25. Would you sell your soul for £10K?

Money really isn't everything...

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

I'm feeling philosophical today because I've just got off the phone to a good friend of mine, and he is currently in a kind of like an interim role where he's stepped up to do his manager's job for six months, and they're training him up to do the role, and he's he's basically been doing it for four months out of the six. And he literally told me that he cannot stand the job. He said he hate the commute to work is like three hours both each way now, three hours there, three hours back, so six hours out of your day just travelling, and the work environment is dingy, horrible-looking office. The people there don't gel with him, it's a stressful place to be. Toxic work environment are the words he used. And he basically said that they're not gonna if he if he takes the job that they're training him up to do, then his pay rise will be so minimal that it won't even affect anything in his life after tax, it won't add up to much at all. So I asked him if he was gonna do it, and he said absolutely not. And I said to him, Well, what if they offered you like 10 grand more? Absolutely I'd do it, he said, and it just it's just got me thinking about how willing we are to give up our happiness and our quality of life for like for like a measly 10,000 pounds, and I see this across the board. I know so many people who work themselves to the bone just for like a little tiny bit of extra money. I just I can't help but think that life is too short. Like, I don't want you know, I'm not trying to say that there's anything wrong with working hard or having ambition, of course that's a good thing, but what are you working for? Like, I don't I think some people just literally love not necessarily their jobs, but they love to chase a career. People want to work up a ladder, achieve things, get the sort of notoriety that comes with promotions and big bonuses and that kind of thing. And obviously the money is you know the primary thing that people want, but for me, like I the reason I work for money is so that I can have a nice life outside of work. That's the reason for it. I don't work because I want, you know, I want to work and I have to work, but I don't do it purely because I love working or yeah, I literally it's it's I'm earning money. I'm literally earning money so that I can come home and have a decent life outside of work, so I can spend more time with my family, the people I love, and my friends, and just have a good life. Make memories, have experiences, do awesome stuff, be happy, be comfortable, be you know, that's that's what I work for. So when I hear that someone is willing to give up their happiness and their time with their family, just you know, for a f for£10,000, it just seems like such a a sad thought, really. And I'm just yeah, it's got I've been thinking about this all day today. What is what is the point of it all? Because I know some people who literally I've got a family that live in the countryside. I've talked about them before, I think, on the podcast, but they their lives are really simple, they don't have loads of money, but they live in a beautiful place, and their lives consist of things that actually impact them every you know, like they've I've said this before about you know, if you if you're cold, you chop some wood, you burn it, you warm then, you know, or if you're hungry, you know, you go outside, you're growing veg in your garden, or the farm next door's got meat. There's that's that's a really simple life, but their their life you could argue is more full than someone who's earning loads of money working in the city. Because they they it's fulfillment, isn't it? It's I think people also chase the kind of pre-subscribed life that the people that are around them, the people that brought them up have laid out as being the only way to do things. I think a lot of people, and I'm not this isn't me, I'm not criticising anyone or talking down about anyone because you know I've I've probably done the same thing myself in the past as well. But people think that ideally I want to have enough money to have a nice car, have a nice house, to be able to buy things that I need, like clothes and you know, nice stuff when I want them, and to have like a nice holiday every year, and people will treat their whole work life around getting those things, and obviously, everyone wants to have a nice house, everyone wants to have a nice car, everyone wants to go on holiday, of course. But are you willing to work yourself into the it's like having if you look at your whole year and then you go, well, time-wise, at least a third of the year off the bat, I'm gonna work, and then another third of the year I'm gonna be asleep, pretty much. So then there's one third that's left for doing stuff outside of work, and you know, a large amount of that as well will be taken up with responsibilities. You've got to look after your house, make sure your garden's you know not overgrown, silly things like that, and buying your food and eating and all and all the chores, hoovering, all these little things you've got to do as well. That's all all going to eat into that other third. So then, when people are literally doing overtime five days out of the week, that's a huge chunk of your time that you're working just to get yourself one holiday a year and to have a nice car, and to have ah, I don't know. I'm not saying anything's wrong, I'm just it's maybe I'm just thinking about it because there are more important things than money, and I think when you reach the end of your life, you're never gonna regret spending time with the people you love and doing things that create memories. You're never gonna regret that, but I feel like you probably will regret working too much just to get some money so that you can have that one holiday. Because do you know another thing as well? I've got you know a big mixed bunch of friends. Some of my friends will go to Florida three or four times a year, or they'll go to the Bahamas or Australia, they have these big extravagant, you know, the Maldives, they'll go away for two weeks to these places, and it and it's brilliant. Don't get me wrong, like I I want to do that as well, but it costs a fortune. Like to go for me to take my family, my wife and my two kids, to Florida now for two weeks, it's gonna cost me the best part of 16,000 pounds, I think, which is a a lot of money for two weeks, really. But then on the flip side, I could I could go camping for a weekend with my wife and kids, and it probably cost me less than£100, it'd probably be£60 to 80 quid, I would have said, for just to get a pitch. Take our tent, set that up, and I think you know, three days camping versus two weeks away abroad, there's obviously a big difference there, but the amount of wholesome, lovely memories and fun that we all get out of going camping, I would say outweighs two weeks of Flash Florida, where you've got all the theme parks and you know Sea World and Universal Studios, all these things, and you know, pool in your garden, all that sort of stuff. That's all really brilliant and it's good, but I honestly believe that I would get more out of a weekend of camping with my kids than I well, we all would, than we would from going abroad for two weeks. So then if you look at it that way, the the sort of return on investment for money, why not do things that are simpler and don't cost loads? And then and then don't work yourself into the ground. And also the other thing is if you're working on something that you actually enjoy, that actually gives you fulfilment, that's very different to literally exchanging your time for money. Because way more than not, people I know will literally work themselves into the ground doing something they don't enjoy at all, but they'll do it for the money, so that they can have that thing where maybe it's just keeping up with the Joneses, that sort of thing, and again, like I said, I'm I'm as susceptible to this stuff as everyone else, so I'm not criticising anyone, but it just made me question it why why work yourself into the ground doing something you have no interest in purely for the money so that you can buy extravagant stuff that won't actually serve you in the long run? It's an interesting thought, isn't it? And it's one that I'm sort of running everything through that lens at the moment because you know we we're looking at booking a holiday this year, and part of me thinks we should just blam a load of money down and go abroad somewhere flash and have a great two weeks and come back and then deal with the fine the financial fallout that comes from doing that. But then the other part of me just thinks, why not just go camping, or you know, just go and get an Airbnb somewhere by the the seaside or go up north, go to Scotland or somewhere, or or nip over to France with the car, or so you know you can get just as much enjoyment out of that. There's a real I think I've mentioned this before again, but there's a a really, really good section of my favourite book. It's The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, and in that he talks about how you don't need to have tasted the most expensive wine in the world to know the pleasures of wine, you don't need to have sat in Paul McCartney's living room listening to him play the piano to appreciate the music and to get everything out of that music, and I think that's the thing, isn't it? You like holidays and things like that, and having nice cars and that stuff, like you don't need to have a Lamborghini to appreciate driving or to appreciate getting somewhere because every every time I've ever bought a nice car in my life that's cost loads of money, it's when you're in the showroom and you're looking at it, it wows you, and you're like, Yes, this is amazing, I really want this, and then you'll you'll go and spend loads of money on it, and within a month or two, the shine is kind of gone, you know. And it and it you I suppose on some level you think that people around you are gonna think more highly of you because you've got this nice car. People don't give a shit, they're too concerned with their own car. Like, people, if someone ever looks at you and thinks your car's nice, that thought is very quickly followed by oh, my car's not like that. And it, if anything, it'll probably be resentment that they'll aim it in your direction because that you've got something that they want. There's no one's ever sat there and gone, oh look at that car, that guy's so good. Oh I really I wish I knew him, but he's a really nice guy. I don't think that's ever happened. But that's the sort of thing that we tell ourselves, isn't it? We sort we'll make ourselves believe that buying the expensive flash thing is somehow gonna improve our life. But as yeah, my experience with nice cars is that as soon as you get them, any little problem with them, you know, someone clips your wing mirror and it's no longer 150 quid for a new wing mirror, you've now got to spend 2,000 on a new wing mirror because it's heated and it's got a special paint colour on it, and the glass has got some kind of non-reflective stuff on it. There's there's oh every single thing. Do you know I brought a I brought a battery for my car a couple of years ago, and it cost me£900 for a battery. A battery? When I was a teenager I used to go down to Halfwoods and buy a battery for like£40, stick it in myself, job done. Now it has to be coded to the car, and it has to oh, there's just so much involved with having nice stuff. So yeah, I don't I'm just I'm thinking dialing about dialing everything back now because we don't need to all have like really flash stuff all the time, and it's I really don't think that the trade-off of you spending all your time in order to get a bit more money to get these things, it just doesn't seem worth it. And the other thing as well is that big companies especially are very, very, very adept at making you believe that you need these things in your life. So much stuff is sold to us that we I don't think we're even aware it's being sold to us because advertising is so clever, and now with the way the internet scoops up your information and then fires adverts back at you, it's very very difficult not to want to buy the thing they're selling all the time. I read this book once, ages ago, and it was about how none of us have ever made an organic decision or had an organic thought in our lives. Sounds mad, doesn't it, right? But if you think about it, think of every single decision you've ever made, every thought you've ever had, and I reckon if not all of them, then 99.999% of them have been influenced by the way you were brought up, and the way you were brought up, a lot of that is to do with the media that you've experienced. Like we're taught from a really young age by Disney about what a marriage should look like and what a happy life and what romance looks like. So whether you whether you like it or not, every single thought you've ever had about your partner or about your love life kind of has been influenced by Disney, amongst other things, and I think every single thing we do does it kind of has gone through some kind of someone's tampered with it in terms of you know the stuff we've watched and the stuff that we've heard about, and also the stuff that we've seen the people around us experience. You'll have seen friends and family, colleagues, acquaintances, all the people you know, you'll have seen them go through things, and you'll have seen the way they dealt with them and then the outcome that they had, and that will influence the way you then act if that thing ever happens to you, right? Yeah, so I don't think it's very, very rare that we will have any kind of organic thought or feeling that comes purely from us that no one else has thought before or has put in our heads or you know that kind of thing. Maybe creativity is one of the few things where that can exist because just say that you write songs or you're a painter or a writer or any kind of expressive art that you might do, then the thing that you create will never have been created before. Not exactly, it might be something you you would have been influenced by other people, and you that will steer to a degree what you're what you're creating, but it's still gonna come from you, right? It's a bit like when they say that the Beatles influenced every single song that was ever made after the Beatles. So you feel so all the songs that are around now basically are there thanks to the Beatles. And there's there's a few big big uh musicians over the time over time who have kind of done that. You know, like Elvis was one, probably Johnny Cash Oasis, you could say. There's maybe Ed Sheeran nowadays as well, but there's all and there's all there's there's loads, but the point is that one once something is in the world, it will continue to influence the world. So I don't know, can can creative stuff ever be truly authentic? I wonder if there's a way that you could undo all of that programming. Maybe you'd have to just sort of sit in a a silent dark room with no stimulation at all for a month or two, and then maybe that would reset everything so you went back to zero and you had then you could start thinking organically. Maybe the best we can ever hope for is to just put our own spin on stuff that's already been done. Maybe that's it. I find that when I read like fiction books, novels as well, you know, there's like they all kind of have the same structure, and there's only like I don't know, four or five stories that have ever been written that all other stories after that are just a variation of that, and it gets a bit boring. I'm like this with everything. Like, this is why I had a conversation with um my wife the other day, and I was she was basically saying I'm a grumpy old man because I don't like watching Britain's Got Talon or X Factor or Strictly Come Dancing, all these programmes that the whole world seems to love. She was just saying I'm a grumpy old man because I I can't get behind any of them. And also I was saying that I don't think that when there's a pop artist who doesn't write their own music, they just get handed the lyrics, handed the tune, and they get told to perform it and be the face and the voice of that thing. I don't think that's as valuable as someone who has written a song and actually made something from nothing. And she was arguing with me that um people, you know, the performing stuff is actually an art in itself, which it is, but yeah, she was calling me a grumpy old man. But I think the first ever X Factor, or the first ever I think it was was it Pop Idol that came out first? I can't remember, or the Big Brother, the first ever ones versions of those programmes that came out, I was really into them for like a brief time for like a year or two, and then it just got after really quickly it became let's just do the same thing over and over and over again. So, like if you turn on Britain's Got Talent now, it will just be the same thing now as it was 10, 15, 20 odd years ago whenever it started. And that's I can't watch that, it's just boring, it's so droll to you know to have the same thing. You've got the same judges. Well, you've got Simon Cow always there, looking older and more haunted every time I see him, it seems, with their buzzers, and then you get the same people that come on doing the same thing. No one's really no one's creating their own stuff, they're all just kind of singing songs that are popular because the audience loves it, and then at some point the judges will stand up and it's just the same thing over and over and over and over again. And it's not really a talent show, it's a let's see how much money we can make out of this person for singing or dancing, or having a dog that dances, it seems as well. It's just the same thing, and I can't get behind it, but it's the same thing as what like what I said about there being a handful of stories that have ever been written, they're just variations of that. There's the same, like, how can how many different panel shows can you have? It's just the same thing, they're just trying, and you know, like oh, I'm getting into I'm getting into an old man rant now. Maybe she was right. I was saying as well about how lazy it seems to me for like Disney to go, oh, we've made the Lion King, that was a huge, massive, successful film. So I'll tell you what we'll do years later, we'll just make a live action version of it, which is almost exactly the same, but just live action, and then we'll flog that and everyone's gonna want to watch it because it's you know Lion King's massive, but it's just trotting out the same old thing again. It's like a cash cow, isn't it? There's no you're not gonna gain anything more from seeing a live action version, and they do that across the board now. Like every now and then they'll say, Oh, did you hear they're making whatever Disney classic into a live action film? It's just like really they're gonna do and oh Harry Potter's done it as well, haven't they? Harry Potter was like hugely successful, like probably the most successful book in history, I think. I think I remember hearing once it outsold the Bible years and years and years ago. But you know, you you look now, I don't know how long Harry Potter's been going now, is it 30 odd years maybe? And in that time, it's still in the top 10 on Audible, as like four of the books. It's just yeah, it's mad how successful that is. But then now they've just gone, do you know what? That's so successful, we'll just make a series of it now and we'll eke it out even more. And the series will I'll probably watch it because I like Harry Potter, but it'll probably be good, but it just it's so lazy just to just trot out the same thing again and again and again and again and again, just because it it's gonna make money. Oh, I don't know. If I if I was one of the the you know, people, the directors or the producers in charge of making these things, and I'm sure I would appreciate making all that money from it, but yeah, it's an old man thing to say that I just can't get behind something that's just keeps re-going and re-going and re-going again because it just yeah, maybe I am turning into a miserable old man. Perhaps this is how it starts. I mean I've got an open mind though, I'm always up for listening to something new or experiencing something new, even if it's something that you know someone in my generation shouldn't understand. There's loads of stuff that my kids come back from school with, like, there's all these phrases and stuff that I'm sure you know when I was their age, I'm sure there are phrases I used to come back with just in in just the same way. But yeah, there are certain things that you just shouldn't say. Like I always wind my kids up because I always say sleigh, I always say sleigh queen, and they just laugh at me because they're just like you shouldn't be saying that, doesn't fit coming out of your mouth, and they're right, but there's loads of stuff like that. But I'm open to new stuff, like there's um loads of music my daughters listen to, and I always give it a go. Sometimes, what was that song? Um End of Beginning. I really like that song, that's a wicked song, but that's apparently that's the guy from Stranger Things, my daughter told me. I haven't seen Stranger Things, but that's something that everyone's going on about at the moment as well. My um my daughter, my eldest daughter, has actually told me that she wants to watch it with me, so we watched the first two episodes, and we're gonna slowly work through them. But yeah, I'm just trying to defend myself here and say that I'm not actually that old and miserable because I like the song by the guy from Stranger Things. So no one can argue that, no one can call me a miserable old man. Does make me wonder though does there come a point in your life where you've kind of experienced pretty much everything? And then there's Nothing left that can excite you because it's so rare that something new and amazing comes out, I don't know, once every five or ten years, perhaps. So if you if so if you're I don't know how old you'd have to be, or you know, you'd have to have led quite a full life to experience everything, but I feel like this is my my curse that I I try everything until I get to a point where I can do it to a reasonable standard, then I get bored of it, and then I want to move on. So things like every sport, when I was a kid, I would try every single sport, and I would do it for six months or a year, and then as soon as I got to a point where I was okay at it, or sometimes quite good at it, I'd get bored, and then I'd then I'd move on to the next thing, and I'd do that until I got sort of alright at it, and then just went around in circles like that. And it's like, yeah, I'm sort of that guy that has a new hobby, buys all the gear, does it to death, and then once I get good, sell all the stuff, move on to the next thing. Oh it's not it's not easy, not that easy being me. Oh, update on the business, it's actually going really well at the moment. I've um I'm taking quite a few bookings for spotlight days, which is really really good. Things are actually moving forwards there, and my studio is now up and running, so I'm gonna start using that for photo shoots and things like that as well. And I've got a couple of local businesses that have asked me to get involved, do hero videos and interviews, that kind of thing, and to film. I think there's a couple of um like product shoots as well that I might be able to do soon as well, so that's really good. I'm still a bit scared about doing things like um like doing wedding photography is an obvious thing to do because you can make quite a lot of money doing that, right? And it would be fun as well. But I feel like I need some more experience first because when when someone puts you in charge of doing the the film and the videos, sorry, the film and the photos for their for the most special day in their life, there's so much pressure there. If you make a mistake or something goes wrong, it's not as if you can just go back and do it again, is it? So, yeah, I'm a bit nervous about the idea of doing that. I feel like I'd need to have like a second person with me as a backup just so that if all else failed, we would have caught everything. Do you know what I mean? So, yeah, but the um the headshots and stuff are coming in as well now. I'm starting to do some headshots and I'm actually gonna I'm gonna offer like to do an entire school, like all the teachers do their headshots for free soon, just just to get some experience and to make sure that I'm happy with the the level that I'm able to deliver. Yeah, so it's all coming on, and I'm actually feeling really good about things. It's for the first time ever, I can really really see like a way forward that this is actually something I can do, I can actually make this work. So, yeah, it's all coming on nicely, and um as ever, I've got a very supportive group of family members around me, which is which is always really good because imagine if I said I was I was gonna do what I'm doing, and then my wife was dead against it, and she just was that hated me doing it, resented any moment I had out of the house doing it. She's been nothing but supportive, so yeah, onwards and upwards. This is all moving in the right direction now. And um, I'm about to uh put out a load of flyers to the the office block that my studio is in. I might I might take my daughter actually this evening and do it. I've I printed off a load of flyers offering spotlight days. I'm gonna put them in the pigeonholes of every business in the building. I think there's about 80 in there, so hopefully, something will come back from that, and that will be more exposure, and we'll see where we go. But yeah, that's all looking good. Everything's moving forwards, and I'm getting closer and closer to that golden day that I've been dreaming of. It's coming, baby. Bye for now.