Pod Insights The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett E31: Entrepreneurialism is a Disease About this episode It’s crazy to think how much things can change in such a short period of time. In this episode I discuss the concept of compartmentalising and 6 positive ways to approach this. I also talk about how I deal with fear in life, how running a business is li...
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:11 Steven Bartlett? Isn't it crazy how much life can change in such a short period of time? And I think that's one of the key topics I want to touch on in today's podcast. Not just that as a topic, but also the impacts of change in our lives. Good, bad, the impact change has on our perspective. How it makes us question existential things like the meaning of life and purpose. And how as CEOs and business owners and ambitious people who are looking to do great things in the world. We're always searching. That's much of what I want to talk about in today's podcast. You know, over the last couple of months, I've been very, very busy. And that's probably much of the reason why I've been away from this podcast.
0:53 Steven Bartlett? I've been traveling all around the world, speaking, I've done 16 speaking appointments in the first quarter of the year alone. And I've said to myself, I'm going to do 16 a quarter. My maths isn't great, but I think that's 64 speaking appointments a year this year. And the thing about this podcast is I have to be in a certain frame of mind for it to make sense and for it to work. And if I'm not in that frame of mind, I don't want to offend you by giving you something that I don't think is worth listening to. When I upload my podcast, I've spent hours and hours thinking about the podcast, looking at my notes, really sort of analyzing myself. And I'm giving you that in a much more packaged way than I did when this podcast first started.
1:37 Steven Bartlett? But it requires me to get in a certain headspace in order for me to share these thoughts with you and to be open and honest and be kind of deep at times. And I think that's why people listen. So I respect that quality of content so much that I'm just not willing to do it while I'm on the road or in the back of a taxi or other. I want it to be great and I want it to be worth the time that it takes. But because I haven't posted a podcast in about two weeks or three weeks, this one might be a little bit long, but it'd be worthwhile, I promise you. And it's a sort of a culmination of the notes that I've built up in my diary over the last couple of weeks from traveling and thoughts that I've had on planes and everything in between. So without further ado, this is the Diary of a CEO and I'm Steven Bartlett. I hope nobody is listening, but if you are.
2:23 Steven Bartlett? Then please keep this to yourself.
2:41 Steven Bartlett? Okay, so the first note that I've written in my diary, sounds a little bit sad, but it's something that I've thought for a long, long time. And I'm actually quite surprised that it's only just made it into my diary. I've written the sentence, "Running a business is like having your heart broken every single day." And why have I written that? Do you know what? There was a particular day, there was a particular day a couple of weeks ago, where I got three or four pieces of bad news back to back, right? And it was just to sort of compound the feeling, I guess. I'd just gotten off a plane after the end of my really, really, really long speaking tour all around the world, and I was absolutely
3:23 Steven Bartlett? knackered. And it was Friday. I was in a Chevrolet, coming from the airport to my house. I look at my phone and all of these text messages come in because I've just got my signal after I've landed. And it's just, "Bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news," right? And it just felt like, "Oh, God, fucking heartbreak." And as a CEO of a company, and even as a manager of a company, or anybody in any business, or any human fucking being, will know that life is full of heartbreak. But when you do what I do, and when you make that choice, you're also signing up to an immense level of emotional uncertainty and heartbreak. And you don't get to decide when that heartbreak, or that
4:05 Steven Bartlett? bad news, or whatever comes, right? And this is why, if you want to be a leader, and this is so, so fucking important, right? If you want to be a leader, then you have to be resilient.
4:19 Steven Bartlett? You have to be. And there's, you know, there's a something I've thought for a long time, which is that ultimately, we're all paid, right? We're all paid in line with the amount of bullshit that we're willing to put up with. And that's why if you do want to be a leader, if you do want to aim high and you want to lead and, you know, be at the top of an organization, then resilience is so unbelievably important. And to be honest, resilience is something that I don't think anybody is necessarily born with, but I think experience sculpts you to have resilience. You know, when bad shit happens, we go through a process, right? And that might be bad shit in your career. It might be romantic bad shit.
5:02 Steven Bartlett? It might be social heartbreak where friends have stabbed you in the back. There's a number of sort of default approaches that we take. A lot of you and a lot of us, and sometimes me, just want to pretend it didn't happen because we don't want to have to confront the issue. So we'll kind of just compartmentalize it. And I've read a lot of psychology books that have talked about compartmentalizing trauma, and it's never ever a good idea. That shit's going to resurface at the worst time. Some of us all manifest itself into something like drinking or drugs, which, you know, my business partner Dom talks about on this podcast. And if you haven't listened to that podcast with me and Dom, I think it's number six, but I'm not sure. Please do listen to it because it's very honest and open and very important. So some of us pretend it didn't happen. Some of us get angry.
5:46 Steven Bartlett? Some people push people away. Some people will blame themselves. Some of us wallow in the pain and the regret. But even for the relatively self-aware and emotionally adept people amongst us, struggles can can take us by surprise. But learning healthy ways to move through adversity, you know, it's a collection of skills that I think most of us would call resilience, can help you to cope with these horrible times quicker and get you heading back in the right direction. And, you know, back in the day, bad news would fuck me for a week, right? Bad news now will probably impact me for about three minutes because I've developed a way of dealing with uncertainty and bad news and
6:29 Steven Bartlett? the inevitability of life that's helped me. And I think the first point, I'm going to give you about five or six points as to how I've done this, right? Now I've scribbled them all in my diary here. The first is just about changing the narrative. And what I mean by this is when something bad happens, we often sort of relive the event over and over and over again in our, in our heads. We overthink it, we sort of rehash the pain. And this is a process that they call dwelling. It's like a cognitive spinning of the wheels and it doesn't move us forward at all. This constant dwelling doesn't move us forward. It doesn't heal us at all. It's not conducive with growth. It keeps us stagnated and pressed back in these negative feelings. You can think of a time where someone broke some bad news to you, right? And you went home and just thought about it and thought about it and thought it doesn't
7:14 Steven Bartlett? help, right? There's this great book I read that shows that the practice of expressive writing does move you forward and it helps you gain new insights into the challenges of your life or the bad things that have happened to you. What do I mean by expressive writing? I mean, free writing continuously for 20 minutes about the issue, exploring the issue, exploring the deepest, darkest thoughts you have on the issue and just letting it out, whether that's on paper or vocally or wherever you want to do it, right? And the goal of this is to get something down on paper, not to, not to create a sort of a memoir like masterpiece, but just to get it all down onto the paper. And there's a study that they conducted in 1988 that found participants who did this,
8:00 Steven Bartlett? participants who wrote about how they were feeling or, you know, maybe do a podcast because we're not in 1988 anymore, like I do, they felt significantly happier, they healed from their sort of bad news or incident significantly weeks quicker than other people. And they were happier sooner than those who didn't do this. And I think that's why I do the podcast. The podcast, as I've said since, you know, probably the first one, if you've been listening, is like therapy to me. It's cathartic. It's my release. I just get to rant at the microphone about what I'm thinking, what's built up in me. And because I'm getting that opportunity to write it down and analyse it on a piece
8:39 Steven Bartlett? of paper from a bird's eye view, next time these things happen, I have a more constructive, pragmatic way of. Dealing with them and I understand them better and I don't compartmentalise them. And so they don't build up and next time I get bad news, I'm still not dealing with the last other five pieces of bad news I just had. So I think that release is important. You can almost liken it to a bin in your kitchen. At some point, you've got to fucking empty the bin. You can't just keep putting shit in there or it will overflow. And then you've got a mess on your hands. So I guess that's the first point in terms of how I've built resilience within myself. I think the next point is more about how you build the
9:22 Steven Bartlett? confidence, I guess, to tackle bad moments head on. And that for me is a form of resilience, right? So the first strategy I talked about, which relates to being sort of cathartic and releasing how you're feeling and expressive writing is great after the fact. It's great after you've been dumped. It's great after you've got terrible news. It's great after you've gone through a hard time. But in the moment, how do you run at the hard time? How do you run at the challenge? And that's all about overcoming your fear. So the second point on this, I've written in my diary, is just about facing fears. Yeah, I'm as terrified at things as everybody else. I wasn't born fearless, right? But I think there's a philosophy in my head, which is deeply ingrained, which to some people
10:04 Steven Bartlett? makes them think that I have this like, you know, supernatural lack of fear. It's just not the case. And I'm really going to give you sort of an insight into how I've personally overcome fear in my life. And it's a sort of incremental approach, right? So what I've always done is I've slowly and repeatedly exposed myself to the thing that scares me the most in small doses. So I told you, you know, if you've listened to the podcast before, the first time I spoke on stage, 14 years old, absolutely shitting myself. My hands are shaking so much that I can't read the words on the piece of paper in front of me, absolutely terrified. But I took more and more opportunities to speak in front of my class, you know, in front of school meetings.
10:46 Steven Bartlett? I did a little toaster at a relative's wedding when I was younger and over time I incrementally increased the challenge to a stage now where I feel totally confident speaking in front of 10,000 people in an arena. And I think that's, that's the sort of secrets of it. I think a lot of people think you have it or you don't. I just think that's totally bullshit. I think with all fears and with all challenges and with all sort of, you know, a lot of the time with talent as well, these are things that come from practice. Try, fail, learn, improve. And they did a study in 2010 to kind of test this and model this in a sort of scientific environment, where they took participants and gave them electrocutions every time they saw a blue
11:29 Steven Bartlett? square. You know, and eventually scientifically, that blue square became as scary in terms of the human reaction to those participants as a tarantula to an arachnophobe. But then they started to show the participants the blue square without shocking them. And over time, the participants' Pavlovian fear, which is measured by the amount of sweat on their skin, gradually evaporated. And essentially, this kind of exposure therapy helps you to change the associations we have with a particular stimulus. So for me, you know, I've flown thousands of times probably now, I don't even know, hundreds of times at least, and the plane has never crashed. So for example, you know, my brain has started to believe that it's safe to fly. But when I first got on a plane, I was absolutely
12:14 Steven Bartlett? terrified. I didn't know what the fuck was happening, and I was convinced that this, that it was witchcraft, right? So that sort of exposure therapy, I think, is something that we can all bring into our lives to overcome our fears. You know, and fears may never be fully overcome. That's not necessarily the point. I'm still apprehensive before I go up on stage, even though I'm confident. But it gives us greater confidence to confront some of the things that will set us free and make us successful and happy. So it's important. Number three on this particular point about resilience is something I've talked about a little bit before, which is practicing self compassion. You know, fear... Adversity, pains, hard times can make us feel incredibly alone.
12:57 Steven Bartlett? And we can often wonder why we're the only ones feeling this way and what exactly is wrong with us. And in these situations, learning to practise self compassion and recognise that everybody suffers and that this is part of the human condition is one of the most important things I think any of us can do. We all have a voice in our heads at all times and that voice can either be lovely and compassionate and warming and supportive, like a good best friend, or it can be nasty and pessimistic and, you know, negative and against you, like a hater, right? And so essentially practising self compassion is training that voice in your head to be your best friend. Self compassion involves offering compassion to ourselves, confronting our own suffering
13:40 Steven Bartlett? with an attitude of warmth and kindness, and most importantly, without judgement. And they've done a study, again, a study, I wanted all five points to be backed up with research. They've done a study with participants in an eight-week mindful self compassion programme in the US. And they reported that the people that did the study, took part in the programme and learnt to be self compassionate were more satisfied with their lives. They had lower depression, lower anxiety and lower stress afterwards compared to people who didn't participate. And those benefits lasted up to a year. It's crazy how controlling that voice in your head can control your life. And I think there's kind of three steps to developing self compassion.
14:23 Steven Bartlett? The first starts with just admitting it to yourself, admitting how you're feeling. Saying to yourself, this is a moment of suffering, this hurts, I'm stressed, right? So important. The next step is remembering that you're not alone in your suffering or your stress or your pain. Reminding yourself that suffering is a part of life, we all feel it, we all go through it, we all struggle. And lastly, just being kind to yourself about why you're suffering and you're suffering, which would... You know, I guess that starts with accepting yourself as you are with it starts with being patient about your suffering and realising that this too shall pass, but also reflecting and reminding yourself that you suffered before and you got through that. So you're probably going to get through this shit too. Treat yourself how you'd want your best friend
15:05 Steven Bartlett? to treat you in a tough time. Treat yourself how you treat your best friend when they're going through some shit. That's the key. And that's the, the point that I personally am striving to in my life. I'm very good at being self compassionate. I'm very good at putting things into perspective. And, and I think that perspective is a perspective that's made me resilient and able to deal with a lot. The next point, point number four, I believe it is, is a point that I think a lot of people will think is bullshit. And at one point, I definitely thought was bullshit until I looked into it more and practised it more. And that is the practice of meditation. I used to think it was hocus pocus, you know,
15:45 Steven Bartlett? vegan, liberal, you know, hippie stuff that people did in Thailand on a hillside. But meditation, you know, the more I've read into it is so very important and I couldn't have been more wrong. And as mindful gurus like to remind all of us, most of our pain exists in the past and in the future. You know, we regret and dwell on things that went wrong in the past and we, we spend time agonising over things and being anxious over things that might go wrong in the future. But when we pause, we find peace. And practising mindfulness helps us bring, bring us to a more sort of present peaceful moment in the present moment. And it helps us deal with negative emotions as they arise. And
16:26 Steven Bartlett? it gives us a sort of defence mechanism for being in the battlefield, shall I say. And one thing I didn't realise until I started thinking about this point of resilience is that I've been micro meditating almost every single day in the office without really realising it. Throughout the day. I will do something which is apparently called mindful breathing and I've been doing it just because it helps me feel good, not because I knew about it, but I read into it and it's a real thing. And mindful breathing just involves bringing attention to your physical sensation of breathing for a second, the air moving in and out of your lungs and through your nostrils and the expansion of your chest. And you know, when the mind wanders away, which inevitably will because it's impossible to focus for a lot of us, including me, I'm talking about me, then you actively bring
17:11 Steven Bartlett? your attention back to your breathing. And you can do this for 15 minutes, you can do it for an hour, if you've got that kind of time, or as I've been doing, I just do it for literally 20 seconds. And when I feel that sort of feeling in my stomach, which we sometimes feel, how would I describe it? It's like a building tension, right? I just take 10 deep breaths through my nose and out of my mouth, and it's amazing how easily that feeling evaporates, almost instantaneously, no, instantaneously, it's immediately gone. I've been doing that for years. Whenever I feel that tension, I just go. And I do it between three and 10 times and honestly makes such a big difference.
17:55 Steven Bartlett? And the most sort of important supportive study on this was a study they did a couple of decades ago where they got participants to do this sort of mindful breathing exercise before showing them really disturbing images like spiders and car accidents and all these kinds of horrific things. And the participants who had done the mindful breathing exercise experienced less negative emotions when they viewed the images than people who hadn't, which I think is pretty crazy and is in many respects, you know, the definition of resilience, emotional resilience anyway. It's just by breathing and doing that sort of mindful exercise of meditation, you can become less negative upon disturbing stimulus or bad news. I think that's amazing.
18:38 Steven Bartlett? And I think it's so important to protect your state because your state, your emotions, how you feel, has such a domino effect on everything. Everything starts with your state. When you're not feeling, you know, good emotionally or mentally, you get ill. When you're not feeling well, you know, emotionally or mentally, you start eating bad. When stress creeps in, good habits creep out. And one of those things for me historically has been healthy eating. You know, when we're emotional, when we're stressed, when we're busy, when we're not taking time to be present, we reach for sweets. When we don't feel like we have time because we're rushed, we order fast food. So not only does sort of cultivating mindfulness help
19:22 Steven Bartlett? with your state, it also helps with everything else and your relationship with food and your, you know, your physical health and everything in between. So it's so incredibly important. Here's my favorite topic of the five that I've given on resilience, which is cultivating forgiveness. The longer my life has gone on, the more I've realized that forgiveness is the answer to so much. One day I was on Twitter and I read a quote that said forgiveness is letting a prisoner go and realizing that you were the prisoner the whole time. And I thought about that quote for a couple of hours and I was like, Lord Jesus, that's the most true thing I've ever heard. There's so much research that suggests forgiveness is beneficial to your mental and physical health. We know that. But also it makes you
20:07 Steven Bartlett? better at dealing with bad news, which as a human is guaranteed. It makes you more resilient. People find it unbelievably hard to truly forgive. Even I do, right? And I'm someone that fully believes in it. But when somebody or a situation wrongs you, and it makes us question everything. It makes us question everything that's important to us. It makes us question our value, our, you know, lowers our self-esteem, it impacts our sense of control. We feel vulnerable. And, and because we feel so vulnerable, we put up the shield, which is resentment. And it's a weapon to guard ourselves against, you know, it happening again, but also to seek revenge, which we think is a form of validation against the situation or person who has perpetrated that sin against us,
20:50 Steven Bartlett? right? And the, the truth is, we have to just acknowledge how we feel. We have to acknowledge what happened and how it's impacting our life. And then we have to make a commitment to forgive them or the situation, which means letting go of the resentment or ill will, not because we want to reconcile with them or let them off the hook, but because we want to let ourselves off the hook and we're doing this for our own sake. The reason why I'm so passionate about this is because I realized that about 30% of the DMs I get from crying, you know, men or women that are heartbroken because of their partners or jobs or careers or something that's happened.
21:31 Steven Bartlett? If they learnt to forgive, they wouldn't be feeling the way they're feeling and they wouldn't be about to ruin their futures by focusing on the wrong thing, by trying to get somebody back or doing things for the wrong reason. Forgiveness is this unbelievable secret weapon. Fuck my podcast. This is something that has changed my life. Instantaneous forgiveness. And for those that are maybe not as good at forgiving situations and people as fast as I've sort of trained myself to be, there was a method which I learnt in the very early days when I tried to sort of get a grasp of my own ego and resentment and it's called compassionate forgiveness. And so when you're feeling resentful towards somebody, spend
22:15 Steven Bartlett? a couple of minutes and do this actively, thinking compassionately towards the offender. They are a human being. They make mistakes too. They have room for growth. They have room for healing. They're probably going through some shit in their own lives that I know nothing about. They're probably going through their own suffering, their own struggles. I forgive them. And you move on. And you do that, not to reconcile, as I said, but to get the burden off your shoulders. You do not want that burden on your shoulders. And researchers have tested this again and again against the common alternatives which are, you know, dwelling or thinking negatively or repressing it or compartmentalising it. And they found that cultivating compassion towards the person or to the situation led
23:00 Steven Bartlett? participants to report more empathy, positive emotions and feelings of control. And that's the outcome that victims of wrongdoing deserve. No matter how you feel about the offender, you're doing this for yourself. And control, getting that feeling of control back and security is the key to getting your happiness back. And, you know, in those five steps that I've described above, ladies and gentlemen, that's how I deal with hard times and how I improve my resilience. But bonus one, bonus point, number six, little bit of a curve ball. None of this shit matters anyway, because you're gonna die. And when I say none of this shit, I'm referring to the bad news, to the hard times, to the unexpected, dumping to the, you know, whatever life throws at you.
23:45 Steven Bartlett? None of this shit matters anyway, you're going to die. And this sounds kind of morbid to some people. We've discussed this before on this podcast, but it's one of the perspectives that I have and have always had since I became an atheist or stopped believing in a divine being that has liberated me from getting too consumed and caught up in the day to day bullshit that life throws at you. We all overestimate the importance of the day to day bullshit. It's really not that important, really not that important. And mortality, the realization that we're gonna die, the sort of embracing of our own, you know, you know, short fate here on earth reminds us what really matters. And to prove this to you, let me, um, let me do a bit of role playing. Okay, so I'm no longer Steve Bartlett, the CEO of Social Chain.
24:31 Steven Bartlett? I'm now your doctor. Okay, and you're my patient. You've just walked into my surgery and I've just asked you to take a seat. Take a seat. I've got some really, really bad news for you today. The results have come back positive, which means that you have 24 hours to live. This is your last day on earth. I'm sorry to have to tell you this. And when you get that news and when that news sinks in, that you've just got 24 hours left to live, do you give a fuck that Jenny did an indirect at you on her Instagram story about your hair? Do you care that someone left a shitty comment on your LinkedIn?
25:13 Steven Bartlett? Do you care about the pathetic, small, irrelevant day to day bullshit that you've been obsessing over and bleeding your eyes out over? None of it matters. All you care about is your family, getting to them, letting them know how you feel about them. You care about your loved ones and you probably might reflect also on the impact you've had. And really, that day to day are the only things you should really, really care about. You know, and it's good to know when to care and focus about other things, but to be able to strategically detach yourself and get a little bit closer to your own mortality and in moments where things feel like they're going to go on top of you, I think is just,
25:58 Steven Bartlett? it's a skill and it's something that I've always done naturally. I've not read a book about it. I've just always done that. I've, I literally will say to myself, listen, none of this shit's going to matter anyway, right? All of this is, and this is a quote that I'm probably quite famous for, from people that know me really well, is I always refer to, life is a game of chess. And if I lose the game, it doesn't really matter anyway, because chess isn't that important. And I'm not saying life isn't important, but I'm saying the day to day isn't that important. The bullshit we get caught up with isn't that important. We just convince ourselves it is. We're so good in our own relative myopic bubble of convincing ourselves that nothingness is so significant. And I think it's important to detach yourself from that. That'll make you resilient.
26:41 Steven Bartlett? It'll also probably make you a little bit cold, as it has me, but you know.
26:47 Steven Bartlett? Why you shouldn't want a pay rise. That's the next point written in my diary. Again, a bunch of these notes came at a time when I just got loads of bad news, so they, they might come across as being a little bit negative, but I assure you they're not. What I've written in my, my notes is, running a business for the sake of making money really is a shit idea. If you can get paid well and avoid running a business, do it. But the problem is, pay is an exchange for the amount of bullshit that you're personally willing to own. So even if you don't run the business, if you're paid really well, you're going to have to deal with a certain level of bullshit that the CEO or entrepreneur is dealing with. You know, being an entrepreneur, doing what I do is almost a bit of a disease. That's something I've said a few times and
27:31 Steven Bartlett? the level of sacrifice, the non-stop roller coaster, the uncertainty that you, you have to deal with as an entrepreneur or someone that's building a business. It makes you kind of ask the question, you know, why would anyone choose to do it? Surely it makes more sense to get paid well and not have to deal with the very top level bullshit, criticism and responsibility. You know, you look at Mark Zuckerberg, he has been hammered and slaughtered online for the last 18 months for Facebook and what he's built there. Why is he doing it? He's absolutely filthy rich. He's got more money than he'll ever be able to spend. But he persists regardless. And another confession, I guess, is, you know, sometimes I feel jealous of people that don't have to do what I have to do.
28:15 Steven Bartlett? Sometimes I feel jealous of people that can, you know, get to work at nine and leave at five thirty and have a proper social life and strong relationships and have more personal time. Sometimes I wish that I had their life. However, and trust me when I say this, because I'm someone that knows myself fairly well, I think. I didn't choose to be an entrepreneur. I didn't choose to think how I think. I didn't choose to be who I am. There was, there was never a moment of pause and contemplation and planning. This is just how the chemicals in my body decided to dance. And this is just who I am, right? It's the thing that makes me tick, you know? But don't, don't get a pay rise. Why did I write you shouldn't get a pay rise?
29:00 Steven Bartlett? I guess what I meant is you shouldn't, you shouldn't always necessarily think that the answer to happiness is getting a responsibility rise. I've seen over the last five years, many instances where I think a pay rise or a promotion or more responsibility has been a terrible idea, a terrible decision for somebody. I think it's ruined their life. I genuinely mean that. And I don't think this is something we discuss enough in society, because there's this sort of unspoken assumption that our culture is, you know, driven by applauding the ambitious and the motivated and those that achieve professional heights, you know, in their career.
29:42 Steven Bartlett? We were told that we have to climb the corporate ladder in order to be a success. And given this expectation, what if you don't want to? What if you don't want a pay rise? What if you don't want more responsibility? What if you are completely happy as you are? What if you are a primary caregiver? What if you are a single mum? What if you are content? How do you communicate your wishes to your boss? How do you tell people that you're good here? How do you even know if you're good where you are? And you don't need to rise anymore? You don't need extra bullshit? How do you know? I think it comes from honest self-reflection, something almost none of us are good at. Almost none of us are good at because the force that is competing with our honest self-reflection
30:23 Steven Bartlett? is society's narrative that in order to be successful and happy and rich, you have to be higher. You have to have more status and more money. So when I say honest self-reflection, I guess it begs the question, how do you do that? Do I have the answer? Probably not. Do I know how to be honestly self-reflective? Probably not. But I think it's just important to know we can be happy already. We can already feel like we have enough. We can already be enough, which is a counter-narrative to the narrative of society. And unhappiness can be caused by overstretching yourself. You don't necessarily get happier and happier and happier the higher you climb.
31:05 Steven Bartlett? It is possible that you are at a state of contentment now. Being too ambitious because you think you need it all, because you think you need that pay rise, can actually kill your happiness and send you backwards. And I think that's important to embrace. We all have a disease which is built into the human condition, which I call I'm not there yet syndrome. I'm not there yet syndrome. But the truth is there doesn't exist. And this is where you can really fuck yourself by overstretching. Sorry for swearing, I'm going to try and swear less, I really do mean that. If you value your mental health, if you value your peace, if you value your social life and you value your relationships, more, more progression, more responsibility, more stress,
31:49 Steven Bartlett? less time, might just be the worst possible idea. Understand what you value, understand yourself and then act accordingly.
32:01 Steven Bartlett? The next point in my diary is probably the deepest I've ever gone in this diary in terms of existential life questions. And I've written, what is the meaning of life? It's interesting because over the last five years, as I've risen in the world of business and as I've built a business and travelled and learnt more and earned more money and everything has changed, going from a kid that didn't have all these things and didn't come from a background or from a family where we had all of the things that I have now. My purpose in life and the meaning of my life has flipped and flopped, as they say. And it's really depended on the current situation that I was in. So when I was absolutely broke and had nothing in Moss Side, I thought the meaning of life was to get money. And I
32:45 Steven Bartlett? thought there, you know, when you get money, you get more happiness. And so I was just chasing after money. And so when I got money, the meaning of my life fell into question again. And I've, I've been searching for the meaning of human life, I guess ever since in some respect. And I, over the last year or two, I've really sort of managed to understand my own answer to that question, which I'll share with you. The change, the change I described there, going from a kid that had no money to running a business and, you know, having all the things I have now, taught me a very valuable lesson, which is, success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. And I think that's an Arnold Schwarzenegger quote, but I'm gonna say it again because it's important. Success
33:28 Steven Bartlett? is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. And I definitely thought that success was the key to happiness back then. The question of the meaning of life is perhaps one that most people avoid asking themselves or avoid thinking about because we fear that we might not find the answer. And we fear that there might not be an answer. There might be a lack of an answer. And some people, you know, they think religiously about this topic, and I used to, up until the age of 18, be religious. I used to believe in God. But, you know, even if God exists, and even if he has an intelligent purpose for, for creating all of us that none of us know, know about, you know, we still don't know about it, right? And if the, the purpose is to go to heaven, as some people say, and
34:11 Steven Bartlett? as some religious people believe, what's the purpose when we're in heaven? And what's the purpose when we're living eternally in the kingdom of God? Regardless of where our soul or our consciousness goes after we die, whether or not God exists, whether or not he gave us some supernatural inherited purpose, and whether or not there is an eternal afterlife, we should strive to create our own purpose, or purposes, in the life that we have and in the time that we have, which is a relatively short amount of time in the lifespan of the cosmos. But Plato, who's a philosopher who I've been studying a lot recently and who I was reading about on a plane while I was flying from North Carolina to Amsterdam, I believe it
34:52 Steven Bartlett? was, used to define humans and man as an animal, a featherless animal with broad nails. But he also went on to give us another definition, which I think is probably more simpler and more apt, and he says that humans, all of us, we are a being in search of meaning. Human life may not have a supernatural, God-given purpose, it may not have that predetermined purpose that most of us are convinced we're searching for, but this doesn't mean that it can't have purpose, or that the purpose we give ourselves can't be just as good or even better than any predetermined supernatural one.
35:35 Steven Bartlett? And so if you ask me, there's no evidence for a shared predetermined supernatural meaning to our lives, and if you ask me, the meaning of life is that which we give it. Sometimes in business, in love and in life, we think just because we can ask a question means it must have a valid answer, but this isn't the case. We say things like, "What's your passion?", and it makes us go, "Oh, fuck, maybe we don't have a passion, maybe there's loads of things we're passionate about." Just because you can ask the question does not mean there is a valid answer. For example, what number is orange? Just because I can ask that doesn't mean there's a valid answer to that question.
36:19 Steven Bartlett? Life doesn't have to be a brain teaser of existential questions and searching that drives us crazy. It can be really, really simple, and I think the more simple we allow our lives to be, the more we can stay in touch with our fundamental feelings and emotions, the calmer we become, the more fulfilled we feel, the less we drive ourselves crazy overthinking things, and the more we're able to live in the moment. And I think maybe that is the meaning of life. I'm joking. As I said, the meaning of life is what you make it. So don't get too caught up in these fucking questions. Sorry, I swear it again. My bad.
36:54 Steven Bartlett? This has been a very long podcast, but the last point in my diary is just about me. I just wanted to update you on me and my stuff and the business and my personal life. Social Chain Group, the company that I'm the CEO of, is going through, in my opinion, its single most significant, exciting period of deciding its future, right? I've never been able to say so little. We've got very big things to come, very big things to come. We're definitely going to be expanding internationally this year, further than we already are. So we're in Munich, Berlin, London, Manchester and New York. And we're going to be taking Social Chain
37:36 Steven Bartlett? to other countries, which is something I need to discuss with the team before I share it publicly. And we're going to be introducing an employee share scheme, which is something we've wanted to do since day one. The first ever meeting I had with our first ever investors, a guy called Marco and Remo and Emerson, I said to them in that meeting that I wanted a certain proportion of shares to be dedicated to the team. So that means that the team would own the business too. And we've spent about four, five years trying to create a scheme that makes sense. And because of the way that we've done our investments and the company has changed and evolved and changed direction, it's always been scrapped because we've had to change things, right? And now we're at a point where we can finally
38:18 Steven Bartlett? offer shares to our employees and to the team and to myself and others, which I'm super excited about because that's true to who I am. It's true to what Social Chain is about. It's true to everything that I believe. And it's a moment that I've been looking forward to very, very much for a very, very long time. So I'm excited for that. And I also think Every company, every CEO, every founding team, every founder, every investor should make sure that every employee in your company has shares in the company. But I think that's fair. And I think if you're a good person and you you care about fairness and not about greed, then you would agree with me because if you ever fall into the trap of thinking that your business has been built by just you, then not only are you an asshole, but you
39:03 Steven Bartlett? are at serious risk of going backwards because you aren't acknowledging what got you there. What else is interesting? I'm getting really into environmental issues and I'm thinking more and more about what we can do at Social Chain to positively impact the environment. So I've spoken to the team and some of our directors one on one about this and we're making a lot of changes across the business to make sure that we're not harming the environment more than we possibly need to in order to conduct our business and to to exist, right? We want to coexist in the environment and we don't want to, you know, cut down the forest and then donate to the bees. We want to live with the bees in the forest. And so we're doing things like getting zero plastics into our office.
39:46 Steven Bartlett? We've banned water bottles in terms of our orders for the teams and things like that. And we're slowly progressing more and more in that direction. I've also exchanged my Range Rover for a push bike. I can't say that's necessarily because of environmental issues because I'd be lying, but it's just living in New York, but I'm proud of that. And we're also focusing a lot this year on social good, what we can do to make the world a better place. And that's something I really want to drive. What else is interesting? We're building an amazing showstopping office in New York City, which is going to be ridiculous. Social Chain's offices around the world are pretty dope, but this is really going to be a showcase. We're also building another showstopping floor in our Manchester office downstairs,
40:30 Steven Bartlett? which I'm super excited about, and a gym and all these wonderful things to make that space even more awesome. So that's exciting. What else is exciting? I was looking at payroll the other day and I was looking at the UK and the US payroll together, two of our markets. And we now have over 200 team members in those two markets, which blew my mind a little bit. I don't know why, but 200 is a big number. And I went down the list and looked at all the names and it was one of those really strange, rare moments in my life where I thought, fuck.
41:01 Steven Bartlett? We, as a company, are responsible for 200 people in just two countries. Right? Staggering. You know, there's over, there's over a thousand team members across the group now, across social chain, the social chain group. But just in social chain group in the UK and the US, we have 200 people. And I don't think I spend much time looking at those numbers. So it really hit me like a ton of bricks. And I, I think I messaged Kira, who's the head of happiness, saying, what the fuck? You know, like, how did we get here? Um, crazy. Really, really crazy. What else is important? This year, we're going to be investing a lot of money in the business, but also in other businesses. So if you do have a business which is interesting, please send me your business plan, your deck,
41:44 Steven Bartlett? a presentation on your business, because we really are looking to, to grow the group further in areas that make sense to our mission. And so I always welcome young entrepreneurs with business ideas. But I'm particularly interested in products that you've got off the ground, as opposed to sort of concepts and, you know, thoughts you might have. So for entrepreneurs, let's call them. What else? You know, over the last two weeks, I've just been absolutely full of excitement. And a lot of the things that I want to share, I'm not able to share just yet because of, because of laws in some case, but because of confidentiality, and because I want to make sure I speak to the team at Social Chain first. So I'm super excited to get back to the UK and have those conversations and then share it with them and everybody else. In my personal life, really cool landmark, I'm going to be speaking in Brazil in front of 15,000 people on stage, not on stage, I
42:29 Steven Bartlett? fucking wish, sharing a stage with Barack Obama. Super excited for that. That's another landmark moment in, I guess, my speaking career, I guess. He's an absolute idol, an icon to me. So I'm just there for the selfie. Hopefully I'll get one, fingers crossed. And in my personal life, I'm really good. I'm really good. I called my mum and dad this weekend, which is something I've not done in months, admittedly, something I know everybody that messages me tells me that I need to do. And I do know the importance of because parents aren't here forever. But I called them this weekend, and I had a good chat with them. And I'm going to call them again this Sunday. I'm going to try and get into the routine of calling my parents every weekend. I think it's just dawned on me that, you know, how valuable parents are. And like, I, I treat my parents as if they're invincible and that they're, they're eternal. And I know that's not the case. And I don't want
43:14 Steven Bartlett? to leave it till, to bad news for me to have a relationship with them and stay in touch. And also, I know how much it means to them that I just call them. Something that I think kids often undervalue is just how much it means to your parents just to pick up the phone and say hello. And lastly, I'm single. I always end on my relationships. I haven't done this in a while, but I'm completely single. I get asked this all the time in my DMs. Are you dating anybody? Are you whatever, whatever, whatever? At the moment in time, I'm single and I'm just focused. I'm so focused on the business. I can't describe it. I think I've got an opportunity. I think there's a moment. I think our team have a moment and I'm hyper focused on that. And I, you know, I have faith in the fact that somebody will come along at some point. And when they do,
43:58 Steven Bartlett? I just hope I'm not busy. Highly unlikely that I'll, that I'll be ready, but I hope, you know, when someone comes along, I won't be busy. You know, people say to me sometimes, they say, has anybody ever managed to turn your head? And the answer is yes. A couple of people across the, you know, the last 10 years or more have managed to turn my head and make me literally think, fuck, you know, I'm really into this person. And so I have full faith that that will happen again in the future. Who knows when? I don't honestly worry about it. I don't have dating apps on my phone at all. I don't have Tinder, Hinge, Bumble. I don't use them. It's just not me. I just wait and life ends up figuring everything else out, as is often the case. Anyway, if you've gotten this far in the podcast, I love you because that's a, that's a real commitment. I think this is probably the podcast, the longest podcast
44:43 Steven Bartlett? I've ever done on my own. And I'm excited to, to, to get back in touch with you guys and to get back to frequency with these podcasts now that I've got some time here in the US to really think and to record in my home. Do me a massive favor if you haven't already, leave a review in the app store of the podcast. And when you leave the review, please just leave your Instagram handle or your Twitter name. So I know who you are and, and then I can get in touch with you if I want to like give feedback or respond, et cetera, et cetera. Thank you so much for listening. It's been, it's been amazing as always. And I, and I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulder because you've listened to me rant. Thank you.
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