S1 Ep9: The Truth About Ozempic, TRT & How To Increase Your Productivity - James Smith

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In the story you tell about your recruitment career, you probably weren't living like your truest life.

Yeah, it's a lie all the time. I got dick of the day playing rugby. They put a bin bag around my neck. I chundered all over the bus and all over myself and still made it on a night out. And then I'd just tell the people, oh yeah, I just went for dinner with my friends. It couldn't be further from the truth.

How did you go from being a PT to now being like multi-portfolio business owner? Working with Chris Williamson meant that there was a lot meticulous detail.

The meticulous product details is Chris Donnelly, and then the marketing is me. The one thing that completely screws my mental health is productivity. It's the one thing I care about the most.

Your take on TRT, I thought, was fascinating because I'm interested. Is that something that I should be looking at?

For me, I'd abused steroids when I was younger, so in my 20s, so I knew what testosterone felt like. And funnily enough, I haven't actually said this publicly. Wow.

So obviously, welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on. I think for those that don't know you, I would love to get a bit of background on you. Obviously, I think your journey has now been, you know, I've been watching your content for years and years, and there's obviously been shifts in your own life. So I'd love to just get a bit of background on, I suppose, how you entered this journey.

So I think I had a skill that I never really appreciated, which was making things easy to understand. I think that is almost 90% of my career. And I did the normal thing, started in corporate, worked in sales, worked in a call center, pretty much, uh, did my stint in recruitment like everyone. And I remember living paycheck to paycheck and I said to my mates, I'm doing a job in recruitment. And they said, oh, it's good money, but you hate it. Yeah. It's like, how can you earn good money and hate it? A year in, it was good money, but I hated it. And I went to Asia for 6 months, like probably every 24-year-old from Berkshire. Mum, Dad, yeah, I'm off, I'm off to Thailand. Of course you are, son. And, uh, when I came back, I was like, I just want to do something I enjoy. So I became a personal trainer and worked in a budget gym in Bracknell. It's £20 a month for a membership. And it was just so nice to work for myself and do a job I enjoyed. I actually thought if I train 3 people a day for £30, 90 quid a day, laughing, I could work 11 till 2. I might just do that forever. You know, just get a cheap flat in Bracknell. That's me. And then the thing that I like to probably look back on now is I didn't even know it when I was younger, but I loved video games growing up, whether it was Age of Empires, Call of Duty, whatever.

My 2 favourite games.

Yeah. Cool. Age of Empires 2. What a, what a game. And I was trying to explain to my mum last night where I am one of your classic self-proclaimed, I did have an ADHD assessment.

Mm-hmm.

And they said, oh yeah, you've got it. But I can't trust them because there's some incentive for them to say you've got ADHD. But anyway, I, I was saying to my mum and dad, homework never benefited me because there was no repercussions of me not doing it. Mm. I'd get a detention, but then Whenever I had detention at school, I would leave detention, put my rugby kit on, and tell my mum I had rugby training. So I never even got in trouble for it. Whereas with video games, if you don't play and level up, you don't get access to things in the game. Like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, you only get one island unless you do the work and do the missions. If you want to go to the other side and get the helicopters or fly the planes, you need to do the missions. So then when I was a PT, there's a part of me that was like, hold on, this is actually a game. Where the more people I talk to, the more clients I have, the more money I make, which then I learned gave me the leverage to control my pricing. And within maybe a year or two, I was the most expensive in the gym. And the main PT had been a PT for 10 years and he was an MMA fighter. He scared me. Mm-hmm. And I remember how much it disgruntled other people for me to be charging as much as the 10-year veteran in my second year. And that was the time that I probably became semi-entrepreneurial. We can't really say that in British culture. Everyone just thinks you're a dickhead. In America, they're like, go get that money. But my version of entrepreneurialism is just looking at your profession like a game. Yeah. Wanting to hit high scores, going on social media, and high scores in the onset was getting 25 likes on a video or getting 3 shares or a comment. And ever since I've been playing the game, which running businesses for me is very much like that, I don't look at followers as if, oh, I've got 20 Twickenham Stadiums full of people on TikTok. I stay very removed from that. But yeah, when it comes to finances, socials, growth, email marketing, conversions, all of that, to me it's like a fun video game that I get to play all the time, help people with their video games, and helping people understand things helps people kind of play the game. And weirdly, that is how I'd explain my career. Writing the books would've been a strategic move where I knew that it could help me in other areas of the game. Doing live talks helps promote the book. There was a time when we had sold more tickets to a live event than we had pre-orders for the book that the live event was about. So somehow I got better at promoting the talk than I did the book. And all of these course corrections over time makes you what some people could call a good marketer. And once you kind of understand the framework to that, you can apply it to any area of your life.

And you talk a lot about honesty and how that's changed in your original career to now. And I suppose that in the story you tell about your recruitment career, you probably weren't living like your truest life, whereas now, from everything I see about you, you seem like you're happy, very much yourself, you know, very honest about your entire life. Whereas what I've seen of you before, it seems like you were living effectively someone else's life.

So my dad worked in corporate in the City of London, and I always thought I had to follow in his footsteps. He provided for our family. Mum stopped working when they had kids. So straight away on autopilot, I was like, I probably need to get a job, probably need to wear a suit, probably need to work for a corporate company. And I remember I used to sit opposite a lady called Lynn and she'd be like— and I worked for a very posh recruitment firm in Windsor called Eaton Bridge Partners.

Shout out.

Yeah, well, they deserve it. They tolerated me through that time. I'll never forget, there was one— they were far too posh for me, and I think I associated posh with good. I couldn't stand it. Um, but yeah, there was one guy on a Monday morning, they do a meeting and they'd all talk about their wins of the week. It's a cringe fest. And I remember one person, he would just tap his notepad and go like, yeah. And I was like, I'm in the wrong place. So Lynn, she'd be like, oh, how was your weekend? And in my mind I was thinking, I got dick of the day playing rugby. They put a bin bag around my neck. I did Amy Winehouse where I had to do a bottle of wine strapped to each hand. Mm-hmm. I chundered all over the bus and all over myself and still made it on a night out. And then I'd just tell the people, oh yeah, I just went for dinner with my friends. It couldn't be further from the truth. And yeah, it's a lie all the time. Way up to this weekend, going on a bender. It was all disingenuous, even on the phone pretending to give a shit. The guy next to me was making 10, 15, 20 times what I was, and I was sourcing all of his candidates. So then he would be getting praise for his great placing. I would be the one on LinkedIn messaging everyone. So yeah, it just I just didn't, didn't vibe. But I didn't know any different. I didn't know you could do your own thing. I used to follow PTs on Twitter going, that must be such a good life. Yeah, you get to work in activewear. That was the dream. Even now I'm in activewear. It's what, it's the best thing.

So presumably you left that job where you were making good money but living, you know, not your true life as it were. Presumably you didn't make as much money initially when you moved to the new you know, PT setup. How did you manage that? Like, because a lot of people who watch this show or other shows are thinking, I would love to be an entrepreneur, I would love to, you know, I'd love to do my own thing. But how do you make that transition?

It's gonna sound really cliché, but I had a really good time in Asia and I was spending about £15 a day. That was the average amount I spent. And I think that knocked me down a few pegs where before I went away I had like a bit of a sports car that I had on finance. And then when I got back, I went and bought an old VW Polo that had been written off. So I went from having a sports car to having a former written-off Caddy Polo where I had to put the key in the door to manually lock it and unlock it. And I moved back in with my parents and I was just happy and going to work and building my own thing. Just, yeah, it was strange. I had pride in my work for the first time in my life. And then it's strange you say that because I turn up to the gym, I say, how many PTs are there? He said, there's only two. Oh, doesn't sound like a great place to work. But I was like, I'll do it anyway. Yeah. And when I get there, first day, I go, can I email the members? And this is before GDPR. The manager goes, yeah, sure. And so I said to the guy behind the desk, I go, can you extract all the email addresses from the gym that have opted in for marketing? And he gave me a file with everyone's email address. So out of 2,000, I think maybe 600, 700 emails. So I blind carbon copied all of them and just wrote an email saying, my name's James, I'm a new personal trainer. If there's anything I can help you with, yeah, email me back and here's my phone number. And I think I was about 7 or 8 clients in my first week. So then it meant I had more time on the floor, which meant more people would be like, oh, who's that new coach? So I got to 30 hours within maybe 2, 3 months. And it was because of the time in recruitment. I wouldn't even know what a BCC on an email is. When I help personal trainers now, I'm like, oh, just BCC someone. They're like, what's that? Or they'll show me their email that they've planned out. I'm like, mate, that's from ChatGPT. Yeah, just be chill, just write something, relax.

Yeah, be honest.

Yeah, yeah, just— so there's, there's those kind of things I definitely learned. So I'm very grateful for the, the sales and the inside marketing departments because they curated what type of personal trainer I was going to be. And yeah, even just that first marketing email meant that by not trying too hard to earn loads of money, I actually ended up in a net better position and I was getting all the money. Yeah. Which, you know, I didn't actually account for tax at that point as well. So then I had to work extra hard in the second part of the year, uh, and then I couldn't I couldn't believe it the first time that I was told I could expense stuff. I didn't understand that. Some of my friends still don't get it. Like, um, I'll pay for their travel to Australia and he's like, oh, it's business expense. I go, I've still gotta pay for it. You know, it's not free. It's not free money, mate. Yeah.

It's not write off.

Yeah. So my tax accountant going, oh yeah, we can do a bit of the car, we can put your rent, we can do this. Mm-hmm. And I'm just watching my tax bill shrink. I say, I've never had this in recruitment. Yeah. You know, it feels like free money. Uh, that was very appealing to me as well. It was kind of like an unfair advantage running your own business. And in the onset, the freedom that gave me as well, just to be whoever I wanted. And I tried being professional on social media, and then I remember one day I was a bit too caffeinated up and I went on a rant and it outperformed all the other videos. So again, it was course correction from seeing what had worked. Yeah.

You've said before that confidence isn't something you have, it's something you do. Can you break down how someone who doesn't feel particularly confident can build their confidence?

The first thing that I say on this is everything and every decision in life is either action or inaction. So let's say someone in your office here, single, on the tube today is opposite a beautiful woman and wants to maybe approach or say hello or good morning, or I like what you're wearing. It's not about confidence, it's about the choice of action or inaction. Now, most people don't choose a path of action in life. So as default, they choose inaction. Get off the tube, you start thinking about that person, you get to work. Oh, I wish I was more confident. Then there's a job application at work for promotion. Oh, wish I was more confident. I'd go for that. And in essence, what I say to people is, if you continually pick the path of inaction in life, you need a guise to make yourself feel better. And that guise is often telling yourself you're not a confident person. Confidence isn't one of the 16 personality traits. It's just an excuse for not taking action. So then that's kind of stage 1 that I have. Then stage 2 is something called the Zeigarnik effect, where Bluma Zeigarnik is a Soviet-Lithuanian psychologist who noted that when waiters and waitresses serve tables, they remember everything that someone orders up until the point they pay the bill. And once someone pays the bill, they forget what that person's had. And in essence, the observation was stating that you will remember any unfinished task or any task that's left open. So we call that an open loop. Mm-hmm. And you'll be haunted whether you like it or not, of all the things you didn't do, the inactions. So let's say you didn't approach the woman on the train and ask her for a number. You can be thinking about that for weeks. Yeah. Whereas if you were to close that loop, by just taking the path of action and saying, hey, don't usually do this, find you really pretty, could I get your number? Even if she says no, or she lies about having a boyfriend, or she shows you her wedding ring, that loop closes there and then, and you no longer have to think about it. Leaving loops open is what people do at the end of a TV show with cliffhangers. You have to get closure by watching the next episode. It's what they do in season finales. It's what TV shows do And after the break, we're going to find out. So in psychology, these open loops are there to haunt us, to keep us thinking about things. But in the realm of confidence, that's really the main thing I say to people to become more confident. Just close loops. Because no one said you had to get that girl's number. No one says that your pitch to a company for investment has to work. If you set the success metrics as, I'm going to give out our deck to 100 CEOs, that can be success even if no one comes back to you. Same way that in content creation, don't set success as going viral or getting a million views. Set success as making 100 posts over the next 3 months. So first of all, it's about identifying the fact that there's just always forks in the road of action and inaction. And the more you continue to take the path of inaction, you get haunted for it. So you're better off closing loops when they arise. And if you are someone that closes loops every time they arise, at a certain point of time, people will say that you're a confident person. And you should have a rebuttal to that. Like, no, you are just— just took the path of action every time.

So if you're talking to someone now who would identify themselves as not being a person of action, what are the habits they can adopt from tomorrow that will start building that confidence? Because I agree with you, I don't think that you're going to go from being terrified to speak to the person to tomorrow walking up and being, you know, James Bond with them. But what are the steps that someone can take to become—

The first one has to be changing what you see success as. Because so many people said it, some even in the realm of fat loss, oh, I've got 10 kilograms to lose. I'm like, you've got 1 kilogram to lose. Let's do that 10 times.

Yeah.

People are, oh, so refreshing. I'm like, it's the same thing. And same with success. When people, I say, okay, what are you struggling with confidence about? Oh, really struggling to make content on social media. That isn't a hard thing. But if you want to make content on social media that performs well, that is. So if people can reframe what success looks like and really bring it down to— there's something that someone's capable of. You could bring me your shyest member of staff and we could say, okay, we're not gonna get you to ask anyone out this week, but you're gonna say hello to 10 strangers. The next week you're gonna do 5 random compliments each day. Mm-hmm. Oh, I like your shoes. That could be the end of it. And you can ease people in. And this is just progressive overload as well. When we work with people in the gym, there's so many connections between every job that I've ever done. When someone comes to the gym, I don't care of their level of competence. If they can't do a back squat, I don't give a shit. It's my job to find out what they can do. And then from that, I just need to identify the next thing. So whether or not a lady can only do box squats on a 12-inch box, my job is to then find the next step that's difficult. And even if it's to the majority of the gym that come past and go, oh, that's not impressive, it doesn't matter. She's got her own individual journey. And maybe in 3 months' time she might have something that is much more impressive. But fundamentally, the whole point of training people is to find out where they are and find the next step. And I never, with any client over the years, would want to give them too much. But yet in the realm of success or social media, people think it's completely fine to overload themselves with these huge expectations. We would never do that. Someone's got a back squat, one rep max of 100 kilograms, you don't go, cool, do 200. You know, you'd say, okay, your next goal is 102.5. And people just really weirdly have these double standards when they're in life when it comes to success and confidence.

And so if someone nowadays is trying to make a name for themselves like you did, like, how does someone go about that? The world is so crowded now. There's so many people trying to build brand and so forth. Like, how does someone stand out nowadays?

I agree, but then at the same time, we never had a For You page. In my day. So the TikTokification of social media, which I would say is people are served content based on what they're interested in, not on who they follow. So in some respects you could say it's easier now because the algorithms now are better suited to categorize your content based on what's in it and what you say and put it in front of people with those interests. So back in 2017, 2016, that was a lot more difficult. There is more competition, but still the majority of the markets still fail to hit the fundamentals of content creation. First of all, the majority of people, this would be my advice to them. Mm-hmm. Wherever they are, they just need to focus on making 100 videos. I never said they had to be good. I don't care if they're shit. I don't care if they bomb. Mm-hmm. They need to do it as fast as they can because that usually is the biggest hurdle. The same way that So many people that are fat and out of shape, they just need to go to the gym for 100 days, 100 days in a row. I couldn't give a shit if you turn up, walk on a treadmill for 7 minutes and fuck off. I don't care, but I need you to go in that building and leave. So much of the first barriers is just turning up. Same with social media. So many people are waiting to be good before they start. That doesn't work in any realm. Same in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. You're gonna suck for the first 2 years. And in jiu-jitsu, that's normal. Oh, when am I gonna get my blue belt? Oh, maybe 2 years. Yeah. And even then you're still just a blue belt. But in the world of social media content creation, I had one guy, he said, I've posted every day since December.

December gone.

Yeah. I said, mate, you motherfucker. I said, it's been 4 weeks.

Yeah.

4 weeks. I think I posted for 3 and a half years before I got my first client. And granted, a lot of that time I was just posting shit. I was posting pictures of my lunch, like, where are my clients? Yeah. I was, I, I am or was the person I take the piss out of now. But I said to him, you, you need to be doing this for months, mate. I think I wrote email marketing emails for 10 months before someone bought. It's, this is the world we live in where so many people have just got crazy expectations. Yeah. I had a, a guy that I work with called Craig, and watching his content come along the last few months, there was part of me that was a little bit concerned because I'd reply to him all the time saying, keep pumping. I was like, there's no way. He's better at editing than me now. He does all these transitions. And one of his videos, I said to him, you look like Walter White from Breaking Bad. Yeah. So we bought the hazmat suit and started making fitness content dressed as Walter White, and 320 days in, he went viral. Wow. And if the— at 319 days, if he called me up and said, James Smith, this isn't working, I potentially might have agreed with him. But then at 320 days, yeah, it finally took off. And you know what, I think I needed that for my confidence as well and for everyone else in the group. And for some people, I think he's grown 20,000 followers in the last few weeks, and that will have an impact to his life because he's set up the kind of systems around it, email marketing, implementing squeeze pages to get people stuff. But people need to have that patience the same way that it'll probably take me 9 or 10 years to get my black belt. And for me, fine, not a problem. I've enjoyed every year just as much as everything else. I wish that maybe the barrier for keeping your head above water wasn't as bad as it is today. So if you imagine interest rates were a bit lower, first-time houses were a bit less expensive, petrol maybe wasn't so extortionately expensive, people could be more entrepreneurial in this country. Yeah. Because the amount that some people categorize wealth or retirement money is how long you could last without working. I wish that period of time was longer here so that more people could take the leap. I did a post this morning about 2:30 in the morning, laying in bed at my freezing mum and dad's house, where I said if you had a semi-pro fighter fight a professional fighter, the professional fighter's gonna win 9 times outta 10. If you have a semi-professional rugby team versus a professional rugby team, 9 times outta 10. So many people need to go full-time professional for their dreams and ambitions to take off. Yet they're doing it as semi-pro part-time and they're working in a coffee shop because they need to pay bills. They need to be responsible to their family. They need to pay the mortgage. And that's probably like the biggest concern that I have for people in that entrepreneurial space. That's the thing that annoys me the most, probably, about the state of not just the UK and Australia as well. It's kind of diminishing and dampening a lot of entrepreneurial spirits.

I would always say to people, if you can, don't quit the job and start tomorrow. Like, the challenge, especially in London, is everything is brutally expensive. And so if you are going to start a business, you might as well at least try and make, you know, whether you call it half of your salary or all of your salary if you can, from your evenings and your weekends. Because if you can't, then I don't think that you should do the thing.

So then there's, there's some realms like personal training which I say the opposite, because you can, with no followers on social media, go to a facility, go to a gym, and talk to enough people that you can get above water. And there are not many professions like that. Which is why I do like people to do or start from an in-person profession, which is easier with PT, physiotherapy, golf instructing, yoga, jiu-jitsu, those kind of sporting, uh, professions, because you can start in shallow water and get deeper.

Yeah.

Whereas if you're going to start a consultancy or an agency business, although you could cold call people, it's a lot more difficult. Yeah. And for, for me, there there are so many potential coaches out there that may be trying to PT people in the evenings whilst working in a coffee shop during the day. And the tough thing about that is eventually content, personal brand, and growing a following will be what breaks you free from the in-person business. But you need to be spending all day living and breathing that. Because my biggest concern with corporations is they'll pay you the least amount of money for the most amount of your energy. Possible. That's it. That's, that's the ever-moving scales. And if you're caught up with someone else's workload during the day, it can really diminish your creativity necessary for growth. And being a PT, if you're thinking about, you know, surveying or real estate during the day, it makes it very difficult to switch into that mindset in the evening of what content can I put out for people. So agree and disagree at the same time.

In your early days, did you experience your own mates taking the piss out of you?

Oh, my rugby team. Oh, Smithy, can we have carbohydrates? One of my best mates tried talking me out of becoming a PT. He was like, don't do it, everyone's a PT. Yeah. This is 2014. And then about 3 years later, I flew him to Oz and we went to the Ashes in Australia. And over about 15 beers, he was like, fair play. That's the only compliment I've ever got from him. That's all you need. Yeah, that was it.

It was all worth it after that.

Yeah. People take the piss. Your family and friends never get it. Yeah. And they will— they will always be concerned about you until they're not. Yeah.

And it will happen to everyone. Like, I always tell a story about how my— one of my best friends from university, like, we were the closest friends. When I started my business, he just relentlessly was telling everyone that I was a fraud. And it wasn't necessarily doing it because, like, he disliked me. I think that he in his own words nowadays, he was like, it was just weird that you were like going out on your own. It was weird that you were doing something different. And so he was telling everyone that my business was like not real. And then when I started posting on social media, everyone around me was like, what are you doing? You know? And my platform of choice was LinkedIn at the time. And so everyone was like, you're so lame. And it just happens. It happens to everyone who tries to step out, I think.

My housemates that I had in Bondi, when I moved in with them, this is early 2017, my following got to about 20, 30,000 on Facebook. My Instagram was maybe at 5,000. I was very late to Instagram. And although I had maybe 15 or 20 online clients, my cash flow wasn't great. And I still had like a car. I had a car on finance the year before. I eventually got pressured into buying a nice car by my clients. One of them came in, She goes, if you don't fucking sort out that VW Polo, I'm gonna buy you a car and I'm gonna charge you what it costs me to do it. And I had two clients who were very influential on me and they trained, Sue trained at 9:00 AM every day. Then her husband David came in at 9:30 and they trained for 30 minutes each every single day of the week. And for that they paid me £800 a month. And it was like my mum and dad coming in, my fitness mum and dad. And they were just so easy to train. And Sue would bring me in leftover food from dinner. She'd bring in Tupperware. She'd be like, here's some lunch for you. She'd bring me in a coffee, whatever. It was almost like my break was with those two. But my gym rent was only £375 a month. So just those two covered my car and my gym rent. So everything else I earned from PT was take-home. So they eventually said to me, you should get a nice car. So I got a nice Golf GTI. I was loving it. So then when I went to Australia, I came back, I'd sell the car. I think I lost like 7 grand on it. So any money I had saved, I lost. I even had to sell to webuyanycar.com.

Right.

Shafted me. I thought I'd be in pocket because of selling the car. I didn't look into the finance equation at all. It was so bad. End of 2016, I called my mum. I was at a Holiday Inn car park in Maidenhead and I had £8 in the center console and I said, we need to swing by NatWest. My mum's like, why? I was like, I need to pay 8 quid into the bank. It was pretty bad. Yeah. Yeah. So then when I got to Australia, in the onset, I signed my contract with Fitness First and I could only afford 3 nights at a time at the hostel that I was staying in. So I had to check out every 3 days, sit in reception. I think it was 10:00 AM checkout, 3:00 PM check-in. Because I couldn't afford to put more money down to spend than 3 nights at a time. So then with the 3 days I was in the hostel, I had to onboard new clients to get cash for the next 3 nights. On top of food and everything else. So every day the receptionist would see me in reception every 3 days for 6 hours. And one of them was like, why are you here? I was like, I can't afford more than 3 nights at a time. It was kind of my budgeting system. So that was a moment where I was fine. But when we moved into our apartment, even though my mates were like, oh, things are going well on social media, I still didn't have enough cash. And then we moved in and they said to me, 'Are you worth $1,000?' I was like, 'What for?' They were like, 'We've bought the sofa, we've got all the cutlery, we've got—' They just furnished the apartment. So even at 27, there was a moment where I had to message my dad. Yeah. Dad, can I borrow 500 quid? And he ended up lending it to me. He goes, 'Don't tell your mum, she'll get worried.' Don't tell your mum, she'll get worried. So then living with those two flatmates, within 6 months my business took off. And it got to the point where I was probably doing about £4,000 a week. So they had moved in with a guy that had to borrow money off his dad to get the sofa, to then living with someone. Well, I was like, I'll get this. And they'll be like, don't do that. You know, like, you're our mate. You're not supposed to be buying dinner for everyone. Sometimes they'd get a bit pissed off if I tried to flex. Yeah. I'm like, I'll get this one, lads. They'd be like, nah, stop that. And it was interesting because they got to go through it, but then I'd get stopped in public. And they'd be like, nah, this is not having that. Yeah, not having it, not having this. People like, can I have a selfie? They'd be like, nah, you can't. Yeah. You know, this is Smithy, our mate from the rugby club. It was just weird, but it was good having those mates that kind of ground you a bit. Where, this is funny, the guy who I lived with then, who's still one of my good mates now, his name's Ben. I try and make content that he might be interested in. Yeah. Because he doesn't give a fuck about anything I do. Good yardstick. Yeah. So like when I'm making a YouTube video, if I'm like ideating title, thumbnail, I think, would Ben be interested in this video? I know, because he's logged in on my YouTube, I know that it will come up on the TV in front of him. And I always think about him as a metric. I know that he's not my avatar and he's not someone I do it for, but if I ever find out that he's watched one of my YouTube videos, that's how I know it must be good.

Yeah, it's a good yardstick of also, like, I do feel like people can get caught up with content. They can make content a little bit too much for the views. And like, if your own friends wouldn't watch the stuff, I think it's a great yardstick to bring you back, to stop being like maybe a bit pretentious or just like a bit, you know, hacky for the views. If one of my good friends says they watched one of our— my podcasts and actually liked it, I'm like, that's the best feedback I can get.

It's such a weird metric to have. Yeah, when one of your close friends gives you a compliment, it's worth like a thousand compliments. It's ridiculous. They low-key hate your professional side. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They, they want you to do well, Kind of.

Have you ever been on a, uh, like a stag do or something with your mates and been recognized on the stag do?

Not so much a stag do because I don't, I don't think I've ever actually been on a stag do. Yeah, I've never been on a stag. How's that happen? I don't know. None of my friends like you. Yeah, none of my good mates. I've actually got quite a close circle. All my friends that I'm friends with now, only one of them's been married, and that was my manager, and we'd not worked together that long, and I didn't get invited on his stag because I just hadn't known him long enough. And, um, yeah, so yeah, I've never been on it. I've still never been on a stag do. Wow, that's crazy. That is crazy. The interesting thing about the early day brand was I would be very open and transparent about things like drug use. So, uh, for about 4 years I'd say I've never said no to a beer. But then I would say to people, I'd take a story in Ibiza and be like, that was a good pinger, or, you know, um, don't, don't be a hero, do half. And it got to the point that I'd be on a night out and someone wouldn't say, oh, you James from social media. I'd be like having a pee and someone be like, do you want a bump? And I'd be like, good, thanks. How are you? Uh, you know, good to meet you too. Yeah. Then I'd be like, uh, but yeah, yeah, a festival, someone come over and be like, I follow you on Facebook. Oh yeah, do you want a bump? So weirdly, that was a crazy brand transition where people felt comfortable enough to— that to be the first thing they said.

Probably why people loved you so much in the early days as well, that you were just like an ordinary dude who also made content.

But, um, I— one of my— my second year in Australia, they gave me a visa for 12 months, but I had to leave every month as part of the visa. So I'd go to Fiji, Bali, New Zealand on visa runs. Whenever I got to the towns, because I was traveling on my own, people would like DM, be like, I work at this restaurant, you should come in. I'm like, okay. And I just sit at the bar, some random person I never met, just get shit-faced, just have 20 gin and tonics, end up going on nights out with people that had just DM'd me. I was an open book to anything. I went to Coachella with 3 girls I've never met before. It was wild. Yeah, someone on my story questions said, do you want to come to Coachella? I said yeah.

So how did you go from being effectively a PT making content to bestselling author, being on television with Piers Morgan. How did those things happen? What was that journey?

So the first book simply would've just been leverage from a publisher to go, this guy's growing on social media. I think when they got a sniff of my email list as well, had about 100,000 on my email list. Right. They thought, oh, even if 20% of those people buy, and if he starts writing it now and his current trajectory of growth, whatever, it'd be a wise investment. My manager, who's one of my really good friends, Luke, he basically, I say to him, he's got carte blanche. He can make all decisions on behalf of me financially, investment, whatever. We've worked together for so long. Quick tangent. He was the first wedding I'd ever been to, and it was his stag do that I missed. It would've been his stag, and it was in Vegas. And he went with, I think like 30 lads or something crazy. Wow. The week before his wedding, he took us on a private jet to Ibiza for one night and his wife pretty much lost it at him. But he was like, nah, I've started working with James. I need to show him like I can be the best manager for him. Okay. So 5 days before his wedding, we did one night in Ibiza on a private jet. And after that I was, I thought to myself, I can, I can never work with anyone else. Who else? Live Nation are never gonna do this. Yeah. We went to Eric Prydz, we stayed at Shire. It was crazy. So ever since then, Luke has all the logins for my bank accounts. I have to ask him, where are we at? What are we looking like? Anything complex, I send it across to him. So he messages me. I was in Bondi. He said, congratulations. I said, what? He goes, you just got a book deal. I said, what book deal? And we FaceTimed each other and he told me, he laid it out. He'd been negotiating between Penguin and HarperCollins. I didn't even know.

Well, there was no book proposal.

Well, he got the book proposal. Right. He went through everything. He was playing them against each other for probably about 2 or 3 months and saying, "Oh, James is really interested in this," because I told him that he could speak on my behalf. So when the first book deal came through, it was for an extortionate amount of money for a first book deal, and it really excited me. But I'd actually been kind of against it before where I was saying, oh, I'm a PT, why am I going to write a book? It seems kind of disingenuous. Most people in the fitness industry just write a book for the cash. And Luke says to me, he goes, there's probably a lot of people in the UK that have seen you on social media and think you're a prick. I was like, yeah, probably right. He goes, they're going to see your book in Tesco's and go, there's that prick. Yeah. They're going to open it on a random page to see what you're talking about. And at that very moment, you could get them to go, "Oh, that's interesting." And I completely saw the book a different way. So I put a lot of effort, time into writing the book, refused to use a ghostwriter, which a lot of people do, wrote the whole book myself. I even flew to the W in Barcelona for 2 weeks on my own just to write. And I worked out how much I got paid per word from my advance. That I worked out how much a room was at the W and worked out that if I wrote 500 words a day, it'd cover my hotel. Right. So I was producing like 3,000 words a day, just sat down in the reception.

I love that you have to trick yourself into writing. That's quite good.

Took a fair bit of modafinil and just sat there. Got really lean from not eating.

And the modafinil, no?

Yeah, the modafinil. I was just wired in the whole time. For anyone that doesn't know what that is. A narcolepsy drug. That people abuse to be productive.

Took it at university, yeah. Very good though.

Yeah. And I've been kind of medicating that part of me for a long period of time. And yeah, so we did the book and the book deal. Well, first of all, I think that my publishers were very happy that I'd actually written it. And I was early. They said, we'll give you 12 months. And I said, can we do it in 6? Because again, maybe the ADHD part of my brain Yeah, I can't have too long to do something or I just won't assert the level of importance to it that it needs. And I also, as a self mechanism that I use to be productive, is kind of catastrophizing the scenario of it not working or not working out. So I sometimes say to myself in my mind, oh, James, if you don't work really hard this month, you might default on your mortgage. You could lose everything. You could be homeless. You know, really not a very healthy coping mechanism to work with productivity, but it works. And did the book in 6 months. Really enjoyed it.

That is unbelievable to write a book from scratch in 6 months. I just went underground.

But the fact that I wasn't doing in-person PT sessions, I used to spend 5 to 8 hours a day with people nonstop. And each personal training session is like a one-on-one meeting. And that was my life for 3 years. So the idea of sitting on a laptop for 6 hours and just writing was easy. Yeah. I could just drink coffee, listen to music, and just give my energy to my laptop keyboard, not people. Mm-hmm. The, not to say that personal training is a very difficult job, but having 7 hours of conversations is. I barely spoke to my parents for 2 years. I'd come in from work, I'd then go to rugby training in the evenings, 2 nights a week. So by the time I got home, they're like, how was your day? Like, good. Mm-hmm. Go to bed. Just finished. Yeah. But you know what, my parents, credit to them, my mum would cook so much for dinner that I had stuff to take with me to work the next day. For probably the first 2 years of being a PT, I would just get out of bed, chuck the sheet back over. My mum did all my laundry. She's a legend. She probably gave me 2 hours a day back from not having to do laundry or cooking or any of that admin, which meant I could just spend more time at work, be more obsessed with doing all of that. And it allowed me to become proficient at doing PT for a long time. So the book writing comparison was easy. Then Piers Morgan was doing his book with HarperCollins at the same time. So my strategy director at HarperCollins teed that up. So I managed to go into Piers Morgan relatively warm, but I was on a— Luke again, his idea, my manager, he comes from a background of festivals, music, artists. So when he arrived at the fitness industry, he was, I'm like, oh, you guys are all nice to each other. In the music industry, everyone's backstabbing bastards and squeezing each other for money. He kind of treated everything as if we were an artist. So our live shows, one of the first things we did together, he said, "How do you feel about doing 12 events across the UK? Leeds, Bristol, Birmingham, small places, 200-seat capacity?" And are the events about the book? In the onset, they weren't. It was the fact he first saw me on a livestream And there was about 2,000 people sat through the livestream as I was doing a Q&A. And he said, "If you can hold 2,000 people on livestream, you can hold 200 people in the Tramshed in Cardiff." So I said, "Cool. Yeah, let's do it." He goes, "Cool. We've already booked the venues. These are your dates. Here's your tour poster." Wow. And we kind of, in the onset, pretty much just had a piss-up with all the people that came and then went out with them afterwards. The first tour, I remember getting people from the crowd, one guy laying on his back and I was pouring café Patronis. Now, like, they were raucous. It was just fun because— was it girls and guys? Oh, mostly girls. We had to change the signs in the bathrooms. So say you had like a 50-50 split of girls and guys bathrooms. We had to change some of the men's to women's because it was probably 80% women the first year.

Sounds like Magic Mike. It was insane.

And then Over the years, the male audience started growing a bit more. And then when the book came out, it was great because it allowed us to then structure the talks on that. Yeah. So I would then turn the talk into a mixture of a TED Talk with like fingering jokes. That's the only way I can explain it. So the live shows, year one for Not a Diet Book, we had quite a lot of fun with it. By the second half of the talk, I'd come out with a gin and tonic. And I would just have fun, crack jokes. It would be fun, all of them. And then as the talks have evolved over the years, for the confidence talk that we did, would've been 2022, we had 3,500 people, Hammersmith Apollo. I've sold out Opera House. Funnily enough, the book too that came out, we made more money from the talk than we did from the book. 'cause we toured Australia and the UK. Wow. So that was crazy. And because they reduced VAT and all the venues we got for super cheap, because coming out the pandemic, they had no bookings. So that was crazy. When we looked at the P&L, we were like, hold on, we made more from the tour than we did from the actual book and book sales. Book one was great. Oh, for the Piers Morgan thing, he was doing his book with HarperCollins as well. And we were doing our events. We had Belfast and Dublin, two nights on the trot. The night in Belfast was tough because everyone got so drunk at that event that someone got kicked out for the first time from an event for being inappropriate, which we had a pretty good tolerance for inappropriateness. And then the next night, all of my friends came over to Dublin to surprise me. So I'm book signing in a bookstore and all my friends come in. Do you know Paul Lima? I'll get you onto him. He's a big creator. It's a 6-foot-4 black Nigerian guy with an Irish accent.

Oh, the comedy guy who does like the impressions and the skits. Yeah, I do watch all of his content. Yeah, I just didn't recognize the name.

His name is Paul. Yeah. So he came over, all my best friends come over. So I'm at a book signing, I'm like, wow, all my best friends are here. They bring me a pint of Guinness while we're signing books. I'm thinking we're about to have the best night out. And then one of my friends taps me on the shoulder, he goes, you could be going on Piers Morgan tomorrow morning. Wow. You're leaving here and going straight to the airport. And my manager looks at me and he goes, it's not guaranteed. They've just asked if you will potentially be available. So I said to him, what does this mean? He goes, we're going to have to fly to London and stay in Shepherd's Bush tonight. And we find out at 8:00 AM if you're going to go on. And I was like, first thing I said to Piers was, you owe me a night out in Dublin. Yeah. So we went back, stayed at this horrible hotel in Shepherd's Bush, and my manager flew back with me. And on the plane, he was letting me know all the ways they were going to try and set me up. So he said to me, they want you to come on, they want you to shame Piers. And he actually was probably the genius behind it where he gave me all the ways to objection handle. So the whole Ryanair flight back, he was asking me questions, I was answering them, and he was helping me curate how we do it. Then at breakfast at 8:30, I think it was, yeah, 8 in the morning. They're like, you're going on. So then we go to White City Television Centre. I'm shitting my pants. And this is my first proper TV experience. Yeah. Good Morning Britain. And funnily enough, for the first 2 years that Luke and I worked together, he always joked. He said, you're going to go on Good Morning Britain. I'm going to be eating a pastry in the green room. So for us, when we eventually got into the green room, There was like, uh, Gazza, Gascoigne was there. Yeah. Then there was someone else and it was kind of a weird moment, but there was no pastries. Yeah. So my manager was like, fuck, no pastries. We went out and at the time I don't really remember any of the interview 'cause of the adrenaline. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I came off, I see him in the green room. I was like, how did I do? He was like, you nailed it. And I was like, fuck. Like, it was crazy at that point. I watched it back and I don't know how I came across composed on TV. I was shitting my pants. And then our publishers message us and we sold so many hardbacks from that interview that we were pretty confident we're gonna secure the number one spot. And it was annoying because there was the other book, The Boy, the Fox, the Horse, or whatever it was called. There was like, I missed that one. There was a book that came out, it was like a mental health book. Mm-hmm. The Boy, the Fox, the Horse, or whatever. I think they only printed 30,000 copies and then it got Book of the Year and it was doing like 50,000 copies a week every week. Oh wow. So even HarperCollins were like, you're sorry. Yeah. Yeah. There's this one book that's come outta left field and you know, you're just not gonna get it. And it was pretty much that Piers Morgan interview that secured us the top spot. Wow. It was mad. It was crazy. I had friends from school messaging me. I've just seen you on TV. I think we did like 15,000 new Instagram followers. Good Morning Britain was a weapon that's kind of died now. And yeah, the interesting part was we then had to fly to Scotland to do an event in Edinburgh. And then our next show was in Newcastle, but we got asked to do Chris Evans the next morning. So we fly up to Scotland and we finish the event and we come out and my manager again, Didn't tell me. We come out and there's a tour bus and all my mates that were in Ireland were on the tour bus. It was a tour bus that Calvin Harris had for one of his tours. Right. I said, how much does this cost? He goes, don't ask. He was like, just don't ask how much it costs. So then we were literally traveling around the country like rock stars. We had a massive double bed in the back. There was maybe 12 bunk beds, massive living area. So we overnight went from Edinburgh, down to London. We showered next to the Shard in a crappy hotel, did Chris Evans radio, then went up to Newcastle and we traveled the country. This is for a book launch for a fitness book. Yeah. But the kind of hype we created from being on the bus going town to town, drinking with everyone at all the events. Yeah. It helped our ticket sales, it helped the book sales. We would do every signing we could as we went around and it was kind of My manager saying that you go to a WHSmith to sign 30 books. I remember we took a Viano to Norfolk to sign 35 books. The Viano cost 2 grand. The royalties on that book was like 40 quid. But he says to me, no one is stupid enough to go to Norwich to sign 40 books. And he's like, that's what is going to make you a number one Sunday Times bestseller. Because you can do the things that other authors just won't.

Yeah, I mean, it's crazy to think that— I think from the outside, if you haven't heard that story, you might think that you were just successful from online. But it sounds like you did, like, toured the country, signed a shitload of books, went to the factory, signed 10,000 books before it came out.

It takes like 9 hours non-stop to sign that many books. Uh, did every radio, every podcast. Even, even now we still have that kind of work ethic to it. And I know that my manager is on calls at 11 PM. He's got a young family.

Is he just your manager?

He, yes, he also, uh, is a shareholder of Nutonic, right? He helped Chris Williamson with his live shows. So when Chris Williamson came to Australia, it was my manager that did that. But pretty much, yeah. And then he has his own, uh, businesses. Again, in the kind of nightlife. He does Defected in Dubai, he's had Fisher for a few gigs. So he still pops up music events here and there. Then he's got another franchise of like cheese and wine festivals. Blimey. So he's got his finger in a lot of pies.

So nowadays you're obviously working across a lot of different things. Like how do you decide where is best to spend your time now?

Chaos. It's no organisation. I think people think I'm more organised than I am. Yeah. Even before we met today, I'm in a cafe and I love on my MacBook, I'll full screen things and swipe four fingers between them. So I'll probably periodically check my WhatsApp every 3 to 5 minutes. I would then every time I get an idea, jump into another task and leave tabs open so I don't forget, because I only close tabs when I know I'm finished with them. So then I'll be in the Discord, I'm writing a new course. I'll have my WhatsApp. Then if I have an idea, I'll open the tabs on Safari and I will spend bits of time between each. This is why I hate things being in my diary as well. So I very rarely, if you saw my diary, you'd laugh. It's maybe one thing every 3 days, right? It just, they just stress me out. If I have something on at 3:00 PM in the afternoon, I'm paralyzed for the whole day. Just float in between tasks. So it's difficult, but somehow miraculously I get things done before the end of the day. Some days I'm very productive in the morning. Some days I'll be at my desk until later in the evening. For years I just had a PT business, which actually meant my life was really chilled. And weirdly enough, my second book talks about life design, balance, And I think that maybe I could be a hypocrite on some of those points where having one business, you can enjoy all of those things, but having several businesses, you can't. And now I've got a son as well. So whereas before I would almost gloat about the fact that I would only work for 4 hours a day, now it's quite a lot more. Yeah. And I definitely having a family now as well. It's not stress. Well, it is stress. I can't switch off because it's not just my life that benefits anymore. But this could just all be a big excuse that I use to overwork. Yeah. Because I love the game.

And so when did the new businesses— I would say, like, when I, when I look at you nowadays, like the drinks brand, like, how did that all come about? How did you go from being a PT, a, you know, personal brand, to now being like a I don't know, multi-portfolio business owner? Like, how did that transition happen?

So the personal training business, uh, we turned into an app in 2017, me and another business partner. He was actually leaving the gym that I was joining, an English guy called James as well. And I said to him, why are you leaving? You know, personal training, we make good cash. And he pretty much just hates dealing with people face to face. I actually overheard him he used to have the Fitness First badges with the magnet, says my name is James. Yeah. And middle of a session, he just reaches under his top, takes his name badge off, and he's like, I'm done. He's like, I can't deal with this, and just walked away from his client. Wow. He just quit in front of everyone. So who was the client? Just, just some guy. The guy just left there, middle of the set. The PT James was like, I'm done. So I spoke to him in the PT room. He's like, I just can't do this anymore. He's like, I just want to build websites. So I said to him that I had an idea where in essence, as a PT, you repeat yourself a lot. So it was about putting all those lessons into one place. The business that I thought it was gonna be, it was, ended up being nothing like it. We now provide affordable workouts to people where they get custom plans. Mm-hmm. That business has been running since 2017. Now that business was fantastic. And my job for 5, 6 years has always just been sending people to a website. Sounds pretty reductive. That's all I've done. Yeah. So you say you're a personal trainer. I'm like, well, just really send people to a website through email marketing campaigns. It was very simple. Online social media strategy, obtain details, run email marketing campaigns, get them to go to the website. Second, someone joins my online coaching platform, they work with the coaches, and really that's my job. So I didn't realize that I was becoming a proficient online marketer or sales funnel guru, whatever you want to call it. Then the books came along. I enjoyed writing and the muscle of being a creative writer. For years I used to do a famous daily email, so I'd do an email marketing email every day. Wow. Yeah, I kind of burnt out after about 6, 7 years. Yeah. But it would be anything. And I would say one day I tried meditating in a park and I wrote an email where I was like, today I did something in public that I've never done before. I was worried that people would see me do it. but I knew if I just did it, it'd probably take 3 minutes and I'd feel so much better. I'd get the release that I want. And if someone saw me do it, that's fine. And I made the email seem like I was having a wank in a park. And then at the end I was like, yeah, today of course I meditated for the first time. So each email would be slightly funny. Or if I went on a bad date or if I got a big laundry bill from a hotel or, you know, even if someone catfished me on a date, I turned it into an email the next day. Right. So for years, there are people now that I still meet and they're like, oh, I loved your email. The time that the washing machine did origami with your clothes or whatever it was. Yeah. So for a long time, when it came to writing the book, it came quite easy because every day I would spend half an hour sat on a laptop in a cafe in Bondi just going, what am I going to talk about today? So the books came quite easy. Then we did the touring, we did the events. We started in very small venues, like I say, worked up to the big ones on the tours. Then The drink came about probably about a year and a half, 2 years ago. Mm-hmm. And a lot of founders sometimes over-egg the cause and the work. You know, people are, I've been working for this for the last year when really the product was given to them at the last minute. Like, I can't imagine Logan Paul and KSI spent too long strategizing the exact font they were gonna use for the Prime bottles. It was pretty much, hey guys, we need you to say you've been working on this for a year. Yeah. But working with Chris Williamson meant that there was a lot of meticulous detail, mostly Chris. Mm-hmm. Not to say he's difficult to work with, but we're definitely that yin and yang where I'm the chaos. I've got no problem with nutting out 20 promotional videos. I don't mind doing a 2-hour TikTok shop live. Give me 500 cans. I even said to Luke this week, I go, mate, I'm in the UK for a week. Give me a high street and gimme a thousand cans. I'll give them out. That's the side of the business I love. Chris just wouldn't do that. Yeah. And that's fine. But then he moans at me for not checking Slack and I'll— he'll go, James Slack. I'll go in, I'll comment. He'll go, that's from a month ago. You've replied to a message from a fucking month ago. Have you not been in the Slack for a month? And I'm like, Chris, if you and I have a different opinion on something, we're gonna go with your opinion. So there's no point. So the flavour profiles, the design, Although I have some input, I would say as a business, the meticulous product details is Chris, and then the marketing is me. I'll get the whole marketing team on a phone call. I'm like, talk to me about TikTok strategy, talk to me about email marketing. Why aren't we doing this? Why are we doing this? What chatbots have we got set up for this? So I would say I'm very much the, like, knee-deep, get my hands dirty marketing, where Chris Donnelly is fantastic at Ensuring the product, the design, even if there's not a dash between research-backed, Chris will spot it. Yeah. If there's a slight taste change with formulation modifications, Chris knows. He's like a sommelier of the energy drink world. He flew from America with a suitcase of all our competitors in a case. Yeah. So it's fantastic that we're both so different with that. Launched Nutonic, had a great year with it.

How did you two come together to begin with?

Do you know what? I can't remember. I've been on his podcast for a few years before he was big time. Yeah. And he would come to my shows. I remember he came to a Newcastle show that we did that was maybe 400 or 500 cap. So it was probably a book 2 tour. Mm-hmm. And I think he saw that and was like, oh, I want to do this. Then we launched the drink together. Then Chris opened for my shows in America and Canada last year, and then I opened for his tour in Australia this year. But pretty much I do a 15-minute segment explaining to the audience why Chris is autistic. And I come with receipts as well. So I almost have a bit of a stand-up element to the show. Right. But you were just mates. Yeah. So knew each other, always happy to go on his podcast. And then when we started the drink together, I think from a very— what's interesting is I've been thinking about this the last few years. Sometimes a business relationship is better than a friendship because there's more value for each side. And I would say we definitely have a business relationship, but it's one where I look at Chris, there's a lot I can learn from him in the same way that Chris, I would like to think, looks at me and thinks there's some stuff he can learn from me, whether it's being more relaxed, showing his personality a bit more, when we are together, we get to see a cool side of Chris where we did some vlogs that bombed, but they were fun to do where Chris convinces the audience that I've got a racist voice. And it's funny because I'll say something and Chris would be like, racist voice. And that was a side you wouldn't see on his podcast. Yeah. You know, it's a side. It's quite serious. Yeah. Unprofessional. Yeah. Yeah. Calling me a far right, saying that, you know, you'd be like, James is very much send the boats back. Nigel Farage, just throwing out right-wing propaganda at me. Yeah. But that's cool because I think Chris being with me can pull that side out. So we had a very good year first year with Nutonic. Really good to have a product for once. Mm-hmm. To think that I could just take a product with me somewhere and that could maybe have a net benefit to the business. Uh, I really enjoy, I can be out and about, meet someone, I'll be like, gimme your address, I'll send you some product. Mm-hmm. And I know that's gonna have a benefit to the business. There was never really a world where I'd send someone a free membership for my training app and it would, you know, really benefit the bottom line. I gave Carol Vorderman once free access to the app. She followed me. I was like, oh, she's like, I'm interested in the workout app. I was like, oh my God. But having a product that you can send people, having people say that they love the product, that's definitely good. Then ever since 2017, I've been doing business-to-business events in person where I just fill a room full of coaches or fringe businesses and talk through it. And I was very much late to the online course bro. World. And about a year ago I was like, oh, you know what? I'm gonna dip my toe. And I launched a business mentorship and it was actually just to see whether or not there was the kind of hunger for it. Yeah. And I actually love it. Yeah. And I've come to realize that it sounds really bad. I don't think I ever really loved running a fitness business. I actually just loved marketing a business. Yeah. And teaching people, I'd say probably 60, 70% of people that I work with are fitness coaches, whether it's yoga, jiu-jitsu, personal training, whatever. But it's really interesting now that I'm working with other businesses, fringe businesses. Some of them might sell social housing, someone else might help people become self-proficient and not use Airbnb for bookings. I was on a call with Matthew Walker, the sleep guy, a few weeks ago, 'cause he didn't have an email list. Yeah. It's like Matthew Walker. It's like, yeah, that's crazy. You got 13 million views on your TED Talk. And I fanboyed a bit on the call. I was like, mate, I've read your book twice. You know, I was like, how have you not got an email list? I said, you've done the hard part. You've become number one in the world at something, which is truly difficult. It's pretty much a gold medal at the Olympics. When you think sleep, you think Matthew Walker. But to be having conversations where I'm leading a marketing conversation with people at such a high level excites me. Before I know it, it's been an hour and 20 minutes. I've come up with 3 or 4 different marketing initiatives and different things that people can do. And spending all day, every day working with those businesses is actually making me much more creative, making me much more business-minded. And then if I spend 3 hours helping small businesses, I then come back to the New Tonic and I'm like, well, why aren't we doing this? Why aren't we doing that? There was even in the course, I referenced that in 2015 I saw a paid ad where someone said, give me your email address and over the next 52 days I'll give you 52 ways to benefit your business. And every single email was an absolute banger. And at the end of 52 days he promotes his book and then you buy his book. I didn't buy his book, but the 52 days were amazing. And I remember educating the course going, oh guys, autoresponders, great way to run an email marketing campaign because people just get hit as an automation. I finished filming that day. So I don't have a fucking autoresponder. So we created an autoresponder for the business mentorship where I did it over 30 days, and that's now one of our key drivers of revenue. So it was only through teaching people that I realized I wasn't doing the very thing I was teaching. And now with so many businesses, I'm getting them to implement something like that where that means on social media they just need to say, hey guys, sign up here, and they get nurtured for the next 30 days. If they don't buy, fine, but if they do buy, cool. And it means that that muscle in my mind of, you know, business marketing, whatever you want to call it, is getting trained so much through working with other businesses. And I love it.

It's one of those things where if you look at like a lot of the really, really successful, I suppose, like online personality, like Stephen Bartlett was a marketer, Gary Vee was a marketer, like you fundamentally, your skill set is marketing funnels and so forth. Whereas most businesses, their biggest challenge is demand generation, lead generation, and sales, and not having enough customers in the funnel. And yet really, when you think about it, you're just practicing the basic principle of get eyes to your business and find some way of making them, you know, subscribe or follow you. And I feel like it's such an under-indexed skill, but it is the most important skill for any business.

I think, uh, so interesting enough, I've now started re-recording, or I've started rewriting. So when I was chatting to you before and I said I was plugged in the matrix, I'm now rewriting the entire course again, but this time with everything that I've learned over the last year. So I wrote the mentorship out, recorded all the modules. This time I'm rewriting everything from start to finish again. And even off the top of my head, I come up with things that I've actually never said before. And one thing I was typing today that I look back on and I thought, oh, this is interesting. I come up with a concept where I call it the 1 and the 5 and the 10-hour rule, which is you need to work towards getting your first hour in front of someone, then your first 5 hours, then your first 10 hours. Then I talk about if you create a 90-second reel in short-form content, how many reels do you have to post for someone to see every single one to accrue an hour's watch time? Mm-hmm. And it actually, if they were to watch one reel a day, 5 days a week, it works out like 24 weeks before they would see a full hour of content if they only saw 50% of your post. So I'm saying to people, if you are conservative with the realistic likeliness of someone actually seeing your content, it could take you a year to get an hour in front of them. So then you do want to look into YouTube strategies, podcasts, but even then the average YouTube video is 11.7 minutes. So therefore to get 5 hours in front of someone, it could take X amount of time. And I've really expanded going into the areas of saying to people, there's no way that you can spend 10 hours in front of someone and they aren't already converted to the point of wanting to do business with you in some respects, whether it is your product, your services, whatever it is. So I'm trying to now create new strategies to— because in essence it is that funnel: content, brand awareness, uh, contact information, email marketing, good well-curated landing pages, and a good sales process. But I'm having to reinvent it because the same with fitness again. I would make fitness content and after 5 years I'd use an analogy where one comment would say, I've been watching your content for years, but today it finally clicked. I'm now taking that into the business world where I can hammer the drums much as I can about making content. But maybe when I say to someone, we need to work hard to get our first hour in front of someone where they go, that's why I need to post more often. Mm-hmm. That's why. Oh, never thought of it like that. Oh yeah. Let me think about it. The people that I've bought into the most, I probably have spent a few hours in front of. I even then went on to calculate how many days I would've listened to Joe Rogan since I discovered his podcast. And then you can kind of see the levels of indoctrination that people have to personal brands based off the premise of how many hours they've spent listening or watching that person, which is why podcasts are such an important format. Someone could listen to 3 to 5 podcasts and get that 10 hours. Yeah. Whereas if you were to try and get that creation on TikTok, it could take you dozens, if not hundreds of reels.

It's one of those things like small businesses always struggle with things like pricing, you know, being able to charge the right amount. And even you said at the beginning, before you were an expert in marketing, you sent a cold email out to the whole Jim's database and as a result got lots of clients. In the most basic sense, if you're a business and you can get, you know, 2,000 people looking at your product, you can up the price because you don't need everyone. You will only have like a fixed amount of supply that you can supply as a business. And as a result, you have lots of people asking for it. You can push up your price. And so in many senses, what you're, what you're preaching is basic, just demand and supply.

There is a lad in my Discord called Lucas, and I'm having a full-blown argument in front of 2,000 people with him where he wants to position himself as this premium coach, high-end, wants to get people on sales calls and charge a pretty decent amount of money for 12 weeks of coaching. And the first thing I tried to butt heads with him was I said, I don't think we need a sales call in there. I think you should show your pricing, not withhold it till the phone call. I think there's something just disingenuous sometimes about, especially in the coaching world, when I look at a menu, I want to see the prices. Totally. I'm not worried about how expensive it is. I just want, if there was a nice Porsche and they go, come to the dealership and we'll talk how much it is, I'm like, no, fuck you, I'll go buy another car. So many fitness coaches think they should withhold pricing and they should go through some kind of sales process. And the thing that kills me is I think application forms are just dog shit. I said, you're not a Soho House membership. Someone doesn't want to come through your landing page, then say apply now. I said, first of all, if they're coming to your landing page, you should have those details already. And I don't like the snaky nature that some people are like, oh, how important is this to you? Whatever. So I said to him, get rid of the sales call. Just put your pricing out there. And we were butting heads. I said, mate, you're, you're a bit expensive. Can you just remind me of how many clients you've got? He goes, 4. I said, well, you're too expensive. And he goes, I don't want to give someone the business class experience if they're paying economy prices. I said, but with all due respect, you can't charge business class prices because you're not busy enough. And my golden rule with that kind of economy of demand is I used to charge a quarter of what I charge now for my mentorship because it was early. I needed people in there. And I said to him, Lucas, mate, if you reduce your prices, you're going to get more clients. If you work with more clients, you're going to understand more people's problems. If you understand more people's problems, you have more good ideas to make content about. If you're making more content about the people's problems that are relevant to your skillset, you're gonna get more people coming in through the door interested in your services where you're gonna get the leverage to increase your prices of demand. There's no world that he lives in where he can excuse the fact that he's too expensive. 'Cause I said, I don't care about your experience. I don't care what you've studied. I don't care how good a coach you are. You're too expensive 'cause you've got 4 fucking clients. Mm-hmm. I said, when you get that to 20 or 30, we can have this discussion. But ultimately, that very simple basic premise of demand, that's what everyone should try and aim for, is if there's more people wanting your services than you have time for. And the best objection to increasing your prices is, I'm too busy. Yeah. No one can argue with that. And yeah, it's crazy how many people think that price is based on where they are, the state of the economy. It's just simply demand. And there are so many better coaches than me that maybe didn't make as much money as me because they never thought about creating demand. They instead tried to be the most experienced coach or study the most amount of courses. Um, but no one knows who they are.

Exactly. Back to Nutanix. So how far do you think that you can take this business? Because I suppose now, like, I can see the same sort of audience for that business as you've had, as in like pretty diehard fans. The people who follow that business seem to absolutely love it. And so what's the plan? Like how far can you take it?

Do you know what was interesting? Credit to Sean, who I told you about. He said to me, the one thing he said to me that sold it, he goes, productivity could be the next fitness. 5 years ago it was all about getting fit, going on a holiday. I feel like the world's kind of relaxed a bit post-pandemic where actually now things are so expensive and tough. If you wanna buy 3, 4 bed house anywhere near London with a garden, you need like a million pounds minimum. Yeah. So someone's gonna clip this and be like, oh, these two guys are so out of touch with, you know, in Lancashire you could get whatever. I remember growing up if someone was like, oh, a million pounds. Imagine, think about this. You could win Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and you can't afford a flat in Fulham. You get all those questions right in front of Jeremy Clarkson. Yeah. You can't even get a nice apartment. And even if you do, You go outside, you get robbed. Anyway, so he said productivity could be the next fitness. And I was like, do you know what? If I don't train today, fine. If I don't eat well today, fine. If I get 5 hours sleep, fine. But if I'm not productive today, I will be an asshole and I'll be on edge. And even my missus is like, do you need to go empty the Discord? I'm like, yeah. I'm like, the one thing that completely screws my mental health is productivity. It's the one thing I care about the most. It's the one thing that I kind of gauge all my values surrounding more than I thought. It's why I really, you know, since I've had more businesses, I barely drink now. I barely go out. I barely party because energy is so important to me because of the amount of creativity I'm trying to get done on a daily basis. So this idea that people wanna be more productive, I think it's not even just the product. I think it's what the product symbolizes. And that sounds really cheesy, I would never intend to say that publicly, but for me, for years, going to a cafe, putting on headphones, having a coffee and locking into work tasks, I've almost had to go somewhere to get work done. Mm-hmm. And I love the idea that maybe we have a product that can signal that to people as well. They go, right, when I crack this can, I'm gonna sit at my desk and I'm gonna get everything done. And I think that it's kind of like the culture locking in, mm-hmm, working hard, side hustle, hobby. Writing your CV, even something to the creator world where writing a script for a video could be the difference between it getting 10,000 views or a million views depending on how well your hook, your setup, your payoff. So having something that can support you with that I think is a big market. I think now productivity is gonna be of value to people. And that's not to say that coffee's bad. I'm drinking a coffee right here as well. Mm-hmm. But I wake up, I have my coffee, I take the dog for a walk, I come back, then it's, I say to my missus, do you need me for anything? Baby goes to sleep, back to sleep at 8:00 AM. I have my can of NewTonic, headphones on, and for the next 2 hours I'm just getting everything done for the day so that by 11:00 AM I can relax, I can go train jiu-jitsu, everything's done. And I want people to buy into that culture because again, a lot of people might not believe it, but they could only be a couple years away of hard work away from a completely different life.

I've always actually really liked your take on things when you've done them on your channels. For example, like, you talked about Ozempic, you talked about TRT recently, you talked about psychedelics, and I never feel like you're trying to sell anyone on any of those things. You're simply just saying—

you're— give me 6 months.

You're trying to, you know, but you're trying to talk it through from your experience. Like, your take, for example, on TRT, I thought was fascinating because I'm 34 and I think for the first time ever I'm like, wow, I just, I feel a little bit slower, a little bit less strong than I used to be. I'm interested, like, is that something that I should be looking at? And I can only imagine how many people are sitting there going like, is that something that I should be looking at? Is that bad for me? You know, is it gonna have a negative effect on me? So can you tell us your experience and like, if you are talking to the audience of people who are considering it, what would you say?

It's a lifelong decision. It's not an easy one because when, when you go on, ideally you will be on for life. But then for me making that decision, I thought to myself, well, I've always kind of imagined myself going on closer to 40 anyway. So then I'll say I'm 30, I'm nearly 36. I think, well, it's 5 years early, what difference does it make? The one consideration definitely is fertility. We've got kids. No. So my first thing I'd say to you is, um, you might not know your levels of fertility right now. And taking TRT would make you go offline, let's say, as far as testicular production for testosterone, but also for semen. So the one consideration for people is if you're gonna try and have kids, there are protocols. You can take a drug called HCG, which, in essence, keeps the communication between your brain and your testicles to keep you online. But that's without saying I'm not a doctor, by the way. But then again, if you were someone that maybe was in the medium-low fertility range, taking TRT with HCG might not be enough. So for some people it might mean they go on, they have to come off. So for instance, I started about 9 months ago, then we had our child. I was like, never again. When we had the child— no, it's the son— I was like, there is no reason why I should get my testicles working again. And now he's 8 months old. Yeah. I started HCG. Mm-hmm. So now as an insurance policy, I'm taking another compound on top, which I inject 3 times a week into my belly fat, subcutaneous, which means under the skin, which is fine for me. 9 months in injecting testosterone, no problem at all. So that's another little side tangent. Some people get really worried about it. It doesn't hurt. I use very small needles. So for people that, one, want to have kids, definitely a concern. Two, squeamish with needles, could be a concern. I've tried the cream. I didn't like the cream quite so much, although I felt good on it. I didn't like that. I'm a bit of a control freak. Sometimes the absorption can depend on how much you sweat, what clothes you wear, where you apply it on the body. You can transfer it to other people. But for me, I'd abused steroids when I was younger, so in my 20s, so I knew what testosterone felt like. And funnily enough, I haven't actually said this publicly, about a year and a half ago, maybe two, yeah, a year and a half ago, I started a production with an arm of Channel 4 and we were gonna call it James Smith on Steroids. And I was gonna blast a steroid cycle and not tell anyone and see whether or not things like my comments on my social media got more positive. I was then going to meet a doctor and I didn't because you would become bigger. I was gonna do what the whole fitness industry do and just not talk about it and just blast steroids. right? And then do promotional stuff on my fitness app. Hey guys, you know, I've been eating more vegetables, join my fit. Like, I was gonna go full-blown dickhead and just, just lie. Yeah. And then I was going to see how long it would take for Greg Doucette to do a video on me, or whether or not Derek from More Plates More Dates goes, this guy's definitely juicing. And then I had this, um, I did— we did— went to Harley Street, got my blood, saw a doctor. And mate, two things. I hate television. I hate it. The way that they're like, okay guys, we're going to walk through this door. Okay, we're going to walk through the door again. Okay guys, wait outside. We're going to take the cameras inside. Now we're going to get you coming in, talk to the receptionist, pretend, and you do 3 takes of that. So by the time we got up to the doctor, I've been filming for like 4 hours. And then the doctor in Harley Street that we used, he had main character energy. So I was hoping he would, you know, have a nuanced discussion, pros and cons. He treated it like it was his time to shine. He treated it like it was his TED Talk on why I shouldn't do it. He maybe ranted on for like an hour. Oh wow. And I just sat there and I walked out and I was like, fuck this. I said to Luke, I'm not doing this. Like, I hate this. This isn't even optimized for YouTube. I don't even think YouTube people care about the stuff TV people care about. Yeah. And also I was getting apprehensive about taking steroids again. So a year and a half ago, I was like, I'm never touching testosterone again. And then, yeah, just had a real flat year where I've never been anxious, but I was a little bit anxious. Then my libido was a bit shot. And my missus won't even mind me saying this, she was kind of concerned there was something up with the relationship. And I said to her, my rebuttal was, I'm gonna get my bloods done. Then I didn't get my blood work done for another 6 months because I kind of just didn't want to see. I would still be productive, still train jiu-jitsu, and I thought that my composition was slipping because I was just training a lot of jiu-jitsu. I was too tight with weights. Then, um, yeah, I remember I was like that. Looking back, it kind of all makes sense. These are all kind of like low testosterone symptoms. Then I was like, oh, I'm gonna start therapy. I did 2 sessions. I hated it. I hated it. I was like, I'd rather have low mood and no sex drive than have to fucking endure that again. Like, oh God, I fucking hated it. And then I first of all tried the cream. Yeah.

I didn't even know there was a cream.

Yeah, you get testosterone cream and I put it on my shoulder at first, then I put it on my chest and then my business partner said to me, rub it on your nuts. I went, why? He goes, it's absorbed much better transdermally through your scrotum. And I was like, okay, cool. Was it? Yeah, it was amazing. Like, but the thing is, I'm gonna openly admit, I guarantee half of it was placebo. Yeah, half of it was just the fact I was getting excited about rubbing a bit of testosterone on my nutsack. But then one of my best mates came out to Australia. I've been on the cream 8 weeks and he was like, what you on? Knew straight away I was stronger. Like, whether or not— and again, this is— I'll probably get in trouble for saying this, but people said to me, why take testosterone when you could just eat better and look after yourself better? And I said, but if I take testosterone, I will eat better and look after myself better. It's like a chicken and egg scenario. What came first? So although I could have improved my testosterone by sleeping more, training less, and eating better, I actually did those things by taking testosterone. Because if we were gonna get takeaway, I'm like, well, it doesn't make sense that I injected my quad with testosterone this morning and now we're gonna have KFC for dinner. So I cleaned my act up because I started TRT as much as the other way around. I think I've only drunk 3 times in 9 months. Wow. Which is like, I've just kind of lost the interest for it because I'm enjoying training so much more. Uh, as far as performance enhancement, noticeable, but more so aggression for training. There are so many less days where I'm like, oh, I could just have today off. Like, they don't exist anymore. I'm like, I'll just go do something, and before I know it, I've had a great workout. My composition has changed. A lot to the point that I look back at my physique a year ago and I kind of think in my head, you look pathetic. Like, it's, it's terrible. Wow. I, I look to myself like, are you training a lot more?

Yeah.

Or do you know what, I'm equally just as tired, but it's from doing a lot more. So I train a lot more jiu-jitsu. Also, it's helped me. We, we don't get tested in the federations I compete in, for anyone's thinking. So there's only one or two main federations as testing, and then the rest of jiu-jitsu is very open. For people to take TRT. It's a very demanding sport. I'm 36 as well, and to even it out, I compete with the adults. So I'm competing against guys 10 years younger. That evens out. Yeah. Um, but yeah, for me generally, it's benefited my relationship, my physique, my health as far as blood work, although you're not allowed to say that technically from like legal standpoint. And what do you mean by that? So let's say you were to do a partnership with the clinic, or you would be in a position to endorse testosterone in any commercial way, You're not allowed to objectively say that it improves health markers. So it's a result of not the drug, but what the drug did to my lifestyle. That makes sense. Testosterone doesn't equal good cholesterol, but for me, testosterone meant more training, eating better, and prioritizing my health, which meant lower cholesterol. Testosterone doesn't equal, reduce cardiovascular risk, but for me it did because of the actions that I took.

So So the thing itself wasn't doing it, but the actions you were taking off the back of it were.

100%. So again, some people take Ozempic and they end up with muscle and bone wastage because they took the drug and just didn't eat and do anything, which meant that they were in a catabolic state and they just faded away. Whereas someone else takes the same drug, prioritizes weight training, and the opportunity when they eat, they eat healthy and high protein food, they get a massively different transformation. So we can't say Ozempic equals great physique. We can say a Zen Peak creates an environment in which someone could choose to make that a healthy environment. So wanted to be really transparent about TRT. It's great for me. I've had one child, I'm staying online for another, but then if we were to hit fertility issues, we have things at our disposal. Like I could come off cycle. I know already how my blood work looks with HCG, without it. We've got our first child, which is, you know, we're halfway there, let's say. So if someone hadn't had children yet, we, we also became fertile very early stages. So my risk for potentially having difficulty having kids was quite low anyway. So there's that. So we've got, first of all, fertility. Second of all, lifelong decision. Uh, third of all, some people and doctors will recommend that you inject once or twice a week, but it's because they're keeping in mind, they wanna make sure they give a protocol to someone that is something they can stick to. I inject every second day, a smaller amount so that my blood levels remain much more constant. Mm-hmm. For some people that can make them quite squeamish, but the needle I use is tiny. So the needle I use is something called a 27-gauge, and I've gone down all the rabbit holes of all different needles, injection frequencies, compounds, whatever, to the point that when my son was getting his baby vaccine, 6-month vaccine, they pulled out a 25-gauge needle. So, excuse me, I was like, I don't even inject with one of those. Like, you know, that's, that's— yeah, yeah, pretty thick needle. But again, when they're injecting the baby, the thicker the needle, the quicker they can administer the injection. For me, I don't mind spending 25 seconds injecting a small amount of testosterone because I know that I'm developing less scar tissue in those areas.

So are you getting the TRT from a doctor?

From a clinic. From a clinic which is signed off by a doctor, right?

So, and is that how most people get TRT?

If you go to a GP, from my understanding, they're very disinterested. You know, the idea of someone being on a medication for life that they may not need— and this is the big nuance debate— did I need testosterone? No, openly. You know, I'm relatively low testosterone, but I wasn't going to die. You know, I probably still would have lived till 80. There just would've been less sex with my missus, shitter gains in the gym, and probably less podiums in jiu-jitsu, right? To the doctor, they don't give a shit. You know, if you have a bit low mood, I wasn't, I wasn't, you know, needing SSRIs or anything. So from a GP perspective, nah, you don't need it. If you have staph, you get antibiotics. If you get this, whatever. But with a TRT clinic, of course they're financially incentivized, but they can then address you on symptoms. So my free testosterone was in the low ranges, but some people could argue it's not bad enough that you need to be on a medication for life. But I was presenting symptoms. So there's some nuance between having low test presenting itself in symptoms or generally objectively being in the paperwork, which can be manipulated through shit sleep. Uh, most sleep's one of the main factors. You do overtraining, you could just go crazy in the gym for a week, barely eat, barely sleep, get your blood work results. That's why most clinics in the UK will get 2 blood tests. But the nuanced debate is between want and need. And I was a little mixture of both. I wanted it, but I also kind of felt I needed it because I didn't want— sounds really bad. I didn't want a life between 35 and 40 where I had to step back from training, where I had to do less of the things that I love. Because I love working, cool. But I also love training jiu-jitsu. Also love lifting weights. And for me, taking testosterone meant that I can enjoy the things I love more. And I can get better results from it. After 30, your testosterone just starts to decline. Your results will start to decline. Your strength, your aggression, everything as a man just slowly starts to decline to the point that before you know it, you're 50. But similar to, they say if you put a frog in hot water, it jumps out, but if you put it in cold water and heat it slow enough, it'll boil to death. Turns out that's not true. But that same adage is probably most men, and we could get into a discussion about women who arguably maybe even have it worse with menopause, but for most men, our decline of testosterone is so gradual, we just kind of think, oh, it's just aging. You just get slower. Yeah. And that's what I thought for the majority of it was, oh, it's just aging. And even if we were to objectively say, if someone goes, oh, you might live less, you were going to live to 85, now you're going to live to 75, I go, oh, do you know what? I'd probably rather be a more jacked, leaner dude during my peak years, have the 5 years at the end. But I don't even think that is the outcome. And although there are risks to everything, I kind of feel like I'm a healthier person now. I feel like I take my training more seriously, my diet more seriously. I feel better, look better. It's helped my confidence. So for me, that was all a good thing. Now it could make it seem like I'm glorifying it, which I am in some respects, it's been great for me. But like with anything, I would say if you are healthy on TRT, it makes you healthier. But if you're unhealthy on TRT, it can make you unhealthier. Yeah. So one of the main side effects that you need to look out for is estrogen. So estrogen is claimed as being the female hormone, but men need it. Mm-hmm. And it's actually a massive, uh, key player in muscle growth, strength increases. So wherever there's testosterone, there needs to be estrogen management. Now there's a conversion called aromatising, which is where if you have too much testosterone, your body converts it to estrogen. And in men that have got high levels of body fat, they aromatise more. So when you start taking testosterone, you have to start looking at estrogen as well, see where it's at. And for instance, when Kian, my son, was born, my diet went to shit. I went from sleeping 9 hours a night to every 2 hours. Then everyone just kept bringing around food, which was great, but I ballooned about 3 or 4 kilograms. And I was still playing around with different dosages. And I'll never forget, 2 weeks later, my nipples felt a bit sensitive and I was like, oh, I'm aromatising. Because I remember from my bodybuilder days, the bodybuilder was blasting steroids. I don't know what the fuck I was doing trying to be a bodybuilder there. I remember even having medication on hand for that. Wow. So I go get my bloods done. My estrogen's high. I consult a few friends of mine. They were like, drop the belly fat quickly. Mm-hmm. And get some evening cardio under your belt and lost a bit of weight. All symptoms went away. Uh, cuz you can retain water, you can go quite red in the face, all signs of your estrogen just being a bit too high, blood pressure. And, um, yeah, then I managed to get control of that. I get my bloods done probably every 4 to 8 weeks. I look at all my markers and then I try different things to try and— it's, I'm gamifying my blood work now. I'm even putting 'em all into ChatGPT. The second I get my blood work, I put it into ChatGPT and say, what trends can you notice from all my previous blood work? And it's like, oh, your liver function's improved. This has come down. I can obviously go through it myself and have a look, but now even trying to supplement different things that can help those little markers.

Um, so where have you found like the best place to learn about this stuff? Because even hearing all of that, as someone who's thought about it a lot, like it's quite terrifying to hear all of that. So where can you like—

your clinic will charge you a fee often per year, so you can always reach out and ask someone. So you can send me blood work and go, or you can actually reach the clinic and go, hey, I've got sensitive nipples. Then they will come back and say, reduce your dose, this is what's happening. Uh, I could go to my clinic and say, hey, 'Where should my estrogen markers be?' And they'll be like, 'Oh, relatively free.' So they're always on hand to help you with that. But then when it comes to things like injection frequencies, YouTube was great for that. Derek from More Plates, More Dates does a lot of information about it. There's a lot more discussions online. People like Peter Attia, Greg Doucette, like all of these are like kind of gym bros online. But when they're transparent about their TRT protocols, it makes it a lot easier. And this is what I want to do ultimately, is that if someone like you was going to YouTube and my videos were why I started TRT, how often I inject. That can kind of just— the more information we can give people, the better they can make a decision that's best for them. And it kind of excites me to put out that content because I'm passionate about it. Even my friends, every time they ask me about it, I end up doing a TED Talk at dinner about it. Yeah, the pros, the cons, the benefits. And even, even this morning before I came here, I got a taxi into London at 4:45, went to White City when it opened. Yeah, great gym session, felt great. Sat in a sauna for half an hour. I was a bit of a wreckhead in my mid-20s. Party every weekend, never said no to a line, you know.

Now 35, getting up with the crack of dawn. ChatGPTing your blood work.

Yeah, and doing my blood pressure in the mornings, having a look at my— oh yeah, 110 over 60, lovely. Showing off to my mates that are on TRT, look how good my blood pressure is. So I've now gamified my own metrics of kind of male health, and I feel so much better because of it.

The other thing I definitely wanted to talk to you about, because you've again been quite open about it, is like Ozempic or similar things to Ozempic. So I was telling you before, one of my best friends has been on something similar to Ozempic. I can't remember the name of it, but it has had the most life-changing effect on his, you know, appearance, his confidence. Like, I play a lot of sport with him, and he has just become so much better at sports. He's lost the the weight. And then there is quite a bit of a backlash against the fact that so many people are on it now. What's your take on Ozempic or similar, and how can people practically think about using it?

So Ozempic is a brand name for the compound called semaglutide, but Ozempic is kind of like the mainstream name. It's what you'd use in a YouTube title, or probably for this clip, the video, because people know it so well. Wegovy is semaglutide, which is again Ozempic. So they're just different brand names. Than Munjaro. I can't remember the name, tazepacide or something, which is another compound. So in the UK, I think Munjaro is becoming a lot more popular. So I, as a knee-jerk reaction, being a classic fitness pleb, I did a video, oh, you shouldn't take Ozempic. I looked into like, I looked into the negatives. But the thing is, if you, if someone had just told you about anesthesia, hi mate, there's this process where We give someone a drug and it knocks them out. Mm-hmm. And then you go, 0.1% of people never wake up. You can make anesthesia sound pretty fucking scary. And that's what I did. I straight away went to look for the worst side effects, the worst outcomes. I was like, if you take a Zempic, you could get depressed or have suicidal ideation. And I'll never forget, I don't usually read the comments that much, but one person was like, James, read your books, come to your talks, love your content. Respectfully, you've got this so wrong. This has changed my life. And I remember that night I was there, I was like, fuck, I'm gonna have to take it. I'm just gonna have to take it. So I ordered a vial of semaglutide from a peptide clinic, uh, in Australia. And in 2 weeks I lost over 4.5 kilograms. And of what though? Fat. I just got leaner. But this point, this was, um, uh, pre-TRT. Probably lost a bit of muscle as well, but I loved it. For me, I have a lot of food noise even when I'm jet-lagged. So when I'm jet-lagged, I'm tired and I have no levers to pull to make me happier apart from caffeine. But then in the latter part of the day when I can't have caffeine, I just need food. And I have— it sounds crazy— I've never been happy on a diet because every time I've said no to food to remain in shape, I've not made that decision happily. Does that make sense? So someone goes, do you want a dessert? Mm-hmm. Yeah, I want dessert. Yeah. But then I say no thanks. But there's a bit of trauma in that decision for me because I'm making a decision that goes against my wants and relative needs for an outcome of looking better or looking more like I do my job for a living. So when I'm not on a diet, I steadily gain weight. And I'm happy. Then I have to go on a diet where I'm steadily kind of semi-miserable, having to force-feed myself vegetables just so that I can kind of combat the cravings that I have. But the majority of my food cravings are emotional. I could have told you that anyway. And I think that could be why so many of my fat loss clients resonated with me, because I talk about food in a very emotional way. Never could just eat chicken and veg and broccoli. I'd rather be fat. Said to you before, I'd rather be fat. Yeah. So when I took Ozempic, and this is really annoying, right? I've spoken about this on podcasts and now the clinics are clipping videos of me to sell their pens. And one of them in Australia called Pilot, I messaged them, I said, oiya dogs, stop selling your product using clips of me. I'm not affiliated with you in any way. They hired an actor to sit in front of a podcast to say what I said word for word. Pilot, you dogs. So I took it and I remember the next day I was just, I had like a microwaveable chicken meal, company called My Muscle Chef, just like fitness meals in Australia. Just ate half, put half back. And then I went out and I went, I've never done that before. Never in my life. Yeah. The last time I didn't finish a meal, I can tell you it was in Iceland in maybe 2014 because I was so hungover I couldn't finish a meal. I can remember exactly what it was. The idea— when I see people leave food on their plates, I'm like, you're fucking mental. Yeah. Every meal I eat, I have to be uncomfortably full or I'm not happy. And when I've taken semaglutide, I turn to my missus and be like, it's been 2 weeks since I've complained about eating too much. That's massive. That's huge. Then on semaglutide, the only way I can explain it is when my missus says, do you want a bit of chocolate? I happily say no. Well, actually, on Semaglutide, I say yes just to be normal. So I go, yeah, I'll have a couple squares. And I don't even want the squares, but I have them so that she's not eating chocolate on her own and feeling alienated by me. And then I'm fine with it. And then I sit on the sofa, I watch TV. Another time I went to pick up sushi. I love sushi because it's made quick and I can eat it straight away. I don't even microwave my food because when I'm hungry, I just want to eat it. My My manager's like, you're a fucking freak. You don't even reheat food. You're that impatient. I ordered some sushi. I drove it home and my missus was doing something in the garden, put it on the side, and I just said, whenever you're ready, we can eat. We waited like half an hour and we ate. And I turned to her and I said, you do know if I wasn't taking this, I would've made you come inside to eat with me so we could eat, or I would've eaten my sushi and just said, yours is in there.

So what's it doing? It's, it's reducing the appetite or it's reducing the amount that you eat. So it slows digestion. Mm-hmm.

One, that's kind of the mechanism that it works with by slowing down your digestion. So by doing so, the signals that your stomach is empty and that you're ready to eat, some like ghrelin pathway, whatever, I don't know the complexity of it. That's the first thing. But the second impact has is on your brain. Now through this self-proclaimed maybe ADHD thing, I'm definitely a dopamine junkie. Definitely gamification of everything. the ways and models that I use myself to remain, you know, what would you say? To pretty much want to do anything, there has to be some dopamine in it for me. Even oversharing, I think, is a dopamine driveway of me. So I'll be with a bunch of people I've never met before, cracking a story about the first time I premature ejaculated in Barcelona, and I overshare so much because it gives me dopamine, right? I don't know why. There's just something about it. Quick tangent. Imagine trying to tell a girl you've just met that this is genuinely the first time you've premature ejaculated. And it genuinely was, but she just didn't believe me. Anyway, to be young. So all of these kind of dopamine pathways. Now when I've taken Ozempic, I cannot think of anything worse than drinking. The thought of a beer on it repulses me. And I'm someone that binge-drunk for the majority of my life. So there's that. Then the second thing is I found I was drinking so many less coffees on Ozempic because I now realize that so much of my caffeine intake is for dopamine because I love having a coffee. So the noise, the part of my brain that's constantly in overdrive thinking I could eat this, what's for lunch, that just quietens down. It's like you turn the volume down on it. And this is going to sound fucked. I enjoy food more on Ozempic. Because the emotion's been taken out of it. Instead, it's just a— it's, you know, post-nut clarity.

Yeah, I know what you mean.

Yeah, for anyone that's listening, sometimes let's say you're a horny teenager, oh, this thing's racing around, I'm like a Texas girl, Texas girl, I could go on a date. You end up having a wank and then suddenly you've got calm and you go, do you know what, I'm just going to relax tonight. That's what it's like, but around food and Little things. Usually if I was going to the cafe and I'd have bacon and eggs, suddenly when I get there I go, oh, thought of having bacon, feels a bit greasy. I had a weird craving for grilled tomato. Never had a grilled tomato with eggs ever before, but I kind of wanted vegetables. Then when you go out for dinner, you have a burger and you look at the chips and you'll be like, oh, they'll probably make me feel like shit. Whereas my whole life is eating the chips, then afterwards being full of regret. So you can go weeks and months genuinely having a better relationship with yourself. Because even now, most weekends when I polish off food, I'm disgusted with myself. Genuinely. I'm like, who the fuck were you just then that just ate all that? Yeah. No, you didn't need to have 3 burgers for dinner.

What the fuck?

If I said to myself at 9:00 AM in the morning, you're going to have 3 burgers for dinner, I'd go, fuck. But then after dinner, I'm sat there going, James, you know, like, then I'm thinking, you can't have breakfast tomorrow, you fat— and then the next morning I'm hungry and can't have breakfast because I had the 3 burgers. All these internal dialogues is me just abusing myself. So on Semaglutide, 2 weeks in, you're going, I'm really proud of you, mate. You've eaten really well. You've not had any shit. You've not caved into any junk food. You're being a good bloke.

So, and do you have—

do you take it all the time? Once a week. You want to take it. So, and is it an injection?

Comes in an injection pen.

Wow. So the pens make it really easy. So you put a tip on it like an injection cap, you twist until it clicks, you take the caps off. They're super sharp, these needles. You don't even feel it. Press it against your sub— subcutaneous means under the skin. You pinch a little bit of fat, pop it in, you don't even feel it. You click, it pushes the perfect amount in. You take the cap off the pen, put it in the fridge, and then you go back a week later. So the first pen on Ozempic is usually 0.25 milligrams. Then the next week they send you a 0.5, then the next week they send you 1 gram. And what's crazy is the first week it kicks your ass a little bit. You're like, oof. But then week 1, you—

As in it feels bad?

Sometimes you're like, I'll wake up, I know I haven't eaten in 15 hours and I feel full. And then I'm like, this is weird. Sometimes you get a little bit nauseous, especially if you try and force food down. So if I know that I'm training and I want food in my system, but I'm not hungry, yeah, sometimes you get a bit of mixed signals. I get to training going, why the fuck did I actually eat? I would've been better off not eating. So there, some people get really bad sickness with it. I was, I was fine for the first few weeks. Then 2 weeks in you go, I can't imagine taking twice the amount. Mm-hmm. But then when you get to week 4, it starts fading away. But the crazy experience I've had 'cause I actually, I'm gonna do a video on this soon. I did 8 weeks recently. I did 8 weeks over Christmas so that I wouldn't gain weight over Christmas. And I actually came into January being in the best shape I've been in for about 2, 3, maybe 4 years. And I had the best Christmas because Christmas for me is a time of the year where I'm a glutton. Mm-hmm. And I get in a real bad headspace about how I look and feel, especially if I'm traveling back to the UK. January for me, if I'm honest about it, it's probably the worst headspace I have for the whole year. Wow. Because I'm genuinely disgusted with how I look and feel. And this year I came all the way around to the new year being probably objectively the healthiest I've ever been. And there was no sacrifice off of it. There were no days where I went, I wish I was going out. I still stacked my plate up at Christmas. There was just probably 30% less eating between. There was no grabbing a plain bread wrap to eat because I was a little bit hungry on the way to the gym. There was No grabbing a sandwich at a petrol station because I was bored. What is it costing people?

Like, what's the— can people take it not full-time? Can you take it to— you know, when my friend told me about it, I was like, you look incredible. Like, quite literally, I've never seen you look like that. You're fitter than you've ever been. You're healthier. You seem happier. I was like, wow, could I take it for like 4 weeks and get in better shape and then not take it again?

Like In Australia it's about £200 a month. Right. To go through a private clinic, which is expensive, but you probably save that in not eating as much.

And not drinking.

Yeah. So yeah, for no, not drinking, you, they say to you not to drink on it, which is a really good idea because you want anything that's not gonna make you feel ill. If you try boozing on it, makes your hangovers hell. Really? I did it once. And do you know what was weird? I got to 7:00 PM at night and I couldn't drink anymore. I went out for lunch, I was looking around the table, I was like, the thought of another drink makes me feel ill. So I was having to drink cranberry vodkas just to try and get the drinks in me. Then the next day I felt so shit. So then again, I was like, I'm never drinking on this again. Mm. But it does really put you into kind of that healthy kind of loop with it. But this is the crazy thing. Some days I did get a bit nauseous, but as a net nausea scale, I was down because every evening after dinner I feel nauseous. Through overeating. So I swapped an overeating nausea for an under eating nausea. Now they're going to make it a bit more difficult to get your hands on it, I think, in the next few weeks because some people with eating disorders have been getting their hands on it. So people that aren't eating enough, eating disorders, so maybe anorexics, bulimics. Oh wow. There was one person in Daily Mail called Avril something, a singer, and she experienced osteoporosis and bone wastage because she didn't do any resistance training on it. So if you're someone that's tend to under eating, you take a drug that helps you under eat and you have adverse side effects from it, it's very easy to blame the drug. So then the agencies that kind of are in charge of these, you know, medicines and whatnot have to step in and make it a little bit more difficult. Even when you go through a clinic, you have to send them pictures of yourself to make sure you're not trying to game the system. But every dude can push his gut out a little bit. Like you say, it can be taken ad hoc, but usually they want you to go through cycles. They also want an average customer duration of months and years, not You know, if you're going to be a customer for one month, it's hardly worth, yeah, the paid advertising to win you over.

Funny, you talk quite a lot about, I suppose, the relationship with how like you look and what you eat and happiness and your work and productivity and happiness. Like, is that quite an ever-present thing for you?

Yeah, massively. So I was a fat kid. No 11-year-old should be asking dinner ladies, what's fatling? You know, I was that conscious of it as a kid. Always, you know, my mum and dad, no offense to them, they don't really know anything about nutrition. So I didn't really have anyone to help me lose weight as a kid. Even at 14, I remember at one point I restricted myself to only eating carrots between meals and I lost loads of weight and then I went back to normal. As a kid, I would get up in the middle of the night to go raid like the chocolate and crisps in the house. Like I've always had kind of semi-disordered eating. Then even playing pretty decent rugby at uni, I'd still live off sausage rolls. I didn't know what carbohydrate was until I was 22. So I was so late to it. And I kind of think if I'd had a better understanding of nutrition earlier, could I have played rugby to a high level? Could my life have been different? All of these things. So a lot of my fitness content was aimed towards a younger version of myself that could have done with that knowledge. Same, the business content I put out, I could have done with when I was in the infancy of my business. And even with these weight loss drugs, there are so many peop— once, once I tried it, when I see seriously obese people, I kind of feel like going up to 'em, put my arm around them and not saying track your calories, not saying get MyFitnessPal, not saying get 10,000 steps a day, mate. Just saying go take the drug. That's it. I, I almost wish I was like a Russian spy with the umbrella, with the secret tip. I just go up on the high street and just stab 'em once a week. Mm-hmm. Because these people have tried everything. They've, they've— you think about some people that hate the drug or say it's got adverse effects. People are having bariatric surgery, they're getting cut open to have clamps on their stomach. Yeah. Like no one should be having surgery or being touched with a scalpel or going under the knife if they can be avoided. The fact that we now in this day and age have come up with a drug that people can just try for a week. You can't try a bariatric surgery for a week. You're not gonna have a $10 grand operation to get cut open and get stapled and go after a week, no, I've had enough.

That's the key is if you can go to a, like, I would never want people to, you know, watch you talking about it and suddenly go, oh, I'd definitely go try it 'cause of that. But you can go to a clinic, you can do your own test, you can track your progress, you can do a couple of weeks and see how you feel. And I think that's kind of the key with all these things.

You know, in The Big Short where he turns and he goes, boom, like the market's collapsed. It's already started in fat loss, as in the, the fitness market. Obesity is starting to decline already. We're starting to see in the data that even projections for aviation fuel starting to decrease 'cause passengers are gonna be lighter. Jewelers are already using less gold in wedding rings because people are starting to lose weight. It's already begun in Australia. There are thousands of these pens going out to new people every week right now. Any person you know that's lost weight is doing it with a Zenpeh. I think the fitness industry is about to explode because so many people are now going to be mindful of muscle wastage and degradation. And in essence, the way it makes the majority of people feel, such as your friend, is they now feel they can be accepted at a gym. They now see the benefits of going to train. They now— everything is going to point in the direction of that. I think that this is going to be a lot bigger than most people think. I could be wrong. And I'm kind of happy for that.

But it's going in conjunction with people are drinking less. Maybe they're drinking less because they're on Ozempic. But you know, that trend seems to be a very present trend. Like when I, you know, I'm 34 now and in my 20s, every Thursday, Friday, Saturday would be rammed anywhere you went. Whereas now it just doesn't feel like that anymore. It feels like the whole fitness is much more prevalent. People taking care of themselves much more prevalent. And so it kind of fits that.

Do you know what I think it has something to do with as well, which again is a complete assumption on no evidence or data, whatever. We now through social media start to see the lives of people doing better than us a lot more. And I think a lot of us rightly so go, I want a bit of that. And every day that we go drinking or wake up hungover, I think that we are realising we are slipping away from our ideals. So for me, definitely, I, I would say I'm not, I'm entrepreneurial. I'm not money hungry. I'm— if someone says you're never going to earn more money, I'd be like, okay, that's fine. But I do see people that live in bigger houses and drive nicer cars, and I like seeing that.

It makes me think, oh, is that pushing you?

Yeah, I like it. Yeah, I want to— do you know what, I want to be able to see a friend struggling and go, oh, let me pay off your car finance. Or, you know, I'd love to be able to, uh, pay for a friends' kids go to university or something like that. I would love to be philanthropic like that. I'd also like to be a dickhead. I already do this where I'm sure you're the same, where like you say, oh lads, I'll get dinner. Yeah. And then they're like, no, no, no, we'll get it. And you go, you're poor.

I mean, I've never said specifically that, but I've definitely grabbed dinner. Yeah.

Yeah. So things like that. So, um, I very much like the, the kind of providing side of it. Yeah. And I think that when people associate alcohol, partying, going out, hungovers, comedowns, they're starting to actually attribute these behaviours to negative outcomes, to less productivity, to feeling worse. I think now people want to do better, they want to feel better, they want to be better. And I think that if drugs like Ozempic can remove barriers for people to be that— like, your friend probably just had an appetite problem. That's it. And it would've hindered his sex life, his confidence, his health markers, what he wears, what he does. Where he trains, all of that. And now that we've— not we've— now that they've created something that helps appetite, it's one of humanity's fundamental vices because the majority of human existence we've been hungry. The majority. Then suddenly food is omnipresent. So the fact that we've managed to circumnavigate that, I think is massive for humanity. These drugs are only gonna get better as well. So Manjaro, I think is already a bit better than semaglutide. The next generation of these drugs. And some people go, we've got no long-term data. It's been used for about 14 years. So we do have quite a lot of data. So what's next for you?

What's your priority at the moment?

I'm really enjoying the challenges that Nutonic bring. I'm very much enjoying the business-to-business space. So I started a new YouTube channel from scratch, so I've got like 20,000 subs, but I'm enjoying that. Started to use LinkedIn a bit more. Yeah. Started a new Twitter page. We've already got 500 people on Twitter. So because I'd created all these brand-specific social media pages, I can't just pivot and start doing business-to-business advice. So now I've got all these little smaller projects and I'm actually kind of enjoying it because I've definitely tried to be famous as part of a business strategy before. Right. And it works. But I think I might have optimized too much for notoriety and not enough for bottom line. Mm-hmm. Whereas in these new business ventures, all I care about is clients. And it's crazy that my YouTube channel with 20,000 subs is making me more money than my channel with half a million, right? Just under half a million. And that excites me because that's the world I want to take brands. I wanna say to someone, hey, you can make really good money with 10,000 followers. You can make really good money with 5,000 YouTube subscribers. And so yeah, that's, that's the side of kind of business and marketing that I'm enjoying. Um, doing more events with that in person. I wouldn't want to say that I'm leaving the fitness industry, but I don't think you'll see me talk about fat loss or calorie deficit ever again.

So if we were to go to the future in-person James event, we're going to see a very different event than what you described at the beginning?

Yeah, yeah. Oh, 100%.

I would wish I could have come to one of those now.

Men started coming because they heard about the ratios. I shit you not. And people would tell me that. That's great. We, 'cause we would do the videos, the photos. Yeah. And people would comment on Facebook like, where, where, where are the men? Yeah. So yeah, it was pretty raucous. I'm glad to have that all behind me. Um, glad I got it out the system. Mm-hmm. You know, I say to my missus, I'm like, you're welcome. Yeah, I've got it out of my system. But no, I'm very much into the other kind of business space. I love seeing trends, things that are changing. I could talk about it for 7 hours, but rather than doing 2 hours TED Talk fingering jokes, and I'd much rather do like an all-day seminar with business owners. This stuff I love getting my teeth into. But yeah, and hopefully I'll cut through the bullshit in that industry because that industry is just equally full of as many Bellends and Charltons as well.

Thanks very much for coming on.

Cheers, thanks for having me.