The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - E50: Jake Humphrey - My Grandma's Suicide Saved Me

Episode Date: March 5, 2020

In my most recent episode of The Diary of a CEO, I sat down with the incredibly successful TV presenter, journalist and entrepreneur Jake Humphrey. Jake has gone from being an unqualified drop out, who was fired from McDonalds after just two months for a lack of communication skills to one of the UK’s most well known TV presenters, with accolades such as CBBC, BT Sport, Formula One and much more. Jake also co-founded the production company Whisper Films, alongside former BBC Sport producer Sunil Patel and David Coulthard and the business has grown from £1.5m to almost £20m. Our conversation was extremely honest and open. Jake has struggled to come to terms with the common misconceptions of who he is, battling suicidal thoughts and developing an unhealthy relationship with social media. We discuss the best way to move forward with the devastating impact social media can have and why failure is the key to being successful.

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. A few weeks ago, the world lost a remarkable on-screen talent in Caroline Flack. It's believed that the pressure of limelight and endless public scrutiny became too much for her to handle. Being famous, being successful, I guess is supposed to mean satisfaction. It's supposed to mean happiness. At least that's what Instagram and magazines and culture have always taught me.

My next guest has lived his whole career in the spotlight too. He's one of the country's most successful TV presenters and he's worked across every major TV channel that there is, especially in the sports industry. On screen you see one thing, the same thing, every time. But behind every face, there's a story of heartbreak, a story of struggle, hardship, pain, and failure. Jake Humphrey is a TV presenter.

He's a journalist and he's a very successful entrepreneur. And a lot of people don't really know about that. He's a guy I've grown up watching on TV pretty much my whole adult life. I think most people would just think he's that football guy, or just that Formula One guy. But most people would be wrong. He's so much more.

Jake's story is fascinating. It's one of failure, suicidal thoughts, getting to grips with online abuse that comes with being in the spotlight. It's a story of lessons learned from working alongside the world's leading high-performance sports stars and managers. It's using everything you've learned to rise from that and turn yourself into a tremendously successful individual. It was an immense privilege to get to speak to the guy who spends all of his time speaking to the most talented people in the world. I learned so much and you will too. Without further ado, I'm Stephen Bartlett

and this is The Diver's CEO. I hope nobody is listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself. Jake, thank you for coming on the podcast. I consider it a real honour. You know, you're someone that I've watched a lot on TV. I'm a big sports fan. I'm a big F1 fan as well. So I've seen your face a lot. So, you know, it's sometimes surreal to see someone who you watched a lot on TV in person. But here's where I wanted to start with the podcast, which is you have a job that I think a lot of people would like in fact even in my own company there are so many people that knew I was coming to meet today and said that you have the dream job that they want why did you get that job that is a brilliant first question why did I get

that job I think it is because I failed and I genuinely believe that you know I I don't know how much you know of the story but I was at I was at school in norfolk um and i failed my a levels i was the most my story is so similar to yours i was the most bang average kid at school and i got an e and n and eu for my three a levels and had to go back to school to retake them and it's hard to not believe in fate right when you go back to school to redo your exams and the very first day you go back, your politics teacher has a letter from a local TV channel asking people in that class to go on to a new digital channel

or a new cable channel back in the late 90s to talk about politics. And I went down there and I said to them, I failed my A-levels. All my mates have gone off around the world. a gap year or they've gone off to university. Like this is a massively embarrassing period for me. Could I come and do some work here at the weekends as well as being on the TV show? I'd actually been fired from McDonald's as well.

Only about three or four weeks before I failed my A-levels for lack of communication skills. How long did you last in McDonald's? I lasted two days. I was back there about four months okay but to be fired from there for a lack of communication skills and now to be sitting here talking to you about that was it is a kind of a weird thing when you reflect on it but it was that a-level failure that meant i ended up at this tiny channel called rapture tv that meant i ended up at children's bbc that meant i got the formula one job that meant i've ended up at bt sport and now i'm sitting here talking to you and I know there's obviously loads of

loads of moments in between there and now but it was that initial failure but but so often when people encounter an initial failure very early on it takes them in the opposite direction it's like a race to the bottom for them because their confidence is knocked which means they try less which means their confidence never builds and then they and the cycle kind of continues but you know is there a reason that you can identify in yourself why failure took you in a better direction i think i was well equipped by my parents that life is not just a bed of roses basically i'm a firm believer now that i've got little kids of my own that you have to teach your kids to fail you know as a parent i think we often try and build the world around our children so that they don't fail at any time and then suddenly you get to 18 or 19 you hit your

first ever failure and you can't deal with it because you've not been equipped at a young age to deal with it and actually my parents instilled a real work ethic in us so i had a paper round from the age of about 12 or 13 I was almost forced to go and do the gardening for an old man who lived next door to mum and dad for about two pounds an hour or whatever I've talked about you know being fired from McDonald's that was a sort of a failure moment I think part of it Stephen is that when I was 18 19 and I failed my a-levels part of the reason why that happened was because I was actually quite a late developer I was quite immature you know I couldn my A-levels, part of the reason why that happened was because I was actually quite a late developer.

I was quite immature. You know, I couldn't have done more than I did at that time. I honestly don't believe because I just wasn't equipped for it. My brain just wasn't sort of developed enough. And then as my brain sort of got to the point where I was, I suppose, I was old enough to be able to deal with things. That's when failure came along and it was almost like it happened at the right time for me. If it happened too much earlier, I think I would have struggled with it.

What are the biggest misconceptions about you? That I'm smug. And I don't know where that comes from. Like you spoke at the beginning about people in your office going, oh, I'd love to have that job. I think it's almost because people assume that if they had the job that I've got, they would be smug because they've got the job Mm-hmm, and that is just simply not the case, but maybe it's smug to sit here and say I'm not smug

I don't know But that is something I get all the time on social media on Twitter and places like that I think the other the other thing is is that I'm just sort of lucky to be where I am. I don't really, I believe in fate and I think I was really fortunate to get that first opportunity to go to Rapture TV and start my broadcasting career. But I don't think that luck has really played a part in getting me to this point now. You know, I think I've sort of worked out the building blocks to success and i think that anyone can do it i think anyone listening to this podcast and who and obviously they are the kind of people that are minded towards success anyway because they listen to this and this is what this for me anyway this is what your podcast is all about i listen to it all the time i think

it's about success no matter what you talk about for me it's about success. No matter what you talk about. For me, it's about success. And I think that, I honestly believe that anyone, anyone can get their hands on success. Why is it that some people don't become successful? Some normal people like you that when, you know, were crap in school, why is it that those people

that therefore don't become successful and why Jake Humphries, who also was a very normal kid in school, went on to become successful? That's really the point I'm trying to get to is, is what's the, is it a mindset difference? Is it? I think we have to be really careful, right?

When we talk about this, because I think we both have been successful. But that doesn't mean that just because it's happened to us, then it's something that's really simple and it can be achieved by anybody. It's almost like just because it happened to us, we think it's something that's really simple and and it can be achieved by anybody it's almost like just because they haven't just we think it's the same rule for everybody else i don't think that i don't think that success comes from expecting it to arrive i think that you can be successful if you know the the trick to successful. Does that make sense? And I think the trick, personally,

I think the trick to being successful is an absolute rock-solid responsibility for every single minuscule part of your life. And I sometimes really struggle to explain this point to people. And I mean total responsibility, total, 100% responsibility for absolutely everything even things are not your responsibility because i don't see any benefit with putting the blame for any part of your life onto anybody else because it's not other people's job to sort that life out right it's only yours

so there might be let's take you as a prime example right um maybe it kind of was your fault but let's say when you left university right it wasn't your fault yeah it's still your responsibility to deal with that of course what about all the times when you were trying to get success and you're in your late teens early 20s and you you didn't manage it right yeah not necessarily your fault but still your responsibility to keep going to the next thing um and then when things do start going well it might not be your fault that they've gone well it might just be that the time was right but then again it's your responsibility to take control of that and i just think if people can get into a mindset where absolutely everything is totally on them and on nobody else it's almost like a door was open and

i thought oh my goodness that, that's the thing. I have to take responsibility for everything. And as soon as I do that, then it leaves no excuses. And how you're raised plays a huge, huge role. Because now you've said that, I was in my head, I was thinking about how much I was raised with that. Almost accidentally, the fact that when I'd wake up in the morning, my parents weren't there.

And when I went to sleep at night, they still were at work. Every day for about seven, eight years from the age of 10 to 18 and I was explaining on a podcast yesterday that um made this connection in my mind that if I was going to have anything it was me that was going to do it even my pack lunch in the morning and so I went off into the world with this mindset that because my parents created this massive void that everything I was going to get was on me I wasn't going to get Christmas me. I wasn't going to get Christmas or birthdays. I wasn't going to get two pounds in the morning for lunch. It was your responsibility.

It was my responsibility to feed myself. And actually for me, that was really liberating because it made the whole world attainable to me in a weird way. When you believe that, you know, Santa Claus is going to show up and present things under the Christmas tree. When did that moment come though? When did you, when did 14 years old? I think I really,

I remember I went off to London to do the junior apprentice for the BBC and my parents didn't know I'd left the house. And I was there for a day and a half and I was 14. This is where you were so different to me though. Cause at 14 years of age, I was still watching cartoons that were probably good for eight year olds. You know, I was not a smart, worldly wise kid at 14 who

would have taken myself to london to go on the apprentice and try and be on there i i was a really like super late developer but i think what i had similar to you was not just a genuine sort of work ethic for my parents but genuine rock solid foundations to start my life from and it's hard to even say exactly what they are but we talk about in my family about giving your kids roots and wings and it's about getting that balance right with giving your kids roots so they know that whenever there is a problem i mean i often say to my kids whatever and they're only little they're four and seven but one of the phrases i like to sort of instill in them is listen i'll always leave a light on in other words wherever you go whatever life does for you however far away you are from

home there's a light on here and you you'll get back here if you look for that and you and you come and find it and i had that from my parents at a really young age that feeling that i've got my roots here and i think once you've got that then then it's possible to extend your wings and to go right i reckon i'm brave enough because it's quite tentative little steps when you're in your teens right i'm brave enough to go to london and do an apprentice audition because i can go i know i can come home i know i've got my roots there i know there's a light on for me sure and that's i think that's absolutely vital do you feel successful no not really um i

don't feel successful and this is something that i try and explain to a lot of people you know when you say what do people think of you and i say i think they probably think i'm smug or whatever i think that people assume that if you've done the things that i've done or the things that you've done that it feels different right i feel like the same kid that grew up in Stoke Holy Cross a little village on the outskirts of Norwich I feel no different I haven't had a buzz as exciting as when in 19 2001 I bought an MGF sports car I paid £9,750 for it and I bought it from an old man in uh in Colchester and I remember him still to this day turning on the light switch in his garage and the light thing flicking on and there's this green MG car I was on children's BBC at the time and it was the first thing I'd ever really bought

for myself despite everything that's happened since I've never had that feeling of wow that is a real sense of achievement and it's almost like the longer it goes on it almost goes the other way have you have you ever seen hamilton in the west end uh three times i've seen it twice it's the greatest musical ever and you know the song there's a million things i haven't done yeah it's almost like the more i do and the more i see the more i realize what i haven't achieved so i was watching miss americana the other other day on Netflix and I think my wife was watching it thinking, oh, this is great, this is nice. And I'm watching it thinking, shit, man,

how have I not been as successful as that? How do I get there? What do I do? And that's, I suppose, why I love my job. I love conversations like this because I think that everyone can give you that little bit of information about what they've done in their life.

And that's why I like sitting with high-achieving sports people because all I care about is that high-achieving mindset that they've had. Has there ever been somewhat anticlimactic things you've achieved? Because you expected them to feel like euphoria and like a finish line or a mountaintop, but they didn't quite feel that way so it felt somewhat anticlimactic yeah yeah i think you're absolutely right i what i would say is i get a real buzz out of doing my job i really love being a tv presenter i really

like the the mental challenge of hearing seven or eight voices in my ear while I'm at a big sports event with 60 or 70,000 people and I'm trying to navigate through and get us out the other side and get the best out of the pundits and come off air to the exact second. I love the challenge of that and I really enjoy the journey. But I don't think that I've ever I think part of the problem is I don't feel like I've got to where I'm going yet and so therefore I've never had that moment of euphoria where I think oh my goodness I've done it this is amazing this is me doesn't that concern you to some degree because you it sounds like that's a place you will never arrive at possibly but I am still enjoying the journey on the way I don't feel I've had my moment yet and I don't feel I've had that moment where I go yes that was wonderful but I absolutely live with the mantra of savor it every single minute of every day um I try and make the most of it you know if I told you that there was going to come a day in a week where your all your all your ambitions were going to suddenly become accomplished and

you were going to you're going to everything you wanted to do was going to be achieved in about a week's time yeah how does that make you feel I've been a little bit scared yeah I think and I suppose immediately my mind goes yeah but I'd get that and then it'll be the next thing then yeah and it's almost like a kind of mindset of having having no no barriers or no ceiling really and i think some people look at me as the guy who's on the telly with no no knowledge of um the sort of charitable philanthropic stuff i like doing or of the production company that i've set up no and those are really important because i think those show that as you get older like life changes and and almost without you knowing like if we'd have had a conversation 10 years ago

um when i'd just done formula one for a year and i just come off the back of seven or eight years on kids tv and you'd have asked me what really matters to you i would have said being a tv presenter like i was obsessed with being a tv presenter being a good tv presenter but still looking at if we were presenting a show together well who's talking the most and who gets the first line who says hello do you say hello every show am I saying hello if you're going to say goodbye am I going to shout bye-bye at the very end it was it was like that it was like a battle it was like a race it was like you know I need to show that I'm a TV presenter and I've got to push off I feel like I've now reached a point where I'm really not that bothered about being a TV presenter. I love the job.

I'm really proud to do it. But I feel like my mind has been open to the fact there's so much more there. I used to think being a TV presenter was the number one job in TV. And that was the main one. And that was like you were the top of the pyramid. And in some ways you are. You know, when I go on air for a game on bt sport there's two or three hundred people working there bt have paid 11 million quid for the privilege of that one game and you're the person that goes hi welcome

you don't really want to mess your words up at that point because it's a bit embarrassing but as i've gone through i've realized that actually you're just one of the cogs in a really big wheel and what i love about having set up the production company that i have is that being on like a board of directors is so exciting because you see this great overview of a business and you get a and you'll feel this as well with social chain and all the other things you're doing you get this sense of the you're not just dealing with your little part of your job driving on a whole business a whole group of people and when i first started in telly people used to help me out and do things for me like you know they give me a presenting job and they would be really buzzing for me

and i'd look at them thinking why are you why are you excited because you've given me a great opportunity i don't i didn't see it i I didn't understand it. Now I get, you know, you talk about, have I had that moment of, Whoa, I've done it. I get a million times more of a buzz from watching other people do well and

standing back like a sort of proud dad than I do my own stuff. You know, my ambition has kind of become lifting everybody up and trying to make the whole not the whole world because i can't control that but my own little space in this world as good as it can be for every single person in it it's really weird um really weird phenomenon that seems to take place in successful people's lives where the first portion of their life they're focused on being selfish yeah because selfishness seems to do something for them and then it seems that they undergo some kind of transition where they realize that being selfless is is actually the most

selfish thing that they can do so it's you being selfless that's actually doing the most for you and it's still you being selfish but it's for yeah it's just a really good way of looking at it different way i don't know when the change happened though i don't know when that moment came where i didn't really care about my own personal achievement and it became about the bigger is it not when you you ticked the box for yourself and so the validation that you were seeking or the the goals that the the fan it could be the financial freedom that you were seeking and you thought you know i can get nothing more out of me taking another step forward if i if i get another job it's really not going to move me in any way if i get another

thousand pounds whatever it's not going to move me in any way yeah and then that becomes almost like a full box it's like and this is what you see with these billionaires you know they start giving 10 billion to the environment like bezos did this week and going to the moon and it's like why is that is that because they're searching for the next thing are they looking for a big buzz or is it because the world has become more than about them it's it's it's i think they've filled like another lamborghini is not going to move them in any way in any way but they need to be moved in some way and so you go in search of what can give you that and it's a i completely resonate with the feeling that in fact the most enjoyable thing for me i said on my podcast i

think last week or the week before was buying my mum new teeth was because so she could smile was like i was really buzzing and then giving people jobs at social chain and watching them develop is like seems like you know that that's much more than buying another louis vuitton bag for me yeah on the screen you have to be a certain way right you have to adopt i'm presuming a certain personality to some degree you're quite lucky actually because you can be yourself you need to yeah i'm a firm believer that to be a good team in fact anything you do if you're playing a role it is not going to last man authenticity is the most important thing and it doesn't matter whether you're the ceo of social chain or you're standing hosting a game of football if you're trying to be a ceo it is

going to fall apart if you're trying to be what you think a tv presenter should be again it's going to fall apart authenticity is absolutely the right thing and i suppose all i would say is when you're a tv presenter you are you just 20 more so if i'm on the telly now and i'm asking you a question i probably wouldn't talk like this. I'd be like, right, Steven, let's talk about,

you know, your business and how it's, you know, it's still me and it's still what I'm thinking, but it just, you just lift it a little, you know? Sure.

For delivery. I think so. Yeah. Just to, you've got to engage people. People still look at people on TV though, in many respects, as they did with Caroline Flagg.

And they, they assume because of your success and because of your you know you've got money you've got your own business now you've got your own production company um you must be completely happy you must be yeah and i'm sure that but i think it's like every other walk of life there are people who are completely happy where they are and there will be people who are not tv presenters who are completely happy and there were people who are completely happy where they are. And there will be people who are not TV presenters who are completely happy. And there were people who are TV presenters who are completely happy.

But I also think there was another type of person where almost the more you get, the more difficult it can become. And this is sad, sad story, the whole Caroline Flack situation. You know, my experience is obviously completely different to hers, but I would certainly say that the single biggest source of stress in my entire life is social media I find

it a really really stressful experience the whole time and I'm kind of jealous of you because I look at you and I think you have such a great relationship with it you from the outside it looks to me like you totally understand it you can navigate your way through you know the right thing to say and when and the right thing to post and when and I feel like every time I go on there I'm probably going to fuck it up a bit and maybe get a bit of criticism and kind of hope for the best I just feel like I don't really understand it you know and and I think, you know, the Caroline Flack story is a really, really stark example of how I think all of us have got a real,

it comes back to the same bloody thing of responsibility because there are people who are putting stuff out there on social media about Caroline and not really about her, about the world we live in, saying you've got to be nicer, you've got to be better, you've got to be kind to people. And then at the same time, they're diving in and attacking someone else who they don't think is being kind.

And I know that they think they're helping, but they're adding to the bile and they're adding to the vitriol. And, you know, people have to look at their own actions, right? Have you gone onto social media in the last couple of weeks criticized the press and social media users and the world that we live in for being unkind and cruel and then two minutes later you've gone onto a website um that pedals news about celebrities and gossip or have you gone and bought a gossip magazine have you basically fed the monster right because a lot of this stuff is supply and demand and if

we stop demanding that we want to know everything about celebrities lifestyles and what goes on then the then i guess the supply will eventually end as well so don't look at the media and blame the media in this particular case don't look at the cps and well so don't look at the media and blame the media in this particular case don't look at the cps and blame them don't look at people who are on social media and blame them we all have a responsibility to alter the way this goes and the only thing that you can really control instead of going onto social media and yelling at everyone else to be better the only thing we can really all control is the way that we use the world and the way that we talk and if you just go on social media and be positive if you just read articles or absorb media that is moving the world forwards in a positive way or negative way then i think you're doing your

bit you know you talked a lot about your own struggles you got to a point where you were suicidal in a few years back now was the cause of that in your mind related to criticism in social media or was it? No, no, it was pre, this was pre social media really. Really? Yeah, and I think this, I think I went through a period that perhaps a lot of young men go through, right?

Where things just feel a little bit overwhelming and they're not sure how to deal with it and you know i actually i never contemplated suicide because my my grandma had committed suicide so i'd seen the absolute first-hand stark effect of what happens when a member of your family kills themselves and how long it took my dad who's her son to recover from that and there was no way that that i was ever going to do that because it just wasn't an option for me having seen what i'd seen so the only option for me was to do what i've always done in my life and just talk and i'm really glad i did and i think that that's what made the big difference for me but what what this

was and i remember that i can almost remember the day, like, I moved into a flat in East London. Just got a job on Children's BBC. And you would think, again, perfect, man. You're 22, 23. You're on kids' TV. For the first time in your life, you're earning money. You've just got a flat. You moved into London.

But I remember my parents driving off down the road, watching them go. And this sort of, like, sinking feeling. It was like a sort of a volcano erupting or something like that and I thought I can't deal with this and I remember wanting to ring them and cried on the phone and say can you come back and get me and take me back to Norwich please and I think that that just created a sort of an imbalance really in my brain for a period of time and I was really lucky that I had them there and I spoke to them and I I mean I went to the GP who said, well, maybe you're in the wrong job. Maybe you can't deal with the pressure.

And I remember just thinking, that's totally not what this is about. You know, I'm just going through a period of sort of, I don't know whether it was introspection or just my brain maturing or, it was just going through a sort of strange episode basically and by talking and sharing with people and i told my wife my girlfriend at the time my wife now exactly what i was feeling and when which was like quite scary to do yeah especially then especially then yeah yeah yeah i do didn't speak to people at work i didn't do that i didn't go into work and talk to people about it there um but i certainly my my family and my wife absolutely were well aware of it yeah um and in a strange way i now i now i'm kind of glad i went through that period

and my message to anyone who's in us in a similar place is not only is talking absolutely the answer. And I'm not the person to cure them, but I can tell you what made the change for me. And it was the day that I accepted I might have these feelings and they might come and go my whole life. And if they come, it's a trick. It's just my brain playing a trick, making me feel something that isn't real. And I need to stop believing something that is not there, that's in my head and use the evidence in front of my own eyes. And that is such a difficult thing to do. But as soon as I accepted it was a trick and it was like my brain trying to con me, and your brain is a very powerful tool, it kind of melted away.

It was the acceptance that made it go strangely the next point in my diary this week is about the podcast sponsor which is boost by facebook they are a dedicated one-stop shop for entrepreneurs for ceos for small businesses job seekers and anybody with ambition that's looking to thrive in this digital economy they launched with the aim of creating a place where all of us can understand this new world of digital and social it can be incredibly intimidating my mum was talking to her about boost with facebook the other day she doesn't know how to use a phone she doesn't know how to type and she's trying to run a business in 2020 and compete against people that do boost is a place for people like her where she can learn

more about the digital economy, about features and skills and training and all of the things that matter, the things that might level the playing field for her as someone that doesn't know about this new world that we live in. You can learn more about this at facebook.com slash boost with Facebook UK and if you do check it out drop me a message and let me know how you find it. I always pop on there every now and then to try and make sure i'm staying ahead of the curve but yeah do let me know how you find it and with it with the pressure of tv i mean like it's something that i can't quite imagine um you say that i've got this like personal way with social media i understand how the thing works yeah but even me even with all the books i've read and

everything i've studied and you know all the advice i've given reading something on social media which is particularly personal or particularly untrue and personal yeah especially if you read something that's particularly untrue and personal and that's going viral about you it's it's i still haven't figured out how to deal with that perfectly emotionally. Yeah, me too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, me too. You know? Because it will still be on my mind for 24 hours. You know?

And it will affect, you can feel it. It's hard to sleep sometimes, whatever. But you very much live in that world by putting yourself out in the public eye. So those feelings that you felt when you were 20-something must have been exacerbated. I'm guessing, this is me being naive but have those been exacerbated since because of because of your rise and success and public profile and i think that i think that in terms of being on the telly i feel totally at ease with that now like i don't even get nervous now no matter what the show is no matter what the gig is

i'm i'm totally at home in front of a television screen. I'm glad that I didn't land a job on Formula One until 2009 when I was almost 30 and that I didn't end up getting a Twitter account or an Instagram account until... What year was Instagram? What year did it start? It was about 10 years ago now. Yeah, so I think I started F1 in 2009.

I think in about 2010 i might have got twitter sure and it was a jumble it was like then really nice everyone was like whoa you're on twitter this is amazing thanks for sending me a message i think you're fantastic um and and and i suppose the the big fundamental change in my head right is that i felt when social media first started and twitter first started it made me feel like i was a genius right because i was doing f1 at the time and it was on bbc one and we had you know six seven eight million people watching it so people would tweet about it a lot and suddenly if we were doing a um a race and we were on on air then the sort of top 10 trending topics were all formula one related or bbc formula unrelated so jake comfrey eddie jordan david coolthard bbc f1 i was the

first person on telly to use an ipad rather than a clipboard so ipad would trend every week and if i was wearing like a shirt you know jake's shirt would be like a fourth trending topic and i was thinking wow everything i do like turns to gold this is amazing but it was kind of a heady mix of being on the biggest channel in the uk and social media having just begun and people at that time being quite having a very different relationship with it and being really positive with it and then all fast forward a few years and the only thing that i see really about myself on social media is is negative like oh here's jake humphrey ruining another football match oh you know these are just ones i remember from the last week oh two minutes into the game um and i'm already pissed

off with jake humphrey uh jake humphrey is such a smug C word. How does that make you feel, honestly? Do you know what? It really did bother me at the beginning. I couldn't work out why I was suddenly getting everything wrong. I was like, oh my goodness, why have I suddenly become the person that nobody wants to watch? Why am I suddenly the person that nobody likes? And you can imagine if you're really young, and I'm so glad I didn't get this experience

until the last six or seven years. Imagine if you're 13 or 14 and you see two or three comments from school friends and you think, oh, why am I the one kid nobody likes? What? That is so, so difficult to deal with. And I'm so scared of my kids seeing that and being in that world. And even at the age I was at, at the time it would have been in my early 30s even I was like wow why have I suddenly become unpopular and I suppose it took me quite a long time to realize and I was really bothered about it then I hated it and it and it would play on my mind and and it

would ruin entire weekends because I'd read a comment but then I kind of realized that this is going everyone's way nobody Nobody is immune to this. And it's not about me. It's about, for some reason, this innate sort of anger that we seem to have. We seem to live with now on social media that people can't. People are constantly waiting, looking for a really random reason to bite back at someone. And I don't know whether it's to make themselves feel better or because. I don't know, Stephen.

I don't know why it is but it almost feels like everyone's just waiting for an attack and that's why the conversations that have been had in the kind of subsequent days after the death of you know caroline is is a really healthy conversation to have but it's it's totally pointless unless people actually change the way they they wire their brains when using social media and i will admit to being similar someone will put something up and i'll be like oh i can't be like oh what's like and i'm thinking hold on a minute i would never say that to that person yeah i would never have that conversation in a room why am i why am i putting it on here you know i think much of the answer is what we're

incentivized to do we do more of and if you think about the gearing of algorithms they incentivize you to be provocative and inflammatory because you get likes followers and retweets and that's the that's the currency and the reinforcement of social media the other thing is there's a real psychological incentive to tearing someone else down because it makes or at least discrediting them in some way because then the the kind of mirror shining back on you says that you are knocking people down to make yourself feel big yeah you're sick there's a there's a quote is one of my favorite quotes when i think about social media which is misery loves company yeah yeah and it's like if i'm miserable i want everyone else to be miserable because then that'll make me feel somewhat validated in my misery or my lack of success or my whatever so you know i think it's sad though yeah when you

talk about people doing things for for likes right and we've all fallen in that trap i will readily admit over the years i've fallen in that trap at times it kills creativity though doesn't it yes it does because you start because i could do something that i'm really proud of that i think is fantastic right yeah and i put it up on my instagram or whatever and it'll get 45 likes and two comments and i'll be like oh that must do that again that must have been crap whereas i can put something else up which is maybe inflammatory or it maybe is a cliche or maybe it's just stealing a quote from you know someone from 200 years ago putting it on my instagram and saying hey guys look at this amazing quote and it gets 600 likes or whatever which would be a good number well what's the what's the more creative thing to do to just be you or to or to do stuff solely because you know it has an impact and i

was talking to you before we started recording about bob eiger the ceo of disney and you need to read the book right but in the book he talks about the fact that one of his kind of, um, golden rules to being a successful CEO is to have absolute rock solid belief and to, to totally trust your instincts and to go with it, not to try and give an answer that you think people want to hear or try and do something that you think will be well received. Just be you. And it's all, he describes it, I think he describes it almost as like a secret superpower. And I really love that. And that is one of the things I want to live by. Because if I can just be totally honest and be totally me and never do something.

Because actually when I've got myself in a muddle, it's because I've done something for an ulterior reason. Rather than just go, no, this is what I think. And I really believe in what I'm saying here. So you can either like it or not, but I believe it. If you can do that, it's a really healthy place to get to. I completely agree. As you were saying that, I was thinking, you know, the one thing that nearly cost me my career in the last five years was this couple of months where I where i for whatever reason which i won't go into

i stopped listening to what i thought was true my conviction and i put the certain very important decisions in the hands of other people and it took me about three months to realize that i nearly ruined everything i've spent the last five six years working for because I knew the answer but I didn't speak up because of a bunch of factors and it was wasn't until I spoke up and said everything we've done in this period is incorrect and let's go my way that everything went perfectly wow and it's and it's exactly what you described it was yeah the one time in the last five years for just a short period that I let go of my conviction you mentioned Harriet your wife

what's it like working with because she works at Whisper Group right your production company what's it like working with your wife is she here no she's not it's incredible to be honest in recent times

she's taken much more of a backward step because we've got two little kids it almost it was kind of more of a thrill right because when when whisper first started and we you know we now have about 80 or 90 staff we've just announced recently that sony have just purchased 25 percent of the business so that's the aim is to work with them to try and take the business global. When we first started, it was my wife and our current CEO, Sunil Patel, working together in the back bedroom of our house. And it worked well, actually. We got on really well and it went okay.

I know it doesn't always happen for some people, but the best thing was that we all, and you might have felt this when you started social chain, we felt like we were just like kids, like having a go and seeing where it went it went okay i know it doesn't always happen for some people but the best thing was that we all and you might have felt this when you started social chain we felt like we were just like kids like having a go and seeing where it went to and i love the fact that we went on that journey together and she was part of it right from day one and and this was something that we built together that's really important to me and you people don't typically think of you as a an entrepreneur that's right you as a tv personality tv presenter whatever it might be so tell me what it's been like being an entrepreneur being the most rewarding feeling in the world and i spoke about this on my instagram a little while ago

it's all come about right because before i started working in formula one i thought that there was a secret that that you that you or I didn't know. But the billionaires and the millionaires and the entrepreneurs and the CEOs and the successful people all knew this secret, right? And then I got into Formula One. And it was the first time I'd been around really high-achieving people. And I was really, really keen. And I said this to you before. Why I love doing my job in sports broadcasting is about being with high achieving individuals I'm

not really at all bothered who wins or loses a race or a game of football I don't care I love people pushing themselves to the limit to be successful right so I got into Formula One I started saying to Eddie Jordan who set up the Jordan Formula One team and you know his wife packed vegetables to earn the extra money to keep the race team alive until they were successful. I said, what was the secret? And then I spoke with Ron Dennis, who set up the McLaren Formula One team, one of the most famous teams to ever race in Formula One. I said, what was the secret? And I remember talking to Lewis Hamilton and saying to him,

you know, you've ended up as one of the greatest Formula One drivers the world's ever seen. What was your secret? Tell me, Jake, what's the secret? I just kind of did it. And I was like, what? That is massively disappointing. Because I was expecting this great revelation.

And I was really like, oh, is that it? And then I thought on that for a bit. And I thought, hold on a minute. Surely that's the best answer I could have ever wanted. Because it means it's open to me. So I'm just going to do it. I'm going to go for this. So I spoke with Sunil.

And I said, look, why don't we just do our own thing, you're a great producer we'll go and do this together all the Formula 1 teams and sponsors know me from being a presenter let's go and meet them all and try and build a business producing content for Formula 1 teams not knowing it would ever grow to the size that it does

we now produce more highlights for terrestrial broadcasters in the uk of sports content than anybody else you know the business is we're probably the third biggest sports production company in the country now and it just started out with the two of us going and having a couple of meetings but it was just because we did it and i suppose the one thing i would love people to take away from listening to this today is it does not matter what it is whether it is setting up social chain setting up the whisper group setting up a company that makes lovely gourmet sweets like the conversation you had recently go and do it just go and do it because the mo

don't wait for the motivation to come do the action and that's where the motivation comes from and then you're on this roller coaster and my god it's an exciting ride i can hear people listening to this jake and they're saying but you know i just need to make the the perfect plan and i've been you know i'm just need to i need to find the the right business i need to make this needs to be perfect the timing i'm very busy at work i'm just done this i i need to i need to be financially i don't have any money jake yeah i know all of those and i get a lot of that back to me on social media when i I put this stuff out there, there is never a right time to do it.

But the biggest mistake you can make in life is not doing it at all. I'm not saying it's going to be a success. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm not saying it's guaranteed, but I am saying the biggest regret you have is if you, if in 30 years time you think, Oh, I wish I'd done that.

And the world is full of people who say, I wish I'd done that. Oh, I had that idea, but I didn't do it. I could could have been a millionaire but i didn't just give it a go you the only way you will know is by giving it a go and if you do if you really believe in what you're thinking if you've got loads of passion if you've got if you get a few lucky breaks along the way then it absolutely it absolutely will work for you but you know take the responsibility it comes back to that same point i made at the beginning of this conversation take the responsibility give it a go if you have to work double just do it be responsible try it you're involved in a break

yeah the charity for you yeah you're a patron yeah what's what work are you doing there and tell me a little bit about your more philanthropic endeavors so it's a really sort of important thing for me um doing various charity initiatives and trying to try and make a difference where i can so i'm on the board of trustees for the community sport foundation which is a charity in norwich that uses sport to change people's lives because through the work that i've done as a sports presenter i really believe you can improve people's lives through sport I've been a patron for break for a decade which is again a children's charity that provides services to young people that is they're just not being provided elsewhere there isn't the money to do what break does which is provide respite care take families on holiday um they run children's centers and children's

homes sometimes they have something called family's house. And sometimes the only safe place for a young person to be with their mom and dad is at breaks family's house, which is incredibly sad, isn't it? Um, and I'm also a vice president of click Sergeant, which is, um, the children's leukemia and cancer charity. And my wife and I put on it a yearly event and we've, we've raised a million pounds for them in the last four years at a yearly event that we do that is that is probably what i'm more proud of than anything else that i've done actually over the years and i think it comes from my dad he

was a charity worker when we were growing up we lived in an old people's home because we couldn't find a house and just to see my dad at work looking after those people we we couldn't walk down the road without my dad stopping and talking to someone who's homeless giving them his card giving them some advice telling them where they can go and that having kindness above everything else absolutely came from my dad and i suppose you know i don't do it because i want people to go oh he's so great he does loads for charity he's such a nice bloke but that is probably an area where i do get frustrated with the whole social media thing where people go he's just a guy on the telly making as much money as he can and whatever that's really not me you know i feel really really lucky that i found a job that i love

being a tv presenter i feel really lucky that i actually find it easy but the best thing it's done for me is it's it's given me opportunities to do all of this charity work and to use my profile and to use my contacts to to try and improve the lives of other people that is absolutely more important to me than anything else i i do not completely believe you well and i think you know what i was saying i'm sure he's heard this loads of times because it does sound like bullshit no you know what i mean it like, oh, he was trotting out the same way I've done. The most important thing for me

is to help other people. No, there's zero doubt in my mind. It's funny because when you meet someone, you can, it's, you know, it doesn't take you long, especially when we have conversations like this to really know who the person is and to know how much of it is an act.

You can even tell by someone's body language how much they are, per se, trying to answer. Of course, because you're sat like this, you're super relaxed and you're talking without thinking. Right. And that's how I know what you're saying is so utterly authentic. But even off camera,

you've been so utterly authentic. And I, and I think, you know, people, people have any question of your character, then they, then they are quite simply quite wrong,

you know, and I've only known you for a couple of hours, but just to wrap up, then I have a game I play, which you might've heard before, which is the old dinner party game, which gives me an insight into who your idols are really that's why i asked the question we're at a table six seats i'm in one of them you're in the other um there's four empty seats dead or alive if you've listened to this podcast you should have the answer well everybody takes like 35 minutes to think of names okay here we go this is easy

for me this is easy for me um the first would be my grandpa why uh because he died too young for me to really talk to him about the life that he lived i really wanted to be a policeman when i was younger so i applied to be a special constable while i was working at rapture tv in norwich but i'm colorblind so i got told no in fact this wouldn't happen now but when i was six i had a colorblindness test at primary school and they gave me a piece of paper with a list of jobs i can't do police officer was on there and i went home crying and it took me weeks to recover from that so my grandpa would absolutely be there um i've got his war medals at home he was a police officer he was a soldier um he's an amazing gentle quiet bloke but never spoke of the life that he lived.

In fact, it was only after he died that my mum told me that he'd had a first wife who'd died of cancer, and he'd remarried my granny and then had my mum. And I think, man, I never even had that conversation with my own grandpa. So he would absolutely be on that list. The second one would be Jeremy Goss. Why? Who scored the most famous goal in the history of Norwich City.

It was against Bayern Munich. It was in the UEFA Cup in 1993. And basically Norwich were this little minnow team that were never going to do anything special against Bayern Munich. And he managed to put the ball in the back of the net. So that's my second one. My third one, and I feel like a slight fraud for doing this, because if you'd have asked me this exact conversation a month ago i would not have

said this guy but i absolutely would have bob eiger on that list because the book that he's just written called ride of a lifetime about and what i love about it is he talks about working right at the bottom of a business and learning about people along the way he talks about the fact that you can be a really good person and be really successful and the fact and what he's noticed over the years is people think they're mutually exclusive you can either be successful or good you actually can be good and successful which i think is such a strong message to pass on to people um and the book is just amazing and it's an incredible story and this is a guy who sat down with george lucas and purchased lucasfilm this is a guy who sat down with steve jobs and bought pixar from apple like the conversations he's had

are unbelievable um and then the final one i will be someone else who's sadly not with us which will be freddie mercury because queen is my most favorite band of all time he was the most incredible entertainer remarkable life remarkable story and he would sing to us at the end of dinner what would we eat we would what would we were we eat my mom's cooking because it is absolutely exceptional we'll pull up a seventh chair for that yeah join all right then we'll let her join she can hang out with her dad again oh amazing um thank you so much jake for your time today you're an incredible character, an incredible, incredible character. And I hope one day that I can, I can read your book as it relates to performance and all these things. And your podcast is coming out very shortly.

Yeah, I'm creating a podcast called High Performance with a man called Damien Hughes, who is an author and he's a professor. He specializes in high performance cultures in sports teams. So we're not just talking to sports people we'll be talking to you a lot of performance about about high performance and how you live a high performance lifestyle i can't wait i'm really really excited for that and i wanted to thank you very really really sincerely for for for coming and doing this today because i know how busy you are and um you're someone that you know has brought me a ton of joy in my life watching tv shows and bringing context to the sports that i'm watching so it feels like a little bit of a fanboy moment for me for sure and you're an incredible guy in a in person just as you are on tv so thank

you so much and i'll throw the love straight back at you you know that you host my favorite podcast and i think the messages that you put out there um with how busy you are to keep on doing it and i know why you do it you do it because you because you want to connect with people as much as possible. And I know that most people in your position move away from connecting with people because they're too busy and everything becomes about them and it becomes selfish again. I love the fact that you've been successful

and you've kept hold of the selfless side. Thank you, mate. Appreciate it. Thanks. Thanks, man.