Relationships, Being An Entrepreneur Is An Illness & Cryptocurrency
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The thing I think about most, especially when I'm on the go but also when I'm sat here in The Diary of a CEO studio, is the Wi-Fi and internet that we have to work with. In fact, anytime I'm filming away from the studio, one of the first things I do when I arrive is open up an app and do a speed test to see how strong the signal is.
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Hello. It’s 2:25 AM here on Sunday night. I’m here in the spare room of my house, and I’m sat staring at scribbles and fairly incoherent lines in my diary. Just for situational context, because I know you can’t see me right now, I record this podcast on a small microphone that plugs into my iPhone.
I record it in the spare room of my house, which has nothing in it—just a sofa bed. I sit on the sofa bed, usually in my boxers. This time, I’m just wearing a towel. I’ll leave you with that visual. And I just start talking around bullet points in my diary. This week is particularly personal, as they all have been, I guess.
But this one is slightly more personal. There’s one topic in particular which made me feel a little bit anxious when I thought about telling you guys. I was in two minds, being completely honest, whether I should share it or not. But again, I reminded myself of the promise that I made to you about full disclosure and about giving you my truth as it is, without exaggeration or simplification at all.
30% more of you listened to chapter two than chapter one, so that’s great growth, I guess. So, I wanted to thank you for that. In some weird way, you are my silent therapist, you’re my confidant, you’re my mute, unresponsive agony aunt. Hopefully, this podcast is allowing some of us to discover and think together. But without further ado, this is chapter three. I’m Steve 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, so this was, being completely honest, one of the toughest, most interesting, and most exciting weeks of my life. Throughout the week, I had several moments of personal epiphany, and it’s been a week full of reflection. I wanted to start where my week ended.
My week ended in a boardroom in London, 15 floors up, looking out above the London Eye and these iconic landmarks in a very, very prestigious building. I was sat around a table with ten 40-plus-year-olds in suits. And there I was, sat in my all-black outfit, my ripped skinny jeans, and my hat.
You guys that know what I look like will know that I always wear a hat—always. That’s a story in itself. You know what? Let's go into that, because I get asked this a lot. For the last three years, I’ve worn a hat every single day. People that work with me, girlfriends, mates, will all say the same thing.
They know the only time I take my hat off in public, being completely honest, is when I go through that airport security section and they make me. And even then, it's a very, very quick exchange. I put it in the basket, I run through, and I put my hat back on.
I’ve been asked why I wear a hat many, many times. So, I’m going to tell you why I wear a hat. Other than the fact that I’ve got bad hair, the reason why I wear a hat is because my life is very, very complicated. The reason why I know why I wear a hat is because I never used to wear a hat until something happened, and that thing was my company.
It’s the same reason why Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs all have one outfit. It’s because as a CEO or as a busy person, you’re constantly trying to limit the amount of decisions you have to make. Before Social Chain, when I used to do my hair every single day, it would take me about 25 minutes to put the wax in my hair, to comb it, and I then had to wait for it to dry and towel it.
All these things were time-consuming. When I started Social Chain, decisions were everywhere, and important decisions were everywhere. So, I stopped caring so much about decisions that didn’t really matter. Now, my wardrobe is 85% black t-shirts, and I have one pair of black jeans, as I’ve said to you guys before.
I just bought a new pair this weekend, actually, so my old ones will be retired. When I wake up in the morning, I go to my wardrobe, I pick a black t-shirt, I pull on my black jeans, and I put on my hat. And then I go to work. I don't want picking an outfit or matching it to factor into that.
I don't really like taking the time to even cut my hair, etc., so my hair tends to grow out quite a lot. The reason why I wear a hat, just to put this to bed, is because I’m trying to limit the decisions that I make. Life is easier just wearing all black. It’s just easier, and it’s quite fashionable as well, I think, to wear all black.
Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh, yeah. Sat in that boardroom. So, sat in this boardroom in London, all these very old, gray people around me. I was reflecting for a second. I had a bit of a moment of personal epiphany where I thought, "How did you get here?" I literally thought that in my head.
We’re sat at this table talking about major strategic business moves. These are 100-million-pound decisions, right? I looked around the table, and I took a little video on my phone because I was like, "You probably want to remember this moment." But how did this little kid from Africa—I guess that’s where I was born originally—get to this boardroom in London?
How did I get to be sat around this table having conversations about hundreds and hundreds of millions of pounds with people that don't look like me, to say the least? And I genuinely thought that. "How did I get here?" As a CEO or entrepreneur, you’re so busy taking one day at a time, one hour at a time, one email at a time, one problem at a time.
You very, very rarely reflect. People are always saying to me, "God, you must be so proud of yourself." And I’m not proud of myself at all. I don’t have time to sit around being proud of myself. I think there’s fear of complacency and there’s so much to do that stops you from ever sitting around and patting yourself on the back.
So, that was a very rare moment where I reflected, only for a couple of seconds. But then when it came to thinking about things I wanted to touch on with you guys today, I wanted to answer that question: "How did I get here?" I wanted to break down the first things that popped into my mind when I answered that question.
The first point I wrote down in my diary is about visualization. Okay, I hate what that book *The Secret* did to the world. Full disclosure, I haven't fully read the book. But when I ask people about that book and what it means, and when I’ve watched YouTube videos from people that have read *The Secret* about visualization, the emphasis seems to be on just saying what you want or just thinking about it instead of action.
For me, the most important thing has always been taking action. So, when I say unspoken visualization is one of the reasons that got me to that boardroom, what I mean is my whole life I’ve known what I want my life to look like. Since I was 16, 17, 18 years old, I knew what I wanted my life to look like.
For you guys that listened to chapter one, you’ll remember some of the things I wrote down that I wanted to achieve before I was 25. When I was 18 years old, it was things like being a millionaire, etc. I always knew what I wanted my life to look like. I never said it; I never woke up in the morning and reiterated that to myself.
It was just a constant focus on who I wanted to be and how I wanted my life to look. So, unspoken visualization, I think, is part of the reason that I was in that boardroom. Because that 18-year-old kid, Steve Bartlett, he knew he would be sat in that boardroom. He didn’t know how; he never knew how.
He thought it would be at first by building a social network. But he definitely knew he’d be sat there. What that then did was make him take certain actions in that direction. And I think that’s the power of visualization, really. It inspires you and reminds you of the decisions you have to take to go in the direction you want to go in.
Let me try and give you an example. If I knew I wanted to be in that boardroom, for the last five years I have made small decisions: not going to X event, not spending my time doing Y, not doing 55 different things in the hope that one might pay off, not traveling the world aimlessly.
I’ve spent the last five years very focused on building me and, in the process, a business. Without that visualization of where I wanted my life to go, then I never would have got there. So, although I hate the book *The Secret*, I think from what I’ve heard, there’s a number of very important elements in there about visualization.
I visualized my way to the boardroom. I never thought I’d say that, because visualization to me is something that is so "ugh"—it’s so disgusting. Like there’s no action involved in just thinking. But the power in visualization is it makes you take actions in a certain direction.
The next thing is goal setting. Did I set goals to get to that boardroom? I didn’t really, no. Being completely honest, and often entrepreneurs will recite their journey and they’ll tell you, "You know what? I planned every step of the way." It’s just not the truth in my case. I didn’t know how I’d get to that boardroom. I knew I’d get there, but I didn’t set goals to get me there.
It’s only more recently that I’ve started to properly set goals. As I said, when I was 18, I set goals about wanting to be a millionaire. Fine. But these weren’t specific goals; this was just an accumulation of money. Now, I set goals and I’ve got very, very clear goals. Goal setting and visualization kind of play hand in hand.
So, if you haven’t got goals and you’re listening to this—you haven’t got 10 goals that you’re 100% clear on when you wake up in the morning—pause this podcast immediately. Don’t resume it until you’ve written down your 10 goals. Over the last couple of years, I’ve started to think more and more about what goals should look like. Should they be financial? Should they be this? Should they be that?
Very, very simple. The thing that I use to set my goals is just a very honest belief that I really, really, really want those things. That’s it. Because if you set goals for other people, or goals that you think you should set, you won’t take the actions you need to. You won’t stay up till 3 AM. You won’t drive with an immense focus in that direction.
Trust me. So, when you come to set your goals, do as I’ve done now and just try and find things that you genuinely really want. One of my good friends, one of my best friends, Alex Ayin—I just had a conversation with him tonight about some of his goals. I won’t share his goals with all of you because I don’t know if I’ve got permission to do so, but he had one goal in particular which is enormous.
It’s something that I admire, such a tremendous, tremendous goal. He offered me, he said to me, "Would you want to team up with me on this goal in achieving it?" And even though it’s something that’s very close to my heart, if it’s not something that I 150% dream about whilst I’m awake and think about every day and visualize and spend all of my time thinking about, I can’t share that goal. So, that’s my second point: setting goals that you really want.
Okay, third thing of how did I get here. I think the third thing that I don't think I’ve talked about before, or I’ve really heard many people talk about before, is about protecting your standard. Here’s the thing: every single person listening to this podcast right now has a standard. They have a standard for the way that they’ll allow people to treat them. They have a standard for the work they do.
Every piece of work you produce, everything you touch, the way you talk to people, your character, everything—you have set your own standard for that. One of the things that I believe has got me to where I am now is I have a very clear idea of what my standard is when it comes to work, and I will protect it.
Even if it means that sometimes I’m not liked and sometimes I ruin people’s days because I message them and I let them know that this doesn’t meet the standard. I believe long-term, people will respect you more because in protecting the standard, you’re also protecting them most of the time. They’re probably in your team and you’re all in this together and you all want to be the best and go to the best places.
As I discovered in my interview with Rankin, one of the world's best photographers, there’s not enough people out there that are just pointing at the elephant in the room. The people that point at the elephant in the room are the ones that cut through, they're the ones that go the furthest and they're the ones that achieve the most.
There are some people who will go through life accepting anything. And then there are a different group of people who will go through life protecting their standard. I’ve gone through the last five years of my life protecting my own standard. Sometimes I found that other people’s standards are higher than mine, which is fantastic in certain disciplines.
So, Jason Fisher, our director of video, his standards for video are much higher than I could ever dream of because that’s his craft and his art. But that’s the other thing I think that’s got me to that boardroom: really, really protecting Steve Bartlett’s standards for work I’ll allow to go past me, things I’ll allow myself to be associated with.
Even down to spelling mistakes. I remember back in the day being a stickler for spelling mistakes on tweets we used to do, the color, the way that the box will fall onto a page—will it fall off the page? Is the line too close to the edge? These kinds of standards, although in the moment they don’t seem to matter, protecting that long-term will change the trajectory of your life. Point to the elephant in the room. I think that’s the thing that I’ve learned the most.
Point number four for how I think I got here, I think, is about going all in and focus. I have sacrificed everything to be in that boardroom. I’ve sacrificed everything for a long, long, long time. I’ve sacrificed fun, nights out. At the very beginning, I sacrificed eating. As you guys know, this is like a broken record.
But I really have to emphasize that going all in for a particular end goal is the fastest and most sure-fire way to get there. And even then, it’s not guaranteed. But I, to sit in that boardroom and have those conversations, I went all in for five years with total focus on one outcome. And that’s why I was in that room.
There’s a lot of people out there that are not focusing. When I first started out as an entrepreneur, one of my investors and mentors said to me when I came to him with an idea—he said, "Steve, you must never ever, ever, ever, ever lose your focus or you will never be anything but everything."
It was a weird thing for him to tell me, but the more I’ve reflected on what he meant, it’s very clear. If you want to be somebody, you have to focus on being that person. It’s so easy to lose sight of what you’re trying to be because of apparent other rewards that are easier to attain. And so you drop the pie while reaching for the apple, as the founder of Boohoo, Mahmoud Kamani, told me one day.
He said, "Never, never, ever drop the pie reaching for the apple." And that’s what I see around me. That’s what I saw in my mom. My mom has been an entrepreneur for 20-odd years and she’s been a failed entrepreneur. I’m not disrespecting her in saying that, but she started 20 to 25 to 30 businesses and none of them have really lasted or been a success.
It’s because she’s a victim of dropping the pie while reaching for the apple. She will start a business; if someone walks in off the street and tells her that there’s a new opportunity which will be more lucrative, my mom would often lose sight of what she’s doing and what she’s building because the rewards weren’t there yet and go after that other thing. And the cycle continues.
So, that focus and going all in on one thing, I believe, has made the difference. It’s also one of the greatest lessons my mom ever taught me without meaning to. When I came to Manchester at 18 years old, it’s a lesson that I would go and tell all my friends about. I had one of my best friends, Logan, he was running three to five businesses at the time.
We had deep conversations in which I referenced my mom and the reason why she never became anything which she could have, because she’s talented enough to be, was because she tried to be everything. So, that focus, despite the presence of results, is vitally important.
Point five is slightly different for how did I get here. It’s, I guess, a desire to live my most awesome life, and that being the most important thing to me. I remember when I was 14 years old, sat on a wall in my hometown, Plymouth, in Devon and Cornwall.
I remember looking down the street—and I think I’ve told this story before—I remember looking at the houses on the street where I grew up and the cars and the people coming out of those houses. As I was doing that, I saw a plane go above me. It was a fairly small chartered plane; it went above my head.
For me, in that moment, it created this almost juxtaposition, this contrast of what I was seeing in front of me, which was very average, right? Very average. And this person I imagined that was going to some exotic place in the world. Before we get into it, this is a very naive mindset. I do not know the happiness of the people in my street.
I am making a very naive presumption and a metaphor for what I’m seeing. I looked around the street and there was a guy who’s got a beaten-up old car with boarded-up side panels. There was a lady coming back from the corner shop, which is a very run-down corner shop where you can get things very, very, very cheap.
I asked myself as a 14-year-old kid: did these people—this guy with this battered car and this woman who had just come from the gambling shop and the local corner shop with a bag full of cheap food—did these people dream of having this life when they were my age? And how do you be the person in the plane, not the person with the battered car?
I’ll never forget it. This isn’t some creation that I’ve made for impact. This happened to me and I sat there and thought about it. It’s funny that I’ve never forgotten. In that moment, I made the decision that I wanted to be that person. The plane to me represented freedom; it represented living your best life.
I remember saying at the time, "If somebody gets to travel around the world and see things and experience whatever they want to experience, then why can’t it be me? Why can’t it be me?" Did the person with the battered car want a battered car when they were my age? I don’t think so.
In that moment, I realized that the decisions that I make could put me in that plane. So, I decided that I wanted to live my most awesome life, as I referred to it. I wanted to see the world, I wanted to do things and experience things at their most extreme: the sadness, the happiness, the fun, the excitement, the exhilaration.
I wanted to experience, I wanted to live. That mindset, I think, is also one of the things that took me to that boardroom.
Lastly, I’ll say the last point on this "how I got there" is very, very simple. It’s a cliché, and I say it all the time, but I think it’s the most important: self-belief. Genuinely believing I can. That is the single—if you can take one thing away from this podcast, it’s the power of just believing you can do something. It is like 99.9% of actually being able to.
I was not qualified at 18 to run a marketing business. I was not qualified at 21 to run a marketing business or the businesses that I run now. I just believed that I could. In believing that I could, I tried. In trying to do so, I learned and I failed, and I learned and I failed, and I learned and I failed.
Those that learn and fail eventually, they *can*. But it all starts with belief. That’s why my favorite quote is: "Those who think they can and those who think they can’t are both usually right." That’s my single most favorite quote because it’s the one that rings truest to me. If you believe you can, even though you can’t right now, the crazy thing is you’ll be able to.
It’s that self-belief that’s taken me to that boardroom. Obviously, I’m not qualified. Obviously, I didn’t go to school to learn about business or marketing or anything that I know now. I just tried because I believed that I could and I believed in myself. And that is the most important thing.
Next in my diary, I’ve written "Internal Locus of Control." I guess this kind of attaches to the points I’ve just been making. My whole life I’ve had an internal locus of control. This is very closely linked to self-belief, I guess. I’ve believed that what happens to me and my destination is a direct result of my actions.
That seems like a fairly obvious thing to make, but I think most people don’t actually have an internal locus of control. Don’t want to bring my mom into it again, but I’m going to. My mom is incredibly religious. When she got her seven businesses and properties repossessed by NatWest just after the financial crisis, she blamed God, she blamed other people doing her wrong, she blamed X, Y, Z.
She’s always done that. She’s always blamed other people for her failed businesses. So, what happens next time is she fails again and blames someone else again. I see this everywhere. I see this everywhere I look. Casey Neistat—although he’s an incredibly successful entrepreneur—he’s kind of violated my rules of internal locus of control this week.
He made a YouTube video complaining about YouTube reducing the amount of money he’s making from the platform. Honestly—and this is quite a contentious thing to say—but I watch that video and I just think, "Well, then go do something else." You don’t have to do YouTube. I don’t like the complaining about external factors hindering your ability to succeed.
If you don’t like the rules of YouTube, go and make your money some other place. I see this everywhere. I see the same thing happen every time there’s a political transfer of power, and the Labor party comes in or the Conservatives come in, and everyone starts feeling as if that now means their life is over.
I see that from about 75% of people who will believe that external factors are the biggest influence over where they end up, like my mom did. My message to everybody, and my message to myself, has always been: it doesn’t matter what situation you’re put in. It doesn’t matter about God or religion, it doesn’t matter about the government, doesn’t matter if Facebook changes tomorrow.
Because the single most powerful thing, something that’s more powerful than all of these things, is me and my actions and the steps that I can take and the belief I have in myself overcoming. So, it doesn’t matter. Get rid of all social networks tomorrow, I’ll be fine. My team will be fine. We’ll be fine.
Because the power is inside us. The power isn’t controlled by a puppet master that’s dictating my life. So, adopting that internal locus of control, although easier said than done, I think it’s very, very important.
Next point, this is a fairly contentious one, is about relationships. I think in the last chapter and the first chapter, I’ve been very negative about relationships—my own experiences with relationships, my ability to hold a decent relationship, etc. This week, I—God, this is kind of tough to talk about.
I was having a conversation with a girl that I know, and she’s talking about wanting to leave her relationship and be single. It got me thinking about how we’re very, very, very easy to always think the grass is greener on the other side. When I was in a relationship—this is going to hit some of you like a bombshell—when I was in a relationship, I really wanted to be single.
And now I’m single, weirdly, I want to be in a relationship. I don’t even understand why I want to be in a relationship again. So, I’ve got this friend who’s desperate to leave their relationship. I’m telling them, "Listen, the grass always seems to be greener on the other side." It’s a cliché, but a cliché just means that a lot of people agree with the expression.
Suddenly I want to be back in a relationship again. Can you believe it? I don’t even know why. Even weirder than that—and this is going to cause all kinds of problems—I think I’m missing my ex. The crazy thing is, she told me I would. This is the ex that I was with for over a year.
Yeah, it’s weird. I don’t know what it is. I went into this point knowing that I would not know what to say. But I just—and do you know what I’m trying to figure out? I’m trying to figure out if I’m deluding myself. I know I’m so good at that. We’re all so good at that. We’re so good at convincing ourselves that we want something that an hour ago we didn’t actually value that much.
But until we don’t have it, we want it more. So, I’m conscious of not just wanting my ex-girlfriend back because I don’t have her anymore. Do you know what I mean? Because in that moment, I was sure I didn’t want it. So, it’s this battle I’m having in my head. It got me thinking, less about my personal situation, but just generally about the psychology of relationships and wanting things you can’t have.
Then when you lose them, you forget why you didn’t want them and you glorify them in your head. How many of you guys have broken up with an ex-partner and then managed to convince yourself that they weren’t actually that bad or that they were good? You managed to forget all the bad times and all the things that made you break up with them, and then a couple of months later you just kind of want them back again.
I think that’s the cycle I’m going through. But I know myself well enough to know that this is just a period of delusion in my head because I’ve done this before. In the instances where I got that person back, let’s say, I re-remembered why me and them weren’t compatible. So, yeah. Tough one. I want a girlfriend again, apparently. At least that’s what my head’s telling me. Interesting. But for right now, I’m completely single.
Okay, next point in my diary. I’ve just written "Be more time-conscious." This is what I mean: it’s my opinion that all of us—every single person listening to this now, including myself—our lives are defined by how we spend our time. That’s the only thing we have to spend, right? We all have this period of time, some of us shorter than others, some of us longer.
But in order to achieve all of our results, what we’re doing is we’re exchanging that time for something. It really got me thinking about how I could make my exchange for time more lucrative or a greater return on the investment. So, I looked at my diary this week. I looked at all the meetings that I have or the conversations or the phone calls I have that I don’t think are going to exchange a good return, and I canceled them.
I’m going to continue to adopt that approach. I’m going to half all of my meetings, and I’m going to cancel any—or just not book them in the first place—that I don’t think are going to return a great investment on time. I think if you use your time—if you make your meetings half the length and you take half the meetings—then you can potentially get a 200% better return on your life, basically, the use of your time.
Long-term, you can only imagine the impact that’ll have. So, that’s one of the missions I’m on at the moment: really, really being time-conscious and looking at my time like money. My time is more important than money. Money you can spend, you can go and make more of it. Can’t make more time. I only have a certain amount, and then I’m going to die. I think a lot of us use our time very, very inefficiently. It’s time to be efficient and more time-saving.
Okay, next point in my diary is my ambitions. There are two points underneath this, which is fulfillment and what do I want to achieve.
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So, I’ll touch on fulfillment first. Where do I get my fulfillment from? Long-term, where am I going to get my fulfillment from in my life? I don’t know. I really don’t know. Again, I wrote this point not sure as to what I would say. Where do I get my fulfillment from?
In the last two chapters, I talked to you about how I used to think that I just wanted stuff. I used to think my fulfillment would come from that Lamborghini and that mansion and all those things. I realized that it didn’t. So, where is my fulfillment coming from long-term? What do I want my life to look like when I’m 60 years old? What do I want to have accomplished?
I think the thing that we all get fulfillment from as part of the human condition is helping other people. I think that’s much of where I’ll get my fulfillment from in my life. I think saving lives, doing great work, stopping injustice around the world is the next phase of my personal fulfillment.
Whether that comes from charitable work or the work we’re doing now. We have immense reach and power at Social Chain. I think that much of my future fulfillment is going to come from using that power to change the world and influence the world for causes, for things I believe in, to take away pain and suffering.
I think that’s probably the next evolution of Social Chain. One of the absolute "gods" of Social Chain, Bethany Trandle—she came to me last week and said, "Steve, I’ve got this really cool idea." She’s very philanthropic already and she’s giving so much back to the world. She’s the girl I told you about that organized all the shoeboxes to send to Gambia for the kids.
She said, "I want to start Social Change." I said, "Listen, Beth, you’ve got my full support. Anything I can do to help this happen, please let me know." Then the day after, she sent me a logo for Social Change, which was the most awesome thing I’d ever seen. I think that’s part of Social Chain’s next journey: being more philanthropic and using our power and our smarts to help the world.
So, I think that’s where my fulfillment comes from. This is a moving idea. Next week it might come from my dog, Pablo, who knows? Next question I get asked all the time is: "What do I want to achieve?" Again, I don’t know. I get asked this on all the stages I go on, I get asked it by everybody. YouTube comments, Twitter: "What’s the end game? What do you want to achieve?"
I don’t know. And I’m completely fine with that. I don’t think we all need to have it all figured out. I don't have enough information to have it all figured out. I’ve not really seen the whole world, I’ve not experienced everything. So, I’m okay with not knowing what I want to achieve in my life. I know what I want my life to look like in terms of impact, but that’s all I know.
I think it’s about time we all start being okay with that and stop focusing so much on having a perfectly scripted answer to the question "Where do you want to go or what do you want to achieve?" I also think people that aren't romantic about where they’re going to end up are more agile and are more able to capitalize on opportunities as they arise.
So, I don’t know what I want to achieve. I know I want to have a massive impact on the world, and I know I want to be great. About four years ago, I was very clear in my mind the distinction between good and great. I’ve decided that I want to be great. Good is—let me give you an example of who I think good is. Good is Graham Norton, right? TV show host, successful, good career.
I don’t know why Graham Norton came to mind, but he’s good. Great is Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey—that caliber of person. I want to be great. That’s how much I know. But doing what? We’ll figure it out along the way.
Next point, just before I end on a little bit of investment advice, which is my last point. I wrote "Being an entrepreneur is a sickness." This is a bit of a contentious topic. But when I look at my life and I look at it compared to other people’s lives, I generally think I must have some kind of sickness.
All of my downtime is spent thinking about business and ideas and obsessing over these things. It makes me a very, as I said in chapter one, it makes me a very unsociable person. I live my whole life in my own little head thinking of my own little things. I’m willing to sacrifice everything. At 18 years old, I didn’t want to go out and talk to people; I just wanted to build business.
It feels like a bit of a sickness. I’m also incredibly addicted to bullshit and to the anxiousness and the pain and the struggle and the problems and the issues. I found that I’m actually addicted to it. It makes me feel alive. Having challenges and problems to solve makes me feel alive, which is bizarre.
So, in a weird way, although entrepreneurship has been glamorized and it leads this group of people into it thinking that it’s a rockstar lifestyle with money and fame and riches and all these things—really, entrepreneurship is a bit of a sickness. It’s a sickness that a few people have caught. And once you catch it, you can’t un-catch it.
It changes everything about your life. That level of focus I talked about in one of the earlier points makes you not want to do anything else ever other than work on your business. Because that’s a very unique perspective and it is a sickness, I think, in some ways, it becomes hard to form relationships.
Entrepreneurship—because it’s been so glamorized, I’m on a bit of a mission to tear that down and really give you an idea of what it really, really means. Because even though some of you will listen to this and you’ll consider yourselves entrepreneurs or business people, there’s another level. Some of you might be at that level. But there’s another level where everything you do is totally consumed by business and your mission. Socializing and social times are an afterthought. That’s the level I’m at.
Lastly, the last point I wanted to leave on just before I pop off to bed—because it is now Monday at 3:03 AM—is about investing my money. Over the last couple of months, I’ve got really, really into this thing called cryptocurrencies, which is Bitcoin and all these what they call alt-coins. For any of you that don’t know, Bitcoin is essentially a store of value just like gold, but it’s also a cryptocurrency.
I really, really believe that Bitcoin is going to change finance, currencies, and the world. Specifically, the technology behind it called blockchain. So, really, all I wanted to do is to tell you guys and you girls that are listening to this now, that if there’s one thing for you to just take a look at—read a book on, watch a YouTube video on—let it be cryptocurrencies and particularly Bitcoin.
Just educate yourself on it because information is power. A lot of you would have heard the term "Bitcoin" and just kind of let it pass you by and move past you. But there are huge opportunities created. Even from investing three months ago, I’ve made a tremendous return on my Bitcoin investment. And you don’t even have to invest.
There’s technology behind Bitcoin—blockchain—which I believe is going to change most aspects of most of the world, not just currency and finance. So, check it out. Just wanted to leave you with that tip because for you guys that do check it out, I really think there’ll be interesting returns for you. And I’m honestly quite obsessed with it at the moment. I don’t think there’s a documentary I’ve not watched about cryptocurrencies.
Anyway, that is the end of chapter three. Again, I always finish these chapters happier and with a metaphorical weight lifted off my shoulder and feeling ready and focused for the next week. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for your attention. Thank you for your tweets. Thank you for all your messages.
Please do leave a review on the podcast. That’d be super helpful for me. It helps it move up the podcast ranking, which keeps me fired up and motivated, and motivates my whole team as well. Do let me know by tweeting me @stevebartlettsc if there’s anything you’d like me to do differently, any ideas or anything at all.
I just wanted to give you another big thank you because I appreciate you guys so much. I will see you next Sunday for chapter four of The Diary of a CEO. Thank you.
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