Pod Insights The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett E13: Why We're All F*cked Up About this episode In this chapter, I discuss the importance I've learnt this past week in first impressions, the reason why we're ALL f*cked up and how we can use that to our advantage, the 20 reasons why you shouldn't be an entrepreneur, and I update on my new journey in moving to New York and as always, my relationship status..
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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? Hello, it's me again. Once again, I'll start by setting the scene for you in your mind. It's 5:22 AM on Sunday night here in my apartment in Manchester, or I guess Monday morning, actually. I'm sat in my boxer shorts in the cupboard under the stairs. And once again, I'm staring at a very packed collection of notes in my diary. I am always busy, but this week I was incredibly busy, which meant that I couldn't record the podcast when I usually record it. So it's probably going to be out a little bit later than hoped for this week. I do apologize. The thing with the podcast is I have to be in a certain mindset to record it. And I speak about this all the time with my team. If I'm not in that mindset where I can sit, stop and reflect and focus,
0:45 Steven Bartlett? it just won't work. And during a very busy week, it's hard to find that mindset. We've got a tremendous amount to discuss this week. So without further ado, this is chapter 13 and 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.
1:19 Steven Bartlett? Okay, so the first point in my diary this week, I've just written down, "Every encounter counts." So let me tell you a story. I have a YouTube channel, as some of you all know. And on that YouTube channel, I do a series called Everyday Entrepreneurs, where I interview interesting, modern day entrepreneurs and try and figure out why they were successful. And this week, I sat down and interviewed Deliciously Ella. For you that don't know Deliciously Ella, the very, very few of you that don't, she is one of the world's most well-known, healthy eating bloggers and entrepreneurs. She's, I believe she had the fastest selling healthy cookbook that there is in the world. I also believe she's got five delis around London. Her products are in all of the supermarkets.
2:04 Steven Bartlett? She's just a tremendous, tremendous person, right? Hugely successful. And before meeting her, I had a few reservations and I had a few suspicions that she might be a little bit of an asshole and a bit of a diva. So I was quite nervous because I don't like dealing with people like that, right? I don't like people that like dealing with people that are up their own asses. Um. And the reason why I thought this was because I know someone that knows her. And that person is notoriously an asshole. So my naive prejudice made me assume that maybe she hangs around with assholes. Or she knows assholes because she is one. When she walked into the room, I kid you not, she was a ray of sunshine.
2:46 Steven Bartlett? That's the only way I can describe it. She was unbelievably nice. Um. She made me feel welcome. She she I could have sat and talked to her for hours and hours and hours. And when she left, I was actually quite sad because I thought, oh, God, I hope I don't, I hope I get to to meet that person again. And she's the type of person you meet and you just want them in your life. Tremendously humble, an incredible story, and I there's no, I don't have enough superlatives to to tell you how I feel about this woman. She was just the fucking best, right? Here's the point.
3:20 Steven Bartlett? She taught me a very, very, very valuable lesson about first impressions. Because I went from a position of maybe thinking she was going to be an asshole to really, really wanting her to win. Based on a singular impression that she'd given me of her. And the minute that I I realized the power of the first impression was this. We had hired a sound engineer to be there on the day to take care of all the sound for the interview. And after Ella's packed up and she's gone, I go to the sound engineer and I say, hey, how was that for you? Um. Did you get everything you needed, et cetera, et cetera? And he says, yeah, I got everything I needed. Um. I also ended up buying her book, um, because I just thought she was wonderful. And I text my wife and told my wife to buy her book as well.
4:05 Steven Bartlett? And I thought, what? While we were doing the interview, this person gave such a good impression of themself. They were so humble and so wonderful that my sound guy bought her products during the interview, literally during the interview. And then he texted somebody else and told them to buy the products too, and they bought the products too. And I just thought, okay, so that's one isolated incident. But just for a second, imagine that force on your side for your entire seventy, eighty, ninety, a hundred year life. And how that would compound in your favor to fundamentally change the trajectory of your life.
4:48 Steven Bartlett? Here's the point, first impressions and all impressions in fact, count irrespective of if the person can do something for you or not. I'm talking about the person that gives you your groceries behind the checkout. I'm talking about the person that cleans your house. I'm talking about the, the person that lays on the floor and sleeps outside that can do nothing for you. All these impressions count. Here's another example of this, which has just sprung to my mind and it isn't actually in my diary, but did happen this week. Three years ago, there was a guy that emailed me and he was a student and he had an event he was putting on. I won't say his name, um, but he asked me if I would come down and judge at his event in London.
5:33 Steven Bartlett? Obviously I wasn't in London, um, I was incredibly busy three years ago, as I always am. But I responded to him and said, sure, let me know what I can do for you and I'll be there. And I copied in my P A and she organized it and I ended up coming down to the students event and being a judge on his panel. Three years later, fast forward three years, um, social train has grown into this huge international business. Um, and we're pitching to YouTube.
6:01 Steven Bartlett? And it's, you know, YouTube are one of the biggest brands in the world, right? So we're, we're taking this pitch very, very, very seriously. We're putting everything we can into it. And then I get an email and it's on the same email chain that that student who emailed me three years ago used to ask me to come and be a judge at their event. And that student says, hey, mate, hey, Steve, hope you're well. I've been following your success over the last couple of years. I now work at YouTube and I'm the one that's leading on the project that you're pitching for. So three years later, the person that I done a little bit of a favor for is now, in many respects, my boss, because I consider all my clients to be my bosses, right?
6:43 Steven Bartlett? So he's now basically my boss and he can now open doors for me or recommend to me or suggest to me. And I just thought that was crazy because I had nothing to gain from helping him three years ago, nothing at all. And now I have everything to gain from, from this guy that I did a favor for. It's so apparent in my life, how there's people I met that I did things for and that are now very important. And also there are people that did things for me that I will never, ever forget, ever. When I was an 18 year old kid, waltzing around, talking about an idea, even though I had holes in my jumper and I had no idea what I was talking about, or no experience, or no money.
7:27 Steven Bartlett? There were certain people that just gave me a little bit of time and still to this day, I know their names. And when I see them, I tell them every single time, if there's ever anything you need from me now, let me know and I'll do it for you. And I genuinely mean that. So that's just something to bear in mind. It's crazy how things come back around. Okay. So the next point scribbled into my diary, I've just written this, figure out you're fucked up and what it's done positively and negatively for you and use it to your advantage. Here's what I mean. It's my ardent belief that every single person in the world, including all of you listening to this right now, are fucked up in some way. And fucked up, because we're all fucked up, isn't actually fucked up.
8:10 Steven Bartlett? It's actually quite normal, but I'm still going to use that term fucked up. And here's how you might be fucked up. Various experiences in your life at a very young age, shape you more than any other experiences. And this is something I learned when I studied child psychology in, in secondary school. And I'm fascinated with this because the way you're treated and the experiences you have when you're a very young kid tend to shape the character and the very sort of fabric of who you become. And so it's my belief that everybody has a different experience. So everybody comes out of that sort of processor slightly different. And if you can figure out what that experience
8:50 Steven Bartlett? did for you positively and negatively, I think you can gain control over those things and use them for your advantage. So I'm going to tell you the three reasons, the top three reasons, let's say, um, that my fucked up childhood, you know, and I use that term flippantly, right? So my fucked up childhood did for me that were positives. The first thing is my childhood made me incredibly good at being alone and being independent. My parents weren't around a huge amount. So by the time I was like 14 years old, they'd already had three older kids.
9:30 Steven Bartlett? I was the fourth of their kids and they almost treated me as if I was the oldest. So my oldest sister was about 19. So I got treated at the age of like 13 or 14, like a 19 year old, right? And this meant that I could go out of the house for days upon end and not really tell anybody where I was. Um, I would make my own dinners. I would do whatever I wanted to do at a very, very young age because my parents weren't around. And they weren't around, not through anything sort of negative, but they were trying to provide for me. So my, my mum would just work and work and work and work and she never came home. She would literally sleep in the back room of the shop she was running virtually every day, including every weekend.
10:11 Steven Bartlett? So the positive thing that that sort of fucked up childhood experience gave me was it made me independent. And I'm still incredibly independent today. And if it wasn't for that, there is no doubt in my mind, there is no doubt in my mind that I would be where I am today.
10:31 Steven Bartlett? And so I'm I'm happy for that, right?
10:35 Steven Bartlett? The way I'm able to work
10:39 Steven Bartlett? and have been able to work for the last seven years of my life with this sort of solo, I'm good on my own, I don't need anybody else mindset is the reason I'm sat here right now. I promise you, I've spent all weekend sat in the office alone. Last weekend, I spent all weekend sat in the office alone. I spend all of my time sat alone and that's because of how I was when I was a child, right? I didn't have many people around, especially parents, so I just became my own person. Point number two of how my fucked upness impacted me positively.
11:13 Steven Bartlett? Because my parents didn't have any money and we didn't get Christmases and birthdays and nice things virtually at all. You know, they they did their best. I don't mean to talk bad about my parents, but we didn't get nice things at all. They inadvertently taught me that if I was gonna have anything in life, it would be of a direct result of my actions. So if I was gonna have all the things I wanted, the only way I was gonna get them was me. There was no force in my sort of young life that just gave me really nice things without having to work. So I had that connection that I would create my my life, right?
11:50 Steven Bartlett? And that's what makes me an entrepreneur, as far as I'm concerned. Had they just given me stuff without hard work, I wouldn't have known the connection of hard work equals reward. And obviously, that's been sort of instrumental to to to where I am now. Point number three is my parents both taught me what hard work was. Again, this is part of the fucked up element because they just weren't around, but they were not around because they were working all the time. I'll never forget when I asked my mum, where is it you sleep? And she pointed at the floor in the dirty back room of her shop in a rough area in Plymouth, where I knew there was rats running around because I could see all of the food bags had been bitten with rats. So I knew my mum was sleeping on the floor with rats.
12:34 Steven Bartlett? And I just thought, where do you fucking get that from? Like, how do you do that? How do you do that? But the way she worked, and then she started a restaurant and she worked the same way. She would go home at four AM at night, wake up at six AM. I'm like, she doesn't sleep and she just works all all the time. And she almost normalized that to me as a child. She taught me that that's what you do. That's just normal. And my dad was the same. My dad would finish his job at six P M. And go to my mum's restaurant and help there until one, two A M. In the morning. Then he was up at seven again. Every day of my childhood, they taught me hard work and I'm incredibly thankful for that. Although it meant that they weren't around as much to sort of parent me.
13:18 Steven Bartlett? And this kind of leads on to the bad sides, the negative things that my fucked up have done for me. So the first thing is it made me tragic at romantic relationships. Because I've never had a sort of a very close relationship to my parents. I've found over the years hard to form relationships, especially romantic ones. The other thing which I don't mind talking about is my mum and dad would argue with each other all the time. And when I say argue, I mean, my mum would sat stand there for like five hours screaming at my dad while he sat down watching T V. Right. And I used to, it used to boggle my mind why a man would allow a woman to treat him like that.
14:02 Steven Bartlett? It was in my mind like low key domestic abuse. And so I grew up and I used to say to my dad, like you, you can't let her talk to you like that. You can't just take that.
14:13 Steven Bartlett? You know, my mum's African, not sorry to stereotype, but generally African women can be a little bit more fiery. Right. And my mum certainly, certainly was.
14:24 Steven Bartlett? And so I grew up with this opinion in my head that romantic relationships meant this imprisonment. And this inability to move. And it was just this horrible negative construct in my head. My whole life I've had that. My whole life I've thought of romantic relationships equaling like a prison sentence, basically. So when I was about fourteen and I started to like girls and girls started to come into my life, I would do anything in my power to avoid the commitment or the relationship. I would make up excuses. I would tell them I didn't like them. When I did, I would run. I would sometimes start looking for faults in them if it ever got serious. And that's something I still struggle with today. And that's a direct result of my fucked up.
15:10 Steven Bartlett? The next thing is it made me.
15:14 Steven Bartlett? Struggle with forming family relationships. I still find it, you know, because we didn't have a close sort of family unit, I still have to make an effort to stay in touch with my family, which is a bit sad, but you know, I think it's getting better and I'm hopeful for that. And the last thing is, I believe the way I was brought up made me fundamentally unorganized. Because I didn't get taught organization from my parents, I didn't get taught really routine, because they didn't really have routine, because they were so busy and out of the house. I'm a fundamentally unorganized person in every element of my life, you know, and I've talked on the podcast about this before, I am trying better to
15:56 Steven Bartlett? better that. Fortunately, because I have so many great people around me now, including my P A and my brand manager and such, you wouldn't be able to tell that I was so unorganized unless you were very, very, very close to me. But again, that's something that my fucked up has done for me. So when you realize you're fucked up and what you're bad at and what you're good at, because of your sort of early childhood, you can start to use these things as weapons. And me knowing that the positive things are fairly unique to me allows me to double down on those things and become who I am today. And when I know the negative things, I can work to correct them. So in my relationships, because I'm
16:38 Steven Bartlett? aware of my fucked up, it now is less sort of impactful on my relationships. And I feel myself running from, you know, the commitment and I rationalize that those thoughts processes in my head and I end up being able to commit. So I just think it's very important for all of us to understand the positive and negative impacts of our fucked upness and to figure out how we can pacify the negative side and use the positives to our advantage.
17:11 Steven Bartlett? Okay, so the third point in my diary this week is just one word and that word is written in big and then I filled it in and the word is focus because I think it's the the word on my mind this week. So some context, our business is getting big, right? There are 30 companies within the the social chain group and we have a lot of sort of opportunities and freedom to make our mind up in terms of which direction we go in. We have very, very big plans for the future, which I can't tell you about just yet, but if you listen to this podcast, I promise you when I say this, you're coming on one hell of a journey with me. And when I said that then, I literally got goosebumps in my legs because I can't
17:56 Steven Bartlett? tell you just yet, but when you do find out how this story sort of all unfolds, I think you're going to be pretty excited. Anyway, the point is, there's a lot of opportunity. And there's naturally a lot of things we could be doing. But one thing I've learned over the last seven years of being an entrepreneur and running businesses is that there is nothing more important than the word focus, especially when things are going well. When things are going well, what happens is entrepreneurs and CEOs, we try and reach for more things to do well at. So if we are a clothing company, we'll try and release more lines of clothing. If we're selling female clothes, we'll try and release male clothes. If we are an entrepreneur,
18:39 Steven Bartlett? we'll try and move into different sort of sectors and industries and these kinds of things. And often, as one billionaire once told me, you should never drop the pie reaching for an apple. And when I was 18 years old, I was this, you know, young entrepreneur that had all these ideas and I would email my investors all the time telling them that I've got this new idea, I've got this new business idea. And they would literally hammer me and say, Steve, the single most important thing, if you want to be successful in life is focus. And sometimes things appear to be great, great, great opportunities. And they probably are, some of them. But you will never realise the full opportunity that you have right now if you don't focus. And one of the things my mum, again inadvertently taught me was, you know,
19:23 Steven Bartlett? my mum started 20 odd businesses. Anybody could stroll in off the street and tell her that there was a very exciting opportunity round the corner and she would drop what she was doing now, well, lose focus of what she was doing now, and she would pursue that business. And she spent two decades doing that, just going after the apple and dropped the pie. And I've got to a point now where I've got to make decisions on where the social chain group goes, right? The decision we go in. And this week, our, you know, very, very successful, very, very, very successful investor, partner and a mentor to me, reminded me that focus is key. There I was telling him about a couple of other
20:06 Steven Bartlett? ideas that I had, which I thought could, you know, be additional businesses within the social chain group. And he reminded me that you'll never, ever reach the full potential of what you have right now if you don't focus. And as an entrepreneur, focus is this really sort of counterintuitive thing, because you just want to take every opportunity. Okay, so this next point in my diary is one that I am incredibly passionate about, and so passionate about, in fact, that I'll be releasing a bit of a content series on this topic. I've just written my diary, admiring the wrong thing. Remember the point. And here's what I mean. I get so many messages from young kids who will tell me that they admire
20:50 Steven Bartlett? my success, they're jealous of it, they admire my car, my stuff, the business, whatever it is, they admire my stuff, my success, right? And growing up and being an entrepreneur, when I was like 18, 19 years old, I would look at other very successful entrepreneurs, and I've got one in particular in mind, that had all this stuff and this success, and I just desperately wanted that. And I've talked on this podcast before, that I confused pleasure with something else, right?
21:20 Steven Bartlett? Those nice things, the car, the house, the holidays, give you pleasure. What they don't give you is contentment and sort of inner fulfillment and that happiness. And ultimately, everything we do, we do in an effort to make ourselves happy. But Instagram has convinced us that, you know, people posting pictures of nice cars, holidays, money, and their physical attractiveness are the most happy. So we all end up envying them and trying to emulate them. But all the major studies have shown that these people are often the most unhappy. And many of them have what I guess is called like an attention addiction, an addiction to the likes and the comments and the social validation and reinforcement
22:04 Steven Bartlett? that means that their self-esteem now depends on what other people think of them. You know, they'll be in a good mood if they get a high amount of likes and comments on their imagery or their photos, in a bad mood or feel low or ugly if the amount of engagement and love they get on social media isn't to their usual standard, right? Studies show happiness comes from family and friends. It comes from enjoyment of your work. It comes from exercise. It comes from avoiding comparison. It comes from having a purpose and it comes from constant challenge. But most importantly, it comes from gratitude for who and where you are right now, not stuff or likes or anything like that.
22:46 Steven Bartlett? And we're, we live in a generation where this generation are jealous of the wrong thing. You should never be jealous of stuff. You should never be jealous of my stuff or my success or even my appearance. I doubt you were, but you know, my appearance, because that wasn't the aim. And none of those things mean that I'm happy. The aim is happiness. So be jealous of happiness. And that's probably what you'll have, you'll get more of, right? Because if you're jealous of my car, you'll try and improve yours and you'll probably end up with a nicer car. Or if you're jealous of my bank account, you'll try and make more money and then you'll probably end up with a little bit more money. If you're jealous of my happiness, you'll focus on that and you'll probably end up happier.
23:32 Steven Bartlett? Be jealous of happiness.
23:35 Steven Bartlett? Okay, so this is something I've been quite excited to share with you. During this week, I wrote down 20 reasons why you should not be an entrepreneur and you should not be a CEO. Why have I done this? There are, again, we live in a generation where social media and all influences encourage young people to be an entrepreneur. And I'm, I'm a big believer in that, don't get me wrong. But I'm also a big believer in the fact that it's not for everybody. And there are so many sort of resources and influences out there telling you, you should be an entrepreneur and telling you why you should. So I wrote down a list of 20 reasons in my diary why you should not be an entrepreneur. And all I'm doing is trying to balance the scale, right?
24:19 Steven Bartlett? Here's number one in this list of 20. People are going to talk shit about you and you will lose friends and family. Okay, so that's a fairly big point. Again, from my personal story, my mum didn't speak to me for two years when I told her that I was going to start a business. I lost friends along the way. Everybody spoke shit about me in the early days. There's still a lot of people that I, I know talk rubbish about me now. And that's just something to consider. Can you deal with that? Are you willing to lose friends and family to pursue being an entrepreneur? And maybe girlfriends as well and boyfriends. Point number two. It's a prison sentence. You can't switch off, you can't leave it, you can't disconnect. And there's no guaranteed end to the sentence.
25:03 Steven Bartlett? Your lifestyle is pretty terrible, generally speaking, in terms of work-life balance. And it is a prison sentence. It's a prison, as I said, it's a prison sentence that you, you can't leave because you're fundamentally tied to your business, right? The further you go, the more tied to your business you are, the bigger it gets, the more tied to your business you are. And you don't ever know if or when this sort of sentence will end. And I say, you know, I say prison sentence as if it's the worst thing in the world, but it's just a very real thing. And some people like that prison sentence. For me, I like the prison sentence. I signed up for the prison sentence and I'm enjoying the prison, you know? That's, that's the choice I make. But it's important for you to realise that, that lack of, you know, people, when they talk about being an entrepreneur, they talk about the freedom you have.
25:46 Steven Bartlett? You have the least freedom when you're an entrepreneur in terms of your life direction. You are bound to your business for an indefinite period of time. Point number three is total uncertainty. Some people aren't good at dealing with uncertainty, but being an entrepreneur and being a CEO, you have total uncertainty. Every day you wake up, you don't know what's gonna happen and anything could happen. And when it does happen, it hits you harder than anybody else. Point number four, you should expect to work seven days a week. A lot of the allure of being an entrepreneur is that you get to work when you like and how you like, right? But for that privilege, you have to work, in my case, all the time. And many of my friends who are entrepreneurs are the exact same. There is
26:30 Steven Bartlett? no switching off and you work every hour for seven days a week and you do that for a sustained period of time. I've literally worked, I honestly think I've worked every day for the last seven years without exception. I've worked weekends, I've worked when I'm on holiday, it's non-stop. And so being an entrepreneur, in fact, is more work and less flexibility than having a job. Point number five, many years of work before any recognition, success or reward. So for the first three years of my entrepreneurial journey, I was still completely broke. Thereafter, it started to pick up, but it took three years of no reward, no real
27:11 Steven Bartlett? recognition and no success at all for me to get to a decent place. Again, it's been seven years and sometimes I forget that because, you know, things seem to move so fast. But yeah, can you deal with a long period of no rewards, no success, no money and no recognition? Gandhi, I think it is, that says, you know, first they ignore you and then they laugh at you and then they fight you and then you win. And being an entrepreneur is very much like that. The early stages can be quite horrific. Point number six in my diary, nobody tells you what to do. And this is, again, one of the stereotypical reasons why you want to be
27:54 Steven Bartlett? an entrepreneur, but it's also one of the great reasons why you shouldn't want to be an entrepreneur, because that lack of direction and that lack of sort of management can be a real pain for some people. You wake up in the morning and you could be doing anything. And it's a choice, right? And you could also be sleeping and you could also be watching YouTube videos. You could be doing anything and that's what being an entrepreneur is all about. Nobody's telling you what to do. And that pressure and that freedom can be the making or the breaking of people. Point number seven, you have to motivate yourself every day for years. If you struggle with motivation and self motivation, being an entrepreneur is probably not for you.
28:36 Steven Bartlett? Um, fortunately, I've not had to motivate myself as such. There are moments when I have to sort of, right, come on, Steve, do this now because I know you don't want to do it, but just do it now. And it tends to be when I'm doing things I don't like doing. Um, but my motivation is very deep. It's a very innate thing and it's a sort of burning fire within me that I've had for the last 10 years. So I don't have to look at myself in the mirror in the morning and repeat affirmations and tell myself to be psyched up for the day. I'm sort of deeply motivated. Um, point number eight, unexpected, soul sucking bullshit every day for years.
29:16 Steven Bartlett? This is again, something I've touched on before, but you, when I wake up in the morning, every single day of the week, I'm mentally ready to receive some news that is absolutely soul suckingly terrible. And that's something you get used to as an entrepreneur. It might be that someone's hacked your company or that you've lost something big or that a client has cancelled or that your app has crashed or you've lost all your users. Or in one case in a company I worked for, Apple just decided to pull the app from the App Store. And they'd built a team of a hundred people and Apple just decided all of a sudden that they were going to remove that company's whole business from the world overnight without warning.
29:59 Steven Bartlett? This is what entrepreneurs deal with every single day. And if you don't want to deal with that, then being an entrepreneur again is probably not for you. Point number nine in my list of being an entrepreneur, of reasons why you shouldn't be an entrepreneur, sorry. You're probably going to fail. That's statistically the truth. Fifty percent of startups fail within the first five years, and many more never go on to reach sort of heights of success. So you probably will fail. Point number 10, your relationships will suffer horrifically. I don't know an entrepreneur that has managed to build a big business that hasn't had to sacrifice relationships to some fairly
30:41 Steven Bartlett? extreme extent. Most entrepreneurs I know are terrible at being in relationships. The ones I know most sort of personally are deeply concerned about this as well. And obviously, me, as a prime example, I'm terrible at relationships as well. Point number 11, the weight of the world will be on your shoulders, especially as the business grows and grows and grows and grows, your staff count increases, and the amount of sort of mouths you have to feed and provide for and make sure your business is stable for increases as well. Speaking for Social Chain, we have, we're nearing about 200 people, and that's 200 people that are dependent on this job and this company for their livelihoods, and
31:25 Steven Bartlett? that's an incredible sort of weight to carry on your shoulders as an entrepreneur. How does that feel for me? Honestly, it doesn't feel like a weight on my shoulders. I have so much self-belief in myself and the team that it doesn't feel like a weight. I just believe in us. So, yeah. But for some people, it does feel like a weight. I know that to be true. Point number 12, you do have a boss. One of the sort of stereotypical reasons why people want to be an entrepreneur is because they don't want to have a boss. Believe me when I tell you, I have many bosses, whether they are my investors or my clients, and, you know, they wouldn't call themselves my bosses, but there is really no different. I consider myself to be serving them, and I report to them, and they can at any moment
32:10 Steven Bartlett? tell me that they are done with me. And there's no difference between that and a boss. They can talk shit at me. Some clients decide to talk shit at you. Fortunately, my investors don't. But this is the same thing. So get rid of this idea that when you become an entrepreneur, you no longer have a boss, because you do have a boss. Point number thirteen, no flexible working. One of the, again, the great sort of attractions of being an entrepreneur is you can make up your own schedule, as I said previously. The point I'm trying to make on this one is you actually have no flexibility in your work. I'm run by my calendar. I have no flexibility. My calendar tells me where in the world I have to be, what I have to do when I get there, and how long I have to be there.
32:55 Steven Bartlett? And it tells me I have to sleep in a hotel in Coventry this night, and then I've got to sleep in a hotel in Bournemouth, and then I've got to get on a plane and go to Amsterdam and sleep there. I have very little say over my life calendar, because my work calendar has to take priority. I have to try and figure out my personal life and my sort of social life around my work life, and that's just the way it is. Fourteen, financial damage and inconsistent income. When you're an entrepreneur, your income is not guaranteed. It could be a hundred pounds one month, and then it could be a thousand pounds the next, and that's just the way that it is. And also, you can get yourself in tremendous debts, like I did, starting Woolpark, my first
33:37 Steven Bartlett? company, which does serious long-term damage to your credit. And I'm still recovering from the damage I did to myself when I was eighteen, trying to start my business. I still have a CCJ, I think. Maybe I've lost it now, it's been six years. And maybe I've just lost my CCJ, but you get the drift, you can do serious financial damage. Point number fifteen, you're just not built for it. A very small percentage of every society is comprised of people with the right temperament, the right energy level, the right risk profile to be a successful entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship is not for everybody. It's almost for nobody. I genuinely believe, in many respects, entrepreneurship is a bit of a mental disorder.
34:22 Steven Bartlett? It's an affliction, right? It's not a choice, it's a compulsion that demands that startups put themselves under, and startup entrepreneurs put themselves under with their relationships, their nervous systems, their bank accounts, and all the other extremes. Would just make no sense to a rational person, right? A rational person would take a job and go to work and have an impact there and then go home and drink a beer. It's not rational to be an entrepreneur. It's a compulsion. It's not a choice. Point number 16, living with constant paranoia, becoming a different person, becoming cold, becoming numb and ruthless. I've, being an entrepreneur has changed me. It's made me cold, it's made me numb. It's changed the fabric of who I am.
35:05 Steven Bartlett? It's made me view the world differently in some negative ways. It's made me paranoid. It's made me look for the worst in people because that's a good way of protecting myself. Yeah, and that's just a part of the game, I guess. Number 17, no holidays. That's pretty self-explanatory. You don't really get to take a holiday and even when you do, you're not on holiday because you're still working. Point number 18, if you don't have focus, and I touched on focus in the previous point, there's no point being an entrepreneur because you will just bounce around and waste your life and cause damage and then end up going back to a job. But focus is key. And if you're someone that knows you're really bad at focusing, then being an entrepreneur is probably not for you.
35:46 Steven Bartlett? And lastly, point number 19, I've made 20 a separate point, but point number 19 is mental health issues. There are an incredible amount of mental health issues amongst entrepreneurs for all of the reasons I've described above, right? If you don't have anxiety as an entrepreneur, you're probably doing pretty well. Or at least if you're not on the spectrum of anxiety from like, you know, nervousness to sort of real deep anxiety, you're probably doing really well. It is a lifestyle that causes incredible mental strain. And again, that's not for everybody, certainly not for those that have suffered from serious mental health issues before, I would suggest.
36:30 Steven Bartlett? And point number 20 is every sort of major study suggests that life is about much more than what most entrepreneurs get in the game for, and that's money. Life is about much more than money. And every sort of major study on happiness alone suggests that if you want to be happy and you agree with my previous sort of note in this diary that happiness is the key, then many of the things that it takes to be an entrepreneur are not sort of conducive with happiness.
37:05 Steven Bartlett? So if you want to be happy, science says you probably shouldn't be an entrepreneur. Um, yeah, I hope that's not put you off. My, my, listen, my aim isn't to put anybody off being an entrepreneur. I, my aim is always to give you realism. And after seven years of being an entrepreneur, um, I have a very sort of real perspective on what it's actually about. And that perspective is in contrast to what the movies and the TV shows and Instagram tells you, right? After seven years of doing this, I've managed to get here. I've got friends that have been doing this for longer than seven years. And they are still, in their own minds unsuccessful. They are still trying. They are still, um,
37:48 Steven Bartlett? you know, struggling financially and all these things. For me, and the way that I was built and the way that I was wired, I will always be doing this. I will do this until the day that I die. Even if I don't get paid, I will do this because it's just who I am, right? And I would rather be trying to become someone and change the world and all these things than, and be broke, than concede for playing it safe in the middle. I don't like safe. I like gambling. I like the risk and that's just who I am. And I hope I never change. Okay, point number six in my diary is about New York. So in my previous podcast that I did alone, when we looked into my diary, I think it was chapter 11. I had a big announcement to make, which was that I was moving to New York.
38:33 Steven Bartlett? Um, and I can't wait to update you on this. Actually, it's quite exciting. So here's the thing. The New York team have great potential, as I said, and I'm going to be moving out there probably this month on the 28th to look for permanent residence. I'm flying out with my P A and we're going to look around Manhattan for an apartment for me to live in. Um, we've just confirmed an office space in Manhattan next to the Empire State Building. And that's where the team will be moving into. They're currently in a WeWork. We're basically going back to a point of hustle to the startup work and all those things, which I remember quite fondly from three or four years ago. And what I've realised
39:16 Steven Bartlett? is that in order for me to be effective in that environment, I'm going to need to change my mindset. Because undoubtedly, as Social Chain in the UK and Europe has grown and grown and grown and grown, the way that I've had to work and the things that I do have changed. So I don't make proposals anymore and I don't, you know, do a lot of the outreach and the pitching and the, all these things. I don't do a lot of the stuff in the middle anymore, right? But in order for the US business to work, I have to go back to that. And what I've sort of been doing to myself is trying to bring myself back to a sort of startup state of mind. Because I know if New York is going to work, I have to take myself there.
39:58 Steven Bartlett? So I can't wait to take you on that journey with me. I'll be moving out to New York on the 28th of this month. I'll be back in the UK every single month, right? I have to be because my calendar runs my life. But from the 28th, we embark on a completely new journey together. And that is me and the team trying to build Social Chain New York to be the powerhouse business that it deserves and we all believe it can be. And I can't, can't wait for that. A new challenge, a new challenge for, for me and a challenge that I think on a personal level, I really, really want. And last but not least in my diary this week,
40:37 Steven Bartlett? relationships. Okay, so relationships, always terrible, right? Still terrible. I'm, I'm very, very on my own. And listen, but before I, before I explain, I'm gonna do a little bit of a disclaimer. I'm so happy. I don't actually think I've ever been more content and happy in my life, ever. But I am very, very alone. And, and see that, see when I say that sounds bad. Let me just go back to the disclaimer again. I am very, very happy and more content than I've ever been at any point in my life. And I've always been pretty content. But now more than any other time, I'm, I've, I feel totally at peace, totally content. And, you know, I feel amazing.
41:22 Steven Bartlett? But I'm not even, I'm not even thinking about the opposite sex. I'm not thinking about women. I'm not think. It doesn't cross my mind, which again is a first. And I think that actually comes from being so content with where and who I am, but women are just not crossing my mind. And, and that's probably the first time in my life that they haven't crossed my mind. So like when I was eighteen and I started this journey of, you know, hustling all the time and building a business and all these kinds of things. I would still turn to women to give me um a sense of affection, I guess, or something. I don't really know what it was, but I'd still do that then. And then when social change grew, it was almost like I was turning to, you know, a partner or a relationship to
42:06 Steven Bartlett? stabilize my mental state and to keep me sort of grounded and to keep me focused and all those kinds of things. I'm now at a point where the business is great. We've got phenomenal people. I'm at peace with everything, so I don't have the need for somebody anymore. I don't have the like the, there's not like a hole I'm plugging, if you get what I mean. So um I'm just great. I'm great alone and I love it and I love my little dog and I just, I go to the office with my dog and I come home with my dog and that's it. And yeah, I love it. Um, so yeah, I'm alone, I'm single. And all of my entrepreneur friends are fucking single too. Well, most of them, most of them. Um. Yeah, maybe we're all fucked as entrepreneurs, you know?
42:51 Steven Bartlett? Maybe, I hope at some point this changes. Like, I hope at some point I find a girlfriend or a fiance or like what I marry somebody. I don't, I don't think I can be like this forever. Like, I don't want to be like this forever. The more I've read about happiness, right? And I've been on this journey of trying to figure out what happiness means. Um, because more, like more money is coming to my life and so, you know. As I said in one of my earlier podcasts, I started to sort of battle with what's the point in money because the anticlimax of getting loads of money and realising that, okay, money doesn't make you happy, or it doesn't scale up your happiness when you get to a certain point. So I started to look into what happiness is and where it
43:31 Steven Bartlett? comes from. And one of the key things is relationships and people and friendships and these kinds of things. And all major studies have confirmed that. So I do hope at some point I find a companion or love, whatever you want to call it. But I'm just cool right now with not with being alone and focusing. And I've got like this real intense tunnel vision at the moment for like where social chain group is going. And I don't want anything to mess with that. I don't want anything to mess with my focus. I have this laser tunnel vision. So maybe when I'm like 30, then I'll start giving people a chance again. It's pretty sad. I imagine most people listening to this think
44:14 Steven Bartlett? I'm a bit of a weirdo or think I'm like pretty sad. But this is just the, this is just who I am. And yeah, as I said, we're all fucked up a little bit. Thank you for listening. Please, please, please subscribe to the podcast. Please, please, please leave a review in the app store if you can as well. I will appreciate it immensely. And if you listen to the podcast, do me a favour, tweet me, put it on your Instagram story and tag me in it. Anything you can publicly to share it with more people will be deeply appreciated. And everybody that does, I will follow you and I will be forever in your debt. Okay. I hope you enjoyed chapter 13. Again, it's been a therapeutic experience
44:57 Steven Bartlett? for me to offload all these things into the dark universe that this cupboard under the stairs creates. I hope nobody is listening. Sometimes I actually do hope nobody is listening. Like I say that as the the sort of tagline for the podcast, but sometimes I'm like, it'll probably do a lot of damage if a lot of the things I say get out into the world. But I just don't care. Right. Like, this is my own little space and you can come and listen here if you want to listen, but you don't have to. Anyway, I'm rambling now. I'm tired. Can you tell? It's now 5:50 or 5:58. Oh, I can't even see the time. It's now really early in the morning and I have to get ready and go to go to the gym and then go to work. I've not slept tonight, which is also really bad.
45:41 Steven Bartlett? But I slept all through the day, so I will be fine. Don't feel sorry for me. I'm rambling. See you next week. I love you lots. Bye bye.
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