Stene Jacobs - South African Sage

Full transcript: Stene Jacobs on London Real

0:16 Happy New Year and welcome back to London Real. My name is Brian Rose. I’m here with Mr. Nick Gabriel and our guest today is Mr. Stene Jacobs. Welcome.

0:24 Thanks. First, I wanted to just thank our sponsors, which is onit.com, makers of Alpha Brain. I actually didn’t give you any Alpha Brain. I’m going to give you some right now. And, of course, of New Mood. I would suggest taking one. I was actually off the Alpha Brain for about four days while I was on New Year’s and I took one yesterday and I had the craziest lucid dream last night.

0:44 What happened, dude? it was off the hisel. You have to tell me more. You can’t just leave that hanging out. I know, I know.

0:49 Are you familiar with lucid dreams? No. So I think everyone’s had a few in their life, but a lucid dreams is like when you’re in a dream and you can kind of choose where it goes. It’s real fragile, but I find that on Alpha Brain, I have them, and I don’t know, I like woke up in this huge mansion that I had and I walked out and there was a party with like hundreds of people and girls and dudes and then these animals started showing up, these like fucking lions with wings on like their haunches and like these big baboons and I was actually really scared and there was like a big crocodile with a big head and I was just like, what the hell is going on?

1:18 Anyways, I ended up partying with this dude named Sullivan who was actually Italian and he brought over some like, some, I know, some tequila that was like had peyote in it but it was like a pink gel. Anyways, he called me on my iPhone and you know how you take pictures sometimes when people insert their picture shows up? He had like an animated gif of himself like shooting people that came up on my phone and I was like, what the hell? Anyways. For a second, I thought you were gonna say like, And I took a picture of him in the dream and the picture’s still on my iPhone.

1:47 Oh God, that could happen. Man, I wanna be a part of those dreams, bro. This was amazing. Yeah, well, you had one the first time you took it, right? I don’t know.

1:55 It wasn’t as intense as that, though. This one was really crazy and I recited the whole thing this morning for like four or five minutes. And now I know how something like Alice in Wonderland can get created because I mean, I’m not normally that creative or an imaginative dude. Would you ask me to take this pill now? Anyways.

2:09 That’s probably not a good idea. Well, you know. That’s more like that, dude. You would be the only guest that’s never taken it. Yeah, no pressure.

2:15 But anyways, if you go to onit.com and use the code London Real, you’ll get 10% off alpha brain new mood and we’re trying the shroom tech out, I’ve ordered it. And it’s got that, you know, that’s like that. Cordyceps. Yeah, the cordyceps, mushrooms. I just want to put something else out there.

2:30 Man, I don’t know about you, but I’m getting loads of emails of people asking me like, they’re saying, Nick, just be straight up with me. Does this alpha brain stuff really work? And I just want to say it definitely works. regarding the mental focus and sharpness. I mean, I think you and I are pretty clean living guys and we’re pretty mentally sharp anyway.

2:48 So I guess in that area of our lives, it doesn’t make too much of a difference. But when it comes to the lucid dreams, I have amazing results with that. Definitely. Absolutely incredible. I just feel a little bit of extra focus and then there’s no caffeine and there’s no crash.

2:59 It’s just, I feel a little, I don’t know, tuned in. But yeah, give it a try. I mean, a lot of people try to think our fans kind of like it. And anyways, it’s something we’re doing. But anyways, I just wanted to also shout out to two of our fans that have left some really cool comments.

3:11 It was Zach Waterman and George Cotton. Just wanna say thanks to those guys. And just keep it coming, we love the feedback and like us on Facebook and subscribe to us on YouTube. Anyways, I’m gonna turn it over to Nick and as usual, you need to tell me who you brought into the studio. Man, Brian, honestly, I’m always happy to come do London Real, but today’s an extra special day for me because this cat over here is named Stene.

3:36 Cool name, by the way. Yeah, it is quite cool. The way I know Stene is, his younger brother Jason is one of my closest childhood friends. We literally grew up together in Cape Town in South Africa. And, you know, Stene was always that like, I didn’t have an older brother, but he was always that cool older brother figure in my life.

3:55 Do you know what I mean? Was like always in awe of the guy. And then he left for London when he was, how old are you Stene? 21 when I left. Yeah, so he was 21, I was still about 13 or 14.

4:05 And then I moved to London when I was 23, and Stene earned a flat in London, and he was basically my first landlord. He was very cool, he gave me a month’s free accommodation, and then I started paying him rent, and we became friends, and I’d say- Is he part of the reason you came, or was it- Definitely made it easier, and seeing what he was achieving over here, and how well he was doing made me wanna come to London. And I’d say without a shadow of a doubt, he’s one of the five people who’ve influenced me most in the world.

4:35 A lot of pressure. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Well, so, um, what brought you to London?

4:40 Well, after leaving school, I went to the Navy. Um, in those days you had to go, it was national service. Wow. So I did my, uh, two years, I was a diver in the Navy and then I just wanted to spread my wings and go for a sort of year gap. And London seemed to be the new, you know, everybody was going. So I felt like I was missing out and I took a plane to London initially only for a year. And, uh, London just gets you by the short and curlies, you know, creeps in and how long ago is this? This is 1994. Okay. So pretty much spent all of my 20s until I was 36 and then my wife and I moved back to Cape Town. Okay. We’ve been back for almost six years. Not a lot of South Africans fall in love with this town, right? I think it’s a period of time they spend here though because it takes a while, you know, when you first get you in a bedsit, you don’t have the quality of life, you may be doing a bar job or really low down in the banking industry in a back office somewhere, working in IT, it’s really difficult to enjoy London, you know, if you’re earning six pounds an hour, whatever the minimum wage is now.

5:44 It is tricky at first. You know, once you start to get to know the place and, you know, it opens up and your slice of London is very important too. People don’t realise that, you know, wherever you are, whatever borough you’re in, London’s only three times bigger population wise than in Cape Town, four times maybe now, but it feels like it’s 20, 30 times bigger because there’s just a different life in every little pie of London. So whether you live in Shortage or Wimbledon or Fulham or Croydon, it’s just like a totally different city.

6:14 It doesn’t feel like, you can’t compare it. And also people always say to me, well, what do you prefer? Do you prefer Cape Town or London? But you can’t compare it. It’s like comparing apples with goats.

6:25 It’s not a fair comparison. In London you get sort of 14 days of sun in the year, and Cape Town’s sunny 300 days a year. But London’s, there’s something about London that’s infectious. It’s an energy, dude. You cannot get it on your world.

6:37 What can I say? Is it the diversity of the people? Or, dude, I don’t know. I think it actually, it’s about the people. You know, it’s something that you can’t explain with one of your senses.

6:45 And it’s nothing that you can touch or see. It’s a throbbing. It’s unbelievable. You know, you come back, I haven’t been back for two and a half years, but as soon as I get off the tube, bang my Oyster card, and I get out, and I realize, wow, I’m back in the center of the universe. It’s a fantastic feeling, and you can feel it.

7:01 It’s just that the streets are throbbing with people, and it’s infectious. I get a rush out of that. I don’t get excited about a lot of things, but London makes me excited when I come back, but we’ve just had a one-year-old, we’ve got almost a one-year-old daughter. Lily was born in February. So my wife and I see London through a totally different, in a different light now, because we’ve never seen it, what it looks like when it is a child friendly.

7:27 It’s a totally different London to when you when you growing up here in your 20s and 30s and and 40s and I was saying to Nick earlier, people spend all their life here and you can almost never get bored. But sometimes you need something else. And I love my life in Cape Town. You know, we’ve got a house with a pool and I take my dog for a run and a barbecue on a Tuesday. You know, I don’t have to go somewhere for two weeks to have a holiday and have my have my little sort of pie of sun Because you’re living holiday.

7:54 It’s there any time. Well, there was some guy in the 1800s who was, I think, a member of parliament that said if you’re bored with London, then you’re bored with life. Samuel Johnson. Samuel Johnson. He retires of London, tires of life.

8:03 Yeah. Okay. That’s it. You know, I’m from San Diego. And the first thing people ask me is, how can I live here?

8:09 They’re like, why aren’t you at home with the sun and the women and everything? And I mean, to be honest, I get a bit bored when I go home, you know, and it’s an urban, it’s a suburban sprawl. And I just, yeah, I don’t feel that kind of energy that London has. Man, I was just, I mean, I moved out to Australia for six months and everyone’s like, oh, it’s going to be amazing. You live by the beach and go surfing and the weather’s incredible.

8:33 And man, that stuff’s awesome for two weeks. Right. And at the end of it, you’re like, you adjust to that threshold very quickly. And the thing about London is sure, it’s only sunny 14 days a year, but goddamn, those are the best fucking 14 days of the year. They’re incredible.

8:47 They are good days. And we’ve had some sick weather last year and it’s sunny today. Yeah, those are good days. I’ll give you that the rainy days are man. I mean I’m in love with this place, dude I know are fucking love this because you weren’t about a year ago or two years ago, dude I guess it was a guy ten years ago. Nick thought this was a living house Seriously, he came to a barbecue in Fulham a fry and And we were turning meat and Nick looked over at this three and a half foot wall in between our neighbors Hang on, this is Victorian houses, they’ve got a 15 foot width, you know, five stories high with their 50 and that’s your postage stamp of a garden.

9:23 And Nick just couldn’t believe it. Is this it? Is this your garden? What do you mean? Most people don’t even have a garden.

9:29 No, but it’s rubbish. You can see the, you know, you can see the neighbor’s garden. So Nick, it’s just, you know, it’s totally different. You’ll get to like it. And London, you know, Nick can’t stop raving about how awesome London is.

9:40 And it’s amazing because it’s a, it’s 180 degree turn. 10 years ago, you know, he’s it’s it’s gripped him and it’s amazing and it is an amazing place I’m I’m just fortunate my wife’s British and I come back once a year and I’ll never write off moving back full-time It’s just for now when you know when Lily’s between sort of one and six I Wanted to be running on the grass and playing with dogs and doing things and you could have that in London It’s just you know, it’s not child friendly. Is it not it’s not child friendly except for Starbucks Starbucks is pretty child But one thing I’d say is, I mean, especially we’ve got some of our viewers asking questions on Facebook about how you got a visa here and I’m guessing they’re thinking about making a move.

10:19 It’s not paradise, right? There are days when I wake up and I look out and it’s, you know, or like it’s four o’clock in the afternoon. I’m not saying that I wake up at four o’clock, but there’s days when it’s four o’clock in the afternoon and it’s dark already and it’s that miserable fucking grimy thing and you’re on the tube and people are like bumping into you and everyone’s got that sour look on their face and they just want to get home. You know, and sometimes that kind of grinds you down a little bit, you know?

10:42 But I think the positives far outweigh the negatives. I mean, I think as Stene said, my first couple of years were hard because I don’t know about you guys, but I found that most of my Circle of Friends actually aren’t English in this town. They’re actually non-English. And I found it was kind of hard to break through, get to know people, getting used to… There’s some great food in London, especially now, but back then getting used to the usual food.

11:04 Like you said, those Victorian houses where you’re like, are you joking? I mean I’m from San Diego, you’re from Cape Town where you’ve got pools and barbecues and big nice houses and here it’s like everything seems kind of like out of a Harry Potter movie or something. Yeah. That’s crazy. But you get to like those houses and they’ve got character.

11:20 They do have character. You know, they are positives with London, definitely. I was in a slightly different situation, I think, I mean I was there for 13 and a half years. Wow. So my first three or four years, my first two years I was there, a lot of my friends with South Africa and all, Antipodian, so you know, Aussies, Kiwis, South Africans we’d go off and run with the bulls in Spain and do crazy things. Most of my first two years, I think I was drunk most of the time, like most Kiwis and Aussies were, and South Africans in those days.

11:46 They liked to have a good time. Yeah. Every bit of money that you spent, you have no responsibilities. It was all just one big party. So the first two years is more or less a blur. But it was a good party.

11:57 And then people go home and South Africans, especially with a two-year work visa, they end up going back to South Africa. So you stop having South African girlfriends and You’re South African friends, a few of them, you and Alistair, they’ve stayed here and they’ve made a life. They’ve married or met English girls and they’ve made a life here and that’s what happened to me. And so I got reintroduced to England the sort of English way because of my wife and I was with her for a long time before we got married and I got to know all of her friends and sort of do what they do, which probably wasn’t very different after I’d been here for five or six years.

12:33 So I experienced two sides of London and I’m really grateful for it. And I come back now and I’ve still got friends because of that. And then I’ve got guys like Alan and Nikki, who are here all the time and you don’t sound like you’re going to leave ever now. Did you have a visa to stay here because you said South Africans can only usually stay for like a two year work visa and then you have to go. Well, actually, when I got here initially that we weren’t even part of the Commonwealth, you know, we were, we only became, excuse me, I only became part of the Commonwealth after the 1994 elections.

13:02 And I got you in March 1994. So I didn’t even have a work visa. So I was really just on holiday. And then I went home and I could apply for a work visa. So I applied for a two year work visa.

13:13 And then during my work visa, because my granddad’s British, I managed to apply for indefinitely to remain and eventually I’ve got a British passport. So I got a British passport after about six years here. And Nick’s on a European passport as well. And that’s how Nick could stay. smart to get that passport I got mine as well and when you’re on a work visa one of the guys on Facebook asked about me and I worked for the company in the city and they can usually afford that process of applying for a visa and I think I had to prove I was uniquely qualified so they have to post a position for my job in the UK and then they have to prove that they hire me for that. I would have thought that they’d just send a picture of you and once they saw extremely good looking that would just be taken care of. I’ll be looking for a visa then. So yeah I got a visa but it was only for that company so if I got sacked or left it I would have to leave the country or ever apply for a new visa it’s quite a process and then they make you leave the country to come back and so as soon as I got my residency I got it and as soon as I got my passport I just bagged it because you never know what’s gonna happen hell the UK might even leave the EU you never know so it’s just like on what you spoke about earlier Stene you know Stene’s that guy he’s always got a story you know he’s had such an immense range of life experiences that he

14:24 Can tell you about working as a bouncer in Greece or I don’t know going running with the bulls in Pamplona Spain or you recommend that awesome you got to do it drunk because everyone drinks all night before that you drink all night generally you go to the main square and you either open up your sort of 750 bottle of sangria or your equivalent bottle of beer whatever your tipple is and you spend the whole night drinking and jumping off the they’ve got a statue in the middle of this, I think it’s called a muscle bar, and people jump off and the crowd catch you. I didn’t do that, it’s the craziest thing to do. It’s more dangerous, it’s a fact.

15:02 It’s more dangerous than running with the bulls, because how it works is the beginning of the morning, people open up and they start drinking, so the catches are pretty sober, but that’s only the real brave who jump off in the mornings, but as you’re drinking, you’re thinking, well, I’ll do that, I can do that. It’s only 20 foot, there’s loads of people down there, I’m gonna land on people even if they don’t catch me. So at four o’clock in the afternoon, if you’re jumping, you’re jumping because you’ve got Dutch courage in.

15:24 Problem is the catchers are also drunk. So people are, you know, the ambulance is pulling in there often. Well, the run is awesome. I mean, so you drink all night, literally they’re bars that are 15 foot wide, like Victorian houses, and they’re right next to each other like a terraced row of houses. And every bar is playing different types of music.

15:43 You know, one bar’s playing Nirvana, or it wasn’t, you know, I did it in 94. One bar’s playing Nirvana, next bar’s playing house music, the next bar’s playing Guns N’ Roses, and you just go from bar to bar, And then before you know it, it’s sort of starting to get light. And at seven o’clock, you go to the start and you run at the bulls. How close did you come to getting like a horn in the… The bulls are pretty quick.

16:05 I mean, if you’re gonna get into the arena, the bulls more or less will run past you, no doubt. You can’t, you know, I think there’s 12 bulls in the run. It’s only an eight or 900 meter run. But the bulls are gonna pass you. So, and you run in on cobblestones the whole way.

16:17 So you really, you gotta watch your foot and that’s the most important thing. Is it a big crowd or is it only a certain number of people that do it? No, it’s a massive crowd. Okay. There’s thousands and thousands of people.

16:26 A lot of people don’t get into the arena. People don’t realize you do the running of a ball, so you do the actual trip, doglegs into an arena, and then they close it off when it gets full. So a lot of people run and they’ve been too slow, they didn’t queue up early enough in the morning. Because the Spaniards, obviously, the thing with they want to get into the arena because when you’re in the arena, that’s where you prove you’re mannered because that’s where it gets down and dirty in the arena.

16:50 The run, you know, people do the run, no problem. You can try and get out and everything, but once you get into the arena, they close the doors and for 45 minutes, the bulls get corralled off. And then you see a whole, you know, Spaniards sitting down like they had assembly, you know, in front of these double doors, 10 deep and about 20 meters wide, and they open these doors and they let the bulls out two at a time and the bulls obviously run over them. Over them?

17:14 Yeah, over them. And then the bulls are in the ring with you. So the same bulls that ran that morning in the ring with you, needless to say, they’re pretty pissed off, and they’re trying to hook people, and it’s epic. Did you go in the arena or just do the- I got into the arena. I ran twice, the first time I didn’t get into the arena, the second time I got into the arena, because the Spaniard that I was with said you have to get into the arena, otherwise it’s like you didn’t run.

17:35 So I did it again. Well, Roberto, thanks. And then the idea is just to avoid the balls. And it’s hectic because, I mean, there’s 12 balls, so you can see two or three balls over here and there, and then all of a sudden, you just see people go, and then you look back, and there’s a ball right behind you. And some people get so scared, They try and jump out of the arena, but the crowds throw you back in.

17:51 So you’re in there for 45 minutes. The crowd throw you back in? Yeah, yeah, you can’t just jump out. So it’s epic and it’s crazy. Stene, see, I told you to do this good story.

18:02 No, it’s a great, you definitely gotta do it. You have to do it, I mean, Hemingway did it, and he’s a legend. You know what we should do it on ayahuasca? Oh, God. I have been thinking a lot about ayahuasca later.

18:11 Yeah, me too, me too much. Stene, I wanted to ask you, some of the most fascinating stories and entertaining stories that you’ve related to me were about your time in the Navy. For those of you who don’t know, Stephen mentioned earlier in the show, he was not just like an ordinary Navy recruit. He actually became a Navy diver, which is the most difficult thing to achieve in the Navy. And I’d just like to know if you could tell us a little bit more about that.

18:34 Is it considered like the bad-ass thing to do when you’re going like a fighter pilot in the US? Like, did you go for it? Well, it’s probably not a fighter pilot. It’s a little bit like the SEALs. Okay.

18:42 But except without all the equipment, because the budget’s a little bit more constrained than South Africa. That’s cool, a good bunch of guys, it’s a difficult thing to do, you go through sort of a set of selection criteria, so you know the normal sort of phys ed things, push ups and swim tests and everything, and how they do it is they do a sort of set of selections where they’ve got maybe 40 people doing selection at a go, and it’s pretty difficult, about five people make it out of each of the group of 40, and they eventually, in our year, They had three classes at 12, an Alfa Brava Charlie class, and eight of us qualified in the end. There were some ship stivers that came on in between, so to finish the whole course is quite a big deal.

19:23 Just eight for the year. Eight for the year. Out of a pool of how many? There’s two classes a year. So out of each class, what’s the total pool in the class?

19:31 Out of 36. 36. And I remember you telling me about one of the tests that you had to do, which was you had to swim through a tunnel that had a series, if I remember correctly, that had a series of, along the time there were a series of points where you could stop and there were holes that you could take a breath and then there were guys like jacking sticks. That’s a harbour wall swim. Could you explain it to me?

19:49 There’s all sorts of things at different stages of the course that have different tests to see that you can get through and the instructors, they’re old school instructors. I can imagine. And so you do harbour wall swims where you’re actually swimming in a harbour wall and their recesses cut out where they hide in and then when you come past they grab And we used to die with these cylinders called twin draggers. I think they’re French sets. They might be German.

20:14 But you have a soft inhalation and exhalation. It’s not like the modern demand valves that you have today, or regulators. They’re soft. So you can actually, if you’re trying to breathe in, they can hold them and squeeze the air so you can’t breathe any air in. And obviously, or if they do the other side, you can’t breathe any air in.

20:31 So try to make you panic and make sure you have a main comment. That’s the whole thing. They just want to see that if you can panic underwater. So the whole time they take an air away from you or doing something to see how you can cope in a panic situation. And some people just can’t do it.

20:43 Some people are physically so strong, you know, they can, in the day they can do a thousand pushups, but you take someone’s air away, it’s a whole different story. So were you always a swimmer or is it just a mental game that you have to prepare yourself? I was always a swimmer, I played water polo at school, but for me it was a test and it was a great time. I look back now, some of my great friends are still either diving offshore on the rigs or they, you know, they’re in different careers, but we have sort of once a month on a Tuesday, we meet up for a couple of Swifties in a pub and talk about old times.

21:13 So we’re like old men talking about, you know, the older you get, the more hardcore you were. That’s funny. There’s some classic stories, I mean. So was it the deep water dives that were the scariest? Well, actually, part one dives is not, you only qualify at 39 meters.

21:29 Only. Have you skipped a dive point? I have. Actually, I took a course in a pool, which was still uncomfortable enough, and then I went out. Open water one.

21:37 Yeah, I think it was. And then I went in, when I was in Bali, I went under it with that with like, I shouldn’t have gone, and the guys were just like taking us down and holding us down and stuff. But I find it really scary, and I was only like 10 or 15 meters. It’s quite claustrophobic, huh? Yeah, and just the whole idea that once your air goes, you just panic.

21:55 Like you said, you could bench press 200 kgs, but if you’re under there and you’re out of air, it’s just a mental game. I’d say it’s much harder than even being choked. It’s like there’s just no air. But there’s pretty much always air. I mean, nowadays you’ve got gauges.

22:08 In the Navy, you don’t dive with gauges at all. You didn’t when I was there. You had a reserve gauge that you pulled down and that gave you an extra 30 bars worth of air. But most of the time it’s instructors taking air away from you. That’s, it’s just testing you all the time to see how much you can take mentally.

22:24 And, you know, if you, if you can’t take it then. So what is it? A Navy diver, what were they ultimately trying to prepare you for? What would, like, let’s say you had continued that route in the Navy, what would you, would you be the guy who’s like planting a mine on an enemy ship? Or what would, what would your, yeah, pretty much, I mean, obviously you’re always preparing for war and hopefully there isn’t going to be a war, but if there is, they want to have someone who, if the ship’s coming to harbor, you need to be able to do a jay search on a big ship.

22:47 So you have guys that go down and check that there are no limpet mines under the ship because obviously you don’t want them to blow up, you know, a ship in the harbor and destroy your whole fleet. So you know, it’s training people to do everything. I mean, you get guys who specialize in underwater demolition. you know, you get guys that are underwater combat, you get all sorts of things, but it’s just preparing you like all the other, you know, artillery and air force guys is just preparing you for a war situation.

23:09 Okay. Stene, I have another question for you. You know, another thing I didn’t tell you about him is, Stene, to me, in my mind, if I had to give you one label, it would be the king of positive thinking, you know, like you seem to me like someone who just wants to just squeeze the juice out of life, you know, And he’ll try anything once, he’s successful in everything he does, I mean, most of you don’t know that Christine’s also a successful property developer.

23:36 And my question to you, I’ve been wondering about this a lot, is, was there a point in your life where you made this decision to be as positive as possible, or is it just the way you’re wired, or where does this come from? That’s a good question, I don’t really know if there was a point where I thought, I’m so negative, I’m going to be positive, or I just need to be positive. And look, Nick, I don’t, you see the positive side of me all the time, but everybody has ups and downs and you just can’t dwell in those downs.

24:03 You know, like I say to you all the time, you need those downs. Those downs are important. You know, I use the sort of metaphor all the time that those downs, it’s like a roller coaster. You need those downs because those downs give you the velocity to get to those new ups. If you didn’t have those downs, you wouldn’t know how good the good times are.

24:20 So the downs are really important, but you need to take the positives from where you are. I used to say to you all the time when you went in your first two years when you were here and you were moaning about London or life in general. And I used to say to you, Nick, you got to suck it up. Suck up the good things, you know? Find out what you like about London, do more of that.

24:36 And it’s the same with Cape Town, you know? There are plenty of times that can be negative. In general, you know, so many South Africans are so negative about South Africa. And in some ways, there’s reason to be, but there’s so many positive things happening on that side too, that you’ve got to, excuse me, you’ve got to love where you are. If you don’t love where you are And you can’t find anything that you find positive.

24:57 You need to move somewhere that you can find that. Because you’ve got one life and it goes by like that. Yesterday I was 19. I was running with the Bulls last week. It’s 15 years ago.

25:08 I think in London or any city, sometimes you get kind of locked into a pattern where you just go to the specific places and you forget, like you said, London has 25 different cities and sometimes you just need to try something new or get out of your pattern. I find myself doing sometimes the same things over again And I’m like, sometimes I get down on London arm and shortage and you know, it gets pretty rough around here sometimes. And I’m just like, why am I here when I could be in Geneva looking at a lake?

25:31 But it’s just, I think you gotta try to change your routine out, but I don’t know how to do that sometimes. And sometimes speaking of changing up your routine, you know, I realized just how quickly the human organism, myself in particular, becomes stuck in its ways that if I- Stabilizes, right? Exactly, I walked a specific route to work. And one day I just said to myself, fuck, I gotta change this route up. I got to turn left instead of turning right here and see where this takes me, and shit, it was actually a short aware.

25:56 It saved like five or 10 minutes of my journey, and this was all because I wasn’t walking with blinkers on. And yeah, we speak about this a lot, Brian, and it’s good to see you on the same day. It’s not your fault, we’re creatures of habit. That’s how I engineer it. You’ve got to constantly be giving yourself a reason to do it, and to see something different is a reason.

26:14 And to find out that you’ve saved time, that’s a mundane, boring example, but there’s so many, you need to go and see things. My traveling when I look back is the most important thing and I love London because London gave me the opportunity, not just financially, but London’s so central that you could go to Europe, you could go to New York for the weekend shopping or you could go to surf in California or go gamble in Vegas or out of the States. Obviously Europe’s on your doorstep, so you can go skiing and that’s what frustrates me a little bit about Cape Town is that I’ve got family And my needs are looked after in a different way in Cape Town.

26:52 But London gave me that sort of central hub where it gave me actually my gateway to the rest of the world. I know that sounds cheesy. But you find in South Africa that it’s hard to get something diverse without traveling for six or 10 hours? Cape Town’s pretty diverse over season, because a lot of people go to Cape Town. But it’s nothing like London.

27:12 I mean, London is. I love Cape Town, by the way. I just love it, I love the food, I love the vibe and I really did enjoy it there a lot. But I mean look, if you’re in Cape Town and you want to go overseas, it’s very expensive A for the average person there and it’s a huge ordeal. It’s like to get anywhere like meaningful to 10 or 12 or 16 or 24 hour flight.

27:34 Here if I want, I can be in New York in four or five hours and you know what I mean, instantly it’s just… Yeah, or Switzerland too and these are completely different people and cultures. Exactly. got to realize Nick that you know and I thought about this a lot too I thought I’m gonna feel so isolated and I’m even to somewhere where there’s nothing around but I realized I didn’t see anything in my own country and I haven’t been to Kruger I mean it’s embarrassing I’m 39 years old I’ve never been to the Kruger National Park I haven’t been to Mozambique I’ve been to Malawi I’ve been to Zimbabwe I’ve been to Zambia I’ve been to Namibia but there’s so many places on our doorstep Madagascar the Seychelles Maldives you know and that’s close to us so I just think well I need to just explore a different part of world. If I ever move back to London then you know those places would be a mission to go to.

28:15 So I’ve got lots of things that are on my tick list and you know I come back to London once a year and fill up our boots on a summer sale or a Christmas sale and just and we love being here when we’re here and my wife she you know she misses London but there’s just different things that I need to do there. I’m just curious since you’re a little bit older than Nick Like how South Africa has changed in the last 20 or 30 years for good or for bad, or I mean, what’s your perspective on it? Because you’ve seen a lot of change.

28:44 I see a lot of positive change. I think for the general South African being there, and some of them have seen a negative change in quality of service provision and things like that, but there was always going to, you know, there’s always going to be a dip before it gets better. There’s a whole sort of socio-economic grouping that has to be educated. And that’s happened now. You know, I went back in 2006 and did a post grad law degree.

29:10 And the people in my class were of the full cross-section, socioeconomically, it’s unbelievable how things have changed. Ten years before that would have never happened. Ten years before it wouldn’t have happened at the same scale. And you see, look, there are lots of bad things that happen in Cape Town. There are lots of bad prejudices that still, that have to die out with the older generation.

29:32 You know, that’s not going to, it’s not going to happen quickly. It’s going to take time. But the younger generation, they’re really joking. I mean, over here, you don’t really, you don’t sort of talk about, you know, you white people do this or you black people do this at home. It’s a banter with young 20 year olds.

29:50 They sort of make a joke out of it, you know, to say, these are your characteristics and it’s bad to generalize, but sooner or later you’re going to need to generalize about something to make any sort of conversation. So my problem with South Africa is that race seems to be brought up far too much still now. In 2012 or 2011, it still seems to be the most contentious issue that gets brought up. If there’s an argument or something, it becomes racial, where it’s nothing to do with race.

30:17 It’s an argument. If there’s a car accident or something, then it’ll escalate into something that’s racist. And that really bothers me, and it’s something that really needs to disappear. But it’s going to take time to change. Do you think the joking about it is a good sign when people can have a laugh about it?

30:30 Yes, definitely. With the sort of younger crew, I mean, I have it at work as well. You know, I’ve got a great guy in the bank. I do a lot of construction for the banks. And there’s a young architect who works there, and Mufundu, he’s a great guy. And we have total banter all the time. The older generation look at us and they think we’re going to get into a fisticuffs. We’re just joking. Do you think it’s similar to the states where we had such a long history of slavery and then we had the Civil War, and then that was supposed to change everything.

31:00 And then 100 years later, you got Martin Luther King walking and getting hosed down. And then even 10, 20 years after that, we have affirmative action. I mean, it took us as a country, and we’re still not there in 150 years because it was such a deeply ingrained socioeconomic difference. No, definitely. I think it’s, look, hopefully it won’t take 150 years.

31:18 Hopefully, technology and access to education, things are happening far quicker now. So hopefully it’s just gonna take a generation, but there’s gonna be an older generation that think that things have gone You know down right now the grandpa’s yeah, well, you know even not not necessarily my parents mom But my parents generation will say oh this country’s gone to the dog and I keep saying to them Well, how I mean that all the parents say that we’ve we’ve we’ve built 560 houses a day since since the 1994 elections. Yeah, but you spoke about human nature and one of the I think one of the The saddest things about human nature is our tendency to romanticize the past.

31:58 Everyone does it, man. I know I do it. And I think it’s just the way it’s always going to be. It is to a certain extent. I mean, the Russians are doing that a lot now, and they romanticize the Soviet Union because back then, there weren’t these oligarchs that had all this money, and at least they had bread on a regular basis, and now they’re complaining, and they’re like, oh, I remember the Soviet Union.

32:16 And a lot of people are like, what are you guys, crazy? Maybe they have some points, but I think you’re right with the romanticism. the Russians shopping on Oxford Street for jewelry and Louis Vuitton brands. Do you think technology is gonna advance things faster? I mean you were talking about that as far as equalize or? You know it’s so strange you asked that Brian because I was just sitting with one of my jujitsu students yesterday a guy called Ben, super intelligent guy and he’s been reading a book by I could be mistaken I think the guy’s name’s Daniel Pinkerton and the whole book is about explaining how, you know, there’s this erroneous belief that, like, we’re living in these dangerous, risky, uncertain times, but actually we’ve never had it so good.

33:01 You know, like, again, you spoke about the tendency to romanticize the past. A few hundred years ago, like, living to 30 was a huge achievement, you know, that was massive. Right. Now it’s something we take for granted. You know, I was just thinking to myself yesterday, I walked into my kitchen, and I poured myself a glass of clean water.

33:17 You know, it’s been such a short period in human history that that was taken for granted. Especially in London. Do you know what I mean? And 50 years ago, you would have caught something and went by drinking water and the whole Thames was smelling so glad they had to break Parliament up. But yeah, I’m reading this book.

33:32 Can you tell me more about that? What did you say? Well, the whole, I mean, it was called The Big Stink. I think it was in the 1860s or 70s actually invented the toilet, the water closet, which you’d think would be a great invention. But the problem is, is the sewers weren’t ready for it.

33:45 So they were flushing, flushing, flushing. And they didn’t realize that you could contaminate the water with, you know, human waste. And so there’s a whole, there’s a whole thing of, I forgot the guy’s name, it was in Soho, where people were getting cholera and dying by the hundreds and he, and they couldn’t see it because, and they thought it was transmitted through the air, the cholera, but it was actually in the water because of dirty pumps. And I think of the name, and he found the certain pump and shut it down and shut the crisis down.

34:10 So you’re right about the clean water and the whole Thames smelled so bad. they broke up parliament and went out to the country because it was just a mess. And then they built the sewer systems along the side of the town. I had no idea. You’re right.

34:21 There’s been lots of improvements on the London side. I mean, Victoria and London, there were lots of advances, especially on the sewage side, on the systems, but they didn’t separate the storm water system to the sewage system. So even right now, they’re having problems on the south bank of the river from Putney on. They’re busy doing some construction there because when it rains heavily, the stormwater floods and that takes some of the sewage down into the river. So it’s still happening now, but the Thames is a different beast altogether. I mean 30 different species of fish thrive in the Thames. You see comrades on the birds on the Thames. They have to eat their body weight in fish every day. So if they can survive on the Thames, that’s a really positive, you know, I don’t know how long you’ve been here, but Nick you’ll remember there was a whale that went as far as his fucking bridge or, you know, it swam up.

35:14 That’s pretty special. Yeah, it’s come a long way. It’s still not the prettiest river in the world, is it? No. But you know, you were talking about technology. I keep reading this book, I think I’ve been reading it for three months, it’s called The World is Flat. And he was talking about now, the chapter is about just the amount of information, just Google as far as as a person, now you can empower yourself with all this information. And you don’t have to waste time when you used to have to go to a library and look up a book and you couldn’t find what you want and now you can find it instantly from a mobile platform and it just talks about how it’s just accelerating all of us and leveling the whole point. Well I don’t argue with my friends anymore because if there’s a disagreement I’ll just google it right. Even Rogan said that.

35:50 I’m googling with the other. Guys don’t get fights anymore because you just google it so there’s no way to fight. Man it’s the most we have so much opportunity at our fingertips and again taken that we are a very small we represent a very small percentage of the world’s demographic. I mean there’s, what is it like? I don’t know what the figure is off the top of my head, but most people on this planet do not have the privileges that we do.

36:14 But for people like us, you know, I’m just really thinking back in my life in the times when I was kind of depressed or down or sad about something, once a friend said to me, he said, Nick, you actually are too lucky to be able to be sad because you have everything you could possibly want. You have no right to be sad. And I was thinking, God damn, he’s so correct in that statement. You know what I mean? It would be wrong to take for granted everything we have. Just the fact that we can sit here and send London Real out to people all over the world and fly to South Africa on holiday. It’s amazing.

36:44 But as humans, like you said, we all, we kind of equalize and then it’s like you wake up the next day and you’re like, okay, my life’s, you know, just kind of ho, ho, hum, like celebrities and you see people get to a celebrity level and then they try to commit suicide and you’re like, what’s going on with you? But they’ve kind of equalized And now they’re not challenged and I think it’s hard to continue to challenge yourself And I think it’s hard what you said when you get into a low point I find it with myself where I’m like a little bummed out It’s hard to recognize that and realize it’s part of the roller coaster. I mean, how do you do that?

37:12 I don’t know but I mean, I find myself always stronger after those lows Look, it might take a week or a month, but I always look back and I appreciate those times You know and it sounds a little bit cosmic. It’s true. Those lows are what makes me The problem is realizing when you’re in a low, because when you’re in a bad mood, it seems that there’s never an end to it. Yeah, it envelopes you and you’re like, oh my God, this is going nowhere. Yeah.

37:39 And then I guess you have to just keep pushing through. But you know, it’s funny. Um, one of my favorite, you know, uh, rappers, his name is ice tea. He’s like, he said, once something one time, he’s like, unless you’ve been through some problems and some real drama in your life, he’s like, I can’t really hang around with you. You know, because it builds character and you know, when you’ve been with someone, You know, sometimes you meet like a 20 year old girl or boy and they’ve had this nice life and gone to college and like you can’t really talk to them because they haven’t had a big punch in the face, you know, and it’s just kind of nice when you meet with someone that’s gone through some struggle because they just have a good perspective about it.

38:09 That was me when I first got to London, dude. Was it? Yeah. Yeah. Dude, this is, I mean, I’m embarrassed to admit this Brian.

38:16 You know, in South Africa, if you come, if you come from like a, a middle class to wealthy family, um, I don’t know if it’s like this anymore, I haven’t been home for a while, but if you come from a middle class family, you can afford a domestic employee to clean your house, right? We call them maids, right? And so throughout my life, I grew up with a maid, someone who would help my mom with the housework and help raise us kids, and it’s just what it was.

38:43 And when I arrived in London at 23, man, I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I had never washed a dish in my life. Not a single time, dude. It was a massive shock. I mean like my parents at this huge house with a swimming pool and like, you know, I waited on hand and foot almost I’m not ready but you know and then like And then I’m living in this little room that Stene’s running out to me and I have to like cook all my own meals Wash all my clothes wash my dishes. It was a big shock to the soup cook. No, no, I still can’t go but I made him watch dishes In fact, I put him on a rotor. You made me clean toilets motherfucker You gotta do that in your life. That was your loan. Look where you are now. Yeah, what can I say, right?

39:20 I owe it all to Stene. Yeah, that’s good. Well, I’m surprised about it. At home, we’ve got the equivalent of Sky or Virgin or whatever. We’ve got satellite TV.

39:29 And I’ve got Sky on a lot to see the international news. And I keep talking about this recession, obviously. And I’ve seen you guys speaking about it. And we are obviously in a recession. But on the streets of London, it is unbelievable the amount of money that’s been thrown around.

39:44 I mean, OK, it’s Christmas. That’s probably not the best sample that I’ve taken visually to see what was going on, but it’s just unbelievable. And the construction that’s going on in London as well. It is crazy. Just in residential streets.

39:57 I’m not even talking about commercial buildings. It doesn’t look like London’s in a recession. It almost looks like it’s a bubble all on its own. I think London is, I mean, the rents in this neighborhood are up 20% in the last year. I mean, this is a recession.

40:11 And this is a, you know, this is shortage. It’s not Knightsbridge, but you go to Knightsbridge and you see all the money. It’s the Saudi money, the Chinese money, the Russian money. And they’re so wealthy, they just don’t care. I mean, if they’re kids going to university here, you know, two million pounds will buy that house and they can just stay there and it’s crazy.

40:27 I had a good friend of mine, Chris, who originally started training me in Jiu-Jitsu and I said, oh yeah, we’re in a recession. He said, what recession? He said, I’m getting phone calls to be headmasters of these schools. He said, you just need to look, he said, for where the work is and find a, you know, a niche, I think. If you got the skills, you know, London can still work for you now.

40:45 It’s, I’m really, before Christmas day, you know, I was watching Sky over here with a family and 43.9 billion pounds in two days, the retail shops. That’s it. That’s the spend. Yeah. But is London an anomaly?

40:59 Because it’s in the pounds. Yeah, but I mean, how much of the recession is actually just scare mongering by the media to sell newspapers and sell like air time on news shows? Well, I don’t know if that’s the sole reason. No, but I’m thinking how much of the reason is worthy. I think it’s a confidence issue.

41:15 And once people are less confident in the US is the prime example. It’s like 80% of GDP is consumer spending and when you tell people there’s a recession They’ll be like, I’m not gonna buy that durable good that car that boat that in America They just constantly expect to have it sentiment. It’s the same with the stock market, you know Yeah, two or three CEOs of you know, see over Meryl’s and and Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan if they all agree that we’re in a recession we’re in a recession You know, it’s a compliment becomes reality It’s like a run on a bank if everyone is scared of the bank They’ll take that money out and it will crash that bank But if you can restore confidence, then they’ll be like, okay, everything’s gonna be going back to her It’s like a great story. Oh, yeah, I was there for Christmas, too It’s Lily’s first birth, you know almost first birthday She’s 11 months old and so I want to take you to see Santa and Santa’s at home rubbish because they wear shorts So, you know the trees all disheveled and it’s nice. No, I mean, it’s 31 degrees So I’m gonna show an authentic Santa so we’re going to her it’s cuz you know, here’s a proper Santa comes from Lapland he’s there. So I’m going down and we got the buggy and it’s mom’s day off so she’s in Fulham. There we are in Harrods, fourth floor, going down. Going to Santa’s grotto.

42:25 So I get to the grotto and there’s someone with a security, you know, Santa’s got security now, he’s got a doll woman. And she’s like, what time’s your appointment? And I’m like, what? I need an appointment to see Santa. Yes, you need an appointment. Go and book.

42:39 She points me to the other side so I think really I need an appointment to go see Santa. I go all the way to the other side and I’m playing it in my head thinking I’m really, you know, I’ve got to ask this woman, hi, we’d like to make an appointment to see Santa. It’s got to get for you. So I get to the girl and I was like, hi, um, um, I need to make an appointment to see Santa. And she’s like, Oh, so are we fully booked?

43:04 So you couldn’t see him. We fully booked until Christmas Eve. That’s what most people just think of me. And of course it’s Harrods. Santa at Harrods, if you don’t book 18 months in advance, you plug it.

43:14 Yeah. So I just said to Lily, well, I’ll have to see Santa in a couple of years. But she was crushed. Yeah. So she didn’t see Santa at all?

43:20 Well, she saw some other Santa at Covent Garden, but it’s not the same. Yeah. Harrods is a bit nuts. I find that place almost intoxicating when I go there. There’s just so much going on and the sales girls, they’re all wearing black and they’re all done up.

43:34 And I’m just like, there’s like hundreds of them and I’m just like, I got to get out of there. You know, I prefer Selfridges. Really? Yeah man. I never saw what the big thing with Harrods was.

43:42 Really? I remember Stene told me once, it was on one of his little, when I was in my I don’t dig London phase and he was like this is the center of the universe and he would say look at Harrods, you can walk into Harrods and you can buy anything you want. If you tell them I want an elephant, they’ll get you an elephant. It’s true. It’s pretty close.

44:00 It’s true, they’ll get you an elephant. Yeah. That’s their sales pitch, they get anything you want. In fact you can choose what type of an elephant you want, Indian, African, they’ll get you an elephant. Seriously? Really? You can buy anything from Harrods. Yeah, that is apparently one of the things, but still, dude, prefer soft ridges. You do? Yeah. Well, it’s not a… Harrods is pretty touristy. Yeah. So the real Santa goes there though. And obviously this is an 18-month waiting list. Yeah, I’m not surprised you couldn’t see Santa, especially the Harrods Santa. Yeah.

44:28 So you’re going back to South Africa soon? We’re going back on next week on Tuesday. So looking forward to 12 hours with an 11-month-old. It’s always great. Oh, you’re that dude Well, you’re that family on the plane that everyone hates, right?

44:39 No, no, on the way here she’s fine. You get like a little bassinet that you can book. You book one of those bulkhead seats and you get a bassinet which is all really cool and the baby can go in there. This is the theory. The baby goes in there and then for 12 hours you don’t hear her or him, no worries.

44:55 She would not go in that. Even when she was asleep, my wife tried to put it in and she just knew that that wasn’t her bed. I’m not going near that. You have to hold me. Look what you got to look forward to, Brighton.

45:05 Oh my God. We had to hold that for a while. Better hurry up. I think they were offering child free plane flights or something in those days. First class, I think.

45:13 I knew first class. I took first class once and there were these two kids in there and I was like, oh my God. Seriously? I just spent God knows how many thousands of pounds on this and they were running around and I was like, seriously? Killing me.

45:24 I can’t afford first class. Dude, I’ve only ever taken first class once and it was amazing. It was like, it was everything it’s cracked up to be. It is, right? Yeah.

45:32 I flew my dad over to London one time, first class, I think, and he was just walking in and they were serving him like steak and he got to London and he was like high roller. That’s cool. For those who don’t know, you can see Freeman Rose in the Supremacy. I might post that on the London Real page. And business, how’s that for you and how’s business in London now? It’s difficult. I went back and obviously been here for almost 14 years, you lose your network and your network is always your business really, no matter what you do.

46:01 If you’re out of your network, it took a long time for me to get back and I’ve got a mentor that I see sort of once a week and he looks at everything, my financial affairs and my personal affairs and he’s a great guy and he said, look, I was a little bit negative when I went back to South Africa actually, I can’t make this work and going back to London. And he used to sit with me and say, listen, it’s not Cape Town’s fault, it’s your fault. You disconnected yourself out of the network and now you need to work to get back in the network.

46:29 Good two or three years to get back and, you know, not create a network, but I had an existing sort of friends that were still there. A lot of my friends had left all over the world in the States or in Europe or Australia, since the whole world is moving to Australia it seems. And people had to start trusting you again as well. That’s what it comes down to as well. Your skills are totally different. When you spend that long away, you gain skills that Now you have to you know convince people that like well, I do this now It’s a it’s a different you selling a different person and you change as well You know you you’re not the same person so there’s so many changes that are happening that you have to reinvent yourself and get back and Really create a network from scratch. I have a mentor Big shout out to you Stene and he was saying to me Um, you know the older he gets the easier business becomes because his network is so strong and established now that that people will just call him and say Stene I’ve got this opportunity do you want you want to join in and he’ll be like yeah let me think about it whereas before before we had the network yet to hustle and yet to guard and find things but now the network brings it to him and it comes back to it all the dodge it’s not what you know it’s it’s you know it really isn’t and it was the same with my business in the city I mean it took years to build but then you have these

47:42 Relationships with these people that you might not think are the value but that is your value because at the end of the day it’s it’s your word and it’s the person that you are and that only happens over time that doesn’t Apple for Facebook, that happens over doing business on a regular basis, seeing people meeting people and trust and I mean they say about Harvard Business School you don’t go there to learn but you go there to meet the people that later you’re gonna do business with and that’s really interesting it’s hard but when you’re in school you’re like okay I just got to get the grades but then later you find out it’s the same even with schools I mean a lot of people have this tussle between why should I send my kids to state schools or private schools because you know I don’t want them to be too full of themselves or be a snob but I also don’t want you know the other the other bad things on the other side it’s really difficult situation South Africa is the same exactly the same thing you know there’s three or four really good schools the traditional schools and there’s some new private schools as well and there’s always this tussle up between well should I send them because a lot of people say well they’re just too snobbish and they’re too full of themselves but they’re great characters that have come out of any school so you just got to think well what do you want but it’s the network on those good schools that you cannot you know you

48:51 Can’t falter the network the networking ability and the you know you keep your child into the try and make them as good morally as you can but you know they’re friends that network they’re gonna keep hopefully into university and then into some sort of career so that’s the base that’s the foundation you building for them would you guys agree with the statement that it’s it’s so cliched but you know I heard once you can only climb as high as your five closest friends and I’ve been thinking about that more and more lately and I’ve had to look at the people I hang out with you know I think we spoke about this another episode you know would you agree with that Stene to a certain extent maybe but I mean your five closest friends now are not necessarily are you saying you’re changing friends all the time because you know you’re gonna be moving and if you if you’re in Cape Town you can have that’s those same five close friends your whole life it didn’t happen to me I mean I’ve got some of my friends that I had growing up with at school but my whole life changed coming to London and I would say on a five-year cycle you know your people that you spend a lot of time with and that happens to be work people a lot changes at that same cycle so maybe maybe if you’re looking at those you know at it that way maybe that’s five or ten you’re five that you’re refreshing but If you’re moving up, they do constantly change. I mean they do for me they do in London when you move

50:13 You know going back to that networking issue an ex-client of mine from the city named a Luca Favreau He’s got a seven-year-old kid and he’s putting him in private school and in London and it’s not cheap It’s like so like four grand a term or something So he’s paying 12 13 grand for this kid and he’s but he’s doing judo and doing you know water polo and crazy learning Chinese and crazy stuff and he said he said Brian but part of that is the network he’s like The kids he’s gonna meet when he’s seven and eight years old will be the kids later that he will know So he’s thinking this he’s planning his kids future this far out ahead I never thought of it all but I never thought of it like that But he’s right because these are like the top Smartest exclusive kids in London and these are the kids that are going to go on to university and probably be people in industry around The world and I never thought about networking that young but he’s right. I mean, he won’t meet friends You can’t necessarily. I mean, that’s a great thing You’ve got two kids going to private schools and it’s a great dream, four grand a term, 24 grand for that. Then there’s a nanny and nannies these days.

51:13 It’s after taxes. 30 grand a year. Yeah, after taxes. So, you know, that’s over 50,000 already between the nanny and the school. It doesn’t include any of their sports or their trips to skiing in Switzerland or anything like that. So it can be a really expensive exercise. But you’re investing in your kid’s future. But you You could have the situation where you do that your whole life and your kids end up not having a good network.

51:35 Having a terrible network. And then also from an employer’s point of view, they do, you know, it was always great to have that Uxbridge education, you know, oh, you went to Eaton and then you went to Oxford and BAM, you’ve got a job straight. I mean, in the city, that used to only be those people. For sure. It was an all boy network.

51:52 But nowadays, I think people are scrutinizing a little bit more carefully. Yes. You know, they’re getting people to come in and they go and listen, this guy might have had a free ride his whole life. isn’t driven or she isn’t driven. So let’s interview this person. Maybe they went to a good state school or a state school and they paid for their own university and they got a first and they’re absolutely the most driven person that you want. We want that person to be the CEO. We want that person to be driving an economy or a change in a business.

52:18 You don’t want someone who’s had a free ride. So it all depends on the individual and I think employers are starting to do that now. I’ve got some pretty heavy hitters that But I know my sister-in-law is a real big player in the banking world, and just the conversations we have, I think she’s high up on the HR side. And the sort of gist that I get from her is that she’ll scrutinize someone’s CV and really get them in. It’s not just a tick box saying, okay, Eton, Oxford, tick, got the job.

52:46 Yeah, maybe that pathway that you could lead your kid through, so you put them in the most expensive private schools and lead this life of privilege, man, it could fuck them up. It could totally fuck them up. And I read quite a few autobiographies and some of the most successful guys are the ones who grew up playing like a stickball on the street with their group of kids in downtrodden neighborhoods. It’s a motivation factor. And I think the world’s flattening as we speak, I think 30, 50 years ago, it was the Cambridge and the Oxford guys that were just in because there was no other information.

53:20 But in the city, I mean, you worked there, we had a lot of East End guys with no degrees and they would be talking like black cab drivers and then you would have them in the investment bank inside, some guy from Oxford, but there’s a lot of guys without degrees, at least in my company, doing very well because they hustled and they started off in the back office and they just worked their way up, you know? But that drive is something that you cannot teach. You know, that drive, it’s like fighting spirit for dogs.

53:44 A Labrador is way bigger than a staffy, but a Labrador is never going to bugger up a staffy. Because it’s, you know, a statu- Do you think it’s born? Or do you think your daughter watches you and she’s like, all right, dad is constantly going for it. He’s doing this. He’s doing that.

53:57 She’s going to grow up with a similar type drive. Nature versus nurture. Yeah. I mean, who knows the answer to that question? I think it’s born.

54:02 You think so? I think you can learn to a certain extent, but some people just can’t be asked. I see people who are driven and people who aren’t driven and it doesn’t matter what socio-economic group they, you know, they come from, you know, I look at my, the people that I aspire to, you know, or just the general brands that we know, you know, from TV, the Gordon Ramsay’s or Michael Cane’s or, you know, Richard Branson of them, they, you know, they worked that they’ve never sat in a cubicle. Yeah. You know, they didn’t go do an NBA and NBA is a great, but they didn’t go and sit in a cubicle. That’s not, you know, Gordon Ramsay grew up on a council estate in Glasgow. And, you know, I’m watching, I’ve started watching Kitchen Nightmares. I’m not I’m not a big food buff at all, but you know what amazes me and impresses me every single time I watch that guy. That’s how much he yells. His dedication to excellence, you know, and a friend of mine was a he had a friend who was a chef for Gordon Ramsay, one of his restaurants. Okay. And he said, you know, you know what Gordon Ramsay’s hiring process is?

55:02 He asked you to fry an egg. Yeah, that was amazing. And that’s one in one of those episodes, he asked a guy to make an omelet. He said make a cheese omelet. And the guy couldn’t. And he was which is like, how can you be a chef if you can’t even make an omelet?

55:15 And he rips through those guys, and it’s sad to see it, because most of those businesses are failing, right? And they continue to fail, right? Well, I mean, I’ve only watched a few episodes, but he seems to turn around quite a few of them as well. Yes, I just finished Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, and thanks for that. But it’s really interesting to get and see how hard that business is.

55:31 And I was thinking about Gordon Ramsay, and Anthony Bourdain’s talking about the burns on his hands, and he’s like 54 years old in his knees, and he’s working 12, 14 hours a day. I didn’t realize. No, it’s a tough business. Chefs are pissed off all the time for a reason. You know, they’re stuck in a hot kitchen and it looks like the tube just with gas burners.

55:49 Everybody’s pissed off on the tube. Everybody’s dog’s died or there’s some sad story in the tube and no one wants to give you eye contact because they’re thinking, you’re a freak. If you just happen to glance and try to catch it, see what happens. That immediate disconnect. We had dinner at Claridge’s, which is Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant.

56:05 And we had it, we were at a table in the kitchen. It was like six of us. It was like a five hour dinner with city boys. And so we got to watch them kind of yell at each other and we’re waiting for Gordon to come in because apparently, back then, he was just, you know, a terror in the kitchen, just yelling at everyone. Did he come in?

56:19 No, he didn’t. He has a few other restaurants, so he didn’t come in, but they were constantly on the ball. Yes, chef, yes, chef. They tasted everything. They were tasting everything.

56:27 And there were signs everywhere. If you saw any rodents, you’re supposed to let people know right away. Dude, I’ll tell you one thing. After watching Kitchen Nightmares, I am very reluctant to eat in anything but the finest restaurants. But when you see what happens in the back, wow.

56:41 Well, Anthony Bourdain said, he said, look at the bathrooms. He said, if the bathrooms aren’t clean, he said those are easy to clean. He said then imagine what the kitchen looks like. And yeah, I mean, I have the same way now. I’m looking at everything.

56:51 Like he said, don’t order fish on a Monday. Never order mussels. And I mean, I was up in the Lake District and they had mussels as a special. I was just like, no, no. Guys, we only had a couple of minutes left.

57:03 You know? Wow, it’s going quickly. Yeah, it’s fun, huh? I always said to Nick and I was too long, but that’s going really quickly. races you know a lot of people say it’s hours too long to watch we’re keeping it under an hour now but um I find it’s hard to really get to know someone unless it’s about that because if we had cut this off at a half an hour then a lot of people tell me an hour is not long enough really I mean we can we’re never gonna please everyone so let’s let’s just stick with this and see what happens maybe in the future we we do a little extra supplemental half an hour that people want to watch but um no it’s been it’s been really good I’m really glad you came on scene I mean it’s the hot seat you never know what’s going to happen, especially with Nick’s question.

57:36 I’ll say to Nick, what’s the topic? I mean, I could have dropped something like, oh, you circumcised, but I thought Stene’s a close friend. I’d better keep a clean one. That’s good info. No, but it’s good.

57:48 We try to keep it unscripted and unedited and just kind of go with what happens. Anyways, thanks for coming on. Oh, it’s been great. It’s about the journey. It is.

57:58 All right, guys. Thanks a lot. All right, bye.