the bossbabe podcast - 34. Building a $500M Company & Sending Anything Viral in 30 Minutes With Steven Bartlett of Social Chain

Episode Date: September 11, 2019

In this incredible episode, Co-Founder Danielle Canty is chatting with Steven Bartlett. Steven Bartlett is the 26-year old CEO of Social Chain Group - a leading, social-first marketing agency that uses owned media, marketing, and technology to build social brands. This conversation dives into the mindset requirements of succeeding in your biggest goals. Join Danielle & Steven in an open conversation about failing forwards, pivoting direction, and trying to find happiness in all that you do. They dive deep into why it’s so important to live your truth and be your authentic self, the difference between quitting and pivoting, following through on your goals, and how the most value you can bring to the world is by being your true self. Steven shares his invaluable insights into the importance of self-belief and how, if you have an unwavering belief in yourself, you are truly capable of fulfilling your true potential. Discover how to grow your audience on Instagram by 10,000 ideal clients in 30 days: bossbabe.com/ig-growth. This episode is sponsored by the Insta Growth Accelerator. A 12-week accelerator designed to show you how to grow and monetize your Instagram account. www.instagrowthaccelerator.com. Apply to secure your place in the incredible Success & Soul Leadership Program: https://www.alyssanobriga.com/success-soul-application/

The safest and the best place to be is to develop your own sense of calm within chaos. It's taken me a long time to get there but there's nothing anyone in this business could say to me today that will ruin my mood. If you are strong enough and insecure enough within yourself to be okay with dealing with a bit of criticism, you can go really far. When you find yourself in that pivotal moment where you find yourself persuading yourself or talking yourself down from taking the jump, all I'm saying is close your eyes and just jump. Welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, a place where we share with you the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance and learning how to balance it all.

I'm Danielle Canty, your host of this week's episode and co-founder of Boss Babe. Now, if you know Boss Babe, you'll know that we love to start each episode off with one of our famous sassy quotes. So in the name of consistency, here is your daily dose of sass. Every day you have a decision to make. Give up, give in, or give it your all. Now, our guest on this week's episode certainly didn't give up or give in. Instead, he has 100% given it his all, and his relentless drive has led him on to build a company worth half a billion today. So it's a real honor to introduce you to Stephen Bartlett, the 26-year-old CEO of the Social Chain Group, which is a leading social first marketing agency that works with brands like Apple, Amazon, Coca-Cola, and Nokia. And I literally had so much fun attending their flagship offices in Manchester in the UK, where I went to record this episode, which by the way, made me feel so motivated to build Boss Babes

offices. I mean, if you follow me on social media at Danielle Canty, you'll have seen how they literally have the best space there from a relaxing jungle area to an Instagrammable flower arch to a slide to a bar where they apparently meet on Fridays after work. It was a real pleasure to hang out there and made me so motivated to build a similar space for Boss Babes. So really excited about that. Now, the reason I wanted to get Stephen on the Boss Babe podcast wasn't exactly about his achievements, which by the way, not only include winning Great British Entrepreneur of the Year awards, but he has also shared a stage with Barack Obama.

But aside from that, what I love about Stephen is his brutal honesty, his ability to talk about subjects that make a lot of people feel uncomfortable. And he always speaks his truth and he shares his struggles and failures as an entrepreneur as well as his wins, which I think is super important. He doesn't really sugarcoat things and he doesn't mince his words either. And this conversation is less about actionable business steps and more around the mindset requirements of succeeding. So I really hope you've enjoyed the upfront conversation about failing forwards, pivoting direction, and trying to find happiness in all. And if you do, we'd love to hear your thoughts. So do tag us at bossbabe.inc,

at Danielle Canty, and at Stephen, as we'll make sure we repost as many as we can. This episode is brought to you by the Boss Babe Insta Growth Accelerator, a 12-week program designed to help you grow and monetize your Instagram account. If you're ready to grow your audience with your absolute ideal clients who are throwing their credit cards at you, then listen up. I've created a completely free 90 minute training to show you how to do exactly that. I'm taking you through the step-by-step strategy to attracting 10,000 ideal clients as followers over the next 30 days. If you know that growing your audience with ideal clients who can't wait to buy from you would completely change the game, then this training

is for you. As I said, it's totally free. I just recommend turning up with a journal and getting rid of all distractions as we waste no time getting into the nitty gritty specifics. You know that I love specifics. To get started with the training, just head to bossbabe.com forward slash IG dash growth or hit the link in the show notes below. A boss babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise

keep going and fighting on she is on a mission to be her best self in all areas it's just believing in yourself confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own version of success well thank you steve so much for coming on the Boss Babe podcast. I know it's been a very busy week for you, announcing the up-and-coming IPO. So thank you for making the time. Thanks for having me. It's a real privilege. You're so welcome. And so I know that, you know, like you say, it's been a very big week.

You've announced that you're going to do an IPO this year. But 22-year-old Stephen, starting out social chain. Was this the grand plan? Was this destined from the beginning or is it something that's evolved? This definitely wasn't planned in the sense of this particular journey. But the thought that I wasn't going to be here by this age would have been truly devastating. And that's coming from a kid that at 18 years old was shoplifting pizzas down the road from here. I was 100% convinced.

And if you look at my diary, which a lot of people have seen from being 18 years old, I wrote that a Range Rover Sport was going to be my first car. And I didn't have a driving license when I wrote that. And I was shoplifting pizzas when I wrote that. And Range Rover Sport was my first car. And I wrote I was going to be a millionaire before I was 25. And I was. I wrote that I was going to work on my body image because I was really skinny. And I wrote I was going to have a girlfriend. Those are the four things in the first page of my diary. And I'd accomplished those things before the age of 25. So at 18, 20, whatever, I was so far from it. The thought that I was going to get to 25 or 26 and not be here, however it looked, whether it was a marketing agency or the social network I started first,

was a narrative that I was unable to accept. You know, I sit with my business partner sometimes and he goes, he talks about how he can't believe he's here and those kinds of things. And I couldn't feel any different to that. I was 100% sure. I find this really mind boggling though, because like you said, you're shoplifting.

You had in your own words previously, nothing at that point. How do you flip that mindset and go, do you know what? I'm not going to stand for this. I'm going to write these things on my diary. And that is now what's going to happen. Like, was there a point where you just woke up one day and just like, yeah, I'm going to write this down. So the context as to why I was stealing the Chicago town pizzas was because I dropped out of university at 18, called my mum, said,

mum, I'm dropping out of university. I've got this business idea. She said, well, I'm not going to speak to you until you go back to university. And my parents, they've always been bankrupt. So they've never had any money. well I'm not going to speak to you until you go back to university my parents they've always been bankrupt so they've never had any money and I'd come up to Manchester with 50 quid which I'd spent in freshers week I didn't get my student loan because when you drop out you don't get it can't pay my rent in halls of residence so I didn't pay that until I was like 23 like it took me four years to actually pay that in the end so I moved into Moss side where all the gun crime happens in Manchester and I just started working in this business and I didn't have a job and I didn't have money or student loan. My parents wouldn't answer the phone.

So I got hungry sometimes. So the distinction that's really important to make is when I say I was shoplifting pizzas, I wasn't a bum and I wasn't unmotivated. When I was stealing those pizzas, I was 100% convinced. And this is why I've written in my diary. And in fact, there's a Facebook diary, which is private, which I've shared with the team. And they all have access to my Facebook so they can go and see it. From day one to day 500, I'm sharing this story. The reason I'm sharing it, I actually lied to myself on day one of my diary.

I say that some TV company have asked me to write this. I just didn't know how to say it. Day one of my diary, I said, someday I'm going to have to show people this story. That kind of gives you the perspective that I had in that moment. This was part of a really, really fun journey to making it. And me being in Moss Side and stealing those pizzas was just a story I was going to tell someday.

What I'm saying is my perspective was the same then as it is now. My circumstances were different. Yeah, so there was no perspective change for me. I was always sure. When it came to, okay, well, I want to start a business. How did you decide what that was? Because I know that initially, you didn't start with Social Chain. You started with Ballpark.

And so what was it that thought process was actually, this is a business I want to do. How did you start formulating those ideas? A piece of advice I would give to entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs is to never sit down and try and think of a business idea because you are flawed before you've began the truth is about sort of business ideas and seeing them through is that there will become a point where it's so hard and so unworthwhile apparently that you should just give up and the thing that is cliche, the thing that keeps you going through those moments where any sort of logical person or sane person would give up is just like really enjoying it.

And being like deeply inspired by the fulfillment of that mission. So I've never made a business plan in my life, A. But B, I've never sat down and tried to think of a business idea. I'd gone to Manchester. I thought it was crazy that I was playing FIFA with my friend Joe from Plymouth, who was also in Manchester. I mean, there's 100,000 students around me. I'm a young guy. I want to get laid. I want to meet people. I want to have fun. I'm sat in this bloody hall of residence, which is the size of a single bed every day thinking like, what the hell is going on? How do I speak to these

other students? Went to the university. They've got this horrible notice board. My very sort of rational thinking was I'll put these notice boards online, got the universities all signed up to it after I dropped out. And that's how that started. How that became social chain was two and a half years into that business, raising investment from some of the biggest social media investors in the world, which by the way, should never have invested in a kid that had never built a website, ran a business had anything he was just convincing right I was just convincing good salesman that's it like on paper there was nothing there there was no GCSEs or A-levels or experience the guys that made Friends United which was the biggest social network in the world at one point give me their money but this is another point about investment and entrepreneurship which I'll

go into another time three years in I had this product and I knew I I'll get into another time. Three years in, I had this product and I knew I needed to get millions of people to come to it for it to be a success. And I tried everything. I tried flyers, posters, none of that worked, exhausted all my budget. And then in 2011, people, you know, when I was trying to give them my flyers were so consumed with their mobile phones that they were ignoring me. So I went to Domino's Pizza, got a hundred pizza vouchers, the Domino's Pizza on this street in Manchester. I love the theme of pizza in this. Yeah, it's actually designed the website on a pizza box, which is part of my talk. I show the pizza box that I designed the website on.

And I handed out these pizza vouchers in exchange for a screenshot of the setting section in your phone, which tells me where you're spending all your time. Obvious now wasn't obvious then. The answer was social media. I just thought to myself in a very sort of logical way that probably my only redeeming quality is I think in a very logical way, like very common sense. I thought, well, I need to have as much real estate as I can on this thing that everyone's spending their time on. So in 2011, I started building these social media channels, met every young person in the country who had built one, hired them or bought all of their channels from them at a time when brands thought social media was not worthwhile. I remember speaking to

Spotify and telling them to post on my social media pages and them just laughing at me. No one thought social media was interesting. You could get a Facebook page to two million in a day but no one would bother because it wasn't worth anything. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform Kajabi. You know I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place so it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I

needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students so if you're listening and haven't checked out kajabi yet now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering boss babe listeners a 30-day free trial go to kajabi.com slash boss babe to claim your 30-day free trial that's kajabi.com slash boss babe and i just want to bring you back to that because there's something that i think we've kind of glazed over a little bit and that's like like this, you started War Park and then you were like, actually, this is not right.

I need to pivot. I need to set up social chain because of X, Y and Z. But this is something that a lot of us go through. This kind of like, yes, I'm all in on this idea. I'm doing this, whether it's your career or a business. But actually, I'm now not enjoying this. I'm now don't feel like this is the way I need to go. Am I quitting or am I pivoting?

And how would it feel like? Did you see it as like, oh my God, shit, I'm quitting on something again. I know you speak like you dropped out of uni, you're dropping out of Wal-Mart. Did you see it that way? Or were you like, actually, no, I'm going to give myself a break.

This is not right. And I need to grow my gut instinct. You have to have a set of like values and principles in life. You have to have this like fundamental set of rules for yourself, which are the foundation of how you make your decisions and for me if I believe in something or I'm not enjoying something that is two of my rules triggered which means the decision has to be made the key thing which underpins all of this is just like really backing yourself and really

believing in yourself and there's no reason why I should believe in myself yeah there's none I don don't come from a family that have anything. My mum can't read or write. She's dropped out of school when she was seven years old. They're bankrupt. Like the real redeeming quality I have, I guess, is I've just always believed in myself. And the crazy thing is about belief, it's almost this paradox. If you believe in yourself, you create more case studies in your life of things you were able to do that you once didn't think you could do which reinforces your belief in yourself and it's this spiral and conversely the opposite is true if you don't believe in yourself you never get the case studies that you can do things you didn't think you could my life is a case of 12 year old kid that was like i'm gonna sell these sweets at school these cigarettes and then at 14 years old i'm gonna start this business and then

at 16 year old i'm gonna negotiate a deal for our whole school in all surrounding schools to get vending machines for free but also to make revenue from them which I'm gonna take a cuff 16 years old you know I'm gonna run all of the school trips and all the school parties for our school of 2,000 people this constant sort of reinforcing of when Steve thinks about doing something and follows it through it happens it made me feel totally like fearless and I think that's a really good distinction actually that following it through because sometimes we can set ourselves like okay we're going to do goals but then if we quit at them because it's like too hard and I think it's

just like really important distinction that actually you've set these goals and some of them probably haven't been easy but you've not quit at them you've carried on going would you say that's right because I do think a lot of people struggle with that self-belief and there are often ways that little things that we can do along the way that really help us build that self-belief and do you think it's just starting with those little things or do you think it's like no you just have to go for the big thing you just do whatever you need to do to get done just need to build case studies for yourself I've thought long and hard about this topic of self-belief and where it comes from here's where it doesn't come from. Instagram quotes, motivational speakers,

not going to come from me. If I was to get your mother right now, sorry, this is a very graphic example, but I think it serves a purpose. I got your mother right now and I held a gun to her head and I said, I'm going to shoot your mum in the head if you don't believe that I'm Jesus. Right? The only thing you could do in that situation is lie to me. Yeah. Because you couldn't believe it without evidence. The same is true in your life about your own belief in yourself.

No matter what I say to you, no matter if I tell you to believe in yourself, there are things that are deep inside your childhood, your early experiences, which will be much stronger and prove as a much sort of firmer sense of evidence to the contrary of Instagram quote or Steve Bartlett telling you on his podcast. So my whole thing is you have to go and make, build those case studies in your life where you were able to do something that you didn't necessarily think you could do. And yeah, the best places to start is somewhere small. And that could be like going to the gym every day for a month. And you said, you know, I did that could be like going to the gym every day for a month.

And you said, you know, I did that and I'm going to set myself another goal now. I've naturally been doing that in my life for a long time. So I've gotten to the point at 26 now where I genuinely believe if you told me to go to the moon next week, I'm like, there's a way to make that happen. Whereas a lot of people, because of the case studies they have, will think, well, I can't because what will people think of me or this will get in the way or there's probably no way for me to do that. Someone that looks and comes from where I come from can't achieve things like that.

Those are all just sort of narratives that you've come to believe. The great news is those aren't the truth. That's not who you are. Those are just things you believe and beliefs can change. And so it's a decision. It's a decision at the end of the day. A lot of people go through their life avoiding getting those case studies or trying anything, and they never believe in themselves. I think that's really powerful because it is.

It's making the decision and getting on with it, right? And we all have some control over our destiny. Have you read The Chimp Paradox? No, but I've heard about it. Yeah, by Professor Stephen Peters. It's really interesting, like the three sides of the brain, like the human part of the brain, the limbic part of the brain, which is like your chimp, and then the computer. And just really understanding that fight, that emotional side of you, that actually it can't be ignored,

but it does need to be managed. And you need to educate your chimp as much as you can, because we're all going to have these beliefs. And your chimp can either work with you and be like, you can do it, or it can be like, no, you can't do it. No, you can't. And it's like how your human brain talks to that chimp side of your brain. If we are ambitious and we want to grow businesses

or we want to grow up our career, we need to make that decision to decide. And you're right, we can't play victim. We can't be like, oh, yeah, it's okay for so-and-so. They had everything given to them. It's okay for such-and-such because someone else believed in them. It's like, actually, I'm going to take the bull by the horn so I'm going to run with it. I think there's a lot to be said.

I can see that you've done that a lot in your life. Yeah, I'm scared as well we're all scared I just think I'm scared of another set of things and like what you're scared of will ultimately define you I'm scared of not fulfilling my potential and doing a job I hate for 30 years and getting to my deathbed and being full of regret some people are scared of what people might think where they'll be if they quit their job or the uncertainty those aren't things that scare me more than being scared of what people might think, where they'll be if they quit their job or the uncertainty. Those aren't things that scare me more than being scared of regret or unfulfilling my potential or living a miserable life.

These are the things that direct my sort of founding values and my decisions. You can imagine from my perspective, most of human decision making on like a day-to-day basis makes no sense to me because I think just people are motivated and scared of the wrong things. What is it you've convinced yourself that you have to lose by going all in like you do realize that you are going to die and people don't they everyone thinks they're immortal death is something that happens to other people I'd love to see how the world changes if everyone had a one of those little sound timers on their desk and they could see how long they had left they wouldn't be leaving Instagram comments on other people's shit

and stalking them. They wouldn't be obsessing over pettiness and fears about what Jenny might say if I try and start this business. They wouldn't. So why can't you metaphorically or figuratively put that sound timer on your desk every day? Yeah, I agree. I think it's really important to realise that life doesn't last forever.

And I think it is interesting to think what we would do differently if we only knew we had a year left to live or two years left to live and how that would impact our decisions and what that would lead us to do, I think is super powerful. Why do you think people get so hung up about doing new things or fears? What do you think? Obviously, you've spoke about conquering your fears a lot. What do you think are the ones that you hear the most of and have helped people push through the fears that I tend to hear are people worried about other people's opinions and a lot of most people's potential without even realizing it is trapped behind someone else's opinion or many people's opinions and I like really really mean that I noticed even when it comes to me public speaking I became the best public speaker I think I could become at that phase in my life when one

day I was in like a really bad mood and I was really tired and instead of like caring so much about being PC and saying things how I think people want to hear them I just spoke my mind and I told a lady on the panel that she was really offensive because she said young people were lazy or whatever I have a business full of 700 young people that aren't mind and I told a lady on the panel that she was really offensive because she said young people were lazy or whatever. I have a business full of 700 young people that aren't lazy. And I was just honest for a change. And that was me just letting down this thing within me that thought I had to please people. Why did you let it down that day?

I was tired and I didn't want to be there. They paid me five grand to speak on this panel a couple of years ago. I didn't want to be there. I was very busy. So I just thought, well, if I'm going to be here, I'm just going to be honest. And that one day changed my life because since then, I realised that what had happened there was I was just myself for once. And I didn't care what people thought.

And since that day, I've adopted that stance in nearly everything I do and say. That's why I'm cool with telling the world that I was stealing Chicago town pizzas, because I just don't care. I don't care if people listen to that and think, he's a thief I don't care you know to keep your opinion you don't care or is it that you're now passionate about sharing your true authentic self it's a combination of two of those two things it's more the decision and the belief that in fact the most value I can bring to the world is just by being myself, by saying what I think and living my life on my terms in my way. And it's also the most regrettable way for me to live.

I think a lot of people feel depressed and anxious and unhappy with themselves and unfulfilled because they're playing the role of somebody they're not. And they're going through life, living to a script or a timeline that their parents or society has told them that they have to march to. And I think it's so unfulfilling and so depressing. So my whole thing is like, look, this is how I wanted to dress today. I wanted to wear a cap and I wanted to say the things I'm saying. I'm a 26-year-old black guy. This is what I'm into. Like, there's no other Steve.

I'm not going to walk out there and go, oh, fucking hell. Like, breathe out and then be myself. This is what I'm like with Cooper when we're in the back of a cab in any country in the world. There's a study they did in psychology where they show that people who try and be someone else in their lives, they end up feeling despair because they've abandoned them true selves, because they've abandoned them their true self if they succeed in being someone else. People that don't succeed in trying to be someone else end up feeling despair anyway because they didn't succeed in becoming something they weren't. But either way, it ends in despair. And these psychologists have shown that the only way to really avoid despair is just

by being your true self. The pursuit of trying to be someone else, whether you succeed or fail, ends in despair. This isn't a new thing. When I say a new thing, I mean the last two years. When I started the business, I was trying to be someone else a lot of the time in a lot of ways and the closer I've come to being Steve the happier I've got the more successful I've got and everything has got better it's much easier to stick up for defend and be proud of you than it is fake you and so many of us are having to defend or be trying to be proud of or try and love a fake version of themselves so it's just it's helped my happiness everything so there is a lot of pressure to be authentic particularly millennials generations that we like we crave that

authenticity right but this is what i have going through my head i'm authentic one day and i'm authentic on another day but actually there's two people can be very different sometimes do you find yourself saying that like some conversations you might have on one day. But actually, those two people can be very different sometimes. Do you find yourself saying that? Like some conversations you might have on one day, one mood, you're feeling one way about it. And another day, you might be in a bit better spirits and feeling a different way about it. Like, do you feel bad then contradicting yourself?

Or do you feel bad? Like, are you ever called up on, well, hang on, you said this one day, but then the other day you're saying this. No, you can change your mind and you can feel different ways on different days. Our moods fluctuate. I'll be in a good mood in the morning

and then a better mood in the afternoon and then a better mood in the afternoon and then a terrible mood. My mood changes based on this environment and also the people you're talking to and dealing with. It's so true that you can meet someone and their energy can impact you and how you're feeling and how you speak. And then you can meet someone

and for whatever reason, there can be a hard to distinguish thing that just kind of pulls you down a little bit. And so it hugely depends on the environment as well. And also, I think it's important to be authentic and always to be ourselves. But actually, if you want to be growing into something and growing into those goals and achieving that, actually, you might need to change at the beginning and you might need to lie to yourself about who you are to actually change that trajectory are you saying like tell yourself that you like almost like there's affirmations like I am great and I even if you don't really believe it yes it's interesting

I maybe I don't know enough about this topic of affirmations and telling yourself things that deep down you don't think are true I genuinely believe that self-belief has to be real yeah you're just trying to trick your subconscious which I don't think you really can do as much as we think we can I think you'll still approach key decisions like dropping out of university or quitting your startup ballpark completely differently if you don't really really believe know what your core values yeah I don't think you can fake it I personally feel like we have these core values and then that's like who we are like I have a certain set can fake it I personally feel like we have these core values and then that's like who we are like I have a certain set of morals that I will not compromise on

I might change my mood around certain things I might say different things or have certain feelings about whether I'm feeling like an imposter or whether I'm feeling super super confident I think all of us have those like set of morals that's really important and values that we take through us on this journey and my mum dad always brought me up with like, you treat others how you want to be treated. And I think that was one of my key morals that why I wouldn't personally go and say something super, super nasty to somebody because I really wouldn't necessarily want to hear that to myself. And I think maybe what we're trying to say is, yeah,

as long as you are moving in the right direction, you have a set of values as you are growing, then the layers on top of that might change. But it's about being a decent human being at the end of the day. And even like the set of values. So some people's values can be so bad. Even their own personal values of themselves and their own beliefs about themselves can be so bad and so destructive

because of things that have happened. If you grew up in the Westboro Baptist Church, you would be a massive bigot. You would be massively homophobic. In fact, you were brought up to believe that homosexual people are the devil and you were helped made to hold signs on the street saying that at the age of five,

you would have really, really terrible values. And even those values can be changed if they need to be changed. And I find it so liberating that these things are all flexible at the same time even your brain is flexible according to science there's brain elasticity so you can literally reprogram your brain physiologically to believe new things about yourself and to hold different sort of perspectives on the world that for me is empowering because it means that nothing

is set in stone in my life yeah and speaking of psychology I just want to kind of bring us around to the psychology of others because one thing as part of social chain and media's change you create amazing content and i know that you have previously discussed around the worst kind of content as content that means that people don't feel anything they see something they don't feel anything sure and i understand from some of the previous campaigns you've done actually you've done, actually, you've tried to create content that it's maybe been a bit controversial. And it's not necessarily stuff that people have liked, but it's created a reaction, it's created discussion points. I think that's one thing to do as a brand. But I think it's another thing to do when you're

actually speaking about your own personal brand. How have you coped with creating content that's quite controversial at times? the easiest way to create stuff that people really resonate with has been again to just be my honest self because if you want to create stuff that's going to be completely indifferent nobody's going to engage with and that is going to add a world full of indifference and tameness and political correctness just try care a little bit about what people think and about being socially acceptable and conformity. Then you'll create terrible, terrible stuff. That's the easiest way to create stuff that nobody's interested in.

I think the most interesting content fills the gap that nobody else is filling. And in a world where we're all a little bit scared to say certain things, it's in fact the people that say those things that have all the attention. And I'm not saying be an attention seeker. I'm saying that you have those beliefs, but we're all just a little bit too scared to give them to the world in the way we think them. We'll maybe package them up.

We might not want to swear. We might not want to do this, that, and the other. So you look at people like Piers Morgan, Donald Trump, Katie Hopkins, these are extremes, right? I'm not saying these are good people. There's a reason why Donald Trump is president, because extremes right I'm not saying these are good people there's a reason why Donald Trump is president because he stood up

on a stage of nine other political candidates and instead of giving the socially acceptable spiel about oh I'm going to help the economy he fucking just went for it

and when the presenter asked him did you say this this and this he went yeah that touched us all and made us feel something because that was different.

He had the sort of courage of his convictions to just be himself. And that's because Donald Trump didn't think he had anything to lose. He also didn't really think he was going to win. That's similar to what I've described earlier on on that panel that day where, for once, I just stopped caring so much

about what people might think if I said what I thought. And of course, here's the thing. When you start doing that, when you start really saying what you think and the way you think it and stop caring so much about the reaction, you will get exactly that, a reaction. And you'll get both sides of the pole.

You'll get people that think you're wonderful and then you'll get people that directly or indirectly telling you to get back in line. And if you're able to deal with that, you can go really, really far. How do you deal with it? Can you deal with it? Do you ignore it or do you like to ignore it?

First time it happened, it didn't kill me. Second time it it happened it didn't kill me second time it happened it didn't kill me when social chain was first born if you go on social media around that time they were calling us the illuminati they called us parasites because we owned all of these massive social media communities and we could make anything trend within half an hour make anyone talk about anything vice came to our office they said make this the most talked about topic online in less than 30 minutes it was buzzfeed came it was Channel 4 came. It was. They could give us anything. So we were polarizing, right? As is great content. And so we had one group of people who might, for whatever reasons, let's hazard a guess, they were jealous. They were

uncertain. It made them feel uncomfortable. Were hating. The other group of people were like, this is amazing. Good on them. They're getting it while they can. But the attention on both sides of the spectrum meant that the phone rang that day, nonstop. That day we signed Disney, Fox and Universal as major clients. There were six of us sat downstairs in a co-working space in the same building. Hannah was crying her eyes out when that happened because all of these people were saying horrible things about us that weren't true, that rarely matters and we emerged from that better because of it and that didn't kill me in fact I would have paid hundreds of thousands of pounds now in hindsight for all of those people to talk shit about me. Was that a pivotal point in your business? It was

really pivotal it's actually on the wall spray painted on the wall downstairs I've just learned over time that if you are strong enough and insecure enough within yourself to be okay with dealing with a bit of criticism, you can go really far. The only way in fact to avoid criticism for you would have been to stay in bed this morning, to not do anything, say anything or try and be anything. The thing that's conducive with avoiding criticism is the same set of behaviors that's conducive with being criticism is the same set of behaviors that's conducive with being totally invisible to the world. And even then people would say you were lazy.

So it's like, if they're going to talk shit anyway, like I might as well go for the most least regrettable path, which is again, just to truly be myself every day. And apologetically. Like, yeah, like I'm not hurting anybody. I have no intention. I will help everybody that I can. I will go out of my way and my team and everybody knows this,

that I'm incredibly generous, not because of business reasons, but because I feel people's pain. Yeah. At the same time, like even if people talk, say horrible things about me and my business, and they have since day one, and they always will, regardless of what I do. I've got a show airing tonight on Channel 4 at 9pm,

which is called Secret Teacher. And it's me going into a school and donating about 70, 80,000 pounds worth of our money to buying a mental health officer and all these things. And we've got the teachers or holidays and whatever else. I'll go on Twitter tonight, and there will be hundreds of people criticising me. Really? Oh, of course. Yeah, 100%. There was last week for the last entrepreneur that was on the show. There will be hundreds of people. I have a decision to make there. That decision I make to allow that energy or those words to have any impact on me will be like defining for my entire life.

Because one thing you come to learn, especially when you run like a really big business like this where you get bad news every day, is the safest and the best place to be is to develop your own sense of calm within chaos. It's taken me a long time to get there, but there's nothing anyone in this business could say to me today that will ruin my mood. Like that will seriously impact my focus. There's nothing. I could go downstairs now and they could say, by the way, we're going bankrupt.

And it wouldn't impact my focus. In the same way, you could give me the best news in the world. I have to feign celebration. But you're not just saying that you just kind of live on this life just like an even keel yeah it's not a bit boring go downstairs you can tell us we've just signed a client for two million I would be completely unmoved but why not why is that a conscious decision I had to develop that to survive okay I see the same in my billionaire friends like I had one in this morning from some people in that from Boohoo, good friends of mine, the Kamani's and stuff.

And I see the same sense of calm. Imagine if you wake up every day and you wake up on New York time. So that's like five hours ahead of Europe. And you know that there's going to be 30 pieces of information in your WhatsApp and your email that are bad. So like, imagine that every single day you wake up and you know that the minute you go, boom, face ID open, it's going to be,

it's here's the bad news and here's all the shit you have to deal with. If I don't detach myself from that in some respect, which is something I've always been good at forever, I think I will move with the news. Yeah. And that's an unhealthy way to live. I'd live like this,

rollercoaster up, down. Oh my God. And it would just be horrible for like, even physiologically for my hormones, for my mental health. so i remained attached from the news and i managed the news the news doesn't manage me and that's the only way i've learned to survive okay i really get that actually and i think that's actually an amazing quality and being a good leader because you have to kind of like steady the ship if you get emotional over it then it's very hard to lead so i really do get that i want to give you a real specific example.

When I was 23 years old, started this business, it was growing really well. We just had the BuzzFeed stuff go out and it was, we signed all these massive clients. The business was growing, just signed investors. On my way to work, I get a phone call from someone saying, did Dom mean to send me that email? And I'm like, what do you mean? 6am in the morning, what do you mean? And I look at my phone and there's all these messages. Did you mean to send me that email email and it's someone had hacked our emails

overnight about 2 a.m dom's email my business partner and they'd sent very tailored specific abuse to all of our clients and all of our investors but they'd made it seem like it was meant to go to our pa so it was like an accidental overhead conversation so it was like lisa was my peer at the time Lisa tell them once we've got their fucking money we're going to run off and shaft them I hate this woman

with her stupid red bag like that specific to all of our clients and all of our investors so I arrive at work in the morning it was our team building day had to cancel team building day while they're all there

bring them all back to the office we lost all of our clients and we lost all of our business in that one morning I'm in the meeting room taking these calls from the biggest brands in the world who are telling me that I'm a coward because I'm not telling the truth.

It was 50 emails sent and looking out at the team, realizing that they no longer had any work to do, 60, 70 of them. And like managing that situation on that day, you only have to go through that once and survive it to really have this sort of perspective. There's really no news you can give me that's bad enough to move me. I can deal with it. And even on that day, it's really surprising to myself i i wasn't stressed i wasn't stressed and i've always struggled with even using the word stress because i just

i don't want to accept that word it's strange don't want it in your life it's a decision you make yeah fundamentally i think it is a decision you make because if i've managed to get really far in my life without really feeling stressed at anything this is a decision people are making as to what matters yeah and what's stress worthy I'm yet to encounter anything that's stress worthy if my parents were to die I think I'd suck this is all just a game I'm playing chess here you know I think it's interesting though talking about that kind of being able to hold that emotion that from the highs and the lows but what makes you you, what makes this worthwhile, right? So you're building this incredible company.

You've announced that you're going to do an IPO. Did you get excited about that, Steve, or not? Or was it just like, yeah, I'm just doing it? Yeah, it's good feelings. It's definitely good feelings. It's good feelings. It's the start of a new chapter, but yeah, it feels feels good the things that feel the best are being able to reward the people that have believed in me I was just going to say through this conversation the times that I've

seen you light up is when you spoke about giving back to others yeah like I can literally see you genuinely light up 2 30 a.m in the gym last night I was thinking people around me don't realize how this story ends for me this story doesn't end if Steve gets rich and then Steve fucks off. This conclusion of my story is, here are all the people that believed in me. Now their lives have changed forever. People need to understand that context of me. And they do. People closest to me understand that. But a lot of people don't understand that. And if they did, I think their perspectives on things would change. But like, really, I mean that. The thing I think of that's when you're successful is when all of these people that believed in me

or were loyal to me or stuck by me are all really, really rich and successful, including like my family, like my people that have worked in this business for three, four years. I've told them this, but I don't know if they really, really can distinguish it from like CEO bullshit to the truth.

So... But what does that mean for you in like real terms? Because I feel like sometimes when you're an ambitious entrepreneur, it's always on to the next and you say, oh yeah, it'll stop for me when X, Y and Z. But does it ever stop? This social change story, it concludes when the people that believed in me are wealthy and happy, all of them.

That's when it concludes for me. It's not when I'm going to resign or anything. It's just when I will say my work here has been done. When they're wealthy and happy. Yeah. Do you think wealth's going to make them happy them happy no but like freedom of choice well I think they'll be unhappy if the promises that I made to them when I told them to drop out of university and join me or whatever go unfulfilled the truth is about all like goals and big ambitions is there's

really all the fun was in the journey you know it's like the mountain top like you spend 15 minutes at the summit but the climb is the the enjoyment part but for me it's important that we do reach the summit and that I do get to say thanks for climbing with me and thanks for believing in me who are the key people that you feel have really like helped you on that journey my mum and my dad and I've already like done a lot in terms of like making sure that they're good. It's really everyone in this business. Their tenure and the commitment and dedication that certain people have shown me.

I don't know if they realise it, but they're all building a debt within me. And the more they have given to social chain, their colleagues, to whatever, they're building a debt within me which I feel obliged to pay back. Is that a bit of a hard burden to carry sometimes? Because I think, like you say, it's not necessarily they're putting the pressure, but you're putting that pressure on yourself. Is that a bit of a hard burden to carry sometimes? Because I think, like you say, it's not necessarily they're putting the pressure, but you're putting that pressure on yourself. Is that what drives you?

I know it will end well. If I was uncertain about the ending, there'd be a sense of anxiousness or pressure. I know it will end well. Because I'm in control of this ending. What I do, how hard I work, how talented I am, how much I want to learn, how much I care will be the predictive factors as to whether we do get to the summit or not. And because I'm in control and I believe in myself, I have no reason to be anxious.

I know that I'm going to give everything I have. And so if we don't get there, even though I've given everything I have, then that's fine anyway, because I could have given more. What is there to be regretful of? But what does giving everything you have look like for you? Because I think that's really interesting because sometimes I feel like, my God, I can never do enough. I can never work as many hours

or I can never learn as much. I'm constantly trying to absorb information. How do you have that peace of mind that, yeah, I've done enough today? If I'm working hard and I'm trying to work smart and I'm trying to read myself every day and learn from myself, say, Steve, you shouldn't have done that. Don't do that again tomorrow. Then making the same mistake tomorrow and thinking, Steve, listen, you shouldn't have done that.

If I'm trying my best to work hard, to learn from myself, I expect nothing more from myself. And I think if I were to expect more from myself than I'm doing right now, I would be anxious and depressed and I'd overthink it. In fact, that would make me procrastinate and I wouldn't actually get anything done because I'd be too consumed with not being enough or doing enough. So I give it what I can today, how I felt based on how much energy I had, how tired I wasn't. And I go to bed, I think you did your thing. And then we'll come back tomorrow and we'll go again. My best is, and this is just keeping it fact, I don't want to sound arrogant, but my best

is a lot more hours than most people. And it always has been. That's been because I love what I'm doing. And I come here on Saturdays and Sundays and work. And that's like. Does it feel like work? Cause I, yeah,

I feel the same. I was doing stuff like this when I was 12. My favorite game with my brothers when we were growing up was I would go and make fake money. I'd get loads of pieces of paper from my dad's printer. I'd write one six times on the first piece, two on the second piece. I'd cut it in strips of money. I'd give it out to my brothers. I'd tell them that my bunk bed was a business

and I'd tell them to come and buy services from me. This is what I was doing for fun when I was a kid. And they would just use me. They'd spend all the money, get all these massages and stuff from me. And then just the game was over because I had all the money. But it was my fun.

I've always been interested in this. There was loads of stuff in my life that sucked. University, call center jobs in Manchester. I worked in probably 15 call centers. I ran from all those places to come here. People say to me, oh, you work too hard. I'm like, you don't understand then. This doesn't work to me.

This is what I find interesting. And in fact, I got to pick all the people. What an absolute luxury. And if any of the people are mean or nasty, they're not here anymore. So I've created my own world around me. And so how can I hate it? I created it for myself on my own terms. And I'm surrounded by people that I really like.

And that's amazing. I think that there's been so many takeaways in this podcast. And I really feel like so many of our listeners will relate to so many of these difficult topics that we go through as entrepreneurs and things that don't actually get discussed a lot. And I'd love for us to kind of round up by just sharing that inner confidence piece for you is so clear and so key, but I appreciate that it's not for everybody. So I'd love for you just to kind of like round up a couple of action points that anyone listening to this podcast who's like right I really want to change my life I really want to like make this decision and go after this dream or purpose I want to do what are the key things that you think is like for them to take away from this we all have these like key moments in our lives where we're faced with making a big decision for me it started you know very early on 14 16 dropping out of university there was this key

sort of pivotal decision moment where there was something that might have caught my eye, but there was a lot, whether it was society, my family, my mum, whatever, potentially trying to keep me in this position of comfort. People listening to this podcast will be sat there thinking, I want to start this blog, I want to start this business, I want to quit this job, I want to go and travel the world. They'll also naturally be defaulting to telling themselves all the reasons why that can't happen and they shouldn't do it and why if they try, they'll end up in a dangerous or scary position or they might lose something which they can't quite define. There's no like fluffy Instagram, motivational podcast or anything that's going to be able to make that decision for you.

I think the best advice I could probably give you is to try and make that decision from your deathbed. And what I mean by that is 85 year old you, which component, which side of the decision are they going to regret? And honestly lead with that. And I call this deathbed thinking, which is trying to make decisions now from the perspective of your deathbed. Because right now, when you're in myopic little bubble where Jenny commenting on your hair or all these little minor things might hold you back. People on their deathbed have this sort of retrospective clarity as to what was really important. And it's never going to be spending another year in that job you hate to get 5K promotion.

It's never, ever going to be that. You're not going to be 80 years old and think, oh God, thank God I got that 2K. Dealing with that asshole boss who was a dick to me. There's no decision in my life I can tell you I've regretted that involved like following that sense of like meaning and fulfillment and that burning thing in my heart. I've never regretted it.

When you find yourself in that pivotal moment where you find yourself persuading yourself or talking yourself down from taking the jump, all I'm saying is close your eyes and just jump. It takes a lot. I cannot think of a case study where someone regrets it. Think about it. My first business failed, technically.

Walpurg technically failed. Because of that failure, three years later, I was making 70 grand a month as a consultant from Uni, Fling, Bebo.com, and all these massive companies paying me to sit in my bedroom, wherever I was in the world. I was traveling the world at this point, and tell them about business and marketing

because I'd failed, because I dropped out of university and failed I learned so much from that failure I made 70k a month at 21 years old with no qualifications because I was amongst the few that were willing to go down a different path and then people paid me to tell them what was down that path even my failures have made me. And that failure led to Social Chain, which is now worth half a billion. That has just been because I close my eyes and I just jump. You'll hear the story of Social Chain. It sounds very planned. It wasn't planned. I quit Woolpark after having a glass of wine because I just didn't believe in it anymore. And I didn't enjoy it. I was working with someone I didn't enjoy at all, didn't like him. And I threw myself into the unknown. Although we're

all programmed to have certainty in our lives, which is knowing where we are in our plan and our strategy and be on timeline. In fact, I think the most wonderful things in life aren't on the timeline, aren't on the track. They're off piste and they're intuitive and they're driven and guided by your own heart and your own sort of intuitive feelings. Your mum or dad can't tell you which way to go. I really believe that. I think everybody knows, but so much has talked them out of what they know. It's kind of unlearning the bullshit and coming back to what you, your true self, I guess.

Thank you for sharing and thank you so much for doing this interview. It was absolutely a pleasure to have you on. No worries, thanks for coming up, I appreciate it. Thank you for sharing your wisdom. If you enjoyed this episode, we would love it if you subscribed and left us a review.

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