Crafting Identity and Integrity in the Online World - Darren Lee, E044

In this episode of The MOOD Podcast, I sat down with Darren Lee, founder of Voics, who shared invaluable insights on content creation and establishing a unique podcast identity. Through his startup experience, Darren emphasizes authenticity and integrity, guiding listeners on the transformative journey from nothing to everything in the online arena.

We also talked about the intricacies of building a successful podcast ecosystem, highlighting the role of content in opening diverse business avenues and the significance of authenticity for sustained success. Darren's insights offer a comprehensive guide for content creators looking to thrive in the dynamic online world and beyond.

Find Darren and his companies across his social platforms
Instagram: @darrenlee.ks
youtube: @darren_ks
website: voics.co

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Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can also watch this episode on my YouTube channel (link below) where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as my social media, so make sure to follow me on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and TikTok or check out my website for my complete portfolio of work.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

50 million views last year. 30 shows how People are searching for human connection. Why podcasts? It's a future of all communication.

Speaker 2: 0:07

What's the stat with podcasts? It's 90%. Don't get past episode three.

Speaker 1: 0:11

Your business is actually a reflection of you. I came from the startup world. Continually, no matter what you're doing, you'll meet a wall of resistance. How do people find a voice? We're largely programmed to follow that path, and if you go outside of that path that's when it's tall puppy syndrome you stick your head up and someone will want to cut you down.

Speaker 2: 0:31

These guys are big players in the podcast market, but what did it take for them to get there? Formal education will make you a living. Self-education will make you a killer. Can you make life-changing money from podcasting? If so, how? From podcasting? If so, how?

Speaker 2: 0:46

Welcome to another episode of the Mood Podcast. I'm Matt Jacob, and today is a slight pivot, but with the intent of bringing you some real value and takeaways that you can implement immediately, whatever creative sector you're in. We're joined by Darren Lee, a vibrant, energetic and well-versed entrepreneur and founder of Voix, a groundbreaking media company that specializes in building influence and authority through podcasting. Kind of apt right. Darren's background and extensive experience in startups and financial technology, coupled with a real, authentic and sheer passion for helping others succeed, makes him a different but invaluable guest who I thought would provide us, value Us as visual artists and entrepreneurs looking to grow our exposure and income, as well as maintain a level of artistic integrity and brand quality. So we talked a lot about common challenges within these arenas and addressing them, such as generating leads, driving revenue and creating compelling content, of course, offering some interesting solutions for entrepreneurs seeking to make a meaningful impact in their respective industries, creators or not. We also touch upon the core principles of finding success, as he shares invaluable insights garnered from his own evolution and rapid journey through multiple failed businesses and so on.

Speaker 2: 2:17

From debunking myths surrounding podcasting to outlining the essential strategies for driving growth and monetization, darren provides actionable advice tailored to aspiring creators and seasoned professionals alike. We talked a lot and we explore the innovative approach to brand management, covering everything from launch to monetization, backed by impressive statistics showcasing his company's track record of success. So, whether you're a budding artist, creator, podcaster or business owner looking to expand your reach, this episode, I hope, promises to equip you with the tools and knowledge needed to thrive in our competitive world that we live in today. So now I bring you Darren Lee. Certainly I face, and many individual artists face. Certainly that I know is selling themselves and how to sell themselves. Like so many people feel uncomfortable talking in a kind of marketable way about themselves. Do you find that often with you know the individuals you do?

Speaker 1: 3:33

yeah, the problem we have is the fact that people it's a curse of granted knowledge. The people don't realize that what they know is valuable. So to think that the five years experience you have in photography or all your background is not valuable because it's easy to you, so something comes natural to you, it's not valuable to other people. And if I say it, then it's not going to be, it's not going to let you stand out, because I think that everybody knows this. So I could do with photography, you could do with art, you could do with any part of putting yourself out there. So that's one underlying level is that their skill isn't valuable, which you need to tell the story. That's what's important to go through storytelling. We'll go through that as well today, like the importance of storytelling, and the second side of that then as well, is the fear of what other people will think about themselves.

Speaker 1: 4:16

Because I'm 28, just around 28,. When I was younger, growing up in Ireland, that's all that mattered was what did the boys think? What did the girls think? What did the boys think? What did the girls think? What do my parents think? What do my brothers think? What do even my university lecturers will think if things go one way or the other and we're largely programmed to follow that path. And if you go outside of that path, that's when it's tall poppy syndrome you stick your head up and then someone will want to cut you down. So it's almost like that lack of conformity means that people do not want to put themselves out there, but to do anything meaningful and worthwhile you need to be able to step outside the curve. That doesn't happen overnight, it doesn't happen over a year. It's slow iterations to get there. So I think a lot of times you need to walk before you can run, and a lot of times the people that I interact with two different things.

Speaker 1: 5:09

So with podcasting, people are either all in and they overestimate what they can do in the short term and underestimate what they do in the long term, or there's the opposite, where people procrastinate and go in circles forever, and we have a ton of clients that fall into the second bracket, where I need to like pull them out of the hump of doing more research, finding better guests, getting the perfect camera, getting the better lens, and my process with this is just ship it, ship it, iterate on it, and I want to get your thoughts on this, too from an art perspective, because anything that I've ever done ever in my entire life has come from just shipping, iterating, improving, looking at myself as an embarrassment as well, right, and realizing that where I'm at right now is not where I want to be, but I can get better.

Speaker 1: 5:53

I think that's the biggest hump that people don't want to get over. I call it the infinite game. It's doing something you want to do forever, and I think a lot of why we don't get started and why people are reluctant to get out there is because they view things as a finite game. They view the Stephen Bartlett's of the world, the top podcasters, top photographers of the world and they realize that they're not going to get to that role immediately, maybe within a year, maybe within a decade. But for me, the reason why we've been able to kind of move is because of the fact that I just view this as an ongoing, never-ending game that I literally never want to finish playing, and that's why, for me, I can be comfortable with shipping, iterating, looking like a dumbass sometimes and getting better.

Speaker 2: 6:32

Define shipping and iterating.

Speaker 1: 6:34

So it comes from a startup world. So I came from the startup world. I came from the VC-backed world, where you raise a bunch of money and you release products to the world and whether it is art or whether it's a product, I think it's all kind of the one in some ways the fact that to understand, are you getting better or to improve what you have, you need to get feedback, and feedback is this data. And the more times we release stuff out into the world, the more information we can get back to the world on what we should do and what we shouldn't do. So before you launch a podcast or start a new project, you need information to tell you which way we want to go. Now, people's general hypothesis is that they'll sit there and look at the board and look at their think map and their visualization and just ponder what people want. But the best way to understand what people want is to give them something and look for feedback. So what does that mean? If we had a product or a service or a YouTube video? If I send a YouTube video to you and I said, hey, getting started on YouTube, do you mind just checking this out for me? You'd say, okay, fix your speech, fix how the camera looks, fix how this looks, and that feedback should come into a feedback loop where you're trying to get better slowly and slowly and slowly.

Speaker 1: 7:39

Now these changes, they're never ending right, and a lot of reasons why I think people fail and why there's a graveyard of podcasts and artists and startups is because people don't want to hear the uncomfortable truth. It's that you need to get better as an individual, as an artist, as a producer, as an entrepreneur. You need to be the one who wants to get better. As a producer, as a entrepreneur, you need to be the one who wants to get better. And as you get better effectively, that's when things will start to click. So in the product world, that's known as a product market fit. I call it in podcasting, podcast market fit, and it took me genuinely two and a half years to find that podcast market fit, which for me, is online business for young entrepreneurs, helping people live a richer and more fulfilling life.

Speaker 1: 8:23

That didn't come overnight. It was constant iteration, getting feedback from the crowd, making the small adjustments and finding the right guest, the right audience, the right topics and kind of having that as like a North Star. But for me, the reason why I think this is a nice like I call it a journey effectively is because it's like meditation. It's a meditative process. You're always getting a little bit better, and if you can forget the end goal and forget what we want to get to and just focus on the small iterations, it leads to building better. Building better products, going to sleep at night, not being super anxious, not getting too overwhelmed, not getting left behind basically in the muse, because you get caught up in what's happening everywhere else in the world. And that's how I think you can really build something that's sustainable and do this for a long term.

Speaker 2: 9:14

I think sustainability and finding purpose within that it emanates from being healthy, both in mind and body, and at least starting from a solid foundation. But coupled with that, education has to be absolutely vital, because to iterate, to improve, to move forward, to evolve, you have to understand things, you have to bring some information in, you have to have the ability to process it and then you have to have the ability to know how to improve on that, because otherwise you're just a hamster spinning the wheel right you, you are just become insane. So you know what's the stat with podcasts it's 90 don't get past episode three, and then 90 don't get past episode 20. Is that?

Speaker 1: 9:58

correct, yeah, so I mean we're winning.

Speaker 2: 10:00

But I I definitely at this point in my podcast like like I only started this the one thing in my life I only ever started through just pure enjoyment. Like it was there was no goal, there's no stats behind it, there's no like business mind behind it Arguably there should be. But I always get so scared. Like if I start bringing money into it, if I start bringing like a strategy into it, if I start bringing business into it, if I start bringing like a strategy into it, if I start bringing business into it, then the passion and enjoyment goes away I think this is an underlying topic of conversation that we can definitely have today that balance between creativity and enjoying the, the journey.

Speaker 2: 10:39

you're talking about enjoying that process, which is a cliche, but I certainly, in my experience I found, have found it's the secret to everything. It's important to have a goal, not necessarily a destination. It's important to be working towards something, but what's even more important is the enjoyment of that work and being able to find what you do enjoy doing. Question for you on.

Speaker 1: 11:01

That is, do you need to always enjoy the thing that you are passionate about?

Speaker 2: 11:08

I don't think that ever exists, because there's always going to be either external stuff that affects that or there's going to be integral stuff within that passion that you're just not going to. We talked about it before. Like I don't, want to be doing that.

Speaker 2: 11:23

You're just not going to, and we talked about it before. I don't want to be doing some stuff involved with this podcast, but I understand it's necessary. And not only is it necessary, it's important for me to understand how those things work and how those things can be better. Otherwise, if I don't understand how the whole thing works, all the cogs turn and stuff. I don't think I can get better. Without understanding, you can't improve. So I don't think that's exists, that's, that's almost, um, you know, an idyllic kind of frame of mind. Are you familiar with steven?

Speaker 1: 11:51

pressfield. No, steven pressfield wrote, uh, turning pro, which is a fantastic book, and he wrote, uh, the art of war, or say the war of art. Okay, the war of art, art of war was, um, obviously a different order, and he talks about the wall of resistance. So, especially in Turning Pro, it's where you go from. Turning Pro you may think that it's about becoming professional, so being a photographer and becoming a professional photographer, but it's less about the goal of the money and the drive and the reward and the status, and it's more to do with the attitude and the perspective and how you show up.

Speaker 1: 12:26

So Steven Pressfield spent 40 years writing his first book. He was like, depressed, he was an alcoholic, he was living in a halfway home and everything in the US, and then he moved into a small cabin, got a typewriter and wrote his first book 30 years later. And it wasn't to do with the outcome, which was getting the book into New York and into bookstores. It't to do with the outcome, which was getting the book into New York and into bookstores, it was to do with the process. So he determined that he turned pro at the point whereby he could sit there and diligently do his work and get the stuff that he needs done and improve in an iterate. So it wasn't the fact that that book got rejected and many more books of him got rejected before they were approved, but it was the fact that it was the shift. It was how you view yourself. It's your internal system, and that was a big thing for me was the fact that, exact same as you, it was all a. You know it's a passion project. Still to this day, kickoff sessions is 100% a passion project. Passion project. But it was how I viewed myself was determining how actually the outcome happened.

Speaker 1: 13:21

So I used to think that I had no background in production, I wasn't gonna going to be good at this. I didn't speak that well at the time. You know, I'm just an Irish dude who was a party boy growing up. You know like why would my stuff grow? And as a result, that was reflected. But when I slowly made adjustments and I got really into the nerdy stuff and the cameras and the audio and the mic, that's when things started to click and things started to change, change and I kind of had that turning pro moment of myself. And you hold yourself to a higher status and when you hold yourself to higher status. You come in here, you show up, you get it done. And the second part he writes about is the wall of resistance. So, like the reason I asked you should you always enjoy what you do, is because continually, no matter what you're doing, you'll meet a wall of resistance you will look at a photo and you'll try to improve it and there'll be some points that you just don't know how and why.

Speaker 1: 14:06

Because there's no rule book. You talk about education. There's no rule book for this stuff. There's no step-by-step process. A lot of it is intuition, a lot of it is like reflective and perspective.

Speaker 1: 14:16

So, because there's no rule book, when we meet the wall of resistance in life, in entrepreneurship, in podcasting and content, most people shit their pants and lose their mind and run away. Right, they'll meet the wall of resistance and run away, whereas what I've often found to be the most rewarding, and the most rewarding personally and the best for the business is when you meet the wall of resistance, to recognize it and then realize, okay, let's push forward. And I found that a lot in my podcast the fact that we used to do things remote because I was, I just didn't have the confidence, I think, to get people in person and so on, and then, when I made that shift, put more time into it. Next problem was how do we do it in person? How do we show up in person? How do we distribute it in person? So you're getting to the next stage and it's a problem-solution continuum when you solve one problem, you open up whatever the solution, you open up the next problem.

Speaker 1: 15:03

So the reason why people burn out in content and entrepreneurship is because they they think that they're going to solve the problem and then solve everything. But that's actually not it. Like the whole, I think a lot of life is facing those wall of resistance, facing the problem solution continuum and then pushing through it. And that's why, you know, I've been at this four years, every single day, like no break ever, no matter what, every single day, every minute, all in 24-7. And continuously that's gotten harder and harder, and harder and harder, because this is the pinnacle, right yeah, today on this podcast, that's it.

Speaker 1: 15:37

But everything is a pinnacle, though. Do you get me Everything builds.

Speaker 1: 15:40

Everything that you do compounds, but, at the same time, every day is from ground zero, and I think that's the best approach. That's how you stay in the game right. It's why artists fly off the rails, why musicians fly off the rails because they don't view themselves as going from zero on every day. They view themselves getting to a thousand or ten thousand and they're above the game, whereas, like when you play the infinite game, you're basically committed to doing this and committed to getting better every single day, and that's when it becomes a meditative process. The same with entrepreneurship, the same with anything you do, the same with going to the gym it's detaching from the outcome and continuously going through the wall of resistance, and that's why I love this game. So how?

Speaker 2: 16:18

do you? Is that you saying that setting goals is not necessarily as productive as many people talk? Because once, or how do you incorporate goals into that? Because I have always struggled to set goals and I don't know whether that's something in me that doesn't agree with a goal setting process or if it's the fact that I don't have clarity. So if you take an Olympian who wins, who's been training four years probably eight, 12, all of his life to win a gold medal 100 meter sprint, he goes and wins the gold medal 100 meter sprint and then the next week he's depressed and in therapy, right.

Speaker 2: 16:57

So, which is not just me making it up, this is evident throughout, especially professional sport musicians. You know they make it and they go. Well, what the fuck is next? What do I do now with my life? Where's my purpose? You know how do I set a new goal when I've achieved my lifelong dream. So you know. Going back to what you're just talking about, how you know is it important to even think about goals, and to think about not necessarily an end goal, but interim goals, or to see a journey ahead of you rather than the journey of that day or that time I think there's external and internal objectives and there's external internal goals.

Speaker 1: 17:34

So an external goal is something that you see on the surface level. It can be followers likes, engagement milestones, revenue goals, metrics right at the sale of your first art, so on and so forth. They're external goals, which are things you move towards and for a lot of people they'll drive towards those goals. And then, if they're just focused on the external goal which generally I study a lot of like social psychology, especially business psychology everything is driven by status. Everything we do is driven by status. So, whether I come into you today, it's a will. This is an internal, subconscious decision of will this increase or decrease my status. And coming today is a decision that I've made to increase my level of status. And this is what I'm even knowing To say what restaurant you went to, what coffee you got, what beans you got that are behind there, so knowing that, that's an external driver.

Speaker 1: 18:19

So for a lot of people me included, you have external kind of views, right, and there's nothing wrong with that. Some degree it's like a north star and especially as like a business owner and so on. It's important to have those because you are now a leader and you're responsible for other people within your team and they need to be motivated by certain ideas. However, at the same point, there's the intrinsic motivation which is basically like why you do what you do, and simon said it kind of you know perfectly put that together, but one kind of way to kind of view that is like is playing for impact.

Speaker 1: 18:48

So, to do with my podcast in particular, it was really set up to solve a lot of the problems that I had with what I want to do in my career, in my life. But the second we started releasing episodes even though I was getting no engagement. The guys that would reach out would say, hey, I face a very similar problem. I'm going through a very similar scenario right now. I found this super helpful and as we grew, I found that impact play to be much larger and have a big impact. Now there's no number specifically on what I want to do from that aspect, but I know consciously or subconsciously, indirectly or directly, it's having a lot of big impact on a lot of young guys and women to build careers and businesses that they want to basically do what they want. And you know, the years are getting younger and younger and younger the guys that we send you messages are like 16, 17.

Speaker 1: 19:31

And they're really unplugging from the traditional way of thinking. Now, I'm not Andy, do everything you know, do everything that the world tells you to do. I'm saying, create your own view of the world. So that's an intrinsic kind of driver for me that keeps me like very much on power. It's the same with fitness. With fitness, you get into fitness to probably appease girls, right? That's the reason why people get into fitness. But then as time goes on, it's all the health, it's longevity, it's showing up for your partner, showing up for your children, showing up for your parents and being a better person. That's why you have a healthy lifestyle.

Speaker 1: 20:05

So I don't think people think about this too consciously and what's focal is causal. I don't also don't think you need to think about it too consciously. I think it's nice to have your life kind of set up in a way that you like you like doing your podcast. It helps you on the side of what you do nine to five. So how do we marry these things together?

Speaker 1: 20:18

But I think the reason why it's applicable to think about it, even interim, every couple of is the fact that when times get really tough and when you're up against that breaking point and you're exhausted. That's when you'll cave and that's why people break, Because it's easy to start right and Peter Thiel talks about, you know, zero to one and everyone talks about zero to one is the hardest. I actually don't think zero to one is the hardest. I think one to 10 is the hardest, Because zero to one you have like enthusiasm and like motivation and adrenaline to get you going, and business and podcasts and contents are so easy to get going these days that it's like anyone could basically do it. But going one to 10 is that monotonous, continuous, never-ending process you need to develop, which is just not sexy.

Speaker 1: 21:05

Some people don't talk about it I think the reason why I've been able to be so open about it is because I actually literally don't sell anything to my audience, so I can openly tell people about how difficult it is and like how brutal it is and how it will make a lot of sacrifices and to be even to scratch the surface. You're going to need to make a lot of sacrifices and and at that point you still might not even be successful, but that's just a brutal reality that most people are not telling you on internet and that, for me, has just been very important to share, because I didn't have these things when I was starting. That's the reason why I go on as many podcasts as I can, because I didn't have that access information right. I think that's where we get into the education piece as well is information that you're getting the best for you and your available circumstances. That's all if not the case, right.

Speaker 2: 21:58

Hi everyone. Before I let you continue with the podcast, just indulge me for a few minutes. I want to briefly talk to you about my new brand, yore. Founded with my business partner and photographic artist, finn Mattson, we are proud to bring you a new artisanal jewelry and specialty coffee brand. Yep, what on earth do they have to do with anything? Well, they're both our passions and they've always been another artistic outlet for me, now for over a decade. For those that know me, coffee and jewelry have been my other obsession since I was young, and I am a qualified SCA coffee specialist. So when I met Finn, some of you might have listened to my podcast with him. When we barely knew each other, our love for art and jewelry had a home, and that home is Yore.

Speaker 2: 22:43

Yore is about the art of intent for everything that we do. Our intention with the label was to add a touch of celestial elegance and artistic expression to our visual narratives. Every piece is a statement, a reflection of your unique story and purpose. It's not just jewelry, it's a wearable piece of art that speaks volumes. Picture this silver or gold adorned with an actual piece of lunar meteorite, making every piece as unique as the moments we usually capture through our lenses. From limited edition lunar jewelry pieces to finely crafted 925 sterling, silver and gold rings, pendants and chains there's something for all of you in each of our unique designs. We're also committed to the environment as much as possible. Our coffee in our Bali showroom is direct trade, organically produced and locally farmed, minimizing impact on the environment as much as possible. Our packaging is all sustainable and our jewelry recycled other than the moonrock, of course Proudly eco-friendly in both packaging and jewellery production. You can feel good about looking good. And to top it off, we offer worldwide shipping, ensuring that a piece of lunar beauty can grace your collection no matter where life takes you. And if you ever find yourself in Bali, please come and visit our House of Yore. Our cafe and community-driven art house is a haven for creatives just like you.

Speaker 2: 24:07

And before we head back into the podcast, please just take a moment to explore Yoray's collection. As a special treat for you, my wonderful audience, yoray is offering an exclusive discount. So head over to our website and use the code in the description for a 10% discount off your jewelry purchase. The link and details are all in the description. For a 10% discount off your jewelry purchase. The link and details are all in the description. So, thanks so much for listening and I'll let you get back to the podcast now.

Speaker 2: 24:39

So how do you I mean it sounds like at the age of 28, you are extremely wise and you have a voice. Right, you have, in a figurative sense, you have a voice. You have a message to convey, which is so important, especially when it comes to podcasting and, um, you know, having value and having building that trust and value, putting it together and you've, you've maybe got something that works. How do people find a voice? You know they, I know so many. I mean, I saw a stat Chris Williamson on on Modern Wisdom podcast, right, he just hit five, five million subscribers, something like that, something ridiculous Three million, maybe three, maybe three millions and then so maybe two million.

Speaker 2: 25:19

The second million he did in nine months, okay, million he did in nine months, okay. And the first million he did in, I think, five years, and the first two years he didn't even get to a hundred thousand, right. So it's like, you know, people don't see that and I really I, I don't love his podcast, but that's just completely a personal preference. I understand his value and I love the production of it. I love the guests he has on. I just don't quite connect with it like I do, maybe Sam Harris' podcast or some of the other ones. By the way, we're going to get on to podcasting because I listen to podcasts every day. I'm obsessed with them. But the thing with Chris Williamson is I appreciated this post he put on YouTube which came on my feed, because he's showing what actually it takes.

Speaker 2: 26:05

You know, people so easy to look at the Stephen Bartlett's, the Chris Williams, the, the Andrew Huberman's, all these kind of big play, lex Freeman's, you know 5 million or something ridiculous, right, it's like these guys are big players in the podcast market, but what did it take for them to get there? It's the analogy is the Olympic athlete. How many people do watch athletics in a four year. You know how often do they watch the European championships, world championships, all the competitions they go through Not many people. It comes to Olympics oh, this guy's amazing Natural talent Well, yeah, maybe. Who saw the 4 am wake-ups every day for months and months on ends, long hours, the shit that you have to do to do it. And that just reminded me like, yeah, look, we all look at that. And this is the curse of social media is you just see results? We are in a results-based society that has to be reaching those results as fast as possible, or we think it is. This is our perception, right? We're completely brainwashed into that in that respect.

Speaker 2: 27:04

So, you know, my question really is how incumbent is it upon artists, creatives, podcasters, educate teachers, people who have a voice? A how can they find a voice if they're a little bit lost? Because you know, going back to chris williamson, I know he started. He's a Geordie who had no life right. He was, you know, similar to what you were saying just partying, enjoying life and just like. Well, I want to learn. I have nothing to say. I don't feel like I have anything to say, but I want to have guests on that I think viewers might be interested in and that was so important. And then, in that process, he found his own voice. He became educated, informed himself, works his fucking ass off right, researches, is a great talker, great listener, interactor, learning that skill along the way, right. So you know, I would never want to say, well, just go and start without knowing what you're doing, but sometimes go and fucking, like you said, ship it.

Speaker 1: 28:03

There's two ways to look at it, so you can be the student or the expert. The student is Chris Williamson, who came into the space not knowing much and wanted to learn. I would say I absolutely felt the exact same scenario. I was 24 when I started. I knew nothing, so I was able to sit there, provide a platform, grow a platform, have people come on and learn as a result, and effectively. That's how it grew and that's how I grew my knowledge base, because we were based in an online business space. I was learning how to build, how to grow, how to sell, how to market, how to communicate, how to do copywriting, and I was learning this through my own podcast. So over time, when I wanted to build my own stuff, build my own offers, I was learning from the fire effectively. So what happened was I was able to share my own experiences as I was growing, and that was years and years and years and years. So that was four years, effectively, of that.

Speaker 1: 28:53

That's something Chris has similarly done, although he stayed in his own niche at the moment, which is like society and culture, but again at the same point, the lessons he had learned from people and his guests.

Speaker 1: 29:04

That's what comes through his intuition. Now that's how it comes through his speech, how he interacts, how he thinks critically, his logic, effectively. At the same point. He did the five years, or six years at this point, or seven years, I did the four years. There's people on the flip side who are the expert, which is the Huberman, the Lex Friedman, the expert, which is the Huberman, the Lex Friedman, rhonda Patrick, and who these individuals are are ones that basically have done decades of learning, Because what you forget about Lex Friedman is that he was at MIT for like 10, 15 years. Initially, he was doing early AI robotics. That was his thing was robotics when he worked on the robotics area. He then came on to Joe Rogan and he was sharing his insights on robotics effectively and all of that community communication of what he had learned the years he could then share in the podcast.

Speaker 1: 29:54

So, regardless, there's no way to skip the hard work, right yeah so, whether you play the student, which I think you should always do, which still Lex Freeman does with his podcast.

Speaker 1: 30:04

He's 400 episodes in. He's still the student. I remember early days of his podcast, seeing how he ran his podcast. As well as being at MIT, he was still a researcher and he would basically do these 16, 17 hour long days and he would be in a studio recording back in MIT doing his research, putting more time into that, finding like better founders and so on, because I think he's doing a bit of angel investing at this point. But what's interesting is the fact that people yes, they see the highlight reel, but you can play two sides the student, which you can encourage, you get going right away, or you can play the, the expert that's in the podcast space.

Speaker 1: 30:44

Take step back. If you are a creator or you're an artist and you are getting started, the best thing you should do is be able to share your work. As someone who is documenting and Gary Vee talked about this best right, gary Vee's approach was don't give your opinion, just document what's happening. Document your wins, your losses, the process. So if I'm in my early days of photography and I'm documenting all of the steps that I'm learning what? What is I'm learning today? What are these harsh lessons? What have my clients realized about my work? What's the feedback if I start documenting this through video, tweets, instagram, linkedin, whatever you want to use that documentation is, people can't argue with it because it's not advice. It's just sharing your own um documentation, your experience, and that's much more of a valuable approach.

Speaker 1: 31:31

One of my close friends, tim stoddard. He was a metadrone addict addict and when he came off metadrone, he had a blog that was helping people come off drugs. And instead of telling you you shouldn't take met, what he said was here's my experience. Here's my experience. Here's my experience. Here's what I did. Here's a difficulty that I had and it blew up and, as a result, he's grown a huge business over the last 13 years and he's a big mentor of mine and he never once told someone what they should do. He just shared his experiences. Right, and that's the beauty of it. Right. And of course, as time goes on, you develop your own worldview and when you're on a podcast like this and you're asked about your worldview, you can bring it out.

Speaker 1: 32:07

But I think sometimes the curse of the creator is the fact that I could hop on YouTube as a kid and start telling you things you should do in your business, in your life and so on with zero advice. You know, a typical example is like dating advice. You hear guys who are 21, who had their heart broken, telling you with dating advice but they don't have experience in life, right. So I think that's where you have the student mentality. It's great. However, there's an inflection point here. So guys will develop the student mentality to build their authority and influence and people view them and say this is great.

Speaker 1: 32:40

I'm learning a lot from Darren. He's a student, he's the forever learner. He's kind of like Ali Abdaal. You know Ali Abdaal. Ali Abdaal did a very nice thing with his audience. He positioned his brand very nicely whereby he's the student, he's the kid. Still, you know, at heart he's a kid at heart. He loves to learn, he loves to help. That's what his role is.

Speaker 1: 33:05

But some people turned over to be the guru. I'm the expert, I'm the guru, I know everything. And when you declare that you're the guru, that means you have to effectively let go of the student mentality. Now why would you take on that new identity? It's because you're selling to the audience, the audience that loved and respected you.

Speaker 1: 33:17

To sell back to them, you need to take on the guru status, because who's going to buy from a student, but you'd buy from expert and there's only, at the end of the day, a handful of experts ever, ever right, and I think that's the problem with marketing.

Speaker 1: 33:31

It's a problem with online business. Problem with creators is the fact that they believe to be able to bring people into their program or whatever they need to become the expert, whereas you don't. To this day, I'm still a student. We have a quite a large business on the back end. A lot of my clients love the fact that they'll listen to podcasts. They'll listen to. What's interesting is, a lot of your clients will actually consume your free content, the most, believe it or not, and they love the fact that I'm still working through these different stuff and I'm working through different elements and as I I'm working through them, I'm also sharing it to the people that are in our you know, in our business, and I think that's much more of a longevity play Um, and that's how we should be viewed, but unfortunately that's not the way the internet portrays it Right.

Speaker 2: 34:18

Interesting and, uh, you know, I think we need to take this moment where I think we're about 30 minutes in. We need to take this moment to rewind and talk about your experience and your pedigree and and not necessarily why you, why you know, it's a kind of validated guest to have talk about these types of things. But give us a little bit of background about you. Know your background, but especially how you started, how you learned, how you learned, how you you got this knowledge and you know how you became. You know as successful as you are today. You know in this moment, today depending on how you define that and uh, just generally kind of your last four years, especially in in this, in this business space well, for me it's been a combination of hambrick turns and I did everything wrong in the book in the beginning.

Speaker 1: 35:03

So, even though I went through the natural path, I went to university. I studied like software engineering. I was going through that traditional path, but at the same point of going through the traditional path, I never I was doing someone else's game right, and if you don't have a plan, you'll be assigned a plan. And I was definitely assigned a plan, but underneath I'd always been an entrepreneur, always been an entrepreneur, like at 19, I was running raves and parties. At 20s I was probably running more. At 21, I was like building crypto exchanges and trying to build crypto exchanges. At 22, I'd built brands and companies. At 23, I was I shut down a brand and at 24, I was trying to build a passport app. So I was trying to get VC funding for a digital passport at 24. Would have been a good idea.

Speaker 1: 35:40

Before COVID came, I was sitting in Dublin airport. I'll never forget this. I was in the departure lounge, walking around Dublin airport asking people would they use a digital passport, six months before COVID happened. Wow, and everyone loved it. And the reason why it didn't work is just because when I was trying to get funded we needed to get so much funding, basically and to get into the Irish government and do all these government programs and all this. But I was literally in the airport walking around asking people would they use my digital passport.

Speaker 1: 36:08

So my brain was always like that it was always a problem solution. But what I found was the bottleneck wasn't the business. There's nothing wrong with running events, nothing wrong with running clothing stores and e-commerce and building apps, but the bottleneck is the individual. The bottleneck was me. It's a problem, right, it's always the case. Entrepreneur is always a bottleneck. So, instead of pursuing passion, instead of pursuing profit, I wanted to pursue passion, which was follow the podcast, follow what my purpose was, follow what I really enjoyed doing, which was just learning, just learning right. So go back to the student mentality. So that's when I actually read Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, beginning of COVID. That really changed the perspective on things, because I kind of always knew that I could just build things in the future. I could build stuff. I need to slow down and learn. So if you've ever read Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, oh man, I should give it to you.

Speaker 1: 36:56

Fantastic book. He so Viktor Frankl was a therapist, psychotherap. He was in Auschwitz and he had wrote, like, his thesis on logotherapy at the time and he was put in the Auschwitz. And the whole idea is that during, throughout that process, he was searching for meaning and purpose throughout the most brutal circumstances possible. And the whole idea is the fact that, no matter what your circumstances is, there's beauty and meaning in the event, in the harrowing event that was Auschwitz. So he would be picking snow at, effectively, you know, minus 20 degrees in Poland, and he would look at like a robin, like a red robin, and he would look for like beauty in that red robin and every single morning he'd come out and pick the snow and look at the robin, and that was his meaning and purpose. And eventually he actually got out of pick the snow and look at the robin, and that was his meaning and purpose. And eventually he actually got out of Auschwitz and he rewrote the book and he had a couple of the manuscripts that he brought with him and the whole concept. There is the fact that it's the search for purpose and meaning in everything, in all sorts of no matter where you were just hardship and everything right.

Speaker 1: 38:00

And I kind of really meditated on that idea and brought that into the podcast space or brought it into my own pursuit of the podcast. And what happened was I would look at where we were at in the beginning, which was terrible setup, terrible video, terrible audio, like I started the podcast with a $60 microphone and a 30 day money back guarantee because I genuinely believed that I was going to hand back the microphone and I was so afraid of doing it that when I had produced three episodes I was hovering over the button to press hit, to press publish, because I was generally that embarrassed of what I was doing. But instead of shying away from it, I wanted to lean into it. So it became that ongoing process basically, and as the microphones got better, the conversations got better. The people that I was interviewing said, hey, this was great, could you do this for me? But because I'm not the brightest in the bush, I basically was like, yeah, sure, and I was kind of helping people, helping people like this, but I never really thought about it like an opportunity.

Speaker 1: 38:52

And then, as the industry kept growing, I think one of the viewpoints I had from very early on was that video was the future. I always thought this audio stuff was just kind of trash. The reason why is because I'm dyslexic. So I need to see things visually, see things to be able to appreciate them. And if I listen to a podcast and I couldn't see you, I didn't really get it. I don't know why. It's my brain. So I believe that video was the future and that was early 2020.

Speaker 1: 39:18

And I genuinely, no doubt like, worked on video every day for the past like four years, to the point whereby we're trying to do like the Chris Williamson-esque style production level because that was the future. And that's kind of how it kind of panned out. Like serendipity, right place, right time. It kind of grew continuously and that was the opportunity within there because, as this industry has been growing, growing, growing, people lack the skills, knowledge and time and, especially with entrepreneurs being busy and creators being busy, they don't have the same time to be able to work on the cameras and the lights and the audio engineering. So it kind of grew organically from there.

Speaker 1: 39:54

And that's when we had moved from just being my show very small team to helping other people. And then what I realized is quite interesting is the fact that often this could be to do with me for sure. When I would tell someone to do something, they often wouldn't implement it, and I think it was a skills thing. Right, it's the fact that it's very difficult to implement the change, to do a content or like creation or art. So I often had to show people. So that's when we started doing like done for you, so would run podcasts, build podcasts, grow podcasts.

Speaker 1: 40:24

So that was, I guess, like phase one and that really really blew up. Like that blew up more than I like could ever anticipate. Um, so I left like the tech world, I was working in the vc world, I left all that stuff. Where was this? At the time? I was based in singapore, okay, yeah, uh, singapore, and I was based in ireland as well, coming from from that, and I was getting a lot of like interest from people.

Speaker 1: 40:46

And then what happened then was you kind of got to the next stage in our development, which is like people were like yeah, this is great, I'm glad that we're big and I'm glad that it looks pretty, but I'm not really doing anything from a business perspective. So that's when we started to add in backend businesses to back-end businesses, so podcasts, so courses, coaching, education platforms, software companies, you know whatever, pretty any business. And what I realized is that, like content, no matter what the pursuit is tweets, podcasts, reels it's all the same, it's all the same. At the end of the day, it's all the same. Business is also all the same to some degree, it's just a few changes. Right, it's white label stuff. So we almost started to white label the products and the services for people, and that's when things just got like crazy.

Speaker 1: 41:32

Basically because now people knew that they could come, they could grow their podcast and their content and then they could also build a business on the backend. And we're also coaching them and helping them and teaching them and so on, and I think that's the. That's the future of, like, online brands. Right is the fact that you have the content cracked, the distribution and then you have the business on the back end. Um, and most people will struggle with that in the beginning, right? Why podcasts? So I think I think podcasting is the future of all communication and the reason being is because, as we sat down, we did not have our phone.

Speaker 2: 42:05

We've no distraction.

Speaker 1: 42:07

It's a future of all communication. Okay, and the reason being is because everything is automated. These days, everything is some Zapier 7-point flow that flows into some CRM and then some setter is calling you and sending you some random number. It's all like everything's automated. It's all it's like AI, like responses on Twitter and on LinkedIn, on Instagram. It's all AI generated. All the text is AI generated. The only thing that we can honestly verify is this so now, that's why there's a huge surge in podcasts, because people are searching for human connection. Think about, like, how humans came to be right. We had tribes, we had individuals, we had language, and language came through from text into words, into scripture, and that's exactly where we're at now, and this is like basically one of the best forms of communication, because not only are people entertained, but they're also educated.

Speaker 1: 42:53

And it's also done at a hopefully it's, but it's at a free level, right it's at a free level, it's no pay to play, right, and because of this we can get a few things one, we have scalability, so we can get to people across America, central America, south America, into Africa, and we can basically get this information across everyone. And on top of that, then it's authentic, right. So the harsh reality is that if I looked at a photo that you produced, I couldn't tell much about you. Now you can probably tell much about someone else, but from an outset, some people can't analyze this, whereas if you've listening for the past like you know, half an hour, whatever you have a pretty good idea of like my values. You have a good determination of who I am like or dislike, but you'll be able to see pretty clearly who someone is, and I think that's what we're seeking.

Speaker 1: 43:36

So the the future of like communication between between normal people, between everyone, is like that, and also also from a business perspective. Like people buy people. You know the founder is more known these days than any like brand right? People know like Steve Jobs. They know like Musk, more so than Tesla. You just got to do a quick analysis of followers of the founder versus the page to realize this stuff. But knowing that you don't just stop and think, okay, that's an assumption's like we need to see this in theory. So the biggest brands, the biggest businesses in the world are founder-led and they're going to be continue to be founder-led.

Speaker 1: 44:11

So even like Elon Musk is the perfect example like him or dislike him, but even in a small micro stage, if you wanted to grow your cafe downstairs, if you had behind the scenes of you showing your values and your interest and your purpose in coffee and your research in coffee, people just resonate with you and people think, like, well, they're not interested in what I'm interested in. People are interested in everything, anything and everything. I'm not doing another podcast. People are interested in everything, right. So it only takes like the internet to attract that audience that you want, right, and you're putting out to the world basically what you're interested in, that audience that you want, right. You're putting out to the world basically what you're interested in, and that's why I think it's going to be. It is like the strongest form of communication and it's more most authentic the strongest form of communication.

Speaker 2: 44:55

Yes, I in, in person. I I think, like now, you and I are talking and I this is my favorite form of communication, like face-to-face. I do some online podcasts and it's great, obviously depending on if the guest is good, but just it's just not the same right? So, for me, in person, as we sit in this room, I believe it's the strongest form of communication. When it gets edited, when it gets kind of told across a narrative. I'm guilty of this, especially in the highlights. I want to get people in. Let's make these highlights as dramatic and as hooky as possible, whether he actually said it in that way or not. We can adjust it a little bit, we can clip, we can cut. So there is still this danger, but I think that's just human nature generally. And media we've got to think of, in my opinion, podcasts as another form of media, whether it's a strong form of communication or not. I mean it definitely is.

Speaker 2: 45:50

But there's still a lot of shit out there. There's still a lot of misinformation out there. There's still still a lot of misinformed opinions. There's still a lot of, and this is why I think that the creme de la creme, these guys that are at the top. They know that, they know that and they are very, not just careful of it, but they're able to communicate their thoughts, their values, their beliefs in a way that definitely is sometimes controversial. You can't have two million subscribers without someone hating you, right, and getting half of them sending you shit. But they do it in a way that's responsible and ethical. It's divis, divisive, yeah, but in a constructive way. If there's that paradox like, okay, it may be divisive but it connects people, there is an element of conversation there.

Speaker 2: 46:32

You look at some of the trash out there and maybe we'll talk about short-form content later, and this is why I think podcasting is so valuable, because long-form content will never die. Short-form content will, and there's only so much you can communicate through short form content and it's most of the time. Most of the time don't send me loads of hated comments. Most of the time it's a load of shit or you're trying to get a whole thing in less than 60 seconds. It's just impossible. You just can't do that. You don't do that on the street, you don't do that in any other form of communication. You don't't phone someone up. Go right, time's going let's. You know, it's just weird, it's just that. It's just so, so strange.

Speaker 2: 47:11

But anyway, mike, I'm getting to a question in terms of podcasting, because you talked about the business side of it and it being a free, free value. Essentially, should it be free value, because I know there's's there's plenty of podcasts out there that that don't hide behind a a sponsor paywall. They hide behind a subscription paywall. Yeah, you know which one, in your opinion, is better or which one is more kind of morally responsible?

Speaker 1: 47:38

it's a really good question. I think it's about what you're providing right, because I think if you're to have a guest on your podcast, I don't think that should be behind the paywall because, like, the guest has given you their time for your platform. So like, for instance, if you had 10 000 downloads, why would I restrict that episode and put it behind a paywall whereby people only get like 400 or like 100 downloads? It's less, it's at the cost of the guest. Does that make sense? Yep, almost. The paywall side should be like your deep dive, so we use human exempt. It's a great example. You know his science, deep dive, his protocols, that he use his stack that he uses. If he wants to pay on a paywall, so be it. That can be his paid like patreon or so on. There's nothing like detrimental there. But if your free value should be like the best possible free value out there and then through that possible means, depending on the size of you wear, you have more things you can offer.

Speaker 1: 48:29

You can get products, services, sponsorships. Now, at the end of the day, if you have a product or service, you don't have to buy it. It's the fact that it's there for the people that want to buy it. So the way I kind of view this through an ethical lens is the fact that you know, if you know that you could help someone with their photography, and they're seeking interest in that, in you helping them, it would almost be a disservice if you're not helping them because of the fact that their express interest, they want you to do it, they want you to give them an offer. Right? It's like if you're running a marathon of sahara and if someone gives you a bottle of water, you'd pay a thousand dollars for the water yeah, but are many people creating podcasts to help other people?

Speaker 2: 49:05

surely the the number one thing on someone's mind is self-interest.

Speaker 1: 49:09

Good point that's a really good point. I would say. In the beginning it's all self-interest, right, obviously going ground zero, but then, as time, like scales and how it progresses, for it to grow, should be the impact of the audience, right, like. That's how it should be, though, because if you don't have your audience in sight and what they fundamentally want, then you're only creating for yourself, right, whereas if it's something we need to make, an action, we need to give an example of this. So, without naming names, I think all this, like this political podcast stuff, is like trash, because if me and you sat down here and talked about Republican versus Democrat, what would we achieve? Nothing. It wouldn't indicate votes, change, parodies, all this stuff. It wouldn't change a thing, whereas if I'm, if you're helping me with my health and you're walking through like, let's say, like a sleep protocol, and we're doing different things to improve our health, well, it turns out, 60% of people in the US are underslept. This could actually help them, and therefore this type of content can reach millions of people and really actually impact people. And all of our decisions are driven by our environment, right? Not only the people we hang around with, but the things that we consume. So if I'm taking in through the ether, through information, certain type of content. That's what I'm actually actioning. So the ether, true information, certain type of content, that's what I'm actually actioning.

Speaker 1: 50:26

So at this point you can look at the political stuff and lean into that, which is, I think, to your point, very self-interest, or the other stuff which is more helpful, actionable, designed to make someone like a better right, and that's when you're providing content that actually is only solving that problem. And that's where I find myself a lot of time focusing in. It's like how do we tell the story, tell the journey, find something that's relevant and relatable to younger people, but then also make it actionable? So I kind of divide it down 50-50, like a Venn diagram Entertainment on one side, education on one side.

Speaker 1: 51:00

If it's just purely entertainment, it's like Kim Kardashian, we don't want to hear about it, it's over there. If it's just entertainment, it's like a textbook, it's boring, right. We want to find the intersection between the two and that's where the story, the journey telling, the story telling, everything comes in the middle and that's when people can be inspired and actually make change. Now let's take another example of that. If you look at the political example that I gave, that's just hugely divisive. It's on the educate entertainment side, um, and people lean into that because rage gets clicks right. That's what happens.

Speaker 2: 51:30

Yeah, the main goal of those types of podcasts is to get views and to make money and to create outrage because it, like you said, gets clicks.

Speaker 2: 51:38

Yeah, um I it is a it's a difficult thing. I don't think they have to be mutually exclusive, right? You don't have to have one or the other like, well, I'm creating this podcast, I'm creating this content, whatever it might be, even a photo or a series of photos. I know photographers that put things on Instagram let's say that they're not necessarily that happy with, but they know it's that style of photos and the way they present it is going to get likes, comments, follows, right. And for me there's this dissonance. I just don't agree with that in any fundamental way, because I don't think it really helps anyone. You don't see someone's true artistry. Therefore, they don't take anything that's of real, authentic value from it.

Speaker 2: 52:27

And to bring this back in the podcasting world, how do we, you know, how do we not get confused with all of the information out there? You know, as an industry like podcasting grows and that's what I really have in the back of my mind all the time whenever we have guests on, whenever we edit, whenever we tell a story over a series of podcasts, you know how do we, how do we cut through the shit but not say, well, listen to me, because what I'm telling is the truth, or the guests that, having on, you know, is portrayed to be the truth teller in this subject. Right, we want to be so careful and like, well, like you said, bring it back to experience. But you go out there in the podcast world, you just have to go on YouTube and go. One guest says this like this like, stephen Bartlett is actually a great example, because I've stopped listening to his podcast because and so is my wife, fee it's like okay, we see the value and he's really good at what he does, he's created something very special. But he has one guest one week that says this thing and then another guest the other week that says completely the opposite, and I feel like he's getting these guests on because it's now.

Speaker 2: 53:33

It's just more of a business. Right, it's to create conversation, not even conversations. Create arguments, to create comments, to create clicks and to just make it like this thing rather than the real authentic intent of you know what? Tell me, tell me what the truth is, but don't even say it's the truth. What? What is your experience, what is your research suggest to you and why should we believe you more than anyone else? So how do we, as both that on the production side, in terms of us as podcasters, but also as an audience. How do we navigate that maze of saturation, confusion and just overwhelming information that's out there?

Speaker 1: 54:10

he's a great example to look at because his stuff is like it's. There's so much different factors. There's health, wealth and relationships how I break down this podcast and within that he'd have, you know, carnivore versus vegan. He'd have like building an investment fund versus building your business and working this company and working that company. It's all so different that at the end of the day, same with, like you know, your artistic pursuits. You only want a handful of like mentors and influences and as you move through your own journey you'd actually graduate out of them. So some guys for me helped me launch my first business. Some guys lit the spark under my ass when I got started, but when I got started I kind of graduated out of their content and moved on to someone else. So you shouldn't be consuming everyone's content. You should just have a small select few people that information comes through right.

Speaker 2: 54:57

But then doesn't that promote echo chambers? You know well, because if you're only kind of confining, you're confining yourself within a bubble of mentors and information. Now I think that there is a pressure on people these days. Well, I don't know if that's true. So then I need to go and source another bit of information from a completely different source, right, and then I need to watch that one because just in case it's different. And then I have to kind of divide the three in between each other and kind of meet in the middle somewhere or, like I do all the time, just go. That's the point right.

Speaker 1: 55:26

It's because, over time of doing this, where do we get information? From? Podcasts, books, tweets, whatever? As you're developing your own, as you have other people to take inspiration from, to listen from, you should be developing your own worldview because you're not taking it as a rule book. Right, that's how you should view information in general is the fact that we take information from here, take information from here, take 1% there, 2% there. But the reason why I said we wouldn't go broad is because if we can keep it kind of narrow, then, as a result, you remove the aspect of just being confused because we need action.

Speaker 1: 55:59

Right, when you're getting information, unless you're kind of defining what that should be, it's like for me, it's the stuff that I can action. So, if it's business, health, wealth, relationships, right, I can action this. I wouldn't listen to four different relationship experts. I just listen to one that resonates with who I am or what I want. And, yes, it's like an echo chamber, but at some point you do need to listen to some individual people.

Speaker 1: 56:23

Now, you just don't cling to that information forever, right, because that's where you can fall into the traps of falling into these groups. The Red Pill group is a perfect example, right pill community. For anyone who doesn't know, it's like, well, how would you even describe it anymore? No one even knows what it is, but it's like basically like a way to like view relationships and whatnot. Guys that fall into that basically just fall into the swamp and they call it the man-o-swamp these days because it's a swamp right now at the from somewhere, but it's the people that graduate out of that actually just take they took one thing that was valuable, which might be like take more responsibility in life and they move on to their next stage.

Speaker 1: 56:58

Right, but so it's balancing education with action, because how much people get stuck in that continuous program of learning more, learning more. You need to actually just do the work right and, like you, you go. You're doing many different stuff. When you hear something that's contrasting, you don't think let's ponder on it for ages, you just think, okay, let's just focus on what you get done, whereas I think the younger you are, the more time you have, the more you sit on these ideas, and that was me when I was a kid too. Right, there comes a point where you have to. You're still a kid. There comes a point where, like, have your worldview, action and the feedback that comes in, that you just basically yeah, by the way, I didn't mean that patronizingly.

Speaker 1: 57:37

I just meant in terms of your age you're way more mature than me, probably um life experiences.

Speaker 2: 57:42

Yeah, um, uh, forgot my train of thought. I was gonna, I was gonna go on, then let's, let's rewind a little bit more, because I want to kind of start with start. We're already an hour in, but I want to continue with entrepreneurship and how that relates to podcasting. Definitely. My first question would definitely be related to that. Before we kind of get to that, I want to picture us in the world of a 95 year old person, let's say a 95 year old lady, and in terms of our communication with them and this is just completely hypothetical, of course, but it's going to showcase a way that we can explain today's society how would you sit them down and explain, you know, assuming the normal 95 year old had no idea about today's generation right, social media technology, podcasting they're probably not going to know anything about it, let alone understand it. How would you explain to them in today's world what the possibilities are today in terms of purpose, fulfillment and wealth?

Speaker 1: 58:48

I think now you have the opportunity to kind of do whatever you want, versus before you had to execute a plan that was given to you to a university, whereas now, if you're interested in something and there's an intersection between there's a market, there's people that want stuff, there's people that need stuff you're interested in it and there's an opportunity to make money from it, then you can lean into that aspect right.

Speaker 1: 59:15

So I think this is where people fall down is the fact that they will view things that they want to do versus what the market wants and they never actually get started as a result. So where we go back to that purpose is the fact that now you can do what it is you actually enjoy doing, providing other people will pay you for that service right, for that product or service, and it's a second pair that most people fall down on right, only fans, we can get into that too, right if you think about get into it but if you think about that, right like that was the perfect storm, right, because it's still going, obviously, but would you explain to your grand knife?

Speaker 1: 59:53

there's only fans, but basically, what actually is only fans? Alright, it's just traffic. At the end of the day, it's just getting attention for something online and then basically be able to monetize attention. So, and what sex sells? Right, if you go back centuries and centuries and centuries, it always got the most attention.

Speaker 1: 1:00:13

And if you go, if you take a step back from that, you go into the psychological triggers of what gets people excited. It's wealth, uh, relationships, uh, it's actually your desires in terms of, um, your primal desires. So, not wanting to starve, not wanting to die. So there, these are all things that can get you to jump out of your out of your seat. So if you're providing a painkiller for these solutions, then that's effectively how you can make money. Look at pharmaceutical companies, look at like television companies right, they're able to sell these services that increase people's status all throughout times. And that's what it actually is. And that's the reason why is because people have a primal desire for like sex, status relationships, and therefore they move on it, and that's the reason why the dating stuff sells. All this stuff sells, right? So that's super unethical, 100% no doubt about that. But you have to understand. That's what the game is played, right.

Speaker 2: 1:01:04

That's that's what can be?

Speaker 1: 1:01:05

a marketing tool, right? Yeah, that's a marketing tool, right. So we go back to I mentioned about divisive earlier. Divisive is an interesting word because divisive people think is like causing controversy, but it actually isn't it's. It's about dividing.

Speaker 1: 1:01:17

So usually your marketing message or your business divides the audience and when you divide the audience, you just throw stones at the other opposition team. That's what a lot of marketing is. It's also baked in religion. They have a thesis and then if you don't believe in the thesis, you're outside the thesis and therefore, uh, if you, you know, obviously extreme views is that you throw stones at the opposite, uh, the opposite religion. Um, and that's just gone through life, right. So now you have this with football teams, you have it with sport, you have it with, uh, views on whatever. Whatever your views are right. So the reason why that's applicable is because that is actually what modern marketing has become, because we always knew this, but now it's just gotten so crazy and so out of hand. That's where I would agree with you and say that a lot of this stuff is unethical the way it's built, because people are building with the wrong motives, because they know that these are the triggers that will get people to make change or to make action, take action.

Speaker 2: 1:02:14

Taking action on something like a podcast. Right, it's like I mean I don't want to go into social media but kind of podcasting is on the fringe of social media. I guess it's a balance between providing value you know, earning trust and then kind of packaging it in a way that sells, and the that word sell is almost like a dirty word certainly it's pardon, what do you think that?

Speaker 2: 1:02:45

because, um, because of the way I don't know I, I don't know I'm. I not a psychologist, I just know that in my mind, when you tell me to sell something, put way in your window Because I don't feel for me. Yeah, I don't feel like I'm qualified to sell something. Why? Because I don't feel I'm good enough. Why? I don't know my parents loved me Genuinely.

Speaker 1: 1:03:15

though if you strip it back like what did you enjoy? Did you enjoy the outside? Did you enjoy? What do you enjoy most?

Speaker 2: 1:03:23

right, because I don't like asking for money, I think, is. You know, I feel like that's it. Money is a money is just for me, quite a dirty topic and I wish it wasn't, because I'd probably be a millionaire. You know, it's like I, I don't. If we talk about money, it's kind of okay, but when it becomes personal and suddenly status comes into it all the time with money which is dirty, it is just not. Nothing comes of chasing status other than a great band, um, that.

Speaker 2: 1:03:51

So I think, just when it, when the foundation is about money, when the core of whatever you're trying to do or trying to talk about or trying to sell is about money, I just don't it, just I don't know why to answer your question, but it doesn't sit comfortably with me as well as many, many people, especially artists, photographers, filming you know, when you have to have a conversation about money with a client or you're trying to sell a course, we're trying to sell even a free. I sold my ebook. I didn't sell it. I like I'm putting off putting a price on it because it's just, it's just like, just, I like it.

Speaker 1: 1:04:27

My observation on this just a man right Is the reason why people struggle to like, think about the business or the attachment to it is it's almost like a low self-worth of what they can provide other people. Because maybe you haven't a ton of experience and so on, but because you haven't proved it, either maybe for yourself or for other people. Therefore, you believe you don't believe that other people find it valuable. So the best way you can do that is get the reps in for yourself, prove it for yourself, create good designs for yourself, create good podcasts for yourself, have self-confidence so that, therefore, you can do that for other people. So to this day, whenever I hop on a call with a prospect and they say can you show me some examples of your work, I'll always show them my podcast first, even though I have hundreds of other podcasts I could could show. I show them my podcast first because I've done it for myself first, before I've done it for other people, and then, when the question comes up saying, can you do for other people, that's when we'll show other people. But you always start with yourself and the best way to lead by example, you know, as a fodder or whatever is always by yourself. You lead by your actions, right? So by doing it for yourself gives you the best confidence that, therefore, you can go and provide it for other people, so that's the best way to do it.

Speaker 1: 1:05:37

A lot of creative people, especially very creative people like artists and stuff their brain isn't on that side of more logic, logical reasoning.

Speaker 1: 1:05:47

You know the economics of a product, of a service and so on, but at the same time, your skills are very valuable. So it's almost like my advice here is to detach from the idea of selling, but look at the skill that I'm providing. So for you it could be like art, it could be expression, right, the skill that you have that you're providing other people, that is of value, okay, and the value that you have is helping them either increase their revenue, decrease their time or just improve their level of status, right, it's generally what a product or service does. So because of that, you can almost think through logic saying that, okay, now this is worth something. It's worth $50, $100, $1,000, whatever, right, that's the best way to do it, kind like, logically, and your time and your work should be valued by that, right, and maybe you need more experience, maybe you need more people to tell you that like it is helpful and it's just about getting the reps in then. So to relieve the imposter syndrome. That's basically what it is right.

Speaker 1: 1:06:49

I don't know you're kind of familiar with like that in general, right yeah is people think that they can't do it for other people, so the best way to do that is to do it for free. So in the beginning of our company, I was doing exactly what I did for us for other people for free, and I just picked a couple of my friends. I was like, hey, can we just do a couple of coaching sessions a month? I did it. They went off and did the work and therefore I was able to see that it was working. Our first client paid us $1,800 for three months and therefore we ran all the production.

Speaker 1: 1:07:17

Everything which you know to this day is like it's like nothing. Now we're looking back at it, but at the time it felt like everything right and what I realized was the fact that the the work I did for free allowed me creative freedom, and the fact that I had creative freedom allowed me to experiment, and because I was able to experiment, I was able to test things and get better because there was no constraint on my ability. So I wasn't confined and you get this from Eric right, when you look at a picture or I listen to a lot of Rick Rubin and he looks at it like a blank canvas or whatnot and it already has constraints. The canvas stops.

Speaker 1: 1:07:55

And the paint you have has a constraint, and all this stuff has constraints. When someone pays you, you are constrained to some degree, whereas when it's free, you've created freedom to play around and some things will go well, some things won't go as well, but all throughout that period of time you're just building confidence, and that confidence then allows you to move up your prices, to go from zero to x amount to y, amount, to move up, and I think that allows you to move up that level, um, that level of degree, and I think sometimes as well. There needs to be a bit of blind delusion too. You need to be kind of deluded.

Speaker 1: 1:08:25

that, okay, I can actually make this work for other people, right, because this is when you get caught too much in your head, and I was actually gifted a book called get out of your head, and it's called by Russ. It talks about this. You need like blind delusion to some degree, and that's how everyone starts, so everyone starts right. So, yeah, any more questions on our sales process, because I think that's something we should stay in for a while. It's quite interesting.

Speaker 2: 1:08:47

Yeah Well, I guess a more high level question is can you make life changing money from podcasting? If so, how?

Speaker 1: 1:08:54

100%. So the way I view it is that you don't want to be the creator, you know, basically trying to like whore yourself out to make money on the internet. You want to build an ecosystem. So what you effectively want to do is, instead of just creating content, you want to build an ecosystem of products, services, partnerships with other entrepreneurs, other people, other creators, other artists. So how does that look in person? So your podcast, at the end of the day, is the front of office. It's just the marketing tool. It's just the front end of your business. It's the door on your cupcake store that says you're open. The backend is all the stuff that actually makes the money. It's the products you sell, that relates to your audience, it's the services you provide people, the coaching, and it's the partnerships you work with other people. That can be the most scalable platform possible. Bear in mind all of the big creators right now, all the biggest writers on Twitter, guys on Instagram, guys on LinkedIn. They've all built a series of even like micro SaaS platforms. You know, saas like software platforms.

Speaker 1: 1:09:51

They've built software platforms. So a lot of these guys have some of the biggest like either software companies or they have service businesses that they don't even operate. They have appointed a CEO and they are basically the marketing channel into these platforms. I'll give you an example. I know a lot of guys that work in animations. You know animations you see on Instagram. They're very aesthetic.

Speaker 1: 1:10:12

A lot of the guys started out having other freelancers as their animation guys and they blew up. They blew up, blew up. So they said, okay, how do we productize this and give it to other people? So now a lot of guys will come to them and say, hey, can you work my animations? They say, yeah, no problem, our service business over here will do 40 animations for you a month. It's $5,000 a month, $10,000 a month or you can do shorter packages. So what they did was they built distribution. So when you own the distribution and you build distribution, you can do whatever you want on the backend. So you can be largely unskilled and offer a service to someone.

Speaker 1: 1:10:44

So let's go back to my genesis. I built my podcast, I built distribution, I built engagement. When the distribution was built, therefore, the people that were engaged with me said hey, how would you do this, how would you do that? And on a service basis, through coaching, consulting and our agency, we were able to help people do that. At the same time, we could build products, which we have. We have lower tier courses that help people build and launch together podcasts and, as time goes on, there's opportunities for us to build software companies in the podcast space. So how can we build software products that people like you and me could use, that could help your life, save time or increase money, right? So that's the ecosystem in the backend.

Speaker 1: 1:11:24

Now, that shouldn't kind of scare you. It should just be the business plan. Effectively, because the front office. As you grow, it almost becomes easier. The podcast that we record today is a lot easier than your first episode, right, it becomes more natural. So we free up that time and we have a few of our team and so on and so forth. That helps us with this. So we can focus on the backend business and that can just be the pursuit, right? Because again, let's go back to the health. It's a great example If I produce a podcast around health and longevity, I could have supplements on the back end that could help you with your health and longevity. It's a big thing that people do, right? No, if you have Alpha Mind or Joe Rogan's, what's Joe Rogan's product that he has on the back end? He had the drink, but he also had a.

Speaker 2: 1:12:09

Yeah there I don't know. Yeah, I mean, look at his podcast. His whole desk is full of shit exactly, or Jocko right Jocko was great.

Speaker 1: 1:12:16

Jocko had the drink and he's a bunch of other stuff now.

Speaker 1: 1:12:20

Chris Williamson has a drink now he has a drink right, and I know Shan, the guy that did his business. I know Shan, he was on my podcast. So that's where. That's where the life change of money comes in. Because, if you think about so, chris Williamson's manager or call manager, the guy they work to call Sean owns a company called GenFlow.

Speaker 1: 1:12:37

Genflow do what we do, but on steroids. They make around 200 million a year and what they do is they partner with you and say, hey, you're good at photography, right? How about we build out a photography coaching program? That would help a lot of people scale their photography business. And you're the front face, you're the marketing, you're a pretty face. The business on the back end is being built. So that's when a company like Genflow would actually build a business for you, whereas kind of what we do in our model is that we partner with other podcasters or entrepreneurs to scale that business, to make it a better business, effectively. So we've worked with some huge, huge companies like Fortune 50 companies uh, doing 50 million, 50 billion a year to improve their back end.

Speaker 2: 1:13:21

Because it wasn't connected what about companies that do like 50 a year, 100?

Speaker 1: 1:13:26

it's the same principle, think about it, think about it right. It's it's audience, it's an engagement, right, and it's about providing a solution to a problem. And this is this is where we go back to again are you selling politics or are you selling problems? Right, because if you're, a lot of those guys will struggle to get any sort of engagement or to build a tribe, because they're not really solving a problem for anyone, whereas when you are problem focused and problem centric focused, like we are today about like how you could use podcasting to build your business and brand that will allow you to build an ecosystem of products and services that run quite naturally. And ali abdal is the perfect example.

Speaker 1: 1:14:03

Student doctor. Let's look at his product stack. Four years ago he built his youtube channel, was helping you study for your med exams. Okay. Then he had a he then he had basically courses that helped you pass your student exams. And then he moved broader. When people told him the feedback hey, we want more productivity stuff. So he built a productivity like stack of people to use, for anyone to use, and then that pushed on to, let's say, coaching programs, teaching people how to get their first million subscribers on youtube, which is like a five thousand dollar program. It's quite a high-tech program and now he's moved on to his book and so on.

Speaker 1: 1:14:41

So think about it. Productivity expanded, he has the audience, he has the engagement. Now you can still do that on a micro level and, if anything, I would nearly argue that it's almost easier at a smaller level, because when you build something that's very tribal and very tight, it works. And forget about my YouTube. I don't have a big YouTube, but it's different, right. My YouTube is like nearly like 70K, so it's big in that context. But my LinkedIn and Instagram are very small, but they're very, very tight. They're very focused on entrepreneurs, podcasts and the engagement we have had, the interaction we've had from there is 100x. The viral platforms. It's interesting, right, that's when you come up to the debate of virality versus actually keeping small and solving problems.

Speaker 2: 1:15:24

This is a huge problem I have with some of the newer photographers out there and I've had some of them on the show. We've talked about it out there and I've had some of them on the show. We've talked about it the concepts and the business model behind idea generation and essentially teaching people to go viral. And there is an element in today's world where we have to understand what goes viral and what increases someone's exposure, because obviously that's important If you want to sell to an audience and build a business. It is part of a, an entrepreneur's toolkit, or at least it should be at least that awareness.

Speaker 2: 1:16:03

If you're not going to use that tool, let's say Instagram, linkedin, whatever one of these platforms you want to choose they're just tools to engage, to promote, to expose my problem with, with and we'll talk about idea generation minute but my, not a problem, but my, I guess my question, my confusion around teaching people to create ideas kind of takes away from the creation itself. It's like giving you a solution before you've even like thought about it. Right, and now we all want quick solutions. You talking to me about these, these companies that you know five thousand dollars for an introductory course on how to get a million people, minister scrubs on youtube. That sounds great. I'm in, but I know what it's going to be. You're going to, it's going to be telling me a lot of stuff and then in the end it's just going to go well, it's up to you yeah, right it's really, it's just down to you.

Speaker 2: 1:16:50

You've got to put in, put in the hard work. So there's this veil of like superficiality, especially on the likes of instagram, which is both the blessing and curse when it comes to photographers. But I have an issue and maybe we can talk about this, because I know you, you coach, or at least you offer consultancy and idea generation and you know, when I was looking at some of your youtube videos, thumbnail is so hook, hooky and catchy and almost clickbait. It's like how to make a million dollars in 10 days.

Speaker 1: 1:17:18

You know it's not like that, but you know you get my point. Yeah, it's all SEO generators. Yeah, so it's like what do we do?

Speaker 2: 1:17:24

This is where the kind of the responsibility I think that we have, especially as our audience grows and this is the curse that the bigger players have to think about it's like, well, now I'm big, or big in my world, like, do I have a responsibility to be a little bit more ethical?

Speaker 1: 1:17:43

about this. You're a leader right, a hundred percent. I completely agree with you and that's why I actually sat on this idea a lot before this podcast, deliberately, even though I didn't even know you were going to ask if I thought about it, because I went down the creative route in terms of the creative lens. True, rick rubin, and his approach is the anti-marketing approach. He says fuck the audience, there is no audience, I'm the product. And his approach is much more that the art is in the creation and is in the pursuit and is in the beginner mind and pursuing that activity, versus in what the audience will think of you. Give them or give them what they want. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And in the pursuit of that. His approach is like it's it doesn't matter how many views, clicks, likes you get. You did your job as the artist once you create and it's a creation process.

Speaker 1: 1:18:29

Now, rory sutherland if you're familiar, rory rory sutherland is from ogilvy. He's one of the OGs in the marketing space. He's a UK guy. He's probably the most respected marketer alive right now. At the moment they had a four-hour conversation you should listen to the podcast when you're training and he said that's great, rick, but we have KPIs to hit. We have targets to hit, we have goals to hit in our companies as entrepreneurs and whatever. And they were joking about it, right, but that's the. In the creative act of the book he says. Mcrubin says forget the audience, whereas Rory's perspective when he read it was like that's great, but we have all these shareholders who need a hit. Now that's at a big scale.

Speaker 1: 1:19:06

How does that work in a small scale? I think there's always that clash between what will work, what will get clicks, what will get hits, and also what is true to the art, to the creative art. And I think once you're in alignment again, we go back to the internal objective. What's the internal objective? What do you want to achieve here? If you can really sit on that initially and look at what you want to achieve, then all the rest becomes a little bit more, I would say, really objective.

Speaker 1: 1:19:37

Like you, you know what you're, you know what you need to do to get to that goal. However, the problem with the clickbait stuff and all this stuff is the fact that that's when you act out of alignment with what you originally said I started to do. So you need to kind of cross that balance. But a question for you is like would you prefer to have let's say we had this podcast today? Would you prefer to have it impact 10 people because you kept it very small and very knit, or would you prefer to impact like a million people but you had to change things slightly to open a broader market 10 people.

Speaker 1: 1:20:12

But that's the problem, right, is that most people don't understand why they're doing it, but 10 people in the long run would be more valuable anyway.

Speaker 2: 1:20:19

Exactly Like having a loyal small audience is way, especially when you think about photographers and artists. Like having an audience that's loyal is, for me, anyway, the most important thing.

Speaker 1: 1:20:30

And you've built that right From observing your Instagram, observing everything. You've built that audience right Because you're a respected figure and as you grow, you build authority and influence. If you click on any of my content, you'll always see the word authority and influence, because that's who you become. When you become the expert or you move from the student to the expert is. You have authority and influence, but it's your responsibility to help your audience at that point and not to sell snake oil to them effectively. Now my question for you on that is like what's the traditional business that an artist would have on the back of their photography.

Speaker 2: 1:21:04

Yeah well, this is. This is a almost an unanswerable question. It's it's so subjective and the difficulty that artists have is that do not want to dilute any part of their creative mindset, the creative vision, the artistic skill. But you know, with time and I've realized this as well it's like well, I have to give something away. If your goal is to have money freedom, time freedom, and that can be anything from $50,000 to $50 million, whatever your definition of money freedom, time, get into wealth. Yeah, well, what's your definition of wealth?

Speaker 1: 1:21:39

This is the thing, right, is that? I didn't mean to cut you across, but you know you can walk through Bali and people are more wealthier than you ever be and they could be local people, right? Yes, it's a combination of money in the bank, time, freedom, location, freedom, relationships, mental health, physical health and financial health, but usually that becomes a curse, right, and I've even seen that, like when I used to work in tech. I was probably making a decent salary for someone that was in tech because I was young and I was like a senior position, but I probably had more freedom than what I've had in the business, not now, but when I was starting. Let's say, right, you know, we were doing 120 hours a week, right, for like a long time and it was very taxing. But then at that point, now we're at a different point in the business, of course, at this point, but at the same point, what I'm trying to say is the fact that, back to social media, those goals are often given to you the financial goal you need, and so on. So it's almost understanding what you want to achieve with it initially and then reaching that Now.

Speaker 1: 1:22:43

If you've ever read the 48 Laws of Power, it's a great story. One of the laws is always to find the end goal, and the story was, I think it was, like the Spanish or the Portuguese went to Central America and when they were in Central America, they had owned a lot of the land and they had discovered some gold and some jewelry and they were, very well thought, wealthy. So at that point they should have stayed in Central America, brought the jewelry back to Portugal and conquered a lot of Europe, and they would have been in a good position. However, one of the generals said after this, let's go into the south, into the Inca tribe, and let's take over all the gold Inca tribe. They set out with their last 200 soldiers to go all through Central America into Peru and during that process they all got killed, they all got infected and at the very end, one of the tribes, one of the local tribes, captured the empire or captured a general and killed him, beheaded him, and the whole idea there was to start with the end in mind. The initial goal was to go to Central America and get their jewellery, and when they achieved that they should have stopped, but they kept on pushing, and that's the curse of many entrepreneurs is that when they reach the target, they push past it and the goalposts shift and of course, in a business, businesses evolve and they grow and so on.

Speaker 1: 1:23:58

But if you don't start with the end in mind, that's when it leads to issues and I've had personal experience with that. I've had a very close friend who built a $50 million company and they never sold it at the time and it was pre-crash of the market and he should have sold it and he didn't and then it went to zero. It went to zero and now it's closed Zero. He went to zero and that was in December. A very, very close friend of mine. If he sold it two years ago, it was 50 million in cash and when all the evidence split it out, he probably would have left with like maybe 20 million in cash. And then he didn't and he's trying to ride it up to like 100 because the market's turned. Investors blow their money, whatever, whatever.

Speaker 2: 1:24:35

No, that's zero. Now it depends on what the intent of that holding is. You know I'm bringing it back to photography and your question about that in a minute. But as photographers they're often individuals. They often have an individual pursuit of showing their art to the world and getting some reverence or respect or something back from it. It doesn't always have to be money, but they want to be like here's what I'm putting out into the world. Hope you enjoy it. And if no one sees it, probably a bit of a problem, but hopefully the creation, part of it itself and the creating of the art speaks for their fulfillment and their purpose. Most of the time that's not the case, right, most of the time we're seeking validation from external sources. So when something comes along, and especially when you're new in the game and you get money for doing a photography, you're like fucking hell, someone's paying me to do what I can do in my sleep or like I love to do.

Speaker 2: 1:25:26

Like wow. I mean, not only is that such an amazing feeling, you think it's not real and you have this fear that it's not going to last. So this is why a lot of artists just burn out, burn out, I'm going to take that job, take that job, take that job. Not because of greed, necessarily that's got to be part of it, that's kind of the other side of the story but because of fear of it running out. How long am I going to be valid? For how long am I going to be respectful? How long before the market changes, when brands start using AI or using influencers for collaborative projects for free or how you know? How long is it going to last? How long before I get sick? And I can't do this? You know, I don't. I'm not a team, I'm not a business, I'm an individual sole proprietor essentially, and so I'm going to keep doing it until I fucking die, essentially, or I crash out.

Speaker 2: 1:26:10

So that's one side of it, and the other side of it is just greed, which is just one of the seven deadly sins, for a reason, right, it's the root of many forms of evil, and that's where the entrepreneurs and the artists that I know that get to that point. They've built such an amazing business and that's never enough. It's never enough. Next thing, next thing, next thing. And what suffers? Relationships, health, that's's it essentially life and livelihood. Yeah, they may have loads of money in the bank and they don't have time to do anything with it, right? So difference?

Speaker 1: 1:26:41

in rich and wealthy right oh, huge, huge difference, because the riches is the cars, the parties, the lifestyle, the house, and wealthy wealth is in the mind, right, but it can be. It can be anything, and what you'll often find too is and it's it's. It's almost like ironic to say, because it's full circle, like the more money you make, the more realize, the more you realize the money makes no impact at some point, especially the lives that we live. Right, like I spend a lot of time traveling and when I'm in like places like dubai, because a lot of like other entrepreneurs are there, I'm never at the level of expenditure that I'll ever be at. It's just not me, right? I'm just not that individual. I'm not an individual to rent cars, to rent yachts, to rent mansions. It just never was me and never will be me. So it's almost like the earth is in the business. The earth is in the creative form of getting better and improving and everything else that happens is a byproduct. And that's why your business is actually a reflection of you, because where you currently are in your own journey and I often say entrepreneurship is a journey of self-discovery this guy's on the path of profitability because it's actually an internal journey, right, and at every single handbrake turn.

Speaker 1: 1:27:50

It's a test of where you're at, and that's why I think it's very interesting to observe people that get to the ego stage and make loads of money and they're still very egotistical. Because, for me, I've been humbled continuously, just battered. Battered by just the market, battered by just just the reality of what business is, to the point whereby I never looked down on someone as a result of being wherever they are in their journey or wherever they are in their business or whatever, because it's just brutal, right, like it's just continuously brutal. Even as an artist, I can't imagine how, imagine how difficult it can be. So you get, you get my respect, get everyone's respect, really sure, for being in their arena. But it's also about defining what goal it is you want to play within that game. Right, and that's interesting. That's human nature, right? We go back all the way back to that example I have I was giving to right up to this day. It's the same stuff. It's over confidence. How do we?

Speaker 2: 1:28:41

as podcast hosts, as creators, as influencers, as photographers, as artists, as musicians? How do we get the stats that we all really want to get? Let's be honest here. No one's going to turn away. 50 million views over 30 episodes, right? Isn't that what you guys achieved?

Speaker 1: 1:29:02

We've done 50 million views last year.

Speaker 1: 1:29:04

Last year 30 shows how Solving specific problems within the three main categories of health, wealth and relationships Right, because that's what everything goes back to in the day, even like the subcategories within them, they all hit those major, major factors. So, whether it is guests, whether it's the podcast themselves, they have to be able to actually solve genuine problems, and this is where we have a lot of content that's like so fluffy, doesn't, doesn't achieve anything, and we have to be very, very cautious of that. Now, of course, let's go back to the beginning. When you're an artist and start out, you take every work you need. You can get right, but as time goes on, you should be a bit more selective.

Speaker 1: 1:29:40

I think 2023 is when we stopped taking on just like random work outside of our ideal, like customer or whatever. We wanted to be very selective and that made a big, big difference, because we were only working with people that were authentic, that were real, that were true to their mission, that had pedigree, that had done it for many years, and therefore we could just add fuel to the fire. Right, and a lot of guys they'll struggle with getting out. So I think a big issue here is the fact that, yes, you can do the content, put out the content, so on. But it is, the work is in the post-production, the work is in the release. I like to say that, like when, when you hit publish, most people take a sigh and they stop. That's when you should start work. The work starts at that point. Oh yeah, it really does, and I can tell in your like you know emotion that like that's where the pain is. So, like, let's, let's look at this right this is the fun part.

Speaker 2: 1:30:35

This is the fun part. This is not easy, but it's the enjoyable part.

Speaker 1: 1:30:38

So let's let's look at this right, because this is interesting to observe. So you, you mentioned that like sales is like it's difficult and you know you don't feel like that. You, that you're you should be selling something. I said to you that the pain is afterwards. When you press, publish and you sign. You're like, yeah, that's a huge pay. If I could give you a painkiller, it's that I can solve that problem for you. Right now, you, you'd pay for it. Right, pay for it. So that's the problem. Solution right is the fact that you have to be able to solve that problem.

Speaker 1: 1:31:03

So the reason why I'm saying this is because a lot of the podcasts that are out there, they just die because they don't put enough energy into actually solving the problems right. So just taking a full circle is the fact that what we try to focus on was production is good, it's important to get it right and so on, but let's just keep shipping the stuff, let's keep putting it out, let's keep putting out the content, let's get better at writing, let's get better at SEO, let's see where we can show up in the world and let's just continuously build that. And, just like Chris Williamson, just like many other podcasts, as episodes go on, they stack. So if you look at your data and this is where it's interesting so Instagram, twitter they have like a shelf life. So within 72 hours, all of your content is erased, it's gone. So you are caught in the biggest rat race of this eternity by just releasing posts and reels and tweets, whereas how have I showed you a new opportunity whereby you could release content and for the next five years of your life it'll start generating views and downloads and as time goes on, in your YouTube or your podcast journey, you actually stack more and more engagement. So that's where you get the asymmetrical returns.

Speaker 1: 1:32:10

And I think the biggest thing that I focused on in all of my 20s was what is the one skill that gives me asymmetrical returns in life? What is the one thing that I can do better than most people, because I put enough time into it that gives me asymmetrical returns? And for me, that's content, marketing and recording and, as time goes on, that scales infinitely in the right way. So I put more time into that. And, of course, you build a team and build the systems around it so that other people can do other stuff. So I think a lot of guys will not focus on? What's that one skill that they can really focus on? That could be anything, that could be art, it could be writing, and, yes, you want to uplift the other skills.

Speaker 1: 1:32:47

So, as I mentioned, I'm dyslexic. I've wrote every single day for the past three years straight and I'm dyslexic and I would argue that I'm actually a pretty good writer at this point, to the point that I actually want to write a book soon, and I've stacked all that information for the past couple of years and it's just made me a better writer. Now am I a great writer? No, but we can build that skill stack effectively, and that's what becomes valuable, that's what leads the content to grow, that's what needs the content to grow, and they all work in tandem and genuinely.

Speaker 1: 1:33:16

I think that as you kind of build that compound interest kicks in and the compound effect is a great book on this too is the fact that the things we do today don't take an impact right now. They can impact 612 months from now, and I'm a big time guy, right, I'm really interested in, like, the concept of time and how the actions you take today have an impact of cause and effect. So everyone says things happen, says things happen for a reason, right, everything happens for a reason. What they don't understand is that cause and effect has a variable of time and time cannot be fixed. So the impact you do today, you don't know when that would have an impact. So let's take an example If you read a book today and if you try to do something in your podcast, in your business next month, in the work, you say, oh, that book sucks, but the work that you read in the book doesn't take effect till three, six, nine, 12 months. So let's give it a practical example.

Speaker 1: 1:34:03

When I was making the changes to my podcast, it was slowly, small iterations, small changes. They stacked and then six, 12, 24, 36 months later we saw the exponential increase and that's why most people don't give up. It's delayed gratification on steroids, effectively. And I always think about when I'm doing something new. And that came to me from bodybuilding. So I got into bodybuilding when I was 14 years old. I knew that it was going to take me 10 years because no one's biodeveloped to 14 to get to a good condition and I just forgot about the time, just committed to the process and that's when I stopped. So I think that allowed me to be a better podcaster better entrepreneur? Because I just don't think in terms of short term, it's long term and yeah, that's kind of it.

Speaker 2: 1:34:43

Yeah, I mean a couple of things you talked about there that definitely want to unpack. Marketing is is is so key and we haven't really talked about that. But you know, get from what you're talking about. In terms of your agency and your business, you help just as much with the production of podcasts as you do with, I mean, even more so the marketing. Is that correct Marketing and kind of branding?

Speaker 1: 1:35:05

For sure. I would say that stage one of us was execution. It was like we do the podcast stuff and that was good. That worked. It helped people.

Speaker 1: 1:35:13

Stage two was we coach and consult. So we come in and do deep dives, we do like strategy reviews and so on. We get in the position they're branding and how they present themselves and how they, how they basically show up in the world. That was stage two, which kind of helped things blow up. And then stage three was a monetization. So only by going through each individual stage that you were able to identify okay, the execution is just not enough.

Speaker 1: 1:35:36

Execution can be done on Fiverr, right. You can send someone a video on Fiverr, you get it back, but you don't get feedback on that, right. So that's kind of the most important aspect Now. At the same point, yes, marketing is important, yes, sales is important, but we also need to have a good product. Which a good product? Which is the podcast? Right, we need to have a good product, something that people will listen to, consume. And how many things have you bought in your life that they look fancy on the outside but then, when you bought them, they're a piece of shit, right? And that's why the online business space needs a recession. We need to clear out to people the bad actors. We need to be able to clear those people out, people that don't want to actually have the business in the back end.

Speaker 2: 1:36:11

Right, sorry, someone called someone on a friend of mine. I won't. I won't name him because, um, we need, we need chemotherapy in the market. We need to. We need to just get rid of a load of fucking weakness. 100, just get rid of a load of shit. And um, it's kind of what happened in the twitter nft market a couple of years ago in the same software, right yeah, uh.

Speaker 1: 1:36:32

So when I was in the kind of vc world it was like it was almost like a joke that you would raise money and you'd have a party with the money and you'd raise 20 million and you go to a founder house. You don't have parties for the weekend.

Speaker 1: 1:36:43

Oh, it was crazy. I couldn't believe. I knew people in singapore that would raise angel investor money, which is even that much it's like 50k and 50k now is for the business or product and engineering and they would fly to LA and go to a founder party and rent a villa. And I was literally losing my mind. Fast forward six months. The market fell out, all VC money dried up, interest rates are gone, so that recession happens and there's a great saying, which is everyone's boss is the CEO and the CEO's boss is the market. So, no matter how good you think you are, the market will rinse you in a second. I think I always just kind of keep that level of humility because, yes, we're riding a good wave now, we're moving really quickly, but yes, things could change right. That's why it goes back to the principles what are we trying to solve? How are we helping people? So on.

Speaker 2: 1:37:35

So that's why is so so important? Because it will never leave you. If you have that and you are true to yourself before anything else, you can ride the waves we should be able to Because you will build something that's authentic and which everyone can see is authentic, which is so paramount these days in the world of shit that's out there. If you are authentic, honest and true to yourself, I honestly believe you can adjust to commercial aspects as much as you want. You can do little sales tactics, you can do clickbait stuff, you can do short form, long form, you can do all the tips and tricks and you can do all the faff, but at the end of the day, when shit happens, you still have that core product, you still have that core integrity.

Speaker 2: 1:38:09

And you know, if people were to ask me those types of questions like, just just be honest, try and do what you love and you know, certainly in the photography world it's talked to a lot of like very, very good photographers who've done very well in their own space. And you know questions like you know how, just really generic questions how do you succeed in the space and how do you get known right? How do you build an audience with such a saturated market? And how do you build an audience with such a saturated market? And most of them, certainly a lot of the top guys just if you're good enough, you will be found. If you're good enough, it will get to the top. It may take one year, it may take 20 years, but at some point, if you do things well enough, you will get there.

Speaker 1: 1:38:52

I don't know if that's true or not, but that's kind of anecdotal in question for you on that is how did you maintain like that moral compass throughout?

Speaker 2: 1:39:01

everything you've done. Oh, it starts with yourself, you know. It starts with how you look after yourself, your, your beliefs, your values and and how you educate yourself on what's out there and and it for me, a lot of it just comes down to honesty, you know, you're honest with yourself. Are you honest with others? Are you honest with your intentions? Are you doing it for status? I, I spent most of my life doing things for status, not necessarily for on the outside, but my own status and what I thought was would make me kind of feel like I got there or I was value, valuing myself, right, and that's just a dishonest purpose, dishonest intent.

Speaker 2: 1:39:37

When did you have that shift? Um, kind of had a little mini breakdown when I was late thirties and, um, you know, look at, young man, look younger than me. I mean, I grow up growing my beard back, which is pretty much mostly gray now, so that made me look older. But uh, yeah, I mean I grow my beard back, which is pretty much mostly gray now, so that made me look older. But yeah, I mean I went through my form of midlife crisis and came through the other side after a couple of years and completely changed my whole outlook on life and photography and the creative side of my world like really really helped me with that and this did, and just being able to talk to people and be honest about everything and be okay with the fact that some people aren't going to like you and that's okay. It's impossible for everyone to like you and that's where things like podcasting and hosting podcasts I feel like a lot of people won't continue with it, because as soon as they start getting negative comments like as soon as they get, they start getting negative comments like oh, as soon as they get start getting big enough, where they get a few thousand views, a few hundred thousand views, and that now you're bringing in a load of hate.

Speaker 2: 1:40:41

You know, it's just the part of it you don't go into. It's just a weird world because you don't go to a public square or town hall and just stand on stage and go. Everyone just fucking shout shit at me, right, it's.

Speaker 1: 1:40:52

The digital world is different, like that and that was a problem I faced, because we never went after an Irish market. I just don't know why. I think it was a scale. The whole idea was like I wanted to go after a US market from the beginning. That's probably why it took so long to grow. To be honest, if I was to go back, take a step back, and that involved me changing how I show up, how I show up, how I present, how I speak, and then in, as a result of doing that, that was a lot of the feedback was like who's this Irish fucker coming into, like America, trying to speak like this, right? So then we started.

Speaker 1: 1:41:22

It was only until I started to do like the bigger productions and people are okay, this guy's serious and that's when we started putting, you know, crazy, crazy investment behind it to build shows. You know, we were building like genuine shows and we like, recently we did, um, we did a show in manhattan and over four days and we built a studio from scratch in manhattan and that's like the full team uh, they were a video, they were basically like a film production team that did movies in manhattan and then we basically built a studio from scratch and that was like can you tell us the podcast? I'd done several of them, so it was with Justin Welsh, sahil Bloom, louisa Nicola, erlin Moore. We'd done four over three days and, yeah, we had to rent the entire space, do everything from scratch, build a team on the ground, and I think it's just intent.

Speaker 1: 1:42:15

Right is that when people don't see from the outside, they don't see the reality. And then when they see the intent, they're like okay, take more serious. Yeah, so there's that side of it. And then also you got to realize too, like, who are these people? Right, like you're hanging out in the commons shitting on people. You don't care enough about yourself, you don't have good self-worth at that point. So I just it's funny, I do a lot of um, I do a lot of writing, and I was writing a lot on trends recently, which has a lot of engagement.

Speaker 1: 1:42:37

I don't know why, because it's like instagram, right, it's like a lot of shitty engagement. And I put up like a post recently. It was so not like divisive, anyway, it was like don't start a podcast, do this instead. And it was like a step-by-step process, all right, and when it like popped off and it doesn't show you the views, but I imagine it's probably in there like 20 or 30 000 views, right, it had like a hundred comments from people being like who the fuck is this guy? What does the guy think he's up to? All I was doing was teaching people to go on other shows to improve their own speech, and that's the whole point of the post was to learn your story and share your story and find out what resonates. That was the whole purpose of it and I I had about 100 comments from people like there was a bunch of hidden comments.

Speaker 2: 1:43:16

What do you know? Who are you to be saying that? Not even that. Not even that.

Speaker 1: 1:43:20

Some comments were hidden because Instagram actually hid the comments that were so abusive and they were like who the fuck is this guy? And they were just the most violent comments possible. And I look at it and just like laugh and laugh at it.

Speaker 1: 1:43:38

But I could see how it goes off the rails. Now you mentioned about what grows and what doesn't grow. We had a few clips last year on YouTube that did like 30 million views and it was so interesting happen behind the scenes because if you look at the comments, some of the comments have like, we've like a thousand comments and they're all like super, like aggressive, being like who's this person, who's this bitch, who's this right, and it's a crazy stuff. But if you look in the back end on youtube analytics, the likes are like 99.9 percent, 0.1 percent downlikes. So what, what youtube can see, if that has, is that that was a piece of content that people wanted to see, but it was also divisive because their their sentiment picked up that people were divisive on it. So obviously people that were divisive didn't down like it, they just wrote the comments. So as a result, that keeps on growing, growing, growing. So that actually is the reality of those platforms on the back end and that's how like they are very soul-destroying.

Speaker 1: 1:44:34

Now my recommendation here is that use social media, like you mentioned, as a tool, but also go from a rented audience to an owned audience. I build my newsletter for this exact reason. My newsletter is like my uh, my bombshell plan. The world blew up tomorrow. I still have my newsletter and I've all my news are subscribers. I could write to them every day if I wanted to, and that's an audience that I own, so I have complete control over what I say, how I say it, how I show up. No one's going to stop me sending emails. I can use different platforms, so on, and that kind of gets you out of this rat race of social media. I think, as we build forward, like that's a better way to cultivate a strong audience diversify absolutely yeah fascinating.

Speaker 2: 1:45:17

I mean, where, where, where do we really go from here? I mean, I've got so many questions and I know we're running out of time. I wanted to, did want to circle back on the three main pillars of successful content. Let's say, certainly in the podcast world, your health, wealth, relationships, right? You're telling me then, as a photography first podcast, that I'm doomed to failure. Or how do I adapt to something like this where it's me who feels like I have a voice, I have something to share, I engage, I want to be part of a conversation, whether people watch it or not. So I'm going to continue doing podcasts. How can then someone like myself, who doesn't necessarily fall into those three categories, how do we adapt in kind of the arts world or any other sector or any other industry that doesn't kind of fit into those?

Speaker 1: 1:46:05

it's interesting because he will think immediately, though, like relationships to do like a couple relationships, but this is relationships, it's the interaction, it's a connection. So that's how it can be. It can fall in there, because it's how we connect with our audience. How do you build that loyal audience of people that we want to engage with? So look at Chris Williamson. He has a bunch of stuff that's like culture, political, a bunch of different stuff. He still connects very deeply with his audience and that's how, basically, he's been able to grow to a huge brand that he has.

Speaker 1: 1:46:33

So, if it's not your content, that's all about that stuff. It's how you interact with people. So people will consume content online that increases their wealth, improves their relationships as well as improves their health, whereas the relationship piece is how you could interact with the host, is how you become someone. That's the, you know, basically the someone that's a guiding principle, that's the tall leader, that's the leader that's part of the tribe, and it's up to you then to have the responsibility to be able to educate your audience and help them, and I think the best way for you to do that is just to get feedback from your audience. It's the best way to do it. So I'll regularly run feedbacks on my audience. I'll ask them a specific question what they want to see next, who they want to see, what are their biggest problems and just get that kind of audience and connection. It's the same 1,000 true fans You're probably familiar with that concept right, kevin Kelly's concept around 1,000 true fans.

Speaker 1: 1:47:26

What 1,000 true fans are are 1,000 people that will really show up for you. They'll buy your products, buy your services, they'll support you, but what they really want is they're learning from you. So the a community and you build a community. That's the strongest element. So, if you are an artist, I would recommend building a community, building the community around your email list, building it around that, that core principle, and engaging with that audience.

Speaker 1: 1:47:48

Um, and often, often, ask people, be like if you enjoy this content, like let me know why it was important. And it's funny. People don't ask their audience for feedback, but whenever I do, I'll always get responses. I'll always get response from people because when people are asked upon, they'll actually will provide. And there's a really good book called um, influenced by robert cialdini. He said a lot of people. He said most.

Speaker 1: 1:48:10

If you there's a study done that, if you provide a reason for your action, people will take action. So if I was to, uh, if I wanted to print a couple pages in the photocopier over here, if I said, can I print a couple of pages, you just you'd leave me off, you wouldn't do it. But if I said to you can I? Can I print a couple of pages because I'm in a rush to get to my next appointment? Over 90 of people will say yes. So the way that I position this is, if you are an artist, I put out your piece of art and say, hey, would really love feedback on this because I'm trying to get better, because we're making improvements. Let me know and you'll get a flood of information.

Speaker 2: 1:48:44

Honestly, Honestly, yeah, yeah, and just being authentic, yeah, you know, it just carries so much weight If you are to position. I mean, do you work with individual entrepreneurs and brands, not just necessarily in a podcast kind of business space, just as an individual entrepreneur?

Speaker 1: 1:49:01

uh, I have obviously we're trying to keep very narrow and focused, yeah, but we've helped a lot of I've also had a few people um, mainly kind of position their brand basically right as in what it is that they want to help people with in the world, how they want to show up, and I just call it the content pillars, like what it is, the core pillars that you're trying to, yeah, describe. So, let's say, for you example, it's like the personal experiences and we can get into storytelling if you'd like to. I think storytelling is like where the battle is going to be won and lost, right, it's going to be in storytelling, it's going to be your personal experiences and then it gets into a combination of how-to guides and tactics and techniques. I think they're the four content pillars that, no matter what industry you're in, what you do, they're the most important valuable assets you can follow through and that's where we'll see the most growth over the next couple of years, regardless of business.

Speaker 2: 1:49:49

So when it comes to someone like a photographer, who's purely trying to grow as a photographer in today's world, you are going to apply the same principles to them For sure, because why is it you got into photography?

Speaker 1: 1:50:03

So let's walk through the scenario. So you're a photographer. You're putting out your photos on Instagram. You also can do photography work for people. Why do people do that? It's because they enjoy the creative act, right? They need to be able to tell their story better, and most people can't tell their own story, right, which is quite ironic because most people don't ponder on their own thoughts. So the more we can learn to tell your own story, we can convey those ideas and then start sharing with other people. So other people will reach out saying, hey, how did you take that photo? And you can start building up that bank of how it is.

Speaker 1: 1:50:32

You help people and I guarantee you 90% of the questions that I get asked, either in our company or people that come through like social media, they all the exact same. They're in different formats, but they're generally the same questions and they go into those brackets of my kind of own story, my own journey, a bunch of a bunch of how-to guides or how-to principles, how to do x, y and z, and then tactics and techniques to get better. So that's to do with photography, right? If you think of photography now, how would that not fall into that plan. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2: 1:51:01

Yeah, absolutely yeah. I think a lot of people can learn. You know, the reason why many photographers get into photography in the first place is because they just enjoy photography and then suddenly they realize they have this light bulb moment and go fucking hell. If I want to do this and get money from it, first of all it's extremely challenging B money from it. First of all, it's extremely challenging b I have to suddenly be good at all these other things. I have to learn how to market. I learn how to sell. I learn. I have to learn what a brand is. I learn how need to learn how to communicate. I need to learn how to educate. I need to learn how to write. I need to learn how to video. I need you know all of this stuff same for everything, though right, what the fuck?

Speaker 2: 1:51:36

I just want to take photos. I wake up every day, and me personally I just go. I just want to go and take photos. I wake up every day, and me personally, I just go. I just want to go and take photos. I can't, I can, but I.

Speaker 2: 1:51:45

But my goals, my goals, dictate to me that I have to do all this other stuff because I want to get to a certain place. Right, so it's. It's just always give and take, but that's why it's important to be able to diversify, to be able to identify these pillars and go look, if I want to do this for a living, because it's different, if you're a hobbyist, right With anything. If you want to start suddenly being a professional and getting paid for what you enjoy doing and this goes back to probably the first thing we talked about it's like you're not going to enjoy everything that you do. You might be able to delegate as much as you can If successful enough, you can build a team, but most of the time, you're gonna have to do some shit that you don't really want to do for sure.

Speaker 1: 1:52:23

I think it's what's interesting. There is like, um, if you observe, like the the part of someone who is a hobbyist, like photographer, they just focus on photography then when they go to do it full-time, they've all the other stuff to worry about. It's exact same in a business. If I worked in a startup and I was working on building like the software, I could say to myself, oh, this is easy, I could do this myself. But what you forgot was that founder raised capital, built the product, built the branding, did the sales, did the marketing. So when that person goes to do it himself, he's like shit. I thought it was just engineering, but it's not. It's all the other stuff. So that's why people fall down is they don't realize there's laws and taxes and all this other stuff you need to consider. Um, but it's step by step, right. It's like small, step by step to realize you wait, do you actually want to do this or do you want to just integrate with your life and everything else?

Speaker 2: 1:53:11

yeah, and there's nothing wrong with that and that's okay yeah, of course, right, but there seems to be, um, this pressure of content. There's pressure of you know. This is where social media doesn't play a good part. It's like there is this external pressure and we are not weak enough, we're not evolved enough in terms of our human brains to be able to deal with this. See something and go, oh, it's okay, you know, I'm okay not being that right. All we see is wealth, happiness and just general. I want that as well.

Speaker 2: 1:53:39

The path isn't straight. You don't just jump over the fence and get there. It's ups, downs and all the other.

Speaker 1: 1:53:47

I think one of the reasons for that, and especially for artists, is the fact that you know throughout your life you don't get that many opportunities to hit a big or to do something that's massive. It doesn't always come right. So if you get one tremor of something that could be an opportunity, it almost feels like you know sunk cost fallacy. If you don't do it, you're falling behind and you know, I kind of felt that with the podcast stuff was the fact that, yes, I enjoyed doing it, but then we got the opportunity. It was like, okay, there's an opportunity here. We have to double down on what's given to us because the next time it won't come around. You'd look at my list of failed businesses in my early 20s, right, every year I'd done something different and every time it had fallen down. This was the first thing that really hit on the back of six years of failed businesses and that leads you to jumping on opportunity. And that leads you to jump on opportunity and that's if you want to do it right.

Speaker 1: 1:54:42

But I think generally you only get a handful of opportunities in life like that. It could be the woman you marry, it could be the opportunities you have, the job you take the business you follow through with, but you don't have unlimited opportunities, or at least you don't have as many as presented to you, right? So what's important there is having a filtration system. We go back to the mentors, the content, whoever so when a business does pop up and you know, recently, with good intent, the friend of my network was kind of saying like that he would be able to do a partnership with me and then we would build like a like a company, as like an IBX COO on.

Speaker 1: 1:55:16

It seemed a good idea, but it wasn't really kind of in line with my path right now, wrong timing, and I was like, ah, whatever, just leave it, go, leave it, be right. So you need to have that filtration process, filtration system. It goes back to the internal stuff first. Right, what is you want to do? What do you want to do it? Do I want to take on another business? Right now, not right time.

Speaker 2: 1:55:35

Be honest about that with yourself, exactly right. I learned that the hard way. I won't do everything because I felt like that's what I should be doing. Right, being honest with yourself. Exactly right. I learned that the hard way. I want to do everything because I felt like that's what I should be doing, right, being honest with yourself. Actually, no, I don't need. I don't need to do that. I don't want to do it because if I try it, I'm not going to be very good at it. I'm probably going to waste time, money, energy and the rest of it and responsibilities from other people, etc. Etc. What does the future of content look like? We talked a lot about podcasts, but how do you see the future of content going in the next couple of years, to 10, 20 years?

Speaker 1: 1:56:10

So the creator economy is obviously growing faster than ever, and when you look at a growing industry, that means there's obviously good and bad actors in it. So people have caught on the fact that you can use content to build businesses, to build authority and influence, and we've seen people like Alex Ramosi and stuff crush it. Obviously there's like Kylie Jenner and stuff as well that crushed it for people that were largely unskilled right and they built huge businesses. Now that's brought more people into the industry. The barriers are lower than ever so lowest barriers to entry. Worst content the industry the barriers are lower than ever so lowest barriers to entry um, worse content than ever being produced. So we're obviously going to get an influx of more people coming in now. That means it's more competitive. It's more difficult to grow, it's more difficult to build authority and influence, but I think there'll be a correction. There'll be a clear out of people. There'll be a new fad, a new like nft fucking wave or whatever. That will clear these people out, right. But if you stay true to like what it is, you want to do so. If you want to have a big impact on photography and using content as a vehicle, you can stay true to that right. I think, generally, though, that industry will keep uh, developing, and there's pros and cons to it. The pros is the fact that I feel that more people are going to do what we're doing, which is more digital businesses going away from traditional jobs, not having to be in offices Like I used to be working at Canary Wharf right. I used to be in investment banking, so I'm familiar with that process, and now I know that I don't need to do that stuff anymore. So there is that opportunity, and the precursor then, or the side effect, is the fact that, yes, it's bad actors.

Speaker 1: 1:57:38

I just had a very interesting conversation with a guy who had a very big agency coaching program he's one of the ogs in the space about a month ago, and I was joking saying we need laws. I was joking we need laws in the online space or in education, and he was like dude, it's here. I was like what? He's kind of just rolled it out that you can't have scarcity and urgency anymore. So before it'd be like, hey, there's only four spots left at two thousand dollars, and now they're going to be filled. It's only available for two for 24 hours. Scarcity and urgency to get you into the program. Now there's laws around that, so there's gonna be more legislation and content what can and can't you do now and where?

Speaker 1: 1:58:13

so now in the uk it started in america, but now it's coming to the uk there's laws around the businesses that you sell products online. So before, like I said to you, my podcast platform is only taking one more person and when a spot is gone, it's gone, and now it's going for $5,000, $10,000. If that's not actually true, companies can be reported and investigated and then fined a lot of money for it. So we'll see more of that stuff legislate and also we're going to see more stuff around information products. So I think we kind of we're in this gray zone for the past five years, whereby a lot of these learning platforms will pop up and teach people like how to make money or how to get into copywriting or how to become a photographer, and as a result of that, everyone was shilling shit, right they? And as a result of that, everyone was shilling shit right, they were shilling a bunch of shitty courses and stuff, and also social proof allowed us to validate were they good or bad, but a lot of social proof was also falsified. So now I think there's going to be more of a restrictive view on that and I think there's going to be a small bit of a blowback from governments.

Speaker 1: 1:59:15

I think, too, about what education is online, because university sentiment is definitely down, especially in America amongst young people, because it's so expensive. So people are seeking out alternative education, which is like these learning platforms, online, and as that grows, that audience grows because that audience is growing very, very fast. Right that every force has an equal opposite effect and for every trend there's a counter trend. So the counter trend on that is really clamping down on those on those online platforms. So I think it'll become stricter and become a lot more difficult to grow, for sure over 10 years, not for now well, and that's good to know, seeing as I'm about to release my course in the next few months, but hopefully.

Speaker 2: 1:59:57

You know, I need to maybe do some more research on that not for now, not for no, but you know what I mean. Right, yeah, the cash and grabs makes total sense.

Speaker 1: 2:00:04

Yeah, drop shipping courses, yeah, all that shit yeah, and it needs it.

Speaker 2: 2:00:08

You know, we, we need that. Um, hey man, it's been a absolute pleasure. I think we could go for hours longer. Um, I kind of wanted to end with a final question and relate it a little bit to more podcasts. The question is what is more important for you, the experience or the final product?

Speaker 1: 2:00:31

Experience 100%. That's what it's all about. Right, if I could do everything in person, I'd do everything in person, but to achieve volume we have to do it remotely sometimes but even that, like the experience of doing that podcast, whether it's remote or in person, you know what.

Speaker 2: 2:00:48

Are you going to value more the end result that's going to get you views, growth, money potentially or are you going to value the actual experience in that experience? I?

Speaker 1: 2:00:58

don't even, I don't even think about the episodes half time when they come out right you know, I just kind of because we're moving on to the next one that's really about those encounters and like I can share with you some like crazy experience I've had. Um, I don't know if you're familiar with luke bellmer, like a big kind of online entrepreneur guy. Um, I met him in singapore recently and one of the best experiences I've nearly ever had, because we were just sitting in like the lobby kind of downstairs here before the podcast and we're just sitting like two guys just chilling, chatting, sharing experiences, getting ready for the podcast, going through that experience. I was getting his feedback after the episode and so on, and those are like invaluable stuff that stick with you forever. Um, I really I met Justin Waller in Dubai recently and one of the best experiences I had was afterwards.

Speaker 1: 2:01:42

We were like this at a table, just kind of almost fried after the experience and he was on the back of a few episodes and we were just sitting there just talking, just talking shit right, and just relaxing, decompressing, and that experience, I think, is like is what I seek so much and that's what I want other people to seek too, because how much of the internet now is just, you know, random messages, random auto responses that no one sees, right, or even messaging your best mates is not as intimate as it used to be, and we're not even calling people anymore, right? It's less video time than ever, so we need to bring back that core, core communication Connect connection and conversation for sure.

Speaker 2: 2:02:25

What is your one tip? You can leave us for those three major pillars in your life. You're obviously a healthy guy. We didn't even talk about your background in in sports, bodybuilding, but obviously just general health, wealth, relationships.

Speaker 1: 2:02:38

Give us a, give us a tip from each, from each of them for wealth a formal education will make you a living, self-education will make you killing. And then for for relationships. I think you need to like take a closer look internally what you want first, before you go like seeking externally. That's why people rush into relationships. Like you know, my my partner, elise, like we found each other because we bought a very common um interest, so it became very natural for us to be together, been together for like four or five years, soon to be, soon to be engaged, hopefully if everything goes well.

Speaker 1: 2:03:18

and then for health, I think the best way to stay in shape is to not get out of shape. I think a lot of guys will struggle to get in shape and out of shape and so on. Just stay in shape, consistently stay in shape. Instead of going from 9 out of 10 to 1 out of 10, just stay at a 6 all year round.

Speaker 2: 2:03:34

I love a good 6.

Speaker 1: 2:03:36

I can live a 6 all the time Just stay in there, but the reality is that people will blow it and go down to the one and mine and so on. Right, and that's how you know, as you mentioned you, you know you're in your 40s.

Speaker 1: 2:03:49

Right now it's 41 insane condition. But like your health, your longevity, the way you show up, the way you can even interact in the conversation, most guys your age are not like that. Right, you're mentally sharp, I can tell straight away, right? Um, you're very, very sharp mentally. And yeah, that's that's the best kind of piece of piece of advice. Be honest. And the more you kind of get involved with health, the more you want to try to improve it. So for me it was obviously bodybuilding, and then it was like fitness, and then it was more like longevity, and now it's like diet, and then my diet's like super optimized and I have like a bunch of coaches and shit and it's probably a little bit too optimized, but at the same time it's asymmetrical. Right, you stack a good habit and then you let it return asymmetrically. Obviously the opposite is also true when you start going the wrong way and drinking too much and having a few more beers and bad food and so on, and that's how you don't look like this at 41, right, I've done it.

Speaker 2: 2:04:38

Well, I mean, I know I've done it when I was your age. I was like aesthetics. I just, you know I was pretty well built. I was, you know, I was in good shape Up here, very bad shape and probably internally not in the best shape either. As I got older, you know, the priorities completely shifted. It's like I'm okay being, you know, maybe a little overweight or not in the, not in the shape I would love to be in, but I'd much rather be like that and internally at least fit, energetic, active, you know, not riddled with diseases, not tired getting out of bed every morning, just having that kind of physical condition at my much rather have. Now it's about longevity and now it's then. You know, I recently talked to fee my wife. She is obsessed in a good way, with mental health and just how a brain works and how your diet can literally dictate pretty much everything, everything you know,

Speaker 2: 2:05:29

so you know, starting from those um fundamentals, what's your diet like? Uh, when I'm in bali, it's, it's fantastic. We, we went vegan about um crikey a year, six months ago, a year ago. I mean, I'm not 100% vegan, I have the odd bit of meat, but, um, you know, generally speaking, we, we made that decision. Uh fee has my wife, she has uh gluten intolerance. So we we kind of have to share that burden sometimes, unless we actually never, I really. But we said we, it was just more thought, more mindfulness about it. So my diet here is great because barley is just so easy to eat healthy food.

Speaker 2: 2:06:11

It tastes amazing, it's. There's so many options, it's all fresh, like super fresh, and it arrives on a bike fucking brilliant yeah, when.

Speaker 2: 2:06:20

I travel with work. It's the opposite. I find it really difficult. Jet lag plays a major part. I get down, I get so tired I go for, sometimes go for two weeks without getting more than four hours of sleep a night. So then sleep, then snowballs with diet and diet, snowballs with sleep. So the worse I eat, the less sleep I'm going to get. The less I, the slower I can recover from jet lagged, jet lag. And of course, the less sleep you get, the more cravings you have for bad food. So it's just like and then I go to the gym less because I can't be bothered, I have any energy and it's just like. Then it's a completely different game. It's one reason why I just want to get out of it. But routine really helps for us and so diet here is, generally speaking, pretty good. We might have one day of the weekend where we're going to have some chocolate and stuff, but generally speaking, six days a week exercise.

Speaker 2: 2:07:05

But this is going back to what I was talking about earlier. I think about diet every day because I think I eat really well and when I don't see results whether it's a little bit off the belt size or it's, you know I should be feeling more energetic or whatever. I don't look to my exercise because I've had how old am I now? I've had 25 years of just experience and I feel like I know what. I know what I'm doing in the gym I own some gyms in Hong Kong Like I've had experience with those people that really know. So I I'm kind of like I'm 90% sure, I kind of know what I'm doing.

Speaker 2: 2:07:38

When it comes to exercises, diet, I might you know, I've gone through periods of my life where I think I'm eating really healthily and then I will learn something new or a new bit of information comes out. I'm like, oh, for fuck's sake, I've been doing it all wrong, right, and then it's something. And this is my problem with a lot of these podcasts and it still amazes me to this day, to this day, there is not one common narrative or common factual piece of information that everyone in the world agrees on, other than smoking and drinking.

Speaker 2: 2:08:07

Basically, it's obvious, in terms of food, what we put in our bodies. Is it good for us, is it bad for us? And then you go down these rabbit holes.

Speaker 1: 2:08:14

It's like religion one of the people get confused and then they go.

Speaker 2: 2:08:18

I'm just going to have a fucking McDonald's. It's cheap and it's easy.

Speaker 1: 2:08:21

So my we'll finish up on this point. But my whole idea about diet is anti-diet. Vegan, carnivore, animal based, keto, paleo is better than no diet. So a lot of the people that go from having no diet whatsoever to a specific diet are much better off. So take Elise McGurk, for instance. She had no diet effectively, she was vegan, but she didn't have a concrete diet. We kind of consolidated her diet to be much more fixed on vegan food and then her transformation mentally, physically, all transformed right. So the whole idea there is. It went from no diet to a fixed diet. It's the same when anyone. That's why people get so entrenched in their thoughts, because they go from having a standard american diet to paleo or whatever. Of course it's better. You were just eating hamburgers for the past six years, right. So when you stop eating hamburgers, it's better.

Speaker 1: 2:09:08

And for me, just like on like a personal note, I had like a traditional bodybuilding diet for years and that is optimized for aesthetics for sure, uh, and it's also good for like working stuff, but it's not the best best. So that's when I dropped out all carbs recently, went completely like zero carbs for the past couple of months and it's actually been a big increase focus, productivity, everything. But the reason why I'm kind of behind that is because I had benchmarked off a pro bodybuilding diet for 14 years. So the changes that I'm making are not 100% for aesthetic and that's why there's a discrepancy, because not everything is optimized for the result. You got to see what the result is. But my goal is for performance recording and in my business. So that's where I can have a better performance effectively and we could sit for two more hours.

Speaker 2: 2:09:52

Well, let's just quickly dive into this very quickly for a few minutes. What is a go-to recipe? Excuse the pun, but go-to recipe for you, for an average person, 30 years old, looking to just gain a bit more energy, sleep a little bit better, just generally be a bit healthy. I don't know, we don't like to talk in generics all the time, but just you know the majority of people out there hitting the thirties and early forties like, okay, I, just, I, just I don't want to be fat. I want more clarity, I want more energy. What is your go-to daily?

Speaker 1: 2:10:25

diet. So my everything that I do is optimize our own focus. So focus is the most important asset that we have. It's the only thing we can control in our life, so it's all focused around focus. So how can I sit at my desk, do my work for as long as possible, basically in a clear thought, and have at least some of the stress and anxiety so to do that? That's where an animal-based diet for me was super effective. So animal-based is actually just red meat and fruit. So my kind of stack would be like raw eggs in the morning, like five raw eggs in the morning, mango, banana, as much as I want, basically on like that kind of setup. But that would be after about 16, 17 hours of fasting. So about 10 am I'd have five raw eggs, banana, maybe a mango, and then I'd train After I train. So my first work block.

Speaker 2: 2:11:06

You train after you eat, yeah.

Speaker 1: 2:11:08

So my first work block will be from 6 am to 10. And I'll eat at 10. And then I'll get back at like 12. I initially because the food that I'm eating is like anti-inflammatory. It's not like having these cravings right.

Speaker 1: 2:11:22

So I can work for a little bit. I probably work for a bit more, and then that's when I would have like a rib eye steak, so fatty rib eye steak three more eggs, so I'm up to eight eggs at this point and I'd have around half a kilo of liver and a kilo of bone marrow. So this would be at like one o'clock, two o'clock, so that's around let's say that's about Wait, this is normal.

Speaker 2: 2:11:43

This is just normal for you at the moment.

Speaker 1: 2:11:44

Yeah, that's what I did beforehand. So that's about so. Rib eye steak around four or five liver burgers, bone marrow burgers between two of them and three or four eggs, and then avocado. Inflammatory yeah, so the more red meat you eat increases inflammation in the joints, but the avocado offsets that, and then that's like 1 pm and then I generally wouldn't need to eat if I didn't want to, because I'm trying to put on more size now at six. I'd have another like ribeye steak. I'd have another like two or three liver burgers a normal a normal normal, an average bloke's not gonna do this right.

Speaker 2: 2:12:19

A guy who works in an office, who has no idea about going to the gym. You asked me. No, I said what's your recipe for people?

Speaker 1: 2:12:26

What would?

Speaker 2: 2:12:27

you say to people coming to you and going right, I just need to lose a bit of weight, maintain healthiness, promote energy, promote focus.

Speaker 1: 2:12:33

So cut out all the heavy carbs and grains, because that's what's causing you to have the energy spikes and drops. So I used to have pasta bread rice, pasta bread rice, and then it comes from grain, and the reason why is because I used to have all these peaks and troughs in my energy and I used to think it was tired. It wasn't, it was just because of the carbs I was eating. Right, and some of Like oats actually isn't glycemic. But it's not the fact that there's something wrong with it. It's the fact that it causes an energy spike and decline. So the easiest way is to remove that.

Speaker 2: 2:13:05

Okay, before we even start breakfast. I'm confused, Okay, so let's just take a step back.

Speaker 1: 2:13:08

right, we're not eating like a lot of starchy carbs, like grains. The only carbs that I'm getting energy from is the fruit.

Speaker 1: 2:13:15

Okay, so bananas, mango, if you're basically okay uh, look, yeah, like anything that's from the floor, right, anything that's organic from the floor, now, obviously no pesticides and that kind of shit, right, but for the most part, a lot of stuff is okay. And then the meat that I'm eating then is just red meat, effectively, and adding in as much um fruit as I want around there. So the reason why this is effective is because you can almost eat towards satiety. So as much as you need, basically, and that will vary. And the reason why I say as much as you want is because there's only so many bananas in the world you want to eat, right, whereas if you had that unlimited review with regular food, you can keep eating the pasta, right, got it? And there's small bits of desires in the pasta too. That makes you want to eat more and I don't know what I leave in for that exact reason. So I'll give you a kind of funny example I drink like a lot of raw milk, right, and I had to stop getting it.

Speaker 1: 2:14:05

The reason why I had to stop getting it is because it came in liters, and every time I get a liter, I would drink a full liter in a day because I just it's my brain. So I have to finish what I start right. And the reason why that wasn't effective is because there's loads of carbs and milk. So I was having like 100 fucking 100 grams of carbs from the milk alone and I was exhausted and I was like, hey, my diet's meant to be around no carb, low carb, and now I'm eating more than like two bowls of pasta in milk a day, so I had to cut it.

Speaker 1: 2:14:33

Basically, so it's just about what works for your body and that's why no one diet works yeah but just when I compare, when I was traditional bodybuilding and man, when I was on the peak bodybuilding level, I was having like nine or ten bowls of rice a day, effectively to put on size, six thousand calories a day. Five foot, five foot, seven on a good day, right so, and I was up like 85 kilos, 90 kilos and now you know below I'd love to be down at 90 kilos.

Speaker 1: 2:14:59

Man, oh, trust me, the way, with the second you drop grains, the second they're going to start falling off you. And also activity, right Just before we finish up on this, is the fact that you can only you can't outwork a bad diet. But also, at the same point, is that when your diet is dialed in, you need to start getting the small levers running.

Speaker 2: 2:15:14

So I walk a ton I'm like the beach every day, I'm very conscious. Now that we've been sat here for so long, it's like, okay, we need to get up now yeah, and I walk a ton in Bali on the beaches.

Speaker 1: 2:15:25

I walk in the gym.

Speaker 2: 2:15:26

I remember actually heard this before I hate it when people sit down between sets.

Speaker 1: 2:15:30

Yeah, I walk in the gym. It actually increases my activity, and then I'm obviously training a week roughly. Um yeah, just walking a dog do you have?

Speaker 2: 2:15:39

uh, we haven't talked about kind of your love of animals and dogs, but obviously, at least for those that don't know, your girlfriend runs a. I'm actually not going to talk too much about that because I know there's controversy with expats doing that at the moment but, um, with with dogs, you obviously kind of have a lot of affinity with dogs and obviously you're an animal lover. You're wearing a dog papa cap, but that must mean you must, you know, have a an emotive connection with animals. Do you find that that's difficult for you when you're eating meat? And is there an issue there or is there any suggestion? Because a lot of people don't eat meat purely from ethical considerations, and then the other kind of potential pros of it um kind of come alongside it.

Speaker 1: 2:16:25

But, yeah, us, us, for example, we, you know we stopped eating meat because we, we just don't like the, the cruelty that a lot of these animals go through, for sure, but based on what we need to put in our body yeah, for me it was um, I cut out like pork initially, like all the pig meat and stuff, didn't want anything to do with it, even like chicken now because a lot of chicken meat and I used to eat chicken for years I stopped eating chicken because a lot of chickens are fed grain. They're not grass fed. So, one, the chicken actually isn't healthy for you. And two, like I've literally had chickens in my house right Like I don't really want to be completely eating them. But for me it's more like the training and obviously the muscle that I've been building for so many years and working towards, which is why I like stick to like just red meat.

Speaker 2: 2:17:08

Now I know obviously there's like that ethical or the environmental impact of that and the ethical impact of that, but that's why it's like just centered around that versus like picking every single thing that I could be eating right, yeah, you, I mean, you know I'm not perfect at all, in any stretch of the imagination, but I think, as long if all of us did our little bit yeah, a little bit, by giving up one type of meat, maybe for sure, right, and the world would be a different place and you even see it being factory farmed and everything right.

Speaker 2: 2:17:35

That's stuff that I've seen people think chickens are healthy, eggs are healthy. When you actually see how they're produced and you go to these farms you're like holy shit, all the diseases plus all the antibiotics they're pumped with. I mean it is scary, especially in the US, right, exactly. And then you think about the politics of it and the economics of it and who's controlled by it, where the money's come from. It's fucking scary and I don't know what I need to do with it.

Speaker 1: 2:17:58

So I know we've tried to wrap up like a thousand times, but when I was in America at Christmas I was like, okay, the only place I can get food is Whole Foods, because everything else is shit right, whole Foods is super expensive. I remember I got like.

Speaker 1: 2:18:10

I got like meat for maybe like two days of what I would eat, right, and it was just chicken as well, and it cost like I would say $200 for two days worth of groceries and I was like, oh fuck it, it's fine. I came back anyway, threw the chicken on the pan and it just sizzled down.

Speaker 1: 2:18:26

And I got one kilo of chicken and I think if I weighed it before it was even cooked, after the sizzle came off, the antibiotics in the water, I say it was around 150 grams, 200 grams, I say I lost 90% of it that was injected. Now that was ten dollars chicken and what's so funny is they're so sneaky in like those stores is that they show you how much it is per hundred grams. Yeah, so it was like four dollars per hundred grams and I was like, oh god, that's fine.

Speaker 1: 2:18:49

I picked it up, yeah, and it was honestly, honestly like 30 40 dollars for the chicken I was getting, um, and it's all shit, whereas, again, I completely agree with you, you don't know where it comes from, but the best thing you can do is probably go to like the best meat places and like just pay the extra bit. So I think my my food cost me roughly around $40 a day, which is a lot. It's a lot of money for just food, right, but it's because I'm trying to get them from the best places.

Speaker 2: 2:19:13

Well, and this is why it's not always on the individual, it's always there for you. Like people can't afford that. A lot of the majority of the world can't afford to to pay for that, so they have to go with the cheaper option and therefore, most most frequently, the unhealthy option and that screws your brain. That's controlled by the, the, the industry conglomerates and the billionaires and these companies that control the four or five companies that control the meat trade in the? U Wait for this.

Speaker 1: 2:19:40

So in America if you go to get food in the morning before 8am, nothing is open apart from Taco Bell, chick-fil-a, burger King and a few other places. The provider of those raw materials is the same company. They just go run around and they control a monopoly of all the big companies. People think, oh, talk about us competing with Chick-fil-A?

Speaker 1: 2:20:04

No, no no Same provider, and that's sub 8am. So when I was doing our tour of New York, because my jet lag was so bad, I'd go to bed at 9am and 9pm and I'd wake up at 1. So I wouldn't have been eating from 1am to like 8 and that was like the middle of the day for me, right, I was so 7-Eleven and all these convenience stores. Nothing was open, oh okay, so from 1am to In Manhattan.

Speaker 2: 2:20:25

Only these places, Sorry. Only these places, right.

Speaker 1: 2:20:27

Sorry, so only these places. So I had to wait until like 8am every single morning, or like 9 or 10am to get anything half decent, and the only place that was half decent, which half decent, which isn't actually half decent, is.

Speaker 2: 2:20:40

Chipotle. Yeah, every time, mate. I'm going to Manhattan on Sunday, I know what's going to happen. I'm going to wake up in the middle of the night, nothing's open. I'll be starving, so I have to. You know, it's just an excuse. I can prepare, I can bring food with me.

Speaker 2: 2:20:52

Snacks, Healthy stuff, Fruit. There's no excuse. I know the options that are given to you is like going up driving the motorway in the UK. You stop at any service station, right? What have you got? All your fast food chains. You've got your Subways McDonald's, Burger Kings, Starbucks. That's fast food.

Speaker 2: 2:21:10

I don't care what people say All of that stuff, and then you've got maybe an M&S and a WH Smith. What do they sell at M&S and WH Smith? Crisps, chocolate sandwiches. That is it. So your choices between going from somewhere to, let's say, you're driving the length of the country. This is just England. Let alone the US and bigger countries. Like you're doing a four hour drive and you have to stop and you have to eat or you have to prepare.

Speaker 1: 2:21:31

I'd love to get your thoughts on this. I know we're trying to finish like a billion times, but the food so I don't need to know this you know, when you get off a plane and if you ever weigh yourself, you get off a plane you have a lot of inflammation your feet swell right and you weigh roughly a kilo more above right.

Speaker 1: 2:21:54

People think, oh, like, it's like the flight and that's a holding, a retention of water. But when you eat on a plane, the compression in the cabin compression doesn't go through your digestion properly because you don't walk around, it doesn't digest properly so effectively. What you should actually be doing on planes is actually fasting so fast before, fast after and then, when you land, eat your first meal. But most people fill up in the cabin, basically Free food, yeah, free food, and then they like can't go to the bathroom to constipate and so on afterwards for days, days and days and days afterwards, whereas what you should be doing is actually just fasting during that period.

Speaker 2: 2:22:29

Um, and that's actually needs a huge issues with, uh well, passengers, but I can imagine the staff too, right yeah, yeah, I I've actually got to a point where, if I'm flying myself, I barely, and if I do, it's a salad or it's something really light, because I, when I first started flying, I was getting carried away with kind of the the, the glamor of it, literally have any meal you wanted.

Speaker 1: 2:22:48

you know lobsters and just anything right?

Speaker 2: 2:22:51

Oh, I love it and then I'll just feel absolutely shit. I've got to fly a plane. Like, what am I doing? The only thing that was missing was alcohol. Of course I never touched that on the flight.

Speaker 2: 2:23:01

But you know, when you're in, let's say, business class and you have the luxury of flying business class and you've got a three-course meal and you've got as much alcohol as you want, the temptations, that's when it is kind of on the individual to Do you fast much no.

Speaker 2: 2:23:22

So my normal diet in the morning is well, most of the time in Bali, when my routine is get up 6, 6.30, have time with the dogs, have a coffee because I'm obsessed with coffee, addicted to coffee water, loads of water journal, then it's workout time. Then after workout I have a shake. So it's going to be about 9 o'clock and I'll have a protein shake that will see me through to like 12 o'clock where I'll have my first meal. That's generally. But you know the to get my, because I don't really eat meat, to get my protein intake I have. You know, I've kind of rely on protein shakes because maybe I'm lazy, maybe I don't order enough food, maybe I haven't educated myself enough what kind of you know plant food I can have that's going to you need to eat so much and I need.

Speaker 1: 2:24:04

The volume is crazy, right. So I have to rely on the supplement. Digestion that's the problem, right. The more if you had lots of like tofu or tempeh, that would screw your digestion to get that minor. If you need a 200 pound worth of, protein right, that would wreck it 200 grams.

Speaker 1: 2:24:19

Sorry, sorry, but the problem with the shakes is that it's just the consistency, the quality of the shake, right, so what the brand is, and so on. Right, hewlett's good, but again it's diminishing returns, being like if you had four scoops a day or five scoops a day or six scoops a day. We should be getting that regular food sources right and, of course, like if it's an ethical thing, we need to find substitutes around it. But I think first thing is like how can we hit that threshold? And then how can we replace with the most natural forms, because that's the whole point, like we don't need supplements if we can get it naturally. But again, even at whatever diet, there's some supplements you want to take and so on. Just depends. It just depends on the goal as well at the same time. But it's important, right? Like, as you said, you're in your 40s. Muscle density is incredibly important as you get older.

Speaker 2: 2:25:05

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 2:25:06

Where is it going? But even for your brain and even, like, for your mental acuity, that's really, really important, right? And even like you read I know you're not interested in reading, but building that into your framework Like want to be, I want to be doing ultras when I'm like 60, 70, that's stuff that I want to be doing, you know? Uh, just constantly pushing the threshold, um and yeah, that's kind of it.

Speaker 2: 2:25:29

Basically, I send it down your, your exciting future of doing ultras at 60 and 70 may. It's been an absolute pleasure. Darren, where can we find you? I can people go and search for you, your, your podcasts, as well as your agency new businesses that people can reach out to you just search downly on google, and if you can't find me, I didn't do a good enough job. Put it that way okay, so they don't deserve to find you. Thank you, man, cheers mate this is great yeah.