Pod Insights The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett E7: Ben Francis - 25 year old CEO OF UK’s fastest growing company About this episode After a couple of weeks away from the mic, I jump back on to reflect on my two recent interviews with Mark Stringer and Ben Francis, in addition to this, my diary was packed full of thoughts from the last few weeks which I couldn't wait to get into...
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Steven Bartlett? Thank you. I just wanted to start with a big thank you to everybody that tuned into chapter six. We broke our records for the fifth week in a row since the podcast began, doubling chapter five and tripling chapter four. And I received so many lovely messages and insightful tweets and feedback on that episode, which have really, really changed my perspective. It was the first time I'd invited a CEO onto the podcast. So it was a bit of an experiment, to say the least. I wasn't sure if you guys would like it, or if you just wanted me to continue rambling on by myself. But the feedback has been tremendous. And so it's definitely something we'll be doing again in the future, the very, very, very near future. And for those of you tuning in for the first time, last week, we had Mark,
0:45 Steven Bartlett? the CEO of Ahoyon, to share his very, very personal diary with us. And he told us his incredible roller coaster story, which moved many of you to tears, in fact. And after speaking to Mark after the podcast had gone out, he's been incredibly appreciative and humbled by all of your kind words and comments he's received. And he asked me just to say thank you to all of you. And in that podcast, we talked about his team leaving him to set up a new company, which he describes as backstabbing and betrayal. And interestingly, after that podcast went out, that team contacted me. And they felt although I had been fair,
1:26 Steven Bartlett? they also wanted to have a chance to have their say. And I thought long and hard about that. And I know this podcast isn't meant to be a place to tear people down. That's not my intention. I don't want to be Jerry Springer. So I don't think it makes sense to have them on the podcast, but I will have a meeting with them this week over coffee, just to chat and get a better picture of their story, because I think that's the right thing to do. And as I mentioned in chapter six, I've met with two CEOs this month. One of them was Mark, who we've had on in chapter six, and the other was Ben Francis. Ben is the 25 year old, same age as me, CEO of Gymshark, which is a tremendous global gym brand that many of you will have heard of. Revenues in 2016 equaled 13 million and projected revenues
2:09 Steven Bartlett? this year are somewhere near 40 million. 25 years old, my age. And because our companies are similar size and with similar age, we live in the same country, I thought it would be fascinating to uncover the similarities, but also the differences between his journey and mine. In doing so, I knew there would be tremendous amounts to learn for myself, but also for you. So in today's podcast, I'm going to quickly look at some of the similarities which I've scribbled into my diary. And then I'm going to share with you all of the diary entries I've had over the last two weeks because it's been two weeks since we've spoken. These diary entries are my favorite, and I think in terms of learnings, you'll feel that way too.
2:51 Steven Bartlett? I've learnt so much since we last spoke and my diary is bulging. It's been absolutely bursting at the seams in that period. I cannot wait to share these learnings with you. So without further ado, this is chapter seven. I'm Steven Bartlett and this is the diary of a CEO.
3:09 Steven Bartlett? I hope nobody is listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.
3:27 Steven Bartlett? Ben Francis. One of the most apparent and noticeable differences between myself and Ben was Ben was incredibly nervous. He was camera shy, he was introverted. Upon starting shooting the video, Ben asked me to stop, turn on the air conditioning because he was sweating so much and he couldn't really focus. And obviously this is not what you'd expect from a 25 year old CEO. The stereotype of a CEO is that they are extroverted, they are loud, they are super confident. And this wasn't the case for Ben. And so it made me kind of think a little bit and analyze as to how he could be so successful. When me and him are so different in something that I consider to be so important. And the answer is clear.
4:12 Steven Bartlett? And I guess it all comes down to the industry you're trying to win in. You know, tech entrepreneurs, they build products for billions and billions of people and they never ever meet those people. In my business, the service industry, I have 50 customers. And my conversations and relationships with those customers are person to person. I meet them from speaking on stage. I then develop relationships with them and spend all of my time having to hone my skills as a salesperson. And as a speaker in order to succeed in my pursuit. Ben doesn't. Ben has a million customers. Ben's customers never meet Ben. They meet the brand. And so in order for Ben to win his brand communication and the branding itself
4:56 Steven Bartlett? has to be the best in the world. And that's exactly where Ben's skills lie. So my communication skills need to be person to person, but Ben's need to be through a brand. And that's where he's the very, very best. Ben also demonstrated an incredible amount of self-awareness and to the point where I was honestly quite in awe of some of his self-awareness. One of the things I think demonstrates the level of Ben's self-awareness is his recent decision to step down as CEO of the company he founded and move to a role which was more in keeping with his strengths. How many 25-year-old CEOs would have the humility and the self-awareness
5:36 Steven Bartlett? to do that? He moved from CEO to Chief Brand Officer because in his own words, he didn't think he was the best at operations, finance and people management. And he wants to spend all of his time doing things he's good at and enjoys doing the most. That's why Ben wins. So Ben's job now is to focus on anything that the customer sees and experiences in terms of marketing and brand and these kinds of things. All entrepreneurs need to learn a lesson from that. I've learned a lesson from that. Recently, I appointed M Ds for my companies, and these are people that have better skills in key areas like operations and finance. And I often think as entrepreneurs, we find it hard to admit what we're bad at because we believe that an entrepreneur is good at everything. It's not the case. I
6:21 Steven Bartlett? am terrible at so many things, so many things. And in the early days, I could kind of scrape past being bad at those things. But as the company got bigger and bigger and bigger, you realise the damage you'll do spending time, which is also very limited, on things you're not good at. And that self-awareness to bring people in who are better than you at those things, even if it means getting rid of what's quite a prestigious title, is why I respect Ben tremendously. The next big similarity we had was in the relationship front. Ben's 25 years old, he's been with his girlfriend for almost three years now. And when I spoke to Ben about relationships, it was almost as if I was speaking to myself.
7:06 Steven Bartlett? On this podcast, I've said before that when I was with my ex-girlfriend, I could be sat in the room, but she would feel that I was a million miles away. And Ben said that almost word for word.
7:18 Speaker 01 My girlfriend will tell you, like, this, there's times where she will literally say to me, she's like, you're at home, but you're not actually at home. Like, I'm not actually there. Like, and we'll go out for food and whatever. And I'm, I'm definitely not there. I'm permanently in my, in my phone or in my head thinking about where we want to go next. So in fact, that's one of the biggest lessons I've learned in actually the last, like, month or two is that I need to sort of learn better to switch off and spend time with my loved ones. Because obviously you never know how long they're gonna, or how long they're gonna last and how long we're gonna last.
7:43 Steven Bartlett? I then went on to ask him a very, very simple question. You've made your relationship incredibly successful. What do I need to look for in a girl in order for me to have the same success as an entrepreneur that you've had? And here's what he said.
7:59 Speaker 01 Switched on, understanding, open to change. Biggest one is open to change. Like, like, there has been, I mean, there's, there's obviously points where I'll just, like, Robin or I have no idea where I'm gonna be in the country at that moment. Where, you know, the next trip is, when, what time I'm gonna be home, whether or not we're gonna be living where we live, all this sort of stuff. But I think, again, I'm very fortunate because she's in the same sort of thing as me. But I think being open to change, understanding, and I think that's huge.
8:25 Steven Bartlett? She needs to be switched on, she needs to be open to change, and she needs to be understanding. And I couldn't agree more. From my own perspective, here's what I think Ben means. First point was switched on. When he says switched on, what, what I uncovered from further conversations was that she needs to understand the fundamentals of what it is you do. Because on those tough days where you come home and you wanna offload a little bit or discuss, if they don't understand the fundamentals, you're not going to get into the specifics because it just takes too long to explain what you do. A great example would be my mum, let's say. My mum doesn't know what the internet is, how it works, how to turn on a computer, what social media is.
9:08 Steven Bartlett? So I can't talk to my mum about the specific challenges within my job in social media. So I just don't bother. I just don't have the conversation because I don't have that much time. And it's the same for relationships. They have to understand the fundamentals. The next point is about being open to change. Obviously, being an entrepreneur is incredibly unpredictable. Like you'll never ever understand until you become an entrepreneur. To the point where you make plans with somebody and then for whatever reason, you continually have to shift those plans. You shift those plans to a new day, the twentieth, we're going to meet on the twentieth. And then on the twentieth, something happens, you have to shift the plans again. And you continue to let people down and become unreliable.
9:50 Steven Bartlett? And often for a romantic partner, this can be seen as a lack of care or disrespect. And that's the problem I have. I've I had it with my last um my last partner where sometimes um the the way that I was was was hard to understand because my my switching of plans would um would appear to be a lack of care, let's say. And the last point was about understanding. Fortunately for Ben, his girlfriend is in the industry and she gets it. And so I implore you to try and find somebody who understands the world you live in. If you're going on this journey to be an entrepreneur, because if they don't understand it, I promise you, you're going to have tremendous conflicts.
10:33 Steven Bartlett? The next point I wanted to touch on was the life of an entrepreneur. Um and Ben, as an entrepreneur, referred to it as being incredibly lonely. He said it was the most lonely thing you'll ever do in your life. Um and he said, there's no one that's been there through it all, so no one will ever really understand. And it just resonated again like you you wouldn't believe. Um the loneliest point is something we've touched on a lot in this podcast and it's hard for me to explain that to anybody. I I can't find the words to describe it. Let me take another shot at it. Here's here's here's what it feels like. You are on twenty four seven, twenty four seven, every day. Sunday night, Saturday night, you name it, you're on.
11:20 Steven Bartlett? And all of those problems and all the issues and challenges and thoughts and opportunities swirl in your head alone. And you can't just yap and talk out loud, or else you'll be a crazy person. But they're there. And those thoughts are swirling around 24/7. And you're almost having internal conversations with yourself to resolve all of these issues. And that's why often, you know, you can be in the room with somebody else and feel a million miles away, is because you are actually a million miles away solving a bunch of problems. So that loneliness is something that really resonated and was a similarity for both of us. The next thing was about resistance and resilience, sorry. So Ben had undergone
11:59 Steven Bartlett? some tremendous challenges, as all entrepreneurs have and undergo. And because of that, he'd become incredibly resilient. One of his closest colleagues before the interview had told me that Ben has this unbelievable ability to stay right in the middle, despite great things or terrible things. He's just composed. And this is a trend I've noticed with all of the entrepreneurs I've ever met, is that the greatest entrepreneurs, the greatest leaders, have this remarkable ability to stay right in the middle despite hardship or reward. And lastly, on this point, he referred to the fact that he actually, in a weird, weird
12:40 Steven Bartlett? way, enjoyed the negativity. He enjoyed the challenges. And this is something that I shared in my my chapter four, I believe, was that because those tough times make you so resilient, almost like a bit of a drug, you require tough times to make you feel something. And it's because you become colder and more sort of resilient and more numb to everything. And in the same way, I think I've become almost addicted to challenges and tough times, because they're the only times as a CEO or a leader that I really, really feel something these days.
13:20 Steven Bartlett? There are so many things that make Ben a successful entrepreneur. But if I had to put my finger on just one thing that differentiates him from his competition, it's his level of care.
13:32 Speaker 01 I really care. Again, like if I get a DM on my Instagram, which I will, you know, inevitably we're shipping thousands and thousands of orders a day now, inevitably something will go wrong somewhere and someone will message me saying I've got an issue. That really hurts me. I go absolutely mental and the first thing I'm doing is I'm running up to customer experience and saying, how the hell can we fix this? You know, how can we make this better? Because to me, and again, the thing, the problem with online is it's all numbers on the screen. It's very easy to get lost in those numbers and it's very easy to become desensitized, desensitized to the fact that each one of those numbers is a human being somewhere in the world. So to me, it's really important to make sure that everyone has a brilliant experience. And do you know what? Even if, the other thing I'll say to everyone is even if no one ever buys a Jim Shark product, I want to put on Jim Shark event so that these people can go and be inspired and motivated and
14:14 Speaker 01 you know, in some way hopefully improve their lives. So if no one ever buys a Jim Shark product, to me, that's not the end of the world because I want people to be inspired and sort of be affected positively by what we do in some way.
14:25 Steven Bartlett? And that level of care stems from him absolutely loving what he does, of course, like it does for many entrepreneurs. But his level of care and attention to detail, for me, is the one reason why you will not beat Ben. You won't beat Ben. Not at what Ben does. You can't beat Ben. Because of that authenticity over time will completely change his business. And here's, I want to give you a very sort of understandable example of what I mean. So on Black Friday, many, many years ago, Ben's website failed. He failed his customers and thousands and thousands of people who tried to order got messed around. And most CEOs would, I don't know, put out a press release and apologize or whatever.
15:08 Steven Bartlett? But Ben writ thousands of hand assigned, handwritten letters to those customers that had been messed around and he was genuinely devastated on a personal level. He refers to the fact that the worst, worst, worst possible thing that can happen to him in a day is that customer will DM him or message him saying that they've had a problem. He'll find himself running up to the complaints department or the customer care team to try and resolve that issue himself. Most people will see those numbers as numbers.
15:39 Steven Bartlett? Ben sees those numbers as people and because he cares so much about the customer experience and cares so much about the product, over time, you can imagine how that level of care compounds. On that day on Black Friday, of course, him writing those handwritten letters probably didn't move the bottom line for his business, probably didn't make a big impact. But over five years, that level of care on every touch point within the business, from the internal teams to the brand, to the marketing, will transform anybody's business. That attention to detail and care can make you a success. And the crazy thing is, it all stems from really loving what you do.
16:21 Steven Bartlett? So the key, I guess, is to make sure that your motives are correct. Make sure you're waking up in the morning and doing what you do, not because you're trying to get rich or because you're trying to make a shitload of money, but because you absolutely love it. And it's that love that results in care, that results in great businesses, that means you take over the world someday. Okay, so now I'm going to open my diary. And it's been two weeks since I've shared my diary with you. So there's a lot of things in there and I'm super excited to share this stuff with you because it kind of weighs on me like a burden until I get it all out there into the universe and get your feedback. So this is kind of therapy for me, sharing the deep, dark, sort of personal elements of my diary with you.
17:05 Steven Bartlett? So without further ado, let's open my diary. Okay, so the first thing I've got written in my diary today is frog in a pan. And I just tend to do bullet points because that's a way for me to remember the thought, but I know exactly why I wrote this. I've been doing this tour around the country and I've spoken at nine universities in the last 30 days. And when I spoke at one of the universities, someone who's a staff member of the tour said to me this analogy about how a frog won't jump out of a frying pan if you gradually increase the heat. And it's crazy, and it's a true story from what I can tell, but even if it's not, the analogy is just as important nonetheless.
17:48 Steven Bartlett? The story goes that if you place a frog in a frying pan of boiling water, the frog will instantly jump out. But if you place a frog in cold water and gradually increase the heat, it won't move. It stays put, continually adapting and adjusting its sensitivity to the water, until finally it succumbs to the temperature, becomes unable to move, its muscles break down and it dies. And when I was told this, I realised that this is the perfect analogy for exactly what happens in most of our lives too. When we're young, we have a clear picture of how we want our lives to look, and then life happens and we're dropped into this cold pan of water and the heat gradually increases.
18:30 Steven Bartlett? And as it does, we we let go of our ambitions, we stay in toxic relationships, we tolerate jobs we hate and end up forgetting who we are and the standards we set ourselves. The heat is so gradual that you don't see it happening before it's too late. The heat is allowing the way someone treats you to get worse and worse without jumping out the pan. The heat to me is letting other people's negativity slowly erode away at your confidence, your self-worth and your ambitions. The heat is staying in that job you hate because the lack of self-belief around you has made you lower your standards to the point where you're now comfortable in this job you hate, but you're totally unhappy and unfulfilled. You know, if someone emotionally or physically abused you on a first date,
19:15 Steven Bartlett? you would slap them in the face and walk out the room. You would jump out the pan, right? But if, you know, three years into a relationship, after months and years of having your standards slowly eroded away, you find yourself accepting that same abuse. And it dawns on, you know, if someone punched you in the face and explains domestic abuse, explains why people stay in these relationships, you will die like that frog in a pan if you continue to compromise your standard. The truth is, the only ones in life that get more are those that demand it. It's only those that protect their standards that get out the pan. So if things are getting hotter, then now is the time to jump out the pan. Because soon, it'll be too late.
20:01 Steven Bartlett? And that frog analogy really, really moved me. So I'm glad I got to share that with someone. And it's applicable in all areas of our lives. And it just speaks to the idea of gradually succumbing to a succumbing to a lower standard. And it's something we've all got to protect. The next point I've written in my diary just says, searching for an end, what comes next? And the reason why I've written this is because in my previous podcasts, I think in the first three, let's say, I discussed the journey of realizing that personally, now I have enough financial freedoms to do whatever I want. And, you know, trying to come to terms with what it then meant to have money
20:45 Steven Bartlett? and what money would do for me in my life. And one of the things that really sort of like I struggled with was I met billionaires, I know billionaires, and the billionaires I've met, I almost think they're a little bit sick in a strange way. Because so there's these two billionaires I'm thinking of, one of them has about three billion, one of them has 1.5 billion. And I sat there thinking, you know, you're sat here looking at your revenues every day, and you're almost addicted to these, these figures and these numbers, but what is it doing for you? Like surely more money doesn't make a difference at this point in your life. And so why do you care about making more?
21:27 Steven Bartlett? And the reason why I had these thoughts is because I don't want to become somebody who gets obsessed with making more money for the sake of making more money. That for me is fucking hell. It's my definition of hell. And I never understood it with these billionaires. And only in reframing why they're doing what they're doing, have I understood the answer to what happens next for Steve? What's the next thing? Because when I looked at those billionaires, I was making the incorrect assumption that their fun or their fulfillment was a destination, that one billion should be the moment when they stop and party and relax.
22:10 Steven Bartlett? Whereas really, for those billionaires, it's all about the process. And there's a certain billionaire who I won't name, fuck it, I'll name him. The billionaire who founded the Huck Group. And when I speak to him about why he does what he does, or you know, or how he continues to motivate himself. Him and the other billionaire I referenced, they both do it for the competition and for the fun of it. Their fulfillment is actually in the process. It's in building something. It's in the progression. It's in the journey. It's not in a destination. They've reached the destination you'd expect them to jump off the train and they've carried on on the train. All of their fun comes from growing something and that's never ending.
22:51 Steven Bartlett? So when I think about what comes next, it's not a viable question to ask myself. There won't be anything next. It's now and it will always be now. It's the journey.
23:04 Steven Bartlett? The next point in my diary just says, the difference between being heard and being invisible. And the reason why I've written this is because over the last couple of weeks, I've been speaking on more stages than ever before. And because of that, I've got better and better at honing my craft and I've had more experience, I guess. And the one thing I've learnt, which I just really, really could not wait to share with you because I really think this can transform your life. Is if you want to be heard, stop fluffing your opinion. Stop diluting it because you care what other people might think.
23:40 Steven Bartlett? And that is unbelievably important. You have to deliver your thoughts, your opinion and your beliefs regardless of potential public scrutiny. And on stage, on panels and in discussions, when I have told the audience exactly what I think, despite the fact I know that many of them will hate me, so many of them will be pissed off. It's cut through and it's travelled further than anything else. And this is why you've got people like Gary Vaynerchuk winning, because Gary Vaynerchuk says it how he sees it. We live in a world where everybody is politically correct. They're all giving fluffy, safe answers to things.
24:21 Steven Bartlett? So it's only those that say it how it is that cut through and go the distance. And so I've had a bit of a change over the last couple of weeks where I've decided now to start saying exactly what I think regardless. And I carried out a bit of an experiment this week that some of you guys and girls would have seen on my Twitter. I did a tweet and it said, print is dead, radio is dying and TV is very, very sick. And before I did that tweet, I sat at my computer for about 20 minutes, reading it, thinking about the consequences of saying that. Thinking about the fact that most people that follow me are in the media world. I've got clients in the media world that are in print and TV.
25:04 Steven Bartlett? I've got friends that are in print and TV and they've dedicated their whole lives to it. I thought about how many people are not going to like me after I tweet this and the potential backlash of that tweet. And then I realised that I shouldn't be making my decisions on that basis. I have to stand for something, even if it's not politically, you know, socially expedient or politically correct. Or it's not going to help me win any more friends. And so I tweeted it and it got 500 favourites and hundreds of retweets. And it got a shitload of abuse, tremendous amounts of abuse. One guy literally made a picture titled, The Reason Why Steve Baller Is Wrong. And he tried to hammer me on the point with data.
25:51 Steven Bartlett? And it really, really, really, really opened my eyes, that whole process. What it taught me is that. My most engaged tweet ever was the one that I actually believed in the most. It was the one that had the least fluff, the least care about what people would think. Of course, it was a general statement, but I understand social media, specifically my Twitter feed, because I'm a thought leader per se. Whatever I say anyway, people are going to try and falsify and prove wrong. So I kept it general. I knew it would be controversial and I tweeted it. And the impact of that one tweet, because it was something I believed in, has been tremendous. One of the biggest brands in the world asked to meet with me.
26:33 Steven Bartlett? They, full disclosure, they paid thousands and thousands of pounds to meet with me, to ask me questions for 60 minutes. And the first thing they said in that meeting was that tweet. That was the thing that I'd cut through to them. And because of that, I was in a room being paid thousands and thousands of pounds to social chain. I didn't take the money myself. Because of that. And because of that, that was the tweet that reached the most people. It got my ideas out there the furthest. And I'd managed to galvanize those people that also agree with me, closer to me. Although, I guess the cost was I pushed some people away. What I've come to learn is that the pursuit of being liked by everyone is also the pursuit of being totally invisible to the world.
27:17 Steven Bartlett? And what I mean by that is, if you want to be invisible, you have to carry out a certain amount of actions. Those are the same actions it requires to being liked. If you want to be liked, you have to carry out certain actions. You have to be a people pleaser. You have to say or do nothing. And those are the same actions it takes to be invisible. Only those that are heard, only those that are on stage, and only those that have the biggest platform are those that don't give a fuck about being liked. They don't have it as a KPI. They have delivering their opinion and staying true to their convictions as their KPI. That's your Gary Vaynerchuk. That's your Piers Morgan. Like her or not, that's your Katie Hopkins. Like him or not, that's your Donald Trump.
28:00 Steven Bartlett? And so my new approach is just to say what I think, despite the fact that every time I tweet or post on these topics, there will be 30 people who will literally, physically want to hurt you.
28:16 Steven Bartlett? Next point in my diary, moving through this fairly quickly, which I'm very proud of, is investment, about investment delusion. So many entrepreneurs aspire to raise investment in their lives. And I think because of popular culture, investment has become something that people celebrate. And really, my mum taught me that when you borrow money from someone, you should be nervous because you've got to pay them back. So investment surely shouldn't be something that entrepreneurs celebrate as they do. One of the crazy delusions about investment is that it gives you tremendous more time and freedom. In some cases, that's true. But I just wanted to share with you a little analogy I told a young entrepreneur who asked me about investment, which I think might help some of you that may at some point
29:00 Steven Bartlett? in your sort of personal journeys, consider raising money. The way I look at it is like a runway. Let's say it's a plane runway. And by taking investment, you extend the length of that plane runway before your aircraft will fall off the end into the water. But the problem is, when you take investment, you speed up the speed of the aircraft. And what I'm saying is, when you take investment, you get an office, and you hire more teams, and you buy more stuff. And that's increasing your overheads. So it's actually speeding up your aircraft. So without the investment, you might have had, say, three months left before you go bankrupt or broke, whatever. And with the investment, because you buy
29:45 Steven Bartlett? a tremendous amount more things, you're speeding up the aircraft down that runway, even though it's a longer runway, your plane's going faster now, and you still might just have three months left. Raising investment for some people is a terrible, terrible idea, because it'll speed that plane up too much, to an unsustainable degree. So be very, very, very careful when you consider raising investment, because not only do you have to pay the person back, and that's the whole point, but it might be the worst decision you make for your business. The next point in my diary is something I think is applicable to everybody listening. But I also think it's probably one of the most important things I'll ever stress, which is the importance of how you use your time. And I've now touched on this in two different chapters, but my thoughts on this topic have
30:30 Steven Bartlett? developed further, so I felt obliged to share it again. The one thing that everybody on this planet, billionaire or homeless person or philanthropist or prisoner or stay at home mum, has in common is we all have the same amount of time every single day. We all get 24 hours in a day. Some people have other advantages. They have more money than you, they have more skills, they have more resources, but we all have 24 hours in a day. And how we use that time, I believe, presents the greatest opportunity to transform our lives, to beat competitors and to win. And the way I've come to see it, as my business has got bigger and bigger and bigger, is
31:14 Steven Bartlett? that the only thing I can deploy and the only weapon I have is the smart use of my time. And because there are so many things I could be doing, it's become harder to understand what I should be doing. But I know it's more important now than ever before. And so here's how I've began to look at my time. Every morning I wake up, I walk up to a roulette table and they give me 24 chips. 24 hours in a day, 24 chips. Eight of those chips are immediately placed on the little square that says sleep and food. Sleep, food and bath, let's say. I'm left with 16 chips every single day and I have the decision of how to place those
31:55 Steven Bartlett? chips based on what I think will deliver the best return when they spin the wheel. And so I might spend one hour in this meeting, one hour doing my podcast, one hour speaking on stage, two hours meeting my clients, one hour with my team, and then I spin the wheel and I see what return I've got. That is basically life. That's my life these days. It's all about placing my time against things which I think will deliver the best return. And really, for all of us, that is the only decision we make every day, is where we're placing those 24 chips we get in order to change or transform our lives for the better. We get 16 chips spare, let's say, a day, which is 112 chips a week, 480 chips a month, 5,840 chips a year.
32:42 Steven Bartlett? And I genuinely believe that the majority of people, and this is based on some research as well, are actually wasting eighty percent of their chips on things that will not have any positive impact on their lives whatsoever. These are things like scrolling social media aimlessly, they are gossiping, they are obsessing over petty, unimportant issues, they are hanging around, wasting time, laying down, these kinds of things, right? Which means that really, in a, in the space of a year, you're only using three point two chips a day, which is crazy, considering you're given twenty four chips, you're using three point two chips a day to push the needle forward.
33:24 Steven Bartlett? That means you're wasting four thousand six hundred and seventy two chips a year. And so when I started to think about this, I was like, this is crazy. If I could just use one more chip a day, doing something productive, because I tracked it and because I thought more about how I was spending my chips, imagine the impact that would have on my life over, over a year, or five years, or ten years. Figuring out how to just use one chip more effectively and more productively can transform your life. And when you consider the laws of compounding interest, it gets all the more interesting. And that one chip, in fact, can be worth hundreds of chips in a couple of years' time because you invested that chip today in the right thing.
34:09 Steven Bartlett? For those of you that aren't familiar with the laws of compounding interest, essentially, in layman's terms, it means that what you invest today will gain interest, and then you get interest on the investment, but also on the interest, which causes things to increase at quite an exponential rate. One of the best examples of compounding interest I can give is about two people that saved their money. I'm going to refer to them as Person A and Person B. Person A saved two thousand pounds between the age of nineteen and twenty six, every single year. So they put two thousand pounds in the bank every year between the age of nineteen and twenty six. That's seven years.
34:49 Steven Bartlett? Person B started saving at the age of twenty seven, and they saved right up until they were sixty five years old. Person A only saved for seven years. Person B saved for almost four decades.
35:13 Steven Bartlett? Who has the most money? Interestingly, the answer is if they both receive nine percent interest on their saving, person A will have more money than person B at sixty five years old. Because an investment earlier, compounding over time, is actually much greater than the initial saving. And this, I think, also applies for the idea of this roulette table. If you're able to save an extra chip every single day now, that will compound over time because of the way achievement, I think, works and building things work. And you'll see tremendous, tremendous awards in your future, tremendous rewards. So how do you, how do you save one chip?
35:56 Steven Bartlett? Say no more to things that don't require your time and plan your time. Don't let your time be planned. The next point is an analogy which I heard this week and I scribbled down into my diary because it so beautifully and simply explains why some people are successful, the most simple reason why some people are successful and others aren't. And it's, it goes something like this. Imagine the world is just one big Yankees baseball game and everybody's given a bat and the person throwing the ball, the pitcher, is the best pitcher in the world. You're told if you hit a home run, you will win the big prize. Everybody is given as many swings as they want and you can line up as many times as you want. And so you can imagine everybody's pulling up in their cars and they're lining up to take a swing.
36:42 Steven Bartlett? And, and when it comes their chance, most people won't even swing. They'll see the bowler is amazing, so they'll just put the bat down and they'll go home. Most people are going to come, take one swing, hear everybody booing in the crowd, give someone else a chance, you're going to fail. And they'll put the bat down, step aside and they'll go home as well. Then you'll have one person grabs the bat, steps up, takes ten swings at the ball. They get booed like crazy. They have insults flung at them. They're doing their best on those ten swings, but they're still nowhere near. Eventually they'll buckle under the pressure as well. They'll give up and they'll put the bat down and they'll go home. And then you'll have that one person who hears the boos, hears the hate and keeps swinging and swinging and swinging.
37:27 Steven Bartlett? And at this point, everyone's like, you're the worst person ever. I hate you, you're selfish, you're going to fail, give someone else a chance. Seven hours goes past and that person just keeps on swinging. And then eight hours in, ping. They hit the ball and it's a home run. And in that moment, nobody cares or remembers the nonsense, the hate. They just look at that person as a hero because they persevered and they stuck in there. And most people don't want to keep swinging. They hear the noise around them, they hear the hate, the criticism, and they give up. Because that's the easiest thing to do short term. And I realised in my own life, when I was eighteen years old, living in the worst area of the city,
38:09 Steven Bartlett? not speaking to my parents, no money in the bank, that I was going to keep swinging. I knew my mission, I was clear on that. So despite the fact I had my mum stood in the queue behind me telling me to to go back to university and to get a real job and all these kinds of things, for me, I was so clear. There was no plan B. There was no other life that Steve Bartlett was able to live. So it was either hitting that home run or keep on swinging. And I made the decision that I would not leave that batting area until I hit that ball. Regardless of the noise, until I hit a home run, I was not leaving the batting area. And all it takes is one hit, one home run. And that's all that people will remember anyway.
38:54 Steven Bartlett? Okay, the next point in my diary is about self belief. And as I referenced at the top of this podcast, I've always had a tremendous amount of self belief and confidence. And one of the things I think is fundamental to success in life, from my own experiences, and as I've reflected, is just believing that you can. But so that like sprung the question on me, where does that come from? And where did that come from with me? How do you build self belief and confidence? And I had a conversation with a friend of mine this week. She's an incredibly talented girl who I believe can do tremendous, tremendous things in her life. But she doesn't, for the life of her, believe in herself. She has no confidence. And so I started scribbling in my diary how she would go about building confidence.
39:37 Steven Bartlett? And I just wanted to share those notes with you. The first thing is she needs to spend more time doing things. That she didn't think she could do. And the the importance of that is we need to build these case studies within ourselves as to what we're really capable of. If we don't try anything new, we don't create the case studies that we can. And her problem is she never tries. She's so sort of confined by her own perception of what she's able to do, that she never even bothers to try. And so, well, reflecting my personal story, at the age of fourteen, I thought about the idea of creating a website. And so I started
40:19 Steven Bartlett? trying to create the website. I failed horrifically, but at least I tried. Because next time, I learned a lot from from that effort, which enabled me to be able to create a website. And then I realized I created an internal case study that sometimes when Steve thinks of things he wants to do, that he doesn't currently know how to do, he's actually able to make them happen. And that simple understanding and that case study stayed with me my whole life, to the point now where I genuinely believe, even if I've never done it before, I'll figure it out. And I think that's one of the most important things. And the same applies for confidence. In order to build confidence in things and situations where
40:59 Steven Bartlett? we feel unconfident, we need to spend more time in uncomfortable situations, or unconfident situations. And very much like muscle fiber, confidence is built by breaking. First time I spoke on stage, I was a mumbling, mumbling mess. Now I basically do it for a living. And it's only because I persevered, and I kept speaking on stages, even though I was terrible, that I now appear to be fairly okay at it. The next point in my diary is inspired again by this tour that I've been doing over the UK. I've met thousands of young people, and I scribbled in my diary, hard work, delusion. And let me explain that. I met
41:40 Steven Bartlett? So many young people that told me how hard they're working and how few results they're achieving from that work. And these are their own personal projects. This is building businesses, that this is within jobs they have. And they're almost being frustrated because they work harder, apparently, than other people, but their results aren't as big as other people's. And it really inspired me to really correct this idea that hard work is equal to value. Hard work and value are two completely different things. And although in Social Chain, my company, there are, I don't know, 150 people, an intern may well put in more hours than somebody else in the director level of the company, but it
42:25 Steven Bartlett? doesn't mean they've delivered more value. And I think there's this tragic misconception that the amount of hours you work should be equivalocal to the amount that you receive in return from life. Really, what you should focus on is delivering more value, because someone in the director level can deliver the same amount of value in 10 minutes that an intern could potentially deliver in a day. And so the focus needs to be on what value you're delivering. And I say this to young people all across the country, because I've seen this sort of entitlement that comes with working long hours. It's this, you know, I put in 10 hours today, I should, you know, have tremendous results for that.
43:05 Steven Bartlett? I sent 100 emails looking for a job and I've got no return. And the real sort of message there is, you should just send five higher value or higher quality emails, as opposed to sending 100 and wasting more time. It's about smart work over hard work. And I really, really believe that reframing can help all of us, including myself, change our lives, focusing on giving value and delivering more and more value, as opposed to delivering more hours. The next point in my diary just says Jeff Bezos. And for you that don't know who Jeff Bezos is, he is the CEO and founder of Amazon, which is, in my opinion, one of the most remarkable companies of our generation.
43:46 Steven Bartlett? And Jeff has a remarkable way of looking at business, which I think should lead all of us to kind of reframe what we think to be important. A lot of the time we'll spend our days thinking about competitors or our products or these kinds of things. But Jeff Bezos has been able to win with Amazon because he has a very singular focus on customer. He obsesses over the customer, not competitors or problems or all these kinds of things. He obsesses on the customer first, and in doing so, he solves most of the other problems in his business because of that. At the end of the day, all businesses are about customers. If you're selling fashion, wear or art on Instagram, it's still all about your customer.
44:28 Steven Bartlett? And his obsession for the customer and the customer experience is why Amazon has one. And so I've looked at myself and my own company and tried to figure out how we can make our business more about the customer. And this is something that I'll continue to keep you updated on. The other thing that Jeff Bezos really inspired me with is his approach to how he makes decisions. He says that making decisions should be done on the probability of regret. And he goes on to explain that on our deathbeds, as Bonnyware discovered in her famous punitive research study, the vast majority of us will never, ever, ever regret trying, will never regret chasing our dreams or trying to become someone, will only regret not trying. And that's how he's made all of his decisions.
45:13 Steven Bartlett? And I implore you to try and make some of your decisions that way. Try and focus on making your decisions based on the probability that you'll regret it when you're 80. And I think if you look at it that way, you'll live a completely different life.
45:28 Steven Bartlett? And finally, the last point in my diary, and I think I've always ended on this point, is about relationships. Um, I'm incredibly single, more single than I think I've ever been in my life. I think the, the only time before this where I was more single than I am now was when I was eighteen years old and I was doing moss side in my bedroom and I was actually too poor to leave the house. Um, that's not so much the case these days, although I'm dog sitting two dogs, my own and then someone else's dog at the moment. Um, but I'm just incredibly focused and I'm incredibly happy and I'm incredibly fulfilled. So I almost don't feel the need to have someone in my life in a romantic sense, as much as the fact, you know, I'm a twenty five year old guy, I get horny like everyone else does. Um, it's not something that I'm seeking out. I don't feel like there's anything
46:11 Steven Bartlett? missing. However, as I said in chapters four, three and two, I think, I have been missing my ex-girlfriend. For anybody that's just tuning into this podcast, I fell in love with or started dating my P A when I started social change. So a year in, I start dating my P A for all the reasons that Ben at the top of this podcast explains. She understood my world. She was understanding. She was open to change because she realized the things that had to, um, she realized things had to move sometimes because she could see everything. She was my P A. Um, and eventually we broke down, we broke up. She moved to Australia to get away from me and uh, I'm started missing her about three months and I start missing her. Don't really know why. Four
46:56 Steven Bartlett? months and I start missing her. Five months, I'm still missing her. And I start sharing it with you guys on this podcast. And um, over the last couple of weeks, I think in the last two weeks, three weeks, me and her have started talking again, which is just craziness, right? She's moved to Australia, literally to get away from me. And uh, we start talking again and uh, it's going really well. I like talking to her. I miss her. It's been good to kind of like explain to someone, you know, my world and well, not explain, but to share again my world with someone because. You know, if I meet a girl in a bar or a club or something and I try and explain to them the complexities of my world, you can imagine they're probably fucking run away. But I'm not having to explain myself again because she, this person knows me so well,
47:40 Steven Bartlett? has been a great relief. Obviously, they're twenty four hours away. But, you know, I've been on the phone to her a couple of times this week and we've chatted and we've, uh, yeah, things are good. But then you, you stumble across this problem, like she's the other side of the world. She's there for, you know, as far as I'm aware, for the foreseeable future. She's not going to move back anytime soon. Um, so you ask yourself, what the fuck are you doing? And I think she's asked herself that as well. In fact, I know she has. What am I doing talking to her? There was a reason why we broke down. Is that reason still, you know, valid? You know, uh, am I just gonna suck her back into this situation? Suck myself back into this situation? Is it gonna be destructive and even worse than before? So it's incredibly, I'm incredibly scared about what I'm doing.
48:25 Steven Bartlett? Like, I don't know if I should be talking to her or not, but, um, it just feels right. And, you know, we always make these decisions, I think, between our head and our heart. And this is definitely a decision being made with my heart, not my head. Because my head is logic, right? My heart does things based on emotion and how I'm feeling. And, um, I guess only time will tell. And I think we should end there. Thank you so much for tuning in for chapter seven and making it to the very end. I, I, I can't thank you enough, honestly. Thank you doesn't quite cut it. I'm deeply, deeply appreciative. You guys are the reason why I do this. Um, all I ask of you is to leave a positive review in the App Store if you enjoyed the podcast. Please, please, please tweet me. Please give me your feedback, your thoughts.
49:10 Steven Bartlett? Be completely honest. I'm trying to be honest with you, so please be honest with me. Um, cause you, like, I don't do this just to speak to myself. As, as much as the therapeutic side of it is changing my life, it's all about us and this, this two-way kind of dialogue, um, that we have. So please leave a review if you haven't already. And please drop me a tweet or a message and let me know what you think of this podcast. I will see you again next Sunday for another chapter of the Diary of a CEO. I appreciate you more than you'll ever know. Thank you.
Previous E6 Mark's Diary - Betrayal, backstabbing and death Next E8: Advice from Elon Musk, Warren Buffet and Steve Jobs Page updated October 26, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
