Episode summary: Samraj Matharu is a marketer who takes in endless amounts of data to determine the best ways of showing products to customers and how to deliver what people want.
But not only does he take in data about reaching target audiences, but has learned how to apply reading and understanding data to better his personal life. Data is available to us easier than ever, and just have to know that it’s there.
Samraj sets goals he wants to achieve and uses a lot of data apps on his phone (and these are already programmed apps on our phones). With a damaged ACL, Samraj needs to make sure he stretches and gets his exercise in.
So he’ll use a step counter on his phone. He can then see his progress, whether he’s keeping up with his goals or falling behind, and recognize what he needs to do in order to achieve those goals. Samraj’s biggest goal is to be the best version of himself.
Guest Name & Bio: Samraj is a believer in self-mastery and does what he can to excel in everything he does. He reads books by Robert Greene, Rhonda Byrne, and Paolo Coelho and has a broad range of interests and skills.
He also likes to excel in the gym and put 20kg of muscle on within 2 years. Samraj has a compelling story to tell about how he tore his ACL ligament and got over it.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION
0:08
Hello and welcome to The Mindset and Self-Mastery Show. I’m your host, Nick McGowan.
0:14
And on this show, my guests and I unpack the stories that shape us, the lives that we lead on our path to self-mastery.
0:22
So let’s not wait any longer. Let the games begin.
0:30
Hey, Sam, welcome to the show. How you doing, man? Yeah, good. Thanks. How are you? I’m doing great. You know, I had your brother on a couple weeks ago, and I think
0:39
you guys, your episodes will probably air right around the same time, but I think you had signed up for the podcast like a couple hours later.
0:48
So I thought we had a great conversation, but I guess apparently we did because I guess your brother was like, Yo, dude, get on this.
0:53
Is that about right? Yeah, because he wanted me to do a podcast and he did. So that’s why I joined.
1:00
That’s good. What a good brother. I mean, he did a great job. We got into a lot of really good stuff. So, you know, I’m right there with him, though.
1:07
I’m hoping this one’s better. I hope with every show it gets better. So, man, I appreciate you being on.
1:12
Let’s kick things off. Give us a little bit of context. What do you do for a living? And one thing that most people
1:17
don’t know about you, that’s maybe a little odd or bizarre. Okay, so what I do for a living, I work in marketing.
1:24
I’ll be working in marketing for seven and a half years now, eight years. I did a degree in Nottingham Trent University, where I achieved
1:31
first class degree and my current job is a Farfetch working as marketing technology manager.
1:37
So for those who don’t know, Farfetch is a luxury fashion marketplace which connects loads of boutiques around the world.
1:43
Boutiques that wouldn’t be able to target people in as much or with as much reach
1:49
or as much of a platform as Farfetch can provide. So that’s why the business model is and my job at
1:55
Farfetch is to figure out how we use our first party data in real time to enhance the way that we personalize advertising messages for customers.
2:04
That’s ultimately my my job. So I use technologies, I use platforms. I figure out how we can use our first party data all together
2:13
to enhance the way that we market on Facebook, Google tell you, on Twitter, on Snapchat, these sorts of platforms.
2:22
And the reason why I got into marketing was because I’m a product person. And the reason I’m a product person is because I’d like to see
2:31
a problem being solved with a physical entity. Now I do like service based businesses, but I think when you have a product
2:38
is something you’ve created outside of yourself and you can sell it to someone, you can package it up, you can tell a story about it and sell it to people.
2:45
So that’s pretty much reason why, but it’s a marketing and I’m always thinking about new ideas
2:51
and I’m always thinking in a different way or trying to be innovative. And the way that I think is very laterally,
2:57
I think about loads of different things at the same time, and that’s why I work in marketing technology, which is very much an innovative technology, useful role. So
3:07
on the second question, what’s bizarre about me, I think.
3:14
Most people don’t know what to do or did not know. I used to be very skinny when I was a kid and it’s quite bizarre for people
3:20
who first get to know me because I’m quite big. So when I was a kid I was extremely skinny. But now I go to the gym, I take care of myself, I have a good diet.
3:28
So when people see me now who let’s say you just met me today, when they see a picture of me when I was 14 or 15, I was really skinny.
3:36
I was kind of undernourished. So that’s very bizarre for people to get to know me now.
3:41
For people who already know me, just trying to think it was bizarre about me.
3:47
I have seven interests. I think I’ve got seven interests I’ve got on the wall. I’ve got a vocal fall on the wall.
3:54
I’ve got loads of books by like Robert Greedy and by Arnold Schwarzenegger, by Paulo Coelho, by
4:03
all sorts of variety of different topics. And what’s so bizarre about me is I’ve got so much of an interest in lots of areas,
4:09
and it could be you could kind of assume I’m a generalist, but I’m also a specialist in what I do, which is marketing.
4:16
So I understand how things connect because I read so much stuff and I watch so many podcasts that
4:22
I can connect things together, and that’s where innovation comes from. And even when I was at university, I paid a lot of attention to my innovation
4:29
part of the course. So what, what, what, what a lecture said was basically that the glass in and whoever was taken from a dust extractor,
4:37
which was obviously an industrial dust extractor, and Dyson took that model of how they extracted dust from the air and he placed it in a vacuum cleaner over.
4:48
And so I also get innovations from anything I can read. So I read about Tim Grover, who’s Michael Jordan’s
4:55
who was Michael Jordan’s coach and Kobe Bryant’s coach. He basically said that, you know, midnight starts in the dark
5:02
and the start of a new beginning or a new days was in the dark. And he mentions about paying attention to detail.
5:08
So, you know, before a game, Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant will go through to the basketball court, bounce the ball and see that’s boss sports
5:15
where nobody else would understand that the borders and bounce so it gives them a competitive advantage over there over the competition
5:22
and allows them not to go into those areas or to push their opponents into those areas. So all of attention to detail, that’s that’s one of the main reasons
5:30
why I love marketing, because every single thing that you fine tune can make a massive difference in the long term got.
5:35
Yeah so yeah that’s fascinating. So I think we can probably spend a good chunk of this episode
5:41
talking about marketing because when you really think of mindset
5:46
and marketing couples along with that, because if you’re preaching things about a product or service, but let’s just run with product
5:53
because you’ve got to think of the product. They can understand that if you’re pushing something that has to do with the product, but you’re not actually engaging with people
6:01
at a core level and at their heart and connecting with them, then you’re just yelling about a product.
6:08
And there are there are some companies that do that, but there are also some companies that really get to the heart of the matter.
6:15
So with the generalist feel and being able to see lots of different things, how do you manage your mindset
6:23
throughout the day in marketing, taking the data, taking all the information and not driving yourself crazy?
6:29
Because I think you and I are probably similar in a sense where we can have lots of ideas and then you’re just like, Holy shit, I don’t know what to do next.
6:37
So how do you manage your day to day and how do you manage your mindset in that? Okay, so
6:43
from a personal point of view, I go to the gym in the morning before I go to work generally, so it helps me start the day by focusing on myself first.
6:53
And and psychologically, you’re telling yourself you’re more important than your job, whether you own your own business or do whatever, whatever it is to be
7:01
your authentic Preneur Entrepreneur, whatever it may be. If you focus on your health first, health is wealth.
7:07
So if you go to the gym in the morning, you’re telling yourself that your health comes first. So subconsciously you’re already on a better footing
7:14
than if you didn’t go to the gym. How I keep myself from exploring seven
7:20
hour days is looking at revenue for the company I work for. So farfetch which idea is going to make the most revenue for the company?
7:27
And I’m a very commercially minded person, so I look at, okay, we’ve got this idea and this idea, which is the biggest idea.
7:33
So here’s a really good example of Farfetch. I was buying something on the app and I wanted to share that product with my family.
7:42
So I tried to share with my family, but the product had a link which sent them to the App Store
7:49
because they hadn’t downloaded the app, right? So I raised the issue
7:55
internally with a few stakeholders and we did an analysis. Now the analysis showed it was quite a good goal to target
8:03
to seven people, to the website instead of the app store to download the app to see this product and then tell me
8:09
you should buy the product and I’ll buy it. But they will also understand that Farfetch can sell these sort of products and they can see products.
8:15
We can target them with enough and maybe later on get them to subscribe, etc.. So I was comparing two journeys.
8:22
The first journey was the current journey. The second journey was the journey I proposed, which is if you have the App Store, if you have the app, go to the app.
8:29
If not, then it directly to the website to maybe download the app, but see the products as well and then let your friend know that they should buy the product.
8:38
This idea. Hypothetically is going to generate a lot more revenue for the company and is being tested at the moment.
8:47
And if I didn’t look at the idea and try and quantify it with numerics, with revenue or with profit or with anything else,
8:53
then the company wouldn’t listen to me anyway. So one thing I’ve learned from working on the client side, which is Farfetch
9:00
$1,000,000,000 company, a company which focuses on how to make more revenue with every single out there is
9:07
I have to persuade people. I have to be a marketer with my ideas internally to persuade people to take on board my day.
9:12
with my ideas internally to persuade people to take on board my day. And the reason for my idea being great is
9:17
obviously the bottom bottom line works, but also with the customer experience. And also I think it’s common sense to send people to the website
9:24
to view the products. First is the App Store to download the app because that’s three or four stages away from buying anyway and how many apps
9:32
to use on day to day basis because very few, probably probably five per day. Facebook, WhatsApp, email.
9:39
I’ll say maybe Twitter and and probably one of the other app on Instagram. So you don’t really use many apps.
9:45
They use tons of websites. If you compare how many apps someone uses per day on the phone versus how many websites they go through per day,
9:53
it’s probably like 20 times more websites per day than apps, at least. I’ve got like probably 50 tabs open at the moment.
9:59
Right. So yeah. Yeah. So, so when you so when you’re looking ideas, So, so when you so when you’re looking ideas, you have to figure out and explore them first and then figure out
10:07
with revenue or with profit or with as so. So a number associated with the idea
10:13
and then sell it to the right people in the company. That’s the way that I look at it now. But traditionally, I would look at the idea is what my mind interested in
10:23
and pursue the idea, but also commercially what makes sense. And when I started in the industry outlook ideas which I liked,
10:30
but now I’m underpinning every single day with commerciality anyway, and I get really interested by the future of everything anyway.
10:37
So the way to innovate means to to make something new. The word never comes from that. And being new, so innovate means to make something new.
10:45
And the difference between an innovation and an idea is an idea is a concept, and innovation is taking that concept to market.
10:53
So taking it to the marketplace. So an idea would be in my head a concept called, let’s say,
10:58
Nick.com, where it sells T-shirts with Nick on it. Commercialization and innovation would be
11:04
I print on the T-shirt and then sell it in the marketplace. That’s pretty much the idea of innovation, right?
11:11
Innovation in itself doesn’t always have to be radical. It can be doing something That somebody already does, like Uber
11:17
There are always taxis around. All Uber does is it allows you to wait without paying.
11:23
You are still probably wasting the same amount of time for the taxi, but you can see on an app going towards your house
11:29
and you can also time it so that you’re in the taxi the perfect time. Whereas when human beings wait
11:35
without a countdown timer, they become quite agitated. That’s why tube stations have times which tells you
11:41
what train will be here in 5 minutes. Now, you don’t care at an airport if you have to wait 2 hours, as long as you know how many hours you have to wait.
11:47
So airports are probably telling you, you know, I will say this long to put this on the board, this one to wait in the queue, etc..
11:53
That’s why airports are very, very painful experiences because you don’t know how long it’s going to take you to get through that queue, to get through security, etc..
12:00
So human beings don’t like uncertainty when it comes to times. That’s what I found anyway.
12:06
And I read all about about evolutionary psychology, around psychology as a whole and how people think.
12:13
And I think… The way to understand a good idea
12:18
because every single business is about people is to understand how people think and how people think is probably the most important thing and the most.
12:24
and how people think is probably the most important thing and the most. Most of the new ideas and new business businesses that come out now are towards getting things faster and also reducing the pain of waiting
12:34
by making it seem like you’re waiting less or seem like it’s coming towards is being delivered to you sooner.
12:42
Yeah, I think you hit on a key a key concept that marketing knows, but people outside of marketing sometimes don’t really know.
12:51
It’s a subconscious thing It’s a subconscious thing where you’ve actually got to be able to connect with those people and be able to make some logical steps that make a ton of sense.
13:00
Like, right now, I’m actually reading I’m reading The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, big Malcolm Gladwell fan and had never run read the Tipping Point.
13:08
I don’t know why or how don’t don’t kill me but now I’m reading through it and I was getting to a point where they were talking about
13:14
Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues. You remember Blue’s Clues. I mean, we all remember what Sesame Street was like, but the difference
13:21
between how they took what worked for those kids back in the sixties and then what was working for children in the nineties
13:27
and how they tied everything together with some simple things, like looking at it going, Why are we sending people to download an app that gives it another couple steps
13:36
when we could just send them direct to the site, and if they want to get the app, go for it. But if they want to look at the product, let’s get them directly there.
13:43
And it’s that understanding. I think sometimes we kind of need to put our asshole hat on and be like
13:48
kind of the asshole buyer. What’s the quickest path? I want to get to this thing because I don’t want to deal with you. I don’t want to deal with people.
13:54
I don’t deal with apps, whatever. So it’s smart that you look at that sort of stuff. Do you think that came from how you grew up?
14:01
Do you think that’s kind of innate? Where do you think that sort of thing comes from?
14:07
That’s a good question just just before we continue. That idea wasn’t part of my remit.
14:12
So I went outside of my remit in my role, and I started going through things I think were important for the business.
14:19
So I didn’t see my role in the business as confined by the remit. I see my role as anything of what my role to be.
14:26
So when I go into business, I’m an entrepreneur in the business. I feel like I’m a partner with the business because I ultimately am,
14:33
you know, you know, when people sometimes say it’s binary, I’m my own business or my own boss in the business
14:40
way, when you’re not your customers, your boss, the government’s your boss, and you will always be bossed around by somebody, whether it’s a manager,
14:46
a customer, the government, your chairman, whoever may be your investors, you’re never your own boss.
14:52
You always you’re always a servant to customers or leader or investors, whoever might be.
14:57
Right. So I think.
15:02
When you’re in a company, you need to figure out what customers want.
15:09
figure out what customers want. So I have to pause and evolve as we want to make sure the customer service journey is personalized for our customers.
15:16
And we’re making sure that we’re getting the most out of our customers for getting retention. The only way you can get retention of customers is to make one
15:23
that experience good to the products nice and three that every good. I think those are the three key areas.
15:29
The experience includes customer service as well, by the way. So those three areas, if a customer buys a good product but your customer services
15:35
are bad, if it’s easy for them to get their products and it’s quite Quite, quite
15:41
a difficulty to buy the products And it’s not much There’s not much thinking to do, like Prime, for example, H&M,
15:47
very cheap products with the didn’t really care about service, that’s fine. But if it’s a high quality product, let’s say something a farfetched like Prada
15:53
and they get that Prada item in the post and it’s not in the right it’s not the right size with the right shape
15:59
or the service isn’t good around that products. or the packages aren’t good people feel that integrates away.
16:05
Right. So it depends on the business. But I think customer service, the way that the good is delivered
16:11
and the speed of delivery is probably one of the most important things nowadays. And the experience on the website or the app.
16:18
Oh yeah. Well, technology allows for all of that. If we think back 30, 40 years, we didn’t have access to be able to do this.
16:26
And you brought up data. We didn’t have access to data or even know what data
16:32
points to be able to try to get access to years and years ago. But at this point, I would imagine you could probably open up
16:38
a couple of reports and just dive right in like mixed Scrooge style and just dive into all the data, all the data that you want.
16:46
So how do you actually go through that from a tech standpoint? But understanding that you’re still human and the people that you’re selling to
16:53
and helping to sell more to are also humans. So how do you tie the data and the humanity together?
16:58
That’s a really interesting question. So I’ll take it.
17:04
I’ll take a tangible example of the App Store situation where we’re sending people who share links on WhatsApp to the App Store.
17:12
The first thing I did was go through reports and have a look at the data to justify the size of the prize
17:18
of this idea of changing the journey. I looked at how many people click on the link,
17:24
how many people visited the website from clicking on the link
17:29
and then the app source and click on the link. I think it was it was a while ago and then I spoke to the product manager who manages the app experience
17:37
and I said, look, I think this is really, really bad. If I want to buy something, social proof
17:45
and my friend’s opinions, my friend’s understanding of fashion and how cool
17:50
this cup is or these glasses are, is going to impair my decision massively. If I can’t get the
17:57
phone to open the link and go to the website to view the product, I then have to screenshot it which is uncrackable anyway
18:04
because I can’t forfeitures and we can’t see the person going to the website. They’ve seen the screenshot. So we’re losing data.
18:11
Secondly, it’s bad for the customer having to screenshot it anyway because it makes them think and it makes their journey more arduous.
18:19
And imagine if they’re seeing 6 to 7 different products and comparing them all. Would make it very difficult for the customer to keep screenshots
18:25
and everything and it makes it very, very annoying for the customer. So yeah, the first thing I do is have the idea, then I quantify
18:33
by looking at reports. So I was looking at Slayer. So up Slayer is say an app platform that looks at the analytics in the
18:40
in the app. And we can understand like where they’re coming from, what they’re buying, how long they spend on the site, etc..
18:47
Then we have a big query which is our database, a customer database, which I sometimes look at to understand, okay,
18:55
how many overall sessions on the website am I getting from the website? Because we’ve got Omni tracking, which is an internal tracking system
19:02
and we call up Slayer. But traditionally for a business they will be so be G.A, Google Analytics.
19:07
So platforms like G.A. or UP Slayer or you’ve got Facebook platforms, Twitter,
19:14
Instagram, obviously Instagram’s for Facebook, but you look at the data depending on what the problem is or what the idea is,
19:22
use that to quantify the revenue you can gain from this idea and then present that internally.
19:27
Or you can just take that if you’re your own business owner and then figure out, okay, how much money can I make? And then just to go through with the idea.
19:34
And once you implement that idea, then report it afterwards and compare what you thought would make sense. What did make.
19:41
Let’s take that example and translate that into.
19:46
Out of business and into normal daily life. So people walking through life and kind of ingesting different data
19:55
and having data points, they drive or they go get coffee or they go to work or they come home and they have their wife and kids or whatever and all that data.
20:05
How would you translate what you do on that side into how somebody could be able to use that sort of process for themselves?
20:13
Interesting. I’ll say. I was actually looking at buying an orbiting F1 sleep truck to track how long I sleep,
20:21
so I messed up my heart rate to understand if I’m becoming healthy and I have a lot of doctor friends,
20:27
so a lot of my friends who are doctors have all things. And so it tells me that all rings are really good
20:34
for tracking good data and understanding your your body, right? Yeah. Social proof.
20:39
And I’ve also got a tracker away and scan a small scale that tells me
20:45
my BMR tells me why I visual, visceral, fat. It tells me my muscle mass, it tells you my metabolic age.
20:54
All these data points I use to give me a general understanding of where I’m going with my body. So if I’m walking, for example, and I take creatine,
21:01
I can see a can of water retention is going up or my water it’s going up, but my muscle mass is increasing loads.
21:07
And since I’ve been having a lot of porridge in the morning, a massive ball of porridge with peanut butter, cinnamon chocolate, honey,
21:14
I’ve put on probably four kilos within a few months because
21:20
porridge is quite a slow burning part, right? And peanut butter is a very good fat and it’s got a lot of calories and protein
21:27
and then you’ve got honey, which is very, very calorific as well and milk, which is very, very dense.
21:33
So all of that combined is helping me put a lot more weight and a lot more mass. And because I think people get confused as well,
21:39
that is the diet that just helps you create that extra mass. When you eat more food, you have more energy to lift more
21:46
and then you lift even heavier and then internally even more. And so it’s like a vicious cycle.
21:52
You have more food, you have more energy, you pass away, then you lift more heavy weights then, or you do more value then.
21:58
You pack more muscle by recovering. And the stronger, bigger. Then you have more food and it works in that sort of cycle.
22:05
So I use data in my everyday life to kind of measure where I’m going. Regarding regard to my phone, for example, I will look at how much time I spend
22:13
my phone, for example, about I’m trying to cut down on maybe Instagram or social media because I think we can become quite addicted to things.
22:21
And Tik Tok, for example, is something I try not to go on at all because I think that 10 second videos can be quite addictive,
22:27
something in everyday life. It depends on the person. I think anybody who wants to achieve his own goal, you should use data.
22:33
So if you’re doing runs for a marathon, track your progress every single day.
22:39
Understand everything towards which we train easily wearing or clothes you wear.
22:45
What’s the impact on your muscles of wearing compression? What impacts of your muscles of having BCI used when your during the run?
22:52
Talk to physios, talk to osteopath, talk to podiatrists around all the different data points, as you said, to improve the way that you run.
23:01
So podiatrists might be like, she’s told me I’ve got flat feet. So he gave me custom insoles that will
23:06
stop my foot pronouncing in words, which will maximalism. I’ve got a damaged ACL, which is probably one of the biggest issues
23:12
I’ve ever had in my life. So I use these data points to improve the way that I use in my daily life because I’ve got an ACL tear.
23:19
Great too. And if I don’t manage myself properly, my knees flare up because I’ve got biomechanical issues.
23:27
So I’ve got flat feet. I’ve got torn ACL, which is a great too, which for anyone listening who doesn’t understand what great to me
23:33
is, it means it’s not sprained and it’s not complete at all. It’s in between. So it’s torn, but not not to the degree to which I need surgery,
23:41
but is still to the degree if I don’t do exercises, it will just lapse back into making my knees hurt
23:49
because it then makes my right leg take on board the pain. Well, sorry, the mass even makes it more painful
23:55
because the next taking all of the quarter the weight of my body. So therefore both of my knees hurt
24:00
and even at the moment they’ve been hurting for the last month. So when I use data to understand how to manage my knee
24:07
pain and I used to keep a log for like probably two years or so in the said like pain scale of ten every single day for like two years, what exercise studied,
24:16
what the pain scale was if I stretched or not, if I saw not
24:21
the source of food that I might have had on my back rates in my knee pain. So, for example, I spoke to an osteopath recently and.
24:28
They were saying that having lemon in water can inflame your body. And I never knew that.
24:33
Apparently. LEMON The water, the reaction when you drink it makes your body more inflamed.
24:39
So foods can exacerbate your body and even foods that you think or drinks that you think are very, very good for the body are not as good as we think now.
24:46
Just because it’s natural and just because it’s from a plant or from a tree, it doesn’t mean or somebody says,
24:54
you know, yeah, just because, you know, lemons good for you doesn’t mean you should put on your skin either. You know what?
25:00
Everything natural is good for you has to be in the right. In the right. You have to take in the right doses and you have to take it in the right
25:06
in the right vehicle, so to speak. Hmm. That’s a it’s interesting to take a bit of a step back with all the data points
25:15
to kind of step back thinking that we’re going to jump to your knees in a sense.
25:20
All that data that you learned to then be able to figure out, well, how do I better heal myself?
25:27
Is way different than think of that person that just completely negative, that just bitches about everything.
25:33
They go, my fucking knees keep fucking hurt me. I don’t know why. And they just bitch and complain instead of figuring out
25:40
how to do what you had done. Now I’m going to call it out because I think that’s part of the reason why people listen to the show.
25:46
That’s a lot of work, like a whole lot of work to go through and log
25:51
all of that and track all that stuff and look at those things.
25:56
But I could assume and I know the answer I’m going to get, but I can assume
26:01
that when you started to do that, it just became part of habit. And not only did you build that routine, but then you started to see
26:08
what you could do with that data. So just similar to the question I asked before, how would you suggest that somebody get started with that without having
26:16
to fucking log everything in their life and track every single thing? What sort of suggestion would you give them to be able to start
26:23
looking for those data points to then use those to better themselves? Also, like on your mobile phone, for example, you’ve got a health app
26:30
while Apple phones and it tells you how many steps to use per day, how many steps you walk per day. So just monitor that and then say, okay, I’ll make less outside hundred steps a day.
26:41
I want to say 200 per day for the next four weeks and just look at every single day and look at on your phone and see if there’s an upward trajectory officer.
26:49
A downward trajectory of it’s neutral if somebody thinks on your mobile phone. There’s plenty of apps you can use anywhere that do things for you.
26:56
MyFitnessPal tracks the calories, your phone track to steps. You’ve got Fitbit, Fitbit can track your steps.
27:01
You can track a ton of other things as well. But in terms of data points, I would say your mobile phone
27:08
is probably the biggest data point you’ve got in your life. It’s called everything you do on there.
27:13
You spend pretty much less than 95% of communication is done through phone.
27:19
Outside of work because we never use laptops outside of work to do emails. Unless you’re an entrepreneur or you’re doing the side hustle.
27:25
So I would say mobile phones got everything on there. And it depends on what you call it is. But I’d say if you call this health
27:31
and use a Fitbit or an Apple Watch or your mobile phone to look at your health app, if it’s not to do with health, then look at things like
27:39
your Monzo, for example, finances your Monzo, tracks everything. If you want, improve your finances, look at Monzo account
27:45
and look at where you can improve your spending. Look, your starting account weight can improve your spending. If you don’t have a bank account with Monzo and switch from a bank account
27:52
that doesn’t tell you your financial spending and go to a bank to come on. So for example. So there’s plenty of ways of doing it.
27:59
But I think technology is the only way or the best way. But if you can’t just talk it out every day,
28:05
how you’re feeling every day and analyze it after the end of the month.
28:10
That’s a great point. Yeah, we we all have phones at this point and we have the technology
28:15
within our hands. But I think you bring up a good point of just writing it down. You know, there’s often a lot of guests that are on here that we talk about
28:22
journaling, doing things in the morning or doing things that night. And I, I know that I’ve hated, hated journaling.
28:30
I didn’t want to do it for the longest time because I was afraid of actually what it would do for me.
28:36
And then when I got into it, it’s a whole different story. So even that little take away of doing some journaling or just sitting down
28:43
and tracking a little bit of something like this morning I woke up at 6:45. Maybe your goal was to wake up at 6:30,
28:49
but then you can kind of figure out what you can do from there. So that’s good stuff, man. That’s a really good point, actually.
28:55
I used to wake up at 5:00 for the gym and people always used to say, how do you wake up at 5 a.m. for the gym?
29:02
This is before COVID, obviously, because I have to go to gym before work. And I was in London, I had to commute in.
29:09
But I think I wrote on the alarm, uh, something like a really good quote, like
29:16
dedication and hard work or something, something around Floyd Mayweather. But every single morning it helped me wake up.
29:22
And one thing I did, which is really, really cool, I’m going to say, is I use my Google home or my Alexa to wake me up
29:29
because when you say stop to Alexa or Google Home, you’ve woken up.
29:35
When you have a mobile phone, you can just tap it and you can fall back asleep. But when you say to something, Stop my Google home so that
29:43
when you say Stop to it, you’ve woken up. And I don’t ever wait in bed for more than 10 seconds.
29:49
I wake up and then I get out of bed and then myself at the edge of the bed do some deep breathing into my gut.
29:55
But even those will state points. You Google home where Alexa is your friend. You can tell it to be your assistant and those those things can change
30:02
your life for the benefit of your body or whatever it may be. I didn’t I didn’t really like journaling and get from all this
30:09
because, one, it takes a lot of writing in my hand, right. So bad. And it takes a long time for me to write.
30:15
Also, I there like in my mind, be interactive before bed and in the morning I like to go straight to the gym.
30:21
And I think journaling is just a means to understand yourself. And I’m always thinking about how I think every every day anyway.
30:29
I’m thinking about as soon as I get up, it’s like, okay, I want to be successful. It’s just part of my mind. And I think that’s really how and how I’m like this.
30:37
I’ve just always been competitive and not competitive with other people, but competitive with myself. I want to be the best version of me.
30:43
And you know, I think when you’re doing that, you can’t be insecure. I don’t really have any insecurities about myself
30:50
because I’m so competitive with myself that I haven’t got a chance to think what my better I’m thinking, what can I improve on?
30:57
You know, I don’t think you should ever be pessimistic towards yourself because people will be pessimistic towards yourself.
31:03
The world is pessimistic. You need to try and self with positive environments. But at the same time, if you want to be negative, be negative quickly.
31:11
I mean, get our system and then start moving forward. Tim Grover The same guy I’ve talked about before,
31:19
like 20 minutes ago who coached Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. He said, you can’t manage what you don’t measure.
31:26
Which I thought which I thought was quite, quite cool. Right. Because it’s very true. You can’t manage what you call what you don’t measure.
31:32
So if it comes to this at this point in your life, you can’t manage your finances without measuring.
31:37
You can’t manage your business without metric it. You can’t manage your weight without measuring it because
31:42
how are you going to manage your weight without understanding how much you weigh? Now, first, it’s how much you weigh in five weeks up to you in your diet, you need to measure it.
31:49
So that’s what I would say. It takes people to watch podcasts. I understand very successful people like Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan,
31:57
how they manage their lives and to learn from them. That’s what I do every single day. I learn from someone.
32:03
I’m reading a book. I remember the high performance book stories from very successful people and Jake Humphries, who’s from the UK,
32:12
he’s a sport sport presenter on Sky Sports I think will beat his forecasting
32:17
and they him and his colleague of got his name, he’s a professor. He they interview a lot of famous people like Rio
32:25
Ferdinand, Gary Neville, a lot of sports people in particular. And sports is really interesting because if you mess up, you know about it.
32:32
A lot of people come out in a big company and mess up and because it’s such a big company, never knows.
32:38
But on the football team, when there’s 11 people on the pitch and you’ve got thousands of people watching you just on TV, if you mess up, you know about it in the press.
32:46
It’s like you people, it’s a community and me manage what it’s like to be in in business.
32:51
You can fail and nobody can really, you know, hear about it or, you know, be in the spotlight, so to speak.
32:59
So learning, learning for sport and things of a very quick like split second success or failure is quite important to me because then
33:07
I extrapolate those learnings into my job, which is a lot, lot less fast . You know, the being a sportsman.
33:14
Or like UFC, for example. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah. You have to be literally on your toes at that point or you’re on your ass.
33:23
So then that makes sense. The, the data points that are in life.
33:29
Like if we really look at that sort of stuff, it’s almost like looking under the microscope because if you really look at the table you’re at, it’s
33:37
not really made of one thick piece of wood or whatever. It’s all these little pieces and these little molecules
33:44
that are put together that we could really kind of see those under the right circumstances,
33:49
but it takes actually being in the right circumstances to do it. Yeah, I appreciate you being honest about the journaling.
33:55
I too, have terrible handwriting, like atrocious handwriting. But I’ve realized that as I journal, there are certain things that
34:03
I just feel like I need to get it out and I just get it out and I look back at it. I’m like, I have no idea what the fuck
34:08
I was just talking about there because I can’t really read it. And then there are other times where I write something out and I’m like, Oh,
34:13
I can almost tell that my body was trying to eloquently get it out. So it’s an interesting thing, but I like where you get up
34:20
and you want to be able to get straight into things. And if we think of Kobe and Michael and think of all of the work that they put in, and somebody said to me
34:29
recently about coaching, they’re like, you know, Michael Jordan had a coach. Do you think you’re better than Michael Jordan?
34:36
No, no, no, don’t. Not really. So it’s interesting to think of that stuff because those people,
34:43
Michael and Kobe, had done incredible things. But if you really dig into their data points
34:49
and what they looked at, there’s an immense amount there. So I appreciate you bringing that up and circling back to that man
34:58
to kind of step away from the data points a little bit. Are there any major episodes that have happened throughout life
35:06
that really stand out to you that were kind of crux moments that you can look at and go, Man, that moment right there was a moment that changed me.
35:14
Yeah, I think. I think when I told myself it’s probably one of my biggest ones in my personal life.
35:22
Because when I told myself I used to be lifting extremely heavy in the gym and it was it was sort of my identity and the city’s identity.
35:30
People know me for knowing all about the body, and I’m extremely strong
35:35
and I take care of myself. And I was doing my slots. But what I thought was funny, you know, is for three years
35:44
and they still heard to this day here and there for three years, I was having pain walking every day.
35:50
And that was mentally disturbing. You know, it was very, very difficult. And luckily, I’m an extremely strong person.
35:56
I’ve done boxing karate, judo, Brazilian jiu jitsu, and I’ve lifted very heavy weights.
36:02
So I’m extremely mentally tough and I don’t think anybody or anything can break me. Um, there was another situation
36:09
when I was 19, when I was in a placement year, and this placement job was meant to be a period, but it was cut to three months.
36:18
Now, I could have chosen to be scared that I’ve not got full placement for the year,
36:23
or I could have chosen to be excited that okay , maybe, maybe it’s only three months now instead of the whole.
36:30
I think it’s meant to 12 months. But it was got three months.
36:35
So I’ve got an opportunity now to get a better job and during that period I got a job which paid almost double what I was on in that first job.
36:45
Right. And I also do it after he got cut from the four year to three months. But
36:51
if it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t have got my first proper job in marketing, which I was only 20 years old at the time and I was managing emails.
37:00
Affiliate agency, the PPC agency, so pay per click advertising agency and I was rebranded Lord schemes.
37:08
I was changing the call design with the artists, etc. And if it wasn’t for that, a really big scale movement
37:15
where I didn’t have a full 12 month job, my year only had a three month
37:20
job, I wouldn’t have had that look of finding that new job. And what sets them at that company was
37:27
I said, Look, I’ll work for you. On the part time basis.
37:32
No. So I work for you on the full time basis with the part time salary. And then they actually said, look, we want to hire you for the full time job with full time salary.
37:40
So that kind of changed me as well, I think, because I’ve been in situations where I’ve had no choice but to fight or have no choice but to adapt.
37:48
It’s made me to a resilient person, you know, physically with money, with a job issue.
37:54
Well, you know, I’ve been I’ve worked in workplaces which, you know, they run you into the ground. And so I’ve had to learn to be resilient
38:01
and to stick up for myself, but in a very, very
38:06
non-aggressive sort of way. So that’s probably one of the reasons why I changed. I, I started reading about know, mastery of myself and how human beings
38:17
think and how our society works as well, so that I could navigate easier.
38:24
Nice. So on that note, what’s that one piece of advice you’d give to somebody that’s on their path towards self-mastery?
38:30
Be yourself. Well, that’s the podcast, folks. Exactly.
38:35
I mean, as simple as that is, because if you’re not yourself, how are you going to see yourself? You can’t.
38:41
You can’t see yourself if you’re trying to be someone else. A lot of people nowadays probably see some of those you meet on social media and
38:48
they want to try and be what that person is presenting themselves to be. But that person presenting a facade right is not true.
38:55
So people will be tempted more than ever to be like somebody else, but that somebody else isn’t who they are on social media.
39:02
They’re very different off social media platforms. So just be yourself, be authentic. And if you’re if you’re always conforming,
39:10
are you really being yourself because you can’t have everything? And I think and the what you know, the work for the working form,
39:17
I’m not sure what the last word is, but it probably just means to copy. Awesome. And I ought to give in.
39:24
And I think conforming means, unless you truly believe in what you’re conforming to, then
39:29
you’re just doing it because you’re scared of going against the grain. And as a person as and in particular
39:35
with ideas in a company or in general in life, you know, Amazon, it came out of nowhere and started selling books online.
39:41
Netflix came out of nowhere. Blockbuster didn’t choose to go into the Internet. Why? Because most of our sales are coming from in-store.
39:48
But hang on. Indeed, another dismal 5% is going to become 100% of the marketplace in the next ten years, which is not right.
39:56
So I will say to people, look, what we’re doing now works. Don’t forget what what was the you know, what they did?
40:03
They didn’t go on the Internet. They didn’t become Netflix. Netflix became the blockbuster of the Internet, and blockbuster became nothing off of the Internet.
40:12
So that’s why even when you’re succeeding in life, always look at the 5% thing
40:18
that will change you forever as well. That’s what I would say. Like.
40:23
I live by Kaizen. So 1% change every single day, a 1% improvement. Whether it’s, you know, reading a book or learning one sentence from that book.
40:32
If you if you read 500 books, that’s 500 pieces of wisdom you’ve gained from that from the books.
40:38
You don’t have to know everything, but you have to know something of everything that you’ve ever encountered. Right? Hmm.
40:44
What a great way to end this man. Again, Sam, I really appreciate you being on the show.
40:49
You’ve talked about a lot. We’ve gotten into a lot specifically on data, which is great because their data points that are technology data points
40:57
and then their human data points. So again, Sam, I appreciate you being on the show. Where can people finally connect with you?
41:03
They can find you linked in some mythology. They can find it. Instagram is finally missing.
41:08
They can find me on. I think that the two main ones actually yeah. This is the two only ones they can find on here obviously on YouTube.
41:17
I see so far, hopefully in the future I’ll open up a load more channels. Well, perfect then.
41:22
Well, again, thank you for being on the show. We appreciate having you. No worries. Thank you for having me, Nick.
41:34
Another great conversation on today’s episode of The Mindset and Self-mastery show.
41:40
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