(EXCLUSIVE) Billy McFarland: The Man Behind The Infamous Fyre Festival Disaster

The co-creator of the infamous Fyre festival, Billy McFarland spent 4 years behind bars for lying to investors and using the mythical tropical island festival as a way to pay off his debts. You have probably heard of him from the 2 massively popular documentaries that blew up on social media. However, what you haven’t heard is the story of Billy as a childhood entrepreneur, creating and selling companies before he was even able to cash the cheques in his own bank account. A college dropout who moved to New York at 18 with nothing but hustle and drive. Only months released from prison, Billy brings his still raw experiences to this intimate conversation, discussing everything from the motivation for the festival, his spectacular fall from grace and how he plans to pay back his debts and build back from nothing. Billy: Instagram - https://bit.ly/3FzNX7x Twitter: https://bit.ly/3FeD6ym Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Steven Bartlett?

  Were you nervous coming here today?

• 0:04Speaker 01

  I didn't know how in-depth we were gonna go. If I knew the questions, I don't think I would have slept last night.

• 0:08Steven Bartlett?

  Are you a pathological liar?

• 0:10Speaker 01

  Billy McFarland? He is the man behind the infamous Fyre Festival.

• 0:14Speaker 02

  Island getaway turned disaster.

• 0:16Steven Bartlett?

  The Fyre Festival is the subject of two documentaries.

• 0:19Speaker 02

  I will never forget.

• 0:21Steven Bartlett?

  When did you realise it all gone wrong?

• 0:24Speaker 01

  We were at the point where the timeline I had come up with was just so off. I'd wake up some days and it's like, we need $4 million by 2pm.

• 0:31Steven Bartlett?

  Did no one say to you, this is fucking craziness?

• 0:33Speaker 01

  I just didn't have the ability to like, okay, what's actually happening? How can we prevent this? And like, almost like as if on cue, a storm rolls in.

• 0:42Speaker 02

  Billy McFarland pleaded guilty to fraud charges. Sentenced to six years in prison.

• 0:46Steven Bartlett?

  You come back to a shitstorm.

• 0:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:48Steven Bartlett?

  The criminality doesn't stop though, does it?

• 0:50Speaker 01

  But I couldn't like, really understand the magnitude and the gravity of the crimes they did commit.

• 0:54Steven Bartlett?

  Your lawyers tried to get you off the 20-year prison sentence by saying that you suffered from untreated bipolar disorder. Do you have bipolar disorder?

• 1:04Speaker 01

  I did two stints in solitary. The seven-month stint was because I tried to do a podcast over at the payphone. They put the paperwork in to send me to like a terrorist facility. When you're rendered useless and powerless, that just kind of kills your humanity. That's fucking scary. That keeps me up at night.

• 1:21Steven Bartlett?

  Andy King. Did you ask him to suck a penis?

• 1:25Speaker 01

  Here's what actually happened.

• 1:37Steven Bartlett?

  Billy?

• 1:40Steven Bartlett?

  How are you doing?

• 1:41Speaker 01

  It's been crazy. A little less than three and a half months since my sentence ended. And really just been a whirlwind of finding the right people, finding the right opportunities,

• 1:56Speaker 01

  and really just dealing with this overhang of probation and the constant fear that there's someone out there who could send me back at any time by taking a wrong turn. So... Trying to avoid paying people back in every sense of that word and emotion, while dealing with this fear that I can wake up one morning to a phone call saying, ha, like joke's over, you're going back.

• 2:18Steven Bartlett?

  So take me back. One of the things I'm so curious about everybody that I sit here and talk to is their earliest context and their earliest upbringing and how that's like ultimately shaped who they are today. So take me way, way back to New Jersey when you were, you know, under the age of 10. What was that? What was your context? Your parents, the situation in which you grew up?

• 2:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I grew up in a pretty normal suburban American household. And I think the defining moment was when I was 10 years old, where I got a cable internet line into my house. And this was the really early days of the internet. And it was pretty much like the wild, wild west era, where a lot of like the framework and regulation and mature social platforms that we have now just didn't exist then. We were in the infancy of like HTML and CSS and the practicality and accessibility of some 10 year olds putting a website online. And I really found the internet to be this outlet where I could push the boundaries of everything that I thought was possible as this young suburban child. And really as

• 3:24Speaker 01

  a way to start getting in trouble and seeing what it was like to get in trouble and see where I could go.

• 3:28Steven Bartlett?

  Talk to me about your parents. I've not heard much about them in your interviews, but I'd love to know the influence they had on you and how that shaped you.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  I think they were great, you know, super loving, super supportive. And I think been asked this question, you know, so many times, but whether it's like the jail therapist, like or the probation department. And I think it's interesting that, you know, there isn't like a defining moment, I think, that kind of set me down, like the entrepreneurial journey. I think I was just like really weird in this desire to make my own path.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  And to really test what was possible. And so I was always kind of looking for journeys to start businesses and really like test the bounds of, you know, of reality and of the constraints placed on me at various times in life. And obviously, like, the constraints of a 10 year old are much different than they were when I was 24 in the midst of the FIRE Festival, and much different at 27 in solitary confinement. But I think the reoccurring theme was trying to find ways to test those restraints. And that took me to the very best times, but also the very worst times in doing four years in prison and, you know, owing the world, whether that's time, money, friendship, an apology. So yeah, it's been quite the journey.

• 4:43Steven Bartlett?

  My question still becomes like, why, though? So testing the restraints of like, what was possible? Why does a kid want to do that? Like, what was it about, about you when you were that age in your childhood, or the circumstances you found yourself in? Or, you know, what behavior was being reinforced and what behavior was being punished that made you go off on that journey? You referenced a sort of a jailhouse therapist, and then probably asking you these kind of questions as well.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 5:06Steven Bartlett?

  Did you learn anything about yourself from that, those conversations?

• 5:09Speaker 01

  Totally. And I think there has always been this desire to prove that I was different. And I don't think I really understood like, what different meant. I don't think it meant trying to be like, the smartest or the most interesting. I was like, trying to prove that I could create my own path. I think that's always

• 5:27Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 5:28Speaker 01

  Been the desire.

• 5:29Steven Bartlett?

  Why did you want to create your own path and prove that? I hear this word proving a lot throughout your story, like a desire to prove yourself right and prove yourself to others. It comes up over and over again in the conversations you've had. Where did that desire to prove yourself come from?

• 5:43Speaker 01

  I think, yeah, I remember back to like, getting an alpha smart in, you know, early grammar school. And I was so desperate to like, hack the teacher's like, admin password for the alpha smart to change the settings on it. And just wanted to show, or I think it's really proving to myself that I could do something different. And I never really did well in terms of like, a structured like, learning environment. I was always either like, super disinterested, or very, very passionate about something, whether it's technology or computers, the internet, and just like, wanted to dive in. And just like, almost testing against myself what was possible and what wasn't possible.

• 6:20Steven Bartlett?

  Did those around you, like teachers and your parents, have high hopes for you in your opinion?

• 6:25Speaker 01

  I think so, but they were also, you know, I don't want to, I don't like the word like realistic. I think they were very like realistic and structured hopes. And my path was certainly frowned upon by teachers, you know, friends, et cetera, throughout the years.

• 6:40Steven Bartlett?

  Even when you were younger, people?

• 6:42Speaker 01

  Even when I was younger, yeah. I think like teachers were always concerned that like, why is he starting a business and not focusing on his, you know, math test? So it was, it was, it was a problem since a young age.

• 6:52Steven Bartlett?

  Do you remember getting sort of like critical or pessimistic feedback at a young age about your ambitions and what was possible for you?

• 6:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 7:00Steven Bartlett?

  Can you give me some examples?

• 7:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's like, uh, I had started a social network a couple of years later when I was 12 years old. And this is early days in my space before Facebook had really gone outside of like Harvard and the initial Ivy League schools. I created a private social network for my middle school. And like out of nowhere, the site blew up and, you know, it was like the talk in middle school for a few days. And the teachers basically called me in and said like, the internet is not safe, you know? You have to stop this right now. You have to get rid of the website.

• 7:29Steven Bartlett?

  And how did that make you feel?

• 7:31Speaker 01

  It made me feel like I thought I was creating something of value, but I felt like that what I viewed as value wasn't, you know, agreed upon by everybody else. It almost created this like reinforcement where like, no, I know this is tangible. I know this is real and I know people like are enjoying something I made. And I felt it was just so cool to have, at the time it was hundreds of people, whatever, but having hundreds or a couple of thousand people using something I made as a 12 year old was just really, really interesting to me. And I think it kind of created this deeper desire, just shell and like desire to prove whether it was to those teachers or to the friends who like weren't supportive, that there is a different way than, you know, the way that we're all taught.

• 8:10Steven Bartlett?

  What did your parents want you to be? You know, like, I think my mom wanted me to be, I actually remember, my mom's from Nigeria. She didn't get an education like we do. I was born in Botswana in Africa as well. And my mom, I think, wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 8:23Steven Bartlett?

  I think she was set actually on doctor. What did your parents want you to be in your own opinion?

• 8:28Speaker 01

  I don't think they really cared as long as I followed the traditional path of like super studying hard in school, doing well, going to a good college, having a good college experience. I think beyond that.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Didn't really care too much. I went to school to study computer engineering. Didn't last very long, so didn't really, you know, study computer engineering, but that was the, uh, that was the intent.

• 8:47Steven Bartlett?

  What, what's the defining difference between both of them? You know, like my mother is X in terms of characteristics. My father is Y. What, what are there? If you had to describe them in a couple of words each, what words would you use?

• 8:58Speaker 01

  I think entrepreneurial, uh, you know, quick, like in terms of like, you know, quick minds are sharp, they're smart. And like honest, I think integrity is like the big thing. They're very honest, good people. And like, that's, you know, has been part of the hardest part to me is them, and not just them. It's like other family members and friends trying to understand how I could go down this path where I was just lying. And, you know, lying to investors and partners and employees and whatever it may have been. It's like understanding how I got there from, you know, the, the path I had taken.

• 9:32Steven Bartlett?

  Have you had that conversation with them?

• 9:33Speaker 01

  I have. And it, it comes down to, I think you've, you've nailed it super early on. It was just this desire, and I think more than desire, probably a need to prove myself. And fast forward many, many years later with like Fire and the Fyre Festival. That need was to these, these investors who basically took a chance in me when I first dropped out of school. And had been backing me for five, six, seven years before the Fyre Festival came to be. Like my life, I felt, and it sounds so silly to me now, but my life, I felt to me at that time was making them happy and making them money. And obviously like the initial investors, if Fire didn't work and didn't work honestly, they probably would have been okay. And they would have been far more understanding than the fact that I ended up lying at the end to get their support.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  But it's like need to prove that I could do it. And the ones who did believe in me, the need to prove that they were right to believe in me, just really led me down this terrible, terrible path of however long it was where I was lying.

• 10:32Steven Bartlett?

  That need to prove oneself, um, it can, it can garner some fantastic results in life because you, you end up striving and being ambitious and it acts as a source of motivation. But then it can also, um, cause I can relate to it, it can also get ugly at some point when. That need overshadows the need to be like ethical or to even have work-life balance, whatever it might be. Have you ever managed, in all the time you've had to reflect on it, have you figured out why you of all people had that, and you use the word need, not desire, you refer to it as a need to prove yourself? Like, where did that come from? Do you know?

• 11:08Speaker 01

  I don't know. And as I said, I've been asked so many times by people, obviously not as smart as you, but I've been asked by a lot of people and I don't think I've given a good enough answer and that's probably something that I need to think about.

• 11:21Steven Bartlett?

  Because it's dangerous, you know, I'm thinking about self-awareness here and if that's still driving you from the back room of your subconscious, where that might take you again in the future, right?

• 11:30Speaker 01

  Agree. And I think it's more about where I can find fulfillment and making people happy because they've made money or invested in a success probably is most likely the wrong formula in a lot of different situations. And I think like especially prison has made me very, very relationship focused and I feel a stronger need to be trusted by someone more than to make them happy. And I think that's the furthest area that I've improved in over the past five years.

• 12:02Steven Bartlett?

  I've never heard you talk about the conversations with your parents in the wake of everything that happened. And what have been those conversations? If I was privy to some of those conversations in person, what would I have seen?

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I've just tried to find a way to apologize and it's been to everybody. It's been to close friends who I think were hurt emotionally as well, other family members, other supporters, and it's just like trying to explain to them like why and finding the real words to apologize. And it was just so crazy as I've had all this time to obviously reflect about it, how I thought I was trying to make people happy, but I was really just like burning down these relationships and hurting them along the way and just how messed up that pursuit and path really was.

• 12:54Steven Bartlett?

  Have you actually apologized to your parents?

• 12:56Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 12:59Steven Bartlett?

  And what's their stance been throughout jail and before and even now, what's their perspective been?

• 13:07Speaker 01

  It's been like, close family is different because we're obviously, we're in touch and you know, everybody, family is your family. And I think for like, childhood friends who I was probably closer with like on an emotional level, it's been a little weird when I essentially was on the sideline in a way for four years or whatever the timeframe was. And then during that time, I'm kind of sheltered from like the media and the comments and everything like I don't necessarily hear or even see everything that's happening. And so like the bulk of that is directed towards other people, like whether it's family or friends. So after so long of like being the target, just because I'm not there to be the target, they start to like, you know, form different opinions and their minds start to wander. And then I think when I've seen people for the first time, like since jail,

• 13:52Speaker 01

  and then I can kind of see like a switch flip in their head after like four or five minutes, like, oh, okay. He's the old Billy that I used to know. And they start like acting normal again, which is like really crazy to me that when I was in jail, I just didn't really understand or appreciate the terrible shit basically that close people to me had to go through, just because I wasn't like available to be at the receiving end of everything that's happened.

• 14:17Steven Bartlett?

  What did they go through?

• 14:19Speaker 01

  I think like the, the emotional trauma, right? And people are looking to blame someone and to, you know, throw shade and hate and I deserve really so on someone. And if I'm not there like to be able to take that hate because I'm physically locked away somewhere, people need a target for it. And you know, unfortunately, I think for a lot of people who, and I learned this in jail too, a lot of people in jail, the ones that take it the hardest are the friends and family. It's because they're not the one, they're not the reason why you're there, but they suffer almost the most from it. It's just, it's not fair.

• 14:46Steven Bartlett?

  Did they tell you that they had been on the receiving end of that, that abuse?

• 14:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. And a lot of friends too.

• 14:52Steven Bartlett?

  What, what, what kind of abuse, did they tell you explicitly what kind of abuse they'd been on the receiving end of?

• 14:58Speaker 01

  I think it's just like the mental and it's like emotional anguish.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  I've had like friends even who didn't work with me, but you know, who were super close and around for a lot of the buildup of the events. And whether it's from like their family or their friends or their employers, like, how could you not know? How could you have been with him? And people are looking for, I think the public looks for someone to blame. And if I wasn't there to receive that blame, or wasn't responding to that blame, they just look for other targets. And like, I think that's what crushed me the most is on this limited contact with friends or family, whatever, from jail, like hearing the sadness and abuse they were taking and being able to do absolutely nothing about it. Just like totally powerless.

• 15:44Steven Bartlett?

  Going back into your story, it's, you know, I was reading through all of the sort of entrepreneurial endeavors you did as a, as a young man, even before the age of like 15 years old, you'd started companies, you'd sold companies, just, just a long, long list of continually starting another business, starting at like nine years old, you started programming 13, you start this, this, this outsourcing startup, which eventually gets sold on an auction site called Your Hot Site, I believe. And then at 15 years old, you create a company called 24 Scene, which is eventually sold to Buddy TV. When you were 15 years old, you go off to, you graduate at 18 from, I guess, high school.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  High school, yeah.

• 16:22Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, we call it different things in the UK. You go off to university and in your freshman year, you drop out and start a company called Spling. And you raised $400,000 in a series A round for this company called Spling at 18 years old, right?

• 16:34Speaker 01

  The financing grounds today are a little different. This is like 2010, but crazy how the world's changed, right?

• 16:40Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. So you raised that capital at 18 years old?

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 16:44Steven Bartlett?

  Is that your first sort of window into the fact or point of awareness where you think, fuck, I can raise capital for things that I have ideas for?

• 16:52Speaker 01

  I think the biggest thing there was having someone so much smarter and older and like more successful than me, actually like believe in me and back it up. The idea to like any friends and any family that I'm taking time off school or dropping out of school is like totally not okay. But the fact that I can point to like a small group of these early investors who were clearly like established and, you know, like amazing

• 17:20Speaker 01

  Almost like icons in their own fields. That was when I was like, look, I have this real group who is supporting me beyond their words. And I need to show, not just them, I need to show the world that these people are right. And everybody else who is saying like, what I'm doing is wrong is incorrect.

• 17:37Steven Bartlett?

  Who was saying you were wrong at that age, eighteen? Who was betting against you?

• 17:40Speaker 01

  I think like every peer, you know.

• 17:43Steven Bartlett?

  All your friends?

• 17:43Speaker 01

  All the friends, all your family members.

• 17:45Steven Bartlett?

  All your family members?

• 17:47Speaker 01

  Not all, I think the majority. And I think that the big thing with like, my friends at that age, who especially like the ones who like did better in school and, you know, probably a little bit smarter. It's just really, as much as like, they can't admit it, and I know I do this to other people too, so I think I see it. As much as they can't do it, like, they don't want to see someone, and obviously we're super young at that age, but succeed beyond them. And it's like, hey, I'm studying seventy hours a week, you know, I know I'm smarter than he is. And I'm working just as hard or harder than him, you know, why can he go and do this and I can't? So I think that's kind of like, a mantra that, you know, I've noticed a lot amongst like close friends. And obviously, I see that same behavior in myself, so yeah, I think that part just sucks.

• 18:28Steven Bartlett?

  On Spling?

• 18:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:29Steven Bartlett?

  It was an avenue for you to eventually move to New York?

• 18:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 18:32Steven Bartlett?

  What happened to that company? Eventually failed?

• 18:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I moved to New York, actually in the second ever WeWork space in New York. This is twenty eleven, I think. Yeah, so second ever WeWork space in New York. And Spling started as a social network, and I was kind of like parlaying off of what I had built in, you know, middle school and high school. And had this really small, you know, websites that ended up selling, which is great.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  The social networking aspect of Spling never really took off, and ended up making software and started to sell it to like these record labels and TV networks. And I was like the suburban kid who was already weird for programming. And now I'm the suburban kid who's weird for programming, crazy for dropping out of school. And now I'm sitting in the office with, you know, the heads of these like massive media companies that we've all heard of, that I didn't even know really existed. Like, to go meet with like the boss at Def Jam, or Hearst, or like Discovery or Disney, like all these companies that were just like a logo on TV for me as a young kid. I was now like tangibly there, and they were like paying for something I was building. Just like a wild experience to go from, you know, being in a dorm room in the middle of nowhere to. In the midst of the entertainment world in New York.

• 19:40Steven Bartlett?

  And so at some point you make the decision to close Spling down.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  So Spling was going and I just got super distracted by these entertainment companies that I was going to. And like, I kept trying to tell back like these childhood friends, I kept trying to explain to them like what was happening. They didn't really believe me. And that was really the genesis of Magnesis was that I wanted to take like the 19 year old me, who wasn't working at Spling and give him access to this world of like entertainment and fashion. And like media that I was like finding myself stumbling into in New York.

• 20:13Steven Bartlett?

  And so I'm trying to get to the point of like, there comes a day where you go, I mean, I've had this in my life, my first startup.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:18Steven Bartlett?

  As well, when I was literally 18 and then I left it at 20 and started my next business. But there's a day where you go, fuck that, I'm gonna do Magnesis instead.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  So I basically said, fuck that, I'm gonna do Magnesis, but like still keep Spling going. So.

• 20:31Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. So Spling, and that was like my biggest mistake. So Spling kept operating for, you know, a few years with, let's say 10 to 15 hours of a week of attention.

• 20:39Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  Whereas like, you know, the vast majority of my time was focused on Magnesis. I think like one of the reoccurring themes is just not seeing things through. And like, it happened again with Magnesis and to Fire, but like jumping ship when, Spling would not have been as big as Magnesis or Fire could have been, but it still could have, it still was okay. And like, I could have had a successful exit for people who were involved and just like not seeing that through was just wrong.

• 21:04Steven Bartlett?

  Reoccurring theme.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:07Steven Bartlett?

  I mean, I see that throughout your childhood and then at inter early, inter early sort of twenties.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:12Steven Bartlett?

  That, that, that I guess ambition and that sort of constant inspiration you have leads you to kind of abandon the last thing.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 21:20Steven Bartlett?

  And, and, and an entrepreneur's currency is their time and attention. So as you, as you cited there, it's finite. It means that the old thing gets a fraction of your time, when really if it's going to succeed in that market, it needs more than all of your time.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 21:33Steven Bartlett?

  This leads you onto Magnesis in 2013.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:36Steven Bartlett?

  You launched in 2014 eventually.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 21:39Steven Bartlett?

  Magnesis was a, tell me, tell me what it was and, and why you chose to switch your attention to this.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. So Magnesis was.

• 21:47Speaker 01

  A network that was seeking to give young people living in major cities access to better benefits, events and networking than their like credit card would give them. So like literally, this is 2012. I just, I started doing the Magnesis card before it launched. I went on Alibaba, this is like 10 years ago before Alibaba is Alibaba, bought this like blank, black sheet of metal and a credit card copier. And literally went and copied my like really crappy debit card with $20 onto it, onto this like black metal card. And just like went to the pizza parlor across the street and the guy just made a total scene when I went to pay and went and showed the card off around WeWork. And started selling cards to like interesting entrepreneurs at WeWork. And that was like literally the genesis of Magnesis.

• 22:33Steven Bartlett?

  And the core of the proposition was that it was kind of elite and exclusive?

• 22:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it was definitely trying to cater towards this like upwardly mobile entrepreneur style crowd.

• 22:45Steven Bartlett?

  That feels like a through line across many of your businesses that went on, which was like appealing to people's desire for status and clout. Cause when I was reading about Magnesis, at the end of the day, it felt like it was a, a black metal card, which was again, appealing to people's egos. Cause everybody wants that American Express black card, but they can't get it because you need to spend, you need to spend like a quarter of a million to get it. So it makes people feel amazing. And then you're promising them, the application process was only a few people could apply. It was all appealing to that people's desire to be.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  That's where it started at when I was like 19 or 20, whatever the time was. And then it ended up growing and the real benefit was a network. And there were certain members or cardholders who were meeting other members and kind of giving them value. And I think like the first concept of Magnesis was one, I wanted the black card for sure. And that was like the fun novelty, like more of the marketing aspect of it. But two is I wanted like a vehicle to share and really invite my friends to all these like entertainment properties where I was starting to experience and explore because they didn't believe me. So it was almost like show them what I was telling them was actually happening and have an excuse to bring people along through this club or community built around Magnesis.

• 23:59Steven Bartlett?

  And you raised capital for Magnesis?

• 24:01Speaker 01

  We did, yeah.

• 24:01Steven Bartlett?

  1.5 million before you launched and then three point something after?

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that the total was in like the mid, mid threes. Yeah. So nothing crazy.

• 24:09Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, and Jarul comes into the picture sometime around the Magnesis.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it started basically like, once again, Magnesis is all about, one, fulfilling like my fantasies of places I wanted to go and can get to. And then once I was there, having all of my friends come to. And I just like loved hip hop as a kid. So throughout Magnesis, we booked probably close to a dozen and a half, or even like 20 rappers to come perform these small concerts for Magnesis. And that's what started the whole ball rolling towards like the Fire app and that concept.

• 24:39Steven Bartlett?

  So when did you meet Jarul?

• 24:41Speaker 01

  During one of these Magnesis member events. And the thing that really struck me at the time was how hard it was to book him. And when he finally like received the offer, he said yes, and like almost like instantly, right? And the problem was this like web of quasi agents and middlemen and managers who all kind of claimed to like represent or know the talent. But in reality, they knew someone who knew like a sister, who knew a brother, who knew a cousin. And it's like this terrible, really like opaque nasty world. And coming from like a technology background, it made no sense to me. I knew there are other like kids like me, right? Who would, you know, pay something reasonable to get access to this kind of like music talent. So we started talking about building an app, which ended up becoming the Fire app,

• 25:25Speaker 01

  to provide like a window into like entertainers' pockets for anybody to give them offers directly.

• 25:30Steven Bartlett?

  And because of that experience with Jarul and just general artist booking, that's what, that was the genesis of this Fire app.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  That was a complete genesis was like booking a lot of these rappers through Magnesis, realizing that almost every single time we were going through middlemen who like weren't really like the manager or the agent. And then realizing, okay, I now have this network of, you know, 20 artists and their real managers. So I can give like access to other people through technology.

• 25:56Steven Bartlett?

  And from what I was reading, this is the, when one of the first big lies was told, which was around the success of Fire mobile app. I read this, I think, I can't remember where I saw it, it might have been the Hulu documentary or something. It said that in a term sheet to investors, it was claimed to be worth $90 million, but was actually doing 60K in business. What is the truth around that? Where was the, where was the lie told here?

• 26:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the Fire app and the Fyre Festival really all come together at the same time.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  It's crazy to think back like how how quick I went down a bad path, but how quick everything happened as well during that time period. This is all 2016. The Fire app was launched at some point mid 2016 and the Fyre Festival was conceived in September, October of 2016. So it was all kind of around the same time.

• 26:46Steven Bartlett?

  Wi-Fi Festival, how did that come to be? Because the Fire app came first.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  Fire app came first.

• 26:51Steven Bartlett?

  How did you get from there to Fyre Festival?

• 26:53Speaker 01

  So we had a townhouse space, basically this clubhouse, if you will, for Magnesis members. And one of the people working at the front desk, I lived a handful of blocks away, calls me one night and says, there's this guy here who is building some crazy things at Google, but he says he flies planes and wants to fly you. I think he's telling the truth. You have to come and meet him. So I ran over to the townhouse and met this guy and like absolute genius, like one of the best developers of AI I've ever met in my life. And he's going to go on to, I think, change your world in very many ways. But he's like, listen, I fly for fun. I have a bunch of friends who do the same thing. We should take a few planes and do a trip to the outer islands of the Bahamas for your Magnesis members. So we've been running these trips for years.

• 27:35Speaker 01

  And I found these outer islands to essentially be this welcoming playground where there might be 10 people who live on the island, who are just so amazing and kind-hearted and warm. And once you bring 18, 20, 24 people there from New York, everybody kind of drops their pretense. And if you connect them around these like, almost like life-defying experiences and adventures, they really, really come together. So it was running these trips for a number of years when I literally brought like one of these childhood friends that I mentioned and Fire app had just launched. He said, hey, man, you should totally do a music festival here for all Magnesis members. So that was a real person who came up with the idea and that's how the Fyre Festival happened.

• 28:16Steven Bartlett?

  And where was the first lie told in the fundraising process? Was it on raising capital for the app? Was it capital for the Magnesis?

• 28:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the Fire.

• 28:28Speaker 01

  The Fyre Festival app didn't raise much money prior to like the festival announcement. We came up with a festival idea in September of 2016, shot and released that promotional video that I think a lot of people saw in December of 2016, and announced a April of 2017 like launch date. So the period was super, super short. So somewhere in like the weeks leading up to that December promotional video, I started lying. And I was lying to Fire Apps investors, lying to Fire Festivals investors, lying about Magnesius's numbers. It all kind of hit when, oh shit, Fyre Festival is real. We're announcing a festival. We have X number of months to build a city in the middle of nowhere.

• 29:13Speaker 01

  How the fuck are we gonna do this? And that's just like sent me off down that path.

• 29:18Steven Bartlett?

  From, I think, from what I recall, there was four months between you announcing the festival and the festival happening. So you're going to the middle of nowhere. You've got to build sewage, infrastructure, basically a city from scratch at 25 years old, with out the capital to do it and without the experience in doing it in four months, in 120 days.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  So stupid. So bad. I think I, like of my 25th birthday, we launched the trailer for the Fyre Festival. And I still didn't think it was real at that time. Like, we had these great trips with a few dozen people and those we could totally handle. We launched a trailer. Then I remember waking up like, you know, quasi hungover five or six hours later. And we'd sold like a half a million dollars of tickets.

• 30:11Steven Bartlett?

  If I said that to people now in my team, and you know, I'm 30 now, same age as you. You know, I've got huge amounts of resources in terms of like contacts and capital. Everyone in my team would turn around to me and give me that look and say, this is not possible, Stephen.

• 30:29Steven Bartlett?

  Did people say that to you? Did no one say to you, this is fucking craziness?

• 30:33Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And I think that part of the curse and part of the gift at the time was a lot of the reasons that were being given to me, why things weren't possible, were all solved with these short-term miracles. And of course, everybody said, hey, the end goal is impossible. You're a moron. Like, you don't understand like what this takes. And then they would give three or four reasons about like smaller problems, right? And then I would go and like create magic and solve these three or four problems and be like, look, we've proved that, like, we can handle the bigger stuff, too. And I think it just took so many random like rolls of the dice to go our way to be able to create a failure so large.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  Because if we found like a stumbling block or a roadblock earlier on, it would have stopped the whole thing. But it was like this weird combination of smart, crazy people all kind of coming together for this wild idea and solving things we should never been able to solve until we couldn't.

• 31:32Steven Bartlett?

  Lying plays a big role in that, though.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 31:34Steven Bartlett?

  I think you have to add lying to the mix because I don't think you would have gotten those people to that island on that plane without a series of almost like nonstop lying. There's no way that you would have, well, in my view, if people knew the reality of, well, in my view, if people knew the reality of the numbers and the situation on the ground. And I remember watching the documentaries, which I know you haven't seen.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:54Steven Bartlett?

  Still.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  No, yeah.

• 31:55Steven Bartlett?

  We're gonna talk about that, but I remember seeing the, there were moments where you were saying to team members, don't, don't tell this investor the nature of the situation. And had you been honest, I think investors, from my experience of building companies, would not have backed this, the reality of the situation. If, if they knew the truth, they wouldn't have backed that.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  Agree. And I almost think that like lying hurt things the most.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  The lying.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  Really pushed away the help that I needed. And I think that how we just announced the festival with our trailer video. We had already proven our ability to, you know, create hype, to bring a manageable number of people to these islands, to give them like an amazing experience. If I just like threw my like hands up the next day and said, okay, I didn't expect to sell this many tickets and I don't have the resources or, or like wherewithal to actually execute this now. I think the professionals would have flocked to me and said, okay, like we are experts in doing this, like let us take over and you do what you're good at, but like let us, you know, be the adults in the room and make this thing actually happen.

• 32:57Steven Bartlett?

  And why didn't you put your hands up and say that?

• 32:59Speaker 01

  I, that's like, that's how I've lost sleep over the past five years. But that's where like beyond lying, like breaking all the ethics and morals, which like totally didn't, totally wrong. It pushed away the help.

• 33:10Steven Bartlett?

  Are you a pathological liar? This is a claim that I've, I've, I've heard leveled at you by the judge in your case, by other people that were working on Fyre Festival, people in the documentaries.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think like my entire mantra and drive right now is to form like super, super close relationships. And I want those six or eight people to never question my integrity. And I think like getting on a microphone and telling the world, hey, guys, like I'm not a pathological liar. It's like, yeah, shut the fuck up. But it's like, I want to feel pride where I can like go home tonight and I know like these six to eight people that I can call or they can call me. You know, we will have our backs and I really don't have the answer in terms of like how I dress it to the world, but it's like to six to eight people and you guys know who you are, like let's build that trust.

• 33:59Steven Bartlett?

  Because that's one of the, even when I was thinking about doing this interview, obviously, you know, the, the foundation of the diary of a CEO is honesty. And I'm thinking, after all this stuff I've seen in these documentaries, how do I know that he's not just going to come here and bullshit me?

• 34:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:10Steven Bartlett?

  How do I know that I'm not going to be one of the investors or one of the other people that was, was lied to? How do I know he's going to give me the truth?

• 34:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:16Steven Bartlett?

  How do you receive that?

• 34:19Speaker 01

  It's just so hard to hear. It's it's super hard to hear. And I think like, natural reaction is to always like fight back and argue, oh, I'm not a liar. And then you just like, and it's like, digs you down a further hole. So I think it's just finding pride in a different area. And it's like, I am highly flawed and like any claims made to the contrary are just are wrong. And for whatever good ideas I've had, I've had, you know, 10 times many bad ones. And like clearly, I lied to an extent that I would really hope that the vast majority of the population like would never be comfortable doing. So yeah, highly, highly flawed. And I think like the next 30 years of my life will be defined by, can I focus on my skill set?

• 35:04Speaker 01

  Can I be honest with a small number of people around me? And like, can I get help in those areas where I clearly need it?

• 35:09Steven Bartlett?

  You haven't watched the documentaries?

• 35:11Speaker 01

  No.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  At the first prison I was at, or like when they appear when they came out, the the guys got like a USB stick with both the documentaries and watched them. And I was like, I literally went outside. I think I was like one of two people who wasn't in the TV room watching the documentary, but couldn't do it.

• 35:29Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 35:31Speaker 01

  I think at that time, I was still like, this is early 2019. So I was less than a year into my sentence. I think I was still like in the combative phase where I just hadn't like come to reality with everything that happened. And I was too scared to hear allegations or comments by other people and not be able to respond. And I like realized like being locked up and then having someone say something where it's probably like 70% true and 30% false. I wouldn't have like focused on or internalized the part that was true, even though that was probably most of it. I just would have gotten enraged by the false part. But I wouldn't have been able to do anything about it. So I felt like I was not like stable enough or mature enough. At that time to to watch it and I probably still am not, but.

• 36:15Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 36:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:16Steven Bartlett?

  Because I was gonna ask you, the follow up was why haven't you watched them now then? If that was 2019, we're in 2022 now, so why haven't you watched them still?

• 36:23Speaker 01

  So I caught myself the other day, someone asked me the same question. And I said, and I think this shows like I'm not like mature enough to watch it yet. I said, no one is is probably slightly true, but exaggerated. I said, no one real interviewed for the documentary. Like, why would any business person who has anything going on in their life, you know, attach themselves to the event? That's mostly true, obviously, but but still, some of the people who did interview, I'm sure were, you know, sharing real stories of real things that happened. So I'm just, I'm not ready. There's no, I don't know why, but I'm not ready.

• 36:55Steven Bartlett?

  Because of how it might make you, it might trigger you in some type of way?

• 36:58Speaker 01

  Or? I think so. And yeah, I just.

• 37:00Steven Bartlett?

  I did ask myself, I said, would you, if that happened to me, would I watch the documentaries? And I'm gonna be honest, I don't know. I don't know, but you must everywhere you go now have pieced together those documentaries because people like me ask these fucking questions.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  For sure. Unfortunately, I think I've I've heard more than than I've wanted to, but I think I understand.

• 37:23Steven Bartlett?

  How do you feel about the fact that like probably for at least some time now, the center point of conversations you have and interviews you do is gonna center on that? That's gonna like, that's gonna be a real defining thing for for many that meet you.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  I think it's super interesting, like, to think about personally. And it's almost like weird because a lot of the people who have watched a documentary, whether they're friends or family members, other people, their advice is like, you are incompetent. You can't do anything going forward, like, you know, go work some entry level, like desk job for 70 hours a week for the rest of your life and and shut up. And I think it's kind of like ironic, right? Because then you're stuck living with the remorse, the guilt, the failure of what you did before. And I think the other option is. Can I go about it, but go for it and go for it honestly? And if I fail, it's okay, but you know, at least take the swing. And like, which path would, you know, make you prouder?

• 38:22Speaker 01

  And I've chosen the latter, which might be right, it might be wrong. But I just think it's really weird to me how a lot of like the close friends who have watched the documentary, almost all their advice has just been like, you can't do anything now. And maybe they're right, but it's like, that's been like, I think that's the hardest thing to internalize from the whole, like after effect process where we currently stand.

• 38:42Steven Bartlett?

  Well, you've clearly got a internal bias to just prove everybody wrong, which doesn't seem to have left you, right? So when you hear that, the Billy that I, I mean, I've come to learn in the last, you know, couple of minutes I've been speaking together, we're just a hundred percent use that as fuel, right?

• 38:58Speaker 01

  I think like, I find pride differently now. And when you're locked away for four years and 10 months, like when you're alone or with a cellmate, but like in solitary confinement, you can't leave. You have to find pride in like the littlest and weirdest things. And, you know, once you leave, 95% of it is just like irrelevant and gets out the window. But I think like finding pride is where it stands. And do I want to be the, the, the guy who's honest but quit? Or the guy who's honest but went for it? And then whatever the outcome is, the outcome is. And like, to me, I can find more pride in that path.

• 39:30Steven Bartlett?

  Fine, first of all, you raised more than $20 million. Now that alone is not an easy thing to do. You know, lying, definitely aided that.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  For a hundred percent.

• 39:45Steven Bartlett?

  But even if people were lying, even if someone was just purely lying, there's still an element of salesmanship that goes into accomplishing such a big investment raise for a first time music festival when you're 25 years old. What are your skillsets that, that made that happen? Let's just lying, we, we put that on the table. You lied.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:07Steven Bartlett?

  But what are the other skillsets that enabled that massive failure?

• 40:13Speaker 01

  So I think there's like taking a second to like dive into the lies and why it was so bad. I think there's like a misconception, at least from what I've heard, that I woke up one day, made a fake spreadsheet, which is totally true. And then with that spreadsheet, you know, went and raised a bunch of money. I think the reality is it's like, not that simple. You know, I can make a bad spreadsheet tomorrow without my background. And you're just not going to go and raise $20 million straight. It's like, it doesn't go like that. I think the hardest part is the trust is that the majority of the people who were backing me had either invested in me since I was 19 years old, or had seen me work since I was 19, or were referred or trusted someone like who fell into one of those camps. So it was

• 40:54Speaker 01

  like six years of trust and failure and struggle that I had to go through to get to the position where I could even ask for that kind of money. So more than the lie about the revenue at the time, which I almost think is not as bad as betraying the trust of the years it took to get to that point where I was even in the position to lie about the revenue.

• 41:18Steven Bartlett?

  So there's that trust building, which again, the jury's probably out on whether that trust was built honestly.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:23Steven Bartlett?

  Because you talked about magnesias also being inflated in terms of the numbers that being lies there. But then your personal skill, like what is it, in hindsight, you think, why did these people back me as an individual? What are your skill sets? Like charisma? Is it your ability to talk, your communication skills? What was it?

• 41:41Speaker 01

  I almost think that you could find similarities in these early trips that led to the Fyre Festival, in some of the magnesias experiences, which is taking people who wouldn't usually meet, bringing them together, and then taking them to a place they've never been before. Whether that's like a jet ski race at midnight around these uninhabited islands, or like spearfishing for your own lobster with someone you've always wanted to meet, is about just like connecting interesting people with like a tinge of crazy around these adventures. And like those adventures could be physical, it could be virtual, but that's kind of always been, I think, what has intrigued backers, whether that's a friend, a partner,

• 42:25Speaker 01

  a sponsor, an investor, is to be part of that tornado of activity and connection and excitement.

• 42:32Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting. So the people, so what I got from that is the people that invested in you wanted the same thing as the people that bought tickets to Fyre Festival. They wanted to be part of something really, really cool themselves.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  They wanted to meet interesting people and do interesting crazy shit. Like that's like, that's the MO.

• 42:48Steven Bartlett?

  And you ended up selling some 8,000 tickets for two weekends at Fyre Festival?

• 42:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:52Steven Bartlett?

  I mean, everyone remembers the orange tile campaign and the use of influencers. And you had Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid, Hailey Baldwin, Emily Ratatowski. And you shot this promo video in the Bahamas, which became pretty viral. Because no one had ever seen that group of influencers together before.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:13Steven Bartlett?

  At that point, you know, you're now, you're now two months, three months out from the festival.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  Crazy.

• 43:18Steven Bartlett?

  You've sold these fucking tickets. This is when the lies get really bad out there. Like in one of the documentaries, it says that you put a villa up on the site for a quarter of a million to try and raise some money that you didn't have. And then I read further and further and I was trying to understand the world you were in that was causing you to continually lie and lie and lie. And I heard about this urgent payment sheet. What was this urgent payment sheet and how was that driving you?

• 43:41Speaker 01

  We were at the point where the timeline that I had come up with was just so off and ridiculous.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  It just like made all of the payments and vendors just kind of go through the roof in terms of like the cost to make something happen so quickly. And like, we just had no money, right? And we were just trying to get money from any source, whether it was investors or sponsors or customers or ticket sales, consulting jobs. I was like, you know, wearing 10 hats to try and get the income we needed to fund the fire festival. And the money crunch was so bad, I'd literally wake up every day, you know, at nine AM to a sheet where we had a list of every payment we had to make before the bank wire cut off at four o'clock that day. So I knew that by 2 PM, I'd have that money come into our account. So the team had enough time to wire it out before the four o'clock wire deadline. And so I'd wake up some days and it's like, we need $4 million by 2 PM.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  So I'd have five hours to go out, source the investors, come to terms with them and actually get the money in the account. Or else we were dead in the water.

• 44:40Steven Bartlett?

  That day, four million.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, we managed to survive like this for almost 60 days. And some days it was a hundred grand and some days it was $4 million. But like, it was, it was wild.

• 44:50Steven Bartlett?

  On that day that it was $4 million, you got till 2 PM. What'd you do?

• 44:55Speaker 01

  Started calling investors.

• 44:56Steven Bartlett?

  And saying what?

• 44:57Speaker 01

  I think like.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  I was telling them we were fucked unless we had this money. And I think that like a lot of the investors almost adapted a similar mindset to me that we're in so far that, hey, we've already spent X. What's an extra couple of million dollars at this point? Because if this thing works, we're all going to make money. And that was the that was the mindset that I was trying to build. And I truly believed, obviously, it was so silly now to look back on.

• 45:26Steven Bartlett?

  Because in one of the in one of the documentaries, they paint they paint the opposite picture. They say that you were calling investors and not telling them the extent of how bad things were, because there was one particular moment where you'd sent an email telling someone not to tell the investor the true nature of the situation with the accommodation, because they wouldn't give more money. So the documentary tells a completely different story about being opaque, untransparent to investors in those crunch moments.

• 45:51Speaker 01

  I think like one of the bad things is, is I definitely sheltered information. Like, not every investor would have the same information, not every team member had the same information. So I certainly kept a lot of the logistical problems in the dark. But if I knew like one investor could solve this problem, you know, I would tell them about the logistics problem, but then say, don't tell anybody else, but we need your help here. So I was picking and choosing people who I thought would be sympathetic or capable of handling certain situations. So, I mean, terrible approach, but it was like a mix of, hey, we're in this far, we need a little bit more, so give it to us. And also a mix of, well, we can't tell everybody this, because if people realize, you know, we need $4 million by 2 o'clock today, we sound crazy and we're dead.

• 46:36Steven Bartlett?

  People hearing that situation where you have this urgent payment sheet and you're waking up in the morning and it says 100K on it, 250K, 4 million.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:45Steven Bartlett?

  One of the things in the documentary showed that you were popping up like fake villas and stuff like that to meet the debt owed on that payment sheet. So if you owed 50, if you needed 50K that day, pop a villa online, call it the Dolphin Villa, sell it for 50K, and that would cover the solution. Is that true?

• 47:03Speaker 01

  I don't think it was as one to one as that.

• 47:05Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 47:07Speaker 01

  We certainly were trying to sell as many expensive ticket packages possible.

• 47:11Steven Bartlett?

  That didn't exist.

• 47:12Speaker 01

  That whether it was like boats or yachts that like, you know, we would go in charter, or whether it was like high end villas that we were trying to rent.

• 47:20Steven Bartlett?

  But you didn't have them at the time.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  So I think our numbers were not like one to one at the end of the day. However, we did rent a couple hundred villas. So I know I've heard so many conflicting like stories from this, but you know, we did rent a couple hundred villas and I'm sure we were off by a number, but it wasn't like, hey, we had no villas on the island.

• 47:36Steven Bartlett?

  There was a quarter million dollar package for like a villa or a yacht or something. Did that sell?

• 47:43Speaker 01

  I think we sold a couple, couple boats for like in that range.

• 47:46Steven Bartlett?

  Quarter, quarter million dollars.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  And then we had, there was a couple houses in the island, which are like, it's like 10 bedroom, you know, like private estate type things. We sold a number of them. I don't think it was like, it wasn't tons, but we sold a couple.

• 47:57Steven Bartlett?

  Well, the boats, did the boats exist?

• 47:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:59Steven Bartlett?

  On the day?

• 48:00Speaker 01

  We, we partnered with like basically like this like yacht brokerage company. So we would just like ride it through there.

• 48:05Steven Bartlett?

  And as the, so going back to my point about that urgent payment sheet, you just said that you'd wake up, like you'd wake up on days, look at the urgent payment sheet.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  Like oh shit.

• 48:14Steven Bartlett?

  You'd be like, oh shit.

• 48:16Steven Bartlett?

  Now I've, I've sat here with the CEO of one of the disruptor banks out in Europe called Tom Monzo, and he talked about the like mental torment. He had a, a red phone by his bed. He's running a bank here. So he'd wake up every day and he'd have a moment of like dread waking up because the stress and the pressure of, you know, having to run a bank. When you're waking up on those days, what is the like the mental health implication? What did you feel?

• 48:42Speaker 01

  It was awful. And I think the one benefit and detriment that I had was an end date. Like this is all going to end on whether right or wrong, like on the festival date, right? We're either going to succeed and like be champions or we're going to drastically fail. And either way, like let's go all in to try to make that happen.

• 49:02Steven Bartlett?

  And what was the, you say the word awful. Take me into the world's word awful. Give me a description of what that actually means in reality. What are the symptoms of that?

• 49:08Speaker 01

  I mean, I was fat as shit. Like my, my heart was out of rhythm, you know?

• 49:11Steven Bartlett?

  Your heart was out of rhythm?

• 49:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like, I think like lost interest in.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  Sexual relationships lost interest in like friendship relationships that weren't transactional and it became like all work and nothing else mattered and like looked terrible, felt terrible and like it just it sucks and I can't imagine like the red phone at the bank because like that's never ending, right? Like maybe you can say, hey, you know, I'll sell or hire a new CEO in seven years, but I can't imagine like that kind of window. Yeah.

• 49:39Steven Bartlett?

  Well, he ultimately quit after seven years building a business.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 49:42Steven Bartlett?

  I think it was valued at billions when he quit and when he did a piece in one of the newspapers, he cited his his mental health.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:50Steven Bartlett?

  Did you experience anxiety?

• 49:52Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 49:56Speaker 01

  I was I was afraid to show weakness, right? So it's like.

• 50:00Speaker 01

  I didn't acknowledge it to myself. I certainly didn't acknowledge it to anybody else, but like I knew something was wrong. I shouldn't be 24 and my heart skipping beats like, you know, that's not not normal. There's no reason why that should be happening. But um, yeah, I just refused to acknowledge it and like would tell myself, oh, you're you're just soft. Like plenty of people have had to live with like much worse stress than this. Figure it out, suck it up.

• 50:20Steven Bartlett?

  Do you know that feeling of anxiety, the one I'm talking about where it's it's like constant state of like?

• 50:24Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 50:25Steven Bartlett?

  And you experienced you were experiencing that in the lead up to the festival?

• 50:27Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 50:28Steven Bartlett?

  How badly?

• 50:29Speaker 01

  It was bad. And yeah, I mean, like, looking back, it's crazy. Like, no one wants to live, right? With a dread to wake up every morning, not knowing like what that Excel document's going to be and then who I have to beg or call or plead or sell to to solve that problem. It's just a shitty life.

• 50:46Steven Bartlett?

  But you you thought you were in too deep and you couldn't turn back?

• 50:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I thought that like. I wrongly convinced myself that there was an end goal and there was a solution. Like, if the event worked and it went well, we'd have a great brand and everybody's happy. Everybody makes money. Everybody's going to want to come next year. And obviously, it was so stupid and silly, but that was a pure. I had the finish line in sight.

• 51:08Steven Bartlett?

  When did you realize it had all gone wrong?

• 51:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, the night before the so the festival was scheduled to be Friday, Saturday and Sunday for two weekends. We had to charter two 737 planes and open up like a temporary terminal in Miami to basically fly everybody to the island. And given we only had two planes, we started to fly guests in early in a Thursday morning before like before the festival started on Friday. And late that Wednesday night, we were like rushing to get everything ready in time. And it's like walked into the room around midnight and like the entire team was like slumped over on their chairs, like asleep on the couch, like heads like leaning on the kitchen table. And it seemed like all the energy at the same time just like left the entire team. And like almost like as if on cue, as if written by a movie, a storm

• 51:57Speaker 01

  rolls in, like late that Wednesday night. And it's like, oh shit, like, I've lost a team. You can't beat the weather, like, or we're not in a good spot.

• 52:08Steven Bartlett?

  Thinking back to the promo video that you made and comment you made on the full send podcast about how the guy that buys the yachts and gets all the girls to come and then pays for it and subsidizes it is never a happy man.

• 52:21Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 52:23Steven Bartlett?

  Are you, this was a question I was pondering as I was reading about your stories, like, what are your insecurities? Because a lot of this seems to be driven by some kind of like deep insecurity to like prove others right, to be the man, to be the guy, to throw the best party and the validation on a psychological level that must be giving some kind of insecurity, some hole it must be filling.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  For sure. Yeah.

• 52:43Steven Bartlett?

  What are your insecurities? And what were they?

• 52:48Speaker 01

  Good question. Yeah. Thank you. I think the need, it always kind of came back, the need to prove this path, right? Of like, I don't need school. I don't need the path that we were all taught as the right path. Like, my path is better and it leads to more interesting and more exciting life. And like, I think I always knew that, but I was so insecure and I wanted to have everybody else believe it. And I would get frustrated when people didn't share those same beliefs as me. So I think it's part of the learning process as well, is to understand that everybody can't believe and like the same thing. And that's okay. And like not taking it personally when that happens.

• 53:27Steven Bartlett?

  Have you got any insecurities around women?

• 53:30Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 53:31Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. It just seems to be centered on this desire to like prove everybody wrong and like fuck the system and like, um, I still, I'm still not quite clear in my mind where that, where that came from. I'm like, was he bullied in school? Was it, was there a teacher that said some shit to him that he couldn't do it? Was it his parents told him he couldn't do it?

• 53:48Speaker 01

  I think part of it is like the curse of, of things never being enough, right? And I guess I don't know what the derivation of that is, but you know, whether it's business success or friendship success, where you live, your home, your possessions, like your, the love that someone has for you, especially during that time of my life, I was almost like jaded into always thinking that it wasn't enough. Like if someone loved me, they didn't love me enough. Or if like I had a great like day at work, the day wasn't good enough. And I think it all kind of come back to like, maybe I'm thinking aloud here, maybe it was like the early exposure at like 18 and 19 to like titans of industry and then me comparing to them where it's like not feasible to get there without, you know, 20, 30, 40 years

• 54:33Speaker 01

  of work that they had put in. But it's like, I wanted everything at that level and I wanted it now. So if you gave me this much, but it wasn't like where they were, I wasn't satisfied with it. So I think it was like the early exposure combined with like the impatience and need to have it.

• 54:50Steven Bartlett?

  There's this really, um, well publicized scene where you're stood on a crate on the day of the festival. You've got all of these party goers around you, kind of screaming and asking questions and some of them a little bit drunk because they'd been off, yeah, sent to a bar on the other side of the island when you were trying to sort of buy yourself time. What was going on when you were still in that crate and what were you thinking and feeling? Were you shitting yourself?

• 55:14Speaker 01

  I mean, right now I realize like how bad my management skills were at the time. Like where the fuck is everybody? Like we had, they weren't all full-time employees. A lot of them were like local contractors or whatever, but we had almost 800 people, you know, the day of the festival, like working there. And I just felt like I was surrounded by these people. I couldn't find any of my team members and I had, I'm not gonna name the publication. I had a publication on the phone with me saying, you know, we heard you ran off on your yacht with like cocaine and hookers. Like, I don't have a yacht, never done cocaine, like there were no hookers. And, but they're also live streaming on the, on their cover of their webpage. So I'm like yelling at them. I'm getting yelled at by like, you know, the 50 or 100 concert goers right there. I just couldn't find anybody, but it just goes to show, I just like, didn't have the systems in

• 55:57Speaker 01

  place to, or the knowledge to manage everything. That was my first reaction is like, where the hell is everybody?

• 56:03Steven Bartlett?

  I heard you made the decision to cancel the festival when someone incorrectly told you that people had died.

• 56:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was told shortly after that moment, maybe an hour or two later, that three people had died. And thankfully, no one was physically hurt, like at all to my knowledge, but I was told these elaborate stories.

• 56:20Steven Bartlett?

  Who told you that?

• 56:21Speaker 01

  Uh, team members, employees. And I think the reality was, looking back now, is that concert goers were like reading things on Twitter and then coming, running to employees and telling them this, but like verified Twitter accounts is back in what, 17, where like announcing like gunshots, fire, like people hit, like it was going all over Twitter and people were getting shot, things like that. And like, none of this was true. But by the time it got to me, the details were so vivid, I just didn't have like, the ability to like step back, take a deep breath, recalibrate and try to like think through the information. It was like, oh shit, people are dead. Okay, cancel this. Turn the planes around, get everybody home.

• 56:59Steven Bartlett?

  How did that feel when you heard that? If someone in my team came to me and said that I was putting on an event and three people were dead already?

• 57:05Speaker 01

  I mean, I just freaked out and said, get everybody out of here, get everybody back to Miami. And that was like, that was the response. But yeah, I was just, I just didn't have the ability to like, okay, like what's actually happening? How can we prevent this? It was more of, it's like a quick knee jerk. All right, send everybody home. It's over.

• 57:24Steven Bartlett?

  One of the, I think, legendary moments from the documentary, which I know you've been asked about and heard about before, is when Andy King says that he, you called him and asked him to suck a dick, suck, literally suck a penis, to have the water imported because the border agents had held it up. What's the truth in that situation? Like, did you ask him to suck a penis?

• 57:49Speaker 01

  I've heard so many variations of this story, and no, he was never ordered to go suck a guy's dick.

• 57:55Steven Bartlett?

  He literally put mouthwash in. He was gonna suck, suck some dick. He was...

• 57:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's news to me. I mean, I've probably heard the story many times, but I think the, the comment was in jest, like, go suck this guy's dick, get this water, like, whatever it takes, more of like, you know, go suck up to him and get the water released, like, do anything beyond paying this guy, right? Like, you can't, you can't pay the, the customs people. So like, go do whatever it takes and just convince him that our festival is gonna fail if people can't drink water.

• 58:19Steven Bartlett?

  He's, he's obviously a gay man, and the border agent was gay, right?

• 58:22Speaker 01

  Uh, I think so, yeah.

• 58:23Steven Bartlett?

  So the assertion in the documentary was because he was gay, you'd asked him to suck, suck a dick if he had to. And he, he took that literally. So he, he says he, he went and put mouthwash in, and he headed down there, fully prepared to suck a dick.

• 58:38Speaker 01

  I think that makes for good TV, but yeah, I certainly don't recall it happening like that, unfortunately. Crazy.

• 58:45Steven Bartlett?

  Do you still speak to him?

• 58:46Speaker 01

  Um, I've heard from him recently. Yeah, so...

• 58:50Steven Bartlett?

  Are you on good terms?

• 58:52Speaker 01

  I, I think he's a good guy. I think he tried his best to, to help. And unfortunately, he was brought on pretty late in like the process. So he wasn't there from the beginning, but I think, obviously, if he was willing to do that, he went above and beyond to...

• 59:04Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, listen, if I...

• 59:05Speaker 01

  Trying to make the festival happen. I'm sure, I mean, yeah, I wish him all the best.

• 59:08Steven Bartlett?

  If I had a friend that was willing to go to those lengths for me, and I have no friend that would do that for me, I certainly would, would stay in touch and keep them on side.

• 59:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:16Steven Bartlett?

  In the wake of Fyre Festival, what happens? You eventually fly back to New York. One of the scenes that really did get me in the documentary on an emotional level was watching that wonderful Bohemian lady talk about how she lost her, her life savings. You know who I'm referring to, right?

• 59:30Speaker 01

  Uh, I do know, yeah.

• 59:31Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 59:35Steven Bartlett?

  How do you feel about that when you hear that that some that locals who worked on that hadn't been paid and then, you know, they're in they're not living privileged lives necessarily?

• 59:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's terrible. And the reality is there are people who are owed there. And they're owed for the last two weeks of work before the festival. I think everybody a little bit different, but getting them paid back, super important to me and trying to find ways to start that process now. I never met that lady before, but no, her story is obviously super sad and, you know, I have heard from her through friends recently and, you know, hope we can figure out, you know, what is owed to everybody and start making those steps there. But yeah, unfortunately, I've never met her, but hope to make right by her.

• 1:00:17Steven Bartlett?

  When you when you leave the Bahamas after that event, you come back to New York, you come back to a shitstorm.

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:24Steven Bartlett?

  I mean, the people that have given you what 26, 27 million dollars in cash.

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:30Steven Bartlett?

  Must be pretty mad.

• 1:00:32Speaker 01

  For sure. I land back on like the Sunday night after the festival around midnight. And then that morning early, the FBI is at my door. And I think like the initial investors who got really mad, thought that the whole festival was a hoax and that I had stolen the money and had it hidden somewhere. And it was like lying about the entire thing. And so just like enter this whirlwind of hell.

• 1:00:55Steven Bartlett?

  Your investors basically went to the FBI.

• 1:00:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, from what I understand, yes.

• 1:01:00Steven Bartlett?

  What makes you what gives you that understanding?

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  Basically, I was called and told it was gonna happen. It's like, you fucked up. It's too late. Like, here's what's gonna happen now. And and like, I was totally, totally guilty. And I would have gone to jail, like, if no one made that phone call, it just made the process happen. Like, process kicked off faster. But once it kicks off, you know, it's out of the out of the hands of the investors and into the justice system. And I was black and white guilty. There was no gray area there.

• 1:01:25Steven Bartlett?

  And one of your investors called you and told you that if you didn't give them X dollar in cash, they would.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  The exact lines were like, we need this amount of money or else you're going to be in handcuffs in the front page of the Wall Street Journal. And I was like, didn't have the money, first of all.

• 1:01:42Steven Bartlett?

  How much was it?

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  I don't want to say because people will know who the investor probably is, but.

• 1:01:47Steven Bartlett?

  Seven figures?

• 1:01:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. More than a million dollars. More than one, less than 10. So I didn't have it. And then I was also kind of like certainly naive in my response. At the time, I just couldn't fathom like that I was lying to investors, right? Like, I knew I was trying my best to make the festival work. And the media's initial like line of questioning and the guest's line of questioning as it was all falling apart was like, this was a scam. You didn't try to do this. So my reaction was like, no, I tried. I'm trying my best. But I couldn't like really understand the magnitude and the gravity of the crimes I did commit. So I was still kind of fighting back like, oh, I didn't do anything wrong. I tried my best. And of course, like, I get back and realize, oh, shit. I mean, it didn't happen overnight, but here's what actually happened. And yeah.

• 1:02:32Steven Bartlett?

  When you get, when you get back, the criminality doesn't stop though, does it?

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:02:37Steven Bartlett?

  This is the bit, honestly, that really got me in the document because I was like, oh, man, you know, some could say, young kid, negligent, inexperienced, his ambition was greater than his execution, told loads of lies. At that point, he learns his lesson. But then for the criminality and lying to continue beyond that point, with this NYC VIP access, where you start selling fake tickets. Give me the context. Why did that happen?

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've, many smart people have said the same thing as you. And I was just caught in this process where, okay, this investor, he didn't threaten me, but the investor kind of gave me an ultimatum. I blew him off. And he was right. He got me arrested. It's all about the money. I have to pay everybody back now. All right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get him his money. And I wasn't like communicating with him at this point, but I'm gonna get him his money. I'm gonna pay everybody else back. And then this is all gonna go away. And I can solve this. And I thought that the proper response to a criminal process was to solve the problem. When the proper response to criminal process is to sit down, shut the fuck up, and like, accept your punishment and just take it. And any other response, just like the wrong way to do it.

• 1:03:47Steven Bartlett?

  So you were on bail?

• 1:03:48Speaker 01

  I was on bail. And like, It was all about this desire like, okay, now it's about the money. Let me pay people back. And back in the Magnesius days, like in the early fire days, brands would essentially pay us to like host these events for our members or to invite members to random things. And I would always get invited to these like charity events and the charity galas and concerts and, you know, award shows and whatever it may be. I can get plus one or plus two depending on it. And I thought like, oh, this is a great way to make money. I can just like, you know, call these brands back and ask for a favor and get a few spots and sell these tickets. I just like was so stupid and still wrong and obviously couldn't fulfill what I was selling. I'm like fucked up and it's kept me awake at night just as much if not more than the festival. So we're on the same page there.

• 1:04:32Steven Bartlett?

  So you would, Hamilton, the Super Bowl, you would email people, cold call them, tell them you had tickets, take the money. And then when the event happened.

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  I would scramble and try to get it. And sometimes I could, but many times I couldn't.

• 1:04:45Steven Bartlett?

  And you would keep that, keep their money?

• 1:04:47Speaker 01

  I would refund it if the event didn't happen, but the problem was I was just so sold out for events in the future that I had no chance at actually fulfilling that, you know, when my bail got revoked and I got arrested, it was just like they lost their money.

• 1:04:58Steven Bartlett?

  And you were doing, were you doing this in the Magnesius days? I heard a story about Hamilton. You said you had 200 tickets to Hamilton.

• 1:05:04Steven Bartlett?

  And then when the event came near, you just like randomly scrambled on like Ticket Hub or StubHub, whatever it is, and bought the tickets last minute and would go and hand them out.

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. So when, in the lying period leading up to the festival, I was trying to get money from everywhere and definitely was trying to get more money from Magnesius to help pay the bills as well.

• 1:05:24Speaker 01

  I was so stupid, like was certainly overselling access to Magnesius events, but we ended up either buying the tickets like at an inflated rate or refunding everybody. So I lost money every single time. It was crazy, like just so stupid.

• 1:05:39Steven Bartlett?

  Your ability to be so comfortable with lying at that point in your life is terrifying.

• 1:05:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:50Steven Bartlett?

  It's one could almost say it's like it's kind of it's kind of I don't know even necessarily should say this, but kind of lucky that like it was wasn't on an even bigger scale and it wasn't like life or death stuff that you were doing in terms of you know what I mean because if you're that comfortable lying to people that could have been and you have the sales ability clearly that could have been a lot like how is your your relationship with lying evolved in the last couple of years since you've been in jail and you've come out like honestly how has it changed?

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:24Speaker 01

  The lies at the time, I think just the craziest part was

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  how stupid it was from every level like you know you work hard to build relationships with friends with loved ones with supporters and obviously as soon as you allow them it's going to get found out whether it's the next day or in a year or in five years.

• 1:06:43Steven Bartlett?

  You didn't believe that?

• 1:06:44Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:06:45Steven Bartlett?

  You didn't seem to ever believe that it would be found out?

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  I always knew in the back of my mind they're going to find out but I convinced myself that if I had made them if I gave them what they want which I thought was happiness and success it wouldn't have mattered like that's where I went wrong and it's like okay they're going to know that our revenue wasn't this but I'm going to make the money and they're going to have fun so they're going to love me still like it's so crazy to think about now but like that was the thought process and that's like even like for the Magnesius tickets like I if we oversold a ticket for an event I was literally like running around when I came back to New York for a weekend like I had to go outside Madison Square Garden and pay like four times the price and make sure that person was like happy in the moment not realizing I just like lost a ton of money in the deal and actually hurt everybody else

• 1:07:27Speaker 01

  because we were losing money on it so I was like so focused and there's like a long term goal or short term goal of happiness and success for everybody around me and that's obviously driven due to insecurity and whatever these desires are but yeah like that was like my personal justification and crazy but that's what it was.

• 1:07:47Steven Bartlett?

  That day when the FBI come knocking.

• 1:07:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:50Steven Bartlett?

  You know, this is before you're put on bail. What is it like? Tell me, because I'm fucking terrified of the FBI and I've never met them.

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  I'm so scared of them.

• 1:07:58Steven Bartlett?

  Just from movies. So tell me what that's like.

• 1:08:00Speaker 01

  Scary as hell. And I think like,

• 1:08:03Speaker 01

  I wasn't defiant. I was more like, I tried my best. Like that was my own like internal, like mentality. Like everybody at that time was accusing me and the festival of all being fake. And like, while I obviously made a million management decisions, the crime was like in lying to investors, right? But I just didn't comprehend yet like what I'd really done. And I didn't realize that I was doing all these crimes for this end goal of making people successful. And even if it worked, I still would have gone to jail. But it didn't work and I was fucked. And it's like, couldn't understand at that point what was happening.

• 1:08:36Steven Bartlett?

  When did remorse show up? And that realization of like guilt and what you'd done? When did that show up? It's hard to figure that out in your story.

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think like,

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  the first day where I was like, something is really wrong was at sentencing when the judge said six years. And I kind of like looked back at the faces of, you know, the friends and family that were there.

• 1:09:05Speaker 01

  That was hard. And it's like, I legitimately just hurt, what it was 30 people.

• 1:09:13Speaker 01

  In a way, it's going to affect them, not just for four or five, six years, but for 20 years, 30 years. And it's never going to go away. And I don't like, that wasn't all the lessons like learned in one day, but that I think was the start of what would take another 18 months of being in jail to really reflect on of like, wow, like this is fucking bad.

• 1:09:35Steven Bartlett?

  Joe Rule was your co-founder.

• 1:09:39Steven Bartlett?

  Did he throw you under the bus?

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  I think he did what most people would have done in that situation, so.

• 1:09:47Steven Bartlett?

  Which was what?

• 1:09:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think he certainly, uh, I mean, he's got a lot of talents, right? But I don't think going, going back to jail was on his agenda. And I was the guilty one, like, he should not, if all, if all things shook, shook out fairly at the end, I don't think he should have gone to jail. He, I don't think he committed any crimes. But like, I think like most people, they quickly made it known, like, what I did wrong and how I did it. But yeah, I mean, I feel bad for him. I feel bad for everybody else who was, who was trying their best or they're trying hard to, to make things happen.

• 1:10:18Steven Bartlett?

  Do you, do you still speak to him? Do you have a relationship?

• 1:10:20Speaker 01

  Uh, no.

• 1:10:21Steven Bartlett?

  Have you, have you spoke to him since you've been to jail or during jail or?

• 1:10:25Speaker 01

  Um, shortly after, um, shortly after getting arrested, I spoke with him like one time. So this is, you know, right when bail started and then didn't speak with him again.

• 1:10:35Steven Bartlett?

  And so your, your bail was revoked because while you were on bail, you started this NYC VIP access.

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:10:41Steven Bartlett?

  And that violated your bail conditions.

• 1:10:43Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:10:44Steven Bartlett?

  Because you weren't allowed to start a company or you weren't allowed to, or because of the line.

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  I wasn't allowed to keep lying, right?

• 1:10:50Steven Bartlett?

  So they found out you were lying there as well and?

• 1:10:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was it, yeah.

• 1:10:55Steven Bartlett?

  So you go to jail.

• 1:10:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:56Steven Bartlett?

  There's this lawsuit where you were sued for a hundred million dollars, but you go to jail, you get six years in jail.

• 1:11:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:11:02Steven Bartlett?

  And you're, a few things in, in your sort of, um, your sentencing, you're not allowed to start another company again. What's the, the actual terminology there?

• 1:11:09Speaker 01

  So I have an SEC rule, the Securities Commission of the US, where I can't be an officer or director of a public company for a life.

• 1:11:18Steven Bartlett?

  Public company?

• 1:11:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, public company.

• 1:11:19Steven Bartlett?

  But you can for a private company?

• 1:11:20Speaker 01

  For private, yeah.

• 1:11:21Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:11:21Speaker 01

  But for life, which is, you know, obviously if I'm in that position, that's a good problem to have.

• 1:11:26Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:27Speaker 01

  People are probably paid back at that point, but yeah.

• 1:11:29Steven Bartlett?

  You get found guilty of two counts of wire fraud, but then you also get charged again for selling fake tickets to events like the Met Gala, Burning Man and Coachella. On top of that, which makes the sentence even worse.

• 1:11:39Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. For sure.

• 1:11:44Speaker 01

  So stupid. Crazy. It's almost like ridiculous. Just didn't know how to, didn't know how to say that I was wrong. And accept, like, accept that admission.

• 1:12:01Steven Bartlett?

  You also got, you have to pay restitution.

• 1:12:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:05Steven Bartlett?

  What is restitution for anybody that doesn't know?

• 1:12:08Speaker 01

  So it's basically wage garnishment forever, uh, until I die or until the people who are defrauded are paid back.

• 1:12:17Steven Bartlett?

  You have to, so on all the money you make for the rest of your life, you have to pay the investors who you lied to and you raised 26 million from.

• 1:12:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:12:25Steven Bartlett?

  Back a percentage of the money.

• 1:12:27Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yes.

• 1:12:28Steven Bartlett?

  Do you know what that percentage is yet?

• 1:12:30Speaker 01

  Uh, I think it changes based in your income level. And so it's been like three months for me so far. So I'm just like not making a ton of money right now. I've, I've made, literally I've made like eight restitution payments so far in the first three and a half months, but I think the percentage just kind of goes up and down based on what you're earning. So it's something I guess I'll continue to learn about, or hopefully, hopefully I'll learn about more as I'm able to earn more.

• 1:12:52Steven Bartlett?

  Jail.

• 1:12:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:54Steven Bartlett?

  I, I said to you before we started recording that one of my recurring nightmares is going to jail.

• 1:12:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. I like you're able to voice it though, cause I had the same one, but I could never have told anybody about that. You know, 10 years ago.

• 1:13:04Steven Bartlett?

  Of course, yeah.

• 1:13:04Speaker 01

  So good for you.

• 1:13:05Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. Tell me about jail. I hope I never, I hope I never find out.

• 1:13:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:13Speaker 01

  I mean, so much of me just wants to like, put it in the past and never think about it again, but it'll always be there. And the hardest part is the distance. It's like you're in timeout and you can't like get consoled or can't like love anybody. Can't talk to your family and friends and any partners, whatever it else it may be. It's the forced distance.

• 1:13:35Speaker 01

  That is the hardest part.

• 1:13:39Steven Bartlett?

  And what does that do to you?

• 1:13:43Speaker 01

  I think like when you're rendered useless and powerless for an extended period of time, it really messes with your psyche. And I feel it every day now, but I can only imagine for the people who are there for 20 years, 30 years, you know, significant periods of time longer than me, like what it does. I think this system is designed to break down ambition and creativity and to like institutionalize you is the word that is commonly used. And I think like that just kind of kills your humanity and it kills your psyche and it just makes you feel worthless.

• 1:14:25Steven Bartlett?

  How has it changed you? We'll go to the positive stuff, but in a negative way, can you see symptoms of how it's had an adverse impact on you?

• 1:14:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think like, and I don't know disrespect to people who have been through like way, way worse. And there's many of them out there. But like having the, I think from solitary confinement, having this weird, like almost like a PTSD paranoia where I now know that there's someone out there who can snap their fingers and like shut my lights out. Right. And there's someone who can like wake up and say, we want him in a concrete box for four years, 10 years, and they can do it. And I can't stop it. That's fucking scary. And like, that keeps me up at night.

• 1:15:09Steven Bartlett?

  That's because you're on probation.

• 1:15:10Speaker 01

  Probation, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So it's like, you know, you jaywalk and that's enough where they send you back to jail. And then now you get to jail, we're going to put you in solitary confinement now. I'm like, someone can snap their fingers and do it. And like, that's.

• 1:15:24Steven Bartlett?

  Does that mess with your, messes with your head?

• 1:15:27Speaker 01

  I think I'm just like, I'm, before I was very quick to pull the trigger, but in both good and bad ways. And now I think I'm a little trigger shy in a lot of aspects of life. And I worry that I won't get that, like, I won't get that back in the good ways. Because like every time I think like, am I going to make a decision where someone's going to construe this as me like breaking a rule, whether my intentions are or aren't? And it's just scary. And like, Just knowing that I was so guilty in the first place and deserved like everything that happened, but then also knowing that it doesn't have to be that way. And there are people who, you know, weren't as guilty as me, who suffered as bad or worse than me. I think that fear has always been there. Like when I was told my release date from jail, the two months I had

• 1:16:10Speaker 01

  to wait after receiving the date were the hardest time in jail. Like every morning I'd like be shaking in bed, like waiting for them to call my name on the last speaker to tell me it was a joke. And like, I'm not going home. And like, I didn't believe I was going to go home. So for those 60 days, I was like, I'm unbearable. And then like, when the day comes, I'm waiting in like the cage, like you're already locked in a cage for them to process you out. I'm like, okay, the FBI is going to show up and tell me it's all a joke. Like, I'm not getting out of here. And like, it's just like the constant like disbelief that anything ever is going to happen again was the hardest part.

• 1:16:41Steven Bartlett?

  And how long is your probation? How long have you got to live with that fear that any decision you make?

• 1:16:45Speaker 01

  Three years.

• 1:16:46Steven Bartlett?

  Three years?

• 1:16:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's pretty long.

• 1:16:51Steven Bartlett?

  Four years is a long time in jail.

• 1:16:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:54Steven Bartlett?

  You know, it's a relatively small number, but if I think about what's happened, if I just go back four years in my own life, to when I was 25, 26, fuck me, I was a different person.

• 1:17:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, crazy. Crazy.

• 1:17:08Steven Bartlett?

  And those are key years. You went to jail at 25 years old, right?

• 1:17:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:11Steven Bartlett?

  26 years old.

• 1:17:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, now I'm 30. So it's like, yeah, missing the latter half of your twenties is definitely, I mean, deservedly, obviously, but definitely development years, right? I'm sure for, for most people.

• 1:17:23Steven Bartlett?

  In terms of lasting memories that jail had on you and lasting impact, take me to, what is the, what are the, what is the worst thing that happened in jail that will stay with you for life? The worst thing you observed or saw?

• 1:17:38Speaker 01

  I did two stints in solitary. First one was three months, second one was seven months.

• 1:17:41Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 1:17:42Speaker 01

  The seven month stint was because I tried to do a podcast over at the payphone, which is a terrible idea to anybody listening.

• 1:17:47Steven Bartlett?

  But I didn't want the competition, so I'm glad they shut that down.

• 1:17:50Speaker 01

  Wait till Stephen invites you on. But um, they tried to send me to a terrorist jail. And basically in retaliation for that podcast.

• 1:18:00Speaker 01

  And they, they put me in officially, put the paperwork in to send me to like a terrorist facility. And I've since gotten out and like looked the facility up. And there's like, there's like a list of the inmates on like Wikipedia who are in that jail. And you know, I'd be one of like three non terrorists there. Like, it's fucking scary. It's like, I wanted a podcast, I was super boring and vanilla, so stupid to do it, should not have done it. You can't do a podcast from jail, it doesn't make any sense. But like, it all kind of feeds this concept where there's like, and I'm not a conspiracy theorist believer at all, but there's someone who could snap their fingers and your life is done. And thankfully, like somewhere in the higher up chain outside of the facility I was in, like rejected that and just sent me somewhere else. But that was a very real possibility.

• 1:18:41Steven Bartlett?

  Well, how were you trying to record a podcast in jail?

• 1:18:44Speaker 01

  They have payphones um, that you're able to make, I think like 20, 15 minute calls every month. But you can do them all in like one day. So we have to wait 30 minutes for each call. So I like a podcast company set a podcast up where over the course of two days, I'll call in every half hour for a few hours a day and record the podcast.

• 1:19:04Steven Bartlett?

  And they found out when the episode was published?

• 1:19:06Speaker 01

  The trailer came out and like an hour or two later, they came and grabbed me and yeah, so that's it.

• 1:19:11Steven Bartlett?

  Solitary confinement?

• 1:19:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:12Steven Bartlett?

  10 months in total in solitary confinement?

• 1:19:15Speaker 01

  The worst part is not knowing when it's going to end. And they were like fucking with me, like, hey, here's what we're going to send you. And they would like send me a program statement. It's called the C, the Communication Management Unit, like Marion, Illinois. Like, here's what we're going to send you. And I, I thought they were bluffing. But then they like two weeks later, oh, McFarlane, they actually put your paperwork in for their, like, you're fucked, like. And it's like the whole time and no one was going to tell me how long it was going to be or when it was going to end. And that was the hardest part, like a never ending saga.

• 1:19:39Steven Bartlett?

  They were taking enjoyment out of fucking with you?

• 1:19:40Speaker 01

  Oh, of course. Yeah, I mean, deservedly so. I get, if your job is to, you know, work inside a concrete bunker and like this asshole kid comes in, I'm sure, you know, I don't blame them for their actions.

• 1:19:53Steven Bartlett?

  I heard you tell a story on the full send podcast about a young guy arriving in jail.

• 1:19:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:57Steven Bartlett?

  You overhearing his rape.

• 1:20:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, in Brooklyn, yep.

• 1:20:03Steven Bartlett?

  Tell me about that.

• 1:20:06Speaker 01

  That was really, really early on in my jail stint. When I had my bail revoked, I went to the Brooklyn Detention Center here, which ended up being there for seven months. That place is certainly like violent. They have all kinds of crimes and levels of security people there. It's like all kind of mixed into one big like fish tanky, you know, cell block.

• 1:20:26Speaker 01

  At that point, I think I was like so wide eyed as to what was happening. I just couldn't really process everybody's pain yet at that point. So I was trying to like understand my own pain. But yeah, you see and hear things that you don't think are real, right? And just like didn't have the exposure to those, to that thankfully in my life before that point.

• 1:20:44Steven Bartlett?

  What did you see in here in that instance?

• 1:20:49Speaker 01

  Desperate people with nothing to lose who are looking for attention or looking for an outlet, taking advantage of others and it's, it's rough. It's just, it's bad.

• 1:20:59Steven Bartlett?

  Do you feel uncomfortable talking about that?

• 1:21:01Speaker 01

  A little bit.

• 1:21:02Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 1:21:03Speaker 01

  I think like there are obviously some great people in prison who I met, but there's just as many bad people. And it's like bad people surrounded by other bad people just kind of creates, it doesn't create anything good.

• 1:21:18Steven Bartlett?

  A story that I, that I'm referring to is I heard you talk about quite recently was that a young man had come to the jail and you'd, you'd heard him at night being raped by another more dominant inmate and you had to sit in your cell and overhear that rape. And you saw him the next day. He didn't tell the police, police guards because he didn't want to get hurt.

• 1:21:41Speaker 01

  So what was so like weird about that situation was he was scared to tell the police guards like what happened, but he had to move cells because like he couldn't deal with it again. So he found a reason to move to a different cell, like in the same, in the same building that we were all in. But the word got around between the other inmates, what happened. So the other inmates pressured the guy who raped him to do something about it, basically. And he went and like took a razor blade and slashed the guy the next day. So it's like, you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. And like, how does that kid handle that situation? Like if you tell on the guy and your entire prison experience is going to be terrible. If you don't tell on him, you're going to get raped. If you quasi tell on him, he'll get moved and then stabbed. So it's like, what, what do you do? And that's like, it's just like a wild, terrible situation.

• 1:22:23Steven Bartlett?

  How, how old was that young, young guy?

• 1:22:25Speaker 01

  I think he was like a year or two younger than me. So this is my first seven months. So I was 25 or 26. So early in my twenties.

• 1:22:32Steven Bartlett?

  Do those things, I mean, do you have any like reoccurring nightmares about about that time? Is there like almost a jail PTSD?

• 1:22:40Speaker 01

  I think from solitary, like I was, I was kind of sheltered at that point because it was so early. That was the first, that was the first and only time I saw someone get raped. I've actually had heard stories later on, but never actually like, I didn't see it, but like heard and like, heard the, what was happening there and heard like his blood, like, help me, like scream the next morning when he was getting slashed. So that was, that was wild. But I think it was so much happening at that time. I didn't fully like take stock into like what had happened. So that happened a year or two later. I think it would have been more like difficult to comprehend. But to the fact that someone was going on at that point is like an overwhelming like emotions. Like if you have a thousand loud sounds blasting in your face and like one more like horn plays in the corner, you're not going to really register

• 1:23:22Speaker 01

  the horn as much as if it was the only sound hitting you at that time.

• 1:23:26Steven Bartlett?

  And you had therapy, Joe?

• 1:23:28Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, they had like jail therapist, yeah.

• 1:23:30Steven Bartlett?

  Did that help you at all in any way?

• 1:23:32Speaker 01

  I think so. And I think it's all like, it's a journey, right? And you need to be the one who kind of drives that car yourself. But I think like, you know, experienced people can push you to start thinking about the right things.

• 1:23:45Steven Bartlett?

  Really, while you've been inside over the last five years, the topic around mental health is, has really emerged in culture. What has your journey been like with your own mental health? Have you experienced, we talked about anxiety earlier, at any point, did you experience what people call depression and the symptoms of depression?

• 1:24:02Speaker 01

  I don't know. So I think like my, the mental health journey started more out of angst. I was in solitary for, it was my first stint there and I had a Wall Street Journal newspaper come in and it was around the holiday times, like getting ready to do Christmas, like alone in the cell, like, you know, obviously super stressful. And there was like a whole back page spread in the Wall Street Journal about dealing with your anxiety in the wine store because there were so many options. And I'm like, these motherfuckers, like, do you know what I would give to like be able to go to a wine store like right now? And like, how is this real? So I think I like my initial like intro to like the in vogue mental health was like a bit of like, this is bullshit. And then I think it took a period of a couple of years to start like opening up to the topic and the concept.

• 1:24:47Steven Bartlett?

  Have you opened up to the topic?

• 1:24:50Speaker 01

  Not fully. And like, I guess like for better or worse, you know, I'm of the belief that

• 1:24:58Speaker 01

  I committed the crime and like I could have and should have stopped myself and getting mental health like wouldn't have stopped me from committing the crime. And I also believe that like I'm like present to the point that I certainly believe I know right from wrong moving forward. And if I commit a crime in the future, it's not going to be because of like a mental health issue. It's because like I'm taking a shortcut and you know, copping out.

• 1:25:22Steven Bartlett?

  Your lawyers tried to get you off the 20 year prison sentence by saying that you suffered from untreated bipolar disorder. The success reinforced his grandiose and distorted sense that there were no boundaries. Bipolar disorder, that's the defense that your lawyers gave. Is that true?

• 1:25:42Speaker 01

  I think like I am extremely flawed in a lot of ways and I'm embarrassed about a lot of things, but I'm very embarrassed about using like mental health as part of my defense. And I just don't believe that that's an excuse for what I did. So I think that was, that was a wrong approach that I took there and like.

• 1:25:58Steven Bartlett?

  But is it true? Do you have bipolar disorder?

• 1:26:02Speaker 01

  I don't think I'm bipolar. I'm sure I have mental health like concerns as many people do. But yeah, I don't think I'm bipolar.

• 1:26:09Steven Bartlett?

  So you think that was your defense and you using that as a way to try and lower the sentence?

• 1:26:13Speaker 01

  I, I, yeah, I think that was stupid. It was wrong.

• 1:26:16Steven Bartlett?

  There's a quote from the prosecutor as well where they said that the defendant is a serial fraudster and to date his fraud like a circle has no end. Mr. McFarland has been dishonest most of the time. Do you agree with that statement from the judge?

• 1:26:33Speaker 01

  I think the magnitude of the lies that led to that point were just so large and so bad that it like it erased any good. And so I, I think that was accurate at the time.

• 1:26:48Steven Bartlett?

  That time inside, you know, you're getting out. What's the plan? You start writing books in jail. I had all of these things. What's the plan? When you're looking forward at your life with your ambition, what are you thinking? I'm going to get out and I'm going to do what?

• 1:27:01Speaker 01

  The craziest thing is that I never thought I would get out. And I'd spend the time like planning things and thinking about what I wanted to do more as like a mental escape, but I was just so convinced that it was never going to end. And obviously it sounds silly. That's really been like the, this like aha moment, like I am out of prison right now. And I just like truly didn't think I would be here. Crazy, I know, but it was like the paranoia of the situation really, really like commits me that this was not going to be over.

• 1:27:30Steven Bartlett?

  And you've started a new company.

• 1:27:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I am out. So I guess I have to do something now.

• 1:27:35Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. You could have done a lot of things.

• 1:27:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:37Steven Bartlett?

  You could have gone in, as you said, people told you to go get a job. You could have played it safe. You start a company called Pirate.

• 1:27:44Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:27:45Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting name.

• 1:27:46Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:27:47Steven Bartlett?

  There's a little bit of humor in there.

• 1:27:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:48Steven Bartlett?

  A little bit of a pun.

• 1:27:49Speaker 01

  Hopefully people understand the self deprecating nature.

• 1:27:53Steven Bartlett?

  And even the way that you're marketing Pirate, we'll talk about what it is, et cetera. But even the, you're very much embracing what's happened.

• 1:27:59Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:28:00Steven Bartlett?

  And you're, I remember seeing a video of the marketing collateral and you say at the start of it, listen, I've got a lot of people to pay back here. You're embracing.

• 1:28:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:08Steven Bartlett?

  What's happened. Was that, is that strategy?

• 1:28:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think like beating around the bush and hiding from the truth just makes no sense, right? And like, people are owed their own money, their own trust, their own apology, and not doing it and avoiding it, I think is worse than saying, it is what it is, and here's my step to make it right. And like, I can't promise that Pirate is going to be worth anything one day. I can't promise it'll work or not work, but I can promise I'm going to try.

• 1:28:39Steven Bartlett?

  Are you, are you really, are you sorry?

• 1:28:41Speaker 01

  I'm super sorry.

• 1:28:42Steven Bartlett?

  Who are you sorry to?

• 1:28:44Speaker 01

  Family, friends first, supporters second, and then goes, goes down the list from there.

• 1:28:51Steven Bartlett?

  And what's the plan with Pirate?

• 1:28:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. So.

• 1:28:54Steven Bartlett?

  Is it a festival?

• 1:28:56Speaker 01

  Not yet.

• 1:28:59Speaker 01

  For all of like the really bad stuff, I think the one crazy positive takeaway of solitary was that it gave me time to think past tomorrow. And if you kind of go back to like those fire days with the urgent payment sheet, I couldn't afford to think past two o'clock, you know, let alone like three years from now. So the benefit of solitary was like, read a lot of books and really just like thought about technology in a way that I didn't have the luxury of, due to my own mistakes, of doing before. Plus, like the reflection about like what I suck at and what I'm good at. So Pirate's like the combination of the time to think seven years ahead and the time to reflect on the areas that I need help and the areas that I think I can succeed at.

• 1:29:42Steven Bartlett?

  What'd you suck at?

• 1:29:45Speaker 01

  I went way too fast. I turned down experts in certain areas like thinking I knew more than them. I'm terrible managing finances. I'm terrible with logistics, but I'm good at building products quickly and I'm good at marketing. I think most of all, I'm good at taking people and allowing them to find value in others that they might have not found without me. And then inviting them and convincing them to go try some experience they would never have done without me and finding like joy and success and ideas from those experiences and connections.

• 1:30:17Steven Bartlett?

  And that's what Pirate's really trying to do, right?

• 1:30:19Speaker 01

  That's what Pirate's about.

• 1:30:19Steven Bartlett?

  Tell me about Pirate. If I'm, if I've never heard of it before and I'm a potential customer, what's, what's the sales pitch?

• 1:30:24Speaker 01

  So working to partner with a really small like boutique hotel in an adventurous island somewhere where we can host the content creator from London, like the entrepreneur from New York, the music artist from LA on a permanent basis. Connect them around all these adventures to go night diving, to go spearfish for their own lobsters, to make music, you know, by the bonfire at night.

• 1:30:48Speaker 01

  As many weekends out of the year as we can, but this time, instead of trying to bring like thousands of people there, we're rigging the area with these 360 cameras. We're going to be live streaming it to the rest of the world. So all of their fans, no matter where they are, can watch what's actually happening and then take advantage of these emerging technologies to own and even affect the experience. So for example, people online could chip in a dollar and build a beachside bar and sell drinks to their favorite artists. Or like, once I'm allowed to travel, I can be swimming at the reef and they can decide to chum the water. And like the local captain, who's like an amazing character, like dump bait in the water. And I think given all the crazy sharks in the area, people would love to see the, the results live of that. But it's all about taking people on a manageable scale, physically to different places.

• 1:31:33Speaker 01

  And then virtually allowing them to connect with people they never thought were possible and partake in these experiences.

• 1:31:38Steven Bartlett?

  So for me, I would go out to some island somewhere.

• 1:31:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:41Steven Bartlett?

  And then I'd be on the island chilling and then my audience watching can fuck with me.

• 1:31:46Speaker 01

  Exactly. Or, or like impact your creative experience even as well too. So you could be like hosting a, a bonfire chat or you can do a podcast from a different island location. And they can say, hey, we want you to do the podcast from this island today with this guest and ask these questions and they can kind of get involved and help own that experience.

• 1:32:04Steven Bartlett?

  How are you going to fund this?

• 1:32:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, so like right now it's doing everything and anything like have a TV deal. I've been signing baseball cards. I'm on Cameo like literally like doing marketing for other small startups. And I think like things have to grow and it's super, super early on, but just trying to find any way to, you know, get the revenue to do all this.

• 1:32:22Steven Bartlett?

  You're going to raise investment again?

• 1:32:24Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:32:26Speaker 01

  Not tomorrow, not this week, but you know, in six, 12, 18 months, like I have to kind of see what I'm allowed to do and what I'm not allowed to do. So taking it step by step.

• 1:32:33Steven Bartlett?

  Do you have this kind of like, because it's been such a public failure and it's, it's tarnished by this like this subject of lies, liar. Do you, every interaction you must have now, is there a part of you that knows that they don't trust you?

• 1:32:48Speaker 01

  I think what's really like interesting, especially from the team standpoint is I'm having an easier time finding like team members and partners and like employees, whatever it is now. And like with having no money and having the tarnished than I did before. I think for like the 90 out of 100 people who just like want to hate and like distance themselves. It almost inspires like the 10% of the people to really want to fight for it and make something happen. So I almost have like deeper, I think more trusting relationships in my small circle than I did before. But obviously I'm going to encounter, you know, millions of people who are just going to like say no at first pass. So it's a big battle.

• 1:33:26Steven Bartlett?

  When I heard you talk about Pirate recently, a couple of weeks ago, you referenced the Bahamas. Now, when you just told me about Pirate then, you said some island.

• 1:33:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:36Steven Bartlett?

  I saw you on Foresense say you wanted to go back to the Bahamas.

• 1:33:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'd love to go to the Bahamas. We'd been working with a small local development, an island called Blackpoint. And we had a super connected, tight like local team that I had known there for years that I call my dear friends.

• 1:33:56Speaker 01

  A few weeks ago, the Bahamas basically announced that I wasn't allowed back, which was super hard for me to hear. I think the reality of the situation is that there are people in the Bahamas who are still owed for their work and they need to be paid back. So before like any talks of returning there happen, like they need to be paid back. And I'd love to readdress the relationship once that happens. But in the meantime, Pirate is the technology we built. It is his experiences. So just like it's early and I don't have the answers yet, but looking for other locations to start testing what we've been building. Who said, who said in the Bahamas you weren't allowed back? The government made a statement saying that I'm not allowed back. I think like some media announced that I was doing a festival there again, which yeah, was not the situation and I don't think I ever announced that and I hope I didn't.

• 1:34:38Speaker 01

  But I think that narrative was taken with and run with to like this overall ban, which came out of left field for me. What did the statement say? That I'm a fugitive of the Bahamas.

• 1:34:49Speaker 01

  So if you go to the Bahamas, they would arrest you? It, it sounds like it.

• 1:34:55Speaker 01

  I'm not aware of any charges that I've, anytime over the past five years, but once again, I think the reality is people who worked hard for the Fyre Festival there, vendors, contractors, whatever it may be, are still owed. And you know, if I can pay, start paying a hundred dollars a week, whatever the number is, like, let's figure that out and get that done. How are you doing?

• 1:35:18Speaker 01

  The stress is there and it's literally been three and a half months, right? And it's like, how do I deal with this? I, I think one of the toughest things for me when I first got out of jail, I was in like a halfway house program for a number of months. And the first people that kind of came to me were people who I had met in prison and they were trying to essentially like, you know, partner with me and get in close. And as I like learn more about those people over time, it's been more of like separating myself with, from them and is like building and rebuilding with old friends and new friends as well. So the human aspect took me some time and I think I kind of like viewed the end of my sentence as like a fresh start. It's like August 30th came, I kind of like had to separate from the people I'd been

• 1:36:00Speaker 01

  around for just over four years at that point and start reconnecting with old friends and new people. That's been a challenge. I think I've got a really great, small group right now, but it's a struggle to survive. Like I have no money, you know, I'm trying to earn however I can and just like get consulting, marketing, you know, media jobs and just doing my best, but it's not going to happen in six months or nine months. It's going to take time. Are you happy? I think I'm excited, but also super paranoid and nervous. So it's a mix and I feel like I have a good four to five years to rebuild the foundation before life is like copacetic again.

• 1:36:38Steven Bartlett?

  And obviously coming in, coming in, doing podcasts like this, it can't be easy to do this every fucking day.

• 1:36:42Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:36:43Steven Bartlett?

  You know what I mean? People like me calling you a pathological liar and just reading off all this stuff that you've done in the past.

• 1:36:48Speaker 01

  To be fair, you've been harder than every other one I've done. So good for you though.

• 1:36:52Steven Bartlett?

  Well, do you know what? Do you know what it is?

• 1:36:56Steven Bartlett?

  It's not just that I feel like I have a responsibility to it. It's like on this process you're on now, there's questions people want to ask. And until those questions are answered, like they're gonna remain.

• 1:37:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:08Steven Bartlett?

  And in fact, for me, I think liberation for you is like facing those tough questions and answering them. Cause eventually like the truth is people are gonna stop asking them.

• 1:37:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:16Steven Bartlett?

  Like if they have those answers. So, and you know what? I think it's worth me saying as well, I believe you should have a chance. I'm very much of the opinion that like people like you that have done wrong and that fucked up and that have held their hands up and said, I fucked up, I'm wrong. Whether you're telling the truth or not, I don't know. You, you know, I, I take you on your word. But I believe that if we have a society where people don't get a second chance, that is a worse society. I spent a couple of, two weeks ago, I went to a prison and spent pretty much all day there.

• 1:37:43Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:37:44Steven Bartlett?

  Meeting inmates and speaking to them and the potential I saw, you know what I mean? It really did open my eyes because as you've described, I saw such unbelievable potential.

• 1:37:52Speaker 01

  Crazy.

• 1:37:53Steven Bartlett?

  I saw mistakes that people had made in their lives. And then I saw a desperation to fix them and to, to get back out and be productive. So I think a society that has open, open arms to, to ex-offenders who have committed certain lower level crimes, I think is a good society. I'm not saying yours is a lower level crime. I'm not passing judgment on your, in your case. I think that's a better society to live in, or else it's a waste of talent. And you know, so that's my stance on it. Now, do I, do I believe everything you've said in terms of like, you'll never do it again? I don't know.

• 1:38:29Steven Bartlett?

  The scary part was you, you made a massive mistake and then made another one. You know, the fire festival was a fucking very public shit show. And then to then scam people with the tickets. I'm like, damn. I hope everything you've told me, told me is, is the truth. What message would you want to send to the world? Like all the people listening to this around the world?

• 1:38:48Steven Bartlett?

  What message do you want to send to them?

• 1:38:51Speaker 01

  I think the beauty that we all have in some capacity is time, right? And it's the patience too. Like, I don't need anything from anybody listening to this. I just hope that in 20 or 30 years, we can look back upon this conversation or snippets of this conversation and said, oh yeah, like, oh, this came true. Oh, there's where you messed up, or there's where you did a good job. I think it's just like documenting the journey and allowing time to run its course. And time reveals all, right?

• 1:39:16Steven Bartlett?

  Pirate, where can we find Pirate? If we want to go check it out, we want to be part of it. Where's, where'd we go to check it out?

• 1:39:22Speaker 01

  Pirate.com, P Y R T.

• 1:39:24Steven Bartlett?

  P Y R T dot com.

• 1:39:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, at Pirate Billy.

• 1:39:27Steven Bartlett?

  Great domain name.

• 1:39:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:28Steven Bartlett?

  Really cool domain name. Who paid for that?

• 1:39:33Speaker 01

  Thanks to TV contract.

• 1:39:35Steven Bartlett?

  TV contract? What's that?

• 1:39:37Speaker 01

  Just doing a small follow-on docu-series about like the attempt to build Pirate.

• 1:39:41Steven Bartlett?

  Nice.

• 1:39:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:42Steven Bartlett?

  You're excited. I can tell you're excited.

• 1:39:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:45Steven Bartlett?

  Are you, were you nervous coming here today?

• 1:39:49Speaker 01

  Not really. I didn't know, like, I didn't know how in-depth we were going to go. If I, I'm glad I didn't really know because if I knew the structure and the questions, I don't think I would have slept last night.

• 1:40:00Speaker 01

  I'm glad I came in a little blind. I've done three podcasts so far. I did the first one like maybe two weeks ago. And then I filmed the second one this morning. Which is fun. And then like, I guess I kind of came in thinking this would be more jovial. So I'm really, really glad I didn't know the depth of this because I would have been super nervous and definitely not have slept yesterday. So.

• 1:40:20Steven Bartlett?

  Of all the things I've asked you, what was the most uncomfortable thing? The thing where you go, ah!

• 1:40:24Speaker 01

  Insecurities, drive, like, like the why. I think it's the most uncomfortable because I don't have the answer.

• 1:40:32Speaker 01

  You're good.

• 1:40:33Steven Bartlett?

  And because you don't have the answers.

• 1:40:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:35Steven Bartlett?

  It still might be running the show in the back room a little bit, right?

• 1:40:37Speaker 01

  Sure, of course.

• 1:40:38Steven Bartlett?

  I'm speaking from my own experience. Like, I talk, I talk a lot about in this podcast, whether I'm driven or whether I'm being dragged by something. And I've, I've only in the last couple of years started to realize that I was being dragged by my insecurities a lot of the time. You know, my goals reflected that on Lamborghini Ranger of a six-pack.

• 1:40:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:54Steven Bartlett?

  You know? We have a closing tradition on this podcast, Billy, where the last guest asks a question for the next guest without knowing who they're leaving it for. So they didn't realize that they were leaving it for you.

• 1:41:04Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:41:05Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting question. And I feel like, I feel like I might know the answer based on what we've discussed. Okay, I'm gonna make a rule. You can't repeat something you've already said here, okay? Make it a little more difficult. The question left for you, not knowing it was for you, is what scares you the most today?

• 1:41:26Steven Bartlett?

  Can't talk about probation.

• 1:41:33Speaker 01

  Taking a shortcut.

• 1:41:36Speaker 01

  I think I have a propensity to go fast and it's good in like tech ways, but it's bad in life ways. And there will be opportunities that come from, from the media, from podcasts, from, you know, being out of jail and it's not taking a shortcut. It's like, don't get distracted by the glittery lights in some opportunity that ultimately represents a shortcut.

• 1:42:00Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you, Billy.

• 1:42:00Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:42:01Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you for being, um, thank you for taking the questions and thank you for being so open.

• 1:42:05Speaker 01

  This is tough, but I'm, I'm super glad I did this. And the line of your questioning is amazing, so respect where it comes from. And, uh, yeah, you're, you're a master at this, so thank you.

• 1:42:15Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you, Billy. Hope you pay all the restitution back. Hope you, hope Pirate becomes a huge success. Hope all the lessons that you've learned over the last 10 years, God, you've learnt lessons, are learnt and they're applied. And I hope we can sit here someday, five years from now, 10 years from now, and talk about the opposite, the success, um, which is usually the conversation I have with CEOs here.

• 1:42:34Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:42:35Steven Bartlett?

  The success, what you've built, how you've done it, um, and share all of those insights and lessons.