Extremely Honest Q&A

For this weeks podcast I decided I was going to do something a little bit different. This week all of you will be interviewing me. I asked you to ask me any question you like about my business, my life or any advice you might need. My team went through and picked the ones that could bring the most value to you. This is my extremely honest Q&A. Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo 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?

  And one of the thoughts that continually gets me to the gym and continually makes me show up and work hard is, and if you're good at it, if you're great at it, then you might just be great at everything. But for me, that really is the meaning of life.

• 0:21Steven Bartlett?

  On this week's podcast, we're going to do something very different, something I've never done before, but something that you've requested time and time again. This week, I posted online asking you to ask me any question about me, my life, my business, whatever you want to ask me. And I promised that in return, I would give very brutally honest answers. My team went through all of the questions that were submitted and they went through and picked the ones that they thought were most interesting. They've written them in my diary here. So I'm going to start from the top and answer these questions with the objective of giving you the most valuable, honest advice that I possibly can. So without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett and this is the Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

• 1:10Steven Bartlett?

  Okay. So the first question is, what is the most important lesson that this pandemic has taught you or reconfirmed for you? And for me, that is, it relates back to a podcast I did at the start of the year, and it's that uncertainty is not predictable, but it's preparable. And I don't actually think that's a word, but here's what I mean. What I know for sure, and this relates to everybody, is that your life is of course going to be full of a lot of joy and amazing things and breathtaking moments and rapturous moments of ecstasy, right? But it's also going to be riddled with moments of unexpected uncertainty and chaos. Joy is much easier to handle. You just kind of let go and go with it, right? The good times, not a lot of action or thought required, but uncertainty and chaos require

• 1:54Steven Bartlett?

  a real rigid set of principles. And for me, those principles over the last 12 months have become acceptance, optimism and action. And these three principles have a real linear connection to the outcome you're seeking. Without acceptance, when bad things happen, there's no optimism. And without optimism, there's no action. And without action, There's often no victory, or at least victory is delayed and hard times are elongated. So when bad news visits, whether that's being unexpectedly fired from your job or dumped by your partner or evicted by your landlord or losing a loved one in the case of a pandemic, you have to do everything you can to stick to these principles despite the intense cloud of natural emotions that will try to convince you and me otherwise. And you know, like I do a lot of sort of introspective thinking for a living.

• 2:39Steven Bartlett?

  And even I am not immune from letting emotion get the best of me in times of intense chaos. I like, no matter how much I've read or written in my diary or how many podcasts I've done, even I fall victim, especially in the short term, to all of those emotions. And sometimes to the, the instructions those emotions give you, which will lead you to, um, to pretty dire outcomes. So, you know, you get dumped by your partner, you immediately think revenge, right? You get fired by your boss, you think, um, yeah, I'm going to sue them, right? I, I fall for those traps too. And I don't think, I don't necessarily think it's, the aim of all humans should be to try and avoid those emotions and that thinking, because I think it's quite impossible. But it's to be better at the response, right? To shorten the time that those emotions sit with you and to be better in your reaction.

• 3:24Steven Bartlett?

  And I want to clarify that acceptance, when I talk about acceptance, it doesn't mean being emotionless. It can often mean the exact opposite. You have to accept how you're feeling, accept what's happened. And importantly, retire from trying to change the unchangeable or from wallowing in regret. And you have to do everything you can to get yourself to a place of optimism. I see that as your responsibility. People won't like me saying that, right? People typically, especially in hard times, don't like to delegate responsibility to themselves. So as hard as it can be, you have to find and create hope for yourself and have faith, just like everything else has in your life, that this too shall pass. And then you have to use that optimism to drive you into action, which is for me, the third principle that I've learned over the last 12 months.

• 4:07Steven Bartlett?

  If your partner's dumped you, it's time to dust yourself off and get yourself into the gym to fight back. And I don't mean fight back as in bomb their house. I mean, fight back in a mental capacity, to stop stalking their Instagram, to triple down on your friendships and your meaningful relationships, to stand tall. And weather the unavoidable emotional storm and have faith and acceptance sit by your side. The opposite of these principles, of course, is like denial is pessimism and is inaction. And these are the principles of a baby gazelle that's decided to fall asleep with its toes dipped into a crocodile infested waters. This is a decision to lose twice. And when I say L, right, I mean loss.

• 4:48Steven Bartlett?

  And when unexpected chaos happens like this pandemic, which smashes our businesses and destroys our social lives and apparently steals a year from from our youth. The first L we take is involuntary shit happened and you didn't choose it totally out of your control. I get that. But the fateful decision to choose denial pessimism and inaction as our response is a voluntary second L. What you're choosing to increase the chances that bad times will become even worse times. You can make the choice not to lose twice. The first L wasn't your choice. The second L, well, that's a byproduct of how you choose to respond. Acceptance, optimism and action.

• 5:30Steven Bartlett?

  And I guess the second lesson I've learned this year is a lesson in the importance of prioritization. You know, this advice of which people often give, and I've often given of protecting your time and saving your time really feels somewhat incomplete to me now. Because it's like the first half of the sentence, you've got to then ask yourself, saving time to do what? Saving time just to spend more of it doing the wrong things? Saving time to spend more of it being more productive, just so you can get more work done? I guess better advice is to prioritize better. If you told 19 year old Steven Bartlett, just to save more time, he probably would have said no to a couple of things. And then just spent that saved time working alone in his office all weekend, all weekend.

• 6:12Steven Bartlett?

  And that advice would therefore lead him to a less joyful, more depressive existence. And if you told 19 year old Steven Bartlett to prioritize better, the first question that comes to mind is, what are my priorities? And my long term priorities, as I think is the case for all of us, are ultimately linked to the things that make our life meaningful, which are friends, the joy of work, our relationships. The satisfaction of pursuing our goals, the challenge, achieving greater freedom, knowledge, the pursuit of knowledge, health and fitness. And I guess I would have reviewed the allocation of my time through that lens. I would have saved time only on the things that aren't connected to my macro priorities and reinvested it in better places. And this year, because we've been forced to realise what matters in many cases.

• 6:58Steven Bartlett?

  I guess now, I'm not trying to save time just for the sake of spending it more on optimising my productivity. I realise that that's an incomplete sentence and really the most important thing is just to prioritise all of my time better and allocate it to those things that ultimately will matter the most. Okay, so the next question in my diary is how do I maximise my earning potential? Let me tell you a little bit of a story based on a friend of mine and his company. My friend has a business which is listed on the stock exchange in Germany, one of the very small stock exchanges in Germany. And having spoken to banks and from my own knowledge of how the stock market and the

• 7:37Steven Bartlett?

  public markets work, him and me both know that right now his business is worth $1 billion because of the stock exchange he's on. If he moves his business to the New York Stock Exchange, the banks and everybody knows that the valuation will be $4 billion. It's the exact same company, the exact same team, the exact same products, the exact same mission, everything's exactly the same. But because he's on the wrong stock market, because he's on the wrong stock exchange, the value is 25% of what it would be if he just took that same business, the same people and the same products, the same skills, the same experiences and just moved it to a different stock market.

• 8:18Steven Bartlett?

  And I reflect on this analogy as a wider, broader sort of life analogy, because if I look at my career decisions over the last, I'd say 10 years, I remember working in one call centre in Plymouth in Devon where I was getting paid about £4 per hour. And for whatever reason, I decided to move to a different call centre with the exact same skills, the exact same experience, and I got paid 10 times what I was getting paid at that call centre. And this is what I've started to notice in my own life is I've had this particular set of skills, whether it's social media, storytelling, marketing, brands, whatever you want to call it. For the last, I don't know, maybe six, seven years. And as I've moved into different rooms and different markets and different companies and

• 8:59Steven Bartlett?

  different industries, I've noticed that that exact same set of skills is valued completely differently. And this made me reflect with that story of my friend's business in mind, that one of the questions you have to ask yourself sometimes in life isn't just, you know, how do I improve my skills? But it's like, how do I maximize the earning potential for my skills? And where are my skills going to give me the greatest reward? Let me give you another analogy, just to just to cement the point. My ex-girlfriend, my ex ex-girlfriend is a flight attendant and she currently flies for Emirates, right? And Emirates pay, they pay okay, right? Lot of lifestyle perks there, but they pay okay.

• 9:38Steven Bartlett?

  She's told me that she'll get paid up to 10 times more if she manages to get a job flying on private jets because of tips and things like that. The same set of skills, 10 times the return for the same set of skills if she can move her skills to a different theoretical stock exchange, if you get what I'm saying. And this is just like one of the the principles I've learned about life over the, really over the last year. Because skills I was paid, you know, X amount for a couple of years ago, I'm getting paid 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 times for the same set of skills, just because I found a market where

• 10:19Steven Bartlett?

  those skills are more in demand, they're higher valued and they're probably more rare. And so that's something I think we can all ponder, which is asking yourself where your skills will reap the greatest return. Okay, the next question is, do you have imposter syndrome? Have you ever had it and can you relate? And then there's a little question underneath, which is, and how do I shake this off? Here's the thing, whenever somebody does something that's outside of their zone of comfort and that they don't have a ton of experience in doing, we all feel the same thing, right? We all feel that sort of low key inadequacy or that slight fear. But the reaction that everybody feels and the way that we label that feeling is completely different. I actually think it's how you label that feeling that

• 11:00Steven Bartlett?

  determines how you perform in that scenario. So some people will say, okay, this is an exciting challenge. I'm going to learn. I'm going to throw myself at it. I'm going to use that energy that I'm feeling, those nerves, or whatever it might be, to focus. Some people will say, oh my God, and they'll implode, and they'll try and retreat back into their zone of comfort, right? And so the response to that, the feeling is human. The response to it is optional. If you go through your life, avoiding situations that give you that feeling of imposter syndrome, then I would bet everything that I have, that you aren't going to reach your full potential. I genuinely believe the feeling of imposter syndrome is both healthy, natural, and a sign that you're putting yourself in a position where you're, there's pressure which will make you grow.

• 11:45Steven Bartlett?

  And I've literally, I can't think of a moment in my life, if you look at any sort of two-year period in my life, where I didn't feel out of my depth. However, that feeling of being out of my depth never meant that I retracted from the challenge. It meant the exact opposite. It meant that I attacked the challenge. I put more hours in, I focused on it. That reaction is ultimately the reason why you can hear my voice now. It's the reason I have this podcast. I very, very unfundly remember the first day ever where I tried to make a video down the lens of a camera and in the microphone. And oh my fucking God, was that shit show. My friend tells me we should make a YouTube video. It's about something political. So I sit in his house, he turns the cameras on, puts a microphone on me, and I sit there and try and get just two minutes of spoken word out down this camera of the lens. I sit there for seven hours, so much so that at the

• 12:29Steven Bartlett?

  start of this two-minute video, it's light outside and it's sunny. It's like the morning. By the end of this two-minute video, if you were to watch it on YouTube, it's dark outside and you can see stars. It took me that long, right? That long, because I was sat there feeling like an imposter. People aren't going to give a fuck what I think. I'm an idiot. I'm just sat there sweating. And ultimately, it was my decision not to let that sort of knock me back and to swerve that being in that uncomfortable situation ever again. That's taken me to this place today where I'm doing this podcast, and there's all these people that listen to it. We've got this YouTube channel and all of these wonderful things. And that is the defining thing. It's not about avoiding imposter syndrome. That's a very human thing. It's learning the art of embracing it. Okay, so next question is, how do you do things you don't want to do? I've had, I've had this cross my mind a lot lately and I'll tell you why, because I've

• 13:13Steven Bartlett?

  committed myself to working out in the gym downstairs every single day and I have been going every single day for many, many months now. I think the first time I started going gym consistently was actually March last year, when all of this craziness was thrusted upon us. But some days, as I've talked about in this podcast, and I know people get tired of me talking about the gym, but it's just a place where you learn so much about yourself and discipline and, and your body and, and your brain and all of that. So I always refer back to it. But some days I just can't be bothered. I can't be bothered to go. I can't be bothered to train hard when I'm there. And in many ways, that's kind of like synonymous of life. There's so many things in life that I just don't want to do. And one of the thoughts

• 13:56Steven Bartlett?

  that continually gets me to the gym and continually makes me show up and work hard is this principle I live by, which is comfortable and easy are like really short-term friends, but they're long-term enemies. And here's what I mean by that. Comfort in the short term makes me feel warm and fuzzy, but then it might lead me to being obese and having arthritis and having high blood pressure and having a heart attack in the long term. So like comfort and easy, I just view, so anything that's comfortable and easy, like super comfortable and is inherently avoiding hard work or discomfort, I kind of view that, that decision or that thing with skepticism. I think you're trying to fuck me in the long term, aren't you? And I genuinely cognitively have that thought process sometimes when my brain flutters and flirts with the idea of, oh, just skip it, Steve. You know, you don't

• 14:40Steven Bartlett?

  really want to do that. Just, you know, get an early night and swerve that thing. I think that's going to stab me in the back one day. In 12 months' time or 10 years' time, that decision to choose comfortable and easy as my friends, well, they're going to become enemies and they're actually not on my side. If you're looking for growth, my general principle is to choose the challenge. I'm not saying choose the thing that you fucking hate. I'm not saying choose the toxic thing that's going to destroy your mental health. I'm saying if you're looking for growth and you're looking to achieve the future that you, you know, you envisage in your mind, your ambitions, then you should choose the challenge. And, and that's the thing that I continually come back to every time, Steve, you know, it hits 6:30 and I know I've got to go to the gym in half an hour and I'm

• 15:23Steven Bartlett?

  manically busy and everything in my head is saying, make an excuse. No one will know. Go tomorrow. Just tell yourself you'll go tomorrow. You'll do it another time. Procrastinate. Or when I get to the gym and I don't really want to show up and I don't want to work hard, the same little thoughts whisper in my brain. But then I think, maybe that's the enemy. Is that, have those thoughts really got my long-term ambitions and my values in mind? They nearly always haven't. And that goes back to the podcast I did with Neer Iyal, where he says that, you know, when we try and procrastinate or we convince ourselves to do the things we don't want to do, it's because of some kind of psychological discomfort. It's because I know that these weights are heavy and I know that it's uncomfortable and I know that I'm tired. And those are, if you are able to overcome those moments where it's easier to quit, those are your growth moments.

• 16:08Steven Bartlett?

  Those are in fact, the most valuable moments. And this again, comes to another point, which I always think, which is the moments where I want to quit, right? The days that are the hardest to get myself up and going are probably by definition, the most valuable moments to overcome. Because that's probably, again, thinking logically, where most people decide to stop. So, you know, that's where the greatest returns are. And I, it sounds like fluffy bullshit in hindsight. No, I think this, I think, I think that in the moment, I think it before I go to the gym. I think, yeah, this is, this is the day where most people wouldn't go. You know, after the week you've had, right? So hopefully that helps. And the conclusive point here is like, you're connecting yourself to who you want to be.

• 16:52Steven Bartlett?

  In those moments, you're reminding yourself of the person you want to become. And this, you know, I read this on Twitter, I think nine months ago, but it stayed with me ever since, which is, how would the person you want to become behave right now? And if you ask yourself in those moments, how would the person I want to become behave right now? What are the decisions the person I want to be would be making? That's usually a good way to decide what the best answer is, right? Hope that helps. Okay, so the next question's a very deep question. It's what is the meaning of life? Very good question, something I've actually pondered a little bit over the last, over the last year or so, as I've, I've got more into Elon Musk's work and space and his motivations for wanting to, to understand meaning.

• 17:36Steven Bartlett?

  He actually says that when he was really, really young, he started pondering the meaning of life and actually made him depressed. And it wasn't until he read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that he found some meaning and optimism. But to, to answer that question myself, I would say the meaning of life is to create and live a meaningful life. I know that sounds like a bit of a cop out, right? But And what you consider meaningful is totally subjective and nobody can tell you what that is or what it isn't. But I think you can spot it when you get that feeling inside yourself that your efforts are resulting in progress or outcomes that feel deeply worthwhile and fulfilling

• 18:18Steven Bartlett?

  to you in any facet of your life, whether it's raising your dog, or whether it's your relationships, or your work, or whatever it might be. And some people find that sort of connection and meaning in building their businesses, in writing, in hobbies, or training their body through exercise, or raising kids, or practicing their religion. One of the most important things I've learned on this podcast, from interviewing guests and asking them about the toughest moments in their life, specifically guests that suffered with depression. I remember we had Dan Murray on the podcast, who had lost his father, and talked about how it wasn't until he did ayahuasca and saw that the world was interconnected, that he refound his meaning. And we also had Ben Williams on the podcast, who said he was suicidal and considering taking his own life, until he saw

• 19:01Steven Bartlett?

  an advert to be a military commando, and went off on that journey to pursue his intrinsic career ambition of becoming a commando, that he found meaning in his life and stability. And also from writing my book, there are some just crazy, mind bending studies that I read about in the preparation for my book, that totally changed my thought process on this. One of them, right, is studying Johann Hari's work, and the work he's done to understand the true causes of depression and anxiety. And his work continually points to the fact that depression and these depressive feelings and this sort of lack of orientation in life, comes from people who have had something happen to them, often who have lost a sense of meaning through trauma in their life, not what's wrong with them, not because of some sort of chemical

• 19:46Steven Bartlett?

  imbalance in their brain. The other really sort of example that I just can't shake, that's in my book as well, is this study they call Rat Park. Very, very simple. They took a group of rats, they put them in cages, and they took all meaning from their life, literally just a white cage on their own. And they gave them a choice. Do you want to drink heroin water, or do you want to drink normal water? The rats that are stuck in a white cage alone, become drug addicts, right? Then they have Rat Park, which is this rat utopia where there's female and male rats. There's a little running machine where you can exercise. There's food, there's a space to roam around and to explore. There's toys for stimulation and those rats don't become drug addicts when they're offered either heroin

• 20:31Steven Bartlett?

  or normal water. They avoid the heroin. If you zoom out a little bit and apply the same thinking to humans, the science says that over the last two years, the life expectancy had dropped between, I think it's 2018 and 2019 because of opioid related deaths, because people are getting addicted to opioids and that's resulting in their death. And, and again, that is because we have an epidemic of meaninglessness, of purposelessness. That's what my podcast has taught me and that's what, that's what my research and my book has taught me as well. Commonly prescribed antidepressants do work for some people. I think it's important to, to sort of caveat my points with that, but adding additional meaning and connection to your life does seem to be one of the most powerful antidotes

• 21:15Steven Bartlett?

  for those feeling lost, depressed and unhappy and lacking that orientation. And just to relate it to what we're going through now with this pandemic, you know, a lot of my friends have been calling me and telling me that they're feeling down, right? They can't particularly describe what exactly is causing them to feel down, but over the last three months in particular, as the UK has gone into this, I think, third lockdown, I've really grown concerned about some of my friends and the advice that I continually give them centers around the point I've just made, which is to find things that will give them meaning. Life before, pre lockdown, gave you meaning. You, you wake up in the morning, you go to the office, you've got colleagues and friends and then you, you know, you go to the, the club, you go to watch your favorite football team play, you go and see your, your mum and your dad, your grandparents. Life was full of meaning before.

• 22:00Steven Bartlett?

  Now it's been pulled from you. So now it becomes your responsibility, if you want to, you know, maintain those good feelings, to go and get that meaning, right? To go and create that meaning in your life. You can't assume that it's just going to show up like it used to. So we, and this is, goes back to one of my points, which is where you really have to fight back. You have to go and get it. And, you know, I'll give you an example that relates to me personally. The weekends, right? So my team and me, we work in this building through the week. The weekends come around. I have fucking nothing to do. I'm a single guy. I have nothing to do. It's me and my dog, right? And he's not a barrel of laughs, to be honest. He's a very simple guy. So he doesn't do an awful lot. And so what I've started to do on the weekends is to really take time to pursue some of my hobbies, which I would never normally do.

• 22:45Steven Bartlett?

  I've started to DJ all the time. I'm now learning to DJ. I do a DJ lesson every single weekend via Zoom. I'm reading books that I used to love reading, philosophy books. And I'm doing this actually not because I want to, but because I know I have to keep my life full of intrinsic passions and meaning, especially at a time when so much of that has been robbed by this pandemic. So that's the long way around the houses. But for me, that really is the meaning of life, to create a meaningful life. And as I say, in these times, it's more important than ever that you fight for that meaning. Okay, so the next question is a really, really great question, which is, what is something you miss about being poor that you think you'll never get back?

• 23:26Steven Bartlett?

  The Stoic people used to talk about this concept of hedonistic adaptation and the hedonistic treadmill. And I'll give you an example that's really easy to understand. I remember at 23 years old, when I took my first flight to Thailand, I think it was 21 years old, to Thailand with my business partner Dom. And I remember getting on that plane and just like, because I'd never really been on a plane before, other than when I was a baby coming over from Africa. I remember like being so in awe of the fact that we were on this like metal ship that was flying across the ocean. And they were like giving me snacks and free water and do I want a Coke? And I'm sat there in the economy section, just like, oh my God, right? Totally like full of like joy and appreciation for everything. And the principles of like hedonistic adaptation say that

• 24:10Steven Bartlett?

  once you've been exposed to a certain level of joy or a certain level of like, I don't know, gluttony or like, you know, material possessions, your satisfaction starts to decay over time. And obviously, as I got more and more money and I got on flights every week and then eventually I upgraded to business class and then like first class. And we even got myself on a private jet a couple of times. Your appreciation for the small things. Waynes, the Stoic people would take the good things out of their life as a practice, just so that they would appreciate them again. And I think that's one of the things that I definitely miss. I've got nice things all the time, and that is a blessing and a curse. Imagine some rich guy talking about he's sick of nice things. But there's truth to that. Like, you lose appreciation for things that used to mean so much to you.

• 24:55Steven Bartlett?

  And when you look at hedonistic adaptation and the hedonistic treadmill, you now require even more to give you that same level of thrill and joy and satisfaction. That's a really sad thing. It's kind of an unavoidable thing to some degree. But with all things in life, you can really make a conscious effort to be grateful and to take moments, not to let life pass you by, all these wonderful things pass you by. So the other point is, you know, there's that phrase ignorance is bliss, and it totally applies to this question as well. When I was 18 years old, and I thought the meaning and point of life was to buy fast cars and to have a million quid in the bank account and to pursue those kinds of things, there was some bliss to that. I thought I had it figured out. I thought I understood

• 25:36Steven Bartlett?

  that the pursuit of greater happiness was just more stuff, more money. And that was quite blissful. I didn't have it now, at 18, I didn't have it. So I thought, okay, that creates real meaning in my life. All I have to do is get more money, and then my life will be more meaningful and, you know, full of joy. And then upon getting the money, I realized that that's not the case. And I remember watching an interview by the founder of Spotify, Daniel Ek, where he says the exact same thing. He's an insecure kid growing up, bit of a geek, and then he gets all this money, not from Spotify, but from the business before. And he has this deep existential crisis where he's like, oh, my God, this wasn't it. And he had to then go on the journey of finding out exactly what mattered to him.

• 26:20Steven Bartlett?

  And I'm still on that journey. Like, I still, this is why I talk so much about meaning and purpose in this podcast, because I'm still figuring out, like, where I should be prioritizing my time in order to reap the greatest returns as it relates to fulfillment. And I think I didn't think about those things when I was 18 and I was broke. But getting what you aim for is the best way to find out if it's actually what you wanted. And I was this young kid chasing material Things and and probably passion mistaking it for happiness. As I got closer to it, it moved off into the distance like a like a mirage or something or a rainbow. We all know that guy who like, you know, has a two bedroom house in a small area. He married to his wife, one kid, two kids, looks forward to, you know, going to the pub on the weekends and supporting his favorite team.

• 27:03Steven Bartlett?

  Those individuals who live the most simple lives and who are happier with less, to me, from my experience generally, seem to be much more fulfilled than my friends that are successful billionaires. And my friends that are billionaires, but also intellectuals and sort of like low key philosophers are the most fucked, right? Because they really have got pretty existential and asked themselves, what is the purpose of life? That's what I mean by ignorance is bliss. And my third point in answer to this question relates to challenge. When I was 18 years old, starting out in business, living in Moss Side in Manchester, I had absolutely nothing. I'd just dropped out of university and I'm basically stood at the bottom of this big ambitious mountain that I've told myself I'm gonna climb and I've told myself I'm gonna accomplish. And I'm looking up at it,

• 27:47Steven Bartlett?

  excited, terrified, but hopeful and yeah, excited. That's the that's the key feeling. And then you climb the mountain, right? The mountain for me was like financial freedom. It was accomplishment. Maybe for my ego, it was like recognition to some degree. I have all of those things now. And so when you get to this point where you've accomplished many of your goals, you have to make a very conscious, active effort to create new, even bigger goals. Goals that will match the same level of excitement and challenge that you had when you're 18. And it's not easy because you don't become financially free twice unless you lose it all. Right? So my goals have

• 28:26Steven Bartlett?

  to be way bigger to give me that same level of like hunger and grit and, you know, determination that I need to to to to stay stabilized and to be to be happy. And I guess it's a crazy thing to say, but to some degree. I miss like not being at the bottom. I miss not having those massive, this just sort of Mount Everest in front of me. And this is what I've seen in, you know, many of my friends who are entrepreneurs and even some of my idols is when they get to that point, when Elon sold PayPal or when Bill Gates sold Microsoft, they then go and take on some of these tremendous, philanthropic challenges. It's no surprise that every billionaire becomes this crazy, massive philanthropist and tries to take on some of the world's most existential problems,

• 29:09Steven Bartlett?

  right? It's no surprise that Elon is doing, you know, trying to save the planet and take us to a new one, because he will not be able to find a sense of fulfillment and happiness in doing another PayPal. He just won't find it. And in many respects, this is why I think people who are tremendously ambitious have a bit of a curse. I've spoken to a lot of my friends that run businesses. You are obsessive about progress and challenge and ambition and reaching the next milestone. And I think a lot of them would actually, if they could just press a button and trade their life for a much simpler life, someone who doesn't wake up every single day and check their WhatsApp for 30 different messages about their business on fire in five different countries. If they could press a button and live a simple life and be content in that life, I think most of them probably would. Many of them would. If they wouldn't, maybe they're twisted enough not to not to realize that the meaning

• 29:54Steven Bartlett?

  of life is to be happy. So if I gave them a happiness button, maybe some of the psychopaths would still opt for their current life. I've got one particular friend in mind, who I won't name, who sat me down about two years ago, and he's very, very successful. He's probably a billionaire by now. And he confided in me that he wished his life could be simpler. He wished he didn't have the level of ambition he had. He made, he told me this one story about going around to someone's house, and they're a very, very normal family with not very much at all. And they just sat there drinking tea. And he said, I was sat there thinking, I wish this was my life. This is a billionaire with more sports cars than I've ever seen in my entire life in one driveway, wishing he had a simpler life, but realizing that he is infected with this virus, which many of us have, the ambitious, the most ambitious

• 30:39Steven Bartlett?

  amongst us, which stops you from being happy without pursuit and without climbing that mountain. Okay. So the next question is, what is my greatest weakness? And when I first read this question, a bunch of different things came to mind and different sort of parts and areas of my life. So I'm just going to share as many of them with you as I possibly can. The first thing that comes to mind is I'm really bad at prioritizing against the things that Really matter to me, and I know that will matter long term. I've talked about this a lot in this podcast. I don't call my parents enough. I don't see my family enough. I probably don't give enough time in person to like meaningful friendships and connections and those kinds of things. And I know I'm completely totally convinced that those things are really, really important.

• 31:22Steven Bartlett?

  It's not that I don't understand the importance of them. It's that like my work priorities always seem to be just one, you know, one step higher on the to do list. My work has urgency to it. There's no urgency with calling my mom. Right. And that's kind of one of the things I know is a weakness in myself that I that I continue to strive to to be better at is trying to prioritize things that aren't urgent, but in the long term are really, really important. The next thing is in relationships, I'm like really self centered. I I just want to do what I want to do. And I like, I am generally like really unwilling to compromise. And that's an awful thing because relationships are all about compromise, apparently. So I've been told many times.

• 32:04Steven Bartlett?

  But I know it's a weakness of mine. I am kind of like, I kind of live the world in my own head. And if I want to just get up and go and DJ or walk down the street or go in my room and just look at my laptop and watch YouTube videos. Doing that is quite hard when you're in a relationship and you've got someone else to consider. You have to consider what they want. And, you know, the things that they want to do that day. And and also in relationships generally, I don't want to do much. Because nine to five, like throughout the week, my brain is fucking chaos. So on the weekend, I'm not really all up for doing much, you know? That's my downtime. And that's become a real weakness of mine. And it's made forming romantic relationships harder. Because on the weekend, I don't want to get out of bed. And if I do, I just want to do some, I just want to do nothing or something very, very simple.

• 32:44Steven Bartlett?

  But the problem I have there is through Monday to Friday, I've spent all my time on my work. So Saturday and Sunday, by definition, like logically have to be the time that I commit to you as my partner. So this is why I I continually struggle in relationships. Because Monday to Friday, it's not about you. And on the weekend, it's about me. It's about me and my downtime, watching Manchester United play. And I have to, I have to learn to compromise. I'm sure a lot of people can relate to that. The last thing would be because I'm so mentally bombarded with a billion things I have to do at all times. Over the years, the one thing that I've definitely noticed in myself is I get more and more

• 33:21Steven Bartlett?

  arguably rude.

• 33:25Steven Bartlett?

  And to the point, which is like when at the start of my career, I was very, I had more time and there were less things like, less tabs open in my brain. So I could take more time about how I respond to things and I could be a little bit more fluffy and soft and whatever. But when you have tons of urgent priorities, your brain is so funny, I was, I was talking to a friend about this this morning, in fact, and I was just giving some feedback to one of the teams I'm working with at another company. Cause the CEO had basically got in touch and requested that all comms become much more streamlined. Because when we, when the team were using extra words, he basically to some degree gets, you know, gets a little bit frustrated with that because we're trying to move fast as an organization.

• 34:08Steven Bartlett?

  And I totally related to that. I noticed myself getting annoyed when anything takes longer than it should. And this is something that's really changed, like totally changed in the last couple of years. So I guess the thing that I have to be aware of is that even in the situations where I'm just desperately trying to save time, is that I don't compromise on being a decent human being. And I can't explain to you how hard this is because we tend to have a philosophy for how we act and how we behave. And that philosophy sits deep within us and it, whether it's a landlord showing me around a new apartment or a new office, or whether it's an email, or whether it's a phone call, the philosophy tends to be the same, right? And you, it's hard to switch between different philosophies. So I tend to treat very personal things sometimes in my personal life, whether it's a landlord

• 34:50Steven Bartlett?

  showing me around an office with the same rapid urgency, or my mom having a conversation with me with the same rapid urgency that I might treat business things. And I need to get better at like switching between the contexts and behaving differently in each scenario and realizing that in some scenarios, the saving of the time is not more beneficial than they're just remaining a decent person and like engaging in the situation. It's hard. And I say it's hard, not just because of my own experiences, but I've seen pretty much, pretty much, I'd say over 70% of the highly successful people I know, become so incredibly impatient that it almost verges on looking like rudeness, like they don't care about you. And like they are not present when you're with them. Now, this is a really hard point to explain, but I think people

• 35:34Steven Bartlett?

  Who are incredibly busy will understand this. Over the last couple of years, I've noticed that I've got incredibly impatient with any request I get. And it's something I've noticed, not just in myself, but in some of my friends who run very, very big, really, really sort of ambitious global businesses, who are constantly bombarded with stuff. They are some of the most like antisocial, slightly rude people I've met. You just can't get 10 seconds of their attention. And like, just to give you context of what's going on in my head now. Right now, as I'm making this podcast, I know that I'm missing this phone call with this PR firm. I know that I've got this major IPO coming up with this one company. I know I've got this board meeting coming up with this company. I've now got this IPO coming up. Got this other conversation about joining this board and this other IPO coming up. And I've got all of these other personal things going on in my life and this, you know, I've got to record this podcast.

• 36:16Steven Bartlett?

  My brain has just got all these tabs open. So when my PA walks up to me and she goes, hi Steve, how's your day going? You know, shall I buy Pablo some dog food? It just, it's just, it's almost, the only way I can describe it is the question is like an irritant.

• 36:32Steven Bartlett?

  And what you, what I've got, what I've learned over the years is like, I have to understand that people don't understand. And I have to try and respond on that basis, which sometimes, especially when I'm like really tired, can be a challenge. Something that I've, I've really tried hard to work on, but I'm still like really not that great at is remembering to be like gracious and just a decent person, irrespective of what's going on in my head and treating people and being super polite and trying to be my best self every single day in every interaction. You know, I, I talked on this podcast once upon a time about the day I got on a plane, I was sat in business class and I look up and it's that guy from Man vs Food. And we were running at the time, one of the biggest food publishers in the world, Love Food.

• 37:15Steven Bartlett?

  And so I, I messaged the Love Food team. There was about 150 people that got this message in the social chain chat at the time. I said, oh my God, that guy from Man vs Food is on the plane. And they all said, okay, go up to him and ask him this like famous social chain question we have, which is what's your favorite sandwich? Long story short, when you join social chain, you get asked the question, what's your favorite sandwich? So I jump up and I walk over to his seat in business class and I say, Hey, I got a question. Boom, shuts me down. Not right now. Like shouts in my face. So I like slowly tiptoe back to my seat in business class and like slouched down. And then I have to message 150 people saying, oh, by the way, that guy we all really like is an asshole. And he would have had no idea that he was speaking to somebody who ran at the time, the biggest food publisher in the world and had hundreds of employees.

• 38:00Steven Bartlett?

  And at some, you know, some point in the future, might have wanted to do some business with him or work with him, but now thinks he's a total asshole. And this for me, that moment, I'll always remember as teaching me how important every interaction is, even the ones that don't seem that important. And I try and bear that in mind. If you've ever come and watched me speak anywhere in the world, which I'm sure a lot of you have, because I was a bit of a speaking hoe over the last couple of years, then you would have known that I never, ever would leave a venue before everybody's got a chance to like, take a photo or meet me or ask me a question. I would be the last one to leave my own talks. Because I, that's the way that I would want someone to treat me, someone that I followed and admired. That's how I would want them to treat me. And I'm scared of being an asshole. Yeah.

• 38:44Steven Bartlett?

  And it's much easier to be an asshole when you're, when you've achieved some level of success, right? Powerful people find it the easiest to be an asshole. They can therefore also probably do the most damage by being an asshole, but also get away with it a lot of the time. I believe in being a good person as much as I possibly can be. And I'm like clearly imperfect in many, many ways. And I still struggle with this, but I'm doing my very best to be a good person and to be kind and to, you know, to never forget who I am and where I come from. Okay. So the next question is, I'm scared to post my business online at the risk of failure or humiliation. Do you have any advice? This is a very interesting thing that I don't think people talk about enough, especially when they're starting out in business, which is how do you overcome the sort of public

• 39:29Steven Bartlett?

  transition from just being Steve to now being this entrepreneur who's running this business and raising money and giving people advice and has, has a podcast? How do you like square that with, especially in your friendships and your personal circles, with the person that they, they knew first, right? And when we started the business. When we started Social Chain, my business partner Dom, who's come on this podcast to talk about it, was ridiculed by his friends privately. Like, you know those kind of jokes that people do where it's like a joke, but it's also not a joke. So he would post on his Facebook page saying, we've just started Social Chain, just started this business, it's going really well, or whatever he'd say. And like five or 10 of his best friends in the world from his hometown would jump on there with these kind of snide,

• 40:12Steven Bartlett?

  jokey, like patronizing, bantery comments. But they were like inherently mean comments. And I remember back in the day continually jumping into his comment section and trying to defend him. And I'd get some of my other friends to jump in there and just be a bit nicer. He was posting his achievements and being ridiculed with like not funny kind of funny banter. And for me, as I reflect on what that actually was and the psychology behind his friends and knowing his friendship group back home, I'll be completely honest, I think his friends saw him changing and somewhat didn't like who he was becoming. Because his success kind of alienated them and nobody, this is just a principle of psychology that I've actually written a little bit about in my book.

• 40:55Steven Bartlett?

  People are most envious of people who they can relate to. So if your colleague at work or your friend or someone your age is achieving huge amounts of success and they look like you and went to the same school and came from where you come from, that inadvertently shines a mirror on you. It means you've got no excuse and that your, you know, success or lack thereof is probably a consequence of your own actions. And as humans, we just don't like that thought. And so Dom's, my business partner Dom's social circle back home, many of them, not all of them, there was one or two key exceptions, were trying to rein him in and saying, you know, you're one of us, stay here, don't become something that we can't resonate with. And if you find yourself in the scenario that Dom did,

• 41:37Steven Bartlett?

  you basically have a really simple choice to make. It feels complicated and it feels like a bit of a minefield, but it's not. The central question and the most important question you have to ask yourself is who do I want to be and what makes me happy? And this is a point you can extrapolate to any sort of area of your life, even those outside of your career. Who do I want to be and what makes me happy? And decide what that is and pursue that thing. Anybody that you lose in the pursuit of your happiness is probably not someone you needed or wanted in your life. Anyway, they're probably not someone that had your best interests, which by definition are you being happy at heart. They're probably someone who was riddled with a little bit of jealousy, who didn't want you to become everything you could become. So that's the framework in which you make your decision,

• 42:19Steven Bartlett?

  which is who do I want to be and what makes me happy? Pursue that and be open to losing people who no longer resonate with you pursuing your happiness along the way. And I distinctly remember going through this myself, which is facing ridicule and banter and little snide comments behind the scenes. I remember a day where I posted something on Facebook, like one of my quotes, whatever it was, or some of my content on my daily vlog, and a friend of a friend had made some snide little comment about like, who the fuck does Steve think he is? The friend had told me, and it's those moments where you can make that decision to like fall back in line and conform and to avoid criticism. Can you imagine my life if I'd done that? If I'd let a couple

• 43:00Steven Bartlett?

  of comments stop me from pursuing my my career and producing all this content, which gives me so much intrinsic joy and fulfillment? Can you imagine if I'd let the fear of a few comments hold me back from my potential and the things that make me happy? I'm so glad I didn't. And in that particular case, where that guy was ridiculing me behind my back, that same person four years later, when he went through some troubles in his life and some mental health issues, reached out to me because he was in love with my podcast now and met me in a sushi bar in London and just sat there and asked me advice because of something I'd said on the podcast that he initially ridiculed.

• 43:37Steven Bartlett?

  And that kind of shows that that teaches me a lesson that, you know, even some of the people that ridicule you at the start, you've kind of got to forgive whatever it is in their nature that's making them try and hold you back. But you've also got to understand that it's not a you problem. It's not your responsibility to control what people think of you in their head or the the image that they've created of you in their mind. That's not your responsibility. Your central responsibility as a human being is to pursue your happiness, your truth, and the things that give you the most intrinsic joy. That's your responsibility. And one of the things I've come to learn about success generally in life is that it's the small, seemingly invisible, seemingly insignificant decisions piling up over time that have the greatest impact on you. It's not our big life choices, it's the small ones,

• 44:20Steven Bartlett?

  the ones that are easiest to do or not to do. And it's the same with bending under public pressure or criticism. It's easy if you see a friend of a friend slagging you off just to stop doing that thing. If you allow these small, seemingly insignificant comments to nudge you one day at a time away from the person you want to be and the person you want to become, can you imagine how far you're going to be from that person in 10 years' time? It doesn't bear to think about.