The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Steven Shares’s His Secret Diary: Dealing With Liam Payne’s Death, My Big Relationship Issue, These 4 Words Saved Me!

Episode Date: November 24, 2024

STEVEN’S DIARY IS BACK! It’s been a long time, since I’ve done this. In this episode I talk about heartbreak, grief, business challenges, relationship struggles, advice from Sir David Brailsford and protecting my mental health - all of it is unfiltered.  When I first started The Diary Of A CEO, the central idea of the show, was to read my personal diary every week – I believed that It might be interesting to get to see inside the very personal diary of someone that was running a business with hundreds of team members, at 25ish years old, while contending with all of life’s problems, relationships, mental health challenges, mistakes, business issues, family problems, and more. So late on Sunday night once in a while, I would pull up a microphone in my old apartment, and I would read through my diary for 45 minutes or an hour. The Diary Of A CEO took on a life of it’s own, I went from reading my diary, to interviewing other people about their diaries, to speaking to experts about all the problems that I cared about. But every single week, someone will come up to me and tell me they found value in those early episodes, and they’ll ask me if I would ever share my diary again… So this weekend, I finally decided to give it go. This episode is my diary. The original, Diary Of A CEO.  Follow me: https://g2ul0.app.link/gnGqL4IsKKb  🚀 The 1% Diary is live - and it won’t be around for long, so act fast! https://bit.ly/1-Diary-Megaphone-ad-reads Watch the Guest episodes on Youtube - https://g2ul0.app.link/DOACEpisodes  Music partly composed by: https://www.instagram.com/eejebee/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It has been a long time since I've done this. Many many years ago when I first started the Diary of a CEO, the central idea of the show was to read my diary every week. I believe that it might be interesting to get to see inside the very personal diary of someone that was running a business with hundreds of team members at 25 years old while contending with all of life's problems, relationships, mental health challenges, mistakes, family problems and more. So late on a Sunday night once in a while, I would plug in a microphone in my old apartment and I would read through my diary entries. The diary of a CEO took on a life of its own. I went from reading my diary to interviewing other people about their diaries to speaking to experts about all of the problems

that I found in my diary. But every single week someone will come up to me and tell me that they found value in those early episodes and they'll ask me if I would ever share my diary again. I've thought about it for years and years and this weekend I finally decided to give it a go. So what you're listening to today is my diary. The notes I've taken in the last few weeks. The original diary of a CEO. 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. Here's the first thing that I've written in my diary this week.

Pedals over podiums. I was driving through the streets of Los Angeles a few weeks ago with a really good friend of mine. It was late afternoon and the sun was hanging low in the sky, painting everything in shades of amber and gold. As we navigated through the ebb and flow of Los Angeles traffic, the distant hum of the city filled the car, a blend of honking horns, muffled conversations and the faint melody of a street performer playing somewhere in the distance. We were on our way to a football match on the other side of town. My friend in the passenger seat

was the founder of a huge fashion business that's absolutely skyrocketed over the last couple of years. It's one of those brands that's become so popular that I know so many of you listening right now are probably wearing. His designs have walked runways, graced magazine covers and become staples in wardrobes all around the world. But as we set off, I couldn't help but notice an unusual, almost palpable tension inside the car. Normally our drives are filled with laughter and lively debates, but this time there was a heavy silence punctuated only by the engine in the occasional sound of cars speeding past. You know that feeling when you can just sense something weighing heavily on someone's mind.

He stared out the passenger window, watching as palm trees and billboards flew by. Finally he turned to me, his voice usually so confident and assertive, was tinged with vulnerability as he broke the silence. Do you ever worry that what you're doing will stop growing, will decline, or will fail? He asked softly. The question hung in the air between us as my brain scrambled to read between the lines. By this question, I assumed that the business he had poured his life into might have started to stagnate. Perhaps the uncertainty this had created was looming like a shadow over his achievements casting doubt in his mind.

Before I could respond, he shifted the conversation. I was talking to our mutual friend, John, the other day, you know, the one with the podcast. I nodded, knowing exactly who he meant. Even he's a little bit concerned his podcast growth has been flat, and he's questioning everything, my friend continued. As he spoke, my mind flashed back to a conversation I had years ago with Sir David Bralsford. Coincidentally, Sir David had been on my mind because I'd spoken to him the day before and we were actually on our way to meet him at a pre-season Manchester United game in LA at that exact moment. For those of you who might not be familiar, Sir David Brelsford is the mastermind behind British cycling's transformation from mediocrity to global dominance. He was now leading performance

at Manchester United under the new Ineos ownership. Many years ago, when Sir David took over as performance director of British cycling, they hadn't won an Olympic gold medal in nearly a century. Under his leadership, they didn't just win, they dominated, securing multiple gold medals and Tour de France victories. But what struck me most when I first met Sir David wasn't his impressive list of victories, it was his intense focus on mindset and psychology, which I'm now convinced is what made those victories possible. I remember sitting across from him on my kitchen table as he cradled his mug in his hands, the steam rising and curling in the air. You know, he began, staring his coffee thoughtfully,

the spoon making a soft clanging noise against the ceramic. When our cyclists became fixated on the podium, on the medals, the glory, their performance suffers. He paused, taking a slow sip. It's a subtle shift, but it's profound. The podium exists in the future, a place beyond our immediate control. The more they obsess over standing on that podium, winning that medal, the less attention

they pay to the one thing that actually matters. The present moment, the rotation of the pedals beneath them. He leaned in closer, his gaze steady and honest, his voice carrying the weight of hard earned wisdom. So we changed our approach. We told them to forget about the podium. Instead, focus entirely on the pedals. Each rotation, each breath, each muscle contraction.

This is where success is truly forged. At the time, his words resonated with me so deeply. The simplicity of focusing on the immediate, the tangible, the now. It was a lesson that transcends cycling, one that can be applied to any endeavor pursued by any of us in any of our lives. Back in the car, as my friend continued to explain his fears and uncertainties, the echo of Sir David's insight seemed more relevant than ever. So I turned to my friend, offering a small smile of reassurance and I said, don't worry about the podium, focus on the pedals. I went on to explain what Sir David had taught me and how by falling into outcome overthinking,

he would be distracting himself from what he needed to do, to turn his business around. I told him that when we allow our minds to drift too far ahead, we risk disconnecting from the present, which is where our power, inspiration and creativity lies. Studies on mindfulness, a practice rooted in staying present, show that those who focus on the now, rather than an uncertain future, experience less anxiety, greater focus and improved performance across a variety of different tasks. And a neuroscientist on my podcast has shown me that studies prove when we become preoccupied with potential outcomes, like whether we'll win a race or if our company is going to die, the brain's default mode network, DMN, becomes highly active. This network, which is involved

in self-referential thinking, which is basically thinking about yourself too much, can lead to overthinking and heightened stress, which puts you off performing at your best. But conversely, when we anchor our attention in the present moment, regions of the brain associated with focus and task execution, such as the prefrontal cortex, become more engaged which enhances our ability to perform at our best. Sir David's approach teaches us a fundamental truth. Ironically, when we focus too much on the outcome, we end up sabotaging the very actions needed to achieve it. We become distracted or paralysed by the weight of our expectations. But by narrowing our focus to the here and now, by mastering each stroke, each moment,

we align our actions with our intentions, setting the stage for success. My friend's greatest risk in that car that day wasn't his numbers stagnating, it was him being distracted by the numbers and losing touch with his customers. If he just focused on the art, the value, his creativity, the very things that had gotten him there, the numbers, the podium, would take care of itself. So whether you're an athlete peddling towards the finish line or an entrepreneur navigating the turbulent waters of business, an artist crafting your next masterpiece, or simply someone striving to find balance in life's complexities, remember, focus on the pedals, not the podium. Success isn't a

destination, it's a journey comprised of countless moments where we choose to be fully present. The podium, the accolades, the achievements, the milestones are merely the byproduct of our commitment to mastering each moment, each rotation of the pedals. I always tell people, you wouldn't plant a seed and then dig it up every few minutes to see if it had grown. So why do you keep questioning yourself, your hard work and your decisions? Have patience. Keep watering your seeds. Funnily enough, this week I stumbled across a video that reinforced the idea of thinking

of pedals over podiums. It's a video of Johnny Ives, the head designer from Apple, who worked alongside Steve Jobs, Apple's visionary founder, at a time when Apple were in real trouble at the very beginning. Steve Jobs had been fired from Apple, the company had struggled and he'd been rehired as the CEO. In the clip, Johnny Ives talks about how a dying company like Apple saved themselves, not by trying to save themselves or thinking about the outcome or problem they were in, but by focusing on the pedals, the thing they could control.

in, but by focusing on the pedals, the thing they could control. Our job isn't to make money for Apple. Our job is to try and make the very best products that we can. Now we trust if they are good and we trust if we're competent and we do our jobs in trying to describe them and if we're competent in making them, they will be attractive and bold, they will be bought in volume and that we will eventually make money. I'm aware that that can sound like an easy thing to say given our vantage point right now but that's actually what we said in 98 when when the company was struggling. You see we didn't say that the goal was turn around

because if we'd said the goal back in the late 90s was to turn the company around, that's all about money. When Steve came back, that's how he articulated what the goals of the company needed to be. And this wasn't some subtle, this wasn't an exercise in sort of clever wordsmithing. This was describing profoundly different attitudes and approaches to what the problem was at hand.

And just to add another layer to this, Sir David and Steve Jobs didn't just adopt this mindset when they were trying to turn a bad team or company around. They also thought like this when things were going very well. In fact when things are really good or really bad it seems people have a greater temptation to start obsessing over the wrong things. I found a letter that Steve Jobs sent to his team in 2010 on the day when Apple became the most valuable company in the world overtaking Microsoft for the first time. And here is what Steve Jobs told his team May 26th 2010 559 p.m. Team as most of you already know at the close of today's stock market Apple's market cap surpassed Microsoft's market cap.

As I once said in a company email sent a long time ago stocks go up and stocks go down and things may be different tomorrow. But I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today. And so it is again. Walt Disney used to say to his team, we are only as good as our next picture. Well, we are only as good as our next amazing new product. Back to work, Steve. When I read this letter for the first time,

I had a huge sigh of relief because just like you, I get anxious about the future. I can fall into worry about outcomes and I can waste energy thinking too much about the podium. In fact, it's in areas of my life that I'm most successful that I seem to worry the most. And this doesn't just apply to business, it applies to life itself.

I've observed that people that focus on what they want, the podium, instead of what they have to offer, the pedals, rarely get what they want. But the people that focus on what they have to offer, the pedals, usually get what they want, the podium. I.e. the people that end up on the podium are the ones that were most focused on the pedals. And the people that never focus on the pedals never end up on the podium. In the good times and the bad, when the numbers are up and the numbers are down, focus on the pedals not the podium. And if you do, in time, the podium will take care of itself.

The second thing I've written in my diary this week is quite a personal one. I've just written, you and your partner are both probably wrong. And this point is really about love and relationships. For several nights in a row, I'd arrived home to my apartment in the east of London at 11pm. Then I collapsed onto the soft 12 foot sofa in my living room. Its cushions enveloping me like a tired hug. And there I lay, savouring the sweet, sweet sound of doing absolutely nothing. The ticking of the clock in the corner of the room, the only reminder that time is passing. This is a gruelling part of the year for me professionally. Whenever my long-standing assistant turns to me with that familiar look of concern

and warns me about the months ahead, I know I'm screwed. My calendar right now is hilarious. In the next three months it has me flying to every corner of the world from the bustling streets of Bangkok and Thailand to the sprawling cityscape of Los Angeles to the desert horizons of Kuwait, sometimes for three major events in the same day. The constant echo of airports, the roar of jet engines, the rustle of boarding passes. For the next few months, this is the soundtrack to my life. My company, Flight, has just launched Flight Studio, our new media company, which has in turn launched a series of new shows. We've also launched Flight Books, our new book publishing

company, signing almost 10 authors so far. My fund, Flight Fund, has some 8,000 applications to sort through. My podcast schedule is crammed, my speaking and events schedule is overflowing. We're building a new software company called Flightcast based in San Francisco, which has meant constant meetings with Spotify, YouTube, Apple and more. We've just taken a new 25,000 square foot headquarters in central London called Flight HQ which we're halfway through building. My talent recruitment company Chapter Two is occupying a lot of my thoughts. I'm juggling a total of 40 companies that I've either invested in via

Flight Fund or founded including a company I co-founded a few years ago called Third Web which has now raised roughly 30 million dollars and was recently valued at $160 million and is based in San Francisco with a team of 50. The list goes on. Boo hoo. I know what you're thinking, Steve, you chose all of this chaos. Don't you dare ask for sympathy. Don't you dare complain about it. I accept all of that. This whirlwind is self-inflicted and I'm still trying to figure out why me as someone who says that I care about peace has seemingly done everything to eradicate the possibility of it. I'm so fucking confusing. I think we all are. What we state and what we do and the forces that pull us, pull us, drag us and drive us

are impossibly hard to understand. But when my life gets more chaotic like this, I become a different person at home. From Monday to Friday I'm distant, a little empty, desperate for nothing. Silence. Solitude. Sometimes, just to lay horizontally on this massive beige couch and do absolutely nothing. But there's a problem. I've been with my partner for almost six years now. We have a great relationship. She is the love of my life,

my future wife if I decide to get married, and the mother of my future kids. But the most frequently recurring issue in our relationship is this mutual frustration from me that she doesn't understand my world and therefore she's not giving me the expected amount of empathy, grace, patience or space and conversely from her that I don't understand her world, more specifically her needs for quality time, presence, love and attention. And on that day, just like the night before, and the night before that, as I lay there like a dead body at 11.30pm, doing absolutely nothing, I heard the soft shuffle of her footsteps on our stone floor as she approached me. She

started speaking to me about a variety of different issues, concerns and topics that were on her mind. Her voice was gentle, but tinged with the weight of unspoken feelings. It was late at night, the shadows long and the world asleep. My dopamine was completely depleted from my brain. My cortisol levels at an all-time high from having to perform all day. Perform as a CEO, a founder, a speaker, a podcaster, a manager, an author, an investor. The mental exhaustion pressed on me like a physical weight. I looked up at her and I said, I can't do this right now. I've had a really long day. I'm tired. I'd said the same thing the night before and

the night before and the night before. I'm going to be honest with you, because I think it's important. After all, this podcast is called The Diary of a CEO. We had a disagreement that night. Our voices remained calm, but the tension was a quiet storm brewing between us. I went to a separate part of the apartment and I closed the door behind me. The feeling I had in that moment is one I've pretty much had my whole life in relationships as a highly ambitious workaholic entrepreneur. I felt misunderstood. I felt like I wasn't being given the empathy, space and grace that I deserved. And I felt unappreciated.

And I was wrong. But that's how I felt. What I've come to realize is that if you're an entrepreneur, if you're a CEO, if you're a manager in a high intensity company, or if you're a team member in a high intensity team, or if you're just someone who's striving to change your life in a radical way by pursuing a goal that's consuming you, your romantic partner will likely never truly understand your work. They will never truly understand your stress, your worries and your constant overthinking. The most you can hope for is that they understand

that they do not understand. There is at least some empathy and accepted ignorance in them accepting the fact that they don't understand. But you also have to avoid the temptation of gaslighting your partner, something I've certainly been tempted to do time and time again. You need to have empathy for their inability to understand. So often, in not just this relationship, but in previous romantic relationships, I've fallen into the trap of thinking that my partner was inconsiderate or selfish or thoughtless because they didn't truly understand how unbelievably taxing or consuming and sometimes stressful my job is. Accordingly, when I get home from work after a difficult

day or when I was consumed by a business challenge, I would be surprised by their apparent lack of understanding, space and empathy. Even though I hadn't really bothered to explain it to them, I kept it to myself. I was expecting her to read my mind. And the truth is, the truth I didn't have the sufficient amount of energy or cognitive reserve to realise is that even in those moments, at all moments, my partner has needs too. No matter how busy or successful or stressed I am. At home, everyone's needs need to be met. And besides, why on earth would they truly, truly understand? It is not their email inbox. It is not their deadline. It's not their tough decision. It's not their chosen responsibility.

I chose this responsibility. I chose this mission. They are a passenger in the car of my dream. It is not their dream. I set the sat nav. I should be grateful that they've chosen to come along for the ride. Being misunderstood at home is one of the prices you pay for the growth that you chase. But here's the twist that it took me years to learn. Although it doesn't feel like it, it is a hidden gift that your partner doesn't fully understand. If they did, home wouldn't offer a retreat from work. It would be an extension of it. I appreciate the fact that I can walk through the door on a hard and pleasant gruelling day into a home brimming with smiles, happiness and free from professional pain. So if this is you, if the shoe fits, keep going. Protect your relationship. Have mutual empathy.

The third thing that I've written in my diary this week. Get to acceptance as fast as you can. I got home that night at 11 PM. I threw my keys down and I walked across my apartment. I pulled open the balcony door to let some of the cool humid thunderstorm air in and as I sat down on a kitchen stall, my phone started to vibrate repeatedly. I pulled out my phone and the caller ID said George one of my best friends.

I answered and before I even spoke, I just knew it was bad news. One of those moments where the silence seems to say more than words. When he did speak, his voice was heavy, each word weighed down by despair. He shared some really sad news. His company, which he'd spent the last decade building, the company he'd become known for, had collapsed. The countless hours, the sleepless nights, the dreams he had, all gone. After 10 years of hard work, he'd lost it all and his team had lost their jobs, he was effectively bankrupt, the business had failed. I spoke to him for the next hour on the phone, and after I turned off the lights and headed up to my bedroom, as I was walking up the stairs, I assumed it was George texting me to say good night and maybe thank you for the conversation.

But to my surprise, as I looked down at the notification, it was a completely different best friend friend and I don't have that many best friends. The message read, can you speak? Listen, it's so unbelievably rare that anyone would ask me to speak. So when they asked to, unfortunately it's always some form of crisis or bad news. I am seen as the busy friend, the one with no time, the one people don't typically want to bother. But I've tried hard to change that. Ever since my conversation with Simon Sinek where he said something that is so unbelievably true. You know, when you find darkness, you, you, whatever, however you want to define your darkness, you know, you feel alone, you feel like nobody can help you, you feel like you have no agency,

you feel like you lack of control. And the first thing that a lot of us should do is reach out to a friend and say I'm struggling or I need help or I'm lonely or I'm depressed or I'm sad whatever you're whatever the feeling is There's no Greater honor There's no greater honor than being able to serve a friend in need And on this stormy Tuesday night, it seemed like I was experiencing the honor

that Simon Sinek described all at once. I stopped mid spiral staircase, slumped into a dark corner halfway up and called my friend Ryan. She's broken up with me. Ryan is one of my best friends in the world, and he'd been in a relationship for the best part of a decade. He'd built a life with this person. He had grand plans to have kids with her, settle down with her, buy a house with her, and spend the rest of his life with

her. In my conversations with both of these friends, I found myself giving them support and advice, and as the words rolled off my lips, the advice that I was giving them ended up being the exact advice I needed to hear myself because I too was facing a series of difficult professional challenges in my businesses, challenges that were keeping me trapped in a cycle of overthinking. The unrehearsed late night advice I gave to both of my friends that I also desperately needed to hear myself get to acceptance as fast as you can. I said this because in moments of bad news or heartbreak or rejection

much of what I think is actually happening is we're mourning the loss of a future or an identity that we created in our own minds that we we had begun to live in, but that never really existed. In the case of my friend going through heartbreak, it was abundantly clear to me that the source of much of his pain was actually his inability to accept that the imagined, idyllic future he had created with this person had been lost. I'll never forget when Mo Gordat said to me So happiness is very predictable. Okay, if you look back at any point in your life where you ever felt happy There is one commonality across all of those moments that can actually be documented in a mathematical equation And so happiness in that sense becomes equal to or greater than so it's really mathematics

That your perception of the events of your life minus your expectations of how life should be. And from that I always deduced that we are unhappy when our expectations of how our life is supposed to be going go unmet. And in this scenario, both my friends and I had unmet expectations of how we thought our life was supposed to be going. It's become abundantly clear to me that the vast amount of pain I experienced in business or life or love and everything in between is actually just my own resistance to situations that I find myself in. Usually when my expectations go unmet, often situations I frankly

couldn't have foreseen or controlled, sometimes even situations that I'm completely unresponsible for. Bad news arrives and then we fight against it in our own mind and in doing so we create our own suffering. We get fired from work, we get cut off in traffic by a bad driver, we get a bad diagnosis, we get dumped by a romantic interest. Someone writes something horrible about us online. The pain is the hours, the days, the weeks, the months, the years of us refusing to accept the situation we find ourselves in, trying to reverse an injustice, trying to correct the past, trying to rewind time. Acceptance of reality, especially of circumstances that cannot be changed now, is the best medicine

I've repeatedly swallowed to have less bad days and less suffering. In a brain study led by a scientist called Hedy Kobar in 2010, brain scans revealed that when people were asked to approach their emotional responses with acceptance rather than reacting instinctively, something remarkable happens. They saw a notable reduction in the activity of the amygdala, often referred to as the brain's in the activity of the amygdala, often referred to as the brain's emotional alarm system. The amygdala plays a central role in processing fear and other strong emotions, so this drop in activity suggests that acceptance

can actually calm emotional reactivity, which is often why we suffer so strongly. You know, I don't know if what I'm about to say is a consequence of aging, but in this season of my life what I value more than most things is peace. Something that I think deep down we all want, but when you look at how we live our lives, with noise, stress and chaos, clearly something that few of us have designed our lives to create. Peace isn't necessarily a word that I highly prioritized at 25 years old, but I think by being in the public eye a lot more now, and just by getting older, it's made peace more of an important priority to me. And peace to me really is defined as that sort of state

of calmness and tranquility that's free from conflict, that's free from stress. Being in the public eye in many ways has been the most intense crash course in acceptance I could ever have imagined. Going from complete anonymity to having an unimaginable number of people listening to this podcast each month and then joining a hit BBC1 TV show Dragon's Den during the same period forced me to confront a reality I wasn't prepared for. The constant flood of opinions, judgment and misinformation about you. Being in the public eye brings with it an interesting new reality. At any given moment, if I wanted to, I could dive into an endless abyss of negativity. I could find thousands of

comments or articles about myself that are true or untrue, but are hurtful either way. And I've had to learn to accept that this is part of the territory. As one of my dear friends said to me, this is now an occupational hazard of your life. And this is especially true in today's world, where even reputable sources will sometimes run with half truths. What I've had to come to terms with is that I can't control what people say or think. I have to accept that there will always be noise. I have to accept that trying to chase every falsehood, every criticism or every hurtful comment is not only impossible, it's self-destructive.

Trying to control these things will hurt you more than these things. Being in the public eye has taught me that true acceptance is about letting go of the need for control. And it's in that acceptance where I've found the peace to keep doing what I love, without being consumed, without anger, and without anxiety. The anxiety and worry and overthinking that I couldn't seem to get hold of when I was first catapulted into the Public Eye. Do you ever fantasize about running away? I do. If peace is what I'm after, surely I should escape to a secluded beach on an island somewhere. I could buy my own island, build a little home right there on the water. I imagine I'd fly my friends out and we'd spend days in

the sun working out, making music, writing. Nothing but time and freedom and peace. When I get drawn off into these fantasies of a perfect, apparent peace, I'm reminded that it would mean giving up on so many of the things that I absolutely love doing, the things that fill me up and challenge me, the things that make my life so painful and worth living. I think humans really need five core things outside of the basics, connection, food, water and air. I think the first thing we need is to feel challenged. I remember having Daniel Pink, the motivation scientist, on my podcast in the early days of The Diary of a CEO, and I remember him telling me that in a study of video gamers, scientists found that an optimal

balance between the game player's skill level and the game's level of difficulty keeps game players deeply engaged. This is the reason why video games have levels and increasing difficulty. You don't actually want to play your life on easy mode and conversely you don't want the frustration from a life that is too difficult. You have to maintain your own equilibrium of challenge. In the studies when you reach your challenge equilibrium players enter a state of flow where they are fully absorbed in the game. All of this applies for my life, and all of it applies for yours. You and me both need increasing challenge. If you're listening to this right now, and you're one of the people considering quitting your job, for many of you, this will be the reason. You feel like you're playing the same game

on the same level every single day. Secondly, I think we need a feeling of autonomy, the feeling that you have freedom and control. Thirdly, you need a feeling of progress or forward motion. Studies show this to be true. And I think fourthly, that forward motion needs to be towards a subjectively meaningful goal. And lastly, you need to be true. And I think fourthly, that forward motion needs to be towards a subjectively meaningful goal. And lastly, you need to be working towards it with a supportive group of people that you like. My life continues to teach me that these five core components are hardwired into our DNA. They are evolutionary survival mechanisms deep inside all of us to ensure that our species continue to build,

to drive forward, to conquer important goals, to lean into challenging tasks, and to do it with our tribe. If your ancestors didn't have this in their DNA, they wouldn't have created the magical devices you're streaming my voice on right now, the skyscrapers we live and work in, and the airplanes we fly on. They passed this desire to you. You're born to create, to build, to accomplish. Together. So with this in mind, I end up concluding that I am living my life in the way that I should be. And even if I did run away, I would end up searching for meaning by creating something and if my creations were successful and appreciated I would end up back in the same situation I'm in now. Peace isn't absence of hard times,

it's your capacity to accept hard times while remaining in the long-term pursuit of your most important goals and that's where I arrive back at the need for acceptance. Life is going to suck sometimes, more so than you or me would like, but that is frankly the price you have to pay for the love, dreams and happiness you chase. To imagine such a world without the bad news, the heartbreak, the pain, is to imagine a world without love, reward and meaning. So whenever bad news arrives, your job isn't to think your way through it, to blame, attack or criticize. It's simply to get to acceptance as fast as you can. And I'm not saying it will be fast. And I'm not saying it will be easy. I'm not saying we

can just decide to accept something and move on. Because the reality is, acceptance comes in waves. One day you'll feel like you've made peace and progress with the situation and the next day the hurt, the frustration, the doubt, the why me, sneaks right back in. Mel Robbins who came on the Diovisio told me that one of the most freeing simple habits she's adopted is to say the words out loud, let them. Every single time she feels herself being aggravated, let down or annoyed by someone or something, which is pretty much every single day for the average person. The let them theory is based on a simple truth.

The fastest way to take control of your life is to stop controlling everyone around you. You have no idea how much time and energy and attention you are wasting trying to control other people. You have no idea how much energy you are burning through, thinking about, worrying about, obsessing about what other people are doing, what they're not doing, what they're feeling, all of which you have zero control over. When she said this to me, I've got to be honest, I think I thought it was nonsense. How can two simple words be so powerful? But then I tried it with a few minor alterations.

When I find myself annoyed at an external situation and I feel tension in my body, the first thing I do is to take a deep breath in and a long slow breath out. My girlfriend is a breath back practitioner and she tells me every single week that a long slow deep exhale activates the parasympathetic nervous system which helps to calm the body by reducing heart rate and lowering your stress levels and after I've done that then I say either in my head or out loud, I wish them well. I don't know why but this simple exercise has proven to be an instant circuit breaker for me anytime I find myself falling into a bit of a spiral. It's really a decision to let go, to refuse to allow a person or situation to consume more of your finite energy, to be empathetic towards them and whatever they might be going through, which is important, and to jump straight to acceptance so that you can get back home

with your life. I wish them well. Acceptance is as much about letting go as it is about holding on. It's about letting go of the need to control a situation that you can't, and it's about holding on to the belief that even in your darkest moments, there's often a hidden gift that is seemingly impossible to see. My life over the last couple of years has taught me that worry doesn't take away tomorrow's troubles. It takes away today's peace. You cannot stop the waves. Frankly, you wouldn't want a life without tides, but you can learn to surf. so get to acceptance as fast as you can.

The next note I've written in my diary is one that I think so many of you will relate to. I've written I need to spend more time in the clouds. Last weekend I went fishing for the first time in my life and it taught me something that has completely changed my life. It was a Sunday afternoon and I found myself in a little boat bobbing gently in the middle of a huge lake in Oxfordshire. The sky was full of rolling grey clouds and as is typical of British weather the rain was pelting against my green waterproof overalls. My girlfriend and I were enjoying a staycation weekend at a place called the Stel Manor. The manor offered a menu of various activities and purely because we'd been so engrossed in a reality TV show on Netflix recently called Outlast, where 20 people have to survive and hunt and

live in nature for as long as they can to win a million dollars, I thought it would be a great idea to pick the fishing activity because if she and I ever needed to fend for ourselves in the wilderness, knowing how to catch our own food might come in handy. So there we were on this little tiny paddle boat on this very big lake casting our lines out and unsurprisingly catching absolutely nothing. The first time in a long time that I had allowed myself to become totally bored. And as I sat there, bored out of my mind, dropping into this meditative state, so many of the answers that I'd been searching for in my life, in my work and in my business,

seemed to emerge out of seemingly nowhere. The sheer volume of epiphanies I had while sat bored on that lake led me to an even bigger overarching epiphany which I needed to share with you today. Because for some of you, this might inspire you to reorganise your life in a way that helps you to become the creative force you need to be to reach your goals in the very, very strange times we're living in. To understand what I'm about to say, you need to understand three separate underlying principles that came to me that day on the lake. Principle number one, clouds and trenches. I've been thinking a lot about this idea of clouds and trenches, the balance between two modes of work and how critical it is to spend the

right amount of time in each mode. The trenches are where the hard, focused work happens. The business meetings, the podcast recordings, the investment decisions, the flights, the speeches, the company building, the interviewing people to join my businesses, the zoom calls, all the action. This is the trenches. You and I both know them well. The clouds on the other hand, are where you step away from the grind. Not the kind of stepping away where you go and get paralytic drunk in Ibiza or distract yourself by playing video games. But truly disconnecting. Thinking.

Walking. Running. Maybe reading. Listening. Doing nothing. Fishing. Dreaming. Maybe reading, listening, doing nothing, fishing, dreaming. It's the space where creativity and innovation are born, where your intuition can be heard. Most of my best ideas have come from time spent in the clouds. They haven't come from boardrooms and brainstorms.

They've come while I was rolling through the hills on Bali on a moped alone at night, running on a treadmill in Cambodia, or sat on this small boat, praying, waiting for a fish to tug my line. Principle number two that came to me on the lake that day is this idea of your unique value point. One of the most fundamentally but poorly appreciated principles of life is that no matter who you are, a creative, an entrepreneur, a manager or even a healthcare professional, you will be paid, recognised and rewarded for your ability to do something valuable that most other people aren't doing. Take this podcast for example. There are millions and millions and millions of podcasts out there.

But the reason you choose to listen to mine is because there's something that we do differently, something you value, that is hard to find elsewhere. That valuable point of difference is ultimately why we're rewarded. In this case by your attention. The greater the difference you offer, the harder it is to find, and the more that it is valued, the more valuable you and your work becomes. Therefore, the more you'll be paid and the richer you'll be. In business we call it a USP, a unique selling point, but for me it's more about the unique value you bring. It's not just about being able to sell something, it's about delivering real hard to find value. This idea of having a strong UVP, unique value point, was brought

into focus for me this week as I watched with my jaw on the floor as Elon Musk's SpaceX launched a 50-storey rocket, the biggest to ever launch, weighing some 200 tonnes, into the air and then caught it mid-air with two metal chopsticks. Unfathomable. SpaceX's value is so rare and so large that it's made SpaceX nearly a trillion dollar company. The second principle of UVP is something that most people building a career or company don't fully understand. Almost 10 years ago when I was thinking about this concept of unique selling points for an article I was writing for the Huffington Post I asked the owner of my local corner shop in Manchester, UK

why he thinks customers choose his shop. He gave me this long list of reasons that included things like great customer service, clean shopping aisles and lots of different types of milk. But in reality, as a customer of his, I choose that shop because it's the closest. Proximity and therefore convenience is that only real unique value point and if a new corner shop opened closer, unfortunately Dennis, you'd lose me as a customer forever. Hold on to these two ideas of the clouds and trenches and your UVP as I introduce the final point. Principle three is the accelerating pace of change. The world is changing at a pace faster

than any time in human history. Futurist Ray Kurzweil famously said, we won't experience a hundred years of progress in the 21st century. We'll experience the equivalent of 20,000 years of progress. The rate of change is accelerating so fast that the solutions to today's problems will be outdated faster than ever before.

If you're 40 years old today, by the age of 60, you'll experience a year's change at today's rate in just three months. If you're 11 years old today, by the age of 60, you'll experience a year's worth of today's change in just 11 days. In simple terms, the correct answers to the business, professional, marketing or personal questions that you care so much about will change at lightning pace. And therefore, so will your unique value point. Technology, markets and the world will move on faster than you can blink.

This phenomenon is often referred to as acceleration of business cycles or creative destruction. The easiest way to see this playing out is to study the rate in which great companies rise and fall in the modern economy. By looking at this data, you can essentially see how long a UVP, a unique value point, lasts in modern times. There was a 2008 study done by a company called Innosight that showed that companies are rising and falling faster than ever before. In 1965, the average company stayed on the S&P 500 list, a list that ranks the biggest 500 companies in the world, for 33 years. By 2018, that number had shrunk to 17 years, and by 2027, if projected to drop further, they predict the company will only be on that list for around a decade. At this rate, by the time I'm 50, companies will only be on the S&P 500 list for a few years, maybe even a

few months, before they're disrupted and fall off that list. However, even these forecasts presume that AI isn't going to further turbocharge disruption, which I certainly think it already is. I think by the time I'm 50, some companies, especially technology companies, will last just months on the S&P 500 list before they're disrupted and fall. And over the last few decades, we're seeing the rise of new companies and the fall of companies accelerate. In comes Apple, out goes Kodak and Blackberry and Nokia. In comes Netflix, out goes Blockbuster. In comes chat GPT, out goes Google. Maybe. This isn't how things used to work. Companies used to stay big and powerful for multiple decades or even centuries because their unique value point was so strong. But in a changing

world, in a technological one, in an AI one, everything changes. So as creatives, as entrepreneurs, as professionals, how do we keep up? And that is where principle number one comes in. That's where the clouds come in. You have to spend more time in the clouds and less time in the trenches. This is what the lake whispered to me that day. More time dreaming, more time disconnected from the trenches. More time alone with ourselves.

To stay inspired. Create new ideas. To disrupt ourselves. To innovate. To tune in. When we're in the trenches, we are standing so close to the painting that we can't see the picture. Stepping away gives our mind the space to wander,

to connect old dots in new ways and to find new valuable points of difference to explore and experiment with. All of these principles have made me conclude that one of the most valuable but unobvious things I can do for my companies is to do nothing more often. One of the best things I could do for my relationship, which is also something that I am building, is to do nothing so I can think about the relationship. I need more time in the clouds, thinking, dreaming, letting my mind wander, because that's where true creativity, value and connection is born.

Over the last year I've taken no time off. I've worked non-stop in the proverbial trenches, but I've had this haunting feeling that because of this, I'm missing something. Something that's quietly whispering to be discovered. Something that will only reveal itself if I pull myself up into the clouds. But I've struggled to give myself permission to spend time in the clouds because everything feels so busy and urgent and important in the trenches right now. I have this strange feeling of guilt that if I stop I'll lose everything. I have a feeling of complacency that's associated with stepping out of the trenches and into the clouds. But there is another voice, I call it wisdom, that is demanding that I do,

because the clouds have something important they need to tell me. I know all of these analogies sound a bit bonkers, but I also know that some of you will be able to relate to the feeling I'm describing. The feeling that you're missing some higher inspiration or message because you've made yourself too busy to hear it. For a second, allow me to get a little bit esoteric. We are all, in one way or another, confined by the narratives we construct around our lives. Maybe your narrative is that people should settle down at 30. Maybe yours is to avoid failure. Maybe your narrative is that technology is bad, that veganism is good, or that marriage is important,

and that people on the other side of the political aisle are evil. These narratives become the bedrock of our careers, our identities, and our lives, making them exceptionally hard to escape and they are self-reinforcing. We're often compensated and validated and applauded for continuing to believe in them, which reinforces their hold over us. However, in work, our greatest opportunities arise when we step back and recognize the broader narratives that society is collectively trapped in. Visionary entrepreneurs excel at identifying the societal and industry narratives and understanding how they limit

us. They dare to imagine a better narrative, a new idea, a new paradigm that others have yet to believe. These individuals become legends and world-changers and billionaires, not because they are successful at the current narrative but because they change it. Steve Jobs is such a prime example of someone who was able to see the flaws and narratives that everyone else believed. It sounds kind of strange but I always think about his bizarre decision to exclude Adobe Flash from Apple's iOS device as a prime example of this. In the late 2000s Flash was the standard for delivering rich video content on the web. The industry was so deeply entrenched in the prevailing narrative that flash was indispensable

for videos and animations and interactive applications. However, Steve Jobs saw beyond this prevailing belief. He recognized that flash was plagued with security vulnerabilities, consumed excessive battery power and was notised for the touch interfaces that he wanted the world to adopt with his iPhone, iPod and iPads. Despite facing massive criticism from many, including people in his own team, and including the CEO at the time of Adobe, who said it was an extraordinary attack, he held firm in his convictions. This move not only set Apple apart, but also rapidly accelerated the entire web industry's shift towards more modern, efficient and open technologies. By challenging the entrenched narrative, Jobs redefined computing and the way that we interact

with digital content forever. But this was the story of Steve Jobs. Someone that seemed to be able to see into the future, that knew our current narratives were so flawed, that Adobe Flash needed to die, that to humans design and typography really mattered, that digital music was the future, that we wanted an app store, that physical keyboards on phones sucked and took up too much space that could be used for other things, that our devices shouldn't have removable batteries, they needed touch screens, no headphone jacks and that everything could be stored in the cloud. How was he able to see the future? To think so disruptively, so clearly, with such conviction? Well, it turns out he spent every

day in the clouds. What most people don't know about Steve Jobs was that he was deeply influenced by meditation and mindfulness practices. These practices played a significant role in shaping his creativity, his leadership style, and the innovative products that Apple became known for. Frequent meditation helped Jobs to cultivate a heightened level of focus and mental clarity, which was crucial in his creative process. And he said it himself, if you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse. But over time, it does calm. And when it does, there's room to hear more subtle things. That's when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly. To Steve, spending time in the

clouds allowed him to hear his intuition. In one interview he said, Intuition is a very powerful thing. More powerful than intellect, in my opinion. It's had a big impact on my work. And finally, the wonderful Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs' biographer, whom I interviewed on this podcast a few months ago, said, Steve Jobs' way of looking at problems was a direct result of the meditation techniques he practiced. It is no surprise to me that one of the most visionary entrepreneurs of

our lifetime had a dedicated practice where he spent time in the clouds with a clear mind tuning out of the noise so he could tune in to his intuition. Maybe we all should. I wonder what message is that your intuition has been trying to tell you but hasn't been able to because you've been so busy creating ever more noise. As I sat on the lake that day, rain pattering on my shoulders and head. Words that I read many years ago from Guru Ram Dass came to mind. The quieter you become, the more you can hear. And my life has continued to prove this to me. Silence, boredom and space aren't empty. They are full of answers. And I need to spend more time in the clouds listening to silence and all that it has to say. Get out of the trenches and into the clouds. The last point in my diary this week is a point that I never thought I would, um, never imagined that I'd be sharing with the world. I literally just got goosebumps when I started

speaking. Um, it was 10.49pm on Wednesday the 16th of October. I was sitting at my computer at my kitchen table in my high-rise apartment. The familiar late-night hum of the city was my only acquaintance, and the lights beneath me like a galaxy of tiny stars. My French bulldog Pablo lay at my feet, snoring softly, a comforting, familiar sound in the stillness of the night. The rhythmic tapping of my keyboard was the only other noise as I flowed through my work. My phone lit up beside me. There was a message from Georgie, the CEO of my media company. Her text read, Have you seen the news? My heart skipped a beat. Before I could reach out to pick up my phone, another notification appeared. This time it was from my personal assistant. Oh my god. It read.

I froze. My fingers hovering above the keys. A wave of apprehension washed over me. What could possibly be so urgent at this hour? My mind raced through a dozen scenarios. None of them were good. Taking a deep breath. I opened a new browser tab and typed in BBC.com, expecting to see some sort of breaking news headline. Nothing. Confused, I navigated to Twitter. The homepage felt like it took a lifetime to load. And there it was. The headline that made my stomach drop. Liam Payne, dead at 31. I stared at the screen, my mind unable to process the words I'd just read. It was surreal.

Impossible. I re-read the headline several times, hoping I'd misread it. I checked the account that posted it. Verified. Reputable. I clicked off the tweet in disbelief and searched his name, not looking for confirmation that this was true, but hoping for confirmation that it was a hoax. But the avalanche of posts that I saw told me that it was all too real. Even as I speak these words into the microphone now, I have this wave of goosebumps that spread across my body. On June the 1st, 2021, Liam was a guest on my podcast. We had a raw, open and honest conversation about life, his struggles with fame and his mental health. After the cameras had stopped rolling, we stayed chatting for a long time, we exchanged numbers and later that night he texted me

expressing that he was still on the high from the conversation and sharing some of his new music which we had discussed after the recording. I was just about to join Dragon's Den and step one step further into the public eye, something he knew more about than anyone. We were both basically the same age, interested in many of the same things, and so over the next three years we became good friends. Between 2021 and 2024, I spent time at his house on multiple occasions learning about his world, his dogs, his love of art, his admiration for multiple occasions learning about his world, his dogs, his love of art, his admiration for his son Bear, his manager, his dreams, his new music

and his struggles. We did boxing lessons together when he visited me during Dragon's Den recordings. We went to the gym together in London when we were both in town. We invested in a company together, had many dinners nights out, trained for soccer and football matches together and had a big England Euros party together in Manchester. He felt like a younger brother to me. I loved him because he was so kind, he was so pure hearted, he was so funny and he was so hopeful that he could overcome all of the challenges that he was struggling with. Liam's death breaks my heart. I can feel my eyes filling with tears as I

say these words. What he needed most from the world was love and kindness and grace. When people need this most, they often get the exact opposite because their behavior is strange, their behavior is atypical, it is hard to understand. Robbie Williams, the legendary artist who rose to stardom at an early age and struggled through some of the same addictions that Liam spoke about publicly, called me after Liam's passing and offered some words of wisdom, some words of comfort and understanding. He also said publicly, we don't know what's going on in people's lives, the pain they're going through, what makes them behave in the way that they behave. Before we reach judgment, a bit of slack needs to be given. Before you type anything on the internet, please have a think.

Do I really need to publish this? Because what you're doing is you're publishing your thoughts for everybody to read. And even if you don't think that celebrities and their families exist, they fucking do. Skin and bone are immensely sensitive. As individuals, we have the power to change ourselves. We can be kinder, we can be more empathetic. We can at least try to be more compassionate towards ourselves, our family, our friends, strangers in life and strangers on the internet. Even famous strangers need your compassion. Ah.

One of the things I've come to learn by doing the Dioversio and interviewing so many people is that people's pain and their sadness and their trauma rarely looks like pain, sadness and trauma. It looks like anger. It looks like hate. Sometimes it looks like laughter. Sometimes it looks like addiction. And addiction isn't for bad or crazy people. Addiction isn't a bad choice that they make. Addiction is a symptom of pain and trauma. And we're all searching for ways to feel less pain. For some of us, the pain and trauma is so unbearable, so inescapable, that the ways we choose to not feel it become destructive in and of themselves.

But it isn't a choice to self-destruct. It's the opposite. It's a last-ditch attempt to survive. And we never heal from pain we refuse to acknowledge or try to escape. We can't pornography our pain away. We can't drink our pain away. We can't smoke our pain away. We can't drug our pain away.

Because these escape mechanisms will just become our new pain. We have to confront our pain away. Because these escape mechanisms will just become our new pain. We have to confront our pain. Losing Liam has shattered a comfortable illusion that I lived under. But in the fragments of that illusion I found a sharper, more vibrant appreciation for every single moment, every connection, every person that I love. The last text messages Liam shared with me were photos of art that he'd created, these incredible, powerful pencil sketches. created these incredible, powerful pencil sketches. And as I sat there in the early hours of the morning scrolling through years of messages, the artwork, the unreleased music,

the loving encouragement he gave me whenever I faced a challenge in my life, the love letters he wrote to his partner that he shared with me, all of it served as the most horrible reminder of the talent of the person, of the son, the friend, the father, the boyfriend that the world has lost. And in that moment I felt so overwhelmed by the urge to text you, Liam, even though I knew that you were gone. I hoped you'd read it. I hoped you'd reply. So I typed the words out anyway. I love you. I'm so sorry that I didn't do more. One more phone call, checking in for no reason at all. One more conversation about how talented you are and how the world needs your gifts. One more message. One more laugh. One more hug.

I knew you needed help. I didn't know how to help. I'm so sorry that I didn't do more. I'm sorry..