Moment 9 - Eddie Hearn on The Sacrifices Behind Being Relentless

In these ‘Moment’ episodes of my podcast, I’ll be selecting my favourite moments from previous episodes of The Diary Of A CEO. In this clip, Eddie Hearn reveals how his childhood in the shadow of his highly-successful father, Barry Hearn, turned him into the ‘relentless’ sports promoter and businessman he is today. We also talk about some of the sacrifices Eddie has had to make in order to make it to the top and discuss how even something as important as family can often become neglected in his pursuit of success. Taken from episode 58 - https://g2ul0.app.link/TFJj7P1BWgb Eddie: https://www.instagram.com/eddiehearn/ https://twitter.com/EddieHearn?s=20 VOTE FOR US FOR BEST BRITISH PODCAST: https://www.britishpodcastawards.com/vote?utm_source=emailoctopus&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Nominated 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.

• 0:03Steven Bartlett?

  Before we started filming today, I had a chat with Frank and he fully grasped. What he said to me, which was also consistent with these interviews, is that you are relentless. And he was telling me he's had some, I probably shouldn't say this, but he was telling me, he said, I've started having this, is it night owl?

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Night nurse.

• 0:26Steven Bartlett?

  Because Eddie will text me in the middle of the night. And he went, I'll tell you one thing about Eddie, he is relentless. You're what, 40?

• 0:34Speaker 01

  Forty-one.

• 0:35Steven Bartlett?

  Forty-one years old. What's made you that relentless at 41 years old, to the point where you're pestering your colleagues at 3am in the morning?

• 0:45Speaker 01

  I don't know, really. I think when I did the book, it was like, it was quite a good sort of counselling session with myself. Because I wasn't really great at school. I wasn't particularly a hard worker at school. I loved a pound note, always. And when I wrote the book, I started writing about my childhood and what it was like growing up and how I was moulded. And I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that I love to win. And I'm a...

• 1:21Steven Bartlett?

  Why did you love to win?

• 1:22Speaker 01

  I don't know, because with my dad, that's what we did. So when we played cricket, when we played football, when we played table tennis, when we sparred with each other, it was like, for me, growing up, you weren't, you know, I would come back from a match, say I played cricket, and he would go to me, and actually my mum was the same, and he would say to me, how many runs did you get today, son? And I would say, oh, no, four. Oh, useless. Come on, next time, knock in a 50. Right, it was never, oh, well, well done, son. You know, you took part. That's what really matters. They taught me taking part is completely and utterly irrelevant. You win.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  And ultimately, sport is how I was brought up. I was brought up on the foundations of sport, the lessons of sport. The winning, the losing, you know, the highs, the lows. But always taught that winning was everything. So, and I'm a failed athlete. You know, I think any kid growing up would love to be a sportsman, wouldn't they? I played cricket at a very good level, but I was never good enough at anything. So this is the next best thing. But I think if you're not trying to win in life and win, winning. It means something different to everybody. Success means something different to everybody. Some people view success as being able to get their pay packet on a weekend, you know, be able to, you know, spend time with their family and have enough food on the, you know,

• 2:50Speaker 01

  make enough money to have food on the table and make sure everything's okay at home and, and be happy. You know, and have a happy life with no, no stress or no drama. That's success to a lot of people. But people's interpretation of success is very different. And, you know, for me, I, I, I still don't know why. I, I, I, I do, and I know, I know why I do this, but like you say. I, I love it, I guess. That's what it comes down to, a passion for what you do. And I don't know what the passion is. Is it the passion that I love the sport of boxing? Is it the passion that I wanna succeed against, you know, and be bigger than my dad? I think that's a big part of it as well. Or is it just that I love to win? Or is it that I'm a bit sick in the head? Maybe all of them.

• 3:33Steven Bartlett?

  The sick in the head point, I wanna play with that idea a little bit. Um, I, I write, I, I wrote in my book, actually, we have the same publisher. I wrote in my book that the thing that invalidates you when you're younger becomes the thing you seek validation from when you're older. And what I meant by that is like, in my childhood, because we didn't have money. Um, and I was this black kid in a school of fifteen hundred white kids. Everything that we didn't have became the things that I chased when I was older, or the thing that made me feel somewhat invalid sometimes when I was a kid. Like you were saying about your dad saying, oh, you, you lost today. Became the thing that I would seek validation from as, as a, as an adult. And I wondered if that resonated with you at all. I mean, like.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  Well, I had a different background. I mean, my dad was poor, became rich, and I was born. So I've I've said before, it's not like when when you talk about generational wealth, we didn't have generational wealth. Um. I had a dad who was from Dagnum, was from a council estate. His dad was a bus driver. And then I grew up in this sort of nouveau world where this bloke had made his money and he was, you know, I'll take the Mickey out of him. I suppose he was a bit of a chav. You know, he was like from Dagnum and all of a sudden he got Ferraris and big cars and we used to have a white limo and a black limo. That would drive like the snooker players around and the fighters around and I was horrible. I was obnoxious. Imagine like a fourteen, fifteen year old kid hanging around with.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  Eubank and Naz and then you're in a limo with your mates going up to London or to Romford for a night out. I mean, I look back and just cringe. But mine was different, you know, and and I guess when it comes down to it and, you know, again, from the book and speaking and speaking to people like Frank Lampard, he went to my school. Um. He was in the year above me. At my school, I was Barry Hearn's son. And Frank Lampard was Frank Lampard's son. You know, his dad played for West Ham. He was and it's a different kind of drive. If you can make it flow in the right way, you know, when you're talking about sort of mindset and and and hustle where all of a sudden.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  I think so many people with successful parents end up just doing okay, you know. But how do you go beyond that? How do you outperform everything that he done? And and I will, and and I feel like I've done that in many ways, but I will never be able to outperform the fact that he came from nothing.

• 5:52Steven Bartlett?

  My friends are, my friend is i- in a very similar position. You, if I said my friend's name, you'd know the guy. His dad is a multi billionaire. I know you know him because I've seen you with him before actually in New York, but um, his dad is a multi billionaire and he grew up with, living in the shadow. And his dad was the same and I had a conversation with him and he said, um, it was all, I was always trying to be better than my dad. He is now a billionaire himself of his own doing. Um, but it's just, it's fascinating that, and his dad, dad sounds very similar to what your dad sounds, where his dad was tough on him. Tough on him.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  I think they're, I think they're tough on you because they don't want you to be that spoiled kid. I mean, you always wanna. Um. Spoil your kids, you know, you wanna give them the great, even now, you know, I've got two daughters. I love to spoil. I work hard so I can give them a great life. But I just want them to understand. Manners, respect and discipline. These are the three most important things and he would make sure that I would understand that even by having me working. You know, give me a clout every now and again, you know, trying to keep because I it must have been frustrating for him because. I was probably all the things that he resented when he was growing up. You know, the rich kid, oh, with with parents who had got a big house and cars and.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  And I would have hated me at school, you know, but he would have looked at me and that's why he was so disciplined with me and. You know, I was in his slipstream growing up, so I would sit, you know, we're here now, that's that was my house.

• 7:16Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Over there. So he would get home from work if he was in the country. You know, he would always go out and give me a game of football or cricket and then he would go in the office all night on the phone. And I would have dinner and I would just sit in the office, you know, I might have a ball just throwing it up in the air. But I would subconsciously listen to the arguments and, you know, him losing his temper and and just listen, not. Because I wanted to learn, just because I was there.

• 7:39Steven Bartlett?

  And you're you're talking there about the sacrifice of his success, which is. One of them, as you've highlighted, is less time with your family. You are relentless. Um. Everybody says that. What is the the cost of being a relentless person?

• 7:54Speaker 01

  You have to be incredibly selfish. You have to, you know, for for me, family is the most important thing. But I have to be brutally honest and say, I don't let even family get in the way of things that I have to do. You know, and that that can make you an asshole and it can make you sound terrible, but I just don't know any way around it. There is no way. You can be the perfect husband or the perfect father and run a successful business or, you know, be a, you know.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  A relentless operator. It's impossible because I know, because I try to balance both. But when you're flying back from America from a show and you land at seven o'clock in the morning and then you go to Manchester for a press conference. And then you come home and you just make it to pick him up from school and then you get back and they say, Dad, Dad, let's go over to Park. And you're just absolutely on empty and your phone's going and you're trying to do another deal and. You know, you're pushing the swing and you're going like this, trying to send a message at the same time. It's impossible, you know, listen. I know, because sometimes my my eldest daughter is old enough to say, Dad, please, get off the phone. And that's that kills me, because that's oh, that's bad to hear, you know, I'm like, okay, okay. But then thirty seconds later, I'm back just having a look down, because it's a lifestyle,

• 9:09Speaker 01

  you know, and it's impossible to be great at anything without making sacrifices, you know, it doesn't matter if you're a fighter, if you're a sportsman, you speak to all successful people, you can't be everything. It's impossible, you know, and and but what you don't want to do is you don't want to disregard your obligations, your family obligations, because they are extremely important. But you also need a wife or a partner who's understanding enough to say, this is what, I know what he's like, he won't stop. And that's why when Frank talks about three A M, four A M, that's because a lot of the time, I'm sort of making up for the hour or two that I've lost out playing with the kids. So I'll put them to sleep, they'll go to sleep at nine, half nine, you know, chill

• 9:52Speaker 01

  out with the wife for an hour, she'll go to sleep, and then I'm up. And now with the growth in America, it means that at four P M, five P M, the West Coast wakes up. Mm. So I can't go to bed, I can't disappear when it gets to eleven A M or on the West Coast or or midday on the West Coast, because they want to speak to me and we want to do business.