#607 - Mike Thurston - Why Are Young Men Feeling So Lost?

i have no one else to compare myself to like i wasn't comparing myself to any other 22 or 23 year old out there in fact i thought i was pretty good because i was like hey i've come out of university and i've got a job whereas now you've got people who are like 16 20 21 who are just making a killing and i think because they're so out there on social media and they have gained quite a lot of following because of the success they've had i think a lot of guys maybe that age or even a little bit older like hang on how does this guy manage to make so much money and so successful i am literally doing nothing with my life thank you for letting me use your house to record this thing what do you think i know you're a connoisseur of uh setups when it comes to podcasting what do you think of this one i think it's really nice uh learning whether that is some old school old and worldly telescope type i think that's very nice very well done i'm impressed you've entered the dark and dingy world of podcasting yeah how are you finding it i find you good actually it's probably one of the things which i've learned the most out of like what's taught me so far from just having conversations with people doing research about people and being able to hold a conversation it's it's been very interesting well you've done youtube for a very long time how long have you been on youtube now first video went up 2016 i feel like longer than that but i guess that's still quite a long time it was the i went hardcore in 2017 that's when i kind of took off so what you're looking back now and obviously having this big arc of content creation for the last coming up in a decade being on a platform which is getting ever more successful ever more popular more and more people joining more and more people being competitive what have been the principles that have managed to get you to not only a stage you've got a sizable platform but also have managed to help you avoid being dragged into the muck and the mire and the politics and the backbiting the reaction videos and call outs and all that sort of stuff you've done a very good job of avoiding that i think i've never really been massively opinionated on anything i'm quite neutral and i would keep like say for example a lot of my content training related which is about training i would never call anyone out or say anyone else's name it would just be what i believe you need to do when it comes to training building muscle losing body fat same thing when i transition to vlogs and lifestyle it's mainly just either about me and what i was up to or the place that i'm going to not about the people is that a purpose-built strategy to avoid getting yourself into politics or is that i think so i think i generally still like drama i would like to avoid it if possible why because it's just just i don't like it stress stress and i think um i think it's petty once like the drama starts it's like backwards forward backwards forwards it never really ends and then sometimes you get a little bit like some people might say something they regret and i didn't want to do something i'll make a video while i think i was a bit super childish yeah what about the principles what else have you done you know looking back on the come up to get from where you were to where you are now what just be myself i think you see a lot of trends over time and people tend to try and like hop onto trends or do what other people are doing who are really popular but i just look to doing what i do and i feel comfortable doing and i feel like that has worked massively for me and the problem that people come up against i think is first off if you're playing a role like if you're trying to be someone else or your version like youtube mic or youtube whatever what you get found out pretty quickly because people are always going to look for hypocrisy or discontinuity between who you say you are and who you actually end up being yeah and the other side i think we're both pretty aligned on is if you're not careful you get known for the drama and nothing else you don't actually get known for your work or your takes or your expertise or your insights or anything like that what you're known for is like okay when's the next reaction video back and forth thing coming and that's like a really bad situation yeah like the prime example of that in the fitness industry would be greg you said and fair play he's doing this thing that's obviously his business model it's working he's getting views but like i said that's kind of what he's known for and that's not something i would i wouldn't want to be known for the guy that has made a platform or generated a big following just from doing reaction videos of other people would you watch greg's content if it wasn't sometimes i do watch the videos yeah yeah because he might just do like a reaction or it's almost like a news channel now when someone in the industry has done something or something's happening or usually it's negativity because negativity brings in the views there's been a few times i'm like oh that looks like some juicy gossip you do need someone to go out and find out what's going on i suppose it very much is kind of like a news feed for the fitness industry i suppose derek does it but derek has a i guess he hasn't done it as much recently i guess he's on to bigger things now but in the past he used to do that he grinds i mean dude i've got to watch my housemate was a big part of derek's liverking video so zach talander his guy that i live with he did the charlatans playbook section of that video and his editor alex was the guy that actually put the whole thing together and i watched him work on this thing for fucking ages ages and ages man i'm watching it happen and unfold behind the scenes and it wouldn't surprise me derek would have asked me to sign an nda i didn't need to because i'm not going to tell anyone about it or spoil it but they worked so fucking hard on that thing um and yeah i do think that derek's a particularly good example of someone that just decides okay here's my expertise i'm going to go with this thing problem is that there is a little bit of fall off he's inevitably going to get himself embroiled in some of those politics yeah right because of the type of content that he's doing obviously one of the things one of the things that derek did recently uh him and matt does fitness yeah because last time that we spoke about two and a half years ago a couple of miles in that direction i think and we were talking then and all of the like easy natural accusations apologies since we were in uni basically like 15 years ago and i think one of the concerns that you had then was well no matter what test you do there is always going to be somebody that says it's efficient it's not enough it's blah blah blah and i think matt had that problem too matt went to derek and said design me the most rigorous randomized testing protocol in the world is that something that yes i've emailed derek and i've watched that derek two months ago right no reply you're kidding you're kidding i'll show you after this because i spoke to obviously i've seen this all happening i've been watching the videos i speak to matt he's like one of my best friends and um matt was telling me because i asked for his number matt was saying just be aware it's a massive ball lake on both ends because he has to be available to do all these random tests he's got to pay for it but then derek has to do so much organization you know he's getting things set up in a country which he doesn't live in and the whole process he can't just do all these random tests in a week or two weeks it has to be over a four or five month period so um he got on that first did everything he could possibly done and proved that he's not taking anything i didn't see i saw the announcement of matt saying i never actually saw the results did he get better leaner and stronger and well the results i think because it was all messed up because he tore his achilles like before the testing started playing football so his i don't know what he's trying to prove that he can still maintain his lifts or something so i think he was able to bring it back but he was getting tested throughout there's no funky stuff happening okay but it was interesting because he's making these videos and proving that it's natural and there's still people who are like no they're not happy so why did you if that's the case why would you message derek if matt's gone through the most rigorous testing protocol available to man and that's still not sufficient because i think there's literally nothing more you can do and if anybody who's going to oversee any kind of testing i won't dare into it because i'd pick up the phone i know i'll ring him i'll ring him until i finish up i was texting him tomorrow i've got the email on the whatsapp but i'm not going to pestle him to give him his view that man is drowning in emails 24 7 there was a period so i'll ask him if i can put this into the podcast uh after he released the living king video which was you know the big crescendo and he does rogan then he does me then he does zach then he does uh like a comedy podcast and maybe just one more and he was like dude i'm i have six months of unanswered emails to deal with because all he's been doing is grinding creating content and build up to this kind of big crescendo maximum thing and then all he's like what's he released like three videos maybe since november december time because he's super busy this is one of the things that i don't know people don't really see the pain that goes into creating content like that or even for you it's so worth it to make a fucking vlog dude it is so painful and it looks like a beautiful life the number one uh design job amongst american children is influencer now and i would imagine that you would probably get folded into that there are some amazing parts of the job but there are some bits that absolutely suck if you're sat with your editor the night before it needs to be uploaded looking at the edit unhappy with something giving amends on frame.io or whatever it is that you're using yeah it's not that much fun and i think that what you're seeing with derek is you know the fall off but it's the same with me i used to have this really strict schedule where i would have to post at a certain time or certain day and i would literally be pulling my hair out just to make sure that everything's perfect everything's filmed and when i wasn't you know maybe two hours were left before the upload it wasn't ready i would be so stressed out and then i thought it's not even worth it just remove the schedule i'll post it a day later two days later what do you think this is an interesting thing especially given that you've been in the youtube scene for a very long time since before i think before derek was on youtube although he has been on for a long time talking about non-fist content do you think that he has been one of the bigger biggest influences in kind of shaping fitness youtube over the last few years what do you think is sort of in terms of education definitely because he's he's like a freaking encyclopedia he knows so much so he's definitely he's definitely had a positive impact i don't know anyone else i think there's a few other people now who are pretty clued up when it comes to yes and he puts a hell of a lot of work into his videos there's another guy he puts stuff for his name he puts all these um like uh bands on his muscles okay so it can pick up the twitching of the fibers and he does all these exercises oh right right right something okay what and he and that will determine how much muscle activation yeah yeah muscle activation doing different exercises i've never seen it before i watched a few of his videos and he's very charismatic and insane that's cool yeah so what would you the trend when you started youtube you know i think i was lucky because i was early yes i would agree you know that rob lipserts like harrison twins kind of era-ish i think was a you know it was a golden era for like bro content blogs lifestyle lifting to me now and i'm outside of that uh whatever like cohort of delivery on youtube in any case but for me it really feels like the um evidence-based you know sort of more scientific approach to education i'm sure there's still a lot of lifestyle channels out there but i don't see your jeff sides of the world your david blades of the world like they don't that that style seems to have dropped away even your stuff seems to be leaning increasingly towards education even outside of fitness i feel like that is what youtube is becoming it's becoming more of a platform for education like i said there is there is always going to be room for those uh vloggers and lifestyle people like jesse james he's smashing it at the moment there's only very few people who can do that and maybe i feel like it's one of those things where people have seen everything true it's hard to really unique yeah so zach my housemate was at the arnold classic a couple weeks ago and jesse james was there with an army of security guys i didn't know what he was dressed up as he was dressed up as something he had a big suit on he had a big beard on maybe he's been crystal study i don't know he's like he's being something and uh zach's watching it from the outside is fucking insane yeah like because it's just this reality distortion field moving through uh he's he's one of the best i've seen he came to the bike yes he did yeah yeah yeah and i just watched him work i was like wow like everything he's got he thoroughly deserves however he's not gonna be able to keep up why because he'll burn out he's young he's like 23 24 so he made a rubber magic you've got that you remember being 23 or 24 yeah that's what i'm noticing now i'm like i'm 33 this year i'm noticing like fuck i'm tired and the worst thing is like homo said it's like this is the most energetic you are going to be yeah well jesse's a very interesting one i think because it's the skit style of video without the cringe and the cheese the one there was one he did with ronnie coleman and jay cutler that to me pushed the limit on the upper bounds i was like if this goes much more it's gonna be a little bit like oh uh but the one that he did very pretended to be crisp um said for the people that don't know who are talking about jesse james fitness youtuber um very charismatic guy young dude from america and he does two and a half million stuff now and he hasn't been doing that long but that's that's the you know it's evident that he's got i don't know he's he's well first of all he's a big ball of energy yep insane amount of energy i think very extroverted yep he has absolutely no fear going up to people which is very interesting to watch as well and he's just he's just hard working always working but there's always a million things going on instead you'd be concerned about his ability to keep up that work right yeah i don't know because like it just gets to a point i think with unless you really really really love something most of the time you're kind of like oh yeah this is getting a bit repetitive now like it's not necessarily sustainable is his work right ethical i've exactly said it looks like a massive reality distortion field moving through an expo but it's like flying around constantly planning constantly just being in front of the camera like i can only imagine how many how much actually doesn't get put into the video like you don't see the best of the best you don't see like all the outtakes that's another reason why the vlog format is just so impractical right you know you want to film a vlog about your i remember you did uh some stuff about you got a nice new car and you wanted to like let people know about the car that you got it took like two days yeah it's a 16 minute fucking lose and we have to drive all the way to the desert which is like an hour away and we have to drive up and down this track with another car filming so we're probably filming that little 20 second edit like an hour yeah and then that's a podcast you would have a podcast and then i would drive somewhere else just to do like a talking part which can't fucking up and then i was like wow it's just two or three days away and now i'm noticing it's like it's not practical i do like the vlogs i still think to be part of my channel but i think now i only want to make a vlog if something really cool is happening either i'm meeting up with someone very interesting or i'm going somewhere really cool the travel vlog is wicked because it's like documenting myself going on holiday and then i'm also sharing the place with people i did a the reason i'm here in dubai is because i just did a debate in qatar is masculinity under attack and um it's the first time that i've done anything remotely close to tv for quite a long time you know i got familiar with it with the dating stuff taking out love island and then other bits of produced documentaries but especially after having spent so much time doing this where if you forget you forgot the guy's name that puts the thing around his arm if that happens on tv that's a cut right let's research it shout it out uh and then we'll run it again from the top you say mike just run that again for us please it's like whereas there's no flow no no no no of course not because they've got 45 minutes they've got ad breaks going between all the rest of the stuff they're trying to sell it to netflix they're trying to do whatever and the thing we did was like incredibly well produced massive team 200 150 people on site to do this thing unbelievable production but even with that you know there's things the host that was mediating the debate needs to do and for me it just feels uh experientially so much more like stop starty you know we the guy that i was debating me and him weren't supposed to speak to each other before like when we were backstage whereas even if you were sitting down to have a conversation with somebody you disagreed with you welcome the door give them a glass of water say oh right okay blah blah blah three two one welcome to the show and you just crack on um so i don't like tv anymore it seems so fake in stages it seems real it's so trite to say like every you know rogan all those guys have been going on about for ages but look at what jesse james does right his content is heavily staged but it's done in a way that almost draws you in yeah it's quite likable it's quite enjoyable and yeah i'm just fascinated um about what's happened with especially like the vlogging world i think the rise podcast has trickled down you know you've been able to do q and a's you've been able to do direct camera things but if someone was starting a channel now we were talking about this earlier on what advice would you say someone's listening and they go i fancy making a youtube channel i'm prepared to sell my soul to the devil i have absolutely i'll go as low as i need to i'll play any role that i need to how would you from first principles just say this is how to get to a million subs as quickly as possible if you're prepared to sell yourself yeah if you wanted to with the absolute minimal work required you can just pick up other people's content viral content and just react to it and have some sort of animated reaction which will provide people some form of entertainment and you're just kind of piggybacking off other people's you amazing work which is kind of like quite questionable but if you want to grow very quickly that's one way to do it another way it depends how how knowledgeable you are as a person like if you have a lot of knowledge to spread and you're very good at communicating and present yourself well all you have to do is sit down and talk make it you know a little bit entertaining have an editor put some cool edits on it and then you can bang out videos non-stop that makes it sound very easy yeah i guess it's a little bit harder than that but in a way it's i'm trying to work out you know given the fact that i think that you're not far off i don't disagree uh i'm just trying to work out where does the people get stuck they don't have a skill set they don't have any value to offer oh so they don't have any expertise that they can actually talk on yeah i mean i was having a discussion about this today about um albert marcus ceo on it founder of on it um told me this thing a few years ago he said that you don't serve people from your cup you serve them from the source that overflows around your cup and he's saying in classic austin psychedelic fashion right what he actually means is sort your shit first right you need to make sure that you are sufficiently capable to do the you thing before you then try and proselytize to the world about how they should be doing it or how you did it and they can do it how you did it and stuff which is why i think if you look at almost all of the podcasts that are doing very well you know you're talking like rogan 50s cuban 40s like tindallin 30s chris alia late 30s 40s like all of these you know whether it's comedy whether it's whatever pick pick your big name podcast tim ferris 40s like these guys are older well hang on if you go to other social media they're not the ones that crush on instagram or tiktok or whatever unless it's repurposing content from a different platform and i think that the reason for that is and it's a very good change you can like complain about i do i'm like railing against tiktok in short form and it's killing people's brains blah blah but certainly one of the good things is that people who have genuine expertise and who don't have been thrown into harsh light by long-form conversations yeah because if you sit someone down for an hour and a half and you go oh there's nothing there there's absolutely nothing there there's nowhere to hide in these conversations yeah i think the older you get the wiser you are the more life experience you have it's quite hard for you to sit there and listen to a 22 year old tell you how you should live actually know how to live life better than you do guys a lot of guys just do something like no i'd rather listen to someone who's the same age as me or a little older it's one of the reasons why i held off on this podcast for a bit because i remember when we did ours i was like man that was amazing like i think i want to do my own and then i was like nah not yet i haven't got the expertise which is crazy right for people to look at i think i need two more years of living life and i certainly did that what's your views on why men are feeling sort of quite lost at the moment because me and you went to uni basically at the same time i think we have one or two years age difference we did the same course we trained at the center for sporting excellence right the cse together which would have been your first major like consistent gym yeah yeah that's what happened to my bros with damn right um so we've been walking through richards road's residence in when did you live wait are you posh twat no this is the thing i don't know i don't know why i picked it but i picked it and then i realized i was like the only northerner there correct yeah so for the people that don't know newcastle university northeast of the uk should be in richards road should be in ricky road um i was in st nary's in phantom because i bet it's my insurance doesn't make you pay uh you were a little of the posh boys my point being when we went to university when we were the age of a lot of the guys that are seeking advice online at the moment there's nothing online but i don't think that there was a sense of being lost despite the fact there was less information out there i don't think that and that's not to say that me and you tumbled into some like perfect slick archetype of being finding our place within university or whatever both of us in like certain ways were a little bit disjointed and took time to find our feet yeah what do you think's changed why is it the guys i think it's maybe the comparison aspect of it because i definitely don't have a clue what i was doing and i think it was only until i was 23 yeah 23 when i came personal train i was like okay so this is probably a step in the right direction before i was working as a manager in hollister worked the club promote for a bit doing all sorts but i never felt lost i was just like okay well yeah i'll just do this but i had no one else to compare myself to like i wasn't comparing myself to any other 22 or 23 year old out there in fact i thought i was pretty good so like hey i've come out of university and i've got a job whereas now you've got people who are like 16 20 21 22 who are just making a killing and i think because they're so out there on social media and they have gained quite a lot of following because of the success they've had i think a lot of guys maybe that age or even a little bit older like hang on how does this guy manage to make so much money and so successful i am literally doing nothing with my life comparatively even if you are on a graduate scheme of hollister i think that's one thing and then maybe the value of a degree has gone downhill now i don't think people are thinking oh should i go to the university anymore is it worth it like do i need to go i don't need to go like what should i spend my time learning i think it can be quite confusing out there all of my richest friends don't use their degrees yeah i don't use my degree you don't george i was at his house before unbelievably successful marketing business philosophy can't remember any of it like i think that all that's very correct there's a quote that says comparison is the thief of joy and maybe that maybe that contributes to a big part of it the fact that just your ability to see 0.001 success absolute outliers crushing at a younger age than you uh so i went to the ufc power slap in vegas last Saturday which was fucking wild and i saw aiden ross one of the biggest dreams in the world i saw all of the elk boys kyle uh mike from uh impulsive haspela was there dan bilzari was there like just being being like take pick your sleep will do it like everybody right all the biggest guys that would be around that that sort of community and you look i mean aiden ross i think he's maybe 20 20 21 he's one of the biggest dreams in the world um like i show speed is something similar maybe even younger maybe he's 19 uh kyle and all the elk boys maybe getting toward their mid 20s mid late 20s but they've got like businesses and franchises and clothing companies all this stuff i guess a lot of guys just thinking oh well maybe i need to take the influencer route and that's why they're so confused yeah perhaps and what about is there something else going on about men's roles do you think like young guys roles in in the world is something being lost there i guess so i mean i'm not massively clear on what it was to begin with what would it be young men's roles i don't know well this is the point when you knew i was also useless i had no idea i didn't know i was supposed to do but it didn't feel like a pressure to know what i was supposed to do so every generation looks back at the generation coming after them and can't believe how quickly they're growing up yeah i'm pretty glad i'm not part of this new generation i feel like we are pretty sweet why just like a simple time growing up first of all without social media i think maybe when i got to facebook that was probably when i was at university just before university email address when we went so it was nice just to have my teen teenage years without all the social media we just weren't on phones i think i'd like yeah like a sony erickson and nokia i feel like i spent a lot more time being present and then um the world's a bit mad now like really mad with all the woke stuff and i don't know well one of the problems you have is everybody always presumes that giving more freedom to people will allow them to more accurately choose the precise thing that they want right if you if there's one pair of jeans in the store and you go in then maybe you want a different pair you can get that one if there's a thousand pairs of jeans in the store fantastic you can optimize your choice precisely for the exact type of jeans the coat the color the length the stretch the whatever right waste everything the problem is that takes the decision of the outcome of success or failure out of the hands of your limited choices and more into your hands you know you see how this would be an issue right if you choose an ever so slightly suboptimal pair of jeans that's your fault because there was an optimal pair of jeans for you to take and i think that the same thing happens here that if the rules and guidelines um that people previously would have followed have perhaps been removed a little bit and if expectations have been raised you should be doing more at this age or able to pay yourself so and so forth that's a really perfect blend of um internal uncertainty and external pressure that can cause someone to think holy fuck like i don't know what i'm supposed to do with my life i don't know all the things previously the traits that i would have taken pride in the uh you know the protector provider competent courageous brave stands up well under pressure doesn't give up easily emotionally mature all of those things that specifically men would have relied on that's only one step away from toxic masculinity right all of those can very easily be well protecting why do you think that women need to be protected should not be the case that women can be safe without the protection of men what is it you're intending on doing well provided you think that women can't afford to look after themselves you want women back in the kitchen you don't want to have careers like holy fuck like can we not turn the volume of conversation yeah because you must have had a lot of these conversations with the interviews you've done do you think it's a the dating market at the moment it's the worst it's ever been it's a really good question um i certainly think that it's the most confusing and the outcomes seem to have the highest rates of sexlessness that we've ever seen so 30 percent of men ish about 30 men haven't had sex in the last year aged 18 to 30 this stat that just came out from pew a couple of weeks ago 50 percent of men say that they're pursuing a relationship short term or long term 50 percent of men aren't aged 18 to 30 now both me and you and everybody that's listening that has a penis who's been through the ages of 18 to 30 knows what the male sex drive feels like at that age can you imagine what it what the world has to be like what your experience of life has to be like for your sex drive to be chopped in half essentially right it's driving mad yeah but these guys are self-identifying saying i'm not bothered about short term or long term relationship like for you to get yourself to the stage where you've tamped down on that sex drive and there's talk of like reducing testosterone phthalates in the water increasing levels of estrogen everything that we eat last time outside blah blah blah people know that testosterone dropped one percent of years since 1980 um so that may contribute to it too but in 2019 it was 61 percent of guys were short term and long term looking for the short term long term mating thing and that's dropped 11 percent in four years like rapid decline so i certainly do think that what these guys are doing just focusing on their own shit that's a really good question i don't know i think that a lot of guys are retreating from the real world but if they were if it was proper monk mode where it's working self-development i'm building myself up that would indicate that they're taking a break to then come back in to integrate into society dating but i think that a lot of these guys just fully checked out even if you're ages you know like under 20 like guys are under 20 going men going their own way it's like you haven't had a chance to not go your own way i'm trying to think if i was 18 year old if i was 18 now it would be a lot harder compared to when i was 18 hard to do what i think now because of social media it's obviously way more competitive and i just think a lot of women who are let's say i was 18 they're 18 they're probably not looking for an 18 year old to date they're looking for older guys today but i feel like that wasn't as much of a thing back then absolutely not the amount of people that you had access to would have been limited but you know coming out the back of this conversation i had yesterday this debate in doha it's all about masculinity masculinity being under attack and i think this is a concern for women as well like a massive concern so i found this really really like interesting story about the batman dark knight rises uh movie premiere so 2012 in aurora colorado and there was a shooting that happened that shooter was a lone man i think he's 27 years old so he enters the movie theater and he starts unloading rounds just kind of at will and three men 24 26 and 27 threw themselves on top of their girlfriends to use their bodies as shields all three men died all three women survived if that is the kind of masculinity that you want to get rid of in the modern world if that's the one that is toxic and part of an oppressive patriarchal superstructure that's misogynistically keeping everybody down and you want to get rid of that we don't live on the same planet like there is no world in which that is the sort of benevolent force for good where somebody sacrifices themselves for someone that they love that you want to get rid of how can you tell me that's something that's a good way that we should get rid of that inbuilt uh desire to protect and here's the thing you could say that it's chivalry or it's cultured or it's societally programmed you're telling me that these guys after bullets are flying have thought themselves like what's the like proper thing to do in what would society want you to do and from first principles they've created a world where they go oh yes i should throw myself on top you know it's an instinct that's deeper and more more inbuilt than that and i'm just i'm really genuinely becoming concerned about this retreat from society that men are suffering with and i couldn't agree more than that do you think the fighting back a bit now thanks to that you take there's more people bringing out more masculine content standing up for masculinity yes i think the best maybe not mainstream media but i feel like on social media there's more of it i would agree uh i certainly think that tate's got an exaggerated view of masculinity and i think that shapiro hits the nail on the head which is that tate is almost always right about the diagnosis but significantly less right about the prescription to fix it that he's able to point out the problems but his solutions much of the time aren't going to be quite as effective i think the delivery need work as well yeah so there's a concept called the soft signal of effectiveness and what this means is that if you are having a discussion somebody that disagrees with you or that maybe just hasn't made their mind up you have to realize if you make them feel silly or foolish or ridiculous that they're going to dig their heels into their position you don't nobody has ever been patronized or ridiculed into changing their mind because it just creates this defense to happen and this is why like i'm nowhere near red pilled enough for most of the manosphere but i'm significantly far too red pilled for almost all of the people that are on the more wokey side of things um but i genuinely believe that that's the most effective way to change minds like if you make people feel silly they're going to dig their heels in and i think that's one of the challenges that andrew comes up against now it garners an awful lot of views which is great and it is good for getting a message out there but in terms of changing behavior effectively i'm not too sure obviously you you had how many plays is that video i think like six million views is that your most video no i think it's like the third most way right but it's climbing up to the top yeah and you did that kind of a little bit before his explosion so talk me through you know we've been talking so far about the challenges that men face in one world problems of masculinity you've spent a bit of time with tate what were your thoughts after having spent time with him how do you think he's contributing to the conversation masculinity why is he failing and falling short i think the problem was all the short form content that was getting quite out there obviously was just like the most extreme out of context clips mostly from some of his old videos so when he started off he's been doing content for a long time his old videos is wild like he's just saying some magic but he can do because nobody's even watching right so when not many people watching videos can get away with saying a lot more as he became drastically popular obviously people go back to old videos and were like what the hell they were using that content and it was just going crazy i when i first came across him he actually dm me this was in 2021 and um i went on his instagram i went to a few pictures and i just thought who is this guy like it seemed like he was um trying to show off a little bit too much and i thought it was all just a front you know how a lot of people out here just fake they're just trying to renting cars trying to show hey i've got money that's what i thought when i saw him i was like this guy's just trying to shit but then i did a little bit of research and i listened to the podcast i think the first one he went on i was doing was fresh and fit and then that was the first time i'd actually listen to someone i was like whoa like this guy this guy is speaking in a way that i've never heard anyone speak before and he's saying things which i haven't really heard anyone say before so i was intrigued and i went into more and i was like actually you know what i want to meet this guy so he came to the bike we linked up to the videos we just have to do especially to see i think i mean he's always he's always doing business wherever he goes but i guess maybe that was part of the plan but at that point he just wanted to because he must have seen me before he thought yeah mike's a cool guy but he saw the audience and then he probably thinks you know what like he was on a mission to get more followers so he can push wherever he needs to push so he probably would see me okay i'll do a video of mike and then i can help me out with my branding exposure obviously that works very well but um yeah i met him in real life he's actually an even better guy oh no a lot people don't like him but in real life he's like a nice guy polite he's actually funny and um i think that's a side which a lot of people don't see because they he definitely just wants some kind of character especially in the videos which he makes himself and he says things and i'm just like why do you say that it's like 70% of stuff he says he's like yeah like i strongly agree with that and then he'll go and say something absolutely ridiculous which is like why do you need to say that because that's the 30% people are going to focus on yeah yeah i think again this didn't quite come up yesterday i came up with uh jordan peterson as the example but i said something to the effect of um if you're not happy with the role models that are currently being held up for men offer up other ones and i asked the guy that was across from me the debater who do you think is a good role model for men and he struggled a little bit uh he struggled a lot actually it's hard to find someone who's a full package correct but i was able to say well look like it's not perfect but i would say that the kind of man that peterson would tell you to be you're andrew huberman's of the world you're tim ferris is of the world you're joe rogan's of the world you're jocko willinks like these are people that seem to have codes of honor and ethics they do hard things they're courageous and brave like you know they don't get into drama but it's weird that more people don't want more men don't want to be like those guys yeah i don't know maybe they do maybe they do it's just that they're not selling that kind of sexy out there lifestyle because it doesn't necessarily resonate like it's hard it's hard difficult nuanced suffering things i mean a whole mosey man i spent i spent uh saturday with him last week in vegas podcasted trained and i went to the power slap launch thing with him and the guy's an unbelievably slick operator he's one of the most impressive people i've really been getting into his he's a terrifyingly competent human right but i don't even know if he owns a car oh he doesn't maybe have like a car but it's like a nice tesla right that's always business 100 mil he's now doing acquisition deals for fucking lots and lots of money so the and this kind of maybe explains a little bit of the tape phenomenon which was that his delivery was so compelling because say what you want about what he says the way he says it is incredibly interesting and it's very very very compelling very precise speaker good with his words you know to go head to head with piers morgan piers morgan is as hard-nosed as you're going to get very very good in a cantankerous debate and he charmed piers morgan twice that he's in the chest right he's a very competent guy but he gets like i'll be honest when i this was last summer i was listening to a lot of podcasts you get me fired up to work the stuff he says about women i just i usually will just ignore but when he talks about just doing the job regardless of how you feel to get the job done wake up early go to the gym and the fact that there's so many other people out there that are your potential competitors if you don't get out there but they're going to overtake you but remember that is david goggins and jockey willink's message to a t with different delivery and with a different package that's being folded into so yeah i think and this is the point that i made if you leave a vacuum for role models and i think the same is coming for women you know for the girls that have been uh left out of this conversation so far i think that there is a burbling below the surface i think that there is a concern a big concern for role models for girls as well yeah this is this is a this is a problem because i'm actually trying to find some really good role models for the podcast and it's quite hard to do that out here yeah i wonder because we were talking about this before i i don't know because there is a lot of successful smart women but they don't want to raise their voice they don't want to be on the camera i don't know this is what i'm trying to figure out you've reached out to them i've reached out to a few i have friends um got a following very smart very intelligent and they're just like they're avoiding it and i'm like i'm literally giving you opportunity to be the voice of women and to be a role model to all the women out there that they need why why are you not doing it that's very interesting so let me put my evolutionary psychologist hat on for a second um i would say first of all maybe it's the uh they're probably a lot more bothered about how they look on camera so they probably want everything to be perfect and women have bad days they're like oh my hair's messed up today so maybe i'm not going to film or like oh i don't like the angle the camera is facing on my face yeah i mean it takes a very particular type of woman to decide to put herself out there as a spokesperson um so there's this evolutionary psychology bias it seems that women have they they try and flatten hierarchies so a bunch of studies show that if females especially girls in school know that their grades are going to be made public they're going to downplay what they got so if guys get an a nini were nini we walked out of some accounting exam in the cse or like henderson hall or wherever our exam was we'd walk outside or let's say we got the results there and then i got a you got b and stick in your face yeah but the evidence suggests that girls will very much try and downplay that another body count as well perhaps i don't think those things are actually linked but yeah perhaps um but the reason it seems to be the case with that is that um jealousy is a massive risk to women very competitive each other but they're competitive in a much more subtle nuanced way they don't get they're not competitive uh outwardly right yeah they're competitive in a much more it's more complex and you could maybe say more devious they're certainly much more complex women's it makes sense i feel like what i've noticed recently is especially out here at least with guys i feel like all the guys are out here supporting each other and helping each other level up but the women are like they're out to they want the best yeah i mean it's not helping each other dude it's it's really this is the thing and guys can say women have got it easy they're outperforming in education and employment and blah blah blah we're having a really fucking rough time with it like no one is no one is flourishing at the moment there's maybe some guys at the top and some girls at the absolute top that are having a great time with it on average at the moment that's not to say individuals can't have like enjoyable life but like it's really tough for girls at the moment okay so there's this ever dwindling pool of guys that are eligible for you you have more opportunities than ever before society says that you shouldn't become a mother you may be one type of career but also like the idea to have a family but if you have a family you treat like a second-class citizen that's been pawned by the patriarchy and becoming a domestic prostitute like it's really not it's really really complex for them to if i was a woman i really wouldn't know what to do no no me neither and given the fact that we spent the first half of this conversation talking about how difficult it is for men and i think that it's maybe it's at least equal in terms of how lost the roles are for women going forward the one difference and i think that this is quite a big difference quite important one is that men are still having finger pointed at them being told that they're the architects of their own misery and also the architects of everybody else's as well like if there's ever a problem with any group usually we would say okay what's going on how can we try and change the world or society so that we can help this group flourish right there's not a woman going to university in 1970 so we introduce title nine for affirmative action encourages women to go now the gender split between men and women is 15 instead of 13 when it was in 1970 but in the other direction so there are fewer men going to university than there were fewer women going to university when that title was introduced and now it's like why are men falling behind can't they pull themselves up by their bootstraps so that is the one of the differences one of the support structures that women do have i think is lacking more so for men which is the uh sympathy that the wider world would typically give them and it's because you know like men specifically white men have had it good for so long that maybe it's their turn to you know be on the receiving end of some disadvantages for a while which is not how the world is supposed to work it's not supposed to be like overdrawn on your suffering balance and now it's your turn to take some of this i don't think that's the way that's supposed to work but yeah i really i really think that we're going to see over the next few years like a challenge for women for the role models what am i supposed to do with my life how can i find like pride and fulfillment that doesn't completely destroy like my innate biological energies as well what's your experience been trying to find female guests for your show easier for me uh because my interest in psychology uh area which is dominated by women has meant that at least 50% of the episodes that i do are with women but this is an interesting lesson to learn there was a period while ago where i was big into the productivity space i was doing a lot of stuff around health and fitness it's a both arenas dominated by men and i would get criticized for the fact that i was bringing too many men on like why are there enough men why are there enough women uh but then since women come on people just find something else criticize it's like why is everybody from why is everybody right leaning or why is everybody british why is everybody white like you're never going to be able to make your guest list sufficiently pure or uh sufficiently representative to mediate all people's problems and the way you said before we started i was like why are you bringing your guests on and you said anybody i'm interested in that's the only way you can go the only way you can't fake the interest no correct uh something else that's changed with you recently which i've been very very enjoying watching happen i'm wearing more clothes on my instagram pictures that's been nice for me personally as well yes don't lie but your relationship with alcohol oh yeah talk to me about your relationship with alcohol and how it's changed yeah so i um i pretty much barely drink anymore um i used to be i guess that's because the whole british culture i actually drink numerous times per week particularly when i was growing up university then even throughout my 20s i was very much into my fitness but at the same time there was always at least one extremely heavy blowout the weekend and then um it just carried on like even i think when i was when i was just before 29 the first experiment where i went sober for six months and that taught me a lot because i was put in situations where i would normally drink and because i was doing this challenge i wasn't allowed to drink and i think that was the first time that i was in situations where uh usually i would be drunk and like in a relaxed state whatever it might be but this time i was sober i was doing something which i would never do and i actually realized it wasn't that hard to do and actually quite liked it and i think i just life is short and i can't afford to have days wasting away feeling sorry for myself being aggressively hungover which at the age i'm at now it was yeah yeah yeah but what what i'll do now is i will i will still drink but it usually tends to be when i have done achieved something or i've got the job done and i can celebrate it's like okay you achieve this let's go out let's celebrate i'll drink if you want to have a drink once that's over then it's back to the grind again what else have you learned from your time going sober obviously the reason for doing it is that you don't want to waste your days so much but what else have you learned i actually really enjoy my reality being sober um i actually don't really like the feeling of being drunk anymore i think now i'm at a point where i feel like i'm very much in control i like i really like the person who i am now when i'm sober i'm a lot more confident now i can have conversations with anyone i charm people i can you know have a laugh i can have a dance whatever i need to do but i can do it sober and there's actually no real need for me to drink when i do drink i realize actually i start to get a little sloppy with my words i say things which i wouldn't normally say might potentially regret and then there's parts of the night all conversation which i won't remember and i wake up feeling like absolutely trash spend a lot of money as well out here on alcohol which is usually just not wise so it's uh when i compare the positives to the negatives there's actually very few positives yeah so this i mean you know i don't know i'm thinking now like what's a why did i do that's a question like you've laid out this balance sheet positives negatives why did either of us and this is both of our upbringings right you know our formative years in newcastle and then both of us talk about once we finish our degrees going out drinking trebs you know you get absolutely annihilated for like 10 pounds correct so again for the people that don't know when we were at uni you could have got three treble vodka mixes for a fiver and you'd usually get free egg with each of them so that's nine shots of vodka plus three shots of jaeger for a fiver and the way that it would work is you couldn't carry all of them back you'd have to pour all of the jaggers in together drink that drink one of the trebs and then carry two back um so what i'm thinking is why is it that we ever saw it as something that not only we would do we would willingly do we would repeatedly do two nights a week throughout all of uni why i think i think from thinking back when i was university i actually don't now that i recall i don't know anybody that didn't drink i feel like every single person drank and if there was anyone that didn't drink they were just the way you hang out with them they weren't a part of the social group yeah they weren't a social circle um i definitely remember drinking a lot just feel more comfortable to reduce the anxiety um yeah especially when you're having you're in a club the music really loud there's lights everywhere there's people everywhere talking it's really overwhelming so the alcohol would numb that and then you feel more comfortable just to interject there think about the modern world this 2023 version of the world someone would say that if that was a challenge that you were coming up against that that's because you're like a blue pill beater simp guy who hasn't worked on his masculine essence and stuff and i think that just to bring it back to what we spoke about earlier on about like why young guys struggling specifically now this expectation again you should have your shit together really i didn't i didn't i absolutely drank so i had confidence to speak to girls i remember i used to have this i had this uh like pink polo shirt and pair of jeans and one night i pulled because like i was adamant because of this particular outfit like oh that's like that's the one and i was so drunk i could barely remember what had happened during the night and you think what like what how that's that's compensating for the fact that it's just a really highly simulating pretty anxiety-inducing environment i think it it would probably make more sense just to not go out but that was that was like the biggest part of university was going out particularly newcastle correct that was like the reason why i chose newcastle right yeah so yeah i don't know i guess at that age you really don't have much responsibility like i think back to university i mean i just you obviously need to get the bare minimum done you have to do a bit studying you don't have a job you just live off student loan you just have a laugh mate so if you did wake up hungover then i wasn't didn't really spend the day watching the rugby world cup or whatever was going on the six nations or some other thing or movies in the common room and then get back to it yeah i am it's like i don't get that but i think the number of people that drink the number of young people that are choosing to go low and know alcohol lifestyles massively increasing yeah i'd love to say this is downstream from a trend i kicked off i think it's bigger than that and i do i i can't look at what's going on there i wonder whether i think it's more it's just accepted no i think it was really not acceptable back in the day unacceptable whereas now it's like okay yeah fair enough maybe that i think there's a lot more informative content out there which is showing just how bad alcohol is like humans and his video about alcohol listen to that and you're like wow yeah it's terrible it's really i think more people are waking up to the negative side effects of drinking alcohol um but it's still there's still a lot of people drinking that's a lot of friends who are drinking yeah but i just don't give a shit if i'm gonna offend their feelings i wonder whether part of it comes to choosing first off choosing the kind of events that you go to and then secondly that growing in confidence because you're right if you're in a banging loud student nightclub with 1500 sweaty freshers and the killer's mr brightside playing at your levels which is like beer spilling face correct you're not you're not not the place for you to what advantage do you have in being able to have a better conversation you also need to drink to be able to cope with the environment that you're in to be able to make it good and this is the thing that i've been saying for like seven years like if you need to drink in order to be able to enjoy a night out you're choosing the wrong nights out like what you're saying is that the experience that you're going on is so bad that you have to anesthetize yourself you have to numb yourself to the experience you're like saying i'm going to go and do this i'm going to stick needles through the skin on the back of my hand but i'll take some pain killers it doesn't hurt so much hang on a second as you grow up you start to do different sorts of events you'll go for dinner more you'll go to quieter venues you've got to somewhere where there's like music where you have a conversation and that is that sort of enjoyment is facilitated more by being sober uh so i wonder whether it's a byproduct of of the kind of events that young people typically attend i wonder whether darren my business fund is still doing all voodoo in the uk whether he needs to i know do coffee and cocktail hour at five o'clock i think that's as well when you're in an environment where everybody else is drunk like that is that's full on when you're sober and you're just looking at people yeah it's heavy like i i feel like if i'm in an environment where everybody's drunk i almost need to be drunk just to tolerate it correct yeah looking forward now you've got you're doing business stuff you've got clothing you've got app you're still growing up platforms as a guy that from the outside looks like he's accomplished a lot of things and he's doing an enjoyable life in a desirable city yeah let's get it all in this apartment let's get it all in this very expensive apartment um what are you are you accumulating skills at the moment are you developing yourself are there certain things that you've set yourself with regards to goals i think the uh podcasting has massively improved my ability to have a conversation and you're only 13 episodes yeah i feel like i'm learning a hell of a lot which is which is good but i'm doing the podcast more just to help with growing the brand and particularly the networking because being in dubai there's always so many people coming in and out and whenever i do meet up with someone who is quite interesting i'm having a really amazing conversation i'm like should record that yeah like this this needs to be out there and it's not the right tight like you can't do it wouldn't work in a vlog because a vlog you chop things up it's like you only take five minutes of it so that was one reason and another one is um it gives you it opens doors for me very interesting people or people who i respect and want to meet because i you know somebody who's for example who's being very successful or they're killing it making loads of money i maybe don't really have much to offer them maybe i can help them get in shape but that's not a quick fix and it's not something i particularly want to do i don't want to be a personal trainer for celebrities but when you have an audience you have a platform all of a sudden you become uh essentially a good asset to them because if they're releasing a book or they want to spend a message or they want to increase their own following then coming onto the podcast is going to be exactly what they want so that's it's like a strategic thing but i'm also learning a lot at the same time is there anything else is there anything else you're thinking at the moment is a an area of your life that needs optimizing yeah um monetizing the following because uh yeah so i think um i've been good at building a brand and growing a following but i'm actually quite shit at selling things and marketing so and it's it's weird because i guess i've never really learned much about it like even though i went to school went to university don't get taught how to sell at school how to market university i did economics and business management but still it was like so heavy on the theory the maths the equations i was like i thought i was going to learn how to run a business here but i'm not learning any of that so those skills i never really developed and obviously i got straight into personal training so i mastered the art of building muscle losing body firehouse communicate with people uh presentation skills but no marketing or commercializing stuff this is something that i like lament about this all the time just how much is getting left on the table you know we both have friends who will have significantly uh easy weeks with less work with smaller followings with less impact adding less value making so much more money and it's not even necessarily about the money i don't think that either of us are like you know needing more materialism in our lives but there's just a sense of well i'm leaving a lot on the table here and yeah that's because i'm not i'm not motivated by money obviously you need it but once you reach a certain amount you don't really need more unless you get a slightly nicer part it would be another 10 floors up or something you know unless you want to start investing and buying property or you want to build another business then okay yeah but that's the one thing about dubai is i've particularly in the past year i remember i think it was like maybe i got back from traveling last summer and my goal was i just want to build my network i just want to meet people i want to meet i want to surround myself with successful people who are doing very well and i've met a lot of interesting people in fact the majority of people i'm hanging out with now have nothing to do with fitness they're just extremely successful in their own field and it's crazy to like you said they might have 10 000 followers 20 000 followers on instagram and they're making so much money i'm like whoa how are you doing that yeah i mean this is this is something that will be very interesting to see how the next couple of years develops because i'm very conscious of not like selling out yeah i haven't seen i don't anyone watching my content i very rarely push things on my followers yeah yeah and i think that in the long term that's the right way to go about things right because your reputation is something that you can't buy back if you do sell your integrity there is no refund policy on that and whatever it is it takes a lifetime to build trust in like he's just so i mean he's a really good example or very interesting one because it seems like him and his brother can just steamroll through issues you know the coffee's other thing was really damning it's two-part or three-part series that kind of broke down all this stuff that logan was doing with his nfts and then coffee goes on rogan and rogan asks him what's the biggest thing and then they pull that and they put that on a clip on rogan's 20 million person youtube channel which gives it another lease of life and meanwhile logan paul is doing wwe and he's making money on prime he's got all of these businesses i don't know what it is and i'd love for someone to explain it to me those guys both logan and jake have an uncanny ability to just keep moving through obstacles bad things happen and it just doesn't faze them i remember after this tommy fury jake paul fight there was a video that he uploaded the first story of the next day on his instagram and it was him going looking at the camera and being happy and then looking down and putting his head in his hands as if he was sad and the caption below was when you lost the fight but made 30 mil you can't fucking knock it you can't knock that um so there's something happening with them and i really want to try and deconstruct what's going on well i think the fighting thing was very good you can't you've always got to respect someone who's gonna step into the ring goodbye like you even i've not done that but why is logan able to continue plowing through these challenges and accusations of nft fuckery and stuff yeah it's weird because it's almost like maybe he's been through it before he knows yeah you're gonna be the most hated man on the planet for a couple of days or weeks and then people forget about it and then it's back to business as usual so he's personally capable of dealing with it but even that like you know someone could be personally capable and the reputation could be damaged that should be independent of what happens do you think let's say for example everything's happened with liverking do you think his reputation is because i went on his instagram the other day and he still got loads of likes and comments and views i'm like why are people still watching this unbelievable i don't know like how how is this he was there just a big plate of testicles and i just thought wow he's still doing his thing what do you think about liverking that's interesting very interesting guy i don't know i think it was it was he did so many interviews where he was literally asked whether or not it was natural and he just says like so almost convincing like no i don't think anything i don't feel like that was necessary i feel like if you said yeah i'm a bit of this i'm a bit of that people would be like oh yeah okay because most people all people in the street at the moment are taking stuff anyway undermined his ancestral message right heavily yeah i guess so yes he was a natural thing yeah apart from those steroids i think that yeah the fact that he was doing that and he already sent that email to derrick like he's playing with fire like that's so the liverking thing is kind of fascinating to look at now as a post-mortem and maybe it is similar to logan paul i've got this idea that i've been playing for a little while to do with uh how seduced by success the world is and i remember billy mcfarlane the guy that did fire festival oh yeah yeah so again for people who don't know this festival fire festival was supposed to be it was running pablo escobar's island and kendall jenner was part of the promotion campaign for it and it was going to be this elite super high class music festival and blink 182 were going to play and it's amazing headliners and the whole thing turned out to be car crash and basically people nearly died there was no water there was nothing but had billy mcfarlane managed to pull off even a remotely acceptable event he would have been hailed as a marketing genius as opposed to a charlatan conman and the only difference between how people perceived him was the success of the event that didn't change the ethics of how he got there in terms of his marketing practices how he raised money which was done incredibly unethically lying to people about where he was going and flying back and forth to and from new york and all this sort of stuff and what that made me realize is for as long as you're successful people will put up with pretty much anything because they are so concerned about being in the trickle-down cast off of your success they want to bask in the reflective glow of whatever it is that you do so much that they're prepared to forgive pretty much any indiscretion and this is what will be interesting to see what happens with tate when he inevitably comes back into the public limelight perhaps from a witness box perhaps from behind bars or perhaps if he gets released back out into the real world because is it going to be the case that he is continuing to grow and have this platform there has to be it's almost like a balance like a seesaw right on one side you have the amount of success that people want to be associated with and on the other side you have the laundry list of bad things that are happening logan paul like suicide forest nft thing da da da da da da da liver king there's like the steroids and this and maybe there's another scandal that comes whatever and it feels to me like it's a balancing act between two billy mcfarlane you know billy mcfarlane seesaw tipped too far in the other direction right he didn't have enough success to hold up the amount of unethical business practices he was going through and nothing island watching five festival like if you're successful people will forgive an awful lot of indiscretions i think that's probably quite true yeah what's happening next what are you working on next uh doing a mastermind uh next weekend seven person yeah so we've got 12 people come spend the weekend with me what are they learning coaching online coaching business so it's a combination of they want to see Dubai they want to get trained by me they want to learn about how to build a brand how to build social media they also want to meet people i know so i'll introduce them to my network so i've got a whole host of events and activities planned over the friday saturday and sunday i think the highlight will be a big yacht which i've been out on the saturday afternoon yeah so i'm gonna invite literally everybody who i know who's worth knowing and just put everybody together on a nice yacht so it'll be an opportunity for everyone to just chat that's really cool there's a number of like builder events in Austin people that are building shit creators founders startup ceos writers podcasters youtube etc devin lebesgue's doing something cool he's got a ranch out he just followed me yeah he followed me this week he seemed like a cool guy yeah he's he's on it he's uh i think he's so he's converted a barn and it's like a hq for him throwing these events you've got ice baths everywhere like it's it's cool he's like building a community i think that's maybe one thing that i've been lacking i could definitely deal with improving the the community which i have it could definitely be strengthened that's you're not the first person to tell me that's in dubai yeah i think it's a place that because of the way not there's a number of reasons one of them geographically doesn't really lend itself to that it does not the let's just go to a local coffee garden and and meet up with 20 of our friends and we can just chat and anybody can invite anybody that's very common in Austin once a week once every two weeks there must be one of these events one of them's called based in Austin 150 people would turn up and just just because and people would bring cases of water people bring cases of sparkling water and like one guy would go get tacos and then you just talk and then someone would say i'm actually going to talk over there about what i've learned to do with decentralized whatever or my new stuff like strategy or whatever people don't listen to some dude just don't talk so that there needs to be more of that because i think uh a lot of a lot of guys who i've spoken to they have a hard time networking and meeting people maybe guys that are older than them or like many people who are just all they want to do is just grow they want to succeed they want to build and it can be very hard if you come to it like i imagine there's a hell of a lot of people that come to invite they don't know anyone and they're like well how do you get yourself to these events luckily for me because obviously i've been here for a while i have a network and i've established myself so i get invited to a lot of these things but if you're a nobody that can be quite difficult so if there is more of these events where pretty much anybody can attend to like it's in my opinion it's life-changing because you may meet some friends which you'll have the rest of your life we might have some conversations that will literally cause you to go on a completely different path you know i just from having a dinner with a group of friends some people who i didn't know uh someone did they introduced me to one guy he was one actually gave me the idea to do a mastermind i was like i actually never really thought about doing that but then it made sense because there's there's so many people every day that message me saying hey mike i'm in dubai can i meet you or can i train with you can i do this can i do that so now this is obviously going to be a tester it's a small scale thing to tell people but if this goes well and enjoy it then maybe i can do it again in the future on a larger scale well this speaks to again one of the challenges both young guys and younger and older people perhaps even gets worse as you get older that making friends having a community you know having a support group uh i feel very very fortunate that austin is just it's like overpowered when it comes to community and socializing is insane i've never ever ever been anywhere that is so hyper social and it's dinners it's dinners and everything's finished by 8 30 p.m because everyone's gonna get up in the morning to go do stuff right they're gonna get back to look after the dog so it's not hedonistic it never gets out maybe i don't get invited but it never gets out of control i'm pretty sure and that has been so for me really nourishing fulfilling and it's filled a massive hole that i thought i needed um and yeah because all my my really close friends are like little party boys yeah and i can't i mean obviously i'll link up with them maybe now and then you know unsustainable regular friendships unsustainable you can kill me mike i appreciate the fuck out of you man it's very very cool to watch what you've done over the last 15 16 years since we've been mates and uh i'm looking forward to seeing how the podcast continues to grow for people that are listening to want to check out the stuff that you do where should they go so just search for mike thurston on any platform no website thurston official pick up a pair of sexy shorts if you want to and then uh podcast challenge first things this i appreciate it thanks