E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide

In this chapter I had the privilege of sitting down with Luke Massie, owner and founder of Vibe tickets. Luke has recently been swarmed with bad press due to his business declaring bankruptcy, to which he then chose to buy back him self. I sat down with Luke to hear his side of the story and to ask him why he thinks he's being attacked for his business decisions. 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?

  People are annoyed because they think the people that invested have been burnt and then you've just bought the business back.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  At that point shit was real.

• 0:08Steven Bartlett?

  Sounds like a fucking nightmare.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  It's not, it's absolutely horrible, it's the most vulnerable I've ever been in my life. This is actually the first time I spoke about it.

• 0:15Steven Bartlett?

  What's the truth?

• 0:28Steven Bartlett?

  Luke.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Yo.

• 0:30Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you, thanks for being here, fairly last minute. I just got back from New York and I was thinking, I'm coming to Manchester, I want to make the most use of my time in this city and you are one of the more, if you don't mind me saying, one of the more famous, renowned, young entrepreneurs here, building an incredible business in an incredible way with an incredible reputation. So I thought I would call on you to have this conversation with you. I think there's a huge amount of things that we'll relate on, I hope there's some things that we have different views on as well.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  I'm sure, that's definitely gonna be the case.

• 1:02Steven Bartlett?

  A hundred percent, but thank you so much for coming.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  You know what, thank you for having me on.

• 1:06Steven Bartlett?

  Last minute, here's where I want to start.

• 1:10Steven Bartlett?

  In, and I do this sometimes as a challenge, in 30 seconds can you tell me Luke Massie's story from now, from birth till now? And the reason I do this is because I think it helps filter out the moments that are most significant. Do you reckon you're up for that challenge?

• 1:26Speaker 01

  Of course, always.

• 1:27Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so I'm gonna stick 30 seconds on the clock.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, cool.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  So young lad, born in Preston, one of five, grew up in a council estate, father wasn't around, been through school, went to college, didn't go to university, set up first business, set up another business, set up another business, constantly challenged, favourite sayings, why not? Came across a big industry, I'm now challenging the big operators in that space and day to day asking why not?

• 1:59Steven Bartlett?

  Perfect, exactly thirty seconds. Tell me about that first business.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  So my first business was a company called Mortgage Claims Direct, which believe it or not had nothing to do with mortgages.

• 2:09Steven Bartlett?

  How old were you?

• 2:10Speaker 01

  So I was seventeen when I founded the company. So the company came about, I was at Cardinal Newman College in my first year of doing my A level, so I was doing my AS. Based in Preston and that was nine to four, every day I was there, five days a week.

• 2:26Steven Bartlett?

  The college was?

• 2:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I was doing economics, finance and sport actually at the time. And I was working at a law firm part-time in the evenings to make some money. So I used to finish at four and then run round the corner to start work at half four till half eight every night.

• 2:41Steven Bartlett?

  I'm gonna, sorry to interrupt that.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:43Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 2:44Speaker 01

  So I needed to make money. So my mum is unemployed, has been ever since I was young. Even when I was at school, I was making money buying and selling sweets. I needed to make some cash to even just go out with my friends at the weekend. I've always been that person. So I've always made money, whether it was a milk round, whether it was a paper round, whether it was buying and selling sweets etc. So even though I was at college, I didn't see that as an opportunity not to make cash.

• 3:09Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think if you, you said your dad wasn't around?

• 3:13Speaker 01

  Yes, for a number of years, yeah.

• 3:16Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think if your dad had been around and your mum had been employed, you would be who you are today?

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Well, probably not. I think my outlook on things would be different. I think my attitude towards challenges would be different. I think you probably get hardened all the time to challenges and I think that starts at a very young age. I think in an isolation, I think being an entrepreneur, you come across challenges every single day. I think most people would crumble at those challenges because, you know, the big decisions that you're making have not just happened here and it happens right now. This is, you know, combined over, you know, five years, ten years, whatever it may be. So, yeah, going back to the first business, I was working on the phones at a law firm, but there was actually a part of the law firm which was a lead generation.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  Arm to the business and basically I was the annoying young lad at seventeen ringing up asking if you'd been miss sold PPI. Um but it was at a time when the banks hadn't lost, so every every person we were calling would convert sort of one in twenty. And it was really hard, it was really hard work and then something happened, the banks had lost. It was now legal that the banks had had to repair people that had been miss sold PPI. It was one of the biggest scandals ever. And our conversion rate went from one to twenty to literally fifty percent. Every other person I was calling, we got a hit. So I managed to save up three thousand pounds and thought I can do this myself. It's an unregulated business. The barriers to entry are so low. We don't have to be a solicitor firm. We can be a lead generation and and and act on behalf of our clients.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  We keep twenty five percent of the money that's that's come back. It was a brilliant model. So um I I created my own script. I convinced two of the the top girls to come and work for me. I said, I've just raised this this investment. I managed to um lie to a landlord in Preston, got an office space. I was meant to be eighteen to get a tenancy. Set up this call centre and called it Mortgage Claims Direct. And the reason for that is, one of the biggest challenges I had at the law firm was when I was ringing up calling from a PPI company, they didn't give me a chance. Whereas if I was calling from Mortgage Claims Direct, and mortgage is really important to everyone, they give me at least thirty seconds on the phone, which allowed me you know, that foot through the door and we saw that our conversion was much higher than everyone else's. So the three grand I had, I worked out that I had basically six weeks worth of money.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  You know, I was paying these women full time whilst I was still at college doing my my A levels. And um you know, I still to this day, you know, I'm fortunate enough for it, but the we ran out of cash. And for two weeks I had to say to these women, this investor's waiting to send the cheque to me, etcetera. You know, yeah, the the money's coming in. And fortunately enough, some of the claims started to come in, which gave me a cash flow. So we managed to scale that business to twelve staff. Um and I sold the business for ninety four thousand pounds a week before my eighteenth birthday. Which sort of set the ball in motion, which is, wow, you know, there's there's ways to make cash here, so.

• 6:08Steven Bartlett?

  It's incredible, they're running a business that. Seventeen years old where you have twelve staff is pretty, pretty incredible. I genuinely, I worked in call centres from sixteen to twenty, from sixteen to twenty.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:22Steven Bartlett?

  For about sixteen to nineteen.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:23Steven Bartlett?

  Years old. And I genuinely think the call centre experience is one of the most valuable.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  Hundred percent agree where you're going with this.

• 6:30Steven Bartlett?

  Valuable, valuable skills I developed. Being a sixteen year old, calling at people at random, out the blue at nine AM at night trying to sell them double glazing, or fascia boards or conservatories, really teaches you something which becomes a real valuable, transferable skill as an entrepreneur.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Completely agree. And it also sets you up for one of the biggest things in life that people don't like, which is failure, which is that, you know, stepping out of your comfort, comfort zone, picking up the phone, speaking to a stranger. That is real life. And, you know, I, I talk about this a lot, but call centres are the, are the modern day workshops. They, they are the modern day factories and.

• 7:01Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. If you think about everything that requires mastery, it's a, it's a process of like, practice makes perfect. So like David Beckham, he learns to do amazing free kicks by continually kicking the ball at the net for years and years and years. And if you think about what call centre work is, you sit there, you pick up the phone, you try, you learn, oh shit, that didn't work with that type of person.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 7:23Steven Bartlett?

  Ten seconds down, you know, the phone is down. Ten seconds later, the phone is back up, you're trying again. I think there's a huge element of self-awareness though to that. Um, when I would call, I knew that the likelihood of someone buying from me based on how I looked was very, very low.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:38Steven Bartlett?

  Um, I knew that if I was a Steve or a Steven, it made a huge difference. I knew if I was, you know, more articulate and, um, you know, tho- those little things, but also.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Personal, yeah.

• 7:48Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. I think self-awareness is a tremendous thing and I think self-awareness is something you can't teach.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:51Steven Bartlett?

  Understanding what people think of you. Um, so anyway, moving on. So you, you did that, you sold the business, you're eighteen years old. What happens next?

• 7:58Speaker 01

  Made a few mistakes.

• 7:59Steven Bartlett?

  Um.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  What kind of mistakes? Went and bought a car that I shouldn't have done. What car? RS five, um, a thousand pound a month of car insurance. Um, and, and you know, still then going back to see my mum in a councillor's there, um, wasn't the best decision. Also gets the wrong attention, you know, I think the end of the day, looking back now, it was a really poor decision at the time. It was, I always wanted that car, I went into Audi, you know, and, and for me, it was my money, I've made it, that sort of thing. But that, that money could have been used a lot better. But those are mistakes that I made at an early stage, which meant I've not had to go and do those now. So, yeah. And then, yeah, I also started to invest in other businesses. Friends had come up to me with an idea of a loft converting business, for example.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  So I invested in Preston Loft Conversions and I thought that if I could invest little bits of capital into three or four businesses, that, that would generate me, that would generate me twenty, thirty thousand pound a year per business and I wouldn't have to work again. And it was that, because I'd had one success, I thought that would work for everything else. And that was another huge mistake, which is you can't spread yourself too thin, but at the same time, stick to what you know. Don't go into markets that you don't know about.

• 9:09Steven Bartlett?

  So where did Vibe come in?

• 9:11Speaker 01

  And so Vibe was founded when I was twenty years old, but it, it wasn't a business. So people talk about Vibe was founded in two thousand thirteen, it's five years old. Yes, it was formed in five years ago, that's because I incorporated the name. I knew it was a very, very good brand at the time, but I didn't know what it was. So I had four tickets to see Ed Sheeran that I bought on my card. And we bought, for me and my friends, we bought four tickets, a hundred pounds each. They gave me the cash, I put it in my bank and I made the purchase for these tickets. Something came up in the social calendar, which meant we couldn't, we couldn't go to the, to the event. And my mates were asking for the cash back, basically. So I went to Google, typed in selling tickets and there was a number of sites that offered me the option to sell these tickets.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  There was Get Me In, Via Gogo, SeatWorth, StopHub. It was a pretty crowded market, you know, they were all offering the same service with the same fees, et cetera. But the, the problem I had as a consumer at the time was two, well, two major problems. First of all, they all charged me a selling fee. So in order for me to get the four hundred pounds back, I had to list them at five hundred. And knowing at the other end, there was a buyer going to pay a fee as well, I just didn't think that was morally right. But if I'm being completely honest with everyone, the biggest issue I had with it was that all these sites would only pay me the money after the event. Cause they wanted to control the process. Now, what twenty year old lad can afford to give their mates back a hundred pounds each and wait for six months?

• 10:30Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  It just wasn't feasible. So I thought, you know, this is, this is shit. Went to Twitter, you know, anyone at our age, when they've got a problem goes and rants about it. I tweeted the fact that I had four tickets to see Ed Sheeran, hashtag Manchester, hashtag Ed Sheeran. And literally within sort of four or five minutes, there was genuine Ed Sheeran fans tweeting me. Hi Luke, I'll take the tickets. They could see that I was a real person. They could see that I invested in my Twitter profile. So I got chatting to one genuine Ed Sheeran fan. I tweeted him, uh, screenshotted him my confirmation of purchase. Shared with him my PayPal details so he could send me money as a, as a stranger would be covered. And I managed to get my money back within ten minutes. And it was at that time where I questioned, as I've always have in life, you know, my why.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  Is, um, you know, there was a need here on a buyer and a seller's part, but the current operators in the space weren't fulfilling that need for either of us. So I started questioning, you know, if I've done this, surely there's other people doing it. So I started using things like TweetDeck and, and checking how many tweets there were. And just on Twitter alone, there was between fifteen and twenty five million tweets a month with the keywords need tickets, want tickets, spare tickets. So that's when the lightbulb moment happened for me, which is if I can replicate what I've done, then I can help thousands of people. So we set up basically the hashtag good vibes. And that's how Vibe was born. Vibe Tickets was a free resource. Anyone who wanted a ticket or had a spare ticket would tweet us and we'd just retweet it.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  And within the first six months, we grew to sixty thousand followers. We then grew to a hundred thousand followers. And this was, you know, an amazing time for us because we had people from the industry itself, from Ticketmaster, using our hashtag and using our, our Twitter handle. And it was insane. And that's how I actually met my first investor who basically used Twitter to sell some Formula One tickets. And was like, I wanna know who this lad is behind this account because he's just saved me a fortune. This is such a good idea.

• 12:21Steven Bartlett?

  So you, um, so at some stage you think I'm gonna make, turn this into a company and an app?

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Well, again, I didn't, I, the idea was planted in my head, so completely randomly, but the guy who ended up being my first investor said to me, Matt Nguyen, said to me, "This is really cool. Wouldn't it be brilliant if every time someone tweeted you, you made a pound?" So at the time, just to give you an idea of figures, it was just me in my bedroom, but we were doing between three and five thousand tweets a day, retweeting, like connecting people. And just to give you an idea of volume, that's probably between three and five million pounds worth of tickets every single day. So we were causing nuisance in the resale market because the big four resale of spending money on user acquisition, on SEO, on PPC, to try and get people to these sites. And we're just taking it all on social because we removed those barriers to entry. We just wanted to connect those people.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  So it was at that time that, you know, this guy who was obviously a lot older than me, a lot more savvier than me, sort of presented this idea. And that's when I thought, ah, a marketplace. So it's brilliant that all these people are using Twitter, but A, I don't own the customer. B, I can never monetize this. And C, if I'm gonna build something of value and I want to pivot and change the product, I'm gonna have to own it myself. And that's when, you know, I went back to him with a business idea and said, "Look, I've listened to what you've said. You've planted this idea in my mind. I can't get it out of my head now. I think I can build a vibe community." And that's when the, you know, the idea of Vibe came about and I wrote my first business plan as such. And on that day, he wrote me a cheque for two hundred thousand pounds.

• 13:49Steven Bartlett?

  A physical cheque?

• 13:50Speaker 01

  A physical cheque for two hundred thousand pounds. He said, "Will this be enough to get you on your way?"

• 13:54Steven Bartlett?

  So you, you make this MVP, this kind of like, you know, minimal viable product to prove the concept. And then you raised, you raised again?

• 14:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, we carried on raising, but I mean, this is another thing that people ask me about, how do I raise capital? Our MVP was the Twitter account. We could prove that even though we didn't have a product, that thousands of people were using this as a genuine alternative.

• 14:13Steven Bartlett?

  I guess you can prove the need, right? Then there's that, you've got to prove the execution of the idea, right?

• 14:20Speaker 01

  And this is where I think for anyone who's listening who's trying to raise capital, really needs to consider this because the amount of people that come to me asking for investment from myself or access to my investors, you know, are typically raising between a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. And when I actually ask them, "Why? Why are you raising this money?", nine times out of tenets, to prove this idea that I've got in my head. When they could actually go and prove the idea that they've got in their head without the two hundred thousand pounds or without the hundred thousand pounds. They could create a Facebook group or they could create a Twitter account and just prove the need. And then it's a different scenario, which is, "Look, I've already demonstrated the need. I now just need capital to make this happen."

• 14:55Steven Bartlett?

  So here's the thing, so you start, and I, my first company was like a tech company. Very, very interesting, a lot of the sort of parallels between it because I realised the need was there. One of the ways I realised the need was there was when we created a Facebook group that did the same thing. It was so active, it was so active in fact, that I knew that if this Facebook group was a website and I owned it, it would probably be worth hundreds of millions of pounds at scale. So if we took it to more universities, Facebook group was just from Manchester, so I tried to create the website, didn't work, whatever. But one of the things that I learnt from running a tech company was that like money runs out quick.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  Very quick.

• 15:35Steven Bartlett?

  And one of the, one of the interesting things is, especially when it's like a pre-revenue tech company, as a founder, you look at the bank account and you know, it's like an hourglass. The more time that passes, the lower this number gets.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 15:49Steven Bartlett?

  And, and it's almost in some respects like a bit of a runway. This aircraft has got to take off before the end of the runway.

• 15:55Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 15:56Steven Bartlett?

  Or, and if, and if it doesn't, it falls off the fucking runway.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 15:58Steven Bartlett?

  Investment, what it does is it extends.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  Extends the runway, yeah.

• 16:02Steven Bartlett?

  The length of the runway, but because it increases the overheads, it increases the speed of the aircraft.

• 16:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 16:08Steven Bartlett?

  So the aircraft's now just going faster down the fucking runway, there's more overheads, right?

• 16:11Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 16:12Steven Bartlett?

  So how does that feel as a tech founder, dealing with that like constant ticking down of the bank balance? How have you dealt with that?

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Very, very good question, Steve, and no one asked this question, so thank you for asking. Exactly. So first of all, in the first year, it's terrifying. You know, you, you, you're, you think you're on to something. You've now brought these people in, they've bought into the vision, you've convinced people who have got families and dependents to come and join this operation and come and, you know, join this vision. But you also know that it's part of your strategy to actually make a, an impact in the industry by going in with this different monetisation model. So, you know, for, for people that don't understand vibes, that not only is our offering different as a product, but our commercial model is different as well to the industry, which is we completely separate ourselves from resale. We're offering a different alternative.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  So, yeah, you know, the first year for me was, was turbulent, it was so hard to, to get in my head that I'm going to have to keep going out and raising capital here and, and, and, and trying to pivot and trying to understand where we're going to generate revenue and. You know, I sat down and we built a very, very good advisory board and, you know, a huge influence on that was Richard Branson, without sort of trying to bring him into the story. You know, he was one that said, you've got to look at this bigger picture. If this is your game plan, you need to make sure that it's part of your strategy and you execute very, very well.

• 17:33Steven Bartlett?

  And you met him on, was it Virgin's Pitch to Rich?

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Yes, Virgin's Pitch to Rich competition. So I was down in London.

• 17:40Steven Bartlett?

  Did you win that?

• 17:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, well, no, I was actually a finalist.

• 17:44Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  We won Capital, but Richard then singled me out and identified me, you know, as someone that he wanted to mentor. And been to his house several times, spent, you know, time with him on that. And I think he saw what I was trying to do with Vibe as a challenger brand and the world against it.

• 17:59Steven Bartlett?

  And you were doing good in the world as well, which is in line with...

• 18:01Speaker 01

  Exactly, you know, we're trying to build something that's right, you know. You know, people all the time question Vibe's model. I could tell you right now that if I turned on monetization tomorrow and charged for this service, we would be profitable within six weeks. But it's not the right thing to do. So we're going about it a different way. And, you know, the external pressures, that is very, very difficult to stay strong to what you're trying to achieve and what the strategy is. There was three finalists, we all won cash. And then McReba, the Plastic Roads guy, ended up winning the actual competition.

• 18:31Steven Bartlett?

  What did they win?

• 18:31Speaker 01

  I think he won more cash and some prizes from J C Deco, some of the partners, et cetera. That is a fantastic business, by the way. Toby's a brilliant founder, so he was definitely a deserved winner. And he is making a global impact to plastics, so fair play to him. But yeah, the following day, Richard invited me to his house.

• 18:51Steven Bartlett?

  Fucking hell.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  I think he just liked Vibe. And it was at that point where Richard Branson said to me, look, Luke, Vibe isn't a ticketing business. Don't think of it as a ticketing business. You're in the business of connecting people and data is your currency.

• 19:04Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  And that's when things clicked for me, which is, okay, how I've been packaging Vibe, how I've been selling Vibe, how I've been trying to convince people. It has to change. Vibe is about removing those barriers and it's about challenging any company that deliberately positions itself to exploit the customer. That's where Vibe can go as a brand and that really started to excite me, but also the investors that I'd previously visited, which was, look, you've been thinking about Vibe as a ticketing business. The industry's very, very competitive. It's going to be difficult to demonstrate a model that's going to work. How about looking at this from this position? And that's when the real cash started coming in.

• 19:40Steven Bartlett?

  But how was it? So I'll go back to the question. Like, how is it being a tech founder who is presumably always raising money? Like, even when you raise, you close the raise, you have to then basically start thinking about the next raise, right?

• 19:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:54Steven Bartlett?

  So what I'm trying to get at is like, I understand from my perspective what it's like, especially as a startup. In our first year, our bank account just went one way, right?

• 20:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:04Steven Bartlett?

  But what does that feel like on a day-to-day basis? How does that impact your life? You know, do you come to peace with the idea that?

• 20:12Speaker 01

  As I said, I think you need to accept that this is the strategy and this is what we're playing for and you do it right. You know, the model that Vibe's doing isn't new.

• 20:21Steven Bartlett?

  What impact does it have on you, though?

• 20:23Speaker 01

  Very, very stressful and but you've got to take that burden on as a founder, I think.

• 20:28Steven Bartlett?

  How has it changed you on a personal level? How is Luke different because of those things now than he was three years ago?

• 20:35Speaker 01

  Wow, that's a really good question.

• 20:37Steven Bartlett?

  This is what we're going to do on this podcast, by the way.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a really good question. And if anyone has ever answered that, and that's probably because you're a founder. So I think it's made me, Vibe's been in positions where, you know, we've got 20 odd staff, there's 80 K about to go in, you know, whatever. And we won't go into details, but the burn rate's, you know, chugging on, you've got three days of capital left. And it's like, you've got investors there and they're riding on their investors. You know, they're waiting to get to a point where it's best to negotiate their position.

• 21:06Steven Bartlett?

  Of course.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  But you become hardened to it. And I think you then start understanding things from a different perspective. And what you've got to do is you've got to take the emotion out of it. And you've got to take the, these guys are trying to screw me over. You've got to take the emotion out of, I'm really worried about everything else. You've got to go, look, this is the product, this is how we're doing things. This is why we're so successful. And the alternative is turn on monetization and slow growth, or turn on monetization and go out against everything you've said and force something. Stick true to what you have and it'll come good. And that's the only advice I can sort of give to people that are embarking on it.

• 21:38Steven Bartlett?

  In your first two years, what was your worst moment? Your toughest moment, let's say, the moment you thought, maybe not the toughest moment for you, but the moment which most people would consider the toughest. So for us, it was probably when one day on the way to work, six AM in the morning, we get hacked and someone emails all of our clients, really personal abusive things, we lose all of our clients. There's seventy people here, they lose all their clients, so we know we've got no more. But and the sort of cherry on the top of that cake was that it was our team building day. So everyone was on their way to paintballing. We pulled up at paintballing, on my way there at six AM, I start getting calls. Our investors have received personal abuse from our email address.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  That's insane.

• 22:16Steven Bartlett?

  And getting there and telling, having to tell the whole company to turn around, we're going home. And we're going back to the office, there's no clients there. They're all wearing their like tracksuits and stuff, are sitting on the desks. Them seeing me in the glass room, like on the phone to all these brands. These brands telling me that I'm a fucking bullshit. What was your toughest moment in the first two years?

• 22:32Speaker 01

  Um, probably, well, it's happened over the course of it. But I think the hardest thing for me has been thinking that something was when it wasn't. And what I mean by that is, is quite publicly recently, there's been a situation with Vibe where I was backed into a corner by someone who was my mentor, someone who did write my first investment check. And, you know, I signed my first shareholders agreement, aged twenty, raised this capital. And at the time, didn't take independent legal advice. And throughout that period, I've thought that something was, that it wasn't.

• 23:07Steven Bartlett?

  So let's give that context then. So recently in the press, as some people would have seen, there was a story, the headline is, Vibe tickets go, Vibe tickets goes into administration, bought back by the founder.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:17Steven Bartlett?

  So you're well known for raising from the crowd.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:22Steven Bartlett?

  So you, I'm not familiar with the process completely, but from what I understand, that this is a platform, I think it's CrowdCube.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  Yes, we used CrowdCube once, yeah.

• 23:30Steven Bartlett?

  So are you gonna have to correct me on all these things? But just from the external perception, it's quite good to start there with the ignorance. You raised on CrowdCube, you raised from other investors as well. The business goes under, this is just a public perception based on press. It says Luke Massie has bought the business back. People are annoyed because they think the people that invested have been burnt. And then you've just bought the business back.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 23:55Steven Bartlett?

  What's the truth?

• 23:56Speaker 01

  Um, so basically what happened was we had, um,

• 24:01Speaker 01

  A sort of very difficult um structure in the old company. Um and again, touching on that without going into the the sort of specifics of the details, but we had a very, very restrictive uh shareholders agreement. Which meant that I couldn't um take on new capital or I couldn't take on new debt without investor director consent. Which meant I constantly had to go back to a person to to get to get their consent to do something. And it got to a stage where, again, come, you know, we had agreement on the table for more capital to come in and. You know, it there was a a situation that was engineered, which meant it was favorable to that one person who was holding the cards. And uh it actually got to a point where the rest of the investors said, well, we're not continuing to invest in this vehicle unless some of these documents are changed. And um it then forced Vibin to a position where the company ran out of capital.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  The company ran out of cash, which meant it was insolvent. And and and for those that don't understand that process, it means that. Once a company is declared insolvent, it means that as a director, I have a duty by law to think of creditors first, not shareholders. And that was very, very difficult, considering that I was the biggest shareholder and I was also one of the biggest creditors, having put my directors loan at the beginning. And, you know, people don't understand that. So um I had to take the correct legal advice and I had to get the take the correct independent insolvency advice and it was it was told to me, look, if this company doesn't get. Um capital very, very quickly, you know, the company's gonna go under. So I went back to the the the shareholder base and and asked for some uh short term capital until I could get this deal over the line. And the money wasn't forthcoming, which meant that I had no other option.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  So the company was placed into our administration and I wasn't willing to give up on this. There was no way, so I frantically ran around, put some uh money together and put an uh a bid together to um to the the independent valuers of the business. To say, look, I'm the founder, I'm willing to take this on, here's my um offer to the business. And my offer was conditional and it was.

• 25:48Steven Bartlett?

  He makes the decision.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  So it's the the the insolvency practitioners, they put an independent value in, so they say, okay, we think this business is worth X. Um and and take everything into consideration. And it's um, you know, it's it's a vigorous process and, you know.

• 26:01Steven Bartlett?

  Sounds like a fucking nightmare.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  It's not, it it's absolutely horrible, it's the most vulnerable I've ever been in my life because I'm now not in control of my own company and the the the. You know, it could have easily been taken away from me because of this process and.

• 26:11Steven Bartlett?

  How did it feel?

• 26:12Speaker 01

  For people to come out in the press to say that this was forced and this was, you know, no one would want to go down that process. If anyone's been through, never mind at the age I am, but no one would want to go down this process.

• 26:21Steven Bartlett?

  How does it feel?

• 26:23Speaker 01

  I was frustrated, I was angry, I was so close to coming out and saying, you know, you guys don't know what's happened, I've not even come out and made a public statement yet, but. Going back to what happened is, you know, my, my offer was conditional and I went in with an offer and my offer was declined, my first offer. And I was so surprised that I couldn't understand, surely I'm the only person that's tried to buy this business. And it became apparent that the one person that tried putting the company into administration had made a bid for my company. Now, people can take that however they want, but.

• 26:51Steven Bartlett?

  So then it then made being a very, very. Original shareholders who had let the business go under also tried to um. Buy it back.

• 26:59Speaker 01

  Not only that, this said person actually tried contacting key members of staff prior to it going into that. Now, this hasn't come out, this hasn't been demonstrated because I don't want to go over the past, but. The situation that was portrayed was the fact that the headlines.

• 27:15Steven Bartlett?

  Contacting key members of staff as if to say like, I'm gonna buy this business and then I'm gonna hire the people and then I'm gonna run it myself, type thing.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  You could take that, you know, however you want, but, yeah, exactly, you know, that's what, that's the fact that people don't know about. So I've gone in with this offer, my offer's declined, couldn't believe it, we've had a significantly uh larger offer, Mr. Massie, at that point shit was real. This was, this is it, I'm no longer in control of my company, someone else is buying it, what can I do? So I sold some more personal assets, I sold some bitcoin, I'm ringing around friends that I know, people that I can, you know, rely on, I said, look, I need to get more cash together to buy this business. Uh I was told that I had two hours to improve my offer, my scraped together some more cash and and put my offer in and. My offer was conditional on, A, I took on the going concerns of the business, things like sales force that are operational to the, to, to, to the success of the business.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  But also that every single member of the staff was moved over, I didn't make one redundancy because my team was so important to me. The first priority I had to do was to save the company, to get the staff. So that very day, the transaction completed, Luke Massie buys the company back, okay? That same very day, because of one of my investors was on the stock market, they had to make an announcement to London Stock Exchange. Which then all the press got on to it and the announcement to the stock exchange was just factual. The company went into administration, Luke's bought it back. So the all, not one media outlet in the North West rang me for a comment. They all just printed that the company's gone into administration, Luke Massie's bought it back. That was really disappointing for me because not one of them rung me up to ask for comment.

• 28:47Speaker 01

  Now, so this is now spreading around Manchester and you know, the headline was true, the fact was true. Luke Massie did buy the company, I did. Yeah, okay. But why and what's gonna happen and what's happening next was never, never documented. And you know what, it shouldn't have been documented. This happens, but because Val is a public company.

• 29:05Steven Bartlett?

  I've got to be honest with you. First time I saw the headline, I think someone sent me a screenshot or I probably got sent it, being honest with you, nine times. In a very, probably in the space of about seven days, just like, because you know what this entrepreneurial community is like, people send stuff around. And so the first thing I saw was, and I didn't read it properly because it was just, it was just something, a headline. The first thing you think, and because I've got like personal experiences of people doing this to screw me as well, was that the first thing you think is that the business has been flipped, you've shaken off people and debts and you've started again and screwed people. That's what the headlines portray.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  Completely agree.

• 29:44Steven Bartlett?

  And anyone, if you saw that for social chain, you'd think the same thing because nobody, nobody knows you, your character.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:52Steven Bartlett?

  They know the personal brand, they know the tweets, whatever. They don't know character.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's the difficult bit is that.

• 30:00Steven Bartlett?

  But then I changed, once I, like, once I read, I actually took the time to read some things. I very quickly realised what happened and understanding how shareholder agreements are written and the past, my own personal past. I completely understood. And that's why I messaged you, just to say, look.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  No, I appreciate that. And you know, for those listening, you know, you sent me a text, just, you know, keep your head up Luke, these things happen, you'll shut off. And to get that from a fellow. You know, in brackets entrepreneurs, someone who's going through the challenges that you're going through, that, that, that helped me through it. But, you know, again, it's, it's that, you're talking about character. And I think that hurt me the most, which was people are actually questioning your character. People are coming out and saying that, you know, you're screwing people over. And this is the thing is, once I'd saved the company and I know, okay, now I'm back in control of things. The first thing I did was pick up the phone to my lawyer and say, I want to give shares back to, to the crowd out of, out of my own shares. Because that, that's what I was gonna do, that was the right thing. But before I could even come out and comment, first of all, I had to take the right tax advice.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  Because what I didn't want to do was give shares to people and then they would all be, they would all be, they would all be landed with a tax bill. So I had to do things correctly. And, you know, when, when I could announce it, I was relieved because I was like, look, guys, this is what I was trying to do. You know, you, you were all so quick to come out and judge and, you know, they were so quick to write the headlines. It was just, in that moment, I learned a lot. I learned a hell of a lot about how things are set up, how things are perceived, et cetera.

• 31:25Steven Bartlett?

  What people want you to happen, like.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't like to say that people, you know, do want to see you fail, but evidence backs that, you know, and that's the thing.

• 31:34Steven Bartlett?

  Of course they do.

• 31:35Speaker 01

  You know, especially people that are in the local community who are trying to champion entrepreneurship. That's really, really bad. You know, at the end of the day, if this was happening in the States, I'd guarantee that people would have been sending me very different messages and, you know, the press would have been different.

• 31:46Steven Bartlett?

  Let's just take this down to the fundamentals. And like, I, I genuinely believe, don't know if this is a good thing to say, I don't care. Um, I think ninety-nine percent of human agenda is selfish in some regard. So when you're winning, it's, say you start winning and I'm just Tom, Dick and Harry watching. It's in, it's in my, um, I'm incentivized and it's in my, to my advantage to, to back you.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  Agreed, to align yourself with that success.

• 32:13Steven Bartlett?

  And then when you fall, because you're, you're joining me as someone that's not done anything. And it's also good, and it makes me feel good to watch you fall and to also take the opposite side and say, oh, that prick, he fucking, he fucked up. Have you seen that massive?

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Always knew, always knew that was gonna happen.

• 32:29Steven Bartlett?

  That always happens, that's why I'm not doing it, you know, that's the same, it makes me feel good as a bystander to think, well, you know, I wasn't, uh, inferior to Luke in fact. In fact, Luke was never gonna succeed, so we're all the same here. Do you know, it's that kind of like. It's the, it's just the way, you know, people are chameleons and when agendas and motives change, they change.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  No, exactly. And this is the thing, you know, one of the disappointing things was the Sunday Times.

• 32:53Speaker 01

  Wrote a piece, not last Sunday, the Sunday before, which was the first page of the business section.

• 32:58Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 32:58Speaker 01

  Which was my face, the image that was used, the image that was used that went on all the billboards because I was the face of Voom. And the headline was Branson's.

• 33:06Steven Bartlett?

  You're joking?

• 33:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Branson's favourite goes under.

• 33:09Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 33:10Speaker 01

  Now, first of all, I haven't gone under. Second of all, I've acquired the business back and things are actually fine. To the consumer, to a vibe customer, they would never know what's actually going on, but because vibe is such a public business in this area. And because, you know, as you said, we've rightly raised capital, it was blown up. But for that to be such a personal headline. That was, that was aimed at me, that's me. That's not the vibe limited. I mean, bearing in mind, we're separate entities, you know. That was, that was quite hard, but it was a lesson. It was, it was a huge lesson for me. And I can't wait for the day that we get to that stage where that reporter's asking for comment and I can go, no.

• 33:45Steven Bartlett?

  Would you?

• 33:47Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't think I'd give him a comment, no, because he's betrayed me to be something that I'm not. And, you know, where, where was you, where was my comment when you asked what was going on? Because what he could have done, this is, this is a real talking issue here. What he could have done is taken what's happened, painted a picture of what's happened, but then asked what I would have done differently. And I, because this is an interesting story for the startup scene, which is not just from the founder perspective, but also from the investor perspective, because this could happen if you're too restrictive. This could happen if you force your founder into a corner. We'll find ourselves, we have to. So there's lessons to be learnt here from founders, which is make sure you get independent legal advice. And again, I don't want to go over the same points because it is what it is. You can make your own judgements on it. At the end of the day, vibe's now looking forward and it's a positive road for us.

• 34:31Steven Bartlett?

  I really want to go back to that point about that reporter. That reporter calls you, vibe's fucking taking over the world. I, I work for vibe, fucking everyone works for vibe, right? He calls you, says, Luke, can I have a comment? Um, I honestly believe in that moment, you should say to him, hundred percent.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:48Steven Bartlett?

  Because that is, that is, if, if, if you walk around with that, that grudge and that resentment to somebody who made a decision based on his own bullshit, uh, defects and whatever, his own agendas to make money and just to capitalize on a headline and get clicks, whatever. If you walk around with that grudge to that person, I think you're losing still.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, and do you know what? I think because it's still raw.

• 35:08Steven Bartlett?

  Because it's still raw, hundred percent.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  Because it's still raw, and that's the thing. And thi- thi- this is actually the first time I spoke about it, you know, the, I've made comments in, in, in, I came out, set the record straight, I'm giving my shares back to the crowd. Since then, I've not said anything, I've just cracked on.

• 35:20Steven Bartlett?

  Forgive all these fuckers.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  Do you know, and that's the, I've not said anything and I've got a business to focus on, I've got an incredible team, I've got an incredible opportunity here. Um, with the business, I've got super, super supportive investors that have not just backed me, but they've backed me through this whole process as well. And, you know, they're confident that I'm going to come through this as a stronger leader, but also vibe is going to come through with this as a stronger, stronger business. And I generally do hope that in two, three years' time, I look back and, and when people say, what was the turning point? It was this, it was, I had to shi-, you know, had to shake off that negative, toxic cap, you know, the, the last six months of my life have been managing the investors. Not managing the business.

• 35:56Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  It became a business itself. And, and thi- this is the problem. And, you know, I've learnt from that, at the end of the day, naivety, you know, one of, one of the, the comments that was on LinkedIn was Luke's younger naive because he's not come out and said something. Okay, fine, you can, you, you can be entitled to that opinion. I was young and naive at twenty. Just signing a shareholders agreement, which pretty much meant that I couldn't make the decisions on behalf of the company. The other thing is, you know, that shareholders agreement was never challenged at any investment round I've ever been through, including the crowd queue round, who have their own lawyers looking at things. So I, no alarm bell was ever raised for me that something's wrong here, until the final raise, when the company was running out of capital.

• 36:34Steven Bartlett?

  What did it, what did it feel like to go on the internet, log in and see someone you don't know, talking shit about you?

• 36:42Speaker 01

  Really tough, but not because of they're talking shit about me.

• 36:46Steven Bartlett?

  What was the worst thing you read?

• 36:47Speaker 01

  Um, Luke Massie had this planned all along.

• 36:50Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 36:50Speaker 01

  As if this is like premeditated, I want to screw people. That is ridiculous. Bear in mind, everyone's been giving shares back. You know, that's, that's it. Um, you know, apart from the guy that put, that puts in the position anyway, and there's a very small few that were following him, so. To have that, it was difficult. I mean, it was new ground, it was new territory for me because I've always been portrayed in the media as a good guy doing the right things at the right time.

• 37:14Steven Bartlett?

  This is the thing though.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  And then when it, when it was, you know, and that's.

• 37:18Steven Bartlett?

  Does it not cut? So the thing is, the reason why that headline was written by the Sunday Times is presumably because you're, as a brand, big and vibe is big. And vibe, go under, is not really a big, as big a story as, you know, connecting it to someone as big as Richard. And then connecting it to yourself, like, part of the danger, I guess, of building a personal brand where you're known as much as, just as much as your business is known, is when you do, when things do go bad, you'll be fucking dragged into the pits. If nobody knew Luke Massie as an entrepreneur, there would be fucking no story there. There'd really, there would really not be a story there. But if you think, what people like is they like the, the rise and the fall.

• 38:02Steven Bartlett?

  They like to cover the Whitney Houston going to the top and then the, you know, the Michael Jackson falling, you know, that's, do you know what I mean?

• 38:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:09Steven Bartlett?

  So it comes with, it's one of the real dangers and one of the things that I'm quite scared about, I'm genuinely scared about with entrepreneurs building their personal brands, is you will rise big, and I've seen this in entrepreneurs that I followed, you'll rise big and you'll rise young and you'll be clapped all the way up, right? And then they're waiting. The same motherfuckers are waiting to boo when anything goes wrong. And I've seen friends, time after time, their companies go up and then down, and then, and the impact it's had on some of them, and it's really fucking tough. Like, mental health issues, like, especially the real young ones. I'm not talking about you because you're, you're much more mature.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  Old now, aren't I? Old, old compared to some of these young entrepreneurs.

• 38:49Steven Bartlett?

  Some of these, I'm talking about eighteen year olds, and I've literally got messages from eighteen year old kids asking me how they're meant to deal with this when they've gone bust.

• 38:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, this is what I'm saying, you know, and. Hopefully the process that I've been through, I'd like to shed some like positive light on it, you know, which is lessons we'll learn and and if I can pass that on to the the next, you know, young founder who's raising some capital who might not have the the resources or the money to to get the correct legal advice, I could just maybe point him, look out for this, look out for dragon tag, look out for these points.

• 39:16Steven Bartlett?

  Three things then.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:17Steven Bartlett?

  Three things, I'm eighteen years old.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:19Steven Bartlett?

  I'm Luke, I'm an entrepreneur.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:21Steven Bartlett?

  I'm wanting to start a business.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  Correct accountant that can give you the correct advice.

• 39:24Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so that's number one.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Correct lawyer.

• 39:26Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  Okay. In fact, no, number one would be a co-founder, because the that you'll know with Dom.

• 39:31Steven Bartlett?

  Fucking hell, yeah.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  If you have someone who can share that burden, someone, it it it.

• 39:35Steven Bartlett?

  I didn't even think about that.

• 39:36Speaker 01

  It's ridiculous, like a co-founder, someone you can, you're in the pub with, things are down, what, because no one, it's such a lonely place. It is such a lonely place. And if I have a co-founder, I can go, what about this, what about this? It's not on a, none other than, it is real context. So even me and you now, we can talk about our our issues and our challenges and they might be the same issue, but in different context.

• 39:59Steven Bartlett?

  Mm-hmm.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  So the advice that I give you might work for Vibe, but it might it might not work for social chat and vice versa, you know? And and it then becomes familiarized um advice. So your text to me was brilliant.

• 40:09Steven Bartlett?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  But in context, it it wasn't, if that makes sense, which is Luke, well, that's really odd, Steve, when people are writing about him, you know what I mean? It's like, but what you're saying is right.

• 40:17Steven Bartlett?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  And and I think having a co-founder to share that responsibility to, because it's sanity as well, which is what, I think it would be even twenty times harder if you was the only founder and you've no one to bounce that off. So first of all.

• 40:29Steven Bartlett?

  You can get sucked into the bullshit. That can become your your uh your, what's it, your reference point.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  I see that really bad. Like, I I see founders coming to me going, Luke, I've actually got this, it's worth, you know, we're we're touching a million now in revenue. What's the next step? And I said, go and find a co-founder. Like, even, we're we're three years in, I don't care. Like, go and find the guy that you can share the, but he's worth five percent, ten percent, tw- twenty percent equity. Believe me, in the long run, like, go and find that guy, go and find that girl, you know, and um and and also, co-founders need to understand what they're getting into as well, which is, so many people talk about their co-founder and the co-founders have no value, no value whatsoever. And and and that's that's another thing that's interesting, we were having a conversation before this and, you know, that does happen. So yeah, get a co-founder, get. The right documents in place from a legal point of view, even between you and your co-founder.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  It's like going into a relationship and having a mortgage or whatever it is, it's like, set the foundations right from day one, just because the only purpose of a contract is for when things go wrong. And shit will go wrong.

• 41:29Steven Bartlett?

  And the crazy thing is, especially when you're young, you, you, you, A, you're just, you're so eager to just give it a fucking go, that you don't wanna spend so mu- you just wanna get the fucking money in and the thing put in the drawer, the contract signed, and you think, from here on in, we're just gonna build a billion dollar company, I'm gonna retire with a fucking jet, everything's gonna be fine. We're never even gonna need to look at that contract again. But I, I'm yet to run a business. I'm yet to run a business. I've probably raised investment in some way, maybe thirteen times. And the contract, every single raise, I've looked at it and thought, ah god, I wish I'd done something differently.

• 42:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 42:02Steven Bartlett?

  Especially the first couple. The first investment, I thought, fuck, I fucked myself.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  Insane, isn't it?

• 42:05Steven Bartlett?

  Second one, I thought I fucked myself again.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  Like, when this all came to, I looked at it, I was like, Luke, you signed that?

• 42:09Steven Bartlett?

  My current investors are amazing.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, exactly. But, I mean, I looked at this, I was like, Luke, you signed that? That's mad. Like, seriously.

• 42:15Steven Bartlett?

  But you didn't know better?

• 42:16Speaker 01

  No, no, but it's, this is what I'm trying to say. And people, this is what the press could have run. This, this press could have looked, this has happened, Luke's come through it, he's managed the process. Let's put that behind us.

• 42:25Steven Bartlett?

  That's not a story.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  No, I, I know, but-

• 42:26Steven Bartlett?

  No one's getting clicks for that.

• 42:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 42:28Steven Bartlett?

  Luke's come through it, he's managed the process. It's Richard Branson's favourite's gone under.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  It's just, it's not, doesn't make it right, though.

• 42:33Steven Bartlett?

  And this is why I don't take it all so personally. Um, and I, I know those same people that are gonna fucking tear me down are the ones that are gonna build me up, you know?

• 42:42Speaker 01

  How, how, how are you going, like, for, for those listeners, how are you going about mitigating that? Are you going into every situation analysing? Or are you just going, fuck it, why not? Like, you know, to a certain extent? Or are you going, do you know what, is this a better, correct use of my attack? Is this correct for what I'm trying to get across? And could this be misconstrued?

• 43:00Steven Bartlett?

  How, give me, give me a more specific example, so like-

• 43:02Speaker 01

  So you took, so you get invited on to go on to TV. What, how do you value that?

• 43:07Steven Bartlett?

  So, how do I make the decisions?

• 43:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 43:09Steven Bartlett?

  So, been asked to go on loads of TV shows. If you, if you ask my team, or you ask, um, anyone in the company, we've been, MTV have asked me to go on a show called, um, How I Got Rich. And I look at the, what they want me to do, and it's, go on a helicopter, show your Rolexes, no, fuck you.

• 43:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:23Steven Bartlett?

  Um, I've probably had that exact offer with the title changed ten times, no, fuck you.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 43:28Steven Bartlett?

  Um, I'm looking for things that will bring value in some respect to things I care about.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  But also, I do not think there's a responsibility-

• 43:35Steven Bartlett?

  It's not who I am.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  Exactly. There's a responsibility if people that are following you and following your brand expect something and for you to go and do that is.

• 43:43Steven Bartlett?

  Here's what I don't want to do. Eighteen year old Steve Bartlett wrote in his diary, I want to be a millionaire before I'm twenty five. I want to Range Rover to be my first car. I want to work on my body image. And the fourth one was, I want to have a long time girlfriend. Long story. I did all four of those things, but upon doing those things, I realised that those weren't the things that are going to give me happiness and fulfilment. So at that point, when I was twenty five years old and I looked at my diary.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  How do you explain that to an eighteen year old?

• 44:06Steven Bartlett?

  So this is what I mean. Like, so I get there, I realise that money and stuff aren't going to do it for me. And I look back down the age ladder, let's call it, and I see eighteen year olds and nineteen year olds. They're looking at footballers and they're looking at all these things. I don't want those fuckers to make the same mistake I did.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  Do you think that's an influencer?

• 44:23Steven Bartlett?

  I don't, I talk about, I talk about on every channel on this podcast, every single fucking episode about how.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  Stop thinking that something is, it's smoke and mirrors.

• 44:31Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, stop, stop chasing after pleasure, thinking it's happiness. Because there's this thing called the head and a treadmill, which is when you chase the Lamborghini, you get a Lamborghini. I've sat at my friend's Lamborghinis, a week later, they don't like their Lamborghinis anymore because you adapt and then you're looking for the next thing.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  Probably sold things like their name and morals to get it as quick as possible.

• 44:50Steven Bartlett?

  And so my thing is, I'm never going to get there, ever. I'm never going to get to this place.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  It's not a destination, is it?

• 44:55Steven Bartlett?

  There's no, so, so I have to create a life where I'm already there in every sense of the word. I've got enough now. I'm happy enough now. If I died today, I've done enough. I've been nice and all those things. So I'm stop, I've stopped pinning my fulfilment on a future extrinsic goal of getting something or achieving something. And I've, I've built my life to where I want it to be sustainable now. I want to speak to my mom more. I want to give to charity now. I'm not trying to cut down the rainforest and then donate to the fucking, the, the rainforest. I'm gonna build a business which, within the rainforest, that helps the rainforest, you know? So it's just a change in my perspective and I share that perspective. I don't share my car with, I don't share what I'm, you know, I don't share how I travel or the, the nicer things.

• 45:37Steven Bartlett?

  I try not to share the extravagant things because I don't want to trick anyone into thinking that matters.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:42Steven Bartlett?

  It's a journey I've been on. It's an interesting thing. I wanted to ask you as well is, what's your? What's your relationship, I've probably tainted this answer, but what's your relationship and motives when it comes to money? What do you want, what do you want from money?

• 45:56Speaker 01

  Security. So I think one thing that I've craved um throughout my life is security, you know, knowing that I can look after my mum and and that's it. As long as there's a level of security, I think, looking after my family, I think, you know. And and not just security, but even down to my day to day decisions and, you know, I'm a long term relationship. I've got a stable relationship and that's something that I've craved from a young age, which is, you know, I was the old, you know, eldest, I was looking after my brothers and sisters. I was trying to add stability ever since I was younger. I was the one, you know, trying to su- support my mum through tough times. So I think that stability is is is a massive thing for me because I, as an entrepreneur, to want stability is quite insane because even as we operate,

• 46:37Speaker 01

  stability isn't the best for, yeah, exactly. So my life in terms of vibe, in terms of how I approach things is so unprocessed. It's, you know, to a certain extent, it's like the creative mind. And then I go home and Luke Massie at home is stable. You know, craves that thing. I go home, I still, you know, look, go and see my mum frequently, do the the food shop with her, that sort of thing. And that, I think, is how I've been able to sort of stay, you know, grounded to a certain extent. Not that I've gone and achieved things that I want to yet, but I think it just puts perspective on things. I still go into, you know, the Ingle Labour Club in Preston where it's two pound a pint and people playing darts, pool, that that's Friday night, you know, and that's because that's who I, that's where I'm from, you know.

• 47:17Steven Bartlett?

  You talked about going home to your partner.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 47:20Steven Bartlett?

  Are you, what's the deal that she's your girlfriend?

• 47:22Speaker 01

  Yes, so Frankie, I've been with Frankie since I was 20 years old. Um.

• 47:27Steven Bartlett?

  Christ.

• 47:27Speaker 01

  You know, really good girl. Again, brought stability. She, you know, she's got her own business. Her life is is busy as well. She's got her own beauty salon.

• 47:35Steven Bartlett?

  Does she understand?

• 47:37Speaker 01

  Yes, I think she understands the.

• 47:38Steven Bartlett?

  Does she understand?

• 47:40Speaker 01

  I don't know. I think she she understands business to her. Yeah, it's tough, it is tough.

• 47:45Steven Bartlett?

  Funny is.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  Because she'll come to me with her problems. I'm like, that is your problem. Like, let me explain the real problem.

• 47:50Steven Bartlett?

  It's so funny. Every time I ask that question to an entrepreneur, it's the exact same response. I say, you've got a partner, does she understand? They go, yeah, she, and I go, does she understand? They go, no, she fucking doesn't.

• 48:01Speaker 01

  Nice, no she, do you what, she's, she's, she's, she's really smart, she's doing, yeah.

• 48:06Steven Bartlett?

  She does her own thing.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  She's gonna listen to this or not, she's.

• 48:08Steven Bartlett?

  No, but, no, but, like, my, so I was gonna, cause, you know, I ain't got, I ain't got, I ain't got, anyone's gonna.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  If anyone's listening to this and single, just at Steve.

• 48:16Steven Bartlett?

  So my thing is, I, I have got to understand that they'll never really understand, and I will cause immense friction trying to get them to understand.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  That's a tweet rather, that's a tweet.

• 48:25Steven Bartlett?

  Like, I, in my past relationships, I've caused such immense friction by trying to get them to understand this thing, that I can't even use words to explain.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:34Steven Bartlett?

  I can say it's really fucking hard, you don't know what's hard, you're using your reference point of what hard means to you.

• 48:39Speaker 01

  That's the thing, you go back, you go back home and teas on the table and it's like, how's your day? And it's like.

• 48:43Steven Bartlett?

  Do I even bother?

• 48:44Speaker 01

  What do you mean? Yeah, what?

• 48:45Steven Bartlett?

  Do I even bother telling you?

• 48:46Speaker 01

  How do I explain that? You know, it's, yeah, it is insane, but the same time, if I was to ask, and I do, what's your problem? It's like, well, this girl came in and wasn't happy with this, or what, you know, it's. I can't even relate to that.

• 48:58Steven Bartlett?

  It's a relative.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, you know, for me, it's, um, yeah, it's that stability and it's, you know, without getting the violin or anything, but when I was growing up, I never had a proper, like, Christmas that, you know, like, everyone was around the table. And then, you know, I found this girl and I'd go around to her house and that was the family, you know, and I felt myself, well, this, this is what I wanted.

• 49:20Steven Bartlett?

  They say behind every great man is a great, you know, woman, or they say behind every great woman is a great man.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  I'm sure, I'm sure, it's, you know, it's, it's one of those, it's, at the end of the day, I think it works for me, stability, you know, at home, in home life. I think then it gives you that rock, so when you are going through these turbulent times, you've got that other person that's going, yeah, but Luke, so what? You know, it's like, and then you, it's like you've said, you've got to then live in the moment and reflect and go, do you know what? Look where I actually am. This is what, you know, what's the worst that can happen? I go back to living in a council estate.

• 49:51Steven Bartlett?

  You're not scared of it.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  I've come from, that's fine, we'll go back there, my mate's still here, it's, it's not a problem, you know.

• 49:57Steven Bartlett?

  You're not scared of the bomb because you're, you're cool there.

• 50:00Speaker 01

  That's what I'm saying, it's like, just, you know, just go for it sort of thing, but, um.

• 50:03Steven Bartlett?

  I noticed in your bio it says, giving it a real go.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  That's all I'm doing.

• 50:06Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 50:07Speaker 01

  Like, people said to me, oh, that is all I'm doing, and I might fail, and fine, but I tell you what, I'm gonna just keep learning, keep giving it a go.

• 50:14Steven Bartlett?

  Why, why? Why is it worth trying?

• 50:19Steven Bartlett?

  Why don't you just go get a job at, you know, somewhere nice and comfy with no fucking stress? You can clock off at six, you can just chill out, you know? You'll know how much money's coming and you don't have to fucking worry about any bank balances or anything. Nice cushy life, you'll go on holidays every, you know, every quarter.

• 50:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you know, a lot of my friends in stable jobs and stable relationships have that. And I don't, I don't think there's anything wrong with that because I don't think everyone is

• 50:41Steven Bartlett?

  No, but for you.

• 50:41Speaker 01

  Born to do this. For me, I think it's, um, again, all I've ever done in my life is that's why. And I think what I'd do if I did that is I'd be asking myself every single morning, why? Why am I going to do this? And I'd then probably get to the answer, which is it's giving me money. Or it's allowing me to go on that holiday. So then I'd say to myself, well, how could I do that anywhere by doing something I wanted? And I'd always keep coming around back at that same question. It'd probably come back to freedom, being able to live life on my own terms. You know, however I do things might not be the right way, but I'm gonna give it a go in, in Luke Massie's way.

• 51:14Steven Bartlett?

  But think about this Luke, you know, all this fucking pain, all this stress, all this bullshit.

• 51:19Speaker 01

  You're asking me a question that you don't know the answer to, so.

• 51:22Steven Bartlett?

  No, I know the answer, I know the answer to it.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  You do know the answer to it.

• 51:24Steven Bartlett?

  So I know like why I tolerate all the bullshit.

• 51:27Speaker 01

  So why do you tolerate bullshit?

• 51:28Steven Bartlett?

  Because there is no other fucking version of Steve Bartlett. There is no other, there's no other version. So it's, it's not for me, it's not even a choice. It's, I'm going to spend the rest of my life trying and, and also.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you could ask a guy who's in a stable job, on 70k, you know, holidays.

• 51:43Steven Bartlett?

  It's all about alternatives, right? So it's all about alternatives. Would I rather be in a cushy middle ground somewhere, earning stable checks and just, you know, coasting through life, you know? Not really challenging myself, or would I rather, um, take the risk and go for it? I'm someone that is so deeply connected to my own mortality. Like the way that, the big, one of the big things I say to, um, people when they're trying to figure out how they should live their lives, right? Is, you know, there's an expression, live every day as if it's your last. Bullshit. Do not do that. That's fucking terrible advice. If you lived every day as if it was your last, you would definitely have an addiction. What if, this was an hourglass, this can of whatever it is here, and I put it on your desk, right?

• 52:24Steven Bartlett?

  And it poured down how many days you had left, forty days, right? Would you be, ask yourself this, would you A, be holding the grudges you had right now? Would you B, be doing the thing you do every day when you wake up at seven o'clock in the morning and leave at seven o'clock at night? If you could see the sand pouring out of the hourglass into the bottom, and you say it had fifty years. I think people would live a completely different life. I think they would take more risks. I think they would forgive easier. This is why I was talking about forgiving that guy.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  Do you think people are scared though? Do you think people are scared of, right, well, I've got this, this is my comfort zone?

• 52:55Steven Bartlett?

  Here's the great thing, this is the great thing with the hourglass, it tells you where you're gonna end up regardless. You're going to die. Like, it's the real, it's the great.

• 53:02Speaker 01

  This is reality, deal with it.

• 53:04Steven Bartlett?

  Like, no matter what, so what's the thing to be most scared of, I think, in probably life is death, right? So, people are all scared that they might not be able to pay the bill, you're gonna die, that's the, the most scariest thing is going to happen.

• 53:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:16Steven Bartlett?

  And Steve Jobs, he really inspired me with his commencement speech where he said like, you're already naked. And understanding that I'm gonna die has given me all of the fearlessness to go for it regardless. All of these fuckers writing about you, they're gonna die too.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:30Steven Bartlett?

  They're all gonna be fucking forgotten. Every, and also one of the things that's really liberated me is really believing that I'm really not special. That I'm insignificant to the world, I don't matter, and therefore all of my problems and my shit doesn't really matter anyway. It's a game, I've got this hourglass on my desk, the sand is pouring.

• 53:45Speaker 01

  I'm just gonna use my time as, however I want.

• 53:47Steven Bartlett?

  I'm gonna forgive people, I'm not gonna do petty things, I'm not gonna worry about what people think about my hair. If they wanna talk shit about me on my deathbed, and this is like what I call deathbed thinking, which is the book I've been talking about a lot, is um. Am I gonna care about Jenny that doesn't know me tweeting me telling me I'm a fucking idiot, which happens ten, probably ten times a day? I'm not gonna care about that. I'm gonna care about my mum and what I did and how good I was. And so trying to live my life now as if, you know. I'm on my deathbed and the hourglass is ticking away. Has given me, why the fuck would I go do that call centre job I did for, for 12 hours a day? Um, if the hourglass was there.

• 54:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:23Steven Bartlett?

  Making money for, to pay the bills for me has never been, never made any sense.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  I think that's what I mean by the why, isn't it? It's like questioning that why.

• 54:30Steven Bartlett?

  Imagine just paying the bills till you die.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  Well, that happens, doesn't it?

• 54:34Steven Bartlett?

  Like, that does.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  And people, you know, and people are cool with that. And that's the thing.

• 54:37Steven Bartlett?

  They're cool with that.

• 54:37Speaker 01

  By the way, there's nothing wrong with people in call centres.

• 54:39Steven Bartlett?

  Listen, there is, the, the thing that it's wrong for everybody to do is do some shit for the rest of your life where you tolerate some stuff you hate.

• 54:46Speaker 01

  Definitely. I couldn't, couldn't agree more with that.

• 54:47Steven Bartlett?

  If you love being a fucking school teacher.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  Love it. Live it, breathe it, yeah.

• 54:51Steven Bartlett?

  You are more successful than.

• 54:52Speaker 01

  Well, that, that scenario is, if you wasn't being paid for this, would you still do it?

• 54:56Steven Bartlett?

  A hundred percent.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  That's the question I ask people.

• 54:58Steven Bartlett?

  I did it for two years without being paid. I was a kid in Moss Side, like, trying to build a business, shoplifting food, like, trying to, you know? Um, and the money hasn't, hasn't impacted me in any way.

• 55:09Speaker 01

  No, it's good to see. It is good to see. And I think there's a, there's a lot of people that follow you. Um, and are influenced by you. And, you know, not just because I'm Sati, but I think you are someone that people should listen to and, and be influenced by the correct influence. You know, Love Island starts next weekend. People are influenced by the wrong things.

• 55:26Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 55:27Speaker 01

  Um, definitely. And I think you're in that position now where you are paying back, even this podcast, I think, you know, you, you're spending your time now. I'm spending my time now trying to, to give back. And I think that's, that's, that's important. The journeys I've, I've been on, even the last six months, I think it's really important because if you can just help that one person. Um, you know, you were telling me about another business that you'd been involved in and it was something that was actually part of your competition. I mean, that's just insane, you know, that.

• 55:50Steven Bartlett?

  I want to take it back to that thing you said. So you said, um, you know, why don't you just go get like the middle ground? You know, whatever, something, you know, that's comfortable. Why doesn't Luke Massie go do the comfortable thing?

• 56:04Speaker 01

  I don't know. I'm trying to find it. It sounds to me like you've had a lot of time to think about this because you've probably been asked it a lot more than me. This is the first time I've been asked it and I probably don't really have the, the straight answer to it. I think for me it's.

• 56:14Steven Bartlett?

  What is making Luke Massie, what's driving him? What's driving him? I'm talking in dead person here, but like what's?

• 56:19Speaker 01

  This is another hard question. I don't know. I, I don't know. I think what was driving me to get up and do the milk round when I was 13 years old? What, you know, I, I don't know. I think for me it's.

• 56:31Speaker 01

  Settling or thinking that you're there, or I don't know, it's such a tough one. I think for me, it's just an internal drive and.

• 56:37Steven Bartlett?

  What do you want your life to look like? Say in 10 years' time, what does your, no, let's say 20 years' time, what does your life look like?

• 56:43Speaker 01

  I can't see it.

• 56:44Steven Bartlett?

  You can't see it?

• 56:45Speaker 01

  That's what probably scares me. That's probably what drives me. And it's not that enough is enough for me, it's that because I've craved stability all my life. It's probably getting to that place where even if this failed, or even if this failed, everything would be fine. And I don't know whether I'll ever get to that stage, like you're saying, and maybe you're a year ahead on that.

• 57:03Steven Bartlett?

  Do you know what I think as well? I think because, um.

• 57:06Speaker 01

  Because I think we're still both learning, you know, you're learning, you know, I'm learning, it's, we're both, we're on this cycle and this is the thing. And, you know, it's our duty to pass it on, just as we're getting past all information.

• 57:17Steven Bartlett?

  I think it is. This is my observation from like this conversation. Um, I think you're right in the sense that, uh, I've gone a little bit further down the cycle because of the, the types of issues I'm dealing with. So I'm, you're like, you're dealing, as you said, you spent the last, how many months dealing with like investor stuff?

• 57:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:33Steven Bartlett?

  Like I've, I'm spending less of my time dealing with that kind of thing. And when you're dealing with investor stuff, like raising, it's every waking hour of the day and it's urgent and it's so important. So you don't have the headspace to think a little bit.

• 57:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, agreed. And I think I need to put, you know, fast forward a couple of months, I've got some key staff coming into business. For me, it's just stepping back operationally, even if it's just for getting, you know, the head out of the clouds and just seeing things from a different perspective, I think will, will help things.

• 57:58Steven Bartlett?

  And I think that's what it is. So I think I just had, because there's managing directors running the business, I think I've had a lot of thinking time. And I remember key moments when, um, one real moment which made me think about why the fuck I'm doing what I do every day, was that when we got a real offer to buy the business from a very big media company, like there's a billion dollar, had probably a hundred billion dollar media company. And I went home that night, um, as a 24 year old and I thought, okay, so if I sell and I accept this offer, then what do I do?

• 58:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:27Steven Bartlett?

  And that was the moment where you start to really realise like.

• 58:32Steven Bartlett?

  What would the money do for me versus taking this purpose from me? And then, um, really, you know, thinking, what would I do tomorrow? Would I start another business? Do I could just spend the money?

• 58:43Steven Bartlett?

  Would, do I want more money? Realising that, you know, like the, the motive for me to get loads more money really isn't the thing. So why am I doing it then? Cause 18 year old Steve, when he started and he wrote it in his diary, it was all money.

• 58:54Steven Bartlett?

  Okay. So last question.

• 58:57Steven Bartlett?

  Dinner table. There are six seats. You're sitting in one of them. I'm sitting in the other. I get to cook. There are four other seats. Dead or alive, you can invite anybody to this dinner party. Who'd you invite to the table and why?

• 59:11Speaker 01

  You with these questions.

• 59:17Steven Bartlett?

  Who are the first people that popped to mind?

• 59:18Speaker 01

  Mum.

• 59:19Steven Bartlett?

  Your mum. Fine. Nice.

• 59:20Speaker 01

  Even if she won't understand it.

• 59:22Steven Bartlett?

  Really interesting that you'd bring her. It says a lot about you as well.

• 59:25Speaker 01

  I think even though she won't understand it or that there's other people, even if there was the most famous guy in the world there, but. Yeah, my mum.

• 59:34Steven Bartlett?

  On that, I'm gonna dive slightly there. So your mum has been this incredibly important influence in your life, as you've explained. And everything you've said has kind of touched back to that. In those, in those tough moments where people are talking shit.

• 59:49Steven Bartlett?

  And you know that they're, and you know, from your mum's perspective, those are people talking shit about her son. Is that one of the things that really gets to you the most?

• 59:56Speaker 01

  No, because I protect her from it.

• 59:58Steven Bartlett?

  She wouldn't even know.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  No, she doesn't see that. I mean, my mum doesn't. My mum doesn't have, uh.

• 1:00:02Steven Bartlett?

  Cause she can see.

• 1:00:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, my, my girlfriend sees it. I think.

• 1:00:05Steven Bartlett?

  But she knows the truth.

• 1:00:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. And she's extremely supportive and, and she knows that I'm, my actions have always said who I am.

• 1:00:12Steven Bartlett?

  So she knows you.

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And, and how I go about things day to day, how I support things, you know. Anyone who knows me, even without seeing those headlines, sent me a message because they know me as a character, you know, they know. Whatever's going on, Luke, don't really know, need to know the detail. It'll be cool. You know, that's the sort of thing. Yeah, they know me and it's, so yeah, I think it's becoming hard on to it and just, you know, doesn't sound. But from my mum's point of view, she, she doesn't understand what I do and.

• 1:00:38Steven Bartlett?

  Same.

• 1:00:39Speaker 01

  You know, my, my mum is, you know, she's an alcoholic. She's, you know, she, she's, she's in that, she's in that place where it's. I'm just a son and it doesn't matter what happens. I'm still a son and I think she, she's, she, you know, she's, she's happy for me. So. Um, yeah, it's about, about protecting her and, um, and knowing that. I think my mum blames a lot of things that have happened in our life down to her, especially external circumstances.

• 1:01:05Steven Bartlett?

  Is she hurting herself?

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, and I think that was, you know, one of the reasons for turning to alcohol. That was her sort of probably escape and still is to a certain extent.

• 1:01:15Steven Bartlett?

  And have you dealt with that your whole life?

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, definitely. So.

• 1:01:18Steven Bartlett?

  Your whole life?

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, my whole life. So it's, for me, it's, so when I was younger, I was very aggressive towards it, you know, you could probably tell in my character, I was confused, I was, didn't understand why, I didn't, you know, and I would come home and one day you'd get my mommy was up and the house was clean and then some days you'd get my mum's been in bed for three days because she was depressed and she can't face the world and I just couldn't understand it. Because I didn't suffer from depression and I don't suffer from depression. You know, so there was confusion, angry, as a young lad, you're still trying to figure yourself out, you're going through puberty, you're growing up, etcetera, and there was, there was all this and then, and also, which is worth pointing out is, you love seeing my, my personal brand and personal message.

• 1:01:58Speaker 01

  When I was seventeen, eighteen, nineteen and I was, you know, trying to start this, you know, you'd see me in shirts and ties and suits and, because I was trying to portray this picture, thinking that I was this, you know, this lad. And it actually got to a stage where I started thinking, do you know what? Why, what am I hiding from here? Why am I embarrassed? This is it. And it's probably a massive part of my story and, you know, it's what drives me, it's who I am, so why hide from it? And it started becoming real and, you know, the tie line came off and then the shirt came off and, you know, and now I'm just cool within myself.

• 1:02:27Steven Bartlett?

  And you talked about depression there.

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:29Steven Bartlett?

  And you said, so we live in a world where depression, anxiety, all these things are both, the awareness of them are increasing, but the data says that they're increasing as well.

• 1:02:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:42Steven Bartlett?

  And in founders and young founders like myself and you, we go through so much bullshit.

• 1:02:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:46Steven Bartlett?

  Right?

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  And also, one of our biggest things is.

• 1:02:51Speaker 01

  Um, we take on the responsibility of everything that goes on. So I'm talking about protecting my mum from things. I I make sure I go out of my way to make sure that she doesn't hear the bad things because that would hurt her. But you do it for your staff. You do it for.

• 1:03:05Steven Bartlett?

  You're the umbrella of everything.

• 1:03:06Speaker 01

  You are everything. So, you know, and and yes, sometimes you're in the press and you're in the limelight and it seems like you're the you're the front man. But guess what? That is the tip of the iceberg.

• 1:03:14Steven Bartlett?

  And you're dealing with that.

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  You're dealing with it.

• 1:03:16Steven Bartlett?

  No, but you're you're dealing with it 24 seven. Every when you you know.

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  But everyone's doing it. Everyone's got their own battles.

• 1:03:23Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, but listen, your battles are unique, right? And they're proportionally bigger. Same as I'm talking about myself as well when I say this, but they're proportionally bigger than, you know, wondering worrying about what Jenny said about your hair at work like, um, and you know, after this conversation, when you look at your phone or your emails, there'll probably be some bullshit there for you to deal with. You know, there's almost, I always used to have this kind of like email anxiety, especially when I was in the tech business.

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  You wake up in the morning, you don't want to see your emails.

• 1:03:48Steven Bartlett?

  You don't want to see your emails because you know you're fresh that there's going to be some fucking bad news because every day there is, right? Um, going back to the point about mental health, have you suffered with anything?

• 1:03:57Speaker 01

  Um, oh, one thing I would say is I'm probably cold in terms of some some relationships.

• 1:04:04Steven Bartlett?

  Emotionally.

• 1:04:05Speaker 01

  Emotionally, because there's something bad's coming, something bad's going to happen. So you, even from a young age, you become a heart. So, you know, when my mum had, you know, serious depression when I was younger and, you know, even child service agency nearly came in at one point. It was that bad is that I protected my brother and sisters. So I made sure that they knew they were loved and things were fine and mum was just going for a bad time. So that then, you know, was straight away from an early age and, you know, as I said, I think then every challenge you go through then it's it just toughens you up and toughens you up.

• 1:04:33Steven Bartlett?

  The toughening up thing though, I mean, that's like conducive with, this is, I'm asking this because I'm interested for me, right? So I used to think, you know, I I'm tough, I get, I'm hard. And you hear these stats about men and, you know, male suicide and these kinds of things. And you think, Steve, maybe, maybe you're not super fucking Superman. Maybe you too are susceptible to these things. And when I think from the age of 18 to 24, building my business, I thought, no, I could never get anything. I could, nothing, no mental health issues could ever touch me. Now I've changed my mind.

• 1:05:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:02Steven Bartlett?

  Now I think after reading so many books, I'm like. We're probably the most vulnerable.

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're probably the most vulnerable when you think about it.

• 1:05:08Steven Bartlett?

  You want, you know, we are because we, and we also convince ourselves that we are um immune. And we just, we close down, we don't share as much on the emotional side because we have teams.

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  And if you was to ask Frankie, my partner, she'd probably say that that is the number one issue that she has with me, which is, I don't tell my problems. And then she'll, she'll see it and it's like, what?

• 1:05:27Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:27Speaker 01

  Like, you've been going through that. And it's like, well, yeah, but it's not your issue, you know, it's my issue.

• 1:05:31Steven Bartlett?

  Girlfriend turned around to me and she said in the car, I fucking remember, I mean, I could tell her, but she went, are you depressed? And I wasn't.

• 1:05:36Speaker 01

  I get, are you bipolar? Cause one minute I'm buzzing and I've just done, you know, done, done fine. Then next minute my world's changed.

• 1:05:42Steven Bartlett?

  You're just, you're a million miles away sat next to somebody.

• 1:05:44Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:05:45Steven Bartlett?

  And yes, yeah, um, but that's interesting. I think it's just one of the things that I'm really, again, this is being a little bit, a little bit further down the path is I'm really focusing on taking care of myself because I now believe.

• 1:05:55Speaker 01

  So how do you do that mentally? Do you?

• 1:05:57Steven Bartlett?

  So there's a number of things. So there's a book I've got to recommend, which I read this week called Lost Connections. And it's all about um debunking the idea that mental health issues are anything to do with a chemical imbalance. And it's not what um what's wrong with you, it's what's happened to you. And that they, it goes through all of these major studies.

• 1:06:16Speaker 01

  Environmental rather than natural.

• 1:06:17Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. And, and it showed, go through all these ma- major studies that prove this even, so it goes through everything from like nature, right? Nature and us as animals being creatures of a certain environment. They show a study where prisoners who face out onto green grass are twen- uh twenty five percent less likely to get depressed than prisoners that face out onto concrete. That's one thing, right? Then there's other things like your, um, we're social animals, we're tribe animals. That's how we evolved and survived today. So we've got incredibly lonely in this connected world to the point now where the average American, when they're asked, how many people have you got that you could really count on if you needed to and like depend on? And talk to in those moments, the, the most popular answer now is zero.

• 1:06:58Steven Bartlett?

  Fifteen years ago it was three. We're becoming more and more isolated in this like crazy connected world. They show all these studies, they show that um people who have close friends and family and talk to them and socialize are um significantly, significantly less likely to become depressed.

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  So I, so I've got a question for you then, which is. You know, if you don't mind me saying, off the record, prior to this sort of podcast, it was, you know, you were saying to me that you've got very, very few friends and you're extremely busy, etc.

• 1:07:25Steven Bartlett?

  So lonely.

• 1:07:26Speaker 01

  You haven't got, yeah, exactly. And you sort of said to yourself, you know, you even said to me and admitted, I feel like I'm a bit of a social recluse now. You read this book and one of the things is that, you know, we're tribal and we're socialising. Do you think that that's what you need to do? Do you think you need to let a few more people into your circles?

• 1:07:41Steven Bartlett?

  The romantic relationships bit is exactly linked to that. So I 100% do. I, and this is why, and it doesn't come naturally to me.

• 1:07:48Speaker 01

  You have to come to Preston, honestly, you'll find a good girl.

• 1:07:51Steven Bartlett?

  It doesn't come naturally to me, right? So what I want to do naturally is go home tonight and get my laptop. What, because I've really.

• 1:07:57Speaker 01

  That's comfort zone, that's not what you do.

• 1:07:58Steven Bartlett?

  I'm, I think I'm good alone.

• 1:08:00Speaker 01

  Depends what you're searching at, off 11 at night, doesn't it?

• 1:08:03Steven Bartlett?

  It will be my emails, I promise you. But what I've done tonight is I messaged my friend, I said, listen, I'm doing this podcast, and then let's go for a drink. He, I don't want to do it. No, he knows that. I've called him, I told him on the phone. I was like, I don't want to fuck, I don't want to go see friends. He, he knows I don't want to fucking do it. He knows I'm doing it because I now believe that I should do these things. It's better for my mental health, it's better for my business, therefore, it makes, it's going to make me a much happier person in the long term. I believe in it. So I'm doing things because I believe in them, not because they're habitless. So, back to this table.

• 1:08:36Speaker 01

  But yeah, so back to this table. Elon Musk's got to be on there for me. He's just, he's just a guy that is just challenging everything, you know. He, he, he is, for me, the entrepreneur disruptor. He is, something's not right, I'm going to do something about it. And that's it. And you know what? He might not get them all right, but do you know what? And do you know what he's actually done? He's taken the blueprint of what Richard Branson did, and he's made it better. You know, putting that car up into space, doing whatever he's done with, he's just taken what's already existed and done it better.

• 1:09:06Steven Bartlett?

  My thing with Richard Branson, sorry, Elon, the reason why I love him is because he was willing to spend all of his billions from PayPal on fucking electric cars and space travel.

• 1:09:15Speaker 01

  Backing himself again, that's what it is.

• 1:09:17Steven Bartlett?

  Are bigger than him. He's not trying to make money. This guy is trying to change the world.

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:09:20Steven Bartlett?

  He's not an entrepreneur.

• 1:09:21Speaker 01

  He wants to build a legacy.

• 1:09:22Steven Bartlett?

  That is trying to get up here. He doesn't give a, he wants to change the world. That's his number one, like, agenda, point. I can't say that.

• 1:09:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:32Steven Bartlett?

  If I'm being honest with myself, I'm not.

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  But the reason why he's in that position is because he's he's he's bought himself that time in that position. He's bought himself that respect.

• 1:09:40Steven Bartlett?

  That's why I consider him great.

• 1:09:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:09:42Steven Bartlett?

  And my one.

• 1:09:43Speaker 01

  Because that's what money gives you is that choice. So if you if you if you can get social chain and social, you know, group to where you think it can, and I can get vibe where I think it can be. Will them be in a position in five, 10 years' time where we can do things that we want to do and our agenda can change. So. You know, again, he's he's got to be on the top of the list for admirers, you know, as an entrepreneur. So my mum, Elon Musk, you. You're on the table. Are you on the table, man? You're not on the table.

• 1:10:09Steven Bartlett?

  I'm cooking already, so.

• 1:10:10Speaker 01

  Right, you're cooking. Okay. Um.

• 1:10:15Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 1:10:16Steven Bartlett?

  Let's go for music, something in music maybe or like.

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  Music, gotta be Kanye West.

• 1:10:20Steven Bartlett?

  Kanye, fucking hell.

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  Because it's just.

• 1:10:22Steven Bartlett?

  We're not going to get to eat anything.

• 1:10:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:10:24Steven Bartlett?

  Talking.

• 1:10:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's just outside thinker, rightly or wrongly.

• 1:10:29Steven Bartlett?

  I love him, but I do think he's a bit of a false.

• 1:10:30Speaker 01

  No, that's what I'm saying, rightly or wrongly.

• 1:10:32Steven Bartlett?

  He's a genius and.

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  He is a genius, yeah. And well, they said, only like, you know, about genius and insanity, that they're so close together. And I think he is. Hundred percent. But if you add Elon Musk, Kanye West.

• 1:10:44Steven Bartlett?

  Your mum.

• 1:10:44Speaker 01

  My mum. Wow, that is insane. Um.

• 1:10:47Steven Bartlett?

  Last one.

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  One, uh, Stephen Hawking.

• 1:10:51Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting.

• 1:10:51Speaker 01

  Stephen Hawking, definitely. He he left his mark on the world. Um. There was a few funny jokes, obviously, when he passed away. But yeah, he's he's a genius. I mean, I've watched his films, the two different ones. You know, the guy was a bit of a player back in the day. He had like six or seven different, and he was a geek, you know. Yeah, he was the original guy, wasn't he? So, yeah, Stephen Hawkins, Elon Musk, Kanye West and my mum.

• 1:11:17Steven Bartlett?

  How do you want to be remembered? I've just stole that from the True Jordan. It's gonna be so mad.

• 1:11:22Speaker 01

  I don't want him remembered. Um.

• 1:11:27Speaker 01

  As a guy that had morals, um, no, as a guy that had beliefs and stayed true to it, whether it was right or wrong. And you, I want people to know, when I've had a discussion with him or they've met me, is that everything I've said there and there is actually what he believes.

• 1:11:44Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 1:11:44Speaker 01

  You might not agree with it, and that's cool, I am cool with that, but you know where you stand with Luke Massie. You know he's honestly speaking from the heart and he's not got an agenda, he's not, that's who he is, you know, and I'll give the right feedback at the right time and, you know, it's not per, it's just, if you're asking me for something, I'll give it you. And, you know, honesty, and that's why I think, because of what's been said in the podcast, that's why I'm so close to the heart, so passionate about it. Um, so yeah, I think just being a man of his word.

• 1:12:14Steven Bartlett?

  Amazing. On that point, um, thank you so much for the time.

• 1:12:16Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:12:17Steven Bartlett?

  Really appreciate it. Pretty late now, what time is it? Super late at night, 11 o'clock, so, um, better go get some food, but thank you so much for coming on.

• 1:12:23Speaker 01

  No problem.

• 1:12:24Steven Bartlett?

  And people can find you on Twitter and everywhere, under Luke Massie, everywhere.

• 1:12:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:27Steven Bartlett?

  Um, and obviously they can find Vibe Tickets everywhere, so it's been a real pleasure and, um, I'm sure we'll, uh, continue these discussions off, off the mic, so.

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  Great, thanks Steve.