Moment 13 - I Have a Secret To Tell You

In these ‘Moment’ episodes of my podcast, I’ll be selecting my favourite moments from previous episodes of The Diary Of A CEO. Over the last few years I have gradually come to understand why, broadly, the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor. This ‘secret’ which only the rich possess is something which I learned only when I became rich myself. In this ‘Moment’ episode of my podcast, I’m going to reveal this ‘secret’ to you all, as I explain why the pursuit of knowledge is the greatest decision you will ever make and how cleansing your social media ‘diet’ can vastly improve your chances of success. Episode 53 - https://g2ul0.app.link/IaAIIFA5Ghb 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.

• 0:05Steven Bartlett?

  I have a secret to tell you, and this is the second point in my diary this week. It's a secret that I only found out and started to deeply understand recently. When I say recently, I mean the last 24 months. It's a secret that I really started to understand, honestly, being completely honest with you, when I got rich and when I got rich friends. And those rich friends pulled back a certain curtain and allowed me to see behind it. I'd always heard about this. I'd always heard that there's another curtain. I heard Joe Rogan did a podcast with Kevin Hart. And on the podcast, Kevin Hart talks about meeting Jeff Bezos and realising that there's this other level, there's this other curtain which some people have access to. And the more wealthy that I got and the more wealthy people that started to surround

• 0:50Steven Bartlett?

  me, I started to understand what Kevin Hart meant. And I started to understand what that secret is. Here is the secret. Access to information and information itself. That is the real privilege in this world. That's the thing. If your rich parent gives you money, that's like them giving you a fish, right? But if they pull you into the family business and show you how it works, they're giving you a fishing rod. Money is a fishing life and information is a fishing rod. And only one of those things will feed you for a lifetime. And when you get to the level that I'm at now, when you have access to a new level of information, you're associating with a different level of person, you realise how much you didn't know before.

• 1:34Steven Bartlett?

  And you didn't know because you don't know what you don't know. They are unknown unknowns. And so back then, I was kind of naive. I just thought I knew everything. And where I'm at now, I started to wonder why no one told me this stuff, the stuff I know now about wealth and finance and about how these systems work. And you start to realise why the rich get richer and why the poor stay poor. Information and access to information, obviously, there's a ton of systemic issues which are controlling things, but for me, information and access to information is the single biggest one. When I made my first million, I started studying wealth, right? And I started studying investing and finance and I started to get really obsessed with how I could turn the money I had into a lot more money.

• 2:19Steven Bartlett?

  I started speaking to more millionaires and billionaires. I started spending more time with billionaires and I got to see what I refer to, to my close friends as money games. The games that they play and how they double, triple and quadruple their money just by having certain information. And this is information that most of us don't have. We aren't given, we aren't let in, we aren't allowed to see behind the curtain. And these are games that I never knew when I was broke, games they didn't teach you or me in school, games that really rich people have no incentive to teach you because they're too busy playing them. The people that sell money and those finance courses on Instagram, they aren't rich, right? They're, they're, they're selling you courses on Instagram. If they knew a better way to make money, they wouldn't be spending their time selling you courses on Instagram.

• 3:01Steven Bartlett?

  But there's another level, there's another level of information, which is what I think Kevin Hart was referring to when he spoke about being able to peer in behind the curtain. And, you know, I'm gonna really disappoint you here after what was probably one of the biggest buildups that I've ever done on this podcast, because I don't have enough time in the hour or so that we have on this podcast to teach you everything that I've come to learn. And to be honest, even if I did, I don't think that's the most valuable thing that I could give you in this hour that we have together today. Just like money is a fish, right? Me telling you today's information is also a bit of a fish, because things change quite quickly in the world. And even if I could tell you everything I knew now about money games, it would at some point expire.

• 3:45Steven Bartlett?

  It would very quickly change. I think the most valuable, important fishing rod that I could give you in this hour is in fact a change of mindset. I think if I can get you to realize that the, your monetary future value and how rich you'll be in your life is perhaps somewhat equal to the value of the information you have in your brain, then maybe, maybe, just maybe, you'll start to value information and learning and the pursuit of knowledge even more. And in the world we live in, we all have access to the, to the same information, pretty much. But most of us still don't understand the true value of it. One of the greatest privileges I think I could ever give to my future kids is to teach them the value of learning, gaining experience, acquiring information and self-education,

• 4:28Steven Bartlett?

  which is something we can all do now because we all have Google, right? We all have the internet, we all have social media, we all have YouTube. You know, you're doing it right now, some of you that are watching this online. I think we tend to overvalue short-term financial incentives and undervalue learning opportunities, which will give us that long-term value advantage. And all of the young people, and even some of the slightly old people that I get a chance to mentor, this is one of the key lessons I try and teach them, is to be able to spot short-term value from long-term value. You know, and I'm gonna go off piece just a little bit here, and I'm gonna tell you a bit of a personal story that happened to me actually quite recently. And this is the, you know, this podcast is the home of the truth, so make sure you do keep this to yourself.

• 5:10Steven Bartlett?

  I had a young person in their early twenties asked to come and work with me. And when I say work with me, I don't mean, you know, in the same building as me, I mean with me. And because of the lockdowns and the way the world is, all of my sort of real close team are literally working with me in my home, or in, you know, in a small co-working space. And this was, in my opinion, a fairly unique opportunity, right? Because we're gonna be sat together pretty much every day. And they were so persistent that eventually I ended up offering them a job. And I offered them a job on the same salary, the same wage that they're earning right now in their current role, and I offered them a guaranteed pay rise in 60 days' time.

• 5:52Steven Bartlett?

  And they effectively turned the offer down because they wanted a little bit more money now. And whatever I say from this point onwards is gonna sound petty and biased and bitter. I have no other way of saying it. I'm just gonna be honest with you. Honestly, from what I know about their situation, and from what I know about where they wanted to go in their career, and as impartially as I could possibly be, that was a fucking stupid decision. Just purely based on the fact that if you sit next to me, or someone that's fortunate enough to have the access to the level of information that I have access to, someone that is willing to give you that information, and information that's probably gonna help you fulfill the goals that you have, fuck a 2K pay rise. That information can quite literally make you a millionaire too.

• 6:36Steven Bartlett?

  And I've seen it make people millionaires. You know, much of the reason why I'm sat here as a millionaire is because I got to sit next to people who had gone on the journey that I wanted to go on. And that's what I mean. We tend to overvalue the short term financial incentives and undervalue the learning opportunities, which will give us long term value. Knowing how to make spot the difference and knowing which is which will change your life. And sometimes you have to play a long game. You have to delay that gratification. You have to hold off on that 2K pay rise because the situation you're in is giving you real long term value. Your long term future will be better if you make long term decisions. Or your life will be slightly better in the short term if you make short term decisions. But then your long term future is compromised. And that's what delaying gratification is.

• 7:21Steven Bartlett?

  You have to learn to do that in your careers too. I'm going to close off this point by telling you the easiest, simplest change that I've made in my life to radically, radically increase the amount of information and the amount of good quality information that I'm exposed to. One small change. But before I tell you, we're going to play a little game. Just imagine for a second that you could pick up an imaginary phone in front of you and you could just listen in to the world's smartest minds. The world's smartest minds in, in fitness, in business, in finance, spirituality and philosophy. Just imagine, imagine if you could be a fly on the wall as they discuss ideas, as they seek to understand the world and as they talk about what they know. And as they play their money games and enrich themselves. Imagine how transformative that would be. Imagine how much that information would change your life.

• 8:05Steven Bartlett?

  It would change your health, your happiness and probably your wealth. And imagine if all of that, that access to information was free.

• 8:15Steven Bartlett?

  It is free. That's Twitter, that's social media, that's YouTube. You can literally watch and listen to the smartest people in the world, think, discuss and ideate. So that's big, the question, you have to be honest. Why the fuck do you still follow Jenny from 10 years ago, who you do not give a F about? As she publicly complains to some customer service rep on Twitter about her T-Mobile data plan being expensive and slow. Or Kylie Jenner, as she publicly advertises the results of her plastic surgery and demolishes your self-esteem in the process. All that clown on Facebook that tries to convince you that 5G internet, the coronavirus and Bill Gates were all part of some Illuminati conspiracy theory. Why are you choosing that information? Why are you allowing junk to seep into your mental diet? Where is that information going to take you?

• 9:01Steven Bartlett?

  Information is the privilege and you have to be the gatekeeper and the unapologetic defender of the information that you consume. I've said this before and in fact, it's proven to be so important in my life that I'm going to keep saying it until I feel like you're listening to me. Who you follow online, especially if you're someone that spends hours of day on the internet and social media like I do, is the single biggest influence on your life. For the love of God, follow better and unfollow faster. My trick, which I'm going to give to you, is I basically mute everyone. 90% of the people on my Instagram are muted, probably nearer 95%. I just don't see their stuff. I don't see their stories. I don't see their posts because usually

• 9:42Steven Bartlett?

  it's actually not that helpful to me. 50% of the people on my Twitter are muted and I'm muting people because just like you, there are real world consequences of, you know, unfollowing friends and people in family and things like that. So I just mute them. It's a nice middle ground where they don't know and they don't need to know, right? And if I start talking shit online, I give you permission to unfollow me too. Please subscribe to this podcast, but I give you permission to unfollow me too. And this has changed my life. Honestly, it's the simplest thing, the simplest decision that has had the single biggest impact on my life. I'm definitely smarter, happier and more professionally capable because of it. So if there was a small thing

• 10:23Steven Bartlett?

  that you can do now to really change the most important influence on your life, it's to go through your social media timelines and every time you see someone who isn't contributing towards the values or the information that you want to consume, boom, mute. But, and here comes a very important caveat, you have to be careful not to unfollow or mute people just because they disagree with your opinion. A few years ago, if I saw someone on my timeline that overtly supported like a different political party or had a completely opposing opinion to mine, or just like strongly disagreed with issues that I really care about, I would just unfollow them. Boom, bye Felicia. And I think I did that because I didn't want to feel the frustration that I felt when I logged in and saw their posts and tweets. And also, I didn't want to

• 11:07Steven Bartlett?

  keep biting and arguing and debating with them online. But when you think about that decision logically, it's a pretty terrible decision. All I'm doing by doing that is narrowing my worldview and I'm building, reinforcing this echo chamber around me, which is full of people who believe everything I already believe. And the fundamental truth that we all have to have the intellectual strength to believe is that often, there really is no right or wrong. Everything is really just a bunch of perspectives. That's what the world is full of. Very, very few things are a case of right or wrong. Probably all agree that the sky is blue, but as it relates to the way the world should be run, our political opinions, how people should be treated, there's typically quite a lot of variance.

• 11:51Steven Bartlett?

  And those perspectives that perfectly agree with yours are actually the least valuable. They're not going to challenge you or broaden your perspective or teach you anything. Only the perspectives that differ from yours can do that. Whether they differ because they're a little bit more developed on your opinions or because they disagree. But it's not easy and I'd be lying to you if I pretended it was. I've genuinely, and this is a weekly battle, I've genuinely struggled to keep people on my social media timelines, within my social media bubble, that say things I really disagree with and that support ideas that I despise. But I also think, if I'm being completely honest with myself, I'm better off because of it. Listen, I'm not, I'm not going to let Ryan on Facebook tell me that 5G internet caused

• 12:35Steven Bartlett?

  coronavirus, but I am going to fill my social bubble and my circle online with people who honestly disagree. People who can respectfully explain why they disagree and people who view the world differently to me. You know, I hope this is the last time that I make this point on this podcast, but it just keeps coming to the front of my mind. So if you've not cleansed your social media following, please do it now. I really, really hope this is the last time. I feel like if I can convince you to do this now, today, this week, it will be for some of you, the greatest thing I was ever able to do for you, the greatest gift I can give you for listening to this podcast. Also, you know, turn all notifications off, all of them, but we'll save that topic for another time.