The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - E21: Mental Health, Mistakes and My Apologies

Episode Date: January 14, 2019

Diary of a CEO is back. Welcome to Season 2 of the podcast, Chapter 1 of my new diary. In the time I've been away a lot has happened and a lot has changed. If you're new to the channel, this podcast is where I share my deepest and darkest thoughts, both...

Quick one, just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio. And thirdly, to Amazon Music, who when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And

thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. the diary of a ceo is back and i've waited the longest time to be able to say that here's the thing after season one you wonderful people dm'd me stopped me in the street tweeted me and hounded me to bring the podcast back for another season. There is no piece of content that I produce that's had such a phenomenal dedicated response. And because of that, we've brought the Diver CEO back for a second season and I've traveled tens of thousands of miles around the world, meeting inspiring people from the world's biggest YouTubers, most impressive business people to the world's most inspiring artists. We've got an amazing mix of guests. The format is simple.

This is not an interview. I want honesty, truth. I want to see into your personal diary. I want to understand you, not to advertise you. I want to hear the things that most people wouldn't have the guts to say because in a world where everything is filtered, it's the unfiltered that people need the most. If you don't know me, my name is Stephen Bartlett.

I'm a dropout. I got kicked out of school. I started my first business at age 18. I'm now the 26-year-old CEO of one of the world's largest global marketing companies, Social Chain. We work with the world's biggest brands. We have five offices around the world and 270 full-time members of staff. I'm just doing my best, doing my best to be my best, but also to understand and navigate life.

What a crazy, crazy journey it's been and it's still yet to be. After season one of the podcast, so much of my life changed. I moved over 5,000 kilometers away to New York City, which is where I now live. And I moved there to focus on building our company in America. And trust me when I say this, America is a big place. America is a new challenge. It's a huge challenge. But I've spent my whole life out of my depth. So right now, America is where I need to be. More on that in a second. But before I open my diary and share all of my deep sometimes dark thoughts with you I just want to thank you I want to thank you for listening thank you for waiting thank you for all of your posts shares comments and reviews I saw them all and in return me and

my team have gone to extra lengths to ensure that season two is by far the best season yet this is not scripted there's no one else in the room with me right now. I promise on everything that I'm worth and my word and everything else. I'm recording this at 3.33 a.m. on a Sunday night alone in my hotel room. I'm going to share deep personal thoughts with you, things that have been playing on my mind, personal information that I haven't shared with another human being on earth, and ultimately all of the notes that I've written into my diary since we last spoke. I hope you're ready. So without further ado this is the Diary of a CEO season two. I'm Stephen Bartlett. I hope nobody is listening but if you are then please keep this to yourself. Where to start? Damn um okay so the first point in my diary i've just written mental health

the guy that committed suicide and um i this is a tough one for me um i'm just going to tell you a story um i made a video on facebook about i don't know six months ago the. The video was called Smiling Through Depression. And the video talked about how some of the world's most adored people that brought so much happiness to so many people's lives were fighting battles that you could never ever see based on appearances. And I talked about Avicii, I talked about Robin Williams, and I talked about others. And my overall message in the video was just to treat everybody as if they're going through something which you know nothing about.

And that kindness really could be the answer to so many things in this world. The video did great. I think it's got 16, 17 million views. And I was so happy to see that it had such a positive impact on so many people. But here's the thing. I was on, I think it was Twitter a few days after the video came out and I got a direct message from somebody called Jack Dean. Jack Dean is a well-known YouTuber he's got millions of subscribers and followers he said to me Steve I've got a got something pretty dark to tell you he said somebody I know locally has just killed themselves and they're very well known in our area and the last thing they shared online was your video about mental health and he sent me a link to this guy's facebook page

and i went on this guy's facebook page and there is my video and all of his friends and family have used that video as a platform to now express their condolences and so on. And in that moment, I went through a tremendous amount of thoughts to think that somebody watched my video and then within 12 hours of watching something that I'd produced, made the decision to end their own life was something that I struggled with a little bit. And I didn't really tell anybody this at the time, but it really messed with my head for a number of reasons. And I'm just going to try and explain all of those reasons to you. So when I released that video, I probably got about 2,000 to 3,000 messages from people who were going through mental health issues. And some of the things that people said, honestly, it makes my hair stand on edge i i spoke to an egyptian girl stuck in

her bedroom in egypt who hadn't left the room for four months who was trying to find a way to kill herself i spoke to people that i knew very closely that shared their very uh deep personal stories about how they'd considered ending their own lives and everybody else, everybody else's life in their life. And then I dealt with this, you know, this guy who shared my video and had killed himself. I felt, I think I felt everything at once. I felt sad. I felt speechless. I felt horrified. And then so here's what happens when something like that happens. The first thing you think is, did I cause this? Did something I say in my video cause this person to end their own life? And I remember going back through the video and listening to it again through the lens of someone that might have been struggling and thinking, is this, you know, you understand.

I went down that path. It also didn't help because so many people around me who'd found out about this guy ending his own life and the fact that the last thing he'd watched was my video. They also messaged me to tell me, Steve, don't worry he didn't end his life because of you and i didn't really think that until people started saying it so um i think that sent me down that path further and i asked myself a ton of questions and then the the second thing and this is ultimately where i ended up this is where my mind ended up, was everything we do, everything we produce has the impact of reaching somebody in their most vulnerable, the most significant moment of their lives. It could be in a shop, you buying somebody their vegetables when they don't have enough change. It could be holding the door open for somebody. It could be something that you post online. And the truth is, you know, the videos I post on Facebook have varied between 2 million views and 35 million views.

And I 100% am guilty of looking at those numbers as numbers and not as people and in that moment I realized those two things I realized that everything I do could be reaching somebody and often is reaching somebody in a very vulnerable place and that those 35 million views are 35 potentially 35 million people 35 million human beings and so what it did for me in that moment it gave me this intense sense of responsibility and i i i'm like haunted by the thought that everything i produce and put online could be the last potentially the last thing a human being hears, I am probably the last person that spoke to that guy that ended his life. And if I'd known that at the time when I recorded that video, what would I have said differently? What would I have done differently in that video? And that's the thought that's just stayed with me for a while. Mental health, because I haven't

experienced mental health issues to the extent that a lot of people have in terms of anxiety and depression and bipolar and all of these things for me it's all and this is me just being completely honest it's always been a concept and a construct that's been quite hard to understand if you've not gone through something you can't fully appreciate it you just can't you can't pretend to I believe every word everybody says when they talk about their mental health issues every word I feel it deeply within my soul in my being it it's always had a huge impact on me and I've cried for friends that have gone through things but in that moment it all became so incredibly real so incredibly real and it makes me feel

emotional even to talk about it now because I just wish there was something more I could have done I wish there was there was something more I could have said and there's literally like tears in my eyes as I say this but and when I think about mental health issues more broadly I think there's a few things that are really really important and I think one of them that I've come to learn over time is that it's empowering, it's peace-bringing to understand that every moment we experience is temporary. Every moment. Our darkest moments, our most stressful moments, they are temporary. And I know sometimes the duration of that, those moments can be years, it can be days, it can be hours, whatever, but those moments are temporary and we must never give up when it rains. But also our brightest moments are temporary.

The days of joy, jubilation with friends, our fondest memories, all of those things are temporary. So we also need to learn that when it's sunny outside and when the sun's shining, we need to live more in the moment. And I think the perspective that all of our moments are temporary is one that will only bring us happiness and it'll help us weather the storm a little bit better. I've read a number of books in the last year since we've last spoken on this podcast about mental health, and I've really managed to develop my own opinions on why our generation and society today has so many mental health issues to the point where I think it's a bit of a crisis. And I think about, and I'm going to talk

very honestly and openly here because this is what this podcast is all about I don't want to have to think about being PC right or monitoring or filtering my opinion I just don't have the fucking time or the patience so here's my thoughts human beings weren't built with mental health issues we weren't created to have you know we didn't evolve with these mental health issues i think a lot of the mental health issues not all of them but i think a lot of them are from causes that we don't yet fully appreciate i 100 agree that there are biological and therefore medical reasons why we get mental health issues the science supports that but i think because of the way that mental health issues have exploded into our into our generation i guess and

into our society today there must be other reasons there must also be societal reasons there must also be cultural reasons because that is the only thing that's changed from now versus say a million years ago of course awareness has changed as well and being aware of these these things has had a tremendous impact because people now feel they can talk about them the stigma has been removed to some extent there's still a stigma there but to some extent um and so societal factors are the things that i focus on the most and when i think about human beings and how we came to survive there's this great book called lost connections and here's a

little bit of a hint no no hint here's a little bit of a reveal i've got the author of this book on this podcast um i recorded this with him in london but to back up a sec great book called lost connections which really examines this. And basically it says this, a million years ago, we evolved to where we are today over that period of time. And a million years ago, we lived in much different ways. And it's mind blowing to me that the way we used to live is the way that doctors and social psychologists and a lot of other people advise us to live today if we want to improve our mental well-being. Listen, on the point of mental well-being, everybody has mental health, okay? In the same way that you have physical health.

Mental health isn't a binary thing. It's not you're either ill or you're fine. It's a spectrum in my mind, right? So we all have mental well-being. And if you want to improve your mental well-being, according to social psychologists and others, they tell you to do things like exercise, to spend time with friends and family. These are all the things that science has proven improve our mental well-being. A years ago we were tribal animals right we lived with our loved ones and our friends and i think this is why the book is called lost connections because we've really lost our connections today we live alone generally between four white walls right we don't see our loved ones and when we speak to our loved ones we do so by tapping glass screens iphones androids we also used to live in nature and there's something about nature which is innately human and calms our soul there's this great study they've done in this book lost

connections where if you look prisoners in a prison that are looking out on nature are like 30% less likely to be depressed than the prisoners looking out on concrete. And that speaks to the innate sort of social needs that we have as human beings that we've lost today. We don't live in nature. We live in concrete jungles between four white walls. And the other thing which I think is so, so important is exercise. As tribe animals and humans, for thousands and thousands of years ago, we used to walk, run, to hunt. We used to be active and we used to do activity and daily exercise every single day. We now use Uber to get around. So for me, when I think about mental health and how I can

improve my own mental well-being, it's all of those things that involve getting back to being more human. It's spending more time with my friends and family. It's daily exercise. It's being out in nature more. These are all the thing. And the book Lost Connections talks about how the feelings of anxiety and depression and loneliness are the human in us calling us to get back to our tribe, to get back to how we lived. It's the pain of the way that the world is today, the loneliness. And there's a stat in the book that really blew my mind. It says that the modal answer, so the most common answer to the question, how many people could you turn to in a time of crisis for Americans, is now zero. A decade ago, it was three. Now the most common answer is zero. We have lost our connections. Okay, point two in my diary. I've just written this one sentence.

I'm just going to read it as I've written it. I've written, fucking trust your gut, you fucking asshole. And just to give some context to that, the reason why I'm so annoyed is because once again, my gut knew something and I chose to ignore it because my head thinks it's smarter. There is no part of you that is, and this is, this experience comes from running a business. And part of running a business, a big global business, is you have to hire and meet a lot of people. So you have your gut instinct, which is always there, but then you make your decision based on your head and your gut usually, but also on CVs and qualifications and things like that. We've probably hired about 350 people in the last four years, right? And so what I get a very clear gauge of is what my gut thought of a person and then how they panned out. So this point in my diary, me calling myself an arsehole for not trusting my

gut again, comes from the realization four years in that my gut already knew. My gut already knew. My gut remembers. My gut remembers how people who felt like this, felt like the person you're meeting or interviewing or the relationship prospect, how they all pan out. And your gut doesn't forgive. It doesn't forget in the same way that your head sometimes talks yourself out of your gut, right? So I'm pissed off once again in my diary because not trusting my gut has cost me more than anything in my life. Not trusting my gut. And the other thing is sometimes your gut comes in six months in and it says to you, listen, Jenny, or listen, Steve, I told you six months ago about this person. I told you to trust your instincts, right? And I'm giving you another chance now to

correct it immediately. And then your head shows up again and says, well, just give him another chance. Maybe it'll be different this time. Trust your gut, ladies and gentlemen. I promise you, trust your gut. We don't trust our instincts enough. And I genuinely feel that the gut, right? Sounds like a horrible word, but I feel like that is the thing that helped us to survive as human beings. On the savannah, I don't know, tens of thousands of years ago or whenever it was, when we saw that lion, and we looked up at that lion, and we didn't go over and think, hey, I want to pet it, because we knew deep down that it would bite our hand off and chew us and maul us to death and suffocate us with its teeth.

That was our gut instinct. I think the same thing is still present today in us and it's a survival thing manifests itself in this unexplainable prejudice you get when you meet somebody um i think it's important i think that our eyes and our head and our brain are too logical sometimes for that thing that's caused us to survive for the last million years as a species so all i'm saying is your gut is your your weapon and just trust and follow it because i can yeah as i said me being stubborn and not learning from my fucking you know my mistake my sorry i'm pissed off at this because it's one of those things that I just wish I did more often, but the chances are tomorrow I still will go with my head

and try and talk my gut out of it. Because sometimes the apparent evidence can be too compelling that you have to, you know, you have to... You feel you have to go for somebody. Damn. Trust your gut, ladies and gentlemen. I have failed over and over and over again at one thing. And if you've listened to this podcast, you've watched my vlogs, you will know exactly what I'm talking about. In 2018, I got fat,

really fat, fat in relation to how I've been my whole life. It's the fattest year of my life, 2018. And how did that happen? It happened because I ate a lot. Surprise. It happened because I ate a lot and I didn't exercise. And also I just didn't give a fuck about eating more. So I would just, and you know what? I had a great time eating all those pizzas, but ultimately, you know what I had a great time eating all those pizzas but ultimately you know your body is really your only possession everything else you're just leasing but your body is your only real possession and I think the thing is as I've written in my diary here which leads on to my next point and this is what exactly what I wrote who the fuck do I want to be? That's the question I left in my diary. And it's been sat there for about four months now, staring at me.

Who the fuck do I want to be? And I know for a fact this year and last year, but I failed. I want to be the best version of myself. And I believe so, so deeply in fitness and being healthy. When I go to the gym, I am happier. I have more energy because I sleep like a baby. My skin's better. You have a better sex life.

Everything is better. And I look better. And therefore, my confidence is higher. I feel great. And in this year, I'm going to ask myself more often, who the fuck do I want to be? And most importantly, are my current actions, eating pizza, laying around, being lazy, in line with who I want to be? And last year, my actions were not in line with who I want to be. I'm going to be honest with you right now. Right. There's this drawer next to me. And it is full of chocolate

bars. And guess what? I am hungry. It is 4am in the morning. I have a dairy milk chocolate bar. There's two whisper chocolate bars. There's two whisper chocolate bars. There's another caramel chocolate bar. I didn't put them there, by the way. This is a hotel. But I've just closed the door because my actions of eating those fucking chocolate bars are not in line with who I desperately want to be. And I think everybody is defined by how they react to hard. It is hard for me not to eat those chocolate bars right now. It is hard for me to do an extra rep in the gym. It is hard for me to go up on stage when I'm nervous. Not that I'm nervous these days, but back in the day, it is hard to work an extra hour recording a podcast at 4am in the morning., when I really want to sleep and I know that

I have to be awake at 3am, we are all defined by how we react to hard. When that thought crosses your mind, this is hard, right? Your decision in that moment is a defining one. That's who you are. And how we react to hard is based on how bad we want the thing on the other side of hard. You know? And so the reason I'm not eating those fucking chocolate bars is because, A, that's not who I want to be. And I know that if I make the decision and I cave in, then I won't get the thing on the other side of hard. And the thing on the other side of hard for me this year is going to the gym, looking great and being healthy.

In the last, I would say, so I started going to the gym in late December. I've been going for 17 days in a row now. And I'm not deterred by the fact that I've failed almost every year at this health and fitness, let's just call it a resolution, you know? I'm not deterred by that. I am going to try again. And 99% of you listening to this should logically not believe me. But let's just see what happens. I feel great. I've lost about, how much have I lost? about six pounds in the last

17 days and when i do things i'm obsessive about them so i've not eaten a carb and bad carb in those 17 days i've only eaten salads i won't even look at a fucking mint just in case it's gonna it's that you know i look at these things now as the enemy this drawer full of chocolate is the enemy i'm kind of linking on to that i've got this other point in my diary here which i wanted to look at these things now as the enemy. This drawer full of chocolate is the enemy. And kind of linking onto that, I've got this other point in my diary here, which I wanted to share. I get asked all the time what book or podcast or quote inspired me to become who I wanted to be. And the truth is, I wasn't inspired by a podcast or a book or a quote. This is just who I am. Faults and all, right? I'm far from perfect. This is who I am. I'm not trying to be this. I'm not acting.

I became who I am today, in fact, and this is the crazy thing. When I stopped acting, when I stopped trying to be somebody else, everybody else. This is who I am. And I genuinely think, I genuinely, genuinely, this might be the most important thing I've ever said on the internet ever. I genuinely believe that if you want to become great happy successful all you need to do is stop being everyone else or trying to be someone else i think disguised behind that mask in the ego and all of those things there is a really amazing human being right a, and a human being that the world needs, not a fucking clone of Mark Zuckerberg or someone else or God, someone the world desperately needs. And I think if you can take down the mask, take down your ego and focus on being that person without care of what people might say, what your mother might do what your dad might you know who he might disown you what your friends might laugh at you for i think that's the the

greatest version of yourself and it's taken me what 26 odd years to figure this out but the best version of steve is a steve that just doesn't give a fuck is is the steve that um just does him and tries to be be better but also admits that he's crap at a lot of things and most things so yeah that's all i've got to say on that diary entry okay so this is a an interesting point in my diary I've just written, I need to learn to say sorry more. Where has this come from? Here's the thing. When we mess up and we hurt people, there's a powerful, almost magical way to help to repair the situation. It's completely free. It takes one second and anyone can do it say I'm sorry it sounds so simple but it's almost impossible if you care about your ego more than you care about anybody else or anything else or the hurt you might have done or the damage you've done and I have been a criminal when it comes to this I have been so guilty because at times I'm

such an incredibly stubborn person at times you know I'm someone that doesn't always like being being wrong and sometimes I'm wrong and when I judge the situation I judge it from a bias perspective where I want to win and I've come to learn especially over the last 12 months the liberating important value of saying sorry more even when you're not wrong you're just saying sorry because of the way you've made someone feel and not enough people do this and I think they'll go through their lives damaging important things relationships you know in the pursuit of winning but ultimately lose because they can't detach themselves from their ego and their ego becomes more important than anything else i'm victim of i'm sorry i i

do this and i just said it i just said i'm sorry i do this more than a lot of people so um i think this year i really want to focus on making sure that I say sorry more often. And even when I'm not, I have nothing to be sorry for. Just being sorry for how I've made you feel. That wasn't my intention. And while I'm here and we're talking about two words, the other two words that I think are just incredibly important to say, which again, I do not say enough.

Again, completely free can have a tremendous impact on relationships and people around you. In fact, these two words get you more things in your life that you will love. And the words are thank you. An expression of gratitude, especially when you're in a sort of management position or a director position is so important because it begets more things to be thankful about from people around you. But in life in general, if you can be thankful for more things, your perspective becomes more grateful. So even if you go through the same things as everybody else, if you have a more grateful perspective, it will feel like your life has been better you've got more and you've had better times

so gratitude as a perspective change i think starts with being thankful more and saying thank you more often that's my little little uh little rant so those two words i hope everybody listening can do more to uh bring into their lives more i'm sorry and thank you let me just to uh do a left turn and let's talk about business for a second. So in season one of the podcast, I told you that I was flying to America and I was moving my life to America to try and grow the business there. Here's the truth, okay? And I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say this, but you know, this is what this podcast is all about. I get in trouble so much for things I say on this podcast, and I just apologize.

I've had to apologize to, you know, family at times, to friends. I have to apologize to romantic partners all the time because all of my podcasts end in a very personal, honest recap of how my relationships are going currently. That always gets me in trouble, and I'm sure it will today. But here we fucking go. But I want to talk about business I moved to the US to help grow the business there in our first year in the US we failed just the facts right we didn't get any traction we weren't serious we didn't invest enough didn't provide enough support to the guys that we'd sent there um we failed year two progress but not great I'd consider year two a failure as well because

the losses were significant right year three we i flew out there in about march time the team had gotten to a point where it was really looking good um and i have to just before i go into this i have to give all of the credit to the team i my me flying flying out there really wasn't the the reason why this business did so well this year it was because of the team and that isn't a humble thing i'm saying because i'm saying yeah whatever that is just the truth okay so that's that's the important thing i flew out there in march we really got going we moved into a big new office space in the middle of manhattan out of co-working and we work which i fucking find very claustrophobic at times um and into our brand new office space and we went for it grew the team we're now about 30 people and our objective when we started 2018 was to grow the business's revenues by about a thousand percent in one year

and I'm very happy and very proud of the team to say that the US team did that this year they grew the business by about a thousand percent and because of that things are getting serious out there. And I couldn't be more excited. I am full of just energy when I think about the challenge out there and the growth of the business. And I believe in those people so fucking much. I believe in every single member of that team. And this year, we appointed a new managing director of the Social Chain USA, which gives me more time to do other things and think about the business from a more global perspective a guy called oliver

yonchev who was one of our our real a players in the uk oliver turned to me and said he wants a a challenge he said he wants to go to america and apply for a job um in a leadership role i said i was looking for a managing director he interviewed among with a couple of others and uh he he passed with flying colors so oliver now has moved his life from sheffield to new york city and it's good listen it sounds like everybody's dream come true but it is tough and oliver i don't know if you're listening mate but you're going to go through a lot of tough things i'm sure you're aware but on personal on a personal level there'll be you know you'll feel isolated big old city you know no friends there thus far so you'll feel isolated you might miss your girlfriend a lot I'm sure you will but oh my god will it be worth it so that's what that's what where we are with the

US challenge which I talked a lot about in season one. The UK business, boom, tremendous. What a brilliant, brilliant year. The team have just been, I don't know. The profits of the UK business grew by something like 500%, 600%. And I couldn't be prouder of the team and what they've done. The UK business, from what I understand now, is either the number one, or maybe it's number two, but I think it's number one. Let's just say it's number one for the sake of this podcast and for the sake of bragging.

I think it's now the number one social marketing agency in the country. Someone feel free to fact check me on that and just DM me. But I believe it is in terms of revenue. And so I'm so immensely proud. It's the story of, you know, this young, different team that have disrupted decade old massive agencies. And we're all a bunch of dropouts. And even those that are now much more senior and experienced, they too are of the same disruptive mindset that we all are. And I just couldn't be prouder. So just to recap on the business updates, Social Chain's breakout year was 2018.

And now that the US has its own managing director, the UK is also led by its own managing director, Katie Leeson, who has an amazing podcast, by the way, called I Shouldn't Say This But, which I just featured on. Now that that's done, I now have more time to invest in my content, in my podcast, in my vlogs, in everything. And hopefully 2019 is the breakout year for the personal brand and for my personal brand. Looking to bring on two new people to help with the personal brand initiatives just to make sure that all of my content is consistent so that all of you guys and girls don't have to wait and thank you

for the patience because you've allowed me the the 12 months to build up our us business and it couldn't be in a better place lots lots of work to be done as always but i'm just very thankful that uh that we that we did it you know that we did it strange thing to say anyway okay so a few more little notes that scribbled into my diary none of these points are particularly connected but they're written here so I'm going to tell you the first one I've just written don't let the pressures from the fairy tales of how your life is meant to be going get you down. Everyone's timing is different. And the reason I wrote this is because I received a very disturbing and saddening call at about 3am from a kid who I'm just going to call John for his own privacy. And this kid had just taken off, he just proposed to his girlfriend. And he just taken off his engagement ring after she'd said no and he'd thrown it into a lake and he was stood by the lake and he called

me to tell me that he was going to kill himself. He was going to jump in the lake and this was at 3am in the morning, I can't remember where I was in the world but I immediately jumped up out of bed and I started chatting to him and one of the things he said to me, which really, really got to me at the time and still kind of plays on my mind today, is he said, I'm going to kill myself. Nothing in my life is going right. I don't have anything going for me. And I look at your life, Steve, and you have everything everything figured out. Oh my fucking god. This guy is 22 years old and because of social media, because of comparison, toxic comparison might I add, he's now considering throwing himself in a lake because he feels inadequate. And the thought that him looking at my life and thinking from the outside that it's all perfect has contributed to that was really oh my god

but i wouldn't be saying this if this was an isolated incident my dms and my direct messages specifically on instagram which i really check a lot are full of young people who are literally under the age of 25 who are killing themselves not in a literal sense in a figurative sense killing themselves um because they aren't there yet because they aren't super rich super successful because they haven't got all the answers all the nobody has all the fucking answers i don't have all the answers my life isn't perfect what you see from the outside right of my life is I've got one thing kind of going well which is like my career and my um my professional you know

the professional side of what I do social change the business that stuff's going well everything else you beat me on everything else you're closer to your family which is probably more important according to science than running a business by the the way. You probably, you had a girlfriend, I know you proposed and she said no, but mate, I can't even fucking hold down a relationship. So you're beating me there as well. You're probably better at getting your hair cut and keeping yourself like trimmed and stuff like that. You probably take better care of yourself. You probably sleep better than I do. I'm winning on one thing. And that's the thing that I dance about online. So don't fucking sweat it and think I have everything figured out because bro, no one does. I'm still, I'm desperately still trying to figure out most elements of my life. Right. And I am

sorry if I gave you the impression that I was perfect or if anybody else is doing that, it is bullshit. Bullshit. Trust me. Nobody is successful as Instagram makes them look, and nobody is as pretty as filters make them seem. The only worthwhile comparison, the only comparison that stands to make your future bright, is the comparison of you today today versus you yesterday. Comparison is deadly and it holds such an immense irony because in the pursuit of comparing yourself to someone and therefore wanting to be better, you end up doing a bunch of shit that holds you back. You end up being jealous. You end up trying to take shortcuts and there is no shortcuts right comparison is toxic and it ultimately ends up leading to you to the the one place you didn't want to be right which is not your full potential not your best self and all of those things do not compare yourself to

others kids please and adults and whoever's listening please I beg you okay so I've written in my diary the next note which is just still trying to figure out what this is all about and in season one of the podcast you would have felt me going on a bit of a journey do you know what I actually think season one of recording this podcast taught me more about life just by having to write in my diary and then speak about it than anything else I've ever done. You guys and this format and this podcast helped me get closer to understanding the meaning of my life and the purpose of my life. And I've basically written here that I'm still trying to figure out what that's what it's all about, because

I've gotten a lot closer. Once upon upon a time 18 year old steve as you guys all know wrote in his diary that he wanted millions of pounds before he was 25 and a ranger of a sport 25 year old steve had uh was worth millions and um had a ranger of a sport right upon getting there i realized that if i spent my whole life chasing this material bullshit i would live a very very miserable existence And there's this great, great important study done by a professor called Tim Kessa, which scientifically proves in his study, but then in 21 other studies, that people who go through life valuing extrinsic things and doing things for extrinsic reasons, which means external reasons, basically. So to impress a girl, to look fancy, to look good on Instagram, to get likes, to get

laid, all of those things, they end up being less happy, more depressed and everything else, right? And people that do things for internal reasons, they are nice because they want to be nice. They play piano because of the joy of it, not because they're trying to get laid laid or paid they see their family and spend time with their family because they love their family they go for walks because they love nature not because of any external reasons or for external motives science shows those people are the most happiest the less depressed the less anxious and they experience more joy so this podcast doubles up for me as a journey of me figuring out alone with you listening, hopefully, or hopefully not, what life is all about. And where I am right now is here. I know that money isn't life. I know that money won't make me happier. What I do know is that using my money to help friends,

family, people in need does make me deeply happy. It gives me a deep sense of being fulfilled and it's rewarding for me. So for me, when it comes to money, what I now know is it's not about collecting more money or showing off how much money you have. It's how you use it. And if you use it in the right way, money really can have a really sort of rewarding impact on your life. The second thing is just about doing good in general. For some bizarre reason, which I'm yet to understand, there is very few things that are as rewarding as helping others. And this is something everyone's always said, but I've never understood. But most of the fun in my role, in my job, in my life comes from helping

others, whether that's an intern that's just started a social chain, whether it's someone that messages me on Instagram or whatever it might be. And so I also know that that's hugely important for my future and whatever I end up doing in the future, whether it's 10 years or 20 years time, it'll be linked to that. And in fact, I do have a business idea. Do I tell you about this business idea on this podcast or do I just wait? What should I do? I'm going to hold off a little bit on this business idea. I'm going to hold off on telling you the business idea for the future.

But it's to do with helping people. It's to do with a few of the things I've described today. It's actually quite heavily linked to mental health as well. And I just think that, you know, with all the skills I've learned over the last couple of whatever, whatever period of time, it makes a lot of sense. And the funny thing is, at all stages in my life, I've accurately predicted what my next step is professionally. And so when I first started Wallpark, I predicted that my next business would be in marketing. As I said to Dom, who's now my business partner, I said my next business will be in marketing. And then now my prediction is that my next business will be in the

mental health arena. That's all I'm saying. Should I I tell you more let's leave it at that okay so all of my podcasts end the same way which is me talking about my relationships in my diary I've written relationship situation is pretty fucked almost all of my notes this week have swear words in it I do apologize if that's if you don't like me swearing I just um it's just how I speak in my head you know what this is not new news to me but one of the things I've come to learn from a certain people certain okay a certain girl telling me is that I'm really not emotionally there sometimes and I do really really worry that my own selfishness and my own sort of like emotional

vacancy is that word I'm emotionally vacant um and my relentless desire to build a business will cost me the happiness of a meaningful relationship and meaningful relationships with family and others as well but more so in a romantic sense i so desperately hope that when i get into the situation where i'm with somebody or in a relationship whatever i can be more compromising and emotionally there because i for whatever reason i'm a bit of a cold bastard like i am a bit of a bit of a bit of an ice king you know my heart is made of it's it's like i struggle with affection and i struggle to care i'm very ruthless and i'm too focused on this one element of my life which is business and and six being successful that i am crap at you know i, I don't know. It's just really hard.

You know, you just can't have it all in life. You can't be, you can't be the best at everything. You can't be the best at being a young entrepreneur, the best at making, I don't know, making wedding dresses, the best at podcasting, the best at relationships, the best at family all at the same time. So I do feel that there's an element of sacrifice but I just don't all of the science and everything worth you know worth reading tells me that relationships and friendships are such an integral part of being happy and all of this is

about happiness let's not get it fucking twisted this is the journey of happiness I think that's why my favorite film is the pursuit of happiness because that's what life is all about. It's the pursuit of happiness. And we all have different opinions about how happiness arrives. Some of us think it's by buying Bentleys and Lamborghinis. Some of us think it's by helping animals. Some of us think it's, you know, and the truth is our happiness comes in different ways, but there are fundamental human things that will make us happy and one of those unarguably undoubtedly is other human beings it's romantic relationships it's the love of family and so if this is all about the pursuit of happiness if this is what i'm doing here then surely surely i have to prioritize romantic relationships family and all those things it's just something

that i've struggled with for the longest time and if you guys have listened to the season one of the podcast you will feel my struggles with this i'm single right now um i am i guess like loosely speaking to somebody on and off i'm getting getting told off a lot at the moment for being a bit of a jackass when it comes to being considerate and understanding how how they feel and just talking enough but other than that i'm i'm single and i don't necessarily want to be single either i do think life is great when you're in a relationship and you're close to somebody and all these things and they live close and you see them every day and all these things.

It's just circumstance doesn't allow that at the moment. Anyway, before, you know, what time is it now? It's 4.29. So I must have been recording this for about an hour. And I've got to be up in about two and a half hours. So let me get to bed. But listen, thank you so much for listening to the podcast. It does mean the world to me.

As always, this is therapy. And now that I've recorded this episode, I just can't understand why I don't do this more often. It's so good for me. Do me a massive favor. Pretty please, pretty please. Can you review the podcast in the podcast store, the iTunes store store five stars please

or wherever else you listen to it um and if you do please just leave your instagram name or handle in the review and when i go through um i will message a bunch of you that have done it and reviewed it five stars um message me privately about the podcast tweet me your thoughts please share it online every single person that messages me about this episode about the podcast. Tweet me your thoughts. Please share it online. Every single person that messages me about this episode, about the podcast in general, I will reply to, I promise you. And I'm so deeply happy to have this format,

this medium of communicating with you back. And I can't wait for you to hear this series. We have some amazing guests and some amazing moments that I've recorded all around the world. I'll continue to do the solo podcast. The format I'm thinking is of doing one on my own and then doing one with a guest and one of my own, then one with a guest. Let me know what you think of that. Message me privately. But thanks again for tuning in. We'll be back soon next week, next week to be precise, with with episode two which has already been recorded with an amazing guest and i can't wait to share that with you so thanks again

please review it thanks share it love you bye