Modern WisdomLessons In Creating A Successful Life - Steven Bartlett | Modern Wisdom Podcast 301
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
125 min read · 24,947 words- 0:00 – 15:00
The most intrinsically rewarding…
- SBSteven Bartlett
The most intrinsically rewarding way I could probably live my life was to resist my labels. Elon Musk or Kanye West, I don't love all of their ideas, but the thing I love and- and admire most about those individuals was they didn't let their past or a label or anything define, define them. And that inspires me. I think that's a free way to live. I think everybody, the vast majority, 99% of people, don't live freely. They live confined by words that, you know, their mum or dad or themselves have given them. (whoosh)
- CWChris Williamson
First off, mate, I need to say thank you for dinner because the last time that we were together, we were overlooking Downtown Dubai, and you invited me and a buddy out for a really wonderful evening dinner. But then as you left, I was in the toilet, so I haven't actually got to say goodbye. So-
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... thanks for dinner, mate, and also welcome to the show.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Thanks for having me. I, I left abruptly because I had a, a flight to catch that night and my suitcases were actually downstairs. So when my PA grabbed me and said, you know, "You've got to go now." I just, I quickly scrambled and, uh, e- exited the building. But yeah, thank you. It was good to, good to meet you and catch up with you and such, and I'm excited to be on your podcast today.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Me too, man. So why did you write a book? You've got a lot of stuff-
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... online already. Like, why do you need a book as an outlet?
- SBSteven Bartlett
This is a couple of... You, you make a really good point. Um, we live in an era of, you know, instantaneous feedback. And, um, I, I'm a, I'm a connected from birth, um, I'm part of the connected from birth generation where I've had, you know, some form of online connection for my whole life. And things have got even more, um, superficial and ephemeral, um, as I've, as I've got older. So you're right, I've got millions of followers online. If I've got a message to communicate, why don't I just do an Instagram story or something which gives me that sort of instant feedback? And I think, in fact, that was, um, paradoxically why I needed to write the book because of the way that the world was, is heading and the, the lack of meaning and how shallow, um, uh, and surface level things are getting. And for me, the book w- if... The book is the antithesis of that. It is depth, it's meaning, it's something you, you spend two years doing, and then once you're done, you still have another year's wait until it's published. And, um, it was a chance to really... There's so many things with books that I came to learn that you don't get with social media as well. One of the real big things which I think changes the way you create your ideas is you... Because you don't get instant feedback or pretty much no, not a lot of feedback at all, there's no comment section, you write with a certain level of freedom, which is quite rare these days. So I got to go deeper than I've ever gone before. Y- I know that if I write a page, um, it's not going to be discussed instantaneously, and I think that allows f- thoughts and ideas to connect in a different way. So just, uh, for me, it was a bit of an experiment, to be honest, something I put off for a long time. But, um, just to conclude that point, there was one day where I looked at my diary from when I was 18 years old, and in the front page of it, I'd basically written that I wanted to be a happy, sexy millionaire. And I, I read that when I was 26 and I, you know, built this massive business and I was traveling from one country to another, and that was the moment where I thought I wanted to write the book because it dawned on me how dumb I was to aim for that and how many other people are.
- CWChris Williamson
An interesting point around the instant feedback. I had Seth Godin on the show, and he-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... said that about a decade or a decade and a half ago, he removed comments from his blog. Remembering he's one of the biggest bloggers on the planet. And people say, "You can't remove comments from your blog. It's a blog. You're not allowed to do that." And he was like, "Well, I know if I leave comments on, I'll just add an extra caveat here and a little bit of a justification there-"
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
"... because you're writing to preempt what people are going to say back."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And I think, yeah, the, um, the low-tech solution of just words on a piece of paper is, uh, is good. The title as well, Happy, Sexy Millionaire. Were you tempted to call it Just Be Consistent For a Really Long Time?
- SBSteven Bartlett
No. So the, the title, as I say, comes from when I was 18 years old. So I'm, I'm an 18-year-old kid, I arrive in Manchester and, um, I decide that I'm going to drop out of university. I know what I want from my life. I've... It's, for me, it's pretty non-negotiable that I'm going to become, one way or the other, a very successful multi-millionaire at a very young age. That was, it was all the way from the age of 14. I was c- I got to the point at 14, 15 where I was so convinced that that was gonna happen, um, with no evidence and no understanding of the, the, the future world that I would face, but I was so convinced. So I arrived in Manchester, 18 years old, realized that this degree wasn't going to give me what I needed to to get to where I needed to go, and, uh, dropped out and then wrote in the first page of that diary, which I posted on Facebook if anyone wants to check it out. I just wrote four, four goals that I have for when I'm 25. A Range Rover Sport was going to be my first car. Um, I was going to make a million pounds before I was 25. I was going to work on my body because I was super skinny. Um, and I was going to have a long term relationship with a girl. Four very simple life goals. I wanted to be, uh, sexy and rich because I thought that would make me happy. And that's, that's where the, the book starts.
- CWChris Williamson
Where does that self-belief come from?
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's a great question, and I think... I'm always super scared of, um, indulging in, like, hindsight bullshit, where you, you look back and you say, "Oh, this, this, and this, and this is why I am the way I am." I think largely, like, 70% of the time, 80% of the time, we don't know. But if I was, was to hypothesize logically where belief comes from generally, um, other beliefs that I have, uh, the answer is clearly evidence, right? Some form of, um, evidence that you have and, and what you sort of derive from that evidence. And, uh, the example that I give, and I think I give this example in my book as well, is I talk about if I was to try and make you believe that I was Allah or Jesus Christ right now, and I held your, your mother hostage at gunpoint and told you to, to, uh, take that belief on, the only way I'm going to believe... The only way I'm going to release your mother from gunpoint is if you start to believe that I'm Jesus Christ, right? You, you couldn't believe it. You couldn't genuinely believe it, even if everything was on the line. And so I, I used to think about that and say, "Okay, well, if that's... If we can't... If we don't actually choose our beliefs..." We choose our faith, right? We, we can have faith in something or somebody, but we don't actually choose our belief. Where are they coming from? That, in that same analogy, if I take this bottle here full of water and I turn it into wine and then I start levitating, your belief...... stop- might start to change, as it relates to me being a deity or something. And so you re- you take that back and you say, "Okay, so if our, if our beliefs are based on some kind of evidence we have and what we derive from that, maybe our self-belief is too." Maybe, you know, maybe we're compounding a set of personal case studies in our life that are telling us that we are capable of something, or that we're not, and it tends to be the case that, from the things that I've read anyway, that the positive case studies upwards are slower, so I can a- do one thing, I speak on stage in front of 10 people, I'm like, "Okay," and then I can do 15 the next day. But when it compounds downwards against you, when your self-belief or any belief compounds downwards, it's rapid. You go on stage and speak in front of 10 people, they heckle you, you forget your words, you never go... Y- uh, i- trying to get back to that stage again is, phew, it's, it's tough. And so I think from a very young age, because of my parents' absence, they weren't around when I was, when I was younger, and I was growing u- I was basically raising myself from about 10 years old. I, I learnt this very important connections that, connection that I hope my kids one day have, which is, if I'm going to get something, whether it's dinner money or the nice pair of shoes that I want because I'm broke and all the other kids have them, it's gonna come from my own actions and behavior. And you learn that at 10 years old, that if, if you're gonna get shoes, a football, you know, whatever, lunch, it's gonna come from something you do. So that sense of independence created a, created a, helped me create a bunch of case studies for myself, and some social factors, I think are what gave me my sense of self-belief. That would be my h- that would be my guess.
- CWChris Williamson
I think that you're right, and it highlights something I've been thinking about for a long time. We presume, in 2021, because people conflate the words confidence with extroversion and being charismatic and outgoing, all of these words move in the same sort of fields, but confidence isn't the same. Confidence isn't given, it's earned. Naval Ravikant has this quote where he says, "Self-esteem is the reputation you have with yourself you'll always know."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And a lot of the time, I think people want the self-belief, the outcome, the "I can achieve anything" mentality when they have zero evidence that it's going to actually happen.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And this is where small wins come in, right? Clean your room-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... make your bed, do the little things, and build up. And that's what you've said, the progressive overload.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah, and this is one of the, this is why I've always been, I've always had this allergic reaction to this idea of, like, pure play visualization, because it's, it's such a dumb thing to me, this idea that there's almost this emerging culture where people will get up in the morning, they'll repeat these three affirmations, and it's kind of like my analogy of just saying that you think I'm Jesus because your mom's gonna die. Like, they'll s- look in the mirror and say, "I am strong, I am powerful, I am" whatever, and then they'll, they'll write on their little, little list of visualizations that "I'm gonna be a millionaire." And, like, but they haven't built any personal case studies. They don't actually believe at all what they're saying. It's just a bunch of nonsense, or like, in their own self-esteem, that is just a bunch of, like, wishy-washys. The difference is, at 18 years old, I believed I was capable, and I used to say to people at the time, I was like, "If you tell me that I have to go to Mars this week, my brain defaults to, like, 'Find out how to make it happen,' not 'It's not possible,' or 'Why won't it happen?' " And for some- I had that because of a set of case studies that preceded that moment, and some people don't. And this is why, like, yeah, I'm, I'm quite against the whole secret, um, lifestyle that some people live, where it's, it's all about visualization and, and not enough about, you know, small compounding efforts in the right direction. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
We're in the same page there. What does, "The things that invalidated you when you were younger are the things which will validate you when you're older" mean?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah, so, uh, I think the quote from the book is, "The things that invalidated you when you were younger will be the s- things you seek validation from when you're older." And you can, you could, that can be anything, right? So for me, I was, imagine this. I come from Africa as a two-year-old kid, and you put me in an area where everybody is richer than me, everybody is, has a different hair, hair color than me, everybody has a different skin color than me. You put me into a street where everyone's house is perfect, right? Perfect, like out of a movie. And mine has six-foot grass and fridges and TVs in the, in the f- in the front garden, back garden. The front window of my house is smashed. So this is already a kid that has some kind of insecurity at that age as well. And so I was invalidated by that. I was invalidated because the things that made me feel invalid or insecure were, like, money, and the fact that I could never have a girlfriend or have a girlfriend come over to my house, because it was a shithole. And so as I got older, you get to 18, you're like, "I'm gonna try and fill that hole." And so the things that had invalidated me when I was a kid, which was, like, um, female attention, or money, or whatever it was, became the things that were most valuable to me in my perception to, to, um, to seek and to chase when I was older. And you see this no matter who you speak to, whether it's your dad invalidated you by m- m- you know, giving you the impression that you could never be like him or you weren't good enough, and then, you know... Most of my billionaire friends, I think two of my billionaire friends, and I haven't got that many of them, uh, both of them have al- almost an identical story where their dad invalidated them when they were younger. These are two billionaires you would know, and they spent their, th- you know, their early years ruthlessly chasing that validation from somewhere.
- CWChris Williamson
Isn't it interesting that in the meritocracy quantifiable metrics of success world that we live in now, that we can look at someone that has the billion pounds, but the completely uninternalized, unactualized sense of self-love, and consider them a success, because we never get-
- 15:00 – 30:00
Can we sink into…
- SBSteven Bartlett
in that restaurant that day felt like a gift from God, and I absu- an absolute euphoria. And I think what I write about in the book is, that day, that moment where I found that 13 quid, which meant that I could eat for maybe the next 10 days or so, was, oh, was like 30 times more euphoric than the day I woke up in that five-star hotel in Manchester, and I g- looked at my phone and someone had texted me saying, "Oh, the company's now public." And, you know, you do the mental math about how much money that means you now have. Um, and I just felt total- totally numb. And I contrast those two moments in, in my book. And this is where I kind of start to introduce the idea of like, you know, bring the stoic philosophy into play, and, and why tho- and, and contrast, and, and why those moments felt so different. The day that I became, you know, a multi-multi-millionaire versus the day that I found £13 in a chicken shop, um, I ha- were, were two completely different days. One was euphoria and one was, um, anticlimax. It's actually when you expect something to be a certain way, when you expect it to be euphoric and it's not, it actually becomes a negative, which is interesting. So when it, when you... and this is the whole idea of like... I mean, this is, uh, a general principle about expectation and reality. Like, the difference between what you expect and what you, what you get is your level of satisfaction. And in that moment, I was... I've always expected that day where I became a multimillionaire to be confetti and marching bands and euphoria. So when it wasn't, and when it came in below my expectation, it was actually a big negative. Yeah. Until I, uh... yeah. Until I did some mind games.
- CWChris Williamson
Can we sink into that time? How do you get yourself to a place where you can leave your company? This is, as you say, a young kid who's never really had s- money, who's never really had quantifiable metrics of success. A lot of people would struggle to give up the good for the great. Is, is quitting a skill in that way?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah. Quitting is definitely a skill, and it's really underrated. I think, you know, people spend a ton of time... You know, words are really shitty. This is one thing that I, I really came to learn in my book, is most of the time which... w- when we try and answer difficult life questions, we get trapped in words, and, like, "I love you." Do you love them? Is f- is this your passion? We, we, we forget that these are actually human words that some other guy made and attached some, um, definition to, that they felt or they were trying to describe in their life at that time. And so... and it's like crazy. As I'm writing this book, I'm, I'm trying to answer these questions, and then like n- most of the time, the question is answered by questioning the question. Something we just never do. We accept words, right? Um, and to get to your point about quitting, one of the things we hear in society, which has really held people back, a set of words, is, uh, like, "Quitting is for losers." Right? Your quitting is seen as this really, really bad thing. You don't, you just prevail. But, but then they glamorize starting, and starting is seen as this, uh, you know, this, you know, amazing, to-be-admired adventure that people go on, whether it's starting a business or a hobby or whatever. And, but the crazy thing is, the often unappreciated but very important necessary thing you do before you start something else is you quit something, and quitting and starting c- go hand in hand, right? In all, uh, facets of our life. Like a monkey swinging through the jungle in Costa Rica, they have to let go of the last branch in order to grab the next. Quitting in itself is just as much of a skill as knowing when and what to start. And in my life, quitting have quite literally defined me. Quitting school, quitting university, quitting my first company, Wallpark, where I'll still be now, trying to make it work.... um, quitting Social Chain more recently, and I see quitting as a skill. In the book, I talk about this quitting fra- framework I've devised, which will hopefully give people a bit of a, a g- a, a, a guardrail. A, or s- sort of a, yeah, a little bit of a flowchart, um, to consider when they're deciding to quit something. I've quit effortlessly my whole life and I've never known why. I've never known why quitting has always been so easy for me. But, but when I s- got time to write out what my brain is doing, um, it started to make very logical sense. I'm very, very logical in the way that I think, and quitting has always been easy, so I presumed it was some kind of logical flowchart. And that's what I, uh-
- CWChris Williamson
What's the process?
- SBSteven Bartlett
... figured out. So, if you're thinking about quitting something, whether it's a relationship, or a job, or whatever, and I wish I had my book in front of me, because it's, it, it is quite an extensive... Oh, I do. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
You're actually leaning on it. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
This is like a... (laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
Is my head in the way or no?
- CWChris Williamson
We're gonna drop down by about an inch and a half. Get the book out.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay. Okay, got it. Got it here. Fine. Fine. So, um, I wanna run you through this, because I actually think it's really important, and I've never... nobody's ever given me this before in my life in terms of, like, a framework for deciding when to quit something. And it's also something that I would love to, like, I would love to debate with people, because I was alone in a jungle when I wrote this and, um... Here we go. So the chapter's called I Quit My Job, and it's chapter 11 in my book, and I've drawn this very useful little flowchart you can see here. So, the first question is, "Are you thinking about quitting something?" Right? And you e- that's either yes or no. If the answer's no, you're... why are you looking at the fucking flowchart?
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
If the answer's yes (laughs) y- we'll g- go to the next chapter then, uh. Uh, if the answer's yes, I ask you, "Why are you thinking about quitting?" And there's typically two reasons why people are thinking about quitting. And I le- I make these words intentionally, um, ambiguous. So, because something sucks or because it's hard, right? And if it sucks, that, for me, means that it's toxic, it's un... it's, um, it's intrinsically unfulfilling, whatever it might be in your own definition. If it's hard, it's because it's a challenge, right? You're not qualified to do it, um, it's difficult, like running a marathon, you're on the 22nd mile or whatever. If you're th- if you're trying to quit because it's hard, is the challenge worth the potential reward? This is kind of the question I've always asked myself. So, in the hardest moments of my business, in, which were always in the first years, it was really, really hard, but the potential reward in my mind was worth the hardship. So if it's, if the answer to that question is yes, don't quit. If you're doing something hard that isn't worth the potential rewards, quit, right? Let's move to the other side of the, the, the, the, um, flowchart. Say y- you're thinking about quitting because it sucks, which is actually where I found myself in with my company. It started to suck, right? It wasn't hard, it sucked. Um, do you believe you could make it not suck? A question I ask myself all the time. Do I think I could go and have the meetings I need to have with the board and with other people, to make this company, for me, the company doesn't suck, it's a great company, for me, the experience for me and what I want to have out of my life, not suck? If the answer's yes, you then ask yourself that question again, which is, "Is the effort it would take to make it not suck, that traveling around the world persuading, worth it?" Yes or no? And so, if it's, if it's not worth it, if you think that you, it would require a year of your life, a million conversations, a gazillion conversations, and it's not actually worth the rewards to, to put that effort in, then you quit. If not, don't quit. Do the work, fix it, and you get it right. However, I got to the point where I thought that the effort it was required to make the experience for me not suck anymore wasn't actually any worth the rewards anymore. I was an 18-year-old kid that started, you know, 20, well, I started that business at 21. T- started the business at 21, got really diluted. As you get diluted as a young guy, you lose, you give up control. You can't take back, you know, shareholder control. Um, the business had got bigger. I didn't have the control I wanted to have over the, the, the, the top level things, and I also owned a small piece of the company by this point. And so you have those two factors there where it's a h- it's gonna be, take a lot of effort to change it, but what, the rewards on offer for you, as a entrepreneur, aren't actually that great anymore. So, this led me to this part on the flowchart where I was thinking about quitting. I didn't believe that anymore that I could make it not suck, and the effort to make it not suck wasn't gonna be worth it, so I ended up quitting. And this is a framework you can basically use for everything, I think. It's simplified enough for you to, you know, make it work for you and to make sense for you, and, uh, and h- hopefully for the reader as well.
- CWChris Williamson
Having just come out of Social Chain, how did you decide what you were gonna do next?
- SBSteven Bartlett
That's a really good point. That's a really good point. I, um, I, I, I went off to the jungle, um, in Costa Rica to spend some time alone with my thoughts, which is actually when I started writing the book, and I think it's chapter 10 or something in the book where, 10 or 11, where I start thinking about that, and, um, I've realized that the tempting thing to do is just to go and do the same thing again. But there's a number of problems with that. You know, one of the things that I discuss in the book that makes humans intrinsically motivated is challenge, and the challenge of doing the same thing again when you're the type of person that I am, is, um, is not very, um, not very challenging, to say the least, right? Um, and the next thing that played on my mind was why, why I would go and do the next thing again, and it's because of comfort. It's because soc- I have this label that's k- been given to me a- by society and by my past and by my accomplishments, which is social media CEO. And there's this temptation to ne- to then spend the next 10 years of my life living out those labels, right? To think that's who I am and to, to, to play the, uh, pl- uh, follow the implicit instructions of those labels, and I, I, I dwelled on that and thought that this is probably why a lot of people get themselves into these, like, mid-life crises where they, they lose their intrinsic joy for their work and they, they, they start to question who they were, because they let society or their past or their mum define who they are, and then they just play that role until they got to 41 years old, they're working at KPMG and they're thinking about jumping out of the window. And so I thought the most, the most intrinsically rewarding way I could probably live my life was to resist my labels and to go back to these fu- 'cause labels as well, they, they're just a bunch of really unhelpful words that we give ourselves to make ourselves make sense. So I thought-... you know, go back to the fundamentals. What am I? Right? Who is- who am I? I'm a guy with a bunch of skills that loves so many things. I don't have one singular passion. I have tons of passions. I like music, and playing with my dog and my niece, and I like art, and I like video games and FIFA and football and business. I didn't like social media. Like, I'm not a... I didn't come out of the womb... My passion wasn't social media. The th- social media didn't exist when I came out of the womb, so how could that be my innate passion anyway? But, uh, there's principles about that job and- that I did like. I liked working with teams, I liked having a big ambition, I liked the challenge, I liked, um, storytelling, and these are things that can, can apply to any industry. So, I resisted my labels, and over the last... since I've left, ab- about nine months, I think it's been now, six or nine months, somewhere in that region, um, I've just resisted my labels. I wrote a book, I- I've learned to DJ, I'm- I've got a big theatrical show that I've sold out in Manchester, written and directed by me, the music's done by me. I've been working in, uh, one of the biggest biotech companies in the world, um, in the mental health space for the last six months, at a $3 billion biotech company. I've been working at Huel, which is the fastest growing, um, like, consumer... it was the fastest growing e-commerce company internationally in the UK. I'm on the board there, um, I'm about to accept a- another board role at one of the fastest growing companies in a completely different industry, in the beauty industry. And why the fuck not? I- I thought to myself that, like, you know, this is wha- this is how I would behave if I truly resisted my labels, and I've- and my inspirations that hang on the walls in some of my rooms in this house, Elon Musk or Kanye West, I don't love all of their ideas, but the thing I love and- and admire most about those individuals was they didn't let their past or a label or anything define, define them. Um, Elon, you know, Zip2, PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, and Kanye who started as a producer, and they said, "You're a producer. You can't rap." And he not only rapped, he put on shows and clothes and shoes and choirs and everything, and that inspires me. I think that's a free way to live. I think everybody, the vast majority, 99% of people don't live freely. They live confined by words, um, that, you know, their mum or dad or themselves have given them, and those words are restrictive. And why be restrictive? I'm gonna die anyway. It doesn't fucking matter, so...
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Yeah, I think, um, I think one of the central themes of your book is to remind people that much of what we're told by the culture at the moment will not make them truly happy or fulfilled. Now, identifying that is great, but how can people actually rid themselves of those internalized values that don't serve them?
- SBSteven Bartlett
I think one of the easiest ways to do it, if I had to just give a simple way, it's, like, to constantly question the question. Um, maybe that's my single greatest skill or gift. I say gift because it's not that intentional. It seems to be- it just seems to what hap- be what happens when someone presents me with something. A good example is my book prom- promo. So, we're doing my book promotion today, and I said to my publisher, like, you know, they said, "Oh, what we do is we get, like, an envelope and we put the- the book in an envelope and send it out to people." And I was like, "But this- you know, that- that's not necessarily a great idea, 'cause we want these influencers to post, so what we'll do is we'll print $100 bills, and Chris, y- if you get your box, it will have your face on it. It comes with this, like, mirror. It says, 'Happy.' This big, like, Instagramable box, and we'll send... we won't send 100, we'll send 1,000." And I'm- and they go, "Oh, no, but that's not how it's done. Why would you do that?" And I'm like, "Well, think about it from a psychological perspective. If I see something three times in a short period of time, if we can get them all s- delivered on the same day, we'll get the world's biggest influencers to... like, this is..." And, but they go, "No, but that's not how it's meant to be done. You should..." And- and then they were like, "Oh, no, but you can't print money. That's, like, illegal. You can't put the money." Like, an- and that moment there is a- this- that is a perfect mo- metaphor for the, the slow pro- the slow, almost subtle force that you'll face many times a day in your life of life just saying, like, "Stick to the blueprint, like, and stick to convention," and it's that little bit of resistance where you've gotta turn and say, "No, we're gonna do it this way." And for me, that was at 16 when I decided that school wasn't gonna, gonna get me to where I wanted to go, or university day one where I call my mum and I say, "Mum, listen, I'm dropping out of university." And she says, "That's not how it's done. You can't print money." That's, like, illegal. You can't put the m-" Like, and- and subtly. It was at- when I started to promote the book, and if you look at Instagram today, we probably have... I was trying to do the numbers. I was like, probably hap- had £500,000 in free marketing today alone. Sent out a thousand books. I reckon I've been tagged already, you know, today, what time is it? It's like 5:00 PM today, and most of my friends haven't got it yet. Maybe 500 or 600 times. These influencers, some of them have three million followers. That one moment of resistance where life, in this case my publisher, was like, "No, no, no, no, that's not the way it's always been done," um, and having the conviction to resist and think in terms of first principles, um, is the most important thing for me. And like, I've built the case study now, so you can't tell me otherwise. And a lot of people haven't built the case studies. Like, if you build the case study for yourself, it's much easier to resist in those moments, uh, and to rely on your first principles. But, uh, yeah, I've built the c- so you- I- there's no going back for me now. I can't unsee what I know. So, it's thinking in terms of first principles, and very honestly, that's just about questioning the question. Eh, e- every, like- when, when you come to promote this podcast, you will do what you did last time. That's what, like, most people do, and I do the same thing.
- 30:00 – 45:00
I agree, man. …
- SBSteven Bartlett
And, like, what I do with my team now is I'm like, "What is the, like, 1% marginal gain? What is the, like, one new idea based on first principles to try and get that 1%?" And that's a ph- that's a mental philosophy, which is continually, like, questioning the question and trying to think of new ideas, even though it requires much more, sort of, mental effort. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
I agree, man.
- SBSteven Bartlett
If you do that in your life, you'll- you'll- you'll go somewhere else. If you- if you're able to do that in your life, it's just tough, and it- it's apparently scary. And I say apparently, because in fact, the most scary thing is not doing that, but trying to con- trying to persuade people of that is probably an argument I won't win, just like the Jesus bullet mother head analogy I give. Like, trying to convince you that the fear, uh, the thing that you should fear is not taking a risk.... is a battle I probably won't win.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, my TEDx talk, which I recorded a couple of weeks ago, had a section in this which is quoted from mutual friend of ours, George McGill. Although, I wasn't able to actually reference him on the slides, but I, I quoted him directly from an episode I did in your old office upstairs.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And Ollie was filming it, and, um, it's talking about the fact that I'm astounded by how many people want to be spectacular in life, but also want to be normal. By being normal, you are, by definition, aiming for average.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
You regress to the mean by doing what everyone else does. By doing what everyone else does, you get what everyone else has got. Normal people get normal results. Weird people get weird results. You call it questioning the question, I call it assessing assumptions. Like, we all have assumptions about the world, about how things should be done, about the way that we're supposed to release a book, the way that we're supposed to release a podcast, construct a conversation, all of these things. But when you assess your assumptions, and it's first principles is now the, sort of buzzword of the last few years, popularized by Shane Parrish and Elon Musk. But what I find interesting about what you just said there is that it's innate. Because what a lot of people want, it may have been-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Maybe it's not innate.
- CWChris Williamson
... well, it, it may have been developed, but that it's something that's built into your source code.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Because there, there are people who struggle to rebel-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... and there are people who find rebelling a little bit easier. Um-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Y- yeah. I think it might be somewhat connected to my self-belief because... And like what you've just described there, where you said, you know, everybody wants to be extraordinary, but everyone also wants to be normal, is like, it's like because of risk and reward. Like we all, we, we all want no risk, which is being normal, you know, safety, do, like stay within the, the sheep pen, and then we all want a gazillion pounds and to live an extraordinary life, which is the reward. So like, of course we, none of us want risk, but we want to optimize reward. And like, I think that maybe that ability to ques... You think, what does it take to q- to think from first principles and to write your own script? It takes fucking guts for a start, because you are quite literally re-wri- writing a new blueprint. It's like walking down... You know, I used to live in the woods and I'd walk this path every single day to get home. And then I, you know, I look, I look up and I look up the hill and, and I think, "Well, I actually live there. So why am I walking this path, which is gonna be like a mile down this way, then it's gonna cut right, when I theoretically could just cut up this hill and go straight to my house?" And this is like a metaphor for life again. It's like, well, but this is the path and there might be snakes there and there's not like a carved out smooth, you know, way for you to walk. And so what does it take to go up there? It takes a g- like a sense of adventure. Where does that come from? That comes from probably nurture. It takes some self-belief. Um, it takes the, the conviction and the confidence to be wrong, which again probably comes from self-esteem, right? 'Cause if I walk up this path and I get up there and I, you know, everyone laughs at me and says, "Well, there's a big fence. You fucked up," y- y- that, that takes a certain sense of self-esteem. People don't wanna risk their self-esteem, especially when they have a, a weak self-esteem. Um, so may- maybe it's more nurture than I s- I think. But the, but what I'm saying is now it feels innate. I, I, I can't, I can't, um, pretend-
- CWChris Williamson
Switch it off. (laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
... that I... Yeah, l- but, and I don't choose it on a daily basis. Like the argument with my publisher, it felt like that was the right thing, and it was, I was fighting for what I knew was right. I wasn't thin- I didn't sit back and think, "Okay, let's think first principles here." And then start like writing out on a piece of paper, that's what I mean by it feels almost innate now, it's so second nature to me to question the question and to not accept questions when they're asked, and I, th- the one I talk about in the book, I think there's a chapter on it. I say I think because I'm not s- sometimes I'm not sure if it's a chapter or just a section, um, which is m- I think, no, it is a, it is a, it is a chapter. It says, "Mom, stop asking me about love." And it's like you come home and your mom says, "Oh, you, you're dating Melanie, are you?" "Yeah." "Are you in love?" And that moment of like, oh shit, now I have to answer either yes or no, and I, my definition of love has to be exactly the same as hers. And if it's no, then fuck, what's wrong? Right? But, and if it's y- you, and then, like, but if it's yes, then that means I'm getting married. And the pr- the unnecessary pressure to, like, slide into one of these binary boxes doesn't help m- my relationship with my girlfriend. Do you know what I mean? So why are we, why do we fuck around with these questions when they're, like, really unhelpful? And, and w- that's another thing I uncover in the book, which is like how invalid quest- so many of the questions we ask ourselves are. You know, I, I think I say in the book as the example, "What number is blue?" And it's a perfectly reasonable question because you know what numbers are and you know what blue is. So what number is blue? And it's the same thing, are you in love? Have y- is this your passion? I, you know what you are, you know what passion is, so are you... Just because you can put to, like just 'cause you can ask a question doesn't make it, mean it's valid or worth answering or worth stressing over or worth overthinking over. And like 70% of the young kids in my DMs are messaging me because they've tr- they've, they're imprisoned by a question that society is trying to make them answer. "Steve, I'm 22 and I haven't found my passion." And they're like, they're like ve- some of them are like verging on suicidal because of these questions, genuinely. "You look like you've..." I'm like, "Bro, fuck, I don't know what my fucking passion is either. Just like stop asking yourself shitty questions and like follow your, your joy and do other stuff like and less than stuff you don't like." And that kind of foundational thinking and not this sort of binary jump in this box, um, thinking is, is freeing again, and it lets you live a more, yeah, peaceful life.
- CWChris Williamson
If people shouldn't be trying to find their passion, what's a better question that they should be asking themselves?
- SBSteven Bartlett
So the problem with the word passion is it's, it's inherently binary. It's like inherently too binary, but it also comes with a definition that you don't actually know, right? So like a good example would be...A good example is, like, the word l- like, love or passion. Like, I love my dog. I love Marmite. I love my girlfriend. I love my mum. Lamborghinis. I love, love, love, love, love. We spray this word around so, like, ubiquitously that we don't actually know what it really means, and it means different things apparently in different situations. And so if someone comes to you and says, "Do you love Jenny?" And you think, "Well, fucking, like, oof, God." You know? "I, I, I don't know what you mean. I have to understand your definition of that to understand if I can fit in the box you're- you've just asked me to jump in." Um, with the passion question, I tend to ask myself in my life, it's just like, "Am I enjoying this?" You can ask yourself, "Am I happy? Do I, um, do I feel good?" These are, like, more foundational questions which are subjective, and it doesn't require me to know your def- definition of the words and then to fit into it in a binary way. That's probably what I ask myself with my life. I'm just like, "Does this feel good?" And as it relates to my time at Social Chain, in the end, it didn't feel good anymore. And as I say in the- my Quitting Framework, I didn't think I could change it. And even if I could change it, I didn't think it'd be worth it. So super easy decision. Not brave, not courageous.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
Courage- brave to stay. Imagine something not feeling good, you don't think you can change it, and you d- or you, you, you think you might be able to change it, but the rewards of changing it aren't worth it, and you stay. That takes courage. I don't have courage. Like, people say this when I dropped out of university, "Oh, you're so brave." No, no, no, no. Brave would've been staying in a situation I hated and s- and toughing it out. That's courage. You know what I mean? So again, this is a- the war of words and how it ruins people's lives.
- CWChris Williamson
I get it. I think the main thing that I learned from 1984, reading that, is the volume of your vocabulary and the accuracy of the words that you use directly influences the quality of your thoughts. And what you're relating to here is that any word is just the nearest approximation for a notion that you have in your head. All of the things-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yep.
- CWChris Williamson
... all the things, the emotions, the concepts that you're trying to convey, you find the nearest possible term linguistically, apply it to that, and then try and get across something which is subtly slightly different. We all, uh, schadenfreude. German has some wonderful words-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... that we don't have. And this is one of the interesting things about hearing them, because you go, "Oh, that's almost like a thing that I didn't know." It's like a thing that-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... didn't exist until there was a word for it.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And-
- 45:00 – 56:22
Can I just say…
- CWChris Williamson
interesting-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Can I just say something on that as well?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, sure.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Like think about the term fat. Like it doesn't sound like a comparison, but then remove everybody from planet Earth. And suddenly, you're not fat. You're the prettiest, sexiest, richest person on Earth. You are, by definition, enough, suddenly, just because I removed everybody else. And we don't actually realize that most of these adjectives or descriptive words are just comparison based. And I would be the sexiest man alive-
- CWChris Williamson
You would also-
- SBSteven Bartlett
... if I could just kill everyone else.
- CWChris Williamson
You would also be the un-sexiest man alive. You would also be-
- SBSteven Bartlett
100%
- CWChris Williamson
... the fastest man alive. You would also be the this-
- SBSteven Bartlett
100%.
- CWChris Williamson
And this is naturally what happens. You come from a hierarchical background ancestrally, and you compare, who am I above, who am I below? You continue to aim up. You continue to kind of dispose of the people that are down.
- SBSteven Bartlett
100%.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, how... Do you find that creeping in with yourself? That obviously you do this self-work, the same as me.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
We spend a lot of time doing gratitude journaling and-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
... internal work. How do you... when you notice that creeping in, that ego, that self-talk, that destructive monologue, what do you do?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm. It's a good question. So it's a, it's a really interesting one, because there's so many contradictions here. Like I'm someone... And I, I discuss this in the book. Uh, like I really... th- in fact, the 20th chapter is kind of trying to answer the contradiction between believing that you're enough whilst also striving for so much more. Always felt like a contradiction I just couldn't understand. And then again, I, I, as I get into in the chapter, it's actually just a f- I'm, I'm making a mistake with a bunch of words. Enough sounds like... You know, this idea that I wasn't enough sounds like some kind of like internal measure of my self-worth that came from somewhere. And the truth is, it did. It came from my perception of the outside world and external validation. I thought that when I was broke, I was less than, and so I strived to be more than or to get to the point where I was enough. And in fact, that whole time, I've always been the same. There's never been a change in my in- intrinsic, inherent value. That was just external, um, like status games that I was playing in my mind. So I wanted to get myself to this point where I knew that I was enough, because that was, that's the foundation you need to chase the right things for the right reasons. For example, my friend, who I described earlier, the billionaire friend with all the clothes and the houses and the sports cars, this is a guy that doesn't know he's enough yet. So he thinks by getting a room full of trainers and color coordinating them, that will make him enough. So he started chasing the wrong things for the wrong reasons. The most important thing for me was getting myself to that point where I knew that intrinsically, no matter what I did, no matter how successful I become, my inherent value doesn't change.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Um, and then that has become the platform to be competitive, and chase and be aggressive at the things that really matter to me. And that's the phase in life where I'm at now, where when I'm chasing something, when I want to be number one at something, or I want to be the best at something, I'm largely doing it, not completely, I'm largely doing it because the prize at the end of that is worthwhile intrinsically for me. So I can channel that like ambition and that competitiveness and that desire to be number one and to win, but knowing that when I get there, or if I get there... 'cause a lot of the time I set myself goals that I don't think I'll ever even achieve, um, the journey will be intrinsically rewarding. That's been a big thing. And as you say, like, do I find myself in moments seeking external validation or not thinking I'm enough? I'd say yeah, but just like 90, 95% less than I used to, maybe more, maybe 90, 97% or something in that region. Less than 5%.
- CWChris Williamson
I'm really glad... I'm really glad to hear that, man. Like it's really, um, encouraging to know, especially coming from the background in the industry that you were in, right? Like you were weaponizing the platforms that you're now criticizing. Your company was built off the back of that.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, and that insight obviously has enabled you to transform...... more effectively personally. I've got a-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... story, actually, that you told while we were out at dinner, and this kind of highlights, I think, what you're talking about here, that you're prepared to do things just because you want to win at them, and you're prepared to put effort in. You were talking-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... about, I want to say that you were at some sort of conference or at maybe a race event, and you and your friends were competing about who could get the most calories burned on their Apple Watch.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs) Yeah, we done that.
- CWChris Williamson
And you noticed one of your friends on a Sunday night at the end of the week was in the gym training. So you decided to excuse yourself and then go and run sprints on a set of stairs nearby?
- SBSteven Bartlett
I was, I was at dinner with, like, Philip Green's family, the very notorious billionaire. I was in Monaco, they'd invited me for dinner. Uh, first time I'd met the full family. Um, yeah, a very important dinner in this beautiful, beautiful restaurant in Monaco. And me and my friends have spent 10 weeks tr- ev- every week competing against each other, six friends, to see who can do the most calories. But then also you can compete individually at the same time. I'd never lost, I never lost. I wouldn't allow myself to lose. So for the nine weeks I hadn't lost. I'm in the 10th week, I'm at the dinner, it's, um, 11 o'clock, it shuts at... uh, i- the competition closes at midnight. And I look down and I just see Don McGregor, my old business partner who's in the group. I see him doing a workout at 11, quarter past 11 or something like that. And I'm at this dinner and, yeah, I have a personal philosophy where, like, I'm not gonna voluntarily lose. Something else might be the reason I lose, but it's not gonna be, (laughs) it's not gonna be a decision that I make. And it is a decision. So I said, just gonna... I said to the team at dinner, I said, "I'm just going to excuse myself, just gonna walk back to the hotel." I fucking sprint back to the hotel across the street, I'm up in the fucking, the bathroom in the, the hotel and I, I put my phone recording and I start recording a video for them in the group and I start doing a HIT workout and I'm sc- I'm screaming at the phone, I'm telling them, I'm saying, "Never try that again. Never try and do me like that again." And I beat 'em, and I never lost, I never lost that competition. I've competed against all of them individually for 10 weeks and then the whole group collectively and I wouldn't lose, and I don't let myself lose. Because for me it doesn't matter, but it's a, it's... you're setting a personal philosophy for yourself every single day in every decision you make. I talk to my team about that, but I also talk to them individually. Like, I'm like, "Are you gonna allow that thing to be part of your personal philosophy, like the way that you conduct yourself?" So for me in, that moment, had I let myself lose, like made the decision I was gonna lose, then somewhere in my brain I think, "Well, maybe that kind of thinking will then creep into other areas of my life that are probably more important, especially as they compound over time." So I just make the decision that I'm not going to choose to lose. And that was that story. But it's an insight into the way that I, the way that I think.
Episode duration: 56:22
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