James Smith: Fitness Myths, Building Confidence and Choosing Happiness (E306)

0:28Watch it early on the High Performance App. to the girl on the tube or you didn't. You either ask your boss for a pay rise or you didn't. I say to people it's not about confidence, it's about action. You need to turn up, then you become confident. That is the voice of one of the most well-known personal trainers on the internet, James Smith, who joins us on High Performance today. My name's Jay Comfrey and we started this podcast because we just wanted to talk to the most incredible people on the planet, learn how they've done it, and hopefully find inspiration for our own lives, didn't we? Yeah, we did.

0:56And I'm Damien Hughes. I'm an expert in the world of high-performing cultures. I'm lucky enough to work with people to help them understand how to create environments that get the best out of themselves and others. So, who is James Smith? Well, after travelling Asia and Australia as a young guy, he took up personal training. He's since written three Sunday Times bestsellers, amassed a huge number of social media followers. And I guess you could say he's known for his unconventional approach to fitness, disparaging the fads and the quick fixes, which have become so prevalent and so dangerous with the rise of social media.

1:30And today, in this conversation with us, he'll take you deep into his approach, his mindset, his methods, and quite often, Damien, his beliefs. Yeah, I mean, I loved how open James was as a person. And as you're going to hear in this conversation coming up, nothing is off the table. He's got some brilliant ideas about the concepts of happiness versus his pleasure, how to manage envy of other people, and I suppose most importantly of all, finding purpose. Expect to learn lots as we welcome James Smith to High Performance.

2:04James, welcome to High Performance. Thank you for having me. Nice to have you here. There's so much that I want us to talk about, but I want to begin with being proud of ourselves. It's something that so many people struggle with, and you've spoken a lot on this topic. I'd love to know what you believe we can do to be proud of ourselves? I think honesty is a big one where I spent the first few years of my professional career pretending to be someone. So I worked in IT sales, worked in recruitment, and I just lied all the time. How was your weekend? Oh yeah, went out for dinner when the truth was I was on the back of a rugby bus with a bin bag around my neck, puking up a bottle of wine that someone made me drink.

2:42Then when I got to work, people, you know, all these nice teas and everything, it was very disingenuous. So when I became self-employed, I was like, that's it. I'm being myself. I'm being honest. And I've never stopped, even if it means that potentially some people don't like you, or that you get hate from some people. I think it's one of the biggest self-development hacks there is, is to be more honest. And there'll be a lot of people listening going, I know exactly that feeling. That's the life I live at the moment. But they've got no idea how to fast forward a few years and not necessarily be sitting in this chair, but certainly be mentally in the place you are.

3:16So Well, I mean, even if it's not professional in your personal life and in my single years, let's say, I think honest marketing was one of my favorite approaches where so many men put on a facade in front of women for, I'm sure, many reasons. But one of the reasons I'm not particularly bothered about any skeletons in the closet is I never lied to anyone. I made my intentions clear and I wouldn't mess someone around. A lot of men, again, in the dating scene will make it seem like they're after something that they're not. They might lead someone on to think they want a relationship or they want marriage, when the truth behind it is they just want a fling or, let's say, a single night of passion.

3:54But actually, the reality is that if they just express that, there can be women with aligned values where both people could walk away happy. For so many reasons, we're conditioned to be someone we're not in every scenario, professional, personal, romantic. And I never really bought into that because I would rather just express where I'm at. and if someone's not aligned with me, we can both go separate ways and not waste time. Again, I think that people prolong and do dating very well. They all prescribe to the same thing. We must go for a drink. We must go for dinner. But I think even after doing a stint in sales, I think it's better just to qualify someone in or out.

4:31So I think even just being real with people. Oh, do you want to come out for dinner this weekend? Not really. I'm knackered. Nothing personal. I just can't be asked, mate. Whereas some people are trying to please people. Oh, yeah, yeah, I'll see you there. They get there. They end up having to split the bill for a dinner that was too expensive. They go home. They resent their friends. There's all this unnecessary unhappiness in life through being someone you're not, not being honest with people. I think culturally we would rather be miserable and dishonest than any otherwise. So, yeah. And so what does it do for you then?

5:00Like the day that you work on a designer, to be honest, how did that then change the course of your life? In business, to begin with, I had attracted the wrong people. Even as a personal trainer, used to wear the polo shirt, used to speak properly, didn't swear much. And I attracted very much the same people that I used to see in corporate. So I was like, okay, I'm going to dress differently. I'm going to be myself on social media, which meant swearing more. And then I remember one client came in and she goes, you use the F word a lot and you seem a bit angry. I think you're going to be perfect for me.

5:32She goes, because I swear a lot. And I used it, you know, I'm a bit angry and we worked together. And I was like, not only am I getting better results for this client, we're getting on, which is a massive part of that coaching barrier that you need with someone. Someone comes in and they'll be like, James, I can't be fucked today. I'm hungover. It's a bottle of wine last night. There's nothing worse I want to do than train with you. I go, okay, let's just begin with the first. If you want to go home at any point, you let me know. Sweet. We could build that rapport through being honest. Whereas if she'd come in pretending she wasn't hungover and pretending she was enthused for the session, I'd probably pick up on that since something was a bit off.

6:06and when it worked with my clients, I was like, this is going to work in other places of the business. Especially when everyone else, you ever notice some people are too nice? When you meet them, they shake your hand. It's a little bit too... Really earnest. Yeah, and you're like, whoa, this isn't real. I always think like, the height of happiness, say someone comes in, hey guys, I've got a new sponsor. They're going to be giving you two million pounds a year. You'd be like, that's really good. You wouldn't be jumping up, swinging fists around. when people are overly nice, I'm like, I know what the peak of human emotion is.

6:40It's not that high. So it seems fake. So again, it's one of those things where, yeah, being real with each other just skips so much bullshit. And so many brands now, when I see them, even Joe Wicks have had a bit of beef over the years. I actually have a lot of respect for him and his business and what he's accomplished. He was just an easy target for me because I didn't take on clients that did HIIT training. But when you see them, come on, guys, we're going to do this workout. I'm like that's not real it can't be no one is that happy to exercise I love training but I'm not that happy when I train so I think the humans kind of see through it they see through the I know from a TV background I've been on TV especially in Australia hey James so amazing thank you for coming on and there's like an ad break and they just they come out of character and I'm like oh so a lot of this isn't real whereas in the podcast space that's gone and it's just a conversation it's long form You don't have to pretend to be someone you're not for an eight-minute period off a teleprompter.

7:39And I think that's why this form of media is doing so well compared to traditional TV media. So authenticity is the secret? I believe so.

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9:14You'll find free breathing exercises, guided meditations, and soundscapes with ambient sounds, lo-fi music, and binaural beats, all designed to help you focus, relax, and even spark creativity while you browse. I'm listening to this and I'm thinking I love the idea of just speaking your truth. but I'm also, there's another voice in my head going, but it can be quite brutal as well. And I like the idea of speaking truth without necessarily the brutality bit of it. How do you make that distinction? So I always think we need some empathy. And I think that sometimes brutality can be an empathetic outcome.

9:51The point I would make here is, I used to play rugby for Maidenhead. I had a coach called Greener, great guy. And he dropped me from the team. I remember taking him to the side. I was like, why have you dropped me? And he was like, last weekend you played the worst game of rugby I've ever seen. You missed more tackles than I could even count. And he said, it was almost pretty embarrassing because your parents were at the game that you would play so bad. I was like, oh, you know, that was awful. But I think to myself, if he told me it was just doing a player rotation, I wouldn't have turned up to training on Tuesday, early, on time, being serious, making hits.

10:28I needed that little bit of honesty and brutality to get me to the point that when I turned up to training I was a different person. So I don't think, and we see this on social media where they might see some of the videos I put out and then they just make a video calling people fat. Oi, you're fat, whatever. They don't realize that sometimes you need to twist the knife then offer the solution. Sometimes you need to hit them in the pain point then offer the solution. That's the basic of sales where if you can exploit the pain point someone has and then position a solution for it, you're actually there being empathetic but if you didn't twist the knife to begin with they might not listen to you that's why some people say would you like to lose fat very easy obviously people say yes but then you could say something like wouldn't it be nice to have more than your face in your profile picture on tinder or hinge wouldn't it be nice to stop turning the light off when you have sex with your partner then you can get into an emotional pain point with that person if you just say that you don't really get far but if you said well i've created a nine-stage guide for free that could help you feel better or create a better body positive image, whatever.

11:30I think that is something that's quite powerful. And in a world, if you're just nice and there isn't an element of brutality, sometimes I don't think we can get under the skin of people to actually get them to change. Sure. Because, I mean, you mentioned... This nightpad here, I feel like I'm in a therapy session. I quite like it. When he starts to make notes, that is the time to panic. Yeah, without sense of worry. No, no, no. Even worse. Just how I think. If he shuts the notebook, then you're like, oh, no. We did have one episode where we interviewed Johnny Wilkinson, and we thought it was going to be a conversation about high performance, and it was so abstract.

12:02I mean, it was brilliant. You haven't heard it. It's amazing, but it's so abstract. After the first question, Damien just went, close the notebook. And we went to a place we never expected. Exactly, yeah. He's an interesting character. And do you know what? So much admiration for him, but it was great. When we started understanding his character afterwards, you realize that all great people, you can be good, but the people that are exceptional, they all have something a little bit different to everyone else. They're wired incredibly different. And the fact he still remembers words that he got wrong in a spelling bee when he was 14 still carries that around with him.

12:38The Michael Jordans, all of these people where they're just so obsessed with perfection. And sometimes I ask myself, am I ambitious or am I not wired correctly? Am I ambitious? Or is there part of me that I'm dealing with inside? Is there some trauma? Is there some, you know, even social media? I was like, am I using a tool that's going to benefit my business and marketing? Or am I trying to get attention that I didn't get as a kid? Or am I looking to prove people wrong? Or the people that used to bully me when I was at school, am I trying to make something out so that one day they see it and I can get the upper hand for once?

13:16And the honest reality is I don't know. So what's your answer when you think about that? question of like am I wired wrong or do I not have the right mindset the questions you have said what was the what was your conclusion to that reflection do you know what was semi answer your question I had a psychedelic trip once and in it I was posed with the question do people like me for who I am or what I do it took me a long time I still I'm not sure if I figured it out I think that maybe a year later I got to the point where I challenged myself and said is it important to know. And I remember leaving that experience.

13:54Have you guys done psychedelics? No. Would you recommend them? Yes. And that's not to say that everyone should do them. But without sounding like I'm advocating drugs, I've been in periods of my life when I need answers to questions I haven't thought of yet. And that's the only way I can explain it. You want answers, but you're not sure what the question is. So you feel maybe a little bit despondent, maybe a little bit, not even unhappy, not even unfulfilled. You're not even quite sure what it is. And another thing as well is the closest thing we have to it is alcohol, where you might have a few beers with your mates and they might tell you how they're feeling, but alcohol never really puts me in spiritually a better place, during or afterwards.

14:40Whereas I've met a friend that I haven't spoken to in a few months and we've done a tab of LSD and sat in a park. And we've spent eight, nine hours just talking about how we're feeling. We've had our phones away. We'll listen to music. We'll take a picnic. We walked around a park that had, what would you call the area of park where there's loads of flowers? What am I calling this? Oh, that's what we remember. Yeah, something like that. The Botanical Garden. Yeah. We spent an hour just admiring plants. Obviously, we were high on LSD. And I was like, what a beautiful experience where if I just walked through this on the way to a tube station or if I was going through a park, so much of the noise that's in daily life becomes silent and all the things that you just are blissfully unaware of become really loud.

15:21And it gives you the opportunity to kind of step back, think about things. And sometimes I'll think about the one thing for three hours and it doesn't matter if I get lost in my thoughts, it doesn't matter about anything else. Then the same with little mushroom trips with me and maybe five, six friends will go take mushrooms and just go to the beach. And I will sit at the beach thinking, And wow, so many people are here not experiencing what I'm experiencing. And then DMT, which is only a five to ten minute experience. Usually, whenever we do psychedelics, you have like a shaman, someone that guides you through it.

15:59Because there is a bit of anxiety. But with DMT, we'd use music. And I'd put on London Grammar. I actually have a playlist for it. And every time I would go in, I'd have an experience. but let's say afterwards it's not more-ish uh you do lsd and then maybe a year later you think oh i could go again i could go two three years between experiences actually probably everyone's gonna judge me for this but the same friend that i went and sat in a park in we went to a wedding in a beautiful part of australia and in the morning he says do you want to do half a tub of lsd i said yeah and there was a giant chess set outside on the lawn there were little baby kangaroos everywhere and me and him we played one chess game for about two and a half hours and everyone's drinking playing drinking games getting ready for the wedding then although it was a little bit difficult putting my suit on when I watched the ceremony it was so usually I would be like oh come on let's get to the reception let's get let's get the drinks out I appreciated it so much and one thing I couldn't stop looking at was how much the parents were enjoying it so there was an element obviously high on LSD where I was looking at the parents watching their kids get married.

17:08And I realized getting married isn't just something you do. It's something you do for your parents. And although it's a beautiful moment for you, it's an incredibly meaningful moment for your parents because they get to see their son or daughter be in partnership with someone that's going to look after them forever. And that lateral thinking would have just been lost or it wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for the psychedelic. So I wouldn't say that everyone should do them, but I would say if there's anyone out there that's curious, I've always been a bit of a strong atheist. But after DMT, I've become slightly more agnostic.

17:40Because it's such a crazy experience to think that there isn't something else. Because you're taken out of your reality, while still being in it. But at the same time, you're like, what is causing my brain to do this? And I think that most people would agree with that. Whereas I listen to a lot of Richard Bates and I was younger, you know, I can't remember which stand-up it was where he literally takes apart almost christianity and religion in general and i kind of adopted those values but then after a couple of psychedelic trips i was like there's something i'm not 100 sure in the research but i believe there is something to do with neuroplasticity where the wiring and connections in your mind after a psychedelic experience has slightly changed although the trip might only last 12 hours your thoughts stay with you but also you are now taken back into your normal life with the thoughts that I take for granted my surroundings, I take for granted this.

18:33Also, using music during trips means that I can go back to that place with the same playlist. So if I'm experiencing low mood, or I'm just not in a great mood, or you know, one thing I discovered recently was I spent the majority of my life without really fighting my way out of my overdraft. I would get into my overdraft, get out, go in, go out. And I never particularly experienced any success. I would say even to the age of 27, I'd never been considered good at something, even at rugby. One of the best things that happened to me was discovering I wasn't that great at rugby. I went to Hartbury College in Gloucestershire.

19:08I went there thinking I was good at rugby. I left there going, this is just a hobby. I went there, I don't know if you know, but I'm a captain of Berkshire under 20s. I left going, I am so rubbish at rugby. And up until the point of experiencing any success, I had to make myself happy. Then over the last few years, I've had a few businesses do really well. And when those businesses do well, you sometimes lean on those to prop up your happiness on a daily basis. You look at Stripe accounts, you look at units sold, you look at all these dopamine related parts of the business. And sometimes you can neglect the little things that made you happy in the first place, whether it's social connection, hanging out with friends.

19:47I even went on a health kick this year where I didn't drink for five months, which meant I didn't see any of my best friends for five months. And it got to the point where I had to then say, oh, do you know what? What were the key pillars of me being happier when I was younger? And one of them would be just going and having five, six pints with some mates. And when I went and met them, I realized as you get older and as you become on paper more successful, being happy is something you have to be much more proactive to do because it's so easy to fill your day with being productive, with becoming fitter and stronger and doing all your work tasks.

20:21but it becomes very easy to oversee the things that you used for the majority of your life that make you happy. And although I could potentially practice, meditate, think, journal, gratitude diary, all of those things, sometimes it's just so much easier for me, similar to meeting someone for five pints, where I go, that's in the diary, I'm giving that day to that, and I can take the benefits from that after that with me as I go. So I think I am definitely choosing a lazier approach, same way that I could potentially improve my energy levels by eating better. But I also know that having 300 milligrams of caffeine can help me out significantly.

20:58So I think from my personality, similar to how I'd like to go to a cafe to do work, I need to be locationally there to do something. My mom and dad hate the fact, you just went to a local cafe for breakfast and you bought breakfast and had three coffees. How much did that cost? £20. £20? £20 a day? I say, mum, it's not that I'm going there for the expensive coffee, I'm going there to work. When I open my laptop, I'm here to work. So I think from a personality standpoint, it's really important to me that I have places I go to do things and sometimes the psychedelic trips are exactly the same. I'm having a mental health day.

21:36I'm having a spiritual day. And the benefits definitely are carried after. And do you agree with the notion that you should still be searching for happiness aside from that rather than living a life that is not very real and then using that almost as an escape? Because I think that is dangerous for people. A hundred percent. And one of the things I've always tried to distinguish in people is the difference between happiness and pleasure. Where pleasure is your nights out. And do you know what? It's taking MDMA and a club in Ibiza. Your pleasure is buying an expensive dinner at Amazonica. It is all the hedonic things you can do in life.

22:09Happiness often isn't. Happiness is actually waking up and going for your morning run without snoozing the alarm. It's the dog walk you have where you leave your phone at home. happiness is catching up with old friends happiness is completely different to pleasure and what i've come to realize is if you try and fill your happiness quota with pleasure you end up in despair and we see people that make a lot of money they they might gamble they might go out drinking they're doing all these things on paper that we see is amazing i just bought a lamborghini but they're not doing the key component things that make them happy and the way you can really understand this is if you go to southeast asia people have nothing when it comes to pleasure They have no disposable income.

22:45They're struggling to get by. They've probably never drunk a bottle of Dom Perignon or seen business class on a plane, but they're incredibly happy because they have all the things they need in life to be happy. Friends, family, social connections. And in those cases, roof over their head, drinkable water. Whereas maybe in Western cultures, especially in London, for instance, people aren't distinguishing what makes them happy and what pleasure is. And they kind of think they're the same thing and they try and fill the happiness cup with pleasure. and you can often end in a very bad place. I still think that pleasure is a luxury, but if you were to, and I've been in this place before where people are coaches and they have a job in a business they don't enjoy and they want to become a personal trainer.

23:27I took a pay cut going from recruitment to being a PT, but I became a lot happier because of it. So it's a net good deal. Although I'm earning less money, that means I'm actually spending less money on pleasurable things, but I'm happier. Good deal. I think if you can ever trade pleasure for happiness, do it. can't just look at numbers, can't just look at what's in front of you because a lot of people that potentially earn really good money in maybe the city of London, they can only escape that life and fill it with pleasure. Going on trips to Europe, whatever it is, nights out. I think a lot of people that maybe use cocaine on a weekly basis are actually not doing fulfilling things in their life that make them happy and then they hit the pleasure trap on a Saturday night with their friends and then just full circle again.

24:13And the distinguishing between those, I think is pivotal. And I've actually had periods of sobriety before where I've woken up one morning and I'm drinking too much. I'm partying too much. I'm having way too much pleasure in my life and it's impacting my happiness. So whenever I've had periods of sobriety, I've always realized, okay, it's time to give up pleasure to become more happy. And here's an interesting story I've never spoken about. five months sober. I take Ant Middleton for dinner in Sydney and he's just done SAS Australia, who dares wins. And I don't know how he knew, but I'm a big Sam Burgess fanboy.

24:53I was going to get him on for a chat before and he was also going through a period of sobriety. Sure. So I meet him on a night out, no chill, absolutely no chill. When I see him, I'm my biggest fan. He's like, you're right, lad. He had no idea who I was or what I did for work. And just absolutely no chill. I was like my biggest fan. About 10 minutes in, he looks at me, he goes, I could have a shot of tequila if you will. Ended up getting plastered. Me and him at Middleton, I come bowling in home early hours in the morning. My housemates all played rugby at the time. I've been out with Sam Burgess.

25:24My life fulfilled. What is it you like about Sam? I loved his story. Then I watched the Slamming Sam documentary. I was like, this guy's incredible. Then following him, coming over to Rugby Union, although it was a bit of a shambles, I don't know, there was just something about him as a character that was every rugby player wanted to be him whether it was physical accolades uh the family rhetoric behind him everything he just do you know what he epitomized probably still now epitomizes what a man is and the annoying thing is that you can't be vulnerable or make bad decisions at the same time same way you know at middleton he epitomizes so much of what a good masculine man is serving in the army but that doesn't mean you're a perfect character.

26:09And just because you're accelerated into fame, we can't expect you to be perfect because the same person who's going to go overseas and die for his country isn't the same person who's going to have a spotless record or not have a temper problem. And I hate the way that we kind of expect all the most violent men that we need in society to be perfect all rounders. And the same for Sam, where he's obviously had his own troubles and issues. And I think actually most professional athletes to have such status and, you know, have so much riding on your performance as someone and then you're just one injury away from it all going.

26:46Suddenly you're jobless. Suddenly you've now got to find a new career path. I don't think people appreciate the mental turmoil that so many athletes go through on their way out of sport. And again, another reason why I'm glad I wasn't better at rugby. There's a really interesting theme, though, that's coming off. over, if we take you back to that conversation you had when you did the psychedelics and you spoke about this idea of you've moved from being an atheist to an agnostic. And it seems to me that you're in an interesting place of curiosity and nuance as opposed to stating absolute certainties.

27:22And in the nature of the work that you do, when I did a scroll through social media of like the fitness industry, there was an awful lot of people stating with absolute certainty what then appeared to be contradictory evidence. I was reading that cardio is better than weights for weight loss, but weights are better than cardio for weight loss. I was reading about you should do fasting, water detox. There was supplements and shakes. I was hearing so much information, I found it overwhelming. But the people telling me were saying it with such certainty that it left me cold. Yet what you're doing is selling ambiguity and nuance and subtlety.

28:01has that been a deliberate shift for you and have you noticed the benefits of not being a strident i think that speaking in absolutes for a lot of people is their hook so the first things we say on social media in the first three to five seconds determine whether or not someone's going to continue watching absolutes and confidence behind absolutes is very engaging for people especially if they can sense certainty because it then means they need further context which they can only get through watching the video. Eggs are bad. Dairy's going to give you cancer. All of these things. Whereas nuance is actually terrible for retention.

28:38So I'd say it has been my own journey where there was a time that I believed in absolutes because I'd learned absolutes. And actually the personal training industry, you do a six-week course, you come out, by the end of it, you're like, is that it? What do I do now? Or you go be a personal trainer. And people go, should I be eating breakfast? Or should I be doing exercise fasted? And the follow-up question is, do you like eating before you train? Because if you do like eating before you train, then you probably have something to eat. And if you don't, then don't. We can't tell people what they like.

29:08Same way with even supplement regimes, creatine, loads of evidence behind it. If you said to someone, do you like taking creatine? They're like, no, I think it's gritty and tastes like shit. Okay, maybe don't take it. And so much of getting people to succeed is to give them something they enjoy. And so much of that is overlooked. And again, even some of the evidence we have, there haven't been big enough trials or studies, red meat giving you cancer. Then when we look at populations as a whole, if you were to take a cohort of non-health-seeking people, don't give a shit about their health at all.

29:43Considering only about 16 % of the UK have a gym membership, we seem to forget there is a massive cohort of people just trying to survive. Don't really care about the gym, don't care about undulating periodization. Then we look at health-seeking populations. we can actually conclude that unhealthy people consume more red meat, more processed meats, more burgers, more bacon, more accessible to cheaper foods like ham, processed meat, etc. When we look at the health-seeking behavior people, more fish, more poultry, they'll choose chicken and turkey more over other food groups. So then if we look at populations as a whole, we can conclude that the more red meat you consume could be correlated with developing certain types of cancer.

30:20But we're not looking at the picture as a whole. Yet people will look at that study and go, it's very clear that red meat gives you cancer. and the nuanced debate surrounding it is very difficult to unwind. Again, it's sugar. When we look at the actual data surrounding sugar, we cannot say sugar is bad. We can say sugar is incredibly easy to consume. We can say sugar is incredibly easy to put you in a hypercaloric state where you consume too many calories. But we cannot vilify something that on its own can be very beneficial. For instance, rehydration. So when looking at electrolyte drinks, glucose, sodium, potassium.

30:55And if you look at a saline drip, if we found you in the desert, you know, maybe me after Ibiza last weekend, we would need glucose to be in that solution so that you can absorb the hydration and the salts in the most optimal efficient way. That's why Powerades and Gatorades for so long have had glucose in them. But if we now see sugar is bad, the same people touting sugar is bad don't even say which type of sugar. Dextrose, sucrose, fructose, lactose. They can't even define, oh, so if sugar is bad, what about fruit? which is, again, this whole debate is just crazy that people see something and they just run with it.

31:30They make an identity out of it because it gives them something to talk about. And I am actually now in a position where even things I've been wrong about recently, a Zen pick. So semaglutide, did a video about it. I was like, probably insecure that it might hinder my fitness business. I had to really get that out there. I was like, maybe I don't want people taking things that reduce their appetite because that's how I make a living. Someone commented on my video and he said it so respectfully. Watched the stuff for a long time. Appreciate what you do. I think he was like, I've even bought your books, but you're wrong.

32:03And just the way he'd written this comment, I was like, I've got to take it. I took it for two weeks. And although I don't think people in the fitness industry should be using it to lose weight, I'm a very high appetite person. Love food. Turn to food when I'm tired. Turn to food when I'm in a good mood. Turn to food when I'm in a bad mood. There's always noise in my mind about food. much of what I've learned in the fitness industry is me dealing with my massive love for food and calories even my parents say as a baby if they were to fly somewhere they need like a baguette of bread give me something to chew even before my teeth were fully there and when I took a Zen pick that noise just went it was not just a lack of appetite it was full control of my thoughts around food my resting heart rate did go up which had me slightly concerned I knew my protein intake wasn't high enough.

32:52So I tried forcing down a protein shake and I was pretty ill for two hours. The impact it had on me made me scared of it. But also having that world of being noise-free, it sounds crazy, but if I ever see someone now on the street that's 150 kilograms, I kind of want to sneak up and just give them their one-week dose of semaglutide and then find them a week later. And being wrong on things is actually, it's quite liberating because then I can just say to people, hey, I was wrong. And again, similar to the honest marketing thing, saying I was wrong about things is actually probably a sign of growth whereas maybe at 28 I wouldn't I would have stayed silent I would have been like doubled down on it sure but I also think you're selling trust as well and I think trust comes from somebody being able to say this was once a viewer held that I now have evidence that have made me change my mind the the trust thing is interesting because sometimes it can be my own downfall where through my late 20s and early 30s have been very transparent about recreational drug use, similar to psychedelics, but then actually outside of that.

33:54I remember being open about telling people I thought I'd done too much cocaine in a period of time. And I think that's actually important to show people that you're, to humanize a brand pretty much because people seem to think they need to have a pristine brand, that they have to be perfect all the time. But just to your point about trust, I think if I don't tell people the full story and I just give them a side of it, which is, you know, fitness business, everything, books, all of that, you actually do need to tell them the dark side as well. And it is semi to be transparent, but semi to be trustworthy, because to be selfish, that's a key component of sales, to have people to know you, like you, and trust you.

34:33And it's one of those things that I think is so important to show people also. If you ever get found out, imagine Danny Dyer somewhere in London gets caught doing a bumper coat, they're like, oh, it's just Danny Dyer. It's not going to make the news or anything, but if you're someone who pretends to be squeaky clean and you get caught doing it, the repercussions are much worse. My mum and dad, over the few years, say I would talk about steroid use or anything, they then find out about it secondhand through social media, or my auntie or my cousins would be like, do you see James' video? Talk about the time he got cramp in his hand injecting steroids.

35:05My mum and dad are now in the last few years, like, James, you cheeky bugger, you know, talking about this time, right? Because they don't have social media. My dad's got like a Facebook account. My mum doesn't even have a phone. So they're very disconnected from the world. But now it's at the point where we can laugh about it. But I did obviously hide a lot of these things from my parents growing up. I want to talk about something that you mentioned, which is this idea of finding authenticity, right? But I don't think we can just talk about going from where you are today to where you are today in one leap.

35:34Like, there's this kind of lonely bit in the middle. There's the hard road in the middle. I'd love to find out from you what kept you going in that period. I'm thinking about the early days of the PT work or the videos you were doing with three or four people watching them rather than millions watching them, the times when you turn up to do a class and one person might have turned up. There's an awful lot of people in that space or are scared to make the leap because they know they're going to be in that space. I've only discovered my personality traits with this since doing jiu-jitsu. Played rugby up until 28, started jiu-jitsu, got my brown belt in December last year.

36:08And it's weird because if a brown belt, I look at purple belt, I'm like, this is embarrassing. But then I look at myself at blue belt, can't even look look to myself compete at white belt i'm like mate you don't know what you're doing but i loved every part of the journey there was not one part i don't enjoy training more at brown belt even though i suffer a lot less a purple belt suffered even uh even more but then i'm like actually hold on i learned the whole journey and if i looked at my time at white belt when i sucked the most i had no idea what i was doing i still see a very happy guy who's happy to turn up to training just wants to learn and get better and i think now looking back at my early career, I was just focused on getting better, just looking for those marginal gains.

36:47I didn't know it at the time. Nothing was intentional. The whole reason I started on social media was I didn't want to face so much rejection on the gym floor. I'd go up to someone, hey, mate, just seen you doing this exercise. We'd love to give you a little fuck off. Yeah, you have a good day. You have a good day, mate. You know, it was, I hated that. I hated people taking their headphones out. What? No, I'm not interested. You know, that was horrible. I came from background door-to-door sales, before IT sales, before recruitment. So I was used to the majority of things going wrong. So rather than being in a position where if I make 100 phone calls, I'll make a sale, I thought to myself, do you know what?

37:21If I can just get better at making videos, I can get better at using Facebook, I can get better at this, things will get easier. With door-to-door sales for Npower, selling gas and electric, I knew that if I was making one sale every 100 doors, eventually it would become 90. Eventually it would become 80. Eventually it would become 70. because the way you conduct yourself and do what you're doing just improves. The same was for social media. There were days I'd post three times and lose five followers, but I could take solace in the fact that I'm getting better at what I'm doing. I ran an email marketing campaign for 10 months, no one bought.

37:5310 months daily emails, no one bought. It was the product that was wrong. I was trying to sell. How did you not stop, though? Because I was getting better at writing emails. How did you know you were getting better? Because I was laughing at them all. That's the problem, isn't it? A lot of people go, maybe I just suck at this. And I, it was funny, the mentors that I had in the space just kept hammering home how important it was. And then I would make up a narrative that maybe my list is too small. Maybe I just need to grow the list more. But the stories I would tell, I would write an email about meditating in a park.

38:23But I would make the email seem different. I'd go, I don't know what my parents would think if they knew I did this today. I went somewhere quiet. I didn't really want anyone to see me doing it. I knew it would only take five minutes. I knew I'd feel better at the end of it. Now, although I don't want anyone to see me doing this, just that little bit of release, that little bit of calm that I get from it, I made it seem like I was having a wank in a park. Then I get to the end, and at the end I was like... I like the fact you explained that to us. Yeah, just in case. But then coming to the end of the email, I sent it and I was proud of it, and I would go, do you know what?

38:51Even if no one fucking buys, I enjoyed this email. So that's how I knew it was getting better. I was trying to sell a PDF that was£20, and it explained everything about a calorie deficit, thermodynamics. Norm wanted it. Then when I went backpacking to Australia, I was charging about£55 an hour. And I said, if you guys want to pay me£55 a week and I'll write all your programs and chat to you every day, let me know. I've got like 12 clients. So I made way more money from the thing that I thought was really expensive that no one wanted rather than trying to sell the thing that actually no one wanted.

39:22I then went to try and give away that PDF for free for email addresses, and I think only two or three people signed up. So I was trying to sell sausages to vegetarians. I scribbled down there the idea of like, The white belt mentality, that willingness to go in as the beginner and have the beginner's mindset. I had 100 ,000 followers when I was still a white belt. And I remember I treated myself, business was going good, so fly first class back from Sydney to Australia. And my first session back to jiu-jitsu, same as every week, the white belts have to clean the mats. And I was on my knees in my gi, wiping other people's sweat off the mats.

39:58And I was like, I love this. because being first class, people are like, oh, sir, your chef will come over. Would you like some more wine? You get treated like you're really important. And it was great to go back to training where people are like, oh, I like your videos, but clean the fucking mats. And that's always been important to me as well where as things progress and get better, more people say yes to you. And it's so nice once, twice, four or five times a week that it doesn't matter what you've achieved, how many books you've sold, how many talks you've done, you've still got to kind of have your place in the pecking order and you've still got to respect everyone around you because there is potentially a janitor who's a black belt with two stripes on and the fact that you've got more in your pension isn't going to stop him crushing you as he mounts you.

40:41So I really like that as well that I'd like to have that white belt mentality to everything where I have a lot of involvement with even little things in my business like editing, video production. I still like being in the nitty gritty of it even if it's my downfall, where a lot of creators are very quick to offload that stuff. I love being involved in it. I love learning it. I love understanding how things work. I'm wondering whether or not the sign at the beginning is to line up the audio with the video. What's the answer, Benny? Yeah, so usually we'd have to clap. But I was like, that's a fancy way of clapping before a video.

41:15Makes you feel good, right? Your name's on the board. And I think it does make a difference. I love your mindset of exploration. And actually, if we think about everything we've discussed, whether it is trying out psychedelics or going door to door thinking the next person's going to buy or that feeling of being served in first class on one day and wiping the mats on the next it all comes down to this ability to explore and this interest and wonder about the world but I also think that people can only really get to that point if they've got an element of self-worth or self-confidence what keeps you knocking on the next door is the fact that you have that belief in yourself that you're getting better So this is quite an interesting thought I've had where I didn't post content because I was confident.

41:58I became confident because I posted content. So it's weird that people seem to wait for motivation in life and they think when I'm motivated, I'll take action. But I think action always needs to be the precursor. I actually think you need to do the thing and accrue confidence on the way. Anyone that wants to create social media should start posting first and you will become confident after you start. Same way that starting jiu-jitsu, you're never going to be confident to turn up to a gym where people fight each other. You need to turn up, then you become confident. So how do you get past that first bit where you're crap at posting content, you're crap at jiu-jitsu, you're crap at door-to-door sales?

42:30So I wrote a book on confidence. I came to the conclusion, I don't actually believe that confidence is really a thing. It's not a personality trait. It's almost like a guy's mask that you must wear to make yourself feel better about not doing things. So throughout life, you have two paths, action or inaction. You either spoke to the girl on the tube or you didn't. You either asked your boss for a pay rise or you didn't. You either put your hand up when the manager of your company wanted someone to take charge of a task or you didn't. So when you go through life not doing things, you need an excuse to make yourself feel better.

43:04And wearing the mask of not being a confident person is a great way to have an out. And I say to people, it's not about confidence, it's about action. And one of the premise of even the talks we do was that there is a cost to inaction. And there's something called the Zyganik effect, where waiters and waitresses will remember what everyone's had at the table up until the point they pay the bill. But when they pay the bill, it's no longer important to remember, so they forget. And in essence, the same reason that before an ad break on a TV show, you're saying, coming up next, who wins in a fight between three badgers and two midgets?

43:40See you afterwards. You open a loop. And when the loop's open, you now are invested until the point you can close the loop. So cliffhangers, everything, TV, it's all about opening loops in people's minds. Unfortunately, when people choose a path of inaction, they are opening loops and they are thinking about those things. So whether the girl in the red dress on the tube that you really wanted to go up and tell her she was pretty and ask her if she had plans for tonight. When you choose the path of inaction, that loop remains open. It builds into the ever-growing database of evidence that you're a person that doesn't do things, aka not confident.

44:10And I say to people that I'm not asking you to be confident. I'm asking you to close loops when they arise. So when something frightening and scary comes up in front of you, whether it's making a piece of content, writing a brief, asking for a pay rise, attending a job interview, it's not about becoming a confident person. It's about closing loops. And if you can just close loops the second they arise, people will label you as confident because you're a go-getter, you're doing the thing. And in retrospect, it's a lot easier to embrace failure or things going wrong if you were proactive, if you were doing the thing.

44:40I think that opening loops and not closing them is the biggest disservice we can do to ourselves. So people, whether they want to start a project, put themselves out there, change career, whatever it is, I think the biggest disservice you can do to yourself is to choose the path of inaction because those loops will never close. They will never get what they want. And again, this comes down to what you deem success as. So for jiu-jitsu, success should be going to the gym, doing a first class. The same way that if you're a young man out there, you shouldn't see success as getting a girl to agree to go on a date with you, the success should be talking to the girl.

45:13Because if you set the success as just going up and opening your mouth, hey, don't usually do this, boom, you can be successful. But if you set the metric as being so gargantuan that you have to tie down a date, go meet her, and have a drink, and have a good time, then you're putting a lot of distance between you. And I actually think the best people on social media aren't actually looking for the outcome. They're just looking to produce the best piece of content necessary. And the second they press post, they've closed the loop. Anything else is just the byproduct. Anything else is just the bonus that comes after.

45:43So when people say, how do you get the confidence to do something? I think they just need to do the action, do the thing, and the confidence will come afterwards. The only reason I can say things with confidence is because I've done the work beforehand. Confidence to me is never a precursor to action, it's something that comes after. If you're still overpaying for wireless, it's time to say yes to saying no. At Mint Mobile, their favourite word is no. No contracts, no monthly bills, no overages, no hidden fees, no BS. I made the switch because I was tired of those ridiculous bills and sneaky charges from my old provider.

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48:06it reminds me of one of the first in fact the first self-help book i read in my whole life was by a woman called susan jeffers called feel the fear and do it anyway but it basically at that time i was a young guy growing up in a little village near norwich and i was like well you i like some people don't have fear so that's how they get stuff done and there's people like me that have fear and never do anything. And this book, everyone feels the fear, but some people do it anyway. It was a really, like, it was a seminal moment for me. It plays nicely into that. We're also all different. I'm not saying that everyone should be, you know, high agency, go get, make your dreams come true.

48:39Some people just want simple lives. And sometimes I envy that. One thing I found myself doing in my early entrepreneur journey was turning around and shitting on 9-5s because I came from 9-5. But now I actually sometimes miss some of the 9 till 5 life. There was a time that I could leave the office on a Friday afternoon and not give a single fuck until Monday at 8am. And now I look to some of those people and I go, oh, maybe from a tax perspective you're way worse off. But I can't shut off. I can't go on holiday anymore. I'm always thinking about business. I'm always thinking about the next marginal incremental increase.

49:15So although that has a plethora of benefits to my life, it also comes with this curse on the back end. So now when someone goes, oh, I'm an accountant, I love my job. Whereas before I was like, oh, you should have your own business. You should have this. I'm like, oh, do you know what? If you're happy, this is, again, the whole thing that boils down to. People just need to find something that makes them happy. And I trained this super wealthy dude once. And he would always come in, he'd show off a bit. He's like, oh, that's my Rolls. He goes, this watch, Harrods gave it to me. And, oh, it's engraved.

49:46It's the same leather from the dashboard of my Rolls Royce. and a few times he told me about this guy he knew who lived in Worthing who just had a small house and a dog and he was the happiest guy he knew he couldn't get it it haunted him as to how someone with so much less money than him could be happier than him and proactively now through life I love finding happy people another reason I love Australia so much is it sounds really bad to say this but sometimes Australians don't feel as hard working as Brits because I feel they almost don't need to they've got the beach they go surfing I remember having a steak in Manly once and the dude serving our table was a surfer dude.

50:26He was really nice. We tipped him a little bit. And I looked at him and I went, this motherfucker probably rolls out of bed at 8 a.m., walks his dog, goes for a little surf, has a little nap in the afternoon, comes to the steak restaurant for 6 p.m., works all night, is an absolute legend, gets a nice tip. I was like, that guy could do that for 50 years and he could have the best life ever. Whereas I'm here stressing, oh, app developers, we've got to do this, I've got to write a book, all of this stuff. And Australia to me was so great to see people just in their element, just going through life, looking at life as not a cycle of five, ten years, career, CV, but how does today look?

51:02How will tomorrow look? And it was kind of inspiring to me where I sometimes get a little, how would I call it, little mental conundrums. Luke my manager is outside I saw a creator online who I don't rate him that highly and he's got a Lambo he's got a Eurus and I messaged Luke I went where's my fucking Eurus you know like I want to have a Lambo and he goes do you know what come back to London we could do 12 hour days for a year or we go to New York and you could just fucking work all day every day and you could have one within six months he goes or you can fuck off your little life on the beach and keep walking your dog and taking your naps in the afternoon I was like do you know what I needed that and yeah, it all boils down to just being happy.

51:48But there is something here that, again, going back to the psychedelics conversation where you're seeing life at a slightly slower pace, you're giving yourself three hours to go and look at the flowers. You're sat in that restaurant, you're seeing the guy coming in, doing a job that doesn't look like there's a lot of stress. Why do you do what you do then? Because it's a choice. Again, you've taken action, but it seems to me that you are pining for something that is slower and maybe less stressful? So for me, it has to boil down to opportunity. So I think I have an opportunity to do things that no one else in my family or even my entire lineage has ever had.

52:26Then opportunity, not just for me, my immediate family, but then the kind of extended family around that. If I was to set myself a goal of paying off everyone's debt, I feel that if I go really hard for five, 10 years, I could potentially do that. Now, is that the pace of life I want to live? Probably not. But I had an ADHD diagnosis last year, and I know it's cool. I also came out with a bit of anxiety, which I know is not so cool. And I pretty much told the psychologist at the time that I sometimes fabricate a really disastrous outcome to motivate myself in the short term. So, for instance, that would look like if I'm not productive today and this week and I don't get this done, My businesses could go under.

53:10I could lose the house. I could have to move back to the UK. I create really diabolical outcomes to motivate myself. I'm really bad with timeframes. If my publisher said, we'll give you a year to write the book, I'm like, can we do it in six months? You know, I need that pressure on me to do it. And I feel that maybe I'm fabricating this world where I need to provide for everyone in my immediate family because when I look around, I'm like, the economy is getting tougher. The job prosperity is getting harder. The salaries are stagnant. the debt and interest rates are moving up. So I think that although maybe the life I live is incongruent with the life that I want to have, it doesn't have to be, and I'm just going to go as hard as I can with the energy that I have now so that maybe I can take my foot off in a few years.

53:54Although I'm sure a lot of people that work until the day they die also say that. So I think that's in the position I'm in at the moment where I perhaps would like a more chilled life, but I do have good balance. I do have a good balance at the moment, but that doesn't stop me from wanting to seize an opportunity that's in front of me. Although the last six months, and since having a child, I've definitely chilled out a little bit. And I think that I've definitely been guilty of getting into a world of vanity metrics where I think actually there was a period where I was just trying to be famous because then maybe the two million followers could look good to the fuck you, to the kids used to bully me.

54:34And I was like, what am I doing? and something I'm really trying hard with now is not getting misled growing a subprime audience. And what I mean by that is, if we look at Eddie Abu, done fantastic as far as the social game. If you look at his content two years ago, he's actually very reasonable. He's actually very well balanced on his thoughts, but he is now a product of the reaction he gets from the crowd and supermarkets and people that champion him. And he's built an audience of nearly 4 million people, but I'm not sure that's actually benefiting in his bottom line or his family. He's actually just tried to be the comical character that plays up to people, that wears the disguise, sneaks into supermarket.

55:12Whereas I know people with a tenth of the following making ten times as much money. And you can get all caught up with the vanity metrics, the likes, the shares, the virality, the media attention, the clout. And I've definitely been guilty of that before. And I'm now kind of slowing down to the point where I actually just want to operate sound businesses where I'm happy with the deal that people get. I could be proud of whatever it is we give out and that it's not some big capitalist venture to make tens of millions or whatever. It's just about operating those businesses and having the good work-life balance because I've seen too many people, Chris Williamson had a guy on his pod, a billionaire who's on antidepressants and it was one of the best conversations I've ever heard where he talks about there's always that next step, that next step, that next step and he's so far ahead and he's like, I'm still not there.

55:59I still haven't got to the area that I'm happy. But you reminded me of that then when you were saying in a few years and I'll pay the debt on it and I was going to say to you that Jake tells the story of reading a book about Edmund Hillary when he gets to the top of Everest and he goes, there's a higher mountain over there I need to do. And when you're talking about this idea of in a few years, then I'll be there. How do you avoid the fact that there'll be another mountain for you to conquer? I think I've been telling myself the same lie for a few years, to be honest. I popped a bottle of champagne when I hit 100 ,000 followers and then I was less impressed when I hit a million.

56:32I actually think that there's a worse return the higher you get. I sometimes think that the first second hand at Golf I bought made me happier than buying a brand new Porsche. So like, I'm aware of it, but it's a constructive problem to have. It's a problem that even if I'm chasing this never-ending hedonic treadmill of happiness, potentially people around me could be better off. But then again, they might not be. But what's the price you're paying now? Because there has to be a price to put yourself in that threat state for as long as you have done? Probably quite a bit of undue stress. I've always been quite a chilled character, but then this year with the anxiety, the ADHD, a lot of it could just be stress as well.

57:15But I kind of thrive in it. I kind of like it. Stress gives me purpose. Productivity, to me, is actually something I care about more than fitness. This was the whole crazy thing where if I don't train today, I'm fine. But if I don't get my work done, I'm an arsehole to be around. So I think the stress, the productivity, juggling plates is almost like a coping mechanism for me. I have a very busy mind and I actually think, I hate the idea of retiring, but I just need to make sure I'm being balanced throughout this journey. And I think that's definitely benefiting me with longevity, even if it means I'm less productive in the meantime.

57:51I think we have very much slipped into this world of being human doings, not human beings, right? And we've forgotten that actually, eventually it's just as important to go to the fields of Iceland with your other half. It's just as important to mess around in a sandpit with your kid. It's just as, you know, like reading a book is a creative exercise. None of these things are less valuable than putting out another video or going viral once more. I think that what allows you to do all that stuff and still stay happy or find the energy is still there, I think is purpose. So I'm wondering about purpose for you and whether that is something that also keeps you going in the right direction.

58:31I always like to try and be the person I really could have done with 10 years ago. That's nice, yeah. That's the simplest thing. I was an overweight kid. I remember even asking dinner ladies what was fattening. I was like, excuse me, what's fattening here? They didn't really kind of understand. I was, you know, a kid conscious, my weight never made the sports team. Then when I got a little bit older, I was buying into rubbish workout plans. So I remember jumping around my front room for like a month every day, sweat patch on the carpet, lost no weight, because I was still doing two for Tuesdays at Domino's.

59:01So no one had come into my life and said, hey, mate, how about you just eat less? How about you stop eating pizza? So I became the person I really needed then. And I was at university then. I was playing pretty decent level rugby, and I still didn't appreciate that I needed to eat less. I thought I wasn't fit enough. I thought I wasn't doing enough cardio. I thought I wasn't taking enough L-carnitine or whatever it was. Then as my career as a PT started taking off a bit, did the first book about fitness then the second book was about life design I see so many people around me getting caught up with things that just aren't important and again probably failing to see happiness as the real currency that's important and then the third book about confidence was so many people maybe it said oh you put yourself out there you're a confident person and the last book was more of a hey fuck you I'm not a confident person like you say before I just did the thing I was scared of so I'm just leaving a trail of breadcrumbs behind me so the people if they could only have half or a quarter of the benefit that what I've learned has impacted me and all these concepts we've spoken about aren't mine.

1:00:03We are walking, talking, encapsulations of just the experiences that we've had. And actually every single thing I've ever said about the fitness industry comes from probably 10 people smarter than me. Mike Isretel, Lane Norton, you know, all of these people that I look up to, I actually assemble what they say and I'll never forget, there's a chap called Ben Kumar, he used to have the number one podcast in the UK about fitness, health, everything. He said to me once, I'd love to have you on the pod, but you're not really a specialist in anything. I said, oh, cheers, mate. And I came to realize, it took me maybe two, three years into my career, the one thing that was really my strength was communicating the things I'd learned from other people.

1:00:41And that's really the purpose. Because I appreciate that people aren't going to listen to a one-hour podcast on caffeine, but I will, because I love the details. I know that there's a seven-second soundbite in that 58 minutes that I could interject into a reel. I love doing the things I know other people won't, so that then I can benefit from communicating it across. Similarly, how you could read a book that's 300 pages and explain it to me in 15 seconds. So although it's not the same experience, my purpose is an amalgamation of things that I think are important without the fluff. And also, I came to realize that all these privately educated people with a PhD that went to Redbrook Universities, although they have the information, they might not relate to my audience because my audience are the type of people that maybe do like a pint on a Monday evening after work or they might be the type of people that went, yeah, do you know what?

1:01:33I do coke three times a year. And if I can just communicate the lessons they need to the audience that they're maybe not reaching, that's my position and purpose within it. And I think that's what I'll continue to do. Even now, moving more into more of a business-to-business space, there's so much waffle about content strategy all of this even just saying someone hey mate can you write down 10 problems your business your customers face there's your 10 videos to go do answer the questions oh i never thought of that so it's making it pure simple sometimes being a little bit brutal but giving people the information that i really could have done with maybe 10 years ago.

1:02:12Brilliant. Got some quickfire questions for you. I'm ready.

1:02:18What is the best piece of advice you've ever received? There's a guy in our gym that my friend Duran used to train called Scott. And Scott went blind a year after making his first million dollars for a really successful business. And, yeah, just bought his first Porsche, rare eye disease, 27, 28, fully blind. One year it came on, changed his whole life. But the guy was always in such a good mood. Such a good mood. And I was thinking, if I went blind at that age, I don't know what would have happened. And Duran was going through a really rough time in his life. And I was with him when we were talking to Scott in the gym in Sydney.

1:02:52And I've never heard him say it with such authority. But he says, whatever happens, you'll be all right. That was it. Whatever happens, you'll be all right. And it rocked me. This guy went fucking blind at 28. I was like, I'm listening. And sometimes me and him will talk and something bad will happen or whatever. and we just remind each other, whatever happens, you'll be all right. Years, 30 years afterwards, he's happier than me. Some days I have to remind myself there's a blind guy in a gym in Sydney who's way happier than I am. What daily habit has had the most positive impacts on your life?

1:03:26Having a bit of me time. I'd have to be selfish with this and it usually is just opening my laptop and emptying emails, headphones on, just having a bit of me time. Early in the morning, I had a lot of girlfriends that hated me and resented me for this because they thought, I didn't care about them. In hindsight, you could have seen from potentially the fact that I wanted to kick them out so I could go on my laptop for a few hours. But if I need calmness in my life in the day, I need to just have that one hour on my laptop a day, I will do an all-nighter in Ibiza and you'll see me at 9 a.m., my laptop out, because the one part of my day that I just need, just calmness, to know there's no emails in there, there's no lawsuits coming in, there's no, you know, whatever it is, just that.

1:04:06And it sounds really reductive, but when I look at any success I've had, the fact that I can just get up, open my email and just have an hour to myself, I think that's it. Because then once that's buried, the creativity juices in my mind can flow because the stressful things are done. Even if it sounds crazy, the baby will be crying, there's a pooey nappy. And my missus I'm with now, we get on so well because she sees the cogs moving in my mind. She's like, go do whatever it is. And it might only just be paying off the Amex. But if I don't pay off the Amex that was due two days ago, The cogs just keep going in my mind and I can't be present.

1:04:39So it would be that. My one-hour laptop. It sounds really crazy. As long as I get that, I'm happy. Very good. You mentioned lawsuits there, which leads us nicely actually into the next question, which is how do you not suffer overwhelm? Do you know what? I would say I potentially do. I'm very chaotic. I'm very disorganized. So I sometimes do suffer with overwhelm. It would be the people around me. So my business partners, I would rather give half my business to someone else and we both work on the business than try and be the major shareholder or whatever it is because I appreciate that so many people actually need to do some thinking for me.

1:05:17Where I would say I'm very creative, I'm also very disorganized. So having people around me that can help manage that, even my manager who sat outside, they take so much mental burden off me because I know what's important, they will be voicing to me. So if I'm ever feeling overwhelmed, I can just go to them and be like, what do you need me to do today? which is actually me delegating my own thinking but that would be the best way because if it's important to them I get confirmation it's really that important but then if they say oh do that next week that helps if you could debunk one fitness myth forever what would it be?

1:05:47I'm going to preface this with I'm not 100 % sure this is true but this is my thought we put so much emphasis on bad foods being bad that I actually think the bad scenario is not getting enough good foods so I think that fruit, vegetables, meat, poultry make us feel good, they make us feel great, they benefit our health, they have nutrients, vitamins, minerals, fiber, they have all the things we need. But instead of saying that, and getting people proactive to eat more of those, we just vilify the things they're eating. I don't think a donut is bad. I think it's a bad deal, because you're getting a lot of calories, a lot of sugar, not really any vitamins, minerals, you're getting good energy, but that's it.

1:06:26So instead of seeing foods as good and bad, good deal, bad deal. The potato isn't going to be that exciting, but you get a lot of things that you want from it. So rather than saying, don't eat that that's bad, do you know what? You're fine having a sandwich. You're fine having a donut if the majority of your diet has what it needs. And I think that inflammation, poor health markers, all of these things are often a contribute of not getting enough goodness, not having too much badness. So I think the people need to eradicate this mindset of don't eat this, don't eat this, don't eat this, or as we've seen, this is shit, this is shit, that this is shit, and instead say, if you eat more of this, you'll feel better.

1:07:02If you eat more of this, you'll recover better. If you eat more of this, you will actually eat some of this as a byproduct. So diet shouldn't be removing things from your diet, it should be adding it. What are the three non-negotiable behaviors that you think are most important? For me, and I would love some people to do this off the back of this podcast, I'd love someone to start jiu-jitsu. I can't explain, well, I can explain it, and I will. So imagine, I'll probably get my black belt in the next two years, and you can cancel me, you can delete my social media, you can hack my account, you can bankrupt me, you can sue me, but you'll never be able to take that away from me.

1:07:32And I often fantasize about the idea of just hiding enough money somewhere that I could open a gym. And I think to myself that if everything got taken away from me, I'll just open a gym on the beach, I'll go door to door, or I'll call up everyone with the skills that I got from that. And if I can get 85 people into my gym, I can live forever. But for me, it's just knowing that chess is fun, but I get bored of it. I sometimes play a bit of chess, but human chess is way better. and there's just something you won't know who you are until you do this sport you won't know how good you are with adversity how good you are with winning how humble you are with winning how bitter you are with loss and also imagine even just playing a game of chess and you see your opponents about to make a bad decision you stop them because you want them to get better I never realised how much I wanted people to do better around me until I started Jiu Jitsu so one would be that even if you're old I know a sheik in the Middle East who started at 38 and he's now a black belt world champion and no, he might have been even older.

1:08:27I think he might have been 45 when he started. Number one, jiu-jitsu. And everyone's going to, oh, but I've hurt my ACL playing football. Just fucking go, right? If you retake your ACL, my bad, but you should be fine. Your partners will look after you. Second one would be about respecting sleep. You know when the Matthew Walker craze came? I became a real diva about my sleep, and I think it's been such an integral part of my life. I'm sure you've had sleep experts and everyone on before. but honestly this is going to sound like a pay promotion I hate it when I do this have you guys heard of Eight Sleep?

1:09:00Yep Have you got one? Yep I love it Jay you don't have one do you? Mate I wake up like I wake up I close my eyes and wake up like that but I also feel like I've been in the bed for about a thousand years and my wife's the same The Eight Sleep for me again transformed my life and it's hugely expensive it's like£3 ,000 for the top model and it's only a mattress cover but then I think to myself people will spend that on a week's holiday in a nice resort or you set a sewer house for a week in Istanbul or Turkey or Mykonos, wherever it is. Mate, sewer house two nights and you spent three grand. Don't worry.

1:09:32So you're like, you're staring down the barrel of one less luxury holiday resort, whatever, years of better sleep. Yeah. And that to me, annoyingly, do you know what, guys, let's do an equity deal. You know, just give me a percent. But it's insane. But I wouldn't, so when I was looking at it, there's a money back guarantee. If 30 days don't love it, send it back. And I was like, I'm going to do a YouTube video. Because then, even if I don't like it, I can do the YouTube video. I can rip them to shreds and still get my money back. And the first night, okay, second night. By the third night, I got my temperatures right.

1:10:04I was converted. And now, if you put three beers in me, I'm selling something to you. So, you know, like, and often it's not even my products. I'm there telling my friend, I'm like saying to my friends, you know, oh, they just bought a Rolex. I'm like, you could have got an eight seat. You know, yeah, it's a nice watch. But, you know, it's not going to help you sleep at night. So that'll be the second one, sleep. And the third thing, probably doing something daily for the soul, which can actually be bringing out the inner child. I taught myself to skateboard at 28. I was living in Bondi. I fell off an eight shit a lot.

1:10:35But sometimes I'll wake up and I'll be like, I'm going to skateboard to work today. I'm going to take the cycle track. I'm going to skateboard in. It will take me 10 minutes longer. I'll turn up with sweaty armpits. But I feel like a child again. Or just something that brings out that inner child, something good for the soul. even if I'm going to be late for dinner, I'm going for a swim. I'm going to go for a swim or I'm going to have a cold bath or whatever it is. Just do something to snap me out of business mode, snap me out of whatever I was doing. What's your greatest strength and your biggest weakness?

1:11:06Strength, creativity, which I never knew because when you're a 23-year-old working in an IT security company, if you try and bring a good idea to someone, shut up. Mate, you're on 22K a year, piss off and do your phone calls. it's the truth though because maybe easier now but back in the day if you're fresh out of uni we're not paying you to be creative we're paying you to do the jobs no one else wants to do maybe if you work here for 10 more years we'll listen to you so a lot of young people's creativity is heavily diminished because that's not the job you're giving them you don't want your graduates to be creative and unfortunately even someone young in your team that might be doing something like editing if they came in and said oh there's something I think we should change with the edit there's always something difficult to accept with someone who's essentially an experience having better creativity than someone that's not it's kind of a prejudice that we have downfall organization awful short-term memory awful remembering what I'm doing awful which is why my business partners my manager like just let you know we're we're in London tomorrow and I'm like yeah yeah pretending I'm pretending I remembered I think it's getting worse because now people around me help me so much with the organization yeah I actually put things on people i say to my missus i've got a call tonight i'm making it seem like i'm telling her that we might have dinner a bit later but really she now knows that i'm asking her to remind me so organization awful chris hates me because i'm never checking our slack for newtonic so chris will passive aggressively have a little poke at me in one of the groups i'll go into slack to check i'll reply and he'll whatsapp me going that's from a month ago you and check the slack for a month.

1:12:42I'm like, sorry, mate. Because at the end of the day, right, Chris is a fantastic business partner and can be quite difficult to work with. But if there's a little bit of copy on the side of the can that we disagree about, we're going to go with what Chris wants because I'm just not going to be able to trump him there. So I've almost given up trying. If there's any changes we're making to the formulation, if I like one and Chris likes the other, I'm going to concede to Chris. One, because he has a fantastic... Is it a sommelier? Yeah. he's the sommelier of drinks the carbonated kind when we produced the drink he was like yep that's stevia don't know how he did it so the organisation side of things all flat but the creativity part of it someone can say to me James all you need to tell me is who you want and where you want them sent that's really my role in a business people say director, entrepreneur honestly all I'm good at is sending traffic in directions with content.

1:13:38I'll get it done before you wake up. But if you ask me to remember something for tomorrow, I'll forget. So the strength and the weaknesses, which is again why I think I might lean into this ADHD category because my ability to be productive in anything that's creative, whether it's writing a book, doing a talk, creating a social media asset, or email marketing emails that make it seem like I'm wanking in a park, that to me I find easy, low pressure. But the fact you'd want me to remember something for later on that week or where I am the following weekend stresses me out. I'm not good at it. But I embrace it.

1:14:12And I love saying to people that where I might seem like I'm organized on the top, there's sometimes pure chaos underneath. Very good. And the final question. You're kind of one last message really for people that have listened to this conversation. You're one golden rule for a high-performance life. Do the thing and everything will happen after. Start the thing you want to do. Go to the place you want to go. create the blog, the content, whatever it is. You cannot wait for anything to come before taking action. Taking action is the first step. And if you wait to be motivated, wait for the right time, wait for anything, you'll wait too late.

1:14:49Do the thing first. Correct the course on the way.

1:14:57Damien. Jay. So, Jamie Smith, what do we make of that conversation? I thought he was a mass of contradictions in many ways. I think when he was at his best there in that conversation was when he was in that place of humility. You know, the story about the cleaning the mats after flying on first class. I think that's when we saw him at his best. I think the conversation about faith, of saying, you know, I've moved from being an atheist to an agnostic, it's that sense of uncertainty, the idea of in the fitness industry, not telling people absolutes, but allowing room for subtlety to go, well, do you enjoy this?

1:15:34Because if you enjoy it, you're more likely to stick to it. When he moved into that space of humility, I really enjoyed it and got a lot from it when he spoke about seeking happiness, not pleasure. I'm all in for that. What did you think? I think we got hold of James at a really interesting time. I think the early stuff on his socials, like it's really bombastic and he's calling out other people and he's being very clear in what he thinks, is very different to the person sitting in front of us today. And I think that's because he's just become a dad, he's a little bit older, he's had the success that I think is, don't you think it's absolutely clear that he craved the success for a long time?

1:16:11Definitely, yeah. And I think when you then get the one thing that you really wanted, it then forces you to rethink and go, oh, hold on, I was now meant to be really happy at this point and I'm not. So now what is life actually about? And I think what life is about is exploration. And that's what I really liked about the conversation. Whether it was him talking about psychedelics, which again is a topic we have not spoken about on high performance. And if someone wants to talk to us about the virtues of it, then fine. It's up to the audience to make up their own minds. But talking about the way he explored there, this idea that we're not fixed, that we should constantly be exploring, that he is going to be learning things until the day that he dies.

1:16:47I think that's great for our audience because I think sometimes you think someone like James Smith is popular and successful because this is his thing and he sticks to it. but that's not the way the world works. Yeah, you know, Adam Grant, who we've had as a guest on here, wrote a great book on this called Rethink, the ability to take long-held assumptions and then hold them up for scrutiny, to challenge, and then maybe come back with more evidence to say, maybe that's not what I thought it was. And, you know, James's anecdote that he said about popping the champagne cart when you get to 100 ,000 followers on social media and then getting to a million followers and realising, actually, it doesn't feel any better.

1:17:24I don't feel any more fulfilled is somebody that's on that journey of exploration. So I think we were really privileged that he allowed us into his thinking at a time when he isn't so filled with sense of certainty. Yeah. But he's questioning and I think that's a really interesting place to have found him. Well played. Thanks, mate. I loved it. So that's the end of today's episode with James. If you enjoyed it, please make sure you follow the show and leave us a review. and I just want to take a quick moment to tell you about the High Performance Foundation. The foundation was created by and for you, our high performance community, with so many teachers reaching out to telling us that the lessons from our show were really valuable in schools and together we identified a need to provide young people with a way to kickstart their own journey to a future where they can thrive.

1:18:13The foundation exists to enable young people, no matter their background, to be able to write their own story and believe it's within. we help young people develop the skills and the tools they need to build resilience confidence and well-being today so they can thrive tomorrow if you'd like to join us on our journey and support the high performance foundation please just visit highperformancefoundation.org thanks for listening and we'll see you again soon

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