How to Identify Your Purpose & Turn It Into a Profitable Business | Simon Squibb

Summary

In this captivating episode, Simon Squibb joins the High Performance podcast to explore the concept of personal purpose and how it can be transformed into a thriving business. Squibb, a passionate entrepreneur, stresses the importance of identifying one's true self beyond societal expectations, highlighting that societal norms often mislead individuals about their potential. With emphasis on the freedom and empowerment that comes from working for oneself, instead of adhering to conventional paths like university or traditional employment, Squibb shares his insights on establishing a purpose-driven life. He advocates for embracing challenges, understanding financial literacy, and pursuing passions fearlessly to achieve personal and professional fulfillment.

Highlights

• Working for oneself initially poses challenges but results in greater freedom over time. 🌟
• The education system should focus more on personal interests rather than standard metrics. 📚
• People should seek opportunities beyond societal norms to find their true calling. 🔍
• Social media, if used correctly, can be a platform for learning and growth. 📈
• Fear and failure should not deter one but serve as stepping stones to triumph. 🏆

Key Takeaways

• Finding your purpose is vital to personal and professional success. 🚀
• Challenge traditional paths, like university, to truly discover what you love. 🏫
• Working for yourself leads to empowerment and control over your destiny. 💪
• Embrace pain as it often transforms into a powerful motivator. 💥
• Use social media wisely as a tool for growth and influence. 🌐

Overview

Simon Squibb brings dynamic energy and insights to the podcast, urging listeners to rethink conventional career paths. He speaks passionately about the dangers of following traditional routes like university without questioning their value, especially when one isn't truly aligned with these choices. Squibb encourages young individuals to explore their real interests and to choose hard challenges early in life which lead to greater personal achievements later on.

The conversation takes an inspiring turn as Squibb emphasizes the importance of self-discovery. He describes how understanding one’s unique qualities and pursuits not only fuels personal growth but also turns into professional success. By stepping away from the cookie-cutter molds imposed by society, individuals find themselves thriving in environments they joyfully choose and create for themselves.

In this episode, Simon also delves into the power of the digital era, where social media is painted not as a threat but as a rich resource. He shares how young entrepreneurs can leverage these tools effectively to build audiences and influence. Squibb, who has conducted substantial research on the impact of education and employment myths, provides innovative solutions for people willing to question the status quo and carve out their unique paths.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction The chapter titled 'Introduction' explores the common excuses people use, such as lack of money and time, when they fail to pursue their dreams. The narrative suggests that real motivation and purpose can help individuals overcome these barriers. It emphasizes the notion that having 'nothing' can actually be a competitive advantage, encouraging people to take more risks and not settle into comfort. The chapter concludes by urging individuals to discover their purpose and challenge their limitations.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Discovering Your True Self The chapter "Discovering Your True Self" focuses on the importance of understanding one's own identity beyond societal and familial expectations. It encourages self-exploration to uncover who you truly are rather than conforming to what schools, parents, or friends might have envisioned. Additionally, the transcript humorously notes an instance of a guest arriving in a tuxedo to emphasize individuality and making a statement.
• 01:00 - 01:30: Dressing Differently In this chapter titled 'Dressing Differently,' the main focus is on Simon Squib's unusual attire compared to his usual appearance, as he is dressed in a suit. The reason for this is because he is attending an awards dinner where he has been nominated for TikTok Creator of the Year. Despite the outcome, Simon emphasizes that failure is a part of the journey and should be embraced.
• 01:30 - 02:00: Business and Personal Mission This chapter delves into the distinction between business and personal missions. The speaker expresses a personal mission to improve the education system by building alternatives that offer more choices for individuals. This stems from a belief that a large portion of the population is pushed into attending university due to societal expectations and the sunk cost fallacy, which consequently leads them into traditional job roles. The speaker highlights the importance of young people, even as young as 15, understanding that they have the option to carve out their own paths rather than conforming to conventional career paths.
• 02:00 - 03:00: Entrepreneurship vs Employment The chapter discusses the challenges and misconceptions between entrepreneurship and traditional employment. It aims to change the mindset that working for oneself is inherently harder than working for someone else by providing tools and free education. The author is involved in various businesses focused on helping people pursue their passions and funding dreams to eliminate excuses that might hinder achieving them. The conversation initiates with questioning the common belief that self-employment is more difficult than working for an employer.
• 03:00 - 04:00: Taking Risks When Young The chapter discusses the concept of risk-taking in youth, particularly in the context of working for oneself versus working for someone else. It suggests that the belief that working for others is easier than being self-employed is a form of indoctrination. This belief, the speaker argues, is perpetuated by bosses who don't want their employees to become their own bosses. The chapter questions the notion of 'easy' and challenges the audience to reconsider what 'easy' means in the context of employment and self-employment.
• 04:00 - 05:00: Challenges of the Education System The chapter discusses the challenges associated with the traditional education system and the employment structures it often feeds into. The speaker emphasizes the importance of owning one's time and being in control of one's destiny, contrasting working for someone else with owning your own business. While working for others may seem easier initially, it can become more challenging over time as bosses and directives change, potentially leading to job loss without ownership or equity. In contrast, entrepreneurship, though difficult initially due to a steep learning curve, offers more control and ownership over one's future.
• 05:00 - 06:00: Financial Literacy and Entrepreneurship The chapter "Financial Literacy and Entrepreneurship" emphasizes the benefits of entrepreneurship over traditional employment. It argues that building your own business offers long-term security and ownership, as opposed to working for someone else where you can be dismissed at any time without ownership or control. The speaker highlights their personal experience of building businesses over five years, to the point where others can manage them, reducing the risk of being fired or losing their livelihood. This chapter challenges the common belief that working for someone else is easier than working for oneself.
• 06:00 - 07:00: Finding Your Purpose The chapter 'Finding Your Purpose' explores the challenges and mindset required to be an entrepreneur. It highlights the common misconception that entrepreneurship is excessively hard and contrasts it with the supposed ease of working for someone else. It argues that entrepreneurs value their autonomy too much to give it up for the simplicity of salaried positions, suggesting that the real challenge lies in taking the initial leap into self-employment rather than in the ongoing journey of entrepreneurship. The conversation also touches on the speaker's personal experience as a founder and co-founder of successful businesses.
• 07:00 - 08:00: The Role of Social Media in Education The chapter explores the impact of social media on education, emphasizing the dilemma faced by individuals questioning the traditional path of university education. The speaker reflects on personal experiences and observations of young people contemplating their future educational and career choices. One key point highlighted is the importance of making challenging decisions early in life to benefit in the long term. The narrative suggests balancing immediate job opportunities with thoughtful educational decisions, urging young individuals not to opt for the 'easy choices' which might lead to difficulties later in life.
• 08:00 - 09:00: Parenting and Social Media The chapter 'Parenting and Social Media' explores how expectations and responsibilities evolve as one grows older. As a young person, without responsibilities, it's easier to take risks. The text contrasts easy choices, such as obtaining a steady salary or pursuing higher education, with the reality that many individuals are unsure of their true desires even as they mature.
• 09:00 - 10:00: The Role of Pain in Growth The chapter discusses the importance of taking time for personal exploration and growth, particularly for young adults who are entering university. It points out that many students choose to go to university simply to gain independence from their parents but lack clear direction about their future. As a result, they may waste valuable years and accumulate debt without gaining meaningful insight into their true aspirations. The author suggests taking a year off to travel, work in different fields, and gain diverse experiences to better understand oneself, beyond what traditional education prescribes.
• 10:00 - 11:00: Rethinking Education The chapter titled 'Rethinking Education' raises the idea of self-discovery beyond external perceptions, such as the expectations set by parents or peers. The discussion centers around finding one's true identity and capabilities, exemplified by a personal anecdote. The speaker shares how, at 15, they started a company and discovered their aptitude for sales, challenging the notion that sales is merely a marketing tactic. This narrative serves to illustrate the broader theme of educational transformation and personal insight.
• 11:00 - 12:00: Optimism and Solutions The chapter titled 'Optimism and Solutions' shares a personal story from Simon Squib's life, where he had to start a gardening business out of necessity, despite having no prior experience in gardening or sales. Simon recounts his initiative to take on the challenge by knocking on doors and offering his services. He successfully acquired clients by charging a monthly fee and discovered a hidden talent and liking for sales through this experience. This story highlights the themes of perseverance, learning by doing, and the potential for unexpected talents to emerge when faced with challenging situations.
• 12:00 - 13:00: Conclusion The conclusion chapter emphasizes the idea that people often don't discover their true talents and interests because they are funneled by the school system and familial expectations into conventional careers like law or medicine. The speaker reflects on how they might have been confined to a legal career, aligned with their parents' wishes, without realizing their skills in marketing and sales. The chapter suggests that the way schools question students about their future careers limits their vision and self-discovery, advocating for a broader perspective that allows individuals to explore their true potential beyond traditional paths.

How to Identify Your Purpose & Turn It Into a Profitable Business | Simon Squibb Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 I've gone to ask thousands of people in the street what their dream is and I've seen what's stopping people people will use money as an excuse people will say I don't have enough money level two is I don't have time what you mean is you don't have a purpose if they can discover their purpose they will find the time so how do you do that I I didn't really find my purpose until I went through if you have nothing you have a competitive Advantage I think people should lean in to pay more they should take risk more but we can easily say no now can't we we got too weak and it's got too easy you know go find out
• 00:30 - 01:00 who you really are not what the schools told you you were going to be what your parents have told you you going to be or what your friends think you are go find out who you really are this episode is supported by huel Simon welcome to high performance thanks for having me I dressed up for you for those not listening uh on Spotify here I am all dressed up so for those that um are listening and not watching we've done over 300 episodes of of these shows now and no one has ever turned up in a tuxedo before yeah I I thought I'd be different and stand out so yeah Tred to get views up on your visual Channel now
• 01:00 - 01:30 everyone's going to go there and have a look right absolutely if you want to see it uh follow us on social not worth it though YouTube maybe some people want to see maybe for some people Simon squib in a suit is is all they need yeah the real reason I'm wearing a suit uh no offense to you guys is because I'm going to an awards dinner tonight I've been nominated for Tik Tok creator of the year so hopefully I'm going to win but by the time this goes out I probably haven't won but it doesn't matter failure is good there you go and we'll talk about that in great detail Simon how would you describe the mission that you're on
• 01:30 - 02:00 it's interesting because I think when people are describing their business Mission I have a business Mission and a personal mission I think my personal mission is to fix the education system and if I'm being honest it's probably build Alternatives so that people have more choice right now I feel like 90% of the population get forced into going to UNI and then they kind of feel obliged for a sunken cost to go and get a job so I want to give people more Choice than that I want people to realize as young as 15 I started a business at 15 you can start thinking about owning your own future you don't have to work for someone else but a lot of people think
• 02:00 - 02:30 it's harder to work for yourself than work for someone else so I want to change that mindset and give people the tools to have more choices on the business side I have a few different businesses but we have different metrics based on them but ultimately it's about free education that helps people do what they love all the platforms I'm involved in all the businesses I have are revolved around that and funding people's dreams so that they have no excuses but to go and make their dream happen Okay well let's start with the first really fascinating point you made there people think it's more difficult to work for themselves than go and work for somebody else yes what's the truth
• 02:30 - 03:00 well if anyone listening thinks that's true if anyone listening thinks it's easier to work for someone else than work for yourself then they have been brainwashed okay because and I know why it's pretty obvious any boss that you have is not going to tell you it's easy to be a boss because then you're going to want to be a boss so everyone that's telling you it's hard is either your boss or people that have never experienced being a boss they're working for someone else and so easy is a really interesting thing what does easy mean for me easy means
• 03:00 - 03:30 making sure that you actually own your time that no one can fire you I want to be in control of my own destiny if you work for someone else it's easy at the beginning but gets harder over time because your bosses changed the directive Chang you could work somewhere for 5 years and then they just let you go doesn't matter how much effort you've made or how good you were for 5 years they'll let you go and then you have nothing especially if you don't own Equity where you're working you own nothing whereas if you work for yourself it is harder at the beginning only because it's a learning curve and that learning curve makes you feel a l by the
• 03:30 - 04:00 way that helps you grow as a human and it gets easier over time so all the businesses I have built within 5 years I've got someone else running them but no one can fire me so I spent 5 years building something up now someone else can run it whereas if I work for someone else I work 5 years and then they just get rid of me I have no ownership so how can it possibly be true and most people do think this that it's easier to work for someone else than work for yourself because again you get trapped in that job you end up being owned by that company and they can cut you whenever they want that's not easy and working for someone also by away it's not easy
• 04:00 - 04:30 so when someone says to me oh it's so hard being an entrepreneur I'm like okay well then give up all your recy go work for someone else if you want to do a survey go ask anybody that's own their own business for more than a year if just give up all their equity and go work for someone else because it's so much easier working for someone else they won't do it no one will so how can it be true it's just a lie but I think that working for someone else might not be easier but I think taking the first step to work for yourself is really hard you know like I'm the founder of high performance right I'm the co-founder of a of a production business with 300
• 04:30 - 05:00 staff I've I've done it myself I've also been employed and I've got nieces and nephews who are you about to go to university age and like you I question if University serves them but I but I don't know what their first step is to do this themselves I think that's the hardest part like what's the first thing you do because the job is already there you can go and get a job yeah first of all don't take easy choices when you're young right you take easy choices when you're young you'll have a harder life later so when you're young take the hard choices first of all your cost the lower
• 05:00 - 05:30 in life your expectations of like I want to when I go on holiday I want to stay in a villa I want a nice pool I've got all these expectations now as I've got older plus I've got responsibilities when you're young you don't have any of this [ __ ] so take all this risk when you're younger it it's so much easier what's a hard Choice when you're young and an Easy Choice well I think the Easy Choice is you know get a salary in people's minds get a salary instantly a pay packet guaranteed amount of money each month people see that as the Easy Choice or go to university for that matter most people don't know what they actually want to do when they grow up so
• 05:30 - 06:00 they go to university because they want to get away from their parents they want an independent life but they don't actually know what they want so they go to university but they waste four years the most precious four years of their life and in England get into debt not in Scotland but in England get into a serious amount of debt and for what at the end of it they come out with a codification that actually often pigeon holds them into a particular job so my idea is like hey everyone should take a year off go explore the world if you can go travel backpack go see different things go get experiences in different businesses go find out who you really are not what the schools told you you
• 06:00 - 06:30 were going to be what your parents have told you you going to be or what your friends think you are go find out who you really are so how do you do that like so when you say find out who you really are what that sounds like quite a big abstract concept but what do you understand that to me well I only can draw on my own Survival bias right so I was 15 years old when I started a company and I didn't know until I did it that I'm actually quite good at sales now sales generally is like a dirty word now we all call it marketing now cuz it sounds cool but I realized I quite like
• 06:30 - 07:00 sales so I knocked on someone's door had no experience in in this business at all and said hi my name's Simon squib I'd like to take care of your garden I'm starting a gardening company would you let me take care of your garden they're like sure how much you going to charge I'm like2 200 a month never started a gardening business in my life never done a gardening job in my life never knew anything about sales I just had no choice but to do that in that moment because I needed money to survive and I realized I was quite good at sales and I quite liked it I quite liked talking to someone them saying yes and creating revenue and so I would never have
• 07:00 - 07:30 discovered that if IID stayed in the school system the school system my parents wanted me to be a lawyer so how was I ever going to discover that I'm quite good at marketing and sales I would have just gone into being a lawyer which there are no Marketing sales jobs within a lawyer sphere right so I I think that people don't know who they actually are mainly because when you enter the school system they ask you the wrong question the first question the school system asks you is what will you do when you grow up that traps your mind into thinking doctor lawyer whatever right a particular career the question that should be asked open up your mind
• 07:30 - 08:00 when you're young is what problem would you like to solve when you're older now assuming we're all going to live to 100 thanks to Elon Musk you now have the chance to maybe do five six seven careers that ultimately lead to solving the problem you care about but you might not know the answer instantly when you're young but my seven-year-old I asked him that since he was about four what problem do you want to solve and then recently he said to me oh I want to solve what David atur says is coming the sick human extinction I want to maybe stop that from happening I'm like wow cool he's kind of got something that he cares about that matters more than a
• 08:00 - 08:30 career and now he can reverse engineer what does he like to do what's he good at what's his hobbies and how can he solve that problem by following that path because our brains would automatically go right great go to UNI do environmental Sciences I know and then you'll be equipped for saving the world y we're brainwashed by University is a business it's a massive business just like the credit score system it's a massive business these things aren't here to help us these things are here to guide us to do a certain thing so we work for someone because that's how you make money you don't make money selling time we all know that time is in not
• 08:30 - 09:00 infinite so if people are selling time 40 hours a week at a certain hourly rate it's not scalable but everybody's taught to sell time except the ones that know that selling time is not scalable everyone that buys your time is selling your time a 100 times more over they're making real profit out of outcomes but you are trained to sell time as a person 90% of your listeners will be thinking 40 hours a week 60 hours a week how many hourly how how much they getting paid an hour this is not scalable and you cannot get rich this way and you will be tra selling time forever and that's what the school system teaches people
• 09:00 - 09:30 but there is something about having a depth of knowledge in a topic though that there is there has to be room for really for expertise or learning it depends depends on what it is it's that time of year where we all struggle to get back into a routine isn't it you've eaten too many mint pies you've not been back to the gym for ages well that's where huel comes in a nutritious meal already in seconds this podcast is sponsored by hu the world's leading Complete Nutrition brand and with over 400 million meals sold
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• 10:00 - 10:30 just use the code HP hu.com and fuel your day with huel Elon must knew [ __ ] about space he went and learned it ELO must knew [ __ ] about cards he went and learned it you know I don't want to pick ELO musk down as the you know the best entrepreneur in the world but I mean certainly from a learning point of view like I I've every business I've ever started I didn't know it until I started it so I I started a gardening company I knew nothing about it and I learned on the job and then I B people in that knew it right right and then and then I started a creative
• 10:30 - 11:00 agency I didn't know anything about it I bought people in that did and then I learned the businesses I went on in fact going into something without knowing it made every business I did different you don't go in there with I just met someone on the way here stopped me in the street and like their dream is to travel and blah blah blah anyway they were telling me they're going to go work in this company to get experience the truth is that company will teach you their experience it will not make you different if you go do it for yourself you'll actually do something different because you won't be trained by them and therefore doing it the old ways I actually think there's something really great in being young and naive and going and looking at things fresh with a
• 11:00 - 11:30 modern look you know how can I do this not how it's always been done but how it could be done again ELO must have done that with cars right he didn't go oh I got to go work at Ford for a few years see how they do it and then once I figured out how the car industry works I might start a car company no but also challenge are that you surely you have to know the rules to know how to break them well what rules in particular do you mean for example well if if we were going into something like space travel you use deal on as the example of it you
• 11:30 - 12:00 need to know what the what the conventions of space travel are to then go in and challenge the idea so who did you learn that from So You Think NASA you go to NASA right you say right I I want to know how the rules of space are and they'll say okay first of all we we spend 15 million on a rocket that never comes back but that's the way it is just the way space travel is this is so expens and and so no I don't think so I think I'd rather not learn from NASA I'd rather learn okay why are they not reusing those space shuttles it doesn't make it airplanes if they took off once and we threw them away when they arrived
• 12:00 - 12:30 in our destination air travel wouldn't exist I think it's actually the Young Generation in particular have got a chance to rethink all this [ __ ] that we have been told as fact about an industry and how it works and everything's getting disrupted so I think the only way to stay Innovative is not learn the old ways but maybe think about the new ways now that doesn't mean to say there's not probably a scientific structure like how to get a rocket to take off sure there's probably some you know mathematical structure that you need but you can either hire that person in or sure go learn it if that's what you want but I want to make sure people have got
• 12:30 - 13:00 informed consent I want to make sure people when they're making choices about what they're going to go and learn it's because they decided it's what they wanted to learn not because they were told by University study this one particular thing now you know this one particular thing do this one particular job that's all I want informed consent for people they want to have choice right now I think a lot of people don't have choice and don't even realize it but surely I'd challenge back and say I'm sure we do have that if you're willing to ask the questions to go in and like you could do that already we don't need to break a system to be able to go in and and and change it sure this
• 13:00 - 13:30 is your opinion I don't agree but it's fine but I mean would you rather get on a like to use your example would you rather get on a plane with a pilot that says I'm just learning how to break the rules of Aviation travel or would you rather have somebody that has done their hundred flying hours to tell you what the what the rules of Aviation travel are before if someone wants to be a pilot then they should go and learn to be a pilot I'm not talking about that
• 13:30 - 14:00 I'm talking about people having the ability to do what they want to do um if you if you want to be a pilot sure you're going to have to go into University and then you're going to have to follow the pilot intruction scheme and that's all fine right I totally agree with you but I don't think um I'm talking about that I'm talking about those that perhaps don't want to follow the system or don't want to get a standard job I haven't actually met very many happy Pilots if you're using that particular example A lot of people that become Pilots were sold this dream and they just sit in a cockpit for 13 hours
• 14:00 - 14:30 a day like brain dead um so I mean yeah sure uh it's it's mostly autopilot um for flying planes now anyway so yeah if that's what you want go do it you you'll have to follow that system to do it I'm not saying people shouldn't uh go learn a craft if they want to do a particular thing I'm just saying make sure that particular thing is what you really want to do right so we're not saying here don't go to university what we're saying is if you're not sure what you want to do or you're not sure University is right for you go and explore if then decide that you do want to go to
• 14:30 - 15:00 university if you if you want that experience which is you know I think we mustn't say University's wasted time right University is a life experience it's just a different life experience to not going to University right y you you go and do that it means you can't do lots of other things you go and do lots of other things it means you can't do that some people love uni some people hate it but you're just saying understand what you're getting and don't think that you're getting something that maybe you're not yeah I I just think right now there's so many people making the argument go to university is happening all the time subconsciously parents your peers the school system literally
• 15:00 - 15:30 their their success is reliant on who goes to University when you leave school for example so I'm actually just saying there needs to be a bit of a counterbalance here because now you can't people don't think they're going to have a good life unless they go to university and university is a business so everyone thinks like no recently someone came to me for a job in marketing and they said they're four years in doing a marketing degree £52,000 worth of debt right I'm like okay what the five ways you make money on Tik Tok how does the algorithm work on YouTube how is uh shorts working in
• 15:30 - 16:00 the future how can you make money from your social media how can companies make money from their social media how can marketing be a profitable thing none of these answers they had to any of these things they're like oh I just learned about how a company in 1990 went bust because they spent too much money on marketing um and I don't know you know the internet didn't work back in 1990 it turns out a lot of companies didn't make it uh okay so know marketing for four years you know just go and learn it in the real world either you know go work for someone temporarily to learn or and
• 16:00 - 16:30 make money while you're doing it or just start a social media agency or just you know I I think the lot of the time this kind of four year university thing to me I agree with you that people some people get some value from it but I find that people have again survival bias if someone went to University they say I got a network while I was there thank God I went to University I got a network well I got a network not going to University people I had such a great experience I went to University I had a great experience not going to University I think I think the difference is is I'm not fine-tuned into a particular job
• 16:30 - 17:00 role at the end of it which university funnels you into oh you're now going to be a lawyer or you're going to be this you're going to be that it doesn't let you just figure out what you could be it tells you what you're going to become and I think that leads to a lot of misery for a lot of people and again I meet a lot of people every day in the streets you know in their 30s and 40s who went to University who end up being a lawyer for four or five years and they hate it CU they're still selling time it's not scalable and they got debt they have to pay off I think so viers ship bias is a very important thing for us to
• 17:00 - 17:30 recognize I am in the question very hard before you go to university Camp I'm not in the don't go camp but the question it very hard I didn't go you didn't go to university you're in the maybe don't go but certainly question it very hard Camp you went to University studied at universities lectured at universities and maybe you're in more in the well I'd consider it really carefully Camp I think where we have to be really careful is long before University the way that we're educating our young people now we've created a foundation the high
• 17:30 - 18:00 performance Foundation because of our frustrations with the lack of soft skills being taught in schools and all of the things that people who sat in the chair you're sitting in right now have told us has got them to where they are today are not being taught in schools I thought you'd like this I got a I got a text on my daughter who's only just got a phone Florence mess me the other day this is what she said the girls are being annoying because they say if I don't do a maths or science a level it means it looks like I don't work hard and if I do dance drama and business it won't set me up for life oh rubbish wonder how that plays into your thoughts
• 18:00 - 18:30 on the school system yeah um when I was younger University was for a particular path it was for STEM related activities it's now become such a big business it's for everybody and I feel like people have got that text as a good example railroaded into a path that they don't really want to be on and so the one thing I'd say about that message which I love it one thing say is I think the word work hard has got a little bit
• 18:30 - 19:00 overused and so like I personally made the most amount of money when I haven't been working hard really when I delegated other people to do things and they were better at it than me yeah now don't get me wrong I actually like working hard I think work should be a positive word first of all and if you have a purpose you don't mind working hard and I think that's the key I would love to give to the next generation is like work should be a positive thing it shouldn't be this negative thing and I think it has become this oh work I've
• 19:00 - 19:30 got to work I've got to I love working I don't need to work today I don't need to work I could just sit by my pool hang out my kid or that I don't need to work I love working I grow I learn I meet people with different opinions to me that I can debate with I grow because maybe I'm wrong and maybe I'm right maybe I'll change your mind maybe you change mine maybe the people listening get something like Works amazing and I think we've kind of lost that a little bit like work's this thing we have to do to pay the mortgage as opposed to work is the thing we do to fulfill our lives and give us purpose and make the world a
• 19:30 - 20:00 better place that that's my argument and I think University a little bit done this to us and I think also for the matter corporations have done this to us too so in your book you talk about people often coming up with their own excuses whether this is because of the brainwashing that we get from society whether at school or in general can we go through each of those seven reasons that people often put in their own way to stop them seeing work as something to enjoy you're talking about the seven steps in my book that right read so people listening might not know where
• 20:00 - 20:30 you're getting this from right so I I in the book I've written out um the seven things that stop people from fulfilling their purpose so take us through them yeah it's it's a like a you know a massive part of my book so um I I I think it it took me a long time to actually understand this and I I've interviewed thousands of people I've probably done one of the largest human surveys in history it's my argument at the moment people can say no you haven't there been bigger surveys I've gone and ask thousands of people in the street what their dream is and I've seen what's stopping people okay and there's lots of
• 20:30 - 21:00 things I I'll tell you a couple of them cuz if I tell all seven we'll be here all day um a couple of them first of all people will use money as an excuse that's a common one people will say I don't have enough money yeah okay so I think that's because they haven't been given financial literacy and how money works so most of the businesses I have started have been super successful either I started with no money and I can give a formula how to do that or I've raised money not my money so I think
• 21:00 - 21:30 people don't understand how money works so I if I didn't understand from a young age how money worked I wouldn't be able to build any business so how do you start a business with no money well maybe my my when I was younger my ambition uh wasn't as big as it is now I didn't want to build a tech platform like I have done now when I was younger I just wanted to pay the bills so I built a service company so my first business was a gardening business and what I said was I take care of your garden they said yes then I asked them for a deposit now that 50% deposit paid all my costs and then when i' done the
• 21:30 - 22:00 work and collected the final payment the other 50% was my profit this fundamental structure on how you can start a business with no money no one's been taught it and so people instantly they'll say oh I don't have money to start a business well like what business do you want to start well they won't even let their mind go there because they don't think they've got money to start a business so that's level one you know level two is I don't have time because I don't have time I'm like you have deliberately told yourself you don't have time what you mean is you don't have a purpose because if you really care about
• 22:00 - 22:30 something or someone you find time time is just a madeup concept as well as far as like we have seven days a week and Saturday and Sunday is Chill day most people think I don't work on Sundays I work on Sundays I I work any day I have to work to make my mission happen and I don't think twice about it and people like work life balance aren't you working all the time no I don't feel like I'm working at all the opposite I'm working all the time but I don't feel like I'm working at all in the context of what people think work is so that's another level how do people remove the excuse use of time well I first of all tell people you haven't got much time on
• 22:30 - 23:00 this planet you better use it meaningfully so when you're wasting time watching Netflix or listening to content doesn't bring you any value and wasting time most people are wasting time that's why they've got no time if they had a purpose they'd find time so find a purpose second step in my kind of my pyramid of why people don't do it is they don't have a purpose if they can discover their purpose they will find the time can we talk about that sure because um I feel in not this similar position to you where I'm very much Pro get out and do the work get out and set
• 23:00 - 23:30 up businesses off you go but people will say to me yeah but you knew what you wanted to do and i' and I feel very lucky that I've found my passion what would you say to people where they are stuck and therefore actually I think of my nephew Joseph you know going to University is almost the answer because he hasn't found the thing that he loves what do they do what should they do there's a couple of answers to this first of all a lot of people go and do things by default because they're in
• 23:30 - 24:00 fight or flight yeah okay fight and flight status is basically where they've got peer pressure or financial pressure the part of the brain that allows them to be creative and figure out what their purpose could be cannot be activated when you're in fight or flight so when your can't make ends meat your electricity might get cut off tonight if you can't feed your family next week because you're know going to run out of money there's no time to be creative you just have to survive and you go out and hunt and you don't think twice right so when you go out and hunt and you don't think twice you can't be creative if you can't figure out what you're meant to do cuz you're so busy in
• 24:00 - 24:30 fear that there's going to be a war you can't affect a bill you can't pay your brain is so activated by fear it's not allowing your creative part of your brain to engage so you're never going to find out who you really are what you really want because it's not alive that part of your brain so the first thing to do is come out of fight or flight and a combination of like pretend you've got money for a minute pretend money is not a problem just try to get into that state for at least 10 minutes because you might be able to die into that creative part of your brain and come up
• 24:30 - 25:00 with the very Solution that's going to make sure you're not broke anymore yeah right I think that's one part fight or flight I think the other thing about it is um for a lot of people who are not sure what to do the best thing to do is expose yourself to as many things as possible to find out what you love and what you don't love so I traveled and I went and did things in different businesses to find out what I enjoyed and what I didn't enjoy so I discovered quite young luckily that I quite like sales I love that idea of like knocking on someone's door and saying can I be
• 25:00 - 25:30 your Gardener and they say yes and that's instant Revenue you've created from nothing so I I think that you then double down on what you're good at again the school system will tell you to double down what you're not good at so if you're not good at history they're like well you know you got to study history more let me get you in a tutor to teach you history more but if you don't like that thing then why double down on it so I think we got to go for me anyway like what I tell people is try to figure out what your hobby is and make a living out of it you know a lot of people think they can't make a living out of it but your your your daughter did you say was it your daughter just
• 25:30 - 26:00 then on your text uh it was my daughter that text me yeah so so she's sounds like she's creative you know there's money to be made in creativity and we're told you can't can't make money being a painter of course you can today more than ever you go live on Tik Tok you'll make money being a painter right now and I don't work for Tik Tok but I just love these tools that are there for young people they they've got a lot of difficulty with things like buying a house and it's hard for them but on the other side wow these tools now like it's the great equalizer you know like you don't even you know the concept of the great equalizer but the social media is
• 26:00 - 26:30 a great equalizer I can go live on Tik Tok now I have a bigger Channel than Channel 4 you know and for those listening overseas it's small TV channel in the UK you know I I have more reach than a TV channel right now so that's incredible and it cost me nothing I just go live on social media I had 417,000 people on my live last week 417,000 people and it cost me nothing to do it and it cost them nothing to watch it I think that's the other really important thing I we we look at things very in a
• 26:30 - 27:00 very binary way social media is bad for children playing computer games is a waste of time for children I remember Richard Osman sitting in that chair and he said well how are your kids playing computer games are they engaging are they being creative are they using a headphone and a microphone to talk to other kids are they are they aware of how the game's been programmed and created do they know the improvements of this version of the game from the one that was released two years ago he said that's brilliant and it's a bit like oh kids shouldn't be on social media what are they consuming how are they
• 27:00 - 27:30 consuming it like the everything that you would ever want to know I think is there totally and it's about educating people not to not go on it but to not go on the stuff that's not good for them well I think it's like anything I interviewed um I've suddenly forgotten his name it come to me in a minute oh Tony fidell he invented the iPod right and then he was part of course therefore inventor of the iPhone yeah and uh Steve Jobs famously deleted him off off his phone on stage when he introduced the iPhone so there's
• 27:30 - 28:00 all controversy around Steve Jobs taking the glory for inventing this product anyway one of the things he said that really stuck with me in the interview was um I was saying the iPhone's bad all these people looking at their phones looking down at their phones you know does he does he feel bad that he credited his product that's so addictive and he said no no the iPhone is a fridge what food you decide to put in that fridge is up to you and see I I believe in social media for social good you got to have the algorithms that are feeding you help knowledge support guidance you are in charge your algorithm and people will throw this thing well in China
• 28:00 - 28:30 they've made it so that kids only get to watch education content and in America they just watch whatever they want that's up to you you know there's a combination of Parental support and kids realizing from a young age they're being manipulated all the time manipulation is nothing new I was manipulated when I was young I was told to buy a Mars ball or drink milk I was told these things would make me run faster I mean I was told a marbow would make me run faster so I was manipulated when I was younger and years before that they were told cigarettes good for you totally this is what I mean
• 28:30 - 29:00 have some Brandy good for you brand Brandy will help you get pregnant or something you know like I think we've been manipulated forever I think if we if we don't give the kids the chance to be exposed to these things and then make them aware they're being manipulated how can they ever control all these addictions that are being thrown at them all day long I think it's ridiculous to ban social media at 16 to people in Australia they're doing that right now they're banning 16y olds on social media it's it's so dumb it's so dumb it's but it's the new like Bann drugs thing in way uh it's the new War on Drugs right
• 29:00 - 29:30 and and and I think education beats control every time so I think you've got to teach people how eff is manipulating you governments are manipulating the Australian government is manipulating people right they're figuring out how to make money for tax revenue and some people you know they'll take money from vaping companies but they won't take money from social media like it's all all a manipulation so I just think we need to make people aware of it as opposed to ban them from things that if they fly from Australia to England now
• 29:30 - 30:00 they're exposed to social media what they're not going to have any knowledge of how to control it and they're going to miss out on opportunities because if I'm 16 today and I don't know what I want to do I'd probably start going live on social media and share that with people and build a following up and earn earn money from it we're literally cutting off opportunities for people when you ban stuff education is key I mean it it's but it has to be honest education transparent education it has to be deep truthful education well tell us then so if you're if we have 16y old kid watching this what are the kind of
• 30:00 - 30:30 questions they should be asking when it comes to social media to understand the influence of it well maybe the best way for me to answer that question is how I hire people okay so I hired someone a little while ago and by the way everyone that joins me gets equity in the company they don't just work for me they work for themselves as well and I think everyone should get Equity where they work right but when I hire someone I ask to look at their feed and see what's happening so one particular person who I hired recently I look through their feed
• 30:30 - 31:00 um they're a young man so as you'd expect lots of pretty women come up okay fine that's you know part of growing up and you know that's fine but then non-stop football okay now I'm not against football per se certainly not against people playing football at all but literally he's spending so much of his time caring about whether or not Chelsea wins a football match now if the Chelsea wins or loses it makes really no difference to his personal circumstances mental healthwise it does affect them if they lose right and it actually doesn't
• 31:00 - 31:30 make any difference those millionaires on that pitch and the billionaire that owns the club will be just fine whether they win or lose it's got nothing to do with him but he's being a little bit manipulated into thinking it really matters I'm like does it really matter how much does it really matter and I think it's just like highlighting these things they make money out of you if you watch they make money if you buy a t-shirt they make money if you buy a season ticket it's just a business now fine if you want once you're aware again informed consent that these things are being delivered to you to manipulate you to buy things and you still want to do
• 31:30 - 32:00 it great what I have an issue with is if he doesn't realize that's taking up at least half a day a week of his time half a day a week he could be putting into something to have a better life for himself instead of supporting billionaires who own a club and millionaires who play football he could be bettering his own life of that half a day a week and the1 pound a week he accidentally spends on football so I like to look through people's feeds and see how they're being manipulated and then educate people a little bit about it I'm I'm in the mid of this at the moment with a my 9-year-old is not on
• 32:00 - 32:30 social media neither's my 11-year-old but she has a phone and there are girls in her school and boys in her school that do have access to social media and I think at break time it's unpleased and if someone's got Tik Tok everyone wants to have a look at it right what do we do in that position because cigarettes were banned for under 16 for a reason right is there not an argument that you're just you're not mentally mature enough at 11 12 13 to make these informed decisions even if a parent says you know that social media is not always good for you you you're talking about the brain
• 32:30 - 33:00 of a 12-year-old up against you know Tik Tok and Instagram and Facebook and X spending billions to keep you coming back for more you know they're experts right in algorithms and feeding what the human brain wants what would you say to parents of those younger not 16 17 18 year olds but 10 11 12 so 2025 is well underway and I bet a lot of you like me have already started to make plans on how this can be the very best year yet and for me making it a great year revolves around some
• 33:00 - 33:30 investment but actually investing in myself physically and mentally so the physical investment has been a SAA that I've just had installed at home and already I'm absolutely loving it but the mental investment is making sure that I take time to go traveling with my kids Flo and Seb and Harry and my wife on those kind of memory making holidays that last a lifetime but obviously both of those goals center around needing Finance the good news is though that's where our new partner xtb comes in they're dedicated to empowering you on your investment journey and that's
• 33:30 - 34:00 regardless of whether your horizon is short or longterm you can maybe buy stocks and ETFs commission free you can invest passively with investment plans open an ISO account earn up to 4.75% interest on uninvested funds and loads more and the good news is it's so easy using that app so just download the xtb app today or click the link in the description below to start making your money work for you in 2025 this is really sensitive subject that if I pick a side I'm going to get
• 34:00 - 34:30 hate okay so it's like a mfield the question you're asking is a mindfield to War what are you doing then well I've got a seven-year-old yeah okay so there's a couple of elements that and I'm not perfect parent and I'm learning as well about this side of it because I didn't have social media when I was 11 so I I but I did have MTV and I did have cigarettes and and all the other [ __ ] that's out there that draws you in okay so I think okay how would I do it my how I
• 34:30 - 35:00 presently do it with my seven-year-old he joins me on Tik Tok lives sometimes so he's with me when we do when we do stuff so he's aware of how it all works he's brilliant by the way on social media he's just a charmer and he just loves talking to the community and saying hello and they love him and we have fun together so the other day we did a live he played his favorite songs I played my favorite songs and people in the audience told us their favorite songs and we played them and it was just fun we had a really good time he is allowed to play games we have a Tesla and when we go in the car he's allowed
• 35:00 - 35:30 10 minutes with me we play a game and he really enjoys it so he knows what's out there in the world but we make it a fun activity we do together okay now um he has a couple of things that he's a bit addicted to one of them's uh thing called Yoto which is like a a storytelling device and it's got no screen and but he loves this this product and it tells him he listens to history and he listens to things he really enjoys on this Yoto and it is a of an addiction cuz he always wants to listen to the stories but to me it's a
• 35:30 - 36:00 healthy addiction he wants to hear what happened in 1066 in the Battle of Hastings and he hits like a book no one was ever saying oh you shouldn't be reading a book that's really bad for you you're addicted to reading books aren't you you're always reading books what's wrong with you weird addicted person books are also designed to make you buy them and read them I think there's good addictions and there's bad addictions and we should accept that humans are not perfect and everyone has different needs he gets a lot of satisfaction being addicted to that Yoto and listening to those stories but I think I don't necessarily think he doesn't need YouTube he doesn't need that and
• 36:00 - 36:30 computer games at the moment I'm with him when we do it now he's seven I don't know what it'll be like when he's 11 12 and at school and all those things but again I don't think Banning anything ends well it's like as soon as you ban something you actually make it more desirable and so I think there's an element of education and it's parental responsibility to educate and it's also our responsibility to take part in what they're doing so my mom you know and I had a big falling out when I was 15 years old but I I would say my mom actually was a pretty good Mom at point
• 36:30 - 37:00 of my life she did crazy things but one of the great things she did do is like if you want to smoke do it in my house I don't want you having to I don't want you getting into trouble I never wanted to smoke partly because I was allowed to and then she'd tell me how bad it was and how awful it is and you know all of that sort of stuff and I think there's something in that education it's still my choice informed consent we're free right we're meant to be free anyway so I don't I don't think Banning or controlling people ever ends well ends in you know Civil Wars and it ends in a very difficult situation for parents and
• 37:00 - 37:30 kids if you try to control kids I think you should be there and it's my parental style guiding and Advising and supporting but Banning is a big mistake so be in their life be in their life be a part of things and I definitely don't think say you're not allowed to look at Tik Tok that's just stupid can you tell us a little bit about the difference between a dream a goal and a purpose we need to give me these questions ahead of time this is that's a deep one dream goal purpose Okay so a dream a goal and a purpose can
• 37:30 - 38:00 actually all be similar depending on the context that you're using it in but to me um a dream is something like I dream of fixing the education system okay and I uh a goal is what I set myself today which is to come on this podcast hopefully reach hundreds of thousands of people that can help with that goal right so today is just one step towards my dream but I have one goal
• 38:00 - 38:30 today purpose for me is the fuel to do it so why almost like why do I care about this problem partly is what your purpose is so I was 15 years old when I was kicked out of home and I couldn't get a job because I didn't have a national insurance card in England you need that to get a job and I couldn't uh I begged on the street and couldn't I didn't get any money people spattered me and ignored me and thought I was a drug addict which I wasn't and so I had no choice but to go and start a business
• 38:30 - 39:00 and I and I say that was if it's glamorous I just as I said earlier knocked on the door and started cleaning Gardens you know like it it um I think purpose is now for me over time I look back at my career and I realized that 15-year-old kid who struggled who couldn't afford a course who didn't have access to network or knowledge didn't get anything from the school system for the 12 years I was there about how money works just I desperately want to go back and help that 15-year-old me right and
• 39:00 - 39:30 and it and it's still the same problem today we're still not teaching financial literacy in school people still don't know how money works and and people still aren't given the tools on how to sell and anyone can sell people still aren't given the tools and you could start a business of your own you know you don't have to go to university and even if you did it for a year and then went to University you probably better you get a better job because you got experience in life you know like so purpose comes from personal pain I think but purpose is uh the driver the fuel the reason to go and do it reason to have that goal and the reason
• 39:30 - 40:00 that dream might exist and so yeah I think purpose is is so crucial again I would teach it at school like what is your purpose is a really important thing to ask yourself as young would that be the first question you'd be asking or or the Dream well I mean what's your dream is my opening question to get people to open up and I can see where they are in the stages of like where they want to go right y if People's dream is just to own a house I know they're a little bit trapped by the system and they just think that's that they don't own house yet so they don't know that a house can own you won't necessarily make you happy
• 40:00 - 40:30 if you're doing work you don't love every day but you're sitting in a house you own it won't make you happy so I think I think what's your dream is an opening question for me to understand where people are at and but I think the purpose to me is the thing that we all build over time but I I didn't really find my purpose until I went through pain and once I found my purpose I then had to fill my own bucket up first before I could ever Circle back and say right you know my purpose now is to help others feel you know get the help they need if they want to start something so if there's anyone watching this that
• 40:30 - 41:00 thinks I don't want to go through the pain but I do want to discover my purpose what are the kind of questions or the angles that they should be thinking of I think you should want pain I think you framed that in a way I I would not answer it I don't I think people should definitely seek out pain exp more well I actually think like bad luck is good luck in Disguise so if if you look at anyone who's been successful and I've interviewed hundreds of people that have been successful billionaires and I and what I've noticed about all of them similarities at some point they had
• 41:00 - 41:30 some sort of pain and it could be you know def framed in different ways it could be um you know so for example my wife her mom got cancer and all the doctors told her her mom was going to die and there's nothing you could do and she just felt that wasn't right so she went and learned something called kinology which is a healing method that's being a bit shunned because it's not traditional medicine it's preemptive care partly right and it's it's kind of uh energy based anyway she went and learned this
• 41:30 - 42:00 this this discipline called kinology and but she need and she's now A Healer which I I tell people that but like oh my God sounds woo woo she's the least woo woo person you ever meet but she can heal people with this energy that she's learned this to craft and so I think that you know she needed the pain of like something awful happening to her mom getting cancer which is I wouldn't wish it on anybody is really awful thing to have happened but equally it's given her a a purpose this healing energy that she now gives to other people that have been told they got no no chance of
• 42:00 - 42:30 living they're going to die for sure she gives them hope right and sometimes hope helps people live sure and so I think you know I think pain is such an important thing I I actually wish it on people in a in a weird strange way like my father dying when I was young know don't get me wrong i' i' I'd like to go back in time and him not die of a heart attack when I was 15 years old I'd love him still to be here but equally him leaving me so young has given me the life I've got today which I love I believe pain really builds character and
• 42:30 - 43:00 that you if you have no pain the people I know that have no pain often have pretty unhappy lives because they have no purpose so I think one of your superpowers is um obviously is communicating but I think also is challenging people to reframe the way they view the world whether it's believing that owning a house is just the right thing whether it's believing that University is just the right thing whether it's believing that avoiding pain is the right thing I think this is a real area of Mastery for you and the
• 43:00 - 43:30 truth is that I think our research probably backs it up that the people that have sat in that chair have been through trauma and Trauma leads to Triumph you know people talk a lot about post-traumatic disorder they talk very little about post-traumatic growth what do you think that the death of your father did for you well I think for the early years of my life it gave me no choice but to succeed no plan a you know burn the boats is
• 43:30 - 44:00 what the Vikings used to call it right because my mom kicked me out of home and my father was gone so I I had no I can go home and stay in this my parents' house like sometimes when you've got other options humans are lazy will default to that easy option I'll stay in my mom's basement and play computer games because I can but I think when you have no choice it's really powerful you can't go back you've got to make it work there's just no choice I think that's so partly that I will say um I spent a long
• 44:00 - 44:30 time being sad that my father left me so young because he never saw me past my driving license never saw me build a successful business he never saw me doing what I'm doing today right and and that is sadness I often felt until I reframed it and I I say that my father gave me one last gift he died at Christmas right he gave me one last gift before he left me and that was the freedom to fail because when he was alive at school my teachers even my parents they all had this anticipation I was going to be a lawyer and that was my
• 44:30 - 45:00 path and when he was gone and this support system was gone I was suddenly free to fail like I CED the gardening company I tell people this all the time if you have nothing you have a competitive advantage and I didn't realize it until I had nothing cuz now there's no expectation on me I could do a gardening company and it failed who care who gives a [ __ ] it's people that have expectation on them like your daughter no she's got expectation on her she can't fail she's got to do math s she's got to work hard she's got to live
• 45:00 - 45:30 up to other people's expectations of her whereas I at 15 was given this gift I could just go and do something and if it didn't work no one gives a [ __ ] and I was free to try and I did many times try many things and failed many times and I and I such a gift that that to answer your question my father gave to me so now I reflect and I Su say to him thank you for giving me that chance you've been very successful you've made a lot of money built some great businesses you
• 45:30 - 46:00 have a huge following how are you going to give that gift to your children well first of all kids don't do what you say they do what you do so the most important thing to me is not that I leave him a load of money the most important thing is I show him how to help people and I show him the joy that I get from helping people CU we've lost this we think that Joy comes from only things we think Joy comes from owning and having money it doesn't and
• 46:00 - 46:30 if anyone doesn't believe me maybe think about the time when you gave someone a present you know you went and carefully selected it you wrapped it you wrote a little note and you put it under the tree you just can't wait for the day they open it right just to see what they think of what you've got them that Joy of giving is something we have actually kind of a little bit lost without realizing that actually helping someone else makes us happy so my job is not to leave my son hundreds of millions my job is to leave my son with the knowledge
• 46:30 - 47:00 that I have and I've learned the hard way that what makes me happy and what makes every human happy actually I don't care how bad you are helping someone else so how are you going to invite pain into your son's life then well I think he has a little bit of pain every day because my son's homeschooled uh and I I I think homeschooling is not painful I think he enjoys his H school but I leave him every day right and I and and I feel it every day he's like Daddy play with me play with me I look I promised to help someone today I've made a commitment to do something today and if we say we're
• 47:00 - 47:30 going to do something we have to do it so every day I give him a little bit of pain by telling him exactly what I'm doing and he asked me yesterday are you okay Daddy I always tell him the truth I was feeling a bit sick yesterday I said I don't feel good I've been overworking lately I need to rest a bit but I can't CU I've got all his commitments and but that's life so he had a bit of pain cuz I had a bit of pain and I think just being honest with him is how I I don't know if you need a traumatic a massive traumatic event to necessarily create purpose but I think showing vulnerability showing a little bit of
• 47:30 - 48:00 pain every day and showing him that you know that life is meant to be painful people that retire die quite quick after statistically two or three years after retiring people die right so it's because they don't have pain or stress anymore like we're men to have stress it's good it pushes us to go and do things you know so I I think I show him he's seven you know he doesn't need to have serious pain but I am not going to leave him money if every single day someone you know someone pops up on my feed telling me Legacy planning leave
• 48:00 - 48:30 your son loads of money you need to do this you need to that no he doesn't need my money I'm going to give him knowledge but I think if I gave him a load of money I think that would actually be a problem and I think that to me is the most important thing is I give him a sense of purpose help him find his purpose if I can before I'm gone but also let him find his own pain what pain points matter to him and I think you're very right when you say your son doesn't need a big traumatic incident like nobody's going to look at your seven-year-old and Hope but the same thing happens to him that happened to you right that's not what your son
• 48:30 - 49:00 needs or any 15-year-old needs right but what they do need is for their resilience to be built totally people have sat in the chair opposite us and resilience beats Talent a 100 or a thousand to one without question yeah follow through persistently because no matter how talented you are with no resilience you don't go anywhere with that and actually I think the truth is that pain builds resilience you know for you it's a big large trauma right you lose your dad at 15 well you try and hurt me now cuz nothing's going to hurt as much as losing my dad at 15 and
• 49:00 - 49:30 having a traumatic relationship with my mom and walking the streets and by the way I cry all the time so you say that I still get hurt yeah well I know what you mean I not uh please don't feel you shouldn't cry cuz I think this is this is the important stuff that we should be talking about right we can fluff around don't go or do go to university but this is the real connection right which really matters um and I talk about that as someone who had a trauma as a young guy and it and I feel it's very B it's been for me so I I feel the conversation
• 49:30 - 50:00 needs to be how do we create resilient young people why I think first of all take risk lean into pain we've got so it's so easy now to say no to things and delay it so again on the way here I got stopped by another young man who said he wants to go to Australia but he'll go in a couple of years I'm like why not now oh I don't have enough money I don't have this I don't have that like just if you got enough money for a one-way ticket yes and if you really got in trouble could you get a ticket back somehow yes go go land in Sydney and try
• 50:00 - 50:30 and survive a week you know worst is it's a story you can always ring your parents up I don't really like you having plan Plan B but you can always ring them and they'll give you a flight and come back like pain is good experience is good and so I still feel it today I was asked to do a TED talk a little while ago there was I I was going to say no because I I blame time I don't have enough time the truth is I I don't I'm a bit scared of it doing it so I will say yes to things that if I have
• 50:30 - 51:00 any sort of fear and then I push through that fear and then I feel success in the other side of fear it's like doing a trial laan if anyone is they've got a train for months it's painful I know someone doing a triathlon at the moment their toenail fell off and their foot's in pain and but then they did the triathlon oh my God the Euphoria of pushing through the pain right so I think I think people should lean into pain more they should take risk more again to my Point don't get some job that just gives you a regular salary and numbs your brain and kills your hope you
• 51:00 - 51:30 know go and start something try something Travel somewhere do something hard every week I moved to Hong Kong when I was 23 I left all my friends and I built up a a life after having a hard hard time I hated it I moved to Hong Kong I hated it and every week I was I'm just going to move back I don't like it I don't like it and then 6 months in suddenly it all changed and I fell in love with it and I had the most amazing experience in a so on the other side of pain is Joy but
• 51:30 - 52:00 we can easily say no now can't we it's so easy to say no to things that might cause us a pain do you want to go for a run no I'm a bit tired do you want to go to the gym n it's all right do you want to eat heal for this week no I just want to indulge and indulge and we've got too weak and it's got too easy you know stop pressing a button getting food delivered to you go pick it up go in the rain go out there in the wind fight that's where the joy is can I ask you a question then about how you recruit cuz you mentioned earlier but you ask for their feed how do you sort of square it away when
• 52:00 - 52:30 people want to come and work for you then rather than send them away and say set your own business do your own thing so you can go work for someone I I'm not saying you can't go work for someone there's a couple of criteria I suggest to people okay one is you're going to learn a lot now if you can go work for someone and learn a lot great because you're getting paid and you know you're not University you pay them and I'm not sure how much you learn right but if you go work for someone you really respect them hopefully or you
• 52:30 - 53:00 believe in their mission and you can earn I wouldn't do it more than 6 months or a year Max otherwise you might get addicted to that drug called a salary but if you can learn and go work somewhere fine what I would say is be cheeky ask for Equity they might say yes yeah so so my my advice is don't not don't go work for someone my advice is just make sure you don't get addicted to the salary system selling time and make sure there's a there's a clear amount of knowledge you're getting from the
• 53:00 - 53:30 experience however I also think and this happens in my company I have a mission to fix the education system and help people believe in themselves and do what they love and promote people who have dreams and get their knowledge out get their dream out there in the world a lot of people I have 18 people on my team now have the same belief they have the same purpose as me so they don't have to go and do it on their own they can join forces with me I call this 1 plus 1 equals 11 right the power of teamwork is inedible but they should all own Equity when working with me otherwise well one
• 53:30 - 54:00 I'm a hypocrite and two more importantly they could build something that they don't own anything in so why not so if you have the same purpose as someone else and ideally the same moral code then you can team up with someone else just make sure you've got Equity because that's a scalable item whereas selling time isn't that's it you've mentioned a few times um you want to change the education system if I made you education
• 54:00 - 54:30 secretary today what would you set it up to look like first of all they'll never make me education secretary but we all know that right there's no but they I would I would love they did okay so I think we need to turn the whole thing upside down okay right now you know without going too deep because I've spent a lot of time thinking about this I'm so certain they're not going to make me education secretary I'm so certain they're not going to change the system I'm building it separately myself directly but the truth is the system present system is doing exactly what
• 54:30 - 55:00 they want it to do it's creating people to go work for companies big lobbying companies it's working just fine we already know it's not providing people with what they need to live in the real world but they haven't changed it for 100 years so what what is it that they need to live in the real world that school's not giving them okay so I probably flip it and say the first thing is understand the individual yeah and what they actually like what they naturally good at and how their personality fits a learning
• 55:00 - 55:30 experience so right now the school system is one siiz fits all you're going to do exams you're going to sit on your own and do those exams and if you get an A you're clever and if you get a d you're stupid that is ridiculous right so I think I'd flip it and say and this best way to explain how I would do the education system if I was in charge is how I'm trying to bring my son up now if my son grows up to be a mass murderer then I'm I don't ever take my advice on the education system ever again but I I think he's a great human being but this is how I educate him when he was 4 years
• 55:30 - 56:00 old he uh we went into a garage and he picked up a road map it was so dusty because everyone's using Saab now right so he picked it up AI AA guide and he opens it up and he starts saying Daddy this road here connects to that road what does this road do what's the M25 daddy starts like looking and so anyway he's so obsessed with roads so he says to me Daddy how did they build this road why did the M25 how did they build it so we go and Google it and find out politicians tried to stop it and why people were lobbing against it being
• 56:00 - 56:30 built how much it costs how much it overruns so he's now learning about maths budgeting politics all from his interest in roads right if I said to hey four-year-old I'm going to teach you about politics you ready like politics I'm going to teach you maths are you ready maths no so you lead by interest and you learn all the things you need to know to understand your interest so I love business so I've learned accounts I don't want to learn accounts if you told me I had to go learn accounts I'd not be interested but if I know I need to
• 56:30 - 57:00 understand accounts to manage cash flow to make a business work that has a purpose that I care about I will learn that stuff or I'll bring someone in that knows how it works so I think the education system should be really tailor made I'm hoping with AI and the future technologies that if we make them work for us instead of we work for them then those technologies will allow us to understand us as human beings how we like to Lear am I an introvert am I an extrovert do I like to read do I like to be in Community Learning do I like visual learning do I like audio learning
• 57:00 - 57:30 and we tailor mate the learning to the individual around their interests as opposed to right now which is like we want more lawyers we want more ex part of the challenge though isn't it is that we're trying to educate millions of people at the same time with limited resources therefore the only way to do that is to remove those at the extremity push them all in the same direction and get them all to sit the same exam I don't yeah 100 years ago I agree but we with this experiment should be yeah and now like thanks to things like YouTube and frankly Tik Tok people don't
• 57:30 - 58:00 like to hear this people are learning on Tik Tok the algorithm is now teaching our kids okay whether we like it or not that fridge is there and people are consuming from it right so my my argument would be like go where people are already naturally consuming content and give them content that helps their lives be better but tailor it to their needs that's what algorithms do so I'm just saying yes 100 years ago we didn't even know the word algorithm so sure yeah 100 years ago master ation Cari and Henry Ford [ __ ] great let's get people learning in Mass let's make sure
• 58:00 - 58:30 that they don't learn too much we still want them to come and work in our Factory and buy one car and go on two holidays a year and come back to our [ __ ] Factory sure 100 years ago Mass education system it doesn't make sense today we know different everybody's different everyone has different learning abilities and skills superpowers if you want some people are ADHD that's a superpower if you give them the knowledge in the way that they like to receive receive it so I think it's time to just rethink how we deliver
• 58:30 - 59:00 information me personally i' I love learning on YouTube I I learn a lot on Tik Tok and we can slack these things off you want I trained my algorithm to give me the knowledge I want in the way I want it right and so I just think we need to rethink the tools out there stop looking at Tik Tok as evil and YouTube as a waste of time and sitting in a classroom learning exactly what everyone else is learning for 4 years makes no sense to me everyone learns differently too like my seven-year-old when it comes to certain
• 59:00 - 59:30 things whoa he's so Advanced like you are anything about history I could ring him up now who answer anything he loves history ask him about certain other things he's not interested doesn't mean he's stupid just because he's not interested in those things it means he's got certain things he's interested in certain things that drive him as a personality as a as a human and I'm just feeding him via that personal ability to learn as opposed to like sit down and read this Blackboard and then people don't like to it because they they everyone wants to put this sort of thing into conspiracy theories right but it's
• 59:30 - 60:00 it's not conspiracy theory if you just follow the money who makes money getting people to go to university who makes money getting people to come out of University to work for them why would you change an education system it's making you lots of money do you think JP Morgan wants to change it do you think do you think anybody powerful wants to change it no they want those people going to work for them they don't want them starting their own JP Morgan God no come and work for us sell ours dumb these [ __ ] down I get really upset about it because I think
• 60:00 - 60:30 people don't realize it and that's not right I don't mind if people realize it and then do it that's informed consent I don't mind but I think people don't realize they're being dumbed down and look we live in this world of misinformation and disinformation and fake news and social media algorithms and everything else and it's so easy to look at all that and think there is no hope so are you an optimist or a pessimist for the 100% an optimist and it's funny you say that because one of my things is when I started this journey 5 years ago and I started going on social media and giving people the
• 60:30 - 61:00 knowledge and help I I guess I was complaining education system still broken oh you know why is why are politicians so useless why is there so much debt culture in England why credit score companies stopping people from living life because they having to worry about their credit school and I was complaining and what I said to myself was I'm going to start giving Solutions the problems and not just complain about them there's a lot of people out there complaining about the education system and complaining about this and
• 61:00 - 61:30 complaining about that I wanted to be a bit more practical about it and say look I I'm not happy with the education system here's an alternative here's some free knowledge that can help you live a better life here's a platform for free that can give you some support and I wanted to start building things that weren't about complaining but were in fact hopefully giving people a solution or at least a way to to change if they want so I think I wanted to stop complaining and start offering a way of actually solving the problem I'm complaining about brilliant and the final question after this amazing conversation for people who
• 61:30 - 62:00 are feeling inspired and ready to go what do they need to do right now I think if you know your purpose you know you're meant to do something don't live with regret regret is the worst people in their 90s interviewed what they regretted the only thing they regretted is what they didn't do if you do something and it fails it's a great story I failed so many times I've got great stories people love inviting me to dinner parties cuz I've got great stories how I failed but I think people don't they should make sure that they lean into that purpose if you don't know
• 62:00 - 62:30 your purpose then just start asking yourself that purpose go work with people who have purpose go see what it looks like go work with people that are doing something meaningful go work with people that enjoy their work learn what that looks like give yourself a chance to see the world if you can especially when you're young just see how it really works out there because the world's an incredible place it's so exciting out there give yourself Hope by going to some of the poorest countries in the world and seeing how kind they are to each other you know just give yourself experience cuz that's all it is is
• 62:30 - 63:00 anyway this whole journey is just an experience just go out there and really like lean in and hopefully along the way you'll find your purpose but I think some of the most interesting people I know haven't found their purpose yet by the way but they're asking what it is and they're looking how they can contribute to other people's purpose and they are making a difference in the world by helping other people who have a purpose and hopefully some point you find yours and then that's you know the holy gra I think Simon thank you for your time yeah thanks for having me guys thank you so much this episode is brought to you by payhawk a company we think are great
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