Rock Bottom Became the Best Day of My Life | Founder Classic

0:00What was rock bottom for you? About a couple of weeks earlier, my mum said she didn't recognise me. This girl I've started seeing has just called me, she texted her my girl and everyone in the business thinks I'm a fucking idiot. So I didn't know why I was acting the way I was, I didn't know why I was drinking, I didn't know why this was coming out of me. So I went to go and see a therapist the next day after a kind of confrontation with Steve. So yeah, I look back on that day and it's now the happiest day of my life.

0:24Alex Chisnall:What stops founders from building something meaningful isn't the lack of ideas, it's the fear of getting started. I'm Alex Chisnell and this is Screw It Just Do It, a podcast for people who are ready to stop waiting, take action and make things happen. I'm interested today in exploring how you went from selling Social Chain, a social media marketing agency you founded with Stephen Bartlett, to championing mental health and a life of sobriety through the publication of your book, I'm Never Drinking Again. I'm Never Drinking Again for me always has two meanings. It's like it's all the definitive, but it's also toning cheek.

0:59yeah and i think we've all said it you know we've all said it at some point you know your wife said it i'm sure you've said it at some point i'm sure i have and for me i've always kind of like pictured the book as being that like sunday morning hangover oh i'm never drinking again kind of vibe and when i started started to write it i really wanted it to be playful and like if you know if people do read it and get a chance to it's definitely not about preaching you know there's a whole kind of um angle i kind of took in my mind which just kind of completely 360 how i started i started very much anti-alcohol so alcohol's bad but like we all know alcohol's bad you know we all know chocolate's bad for us we all know smoking's bad for us we all know betting is not the best for us so why do we still do these things so i kind of went on a journey to explore culturally scientifically why we still do these things and then i was like okay well we all know the situation so what can i achieve as an outcome to which is going to have an impact on people i was like well i know people aren't going to stop you know i i i'm not gonna stop eating cookies i absolutely love cookies but i can change my relationship with them yes so i i'm not binging i'm not dependent on them and i can be in control of my consumption of bad stuff um and that's what i thought of alcohol i said look if i go out there and tell people stop drinking it's going to create a siege mentality they're going to fight back but if i tell people that your life can be better if you change your relationship with alcohol I think that's a statement everyone can get behind

2:28Alex Chisnall:yeah agreed agreed and I read that the six years at Social Chain I think correct me if I'm wrong seven at Social Chain contained some of your happiest and your darkest periods of your life how do you reflect back on that now and having done that probably cathartic experience of writing a book and deeply thinking yeah I mean it was some of the best times um i think the the worst times as well i think a lot of it came from like a lack of awareness of myself and i think that's partly due to being so young i was going to say that okay yeah so you know there's a reason in the book i talk about how a male brain doesn't fully develop until 25 um so you know you can it kind of explains why young men are some way they are when you and i kind of talk a little bit about celebrities who've gone on to be impacted by alcohol especially child stars who have a lot of pressure from a very young age and in my in my honest humble opinion i couldn't handle it and i like to think i'm someone who was relatively capable hence why i started a business and stepped out of it so if i couldn't handle it then it says a lot about how i view young people now and how i view the world is like until like you've fully developed fully matured in yourself and you've got an understanding how to deal with stress and emotions you shouldn't be exposed to ridiculously stressful negative environments because it can have damage and impact to you so i largely think that a lot of it was based on the experience i went through um if i spent the first you know from 20 to 25 years old working a normal job and learning all these things that were going on in life and then started social chain i probably wouldn't have gone through it you know i probably wouldn't have gone through a drinking situation because i'd learned about myself i'd have been much more mature and been able to handle situations yeah so i think a lot of it was a product of the environment i've been so young at that point um the other side of it is is it's kind of my big kind of like viewpoint is like do i think at some point alcoholism would have crept upon me and knowing my personality and kind of going through this kind of process of like questioning why it happened in the first place yes i think it would have happened to me and it could have been 30 it could have been 40 could have been 50 but at some point it was going to creep up on me and the damage i did at 22 years old to my to my life um was all repairable you know there was there's no kids there's no marriage there's no there's no major health there's no long term no exactly exactly so i'm actually thankful for the fact that it happened so young because um one in eight people have got um an addiction gene in them this is kind of like breaking edge new research that's kind of coming out um i spoke to dr stephen peters about this and it only activates about 25 years old really so when the brain's fluid that it seems to be some kind of thing which turns on in your body so i can't i mean i've not been tested so i can't say whether i've got that or not but what happens if in a situation of high stress and high pressure your body changes and reacts and i had to mature i think my body matured and i think that switch was turned on this is what i believe in myself so i believe that i was always going to have some form of level of addiction yeah to something and it just happened to be alcohol i happened to learn the damage of it i happened to be able to be in a situation where i had enough purpose energy of being so young and motivation to get over it so i'm thankful for it when i reflect on the times of social chain like the dark times now you know i remember that feeling that the the day i you know the kind of explosion when i hit rock bottom i look back now and like that's the happiest day of my life because it was the start of a new life and and what was rock bottom for you uh rock bottom so there was a series of events that kind of happened towards me um reaching rock bottom you know and a lot of them are in isolation away from people so i'd come home one night from night out in the middle of winter we lived on a really high slope i slipped over broke my ankle had to crawl into bed um woke up at 11 o 'clock my phone had like 100 missed calls we had a client in who was supposed to meet me i had to go to hospital to get that sorted and it was just embarrassing that was a terrible day there was times when i was you know um really upset in a friend of mine so i basically gave her a lecture on why i think her going to university was wrong and that everyone should start a business and really kind of patronizing and like basically damaged my entire relationship with that friendship group because she was like queen bee yeah um and this was like a really kind of like defining the time of friendships because you start into you know whatsapp just came around people start getting into groups and like i got ostracized a lot from a lot of friendship groups okay in those situations for how i was acting and people just want to be around me so like these events happened and then the last day was when um i basically was texting another girl while seeing this girl that i was with we've been with her for about a month she caught me texting another girl when i was at the races um we got back to me and her got back to a bar in manchester some of the team were there i was just basically drunk embarrassing um derogatory to them who were basically a team of social chain and then um loads of stuff was caught on video which was embarrassing and then steve saw it steve was on the other side of town woke up the next day so um what happened a week about a couple of weeks earlier my parents said she didn't my mom said she didn't recognize me so i've just my mom doesn't recognize me this girl i've started seeing has just called me to text another girl and everyone in the business thinks i'm a fucking idiot so that's like rock bottom yeah yeah yeah like you every single part and you feel terrible in yourself you know you look what you look terrible you put on weight so all those concoctions of everything that was important to my life it's just like my friends are pissed pissed off for me so like every single kind of core asset of my life is like what is going on yeah so that's rock that you know that that's rock bottom and um you know that that feeling that day when like i'm like i'm just tired now i'm tired of i don't know i don't i'm tired of not knowing and i i don't i know it's not me so at that point all you've got your words are empty you know your words are empty i can't go and apologize people because i've been apologizing the last six months yeah um the only real form of apology is change behavior and i don't know the kind of the helplessness within me didn't know what was going wrong so i didn't know why i was acting where i was i didn't know why i was drinking i didn't know why this was coming out of me so i went to go and see a therapist the next day after a kind of confrontation with steve where i broke down and said look this isn't me like i don't know what's going on he's just concerned about it yeah and the business well the first the first he came he came to that meeting on the sunday which is the day afterwards with like an intention of like war of like shouting at me okay but i i just just broke down in front of him at first and then like you know you see the yeah this is the you know i think with the it was the first time we ever talked about the stress that we got on for business and that what that was creating and like i was just broken so i'm like i'm like just like i need to build it back up again yeah so um um i you know i could have walked into that room and tried to um lie and be like well it wasn't that bad and that's you know i mean i probably would have carried on and at some point i lost everything but now i'm at a point where yeah all these things have got to change so this girl i'm seeing she's like giving me an ultimatum steve is like this needs to change all the business you know this we need to have always have a serious conversation my parents don't want to be around me my friends that like me so i need to change my behavior here so i went to see a therapist went through everything that i was going on he quickly diagnosed me and just said like alcohol is your medication you're trying to run away yeah in your mind you're trying to mentally escape all the things that are going on so if you stop drinking you won't create more problems you know you're not going to make things worse for you but these are the tools you need to do to deal with the other stuff and that's what i was not doing and that kind of changed the view of the business so my kind of burnout breakdown whatever you call it was a was a trigger to go bring a management team so we went and got a management team in because we realized we couldn't do it ourselves so if that was your reaction how did steven cope with this pressure because you were both what like early 20s and you were both under the same amount so he he really um did a lot of social isolation so hence why i'm getting i'm getting drunk and with a team on a on a saturday he's other side of manchester at home like to learn like away from people just like dealing with things yeah you know so we would that was that that day you know that day is a reflection of how we were dealing with what was going on and we you know not that we were avoiding each other but we just probably weren't we're 22 23 old guys we're not talking about so young we're not talking about this kind of stuff so um that that changed a lot within our relationship we started to talk more about stuff and how we were getting on and how we're feeling and um the business and what we wanted and and it kind of was a was a you know exception that we can't do everything ourselves we hired too young we had too many problems in the business we started to have to solve them them all and it really kind of uh rocketed our our approach and how we built this management team and it was really kind of like a uh for me like kind of like real like uh cathartic yeah expression of like we need help and our help was like a lot of things i got a mentor i got a therapist we brought in a management team and we grew up and we had each other from that point before we had each other we were there but we didn't on an emotional level so it kind of built an emotional connection between us which we didn't have before which was great so yeah I look back on that day and it's now the happiest day of my life if this conversation resonated with you don't just sit there act on it make sure you follow or subscribe for more game changing conversations and remember the only thing standing between you and your business breakthrough is the decision to screw it and just do it.