Full transcript: Brian Rose on On My Way Podcast
0:00 Brian Rose: This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is…
0:30 And I can show you my passport. There you go. So this proof is in the pudding. I never told anyone about this darkness. I didn’t tell my wife, I didn’t tell my kids, I didn’t tell my best friends, and I thought it was just gonna be a dark period in my life that I would never ever address again.
0:45 Tears start coming down my face, and my camera crew’s all there, and they’re like, we’ve never seen Brian cry, ever. We are here to serve, we are all one. And I learned this after 13 years of speaking to over 1,000 people on London Real. So without further ado, I’m within Jeremy, wherever you are in your life, or wherever you’re going, whether financially, spiritually, or for your health, I hope you’re on your way. Now let’s get into it.
1:13 Radin Jahromi: Brian Rose. What a pleasure.
1:14 Brian Rose: Pleasure to be here, brother. What a pleasure this is for us. Thank you for the ride, man.
1:19 Radin Jahromi: What a pleasure this is for us. Taking you to the airport, you don’t have much time. I mean, we thought, listen, Kill Two Birds with One Stone.
1:25 Brian Rose: Look, it’s a beautiful thing. It’s a great excuse to roll to the airport in style and do some media.
1:30 Radin Jahromi: And like I was telling you, I always have a special place in my heart for anybody who’s trying to broadcast themselves, man. I appreciate you.
1:37 Brian Rose: Yeah. I appreciate you.
1:38 Radin Jahromi: I know you started a long time ago.
1:40 You’re one of the OGs in the game. You and I would say you’re the London Joe Rogan.
1:45 Brian Rose: You know, that’s a huge compliment. I always wanted to be. Joe Rogan inspired me to start the show.
1:51 You know, I used to watch Joe before people knew who he was, because I trained Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I watch UFC. So I knew about Joe. I knew we had a show. I used to watch him before he was on YouTube when he was on Vimeo.
2:02 And those shows to change my life. And I was a banker. I was making a ton of money, but I was extremely unhappy. And at night I would go home with all of my stuff and basically drink myself to death. And I thought, you know what?
2:16 I need to change things up. And so I literally quit my job and I was trying to be maybe the Joe Rogan of London. And that was 13 years ago.
2:24 Radin Jahromi: Wow. You have been on Joe Rogan before Joe Rogan was Joe Rogan when he had the, in his old studio in LA, and he had the laptop in front of him.
2:33 Yeah. He doesn’t have any of that anymore, but that’s how old you go with him.
2:38 Brian Rose: Yeah, we were on episode 271 of the Joe Rogan Experience. Wow. It was in 2013.
2:42 And that was a huge moment for us because here we are in London doing a podcast. Nobody knows what a podcast is in London. Barely know what it is in America. Now, look, we were always on video. I never really considered my show a podcast.
2:54 I think it’s more than that. But when Joe started noticing us and commenting on our posts, I couldn’t believe it. I just thought somebody was punking us or pranking us. The fact that Joe would actually be listening to what we were doing. And then when he invited us on the show, it was a massive moment.
3:10 And when we went there, it was in the ice house comedy club. He had a room in the back, all these psychedelic colors. Red band was still there. And I remember we flew to LA and recorded that episode. And it was just, it was a huge moment because it was like recognition from who I knew at the time was the OG.
3:28 Took the world another decade to realize he was the OG. That we were like on the right path. But I also said at the time, I said, just being on Joe Rogan doesn’t make you. I remember saying to someone, when you get back to London, we’re gonna have to go right back to work and keep working. But it was a big moment.
3:45 Joe’s such a warm guy. Gave me a big hug when we came in. Passed me the joint. I refused. Just because I don’t do well with weed.
3:54 I also figured I got three hours to debut to the world. I better at least try to represent who I am. And yeah, we had a show conversation. I didn’t think it was the greatest show, but you know, we did it and then we kept going. So that was a big moment.
4:09 Radin Jahromi: Awesome. You know, I used to, in Australia, when I used to go to business meetings, I used to get high and smoke a little weed before business meetings. And my business partner would look at my eyes going, you go to this business meeting like this? And I said to him, I do my best meetings like this. So I think if I could, thank God it’s illegal in Dubai, that I can’t get it.
4:29 I can’t get my hands on it. But I think if I could, I’d be doing it every day before a podcast. I’d probably be doing it on the podcast. Some people can function on that. I know Joe can train on it and things like that.
4:39 Brian Rose: So look, God bless man, to each his own. For me, I’ve been super sober for like six years now and I really love it. So that’s just me. But like I said, to each his own.
4:49 Radin Jahromi: Listen, you got to really fit.
4:51 For your age, you got a ripped body. What do you do for fitness by the way?
4:56 Brian Rose: You know, for me, my physical training is really about my mental state. So for me, in order to be a calm and cool and collected father, leader, creator, broadcaster, investor, whatever I have to do, I’ve got to get past the natural, honestly, aggression I’ll wake up with or maybe the negativity I wake up with. And everyone has their process.
5:19 For me, if I don’t get in some hard anaerobic cardio, I’m just not the person I want to be. So for me, my daily training, it’s about the mental state. And yeah, I mean, the physical body kind of comes with that. But I’m dancing, boxing, running, lifting, swimming. I embrace all these physical movement patterns and I love it and it keeps my brain fresh.
5:41 So that’s probably the result of that. But I don’t train necessarily just for the body. I train really for the brain.
5:48 Radin Jahromi: Yeah, of course, I only train the gyms in Australia and we did a survey and everyone said to empty this. It’s not, and there’s a direct correlation between a healthy body and a healthy brain.
6:00 Andrew Tate says, you wanna kill yourself? Okay, go get a six pack first. Then if you wanna kill yourself, I’ll help you. But get a six pack first. Yeah, that’s right.
6:08 Well said, right?
6:09 Brian Rose: Right, if you have a six pack, you’re probably not gonna be in that depressive state where you’re gonna wanna go do something bad to yourself. We grew up in this world where we separate these two areas of our body and the brain. It’s all about the intellectual, I’m gonna do everything here and process. And that’s what most of us are paid for.
6:27 But this is all one unit, including our heart and you can go deep into all of that. So it’s one unit treated as such. It’s probably the single most important thing that people don’t do in this world is do physical activity and can cure so many ails.
6:41 Radin Jahromi: Yeah, absolutely, I agree. Okay, so you’ve been podcasted with so many people.
6:46 You’ve interviewed so many people. I don’t even know if I can say podcasted. You’ve interviewed so many people, right? Tell me some standouts. Tell me some standouts.
6:56 I mean, you come from a banking background. You’re in Wall Street, you’re in New York. There’s things like the Jordan Belford character really stand out to you because obviously it’s from that world.
7:05 Brian Rose: Yeah, look, people always say who’s your favorite guest on London Real. They always say it’s like my children, I don’t have favorites, you know?
7:12 But of course we know that’s not true, right? And so I have a few favorites. You know, we’ve actually made six documentary feature films and a lot of those feature the guests that impacted my life in a massive way. And so I made those guests about first Dorian Yates, six time Mr. Olympia, Ido Portal, a movement guy out of Israel.
7:31 Then I had Dan Pena, the trillion dollar man, John Joseph in my quest for an Iron Man race. And then of course David Icke was featured in our latest one. So those are the names that had big impacts, but yeah, I mean, so many. I’ve had over a thousand conversations with some of the most fascinating people in the world. You can call them interviews, but I’d like to believe that we create an experience in six camera, high definition, unscripted, unedited, uncensored where I can capture the essence of who that person is.
8:00 If they die the next day, God forbid, people could watch back their grandchildren, their great grandchildren and know exactly who they are up to 95, 98% once they have an episode of London Real. I think people are gonna be watching my shows a thousand years from now. I truly believe that. So I try to capture that. And yeah, there’s always standouts.
8:18 Jordan Belfort’s amazing. He’s been on the show many times. I just had him on and he’s got a new book out. And he’s a really interesting guy. I worked on Wall Street for a long time.
8:27 His Wolf of Wall Street is a different Wall Street than mine. He was on Long Island, doing penny stocks and boiler room stuff. I was literally on Wall Street doing derivatives trading with like the Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan’s. So a different experience, but I respect Jordan a lot for what he’s gone through. And look, one of my favorite guests on my show is Ice-T.
8:47 He’s an old school OG hip hop rapper. And he always says it’s not about the come up, it’s about the come back. It’s like when I watch a UFC fighter take a loss, I’m always watching, can they come back from that loss? Can they become better? Because if you can’t, maybe you never were a winner.
9:04 Maybe you just had a series of fortunes. And so like myself and Jordan, Jordan was in prison. He lost everything and he decided to start writing. He couldn’t write, he taught himself to write and he made this massive comeback. And that’s who I respect.
9:21 I respect the people that come back from losing everything. That shows me resilience, that shows me character. So I like people like Jordan. And to be honest, probably every single guest on London Real has had a massive setback and come back from that, including myself. So that’s what stands out to me.
9:38 That’s where wisdom comes from. And that’s why I think it inspires all of us when we watch these people. We’re like, wow, they came back from that? That means I can come back from anything. So yeah, Jordan’s up there for sure.
9:49 Radin Jahromi: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can feel that energy in you, by the way, that Wall Street, if I had to say one word, it’s tenacity, it’s you just don’t give up. You’re like, okay, I’m gonna come back, I’m gonna come back. You know, I think it was Grant Cardone told me, he said, look, if you don’t give up, then you will always win. It’s just true.
10:09 Brian Rose: And Jocko Willink, a U.S. Navy SEAL, he’s got these amazing concepts like discipline equals freedom and extreme ownership. And he always says, if you just never quit, if you can say, he always says this term where he says good, anything bad that happens to you, he says good, there’s a great video online about it. And he says, if you can say the word good, if you can just even whisper that, that means you’ve got some fight left in you. So what you do is you recalibrate, you reload, you re-engage, and you go back out on the attack.
10:41 And that’s life. I’m gonna be doing that until I’m 80, 90, 100. There’s gonna be always battles out there. So that’s what people always need to remember. We actually had a situation like this just yesterday.
10:52 Radin Jahromi: I was really excited to podcast with you today. And I was at the bank and I saw my friend who’s a DJ. He’s like, what are you doing right now? We’re going on a boat, do you wanna come? Let’s go on a boat.
11:00 If I didn’t go on that boat, I would have gone home. On the way to the boat, the car breaks down. We end up jumping in a taxi, going on the boat, sending this car to the mechanic. The mechanic says, I can’t get this sorted before your podcast tomorrow, 11.30. I said to him, I’m gonna buy everybody lunch.
11:15 I caught up with this taxi boat from the yacht to the shore, ordered it for everyone. I went to the garage and sat there with them. And I was there until 1 a.m. And I drove this car back home, sent Shaq home, and I said, I cannot. And it’s just a fight of tenacity.
11:32 And if you’re not there, they’re gonna go home. Ordering them food, standing above him, because I said, listen, he’s going to the airport. I need to get this.
11:39 Brian Rose: Yeah, much respect, man, much respect. And that’s the thing, a lot of people don’t see the behind the scenes pieces that make somebody great.
11:46 And again, I call it media bias. And I still do it too, even though I’m in the media business. You see someone and you’re like, ah, that pop singer got lucky. Oh, that guy got lucky. Oh man, he’s not there.
11:57 But look, if you’re seeing them, most likely they have a hundred stories like the one you just said. That time they had to push through, that time they had to get it done. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be where they’re at. So you should always respect people for where they are and always understand you have a media bias. I mean, I have people on my show all the time.
12:15 And at the end of the show, I’m like, wow, you’re amazing. I thought you were a total jerk, you know? And then now when you sit there, I’m like, wow, Grant Cardone, perfect example. The day before he’s about to come on the show, I said to my team, why the hell we having this guy? He sits on top of his plane.
12:28 He shoots out money out of a gun. This guy looks like a total, shallow jerk off. He sits in my chair 12 minutes in. He’s talking about how he was 25 years old, addicted to meth, just gotten beat up, 24 stitches in his face. And his mom said, you’re a loser.
12:44 I never wanna see you again in my life. This guy getting real with me on the show. And I’m just like, wow. So nobody is what you think they are. Everyone has a deep story.
12:54 And that’s probably how they got to where they are. So yeah, respect to you, man. Anybody who can pull something off consistently over time has gone through a lot of heartache to make it happen. You just don’t see it. So nice work.
13:06 Nice work on making this happen, man. I wasn’t gonna tell you that, but the other way we’re talking about this, I thought I’d mention it.
13:13 Radin Jahromi: You know, something that I love about, the reason why I said interviews more than podcasts, because I feel like podcasts are more, is more of an open discussion. But with you, the thing that I really like about your style and really respect about your style is you sit there, stealth, quiet, and you almost squeeze the juice.
13:29 You squeeze everything out of them from that question that you asked. And then you wait, and then you go in for the next, or follow up, or something like that. Is this something you have to develop? Or is this just something natural to you?
13:40 Brian Rose: You know, it’s interesting.
13:41 A lot of people start shows and they think, well, what am I gonna do? Interview Jordan Peterson for the 1,000th time, or interview this guy for the 500th time. I got nothing to add with my new podcast. That’s not true. And that’s why even if I wanted to compete with Joe Rogan, I could never compete with Joe Rogan, because we’re two very different individuals, and our energy and our styles are gonna bring out two very different conversations.
14:00 So, look, me, I’m actually introverted by nature. Maybe you are too. A lot of people on YouTube are actually introverted. They find this is a means of somehow connecting to people. And so for me, if you watched my first two years of London Real, I didn’t say a word about me.
14:16 Like, never shared anything, any perspectives. I just, you know, sat there and tried to elicit as much from the guest. For me, London Real is about the guest. I am trying to get the best version of them, or the truest version of them, to the world, for the world to see and judge who they are. It’s not about me.
14:34 It’s just, frankly, not about me. And unfortunately, in the media we see today, and for the last 10 or 15 years, people’s shows are all about them. How much can I yell? How much can I proselytize? How much can I lecture the world?
14:47 For me, it was always quite the opposite. I always joke, if I do my job right, all I have to do is sit there and shut up, right? But I think that’s my style. And again, the problem is, is if you’re trying to build a personal brand, which I never was trying to, it will take longer, but I’m trying to create this piece of content. I’m trying to create the perfect conversation.
15:10 And people don’t understand, it’s unedited, unscripted, I’ve never met the guest. The guest is nervous, they’re stressed out, they had a bad taxi ride. They get to my studio, it’s my job, my job, extreme ownership, not their job, to get them in that chair and to open up their story like the most beautiful Hollywood film, the most beautiful story arc, the hero’s journey, where you’re uplifted, you laugh, you cry, you go to the dark depths and then they come back for the victory.
15:34 That’s what I’m trying to craft in a conversation to where it’s almost like watching a movie when you listen to that show. That’s what I’m looking to do. And so my style is to allow it to happen. And I usually lock myself in a room, my studio, there’s no one else in the room. And we’re literally in a box and the lights are on and we’re looking at each other and like something’s happening here.
15:56 And I’ve had guests like David Ike said, the energy’s building up in the room and we’re capturing a moment. It’s like souls are connecting, we’re creating something greater than the two of us and people can feel it out there. I know that our episodes during lockdown, people felt something and we’re creating something really special in there that will always be there for time forever. And so I’m trying to create that and it happens when I go deep, people say, how did you get Eddie Hall, world’s strongest man, fucking behemoth of a man, to cry on your episode?
16:28 I’ve gotten Nigel Bent, the dark destroyer, one of the scariest boxers in the 90s and 2000s to cry on my show. He cried for two minutes, I had to reach over and touch his knee because he was crying. How do you get those guys to do that? Because I’m there for two hours, because I never break eye contact with them, because I’m setting up that safe atmosphere. Maybe they’ve already watched one of my documentary movies where I talked about my heroin overdose, where I talk about my ayahuasca experience, where I talk about my divorce when I was seven years old.
16:55 Maybe they know it’s a space where they can say that and maybe they’re expected to go that deep. And so I’m trying to create that space to where we can get somewhere that’s real. When you see Eddie Hall cry because he promised his grandma on her deathbed that he would become the world’s strongest man and she died in front of him and he said to me, you know what I did, Brian? I went to the gym. Wow, like that Eddie’s crying is massive.
17:21 That is the moment, like that’s the moment that will inspire thousands. Who knows, maybe millions of people to do something with their lives. So that’s what I’m trying to create, but sometimes you’ll just see me zip in my mouth.
17:34 Radin Jahromi: Also, the more you shut up, the more people talk. Exactly.
17:37 Brian Rose: But I’m not actually intentionally doing that, but I’m trying to set the space to allow them to show me something. Sure.
17:45 Radin Jahromi: Yeah, sometimes it works well, sometimes it doesn’t.
17:48 Brian Rose: No, honestly, and if it doesn’t, we don’t air it. We always air it.
17:52 It’s just, you know, some rise to the top. It’s like the Beatles, man. They have hits. There’s a bunch of songs the Beatles made that suck that you never listened to. With London Real, we’ve done 1,000 episodes.
18:02 You probably know 100 guests. And there’s 900 that no one watched too much, but maybe they inspired someone. So again, the good stuff rises to the top.
18:10 Radin Jahromi: Of course, but that’s the nature of the game. You’ve got to do it.
18:13 You can’t just do the best ones. You mentioned you divorced. You mentioned the heroin overdose, all that stuff. What is the hardest thing to this day that you’ve been through?
18:22 Brian Rose: Hardest thing I’ve been through.
18:24 You know, in 2018, I had a guest on the show and his name was John Joseph. And he was the lead singer of, I’m okay, thanks, of a hardcore punk band called the Chromax. He’s this hardcore front man for a rock band, has a history of drug addiction and sexual abuse when he was a kid at a foster home. And he came on my show in 18 and we had an amazing conversation in London. And afterwards, he’s like, you know what, Brian, there’s something going on with you and this is not finished.
18:57 And so he called me from New York a few weeks later and said, Brian, I want you to run an Ironman race with me. And I was like, Ironman race, what are you talking about? I got two young kids. I’m 47 years old. I’ve never done anything in distance.
19:07 I’ve never swam any distance, ran any distance, biked any distance. He’s like, come on, Brian. He’s like, you know you need to do this. You come to New York and we’re gonna do this together. So, you know, look, needless to say, I said yes.
19:18 I went to New York. I started training for this race. And when I was in New York City, I had all these flashbacks to some of the worst moments in my life. I spent four years in New York City. I was in my 20s and they were hard because New York City, man, as John says it, it’s the ultimate bullshit detector.
19:34 It brings out the good and the bad and it’s tough, man. It’s tough and it’ll burn you up if you can’t survive. And look, I’m in my 20s. I don’t know who is equipped to survive in that city. And I went to some dark places.
19:46 I got addicted to drugs and I actually overdosed on heroin in that city. In 2001, at the same time, my best friend from MIT fired me and my girlfriend, a four years lefty. And two guys, I got some guys that had to crash some buildings at the World Trade Center right next door to my neighborhood. So it was a bad year and I ended that year by getting the hell out of the city and moving to London in 02 and I tried to rebuild myself. I never told anyone about this darkness.
20:12 I didn’t tell my wife. I didn’t tell my kids. I didn’t tell my best friends. Two people in New York knew about it. And I thought it was just gonna be a dark period in my life that I would never ever address again.
20:24 And yet when I’m training with John for this Ironman race, 16 years, I’m walking around New York City, I’m having these flashbacks and he puts me on the stationary bike and he pushes my heart rate to the maximum for like six minutes. And he’s yelling at me, yelling at me and tears start coming down my face and my camera crew’s all there and they’re like, what the fuck? We’ve never seen Brian cry ever. What’s going on here? And I was just breaking down, reliving all of this failure because New York City for me reminded me of failure, like all the things I did and the things I ruined.
20:54 And I ended up having a chat with John that night on the sofa of our Airbnb and I said for the first time, what happened to me, the overdose. And I felt comfortable because John had talked about sexual abuse. I mean, if you’ve got a guy that’s real, I could be real. And I talked about it for the first time. And I later played that in front of my wife at the time and in front of my daughter and I ended up publishing it for the whole world.
21:21 And it was the hardest thing to do because it was the worst time of my life. And then to confessing it was the hardest thing to do. And I remember having to hit send on an email where I said, my heroin overdose was my headline subject line on a Saturday. And I thought, man, everything, this could all be over and I hit send. And it was amazing because all I got back was love.
21:43 People said that happened to me, that happened to my brother, that happened to my uncle. How could that happen to you, Brian? You’re the Wall Street guy, you’re the MIT guy, you’re the successful guy. It’s like, look, drugs, they don’t discriminate, man. They come after all y’all.
21:54 And they’ll come after you and they’ll ruin your life. And so that was probably the hardest thing that ever happened to me. I almost died, I woke up in the hospital and also the hardest thing to come clean about. But now it’s one of my most proudest moments. Here’s the thing, here’s the thing.
22:09 Something I thought was so dark that would only be bad turned out to be one of the most beautiful sources of life for so many people. And so I always encourage people, go into the darkness. If you have a show like this, get vulnerable and tell them the real story because people are so inspired by that. And everyone has darkness, everyone has those bad times. And so if they can learn from that, they can come back.
22:34 So for me, that was one of the hardest things. Honestly telling my stepdaughter, it was one of the hardest things. She was like 10 at the time or 12. And I was like, I had to sit her down and say, look, this is what happened to daddy. And it was just really hard, but necessary.
22:49 So yeah, that’s probably one of the biggest things. And because of London Real, I could finally put it out there. It’s in a movie I made called Iron Mind. It’s all about the Iron Man race and the comeback from these really hard times. When I spoke to my ex-girlfriend, I said, what attracted you to me initially?
23:05 She said it was your confidence. And I think my confidence comes from accepting my darkness.
23:10 Radin Jahromi: There you go. When you accept that that you’ve been through, what are you gonna do to me? You know, I accept it, I wear it, right?
23:17 I’ve been there and when you wear it, then it kind of disarms anyone else and you don’t have to hold it in the shadows anymore. I’m reminded of a line from the movie Scarface, when they got Tony Montana and he’s in immigration, he just came across from Cuba. And he says, yeah, he says, there’s nothing you can do to me that Castro has not already died, right? So, look, Tony got there and again, he had seen all the bad stuff. He had made it through.
23:40 And it was true, when there’s nothing that life can do to you that has already been done, you’re like, yeah, okay, bring it. I’ve been through that, I’ve come back from the dead and I’m still here, motherfucker. What you got, you got nothing on me, nothing on me.
23:52 Brian Rose: And again, sometimes when I’m training really hard, you’ll hear me, I’ll be shouting that out. You got nothing, what else you got?
23:58 Is that it? Is that it? Let’s go. So, yeah, you’re right.
24:01 Radin Jahromi: If you could just overcome Nietzsche, which does not kill me, makes me stronger, it is true.
24:07 Brian Rose: So, yeah, use it as a tool.
24:09 Radin Jahromi: We should have done the gym session together before you left, by the way, okay? I’m hyped up right now. I wanna go to the gym right now, actually, with you.
24:17 Brian Rose: Oh, me too, me too.
24:18 Announcer: If you like this video, consider subscribing. We do weekly podcasts with experts in every industry to help you find direction and guide you on your way. Now, let’s get back into it.
24:29 Radin Jahromi: You announced that you’re running for mayor of London. Yes.
24:32 Congratulations. Thank you. I think you’ll get it. The influence and the audience that you already have and the shit job that Sadiq Khan is already doing that’s helping you, assisting you, pretty much is the layup for you right now at this point. London, I lived in New York, I told you this, and I went to London for a couple of weeks.
24:50 I see a lot of similarities with London and New York. Do you as well?
24:54 Brian Rose: I do, look, I moved from New York City to London permanently in 02 when I had to get the hell out of Dodge and I rebuilt my life, rebuilt my career, and I love London. London has always given me success and fortune and greatness, whereas in New York City, it literally, it nearly killed me. And so I love that city.
25:11 I’m a citizen, my children were born there, and I plan on being buried in that city. So I’ve always loved London, you know, and back in 2020, you know, when they locked that city down and we were putting out episodes that ended up getting us censored, and we could talk about that later, I was so angry at what the mayor at the time, Sadiq Khan, did because he shut down the city and I would take taxis home at night and these black cab drivers were the ultimate entrepreneurs. I love black cabs in London.
25:35 They’re like your own personal limousine. These guys were on the edge of suicide. They were on depression. They’re like, you’re my only job, Brian. I’m at home, I bought a brand new taxi for 65,000 pounds because the mayor told me to and now he won’t let me work.
25:48 And I had friends with businesses and restaurants and wine bars, and they were just dying. And at the same time, I was interviewing people like Dr. Martin Koldorf and Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford that said, this is not the solution, locking everybody down, this is wrong. And so I got so angry, I looked at the city and I said, every decision Sadiq Khan is making is actually trying to ruin this city. And I thought, how can this happen?
26:11 And I looked at the conservative candidate, Sean Bailey at the time, and I thought he was even more of a joke. And I thought, to hell with this, I’m running for mayor of London. And so we ran, we spent seven months, millions of pounds, and my face was on all the billboards. I had a battle bus with my face on it. We drove 5,000 miles through every single borough of London twice, the police pulled me over, tried to stop me from campaigning because we were in lockdown, which was ridiculous.
26:33 And we ran, and I realized one thing, it’s really hard to beat the two-party system. You’ve got Coke and Pepsi, you’ve got labor and conservative, you’ve got Democrat, Republican, and my good friend Bobby Kennedy is trying to do that in America right now, running as an independent. The problem is, is the whole system, including the media, and the media is all wrapped up in a complicit system with politics. They don’t really want the independent candidates, but I’ve watched my city now, three years later, go further and further down into the ground.
27:05 Stabbings and killings on the streets of one of the most beautiful cities in the world that are at nightmare proportions, they no longer allow our freedoms, our freedom of speech, our financial freedoms, and again, transport, housing, business. London’s a war zone. People in Dubai laugh out loud about London, whereas 20, 30 years ago, the UK was revered in this region. Now it’s not. People are exiting and moving to places like Dubai, where things are safe and taxes are low and services are there.
27:35 And so I think the entire Western governments have to stop walking around with their egos and this delusion of superiority, when in fact, their democratic fair system is broken. And so I wanna go back and honestly, take everything I’ve learned in the last seven weeks here and try to get it back into that city and take it forward for the next four years. So that’s the plan. Current mayor of the city con, conservatives have put up another joke of a candidate.
28:03 Our policies are strong. I love that city, and I’ll dedicate the next four years of my life to making it better. And this is our second time around. People have been begging me to run for three years, but I don’t really understand it. But that man has a lock on that city, but I think the truth will come out.
28:19 Radin Jahromi: I think so too. And I think, you know, you being here is almost like an educational trip, just to see how Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum runs this city so well. And there’s so many things you can take from this. And it’s not just one secret source here. There’s many things.
28:34 But I remember Sadiq Khan during COVID, he just fumbled through that so bad and has made the city go down so much further after that. He was not a decision maker. He can’t make decisions on his own, not only on his own, but even in a quick manner. I guess that’s kind of what Dubai does really well here. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum makes a decision straight away, right?
28:57 Actions there. And I think that’s something that you would do bringing that culture there.
29:02 Brian Rose: This is such a fascinating place because His Highness, as you mentioned, has this long-term vision, you know, the 2030, the 32, the 2070 plan. And not only it’s him, but it’s his family. Like their entire reputation is on the line.
29:15 And they have this long-term vision. You know, when I was running for mayor, I had people from the House of Lords, you know, people from the Metropolitan Police all working with me on my policies. I published a 65-page manifesto and we had plans for housing, for transportation, for the police force, for crime, for business. And at one point, I looked at all these people on Zoom and I said, you know what? If we do what we wanna do, the next mayor is gonna take credit for what we do.
29:37 I said, is everyone okay with that? They said, yeah, we’re with you, Brian. And that’s the problem with this broken system is that no one wants to do anything because it’s a four-year term. And another four-year term, maybe if you’re lucky, same with America, I’m calling out the United States as well. And so no one ever does anything for the long-term.
29:52 If you wanna solve problems like transport and housing, folks, you need a 20, 30-year vision. Look at Dubai. You need an unwavering vision, maybe for 50 years. And so you look at this thing in London, people are electing themselves for their personal benefit, for their personal reputations, usually to line their pockets through government or to try to work for the next office. Sadiq just wants to be prime minister.
30:13 Look at what Boris did. He was mayor and he was prime minister. So they don’t care about making these intelligent long-term decisions. And Dubai is the perfect example of someone doing the opposite. And people don’t understand this city.
30:26 You would think a monarchy here wouldn’t care about feedback. Are you kidding me? Everything that happens in this city, including when you land on Emirates Airline, how did we do? How was the feedback? They move in very fast proportion.
30:39 He calls himself the Shake CEO, okay? He gets rid of the bottom 20% of performers. He runs this place like a business. It is a business and it’s a beautiful thing to behold. And again, it’s not what people think it is.
30:52 They think it doesn’t have this, it doesn’t have that. Oh, Brian, you’re in Dubai. You don’t have freedom of speech. I’m like, oh really? Like I do on YouTube?
30:58 Oh, I don’t. Like I do because of Ofcom in the UK that told me I couldn’t ask questions about lockdowns, about masks, about social distancing. Regardless of the fact that I was right about all those things, that doesn’t matter. We should have an open and honest dialogue to where we can find it because the best ideas always win. And so these illusions of freedoms in the West, they need to be questioned right now.
31:20 And this place is a shining example. And that’s why, honestly, the last seven weeks have been the perfect place for me to be to get London back on track because I’ve just literally absorbed all the greatness of His Highness’s vision for this place. And it’s incredible.
31:35 Radin Jahromi: When you have leaders, especially in UK, that can’t make decisions and just hand everything back to the people, you decide, you decide. Then you get things like Brexit, which was a big mistake.
31:46 You look at the unemployment’s gone through the roof, the economy’s shrunk, big mistake. Some people should not be making decisions for the country. You shouldn’t let the people vote. They don’t know what they want sometimes. So that’s why, and I think why I really like you for this role in politics is because you’re weathered.
32:03 You’ve been from being addicted to being on Wall Street making millions of money, millions of dollars. You’ve been through all the ranks in the social economical world of things. So you know exactly, you can meet every… Every genre of person in the streets.
32:20 Brian Rose: That’s who I go out and talk to, really.
32:23 Every category of people from the millionaires making millions a week to the drug addicts to seeing what they need, right? What do they need to be able to get off the streets, to not be homeless, to not be addicted, to not sell drugs, to not do violence?
32:36 Radin Jahromi: So that’s why I think for you, it’s just such a perfect case study for this. I feel like your whole life has been to get you ready for this.
32:44 Brian Rose: Look, I’m not doing this because I wanna do it.
32:46 I’m doing this because I have to do it. And that’s the thing, I mean, honestly, the pay is garbage, the hate is real, and it’s probably one of the hardest things I’ll ever do. But I owe it to the city that really gave me everything. And that’s why I wanna do it. And look, I went to every single borough in London.
33:00 I hang out on the streets. One of my most popular boroughs is Tower Hamlets. You’re like, this is one of the most urban, downtrodden, problemed boroughs in London. And yet when I go there, all the kids on the street, they love me. Because they see me, they see me doing real things, putting out inspirational messages, stay in fit.
33:17 I go to the boxing clubs there. I go and I see what’s going on. I go talk to the knife crime centers and what they’re doing with the youth. I can talk to anybody in that city and I really care about what goes on there. The problem is, is trying to get through this brainwashing that the two-party system does.
33:32 Unfortunately, many people, three days before the election on May 1st or April 30th, they’ll go and say, oh, I need to vote. What party has my interests? And Labor says, Labor says, we have your interests, we’re looking out for the worker. They’re not actually. And so my father voted Labor, I’m gonna go vote.
33:49 And then they don’t think about it twice. I’m asking everybody out there just to really zoom out and look at who is making decisions in your best interest. And that’s what I wanna do. So we’re gonna get out there. We’ve got some amazing policies.
34:00 I can’t wait to meet the people in the streets. This time we won’t be locked down. We’ll have a battle bus, we’ll be out there. So it’s gonna be epic.
34:06 Radin Jahromi: Yeah, it’s gonna be epic.
34:07 I’m looking forward to seeing it. Can you be a prime minister in the UK?
34:12 Brian Rose: You know, I’m a British citizen and so I can be anything, really.
34:16 Radin Jahromi: Yeah, I’m a mayor, a minister, which then you could be prime minister as well. A lot of people don’t realize both Winston Churchill and Boris Johnson are both also Americans.
34:28 Brian Rose: Yeah, exactly, Winston Churchill and Boris Johnson was born in America, Winston Churchill as well. So people don’t realize there’s a long history. Although when people hear my accent, they say, how can American be that? I’m like, I’m a British citizen, I can show you my passport. It’s the same color as your passport, which gives me all the same rights in your country.
34:45 There you go. So there’s proof is in the pudding. There you go. And so I always try to remind that of people and there’s a rich history in Britain of people from all nations coming. And that’s the thing that Britain forgets sometimes.
34:56 It is a country of immigrants. I talked when I was running for mayor three years ago, I said, raise your hand if your parents came from another country, maybe about 10%. Raise your hands if your grandparents came from another country, 40%. What about your great grandparents? Pretty rude, every hand goes up.
35:11 Look at the royal family. They’re not British. They’re German and Greek and all these other things. So like Britain soon forgets that it all comes from other nations. And so as an American or born in America and now I’m also British, I think I’m gonna bring just the best ideas.
35:27 And that’s why coming to a place like Dubai is just as important. I have my golden visa here. I was blessed to get that from an incredible member of government here. And again, I think that brings more ammunition to the table, the more experience I can have.
35:40 Radin Jahromi: Absolutely.
35:41 Is that the goal? Is being prime minister the goal at the end?
35:44 Brian Rose: No, not really. What I really wanna do is-
35:47 Radin Jahromi: But it’s not up to you. If you’re a man, the people love you.
35:50 It’s not up to you.
35:51 Brian Rose: Look, like you said, you have to see what happens. It’s fascinating to watch Donald Trump right now because Donald Trump gets up and says, look, did I need any of this? Like, did I need these problems? Did I need lawsuits in different countries and owing half a billion dollars and all these things and the persecution and the hate and God forbid assassination attempts.
36:10 Do I need, did I need this? I could have sat there and just been rich and lived in Mar-a-Lago and do all these things. But he was called to do it. So I am here to serve. And you know, to be honest with you, that’s the biggest mistake I made for 40 years of my life.
36:22 I thought it was all about me. And when you live your life for you, you will be an unhappy, depressed and maybe alcoholic or drug-addicted person because life is not about you. And this is what they don’t teach us on MTV and they don’t teach us on TikTok. And they don’t teach us in all the movies. They say, oh, what have you done?
36:41 I wanna see you on the private jet. I wanna see you with the Bugatti. No, that’s not the way it works. We are here to serve. We are all one.
36:50 And I learned this after 13 years of speaking to over a thousand people on London Real. Every single one of my greatest guests on London Real at hour two or hour three of the conversation, they finished and they say, you know what, Brian, we’re all one. I remember the first time I heard it, the story in the eight, six time Mr. Olympia said it. He said, I know that doesn’t make sense, Brian, because you see that guy across the street, he’s yelling and you say, look at that dude.
37:11 He’s like, I’m not him. Yes, we are. We’re all one. And ultimately we’re here to serve. And once you get in that service mindset, and that’s where all the joy, all the happiness, all the purpose happens.
37:24 And that’s why I respect someone like you who’s telling these great stories. You’re being of service. I’m telling these stories. I’m teaching my students. I’m investing in these companies.
37:32 It’s all about making someone else better. When you do that, man, I’m telling you, this life becomes beautiful. So look, if I’m called to serve, I’ll do it. I’ll do it. I’ll do it.
37:43 You know, that’s what this is all about. And the problem is, is that whenever I revert back to it’s all about Brian, it’s not too far out where the unhappiness comes. So I got to remind myself that every day to be of service. And that’s why I win. This might not be the most convenient thing to do.
37:58 I’m like, I got to say yes. Let’s say yes. And I’m so glad I did it, man. I’m having a great time talking. I appreciate you.
38:03 Radin Jahromi: Thank you for coming. You know something that I pick up from you? You don’t have an ounce of racism in you. You don’t have an ounce of bias on any cultures or nothing. We are all one.
38:15 And I think you’ve picked that up from podcasting so much. Talking to different people and realizing that. So that’s why with that, and from being in every category in society from rich to bottom combined, when you go into politics, you’re going to shoot up. You’re going to be a rocket. Man, that’s an issue in observation.
38:33 Brian Rose: Yeah, I don’t know. I grew up in a family where it was just not an issue. And we always just treated everybody the same and just gone all around the world. And that was so many fascinating different types of people. And like everybody is the same and we are all one.
38:47 And the problem is it just takes people some time to figure that out. It’s just our job to keep pushing that message, I think.
38:53 Radin Jahromi: You know, you’ve podcasted with so many different people, right? What are some of the personal habits and practices you’ve adopted as a result of those interviews?
39:01 Brian Rose: Yeah, look, so I’ve had some incredible people I’ve spoken with.
39:04 The first one that comes to mind is, look, Dan Pena, he’s the trillion dollar man. He’s the high performance coach with the castle in Scotland, American ex-military. He screams a lot. He’s like your grandpa that yells at you. And you don’t want to hear what he says, but you know he’s right.
39:18 And he’s one of my most popular guests. I both love and hate Dan equally. I’m currently not, we’re currently not speaking, but that happens every year or two. And so, you know. It’s like a brotherly relationship.
39:28 It’s a father-son, look, me and him are the father-son archetype. That’s why people love watching us. It came to my show 10 years ago. I published a show on Easter Sunday and he always gets mad at me because he said, Brian, you made me compete with the Lord when you published the show on his day. And he said, you made it hard for me.
39:44 And so we had a 10 year relationship. It’s been amazing. But one of the things Dan taught me was a few things. First of all, affirmations. Every day you need to wake up and verbally out loud speak your affirmations.
39:55 What’s an affirmation? One of your goals said, as if it’s true today, I am privileged and excited to be a billionaire. I am uncomfortable in leading a team of 20 people. Now you might not be those things, but you say it every day because the mind is very pliable. It really doesn’t necessarily know what reality is.
40:15 And if you continually drumming it, what is true, that will get you to where you wanna be. And it really works. These kinds of things, the vision boards, meditation practices are really important to me. The other thing Dan taught me is is to engineer risk into my life. Most people listening to this or watching this are not taking enough risk, period, period.
40:34 And so if you’re not engineering risk into your life, you will not have any wins in your life. And here’s the thing, your losses, quote unquote losses, first of all, nobody remembers them. And your losses, even those turn into be wins. And so Dan Pena taught me, I wasn’t taking enough risk. It’s not every year I look out in front of me and I think, how can I take some big risks, some big like, whoo, I don’t know what’s gonna happen here.
40:58 Like that’s crazy. And I always say, what I wanna do with London Real is, is I wanna do something next year that I can’t even fathom doing. Like I can’t even dream of something we’re gonna do. That’s where I wanna be. Which means you’re coming up with these crazy, big, bodacious, once in a generation goals.
41:15 So I encourage everybody to do that. Look, every day is precious. Like nobody gets out alive. We don’t have that much time. How much time do you have?
41:25 A day, a week, a month, a year? You’ve gotta go big. You owe it to this beautiful gift of life to go as hard as you can every day, as big as you can every day. Take those risks. What you think is a risk, it’s a joke.
41:38 Most people are so concerned about what people think of them. They care more about people they don’t like, right? Of what they say about with their lives who aren’t gonna help them or care anyways. And you gotta just go pull the trigger, as he would say. So that’s one of the big things I learned.
41:52 Radin Jahromi: Brian, I wish I had more time with you. I wish I had more time with you. Please come back when you’re back in Dubai next month.
41:57 Brian Rose: I’ll be back in a couple months. We can definitely do it again, man.
41:59 Appreciate you. Yeah, I really enjoyed this, man.
42:01 Radin Jahromi: Of course, we’re at the airport now. Thank you for everything. Thank you for blessing us today.
42:05 Brian Rose: Thank you for doing that.
