How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S13, Ep2 How To Fail: Steven Bartlett

Episode Date: January 19, 2022

Today's guest is Steven Bartlett: millionaire by 25, Sunday Times bestseller by 28, the youngest ever Dragon on Dragon's Den by 29. He's also the host of The Diary of a CEO podcast, which recently reached the number one slot on both Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And all this before his 30th birthday. Honestly, I'd have to hate him if I didn't think he was so great.Steven joins me to talk about his first business failing, a relationship break-up, toxic masculinity, his failure to tap into his feminine side, the art of making decisions and the power of knowing when to quit.I went on Steven's podcast last year, and it felt as though this chat was a natural companion piece to that: just two people, opening up about the stuff that counts. I'm blown away by Steven's insight, vulnerability and strength and it was such a pleasure to chat to him and learn from him.---Steven's live tour kicks off next month. It's currently sold out but to be alerted first with new tickets, visit https://thediaryofaceolive.com/---How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Naomi Mantin and Chris Sharp. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayHow To Fail @howtofailpod Steven Bartlett @steven Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right. This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. Because learning how to fail in life actually means learning how to succeed better. I'm your host, author and journalist Elizabeth Day, and every week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned

from failure. When he was 18, Stephen Bartlett was, in his own words, a black, broke, lonely, insecure university dropout from a bankrupt family. Born in Botswana and raised in Plymouth, he'd been kicked out of school for poor attendance and quit higher education after one seminar. But he dreamed of a different future. In his diary at the time, Bartlett wrote that he wanted to be a happy, sexy millionaire by the age of 25. He achieved the millionaire bit. By 25, he had created one of the world's most influential social media companies from his bedroom. By 27, he had taken the social chain public at a market valuation of over £350 million. Forbes magazine named him one of their 30 under 30, and he was the entrepreneur rising star at the Black British Business Awards.

The happiness part took longer for him to come by. Bartlett began to realise that almost everything he'd been told about success, the fast cars, the private jets, the designer watches, was a lie. The material wealth didn't fulfil him. So Bartlett set out to find his own answers the result is Europe's most downloaded business podcast the diary of a CEO in which he interviews everyone from Professor Green to Liam Payne and me about what drives them the podcast has spawned a Sunday Times best-selling self-help book and a social media following on Instagram of over 1.4 million, with whom he shares daily nuggets of insight and wisdom. Now the 29-year-old Bartlett is the youngest ever dragon on the BBC's hit business investment show, Dragon's Den. And he's

about to go on tour with live dates including the London Palladium and venues in Glasgow, with live dates including the London Palladium and venues in Glasgow, Newcastle and Birmingham. It would seem then that Stephen Bartlett is living his best life. But as he writes, the most convincing sign that someone is truly living their best life is their lack of desire to show the world. Your best life won't seek validation. Stephen Bartlett, welcome to How to Fail. Oh what an honour to be here that was really awkward for me I just find it so I'll never get used to that so just hearing those things and yeah. Does it feel real? No not really I was at an award show

last night and the night before and they read those things out it just seems like they're talking about somebody else. I don't internalise any of this stuff, which has really helped me actually think because I don't really care. Like I deeply don't care. So I don't care what people think. And it can nicely go both ways. It doesn't always go both ways, but it can generally goes both ways. So that thing about validation and not seeking external validation, you genuinely mean and feel that? I definitely still seek validation for sure, but it's at like 10%.

And when I was younger and over the last 27 years, whatever, it was probably at like 60 or 70%. It's really stupid. And I think naive to kind of consider these things as like a light switch that switches on and off. It just never does. But getting to the point

where you're not like run by validation to the point that you're making unfulfilling life decisions for me is the goal and I'm just trying to reduce that so one of the ways that I do that now consciously is whenever I make a decision I'm asking myself for the first time ever why I'm making the decision a year ago I said I said to my girlfriend my team I'm like I'm gonna buy a Rolls Royce and then I have a conversation about why I want to buy it and it's not valid reason and then you go well then what's what's influenced you to feel like you want to buy a Rolls Royce and then you can get to the bottom of it and you can make better decisions but that was just like a glimpse right yeah that's not every day that was just a glimpse I always use

that example because even though I understand this stuff and I spend my life talking about it and I've written about it at length these things things like never really go away, especially when you're living in the cauldron of the Western world where I can't walk down the street and have a billboard or a car convince me that there's something that I don't have but need. So it's like a practice. It's never going to, you know. So is that about ego? Because I had a, not quite a Rolls Royce comparison comparison but today I was meant to be going to a dinner tonight and I was really flattered to have been invited to the dinner and when I said yes to it a couple of months ago there was a little voice in the back of my head that was like

you won't actually want to do that when it comes down to it you'll feel stressed that you have to go and I was like but I'm so flattered that I've been invited to this thing and it's really special and I should go yeah I just cancelled you cancelled I cancelled because I was this thing and it's really special and I should go. Yeah. I just cancelled. You cancelled. I cancelled because I was like, what is it in me that requires that? And it was a sense of fitting in and being respected. And I was like, actually, but do I, Elizabeth, desire that? Yeah, it's exactly that.

You'll never catch me at dinners. Like, honestly, I got a dinner invite this week from, even if I describe the person, it'll give it away. But the richest person you could probably meet in this country. I just have no interest. And I don't care how many celebrities or paparazzi are going to be there. It's exhausting to go and small talk with a bunch of people that don't matter to your life and that aren't necessarily going to add a tremendous value to your life.

When I could go hang out with my nieces or just with myself or go to the gym or have a massage. like there's a lot said about networking in business I never network what does networking do it expands your network so those are the ways to expand my network podcasting producing content doing really well in my business and all these other digital reputational factors expand my network in a way which is much more considerable and easy than going in like flocking around a room introducing myself so I've never networked I find it exhausting and pointless and I think there's a much more scalable way to network which is either doing something that adds a lot of value to the world and then you don't really have to network or using the internet which is what I've always

chosen to do but yeah you're totally right I'm exact same. I'm a really violent Noah, a violent counsellor. I cancelled something this morning. Yeah, that makes me feel so much better. A violent Noah is going to be my new mantra. Will you take me back to that point that I mentioned in the introduction where you were broke, lonely, insecure? How did that feel? Most of my life, I think, in fact, like, so from the age of very young, maybe 10 years old to about 23, probably, when I was back in Plymouth in Devon, living in a smashed up house. Contrast is really the thing that makes you feel like crap. Oh, I didn't swear. Crap.

You can totally swear. I can swear, okay. It's like taking your shoes off in someone else's house. Yeah, contrast is the thing that I think makes you feel like rubbish, right? So comparing yourself to whatever environment you're in. And for me, like, that's what I always think about with my old Nokia phone. And I write about this in the book is my Nokia phone was the bee's knees until iPhones showed up. Like, I was proud to, like, pull that aerial up and, like, play Snake and do my polyphonic ringtones

until a world existed where my Nokia sat amongst iPhones. And growing up, I was the Nokia sat amongst iPhones. We lived in a perfect middle-class neighborhood. And you can go on Google Maps, you can still see my neighborhood. It's still perfect. Google Maps was probably taken from my street seven or eight years ago. So it's like a view back in time. Every house is perfect. Everyone was whiter than white. Like it just needed the picket fence and then someone would probably rent it for like a movie. But my house, which sat right in the middle of that neighborhood, was the grass was six foot high. The windows on the front of the house were smashed.

One of them was smashed for 15 years, my brother's bedroom window. The back of the house was the worst. That was where like people couldn't see necessarily. So only our two neighbors. And that was maybe, I don't know, six, ten foot high grass, fridges, TVs in there. Half of our house was dilapidated. So at one point we'd decided to do an extension and just knock the back of the house down, but just never did the extension.

So one of the doors inside the house, if you opened it, you just went into the garden, like a wooden door, not like a proper outside door. That was compounded with the fact that I was the only black kid in my school, other than my brothers and sisters. And I was the youngest of those. So they all left eventually. hair's curly everyone else's hair's straight we're super poor I can never bring someone home to like meet my family or none of my friends ever came in my house in the whole 18 years that I was there never had a girlfriend

come back I was always lying and I was lying because you know in that age on the playground all you want to do is fit in you want to be like the other kids and that's survival so I was learning how to like lie and say I was getting things for Christmases and pretend like making up things I got for my birthdays and then relaxing my hair so it was straight and it was just that for like a long time like 16 years of that and then also the relationship with money like I had an unhealthy relationship with money because my parents taught me that it was the cause of the pain in our household it It was the reason they screamed at each other. It's the reason they clearly didn't love each other. It was the reason I was, I felt so much shame going to school every day or, you know, not having the things everyone else had.

So it was a contrast was the thing that made me feel so, I guess, insecure. And do you know what? I never knew it then. Me, insecure, captain of the football team, did really well with the opposite sex. I was a cool kid. I was running all the parties by the age of like 16 or 18, all of the school trips and all of the parties for our entire school. Did all the vending machine deals. So our school finally made money from vending machines and they didn't have to buy them at all. We just made commission and someone gave them to us. I did all of these things. And so I was a cool kid, but I was insecure.

If you'd said to me back then, I was insecure insecure I would have pointed at one of the kids that was being quiet and the typical kind of like little bit maybe nerdy kid and I said those are the insecure ones like no I was only I only realized this maybe when I was like 23 or 24 25 and I understood what insecurity was and how it manifests itself and behavior but no I was definitely insecure you were wearing a mask in many ways your life was pretense 100% I posted this online and some of my friends back home were like what you're talking about people back then because I posted something saying that like I had to leave that environment to finally be myself and they were like what are you talking about Steve this isn't true like you had loads of friends you're I'm like you don't understand there's a reason why I'm very very

different now to how I was back then. Tell me about your entrepreneurial spirit, because that thing about the vending machine stuck out of that story. Where do you think that came from? Did it come from your parents, your family background, or was it something that was uniquely within you? Yeah, I think there's a couple of factors. I think to say that it's like innate is probably not true because I'm the youngest of four and it was only present in me. So I zoom in and say, okay, so what happened to me of all my brothers and sisters? Well, we were poorest when I was youngest and my parents were most absent when I was youngest, because what tends to happen with parents

sometimes is they parent the first couple of kids. And then when one of them's like 18, 19, they kind of assume they're all 18 and 19. And that's what happened in my household. So when I was growing up at 10, 11, 12 years old, I'd wake up and neither of my parents were there. And then when I went to sleep, neither of them were there. So my dad was working in London five days a week,

which is about four hours away. And my mom, she was trying to start her businesses. And she was getting broken into a lot. So she just decided to sleep in the business overnight she would sleep in the back room with on a bag of rice so this created this huge like void of independence but it also taught me at a time when I really wanted stuff and to fit in and to have lunch money and whatever it taught me that if you're going to have anything it comes as a direct consequence of your behavior. So yeah, this huge void of independence, not having my parents.

I remember I went to do the junior apprentice in London at 14. My parents said no, I'd left the house. That's an eight hour round trip on the train to go and contest in a huge business competition in London. And they had no idea I'd even gone. They didn't even notice. And I got to the final

and they didn't even know that I'd left the house. And that kind of speaks to what it was like back then. It was just like total independence. So I was going to school 20% of the time, 30% of the time. That's why I got expelled. And my parents had no idea. I was just forging my report cards every quarter or whenever they delivered them. I'd like collect it in the post.

I'd scan it and I'd put new grades on it, give it to my dad. And it would be so great. So I was running my own life and I had this huge independence. And that's, I think, the culmination of being really insecure and wanting stuff and having this huge void of independence was the kind of factors that came together it's funny because you think of ambition as this like intentional really authentic drive to achieve something whereas what I've come to learn is most of the time it's like just insecurity and insecurity is one of the most immense drivers of motivation people will ever see I feel like a bit of not fraud but when people ask me that question how are you so motivated I say no it's just insecure and you

can see the panic in their face when that's something that's very hard to replicate but that's just the way it is I am exactly the same in that respect and I'm a big believer that fuel is fuel and whatever gets you to where you need to be, that's an adequate enough driver, an adequate enough motivating force. Did you feel loved? Yes, without huge affection. So my parents, I've always called them by their first names.

My dad is quite typical of a quiet, older now, white male father. Just say, well done. But that's the most you're ever getting out of the man. Very passive. My mum is very enthusiastic, shall I say, in terms of very passionate. That's probably the right way to describe it. She's from Nigeria.

Never really affectionate with either of them. They didn't know anything about my life. They didn't know what was going on in my life at all. They didn't know if I had a girlfriend if I was doing well in school nothing so there's always been this distance which has been made it hard to relate to them especially as I left home and then started building businesses on this thing called the internet which they don't understand either and I never had a conversation with them about what I do so if they've learned about what I do it's from reading something online

even we've never had that conversation about what I do it'd be really difficult now as well based on some of the things I'm doing now with the blockchain and web3 and they know dragon's den so I called my mum I was like do you know dragon's den and I put the dragon's filter on an iMessage when I called her and she was like yes I understand and I was like I'm gonna be a dragon on dragon's den she's like okay okay so when are you pitching I'm like no no no I am going to be a dragon. 10 minutes later, Penny finally dropped. She's like, ah! But yeah, loved but not close. Okay. You're clearly someone who had to foster this incredible degree of self-resilience from an early age, which is why you are where you are now. Do you think that there's a difference, before I get onto your first failure, between belonging and fitting in? Yeah, for sure. So when I think about belonging,

for me, it's somewhere where you're supposed to be, somewhere you belong. So somewhere where that is in line with your intrinsic joys, passions, the things that fulfill you, that is where you belong. That is where you're meant to be. in is a forced attempt to like socially conform with a group and I think one of those paths which is belonging would result in good things happening in your life and in your mind and the other is often a temporary mechanism of survival where you you try and fit in at work you try and fit in on the playground but it doesn't appear to be sustainable in the long term did you just come up with that that was just like off the top of your head yeah okay I spend a lot of time thinking about these things right so not about that particular topic but just like the terminology and yeah I mean you get it from sitting with a podcast guest right you

just see patterns in people and it becomes quite easy to communicate which is like the really unexpected upside of running a podcast it just helps you in all facets of life like business and talking and explaining your ideas in a concise way so I also like the way you call it running a podcast it makes me feel like a CEO I feel like it is like it's very enjoyable job but it's a business for us and it's like we've got a team and we've got standards and we've got expectations and it's a well-oiled machine from booking the guests to their transport to getting them here, then the promotion after. It's like a really end-to-end.

Yeah, maybe I do look at it like a business. Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest? Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest? This is a time of great foreboding. These words supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago. These words supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago set in motion a chain of gruesome events and sparked cult-like devotion across the world. I'm Matt Lewis. Join us as we unwrap the enigma and get to the heart of what really

happened to Thomas Beckett by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Hi, I'm Matt Lewis, historian and host of a new chapter of Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. Join me and world-leading experts every week as we explore the incredible real-life history that inspires the locations, the characters and the storylines of Assassin's Creed. Listen and follow Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Broadly speaking, how do you view failure and success is it different the way you view it from a business perspective from the way you view it personally probably yeah I think personal failure is a lot harder to take because it's so close to home. So there's a real strong emotional impact. Whereas business failure, you're typically talking about profits and bottom lines and other sort of less emotionally sensitive

implications. So yeah, I mean, they're both emotional, but personal failure is just a little bit closer to home. So yeah. Which one do you feel is easier to deal with now? Business failure, for sure okay because business for me is a game you're playing out in front of you so it's like a chessboard out in front of you but or like if I got a playstation I'm holding the remote control and playing what's on the screen I'm conducting it so if the character dies in the game it's not fatal but with personal failure I'm inside the game that is me that is playing inside the screen so it can feel a lot closer to home so businesses you know they can come they can fall but the way that is me that is playing inside the screen so it can feel a lot closer to home so

businesses you know they can come they can fall but the way that I've always played my business and one of the things that's given me resilience in the hardest times is like this video game mindset I always refer to as I am not the business I'm disassociated from it I'm looking down on it and in the hardest times my job is to like navigate the pieces on the board to a better place as opposed to internalizing what's happening and that's really helped me and I know me and my business partner Dom when we built Social Chain we had two different approaches because we went through the same thing lived in the same house we're the same age and he became an alcoholic and I was finding him in the

laundry room drinking alcohol at 3am and dragging him up to his bed and he's fighting the bottle off me whereas I was super calm in the situation. And for me, the agony of business wasn't touching me. It was outside of me. So it's almost like you took what you'd learned from wearing a mask in childhood and you switched it so that it becomes like a meditative practice. That element of detachment can sometimes be really healthy and helpful. Yeah, it can.

Yeah, it's in the right context, right? We'll come on to that. Yeah, sometimes it's not so healthy. But yeah, can yeah it's in the right context right we'll come on to that yeah yeah sometimes it's not so healthy but yeah I think that's what resilience is resilience is this slow habit of learning how to deal with adversity in a way that will help you to survive so I'd probably been surviving a lot longer than Dom had and I went and met him he was in a very nice university in a nice area with a very very very nice family and I was like come and join me I'm starting a business and then I went dropped him straight in the deep end and maybe he hadn't developed the same level of like mental resilience to cope with the extremeness of what it was like to have hundreds of employees never

to be able to like like on the day of payday to know that you couldn't pay anybody but still always make payday for like eight years. We never missed it. But there was literally, I remember sometimes where, when we're running the business, I know that in an hour we have to release wages. It's the end of the month, it's Friday, but I know there's no money in the bank.

So I know I've got to find a way to get NatWest to like give me a loan in an hour. And this didn't happen once. This happened 12, 15 times, sometimes month after month and we never missed it but it was just like i don't know some divine intervention something always happened there was one particular time which i talk about now that i've left where nat west called me and said the only way we'll release wages for 300 people is if you can get a client to sign a contract saying that they're going to pay you four million and i'm at this event with this big client

of ours who we do have a big big piece of of work coming up with. So I'm trying to get them drunk because I know if I can get a couple of shots down some of these CEOs, one of them's going to Adobe e-sign my phone. And we did it. And everyone, there'll be about 15 people in the business who will back that story. Hannah, Dave, Christian, Dom, they were waiting in this WhatsApp group for me to get that signature. We got signature they sent it to natalie at natwest and she released the funds no one ever knew and it's funny because you go in the office on that friday everyone's celebrating beers and you're just how you're just thinking you guys haven't sorry to like ask such a banal question but how do you deal with that level of anxiety do you feel it in your physically you do even I did

not as extreme as other people around me did but even I got to the point where I was just sick of it I was sick of being in that situation if you're in that situation once like oh my god that was whoa whoa but if you're in that situation 15 times over the course of many years and you also don't know when that situation is going to come so you're living in a certain state of like uncertainty it's difficult and you just got to get till tomorrow you is going to come. So you're living in a certain state of like uncertainty. It's difficult. And you just got to get till tomorrow. You've got to do that for years. It's not easy.

It's not for the faint hearted either. And it also changes you. It makes you a bit of a dick. In what way? Because you become a little bit more emotionless because I can't show those really, really panicky, anxious emotions to my team. I think you find yourself retreating a little bit and you also find it harder to celebrate the ups, right?

People think about this. When you like emotionally desensitize yourself, you're doing it both ways. You can't just pick to like, okay, I'm just going to ignore the bad stuff. You end up developing what I call like a calm within the chaos and you try and just stay in the middle. So the best days I was in the middle on the worst days I'm in the middle and that was my coping mechanism so and it does it wears you down it wears you down as a human and yeah. Let's get on to your first failure which is the failure of your first business Wallpark so this is pre-dating Natalie from NatWest and the social chain isn't it what happened with Wallpark? So I was at university, decided I was going to drop out,

called my mum, my mum dropping out. She says, I'm never going to speak to you again if you don't go back. Doing it anyway. And then I had this idea for the student notice board because I'd gone into university, I'd been to one lecture and I saw that they still used physical notice boards with like pieces of paper on. And I thought that's mad in 2000 and maybe 13 or 2012 that we still use these physical notice boards and I'd been to the university down the road Manchester

University and they'd had the same thing so I went over to Salford University and they had the same thing so my idea was I could make an online notice board a website for just the city of like Manchester for example where there's a hundred000 students in three universities, you basically go on there, you click a button and say at MMU and Salford, if those are the students you want to hit, you put it in a category and you write your post. It's very simple. So if I'm looking for a football team player for my university football team, and it can be from any university, I'll just go on and write at MMU, at UOM, at UOS, all three universities, looking for a football player for Sunday did anyone want to do it that was the idea launched it I was super broke here so I was at this point stealing

like Chicago town pizzas to feed myself and finding ways to get Just Eat to give me free food that I hadn't ordered super broke super painful period of my life in terms of like physical pain and I had this idea so managed to raise some money from some investor just by sending an email and maybe 20,000 pounds, launched the website, built it for a couple of years, and we just couldn't get people to stay. So this is really when I learned about marketing. This is ultimately what became social change. Just couldn't get people to stay. So one day I go on Facebook, I see this Facebook page with 5,000 students, got Manchester students on it. A satirical Manchester student Facebook page. I go and meet the owner. I buy the page off him for 50 quid. I post on it and it's the most people that we've ever had come to our website,

but they don't stay. I then decide that I'm going to make all of the Facebook groups for all the freshers joining university across the country this year, make these fresher groups and the fresher groups become my website. Everybody is doing what I planned my website to be in these groups. And I remember saying to my team at the time, if we can get them to do that on our website, our website's worth a hundred million. Facts. Because there was a post every single 10 seconds in some of the groups, in the big like university groups, students were using it to buy stuff, trade stuff, sell stuff, interact, organize where they're going tonight, etc. But I couldn't get them to leave Facebook, come to my website. I even closed the groups and put a pinned cover photo saying you have to do this on Wallpark. And like people didn't do it. And at that point,

you realize that you're fighting an incumbent that you can't beat. Facebook was the platform for a variety of reasons, which I could go into, but it's not worth it. Facebook was solving the problem that I was hoping to solve. And I called my investors. I said multiple times, I said, we need to build social media pages. They were like, just focus on the website, Steve. I had that over and over again. And then I remember being in London one night when I was 20 years old, just drinking this glass of wine, living in zone seven, zone 5,000, like never leaving that little room. And I just sent the email. I said, I quit. And I took the

social media pages with me that I'd built at the time. And they didn't care. They didn't value them. And I said, I'm going to do social media instead. I believe in it more because of what I'd seen. And this was at a time when people didn't really believe in social media, but yeah, that was hard because my identity was that business. I was Wal-Mart guy, even though it wasn't like hugely successful. I was on BBC News Night, obviously all your friends know you for it. And I quit completely abruptly out of the blue. And I just knew that this wasn't it. Like I knew university wasn't it. Have you always known when to quit? And do you think that that's a valuable life skill? I've always known when to quit, but not known why I've known when to quit and do you think that that's a valuable life skill? I've always known when to quit but not known why I've known when to quit. I've always been such a comfortable peaceful quitter

and it's always been quite terrifying for people around me because it doesn't make sense on paper so even school like I effectively quit going to school my attendance hit 30% they expelled me. I went to university I was there for one lecture I quit I actually deferred never went back and then my first start at Woolpark I quit as well for me, I think I'd rather the uncertainty than the certain misery of the current situation. And so many people would rather the certain miserable situation than the uncertainty. And for me, like, this is something I've developed over time, but I am not brave for quitting. Like, I think people are brave for staying. And it's like, people always ask me that. They say, oh, you're so brave. Like, how'd you learn to quit?'m like no no no staying in university in a course that was sucking the soul out of me and then going and

getting a job in a place that would have sucked the soul out of me as well doing a career that was bravery what I did was like cowardice I don't have the bravery to not follow the north star of my life which is happiness I'm a coward and if you look at what I've done I've literally just done the easy thing the easy thing that voice inside me told me was the selfish easy thing. That's what I do in my life. I think what you said there is so profound that you'd rather uncertainty than certain misery. You can apply that to everything in life. You can apply it to a relationship because I think so many people get stuck in relationships because they think, well, it's better to put up with this sadness because then I won't be alone. And who knows if I'll find someone else, or people are happily single,

obviously. But that is such a good mindset, I think. You've just got to remember what the North Star is of life. And it's just to be happy. And if you're not going in that direction, and you're not happy, then you are taking the biggest risk and something in my view something needs to change so comfort isn't the north star that's not going to get you there a big pay packet isn't going to get you there and if you have that as the like framework in which you make all your decisions happiness then life should be fairly easy it's not because of all this extra noise and all of this like fear and society telling you that your life has to be a certain way but if you can kind of drown that out and just listen to that as you're like guiding north star then it's actually quite easy life but we complicate it so going back to

wall park and the failure of wall park you said that your identity took a hit because it was so enmeshed with this business so how did that manifest itself? Were you depressed? No, I'm just trying to take myself back there. Because it's, to be fair, by the end of it, I was miserable. I really wasn't enjoying it. And that's why I quit again. It's the same with school and university. I just didn't like working with the people I was working with. The investors didn't really understand me or respect me. I didn't believe in the company anymore. And it felt like work again. I felt like a job and I don't do that. Okay. So then the failure, I suppose, led you on to what became the social chain. Yeah.

So with social chain, how did that differ from the wallpark experience? Did it not feel like work when you were doing it? Yeah. One of the most important things is when a business is going well, it's much easier to enjoy it. I'd learned a lot of lessons. So the company was set up with a different structure, had a lot more control over decision making. And because it did so well, got to hire loads of people that I really liked straight away that had no experience at all. But they were my friends. They were my friends through business. Some of them had been at Wallpark briefly as well. And it just was like a rocket ship. It was a rocket ship. We were super early. No one really believed in social media in 2012. Brands definitely didn't. We did. When I left Wallpark, I went traveling the world with Dom.

So it was super enjoyable. We're in Thailand. We've got Spotify calling us saying, hey, can you help us with the social media thing? We're thinking this is amazing. One hour work and then go and party at the full moon in Koh Phangan or wherever it is. The demand from clients became so

strong that eventually we went all around the world and then came back to London. One of our clients said, can you be here for the launch? Launched their business. Our business was making a lot of money back then, maybe about a hundred thousand a month. And it was just coming to me, coming to my bank account. Natalie from NatWest must have been happy. Oh, well, yeah. I didn't meet her until slightly later until things got difficult. But one of my clients said, we'll give you 300,000 pounds to turn what you've done for us into a business and I said no don't want to do it my life was so free had all this money why would I do that and it was like four or five months later that actually Don persuaded me to take the check he walked downstairs

to NatWest and paid it in and then we began and that was about seven years ago so sorry for my ignorance but the social chain you would do social media for big companies. Yeah, that's how it started. Yeah. We owned these huge social media pages. So we had about, at our peak, about 100 million followers. We were doing 7 billion video views on our channel. So on one hand, we're this agency that helps Apple and Amazon and whatever and Coca-Cola

do their social media marketing. On the other hand, we're a really big media owner. We own the biggest sports page on Twitter and Instagram and the biggest food page in the world back then. And the biggest student page with 11 million students on Facebook, which was actually from Wal-Mart. We had these huge assets, the biggest fitness page, the biggest Harry Potter page in the world, the biggest Sims page. I'd gone around when I'd left Wal-Mart and met every kid that had built a big social media page, offered them a job and hired them. And so we were this chain of social media pages at a time when their parents were forcing them to get a real job because they didn't think social media was a real job. So it was an opportunity. We came together and that became social chain.

Now it's this massive e-commerce company as well. And it you know doing 700 million in revenue and it's very different and you've stepped back yeah I resigned last year so now that you're on Dragon's Den I suppose the question that I wanted to ask you is relevant to both business and Dragon's Den how easy do you find it to make decisions because you must have people coming to you every single day needing you to make a million different decisions about a million different things. And I noticed when you walked in here with your lovely team, you just immediately knew when they asked you a question, what the answer would be. I think I would really struggle. And I'd be like, I don't know, what do you think? How do you do that? It's interesting. So there's a couple of things. I try and make as little decisions as I possibly can. And I put systems

in place so I don't have to make decisions. One of the ones that I have with my team is when they message me, they have to message me and say, I'm going to do this unless I hear. And I know this sounds really strange, but say you've got hundreds of people messaging you or even 20 people messaging you. If I look down at a message, my approval can be just seeing it. It actually requires a lot of mental energy to think about the decision and then to respond and even say no it like it takes you out of your flow so for me

all of my team will say steve i'm gonna buy this unless i hear i'm gonna do this unless i hear i'm gonna book this unless i hear and so i can just look at my whatsapp and just see what's happening without having to do or say anything so i'm trying to limit the amount of decisions i have to make and then obviously you need to have good people and set parameters so that they can make as many decisions as you possibly can. However, there are some decisions which you have to make and make them as quick as you can and be at peace with it. Because most of the time in life, the greatest cost isn't the outcome of the decision. It's the procrastination of the decision. And Obama said this to me, funnily enough, not to name drop, not like we're friends. That was an amazing name drop.

But I read about it in the book because it was a really profound thing. Like, how does Obama make the decision to kill Osama bin Laden when he doesn't have all the information? And the implications of being wrong or right here are significant. And we were at a conference in Brazil where he said this. He said, I get to 51% certainty and then I'm at peace with that. And I was thinking about that because he goes, you know, in life generally, relationship decisions or business decisions you're never going to get to 100% and the endeavor to get to 100% is going to potentially cost you in more significant ways than being wrong at 51% so he was making the point to us in the green room that you get to 51% and then you are at peace that you made

the best decision with the information you had at that time and you move on. And I kind of noticed that I do that in my life anyway. It's like, you don't always even know if you're right, but make a decision faster. And in my business, and especially working with clients, you see very, very clearly from a bird's eye view, the cost of dithering and procrastination. I've got two clients in mind, both part of the same family business. One of the clients, I'm gonna call him client A, they make decisions so unbelievably quickly.

Sometimes they're wrong, but they at least find out if they're wrong or right so fast that they can make another decision. And I've seen their business just absolutely explode. They have this really, really small team. The CEO sits there. I sit there with him, give them advice. They make this really, really small team. The CEO sits there. I sit there with him, give them advice. They make the decision then and there. No waiting around, no day, no thinking,

let's make a decision here. They've exploded. They're probably the fastest growing business in the category. Another business within the same family, I also work with them. And if I went and approached them with the same idea, it could potentially take nine months of trying to get it through 12 different people and all the red tape and blah, blah, blah. Their business is dying. And I know why, because they're just procrastinating on these decisions. And it's the procrastination and the lost opportunity that comes with that, that's costing them. And this applies to everybody's life. You don't have to know the right answer. Like get to a point where you're at 51%, say yes, and then find out. And then you can probably like,

take that crappy job, spend a week there, find out that it's not the one, and then go find the next one. Whereas someone else is going to spend nine months getting to the point where they accept the crappy job, which they've waited nine months, and then they're going to spend another nine months deciding whether to resign, and their life is just flying past them. That's what I mean by being an aggressive Noah or whatever I said I was sure with university I was sure with Walpark I was sure with social chain the minute I was sure I sent the email and there was no long drawn out procrast I got to 51% so how's Dragon's Den been because there has to be a bit of procrastination there because

otherwise there'd be no tv program you have to have a chat about your decisions yeah a lot of it's like chess right so i'm trying to see what peter jones is doing first and what deborah's going to do and you know sometimes if i don't know something about a business and deborah's interrogating them i'll just be quiet and just learn about the eco credentials etc yeah a lot of that's chess right and then you're right the entrepreneur walks through the door sometimes they pitch for 20 minutes sometimes it's two hours or three hours. And you've got to make a decision right then and there whether you're going to give this person. You do not know.

But how much, what's the maximum investment? I probably can't say this year because I'm trying to learn where my parameters of my NDA are. But a big six-figure number, then and there, of my money. It's not like the BBC money. I know people sometimes think that's my money.

But is it money that you actually bring in? Because there's piles of cash on the table. Is that your... Oh, no. I always wonder. money I know people sometimes think that's my money but is it money that you actually bring in because there's piles of cash on the table is that you I don't want to like let the cat out of the bag I feel like that's a long-standing there's like two questions people always ask which is about the lift and about the pile of money I've been in that lift because I filmed in that same studio so you know the answer yes lift off okay well again no comment yeah who's your favorite dragon oh that's a tough one they're all so wonderful for so many different reasons that's such a diplomatic answer it's like a little dysfunctional family in many ways i would say that deborah and

peter are the ones that i've watched for almost you know peter almost 20 years i think deborah about 16 years and i watched them since I was 12 on TV, on Dragon's Den. So sitting between them and getting to know them so well has been just remarkably surreal, amazing. I mean, Peter Jones is the world's most nice human being I've ever encountered.

And it's like so nice, it's almost suspicious. And I don't, I genuinely, cause I'm like, how can a human being be that, like much of a gentleman and a sweetheart? And I'm with him for 25 days and I met his family last week as well. And they're just all just so lovely. And Debra, she's, I just love everything about her.

She's tough. She's, you know, you don't mess with Debra. If you come in with your bad numbers, oh God, I sometimes when someone comes in and their numbers are all over the place, I'm like, I want to just like jump in front of them because you know you're cringing too do you have anything on your rider any of the dragons like do you have a bowl of blue m&ms there's nothing special like that when we go in the green room there we all have our own little

snack troughs that's what I want to know about yeah and we all have different things in our snack trough but also it doesn't really matter what's in your snack trough because peter jones is going to come and try and invade it and he's like seven foot five so if he can he will clear out your snack trough and then deny it which he did multiple times deborah's is all like vegan so no one really wants her snack trough like but is yours all huell mine is yeah mine's like a fitness bar and a bottle of Huel having that for 25 days wasn't necessarily the best thing in the world but yeah that's what I have in mine it's quite boring there's no sweets or anything in there and then between pitches they'll come and take our orders for lunch it's long you know I woke up at 6am and I go to bed at 1am and I do

that for 25 days so it is really it's very long wait before I get onto your second failure what's in Peter Jones's snack trough is it like tonics tea cakes i get onto your second failure what's in peter jones's snack trough is it like tonics tea cakes and i'm right if he could get in there like yeah can of coke sweets i should he's gonna be so annoyed but everything like it's like a seven-year-old's birthday party he's seven foot five you can get away with it your second failure is and i'm so interested in this one when you ended the relationship with your now girlfriend when you encountered a problem so the reason I'm so interested in this is because the last time we met I was on your brilliant podcast had such a wonderful conversation

with you and you had just gone through a breakup and we had a little conversation when we weren't recording about what might have happened and your communication style because I'm married to a CEO and it took me a really long time to learn his communication style and not to feel that he was just dissing me at every available opportunity he was actually just like getting communication across in a really swift way so tell me what happened and why you chose this as your second failure. I met someone, funnily enough, from Instagram. This is a crazy story. And I don't meet anybody from Instagram or any dating apps in my life ever. I don't do any of that stuff. But I made a video called If There's Anybody Out There. And it was this kind of like sarcastic

video of me explaining that there's a lack of certain values in the world. And at the end of it, I say, if there's anybody out there who doesn't embody these values, slide into my DMs. And this person slid into my DMs and she's called Melanie. And my middle name. There you go. They're all great. Everyone with Melanie is fantastic. Again, this is me being very efficient. We chatted for about a couple of hours. I was like, let's flip a coin. If you win, I'll come to you. If I win, you fly to London. So she flew to London because I flipped the coin. So a little bit of bias in that. And we got on really well. And she's the first person I've met who just has the like purest, most real values, kind of like driving her brother to school

in the morning in her beat up Citroen Saxo is the most important thing to her family values. She doesn't care about anything material. I couldn't buy her. If I bought her a Louis Vuitton bag or something, she would look at me like, what the fuck are you doing? Like, even if we go to like a nice hotel in like Jamaica, she'll want to stay in the Jamaican hotel.

That's like one star. She's like the purest human being ever. Doesn't care about anything. That a lot of people that grew up in my generation on Instagram can't help but care about and she's really this refreshing beautiful human being I had a long distance relationship she was living in France I was living in New York at the time eventually you know we spent more and more time together and then one day when we're in France we encounter that we have a problem in the bedroom with sex because for a guy it's very easy to misunderstand something about sex because it's so like connected to your ego and she had a situation

with sex which was making I think it just made me feel emasculated that I didn't understand I couldn't understand it because I'd never experienced it before and I remember saying to her like what's the matter and she said I'm not comfortable talking about it with you and I thought well okay well I can't talk about it then this relationship's over I didn't say that then and there but I left France and I called her and I was like well relationship's over because we can't I don't know what this is and so that was the end of the relationship and that was like the best person I'll probably ever meet in my life like for sure for sure she was good in every way. She was the most supportive

person in work. I remember times where I'd, she'd fly into New York to see me. And I got a call that day saying I had to fly to San Diego to buy a company for 50 million. And I remember telling her with the fear of my past relationships where you just get punished. And she was so happy, big kiss, good luck, babe. And then I flew, came back two days later and expecting maybe a bit of like you know a little bit pissed off on the low so happy and just time and time again the most supportive amazing human being but that one issue we had in France which I'd kind of seen coming I made a very abrupt decision just to end the relationship and I don't know what that is in me but I definitely shouldn't have done that and I regretted it for an entire year and that feeling of regret started to build as I met other people and I realized that they

would never compare then the pandemic happened and she was really struggling being in France because the lockdowns were severe she always wanted to go back to Bali she'd spent some time there a couple years ago so she wanted to move there and she had some problems at the airport she called me saying I've got this problem with this and this and this and this so I just bought her the ticket sent it to her for her and her friends and I just moved her to Bali so she lives in Indonesia now didn't really talk a lot and eventually I just the regret overcame me so I figured I'd do something about it I'm feeling like all sorts of emotions as you're talking are you feeling them yeah Yeah. It's really moving. I'm so thankful for your honesty. That's such a beautiful thing that you've offered us

and a really difficult thing to talk about. And I'm so glad you have. I mean, you did the same when you came on my podcast. You were just completely honest. And it's liberating for me. It's liberating for the audience. So I'd rather just live in honesty, you know? And why do you think that

you did end it abruptly? Was it almost because you felt too much and it was easier not to be vulnerable? There's two reasons. So I'd never experienced an issue with sex before where someone doesn't want to have sex with you before. So I think as a guy, you don't know what that means. If you don't understand it being a possibility, the only way that the like Neanderthal brain of a man will default typically to understanding that is, well, that's a problem with me, or there's something wrong with her or something. It's just, it's all very binary. And the conclusions you draw are very unhelpful and destructive, especially if they don't want to talk about it. Is your pride dented?

Yeah, 100%. But also like when you ask them like what this is and they go, quote, I don't feel comfortable talking about this with you. That's like, there's a problem and I'm not turning on the light switch. Yeah. So you really are going to be left with your own unhelpful conclusions here.

I thought, well, if she's not comfortable talking about it with me, then we're never going to be able to solve it. And it's an important part of a relationship like intimacy and sex so I just thought it's easier just to throw that away and I'll just go find someone else it strikes me that you're a very straightforward communicator and sometimes a straightforward communicator which is such an admirable thing to be can meet someone who maybe isn't straightforward for other reasons, like might be saying something that isn't quite exactly what they mean, but they want someone to give them time to get there.

Exactly. Is that what was happening? Yes. You were just like, well, you told me you don't want to talk about it, so that's it. Yeah. We're not going to ever talk about it. And my business brain as well is like very conditioned to be efficient. So does someone talk about it? Fine. Well, that's it. I'm not going to hang around and wait for someone to

get comfortable talking about it, am I? It's just, well, does someone talk about it? Fine, let's, well, that's it. I'm not going to hang around and wait for someone to get comfortable talking about it, am I? It's just, well, does anyone talk about it? Okay, well then, it's like a flow chart. It's like, yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. You get to the end, you think, well, I can't do anything about this situation. So throw the situation away. This was like a very immature version of me that I've now in hindsight understood

and I've changed so much. Part of the reason I can talk about it because had I not understood the situation and the faults I made in that situation, you wouldn't be getting. Part of the reason I can talk about it because had I not understood the situation and the faults I made in that situation, you wouldn't be getting this side of the story. You'd be getting one where I'm blaming the other person and where I'm taking no like accountability. But I've developed this understanding

of what mature love is. And I know that in that situation, I was like really naive, immature. And like that as a philosophy, that as a behavior pattern for the rest of my life will destroy everything that's good. Because I've come to learn that all relationships, they encounter storms. And it's in fact how you get through those storms. If you can get through those storms and heal the relationship to 101% versus 99%, every single storm should make you

ultimately stronger. It should resolve something which binds you together. That's really what a relationship is. And Mo Gowdat, who I know you've been on your podcast before. Yeah. And who you talked a lot about. And I said to him that you were one of the people that mentioned him. He talks about how you've got a love and you've got a relationship and you really only have to work on one of them. You don't really have to work on the love.

Like it doesn't really take much effort, but the relationship you do have to work on. And you can be madly in love and have an awful relationship yes and i was madly in love but i wasn't willing for whatever reason to work on the relationship i didn't think it was something you worked on so wise it's so wise and we've all been done a massive disservice by romantic comedies that we grew up with where you think that being madly in love is the thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're so right. That's such a good point that you and Mo make.

So Melanie took you back. So this is where it gets even more wild and I'm like fully giving away the, because I've got this, the Barry Vaseo live show and this is part of the story of the end of the show. So I flew to Indonesia and one of the things I'd like come to learn as well is that when you really love someone,

you truly love them, like Osho says, like if it's a plant and you truly love it, you don't pick it out the ground. You don't try and change it or manipulate it or try and force it to be how you want it to be because then you end up killing the thing you love. You end up like stifling the plant or whatever. So I flew to Indonesia and with no expectations at all

and saw that she was there living this really happy life now, very, very happy life now, I knew why I was going there. You don't fly 22 hours without some kind of objective, right, in the back of your mind. And I went and met her and she said to me, she said, I need to speak to you. We had like some really, really nice days together.

We had some dinners and stuff like that. There was no like, it wasn't romantic. You could tell it was like an elephant in the room, but just really nice, like, you know, dinner dates and lunch or whatever. And she said don't need to speak to you about something so I said okay I'll go and see her and she said to me she said um I was with someone else I was with someone else like during the gaps when I came out to Indonesia I met someone and I've been with someone else and in that moment that was the first like test of my ego this was again like my chance to go either way and that's

when you're like back comes up as someone that has an ego and you might want to decide to like punish them or you know make them feel like shit for and for whatever reason I gave her a kiss and I said thank you so much for telling me like I know how hard that is to tell me those kind of things and yeah that's it that's the end of it went away that day saw her the day after had a really nice day and then that day she said you know what steve like i don't really know what the future holds for us but like it's been like amazing to see you etc and you never know what the future holds and i said the same i said i completely understand that's really nice to see you here and so happy and that was it and then the day after i said to her i'm

flying on sat, but I sent her this really lovely message saying how wonderful it is to see her so happy, and in her own element, and how much all of the, like, internal changes, some of the battles she had in other parts of her life have been overcome, and I was so proud of her, and I was always going to be here for her, and she goes, oh my god, you're leaving, I go, yeah, my flight's on Saturday, she goes, can I just say bye to you before you go, that's another moment when my ego pops in and it goes, punish her. She's not ran back to you. She's not taking you back. Tell her she can't see you before you go. That'll make her feel like shit. Your ego says that. So well, you know, that's a moment where I could manipulate her and try and, and again, I was like,

my message back was like, of course I'll see you before I go. And it's when we met that time, everything changed. I look back on it and say say there was like multiple tests there where I could have been immature again I could have been manipulative I could have tried to force the outcome I wanted and on every single occasion even when she said something to me which really I reflected on that sucks I gave her a really safe space I gave her a kiss I said thank you for telling me and it was said, thank you for telling me. And it was on that last moment where she realized that where I was going. And I said, of course, I'll come and see you before I go. She was like, okay.

She planned this big itinerary. We had the best day together. And it was like, we fell in love again. And it was at that like final hour. Because she could trust you. Yeah, I don't know what it is. It was like, I'd proven to her that I was finally able to love her in a more mature way.

And that's probably what she was looking for this whole time. And we've been together ever since. And like, like our relationship is to say it's like strong is an understatement. And it's because of the techniques we've learned about dealing with storms. And it's about what I've just said there, which is like creating a safe space for the other person to communicate how they're feeling and not like attacking them or trying to win but just trying to create an open space for communication and being really mature about all of these situations that is honestly the single thing that's changed it for me

is learning how to communicate in a way without my ego and to express how I'm feeling and I think this comes on to another point you're probably going to talk about yeah it does come on to your third failure but before we get on to that I just wanted to ask you one final question about styles of communication. Because I think that's one area where relationships constantly falter, especially in the early days. And I definitely had to learn my partner's communication style, which because he has a high pressure job, which because he has a high pressure job sometimes that communication style from the boardroom filters into a text that he might send me and I got used to it and now I find it funny and sometimes I'll like end a phone call which has been quite business-like saying kind regards and then he knows he's done it because I'm being thrown into like a con. Do you also like, is there a journey that you have to

make where you have romantic or relationship texting versus business texting? Yeah, for sure. So in my business context, it's all about efficiency. Again, it's about use as little energy as I can to get the message across and communicate as little as I can as well. It's not a democratic environment business. So you have to make, especially at the top level, decisions. If businesses make most of the big decisions by consensus, they will fail. You can't establish company culture by consensus. If you're Sir Alex Ferguson and you're leading Manchester United, you can't ask the dressing room, how do you think the culture should be? Or you think it should be,

you think we should do four days a week you think we should do one you'll try and please everybody therefore you'll please nobody and you'll get this really fragmented unclear environment so in business there is a level of like authoritarianism I guess like very like clear instructions and this is the way we're doing it and people need and like that clarity especially when you're you know and focus the prism in which you're making your decisions is always about saving time and efficiency pretty much all the time to generate some outcome. However, in a relationship, if my girlfriend wants to go and sit in a park for two hours and meditate, I cannot use the same framework of whether that's a yes or a no that I use for the other 15 hours of the day, I can't weigh that up

on the potential return because there is no return in terms of like financial or tangible or whatever. So I had to become these two different mindsets where in one of them, it's like optimized for efficiency. And then the other one, the KPIs are much different and there really isn't KPIs. It's like, you want to go and do ecstatic dance or contact dance where we kind of like dance like fairies and in the dark sounds hideous but in Bali it's like hideous like and I don't I feel really uncomfortable doing it I'm gonna say yes and I'm gonna go and dance for three hours in Bali with a bunch of strangers during the day I'm gonna go and do that because I realized that like I said earlier about you invest in

relationships and you've got to work on it it's not always about me and this is like not the attitude I take into business like of course you're like nice in business and you want your teams to be happy but at the end of the day it's very focused on your objectives and there's a prism in which you're making these objectives in a relationship there's not it's like trying to make the other person happy trying to understand them and I'd say compromise but i don't like the word because it kind of alludes to you doing something you don't want to do it's more being open to plans and to yeah what's the right thing it's like a sea meeting a shore a perpetually changing scene of perpetually changing shore and what i haven't told you but as a surprise after this podcast we're going to do two hours of ecstatic on the street in South London. Well, I'm an expert now, so I can lead. That's okay.

Which does neatly bring us onto your third failure, which is such an interesting one. I'm really glad you've chosen it. We've never had it on the podcast before, which is that you failed at not being in touch with your feminine side yeah tell us about that I see like the masculine energy it's how my girlfriend refers to it as well as being the like highly competitive aggressive cold less caring or sensitive energy and then I see the feminine side of me as being more caring and more emotionally in touch and those kinds of things and And as I've like risen through my childhood, trying to survive and fit in on the playground, on the football pitch, and then through business, I've like really like lent into that, like deeply competitive, masculine, emotionless,

shut up. It doesn't matter how you're feeling. Let's just persevere side of me. And I've come to learn, as I kind of described before that that's really self-destructive over the long term I spoke with Patrice Evra and he grew up in the streets of France he was a drug dealing his brothers and sisters were dying because of drug overdoses he was being molested in school by his headmaster he was going through some really extreme awful unthinkable things so he learned to shut down and survive which meant like that really intense masculine toxic masculine energy and I think I've done too much of that too and also like I never really learned the affection

side I said earlier my parents weren't really affectionate with me so if someone called me their best friend when I was like 18 it made me feel like really uncomfortable even calling my mum and dad mum and dad to their face makes me feel uncomfortable it's like I don't know that I don't know that and like and also on the other side of it when I was from the age of 10 till 22 if a girl wanted to be in a relationship with me even if I had pursued her the minute she wanted to be in a relationship with me I would do everything in my power to end that situation even if I pursued her for like years I would persuade her out of it I was hiding from opening up emotionally it was ruining my chances of like having proper friendships proper relationships being open even having podcasts and speaking to the world you have to be vulnerable and open up

and I just hadn't done that and there was no chance of me ever having a relationship when I could never say the word love there's no no chance past Steve would have said the word love it's just too uncomfortable for me so I was like this little like rock and that's probably why I survived in a lot of the harder situations because I wasn't I was quite emotionally vacant but I've had to unlearn that and I'm unlearning it as we speak and so I've gone on that journey to open up more and to not allow the demons from my past or the things that are in the back room or the, you know, the things from my childhood to be running the show as much. And that allows you to have a much more full life. Like it means that you can be successful in more than one thing, not just business. You can be successful in your relationships,

your friendships, your family relationships. And that's what a full life is. You have to have those meaningful connections and toxic masculinity as I experienced it and as I portrayed it is a barrier to having meaningful connections. Do you think that the earlier iteration of Steve would have even admitted to the concept of failure? Do you think he would have admitted that he'd ever failed? No, no, no. He wouldn't have admitted to most things he was just an idiot like knew very little about very little so very cliche very lamborghini is the way forward i need to make a million pounds as i kind of write in my book like i needed a million pounds a girlfriend and a lamborghini or a ranger of a sport i think it was actually a ranger of a sport because i thought lamborghinis

were too expensive but that was it that was life was really that simple. And everybody that didn't work seven days a week like me was an idiot and they were going to be unhappy because I was going to be rich and they were wrong. And I would look down on people that couldn't work seven days a week like me. And that weren't giving up everything Saturday and Sunday in the office and sleeping in the office on Saturday night and sleeping in the office on Sunday night, wake up before the employees come in. Like I thought everyone else was wrong about everything. Do you have a car now? I do, but I don't drive. So my driver's actually outside. I can see the car, but, and this is only two weeks old, but for the last three, four years, I've just had an electric bicycle. I sold my Range Rover when I was 26,

25, the Range Rover that I wrote about at 18. And then I got an electric bicycle. This was interesting because I talked about the Rolls Royce decision. Everybody my team said no and my girlfriend was like why would you buy Rolls Royce and that made me really embarrassed because I was like I'm sorry babe like you were totally right but then they all signed off on me getting a van and just to be driven around so it's like it's got an office in there it's got a coffee machine in there I've seen it on Instagram it's so cool and we use it 24 7 to the point where we're using it too much now so of the last 24 hours i've been in there for eight hours and then all of our podcast guests are now picked up in it and our team move around in it and yeah it's like my office on wheels so it's got internet and tv

and as you mentioned it's waiting outside and i know that we're running over time i just wanted to ask you i'd stay here all day oh thank you it's just it's been so amazing like honestly you've dropped so many truth bombs that I just want to keep on talking to you oh thank you but I did want to ask you something specifically about masculine and feminine so you've spoken about your family but I wonder where you think you got the archetype of what is male and the archetype of what is female when you were growing up beyond your parents? Everywhere. Like I can't think of somewhere where I would have got a more healthy archetype everywhere. I had two older brothers. I watched every movie, game, internet, every advert,

everywhere, everywhere. And it's happening, but it's going to require a lot of effort from a lot of men that are inadvertently or advertently portraying that archetype to kind of rewire this it's actually one of the things that i now see as one of the biggest services i can do to the men that follow me is to have these conversations and to be really open about it and i've started that in the last like month pretty much all of my male guests i asked them this question and, you know, me and Patrice sat there and we basically cried on the podcast talking about this topic. And I know that that's a service I can do in my position. I've just signed a deal with Penguin to do another

book. I think it will heavily be about that topic of like how to create a new type of man. You know, like look at the numbers, men are killing themselves at ridiculous rates. And it's no surprise as to why that is when you think about the unsustainable toxic masculinity that is depriving them of the chance of forming meaningful connections, expressing themselves and pursuing who they actually are, whatever the answer is. So it feels like one of the greatest services that I can do for men now, whereas former Steve would have been of the opinion, the greatest service I could have done is like teach them how to get a Lambo. Now it the opinion the greatest service I could have done is like teach them how to get a Lambo now it feels like the greatest service I can do is like teach

them how to cry with their girlfriend so that is such a beautiful note to end on and I cannot thank you enough for making time in what I know is a hectically busy schedule to come and talk to me long may you and your ecstatic dancing continue you are an absolute pleasure to talk to you and a force for good Stephen Bartlett thank you so so much thank you it's a huge huge honor all of my team were freaking out that you invited me to come on this podcast so it means a lot thank you thank you if you enjoyed this episode of how to fail with elizabeth day i would so appreciate it if you could rate review and subscribe apparently it helps other people know that we exist