The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Moment 21 - Professor Green on The Source Of Your Success

Episode Date: September 2, 2021

In these ‘Moment’ episodes of my podcast, I’ll be selecting my favourite moments from previous episodes of The Diary Of A CEO. Professor Green’s accomplishments as a white rapper, at the time he found success, is a staggering achievement. An achievement which, perhaps, wouldn’t be expected from a young guy dealing drugs to get by. So in this clip I ask Professor Green, aka Stephen Paul Manderson, to explain how he found success in his career, and then happiness. Episode 80: https://g2ul0.app.link/7FV8iDIJcjb Professor Green: https://www.instagram.com/professorgreen/ https://twitter.com/professorgreen

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 time square um for the show so thank you so much amazon music um thank you to our team and thank you to all of you that listen to this show let's continue i remember listening to your music when I was in when I was in secondary school a lot and I remember listening to a lot of your records more recently as well and even you know like as as when I know you were coming in today I started like going back through my old back catalogue of your music um at the time when you made it as you said then in the UK in the uk hip-hop scene as a white male that's a fucking staggering accomplishment like do you not know genuinely it is i'm like i know a lot because

you might not know this but you're from the jump off days yep and i'm all the don't flop boys that all best friends are mine like i don't know if you know you know unanimous i don't know if you know who you know okay he'll be offended but um no but like you know i kind of jumped out yeah of course yeah yeah yeah we've been manchester and like they used to come to my house sometimes for five days in a row and like stay at my house and they'd rap and stuff i used to write music back in those days as well but watching how talented a lot of these people are at what they do and still a lot of them haven't made it like you did yeah Yeah. Makes me beg the question. It's like,

what were the factors that came into play to make sure that you as a white rapper in the UK scene got through? Um, do you know what? Just persistence, persistence, persistence. I just didn't stop.

You know, there were so many full starts as well. I was signing to Mike Skinner's record label, me and him, me being lazy, not working as hard as i should have when um during the period when i signed to his label um and i can put my hands up and say that but us also biting heads and not agreeing on music up until a point and then just as we did and he sent a really

kind email and he was like look i've been spending too long trying to make you into something that you're not rather than focusing on what you're good at let's go um and it was almost at that point when warner pulled the financing from his label they were subsidized in his label they moved everything in-house apart from all of this the rest uh sorry i think it was six seven nine uh was the label they kept and they moved that in-house and then they they pulled the finance in from the rest of their subsidiaries because of napster and LimeWire you know that the money they were seeing had had fallen subsequently because of all the piracy um so the album never came out for two reasons because the label lost their financing because I never worked hard enough um and then after that I went back to what I knew um and what facilitated me being able to continue my my quest

to become a successful musician which by the way i thought would absolve me of everything in my past yeah and just make me happy what did you find out uh well that was bullshit wasn't it what a stupid fucking idea that was um so you thought that becoming a successful musician would make your part would put your past at ease, basically. Yeah, you just, you just, you, and this is what's dangerous about pinning your happiness or your hopes of happiness on an ever moving goalpost. Quite often you move yourself. If I sell this many records, I'm going to be happy. And then you sell that many records and then it's like, okay, if I get a number one single, I'm going to be happy.

Then you get the number one single. And then it's like, well, what's next? You talked about this to be happy then you get the number one single and then it's like well what's next you talked about this earlier you said about how you've got to enjoy the moment more yeah else you'll never enjoy like yeah yeah how do you do that though in the moment um in the moment i don't like so for me i'm just it's just it's been a really really long journey towards not you know going back to the corners you can't see around this it's just taking it for what it is it's like i'm here and i'm i'm entirely present my head is not worrying about the meeting that i've got to go to afterwards i'm aware of it because i've seen my schedule but i'm not thinking about it and i used to like i would lay in bed and my mind would be spinning spinning

spinning about everything that i had coming up there's no like it's good to plan like and i find you worry more if you don't plan but i try and look at you know i don't look at my calendar too far ahead anymore because it doesn't help me you know i i want to be present i want to be able to be here and have a conversation with you to look you in the eye and talk to you without having another shit in my head you know an empty head and an open heart man that's that's that's how you're present and they're not the easiest things to achieve when we all have so much going on in our lives and when we're always so like ambitious because when like as you say the moving goalpost and i really like because i will achieve something today but before the date of even achieving it

i've already set the new goal do you know what i mean and so you never experience the achievement and i've i've, since leaving my business, one of my mentors said to me, he's that old and he's done it all and he's way more successful than I'll probably ever be. And he was like, the one advice I'll give to you, Steve, is just like, try your very best to enjoy it in the moment. Because you look back on it with rose-tinted glasses and you wish you had just savoured it more.

Yeah, but you can enjoy it in hindsight, isn't it? It's what I was saying earlier. You look back on it and you go, wow, I that but actually it's the the accolades are not that important the rewards are are they're they're part of it if you're lucky enough to achieve but the process is the part of it that you have to enjoy and that's the i think that's the struggle that's why a lot of people don't necessarily find themselves that happy because they're not in situations where they're happy to be doing the work that they're doing to get to where they want to be.

And that's perhaps because they're in the wrong place where they want to be and what they're doing to get there. Don't, you know, they don't marry up. And we're fortunate. We do things we love. We get to pick and choose. That's, that's uh you know i was gonna say it's lucky but it's it's not it's hard work and perseverance what do you worry about then

these days um i mean most recently in the last two weeks it's been like is that noise that my son's making in his sleep normal so for context uh steven's just had a new kid yeah um a new baby boy yeah which is amazing my first child um i'm really you know just i mean yeah just the thing the things that i encounter day to day i'm not really too i don't know man like it's weird to be at this point in my life in my career about to sign a new record deal, to be putting music out again, but to not have that, like my energy is different. I'm just excited in being able to have a route to market. I've had all this music that because of some stupid problems I had with the label I was with that I couldn't put out i wasn't able to to to exercise that part of you know what i did and that i missed terribly because that's my output that's my creative output you know i enjoy working on all the other things i'm doing whether it's a gulp or giz and greens anything all the ideas that i have that i you know will hopefully come into fruition later on that i'm chipping away at behind the scenes but music is my output that's my hobby it always has been so when

i get suppressed and i'm not able to to to work on music or release music and they kind of go hand in hand because it's kind of weird working on music that you know you can't release or that you know someone is standing in the way of you that you don't feel as motivated to get in the studio and work whereas now i'm like i don't know but i'm not worried about how it's received i'm just really happy to be able to put music out my worries are not not what they were all the things i used to worry about i you know i mean i don't have financial security yet and i'm in a much better place than, than I could have been growing up where I grew up. It wasn't what was expected. Um, but you know, I have to pay my mortgage. I have things like that, but there's, you know, they're not worries.

I have to work to pay, you know, that's again, you know, work can be a stress or it can just be work. You know, my mortgage can be a stress or it can just be a mortgage. I just have to work. There are things that there's quite simple things that I have to do in order to pay my mortgage you know so i try and not get bogged down by by the everyday shit my worries uh uh just whatever pops up and are they worries you know and i get to to know a child like am i holding my child correctly things like that that they're they're my current concerns