Scooter Braun: The Lie I Chased Almost Broke Me... You’re Probably Chasing It Too!

What happens when you build a billion-dollar music empire, but lose yourself along the way? Music mogul Scooter Braun reveals the raw truth behind his mask. Scooter Braun is a renowned music executive, entrepreneur, and manager behind the careers of global stars like Justin Bieber, amongst many others. He is CEO of HYBE America and founder of SB Projects, a dynamic entertainment and media company. He discusses: The mask he wore as “Scooter” and the journey back to being Scott Why he carries guilt for every young artist he managed How 20 years of running finally led him to confront his deepest fears Why he felt like a complete fraud even at the top and how he overcame it The reason why his divorce saved his life 00:00 Intro 02:46 What Drives You? 08:01 Your Dad 09:55 Your First Business 12:22 You're Very Good at Forming Relationships 14:31 What Did Everyone See in You at an Early Age? 16:06 People Trying to Stop Your Dreams 18:45 Signing Your First Acts 21:36 Discovering Justin Bieber 24:52 What's Your Relationship With Justin Bieber Now? 26:34 What Do Highly Successful Artists Have in Common? 28:09 Why Are There So Many Tragedies Around Famous People? 34:05 Did It Hurt Parting Ways With Justin Bieber? 34:30 The Artists You've Worked With 37:20 The Praise and Hate I Received Were Both Misunderstood 40:13 An Artist You Were Wrong About 44:47 Quitting Music Management 51:40 Ads 52:50 Selling Your Company for $1.1 Billion 54:53 How Pivotal Was the Incident With Taylor Swift? 57:56 Contending With an Unfair World 1:00:34 If I Had Seen You Then, What Would I Have Seen? 1:02:12 Your Divorce 1:07:27 Friends Being There for Me 1:11:32 Why My Marriage Fell Apart 1:22:23 The Work You Do on Yourself 1:26:12 The Power of Building Connections 1:27:48 Spotify Saving the Music Industry 1:31:38 What's Next for Scott? 1:33:56 What Is Steve Trying to Achieve? 1:39:30 What Should We Do if We're Always Chasing Something? 1:49:51 If You Could Do Anything Without Fear of Failure, What Would You Do? Follow Scooter: Instagram - https://bit.ly/45Ihx8k Twitter - https://bit.ly/3SZHKYJ Facebook - https://bit.ly/43JalX2 The Diary Of A CEO Conversation Cards (Second Edition): https://g2ul0.app.link/f31dsUttKKb Get email updates: https://bit.ly/diary-of-a-ceo-yt Follow Steven: https://g2ul0.app.link/gnGqL4IsKKb Sponsors: Linkedin Ads - https://www.linkedin.com/DIARY Stan Store - Visit https://link.stan.store/joinstanchallenge to join the challenge! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Steven Bartlett?

  There's parts of your life where there's these big question marks that I'm hoping you can answer for me.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 0:05Steven Bartlett?

  But I want the full truth.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Now I'm nervous.

• 0:08Speaker 02

  Scooter Braun is the man behind some of the biggest stars in the music industry.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  And he built one of the most disruptive entertainment empires on the planet. I've never really said this out loud until right now. At this age, I feel a lot of guilt because I worked with so many young artists and we were all kids moving so fast. And we all wanted to succeed so bad. And it wasn't until I was 40 years old, doing some intense therapy, that I realized I was so driven by the fear that I wouldn't be enough. So let's go back. As a kid growing up, I wanted to prove that I could be more than the privilege I was born with. And I created this character Scooter because I didn't think Scott could achieve these things. And that mask made me absolutely relentless, faking it till I make it. Like, I have no right convincing Justin and his mom to be on the first plane they had ever been on and meet me.

• 0:54Steven Bartlett?

  So what were they betting on?

• 0:56Speaker 01

  My ignorance. But it was also realizing that so much of insecurity drives us and makes us great. Like, now that I'm here, I can't fail because then everyone will see that I shouldn't be here. So let's go for it. And then we had such extreme success. The whole world thought I was crushing it, but I had built this mask so big, I didn't realize how far away I'd gotten from Scott. So here I am, the top of my game, I wanted to kill myself. It went to a very dark place and I broke down crying because I spent so much time trying to impress people who didn't love me. And instead of realizing how many people already did.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  And I was so desperate to do the thing I had never done before.

• 1:38Steven Bartlett?

  What was that?

• 1:43Steven Bartlett?

  Quick one, before we get back to this episode, just give me 30 seconds of your time. Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week. It means the world to all of us and this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place. But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started. And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24% of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app. Here's a promise I'm going to make to you. I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future. We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show. Thank you. Thank you so much. Back to the episode.

• 2:30Steven Bartlett?

  Scooter, when I look at your life and I look at the things you've achieved, so much of it makes sense, but then there's these other parts of your life where there's these big question marks that I'm hoping you can answer for me. And maybe the earliest question mark that remains in my head is what it is that drives you? Because from an exceedingly young age, there was this dog in you. There was something, for me, when I was going through the research, it looked like a chip on your shoulder or something to prove to someone. And so that's really where I wanted to start. I want to understand your earliest context, so I can understand the cauldron that Scooter was shaped in and in the way that that made the boy turn to a man. Big question, but that's the

• 3:14Speaker 01

  Starter.

• 3:15Steven Bartlett?

  The burning question in my head.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  You know, it's funny, because you started by asking Scooter, what drives you? And it took me a long time to figure out as an adult that it was actually Scott, my real name, that was the real driver. And I really created this guy Scooter when I was an adult, because I didn't think Scott could achieve these things. So I almost like created a mask. And it wasn't until I was 40 years old, doing some intense therapy, that I fell in love with my name again and realized the answer to your question, which is, part of it was shame of why, with my family's background, am I getting all this

• 3:59Speaker 01

  privilege? My father's a refugee from Hungary. My mother, her dad died when she was 11, you know, and her mother struggled to raise them with family help in the Catskill Mountains. My grandparents were Holocaust survivors. And here I am, first generation born in America. And I wanted to prove that I could be more than the privilege I was born with. And I, so I had that chip on my shoulder. I wanted to prove my value. I wanted to prove I was worthy of this.

• 4:27Steven Bartlett?

  Who's told you you had to?

• 4:30Speaker 01

  No one. I think, you know, as a kid growing up, I read it that way because, you know, you're hearing the stories of the Holocaust and my dad, every night before he put me and my brother to bed would say, hey, boys, you're different. You're special. I hold you to a higher standard. Every night before we went to bed. And we started to really believe him of like, we need to hold ourselves to this higher standard. We need to do more. The idea of failing, the idea of looking at my parents and not achieving it, that's what drove me. And years ago, I was on a podcast, probably 10 years ago. I was doing a podcast with Complex with this guy Noah.

• 5:06Steven Bartlett?

  I watched it.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  Do you remember the baseball analogy?

• 5:10Steven Bartlett?

  I literally wrote it down in my notes.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  Well, I will tell it again, but I will tell you on your podcast, the difference I hold today.

• 5:16Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  They asked me what it takes to be successful. And I made up this analogy with baseball. And I said, imagine Cy Young Award winner C.C. Sevathia at the height of his career is in the middle of Yankee Stadium and they invite everyone to come hit a homerun. And they say, you get as many at bats as you want, and whoever hits the homerun wins like the, you know, billion dollars, million dollars, whatever it is. And you can imagine everyone flies in from all around the world. People are feeling from New York City. The line is crazy. And I said, the person who's successful is not only the person who finally gets up to the plate and swings and misses, but stays at the plate. And now people are saying, are you kidding me? There's lines of millions of people waiting for their turn and you're going to stay there?

• 6:00Speaker 01

  You're going to stay there and swing again? And they swing again. And then everyone's booing and they swing again. And they literally keep swinging as everyone is booing them and booing them and booing them for hours. They're the most selfish person in the world. You don't deserve to be here. Get off that plate. This is not... And then they finally hit that homer. And everyone cheers because, oh my God, they did it. And I said that years ago. And it wasn't until recently that I realized there's one difference in the story. I never understood who the crowd was. I always thought the crowd was being able to shut out the outside noise. I always thought the crowd was the naysayers and all the people who in your life will tell you you're never going to achieve anything and that's part of it. But the crowd, all those people waiting in line, is actually you.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  That's what I never realized till now, that that's the difference. I always thought, when people asked me what drove you, I thought it was all the outside noise. I thought it was the fear of failure, the fear of letting them down, all these different things. And it wasn't until recently, when I hit some hardships as an adult and really had to look inward, that I realized everyone's got the same crowd. And everyone has their own issues and everyone has their own stuff. And what actually brings you to success and self-worth and happiness is actually understanding how to stand at that plate and shut out the noise that's here. Not the millions of people around, the millions of people are in your head screaming at you, telling you you're not enough, the deep, deep lie from the most confident people to have it.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  So I'm glad I get to finally publicly say the difference because I've had it wrong all these years.

• 7:33Steven Bartlett?

  And in that analogy, you talk about how most people come up to the plate, they swing once.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  They leave.

• 7:38Steven Bartlett?

  They hear the boo, they leave, they go back to their sofa or wherever they're coming from.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Or they swing two, three times, everyone's telling them they're selfish and they get, you know, oh my God, and they're embarrassed and they leave. It takes a lot for someone to stand there in the middle of the noise, shut out the noise and understand the opportunity was given to me, I deserve this, I'm going to keep swinging.

• 7:58Steven Bartlett?

  Going back to your early context, Scott.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:02Steven Bartlett?

  Your dad, Irvin.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:03Steven Bartlett?

  He sounds like quite a tough guy. I was reading about some of the things he was saying to you when you were a kid and I was like, Dad, Jesus, like when he called you a liar.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:11Steven Bartlett?

  That day and told you about living with integrity, et cetera.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  My dad grew up tough and it was almost like when you're being raised by two people who lived through what they lived through, they were raising him for a world that took everything away from them. They were so loving, they still raised him that way. And then he was so loving, but he still raised us really tough. And I was the firstborn son, so I'm the oldest of all our kids, all the kids, so he was very tough on me. You're referencing this time when I was probably 14.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  And he uh, he caught me in like a white lie.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  And usually he would punish me and his punishments could be severe. But this time he just said, hey, come here, I want to talk to you. It's not gonna be a punishment this time. I just want you to know, you got the gift for gab. You could talk your way out of anything and in life, I used to tell you, if you lie, you're not gonna be successful. I want to tell you the truth, you're so good at it. You might be successful, but you're gonna be a liar. And I'll know you're a liar and you'll know you're a liar. So do with that with what you want. And I was so beaten down and ashamed because it wasn't like raining down fists on me. It was just like, the guy I admired so much called me a liar. And I walked, I was messed up. And I went back to him and I said, Dad, I want you to know, I'm not gonna lie. I'm gonna be a man of integrity.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  I'm, I, yeah, I could do that, but I understand this opportunity, what you're saying. And he just looked at me and said, okay, good. And he walked away. And it was one of the best lessons ever, you know, because he was right. Like you, you can win certain ways, but you're gonna know, how do you, how do you want to win? You want to do it the right way. And um, and that, that tough love, I'm appreciative of it.

• 9:56Steven Bartlett?

  You go to college?

• 9:57Speaker 01

  I went to college.

• 9:58Steven Bartlett?

  You went to college, um, you started a business at college doing events?

• 10:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I, I started selling fake IDs. That's what I started.

• 10:05Steven Bartlett?

  First, yeah.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I sold fake IDs because my friend sold fake IDs and I thought he had a bad business plan. So I was like, I'll market them, you make them.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  And, and quickly, uh, he broke my golden rule of not keeping in touch with people we sold to. So I stopped immediately because I didn't want to get caught. And um, I walked by a nightclub and said, how much would you give me if I brought people here the next week? And that was the beginning of my Atlanta party promotion days.

• 10:32Steven Bartlett?

  Why did that succeed? What is it about you, as you look back in hindsight, your skill set, your ability, that made your party promotion days so successful, which eventually sort of parlayed into music, but?

• 10:43Speaker 01

  A combination of things. I think one, uh, I wasn't a threat to the freshman girls. I had a high school sweetheart at the time. I was very committed to her. I was a decently cute kid and I could dance. So I was a good person to go out with and have fun. So that was one thing. Number two, I was playing sports. So I had a lot of friends in different, you know, teams and different arenas. And three, I was in the right place at the right time. You know, I, uh, that first party I threw was successful. And at that first party, I was approached by a guy named Jason Weaver. He's an actor and he was in this old Michael Jackson movie I used to watch as a kid where he played young Michael. And he came in and he said, this is crazy because Atlanta at that time was very segregated in the club scene. So it was like, if you were black, you went to a party that, you know, a club that played hip hop.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  And if you were white, you went to a club they played techno. But I didn't grow up in the South and I wanted to listen to hip hop and rock and roll. And we played that. And when Jason came in, he was so fascinated to see a mixed crowd listening to hip hop. That he was like, you want to see how the other half lives? And Jason brought me to a club called Velvet Room on Tuesday nights in Atlanta, Georgia. It was ran by a guy named Alex Gettawan. Alex was so fascinated to see me in the line. He said, you know, let this kid in here. And Alex taught me how to promote. He taught me what the value of the door actually was, what I should be getting from the bar. And I would start moving my parties and I would spend all my money that I made on Thursday nights at the college party on Alex's Tuesday night.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Meeting people, meeting rappers, meeting singers, meeting different people, faking it till I make it. And getting people to come back and forth between my parties. And that's how I started. That's how I met Jermaine. That's how I met Luda. That's, we all kind of came up together.

• 12:23Steven Bartlett?

  Relationships. Why did he give you a foot up? So many people are early in their careers and they're having these chance encounters, but those aren't converting into a relationship. And when I look at your life, there's people you meet along the way who end up being really, really pivotal. And it appears to me as an objective observer that you have an ability to form good relationships, loyal, lasting relationships with people.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  One, I think it's important to pay people respect. You know, I came from a household where you respect your elders. And when I was coming up, I was nineteen. So I was very respectful of the people that are giving me an opportunity. And I never forgot who helped me along the way. I think the other thing, there was a big part of my philosophy was, let your work be the reason they want to meet you. I didn't want to be that kid who was going, hey, give me an opportunity. And by the way, sometimes that works. But I wanted them to see what I was doing and then say, come over here. I didn't approach Jermaine Dupri to work at So So Def. Jermaine heard about me and my parties and he met me. And he said, you have more potential than parties. Why don't you come work for me?

• 13:30Speaker 01

  I didn't approach, you know, Ludacris, who was coming up as a rapper and say, let me do that. I didn't, a lot of people in my life, I, I never really approached them. And then even as my life changed and I got older, I made a lot of relationships and I have a lot of relationships now that I've never done business with. And people go, well, you have that, why don't you? And it was because I never wanted anyone to feel,

• 13:53Speaker 01

  probably my insecurity is I never wanted anyone to feel like I needed them. I never wanted to feel like a user. It was like my own insecurities of how they might see me. But I think on top of that, I just,

• 14:05Speaker 01

  it was that same old thing of never wanting to be in a position where you're begging somebody for something.

• 14:11Steven Bartlett?

  I called Jermaine and we spoke to him and I listened to the recording again just before you arrived. But what Jermaine said in that voice recording is also pretty similar to what your dad said, which is they both saw something in you. You're this young kid who doesn't have an extensive track record of decades of work, but they're all betting on you in some way. As you look back on your life, what were they betting on? Cause they all seem pretty sure that you had something.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  My ignorance. I think, I think, uh, no one told me I shouldn't be there.

• 14:47Steven Bartlett?

  And he offered you a job for working at his company, which meant you had to drop out of college?

• 14:51Speaker 01

  I didn't have to drop out of college. I did because I went to work for Jermaine and now I'm traveling all the time. I'm still throwing parties. You know, we're gearing up for Usher's album. We're doing this. We're doing that. I'm working with the Young Bloods, Anthony Hamilton, like it's, and I'm nineteen, twenty years old. And my grade point average went from a three point something to a one point something. And they brought me in on academic probation and they said, um, you know, what's going on with you? Is there a drug problem? Are you being abused? And I said, no, no, no, no. I'm an entrepreneur. I'm building this. I want to build a record label. I'm working for Jermaine Dupri. You know, and this guy's looking at me like I'm insane and he is, this dean looks at me at Emory and he says, do you know the story of Robert Woodruff?

• 15:34Speaker 01

  And I said, you know, Robert Woodruff? He goes, yeah, the founder of Coca-Cola, the Woodruff Center, the largest endowment in Emory. And he tells me this amazing story of this entrepreneur who created Coca-Cola, who is the largest endowment at our university. And I'm so hyped. I'm like, this guy gets me. He gets me. He's gonna help me. I'm gonna be at the school. And just when my hopes are really high, he looks at me, goes, you know what we're gonna do, right? Because we're gonna stop all the nonsense. You're gonna focus on school. You're gonna get a degree because the chance of you being like Robert Woodruff without an Emory degree is like one in a billion. And the moment he said it, that's when I dropped out of school.

• 16:11Steven Bartlett?

  What did your father say?

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Before you ask me about my father, I want to ask you a question.

• 16:15Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  You made a face and you paused.

• 16:18Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  Because you have your own story of something happening like this.

• 16:23Steven Bartlett?

  I just have a, I just have a real hate for dreambusters.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  Yet every great story we have of success, people tell of that pivotal moment, whether it be this dean or Michael Jordan being cut by his coach, his varsity coach when he was younger.

• 16:37Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  We all talk about the dreambuster as a catalyst to our success. And, you know, in life, I've, I've kind of feel like everything, even, you know, it's like I have this tattoo, amor fati, you know, from Marcus Aurelius. It's like a concept, love of one's fate in Latin. And it's this concept that you have to love the sorrow as much as you love the joy. You have to love the pain as much as you love the success. You know, it's, if it wasn't for that dean, I wouldn't have had that chip on my shoulder in that moment. I would just push you on the fact that you hate these dreambusters, but I am so grateful for them.

• 17:08Steven Bartlett?

  I'm, I'm grateful for the dreambusters. However, and this is actually something I was talking to my friends about in our group chat this morning. Is it okay, in your view, to be driven by haters?

• 17:21Steven Bartlett?

  It's so funny because-

• 17:22Speaker 01

  If you're only driven by haters, no. But I think that everything plays its role at the time. Like, um, Robert Greene. He talks about this idea of embracing your dark side. And I think that there's truth in that. Like, you know, if, if you continue to fight something that's naturally inside of you, you're gonna really struggle with it. If you can accept that's part, you can use it as fuel and you can move right through it. So, yes, there are things that drive me. My curiosity is a big driver for, for where I go. My children now are a big driver for where I go and how I live my life. The people I love, the joy that I find, the introspective voice that now I can go to when I'm meditating or, you know, working on myself.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  But doubt from someone who dislikes me, or doubt from a hater, I can pretend like I'm zen as much as I want. But if I'm being really honest with myself, sometimes that's the fuel that I need. So I think if it's, if it's solely one thing, it's not healthy. But I think if you can admit, you get fuel and different influences from different places and don't try and be ashamed of the one that doesn't fit in your narrative of how evolved you are.

• 18:34Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 18:35Speaker 01

  You know, then it's okay.

• 18:37Steven Bartlett?

  You established SB Projects, I believe, after leaving Jermaine, when you were 24, 25 years old?

• 18:43Speaker 01

  24.

• 18:45Steven Bartlett?

  And I read that you'd kind of had, had this plan to sign three different types of acts.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:51Steven Bartlett?

  First one, Asher Roth, who's a very famous rapper.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wanted to sign three types of acts. And Asher fit the mold for one, Justin for the other, and the other one I never found.

• 18:59Steven Bartlett?

  So Asher, for people that don't know, is a very successful rapper. What was the mold you were trying to fit?

• 19:05Speaker 01

  Eminem was a very big rapper, is one of the biggest rappers of all time. And I was in college and I'm watching all like these, at the time, these frat guys. But they loved hip hop. And I don't think they had anyone who spoke to their life. So I wanted a kid who could speak to college life, who had the skills to be credible within the world of hip hop.

• 19:26Steven Bartlett?

  Why did you think you could find talent? Did you believe ignorance?

• 19:31Speaker 01

  I'm telling you, every aspect of my life, if we talked about every little thing that I've been in, you said earlier, I've been in all these different things and probably your listeners have no idea the hell I am. So they're like, what is he talking about? But every time I put myself in that next arena, it's this why not me? I had no right contacting Asher on MySpace. I mean, at that point, I could say, okay, I came from SoSoDef. I was the youngest vice president of music because of Jermaine when I was at SoSoDef. I was 20 years old. So I had the right, you know, some credibility other people didn't have. I definitely could do that. But to tell him to drop out of college and move down to Atlanta, Georgia for be the first artist on my record label to, you know, find Justin in Canada and convince his mom and him to be on the first plane they'd ever been on

• 20:15Speaker 01

  to come down to Atlanta and meet me. I mean, it was, I was 25 years old, 24 years old. Like, these are, I was insane.

• 20:25Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting. When we talk about belief, we ask if, Scooter, did you have belief? But in your case, you had the lack of limiting beliefs, which shows up the same as having belief. There was just like nothing.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  It wasn't even, because I was so driven by also the fear that I wouldn't be enough, that back then I would have lied. I would have said, oh, I had such a deep belief in my conviction that I could do it. It was partially that, but it was also why not me? And no one told me I can't be here. And also, now that I'm here, I can't fail because then everyone will see that I shouldn't be here. And so it was this fear, excitement, fear, excitement, conviction. So I always tell people when I meet them as young people, I'm like, you don't have kids. You can starve a little bit. Your parents want you to go the easiest route because they don't want to see you suffer. But now is the time when you should be suffering.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  If you want to go for it, now's the time when you don't have anyone to support, where you can really, really go for it. Because later on in life, you've got to think about other people. And back then, 19 years old to 24, I'm, let's go for it.

• 21:37Steven Bartlett?

  And the second artist that you signed is called Justin Bieber. Who's Justin Bieber? Justin Bieber. You were 26 years old when you came across Justin?

• 21:48Speaker 01

  25.

• 21:49Steven Bartlett?

  25. And he was 12, 13?

• 21:52Speaker 01

  13.

• 21:53Steven Bartlett?

  Damn.

• 21:55Steven Bartlett?

  You discovered Justin by watching a So Sick video by Neil?

• 21:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I saw a bunch of videos from his church his mom had posted and the one that moved me the most was So Sick by Neil.

• 22:29Steven Bartlett?

  You must have been asked this a gazillion times, but the the actions you then took based on seeing a kid on a video are bizarre.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:41Steven Bartlett?

  They are bizarre.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I like Googled the background of of the church to look up the businesses and then called the regions of Canada school boards to figure out where he was because his mom had a different name than him because her name was Milet, his was Bieber. So I went a little crazy to find him within 24 hours. Once I saw him, I kind of knew.

• 23:02Steven Bartlett?

  In person?

• 23:03Speaker 01

  No, I knew when I saw online. I was like, this is the kid I've been looking for. And I felt the same way about Asher. I mean, I relentlessly kind of pursued both of them. I had a clear vision to like what I could do and what he was capable of. And it was funny because no one believed me. I mean, even after we met and we did the deal and we started working together, literally no one believed me. And YouTube was not a big thing back then. So when I took him from 60,000 views and we took him to like 60 million, now he's like one of the biggest YouTubers in the world. And everyone's like, yeah, YouTubers don't turn into musicians though.

• 23:36Steven Bartlett?

  What were the first principles that you saw in him? Like, what were the, because when I think about having those moments where my intuition just says yes to something?

• 23:42Speaker 01

  Tone.

• 23:43Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  Charisma. It was like.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  He had incredible tone and he had soul and he had charisma. He was doing like, there was one where there was an instrumental and he was like jumping around. And I just believed in him instantly. And then when I met him, he had even more charisma. He was funny and I was like, all right, this kid, let's go. And he was an athlete, so he was competitive. He was a very special, special talent and a very unique individual. And those were special times.

• 24:15Steven Bartlett?

  And you flew in to meet him and his mother?

• 24:17Speaker 01

  No, they flew to me.

• 24:18Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, okay.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  I talked to her for like an hour and a half that night. And the first plane ride they ever went on. And I remember he was so excited that there was a fridge inside his hotel room.

• 24:29Steven Bartlett?

  His mother said, speaking of you, Scooter really believed in Justin from day one. He put everything on the line for us.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  And they put it on the line for me, too. You know, they believed in a 25 year old kid. And we were able to achieve some amazing things. And I'm very proud of what we achieved and always rooting for him.

• 24:57Steven Bartlett?

  What's your relationship with Justin now?

• 25:02Speaker 01

  Not the same that it was. I think, you know, these things go with ebb and flows. I think there comes a point where I understand he probably wants to go on and and show that he can do it. I mean, we we worked together for so long and we had such extreme success. And I think you get to a point as a as a man where you want to show the world you can do it on your own. And I completely respect that. And I think at this point, that's what he's doing. And myself and and everyone from the old team is rooting for him. But I stopped managing two and a half years ago. And now I'm I'm a cheerleader from the side. And, you know, I I want everyone that I worked with to do well.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  I think sometimes when you walk away from management, I've heard managers, which I never understood, they'd be like, deep down, behind closed doors, they don't want to see them do as well without them. It's almost like, you know, them succeeding is is tarnishing your legacy.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  Every artist that I worked with, I believed in them because they were great. And if they continue to be great, I think that's the best testimony to that belief. So to see Justin move forward and succeed, to see Ariana, you know, with what's happened with Wicked in this past year,

• 26:22Speaker 01

  to see Tori Kelly, you know, to see everybody that I've ever had a chance to work with, to see them go on and do great things on their own, it's awesome.

• 26:34Steven Bartlett?

  Is there anything that these individuals have in common at all? These people that...

• 26:39Speaker 01

  Pain.

• 26:39Steven Bartlett?

  Pain.

• 26:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's pain personally. I think to be able to convey emotions on the level that it touches people around the world, you have to understand emotions. And I think, I think great artists, great performers are able to draw from different places. And sometimes it's joy and sometimes it's pain. And sometimes it's just a natural God-given gift.

• 27:09Steven Bartlett?

  How important is hard work?

• 27:11Speaker 01

  Oh, it's very important. I think, especially in the beginning. In the beginning, you're stepping into a pool where everyone talented wants to be seen.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  And you have to work incredibly hard to break out of the noise. So, and by the way, I don't think that's particular to artists or music or film or TV or anything I've done with entertainment. I think that's every business I've ever been a part of. The first three to five years of any business I've ever built in any arena or worked with anyone who's ever achieved anything great, those first three to five years are the most important.

• 27:49Steven Bartlett?

  Sounds like something I said to my girlfriend.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  It sounds like, you know, same thing with a relationship maybe, but put in the foundation those first three to five years and really be there together. I really believe that, I think.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  You put in that time in the beginning and you can break through the noise and set a foundation for everything else.

• 28:09Steven Bartlett?

  When I think about Justin's career, he had a wobble where he was involved in lots of sort of, you know, it looked like he was going through a bit of difficulty. And I reflect on one of my friends, Liam Payne, and he was on this podcast and who's sadly passed away now, but he also, around the same age, was thrown into the public eye at a very young age. He joined One Direction, went on crazy, crazy, wild roller coaster ride, that is One Direction. And he admitted on the podcast that he struggled. He struggled with addiction, he struggled with lots of pain that he was dealing with. And his story is an inspiring one ultimately, but also a tragic one in many respects. Why does this happen to so many young artists, childhood stars?

• 29:01Speaker 01

  Yo, when you ask me this question, at this age, I feel a lot of guilt. I feel a lot of guilt because I worked with so many young artists. And like I told you, I hadn't taken the time to look at myself or do the therapy myself until I was older. So I didn't understand at 25 years old, at 27 years old, at 30 years old, that they each were coming from very unique backgrounds of their own stuff with their own families and their own childhoods and growing up this way and being seen by the whole world and being judged by the whole world at a very young age. And I think it's two things.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  I think, one, human beings are not made to be worshipped. I think we're made to serve. And I think that when we worship human beings, it changes something within us. It messes us up a little bit because that's not what we're built for. And I think that can be very confusing. And I think being able to transcend the childhood of, you know, people cheering your name and everything else at that level and get to the place where the artists I've worked with are, where they are in healthy relationships and with their families and still working through stuff, but like having a human experience, I think it's a testament to their strength. So I think that's part of it. I just think the nature of of being on that stage,

• 30:28Speaker 01

  you know, that young and people chanting your name. And I didn't realize that till, you know, I got older. The other side of it is, I never understood, even without me, I didn't have that childhood, yet I broke. And what I think also is important is, I don't think we can push everything. I think adversity is important. We can't just talk about mental health and say adversity shouldn't exist. But I do think I understand the importance now of

• 30:58Speaker 01

  of really putting in the time to make sure mental health is addressed and that we have an outlet to speak to someone outside of the crew.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  And there's a lot of things that I learned within myself that I wish I knew back then.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  I met those One Direction kids when they started. They came to LA and actually the whole group, because Niall reached out to me, they came to my house to hang out in the backyard when they were first starting, before they really blew up, like their first US visit to LA. And I met Liam back then.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  And I met the excited young kid with the with the voice.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  Yet each one of them has had a different experience. Each one of them has had a different

• 31:41Speaker 01

  story of perseverance and tragedy.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  And that's the thing, it's like with kids, like you just never know what the cocktail's gonna make of life. And I think

• 31:55Speaker 01

  I think, you know, that idea of we're not made to be worshipped, that can play funny things on the mind.

• 32:03Steven Bartlett?

  The brain isn't even developed until you're 25, they tell me.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  I don't even know if mine's developed at 43.

• 32:09Steven Bartlett?

  But I've sat here with so many neuroscientists that have said that to me, and also addiction scientists that say the brain is still learning and building its sort of like dopamine receptors and stuff. So Liam was telling me that he was up on stage in front of a hundred odd thousand people in Dubai. Huge adrenaline rush, huge surge of dopamine. Then they drive him back to his hotel. He was like, they lock the door and it's just me in there with the minibar. And then the next day, it's the exact same thing. Stage, car, hotel.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  And then without the stage, you're looking for that dopamine hit.

• 32:37Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  No, it's it's a

• 32:41Speaker 01

  Like I said, it's, I'm very proud of the job that we did and how much we cared and how much the team cared for all the years that we did it. But it doesn't mean I don't look back and wish that I knew what I know now.

• 32:58Steven Bartlett?

  How would you have been different?

• 33:00Speaker 01

  Hmm, I think I would have had a therapist on the road for all of us. You know, I think that's the biggest difference. I think I would have slowed down all of us. I think I made, would have made every single one of us stop and do that hour. You know, because we were all kids and we were all moving so fast and we all wanted to succeed so bad and we all wanted the excitement and we wanted to make kids' dreams come true and bring them down from the upper decks to put them in the front row and, you know, to help Justin get that number one and, you know, to help Ariana do this. And we all wanted it and we were excited and we were doing something that was so unique and everyone in the world was so excited for us.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  You know, "Oh, my gosh, you guys are a part of this. This is so cool." I didn't know, I didn't know to go inward for the dopamine hit. And I wish I would have known that and been able to share it back then.

• 34:03Steven Bartlett?

  When Justin ultimately said that he wanted to kind of go it alone and do it himself, does that hurt?

• 34:10Speaker 01

  No, not at that point. I think I was also at that point. You know, at that point, it had been a couple of years where I knew I wanted to do something else and I, I wanted to find out who I was. I wanted to experiment with, you know, a different career and we were both communicating enough with each other. Everyone, the writing was on the wall.

• 34:30Steven Bartlett?

  How many clients?

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 34:32Steven Bartlett?

  That we would know?

• 34:33Speaker 01

  A lot.

• 34:34Steven Bartlett?

  Because when I was doing my research, I was like, "No, surely not." Carly Rae Jepsen and then Martin Garrix, Kanye.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:43Steven Bartlett?

  Can you give me the top 10 off the top of your head that you worked?

• 34:47Speaker 01

  I never say a top 10. A good manager knows not to do that. But I got to work with a lot of incredible artists a long time. I mean, from Zac Brown Band to Black Eyed Peas to Justin to Ariana to, you know, Martin Garrix, we signed while he was at Club Med with his parents. We contacted him because he had the song Animals and we heard it.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  To Dan and Shay, I mean, just to so many over the years. It was pretty incredible to be a part and so close to so many incredible stories. You know, and to see, you know, going to a coffee shop to see Tori Kelly sing, to seeing her walk on a Grammy stage. It just, I got to see really incredible moments in people's lives to, you know, Demi telling me, I want to sing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl. You know, and show me a tweet that she wrote this years ago to see her actually perform, you know, you know, at the Super Bowl, you know? So it's, it's just been a really cool experience, but I got to see it in so many different arenas. And you're only there for a flash, right?

• 35:52Speaker 01

  You have this little tiny, small moment here, a little tiny, small moment here. But to get to witness so many different rides, it's a really cool thing. I remember as a kid, I heard this great saying, don't just read stories. Try to be a part of them. Try to be a story. And I think I've always tried to take that into my life.

• 36:10Steven Bartlett?

  Crazy, crazy. Well, I was, there was a second ago when you were talking and I was just, I stepped into your body for a second and I ran the highlight reel of your life, just as Justin's sort of manager. I was thinking, God, like the places you must have been and the things you must have seen. Just as his manager, let alone working with all of these other great artists. It's not just a lifetime of experience, it's multiple lifetimes of fortune to get to even see those things.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  I met a guy years ago and.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  I'll name drop here. So I got invited to meet Charlie Munger.

• 36:47Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, yeah, the investor, yeah.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  And everyone was asking him questions about business, and I asked him a question about life. And afterwards, his guy contacted me, he goes, Charlie liked your question. He wants you to meet this other guy that he really likes. He was a brilliant businessman. And I meet this other gentleman. And he tells me he's a statistician by trade. And the reason he's excited to meet me is because people in my world, who are part of so many different stories, live in dog years. Because they get to be a part of kind of so many other people's things.

• 37:17Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  But it's a, it's a unique thing. But I told you, it, the biggest lesson I learned from all of it

• 37:27Speaker 01

  is that at one point in my life, I received so much praise. And then the next moment,

• 37:35Speaker 01

  without me expecting it, I received so much hate.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  And on the other side of all these experiences, I've come to learn that both were not deserved. The people who were praising me did not know me, and the people who hated me did not know me. And it's like one of my favorite, I saw Tom Hanks say this on like an actor's table one time. He goes, this too shall pass. Remember that?

• 37:59Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 38:00Speaker 01

  It's so great. He's like, you think you're killing it? This too shall pass. He's like, you think it's gonna be hard? This too shall pass. Like, it's true.

• 38:07Steven Bartlett?

  So what do you anchor in then? If so much is transient?

• 38:11Speaker 01

  At this point?

• 38:13Steven Bartlett?

  In life generally, what does one anchor in? If everything is transient, if, you know, this too shall pass.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  You don't have kids yet. I have a major anchor and three kids. Major anchor.

• 38:21Steven Bartlett?

  What if you don't have kids?

• 38:23Speaker 01

  If you don't have kids, that's when you should definitely do the self-work because your anchor's you. And, and the truth is, I've really gotten to a beautiful place of, I fully expect to be misunderstood in the future. I expect tomorrow, something can happen where, especially because my life has been somewhat in the public eye. You get misunderstood all the time. People make up stories, they twist things. Someone's hurt and it comes out this way, that way. I can get pulled into this stuff. It's happened to me already. And so I've come to terms with that. What I've realized is being on the other side of it already happening to me, all it does is end up making room for something else. So for me, what anchors me is I no longer think I'm in control, but I think I'm participating in one hell of a game. I can't control the outcome.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  Steph Curry and LeBron could be at the height of their game, but even they can't control the game. They can influence it. And so that for me, it was like, the first half of my life was I'm manifesting, I'm manifesting, I'm doing this, that youthful energy. And then you turn 40 and this stuff happens and you start the other half of your life, you're like, you know, Michael Singer, I need to surrender. You know, you're at the surrender experiment. You know, like everything's surrender. And then I realized there's a balance. There's this balance of I'm participating in an incredible game and I can bring what I bring to the table. And I'm not going to be able to control this game, but maybe I should start enjoying the game a little bit. I'm out here, I'm participating. That's pretty freaking cool.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  And I think that is what anchors me at this point, that I have no idea what the next five to 10 years of my life are going to look like. I used to think I did. Now I know it can change like that. And I think I'm excited for love in the future. I'm excited for adventure. I'm not looking forward to the pain, but I know if it comes, there's a reason for it.

• 40:14Steven Bartlett?

  So tell me about a, an artist that you believed in. You don't have to name them, of course, but an artist you believed in you were wrong about. Something you really, just your first principles were off. And in hindsight.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  I had an artist who was, honestly, maybe the most talented artist I ever signed. His name was Spencer Lee. And Spencer Lee got brought to me by a buddy of mine named Freddie. And we did a deal for Spencer and Dave Appleton, who I told you about, my buddy, was trying to handle in management. And Dave started calling me saying, hey, there's some real addiction issues here and we're really struggling. And we put him into rehab and then he wrote one of the most incredible songs, River Water.

• 41:04Speaker 03

  Wash me clean.

• 41:08Speaker 03

  Send away my worries, please.

• 41:17Speaker 03

  River water, take me down. Show me the dreams that I never found.

• 41:33Speaker 03

  River water smell, wanna drown.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  About addiction. And when he got out, we thought, OK, he's gonna be clean and everything great. We made this video and we started getting going. We made the Spencer Lee Band. And we started putting him out there, like paying for everything to kind of get it going. And he started doing festivals and we started getting phone calls of like, hey, people are coming to see this insane talent with this voice. And he went back to drugs. And he overdosed last year. And he's no longer with us. And we got the news because his grandmother, who's the sweetest, she called to say, thank you for trying and everything else. And that was the love of her life and she lost him.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  And that one I got wrong because I thought, you know, maybe if we get the records right, if we get the music, if he gets on the road, you know, he gets out of rehab, like, you know, this would be enough. It's one of the biggest tragedies because I can't tell you how good he was. I mean, he just a special, special talent. You listen to this guy's records. Sometimes I always say I want to like reach out to his family and be like, let's just release the records, like the ones that I have that the world's never heard. And I, you know, I, all the money should go to, you know, a cause, you know, to help people in a similar situation. I wish we could do that. I'd love to get permission to do that.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  Because he was one of the most special talents I ever came across.

• 43:06Steven Bartlett?

  They don't want to release the records?

• 43:09Speaker 01

  It's complicated.

• 43:12Steven Bartlett?

  Last week, I was in New York interviewing one of the world's leading addiction experts. And if for anyone that hasn't been through addiction, it's a very confusing thing to observe because as an onlooker, you just go, just stop that. You're self-destructing. But if you've had friends that have dealt with addiction, you realize that it's not an attempt to self-destruct. It's like an attempt to.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  Kill.

• 43:34Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, it's like it's maybe the last attempt to do the opposite, to survive, to survive from something.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  When I was dealing with addiction with someone I managed, someone I really respect, told me about Al-Anon. Al-Anon is for a support, it's like AA, but for the families. And they recommend I go. And I went to two Al-Anon meetings and it was very helpful at the time. And one of the things I learned there was one, this concept of it is not your fault. This is not about you, that you have to love them where they're at, you can, you know. But the biggest thing I really learned was be a rock. You know, this person said to me, home doesn't move around. Home is a constant place that someone can come back to. If someone beats addiction, it is because of them. You know, they've made that choice and they deserve the credit.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  But if you want to be helpful, this person said, just try to be a constant place. They know that no matter what, at the end, they can come back and they're, and you'll be waiting.

• 44:31Steven Bartlett?

  Understanding your story, you stuck around with Justin when he went through his, his difficult times and people were calling for you to drop him and to maybe move on.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it was an interesting time, but like I said, if someone beats that, they deserve the credit. So I don't, I don't deserve any credit in that. He does.

• 44:47Steven Bartlett?

  You ended up posting that post on your Instagram, which sent a ton of headlines around the world, saying that you were quitting music management.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  Twenty-three years?

• 44:56Steven Bartlett?

  After twenty-three years. There was a little bit of a question mark though, because I think you referenced in something you'd posted, that part of your inspiration or a catalyst was a particular artist had decided that they wanted to go their own way.

• 45:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:11Steven Bartlett?

  Who was that?

• 45:12Speaker 01

  I prefer not to say, like, there's a bunch of legal stuff around that and everything else, but she, she informed me and I respected the hell out of it, that she was, she felt that way. And, but I had had that conversation with others too. And, and.

• 45:30Speaker 01

  I mean, I wrote it all in 23 years. The reason I posted that at the time was I'd already made the decision a year prior, but I'd never talked about it. And, you know, when you're running a big company, there's all these, you know, legal things and we had to wait till everything was in order and then I could say it. And, um, and they were like, well, you've already been out of it for a year. Why say it now? And I just felt I need to say it for me, but I also need to say it so I hold myself accountable not to ever go back.

• 45:55Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  And I, you know, it was way too long. It was like 10 slides on Instagram.

• 46:00Steven Bartlett?

  No, it was incredible.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  But it was, I appreciate you saying that, but it was from the heart. And I remember waking up, posting it and then just like falling down because I was like, oh my God, like this thing I've been doing since I was 19 is now over. And what I wrote in there is the truth. My entire adult life, that's all I had known. So not being in that situation, I didn't know what a normal adult life was like. I didn't know you could have a weekend. Like, I didn't know, you know, like, that's what it was. I was on call all the time for 23 years and it wasn't one, it was a lot. And, um, finding out what a normal adult life was like was pretty wild to me and also really interesting, but I don't, I had some of the most incredible memories and I'm

• 46:47Speaker 01

  very grateful, but if you remember, do you remember the Barry Gordy quote at the end?

• 46:52Steven Bartlett?

  No, I don't.

• 46:53Speaker 01

  Barry Gordy is the founder of Motown Records. Barry Gordy is a kid from Detroit.

• 46:58Steven Bartlett?

  Michael Jackson's theater play, Barry Gordy.

• 47:01Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 47:01Steven Bartlett?

  Yes.

• 47:02Speaker 01

  So before Barry Gordy, black musicians would make incredible music and a white person can come along and just cover it and make it theirs. And Barry Gordy took that back and gave us Motown Records and changed the entire music industry. And I was at a dinner and Barry Gordy was placed next to me and I was just like freaking out, Barry Gordy's sitting next to me. And we start talking and this is years before. He said, I'm going to tell you a story and you're going to need it one day. And boy, was he right. And he said, you know, do you know what the Motown 25 was? And I said, absolutely. It was the first time Michael Jackson did the moonwalk, Diana Ross. And he's like, oh, you really are a Motown fan. I was like, yeah.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  And he said, well, do you know I didn't want to go? I said, what? He goes, yeah, I didn't want to go. At the time, Michael had left for CBS Records, Diana had left for CBS Records, and everyone was saying that I took their publishing. And I was like the bad guy for all these people that I had supported and lifted. And like, I was so angry. And I didn't want to go. I said, well, what changed? He goes, my family made me go. And I said, yeah, because I remember you were in the balcony and I kept cutting to you. And he goes, you know, the first, I get there and Diana Ross is hosting, Michael's going to perform, he's the biggest thing in the world. I'm mad. But as the night went on, I suddenly realized Little Barry from Detroit would have lost his mind knowing this was coming. He said, young man, it will never end the way you want it to,

• 48:28Speaker 01

  but it doesn't mean it didn't happen. And I didn't know how much I needed that in the years to come. You can plan it, you can try and control it as much as you want. But Barry Gordy was right. It will never end the way you want it unless you're Derek Jeter on the Yankees. Or, you know, you're messy. But most of us, it's not going to end the way we wanted. However, it happened. And how cool is that? Like, how cool is that? That like, we get to do this and get to have this life. And I thought, that's the way I wanted to end 23 years. Because me stopping managing and ending managing, and it didn't end the way I necessarily wanted. I would have wanted a giant concert where all the artists come out,

• 49:12Speaker 01

  we celebrate everything we did together. And ended pretty abruptly of like, oh, this is it. And some want to leave and some want to stay. And yeah, I'm done. I don't want to do this anymore. And some people understood it and other people didn't. But it happened. And no one could ever take that away.

• 49:30Steven Bartlett?

  Did you ever feel betrayed?

• 49:32Speaker 01

  Oh, of course. But I'm sure that goes both ways. Like, as much as I felt betrayed, like, music business can be heartbreaking. Management can be heartbreaking. If you watch David Geffen's documentary, he says, uh, management is like, move the mountain over here, and they say it was supposed to be there. You know, but like, but at the same time, it must be heartbreaking the other way. It's such an interdependent relationship, and it's such... I don't, I, you know, people always say, stay on your side of the street. I try to do that. It's easier for me to move on with my life and be happy by staying on my side of the street. So, yeah, I've definitely felt betrayed a hundred times. I've definitely felt misunderstood so many times. But I also try to give empathy of,

• 50:17Speaker 01

  if someone is doing this to me, they must be hurting for some reason, and maybe I did play a role in it, even if I don't know I did. You know, so... Do you feel betrayed? Yes, especially in a job of service.

• 50:32Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, but, yeah, you're right. We all do have a preconception of how, how the run will end.

• 50:38Speaker 01

  Man, we're all the protagonists in our own story.

• 50:46Steven Bartlett?

  Now that there's been some space between that decision.

• 50:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, two and a half years.

• 50:49Steven Bartlett?

  Two and a half years since that decision. Wow, two and a half years, wow. It feels like it was six months ago.

• 50:54Speaker 01

  Well, it was two and a half years for me.

• 50:56Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  It's been probably a year and a half since I probably posted that.

• 50:59Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, you've had some space since that decision. Correct decision?

• 51:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh, yeah.

• 51:03Steven Bartlett?

  Even high conviction now that it was the right thing?

• 51:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, and like I said, it happened. In hindsight, it was what it was supposed to be at the time it was supposed to be. I think the reason why I wrote 23 Years and why I quit, I wouldn't say I quit, when I retired and stopped doing that, when I moved on. How about that? When I moved on to something else, was because of what exactly I wrote. It was...

• 51:23Speaker 01

  I was too afraid to find out who I was without it for so long that I probably should have left earlier. But I finally got to a point where I realized either you do it now or something bad. You're gonna have to learn the hard way again. You know, so it was time and it was time for some of the most amazing artists that I worked with to also spread their wings and do their own thing.

• 51:46Steven Bartlett?

  I think B two B marketers keep making this mistake. They're chasing volume instead of quality. And when you try to be seen by more people instead of the right people, all you're doing is making noise. But that noise rarely shifts the needle and it's often quite expensive. And I know, as there was a time in my career where I kept making this mistake, that many of you will be making it too. Eventually, I started posting ads on our show sponsors platform, LinkedIn. And that's when things started to change. I put that change down to a few critical things. One of them being that LinkedIn was then and still is today, the platform where decision makers go to not only to think and learn, but also to buy. And when you market your business there, you're putting it right in front of people who actually have the power to say yes. And you can target them by job title, industry and company size.

• 52:32Steven Bartlett?

  It's simply a sharper way to spend your marketing budget. And if you haven't tried it, how about this? Give LinkedIn ads a try and I'm going to give you a hundred dollar ad credit to get you started. If you visit LinkedIn.com/diary, you can claim that right now. That's LinkedIn.com/diary.

• 52:50Steven Bartlett?

  You sold your company for 1.1 billion dollars. That's what I read.

• 52:54Steven Bartlett?

  You can't confirm or deny it, but.

• 52:55Speaker 01

  That's publicly traded, so I can confirm, but I don't like talking about.

• 52:59Steven Bartlett?

  You sold your company for 1.1 billion dollars, which I don't think people realize it's a fucking lot of money.

• 53:05Steven Bartlett?

  At 39 years old, roughly?

• 53:07Speaker 01

  I was about to turn 40.

• 53:09Steven Bartlett?

  You talk about laying on the beach.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:11Steven Bartlett?

  With your belly out.

• 53:14Steven Bartlett?

  I mean, with a significant amount of money in your bank account, without the same job that's sort of demanding your time seven days a week.

• 53:24Steven Bartlett?

  A lot of people are scared of that. Not the money, but the gap, the uncertainty, the space.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  Honestly, the timing of when it happened for me.

• 53:39Speaker 01

  I was in such a place, like I said, of surrender. That I really wasn't looking at it as like achievement or money or something like that. I more looked at it as, what are you gonna do now? Are you gonna try and control or are you gonna participate? Like I told you earlier. And I started to just be curious for the first time. Instead of, I love this idea of a competitive mind versus a curious and creative mind. A competitive mind is what I had and it's where I was of, there's always something finite when you're competitive. You know, it's going to finish. There's going to be an outcome and then what? But when you're operating from a curious and creative mind, there's no end. You can just continue to create, you can continue to build.

• 54:20Speaker 01

  And I want, I wanna be in that place in my life now of what, how big can I think? I saw this Jeff Bezos interview the other day and he just said, "One of the biggest curses of an entrepreneur is not thinking big enough." You know, and I think, you know, think big. You know, you only get one ride around this thing. Think big, have fun, love your friends, love your family, dance, laugh, cry, you know, do all the things and get to know yourself more and more every single day.

• 54:53Steven Bartlett?

  Just before that time, we have this whole Taylor Swift incident.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  What happened?

• 54:58Steven Bartlett?

  Is this the moment you're talking about where you received bad press?

• 55:04Speaker 01

  Oh, bad press, yeah, yeah. That was, when I bought Big Machine, I thought I was going to work with all the artists on Big Machine. I thought it was gonna be like an exciting thing. I knew that Taylor, she and I had only met three times, I think in my life, three or four times. And one of the times, it was years earlier, it was really a great engagement. She invited me to her private party and we respected each other, we had a great engagement. In between that time, since I'd seen her last, I started managing Kanye West, I managed Justin Bieber, I knew she didn't get along with them. I had a feeling, this is where my arrogance came in. I had a feeling she probably didn't like me because I managed them, but I thought that once this announcement happened, she would talk to me, see who I am, and we would work together.

• 55:50Speaker 01

  And the announcement came out and I'm calling Scott Borchetta and saying, hey, send me her number. I just talked to Thomas Rhett and he's excited and I just talked to, you know, this, you know, this person and they're excited and I'm calling, you know, Florida Georgia Line next and, oh, and then this Tumblr comes out and it says all this stuff and I was just like shocked. And it's been five, six years. I don't need to go back into it, but what I can tell you is everything in life is a gift. Having that experience allows me to have empathy for the people I worked with, who I would always say, yeah, I understand, but I never knew what it was like to be on the global stage like that. I never knew what criticism like that felt like. And like I told you, the biggest gift

• 56:35Speaker 01

  that I got from that was understanding that all the praise I had received up until that moment was not deserved. And all the hate I got after that moment was not deserved because none of these people knew me.

• 56:50Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 56:52Speaker 01

  She didn't know me. This person didn't know me. This person who met me three times, they didn't know me. I could show respect for all of them because I don't know them. So I can love them where they're at. But the gift of pain was awareness. And the other part was going through very, something very personal shortly after I was going through the divorce, my marriage and all these different things. And it just felt like one after another. But I look back at those didn't, these didn't happen. I really think they're all gifts because when, when something's fair, you don't respect it. When something happens to you that you feel is fair, you're just like, oh, I, I deserve that. You move on.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  You feel justified because you saw it coming. When something happens to you that feels deeply unfair and you can't fix it.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  Then you really gotta look at everything and realize the role you played in this, or maybe this, or that, or who do you want to be, or how to... So I'm grateful.

• 57:56Steven Bartlett?

  But how does one contend with an unfair world? And I use the word unfair as well because, you know, we've got investigative researchers here who looked through everything relating to that particular deal. And then we also looked at what's written on the internet. And there's this great disparity between what actually happened and what people say happened.

• 58:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:14Steven Bartlett?

  And there's actually, I think there's a documentary out there which goes into it in great detail, which Andrew Schultz was talking about on a podcast, which I saw. So I looked at that documentary as well.

• 58:22Speaker 01

  I mean, look, I'm grateful for a couple of things. One, my kids were really young when it happened, so they didn't feel it as much.

• 58:27Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 58:27Speaker 01

  It was very hard at the time. It was hard on marriage, it was hard on our family.

• 58:31Steven Bartlett?

  You were getting death threats.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I also don't know what was being said on the other side, you know, because I never got to have the conversation, you know? So I think when people aren't communicating and refusing to communicate, a lot of things can get misconstrued and you, you know, I don't want to hold any hatred or like, everyone moves on, you know? So, yes, I appreciate you saying that. I appreciate you actually doing the research. But for me, I choose to see it as a gift. I choose to see it as being able to have a perspective that very few people in the world have, of knowing what that's like, of feeling that on a global level.

• 59:12Steven Bartlett?

  Pain.

• 59:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. And also just...

• 59:14Steven Bartlett?

  What does that mean in reality?

• 59:16Speaker 01

  It just felt unfair. It felt like, but so much, but of course, of course it happened to me, right? Of course, because here I was, thinking my value was from all this praise, you know? And I'd, and everything was me making sure that I was living up to it. And then this happens and it's unfair and I can't control it. And of course, the universe was like screaming at me, like God's screaming at me like, hey, wake up, you're not in control. You can't navigate all of this. You don't get to decide what your legacy is and you, you just get to decide who you are on a daily basis and who you choose to see in yourself and how you treat the people that love you and the people you could actually interact with.

• 59:57Steven Bartlett?

  Surrender.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  But surrender and participate. You know, that's the big thing for me. It's more than just surrender. It's surrender and participate and just enjoy the ride. That's why I got the tattoo, you know? It was...

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  I can't worry about everyone's niece being mad at me. You know, like, you know, it's what I gotta do is is show up for my niece. You know, and I gotta show up for my friends and my family. And I wish everyone involved across the board, whether I know them or not, nothing but good wishes.

• 1:00:34Steven Bartlett?

  When I say specifically that pain, people don't like, think about how many people on earth have experienced such a thing. And if you if I could be a fly on the wall that is actually just has CCTV for eyes. And I was watching you at that moment in time, just for seven days I got to watch Scooter. What would I have seen?

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  Like I said, at that point, I hadn't really done the work.

• 1:00:56Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so resistance.

• 1:00:58Speaker 01

  Resistance, trying to navigate it, trying to understand it, trying to um figure out how to fix it. And then I couldn't, but then I did financially. Like, I couldn't fix the relationship that I didn't have. But then I was able to figure out, okay, you know what?

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  We will sell it. You know, in a in a world of streaming, re-records will only help the old catalog as much as they help the new catalog. Both will get a bump. I presented that I showed, you know, how everyone can be a winner here. And I was able to sell the catalog and I don't want to go into too much detail, but I but I offered it. It's that now come out very factually that I did offer it. There's evidence of that multiple times in that process. They said, no, I sold it to someone else and I washed my hands of it and moved on.

• 1:01:49Speaker 01

  And I actually sometimes look back at that and I go, the universe was trying to teach me something. And I navigated out of it. I found a way out.

• 1:01:58Speaker 01

  So then the universe went, oh, man, we tried to try to give you a warning sign. We try to like, you're you're sailing by on the Titanic and we're waving like iceberg. And then the universe said, okay, you really didn't pay attention and you still aren't doing the work. Marriage.

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  Because that one got me. That one got me to pay attention. Losing my kids 50% of the time. That one changed everything. And

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  the world that still couldn't move me. I was still able to figure out the chessboard. But my kids and my marriage.

• 1:02:38Speaker 01

  That one rocked me and woke me up. What's really crazy is when I told you I did this Hoffman process, I won't tell you the process because you're not supposed to, but I can tell you at the end of the week.

• 1:02:50Steven Bartlett?

  Can you give it context for anyone that doesn't know the?

• 1:02:52Speaker 01

  The Hoffman process is this one week, no phone, no email. Intense work on your early childhood to understand why you are the way you are and give you tools to go out in the world and understand yourself. The reason I went, October of 2020, my marriage was falling apart. The whole world thought I was crushing it. Ariana's crushing it, this, Justin's, all these people were on fire. And I had a suicidal thought for 20 minutes, where I was like, if my marriage is going to fall apart, I'm not going to be with my kids all the time. I can't control this. I'm not going to be this perfect image that I presented to the world. And if I can't be this perfect image, I don't want to be here.

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  And it went to a very dark place. And after 20 minutes, I said, what the hell was that? That's not me. I would never leave my kids. I don't want to leave anybody. Like, what was that? And the next morning, I was on the set of a video shoot. And a friend of mine called and he said, you know, what's going on with you? And I told him. I told him about that night before. He called me back with another friend and they said, you need to go to Hoffman. We did it. It changed our life. They told me that they could get me in in two weeks because there was a cancellation. October 24th. And that was the release of Ariana Grande's Dangerous Woman album. It was the busiest week of the year for me in work. And I started laughing in the parking lot of this video shoot. And she goes, do you want us to pick another week? I said, no.

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  I said, I've spent my whole life pursuing these things, doing this, choosing this, choosing Scooter, choosing that life, choosing the clients. And I'm the top of my game, yet I wanted to kill myself last night. Something's got to change. And I chose to go to that place instead. And the hard stuff actually came after I got out of Hoffman. You know, I ended up going through a divorce. I ended up going through all this different stuff. But I never was depressed again. And the most interesting thing that happened on the other side of it is, six years ago, I was biggest manager and the perfect marriage and, you know, everything I touched turned to gold and there was no negative press about me ever.

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  Six years later, I'm divorced. I don't manage anymore. I've had negative press and I couldn't be happier. It doesn't mean it doesn't ebb and flow. But I get to be the dad I've always wanted to be and the friend I've always wanted to be. And it doesn't mean that things aren't going to go, you know, be hard and I'm going to say, suffer more things and go through them. But I'm in a place that I understand amor fati. It's like everything is a gift and I'm being super long-winded, but that's the story.

• 1:05:35Steven Bartlett?

  That phone call the day after that to your friends?

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:40Steven Bartlett?

  Did you tell him the truth on the phone? The full truth?

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did.

• 1:05:43Steven Bartlett?

  And what was that full truth?

• 1:05:45Speaker 01

  That I had the night before thought about, you know, just shutting it all off. It wasn't even the idea that I wanted to die. I just wanted the noise in my head to go away. I wanted the failure, the disappointment, the fear. I was going to fail in my mind. I couldn't control it. I'd always been able to navigate out of failure and head towards success. A pit stop. But I had left, what I found at Hoffman, I told you is my name, the inner child, the Scott. I had built this mask so big. I wanted to feel like me again. And I didn't realize how far away I'd gotten from that. Building up this armor, building up the mask, you know. I want to tell you something funny. I usually don't say names in these things, but I want to give him credit because I think it's hilarious.

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  Michael Rapinoe is the CEO of Live Nation. He's an amazing guy. I think he's one of the most impressive people in the entire entertainment industry. Because he wields so much power, but he also empowers other people so well. And after the divorce, after, you know, the big machine and stuff that happened with that, all these different things. And you know what Michael told me? He goes, I like you a lot more now because you seem human.

• 1:06:58Speaker 01

  You know, and he told me, he was like before, he's like, nobody goes like, it's like this. He's like, you know, I just didn't, he goes, he goes, I didn't think you were real. I thought you were full of shit. And he was right. I mean, I didn't know myself because I had no reason to do so. And it wasn't until I had some real hardships and real pain and real scares and real rock bottom moments that I started looking at myself and started figuring out who I was. And then everyone got to know me. My best friends since I was 11 years old, they're the people I hang out with the most. Two of them live out here, Mike and Vuuk. And I hang out with them all the time. And people who know me, they know these guys because they've been my friends since we were 12 years old, 11 years old.

• 1:07:42Speaker 01

  And Mike and Vuuk told me at 40 years old, when I was doing this work, we've known you since you were 11, and this is the most we've ever known you. And I'm not surprised or insulted because they say you haven't changed, but we didn't know you. Because I was always, even to them, presenting what I thought they needed me to be, perfect. And then I broke. And then I said, this happened, and this happened. When I was a kid, this was going on, and this was. And they were like, we love you. And I really became one of the boys for the first time in my life. I became one of the boys because the boys became vulnerable. I thought it was the opposite my whole life.

• 1:08:26Speaker 01

  I thought you had to be cool, you had to be tough to be one of the boys. And it was funny because they didn't, all the achievements, not only did they not give a shit about, I probably lost touch with them more so. And when everything fell apart, they were the ones that were there, the ones who knew Scott, the ones who didn't care about any of it. And I've never really even said that out loud to this extent until right now. And I'm actually glad I get to say on here both their names. Because they... Damn.

• 1:09:01Speaker 01

  They picked me up in a really, really tough time. And a time when I couldn't even look at my own brothers because I was too ashamed. And um.

• 1:09:12Speaker 01

  And I never felt like one of the guys, like I felt like I had those friends, but I just couldn't let them all the way in because I felt, well, maybe I'm smarter. Maybe I'm this, maybe I need to be perfect. And it wasn't till.

• 1:09:25Speaker 01

  I really hit rock bottom that I realized that they always had my back and I made all these stupid ideas in my head and. They were. They were there and they weren't there for Scooter. You know, they were there for Scott and I see you getting a little emotional too. Because you probably have the same type of friends. So I'll, I did it so you can do it too. What are their names?

• 1:09:49Steven Bartlett?

  Michael, Ash, Dom, Anthony and Oliver. But they are, they're the constant, they're the, they're through everything, the up, the down, the up, the down, the up, the down again.

• 1:10:03Speaker 01

  And they don't give a crap about any of this. In fact, if your friends are like mine, they're brutal about this stuff. My friends ripped me like if people saw the text messages between us, they would think we hate each other. But we love each other deeply and, and the best part about the messages is the random, hey, guys, I love you. You know, it happens all the time. I get a phone call, I'll pick up, I'll just see Paul, hey, brother, I love you, just want to call and tell you. I'm really grateful, like I have so many different people I can name. And what was really interesting is. Before all this happened, I don't know if you can relate to this, but. I spent so much time.

• 1:10:47Speaker 01

  Trying to impress people who didn't want to love me.

• 1:10:53Speaker 01

  Instead of realizing how many people already did.

• 1:10:58Steven Bartlett?

  I was just thinking, what a great shame it is that the amount of units of energy we exert on, as you said, like the external, like the audience. Whereas when you ask me, who would be there for me irrespective of what was going on in my life, I can name them. And then I ask myself, how much energy and effort am I putting into these relationships? And I'm embarrassed about how much energy and effort I'm paying into these relationships. I'm like embarrassed by it.

• 1:11:19Speaker 01

  They wouldn't care, but they'll still be there.

• 1:11:23Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, they don't care, yeah.

• 1:11:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's the best part, because when you do start putting your energy, it becomes even more fun.

• 1:11:32Steven Bartlett?

  It's really, it's really, um, it's really difficult for me to understand, and this is my naivety, the part that's difficult for me to understand is, you, family meant so much to you. Didn't you, didn't you have a tattoo that says family?

• 1:11:44Speaker 01

  First one, when I was eighteen.

• 1:11:46Steven Bartlett?

  You got a tattoo at eighteen about your future family?

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:11:50Steven Bartlett?

  So family has been this, like, dream and ambition of yours.

• 1:11:53Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:11:55Steven Bartlett?

  So it's surprising to me, as someone who was naive in this context, that some, it had to be threatened for you to care enough to...

• 1:12:03Speaker 01

  You know, I cared, I just, childhood trauma is a hell of a thing, man. It's, um, and we all have it. That was the thing. The reason I didn't think I had it is because I had friends who, you know, had parents who were alcoholics, I had friends who had parents who this. So I always thought, you know, both my parents are here, they love me, like, the stuff I dealt with, that's not real. You know, I come from an immigrant family, like, we can deal with this. Like, we're strong, you know, that's not real. And what I realized is, everyone has trauma, that's the human experience. And the faster we value our own trauma, and stop trying to downplay it because we don't think it equals someone else's, the more we can work on ourselves. Because all you get to do is work on yourself. You don't get to work on the other person.

• 1:12:48Speaker 01

  Like, you can really only work on yourself. You can help the other person, but the work, that's only here. And I think that I saw my life is perfect, so why change anything?

• 1:13:03Speaker 01

  And that's why you're smiling.

• 1:13:05Steven Bartlett?

  So stop calling me out.

• 1:13:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're smiling.

• 1:13:07Steven Bartlett?

  It's so true.

• 1:13:08Speaker 01

  Because you see your life is perfect.

• 1:13:09Steven Bartlett?

  I think everything's going fine.

• 1:13:11Speaker 01

  She's screaming at you and trying to, and you can't see it.

• 1:13:13Steven Bartlett?

  She's not screaming just yet. She is.

• 1:13:16Speaker 01

  In her own way.

• 1:13:17Steven Bartlett?

  Increasingly expressing to me, and yeah, in her own way, that there is an issue. And I, I'm going to be completely honest, because this is why I started this podcast, was the diary of a CEO. So this is what would be written in my diary.

• 1:13:31Steven Bartlett?

  The alarm is getting louder. And I'm still in a, a state where I think I've got a lot of time before the alarm is so loud that I can't fix it.

• 1:13:40Speaker 01

  I got you. I see you, buddy. Trust me, I see. And here's the funny thing. I don't want to go into details. I have a lot of respect. We're family forever.

• 1:13:49Speaker 01

  It goes both ways. It's not like there was one thing happening. Both people have to play a role in where we got to. You know, things happen on, you know, both ways. However, Chris Rock says something really special. He goes, relationships are actually quite easy. You know, you ever try to pick up a couch with two people? No problem. Pick up a couch by yourself. And that was the thing. We, we both went to pick up the couch at different times. And we were made to be amazing co-parents. We were made to come into each other's lives to help each other be better in different ways through the heartbreak of our relationship ending. And we were, we were brought together to make three incredible souls.

• 1:14:32Speaker 01

  And now whoever gets me next is in for a treat.

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  Cause I'm a better version than I was before.

• 1:14:41Steven Bartlett?

  And in hindsight, what are those warning signs for someone like me who might be?

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  The choices that you make that you justify. Oh, I gotta do this because, you know, if I don't do this one, it could all fall apart. No, it isn't. You know, if I don't, if I don't stop everything I'm doing and choose this, it could all fall apart. Or, yeah, okay, you're saying this to me, but you don't really mean it because you don't understand what I'm going through because I'm in this grind. I'm in this hunt that you, no one can understand because only I can achieve this. You're smiling because you live.

• 1:15:16Speaker 01

  Can I ask you some questions?

• 1:15:16Steven Bartlett?

  Sure.

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  How long you guys been together?

• 1:15:21Steven Bartlett?

  Uh, six years now.

• 1:15:24Speaker 01

  And why are you smiling so big? Because how many times have you made those choices?

• 1:15:27Steven Bartlett?

  Because I know I just justify bullshit. And there's always gonna, I know logically, there's always gonna be something else. There's always, there's never gonna be a perfect time. So I know logically that I have to pick imperfect moments.

• 1:15:38Speaker 01

  And do you guys want kids?

• 1:15:40Steven Bartlett?

  Yes.

• 1:15:41Speaker 01

  Do you use that as an excuse? Well, the kids aren't here yet, so I need to grind now.

• 1:15:49Steven Bartlett?

  I've, I've, I've certainly thought it as a way to justify to myself, to self rationalize. I don't think I've ever said that to her, but I have said to her.

• 1:15:57Speaker 01

  I've said internally.

• 1:15:58Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I've said it to myself internally. I've said to myself, like, this season of life, up until I'm 35, I'm gonna go for it. And then at 35, I'm gonna shut.

• 1:16:05Speaker 01

  And then, you know, she's looking at you thinking, I wanna be able to trust you to have children.

• 1:16:10Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:11Speaker 01

  Listen, a long time ago, someone really smart ran this little exercise with me. And I wish I would have paid better attention to it, other than just thinking it was a cool saying to, like, use in the office. He said, if I told you someone you loved was sick, and you had a billion dollars, how much of it would you spend to save them?

• 1:16:36Steven Bartlett?

  A billion dollars, yeah.

• 1:16:37Speaker 01

  Correct. And he says, is your loved one, is she healthy? Does she love you? Is she here with you right now? Everything you're working to achieve, with that perspective, you already have it.

• 1:16:51Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:52Speaker 01

  And they said it to me, and it sounds great. And I'm seeing it on your face. You're a smart guy. It's logical. You're like, yeah, I get it. And then you're gonna go repeat the same stuff, because that's what we do. And what I realized when I went and did this work was, it's not gonna change between you and her, or me and my ex. You know, that wasn't what it was about. It was actually something deeper, deeper underlying, that had nothing to do with the current relationship. It had to do with that lie, that I'm not enough, that this person actually doesn't really love me unless I do this.

• 1:17:24Steven Bartlett?

  Were you happy before the marriage fell apart?

• 1:17:27Speaker 01

  I think so, but I also didn't know who I was. I think I was happy because everyone in the world told me I was doing great. And I thought that that was enough. And I feel like, looking back now, I feel like I was asleep at the wheel. I feel like I didn't know myself at the time. And but I had so much success at such a young age. So everyone was telling me I was doing great. So I just chose to believe them. And it wasn't until I, you know, the foundation broke and there was nothing underneath it. That I was like, oh shit, I'm actually not happy. And I never knew. And it's like, I wouldn't go back to that before all the crap. In a million years, I want to stay here. Because now I'm like, I'm awake.

• 1:18:08Steven Bartlett?

  What is the practical advice you would give me? Because you can identify where I'm at in your own story. So what is the practical advice you'd give me now? To avoid myself getting to a situation where one day I have regrets. Because I didn't listen to the alarm.

• 1:18:24Speaker 01

  Couple of things. Number one, turn the cameras off and go do some self work. Stop being nudged, just go do it. Stop being, with all due respect, a pussy.

• 1:18:32Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, I appreciate it.

• 1:18:33Speaker 01

  And.

• 1:18:35Steven Bartlett?

  Just not my group chat.

• 1:18:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's just, there's no good time in the future. There's no when I get to thirty five, when I get to thirty six, or I get to forty. There's when I achieve this. Go do it. One to two weeks out of the year will not kill you. It will only make you stronger. Because what you're dealing with, with what you're telling me, has nothing to do with the two of you. It has more to do with your stuff. And she has to go do her stuff. You have to see if she wants to go do the same thing. And and work on herself in the same way. Because it's a constant thing. The second thing is, go on vacations together. And when the kids come, go on vacation. That's something I think we we forgot to do. We did the vacations with the kids, we did the vacations with friends. But we didn't do vacations together because we were so, we had three kids in five years. And I think, you know, that's something I think about.

• 1:19:21Speaker 01

  But then also just trust that like, if it's supposed to be, it's supposed to be. My journey was supposed to be exactly the way it was. Even the when I found out things and she found out like.

• 1:19:34Speaker 01

  About ourselves, it was exactly when we were supposed to find out. So I just, I'm a firm believer, you know, you're here to learn exactly what you're supposed to learn. Have you read Many Lives, Many Masters? No. By Brian Weiss? No. Easy, quick read on a weekend, you'll enjoy the hell of it. Brian Weiss was the head of psychology at University of Miami. And he was recommended a nurse from the hospital. Would he see her? And he saw her and she had deep trauma and couldn't figure it out. So he goes, we're going to do hypnotic regression. She does hypnotic regression. She goes into something from like age zero to six that she couldn't remember. Very traumatizing. He's like, oh, this will make a difference. She comes back the next week. It's even worse. That makes no sense to him. He does hypnotic regression again and she goes into a past life. He calls bullshit.

• 1:20:19Speaker 01

  He does another hypnotic regression. She goes into another past life and he realizes her educational background could not know the things that she's saying that he's looking up. So what happens is he just writes a book about this patient and how she changed his entire practice. And what was really interesting about it is it made me look at death differently and life differently. We're here to learn. And then if we don't figure it out, we leave and we come back again. And if we learn that one, we come back and it's transitions and, but it's never, it's not ending. It's all about coming here to learn. But I feel like I have so much to learn and at least I know that. And I'm such a mess and I'm figuring it out every single day, that if Brian Weiss's book is right, I'm not going anywhere for a while.

• 1:21:04Speaker 01

  But it's a really amazing way to look. And what was interesting is when I told, my mom had read it. When I told my dad, he actually goes, well, you know, we're Jews. We don't believe in reincarnation. And when I started studying Kabbalah, I realized that actually Kabbalah teaches reincarnation almost the exact same way this woman was describing it, which means Judeo Christians. Actually believe in reincarnation, but many of us don't know it.

• 1:21:28Speaker 01

  And it was just a really interesting way of looking at life.

• 1:21:31Steven Bartlett?

  Do you believe in reincarnation?

• 1:21:32Speaker 01

  I do.

• 1:21:32Steven Bartlett?

  You do?

• 1:21:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do, especially reading this book and then studying Kabbalah. And I started studying Kabbalah about a year ago.

• 1:21:40Speaker 01

  I like some of the principles I've learned from Kabbalah about this idea of being a custodian. That nothing is actually ours, but we're custodians. You know, that God, Hashem is what they say in Kabbalah. But this idea that we're supposed to give 10% to charity, but no more than 20. You know, because the belief is if God is giving you this, he's asking you to hold on to it because he has a purpose for you. But if he chooses to take it away, you should be just as joyful. Because it was never yours in the first place, you are a custodian. And I think that's a really great way of looking at materials, looking at life and understanding. Like I said, participating and I'm getting to play in this game.

• 1:22:23Steven Bartlett?

  But you have your moments, right?

• 1:22:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:26Steven Bartlett?

  Still today, because you're someone that's done so much work. So it's interesting speaking to you because you're someone that I would seek advice on in everything in my life. But you still have work left to do. You said there, I still have things left to learn.

• 1:22:40Speaker 01

  Well, I think I have a lot of things left to learn. I find myself sometimes needing to defend myself, sometimes not defending myself when I should. I feel like sometimes I feel misunderstood or not loved and I have, you know, had that moment. And then even on the other side, there's times where you feel like, oh, you're doing all this work. And people see you as someone who's done the work. And then you don't want to be seen as someone who's failing at that work. And the truth is, that's all part of the process. It's like a constant surrender to your, your human experience. The work for me is, life is going to throw the things you need at you. So like I said, tomorrow, something could happen that, you know, I'm being ridiculed again and I'm having to learn again.

• 1:23:22Speaker 01

  You know, or a praise could come and I'm having to learn how to handle that. Like, I don't know what tomorrow is going to bring. It's always a new experiment. But it's almost as if like, when you're doing this work, people call it, it's as you're swimming in the waves. And now you have the skills to get through the wave. The waves still come, but you're just going through them differently.

• 1:23:42Steven Bartlett?

  Do you wish they wouldn't come?

• 1:23:43Speaker 01

  Hell, no, that's life. You know, I, I asked.

• 1:23:49Speaker 01

  You said I had a company, Ithaca.

• 1:23:52Speaker 01

  Do you know where it comes from?

• 1:23:53Steven Bartlett?

  No.

• 1:23:54Speaker 01

  So, some people think, they're like, "Oh, Ithaca, New York." No. It comes from a poem by Kafafi. I asked David Geffen, years ago, with his extraordinary life and career, when did he feel like it was enough?

• 1:24:13Speaker 01

  I was 30 years old when I met him, and I asked him that question the first meal we ever had. And he looked at me and he said, "That's not how life works. It goes up and down the sat." And he goes, "I want you to read a poem." And he gives me Ithaca by Kafafi. And I named my holding company. I had SB Projects, but then when I did the holding company and started doing other things too, I named it after this poem because I was so moved by it. And the concept of the poem of Ithaca is you're on the way to the island of Ithaca in the Greek Islands. And along the way, you're going to see so many different things. And you're going to meet scholars and you're going to learn wisdom and all these different things. And when you find Ithaca finally, if you find her poor, she did not fool you. Because it was never about the destination. Always about the journey.

• 1:24:58Speaker 01

  And I think right now, if I get to this end game with you, like, that's no fun, then it's over. So like, keep the waves coming.

• 1:25:08Steven Bartlett?

  I made the biggest investment I've ever made in a company because of my girlfriend. I came home one night and my lovely girlfriend was up at 1 a.m. in the morning pulling her hair out as she tried to piece together her own online store for her business. And in that moment, I remembered an email I'd had from a guy called John, the founder of Stan Store, our new sponsor and a company I've invested incredibly heavily in. And Stan Store helps creators to sell digital products, courses, coaching and memberships all through a simple customizable link-in-bio system. And it handles everything: payments, bookings, emails, community engagement, and even links with Shopify. And I believe in it so much that I'm going to launch a Stan challenge. And as part of this challenge,

• 1:25:53Steven Bartlett?

  I'm going to give away $100,000 to one of you. If you want to take part in this challenge, if you want to monetize the knowledge that you have, visit stevenbartlett.stan.store to sign up. And you'll also get an extended 30-day free trial of Stan Store if you use that link. Your next move could quite frankly change everything. I told Daniel Ek that I was interviewing you a couple of months ago. And he sat me down in his LA office and was like, I've got to tell you a story about that Scooter Braun guy. I've got to tell you something. He said that when he made the Forbes under thirty list, when he was a young man in, I think Stockholm, Sweden, he said he randomly got a phone call out of the blue from you and you had decided to call everybody on the Forbes thirty under thirty list.

• 1:26:38Speaker 01

  Billboard.

• 1:26:39Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, the Billboard.

• 1:26:40Speaker 01

  It was Billboard thirty under thirty.

• 1:26:41Steven Bartlett?

  I thought it was Forbes. And you decided to call every single person on the list just to introduce yourself?

• 1:26:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:47Steven Bartlett?

  When I heard that, I thought, fucking wow.

• 1:26:51Speaker 01

  You don't want to know why?

• 1:26:52Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 1:26:53Speaker 01

  Because every single time I met someone very accomplished and successful and they wanted to help me, they'd say, well, who are you trying to reach? And they'd say, oh, my gosh, I've known them for 20 years, 30 years. And they would pick up the phone call and their power was in relationship that was expansive and, and long, and they knew each other from the beginning, not that they had met some powerful club at the end. And what I realized was the real power is in community. And I wanted to know my peers. I wanted to grow with them, that we didn't need to go and find someone who already had it. We needed to support each other.

• 1:27:35Steven Bartlett?

  How old were you when you did that?

• 1:27:36Speaker 01

  Twenty seven.

• 1:27:37Steven Bartlett?

  So you were 27 and you called everybody on that list?

• 1:27:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:43Steven Bartlett?

  Such a cool thing to do. So many people are now going to go do that. But it's such a cool thing to do.

• 1:27:48Speaker 01

  By the way, I am an early investor in Spotify because of that phone call. He was just, I'm sure he told you this, he was just a company in Sweden.

• 1:27:57Steven Bartlett?

  He didn't tell me this part.

• 1:27:58Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. He was just, when I called him, he was, you know, they were talking about this new thing Spotify, but it was in Sweden. And we met and I tried to get in right away after we met because I was like, what is this? And he didn't let me in at first. And then, you know, I went and met Shaq.

• 1:28:14Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, Shaq. Good friend of mine.

• 1:28:16Speaker 01

  I met Shaq in London. We walked around and then DA Wallach was like advising them. And I ended up getting to be a significant, you know, investor at that point in my life in this, you know, new young company Spotify. And I have not sold a share in probably 18 years.

• 1:28:32Steven Bartlett?

  You haven't sold a share?

• 1:28:34Speaker 01

  No, I'm a firm believer in that company and I'm a firm believer in Daniel. And I, and I think, listen, I hear all the time where people are like, oh, look, you know, this is so unfair. Daniel Ek, with his bravery and his foresight, saved the music industry. He gave value to our industry again. He found a way to make us go from going in one direction to the most successful we've ever been. And I don't think people realize that and give him enough credit for what he did.

• 1:29:05Steven Bartlett?

  People don't understand the machine. They just think, well, record sales went away and now we've got this streaming fee and it's lower. So what is the context we're missing there? What did he, what did that company do?

• 1:29:16Speaker 01

  It gave value to our business. It gave, you know, multiples on publishing and masters that we had never seen before because now everyone's music can be heard and heard for a long time. You know, at the time Daniel came along, all I would hear going in the music business is, man, you missed the eighties and nineties. Sorry, kid. You know, this business is going down. You know, and Daniel with streaming made it so that, you know, these, these major labels and these independent companies and, you know, these artists are able to do things they've never been able to do before. One, on bringing that amount of revenue to our business, but two, also bringing our global community together. And, uh, and that was Daniel's foresight and his vision.

• 1:30:00Speaker 01

  And his, uh, I mean, he didn't have any relationships. He didn't know the major labels.

• 1:30:06Steven Bartlett?

  Crazy, isn't it?

• 1:30:06Speaker 01

  You know, he, he, he saved the music industry. And I think now that, you know, he's the biggest thing in the music industry, it's easy to point at him as like the big bad, oh. And yes, he's always trying to innovate and change, but he has brought more money back into our industry than we ever thought would be there. And, um, and I'm grateful to him. And I think he, he saved a lot of careers.

• 1:30:30Steven Bartlett?

  I also would like to add a couple of words to that, just to say what an unbelievably humble, smart, kind human being he is. It's an impossible story for it to do what he did out of Stockholm as well, not Silicon Valley, and for it to be the dominant platform and still to be the best platform, even as a podcast, that's my favorite platform by far. And they've just decided in the last two to three months, which is actually why I was over at Spotify's office to meet him, that they're gonna start paying podcasters revenue that we've never been paid before. They're gonna cut us in on the Spotify membership fee, which means that, again, it's gonna fuel this whole industry. Apple aren't paying us anything, but Spotify have decided to pay podcasters who upload on video, which is gonna mean that people can quit their jobs and focus on this.

• 1:31:13Speaker 01

  Daniel's a very innovative guy, and I remember him as the kid I called on that list and who, when he came to the United States a couple of weeks later, played me in ping pong eight times, you know, and that's how we became friends. And he's incredibly humble, incredibly smart, incredibly hardworking, and he has changed a lot of people's lives.

• 1:31:38Steven Bartlett?

  What's next for you, Scooter? Shall I call you Scott or Scooter?

• 1:31:41Speaker 01

  Either one, I'm proud of both now.

• 1:31:43Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, I'm gonna call you Scott.

• 1:31:44Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:31:45Steven Bartlett?

  What's, what is next in, if we sit here in 10 years' time? Do you have any idea what that chapter looked like? Or do you have any idea what would have had to have happened for you to consider it a success?

• 1:31:58Speaker 01

  The only thing I wanna make sure is that, you know, I stay, I wanna be the father to my children, right, that I, that I wanna be, that I continue, that that's the thing, like, that's the one consistent thing. I wanna make sure that I put them first, that they are my priority, because I get them until they're 18 and then, you know, they're gonna be like, Dad, we're out.

• 1:32:15Steven Bartlett?

  Yes.

• 1:32:16Speaker 01

  And I'm still gonna, obviously, look forward to the next chapter, but I got 10 years of that. I think something I'm excited about in the next chapter is like, what does love look like? What does relationship look like? And then I'm excited to be a rookie again and try new things and get into industries, because I said to you before we started taping. You know, you asked me about AI. And I said, I feel like we're in the beginning of industrial revolution and a Cold War at the same time. But there's just so much opportunity because things are shifting and things are moving and we're becoming a more productive society. Because like you, I've gotten to see some of the things that are coming on the technology side and it's mind blowing what's coming.

• 1:32:58Speaker 01

  And it's mind blowing what's already happening that people, a lot of people don't even realize. And the innovation is going to get faster and faster and faster. And I think the one thing that will never go away is humans want for taste, for human error, for experiences. If anything during COVID, we saw national parks explode. People had time for experiences. I think AI is going to make us more productive. We're going to have more time for experiences. And I'm excited for that and I'm excited for what that world looks like. And I think there will always be growing pains when there's change. But on the other side, societies have always been measured by productivity, not by wealth. How productive is that society? We're about to be the most productive society we've ever been.

• 1:33:41Steven Bartlett?

  It's quite, it is quite scary, but it's also extremely exciting. And I think, I think both responses are quite natural. I think excitement's often present where fear is. And I, the choice that I'm personally just making is to lean in and to mess around and to learn.

• 1:33:56Speaker 01

  When we spoke earlier, you were telling me that you'll stay up all night long, like learning how to code with AI. And you're trying to understand all the AI tools that are in front of us. You can kind of be first because you feel like, you know, you weren't at the right place in the dot com boom. And you want to make sure that you're in there. Can I ask you what you consider success? Is it, you don't want to miss out? Like what, what is the success? Why do you feel like you want to not miss out? What do you want to be first to? If you, if you achieve something on the other side because you actually master AI and you are one of the first? What are you hoping happens?

• 1:34:31Steven Bartlett?

  So I think I'm trying, I'm running from a fear and the fear is.

• 1:34:37Steven Bartlett?

  I'm thirty two now and I've I've been playing at the frontier my whole life. So like my first business was in social media. I rode that wave into shore. It changed my life. I was relevant. It made me feel great. I built on on that frontier as the wave came into shore. Then the blockchain came around, started a company called Third Web, valued one hundred and sixty million dollars. Amazing, I was on the frontier. Then this AI thing comes along and it feels like the wave is coming in and I'm I've got a surfboard and I've got to decide whether I want to take this wave or not. And if I I feel like if I miss the wave, if I'm not involved, if I'm not building there, then it's quite existential. It's like, then I don't know what can happen and I don't like that. I don't like the unknown.

• 1:35:21Steven Bartlett?

  And it goes back to many things we talked about, but I.

• 1:35:23Speaker 01

  You ever swim in the ocean?

• 1:35:25Steven Bartlett?

  Yes, I'm not the best swimmer in the world.

• 1:35:28Speaker 01

  I'm saying, but you'll go in the ocean?

• 1:35:29Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:30Speaker 01

  Not just on the beach, will you go out in the ocean and get in the water?

• 1:35:33Steven Bartlett?

  If I have my floating vest on, because I can't I can't swim.

• 1:35:36Speaker 01

  Which is interesting, though, you'll get in, though.

• 1:35:38Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, a hundred percent. I have a top I wear to go in.

• 1:35:41Speaker 01

  No, I understand that, but I I find that interesting only because the ocean is a place where you have absolutely no control.

• 1:35:48Speaker 01

  You know, it's the ocean can do what we want. You don't know what's in there. You know, a lot of people like I see when they want control. I realized there were years that I kind of just didn't swim in the ocean.

• 1:35:58Speaker 01

  I swim on the beach, but I didn't really want to go into the ocean because I didn't have control out there. You know, I didn't know what was in there. I didn't know what could get me. I didn't like, I couldn't see it coming. I couldn't control the outcome. And you talk a lot about this, like the need for control that makes you feel uncomfortable. But you are also a very big risk taker. I mean, you're thirty two years old, you've achieved all this, you're pushing yourself to find out more, you're defying all the odds. You got the kid from home who's still talking crap because, you know, look at everything, what you're doing. And and I I guess I'm I'm intrigued because, one, you don't give yourself the credit of how much you go into the unknown. It's almost like you do it out of fear and necessity. But I'm really pushing you on like, what does success look like for you?

• 1:36:44Speaker 01

  Because you're on the surfboard, you keep surfing. I'm trying to figure out like, where where is, what is success to you? Is it?

• 1:36:51Speaker 01

  You're ninety years old and you're looking back at your life. What are the things that you could not live without? You'd be disappointed if they weren't there.

• 1:37:01Steven Bartlett?

  I imagine it's gonna be my kids. I imagine it's gonna be my relationship with my partner. I think that's the going back to. This sounds like a crazy thing to say, but if there was a button on the table and I had to press it to kill myself or my partner, I'd press it to kill myself. And that was a really clarifying thought for me because I was like, I'd literally take my, I'd give my life to save this person, this other human being. My nieces, my brother, um, my fam, my fam, my, my family.

• 1:37:29Speaker 01

  I'm confused because you haven't named all the achievements of AI. You haven't named, you know, all the things that you think you need to do.

• 1:37:38Steven Bartlett?

  You know, the, um, Ithaca.

• 1:37:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:41Steven Bartlett?

  Part of what I think makes the journey exciting is being like slightly terrified and having something that consumes you. And that challenges you and that scares you a little bit and, and building and experimenting and leaning in. Like when I was a kid in my bedroom, I'd turn my bunk bed into a business. It'd be a salon one week and then the next week I'd be dismantling my brother's radio and trying to sell the parts and like. So I've always been extremely curious, extremely experimental. I've always tried to build things. So I think that's my fun, but I also, I, these days, the more I've done this podcast, the more I've learnt to like question myself. Question what I'm saying.

• 1:38:18Speaker 01

  Listen, I think you're an incredibly intriguing guy. That's why I wanted to meet you. And I love how much you push yourself and you question things. But I find it very interesting that when I asked you about your nineties and when you look back. You name things that are very attainable to you because you found someone that loves you and you love them.

• 1:38:37Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:38Speaker 01

  And then when we're talking throughout this entire conversation.

• 1:38:43Speaker 01

  It seems that when you actually open about your personal life, you spend a lot of your time avoiding that thing and focusing on all these others that make you feel worthy to experience that thing. And I guess like what I'm just trying to say to you for as a smarter guy as you are, this is coming from someone who literally suffered from the same thing.

• 1:39:07Speaker 01

  The thing that you want the most at 90, you got.

• 1:39:12Steven Bartlett?

  It's true.

• 1:39:13Speaker 01

  The building in your room and the building with AI should be just fun.

• 1:39:19Speaker 01

  It shouldn't be terrifying anymore. It should be fun because the terrifying thing is turning 90 and not having the thing you really want.

• 1:39:27Speaker 01

  That's when I woke up.

• 1:39:30Speaker 01

  And.

• 1:39:32Steven Bartlett?

  So what does that mean for me? And what, for anyone that can resonate with that, what does that mean that they should do? I know you said like turn off the cameras and, but can you do both?

• 1:39:41Speaker 01

  I don't know. I think everyone's journey is different. I think everyone experiences things in a different way. Some people are able to, like you talked about with addiction. Some people are able to say, just stop. And other people can't. And other people have to go through a different process to get there.

• 1:39:54Steven Bartlett?

  So I'm trying to understand the balance, though. Like, how do I know if I've got the balance right in that regard?

• 1:39:58Speaker 01

  Well, I hate that word because someone I really admired said to me harmonize, you know.

• 1:40:04Steven Bartlett?

  So how do I know if there's harmony?

• 1:40:04Speaker 01

  Jeff Bezos was the one who said it. He was like, don't balance things, harmonize. Why, why weigh things that you love against each other? You love building in your room. You love learning things and building things. You love that. You love your partner and you want to build a family with her one day. It's not about balance. It's about putting them together.

• 1:40:26Speaker 01

  Bring her into every aspect of it. Bring her into the fears that you have with this. Bring her into, you know, that's what I, you know, I didn't know that. You know, it's, it's bring every aspect of your life together and share and let them be with the up and downs and you do the up and downs and kind of go across the board. And then also, like I said, do the work to find out why you ask all these questions, but still with all the nudging that's happened, do the work to find out why you're so afraid to actually turn off the camera and just do it.

• 1:40:54Steven Bartlett?

  So are you saying then to get out of like competition and get into that curiosity that you described? You said about these two states that you can investigate.

• 1:41:02Speaker 01

  I mean, look, I think being competitive is always a beautiful thing if used in the right way. I love that. But I will say to you, when you talk to me about where the AI staying up at night, where building your company came from, it was a kid building in his room.

• 1:41:17Steven Bartlett?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:41:18Speaker 01

  That kid wasn't competing with anyone. He was having fun in his room. He was building. That's when you're at your best. It's when you're actually just building for the joy of building. And I think along the way, based on our fears, based on the I'm not enough, based on all these different things, we start to take that thing that brought us joy and we start to think, if I don't crush it now that people are watching me do it, I'm not good at it. And you're asking me for like, this question is almost if it's like advice. I'm trying to figure it out the same time you are.

• 1:41:53Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:54Speaker 01

  You know, so I guess I'll pose it back to you. You've done research, you know, a little bit about my life. What would you say to me? What should I be doing next? What do you think I should be nudged to do?

• 1:42:06Steven Bartlett?

  I think what you're, what you've done today is some of the most valuable work that you can do. And what I say today, I mean, is as you've sat here and the vulnerability that you've expressed, the honesty, the nuance to certain points, I think it's one of the most important things you can do because many of us don't get to climb up to the top of the mountain top and see what's up there. And you're choosing to go up there and then shout back down about your marriage, about business, about your mental health and everything in between, about mistakes you've made, injustices, all these kinds of things. Probably one of the most powerful things you can do because as you've identified, there'll

• 1:42:50Steven Bartlett?

  be a couple of kids, maybe me being one, who will not have to be burnt, not have to hit the rock bottom to learn the lesson. And there's actually very few people, I do this for a living, there's very few people that have both that experience and the ability to articulate it in a way that is resonant. In terms of this next season of your life.

• 1:43:11Steven Bartlett?

  I think you're doing so much well. It was so nice actually hearing you on the phone to your kids yesterday. When they came over and it was like, Dad, I want a pencil or whatever he was saying. And you were like, Stephen, you said to me, I've got a, you hung up the phone and you addressed your kid. You called me back in 10 seconds. And I thought there was something really special and telling that you were willing to end a phone call with someone and put the phone away and immediately be present with your child to have a conversation with him, to have a conversation, then call me back straight away. And most people don't do that. So I thought, okay, he's really, this really means a lot to him in this season.

• 1:43:40Speaker 01

  You know, when, when you just said to me what I did here today.

• 1:43:44Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:45Speaker 01

  I smiled because I was being really honest with myself and I really appreciated you saying that. But I also smiled because I was being honest with myself of how funny it is that when I leave here,

• 1:43:57Speaker 01

  all I've been doing lately when I'm away from my kids is thinking of what do I build next? So I can show my value. I'm going back to that old habit because I'm excited to build something else. But when I'm being really deep, honest with myself, really going deep, it comes from this place of, well, if I can do it again.

• 1:44:16Steven Bartlett?

  Then I'll show them.

• 1:44:19Speaker 01

  This time will be the one that I'm happy about. This time will be like, it's that same old thing that comes every single time. And I still want to build something because I get joy out of that. But same, while I'm giving you this advice, when you said that to me, I went, oh, man. He's right. This is the most valuable thing I could probably do. But the reason I don't do it is because deep down I feel not worthy of it. I feel like, who am I to tell anybody anything? You know, all of us, we feel like a fraud when we're giving any kind of advice. And that creeps up in me and I, I get this very, from being very vulnerable, it gets this place of, I don't even want to say, oh, thank you for saying that at first.

• 1:45:02Speaker 01

  Because I'm like, well, if someone's watching, they'll be like this arrogant guy. Or you get all the voices coming back in your head. But the truth is.

• 1:45:13Speaker 01

  I want to go and build something next. I want to fall in love again. I want to be present for my children. And I want to be someone who can give advice from a place of wisdom and be proud that I give it, but also receive it because I've learned just as much talking to you. And what I will tell you is you are way ahead of the game at thirty-two compared to where I was.

• 1:45:38Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you.

• 1:45:38Speaker 01

  And I had a lot of success at thirty-two, but I wasn't asking these questions. And I wasn't pushing myself the way you did. And I think it is an incredibly cool thing that this is what you get to do as a career. Because I think you get to help a lot of people. And don't ever lose sight of the fact that the kid who was building in his room is now building in a lot of other people's rooms. And it's really impressive.

• 1:46:04Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you. That means an awful lot coming from you. I've been extremely excited by this conversation and I've been telling everybody in our team because of the conversations we have on the phone. And I knew that if those conversations are any reflection of the conversation we'd have on my show, it would be really pivotal for me. And it has been. It's been the nicest punch in the face.

• 1:46:25Speaker 01

  You need to.

• 1:46:27Steven Bartlett?

  You know, people probably wonder why I say all this stuff in public. But what an unbelievable opportunity it is to meet someone like you and get to learn from you, genuinely to get to learn from you. Like, what an unbelievably crazy thing from this kid from Botswana to get to meet someone like you and learn from you, to the point that my life has a chance of being better than I've spoken to you. And then to get to share that with people who I know are struggling with the same shit, who are contending with the same battle. So that is why I make the decision to have these conversations in the way that I do. And.

• 1:47:03Speaker 01

  By the way, just because I struggle with giving myself credit, I wanted to say this to you. The kid from Botswana is teaching me as well, the kid from Cascap. You know, it's a... As much as like that's an incredible thing.

• 1:47:23Speaker 01

  I wanted to come on here because I've listened to your podcast before and I've been one of those listeners who grew and learned from it. So, thank you, honestly. And continue to give yourself the credit you deserve and continue to ask the questions.

• 1:47:36Steven Bartlett?

  I do want to blow a little bit of smoke up your arse for something else that you've done because I don't think people have all of this information. But when I looked at the breadth of philanthropic work that you've done, whether it's the support you gave to Manchester, which is the city that I consider my hometown after the Ariana attack. Ah, my God, you've got a bee on your arm. But all these other foundations. The list of philanthropic work that you've done is so long that I would have to, we'd have to do another podcast just to go through all of these things. And you don't talk about it publicly. I don't see you posting about it all the time. So for me, that's always indicated that you're doing it for the right reasons. But it's incredible. So thank you for doing that as well. And you deserve credit that you never, you never get for doing all of these things.

• 1:48:21Steven Bartlett?

  And this inspired me as well. Because sometimes I think as entrepreneurs, we can fall into the trap of thinking we, we cut down the forest, then donate to the bees.

• 1:48:29Speaker 01

  You know, my mom is the reason. She, as I started building in college, she said, just promise me, you know, you'll do sedaka, which is charity within our, our culture, to give back. And I basically said, every aspect of my business will have a give back component. And Shawna Nepp, who runs our family foundation, like, our job is to make the money, her job is to help me give it away. And sometimes it's with money, sometimes it's with effort. But I've met so many incredible heroes, unsung heroes in all this work. People who really dedicate full time their lives to this. And I really, I always say, my grandfather, before he passed, he said, if your glass is filling with water, and you're one of the lucky people in this world, that God continues to pour water into your glass,

• 1:49:14Speaker 01

  well, you better start pouring it into other people's glasses. Otherwise, it's just going to spill and make a mess. And I never forgot that.

• 1:49:22Steven Bartlett?

  Even when you sold Hype, there was this tremendous amount of money that you turned around and gave to all the employees, which a lot of people don't know about. And you also gave money to several of your artists. From what I've researched, tens of millions were given to your artists as well, and you could have kept all that money to yourself. So when I hear that someone's gone around and given that much money to 264 of their employees and artists that have worked with them, you kind of get a picture of who the guy is. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're going to be leaving it for. And the question that has been left for you is.

• 1:49:57Speaker 01

  Now I'm nervous.

• 1:49:58Steven Bartlett?

  Why do people always get nervous on this fucking live question?

• 1:50:00Speaker 01

  I've been asking questions all the time.

• 1:50:02Steven Bartlett?

  The question left for you is, if you could do one thing that fear of failure has kept you from doing, what would it be? And why has it kept you from doing it?

• 1:50:12Speaker 01

  Man, if I could do one thing, that's a really great question.

• 1:50:27Speaker 01

  You know, at first I was thinking it would be like, oh, say sorry to somebody or this, that. But I feel like I've gotten to do that with people in my life for the last couple of years for things that like I wanted to kind of talk about. And some things you realize like, it's just not the season for that, you know, it takes two.

• 1:50:42Speaker 01

  And I felt myself, it was almost the fear of saying this out loud, write, write a book.

• 1:50:48Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, thank God.

• 1:50:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've always, I think it's, it's, my brother wrote a book, a really great one called The Promise of a Pencil. And he was a New York Times bestseller. And I was always like, that's Adam's thing. And I've always wanted to write, but I always feel like my mind and, you know, the things I'm working on myself, all these things, they change like every week. And I've always felt like, deep down, like, oh yeah, you should write a book, but like, you're really not going to write a great book if you do. And I think it's always held me back from actually just sitting down and doing it.

• 1:51:18Steven Bartlett?

  I've got goosebumps then because as in that silence, for some bizarre reason, I swear on my mother's, I was thinking, I hope he says he's going to write a book. I swear to you, that's what went through my mind. I went, I hope he says he's going to write a book. That's why I went, thank God.

• 1:51:32Speaker 01

  Well, I didn't say I was going to write it. I said, fear's been holding me back. But maybe, maybe you'll turn off the camera and go on your nudge and this will be the nudge for me.

• 1:51:39Steven Bartlett?

  Well, we hope you do, Scooter, because I've been so shocked and blown away by your wisdom and your ability to articulate things. And the stage of life that you've arrived at is, for me, as an objective observer, just the perfect moment.

• 1:51:53Speaker 01

  I appreciate that. And we'll keep doing the work together. And this is the beginning of a great friendship. And I'm really honoured to be here and really happy for all your success.

• 1:52:02Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you. The feeling is mutual. Thank you, brother. Thank you so much. Thank you. This has always blown my mind a little bit. Fifty-three per cent of you that listen to this show regularly haven't yet subscribed to the show. So could I ask you for a favour? If you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us, the free, simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the subscribe button. And my commitment to you is if you do that, then I'll do everything in my power, me and my team, to make sure that this show is better for you every single week. We'll listen to your feedback. We'll find the guests that you want me to speak to. And we'll continue to do what we do. Thank you so much.