A Bit of Optimism - Sweating the Small Stuff with Steven Bartlett (Part 1)

Episode Date: August 22, 2023

How you do anything is how you do everything.Steven Bartlett embodies this old adage.  His high standards and focus on the finest details launched him from a broke university dropout to one of the world’s most influential entrepreneurs.At 30-years-old he has already founded multiple companies, starred on Britain’s hit tv show Dragon’s Den, and he is now the host of one of the planet’s most popular podcasts, Diary of a CEO.  He is a leader for the new era. It was a joy to turn the tables on him and have him talk about himself for a change. His new book, Diary of a CEO, is available for pre-order now. This is…a Bit of Optimism.For more on Steven and his work check out: His new book: https://smarturl.it/DOACbookHis website: https://stevenbartlett.com/ 

Stephen Bartlett has a unique ability to get people to open up and talk about things they probably haven't talked about in public before. I should know. He did it to me. So I invited him on to a bit of optimism to see if I could get him to do the same. He's quite remarkable. He started building companies when he was just 18 and took himself from being a broke university dropout to a millionaire by the age of 23 and one of Britain's most influential entrepreneurs. He's been one of the regulars on Dragon's Den, the British equivalent of Shark Tank. And most importantly, he's become a voice for the modern entrepreneur. In part one of our two-part conversation,

Stephen proves himself to be vulnerable, introspective, and curious. Not just about how he achieves, but why he feels the need to achieve in the first place. This is a bit of optimism. place. This is a bit of optimism. So the best part about sitting down to do a podcast with you is that you are never on the receiving end of these things. And you have made quite a career out of getting people to say all the things they don't want to say. And now here you are on the receiving end. Yeah, it's terrifying. Now you know how we feel. I'm not going to start with, here's how nice I am.

I'm not going to start with, I'm going to ask you a question. Most people lie about the answer and I want you to be honest. How are you? I'm not going to start there. But how are you? How am gonna start but how are you um how am i i'm good interesting chapter of my life it's an interesting chapter of my life i think um things feel more balanced than ever if that makes sense when i say balanced i don't mean in any equal proportion i just mean quantities that make me feel good right and i feel like i'm in a bit of

a boring phase of my life in an interesting way define boring just this kind of straight compounding phase of my life where nothing huge happens but in fact everything is happening because it's boring it's the same it's showing up every day it's discipline boring mean routine or does boring mean you're bored it means there's not a huge variance in the amount of experiences, but it's intentional. So it's maintenance. Yeah. Focus. Focused. That is counter to your personality. And what I mean by that is

you are sort of an entrepreneur's entrepreneur. You dropped out of school, went into business by yourself, sort of lived the entrepreneurial life. And entrepreneurs, their mentality, the creativity, the excitement, the joy doesn't suit maintenance, which is why entrepreneurial-minded folks struggle in a corporate environment. So does that mean you're changing? Does that mean that you're in a position of no creativity? You're not feeling challenged? Like, so bored is a very interesting choice of words. Yeah. So let me just take my podcasting business. It's about 30 people. It's called the driver CEO and everything is going up

and to the right. So this month is our highest downloads ever. We're going to do about 35 million downloads this month, 400,000 new subscribers on YouTube this month, Spotify, everything's going up and to the right. And I know that it's in those moments, because I know this from, I'd say, two and a half decades of observational analysis of my mother, of successful people, of Joe Rogan, of all the people that were big and then fell off. I know that it's in those moments when temptation to lose focus is the highest. So it's in those moments when everything is going great that you need to have this kind of boring patience with the process. And it's this slow, iterative,

1% finding of marginal gains that feels boring because I'm not accepting huge new opportunities that might divert my focus. I'm doing, in fact, what I think Joe Rogan did so well, which was do the same thing for 15 years and don't allow yourself to be swayed by temptation, which is, as I said, optimal when things are going well. Give me an example of a person or an organization that you believe gave into temptation. The biggest YouTuber in our country

in the UK had, let me say 3 million subscribers. He was the king of YouTube. He was the king of in-depth conversations. He was the king of the algorithms, etc. He got so big that he got so many opportunities. He got an opportunity to start a fighting channel. He got the opportunity to start a gaming channel, a football channel, a second football channel, the gambling channel. He took those opportunities. He got an opportunity to move to another platform called Twitch. He took that opportunity. He lost focus. You slowly saw this descending of his ability to reach people, his message. He lost sight of also his authenticity and would take opportunities based on their lucrativeness, not the resonance that I had with him and his audience.

And I just watched him go from being the king to being now completely, you know, he texted me the other day and asking me for a loan because his whole team have left him. And I diagnosed that moment against someone like a Joe Rogan who doesn't get credit for really the consistency and staying power. And I go, it was in the moment when temptation was highest that he should have made the toughest decision, which was to focus. And I talk about that a little bit in my book, these moments in my life where I had such high temptation to lose focus. Or my mother, who I watched start 25 businesses between the age of my age of 10 and 20. And I watched how she was never successful because whenever something has showed any sign of success or failure,

she would be swayed by a narrative that there's greener grass elsewhere. And watching your mother, like our family, we were virtually bankrupt for my entire childhood. No birthdays, no Christmases, no driving licenses, living in a derelict house purely because of my mother's lack of focus. Even the one business she started, which is this restaurant that went remotely well, she was immediately swayed by someone down the street telling her that an estate agent's business was better. And then I watched the restaurant crumble as she tried to give 50% to two things when both of her competitors in those industries are giving 110% to each. So when I said boring at the start of this, I'm honoring the fact that I know focus and focusing on consistency and compounding and doing more of the same stuff is in fact the path to the top.

There's this really interesting boring section in the middle of it when you've got to just say no a lot. And they always say, you know, when you're unsuccessful and things aren't going well, say yes. And when you're really successful and things are going well, say no. I'm saying no to everything. And it can feel a bit boring. I guess what you're describing in the example of the British podcaster is selling out, right? Yeah. Which is you've achieved a level of notoriety or you have a number of followers that is now appealing to other companies and advertisers, et cetera. And you say they dangle money in front

of you. It's the focus, the selling of the focus that I think is the worst thing. You know, Charlie Munger, one of the greatest investors of all time says, never interrupt compounding interest unless you absolutely have to. Like that's one of the great rules of investing. Never interrupt the process when something is compounding. And he interrupted the process by shifting his focus. And that's the chapter of my life I'm in. And it's difficult to speak to teams.

In fact, your work on thinking about infinite games and finite games really helped me because you've then got to build a system that is built for a long chapter of your life. You've got to build a company culture and you've got to energize your people and inspire them away in a way which is built for 10 years, not 10 months.

And that's what I think a lot about is how do I keep these people with me for the next decade? How do I keep their enthusiasm up? How do I keep them in a sustainable culture? Did you always know this? When did you learn this? When was the conversion to being finite driven, hitting a number, hitting a score? If I get this amount of money, that'll make me happy to now recognizing that boring is actually a strategy. So it was reading your book, in fact. So reading about finite and infinite games changed my first business in a quite profound way, because I realized that we were aiming at things like becoming the best in our industry when we wanted to be number one, make the most

revenue or whatever. And I realized that there was a both a lack of fulfillment that would come with achieving those goals, but also it wouldn't stand our company the best chance of succeeding over time because we were unsustainable. We were too intense. We were focused on short-sighted goals. We had short-sighted incentives. And then in 2000, I'm going to say 2019, I stood in front of my company and presented a new way forward, which I called www. Which was our world goals, which means outside of our walls, our welfare goals, which is the people inside of our walls. And our work goals, which is the work we do for the clients that we have. And these goals were all infinite in design. And just because of that, it meant that we were designing our company to go for multi-decades.

Motivation increased, staff attrition fell in terms of people quitting. Our incentive structures changed. Our client work changed. We took on different clients that could go with us over the long term, which were more lucrative. And that's kept with me ever since. So thank you. Oh, I love that. And thanks for being an example of what an infinite minded company looks like. So there's a detail in your own growth and your own history as an entrepreneur that I find really interesting. I'll give an analogy. Some people – I've had people come up to me and say, can you help me?

Can you give me advice? I want to be a public speaker. And I say, well, what do you want to talk about? And they go, I haven't figured that out yet. And sort of you realize they've got it in the wrong order, which is you find yourself compelled by an idea and then you figure out a way to spread that message, public speaking being one of them. So it was always weird to me that somebody says, I want to be a public speaker. I don't know what to speak about. And I think we see that very often in business owners, which is, I want to make a lot of money. I want to be my own boss. I'm looking for a business I can start, right? And money very often is the driver if i hit this number i'll feel successful be successful

whatever and i'm very curious about your rise when you started your first business before you went public what was the motivation what was the drive as i mean how old were you when you started that business i was 21 when i started that business it was a pivot from a business that i started when i was 18 but yeah 21 when when it founded, when it was registered as a company. And what was the ambition? What was the drive? It's multifaceted. So there's a personal drive, which is to become rich. And that was very clear to me. I needed to become rich. Why? was deeply insecure and riddled with shame and being the only pretty much the only black kid in an all-white area growing up we were the weird family in my view as i said we lived in a derelict

house and values often decided by comparison so you know if you look at where i was getting my value from you've got a perfect house next to ours a perfect family on the other side you have another perfect white family with lots of money next to ours then you have this derelict house with me and my black family inside of it where the grass is six foot high everything about my context my environment told me that i was lower value it told me that i wasn't enough so the things that invalidate you when you're a kid often become the things you seek validation from as an adult and for me i was invalidated by our lack of money by no romantic interests, by my family being quite bizarre, my mother being particularly interesting. And that's what I wanted. I wanted normalcy. So at 18 years old, I write in the front

page of my diary that by the age of 28, I'll make a million pounds. A Range Rover Sport will be my first car. I'll get a six pack and a girlfriend. And that was my orientation and my North Star in life. That was, if I did all of these things, then I would be successful. And that's the path I set out to achieve. And by 23, I had a Range Rover Sport as my first car. I had multiple millions in the bank account, had a girlfriend and I was working out. And, you know, I didn't feel great to say the least. So 23 years old is a pretty young age, A, to be a millionaire, but then to have achieved one's goals on paper and not feel successful. So you achieve these things and then what happened? I realized that I'd been lied to by some kind of narrative. And when I say lied to,

I don't mean someone had lied to me. A narrative had lied to me at some point along the way. A narrative had told me that upon our company going public that morning, when I went over to my phone in the corner of the room, that a marching band might appear. And maybe all of those people that called me the N-word or bullied me when I was a kid would appear and apologize and say how great I was or something. You know, I was confused about the nature of fulfillment and who I was and why I wanted what I was. And I was riddled with fake ambitions. I think that's what I came to learn over the years was that my ambitions were fake. They weren't ambition. They were insecurity. And there's a big distinction. And most of our lives are dragged by insecurity and shame. They're not driven by ambition. And it's a tragic truth that

most of us are going to have to have our ambitions and our narratives fail us before we realize that they're illusions and they're mirages and they're false. It's something that I think a lot about. How do we get people to realize that these limiting beliefs and ideas that are driving their lives are illusions before they have to undergo the pain to realize that themselves? In that chapter of my life, even a little bit earlier when someone offered to buy our company for a very big eight-figure number, me going home and going on rightmove.com to look at the houses I could buy, then going on Autotrader and look at the car that I could buy and looking into the image on this screen and realizing that I would be somewhat emptier. I'd be somewhat poorer for buying these things. And I

couldn't quite, it was an emptiness that I could feel inside of me. And then I met the guy that I wanted to become. I always think about this. I went and met the guy that I wanted to be. Friend of mine, he's still a friend to this day, billionaire, seven Lamborghinis outside of his house. I slept in the Louis Vuitton room, which was just this big room surrounded by these bags. Spent time with him that night till 5am and he opened up to me

and deeply, deeply lonely, asked me to sleep in bed with him that night. This is a 35 year old man, one of the most miserable people at a fundamental level that I'd met. And that is who I was striving to become. So I had to go in search of something else, a new set of values to govern my life. You described this as fake ambition. So then what's real ambition? Because you did make the distinction. What's real ambition if this is the fake ambition?

Yeah. So real ambition is driven by your intrinsic desires and passions and interests. So, you know, like I DJ now and I do this podcast. These are things that I would do irrespective of remuneration. They're attached to my like intrinsic motivation. So they're the things that you would do for free? You might not do them for free unless you're fortunate enough to have surplus income. But they're the things that, you know, yeah, you would choose to do if in a world where you didn't have to worry about money.

So fake ambitions are driven by the pursuit of rewards and validation like i wanted a lamborghini and i wanted to range over sport even though i'm not interested in cars real ambitions sound like i want to go and play the violin in the hills of peru because i love the violin it makes me feel great and and it's funny because i used to think that if i realized i was quote unquote enough it would remove my ambition. A lot of people think this. I've had people like Gary Vaynerchuk and other people I've interviewed say that if they're scared to go to therapy because of what it might change in them, because of what it might remove, they think it will steal their ambition.

It doesn't steal your ambition. It steals your fake ambitions. And it gives you enough space to focus on your real ones. You've achieved a tremendous amount. And I think what I really enjoy about spending time with you is for somebody so young you have a tremendous amount of perspective and wisdom i'm getting older now and i sort of i'm now that person who i remember older people would say to me but wait till you appreciate what the world is like when you're older you know and i'm like that person now looks

back and be like oh i wish i knew that you know do you have a sense of what you still have to learn at this age looking forwards or is that an unknown to you that you're gonna have to trip over and you know fall on your face to find out so outside of parenthood which i it's one of those things that i realize i'm not going to know anything about until it happens. I would say romantic relationships. I still have a ton to learn there. I would say I'm still slightly confused and insecure as it relates to self-worth. I do spend too much time obsessing over metrics. And I know that there's still a fundamental link between my self-esteem and my self-worth and these metrics and numbers, which is interesting. I sat with someone who wrote the book about status or status. I don't know how you guys say it over here. And he says, we all play status. Status, what'd you say?

No, I'm just kidding. I'm going to say status. We all play status games. I was under the opinion that I'd stopped playing them. I'd sold all my fancy things. I didn't have designer stuff. So I assumed I'd stopped playing status games in my life. And he made the case to me that your games just change. When you don't have a lot of money, the logos are bigger. When you become a billionaire, it's smaller logos, but bigger yachts. People with cameras, they play, you know, if my cameraman walked in now, he'd start talking about the cameras in this room and try. We all have these different games we're playing and I'm playing a different set of games now. And I don't want to be a slave to the game. I want to be conscious of the things that I'm

doing and making sure that I don't find myself in a similar position where i'm trading happiness for my self-worth that's still still an ongoing challenge i have and then i have other challenges like i have a lot to learn about emotional regulation tell me more i find it easy to get annoyed at things no i'm never angry i don't shout it's not my style but i find easy to go, specifically as it relates to work things. You said this on stage. Do you remember when we spoke? Yeah. You said, I get very annoyed at small details not being right as it relates to work and standards. And that's something that I know that I want to improve. I want to be able to take a little bit of a pause before reaction. You said you still harbor insecurities and have self-worth issues

based on hitting metrics. Say more about that. Like you're happy, you wake up every day with gratitude, and yet it seems paradoxical or oxymoronic that you still struggle with self-worth issues related to metrics. It seems paradoxical, but it's not because both are definitely true. So it's definitely true that I wake up every day with this like deep sense of gratitude and disbelief in my life. Like it's definitely true that i wake up every day with this like deep sense of gratitude and disbelief at my life like it's every day but at the same time my obsession with being successful like making things better finding marginal gains everywhere to the point that it

frustrates me and this obsession with like climbing and being better feels like it's still rooted in the same old issues from my childhood for me me, it's about being conscious of that and having a healthy relationship with that pursuit. And again, it being driven and not dragged. Tell me a project that you've been involved in professionally that you absolutely loved being a part of. It may or may not have been commercially successful, but if every project

you ever worked on was like this one, you would be the happiest person alive. The Diary of a CEO, the podcast. Okay. So what specifically about Diary of a CEO? Yeah. I mean, the Japanese refer to it as your ikigai, right? It's something that I think I can get good at. I believe it's helping other people. It's remunerative for me and I enjoy the process. So it ticks all four boxes in that regard. Seems to be my ikigai, as the Japanese would say. It's definitely the thing that I found in my life that checks all those boxes.

A lot of my businesses, I know that I'm running them for commercial incentives. It's ticking a curiosity box, but it's really for a commercial means, an end. But the diary of a CEO would be the one. Is there a particular guest or episode or series of guests that capture that feeling better than anybody else? So many of them, obviously all of our ones. That third episode we had for me is a perfect example of that where you have a human being, you get to meet a human being at that human being's essence. You get to learn things that are reson its at its that human being's essence you get to learn things that are resonant and that make you feel like your struggle um isn't because you're

inadequate it's because you're a human too and you're given a path through your struggle there's humor in there there's you know a range of emotion in there those are my favorite things and if i go right down to when i was a kid i was strange i would go on first dates and I would ask them deep questions about their childhood. If I had a tour guide and he was telling me, I remember being in Peru and the tour guide was showing me buildings. And for seven days, I showed no interest. And on the seventh day, he started talking about how different cultures that he takes on the tours have different levels of happiness. And he had my undivided attention. And he said to me that on that seventh day, he says, you haven't paid attention for six days.

And on the seventh day, when I started talking about people you tuned in, that is, it's just clearly in school, you know, two lessons that I went to and didn't get expelled from were psychology and business or the other lessons, my tenants hit 31%. And that's where they kicked me out. So, and I would steal this psychology books because I wanted to take them home and read them. So I've always had a focus on human beings and why they do what they do. And so this has just proven to be the perfect solution to that. Tell me an early specific happy childhood memory, something I can relive with you. Running around in the garden with my brothers playing, having a water gun fight.

Was that one water gun fight you're talking about or something you did on a regular basis? Just one particular one that I remember. Okay. Tell me about what of all the magical things, and I know you had a weird childhood, but of all the magical things that happened as a child, what is it about this one thing that you're choosing to tell me about it now? Freedom of any worries. Just felt, I just felt the sun on my body running around through the garden. Our house at this point wasn't dilapidated. My parents were still in reasonable terms with each other. And yeah, it was freedom. It was sunshine.

I was away from school. I didn't really like school. It was freedom. And that freedom is something I've pursued my whole life. Absolutely. In an unrelenting way. I do believe. You've done things where you played in the garden before.

You did things where you played with your friends, where you had a sense of freedom. You know, what was it about this one where you're playing with your brothers? Just seems to be perfect that day. I don't know why. Just seems like everything, there was ease. And there was so much dis-ease in my childhood. There was so much screaming and shouting. This particular day just seems to be very easy. Everything was there. The sun was there. My family were there. They seemed to be happy. The house was fine. Wasn't any worry. And I was free. And that freedom is really why I'm

an entrepreneur. I'm just not very good at being constrained. I'm a remarkably good quitter. That's one of my greatest skills is being better than everyone I know at quitting. Say more about that. I just think I'm a really, really good quitter. I reflect on my life. Meaning you know the right time to quit or you just quit too quickly, quit too easily?

Know the right time to quit, but it's more sort of intuitive and instinctive than that. Quit with such ease and such little worry about um the path forward or what i'm the path behind me and yeah that's really it i think quitting the real skill of quitting isn't necessarily knowing because you can't know but it's it's knowing that um you can't tolerate the current situation it's knowing that uncertainty is a better hand to have than misery but what about i mean there's a young generation now that quits very easily yeah and they seem to be following your counsel which

is this sucks i could go talk to somebody but they probably won't listen to me what's the point of going to talk to somebody who doesn't care about me anyway. Everything you're saying can be rationalized and used to justify quitting regularly to the point of too much and too easily. Like where's the nuance? I think the key point of difference is I'm saying when you think about the fight to change something, you have to weigh up the rewards on offer.

You don't lead a fight to change something in your job if the rewards on offer are still at the other end of that, a job that you absolutely hate, you know? Or if you think that all the effort it would take would still leave you with a job you hate, you fight for something when you believe that the fight is worthy of the eventual cause. And I believe the nuance as well as it relates to Gen Zs and working culture is when you're young, and I talk about this as well a little bit in my book, is you should really be focused on filling these first two buckets, which are your knowledge and skills, irrespective of, I believe, the resources, the reputation, and the network you get from the role. I think those are the most important things. I talk about these first five buckets in your life, knowledge being the first

one, which is what you know, skills, which is what you can do. Resources, which is what you have. The network, which is who you know. And your reputation, which is what the world thinks of you. It's really those first two buckets that are the most important. And it's all five buckets that are going to decide the course of your life. The example I give is of my friend in San Francisco was in his front porch, and a guy comes running towards him sweating and saying he's building these rockets and putting these chips in people's brains. Then he runs off. And when my friend told me that, I was like, my first knee jerk reaction was that is a psychopath that had escaped from an asylum. My friend said it was Elon Musk.

And the minute you know that it's because of Elon's reputation and all of that, those five buckets that he's paid into, you know, the world is his oyster. those five buckets that he's paid into, you know, the world is his oyster. And I think young people, what sometimes they'll do is they'll choose reputation or they'll choose resources, which is money or remuneration in any regard, or they'll choose network, working in a place that's surrounded by cool people versus knowledge and skills. And I would implore all young people to focus on jobs that give them knowledge and skills, the two buckets that no one can ever take from you. No professional earthquake can empty those buckets. Leaning into tension, like some of my relationships, friendships, romantic relationships, where there was a tension and I should have walked away. Instead, I had an uncomfortable

conversation and ended up making the relationship stronger. Now, where... Sounds like an exit interview. Sounds like it. Tell me more. When someone leaves the situation, when there's a breakdown in the situation, you conduct an exit interview with them. Yeah.

Our exit interviews are surprisingly illuminating. I read every single one of them in every single company I have. It's the one thing which Lisa has to send me on email. Yeah. And I find things out about people that just sat in the office and might not have spoken up or raised a grievance because they were finally given a safe environment where they were asked about what they really thought about a lot of things. What's some insight that you got that you were able to change the culture? For example, the diary of a CEO team, which is 30 people.

We now have 360 interviews because I read things in an exit interview for a different company and I had no idea that person felt that way. Why didn't I ask? So is that why you built in the 360 so you can get that information before the exit? And also trying to dissuade people to join the company before we interview them. You think of interviews as a place where you're selling yourself. Because of these exit interviews

and because I know that our culture is so clear and non-negotiable in many respects, I really try and dissuade people from joining at the very start now. So what do you say? I'm just very honest about the way that we work. And the expectations is we're a team that are absolutely, absolutely sweat the small stuff in every regard.

We work in the office. We have what we call freedom within parameters. So these are the parameters of our working environment. We're in on Mondays, we're in on Fridays, we're in most of the time. And then you're given freedom to make your own decisions. So if you're not in today, I have no idea where you are, no one's going to ask you. If you're not in for three days, I have no idea where you are, no one's going to ask you. You're totally trusted in that regard. But we need these parameters because we believe in synchronous collaborative work as well.

And I laid out this manifesto to my teams, which I sent to them, basically saying that we're going to be in the office. But the key thing was explaining why, the underlying values and principles as to why we're in the office and how that links back to us achieving these big ambitions that we all want to win. And in there, it says some you will do the best work of our lives sometimes in a coffee shop or on a beach. And we'll do some of it in the office. It's a hopefully it's a nuanced thing. I'm really clear on that. The my biggest thing in teams and company building is culture.

I'm really clear on that. My biggest thing in teams and company building is culture. The older I've gotten business, the more I've realized that my job is simply to hire the best people in the world and buying them with a culture that makes one plus one equal three. And it's my obsession. I'm so obsessed with it, you wouldn't believe it.

How to get a group of people to behave in a manner that is conducive with best outcomes. And that's also links to my obsession with psychology. I write a lot about this in my book and I've studied it a lot and I've spoken to the best managers in the world, big sports teams and their players. And I've learned so much in this department.

I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm channeling my inner Stephen Bartlett. I'm listening. I'm just sort of sitting here and letting you do your thing. That's my thing, listening. What I think is interesting, which is to tell somebody up front that we sweat the small stuff, right? What I'm curious about you as a leader, as you grow as a leader, especially when scale starts to show up, when you have 30 people becomes 50 people, becomes 80 people, becomes a thousand people. Well, you don't actually know everybody's name anymore and you don't recognize everybody's

face. You walk through a hall and you don't even know the people who work for you. I've been there. I've seen you sweat the small stuff. And you and I are very, very different in how we sweat the small stuff. And I'm very curious how do you know the impact on your team the way you sweat the small stuff? What ripple effects it has? Are they able to sweat the small stuff when you're sweating the small stuff for them? So I'll give you a real life example. It's the example, I mean, we talked about it a little bit,

but when we did our charity show at the Royal Festival Hall, the mix on the music was all wrong. The music overshadowed our voices, which is the intro music before we came on. the music overshadowed our voices, which is the intro music before we came on. And I knew it and you knew it. And we said to the team, that needs to be fixed. And you sat in the audience and kept pushing and kept pushing and kept pushing. And I was watching you sweat the small stuff.

I don't know if you noticed, but I sort of like walked away. I went and did my own thing. And not because I thought, oh, Stephen's got this under control. It's because the way I do that is different. And my attitude is, and it's not right or wrong, and this is what I think is interesting. I sweat the small stuff by saying in no uncertain terms, this must be fixed before we go live. And then I expect them to fix it. But I watched what happened. I don't know if you know this is because you were sweating the small stuff. It increased the level of stress. The people who are professionals who know exactly what they're doing now became vendors, moving a level up and

moving a level down because you told them to, not because they said, I think I'm going to try this and see if that works. They became order takers. And we got the product. But my question is, at what cost? And for one night, whatever, right? But when it's your own team, the question is, is that sustainable? And how does that make somebody feel over the course of time? When absolutely create a culture where you expect them to sweat the small stuff. And the analogy I'll give is a military analogy, where there's something called commander's

intent, where the commander says, I want this accomplished, and then walks away. And it's up to the team to figure out how to get it done and to get it done to the satisfaction of the commander. But the commander doesn't say, have you tried this? Do this. Now try this. Wait, that didn't work. Do this over here. And what they're doing is building confidence and leaders in their wake versus order takers and creating an environment where confidence might actually not grow. So that specific example is a good one. So I arrive in the hall. We've got an hour to go.

Done multiple shows myself. The last one I did, there was real issues with sound and acoustics. So that's on my mind. I sit down, they play it. Nobody seems to, this is my perspective. This is not my team. So I have no idea about their behaviors,

whether I can say something to them and it will change instantly. I don't have that level of confidence. I've never met these people before. I hear it and there's a clear issue with the audio. Yeah, it's bad. I know that the last time I let that slide, I then woke up in the morning to 27 messages

across LinkedIn and Instagram of people really unhappy that had spent 70 pounds to come to a show. That's front of mind for me, that LinkedIn message, that essay that girl sent me from Glasgow who had traveled down from Glasgow to see this show. Then because of an audio issue we had, she sent me an essay telling me she had a bad time. That's weighing on my mind. So I communicate that I think it needs to be better. They play the new sound and I still think it's not good enough. It seems like some people around me think it's good enough. Yeah. It doesn't meet my standards yet. So I say, it's not quite there. They play it again.

It's not quite there. It again, seems to me that people around me are okay with that standard. It's not okay for me. Right. For me, it has to be there. They play it again. It seems to me like some people around me would at that point say that's good enough. Yeah. Not for me. Yeah. Because I'm thinkingbecca who sends me the linkedin message with the essay tomorrow morning yeah when she comes out and she couldn't have heard it and she's traveled from

other another country we had people coming from other countries so my decision was i will sit there i'm not telling these audio people to do because i ain't got a clue what they're what they're doing and i'll just say when i think that i can hear the audio clearly yeah and eventually it got to a point where it was about 80 and they said we'll continue to work on it and then I walked away yeah that's how I am if you work with me you'll know that there's a standard and I've seen you know you asked me the question how does this impact the people around me I genuinely believe that when you look at the podcast trailers yeah that we have you've told me you think they're the best yeah and you've said to me as well that your team are trying to emulate them yeah that we have you've told me you think they're the best yeah and you've you've

said to me as well that your team are trying to emulate them that's what it is it's we sit there sometimes on sunday night till 2 a.m tweaking one second because we we that is both a controllable thing and it's the thing that most teams don't care about they go to bed they walk away for sure so i've it's my it's my belief and i say this a lot in the book that fighting for the most used phrase in my office is one%. It's our religion. If we were to get hoodies, they would say 1% on the back of them. We believe that it's the small things that most people don't care about that are the things where the most accessible and important gains are made.

So that audio for me was one thing I could control. It was getting that right an hour before the show. And when we walked out, it was perfect. It was. Do you want to know how i dealt with that situation because i dealt with it simultaneously with you i was also very very unsatisfied and it had to be good for all the same reasons i know people are traveling in people are paying good money i know it's a special event and you and i have the same very high standard that we want people to walk

away going that was so worth money and two hours of my life and i'm so so glad I went like I want them to feel That they got the better half of the deal every time I went to the senior person there the one whose reputation is on the line for putting the show on and I leaned into them And said this is not good. I said this has to be better. So I didn't know who they were, right? I had no idea who any of these people were so for me I was like I can't trust people that I've never ever met professionally to deliver upon a standard when it's when i was like the people that are coming are tagging me on instagram so i and it was that's the moment and uh had i not

had a show recently where there was an audio problem and there was a big backlash which i had to answer for or if it was my team when i turned to my team and I said, we have to get this right. If I'd said that to my team, I could have walked away. But if I say that to a team I've never met, I'm going to sit and make sure. So I'll tell a story. So I did this thing for the Disney Imagineers a bunch of years ago. I was just giving a talk about why and start with why. And they wanted to see what it meant to start with why. And so I picked a random guy in the audience to do a Y discovery with. And I picked somebody with gray hairs because I figured he had a little experience and kind of knew his thing.

And unbeknownst to me, I found this out afterwards, the guy I picked, his nickname in the company, and I'm not even sure if he knew this, was Ice Chips because he was a cold bastard. Right? So I picked on Ice Chips. because he was a cold bastard, right? So I picked on ice chips and I started asking him to give me a specific example of what it meant to be an Imagineer, like why it was so important. And he told this story over the course of many minutes, I'll give you the very quick version, of a new ride that he had overseen the building of. And he went to see the opening of the ride. And at the opening, there was a guy in a wheelchair with his kid waiting to go on the ride. And he said, anywhere in the world, everyone would see a guy in a wheelchair with his son.

Only at Disneyland do we only see a father and his son at Disneyland. You talk to people who are in wheelchairs, just how seamless and how easy Disneyland is. And his intensity is because it mattered so much to him that that person never felt like a guy in a wheelchair, that he only felt like a dad with his son at Disneyland. And we're all crying. And in an instant, everyone understood why he was such a cold bastard. It's because to him, the stakes were that high. In an instant, those who worked for him who 10 minutes before hated working for him now loved working for him. In an instant, more people wanted to work on his team because they wanted to be held to that standard. I think that people with

high standards should obviously continue those high standards. But I think there's value in sharing a specific story of a specific person. Maybe it's a girl from Glasgow or the converse, something affirmative. That helps people understand why you come in like a bull in a china shop. Because it makes them want to support you and i don't mean you i mean a leader and it makes them proud to lift the quality of their work and push harder for that one percent rather than feel that no matter what they do they can't do anything right and i've been on your side i've been the one who's come in

and said no no and i've sat there and pushed and pushed and pushed and it was only until a lot later in my career that i learned that what i was doing is making somebody feel that they can't do anything right and i appreciate you said it's different for folks on your team yeah because so the reason when i was talking earlier about these um exit interviews you'll notice that i said i switched from the diary of a co team which is about 30 people to saying another company's exit interview yeah because no one's ever left and part of the reason that i think no one's ever left the diary of a co team in the four and a half years that we've started since we start the company no one's ever quit the company is because we're so grounded in our sense of purpose to the to the point that

every day we start with our impact chat, which is the screenshots or the messages we've received from people all around the world. Or we watch a little clip of someone that's come up to us in the street and said about their darkest time and how what the work we're doing has been pivotal to them.

The team will watch the episodes. We all spend an hour every week going through the most meaningful points of feedback we've have i feel this sense of responsibility and when i show the metrics to the team which we did this week it's all framed against impact it's all framed against joanna who came up and told us about the loss of her son and so and it feels like this responsibility that we're holding as a as a unit together which means that the work like and also do you know when i talked about the

trailers and stuff yeah I said Saturday night, 1am. One of my things is you sit in the trenches with people. If I'm asking Ant to make a correction last minute, because one word in the trailer isn't quite hearable, I'm going to sit with Ant till 1am on Saturday night. I'm not going to tell Ant to make that edit and then go to bed or leave. So I will sit in the studio, even if I'm useless, just to show that we're doing this together.

That's so important to me. And when we're thinking about that moment in the theatre at the charity event, there's part of that in it as well, which is there's the trust issues that I have because I don't know these people. There's this fear of Rebecca's going to send me the LinkedIn message and we're going to ruin her trip if she can't hear it. And then there's this third point, which is I actually think I'd be'd be more of an asshole to say something and walk off and not take part. The thing that I so appreciate about the way you built the diary of a CEO, the company is, and I think a lot of companies don't do this, which is you are very clear about what it's like to work here. And you're going to say, you're setting expectations upfront. This is what it's going to be like. If you don't like that, please don't work here because this is what it looks. And it's a lot

more sophisticated than we work hard, play hard, like, which is nonsense. I've never believed in that as an aside, both of those sound very unhealthy, working hard sound, you know, it's like work smart, play always, you know, but that's an aside. And then the expectations are set. And if somebody doesn't like it, then they knew that upfront. And I think that very often what happens when companies are interviewing, they're selling themselves just as the potential employee is selling themselves and they make it out to be incredible. And we have fun all the time and it's an amazing and it's, and it's fun all the time and it's easy all the time. Well, that's not how any company is ever. And so what I love is the way you set expectations up front.

And then you simply say, I'm going to hold you to the standard that I told you about on day one. Do you know the most motivating thing I think for people in work is, and I've come to learn this, is progress. Yeah. The reason why maybe Sophie, my assistant, who's been with me for eight years, pretty much my whole career, hasn't left is because she feels like she is on a rocket ship. And when Harvard Business Review interviewed 1500 employees and asked them what their best days in work were, it was always the days when they had a sense of progress. And I know that progress comes from those 1% marginal gains. Sir David Brailsford, when I interviewed him, he talks about how making 1% gains improves your sales numbers or your performance on the bicycle in the Olympics or whatever. But the more important thing that no one understands, he said to me, is when you create the impression amongst a group of people that they are going somewhere, that they are moving. He says that was the thing that changed

our fortunes when he became the head of performance at the Olympic cycling team and took them from being the worst cycling team of all time to the best ever and holding all the records. He said it was the sense of progress, the sense that we're going somewhere together that did it. Not the gains, the psychological sense of progress. And so we call it the progress principle. This is why I think if you spoke to the 30 people individually and said, is this the best job you've ever had? I think 95% of them would say yes, because we feel together collectively, like we're going somewhere. And more importantly, it's somewhere we want to go, somewhere that matters. And it's something other than money.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because progress can be like, look at our growth. Because I think a lot of companies- No, it's nothing to do with that. Right, okay. I just want to be clear for people that we're not talking simply about-

No, it's a sense of forward motion. And I think if you want to make people happy in work, they need challenge, right? This is why in game psychology, games get increasingly more difficult. You wouldn't do the same difficulty of crossword over and over again you want a sense of challenge to keep you engaged daniel pink who i interviewed talks about challenge being critical to motivation yeah they need that sense of forward motion which is the progress principle that sense that we're

going forward together so you've got to keep people challenged healthy amount of challenge and it's different for everybody you know we're all swimming at different depths already so it's just that one step forward into that discomfort zone. You want to be working with a group of people that you genuinely believe care about you, which means that they care about you beyond the professional output. You want autonomy in your work. If you have a sense of control and freedom, which I believe that the people in my team do, although we have high standards and high expectations. And lastly, maybe most importantly of all, you want to believe that the place you're going is subjectively worthwhile. So for Holly and my team, if you asked her why she loves this job,

it won't be the same as why Sophie loves it or why Will loves it. Totally different reasons, but they've all got a reason and it's a worthwhile reason. And it's hard to lose people that when you have all those five things going for you. The thing that I think distinguishes you from other, not just young entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs and business people, is there was this 80s, 90s model that was formed that perpetuated up until today about the hard-nosed business leader who believes in progress and growth, pushes people because we have high standards, and to some degree is always, there's a lack of vulnerability because the vulnerability is weakness. And you still represent a lot of the,

you know, you're successful, you're young, you have ambition, you're driven, you believe in very, very high standards. And yet you are very comfortable being very open about your struggles, you are very comfortable being very open about your struggles, your uncertainty, crazy screwed up childhood. You're very open about unresolved issues, struggles with relationships, feelings of inadequacy, still unhealthy connections to metrics to some degree that you're still working through. And you're very comfortable presenting yourself as a work in progress. I think that the message that you spread and the fact that you have been as successful as you are as young as you are, I think quite frankly, and I sort of pushed you on this a little bit at the beginning,

I actually do think that you are leading a new movement of what the future of business and business leaders could look like and should look like. That the two are not mutually exclusive. That being a human being goes along simultaneously with commercial success. It's not either or, they go together. In fact, they're healthier together. I just want the best outcome in my personal life, my mental health, and in my business. And it's my belief that high standards are non-negotiable if you want to be successful. And again, why does success matter? I've explained that in part, but I've explained why the success of the team also keeps people motivated. If I want to be happy and successful in my personal life, then I also need to be open

and I need to be honest and I need to be a human being, honest with myself first and foremost, which allows me to be honest with others, allows me to be open enough to have relationships with a woman who, you know, can connect with me. So I hope that the by-product, everything you've detailed there is because I'm trying to be successful. I'm trying to be successful in myself and in my business.

And by the way, I know saying that I have high standards in work is like, I know some people will think it's like a toxic thing or whatever. I'm like well aware of that, but I also have studied hundreds and hundreds of successful teams. I've interviewed 10 Manchester United players under Sir Alex Ferguson

and the biggest CEOs in the world, all of them. And I know that, I know a couple of truths. I know that people do want to do the best work of their lives, the right type of person. I know that there's no company or great team in the world that's ever got there without high standards and unnegotiable values. ever got there without high standards and unnegotiable values. You can hear part two of my conversation with Stephen in next week's episode.

Until then, take care of yourself, take care of each other.