Master Human Nature & Hack Your Way To Success - Steven Bartlett (4K)

1. 0:00 – 7:33

   The Frame Matters More Than the Picture

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      You are a guy who likes stories and likes ideas.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett0:03

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:04

      So am I. So today, I wanna go through some of the best ideas that I've learned from you over the last year or so. First one, "The frame matters more than the picture." What's that mean?

   4. SBSteven Bartlett0:15

      (inhales) I think often in life, whether it's marketing or innovation or when we're building companies or products or making content, we fall into the trap of thinking that the thing we're creating in and of itself is doing all of the work to tell the story. But when I looked at tons of studies, when I looked at Apples and art galleries, and when I looked at, um, Coca-Cola studies that they did where they put Coca-Cola in a glass and then Pepsi in another glass, and then did a different study where they showed you which one was which, it's so clear that much of the work is being done in psychology, not in reality. And what I mean by that is, if we just think about the Apple store, every electronic store you've ever walked into in your life is kind of like a crazy jungle of wires, right? That's how electronics st- stores always were. What Apple did differently, and which helped them to justify the cost of a $2,000 smartphone, was they gave the, uh, the iPhone space in the shop. And we intuitively know that real estate is expensive, so the space that the object is given actually pours into the value of the object itself. So in an Apple store, because it has two feet eith- either side of it, the frame in which it's presented is telling you that this item in the middle is high value. The, the context you've always seen that kind of framing in is an art gallery, where you have one-off special pieces. The other thing I think is so critical to what Apple do so well is they only show you one of each device, and they keep the rest in the back room. If we think about scarcity creating value, things that are perceived to be in limited supply, like pieces of art, where they're s- they're typically one-offs, are seen in higher value. The frame in which you present something is doing so much of the work to, to communicate the value of the thing within s- within it. Um, and even in the Pepsi-Coca-Cola studies, which are super famous from back in the day, people would rate the Coca-Cola drink h- more highly when it came in the can and you could see what you were drinking. They would say, "That's the better one." But when they removed the can and told people that the Pepsi was a Coca-Cola or they had blind, um, cups with nothing written on them, people chose the Pepsi. The frame and the story there are making people believe that something tastes entirely better. So it's not just about value, it's about taste and sense, and really at, at its core, psychology.

   5. CWChris Williamson2:16

      There's a story from Sam Harris that I love, which kind of takes this from the business marketing into the personal development space, and he says, "After you've finished a workout, CrossFit or Brazilian jujitsu or intervals or whatever, and you're laid on the floor panting, making a sweat angel, and you've got the taste of metal in the back of your throat and you're hot and e- e- every, the vision's blurry, everything, right, that sensation, although objectively being quite uncomfortable, your felt sense of it is satisfaction." It's pleasure in a way.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett2:43

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson2:43

      It's a very kind of, uh, masochistic type of pleasure.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett2:46

      (laughs)

   9. CWChris Williamson2:47

      But if you spontaneously had that happen while you were sat in traffic, you'd be fucking terrified.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett2:52

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson2:52

       You would ring the ambulance and you would say, "I, I'm dying. Th- this is a heart attack or a stroke or whatever." So the frame that we place around our experience largely determines our experience.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett3:02

       And the question becomes, why? So as I talk about a lot from looking at some studies that they did on mice in a maze, where they put chocolate at the end of the maze and then set the mouse off, they scan the brain of the mouse as it's going through the maze the first time and it's firing like crazy, so much activity in the brain as it's sniffing everything and scratching everything. Eventually, it finds the chocolate. The second time in the maze, they scan the, the mouse's brain and they put it back into the same maze with chocolate at the end of it, and it glides through the maze with no cognitive activity appearing to happen at all. It's gone into autopilot. And like, when we think about the, the amount of cognitive load that the brain would encounter every day, just when I'm in this room, the amount of things that I would have to think about, or, or, um, to save cognitive capacity, tune out of, what we know is the brain is taking shortcuts, and the frame and the anchors around the thing you're looking at provide tons of shortcuts. So even in the case of what I talk, talk a little bit about as well is if I gave... In these studies, they gave people three options. "Do you wanna go to an all-inclusive trip to Paris or an all-inclusive trip to Rome?" And in that study, people go, "I want the all-inclusive trip to Paris." But in the second study, they say, "Do you want an all-inclusive trip to Paris or an all-inclusive trip to Rome, or an all-inclusive trip to Rome without coffee?" People suddenly choose the middle option, the all-inclusive trip to Rome.

   13. CWChris Williamson4:19

       Mm.

   14. SBSteven Bartlett4:19

       And it's purely because this third option, which has entered the f- the frame, has tricked the mind to think, "God, if they removed coffee from the all-inclusive trip to Rome-

   15. CWChris Williamson4:28

       (laughs)

   16. SBSteven Bartlett4:28

       ... the all-inclusive trip to Rome must be way better, because they haven't removed it from the trip to Paris."

   17. CWChris Williamson4:32

       Yeah.

   18. SBSteven Bartlett4:33

       A slight thing. And we see it, again, on menus and in electronic stores with TVs. And if you go into a, a s- a, a steak restaurant and there's three steaks, people will typically choose the middle one, because the, the cheapest one and the most expensive one are telling you a story that the cheap one's too, yeah, probably not good, the expensive one's a little bit too bougie, and that middle one, which is anchored in the middle, in the middle of that frame, is probably the nice, happy medium between the two. And this is happening all throughout our lives. We're taking shortcuts, using the frame to tell us stories of the thing that sits within it.

   19. CWChris Williamson5:02

       Mm.

   20. SBSteven Bartlett5:03

       People don't think about the frame. They think about the thing they're creating. But great artists, great innovators, your Steve Jobs of the world, your Teslas of the world, they obsess about the frame, because it's hard to check... Like, if you think about, we wanna make an advance on people's perception of our product, the thing we've created or the content, it's really hard to do that in reality. Like, it's really hard, as Rory Sutherland says, to make a train faster or to make an iPhone better.

   21. CWChris Williamson5:26

       Correct. Correct.

   22. SBSteven Bartlett5:27

       But it's easy to play with the frame to change the story in the consumer's mind.

   23. CWChris Williamson5:32

       Yeah. This is where differentiating yourself with whatever you choose to do, people get captured. They obsess over the actual thing itself.

   24. SBSteven Bartlett5:41

       Mm-hmm.

   25. CWChris Williamson5:41

       Whereas there's all of these other ancillary, extrinsic, sort of diffuse differences that you can use. And, um, yeah, it's why, you know, I've spent so much money to make this look pretty.

   26. SBSteven Bartlett5:52

       Hm.

   27. CWChris Williamson5:52

       Because when people look at this, it's filmed in a different aspect ratio, right? It's not filmed in 16:9. It's filmed in a custom version of Cinemascope, right? It perfectly fits an i- anybody that's watching on an iPhone now, turn it to widescreen, and you'll see that it perfectly fills. There's no bars at the top. There's no bars at the sides. It'll even get cut off by the circle of the bezel of the iPhone. That's how perfectly curated this is for the mobile viewing experience.

   28. SBSteven Bartlett6:14

       Shall I say what I think the most impressive thing that you do is? That's so tiny and it's actually just four characters long.

   29. CWChris Williamson6:18

       Hit me.

   30. SBSteven Bartlett6:19

       ... in terms of the frame, is you write, in the title, "4K." Nobody cares. Right? Objectively, it's not gonna change the content, uh, the experience of the content itself. But when you say 4K, it's actually telling a much bigger story. It's actually saying high quality, high production value, um, and really like the- the second order thing is they're really worth your time.
2. 7:33 – 21:29

   You Don’t Get to Choose What You Believe

   1. CWChris Williamson7:33

      Next one. You do not get to choose what you believe. How is that the case?

   2. SBSteven Bartlett7:39

      This is one of the, the, the most, I think probably the most important things I've discovered over the last couple of years, because our lives are essentially beliefs that we've accepted as being subjectively true, whether they are objectively true or not. Um, we- our lives are run on this instruction manual of these beliefs that we've inherited. And when, when we're thinking about belief change, which is, um, what we need to do to, you know, pick up a, a healthy habit in the gym or to build a business or to persevere in any context, it all comes back to like, okay, how do I change something that's limiting me? How do I change a limiting belief and how do I adopt a new belief? There's a, a big sort of contingent in the self-development community that say you can go and look in a mirror and you can recite things to yourself and the brain will believe those to be true. So there's a whole contingent that say just think about something and you'll believe it. But when I reflected on that in my own life, I, I asked myself, "How many of my beliefs have I actually chosen?" And I used to be religious up until I was 18 years old. I believed in some kind of God, Christianity. Um, and I- I- I zoomed in on why that belief fell away. What was it? And really what happened for me, and what I've come to learn, is that, um, there isn't a single belief I have that I've chosen. And I c- the, the experiment I'd ask anyone to run that's listening to this is, think of a belief you currently have in your life, anything you have, and ask yourself the question, could you unchoose to believe that right now? If I, if I put a billion dollars on the table, of Elon Musk's money, and I said, "Um, I'm gonna give you this billion dollars. If you don't believe this hypothetical two pence coin that I'm holding, if you believe it's a 5p coin."

   3. CWChris Williamson9:10

      (laughs)

   4. SBSteven Bartlett9:10

      Very simple. There's a billion dollars on the line. And the reality is, you couldn't. You couldn't for a billion dollars. Or if I held someone you love at gunpoint, you couldn't change any belief you have. You could lie. I'm not talking about faith and hope. I'm talking about actually believing it's true. So if we, if we all agree upon that, and I, I ran some surveys with people where I asked them this question, about 20% of people originally thought, um, they could choose their beliefs. And then when I ran that survey, almost 99% of people realized that they're not choosing their beliefs. Where are my beliefs coming from? Well, all of our beliefs, in my view, are based on the evidence that we've acquired, usually through our first-party senses. Sometimes vicariously from observations and sometimes because they've come from authority figures and figures in our lives that we trust. It's evidence that we've accepted as truth. Doesn't mean it is true, but it's evidence we've accepted. Um, and therefore, if you wanna change your beliefs, what's abundantly clear is you have to go and put yourself in situations where your existing beliefs are counteracted with new evidence. So when it comes to speaking on stage or when it comes to, uh, learning how to be a podcaster or when it comes to self-belief or whatever it is, you have to go and collide with new evidence.

   5. CWChris Williamson10:17

      Yeah. Ryan Holiday's got this amazing quote where he says, "Self-belief is overrated. I prefer to use evidence."

   6. SBSteven Bartlett10:23

      Yeah. Exactly that.

   7. CWChris Williamson10:24

      And it gets back to that Hormozi quote I said to Goggins, right? "You do not become confident by shouting affirmations in the mirror, but by having a stack of undeniable proof that you are who you say you are. Outwork your self-doubt." And ultimately, hoping that you're going to be able to... Uh, b- believing that you can think your way out of a thinking problem is like believing you can sniff your way out of a cocaine addiction.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett10:46

      Mm-hmm.

   9. CWChris Williamson10:46

      Right? You have to give yourself something else that's going to step change where you're at.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett10:50

       I was hypnotized last week after-

   11. CWChris Williamson10:53

       How'd that go?

   12. SBSteven Bartlett10:53

       ... after we met. And that, I said to her before she hypnotized me, I said, "Can I ask you a question? Do we get to choose what we believe?" And she actually said yes. And I think she, she interpreted it differently. She's a very, very famous therapist called Marisa Peer.

   13. CWChris Williamson11:06

       Did you video this?

   14. SBSteven Bartlett11:07

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson11:07

       Is it coming out on the internet?

   16. SBSteven Bartlett11:08

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson11:08

       Amazing.

   18. SBSteven Bartlett11:09

       30 minutes. It's hyp- hypnotizing me to not eat sugar again.

   19. CWChris Williamson11:12

       Okay.

   20. SBSteven Bartlett11:12

       To, like, have a better relationship with sugar.

   21. CWChris Williamson11:13

       Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   22. SBSteven Bartlett11:14

       Right. Um, and it was interesting 'cause she takes me back to my childhood and then confronts me with the, the information that my inadequate lunchbox made me feel insecure. It made me feel a ton of shame growing up 'cause I never had anything.

   23. CWChris Williamson11:26

       Mm-hmm.

   24. SBSteven Bartlett11:26

       Like, we didn't have f- food or m- like, money or those kinds of things. So really, my relationship with sugar now is it's- it's- resembles power-

   25. CWChris Williamson11:34

       A status symbol.

   26. SBSteven Bartlett11:34

       ... control, and fitting in.

   27. CWChris Williamson11:35

       Yeah.

   28. SBSteven Bartlett11:36

       The fact that I can just order whatever I want, anyone... So she went, took me back there and unwired that. But what she's actually doing is she's giving me new evidence, 'cause she takes me right back to that kid and she's basically whispering into his n- his ear a new story. And that's, and so I actually think that the principle that we don't get to choose what, uh, what we believe still holds true. But with hypnosis, which seems to be the outlier, they're giving you new evidence that, that counteracts your current beliefs. That's all she did.

   29. CWChris Williamson12:01

       Interesting. Yeah, so, uh, an important sort of caveat is that new evidence doesn't necessarily need to come from the external world.

   30. SBSteven Bartlett12:08

       Yes.
3. 21:29 – 35:12

   Why Self Respect is So Important

   1. CWChris Williamson21:29

      The Mark Manson quote here is, "The person you have to spend the most time listening to in your life is yourself. Try not to lose their respect."

   2. SBSteven Bartlett21:37

      Mmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson21:37

      And self-respect and self-esteem, I think, largely comes from having faith in your own word. So if you were to treat yourself like a friend you are responsible for helping, which is Peterson's advice, right? Let's say that every time you invited a friend out for lunch, they turned up late or didn't turn up at all, they didn't text back, they just kept not holding to their word. After a while, you wouldn't believe in them, you wouldn't be friends with them, and you'd stop inviting them out to lunch.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett22:03

      You'd let them go.

   5. CWChris Williamson22:03

      You are that friend to yourself. How on earth do you think that you're going to be able to move mountains and get out of that relationship that you don't like and move countries or change career when you can't not hit snooze, even though last night you promised yourself that you weren't going to hit snooze?

   6. SBSteven Bartlett22:18

      Mmm.

   7. CWChris Williamson22:19

      And it's how people that are able to do extraordinary things have been able to get there, that they've just started off unbelievably small, right? "I'm just not gonna hit the snooze button. I'm just not going to use my phone before 9:00 AM." Right? These are... Controlling your thoughts is unbelievably difficult and requires a lot of meditation and maybe psychedelics. Controlling your actions is relatively easy, especially stuff like, "Don't pick your phone up before you've gone for a walk." Just try that in the morning. Sunlight before screen light, as Huberman says.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett22:46

      And that's the, the easiest way to control your thoughts.

   9. CWChris Williamson22:49

      Yeah.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett22:49

       Because there's a two-way relationship between what you do and how you feel.

   11. CWChris Williamson22:52

       Absolutely.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett22:52

       So, so if you wanna change how you feel, focus on what you're doing. If you wanna change h- what you're doing, focus on how you feel. But, but you said about extraordinary people there, this is what Chris Eubank Jr. said to me, which really stuck with me. He said, "My dad flew me to Cuba, um, and they, we had a training camp out there and they surprised me. They put the, the heavyweight champion of Cuba in the ring with me." He's not, he's like a middleweight or something. "He gets in the ring, this heavyweight storms across to him, knocks him so hard he flies out of the ring and hits the floor, dead leg as h- and he's laying on the floor." He says, he said to me, "I looked up at the ring and I saw this massive Cuban heavyweight stood there." And he said, "I realized in that moment that I had to get back in the ring, because if I didn't, it would let the demons in." And a- another instance of when he talks about the demons more specifically was on his story about the treadmill. He goes, "If I'm running on a treadmill and I get to mile nine and I get complete cramp in one of my legs and I know I've told myself I'm gonna run 10 kilometers today..."

   13. CWChris Williamson23:43

       Mmm.

   14. SBSteven Bartlett23:44

       He goes, "I will have to limp the last mile, even if no one's watching, because I can't let the demons in. And if I let the demons in, they'll show up in the 11th round of a championship fight when there's 50,000 people watching me in the audience, and I know deep in myself story that I'm the type of person that quits th- when things get hard because I got off that treadmill at mile nine when no one was watching." It would modify myself story. The commitments we keep to ourself and what we do when no one's watching is the most persuasive evidence that governs everything we then do every day thereafter and this is, for me, h- was a huge revelation in my life because, you know, you can look at certain people in your lives that are struggling in certain situations and oftentimes it's a result of continually unkept commitments to themself.

   15. CWChris Williamson24:27

       Yeah. I don't know anybody who has done extraordinary things that isn't keeping their word in that way.

   16. SBSteven Bartlett24:34

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson24:34

       Right? There's... Consistency doesn't guarantee that you're going to be successful, but not being consistent will guarantee that you're not successful.

   18. SBSteven Bartlett24:42

       Let, let me un-Superman. Like, let's like... The mess of this-

   19. CWChris Williamson24:46

       Mm-hmm.

   20. SBSteven Bartlett24:46

       ... is some people are remarkably good at keeping commitments in some areas of their lives-

   21. CWChris Williamson24:50

       Mm-hmm.

   22. SBSteven Bartlett24:50

       ... and hopeless at in others. So they'll have kind of dual self-esteem. They'll be incredibly, you know, confident and secure in their work, but in relationships or whatever else, they'll be-... uh, ground zero. And I'm very much one of those people, that has areas of my life where I have immense commitment, and you'd say, "Oh, he's such a disciplined person," and then other areas of my life where I resemble-

   23. CWChris Williamson25:11

       You've just been hypnotized by the sugar.

   24. SBSteven Bartlett25:12

       (laughs) Yeah.

   25. CWChris Williamson25:12

       You know what I mean?

   26. SBSteven Bartlett25:13

       Yeah. I, uh, actually haven't eaten sugar since as well, so it did kinda work.

   27. CWChris Williamson25:16

       Oi.

   28. SBSteven Bartlett25:16

       I've no desire to have sugar anymore.

   29. CWChris Williamson25:18

       Hell yeah.

   30. SBSteven Bartlett25:18

       So.
4. 35:12 – 47:51

   Most People Strategise Instead of Executing

   1. CWChris Williamson35:12

      from this, aim to focus on executing, so the f- the- the four disciplines of execution, a really interesting a- analogy that's used. The word strategy is in the top 10 of all LinkedIn words in bio descriptions and execution and executioner aren't even in the top 1,000.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett35:29

      Mm.

   3. CWChris Williamson35:29

      Right? Because it's much easier to strategize than it is to execute, but if you... This is a term that's... You can tell people that really know business when they use one of a few terms. Talking about someone being a real operator-

   4. SBSteven Bartlett35:41

      (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson35:42

      ... right? That's, you go, "Oh, okay." Say no more. Like I know there's someone that will get things fixed, right? That they're able to take charge of whatever the challenge is that's in front of them, and our mutual friend George Mack's got this beautiful idea. I'll ask you this one actually, so the way to work out who the highest agency person in your life is... Have you heard him do this before?

   6. SBSteven Bartlett36:01

      No.

   7. CWChris Williamson36:01

      Fucking brilliant. Okay, so you are trapped in some South American jail, right? And you're about to be transported somewhere where no one's gonna be able to get you back. Let's, fucking Columbia, Argentina, somewhere, right? You have 24 hours and you only have one phone call to ring somebody to come and get you out. Who's that person that you ring?

   8. SBSteven Bartlett36:24

      Ooh. (laughs) Prince William. (laughs)

   9. CWChris Williamson36:39

      (laughs) Right, okay. I feel like you've broken the game a little bit there.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett36:45

       (laughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson36:46

       I don't think that was, that was perfectly fair.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett36:48

       Do you know, my framework though was find someone that is both smart and influential, and that cares about me.

   13. CWChris Williamson36:52

       And a member of the royal family.

   14. SBSteven Bartlett36:54

       Yeah, well, okay, and that cares enough about my predicament.

   15. CWChris Williamson36:56

       Yeah.

   16. SBSteven Bartlett36:56

       So-

   17. CWChris Williamson36:57

       But that- that- the- the framework that you came up with there if you don't know the future King of England is someone that is able to think on their own, that doesn't need instruction, that is going to be able to solve problems at a very high level, under pressure, very quickly. You know, just all of the things that you want in a friend.

   18. SBSteven Bartlett37:13

       Yeah, so true. It did, you whittled it down to five people instantaneously in my head-

   19. CWChris Williamson37:17

       Yep.

   20. SBSteven Bartlett37:17

       ... and I was deciding between them, but I thought, "I don't know if they can pull enough levers."

   21. CWChris Williamson37:20

       Fucking Prince William. Yeah, you've got an idea that's kind of similar, you must become a plan A thinker.

   22. SBSteven Bartlett37:26

       Yeah. And just- t- on that last point-

   23. CWChris Williamson37:27

       Yep.

   24. SBSteven Bartlett37:27

       ... it just popped into my head then that I think that what I'm saying here is that no matter what you're aiming at over the next 10 years in your life, I think this horrible realization that bucks the trend of every Instagram quote you'll ever read or every course you'll ever buy is that the fast way is the slow way because the slow way is the only way. Like, I s- I stood behind friend again this weekend as he did his show in an alley-palley to 10,000 people or whatever it was, and I'm looking at this guy going, "I want to do that. I wanna be able to do that." But my better sense from interviewing all these smart people knows that it's not a case of me doing a call... It goes- my m- my, my brain now goes, "Are you willing to put 20 years of silent, boring drudgery and obsession into doing that?" My brain goes, "No." So separate out the aspiration from the aberration.

   25. CWChris Williamson38:10

       Dude, I g- I, I gotta show you this. I gotta show you this. So Mark Manson put this quote up a few months ago, and I've not been able to stop thinking about it. "The most important question to ask is, 'What pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for?' Anything worthwhile is going to require some degree of pain and struggle. So, if you're oriented toward the pain and the struggle, you're probably going to be more aligned with what you're capable of accomplishing rather than if you just orient toward the pleasures." Hmm, so good because w- we say, "Find the thing which you enjoy the most," but really what you're finding is what is the pain you're prepared to swallow the most. Nothing worthwhile is going to come without discomfort. You know, even for me and you, love doing this show, love speaking to all these interesting people, get to fly around the world, and all th- but I would be lying if I said I love writing show notes or doing research in Guatemala airport at 3:00 in the morning because I'm on a delayed flight and I've got a flight- I've got a episode tomorrow. Like, it's grind. It's grind that I care about and it's grind that I can do that other people couldn't do, but it's not not-grind, right?

   26. SBSteven Bartlett39:16

       This goes to the discipline equation, which I'm-

   27. CWChris Williamson39:18

       Yes, yes, yes.

   28. SBSteven Bartlett39:19

       ... you, you might be-

   29. CWChris Williamson39:20

       I'm familiar with-

   30. SBSteven Bartlett39:20

       ... might be coming at-
5. 47:51 – 58:54

   Are You Driven or Being Dragged?

   1. CWChris Williamson47:52

      "I was riddled with fake ambitions. My ambitions were fake. They weren't ambition, they were insecurity. Most of our lives are dragged by insecurity and shame. They're not driven by ambition. And it's a tragic truth that most of us are going to have to have. Our ambitions and our narratives fail us before we realize that they're illusions and mirages and they're false."

   2. SBSteven Bartlett48:14

      100%. And j- it's afst- I have beliefs sometimes that a lot of people disagree with, um, but, and I think this is typically one of them, because people want to take control over their success. They wanna have that sort of power over it. But if I se- I remember sitting with Eddie Hearn and I remember what Will Smith said, and they all describe, they can all very clearly articulate the reason for their- their motivation and their drive. They live in a world where every media reporter will say, "Oh, you're so amazing. Like tell me how you, you're motivated every day." It's not the case. I actually, I question how much choice they have over that motivation. In the case of Eddie Hearn, he lived in the footsteps of his father, Barry Hearn, who pulled up to school in these Rolls-Royces, and he was known as Eddie Hearn's son. He's competing with his father, he'll say it.

   3. CWChris Williamson48:55

      Yeah.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett48:55

      "I'm driven, I'm dragged by the insecurity of- of being Barry's, Hearn's little son, and I wanna outdo him."

   5. CWChris Williamson49:02

      Yeah.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett49:02

      It's the same with some of my other bili- billionaire friends, and it's the same with Will Smith. He's being dragged by an insecurity and shame. So the key thing, 'cause that's not always a bad thing, right? In- in every context of life. It might make you arrive at financial f- freedom sooner than others, but you just wanna make sure that you're cognizant of it, at least. In my life...I realized at about 24 years old when we had an offer from a very big company to sell the business, and I went home that day and I Googled mansions and Lamborghinis on Autotrader. And I looked into that screen and felt- felt a deep sense of emptiness, like I'd been betrayed by somebody, like someone had lied to me. And it was true, someone had lied to me. Eight- 18-year-old, 12-year-old Steve had told me that that would fix everything. And as I played out it arriving on my doorstep, I realized that I'd be poorer if I bought it, some- I'd lose something. I'd lose my company and the community and the love I had, but I'd lose something else. Then I went through this six months of sort of existential crisis of like, "Okay, so if it wasn't for that, if- if we weren't obsessing like a dog-"

   7. CWChris Williamson49:57

      What the fuck was I doing it for?

   8. SBSteven Bartlett49:59

      "... what the fuck was I doing it for?"

   9. CWChris Williamson49:59

      Yep.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett49:59

       And, um, I- my fear, this woman came into my office one day and she said to me, "Just imagine for a second you have everything you've ever wanted." She goes, "'Cause the truth is, you do. There's no goal that you haven't completed that you need to complete to be worth more." And I remember walking away and thinking, "What a load of rubbish." Two years of dwelling on that thought. And I arrived at this conclusion, I think because I was scared of this idea that losing my drive would- would lead to no ambition, but it's very much the opposite. Losing your am- losing your... losing your insecurities and your shame that's dragging you doesn't dissolve your ambition. It dissolves your fake ambition and creates room for your real ambitions that are internally, intrinsically motivated. So instead of wanting a Lamborghini and a mansion, I wanted this whole set of other things when I realized that the Lamborghini and the mansion were never gonna make Steve Bartlett worth more than one Steve Bartlett.

   11. CWChris Williamson50:52

       Hmm.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett50:53

       Deeply in me, I genuinely think part of me thought that if I got a Lamborghini and a mansion, Steve Bartlett would be worth two or four Steve Bartletts. But your- your- your currency is one of one. And so in that moment, once I'd realized that n- nothing was gonna change the intrinsic value of me, I could focus on things that I would do regardless of that per- perception of value fluctuation, like starting a podcast or, um, learning to DJ or doing a musical up and down the country or joining a psychedelics business just to learn for a year about mental health and psychedelics. And the funny thing is, if we think about Fred again and Derren Brown and all of those people that achieved mastery from a decade of natural dedication, is that's altho- also the path to real mastery, when you're not being dragged.

   13. CWChris Williamson51:34

       In other news, this episode is brought to you by Nomatic. No, literally, it's actually brought to you by Nomatic. Their Carry On Pro is the hand luggage that I used to transport my laptop and all of the stuff (laughs) that I brought with me to the UK. The difference between having proper, well-designed, durable, high-quality luggage and not is everything. It makes the difference between packing a complete hell or actually quite enjoyable. The team at Nomatic creates the most functional, durable, and innovative backpacks, bags, luggage, and accessories. Everything from Nomatic comes with a lifetime warranty, which is exactly how confident they are in the quality of their products. Especially if you're someone that travels quite a lot, you need to make sure the luggage you're using is high quality. And Nomatic is the best that I've found. So if you need to upgrade your luggage game for work, for travel, or for anything else, the first place to go is Nomatic. Head to the link in the description below or go to nomatic.com/modernwisdom and use the code MODERNWISDOM at checkout for 20% off everything sitewide. That's nomatic.com/modernwisdom, and MODERNWISDOM at checkout. The thing that's interesting to fold in here that I think is useful, most people have more pain than they do anything else, especially when they're starting out. I don't think when you very, very first begin a pursuit you've got this perfectly balanced desire to maximize your ikigai and show up in the way your logo's being spoken forward it's supposed to. It's not. People took the piss out of you for being different in school, or your parents didn't believe in you or they coddled you too much, or you don't feel like you were given the opportunities that you should've got, or you failed yourself or other people failed you. That's fucking power. That's fuel, right?

   14. SBSteven Bartlett53:15

       And do you know what it can be as well? It can be a tiny thing

   15. CWChris Williamson53:18

       Oh, a flo- throwaway comment.

   16. SBSteven Bartlett53:19

       ... when you were seven.

   17. CWChris Williamson53:19

       Throwaway comment that went-

   18. SBSteven Bartlett53:20

       Someone grabbed your lu- lunch money.

   19. CWChris Williamson53:21

       Oh, yeah.

   20. SBSteven Bartlett53:21

       And that taught you a story, going back to what we said about evidence, about money and other people. And that has just dominated your self-story for the- for the next three decades, a story you learn about money, you know?

   21. CWChris Williamson53:32

       So I think that that fuel is toxic, especially when used for a long period of time. But I reckon you can get a good five or 10 years out of it. And I think that to get yourself past the activation energy to go and do something, in the very, very beginning, it's all well and good for you or me to sit here and say, "Ah, you know, you can find the balance in the way that everything works." Like, we've been through that fire. Let's neither of us kid ourselves about what got us here in the first place. It was fucking resentment, right?

   22. SBSteven Bartlett54:06

       Mm-hmm.

   23. CWChris Williamson54:07

       I had a desire to prove every bully that had ever picked on me in school, every person that had thought I wasn't gonna ana- amount to anything, everyone that had ostracized me socially, I wanted them to regret that decision. Don't get me wrong. And it's only been after a long, long, long time of realizing that actually, if it wasn't for the fire that they'd given me, I wouldn't have got to where I am now, which is a place that I'm incredibly proud of, so I should thank them. Oh, that's a fucking interesting realization.

   24. SBSteven Bartlett54:37

       And here's the- here's the risk, though, and what I came to learn, is it will take you somewhere, that drive, but it's not guaranteed to take you to happiness. And the- the obsession of being dragged by an insecurity, like the one you've described and the ones that I describe, is so overpowering that it might mess up your priorities.

   25. CWChris Williamson54:58

       Mm-hmm.

   26. SBSteven Bartlett54:58

       And- and I think at a deeper level, humans, regardless of their drive, we do need these fundamentals to be happy. We need that sense of connection, we need relationships, we need all of those things. And in my case, I work seven days a week in that bloody office. I would come in even when I didn't have anything to do-

   27. CWChris Williamson55:12

       Mm-hmm.

   28. SBSteven Bartlett55:12

       ... because there was a deep sense of sort of self-esteem associated with my work. The cost was I didn't speak to my family for two- for two years. The cost is, like even as I sit here, it's like I haven't spoken to my mom for months.

   29. CWChris Williamson55:22

       Mm-hmm.

   30. SBSteven Bartlett55:22

       Like, we've fallen out.
6. 58:54 – 1:06:30

   The Loneliness & Hedonism of Elite Achievers

   1. CWChris Williamson58:54

      he says, "Loneliness is a kind of tax we have to pay to atone for a certain complexity of mind."

   2. SBSteven Bartlett58:59

      Yeah. There's two things we don't want to be, not enough and different. That's what a therapist said to me recently that came on my podcast. She said, "There's two things that fundamentally... I interview billionaires and CEOs and royalty..." So she goes, "I- I'm a therapist for billionaires, CEOs, and royalty." She goes, "The two things are, that people struggle with fundamentally are feeling different. We don't want to feel different. That's a rejection from one's tribe, which used to mean back in the day through a process of self-preservation, we'd die earlier, as you- you've heard about in the studies of, you know, that they did at Harvard. Um, we'd get more ill, our immune systems would break down. And the second one is not feeling like you're enough, which means you're not valuable to the tribe. So not being part of the tribe or of- of good... or of good use to the tribe causes a bunch of signals in our body, which then manifest as physiological disease-"

   3. CWChris Williamson59:40

      Mm-hmm.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett59:40

      "... and psychological disease."

   5. CWChris Williamson59:41

      Mm-hmm.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett59:42

      "So, at- at its core, sometimes I think when I'm feeling in- not such a way, maybe I'm feeling lonely or I'm feeling really different or some... I've got some feedback which makes me feel like I'm different in a fundamental way, I just ground myself in the understanding that even the fact that I feel that makes me like everybody else. And, um, in terms of loneliness, I've had to kind of carve out my own new tribe in my life, a very small group of people."

   7. CWChris Williamson1:00:04

      With Prince William.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:06

      Ah, yeah. (laughs) No.

   9. CWChris Williamson1:00:07

      But no, moving- moving to Austin was a big part of that for me because I was around... It- it's a s- s- city of cultural immigrants.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:16

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson1:00:16

       Right? Everybody has gone from one place to this place, so that is the selection effect, and it's why, you know, again, another great way to work out who's high agency in your friend group is, are they living in the same town that they were born up in or in a new one? Are they living in the same country that they were born in or a new one? Have they decided to do something on their own and take risks that they were the only people who they were responsible for? Um, in relation to your riddled with fake ambitions thing-

   12. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:41

       Mm-hmm.

   13. CWChris Williamson1:00:41

       ... this great quote from Alex that says, "You've already achieved goals that you said would make you happy."

   14. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:47

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:00:48

       And that encapsulation of the hedonic treadmill in a single tweet I think is so interesting.

   16. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:55

       It- it... but it also calls you to reframe what you're- what you're pursuing, and this is why the part of the discipline equation, the psychological pursuit, is actually really a nice thing to focus on, because we both know in all of our lives, e- even the- the podcasting game you're playing now, there's not a finish line here, is there? Every day is the finish line. So I- I- I think it reframes what we're aiming at because they are mirages that move off into the distance as we approach them.

   17. CWChris Williamson1:01:18

       Yeah.

   18. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:18

       And if you're... if you become too... you think about unhappiness coming from unmet expectations. If you're too focused on the- the- the podium giving you pleasure, when it doesn't, the expectation that it would could lead to unhappiness.

   19. CWChris Williamson1:01:29

       What happened when you hit a million subs?How did you feel?

   20. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:32

       So we hit- I mean, eh, I'd sit down my team, I go, "I know- I know none of you really care. But the reason why we should celebrate is because..." and then I give them the reason." And it's same with three million, when we hit three million subs, it's the same thing. Walked into the back room of our studio, I go, "Listen, I know this doesn't actually matter. What matters more was the old lady that came up to me when I went to Penguin the other day and said that, was almost crying in the lobby. That's what we all care about. We care about the Chris Kamara thing where he came on the podcast and his former football club put banners up in the stadium about it. We care about impact. And this is just a- a- a trailing metric of impact." So, um, it's important, you know, and I've done a lot of research over- over the last 10 years about how to build a company in such a way where you don't get those moments of burnout or anti-climax. And Simon Sinek talk- talks about bidding- b- building things as if they are infinite. So how would you set up you and this podcast team through the frame of, "We're gonna do this for 100 years"? Well, you- you design- design the system to be sustainable over a- over the long term. You'd aim at consistency. You try and optimize intensity, but not at the cost of in- consistency. And the whole system of how you treat the people and how this everything, and how you treat yourself would be set up in such a way. That's what I think about now. I'm actually thinking about our podcast through the lens of, heavily inspired by what Joe Rogan's done, sticking at that for like 15 years. How do we run this game for 50 years? And I think that's a huge competitive advantage to think through that frame, 'cause there will be a lot of people that would have designed their systems in a way that is not sustainable, and I see it with podcasters all the time. I see it where they've, you know, they've got four mates who are all on the podcast and they're doing it twice a week. Well, then what happens when Gerry, you know, has a divorce with his wife and has to leave and then it was- the system was never designed for longevity. So all facets of my life, my companies, my teams, all designed for longevity.

   21. CWChris Williamson1:03:15

       90% of podcasts don't make it past episode three.

   22. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:18

       (laughs) Really?

   23. CWChris Williamson1:03:19

       And of the 10% that do, 90% of them don't make it past episode 20. So by making 21 podcasts, you are in the top percentile of all podcasters ever in history.

   24. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:30

       And how many get past 10 years?

   25. CWChris Williamson1:03:31

       Oh, fucking hell. Jesus.

   26. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:32

       Yeah, that's the game I wanna play. I wanna g- I wanna do a 20- 20, 30 year, I say it to my team all the time, multi-decade systems.

   27. CWChris Williamson1:03:38

       Long-term games with long-term people.

   28. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:40

       Yeah. So my team can move through the chapters of their life, right? They're gonna be fathers and mothers. They're gonna get, you know, they're gonna have certain moments in their life where they have health risks. And is our system designed to guide them through that but retain talent that we want to retain? Um, is it re- is it designed for a changing world that's gonna get AI-centric? Like do we have enough, uh, fast-acting feedback loops so we know when the next thing's coming?

   29. CWChris Williamson1:04:01

       Would you not just slot people in and move people out? Like the differences and the challenges that you're going to encounter at 10 million subs is gonna be different to what you encountered at 10,000 subs. So and I know, yeah, I get that, and there will usually be a core group of people, but really the only core thing is you, right? Ultimately, if you want to start doing stadium Ed Sheeran-style productions, the people that did the first Steven Bartlett Tour, they're not the people that can do that, right? You need new people. You need a different cinematography team and you need people that can do live broadcasts and they need to be able to do switching on this huge fucking desk, camera three, camera four. Like I- I don't disagree, but fundamentally what it seems to me it comes back to is, how can you make sure that it's your infinite game? Yes, it trickles down to the rest of the team, but ultimately the team are gonna come and go. The only thing that's gonna remain is you, 'cause if you go, it's fucking done. You're not selling Diary of a C- like, Diary of a CEO now presented by fucking Jimmy Carr. Like it's not happening.

   30. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:00

       So in that sentence, there's a key thing I said, which is the talent you want to retain.
7. 1:06:30 – 1:15:09

   Why You Need to Sweat the Small Stuff

   1. CWChris Williamson1:06:30

   2. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:30

      I ju- I just think, uh, just think it's the most important thing. I remember one of the most important books I ever read was The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson when I was 18 years old, um, because it helped me understand the importance of marginal gains and the tiny things in life and how they're compounding for or against you invisibly in every w- aspect of your life. Your teeth, your skin, your finances, your relationship. The tiny things are compounding for or against you. The- the analogy I give to help sort of illuminate this is if you didn't brush your teeth today, no one in this room would know. If you didn't brush your teeth every day this-

Episode duration: 2:08:14