Spencer Lodge - You Don't Lack Talent, You Lack Courage: How To Take Control & Own Your Future

Full transcript: Spencer Lodge on London Real

4:24 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Spencer Lodge, the award-winning entrepreneur, business strategist and podcast host. You have spent over 3 decades mastering the world of sales and business leadership, and we’re recognizing the top 100 most influential people in Dubai for your impact on the financial services industry. You’ve launched multi $1,000,000 ventures, coached thousands of salespeople, and played a key role in scaling businesses around the world.

4:50 You’re also the host of Unscripted with Spencer Lodge, one of the most listened to podcast in the region with guests like Tony Robbins, Stephen Bartlett, Ant Middleton, Grant Cardone and most importantly, me. You ultimately believe that mastering sales is the single most important skill for business success and that without it, even the best ideas will fail. Your mission is to help as many people as possible achieve extraordinary results by changing their mindset, taking responsibility, and embracing discomfort.

5:18 Spencer, welcome to London Real in Dubai. I am so excited to be here. Thank you for having me on the show. It’s really kind of you. Dude, it’s my pleasure. I sat down with you for your show I think a year ago and we had an amazing discussion.

5:31 I find you an incredible host. You’re really intense and we were really having a meeting of the minds. I think we could have gone on for another hour or two. So really enjoyed that. I’ve gotten to know you and now I want to go deeper today. Lots to talk about, but I wanted to jump in maybe right on that top line part about sales.

5:50 I don’t think I’ve ever had this discussion where sales is the most important thing, and I’m curious why you say that. I’d say today sales is still a bit of a dirty word. If you tell your mom you’re a salesperson, then she’s like, oh, why aren’t you a doctor or a lawyer? When in fact, salespeople are usually some of the most highly paid people in the organization. They make things happen.

6:12 And if you’re an entrepreneur, you know you’re dead without them. And I’m curious, why do you say that? And why do so many people still not really recognize that? People like the word entrepreneur, they like the word business owner, founder. OK, these these kind of cool words that are associated with starting a business. But anyone that starts a business, the first thing they’ve got to work out is, is how they’re going to find clients.

6:37 Doesn’t matter what what the job role is. If you’re the CEO of a company or the managing director in these fancy titles, it’s like you’re a salesman. Now you might be selling different things in different ways to maybe the guys that are on the bottom rung of sales in the business, but you’re still a salesperson. So how, how did it get to be dirty? And if for me, I look at salespeople as the backbone of a business, you see the, the, the administration and the operational and, and different functions in the business, looking down their nose at salespeople.

7:04 Well, let’s see how your salary gets paid if there’s no sales, you know, because if you think about it, the company doesn’t make any sales. You don’t have a job. So should we maybe respect these guys a little bit more? And then let’s add to that the psychological highs and lows on a daily basis that they have to deal with one minute on fire in the car giving it yes, and the next minute getting a no. And that feeling that goes with that they have to deal with those people that work in other functions in a business, get their salary, they get the medical insurance, they get everything delivered for them. OK, they’ve got a, a cheap KPIs, but if they have a bad month, do they still get paid?

7:39 Hell yeah. Sales people don’t. So I think they should be respected for bringing the revenue into the business and I think they should be respected for the highs and lows they go through. And actually we should champion them because these are the guys, as you say, that are making it happen. Yeah. How do people become good at sales? Because when I look at your background and I want to go into it, I don’t see the making of a salesman as you grew up as a young kid.

8:02 So how did you get good at it and how can you recognise a good salesperson and what makes a good salesperson? So this is a really interesting question, so thank you for asking it because I believe that sales is a skill just like law or accountancy or anything else. It’s a skill that you need to learn. A lot of people have got into sales by by accident, you know, they couldn’t get the job that they really wanted. So they go into some business development function in a business and, and, and they have to learn to be a salesperson or their grandmother says, well, you’ve got the gift of the gab, so you you should be a salesperson. To me, it’s not being a great salesperson, It’s learning the skills #1 and #2 understanding that selling isn’t talking, selling is listening.

8:41 And so you have to be a really good listener. And there are lots of people out there that don’t listen very well, but great salespeople do. You need to really understand what’s making your client tick and what’s important to them. Whereas a lot of people think I just got to pound you until you say yes, but you want to listen to them, see if you can solve their problem, but more importantly, reiterate back to them what they want and create that relationship or understanding. Is that what a salesperson does?

9:08 Imagine us changing the title of salesperson to Chief Problem Solver. So that’s their job title. Chief Problem Solver in a business, they’d probably get a lot more respect, but that’s all we’re doing with everybody we meet. Yes, at the end of the day, we’re trying to create revenue for our business and we’re trying to match what we have as a product or a service with the need of that person. So a great salesperson is just trying to identify the person that has the need, understand their need in great detail, and see if they can bring a solution to that problem. Then you’re respected, OK.

9:38 Then the transaction is done in a really structured, professional and respectful way and everybody wins. It’s like a customized solution. And often times your client values things that in your opinion aren’t valuable to you. Our own expensive for you and you can deliver those. And sometimes the things you think they’ll value the most aren’t valuable to them. And the only way you know that is by listening. Yeah, being being great at asking questions. And I think that’s why I enjoy podcasts because I like to learn.

10:06 I’m naturally very curious about people and, and I’m no different if I’m in a selling situation, I want to learn about somebody. I want to understand what makes them tick. I want to understand what their challenges are. And I want to understand, you know, is there something that I can bring to the table that could solve that problem in some way? Now, sometimes personally, my mind runs away with me. So as I’m listening, my mind’s coming up as solutions all the time.

10:27 But maybe because I’ve been doing it for a long time, that’s why it’s like that. What’s the biggest mistake most people make in sales, whether they’re just beginning or even seasoned people? Respecting themselves is a really important one, and the second one is understanding that it’s a skill and you have to invest time in learning and getting educated rather than thinking you’re just going to wing it. OK, what do you mean by respecting yourself? Well, salespeople can very easily disrespect themselves. They can.

10:56 They can. They can because they get lots of rejection. OK, so when you start off in sales, I mean my boss told me on my first day in sales, I, I, I swear this is the absolute truth of what happened is this. Door to door selling furniture. No, no, it wasn’t for office.

11:08 Equipment. Office equipment, right? And it and I literally had to make 100 cold calls and he said get me 100 no’s, then make 100 door knocks and then 100 cold calls the next day get me 100 no’s. So I’m I’m a kid, but what he was doing, he was teaching me that no is good. You’re going to get a lot of it anyway. So learn to accept that there’s nothing bad about it. And, and, and at that stage in my career, as young as I was, as moldable as I was, I was learning one of the most important skills within the sales industry, which a lot of people don’t learn.

11:39 Get used to know, yeah, and bring them in as just got to line them up, knock them out. If you get 100 Nos, then you’ve done the correct thing that day. My boss said to me when I got into financial services at 23, he said to me you’re 23 years old. What self respecting 50 year old man is it ever going to trust his money to you? And I was like, Oh yeah, he said you have to know more than anybody else because you don’t have life experience on your side. So be a whiz.

12:08 Understand everything there is to know about sales, understand everything there is to know about this industry. Put them together and you’ll be able to show with your expertise that you can bring value. And that was really important to me to understand. And he was right. Who’s going to trust a kid with their money?

12:23 So I think that in sales, it’s really important, like really important that we don’t go into sales and just kind of fumble our way through. It’s never going to work. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s like crypto. How how do you ever get anywhere with investing in crypto unless you take some time to learn about it and study it, Go and go and have going to go to classes, get people to teach you how it all works, then invest in it. Now, if I said that to anyone, they’d say, well, that’s, that’s exactly what you should do.

12:48 But when it comes to sales, it’s oh, you know, well, you know, I’m a good communicator, you know, I can, I can knock on doors or I, I can I can make calls. Yeah, but why make 100 bad calls when you can make 100 good calls? Do. You think we’ll ever have degrees at universities and sales? Why don’t we?

13:07 I mean, my daughter right now, she’s studying philosophy and a bunch of other things. If she said there was a sales degree, I’d be like, you’re all over that. That degree would be worth 10X anything else because she could get out and be be ready to do almost anything. You know, you go anywhere. Imagine four years, Spencer the details. A class on cold calling.

13:28 A class on mindset and rejection. A class on each one of these things a semester. On cold calling, imagine that you’d be a. Master bulletproof role plays internships telling you Harvard’s missing a beat. But why don’t they do that?

13:42 I I’m always baffled by this. I’m really baffled by this. Because they’ll do marketing degrees, right? OK, Degree in marketing. Yeah.

13:49 And I’m like, well, marketing and sales are partners. They’re friends. They’re OK. They’re enemies sometimes in business, but the reality is they’re friends, right? It’s push selling and pool selling. It’s marketing’s pool selling.

13:58 Sales is push selling. It’s like there should be a degree in that. Yeah, it’s just has this weird connotation, this weird, you know, thought process around it. It’s icky, isn’t it? It’s icky even though, like, some of the highest paid people in the world, a great salesman and every great entrepreneur is by definition a great salesperson. Elon Musks and the Tim Cooks and all these people, look at them, They’re selling all the time.

14:19 They’re not building personal brands on the back of it. But who’s front and center selling the new iPhone? It’s Tim Cook walking around the Apple campus. It’s crazy, you know, now people really understand and when I got into this business I’m in now, I had to be the front and front and centre sales person and I didn’t mind it. I was ready. But if you’re not ready as an entrepreneur and think you think you’re going to outsource it, like forget about it, right? Yeah, no chance, because if you’re an entrepreneur, you might need to raise some money.

14:45 You’ve got to sell. Yeah, you might need to persuade people to come and join your start up with no big salaries. You’ve got to sell. So it’s in all parts of our lives. And Mark Cuban says if there’s one skill you have to learn, the first skill must be sales.

14:56 Everything comes after that. Do you find that you can continue learning? Like I sometimes get these reels Oing U on Instagram and these people saying like, here’s three things about sales and I watch it and I’m like, damn, that’s pretty good. You know, I’m just constantly getting some knowledge. And Chris Voss, he’s that famous FBI negotiator and he always says get them to say no, don’t get them to say yes. And I don’t know if I completely agree with that, but I’m playing with it and trying it and I don’t know I’m I’m constantly getting new ideas on sales.

15:23 But sales is about systems and processes. Greatest salespeople have systems and processes they follow. So if I look at my success when I was actually selling, I had a system that I followed, OK, I was a guy that was had three, three options. I could cold call, I could network or I could get referrals. Well, I didn’t want a cold call.

15:43 Nobody does networking. I’m the guy in a networking event in the corner and looking at my phone going, why am I here? Why even you? I don’t like going into a room of strangers called. OK, if I go in and I’m coming to see you and you introduce me to three people, that’s fine. But if I don’t know anyone, Oh, that’s that’s that’s what if. They know you because of the show and stuff. Even someone said it, I was hiking the other day I was coming down the mountain.

16:05 This lady went you’re famous and I’m like, am I? And I would just immediately, basically, I just felt uncomfortable with that, as you said that. But, but I think that that as, as sales people, understanding your systems and the process you follow is important. So for me it was referrals. OK, Now I, I wasn’t the best salesperson, but I was the best person in getting referrals on the planet. Nobody in, in my industry could come close to me because I obsessed about it and I listened to every video. You know, back then it was the cassette tapes and the CDs, whether it was Tony, Zig, Ziglar, whoever it was Jim Rowan and stuff like that.

16:37 Nowadays there’s many more and there is some really good content out there. There’s there’s an Italian guy in the UK that wears really bright yellow suits and he’s a cold calling expert and he gets and his cold calls are brilliant and he literally does them and you can hear the person speaking at the other end. And I learnt something from him everyday he cold calls people, he says, he says to them, if I, if I told you this would this was a cold call, would you pick your phone up and throw it out the window?

17:04 And I love lines like that. This great starts. If I told you this was a cold call, would you forgive me? And that’s why I really, I think that when you’ve got people like that, that are giving some value in some way, learn, try it. It might work for you, might not, but definitely listen.

17:18 But it’s really a process. It’s not about a fancy trick or A1 liner. It’s really about a system. And that is you’re doing tons of outbounds, you’re following up with people, you’re doing all these things that ultimately get the results just like an engineer would or just like a designer would. And that’s where you should look at it as like a skill, not some magic ability, not something to do when you’re inspired like an artist.

17:40 You just got to grind and put in the time. Yeah. OK, our mutual fund Grant Cardone I remember once said something, it just came into my mind. He said, he said self standing up close, sitting down. And I think what he meant by that is the emotion, the excitement is done standing up.

17:55 Maybe that’s when you’re on the phone and you’re standing up or maybe you’re with them and then when you close you’re sitting down. Which means, OK, now I’m going to go through all the details and get them to sign and make sure they know everything to where when it’s closed, they’re happy. They don’t come back later saying I didn’t know that. Do you agree with that? Do you ever think about that? Really.

18:13 OK. So let’s say we were doing some training right now and we had 10 people in a room and we decided to do some role plays. Is it going to be better if they stood up to the role plays or sit down? It’s always going to be better if they’re standing up. OK, there’s more energy. The esophagus is open.

18:28 We’re breathing better. So I believe you should stand up when you make every call. They say smile when you dial It’s it’s it’s it has purpose behind it. Smile being a positive mindset when you dial. Nobody wants to answer, answer the phone to someone going hello. You know they want someone positive on the phone when you when whatever it is for you.

18:47 And I don’t believe it’s a numbers game. Sales, OK, I don’t believe like a lot of people do, it’s a numbers game. I believe it’s the right numbers game. So for example, you can make 100 cold calls or you can call 10 referrals. What would you rather do? I’d rather call the 10 referrals all day long. I’ve probably got a better chance of converting 10 referrals than I have 100 cold calls. Well, 10 referrals might take me half an hour. 100 cold calls might take me half a day.

19:14 So for me, I don’t believe the numbers game should be like that. OK, so I see it a bit different, but you know, I’ve got a lot of benefit from spending time with Grant as well. And, you know, what does he bring to the table? A system. If you go, go and do his course, there’s a system, there’s processes and there’s high energy, right?

19:30 And that’s that’s the ingredients we need. I remember one of his process I think was the follow up. He’s like so many people, just salespeople. They, they miss the follow up, they don’t do the follow up and the follow up out of that and the follow up after that. Maybe because that’s a little more grunty and maybe you don’t have the adrenaline spikes with the the initial outreach, but that’s the system, right?

20:45 The other thing is we, we we forget that if you speak to 100 people, there might be people in there that it’s not the right time. Yeah. They might have just had an argument with their wife. Yeah. They might have just had a bit of road rage in the traffic.

20:59 You know, they might have come out of a busy meeting. They might have a busy day. It might not be the right time. Now, that doesn’t mean they don’t like you. It just might not be the right time.

21:07 So why would you not go back to them again? Maybe the next time is the right time and people will always put you off by saying call me back in three months, OK, Or call me back next month. I don’t know. Can I call you back tomorrow? You know, if we’re going to do something, I’m I’m going to demonstrate some value to you.

21:23 So let me demonstrate that value and then you can decide whether I’m of I’m of value to you. OK. And if people are intrigued by this, what do you think is the best way for people to learn how to sell? The first thing I would do is I’d go online and I’d look because different people appeal to different types. You know, there there is some great sales trainers out there Grants a great 1. You know, Chris has got his Chris Voss has his approach, but there’s many out there.

21:45 But go and say to yourself, this is a skill. I’m going to learn this skill and I’m going to find someone whose personality and approach I like so that I can learn the skill from them. OK. And then always be a student. OK, love that.

21:57 All right, love that. I want to talk about your background because I can’t even believe you’re here based on your background. There’s nothing in your early days that would imply that you would be as successful as you are today in my opinion. But I want to go into that. But first of all, I know you is like the King of Dubai.

22:13 Well, not the king of Dubai, but one of the most plugged in guys, an OG here who’s been here for a long time and seen the whole thing grow. Can you tell me about your experiences in Dubai? How long have you been here? Why did you stay here and like what you’ve seen over this past decade plus? Imagine you go and work for a company where the boss that you work for is really ambitious and he really wants to be successful and he really wants to take you with him. Now plant that into a city.

22:45 Bear in mind I’ve lived in nine countries before I came here. So I’ve been around the world, South America, Far East, Africa, Europe, I’ve been all over Eastern Europe. So I’ve I’ve got a fair understanding of what people are like around the world. And then I come here to this city and and I remember what happened and, and people won’t necessarily know all of the UAE, but I landed at the airport and I had I had a meeting in a place called Alain. Now, Alain is a town about an hour and a half from Dubai.

23:12 So I arrive at 2:00 in the morning. I jump in a taxi and I give them the guy, the taxi driver, the Hilton Hotel Alain. And he’s like Alain. And I’m like, that’s what it says. He went Alain. I’m like, yeah, so we drove through the night and we got to this hotel.

23:29 I wake up the next morning, open my curtains. OK, There’s mountains. I’m not. Are we in the right country? I thought this was desert.

23:38 Anyway, the guy I was meeting met me. We had the meeting and he drove me to Abu Dhabi and. And it was very Arabic, you know, it’s very, very big part of Arabia. Lots of sand, lots of desert, lots of kind of old buildings. Nothing, nothing too shranky and sexy. And then later on in the day, about 5:00, we drove to Dubai from Abu Dhabi.

23:54 And as we’re coming towards Dubai, I could see these lights and these stuff going on in the distance. I’m like, that’s Dubai. And so we’re driving up this highway and I’m like, and so they said to the guy, I said, is that Dubai? He went, no, I said, what’s that? He said, oh, that’s Dubai Marina. That’s a project that just started. I’m like, that is a Marina.

24:13 It’s the biggest Marina project ever built in the world. And this is the first part of Dubai that I saw. And I’m like, holy macaroni, what year is this? This is 2005. Five OK 20 years ago the.

24:23 Marina had six towers that had just been finished. The rest of it was nothing. And they had dugout, the water, the water. Was there, the water was there. Just. 6 towers but not both ends, only one end.

24:31 So you couldn’t go all the way through and loop around? Wow. So that place that I know you at, that was all blocked off at the beginning. OK. And the palm was.

24:38 Palm was built but there weren’t houses. There were a few houses on it. OK, so they were just started so they were just selling them off plan when I was there. And then people were moving into the first houses and I and then people would say, yeah, you can buy a house for half £1,000,000 on, on the Palm Palm Jamira. And I’m like, who the hell would you want to live on a Mermaid Island?

24:58 You’ve got to be nuts. But I also said that about you, wouldn’t it? I’m like, who the hell would you want to live in the Marina? And this is like, who the hell would want to live in JBR? You know, all of this stuff is like, why would they want to do that?

25:08 But you could just see that there was real ambition and what I learnt very early on is that we don’t have politics here. So in England, what do we meet? We meet, how’s the weather, how’s the traffic, how’s public transport, politics, religion, normal conversations in the UK, We don’t have politics here and that was really refreshing. We don’t have weather either because it’s either hot or mega hot. So hot is all it is. So I’m in a country where you can see there’s ambition, you can see there’s lots of stuff being done across the Rd. from my office.

25:39 At the time they were, they were just about to build the Burj Khalifa. And so it was a big construction site of which nothing came out of the ground at first because all the foundations and the underground car parks were being put in. But then slowly this building came out of the ground and every week another floor went up and it was literally outside of my office window. And I’m like. Wow.

25:59 And this huge shopping sound like, wow. And they’re like, this is going to be a whole city, a whole district. This is downtown. And I’m like, I knew it as the desert. I was running around with a football out in the desert before. So I saw this going on and I could see that there was a, there’s a lot about this place that was that was cool. And another thing that was really interesting is every time my mum, my mum and dad came to visit, my dad’s an architect. Every time mum and dad came to visit, my dad was like, oh look at that building, oh look at that. He was spotting stuff he hadn’t seen three months before and he couldn’t believe how quickly they were constructing it. And so that gave me a good understanding of what was going here in the ambition and the 11 of the greatest marketing statements I saw, they were building the World Islands and as they were building, there was a billboard on the Sheikh Zahid Road and it said Dubai puts the world on the map. I.

26:47 Know it’s just that is so cool. Very well said. Yeah. Did anything make you want to hesitate coming here or were you just kind of like, I like the energy, I want to be here? So a lot of people when they live overseas for the first time, they’ve they’ve got a transition that the, the, the culturally is a big shock for them and everything else. I came here after living in different countries. And so it was, it was another place to come, OK. It was once I got here that I saw the opportunity and the amount of people that were moving here, not tourism wasn’t big then.

27:17 So everyone that was coming here was an expat to work and the numbers were just colossal. They were growing all of the time. Even back then. Yeah, but I also was here in 2008 when it fell apart. OK, so I saw all of that. You know, the city emptied.

27:30 Know we have traffic here now. We had traffic like that then, but then it stopped. Everyone left. And so literally the motorway, this exiled Rd. was empty and so it was really interesting to watch.

27:41 It will happen. So financial crisis happened and then they stopped basically doing real estate and building here just because everything was hurting. Not a lot of money out there current it just it just stopped and slowed down. OK. And then it came back. It came back.

27:55 That’s right. OK. And how different is now compared to 20 years ago, you know? So there’s some downsides with growth, so we have to be honest about that. And so for me, 20 years ago, wherever I went, to a bar, to a restaurant or a social club, wherever that may be, a sports event, you’d bump into people, you know, everywhere you went.

28:18 And that was really nice. It felt like you belonged to part of a community, a wider community than just your area. Now with so many people here, we’re seeing these geographical areas separated and the traffic’s bad. So people may be on the palm of the Marina don’t want to go far. You know, no one wants to go to the DIFC of an evening because the traffic’s bad. So that was that’s one problem.

28:38 But the other problem, and I’m saying this as a complainer, but I shouldn’t complain, is the the amount of tourists that come here. We didn’t have that back then. And so I don’t know who’s an expat and who’s a tourist. All those years ago, I knew you were working here. OK, you, whatever your job was, you were working here.

28:53 And we were similar because of that, both living away from our homes in another country, building the future for ourselves and our families. And so it’s very easy to connect. OK. And now a lot of that is tourists, and they’re only here for the weekend of the week and it feels like more they’re tourists as opposed to people that have decided to live here. You you don’t necessarily make the effort to get to know people in the way you would have done before.

29:16 OK, you know, I came here, I think in O 7 just to check it out. I was working in the city. I brought my girlfriend at the time. I stayed at the one and only I remember and I’ll be honest, I didn’t get it. I was like, because usually when I went to places I wanted to see the local culture, it was harder for me to find it here. I saw a lot of nice things, but I was working in the City of London so I’d been to nice restaurants and I just didn’t really understand the vision.

29:42 I was only here for three days and I left thinking it’s OK, but I don’t really get the vibe. Then I came back in 21 or 22 and I was totally sold. You know, it just, it had grown so much and the diversity of the expats were here and it was this amazing community. And like, I was at an event last night, I guess it’s a networking event, but I was walking on, I met these two girls that are in London. And I said, I said, you know, this is an incredible place.

30:11 They’re like, this is amazing. And we were like, they the girl said, if we were in London, we wouldn’t have even talked to you. We wouldn’t have exchanged numbers and we wouldn’t be talking about the future. And I’m like, is that true? We wouldn’t have even talked to each other? No, we wouldn’t have.

30:23 We would have just, you know, kind of looked at each other and kept on going our way. We wouldn’t have wanted to help each other. So you got the same three people, you move them to a vibration like Dubai. And now we’re like, hey, how are you? How can I help that explain that Spencer explain the magic that happens here? It’s very easy to explain actually. OK, if you live in London and your family are from the local area, your mum, your dad, your aunts, your uncles, your cousins, you have a whole infrastructure around you. Your your life isn’t around people you work with always. You might go out on a Friday night for a couple of beers after work in London, but the rest of your time will you with your family and your and your friends from school and people that you’ve built over the years here. You arrive with none of that and it’s lonely, OK? There’s no one that you know.

31:09 Now, you might have a friend of a friend that knows somebody that lives in Dubai or someone you know there. There, there can be connections and you reach out and you feel awkward because, you know, can I, can we have a coffee? I’d like to pick your brain. But everybody that lives here in Dubai was in exactly that position the day they arrived. And some people a little bit better than others, but it’s still lonely. And because of that, that energy has come from everyone going. I was in your shoes once too.

31:34 I’m new too. Can we try and help each other? Whereas in London, Well, we’re busy new. You know, I lived in Amsterdam. The reason I moved to Amsterdam is that as a kid, I’ve been, my dad was with Shell.

31:47 And so I knew lots of international Dutch people. Yeah. And I’m like, yeah, Dutch people are great. But I went to Amsterdam. I didn’t get invited to anyone’s home in four years in Amsterdam.

31:57 And I’m like, that’s interesting. Yeah, same with me in London. Maybe that was me. Yeah, But people don’t invite you. They don’t include you because they already have a sufficient network. They don’t need new people.

32:10 But we need people here, right? Because people will help us breathe. And I think that’s important. And everyone’s doing business here and it moves fast and it moves almost 24/7. Almost.

32:21 It does move 24. Yeah, and more so than I can get a European city. You maybe you’d say it moves like New York City, but I might argue it moves faster. And so when I’m out, I mean, one night in, one night in Dubai, I can make more amazing connections that I could in 30 days in London. Things that go somewhere, things that like 2 days later things are happening and calls.

32:40 And then it’s, it’s, it’s just hard to explain to people, you know, how this place just wants everyone to win? Imagine just being living in a House of optimistic people. Just imagine that you’re like, no cynicism, no, no, no, no realism, just optimism, OK, and ambition. And there’s a whole house full of those types of people. It’s going to rub off on you. It’s going to impact you positively. It’s going to make you work an extra hour. It’s going to make you push yourself a bit harder. But then imagine a city full of that. Everyone’s optimistic.

33:12 And if you’re not optimistic, you leave very quickly, which is great go. Yeah, I always tell people like if I go to, you know, Old Street where I where I’m based in London and I walk around and I look at all the people going by, most of those people don’t really want to be there. They’re phoning in, they’re collecting a check from somebody, the government or a business and they’re kind of trudging through life and you get this vibe and the place is, is kind of broken. It’s kind of it’s kind of not going anywhere infrastructure wise.

33:41 And you get this feeling when I come to Dubai, everybody isn’t here intentionally because this is a place where they’re going to build a better life for themselves. Whether you’re a cabbie or the girl from Cameroon that gives you my coffee at Starbucks or you or all these people, they’ve intentionally come here because they want to make their life better and they want to change their circumstances. And that energy alone for me just makes the whole place vibrate at this really high. So here’s a great way of understanding it. In London, those people, you can’t say to them if you don’t like it, leave because there’s nowhere to go, right? That’s where they’re from.

34:18 If you don’t like it, leave. But in Dubai, if you don’t like it, leave. Get on a plane and you. Can’t make it. You’re going to.

34:27 You’re going to go. You’ll have to go. You have to go. You’ve got no choice but. You can’t camp out on the street, you can’t get benefits, so you have to hustle and make it happen, right?

34:37 There’s that famous quote, I think where the Sheikh said when you wake up in Dubai, you run. Whether you’re the lion going after your prey, you run. Whether you’re, you know, the Impala, you run. Everybody wakes up and runs. It’s brilliant, isn’t it? This is.

34:53 I’m going to tell you this after living in 10 cities, OK, this is the best city in the world bar none. I’m not a local. I’m not paid to say that, OK, OK. I don’t have any any upside for saying that. Seriously, if you want to live somewhere and enjoy the experience and be in an environment where you can succeed and grow and be around other people, there is no better place on the planet right now than this place. And I’ve been here 20 years, so I’ve seen it all. I’m not the guy that’s been here for 12 months. There isn’t a better place than this, period. I can’t believe you can say that with that much excitement after being here for 21 years.

35:30 You know, people can’t say that about a marriage or their company or anything after 21 years, even after 10 years. But you’re saying that if you follow you on social on Instagram, it looks like you’re paid by the Ministry of Tourism. It is. And a lot of people are like that here. I follow their feeds and I’m just, they’re like, let me tell you again why this is the greatest place and it’s just on and on.

35:50 I think I do the same thing on my stories. But you, you, you mean we? What’s this whole woke thing that happened in the rest of the world that didn’t exist here? Yeah. I mean, what did the rulers of this country do? They just rolled their eyes and went whatever, OK? They dealt with COVID in a way that the rest of the developed world, the rich developed world, didn’t know how to, whether that’s Australia, the UK, Europe, OK. Literally, it dealt with very quickly and handled very well. OK.

36:17 You used to think about a country that’s 50 years old or 51 years old. Imagine what in the UK you do in 50 years. And you compare that to what they’ve done here. Is there are there parts that don’t work properly yet? Of course.

36:29 Is the legal system perfect yet? No. OK, but they’re working hard all of the time. So you’ve got this, this city that’s equally in the race to succeed, just as every entrepreneur is. They want to be the best, they want to bring this.

36:42 And so you’re in this place where it’s literally, come on, let’s go together. And so you get sucked into that positivity. And there’s no reason for anyone that works hard to fail. Right. So much abundance here, so much success just waiting to happen for people. Yeah.

36:59 Just curious, you know, when, when you think about the future of the city, is it just going to keep growing and growing and growing? And they have ambitions of being the the best city in the world, the number one place in tourism. They just want to keep going. What can we compare it to? Maybe Singapore? If you look at Singapore, they’re they’re essentially a very small landmass.

37:21 You look at the UAE, 84% of this country is Abu Dhabi. The other six Emirates cover the rest of it. But if you go up in a helicopter and look down at the city, there’s not much of it that’s developed. The country’s actually not very developed. We might think it is because we see all these towers everywhere and whatnot, but there’s a thin strip of the sand from the coast in a couple of kilometres that’s developed.

37:44 The rest is desert. So geographically we in a great location, OK, we’ve got phenomenal airports, which means we can move around and so-called logistics move around very easily. We’ve got favourable tax benefits of working here. Is it going to grow? What would stop it growing? And, and the great thing is all of the people that are here are comparing it to there and they’ve got reasons not to be there, whether that be Indians, Pakistanis, British, French, Americans, Australians, S Africans. Why would a South African come here? No tax and it’s safe.

38:20 OK, there you go. Two things. I my my kids, my house won’t get robbed, my car won’t get stolen. I won’t get a car jacked and I can earn more money tax free. It’s like there’s not much to think about is there?

38:33 In the UK. What have I got to do with bad weather, government making bad decisions, high taxes, terrible medical services or health services, road works that seem to go on forever and never end. And it’s like, Oh yeah, but UK is great. Tell me, tell me about crime as well. Was we’ve got you can’t wear your watch, whatever watch you’re wearing, you can’t wear that. You can’t walk around.

38:53 My, my wife was at the Bulgari Hotel in London recently. She went outside to take some photos with her phone and the, and the doorman said put your phone in your pocket. She was outside the hotel. It’s like, give me a give me a reason to go back. Give me a reason to live in London. Now, in terms of success and becoming successful, I don’t believe Dubai is any better than anywhere else if you want to be successful.

39:17 So it’s really important that that I share that because I believe if you’ve got it in you and you want to be successful, I think you can do it anywhere. Now, if you and I went with the right attitude and we went to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and we said we’re going to make it here and we wrote a plan and we executed it, we would make it. So I don’t think it’s that that that these places don’t have the opportunity. I just think that people think it’s easier here.

39:42 Is it easier? Here, I’m not sure it is OK, I I’m I’m I’m not sure for anyone that isn’t prepared to work really hard, sacrifice a lot of their personal time, OK, all of those types of people. I’m not sure if you don’t, if you’re not prepared to do that kind of stuff, you won’t make it anywhere and and he’s not going to be cushioning. OK, one thing I find really refreshing Spencer is.

41:00 The lack of politics, you know, I just turned it off when I left London at the end of December and I will refuse to log into any of the news sites. And it’s just nice to stop the bickering and the drama and the headlines and the. Did you hear what he said? And did you see what the stupid thing she did? And it’s just like, it’s become such a huge part of our lives in the last 20-30 years.

41:24 Politics, which used to be something when I was a kid, you’d think about every four years or every once in a while. Now it’s literally replaced entertainment, and it’s just so low energy that I find it really nice not to be surrounded by that here. And I think I was talking to Doctor Marwan, who’s an Emirati here and amazing guy, and he just said, yeah, we try to dial all that down so you can focus on your business and your family and the stuff that matters.

41:49 And it’s really noticeable, you know? There aren’t any politics. You don’t. You don’t make any decisions. You don’t get involved in it.

41:56 And think about every time a country allows other people to be involved in decisions, it never goes anywhere. Yeah, you know, now. OK, if the rulers were megalomaniacs and causing great problems, then that, you know, that’s a different scenario. But you’ve got a group of leaders in this country here that make the decisions. They move very quickly and they’re doing what’s in the best interest of their people and indirectly that becomes in our best interest too. Yeah, very much so.

42:20 All right. I want to talk about how you made yourself into this person, and then I want to talk about your show as well. But I, when I look at your background, Spencer, like you could easily, you know, and not be where you are right now, you know, and yet you are here. And I’m just wondering how you went from this kid, you know, who couldn’t really pay attention at school. Parents were divorced, had financial struggles.

42:48 You’re bouncing all around to different places and you can actually sit here today, you know, with an incredible business and incredible podcast and all this amazing success around you. If your teachers had told you the least likely to succeed, I feel like you would have been up there in your grade. And I feel like if you ever went back to your reunion of your high school or whatever, you’d be looking around at a bunch of people and they’d be like, Oh my God, I can’t believe he made it. When I read your back story.

43:13 I get that. Am I off there? I think when other people see you and and and and interpret what happened, I think they see it differently to how you do I. I mean mum and dad getting divorced when I was 7, is that highly unusual? Probably not.

43:28 Same. With me by the way there. You go dad going bankrupt, you know, I see that as his badge of honour because he lost his business and he started and built again. I had a mum that worked really hard even though she had the kids to bring up. She had two jobs and I, I was, that was, you know, by osmosis.

43:44 I was learning about that but I just, I couldn’t get the school thing, you know, and I was bullied quite a lot because I wasn’t very intelligent or appeared to be very intelligent at school. And so I didn’t really fit in at school. I didn’t know if I was a loner or not. I seemed to try and use humour to get myself out of trouble as much as I could. But, but I don’t. And I think everyone needs to have this moment where they realise what they’re fit for.

44:10 And I think when I got into sales, I realised that I belonged somewhere Before then, I didn’t belong anywhere. But I don’t, I don’t really think my childhood was because I know I’ve worked with kids that have been through awful situations. And so I see mine as being, yeah, average, normal, didn’t do very well, kind of kind of fumble my way through things. And then I found this thing called selling, and it was like, what do you mean? I don’t get a salary and I can earn as much as I want.

44:41 But. So if I work harder than him, I can earn more than him. Yeah, really. I was like, well, hold on a minute. And I remember going into this first office I ever went into and I there was a white board and it had 20,000 lbs was written on this white board next to this guy’s name called David Thornton. And I looked at and I went he’s how much money he’s earned this year?

45:03 And they looked at me and they went this week and I was like, you’re joking. He’s earned that much money this week. And I was like, if someone could earn that kind of money, imagine what I could do if I could just earn a fraction of that. And so it was just, it was just, I found where I needed to be. And then my career took off because I knew I could be in control of it.

45:24 I knew I didn’t need to have a degree to be good. I knew I knew that the lessons I was taking or what I was learning directly translated to money. And when you’re young, you want money. And it’s for a car, for a suit, for a watch, whatever it may be. But when you’re young, you want the money for those things.

45:44 And what? So if I work harder, I can get a better watch. I like that. If I work harder, I can buy a fancier. Oh, I like that. Well, I can go on a nicer holiday. I definitely like that.

45:54 And so that, that, that became the reason to want to learn and be good at something. So when I look at my childhood, you know, my sister’s got Asperger’s. My, my mum and dad got divorced. My, my, my parents had no money, but that, you know, my mum loved me to bits. You know, she still is my #1 fan to this very day.

46:13 You know, every, she’s so proud of me and my mum and, and, and won’t have a bad word said about me by anyone. And constantly telling people, you know, are you’re watching Spencer’s podcast. The pension is in Cyprus where she retired to. They’ve all got my podcast on. So when you’ve got a woman behind you like that, that went out and demonstrated with actions that you can get somewhere if you work hard and believed in you, no matter what, that that I think that, you know, it’s, it’s hard not to unless you really are lazy to to become something.

46:43 And when I also look at it, Brian, you talk about these things that I find quite alien. You know, you say success and the huge success you had and the and it’s like, I don’t see that. I see myself as a failure still. Yeah, big time. Explain that. I don’t.

46:57 I don’t see myself as successful at all. Explain that Spencer. How do you measure success? I don’t know, you know. How do I, how should I measure success? And you know what, what, because I, I, I made money and, and I made quite a bit of money and, and, and what, that, no, that’s not success.

47:16 And, and if I’m ever going to be measured by that, I’ll never win. Go and spend a weekend in Monaco. You’ll never be the richest guy in town, you know, So I, I, what’s success from a monetary point of view? You know, I don’t know, I, I look at your podcasts and I think you’ve got amazingly successful podcasts. I’ve watched it for years, you know, and you know, and when you invited me to your studio a few, a few months ago, whatever it was, I was, I couldn’t believe you’d invited come and see my studio.

47:39 I’m like, wow, you know, to me, you were like pinnacle stuff, you know, and now I’ve got to know you’re just a really nice human being. And so, oh, he’s normal, you know, I had you on a pedestal, but you’re just a really nice guy that’s worked really hard to achieve something. What? What? What do we measure success with Maria Conciercio, who I work with the children, with the children from Bangladesh.

48:00 She’s saved 680 children from the slums of Bangladesh. That’s success to me. So I think we, we, you know, a lot of the time we measure people’s success by the fact they live in a big house. They’ve got the, the, the chairman or the CEO of a business, they’ve done a few IPO’s and you know, they’ve got $100 million in the bank. And I say that’s rubbish. You know, if you want to measure me by that, I’ll never be the winner, OK, There’ll always be people doing better. OK.

48:25 But have I been able to go and create a documentary from my podcast that has enabled me to highlight the stories of these children that have been through these horrible situations and, and, and showcase heroes that have done real work, real world life changing work. Then, then, then yes, OK, I’ve had some success. And So what do I want written on my on my gravestone, you know, between 1970, the year I was born and whatever year I die, that dash, what is it going to represent? He made a load of money.

48:54 Oh, great. So what? So what will it say? He made a he made a difference difference. He made a difference.

49:02 He went out and who knows because I’m 55 years old next month, I’ve got another 35 years. I’ve still got, you know, decades ahead of me to make make even more of a difference or do even more things or or pivot and go into another direction. But success, success definitely isn’t money. OK? I want to be known by you as a guy that did everything I could to try and help you get somewhere that you wanted to go and be remembered for the difference I made to you.

49:30 Or I want to be remembered by you as a guy that was really kind to you. That’s what I want to be remembered for. You know, I don’t want anyone to say he’s all right. I want people to say it. Don’t like him or I think he’s fantastic because if they think I’m fantastic, they’re my kind of people.

49:46 I’m not foolish enough to think that everyone’s going to like me. But those percentage of people that do say, you know what, he’s a really good guy. He did this for me and he didn’t want anything in return because a lot of the time people always think that you want something back. But then on that metric, you’re successful as well. I try and help people, OK, because I, I don’t like pain. I really struggle with, I really struggle with watching people in pain.

50:13 And you know, when, when people, when people struggle, it hurts me. And I, I don’t like, I don’t like them to feel the way that they feel. And there’s something that compels me to want to protect or, or bring a solution or something that will make it better. You know, you go and spend time in a village in Nepal with a community where every child at the age of 8 years old becomes a prostitute and they have no other option. The the suffering that people go through, the needless suffering that people go through really, really deeply affects me. And it’s like, I’m, I’m the guy that will cry on every movie because I I cry for the champion. I cry for the hero, whether it’s the free Willy or whatever. It’s like, yeah, come on, you can do it. You can do it because I, I believe so many people have had so much poison in their lives in so many different ways that it just, it infiltrates their brain and it stops them thinking about what their lives could be.

51:12 And they just sit and exist or they wallow or they go backwards and I find that really difficult to cope with. I just want people to win. If you, if I can help you, why would I not help you? Why, why, Why does there need to be a measurement? Why, why, why does there need to be something in return? Why, why can’t I just help you?

51:29 Why can’t I just tell the guys out here, You know, often you’ll see people that on I go hiking at the weekend, often you see people on the side of the road, on the side of a highway. A guy in his raggedy clothes on the side of a highway, probably a labourer and he and he’s holding out his hand because he wants to lift up the road. And 99% of people will just go and go straight past stop and give the guy a ride. For goodness sake, he only wants a ride. Give him a bottle of water, have a chat with him.

51:58 You’ll be grateful for the fact that you did that. You’d have probably had a nice little chat rather than sit in your car on your own. And it’s like, what’s the cost of these things? Are we that important? You know, are we are we are we that wrapped up in our own self importance and our own, you know, our own self worthiness that we can’t be humble with people and just try and be kind.

52:20 Because I damn if I was on the side of the road and my car was broken down and I put my hand out, I wish someone would stop for me and take me to the gas station so I could fill the fill the Jerry cat up. You made a few allusions to the work you’ve done with human trafficking. Can you tell me how you first got introduced to that world? And then also, why did you go further into it? Because for so many people, knowledge of that would be so emotionally uncomfortable that they wouldn’t lean into it.

52:48 And when you first told me about that on your podcast, I was like, wow, that makes you unique. I’m not saying successful, I won’t accuse you of that again, but makes you unique because you’re leaning into something that’s extremely uncomfortable and extremely painful, especially to put your life into it. Because I knew you’ve made documentary films about that and you’ve really made a lot of content about that. Can you tell me about your journey with this terrible issue that’s happening in the world? I.

53:14 Met a woman by accident one day and learnt about her story. So I used to be part of something called the the the Global Sustainability Network, which was a group of people that got together every Saturday here and we would talk about what we could do for goal late for the UN sustainability goals, trying all of us trying to give back. And they would bring speakers in. And so they brought this guy in called Kailash Satiati. And Kailash won the Nobel Peace Prize. They saved over 80,000 children from child slave labour. And I sat and watched him talk.

53:44 There’s thirty of us in the room and he’s talking. He’s got some slides for us to look at. And my jaw was on the floor. I was like what a, what a selfless human being. He went out, he was shot at, he was attacked. All this kind of stuff happened to him and he did this great work.

54:01 And I was, I was so inspired by him. And then the next week, this lady called Maria Conciersel came and Maria was born into poverty in Portugal. After a long story, which I won’t bore everybody with right this minute, She got into be Emirates cabin crew here, went to Bangladesh, saw the kids in the slums on a layover. And she just promised to help a family. She she she needed to help somebody.

54:25 She came back here, sold her possessions, went back there to help one family. And then she Googled, how do you raise money for charity? And the first thing that came up with Google was climb Mount Everest. Maria’s never been in a gym. She’s never done anything like that. But her brain was what?

54:44 So if if I climb Mount Everest, I can raise some. And I’m not talking about base camp, I’m talking about Mount Everest. If I raise, if I climb this mountain, I can raise some money, which means I can help more children. Now, anybody else that goes to Mount Everest goes 8800 meters. The biggest, most scariest thing in the whole wide world. You know, the expedition’s going to be like this, Maria, this was in the way of helping children.

55:07 So I’d better climb it. She’d never climbed another mountain. Wow. Most people climb other mountains and then get to Everest. She started with Everest, won a Guinness World Record for the first Portuguese woman to climb Mount Everest. Made money, helped kids better Google that again. How do you raise money for charity? North Pole?

55:27 Better do that. Then again, one after the other after, to help kids. And she’d taken 600 children from the slums of Bangladesh, taught them English in a school that she built and paid for, brought them to Dubai, got them scholarships in schools so they could stay here to give them an education, because she made a promise to their parents that she would help. And I just was exposed to this human being. And I couldn’t believe that this little Portuguese lady had done all of this.

55:58 And so I got to know her a bit. I spent some time with her. And after a few months, she said to me, would you like to meet some of the girls? And I’m like, yeah. And she. Well, where do you want to meet?

56:08 And I’m like, anywhere. Tell me, she said. I said, Mall of the Emirates. We’ll take them. We’ll take them to Mall of. Yeah.

56:14 OK, fine. So I’m in Mall of the Emirates by the ski slope, if anybody knows that area. And these 12 Bangladeshi children come running over to me, wrap their arms around me. Hi, Mr. Spencer.

56:25 Hi, Mr. Spencer. How are you? And Maria’s following behind, and I’ve got these beautiful kids. And I’m like, wow, how cool is this? And I’m right, Who wants ice cream? And they’re like, yeah.

56:35 And Maria says to me, we can’t have ice cream. I’m like, why not? She said they’ve never had ice cream. It might not agree with them. So maybe we could just avoid that because it might not work.

56:45 And like, the kind of, what do you mean they’ve never had ice cream? She’s like, they’ve never had ice cream. I was like, yeah, I was in that moment. I was like, wow. So we took them to the fun fair and we I watched them in the fun fair. It was an amazing experience.

56:58 Then I wrote on Instagram, has anybody got 3 hours this afternoon spare that can come and help me with 12 children? I don’t care who you are, I don’t care where you are, but if you’ve got 3 hours I’d really appreciate it. One guy called Loi who owns a company called Provident Real Estate, messaged me. He said where are you? I said Maul of the Emirates. He said I’ll be there in 30 minutes, dropped everything, came and helped me and Loi and I spent the afternoon with these 12 kids.

57:24 We went into the hypermarket in Carrefour. We got 4 trolleys and we said right. I said to Maria, what do they need, Let’s get them what they need. She said everything. I’m like what does that mean? She said they have nothing, what they’re wearing is what they have.

57:41 I’m like really nothing. She’s like nothing. So we went through and I’m like, girls, get yourself some pyjamas and they look at me and they’re like, what to keep? And I’m like, and like each, and I’m like, yeah, get yourself some sneakers. And, and, and we filled up these four shopping trolleys with everything that they would need.

58:01 Female hygiene products to hair brushes to, to fascinated by hair clips. These kids never seen hair clips. Fascinated by ladybirds and, and, and strawberries and, you know, this little stuff fascinated these kids and we shopped and they’re, they’re bewilderment and they were mesmerised by the fruit section. And I’m like, guess it has some, eat some fruit, let’s eat some grapes, you know, let’s have some fun. And they were just, this was just a magical experience for them. And we got to the end of it and lo, I insisted on paying for it. But he’d given up this afternoon. And these children had had the, the experience of a lifetime. And I just knew in that afternoon, I knew I had to try and forge a connection with them and try and help them. So the next thing that happened is, and it’s really important that that I tell this story because it’s important to understand these children.

58:50 There’s a guy called Tyrone Reed who’s here in Dubai. He’s the CEO of Emirates Catering. He was the CEO of another company before. And I said to Tyrone, your company has Dubai more shop called Candylicious. I would love to take the children to Candylicious one day.

59:06 Would that be OK? And he’s like, sure. He said, meet me at the restaurant next door to Candylicious. I goes, let’s, let’s buy the girls some lunch. I’m like, oh, that’s so lovely of you. Thank you.

59:18 We met, bought them lunch. We went to Candylicious. He closed Candylicious for them, gave them AVIP tour. And he said to all of the girls, you can have whatever this shop is now yours. You can take everything from the shop if you want, or you can take one thing.

59:34 It’s yours. Whatever you want is yours. They learnt to make candy and stuff and none of them took anything more than a small bag and we came out and we were like so grateful to him for doing that, thank you so much, He said. It’s not over. He said. Who wants to go to the movies?

59:50 The kids were taken into a private screening of Aladdin, with butlers all lined up to serve them in the cinema. Just magical. And then I came out of there. Who wants to learn to ice skate? The kids were learning to ice skate and they’d never been on ice before.

1:00:10 And so they’re now they’ve they’re like, they’ve got ice skates on. They’ve never done this before. And they have this experience, which my kids, if I took them to ice skate, would be, yeah, that was fun. If I took them to the movies, yeah, that was fun. Candy Licious. Yeah, that was fun.

1:00:23 But these kids, it was, it was everything. And you realise that you can do very small things that we take for granted and make a huge difference to people. And I knew in some capacity I needed to tell Maria’s story to more people. I needed because she was incredibly shy. And I’m going to get you on podcast to tell your story, you know, terrified.

1:00:49 You know, she’s learnt better now, but she was terrified. I’m, I’m going to get you on stages where you can tell this story. It’s really important. You know, this is overwhelming, but Maria, Maria is one in a million. She’s the most successful person I know. She’s the most impressive human being I know. And I needed the world to hear about her. And that’s how I was then driven to after learning to make content.

1:01:14 Not very well, if I’m really honest with you. I knew I needed to try and find a way to get her story out to the world. And that’s really how I then got involved in it because after meeting 12 girls, you don’t just meet 12, eventually you meet more. And Maria says to me, one day we need to, we need to get some more scholarships, otherwise the kids can’t stay. And I’m like, how do I help? She goes, do you know any head masters? I’m like, yeah.

1:01:37 So I contacted one of my head masters and I’ve got some girls said can can you take them? He said, I can take one. I’m like, great, OK, one. I’m like, what am I going to do here? So I took twelve of them to the school, into the principal’s office, and I said, he said, I said one. I said choose.

1:01:55 And he was like, you bastard, biblical. Stuff right there. And I would just take your choice. And he said, I, I’m honestly take your choice, whichever 1 you want, we’ll go and find another 11 homes somewhere else for them. He took six of them that day, OK, which was amazing.

1:02:08 And I’m very grateful that he did. And I found somebody else to do the same. But again, it leans into reaching into people’s kindness. There are kind people out there. I think most people are kind.

1:02:19 You just need to give them the opportunity to be kind. But for me, it was like that changed every part of my life. I’d made money. I’d been successful on paper. I had flash cars, big houses, fancy watches, all that kind of stuff. In 2012, when I met Maria, that changed forever. 42 years old forever.

1:02:39 Never ever since have I given a hoot about money. Apart from how it can help them. I don’t. I don’t need to drive fancy cars. I don’t need to wear fancy clothes, much to my wife’s annoyance. I I don’t need to live in a fancy house. I don’t need any of that stuff.

1:02:59 I don’t need to fly in first class. It’s just to me, it’s not important because the value that that that. People say I’m selfless, but it’s selfish. I promise you it’s selfish because the effort that I put into this feeds me in in ways that I’d never experienced before. And that to me is where the value is and that’s what makes life worth living. And at 55 years old, you’ll realise when you’re young you can’t see it, but you’ll realise when you get a bit older, you just realise that what’s important in life is watching your boys grow up.

1:03:32 You know, watching your boy playing the trumpet for the first time. Watching your son play in a rugby match, watch your daughter play hockey and, and take their friends out and go and play in the park together with no phones and no toys and throw a frisbee and kick a ball and hang out and do that kind of, that’s important. The other stuff really isn’t. And if you can attach yourself to trying to make someone’s life better, like like I’ve done with this, it it, it does nothing but makes you feel better about being a human being. Wow, that’s powerful.

1:04:05 Almost got me tearing up there a little bit, Spencer. And so the past 13 years, you’ve been doing this in many different ways. And how has this grown and changed and morphed? Because you’ve done documentary films, you’ve done podcasts about this, you’ve gone deep on the human trafficking side. And tell me about all of that.

1:04:24 So the podcast went off in a direction of, of really trying to learn about this in many different ways. I wanted to understand how child slave labour and human trafficking really applied and, and the kind of injustices that took place. So I’ll give you some, some, some stats. Half a million kids go missing every year in the United States. Disappear.

1:04:45 Like disappear. And that’s not immigrant kids. That’s just United States half a million. Yeah, every town and every city in the United States and the UK, trafficking takes place. Wow.

1:05:00 No Coventry, Brighton, Norwich, all of them. It takes place under our eyes. And these kids just disappear and people look for them and then they give up. They sometimes don’t even look for them. Do you have the foster care system?

1:05:21 Kids go missing through that in developing countries. Excuse me, in developing countries life has less value and because of that sometimes people have kids and they can’t afford to keep the kids. Probably a good movie to watch to understand that is Slumdog Millionaire. Yeah. You know, these kids are born into poverty, they don’t have so much value.

1:05:46 But I just don’t believe that’s right. I think kids need a chance, you know, and, and, and so I’ve learnt all about human traffic and I’ve learnt about child slave labour and I’ve met the heroes. Hanabadi in Nepal, she was trafficked. She was she was a prostitute at the age of 8. Gosh. Her mum and dad made her a prostitute. Wow.

1:06:08 He met in that this is this doesn’t even but she said no, she ran away. Now where we were in the village with her was a 2 1/2 hour flight from Kathmandu. That’s that’s a two week trek that she made when she was 10 years old to Kathmandu. She got there, she met a priest. The priest said he’d help, but he had to travel.

1:06:32 While he travelled, he got cancer, throat cancer. He prayed to God and he said to God, if you get me through this throat cancer, I will help that girl in her village.

1:07:07 It was just a magical, magical take action. Don’t take my word for it. Through Dylan’s she need to do. And I really hope that someday down the road I see you in the club. It far exceeded expectations without question. He got through the cancer and he helped 700 children rescued from the village, a school that she fundraised for and built, plus accommodation for all of those 700 kids on an absolute mission to solve this problem.

1:07:43 In India and in Nepal, you have a caste system. So the lower the low is, the low. And up there, they don’t talk to the people down there. Her cast wasn’t allowed to go to school, wasn’t allowed to go into a supermarket. They were that low, but we got the attention of the president of the country.

1:08:00 Once we got the attention of the president, the president wanted to meet where we’re able then to show the president what we were doing. And the president said, let me fight for you. And never before, and you’ll see it in the documentary, never before has anyone from Hannah’s cast ever been able to shake hands with the president. The president, the female president took Hannah in her arms and held her put head on her breast. And she said, I’ll fight for you.

1:08:25 And in, in the first time in history this has happened. And so when you see stuff like this, you, you see that there’s hope and there’s progress, but there’s just so much work to do. And I can, I can interview business people on my podcasts and I can learn about business to bring value to my, my audience. But I think people need to learn about what’s going on in the world. And because I, again, I believe people are kind.

1:08:47 And if people get the chance to try and help, they will. And so I’m not a fundraiser or anything like that, but you might know someone, OK, that that makes kaftans that I could call and I could get a discount on kaftans from, OK, that might be the, the one bit of help you can do. You actually might know somebody, OK, that, that, that that makes rucksacks for school. Or maybe I can contact them and I can get some discounts on some rucksacks. It’s all little pieces that make a difference in the end.

1:09:16 And I promise you, these kids, you, you spend 15 minutes with them, OK? They’re more addictive than any drug you’ve ever seen in your life. They’re just phenomenal. They’re just incredible kids to be around. Our friend Sadia came one day.

1:09:29 She said, I want to meet these girls. And we went and it was the last Ramadan, actually. We went out of the iftar with the girls. And she’s like, they’re just awesome. And she then connected with them and she’s worked with them ever since. Wow.

1:09:39 Now there was a movie that came out in the States last year, The Sound of Freedom. Freedom. And it was not shown in theaters and there was a bunch of private screening. And I think Hollywood didn’t really want to address it, but a lot of people saw it. And I think it was, it was a dramatic film, but based on, I think, child trafficking. And it opened a lot of people’s eyes. What did you think of that?

1:10:04 Was that a helpful thing to start that discussion? What was the reaction to that? Are changes being made in the States or anywhere else? So this is where the, the film is fantastic, OK, A really fantastic film. It depicts the, the, the, the scenario exactly as it would happen, OK. So it’s very, very real in what happened. And the work then that was done to go and rescue the children is work that lots of great people do. Operation Underground rail work, Operation Underground Railroad, do that.

1:10:33 And so there’s lots of great work. It was frightening for people when they saw it to see that it happens, OK, some people don’t like it because a lot of trafficking involves people that are much higher placed than the average guy. And so you’re dealing with organised crime. If you compare it to the drug industry, I am a drug dealer and I sell you a bag of cocaine. You consume the cocaine, the transaction is over.

1:11:03 I’m a human trafficker. I sell you a child. You’re finished with the child. Your friend wants the child. I sell your friend the child, Your friends finished with the child. His friend wants the child.

1:11:16 I sell the friend the child, the child. So I’ve made X amount on you, X amount on him, X amount on him, all for this one child. The money in it is so much bigger than the drug industry. It’s it’s insane. It’s probably the biggest and also very difficult OK to catch the criminals. It’s probably one of the biggest forms of organized crime that exists on the planet.

1:11:40 And difficult to catch the criminals because it’s hard to follow and trace all that back and prove things and the. Kids are brainwashed, so they’re brainwashed and so they don’t speak out. So scary. And let’s say, for example, the cartels in Mexico recently, we’ve seen obviously pre Trump, all this immigration coming through the the borders and people were saying that the cartels were making more money off of trafficking those people through the borders than they were even on the drugs maybe from what you just said. And then I’m sure there’s not only the adult trafficking through the borders, but then there’s also child trafficking that they’re doing too.

1:12:15 And you’re saying this is big business for big organized crime and it’s a bigger business than even the drug trade? 10 times bigger than drugs. You can only use the drugs once. You can reuse kids, you can reuse teenagers, you can reuse young girls. Lena who was in the documentary.

1:12:31 Lena was from Bulgaria, young lady, 17 years old, had a boyfriend, dated him for three or four months, nice guy, took her out for dinner, took her on holiday. And after three months he said to her, Lena, babe, you need to get yourself a job. I’m not going to just carry you. She’s like, no, that’s fair. He said, I think there’s some work at the hotel. He takes us to the hotel in that evening. She’s thinking bar work or waitressing work. He said, I’ve spoken to the manager, we’re just going to put you in this room because he wants to come and interview you. She’s like, OK, so he puts her into one of the hotel rooms and says I’ll be back in 10 minutes.

1:13:03 Well, he makes her have sex with 10 men that night. Jesus. And then every night for the next three years and threatened to kill her mum and her sister if she didn’t. He then drove her to Amsterdam and put her in the red light district where she worked. And he was the pimp. Every day, every day, every day until 1 customer, a Dutch guy, went in two or three times to see her and realized that she didn’t want to be there.

1:13:27 And then he said, why don’t you come to my apartment, check it with your pimp, come to my apartment, and let’s do what we need to do there. The pimp agreed. She went to the apartment. He grabbed her phones from her, threw the phones in the canal and called the police. She’d come from Bulgaria, where she was scared of the police.

1:13:44 She thought the Dutch police were the same. But the guy knew what to do, and the police then protected her. But it took 10 years to get the guy convicted. Wow. I worked with the the, the newspapers there, I worked with the lawyers and the investigators that were all part of it. 10 years to get a conviction. And he got three years in prison after 10 years. And that was one guy with one girl. How many other girls you’ve done it with? You don’t know but that.

1:14:14 But again, the girl’s not going to say anything. Lena didn’t say anything because you say a word. I’m going to kill your mum and that’s what happens. Wow. And so you’ve gone really deep on this. You’ve interviewed lots of people. You’ve helped them pretty.

1:14:29 You’ve produced documentary films. Yeah. And we’re just about to make another one. Yeah, we’re just about to make another one in India because we’ve seen this happening in India with farmers that are killing themselves because of the problems that exist through this. So there’s a whole another story.

1:14:41 But yeah. Killing themselves because their children are being taken or. They, they have the children taking the, The farmers in India kill themselves because they borrow money at a high rate of interest from a loan shark. They can’t pay the money back, so they have to give up their tractor, let’s say. Then they have to give up some of their land and then more of their land until they’ve got nothing left. And so the whole livelihood is, is wrong, all because of the way that the money system operates in India. And it’s like these things happen, this injustice to poor people.

1:15:16 We can, a lot of these problems are solved very easy. Trafficking is solved. It’s solvable, but it has to come from the top. The desire has to be from the top to be solvable. And when you look at Epstein and what was going on with him, you know, and OK, they weren’t children, but they were still teenagers that he was involved with. Would you know if, if you had a teenage daughter that was 141516 years old, would you want to give in a middle-aged man a massage in his luxury house in Miami for $500? No, you wouldn’t want that at all. In fact, if you heard one of your kids doing that, you’d be like hell no.

1:15:51 So and then and and if you go deep, deep, deep into this, which you can and you can go down into MK Ultra, which is the CIA program that was established where the Nazi soldiers came to train kids to be killers that again were trafficked kids. You know, they empty their brain of any moral compass and destroy their lives. Why? Well if some 50 year old politician wants to have sex with a 5 year old, go to the GB Rd. in in Delhi, the biggest red light district in the world. Children are taken in there in boxes at 2 years old and they grow up in caged boxes just to satisfy the sexual desires of men.

1:16:35 I mean like, it’s the sick. And this is mostly not talked about, right? And people point fingers at Hollywood and they don’t want to talk about it because that is almost a city, maybe not built on this, but built on taking advantage of young kids for movies. There is on only fans. Girls go and parade their bodies on only fans and do different things, but there’s some people on only fans that just do their feet and their and their fingers. Yeah, because there’s men that have got fetishes for women’s feet.

1:17:09 Now, if I said to you, you into women’s feet, personally, not my thing. Yeah, but there’s some men that are. But there’s also men that are into kids. There’s. And what happens is when you can have anything you want.

1:17:21 So when you’ve had the sex with the supermodel, then you’ve had the threesomes and the foursomes and the fivesomes, then how do you spice it up? OK, now we’d try a bit of bondage, shall we, and do a bit of that, maybe with some role play and do that. Oh, no, I want to do something different. I want a virgin. OK, let’s have sex with a virgin.

1:17:37 Oh, I like the taste of having sex with a virgin. Like I want 2 virgins and so on and so forth. And it gets more and more depraved and so people can get their fix and the younger and the younger and the younger and it’s just, it’s so common that it’s, it’s taking place under our eyes without us seeing it. You, you look at prostitution. Never died, did it? It just grows and grows and grows. It’s in every city, OK, in every country in the world. It exists whether you’re gold miners in, in deepest, darkest South America or, or whether you’re a city worker in the City of London or you work in the West End on Knightsbridge. It’s, it’s at every angle and at every parallel. And we sit and, and, and make out that, you know, these girls aren’t only fans.

1:18:26 You know where they’re making a living. They’re not. They’re destroying the ambitions of so many other children around the world. So I can, I can go on about this forever because I’m really passionate about it and I care about it. I just want people to open their eyes, not to be naive.

1:18:43 And if there’s a way they can try and help, then they should try and help, no matter how small that may be. How can people help? Oh man, there’s so many ways with Maria’s girls, you know? I said to Maria. What is it the girls like about me?

1:18:55 She said. You make them feel seen and heard. And I was like, wow, it was such a big compliment to hear that. The fact that they felt, you know, Uncle Spencer makes them feel seen and heard. I thought, what a lovely thing to say.

1:19:08 And then people say to me, how can I help? And I’m like, you’ve got no idea how important love is. It’s not about getting your wallet out and giving us some cash, OK, Of course that’s always going to be welcome for anybody that needs that kind of stuff. But actually they just want to be recognised. They want to be acknowledged. They want to be be seen as real people. And love and kindness is, is by far the coolest thing is when I take people to meet them and we go for dinner and they chat and they really ask them questions and learn about them and learn about what they’re interested in and what their goals and ambitions are, you know, and you see these kids, they just come alive because they, they, they want the same as anything anybody else.

1:19:48 We want to feel that we’re part of something and we’re not alone. And we want to feel like we’re respected because you people can move mountains themselves when people believe in them. You know, if you don’t believe in somebody, then they’ve got to work out how to get an educational, They’ve got to work out how to get somewhere to live. That’s 10 times more difficult than if you’ve got people behind you saying, I believe in you, OK, I’ve got your back. You become you become more powerful, don’t you? You can run through walls when people believe in you. So it’s everybody can help, they just need to open their eyes to what’s going on around them.

1:20:21 Anyone wants? To come and help the people that I work with. Just send me a WhatsApp, I’ll gladly arrange. You can come and have tea with us. You can come and have a pizza with us. Come and meet them and have some fun and meet these incredible young ladies.

1:20:33 I mean, some of them are now going off to university in different parts of the world. One of them wants to be Prime Minister, which is just phenomenal. Shuli they’re, they’re just great kids and, and, and you’ve only got to spend 10 minutes with them and you’ll start to realise, you know, and then you’re addicted. So be careful. So this is your mission for the rest of your life? The only thing that matters, OK, It’s the only thing that matters.

1:20:54 I don’t need, I don’t need all of these things that people need, OK? I need my kids to be healthy and I need my mum and dad to live for as long as possible. And I need to try and find a way through whichever means possible, to try and highlight the stories of these people that suffer so that everyone can get a sense of it. And the ones that want to do something about it do. And the ones that don’t, No, no, no bother, you know.

1:21:16 But you know, we all care about different. Things Is it getting better or getting worse? Worse. Why is that wealth gap digital? Just the world getting weirder. People sit at home and they spend more time consuming pornography than they’ve ever done before. Young people do that more than ever before. How is that pornography made?

1:21:38 Where is it filmed? Who were used? People get more twisted fetishes around that kind of stuff and so on. And you have that when people need to eat. Wow, wow.

1:21:53 I didn’t even know about those numbers. And you think of America, you think, well, how are a half a million kids missing? And it’s weird because with the the border opening and whatever, I don’t know how many people came in. And then they always say, oh, there’s all these missing children and never really clicks to me, you know, that that’s a thing and that that happens. I don’t even know this stuff happens.

1:22:12 You know, I know a lot of successful people that that doesn’t get mentioned, you know, and so I don’t realize that this is a huge thing. You know, appreciate the fact that you went into it and you’re making your life such a big part of that. Tell me about your podcast because it sounds like it’s an incredible vehicle for you to explore all these stories. Sounds like it’s changed your life in a massive way. You’ve talked to over 300 people. Yeah, we’ve got 340 episodes now, something like that. So we’ve been going for a long time. How long have you been doing it?

1:22:46 Seven years, I think six or seven years. You, you, I have to tell people this because you came on the podcast and it was fantastic. You did. And I was obviously a big fan of your work, but you came on the show and you did something that nobody has ever done. OK, after the show that evening, I got a video from you and you know, you sent me the video and you said, hey, Spencer, I just want to say thanks for coming on the show.

1:23:05 Here’s 4 pieces of advice I’ve got for you, 4 pieces of advice I have for you. You can throw them in the bin if you want and you can disregard them and tell me to do 1. He said, but they might make a difference. And you went through what those four pieces of advice were. And I, I showed them to all my team.

1:23:20 The very, the soon as I read them through, I watched them through. Sorry, I sent that video straight to the rest of the team. I said, this is what Brian says. OK, we need to listen to Brian. And so the fact that you took the time to do that meant an awful lot to me. And you followed up with a couple of check insurance with me, then invited me to your, to your studio to see how your studio was laid out.

1:23:39 You didn’t need to do that. You’re extremely kind. I made, you know, I moved to heaven and earth to make sure I could be there for that because that was really important to me. What kindness and generosity to me knows knows no bounds. And so I’m very, very grateful to you.

1:23:50 And I mean that sincerely, not because there’s cameras in this room, but I’m very grateful for who you are and what you’ve done for me. Thank you. The podcast is literally the best thing I’ve ever done. There’s nothing that comes close to it. I love meeting people. I love learning about people’s stories. I love learning about people’s missions. I love dumbing stuff down for my audience so that they can learn too.

1:24:16 And I’m not afraid to be the thick kid in the class almost. That’s like, I don’t get it. Please explain to me another way when specialists come in and use fancy words and that I don’t get. Then I know that some of my audience won’t either. But I’ve also built a network of people. I have connections.

1:24:35 I know I can reach out to lots of well known celebrities that have been on the show and say, hey, can I buy you a coffee or can I ask a question and then they’ll respond. It’s been an absolute joy. Why many more people don’t have a podcast, I don’t know. I know the stats. 5 million started, 380,000 produced an episode last month.

1:24:55 Most people don’t go past 7 episodes. They run out of money and I think every company should have a podcast internally for their staff. OK. I think that that’s valuable. I think whatever industry you’re in, you should make sure that there’s a podcast teaching people about the industry, hobby or passion, whatever it may be. You know, the truth of how interesting some of this all all is is true crime podcasts are way up the rankings, you know, in the global podcast in the leagues. And I find that really interesting because people are actually interested in things that go wrong in the world. And so that leans in a little bit to to my stuff as well. But no, it I mean, and I didn’t and I spoke to Lewis Howes. I said, how many episodes did you do before you knew what you would do?

1:25:40 And he went about 500. He said, I’m not sure I know now. And you know, I remember, you know, I started off with personal development and then, you know, I moved into telling these real stories. And then somebody said to me one day, and I regret this, somebody said to me one day, I can’t listen to your podcast anymore. It upsets me too much. And I was like, oh, oh, I’ve got to change tact here. But I wish I hadn’t because that that was the stuff that stimulated me the most.

1:26:11 I learnt the most and then after that I, I, I started to get involved in understanding the blockchain and crypto and I think people needed to learn about that in a simple way. So Robert Breedlove, Michael Saylor, Raoul Paul, these people were speaking English in a language, a crypto language that was definitely gobbledygook to most. And so they dumbed it down and it was. And then I had Da Vinci Jeremy on and he and he he talked about the history of money and that was really valuable too.

1:26:39 And learning all about this kind of stuff was, was really kind of like really thrilling for me because it was this, you know, this whole new asset class that maybe most people didn’t know about. And everybody keeps asking, well, how what is crypto? How does it work even now? Have you got Bitcoin? And you know, I’ve got some Todd. OK, what’s Todd?

1:26:55 No idea, but someone said buy it, you know, and so and then on top of that, it’s like how the world of AI is developing. It was scary for me because I’m not a techie person. So it was like, I don’t really understand what’s involved here. It’s magic, let’s call it magic. AI is magic and it solves things. And then it was, now we really need to get to the bottom of this.

1:27:15 And you know, what is what is it actually? And so I’m on a bit of a journey with that at the moment too. And I hope and I pray that people enjoy what I do. And, you know, and I’m sure they don’t listen to every episode and but when they’re on the way to work in the car or or when they’re in the gym that they’re listening to me and they’re getting something from it and I’m being valuable to them. And if I am, then great. And if not, then it’s the most selfish endeavour in the world and I’ll do it anyway.

1:27:43 And you said at one point you were getting real stories and then you got some feedback and you kind of moved away from it. Now, have you gone back to where it’s real or it’s what you want to talk about and learn about? Is that your? Is that your North Star now for choosing a guest? My obviously as you know here in Dubai, it’s different to London or being in New York, you don’t have as many people here.

1:28:06 So it’s harder and I don’t want to do it online. I want to, I want to do it in person, but the great thing about Dubai is that I’m in the fastest growing, most ambitious city in the world. And so there’s a fair few people like that. And I like to talk to people that have that hunger and desire inside of them and that fire in their belly, whatever it is that they’re trying to pursue. And so whether that’s someone from here that’s just about to go and run 7 marathons in seven continents in seven days, or whether that’s someone that’s, you know, found the secret code to AI about how they could get rid of call centres and they can now make call centres automated around the world.

1:28:42 And, you know, all this kind of, to me, it’s a learning experience. And so I don’t, I don’t, you know, and my team get frustrated with me. They’re like spent niche, whereas Americans say niche. OK, Yeah. And I’m not.

1:28:53 I don’t want to niche. I I I want to. I want to learn about what I want to learn about when I want to learn about it. Can we? Yeah. Do you believe the same?

1:29:01 Yeah, I do. But you know, at the end of the day, Brian, you, you literally were the person that got me interested in podcasts. You were the first podcast that I listened to. What’s the word continuously? OK, You’re you’re the podcast person that I could see.

1:29:15 I remember because I remember the podcast in the kitchen. I remember, I remember, oh, your scraggly hair and whatnot. I remember that. I remember when what’s the what’s the crazy guy in in Scotland, in the castle? Dan Pena. Dan Pena, I remember when you were Dan Pena and your fallouts with Dan and your confrontations and your love for each other and the, the, what are you wearing?

1:29:35 And then the suits came along. I, I remember all of that because it had impact on me, because it felt to me like you were a student in some of these experiences. And I like the fact that you were willing to be a student. You know, some sometimes people aren’t, you know, and it’s like willing to be to be vulnerable. And I think that’s really important. And, and I know you faced all the challenges with the whole David Icke stuff and whatnot.

1:29:56 And you know, my wife is a huge fan of your work. She’s a huge fan of David Icke. My wife knew you were coming today. I’ve never seen my wife send me so many messages as she did today. Say hi to Briver. Don’t forget, have a good don’t do your best. Don’t want to all this kind of stuff coming through because she’s such a fan.

1:30:11 But I’ve watched what you’ve been through and, and, and, and how everything was taken away from you. And that to me is just like, whoa, you know, that was heavy. And, and most people on the back of that would have very easily crumbled. OK. But you kept going and you kept going and you kept going as, as you, as you morph into different versions of yourself and you start to it’s like you peel back another layer of Brian and I, I really like that. It’s like, what, what’s wrong with another layer coming back? Why does he, why does Brian have to be 1 dimensional? Why, why can’t Brian be multi dimensional? Why can’t Brian be passionate about this? And that why, why, why does he have to be passionate about both things at the same time?

1:30:49 Is that for me? Maybe because I’m doing a bit of this and I’m, I’m following in the in your heels that, that I’m sensitive to that. But you, you just, you’re probably one of the most underrated people I know. And, and and and that’s good. And that’s bad.

1:31:05 OK? It’s good because I get to keep you a secret. But it’s bad because more people need to see your work. I appreciate that Spencer really do a lot and you know me pretty well. I find that the podcast just amplifies life.

1:31:17 It just dials it up, you know, and I, I’m so I’m so impressed that you’ve gone 300 plus episodes. And I, I have a soft spot in my heart for anybody who wants to start their own show. And I, I used to say 10 years ago, I said podcasting is the fountain of youth. That’s what I used to say. And again, like, we didn’t really understand what it was back in the early days.

1:31:36 I always used to say, like, we don’t really know what YouTube is. And it sounded like such a silly thing to say, but I was talking about this entire methodology of humans connecting and the feedback loop and the community we were building. Nobody knew what an influencer was and nobody knew what this thing was. And Pena used to just yell at me and say this is worthless. And you’re you’re London reelers are a bunch of losers and this isn’t a business and all this stuff.

1:32:01 And it’s like, you know, now you look back and he was, as usual, completely wrong. And I was completely right. Same with Bitcoin Dan. But you know, it’s just, it’s incredible how it just dials up everything in life. And it again, it, it forces, I love still being a student and I still have so much to learn, but it forces you to allow other people inside your brain, like on a daily basis, you know, or twice a week or three times a week.

1:32:27 And it, it forces you out of your echo chamber. And we’re all in our own echo chambers now and, and then. And so for me, it’s just this way to just always continue to learn. And it’s taking me on this crazy adventure. Same with you, you know, and I can’t imagine I wouldn’t have done one 100th of what I’ve done without the show. You know, I, I was a banker in the City of London for almost 10 years.

1:32:49 If I would have played that out, I would have kept doing the same God damn thing, probably be drinking myself to death at this point. I would have the same friends doing the same things. I couldn’t have imagined even one of the experiences on London Real and now I get to do that 10/20/30 times a year. It’s just incredible. I’m always thinking like, if that old Brian could ever meet me, very versus his life, he would be like, what the hell are you talking about? You did what then you did what?

1:33:15 You’re aware what? Like, it would just be this incredible thing. So I’m so grateful to do it and I always love people when they do it. It’s hard to do a podcast, probably because you have to confront your own ego and you have to look yourself in the eye and come to terms with who you are and who you want to be. You got to show up every day. You got to push yourself through the hard times. You know, I, I, my first five years of podcasting was shocking, you know, I mean, shocking. I would look in the mirror and be like, what the fuck are you doing?

1:33:43 This is like going nowhere. Nobody cares. Nobody’s watching this. It’s not making a single dollar. Why are you doing this? Let’s keep going.

1:33:52 And it was just this, this whole process. How did you? That’s really interesting because I went through those questions as well. I’m like, what am I doing this for? How do I make money out of this? Because it wasn’t so much I need to make money because I want to be profitable.

1:34:05 It’s like I need to make money to pay all these people that I’ve got that, that are editing and then filming and all this kind of stuff renting. And it’s like, to me, it was like, how am I going to make money out of this? And and it was it was people that I knew that were ahead of me that kept going and I couldn’t see how they were making money that I thought there’s got to be, there’s there’s something I don’t know that they know. So how did that’s an interesting, can I ask you this question? How when did you first start making money out of it? And how did you make money?

1:34:31 So, you know, for the first five years, I remember I would look myself in the mirror maybe at the end of the year and be like, what am I doing? And how can I justify doing this again? Because we couldn’t even pay like the rent with what we were doing. There wasn’t even a business model. I didn’t even know what the hell I was doing, to be honest.

1:34:49 I was just getting anybody stupid enough to come to my kitchen to talk to me. And I’m, I was introverted. I had no friends and my city friends thought I was insane. They wouldn’t come on the show. So it was just anybody who was dumb enough to come to the kitchen and talk to me.

1:35:02 That was five years, though. Yeah, that was. Five years before I think we made our first money, I think in 2015 or 16, I started an Academy and I realized I had an audience that would pay money to learn from me, which is a very new concept back then. And nobody was doing that business model. I mean, Rogan was ahead of me, but also you look at the Rogans and the Patrick Bet Davids.

1:35:26 I mean, they were independently wealthy and they funded those things from their wealth. So like, they didn’t have business models. There weren’t many models out there. And so for me, it was just faith. I looked in the mirror, Spencer.

1:35:36 And every year I looked in and I said, wait a second, Is this thing making money? No. Does it have any chance of no. Is it even going anywhere? No. Is anyone watching it?

1:35:43 No. OK. Are you a better person? Yes. Are you happier? I am actually.

1:35:50 Are you making friends? I actually have some friends. Are you connected to, to people? Oh, man, making some connections like that Dorian Yates guy is kind of cool. And wow, then let’s do it one more year.

1:36:02 And that’s the decision I would make. And then and my, my, my girlfriend at the time, mother of my children, she was so loyal that I think one time in like 3 years or four years, she said to me, is this going to make money one day? And otherwise she’d just let me alone. And so I was just a man on a mission. I, I’m like that guy in close Encounters of the Third Third Kind where he’s at his house and he’s building a Mashed potato mountain on his on his thing.

1:36:29 And the next thing he’s doing, he’s building a mountain in his living room. And he doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he’s got to build this mountain. And then he’s got to go to the mountain and meet the aliens. And that was me, right? And so everyone around me like, what are you doing? And I don’t even know what I’m doing, but I’m doing something I have to do, and I just got to do it. And I don’t know why I got to do it. And then later, I don’t know, maybe I meet the aliens. And maybe that’s like when Rogan invited me on the show, it was like, oh, the aliens said, you’re going in the right direction, Brian, keep going.

1:36:57 Or when you get an amazing gas store, you know, you sell somebody an Academy course. It was like, Yep, keep going, keep going, keep going. And then that just kept me going. But many times I was like looking into the abyss, just thinking what the hell am I doing many, many times. And then with the challenges you said, you know when you become famous and then infamous and then people try to cancel you and deep platform you and then people come attack you and then.

1:38:16 They take away the things that you had and take away your assets and the world’s asking you, OK, are you still going to do this? You still want some of this? It’s like, yes, I do. And so then I, I got to change and move and, and, and it’s, it’s been the most incredible growth experience ever. And along the way, I’ve become sober would never have happened without London Real. I become a father would never happened with London, London Real become a filmmaker, ran to be Mayor of London. I got my first boxing match in three weeks. That’s all because of London Real. So I’m so grateful, you know, and it’s just made me a better person.

1:38:54 And you can see that. Oh my God. And I still have work to do and I’m still learning, you know, and so I know exactly what you’re talking about, but you articulated, I think even better than me, Spencer, Everybody sees you now as this guy who’s like, you’ve got mission, you’ve got purpose, you’ve got massive businesses that you don’t talk about very much. You’ve got this podcast. But you know, 10 years ago plus you also struggled with relevance, mental health, even wondering if you still wanted to be on this planet. And I was wondering if you could talk about that because, well, I’m just going to go there.

1:39:37 When I got to Dubai about a year ago, I, I knew a girl here and she posted a video on her Instagram and she was E foiling out in the water. It’s these electronic foils and it looks like you’re floating on water. And I said, wow, that looks cool. She says, you want to do it. I said, OK.

1:39:52 And I met her and a couple of guys and there were these guys, they were like totally jacked. They had these foil boards. And, you know, they would go out and do these things. They gave me one of their boards. They taught me how to do it. And I was joking that they felt like kind of the guy’s in Point Break.

1:40:10 They would like, go surf. They were handling their business. And at one point, I said, well, we got to skydive if we’re in Point break. And so we all went out skydiving. And I called them the Point Break crew.

1:40:20 And when people say, oh, Dubai’s full of, you know, these superficial people, I was like, no, these are like the most generous, amazing people in the world. And yesterday I found out that one of the guys who would get up at 4:00 in the morning and post his training videos and post his Rogan inspirational quotes and was so generous. He ended his life over the weekend. And I just couldn’t imagine this happening to a guy like that. And, you know, he looked like the guy that would never do that. And again, super strong, super in shape, super generous. His name was Sam Sutherlands.

1:41:08 And I just couldn’t believe it when I saw the post. And I don’t think anybody can believe it. Sam Sutherland. Yeah, Sutherlands is his name. He was a, a construction guy here and then again, a big part of a bunch of our lives. And I think everyone’s trying to understand it and deal with it. I’ve had, I’ve lost people before, but never, you know, from suicide.

1:41:27 And the word is he just kind of slowly started retracting from everybody. And then this happened, and it happened in the course of 60 days, 70 days. And so I’m just struggling with this and wondering, of course, you know, what could I have done? But like, if this guy was struggling with this, how many more men out there are on the edge of doing this? And how many people have come so close to this?

1:41:52 And what can we all do about it? And how can we be more aware of it? And so when you told your story of kind of going into the abyss, it hit home a little bit more this week than it normally would. And so I was just curious if you could talk about that and talk about what you know about that process. I’ve had some lows, but it’s never gone that low for me.

1:42:15 I don’t know if it will one day, but it you know, it did for him and it’s something I’m struggling with. You see people that are depressed and they’re very sad and they’re very down. Those people tend not to be the ones that take their lives. It’s it’s not the ones that are feeling sad and sorry for themselves. It’s the ones that have got to a place in their life, or at least it was for me and the people I’ve spoken to, where you just don’t think you have any value to add to the world and that the world would be probably better off without you.

1:42:49 Now that could be, well, my kids will be better off without me because they’ve got their mum and their stepfather’s a really good guy. So what do they need me for? Or my business would be better off without me because I’m just, I’m just in the way, you know, I’m a bottleneck to this business. My friends would be better off without me because I’m always the the one that stops this and stops that. It’s like this belief you have because when you become suicidal, you’re no longer sad, you’re actually feeling free. Wow.

1:43:18 Because when I’m suicidal, when I was suicidal, I was like, I was carrying something so heavy and suicide felt like it was very light. So you go into a place where as, as I did, I went through a difficult period and I, I planned what I was going to do. It was very simple. Fly back to London, say goodbye to the children. And again, in my mind, kids have got a stepfather.

1:43:42 He was a decent guy. Their mother was a good person, there was money so the kids wouldn’t struggle financially. So I’m like, what? They’re financially going to be fine. They’ve got a mum and a stepdad, so that’s all good. What, what do they need me for?

1:43:54 I’d better go say goodbye. And so I went back home to say goodbye and my, my dad’s never at my house. My dad lives in Newcastle and my dad’s car was on my driveway. So I what I would do is every other weekend I’d go to London, I’d land at heater airport, there’d be a taxi, pick me up, drive me to my house near Stansted Airport. It would drop me off. And I lived on the farm, so it was a long driveway. But my dad, my dad was there and he’s got a private number plate. So I knew it was him.

1:44:22 And it’s 7:00 in the morning and I’m like, what? So I put the key in the door, go inside the house. My dad’s in there and I’m like, what are you doing here? He’s like, I was in London. So I thought I’d come and see you and you were coming home. I’m like, how did you get in?

1:44:36 And he said, the housekeeper let me in and I’m like, OK, fine. He said go grab a shower, I’ll make you a bacon sandwich. I left some breakfast and then I then I’ll be on my way. I’m just on my way back from London. I was like, OK, so I had a shower.

1:44:49 I came down, we had some breakfast. He said, oh man, there’s a man I want you to meet a buddy of mine. Maybe we could meet him before I go back to Newcastle. What are you doing this morning? Now he knew that I I don’t do anything when I land on a Friday morning. Generally.

1:45:02 What I used to do is I used to sleep for a couple of hours and then I’d go and get my my day done. I said, oh, you got, you got me. You love him, you love him. And he said, he said we’ll go in my car and we jumped in his car and he drove me to the Priory, the clinic in Chelmsford and introduced me to a psychiatrist and I stayed there for five days with a psychiatrist because my dad knew what I was about to do. Although I’d not said a word to my dad.

1:45:29 Now I’ve spoken to my dad many years after about it and he’s like, I knew what you were going to do. He goes because I know he did the same. And my dad and I aren’t incredibly close. We don’t see that much of each other. We talk, but we don’t see that much of each other.

1:45:43 But for him to notice that and what my plan was that morning was to fly home, get off the plane, go have a shower, go to my children’s house where she lives with, they live with their mum, say my goodbyes. And there were three buildings in Chelmsford in this, in the, in the town of Chelmsford in Essex that I was, I’d chosen, I would, I’d been to all three of them and I chose to jump off one of them. And I was, but I wasn’t, I wasn’t upset, sad, feeling down on myself. I was feeling relief because it was finally over. And that’s as that’s as bad as it was. I’m so, so sad to hear about your loss. It’s so deeply upsetting when people do that. But I, I don’t think when people do it, they, they do it in their headspace thinking that they’re doing anything other than doing you a favour in their mind.

1:46:39 And so, yeah, that, I mean, luckily my dad saved me. Luckily the then I stayed in the clinic and they helped me and they helped me understand the pain I would cause my children if I wasn’t there. And it that that was the, the kind of catalyst for for five years of clinic clinical depression that managed before I came out the other side. And a lot of the a lot of the documentary work and a lot of the work with the children were my cure. So I could have been given medication, but they were my medication. The children I was, when I saw how tough their lives were, I had no reason to be complaining.

1:47:21 Things were never difficult for me. And it was just this injection of gratitude. I was so grateful. And that would last two weeks. If I saw the kids every two weeks, it would literally be that I’d be, I’d be happy as a pig in shit.

1:47:33 So happy for two weeks. Go and see them again. They’ve got no idea how what they did for me a lot of the time. People, Oh, you’ve been so good to these kids. You’ve been, let me tell you, they saved my life. You know, they gave me a future, they gave me hope. They gave me, they gave me the opportunity to think outside of myself.

1:47:49 And, and so I think that although suicide is a terrible thing and it it, and then we obviously know the statistics when I remember between the age of 45 and 50 are more likely to kill themselves than any other age group. But there’s also young people that are killing themselves now more than ever before. They’re lonely, desperately lonely. People don’t believe there’s any hope. I mean, you believe you go to work, you go to school, go to university, go to work.

1:48:15 You need to save up two years worth of your salary to get a deposit to put down on a flat 2 years. That’s going to take you 5-7 years to put that money together. What hope have you got? It becomes it becomes empty and desperate. You do a job you don’t love, you’re in relationships with people that you don’t love you, you’re not stimulated or you become so overwhelmed with the responsibility of being a man, the financial responsibility that it can get too much.

1:48:46 And, and when it gets too much and you don’t know, you know, because we all have a different compass. You know, you having $1,000,000 in the bank could mean that you’re, you feel poor. And me having $1,000,000 in the bank could mean I feel rich. So we have all of that different perspective. And, and the only thing that I can say to anyone is don’t give anyone advice.

1:49:09 Like nobody wants your advice, but they do want to be heard. And if you can get them to talk, it’s really valuable to listen and don’t judge. Don’t judge anything. You know, you’re, you’re there, you’re there. If you are a real friend and you care about people, do so.

1:49:25 And if you notice any of your friends, any of your friends are a little bit quiet, OK, just check on them. And I don’t mean drive over to the house. Just check on them. It can be as much as a funny joke. Get them talking and you’ll find out. You’ve been a bit quiet lately.

1:49:40 You’re right. And men just don’t do that enough, you know, to be going down the pub. Yeah. OK. Just just check on someone. Just just just like you check on your mum. If your mum went quiet, you’d be like, Mum, are you OK? Yeah.

1:49:58 I was saved, so I was lucky. But when people do take their lives, it’s just to me, such a waste, such a waste in so many ways because they that it’s, it’s not an I’m fortunate because I can now see because of afterwards, the impact that I’ve had on other people that I wouldn’t have had. And that’s, that’s what now with your friend Sam that’s passed away. He’s got no idea of the impact he would have on people or he’s had on people. And that’s. Sad.

1:50:22 How did your dad know? I don’t. Know I saw my dad the other day. He was his 80th birthday. I saw my dad the other day. We don’t talk very often.

1:50:31 And he told me about his childhood. My dad was went through a horrific childhood, mate. He was born in Nigeria where my grandparents were missionaries in the Second World War and then went to school in the UK to to an orphanage in the UK when he was 8 years old. And that orphanage was with kids whose parents had died in the Second World War. And he was 8 and the youngest kid in there was 13. And so he was, he went through a torrid time in there as a kid. He was left there for three years by his mum and dad before they came back from Africa.

1:50:59 So we had a tough time as a kid, that really tough time and, and, and it’s clearly like everybody has got his own traumas and, and, and struggles to deal with and cope with along the way. But I, I believe some people, you know, your mum and dad do know you, but some people can just sense things. And I think my dad was he, he could just see maybe because a lot of people said my behaviour, my pattern was the same as my dad’s. My dad did well. He went bankrupt before he went bankrupt.

1:51:32 He did well. He was successful, OK. And he was the centre of attention. He was the guy that was buying everyone the beers. You know, he was the guy that was, you know, demonstrating that he was doing well. Then it all went horribly wrong.

1:51:43 And then he built up and it, but his personality shone through. He was a real character with everyone. And so maybe that my, my dad could see that I was, I was mirroring or copying or repeating his behaviour and he knew where it took him. But other than that, I don’t know. And even if you asked him right now, how did you know I asked him?

1:52:00 It’s like I just said something. Wow, well, thanks for that. It’s super helpful. You know, it’s weird because I’m, you know, it’s a lot of feelings. So sometimes you feel guilty and then you feel like it was a waste. But then I have to put my myself in his shoes. But I mean, I guarantee you if he could see what we saw in him, so.

1:52:21 It was the way, isn’t it? It’s always the way all was the way what you saw in him you couldn’t see. I know what that’s like. Because people were like, when they found out they’re like, you would do what? Why would you do that? And they’d list all of these different things and you’d be like, oh, OK, I didn’t realise those things. Yeah.

1:52:38 And sadly you didn’t. And yeah, it’s really, it’s awful. But you you’ll never forgive yourself, because you’ll think there will always be something you could have done, right? I always think that I’ve had a few people leave me in this friends in my life. And I always think on their departure, they’re, they’re giving me a lesson and a message, you know, and I had a guy in the city, I was godfather to his children and he died when he was in his early 40s. And I think I realized then that, you know, life is so short that I better start doing what I what I want to do and what I love to do.

1:53:14 And it’s probably why London Real was born. And I I don’t know the message from Sam, except maybe it’s to be more aware of other people like him to make sure that that doesn’t happen, you know? Yeah.

1:53:31 I’m so sorry. There you go. No. And thanks for talking about your struggle. I mean, that’s, that’s very bold of you to be vulnerable and talk about that, you know, because that’s hard. I’d love to finish on this concept of purpose. It’s something you talk a lot about, and maybe it’s for men, maybe it’s for everybody, but I think you’re really big into people finding their purpose and then going into the fear and then putting into the putting in the work. And it’s something that you talk about a lot. I get your Instagram Stories in the morning where you’re always driving through the dark.

1:54:06 I didn’t realize you trained at that time. I just thought you were a madman like Jocko. But you wake up and you always put these inspirational messages over the front of your car driving and they’re really powerful. But can you talk about that? And is this something that took you a while to learn, or is it something you’ve always known? I learnt, I learnt very young that I didn’t have an education in the way that other people did. So I couldn’t, I couldn’t use that as a shield, you know, a university degree.

1:54:34 So but as I learnt that hard work equalled something and my mum taught me that working in sales taught me that Commission only, you know, hard work equals something. So what is it you want? And so in the early stages of trying to achieve something, you, you, you give yourself a smaller goal than you would later on in life. And if you can achieve that smaller goal, you can prove to yourself you can do it. And then you can increase that goal later on. But if you’re just selling to make money, it won’t last. So there has to be a reason behind it. So if I said, you know, I need to sell $100 million worth of investments this year so that I can make $10 million so that I can buy myself a big fat house, OK, It, it hasn’t got yet. There’s no energy that goes with that, OK? But if I’ve got to sell $100 million this year to make $10 million so that I can invest $9 million in building a new school for the children in Kathmandu, get out of my way because I’m unstoppable, OK?

1:55:32 And so, but, but there’s also within me, there’s a winning mentality. So if I give you 2 options, option number one, you earn $200,000 and you come second in a competition for the year. Option #2 is you earn $100,000 and you come first. So $200,000 and you come second, or $100,000 and you come first. I I want the $100,000 because I need to win. Lots of people I know are like, yeah, but there’s twice as much money coming second.

1:56:03 Yeah, I’m not interested in that one because winning really matters to me. OK, I don’t know why, but there’s something about me. It’s this like all these years, I was never a winner as a kid. And so then then to, to go and become a winner at something, you know, find my, find my kind of genius, whatever it may be, that then I could be acknowledged for being somebody I was, somebody I was recognised. So there’s instinctively part of me, I really believe, period, period, period, that if you have no mission and no purpose in life, you go nowhere.

1:56:34 Now, it doesn’t have to be anybody else’s mission and it doesn’t have to be anybody else’s purpose. It’s just what you decide, and that can change. But if you get up every day and you don’t know where you’re going, how will you get there? If you wake up every day and you don’t know what your journey is, how will you fulfil yourself? So for me, there has to be a mission.

1:56:53 Now, it could be a mission that we share. So let’s say you and I were business partners. It could be our mission. So it doesn’t have to be my mission, OK. And we could have our own responsibilities within that, within that that goal and objective, OK. And we’re working it together and, and sometimes it’s more fun to have other people to do that.

1:57:10 We’re all working on the same thing together, going in the same direction because we’re going to hit that goal. So with my businesses, we have a three-year period of where we need to get the business to a certain valuation so that we can sell the business. Everybody that has shares in the business is incredibly aligned with me because we’re all working towards the same thing. Now some of them want their money for certain things, you know, they want to buy the fat house. Some of them are motivated by that. I know if I’m able to sell the company for what I can sell it for, I’m going to build a school. I’m able to build the other things I want to build as well to help the people I want to build. And so it’s very, it’s very mission LED for me. And then I’ve got something to be excited about. And most people on the planet have none of that. They are just enough as they’re journeymen. They just exist.

1:57:56 They go through the motions and they, they live their life. They have their one or two holidays a year. They’re paying for their, you know, their semi detached house in South London, OK. They’ve got a 25 year mortgage. They’re, they’re paying, you know, tax on their salary.

1:58:10 And, and, and, and it’s just that. What is it for if you work for a company and you’re not self-employed, then sit down with your boss and say, how do I get to the next step? Tell me what I’ve got to do to get there. How long is it going to take? And what have I got to achieve to get there?

1:58:24 Give me something to focus on. Give me something to get excited about. Give something so I can have hope. And I just find that most people just don’t live in that world. They live in that that life of mediocrity. It’s like, why do you want mediocrity? I’m 55, OK, I still feel 25, but I’m 55. I’m going to be dead in 35 years. It’s like I’m not here for very long. Imagine getting to the end of your life and going, yeah, it was all right, You know, imagine getting to the end of your life and having like a cold Pilkington type of type of feeling towards it.

1:58:57 It’s just like, yeah, it was all right. And he’s like, what was the point of that? Like your kids, OK, when you’re when they’re small because they don’t understand, you’re the hero, OK? But when your kids are adults, you still want to be their hero. You want them to be able to talk about you to their friends, about what their dad does and how well he does it and, and the lives he’s changed or the people he’s impacted or the money, whatever it is that you’re measuring it by.

1:59:20 And a lot of people just don’t get that. And also, as we get older, people give up. It’s like, what are you giving up for now? People say you’re 55 years old. You have to, I’m just getting started. You know, I’m 55.

1:59:31 I’ve got so much more to do. I haven’t achieved anything yet really. OK, when I when I’d saved a million kids, maybe I can sit back and say. But until then it’s just like, get focused on what you want to be. And if that means you want to be the best Baker in the world, be the best Baker.

1:59:48 If you want to be the best nurse in the world, if you want to be the best garbage man, be the best you can possibly be, because nothing but positive comes from that. Even if you’re recognised as the best garbage man in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, you’re still recognised for something. And that recognition will mean that you matter. And whilst we don’t need to be reminding ourselves all the time that other people should determine whether we matter, there’s nothing bad that comes from someone saying I’m impressed with you, well done, taken off, respect.

2:00:18 Because it just feels good. And what do we want? To be happy? And if we want to be happy, we need to feel good. So for me it’s very simple.

2:00:27 And then fear, something you talk a lot about, I guess to achieve a lot of things, you got to go into that fear. And fear is the thing that stops most people. And once people go into it, which is probably rare, they realize there’s actually nothing there. It was these phantoms that make us play, these tiny, make us live these quiet lives of desperation. And yet it’s like a cage that’s unlocked and you can walk out whenever you want, but you stay inside of it because of these fears. I’ve got a guy that works for me called Khalid. If he listens to this, he’ll know exactly what happens. So Khalid for the last three months have been teaching to get referrals.

2:01:01 He hasn’t got 1 referral for three months. I’ve taught him every way possible to get introductions and referrals in his business. He sells medical insurance and, and yesterday we, we had literally had like like the final kind of like it’s going to go like this. We’re either going to give up on this, OK, or you do it. And I know that he’s uncomfortable.

2:01:20 He’s so amiable. He wouldn’t say Boo to Goose. He’s the kindest, sweetest guy on the planet. He’s nice to everybody. I’m like, it has to change.

2:01:28 Anyway, I got a 3 minute voice note last night for him and the three minutes of the voice note, 2 minutes and 45 seconds were essentially taking me down a path to think he wasn’t getting referrals in the last 15 seconds. He said. And by the way, the guy gave me an introduction, but what had happened is he eventually submitted. And when he submitted, he submitted and he gave me one willingness and that was to try, whereas all the other times he hadn’t tried.

2:01:57 So he told me about what happened in the meeting, went through the process, and then in the end, he got this referral. And I saw him this morning, I gave him this big hug and I’m like, you’re amazing. How cool is that? I said, you now can’t unlearn that. You now know how to get a referral.

2:02:10 No matter what happens, you can get a referral. So do you think you could get 2? That’s not 100% more because it’s like, it’s like a marathon runner. You don’t marathon running isn’t the 26 miles on the marathon, it’s the months and months of hard work that goes into it before. So for him it’s like now you’ve unlocked it, you’ve learnt to ride a bike, you can’t unlearn it. You now can jump in the pool, you won’t sink. You know how to swim.

2:02:34 You can’t unlearn swimming. And so we’ve got him to this point, and now we’ve got him to this point. He’s stepped over this fear that he’s has of asking somebody and somebody saying no. Our problem is, you’ll remember this when we were kids, when we were 18 years old and we went to a nightclub, How do we date women? How do we find a chick? I don’t know, get super drunk and then maybe find a way to? You’d walk around the nightclub.

2:03:04 Yeah. OK. And at the end of the night, when I was young, at the end of the night, they played the slow songs, OK. They called it the erection section in the nightclub, if you can remember. OK.

2:03:13 The DJ would come on. Hey, ladies and guys. And so you’d go and try and find a girl to dance with. And the first girl would be like, no, the second one might be no. Eventually one of them would go, yeah, OK, we can have a dance. You’d face this rejection.

2:03:26 So rejection wasn’t so painful back then because you’d you’d face this on Friday nights or Saturday nights just trying to meet people. We don’t do that anymore. We don’t have that, that, that, that, that, that kind of callousing, as David Coggin says, that callousing of our mind around that. So we’re so fearful of someone saying no. But I say if someone’s going to say no, So what, what, what, How naive would you be to think that everyone would say yes? And so I really believe that, you know, if you knew, if the law said for you to get a yes, you must get 5 Nos 1st and you won’t, It’s impossible to get a yes without 5 Nos. OK, so you please go and get the Nos so you can get the yes. Everyone would walk off, go no.

2:04:08 OK, no. OK, Five of those I could have my yes because they would know. That’s the formula. And I think that’s where we have to get people to understand, you know, there’s nothing wrong in someone saying no. And if you’re stupid enough to think that everyone’s going to say yes, then you need to have another look in the mirror because not everyone’s going to say yes.

2:04:25 And so fear to me, all these, these, these acronyms that use false evidence appearing real or F everything and run and all that kind of stuff, you know, using them all like I have, it’s like, it’s like we’re scared of what, you know, I do something every morning in the mirror. OK, so I go, I go, this is my process. I’d have a shower. I go to the gym, I come back from the gym, I have another shower and then I have a shave, OK. And I stand there while I’m having a shave and I look into my pupils, like deep into my pupils.

2:04:54 And I have my morning chat with myself and I say, what’s it going to be like today? Then what are we going to do? What excuses are you going to give me today? What nonsense are you going to come out with? Or are we going to have a good day?

2:05:04 Are we going to execute? Are we going to get this done? And that conversation lasts about two minutes of me having a don’t let yourself down, Spencer. And that people think it’s madness, but for me and then get in the car and I go off to work and I’m like, you’ve got this. And so when then someone wants to test me, I think I lean into that.

2:05:25 I get excited by reaching that level of maybe that fear of the unknown because I want to know what it because when you know what’s the other side of it, it’s quite easy to enjoy it rather than a lot of people that are like, oh you mother of God, you know what I’m doing right now. I like that conversation with yourself because that’s what it’s all about. The biggest opponent or enemy we all have is ourselves, period. And if you can push through that or have those conversations every day, you might not win every single one. The other self might come in and screw up your big plans of the day.

2:06:01 But he’s like, you’ve, you’ve had Coggins, haven’t you? Yeah. I mean, he’s a dream for me. He’s just like, he’s just like the biggest mirror you could ever have in your face. He’s like.

2:06:10 And your excuses. What? Again? It’s like the way that he he deals with his situation and. And Maria Conciercio is just like Coggins, but she’s she’s quiet.

2:06:18 She’s not loud, but same thing. Yeah. Maria in the gym, she’s 5 foot 4. She trains with me. She’s a tiny demure lady.

2:06:25 She carries the same weights as me. OK, she carries the same medicine ball as me, OK. And she wants to compete with me on the sled. And she’s this little tiny lady because she’s like, you can’t break me. I’m unbreakable.

2:06:37 Like Coggins. You can’t break me. You’ve got that. And that’s why people like that will always, always go on, because it’s almost like, it’s almost like the the pain is, is almost by accident a pleasure. Yeah, it’s great to have people like Goggins in our lives and Penas in our lives to remind us. We could go.

2:06:56 You’ve had you mind. I goggies wouldn’t come on my show. He didn’t respond to me. He’s, I don’t think he does much at all now any media and you know, we got him at a special moment. He was in London, but he’s really introverted and so he came in with I think his his wife at the time or soon to be wife and you know, not a lot of small talk.

2:07:16 Luckily I had a pull up bar in the pack and I knew he had won the world record for the most pull ups in 24 hours. So he started doing pull ups and we got chatting. But you know, he doesn’t actually like doing media. He doesn’t actually like talking. I don’t think about his stuff. He doesn’t like motivating people because he’s usually just so angry that they’re not actually doing it. Have you, have you listened to the audio version of his book Can’t Hurt Me?

2:07:39 Yeah, both of his. Books. So the guy narrates it and then brings Coggins in. It’s like a podcast that brings Coggins in. I love it. You know, It’s like really good.

2:07:48 Yeah, I love Goggins. It’s so perfect. It was funny at one point where talking in the show and he says, he says, you know, we’re sitting here, Brian, with our fancy water, you know, talking about all this stuff. But, you know, when I’m out there on the run or you’re out there, that’s when it’s really hard. And I just laugh out loud because only David would say that our water was fancy, you know, because for David Goggins, when he’s running through the desert for 300 miles, water is fancy. You know, it was great.

2:08:15 It was great talking to him and and having that connection. But yeah, those people are are just gold, you know, gold. And because of the beauty of digital media, we can get those peoples in our hearts and souls. And that that’s the upside of that, you know. So Spencer, how can people learn more about your documentaries? Maybe learn how they can get involved in some of this charity work, podcast, all that good stuff. How do they find more about you?

2:08:41 It’s really easy. I mean, my name sounds like an old people’s home, so it’s really easy to remember. Spencer Lodge. Now there is a Spencer Lodge in New Zealand, OK, which is a hotel, but it’s not that one. Everything else is me, so you’ll find me in all my socials and it’s a very easy name to search. spencerlodge.tv is my website.

2:09:00 If you’ve got any questions you want to learn anymore, please reach out. Just just ask me. I, I respond to everything myself and I’ll, I’ll answer any questions that’ll help or I’ll guide people. And if people want to meet Maria, I’d gladly do that, or Hannah Badi or Lena, the other people that are in the documentary and learn about their journeys, then we’d be very happy to tell them. That’s amazing.

2:09:19 That’s amazing. Thank you for reaching out to me and then putting up with the months where I didn’t get back to you. As a year. A year. See, folks, I mean, I really am a jerk. A year?

2:09:29 You took me to say yes to your podcast. Yeah. So if there’s any podcasters out there that I’m ignoring, you know, it’ll be at least a year. And that’s for Spencer. So it might take you of more years, but thank you for pursuing me and thank you for having me on your show and I really enjoyed it and thank you for letting me get to know you, you know, and again, it’s one more bonus I get from doing this show is that I get to attract people like you in my life. And so thank you, thank you for the lessons today and thank you for the deep stuff.

2:09:57 You talked as well about mental health and and that’s really helped me a lot. And man, just I’m so glad and excited to be in the city with you. I’m going to probably be here six months a year because I love it here and I want to spend a lot more time here and a lot more time with you. So thank you. Really appreciate. You thank you so much and the pleasure really is all mine, I promise you that.

2:10:15 I appreciate that man Thank you. And I just want to say thank you to Web Three TV. We will see you next time. Take care.