How To Survive The 21st Century - Jason Stapleton - #148

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello, friends. welcome back. My guest today is Jason Stapleton, and we are talking about how to survive the rest of the 21st century. We're hearing in the news and anywhere else that AI, robots and automation are gonna take our jobs, and we're just gonna be helpless proletariat in the street, throwing feces at each other. So how do we survive it? What are the skills and the knowledge that we need to make ourselves robust and resilient against this oncoming apocalypse of meaninglessness? And Jason has some pretty good ideas about how you can future proof yourself. In other news, I thought I'd give you a quick heads up about some guests that are coming on soon. So Ben Greenfield, Steve Fawcett from JST Compete, Shane Parrish, the guy behind Farnham Street and the Knowledge Project podcast. It's gonna be a very fun few months. And finally, this episode is brought to you by The Six Minute Diary. You will have heard of me speak about this on Lifehacks and throughout multiple episodes. It is the best way that I found for practicing daily gratitude and it's 20 quid. I'm not on a commission deal. Head to the link in the show notes below and go get yourself one if you feel like starting a journaling practice and doing some daily gratitude, some gray lead attitude would be really beneficial for you. I've stuck with it. My bullshit filter is pretty high and I've not stopped using mine yet. But for now, please welcome the wise and wonderful Jason Stapleton.
Jason Stapleton in the building. How are you doing, man?

**Jason Stapleton** (1:55)
I'm doing well, brother. Thank you for having me on your show.

**Chris Williamson** (1:58)
Thank you for being here, dude. What's been going on? What have you been doing today?

**Jason Stapleton** (2:02)
Well, today, I've been doing a lot of, it's so funny, because the bulk, people think that what I do is, I mean, some of what I do is cool, and some of it is celebrity, I guess, in terms of how it looks and the places I get to go. I live in Los Angeles, so I get to go to a lot of premieres and stuff like that. But the bulk of what I do is sitting in a room, staring at a computer screen, looking over numbers for marketing and advertising, and that's what I was doing today. I'm actually writing sales copy, and I was building out a bunch of sales funnels for some YouTube advertising that we're doing. So, it's not glamorous work, it's not sexy, but oftentimes that's the work that really pays the big money. That's where the dividends are made. It's not when people are seeing you, it's not when you're on Instagram or Facebook or anything like that, it's when you're bunkered down in your room, when nobody's looking at you doing the stuff that nobody else is willing to do. I always say, success happens when nobody's watching.
And I guess I was involved in a little bit of that this morning.

**Chris Williamson** (3:03)
That's cool. Yeah, I always think about Conor McGregor, people look at this guy and he's essentially unlimited wealth now, and there's a bunch of things that he is capable of doing that pretty much no one else is. However, Conor's had two kids over the last few years. Conor McGregor, as a dad, has had to get up at three in the morning and change a dirty nappy. Like that is just reality. There's some things that you have to do that you can't stop doing, right? There's this quote, I think it's Erasmus that says, from the king in his castle to the peasant in the street, everybody shits. It's like there are certain parts of life that you just can't get away from. And you know, you're right as well, like, as a club promoter, people see you standing on the front door of a nightclub, and they just think it's like strippers and cocaine until six in the morning. They wake up, like, throw the condoms in the bin, have some cereal and a Budweiser and crack back on. I'm like, no, like, absolutely not. I'm the guy that has to sit in the office and argue with the manager because the till floats off and all this stuff. So yeah, I think no matter your industry, you're always going to have to do the grind.

**Jason Stapleton** (4:09)
No, it's funny, when you talk about McGregor, one of the things that I was always, I really loved about him, you've got video of him going back to when he was a nobody from nowhere. And not only, what's always impressed me about him is that personality of his existed long before he was wearing the pants for it, right? Back when he did, I mean, he hadn't won anything of no, but he knew somewhere deep in his soul that he was gonna be the Muhammad Ali of the MMA world and he went at it with the ferocity and with just a cold unwavering belief that it was possible. And I just, I think that's necessary for any amount of success in life. You have to believe it in yourself first before anybody else will believe it and before you're ever gonna be able to achieve what you want. I, you know, people, different, some people love him, some people hate him. I absolutely love him as a fighter, but I love him more for the industry that he's built around himself. He's made himself into a true icon. And for anybody who studies influence or brand building, man, he is somebody that you have to look at because he's just done it perfectly.