Bryony Cole on Sex Tech, Self-Discovery, and the Future of Intimacy

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0:22 Bryony Cole: Brick by brick, the most unscalable things, and that meant doing the unsexy things, which I think a lot of people think sex tech is really sexy. In fact, it's quite the opposite. I was renting out my place in New York on Airbnb and dog walking to support my business, which isn't a flex in a way of like, I would do anything. It was just a necessity. And also, when you have a germ, a seed of an idea you're extremely passionate about, you do those things.

0:54 Pauline Fetaui: What do sex tech, dopamine exhaustion, synthetic love lives, and a rescue mission from a mud brick commune have in common? Today's guest, Bryony Cole. Bryony has paved the way as a global authority on sex tech, founder of The Future of Sex and Sex Tech School, and an all-round rebel with a cause. In this episode, Bryony drops wisdom like, as a founder, you should show your work, getting behind your work, not in front of it. Why momentum comes from moving to the next creative thing instead of waiting for perfection, and how to actually create an industry. And for us personally, how the next wave of intimacy may be with AI. But the real currency of the future is being fully, messily human. We talk about the evolution of women and men, and could someone like Cam Fraser or Stephen Bartlett be the next male archetype to aspire to? And if you've ever felt burnt out, lost, or like you're outsourcing your intuition to tech, this one's for you. Because Bryony says, the future might be synthetic, but your power is knowing yourself. This is the future of sex. This is the Future of Self. Let's go.

2:00 Bryony Cole: You're listening to a Day One FM show.

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2:59 Bryony Cole: www.instagram.com/vanta/pauline.

3:06 Pauline Fetaui: Hi, Bryony.

3:09 Bryony Cole: Hi, Pauline.

3:10 Pauline Fetaui: First, tell me, who are you and what do you do?

3:14 Bryony Cole: Hello, I'm Bryony Cole. I'm the founder of Future of Sex and Sex Tech School, and I have been deeply interested in this intersection of sexuality and technology since 2016. My former life was in tech, but I realized no one was talking about what was going on with our sexuality and how our behaviors, like the way we fall in love, the way we date, the way we have sex, was changing through technology. And so now I focus on sextech as a market and look at it and speak about it. And also Sextech School allows founders to come, uh, to a 6-week school and learn all about the industry, the challenges like censorship, raising money, building a business in space and all the amazing things like finding your people, building something that is based off your own personal experience that resonates with so many other people, and send them out into the world to hopefully, you know, change the world and revolutionize the way we look at being human, the way we move in the world.

4:16 Pauline Fetaui: I love that. Now, 2016 was some time ago, and I could just imagine back then sex tech was not necessarily a theme or, you know, something that people would delve into straight away. What what kind of inspired you to get going or, or look into this space, especially because you did have a career in technology, media, and communications, and going to sex tech? What was that?

4:42 Bryony Cole: Well, I think there's like a personal thread and there's a professional thread in this, and the professional thread is the easiest one to explain. It's like, it was a moment in time where I'd moved to New York with a startup. They got acquired by Microsoft. We were really successful, but I reached a moment where I thought in my career, is this it? And I think a lot of people reach that when they've been ticking the boxes, doing the right things. And you know, I'm climbing the ladder, the corporate ladder, and I was in New York and I felt like, oh, hang on a second. Like I could very clearly see a future here that wasn't actually me on a personal level. And so that's what inspired— More. The, the change, right? The exit out of the enterprise tech world and the, well, where do I go next? Underneath that is the personal thread, which was like, I had a very standard upbringing in Australia, beautiful middle-class, we're the luckiest country, right? But I always felt like I don't really fit. I've been told to be small my whole life. And I think we've talked about this before.

5:55 Pauline Fetaui: Mm-hmm.

5:55 Bryony Cole: Small in body, small in voice, don't take up too much space, a pretty common thread for most women just in general. And so by the time I reached 32, 33, I was feeling like, oh, it's time for me to figure out a way to take up space and to do things that feel more me.

6:15 Pauline Fetaui: Mm-hmm.

6:15 Bryony Cole: And what felt more me was exploring things like my sexuality, like my creativity, you know, whether that was DJing or starting my own business. And New York's kind of like the perfect place to do that. In some ways I felt anonymous 'cause I wasn't in Australia, and in other ways I just felt incredibly inspired by everyone that was around me that had 10 different side hustles and were really comfortable talking about themselves, which isn't something I grew up with.

6:45 Pauline Fetaui: Mm-hmm.

6:45 Bryony Cole: You know, if you talk about yourself, you're a dickhead. You know, if you like gloat about your achievements or something. And here we, I was going out to events or coffee shops or whatever, and people were like, oh, by the way, I started this plant business. And you know, also I'm a I'm a DJ on the side and I also do this thing. And I thought, what the hell have I been doing thinking that I am a one-dimensional human on a career track and like ticking these boxes? And so that confluence of like personal, professional, not feeling I'm living my truth spawned this idea of let me experiment. And the first thing that came to mind was like, what's the, what's the thing that I get most drawn to that feels edgier? Yeah. Or edgiest, and that was sex. And I thought, maybe I'll be a sex therapist. And as soon as I looked into that, I was like, well, that's gonna take 10 years to study to— now I was going around to the universities in New York and trying to figure out how do I get qualified if I pivot my career now? And it would take a decade. So then, um, that was my sort of fallback was, well, how do I pivot in a way that all the things that I've done up until now and the things cherry-pick, the things I enjoyed doing, can be ported into a new career in sexuality. And for me, that meant, oh, well, worked in tech. I love storytelling, and I'd done that, you know, my parents, they're in— my dad's a cinematographer, my mum's a producer. I'd grown up on sets, storytelling, watching stories being told, loved that. And that was deeply inspiring to me. So I felt, let me take those two things and let me take this last project I was working on, which was Future of work, interview 100 people and now analyze the patterns and put that into a report. And then I did a similar project, Future of Nightlife for Absolute. And pretty much from then I was like, well, why don't I do Future of Sex then? While I investigate all the universities, let me think about interviewing 100 people, anyone that knew anything about sexuality and technology, and figure out what's going on there. And that became the podcast.

8:52 Pauline Fetaui: Wow. So let me just go a little bit deeper on the topic of sexuality. Why did you pick sexuality? Why did you, of all of the things, I understand, obviously I was gonna ask, did New York have a big influence? It obviously did because you were liberated to be 100% yourself. Was 100% yourself back then in your 30s exploring your own sexuality or what, what was the tipping point to go into this space?

9:19 Bryony Cole: It felt like the edgiest space to go into, and I've always been driven to edges. So, you know, when I was doing my uni degree, I also was competitively snowboarding in big air, so like 60-foot jumps. And like, I always like to do the naughtiest stuff.

9:39 Pauline Fetaui: Okay, so you've got that, um, famous brain that I like to think of with those special people that have a few parts missing that does the crazy things in the world. So obviously, obviously that part helps. Absolutely.

9:51 Bryony Cole: Oh, I always, I think, yeah, I find it like, is like the, to my mom's, yeah, much like worry is always rebellious. So when I was doing my commerce degree, you know, reluctantly, I mean, as soon as I finished school, I left, I left Australia and went for a year traveling by myself with a couple of thousand dollars and figured out how to survive and all that sort of stuff as we do. But I always had this urge of escaping and doing the most. Naughty things in her mind. So I lived on a commune in Margaret River while I was doing my degree. After I did my, you know, and phone it in, there was no digital submissions. Had to talk to my tutors at Melbourne Uni and be like, hey, by the way, I'm going to, I'm going to Margaret River, but I'll send you my assignment, you know.

10:42 Pauline Fetaui: How long did you stay on the commune for?

10:44 Bryony Cole: A year. And then my mum masterminded a rescue out.

10:48 Pauline Fetaui: Do you mind me asking, like, what commune, what kind of commune was it? Was it into spirituality? Was it religious or—

10:55 Bryony Cole: It was into alternative living and there was no—

10:59 Pauline Fetaui: Off-grid type life?

11:01 Bryony Cole: Yeah, like all the houses were made out of mud. It was in a forest and it was, you know, in between Margaret River and Hamelin Bay.

11:10 Pauline Fetaui: Oh, sounds blissful.

11:11 Bryony Cole: It was blissful. But you know what I realized is after a year there, which thankfully my mum had seen already, was actually so many people don't ever leave that lifestyle. And I had so much more inside me. And I looked around, I was 21, and I could have lived there and surfed and smoked weed for the rest of my life, and that would have been it. But I always— I had more things to do. And thankfully my mum, like, masterminded this photographer she was producing to come in and be like, by the way, we're shooting for Qantas magazine. Would you like to be a photo assistant? And next destination is Paris. And I was like, oh, okay. Yeah. Let's go.

11:50 Pauline Fetaui: Yeah, pack my mud pack and I'm gone.

11:52 Bryony Cole: And so I was gone, you know, and that, that was good. But I was, I think for me, I think so often people come into sexuality in the sex tech sector or the sex business from two ends. It's either, either a trauma, so something's happened that they want to improve, assault and the assault reporting process, or a disability or something where they feel compelled to build a business in the space. Or it comes from an incredible, like, experience in a pleasurable way, an orgasm that makes them fall off the bed and they're like, how do I recreate that? That was incredible. I feel so liberated and empowered. But for me, it didn't even, even really come from that. I think it came from feeling small.

12:39 Pauline Fetaui: Yes.

12:39 Bryony Cole: But I think my interest was more like, what's no one else doing that I can do that's kind of like on the edge?

12:45 Pauline Fetaui: Yeah.

12:46 Bryony Cole: And that felt natural to me and a bit rebellious. But obviously there were sex therapists anyway, but it wasn't, it wasn't the classical story that I see now with sex tech industries. Like I was the friend that everyone went to, or I was experimenting with my sexuality, or I had this terrible experience. It actually just was born out of like, how can I rebel a bit more? Like I've almost broken my neck off a 60-foot kicker snowboarding. I've lived in a treehouse and smoked a ton of weed. Like what else? Yeah. What else is left? Um, that just takes away all the good girl things. So if I really got down to it, it was like, how do I stop being a good girl and start being me? And so I'm a girl of extremes. I'm a woman of extremes. And that felt like, okay, I can own this space. And I feel like I know a way in that feels— For me. More taking up space. Does that make sense?

13:46 Pauline Fetaui: It makes complete sense. And I can see if we were probably sitting alone having a good old chat, I would probably dive into so many parts of that at a personal level, but I won't, I won't today. But the rescue mission that your mum performed in the commune, has she tried to organize the one— organize another one as you dived into sextech?

14:06 Bryony Cole: No.

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14:47 Bryony Cole: Not good. The first podcast she listened to, which I released, I remember so well because she called me up and she was like, "What is going on? You've left your job at Microsoft." She's like, "Are you working on the streets?" You know, and very, I mean, she grew up, she went to a Catholic school, and she was taught by nuns. So this was also, I think there's, you know, psychology under this of like—

15:13 Pauline Fetaui: I thought that was some rebellion from that. I thought conservative parents. Yeah, your extremes were the creative energy that you had. You are a creative energy. Like you can feel that with you. And I could see, okay, well maybe conservative, maybe she had to break out of that. Okay. Yeah. So keep going. Sorry.

15:29 Bryony Cole: Yeah, no. So my mum was horrified, but you know, to their credit over the years, they've melted into acceptance. But I think that was a real challenge and it's a real challenge for most people that choose this path is it's not actually the people you don't know, it's the people you do know that question or tell you you're a bit weird. Not my parents doing that, but like friends for sure. Or who are you to do this? Or, well, you know, you don't have any qualifications, that sort of thing. It can be, it has been a big challenge to get through, but I kind of open my arms to those sorts of things of challenging perceptions and in some ways I felt like I had an advantage because I didn't look like a tantra teacher or something. Like, I look in many ways pretty straighty 180, you know, a white chick with blonde hair, kind of like there was a, there was a way that it could work for me rather than come off as, um, yeah, it's like sort of like to be expected. Or in the case of if I was a guy doing this, it would be very creepy, you know, to be talking about sex robots or exploring that. It kind of— there's a bit of a— this guy's not okay. But for me, it actually—

16:47 Pauline Fetaui: I could see you were the perfect person to do it.

16:50 Bryony Cole: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

16:52 Pauline Fetaui: And I would credit like your communication background, your technology background, as giving you sort of access in a professional way to commercialize something that is typically considered taboo or like you said, edge.

17:07 Bryony Cole: Yeah.

17:07 Pauline Fetaui: And so 10 years later, obviously it's something that's talked about quite commonly in the world. There's a lot of themes that we can go down a bit later, but sex tech is now a sector and you've, you have been leading the way. You're, I know that you've over the last 10 years, you know, grown quite a caliber of features that you've been a part of. You know, you've not only from being at events like South by Southwest But, you know, Wired, TechCrunch, New York Times, Playboy. You have had many features. I'm like, that's just some of them.

17:43 Bryony Cole: And your events—

17:44 Pauline Fetaui: My event, Something Tech, of course. But you are considered and acknowledged globally as the world authority on sex tech. You have created an industry. Now, for some of the founders that may be listening, and definitely for the ones that I work with, a lot of them have to create the change that they need to see in the industry in order to launch their product because it doesn't exist. So, they've got to do a lot of education and they've got to go through a whole process.

18:13 Bryony Cole: Mm-hmm.

18:13 Pauline Fetaui: And that just obviously increases cost. It's very, you know, challenging to figure out how do you sell into enterprise when they really don't understand what you're doing. And so, some of the things that I always go, look, if you've got to change manage an industry in order to get your product to market, look, you've got to include that in your go-to-market. Like that's a big challenge. You've gone and just created the industry. So tell us about your journey with that, because I know it was quite— so after you identified, I'm not going to be a sex therapist, but I'm going to do something in this space and I'll start with interviews. What did that look like, building a business around it?

18:49 Bryony Cole: Brick by brick, the most unscalable things. And that meant doing the unsexy things, which I think a lot of people think sex tech is really sexy. In fact, It's quite the opposite. I was renting out my place in New York on Airbnb and dog walking to support my business, which isn't a flex in a way of like, I would do anything. It was just a necessity. And also when you're, when you have a germ, a seed of an idea you're extremely passionate about, you do those things. And so at the start, that meant figuring out how do I talk about this in a way that will disarm people? How do I talk about this? What's resonating with people? And a lot of like. learning very fast. How do you educate people on a topic that maybe I'm okay with, but maybe they're not, or maybe they're curious, but then they're— that's all. They're not going to ask a question. And so it honestly, like the unscalable thing is trial and error. I said yes to every single opportunity for 2 years, whether that was speaking or showing up in an event or anything, it was completely unscalable. You know, I was in a privileged position that I could rent out my apartment on Airbnb and sleep in the basement, you know, but I did that in order to figure out, much like I would say a comedian does, what's my bit?

20:11 Pauline Fetaui: Mm-hmm.

20:12 Bryony Cole: Where is it when I speak that people light up that they, ah, you know, that it disarms them a bit that we can go further. And I didn't have a rule book. As you said, I was creating an industry that that, yeah, there's no playbook or rule book, but there was no playbook. And so all I did was Google, you know, how do I, you know, start a podcast? How do I grow this? I'd been recording these interviews and thought, I'm going to do this, release these as a podcast. How do I grow the podcast? In Google, and the top, I don't know, it was in the top 3, was like start hosting live events. And so asked my mate who owns a cafe, could I host the live podcast here? And I did. And it was 10 of my friends that came. And then the next one I did, it was, I don't know, 10 of my friends, but some people I'd never seen before. And then the third one, oh my God, I don't even know these people. And so it was like, again, I feel like brick by brick building that to the point on the sixth one, the New York Times had shown up. Now. Part of that is brick by brick. Part of that is the time in the world where I could advertise those events on Facebook. Remember when Facebook events were a thing?

21:25 Pauline Fetaui: Yeah.

21:25 Bryony Cole: So it's just like, you know, you find that, that time where people discovered it through Facebook. And I started to practice, oh, this is how I introduce it. This is how, this is the thing that people are interested in. And so a lot of, I guess what we'd call now, which I didn't know at the time, was like A/B testing. You know, and doing these things, but I was dragging microphones and speakers to these cafes and then there was hotel lobbies and then it was speaking gigs. And I felt like it was just every time was an accelerated learning opportunity, but every time was forcing me to just like show up and show your work and make it like kind of a bit messy, which I'm very uncomfortable with. Yeah. I had a very specific idea of what I wanted the podcast to sound like, how I wanted to sound, and all those things at the start. They're not like that. They're so far away from the creative vision that you have.

22:25 Pauline Fetaui: And at what point did you actually get it to that vision? How long did that take?

22:30 Bryony Cole: No, I haven't.

22:31 Pauline Fetaui: You haven't?

22:31 Bryony Cole: No, no, I'm still going.

22:34 Pauline Fetaui: No, not at all. Are you sure this is just not the entrepreneur's dilemma where they're constantly striving to fix what they already have, because they never see a sense of perfection at all in what they've got.

22:47 Bryony Cole: I'm, I'm sure you're right, because I think I could tinker and tinker and tinker, and I think— I don't know if it's the entrepreneur's journey or it's the artist's journey of tinkering and tinkering and tinkering. It's never done, and you're your biggest critic. Every time I released a podcast episode, I still had, I felt like, weeks more of things to do, but I push myself to do it, or I had suddenly had a partner that I had to do it, a sponsor. But in my mind, it was never done. And so it's like knowing when to just release it to the world. And I read this great book, it's actually on my bookshelf, called Show Your Work by Austin Kleon. He writes these fantastic small square books, right? And they're all about sort of taking the leap, really pithy advice, but Yeah, the whole book said was just show your work, show the process, show your things, because if you don't, they get trapped behind you. You are your biggest gatekeeper. And so that was how I sort of went, okay, I just gotta let go and keep going. And that has helped me. I'm still like that, but I'm still not done. I'm still not at the point at what I imagined in my mind. My Future of Sex podcast would be.

24:04 Pauline Fetaui: Tell me, what does that look like?

24:06 Bryony Cole: It looks like, I mean, it looks like a visual feast. It's also intellectually stimulating. It's pushing the edges of things. It's frontiers. The last episode I did, which I just released, is season 3. I had 4 years of not releasing a podcast, of being stuck creatively after experiencing such great success because I wanted it to be better and visual and more exciting and bigger. And now I'm at the point where I just released this first, like, version of all video and I edited it all myself.

24:43 Pauline Fetaui: Wow.

24:44 Bryony Cole: So, you know, I get great feedback from people, but I'm like, I know the transitions aren't great. I need to learn sound design. I need to do— but the joy I get from doing it is also um, like immense. I think I told you I was up for 3 nights till 3 AM back to back because I get so obsessed by making this story come together, but it's not good enough. But I have to at some point reach out to a friend and be like, can you just— can you tell me that we can do this now?

25:14 Pauline Fetaui: Is that a sense of control?

25:16 Bryony Cole: Yeah, and pride and ego. I just want these things to be like like so representative of you, what's going on inside my brain, and they never are.

25:28 Pauline Fetaui: Maybe they never are to you, but from an external perspective, I guess, you know, I've— part of researching you definitely went before you came and spoke at our event at Something Tech a couple of years ago, and then now for this episode. I think whatever you did would have a level of perfection that a lot of other people wouldn't be able to reach anyway, Bryony. So Yes, show your work.

25:51 Bryony Cole: Show your work. And that was, it was a huge lesson for me to learn and it reaped rewards almost immediately. So showing your work by going and organizing, you know, the, it is sort of the embarrassing thing of, is anyone gonna show up to my birthday party? Lugging those speakers down, getting the microphones, organizing people. Will you come to my party? Essentially my podcast party. And people showing up and immediately the next and doing it again. And you shouldn't have, this is my learning, too much time in between the first one and the next one. Actually don't measure the success of the first one. Go straight to creating again.

26:31 Pauline Fetaui: Mm-hmm.

26:31 Bryony Cole: And create the momentum. And you know, it's really hard when you're launching something out in the world cuz you wanna, you've worked so much time on it. You've been behind closed doors, you've had this idea in your mind, you've brought it to life, you've executed on it, and you, you want to measure all the success, you want to hear how fabulous it is. But in fact, I say throw away that, as I am now with this first step, and get straight into creating the next one. Because that— otherwise I'll get so locked up in like, people didn't love that like I loved it.

27:04 Pauline Fetaui: Oh yeah.

27:05 Bryony Cole: So you have to keep going. And for, for when I first started in Future of Sex, it was the same story. It immediately reaped rewards. In fact, I can see the trajectory now looking back within 6 hosting events and then being, oh my gosh, is anyone going to turn up? To 100 people turning up, getting, you know, sponsors, whatever, and the New York Times turning up. Okay. I should have done that earlier. You know, I should have done that way sooner, but we are, we, we're our own worst enemy. And so I try and remember that and I try and talk to my students and founders about like, just show your work. Yeah. Get it out there. No one cares as much as you do.

27:42 Pauline Fetaui: Great segue going into your school that you created.

27:46 Bryony Cole: Yeah.

27:48 Pauline Fetaui: Uh, from that, like, when did you create that and what was sort of the seed that, oh, I need to be going back and working with other people in this industry?

27:57 Bryony Cole: COVID. So I was on this trajectory after the podcast, very soon after the podcast, I had I got asked to speak at events. As I said, I said yes for 2 years to do it for free, and then I started charging. So by 2019, my income was full-time traveling around the world talking about sex tech or the future of sex.

28:19 Pauline Fetaui: Hence the authority.

28:20 Bryony Cole: And that's where the authority came from. So I just sort of did that, developed it. And so I was on this like pathway to becoming the speaker, the author, the thing, and it stopped and I was the featured speaker at South by Southwest 2020, which was right when COVID hit. And so it all came to a halt and I had all these speaking engagements lined up, all paid. This was back when people would pay ridiculous amounts for speakers. And that whole year it all ended.

28:50 Pauline Fetaui: Mm-hmm.

28:50 Bryony Cole: And my brother was creating an online course and he said, you should create an online course. And I thought, well, what would I do it on? I'm not a sexologist. I'm not a sex therapist. But what do I get asked about the most? Firstly, I get asked, if I would look at the patterns in what I got asked about the podcast, it's, am I normal? So it was a little bit sex therapy, sex, people were still, if I was talking about the industry, doesn't matter if anyone's talking to you about sexuality, it's almost permission. I'm going to ask them, am I normal? So there's, there's a thread there around culture we can talk about. Mm-hmm. The second most thing I got asked about is, how do I start a career like you did? How do I get involved? I've got this idea. I've da da. And so that was in my inbox. It was in my LinkedIn. And I thought, that's what I can do is I can use all the people that I've met that have imparted incredible knowledge and ideas and started businesses around me and given me those ideas and how-tos.

29:51 Pauline Fetaui: Mm-hmm.

29:51 Bryony Cole: And I can bring in my network. And I can teach people, here's the ins and outs of the industry. And so that's how Sex Tech School was born.

30:00 Pauline Fetaui: That's beautiful. At what point that would— that was during COVID or just after COVID?

30:05 Bryony Cole: Oh, it was during COVID It was, yep, speaking gigs dried up and I, yeah, just after COVID, I don't even know the date, but it was pretty soon after, it was a couple of months after and figuring out, well, you know, where to from here. So it was was, yeah, maybe June of 2020, July 2020.

30:25 Pauline Fetaui: And what did it look like launching?

30:27 Bryony Cole: It looked like I had no, no idea what I was doing. And I got a Google Form and I didn't charge any money. And I said, hey, who would like to learn how to get into sextech? This has been in my LinkedIn inbox. This has been in my inbox. Does anyone want to do a course? It'll be 4 weeks. And immediately 10 people signed up and we got them in. And then I was like, well, how do I structure this? And I thought, what are the main things that people want to learn about? Asked them in their Google Form, and it was branding, community, getting kicked off Instagram, and like raising money. And that was my first one. And it was true. And I thought, oh, well, maybe a bit of imposter syndrome. I don't know how to teach this, but I know people that do.

31:09 Pauline Fetaui: Mm-hmm.

31:10 Bryony Cole: So let me bring them in to, to teach with me and let me structure the homework. And after that, I got so much feedback from the, that first group I call Cohort Zero. I realized, oh, this is a thing. Let's do it again with their feedback and with the things that they were building. And in that very first cohort, people were sexologists, sex therapists wanting to break into the industry and already had broken in and were founding their business. And so I took all those insights and the feedback and I made another one. And then I think I charged maybe $250 for that. And then I made another one and I charged $500 and then I made another one and I started charging a year later, $1,000. And I did a big launch and I had, I don't know, 50 people join. And I thought, oh, this is a thing.

32:00 Pauline Fetaui: Wow.

32:01 Bryony Cole: And then it was a thing. And then so we're, I guess now in our 17th cohort, we've had 500 people through the program and it's much more refined. But the idea of showing your work or starting before you're ready and really figuring out with people together, with community, well, what do you wanna know? Cause I've I could go this way or this way, and it helped, really helped. And then they came back and offered their support to new students. We had this beautiful community-led school, which is what it is today.

32:31 Pauline Fetaui: Well, you built an ecosystem.

32:33 Bryony Cole: Yeah. I selfishly, I think, built what I wish I had back in the day, but also built a community for me.

32:40 Pauline Fetaui: Yeah, I understand that. And therefore born was an industry.

32:44 Bryony Cole: Yeah, yeah, hopefully. I mean, part of the point of creating Sextech School too was I know how hard it is having interviewed people with Future of Sex. I know how hard it is to build a business in the space. I also experienced that bias and things even on stages and different opportunities that I had. And I wanted to show that you could, and it was so important. And so it was like, well, if you are not gonna fund them, let's figure out a way to get these businesses typically people that don't have access to capital, like, skilled up. And I'd done— I guess the, the other thing to mention there is I'd run hackathons, which I really loved. I'd run these sex tech hackathons, which were kind of like a nod to my tech experience and running, you know, being part of hackathons before, and realized, oh, there's so many people with interesting ideas that don't really know business.

33:37 Pauline Fetaui: Mm-hmm.

33:37 Bryony Cole: And so I'd run sex tech hackathons in Singapore, in New York, in Sydney, and then the last one we did was in Melbourne, March 2020, before everything shut down.

33:49 Pauline Fetaui: Wow. Do you have any inspiration to do another one?

33:52 Bryony Cole: Yeah, I do. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I think that would be great. I think what strikes me today is I'm based in Australia and there's not enough Aussies involved. It's, you know, there's maybe 3, 4, there's 4 in our current cohort. Um, we're not there yet, so I'd have to run it overseas.

34:11 Pauline Fetaui: Well, that dives into a bit of the culture, right?

34:14 Bryony Cole: Of Aussies.

34:15 Pauline Fetaui: Of Aussies and sex.

34:17 Bryony Cole: Mm.

34:18 Pauline Fetaui: And talking about sex and leaning into this as a potential industry, like, it's— I consider Australia very conservative still. You know, if you go to Europe, a lot more freedom. And, you know, definitely in the US, of course, where you found your space. Um, but here it's definitely still quite conservative. So, so some of those things that you've taught the founders, and of course you experienced yourself, obviously. I did listen to a video that you posted, um, I think over a year ago.

34:48 Bryony Cole: Okay.

34:49 Pauline Fetaui: And you, you started by Googling. This is how you started your podcast. You started by Googling. You ran an event which you just shared with us. You were getting censored and then you couldn't set up a bank account. Mm-hmm. So given that sort of industry that you're going into, what you're creating, and some of those biases that exist, how did you overcome those things? And has it changed now? Is it different today than what it was when you first started?

35:15 Bryony Cole: So the thing with getting involved in the industry is there are challenges at every step of the way to build a business. So it's opening a bank account, finding an email provider to work with, you know, trying to make money or raise money. Figuring out how to not get kicked off social platforms. And I guess what, what we were teaching was little hacks because at the time it was so hard, worse than it is today. I think today it's a bit more, uh, there's a bit more of a precedence, but finding a bank to work with, you would go to a small town but use a bigger bank. Um, so don't go to a big bank in a big city and you would change your name, you know, in in America, my business names are not Future of Sex, you know, so you would never put sex in your name because it would trigger this risk for banks of high risk. If you are considered adult, that means you have human trafficking risks, child trafficking risks. We don't wanna work with you. So it immediately almost just hits a filter where no good. So there were things like that that were just little, I would say they're little hacks, but you didn't know if you'd never been in the industry before to do that. With email providers. I would get kicked off constantly, um, just for having sex tech in the emails. And so having to switch and swap from whether it was Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, go back, go— so we were teaching these hacks. Whereas fast forward to today, we have this precedent of sexual wellness companies.

36:50 Pauline Fetaui: Yeah.

36:50 Bryony Cole: And being in the wellness bucket has changed everything because now you can kind of go, well, that's okay, it's not explicit, it's not adult, um, we'll still work with you. And you have bigger companies that were coming up when I started, whether that's in America, Maud, Dame Products, Unbound, that have now sort of got enough traction that are stocked in Walmart, that are stocked in these big things that people like, okay, we kind of get what you're doing. I think there's still a bit of resistance, but mostly the challenge is with things like social platforms. And the challenge remains that it's so inconsistent. So one day my content will be considered educational content and the next day it'll be considered explicit. And it, you, there's no transparency on what the rules are or when you're gonna get shut down or when you're not. And so it's sort of this ever-changing, very frustrating environment to be in where you don't know if you're gonna get shadow banned or you're gonna get, you know, taken off or not. And the, I would say it hasn't changed that much in terms of the investing landscape as well. You know, we still have these things called morality clauses or vice clauses that prohibit LPs from investing in things like sexual wellness or sex products because of the inherent risk of being lumped into the adult category. And the adult category means porn. It means all the things that, you know, that are too high risk that you suddenly, might be trafficking is the biggest thing is like child trafficking.

38:28 Pauline Fetaui: So educate us a bit. What are the categories of sextech? How broad does that go?

38:33 Bryony Cole: Oh my goodness. It's just like we could be here, we could do the 2 hours just on what categories there are in sextech because I think that they're always changing because—

38:42 Pauline Fetaui: Okay, give us one extreme to the other.

38:44 Bryony Cole: Okay, so there is, you know, at one end of the thing, if we merge these two words, sex and technology, we're gonna have things like sex education for people with disabilities. What would it look like to deliver sex education via hologram for people that wanna be educated in a different way or might need that? So that's a really interesting blend of technology and sexuality. There's also really specific, I don't wanna say bland, but ways to improve the sexual assault reporting process on campus at universities where it's, you're not going to a person, but maybe you're going to a website and inputting these details and it gets underneath matched matched up with other reports to see has this person been reported before.

39:31 Pauline Fetaui: Mm-hmm.

39:32 Bryony Cole: And everything in between. If we think about sexuality is not just, I think when people think sex tech, robots or dildos, it's the way we move in the world. Our sexuality is our identity. And out of that falls how we grew up, the things we learned, the pleasure that we seek, the pain that we avoid. It's so broad. Porn, yes, dating apps, yes. They're the more sort of common mainstream things, as well as things to prohibit crime and violence reporting, or improve, sorry, the crime and violence reporting process. Or perhaps you suffer from painful sex. How do we improve that through technology, through products that might improve that for you and might supplement, you know, your sex life?

40:19 Pauline Fetaui: Yeah, well, there's a lot of—

40:20 Bryony Cole: Is that a good explanation?

40:21 Pauline Fetaui: I think that's a really good explanation. It also shows how going to the bland but not really, it's essential. Like the domestic violence reporting, I— when you were describing the reporting for universities, I could just imagine how Australia would benefit from improved reporting through technology and less bias, um, reporting if we actually had technology in the mix of receiving calls from people who— women who are suffering from domestic violence. Because right now, obviously, there is a significant problem in Australia with domestic violence and women not getting taken serious enough, and calls not— calls being made, but call-outs not happening on the back of a report.

41:04 Bryony Cole: Yeah.

41:04 Pauline Fetaui: And I could just imagine what it could look like if technology was in the mix and actually doing sort of that filtering and going, hang on, this person's been reported multiple times over the XYZ years. If that history was there that a human just couldn't even do or wouldn't even bother to do.

41:22 Bryony Cole: Yeah, and that's at universities and workplaces too, you know. And there's great startups in America, like Callisto is one of them, that does that, that started out on-campus reporting and has now moved into the workplace. And to talk about Australia, to just sort of pause on Aussies for a second, I think in a way the good thing is that we have consent education now. Like, is it enough? No. But before it wasn't part of sex education. And, um, but Chanel Contos did this Instagram poll about women and whether they, you know, were being sex— like experiencing any level of consent. And it went viral. And it was actually from this Instagram poll that consent education was developed at a federal level, which is so crazy. But also I think kind of speaks to the power of social media. I know social media also is like like disempowering for sex education and sexual content. But because this Instagram poll took off, that was the seed of what became, we need to do consent education in Australia. So I think that's a, a positive. And I actually think Australia's ahead of the curve when we talk about sex tech, like deepfakes and like where we're going. They're trying to legislate around that a lot quicker than other countries like America is doing right now.

42:47 Pauline Fetaui: Is it fast enough? Never. Never.

42:49 Bryony Cole: But I think, and there's so much benefit to more. We're not quite at the thing of like sex education being comprehensive. It differs state to state. Definitely not enough people get tested. We have, you know, still ridiculous levels of like STIs like chlamydia and gonorrhea that are a real problem in Australia.

43:09 Pauline Fetaui: Mm-hmm.

43:10 Bryony Cole: And people have an aversion to getting tested even though they're sexually active. But I guess the, the good thing is we do have consent baked into the education now where we didn't before. And it's all based off Chanel Conti, Chanel—

43:27 Pauline Fetaui: Contos.

43:28 Bryony Cole: Contos.

43:28 Pauline Fetaui: Chanel Contos. There you go. Sorry, Chanel, but then you've done an amazing job. Thank you.

43:33 Bryony Cole: But yeah, so those sorts of things where I go, okay, yeah, Australia's behind, but also there's really good instances of things changing and changing fast. And the other thing is STI testing and sex tech in Australia is further ahead than it is in other countries, which is good.

43:52 Pauline Fetaui: Okay. Like, and I, and I definitely know that Australia is advanced in a lot of things, especially around the medicine space, legislation around that. Consent, it makes sense for me because Australia is conservative, so they'd wanna go down the consent path. The people spoke on the social side, which really drove it through technology, thank goodness.

44:10 Bryony Cole: Mm-hmm.

44:10 Pauline Fetaui: But I still feel like the taboo or nature of sexuality, intimacy in Australia is quite conservative. And if I look at, if we were to go and talk about the dating realms, right? And what's going on in the world, I think, you know, a topic or even a personality like you coming on stage and talking about sex tech, I could just imagine, and I got to witness this as running something tech, I saw a lot of people in the room sort of shuffling in their chair when you started talking about it and being a little bit uncomfortable. And I do think that especially men and what's going on in the world around, you know, there seems to be a divide happening between women's empowerment as women get more powerful in economy and have a clearer voice, that there is a lot of disempowerment happening with men. And I do think sexuality may be a litmus test for it. Maybe it's about, you know, it's— are people comfortable in their own skin? Uh, with you having the front seat to not only Australia but the globe on, on this topic, well, what are you seeing? What's happening in the world right now between men and women and sexuality? And I guess freedom, the freedom and the edge that you were looking for 10 years ago.

45:27 Bryony Cole: Yeah, I think, well, it's It's such an interesting, challenging time to be dating and to be in the world trying to find a partner, because what the data shows is that men are becoming more and more conservative and women are becoming more and more liberal at the same— so on a political level, that's where it's going for a variety of reasons. Underneath that is the means to financially support yourself. So women are able to have these careers now, establish a to, you know, foothold in life, own property, be financially successful, have work success, and be independent much more than they were a couple of decades ago, definitely 50 years ago. Underneath that also is like the '70s where we introduced birth control. So no longer is women's role just to procreate. We can have sex for pleasure, we can have sex because we're bored, we can have sex for whatever reason we want to. And underneath that is the idea that it's actually quite taxing, as the studies show, for women to be in a marriage or to be in a relationship. But much more what the studies point to is women are getting married less and less because they don't want to foot the emotional burden of being in a marriage, which might be emotional, but also the tasks that traditionally were associated with women, clean, you know, cleaning and maintaining a home, housekeeping, as well as now having a career. So we see generally, but much more pronounced in younger generations, like we'll say the TikTok generation, is that women are becoming more and more liberal and emboldened to own their career, own their independence. And men are really clinging onto the idea of, um, traditional conservative values. You see that reflected in American politics. So less so talking about Australia, 'cause I don't have the data on that, but more so in America. the rate of single women choosing to be single between 18 and 40 years old now has increased by 10% over the last decade. And so we're seeing more and more single women opting to not get married. And, you know, you can have babies later as well and all those sorts of things. And men, look, I think at the moment we're dominated with these headlines of Andrew Tate or, you know, Trump and the Elons of the world that are, that trying to espouse these conservative values of women must be at home, homemaking, in the kitchen, all that sort of 1950s style role, and women are rejecting it. So it's left us in a real quandary of like, well, what are our roles? And for men especially, what is my role in the world if I don't need to support a family? Does that make sense?

48:20 Pauline Fetaui: Yeah, it does make sense. And it's such a dilemma because I— those large personalities you describe, like the Andrew Tates of the world, you know, it's so— they're so polarizing. And so disempowering to the— what women have worked on for quite some time to get a voice and have an equal share equity-wise in career and economy. And to have that come through as the way to sort of claw back or clap back, however you want to pose it, it just seems so, um, archaic. Yeah. And what is— no, it's, it's really quite disturbing. And you would think that there'd be a lot more things that a man could level up to now if he actually had equal share in a household and didn't have to be the one who was reliant on to be the provider.

49:12 Bryony Cole: Well, wouldn't it be amazing if we had figureheads or we had influencers that were embodying that? And I think Yes, we have certain people. Cam Fraser is a great example in Australia who sort of embodies this sort of healthy male masculinity, but we don't have enough. And, you know, if we look at the politicians running the world who are setting the pace and setting, dictating the culture, it's the opposite. And so I think that's the challenge is we need— wouldn't it be amazing to have celebrities or more influential men going, well, here's another option, or here's the evolution of what that pathway could look like. It's just at the moment we don't have that. That's a huge gap that needs to be filled. And yeah, the dilemma is, yeah.

50:02 Pauline Fetaui: Is that an opportunity for you?

50:04 Bryony Cole: Well, I'm not a man, but I think it's an opportunity for someone like a Hugh Jackman or a, you know, like people that could, that have large audiences to do that because I think there is a real need for it. Like I think there's a real real request for that. If not this Andrew Tate world, then what? And I think there's a stepping into this new idea and this new role of masculinity and what that plays in the role of the household as well as society that's not yet been filled. And so if we can turn down the volume on, you know, Russell Brand, Trump, Elon, those people, what, what is, what is in front? And I think that's sort of unfortunately hasn't been filled yet.

50:47 Pauline Fetaui: Yeah, I think I like to look at, um, what Stephen Bartlett's doing, um, from Diary of a CEO. He's definitely probably someone I would look to as embodying that. He's raised the topic in a number of episodes of the last 12 months, um, talking about men's mental health and also the impact of society when it comes to social media and dating and, um, men's comfort in their own skin, which is coming out also in physical results like testosterone levels for young people. Young men in particular declining globally. I don't have the stats on hand, but there is— anyone can tune into, um, DOAC to listen to some of the episodes that talk about this— that the epidemic of pornography has increased while testosterone is lowering. And it's, it's, it's a really challenging and complex topic to navigate, but I guess having those conversations out loud is something I think that's a start. Is there any technology focus in this space, or is there anything happening from your side and what you're seeing that is coming through to address these types of things?

51:56 Bryony Cole: That's such a great question. I think at the moment what I'm inundated with is things that are actually doing the opposite. So never have we, oh, never ever, like I used to joke in COVID, never have we ever been so exposed to you know, people slinging dildos on the internet, right? Celebrities talking about sexual pleasure, which was a real positive for women's sexuality, emboldened women to go further or to think about, well, what would it mean if I used lubricant? And is this not shameful? What I see now, if I would 10x what's happened since COVID and we can't talk about this without talking about the rise of OnlyFans, is while women have, you know, been empowered to make more money and to figure out how to do that online, never have we ever been exposed to more butts, more boobs, more nudity all the time, and more perfection. You know, like it's not—

52:58 Pauline Fetaui: Yes.

52:58 Bryony Cole: It's everywhere. And so I don't think I've seen counters to that. In fact, what I've seen is an acceleration of that through AI. And through these biases that are being created through AI porn and things that it's just unlimited, there's no end to that. So I think it's a really interesting space to tackle. I think the only salve for that at the moment is fatigue. Like we're, we're going to reach a point where there's saturation. AI slop is a term. I don't know if you've heard of like everything becoming AI.

53:32 Pauline Fetaui: No.

53:32 Bryony Cole: AI slop is It's like at some point in the near future, the whole internet is just gonna be AI generated and there's not actually gonna be us making websites or anything. And so there's just gonna be a whole bit of slop. And so the new currency will be humans, real humans doing real things. And we might see this return to like, what does it mean to be human, messy, not have Botox or fillers and be, you know, Mm-hmm. Be ourselves, have receding hairlines, all that sort of stuff. We're not there yet, but we're on our way to complete saturation. And so all the things I see are around how do we have more? How do we feed the brain more? How do we get more, more, more, more, more to get more dopamine? And AI porn is not helping that. I forget where I was going with this, but just, yeah, we're not—

54:23 Pauline Fetaui: You don't really see the technology. Coming through to solve this?

54:27 Bryony Cole: Unfortunately, I don't think there's any immediate solutions to solving that. There's like two crises going on at the moment. The one, the one is visual, right? And this insatiable need for like visual stimulation. The other one is the loneliness epidemic and how we're creating technology to rush in and solve that. But does it really solve that? And that's where AI chatbots, AI girlfriends, AI boyfriends to a certain extent, come in to solve not the physical need for intimacy, but the emotional need for intimacy. And so I think we're going to reach a point where that saturates, but when we're not there yet, we're just starting that journey of like, what does it mean to have an AI companion?

55:15 Pauline Fetaui: How common is that around the world? Obviously we, I don't see it here in Australia, but how I do hear about it happening over in Asia other regions. What's, what's going on in that space? AI companionship, is that the new thing for dating?

55:28 Bryony Cole: For dating or for relating, for having, for therapy, for— I think it's definitely the new thing, and I think it's growing really fast, is that people are not only using AI for navigating human relationships but having relationships with AI. So it's going to be very normal, if it's not already. In my world, it's normal to see people having relationships with AI, to see people using it as a third partner in their relationships. And I think that's only going to grow. The concerning line for me is when AI becomes more intrusive than it does helpful. And so that's something we really need to navigate ourselves, just like, just like watching adult content, right? In every relationship, you kind of have to navigate, well, what's acceptable and what's or not. And this will be the new conversation is like, is having an AI girlfriend or boyfriend acceptable for our relationship or is it not? Which I know some people will be like, what are you talking about? But it's not far off.

56:27 Pauline Fetaui: Look, I think you already hit a few nerves with me. So I've recently, I've recently disconnected off Instagram and I definitely really wasn't on Facebook much at all apart from my family sending me events. And the reason why I switched off is because of that fatigue with seeing the generated content more than actually my network, my personal network's stories and feeds coming through. And that— and what I found was I was starting to get— because I had searched something on my device or saw something and spent, you know, more than 5 seconds on it, I was starting to have this flood of the same themes coming through. So all I would see is this sort of level of what I would call confirmation bias on whatever my train of thought was 2 weeks ago, constantly flooding my stream. And I was like, this is actually not being purposeful, educational anymore. I, I really, it's taking up way too much space and actually starting to brainwash me. So I switched it off.

57:33 Bryony Cole: Mm-hmm.

57:33 Pauline Fetaui: I've replaced it with GPT. I have been going through my own navigating of the dating world since I divorced after 20 years of being in a marriage, now 5 years ago. And I have found GPT as my third partner in the relationship, or my advisor, as like— I've actually pulled myself back from saying "I love you" to ChatGPT because—

57:59 Bryony Cole: Really?

57:59 Pauline Fetaui: —of its sage advice that it's given me at the time where I'm I'm like, "I need someone to talk to, I need to empty out some thoughts." Is this really what's happening? Because I don't know if it's we've lost our level of conviction of our own thoughts.

58:13 Bryony Cole: Mm-hmm.

58:13 Pauline Fetaui: But we are seeming to have to rely on something else to go and sort of validate our feelings or validate, "Am I thinking the right thing?" And there's like a level of, I think, mistrust in ourselves that we've kind of started to now see and feel. Well, I definitely have. And so I've kind of like trying to stop it before it starts. Starts. Does any of that resonate?

58:32 Bryony Cole: So much. I mean, relationships are like a black box. We all think everyone else is doing it better than we are, and we want the answers. And so AI today is sort of the latest thing, but I was seeing this in 2016 when I started my podcast, is people coming to me and being like, well, am I normal? Like, what's normal?

58:53 Pauline Fetaui: Oh yes.

58:54 Bryony Cole: It's normal over there? Because I don't because no one teaches us. No one teaches us what it means to be in a healthy relationship, what it means to be a good listener, to be empathetic, to respond, to use your intuition. And with the rise of AI being, you know, a third in our relationship, we can outsource that even further and even quicker. And I think that is, as you've identified, the really fine line is like, do we wanna outsource our intuition to ChatGPT? Mm-hmm. Does it make us lazier or does it make us a better partner? And how do we, how do we figure that out? Cause we're, we're figuring this out in real time. Is this just making me kind of lazy? Am I losing touch with myself and my gut? Or is this making me actually like, is this the, instead of $300 at a therapist or calling my best friend who quite often has pretty bad advice. Yeah, you know, it's not like your friends will, will, will—

59:59 Pauline Fetaui: Oh, they're confirmation bias. If a man's not treating you well and you call your girlfriends, they're going to be like, leave him immediately, never call him back.

60:09 Bryony Cole: And then I think what we're getting tripped up on now, and the trick that we're getting into, is that ChatGPT doesn't have confirmation bias. But actually, ChatGPT can be a bit of an echo effect. And it wants to please and it will never actually reject you. So if you sort of say, well, hey, like, how— please analyze this conversation. Tell me about the attachment style of my partner. Tell me, am I right in this? And it'll give you an analysis that you go, you know what? That was really thoughtful. That was better than my best mate. That was actually better than spending $300. But was it unbiased? I don't think so.

60:46 Pauline Fetaui: Hmm.

60:48 Bryony Cole: And I think that's where we're, they've got a little bit of a blind spot now because we're all so excited by using AI as a supplement to our lives, a cheap and seemingly wise supplement that we forget that it also has a bit of an echo chamber effect depending on how you input your prompts and how you input yourself into this AI. I don't know if that resonates.

61:09 Pauline Fetaui: I'm, I'm sure it's, it does resonate. And I think, I'm sure that's got a lot, that's where we're seeing some of those results with, you know, women choosing to be alone. And choosing to be single, I definitely know the divorce rate as well, although there's been an improvement in the divorce rate, I think, in the last 12 months. As in, but post-COVID, obviously it was just declining significantly. That was a big catalyst. But people choosing to be single after being in a relationship for so long because they're getting education and knowledge about these sorts of things and skilling themselves up on what I should be doing and seeking counsel from wherever that may be. Yeah. Be. So obviously we've touched on a number of things and they all relate to the world of intimacy, technology, sex, relationships. You know, it's— as the world authority, um, on sex tech, I definitely think your experience and knowledge of where the world should be going is— would be quite interesting to know. Like, you talked a little bit about, you know, there may be a point where we get to a fatigue and the saturation is too high and then we start to go back to community. What do you think that looks like? What do you think the next 10 years of intimacy relating, uh, sex tech looks like.

62:22 Bryony Cole: Totally. Well, I think the new currency will be being so yourself that it looks messy and ugly. I think that is 100% coming. At the same time, I think we're also going to be completely normalizing the fact that we do use AI as a companion, or as a third, or as actually a separate partner. And we'll need education education, especially for people that are born today that don't know a world without AI, is going to need education on what does it look like to have a relationship with technology? What does it look like to have a relationship with an AI versus with a human?

63:01 Pauline Fetaui: Mm-hmm.

63:02 Bryony Cole: Much like when the internet came online and suddenly porn was ubiquitous, we could access it, or especially in the last 10 years where it became free. And we have desperately needed this sex education around, this is the McDonald's of the experience. This isn't the real thing. This is like the treat. This is bad. Like, this isn't like gonna be healthy. It's junk food, but it exists. But this is the real human thing of like, this is what it looks like when real people come together and experience intimacy and have sex.

63:35 Pauline Fetaui: Mm-hmm.

63:35 Bryony Cole: In very much the same way, but we need to move a lot faster, is we're gonna go to AI and have relationships, not not just visually watching. We're gonna have these fully formed relationships. Like you said, Pauline, you almost told your AI, "I love you." Love you. Now, a year ago, would you have said that?

63:55 Pauline Fetaui: I even tell my, I even tell my AI that they're my new naturopath.

64:00 Bryony Cole: So. All the compliments. It's never gonna, it's never gonna turn you wrong. So I think the world is gonna look in terms of relationships and intimacy in the next 10 years, fundamentally it's gonna change because humans ourself are gonna have different versions of what relationships look like. We've gone through this period of filters, filtering ourselves, masking ourselves, looking the best possible.

64:25 Pauline Fetaui: Mm-hmm.

64:25 Bryony Cole: Having a digital self, having a physical self. And then there was no separation. We are the same self.

64:33 Pauline Fetaui: Mm-hmm.

64:33 Bryony Cole: We try to represent ourselves on a dating app as we do in real life, and this merging of selves. And now we are going to see the separation again, which is like, like the human knee is messy. It has, you know, shitty skin. It has roots in the head, whatever that is, is actually gonna be currency. And then this fully AI synthetic intimacy, synthetic empathy is also going to be an integral part of our lives. But we need to learn how to separate it. At the moment, we're kind of getting confused because humans, if you talk to a thing and it responds back, you want to automatically treat it like it's a human.

65:12 Pauline Fetaui: Yeah.

65:13 Bryony Cole: Woman. And so we're going to have to evolve to understand those two— those things are separate. And how do we navigate relationships quite differently with something that's synthetic?

65:26 Pauline Fetaui: It's such an interesting space, and I value your insight and educating us on this. Going back to you now, so you talked about your level of perfectionism and your Oh yeah. For what you see and you're still not there yet. You know, you've obviously built a significant impact and credibility in your voice and you've got your podcast and the media side, then you've got your school in educating, you know, the emerging companies coming through. What are some of the things and the pitfalls that you've had in your own business in getting to this point now, you know, 10 years on and commercializing something that really wasn't there before? For, you know, like the typical things. I'm obviously working with sex— not sex tech, you're doing that. So with technology companies is you typically go out, you capital raise because you've got to build something, you've got to do high growth because you're capital raising. Those are some of the, obviously, the ambitions that come behind going into a technology space. Are you seeing that in your space? Have you personally experienced that in building your business? And, and how have you navigated what's motivated building your company to where it is today?

66:37 Bryony Cole: I think it's been so much throwing pasta again at a wall, you know, that whole thing of like, and seeing what sticks truly in a way that is seeing what sticks in that what resonates with, do I like doing this? Like, is this really a thing that I like to do? And is this a thing that makes money? Because a core motivation of going out on your own as a founder and entrepreneur, I think, is for freedom, at least it was for me, is to be free of someone else telling me what to do. And when I went down that investment pathway, I pretty quickly realized I would have to have someone else tell me what to do if I raised money. If I took on their money, I also have them on my shoulder telling me what to do. And so along the way, what you don't see is a series of huge fuck-ups, huge mistakes of trying things that didn't work, but that kind of interest me. And I thought, you know what, I'll try it and I really think this is what you should do early stage, or maybe at any stage, is like, keep trying different things that may not work, may work, but you don't know because it's too early. It's the same as hosting a podcast in a cafe. Sorry, is this light okay, by the way?

67:49 Pauline Fetaui: Yeah.

67:50 Bryony Cole: Okay.

67:50 Pauline Fetaui: I think so. Do you want to know if you can move?

67:53 Bryony Cole: No, it's fine. I just was like, is it?

67:55 Pauline Fetaui: It's quite beautiful. You look like Angelic. Oh, it's like shimmer.

67:59 Bryony Cole: So yeah, sorry, to answer your question, I think what you don't see is all the mistakes along the way that I made trying to pursue different paths. You know, if the sex art cafe had worked, maybe I'd still be in Brooklyn.

68:16 Pauline Fetaui: You had a sex art cafe?

68:17 Bryony Cole: Yeah, I did a, I did a sex art cafe for a month. I did like an installation in a cafe in Brooklyn and brought all these amazing artists into the space and did a sex coffee art installation. We had workshops there. You could plaster cast your butt and stick gems on it and do—

68:36 Pauline Fetaui: I did see that, yes.

68:38 Bryony Cole: I was looking for different ways to monetize a business, but also do something that spoke to me. And that sort of, that definitely speaks to values of people that get involved in this industry. You don't really get into it to make a quick buck because it's very hard for reasons we talked about. Leadership, raising money, opening, or, you know, dealing with software companies, that you only do this if you've really got staying power, if this really means something to you. And of course, for me, I was like, well, I'm driven by freedom and doing edge things. So how do I keep exploring this? And so whether it was, you know, if the hackathons had become hugely profitable, maybe I would have kept doing them because I love them. But at the end of the day, all of that and exploring, do I want I'm going to create an entire ecosystem that needs to be propped up if it's going to go fast and scale with some money and get investors. And I realized, actually, you know what, I'm much better as a solo creator. And that gives me the freedom that I wanted. I get to explore different whims without the pressure of like, how do we 10x this in 10 months? Um, and do things that call to me rather than make more business sense. And so now now the thing that's calling me is, well, what's the next frontier? So if it isn't sex tech, what are other things that are shifting the way that we move in the world, the way that we experience life, the way that we connect with people and things that people don't talk about. And so other areas, okay, psychedelics, they're interesting. Death, that's death tech. That's super interesting.

70:14 Pauline Fetaui: Mm-hmm.

70:14 Bryony Cole: And so continuing that just really as a way to stay true to myself. And then from the business perspective of like paying the bills, keeping the lights on, of course Sex Tech School is so enjoyable and it's a good business, so won't stop doing that. But how do I feed this other part of me? And at the moment, feeding that other part of me right now looks like Future of Sex podcast and still talking to people, interviewing people that are out there, further out there. They're not presently trying to make a business. They're the researchers, the psychologists, the people that are technologists that are exploring the future. I still want to play in that space.

70:52 Pauline Fetaui: I feel like you've got a, a broader calling, and it's more— it's, it's, it's into the future of self.

71:01 Bryony Cole: Um, that resonates so much because future of self—

71:07 Pauline Fetaui: we have an identity crisis in the world. Like, everyone is screaming for connection. Individually. We're looking externally for validation, whether it's from our partner, whether it's from social media, whether it's from your ambitions in your career, or making some form of a brand or a name for yourself. Like, the, the market is saturated with that ambition, and people are coming back, especially post-COVID. You know, more people are getting into psychedelics.

71:35 Bryony Cole: Mm-hmm.

71:36 Pauline Fetaui: More people are getting into natural therapies, alternative modalities that are helping— what, what's the single thing they're helping? They're helping you find yourself.

71:44 Bryony Cole: Yep.

71:45 Pauline Fetaui: So the future of self and where you're going with this is something that I really think is needed and needs to be taught. Like, the whole, the whole premise of this podcast Perspective X was because of my own realization. Now I'm 44, that I, um, and divorced after 20 years of in one relationship, realized I know nothing, right? And what I do know though is my perspective is ever-changing.

72:17 Bryony Cole: And one—

72:17 Pauline Fetaui: Mm-hmm. Second thing is I'm 100% accountable for my experience on Earth. So again, it's all back to myself. So it's about our perspective, how it's shaped, how it's evolved. You've gone and started and created a, a sector of intimacy, sexuality with technology. Now technology has caught up. Up. And it's created our little AI friend who's now becoming our potential partner and blurring the lines of our understanding of ourselves. You know, the future of self and like delving into all modalities that covers that will just be such an interesting space to go into. Bryony, I implore you.

72:57 Bryony Cole: I think you've just named my new podcast. You've named my—

73:00 Pauline Fetaui: I implore you. I implore you. Go, go, go, go. Go, go create the new space for this.

73:06 Bryony Cole: Okay, Future of Self it is. Totally.

73:08 Pauline Fetaui: Future of Self.

73:09 Bryony Cole: That's the name for the new podcast then, right?

73:12 Pauline Fetaui: It's, yeah, it's something that's broader. It needs to be expansive because we're losing ourselves. And that's why, you know, my, um, 26-year-old niece— I've got a few nieces, so it's not obviously that someone will probably listen to this in my family, go, who is this messaged me the other day, um, and said, oh, what do I do about— how do I know if I've got burnout now? What do I do if I've got burnout?

73:38 Bryony Cole: She's 26 years old. My goodness, 26.

73:42 Pauline Fetaui: And she's got burnout. You know, I remember having burnout when I was at Hewlett-Packard, and I left because I, I drove— I stopped at a green light, and that's when I knew I was burnt out, because I actually stopped it at a green light.

73:55 Bryony Cole: Thank God it wasn't the other way.

73:57 Pauline Fetaui: But, and then I was like, oh my God, I just stopped it. I'm sitting at a green light and these people are beeping me. And then I knew I was like completely delirious at that time and burnt out. But I was in my late 30s, um, when I did that. You know, a 26-year-old and experiencing burnout, not being able to keep up, just makes me so saddened. And also, again, not knowing what to do, how to navigate the self and what to do about that.

74:20 Bryony Cole: Yeah, really sad. People are lost. That's so devastating to hear, like 26 years old. I agree, it wasn't till mid-30s that I came to that moment. But the level of— what is it, like dopamine exhaustion? Like the absolute saturation we have to everything— focus, entertainment, everything is just on tap— that it makes sense that it's happening sooner. And that before you even really know yourself— How on earth do you know yourself at 26? 6. I certainly didn't.

74:53 Pauline Fetaui: No, I still am figuring myself out. And, and you know, the thing is, people don't even know what is going on in their own bodies. So they don't realize that sitting on your device and scrolling through and what it's actually doing— they don't even know what they're like, what the reflection is at nighttime when you've got the lights off and that screen is bleedingly looking through your eyeballs. They don't know what that's doing. So people are wondering why I can't sleep. Me too. Why can't I sleep? Why can't I do And it's our body is having this physical reaction to the world and we're still, the education system is not caught up on ourself. How do we deal with ourselves body-wise? How do we deal with ourselves emotionally, work-wise? You know, it's a new crisis and a new challenge. So yes, I'm looking forward to the future of self.

75:39 Bryony Cole: Future of self. Well, I think people are rising up to meet this. Like I think, and maybe it's just because that's in my orbit, I've never met anyone I've never heard so much about somatic work, body work, than I have in the last few years. So I think there is this cultural recognition that we are collectively kind of burning out on technology because we're thinking technology is the answer when actually it's like, well, technology is just the tool to do the thing.

76:06 Pauline Fetaui: Mm-hmm.

76:07 Bryony Cole: But remember, you are the human that has the choice.

76:10 Pauline Fetaui: Mm-hmm.

76:10 Bryony Cole: And we kind of forget that. And, and you get to choose. When you pick up the tool or what you do or how your body works and all the knowledge that's stored in your body, not on ChatGPT.

76:22 Pauline Fetaui: I am excited by the amount of technology that is coming out that actually starts to monitor this, collect data on this. You know, I'm wearing my Oura Ring, which I—

76:33 Bryony Cole: Oh, I need to get one.

76:34 Pauline Fetaui: Oh, I love my Oura Ring. Do you love it? I love it so much. And I am at risk of being addictive and attached to it. And I practice non-attachment. So I, so I sometimes have to take off the ring and just not wear it, just to remove my attachment to it and my fondness and telling it I love it. Um, but it helps me tune into what's going on in my body. And I, I, it's exciting to see more and more technology coming out into this space. And I think, you know, you said something earlier about entrepreneurship, um, and choosing, um, you know, people, you know, bring ideas to the world that they wanna solve either because of past pain or something that they've experienced that they wanna work on.

77:12 Bryony Cole: Mm-hmm.

77:12 Pauline Fetaui: Or for your case, it was about going and looking to the creative and the edge of it, but I'm sure there's more to that. But I work with a lot of entrepreneurs, you work with a lot of entrepreneurs, and I definitely see that sort of, you know, deliver at all costs, including your personal self and your wellness. And if that means I'm just gonna work, you know, 12 to 16-hour days for the next 4 to 5 years to do that and compromise family, love, and everything else, that is definitely the culture that's been encouraged in my sector, our sector.

77:46 Bryony Cole: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

77:47 Pauline Fetaui: What's, what's your thoughts on that when it comes to, you know, this self and with technology? Like, I think there's a space for something else now. Is that same rhetoric really needed?

77:59 Bryony Cole: Yeah, I do too, because I think I've fallen victim to it, you know, of working those crazy days at the expense of living in the world versus living in my mind, which I think is—

78:12 Pauline Fetaui: Love that. Love that.

78:14 Bryony Cole: Well, it's so true though. So, so I think yes, and but I keep coming back to like technology being a tool that allows us to do a thing and not becoming like technology tells us what to do or the culture tells us what to do. So it's almost like there's this return to self that I hope, and it's perhaps a period in my life that I've reached from peeking in the like burning out, working till 3 AM every night, of a return to self of like, well, what does it look like to integrate your life and love, family, be out in the world, be physical, go and act, do activities, stay off the internet. I don't think anyone has the answer. I think people are living in extremes right now. Some people are like, we've gotta go off the grid. We've gotta do this.

78:59 Pauline Fetaui: Mm.

78:59 Bryony Cole: We've gotta do this crazy morning routine. We've gotta wake up at 4:00 AM and dunk our head in a bucket of ice. And sure enough, the equilibrium is coming. Coming. If you're an optimist, right? If you're an optimist about this future, you go, well, it could be all amazing, or it could be totally dystopia, or what my favorite word of the moment is, or it's not utopia, it's not dystopia, it's thrutopia.

79:29 Pauline Fetaui: Oh.

79:29 Bryony Cole: With the recognition. Yeah. Yes. There was a recognition. There's some, some bad shit's gonna come on the journey with us, some amazing stuff that's gonna be additive, that's gonna enhance our life, will also be on the path.

79:44 Pauline Fetaui: Mm-hmm.

79:44 Bryony Cole: And so trusting that is the future while also taking a good inventory, a good look at yourself and thinking, okay, well, how do I factor that into my life? Whether that's calendaring it in or whatever. I think we're all looking for technology to be the solution and to solve for this, but it's actually like, I don't know, it's on you to show up for the thing. So yeah, there's no answer there. There's just like me deeply exploring that on a personal level.

80:12 Pauline Fetaui: I think, I think that is in the answer though. I think, I think your exploration is the answer. The only way is through. And that's a famous quote. I have no idea who wrote that, but, um, the only way is through. And also you're right. Like if we did not know that there was evil in the world, we wouldn't understand the polarization of good. Yeah. So if we didn't have light, we don't know that it was darkness, right? If we didn't have darkness, there's no light, should I say.

80:41 Bryony Cole: So colors it in.

80:42 Pauline Fetaui: It is. It's like part of it. So even with, yeah, the thing that's going on with the saturation of social media and losing ourselves, there's gonna be, yeah, some positive and then there's gonna be some fallout, but that's with any sort of innovation that comes through the world. So I think, yeah, you're right. The only way is through. Bryony, it's been a pleasure getting to explore your world, your perspectives on, um, intimacy relating sex tech, technology in itself, men, women. Um, I really wanna hear more from you in your next chapter. You know, I think you've got some wonderful, uh, wisdom in there. And, uh, for those who don't know your Future of Sex podcast, people need to go and tune into that and so much more that you're doing in the world of opening up our minds to sexuality.

81:31 Bryony Cole: Thanks so much. Thanks. It's such a privilege to get asked questions that you don't normally get asked and have the space to answer them.

81:37 Pauline Fetaui: So thanks, Pauline. Love your work. Thank you for tuning in to the Perspective X podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, please hit the subscribe button. Wherever you get your podcasts. This podcast was produced by the Media Gurus and our friends at Day One, the podcast network for founders, operators, and investors.