The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Moment 9 - Eddie Hearn on The Sacrifices Behind Being Relentless

Episode Date: June 10, 2021

In these ‘Moment’ episodes of my podcast, I’ll be selecting my favourite moments from previous episodes of The Diary Of A CEO. In this clip, Eddie Hearn reveals how his childhood in the shadow of his highly-successful father, Barry Hearn, turned him into the ‘relentless’ sports promoter and businessman he is today. We also talk about some of the sacrifices Eddie has had to make in order to make it to the top and discuss how even something as important as family can often become neglected in his pursuit of success. Taken from episode 58 - https://g2ul0.app.link/TFJj7P1BWgb Eddie: https://www.instagram.com/eddiehearn/ https://twitter.com/EddieHearn?s=20 VOTE FOR US FOR BEST BRITISH PODCAST: https://www.britishpodcastawards.com/vote?utm_source=emailoctopus&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Nominated 

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 before we came uh started filming today i had a chat with frank and he fully grasped on you now what he said to me which i which was also consistent with these interviews is that you are relentless and he was telling me he's he's had some i probably shouldn't say this but he was telling me he's i've started having this, is it night owl? Night nurse.

Night nurse. Because Eddie will text me in the middle of the night. And he went, I'll tell you one thing about Eddie. He is relentless. You're what, 40? 41. 41 years old. What's made you that relentless at 41 years old to the point where you're pestering your pestering your colleagues at 3am in the morning i don't know really um i think when i when i did the book it was like it was quite

a good um sort of counseling session with myself because i wasn't really great at school i wasn't particularly a hard worker at school i I loved the pound note, always. And when I wrote the book, I started writing about my childhood and what it was like growing up and how I was moulded. And I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that I love to win. And I'm a...

Why did you love to win? I don't know, because with my dad, that's what we did. So when we played cricket, when we played football, when we played table tennis, when we sparred with each other, it was like, for me growing up, you weren't... I would come back from a match. Say I played cricket and he would go to me. Actually, my mum was the same.

And he would say to me, how many runs did you get today, son? And I would say, oh, no, four. Oh, useless. Come on. Next time, knock in a 50. Right? It was never, oh, well, well done, son.

You know, you took part. That's what really matters. They taught me taking part is completely and utterly irrelevant. You win. And ultimately, sport is how I was brought up. I was brought up on the foundations of sport, the lessons of sport, the winning, the losing, the highs, the lows, but always taught that winning was everything.

And I'm a failed athlete. I think any kid growing up would love to be a sportsman, wouldn't they? I played cricket at a very good level, but I was never good enough at anything so this is the next best thing but I think if you're not trying to win in life and win winning it means something different to everybody success means something different to everybody some people view success as being able to get their pay packet on a weekend you know be able to you know spend time with her family and have enough food on the you know make enough money to have food on the table and make sure everything's okay at home and and be happy you know and have

a happy life with no no stress or no drama that's success to a lot of people but people's interpretation of success is very different and you know for me i i still don't know why i i i i do i don't know i know why i do this but like you say i love it i guess that's what it comes down to a passion for what you do and i don't know what the passion is is it the passion that i love the sport of boxing is it the passion that i want to succeed against you know and be bigger than my dad i think that's a big part of it as well or is it just that i love to win or is it that i'm a bit sick in the head maybe all of them the sick in the head point i want to play with that idea a little bit um i i write i wrote in my book actually we have the same publisher i wrote in my book that the thing that invalidates

you when you're younger becomes the thing you seek validation from when you're older and what I meant by that is like in my childhood because we didn't have money um and I was this black kid in a school of 1500 white kids everything that we didn't have became the things that I chased when I was older or the thing that made me feel somewhat invalid sometimes when I was a kid like you're saying about your dad saying oh you lost today became the thing that I would seek validation from as as a as an adult and i wondered if that resonated with you at all i mean like a lot of different background i mean my dad was poor became rich and i was born so i've said before it's not like when when you talk about generational wealth we didn't have generational wealth um i had a dad who was from dagnam was from a council

estate his dad was a bus driver and then i grew up in this sort of nouveau world where this bloke had made his money and he was you know i'll take the mickey out of him i suppose he was a bit of a chav you know he was like from dagnam and all of a sudden he's got ferraris and big cars and we used to have a white limo and a black limo that would drive like the snooker players around and the fighters around. And I was horrible. I was obnoxious. Imagine like a 14,

15 year old kid hanging around with you bank and Naz. And then you're in the limo with your mates going up to London or to Romford for a night out. I mean, I look back and just cringe, but mine was different, you know? And,

and I guess when it comes down to it, and again from the book and speaking to people like Frank Lampard, he went to my school. He was in the year above me. At my school, I was Barry Hearn's son. And Frank Lampard was Frank Lampard's son. His dad played for West Ham. And it's a different kind of drive if you can make it flow in the right way

you know when you're talking about sort of mindset and and and hustle where all of a sudden I think so many people with successful parents end up just doing okay you know but how do you go beyond that how do you outperform everything that he done and i will and i feel like i've done that in many ways but i will never be able to outperform the fact that he came from nothing my friends are my friend is in a very similar position you if i said my friend's name you'd know the guy okay his dad is a multi-billionaire i know you know him because i've seen you with him before actually in new york but um his dad is a multi-billionaire and he grew up with living in the shadow and his dad was the same.

And I had a conversation with him and he said, I was always trying to be better than my dad. He is now a billionaire himself of his own doing. But it's just, it's fascinating that, and his dad sounds very similar to what your dad sounds, where his dad was tough on him.

Tough on him. I think they're tough on you because they don't want you to be that spoiled kid i mean you always want to um spoil your kids you know you want to give them the great even now you know i've got two daughters i love to spoil i work hard so i can give them a great life but i just want them to understand manners respect and discipline these are the three most important things and he would make sure that i would understand that even by having me working you know giving me a clout every now and again you know trying to keep because i it must have been frustrating for him because i was probably

all the things that he resented when he was growing up you had a rich kid oh with with parents who had got big house and cars and and i would have hated me at school, you know, but he would have looked at me and that's why he was so disciplined with me. And I was in his slipstream growing up. So I would sit, you know, we're here now. That was my house over there. So he would get home from work if he was in the country. You know, he would always go out and give me a game of football or cricket.

And then he would go in the office all night on the phone and i would have dinner and i would just sit in the office you know i might have a ball just throwing it up in the air but i would some subconsciously listen to the arguments and you know him losing his temper and and just listen not because i wanted to learn just because i was there and you're talking there about the sacrifice of his success, which is one of them, as you've highlighted, is less time with your family. You are relentless. Everybody says that. What is the cost of being a relentless person?

You have to be incredibly selfish. You have to, you know, for me, family is the most important thing, but I have to be brutally honest and say, I don't let even family get in the way of things that I have to do you know and that that can make you an arsehole and it can make you sound terrible but I just don't know any way around it there is no way you can be the perfect husband or the perfect father and run a successful business or you know be a you know a relentless operator.

It's impossible because I know, because I try to balance both. But when you're flying back from America from a show and you land at seven o'clock in the morning and then you go to Manchester for a press conference and then you come home and you just make it to pick them up from school and then you get back and they say,

dad, dad, let's go over to park. And you're just absolutely on empty and your phone's going and you're trying to do another deal and you know you're pushing the swing and you're going like this trying to send a message at the same time it's impossible you know listen i know because sometimes my eldest daughter is old enough to dad please get off the phone and that's that kills me because that's oh that's bad to hear you know i'm like okay okay but then 30 seconds later i'm back just haven't looked down because it's a lifestyle you know and it's impossible to be great at anything without making sacrifices you know it doesn't matter if you're a fighter if you're a sportsman you speak to all successful people

you can't be everything it's impossible you know and and but what you don't want to do is you don't want to disregard your obligations, your family obligations, because they are extremely important. But you also need a wife or a partner who's understanding enough to say, this is what I know what he's like. He won't stop. And that's why when Frank talks about 3 a.m., 4 a.m., that's because a lot of the time I'm sort of making up for the hour or two that I've lost out playing with the kids.

So I'll put them to sleep. They'll go to sleep at nine, half nine, you know, chill out with a wife for an hour. She'll go to sleep and then I'm up. And now with the growth in America, it means that at 4pm, 5pm, the West Coast wakes up. So I can't go to bed. I can't disappear when it gets to 11 a.m or on the

west coast or or midday on the west coast because they want to speak to me and we want to do business