The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Growing A 10+ Million Youtube Following At The Age of 22: Joe Sugg

Episode Date: August 25, 2022

Joe Sugg is an influencer who, after breakout success before he turned 21, decided to dial down the parties and temptations of fame in order to return to nature and make everything more low key. After realising he didn’t enjoy his life as much as he was supposed to, some serious prioritisation about what his real values were and what really mattered to him was in order in order to refocus and rebalance his life. He hasn’t looked back since. Joe’s new book Grow is out on the 15th September, it goes through the lessons he’s learnt and the strategies he’s adopted to help him find balance and harmony with his life. Joe: Joe’s Book - https://g2ul0.app.link/NIKf94xNKsb Twitter - https://twitter.com/joe_sugg Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/joe_sugg/ Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo

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 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. I start to feel anxious or getting followed by a guy like my mind is panicking. I actually can't concentrate on driving because I know this person is just trying to follow us. Strictly finalist, written a book, West End. An internet sensation. Joe Sutton! You started at 19, 20 years old. By 22, you had about 6 million subscribers.

Yeah. That's fucking nuts. It was so uncertain about where that was going to go. The rise, but also the fall, can happen so quick. yeah that's fucking nice it was so uncertain about where that was going to go the rise but also the fall can happen so quick that imposter syndrome i already had got amplified anxiety self-doubt the whole thing just didn't feel real diane you met her on strictly first real proper girlfriend yeah the further you go in that competition the higher the pressure is and the stress gets. We saw the best and the worst of each other.

I always thought it would be a very private thing. It's actually ended up being the complete opposite. Hand on heart, do you think if you had never started YouTube, you'd be happier overall? Good question. So without further ado, I'm Stephen Bartlett,

and this is The Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself. Joe. Hello. Tell me, what are the most important things that I need to know about you from your early years in order to understand you? In order to understand the man that you are today. The man I'm today. I was quite a loud child.

I was a loud, annoying child growing up. When we look back through like family videos, it's quite embarrassing to watch, particularly me because I was the sort of boy that'd be like mommy watch this watch this like repeating myself over and over again and we're watching it back like oh shut up like you were annoying child but then um at some point i flipped and i don't know when that was but at some point i flipped and became a very sort of timid quite shy child. Always very creative, even from an early age.

I was a good drawer. I used to illustrate and draw a lot of pictures at school, which definitely came from, passed down from my parents, mum and dad, both very creative in their own sense. I went to a very, very primary school um in rural wiltshire uh i think there's 52 pupils in our in our whole school going from there to secondary school was a big change for me because that was going from 52 pupils in the whole school to over a thousand so that was a big which probably could have a a reason why i went from being sort of quite a loud annoying child to being a lot more

sort of oh i'm at my depth here i'm now a small fish in a big pond you were i read in the book in chapter one of grow that you were quite self-deprecating at that point in secondary school yeah yeah yeah yeah primary school i i feel like primary school i was a i was a lot more confident everyone knew everyone very well and i just felt like a lot more popular then and then yeah moving to secondary school it was much more like yeah like i said it was it was a very different place um and that's when i first sort of encountered teasing and bullying and stuff. And I wasn't necessarily like bullied, but it was more like if there was ever like teasing going on or things that they were trying to sort of dig,

I very quickly sort of realised if I'm already sort of poking fun at myself, they will get bored of trying to poke fun at me so there's less chance of that happening at that age in secondary school would you consider yourself to be a confident child no no do you know what silently confident like in my head i've always been the sort of person where i can i know what i'm capable of and like i know that that i think you know I know that I'm I can do certain things to a good standard and I know that I I can be a good student and all this kind of stuff um but on the outside not as confident at all so like with work and stuff I was very confident I was confident that I'd be able to get the grades and do well in school and things like that but

it's more the sort of social side of it i found that a lot more difficult well if i'd asked you at that age what you wanted to be when you grew up what would you what would you tell me say like 16 ish 16 i wanted to be i wanted to work in media but i wanted to be more go more down the route of um animation my goal as a kid initially first of all it was an archaeologist of course i wanted to be in diana jones and then uh secondary school um i wanted to work for aardman i wanted to be an animator like model builder um or just i think i've got i've got a lot of patience and uh if you know animations like or how long it took to make chicken run or wallace and gromit you know what animation is like or how long it took to make Chicken Run or Wallace and Gromit, those films take a long time to make. So I wanted to, yeah, I felt like I'd be good to do that.

I wanted to work for Hartman. Your grades at A-level were really good. Yeah. Which was surprising because then, you know, most people with those kind of grades that get A's and stuff would then go off to university. Yeah. You chose not to. No, yeah. So we did work experience. I don't know if you did the same. that get A's and stuff would then go off to university yeah you chose not to no yeah it's so we did a work experience I don't know if you did the same like when you turn 16 you have to

get into a dentist did you yeah I fell asleep every day so I um I I decided to go roof thatching with my uncle so my uncle is a roof thatcher which is a very old traditional craft that they don't really teach anymore it's very like kind of there's no classes you can go and take and you can't study for it you've got to actually go on the job and work on the job and you learn that when the master Thatcher thinks you're ready you then go from being an apprentice to a master Thatcher and my school I remember my school advised that i didn't do it but i went and did it anyway shouldn't have done sorry uh but i i so i went and did that and then um i absolutely loved it i and it was i was outside i think what it was i was

outside it was it was tough i wasn't really i was lifting a lot of straw and moving things and sweeping up but i absolutely loved it is there's something about like when we finished a roof we'd look at what we've done and it's just that feeling i wanted to bottle that up and be like that's what i want for the rest of my life so i decided that i wanted to be a roof thatcher for the rest of my life i'm the sort of i'm very kind of i'm very bad at making my mind up on things as well there's a lot going on I'm very bad at making my mind up on things as well. There's a lot going on. I'm very bad at making my mind up on stuff. So I was like, what if it doesn't work out later on down the line? I need to have A levels. So if I, if this doesn't go to plan or, you know, after a while, I don't like it, I can at least then try out

university and go back to trying to work for something in the media or or arden or something so um but i didn't i'd sort of i i always like the idea of having safety nets underneath me so if something if something doesn't go to plan it's all right you've always got that safety net of and that's kind of like in a way what roof thatching became because i started doing youtube as a hobby off the back of the thatching i did it my spare time and that started to take off and and become a full-time career but then i was in a way safe going into that because i was like if it all doesn't pan out because this is going back to when youtube wasn't really a career as well so it was it was so uncertain about where that was going to go

but I always felt very like secure in the fact that I knew that if it didn't pan out I'll try it for a year if it doesn't work I can go back to a job that I genuinely really really love so yeah the two the two ideas that that almost in sort of collision there was this idea that you are very self-confident in your abilities and that you've always needed a plan B. Yeah. I was trying to make them make sense as two kind of separate ideas

because one of them sounded a bit like self-doubt. This idea that sometimes there's a struggle to make a definitive decision and that there's a need for a plan B. Are you someone that has self-doubt at the same time? Because I think it's possible to understand your talents but also have doubt in the future and how things will pan out yeah i'm the sort of person where i think of the best case scenario so like i i have those like i've got a very vivid imagination

so with everything i go into i always think of the best possible outcome, which then gives me that sort of self-confidence. But then I also have Mr. Self-Doubt on the other side who finds the worst case scenario. And then they have a battle in my head of how I should think. And I think that's where the indecision comes from with a lot of stuff. I live with it. I'm glad I've kind of got it

because I wouldn't want to always have the self-doubt there and I also wouldn't ever always want to have the self-confidence there because I think that would make me a completely different person maybe a person that I don't like either so I don't know it's there's um yeah I have I have both that's the thing with um with the self-doubt if it's just a little bit too high and i learned this actually from a guest on this podcast called near il he um his he wrote a book on why we get distracted and ultimately like why we procrastinate on things and he says procrastination is the result of us trying to avoid a task or thing that's that we have

psychological discomfort associated with yeah so when you're like you know you've got the essay to do you'll end up doing the washing up because that's the task you're competent in and whereas with the essay you know there's loads of research to do you're not necessarily you don't feel comfortable starting yet there's something missing so there's mental psychological discomfort so you just go do the dishes yeah and i think self-doubt is one of the things that leads us to have that psychological discomfort where we just kind of delay it and wait for that perfect time or yeah go do the dishes i have that all the time as i i always say it's because i'm creative it's because i'm creative it's like i get scared i don't scared's the right word but i yeah i put

it off like if i know i've got something i want to do that's that is creative and requires a lot of sort of sitting around thinking beforehand then putting pen to paper or or um anything that's going to involve the creative process i delay it and i i think it's a thing of like what if i start doing it and instantly i don't like it and i'm like ah this is not how i imagined because you you sort of in your mind you have this version of it's always going to come flowing out of the pen or you're going to start filming um something and it's always going to go perfect plan and it doesn't and it very very often does it all just completely flow um and i think that that kind of puts a block in i'm always like if i'm going to

do it i need to make sure everything's prepared beforehand that is very interesting a lot of the time is what we say to ourselves that we're the reason i'm not starting it or the reason i have that procrastination is because i'm a perfectionist I've really what you know everyone loves that because it's a nice way of framing yourself as being as having really really really high standards and being honestly it's kind of like saying I'm the reason I've not started it yet or the reason I struggle is because I'm amazing yeah it's almost like saying that when really a lot of the time it's probably self-doubt and that psychological discomfort associated with you don't feel fully competent or like you could fully nail it. And you're trying to avoid the mess, which we all encounter as we do anything.

Yeah, I think it's like, it's kind of like that. I think it's from that part of my brain that's like seeing the best possible outcome. outcome so like let's say for example uh i'm doing a painting in my head i'll have that thing of like almost going ahead because of my imagination i see it finished and i'm like this is it's going to be amazing it's going to you know i'm going to post it online and people are going to love it and things like that but then i start and it doesn't quite go i'm like oh actually this is in my mind i've gone through this process of like doing it over and over again and getting it to how I want it to go. And then I start doing it and it's not going how I imagined it. And that sort of scares me a bit.

And that's why I think I put things off more from that kind of side. Unfinished paintings? Yeah, a lot of them. Too many of them. What have you learned about, is there anything that you've learned or anything that's helped you get past that initial hesitancy of procrastination? Because, you know, reading through your story and even speaking to you today, even before we started recording, I was like, God, this guy's got so many ideas.

I was going to say, yeah, that is something that I've struggled with, especially nowadays where like going into things like business like starting businesses and stuff that i feel like from what i've seen very rarely do you see people that are doing so many different things and it is that thing of like i'm a plate spinner like i love spinning plates of different things and trying to keep up with these spinning plates and i take time to sort of sit back and look at these things and think what when are you going to sit on one thing and actually just do that thing and devote you because you see like you look throughout history of like artists and people who have devoted their whole life to sculpting do I mean and and um I sort of tell myself I'm not going to achieve anything sort of near that

if I don't dedicate my whole life to one thing. But for me, I just find it so difficult because I'm like, I've got a limited time and I want to dip my toe into everything. And it's weird because I feel like I use this analogy and I don't know if it's a great analogy or not, but with the YouTube sort of career that I've had over the last 10 years, that is something that I did sort of double down on and really focus all my energy on at one point but then it became a point of branching it out and doing different things um just as a form of like stability as well because we didn't know we still like we back in those days we didn't know how it's going to last for so we did sort of branch out into different things I think I just got a bit carried away with the branching out and just I was like there's so many things to sort of see and try out and do i see like the that youtube thing of like catching a like going out to sea and catching a wave and

caught that wave in um and it was incredible it was a it was a record-breaking wave it was a major wave kind of thing and you know uh and now i feel like i'm sort of i'm back out on my board again and i'm paddling around i've caught a few little waves but they've not been like another you know ripper of a wave like like the youtube one was yet but i'm i'm sort of like i know that there's more big waves out there but it's just kind of like knowing which wave you start paddling you know like how surfers sort of start to paddle out trying to catch them and you watch them they sort of get it and then doesn't go and it's like i feel like at the moment i'm sort of paddling out and sort of

waiting for that sort of next big wave in a sense why do you need a next big wave good point i should just stay on the beach i think that's actually what my therapist i have the therapist i speak to and i use that analogy with her and she said but it's the exact same thing why do you need to catch the next big wave why not stay on the beach you don't need to go out and constantly catch big waves i was thinking this because you said earlier i mean the question i was gonna um ask before you talked about the wave analogy was kind of similar which is if you're happy spinning multiple plates and trying lots of things and sculpting for the joy of sculpting it seems like and this is i'm guilty of this in

the biggest way it seems like there's this other narrative which is saying no no no no no forget what you love doing focus because success is the most important thing yeah and when i say success i mean like accomplishment yeah because real success probably is actually being happy yeah and you're happy like but but it's almost it's almost like we deny ourselves of happiness because there's not a gold medal there or there's not a gazillion followers there yeah but you're enjoying sculpting yeah for the sake of sculpting it's like it's like a punishment of yourself like i feel like i um it in a way i yeah it's kind of like a form of like joe you know you love doing this and this makes you genuinely happy so why don't you just do it do you know what i mean and if you love it that much and you stick at it and do it then good things may come from it but it's not gonna happen straight away and it's like it's almost like i get into a thing of like i like to sort of the things i know

i love doing i put aside and i focus on the things that uh that maybe i don't love as much or not as passionate about as much but i'll sort of almost put that before the little things that make me really happy it's bizarre i've no idea no idea i've tried to i've tried to like think about it a lot and it's it's weird that it comes from i don't know where where it comes from because are you saying because those things you could be although you might not love them as much you you might be able to be successful in the eyes of the world in them or i think i it's because i've got that thing i mean it's looking for instant success and stuff which is weird and maybe that's because of like before on youtube and stuff there was a time where you know we were i say we like might speak for myself

but like me and a lot of the people around at similar time that on that sort of wave that we were on we all um everything we sort of would go into almost became an instant success in a way it was like yeah i think because we like back then i felt like it was it was so much bigger anything you sort of went into you you know it did end up sort of getting attention and doing really well and and things whereas now maybe not so much and i think that's kind of crazy we signed some youtubers back in those days so maybe not because you were you were very very early but yeah in 2013 14 we signed a bunch of youtubers and still to this day none of them were near the size of of you and that sort of british cohort of like youtube megastars but still to this day i and they must have been 18 19 20 years old i still

think it ruined their lives yeah because i watched an 18 year old 19 year old kid who had started a youtube channel got to 200 000 300 000 subscribers when there was no video that was the only shop in town for video yeah just before facebook video and instagram and snap and all and twitter video so that was where as brands we were just pumping all the money into these YouTubers. I watched those kids turn down 15 grand to show up to a fucking movie premiere or to just show face. When that wave comes into shore and hits the beach and it's over,

those kids are in a psychological trap almost with their own personal expectations of the world. And I really worry about that because success can be a curse because of the way it messes with our own personal expectations of ourself and of the world. And in some respects,

that sounds like what you're saying. Your expectations back then, everything you guys touched did turn to gold. Now you're saying it's a little bit more difficult. Yeah, bronze. Does any of that resonate with you? Oh, 100%, yeah. I think that's a little bit more difficult. Yeah, bronze. Bronze, yeah. No, yeah. Does any of that resonate with you? Oh, 100%, yeah.

I think that's a big part of why myself and Casper is also YouTuber. We started a management company because in the future there's gonna be kids. I mean, we were just seeing it then, like young kids that were shooting to fame overnight. But even I think nowadays with other social medias, it happens even quicker.

Like the rise, but also the fall can happen so quick. And I was like, for me and Casper, we were like, we want to make a management company and a big role of what we have in that is being in a way kind of mentors when needed for any questions they have or any concerns they have about that kind of thing. We can sort of give,

I kind of use it as like, I guess like the, you know, like the Hunger Games, that guy who's like sat on the train and he sort of give it's i kind of use it as like a i guess like the you know like um the hunger games that guy who's like sat on the train he sort of takes her through it and be like look this is going to happen i guess like a a very different version of yeah like yeah kind of like mental kind of role yeah um and that for me is like one of the that the best things that i do at the moment is having that sort of one-on-one with our own clients and sort of if they've got any sort of issues being able to actually offer advice and see it make a change i'm joe at 19 yeah yeah and you're joe at 30 right what do you say to me

i'm about to but as you were i'm about i'm thinking about uploading that first video yeah what advice would you give me i would say if you want it to get to that level you can do it if you put in the sort of the consistency and you're you're making stuff that is going to get seen and stuff but just be prepared for there's other sides of it that aren't aren't all bells and whistles and that kind of thing there's there's going to be obstacles there's going to be things that that you're going to need advice on and we're going to be here to to help and hold your hand through that if you need it what are the things that are wrong press negative press um you know haters you're going to get trolls that's the bigger audience size the the more issues it brings in terms of the more eyes that are on you,

the more people that watch your stuff that may not like what you do. And then they've got a thing out against you. And there's a lot. What's the mental cost? I would say that if you're me, it's still worth it. It's still, don't ever regret doing it. It's still worth it. Like you, there of course there's negatives but the positives that you've gained out of it or you will gain out of it um in everything

outweighs a negative and don't get don't get bogged down by the negatives because there's more you know there's more positive there's going to be more positives and negatives the the negatives don't matter as much as you think they're going to matter at the time at the time when you experience these negatives and these things that you know don't go your way or that's going to happen but don't let it don't dwell on it don't let it consume you because there's positives beyond that that and you'll you'll look back and you won't regret it what is the worst thing that's going to happen to me the worst thing that's going to happen to you over the next 10 years so i'm 19 years old you know how it all plays out yeah

overthinking overthinking and worrying about what other people how they perceive you what cost is that gonna have um a few sleepless nights a lot of anxiety self-doubt i'm guessing at 19 years old joe didn't know what anxiety was. No, no. What is it? It's a feeling of claustrophobia, feeling a bit trapped. Do you remember days through that period? I mean, you talked a little bit in the book about, I think, 2015 or so, a couple of years in.

I mean, so you said earlier you started at 19, 20 years old. old by 22 am i correct to say that you had about six million subscribers possibly yeah that's fucking nuts yeah it happened really quick i was very fortunate that my uh my sister zoe sort of um and alfie actually um her partner they they really encouraged me to do it. Before YouTube, we used to buy blank cassette tapes and make our own radio shows or, I guess, podcasts back in the day. As kids, we were always taking our parents' camcorder and recording shows. And Zoe was very much the leader in that. She was very much the director, let's say.

And I was always the sort of... I director let's say um and i was always the sort of sort of i just did what she told me to like i was a little brother that would just go along with it and that kind of thing and um so when youtube came around she started to get a bit of success from it and she was like you should give us a go because it's the kind of stuff that we were doing as kids or have done we're kind of like it's not that far off from what we used to do but you know there's an audience that can watch you from around the world and and um and uh so yeah so i gave it a go and it and it i think back then the success of like the some of the some of the stuff we filmed back then wouldn't it be like a drop in the ocean now in terms of like how big social media has got and YouTube and stuff, our stuff wouldn't

be watched nowadays. It was like we were very much kind of hit it at the right time. And yeah, so I started and it just sort of snowballed and it snowballed really quickly. I remember there's a time where I was still thatching on a roof five days of the week and then um i had an email come through asking if i'd go to fly out to los angeles to interview simon carroll and yeah i flew out there and it was all first i'm ever experiencing a business class flight i still had like straw in my shoes from like being on the roof and like hadn't showered like kind of like just groy thatcher getting on this plane like a chauffeur driven car pulled up to a house and took me off to the um heathrow airport and i went through the there's like a little secret bit um they put these barriers down you have your own like private security kind of thing and you go

through and and i was like it just blew my mind and and uh and i hadn't even got to Los Angeles yet. First time ever flying on my own, like solo. And that whole experience was just like, the whole thing just didn't feel real. It did not feel real. It just felt like I was sort of like living like a double life in a way. Like yesterday I was on a roof thatching and now I'm sat in Simon Cowell's fancy house sort of talking to him about skype

those experiences especially when they're really quick and they go from zero to a hundred people when that when i sit here with them often talk to me about imposter syndrome yeah because you as you said you're kind of living a double life you're like what the fuck am i doing yeah i just draw my shoe and simon cowell and definitely yeah imposter syndrome there's definitely a lot of that going on um and that must result in overthinking and doubt and yeah all those things we talked about and that's another thing actually that i would say to younger joes but you're going to get this thing called imposter syndrome um you'll learn about later but yeah it'll be there and I've had that even even now to this day like even sort of like even now with this podcast like I've listened to this podcast all the time

and even on the way here I was a bit nervous because I was like you get like these you know these incredible CEOs on and these people that are so good at talking. And I struggle to get a sentence together most of the time. And I'm like, even me, I feel like there's people on there that have done such amazing things. And I'm like, even for me, it still gives me that little bit of imposter syndrome of like, there should be other people. There's a lot more people that should be sat in this chair

rather than me. What's the risk of that? Because, you know, a lot of people, for me, the risk is you end up like avoiding like opportunities in life and stuff because i'm sure there must have been people that we've asked to come on this podcast before that through imposter syndrome said no like they because we do get a lot of people come here and they'll say some of the thing we've had i mean i can think of a few people who literally came here and was like i don't know why you've asked me to be here. And that must impact performance. It must make the whole thing unpleasant.

I mean, at least the lead up anyway. Yeah. Until I'm such a, you know. It does. Yeah. I think like a good example for me is doing Strictly or even actually probably more so is Waitress in the West End. So I did a stint on the West End in waitress and this was coming off the back of doing Strictly so my confidence actually it completely changed me in a sense

that it gave me such a big boost of confidence which I didn't hadn't had for a long time and so riding on that confidence I agreed to do a audition for Ogiegee and waitress in the west end and um i remember i kept asking sort of my sort of my team being like have they asked me because of like strictly or you know will they be honest and like if i'm not good enough will they just tell i don't want to sort of put me in it if i'm actually not good because i'm not to standard that they'd take someone on do i mean if it's not me and uh they were they were sort of like i think you'll you know just go along you'll be you'll do this kind of stuff and um i remember even after doing the audition and they said they really loved it and things like that i still in my mind i was still like but did you though what

like are you sure like are you sure and especially like the the the backlash that i kind of got from that was was quite like i mean it's it's nothing that sort of worried me too much but there was a lot of like people that was messaging me being like you you don't deserve this as people that have trained their entire lives in musical theater and they're not gonna they didn't get that they won't ever get that opportunity because people like you coming in, taking those roles. And so I started to have like a massive, and that kind of like, that imposter syndrome I already had

got amplified and I was like, maybe I shouldn't do it. And just sort of, but then I wonder if there's been any times where people have then turned around and said, actually, do you know what? I don't want this because of what people on social media have said did i mean or give their opinion on um so that was a real sort of that was a definitely a moment that stands out to me of being like i probably shouldn't be here doing this in your in your journey with social media and YouTube, was there a moment where you go, that was where I really started to see the symptoms of getting burnt out by doing this? Was there a year or a time where you just thought, fuck, I don't want to open my emails.

I don't want to upload. Yeah, it was, I think, around 2016, 17, I think it might be. I remember it clearly because it was just a time where there was just a lot going on. I think YouTube was like massive. We were, you know, like I think at the time, I mean, I run, at the time I had three YouTube channels that I was trying to all keep up at the same time.

And this was actually before i had any i was doing it all solo as well so i'd think of the ideas i'd shoot them all edit them um obviously distribute it i guess kind of in a way market it by promoting it putting it out there and trying to get people to watch my stuff but i also had a uh a book coming out um which i was working on uh we'd also me and casper did a feature with BBC Studios, like a sort of, like a straight to DVD kind of like film of us sort of travelling around in a camphor.

So there's a lot of things going on and obviously lots of other different things in the background. And it got to a point where I was like, my life as a Ruth Thatcher before all this was, there was no feeling like this, how I'm feeling now. It was just, I had my, I had such a solid structure, like up at this time, go to work until this time,

go back, unload the straw, load up the van again, go and see my nan, give her the paper, go home, go to the gym. And then that was it. Was that, was that a part of your life? There's been a lot of times throughout my life where I've looked back and thought that was it. Was that half your life? There's been a lot of times throughout my life where I've looked back and thought that was like, I think it's because that structure,

it does make you feel like it's, I was living a more, yeah, yeah. Hand on heart, do you think if you'd never started YouTube, you'd be happier overall over the last 10 years? Hand on heart i think i i'm more happy the route i've gone down as well i think because the thing is i can't i can never sort of as much as you know i i've had my struggles online and stuff that actually the online has also been such a big help

for me and especially like in terms of like youtube and the way that they i've worked with them and personally and like had support from them has been incredible so i'm very fortunate as a creator on youtube that youtube has actually given me a lot of support and i've had a good team around me that have given me the support uh and the friendships and the family that i've had a good team around me that have given me the support and the friendships and the family that I've had around me although I went through a time where I did struggle a lot and I I had that burnout and I had that sort of anxiety and worry and self-doubt and stuff I've had a really good set of people around me that have helped me sort of get past that even with the the roof thatching you know i i look back on it now because i'm so so far down a different path but if i went back to thatching i'm sure there were times where i'd be up on the roof when it's like sideways rain wind freezing cold thinking like what am i doing

up here like so i think it's all sort of comparative to where you are at certain points in your life did your love for youtube shift though because obviously you start posting less frequently on your main channel yeah um to the point where it's and it's funny because as someone that's kind of observed the whole youtube journey over the years there seems to have been this point which you've literally spoken about where multiple youtubers appear to have kind of vanished a little bit yeah and then they end up posting a video saying like almost giving their reason why saying they're going to come back it's yeah it's another one a year later saying they're going to come back and they never

come back what is going on i think i mean i have to say i can't speak for everyone but for myself personally i i think it's partly because you're my audience have all grown up or the audience i had back then they've all got older they've all they're all in their sort of i presume a lot of the ones started watching me when they were 14 15 they're all now in their 20s they've got their own stuff going on and the stuff that i knew how to make back then is not what they want to consume now as content it's what i sort of gauge from it i have like i have i have a guess as well which is i think very much in line with what you're saying i think that the algorithm might have changed a little bit yeah and i think that i think a few things happen when that happens so i think as a creator you get psychologically

demotivated yeah when you're doing the same work and you're not getting, you're getting a, basically you're getting a vote from your audience to say, which sounds like we don't like it anymore. And then it seemed like that happened all at the same time with that initial sort of YouTube cohort. And so a lot of them, because they saw declining numbers and whatever they were making, decided to try the formats and other things

and go into other places. I remember back in the day, like YouTube seemed to be much shorter form videos. and now you have a lot of long form stuff a lot of 55 minute hour jerogan three hour videos on there yes there's always like rumors that go around being like oh this if you heard the latest this is what now you know this is what the algorithm wants and stuff and i i agree with that to a degree but i also think you've got the people that take it to the extreme sometimes and like you know the reason why I'm not doing this because of this and I never want to solely blame it I think that's why I don't always blame it on an algorithm this might go back to me

being the sort of self-doubting kind of imposter syndrome type vibe again or thinking like it's not just because of this mechanical thing that goes on in the background it's also because i need to switch things up and change my you know who i am online or what i'm doing online i need to move i need to shift what i'm doing with the times and i think that's harder than i than i thought when i was i'm going to change my stuff now and it's i think it's more difficult than I thought when I was sort of like, I'm going to change my stuff now. And I think it's more difficult than I thought. Was there a point where you saw numbers decline and you thought, where you start to think,

wait a minute, this is not how it used to be? Yeah, yeah. When was that? It was right before I said yes to doing Strictly. I thought, you know, it'll be fine. I'll get used to it and try with different content and things. I started to post different stuff and it just wasn't doing, performing as well as it used to. And I'd always kind of like prepared myself for it. Like my dad

actually gave me a good piece of advice, looking back on it, of being like, this, what you're doing now is great, but you know, in in the future it's only gonna get more more people trying to do what you do and there's gonna be people there's always there's always people out there that have new talents and stuff and it's gonna it's gonna change over time and there's gonna be people that come into this that have got you know not saying that yeah there's many people that come into it that have got super talent and stuff that just completely dominate and things. And so unless you've really got something about you,

you're going to struggle to keep up because it's just going to get bigger and bigger. And I kind of like, I look back now, I'm like, actually, a lot of what he said makes sense. You know, there is, you know, that's the sort of way it's gone. How do you define yourself now who are you now like as a from a self-definition point not that that's something i like to do to myself i don't like to self-define but if you if you someone if someone asks you to write a bio what do you say it's one of the hardest things for me to answer it genuinely is if if i'm ever asked to sort of sum myself up what i do i just i think it's like my

instagram bio is like i i am creative or something like that because i don't i find it so hard to sort of pigeonhole myself as this is what i do and this is what i am um so i'd say like it's it's difficult i just like to say like i'm just a creative person you wrote a book about being outside and in nature it seems like a fairly unobvious topic for someone like yourself to write about so it's very compelling why why did you decide to write about this about the importance of going outside during the lockdown we were all sort of looking for things to keep us busy and and i like we've mentioned before i love hobbies i'm always looking for things to do and i had like a balcony that ran off from my living area

and i got into gardening in that small little balcony of the things i could do at the time and the things i had lying around i got really into it and it's like sort of like caring for a plant i'm just trying to make a plant grow or putting time and effort into something else um and and sort of not being in this sort of the whirlwind that's going on online on our phones and stuff at that time disconnecting myself from that and sort of reconnecting myself with something as simple as as nature made me feel so good it took away all kind of like anxieties um i just felt very calm and very like it took me back to my childhood in a sense of like how i grew up i was very lucky to grow up in a in a little uh cottage type place um so getting all that

thoughts it's it's part memoir i talk a lot about like growing up in the countryside and like and sort of things actually living in london and and all that kind of stuff but also a part practical guide of hopefully giving some tips for other people in terms of like how they can find their own balance that suits them in terms of the real world and social media world it's quite a personal pivot isn't it going from being a youtuber who's uploading across three youtube channels and is glued to a screen to standing here holding these pots yeah yeah yeah it is very different i think but that's that's kind of like how i've been. I like to separate out those two things. And what I've realized is separating those two things out

is really beneficial for me. But it's in no way sort of saying that social media is bad and this kind of thing. You shouldn't be on social media because it's a tool that we all use. And we kind of like need to use, like in terms of like, we've got a personal computer in our hands. it's kind of like an extension of our arm we use it for so many

things so it's not saying like don't use your phone your phone is evil it's more kind of like finding a balance that's right for you that is going to help you feel better about yourself mentally on that point of thinking um mental health has become an increasing conversation over the last uh 10 years social media has played it's kind of sat in the middle of that debate um being someone that started a big social media business i talk about this a lot um and obviously you know people when we talk about social media and mental health they'll say well you made all your money from it so and and my rebuttal is always the same which is you know if i if i've spent 10 years within it and i

knew there was something wrong and i didn't tell you yeah i'd make me even more of an asshole right just because it had made me money so having having been us like very deep in social media over the last 10 years i think we're probably more qualified than most to talk about the impacts it has on us um the mind for better and for worse when you were going through your hard times of social media when you were having those real anxious moments where um you've written a few things about how there was about a two-year period with when when you'd really got going where you just had this overwhelming sensation that felt like it was impossible to escape what were you telling anybody about it were you talking to people were you speaking to zoe your family and saying i'm getting anxiety right now? Yeah, more so my sister, because my sister has suffered with it a lot

throughout her career. So I found it, I was very lucky that I could speak to her about it. And I obviously got a therapist as well that was recommended to me through my sister. Do you remember that first time you spoke to her about it? She was very good about it to be fair, because she's been through a lot of that stuff she sort of um straight away made me feel better in knowing that

at least sort of acknowledging what it is and bringing some sort of understanding to it um but it definitely definitely helped having someone so close to me like my sister being able to sort of help with that and you spoke to a therapist about this yes going to see a therapist has a lot of stigma surrounding it so especially men are often very reluctant to do that because i think especially once upon a time going and seeing a therapist meant that i was crazy oh yeah yeah so your journey to actually getting into the into therapy can you talk to me about that process and what pushed you ultimately to take that step?

I think for me, it was, I was, I never saw it as a sort of, I don't know whether it's because of my sister, once again, like through everything sort of, in a way sort of paving the way through that of like being like she was um seeing a therapist so I already felt like well if my sister my big sister can do it then then I can do I mean you know if she can do it I can I could do it so I was quite lucky in a sense it was actually a very easy process for me what has therapy done

for you practically is there anything you go that's it really helped me with that particular challenge that I had it's made me realize that I am a uh I've got a thing about people pleasing I'm a people pleaser so I I often feel like I can't be my unapologetic self in a situation without risking causing offense to someone. I'm like terrified of upsetting someone or saying the wrong thing. I'm learning through therapy that how to sort of manage that and to acknowledge it first and foremost and then to sort of and we're working on that at the moment of trying to sort of work on like why i have this thing of being worried so much about what other people think about what i do it's a tough business to be in if you if you have that as a kind of predisposition has your therapist been able to offer you any advice about overthinking at all yes uh more so in like the sort of anxiety side of things there's three there's there was i think two or three points that she suggested and it's like de-de-catastrophizing the catastrophe

um using time to separate so like if i'm if i'm feeling anxious i've got a sort of the way you think about time helps for example i was at um chelsea flower show recently with my mum and um i was i was engaged in conversation with someone else and i was but my mind was thinking like there's so much going on around me i started to feel anxious i just needed to get out of there and it started to make me feel sick that i was like i couldn't leave and i and i had um i remember i had a glass of champagne in my hand and i was like i don't know what to do because i can't i was starting to think of all these different scenarios of being like i can't just be sick here because i'm in like someone's garden i can't just like i can't just run away and leave mid conversations i'm so worried about going to them sorry i i can't just like, I can't just run away and leave mid conversations. I'm so worried about going to them. Sorry. I can't listen to what you're saying right now because my mind is

panicking. I need to go. I was so worried about how they would think of me. So it's like all that going on. But if you, what I've learned is that if you take that and think this conversation is max going to last five minutes, that helps. And it's like, no, that after those five minutes, you can walk over there and you can be on your own and do this kind of stuff. And it's going to last five minutes that helps and it's like no that after those five minutes you can walk over there and you can be on your own and do this kind of stuff and it's going to help so it's like kind of like if you're going into something that you think oh it's gonna be a five hour thing or like a two-hour exam you break it down into like chunks so it's like i've got okay this two-hour exam is uh four 30-minute chunks and that that starts to make me feel less anxious about things and then

also sort of thinking ahead of that whole thing so you've got an exam thinking well after this i'm going to go and do this this and this and this and when you're thinking about things further in the future it actually starts to make make me feel more calm diane you met her on strictly yes strictly gave you a lot didn't it yeah it did yeah yeah what was really interesting is that was your first girlfriend yeah that's that's first yeah first real girlfriend first real proper girlfriend yeah at what age 27 26 yeah god i wonder if had you met her outside of strictly if you would be together yeah because it seems like you would have done a pretty good job of overthinking your way it's we have the same conversation we're like how lucky it was in a way that we were even part together because when

you're partnered if you're if we weren't even partners on the show we're on the same show we still say we may not have got together because when you're actually with your partners, you don't see each other throughout the week. So we're like this, we sort of see it as like the stars sort of realigned there. But it wasn't, it was an odd sort of situation, I guess.

It's not how I thought it would happen. I used to be quite like nervous about sort of getting a girlfriend publicly because i would always think what because i had at the time i had this sort of uh large female young female demographic that were that really into sort of what i did and things like that and i was kind of like i've seen through like friends i I've got girlfriends, you know, and when they introduce their girlfriends to their audiences,

it's a bit kind of like a, I always thought it would be a very private thing. And in my head, the whole time I was like, it'll be very private. And it's actually ended up being the complete opposite. It's like, you can now watch the moment we met, which is kind of unusual. It seems from just speaking to you today

and getting to know you a bit, it does seem like that was the perfect way for you to get past because you were forced together yeah yeah yeah and it's you know what i mean in the context of the show you were forced to spend time with each other you weren't there to to fall in love but they put you together to do this very quite intimate thing very deep journey over many many months yeah and it feels like from a from just understanding you a little bit that was probably the best way for you to get past a lot of that, sort of talking yourself out of it. 100%.

And you know what? You see the, I feel like on that, in that environment anyway, especially for me, it's like we saw, I feel like we saw the best and the worst in each other over that sort of 16 week period. There have been times where we go into training and like things weren't going to plan. We thought we're going home and we, you stress the further you go in that competition the higher the

pressure is and the stress gets and things like that so we we saw the best and the worst of each other within those 16 excuse me within those 16 weeks and um and i was and afterwards i was kind of like when we even sort of like had time to really kind of sort of address things like post um and be like i actually kind of want to spend more time with you because i felt like i kind of i've seen the best and the worst and i can you know i'm happy with that and it is vice versa and so um so yeah that's how it yeah that's how it sort of happened so the show ends yeah you get to the final you do very well and then you did the tour yes which everyone a lot of people do and they love that process as well when did you decide that your dance partner was not just a dance partner and was a girlfriend

it was it was actually it was before the tour before the tour before the tour yeah strictly but before yeah it was after the show finished um and like a few days after we had time to sort of like we obviously missed each other because we didn't see each other so after we were like sort of like i do miss like miss spending time with you and things like that and so obviously we had a conversation had a sort of decided and to see each other more often and things like that and we actually then went uh went away to a place in the new forest wait a minute that was very quick you had a conversation on whatsapp or in person no no like in person okay so you met up a few times in person yeah yeah and then straight to the forest and then uh we went yeah we went uh we went to the new forest like a little

trip right um and i remember we were getting like followed because like there's a lot of like um sort of there was a lot of like attention on us at the time i think and um and so yeah we were getting we were getting followed by a guy like i'm very like sort of aware of like what's going on around me and stuff i think it's i think it's just from the career that i've had over the last 10 years i don't know but i'm like i was like that guy's part i could see from my flat i was like that guy's parked there he's a paparazzi yeah and um it's this is gonna sound really like really wanky but i i i was lent to naston martin that that morning so i went down and i was like this is the best i do things like this more often i get um lent cars like this and i was like and so i went down and um parked it and he must have seen me parked he

knew what car to follow and later on that day i was driving along and i looked from the rearview mirror i was like i think we're being followed and then um i recognized the like the license plate was something to do with the car and um and it put me on so much edge i was like driving along thinking like i actually can't concentrate on driving because yeah i know this person is just trying to follow us um so i i i um i yeah i sort of turned off from where i was trying to go to because i don't want to actually turn up to where we're going so i was like trying to like shake him off shake him off a little bit so i was like right diane you know how to work bluetooth it's like yeah put on the james bond theme song

and we had that moment of just like trying to sort of avoid um this this guy he was following us and we did manage to do it obviously very safely did the pictures come out in the paper no no nothing luckily because we were moving on the move um but but yeah i remember that very clearly of that kind of like a moment of being like this is not what i'm used to at all don't don't know if i like this but but then yeah that's where we sort of yeah that's where you're a couple years into the relationship now yeah you live together right right? Yes. Yeah. How's it going? Yeah, it's going good.

Yeah, going really well. It's really nice because we are both very, like she's also one of the professional dancers. So she's still very much involved in the show. And when the show is not on, she's involved in the tours and things like that. So a lot of our time is separate. And we had one year, obviously 2019 was a year where we were like

together and but we had our own stuff that we're working on it's a very busy year for me and also a very busy year for her with like tours and and back then even like i think they do like cruise like did like cruise ships and stuff as well so like those are different tours and stuff so we were away a lot of a lot of the time but then when we come together it's so nice because we've got so much to as they say like distance makes the heart grow fonder and that kind of stuff and i i genuinely kind of i do believe in that i think especially in this sort of situation like although we are away from each other a fair bit because of our work commitments and stuff it works really really well and like when we do when we are together it's nice just to spend quality time together um but yeah no i'm absolutely loving it

we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the previous guest asks a question for the next guest not knowing who they're asking it for do you remember a moment where you realised that you loved your job? When was it and why? And was there a moment when you realised you hated your job? When was it and why? Ooh, good question. The moment that I remember that I loved my job was, there's a lot of little moments that stick out,

but I think this was going back to the old YouTube gang. So like me, my sister, Alfie, Marcus, Butler, Jim, Tanya, a lot of that kind of, the brick crew we were called back in the day. We got invited to harry potter world um and i'm i've i'll admit i'm not the biggest harry potter fan but just being around like having like a day out with with that group that first sort of because it's kind of like our first sort of big group out somewhere and just being around these people and we're all going through the same

situation which i really appreciate the fact that there's people within this group that i can chat to and speak to about what was going on and it was such a new and exciting time and we're all kind of on that journey up um i just remember that memory's always stuck in my head and there's weirdly there's a there's a vlog i've logged we all vlogged it so it's like it's actually been documented so we can go back and watch it in the future and stuff but um that really sticks out so what about the second part of that question the so a moment sorry a moment where i hated my job yeah i guess it was the time where i had that burnout feeling and i was i had so much going on i just thought you know what i actually don't really know if i want to do this anymore and i was i had so much going on i thought you know what i actually don't

really know if i want to do this anymore and i i remember telling my manager at the time um alex uh that i was like i just don't know if i want to do this there's too much going on i don't i i actually can't really handle it i'm you know i'm thinking about my old job and how much sort of simpler that was and thinking like, ah, it's like, but I had all these things going from my head of like that thing of like, don't be ungrateful, but also I am struggling with it.

And I guess in that moment would feel like the time that I hated it, but it didn't last very long because my manager at the time, Alex, she sent me like a care package. She like went out and above and beyond and sent me this care package. She went out and above and beyond and sent me this care package of like a book.

And weirdly it was a Harry Potter book, which as we know, not the biggest fan, but at the time it was exactly, like I said, it's exactly what I needed. But right before she saved the day, it was, yeah. Tough. Probably about that time, I think. Joe, thank you so much.

Thank you for your time. Thank you for writing a really important book. I think these kind of messages in the digital overstimulated world we're living in, especially our generation, the generation that are coming, are very, very important. And they're very simplifying, which I love because it's very easy to write very complex things

that try and make things more complicated than they are in order to make yourself sound super smart or to try and trick people to buy something or to think you're a scientist. But I love stuff that is simplifying. It makes it much more accessible. And I think that is why I love this particular book so much. But I also really appreciate your honesty

because you're talking about topics and themes that on one hand, very few people will ever get to experience with the crazy career that you had in youtube and that you're having in the media and all of these things but but also topics that are not always easy to talk about which is the the difficult harder times and and that balance is exactly why we do what we do here so thank you for your time thank you very much no pleasure thanks for having me i can't see wait to see what happens next. Safe.