gone you can't go why no i just want to i want to have good relationships and contentment starts to lean in and over the top of it there's two sets of people I interview, some that I say, what does success mean to you?

27:49And they go, I've never thought about it. I never had the chance to think about it. They've had blinkers on their reality for their upbringing, their background, their reality, their flexibility, whatever the things are, but they've never really thought about it. And then the other ones are going, oh yeah, wow, I've done this. I went meditating. I know what I want to do. I've found my purpose i read all the books and those that are enlightened to understand that they can understand what success means to them and they can define it and they can know it changes can do the like they can play the two games one which is down here earning money paying taxes getting a mortgage taking the kids to school like doing the thing and then the other one is sticking your head above water and go oh it's all rubbish and made up like it's all made up by other humans no smarter than you and i it means nothing really if i'll play a bit but they can they can go between the two modes and the book will be trying to wrap up all these stories from all these great people you know celebrities and politicians and the guy digging the road in front of my house and uber driving young people and all people like just saying like the definitions of what success needs to be thought about and if i'm honest about it it's not about success it's about the meaning of life but you can't ask people what do you think the meaning of life is so it's a big question yeah so start with success people can define that a bit easier what does success mean to you

29:11Sol Rogers:i'd love to answer go on tell me for me it's yeah it's all wrapped up in reliability so i have a huge value of reliability being there showing up whenever i say i'm going to and for whomever it at that point in time you know you just sorry i missed the recording last week um you said earlier about you know people who leave that corporate and then set up a business i mean we are the epitome of those people yeah yeah right and that was driven by for me showing up for my kids and being able to be there for them whenever they needed me and and and that and it's it's the same in business you know hopefully on he says the same thing but i'm you know i i am there to deliver i know my role i'm happy to go outside of my role i will probably encroach on other people's roles but i'm i am there to be reliable and that is that's what my version of success looks like is that anybody else would say she shows up yeah yeah it's measurable it's quite nice as well you can measure where i 100 of the things i turned up or i'm 97 reliable like but i can i can stat that yeah i like that yeah and on the deathbed then your line then you're i i wanted to show up for people yeah i've hopefully showed up for people and people are hopefully showing up for me you know yeah yeah how about you ollie it's a really interesting question i was just thinking my mind was going as you were talking i um i think for me there's there's i have a very strong value around autonomy um i really value autonomy i value independence and I value having options.

30:51So being in a world where I have options is success for me in lots of ways. But more internal than that, I think it's about knowing myself as much as I can do. And it takes a long time and there's no substitute actually for time in that process. You can't shortcut that. And you do, I think in your middle age, you do start to have more realizations and more insights and whether you're on that journey with a therapist or uh or a partner or friends or just yourself in your internal world i think i think that's that's a place i've always wanted to get to um and yeah i think that's probably good answers no wrong answer yeah and it's uh some of the interviews i do people think it's a trap I'm like, there's no one listening.

31:39It's just me and you here. No wrong answer. But I think people think there is, or they've heard there is, or they've heard, you know, other people's self-help books and they get themselves stuck in a thing of what they think they should be, forgetting they should just be themselves. So do you know what? My sister's a dietitian and she said the big bug bear that she has is that people come to her and find actually a dietitian at a party or something. They'll say, what should I be eating? She says, everyone knows what they should be eating, but they want to hear like a secret shortcut and they want to hear, actually, you don't need to eat broccoli, you need to eat this, whatever.

32:11Chocolate's fine, red wine's fine. She's like, everyone knows the facts. And I think there's an industry around self-help. People love this idea of here's a shortcut, here's a hack. And some of those things can be valuable, but none of them are a substitute for time and what it takes and what personal growth genuinely looks like. Yeah, I think there's something there. Yeah, I think just building on that, the school system, especially in the UK, is really tricky. We train our children to be factory workers and we sit them regimented and they sit by the clock and they do their things and they have to pass an exam.

32:51They don't get an opportunity often to fail. and even if they do fail we tell them they're allowed to fail and fail forward but the school system doesn't want that because if you don't get an a then you're not going to the next level you're not going to the next level and we we've put this intrinsically into you know what kids think they should be and forgetting that every human is going to be different you have to play the game if you want to play the game get involved but then you can make some really practical decisions of you can live in a van you can live in a yurt you can live in scotland you can move to south you You could be anywhere you want.

33:22You don't have to be in central London in a very expensive flat and trying to chase money to have a Ferrari. Because, as Steve Jobs said on his deathbed, you know, he was the richest man in the world back then. And he's like, a$3 ,000 watch or a$30 watch, both tell the time. Like, the most expensive car in the world and the cheapest car in the world get you from A to B. And he was the biggest brand in the world back then. But I think so much of it is being able to, especially for what you guys do with purpose-led wealth, there's an understanding of what does the money do for you that actually moves the needle in the things that are important.

34:02You know, maybe it's going to philanthropy, maybe it's like not get a bigger house, go the other way. Take all that and put it into a place where the money now works for you in a different way and you haven't just spent it all on some giant shiny object which nobody cares about. what was the thing the other day like the classic line of whenever you see if you know someone driving a fancy car they think you're looking at them you're not you're thinking about you driving that car you don't think about the person in it at all you just go well what do i look like if i was in that car and i don't think that person in that car is any better at all but we think buying a shiny thing is a way of showing off you know status and positioning but it's actually not there's a good Jimmy Carr line he's done you know he's gone into self-help which I think is amazing he said when you in your 20s you think everyone's looking at you or thinking about you in your 30s uh 30s 30s you think you um sorry when you're 20s you worry what other people thinking about you in your 30s you don't care what other people think about you and in your 40s you you realize no one was thinking about you at all like this that's not true isn't it no one's actually at all no one's interested no no they've all got their own lives going on right yeah what

35:17Sol Rogers:i've been really interesting about this is the parallel that fits underneath what everyone's view of success is runs from experience so how we feel about money is generally driven by how we have been taught to feel about money by our parents for example what we believe to be success is generally underpinned by probably a value that we either didn't see displayed or did see displayed really, really well. And I wonder how that comes through in the conversations that you're having. It certainly comes through in the conversations we have around purpose of wealth. What I want to do with it, what I want it to facilitate for me is generally driven by something I've either seen or I haven't been missing.

36:02Sol Rogers:Is that the same in the book, that success is driven by what people have either experienced or missed yeah so the next question after what does it mean to you i say what does you know what did an 18 year old version of you say was success and you let that ruminate for a bit you're like i was 18 i was crazy i was young and then you go then you go what did your mom and dad tell you what success was and that opens up that pandora's box for a minute like and before you go you just go back a few generations and you realize that often like you say there's there is either uh an undercurrent of being told what's being successful is and it can come back in a often not a really positive way it's like forced upon you either like your parents like parents worked really really hard and they don't want you to have the same life so they really push and pressure you as you through academia to go and be successful go be a lawyer go make a like go go get the thing go get the money when actually all you wanted to be was a vet or whatever pick your other career you want to be in and it's actually quite a negative thing connected to it it takes a long time to unpack though i'm doing it for someone else a good friend of mine he's changed his career five times now and every time like it's leveling up from physicist to mathematician to teacher to lawyer to doctor to surgeon he's only got like astronaut and firemen left and it's because it's really hard to prove his parents to to make them proud like there was a driving factor from underneath so you're absolutely right the success has often comes from our upbringing and breaking that mold or having the ability to not do it for somebody else and again not do it for status and even the status is showing to your mom and dad that you've done well and you have the big house with the big gates maybe trying to prove something to somebody when actually you don't need it i'd write like go back to agency and time again having more flexibility to do the things you want to do and not chase the giant massive house i think is way more important and if you aren't trying to unpick who are you trying to prove this to you are successful you're having you're healthy you've got a good family you have a roof over your head everything else is a nice to have really but no it's there's definitely parallels from it and it what it comes from what it seems to come from is there is an intrinsic or extrinsic forces on telling you what success is and then you stick this massive pressure cooker of westernized capitalism over the top of it to be continuously sold new stuff new trainers bigger car, shinier thing.

38:52If you have this stuff, you'll be more successful. If you have the newer thing, so it is everywhere around us selling us to consume more, to earn more, to work harder. Otherwise, you're not successful. There's Ombit reading Yuval Noah Harari's stuff, the Sapiens and Homo Deus. I was really struck by this idea that, and it's completely new to me, but the idea of growth and things getting better tomorrow or the next day is quite a modern concept like go back 200 years yeah no one particularly thought that next year is going to be better than this year whereas now we're always focused on growth from a political macro level down to the personal we want to have a better car

39:35Sol Rogers:bigger house whatever that thing is even on school reports it says growth mindset and i wonder whether or not that that choice and that as the the aspirations just just make us less happier as a society right and um i don't know whether that's true or not but you you can see the link yeah it's i mean happiness is an interesting one for the fair number of people when i say what success they say happiness and i've had to really like in the early interviews I was like, yeah, that resonates. And then you go, no, that's not. Because you're not always happy. And in fact, humans are full of complex emotions.

40:19And if you're saying that that's the only successful metric, then three quarters of your life is not success because I'm frustrated and I'm annoyed and I'm melancholy and I'm sad. Like these are all normal. So you have to like reframe what happiness is and where happiness comes. Happiness is a great thing, bit of dopamine in the brain to say these things are good for you to exist like friendship love relationship having children eating nice foods keep doing that's why it kicks around um actually you know slight sidebar but i was talking to a friend about building businesses like you know this current thing of always being have real good cultures being really good to employees making sure your employees as happy as you can be and he says you know it's really tricky to balance that.

41:03I said, well, you know, if it was shown that if I was made them miserable and it made me more money, I would do that, but it doesn't. Making them happy makes you more money. So practically it's a win-win. So keeping people happy, keeping people positive for work is what we need. But flip of it, miserable people, not miserable, sad, anxious, scared, depressed, low people spend more money so for capitalism it actually doesn't want happy people because they don't spend as much and if you look at it's slightly conspiracy theory but if you look at it most of the tv program from most of the streamers are very drama horror thriller like like there's not a lot anxiety provoking yeah yeah and if you happen to own the biggest store in the world and you also have the tv stuff after they've finished watching the scary thing maybe they'll go and buy some stuff yeah essentially yeah it is interesting because

42:05Sol Rogers:you do have to feel both i was reading with my daughter isadora moon this week and she goes to a well and wishes to be always happy and these nymphs make her always happy and then she's in school and one of her friends falls over and she's really happy about it and everyone's like what are you doing that's really unkind and her mum picks up on the fact that she's always happy so takes her back to said well and says to the nymphs you have to have every feeling to know that you are feeling happy and that comes with that you have to know every feeling to also feel successful or know what you place value on from a success perspective absolutely i mean there's a i think and anyone who's been through any trauma in their life or any therapy in their life knows this but there's a there's a barometer of like your happiness index like this the best thing in your life is a hundred percent and the worst thing is like minus a hundred and for a long time you think it's actually like uh not a percentage scale you just think it's numbers so like you can be like 228 happy or 300 happy or 400 happy and so i thought there's more people there's people that are happier than I am or there's people that are sadder than I am but actually it's a percentage scale the best and the worst thing that ever happened to you is it it but it doesn't make it bigger or smaller it's just that when you line it up with someone else's there's fits within or outside of your scale and so the worst you know I'd always get it with students going oh the worst thing in the world I just broke up with my boyfriend or girlfriend it's not the worst thing in the world but you know what to you I bet it does feel like the worst thing in the world right now because it is the worst thing that's ever happened to you there may be in the future things that make this seem very insignificant but i totally get why you feel like that but only through time do you begin to have those that perspective on those feelings and that comes with you know our life our career our friendships our you know kids and everything else and kids actually make you reframe the whole thing again yeah i can't believe how quickly this conversation's gone oh sorry i would love i would love to carry on speaking we've look at the clock and i was like how did 45 minutes go back so quickly um thank you for this oh pleasure it's been a really insightful conversation i will sort of ask what advice you'd give to your younger self um take the soul aged or even the boys 15 16 boys yeah what would you what would you give um i think that i've i've stolen it from jimmy car as my like north star yeah someone asked him what the meaning of life is and he just said it's five words enjoy the passage of time that's all you have to do doesn't mean have the most perfect most amazing life you don't have to be like maxing out it's just enjoy it and a passage of time is all we've got from a to to b and so if you're not enjoying it for whatever reason change it you know and it could be your career it could be your life could be everything else i extend it a little bit i just say to try to enjoy the passage of time with those you love i think that's the advice i give my kids i told you one not to be missed thank you so much soul this is amazing thanks for your time Thank you.