Steven Bartlett on Mastering Business & Life: Outside The Box Lessons On Mindset, Ambition, Vulnerability & What Matters Most

26:52What's important for me there is that I, although it wasn't a good workout, I kept my obligation with myself, my own self story. That's something I continue to struggle with. And again, it comes back to overextending myself in terms of my calendar. And I have conversations with myself all the time. It's literally a mental dialogue, which is a conversation about who I am and who I want to be, and how the person that I want to be would be behaving at 11.30 at night, on this particular night. What would he do? And it's so interesting. That's why I talk about the self story a lot, because no one's going to know.

27:25No one's going to know if I went to the gym. There's going to be no evidence or results based on that 10-minute workout. But it's purely a story and a conversation that I have with myself. And we all have a story about ourselves that we don't know is governing our lives. And if I didn't go then, it writes a new little line into my self story about the person I am. And it's a line in my story that I don't want. And having spoken to a lot of professional athletes and such, I was able to identify that those stories govern their lives when things are hardest, the most hard. And the gym thing is a difficult thing for me at the moment because I'm going.

27:59I went yesterday. I had to go at 2 p.m. just after I bumped into you in the street, actually, just before. But I struggle with that. But I fight to get back on the horse every week. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think there's something deeper around that, which is the self-esteem that you cultivate when you are living your life in integrity with your values. And if you establish that as a key value, this is who I am. I'm somebody who works out. And you show up for that in yourself when your head hits the pillow that night, you feel good about yourself, even if it was a 10 minute workout because you are true to your own word.

28:35Exactly. And I allocated the time against my values. You mentioned story. Story is a whole section in your new book as well. The importance of understanding story, how to tell a story and being connected to the story that you tell yourself about who you are and the story that you're sharing with the world. So if I was to ask you, you're an individual, but you're also a public person. And on that level, as cringy as it sounds, you are kind of a brand, right? Like what is the story of you? Like how do you articulate what that story is? I have never really tried to articulate what that story is. I think that - That's so interesting, given how much importance you place on this idea.

29:19It's really interesting because I know that the story of me exists in everyone's life who experiences me and it's a completely different story for them. The thing that I, the controllable to influence that story is my actions. So I was funny, I just had my hair cut before I came here. My barber was cutting my hair and he says, oh man, people walk into the shop every day. They're always talking about you. Some people are saying this about you. Some people are saying this about you. Some people really like you. Some people don't like you. Some people don't understand you. They're not sure if you're black enough.

29:46They're not sure if you're this. And I was just thinking to myself as he was saying that there's this part of you that wants to jump to control that. Maybe I'll start being more black. Maybe I'll start doing this. Maybe I'll start, you know. And then there's this other part that knows I'll never be able to control that. But the controllable is I've got to keep doing myself justice and proud. And then from that, everyone will write their own story. Some people that'll be inspiration, some it'll be something else. But I've never sat down and tried to like articulate the story of me. I'm an entrepreneur.

30:18I think I'm a creative more than I probably let on because I think about the work that I do and it's the creative stuff. And I'm someone that believes a lot in themselves and really wants others to believe in themselves more so they can get close to their potential. That's maybe my story, but I don't think about it. I wanna double click on the self-belief piece in a minute. But before we get there, I was thinking to myself in preparing for this, It's like, what is it about this guy that's so interesting and compelling and that has him sort of standing out from the crowd in who he is and what he does?

30:55And I'm sure there's a number of reasons or things that I could identify, but the thing that really, I think my brain hones in on is this notion or this innate capacity, maybe it's a gift that you have, or maybe it's a discipline to come across wisdom, to learn things, which a lot of us can do, but it's your ability to then apply these things to your life. You're so young and so accomplished at such a young age. And I see somebody who identifies a good idea and then is able to incorporate that into his life and produce returns as a result of it. Whereas most people I think really struggle with this.

31:42We can all read books, we listen to podcasts, we're on the receiving end of good ideas quite frequently. But until we reach a certain pain point or crisis point in our life, we're very resistant to habit change. And to me, from the outside looking in at you, you seem to have figured out a way to remove that resistance and kind of lean into habit change with a little more ease or facility. It's interesting. Such an interesting observation. One of the things I've noticed about myself is I'm not good at overstaying my welcome in situations where I don't feel good. And I'm also someone that doesn't, that often sees the thing you would consider a risk.

32:26I see that as the easy choice. And I see the thing people call a risk in my life as the easy choice. I see the risk. So I'm really referring to key moments in my life where I've quit stuff. I look at myself at 18 years old, going to that lecture and really hating it and deciding that I'd never go back and I didn't care. You did one lecture at business school at university and said that was it. To me, the risk was staying. But every interview I do, they say, oh, you've missed so much courage. I think the courage was staying in a situation where I didn't feel good. And then my mom calling me and saying, I won't speak to you ever again if you don't go back to university.

33:03And me being like, that's okay, she'll be fine. and that ease of moving away from situations that don't serve me and towards situations where I just feel good inside which is this I can't believe the world ignores it we all have this like compass this this thing built inside us which is how do you feel and it's so low on our on our order of signals or voices that we tune into which makes no sense to me everyone's you know like above that people rank their mother's opinion the girl on Instagram that didn't like my nails and for me the most important, number one is how do I feel? And when you apply that at a very young age, where you can gracefully move away from school at 14 years old and then get expelled, they actually unexpelled me because I was making them so much money.

33:43It's what my headmaster said on TV. And it's true. To university, don't like it there. Built a startup for two years. Investors, all of that, quit out of the blue. My third company quit out of the blue again. If you can gracefully use that signal inside you, which is how do you feel in this situation and prioritize that, I think you get closer and fast, it takes less time for you to get to the life you want. And I'm so good at quitting. Like my last company, we were about to uplist onto the second, a very large stock exchange. And I quit because I just didn't feel good anymore. And it wasn't a difficult decision for me.

34:17And if you think about what I left on the table in terms of monetary value, huge, it makes no sense as to why I quit. There was no branch I was swinging to, don't want to be here anymore. and that framework for life creates the impression that you're very good at, I don't know, discipline or making decisions, whatever it might be. But for me, it's, I don't know why people hang around in situations so long. But you do, you do know why. I think that that authentic voice within all of us, you can call it your gut instinct or your intuition is certainly, you know, a capacity that we all hold, but it gets worn down through social expectations, through societal expectations, through familial obligation, and just the confusing aspects of what it means to grow up and try to figure out your place in the world.

35:05And I think, you know, with that, we tend to repress that instinct. And for some reason, you were able to maintain it. Perhaps it's, in some people, it's that childlike nature, in others, it's just a a real strong sense of identity or an antenna for what serves you and what doesn't. But I think it's something that you've protected, but it's something that if left to our own devices and without proper boundaries gets eroded. Yeah, and it's a signal like hunger or thirst is a signal that it's deep inside you and it's there for a reason. It's a signal, a really important signal that's hardwired into you from generation and generation and generation.

35:50like hunger and thirst is all, you touch something and it's hot. So I pay attention to that signal last night. But why, how are you able to do that? Like I just know, I only have my own experience and I didn't really begin to connect with that until I was in my late thirties and early forties. No one ever said to me like, what is it that you wanna do? What's important to you? What makes you feel alive? Is there a way for you to feed that or fuel that or honor that at least? that's not part of our education system. It wasn't really the way that I was raised to no fault of anybody, perhaps mostly to my own fault for not respecting it.

36:29But that facility to appreciate and respect that signal within yourself, I think is almost an act of rebellion or, you know what I mean? Yeah, I completely know what you mean. And I think this comes back to the one skill that I think I have. When I do an audit of how I came here versus my brothers, who are just these two super geniuses, both older than me, super geniuses. One's a Mathly, LSE, Cambridge, whatever, geniuses. Then there's me. The thing that I have, which is clearly different from them, I'm not smart. They're smart, right? You are smart, though. I'm smart in a different way. If you gave me a GCSE, which is the grading system we have in the UK, I'm so low on those scores at 16 years old, is self-belief.

37:14and I know this is it sounds kind of cliche to say self-belief but at 10 years old my parents stopped being parents basically so I'm the youngest of four they raised the other three and when you get to the fourth one you think oh kind of we've done it and he's kind of I mean she's 23 21 18 he's 10 but he's kind of you know and they stopped coming home so my mum would sleep in the back room of her shop on a bag of rice and I remember going to the shop and seeing that it had loads of bite marks in it and going why is she goes oh there's rats here I sleep here because I'm being racially abused and people break in at night.

37:46So if I sleep in the shop, they're less likely to break in. My dad would then leave his job, go to her commerce shop, and then in the evenings, she would go to her restaurant, right? None of these businesses ever did any, well, they all - Yeah, your mom was a serial entrepreneur of sorts, right? She still is a startup entrepreneur. But suffered from lack of focus, perhaps. Yeah, and she didn't get an education in Africa. She left her school at seven years old or something, five or seven years old. Didn't know how to read, didn't know how to write, moved to the UK. I don't think she still knows how to read and write.

38:15So she was starting these businesses. They weren't going well. My dad was leaving his full-time job and going straight to her. And I was 10 and they forgot I was 10. So at that age, I could leave the house for two days and I could do what I want. And they genuinely, there was no repercussions and they wouldn't know I'd left. And what happens there when you've got a kid who's the only black kid in an all white area and with a poor family, he's desperate to fit in and to have stuff. and you've given him this whole void of independence. You've given him all of this space to conduct experiments about life.

38:46Those experiments lead to failure and the failure leads to feedback and the feedback is knowledge and the knowledge is power. So the thing I look up with myself is I got to conduct experiments at 10 years old about the nature of what I'm capable of, whether it was selling the cigars my mom had bought from Nigeria all around the city and raising loads of money or at 12 years old going to my dad, I need 50 quid because I've organized this event, 2000 under 18s are coming at this nightclub and they need me to pay a deposit. They think I'm 18. Can I borrow 50 quid? I'll come back. Then coming back the next day with a bag of money and reaching into it and giving my dad his deposit back and going upstairs with this huge bag of money.

39:20I was conducting these experiments at a young age. They're all reinforcing this thing we call belief. Belief is evidence. It is subjective evidence you've chosen to believe about yourself. So that as a macro tailwind in my sales from 10 to now creates somebody who will look at obstacles and look at how they approach things and have a huge optimism bias. I believe I can do it. And that is positively reinforcing upwards. We're all in a self-belief spiral upwards or downwards. Some people are negatively reinforcing. And what I mean by that is they're approaching the challenge at work of speaking on stage with skepticism and fear.

39:59therefore they show up badly and even if they do a good job because of that frame they interpret they did a bad job which erodes their self-esteem which means next time they show up with even more pessimism if they even raise their hand to show up and it's this downward spiral since 10 I've been on the opposite I've been on the upward spiral tried something could be that the business I started at 10 or 12 years old it went well which which meant that next time I showed up with more optimism and belief which meant it was more likely to go well and even if it didn't I interpreted it well. And since 10, I've been like that.

40:29And from that, I've accrued a lot of knowledge because I've been failing fast.

40:39I own a bunch of spectacles and I made the grave error the other day of donning a normal non-Roka pair on my indoor trainer when I was riding my bike indoors. And I got to tell you was a disaster. Every three to five seconds, I had to take my hands off the handlebars and push my glasses back up my nose until I got so frustrated I just tossed them aside. This is the dilemma of every active but optically impaired person I know. And as someone who has relied upon eyewear every single day since I was five years old, it is also the source of endless aggravation. thankfully now eradicated thanks to Broca, the stylish performance eyewear company founded by two former Stanford swimming teammates of mine who have gifted everyone like me and quite frankly, the world with their fashionable line of super lightweight prescription glasses and sunglasses with patented no-slip nose and temple pads that are just impervious to sweat.

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42:13But it's also a choice. You could have crafted an entirely different negative spiral narrative about your upbringing and your parents who were always arguing and the grass that was never mowed in your front lawn and the refrigerators that were accumulating and being the only black kid. And I mean, there's a whole story there that you could have nurtured around who you are and what you're capable of. So at some level, you make this choice to invest in the upward spiral narrative. of around your own capacity. So how do you, is that, was that something that was conscious? Is that its own discipline or is that a preset default setting for you?

42:55I would love to say it was intentional and conscious, but I think we're all trying to find ways to survive when we're young. And you have two ways you can survive. One of the routes to survive in that context might be to fall back and fall out of the situations I was in. I just remember this constant feeling of like shame and insecurity and I need to be enough. and I was chemically relaxing my hair to make it straight like my white friends. And I was like stealing things so I could have the same shoes that they had. That was my way of survival. It was, I will find a way, I will use that energy of shame and that motivator of shame, which Will Smith, I've heard him talk about before and I will direct it towards fitting in at all costs.

43:32And that was my way. And I'm probably still doing that at some level. Yeah, that was my question. Is shame still a fuel for you? It's not a great fuel source. It's not a great fuel source because you end up aiming at the wrong things. And when you get those things, they're like mirages that just disappear in your hand as you grab them. And you realize that that was not the thing. There was nothing actually there. So a void you cannot fill. So shame is 100 % still a motivator in my life. I always try and be as aware of this as I can be so I don't end up in the wrong place. But I know it is because sometimes I end up using the wrong metrics to understand and whether I'm doing well, you know?

44:13Talk a little bit more about that. It's all like the comparative metrics, right? Like I've done a really good job over the last two years to move away from caring about these comparative metrics, but why do I care about being successful or being seen as successful? Why do I care about that? It doesn't matter. What matters is that the impact our work is having and outside of, I've got financial freedom now. So why do I care about what people might think of me being successful? I'd say there's a percentage of that still there in me. That comes from the school situation where I just wanted to fit in.

44:53Well, impressions, social metrics have replaced the luxury brands and the fancy car as a marker of status. and it's a highly addictive drug. You're very good at it and you're very successful at it. But even the best of us are hard pressed to, you know, resist the lure of what those numbers mean. And I know this has been a struggle for you. I am interested a little bit more in the relationship between that and shame, because I think you are somebody who learned early the false promise of some of the material worlds, you know, kind of, lures, so to speak, and did a pretty good job of right-sizing yourself around the true value of the mansion or the, you know, the Ferrari or whatever it is, but dangling right in front of your eyes is subscriber counts.

45:52Yeah. And how many people, you know, rankings for your podcast and the like, which is something that I struggle with as well. I sat down with a wonderful gentleman who had written a book about status And at this point in my life, I don't have designer things per se, you know, don't have the Rolexes, don't have flashy stuff really. The most flashy thing in my life is the, I have a driver who drives me in this Mercedes van and inside it, it's really nice. I've been in the van. Thank you, that's right. Yes, you were very gracious to take me to a Premier League game last time I was here, right? So I got, I had the privilege of riding in that.

46:28Yeah, so you've seen it. So that's the, so I thought to myself before I spoke to him that I'm not playing status games anymore. And what he pointed out to me is when we don't have a lot of money, the logos are really big. And then we have, when we're more sort of successful in our lives, the logos shrink, we start playing different games. So billionaires, it's all about the size of the boat, but they'll never wear like head to toe Louis Vuitton. No, no, no. If you go to Nantucket, everybody's driving kind of an old car. Yeah. You know what I mean? But that doesn't mean that the status game has been erased.

47:00It's just displaced. with a different game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In San Francisco, they're all driving Teslas, but it's all about either their fund size or the startup that they're building. So that made me really aware that I'm still playing status games, but it's a different type of game. And actually, if I was to walk in here head to toe in Louis Vuitton, it would actually be like a counter signal to the status game I'm playing because the people in my status game now would think of me worse. So it's like, and he said to me - You're still in the mousetrap though, or the maze. And he said to me, we all are because status really, really matters for survival throughout human history.

47:34So we're all playing status games. It matters to all of us that we fit in. Cancel culture and rejection, all of these things, hurt so badly because they are a prehistoric signal that we're being kicked out of our tribe. And back in the day, if we were kicked out of our tribes, we would die. Our bodies change physiologically. We fall into this mode called self-preservation when we feel an ounce of rejection. We sleep worse. We go into higher stress, more alertness. Because in a tribe, the great thing is there's so many people that you can relax. You're all looking out for each other. You have different chronotypes.

48:06You're sleeping at slightly different times, more eyes and ears. When you're on your own, you don't have that. So you live almost a decade less long and your whole physiology changes. So when you get a metric changes, it's like the equivalent of the modern day. You see one of your metrics dipping down. It's in some ways a signal of rejection that you're being kicked out of the tribe at a deeper level. and you get a similar response oftentimes. Or if someone's commenting badly on one of your photos, even if you've got a thousand positive comments, that one or two negative ones, they trigger that sort of, you know, that innate sense of rejection and all of the feelings it makes us feel about ourselves.

48:43So managing that has for me been closing my context down completely, which is like, if you tweet me, I won't see it. If, you know, don't search your name, don't look at your comments as much as you can, especially on like, you know, like a cesspit apps. We know the ones. Yes. And keep your context super small. That's really, really helped in my life. But it's also putting the lie to the whole notion that your status is correlated with any of those things, truly, right? Like, can you transcend that idea? I mean, I'm sure some people can. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't believe I will in my life. As somebody who's so good at learning something and applying it, the friction there with still struggling with that, I just, I think speaks to just how powerful these things are in controlling our decisions, our lives, and our time management.

49:33I used to believe that my body was against me in so many ways. I used to believe that it was fighting me, trying to lose weight, trying not to eat sugar, trying to not to procrastinate, trying not to care what people think, all of these things. And if you change the frame from, why won't my body let me do these things that I wanna do in the case of status? Why wouldn't it let me stop playing status games or stop having the cookie at 11 o 'clock at night? When you look at the body and what it's doing is it's trying to keep you alive. And if you look at it through that frame, your body is on your side.

50:07And then if you look at it through that frame, status games are a survival thing. The sugar, I don't know, 10 ,000 years ago would have kept you alive if you came across it. It wasn't so abundant. We didn't have fridges and these things. So your body isn't against you. It's doing everything it can to keep you alive. weight loss, I sat with weight loss experts and they all said to me, your body doesn't want you to lose weight because your weight actually correlated to how long you have left to live once upon a time. If you had more weight, you had longer to live. And if you were skinny, when we didn't have an abundance of food, you had less time to live.

50:40So it tries to defend your weight at all costs. So your body is on your side. Status games are innately human, as is all these sort of diet and discipline related habits that we can't break. That frame is helpful. Yeah, I think it's also about agency, right? Are these things controlling you or are you driving them? And I think to extend your example, you can also think of all of your character defects and defense mechanisms, all your psychological framework similarly. I don't know if you've had, have you had Richard Schwartz on? No. So he has this, he's a psychologist with a modality called internal family systems.

51:19Oh, I've heard of it. Yeah, IFS, which is the idea that all of these, we're all a multiplicity of personalities. And when we feel that instinct to lash out or we're resentful or fearful, these are all just pieces of ourselves that were designed to protect us in the same way, sort of maintaining fat around the belly serves us in that regard. And understanding those impulses and why we created them for ourselves becomes very powerful in learning how to act in contrast to them. And to have empathy for yourself. Yeah, I think, yeah, that's the big piece too, right? To not think you're useless, you've got no discipline and you're lazy and why can't I stop eating that thing?

52:02Or why can't I stop playing this status game? In terms of your own empathy for yourself, you mentioned shame, but when you reflect upon your childhood, I also hear quite a bit of gratitude. Like you are the way you are, despite some dysfunction and whatever trauma you experienced at that time. Clearly these things made you who you are. 100%. I didn't enjoy it at the time, but I wouldn't change any of it. That might be some, you know, survivorship bias or whatever they call it, because I'm happy with where I am now, but I'm well aware that you change my circumstances even slightly and I don't have a life that I'm happy with today.

52:41I reflect on my best friends from that time. None of them of my best friends have left the city. None of them are in situations where they are happy. My mother did a fantastic, brilliant job of insulating us with very, very harsh discipline that I couldn't even tell you about because you'd think it was inhumane or something. But keeping us focused, we couldn't swear. She couldn't read or write, bear in mind, but she would get encyclopedias off the shelf. My dad was working in London, which is like four hour round trip away. for five days a week. So this is this Nigerian woman raising four children in a house.

53:14She'd get, that can't read or write. And she ended up raising a lawyer and like a super genius mathematician. I went to Cambridge. My brother, who's even smarter than all of us, and then me, she'd get encyclopedias and put them in front of us and say, copy from here to here to the end. And I'd copy them and then call my dad in London and say, dad, I just learned a new word, important. Her discipline in those early years is profound. and watching her sleep on that bag of rice taught me that hard work is not something you complain about. Like, my mum never complained. It's something I always reflect on.

53:46Her life was like no one's life I've ever seen. She worked from the minute she woke up to the minute she fell asleep. And she didn't once say, I'm tired. She didn't once complain. It was... And that maybe speaks to where she's come from and what she watched with her mother on those stalls in Africa. That was so deeply ingrained in me that I almost find it hard to resonate with of people who have a pessimism bias because of that. I never saw it. And what's your relationship like with her now? It's been on a journey. It's been on a really interesting journey where when I was 18, 19, I was trying to intervene with her businesses and give her advice and she would never listen to me.

54:24Now she listens a lot more because my life has gone well in the business context. She never wanted me to be in business. As you can tell from that phone call where she disowned me. and I think she's still struggling with being in this country far away from home and being deeply misunderstood and as I've grown up I've come to learn about the racism she was telling me about when I was younger that I could never believe now I understand it I understand what she was going through being a Nigerian woman in the UK in 1992 in not just the UK but in the countryside side of the UK. We're talking four hours that way, where everyone is white.

55:03I couldn't understand what she was going through. And I think she's still suffering with the repercussions of that racism she experienced. We were not super close, I'm close to the rest of my family, but we talk.

55:18What would have to happen to bridge that intimacy gap with her? What is the barrier there? You know what it is? I think I've, this might be because I'm mixed race, or because she came from Nigeria and I grew up in the UK. It's how do we relate to each other? This is not... She doesn't understand the internet. She doesn't understand what I do. She's seen me on the TV doing Dragon's Den, but it's trying to find that bridge that we can meet on and connect on, which I've always struggled with. And I've actually always struggled with it with my dad as well. Like, I don't know what we talk about. And they don't know me.

56:02I call them by their first names. I always have since I was a kid. Never called the mom and dad ever in my life. Not once ever. What is that about? I don't know. I don't know. I hear - Your siblings do the same? Yeah, we all do the same. We call them by their first names. And we always have. Yeah, that's wild. My mom apparently said when we were younger, she wanted us to be more like her friends than her children. So she, and I think it may be she didn't want to feel that old. so we always caused contact by our first name. But do you feel like you need your mom to understand what you do? No. So if you can liberate yourself,, if you're liberated from that, Can't you just meet her with compassion and a lack of expectations?

56:41When we have our phone calls, the phone calls are my mom talking about her world for 30 minutes and what's been going on in her day. And then that's the end of the call. And it's not because I don't have a desire to share. There's no room in that conversation for me to say anything. I understand. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I'm not asked. I mean, she might ask about my girlfriend now, but outside of that, There's nothing about me in that call. It's about, she wants to tell me stuff. Yeah. And then the phone call ends and that's our relationship. Yeah.

57:16I can relate a little bit to that. Okay, there you go. That's a different podcast, but yeah, I understand. One of the things I think is really instructive and cool and interesting about you is that you're very consciously modeling a new idea of what it means to be a leader and a CEO. Throughout the 80s and the 90s, me being two decades older than you, the people who are influencing what that looked like were much more traditional. It was the Gordon Gekko's and greed is good and win at all costs and never show weakness, never show vulnerability. And I think what you're showing up and representing is something entirely different.

57:59And despite whatever fuel sources you're relying upon healthy or otherwise like shame, you're sharing in real time that journey for the benefit of others. And you're leading with openness and optimism and a level of vulnerability that a couple of decades ago or not too long ago would have been frowned upon or looked upon as a weakness in terms of how one would lead teams. And so I think there's something really interesting and instructive about those choices and what it means in terms of how other people show up to lead teams, to be leaders, to be CEOs, to be executives, and just to be more fully actualized human beings.

58:45You know, vulnerability was a revelation in my life and it was an experiment that I ran. And I say this because as a man, as a CEO, sometimes it felt difficult to be vulnerable, right? Especially in the early career, because I still, I'm in the wake of theory that you've described. And even I growing up saw CEOs on TV as being these like white men in suits that are like, I never had them stop to talk about what they were struggling with on TVs and in a movie. And about, I'd say five years ago, I sat with my team and said, I want to start a podcast and I want to be honest about what's going on in my diary.

59:24And in there, it would include everything from masturbation, challenges with my mother, mental health, anxiety, regretting decisions I made that day. And I want to put it out there and see what happens. And I say it was an experiment because it's terrifying to do that. That experiment, putting that first episode out there, was the most enlightening thing I've ever experienced. I thought vulnerability was a repellent. It turns out it's the world's greatest magnet. It brings everybody to you. If you think about what's in greatest supply in the world, it's the antithesis of vulnerability. It's filtering your life and showing, you know, the best parts of your life and that you're successful and imperfect and all of those things.

1:00:05That's the thing that's in greatest supply. The thing that's fundamentally in the least, is in highest demand though, is the thing that we can relate to in the 99 % of our lives, which is the struggle, the insecurity, the doubt, the eating the pot noodle on your bed, on your belly button at 1am in the morning, thinking about someone that's broken your heart. That's the thing in greatest demand, but in least supply. And so it turns out, also I came to learn a couple of years later that when someone shares their struggle, it increases oxytocin levels in us and we feel more connected to them. So I tried sharing mine and it was the most profound reaction I'd had from my best friends in my life.

1:00:44Only my best friends listened to it because it was episode number one. But what they said to me changed my life. So I wanted to continue that experiment of vulnerability in more areas of my life, including with my partner, with my team members and with the general public and it is win-win. It makes me feel amazing because I get things that are trapped inside of me running my unconscious mind like a puppet master in the back room out in the open and also other people can relate to it and resonate with it more than anything I could say. If I sat here now and said oh yeah I've got a Range Rover Sport and a Ferrari and I've got a million power.

1:01:19No one's gonna take anything from that or feel connected to that. But me talking about my mother and the human sides of the 99 % of my life, great for me, great for them. It's interesting that it began as an experiment and you were kind of calculating it in terms of external response. And my mind was going to what was the internal barometer of that? Because in doing that, in summoning the courage to be vulnerable, especially in a public format, is a frightening prospect, but it's also incredibly cathartic and empowering. Yeah. And liberating, right? Because you're carrying around that baggage.

1:02:01And there is generally a piece of shame attached to these things because we feel weak or insecure around those vulnerabilities, but in sharing them and exposing them to the light, we realize one, they didn't kill us. two people aren't rejecting us as a result of sharing them and three uh by by putting it out there it no longer holds power over you in the way that it did when you keep it in the shadows exactly that simon sinek's been on my podcast three times and he said the third episode where he opened up with i'm feeling lonely he told me his entire so he said all the other podcasts i've ever done you know people might come up to me and say that was a good episode that one he said was it changed his life.

1:02:48His whole friendship circle right onto him. Messages, phone calling him that day, people in the streets and cafes coming up to him, in his words, crying their eyes out. Why? Because Simon went from being this great thinker and, you know, great deliverer of ideas to being a human being that we can relate to at a deep level. Running the experiment of vulnerability in more areas of your life will be the greatest magnet towards connection anyone could ever run. Sharing your struggle, honestly, it almost bucks the trend because we've been hardwired to believe that people will be drawn to us if we are perfect, if we portray perfection.

1:03:26That's a great lie. It's the opposite completely, especially, I actually think this has been accelerated by the advent of social media. The first chapter in social media, which I was a big part of, I was running a social media business at that time, was all about perfection. then there was this sort of counter movement away from perfection and towards authenticity. And that's where we live now, which is I think we're in the age of authenticity where authenticity is an unbelievable currency for you. It's great for, this is the important thing, it's great for you as well. Yeah, but there's a caveat to that, which is what we now see quite a bit of is performative authenticity, which is sort of a false.

1:04:08Which is the counter movement to authenticity. Right, which makes the whole word, you know, authenticity, devoid of meaning. It becomes a wallpaper word to coin a phrase from your book. And then it becomes incumbent upon the person on the other end of the phone who's scrolling to discern the difference between somebody who's truly being honest and showing up and expressing from the heart versus the person who's doing it for, you know, the likes and the comments, right? And I think we're good at telling the difference. I give people more credit for that. Yeah, and I think young people are extremely good at, the bullshit detectors on young people are very finely honed out of survival, out of, I mean, it's a skill that's required as somebody who grows up with technology to understand the difference.

1:04:58Yeah, and as you said, Gen Z's have spent, in many cases, they've been in the social media era for 20 years now. So every day for nine hours a day, according to some of the studies, they are looking at people's performances. And almost as if they're training through machine learning in their brains what authentic looks like and what it doesn't look like. And when someone's lying to you and when they're not, when they're being honest and when they're being dishonest. The world's greatest A-B test on a generation of humans and how they behave and what their intentions are. Which maybe we, you know, my dad didn't have growing up.

1:05:29Maybe in a day he didn't encounter a thousand people. But the Gen Z's in my office are scrolling through thousands and thousands of performances a day. so their barometer has been finally changed. And what is that doing to young brains? I don't know. I don't know. I don't wanna think about that. As somebody who's in that ecosystem and in that business. I don't think it's doing a good thing. I don't think it's doing good things for sure. And I was actually, as I was getting my hair cut, the barber had bought his two-year-old son. And to keep the two-year-old son occupied while I'm getting my hair cut, he obviously places the phone there.

1:06:04and the phone is hypnotized, this two-year-old. The two-year-old is literally, and I said to him, look, he's hypnotized. And because he's just doing the same motion back and forth looking at the screen. If you take that phone away, this kid starts running around and grabbing stuff and playing with it. The minute you put that phone down, frozen. I was thinking there's something in that two-year-old's brain that is being hijacked. Some kind of dopamine. Oh, sure. You know, it's the same with that generation. Unquestionable. And there's a cost. There's always a cost. So you conduct this experiment in vulnerability in a public sphere by launching the Diary of a CEO podcast.

1:06:36I went back and listened to a variety of your very early episodes, which is super interesting. Obviously, the show has evolved quite a bit since those early days, but I really like those monologue episodes. I find it very difficult myself to sit in front of a microphone and just talk. It's much easier for me to kind of do this sort of thing. And it's easier for me to hide a little bit, right? Like I try to inject just enough of myself, but it's not about me. But when it's just you talking into the microphone, sharing from the heart, that requires something altogether different. I'm curious around the evolution of the show.

1:07:20Obviously it's a global smash success and congratulations. I think it's well-earned and you know that I have huge respect for what you do in the way that you do it. But I'm curious around why you don't do more of those vulnerable check-ins. Of all the requests we get, the most frequent one is people wanting me to do that. Those first sort of 10, 15 episodes. Of all the requests I get, I've put my stories multiple times over the last two years. I'm gonna do it again. I'm gonna do like my Steve's diary, sharing maybe seven points from my diary every week, where I'm just being completely honest and open about what I'm thinking, what I've been struggling with.

1:08:01it was it actually the process of it unlocked so many answers in my life more than anything i've ever done it's why i felt realized why i couldn't be in a relationship why i was struggling to be in a relationship from doing that process of write in my diary reflect upon it broadcast it teach it to the world we broke up again oh my gosh you've really listened yeah yeah honestly it was it was um two things the first is time takes much less time for me to interview somebody else. That's kind of a bullshit excuse. Honestly, like for me, like to interview someone else takes me, I'd say, so three, two, three hours preparation time.

1:08:40And then the conversation will last three hours. It's about 6 ,000 total for me to sit down and write through my notes in my diary takes, I'd say nine hours solid. And I heard Huberman talking about his solo episodes and he says it It takes days, days and days and days. Oh yeah, yeah, for sure. But that's a very different thing. Yeah, that's why I think it is. And then interviewing other people - See, I think there's something else. I think there's a resistance. Really? Because now the podcast is a juggernaut and what you're doing is working so well. So it's very easy to not do the thing that you were doing at the beginning.

1:09:23Do you think I should? Yeah. You think I should? Yeah. Not every episode, but once a month, maybe. Don't forget what inspired you to do it to begin with. So just being completely honest, I just don't know where I'd fit it. My team always want me to do it. My team actually put a solo episode in yesterday and I deleted it from my calendar because that day I was like, I've got too many meetings on and this is my only day where I can sit down and work. So I deleted it. It's easy to remove those ones. Apply your discipline equation. I don't know where I go. I need to say a little things. It fits squarely in one of your value buckets.

1:10:01Yeah, you're right. You are right. I honestly, from the bottom of my heart, I can't add anything to my life right now. I can't add nine hours to my life right now. I don't know where I'd add it. Getting me to write the last... I told you yesterday, I flew back to London and wrote the last story in London. My manager who sat out there, and he'll know because he's looking smirking and putting his thumb on. My manager had to chase me for three months to get me to write that last law. It's about four pages. So to think I'd be able to sit down maybe once a week and write what solo episodes are about seven or eight pages.

1:10:35I don't know how I would do that. My vlog that I've started is my way of showing you into my world a little bit. Sure, but that's a day in the life. So I'm just challenging you gently here. the show is called Diary of a CEO and it has become more and more other people's diary. Yeah. And not your own. Yeah. So just something to think about. I'm gonna do it. Just put it on the calendar a month from now. And I'm gonna do audio only. Yeah. So that is easier for me to read from my notes and I don't have to keep doing cuts. And I'm gonna run it as Steve's diary once a week or once a fortnight on audio only.

1:11:15There you go. I'm gonna hold you to that. Please, please. The other thing that I noticed yesterday when I bumped into you on the street, that made me think that it made you a little uncomfortable was when we were taught, you were sharing about how you went away to finish the book. And I was sharing that I do a month sabbatical every year. And you almost recoiled at the idea. So when we talk about discipline and hard work and entrepreneurship and going the extra mile and staying late with your team and all the kind of things that you think about when you're trying to achieve a goal, the idea of stopping altogether, to me feels like a healthy pursuit of that discipline.

1:12:07Because I think it's easy for you to go, go, go, but maybe it might require a little bit of discipline to stop and understand that that's part of the process also. That would be the hardest discipline for me to master. Right, right, right, right. And it's easy to be disciplined about things other people think are hard, but are second nature to you. Real discipline is plying it against the things that you're most resistant to. So if we go back to the equation and look at the me stopping for a month, not doing any work for a month. Here's all the excuses and all the reasons why it's impossible. The why is just not there for me.

1:12:46So, you know, you talk, we often, you probably talk about in your show, I talk about a lot of mine that sometimes people need to hit a rock bottom moment or a certain level of pain before the why increases, before they break the cycle that they're in. For me, the why is not strong. So when you say that, my brain goes, yeah, but why? I don't need to stop. If at some point in my life, whether it's through having kids or whether there's some kind of personal crisis in my life, the why increases. I think I might be disciplined with that. But where I sit today, I go, I'm a little bit overextended, but there's no part of me that would see taking a month off as helpful or necessary.

1:13:28So I would, you see what I'm saying? You know that at Christmas time, I take about three weeks and I go to Bali. I've done that Costa Rica and Bali every year for the last three years. There I sit alone and I write. That's what I would do in my free time. I wouldn't enjoy taking a month off and doing nothing. My stability is chaos. Yeah. My chaos is stability. Now it is. It has always been. Now it is. But the discomfort that comes up for you around the idea of doing nothing, I think is worthy of investigation. 100%. Yeah. And maybe you do need to burn out. or something has to happen for you to recognize that.

1:14:08I just think that under universal law, you have stress and rest, right? You go to the gym, you stress your body, you rest, you recover, you go to sleep every night. Everything is a cycle, whether it's a micro cycle or a macro cycle. So I know that you prioritize sleep, you don't set an alarm, you make sure that you get as much sleep as you need so that you can be the high performer that you are, that's in the micro. but in the macro, look at it from a decade perspective or an annual perspective, you need to build in those rest intervals just the same. This is why my girlfriend is such a great counterbalance in my life because she demands of me my time when we go away.

1:14:50So we went away to Portugal. How dare she do that? Yeah, I know, I'm framed that really badly, but everything in my life is I do because I wanna do. And when she says, I wanna go to Portugal for a week and spend some time with my family, I wanna go as well. It's not, and I say this to her, she knows this about me. If she wasn't there, I wouldn't be doing this. Like if she wasn't in my life, default Steve, when she goes away herself for two weeks is intense. Really, really intense. And I like it. Yeah, I know. This is what I'm saying. Yeah, of course. I understand this. But I also reflect and go, it's not sustainable.

1:15:30And there's this other thing that's about to emerge in my life, which is children at some point in the next three years. How will I fit children into that equation when they will also demand of me my attention and my time? Something's got to give. And as I always, I found in some of my friends, when they're not changing behaviors and they're not breaking habits, maybe they just need a little bit more pain. And it's a horrible thing to say, but you know that certain people just need a little bit more pain before they change course and say enough is enough. Maybe I need a little bit more pain in the opposite direction to flip my incentive structure.

1:16:04But I have to also caveat this by saying, I'm happy, whatever that means. As in, I wake up with a deep sense of gratitude for the life that I get to live. And I rarely have sad days. I mean, can I think of having a sad day? I've had like really difficult periods, but I don't have a lot of sad days. So yeah, that's also why there's not been enough of force in the opposite direction getting me to change the way I am. Yeah, I mean, I'm glad to hear that you're happy and I think that's genuine, I believe you. But I think there's a, maybe just beneath the surface, some control issues, some fear around what it would feel like, what it would look like if you had to kind of release the reins a little bit and let some other people in.

1:16:48That's very threatening to your identity and the direction that you're driving your ship right now. I think you're scary. That's scary. I think you've nailed it. Maybe I'm not so conscious of that fear, but I think there's definitely a fear there. Because why wouldn't I go in and hang out in beautiful places around the world and beaches and just relax and just get on the moped and just drive down, go to the gym and just chill out and just do something else and not be obsessed. Why wouldn't I do that? Where does this obsession come from? And it is, it's an obsession, my team know. It's a seven day a week shower, walking down the street, everywhere I go, obsession.

1:17:23Why?

1:17:27I would have to relate it to the things I've said in my childhood. And I think what that created in me is also this, when you believe you're really capable of a lot of things, when you really believe in yourself, you're almost haunted by that potential. And you always feel like there is no end to where you can go. And when you're stood in the face of a huge perception of potential, Like you just think that there's no finish line here. And I think maybe there's a part of me that thinks myself, maybe at a deep level, that thinks my self-esteem is related, is correlated to how far down that never ending track I am.

1:18:08And what is the role that your ego is playing in all of that? Because there's a kernel of narcissism at the center of that, thinking that you're the puppeteer in charge of all this latent potential awaiting manifestation. And it's just, it's up to you and your sheer force of will to make it happen. And there's something beautiful about it too. I don't wanna cast it in a pejorative way. What is, when you say ego, how do you define that? Because the word is used so broadly. Sure, the idea that you and you alone are responsible for whether or not these great gifts that you're gonna bestow upon the world are gonna happen or not.

1:18:50And as such, going to the gym and chilling out and riding a moped around Bali is a frivolous pursuit that is reserved for mortals. So I do believe that, I definitely have a bias towards believing, no I do, I definitely have a bias towards believing that my outcomes in life are like heavily correlated to what I do. And that can be a gift and a curse. You know, it's the exact way you've just described it. And what is the relationship between self-esteem or just a feeling of goodwill within yourself and the external results of your labor. This is something that I've had to hazard a guess at because it's not abundantly clear to me.

1:19:34But when I think about, when I think, when I piece together certain pieces of the jigsaw I can see, I assume that the missing pieces that I can't see are telling me that there's a correlation between what I achieve and my perception of myself. at a deep level, you know? I can't fully see that picture, but there must be.

1:20:02This is something that I suffer from. So I can relate to this self inquiry, but I know that you've shared your kind of ongoing conversation with yourself around this, that perhaps was maybe initially prompted when you sat with Radhanaswamy. And he said something to you around the idea of you being enough or you are loved for who you are and your kind of recoiling response to that. Yeah, so that conversation actually came from a lady that came to my office and said to my team many years ago, just imagine you are ready enough. imagine that you have everything you need and you've all these goals that you have in your life they don't actually matter you already have everything you need and I remember thinking that's a load of nonsense god that's going to mean that what's the point getting out of bed in the morning what's the point of motivation if you've if you're already enough I remember walking back to my desk the idea sat in my brain for two years and everything I figured out about the nature of my life proved it to be true and also when I realized that at 25 when I got that range of a million pound six-pack girlfriend and the anticlimactic feeling of you aiming at the wrong thing and none of these goals ever mattered made me realize that unless you believe what that woman said to me that day, unless you believe that you are currently already enough, what ends up happening is you fall into the trap of thinking that one Steve Bartlett can be worth more than one Steve Bartlett if I accomplish something.

1:21:33The currency of Steve Bartlett is one Steve Bartlett irrespective of accomplishment is always going to be worth the same inside here. So if I accept this idea that I'm already enough and that none of this stuff is going to move me, then I can start aiming at things that I didn't believe would sway my internal worth, which means aiming at internal ambitions, intrinsic things, which is why the podcast really took off and why I started it, because it was something I would do regardless of remuneration. So one of the things in my life that I loved, obviously the motivation structures change when it becomes a bit more widely listened to.

1:22:09Sure, sure. But what you're getting at really is this idea, this distinction between ambition - Fake ambition and real ambition. Yeah, how you mask insecurity as ambition and it's only in success that you realize the nature of that. Yeah, I thought her words would erode my ambition. in fact it erodes your fake ambitions what it illuminates is your real ambitions and um and I have kids come up to me after I speak on stage and they'll say I want to be a public speaker like 19 year old kids and I go why do you want to be a public speaker and they go you know like I want to I want to I want to speak on stage what they're actually doing what they actually want is they want the admiration they just saw you get right it's not that they have an idea they feel compelled to share it's about you it's about standing on a stage and having people look at them and and clap which they didn't get at seven years old.

1:23:01So that's a fake ambition. They don't actually wanna be a public speaker. And in that instance, we've confused aspiration with admiration. We have admiration for what we just saw in that person. So we think it's an aspiration of our own, but they're two very different things. And so, yeah, that changed my life. But the, I can't even pronounce his name, Radhanath? Radhanath. Radhanath Swami. What he said to me was in New York, Jay Shetty took me to his conference when I was 20 something, early 20s. and I was contending with this internal issue where I knew I was really capable of doing things. I knew I was capable of having an idea and making it happen.

1:23:36So when I got to ask him a question, I said, am I wrong for spending my life building businesses and enriching myself versus going to Africa and saving just one life in the village in Africa where I was born? And he said, you can't pour out for others that which you don't have yourself, which was really eye-opening for me. And so I spent the next 10 years kind of focusing a lot on building up my skillset so that now hopefully I have more that I can pour out for other people. Cause we all contend with that feeling, don't we? Yeah, in AA they say something similar, which is you cannot transmit something you haven't got.

1:24:11Yes. Which speaks to the authenticity, fake authenticity thing, right? If you're holding yourself out in a certain way in the world and doing it in service of others, if that's not real, it's not gonna connect or resonate. Amen, yeah. Versus earned experience over time, right? Amen. But when you talk about these ideas that are a little bit more ephemeral, ethereal, it reminds me of a conversation I had recently with Arthur Brooks, social scientist, professor at Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School. He's written a couple of books. He has a new book coming out that he co-wrote with Oprah.

1:24:55And he's sort of an expert on happiness. He writes for the Atlantic Magazine. And he's distilled the pursuit of happiness down to these four pillars, which are family, friendship, work, preferably work that is in service of others or about something larger than yourself. And the final one being faith. Now he's a hardcore Catholic, but he feels very strongly and the social science supports this idea that if you want true happiness and happiness not being a state, but rather the result of how you invest your attention, time, and energy, that something transcendent has to be an aspect of that pursuit.

1:25:45Something that is about more than yourself. Something that is about through your work serving others, of course, and yet a little more ethereal than that. And I think this is where the rubber just might hit the road with you, Steven, right? As you tense up. Yeah, I was trying to find that in my own life. The closest thing I can get to that is just the conversations you have with people about how what you do has helped them in some way. that feels like an almost spiritual, it's the fourth part of the ikigai work as serving as. And I think that's why of all the successes that you've had and all the things that you've done, why the podcast I think is probably the most meaningful.

1:26:36100%. Yeah. You know the ikigai thing? Sure. That fourth piece of doing something that helps the world or other people. It's the only thing I've ever done in my life where I've managed to find that fourth piece, done things that I'm good at, that will make you money, But finding that fourth piece of like, this is why it's the, of all the things I do in my life, it's the most enjoyable. And also like, hate to say it, but it's the least profitable financially, but it's the thing I give most of my time to. When you find that pursuit that is also an offering, but is a passion, like it's something you love, you would do ordinarily without compensation because it brings so much meaning into your own life.

1:27:19and then in turn to have that be of tremendous value to other people is the greatest gift. And it's why I will always do this. Like I just love it. I would do it for free. I did do it for free for many years. I'm very grateful that it supports my family now, but I understand that impulse and that's why I'm not surprised despite all of the companies and all the other things that you do that this is the thing that means the most to you. But I still think that that falls under what Arthur Brooks would call the work bucket and not the faith or transcendent bucket. I grew up believing in a God. I grew up believing in a higher power.

1:27:58And for whatever reason, at 18 years old, I was the last one to renounce my faith in my family and of my siblings. For whatever reason, I discovered the work of Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris and Hitchens. And I started to question as I do with a lot of things. I had these new ideas in my head. So I spent two years as this absolutely obsessed, atheist, agnostic, reading every book, watching every documentary in all of my free time. And from there, my faith fell away. But I find faith in and awe and beauty in the stars and the universe and all of... I spent so long reading and studying about the universe and watching the cosmos documentaries.

1:28:40And that has become my new awe, which is this incredible, the awe of the world we live in. And it almost came to a point in my life where I didn't feel like I needed to believe in a God or a deity or anything like that because I can believe in, there's so much awe that my brain can't understand. When I think about a whale, I was talking to my girlfriend about it last night as we were falling asleep. These things are just awe-inspiring enough for me to, you know, and there's so many unanswered questions. So I have to live in, would you call it faith? Or would you call it just uncertainty around the nature of why I'm here and what I'm doing and what the real game is of life.

1:29:17Yeah, I think uncertainty and being able to inhabit a place of awe and wonder, I think is a gateway drug towards something greater. But I think in that process, a big piece of it is developing a capacity for humility that can act as a counterweight against the wiles of the ego that are luring you in directions quite attractive, but ultimately not in your long-term best interest. The recurring trend I've noticed in the guests that I've had on that I've been through AA. So recently, Russell Brand, Rainn Wilson. Both friends. Both friends, both written books about spirituality. Both told me, both said what you've just said to me about the faith being such an instrumental part of their lives to the point that I think Russell alluded to the fact that without faith, he would not be able to be stable in his day to day.

1:30:16I think he said something to me like, I spend the first two hours of the day reconnecting to my faith just so I can be normal. And I noticed that my guests who have been through AA are the ones that really have spoken to me so passionately about the importance of faith. Am I like seeing something here? Is that a correlation with that? Well, AA is a spiritual program. Right, okay. So it is one of the principles and one of the steps is developing an understanding and appreciation of a God of your own understanding, a higher power. And the steps are really rooted in ancient spiritual traditions that are tried and true around doing a personal inventory and making amends, from almost a karmic perspective.

1:31:10Meditation is one of the steps, being of service, giving back, humility, all of these things infuse that 12-step program. But fundamentally, it is about surrendering your life and your will and your power over to something greater than yourself. And what is that for you? And that idea of surrender, I think, is very counterintuitive and particularly with people who are of the kind of alpha personality types because it provokes a sense of giving up in them, which I have only learned over the years is an illusion. The idea being that when you're in your own self-will and you're running your life according to those parameters where it's all about you and what you want and what you need and it's up to you to get it, that that can be an effective fuel source that can even reap positive rewards in your life, but it will ultimately plateau and hold you back from your greatest capacity, which is what happens when you allow yourself to recede a little bit more into the background, relinquish those reins, and understand that there are forces greater than yourself at work and at play, that when you can be in that space will help guide you in the direction you're meant to go.

1:32:35And I think the entry point for you is making the connection between that and this very strong sense of self and intuition that you have that has always been your guiding force in your life. What is that force or faith for you? It's undefined. It doesn't fall into any specific tradition other than kind of a broad knowing that there are forces at play that are beyond our capacity to intellectually understand. And it's my job to not be engaged in trying to understand it with my mind and instead to let go of that and just engage with the heart, which means paying attention to that inner voice. What is it telling me?

1:33:25Why do I have this? Where does that come from? And really respecting that, which I think you already do. Okay, but you don't have to do a practice, like a daily practice to connect with that. Well, that's of your own design, but I think a practice around stillness and quietude so that you can hear what's being said inside of you, I think is important. And again, I think this is something that you're already doing. But I think that's why meditation and mindfulness practices can be so powerful because they connect you with that heart voice. That's so easy to cloud in the gestalt of our busy, stressful lives.

1:34:09You're completely right. Because the person - I know your girlfriend, what's your girlfriend's name again? Melanie. Melanie, yeah. I mean, I'm sure she would, she's probably banging this drum in your ear all day long. You would, no. No? She's living it. Yeah. But she's, I mean, she wakes up and meditates for an hour every single morning. But she's liberated from the need for you to see it the way that she does. Yeah, and vice versa. Which is evidence of an advanced consciousness. But it goes both ways as well. Like it's really interesting to have a girlfriend who's so deeply spiritual. That's her career, that's her life.

1:34:44She does retreats, Breathwork Studio where we met yesterday. But the reason why we work is because we have our lives and we're secure in it. And we're not trying to convert the other individual to our way of thinking. We're looking over and stealing things from each other's lives. We said this in the car two days ago. She was like, I used to think I wanted to be with someone who was also really spiritual, but I've got that box ticked. So being with you allows me to learn something and vice versa, in terms of I've learned so much from her, from just observing her. It's really interesting though, because when I do go to Bali at the end of the year, the conversation in my head and who I am is much closer to who I want to be.

1:35:21And it's because of the stillness. It's because I've had space away from the machine. So can you bring some piece of that into your daily life and routine? I have sat with so many amazing people, super successful, people that I love and admire so much, who tell me about the importance of meditation. And I have still not made it a habit in my life, a discipline in my life. And again, it's because there's something in my brain, and this is me just being completely honest, I completely believe in meditation and stillness and taking 30 minutes a day, even 20 minutes a day. I completely believe in how much that would impact my life.

1:36:06Do you though? Because you are so good at taking those things, you know will benefit you and incorporating them into your life. Yeah. The resistance there, I think is interesting because I think on some level you do believe, but there's also a big part of you that doesn't. The part of the discipline equation, now that I think about that, it's missing, is prioritization comes into play because your time is a zero sum game. So it depends if I believe, deep within me, if I believe something else is going to reap a greater return on investment. So you can believe these things. I believe meditation is important just because I've heard it so much.

1:36:43I've experienced it in my own life a little bit. But I think somewhere in me, I believe all these other things are more important. I believe getting up at 9am and having that call with the fund manager, who's gonna invest in our fund was more important than pausing for 30 minutes. And until the prioritization changes, it won't happen. Is that accurate? Does that make sense? Like am I BSing myself? I don't know, only you know. Yeah, because there's some things I believe and I wanna do, but they're not winning out over the other things. Sure, I think part of it is this idea that, But our morning routines are now extended hours and hours and hours.

1:37:23Like, what are you gonna actually do to begin your day? Are you gonna get up? You're not gonna set the alarm, so you're gonna wake up later, so you get your rest, and then you're gonna do your meditation, and then you're gonna do your cold plunge, and your sauna, and your workout, and your morning pages, and your journaling. It's one o 'clock in the afternoon. I'm going to be gone. So I understand that. There's something very human about that. But I think it's curious, I mean, you recently had Sam Harris on the podcast, you've had Russell, you've had all these people. They're, you know, I mean, Sam, atheist, right?

1:37:57So he's non-threatening to you from that kind of organized religion perspective or spirituality perspective. And yet I think he would aggressively advise you that that 30 minute meditation is far more important than these other things that your brain is telling you should come first. I look at it through the context of that discipline equation and I say okay friction's probably quite high because it's difficult for me to sit down and do nothing that's quite a difficult psychological challenge for me the enjoyment of it is probably not high enough and the why is probably not clear enough so if something happens in my life if I have some kind of experience maybe I go on a retreat and someone sits with me for seven days and they really show me.

1:38:40I need to feel it and see it for myself, how transformative this is. And they find some way to make it more enjoyable for me and reduce the friction, it will stick. Sleep is a really interesting example of this, how it stuck in my life. Last night, before I went to bed, I kissed my girlfriend under the lips. I said, last night, babe, my sleep efficiency was really, really low. So I'm going to sleep in the spare room tonight, which is my room. And I slept in the room. I wake up first thing in the morning, look at my whoop, check exactly how much sleep I've had. Because I ran the experiment of not sleeping and sleeping and saw the variants using data to understand the correlation in my mood performance and how I feel is so great when I haven't had restorative sleep.

1:39:22It's stuck. And now it's like a non-negotiable in my life. And meditation will have to do the same thing. It will have to impress upon me so greatly the advantages of it that that That Y part will become discipline. It's not there yet with me. And does that have to be experiential? I think so. Or could you take the advice of people who are practitioners of this, who could tell you trusted people, people like Sam Harris, Tim Ferriss, people like that, that you probably on some level,

1:39:54appreciate their wisdom and believe that they're credible in what they're telling you. So they've all told me. See, this is the thing. But it goes to beliefs, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is what I talk about with beliefs. I talk about it. It's interesting too. You're like, I can see the gears in your brain working. You have this mental model and you're trying to solve it intellectually. I believe that our beliefs are most significantly influenced by our first party experiences. And that's why I talk about running these experiments and building self-belief. If you try and have a conversation with a flat earther, you can tell them all that.

1:40:28You can show them pictures. You have a whole thing in the book about this. Yeah. Yeah. The only way you would ever convert a flat earther is taking them up there. That's the only way, taking up there and looking at the planet. That's the only way. There probably would be another reason they would come up with. Oh, yeah. When they got up there, they would say, oh, this is an illusion. But that's the closest you could do. And it's the same with climate change. Until people see the river in their own village overflowing every single week, they're not going to see a gradual change happening in the atmosphere.

1:40:57They won't believe it. So, the same I think applies for all when we're trying to change our beliefs, you have to go and get first party evidence that you subjectively accept as true. And I can expose you to first party evidence, but you might not subjectively accept it's true. So you have to then accept that it's true. Breathwork was a good example for me. My girlfriend took me to a breathwork class. Breathwork, what breathing? And I had a really transformative experience where I'm crying after. I believe in breathwork now. Holotropic breathing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That kind of like psychedelic.

1:41:29Yeah. It's incredibly powerful. You can get a group of people to open up and weep and share experiences almost instantaneously, people that don't even know each other. So my wife takes groups of people through this exercise on our retreats and it bonds the group and it's amazing what people share in the aftermath of these experiences. It's like a psychedelic experience without taking psychedelics. Do you think we've all got a different sort of barometer of skepticism and a requirement for logic and proof and evidence and science when we approach our lives. Because you was talking about the cogs going on in my brain.

1:42:06I'm definitely someone that needs to see it. Sure. And understand the science for me to accept it. Yeah. Get over yourself. Is that really what it is? Yeah, I think on some level, I understand it because I'm the same way. And my relationship feels, to my wife, feels similar to your relationship with your girlfriend, even though I haven't met her, just based on what you've shared with me. And I think I am best guided when I'm able to kind of step outside of the confines, understand that our brains are attempting to identify patterns that help us make sense of the world. And we do that so that we feel safe, this understanding of who we are, this crafted identity that I know I'm very invested in based upon these mental models that I have about how the world works, about who I am and how I fit into it.

1:43:05And I think some of my greatest growth has been when I can disabuse myself of those parameters or understand their limitations and just allow myself to step outside of it and entertain something different. And I think what's interesting about this, given your resistance, but also your curiosity, is this disposition that you have around questioning the question. Like this is almost a gift of yours to always try to step outside whatever paradigm you're in so that you can have a broader view of what is happening and identify a different or new way. so maybe for you questioning the question should be applied to your own pattern making capacity in your intellectual mind part of me the way i like rationalize it to myself and this might not be true is if i accept things that i can't understand or see the data on or experience then i'm susceptible to accepting anything and that's not a that doesn't feel like a productive framework for decision making as I proceeded my life.

1:44:21And I have to be honest, this might have been influenced by my early context, because you've got a mother who will believe everything. And then seeing that fail her, everything, things with no evidence, you know, I would wake up and she would have my 3am in the morning, she's got my maths books from school, and she's going through them to find numbers. She's got a ball spinning here, and she's finding numbers in the math book, putting her finger on them. And if they come out of this ball that she's spinning, she'll play them in the lottery. Just, I would wake up and she had an egg on my head. Yeah, I understand.

1:44:54She'd put an egg on my head when I woke up in the morning and be doing smoke in my room. So I saw this like superstitious, you know, and we all, all four of us are the most pragmatic, I mean, mathematicians, pragmatic. We required data to believe things. And we rejected that. Right, as a reaction. I think so, yeah. It was just so strange to us. So we've all grown up to be very logical and evidence-based, every single one of us. And I've applied that to my life clearly, where I'm super skeptical about things. And yet you found your way to Melanie, who sees the world very differently and navigates it differently than you.

1:45:29And there's something about that that clearly is intriguing and interesting and compelling. Every girlfriend is like that. Every girlfriend I've had is like that. Right, right. So what is that? I think it's, I mean, maybe there's some like Freudian mother. But I think outside of that, I am also a really, really curious person. You've outsourced your awe and wonder to your partner. Yes, 100%. Which makes you feel safe while also appreciating it as long as it is at arm's length. Yeah, and as long as it's not trying to convert me. It's not threatening your mental model. I love it. I would not be with, I said to her last two days ago when we're in the car talking about this.

1:46:08Notice how I've never dated anyone like myself. I said, that would be a nightmare. I love being able to look into your world and your window and see how you're doing the investigations for me. You're rummaging around and then you're telling me about it, but you're not trying to convert me, you're sharing. And from that, I've taken things. I've become a way better person because of that in that non-threatening way. Like she's not threatening to me. She's not trying to convert me to anything. So it's been a wonderful balance in my life having her, both for work-life balance, whatever they call it, but also for like spiritual balance.

1:46:39And she'll notice in me, she's noticed a huge change in me since she met me. It's just slower. My girlfriend, and I say this with all respect, she defaults to accepting new ideas and beliefs about the world. I default to interrogation and pessimism. And one or two of them get in, but they get in slowly and after meeting certain criteria. They have to be, they're sort of stress tested before you let them in a little bit. Like breath work, I don't know what the science says about it, but you've had an experience with it. Doesn't matter the science to me. I mean, the guy explained it to me and that's probably why he was the right person to do it with me.

1:47:22He explained the physiological processes in my body with fight or flight and how we live in a state of shallow breathing and the oxygen in the brain. And then we did the session. So you have explanation, you have experience, acceptance. Yeah. For me. Yeah. You can't just give me explanation. Yeah. You have an interesting relationship with risk. For you, the risk would be to live an ordinary life, to extend yourself and kind of pursue these startups doesn't feel like a risk to you in the way that it would maybe for somebody who's wired a little bit differently. So I'm curious around what you feel to be risky or what is it that is luring you in a certain direction, but frightens you and feels like a risk, even though, you know, perhaps it's something you should explore.

1:48:22The thing that frightens me, I think if I'm being honest, is as the platform that I have, like with the diary of a CEO has gotten bigger. With that comes just more feedback to deal with. It kind of goes back to what I was saying about rejection and that kid in the playground in school. Your success, which you drive towards because you want validation, you want clapping, right? Also comes with booing. And I think that is the thing that frightens me. Like, I know that in order to have a happy life going forward, What I need is a small context of people that I love that are around me and to be doing things for intrinsic reasons.

1:49:05But as that expands, the temptation to tune into external voices or to do things that aren't intrinsic increases. And that is the risk that I face in my life. Being swayed away from myself and into caring about the noise that I've clearly been intentional in trying to create. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. That's the thing that terrifies me. Yeah. And how that might hurt my life. Like one of the things I'm scared of is like people knowing who my girlfriend is and how that might ruin this special part of my life that is keeping is really pure and wonderful and small and feels like a, you know, I'm scared of that.

1:49:41You know, Rogan's managed that really, really well because people don't really, keeps that out of it. Yeah, he seems very conscious around what he's willing to share about his personal life. But I think that's the trade-off, right? You're in the public sphere and it comes with the good and it comes with the bad. But can you rest your head every night knowing that you put out content that is attempting to raise the vibration of consciousness? Like you truly are approaching this from a place of curiosity and genuine interest to learn and to share good ideas with people. And maybe not every episode is gonna connect with everybody in the way that you would like, But I think intention matters.

1:50:28And I think it's very clear, the intention that you're bringing to what it is that you're doing. And I guess what I would say is with that, irrespective of what the cackling and the caucus is around whatever episode or whatever's happening that's outside of your control, can you not just sleep easy knowing that you did your best to do good in the world? Yeah, 95 % of times. So then what trips you up? You know, it would be... This is why I try not to expose myself too broadly. It would be some kind of external... I'm new to being in the public eye. So I haven't put the systems in place everywhere yet to dealing with that.

1:51:17I've, over the last six, 12 months, made a lot of progress, but I went from being someone that people really didn't know at all to being on the number one business show in the UK called Dragon's Den, which is like Shark Tank in America, being a dragon on there. And the podcast in correlation to that surging in the country to being the most downloaded in our country. And that suddenly thrust me to the front and I didn't have systems in place to deal with that, which meant that like walking down the street in Shoreditch, there's a reporter following in the car, taking photos of me and my girlfriend walking down the street, then publishing those and saying things that aren't true.

1:51:53about we were walking to the gym. We were on our way back from the gym. The pictures in the newspapers say like... Having a row. Yeah, like a heartbreak. He's gotten back with his girlfriend after she dumped him for overworking. Now, when you receive that, the brain doesn't know how to process that if you try and process that without consciousness and intentionality. So how do I handle that information and feedback in a way that will allow me to remain focused on what matters in my life? That's what I've been working on for the last two years. And I think I've made a lot of good progress, if I'm honest, to put those systems in place.

1:52:27But as you propel further into the public eye, because your show's growing hugely, my show grows, what comes next? You know, I look at other people who are further down the line. I look at some of the stuff that like Rogan has been through. And I go, man, that is... I don't wish that on anyone. I don't wish that on anybody. And I wouldn't like to endure what, you know, like a version of what you just shared. I feel like right now I'm in this sort of perfect place where occasionally people say hi to me, but it's always nice and it isn't invasive into my life. And I'm very cautious about it morphing into anything more unmanageable than that.

1:53:06The only reason it did for me was because I went onto a show which is like an institution in our country. Yeah. Like, so if you go on, if I think if I was doing my podcast, it wouldn't be the case. If it's the minute that I went into that world, the traditional media world. Yeah. That's when it all changed for me. Before then, I didn't have this issue. No one cared about me. No one wanted to write anything about me or talk about me. And I almost, you know, it's interesting. Rogan is obviously so big that he is, he's in every world. It's a whole different thing. Yeah. Yeah. So, and he's also UFC and, you know, everything he's done on TV.

1:53:40So, you have this new book, The Diary of a CEO, which I really enjoyed. I was sharing with you yesterday on the street about it. On the one hand, it's really chock full of all kinds of timeless wisdom. It's definitely written with an eye towards it being timeless. It doesn't matter that it's 2023 or what year it is, but also in a way that's quite breezy and easy to digest and read with recaps. And it's sort of written with an eye towards grabbing attention, holding attention and keeping it as lean as possible. Like there's no extra words here. You say exactly what you need to say in order to drive your point home and to support it with studies or examples of people that you've had on the podcast.

1:54:27And I think you did a really wonderful job and it's gonna impact a lot of people. But I'm curious around why you decided to write a book. We were talking yesterday and I was saying, yeah, you can spend two years writing a book. It will make less money than doing a podcast. It will reach less people. Like in your mental model of running the equation of value and investment of time, resources, et cetera. How do you come out squaring that equation on the side of investing the time and energy required to put something out that's good? There's so much to be gained in the unobvious decision. Throughout this conversation, we've talked about how when sort of inauthenticity was high, there was this counter movement towards authenticity.

1:55:12And now there's like another counter movement, which is like fake authenticity. When digital music came along, you know, vinyls surged again. Now that we've become more glued to screens and phones, IRL community things are surging. You even see bowling alleys being, making a comeback and miniature golf and all these things. And I believe the same about... Pickleball. Yeah, all of these things that are coming back. And I love it so much because I bet on humans' innate desire for connection and being together in a world where everyone's optimizing in the other direction, it will always be there.

1:55:48So there's a big opportunity there to bring people together. Last night, we actually did a dinner party for Diary of a CEO listeners. Third one we've done. There's nothing more magical that we've ever done as a team. There's nothing where people won't leave the room. 20 total strangers from our community that stand up. They all have question cards in front of them from the podcast. They reveal something deeply intimate about them, vulnerable about them. those 20 people become best friends that night. They're literally best friends. They make WhatsApp groups together, and then their friends, like since the last one we've done, they've been meeting up recurringly.

1:56:21There's something so beautiful about the unobvious polar opposite path. There's wonder there. And that's kind of how I see a book. I spend all my time making content, Instagram quotes and podcasts. And the wonder I found in something both physical, that has such depth, that takes so long to write, is hard to articulate. But it's the most enjoyable thing to me when a couple hundred thousand people, or however many that buy that book, read that, focus on it, and then have a conversation with me about it. It's way more impactful than the Facebook video I did that did 30 million views, that was just a quick, cheap viral video three minutes long, that did a big number, but in terms of meaning, didn't mean anything to anyone.

1:57:11Books are depth, they're meaning and they're considered, there's no comment section, you know? Yeah, yeah. It's so special. Yeah, it's indelible and lasting. In a culture that's increasingly recycled, there is still a sense of permanence around writing books. Exactly. And it makes no sense to it makes no sense if you score it based on the traditional scoring system, like you did, like money, time it takes, reach. But it makes all the sense when you score it based on fulfillment for me to write it, fulfillment for the people that take the time to complete the book. And as you say, enduring, because social media and all these other mediums are fairly ephemeral.

1:57:58This is the antithesis of that. There's usually value in the antithesis. That's what I've come to learn in my life. So if somebody is listening or watching this and they're thinking, I'm not a business person. I have no desire to be a CEO. I don't even know any CEOs except maybe my boss. Like, why should I read this book? And I have a lot of reasons that I could speak to about that. But I wanna hear from you. Like the average person picking this up, diary of a CEO. I'm not a business person. I'm not any of those things. I consider myself to be a guy who's trying to...

1:59:07who live the best life I can, making us choose Apple over Samsung or Uber over Lyft or whatever it is. Understanding why humans do what they do, including yourself is really the nature of this book. And it allows you to understand your team members, yourself, your customers, and all of those things. So yeah, it's a social psychology book more than anything. And the first third of it is really about the self, this idea that you can't be a leader or run an organization if you're not first tending to your vessel. and you discuss all the various ways in which you've done that or things you've learned as a result of hosting the podcast about that.

1:59:45But that's the fundamental pillar upon which everything else rests. Can I ask you a question? Because you're a very smart person and I know you actually read the book. So what law was stood out to you? I've never had any feedback on the book ever before because you're one of the first to read it. Well, I think that, I mean, certainly there's plenty in there that I already knew or maybe I didn't have words for, but I already kind of understood the idea that, you know, knowledge is the best investment of your energy and that everything is built upon from there, skill, relationships, network, et cetera.

2:00:20I really love that idea. The 1 % kind of David Braille's Ford rule, who's the British cycling Team Sky guy. I love that, the idea of success being measured in progress rather than results, like being in this persistent state of moving in a certain direction is actually more meaningful than achieving goals or hitting benchmarks. It's that sense of we're going somewhere and we're doing it together, I found to be really interesting and powerful. And then all this sort of marketing stuff that I don't know about, like why the Apple store is the way it is and why that works, creating this, first allowing you to touch the products and having a sense of ownership over them and the kind of luxury scarcity notion of space to product ratio that exists there.

2:01:13And the examples that you gave around creating friction between the customer and the product, I thought was something I hadn't heard of with the cake mix and it wasn't working when it was so easy until they realized that and said, okay, now you have to add an egg and suddenly sales were more like, all these weird kind of counterintuitive marketing things that then you go on to describe how you apply them in your podcast was personally relevant to me. Because I was like, wait, he does what? Like, you know, I'm reading this book. I joked with you yesterday, I'm gonna make everyone on my team read this.

2:01:46I'm like, all these, like, this is some fucking crazy Machiavellian shit that he's doing in his podcast that's making it grow. And like, we're looking at YouTube trying to figure out, like, what are we missing here? I'll put out amazing content and sometimes it's flat on YouTube and I don't know what I'm doing. And I see you with this hockey stick growth right now. And then I read the book and I realize like, oh, the level of intentionality, the attention to detail, all these things that I really appreciate that aren't, you know, like great mysteries. It's like, you really care about what you do.

2:02:18You've hired really good skilled people. You stay up late with them and you pay attention to the small details, the things that other people don't care about that become the differentiator. And that's something that I believe in. And I thought that I was doing until I read the book and realized like, oh, this guy's at a whole fucking other level. Like the story that you tell about when the guests come in to the studio, you do enough research to play the music that they like, like their favorite music. And not one guest has ever mentioned it. but the idea that you think that that's important as a detail.

2:02:55And then I was trying to remember what music you were playing when I came in. I can't remember, I don't know. I was like, what? Anyway, I thought all of that was super fascinating because I really am proud of the fact that I think that we're executing at a very high level on our podcast. And then to realize like, oh, there's so much more growth. There are so many other things that I wasn't even thinking about. And credit to the success that you're having with the show right now. But I don't think, I think those details are all super important, but I think they speak to a broader commitment and intentionality that you're bringing to the conversations.

2:03:33And I think that's the real mover in why your show is doing so well and connecting with so many people. Because none of those details matter unless the conversation itself is special. The conversation itself is the part that I feel like I haven't ran any experiments on. because it's just led by curiosity. So when you walk in the door, there's no data that's going to tell me what to speak to you about. It's what I'm interested about in this individual. Outside of that, the process undergoes a lot of experimentation and 1 % searching. But the conversation is like, like I said with Simon Sinek, where he comes and sits down and says, I'm lonely.

2:04:08I'm going to ask him the questions I care about. I've actually never written a question down. I have bullet points of dates and stuff, but I've never in my own... You want to see my outline? This is like, I do the same thing. They're not questions. They're just, they're ideas, right? But I think this is interesting because this goes to what we were talking about earlier, the head and the heart. The head wants to say, here's the architecture for a perfect conversation. Here's how I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna start with the Mr. Beast, five second. How do I grab them? Well, I'll go on YouTube. I'll look at all the videos this person has done.

2:04:42And when I see those peaks, I know that's what people are most interested in. So I'm gonna come out of the gate and ask that question first. That's all good. I'm not saying that doesn't work, but truthfully, the art of the conversation is a heart-centered thing, right? Are you present? Are you listening? Are you sticking to an outline or are you actually paying attention to what the person is saying so that you can have an organic, authentic exchange of ideas and emotions? Because that's what moves the needle with people. And I always say, when people ask me, how do you approach podcast conversations?

2:05:20You do a lot of prep, but then you have to, like an actor, you have to put it away. And you have to be willing to go wherever it wants to lead you. And my goal as a host is to emotionally connect with the guest. If I can do that, then I can trust and have faith that the conversation will go in the direction that it's meant to go. But when I allow my head to be in the driver's seat, it ends up being flat. So for me, it's all about the emotional connection. And I always prided myself on the guy who could make the guest cry or evoke, you know, something true and special emotionally in the person that I'm talking to.

2:05:59And I see you as somebody who really understands that as well. And that being at the heart of what you're trying to do. And that's something that you're not gonna solve with a spreadsheet or a model. So interesting, because people say, we've had a lot of emotion on our show. And in hindsight, when you're interviewed, people are trying to ask you how that happens. And so you're trying to figure it out yourself. So you're trying to apply your head and go, well, maybe it's because we do this and this and this and this. But it's a hindsight thing. At the end of the day, it's because I genuinely cared about trying to find something out about them and really understand that thing.

2:06:34And also listening has actually been the most underrated thing about our show. It's like, people will go where they want to go. And the longer you let them go there, the higher probability that they're gonna go to a level they've never been before. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, but you have to create an environment that's permissive for that experience. And the way that you do that is to, yes, listen, but also lead with vulnerability yourself. You can't expect the guest to open up if they don't have the sense that you're willing to meet them there. So true. So true. And people will say, oh, Steven, he's the guy who, he wants to know about the trauma.

2:07:15Like what's the trauma that made you the special person that you are? Yeah. And that's really, I think that's the sort of skeleton key that unlocks your approach to your guests. I think it's important to say that that's because I genuinely wanna know. Right. I had a tour guide. And it's real. Yeah, I had a tour guide for seven days in Peru. First six days, he's talking to me about buildings. So I'm not even, honestly, I'll be honest, I'm not paying attention to him. My girlfriend's talking to him for those first six days. On the seventh day, he starts talking about the variance in happiness and mood and trauma that he's seen from all of these guests that he's taken on the tours, from China to Poland to...

2:07:52And I am glued. I'm transfixed on him. He says to me at that dinner on the seventh day when we're parting ways, he goes, you didn't care for the first six days about these buildings. You didn't care about how old this building was. The minute I started talking about people and why they are the way they are, you were like... I was interviewing him. What about these people? What about these people? Are they more grateful? Are they happier? And that was just another instance for me. Also, I have to think about my childhood. I couldn't date people because my first questions were always too deep. So it was a nice filter for me to see if they were my type of person, because I might ask them straight away a really deep question about themselves.

2:08:25And a lot of people don't like that. My podcast is a reflection of what I'm interested in. I want to know why people are the way they are. I'd love to interview serial killers and just to understand, you know, what's making them tick under there. So who is it that you really want to get on right now? Do you know, one of the people I want to get on is Elon, because I used to have him on my wall, you know, as like an elite entrepreneur that solved huge problems and is unlabeled. I love people that are unlabeled. Like when you said earlier that I'm a CEO or an entrepreneur, I like see myself as this, as a person with a multitude of interests.

2:09:02He's achieved so much across such a broad range of things. His life is clearly overextended in any measure. I want to know if he's really happy. And also, in the last year, there's been a bit of a change in Elon with this whole Twitter thing, the way he's speaking online. And I want to get to the heart of why that is, why he's changed. He's become a little bit ugly in his tone sometimes, in my opinion. And I want to know if he cares about happiness. Because I've heard him say to Rogan, you wouldn't want to be in my head, it's so painful. But Rogan didn't ask more about that. Sure. I would love to know more about that.

2:09:38Yeah, what is driving his online persona and that erratic behavior? What's beneath that? What's behind that? What is the need that he's trying to fill by purchasing Twitter and becoming this sort of, you know, trolly kind of edge lord online? What is it doing? It's not befitting a man of his stature who has really revolutionized industry. And had he not purchased Twitter and kind of become addicted to what he's doing online, we would just be in absolute reverence of this guy. And he would have had a lot more time to pursue, changing the world in meaningful and positive ways. And hanging out with his kids, his nine kids or something, 10 or 13.

2:10:28He has a lot of kids, doesn't he? Does he care? I don't know. I've never met him. That's why I want to know. What about you? Who do you want to have on?

2:10:38Yeah, that would be one. I've never seen someone have a conversation with Elon that I want to have. You would be great to have Elon on because you would go to the same places that I think I would want to go. Yeah, but I think you're somebody who, you know, I listen to a lot of old interviews with you and you talk a lot about Elon. And I found myself wondering, I was listening to a couple interviews over the last week that you had done maybe from like 2020, 2021 and yes, you have a lot of reverence for what he's achieved and his kind of unique way of thinking and problem solving. And I found myself wondering, like I wonder if you would say that in 2023.

2:11:15Well, he's no longer on my wall because I don't feel the same way about him. I have huge admiration for the way he thinks his first principle mindset, which I've completely stolen. and all of these things relating to innovation, problem solving, and also kind of like getting a lot done. Yeah. But I can't relate to this guy that I see doing the memes and the kind of right wingy, some of the rhetoric, I just find it quite ugly and divisive. And I'm trying to square it. So I'd like to speak to him. There's a bit of a, I think a charitable interpretation would be that he enjoys being a chaos agent.

2:11:51and there's a little bit of the twinkle in his eye, like he knows that he's being provocative and there's something thrilling about that for him. That would be the most charitable interpretation. My guess is that he did the right thing for a long time, built this car company, built this rocket company. Tesla changed the automotive industry. It was the catalyst for laws changing, proving that you could have fast, quote unquote, affordable electric cars. And then all the other manufacturers have followed suit. He's done really great stuff and he was attacked. And he was attacked relentlessly. And even the president of the United States, when talking about environmental issues, attacked him for subsidies.

2:12:34And he's not invited onto their panel of EV auto manufacturers. The left have attacked him relentlessly. So he's found a home, as he kind of puts it on his own words, on the right. And as a way to stop the attacks or take control over it, of all these journalists, he bought Twitter. That was the home of the attacks. It was kind of a way to stifle the attacks. Now, he finds himself over on the right kind of, and, you know, I think that was it. I think he couldn't comprehend that he was doing good for good reasons, yet these people were trying to destroy him. And they were trying to destroy him.

2:13:10Some of the stories that came out of it. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. I think on top of that, I would add, I think he's said publicly that he, you know, would have liked to have been a standup comic. So there's a part of him, there's a little comedian aspect to that, that I think he's trying to express. 100%. I don't know. No, you're right, you are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So who's replaced Elon on that wall for you then? You haven't given me your answer, yeah. What? You haven't given me your answer. Let me think about that. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about this kind of stuff.

2:13:45It's sort of like, you know, where do you see yourself in five years? You know what I mean? It's like, people think that I have some answer, you know, at the ready, because I do get asked this question a lot. And because I'm asked it so often, I should have an answer. Every time I get asked it, I can't think of anything. I mean, the truth is like, the people that I'm interested in having, I get to have on. You have one interview left. Oh God. You get one interview, who do you have it with? There's so many variables that play into that because you can think of archetypal individuals who would be amazing, but then you think, yeah, but is that person really gonna open up to me?

2:14:22Am I gonna actually get anything interesting out of that person because they're so media savvy or because this is just another interview? So I think the receptivity piece is really important. You know what I mean? I mean, like, it's not about getting the big name, it's about the person who is ready and it being the right time for that conversation. I think timing is super important. Where are they in their life? Are they in a place where they really want to open up in a way that they haven't before? And not everybody wants to do that. Most people don't, they have too much to lose and not enough to gain.

2:14:59So that's what I think about. And I think about that more than I think about the person because I think every single person could deliver the best podcast I've ever done. And yeah, exactly. And for me, when people say to you, who's your favorite guest, blah, blah, blah, even she could ask that, right? And I was asked that in the hallway out here just before coming in. And I said what I always say, which is like, it's very difficult to choose, but I will say this and I'm curious how this lands for you. I'm still dodging here. I'll get to it. For me, the most meaningful guests have been relatively anonymous people, maybe not totally anonymous, but not like big names, but people who just come in and they have the most amazing story and they tell it with such earnestness and pathos and integrity and honesty and vulnerability that it ends up touching people in ways you couldn't have expected.

2:16:00And in turn, because of the scale of the podcast, it ends up impacting their life in a way they didn't anticipate and changing the trajectory of what they're doing and impacting people out in the world in a very meaningful way. And so those tend to be the most personally meaningful and gratifying guests to have on. And they're not ones that you would know their names necessarily. So I'm always looking for those people. You help that person get the credit they deserve. Sure, you have the privilege of shining a light on somebody who is deserving of that attention, who otherwise might never have received it.

2:16:38So as fun as it is to have shiny people on the podcast, the real value for me is in finding those nuggets, that are hidden under the rocks and maybe living between the crevices and unearthing them and pushing them out in front and saying, Share. I mean, I couldn't add another word to what you just said. If I had to add a different point, my second favorite type of guest, I mean, that's definitely it. We say this all the time. But my second favorite is when you think you know someone, because they've been in the public eye, and they've presented a certain image. We had a guy on called Jimmy Carr.

2:17:19And he's a comedian that's known for just one-liners. They're usually kind of like filthy one-liners. And he walked in that day, and he was this completely different person, this deep philosophical guy that spent the whole two hours talking about what happiness truly is. And it shocked me, it shocked our viewers, and it was one of the best performing conversations, a totally different individual to the one you know. That felt really worthwhile. Yeah, but that's like lightning striking. You can't manufacture that in somebody, like it takes two people and that like it goes back to what I was saying about timing.

2:17:56That person was in the right mindset at the right time in their life where they were willing to share something that perhaps even weeks earlier, they would have been too afraid to. And something about the environment that you're cultivating and creating that is conducive to those types of conversations. You have to set a tone and create a space where somebody feels safe doing that. and sometimes it's hard. Look, we're in here, there's cameras, there's lights. You're comfortable, I'm comfortable doing this. Not everybody is. How can you transcend that and get past that so that the person can be in that flow state to allow that honesty to come forth?

2:18:43I wish I knew. I had a really interesting conversation with Brian Johnson on my podcast. You know Brian Johnson? I've never met him in person. We've had emails and I know a lot about him and I don't wanna step on your words, but I know I have lots of friends who know him. And I think what's interesting about him is on the surface, looking in, you would think, well, this guy's a weirdo. Like he's lost his mind or his priorities are off. But every single person I know that's spent any time with him has found him to be incredibly genuine, humble, curious, and well-intentioned with integrity in what he's doing.

2:19:23And I think it's cool that he's out there doing that. Somebody needs to, right? So he's like this canary in a coal mine who's testing all of these things for us. So anyway, please. You've nailed it. My team was saying to me before he arrived at the studio, oh God, what'd you think of him? I don't know. And Will out there actually apologized. I'm sure Will won't mind me saying this. Will said to me, kept saying to me, like, what do you think of that Brian guy? God, you know, and my other team members were going, what do you think of that Brian guy? And I remember saying to my team, I've not met him yet.

2:19:55I don't know yet. You can read a page six or a Daily Mail article. Yeah, exactly. I'm not interested in that stuff. Brian sat in front of me and presented himself for two to three hours. And in that conversation, I reserved my judgment and learned about Brian. At the end of the conversation, he said something to me, which is the biggest compliment any guest has ever given me. He goes, Steve, I go around and I do lots of these interviews and I'm very well attuned to little micro expressions or micro questions that are laced with a kernel of judgment. He goes, this last sentence he says in my podcast, you did none of that.

2:20:30And it was the best compliment a guest has ever given me because it really mattered to me that someone who is clearly so prejudged before they walk in a room to do an interview felt that, felt safe in my environment that there was no ounce of judgment and it was all curiosity. And I almost got emotional, I almost get emotional thinking about it now when he said that because that matters so much to me. And I think that's part of it, is like taking people as, not as the headlines or the research notes say, but as the person you meet and understanding that they are human, they want love, they want all the things that I want at the most fundamental level.

2:21:09And I think if you meet them on that level, then you can go to interesting places. Yeah, well, I think that's more profound than how to approach a podcast conversation. Because if you can bring that level of presence, compassion, understanding, and non-judgment to your daily interactions with your friends, your family, your coworkers, people you meet on the street, you will have that same experience. I struggle with that. Yeah, me too. Funny, I'm gonna do that on podcast, but I'm not getting my own life. With the cameras and the lights on, It's like, it's all performance and good, right? Can you do that when you're stuck in traffic or with the grocery clerk when you're late?

2:21:49Those are the real moments. I struggle with it, particularly with people close to me in my life, where I struggled to apply the same level of empathy to the circumstances that might have made them the way they are. And I'm trying to fight with logic to change them. Right, well, the model might be, can you bring that beginner's mind to each of those exchanges? Oh, I wish. I wish it was easy. Yeah, you both, right? I wish. I beat myself up about it quite often, actually, that I'm not able to apply myself in the way I'd like to, to those situations. Where someone I love in my life is exhibiting recurring behaviors that are self-destructive and I don't approach it with enough empathy.

2:22:34I approach it with like... Problem solving. Yeah, I need to fix you. How can I fix you? Yeah. And it's not working. How's that work out? It's not worked. We're eight, nine years in with one person in particular. And I've made, I've probably made, if anything, I might've made things worse. I think about that too. I think the way I've approached the situation might be the opposite medicine or antidote to what they need. They might need someone just to sit in the mud with them, as Simon says. Usually they do, right? I think it's, my wife would call it robbing people of their divine moment. Ooh. If you're trying to fix it, if you're trying to intervene, you're interrupting a process of learning and experience for that person that perhaps they're better off experiencing without your involvement.

2:23:24So you get out the mud or you just sit in the mud? No, you support and you listen and you say, I believe in you to find a solution for yourself and I'm here for you, rather than here's what you need to do. Oh, that's so hard, especially for someone that has the bias towards thinking about data and solutions and evidence and patterns and, you know, something I really struggle with. And I want to be better because I think I'd have richer, more authentic, deeper relationships if I was able to do that more often. All right. Well, we got to wrap it up here. But what have we learned? We learned that you're going to be doing, you're going to go back to your original format and do some monologuing.

2:24:04That's a promise before the end of the year. Did we get an agreement that you're gonna begin a meditation practice? We're not so sure on that one. I didn't think we got the agreement, but I think we - We're a little shy of that. Something needs to happen. We're thinking about it. I need to go on a meditation retreat. One of your retreats. You do this on your retreats? We do, yeah. When are they? What's the next one? I don't know if we're doing another one. I'll let you know. Please let me know. You're in Bali all the time. You can't throw a stone without hitting the meditation retreat. So we have that.

2:24:32What else do we, Oh, yeah. How are we thinking about the transcendent and the divine? We're planting that seed in you, Stephen. What's the first step for me? I can't tell you that. That would be me robbing you of your divine path. You have to figure that out for yourself. I'll keep my eyes open. Okay. In the meantime, while your eyes are open, everybody's eyes should be directed to the Diary of a CEO podcast and the new book of the same name. Again, you did really a wonderful job with this book. Thank you. Even if you have no interest in business, it's really a primer for how to think about your own life, how to prioritize your time, your resources, your attention.

2:25:17And if nothing else, it allows you to see the world more clearly in the way that some of your favorite companies operate to manipulate you, hijack your attention and garner your business. Is there anything else? What is the main idea you want people to take away? You've nailed it. You've nailed it. I have nothing more to add. And thank you so much for inviting me onto your platform. You're someone that I've watched for many, many years. And there's so much about you that I admire that I realize I will never get to. And again, maybe this is the distinction between aspiration and admiration or something, but there's so much about the way you conduct yourself, the way you hold yourself, your values and your integrity that I think I'm still a little bit short on, but I aspire to get there.

2:25:59and it's indescribable. I don't even know how I pointed it, but it's the way in which you carry yourself and the clarity of your intentions and how I experience that, that I would love to replicate someday or get closer to. So you're a big role model for me in that regard. And that's why spending time with you recording, but also when we went to watch Manchester United lose in London was really wonderful because vicariously it's contagious. Part of it is sort of impressed upon me. So I thank you for that. I thank you for inviting me onto your show because it is one of the legendary shows out there.

2:26:37And so it's an honor. I really, I appreciate that. That means a lot, Steven, it really does. It touches me that you would say that my kind of reflexive reaction to that is to deflect and also make sure that you understand that I'm just riddled with character defects. So whatever I'm emanating, please understand that I'm, my own worst enemy most of the time, but that means a lot. I've been watching you for quite some time and how you show up in public life. And I think it's incredibly admirable and impactful, the integrity and the thoughtfulness that you put into what you're sharing, why you're sharing it and how you're sharing it, particularly in contrast to the sort of entrepreneurship, CEO wealth porn of social media, of people getting out of sports cars and walking onto private jets, et cetera.

2:27:35I mean, that's what we're attuned to. And you're modeling something very different. And the fact that you have become this powerful role model for an entire new generation of entrepreneurs, business people, and just people who are of influence in the world, I think is very meaningful and I wish there were more people out there like you. And the fact that when I came and did your show, which I enjoyed tremendously, you then extended an invitation for me and my kid to join you at a Manchester United game and I got to spend a whole afternoon with you was an incredibly kind gesture that I will not forget.

2:28:18I really appreciate what you do and how you do it. Thank you, Rich. I don't know what else to say. Thank you. Yeah, so everybody check out Diary of a CEO podcast book at Stephen on social, at Stephen Bartlett on Instagram though. Stephen on Instagram and then Stephen Bartlett on Twitter. Yeah, okay. I had it reversed. Yeah. Either way, he's easy to find. He's capable, right? And next time you come to LA, please try to hang out a little bit. I look forward to it. Thank you so much. It's an honor. Yeah, thank you. Peace.

2:29:03That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive as well as podcast merch my books finding ultra voicing change in the plant power way as well as the plant power meal planner at meals.richroll.com if you'd like to support the podcast the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on apple podcasts on Spotify and on YouTube and leave a review and or comment.

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2:30:25Portraits by Davey Greenberg, graphic and social media assets, courtesy of Daniel Solis, as well as Dan Drake. Thank you, Georgia Whaley, for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love. Love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants. Namaste.

2:31:08Thank you.