YouSaid · the spoken record

Chris Williamson

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179
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2025-12-29
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2025-12-29
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  1. “My experience that's not the way it is at all your entire journey of personal growth is just steeped in doubt and self pity and uncertainty, and it tarnishes the whole experience. It's not sexy. It's not cool. You're like, this is supposed to be my rocky cutscene. It's three and a half minutes in the movies, but it's been four years for me. What's going on? There's not even the promise that there's any glory on the other side of it. And Exactly why it's so much easier to just go back to your old patterns, why it's easier to just go back to doing the old things that you used to do.”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “Origin stories miss. I wish that they paid more attention to it. Seems to me that on every hero's journey, as soon as they make the commitment to go from where they are to where they want to be, their self belief never wavers. Sure, there's ups and downs in the journey and the progress But that conviction doesn't slip. It's like at that moment the clouds parted and I was sure I was going to become a UFC fighter, I was going to become a businessman, I was going to get off drugs, change my mindset, whatever.”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “And the initial sad reality is that on your journey of personal growth, at some point you may need to leave a group of friends behind who aren't growing at the same pace as you. The really sad reality is that if you do a lot, you may have to do this multiple times throughout your life. And it's not a value judgment about who's better or who's worse. It's just a stark reality of what happens when you start to make changes in your life. And for instance, I met a million people on the front door of nightclubs, a million people in person had a handful of friends, and I worked with half of them. Million people, handful of friends in internet marketing speak, my friendship, conversion, funnel ratio was not very good. Million people handful of friends. And the only way that I could work out who I was was to kind of follow my own instincts and do some of the personal development stuff, like a thousand days sober, five hundred days without caffeine, which is fucking miserable, nine gratitude meditation journals with no idea if any of it was going to work. And this is the really important thing, and it's a bit that...”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “It's very uncomfortable because it's tempting to go back to the old life that you're used to, the old patterns, the old routines, the old friend groups, the old everything. And you have to stop doing the things that you know bring you validation in the moment to start doing things that you have no idea about whether it will actually work. Like, you're going to tell me that I'm not going to go out with my friends this weekend because I'm going to keep my meditation streak going. Who even knows if meditation works, right? It's so much easier to just stay in the routine that you were previously doing the same sort of things for you to pull away from that. You're going to have to do stuff usually that makes you more different, more easy to be mocked, and more alone.”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “So your change is creating some friction between you and them. Your friends like to play Xbox on an evening time, and that's how they hang out. But you want to start going to the gym. But your friends don't go to the gym. And then when you do hang out with them, you're talking about the gym because that's your new thing. And they're still talking about Xbox. So there is a friction that happens as you try to grow. Because if your friends don't grow at the same pace as you, you don't speak the same language. A friend referred to it as changing your dialect so much so that over time you and your friends don't even speak the same language anymore.”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “You have decided to stop drinking. Your new year's resolution is six months, I'm going to stop drinking. You can go out with your friends that want to go to the pub on an evening time, but you feel a little bit ostracized. They're having digs at you and jibes at you. Oh, come on, mate, only one BR, who do you think you are?”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “The long chapter describes a time in your life where you're so developed that you can't really resonate with your old set of friends, but you're not yet sufficiently developed that you've built a new set of friends.”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “This belief climbs inside of you and sort of wears you a little bit. A lot of the time we're scared of that, and I understand why, but resisting the fact that that's there. I don't know, it's kind of a denial of this beautiful thing that's just been given to you. There you go. There's like something new and exciting that you can move into. And I think a lot of friction is in the resistance. Suffering is in the resistance of the thing.”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “Yeah, I don't know. It's just growing up, dude. Growing up's weird because something changes and you kind of didn't choose it. Do you know what I mean? Like, did you choose?”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “No, no, I grew up. I guess that's what growing up is called. Like it wasn't some moment where the skies opened and things changed. I noticed I used to think that kids were super annoying. My business partner had his first son when he was 25, so I would have been 25 too, 25, 26 maybe. And I remember thinking, fuck, like he just can't come out with me anymore. He's busy. He's got all this stuff to do. And then each kid that he had, it was about two years apart, each one. I noticed my relationship to the child was different. I was like, oh, okay, well, you know, they're kind of cute or whatever. And then another one came along and I'm like, okay, that's really nice. So I saw this sort of sedimentary rock, this archaeological dig of myself change. And now I'm godfather to my best friend's daughter, beautiful daughter. It was like four months old, five months old. And I love going around and seeing her.”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “Deep question that's been in the back of my mind it's easy to push off if people want me or I move from caffeine fueled meeting to evening dinner I actually have to listen to that But if you sit with your thoughts for a little bit, and this is why a lot of people don't like sitting with their thoughts, this stuff comes up, and that's why the question, what emotions are you unprepared to feel is so good?”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “Two years Or three years ago? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And again, we are product of our environment. All of the cornucopia of different things that we can do. Look at this panoply of options that I could spend my life doing. And you sort of get shiny object syndrome and you chase after things. And isn't it going to be exciting? And then you get to where you thought you wanted to be and you go. That might not be the answer. That's why Having a bit of time to reflect, having a little bit of time for quiet, fleeting thoughts to come up. Like a busy calendar is a hedge against existential loneliness. If you are always needed by somebody, you don't have to sit with your quiet thoughts. You don't have to think.”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “And I've stopped suppressing. Wonderful. I think that there is a wonderful upside in trying to conquer and trying to achieve mastery, trying to really drive yourself to go and do stuff. But I'm not like, fuck your feelings, just hustle and grind until your eyes bleed either. So I'm trying to show balance. I think mindfulness is really important. I think that a physical practice is really important. All of this stuff kind of appears in the exterior. Remember what I said before? What's the conversation we're unprepared to have? What's the one thing that you should be doing? It's usually the big thing. The big thing is probably going to be something to do with a fucking family dude. Like, it's time for you to have a family. But it's a...”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “Yeah, very much so. That being said, I've never claimed to be some shiny example of what people should do. I certainly know that I try my best to Be the sort of guy that I would want to be friends with. I quite like me. They quite like me, and I've worked really hard. I didn't like me, and I worked really, really hard to form myself into a shape, a construction. I feel big emotions, for instance, and for a long time I was re ashamed of them, and I wouldn't get below the neck and I would use intellect to protect myself from feeling my feelings. And on stage, anybody that's come to see my live show, I get teary. Every night I get teary telling the same story. Okay, well I think that's a good thing. I think it's a good thing for guys who feel their emotions to show that they feel their emotions. Suppression isn't the same thing as strength.”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “He said, I will personally baptize the third child of any family in the country. So now these parents are speed running having kids so that their child can be baptized by the equivalent, you know, the goat is like the fucking Avici of pastors. Did the exact opposite. They had a cultural intervention which showed a non-profamily influence, whereas Georgia had this one that was a pro-family influence. So a cultural intervention that South Korea could easily implement would be to say the only way that you can become a K-pop star is to already have had a kid. Like we're only going to create boy bands and girl bands out of people who have already had families.”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  16. “Going to be a representation for us. One of the things that K pop stars have to say is that they will be celibate while they're in the band. So not only does this mean that they can't be in a relationship, so the most popular cultural influences in South Korea aren't showing a pro-relationship narrative. Also, obviously can't be mothers or fathers because they can't be in a relationship. The converse of this, cultural intervention in the country of Georgia, very religious, and there's this superstar pastor guy, a very religious country, this pastor that's kind of like a really rock star sort of dude.”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  17. “You model the behavior of the people that are around you and the people that you see. So good example of this. South Korea's got one of the worst birth rates in the world. For every hundred South Koreans, there will be four great grandchildren. The 96% reduction over the next century. It's insane. There are entire classrooms, whole schools in South Korea that are unoccupied. And there are many, many reasons. The 4Bs movement, the increasing of women's acceptance into education. And then when they got into the workforce, they were still being prejudiced against, which meant that they swore off a lot of the things that they were promised. Lots and lots of lots of different reasons. But one of the big ones, culturally, which is really fascinating, is K-pop. K-pop was this export that Korea was going to put to the world. We have this ability to construct the perfect boy band or girl band. We're going to export it to the world in this.”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  18. “I have to sacrifice Pain, discomfort, lack of freedom. For something that I have no idea about whether or not it's going to make me satisfied in future and yeah, maybe people say it's the most important thing or whatever, but it's easy to excuse away when there are so many other things I can do with my life. I can travel around barley and I can watch Netflix and I can build a business and I can start a substack or I can build a YouTube channel and do a podcast. All of these things that you could do pushing off, pushing off, pushing off. It's no surprise. And the final point is I think having kids is memetic.”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  19. “Not because there's too much area under the curve that's flat as opposed to everybody kind of dancing to the same tune, they're all dancing to different tunes So that contributes to it. I certainly think that there is an anti-family message that comes about that there's a girl with the list on TikTok, which I think is this girl who wrote 350 reasons to not have kids like eight pages, nine pages long, and it went super viral and it's everything from literally a parasite growing inside of your body to can't wear cute heels with the girls will have to miss brunch, all of the different issues that can occur during childbirth. And then I think there was a list of things for kids. And it was like maybe a page, a half a page long that she'd written. And she is open to seeing the world as she wishes, I think by the sounds of things it is a really good idea that she's not a mother, and I'm glad that she's choosing to not have kids. But that tone, that sentiment is like prevalent because people see this is what”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  20. “At eighteen the first thing you do isn't get married, oh, I'm going to go to university. I've just put three or four years into university, I'm going to now go and get a job. And now I've committed to the job. I'm going to maybe climb the corporate ladder. And that's pushed the vitality curve back. It's made it later rather than being earlier. And another problem is because there is such a multiplicity of different life directions that people can go down, the likelihood of you being ready at 22 and you meeting someone else who's also ready at 22 is actually quite low. So if you think that you can have a graph like this vitality curve it's called by Stephen Shaw. And previously it would have been very short and sharp and spiky and that would be like when people want to have kids. It's like from 18 to 24, let's say. If you meet anybody within that age range, it's likely that they're at the same life situation as you. thirty five. You need to meet somebody that's also 35 and ready to have kids.”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  21. “It's a painful realization I've had some of the best demographers in the world on Lyman Stone from the Institute for Family Studies, Stephen J. Shaw, who did the Birth Gap documentary. These people know what's going on. It's a function of a lot of things. It's a function of people having other stuff to do. There are so many other things to do than have kids, reliable contraception that means that you can choose to put it off and continue to push it off for as long as you want. Specifically women's socioeconomic emancipation into the workforce and in higher education means that”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  22. “This is an unteachable lesson, dude. The you should probably have kids now, right? That could be a lesson, perhaps. That you will never feel ready. That could be an unteachable assassin.”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  23. “I mean, it's a great question. For me, I spent a lot of time in my 20s really trying to work out who I was. I had my head at my own ass. I'm happy to say that I had a slow development psychologically in terms of becoming the person I wanted to, in terms of realizing how important different things were to me. Like, how long have you known, felt it, I should have kids”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  24. “Jay got kid Yeah, no, okay. Yeah, but then also Tucker Carlson's breeding a lot. He was number 10. Rogan's got three daughters, I think, three or four daughters. Rogan's”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  25. “Ah, but probably filling it with other stuff family same as you. I can't wait to be a dad. In dog, I should have a dog. I should have a dog. How many times have I thought the thought I should have a dog? Get a golden retriever.”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  26. “The edges You pushing yourself just beyond what you're comfortable with, and sometimes this can be emotional pain too, leaving the job happens when you get pushed out of Region Beta on the bottom end, or growth happens when you overextend yourself the right way. Like, it pushes you so that your system becomes more resilient on the other side. Many of the periods of radical important change that you have had in your life have only occurred because of severe challenges you faced. Like back. Almost all of the big periods of growth in your life have germinated from your lowest points. In retrospect would you have avoided them if you could? So, yeah, this challenge is a gift. You can lean into discomfort as if you invited it through the door. It's like, oh, there we are. Hello.”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  27. “But all of the time that you spent worrying will have passed. So you're sacrificing your joy and your presence in the moment for a problem that you won't even be able to recall in the future, so immortality would kind of be the only life where so much flippancy with the time that we have would be acceptable. Learning comes from the edges three. Change is uncomfortable, and it rarely occurs without a lot of stress.”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  28. “There will never come a time when you have no problems. You think you were going to wake up one day and there be no more problems, like completing a video game level and going to a map where there's nothing there? Always going to incur problems. Your problems will change, but having problems is going nowhere Number two, whatever negativity is consuming your thoughts probably won't matter in three months time. In three months, you won't remember the corrosive texture of your own mind or the boring, repetitive things that you thought, or maybe even what you worried about. Think, what were you worrying about three months ago right now? Probably can't remember.”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  29. “You're making trades. I'd love, you know, what would I do to make 85-year-old me miserable and what would 85-year-old me want me to do more of? Great frames. Let me give you a couple on problems and stress. So one of the issues that people come up against is you've got the start of the wide-eyed blue sky vision for what's going to happen. And even though you know that stuff's going to come and sort of get in the way, it always feels unfair when it does. It shouldn't be this way. We sort of rail against the road bumps that we have along the way. So six lessons about problems and stress. And one, problems are a feature of life, not a bug.”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  30. “Mentioned something in an email that made me feel like they really don't value me. And I really, and it's just over and over. Or I need to sort my diet out. I need to sort my diet out. I should sort my diet out. I can't sort my diet out. I'm going to sort my diet out. I should sort. I can't over and over and over again. What are the thoughts that plagued you this year? What are the ones that kept on happening over and over and over and over again? And typically from that, there is a conversation that you need to have. There is an emotion that you're unprepared to feel. Another great question. What are the emotions that you're unprepared to feel? If fear comes up, do you run away from it, you distract yourself away from it, you drink yourself away from it, you lift yourself away from it. What are the emotions you're unprepared to feel?”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  31. “Distraction. It plagued you. There's this thing that's there. Fuck, like that thing that my partner said to me eighteen months ago over dinner is still in the back of my mind and I'm ashamed of bringing it up to them. I'm even more ashamed to bring it up to them now because they're probably not even going to remember it. But they said this thing or they looked at the weighter that way or my boss.”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  32. “Stuff, man. And lots of people have got real world restrictions, which fucking blows. But there's always something that you can do that's little. Another question people can ask themselves on reflecting on last year, what are some of the thoughts that you repeated too many times, this year? The things that came up over and over that little voice in the back of your head, that conversation that you need to have”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  33. “Think about this if you're succeeding at a job that you hate, imagine how great you'd be at one that you loved If you're not fired up about the thing that you're doing today, and you're still winning? What could happen if you actually enjoyed, you were fired up when you woke up on a morning? Imagine that.”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  34. “And this causes people to fear making choices. They project the potential regret they're fearful of in the future down into the present, and it causes decision paralysis, so they don't do anything. They think, oh, there's so many different options here. And this is one of the paradoxes where you think, well, lots of choice allows you to maximize what you want. You get the perfect pair of jeans. So why is it that firstly, people tend to be less satisfied with their decisions when they're given more options? And secondly, why so many people struggle to make decisions in the first place? Oh, because they're paralyzed by the overanalysis they have of all of the different optionality that's in front of them.”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  35. “Roll the clock forward, it's twenty twenty five. You go into the Jeans store. Do you want skinny or stretched? Do you want boot cut? Do you want ripped? Do you want bleach? You want gray, blue, black? If you walk out of the jeans store with a suboptimal pair of jeans, this is no longer because of restriction from the environment. This is because of your inability to make the right choice.”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  36. “The difference in behavioral economics between maximizing and satisficing. It's like the two terms, like basically what's your threshold for conviction? You know, the paradox of choice by Barry Schwartz. Do you know this? Okay, so Barry Schwartz uses this wonderful example of people buying jeans 50 years ago, going into the jeans store. You go in and there is one type of jeans. There's maybe different sizes, maybe. And you go in, you buy the pair of jeans, you leave. Maybe they're not the perfect genes that you wanted, but you had no other choice, right? So you've got them. So you're okay with your decision. Would have been happier if there was others, but there wasn't. So your decision regret is basically zero.”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  37. “It would galvanize them to go and do something. And this zone of comfortable complacency that people get into is where they can sit for a very long time. And it's a really dangerous one. Things aren't bad enough to be bad, but they're nowhere near good enough to be good. And this Of grey zone, this liminal space, this sort of like productivity purgatory that you sit in, just sort of allows you to keep moving forward. You're not moving toward what you want, but there's not enough discomfort to get you to do it. One of the most spicy questions that's been asked at one of my life talks about this was, should I purposefully make my life worse so that it kicks me out the bottom of Region Beta? I'm like, it's a high-risk strategy. I wouldn't recommend it. But it is a difficulty.”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  38. “Worse things can be better than better things. So for instance, the person who lives in an apartment and it's in kind of a sketchy area of town and there's a little bit of mold on the ceiling and the housemate's kind of a bit weird, but it's really cheap. And they quite like the bed and it's not too far from their work. Someone's in a relationship and their partner's not abusive or mean to them, but not really that fired up and don't really see that much of a future with them. Or the person who's got a job and their boss is a bit of a dick and it doesn't pay that well, but it's really cushy and they don't actually have to work that hard. All of these people would be better off if their situations were worse.”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  39. “Well, that's the Region Beta thing that you mentioned earlier on. So the Region Beta paradox, imagine that if you were going to travel less than a mile, you'd walk it. If you're going to travel a mile or more, you would drive it. Paradoxically, you would travel two miles, quicker than you would travel one mile. You'd jump in the car. And what this suggests is that if we only act when things cross a certain threshold of badness,”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  40. “I'm pretty stubborn, and being stubborn has meant that I've just kept showing up and that stubbornness feels even more in reach than consistency. Consistency is pretty in reach, right? Don't miss two days in a row. All right, well, fucking. Write five hundred words a week. Start a substack and write 500 words a week. You can probably do that. You can probably find 500 words a week. It'll take you half an hour. Write 500 words a week. After a year, you're a writer. Congratulations. You're a writer. You have the license to be able to call yourself a writer. How fantastic? And then who knows, in four years' time you've got Penguin came knocking. Maybe there's a book deal for you. How fantastic would thou have a published author with Penguin? How fantastic's that? It starts by just going”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  41. “Well, let me give you this I think a lot of people assume that self-belief is kind of the answer to what it is that they're looking to do. You can just do things. You can just do it anyway. You can do it Do it with no self-belief. Do it when you don't want to Do it when you think it's not going to work. You can just do things. And I've learned that you can have no self-esteem and show up anyway. You can have no self-belief and things still go well. Rhine Holliday says self belief is overrated, generate evidence. Fuck ya, our evidence. An undeniable stack of proof that I am who I say I am. And I am the poster boy for imposter syndrome, dude. Like, I never assumed that I would amount to really anything.”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  42. “What is entrepreneurialism? It's like vision, it's risk taking, it's being prepared to do something that hasn't been done before. And maybe there's some something else that I'm not seeing that's a part of the UK. Maybe it's the weather, you know, maybe it's the fact that we're a waterlocked island or that the population density is 10 times that of the US. There's something I feel like bottom up that's putting a bit of a restriction on people. And yeah, it was a shame to see that the UK press was... Just living out the exact cultural script that I assumed that they would.”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  43. “I don't know, man. I mean, I hesitate. I don't like to throw a ton of shade at the country that I left four years ago now because it does feel a bit like pulling the ladder up after I got... The last lifeboat off the Titanic and me going, like, sorry, I had my problems while I was there. I had my criticisms of the UK while I was still in the UK. I wish that people were more positive some. I wish that there was less Toll Poppy syndrome. I wish that at risk was more celebrated. You know, we have the same number of universities in the top 10 in the world as America We produce 80% fewer entrepreneurs.”

    2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  44. “And I know that there are so many people that this is just a mimetic issue, that if you had one key mover within a group, that that would start to spread and spread and spread. But to the people in the UK that are doers and are builders and are actually making stuff happen, you have one of the hardest jobs in the world. Because not only have you got to get over the lonely chapter, the challenge, the difficulty, the procrastination, the getting up early, I've got to stop drinking, caffeine 90 minutes after waking. Holy fuck, there's so much on my plate. You have this additional gravity of a culture that doesn't tend to celebrate success and risk-taking in quite the same way. So if that's you, I think power to you, I really do. And there is a community of people out there, even if it feels lonely now.”

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  45. “Having people around you that genuinely are prepared to watch you take big swings is something I wish I could gift to the UK. The way that I would put it is Americans want you to succeed in case you take them with you. On the journey And the worst parts of British culture don't want you to succeed in case you leave them behind.”

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  46. “Yeah, we know the Indiana Jones movie where he's running the big doors coming down the big stone door and it's coming down real slow and he's running, running, running, running, running. He slides underneath and he grabs his hat as he comes in. I kind of feel like that was us in the podcasting world. We just snuck in before this sort of explosion and we rode the increase in platform size. But yeah, look, dude.”

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  47. “That maybe you can do it too. And maybe we all got lucky. I don't know. But it made me real sad to read that. And this isn't just that I was like, it would have been nice if the UK press had backed us and said, good on you guys. But on top of that, it just reminded me of a mindset in the UK that... Kind of has Stockholm syndrome for their own sad moments, for their own zero-sum tall poppy thing. And I really don't like the tall poppy syndrome in the UK. And it made me sad to read that.”

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  48. “Yeah, it was really made me sad and it made me sad for a few reasons. First off, the UK's not exactly showering itself in glory at the moment. There is an entire content bucket of American streamers reacting to news from the UK and going, oh, the downfall of the UK with the whatever. Whether that's true or not, the optics aren't great coming out of the UK at the moment. And you've got three people who have done it. I don't know whether Jay is from working class, but I'm from as working class as working class can be. I know that you're even lower than me somehow. Congratulations. And wherever Jay's from, and you've managed to get these three guys who are genuinely trying to make the world a better place, really working hard at it. And your main takeaway was not during a time where the UK is kind of eating shit on the global stage, congratulations to three people who can show young entrepreneurs, people that want to do personal development, improve their online.”

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  49. “With regards to this. Lady who wrote this article basically said it was a rejection of our patriotic inheritance that we were trying to do self-improvement at scale. Whatever happened to the British stiff upper lipness where we sort of feel stoically satisfied in our own loneliness and misery. That's like almost an exact quote.”

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  50. “Okay, so it was the same week that the Spotify wrapped came out. And in the top 10 in the world, there's me, you, and Jay Shetty. There's three Brits. I think we're punching above our weight.”

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