I want to break free from the sales trap. Yes. You were expecting that, weren't wasn't. Very quick. It's the staccato. Please don't call me that. It's the 23rd of March. We're breaking free from the sales trap. Don't. It's a great trap. We like it down here. And Seneca wrote some letters, but some of them were moral. This is one of them. The struggles of the rational mind are entrenched and deeply ingrained habits like greed and unchecked ambition.

They've locked the mind in a straitjacket and become persistent flaws. Put simply, this condition is a relentless distortion of perspective where things of minor value are pursued with overwhelming intensity. Really good. So I went for a recruitment interview probably more than a decade ago now. So was probably about 21, 22, one of my first jobs in London. Gave away your age then? It gave away my age. It's okay. It's available online anyway. Google, Jefferson, DOB. That means date of birth for the listeners at home. And I remember sitting around this round table and I can't remember what recruiter it was, but it was one of- Dave? No? Steve. Oh, no, no, no. It was a company. Oh, he's the recruiter at the No, no. The recruitment company. was a massive one. It began with a G.

Nigel Frank? No, can we get a fact check at the back? Recruiters beginning with the name G. Thank you. We'll come back you. name G or the G? The letter G. So yeah, so I interviewed, I remember them saying like, why do you want this job? And I spun a web of lies. Okay. Recruitment name at the back there? Glenn Callum. We'll put his Instagram handle in the comment. Glenn Callum, thank you for that opportunity. And we sat around this big board room in the middle of London and I said, why do you want the job? And I spun a web of lies of how I was money motivated and I had a picture of a yacht on my wall at home and I didn't get the job. And I think they could see through me. Actually, what I actually wanted was a place that I could just work, have fun, make some new friends and then clock off at five o'clock and not think too much about work. I know that that's not like that, but it was such a funny one. like I thought money motivated. I thought that's what you had to be to work in sales. But actually it's not about that. You don't necessarily have to be money motivated. We were talking yesterday and you said something quite interesting about money and status. So run me through that. So there's no part of your brain that knows what money is. Money is not a concept that's ingrained in as money as a story. It's created by people and the way that people might not know this right, but there used to be other kinds of human beings.

the andesoles, there's like all the different kinds of human beings. think maybe eight different kinds of species of human type animal. a lot of them died off. There will be ones that are more powerful than others. There might be one that individually was more intelligent. All these different things. But human beings, the way we've evolved and outlast and survived is by not only creating stories, but believing in those stories. So the idea of money.

is a story paper and metal being worth something and me giving it you and you giving me things in return is a story. It's one that we have to believe in and agree on in order to push forward. All it takes is for as all as a species to go, I don't make sense. Why is that one to do that? And we die for that. What's a lot of that? So there's no part of your brain that looks after money, but there is a part of your brain that is big on status. We are status driven animals because in a tribe you would want to have status in the tribe. So I'm worth something. That's where this need for validation comes from. So actually what money unlocks is status and people are constantly playing these different status games. So I could be saying, I want to play the millionaires game, right? I want to signal I'm a millionaire. And then before long, I'm then competing with other millionaires for status. Okay. Right. Well, I'm competing with them is I want to be in the 10 millions. Yeah. I'm playing the status game with people who are worth 10 million.

And actually money and money motivation is not what we think it is. It's actually status and status motivation. So when you ask people about, are you money motivated in the recruitment, if you're a sales interview, what you really want to be asking is what do you hope money gives you? What are you hoping unlocks? And what you're looking for here is does the desire, the thing that they want have a very, um, immediate finish line. I want to go on holiday to Dubai. That's got a finish line. Okay. So you've got a holiday to buy them. What, what motivates you then?

I want to buy a house. OK, well, you want to buy a house, you know, save some money for a year, smash the job. You're into it. Now, what? What more do you know? The idea is that doesn't have this definitive finish line. And once you realize these things about yourself and about us as a species, you find that the path and the game you play evolves to be something else. And that's really, really good. I was reading something yesterday and there's two types of paths that you can go down when it comes to status.

There's bought status and there's earned status. Okay, go on. That sounds good. So bought status would be your Rolex, your Montclair, your Canada goose and status might be running a marathon. It could be running a business. It could be growing a team. It could be doing a hundred episodes of a podcast and it only be in March. Like all of these different things that you can earn status.

So it's a case of you can buy status, okay? But really, it's, call it the Lamborghini paradox. So we're not materialistic, and we're also quite humble and modest as human beings as well. But we're not, are we? Like you can tell, I think this is from Uniqlo, it's absolutely fine. We like our Doc Martens, but that's brand, brand-wise, that's probably about as far as it goes. But the Lamborghini paradox is a lot of people buy fast cars, these flashy cars, and when somebody sees you, in a Lamborghini, what you're probably thinking is everybody wants to be me, but they're not. They don't want to be you. They just want what you've got. So if you walked in here and you was wearing a Canada goose jacket and you've got that bought status, it's not that I want to be you. It's just that I want to have the things that you have. want the view, not the climb. They want the view, not the climb, but the earned status. That's something quite admirable. like, well, you, you're somebody that gets up in the morning and you do this and you train and you can do a marathon. Yeah, I want a bit of that. So you might want to do the marathon, but also do you want the habits that come with it? Why are you smiling at me like that? Just like you quite a lot. I don't know what to say about it. Should we call it that? I've been Jack Frimston. I've been Zack Thompson. Remember you will die. Hello, Mr. Potter.