Pod Insights The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett E9: Social Media Is Destroying Our Society About this episode In the ninth instalment of the podcast, I discuss my recent trip to Sri Lanka and the lessons it taught me about gratitude, the power of networking, the trap of social media and impacts on mental health, and as always, and update on relationships.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Steven Bartlett? It's good to be back. After a seven week podcast hiatus, I'm happy to announce that the podcast is finally back and it's back for good. I know what you're thinking, Steve, where have you been? And the honest answer to that question is I've been everywhere. And over Christmas, I flew out to Dubai, India, Sri Lanka, and then over New Year's, back to India and then back to Dubai and then London and Manchester. I've had several personal revelations. My perspective on so much has changed. I've interviewed some of the world's most followed and influential people. I've been planning out our company's future and reflecting on the company's past.
0:42 Steven Bartlett? Most importantly of all, for you, I've been scribbling all of it in my diary. In 2018, the diary of a CEO is going to be evolving considerably. And I've invited a number of the world's top CEOs and entrepreneurs and managers to join me on the podcast and I'll be delving into their diaries, their secrets, their dark times and trying to learn from their experiences. But it's not just the world's biggest CEOs that I find immensely interesting. In fact, most of the time, the entrepreneurs, the CEOs, the managers that I am most obsessed with are those that never got big, those that failed. The entrepreneurs and CEOs that don't make the headlines, their names you do not know
1:24 Steven Bartlett? because for whatever reason, the test and the challenge of getting there was too much. This podcast isn't about me. This podcast is for me. And by way of it being for me, hopefully it'll be for a lot of you as well. Anyway, without further ado, this is chapter nine. I'm Steve Bartlett and this is the diary of a CEO. I hope nobody is listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.
2:09 Steven Bartlett? Slum gratitude. I went to India for fourteen days. I got to see a lot. I went to the Taj Mahal, I did the touristy stuff. And I also went and saw how the people live. I went to the slum in Mumbai. I went up a mountain, I went through jungles, I saw it all. I witnessed things I never thought existed, I guess. I, I had my perspective changed forever. We've all seen pictures of slums, right? We've all seen the movies. But I promise you, you have no idea what a slum is like until you go there. I was sweating with the heat. I was overwhelmed by the sound and my eyes saw mess, rubbish and
2:53 Steven Bartlett? raw sewage like I've never seen before. The slum is, I guess, the most entrepreneurial place on earth. The whole of India comes there, dumps their rubbish there. And the people that live in the slum basically recycle it to make a living. And so I saw men, children, women recycling TVs to extract the copper from the wires so that they could sell the, the melted down copper to the world. I saw them doing the same with, um, rubber, turning tyres into rubber pellets to sell to the world. It's the most resourceful place on earth. But it's the most heartbreaking in the sense that these people are living in conditions you could never even imagine. I will never forget the moment I saw a three-year-old kid
3:37 Steven Bartlett? run up to me whilst playing on this pile of rubbish. And he squatted down in front of me and he pooed and then he peed. And as he got up and began to run away from me, I saw him trip and I looked over to see what he tripped on because it's, I mean, the whole place is a tip. And he tripped on the body of a dead rat. And this kid was completely naked. And I remember just thinking, taking pause for a second and thinking, where the hell are these, this kid's parents? It was just incredible. The place was just in incredible. There were, you know, things in there that I couldn't even articulate. And people just sleeping all over the floors.
4:21 Steven Bartlett? I walked past one room which was so hot, I had to, I had to step away and take a breath. And I asked what was in there and it was just a hole in the ground and they said it was a bakery. That hole in the ground is a bakery. They said there's a man in there baking right now. I promise you, the heat in that hole in the ground was hotter than anything I've ever experienced. But the people there, and this is really the message, and this is why I wrote Slum Gratitude in my diary. The people there never asked me for a thing. They didn't ask me for a penny. They didn't beg me. They didn't ask for food or money or anything at all. And more shockingly, more shockingly than anything at all,
5:05 Steven Bartlett? the people were really, really happy. And obviously, that's just an observation, right? I don't know how happy they were. Didn't ask them. But I, when I looked through my camera album, specifically with the kids, there wasn't one kid in any of my photos that wasn't happy. That wasn't smiling, didn't have a massive smile on their face. And as I walked through, I saw people that was laughing and playing and playing games and they'd got a stick and they were playing cricket. And I walked away from the slums weirdly not feeling sorry for anybody in there because they didn't feel sorry for themselves.
5:46 Steven Bartlett? And then I reflected upon my own society here in the UK and how often we complain about so little and really how complaining and being negative is a very, I guess, subjective thing. We complain because it's relative to the world we live in. And because I've been there and because I saw that little kid soil himself and then run and trip on a dead rat, my perspective of what is complain worthy has shifted forever. I've built a tremendous amount of gratitude for the things that I have, but I've also realised that it's really not about the things I have at all. It's actually all about my perspective on the things I have.
6:31 Steven Bartlett? And my perspective on who I am, where I am, and that's what I call slum gratitude. I walked away from the slums with a tremendous amount of gratitude and a new perspective on how to to be happy within myself. If I had to guess, if I had to guess, I would guess that the people I saw in those slums are happier than the people I see in this country every single day. The people I see posting on Instagram and Facebook, and I think that says something. The next thing I really taught me was about the privilege we've been given from birth.
7:11 Steven Bartlett? And how many of us, just by being born in a part of the world where we have a roof over our heads, we have a parent or parents, we have internet, we have all of these things, schooling, education, we have tremendous privilege. And every time you make an excuse, you are disrespecting the privilege you were given when you were born. And I really want to embrace that personally in my own life and see what I've been given as a lottery ticket to be and achieve anything I want to. Because those people in those slums aren't making excuses because nobody's there to listen. And in my own life, I'm just like everybody else. I make excuses sometimes.
7:51 Steven Bartlett? And it's very easy upon coming back to the UK to fall into the trap of the old behaviours and the the lack of gratitude and the thinking, you know, at times that I'm disadvantaged, but I'm truly, truly blessed and we all are. If you're listening to my podcast right now, I promise you, you have more than the great majority of this world have. Don't disrespect your privilege. The next point in my diary is about hard work and I'm just going to keep it completely real with you. While I was away, I was on a flight from Dubai to India. And while I was in the air, I asked Dodds in my personal brand team to upload some stories to my Instagram for me. Um, and he created some stories and he uploaded them. And one of them he uploaded was about hard work.
8:36 Steven Bartlett? It's not something I've said, but Dodds had taken it from somewhere, some inspiration and he uploaded it. And by the time I landed, I looked at my Twitter feed and people were going crazy at these stories that had been uploaded.
8:51 Steven Bartlett? I didn't agree completely with the message of the story because it referenced rest not being important, which I think is important. So I removed the story, but I ended up getting into debate with a total stranger about hard work and several strangers about hard work. Because of this tremendous rise in mental health awareness, there's also been a tremendous amount of negativity which has risen towards hard work. And now encouraging hard work will literally get you scolded online, as it has for me on several occasions. People hammer me for telling people to work hard. And I wanted to address that because I think, you know, for me,
9:31 Steven Bartlett? hard work is a great weapon. And that's exactly what it is. But there's this, you know, growing culture that anyone that tells you to work hard is telling you to volunteer to take on mental health issues. And that's certainly not the case. In my life, there's no way I could be here now speaking to you on this podcast if I hadn't worked hard. I was a 18 year old kid that had nothing but a CCJ and a shithole house in Moss Side with a single bed and rats running around me. And I had a full time job in a call center. In order to get here, I had to work really,
10:12 Steven Bartlett? really hard. I had to. There was no other way for me to get here. So when it comes to listening to my advice, of course, I'm going to tell you what I did. I can't tell you the way. That's completely subjective. It depends on your circumstances. But my way was hard work. I would go to work and I'd work a night shift. And then when I got back from the night shift in the call centers, I would start working on my business. So I was working at times 18 hour days. And hard work, okay, it's not just about hard work. But as I said, it serves as a great advantage to get you ahead of competition, to get you ahead of yourself, and to push things forward faster.
10:53 Steven Bartlett? And in a world that is so tremendously competitive in all arenas, any advantage is a useful advantage. I encourage hard work, and I'm not ashamed of that. And I think you have to make a choice. For me, I didn't have kids, I didn't have a wife, I didn't have a mortgage to pay. So I really rolled the dice and I really tried to risk everything. Other people have to weigh up it differently, right? I'm not encouraging someone that has a family to spend all of their time at the office. I don't necessarily think that's the best thing to do. But in my circumstance, it was the only way for me. Um, one of my great mentors, Elon Musk, was asked about hard work and its importance. And here's what he said.
11:38 Speaker 01 Work like hell. I mean, you just have to put in, you know, eighty hour, eighty to a hundred hour weeks every week.
11:48 Speaker 01 That's a lot of work. That, but the, all those things improve the odds of success. Okay. I mean, if, if, if, if other people are putting in forty hour work weeks and you're putting in a hundred hour work weeks, then even if, uh, you're doing the same thing, you know that in, in one year, you will achieve what they achieve. You, you, you will achieve in four months what it takes them a year to achieve.
12:13 Steven Bartlett? So that kind of summarizes exactly how I feel. You have to make a choice as to what you want in your life. Some of you will want family and you'll want to travel and you'll want, you know, relative comforts when it comes to your professional lives. And some of you will want to go outside of the, the, the commonly trodden path and do something different. You'll want to achieve something tremendously great in the business world or in your professions or your arts or your crafts or whatever. And I promise you, if you're going to succeed, you're going to have to deploy hard work. And anybody that tries to discourage hard work really, really, really needs to think about what they're saying.
12:55 Steven Bartlett? As Elon Musk says, it serves as a great advantage and it's an advantage you want on your side, not on your competitive side. The great thing is, and this is, um, the sort of redeeming thought here, is when you love what you're doing, it doesn't feel like hard work. And whenever someone comes at me and attacks me for promoting hard work or for working hard myself, I really. Believe they don't understand my relationship with the work I do. My, my work is my fun. I go to the, I've been at the office today and all weekend because it's my fun. I enjoy it in the same way that I enjoy watching Manchester United play on the weekend. My work is my fun. Um, I'm not sat there sweating, doing something I hate, driving myself crazy.
13:39 Steven Bartlett? So my hard work is, um, is not so hard after all, the, the hours are just long, I guess. Hard work is important. Use it as your advantage.
13:51 Steven Bartlett? Okay. The next point is something that I've posted about on my Instagram and my Twitter recently. And this is about upgrading your library. I spent a couple of days doing a little bit of a self audit over Christmas and I wanted to look at where I was spending most of my time. And I really think time, as I've said in previous chapters, is the single most important thing we all have. And every day after sleeping for, I don't know, six hours, we have a couple of hours to deploy to achieve everything we want to achieve and become who we want to become. So I did a bit of a self order as to where I spend my time and it's something I encourage all of you to do. And what I did is I tracked my time for seven days.
14:32 Steven Bartlett? And the, the key thing I learned, and I think you should all do this because you'll be tremendously surprised, is I spend so much time on bloody social media. And obviously my job is social media, so that's quite understandable. And, you know, we're, I guess, podcasting and social media in some form. But while I'm on social media, I spend a lot of time scrolling on my newsfeed and I spend a lot of time reading things on my newsfeed. And so I started to think, how can I make this time I'm spending on social media more productive? Um, and there's a couple of ways of doing this. The first one is reducing the amount of time you're spending on social media. There are several tools you can put in place to limit, uh, the amount of time you're spending on, on, online.
15:18 Steven Bartlett? Um, there are tools you can also add to your computer and your desktop that track exactly where you're spending your time. This is how I track most of it. Um, but the most important thing I found was just improving.
15:32 Steven Bartlett? What I'm doing while I'm on social media. And I tried to think about ways I could do this and I wrote a bunch down, but the most important one was about what I'm consuming. When I'm on social media, I'm, without realising it, reading a tremendous amount of information and watching videos and listening to stuff. And that stuff I'm consuming is changing my perspective, whether I realise it or not. It's also changing my mood. It's making me happy or sad or, you know, depressed or whatever you wanna, you know, whatever word you wanna use. But it's impacting my mood. It's also shaping the information that I have. So it's either teaching me something or not teaching me anything at all, or teaching me something that's not true in the case of fake news.
16:16 Steven Bartlett? Um, and so what I wanted to do, and the, the one thing I realised is that my timeline is where I spend most of my waking time. My, you know, whether it's my Instagram or my LinkedIn or my Twitter. And that is basically where I'm getting most of my information and also setting my mood. My timeline is my library. It's the modern day library. Your timeline is your library. And if it is a library, what are the books that I'm currently reading? I'm reading gossip magazines. I'm reading trashy okay or hello magazine. I'm not reading anything particularly good. I have the odd person I follow that's inspiring or that teaches me something, but not enough.
16:59 Steven Bartlett? And so this year, I'm upgrading my library. One by one, I'm unfollowing anybody on my timeline that tweets or posts stuff that I don't think is serving to improve my mental state, my information, my perspective on the world. And I'm replacing them with one person that is. I genuinely believe, and I think psychology backs this up, that by doing this, you can really change your life. One of the, the books I read recently talks about how our unconscious mind is tremendously influenced by everything we see and read every single day.
17:39 Steven Bartlett? And that we're actually priming our mind by the things we're reading and by the information we're consuming. So for instance, if you walk into an office one day and just before you get to work, there's a big sign that says, you're gonna have a great day. The majority of people who see that sign will then report on a questionnaire that they are happy and optimistic about the day they have ahead of them. If you walk into work and you see a sign that says you're gonna have a bad day. Psychology and scientists have proved that people, a great amount of people, will over-index as to saying they think they're gonna have a bad day, even if you can't remember seeing that sign. That's your subconscious at work.
18:23 Steven Bartlett? And so the same thing is in play when you log into social media. If you're seeing negativity, if you're seeing misinformation, if you're seeing things that are bringing your mood, your state, or your perspective down, that will change your world. And so I'm going to upgrade my library and I implore all of you to do so. In the short amount of time that I've unfollowed a couple of people and I've followed more people that are informative, not only have I learned things and become more positive, but I've managed to unclutter my life and get a tremendous amount of negativity out of it. Upgrade your library.
18:58 Steven Bartlett? Okay, so the next point in my diary is about your network and how important your network is. I learnt this lesson while I was in Sri Lanka. And as I drove through the jungles in Sri Lanka, I turned to my driver and I said, can you take me to a place that does whitewater rafting? And he sets off down the hill and he drives past a place that does whitewater rafting and I point to it and said, there's a place here, stop, stop, stop. And he didn't stop and he carried on going and he says, I know a place. He drove past ten more whitewater rafting places that all had the rafts out front before he pulled up at this one place and said, here, here we go, we're here. And so I jump out and I go whitewater rafting and I jump back in the car. I tell him to take me to a restaurant. He drives past loads of restaurants, pulls up at one restaurant.
19:43 Steven Bartlett? I tell him I wanna go buy souvenirs. He drives past loads of souvenir places and pulls up at one souvenir shop. By this time, I realised there's a pattern. He's selectively taking me to certain places. And so I put the question to him. Are you making commission from the places you take me to? And he honestly, he stumbled his words and eventually he admitted it. He said, yes. And in that moment, I actually thought it was quite smart. I wasn't offended. I said to him, I think that's really smart. Um, because what he had done was he'd built a network and he was leveraging that network to make money. But also I was more impressed by the suppliers, by the, the whitewater rafting place, the restaurants, the souvenir shop.
20:26 Steven Bartlett? And he told me that in Sri Lanka and India, network is everything. You can build a successful business just off who you know. And he told me that the people that are most successful in Sri Lanka are just those that have a contact at the tour operators or with a driver. Because the drivers will just take all of the, the rich foreign foreigners to their places. And I thought about this for a little while while I was in the back of the car and I reflected upon my own network and how valuable network had been important, had been to me over the last couple of years. And in my first year in business, when I was 18 years old, my network was everything. My network was much of the reason I had any chance at all.
21:08 Steven Bartlett? Um, when I started my first business, my network saved me repeatedly from going bankrupt. Uh, on three occasions in particular, when, when I ran out of money. Um, and my network was everything. And, and so we often spend tremendous amounts of time as entrepreneurs trying to improve our products or our, our people or ourselves. But I don't think many of us really, really understand the importance of your network. There are so many tremendous entrepreneurs I've read about that have got to billions and billions of pounds in revenues just by one person, one client, one supplier that they managed to meet. Your network can change the game.
21:54 Steven Bartlett? And so I really think you should have a network strategy. What I mean by this is a strategy for growing your network with the right types of people, whether it be on social media or in real life. And so in 2018, for the first time in my life ever, I wrote my own network strategy. And, uh, I'm, uh, focusing on expanding my network with interesting people who I think can add a lot of value to me, but also I think I can add a lot of value to them. So I've got a short list and, uh, who knows, maybe some of you guys are on it. Your network is everything.
22:30 Steven Bartlett? Okay, so the next point in my diary, I've just written, take what you're given or get what you take. And I guess this is a perspective thing. One of the things I've I've learned over the last couple of years from doing the job that I do now. And we have one hundred and seventy two members of staff within Social Chain Group. And the Social Chain Group, which is the top company, has three hundred and fifty odd members of staff. One of the things I've learned is the people that get ahead and get more from life are the ones that ask for more. And it sounds like a very simple theory, but really, it really underpins everything I've noticed. I think a lot of people think that what they're given is all they're able to get. And so they go through their life just taking what they're given.
23:14 Steven Bartlett? And then there's this other contingent of people who go through life, realizing that they can have what they ask for. And they end up getting what they take. And this is not just for CEOs or entrepreneurs, it's for employees too. I see that within my own business. There are some people who will ask for more responsibility, they'll ask for more. You know, an increase in their role, they'll ask for more and they'll back it up with work and, you know, they'll be talented. So they'll get it. And then there are some people who will just continually take, will get what they're given. They'll never ask for anything else. And so the amount that they're going to receive in their life is really down to others.
23:52 Steven Bartlett? And the message I have for everybody listening to this is to really embrace this idea that you can decide what you get. You can design your own life, however you want it to be, but you have to believe you can. And that's really the the secret to to to getting to getting what you take is believing that you can.
24:19 Steven Bartlett? It's interesting. When I spoke to my ex-girlfriend when I was in India, she was talking about some of the ambitions she had. And the way she was talking about it was hopeful. I really find it hard to believe in people that are hopeful. I like to believe in people that don't hope for stuff, that believe they're going to get it. Because the truth that I found in my personal life anyway, and from my own experiences in the last couple of years, is that you can genuinely get whatever you want, right? If you just believe you can. There should be a book called Belief, and the first two words in this book should just be self-belief.
25:03 Steven Bartlett? And the end, that should be the most popular book ever sold, because self-belief to me is everything. When I was seventeen years old, I said to a few of my friends, I said, "One day, I'm going to be on the red sofa on BBC Breakfast." I don't know why I wanted to do that, but I just said I would be. And last week, there I was at twenty-five years old, sat on the red sofa at nine AM on BBC Breakfast. I don't know how that happened,
25:30 Steven Bartlett? but I just believed I would be somebody that would sit on that sofa one day. And by the luck of, call it luck, call it whatever you want, there I was, sat on that sofa. I think what I want to leave with people in my life, if there's one message, it would be that you can be anything or anyone you want to be if you would just believe it.
25:53 Steven Bartlett? I think that's going to be my life's mission, and I'm fine to die with that, you know, mission half-complete. But I just think that's a really, really important message, and I think the world would be a much more happy place if we all got to be who we wanted to be. And as I said, that starts with self-belief.
26:13 Steven Bartlett? The next point in my diary, I've just written, get rich slowly, state of mind. And I know exactly why I wrote this in my diary. Um, scrolling through Facebook, I see a tremendous amount of spammy fake ads of people offering me really simple, apparently simple ways to get rich quickly. And we all know that most of these things are a scam and are just ways for people to try and make money from you. But we do live in a world, unfortunately, where this is just catering to a demand. People do want to get rich really quickly. They want to play the lottery and make themselves millionaires and all these things. And I've come to learn over the last couple of years, and even in the last couple of weeks, that you should never aspire to get rich quickly. You should aspire to get rich slowly.
26:57 Steven Bartlett? Instead of winning the lottery, which, you know, is a temporary thing, where you'll probably end up spending all the money anyway and making yourself tremendously unhappy. Um, because of the anti-kymax that your addiction or your desire for wealth will create. You should endeavour to get rich slowly. And this means learning, it means information, it means by personal and self-development and building wealth, not richness. And wealth to me is also a state of mind. Richness is getting the right numbers right on the lottery. Wealth is longevity, it's sustainable, it's rewarding, it's earned.
27:36 Steven Bartlett? And so I want to shift the perception that getting rich quickly is the desired thing. I want people, and even in myself, I want to embrace the journey of getting rich slowly. I think that's a much happier way to get yourself to financial freedom. And I think it's a way that will provide longevity for you, your kids and your kids' kids in the future.
28:00 Steven Bartlett? So the next point in my diary, I guess, isn't even a point. It's just a scribble that I wrote in the back of a tuk tuk in India. And being completely honest, I don't even know why I wrote it, but I'm just going to share it with you and just leave it as that. I wrote, "We don't choose to learn all of our lessons in life. Unfortunately, some of those lessons have to suck. But in sucking, they serve to prevent from making the future suck so much. So be happy you learnt them now." And there you go, that was the whole, the whole point.
28:32 Steven Bartlett? Okay, so the next point in my diary is about, this is funny, I wrote controlled savage. And the reason why I wrote this is because in business, one of the things I think has become really important to me is being able to be both ends of the spectrum when it comes to my perceived emotions. So being able to be super compassionate and calm and relaxed, and also being able to be slightly more aggressive and stern and direct with people. And the compassionate side of it tends to come into play when you're dealing with your teams and things like that. And then the more direct side of things tends to come into play when you're dealing with suppliers or people that are trying to take the piss out
29:14 Steven Bartlett? of you, or to charge you more than things actually cost. And I've been surrounded by a lot of people who are able to do both ends of the spectrum. Often they tend to live more at one end of the spectrum. But what I've noticed is it's incredibly important in business, just from my own perspective and in my own opinion, to be able to do both. So it's important to be the nice guy, but also to be the tough guy at the same time. But where people go wrong is when they lose control of their emotions. So when you can't control being the stern guy or girl, or the aggressive
29:56 Steven Bartlett? girl, because you have to be at times. I know for a fact, if there weren't certain moments where I was much more stern or direct with my suppliers, let's say, they would shaft me. They would cost me tremendous amounts of money. They have to know that there's a line and they have to respect that line. And often, the way that you do that is by being a little bit more stern, direct, and I guess aggressive. This is something that I learned involuntarily from my mentors. Many of my business mentors, not naming any names, are just absolute fucking animals when it comes to getting deals done. And when it comes to negotiations, they will tell you to fuck off. They'll tell you you're ripping
30:36 Steven Bartlett? them off. They will smash things in front of you. But they've built billion pound companies and they're tremendously successful. So it's hard for me to not believe in that approach to some extent. The important thing, and what I've come to learn over the years, is control. So when I do.
30:55 Steven Bartlett? Become very direct or very aggressive or very stern. It can't be an emotional thing. It has to be an act. If there's ever a time where I lose my emotions, I tend to lose. So I've developed the ability to be very aggressive without it being an emotional reaction. Because, you know, you never win in that, in that field. So one of the things that I've, I'm really going to continue to work on is this controlling both ends of my emotions, but deploying both. If any of you listening to this now don't have the aggression in your locker room, I promise you it comes in handy. And if you don't have compassion in your locker room, I promise you it comes in handy. You have to have both.
31:37 Steven Bartlett? But of course, as one of my mentors taught me this week, in order to control anyone else, you have to first learn to control yourself. And that's incredibly, incredibly important.
31:50 Steven Bartlett? The next point in my diary is about mental health issues and anxiety and depression and all those things. As my life has got more and more complex, right? And when I say complex, I mean, busier, there's more technology involved in my world, there's more people involved in my life, there's more people messaging me, more notifications, all of these things, there's much more complexity to my world. I've noticed that my state changes at times in ways it didn't used to in the past. So I would get more anxious at certain moments and I'd feel sort of like butterflies in my stomach and these kinds of things, which I never felt before. And so one of the things that I've, I've been on a sort of personal mission to understand is how we as a society have been impacted by this incredibly complex world.
32:34 Steven Bartlett? I'll never ever forget when I went to Thailand and I visited a family that lived at a bottom of a hill and they didn't have internet or mobile phones or anything at all. And they were just insanely, from all accounts, insanely happy. And I thought for a second about how simple their world must be. They live in their own little house with no neighbours, they have no internet, no wifi, no nothing. How simple and peaceful must their world be?
33:02 Steven Bartlett? I'm almost jealous of that. We live in this tremendously, you know, busy, buzzing world which never sleeps and no wonder the kids and teenagers are struggling with mental health issues and anxiety like never before. And so in my own personal sort of journey, one thing I'm trying to do is make my life much more simple, much less complex. I've turned off all notifications on everything I have. So I don't get notified any, any more about messages, WhatsApps, text messages, emails, anything. I go to my inboxes. They don't come to me. And I've put in a weekly massage. I did yoga for the first time as well. And I spend time now, I bought a Kindle, so I'm spending a lot of time reading.
33:47 Steven Bartlett? And I'm also gonna be walking the dogs a lot more in the weekends to try and get out more. And this is the most drastic one, which I think a lot of you probably won't believe. But I'm turning my phone off on Sunday evenings. So Sunday evenings, I'm off the grid. I'm off internet and I'm just in books. This is part of me trying to take control back of my own life. There's a lot of videos that have been going viral lately. And one of them is by a Facebook executive. And here's what he says.
34:19 Speaker 02 We kind of knew something bad could happen. We have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works. People need to hard break from some of these tools and the things that you rely on. The short-term dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works. No civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth, bad actors can now manipulate large swaths of people.
34:55 Speaker 02 To do anything you want.
34:56 Steven Bartlett? And for me, I find that tremendously, tremendously concerning. But I find it dangerously true. We are controlled by these things we've created. And I think we're in the generation now where we have to admit it and do things to take back control. Because our productivity, our mental health, our relationships, and our very sort of social fabric is being eroded away at and um yeah, it doesn't have to be the case. Okay, so in chapter eight of the podcast, I told you that criticism has become one of the most important things to me because often as business leaders, we just seek out
35:36 Steven Bartlett? praise and we find it very, very difficult to seek out criticism because it will hurt the ego. But really, a good constructive criticism holds tremendous value. It's worth its weight in gold. And so I said to you as a sort of personal challenge that I would send out an anonymous questionnaire to all of my team, a hundred and seventy odd people, and I would ask them to criticize me. I'd ask them what I could be better at, what I wasn't good at, et cetera, et cetera. And I'd ask them to answer anonymously, but also honestly. And that's exactly what I did. So I really asked ten questions about how I could be better. And then I asked a penultimate question, which was, do you feel valued by me? And here are the answers.
36:19 Steven Bartlett? The general gist was that I was very selfless. I'm very generous and very friendly and supportive. One of the big learnings is the impact of just saying well done and nice work. It was interesting, one person literally could cite seven months ago, the moment when I said, nice work, well done to the person that sits next to him or her. And that really, really blew my mind. And as I continued to read through the answers, there was this general trend that just that little nice work or that well done was having a tremendous impact on people. And that is free. Just to say well done to the person you're working with is free. And by all accounts, it means a tremendous amount. So I've, in my personal life, tried to.
37:03 Steven Bartlett? Introduce this thing I'm calling the well done culture where I'm asking our leaders to feedback to me at all times, anybody that's done anything above and beyond or good or you know, anything at all that could could earn a well done and creating those feedback loops so that I can then go to that person and say, listen, I've been I've been hearing great things about you. Um, just wanted to say well done on this. Not only do I mean it, but it's a it's it's incredibly meaningful for the person you say it to. I think everybody should think about that. That little well done holds so much value. The next thing, um, people said they would love to speak to me more. Someone said that I need need to set clearer timeframes on when I'll deliver things. Someone said I'm always in a rush.
37:44 Steven Bartlett? I need to sleep more. I need to relax more. Um, people said that they thought new teammates wanted to spend more time with me and that I need to spend more time building relationships with new teammates. I I do do my best to try, but obviously with um, time constraints, it's tricky. What I've done now is I've made sure that every single person that starts at social chain immediately goes into my diary for a five, 10 minute session where we'll just catch up and get to know each other. The problem I have is when people start at social chain in the various offices around the world, I'm of often not there for their initiation. So they might work at social chain for weeks before I've even got a chance to meet them. Um, someone said, how about the teams just get to go for lunch with you a little bit more? Um, people said I communicate effectively enough. Those that thought I didn't
38:27 Steven Bartlett? communicate effectively enough or often enough, um, cited the fact that they knew I was busy, so they understood. Um, everybody wants more information and clarity and transparency on where the company is going. Um, and they want to know about their own personal progression. They want more training and a better induction process into the company. We've always been guilty of just kind of chucking people in the deep end a little bit. So we've introduced a more clear, longer induction process and a history lesson on the business. They want clearer objectives. They want cleaner cups for clients. Uh huh. They want um, a better working printer. But most importantly of all, they want self-development. They want um, training courses and they want more time, I guess, more time with me, which was a big
39:12 Steven Bartlett? trend within the answers. The most important question I asked was the last question, which was, do you feel valued? And ninety nine point nine percent said yes, and one person said no. And it's interesting that that one no really, really haunted me, I'd say. And you weirdly start looking around the room and thinking, who doesn't feel valued? And part of me is really, really, really happy that there's that one person that doesn't feel valued. Because I tell you how it changed my perspective, knowing that that could be anybody, anybody of a hundred and seventy people. It made me really, really think about, not that I don't already, but it really made me focus on how I talk to everybody.
39:55 Steven Bartlett? Because one day, when I'm in a rush or when I'm busy doing something, I might be a little bit blunt or a bit too straightforward with that one person that already doesn't feel valued. You don't know who it is, could be anybody. Um, and so it's, you know, it's made me make sure that I, uh, I'm always on my game with everybody at all times, I guess. But it's not too bad. Ninety nine percent is, um, is okay. I'm working on that one person, whoever you are, you're probably listening to this. Okay. And lastly, as always, I wanted to end this podcast talking about my relationships, um, my romantic relationships. So here's the thing, I didn't go to India and Sri Lanka alone, I went with my ex-girlfriend. Um, and you guys and girls that have been listening to this podcast will know that I have an ex-girlfriend
40:40 Steven Bartlett? who used to be my P A at Social Chain, she's moved to Australia. Um, we started talking again, we both always wanted to go to India, so we went. She flew from Australia, I flew to India and we had a really good time together. And it was really, really sad to leave because upon leaving, I realized that she's flying back to, well, not that I realized, I knew. She flies back to Australia on a twelve hour flight and I fly back to the UK and we're twenty four hours away again. Um, but it was just great, it was great to catch up, it was great to rekindle our friendship. Um, and to spend quality time together while we were there. Who knows what the future holds for me and her? She lives on the opposite side of the world, I live in the UK. Um, but one thing I do know for sure.
41:25 Steven Bartlett? And this is more true now than it's ever been in my life. I am really good. I'm really happy. I'm I'm content. I'm really happy with everything in my life. I have no desires or any gaps in my life that need to be filled by somebody. Not to say that I wouldn't be in a relationship with somebody or anything like that. I'm just not needing for that right now. Um.
41:52 Steven Bartlett? And that's probably one of the the, I guess it's a first in my life, where I genuinely think I'm I'm cool. I come home at night with my dogs and I get in bed and I'm happy, you know? And this probably means this is the time when I'm ready for somebody else, right? When I'm most complete on my own.
42:12 Steven Bartlett? So yeah, that's a thought to to leave you on. Right. So next week on the podcast, we've got some very, very exciting things coming. Um, I'm sitting down with Dom, the person in this world that probably knows me best. He's the person I started the business with. We have tremendous stories, which we've never told before, from when we started the company, the highs, the horrific lows, um, the struggle, the pain and all those things. And so I think having the conversation with the one person in this world that's been through all of my life with me, at least my professional life with me, is going to be incredibly, incredibly insightful and hopefully quite inspiring because Dom doesn't always get the credit. He doesn't always get the the spotlight and he he doesn't
42:54 Steven Bartlett? always opt for it. But Dom has been through a tremendous journey himself and he's an incredibly inspiring guy. He's just quit drinking. He's now a marathon runner. Um, he's lost more weight than I probably weigh. Um, and so I can't wait to bring him on in chapter 10 of the Diary of a CEO. That is going to be my favorite podcast to date. So please, please, please subscribe and you'll be the first to find out when it drops. All you've got to do is hit that subscribe button on the iTunes store. Or if you're listening on SoundCloud, then you can just follow the channel there. Thank you so much for listening. Do give me a five star rating in the in the App Store if you've enjoyed the podcast. I hope to see you again next week and I cannot wait. To introduce you to Dom, who is an absolute superstar and my best friend in all the world.
43:39 Steven Bartlett? So yeah, chapter 10, see you there.
Previous E8: Advice from Elon Musk, Warren Buffet and Steve Jobs Next E10: Dom's Diary - Mental Health, Addiction & Quitting Business Page updated October 25, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
