E5: The Battle With Self Doubt

In this chapter, I focus on the relationship between patience & impatience, the battle with self-doubt and the question of whether entrepreneurs should be single. 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.

• 0:12Steven Bartlett?

  Hello.

• 0:15Steven Bartlett?

  So this week, I said something to you guys, which wasn't actually true. In chapter four of the Diary of a CEO, I said that this week I'd be joined by a friend of mine and a guest who's also a CEO and has gone through a tumultuous journey in their own path to becoming who they are today. And when I turned to that friend and asked them to come onto this podcast and told them the format of the podcast and that it was very, very personal, it was no holds barred, it was ego free and it was just the truth. Unfortunately, that friend declined and I understand that.

• 0:56Steven Bartlett?

  I understand that sharing to this depth and sharing on this level isn't going to be for everybody. And I was, I guess, a little bit too optimistic in thinking that it would be quite easy to get CEOs to come on and share in such an open way. Even for me, I find it a challenge to share every detail of my life. And the reason for that often is because when you run a business, and in my case, we have over 150 people within our team, and then in the wider group team, there's probably about 400 people.

• 1:31Steven Bartlett?

  If I say something which is at all controversial, there's a high probability that I'll offend somebody. And my whole life, right, all of my inspiration comes from, well, most of it, comes from my interaction with people around me. And it just so happens that sometimes those interactions or those people around me also work within the teams at Social Chain or within Social Chain Group. So I understand why it's risky. I completely get that. What I've gained from this podcast, as I tell you every single chapter, is so valuable for me that I've continued and I've persisted with my commitment to being honest. And that's something I hope will never change. This week.

• 2:13Steven Bartlett?

  It's me on my own, but next week I'm going to try and again and get a particular friend to come and join me and a particular friend who's built one of the biggest companies in the world, but has gone through one of the most grueling journeys, which ended in a very, very sort of big health issue quite recently. I'm going to try again and get him to come on, but if he doesn't oblige, then I guess I completely understand and I'll try somebody else. But without further ado, this is chapter five. I'm Steven Bartlett and this is the diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

• 2:53Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so this week, the first point in my diary is about patience and impatience. I've historically been a huge advocate of impatience. I am naturally an impatient person and my impatience, I think, sometimes makes me quite unpleasant to be around, especially to work with, because I always believe, even sometimes wrongly, that things can be done faster than many people believe.

• 3:23Steven Bartlett?

  When, you know, even working with things like builders on getting our new office complete, the builders tell me it's going to take a month to build something. I know really in terms of hours it will take, I don't know, two days, but the way that planning and, you know, weekends and all these things come into, come into the picture means that it then takes a month. And so I've always been for the people around me, that force of impatience.

• 3:50Steven Bartlett?

  And it wasn't until this week that something happened that I started to think about patience as well and the role that the two play and have played in my life. I've always been impatient every day. So when it comes to completing tasks, I'm horribly impatient. I'm the guy that always goes on Amazon and tries to get things delivered on the same day. And I, I, I will buy services and pay more for things that save me time because as I've stressed in my previous chapters, for me, time is the single most important asset that we all have. And that's another point in my diary, which I'll get to in a second. But the reason why I spent much of this week thinking about the relationship of

• 4:32Steven Bartlett?

  impatience and patience was actually inspired by a young person within my business asking me for a pay rise. And that sounds like a strange way to arrive at the patience versus impatient debate in your head, but it wasn't until I started to explain macro patience, long term patience and the importance of it, that this all made sense to me. And here's what I mean. So in the short term, I'm incredibly impatient. I've always been, but long term, I've been incredibly patient.

• 5:15Steven Bartlett?

  For the last seven years, I've worked in business to get to a position, which I'm getting closer to now, but still a certain position of success and financial freedom and achievement and all those things. I've given seven years, which is an incredible amount of time for a very naturally impatient person to give to anything. But what I've realised is when it comes to becoming who I want to become and fulfilling the big achievements I want to achieve, we should all expect to commit a decade to getting there. I can't really think of somebody who I admire that didn't put at least a decade into getting to the end game or their desired outcome.

• 6:01Steven Bartlett?

  It doesn't happen overnight, so cliche to say, but it really, really doesn't happen overnight. Good things happen overnight. You can have big wins overnight and you can get things done overnight. But the long term goals, if they're as great as they should be, you should expect to commit a decade to them. And when I reflect on my first year in business, which was with, I guess, Walpark, I started a business when I was 14, but skipping to the more serious business I started when I was 18, in the first year, I got paid zero. And I worked in call centres on the side. I worked in every call centre you can possibly imagine, selling everything from artificial grass to Facebook ads to studio vouchers to get your photos taken to car insurance.

• 6:43Steven Bartlett?

  I sold everything and my business paid me nothing, apparently nothing. In year two. Again, I worked in call centres, I worked in a McDonald's for a little while, and my business, Wall Park at the time, apparently paid me nothing. In year three in business, my business finally, because I'd raised money from investors, was able to pay me one thousand three hundred pounds, apparently. And then in year four, I left and I started Social Chain. In year four, five and six, obviously I was paid quite well.

• 7:18Steven Bartlett?

  And when I reflect, coming into my seventh year in business, in a year where our company is on the verge of a fairly large merger and IPO on the London Stock Exchange, I reflect on years one, two and three, and I realise that I was being paid in those years, something much more valuable than money, because I was patient. I learned in those first two years about people. I learnt how to raise investment. I sat with the biggest brands in the world and pitched to them. I learnt things that were much, much, much more valuable than money. And had I had impatience when it came to my overall goal in those early years,

• 8:02Steven Bartlett?

  had I not been prepared to wait seven or eight years to get to the point where I am today, I never, ever would have got here. And in the short term, in the short term, we can often underappreciate the value of experience. To me, the only reason that I've personally managed to achieve anything is because of what I know, right? And my ability to apply that. And I think, okay, so what gave me what I know and my ability to apply that? It certainly wasn't my paycheck, it was my experience. And it was a very, very extreme, advanced experience for a young person, but it was my experience.

• 8:43Steven Bartlett?

  And so the most valuable thing, I think, when speaking to young kids, and I'm on a tour at the moment around the country, going to nine different universities this month and speaking to young people. And they continually ask me about their decision to stay in university or drop out. And my one answer to them has been, the most valuable thing you can get in your early years, and really in any year of your life, is Powerful, relevant experience of the real world. That is worth more than any paycheck. It's worth more than any degree or diploma you can get. And it's the definition of believing in delayed gratification. It's the definition of saying, okay, in this moment, I might not be a millionaire.

• 9:25Steven Bartlett?

  I might not be tremendously financially free, but I'm gaining something that for the rest of my life will enable me to be so. And that's where, for me, that long-term patience makes all the difference. It's a requirement of success. So if it's not working out for you at the moment, and if you find yourself in a position where you think you're maybe not being paid enough, or you're not in the right position because you're at university and you're not enjoying it, or the course isn't teaching you the relevant information. My advice to everybody listening to this now is place yourself in a position where you're learning the most information and you're improving most on your weaknesses, but also getting better

• 10:10Steven Bartlett?

  at your strengths as you possibly can. And throwing myself into a startup and entrepreneurial life at the age of 18 with no experience, no money, was the single greatest decision I've ever made in my life because it was the fastest way for me to attain the information of a 40-year-old. And that's exactly what I did. I continually say to the people that did the course with me, I learnt more in the three months after dropping out of university about the real world and real applicable sort of information than I genuinely believe all of the students on that course would have learnt in three years and after paying tens and tens of thousands of pounds to get that information, which I honestly believe is, a lot of it is fairly relevant.

• 10:56Steven Bartlett?

  And when I look at, so that's me, the other person involved in Social Chain, who founded the company with me was Dom. And Dom is again, somebody who practised incredible patience long term. When I met Dom, I asked Dom to drop out of university and join me in my startup. I offered to pay him £500 a month. And for a year, he was the hardest working person I've ever seen in my life, and the kid was paid £500 a month, right? Fast forward five years, Dom has a Mercedes Benz, he has his own house, he does whatever he wants to do, he can travel wherever he wants in the world, but only because he practised

• 11:38Steven Bartlett?

  that long-term patience. Had Dom come to me when he was 19 years old, when I met him, and said, Steve, I'm not going to do this unless you give me a pay rise, honestly, I wouldn't have been able to. And there's a high probability Dom would have moved in the direction of more money, short term. And that's the definition of practising short-term, well, long-term impatience, right? But thankfully, Dom didn't. Dom took a bet on himself being in a very sort of high-information situation, an extreme situation that most people aren't in. And then, fast forward seven years, Dom is now an individual who can achieve great

• 12:20Steven Bartlett?

  financial sort of draw because of the information he has. So my message to everybody is never, ever, ever, ever lose your short-term patience, impatience, sorry, on a day-to-day. I need that, I cherish it, it's a way to protect your time. But long-term, you have to be patient. And the minute you decide, or the minute you lose your patience long-term, then you'll spend your whole life with short-term results.

• 12:55Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, the next point in my diary is about self-analysis. And this week I've spent some time self-analyzing and trying to figure out the areas which I think I can improve on most. You know, very, very few of us actually spend any time at all self-analyzing. But when I came to think about where my weaknesses are, I genuinely believe I've known about them for my whole life and I've never really, really addressed them. And you know, I'm a big advocate of people doubling down on their strengths, but we all have weaknesses that actually hinder our strengths, right? So, full disclosure, my weaknesses, in my own opinion, or the areas where I think, you

• 13:37Steven Bartlett?

  know, if I fixed that, I could double my performance, or I could double my output, are two things. Self-discipline is the first one. So, self-discipline, as I've said in previous chapters, is basically being able to do what you want to do. That's like the simplest definition I can give, which means that if I want to go to the gym, then I'll actually be able to get myself to go. That's self-discipline for me. It means that if I want to sit and work and do a piece of work right now, I'll be able to get myself off Netflix, out of my bed, and to do that piece of work. And I think people think, okay, Steve, you're a fairly young, you know, you're a young guy, you've, you've, you're fairly successful in what you've done.

• 14:21Steven Bartlett?

  Surely your self-discipline is 100% perfect. Wrong. My self-discipline sometimes is fantastic. My self-discipline sometimes is not so fantastic. And it really depends what the task is and what the sort of pressures are for me to complete that task. However, I'm on a very personal journey to improve my self-discipline because I really, really, really believe that the key to owning the world and owning anything you want to do starts within. It starts with mastering yourself. And for some reason, all of us as human beings, every single person listening to this now, has self-discipline issues.

• 15:04Steven Bartlett?

  And we have self-discipline issues to varying degrees. Some of you will be able to generally pick yourself up and go to the gym at 6:00 AM in the morning. You'll be able to get your work done, you know, you'll probably be performing at about a 60, 70% self-discipline. Some of you... Will only be able to get yourself to do that for one day and then you'll quit and go back to comfort. And you're operating at about twenty percent. My personal mission and the thing, the one thing that I think will make me an elite performer and sort of master myself, which again is much of my, well, all of my goal, is getting to ninety five percent self-discipline. And that's one of my weaknesses at the moment. Sometimes I'm unable to get myself to do what I want to do.

• 15:50Steven Bartlett?

  And the second thing that I sort of learned from self-analyzing, the one area which I think will have the biggest upside for me is, as I touched on in the last chapter, time management. And this week I read a book about the secret sort of source behind the world's most elite performers. And virtually all of them cited good time management as a way to be more successful. And I've, you know, the more and more I've gone on my journey, I've realised the hidden importance of time. Time is something that you never, ever, ever, ever get back. It's all we have to deploy against our own lives, right?

• 16:31Steven Bartlett?

  And I look at my time management almost like a roulette table. And you're placing your chips against certain activities. So I'm saying, okay, I'm going to spend an hour worth of chips on doing this task. And an hour worth of chips doing this task. And then you spin the wheel and you see if you, if placing your time against those tasks returns an investment. And a lot of us, because we have poor time management, end up wasting time. So we, we, we get half of our chips and just throw them just off the table somewhere. Because we, we wander around the internet, we spend time on Netflix, we go into the YouTube poll, which is when you start watching something and you end up an hour later watching cat videos. We all do that, okay, every single one of us.

• 17:13Steven Bartlett?

  And, and I've been looking at ways to be better at time management. And one of the suggestions that I read about this week was, instead of working to to-do lists. Work to a calendar and block out moments and times within your calendar to do specific tasks. I currently use a to do list and earlier this week I started blocking my time against a calendar. So I'd say at eight P M for that hour, that's when I finish my speech. At nine, that's when I go to the gym. At ten, that's when I do that task. And that allowed me to control my time. I honestly recommend it to everybody. Before that, I just had a very, very long to do daunting to do list of tasks that I have to complete

• 17:55Steven Bartlett?

  at some point soon. And that allows for procrastination. That allows for, oh, just slip in an hour there for Netflix. And what happens is you spend all evening watching Netflix and then you scramble to complete your tasks last minute and you do a poor job on those tasks. So that one of the key things I've learnt this week, and I'll continue to keep you updated about my my battle with time management, because I will say it again, time management is the single most important thing. All of us can master that and self discipline. I think the use of your time is the most important thing, but self discipline is is is how you manage it. So yeah, that's my self analysis of myself. And those are the two key things at the moment

• 18:35Steven Bartlett?

  that I will be working on. Okay, so the next point in my diary is actually a question. And it's a question I got asked this week by somebody at a football game. So I went to watch Manchester United play Chelsea. We lost, which was absolutely terrible. And I took a friend with me from YouTube. And I was telling him about the things we're doing within the social chain group and how it's progressing. And he turned to me at half time and asked me a question, which I get asked quite a lot. And I finally wanted to just let it out there and kind of let this be the answer once and for all. The question was, you must be so proud of yourself.

• 19:15Steven Bartlett?

  And the honest answer to that question, honest, honest, honest answer to that question is I'm not proud of myself. And I'll explain that because that sounds kind of tough, right? In the world that I live in, it's so fast paced, it's so quickly moving that you don't, A, you don't get much time to be proud of yourself. For me, I fear being proud of myself because it reeks of complacency. Sometimes I admire the way I act and sometimes I admire who I am or the way that I treat people. I admire those characteristics in myself. But at the very, very core, I'm still the same kid,

• 20:00Steven Bartlett?

  but my circumstances have changed. So I was the same, inside of me, I've not changed, right? I was the same kid at eighteen, the same self believing, ambitious, do or die kid at eighteen years old. All that's happened is I've been able to create an impact and the world has started to realise that I'm that ambitious kid that was self believing and had a very sort of fearless attitude. But I've always been the same kid, right? And the other point is that in my world, I've been there every single day in the journey. I've been there since I was eighteen, every single hour, every single day.

• 20:41Steven Bartlett?

  And at no point was there really a moment where I like won the lottery or anything. For me, in my head, it's just been one foot in front of the other continually up this staircase. And right now I'm on staircase, let's say staircase number eighty, right? And when I climbed from zero to one and then one to two and two to three, I didn't celebrate because that was just one step and I was there. But when someone comes along and they meet me at step eighty in my life, I see how they can look at me stood on step eighty and think, wow, you must be so proud of yourself. And I always think to myself, I'm like, no, because I'm just, I was on step seventy nine last month and now I'm on step eighty, so I'm not going to celebrate a step. Do you know what I mean?

• 21:22Steven Bartlett?

  Upon reflection, there are moments though when, and I had one at Chelsea just after you asked me that question where I was like, Christ, I wonder if you ever really, really, really, really knew you'd be here? You always believed you would, but did you really, really believe?

• 21:40Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, and it's always in those moments. I talked to you in chapter two, chapter one or chapter two about, no, it was chapter two, about being sat in that boardroom with investment bankers and lawyers in London and thinking, fuck, like, you know, how did I get here? But I have those weird moments, but those honestly, they last three seconds and then I click out of it.

• 21:58Steven Bartlett?

  And the last point on this is again, I kind of touched on it at the start, but it's a fear of complacency. I'm, I'm, you know, the bigger something is, the harder it falls, right? That's a cliche, but it's so fucking true. And I am always fearful, and I can be honest about this, I'm fearful about getting comfortable and complacent, because I think when you get comfortable and complacent, you lose your focus. And when you lose your focus, you're at risk of losing everything. And so I think myself and Dom and some of the other sort of people that have been there since the very, very start, we're all so focused on just doing a good job today and advancing today. And we don't want to commit any time, any mental energy in the cup of looking

• 22:42Steven Bartlett?

  back and reflecting and patting ourselves on the back. And this is kind of how I described it. This is the last point on this, on this particular note. If you imagine there's two cups in front of you and you have a hundred Skittles, right? And your Skittles represent attention or focus. For me, I get a hundred of those Skittles and I can either put them in the cup that says, looking back on my past, or I can put them in the cup that says, looking at today in the future. For me, I make the choice to put all of my attention, every single Skittle in the cup of today in the future, because that's the, that's the best use of my time, energy and focus.

• 23:20Steven Bartlett?

  And that's basically how I see it. So when people ask me, you must be so proud of yourself. No, I've not had time to be proud of myself and I've been there every single day.

• 23:29Steven Bartlett?

  The next point in my diary, I've just written down, everybody is a fraud and the battle with self doubt. So why did I write everyone is a fraud? I had two kids come and see me earlier in the week. They are startup entrepreneurs and they told me that their school had asked them to come and speak and they felt a little fraudulent.

• 23:51Steven Bartlett?

  And I um, it dawned on me in that moment that everybody feels a little bit like a fraud. I've got a friend who is one of the most successful entrepreneurs, I would say, in his industry in the world. And I've had private conversations with him about self doubt and how he feels. And he's told me that he feels like a fraud. This is a guy that produced something that is now worth billions and billions and billions of pounds and built a great company which disrupted a whole industry. And he feels like a fraud. We all feel like a fraud to some degree. It doesn't mean we don't believe in ourselves. It just means that it's very, very natural.

• 24:36Steven Bartlett?

  Whenever you find yourself in a position that you've not been in before, to feel slightly unqualified or that you're kind of making it up as you go along. And you know, when I reflect on my personal journey, of course, eighteen years old, when I walked in and met the biggest brand in the world and told them about how I was going to market them on my website. I felt a bit like a fraud because I'd never done that before. So what I was saying was guessing at what I should be saying, right? So my message to everybody listening to this is, everybody feels like a fraud. And if you do feel like a fraud, it's a great sign that you're working just outside your comfort zone. And the next point is, as I've written here, is about self doubt. And I think, you know, people feel unworthy when they feel self doubt.

• 25:20Steven Bartlett?

  They think that all great entrepreneurs felt no self doubt at any point ever. That is bullshit. Everybody at some point feels self doubt. And it's kind of like linked to the point about being a fraud. We feel doubtful when we do things we've not done before. Nobody listening to this podcast feels any self doubt when it comes to putting on your shoes, right? Nobody feels self doubt when it comes to opening the fridge. Self doubt for me comes when you don't have a case study for an action you're about to partake in. So like starting a business or straying anywhere outside of your normal functions. So self doubt again is completely normal.

• 26:05Steven Bartlett?

  The next point in my diary is about how to build self-confidence. I've written this down because a kid came up to me when I was speaking in Bournemouth University this week, and he asked me, he said, he was a very unconfident young chap, and he said, listen, I want to start a business. I've got all of these ideas, but I just, I just struggle with self-confidence. And this is very closely linked to the point of feeling like a fraud and self-doubt. And it got me thinking. And my conclusion for everybody that has a struggle with a lack of confidence is, is this. We all feel unconfident at things which make us feel uncomfortable. Right? So like, walking up to a girl in a nightclub, if you've not

• 26:50Steven Bartlett?

  done that before, can make you feel unconfident. When it comes to walking up on stage and speaking in front of a thousand people, if you've not done that before, you can understandably feel incredibly unconfident. And when I, when I first walked up on stage, and I felt that feeling in my stomach in front of 50 people, I felt very, very unconfident, and I stumbled across my words, and I performed pathetically. The first time I tried to speak to an attractive girl, I felt incredibly unconfident, and I, my performance was, again, terrible. She probably walked away. I can't really remember the first girl, but I imagine I was pathetic. When it came to kissing a girl, I remember that day because I was fucking atrocious. I nearly ate her face off, and I, and I was rebuked with my friends for the next year

• 27:34Steven Bartlett?

  for being a guy that eats girls' faces off. I can't believe I'm telling you this. But the key for me to build confidence is to spend more time in uncomfortable situations. Because I was unconfident the first time I walked up on stage. But after doing that for three years, now speaking in front of thousands and thousands of people, at one conference I spoke at 1,500 people, my confidence has grown. And it's only because I endured the uncomfortableness of it. And so, my advice to this kid was, you know, what are you doing right now? And he told me, he, you know, he plays Netflix with his boys. On the weekend, he watches the football. That's all he does. So when it comes to speaking and starting a business,

• 28:20Steven Bartlett?

  Of course, he's going to feel unconfident. He's never done it before. It's a total unknown and there's a high perceived risk of failing or making yourself look stupid. So my advice was was kind of twofold. He needs to throw himself in more uncomfortable situations. That's how you build confidence. That's the only way I've built my confidence. The only way I built my confidence to film myself every single day and talk directly down the camera was by doing it and by persevering past the point of that dread and feeling of uncomfortableness. So one thing I want to recommend for anybody who struggles with personal confidence issues is to throw yourself in uncomfortable situations.

• 29:03Steven Bartlett?

  I want you to do a Facebook Live video this week on a particular topic and tag me in it. I think Facebook Live is a fantastic way of building confidence. If you do 10 Facebook Live videos, I promise you, I promise you, your confidence will build. But the chances are, and this is what unconfident people do. They'll go on Facebook Live or they'll go in the direction of that uncomfortable act and they'll feel that resistance, they'll feel that thing in their chest, they'll feel that they look stupid and they'll never ever do it again. And they'll live their life feeling unconfident and within their comfort zone. Just to repeat, the key to build confidence is to spend more time in uncomfortable situations.

• 29:48Steven Bartlett?

  And that links quite closely to one of the points I said in one of my earlier podcasts about struggling on purpose. Because just like muscle fibre, I'm a great, great believer that the way you grow is by breaking, right? And you've got to break down those feelings of anxiety by throwing yourself into Facebook Live or by standing up on stage or by pitching or by selling or by trying. And I think confidence is much like muscle fibre. You have to break it in order to build it. And often that often means making a tit of yourself in certain situations. And when I talk about struggling on purpose, much of that is is to do with confidence, but it's also to do with general progression in life.

• 30:33Steven Bartlett?

  And the way that when I look back, the moments where I struggled, the moments I found toughest, whether that was the first time I had to let somebody go from the business, or the first time I had to pitch to an investor, or the moment I cried when all of the bank accounts when I was 18 years old said they wouldn't give me a bank account because my credit was so bad. The moment we got hacked and all of our clients were contacted and we lost virtually all of our business. Those are the moments of struggle that defined me. The moments of struggle gave me more than any other moment in my life. The moments where things are easy, that's just life validating what you already know. That's life telling you, okay, what you thought was true is true.

• 31:15Steven Bartlett?

  But when I I went through pain and struggle and all hardship, something broke, something tore, and that made me stronger. And so I implore you, when you feel that resistance, understand that this is your growth moment. This is a moment which is going to make you better and more capable for the future. And that's the most valuable moment in all of our lives. And last point, as always, I wanted to end on a little bit about my girlfriend. Or my ex-girlfriend, she's not my girlfriend anymore. I've talked about relationships in every single podcast I've done. So I'm going to end on relationships once again. In my last two podcasts, I talked about missing my ex-girlfriend. We broke up, she moved to the other side of the world, and that's that.

• 32:00Steven Bartlett?

  And she was once my P A. And we got very, very, very close and she knew everything about my life. And she got to a depth within me that I don't think anyone's really got to before, which allowed me to be myself. And that's rare because.

• 32:18Steven Bartlett?

  It's because of the way that I'm built and because of my negative perception of relationships, I've never really let anybody get that far. And so I think much of the reason why I've missed her is because I miss somebody understanding me to the level that she understood me. And when someone, it's going to be quite hard for someone to get to that level with me because I'm so, I'm so bad at sustaining a relationship or any sort of, you know, any sort of romantic relationship with somebody for more than three to six months, right? I tend to like run away from it because of the way that my parents showed me this model of relationships being a negative thing. And so still deep within inside me, I have this battle where I think relationships are negative, so I run.

• 33:03Steven Bartlett?

  But she managed to get past that. And then I think what I, what I miss is the familiarity and depth. And it got me thinking about this question, which I often get asked, which is, should entrepreneurs be single? Or should they be in a relationship? And I'm gonna do the pros and cons of both to end this podcast. So why should entrepreneurs be single? Okay, the obvious reasons are you have more time, I guess. You have apparently better focus, I guess. You can be more flexible, you can travel easier, you have less commitments, those kinds of things, I guess, are the apparent upsides of being single.

• 33:46Steven Bartlett?

  The upsides of a relationship in my perspective, and only in hindsight have I learnt many of these things, are entrepreneurship is an incredibly lonely journey, as I've said. And having someone to turn to can be great at times, especially if they really, really understand you and what you're going through. Having that sort of soundboard is great. It's almost like another business partner.

• 34:08Steven Bartlett?

  When you're in a relationship, to counteract what I've just said about being single, I think you're actually more focused. And I used to think that when you're single, you have more focus because the relationship is a distraction. But I actually now think upon hindsight, in a relationship, you don't focus on running around nightclubs and chasing tail and chatting people up and swiping on Tinder. You have your girlfriend, you have that part of your life or girlfriend or boyfriend checked off, and you can now focus on your career. So that's the sort of change in my perspective. And lastly,

• 34:43Steven Bartlett?

  It's good because it creates separation between work and home life. And if you don't have somebody at home that is there to tell you to shut the laptop and to watch a movie, as a single guy, I find this for myself anyway, I can just spend all of my time working because nobody's telling me to stop or to go for dinner or to go to the movies or anything like that. And so a relationship can help a lot with your sort of work-life balance, I guess, right? That kind of thing, or just helping you have more recreation, I guess, in your life.

• 35:22Steven Bartlett?

  So that's my analysis of that situation. This week has been an interesting journey for me and I already know that next week is going to be even more interesting. This week I'm on the road with Adobe, going around nine different universities and speaking to thousands and thousands of kids at these universities. And so I'm getting a lot of questions, I'm doing a lot of self-analysis and I'm doing a lot of thinking. I want to thank all of you for listening to these podcasts. I can't tell you how much it means to me. This podcast, for whatever reason, has made me connect with you guys and you connect with me more than any piece of content I've produced historically. So I'm really, really, really, really, really enjoying it. And I think I may, depending on what you guys say, try and move this to doing it twice a week. Let me know if you want me to do that.

• 36:08Steven Bartlett?

  All I ask is you leave me a nice review in the app store. I think that will help the podcast move up a little bit. Still not sure how the podcast store works, but if you could leave me a review, that would be super, super nice. Tweet me, let me know what you thought of this episode and tell me what things you want me to change or if you want me to introduce new entrepreneurs, et cetera, et cetera. I'm looking for feedback. This is a new sort of piece of content for me and I'm desperate for your sort of feedback. So please tweet me, please leave me a review.

• 36:37Steven Bartlett?

  And I just want to say thank you again. Thank you so, so, so, so much. If you do leave a review, please leave your Twitter handle or your Instagram handle at the end of the review and I will follow you on social media and we can talk via DM. Thank you so much and I will see you next week for chapter six. It's been an absolute pleasure as always and I will see you on Monday.