Dominic McGregor: Dom's Diary - Mental Health, Addiction & Quitting Business
Guests: Dominic McGregor
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This week may be my favorite chapter of all time. In Chapter 10, I fulfill a promise I made to you in Chapter 9 by inviting on my business partner, Dominic McGregor. He comes on the podcast today to share his deep, dark secrets and his incredible story.
So many of you will know my story, but this whole time I've had somebody standing right next to me. He's a completely different person. He chooses not to take the limelight, he has a different perspective on the world, and he's built in a different way. He has an incredible story. You'll hear things from Dom that I was honestly frightened to share with the world.
I first hired Dom back in 2014 to join my startup, Wallpark, because he had grown a large social media page and I was looking to advertise the platform on social media. I messaged him online and met him in a bar, and I encouraged him to drop out of university and join me full-time. Surprisingly and courageously, he did exactly that.
We've worked together side-by-side ever since for the last six years, and we went on to start Social Chain together many years ago. Through that time, we've been through it all. We've lived together, worked together, traveled together, slept on floors together, argued, and had celebrations like you wouldn't believe.
Dom has his personal struggles, and me and him, as I said, are very different people. There are things that I've always wanted to ask him, and today was that day. This is his story of success, of mental health issues, of alcoholism, and of the struggle. So without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett, and this is The Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody is listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.
Okay, Dom. A lot of people that listen to this podcast would probably follow me across Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram. They know a lot about Social Chain, but they don't hear a tremendous amount about you. So my first question to you is, from your perspective, why is that?
Good question. I think the reason people don't hear a lot about me is for a couple of reasons. I don't like to put myself out there too much, and what you put out there, you get back. So that's probably the main reason.
Secondly, the role I play is a little bit different to what Steven plays and what you play. It's much more about bringing people together and getting things done. To be frank, I probably wasn't someone that maybe a year or two years ago could be someone who's put out there.
So what is it you do then? Make the distinction between what I do at Social Chain and what you do at Social Chain.
I've always seen it like external and internal, a little bit like a marriage. What I do is solve problems of how things are working at the moment. Whether we've got problems with a campaign or two parts of the business aren't working very well together, I come in there to fix it and to tweak it.
What you do is much more about the external kind of noise: who we are, getting ourselves out there, being the face, and representing the business. You bring them through the front door. But you also do the stuff that involves inspiration and the perception of who we are internally, while mine is more nuts and bolts—pulling things together, sticking things together, making things more efficient.
Obviously, because I spend a lot of time doing external-facing stuff—speaking on stages, the podcast, the YouTube channel—I get a disproportionate amount of credit, right? How does that sit with you?
I don't care, because I know you can't alter history. It comes from being secure in myself. I know what role I play, I know where we came from, and I know the story. It doesn't matter to me. I've always thought the business is the most important thing here. Social Chain is us, so it's about making sure that is always going forward.
Question then: If Social Chain was two Steven Bartletts, would it work?
No. It would never work. Same question to you: If Social Chain was two Dom McGregors?
No. It would be a completely different place. I don't know if it ever would have been possible, to be honest. It wouldn't have got anywhere. We've always said we have complementary traits.
That's why it's worked. There are so many times when things have had to be realigned and we've had to talk, where similar personalities would have clashed over their perceptions. We say it about ego quite a lot; if you have two really big egos of the same type in the room, they both think their position is right and don't have the foresight to be humble enough to say we could do it this way.
I always think that the biggest impact we both made was in the early days. When it was just two of us, that's when we defined the place. That's when it took a lot of work.
You've been doing a lot more public speaking lately, which is a first. We're now three years into Social Chain, but you've now decided to take the stage. What's inspired that? What's given you the courage?
It's self-confidence. Like most people, I was crippled by my own anxieties about myself—how I'm looked at, how I'm perceived. One of the biggest things I hate about myself is my voice. I've got a very distinct accent; you can hear it right now. It's not clean, it's not the best.
I speak quickly. I've always shied away from long public conversations for that reason, but also because of how I perceive myself and maybe not being a very natural presenter.
How are you finding it?
I love it now. Honestly, I've got over those hurdles. The voice thing I'm not over yet, but I've more embraced it. I struggle with the idea that people struggle to understand me sometimes, which is probably self-deluded.
I think I did in the early days. I would always say, "What? What?" and ask you to repeat yourself. You're much more articulate than you were back then.
I've had that my whole life. People tell me I need to speak slower. When you're in front of people, the minute you feel like you lose their attention, that's when you start going into yourself even more. The idea of public speaking when I wasn't confident in my voice just triggered everything.
What's the most annoying thing that I do? In terms of working with me, what's the hardest thing to deal with?
Forgetfulness. We've had conversations about something, it happened, and then things move on. Two months later, we revisit it, and it's like we never had the conversation.
That's early-onset dementia. I'm pretty convinced. What do you think the most annoying thing that you do is?
I take too much on. I try to juggle too many things. In the beginning, it was because I didn't trust other people, but I always think I could do a better job than people.
I also think you're a bit of a "yes man." You were definitely more of a yes man in the past, trying to please everyone.
What was always weird was when you don't have a tangible output. The shift in my life from running communities at Wallpark to this position where I'm not running pages anymore was a really weird feeling.
For context, when Dom says "pages," he means Twitter pages. When I met Dom, he was running a bunch of Twitter pages.
That transition from doing that to not actually having a tangible output, but actually helping other people grow and doing leadership-orientated things, was a very difficult transition.
On that point, do you think entrepreneurs are made or do you think they're born?
My opinion is that no one is born anything. A lot of life is nurture. It comes through the early stages of development—playing sport, how your parents are, how you interact at school. You do develop certain traits like leadership which can translate into business, and a natural curiosity for wanting things to be done better. I think it's nurture, and putting yourself in a position where you run a business is a skill you can learn.
You've really got to define what you mean by entrepreneur because there's a stereotypical idea of a risk-taker, fearless type.
They're problem solvers.
There are so many different types. You've got a Mark Zuckerberg who was a coder who built an amazing product and learned how to be an entrepreneur. When we say entrepreneur, we imagine this person that's really good with people, a bit of an extrovert, a risk-taker with a big ego. But if you look at the most successful entrepreneurs, like Elon Musk or Steve Jobs, they didn't start that way, but they're made into that. When I met you, you were a bit shy in a professional sense. I think you were low confidence. But going from where we met in that bar in York to now has answered the question for me that you can be made into one.
One of the other questions I had was about your personal journey. We met when you were 20, and I was 20 as well. You've gone from someone who was very low confidence to taking on great responsibility. I would say at times in the early days, you really struggled with the stress of that. Then it got to the point where alcohol started to become something that would help you get out of the stresses of running a business. As things got harder and harder, you began to escape more. I also, in some respects, felt like I represented the stresses of the job. We were living together at this point, and if you work with me and we're business partners, but then you also come home and live with me, it's kind of like the stress comes home as well.
I had stress from so many angles. I had a crap relationship. I wanted to get out of that so badly, and half of it was just that, work, and everything. I actually enjoyed the house at first, but then everything just got on top of me.
I hated this girl. She was just so anti your career and your ambitions; it was almost this competition.
I hate thinking about it. I didn't like myself. I hated everything to do with me—how I was, how I looked, how I was acting, how I was speaking. You need to love yourself because we're putting ourselves through a lot of stress.
Near the end of your relationship with this girl, you developed a... just to set the scene, you've got this job and at the time Social Chain was still a startup. There were tremendous financial pressures, nothing was guaranteed. We were obviously looking at the bank balance all the time trying to figure out if we were going to be able to make payroll. Clients were canceling left, right, and center because we just weren't set up to fulfill the work properly at that time. Going home every night at 1:00 AM, 2:00 AM, 3:00 AM, unsure how you're going to pay payday in a couple of days. Then you've got your girlfriend giving you a hard time. You started developing a fairly unhealthy, destructive relationship with alcohol. We had this term "Drunk Dom."
The thing is, Social Chain started out with a lot of wins as well as struggles. At first, everything started off as a celebration. We'd all go out at weekends and have fun. The more things were going on in the background, the more I just started drinking more and more.
The relationship you had with drinking was like nothing I'd seen before. You would drink one beer, and then if you drank one, you would just not stop. It wasn't three or five; you would go and keep ordering. It got to the point where we would lose you because you'd be at the bar ordering your own drinks and guzzling them down. I'll never forget that night where we came home and the lights were off. It was 3:00 AM and you were in the front room drinking a bottle of wine with the lights off. That was maybe the start of me thinking this isn't normal. Did you consciously think alcohol was helping?
It was totally unconscious. It started off as a celebration. By drink four or five, I was gone. I just wanted to get away from everyone. I wanted to go off by myself and be in my own little space.
Did you ever think about quitting?
I thought about selling. When the offers started to come in and people were interested to buy, of course, heads were turned. I know I was very pro-us selling in the early days because it was a way out. If I got the security of selling some shares, then I'm alright, I can sort myself out. I felt like I had completed something. In the back of my mind, I thought I could then sort myself out.
What would you do? What was your plan?
I had no plan. I just know I wanted something. I was seeking something in myself. This is when I was drinking. Once I stopped drinking, every single time we get an offer now, I don't care about it. But in that moment there, I was seeking some form of security.
Then you get out of this fairly toxic relationship. It didn't happen easily, did it? I remember you telling me one night, "Right Steven, I'm going to go meet her and I'm going to go end it." You were out for four or five hours, and you came back still in the relationship. She'd managed to convince you that you were the problem and that your career was so selfish that she was the victim. You came back really upset about what you had done to her by having this career. For me, it was just another sign that you weren't really in control.
I wasn't in control of my own emotions, I wasn't in control of the relationship. I hate that person. I see him now in other people. "Drunk Dom"—that guy. I look at him and think, "How are you like that when it's so obvious you're in a bad relationship and you've got a problem?" At the time, you're just so dazed by everything. You don't know your right from wrong. You're not happy with anything. You're not happy with yourself, you're not happy with your relationship. No one is making you feel good. You're putting so much pressure on yourself and something has to change at that point.
Because you were in that state where you were struggling with these external things, it's clear that's why you lost control of that romantic relationship. You were almost quite submissive to this person, and she was quite naturally a bit of a manipulator. I remember the day after you had finally broken up with her. She calls you on the phone and she says, "If you don't leave work right now and come and see me, I'm going to crash my car." She's driving on the motorway, and then she screams and she hangs up the phone to make it seem like she crashed. Obviously, you're very upset by that because you believe this person. But she was really playing to this guy that wasn't in control of himself, and she knew that.
Yeah. I'd already banned her from everywhere. She was banned from the house, she was banned from the office because I just thought she was a bad influence. I always felt really guilty because I'm a bit of a control freak. I was always really worried that I was controlling you.
When I first met her, we were staying on Lisa's floor. So I was like, "I met a girl, she lives in Manchester, I can stay at her house, I can get a bit of a base." That sounded like a good idea. Me and Dom were basically homeless in the sense that we had moved out of our place and were looking for somewhere to live. I looked for any kind of stable base, and I fell into it.
She ended up giving you those phone calls where she threatened to kill herself. You obviously got very upset. We said to you, "Listen, go to Thailand today." Literally booked the flight, went to the airport that day, and you just flew away. Talk to me about the day that you quit alcohol and how that happened.
I was always a danger to myself, which I could deal with. I damaged my ankle one night. I remember on my birthday—my birthday was on a Sunday, went out on the Saturday—I spent the entire Sunday in our cinema room, which is pitch black with no lights, just there in the dark. You guys came in and asked if I wanted to go to town. I said, "No, I'll stay here." And that for me was like a moment when I was like, "What? It's my birthday and I'm just sat in this black room, hungover, not seeing anyone." That's when I really started to think, "What the hell am I doing with myself?"
Then a couple of other instances happened where I was still doing damage to myself, but I wasn't doing damage to other people. I thought as long as it's not too bad, I don't think people are catching on. I quit drugs first. I quit coke. I was doing coke. I got that out of my life, I was like, "I don't need that, that's not me." I thought that was the problem, so I got rid of that.
For a bit of time, maybe in my head I got better, but I don't think I did. Then we went to the races, an alcohol-fueled day. I got back about 8:00 o'clock in the middle of the day to Piccolino's in Alderley Edge. I just went in there, started stealing bottles of wine off people's tables, generally just disruptive, shouting at people in front of some of the team.
I got thrown out, started walking down the street, shouting again at other people. Then I regretfully—probably the worst moment of my life—said things to someone who I probably consider to be one of my closest friends, someone that works in the team. He's been here since day one, I care about him deeply. Waking up that morning, finding out what I said to him and the manner in which I acted towards him when he was only trying to help me—he was actually trying to get me to bed and take me home. I realized I was hurting other people.
From my perspective, I was also out and about that night. Obviously, there were two different Doms: the Dom in work, who's the super nice guy, the team player, the calm, collected funny guy. But predominantly the reason why you were the butt of the joke amongst even some of the team was because of the *other* Dom. When you're less secure in yourself, you kind of make yourself the butt of the joke. Then there was this other Dom which was the "Drunk Dom" which, because of how out of hand it was getting, was doing damage to the real-world Dom.
The problem we have when we're trying to lead people is that leadership is a given thing; people give it to you. If they don't respect you because of how you're acting in work or out of work, you cannot lead people. I was at dinner and started getting texts from people in the team saying Dom is out of control, he's been kicked out of Piccolino's, he's walking down the street, he's just said something to somebody. That was the first moment when we had a conversation which was really not pleasant. You texted me saying that you were absolutely wasted but that you wanted to sell. It hit me like a ton of bricks because although I was so pissed off in the moment, I was also like, "That's pretty serious if even the drunk version of you wants out."
You do so much now on things like mental health issues and your recovery from drinking too much. Did you have mental health issues?
I had anxiety. That was what I had. Imagine you're talking to yourself and you're talking yourself out of everything.
I always wonder if I've got anxiety.
Everyone has it, but it flares up. Why I learned to manage it was to notice when you're having moments of being anxious and what to do in those moments, and just to be aware that you have it.
How does it feel?
Something is pressing on your mind and you know you need to talk to someone about it, but you put it off because you don't think it's the right time. You take, for example, a client not paying. You'll hold that information to yourself, try and solve it yourself, but you won't get anyone else involved. You'll lock it away until it's got so far out of hand that you need someone to come in to help you or you've solved it and it can go away.
Is it like a feeling of nervousness or anxiousness?
Yeah, you get it. Sometimes I get this real... when I've got something on my mind and I've compartmentalized it a little bit, and I start feeling like super anxious. It's almost the feeling like that I get just before I go up on stage. I get that for a while in my insides.
Naturally what I do is I take on too many things. When you've got these... small things that made a big difference to me at work were like getting a calendar. We didn't have a calendar for the first two years; we were just winging stuff. Getting a Wonderlist, learning how to deal with the problems put in front of you—small changes make such a big difference. But the main thing was when you get that feeling of being anxious, solving it. I had to write down every single time I felt anxious over a problem and then say what I thought the outcome was going to be. Someone asks for a pay rise and you don't know how to react because it triggers this anxious thing in your head where you're thinking about payday coming up, we haven't got enough money to pay people, and you start thinking about a million things before you can even go back to them and say, "This is where we're at."
And they pile on top of each other, making all of them worse.
Then I was drinking and I was forgetting about them over the weekend, and then you sober up and they get on top of you. I get small doses like social anxiety where sometimes I don't know what to say to people in conversation because you've got everything going on in the back of your mind. You're just a blank person. You'll be there in social situations but you won't be there because your mind will be gone away and you're sat there like, "I don't know what to say to people because I've got these million things I'm thinking about."
So you never really spoke to me about that feeling? Why?
I didn't speak to anyone about it. The only person I spoke to about it was the guy I was seeing. I spent so long trying to understand myself. I'm still not there, no one ever gets there. It's about understanding the triggers you have.
When you say "the guy you're seeing," you mean after you quit drinking you went and sought help from somebody? But you never... I was sat next to you this whole time while you were feeling these things. Why didn't you just turn to me and say, "This is how I'm feeling, it's really tough"?
I think it's probably the same reason a lot of guys don't speak: feeling inadequate. Don't feel like you're up for it. Feel like you can solve it yourself, you don't need help. Showing weakness.
Did you not think that I had any weaknesses? What was your perception of how I was dealing with all these things?
I always thought you were so good at putting them to the back of your mind that they weren't there. I was just so caught up on myself worrying about them that I didn't... you were the first person to tell me to talk to someone about it. I didn't even know I should talk to someone about it. I thought my role as a person was to... I didn't know I needed help. You told me I needed help.
Okay, let's go back to that day then. The day after you get very drunk, you wake up, you realize you've damaged a few relationships. I messaged you and I said let's meet at the office. We had a very private, honest conversation in which we talked about... you were very honest for the first time ever. I think the only thing that stopped me on that day being mad at the damage you'd... because the way I always felt was like "Drunk Dom" would create a mess for me to clear up. The only thing that stopped me being mad on that day at all was just how honest you were about your situation. You can't be mad at somebody when they tell you that they've been struggling with some stuff and that they want to get a grip of it.
I think the first time I hurt someone else... I think I could deal with hurting myself, but hurting someone else, that's not me. That's a complete contrast to who I am as a person. I don't hurt people. That bit on me, knowing that I've done that damage to someone, alongside actually speaking to someone about it for the first time, being told by my best friend that something's not right with you, hits all in the space of 24 hours. That day is the day I never want to... I never want to feel like that again.
Entrepreneurship and being "the boss" is something that's glamorized on social media, in movies, in magazines, in culture in general. There's this obsession with being the entrepreneur and the association is that you're on private jets and you've got jet skis and all the money you want and the biggest smile in the world. But there's another story which nobody tells you about. What is that other story from your perspective?
That other story is almost the reality. You do see the progress, you see that, but you don't see the actual work that goes into getting there. I think the reason the entrepreneur is this flamboyant person is because of what they learned through the journey. They learn to become that type of person through going through hard times.
What are the hard times?
Questioning whether this is constantly the right thing that you're doing. How many times have we changed course of what we are as a business? It's taken us two or three years to find our identity.
Here's one of the hard times that I think you've just mentioned there as well: the buck stops with you. If you... this is one of the things that I learned: everybody's problem is your problem as well as your existing problems. Unfortunately, you can't pass it to anybody. Also, because you're in charge, nobody's going to tell you what to do or how to handle it, which is also one of the perceived upsides of being an entrepreneur. At moments where you've got a 25-year-old guy or girl come to you with some serious problems whilst you're dealing with massive client problems, then massive financial problems, then massive personal problems, and then more of the same repeated the same day on cycle.
Every single person adds another problem to the mix. That's one thing I said to the guy when I was seeing him. Every time we'd celebrate winning a contract or a new person would start, that was another layer on top. It was more worry. The more people we got in the team, the more people you had to pay, more money you had to make, more issues. The growth of Social Chain was so quick and the amount of people we got in, the amount of clients we won—as soon as we won a client, my first thought was, "God, how are we going to be able to deliver this? What happens if it goes wrong? We've got a lot backing on this being a success."
I just remember those days. I've talked on the podcast before about that day when we got hacked and we had all of our clients at one point basically tell us they were going to leave. We had a team waiting who just wanted to go into paintball and we had to tell them, but we had to try and fight to convince our clients that we didn't hack—it wasn't us that had sent them those malicious emails. Then I remember that day someone in the team's boyfriend had dumped them and they were in a terrible state and they needed picking off off the floor. Your clients need picking off off the floor, you've got family issues at home, and all these things going on. And you are 23 years old at these times. You're barely trying to figure out the world to yourself and you're being forced to be significantly beyond your years without the qualifications.
One thing that I've learned is how much it changes you. I can know what "Old Steve" was like, I also know what Dom's like, and the change I've seen in you is probably more drastic. Going from that kid that I met in that Revolution's bar to the weathered, tough, hard, very impatient, I'd say, now with bullshit. A very low tolerance for bullshit or people bullshit—people that are causing problems or that are egotistical or that are doing things with bad intentions. Your reaction now is you very much want to wash your hands with them very quickly. Probably you're probably more impatient in that regard than I am.
It's just interesting how in three years you can change so much. But I just want to take you back to... on that day you admit you're struggling and you say you're going to go see this guy and you said you're going to go quit drinking. Honestly, didn't believe you. Of course I didn't believe you. I'd known "Drunk Dom" for so long. For my whole life working with you, that's the only guy I'd known, so I didn't see how you would do that. But here we are, how long's it been now?
19 months.
19 months without a drop of alcohol. Ran multiple marathons. You've lost... you're probably skinnier than me now, which is a concern. Healthier than ever, transformed in sense of your leadership skills. Total respect from everyone in the team and beyond. People that didn't respect you then are literally intimidated by you now. A mutual friend told me this weekend, "Dom is like intimidating now." You went from being the joke in the group to being so good at leadership that you're intimidating people. Talk to me about that journey from the start, meeting this guy, what he taught you.
He asked me the questions which made me think about myself. He asked me questions that I've never been asked before about family, about relationships, about work. And he made me think. I first understood what I was going through. It took him about 15 minutes of me talking at him to say, "This is what you've got, this is what you're dealing with, this is how we're going to go over it." The minute he told me what I had and he said the word "anxiety," things started to fall into place. It all makes sense now.
He just made me think about myself. He gave me confidence, gave me some ways of getting over it. I lost who I was. I won't forget when I used to go home to York to see my parents; my mom would just be completely different with me. Telling this guy all these things about the small things, about my mom not wanting to see me and how your family think you've changed as well, makes you think like that's not me as a person. Then he sat down with me and said, "What do you think your values are? Who do you want to be in five years? What do you want people to think of you?" We did that exercise and then he said to me, "What you need to do then is all your actions have to sit within your values. If you don't think something aligns with who you want to be or how you want to be perceived, you can't do it."
I had a real big session with him where we just spoke about what I was known for growing up, how I was, how I thought people perceived me. And he said, "Look, that's who you are. You're still that person, you've just lost him." It was really hard hearing like my mom said that to me, that she feels like she's lost me as well, which was really hard to hear.
Change only occurs when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of making a change. That was something that always resonated with me. I was like, "Okay, that's never happening again. That feeling I had that morning waking up, I'm never having that feeling ever again. I'm getting past that." I was just so spurred on by who I think I want to be, what my values are. I'm never letting myself get into that position of feeling like that ever again.
Who do you want to be and what are your values?
Going back to when I was younger, I was always really active and really sporty. That was something that I really loved doing. I always saw myself as having loads of friends, loads of people that really liked me in social situations, which I started to lose. As well, I guess one thing is that I always saw myself as really ambitious, as someone who takes on challenges and solves them, but also overcomes them. I turned it into a game for myself. I turned it into myself that alcohol is the enemy, alcohol is the opponent from sport, you're going to beat it. And who I wanted to be is... I've got this image in my head, I've always had it, I've always looked a couple of years forward of this kind of perception of this person of who I am.
Describe him.
Not far off what I am now. I've got... obviously the journey is never complete, but in just nearly under two years' time, I've been transformed into this person who, when I was sat there hungover after doing what I did, this is who I wanted to be.
I honestly don't know how you've done it, to be honest. It must be the pain of staying the same or something. For to not drink for 19 months when you're your age, despite everybody pressuring you, "Go on, have a drink," and then to do the running thing as well... I think you ran what, 12K yesterday? I was in bed watching Netflix with my dog, and you're out there running it at 2:00 AM in the morning. People will want to make a change and it'll last a month and they'll be back to their old ways. So it's pretty tremendous that you've been able to completely shift the course of your life for a sustained period of time.
It's only in hindsight you start realizing how dark things got. I've only told one person this, because I had a very open conversation with someone who is a friend who's going through things as well. He asked me, "Have you ever thought about it?" And I went, "Thought about what?" And he went, "Killing yourself." And I said no, I've never sat there and thought, "Okay, I'm going to kill myself." Never thought about that. But sometimes... when the trains come past the station, you just think, "Oh, what if? What if I jumped? Would I be alright?" And I had that thought with a couple of things.
Was that at low times?
That was the low time going down to London. I'd sit there and think, "What if I jumped? Who would miss me? What would happen?" And honestly, I had that a couple of times. It's only when you... all these things I'm saying have always only been in hindsight, understanding my anxieties, understanding my triggers, understanding what sets me off. When you have such a contrast of who you were versus the path you're on now, you'll do everything you can to move forward and not go back.
How important was taking that first step just to go and speak to somebody? Because it is incredibly hard. People often think, "I don't speak to somebody about the way I'm feeling because I want to be brave." But for me, there is nothing braver than holding my hand up and saying, "You know what? I need to speak to somebody." I really wonder if I went through some serious mental health issues, would I be able to go and speak to somebody? I don't think I'm that brave. Because of the stigma, it's a terrible shame.
Speaking to you about it, that's what we spoke about. That was me talking about it, and I think if I can say it to you, I've said it now.
But how important was it though? To go and speak to somebody about it?
It was the most important thing. The biggest, most important first thing was someone telling me something's wrong. Someone who knows me better than anyone telling me that something's wrong. That was the most important thing in my life.
The start was you admitting it though, wasn't it? To yourself, I think.
I admitted it to myself, yeah, and I admitted it to you. But you know, it wouldn't have happened if you didn't happen. But then the second part of that was then acting upon that and having a conversation with someone who knows... I said the same thing to him that I said to you that day. I said exactly how I felt, and he can put it into a structure that helps me overcome it.
One of the things I've always wanted to speak to you about is money. We talk about how not having money is... in terms of paying your staff and cash flow issues and all these things, which we went through for a good 18 months nonstop. Probably five months in a row where we're just like, "I have no idea." I remember that one month where we looked at the bank account and payday was just around the corner, I think a week away. There is no money in the bank, but there is a team to pay and there's many bills to pay, probably £60,000-£70,000 worth of bills to pay in a week's time. No money in the bank, and just that mad scramble to sell something.
And get paid as well.
And get them to pay, yeah.
We could sell something; getting them to pay was a different story.
This is such a funny story. We managed to sell to a company at the time a campaign, and one of the KPIs was there'd be a trigger payment if we hit a certain objective. The objective basically to save Social Chain was getting them to be the number one trending topic in the country. It was really if this brand doesn't become the number one trending topic in the country, we fail. That is the truth.
That's the crux of it, isn't it? I remember you messaging me saying this has to happen. We have to make them the number one trending topic in the country or it's goodbye. I think that's the last campaign I did, I ran. Because we... probably one of the last times I've sold and done... because at the last... I remember we were in the white room there, and it was me and Hannah who stayed late to do it, and we were like this has to happen. Hannah was so shocked by the relief when I celebrated. I haven't celebrated like we'd just done it since Tipi Tap.
I can't remember, but I remember messaging the client the next day and being like, "Hey, we did it, can you send the money please?" Anyway, moving on, the point I was going to make is: not having money in a business is tremendously stressful. But what about on the opposite side of it? Being 22 years old at the time when we first started getting a little bit of money—and it wasn't even a tremendous amount of money, it was just more money than we needed. You've got a spare. How did having too much money impact you? And does money make you happy?
No, money doesn't make me happy. What it does is it gives you freedom. Having disposable money, you can do things. And we were partying; that's what we did.
Was it all upside? What's the downside?
So for me, and this is kind of what I was alluding to, was a bit of a sense of anticlimax. Thinking... I remember we had a conversation in the old flat where I think me and you realized that we were not motivated by money. I remember standing to you and saying—this was before Social Chain was a company really, in the gap between Wallpark and Social Chain—"There's £20,000-£30,000 worth of business in my emails. If I just go downstairs and send an email, then we make the money, but I just can't be bothered because another couple of grand isn't going to make me happy, so there's no motivation to do it."
What that taught me in that moment when we had that conversation is that I don't do this for the money. Now when we sign big deals and we sign major clients, I'm tremendously happy, but the reason isn't because of the money.
The thing from that conversation which stayed with me is I think—and I'm just going to be completely honest—at the time you were pursuing a girl. Do you remember this? You were pursuing a girl from York. And I think because you thought that money was the enabler of all possibilities, which is what I mean by the anticlimax, you thought money gets you everything when you grow up. But you couldn't get this girl. And you were putting pressure on yourself because you were like, "Well, I've got some money now," not a huge amount, but you weren't a broke student anymore. But you thought that the money would get you the girl, and because it wasn't getting you the girl, you were struggling with that.
Yeah. And I think you're completely right. You think the money side of things is success, that's like an open door, but it only exposes cracks in who you are as a person. I'm so glad that I managed to make a bit of money when I was younger because it teaches you about yourself, it teaches you about what you value, teaches you about what you want in life. Right now, money doesn't make a difference because I wasn't happy then. I went through a year of not being happy with myself, and no amount of money would have changed me, it would have destroyed me.
What makes you happy?
The number one thing that makes me happy is seeing other people happy. And that comes from seeing them here progress, seeing them here do things. Every time today we had such a great day with good news, I'm so glad that people are winning. We've built an environment here where people can do that, and I think that gives me the most satisfaction.
Still want to sell?
No. This is me. I saw the work stress as the enemy, but then I realized that this is Social Chain—it's me, it's us, it's everyone who built it. This is our purpose. I learned that. I don't know why I didn't know it, but I learned that this is everything I'm doing is for this. This is who we are.
I think it's important to note that through all the hard times, I obviously went through the hard times too. One question I wanted to ask you is: I always assumed you dealt with it by switching off and forgetting. Same way I did; so I was thinking I get drunk and I party. You would always go to your bed and you'd watch YouTube videos and you'd forget about it that way. How did you deal with it?
I think it comes from your inner dialogue and that person that speaks to you in your head. You're talking to someone the whole time, you're talking to yourself. And whatever that person's saying back to you will shape your perspective on the situation. Only in hindsight do I think now, the guy that was talking back to me was very good at rationalizing everything, and he was so... he had such an innate self-belief that he probably wasn't that scared of failure. To him, it was all a bit of a game as opposed to it being real life.
Although as the business grew there were more real consequences, I just never thought it was going to go bad. I never believed it was going to go wrong, even in the... and then I talk to you now about being addicted to the hard times. I think the guy talking... because I felt it, I felt the tough days and those moments thinking... I literally have had so many moments in those early stages where I think, "Wow, what the fuck... like today is so bad. Surely there is no human being that can deal with this and not break." I've literally said that to myself.
"This is the worst day ever. You couldn't make this up." But that's the kind of tone that I'm taking in my head. It's like, "This is so fucking bad." Do you know what I mean? It's not like, "Oh my God, I can't deal with this." It's, "Oh my God, this day is this... there's no way you could make this day worse." And then someone would come in or send me an email and make it worse, and I'd go, "There you go, this is the fucking... this is..." But I'd also, that voice would be like, "This is the test." It would be like asking me back, "Can you deal with this?" And then all you've got to do is get over one small bump and then you can do a little bit bigger one. And then you keep doing that for a couple of years, you can do hills and mountains. Then you almost feel a sense of invincibility at a point. You become better and better at rationalizing bullshit.
I've seen the same in you where the news you can take today results in very little reaction, versus if I'd given you that news two years ago, you would have taken that shit home, you would have been thinking about it all night, you probably would have had a glass of wine. So you almost become... this is why I say the word like "numb" and "weathered." We're both a bit fucking haggard here. Do you know what I mean?
Honestly, you've got no emotions. I've got no emotions. I don't get excited, I don't get sad.
That's an interesting thing. I said this on the podcast about... you just stay in the middle. You get the best news in the world, you go, "Amazing," and then but you don't feel shit. And then you get the worst news in the world, you think, "Oh fuck," but you don't feel anything. And because you realize that it's much more healthy for you, but also the people around you, for you to just be unmoved.
And that's where the running comes in. So you talk about how you had that person telling you you can go more, you can do more, this is the test. I didn't have that; my person was telling me, "Oh but what about this, what about this," you know, so many "what ifs" and asking myself more questions. From the running, you realize that running is a mental battle. You can do that, you can do that, you can do that, you know you can just keep going, keep going, keep going. That kind of got me through everything; you just keep going and it's fine.
So you've come from a kid in a bar in York who's very nervous, not really speaking much. You've gone through that process of dealing with the pressure that you were given by the nature of this lifestyle, struggling to cope with that, speaking out about your struggle, overcoming the destructive side of you, burying "Drunk Dom."
Coming out the other side where you've now turned it into a positive. You have a blog, you're raising money for charity, you're one of the most vocal people in terms of mental health issues and mental awareness that I know now. You use every opportunity you can to use your platform to talk on those topics. You're currently raising money for CALM. What's CALM?
CALM is the Campaign Against Living Miserably. It is focused on raising awareness of male suicide. Suicide is the number one killer of men under the age of 45. Obviously, suicide comes from guys not speaking out, having internalized all their problems and looking for a way out. That's what suicide is, quite bluntly; it's people's escape route. It's how they end their problems.
You've talked about how you absolutely love the job now. I think we've both come out the other end in a way. We weathered the storm—the tough, tough times where most people would quit or they'd fail. We've come out the other end and it's almost this promised land where we're on these pastures, there's like unicorns and... there's obviously all the bullshit every day, but it's nothing compared to the shit we went through. So it seems like we're in heaven. But what does the future look like for you? What are your big ambitions personally within Social Chain?
As I said, this Social Chain I feel like it's me. I feel like this is my purpose. This is who I am. I look around at the people here and I feel like this is the family we've built. I want this place to just go to where we want it to go. I want to create the world which... unicorns for everyone, I guess.
We know where we're going on a company level. That's also helped me a lot because really, at first, we never had a plan. We kind of winged it. I think that was something that caused always a lot of discomfort—we didn't know in ourselves who we were. I think that always kept me up questioning where are we going, what is this business, is it a business? I think when we decided on the Media Chain/Social Chain split, in my head it made a lot more sense as to who we are now. It answered the question of what we're actually doing here—what is the business?
So you've got more clarity over what the business is, where it's going, its importance in the world. We've obviously got an incredible group of people here now. I think this is probably the most understated part of why Social Chain is so good but also why we're so much happier—it's because we now have real, mature, incredibly effective, talented people in key roles. These people are smarter than we are, better than we are, they fill all of our weaknesses and more. They teach us how to be better entrepreneurs and leaders and managers and teammates.
We learned that because you're a control freak and I don't like handing things over to people, but we had to learn to. We had to learn that we can't do everything and that we're not the best at doing everything. When you first met me, I was in a suit. I thought when you talk about someone who runs a business, you have this idea of someone who does everything and is very on... what everyone thinks someone who runs a business is. But the reality is it's great people who run the business. Great people build an amazing business.
That's the definition of a company, isn't it? A group of people.
Yeah. And that's not down to any individual. It's about having a great, cohesive working family. Starting 11 family, yeah. Personally, where do I want to go? I'm very happy. I know I'm very happy with who I am right now. I've got a couple of things I want to do. I'm still finding out...
Your relationship as well?
Yeah, and I really like her. She works here at Social Chain. This is the moment when I knew I wasn't just controlling you because I like her and I don't interfere in your relationship. So that's when I was like, "Okay, it's not me, it's just that other one was terrible."
I'm very open-minded for where I'm going at the moment. I know I'm on the right trajectory. I'm doing more in the public space, I want to do more in the public space. I think I can make a difference. I think that's come back to the point of what makes me happy now—seeing people progress and people develop and people be happy. If I can... that's why I'm so passionate about mental health because I can make a difference to people. I want to continue to do that and I think that's where I'll go.
I'm going to put the link in the podcast description for the CALM fundraiser that you're doing currently. Talk to me a little bit about that. You're raising funds and you're doing marathons?
Yeah, I'm doing 12 races over 12 months, all different lengths, all different kinds of sizes, from Tough Mudder which everyone knows about but also some really cool ones. I did a 12K in France where I was running at midnight through the snow. Then the whole thing is leading up to the London Marathon in April. April 23rd this year.
I might do it. I'll see what my schedule's saying but I might do it. You've got me interested now. Listen, thank you so much for a few things. First thing is for being so tremendously open because it's not easy. It's a very selfless thing to do. It's much easier and much more selfish to just protect your ego and to be a bit closed off. But I think one of the things I've learned from you is the importance of speaking and being honest with yourself and other people. I've really learned that. I don't often say that to you but I've really learned that.
You've inspired a lot of people within the team now. You've gone from someone who, as you said at the start, was maybe a bit of a joke to people, to now people look up to you. But not just that, they also seek advice from you on a private level to do with their own personal struggles. You've become a bit of a magnet, especially to the men within the business, as the team's grown to nearly 200 people now, as somebody you can come to who will be the ear as the guy that you saw was to you. I think that's so important because there's just not enough men, especially in high positions or positions of leadership, that are willing to be that open.
I completely respect you for that and it has been inspiring to me. But also thank you for the turnaround you made. Look, I don't think I could have done this alone with "Drunk Dom." In sorting yourself out, you really did me a massive, massive favor. You made my life so much easier. You took the weight more with me, took the strain of the business more with me.
Look, I'll never forget that day. I've not said it to you, I've not told you—I don't know if I've said it like a little bit—but like that day, I don't know whether I'd be here, not not in Social Chain but alive. I've honestly felt that. The route I was going down, I don't know whether I'd be here. So when I say like thanks for like saving my life, I honestly feel like I had no one telling me the truth.
I appreciate that, but I can't get away from the fact that you very much did that yourself. I don't know many people—and I know a lot of friends who are going through a very similar thing to you—and none of them are admitting it, or have the courage or the bravery to talk. I admire the bravery to say something. I honestly question whether I would. I don't think I would, and that's something that I struggle with. If I was really, really struggling at some point in my life, would I...? I really don't know. And I worry about that because that's even more dangerous. That's like the most dangerous thing.
I've spoken to someone high up here, a female, who we both said the same thing. She's gone through... I think once you break and you feel yourself breaking, you're never going back. And what me and her said is that we want people not to have to break to realize that they can... there's something wrong with them. And that's where I think as you... if you haven't felt like that, you haven't like broken or you felt like you've broken or you've had that feeling... because you said it to me as well again about the stress threshold. Everyone's got that day where it was the worst day, and it was the worst moment of your life, and it builds up that that was the worst day and everything underneath that you can deal with. You can deal with all the shit that as long as it doesn't reach that threshold ever again. My threshold now is so high from that moment when I felt like I wanted to give up on the dream, you know, to sell it all, to get rid of it because it was on top of me. And that bullshit was so much that I know now I can deal with everything.
And on that note, just want to say thank you for coming on the podcast. Again, your honesty is something I hope you never ever lose because I think honesty and that openness and that vulnerability is something that's rare and is healing to a lot of people. So thank you so much, I've thoroughly enjoyed it. All of the links to Dom's social channels and his Everyday Hero fundraiser are all below in the podcast store. You can find them on my Twitter account as well. Do tweet me, do tweet Dom. What's your Twitter, Dom?
@dominicmcgregor.
@dominicmcgregor. Let us know what you thought of the podcast. And I will see you again in Chapter 11. Thank you.
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