All Episodes
Previous Next
April 21, 2019 - David Icke
48:16
NBE Talk To Presenter And London Real Creator Brian Rose
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
I'm a non-binary elephant.
Podcast. Hello ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Non-Binary Elephant Podcast.
Today we're joined by, well, presenter, Brian Rose.
That's what I know Brian as.
What we try and do with the podcast is one of us will generally have a bit of background on the person we're interviewing.
Sometimes we both have, but generally one of us will, and the other one then purposely doesn't, so that we're kind of coming in fresh and listening and asking questions that probably you'd ask at home.
So, my brother, you've done loads of research, haven't you, Jay?
I have, yeah. Would you want to tell us a bit about him then?
Because I only know the TV presenter, Brian Rose.
Okay, yeah, yeah. So the main thing he's known for, Brian Rose is the founder and host of London Real TV, or London Real, a new media and transformation company best known for weekly live video talks with some great minds.
Some of their guests include Chris Eubank, Graham Hancock, Mr.
Olympiad, Dorian Yates, Paul McKenna, Boris Becker, so some big old people.
But he's a very interesting guy because his background wasn't in television or journalism at all.
His background was in banking. Grew up in California, came over to this country, had a career in banking and then basically went, nope, don't like this anymore and started a whole new career.
So he's got a lot to say.
He's a very, very interesting guy. I'm really looking forward to chatting to him about a lot of things and I'm sure you'll have a lot of questions that will come up from what he says.
Awesome. Well, I'm looking forward to it.
Welcome to the show, Brian.
How are you going, mate? Fantastic.
Yeah, really good. Great to be on here.
Well, thanks for coming on.
Jay's done quite a lot of research on yourself, so he's sat opposite me, sort of armed with millions of questions.
I know only you, the TV presenter, so I'm kind of quite intrigued.
That's generally the format we do, is one of us researches, one of us doesn't, so that the one that hasn't asks the questions that the audience would be asking if they don't know who the person is and so on.
Nice. And he's worked quite well.
I like it. Firstly, I've found out loads of information in the last 24 hours that I didn't know.
For example, I didn't know you grew up in California, which is pretty different to London.
Ended up in Shoreditch. So how did that start?
How did that happen, ending up here in the UK, first of all, from going up over there and going to MIT? How did that first begin?
Yeah, so I grew up in San Diego, California.
I was born in 71. And it was really quite an idyllic existence.
I think San Diego has the best climate of any city in America.
It never snows.
It's never humid. I think I wore shorts to my elementary school every day in a row when I was in fifth grade.
you know our house could kind of overlook San Diego Bay and You know, it's a place where a lot of people don't want to
leave and in high school We actually had something called surf PE where you wouldn't
show up at the gym You would show up on the beach and you would surf for two
hours and then come to school I mean it but it boggles my mind just to describe that to
you right now and so it was very California Tony Hawk the famous
skateboarder went to the same high school that I did and a lot of people never leave but for me, I was kind of
restless and There was I was always kind of frustrated because there
wasn't a sense of history in San Diego, you know I think some monks came up the coastline and named the cities after themselves, San Diego, San Francisco, that kind of thing.
I never felt like there was, you know, much history there or maybe culture.
So for me, when I got into an urban environment and later into London, it just felt right to be in a place that had, I don't know, more action, more culture, more history.
So I was always drawn to leave that city and it's very hard for people to understand.
Yeah, because when you first came over, you went into the banking industry, didn't you?
Yeah, I came to London originally for banking.
And so just to quickly fast forward, I was always a science geek in school.
I loved science, computers.
I used to... Program on computers.
I learned Fortran and C++. I even took assembly language at UCSD. So that was me.
I was never social. I couldn't talk in front of people.
I hated English and history and communications of any sort.
It was all very introverted stuff.
So I went to MIT, got my degree in mechanical engineering.
But I was always kind of a little bit of a businessman, like a little capitalist kid.
I loved selling candy on the bus and And I always was fascinated with money, so Wall Street was looking for quote-unquote rocket scientists, and I was one of them, and they hired directly from MIT, and I went to Wall Street, and I started pricing and trading derivative instruments, which I could talk your ear off about.
And so that's why I got into banking, and when I got an opportunity to go to London, the first time I came here was in 97.
I jumped at the chance, and I moved here and lived here for two years originally, and I was a banker.
Did you find that if you were restless, obviously, on the West Coast in terms of a lack of culture, did you find more culture in Boston and in New York?
Yeah, I would definitely say so.
I mean, when you walk around Boston, you know, you see things of early America.
And I mean, honestly, in San Diego, if you find something that's older than 1950, you're lucky.
I mean, it really is. You know, maybe you go see an old mission or something, but otherwise...
Every building is recent.
There's no statues.
There isn't really a vibe there.
And most of California is very new.
And so yeah, Boston and New York City really had some history and some heritage there.
So yeah, I really love that.
And then of course, when I went to a place like London, it was amazing.
You know steeped in history and culture and I really enjoyed that and something about London really vibed with me.
I think honestly guys it was it was I felt like I could hustle here and I could get far and I felt kind of I had this immigrant mind where you know for me there was no there was no going back.
I had to make it or I had to kind of You know, leave the country.
So I like that vibe and I think somewhere deep down inside my soul is British, if that makes sense.
That's interesting to hear that the other way around because it's kind of seen a lot over here as the American dream.
You know, you've got to go to New York and make it as a success.
It's interesting to hear that the other way around.
Yeah, I just find this city...
I've always had success here.
And whereas New York City quite literally just kicked my butt.
I mean, I got crushed there.
I succumbed to a lot of my own demons.
I never really made it in business.
But in London, I don't know.
I seem to flow here.
And I think it's the greatest city in the world.
I think New York is a bit overkill.
It's great when you're young.
And I understand how a lot of British people want to go to LA and New York City.
I've had Paul McKenna on the show and a bunch of other people that go to Hollywood and And I get it.
As a testing ground for media and for the movie business or for Wall Street, I get it.
But for me, London's the spot.
And it's plenty big to get everything you want, in my opinion.
So that's why I stayed.
Do you think the fact that you're an American coming from overseas helped you in London, though?
Because you're interesting immediately.
Yeah. Whereas in New York, you're just another American, aren't you?
Yeah. You know, the Brits and the Americans have a strange relationship.
You know, they call it a special relationship.
I think we love and hate each other.
I think we respect each other and also can't stand each other.
You know, so when I got into the banking industry, and the banking industry can be a rough place.
You know, it's a bunch of alphas walking around trying to like, you know, you know, Piss on things, really.
And so I got called the septic tank yank and everybody made fun of me and all that stuff.
But I think deep down inside, the Americans respect the British because they have class and culture and we have no class.
It's really true. And I call it the Downton Abbey effect.
Americans are always looking to London because they realize that they don't have...
Taste, culture, and class.
And it all comes from older cultures.
And I think the British respect the Americans for their optimism.
I think to a certain extent, their risk-taking, sometimes their aggression.
I think they kind of respect a little bit of that.
And it's people growing up in completely different environments.
So yeah, I had an advantage here.
I was kind of the American and Honestly, I can get away with a lot as the American, if that makes sense.
It's like I can come to a party dressed weird or say something out of context and they're like, oh yeah, he's an American.
So we'll let him get away with that.
But yeah, if I was a Brit or from some other place, yeah, it would definitely be harder.
I've always felt comfortable being a foreigner here and now it feels like home even though technically I guess I am a foreigner.
I think there's this sort of illusion here as well that America means success.
So in this country, as an American, you're automatically effectively put on a pedestal to an extent, I think particularly in business.
Yeah, that's an interesting point.
I mean, America is a crazy nation full of people that are successful and people that are not successful.
It's a nation of equality.
It's a nation of racism.
You know, it's a nation of justice and injustice.
I mean, you know, I agree.
People idealize America for the top things they see, but it's a place where it has just as many problems as anywhere else, if not, you know.
A magnitude of those problems because it's such a big place and it's got a lot of issues itself.
So yeah, a lot of stereotypes there for sure.
I think I've always thought of America as a country of extremes.
So I think the fattest guy in America is definitely American.
Sorry, the fattest guy in the world is definitely American, but I bet...
The skinniest guy in the world is American, and the most intelligent guy in the world is probably American.
Fastest man in the world is American.
Yeah, but that might be a lot to do with the size of the place, I suppose, because I've done a bit of driving, and it is enormous, isn't it?
Yeah, it's super massive.
One of my guys just took a trip to California.
And California as a state, and you might have to check me, but I think as a state, it's the ninth largest economy in the world.
So that's one of 50 states.
And so it is massive.
I think it's 300-some million people.
And there's all sorts of weird pockets of people.
So yeah, you really get the extremes.
It fosters the extremes.
And I do think the fattest person in the world is American.
And probably the fittest person in the world is American.
It's just these weird extremes and it's sometimes hard to believe that it's all one country
because it's on, you know, so many different climates and islands and you know races and creeds. It's it's it's hard
to get your head around what it really is.
But I would agree if you're an American in London people probably assume a lot of things about you.
Also, if you're a Brit in New York City, you just have to open your mouth and everyone thinks you're cool and wants to be around you because you also get a lot of great associations with you.
So maybe it's a cultural thing.
Yeah, possibly. I love America.
Well, parts of it.
I just find every time we go, no matter where you go, it's so different.
It is not a country, is it? It's a series of countries.
There's still almost cowboy towns in the southwest.
Yeah. Yeah, it's very regionalized.
It really is. And yeah, there are pockets of people that Are still the same way they were, say, 50 hundred years ago.
Yeah. That's quite cool.
In some ways, yeah. I think, like, I love New York, me, personally.
Like, I'm a Ranger fan, so I love watching the Rangers.
But the same thing in New York is that people are dead rude, but for some reason you let them get away with it because they're New Yorkers, and that's just sort of how it is, and you expect it from them.
So you're like, yeah, but it's fine. He's from New York.
Oh, I'll get it.
Yeah, that's why. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, New York is a fascinating place.
I think a lot of people always need to be reminded that New York is not America.
So sometimes people go there and they're like, oh, this is America.
It's like, no, this is a, you know, a bi-coastal extreme of where all these people came on this crazy island and stacked up really tall and fought.
You know, even look back at the gangs of New York, that movie by Scorsese, you can kind of see...
New York was fought over.
People from different clans and religions and countries, they fought and bled over these square feet of territory there.
So yeah, New York's an incredible place.
I spent four years there.
I loved it, but I could not live there now.
It can be addictive, the energy, and it's such a high frequency that I think you really need to take a break from that sometimes.
But, you know, it's intense.
Yeah, it's pretty intense. I'm over there next week and it's nice when you go for three or four days and come home back to my little village where you can see trees from your house.
Yeah, that helps, doesn't it?
It does. So you came to London still doing banking?
Sorry, we went totally off on a tangent about New York.
Yeah, so again, I first got here in 97.
I went back into New York in 99 to be the CFO of a dot-com startup.
The internet was booming. And one of my buddies from MIT introduced me to a high-level guy who was starting a company that sold luxury goods on the internet.
We were selling jets online.
It was really crazy. But after that bubble burst, I came back in 02 to really come back here for good.
And I spent 10 years in the banking industry here.
And, you know, I thought it was going to make me happy.
You know, for me as a young kid with the American dream and this capitalistic version of the world, I just really thought that if I put enough zeros and commas in my account, I would become happy.
And, you know, 10 years later, I was quite the opposite.
You know, I had a bank balance, but I was alone.
I had one of these like two-story flats with no furniture in it.
I was single and I was drinking a lot and I just was like, how come I'm not happy?
I'm supposed to be happy. So I really got to a point where something had to change.
Yeah, I think there's, again, it's this illusion of money equals success.
Certainly in this country, you're kind of massively told it through the education system that unless you get a good education, don't get a good job, you won't have money, you won't be fulfilled and you won't be happy.
And I think there's so many stories like that of people that achieve all those things.
And then realise that actually means nothing without a lot of things that go with it.
I think the thing is also, you've got nowhere to go.
So if I say for me, for instance, say I've not got money, but I think if I get money, I'll be happy, which is like you said, that's what we're taught, then I'm still striving for that.
But I guess, like yourself, you've got the money, you're not happy, because it's all nonsense.
Where do you go from there? Yeah.
Yeah, and honestly, without having independent media like we have today, I mean, 10, 20 years ago...
You really would be stuck, because all you have are maybe some books on a bookshelf, and your immediate peer group, which most likely is just like you, right?
Same echo chamber. If you're working with a bunch of bankers, they're all kind of lost.
And I mean, let's be honest, it's not like I'm a stupid guy.
Like, I've spent my life pursuing ideas and working on my brain, and I couldn't see this blind spot that was right in front of my face.
And it was exactly that.
Money is Does not equal happiness.
Does not equal purpose.
Does not equal anything.
And I had to find another way.
But it was dark.
And I think a lot of people get to this point in their life where what they've been taught, which pretty much globally now is that, maybe, I call it the American dream.
You know, I mean, look at the Instagram accounts.
Look at the music videos.
Look at all that. I mean, kids are taught that the bling and the cars and the girls are what's going to get you there, consciously and subconsciously.
And yet, that's not the truth.
We need to have purpose and passion and connection and a reason for living.
So... That's something that we talk about.
And it's just all about really trying to see what's really important to you.
And so I luckily found a way to discover that.
But a lot of my colleagues are still there grinding.
And when I see them in banking, they actually don't even know what to say to me.
It's almost like we're from different planets now.
So it's very strange. Yeah, that happens, doesn't it, when you go on a different path.
You see people from where you were before and you just realize how there's absolutely nothing in common anymore.
People come in and out of your life.
Yeah, the whole way. No, it's true.
And I'll tell you guys, it's really strange because they don't even write me and say, hey Brian, I see what you're doing with London Real.
It's really amazing and good luck.
They actually don't want to talk to me because I think I represent something that it's just so foreign to them and maybe it represents something they're not doing.
It's just we can't even talk.
It's weird. It's like we don't even have a frequency of communication.
So it's very interesting.
I think people that kind of, as you've done, see through the bullshit, if you like, and then...
Go and do something as you've done, make a massive success of it.
I think there's probably a hint of jealousy there as well in the fact that they're still in the grind.
But you're saying something about them as well, about the fact that you've done it and they haven't.
People don't like that. Yeah, absolutely.
So, coming back to how this all started, so I was reading earlier...
While doing a bit of research, that your epiphany or eureka moment happened while at Richard Branson's chalet in Switzerland, when you kind of went, enough's enough, I need to change your direction.
And so how did you end up there for a start to begin with?
It's a hard life I've been living.
So, you know, I used to work in the banking industry and so something that we would do is take our clients out.
I was entertaining clients on a regular basis to build relationships and we ended up
making a lot of money together.
And so I was always out on the town.
I've been to all the top restaurants in London.
I've been to the Monaco Grand Prix.
I mean, I got bored at Monaco because I didn't even want to be there,
but I was there because the client wanted to be there.
I had an epiphany when we were on a ski trip where I had 50 or 60 of the top derivatives traders at the top banks from London in Switzerland.
And we used to go to Richard Branson's chalet.
He has a chalet in Verbier. And you can picture the scene.
We're up there with 60...
Of, you know, highly paid, you know, probably some of the most powerful people in their banking institutions.
We have the chalet, we're up doing helicopter skiing, and, you know, we basically own the town for the weekend and popping bottles.
I looked around at all of this stuff, which is kind of the culmination of all of my life's work, my dreams, my education, my degree.
It's everything I wanted, everything my parents wanted, everything my school and institutions wanted.
My friends would be jealous of this situation.
Look at you with the people you're with and these lavish surroundings, making the money you're making.
And I got a text from a friend in London and he was like, hey Brian, how's the ski?
And I looked around and I was like, I texted back and I said, I've never been surrounded by so many people and felt so alone.
And I just realized I didn't want to be here.
I didn't like these people.
I had no connection with them.
And this was not making me happy.
And it was really sobering.
I wanted to leave actually the next day.
But I think I hung out until Sunday.
And I got back to London and I walked in and I resigned.
I left my job. And I had no idea what I was going to do.
But I just knew I couldn't do this anymore.
I bet you had a cross between absolute fear and absolute relief in you when you handed in your notice.
I mean, my hands were shaking.
It was hard.
I was walking away from this security.
It's funny, I called up a couple of my clients.
I had some guys at Goldman and some guys at some other Deutsche Bank.
And I said, I'm not happy, I'm leaving.
And one of my clients said, Brian, you haven't been happy for three years.
And I was like, what?
I was like... It's my job to kind of act, but he's like, we all know you hate it there.
They're like, good luck. So it was terrifying, but also relieving, but it was a big moment.
So yeah, I just walked out and just had no idea what I was going to do.
It was terrifying, but yeah, liberating in some way too.
So what was the thought process after you'd walked out and obviously a couple of days had gone by, dust had settled?
What was the process there between that and then starting London Real?
How did you come to the decision that starting an independent media movement was where you wanted to go?
This is 2011, so again, not a lot of great things online you can consume.
Not still a lot of things that you can watch that get your brain thinking differently.
But I did manage to have a conversation with myself and I said, One thing I don't feel the need to do is to say start a tech company and do an IPO and make a billion dollars.
I just was like, you know what?
And I remember telling my dad that.
I was like, I don't need to tell my friends from high school that I just did that.
So I kind of recognized in one way that maybe I was seeing through the matrix that I didn't have to get into this repeating loop of doing something for the wrong reason.
So I recognized that.
But other than that, I had been watching the Joe Rogan Experience, who was one of the early podcasters and broadcasters from Los Angeles, and he had been doing it for about two years.
It still wasn't on YouTube.
It was still pretty underground, but I was a fan of the UFC. I've been training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Thai boxing and mixed martial arts since I got to London in 2002.
So I knew of him and I knew of the podcast because of that.
And honestly, it was one of the few times I had peace in my life, was sitting there listening to Joe on a Sunday afternoon.
I felt like I was privy to a conversation that was, I don't know, I was almost kind of a voyeur into a couple of really cool dudes talking about real stuff that I couldn't get on television, I couldn't get in a book, and I just, I've never felt so...
I don't know, in tune or at peace, listening to those guys talk.
And I just thought, what if I could do that?
And that was the spark that started it all.
So what was your first move then?
So you've decided, this is what I'm into, this is something I could do.
Where did you start?
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, which is a martial art.
And one of my teachers was a black belt.
And I said to him, I said, hey, do you want to start a podcast together?
And he said, okay.
So literally, it was just taking a chance.
And he said, okay.
So the two of us started a podcast.
And I went out and bought webcams and bought microphones.
And I set up an Ikea desk.
And I literally started the first show.
I gave it a name.
I called it London Real.
I can tell you why. And the first show was me and my jiu-jitsu buddy talking about the show.
And from there, we invited our other cool buddies who trained jiu-jitsu with and my limited number of friends to come on the show, and we started talking.
And that was October 2011.
And I just made a promise to anybody that was listening that I would produce an episode every Sunday without fail.
And that was eight years ago.
Wow. So you've kind of jumped in at the deep end then.
It wasn't a dip your toe in and see how it goes.
It was bang, straight in.
I'm going to make a career out of this.
Make or break. Yeah.
I mean, again, it was never going to be a business.
I just felt the need to do it and I was excited.
I can get a little obsessive.
And for me, it was just like, I get to build this and I was learning.
I have to hook it up and I knew nothing about sound.
And I had uploaded a couple of videos to YouTube like the year before.
And so, but I was new and Social media was new.
For me, it was like a project.
It was almost like a science experiment, and I was a part of it.
I never thought it would be a business.
I never thought, what is it going to turn into?
It was just I had spare time on my hands.
I had nothing to do.
I didn't want to find another job in banking.
I didn't want to start a company.
So for me, I think it was healing.
I think there was a lot of healing going on those first few years because I think I had traumatized myself over the previous years chasing a dream that was not congruent with who I was as a person.
How were you surviving before you monetized it?
Was it just watching your savings just disappear?
Yeah, I always say that the banks finance London real.
Right. Because London's an expensive place to live as well, isn't it?
It is. No, it's really funny.
I mean, if you want to know who put out messages from great thinkers like David Icke, it's the banking industry.
Because they're the ones that financed this because I was literally living on savings.
And that's the one thing I did when I was in banking industry.
I mean, I spent some money on holidays and stuff, but I was never the guy that had to buy five Lamborghinis and buy three houses.
For some reason, I saved most of it.
And I spent a lot, but you can only spend so much as a single guy.
And so, literally, I was just living off my savings, and I was enjoying what I was doing so much that every year I would look in the mirror and say, What are you doing, Brian?
This is absolutely ridiculous.
Your friends think you're insane.
Your family thinks you've lost your minds.
Everyone tells me, why do you think anyone cares that you talk online?
I mean, literally, people were mocking me at this point.
It was just a joke. My friends in banking definitely thought I lost it.
They're like, Brian started a YouTube channel.
He's out of his mind. But every year, I looked in the mirror and I said, how can you stop this?
You become a better person.
My relationships were better.
My health was getting better.
I was, for the first time in a long time, loving what I was doing.
So I just kept pushing it.
One more year. One more year.
And it was just me for three years.
Just me solo doing that show for three years.
And then we slowly started turning it into an academy and then a business and it's what you see today.
Yeah, so talk to us a little bit about the Academy.
I didn't know too much about that until I did some reading on it earlier.
Other things you do other than the broadcasting.
Yeah, so I think it's important if you're going to broadcast a message to broadcast the message that's true to who you are.
It's the beauty of independent media.
So we don't have any sponsors, which puts me in a difficult situation, which means I have to find another way to pay the bills.
We have 20 full-time people now.
It's quite an operation. And so the beauty of that is if we can find a different way of generating revenue, I can publish whatever I want with whoever I want.
And that's something to kind of emphasize because even if you have a sponsor that you're selling mattresses to or you're doing this or doing that, a lot of podcasts in the States have sponsors.
It will affect your message, I think.
Whether it's subconsciously or consciously, it might mean you don't invite XYZ on your show.
So for us, I think it's been wonderful because it's kept us independent.
And I have from the very start.
So we've talked about, I talked about ayahuasca, which was an illegal drug, a class one, according to the UK government.
And I, the third episode on London Real, the sixth episode, we talked about taking it and our experiences it.
I honestly thought the Bank of England would never allow me to work in the financial industry again.
I didn't know what was going to happen, but we were like, you know what, we're going to do what feels right.
So It's been a really important part of London Real just to be able to be independent.
As far as the academy, I would get stopped in the streets by people.
After about three years, people started stopping in the streets and saying, Hey, I saw your episode with this person.
It was amazing. And they would start saying things like, Hey, are you ever going to do a live event?
Would you ever teach some of the things you learned about how to broadcast?
Would you ever give us access to some of the guests?
And I was always like, No, no, I'm too busy.
I'm too busy broadcasting.
And so, after about a year of that, when your customers are asking you questions
and telling you about their challenges and problems, that is a business.
Because if you can solve someone's problems, that's all a business is, really.
It just solves people's problems.
So, once I listened, I finally said, hey, what if we could create an academy,
people that watch London Real are a certain type of person.
They wanna challenge the status quo, they wanna push themselves to be better,
they wanna find out the real information, they wanna be better versions of themselves.
What if I could put them all together in a room, connect them, and then teach them how to do things?
And that's how we created the Academy.
Again, we were terrified.
We didn't think it would work.
But now it's turned into a major operation.
We've graduated over 3,000 people in 87 countries.
We've taught them business, broadcasting, public speaking, and lifestyle enhancements, so ways that they can move their body, change their diet, that kind of thing.
So it is what we do here, and it's actually a big part of what we do.
It's behind the scenes, because most people know us for our conversations in the studio, but it's pretty special what happens there.
Fitness is quite a big thing for you, isn't it?
I do remember Jay telling me that.
I'm trying to get over your breakdancing videos on Instagram.
Yeah, the breakdancing stuff is pretty good.
I mean, I had a guest named Ido Portal who was really big into human movement.
So just him coming into the show really affected my life a lot and taught me a lot about human movement.
And we did a documentary film about it as well.
Yeah, the academy is a big part.
We had about 100 people fly from around the world on their own dime a couple weeks ago and came for a graduation ceremony.
It's just amazing.
We connect people from all over the world.
They kind of make these lifelong friendships and they're starting podcasts and building businesses.
It's really kind of weird.
One of the guys was a PhD student and he grabbed me later and he said, You don't understand what you're doing.
He said, traditional universities, they teach a specific thing and then push people out into the world and it has no feedback loop and no relevance.
He's like, what you're teaching is like teaching people how to learn themselves and it's just like this really weird like second order effect and he started telling me all this stuff and it kind of fried my brain but it's definitely kind of unique.
That and the fact that we have these independent ideas in media at the same time, it's It's something that we've never seen before, and the technology allows us to do it.
I couldn't have done this 10 years ago.
So we'll see what happens, but it's kind of exciting.
It is exciting. I mean, to think about, it's still only a very young business, and it's 3,000 people through.
That's quite a large number.
Yeah, it's amazing. I had a live call last night and I'll have people from, you know, sometimes like 32 different countries will be live on the call.
And by the end of the course, it's their eight-week courses, they all become almost like family because they've kind of uploaded their thoughts and their dreams and their failures and they've worked through all these things.
So it's weird when they see each other, they're almost kind of closer than some of their friends and family.
But the weird thing is that I encourage my business students to create businesses that will be bigger than me.
I encourage my broadcasting students to make podcasts that will be bigger than me.
So I just want you to go out there and build something that's going to add value to the world and change the world.
So it's weird because a traditional university kind of has this old school survival mentality.
But for us, we just want to put these ideas out.
And with something like YouTube and the internet, I don't think we understand what it is yet.
It's It's changing humanity in a recursive way to where it's just going somewhere we don't know.
We're trying to be a positive part of that.
Yeah, absolutely. I think one thing mainstream education doesn't teach at all is happiness and self-fulfillment.
You never hear that mentioned.
It's all about success is defined by either money, status, qualifications, accolades.
I think self-fulfillment and happiness is way above them.
You can have a fiver in your pocket and be the happiest man in the world.
You can be a multi-billionaire and be very miserable when I know which one I'd rather be.
And from what you're saying, your course is much more focused on self-fulfillment, happiness, something that's going to make you feel proud.
You're going to be proud of what you've done.
Yeah, I'm always trying to get my students to connect.
I always call it the longest 18 inches in the world, and that's the distance from your brain to your heart.
It's just like really drill down and say, what is your purpose in life?
What were you put on this earth to do is what I ask people all the time.
And it could be to make rockets that go to Mars and to build electric cars.
I think that's why Elon's here.
But it might mean that you're here to raise three amazing children.
It might mean that you're here to whatever.
So I'm always, yeah, really getting people to focus on what makes you happy, what's your purpose, what's going to fulfill you.
And, you know, luckily today, you can get these messages on media, independent media, but, you know, 10, 20 years ago, you really couldn't.
And so, you know, you're lost.
I mean, maybe if you went to a Tony Robbins seminar, you got a book, but you weren't bombarded by people constantly saying, guess what, there's more to it than this.
There's more than what you think is happening out there.
Open your mind. Open your heart.
So, you know, thank God we have that today.
Yeah, I mean, that's where I think a lot of people go through their whole life probably never asking the questions you just have of what do you really want to do?
What makes you happy? What are you here for?
Because of this kind of rat race, if you like, of trying to survive, trying to survive, trying to get enough money to live, to pay the bills, to eat, to sleep, etc., But so many people don't have the time to take a step back and think, right, forget about everything else.
What do I actually want to do?
What makes me smile?
What can I bring to make the world a better place when I leave it?
It's also that people are worried about what other people think.
Yeah, massively. Because you might think, do you know what, what I'm happy with is just...
Sitting in with my friend, drinking beer, chatting, that's great.
But the world says, no, you need to do more than that.
You need to do more than that. You need to be active.
You need to do this. You need to do that. And so people end up doing things they don't want to do.
Peer pressure is massively factored on that.
I'm a believer that if everyone thought the same thing and wanted to do the same thing, the world would be very boring.
The diversity of opinion, of passions, is just what makes the world go round.
It's brilliant. Yeah, to be honest, 99% of my students that join my academy, the biggest problem they have is fear from acting based on their peer group, purely.
And I said it last night to someone and they laughed.
I said, you care about the opinions of others, most of those people you don't even like, and yet they are causing you to live this kind of quiet life of desperation.
So... And usually when people actually put their ideas out there, they find out that most of their fears are unfounded.
But yeah, from the cradle to the grave, we're brought up in this weird system where there's all these rules, we don't question them, and we don't ever kind of wonder what we could be.
And your dad talks a lot about this stuff, and that's why I appreciate a lot of his thoughts on this, because it's really a prison in your own brains that's kind of self-constructed, And you can get out of it, but it's hard.
It's an uphill battle because everything around you, the television programs, your mom, your dad, your structures, your economic structure is kind of trying to get you to do something the opposite.
So it takes work almost like a martial arts practice.
You got to really work at it every day.
Yeah, absolutely. Bringing that to like today and what's going on in this country today is something that I've been thinking about a lot recently with the rise in violence, obviously knife crime in London is massively on the rise in the rest of the country, is there's clearly a lot of young people that are very frustrated, very angry and probably look at the world and think I've got 50 years left here, what am I going to do?
I don't like the way it's going, it's The opportunity doesn't seem to be there.
And I saw something that you put on Instagram the other day to do with having anger and how you can harness anger and actually use that for a force for good.
And you mentioned in the post that you've been angry most of your life, but you've managed to funnel that into things to make something positive.
Yeah, you know anger is something that I I use and channel because we all have anger inside us and I
Always use my anger for a purpose And so a lot of people say, you know, don't be angry go
back to the meditation and go back to the the you know Go back to and do what the Buddha does
But for me, I try not to dwell on the anger, but I try to use it to push me through to the next level
I think today when people look around them, there is a lot of anger. There's a lot of division
I think everybody wants to be angry at someone else.
I think people want to be against someone else.
There was some article I read recently from the States where it said someone's more likely to be against someone else as opposed to for someone, even if it means the same values they have.
So it's like we have this kind of reactionary mind.
Like you can't do that as opposed to, oh, you can do that.
And so I think kids these days are kind of seeing this divisiveness and this tendency for us to kind of, I'm going to be part of this group and you're going to be part of that group.
So I think it's, first of all, really examine your behavior and understand also the world is not online.
You know, look around to the people around you and what they're doing and really base yourself on that.
Because when I walk out in the world, I get a lot of positivity.
I meet incredible people. People on the road stop me and say, thank you for London Real.
When I go online, I see hate, I see criticism, I see anger.
But I don't know sometimes if that is the real world.
And so when it comes to my anger, I mean, I did an Ironman triathlon last year and I did a whole movie about it.
It's called Iron Mind. It's on YouTube.
And in the movie you see, I'm getting angry sometimes.
And I'm getting angry because I'm on this vegan diet and I've got to train like 13 times a week and I've got this triathlon coming up and my body's breaking down and I'm 47 years old.
And I just try to use that anger to focus it to get me to the next level.
And that's what I try to tell people to do today.
Use it for a purpose, but don't dwell in it and don't be always in that anger because it's not going to serve any purpose.
I think it's really interesting you saying about the real world and the online world because I agree completely that online is a real toxic place and I think if you live in terms of What is online is reality.
So all the Twitter storms, the anger and the hatred and all this sort of stuff, the opinions that you see online, you would think you lived in a different world to the one that we really do live in.
You go to a pub or down the street and you chat to someone, their opinions are completely different to the stuff that you see online.
We did an interview on this podcast with a couple of guys that made a documentary called Plugged In, which is very interesting, talking about the toxicity of social media and stuff.
And a lot of people's attitude is like, well, just come offline then.
Just come off, delete your accounts, get off.
But I'm more to your way of thinking, I think, which is that if you leave, then there's no positivity there.
Whereas you with London Real and doing what you're doing in terms of the academy and stuff, it's actually putting some positivity online to balance out the negative.
Is that a conscious thing on your part?
It's a great question because we've created this kind of Twitter sphere, if you want to call it that.
So it is human created. There are humans out there.
But it's this abbreviated reactionary environment with no nuance and no story.
That's what I find really interesting.
And so when you see something or read something, immediately you come to this short-sighted conclusion.
And then it kind of...
It kind of flows from there and then it becomes divisive and people get angry and people get shamed and all of this crazy stuff.
But in person, like you said, at the pub or when I sit down with someone from London Real, I had Rose McGowan in here the other day and she first came out with the Harvey Weinstein accusations.
The Me Too movement came after that and a flurry of anger and shame and people being tried in the court of public opinion and people being justifiably accused and unjustifiably accused.
And I said to her, I said... Rose, I said, there's a lot of collateral damage.
I said, I know people that have had their careers stopped because of a single accusation.
And I said, has it gone too far?
And she said, yeah, maybe it has.
And I said, wow, no one would have ever expected you to say that.
And that's because it's a tweaks.
It's not like a one-hour conversation.
And when you really can have a human conversation with someone, there's nuance, there's understanding, there's story.
And that's how we move forward.
So that's what we're trying to do at London Real.
And honestly, David is a great example.
If you sit down for three hours with David Icke, you really understand why he says what he says and what it means, and there's a lot of nuance to it.
And I think if you sit down with most rational human beings, which is most of us, you'll realize that they actually have some intelligent points, and they're not capitalists, racists, This, that, they're actually humans on a journey, and I think we can understand something from them.
So yeah, we're trying with London Real to try to be the antidote to the Twitter madness.
I don't know if we're going to make a dent, but I think people are starting to appreciate these nuanced conversations.
Yeah, I agree. Nowhere really in the world you get three hours to hear somebody, you know, everything in the mainstream, soundbites, five minutes, ten minutes, justify yourself, which you can't do.
When you're talking about any idea, no matter what it is, that's slightly different or out there, you can't explain that in ten minutes.
I think people are kind of slowly rebelling as well against the kind of, you know, like a pop song.
Well, it's three and a half minutes, that's too long, it needs to be three minutes.
Well, that 30 seconds is the best bit of the song, got to ditch it.
And, you know, tweets only being, what are they now, 240 characters or whatever.
You can't get anything across in that.
Fast food, fast, you know, everything's fast.
I think people are slowly coming out of that and now they want some substance.
I don't want a five minute YouTube video like you're doing.
I want three hours. I want context.
I want to hear from the beginning to the end.
And I think that can only grow for London Reels.
Yeah, I agree. I agree. That brings us nicely to a question of what has been your favourite interview that you've done or the one that you feel is most powerful or you've enjoyed the most?
Yeah, that's a great question. I don't have any favourite children.
That's The truth is that London Real is my life and I am London Real.
So the people that walk in my studio, they literally change the course of my life.
So this isn't like a TV show for me.
This is literally my consciousness.
So when someone comes in that has a point of view that's powerful...
It literally draws me on another path.
I had a guy come in here two years ago who was an Ironman triathlete, used to be a Hare Krishna monk.
And he challenged me to go and run an Ironman at 47 years old.
I had a guy in here that calls himself the $50 billion man who has a castle in Scotland and is a high-performance coach.
And he came in here and I went up and saw him for a week and it changed the course of my life.
There's an Israeli guy named Ido Portal who specializes in human movement.
He coaches Conor McGregor, one of the greatest mixed martial arts fighters of all time.
And he took me on a journey of rediscovering my body and that's why you see those breakdancing videos on Instagram.
So... I actually have to be careful who I allow through that door because they're going to change my life.
So I probably got the top ten people.
You probably see them because I make documentary movies about them.
But some of those people.
But sometimes it's just someone else that sits down in that studio and I look into their eyes and two hours later I'm like, wow, I will always remember that and I will never look at that person or that thing the same way.
Yeah. I've been lucky enough to get probably the greatest education that any human could get just sitting in the studio.
So I got the greatest seat in the house.
I'm so glad that the rest of you find this entertaining, but I would probably do this if nobody was watching.
Is there anybody that you want to speak to that you haven't managed to yet?
It's a good question. I used to be really...
keen on getting a certain guest because then it would prove that our show was
where it needs to be. So if we get the rock on then we'll really have
made it. So I don't think about it the same way because I found that sometimes
a conversation with someone that doesn't have 50 million Instagram followers can
be better if that makes sense. Sometimes someone that's super popular
doesn't actually give me an honest, deep, hard, real message.
But I have a couple people.
There's a hip-hop artist named Ice-T who I used to listen to when I was a kid, and he was a hardcore kind of gangster rapper in L.A., and I still want to get him on.
And there's an author named Brett Easton Ellis who wrote the book American Psycho, and both of those guys are on my list probably for my own weird personal childhood reasons.
I mean, I had Run DMC on the show recently.
and that was really hard for me to just pinch myself and be like, wow, that's Run DMC.
So some of those things are maybe just personal things I wanna tick off, but honestly guys,
I wanna have conversations that blow people's minds.
And sometimes that happens with people that don't necessarily go on TED stages
and are in movies, sometimes they're different people.
And that's the kind of people I want to have.
And guess what? YouTube doesn't lie.
So look at the views.
If 400,000 people watch that thing, it's resonating with people and it's not always who you think it's going to be.
Yeah, absolutely. I've loved watching.
I mean, I really enjoyed the Grant Cardone one.
You're talking about investing in yourself, about how many people spend billions of dollars in the lottery but don't spend money on themselves and their friends and so on.
I really enjoyed that one. That resonated a lot with me.
Go figure. And I honestly didn't even want him on the show.
Like the day before, I'm like, who is this guy?
You know, he sits on top of his jet.
I'm like, why am I having him?
But I got him here in eight minutes in the show.
He's talking about how his dad died when he was a kid and he was hooked on drugs and his brother died.
And, you know, he had a real heavy journey.
And yeah, Cardone really surprised me.
So it's amazing the kind of deep journeys that people can have.
And a lot of times these people aren't what you think they are.
That's for sure. Absolutely.
Well, that's the thing about three hours.
You can't be faking three hours.
The real you will come out, wouldn't it? Yeah.
Well, yeah. You'd hope so, wouldn't you?
Right. Well, it's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you.
Thanks for giving us so much of your time.
Yeah. Thanks, Brian. Really appreciate it.
My pleasure, guys. Thanks for having me on.
Speak to you soon. Take care. Take care, mate.
▲
Export Selection