Chris Williamson 0:00
What I realised there was that there are particular modes of existing that we get in our early 20s, many of which are kind of the lowest common denominator. limbic hijack route to success that we can find, right? Like quite a base transactional, transient route to success. As you grow up a little bit more you realise, hang on, perhaps this isn't serving me quite in as much of a holistic broad view as I want. That's what I saw with fitness. But I think you see with specifically guys, maybe with girls as well, the menopause is someone realising that as you get toward the end of your 20s, the values that you had when you were younger, aren't serving you.
Ali Abdaal 0:35
Hello, and welcome to deep dive the podcast that delves into the minds of entrepreneurs, creators and other inspiring people to uncover their journeys towards finding joy and fulfilment at work and in life. My name is Ali and in each episode, I chat to my guests about the philosophies, strategies and tools that have helped them along the path to living a life of happiness and meaning. And this week's episode of Deep Dive, I sit down for a chat with my friend Chris Williamson. Chris is a club promoter TEDx speaker, YouTuber and podcaster. His podcast modern wisdom shares life lessons from the smartest people on the planet, including the likes of Jordan Peterson, Ryan Holiday and James clear, and was born out of Chris's curiosity for self discovery. And after his existential crisis, after appearing on the TV show love Island
Chris Williamson 1:16
while I was on love Island, I got to observe people that were that person, the pinnacle party boy, right, because I was playing this role. I thought I was but it kind of turned out that I wasn't really and I had this fatal dose of contrast is I lived in a villa with no distractions for four weeks, watching these people, and being with them, but really still feeling on the outside.
Ali Abdaal 1:38
In our conversation, me and Chris discuss how he shed the party boy persona in favour of intellect and meaning. Before discussing topics like masculinity, role models and the dating market.
Chris Williamson 1:47
Almost two thirds of women say that they would not be in a relationship with a man who is less educated, less wealthy and lower in status than them.
Ali Abdaal 1:53
So please feel free to grab a cup of tea and enjoy the conversation. Chris! Welcome to welcome to the podcast. How you doing?
Chris Williamson 1:59
My pleasure, man. Thanks for having me.
Ali Abdaal 2:01
So we've spoken a few times. I think I was on your podcast maybe a year or two ago saw your guy be I think yeah, and then we kind of kept in touch ever since. But one thing I didn't realise when we were doing research for this, I just did not know anything about your former life as a professional party boy. Yeah. And I saw that that's, that's like the third thing on your Twitter, you've got YouTuber podcaster and preferred former professional party boy. Yeah. And I feel like you and I have a few things in common on the YouTuber and podcaster front. But I know literally nothing about the world of a professional lot. Okay, I wonder if you can, like, you want professional addley I could have sworn I want. I wanted to be a professional that which is why I ended up making YouTube videos about productivity, but it kind of took me in a different direction. What was what was your life growing up? And like what was the kind of professional party boy stuff that you used to do back in the day like pre 2015.
Chris Williamson 2:47
Cool. So I'm a club promoter by trade, I still own one of the biggest events companies in the UK called voodoo events. I've run about 1000 nightclubs, events in my entire life. I've seen a million people go in and out of them. So I've met about a million people in my life stood on the front door of nightclubs between 10pm and three in the morning, which is a fascinating insight into human nature. Because when people are their inhibitions have gone and they've had a little bit to drink. It's a pretty interesting petri dish for things to occur. And that happened at uni. So I was skint at uni, I started flyering and I was like the best flyer then I was the best holes flyer then I was the best Junior event manager and I picked up a franchise when I was 19. That was called carnage, which was a t shirt back roll. Like anyone who's probably 30 or older will remember it wore a t shirt and you ticked off tasks on the back as you went around different bars. So we did really well with that. And then I started doing weekly club nights and then you pick up more club nights and then you get managers and then you get guests listed. And now we have a bar in Leeds six nights a week in Leeds four nights a week in Newcastle, we've got over 1000 staff, we have a shots company that do shot girls, and sorry, what? So shot girls, girls who go around and say girls, so they sell shots. Okay, so you want a yoga bomb, but you can't be bothered to go to the bar? Yeah, good looking girls go around and sell shots to people that can't be asked to leave the dance floor. Yep, they charge a little bit of a premium, we take the premium and pay the girls a little bit of a cut. So we have a bunch of different sort of nightlife related businesses. And that was the formative years, man, that was until 2017 2018. That was the bulk of what I did.
Ali Abdaal 4:22
So. Okay, so I think I think this is an interesting kind of divergent is sort of divergence of our paths. Because when I was at uni, and I was like, I need to make money, I decided to make websites. Whereas when you were at uni, and you need to make money decided to so how does that work? Do you just like give fliers to students? And like how, while you're at uni, TWICE, TWICE? Yes, in front of you. You are precisely the sort of student I hate. You are precisely the sort of one No, I need someone who is desperately lonely and wants to go out on a night out three or four nights a week with their friends got it.
It's a very interesting way to look at marketing because what you're Playing off the back of his mimetic desire, status. And Cool, okay, what makes something cool is really, really difficult to define. So what we try and do as event promoters is we create brands. For instance, wiki we want to be there is this sort of pastel and pink flamingos, very girly sort of girl power, but it's a bit retro and chic as well. So we came up with Paradiso, which is this flamingo, neon sign. And that was a Friday that we launched, it's all girly. Girls get pink shots, and there's different types of music and stuff. And we've dressed the venue in pink. Okay, that creates a image to market. Yep, we put DJs on the right, we price it correctly, we deal with the venue. That's the sort of appropriate location for this. And then people hopefully come and then once you've got them, your network to them, you get networkers guestlist is that go and say, Hey, you coming out tonight? They build up their networks, they make a commission on the people that come in. Oh, it's a pretty sophisticated when you look at a nightclub and go, it's just people getting drunk in a room to music. It's like, what's going on behind the scenes? Yeah. And
so were you one of the kind of networkers originally Yes. Okay. So you would kind of make friends with because like, on my, on my college Facebook page, there'll be a guy. His his name was Sam, Sam, Sam Miller, I think and people used to call him the spam bellow, because he would just go around like spamming people, right? Hey, coming
out. He's one. So he would be one of mine. He would be one of the little agents that we send out into the world. But yeah, I mean, the guys make good money. And they have a sense of belonging and they can move their way up. So I mean, we've got full time members of staff now we've got guys that do placement years have come and done graduate stuff with us. Yeah. And yeah, it's it's fun, man. It's really good fun.
So what were you like in school to end up as that being your side hustle rather than me ending up as website design being my side hustle,
I was probably a lot more like you in school than you think. Really? Oh, yeah.
I'm imagining you're a professional Latin School and all the football teams, all the girls interested in that kind of No,
no, no, no, very much a late bloomer. So school was I played cricket quite a high level. And for a long time, throughout pretty much all of school. I went to a state school state primary state stopped in Sixth Form College, Stockton being a town that was only famous for having the highest teen pregnancy rating in the UK. And it recently lost that so it's not even the best that that anymore. And yet very much unpopular kid in school, like wildly unpopular, okay, really, on the outside looking in didn't really fit into any particular groups. Hey,
that was not like me. For the record. Okay. Okay.
And then I think that what that one of the advantages it gave me was, when I came to be a club promoter, when you're on the outside looking in, you can see how groups colour, that's it. And it means that you can actually look at what it is that they want from different things. And you can observe group dynamics for markets in slightly different ways. Okay, so what we're manipulating as club promoters, is group dynamics, cool trends, how to bring people together, okay. And it's, I think it's far easier to do that from the outside than from the inside. If you look at most top top level club promoters, guys that are of my level, they are not people directly in the middle of the popularity group. They're ones that are slightly actually on the outside. Because I think it gives them a bit more perspective. Okay.
So as a club promoter, you figure out like who the cool kids are, you get them to come to your nightclub, you get them to build hype around it, the cool kids are going to parody so therefore, the slightly less cool kids are like, we want to be like the cool kids are going to parody Cisely
you can be cool, promote sick. Okay.
So you started off doing this is a side hustle, how did things like escalate beyond that point to where it were where you want to.
So we just launched a Saturday night in Newcastle that was very, very successful, we timed it correctly with the market. And that became one of the biggest events in the country. It was just as God sure had started. So the first ever episode of God show season one, episode one, they're in Vudu, which was a Saturday night. And we run that for six or seven years probably did quarter of a million people through that one event in that time, maybe more. And that gave us a foundation that we could build on top of we could recruit managers, we learned our processes. So we've very much structured and made a procedure out of clip promo as best we could to try and have a formula for how you release an event how you do pre build up to things. And yeah, that informs a lot of the things that I do now. So to give you an example, whenever I release anything to do with my podcast, or a new lead magnet or courses that I do, I take huge advantage of long lead times and teaser campaigns, because that is my click promotion heritage right showing through. I know for a fact that if we are teleological beings, right, we look forward to something occurring, and we actually enjoy the anticipation often a lot more than we enjoy the event itself. So by having I'm releasing a new lead magnet in Seven days time, it's the modern wisdom reading list. Here's a countdown timer on Instagram. Here's some teaser pages of it coming out. This is why people have asked me to do it. This is what it's gonna look like, but you can't get it yet. This is what it's gonna be like. And it's just different things maybe I'll talk about on the podcast, maybe I'll bring it up on Instagram, maybe I'll release a little bit on Twitter. And then on that day, you get, I think that you end up with a overclocked amount of demand and interest, because people have just been like, waiting in the wings for it. We do the same thing with club nights release a teaser video for the teaser video, then release a teaser video, then we do a countdown, then we finally get the event. Yeah. And you turn it outside. And there's 2000 people because they've just they're just curious about what's going on here. Why is this happening? So yeah, long drawn out teaser campaigns is a great hack.
Interesting. So when you say we put on like a club night, like what is what is the the structure of this organisation look like? Cool. So myself and my business partner, Darren? Yep.
There's two partners that are the parent company that work with us in Leeds, Matt and Dave. Yep, below us. We have about 12 managers. Below them. They're about four or five trainee SAS Junior managers. And below them there's about 500 guestlist staff. So each manager has a team and they similar to a sales team. They recruit them they find them so they'll be on a night out and they'll see some girl that's really hot or some guy that's really cool. Or some like girl that's got chat or whatever it might be Yep, they'll say Hey, why are you in our event? You should be working for us and then you get in for free and you get to drink free and you get to earn money. Do you want to come work for us? They usually sometimes they say yes they bring them on board and then that person starts bringing their friends down guess Lister makes commission from their friends attending manager makes commission from all of their teams commissions. Yeah. And then we take the door the door entry money over the top,
we're going to take a very quick break to introduce our sponsor brilliant brilliant is a fantastic online platform for learning maths, science and computer science with interactive and engaging courses that I've been using for many years. But to be honest, I wish I'd had the lessons and Master Hand when I was preparing for my GMAT when applying to medical school. A lot of the time when we're taught maths at school, the focus is on empty memorization formulas that we can apply in our exams. But the great thing about brilliant is that courses teach you how to actually understand concepts from a first principles approach and develop the intuition to solve problems. Also, their computer science series is absolutely sick. They've got some fantastic courses on algorithms on learning to programme with Python, they've got a whole series about cryptocurrency and understanding exactly how things like Bitcoin work from the ground up, which is genuinely fascinating. So if you want to give their lessons in maths or try or even science or computer science, then head over to brilliant.org forward slash deep dive, and the first 200 people to sign up via that link will get 20% of the annual subscription to the website. So thank you so much brilliant for sponsoring this episode. So you see you're managing a pretty large team. Yeah, it's huge. While distributed, distributed as an you've got everybody is accountable to someone and no one's team is actually that massive. So the largest single amount of responsibility that any one person will have, yep, will probably be about 30 to 40 people. And that would be one of the managers looking after a big team of guest services. But they don't need MANAGING EVERYDAY.
Are you coming out tonight? Have you sent your guest list in? You did shit last week? You did? Well, last week, you won an award his bottle of vodka,
whatever. Nice. Like if you're if you're this sort of professional networker professional party, boy, do you form like real friendships through that? Or like how? How does the social dynamics of your personal life work?
When do you end up with transactional friendships from doing this? Yeah, absolutely. But you know, the ones that are and people know why you're there as well. Okay, you transcend the friendships, especially with the people that you work with. So we have a voodoo old boys group, which is the guys that have graduated and moved on. Some of them are being finance people out in China now or some of them are running stuff in London or Manchester. And we all keep together and we bond really, really closely. So my business partner wedding 50% Plus, of the people that were there were people from nightlife. Mostly they were the ones that we'd worked with, there is very much of them and us title, kind of like a what's it called in con artistry is like a mark and a con or something. There's the marks that the people that are going out, and sometimes you make good friends with those people, for the most part, you bond with the people that you work with, okay, but those friendships, you know, you're going through really intense experiences together if you'd stand on the door of an event and run 2000 people trying to fit in on Halloween. So we got Halloween coming up 2000 people trying to get into a venue and it will be chaos. And people are drunk people are throwing up people are having fights. There's someone spilled something on the floor, some girls fallen over and twisted her ankle, we need to get whatever whatever. It's a really strong bonding experience with some people. So you end up with a small, tight knit group of friends. And then a very, very sort of disparate group of acquaintances.
Interesting. I guess it's sort of like how as a YouTuber, you're not really friends with the audience. You're friends with other other YouTubers. Precisely,
precisely correct. And
there is this kind of parasocial relationship between the audience and the YouTuber were the same. Both parties know it's somewhat transactional, but we both know
what this is. Yeah, okay.
That's interesting. Okay. So how was he spent three years at uni? Five, five years, he
did a bachelor's with a year in industry, which was doing club promo for ourselves. We wrote ourselves a recommendation letter and got awarded placement students of the year off our own letter. Then went to do my master's in international marketing. The reason I did that was because I was told that it would be the easiest Master's to do, because it was mostly my Bachelor's was bundled into another year. I paid for that in cash. So I went and paid 8000 1 million in cash. Oh, because I'd saved up this money from running club notes. Yeah, and then paid cash to the ladies. And they said that the safes only rated for 500 pounds. I was like, well, the bank still open, you can go I'm not taking it back. You've got it. So that felt quite nice. I was able to self fund my own masters from running events that that was like really, really satisfying to me. And then five years at uni, take me out love Island, YouTube. Yeah.
Okay. What was it? So take me out was your first foray for Ava? And yeah, how did that happen? And what is take me out for, for the uninitiated,
it's a modern day version of blind date. It's a very fluffy dating show here in the UK, a guy walks out on stage, there are 20 Girls sat behind stood behind podiums, and they can keep their light on, which is I'm interested or they can turn the light off, which is he's not for me. And you go through different rounds where you expose different pieces of information about yourself. So there'll be a VT about your life, there'll be an explanation of what you do for work, and maybe interview one of your friends. And whatever's left at the end, whoever has their lights on, the guy then has the power to choose who he wants to go on a date with. You're then flown off on holiday for a day with the girl and you spend a date dating her. That's all televised as well. And then you decide whether or not you want to keep in touch on art. And then you go home. So it's actually quite the filming things quite condensed. Yeah. But um, that was fun. And I'm so I'm a mental model. I've been alongside club promo and doing YouTube. I've been a model since pretty much I was 18. Okay, and a DJ as well. So it was just anything that was kind of like, it was the archetypal fuck by life. Anything that made me look like a fuck by and would earn me easy cash. That was for me. So
you decide to do the male model thing? And then the the Take Me Out thing about Yep. What if, for example, I got an email saying you want to be on take me out? Actually, I have a few a couple of years ago, I got an by some person messaged me on Instagram saying, Hey, I'm a producer like ITV, something, something something probably one of the legions of them. Would you be interested in? Coming on? Take me out like, sort of Doctor Special Edition. Yeah. And I was like, hell no. Why not? Because it's good question. Why? Because it seems like cringe and scary. And like,
I think you do amazingly well. I think you do phenomenally well, on taking out especially as some of you have to imagine how little time most people have spent in front of a lens. And how poorly most people deal with the pressure of being on camera, which is something that you literally do for a living. If you came downstairs and you understood your positioning, like you know who you are, you know what your offer to the market is overall. And you just leaned into that a little bit more like, Hey, guys, I'm Ali, I came first in Cambridge, this, this and this thing. I'm a tech reviewer, I do this, that and the other. And actually on the side, I can play guitar and you pull the guitar out, you start doing that or you did your freestyle rap. Dude, you've nailed it. I promise you that's, that's gold. That is absolute money.
Okay, but just as you're, as you're describing it just even even the thought of that is filling me with this sort of like, Dread like, you know, I'm kind of sweating. I'm kind of thinking that I don't want to be that guy. I think it's a fear of what other people will think people who I know. And people at large will think of me because they'd be like, Oh my God, what the hell is this? Did you have any of that when you went on it? Were you just like, Screw it. Yeah.
That's a good point. When you do take me out specifically, that's in front of a 400 person live audience, which is really really scary. Doesn't matter that it goes up to about 4 million people on TV you don't think about that. 400 people in the audience that's pretty scary. And also when you come down there's a it's called the love lift. When you come down the love left. That is the most rickety piece of shit that has ever been created. The fact that that's got past health and safety blows my mind. So you're, you're stood on this terrifying contraption as it slowly lowers you to the floor to be judged by a group of 20 girls and watched by a group of 400 people while paddy McGuinness is next to you, the people that don't know paddy McGuinness is like a ex TV guy that now does talk he doesn't he does it
probably seems like I know him because he's a person in articulate the board game and I never know who he is. Like Patty
Look out that to your reference in a culture
like first name something power that like betting company and then like the next one is like a some kind of alcohol. Like, oh, how do we get this? Wow, that would be how I describe it anyway. So yes, how? Yeah, how do you get over that? How did you get over that like Civic? I imagine anyone 99 point 99% of people listening to this, if they imagine themselves on a reality TV show where they're being judged by 20 Girls and broadcaster 4 million people, and 400 live person live audience would think never in a million years. Am I doing that? Yeah. How like, what was different about you your mindset, your approach that made you be like, You know what? This is legit.
This lesson, yeah, isn't as satisfying as it should be. But it's, it happens so much, you just end up doing it. Once you're stood at the top of the lift, and you arrive at the bottom your feet and walking forward, and you go,
but at that point, you will but like the point where it's like, you have to sign up for this thing. And you're kind of visualising you're imagining anything. We just
didn't think about it enough. Okay, and think about the fact that I was going to be in front of, honestly, dude, I think that one of the underrated productivity tools, or life tools that far few people use than should do is YOLO. Just the fact that you can, I'm just going to try this and see what happens. Yep. And just jump feet first and learn to fly on the way down. But I'm, I've been asked to go on this TV show. Am I going to be any good? Am I going to totally blow it? YOLO and then you just do it like that is? It's such an effective route for living a very life. Because you you'll probably be fine. Yeah, you'll almost definitely be fine. Yeah. So just have faith that the future version of you will sort it out. And sure enough, that happens. So yeah, it's a bit nerve wracking before you're going to go on anything at home should I do? I was 24. I was I didn't know anything about breathing techniques. It wasn't meditating. I wasn't doing cold plunges to try and control my parasympathetic balance. I just thought I'll have a Corona and hope for the best. So I had to be backstage. And then before you know it, you're stood in front of girls, and you're talking and you're saying things, and you realise, wow, I didn't totally blow it. Yeah, it was just normal. And I survived and didn't, okay, turn into a puddle of anxiety on the floor. And they go, Oh, I was fine. Maybe I can do something else like that.
You know, it's either a good time or a good story. Correct? Correct. Occasionally, both. So that was that was the Take Me Out career at this point. You're you're you're 24? How what was happening next in your life? And where did love Island come into things?
So that was just pure party by mode, trying to build up the events business.
So at this point, did you start your own events business? This was a we'd started that when we were 22. Okay, so through 23, four years into uni, you were like, You know what, let's do this thing develop properly ourselves. Okay. And he's not your business, but your business partner?
Correct? Yeah. So we've done a little bit of work for other events, companies, previous to that, and dotted around, but it always been me and my business partner, I sat next to him and my first ever seminar, and we're still together. 15 years later, slim got rid of each other. And that has always been the single consistent throughout, which is, again, trying to take give some takeaways beyond YOLO, to this podcast, finding someone that you trust, absolutely 100% implicit. Total trust is such a competitive advantage, I get far more than the 50% of the money that we make that he takes from our split from him. Because I just we know each other inside out and and finding a business partner that's like that, it really makes the solo entrepreneurs, even more impressive to me, because I think God like for you to be able to be that person, all of those decisions, there's no way that I would have been able to do that with our business. So we're running our events, and DJing, a couple of nights per week, I've done the Take Me Out thing, which was just YOLO and clout. And we start launching other events, we pick up more and more networks so that we can branch out, we start to bring in some more managers, we learn to relinquish control, which is something that every young businessman struggles with, yep, you've got this baby that you've built, you understand exactly how it's supposed to work. I know exactly where the inflatable supposed to go. Which railing it's supposed to be tied around and what sort of not Is that supposed to be used for where the cable ties go to put the banners on the barriers that go outside to control the queue? No, no, the cable ties supposed to go on that room not that wrong, because there's a little bit of a crease, you just you know it inside out. And then you need to learn, okay, if I want to scale this business, I need to relinquish this control. And that's very difficult. And we did that more slowly than was optimal. Okay, I held on to control for longer than I should have done. And but over time, we got used to it. We started to bring in more and more guys that we trusted that could come in underneath us. And we started to outsource more and more of that workload. Picked up more nights, more events, more entries per night, more staff, more managers to manage the staff. And you just slowly build and build build over time.
How did you kind of how did you learn to relinquish relinquish control? Was there like book was like a pivotal moment was it?
So this is periods man, I'm a really good avatar for the bro businessman, okay, up until about four years ago. And sometimes, sometimes I think that with the podcast that I do my own wisdom, it does not. It doesn't speak to the person I used to be quite so much because I wasn't reading books. I wasn't bothered about personal development, I was bothered about effectiveness in business. And I was happy to develop my own business strategies. But I was quite just in the moment doing my thing. And there wasn't this sort of meta Cognizant step back to look at it. And, yeah, that's a strategy. So Jordan Peterson was on the show, and he talked about this, about the ability to step back and look at yourself, I can give you the link to put in the show notes if you want. But the ability to step back and look at it is something that I only developed far later in life. And when you're in it, the thinking I am going to let go of this baby, which is mine. It feels like someone's pulling something out of you, like pulling a child away from you. And it's incredibly difficult. But what we realised was if we want to scale and grow the business, I have to learn to do this had I've read Michael Gerber's, the E Myth revisited, that would have been fine. What I didn't, I don't even know that existed, right. And even if I hadn't, had existed, I would have probably been eating Domino's and drinking Budweiser. So I probably wouldn't have been able to focus. So I wasn't in the right place to receive the message, even if I'd seen it. The other thing, so two things, right, that businessmen, young businessmen and women really, really need to remember. The first one is you can relinquish far more control of your business than you think. The second one is you can raise your price far more than you think. Almost everyone is under charging for their product, almost everybody is doing that, because they err on the side of terror. Imposter Syndrome comes through in the way that you market yourself and you put your products out there, you don't think that they're worth as much as they are, because you want to have demand as opposed to profit. Sometimes that's until you can have the equanimity to see it from a bit more perspective. But I was just so terrified of doing it. So yeah, you can outsource far more of the work that you're doing, didn't you think because you're holding on to it too much. And you can raise the price far more than you think. Because you're terrified of people not buying your product
I have I have a lot of conversations with people about those two exact points. When it comes to the the the outsourcing thing when it comes to your usually creators or kind of creative businesses where they were they were the technician, they were doing everything by themselves. And then the thought of outsourcing editing, oh my God, no one can edit like I can. I have my unique style of editing. Therefore kind of the fear of outsourcing it. But every every single person I've spoken to who has managed to outsource editing says, Oh my God, I've freed up 30 hours of my life every single week to be able to make more content or do the things I want to do or spend more time with my friends and family rather than sit on Final Cut. Yes, cutting out pauses and dinars and adding B roll here and there. And on the pricing thing as well, I really had this fear when we first launched our YouTuber Academy. And initially it was going to be like a $200 product self paced, I was like, Alright, I'm not I'm not going to suffer the risk of a single person saying this is not worth it, or that I'm selling snake oil. Therefore, I'm going to overload them with value and charge very, very low, low, basically no money for it. And it was speaking to a few of our mutual friends Tiago forte and David Pearl, who talked me into not having this fear of selling and recognising that actually you can raise the prices, you can do it as more high touch thing, and that provides a specific service to people. It doesn't target everyone. It's not going to target the bulk of your audience. But that's okay. I just feel that that feeling of like oh shit, what are people gonna think when I start charging real money for something? Yeah. Really scary. But serious. So you've you're finishing uni, you're building up this business scaling, what were the what was the motivation there? Was it a kind of money thing, a status thing, a prestige thing? Like why? Why trying to scale a business?
Yeah, good question. So I think for a long time, I found my sense of self worth in success in business. This was probably not having tonnes of success socially. When I was younger, and me wanting to prove to the world that I'm worth something that I can have. People need me that I have monetary success that I have accolade. I have renown prestige status that I'm being I'm sleeping with the right girls that I'm spending time with the right friends. I'm standing on the door of the correct clubs, like these were the things that were giving that were making me feel like I was worth something in the real world. And that was I mean, don't get me wrong, it's pretty satisfied. It's pretty good at satisfying you on a surface level. Okay, and it can go for a fair while and I like rode that until the wheels came off. But then I did love Island and that was when I was 20 t 827. And the same casting director that worked on take me out. also worked on Lavanila did exactly the same thing. Hey, man, I need someone to this new show. Can you come and do a screen test for me? Yeah, sure. Well, and before I knew it, I was in a pair of swim shorts in the back of a Jeep about to go into a bit. That's literally how it worked. Hey, man, can you come in stream screen testing Newcastle, I just wanna ask you some questions. Yeah, whatever mate, like we became friends. I'll do that. And then I had the most thorough sexual health and psychometric evaluation that you've ever seen in your life in Holly street somewhere in London. And then literally before I knew it as, okay, so what is love Island? For the uninitiated, it is kind of like a cross between big brother and the bachelor, the Bachelor in Paradise. If you watch the American version, to dating show, people get thrown into a villa. And there is usually about 14 to 20 Guys and girls, but 10, between 10 and seven of each. And you have half the number of beds that you do people. So everyone has to couple up, you couple up with a partner, and then you swap and then there's eliminations. And there's tasks. And it's all about people that are trying to find love, supposedly. And every so often, there's eliminations, and you get to the end, and then there is a prize for the people that win and 50,000 pounds or something like that. And I was the first person through the doors of season one. So the first ever person through on this particular iteration of the of the series, and that was just another YOLO that right? This will get me clout. This will get me accolade clout clout as in cloud renown status. And I thought it'd be fun free holiday. Okay, good time. Yeah. Well, why not do it? Yeah,
I did. So these days, love Island is like, ridiculously huge. Yeah, at least in the UK, I don't I don't know. But internationally, but the people who are en la vida, and then at the 50,000 is nothing compared to the millions of followers, they'll get on Instagram and nihilists
endless either to work for probably five to 10 years after you've been on if you're on for a couple of
weeks. So what was it like back in the day kind of season one was very different periods.
And they were focusing the first season, they focused on Snapchat a lot. Whereas now it's all Instagram, which was great, because it means you can monetize your Instagram off the back of it. We didn't know if it was going to be like Johnny shore X on the beach, where you're going to be getting drunk every night and going on nights out. Or if it was gonna be like big brother who's going to be tasks, and you're going to have food taken away from you and your sleep pattern was going to be ended up being quite fluffy. But we didn't know that. I also didn't know you can have someone manage your social media while you were inside. So I just had my Instagram locked off. So people could follow me or whatever. But so anyway, very different. Don't get as much attention as you do now. Now, if you're on for as long as I was you would come out with probably one or 2 million followers. And if you can correctly monetize that, that you're sorted. Yeah, it blows my mind. Here's it. Here's the thing. For the people that may have been on Long Island that are watching that we're on season two to three, or after, and we're on for more than a couple of weeks. If you haven't built a business off the back of that and you wanted to. That's a huge problem. Yeah, you had what every marketer, every internet marketer desires, which is free clicks for a long time and a huge amount of ad rank, and just didn't monetize it. But for us, it would I think the person that one came up with 100,000 followers on Instagram, which now even if your name gets mentioned, even if someone says oh, you watch that Ali Abdaal on YouTube, that's that's 100,000. That's 100,000 followers that. So yeah, it was smaller in terms of viewership smaller in terms of footprint digitally. But it was a really interesting experience. Yeah,
what was the experience? Like?
It's actually quite boring, to be honest, because you, all you're allowed to talk about is stuff that's happened in the villa. So you can't actually talk about that mutual friend, you've both got that outside, or that place that you both like to go to to run or to go for coffee, or for almond croissants are whatever, can't talk about that. And they will come over the PA and say Islanders, can you please stop talking about the outside world because they can't publish that content? Because who that's watching the show gives a shit about the fact that mean you both like almond croissants. No one cares. What they care about is the fact that mean you were fighting over Katie, and she totally mugged you off last night, bro. Like, that's what they're bothered about. Okay, so that's what they try and push. They're constantly asking you to create content, and that's fine. They don't finesse or finagle the storylines too much. They try and catalyse them a little bit, but they don't really impose themselves in terms of what's happening. Yep. But it's pretty boring. You've got no friends, no phone, no family, no contact to the outside world, nothing to distract you. No books, no, nothing. It's just you. And some people that are trying to have sex with each other, constantly talking about who's having sex with who? That's it. That's what the show is. And it's it was kind of, I guess it was an interesting thing to watch. But this was the pinnacle of me getting toward the end of my 20s and the guys that are listening may feel this as well. It's what I call the manor pause. Oh, which is toward the end of your 20s if you've grown up living quite a brewery life. What I think a lot of guys find is that the values that served them when they were in their early 20s Maybe 21 are not going to serve them when they're 31 and they realise this quite profoundly sometimes. So you see this I first noticed it with training so guys would do. Body bills body Bill style training because it's the lowest barrier to entry, it gives them confidence, it makes them bigger and more muscular, and it makes them feel attractive. But as they get towards 2829, they realise that they get out of breath going up a set of stairs, and that they can't touch their toes. And they haven't really been that functional. And maybe they get back into playing football with some mates. And they realise that they've just got no cardio, and they're not very functional. So then you see guys that are toward the end of their 20s. They'll go and do CrossFit. Or they'll go do Brazilian jujitsu or fighting or yoga, or girls might go back and do dance that they haven't done since they were a kid, they might start doing ballet again or go and do those
Pilates classes, group Pilates classes spinning. Why realise realised there was that there are particular modes of existing that we get in our early 20s, many of which are kind of the lowest common denominator, limbic hijack route to success that we can find, right? Like quite a base transactional, transient route to success. I want a training methodology that's going to make me look good. I will do the one that makes me look the most good. But does it fulfil you and make you feel good? I don't care if it makes me feel good. I just want to look nice. Yeah. Okay. As you grow up a little bit more you realise, hang on, perhaps this isn't serving me quite in as much of a holistic broad view as I want. That's what I saw with fitness. Well, I think you see with specifically guys, maybe with girls as well, the man Oh, pause is someone realising that as you get toward the end of your 20s, the values that you had when you were younger, aren't serving you. So me realising that the girls that I was sleeping with or the money that I was making, or the club nights that I was running, is that really the highest calling that I have for myself, is the fact that I've been on a reality TV show going to be my crowning achievement. Is this what I'm bringing to the world? Well, you know, the world was pretty bad before he came. But after he left, at least he went unloaded reality TV shows, like come on. So while I was on love Island, I got to observe people that were that person, the pinnacle party boy, right? Because I was playing this role. I thought I was but it kind of turned out that I wasn't really. And I had this fatal dose of contrast is I lived in a villa with no distractions for four weeks, watching these people and being with them, but really still feeling on the outside. So I was out right? There is a problem here. I thought I was this, I thought I was this party going fun loving, extroverted, big name on campus, big dick around town guy. And I'm not to something up here. So after that was when I thought I really need to do some self inquiry and kind of work out. Who am I? What am I values? Why am I here? Now, I feel like because of the proliferation of podcasts, and self development, and personal growth, YouTube and stuff like that, people getting exposed to these sorts of messages at a much younger age. But it took me until I was 27. For me to actually really think probably need to work out, like who I am and that and then got to coming out of love Island and the final night, came out after about a month looked up at the sky in the south coast of Majorca, which is one of the astronomy spots of the world. Low light pollution, high visibility, no moon and I saw the full Milky Way for the first time. And that was quite profound experience because I've been in this really intense emotional thing. And I haven't seen anyone have spoken to anyone stepped outside, first night on my own without cameras on me for a month, looked up at the sky and saw the Milky Way. And I'd had this weird sort of existential discordant thing going on where I thought Who am I I'm not this but looked up. I thought Fuck, right. Okay, I just need to do some self work here. So that was kind of the kick toward my minor pause. So what happened that I did some self work spent a lot of time just crushing amounts of content, School of Life Bailando, Bhutan, Sam Harris, Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson. This was when all of these people were coming to the front, and didn't really know what I was looking for. But just thought if I watched enough of it, something will come out of it. And it kind of did. And then a year and a half later, I'd been asked on a bunch of different podcasts. Could people say, you've been on this reality TV thing? Can we ask you about that? So Oh, yeah, what's a podcast? Cool. I'll come and do that really enjoyed the process, enjoyed it so much that I realised I want to do this more. The best way for me to do it as much as I want to is to start my own side, my own. And that was start of 2018
in that one year gap between being on love Island, sort of when you were consuming all this content and stuff. What were the like, what were the learnings from that,
like, tell the truth was the first one, the most important one. I'd spent a very long time playing a persona on the front door of this nightclub, right? A lot of nightclubs in Manchester and in Newcastle working about 1000 nights and being Chris the club promoter and being the guy that sorts him out with guestlist and all he does shag my mate and blah blah blah, being that guy. And what I realised was that that was a role that I was playing that wasn't A genuine representation of the person that I was, I was being the person that I thought other people wanted me to be, because it was effective. And it was, I was world class at playing Chris Williamson on the front door of a nightclub, like literally Oscar winning performance. But it wasn't me that wasn't the person that I genuinely was. So I needed to unearth and sort of scrape away all of the different personas that I had that were lying over the top of the person that I genuinely was. And that involved turning over tonnes and tonnes of different stones and looking at what was underneath and going, Okay, here's a belief that I have about the world. Here's something that I think is this true. And I'd spent so long lying to myself and to other people about what I genuinely wanted and what my values were. Yeah, mate meant tonight, mate. Yes, a lot of burden there, mate. Yeah, see later on me, like all of that for a decade. When that wasn't really my logo speaking forward, right. That wasn't my truth coming out of me. That was me just doing something. I needed to get past all of that. So I'm doing this archaeology thing going like, right, am I going to hit something that's solid, as I tried to unearth all of the different behaviours and the thinking patterns and the beliefs that I've got, and that eventually, I got to something that felt a little bit more stable, which was intellectual curiosity, a desire to learn and improve myself, a desire to sort of connect with people around me, a genuine desire to be open and vulnerable, and to show other people that being open and vulnerable. And truthful is something that can help them and make them feel good. But it took over a year took 18 months for me to even start to really glimpse that.
What sort of questions were you asking yourself? Like? What do you mean by like, what does this unearthing process look like in practice?
A lot of it was just thinking about how do I spend my time? Does that? Is that the way that I want to spend my time? Does that serve the person that I want to be? So I wake up at different times every day? Is that the sort of the Chris that I want to become wake up at different times every day? Okay, I pay, I take a high amount of self worth, from the amount of people that go into my club night. Should I be hinging myself worth on what the market does? Probably not. That's probably a bad idea. But it took me a long time, it seems so dumb, looking back and going like, obviously, me, you and the performance of your event and business are not the same thing. It is not you and its success or failure does not make any sort of change to your worth as a person. But that's the world that I direct for myself.
That's a that's a hard realisation. I remember when I was in school, where I was equating my personal self worth to how well I did in exams, and then at university to how well my business did. And then even now. Well, I had, I had a whole like, five hours of soul searching, typing journaling on Apple notes four days ago, where I was like, Oh, my God, I take too much self worth away from what my videos do. Like I think this I love how it kind of opened your being about this. But I but but I think this this journey of like dissociating our self worth from these other random bullshitty external metrics. It's not an easy one. And it's I think, I think it's a lifelong journey for all of us.
Here's a question for you, man. Yeah. Do you think that people love you for what you do or for who you are?
I've been. So over the last few months, I really thought it was for what I do, especially when it came to friend friendship and stuff. I thought that I just didn't quite, I thought it was the things that I was doing. That were the reasons why people wanted to be friends with me. And it was, it was surprising when I mentioned this to a few friends. And they were like, No, you actually don't need to do any like. Because if I think about the people I'm friends with, I'm not friends with them for what they do. I'm friends of them for who they are. And it took other people pointing out to me that well, that's how other people feel about you for me to think, Oh my God. And that was quite like a profound realisation for me, and made me realise that I can just sort of be myself, but in but before I'd been like, be yourself, it's all just BS, because like, choose yourself and all that kind of stuff. I got another question. Yeah.
Do you love yourself for who you are for what you do?
Oh, good question. I think I love myself for what I do. Yeah.
So here's the problem, right? We want the world to love us for who we are not for what we do. We don't want people to love our achievements. We want to feel like we're worth something ourselves. Yep. However, we love ourselves for what we do, not who we are. So we're asking the world to do something that we don't do ourselves. I want you to love me for who I am not what I do. Meanwhile, I'm gonna love myself for what I do, not who I am because I feel like when I achieved something that I feel like I'm worth something more to myself when I hit that next subscribe account when I get that gold plaque. Diamond plaque when I hit a new best number of players when I get more people on my academy when I put more people into my club now When I sleep with a more popular girl, when I hit a new number of followers on Instagram, all of these different metrics are things that are hiding the fact that we don't want to give ourselves self love for what it is that we who we genuinely are. What do you mean by love yourself, feel comfortable and feel like you are sufficient. Independent of how you perform day to day in the world, the fact that you stripped of all of your achievements, YouTube channels gone, podcasts gone, degrees are gone. All of that stuff. Are you isolated and stripped bare still worth something to the world? And do you feel like people would still love you and still care about you? That's a good question. It's a difficult, it's a very difficult one. So I got that realisation from Aubrey Marcus, another dis anyone that's resonating with this, I'll give you the link for this episode with Aubrey, he's just sold on it to Unilever for a huge, undisclosed number, like hundreds of millions of dollars, right? The link will be in the show notes below. He said he'd bolstered his entire life with sex and money. So he'd spent his entire life chasing women and trying to work. He's just sold his company for hundreds of hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. And he's just got married, what's left for him? All of the things that he used to be chasing now he's completed them. And he had an existential crisis. Because he said all of these things that I thought would fulfil me, I've now done it. So who am I, I'd wrapped up so much of my self worth in the fact that I was chasing this dream dragon of a woman and of a figure in my bank account. And now it's got to the stage where actually who am I without all of that? Or who am I once all of that's been completed. And this comes back to what happened when I first started a business. And again, this is another element for young business people. If you attach your sense of self worth to the success of the business, you are on a path toward misery. The reason is that you don't get to control the fucking market. Right? The market will do what the market will do, and it does not give one single shit about you. It doesn't care. So why would you say that your self worth is based on trends in the market. You're literally externalising your sense of wellbeing to other people. That's the same as that's the same as people that leave notifications on their phone. It's exactly the same, okay, you're allowing the entire world, anybody on the planet to intrude on your day whenever they want. This is the same with your business, you're allowing the response of the market to determine your self worth every time that you put a product out or run an event or release a YouTube video. If you feel crap when your YouTube video underperforms, but feel amazing, when your YouTube video over performs, that's fine, that's realistic, you care about performing well. But if you genuinely feel like you are worth more, or worth less, that's a different step, you've crossed a line there. And this is something that I still fight with all the time, I still struggle with it. This is me understanding the path but not having completed the path.
So you're on this kind of 12 to 18 month journey of self discovery. And you said that one of the things that helped is asking yourself, Is this thing that I'm doing consistent with the person that I want to be? Yes. What were some other things that you figured out about yourself along that that path?
Not telling the truth was was a huge one that had just been people would ask me my opinion on something and I would tell them what I thought they wanted to hear, okay, not what I genuinely believed, because I presumed that that would make them like me, because I just wanted to be like, and this was funded or fueled by being a club promoter, which is very transient and transactional. And there is a degree of performative nature on the front door of a club. Now, if someone says, Alright, mate, how are you? And you go, actually, man, my dog just died and blah, blah, blah. But no, I just want you to say yes, and give me a stamp and go, let me in. So there is that was reinforced by work. Some of the other things were mostly to do with opening up and being being vulnerable because I was in a hyper masculine, very cool guy world. And it wasn't. It wasn't. How would you say conducive to having a bad day and opening up to someone about it? It's another challenge as well, for anyone that's a business owner or at the top of the tree that's listening. You can feel like because you are the head of your business, that showing any form of weakness shows a weakness in the business, that if you underperform, or you have a bad day that the people who look up to you, your subordinates and your employees within the business will see you, as less will see you as unworthy of leading them because who's whose leader would spend a couple of days in bed because he's feeling down about whatever might have occurred. Another thing that I realised was working, working so hard that you Have a miniature breakdown, which for me manifested as being in bed for a couple of days and I just couldn't be bothered to get out and it felt like depression but I think it was just like smaller key breakdowns and it always happened around Freshers Week. So one month of constant buildup constant and this was when I'd stopped partying so much as well. Releasing event after event after event all on social media, then going and working on the night, four or five hours sleep, then get up the next day, go to the office, make sure that everything was sorted, run another event, fill it cash, the tills go home, do the next thing, oh, is this working? This DJ is cancelled blah, blah, blah, just constant intensity, start of October every single year, I would always spend a couple of days in bed, my mind, why is it I always end up feeling a little bit sort of shitty after this. Because going so hard, you end up snapping is not a sustainable work protocol just doesn't it you can't keep doing that and expect to get consistent results.
And punishing yourself because you don't have the tolerance. It's like having eyes that are bigger than your stomach. It's like having an appetite for work, which is bigger than your capacity for work. And this is something in a productivity world. Like I'll get more, I'll just get more done. That is a route toward disaster. For Chris sparks says in order to pick something up, you have to put something down. The presumption is if I want to be more productive, I will just down regulate my sleep or up regulate my efficiency until I fit this new thing in Yeah. But you're already working close to your maximum capacity. Because if you weren't, you would be doing more. Most people that are driven type A personalities are already working close to that capacity. And then when you because you see all of your own inefficiencies, right? You think Yeah, but I spent 30 minutes a day on YouTube. So if I add this new thing, and I'll just get rid of that 30 minutes a day. It's like no, the 30 minutes a day and YouTube is there because you need to fucking break from all the work you're doing. That's going to stay when you add this in the place it's going to come off of is going to be optional things that really matter. like spending time with friends and family like chilling out on a weekend like getting more sleep. That's what's going to really really stink. So those are some of the realisations work less open up more be truthful. Realise that you have curiosities and intellectual desires and stuff that maybe don't align with the person that you thought you were. And a final one was, I'd never really connected with any of the success of the business not in a meaningful way, not in an existential way. I felt proud that we achieved a lot and had tonnes of people come to the event and that felt meant but I never, I never really really felt it. And I think the reason for that was if you're playing a persona, I was called promo, Chris. You don't feel like your achievements are yours. You feel like that people applauding a character that you're playing. So the same way that we don't love Russell Crowe, we love Gladiator. We don't love Chris Hemsworth. We love Thor, you're always one step removed from the things that you're doing if you're not being truthful and open. Whereas if you do something that is genuinely you, putting yourself out into the world when someone says Ali, I really love what you've done with this. And that's your truth. You go, that's me, as opposed to Ali, I really love what you've done with YouTube or rally over here you go, yeah, well done YouTube rally, like pat on the back for you. And that's the difference between doing something that feels fulfilling, existentially. Yeah, and doing something that just feels like pride.
Hmm. So interestingly, on that, on that point, yesterday, we put out a video, the first one in a while on the channel, where I felt it was like, authentically me, I didn't really have a script, just have had a few talking points 45 minutes long, and me just rambling about stuff. And the response to that video was just insane. And I was going through all the comments and the comments really nice. And I woke up early this morning, I did the thing that you shouldn't do and grabbed my phone. And I was like, You know what, let's see how the comments are doing. I'm just like, Oh, it's so nice hotting every single one. And I haven't read YouTube comments in months, because I've and hearing you say, that made me realise that the videos that I think we've been putting out, over the last few months haven't really felt particularly authentic, it felt like I was playing a character. Whereas this one, I was like, alright, you know what, let's do it. Basically, uncut. felt so much more authentic. And so the comments really resonated with me more than a comment on a video that I felt. I mean, I had the idea, but like someone else wrote the script for it, and kind of vibes. Yeah. I wanted to talk about masculinity. This is something that I struggled with. And I think you're an interesting person to talk to about this, because you seem to not worry about coming across as work. Or like, you know, saying the right thing, you know, saying saying things that fit into the Overton window of acceptability. And you know, some of the stuff on the podcast, somebody will say is somewhat controversial. And so I'd love to hear your take on like, what, what's what's the deal with like masculinity? It's a broad, broad, open question. And I have a few kind of sub questions that I'd like to ask. But can we what what's your thesis on masculinity?
It's an interesting one. I think it's a word that has been co opted to me A lot of different things. Now you're right with some of the people that I have on the show on modernism, which is my podcast. Their views, perhaps go against a progressive orthodoxy that exists at the moment. That being said, I don't think that they're tremendously controversial. I've never ever been on the verge of any sort of cancellation, or really, I don't get negative comments on the videos, the vast majority of people that watch the show, they understand that I'm coming from a place of genuine intellectual curiosity, and trying to understand things. That being said, I think that it is very difficult to have a wholesome role model as a young guy at the moment. I don't think that young men know what they should grow up to be. And by that, I mean, what sort of a man what sort of values they should have. I wholeheartedly agree that the metoo movement was a long overdue reckoning for men in positions of power that used those positions in order to get sexual access in order to manipulate women. That was something that had to happen. That being said, you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater, and say that any masculine traits are part of a sis hetero, patriarchal construct that runs below the surface of everything that we see. And these are oppressive, patriarchal ideas to do with gender and misogyny and gender roles and blah, blah, blah. What you end up there with is men who make up 50% of the entire world's population, not knowing what the fuck to do with their life. They don't know what they're supposed to do, how they're supposed to exist in the world. We've already got rid of religion. So some of the things that gave us a sense of meaning have gone. We've got rid of jobs for life, which meant that our craft, we might have been a stonemason, or a builder or a farmer or something that worked with our hands where we could see our physical creations in front of us and this is for women as well. Those things have gone for everybody. And then when you say, okay, and the things that you used to rely on to do with masculinity, things like competence, hardwork, courage, bravery, trustworthiness, industriousness, conscientiousness, when these things are also perhaps lambasted and labelled negatively, that doesn't really give men much of a place to stand you. Okay, so what am I supposed to? What, what is a man now? We're not getting into the gender debate, what is a masculine portrayal of somebody's personality? Like, what are the characteristics that make someone masculine, that are positive? And that's a kind of a difficult question to answer. So when it comes to masculinity from my side, I just know that I'm an only child, right? So I had an older brother, our generations gap. So our parents generation is quite large, a lot of the rules and the procedures that our parents had don't really work for us or role models in terms of your parents, you're also a little bit of a distance away from that there's a Delta to work there. And I didn't know what I want it to be. And you've just heard a story about how most of my 20s is someone who did two degrees at uni, who can be an idiot, but isn't a complete idiot was lost, really, really lost? So I think, right, I want to try and give young guys the advice that I wish that I'd had when I was younger. And this isn't real social dynamics, pick up artists, that weirdo stuff. It's not negging and neuro linguistic programming to get girls to go to bed with you. It's how are you a confident person in the world, as a man that feels proud about yourself? There's proud about your masculinity that's proud about the achievements that you've got. That doesn't mind about being vulnerable, but doesn't identify with being vulnerable. You know, finding somewhere to stand, I think is there's been a difficulty.
Why do we need concepts like masculinity and femininity? Why can we just say, you know, what, courage, bravery, confidence being, integrity, honesty, these are all universally good qualities. And therefore we should strive for these universal good qualities and not label them, some of them masculine, and some of them feminine, for example,
because men and women aren't the same. They're not the same. For all that deconstructionist ideology may wish that they were the same. They're not. There are certain things that men have a proclivity toward, and there are certain things that women have a proclivity toward, okay, on average, on average, it does not mean that you cannot get masculine women and feminine men, it does not mean that this girl that I know is really, really masculine, and she's more masculine than you are. yet. I'm sure that they're very well, maybe, but those are outliers if you were to throw them across. We also need them because we live our life through archetypes. We look to people as examples. And for the most part, we model ourselves on stories. We model ourselves why when you watch The Big Bang Theory, do you immediately know what each character is the hero's big chested and muscled and has a large drawer and the nerd always wears glasses and there's the damsel and the villain, the villains always in black or he's got a fringe or something. It's because we need to be able to shortcut our way to understand what people are about We're trying to design our own lives as well. We also look to archetypes from history. I think that it's an important learning procedure for both men and women to have role models that they can look up to. And I don't know, at the moment that there are very many well accepted role models for men to look up to. For all that Harry Styles is an awesome singer. I don't know that every man wants to be Harry Styles. Not every man wants to be like the rock either. But you have to have some role models for guys to look up to. So that also needs to be a synthesis, what is the average on average, what is a good principle for men to try and achieve the same thing goes for women. And my concern is that we've thrown a lot of baby and bath waters out. It's easier for me to make an example with girls than it is with guides to this. So for instance, women being encouraged to have careers over families is something that absolutely should be a choice for them. And if you are a go getter girl, that is that sick, more power to you. However, I think that you need to be an incredibly unique woman to make it to 50 Look back without a family and say that it was a good decision. That is not to say that there are not women out there for whom it is the perfect decision. But I think that you need to be quite a unique woman for that to be the case. Great pushing, every woman should have a career should prioritise their career, you don't need no man, you shouldn't settle for less cut back, you're a boss bitch, and almost creating an environment in which women who do prioritise families over careers are seen as compromising toward a archaic view of what a woman should be. When a lot of women take very, very hard, large amounts of pleasure from raising a family. I don't think that that's tremendously respectful to the women that want to go and do that. There is a framing to the situation that presumes that going and getting a career is the thing that everybody should should endeavour to achieve. And that's not to say that men can't stay at home and be the primary. How would you say child care. But in relationships, where the man is not the primary breadwinner, they are 50% more likely to end in divorce. In relationships where the man is not the primary breadwinner, he is statistically more likely to need to use erectile dysfunction medication. Almost two thirds of women say that they would not be in a relationship with a man who is less educated, less wealthy and Lauren status than them. If this seems like it's bizarre set of statistics, think about if you're a girl, think about Would you date a man that shorter than you? Maybe? Okay, would you date a man that is 10 inches shorter than you? Well? Probably not? Well, okay, that is just the same reporting across onto status and wealth and education as well. I think overall, a man needs to be three or four from taller, richer, smarter and more status, you can get away with being a short guy who's rich, smart with high status, or you can get away with being a tall guy with status who's maybe not rich yet, but is well educated. If you're only getting two of those four, you're starting to struggle. This isn't to say that women are callous resource extractors, right. What it's to say is that women like men who are on average, trustworthy, hardworking, conscientious, they're the sort of man that you can depend on that will get things done. And if you have status, intelligence, through education, and wealth, that is a signal that you have these things, but what we've been told is that if a man is to try and achieve status, wealth, or education, he shouldn't go and do it. That is him sticking to an out of date, personality type that men no longer needs need to adhere to.
There's like a few things going on here. There's number one, that men and women are different. And while both men and women exhibit all traits across all spectrums, spectrum, whatever. Men are, on average, higher in ape in some traits, and women are on average, higher in other traits. Yes. And are we saying that it's those traits that are that we can broadly label with all the caveats that goes with broadly like trying to label anything based on like, the large numbers as like masculine traits and feminine traits, I would say so. So for example, masculine like men are on average higher on trait aggression, or conscientiousness, I guess less so on empathy, less on caring this more so on competitiveness, less on warmth.
And so men are interested in things women are interested in people.
And so when it comes to, I guess, with the role model, role model discussion if for some reason like no one bats an eye at the fact that people want role models of their own race. You often hear people say that, Oh, there are no black X and whatever, or there are no Pakistani whatever the there are no Chinese people in films, and therefore, Asian people like a role model of that of that particular type. And I guess what is, I guess when it comes to role models in general, it's, it's, it's very hard for someone to have a role model who's not like them. Like, I guess the anti gender, anti masculinity femininity brigade would say that if I'm looking for a role model, I should be just as likely to choose a female role model as a male role model, which is just unlikely. Similarly, a woman is very unlikely, like, I don't know, a white woman is very unlikely to have a black man as their as their role model for me as a role model. Yeah. And so is what you're saying that as a as a dude, it's hard to find. Because I guess, if we think about, like, who would be in the running as like role model, James Bond, famously, but then the whole misogyny stuff, which means that James Bond is not allowed as a role model. The Rock potentially runs
pretty good shout, yeah, it's the rocks, the rocks, a guy who is able to take a lot of boxes, like when you're the guy that simultaneously able to be top in an action movie. And potentially President of the United States, like there's a campaign to make the rock the President of the United States, like you've done a lot, right? You got a lot, right. Yeah, you correct with the rock, you know, he's in touch with his own emotions. But even that sort of thing. I haven't seen any criticisms of the rock. Maybe he's like the outlier that proves the rule. I'm not sure. I think that the challenge is, if you don't have any role models, people get lost. I think that there are a lot of role models for how girls should behave at the moment. And there's a lot of support for girls, and rightly so for a very, very long time, that wasn't girls weren't encouraged to do whatever they want. But it feels a little bit like men are not being encouraged to do whatever they want now, and that's not whatever they want, that is to try and achieve in the world in a way that they think it's gonna make them feel fulfilled.
We've talked a little bit a little bit about like, about the dating marketplace. And you've touched on the thing. The the traits that women on average look for in men are different than, you know, the traits that women on average look for men on average look for in women, correct. And I guess what you're given that you've have sort of experienced the professional party boy lifestyle you've been on, take me out, you've been on love Island? What's your, what's your take on like, what are we what are the things that men in general seem to like in women and vice versa?
Cool. On average, this is before every single sentence right there. On average, everything in this episode was, on average, on average, men are interested in youth and fertility from women. On average, women are interested in resources from men. This is shown out in a number of different ways. Why is it that throughout all of time, the optimal weight for women in terms of what's culturally been seen as attractive, does fluctuate. So across different cultures and across different ages, it fluctuates, however, the waist to hip ratio always remains the same around about point eight. Why is that? Well, it's because a high waist to hip ratio is a signal of fertility. Why is it that girls who have bigger eyes and flush your cheeks tend to be seen as more attractive? While it's because bigger eyes and fleshy cheeks are associated with youthfulness, and youthfulness is associated with fertility. Women who have more symmetrical faces are more fertile, which is why we are attracted to symmetry. It's also more costly, in order to be able to grow a symmetrical face than a non symmetrical face, which is why we're attracted to that as well. Spin it around in the other direction. Men's body sizes have changed over time exactly the same. But the optimal shoulder to waist ratio for men almost exactly stays the same. Why is that? It shows that you can get excess calories on top of what you need. Well, who cares about excess calories? We have more calories. I mean, yes, but not for almost all of our evolutionary past. For almost all of time, men were undefeated and overfed. And if you could show that, look, I have so much access to resources and food that I can sustain this stupid big body with these big shoulders and this small waist. That is that's good sign. The dynamics and the way that this bears out is so interesting. And it's difficult to not sound like you're trying to make prescriptions for people's relationships, which is not what I'm doing. I find it fascinating, endlessly fascinating to look at the dating market, and to look at why people like the things that they do. The difference in right swipes on Tinder for a man with a bachelor's degree versus a master's degree is the master's degree get to 90% more right swipes. That's all that you need to do. So if you're thinking about doing a master's degree, and you want to get more right swipes on Tinder as a guy, just do it For every 15 IQ for every standard deviation that a woman's intelligence increases over about 110 to 115, every standard deviation, which is about 12, her chance of getting married goes down quite significantly. It's about 20 to 30%. For each standard deviation, chance of marriage continues to drop. And why is this? Well, it's because women tend to want to date a man that is richer, smarter and more successful than she is. They date up and across, it's called hypergamy. So if you are a top your own dominance hierarchy, quite rightly so you as a woman should be able to go and achieve as much as you want, start your own business be as educated with a PhD and 1000 people that work for you make a billion pounds. But if your fundamental attraction is to men that are higher in status, wealthier and more intelligent than you are, how are you going to date across and above a dominance hierarchy if you sit on the top of your own, if you're the richest, smartest, best status woman on the planet, who's above you, that's a man, there's no one. So high performing women narrow their own dating pool, sadly, and this is a real difficulty. It's like being the tall friend. If you have a girl friend, who is six foot two, she she's probably stuck looking at professional athletes. If she wants to date, on average, women like to date a man that's about 2020 centimetres taller than them, that seems to be the optimal height difference. If you're six foot two as a girl, you've narrowed your dating pool, because you're so tall. The equivalent happens with earning the equivalent happens with education. Because typically, you want to date someone that is above and across.
I think the height example is interesting, because I think when you say I've had these sorts of conversations so often with people and when you use things like intelligence or IQ well, but like, oh, you know, IQ IQ has been debunked. And intelligence is not really a thing, because it's all a social construct. When you use things like when you use any kind of personality traits, it's like, oh, but that's socially predetermined. Like obviously, that's not a thing. But as soon as you use the height example, people like Oh, shit.
Rubber met the road. Yeah, really? Well, I mean, for the people who don't believe in gender differences to do with personality and to do with attraction. I'm not speaking to those people. This may be interesting to them, but they're not on the same plane of talking that I am. Right now. There's some asymmetries that occur in the dating market that are really unfair. One of them is the fact that men are allowed to be as sexually liberal as they want when they're young, and that women are that sucks for women. Not so much for men. But the single biggest predictor of extramarital sex is premarital sex. single biggest predictor.
Probably confounded by the fact that very religious people wouldn't have premarital sex and Yep, yeah,
good point. And, um, but with that in mind, yeah. What you see is a myth. That's unfortunate, also being reflected in reality in terms of what your preferences would have been. So most people don't want to be with a partner that's going to cheat on them. That means that you have an awkwardness when you're in your youth, because you need to think okay, like, over my shoulder is someone kind of watching to see how many people I sleep with? Am I Am I judging my sense of self worth on how many how many people are sleeping, that's something that I think that would be great to get past. For women. I think that that would emancipate women from it. But the problem is, the desire is still going to be there. Like, if you found out that your girlfriend had slept with a number of people, or 10 times that number of people, it's very difficult for you to not feel some sort of a difference to that. But I don't know if the same thing happens in reverse from girls with guys. So for all that something may be a social construct. And we may be able to do some, some good work to deprogram this and to be able to help liberate women, like when the rubber meets the road. It's going to be hard to actually stop that from happening.
Yeah, I think I think you and I share an academic interest in the dating market, because it really is where preferences are realised. Great way to put it and you can you can talk all you like about how you don't care about loads. You don't care about height, you don't care about weight, you don't care about number on a bank account. I think there's like two things here. There's like, obviously, no one's going to disagree with you know, someone's height does not reflect at all on the value of the human being someone's money does not reflect on the value as a human being there is like a sense of these arbitrary measurements simply does not need to be stated. These arbitrary measurements correlate with someone's actual worth as a human being. And but that's not the market we're talking about. We're talking about a market which is different to that which is the dating marketplace, which is very takes sort of a specific interesting use case where as much as you would like for there to be no different as much as I would love to be equally attracted to women of all insert trade here x here. In reality, I'm attracted to women who are more on a particular end of the spectrum of whatever trait we're whatever trait we're thinking about. And there's very little I can actually do to change that. Whereas obviously, if women are on one end of the spectrum of trait X, compared to another end, I'm not valuing them any more or less as a human being. Yeah.
So that's it, that's one of the problems that we've had is that preferences have been conflated with some sort of value judgement about people's worth. And that's not the case. But you can't deny the fact that if you prefer something to something else, that's simply your biology bearing it out. Now we can, we can have some sort of judgments around around our preferences. But the vast majority of this is limbic as hell, like it's just some bit of the brain. Yeah, back here, you're not consciously choosing the things that you're attracted to. If you're a girl, and you like black guys, like did you choose the fact that you liked black guys? Or do you just tend to like the construct the way that those people look? Do you tend to like artists or musicians or whatever it might be? Who chose that? Did you choose it? Or did something else choose it from you? And you're right, it's where preferences really get born out. So you see the same thing. In the marketplace, there's two things that you can't really defeat one of them's desire and the other one's money. So people can virtue signal all they want, but there's been to bring it back to the love Island example. There has been criticisms around lack of diversity in terms of sexual expression, in terms of race in terms of bunch of other things. If is it ITVS job to make a show which is diverse, or is it his job to make a show, which is successful, because the market will reward the one which is successful, so people should vote with their feet or their eyes, if they want to change something in the market, if you don't want love Ireland to be the way that it is, then stop watching it and decide to try and campaign to get something else or make something yourself. The same thing goes for in the dating market, like desire will always win out, the person that will be campaigning for why gender is a social construct, and why masculine traits are completely arbitrary and look at the person that that person is dating. And they will almost definitely have some of the predictable traits that someone is looking for in a partner. Again, it's it's I don't understand why it's controversial, to bring up the fact that people have preferences. And those preferences are not just ones that we've chosen, the ones that have been embedded in us for quite a while. It makes sense that men want women that are fertile, because that's what we're here for we're here to survive and reproduce. It makes sense that women want men who can get access to resources, status gave you access to resources, money is a proxy for resources. Education is a predictor of future ability to attain resources. Why would this be a surprise, but the last few years is kind of turn things upside down a little bit like this.
So we've talked a lot about and I think when having these sorts of discussions, this is the stuff that my brother I often talk about on our podcast as well. And we find that when we get emails about it afterwards, from people who are upset with the way a certain thing was discussed, there's one thing one thing which they point out very, very recently, actually, and I and I agree with this is that there's a difference between talking in broad general generalities about averages, and how those averages bear out for a specific individual. And then a step further, how the knowledge of the averages should dictate the behaviour of an individual. And so what I mean by that is, so to, to use a personal example, women are on average attracted to men that display more alpha male tendencies. It's probably not a particularly controversial point, like, you know, traits like assertiveness, confidence, aggression, borderline, bordering on aggression, those sorts of kind of things that you would expect if you see if you, if you think alpha male, for example, on average, women are attracted to those and there's very little they can actually do about it. I actually recently read my secret garden by Nancy someone, which is like a book that was released a few decades ago, the first time women's sexual fantasies was published in okay in writing. And apparently, that book had like, I was doing a bunch of research on this took the world by storm and became an instant bestseller because people were like, oh my god, like, this is what women's sexual fantasies are. And all the women were like, Oh my God, I didn't realise other people were like this too. And a lot of them the vast majority are around the thing things that you, you know, things that display overly alpha male tendencies on a man's part. It's not to say women want these things to bear out in real life. But on average, we can like, let's assume women are more attracted to those sorts of traits. Then when it comes to like, okay, cool, that's fine. That's an that's an academic point, based on maybe, average, maybe 51% of women are more attracted to that, say, but there's still a vast proportion of women who are not. And so for someone like me reading about this stuff, I think the danger is, then I can start to think that, okay, if women are more attracted to alpha male traits, and that is not really the sort of person who I am because of various reasons, the way that I maybe some nature, or maybe some nurture, the way that I was raised is a very sort of feminised kind of culture where alpha male traits are sort of considered to be downtrodden. And this is this is like, not a good way to be. But given that I'm not particularly having success in the dating marketplace, hypothetically, then, should I try to adopt such as these alpha male traits? And should I mould my personality in a way that makes me more attractive to women? Because, you know, I've got to find a wife. For the first half, for the first X number of years of my life, there was a good quote from someone who said that life is always in two stages. The first stage is when you're trying to find a partner. And the second stage is when you actually, once you've done that you realise, okay, who the hell am I and what do I do? And so given that I'm competing in this dating marketplace, should I try and get their master's degree? Should I try and be more domineering? Be more confident, be more aggressive? Should I try and go to the gym and get more Hench? Because, you know, we should I put a topless picture on Tinder that shows me smiling without my teeth, because that's considered a higher? I don't know. So
this is, this is one of the problems like generally with dating, and I appreciate, you know, all of the people that send in their thoughts. My mind isn't fixed on these things, right? Like, I just have a real perverse curiosity around all of the things to do with the dating market. And I hope that that comes across in good faith, because that's genuinely how it is. There's two things going on. One of them is how much how much can you play the game without compromising who you are truthfully? Yep. And the other one is, how far do you go before you basically play persona, which is what we spent the first half of this conversation talking about, right? You don't want to, you don't want to make someone fall in love with a version of you that you're not, but also like maximising your attractiveness, understanding the rules of the game, you'd like. You can't pick the ball up in football, but you can run faster with it, you understand that if there's a good tactic, that means you can score a bit more if you have this particular set piece, that's not too bad. What happened and the problem with pickup artistry, and this is something that I really, really got kicked by the whole negging. And you've got to, if people don't know what pickup artistry is, it was sort of during the early 2000s, in the mid 2000 10s, where men had found particular Neuro Linguistic Programming tricks that allowed them to bed women, by utilising different cognitive biases. Basically, it was kind of like tricking Webb was psychologically tricking women into bed or tricking women into being attracted by them. And that's kind of been really thrown out of the window. That being said, there are certain rules and procedures that will make you more attractive to a woman, the first thing that I would do is go to the gym, like it is the most robust way to make it more attractive than having a beard or having a low voice, which are two other signs of high testosterone. So this is Rob Henderson's work looked at this, that it's the most robust way to become more attractive as a guy is to be in good shape. This doesn't mean single digit body fat at 220 pounds. This just means that, you know, slightly visible abs, and probably a medium sized t shirt or above that is you are top probably 5% of physiques on the planet. If you're if you're able to get yourself to sub 14% body fat, with a little bit of vascularity on you on your arms, like and that's not. So it's a difficult question, man. Like, how far are you supposed to push yourself in the effort to become attractive to the opposite sex? It's a really difficult question. You don't want to make someone fall in love with you for something that you're not. And this is for guys and girls. So a good question to ask yourself is, am I the sort of person that the sort of person I'm attracted to would be attracted to? Yeah, what's the sort of person that I want to get? If I really, really, really love guys that go to the gym, I'm a chick that has never been to the gym. You got to go to the gym, because he's probably going to want a partner that goes to the gym as well. If you're a dude, who really loves music, and really wants a partner that's into music, you need to start going out to gigs and trying to find girls that are there. Stop looking for them in the library. So models by Mark Manson to be read this. Yeah, phenomenal. So that's, as far as I'm concerned. It's the one stop shop for men on dating. How to become a more confident human. Yes, you should take the knowledge that you know around the dating market as men and as women You should utilise it to inform the way that you try and date. But there has to be a point at which you go, Okay, I can't compromise myself too much. And a final piece of framing that actually I did take from pickup artistry. But that is as ethical as you can get is to control the frame. So you are the prize in the interaction. This doesn't mean that you don't think that the other person's important or interesting or valuable, but entering a frame of a conversation saying, I am an inherently valuable, interesting person, this person is fortunate to be going out for a walking date with me and to grab a coffee, like how cool like, I'm going to get to find out about them, and they're going to get to find out about me, if I was them, I would be about to have a really cool afternoon. Like that is a great way to enter a frame, I think for dating high value, you're controlling the context, you're coming across confident and competent. Like those are good ways to step into things. Certainly better than like, Oh, I'll start speaking to a friend and then I won't look at her. And then when I do look at her, I'll tell her like shit. And like that was that was never going to be a sustainable strategy.
I like this way of approaching things like understand the rules of the game, and use those rules of the game to inform maybe inform what you're going to do to maximise your chances in the game. But don't do it in a way that feels to you and authentic to who you truly are. That makes a lot of sense. And on that, on that note, we did have a comment on one of the one of the videos that I did with my brother where I was like, Oh, these guys are acting as if finding love is a game. Like okay, no, it's just a metaphor. Just like life is a game anyway. But yeah, I think so. The the kind of one specific example that I often think about a few a few months ago, I was I was on a date. And afterwards, we went out driving to watch a typical
Ali Abdaal day give me give me the like quintessential Ali's taking you out for a date. Where does he take you? And what does he do?
I feel like a date in three parts is ideal. Where it kind of you know the whole again, from the from the world of pickup artistry, where I think this is actually a good a good shout, bouncing from one location to another. So starting off with maybe grabbing a coffee then going for a walk. And then you're going for the walk, had a bit of a chat then go for food somewhere. And then after the food somewhere like a third part, maybe go for a drive or go for another walk or go for dessert or you know, just something that allegedly the way the way the dating thing works. Like if you've if you've been sitting each sitting at dinner talking for three hours, that's psychologically a less, it feels like you're less close than if you've been talking for one hour at three different venues, which is just how we experience memories. But one thing I like to do is go for a drive afterwards, especially if it's a place I've driven to. And in the Tesla in the Tesla, of course, with heated seats. We were driving to the McDonald's drive thru, which is again one of my favourite spots because I like I love I love McDonald's right through. And I think weirdly going on a McDonald's drive thru on a date is like very me. And if someone doesn't like that, then great. That's like a perfect filter.
I like that. It's a stress test.
It's a stress test. Quite Yeah. But then on one of these dates a few months ago, on route to them to the McDonald's drive thru. We put some music on and played driver's licence by Olivia Rodrigo bang a song, basically. Oh, well, let's imagine like a Disney song. Okay, that that kind of vibe. Okay, can I knew all the lyrics to actually driver's licence and good for you by Olivia trigger, which I knew all the lyrics of the Disney song. And I was thinking at that point, I could make a choice. Do I be myself and sing along to the Disney song? Or do I recognise that all girls are more attracted to masculine traits this mean love freakin loving Olivia Rodrigo. And Disney songs and knowing all the words are good for you is not a particularly masculine trait, at least by traditional definitions. Maybe it's only date number two, maybe I'll just like turn that down a bit and weave in. And I made the decision at that point to be like, Screw it. Let's sing the songs. And turns out she also really loved singing Disney songs and Olivia Rodrigo. Were just singing along together and it was great. But I was kind of thinking that hmm, have I, in a sense, shot myself in the foot by revealing this aspect of me. And then afterwards, I was like, now it's fine. Like, this is who I am authentically. This is my true self. It's all good. Yes. If it turns out the girl is not into guys who'd like singing singing Disney songs. She's not gonna enjoy being with me because I think Disney songs all the time all day every day. But the fact that I had that thought process made me wonder Oh, have I drunk too much KoolAid of like, read that's
a that's a that's a really, really good it's a really, really good insight that you get a it's the Midwest me, man. It's the Midwest mean, it's like the idea and the genius do the same thing. Just I just be myself. I just be myself. I will optimise my red pill pickup artistry so that I understand the negging of the blah blah like No, no, just be yourself. But you are right. Like understanding the dynamics I think is different to making letting them change you. I think that you did the right thing. I think that just being yourself with somebody is a really good way to, to try and do that. Now, if yourself is becoming a more competent, more trustworthy, more hardworking, more attractive human over time. That's a win. But trying to this is one of the reasons I also pick apart this guy's if you look at them now they're all wrecked. Like look at Neil Strauss. Yeah, who's gone total awakens like DMT guy, why Tucker Max took a max is a perfect example. The guy did. What do you think about it? What he wrote he created the frutta genre, didn't he? I did he, oh, all of these New York Times bestsellers. Were him throwing up in bathrooms after drinking and having sex with him from being the publishing guy. He wrote what women want with Jeffrey Miller, the evolutionary psychologist. Oh, dude, his entire back catalogue of books is just him having sex and partying? That's all it is got a lot of reading? Yeah, precisely. And he's done 1000 sessions of psychotherapy, MDMA assisted psychotherapy. Now this like fully awakened human talking on Twitter about real deep and meaningful things. Why? I think it's because when guys in their youth, and they in their 20s tried to be the sort of man that they thought women wanted to be attracted to. They ended up realising how far that was from the person that they truly were. And it made them feel really, really unhappy and uncomfortable. And they relapsed after a lot of self work to a much more virtuous, much more aligned and awakened place, which is them just fully being themselves. Neil Strauss now incredibly vulnerable online Tucker, Max, incredibly vulnerable online. Why? Because for a long time, he wasn't for a long time he was doing the things he thought he was supposed to do. And I think that you've played it, right, I think that the way to go about things is to have confident competence that this is you and own it, and be like, Look, yeah, maybe this isn't whatever typical masculine trait 101, the red pill, guys say that you shouldn't do this. So alright. But also, if you want to try and be your version of someone else, the best that you can hope for is being the second best in the world at it. Like if I want to do my podcast, like Joe Rogan, the best I can hope for is being the second best Joe Rogan on the planet. And when you're going into a dating environment, I just setting the tone in that way is going to be bad. That being said, if you have more extreme quirks, if it was I can't think of any a PG 13. But if you had something that was a little bit more out there than you singing Disney songs, perhaps you do slowly introduce people to that. But the prospect of never bring that up. I don't think that really works.
Interesting. So I guess if I had a strong if, for example, it was just part of my part of the way I live life, that I never have a shower, and I don't believe in washing. That's, you know, I think that a future partner would would want to know, but it's probably the sort of thing I should mention on day number one, it's just do it.
I think that what you would be aiming to do and what everyone's aiming to do is to try and construct a world in which they are the sort of person that the sort of person they're attracted to, would be attracted to. That's what you want. This is this is the sort of quick fix to dating problems. It's like, okay, what what sort of partner do I want genuinely? What are their interests? What are the non negotiables that I want from a partner, they have to choose three things, non negotiables, they have to be like this. They have to be pick them. And then all of the other things, you can just kind of learn to love people around them. That doesn't mean that you need to settle. But it does mean that I think you end up in a situation where you have the things that really matter. Being there, and then you starting to love people for their quirks, like a lot of the times when you fall in love, you end up falling in love and going I can't believe it was you. It was never going to be you, you you with all of your uniqueness. And all of the different things that you have. How is it you it was supposed to be her but it's you, and you can't believe it. Why? Because you are absolutely shit predicting what you're going to be attracted to, you know, some things that you will not compromise on. And then the rest of them you end up falling in love with the way that he drives the car, or you end up falling in love with the way that she makes the bed or the way that she looks like all of the things that you wouldn't have thought it was going to be like this is where love seems to come out. And it's those quirks and those uniquenesses that give you a competitive advantage in the dating market. So you are not utilising the fact that you do sing Disney songs and you do know that the words to them, that puts you at a disadvantage because you're just being like, Ali, not version, not point nine, you're the beta tester version of that, because it's you're not fully utilising all of the different features. Yeah.
Yeah, I think I guess I guess it is that everyone has to make that decision for themselves. What is the balance between I am doing this thing to become more attractive versus at And and not it and it not bordering into territory of this thing is straying far from who I am, for example, I'll have to hold my hands up and say the reason I go to the gym is to be more attractive. But the sort of person I want to be as the sort of person who takes the health seriously, yeah, and it just so happens that the proximal reason, like the main reason is currently look more attractive. But it's also a sort of life that I would like to lead. And therefore, I think,
if you can win on multiple, if you can win on multiple different domains, I take it, take it, it's like saying, my youtube channel gets plays, which means that I have access to making new friends, but it also adds ad revenue. But I should feel bad about the ad revenue, because I'm supposed to be here. For the friends, it's like, no, like, just take them all, if there's a tonne of wins to get out of something. But to come back to what we said at the, for the first half of the conversation about being yourself and about trying to kind of work out who it is that you are. I think that coming at something from places, I'm already enough, but I want to be better, is very different to I am insufficient, unless I have this, unless I get 8%, body fat and massive set of arms, and I can out bench everybody in the gym. But unless I get that, then I am not worthy of having a partner is very different to I am already worthy of having a partner. And I know that this will make them happier. Like and this will improve my chances of finding someone who is going to be attracted to me. And I'm going to be attracted to as well.
How do you think about the balance between be yourself versus choose yourself? elaborate system for that. So we've talked a lot about how you're, you know, you went on the journey trying to uncover your true self. One school of thought is that, well, we don't really have a true self, that true self is just a result of the accidents of our, the accidents of the way that we were brought up and adjusted, and the traits we got from our parents and from our friends at school. And you can do a lot to change who you are, if that's what you want. Want to do. For example, when I was in school, I wasn't particularly outgoing, or particularly charismatic or particular confident. And I recognised that, you know, me being myself would have been me just continuing on that route, I decided, You know what, I'm going to make an active decision at university to change myself to become someone who's more confident and more charismatic, were and someone who is a little bit more outgoing. And although those that was not a natural transformation, initially, it felt it felt like comfortable, like any change, which always feels it feels uncomfortable, I am now much more confident, charismatic, opening, social settings, that kind of stuff. But if I'd been told abroad, just be yourself, it would have probably that probably going to happen. And so I'm curious as to what what your thoughts are on that. So
I believe that your life should be lived by design, not by default, that you should be intentionally doing things, because the default quite often is actually a bit shit. The the default setting that you would go to would be the Netflix and bag of chips and not doing hard things and not having new experiences and all of the basics or you would just be ruled by your biases, right, which is definitely not what you want. That being said, we are not infinitely malleable, we are not complete blank slates. There are predispositions that you have that I do not and there are predispositions I have that you do not 50% Pretty much of everything you are psychologically is genetic, on average. And what that means is that you are inclined towards certain things more than others. Just by hook or by crook, you haven't ended up being an artist, or a painter, or a club promoter, or a reality TV guy. Yeah. Like there is something inside of you that has caused you to lean toward the particular life that you do. Now, understanding yourself and saying, right, I'm going to play to my strengths, I'm going to enhance it. So one of your strengths is being able to learn things quickly. Right? So you have a matter power that permits you to be more malleable than most people. But it's not unlimited. You can't learn to be anything that you want, you can just learn to be that you can manipulate certain areas of you to enhance them and to downregulate others. The difference between Be yourself and choose yourself is interesting. But especially as you grow up your life paths, they do start to get closed off more, right, because you have less and less time presumably most people will want to start a family of some kind, which, again, it's something that you're working toward as you grow up. And yeah, it's an interesting one, I think. I think that choosing yourself has a beauty to it and a sense of achievement once you've completed it. I think that's really really nice and you can feel proud of the person that you are, but that needs to come from a place of inner truth, or else you're just going to end up playing a role you're not going to be if you decided tomorrow that you wanted to wake up and be a PT in a gym, and just be some super Alpha Go out sniff a bag with the boys on a weekend, like five minutes. and watch the football or did you see the West Ham game last night they like, if you decided to be that guy, I'm sure that you could probably flip up, you absolutely could force yourself into it. Someone held a gun to your head and said, right, you got to be the biggest lab that you can for the next year, you could do it, but it wouldn't be you. So you can't fully choose yourself. You could act yourself. But the difference between choose and be is basically does this feel like it's cohesive with my inner desire. And what you're trying to do is you're trying to remove the distance from what you would do and what you want to do. So what would I do? If I woke up this morning, I would maybe do some meditation and do some walking. It's Can I get something from system to system one? And the more that you get the things that you want in system two to system one, that's you creating yourself to be yourself? Does that make sense? Like if you can choose the things that you want to have in life, and you can make them so much a part of you that they actually end up embodying you and you embody them? That feels like that feels like you've managed to
merge the two together. Yeah, it's sort of like habit formation, but for personality traits, I guess. Yeah. And also for
the values that you have. Yeah, for me, I was a guy that took a lot of pride from the success of his club night and from the way that he was seen and blah, blah, blah, don't get me wrong, I probably just transmuted them into other different, like, desires and wants and, and shit. But I got rid of those ones, because I didn't want them anymore. So I guess you can choose yourself, but you're not infinitely malleable.
I mean, I think that's a good place to end this. We still have so much to talk about, about your podcast about your journey about your whole weirdness stuff, authenticity, wanting to want things. I think we'll save that for part two, because this is officially the longest episode we've ever recorded on the deep dive. I have a few rapid fire questions for you. Me, too. And with that, we're asking everyone what advice number one, what advice would you give to your younger self? feel less fear less feel has who has had the biggest influence on your career?
Dave, my older business partner, the guy that is the CEO of the company that we're twinned with,
right, what was the influence that he had, he was the first boss that I ever had. He
was the first role model that I ever had. He's about four or five years older than me, and he is just a very, very shrewd guy. When it comes to business. Almost all of the business acumen that I have can be attributed the genesis of it can be attributed to that guy.
What's one tip for someone looking for success? Sleep more? What did the first and last hour of your day look like?
Upon waking elements salts in water, walk for 15 minutes, journal, meditate, breath work, read, cook, and then a nighttime usually watching some sport or whatever with my flatmate in the living room or Re and then some sort of reading probably half and half
nice. I need to ask you more about your morning routine next time we speak. What material item under 100 pounds Could you not live without flash that's added the most value to your life in recent memory
under 100 pounds. Steel shaker? Oh, just steal protein. Shake it up. 15 quid cool.
What book would you recommend to anyone?
The Almanack of navall. Ravi Kant.
If you lost everything, how would you start the business again?
Philip clubnight easy.
What quote or mantra do you live by?
Don't practice what you do not want to become?
Less. And finally a journey or destination? Journey. Right. Nice, Chris. Thanks for coming on. Thanks to all of your all of your things in the video description. Anything in particular you'd like to plug?
Those episodes that we mentioned, will be linked in the show notes below modern wisdom wherever you listen Apple podcast, Spotify, YouTube, Chris Williamson. And if you want a list of 100 books we've talked about a lot today, Chris will x.com/books is a free list of 100 of the most impactful and interesting books that I've ever read.
And will link my appearances on your podcast as well in addition, which
was awesome.
Oh great. Thanks for coming on and see you later. That's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you very much for listening. All of Chris's links and all the resources we discussed will be in the show notes and the description if you're watching this on YouTube. Thank you again for tuning in. And if you did enjoy this episode, don't forget to leave a review on Apple podcasts and more people can discover the podcast. Catch you
Unknown Speaker 1:44:19
later.
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