E1: Sacrifice, Work/Life Balance & Purpose

In the first chapter of my diary, I discuss what it takes to be an entrepreneur including the immense sacrifice involved from relationships to financial and personal, the unpredictable chaos surrounding your life, how people will be the most important part of your life and business, the never-ending debate on work/life balance and how my perception on my purpose has changed over the years. 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.

• 0:07Steven Bartlett?

  So here's the thing, a few years ago, I was a broke university dropout, living in one of the worst parts of the country, alone, with nothing but a laptop and a dream. Fast forward a few years, I'm the 25-year-old CEO of one of the UK's fastest-growing companies and most exciting, and that company's called Social Chain. My world is intense, sometimes crazy, always challenging, and always unpredictable. This podcast is simple. Every Sunday, I'm going to share my personal diary with you, and I want to give you an insight into what it's like behind the scenes, being an entrepreneur, the deep, dark thoughts that nobody else will share with you, and anything else that's playing on my mind. This is not scripted, this is off the top of my head, and this is direct from my diary.

• 0:52Steven Bartlett?

  This is the diary of a CEO. I'm Steven Bartlett. I hope nobody is listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

• 1:02Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, because this is chapter one, I thought the most sensible place to start was with the question, what does it take to be a CEO, and what is it like being a CEO or an entrepreneur? And in popular culture, it's been incredibly glamorized. There's been movie upon movie upon movie, which illustrate the plight of a CEO of being, I guess, initially quite tough, but then guaranteed success, riches, partying, and happy endings. And that's fundamentally incorrect, and I see this image of what it's like to be an entrepreneur really guiding a lot of people astray, but also leading a lot of people that aren't equipped and aren't fully aware into the lifestyle of being an entrepreneur.

• 1:43Steven Bartlett?

  And I think much of the reason why I want to do this podcast is to answer some of the questions and to debunk some of the misconceptions about what it takes. I think the first thing that you have to be prepared for if you want to be an entrepreneur or a CEO is immense sacrifice. And when I say sacrifice, I don't mean giving up your weekends or not watching that football match. I mean transforming your life fundamentally and sending it in a different direction. I mean five years of uncertainty, pain.

• 2:23Steven Bartlett?

  Immense loneliness, uh, losing relationships of people that you really, really cared about. Uh, not being able to form new relationships. And when you do losing those relationships too, because you're just too consumed and you're living your whole life in your head. I mean, financial sacrifices. I mean, every type of sacrifice imaginable. And those are the sacrifices that I went through and many of those sacrifices I continue to go through in order to fulfill my duties of being a CEO. And, uh, as the company grew and we got to the point where we, we have hundreds of people in the teams. My, my reason for that sacrifice has changed.

• 3:03Steven Bartlett?

  I now feel personally responsible for hundreds of people's lives. And that makes me, um, sacrifice more, but sacrifice much easier than I ever did before. Being an entrepreneur involves immense sacrifice. I think in the initial stages, you really are saying, I'm willing to give up everything that I am right now in order for this thing that I want to be. And I think that's the most important question to ask yourself. Is how bad do you want to be that person? How bad do you want that life? And how bad do you want to be an entrepreneur or a CEO? Because, uh, you've got to, you've got to want it more than you want everything you have right now.

• 3:45Steven Bartlett?

  Because for the next year, two years, three years, as you embark on your journey, you're probably going to have to sacrifice everything you are to become that thing. And I did. I, I sacrificed being a very sociable young man that was having fun, um, to going in the complete opposite direction, living in the worst, my opinion, the worst area in Manchester, uh, with absolutely no money. And many weekends I would leave my house, dressed as smart as I possibly could dress in the search for some food left somewhere by somebody. And that often meant going into takeaways. At one point at my very lowest, it meant going into shops and taking pizzas that I hadn't paid for, um.

• 4:30Steven Bartlett?

  And that's how bad I wanted it. And in those moments, I had a very, very clear belief as well of the, the reward of my sacrifice. I completely believed it was going to pay off. And that kind of links me to another point, I guess, which is in order to sacrifice, you have to believe. And I one hundred percent always believed. Um, and I think you have to. The next thing is as, as you grow your company, um, you have to get used to the unpredictable chaos. And unpredictability can be, um, a great cause of anxiousness for any entrepreneur because you wake up every day and you have no idea what email you're going to get. And you

• 5:14Steven Bartlett?

  could get an email, and I did many, many, many, many, many times in my journey, get an email that would make me believe that it was all over. And when you get that email, you have to be built of a certain type of, uh, material, um, to keep going in the right direction. I remember many, many instances, especially when I was eighteen years old, where the bank emailed me and told me that they would not let me open a business bank account. And so I went to another bank and they told me that I would not be able to open a business bank account. And I went to another bank and they told me that I would not. And after going to three or four banks, I genuinely believed because my credit rating was so poor, I would never be able to start a business. And that was a small thing in the early days.

• 5:55Steven Bartlett?

  And then advanced two years, the company's going, well, we've got fifty members of staff. And you get, uh, an email from your investor saying that, uh,

• 6:07Steven Bartlett?

  I don't think you meant to send me that email, Steve. And I think, what the hell is that? That's at six AM in the morning. And then I get another email from another one of our clients saying, did you mean to send me that email? And what happened was every single client you have. And every investor you have has been sent a malicious, very, very tailored, abusive email to them personally from your business partner Dom's email address. And in that moment, not only do you question whether you've lost your investors, but you question whether you've lost every client you've spent the last two to three years building up. In that moment, you've got to have, you've got to be made of a certain type of material.

• 6:49Steven Bartlett?

  And then even further on in the company, you know, in the first year when we had some financial uncertainty, there were moments where we genuinely weren't sure how we were going to pay the bills. And you've got payday coming up, you've got bills approaching. And there's total uncertainty around how in five days' time, you're going to find six figures to pay your bills and to pay your wages.

• 7:14Steven Bartlett?

  And that uncertainty and the anxiousness is something you take home. It stays with you on the weekend, stays with you in the bathtub, in the shower, on the way to work, on the way home at night, 1am in the morning. And you have to live with that. It stays in your head when your girlfriend turns to you and she says, what do you want to do this weekend? You don't want to do anything this weekend because your mind is consumed with the issues. And many of these issues are things that you can't tell anybody else. And that uncertainty, that continual 24/7, seven days a week, 36, 365 days a year, anxiousness is something that entrepreneurs, CEOs have to learn to live with.

• 7:56Steven Bartlett?

  And that's why I've, I've referred to it as developing your own calm within the chaos. You cannot predict the bullshit, but what you can predict is bullshit.

• 8:08Steven Bartlett?

  And the second thing, which I touched on a little bit there on that point would be. You spend your whole life living in your own head and it's a very, very, very lonely place. Um, because of the issues and many of them you can't speak to anybody about. Sometimes you can't even speak to your business partner about those issues. You spend your whole life living very, very deep within yourself and often, I remember my girlfriend turned to me one day and she said, um, even though you're right next to me, I feel completely alone. And I think that perfectly summarizes how you'll make people feel probably for the next few years of your life, um, or potentially all of your life as a CEO. And I've not managed yet to figure out how I switch off, um, around romantic partners,

• 8:53Steven Bartlett?

  around family, around anybody at all. Um, and it's something that I'm continuing to work on, but I've certainly not figured that out yet. Um, and lastly, linked to the unpredictability and all these other things I've mentioned above, um, as a CEO, your number one issue at all times is people. Really, that's the only thing you, you agonize over and you, you are continually provided problems by. And as our company grew and hit, you know, the hundred mark and then went on and got bigger and bigger, um, the, the amount of people, uh, and the amount of people problems you have to deal with also scaled, um, in, in relation to that.

• 9:38Steven Bartlett?

  And so one thing you cannot predict is someone in your business is boyfriend or girlfriend dumping them. You can't predict them going through mental health issues or you can't predict them, um, being injured or, you know, going through serious issues at home or losing a loved one. These are things you cannot predict, but these are things that as a CEO, as a responsible CEO, you should and have to care about. Um, and what happens is not only do you have your own problems, your own people problems in your own life, your own relationship issues, your own family issues.

• 10:17Steven Bartlett?

  For a CEO like myself that really, really cares, really genuinely cares, you inherit the, the issues and the, the challenges and the personal problems of everybody in your business. And that is, is a challenge as well. And it's, it's a challenge that I've volunteered to take on because I do care. But it's something that, um, at a young age is a challenge to deal with. And it's fortunately something that I've, I've almost survived it.

• 10:48Steven Bartlett?

  As the company scaled from one to 20, dealing with 20 people's personal issues, but then also work issues,

• 10:56Steven Bartlett?

  was challenging. As it got increased, then I developed this thinking about my own calm within the chaos. And that allowed me to deal with people problems, despite the fact that, um, it was scaling at a rapid rate.

• 11:11Steven Bartlett?

  Point number two in my diary this week is about work-life balance. And something I've seen in the comment section on my YouTube channel and in other places and on my Instagram, is people being concerned that I promote a lack of work-life balance. And I wanted to be explicitly clear about this thing because it's, because it's something I've been thinking about for a while. I, I do not promote work, a lack of work-life balance. It's simply just my reality. And what I do with my vlogs and with my Instagram and with everything that I put out is I'm documenting and doing my very, very best to give you my truth. And my truth is that I work seven days a week, virtually every waking hour in those seven days. I don't switch off.

• 11:59Steven Bartlett?

  But it's important to know that in my mind, people who come to me with the work-life balance argument, don't understand my relationship with work. They are using the traditional construct of what work is.

• 12:16Steven Bartlett?

  And sort of painting me with that brush, but to me, my work is totally different. I love my work. My work is my hobby. Work is where I go to relax. And when you love your work so much, and when you're sat at home playing video games and on a Saturday and thinking, God, I can't wait to get to work. Um, it's not work, it's life, right? It's it's my fun. So imagine me going to you and and you're doing something you love doing and me saying, Christ, you really need to do more of stuff you love doing. So I'm sat there thinking, you just don't understand.

• 13:01Steven Bartlett?

  You don't understand my relationship with this thing. It's not work-life balance, it's life-life balance. And I genuinely believe, not only do I love my work, but I also believe in hard work. I believe that people who get to high places and are successful in what they want to do, whether it's an athlete, a gymnast, an entrepreneur, a chef, a pianist, they put in hard work. I don't know a case study of someone not of someone being wildly successful that didn't work hard. I believe in hard work. And when I love something, I'm willing to give it. And I'm willing to give it every waking hour of the day. Unfortunately,

• 13:46Steven Bartlett?

  because I'm a single male that has virtually no commitments, that has very little sort of attachments in in sort of like romantic relationships, I'm able to work every working hour. Um.

• 14:01Steven Bartlett?

  And finally, the last point in my diary is about relationships, love and friendships.

• 14:09Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so, starting with relationships generally, and I'll talk about family relationships and friendships, and then I'll get into the thoughts I've been having on romantic relationships. First and foremost, my relationship with my family is fairly distant. I don't know anybody outside of my immediate family, so I don't know who my cousins are, I don't know who my grandmother or grandparents are. I know some of them have passed away, but I don't know if they all have. I've not really met them, and I wouldn't know them if they walked past me in the street. It's just the way that my family were. My mum and my dad never really had a connection with their family, so I don't know their family. I only know my immediate family, which is two older brothers and one older sister, and

• 14:54Steven Bartlett?

  my mum and my dad. And for context, my mum and my dad, growing up, had a terrible relationship. They're still together, but they screamed at each other, well, my mum screamed at my dad, for hours and hours every day, and that's all I knew. And so, growing up, my idea of a relationship, when looking at my dad sitting there, being screamed at by my mother, was very, very negative. So it wasn't until I was 21 years old, 22 years old, 22 years old in fact, that I even had anything that resembled a relationship. It's my belief that although I've not had relationships, and I'm really not good at keeping relationships, whether they're romantic, or friends, or family, it's my belief that

• 15:38Steven Bartlett?

  relationships really do matter. And I was listening to a TED Talk the other night, and it was talking about what makes us happy, and it's this study conducted over 75 years on thousands of men, rich men, poor men, and they studied them every year, basically until they died. And what they found out over the course of a lifetime was that the single most important thing, the single most important thing to health and happiness and all of the above was relationships. And not just any relationships, or the quantity of your relationships, but really, the quality of your relationships. And they can make a clear distinction between those that had good quality relationships, and those that didn't, by looking just at their health.

• 16:24Steven Bartlett?

  And it made me really, really think. And when I watched that talk, it really made me reimagine and rethink my perceived or my opinion of relationships. I think I've always thought, you know what, Steve, you're good on your own. You don't need anybody else. You don't need friends. You don't need girlfriends. You don't really need family.

• 16:46Steven Bartlett?

  But I've come to learn that I do, and I've made a much more active effort to stay connected with my family, but also to try and build a little bit of a closer relationship to my friends. And this is something I'm working on. I live a very, very, very solo life. I'm a, as I said, the world is lived in my head, but I spend most of my time alone. I always have, and I've always been happy to do so. And on the romantic front, one thing I've always done, because my parents showed me a model of relationships that was so negative, is I've always ran from commitment. At any point when any girl, dating back when I was 12 years old, showed any interest in me, irrespective of whether I liked her or not, I would run.

• 17:31Steven Bartlett?

  I would make excuses as to why me and this girl couldn't be together. I would look at the bad parts of her. I would try and find holes. I'd find any excuse to get out of there. And I did that my whole life. I did it when I was 12, did it when I was 16, I did it when I was 18, I did it when I was 21, I did it when I was 22, and I did it in my last relationship. And it's something I'm trying incredibly hard to work on. But I did manage to form a relationship, although it wasn't the best performance as a boyfriend. I formed my first relationship when I was 23 years old with my P A. Now, this was a girl I hired when I first started the company, and then a year into her employment,

• 18:11Steven Bartlett?

  we got romantically involved. It's a fairly long story, but she was the first girlfriend I've ever had. And I think much of the reason why we came together was because she completely understood my world. Being my P A, she gets to see all my inboxes. She really knows me very, very well. And I feel like that's much of the reason we lasted for so long. But she also taught me that it was possible, that it was possible for me to have a relationship, something I never, I never thought was possible. And she also taught me that it could make you happier. It could make you a better person, it could make you less lonely, and it could be a best friend, I guess. And so my, my perspective on relationships has changed in the last, in the last couple of years.

• 18:55Steven Bartlett?

  And unfortunately, that relationship didn't work out. It didn't work out really because of me. Because I wasn't able to learn compromise, or I didn't wanna compromise. I'm not quite sure what it is, but it didn't work out because of my inability, in my opinion, to compromise and to give more. Um, I was very, very, very selfish. Um, and I really, you know, I really don't understand how I'll ever really be able to have a, a good, solid, strong relationship. When I commit as much as I do to my, my professional life mentally and in terms of time. So it's also made me question and ask myself, what is it I'm looking for in a romantic partner?

• 19:38Steven Bartlett?

  What has a person got to be, who have they got to be in order for them to have a harmonious relationship with an entrepreneur? Or a CEO like myself? And I think there's a few things. So my last relationship was with my P A. She was super, super close to me. I saw her every day in work and she completely understood. And it, in many respects, did work. It did work. And so part of me thinks that I'm looking for somebody that completely understands my world. And so I started thinking, do they need to work for me? Do they, are they gonna be a P A? Are they gonna be an entrepreneur themselves? Um, and I don't really know the answer.

• 20:21Steven Bartlett?

  Right now, I'm, I'm seeing somebody that lives on the opposite side of the world, basically. Um, and she's got her own thing going on. She's acting, she's modeling, et cetera. And that's worked out in many respects because it allows me time to focus when I'm here and I'm in the office. And often when I was dating my P A, I couldn't focus because, uh, if we had an argument at home, obviously that comes into work in some regard. And she's moody with me around the office, et cetera, then I'm thinking about that as opposed to thinking about my work. So now having somebody that's on the opposite side of the world, when I'm here, I'm focused. And when I'm with them, I'm focused on them. So I'm trying that out and it's going fairly well. But I do think, you know, how long can that be sustained for before you want that person a little bit closer?

• 21:07Steven Bartlett?

  Um. So it's a tough one. I really don't know what I'm looking for. I don't know what I should be looking for. The point I'm at now, I think entrepreneurs should date people that are incredibly busy and focused on themselves, but also understand your world a little bit. I think that's the healthiest balance. The counter argument says, find somebody who does not understand your world, is totally separate, and doesn't get it, because then when you go home, they help you switch off. They don't get it, they don't want to talk about it. So when you go home, you leave work at the doormat. Um, I don't know. I really don't know. It's a journey I'm on at the moment, and I'm going to keep you guys updated as to, as to what happens there.

• 21:49Steven Bartlett?

  And lastly, the last point I wanted to share with you is the idea of purpose. So there's a few things that have happened to me over the last couple of years, which have really made me question and try and find my, my purpose. And this is because at the age of eighteen, when I had nothing and I was living in a very, very poor area in Manchester, my idea of why I wanted to be successful was because I wanted money. Much of my reason was money. When I reflect on the things I wrote in my diary at eighteen years old, two of the points related to having a nice car and having loads of money. And now we've got the twenty-five-year-old Steve perspective clashing with eighteen-year-old Steve.

• 22:33Steven Bartlett?

  And this is the moment where I saw that those two characters and those two motives and agendas clash. It was the minute someone offered to buy my business and they told us what figure they would pay for the company. And for a moment, I went into a few days and a few weeks of reflection and thinking and had a few personal epiphanies and I really sort of analyzed in that moment what we wanted to do. Um, it didn't take a, a long period of time for me to arrive at my conclusion or my answer to them, but. Just being put in the moment where someone says to you, I will give you millions and millions and millions and millions of pounds right now. It makes you wonder and think

• 23:19Steven Bartlett?

  about what's really important. And in that moment, eighteen year old Steve showed up and he said, amazing, we're gonna buy that Lamborghini you always wanted to buy. And we're gonna buy that huge mansion that you kept looking at every week when we were eighteen years old, living in Moss Side in Manchester. That's what we're gonna do. And then twenty five year old Steve showed up to that same party. And he said,

• 23:48Steven Bartlett?

  why do you want a Lamborghini? You probably won't drive it that much. You spend all of your time travelling. You like your car you have now. You don't need a Lamborghini. What a terrible waste of money. It's not gonna make you happy. It's not gonna make you happier at all. In fact, it's just gonna make you poorer. And eighteen year old Steve had this idea that things would make him richer. But twenty five year old Steve knows that things actually just make you poorer. And there was this mental clash. I was on right move when I heard the figure that they would would give us. And I was looking at houses and I was looking at cars. But twenty five year old Steve

• 24:27Steven Bartlett?

  was looking through the lens of not caring about materialistic things at all. And so that made me reflect and it made me think. So if not material things, if not material things, then why are you doing all of this stuff? And twenty five year old Steve knows the answer to that question. But it was eighteen year old Steve that wanted an answer. Because eighteen year old Steve thought we were doing all of this stuff, A, because we wanted to build something big, but really, it was to quench the pain of starving every fucking day, because I didn't have anything to eat and I didn't have enough money to get on a bus and I didn't have enough money to go to another country and I didn't have enough money to have fun. I didn't have enough money to get

• 25:10Steven Bartlett?

  into a nightclub. Eighteen year old Steve, his motives when he didn't have those things was to attain those things. And he thought that those things might make him happy. Eighteen year old Steve was totally wrong. Fortunately, fortunately, eighteen year old Steve was already happy.

• 25:28Steven Bartlett?

  But I thought at eighteen that the more money you got, the happier you got, which really is not the case. Money becomes totally irrelevant when you have enough money to feed yourself and to pay your rent and to have enjoyable experiences. Then money doesn't scale your happiness. And that was a lesson I learned. And so, again, back to this question. So what am I doing this for? And over the last twelve months, two years, it's become clearer and clearer for me. I think Social Chain and the existence of a business like Social Chain has had a tremendous positive impact on the world.

• 26:13Steven Bartlett?

  Without really knowing it, by creating the working environments we've created, we've inspired businesses across the country and across the world to follow suit. Our culture has changed cultures and our people have changed people. We have employed hundreds of young people who, without Social Chain, would probably, in some cases, feel fairly disillusioned and confused about their careers and their lives. We've also helped develop people who were shy, who were within themselves, who were introverts, who were inexperienced, unconfident, and they've become incredibly confident,

• 26:57Steven Bartlett?

  super talented, young leaders. That, for me, has been the greatest reward of this whole journey. It's not been the money, it's not been any article anybody's written about me, it's been being able to have a transformative impact on people. Also, stretching that a little bit further, because we've built such an awesome business, I do think so, we've been able to inspire other people. And this podcast and my vlogs and my Instagram have given me great, great purpose, that thought leadership, that having a platform gives me great, great purpose. And all the messages I get, thousands of messages every month from all around the world

• 27:40Steven Bartlett?

  from people who have made a change in their lives for the better and in the direction of happiness has given me great, great fulfillment. And lastly, as an entrepreneur.

• 27:52Steven Bartlett?

  It sounds, it sounds empty, or it sounds like it's not worthwhile, but building something, building something great that disrupts an industry and that changes people's perceptions on the world and the way that things should be done. The competitiveness of it, the, the, the excitingness, the challenge, the having an impact, the reaching people, the reimagining how the world is, that's what we're doing at Social Chain. At the most fundamental level, that is what we're doing. And that's why, to me, this isn't work. It is sport. It is incredibly fun. And the impact we're able to have by existing, by getting bigger, by having a bigger platform and by having

• 28:35Steven Bartlett?

  more influence, could change the world. And that's the bet that I'm making. I want Social Chain to change the world. You heard it here first.

• 28:47Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you for tuning into chapter one of the CEO Diaries. I had no idea where this podcast was going to go. I'm sat in my boxer shorts at home in Manchester. It is now 3am in the morning on a Sunday night. I've got work in the morning, another week, busy week ahead. I'm sure it's going to throw at me a lot more challenges and I'm excited to reconvene with you here on Sunday and talk to you about what I've learnt this week and to discover some, some new conclusions. Thanks for joining me and I'll see you guys again on Sunday.