Latest / The Breakfast Club / INTERVIEW: Steven Bartlett On ‘The Diary Of A CEO’ Podcast, Work-Life Balance, Why He Picks His Own Guests + More

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INTERVIEW: Steven Bartlett On ‘The Diary Of A CEO’ Podcast, Work-Life Balance, Why He Picks His Own Guests + More · The Breakfast Club

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hold up. Every day I wake up. Wake your ass up.
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: The Breakfast Club. Y'all finished or y'all done?
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Yep, it's the world's most dangerous morning show, The Breakfast Club.
• 0:10
  Speaker 3: DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne Tha God. DJ Envy is
• 0:13
  Speaker 3: not here, but Lauren La Rosa is. And we got
• 0:15
  Speaker 3: a special guest in the building, man. We talk about
• 0:18
  Speaker 3: successful podcasters. This guy right here is one of the
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: most successful podcasters.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: In the business.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: The number two most listened to host-led podcast ever.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: In the world. He has 20 million subscribers on YouTube.
• 0:30
  Speaker 3: And Forbes said he made a lot of money last year.
• 0:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah, he was on that one with Charlamagne.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: He made a lot of money. Charlamagne made 27. I
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: think it was in the 40Ms. Oh, okay. I think
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: it was like 45 million or something like that.
• 0:41
  Speaker 5: Just look at that.
• 0:42
  Speaker 4: That's about 75 million sitting over there together.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Steve Bartlett from Diary of a CD.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: I know, that's right.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Good morning, sir.
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: Good morning, Stephen.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Good morning. Thank you for having me. Have you been
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: talking about making a lot of money last year? Right.
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: You were top 10, buddy. Mr.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: 200 million, yeah.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Over there in that corner, there's a lot of work
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: going on.
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: But nah, salute to Steven, man. I really enjoy what
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: it is that you do. How are you, first of all?
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: I'm good. I'm good. I've been traveling a lot over
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: the last couple of weeks, so I'm a bit all
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: over the place. I spend about 90% of my time, 95%
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: of my time probably on my business, which is the
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: media company behind the podcast. And I spend honestly about 5%
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: of my time on the podcast. So I've been all
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: over the world in the last 10 days, Australia, Helsinki, Oslo, Amsterdam, Munich, LA,
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: New York, Nashville. And that's what my life looks like.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: It's rolling around with my team on my sort of
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: remote office. And we're building a bigger sort of media company.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: And The Diary of a CEO is one piece of that.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: But I'm so happy to be here because I've watched
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: the show since I was a kid. So these things
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: are so surreal for me. Being in environments like this,
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: it's all very, very strange for me.
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: When you launched Diary of a CEO, did you launch
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: with the mindset of, okay, I'm going to start this
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: podcast and a media company, or was it just, I'm
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: going to start this podcast?
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: So I, it was 2017. I started it in my bed.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: I went to the Apple store, bought a $ 100 microphone,
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: tried to record it myself. I got this sock and
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: put it over it because there was coming through the microphone.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: I'm sat there at 2 a.m. doing it in GarageBand.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: I publish it. Nobody really listens. A couple of years
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: goes by. 2019, I'm living in New York City, running
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: my business out here, running the New York office. And
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: the world shuts down. I resigned from my company. The
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: company had gone public through this merger. And I asked myself,
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: what would I do if money no longer mattered? Because 2019,
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: it no longer mattered to me. So I thought, well,
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: that podcast I used to do in 2017, I really
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: enjoyed it. So I said, I'm going to do it
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: every week. So from 2019, I was doing it as
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: a hobby. It was my little hobby on the side.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: And but I applied the same principles to building business,
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: to media, to audience, to commercializing media that I'd learned
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: through my twenties. Through my twenties, I ran a marketing
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: company that did the marketing for brands like Uber and Apple.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: And we worked with Amazon. So it was just taking
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: those principles of audience and commercialization and team building and
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: applying it to a podcast. So in that regard, I
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: had an unfair advantage because through my twenties, I was
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: building huge audiences of hundreds of millions on the internet.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: So it's just, it's those principles I think to audience
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: building and, I applied it to a hobby that I
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: had and I had no idea it'd be this, but
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: I have to say the minute I tried podcasting and
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: realized it was my Ica guy. I think it's something
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: I can get good at. I enjoy it. I think
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: it helps the world. Um, and it's remunerative. I said
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: to my team, what, six years ago, I said, the
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: last company I ever build will be a media company.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: And I think we need more independent media businesses that, um,
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: that are, that have a, a different perspective on the world.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: And I knew then five years ago that I, that's
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: what I do. So that's what we do now. We have,
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: 800 creators on our hosting their shows their podcasts on
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: our platform we have about 50 that we've signed everybody
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: from people like you know uh tony robbins and then
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: we have about almost 10 now where we're basically a
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: co-founder with them and we build and run their entire
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: business everything from their production their data science their brand
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: deals we do it all in-house and we have hundreds
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: of people full-time building now creative businesses around these creators
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: so I think we can build what, you know, I
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: refer to it as like the platform. You think about Disney,
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: they built a platform for IP. I think our objective
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: through my company, steven.com, is to do that for creators
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: that I think no longer need middlemen stood between them
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: and their potential. I'm glad you said that. I tell
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: Lauren all the time.
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: I think me and Jess have had this conversation, but
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: people always ask me, how do you get on these lists, right? Like,
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: how do you make all this money in podcasting? You
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: have to build a business around the podcast.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Exactly.
• 4:31
  Speaker 6: I want to talk about the business behind your platform
• 4:32
  Speaker 6: that you're talking about, right? Your day-to-day outside of the podcast,
• 4:37
  Speaker 6: what does that look like from a beginner standpoint before
• 4:40
  Speaker 6: you have all the shows? The first show you started
• 4:42
  Speaker 6: after your own show, what was your day-to-day like as
• 4:45
  Speaker 6: a regimen and how did you build from that show
• 4:47
  Speaker 6: to scale all these other shows on the network?
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: So I think you don't want to start a network
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: unless you've got an edge. Like there has to be
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: something that you have that's going to give you what
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: we call in business a moat, i.e. some kind of defendability.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: And what people think that the Diovers, so this month
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: we'll add about 900,000 subscribers on YouTube. Another 200,000 across audio.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: We'll do 170 million downloads this month on my show.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: That's not because I'm asking better questions. I'm under no illusions.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: Like people give me compliments and say, oh, you're a
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: good interviewer. Not really. I think that's a commodity in
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: the game of, podcasting, everybody can have AI now and
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: ask the questions for them. For me, there's a platform
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: we've built underneath my show, which means that we're able
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: to kill guesswork. And so I looked at the end-to-end
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: process of producing media and asked myself quite simply, where
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: does guessing occur? So when you're thinking about the right
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: guests for your audience, when you're thinking about the topics
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: and themes that are most relevant, is there a way
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: we can use data science to inform, to kill the
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: inefficiency of guessing? And we built this technology platform underneath
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: my show, which is, I think, responsible for the success
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: we've had, both on the production side, but the commercial side.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: And that for us was like, right, we've got a
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: moat now, which is scalable, where I could take a,
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: you know, one of you guys, put a show on
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: top of our platform. And I think I would give
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: you an unfair advantage as it relates to media. The
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: minute we had that built, that was the moment when
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: we decided to build a network. And what does that
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: look like? Honestly, the whole game of business, I've been
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: doing business, I dropped out of university at 18 years
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: old after one lecture. The whole game of business is people.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: And like, you know, having interviewed the greatest CEOs on
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: planet earth, whether it's the guys that built Spotify or
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: Brian from Airbnb or Dara who built Uber, their understanding
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: of the importance of people on a graph would look
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: like this. You start your career and think it doesn't
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: really matter and it's your hard work and you better
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: have some good ideas. And then it goes up like this.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: Like eventually Daniel, like the founder of Spotify was like,
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: do you know what? People are the most important thing.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: So I spend about 30 hours a week just on
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: interviewing and hiring people because I think everything is downstream
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: from that. And I wish, but it is like every idea,
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: every marketing campaign, every deal you get is downstream from
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: someone like a person that went out and did that
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: for you. So my, again, my competitive advantage in building
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: businesses is like, I'm going to spend more hours per
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: week on trying to find truly exceptional people that I
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: feel like I might not have a right yet to
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: hire and ask them to come and join this mission.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: That is the, I wish someone told me this, like
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: when I was 18, 19, 20, I was banging my
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: head against the wall that like, actually the game is
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: to go furthest upstream and try and get people that
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: are so exceptional at what they do to come here,
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: to the point that you almost can't keep a straight
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: face when you're speaking to them. Not just successful, right?
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: I watch a lot of your stuff, and you're big
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: in the barbershop. Sleuth in my barber tie.
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: Whenever I go in his barbershop, he always got you.
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: He got some diary of a CEO episode playing. But
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: not just successful. You have a lot of emotionally evolved
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: people on the show. And I think that's what attracts
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: folks more than anything. Not just the success. People see
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: this high emotional IQ people have. What's something you've learned
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: from your guests that you still struggle to apply to
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: your own life?
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: So much. It's one thing to sit there and learn
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: about how to not get triggered and how to not
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: get in your emotions. But then I'll be on the
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: weekend and me and my fiance, we might disagree about something.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: And I know that neuroscientists tell me to make them
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: feel heard and understood. But then in the moment, I
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: can be as fallible as anybody and I can... I
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: can react to things or I can not, as this
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: neuroscientist was saying to me, I can like step into
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: my amygdala too much when I'm, you know, when I'm
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: in those situations with my fiance. But it's just so
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: much because you sit there and the world's greatest tell
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: you how to do it perfectly. And then the mic
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: turns off and you go back into your own life
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: and it's a bit of a mess. Like I sat
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: with Andrew Huberman, who's, you know, who Andrew Huberman is.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: And he's like the great neuroscientist that tells you how
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: to optimize your life completely and I wake up at
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: 9 a.m. in the morning, 9.30 a.m.
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: In the morning.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: There's no morning routine for me. There's no like turn around,
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: touch the ground, green juice, gratitude journal. It's always been
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: like that. I have a chronotype, which they call an ALP.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: Chronotypes are, you know, there's basically three different chronotypes and
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: it represents when in the day you do your best work.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: The thinking here is that when we're in tribes, we
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: didn't all want to sleep at the same time. We
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: wanted some people up early, some people up late. So
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: they tell me get up early, look at the sun, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: But I've always been a mess in that regard. It's why...
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: I struggled in school. My attendance in school was 30%.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: When I was a kid, I got kicked out of
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: school because of my attendance. Cause I couldn't focus. I
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: had ADHD, which I didn't know about. So I say
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: all this to say that like, I am, you would
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: be shocked how much of a mess I am in
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: terms of organization, like doing the things that people say
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: you should do. But what it's taught me is there's
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: plenty ways to skin a cat. Do you know what
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: I mean?
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: Like there's, People say that, but I've never skinned a
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: cat once. I don't even know how to be.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: First, how do you be skinned a cat? You always
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: say that. It's actually a terrible phrase. Like, I've never
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: done it one time. Why do people say that?
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: I have no idea.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: You know, but it's true. There's plenty of ways to
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: get there. And it's useful to take the pressure off
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: you to do it like someone else did it. You know, so.
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: Do you feel like you're better at explaining how to
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: live than actually living?
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: Um i think we all are if we're being really
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: honest i think there's something understanding and action like live
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: in two separate compartments so you can conceptually understand what
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: you're supposed to do but then putting that into action
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: it has to go through a whole nother set of
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: barriers and your trauma from your your childhood and all
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: kinds of personal stuff so for sure for sure for sure.
• 10:13
  Speaker 5: Just on your personal life How the hell do you
• 10:15
  Speaker 5: have time for your fiance if all you do is travel,
• 10:18
  Speaker 5: all you do is work? Like you just said 95%
• 10:21
  Speaker 5: of your time you spend on your business. How do
• 10:24
  Speaker 5: you have time for just Steven?
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: It's a great question. Someone told me, I've been with
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: my fiance now for eight years. So like before the
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: podcast and all that stuff. And someone once told me
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: that a rule where if you're going to be away
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: from them for more than two weeks, everybody goes or
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: nobody goes. And so this is a rule that we
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: put in place recently. So what I didn't mention in
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: all of those stops that I just talked about is
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: after Perth and Australia, I took two flights to go
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: down to Bordeaux and have dinner with her and her
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: family for 24 hours, walk around the streets of Bordeaux
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: where she's from, meet her dog, her new niece, et cetera,
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: and then flew back to Munich to carry on my work.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: And then the reason I flew back to LA is
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: to spend two days with her and then flew out
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: to Nashville, then here. I think as the older I've gotten,
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: the more I realized that, you know, I've interviewed the
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: guy who did the longest ever study on human happiness.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: And so the studies ran for about a hundred years.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: So long, in fact, that they have to pass the
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: study to new researchers when the old ones pass away.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: And the one thing they found that's most causal for
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: human happiness isn't like the money or the accomplishments or
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: the podcast, whatever. It is like, do you have a strong,
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: significant relationship? And in this regard, it was with like
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: a romantic partner. And that extends life expectancy, improves happiness
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: more than anything else. So I didn't know this in
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: my early career. I thought I was just trying to
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: get it. I was trying to get the Range Rover, the, like,
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: And in this season of my career, it's so obvious
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: to me that if it is a priority, then you
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: should see it in my calendar. Because that's really what
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: your priorities are. It's like how you allocated your time.
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: When you call your assistant and be like, hey, could
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: you make sure that I can be here for my
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: girlfriend on such and such day?
• 11:59
  Speaker 4: Fiance.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: Fiance, I'm sorry. Fiance, no, no, all the time. And
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: it's a battle. Again, I'm not perfect. She'd say that
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: I'm trying really hard. And as we move into this
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: new era where we're trying to have kids and we're
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: hoping to have a kid soon, It's going to be
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: another shock to my system. I mean, I don't know
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: how you guys manage that. If you've got any advice.
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: I don't.
• 12:19
  Speaker 5: I'm trying to get some from you.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: Christmas last year. Oh, okay.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Oh, my God.
• 12:24
  Speaker 5: Congratulations. My husband proposed on Christmas as well.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Oh, really?
• 12:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 12:28
  Speaker 5: I'm married now, but like three Christmases ago it is now. No,
• 12:31
  Speaker 5: two Christmases ago he proposed.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: You got some advice for me?
• 12:34
  Speaker 5: I wish. On making time, you know, and trying to
• 12:38
  Speaker 5: balance and juggle everything. You hear people say, you know,
• 12:43
  Speaker 5: work-life balance. Like, what is that? I honestly feel like
• 12:46
  Speaker 5: it doesn't exist perfectly. You know what I mean? There's
• 12:49
  Speaker 5: no correct formula for that. Like, you know, it's always
• 12:52
  Speaker 5: going to be a complicated equation for that.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: Something's going to suffer. You've been with your partner a
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: long time. 28 years. I remember from the interview I
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: did with you.
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: Married since 2014.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: What advice you got for me? pray bro pray just
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: pray man i mean.
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: Really you're doing it but like i just just said
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: there is no such thing as work-life balance and don't
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: lie to yourself about that like something is gonna suffer
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: so it's either gonna be your time with her or
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: your time with your work so you just gotta make
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: a decision on you know what you're willing to sacrifice.
• 13:21
  Speaker 5: That's what it is this is not it's not perfect
• 13:24
  Speaker 5: like i work here in new york so i live
• 13:27
  Speaker 5: here right because i do this every day i do
• 13:29
  Speaker 5: radio every day but my family is in maryland i
• 13:32
  Speaker 5: have a A two-year-old, you know, I don't see her
• 13:34
  Speaker 5: every day.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: She's Mexican, though. She's fine by herself.
• 13:37
  Speaker 4: First of all, uh-uh.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: She can put things together.
• 13:39
  Speaker 5: No, he did not. Uh-uh. And what about my 14-year-old?
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: He black.
• 13:44
  Speaker 5: What do you think?
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: Dolly just hit him, too?
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: What you think?
• 13:47
  Speaker 5: Yo, uh-uh.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: So this is how I get by. Just like this.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: Just being funny, making fun of my family.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: This is how I get by. Crazy. Can I ask
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: you a question? Is success a form of addiction? That's
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: a great question. I often wondered through my early years,
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: whether I'm like driven or dragged because you people, if
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: you accomplish something, people give you compliments. And so, and
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: the more I've sat there with people that are truly
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: exceptional or anomalies, the, one of the patterns you find
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: in them is that they often have an anomalous upbringing
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: of sorts and it can be like a little T trauma,
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: but it's something that often invalidated them. And then their
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: success is really the pursuit of like, um, curing the
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: thing that invalidated them when they were younger. And I
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: reflect on myself and I go, Hmm, probably. Like, can
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: I take credit for being driven when as a young man,
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: we moved, I was born in Africa, in Botswana, moved
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: to the UK. I have a Nigerian mother. We were
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: the only black family in the area. There was no,
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: you know, Plymouth in 1994. In my school, I think
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: it was about 2000 people. It was just me and
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: my siblings that were the only black people really that
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: I can recall. And then we moved into a middle-class area,
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: but we struggled with money because of a couple of
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: decisions we'd made. And so you understand the context of
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: anything in life by the, you understand the value in
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: life by the context in which you see it. That's
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: really like where value comes from. That's where like pretty
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: comes from. It's an analysis of the environment that pretty
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: exists within. Or you won't understand like worth from the context.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: So in my view, I had a lot of shame
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: because we were the strange black family. I was chemically
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: relaxing my hair to try and fit in. I'm wearing
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: these skinny jeans and listening to like Arctic Monkeys and
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: the Kooks to try and, And then I thought that
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: money was the cure to the shame. So if you
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: look at my 14, 15 years old, I'm doing anything
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: to try and make some money. I'm doing the vending
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: machine deal for my secondary school so that we can
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: make a cut and then I can make money from that.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: And I stopped going to school because I'm not interested
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: in that. I just want to make money. And it
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: all centers back to feeling a huge amount of shame.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: And if you look at my diary at 18 years
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: old when I dropped out of university, four goals before
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: I'm 25. And I've published this diary. Make a million pounds,
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: get a range over sport, get a six pack. Get
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: a girlfriend.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: Don't just skip over the six packs. No, because I'm
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: still working on it.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: But I thought that was life. I thought if I get,
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: and then I got it before 25. I went from
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: shoplifting pizzas to getting those things before 25. And it was,
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: oh my God, like something has lied to me. And
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: the thing that had lied to me was like my
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: own shame. And eventually I can stop. I could go
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: from being dragged to holding the steering wheel and like
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: driving my life more intentionally, which is when it, you know.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: At 2019, I say, what would I do if money
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: no longer mattered? And I go, a podcast. Because I
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: just loved it. So- And then you became more successful
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: than you've ever been.
• 16:34
  Speaker 6: But then you put your overdrive behind a podcast.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: Funny how that happens, isn't it? And again, we have
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: to define success, which is, you know, once upon a time,
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: I would have said success was the car or the whatever.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: Now success for me has to be, do I wake
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: up every day and enjoy my life? Do I look
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: at my calendar and go, oh my God, aren't I
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: so lucky? Do I have these strong relationships around me? And-
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: You can say this, but then look at how I
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: allocate my time. I flew across the planet to spend
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: a short period of time with one of my close
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: friends for his birthday in a basement in Manchester dressed
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: as Will Smith. Because I was actually... friendships are hard, especially,
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: I think, as a man, as you age. Why were
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: you dressed as Will Smith?
• 17:13
  Speaker 5: Because he looked like him a little bit.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: It went hard.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: Was it hard? No, his birthday was, you have to
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: dress as, like, TV characters, and I thought... Oh, okay,
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: we'll see.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: I'm like, who's still trying to figure it out? Who's
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: still trying to figure it out? I was in somebody's
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: basement dressed as Will Smith.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: Yo, shit.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: He was dressed as Diddy.
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: They got you at the party soon. He was like,
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: no way.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: Nobody was dressed as Diddy. Calm down.
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: In the basement.
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: So if you stop building your business tomorrow, would you
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: still know who you are?
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Someone said to me the other day, they said,
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: what would you do if someone took everything away from you?
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: And it was so funny because the first thing that
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: popped in my mind is you can't take everything away
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: from you. Because really what I value the most are
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: the intangible things. It's like the knowledge I've acquired. It
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: is the experiences that I've had. It's the relationships that
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: I've built. And I say that when I reflect on
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: my life, there's kind of these five buckets you fill
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: throughout your career. The first is knowledge. The second is
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: your skills. And it's these two buckets are so critical
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: because they can never be unfilled. people can take the
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: other three buckets from you. They can take your resources,
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: your reputation, they can take your network from you, career
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: earthquakes and fill those buckets. But the things that are
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: most critical and that actually cascade to fill the other
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: three buckets are your knowledge and your skills. So you
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: can take my car, you can take whatever. But the
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: most important things, the sort of precursors to everything I
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: value are like untakeable. And so I say this to
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: young kids who like thinking about how to orientate through
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: their career is like aim at the untakeable buckets, aim
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: at the buckets no one can take from you, which
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: is like what you know and the skills you have
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: and forego a little bit of like cool and maybe
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: a little bit of money sometimes, especially early in your
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: career or even, yeah, like who you get to hang
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: around with for those two things. So I don't think
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: people can, I don't think you can take the things
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: that matter the most from a person because of those buckets,
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: you can kind of get them back, I guess.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: I agree.
• 19:10
  Speaker 6: But you've gotten to that place so young, right? And
• 19:13
  Speaker 6: a lot of times, like it takes people some time
• 19:16
  Speaker 6: and when they get there, that's when they start thinking about, okay,
• 19:18
  Speaker 6: if I start winding down now because I've understood all this,
• 19:22
  Speaker 6: what does my life look like? So you're winding down
• 19:25
  Speaker 6: or stepping back. Do you think about that now a
• 19:28
  Speaker 6: bit more earlier because you're so young and have gotten
• 19:30
  Speaker 6: to the point where you know what really matters in
• 19:32
  Speaker 6: life because you've achieved so many things?
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: I don't spend a lot of time thinking about stepping back.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: I'll be honest, I'm very aware that I could become
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: a dad very quickly. And when I look at my calendar,
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: I go, something's got to give. And it's one of
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: those things, I talk to my fiance about this all
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: the time, like we can... panic about that, and that
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: will make us procrastinate. or we can realize that like
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: the first principal question is do i want to become
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: a dad do i want to be a good father
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: do i want to be a present one absolutely does
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: it matter to me absolutely will i therefore adjust like
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: i have with everything else in my life like podcasting
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: you know it takes time my business didn't exist three
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: four years ago i adjusted and So I want this thing.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: I trust our relationship. It's strong enough to make the adjustment.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: So that's what I'm thinking about. And on your point
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: about being successful young, I think one of the most
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: critical things there is you have to be good at quitting.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: I think the reason why, you know, I'm just turned 34.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: The reason why you refer to me as being young
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: and successful is because I've not overstayed my welcome in
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: situations that didn't serve me.
• 20:29
  Speaker 6: That's what I admire about you and all the success
• 20:31
  Speaker 6: that you've had.
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: When I... I looked at your age when you were
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: on the list with Charlamagne. I was like, yo, what?
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: 34, right?
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're the same age.
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: We're the same age.
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: Yo, you really out here.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: So again, I've kind of left clues about this. I
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: said I got kicked out of school. I stopped going
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: because I'd realized that it wasn't for me. That wasn't
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: going to be the path. Went to university for one day.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: Started a business. Did that for two years. Quit out
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: of the blue. Started another business. Got that. Got very big.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: Quit out of the blue. And I think often in
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: life we glamorize starting. Because, you know, if you go
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: into a gym, I was in the gym yesterday. And
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: it says on the walls, like, never give up. I
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: think this is like fundamentally quite toxic advice. Like logically,
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: the thing you have to do before you start, and
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: by the way, starting is the thing that gets all
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: the champagne and the flowers and all that, is you
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: have to quit something else. Like they're fundamentally interlinked. So
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: getting good at quitting, I think is a skill that
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: the guests I sit with in interview have mastered, which
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: is like, and it all comes down to your relationship
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: with uncertainty. Because when you quit, sometimes you have to
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: do it at like 51% certainty of the decision you're making.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: This is actually something that Barack, President Obama, I heard
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: him talk about when I spoke on stage in Sao
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: Paulo many years ago. He was talking about the biggest
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: decisions as president of the United States, getting Osama bin
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: Laden in that compound in Pakistan. And he said, as president,
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: I have to get to 51% certainty on these big
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: decisions and then make it with the peace of mind
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: that I did it with all of the best available information.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: And Jeff Bezos, again, who's someone that built Amazon, who
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: I've studied extensively, talks about how Amazon has to be
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: the best place on earth to fail. And part of
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: that is realizing the difference between a type two and
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: type one decision. Most things in life are type two decisions.
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: They're doors that if you walk through and you're wrong,
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: you can come back through. But we treat decisions in
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: life like type one, irreversible doors. Me leaving university after
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: one lecture, I could have gone back. Frankly, I could
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: have gone back to my startup because I was good.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: They would have taken me back. And kids come up
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: to me all the time because they're scared about quitting
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: because all of these sort of phrases. And the first
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: thing I'll ask them is like, if you're wrong, can
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: you go back? If it's type two, you make it quick.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: And that means that you can get through life quicker,
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: I think. So that's a framework that I apply to business,
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: but also my own life.
• 22:34
  Speaker 5: I feel like people are more scared now to quit
• 22:37
  Speaker 5: than any time before because of the economy and how
• 22:40
  Speaker 5: people don't have money to even sustain living. You know
• 22:44
  Speaker 5: what I mean? So you got all these people, like
• 22:46
  Speaker 5: our listeners, for example, they have nine to fives, but
• 22:50
  Speaker 5: they have things that they're good at, things that they
• 22:51
  Speaker 5: want to quit. to be entrepreneurs and put like 95%
• 22:54
  Speaker 5: of their time into a business, but it's like we're
• 22:58
  Speaker 5: under government right now and it's not really allowing us
• 23:00
  Speaker 5: economically to do something like that even if we wanted to.
• 23:04
  Speaker 5: What would you say to those people?
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been there. When I was 18 and I
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: left university, I called my mom and I said, mom, listen,
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: I'm dropping out of university. I'm the youngest of four kids.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: All of my siblings went to university. And my mom,
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: she left school in Nigeria at seven, somewhere between seven
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: and eight years old. So she's still not able to
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: read and write So you can imagine how that felt
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: because she sees university as safety and security. And then
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: her youngest kid is saying, you know, she's basically stood
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: in my way because she loved me. And she thought
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: that my safety was getting that education. I say that
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: because education comes in many forms. And so what happened
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: to me then for the next two years, didn't speak
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: to her, went and worked in call centers for immediately.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: And I was working night shifts in call centers. When
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: I got time off, I'd use the evening slot and
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: their wifi to design my website. I actually got fired
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: from this one call center called late rooms because I
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: I'll be honest, they realized I was working too much
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: on my side thing. And they could listen to my
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: calls and they realized that I was doing my business.
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: And that's the reality of it. You have to be practical,
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: but you do have, it's going to come at a cost.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: There's almost nothing in life. There's no free lunch in life.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: So you can't have it all. And so for me,
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: I had to work my evenings and my weekends to
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: try and build my life raft to get out of
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: the call centers that I was working in. And that
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: is often the case for people. Everyone's situation is different.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: So you've got to be careful as well, taking advice
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: from anybody, including me.
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah i think what you're describing steve is uh the
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: loneliness of achievement right like people talk about the sacrifices
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: required to become successful but they rarely discuss whether those
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: sacrifices were worth it yeah you know so so what's
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: something success has cost you that you feel like you
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: know you can't you can't get back.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: It's funny um on this idea of like success and
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: the cost i asked my producer who's produced the dire
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: overseer with me since it began he even worked in
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: my my other company with me i said to him
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: on air which is has been published i said um Jack,
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: you know my life better than anybody. You see what
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: happens when the cameras turn off. Would you like my life?
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: This guy said no so quickly. It was offensive. I
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: was thinking, just think about it. He went, no, like
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: that on camera. And then I was like, follow up question.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: Do you think I'm happy? And he said, yes, equally fast.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: And it's the same for me. I actually wouldn't like
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: his life either. And I think- He said the minute
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: you get out of this chair and you try and
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: walk across the room, you'll have three people stop you
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: as you're trying to get to the kitchen. And I
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: know you haven't eaten lunch today and it's 6 p.m.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: And he because he sees what it's like. You have
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: hundreds of full time employees. You're a bottleneck to everybody.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: So he wouldn't like that seven days a week for
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: whatever reason. And it's not better or worse. It's just
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: the way that I've chosen my life to be. I
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: say this because it's important. The success we talk about
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: is a subjective one. He is successful. I'm successful. We
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: have different lives and different things make us happy. The
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: great cost of my life would probably be relationships. It's
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: harder to have, and they're so important. It's tricky. And peace,
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: I guess. I probably have less peace. When I was 26,
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: living in New York, we had about 500 full-time employees
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: around the world. have 500 employees they have one problem
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: each a day 365 days in a year you have
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: like one and a half problems to deal with a
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: day and you don't and it doesn't doesn't matter if
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: it's your birthday or christmas or whatever so dealing with
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: that finding a system to deal with unexpected bs that
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: occurs out of nowhere when you're 25 whether it's we
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: got hacked one day and all of our clients were
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: sent specific personalized abuse about their physical appearance and i'm
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: 25 and we're off at paintballing with the team and
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: you have to turn the whole team around and take
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: them back to the office and then contact all your
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: clients and you lose 80% of your business in a day. Like,
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: you know, you have to develop a system for calm
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: within chaos. You know?
• 26:44
  Speaker 5: It's like you invite chaos. I feel like you, you're
• 26:47
  Speaker 5: really good at, like you like that pressure. You like
• 26:51
  Speaker 5: the chaos. It's like, is that, am I, please tell
• 26:54
  Speaker 5: me if I'm right or wrong. There's something about it
• 26:56
  Speaker 5: that gets you going and gets your adrenaline going.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: It's interesting. The, um, I learned from a neuroscientist that
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: your brain adapts to the hardness that you tolerate. There's
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: this particular part of the brain, which they just discovered
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: in neuroscience called the anterior mid cingulate cortex. It's this big,
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: it's inside the middle of everyone's head. And the crazy
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: thing about this part of the brain is it gets
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: bigger when you do things you don't want to do.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: So not things that are hard, not running the marathon,
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: which you wanted to do because you're things you actively
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: resist and then do anyway. And people who have a
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: bigger part of this brain are then able to do
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: more things that they resist and didn't want to do.
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: Younger generations, they report, have smaller anterior mid-singulate cortexes than
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: their parents. And people that have worse health outcomes also
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: have smaller ones. So I think it's weird because we
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: always talked about the willpower muscle. From a neurological perspective,
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: you do actually adjust to it. And then you're able
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: to swim at a deeper depth. And so I'm glad
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: that I have those experiences in my early life that
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: made me resilient more. I think this is a bit
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: of a story, but I always think about, I think
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: it's Roosevelt. He was this young man based in New
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: York City who was like this skinny young man who
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: hadn't had any experience. His friends describe him as being very,
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: you know, quaint and small. And then he comes home
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: on February 14th one day and his mum is dying
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: upstairs and his wife, who had just given birth to
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: his daughter, who had rushed home to meet his daughter,
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: is dying downstairs. Both of them die. He takes himself
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: out to the Badlands in America, which is this horrific
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: environment where it drops to minus 40 degrees. in the
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: winter and it's excruciatingly difficult and horses diced it up.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: He spends two years on saddle, sometimes 18 hours a day,
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: basically punishing himself because of the grief, comes back to
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: America after that. And if you read what his friends
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: say about him, completely different human being. He then becomes,
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: I think, the youngest ever president in the United States.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: At one point when he's leading the charge on the
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: back of a horse up this hill, he gets shot,
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: glasses fly off. He says, give me your glasses, puts
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: them back on and keeps going. He gets shot in
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: the chest while giving a speech and says, it would
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: take more than a bullet to kill a bull and
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: keeps reading his speech. And if you look at his
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: track record, even in his diary, he points to the
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: fact that if he had not gone to the bad lands,
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: he would not have been able to accomplish what he accomplished.
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: So I often think about that one story and understanding
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: the brain in this way meant that I reframe the
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: difficult moments that I go through. And in some degree,
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: I'm thankful for them because they are setting me up
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: for a future that I can deal with, you know,
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: deal with bigger problems and challenges. So yeah, That refrain
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: has helped me a lot when the storm comes.
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: That's why I love your show because the brain is
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: such an interesting thing. I think about the psychology of
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: wanting more. I think about the environment you come from.
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: I think about environments that I come from. We didn't
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: grow up with money, right? So do you believe most
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: ambitious people are running towards something they want or running
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: away from something they don't want to feel no more?
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: Both. If they're being honest, I think I'd be lying
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: if I said I wasn't. I'd be lying if I,
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: you know, I try and, again, I interviewed this guy
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: that talks about status and he says Humans are, we're
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: built to play status games. Now, when I started in
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: my career, it was like, how much Louis Vuitton can
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: I buy? Because that was, in my context, that was
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: how I rose in status. Billionaires do it with yachts.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: They don't wear logos anymore, but they want to compete
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: on how big their yacht is. The big CEOs are
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: competing about how big their AI labs are. We play
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: that game the whole way up because at one point
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: it meant survival. So I'd be lying if I said
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: status isn't still a game I'm playing. Like, I want
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: my podcast to be successful. And I'd like it to
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: be number one. Like, I don't know. Like in Lion City,
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: I'd like it to be 17. Number two right now?
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: We got you.
• 30:26
  Speaker 5: We got you.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: You coming for it. But no, it's true. But then
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: also I think you have to be intentional because if you're,
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: it's kind of like sitting in the car in the
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: morning and if you just hit drive, you're going to
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: get lost. If you just hit the sat nav, you
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: never get out the garage. You have to do both.
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: If you just hit the pedal and drive, you're going
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: to be lost. But if you just put the sat
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: nav on the satellite navigation. Oh, satellite. Then you're still
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: sat in the garage. So you have to do both.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: You have to be intentional about direction. And you have
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: to have the drive. One without the other and you're
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: lost or you're in the garage.
• 30:59
  Speaker 6: So your discipline that you have for how consistent your
• 31:02
  Speaker 6: podcast has had to be, how you build your business
• 31:05
  Speaker 6: and your schedule, has that always come from you knowing
• 31:08
  Speaker 6: that intention or have you bumped your head.
• 31:09
  Speaker 4: A couple of times and you were like, all right,
• 31:11
  Speaker 4: I got to tighten this up?
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: Of course I bumped my head a couple of times.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: In fact, we have a head of failure. And the
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: whole point of the head of failure in the experimentation
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: team is to increase the rate in which we fail.
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: A head of failure in your business.
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 31:23
  Speaker 4: Do they focus on your podcast or just the other ones?
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: All of our shows.
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: Got you. Oh, I need one of those.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: Arguably one of the most important. So the thinking is
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: that in a world where you're trying to figure out
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: how to do a podcast, which platforms to use, how
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: do I do a thumbnail, whatever it is, the answers
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: at the moment to any of these questions are changing
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: so quickly that if you listen to futurists like Ray Kurzweil,
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: he says that if you look at the stats that
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: he's put out there, If you're like 10 today, by
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: the age of 60, you'll experience a year's worth of
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: today's change in about 11 days. If you're 40, by
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: the age of 60, you'll experience a year's worth of
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: today's change in about 90 days. I.e., the correct answer
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: to like how we build these businesses is changing, especially
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: with AI. So how do I find the right answer
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: before my competitors? And the question becomes, if you look
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: through the great founders of our time, they all point
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: at the same thing. Like I said, Jeff Bezos' 2015
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: Amazon shareholder letter. It says, Amazon will succeed if we
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: are the best place on earth to fail. He says
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: that one in 10 of the experiments they make at
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: Amazon pay for the graveyard. You probably don't know about
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: the Fire Phone because it cost them a lot of
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: money and failed. Or Endless.com. You probably might know about AWS,
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: which is what most companies are now hosted on. It'll
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: make them $ 170 billion this year. It's the biggest B2B
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: company on planet Earth, I believe, or at least it was.
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: It pays for the entire graveyard. In our business, we
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: discovered that about two things we do a year, of
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: all the failings, of all the experiments we run... and
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: trust me, we run the most crazy, petty experiments you'd imagine,
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: completely have changed the game for our show. Completely. It's
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: so extreme, in fact, that even our barista posted in
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: our experimentation Slack channel, she's a barista that runs the
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: coffee shop downstairs, saying that she's experimenting with a flat
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: white versus a mocha latte. And she had the scientific experiment.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: She said, I'm going to present them to everyone that
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: arrives at the office in the morning the same way,
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: and I'm going to measure which one sells the most.
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: That's how much we care about experimentation, because failure in
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: life is feedback. Feedback is knowledge and knowledge is power.
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: So failure actually is the power of an organism, of
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: an organization. It is how many times do you learn?
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: And the problem is we're also scared to run risks
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: because of what we think failure means, that we don't
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: learn fast enough. There's never been a more important time
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: to learn fast enough. I wrote my book a year ago.
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: It's still not published. you're not gonna get the answers
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: from my book when the world is changing this quickly.
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: That's like giving you, if I sat here and gave
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: people tactics for building a company or media business, like tactics,
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: it's like giving them a fish. In three months, it
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: won't work. So the fishing rod is the principle of
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: increasing your rate of experimentation. And this is what we
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: do in my company. We test the most, like the
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: smell of the room when the guest walks in, the
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: music to play when Charlemagne arrives. We'd research that. The
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: CO2 levels in the room when I'm doing an interview,
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: because I have a CO2 monitor right next to me
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: in every interview because it gets above a thousand parts
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: per million. It's like drinking a pint of alcohol your
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: cognitive performance can drop. So everything, we want to find
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: marginal gains, not big steps forward. We do that through failure.
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: What was the song that y'all played when I arrived? Actually,
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: I have to look at the research brief, but it
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: would have been, trust me, they would have, I can
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: find it. I'll find it after.
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: What's your understanding of the relationship between money and happiness?
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: And the reason I ask is you've interviewed billionaires and
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: psychologists and spiritual teachers.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: You've lost people who've lost everything.
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: So what is, what's your understanding of a relationship between
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: money and happiness?
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: Because you have the money now. You know, a lot
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: of people say money can't buy happiness, but I don't
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: know if they've ever had to like shoplift pizzas and shit.
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: I'm definitely happier now. I have less worry. I don't
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: know what you're supposed to say, but there becomes a
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: point where it takes care of your like base level
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: Maslowian needs of being able to feed yourself and provide
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: for your family and not have to look down and see.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: I remember looking down on my desk every day and
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: I had my CCJ, which is a county court judgment.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: It's like, the closest thing I've ever got to a qualification, CCJ.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: And I had two CCJs and there's bailiff letters. And
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: that was a angst in the back of my head
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: that meant that I had to play short. And actually
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: much of the success in life, I think, especially in
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: the context of business, is having the freedom to play long,
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: to take bigger risks, to think more long-term. And now
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: in this season of my life, because I don't worry
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: about the money part, I'm able to play long, which
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: paradoxically means you can do things which end up making
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: you more successful or wealth. Um, so I, I'd, I'd
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: implore everybody to, you know, to, to really, um, to
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: get out of the, to do everything they can to
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: first get out of the, the pressure and the weight
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: of financial pressures. Um, and this goes back to what
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: we were saying earlier about like, be careful not to
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: quit the call center job before you figured out your
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: life raft. Right. Sometimes we think of them as binaries, like, no,
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: go for it, go for it. And I hear this
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: advice to start the business and I go, listen, well,
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: you do want to make sure your foundation's good, especially
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: if you've got a family and kids to feed. So, um,
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: but you know, I'm definitely happier now. Yeah. In that regard.
• 36:26
  Speaker 5: You do look like Will Smith, yo.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: This is why I chose Will Smith. It was the
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: least effort.
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: You do.
• 36:32
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: I put on some like dungarees or something. I can't remember,
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: but from Fresh Prince.
• 36:36
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: I see it. You got something?
• 36:42
  Speaker 4: No, go ahead.
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: I was going to say, you know, what's something you
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: believed with absolute certainty when you first started the Diary
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: of a CEO that you don't even believe in? Hmm.
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: I thought people were fundamentally very, very different. And I
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: now believe the opposite. I think the more people you
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: interview and you go in search of finding these differences
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: in people, I sit with someone like Charlamagne or I
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: sit with Michelle Obama or Kamala Harris, you're expecting to
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: find this huge array of differences, but actually at the
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: most fundamental level, you find these like fundamental similarities. If
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: a child goes through this or if a human goes
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: through this thing, they tend to act like this. This
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: tends to be the outcome. And the great news for
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: that is like, no matter what you're going through, it's
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: not like evidence of your own personal inadequacy. A lot
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: of it is evidence that you're just like a human,
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: like everybody else. And the similarities that you find in
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: the most successful people in the world, or that I
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: see in myself when I was in that bedroom at
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: 18 years old, they're like fundamental human stuff. So like
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: the thing you're going through today might not be evidence
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: that you are less than in any way. It's actually
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: evidence that you're just like everybody else. The most fundamental level.
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: And that was a surprise to me. But it also
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: has liberated me to... accept myself more and accept my
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: flaws more because they're all like human flaws, I guess.
• 37:58
  Speaker 5: And I wanted to ask you about your guests. Do
• 38:00
  Speaker 5: you pick them or do you have like your team?
• 38:02
  Speaker 5: Like how do you pick all of these great people
• 38:07
  Speaker 5: that you sit down and interview?
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: I pick them. And it goes to something I was
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: saying earlier, which is success for me is looking at
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: my calendar for a consistent period in a row and
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: being excited.
• 38:18
  Speaker 4: You talk to people you want to talk to.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And the other point I said was about long-termism. Now,
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: if you really, like, I really believe that just extending
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: the time horizon of your goals is like magic because
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: it means you make different decisions today. And those decisions
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: today result in better outcomes. I'll give you a very
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: simple example. If I gave you an unlimited amount of
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: bricks and I gave you 60 seconds and I said,
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: build the tallest tower you can, what you're going to
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: do is you're going to get the bricks and you're
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: going to stack them vertically like that. And then if
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: the wind blows, your tower falls down because you rushed. Now,
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: if I gave you the same unlimited breaks, but I
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: gave you a year, the first thing you do is
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: you probably put them horizontally and start making foundations. And
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: when the wind blows, your tower is still standing. All
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: I did was change the time horizon. Same resources. What
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: I mean by this is I've noticed in business, but
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: in life generally, you take a longer term time horizon
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: to whatever you're working on. You actually end up creating
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: a durable moat, a defense. something that is stronger. And
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: so the same applies for guest booking, which is I
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: could have, I'm thinking about a particular name on my
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: list now that has 170 million followers and is this superstar,
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: but I'm just like not interested. I don't watch those movies.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: I don't know that. I don't just, so if I
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: say yes, then I'm now on this slippery slope of
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: waking up in the morning and looking down at my
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: diary and saying that I have to do something. I
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: get to do something. I have to do something. And
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: imagine what the precedence that's, so what's going to happen
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: is I'm going to quit again. Three years time, I'm
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: going to go, I hate this life that I've built
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: for myself. And so I won't be able to go
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: 30 years, which means I won't be able to compound.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: And so my team are well aware. They go, oh,
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: this puppet, they're so big. I go, listen, long-termism. Play long,
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: you know? So I pick all my guests, people that
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: I'm curious about, and it's worked out so far. So
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: long may that be the case. This is my last question.
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: It made me think about something when you started talking
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: about human flaws, right? It made me think, what's the
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: question you've been avoiding asking yourself because you're afraid of
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: the answer? It's that question.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: It's literally that question.
• 40:15
  Speaker 5: Wow.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: And I think it's such an important question because it highlights...
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: maybe the most important area of your like all of
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: the most important area areas of our life or progress
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: sits behind like the most difficult question the question that
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: makes you feel uncomfortable why does it make you feel
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: uncomfortable oh for good reason there's some kind of dissonance
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: there or something you're not admitting to yourself um for
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: me it would be it would be the the like
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: the fundamental contradiction that i am like we talked about
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: it earlier but like i i again i really really
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: know how important when i think about my deathbed and
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: when i look at the studies on people on their
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: deathbeds that were done by australian palliative nurse bronnie where
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: um the single biggest regret are things around like relationships
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: and not living a life true to themselves and what
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: i someone said to me the other day like imagine
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: you're on your deathbed now what will matter in that
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: moment and i closed my eyes they said it's my
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: podcast and the only thing that seemed to matter was
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: who was stood around my bed my my fiance melanie
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: who'll be my wife and my kids and what they
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: thought of their father. That's the only thing I cared about.
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: I wasn't thinking about podcast or I wasn't thinking about
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: car drove or the jewelry or anything. And so I thought, well,
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: if that's gonna, if I know that's gonna be true,
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: then why have I seen Melanie for like, I don't know, six,
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: seven days this month. Why haven't you done anything about that?
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: This is the conundrum. And I don't know. I don't know.
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: And this is, do you know what I think it is?
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: I think the uncomfortable truth about relationships is at some
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: level we do take them a little bit for granted,
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: I think, and they're not urgent. Business is always screaming
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: at me. It's always here, you know? So you have,
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: like my businesses, my emails, my notifications, this has happened, Steven, Steven, Steven,
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: like I said, my colleagues said, if you walk through
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: the building, three people come up to me and your
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: relationship is always less urgent. So it's quite a challenge
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: to try and like make it as urgent, as important
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: as it relates to your calendar. I'm doing my best
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: to improve. I think awareness is step one in figuring
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: it out.
• 42:14
  Speaker 6: Me shifting that changed how mentally I was able to
• 42:17
  Speaker 6: like take time to deal with like, am I okay?
• 42:19
  Speaker 6: Cause my nervous system was always like my family stuff
• 42:22
  Speaker 6: was so urgent, urgent, urgent. And I didn't think it
• 42:24
  Speaker 6: should be when I shifted and was like, no, it
• 42:26
  Speaker 6: should be.
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: I started being able.
• 42:28
  Speaker 6: To like breathe and take time to figure out like,
• 42:31
  Speaker 6: what do I really need to deal with? So I
• 42:32
  Speaker 6: can deal with the urgencies in business.
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: Interesting.
• 42:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah. How did you do that?
• 42:37
  Speaker 6: I didn't have a choice. Life made that decision for me.
• 42:39
  Speaker 6: But once I was in it and I got through it,
• 42:41
  Speaker 6: I was like, I felt so like free and I
• 42:43
  Speaker 6: could breathe. I was like, this is, I want to
• 42:45
  Speaker 6: create like this. Like, I don't want to be at
• 42:47
  Speaker 6: work all tense and crazy and like, yeah. So I
• 42:50
  Speaker 6: just stayed in that space and I like, I make
• 42:52
  Speaker 6: it a priority. Like anybody who knows me knows like
• 42:54
  Speaker 6: family is a priority first for me.
• 42:57
  Speaker 4: Period. I just did it. I didn't have a choice.
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: You could do it. Just schedule it like everything else.
• 43:09
  Speaker 5: You're starting right now, like you said, in the last
• 43:12
  Speaker 5: 10 days you've been through all this, but you took
• 43:15
  Speaker 5: two of those 10 days to make it to Melanie.
• 43:18
  Speaker 5: And I'm sure she appreciates that. What you're doing now,
• 43:21
  Speaker 5: you're building to a point where you don't have to
• 43:24
  Speaker 5: be the one on all these planes and all these meetings.
• 43:27
  Speaker 5: But you don't.
• 43:28
  Speaker 4: Want to give up.
• 43:29
  Speaker 6: It feels crazy to give your baby over to somebody
• 43:32
  Speaker 6: as intimately, probably, like your business as your baby, as
• 43:34
  Speaker 6: intimately as you do.
• 43:35
  Speaker 4: You pick all your own guests. You want to talk
• 43:37
  Speaker 4: to people you want to talk to. I get that.
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: I was just thinking about it, and I haven't told
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: anybody this, but a lot of the reason why I
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: was flying around the world is I had these different
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: speaking appointments as well. And so what I did, I
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: realized on the road, I was like, do you know
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: what I need to do? I need to double my
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: speaking fee. And do you know what? And so the
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: problem with this, and I need to make sure that
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: my team don't tell me about the offers that I get.
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: Because when you come from 15 years ago, I'm going
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: into restaurants, I'm putting my hand down the back of
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: the chair to see if anyone's left change, right? So
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: that I could eat that day. So when you get
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: these big numbers come in for offers, you feel guilty
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: if you don't just go do everything. Because there's a
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: part of you that's like, you know, it wasn't that
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: long ago when this didn't exist. So I said to
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: my team, finally, on the road on this trip, whatever
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: my speaking fee is now, just double it. And then
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: I told Melanie. I was like, and she was actually
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: really happy because it means that I'm going to be
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: able to. That's not going to change anything.
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: No, because they're going to pay that shit.
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: Because I feel like he was expensive and he still goes.
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: I'll tell you off air, but I get some numbers
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: that I never thought I would walk away from. But
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: it's because my time means more. Being with my family
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: means more. I'm talking about like, I could easily go
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: here on a random Thursday, fly in, get this money
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: and fly back, but I'd rather pick my daughter up
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: from cheerleading practice.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean?
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: I'd rather wake up in my own bed on Friday
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: morning and not have to rush back and land at
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: midnight or one o'clock and rush.
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: To the radio station.
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: Your time will absolutely mean more than that money, no
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: matter what the fee is, I promise you.
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm looking forward to becoming a dad.
• 45:11
  Speaker 5: Oh yeah, when you become a dad, man, you ain't,
• 45:13
  Speaker 5: all these questions that you ask, all of that shit
• 45:14
  Speaker 5: going to go out the window. It's just going to
• 45:16
  Speaker 5: be your, it's going to come automatically to you. That's
• 45:19
  Speaker 5: your baby that you're talking about. You know, you ain't
• 45:24
  Speaker 5: even going to have to ask no questions, no nothing
• 45:26
  Speaker 5: is going to come to you. Like, not everything is
• 45:28
  Speaker 5: on your baby, on your family.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: Trust me.
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: It'll be beautiful to see.
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: Listen, Steven, my final quote, never get so busy making
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: a living that you forget to make a life.
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: Amen. You know who said that? Dolly Parton.
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: Really?
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: You can work nine to five all you want.
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: That's the lyrics.
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: Make sure you listen to the Diary of a CEO podcast.
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: The number two most listened to podcast in the world.
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: So who doesn't listen to it? It's Stephen Bartlett. It's
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: The Breakfast Club.