E15: Gerard Adams - A $50m Elite Exit

In this Chapter, I meet Gerard Adams - A born entrepreneur. He takes us through his journey of struggle, success & tough decisions as he grew one of the most popular online publishers - Elite daily, through to it's sale to the Daily Mail. Now heading up an incubator for entrepreneurs in Fownders, Gerard's mission is bigger than ever. 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.

• 0:01Steven Bartlett?

  Jared Adams, co-founder of Elite Daily. Sold his company in his twenties for $50 million. But this isn't the story you would expect. This isn't the what did you buy? How did it feel? This is the story of immense pressure, betrayal, threats, choosing to start again from the bottom and figuring out that sometimes in life, our greatest regrets become our greatest blessings. Before you dedicate your life to trying to follow in Jared's footsteps, you need to listen to this. I ask him personal questions that he admits he's never thought about before. He's an inspiration, a born entrepreneur, and he's a man on a new mission. Without further ado, this is chapter 15. And I'm Stephen Butler. This is the diary of a CEO. I hope nobody is listening.

• 0:46Steven Bartlett?

  But if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

• 1:02Steven Bartlett?

  Jared, thank you for joining us today. It's an honour to meet you. My first experience with a company that you created was in a cab in New York about four or five years ago. And I got on an Uber pool, I think it was. And a guy turned to me and he said, I work at Elite Daily. And he gave me his card and we started chatting. We promised to meet up in the future, but we didn't in the end. That was the first I'd heard of Elite Daily. And then as I got more and more active on Facebook, it feels like it was all I ever saw. And so, meeting you today is in some ways putting a face to a name, which is the brand that you created, which was for our generation, an absolute monster. And I think to some people, it definitely still is. You have more than a story. You have a journey. And I think that's fair to say because I've seen the path you've taken,

• 1:46Steven Bartlett?

  both in terms of being a CEO, but also the sort of more spiritual, purposeful path you've taken. What I want to do to start is And this is something that I do with all the guests that I meet is give you a minute to try and tell me your birth to present moment story. And then we'll dig down and this isn't easy, but if you're up for it, that'd be amazing.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I'm grateful that you've taken the time to come over to Newark, New Jersey, you know, near where I grew up to do this interview and I admire your work. You know, I really do just sitting before we went live and like really looking at the growth of what you created at such a young age and being in a similar space and similar generation, building a monstrous media company. I look forward to learning from you. I love this. I love meeting new people that I feel are on a similar journey. And I feel like no matter what, you know, we all have a different story and we all can learn from each other. So I look forward to building our relationship. You know, you're somebody that I feel like I can really relate to both, not just in business, but your character. Obviously you must be a great leader and everything around me is around is really

• 2:50Speaker 01

  creating and and working with some of the greatest leaders of our generation. And you seem to be on that path and really doing that and executing on it. So, you know, I look forward to building our friendship.

• 3:02Steven Bartlett?

  And that's the thing. So a lot of the questions I'll ask today are based on the fact that I think you've got things and experiences that I'm yet to get. And I think much of the reason why we seek mentors in life is because we want to not have to go through some things ourselves if other people have gone down those journeys and have can shout back what's down that path. So some of the questions I'll ask today will be centered around that as well. But without further ado, one minute on the clock.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  Okay, one minute. You know, I would say like I grew up, so my whole family grew up right here in Newark, New Jersey, and I went to a school near Newark. For me, my mom and dad were really the the anchor of my entire life. I was blessed to have really great parents that guided me. They're my first mentors. My mother, I saw her work seven days a week at a local supermarket. That was my first job. My father taught me leadership, but I ended up starting going down the wrong path. I ended up getting into a gang when I was in high school and hustling drugs. And I had an instance where everything was about to completely take me, you know, down the path of like either debt or jail. And I ended up getting pulled over by police officers.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  Long story short, I had a second chance and I was able to get out of that. And I realized that. For me, I really wanted to channel that hustle mentality into business. But I didn't know really how to do it. Similar to you, I ended up wanting to make my parents proud and I ended up going to college. I dropped out my first semester, but what changed the game for me was mentorship. It started with my mother and father, but then I was able to seek out another mentor in my life. And now I have, you know, many, many mentors. But through working with mentors throughout my entire journey of 15 years as an entrepreneur, it's allowed me to continue to really grow and become a real entrepreneur. And I've failed many, many, many times, but I've continued my entire life to just surround myself

• 4:52Speaker 01

  with quality individuals and be humble enough to not want to be the smartest person in the room and continue to learn and just get comfortable with doing the things that are risky and uncertain. I've gotten through a lot of it and I'm continuing to be a student at the game of life.

• 5:07Steven Bartlett?

  That led to your first startup, which was in investing?

• 5:10Speaker 01

  My first startup, yeah.

• 5:12Steven Bartlett?

  Your first startup?

• 5:13Speaker 01

  My first startup was an online publication known as Stockspot. So when I met that first mentor, when I decided to drop out my first semester, I was literally during finals week and I just like looked around and I was like, this isn't for me. What am I doing here? I literally just walked out, walked out of finals. And I could have gotten like credits for like going through the whole semester for at least one semester, you know? But I knew that was like, all right, if I'm going to do this, I need to go all in. I just felt that intuition and I've always been a person that is...

• 5:43Steven Bartlett?

  Impulsive?

• 5:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, like I follow intuition. Cliff jumping, jumping out of a plane, like I'm willing to take that leap of faith. If there's one thing I've grown up with, it's strong faith. I was named after a saint and you know, my church was really big for me like growing up.

• 5:59Steven Bartlett?

  Where did that come from? Cause that's self-belief, right? The way the education system works now is we kind of condition people to go down a certain path and be grateful for going down that path. Where does that self-belief and that feeling that you were different come from?

• 6:11Speaker 01

  Having good parenting, I know a lot of people unfortunately don't have that. You know, for me, like my mother and father, hearing the stories when my grandparents immigrated to this country and what they went through with nothing to be able to build a family here, just impacted me on a whole nother level. And basically, they just always pushed me that like, no matter what, I may not be the smartest kid. I wasn't a great student, but they believed in me. Like, I wanted to go to art school. It was really because of them. To be honest, it wasn't like I had all the belief. In fact, it was like the opposite. I'll never forget, like, I actually cried during like my last year of high school because I, you know, all my friends were getting into these good colleges and things. And I had gone through hustling and I was just like, was lost. And I didn't think that I was destined for much.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  I was, you know, I didn't know where to go, what I was gonna do in life.

• 6:59Steven Bartlett?

  When did that change?

• 7:00Speaker 01

  That day, I dropped out.

• 7:01Steven Bartlett?

  So you dropped out of college?

• 7:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, that semester, when I put that pencil down and I walked out of that, out of that classroom and I had a mentor that I had met and I would drive to his house and I became an apprentice. And that's when it started to change for me because I started to learn about building online communities. I started learning about digital marketing. I started seeing how he was investing into stocks. And that's when I was like, okay, I can do this. Like, here's a guy who's in his twenties, I'm young, he's figured something out, I can figure this out. And for me, it was like, I don't care what it takes, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make this work. I'm gonna figure it out, I'm gonna learn it. And I'm gonna, and I was just obsessed with like, learning about business. And that led me to that first, that first online community that I built to learn from other stock traders.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  Basically, that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to learn about stocks, so I created a forum. That forum was called StockSpot. And basically, every member had a rating similar to eBay, one to five stars, color coordinated. And I built it because I just was trying to create a solution to my own problem, which is, how do I find a like-minded community of people that are trading stocks, investing into companies, so that I can learn from them? That ended up becoming the first, like, the first platform I built with $5,000. Basically, getting that off, I stayed up till four in the morning. I would go on every message board online and basically be like, Go to StockSpot to talk about stocks, you know, spamming everything, you know.

• 8:25Steven Bartlett?

  Gorilla back.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  Gorilla, yeah, yeah. And that was the beginning of when I knew I was on to something. When I finally had people signing up and communicating on there and then I had one company call me and say, hey, I want to advertise on your platform, you know, I want to get in front of all those people. And that's when I realized, I was like, wait a second, I can actually, I can make money doing this.

• 8:46Steven Bartlett?

  And how did.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  That changed.

• 8:47Steven Bartlett?

  How did that lead to Elite Daily? I know you met a young guy called David.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 8:51Steven Bartlett?

  And David, you had this idea, you talked about it. Eventually you launch Elite Daily, again gorilla hustling, connecting the dots. It grows into this big business. I'm fast forwarding here a little bit, but if I miss anything, that's important. As the company grows, you need that growth capital as we all do. So you take investment. And then you get to a point where the, you get an offer from the Daily Mail to, to sell the company. And in that moment, you, you kind of plunge into, I guess, a bit of confusion. You've never done this before. The reason why I fast forwarded to that point is because selfishly, selfishly, it's the most relevant moment to myself in a, in a sense. I remember when I got that first

• 9:31Steven Bartlett?

  offer to sell my company and how much it messed with me because it's the first time when it became real and the decision to sell my like purpose for money was a real one. How was it for you on that day when you got an offer to sell the company? How did it feel?

• 9:49Speaker 01

  And it was really exciting.

• 9:50Steven Bartlett?

  Tens of millions as well.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. So it was really, really exciting because it wasn't the fact that like when we got the offer, I was ready to sell. It was just that, what you just said, it was like that validation that like, okay, we've created something here like, you know, when we started Elite Daily, it was in my apartment. It was an idea. David that you mentioned was eighteen years old. I mentored him. His father was away and he became just like a friend of mine, like a little brother to me. And my little brother, my other co-founder Jonathan St. Pedro, which was a friend of David's as well, was us three. And to go from like this idea we had buying a domain name on GoDaddy for nine dollars and ninety nine cents in an apartment to now eighty million unique visitors and inhabit.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  That offer, it was like, we, yes, like, we, we validated, but I was like, we're not selling. But this is great. Like, let's keep going because that's only gonna grow. We're only gonna get more and more offers. We're only gonna attract more and more. Like, we finally, for me, it was like, that validation of, yes, like, now, we have the credibility. Because, prior to that, we didn't feel like we had credibility. People didn't believe it was real. You know, I'll never forget, like, bigger publications actually started to like, write negative articles about us. And they were like, these aren't real journalists, like, this publication is like, a bunch of garbage. A lot of people didn't even really believe that the traffic was real.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  We were always kind of these underdogs in the media space, especially here in the United States. And, you know, for us, we craved that. We're like, no, like, we're the underdogs, but we're real. Like, we are a threat. We are someone out there who's not gonna stop. We're for our generation, by our generation, nothing's stopping us. This is bigger than us, and we're creating a voice of our generation, whether you like it or not.

• 11:35Steven Bartlett?

  So why did you sell?

• 11:37Speaker 01

  Well, so, you know, when that day came, my co-founders, we were scaling at such a high pace. And, believe it or not, we were doing, we got that offer of our acquisition during our raise of our second round.

• 11:50Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  And the venture capitalists started to like, work against us. And they were trying to get the valuation lower. When that offer came in, our lead investor, which is one of the biggest venture capital funds in the country, basically, they care about wins.

• 12:06Steven Bartlett?

  They care about numbers, right?

• 12:08Speaker 01

  They care about numbers, they care about wins. So I actually got a letter in the mail that was like, this is the best decision, and, take it. Almost like a threatening letter.

• 12:16Steven Bartlett?

  A letter in the mail?

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:17Steven Bartlett?

  In the post?

• 12:19Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, what do you mean?

• 12:19Steven Bartlett?

  In the, in the-

• 12:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, mail.

• 12:20Steven Bartlett?

  A little, a physical letter.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  Physical letter. And I remember getting that, and like, dang, this is like, interesting. And at the same time, my co-founders were like, no, like, this is the right decision to make. We're gonna sell. And I remember taking a walk with my co-founder, we used to always go for walks in the park, to talk about big decisions, kind of old school. We'd sit on the bench. And I'll never forget, one of the last times we did that, you know, he was just like, really, had all this weight on his shoulders, every investor's talking to him, he was just like, Gerard, like- You know, I'm done.

• 12:50Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 12:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was like, I'm done. I think it's the right decision and I'm stressed and I think that this is the right move.

• 12:56Steven Bartlett?

  What caused the stress?

• 12:57Speaker 01

  At that time, we had 200 employees. We went from like the three of us having, you know, lean and mean team of like eventually like 10, 10 people to like 200 people and we had to make payroll. That's why we're raising money. So I think the stress of like having to make payroll. But we had this acquisition, 200 people's lives you're responsible for. They're all young and like believing in you. And the biggest thing was Facebook was changing their algorithms and this is the reason why we sold. And I'll never forget the day of that board meeting, I, I raised $5 million to give us the option to not sell, to keep going. But both of my co-founders, I pulled them out to another room and looked them in the eyes like, look, we got, I got the 5 million. Let's do this, you know, let's stick this thing out. And they were like, gee, we did it.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  Like it may not be the big exit that, you know, but it's not about the money, but like this gives security to everybody who believed in us. The Daily Mail is this amazing organization that'll like keep the journey going and they were like sold on it. And they were like, what we do after this is really what matters. How we can take this and, and really moving on to doing something that's more purposeful. So when we went back into that room and it was very emotional because for me, the one thing my mentor told me is like rule of thumb, man, if, if both your other co-founders are out and it's a win for everyone, then you should go with your co-founder and then replace them.

• 14:16Steven Bartlett?

  You talk a little bit about the stress there of running a business and it's a stress I know well. In a previous chapter in this podcast, chapter six, I sat with my co-founder Dom and Dom went through a very similar thing. As the company grew and we had to make payroll, he suffered some mental health issues and even talks about the time where he genuinely at a train station thought, what if I just jump in front of this train now? It got that hard for him and it was hard for both of us. And so he started doing drugs and he fell into sort of alcoholism and he completely lost himself. We live in a bit of a world where our generation have started to really think that entrepreneurship is this kind of rock star.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:53Steven Bartlett?

  Super cool thing. Much of the reason why I do this podcast is to tell the truth.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:59Steven Bartlett?

  What are the truths?

• 15:01Speaker 01

  It is the best and worst thing that ever happened to you.

• 15:04Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm, amen.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  It's the best and worst thing that ever happened to you. Like, it's the utmost freedom. I wouldn't change anything. I would never, ever do it. Like, entrepreneurship is, is... I feel so, like, grateful for the fact that every day I get to go out and create and have the ability to, you know, shape and create my reality. It's amazing, but at the same time, it is definitely the hardest thing in the world. Like, those moments when you, you know, you don't know if you're gonna be able to pay for your rent, if you can eat. I've been completely bootstrapped to the point where, like, I've had to sacrifice making anything for myself in honor of my team and everyone around me. I was the big brother of the, of the, of the co-founders. So I was like, "We got this." I have faith.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  I was a little bit older at this time. I've been through some failures. I think my, my co-founder's never been through that kind of failure. So I think the fear of failure, the opportunity of like, "No, this could be a win." You know, like, "I don't wanna be that failure. I don't wanna have it, and it's working, and then lose it." I can't speak for, for, you know, for them, to be honest, but ultimately, that kinda... It is one of the most stressful things you will do.

• 16:17Steven Bartlett?

  Is it for everybody?

• 16:19Speaker 01

  No. It's definitely not for everybody.

• 16:21Steven Bartlett?

  How'd you know if it's for you?

• 16:24Speaker 01

  If you feel like you can't go to sleep, but you can't wait to wake up.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  It's that kind of, like, passion. It's like, you just don't even wanna go to sleep 'cause you're just that excited. You're like, keep it going. And then, like, when you do, you just can't wait to wake up 'cause you're like, you're, you're gonna get back at it again. It's an adrenaline, it's like, it's... You, you have to be a certain kind of individual to, to get comfortable with uncertainty. It's just that simple. Some people need security. They need to know that, like, everything's okay. And then entrepreneurs are the ones that are completely comfortable. There are no rules. They're just completely okay with doing the most, the hard thing, the most uncertain thing, the most uncomfortable thing.

• 17:09Steven Bartlett?

  And are you okay with going back to zero?

• 17:12Speaker 01

  That's exactly what I've done after the exit. You know, I came back to Newark. You know, thirty-three percent of the population here is below poverty. I didn't touch the money. You know, I basically sent it to a trust. And I basically was like, I'm gonna start from complete scratch and like reevaluate like what I'm meant to do. How I wanna pursue being an entrepreneur going forward.

• 17:32Steven Bartlett?

  Most people, when they exit a company and it's a, you know, tens of millions of pound exit or dollar exit, they'll probably buy a fast car, buy a really nice house, ball out a little bit, go to the club. After your exit, you talk about falling into a bit of a depression. Why was that?

• 17:51Speaker 01

  I was like the lone wolf in that board meeting, trying to convince a whole room of investors and the two co-founders that I started this company with to not sell. I did everything. I raised five million dollars within ten days just to keep us going. And I made a speech in front of the whole room. And I like genuinely was like, I don't, you know, I'm okay with if Facebook changed their algorithms. We'll get through it. We'll adapt and we'll keep going. You know, we have a brand. We have something that stands for something. You know, it's different than like if we just, I felt we had built like, I just, you know, we had just built something with a lot of, a lot of traffic and we were like really good at creating. I felt like we had a brand. I remember going to Italy for one of my other investment portfolio companies.

• 18:35Speaker 01

  And I had my Elite Daily shirt on and like people stopped me in the street and were like, yo, I like reading Elite Daily like every day. Like it's the one thing that like pushes me every day. For me, that just meant something. I felt the Elite Daily name was invaluable. It was like almost like priceless in a way for me.

• 18:55Steven Bartlett?

  You said in an interview before that you sold at the right time. If you were a hundred percent honest with yourself.

• 19:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:02Steven Bartlett?

  Do you wish you hadn't sold? Or do you wish you could have persuaded them differently?

• 19:05Speaker 01

  No, I don't regret it. I don't regret it. I mean, for sure, I went through it being depressed. But like, if I didn't sell, I don't think I would have.

• 19:13Steven Bartlett?

  Found yourself.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  Found myself, yeah. Like, I didn't really ever think about legacy. I didn't really ever think about like what my purpose was. I think, deep, deep, deep down inside of, at that point, I was, I was the mentor of like my co-founders. And I've been mentoring people, I've been investing in people. But I, it really started to clear why I'm doing what I'm doing.

• 19:32Steven Bartlett?

  You said in an interview, I think you did with Founder, when they asked you what, the one piece of advice you'd give to a young person, you said, "What do I truly want in life?" And you're saying to ask yourself this question. Where am I going and what is it all truly for? That's what you'd say to a young person. Can you answer that question for yourself now? Can you answer the question, where are you going and what is it all truly for?

• 19:59Speaker 01

  So.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  Where am I, where am I really going? I guess like, for, for me,

• 20:12Speaker 01

  it's, I think I've gotten really comfortable with the process and the journey at this point. Whereas I, in the past, I had these big ambitions, whether it was like monetarily or the different types of companies I was launching. And I think now where I'm going is, every single day, I'm more so just like, working on how to become a better leader for myself. Okay with the fact that like, I don't know how much time I really have. And I want to do everything I can every single day to just inspire my team, inspire the people that follow me to, to like, ask themselves those questions. I really carried a lot of weight that I had to save people through entrepreneurship. And now I realize it's not my duty to save anyone. It's my duty to just live my best life, continue to work on myself.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  And through that, be selfless and inspiring others to do the same, to really make sure that they're questioning everything.

• 21:03Steven Bartlett?

  There's a huge amount of entrepreneurs that'll be listening to this right now that have the sole ambition of building a big, big company and then selling it. And then, I guess the presumption is, once that happens, you become happy. What would you say to those people? Because I was one of them. Like, when I was 18 years old, I wrote in my diary. And a lot of people online have seen my diary and it says, things I'm gonna do before I'm twenty five, become a millionaire. And this time I was shoplifting, like I was, and my rent was a hundred and eighty dollars and I hadn't paid it for five months. I was shoplifting food to feed myself. I was broke and I was living in an area which is synonymous with gun crime, the only place in England that's synonymous with gun crime, right? We don't even have guns.

• 21:43Steven Bartlett?

  And I wrote in my diary, before I'm twenty five, I'll be a millionaire, a Range Rover will be my first car, and then two other things about putting on weight and getting a girlfriend, which don't matter. But when I look back at those things I wrote in my diary, I'm quite,

• 21:56Steven Bartlett?

  I'm quite, I would say almost ashamed that those are the things that I thought were important.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:00Steven Bartlett?

  And it seems so like, what's the word? It seems so naive almost for someone that has attained money to look back at someone that doesn't have money and say, by the way, that will make you happy.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:13Steven Bartlett?

  Because when I was broke, one pound or one dollar would meant so much to me. It meant I could eat that day. You see what I mean?

• 22:21Speaker 01

  It's hard when you're broke and you're like hustling, it's hard not to obviously think about, you know, money, you know, I mean, it's, I always say, it's like, you know, an entrepreneur, it's purpose meets profit. I did a whole little podcast series on this. You do need to learn how to like turn a profit in order to impact more people's lives. But I would say that like you don't need to have that exit. You can choose right now to reevaluate like what your values really are. And I think that that was something I didn't do until after the exit. And I would say, if you're listening and you don't have an exit, you're building a big company, I would say, really sit back and like reevaluate, like what are your values and are you truly living to those standards of your values? How are you treating the people around you? How are you, how are you making sure that the company culture that you're creating is living up to those values?

• 23:05Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think in the world we live in, where Instagram and social media is the, one of the big influences in all of our lives,

• 23:13Steven Bartlett?

  I almost feel like a lot of young people don't know what their values are. Cause I think if you asked a young person, Really what they thought their values are, they might say something to do with Kim Kardashian or fast cars or getting money and posting on Instagram. So part of me thinks social media has really corrupted a generation into not knowing what their values are.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  It's the new drug.

• 23:33Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. I mean, like, one of the biggest things, it really is. It's like a gift and a curse at the same time because it's allowed us to connect on such a on such a level where you can just shoot a DM and network and like you can build relationships. But at the same time, like people are every single day addicted to the scroll and look at what everybody else is doing. What I try to tell a lot of, you know, the mentees that I work with, it's like, you know, take some time. I do FaceTime Fridays, like people who comment on my post, I pick, I give my time away on Fridays and FaceTime people from all over the world. And one of them on this past Friday, I was like, do me a favor and this weekend, like completely put your phone away. Get outside and really just think through, like, what is it that you want to bring to the world? Like, what do you want to bring to the world and what must you really bring to the world?

• 24:19Speaker 01

  Because I think we get so caught up in that and like scrolling and looking at what everybody else is doing. We don't ever figure out what the hell we want. What do we want and what do we want? And like, what do you want to bring to the world? And yeah, I think you're right. I think social media has brainwashed us to not even know what we want, what our values are. You know, it's like a vicious cycle of like consumption and never like actually separating yourself from all of that. Who are you and what do you want?

• 24:44Steven Bartlett?

  What have you learned from meeting all of these young aspiring entrepreneurs? That you think most entrepreneurs or at least aspiring entrepreneurs don't know or don't have? Is there something that you impart on these entrepreneurs or a pattern you're seeing within aspiring entrepreneurs? That you think every aspiring entrepreneur needs to to understand? Gary Vaynerchuk talks about self-awareness and when he came on, he talked about self-awareness. He highlights the fact that personal branding is incredibly important in the modern age. What are the things that you try and impart on these entrepreneurs?

• 25:18Speaker 01

  I think the biggest thing that I would, I mean, it's a few things. One of them is it's a personal development situation. I think it's a lot of the aspiring entrepreneurs, two things, I think.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  Really have the perseverance to really see it through long term. They're excited, they want to launch the company, they want to be that entrepreneur. They don't really recognize what it's like, you know, and the perseverance that they need to have. And I want them to really gain that perseverance when times get really tough because it will get tough. You have to learn how to adapt to the market and a lot of them I see when things don't go as planned.

• 25:59Steven Bartlett?

  They they bounce.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  They bounce, right? They quit because why? Because they have bills, they got to pay for it. They got to figure things, you know, and instead of becoming resourceful, figuring it out, sticking it through and adapting as hard as it may get. Instead of just saying, okay, this this, let me quit on this and try something new. They give up too easily and I would say see it through, continue to adapt, be a little bit more resourceful.

• 26:21Steven Bartlett?

  I've always seen that as like the natural selection of entrepreneurship is when those first hurdles come into play. The ones that do get over it are the ones that are in some respects meant to go the distance. Because they have that why, they have that reason, they have that resilience, whatever it is to go further. So, and I also see it in my my own ideation process. When I think of a new idea, if it doesn't stick and if I don't persevere, it's almost my my body telling me that I don't care about it enough. So part of me thinks that like quitting is really interesting because I don't want to say that quitting is a good thing. But quitting for me is a way that I know that I didn't really want it.

• 26:59Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 27:00Steven Bartlett?

  Or at least I didn't want it for the right reasons, maybe.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  I would agree with that a hundred percent. I mean, maybe it's if it's not at the core of what they, you know, what an entrepreneur really generally creates. And I think that's why it's important to ask those questions as to like, what is it that you really want to bring to the world? And what must you bring to the world? Because it has to be so freaking innate inside you that you're willing to do whatever it takes. Because that plan that you set out to get there is never the plan that it ends up being. Yeah, so I would say that and I would and I would also say the like that the fact that. A lot of entrepreneurs now because of social media, you look at Gary Vaynerchuk, you look at your Instagram page or my Instagram page and you have these aspirations to be, you know, to get to where maybe a certain entrepreneur really is.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  And I think recognizing that like everybody has their own path and being like, having the patience of knowing like that, you know, don't compare yourself to anyone else. Like really understand that you have your own, you know, your own path, your own journey, your own story that you're writing. So trust in that intuition and like write your story.

• 28:09Steven Bartlett?

  Are you scared of dying?

• 28:11Speaker 01

  No, no, I mean, I, it's something that I know is coming, but I've already died.

• 28:17Steven Bartlett?

  How do you mean?

• 28:17Speaker 01

  I went through a spiritual journey where like literally I went through like death.

• 28:22Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 28:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's what kind of like made me awaken as to like knowing that like at the end of this, at the end of it all, like it doesn't really matter, you know, like having an exit, not having an exit, money, like clothes, watches, materialistic things. It really, it really doesn't really matter. It's really how you make people feel. It's how you live your life and like the character that you have. And I think a lot of us don't really even recognize, you know, what like the opportunity that we really genuinely have while we are alive. And we don't really have a lot of that, a lot of time. And I feel, you know, for me, I embrace it. I think that's why now it's different for me. Like I'm not after like another huge exit or anything like that.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Like I just, you know, every day I'm just trying to live the most fulfilled life that I could live, inspiring others, you know, spreading my, spreading my message, spreading my voice, continuing to grow myself, you know, every single day and also be more present. Like get outside, travel more, go on more adventures, meet new people, have new friends, be more present for my family.

• 29:27Steven Bartlett?

  One of the things that I keep reading about that results in happiness is human connections, right? With the whole entrepreneur movement, there's a lot of messaging around, you know, hustle hard, it's lonely, it's a journey, do it on your own. And that's what I've always done, right? Since I was, since I was eighteen. And the more and more I read about happiness coming from human connections and people, I start to question whether I've done it the right way because I am quite like a lonely person. Not in the, the like emotional sense, but I'm alone a lot. And I'm, the problem is I'm really good at being alone. I, so I've almost started to worry about that and I've not been able to hold down any romantic relationships at all. So this question is about romantic advice and your own sort of relationships.

• 30:09Steven Bartlett?

  Being the entrepreneur you've been through the years, have you been able to, to hold down romantic relationships?

• 30:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have. I've had, I've had relationships. My last relationship, basically like, almost like attached by the hip.

• 30:22Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 30:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, she was a really, you know, supportive. She traveled me everywhere. She was there for me.

• 30:28Steven Bartlett?

  Why didn't it work?

• 30:30Speaker 01

  So the reason why it didn't really work is because it almost became, I felt codependent.

• 30:37Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  And I was providing and doing everything and although she was completely supporting me, I, I noticed that she wasn't actually fulfilling what was her destiny. I felt like she didn't yet figure out her own independence and her own passions and, you know, and I wanted that for her. And every time I would like try to inspire her and say like, what is it that you want to do? I want to support you. And I felt that she really wasn't doing that and she started to, she started to open up to me about like certain things that I felt the only way that she would really grow is if I actually just let her go a little bit and let her go and like find herself. What is it that she really wanted without, you know, without me kind of being such like a safety net for her?

• 31:23Speaker 01

  So I wanted to make her life alone comfortable. I absolutely love her to death. We still talk, we're friends, but she's out there and she's growing.

• 31:30Steven Bartlett?

  What's the, the perfect partner? If you had to pick three characteristics of the perfect partner for you, what, what would those things be? Considering your world and how busy you are and how focused you are and how big your mission is, what is the, what do you think the perfect partner would have as characteristics? Again, this is a question I'm asking because it's selfish.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Perfect partner.

• 31:55Steven Bartlett?

  Cause once upon a time, I thought it was, oh, this color hair, this color eyes. You know, this kind of figure, talk like this, this kind of smart.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:04Steven Bartlett?

  Over time, what I've done is I've got more and more down to just these fundamental principles. So I'll share mine with you.

• 32:10Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 32:10Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so my first one is they have to be sexually attractive and it's just a very human thing. But there has to be sexual attraction, right? The second thing is I would want them to be intellectually stimulating. Being able to have a conversation on this level without having to make myself smarter or dumber. I think super important because, you know, when I think about relationships, it's very much about there's. You've got to love the person for time, but also at nighttime and daytime, if you know what I mean? And you've got to love them for eighty years, right? Regardless of looks and appearances. And then the last one is, and this is I've kind of refined it recently, is just someone that makes me a better version of myself. And that's kind of an open ended one intentionally.

• 32:51Steven Bartlett?

  So it could be within my career, it could be spiritually, it could be another factors, but someone that doesn't. Sort of suppress me, but they just make me a better version of myself. And those are my three things. If I can find someone that has those three things, then I think.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  You got it. I think those are really good.

• 33:05Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, we can share.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think those are really good. I mean, I really like the intellectually stimulating. I would have to, I would definitely agree with that. I agree with all three of those, right? I mean, obviously you need to be sexually attracted and I think you need to naturally have that kind of attraction. I mean, I want someone who is independent. You know, that I can, we share, we both have our own lives, but we support each other's lives. You know what I mean? Like, we don't, it's not that we depend on each other, we just, we absolutely have that love for each other. But we also know that we're both our own individuals.

• 33:41Steven Bartlett?

  I completely agree.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  And I think that's a really, really big one for me. I want someone that completely, like, is okay with themselves. They're okay with being alone. You know what I mean? They're okay with, they're completely independent.

• 33:55Steven Bartlett?

  And is that because you are? And anybody that isn't would therefore take a little bit of that from you. So by someone being codependent, they almost challenge your independence, if you know what I mean?

• 34:05Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm a Sagittarius, I think, I think. From what I hear, yeah, like I 100% that is something that that I value is is I think that's part of being an entrepreneur, right? Like that independence, that freedom, and it's anything that tries to confine me, I like break away, right? Like, I guess why I couldn't be in a classroom.

• 34:27Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, same.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? So, you know, I think for me, having someone that there's that absolute trust and and just like you you love each other's company but and and spend all that time, but at the same time, you allow that that independence, you know, and support that for whatever it is that they, you know, each other want to do, I think is really important to me.

• 34:52Steven Bartlett?

  I agree. Last question then. Founders.

• 34:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:57Steven Bartlett?

  What does founders have to become for you to feel like you fulfilled your mission?

• 35:07Steven Bartlett?

  Or have you already?

• 35:10Speaker 01

  So I think this is like part of the reason why like I'm okay with death, because I feel like I've done work with founders and built a brand that, you know, if I were to die today, would would continue to live on because of like the meaning behind it is more than, you know, more than a business model.

• 35:34Steven Bartlett?

  Sure.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  You know, and we've touched 200 kids' lives this this past year, inner city kids, middle school and high school students. And I think what it needs to become as a social enterprise is, you know, it has to on on one side, I want it to be a community of like this our generation of leaders that are out there that want to also make an impact in the world and that are entrepreneurs that are trying to create real problems to real real solutions to problems in the world. But on the nonprofit side, like I really want to see us, I want to say improve the education system. I think entrepreneurship. The principles of entrepreneurship, it's not that everyone needs to become an entrepreneur, but the principles of entrepreneurship and emotional intelligence and these things that are not being taught in school.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  I think I want founders to be an anchor in, in actually having the education system evolve and teaching entrepreneurship and emotional intelligence because I believe that entrepreneurs are the ones that will save this world and save this economy and, you know, we should be instilling, you know, the, the, that type of education at a younger age. Cause it, it 100% like, I think, saved my life. Yeah, I, I believe that the, the, the school system is outdated. So I want, what it, what I think it must become is something that helps evolve the education system for a younger generation so that they can go out and grow up and wanna create solutions that bring people together, that heal the world. That's, that's, that's what I wanted to

• 37:02Steven Bartlett?

  Amazing.

• 37:02Speaker 01

  To grow to.

• 37:03Steven Bartlett?

  That's incredibly inspiring and you've certainly taught me a lot and I'm sure you'll, you'll, with your personal brand work and it's only getting bigger and bigger and bigger and you're impacting more and more people. I'm sure you're gonna achieve and have the, the impact that I, I know you're, you're set out to. And you've, you've inspired so many people already as, as you've said, and you've been a role model to a generation that I think this generation need. There's a lot of role models out there that I think are leading young people astray because going back to the point we said about values, they're teaching a set of values that aren't making the role model themselves happy. And so I think it takes a certain kind of person to be open and honest about that. I, I thank you on behalf of myself, but also all the, the sort of young people out there that are looking to someone like you to, to shout back down the ladder about what's up here, do you know what I mean?

• 37:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:48Steven Bartlett?

  So, thank you and thank you so much for your time today.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  Hey, absolutely. I appreciate it. And your work is, is unbelievable. So I look forward, like I said, I, I look forward to seeing how we can come together and

• 37:57Steven Bartlett?

  For sure.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  And build some great things, impact some people around the world. I mean, it seems like you've created a, a, a unbelievable band and, and a brand around the UK and you just moved to New York, right?

• 38:07Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, so I'm here now, so. Yeah, we need to have chats off camera.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  Let's do it, let's do it. Thank you.

• 38:14Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you so much for listening to this chapter. It means the world to me. If you can, please do subscribe to the podcast and you'll be notified the minute it's released. I'm often quite bad at letting you know when it's out on my social channel, so this will give you a bit of an advantage. Also, if you have a couple of seconds, please do leave a review for me in the App Store. Everybody that reviews the podcast and tweets me, I promise you, if you leave your handle in the review, I will get in touch. Thanks and I'll see you next week.