Skip to content

Podcast

16 Brutal Life Lessons for Ambitious People - Michael Smoak -

Modern Wisdom

Source ↗ ← All highlights
  • High Standards Turn Wins Into Obligations
    • High achievers often treat wins as obligations, so success becomes the minimum acceptable standard instead of something to enjoy.
    • Michael Smoak contrasted running his first 10 miles with casually discussing 16 and 20 mile runs years later. Transcript: Chris Williamson I have a hard time celebrating my achievements because in my mind, it was my obligation to achieve it. Michael Smoak Oh, the dilemma of the high achiever. I know you don’t struggle with this at all, right? Chris Williamson I know this truly. Game recognizes game, as they say. Michael Smoak Yes, yes. All from a place of deep wounds and the desire to be adequate and enough. Yeah. I have a hard time celebrating my achievements and wins because it was in my mind. In my mind, it was my obligation to achieve them. And not only that, I think the group of people we hang out with, you hang out with, I hang out with, makes the exceptional seem extremely normal. I was having a conversation the other day with a friend who both of us had long runs and I was running 16, he was running 20. And there was a time a couple of years ago where you couldn’t have paid me thousands of dollars to do anything but drive 16 miles. And the fact of the matter is the average person thinks that’s crazy. And there was a time where I was extremely proud of that. I remember running my first 10 miles. I remember where I was. I remember what I was doing. It was sunny. We were in Atlanta on the belt line. And I remember when it hit 10 and I hit stop on the Apple watch and I went, holy shit, I just ran 10 miles. And then now it’s just a normal and the carrot keeps moving for the high achiever. So I think the battle has now become learning to be content in the things that we achieve. This was a goal of mine, sitting down with you and being on this podcast. I’ve listened to it for years and it’s incredible to be in it with you right now. It’s truly an honor because you can interview anybody in the world and yet here I sit. And so what, what is the, what is the line between sitting in the pride and the humility and the graciousness and gratitude of the achievement and then moving the needle? I think you alluded to this in an episode you did a while ago, talking about how you forgot to celebrate the wins along the way, which led to an inevitable case of burnout. And when we were here at the podcast, at the four-way podcast the other day with Sean and George, we talked about the importance of romanticizing every single thing in your life. So that way, when the big achievement comes, it doesn’t feel like an obligation. It feels like a victory and you can truly sit in it before you move on (Time 0:00:00)
  • Ambition Keeps You Living In The Gap
    • Raising your standards can trap you in the gap between where you are and where you want to be, so you keep feeling behind while improving.
    • Chris Williamson used Alexander the Great’s tears as a model for ambition that always outgrows accomplishment. Transcript: Chris Williamson It’s strange. Yeah. I think people that have high standards assume that they should always win. They should always succeed. And that turns success from a cause for celebration into the minimum level of acceptable performance. Success simply becomes what’s expected of you, and anything less than success would be a failure. And yeah, it’s the habituation that we see, hedonic adaptation. People talk about it for you buy a new car and it’s all exciting. And then pretty quickly you get used to it. You move into a new house and you’re thinking about it for so long and you were looking on Zoopla and Rightmove and you were comparing it. And this is what we’re… And then it’s just the place that you put your shoes at the end of the day after a while. But a much more sort of pernicious place for this is in personal growth. It’s in your own capacity. So previously, your old PR that you celebrated at the time is now a warm-up set. And the same thing goes for the status that you have and your precision with the way that you do your art form, the speed at which you can complete a particular task, whether you’re a salesperson Or you manage a retail store or you write a blog or whatever, you want to permanently be pushing the limits. And as you raise the bar, that means that you will always feel like you suck because your standards continually outstrip your ability to deliver them. And that’s good in some ways because it keeps forcing you to progress. But it does mean that you live in this gap, right? You don’t live in the game, the comparison between where you are and where you are. You live in the gap between where you are and where you want to be. That’s not where you could be because sometimes you can want to be further than where you could be. And I told you that story about Alexander the Great, which is how we read the quote of Alexander saying, and Alexander wept, for he saw there were no more worlds to conquer, as his ambition Being able to outstrip reality’s ability to challenge him. Oh, he was bigger than the world, and he reached the edge of it and couldn’t keep going, but would have done. But that’s not the actual quote. The actual quote is him realizing that there are infinite worlds and he hasn’t even yet become the Lord of One. So he’s crying at how puny and minuscule his accomplishments are. And I think that that’s actually much closer to how we all feel. Like who has ever reached the edge of their ambition? Their ambition continues to outstrip it. You’re right. If you raise your standards, you regularly disparage your accomplishments, even in the process of them. And there’s a John Bellion song, Why, with Luke Combs. And in it, he says, if the higher I climb is the further I fall, then why love anything at all? He’s talking about opening up to someone, but I think the same thing works for just hard charging and overachieving. That way, if I permanently overachieve, then eventually I might get there, but you (Time 0:02:01)
  • Service Fulfills Faster Than Status
    • Money, status, and even authenticity fail as final goals because desire outpaces reality, while service offers a quicker route to fulfillment.
    • Michael Smoak framed serving a stranger, a barista, or a podcast listener as more grounding than chasing external success. Transcript: Michael Smoak Never arrive. When you said, I think you alluded to a version of it in there, but you said something to me the other day, our desire always outpaces reality’s ability to meet it. And I chose to just listen to people like you, people like Jim Carrey, who say, I pray that everyone gets rich and famous and has everything they ever want so they can realize it’s not the Answer. And a lot of people go, okay, great, but let me just do that anyway. And then they get to the hedonic treadmill and then they get to the end of their rope. There is no end, right? The goal is not money. It’s not status. It’s not even authenticity, which is something I speak on a lot. For me, the goal of authenticity is the byproduct of that. The goal is, in my opinion, to stay tapped into inspiration and deeper levels of inspiration. And there are things that always get in the way. Well, I want more money or I get an idea and I want to act on that idea. But I just chose to listen to you guys talking about how you get everything you want and then you realize it’s not the answer why would i then go yeah but screw what they said i’m just going To do it anyway so i can be in the same state of not suffering but mild discomfort when i realized i didn’t get what i truly wanted and so with the alexander the great quote where he realizes How minuscule he is and he weeps over that maybe there’s value in realizing how minuscule we are and being grateful and how minuscule we are because then all we have to worry about is, And this is where my faith comes in, just being a servant. For me, I feel fulfilled if I’m serving others. And that’s a really broad mission that can look a lot of different ways. It can be saying hello to Gerard, the guy I crossed the crosswalk with today outside of my building. It can be asking the barista how their day is going. It can be putting on a podcast that a whole lot of people are going to see with the intent of delivering a message that might make one of their lives better. If I just say, how can I serve someone today? Then that’s fulfillment. And Tony Robbins says material success without spiritual fulfillment can feel like the ultimate failure. And that’s why you get people at the top with all the money and the cars and the women and the success, and they feel empty inside and they take their own life because they’re depressed. So for me, I think the antidote is realizing we’re dust and not weeping within that, but being deeply, deeply grateful that that’s all we are. Chris Williamson There’s obviously a lot of sexiness around memento mori. People think about, remember that you’re going to die, stoicism thing. They’ve got it on a coin that Ryan Holiday has given to them. I think that there’s a memento mori for productivity. You will never get on top of all of the tasks that you have to do. This is an Oliver Berkman thing where he says, there will never come a day where you have completed all of your tasks. I think about the fact that one day I’ll die and my email inbox will continue to accumulate messages, people will get pissed that I’m not replying to their emails, not knowing that I’m Dead. And maybe that’ll be lots of people because it’ll happen suddenly and I’ll be young and maybe it’ll be a few people because I’ll be old and they’ll have known about it. One day that will happen. It will keep going. So you have this, it’s kind of like workload entropy. You are going to be defeated by the entropy of this workload bearing down on you. And it’s just never going to stop. So I think realizing that’s not morbid, but it should feel liberating, which is I think what you’re getting at. You should be liberated by this. Look, you’re never going to get on top of it all. Yes, there’s things that you need to do. You want accolades. You want status, acclaim, external achievements. Cool. Go get it. Just know that if it feels a bit more hollow than you thought it would, that that’s kind of by design. It’s always going to be that. (Time 0:04:50)
  • Productivity Has Its Own Memento Mori
    • Accepting that work never ends can feel liberating, because there will never be a day when every task is finished.
    • Chris Williamson imagined dying young while his inbox kept filling, using that absurd image to argue for more fun now. Transcript: Chris Williamson There’s obviously a lot of sexiness around memento mori. People think about, remember that you’re going to die, stoicism thing. They’ve got it on a coin that Ryan Holiday has given to them. I think that there’s a memento mori for productivity. You will never get on top of all of the tasks that you have to do. This is an Oliver Berkman thing where he says, there will never come a day where you have completed all of your tasks. I think about the fact that one day I’ll die and my email inbox will continue to accumulate messages, people will get pissed that I’m not replying to their emails, not knowing that I’m Dead. And maybe that’ll be lots of people because it’ll happen suddenly and I’ll be young and maybe it’ll be a few people because I’ll be old and they’ll have known about it. One day that will happen. It will keep going. So you have this, it’s kind of like workload entropy. You are going to be defeated by the entropy of this workload bearing down on you. And it’s just never going to stop. So I think realizing that’s not morbid, but it should feel liberating, which is I think what you’re getting at. You should be liberated by this. Look, you’re never going to get on top of it all. Yes, there’s things that you need to do. You want accolades. You want status, acclaim, external achievements. Cool. Go get it. Just know that if it feels a bit more hollow than you thought it would, that that’s kind of by design. It’s always going to be that. And a much quicker way to try and feel fulfilled is to go, huh, what if I just had fun? What would it be like if I had a little bit more fun? This guy asked me last night, I have this burning ambition in the Q&A of one of my work in progress shows. I have this burning ambition. I can’t turn it off. What should I do? I said, just become really, really successful. That’s the quickest solution. Use the fuel. Hey, man, I’ve got this massive gas tank, and I can’t take my foot off the gas pedal. All right, drive until you run out of fuel. Just go. Keep going, and then eventually you’ll run out. It’s a strange one, though, right? Because obviously the difficulty of this discussion is that saying to anybody who has a burning ambition that the end result of their ambition is not going to make them happy is like Telling a hungry man that food doesn’t really matter as a fat man. And you’re stripping away from people the very fuel that they want to use to keep going. And it feels a little bit like rug pulling someone’s dream out from underneath them. So it’s a very contentious point to talk about. But I think I’m seeing so many more people discuss it as people’s speedrun careers. People can get to the top of a career in a pretty short amount of time, and then it’s not what they expected. So I think more and more people are having this mini existential quarter life crisis thing. Well, (Time 0:06:57)
  • Healing Shows Up In What You Can Say
    • If you cannot talk about a wound without breaking, it is still shaping your life from underneath.
    • Michael Smoak knew he had not processed his father’s decline when a slide with his dad made him go silent onstage for 30 seconds. Transcript: Chris Williamson What a lot of people are looking for, significance. Seen, belonging, mattering. Seen, heard, and understood. If you can’t talk about it, you aren’t healed from it. What’s that mean to you? Michael Smoak You’re only as healed from something as your ability to share it. It means everything to me. So my dad passed away January 19th of 2025, and it was a long, arduous, painful process. Moved home after a long breakup, lived with that person, came home to reset, thought I’d just get to spend some time with the parents before I moved to Florida. And then my dad’s not quite right. I hadn’t seen him in about a month, so he was regressing quickly and I could tell he didn’t look right. And what I didn’t know would happen would be over the next seven months, his health slowly regressing with no real answers as to what was wrong with him, which was really the crazy part. We didn’t know what was killing my dad, which is a really weird place to be because it was the epitome of helpless. There was nothing the doctors could do, I could do, and maybe we’ll dive deeper into the story later, but I remember not even being able to answer the question, how’s your dad doing without That pain or that tightness in my chest and my throat coming up. I couldn’t even say he’s fine. He’s not doing well. I couldn’t share anything about it. And 36 hours before he passed, I went and gave a presentation and I battled it, but he insisted that I go give this talk at a conference in Dallas and fly right back home because I was afraid He’d pass while I was gone. And he said, what are you worried? I’m going to die? And I said, yeah. And he said, so what? We’ve said everything we need to say. Go live your life. I’ll be mad if you don’t do this. And I did it and he hung on. But I remember there’s a part in that presentation where I talk about conviction and how important health is and how that’s one of my core messages in my content is you can have a laundry List of problems until you have a health problem and then there’s only one problem. And I lived it, but I couldn’t even talk about my dad because there’s a picture of him on the slide when I get to that. I told you about this and it was the first time I’d ever shared that story. And it’s the day we found out he was going to die. I took that photo for me. I didn’t think I’d ever share it, but it’s powerful because it was the moment that I remember being or thinking as a kid would be the worst day of my life. And I couldn’t, I was on stage and I just broke. I had to go silent for 30 seconds in front of 300 people and gather myself because I wasn’t healed. I hadn’t done the work. I hadn’t let myself grieve. I hadn’t let myself be angry. I hadn’t let myself be sad. And now I can sit here with you on the eighth biggest podcast in the world. Congratulations. That’s super cool. Suck me off. I will. And, and tell that full story without pain because I went all the way into the emotion. So you cannot, I don’t believe, I believe this. You cannot heal what you cannot feel and you cannot feel what you were unwilling to reveal. And for me, it was about talking about how I felt, letting myself be angry and telling someone I’m angry at my dad that he didn’t look after his health more tightly. But my first instinct was to manage the emotion. How dare I be angry? He’s dying. How dare I do that? But that’s not how you heal. We don’t heal and do the work by burying our emotions because what you bury will bury you. It will come around in your subconscious mind and run the show. So instead, I allowed myself, I gave myself full permission to explore the emotion of anger and then ask myself, is this valid? Is this real? No. But I couldn’t get there until I processed it. And then it was sadness and grief and guilt and at times happiness, full permission to express the full spectrum of emotion with which I was existing in. And now I can use that story to help people. And that is an incredible source of fulfillment. I heard a great Christian creator say once, your purpose in this life is to take what God delivered you from and turn around and help other people do the same thing. And for me, my biggest fear was always my dad dying. It was the grief that would come with that, but I made it to the other side. And now I get to share that story because I am healed from it. I don’t cry or choke up when I talk about my old man. And there was a time where if you’d asked me this a year ago, I’d have to probably just say, hold on and pause. So that’s what that means to me. If you cannot talk about it, you are not healed from it and it will run your life subconsciously in some way, your relationships, your work, your body, your health. So whatever is stirring around inside you that you suppress, understand that suppression of expression leads to depression. And until you express those emotions, you are not going to be delivered from them. (Time 0:11:01)
  • Resistance Turns Pain Into Suffering
    • Suffering grows when you resist emotions instead of letting them move through you, because you start fighting your feelings about your feelings.
    • Chris Williamson linked this to ACT therapy, while Michael Smoak said processed pain can produce clarity instead of depression. Transcript: Chris Williamson It’s interesting when we try to dictate the way that we should feel. I’m angry. I shouldn’t be angry. But you are. And I think this is a big part of what ACT therapy is trying to achieve, acceptance and commitment therapy, that the acceptance part is, this is just happening, and I have to allow it to Sort of move through me. And if you don’t, that’s when you begin a relationship, not just with the emotion, but with your relationship to the relationship of the emotion. I shouldn’t feel shame. And then you feel bitterness about your shame, and then you feel frustration at your bitterness about your shame. And it’s this infinite regress of saying things to yourself about something. My partner did something and it really made me feel agitated, made me feel maybe envious or insecure. I shouldn’t feel insecure. You do. You’re allowed to feel it. It doesn’t mean that you need to act on it. And maybe you do need to act on it. But if you just deny the emotion, I think there’s a lot of insight that comes out of that. But it’s not cool to do that. It doesn’t flex particularly well. It isn’t, we confuse suppression for strength and they’re not the same thing at all. Yeah. Michael Smoak What’s that John Mulaney bit? I had Irish parents. So my dad’s belief was, I’m going to take this emotion and then bury it down. And then one day I’ll die. That’s the Irish Catholic approach to admit masculine emotion. But you’re right. Most people are intellectualizing and managing their emotions i’m pissed but i shouldn’t be well now you don’t get the clarity on the other side of the processed emotion on in my opinion On the other side of processed emotion is divine revelation like i got to nothing but love and gratitude for the relationship that i have with my old man on the other side of letting myself Be angry sad and gr instead of burying it. But that is also an uncomfortable process. It’s not suffering, but it’s pain. It’s a lot of pain. What did Arthur Brooks say on your show? Suffering is pain times resistance. And if you can just eliminate the resistance, pain in life is inevitable, but suffering is optional. And suffering becomes part of the equation when you resist the pain instead of letting it move through you. Not be consumed by it, but let it teach you something. Understand it, and then move through it. And then on the other side, that is the work. Everyone says, oh, I’ve done a lot of work on myself. That’s the work that I believe people say that they do or want to do. (Time 0:15:50)
  • Smokes Razor Exposes Fake Calls To Speak
    • Demands to “speak on” an issue usually mean “repeat my opinion,” not “think independently in public.”
    • Chris Williamson named this dynamic Smokes Razor after Michael Smoak’s Minneapolis controversy and wider platform pressure. Transcript: Chris Williamson Think you can call it smokes razor which is when anybody asks you to speak on a topic they’re not asking you to speak on a topic. They’re asking you to agree with their position. Speak on Iran. You don’t want me to talk on Iran. You want me to say what you think about Iran. Because if I speak on Iran, but I say the opposite thing to what you believe, you’ll be unhappy. So say what you mean to say. Say what I want you to say about Iran. That’s more accurate. Now, now you’re not part of Smoke’s Razor. But I did. I agree. I think it’s a great take. And I can’t unsee it now whenever anybody says, when are you going to comment on? When are you going to comment on this thing? It’s like, you don’t want me to comment on this thing. You want me to say what you think about this thing. You want me to echo your opinion and i’m sure you get that just a few times a day i got in a lot of trouble this year from doing that not for not doing that i did it too much which is interesting Because the world has two things that are that are true at once you’re not iranian and you’re also not from minneapolis but you’re supposed to comment on it but there’s also worlds where People are told like are men doing talking about women’s bodies? I mean, if the men were in support of access to contraception, that’s speaking about women’s bodies. I’m sure that that would be fine. You shouldn’t be talking about this group because you’re not a part of it. Well, gay rights are fucked because I’m not gay. And Peter is fucked as well because I’m not a chicken or a cow. The Ukraine war, I’m afraid I’m from neither of those locations, so I can’t comment on that. I’m not a whale, so the Save the Oceans project, that’s out the window. We are only allowed to talk on topics that we are a member of, that restricts a lot of things. And at the same time, people will also say, you have a platform. It’s your duty to use it. The world is filled with people commenting on things that they know nothing about. I don’t intend on trying to add to that. I already do. I encroach on that territory enough already. But I think the world would be better if people said, I don’t know much about that. So I’m not going to say anything about it. We don’t need more psychology professors turning into global terrorism experts. There are people who have specialities in these worlds. And if you can bro-science your way through things, you can talk about whatever you would like. Don’t posit yourself as some sort of fucking authority. And certainly don’t hamstring somebody into saying something. Yeah. Simply because you have an agenda. We’re doing the world a favor by depriving them- Shutting the fuck up? (Time 0:54:04)
  • Fear Of Being Perceived Stops More Than Failure
    • Fear of being perceived, not just fear of failure, blocks people from posting, speaking, or trying things that could change their lives.
    • Michael Smoak argued the goal is not killing that fear but staying connected to inspiration and investigating the insecure part underneath it. Transcript: Chris Williamson The number one fear that holds people back from having everything they’ve ever wanted in life is the fear of being perceived. Most of us are operating from a place of deep fear and scarcity. Where we need to be operating from is a place of deep trust and abundance. Your slogan for the year should be simple. What you fear is, your slogan for the year should be simple. Where your fear is, there your task is. Lean directly into the things that make you most afraid if you want to build the life you’ve always wanted for yourself. Michael Smoak That’s the thing that holds people back. It’s not the fear of failure. It’s not even the fear of success because sometimes there’s that that comes into the equation of who will I have to become if this all works? What will have to shift within me? At every level we hit, we all have different thresholds for this, is the fear of being perceived. It’s that little middle schooler inside of us that says, what will they think of me? Will I be cast out of the cool kid crew? I’ll be cast out of the tribe. What will the internet think? Like I said, every person has a level for this. For some people, for most people that I get questions around, it’s posting for the first time online. What if I look cringe? What if I look corny? For many people, it’s the fear of public speaking. You know, that’s the number one fear ahead of death in many psychological surveys, which I find fascinating. Do you think that’s true? I’ve read that too. Do you think that’s true? I mean, it’s in the data. Chris Williamson I’m going to shoot you or I’m going to put you on stage. Michael Smoak Yeah, you’re going to go on stage, but your body’s probably going to have a fit. This is also not fair. You do it for a living. So like you’re a bit of a biased resource on the answer. Some people might literally rather be killed. I don’t know. I did have a friend once say to me, and I quote, that we couldn’t experiment on him. He said, no, I’d literally rather die than get on a stage in front of 2000 people. And he didn’t laugh. So, I mean, his word was bond at that point, but at every level we hit a wall of perception, a fear of perception. You know, at first it was for me posting online and then I did it and it started to work. And then I overcame that, if you will. And then it was, the audience got bigger and now it was, and then I got canceled for the first time. This happened last year too. It was about a different thing. And then the fear of perception kind of crept in there. And then maybe it was my first public speaking event in front of a couple of hundred people, and the fear of perception came back in. Believe about themselves to be true. And really their deepest, darkest fear. What if they confirm that I am not enough? What if they confirm that I am incompetent? All the things that we deal with because someone said those things to us, you’re inadequate, you’re not enough, you can’t sit with us, you’re not good enough, whatever. When we were a kid and we chose to believe that thing. The fear of perception gets to everybody, but there’s a level to it for everyone. Your fear of perception is much higher than the person at home listening to this or sitting in their car on their drive to work right now. But at some point you hit a level where you go, what will they think of me if I do this? There’s something within you that could hit, maybe it’s a new style of content. Maybe it’s throwing out that certain joke that you really know is pushing it in the new talk. Maybe it’s being vulnerable to a degree that you’ve never been online before, because that’s not what the other guys are doing. So what will those guys think of me? Because you’re batting in a league that’s pretty high. What will those guys think of me if I say something totally different in my videos? It’s there somewhere. But I think too many people view it as a fight. I can overcome the fear of perception, or if I can conquer the fear of perception. The goal is not to overcome the fear of perception is to stay tapped in with inspiration because you’re inspired until you hit the wall. You know, the content was flowing for me and I was super inspired and creating a bunch. And then the first wall was boom, canceled because I said something polarizing. This was, like I said, a year plus ago, I made a fat joke that was pretty off the, it was off color, but it was funny and That was where it first crept in people big creators started saying Crazy stuff about me. That wasn’t true And then I and then I got blocked from inspiration I didn’t know what to create because I was worried what they will think of me With what came next And so if the goal is not To overcome the fear of perception but to stay tapped into inspiration Then that shifts it from a fight to more of a dance Is everybody wants to maximize their potential, but I don’t think That’s the game. I think you don’t want to maximize your potential. You want to know deeply the parts of you that don’t want you to do that. Because when I decided to do seminars last year, there was a part of me that went, what if nobody shows up? Maybe a fear you had selling tickets across the world, maybe not, but that fear crept in. And so then the job is not, oh, let me just bury that. The job is then let me go explore that part of me that thinks nobody will show up so I can get to, as I said earlier, is this true? Why is that kid in me so afraid that nobody will come to my birthday party? That’s the adult equivalent of the speaking tour I did last year. And so through deeply understanding and knowing the parts of us that don’t want us to maximize our potential, it is only in doing that that the fear of perception falls away. But there’s nowhere to get. That’s the game, dude. That’s the game. There’s nowhere to get. It’s an exponential curve. It never touches zero. For every new level, there’s a new devil. I love that quote. And when you went from your first episode on your couch in the UK to top 50 to top 25 to now eight, there’s a fear that creeps in at every point, something that you have to work through. But I think the secret is knowing deeply the part of you that says you don’t deserve that. You can’t have that. And instead of saying that’s wrong, familiarize yourself with it. And then you can process it. And that’s the difference between processing your emotion and being run by your emotion. Because the two decisions you make, if you listen to the narrative, I’m not enough versus observe it and understand it and move through it are wildly different decisions. So that’s what the fear of perception is to me. It’s the goal to stay tapped into the inspiration of what I believe the messages that God is placing on my heart are. And that’s why my content is so diverse. One day I’ll make a video about grief and what I learned from the death of my father. And the next day it’s the fucking review of the Coke flavored Oreo, or the Oreo flavored Coke Zero, my most viral video ever, classically, which is hilarious. There’s no, it was just inspiration. It was following the inspiration. And in doing that, I’ve built a business out of it, but conventional rules would tell me, well, you’re not sticking to the framework and the structures and the virality. It’s all bullshit. So the goal is to stay tapped in to inspiration by dancing with that fear of perception. (Time 0:58:07)
  • Abundance Thinking Helps The Cautious Risk More
    • An abundance mindset lets some ambitious people take healthier risks, spend, rest, and trust life instead of hoarding safety forever.
    • Chris Williamson said Die With Zero countered his instinct to cling to money because he had never had much before. Transcript: Chris Williamson There’s an interesting line between scarcity and abundance. So George Mac is just the most abundance mindset person I’ve ever met. It really is. He has, this is one of my fucking favorite George stories. I think he must be on his 30th pair of AirPods now. And he’s kept them all in his Bluetooth history. I hope he has Apple stock. Probably. And you can see George’s AirPods, one, two, three, four, all the way up to 30. But because they’re all linked to his Find My, there’s one pair that’s in the United Nations building in downtown New York City. There’s one left AirPod i think that’s in kandahar or something so he’s lost them around the world or some of them will be in the ocean others of them have been picked up by people where He’s left them and uh he left them in dean’s the other night oh my god when we were at dinner yes oh my god left them at dean’s uh and he can see he tracks them and every so often because you can Do the find my he just plays a sound out of the airpods so the fucking un building will be and it’s just him fucking with the dude in kandahar he’s just like fucking with him because he knows That he’s got the airpods it’s so good but he’s just got abundance mindset man and i don’t think anyone’s done a full treatment on the difference between scarcity and abundance mindset Not enough it’s a really obvious meme i guess if you’ve been in the personal development world for a while i haven’t seen it fully sort of break through and the idea that a glass half full Versus half empty is a pretty sort of cliche way to think about it. Just assuming that it’s okay, things will get better. I can take the risk. I can spend the money. I can treat myself. I can give myself time off. I can permit myself to attempt this thing that I don’t know whether or not it’s going to go well. Just assume that things are going to go well. And it’s a particular type of advice for a particular type of person that maybe many, perhaps even most people actually need the opposite advice. They need to be told to pump the brakes on their risk tolerance. There is a big subset of people, I’m going to guess, at the very least like me, perhaps like you, who need the opposite piece of advice. I needed to read Die With Zero by Bill Perkins, because otherwise I would have just been scrimping and saving. There’s a difference between misers and spenders. And unfortunately, I fell into the camp of I’d never had money. So I thought, well, now I’ve got it. I should hold onto it. What if it goes away? Well, that means that you never get to arrive at a place where you arrive. And yeah, abundance mindset is a wonderful salve to the uncertainty and the fear that I think a lot of us feel. Michael Smoak Your episode shift, are we allowed to talk about the new style of content that’s coming up? (Time 1:04:31)
  • Creators Need Information Relatability And Aspiration
    • Great creators combine authority, relatability, and aspiration instead of only teaching from a polished distance.
    • Michael Smoak broke this into informational, relational, and aspirational content and praised Chris Williamson’s looser group episode as relational proof. Transcript: Michael Smoak The, but that’s a great example, right? You could have said, well, this isn’t what my audience expects of me. This isn’t what got me to top eight in the world. I can’t do a four-way podcast of me and my boys bullshitting I’ve been the interview guy. I’ve been the solo guy giving advice. But to me, I’ve viewed what you did as an act of authenticity and trusting that diversifying is actually the exact thing you should do because you haven’t done it up to this point. And the more frictionless, less buttoned up, you know, pop a button and let your hair down approach to this, like us just talking and joking. And some of the crazy stuff that happened to that episode is exactly what people want to see from you because it makes you so relational. So I view creators through this lens as well. There’s this guy who said he uses his content as a direct exposure therapy to people-pleasing. He posts whatever he wants. He says, I don’t, I wish I knew his name so I could give him credit. I post whatever I want. I’m not really overly mindful of what my audience wants. And I have a wide variety of topics that I speak on. He’s an authority in some places. He’s very human and goofy in others. And he talks about his story in other facets of content. So there’s three pillars I think that exist. There’s informational, aspirational, and relational. Informational is the authority figure content. I’m teaching you something. And then relational is the OpenTabs podcast, if that’s what you decide to call it. Did you decide on a name? Chris Williamson We’re still working between Rabbit Hole, OpenTabs, SideQuest, and Stuff I Love. Michael Smoak I like OpenTabs, dude. OpenTabs is fun. Tabs is good so informational is we’ll use my content for example when i’m teaching you about creatine or the form and fashion of public speaking tips how to limit your filler words something I’m competent on and then there’s relational it’s just me saying this is the oreo flavored coke let me review it and it’s just total it’s total brain rot It’s just funny. I’m cracking jokes. And then there’s aspirational. There’s look at what I overcame and you can too. Leo Skeppy is a masterclass on this. I don’t know if you know who that is, but he’s a huge creator. He’s got 10 million followers on TikTok, five on Instagram and a big podcast, but he is a therapist in his podcast. Basically, he does this video. It’s like, come get ready with me and let you see my outfit before I go out in Vegas for the night. And it’s like no value. People are saying like, this feels like a FaceTime from you. I love you. And then aspirational, he talks about overcoming an abusive relationship and the hardship that he dealt with to get to where he is now, which is wealthy, healthy, and abundant. And when you combine those three pillars, you get an audience that is really bought into you because not only can you teach them something, but they can relate to you. And they can also feel that they can overcome hardship too. You’re not just this person, this man or woman in the ivory tower sitting in your beautiful podcast studio. No, you’ve been through shit because you’re human. And that’s what I think is that makes an incredible creator and also allows us to continuously break through the levels of the fear of perception. And that’s honestly how I view content. My videos are me expressing myself in the purest fashion that I think is almost childlike to me. Chris Williamson Also makes for an interesting person. (Time 1:07:42)
  • We Chase Feelings More Than The Thing
    • People rarely want the object itself; they want the feeling of significance, adequacy, or status they expect the object to provide.
    • Chris Williamson extended this beyond Ferraris to black belts, meditation hours, and self-development milestones that still hide arrival fallacy. Transcript: Michael Smoak We don’t want the thing we want the feeling that the thing gives us why yeah what did we’re speed running our recancellation right now with all the references we’re pulling what did andrew Tate say you don’t want the ferrari you want everyone to know you have the ferrari and that they can’t have the ferrari all right we don’t we don’t things isn’t fun getting things is fun Having things isn’t fun getting things is fun, but we don’t want the thing. We want the feeling that it gives us because I’ll give you my opinion on this. This is, it’s a faith-based one yet. Again, we’ll come back to this. My, a lot, my, my pastor, Philip Mitchell, that I referenced earlier says that everybody has a God-shaped hole in their heart and they try to fill it with the things of the world. And, and this is why biblically idolatry is a sin. Sin is actually just God’s way of protecting us from hurting ourselves because we’re stupid. We’re people, we’re dumb and we make mistakes. To idolize something is to put it on a pedestal and to put it on a pedestal implies that it can never let you down. But things of the world are imperfect. They’ll always let us down. And so we don’t want the thing. We want the feeling the thing gives us because the nice watch, the nice car, the status, the success, the money, whatever, any form of material success, will it make us feel significant, Seen, heard, understood, important in our place in the world? And it never does. Like you said, it’s the hedonic treadmill. You step into the thing. It’s really cool. You get the dopamine hit. And then the Ferrari just becomes, we’ll take my car. Chris Williamson Well, don’t forget, there’s a much more squirrely, pernicious version of this, which is developing yourself with your traits and your skills and maybe your knowledge as well. Naval has this cool idea where he talks about how he wasn’t that concerned about being smart, but he really wanted to appear smart. So what he did is he just wrote, memorized tons of stuff. And that gave him the illusion of being smart to other people. But it didn’t mean he actually understood what he was doing. And that difference of when I’m able to impress people around a dinner table, when everybody else shuts up and they think I’m the most interesting person in the room, then. Or a black belt in some martial art. When I get there, then. And the difference is there’s an obvious cultural meme around how cringy it is to assume that a Ferrari is going to fix your self-worth problem. But there’s far less about, well, once I’ve done a thousand hours of meditation, once I’ve got my black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, once I’ve finally read all of the classics and can Quote them verbatim around the dinner table, once I’ve done even more pernicious than this, go deeper, once I’ve done every level of the Hoffman process or internal family systems, Or I know every Joe Hudson Art of Accomplishment podcast off by heart, and I’ve done the work, and I’ve transcended and included my Wilburian ego, and everything has now become a perfect Manifestation. I’ve alchemized myself. That is just a slightly cleverer twist on the same arrival fallacy. I will be when. I will be something when I something else. It’s the same dynamic. It’s just done in a slightly less shallow, obviously vapid way. Michael Smoak Nowhere to get. There’s nowhere to get. It doesn’t mean you don’t go there. It doesn’t mean you don’t achieve the thing and build the accolades. That doesn’t mean it’s not fun and it doesn’t feel good, but there’s nowhere to get. (Time 1:10:47)
  • Recording Final Conversations With His Dying Father
    • Michael Smoak describes recording a series of conversations with his father after he got sick and asking him the hard questions people avoid.
    • He says those sessions were brutal: he sometimes had to turn the camera off and walk away because of the pain.
    • He asked his dad things like what he wanted to say at Michael’s wedding and is grateful he captured those answers.
    • Having that experience raised Michael’s threshold for pain and stress and changed how much he cares about internet opinion.
    • He tried controlling his public narrative before and found it created more internal pain, so now he leans into having the real recordings and memories instead. Transcript: Michael Smoak Nowhere to get. There’s nowhere to get. It doesn’t mean you don’t go there. It doesn’t mean you don’t achieve the thing and build the accolades. That doesn’t mean it’s not fun and it doesn’t feel good, but there’s nowhere to get. There are just levels to climb through. And zero is death. Zero is when your life is over. And that, in my opinion, takes all the weight off of it. It makes it more fun, easier to obtain. And that when I get to the end of my life, I will have hopefully, God willing, a lot of cool shit. But the ultimate mission for me is to I hope, you know, my dad said this to me like four weeks before he died. I thought it was very interesting that a guy who was living what I thought was the fullest life ever, the stories he told me, the things he got to do, the things him and his friends did. The last four to six weeks, he was alive when he was just stuck on the couch and we would just sit and talk. And one thing I’m really thankful for that I did that I hope anyone listening to this with parents who are still here do is I recorded a series of podcasts with my dad when he got sick and I asked him all the hard questions and it was fucking brutal and like had to turn the camera off, had to walk away. It was, it’s a unique pain to look at my dad and say, what do you want to say to me on my wedding day? Can you say it right there? That’s hard. But I’m grateful that I did it because now I have it. (Time 1:14:05)
  • His Dying Father Regretted Time Not Trophies
    • Near death, Michael Smoak’s father did not obsess over achievements; he regretted time away from family and wanted to hear he had served well.
    • Michael recorded hard conversations, including what his dad would say on his wedding day, so he would not lose them. Transcript: Michael Smoak But the ultimate mission for me is to I hope, you know, my dad said this to me like four weeks before he died. I thought it was very interesting that a guy who was living what I thought was the fullest life ever, the stories he told me, the things he got to do, the things him and his friends did. The last four to six weeks, he was alive when he was just stuck on the couch and we would just sit and talk. And one thing I’m really thankful for that I did that I hope anyone listening to this with parents who are still here do is I recorded a series of podcasts with my dad when he got sick and I asked him all the hard questions and it was fucking brutal and like had to turn the camera off, had to walk away. It was, it’s a unique pain to look at my dad and say, what do you want to say to me on my wedding day? Can you say it right there? That’s hard. But I’m grateful that I did it because now I have it. And it goes back to, I don’t really think a lot of what the people on the internet think about me because I had to do that. My threshold for pain is so much higher. For stress is so much higher. I don’t want to control the narrative. I tried that. And it created so much more pain within me. But back to the original point, it was interesting to hear a man who I thought was 10 feet tall and bulletproof and had done everything in the world and had shown up for me every time I needed It and was a great husband, a great dad, the best I’d ever seen. When he got to the end of his life, all he could tell me about was the things he wishes he did more of. And it wasn’t anything complex. It wasn’t that he wish he sold more tracks because he was a running track salesman. It wasn’t that he wishes he did more skydive jumps or that he spent more time on the golf course. He said two things. He said, well, he said three things. He said, number one, I should have spent more time at home with your mom and less time on the golf course with my buddies. Number two, I should have been here for you guys more when you were growing up. I didn’t perceive it that way. To me, my dad was always there when I needed him. Like I was lucky to have a dad who really loved me and showed up for me and my brother and sister. And the last thing he said was, all I hope to hear when I get wherever I’m going is, well done, my good and faithful servant. You fought the good fight. You’ve run your race. Here’s your crown. It’s time to rest. That’s scriptural. And to me, these achievements are fun. They’re so fun. Cannot put be put into the feeling i have of gratitude to be sitting across the table from you right now man like it’s so cool i told my boy today he called me he’s like how you feeling i was Like dude we do downloads on modern wisdom we were getting our walks together in college like this is so cool it’s incredible but where i stand with my belief is not is that god’s not going To say, well done, my good and faithful podcast host, my good and faithful content creator, business owner. He’s not going to say husband or father or brother. He’s going to say servant. And if what I do glorifies God, and if I feel that way and I receive confirmation or what I think is confirmation, that’s what I think I’m here to do. And that’s what I think we’re all here to do. And I think if more people open their heart to the possibility of that being true, they would still have fun pursuing the thing and getting the thing and having the thing. But they’d understand that that’s really all we’re here for and that the only zero, the only arrival is the end of it. And that it’s all just fun. It’s fun and service. That’s it. (Time 1:14:31)
  • The Lonely Chapter Is Usually A Good Sign
    • Feeling lonely while outgrowing old habits and interests often signals progress, not failure, because self-development is naturally socially isolating.
    • Chris Williamson and Michael Smoak described years of solo walks, obsessive learning, and uncertain experimentation before any visible payoff. Transcript: Chris Williamson The path to being the best version of yourself should be lonely, and the loneliness you feel is nothing to be sad about. It is a benchmark and an indicator that you’re probably on the right path. Everything in life has a true opportunity cost to it. Cutting people off, cutting things off, cutting habits off is uncomfortable, but every time I’ve done it, something incredible has filled that gap. Michael Smoak This is total inception listening to you tell me what I said because I learned that from you, which is kind of hilarious. Correct. Chris Williamson It’s the human centipede, but we’ve both got our ass and mouth attached to each other. Michael Smoak We’re Earl Burrussing each other or whatever the fuck it’s called. That’s correct. Yeah. My mouth to Chris’s ass. Clip that. Very good. Yeah, I mean, you and Hormozy talked about the lonely chapter. And I remember going through that being 22 years old and wondering. I really had one friend, my best friend, the guy I just told you I was on the phone with earlier. Will, I love you if you’re listening to this. It was just he and I. I would have these feelings of why do I care this much about resistance training, progressive overload? Why do I want to learn about hormesis and heat exposure and listen to Dr. Rhonda Patrick talk for three hours about those things with Joe Rogan? Why do I care what Chris Williamson and Andrew Huberman are going to talk about for two hours? And when I go talk to it about my talk about it to my friends, they go sick, dude. It’s like, you can’t expect everyone to have the interest, same interest as you. I get that. You want to slide me one of those? Yeah, get in there. Appreciate it. A little nicotine bump. Chris Williamson Go on is this is this the mint one this is the watermelon peppermint i think watermelon peppermint now we’re just finding different ways to stimulate ourselves yeah i have an oral fixation Which is great to say after we just talked about ass to mouth yeah chris loves funny ways to get orally stimulated for sure. Michael Smoak Yeah, that’s correct. I remember this nicotine toothpick’s about to go straight to my frontal lobe and allow me to cohesively pull this thought together. But I remember being very confused about why nobody gave a shit about the things I gave a shit about. And I just had this one friend. It was me and Will. And he was up in New York at college and I was down in Georgia. And so we’d do these things we called neat chats. We’d go out and go for a walk, non-exercise activity, thermogenesis. Walking, neat chats. He just texts me like neat and we go. And we do downloads on the podcast we were listening to, but we were each other’s only outlet and that can feel lonely. And I remember a girl I was dating at the time saying, I talked to her about the first time I heard about the anterior mid-cingulate cortex. And I went, this is groundbreaking fucking information. I’ve got to tell the world. The British are coming. The British are coming. The AMCC is growing. Fuck you, it’s boring. Yeah, exactly. And it was a very loving, you should make content or something. Chris Williamson You should talk about this. Yeah. But not to me. But not to me. That’s exactly right. It would be really great if you didn’t talk to me about it. Michael Smoak That’s exactly right. And at the time it felt like rejection, but in hindsight, I’m like, yeah, I can’t expect you to care about the things I care about. So for me, this period of losing weight when I was overweight, I lost 60 pounds when I was 21 and kept the weight off, became passionate about understanding that it’s actually not that Hard. My life got better when I did that. People treated me better. My energy was better. My clothes fit. I felt better about myself. Look good, feel good, play good. Why does everybody think this is so hard? And then it got deeper. My grandma died of Alzheimer’s. So I became interested in cognitive decline as it pertains to exercise and lifestyle. And this passion just kept growing within me where all I was consuming was podcasts and information on this at any chance I could, but I wasn’t really doing anything with it other than My own benefit. And I realize now so clearly looking back that that was God preparing me for this. I use everything I learned over that seven year period in my job every day. And people ask me, how do you know all this? I just spend six years alone walking by yourself, listening to podcasts for a thousand hours. That’s what it takes. And that was my lonely chapter. And it felt like it was for nothing. And looking back, I laugh at the idea of that because it’s part of why I’m in this room with you was my obsession with those things with no seeming or visible horizon of payoff in the future. You know, what does Hormozzi say? Being able to do the work without the promise or expectation of it paying off at any given point. I did that and eventually it paid off, but that’s where my love came from. And that’s where the understanding I tell people, if you feel like you’ve outgrown, in your words, you’ve outgrown your old group and you haven’t found your new one yet, that is a barometer That you’re actually on exactly the path that you’re supposed to be. At least that’s my take. And it’s what I’ve seen in people who other consider themselves high performers as well. And I think you feel similarly given that clip that- Of course. Chris Williamson Yeah. I mean, it was the central thrust of the last live show that i did it was the thing that people spoke about the most it’s kind of taken on a life of its own which is really cool and i think what’s Coolest about it is that it puts a name to something that a lot of people feel and that nobody had actually come up with a term for And yeah, it’s not romantic. There’s no point in that process that makes you feel like there’s glory happening. Your entire journey of personal development is just steeped in uncertainty and self-doubt. It’s not cool. It’s not sexy. I think the cut scene was three and a half minutes in the movies. It’s been four years for me. What the fuck is going on? There’s no promise of any success on the other side of it. I’m permanently questioning if you’re making any progress. Am I doing this right? And it isn’t like every training montage that you’ve seen where the hero goes from realizing he needs to change to the change with ups and downs in the journey and the progress, but no Loss of conviction. I lost conviction all the fucking time. Like, what should I be doing? Should I be, maybe I need to do more yoga. I’m actually CrossFit. I should be doing CrossFit. And if I did more CrossFit, no, fuck, because I need to meditate more. If I meditate more, I should learn. What should I learn? Should I learn the classic? Maybe I should read philosophy. No, I should do evolutionary. Just constantly trying to work out what I’m self-generating and self-educating. And yeah, when I look back, I’ve got this couch in Newcastle, the old studio, the one that I had to paint the ceiling off because it had candle set because I had a candle obsession for a while. And everybody said that it was mold. It wasn’t mold. Wasn’t my mom’s basement. It was my bedroom in my house that I bought and I loved, but it didn’t look that great. So I did have to get it painted. The internet bullied me into getting painters around, two gay painters. It was brilliant. And they came around, did this thing. And then it was a Douglas Murray episode, actually, that put the final, like, because he said, what’s that on the ceiling? And I was like, right, (Time 1:19:12)
  • He Built A Career By Running Back His Education
    • Chris Williamson did not plan his current career; he backed into it by following interests he had once suppressed for safer degrees.
    • He remembered writing his master’s dissertation in 36 hours on Red Bull and cocaine, then later building his own intellectual curriculum through the show. Transcript: Michael Smoak No. Chris Williamson I mean, look, grand plans, sort of big, impressive goals for life is never something I’ve been particularly good at. Really? But this wasn’t a plan, right? This was emergent. This was me failing forward, falling forward. Someone once described adulthood as like being pushed down a set of stairs at age 18 and trying to catch your feet until you die. And it does feel a little bit like that. I’m like performing adulthood, performing competence, whatever it is. But no, it absolutely wasn’t the plan. I didn’t have any plan at all. But I really enjoyed the process of following my passions, which I’d suppressed for a long time. So I did two degrees at university. I did a bachelor’s in business management, then a master’s in international marketing, and I did a year in industry. So I was at university for five years, left at 23. And I remember when I completed my master’s dissertation, I finished it. I started and finished it in 36 hours. I’d been given the entire summer to write it, and technically the entire year to write it. And I’ve started and finished it in 36 hours. And I did it on a case of Red Bull and three bags of very, very questionable cocaine from my local dealer. And I was so wired and just screwy by the end of it. My housemate had had a party downstairs and I kept going downstairs to do a line to then come back upstairs. I was like watching the party slowly degenerate as I was finishing my dissertation. I was completely sober. I mean, apart from the cocaine. Completely sober is a crazy thing to say when you were railing. Completely cocaine. Yeah, but like not, you know, I’m coke sober. Yeah, sure. And I didn’t trust myself to hand my dissertation in. I didn’t trust myself to drive it in. So I walked it into town. I walked to town from my house because I wouldn’t drive, obviously, because I was completely, I was like, you did just dedicate a year of your life and kind of the crowning achievement Of your academic career to this thing. So you were prepared to roll the dice with this. And it came back and I got one of the highest marks of my entire module was around that dissertation. So cocaine’s a hell of a drug. My point being, when I decided I’m going to try and do something that’s just for me, I looked back at my degrees and realized I should have done philosophy or psychology. I wasn’t fired up about business. I didn’t want to do business, but I couldn’t work out what job a philosopher would get. I didn’t know. I didn’t know what job a psychologist would get. Psychology was interesting to me. So I suppressed what I was interested in and did it in service of a thing that I thought would be functional. And then, you know, 15 years later, I can’t remember anything that I learned. So it was completely pointless. And I got the opportunity to run it back and basically create my own university course. And the one thing that I knew that I did want, the one goal that I did have was to be respected by people that I respected. I really wanted to be seen as a peer by people who I admired. And I think that’s one of the coolest things to have someone who got, dude, I really fucking love your work. I really like this way that you approach the world. And for them to say, oh yeah, I like this about you too. That is a fuel, I think, that will drive people. It’s not as transactional as just status growth it’s wow this person is discerning and they’re good at what they do and they like what i do too amazing what a great stamp commendation That i’ve received and that was something that i really wanted and yeah i had my fucking mount rushmore of guests and that was largely around mount rushmore of people that i wanted to Respect what I did. And, uh, that was what drove me for a good while. So do you feel like you’ve done that now? Still need to get Rogan on. He’s fucking skittish and he keeps on going elk hunting. So he’s busy, but, uh, yeah, I think so. I think, I think all of the people that I started off wanting to turn from a idol into a rival and appear, I managed to do. And that was awesome. And now it’s a case of, okay, what does it look like to start to forge something new? Right. What’s next? I don’t know. More of this. I’m just enjoying fucking having fun on the show, speaking to people like you and seeing what a new generation of creators that I can collaborate with is like. Guys like you, Joe Foley, Alex O’Connor, Dylan O’Sullivan, Chris Griffin, Elliot Buick. There’s a lot of young talent, younger talent that’s an entire generation in internet speak, but realistically only between 10 and 15 years in real life. And that’s cool. I think that’s really fun. Okay, well, what other angles have we got that we can play around with here? Who else is coming up? And then you get to be a platform for other people, which is sick, because for almost all of your career in something like this, you’re basically riding off the coattails of people who Are more successful than you and like suckling at the teat of someone who’s already suckling today. Accumulated a lot of that on his mind. I don’t. What can I say? And then eventually you get to the stage where you can pay it forward and you go, wow, I really fucking like this person. I’m going to give him a crack. Angelo Summers, fucking unreal. One of the best video essayists. So good and criminally undersubscribed. I just loved his essays. I’m like, I want to talk to him. Come to Austin. I want to talk to you. It’s sick. And I’m not quite yet a kingmaker, but you know, it’s good. We’re getting there. And that’s really, really fun. Is (Time 1:30:32)
  • Long Consistency Beats Fancy Tactics
    • Exceptional results usually come from doing obvious basics for an unusually long time, not from finding a hidden trick.
    • Michael Smoak pointed to posting every day for years, while Chris Williamson noted that 21 episodes already puts a podcast in the top percentile. Transcript: Michael Smoak What would you do for free right now? What would make you really happy? Is it to have that next generation around and on? Chris Williamson I would sit down and have these conversations for free. I did this before anybody listened. I did this long before anybody listened. It took, I think, two years to hit 10K subs. So that’s 150 episodes. And then it took three years to hit 100K. So we’re now at 300 episodes. And then when I moved to America, you were at 250K subs. And that was 450 episodes. We’ve only done a thousand, nearly 50% of the show was done before I moved to America and under 250k subs. And then I came out here and all of this stuff happened and it was really amazing, but I’d already done it when nobody was watching for a long time. Now we were stuck at, I think it was like 7K for nearly a year. And I didn’t care. I just loved what I was doing and it’s still the same. And so there’s nothing else that I want to do at 5.20 PM central time than be here and chat to you. There’s nothing else that I want to do. I am enjoying the stage stuff. That’s fun. Going and doing the live stuff’s cool, but there’s nothing else. All right, I’ve got another one. I want to harass you about this one. If you want exceptional things, you have to be willing to work toward them for exceptional periods of time. I’m willing to bet 90% of people who didn’t get where they wanted did so simply because they stopped too early. Michael Smoak I’m going to do the thing, the aphorism thing. Do it. 90% of success can be boiled down to doing the obvious thing for an extraordinary period of time without convincing yourself you’re smarter than you are, is the end of that quote from Mr. Hormozzi himself. What was the obvious thing with growing the podcast? What are the obvious things that you did that got it to where it is today? Not stopping. That’s it. With social media growth, people ask me all the time, what’s the number one thing you’d recommend? Post every day for six months. 90 plus, I would guarantee you 90 plus percent of people wash out after 90 days of posting. And so extraordinary success comes from just doing the boring stuff, but you can’t package that. You can’t make an incredible viral clip out of it or a multimillion dollar business. If you just tell people, if you want to get jacked, you should probably just not stop working out and not stop eating well and not stop walking. And if you want to have a successful podcast, you should probably just not stop uploading an episode a week or two episodes a week. It’s the same with social media. I haven’t missed an upload in two and a half years on social media yeah the byproduct is the growth but it’s the obvious thing and it’s the thing it’s not easy to do because things get in The way you have all these ideas or creative blocks or reasons you can’t post but it’s simple to understand is if you want to be where you want to be you have to do the boring shit for a long Time and that’s what i’ve noticed from everybody at the top There was never this game-changing revolutionary formula for how they got there. They just kept fucking showing up. And if they had 10% to give that day, if I had 10% to give that day and I gave it, I gave a hundred percent because I truly understand that that is so much better than nothing. And I do think so many people on social media stop right before they pop. So many people in the gym stop right before they hit that flow state with their workouts that gets them in the best shape of their life, or they find that way of eating that feels comfortable And that they can sustain forever. Most people stop right before they strike gold. And I know if I just keep showing up, even if it all falls away, like you just said i’d still do this for free if all the sponsors and the platform got stripped you’d still come into this room And record which means you climb again but not many people have the testicular fortitude to be able to do that i think also one of the things is people mistake doing something they feel Chris Williamson They should be doing instead of doing something that they’re obsessed with. So I’ve got the difference between discipline, motivation, and obsession. So discipline is, I will make myself do the thing. Motivation is, I want to do the thing. And obsession is, I can’t not do the thing. Sort of climbed inside of you and it’s staring out through your eyes. And what we look at with a lot of people, now it appears like discipline. But what it is, is just the remnant of what was previously an obsession. Going to the gym, for me, was something that I did because I was obsessed with it. I wouldn’t go on nights out at university because I wanted to stay in and read bodybuilding.com forums to see if this blueberry extract would get me more jacked or whatever the fuck. And now my training pattern is just like the hard rock that’s cooled after that lava erupted for a while. And it looks like discipline from the outside, but it’s actually just the remnant of this thing that kind of wore me for a while. And I don’t know whether you have heard me talk about this before, but 90% of podcasts don’t make it past episode three. And of the 10% that do, 90% of them don’t make it past episode 20. So by making 21 podcasts, you are in the top percentile of all podcasters ever. Let’s go. We did it. And it just sort of goes to show how rare consistency is. And yeah, if you want to, I want to be in the top percentile of all podcasters ever. Okay, just do 21. They can be shit. Do 21 and you have already won. And yeah, consistency is not sexy. And it doesn’t really fit very well on an Instagram reel because it’s not a quick fix. So yeah, it doesn’t surprise me that people don’t want to do it. I think another element, a lot of people didn’t get to where they are because of a lack of support. (Time 1:36:29)
  • Discipline Often Starts As Obsession
    • What looks like discipline from outside often began as obsession, and support or praise can help people survive the long uncertain middle.
    • Chris Williamson said gym discipline is cooled lava from past obsession and called himself someone with a “lifestyle-wide praise kink.” Transcript: Chris Williamson So I think the lonely chapter thing, I was for a very long time and still maybe deep down now, uncertain. Am I doing this right? Is it okay for me to want to do this thing? And I basically have a lifestyle-wide praise kink. And if you just say to me the thing that encouraged me, that is a really good fuel source for me. But that means that in the UK, somewhere which is quite disparaging of anybody that wants to do anything different, it’s the opposite. And I know that the lonely chapter thing particularly resonated with people in the UK because it’s one big fuck off lonely chapter. And that’s also one of the reasons I think that we’ve got such millionaire exit, like the whatever it’s called brain drain, this millionaire flight that’s happening from the UK. Because if you’re the sort of person that wants to make a lot of yourself, it’s not a wonderful culture to be in. And I really would love to change that. Yeah, the praise kink is a super funny way to put that. Michael Smoak A lifestyle-wide praise kink. Good boy, Chris, good boy. Don’t you do it. I don’t need it from you. But I love what you just said there, the 21 episodes about putting you in the top 1%. They are probably going to be shit. That’s the thing my love is mr b says create 100 videos and understand they’re all going to suck and then maybe you can start to get kind of good at it that’s the best creator on the planet By every observable metric i look back at my old content it’s horrific it’s i cringe it’s awful but it has to be shitty before it can get good your your episode one through five are probably Nowhere near. I listened to episode one, actually. What do you think? I mean, compared to this, you suck. Listenable, but comparatively shitty. And it’s the same thing with my pod and my first videos. It’s suspending the ego long enough for the skill sets to catch up. Yeah, that’s lovely. Chris Williamson That’s what it really is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And because your inspirations are not the people that are only one step ahead of you, they’re the people that are 15 steps ahead of you or 100 steps ahead of you. So you compare that to where you are. But nobody does that. Nobody starts playing football on a weekend and says, well, Cristiano Ronaldo is so much better than me. It’s fucking pointless, me even trying. You go, well, I suppose so. But if there was ever a, well, I was talking to Louis Theroux this morning and he said about the two jobs that British young boys want. Number one is still, I actually think this is a good sign. Number one is still to be a Premier League footballer. I think that’s a good sign. But number two is be a YouTuber. And there’s this weird world where what people need, what young boys need is more resilience if they’re going to do that. And it seems like more patience as well. It’s a particularly unpatient culture for people who want to be YouTubers an awful lot. Michael Smoak Yeah. I love that, that, that phrase, why do, why do grown men love pro athletes so much? Because it’s a kid that never gave up on their dreams and they want to be like that. And so it’s cool to hear that there are kids that are still wanting that. And I think that that childlike wonder gets taken from us at some point along the way in many people. And I still see that in what you do, the open tabs episodes, the way you fuck around talking about how you were railing lines of Coke like this. It’s a playful, not that kids should do Coke, not what I’m saying. No, it’s a great nootropic. It’s a great laser focused, but it’s, it’s at some point we, something happens to us and we just forget to play and have fun. And that’s why content is, is so easy for me to create. It’s, I looked, Proverbs 13, 12 says, hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a dream fulfilled as a tree of life or a longing fulfilled as a tree of life. I viewed a tree of life in that quote as inspiration. And the hope deferred was me not creating the content. And when people ask me what my strategy is for videos, I don’t have one because I treat it like a kid in a sandbox building castles it’s just it’s all content it’s all ideas and when i suspend The disbelief that it has to be anything the inspiration just continues to flow and that’s i encourage all the adults out there to unpucker their asses and have fun find a way to have fun Like you and i in the park the other day throwing the fucking unwinding our fucking rotator cuffs yeah 15 minutes i was not i was truly i was oh yeah i forgot it cracked oh yeah let’s see if You can get this on the microphone oh it’s popping inside my shoulder but i uh i went like this on the pod the other day and it just the whole studio heard but we were it was so funny the way Like the 12 year old inside of all of us or inside of you and I on that walk, as I bent down for the ball, we both went, yep. And then it just, no words directly into a game of catch. (Time 1:42:28)