 Because I used to be driven by achievement in the sense that it was very much like, you know, get to these milestones, get to these milestones. And I'd find every single time I got to a specific milestone, it would go, like, the fulfillment would go away in two seconds. You know, like, I'd win an award or I'd do something really cool. I would just forget about it within the space of a matter of hours. I think the best one was, and I only realized this probably a couple months ago, in the sense like, I published, I think I published two books at the same time. I literally forgot about them the same day. Like, publish them, just didn't even think about it. Welcome to the Sevo show. We have Jack Anderson on the podcast today. He is a 22-year-old boy, now becoming a man. And he reached out to me. So I'm just going to pretty much read what he's told me. A five-time author, nonprofit director, independent filmmaker, ninja warrior and sports commentator. And there's a whole more things to it. He's written some Year 12 textbooks, which got my attention. Chemistry and maths, two favorite subjects, if physics was not in the equation. And he's able to support hundreds of disadvantaged students and has his own online platform with more than 80,000 annual users. Damn, that's a good resume for a 22-year-old. Thanks, bro. Thanks for coming in. Thanks for supporting StreetX. Yeah, I didn't plan that one. That's all right. That's all right. It's fine. StreetX, Jackson Pryor on the podcast previously with a StreetX shirt. So lots of StreetX fans being in Perth. So yeah. But yeah, spawned in. And you're a baby when you spawn in. And then you grew conscious. You grew up personality. And you started to become more intelligent over the years. Which school did you go to? Oh, I went to Wesley College. Where else did you go? I grew up in Kow Guli. Oh, OK. So I spawned in in the Soviet Union, migrated to here, escaped to Gulag with my mother, and ended up in a sort of country Gulag in Australia. That's crazy. I ended up all right. We talked about this off camera before, the difference between kids and the disadvantages they have depending on where they spawn in. You were spawned in a good spot. I was spawned in a good spot. I was spawned in a little bit of a Hawaii spot, and then migrated to another country spot. My advantages of that was I was able to bring myself across three different types of people. The ethnics, the countries, and now the cities. And being a teacher, I was able to teach in private schools and public schools. I much prefer public schools with the kids where less vanilla. Yeah, definitely be a bit more interesting. I mean, Jack Anderson, very vanilla name. But you're definitely not vanilla for what you've done in your 22 years of life so far. Most people have not done that in their lifetime. So apart from being in a private school, which you say has given you a good advantage, like a head start in life, you obviously leveraged that and made the most of it and didn't just rely on your parents. So shout-outs to your parents to do that. But what do you think happens when someone that spawns in well goes to a private school and doesn't do the right thing? Do you see that a lot? Yeah, no, definitely. I think, man, because I think about this all the time in terms of what, I don't think people do the wrong thing necessarily. Like obviously a lot of kids aren't academically inclined and then they discover drugs and alcohol at a very young age and it kind of just messes with their brain and they kind of really pursue that wrong path, which I see a lot from kids in private schools. But I think the other half is, you know, they lean into that privilege and they say, no, I studied really hard in school. I did really well. Then they go get like a job in investment bank or as an engineer. And I think that's totally fine, but I think the way in which I saw it and which was, you know, I always could have been an engineer, I could have been like an investment banker. It wouldn't have been that hard for me to be like, because I just have so many inherent privileges where I've been privately educated. I live at home throughout my university degree. Of course I can go get a stock standard job. I kind of saw it as the other way of saying, hey, maybe I should think about how I can go about helping other people and actually making a difference and realizing that maybe I was given this privilege for a reason, maybe it wasn't just to make more money. Yeah, make the most of it. Yeah, make the most of it. So that's a rarity as well, which is good. And then you've embraced it. Do you feel like you don't have as much hustle or have you just made it so that there's all the hustle that you can have, because your hustle is hard? Yeah, no, I think I've always been, and so has the rest of my family, my parents are from an entrepreneurial background. So just always having that kind of, I love a challenge. Like I thrive on uncertainty and I love pivoting as we were kind of talking off podcast. I really enjoy being out of my comfort zone and really giving things a go. So I've always been like that in the sense that I've always loved to kind of push myself, but I think recently, and this is the scary part in the sense that I've really been pushing myself in the past, but over probably the last, probably three or four months as I've kind of been reflecting, I've come to understand the passion and strength I gain from being altruistic and really if I tear down that mirror that kind of I look at myself and I just focus on helping other people, my drive just goes up exponentially and I'm really excited to kind of see what happens if I just really lean into it. Amazing, amazing. So you've got a non-for-profit and just for the viewers, what is a non-for-profit? What is a non-for-profit? Yeah, well, it's probably not gonna come across as great for me, but I guess the best way I'd put it is, you know, you're not there to make a lot of money. Like it's all the money goes back into running the organization and you can pay staff wages and stuff, but for the most part, it's something created with altruistic intentions and to do good in the world and you're not trying to make money. There's no real capacity for you to make millions and billions of dollars as an individual running a non-for-profit. So that's the best way I look at it, but I don't know the actual stock standard definition. Yeah, it's fine, it's fine. And what is the goal for you for your 20s? And we'll unwind this question later. Man, that's a tough one. Yeah, I think like yourself, I just love pushing myself and going for the limits, but I think I see it kind of happening through two avenues in terms of what I want to do. The first one is definitely make a transformational difference in education, which is what something that I've seriously been working towards for the last three years now is got out of school, realized how horrible my school experience was, and I'm like, cool, I'm going to do everything in my power to make this easier for young people because man, school's rough for a lot of young kids. So definitely see myself just pushing that way through the work that we're doing at Elucidate, through all the other ambitions that I'm currently working on on the side. And then, but I'd say the second half is just to have fun and to, again, I have a tendency to take life quite seriously and I can get quite caught up in my own work and just to kind of have that other side of saying, hey, just make sure you save time for just hobbies and relationships and people and travels. So it's finding that balance and that's the goal. Yeah, yeah. Do you have a Mrs? No, not at the moment. Oh, not at the moment. Easy, easy. So tell me what it's like being a 22-year-old that has all these things on his plate that yeah, what is your day-to-day like? Talk me through it. Man, yeah, every day is different. Like seriously, I have a to-do list of like 100 things but I'm pretty good at whittling it down. I reckon for the most part I structure, every day is different but a lot of it's just writing. I think whether, because I do a lot of speaking, I do a lot of writing. I'm currently writing all my scholarship applications. I've still got a university degree going on. I've got to pay the bills with just like doing basic tutoring at the moment. I'm getting funding for the organization and I'm managing people. So a bit like yourself, it never, the problem is it never ends, like in terms of the workload, never goes away but it seriously is, I think the only stock standard thing I have is get up at 6 a.m., go get a coffee, sit there for like 10 minutes and just think, what am I about to do today? And then just go after it. Have you got any assistance or anything about that yet? Not at the moment. Definitely don't have the financial means for that one. I think the beauty of like running a non-for-profit though is we've got 40 volunteers in our organization at the moment so the work can be spread well. I think the problem is we're writing so many textbooks, we're creating films, we're making all the online content for all students across Australia. The work never ends so yeah. That is amazing. Yes, so you're saying you got a degree and you're also looking for scholarships. You're heading to the States hopefully. Yeah, that's the goal. I reckon that's because like I think all of us have a lot of smaller dreams but that's always been my dream for a long time is ever since I was 19, I was like I really want to attend a US or UK college like Oxford or Stanford or Harvard or something. And I think the key underlying motivation because I remember saying this to my mum three years ago, it's like mum, I will be the least naturally talented person to get into one of these schools which now I've just come to understand is people just perceive natural talent when it's just work over many years for the most part. So it's just been my goal ever since and bringing that into fruition is seriously life changing hopefully in terms of, I think it's about the people that you surround yourself with at the end of the day. It's like having powerful chats like these where I get to meet yourself and walk away energized and the opportunity to have that every single day at one of those schools would just be incredible. And what are you hoping to get out of it at the end of the scholarship? Yeah, so the goal is to do hopefully a lot of the degrees so like at Harvard and Stanford or Oxford, they all come under a masters of education in learning design, innovation and technology or one of those kind of umbrella categories. But the idea of learning design is understanding how to construct things that actually are beneficial to young people. So it's actually taking a very kind of engineering learning design approach of, okay, how do I create the best learning ed tech company? How do I create resources that young people can use? How do I structure life education, films and videos and content to actually help people? What are the fundamental principles? So I hope to actually learn that kind of key stuff but I think more so as the people. Like I'm a man of ideas and I have so many that I wanna execute on and meeting with the world changes, meeting with the people who have come from all across the globe. You know, like they get people from 30 different countries to come together at these schools and to have people who have had different experiences in education systems to kind of converge together, get their perspectives and most importantly work with those people because I've got altruistic intentions with education. I'm not really trying to make a giant ed tech company that makes billions of dollars. I'm trying to actually do good. So I see the opportunity to link up with people who see that in the same kind of light and yeah, I guess I just gotta get in. That's the first step and that's a big step. That is a big step. Yeah, once you're in there you can just start talking to anybody and it could be the most casual conversation. You can meet the most random person and you never know who they are and then that could be that person that you're looking for or they can link you with that person. So that's where you gotta treat everybody with love and respect. Definitely. So you say you come from a place of empathy. That's how you operate. Tell me more about that. I think for a long time, because I was actually driven because I used to be driven by achievement in the sense that it was very much like, get to these milestones, get to these milestones. And I'd find every single time I got to a specific milestone it would go, like the fulfillment would go away in two seconds. You know, like I'd win an award or I'd do something really cool and I would just forget about it within the space of a matter of hours. I think the best one was, and I only realized this probably a couple months ago in the sense like I published, I think I published two books at the same time. I literally forgot about them the same day. Like publish them. Just didn't even think about it. And to me, that was kind of crazy in the sense that I'm like, man, the reason I'm not getting a great deal of satisfaction in my life is because I'm so centered on achievement. And then I kind of thought back to all the things that brought me deep fulfillment. And it was those times when people came up to me and said, hey, like I really appreciate what you've done for me. Or just those moments that I've genuinely helped people. So the idea of empathy and driving through that is kind of my key motive now in the sense that I really feel like young people have been dealt an incredibly bad hand in the sense of they live through social media. They have a school system that kind of crushes their spirit and it's just a really hard place for young people to deal with right now. And we can look at it and tell them the things that they're not doing right. Or we can say, okay, how can I help these young people? How can I get the absurd number of statistics of people who genuinely really hate their lives right now and who are still in school for the most part, all those young kids that are just really struggling through school, how can I help them? And when I think to answer that question, that just brings me the greatest deal of satisfaction. And it's scary and it's exciting because I feel like I've finally found something where I'm like, yes. So early too, at 22, finding something that you really like, it's like a gift. But it took a lot of work. It took me three years of constantly experimenting only to come back to the idea that, hey, maybe I just like helping people. Maybe that's what I want to do. I mean, that's your overall. I mean, there's like Y coaches that help you find your Y. And I've done it before. And I don't know, it just felt like I was reading a horoscope, but... No, I would put those kinds of ideas. I think they can help, but it's like buying a self-help course online. It can help, but it can't solve your life, in the sense that at some point you just gotta experiment. I think you only, I'm trying to bring something up in a sec, but I think it's a matter of just self-reflection to the point where your self-awareness grows and you're going, yes, that's me. But it's also hard to reflect on yourself. Sometimes you need someone externally to kind of validate in a way. But the Y, what is my Y? What is my Y? I'm trying to find it. What is your Y? Do you know your Y? Have you, do you have like a... I've never, no. Like a self-emission statement? No, but if I had to take a guess, it would be... Let me hear yours and then I'll... So, I feel like I might be wrong. Says, I am most successful when I contribute and add value to people's lives. I am driven and focused, love to share stories and document my outcomes. I am selfish to the point of becoming selfless. I optimize people's lives. That's my mission statement. Wow, okay, that is very... That's very well said. I didn't realize that it's got kind of a four-tiered approach to it. It does. Can I ask just quickly about the selfless to selfish? What does that... What do you mean by that? Selfish to selfless? So, selfish to selfless means when you start this world, wherever you are, however you're born, whoever you're born as, whatever your beliefs are, whatever your parents... However your parents nurture you through the nature that they have provided, you're on your own eventually. And it's up to you to decide what you want to do with yourself, right? So, a lot of people go, right, I need to help my parents. That's being selfless. They go, right, I need to help other people. That's being selfless. But at the end of the day, are you looking after yourself? Yeah. And you need to look after yourself first? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the selfish part. Okay. Because if you're not looking after yourself first and you let that deteriorate, your mental health, or you're burnt out, or you're physically unable to keep helping, people say, okay, you know, you're a saint. You sacrifice yourself for the benefit of others. People can do that. People would do that every day. Yeah. But I feel that if you are selfish first and look after yourself and have yourself sorted, you can prolong the selfless over time. I agree. And you don't burn out. So that comes down to are you, what you do, what you do, is it fulfilling for you? Because you can be selfish because what you're doing, if it's helping others, but you don't have time for your family, that can be considered selfish to them. Yeah. So there's a balance, right? And there's so many ways you can go about this. No, I like the model and I can kind of see that. I feel like I can picture you kind of, you know, you build up this huge empire and then eventually you just like, boom, let me just save the world kind of thing. Exactly. So like with the last four or five years of my life with teaching and now doing social media stuff and now teaching other businesses to do it, the teaching part is selfless. The me asking them for money is selfish, technically, right? You do it out of the goodness of your heart, but I need to pay the bills too. Yeah. But if there's a clear understanding that doesn't matter, but it's when people come and approach me and go, Seth, can you teach me how to do it? The selfish me will go, I don't have time or you need to pay me money. The selfless me will go, yeah, no problem. Let's see what you got. I'll help you, I'll give you some time. And that's subjective depending on the situation, who it is and things like that. But ultimately I want to chase my philanthropic goals, which is go out to speak to kids for free, which makes it more selfless, because I'm sacrificing my time or I'm donating my time, because you can't get time back, right? Unless you're Justin Timberlake and you're doing that for the love of it, but that doesn't pay the bills. Unfortunately, we live in a society where we have to maintain a fuel, a tank of fuel in the car to get to these places that you talk. You have a roof of your head, your clothes, your food, your water, all these things require money to, you know. We don't live in a dystopian society where everybody just works together and we're in La La Land. Yeah, I totally agree, because when I think about my own life, for the last three years I haven't paid myself for all the work that I've done at the Lucidate, which is thousands and thousands of hours. Exactly. And it's only now that myself and my co-founder where we're managing so many people, we're putting in so many hours, he works a full-time job and then just does this on the side, which is just foolish. It's like, we're finally getting this point, we're just like, okay, we need to pay ourselves as soon as possible, otherwise this is just gonna burn out and in the long term, this organization won't exist and we're just, it's all for nothing. Yeah, so this is where you have a business plan, you have an outcome, but your ultimate why of why you're doing it is for the benefit of others, right? Definitely. If you have a, you wanna monetize it, that's fine, but if you come at it, that the ultimate goal is to monetize it first, yeah, you're looking for that. That's when people go, you're full of shit. If the monetization is a by-product, because it eventually happens, you get an opportunity, someone will come up to you and say, hey, what you're doing here is amazing. Are you seeking any sponsorship? Yeah. There's your cash opportunity. Oh yeah, that's how we're doing it. Exactly. We're definitely not taking away from, for instance, we sell a lot of textbooks, we've got a two for one donation model, where for every two that we sell, like we produce and donate, third goes to a low socioeconomic school. So we don't take money out of our actual products or anything that we do, that's all very centered around that, but it's using sponsorships, it's using grants to say, hey, we're trying to do our best here, but we do need something to survive, otherwise it's just not sustainable. Yeah, and you can be selfless first, and then be selfish, or the selfish part doesn't even like considered because they just offer it to you. Yeah. Like the book, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook by Gary Vaynerchuk, that's what he talks about. He goes, give, give, give, and then ask, right? And have no expectations of that ask, because if you have expectations, that giving is actually not giving, that's going, I'm building you up to a point where I can ask, and if you don't give back, you're a piece of shit. That's what most people are doing wrong. Okay. You need to give without any expectations, and just enjoy it because you love doing it. So that's the selfless part, right? But at the end of the day, you also need to pay the bills, right? So there needs to be a way to do it. And what I've learned in content creation, it's like going around to all the different restaurants in the Perth, and going, hey, I'd love to work for free. I'd love to take some photos, create some content, or whatever, right? This morning, perfect example. There's a place across the road from my house. It's called a village cafe, something, and it's a South African shop. They've got an amazing built home there. And I went in there and grabbed some, this was a few weeks ago actually, the most recent time was today. After that first time a few weeks ago, I made a video, got like 15,000 views on TikTok. It's not as big of a amount of views from my channel, but 15,000 localized in Perth, because I looked at the statistics, that's a great pool. And I came back in this morning, the lady recognized me instantly. She goes, thank you so much for that video. So many people came in and bought all the jerky. That's incredible. And I was like, and I paid for the jerky, right? And then she goes to me, I didn't even ask her. She goes, today I'm giving you $20 credit. And I got like $30, and I paid for the extra $10, so I went over, I got a coffee, and I was stoked, right? I was selfless first, and then they rewarded me. But I didn't even ask, I had no expectations. I was going in there today, going, I'm dropping 20 bucks or whatever, on jerky and coffee, and that's how I shit myself every morning. Yeah, fun. Yeah, coffee and jerky, but you know, key to life. Yeah, I actually, I can agree to that point, because I remember when I was, I went to a sponsorship meeting where we got, I think we got like $35,000 or something to help pay wages and stuff for one of our staff member and buy some textbooks. But I just went in there, I rocked up in shorts and a T-shirt, this was like a giant board meeting for this thing. I had no idea that they wanted funding. I thought they just wanted to meet to hear about what we do. And I just start telling them for 45 minutes, I just stand there and just like talking to them about everything that I want to do it, and what we want to accomplish. And then I get an email from them later, they're like, hey, here's some money, do it. And I had no idea. Yeah, dude, that's it. But on that, a lot of people, I think it depends on where you are. So like, if you're in a comfortable spot, I think act selfishly and then, but if you're really struggling, just it's about depending on where you are. Yeah, it's a sign of desperation. Like if you're doing this from a place where you need money or you're desperate to make this sale, you're going to come off a little bit more desperate. So that's why I always say to people, don't look for a job if you're unemployed, but by the time you're unemployed, look for a job while you still have another job. Obviously that advice doesn't work for people who are already unemployed. Do your fucking hustle. But like, when you have a job and you don't like it anymore, start looking for something else. And you do that by offering your services for free, like I said before, and you just speak from the heart, for the love of it. People don't do that. And I'm like, it's not going to work for you. It's the same with dating as well. You said you're single, this is a pro tip. See this ring? I mean, he's a married. Girls can see that. But I come in and speak confidently to women or whatever, but as before as a single person, you're like, oh, you want to talk to them? And they're like, oh, I don't know. You know, you're a little bit like, you know, maybe if there's a connection, you don't want to ruin your chances. But now I'm just like, yeah, cool, sick. How you going? And they love it. They love it more because you don't give a fuck. It's the same with business. So I come in, one of my best sales ever. And I came in with three different products. And I sat down and the director was there, like the main guy. And I sat down. All these other people in there. And I was just talking about what I do. And then at the end, and I came up with these prices at like the night before, because my mates said, no, you got to put up the prices. And then sat down, did it. And I was expecting him to maybe choose one of them or maybe go, we'll think about it. Stood up, shook my hand and goes, yep, let's do it. And I'm like, so which one do you want? And he goes, all three of them. That's crazy. And the funny thing was like, that wasn't even an option. It didn't make sense. But he wanted all three of them. And I'm like, fuck, okay, let's do it. And I made 80 grand that day. So that was sick. And, but I didn't have any expectations going in because I just wanted to share that story. But, and this is what happens when you have a passion. You come in, you do your passion. Someone else notices it. Someone offers you some opportunity. Then they pay you for it. And you're like, how good's this? And that passion's amazing. And then you get more and more and more opportunities. But then eventually you're working. And that can be dangerous because your passion may go away because you're stressed about the pressure of delivering the product. Before that payment, you weren't stressed because you were just doing it for the love of it. So now that's where I'm at. Where I'm doing it. I used to do it for the love of it. I still am doing it for the love of it. But the money makes it a little bit more work. Yeah, it works. Yeah. And historically, three, four years into these ventures, I got to a point where I was like, this isn't fun. Yeah. I'm making lots of money, but I'm not having fun. So I would move on. And that's what I mean. Like you got to find something that you can push through to get to the point where you can evolve it, where you either sell it or you can find someone else to delegate it to, teach them and build a team to do it for you. And then you're in the background and you get to find... It's like the restaurant analogy. You want to own a restaurant? Great. But you need to make sure you're doing something for that restaurant that you love the most. You can't do everything. It's impossible. You can't be the waiter. You can't be the chef. You can't be the bartender. You can't be the manager. Yeah. And yeah, you can't be the cleaner. You have to delegate. But you can be one thing and one thing well. You want to be the head chef because you fucking love cooking? Do it. But you got to make sure you stay in that one lane because there's other people that do it. It's the same with every other job. That's what I've kind of learned recently. So more advice, whatever you're doing, make sure you love it. But once you stop loving it, you still like it? Yeah. Start to delegate the stuff that you don't like about it. And just focus on the things that you love. On the one thing you love. OK. I like that. That's some advice I've learned recently and I've adapted it. And I'm like, you know what? I love creative direction. I love going out there and showing people what they need to do. Yeah. But then they can do it. Go for it, right? Educator, right? If you don't, if you can't do, you teach. Yeah, pretty much. And if you can't teach, you teach kindergarten. That's what they say. Teach gym. Yeah, teach gym. Teach. I like that, though, if you can't do it, teach it. Yeah. That's like every guru out there. But that's the problem, though, because as a former teacher with an education degree, I used to be triggered by that comment. But then I realized, holy shit, most teachers don't fucking do. They teach because they don't do anything else. They landed in a cushy job that has a lot more responsibility than they think. And then they just took a degree and go, you know what? This is the best I could do with my ATAR score. And it's either marketing or this. Fuck it. I'm going to go or sports science. There's no sports science jobs. I'm going to do a dip head in school. Yeah. And oh, look, I got a job. How good is that? Oh, I don't actually know how to teach this subject. Oh, look, I'm teaching this other subject. That's how it works. So and then when I realized that in the education system, I was like, well, that sucks. I'm here because I love teaching. And I started uni at 24, right? OK. Because I didn't want to go to uni. And the difference between me going at 24 versus literally most of the mostly all of the other teachers, they were either in the school system from school. They finished high school. They went straight to uni. No gap year. Yeah. They finished uni. They went straight back into the school system to teach instead of instead of learn. They never had outside experience. They may have had shitty weekend jobs. They may have had a couple of holidays, but they never had a full on couple of years, yet alone a handful of years that I had, including a successful personal training business that I built in that time. Yeah. I had all these extra life analogies. I've lived a little bit. Yeah. No, I couldn't agree more because it's something I was doing in my degrees. I went part-time for when I took my third year and I struck it out into two years. That was probably the best decision I've ever made in terms of it freed up time because when you're studying a full-time degree, you don't have time to think. It's just constant, constant, constant study. Yeah, that's your life. You get a break, but you spend that whole time doing internships and kind of working. Yeah. So you don't really get a moment to even think about what are the things you actually want to do. I think people need at least two years of gap. You reckon? People say, take a gap year. No, no, no, you need two years. You need two full seasons. Would you say straight out of school? Two full years. Straight out of school. You reckon? Yeah. I would actually, because I think if I could think back on my life, I think at 18, it's handy when you get straight out of school, but also honestly, going mid-degree is also not a bad choice as well. But then the problem is you'll probably end up changing your degree once you stop for two years. Well, the thing with two-year gap is you get to travel if you worked and save money. If you're smart about it, yeah. And you get to taste test different industries and go, right, which industry do I like that I could put up with? Yeah. OK, it's not retail. OK, it's definitely not hospitality and tourism. What else could I do? Oh, corporate. All right, I did an admin job for six months. Those bosses looked a bit stressed, and they drank quite a lot of alcohol on Fridays. Don't want to be them. Oh, look at that. Old mate had a heart attack at 53. Maybe not. No. Oh, a doctor. Oh, shit. They got a Mercedes and they got a nice house in Apple Cross. But man, they're stressed out of their minds. They're also drinking a lot. But something that I think we were talking about off-camera, which I think might be interesting, which is you can take a gap year, but the other thing you can just do in the meantime is spend 20 minutes a day just trying new things, which is the theory that I have, which is try everything, give everything a go. So let's say you have this faint idea that you want to do stand-up comedy. Just go try a course. There's really no harm in it. And you don't have to take a full year off to do that. You can literally spend one hour a week just giving it a go. So I think for a lot of people who don't have that luxury, maybe they're mid-degree at the moment, or they're in their jobs, so they don't have the time to go take a gap year. They can't be like, all right, kids, I'm just going to go take a gap year. You've got to have a practical approach first to see. And then you go, if you're interested in the theory enough to see how it works, then you go to uni for it. But then it goes to a conversation. Not every job needs that degree. You don't need a marketing degree. Especially nowadays. You don't need a film degree. I think it's becoming so prevalent now with just seeing all my mates, the degrees they have versus the jobs they end on. An arts degree? Why? No disrespects to whopper and stuff. I feel like a lot of universities are going to go out of business in five years. Jordan Peterson actually said this and I completely agree with him. Ever since he started talking about chat GPT, he's going, he's saying stuff like universities are going to go out of business. And it's just because people can research it so much quicker now than ever before in the history of the world. The information is there that makes so many more things redundant. And that can be condensed into like my writing, my scripting, my ideas, brainstorming sessions have like a fraction, like one-tenth of the fraction of the time. One-tenth. Yeah. For everyone, it's crazy. It is crazy. But I think like, all right, what are the industries that you still need a degree for? You've got medical, you've got law. Consulting, like engineering, financial. Yeah, finance. Finance. I think it will always have its place at university but I do think unless they adapt, they will see jobs. I think as they are. I think people are going to get smarter before they go to uni because I want this to happen. And not because I want to shit on unis, I just want people's self-awareness to be so much clearer before they get to uni that they know what they want to do. Because it'd be an interesting stat to pull up. How much money is spent on a degree before you either pull out or it's not used at all? Yeah, that would be a lot. Here's a study that I know universities will never back. How do we fix that problem where the money is wasted on that dropout or the lack of that degree? It's a funny one because I don't use my degree, technically. Technically, yeah. But I have learnt a lot from the time that I spent in that. And you can say that you can spend 30 to 50k learning on what not to do. Yeah. But you can also grab the learnings from that degree and adapt them to the next journey. It's kind of what I'm doing now. And you can say it was worth it. You can say that was the path. And if it wasn't for uni, I wouldn't be on this path, which is true because if it wasn't for uni for me, I wouldn't have gotten a degree. I wouldn't have gone to school to teach. And I wouldn't have had the year 10 kid show me what TikTok was. Is that worth 30, 40 grand? I mean, return on investment from that? Yes. Do I still have a hex debt? Yes. Am I salty about it? A little bit. But for the most part, for the most part, model of the story is you should not go to uni unless you had a bit of adult life experience and you've seen what's out there. Because most of the time, and this is again from observation from my friends I went to school with who have went straight to uni. They have got nothing to do with their degrees, at all, most of them, or they dropped out. And then the kids that do go to uni, they do it for the wrong reasons. They don't know the day-to-day of the job that they're studying for. And when they get to that job, they hate that job. And I'm just like, you should have done your research further. You should all do work experience where you go. Is that something you want to do for potentially 10, 20 years? Yeah. Most of the time it's not. The problem with that, and I totally agree with the introspective nature of it all, but you can't force kids to be introspective in the sense that if you don't actually set in the systems where they go get work experience, where they spend that time thinking about what they actually want to study. Because there's no time at the moment in school, for instance, to be able to actually think about what degree you do. That's on your own time. And kids aren't going to do that. A lot of kids just don't have that kind of initiative or willingness to say, hey, no, let me sit in my thoughts. Let me think about what the day-to-day is. That's what I want to teach them. I want to bring that in. I want to go, all right, let's talk about the Socratic method. Why do you want to be an engineer? Oh, your parents said so. Do you agree with your parents? Is there something else that you'd rather do? What is your ultimate job? Describe me your perfect day on the job of your dreams. What would it be? And some people would say, travel blogger. You can do that. It's saturated, but would you be willing to put in the work to do better than 99% of the travel bloggers out there? Most of the time it's no. It's always that, really your passion. I want to be a YouTuber, okay? Do you have a YouTube channel yet? No. Well, fuck, why not? Because that shit's free. You want to be a YouTuber? You haven't started a YouTube channel yet? It's supposed to start, you know? But then if it's like, I want to be a pilot, okay. Name me five films with, you know, airplanes in them. No, that's the sort of obsession that I'm looking for that a kid can go, fucking Top Gun, fucking behind enemy lines or whatever. And I don't know. Top Guns, you know, all the time. I actually watched Top Gun when I was 10 or like a little bit younger and I fucking wanted to be a pilot because of that movie. I'd suck you in. Then I had a growth spurt and I was like, fuck. Cockpit's not for me. And it's like, in your childhood, I always actually had a camera. I always loved taking photos. I was fascinated about Polaroids and all that stuff. But I didn't grab that self-awareness until later. I always loved when Jackass came out. I was like, fuck, I want a camcorder. I don't want to do dumb shit right now. I think every kid wanted to. But I actually did it, you know? Like I was doing stunts and stuff and I had like these little, like two megabyte cameras. You know, it looked like you're filming with a calculator and yeah. And I didn't get to realize that until later because I didn't have the resources. I started my YouTube channel when I was in year 10. Did you cop it when you had a YouTube channel? Nobody knew I had a YouTube channel. No, nobody knew I had a YouTube channel. I had one of the very first phones that weren't smart, didn't have internet, but you can record your videos on. And I put it on YouTube back then. God, I wish I could find the channel. I don't know where- Oh, do you know I have the videos anymore? I've got to find it, but it's literally two megapixel bloody- It'd be so priceless. And it was like, I was filming everything. Really? So just like day in the life, everything in between, little skits I can imagine and stuff. But I just didn't have someone telling me, this is your thing, you shouldn't. I didn't have that self-esteem. No, no, it's hard to have that connection. The other thing I did was online trading, like in-game trading, not like shares. I was playing these games where you can trade items inside the game. I fucking love doing it. I love doing a froth that I was good at it. And then I would be playing online, like the very first online games. And I could, I was doing that shit before PewDiePie was a thing, before Mr. Beast was a thing. All those guys- As you were making videos about it? I was one of the first to get an Elgato- Are you serious? To do all of that. I figured out how to do it- Before there was all the tutorials? Like when it was just starting. That's crazy. I have clips of me getting nukes in every second Call of Duty. And I was obsessed. And this was before streaming was really thick. This was before Twitch came out. The only problem was I lived in Calgooli. And my dreams were crushed because I didn't have enough bandwidth to stream and record at the same time. Right. You know? And that was a bit of a shitty one. And then I moved here. And I lived in a suburb called Padbury. Yeah. And they didn't get NBN until like 2018 or something. 2019. They were like one of the last suburbs in the fucking suburb, in the state to get it. It's like a black hole on my suburb. Which was frustrating because I remember 2016, 2017 I had built a PC and it was ready to go. I had everything. I had invested everything. And this was when I was at peak uni as well. Yeah. And I was like, I'm ready to go. We tested it, but I was lagging. I was lagging. I was playing Call of Duty, but the streaming was poor. It was terrible. So download, upload at the same time, you're gonna fuck it. So that dream died. But now it's, I have the opportunity again, being here in the studio in the city with city internet speeds. Did you forget about it until you started actually getting, like when you're a teacher and stuff, did you kind of forget about all of that in the meantime? Yeah, I had something else to do. Now I'm more money driven. Like I want to make sure that whatever I'm doing can get me to buy my time back as quickly as possible. And also, yeah, I'm making as much money as possible, as quickly as possible. I've got patience. But if I'm doing something that isn't making me money, like the podcasting, like what we're doing here, technically isn't making me money. But yeah, but I love doing it. And it's my kind of alternative to the gaming stuff. I get to learn from you. I get to meet with you and all the other guests. And who knows, 10 years from now, you're a module and you go, Seth, I want to fly you out. Let's record this bit. I want to fly you out and I want you to speak to my people. Sounds like a plan. No deal. And that's the sort of, and no expectations either, but like, that's the sort of thing that I enjoy doing more right now, rather than going online, setting up Twitch and going, all right, let's play fricking Warzone or something, you know, try and get the dub. There's no value in that. Well, I think when you, when you look back on your own life in terms of what had to happen, if, let's say you did become a full-time streamer and you pursued gaming, was that your life's purpose? Whereas nowadays you're older, you can actually give back through the content that you're producing and make things that would benefit to young people. I think the universe looked after me back then in a funny way where he said, you know what, you're in Calgoolly, fuck your internet speed. You're going to move back to Perth, fuck your internet speeds still. Because we are not here to do this. This is not your purpose. And, you know, I do believe in all that shit, the whole purpose thing. And I look back and reflect and go, holy shit, if that had happened, I would not be here doing this. But you'll never know the alternative. So you can't dwell on the alternative. So the alternative is me going back, building the PC and 2016, my internet speed's elite. I dominate Rocket League, Call of Duty and all that shit and make, I don't know, an extra $1,000, $2,000 a month or whatever doing that. Maybe I pop off, maybe I become an elite gamer, maybe the personality could have grown. And then after all of that, I'm invited to an event in Melbourne to compete, walk across the street and get hit by a bus. That's such a horrible way to look at it. Yeah. You know? No, I think you're on the right path. I think one theory that I have in all that, which is, I think it's a type of person, because like when I think back to all the things, if they did happen versus if they didn't happen, if certain things that I thought were good at the time happened to me, my life would be on a horrible trajectory. But the theory I have is, is certain people are very tenacious and always kind of go after everything that they want to do and take on initiative constantly, which is what you do. And as a result, you end up always having the best iteration of your life. Like in the sense that it's just the type of person, which is no matter what happens, no matter what failed, like even if certain things didn't fail. Someone's fan belt is not living its best life. I thought it was a hard drive. But yeah, I think just it's the certain person because I always look back and I think everything that's happened, I'm really glad has. And the only reason I reckon that's happened is because like I'm always going after things and just giving things a go. I love it. And that's the type of person. That's it. And that's the thing with my sort of, the gaming. Yeah. The gaming path. If I really wanted it badly, I would have still made it work. Have you seen game, like I'm not saying you wouldn't make it, but have you seen the gaming community nowadays or it's actually kind of disgusting how much they play. Like it's, they grind like 12 hours a day, 14 hours. Yeah, but why do they grind? Do they grind to get really good? Yeah. See, I wouldn't. You'd be a content man. Yeah, I would be, I would be funny stuff. Okay. Like programming is nuts nowadays. Like laser beam, he got really good at Fortnite and you know, all those other guys and then they have a personality or whatever. But how they're doing it, I don't know. Like whatever they're doing. And the Logan Pauls and the KSI's, they're all entertainers. Yeah, they're not getting views because they're good at gaming. So like look at it outside of gaming, look at it in sport. Which sportsmen are the most notable? The ones with personalities. The ones that are the most marketable. Which musicians are the most successful? Not the most talented, the ones that are most marketable. That's the fucking truth. So am I saying I've got 1.5 million followers on TikTok because I'm the most talented? Maybe not. Maybe it's because I'm the most marketable. I stand out, literally being tall as fuck, you know? It helps. It's like, everyone's gonna notice that guy. Let's put him up, let's put him up above everybody else. But yeah, so utilizing that, but utilizing that gift for good, you know? Being six foot 10, like how many other famous people do you see at six, 10, apart from basketball? I was about to say that, but yeah. But those basketballers, like even them, they go out into the wind. Yeah. Like Hassan Whiteside, when was the last time you heard about his name? Exactly, did you even know he left the league? No, fucking smoke bomb. But that's what I mean. Like the most marketable player of all time in basketball was Michael Jordan. He is still Michael Jordan. He made more money this year and last year. I think I saw that start. That's crazy. He made more money every year than he did in his entire basketball career combined. And that's the business side of it. So if you have a marketable character in yourself, you need to get around the right people who are not gonna dog the boys, dog you and take advantage of you, like Elvis's manager did, and push forward so you can survive. Conor McGregor, another example. You know? Yeah, Conor. Absolute prime fighter. Got two cocky and got lots of cash and still a great dude. I value him, I vibe with him. And he was there to take over. He wasn't there to take part, he was there to take over. So then what happened was he got into the alcohol business. The proper 12, the Irish loser. And he made so much money from that. Now he's doing something with the points, the dark lagers, the Steins. I'm sure he's doing well. And now he just released something recently, another proper 12 whiskey apple flavor. And the way he promotes it was genius. He comes out like he's Steve Jobs and unveiling the iPod for the first time. The iPod of the whiskey. Literally, it was perfect. It was so good. I think above all else he's just himself when you actually get about it. Exactly, exactly. There's no one other than himself. And that's the key. And he's built his own brand and he's monetized his own brand perfectly so that now that he doesn't even have to fight anymore. Yeah. He makes so much more money than he ever will fighting. But that's what people need to do nowadays. Like if you can build a brand around yourself, you need to do it from the heart. You can't do it from right. When I get enough followers, I'm gonna ask them all to buy merch. You haven't deserved that right. They need to discover your merch and buy it anyway. Mr. Beast has done it perfectly. He's done it for like, I think it was like, I think he's seven years in or maybe a little bit more, almost 10 years in now. He's been doing it for that long before asking his audience to buy. But now they just eat out of his hand. Literally, the chocolates, the burgers. It's incredible what he does though, in my opinion. I think it'd be- Absolutely. Everyone good usually somehow becomes bad. There's some dirt that gets brought up on him. Of course. One of the few people that have really kind of kept that. Yeah. That's straight line. I vibe with him. But that's what I mean. He's very careful and he's got the right people behind him. And his intent is pure. But like the prime drink that's coming out, it's like you're clearly pushing that. And the kids take it, but they love KSI. Logan Paul's a piece of shit, apparently. I think you need the duo. One without the other, it wouldn't have worked. No. But again, it's perfectly executed, but that's marketing. So now I'm just thinking, okay, how do I do it? And why do I want to do it? Start an energy drink. I don't want to fucking start an energy drink. I don't really want to do anything consumable. One, because it's a lot harder. And I'm not afraid of hard work. I'm just going, well, there's a lot of laws and fucking regulations you have to pass. Yeah, you need a whole team. What if I have an education tool that I can, like you've got your books, right? What if I develop something where the kids can easily, you know, organize themselves at school? Yeah. You know, like. You've got experience, though. Yeah. You know, maybe that's something that I'll do. Maybe it's a PDF. Maybe it's, you know, digital download everybody can grab and sell it for two bucks. Yeah. Make a skill show, of course. And have you seen, people make so much money off skill show. It's insane. But 10 million people buy those PDFs. It's 20 million dollars. Three dollars. Three dollars, you got 30 million. There's your 30 million. It's as easy as it is. But that's where, you know, people need to see the value beyond belief. And they go, I want to buy that. What does that get me as well? What's the difference between me owning it and someone just pirating it? Now, people started doing all that NFT shit the last two years. And it was just all fucking waste of time and money. But it can be done properly. It's just 99% of the NFTs are full of shit. Yeah. Because the intent is we want to make money. Oh, I love listening to it all. Like I listened to a bunch of just like crypto people and people like Coffey Ziller. And they kind of just talk about how, like the whole NFT market was just pumped. And it's just so funny to see what, because people just, when you have a pure financial motive, like what extent you're willing to go to just crush humans. Like they just don't care. They don't give a fuck. They're just like, cool, give me your money. Well, if they want to, they won't be, they won't be happy later in life. Because, you know, it's like you start up, you start up something that takes advantage of people's addictions. And you make lots of money from it. Yeah, you're successful. If you're, you know, scaling it from a point of your bank balance, but deep down, how did you make your money? People's gambling addiction. And that's why I hate gurus, because I think for the most part, they kind of pry on people who have nothing, who really hate their lives. And then like, hey, I'm going to sell you this course, 500 bucks, change your life. And obviously won't, never does. Otherwise, they'd have generous access to it. That's why I don't have a course. That's why I don't have a course. I mean, the skill share thing, yeah. But it's when they do the sales funnels and they get in, they trap you, they make you join their inner circles. And then at the end of the day, those people just became wealthy off of the wealth of poor people who just are looking for a way out. Yeah, exactly. I have an obligation to myself that everybody that jumps on and learns with me needs to get some success. I mean, a lot of it, they need to come to the table too. Of course. And as a, I'm empathetic to the kids. If I give them work to do, and I teach them how to do it, but they still don't do it. I feel like I failed still to not motivate them or instigate them enough or manipulate them in a positive way for them to go, yeah, I'll do it. I'll do it because I see the value in it. Whereas now I've got my consulting and all that stuff and people take an hour session with me every week or whatever. And I give them actions, accountability. The same thing as I did at school. And then they don't do it. Did I get a refund? No. I've done it. It's their fault, you know? But I'm also reflecting and learning and going, okay, how do I make them do that better next time? And it's deja vu from when I was a personal trainer. You come in two, three times a week with me. But if you eat shit when you get home and you're sedentary for most of the time, we're at best plateauing. We're at best just maintenance. Yeah. But you come to me in the last six months and that's all you did. We're maintaining where you are from the beginning. We haven't moved. Yeah, I've gotten fatter, but you haven't gotten anywhere closer to your goals. So... I think the good sign of... I think this kind of stands back to the idea of leadership, which is a good leader kind of, even if someone's not making change, they take the blame on themselves in the sense that it's like, okay, what am I doing wrong? Why is that person not doing the work? So I think that's my next part of my personal journey is, if I was to create a course, how do I make sure that everybody uses it? But it makes an impact on their lives, you know? Otherwise, I'm going to be straight up with them. Are you going to do it? And that could be a sales pitch as well. Before they get to the checkout, there's a little questionnaire that stops them going, are you actually going to use this? Do you promise? That's a good one. If I was to email you 30 days from now, would you be able to prove to me that you did it? You know? And maybe people go, oh, fuck, probably not. But that's fine. Yeah. You know? So, you know, a potential marketing idea. But yeah, most people are full of shit. Most of those gurus are full of shit. Yeah, it's basically goal-setting, glorified. Yeah, here's how to get 100,000 followers from TikTok. In a month. I'm like, okay, tell me more. So you do this, this, this, and this. I'm like, okay, cool, all right. So your demographic's clearly people that just want to get lots of followers. What about if it's a specific business? Yeah. How do you leverage that following? There's so much more to it. And then all these people that are eating out of the palms of these gurus' hands. And then when I come in and go, hey, I can actually help you. They're like, can you, the last person couldn't? Yeah. All right, well, let's talk about it. So, whole lot of other shit. But did you bring your books? Oh, shoot. No, I didn't bring the books. That's a horrible point on my end, eh? That is definitely bad. So, Jax meant to bring his chemistry and maths books that he wrote. I was. He was meant to show them. But it's okay. We can put them in the description. In the description. Yeah. God, today's been a hectic day. I didn't even cross my mind. That's all right. That's all right. So you're off to Bali tomorrow. Yeah. Chilling out. Chilling out. Great. By yourself with your parents? With everyone. Oh, I'm going with a bunch of family friends. So just nice. Yeah. I feel like it's a long deserved break. I haven't had a break in a long time. So it's going to be nice. It's only for like five days or something. But definitely be chilling out, surfing a lot. And trying to get good again. Sounds like fun. I haven't surfed in so long. Is it good surfing, Bali? Yeah. Well, from my basic opinion of it all. But yeah, I'm not like some expert that will surf. Yeah, cool. But yeah. So you're starting, you're starting a path. You started your path, but you're still very starting. You're going to get a lot of these comments from older people. It's a little old person thing, isn't it? If you were to tell yourself on your last day of high school something, what would it be? Man, I think it would be just a, I think the one thing that has worked best for me is having a great attitude towards everything. I'm really of the belief that in order to get to where you want to go and in order to bring the right people into your life, it all comes back to having a great attitude, which is just for me just going out, being incredibly positive, being incredibly nice to people all the time, always being excited about the things that I'm doing, even if I'm not necessarily always there. And as a result of that, I've just found that I've been able to shift away from all the negative things in my life and bring the right things in. So definitely having a great attitude is for me. That's a simple one, because the reason I'm saying that is because you can give so much advice, but a lot of it's so circumstantial, whereas a great attitude is not circumstantial. It's a decision. You can be a billionaire and have a terrible attitude or you can be in a third world country and have the best attitude. So that's the advice I'd give. Right on. And if you were to tell yourself, if you were to tell your 32 year old self, no, rephrase that, if you were to ask your 32 year old self a question, what would it be? Okay, what was the biggest, I think I would ask him like, what's the biggest source of happiness in your 20s? What is the thing that really mattered in your 20s? Like I'd ask myself that, Jack, what mattered the most? And then I would go for that. That's what I'd ask. Nice. I could say to you, as a 32 year old, it would be time. Time. Time matters the most and how you utilize it. Did you, have you always understood that or is that only come recently? No, more recently. So my 20s, and this is something that you can do. Yeah. But you learn it. And I feel like, I'm like, fuck. First five years of my 20s, I could have done so much more. Yeah. And I would, I would swap places with you in a second. But yeah, like at 22, I was, what was I doing? Starting, starting like really getting into my footy. I had a personal training business by then, but I was barely, barely surviving because I had a loan, a car loan that was fucking dumb. Yeah. And I was trying to figure out what car did you buy? VA Commodore SS. Yeah. It's like $916 a month down the drain. And I was learning how to have housemates, different housemates. Yeah. So that was interesting. But I, any spare time that I had, I didn't utilize it at all. But I, yeah. I was busy. I was a personal trainer. I had a girlfriend, I had a footy, and I had a, you know, other shit that I did. Yeah. But I had so much spare time that I just didn't realize I had spare time. Until you don't have it. Until you don't have it. Yeah. I don't think when people get full-time jobs, then they're like, oh, shit. You sound, you're pretty busy anyway. So, you know, I enjoy it. Yeah. As long as you enjoy it. Like for me, I didn't enjoy it, but I pivoted, pivoted, pivoted until I'm here. Yeah. Do I enjoy it now? I do. More so than I did before. Could I enjoy it better? I could. But that's my path. And that's what I'm trying to figure out. So, and that's what I mean by you, like how to find your own path. Oh, I had a, I don't even know. That sounds like I'm brainstorming for the title of this podcast. What do you reckon, Ryan? What's the title of this podcast? He's gone to sleep. He's on three hours. He's on three hours. He's sleeping. Ryan's actually a zombie today. So, yeah. Thank you for coming in. Thanks for having me, man. How do we find, how do we find everything about you? Man. Where do we stalk you? Yeah, I think just stalk me on LinkedIn is probably the best place to get me. All right. Like that's where you'd find all the links to all the stuff that I'm working on at the moment and all the books that I've written. But, you know, if you want to, if they want to ask, if they're in kids in high school or teachers, definitely just go to www.elucidate.org.au and you can see all our platform and just get involved. And if anyone's out there that's a uni or anything and wants to get involved in some pretty sick projects, in my opinion, hit us up. So, yeah. Perfect. You know where to go. Thanks for watching, listening. Leave a five-star review if it deserves it. If it doesn't deserve a five-star review, don't because it fucks up the ranking. Subscribe on YouTube if you haven't. If you're listening to On Spotify. If we monetize this, then I can do more of this shit for fun, for longer, for more guests. Gonna try and ramp this up to a couple of guests a week. But until then, thanks for watching, listening, commenting, loving. Good thanks.