The Day My Dream Came True

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Wow. Listen, this is a really great chapter in my diary, so congratulations for choosing this one to tune into. I know for sure you’re going to take away a lot from this because I’ve learned so much over the last couple of weeks. Some of these lessons are things you can only learn after a decade of working hard at one thing. A lot of these learnings are the most fundamental learnings that most entrepreneurs never get.

In fact, only 0.00001% statistically of entrepreneurs will get this particular piece of information firsthand in their life. There’s been some pretty crazy developments in my life, my business Social Chain—the business you’ve listened to me build in this podcast—became a public company last week. What does that mean? It means that you can now buy shares, for a start, so go ahead if you want to.

It means that we can raise money via an IPO and make everything more incredible. It means that we now have a market valuation of over 200 million. As a founder and as a shareholder, you can theoretically now sell your shares. It’s the first time in an entrepreneur’s journey where they become able, at least they have a simple mechanism, to do that. So it’s a massive milestone; it’s huge.

I’m going to talk about the emotions surrounding it for me, what I’ve learned, some of the surprising things that this milestone has taught me and reaffirmed for me about success. I’m also going to get a little bit personal. I’ve not done that on this podcast for a while. I miss being a little bit personal with you. So we’re not just here to talk about going public as a business; we’re here to talk about Steve—the behind the scenes, the things most CEOs and successful people won’t talk to you about.

So without further ado, this is the diary of a CEO. I’m Steven Bartlett. I hope nobody is listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

This is maybe the most significant milestone in my professional career. If we take the calendar back a couple of years, I was a completely broke, parentally disowned dropout with no money, shoplifting Chicago Town pizzas to stop the burning pain in my stomach, living in the worst area in Manchester with literally no qualifications—just a big dream. That’s where I came from. That’s who I was.

Upon the press this week—the Financial Times, the Times, all of the big papers plastering these headlines everywhere—Social Chain now worth 200 million, Social Chain is now a public company. I was tremendously happy for my investors, for my team, for our journey and the process we’ve been on. But fundamentally, nothing has changed. Nothing has changed.

The truth is, if you understand what I went through as a kid and growing up, if you understand that the only reason I would stand there and watch my parents screaming at each other every day was often related to money. If you understand that the only reason I felt inadequate and inferior in school was because I never had the nice Christmas presents or birthday presents, and I couldn’t often afford the nicest shoes or nice bag or nice pencil case.

This was always the gap I was trying to fill in my life. And so you would think in a moment like your company going public and it getting a market valuation of 200 million, all of the world’s jigsaw pieces would beautifully fall into place and you’d feel this sense of euphoria. You don’t. Here’s the thing, and here’s the redeeming factor of all of this—the thing that I never realized until I got to these moments: I was always fulfilled.

I was always content. I was always enough. I really was, even when I was broke living in Moss Side at 18 years old with a big dream. I was enough. I had everything I needed to be happy. But because I’d watched so much misery come from a lack of money as a kid, and because I’d bought into this societal and social media narrative that money would scale your happiness infinitely, I think there was a little bit of anticlimax when I didn’t go much happier than already happy, if that makes sense.

Think about that. Completely broke kid comes from a very normal background. My mom can’t read or write. I remember teaching her how to read and write when I was younger by going through the Bible with her because she loved that book and still does. But yeah, this is how it feels. It feels amazing for my team, for the journey of my business, for the people that believed in us, and for the prospects of our future.

But deep within inside me, nothing has changed. Nothing. Not one thing. I still feel exactly the same. I feel the same as I did when I was 18 and broke. Fortunately, I’ve always felt pretty good. I’ve always felt content. I’ve always felt fulfilled.

Here’s the thing: if you are focused on the wrong thing and if you are believing that that milestone or success or that windfall of cash will change something fundamental to your sense of fulfillment, you’re going to have a wild ride when you get there. Take my word for it. In fact, the anticlimax might destroy you. It might make you feel even more unsatisfied.

So what I learned this week is this: even rich people, even really successful people with "everything" can feel completely miserable and completely unhappy. Even people with the biggest families, the most beautiful wife, the most freedom can feel the most unfulfilled. Conversely, people with nothing, like I was in Moss Side, can feel so overwhelmingly grateful and fulfilled.

Really, it’s not the external factors that are going to move the needle; it’s those internal factors. I walked out of my hotel room that morning that I was staying in Manchester and I started to walk out onto the street. It dawned on me—literally dawned on me—that these were the same cold, dark streets I used to walk through alone at 1:00 AM in the dark of night on my way to my night shift in a call center in Cheetham Hill in Manchester.

I was dreaming about freedom. I was dreaming about the freedom of choice. I was dreaming about the things that I now have. I literally, on my way to work that morning, got emotional. I remember sending a voice note to my business partner letting him know, but I literally felt tears in my eyes because it was the contrast of me versus then that just made this wave of gratitude just run through me.

Sometimes we have to realize that gratitude doesn’t always naturally show up. You have to make gratitude your religion. You actively have to deploy gratitude. You cannot expect to just feel grateful. This is one of the crazy things about the ladder or the staircase of success. If the staircase to success in your life is 100 steps long, you’re not going to feel tremendously grateful when you go from step 72 to step 73.

But if you deploy gratitude and you look down that whole staircase—all 73 steps—you will feel tremendously grateful. You don’t feel grateful day-to-day typically. You have to practice these things like contrast to feel gratitude. This is why when people walk through hospital wards and they see people suffering, they see horrible illnesses, they see families stood by their dying loved ones' beds, they suddenly feel so grateful for their health.

But they didn’t otherwise. They didn’t when they were sat at home. Contrast is an amazing way for all of us to deploy gratitude. You cannot expect it to show up. Practicing gratitude in these moments has made me realize the importance of developing closer, more intense, more passionate relationships with things that really matter in my life, and less of an attachment to things that don’t serve me—to external nonsense, to external people’s opinions, to validation, to Instagram likes.

I called my business partner that morning when the business went public and all these headlines were popping up in the press, and I just did a little bit of a gratitude exercise with him. He’ll tell you this. We went through everything we’re grateful for. It was a moment where we deployed gratitude together. After that phone call with him and after that conversation, I swear to God I had a brilliant day. I felt great.

Gratitude helped me to realize that wealth is freedom of time and freedom of choice. That’s what I managed to get over the last couple of years of hard work, and for that, I am so tremendously, tremendously grateful. Really, my job as a CEO is to make sure as many people as I possibly can get that freedom of time and freedom of choice. Here’s to the next chapter. This is only the beginning and I’m so excited about the journey now.

People have always been surprised by Social Chain. We’ve always been an underdog company, but I think the next move is going to blow people’s socks off. So stay tuned. The next point in my diary just says: "I fantasize about being my true self." And I do. I’ve said in this podcast before that I am myself, and I am myself, but over the past couple of weeks, I think I’ve realized that I’m still very much filtering my true self—my 100% self, my most authentic self.

When you run a company and you have clients and 700 team members around the world, you have to. We’re in the middle of cancel culture—a culture where you are judged purely based on what society considers to be your worst ever action, your greatest divergence from what is politically correct. Social media’s ability to provide rapid global consensus and immediate political correctness checking feedback loop does a wonderful job of keeping us all in line, in check.

Those that dare to step out of line, those brave enough to be themselves, are quite often attacked, vilified, and they are seemingly at risk of losing everything: their credibility, their job, their reputation, their clients, their friends, themselves. But maybe they’re actually finding themselves and losing the person they were pretending to be. That’s why I wrote this in my diary; it’s what I’ve been thinking about this week.

In 2004, they did a study at Louisiana Tech University on hundreds and hundreds of participants, and they were looking at authenticity, life satisfaction, and levels of distress. They took two points in that person’s life that were two months apart. They found that those who showed greater authenticity—those that were their true selves at the first point—were more satisfied and less distressed at the second point.

But distress and satisfaction at the first point did not predict authenticity at the second point. So it does seem that those who are more authentic, those who are able to live a life that is true to themselves, have significantly, significantly greater levels of happiness. Another study, this time done at Tel Aviv University, was pretty mind-blowing, to say the least. They took a big group of people and they randomly assigned them to one of two groups.

The first group were told to think of a time when they were most true to themselves—true to their values, where they weren’t pretending, where they weren’t wearing a mask or playing a role, they were true to themselves. They said what they thought, they felt what they felt, and they were their true, most authentic self. That’s group one. Group two were told to think of the opposite: think of a time when you were most inauthentic, where you abandoned yourself, where you were wearing a mask, pretending, lying, living someone else’s life.

Immediately after doing this, participants completed a test of happiness related specifically to how they were feeling at that exact moment, at that present time. Mind-blowingly, those in the first group—the "true to yourself" group who were simply asked to recall being authentic—were always happier than those in the second group who were asked to recall a time where they were inauthentic.

It just goes to show: just by taking yourself back to a time when you were true to yourself, you can make yourself happier that day. Imagine if you were actually true to yourself every day. Imagine how much happier you would be. It became really apparent in my life a couple of years ago that my happiness and my success and my authenticity—me being my true self—were all correlated.

Even if you think about Bronnie Ware’s study where she interviewed people on their deathbed, the one biggest regret of dying people, the one thing that bugged them the most, was living a life that wasn’t true to themselves. Listen, we are all guilty of pretending. If you haven’t at one point pretended—whether that’s your whole life or faking a laugh in front of a client or a boss after they’ve cracked an unfunny joke—we’ve all pretended.

Whether that’s out of fear, lack of self-awareness, or the desire to be accepted, putting a mask on is sometimes our only choice. Sometimes it helps people. Sometimes when someone you love is going through pain, we have to wear a mask to ease their pain. In the culture we live in, in the era of cancel culture, this is increasingly more common. In fact, so many of us pretend so often, sometimes 24/7, that when I say "your true self," you might not even know who that is anymore.

Your true self is, by definition, the most honest version of who you are. In other words, your true self is the most authentic version of you—all masks, affectations, and pretensions aside. Your true self is you when you’re at your most sincere and carefree. Think about times you spent with people you’re 100% comfortable with, or times when you’ve been completely alone. Those circumstances often reveal your true self.

One of the things I’m most proud of, in fact, is that I’m fundamentally the same person when I’m alone as I am in this podcast, in work, with my friends. But I’m still holding myself back. I know I am. I’m still silencing myself sometimes. I’m still not completely liberated creatively. I’m still playing by the rules more than my heart wants to.

You know that whole thing that’s been buzzing around in social media culture where someone will post something online and they’ll say: "Felt cute, might delete later." The reason we say that is because we’ve said something that felt good in the moment, but upon further scrutiny—whether that’s from external factors or from ourselves based on external factors—we’re going to delete that later and change our mind.

I want to be the type of guy that posts it because it felt cute and then still feel cute later. I’m not talking about selfies here; I’m talking about ideas, I’m talking about creativity, I’m talking about ambitions. I want to do something and not feel the public pressure to change my position later. To address a common misconception about being authentic, it’s not about becoming something. It’s not about showing how confident you are or loudly expressing your most offensive opinions 100% of the time without filters.

Being your true self is not about being an asshole or being an in-your-face type person who enjoys using explicit language, and it’s not about becoming more eccentric. In fact, the truth is, authenticity is not trying to become anything. It is, by definition, about embracing yourself exactly as you are in the present moment. There is no need to chase any ideal authentic self-image that you have. There’s no need to try and become more genuine or more real.

Chasing authenticity only creates more suffering, more despair, more anxiety, more unfulfillment. In fact, chasing—as I’ll touch on in my next point—is really one of the easiest ways to guarantee unhappiness. What you’re doing now is chasing. What I’m doing now is chasing. I’m chasing society’s image of who I should be. Being your true self is about being exactly who you are, whatever that looks like.

It’s about embracing all of the ugliness, the weirdness, and the defects inherent in your nature and unlabeling them as ugliness, weirdness, and defects, and rebranding them as *you*. It is when you stop trying to make your inherent uniqueness fall in line with society’s idea of what normal and acceptable is. Of course, it’s completely impossible to be outwardly authentic 100% of the time. Let’s just be real.

I’m sure your mother-in-law wouldn’t like to know what you secretly think of her. We have to draw the line somewhere in order to survive. Life is a dance of duality: of light and dark, pleasant and unpleasant, work and play, thinking and feeling, truth and lies. Some situations require us to wear a mask, but we must never wear the mask so blindly and for so long that we get lost in the performance and we lose ourselves in the process.

We can still be in touch with our authentic true self even when we’re putting on a show. I guess the key is bringing consciousness of the role you’re playing and why you’re playing it. The problem is if you’ve been pretending for a long time—one year, five years, ten years, your whole life—you will have created an environment, a personal brand, external expectations, a career, and relationships based on someone you are not.

These things will now imprison your true self because deep down you know that if you are able and you start to become your true self all the time, in every way, it’s going to come at the expense of some of these things: at the expense of your friends, at the expense of your job, the approval of your circle that are attached to a false version of you. Because of this, we decide to lay low. The cost of being our true self doesn’t seem to be worth it for the unknown rewards.

But your happiness depends on it. They say it’s better to fail at something you love than to succeed at something you hate. Well, it’s also better to fail while you’re being your true self than it is to succeed while living someone else’s life. So how do you become your true self? This is a tough one. Something I’ve been thinking a lot about. And you know, I’m someone that I genuinely do consider that I’m like 95% of the way there.

The first point, I think, is being clear with who that person is. Who are you? What do you like? Where are you from? What do you dislike? What do you value? How do you feel? What feels natural? What makes your heart feel full? What makes you feel complete? And when you answer these questions, do not factor in what people might think of your answers. This is not easy to do because societal approval is a pretty intrinsic part of all of our decisions without us even knowing it now.

The next thing is you have to stop imitating, conforming, and abandoning that person. On this podcast before, I’ve talked about a moment in my career, in my speaking career, where I was incredibly tired. I was on stage on this panel and I just wanted to go home. For some reason, my mask fell off. That mask of just pleasing people and saying what they wanted to hear. This was maybe a couple of years ago.

And my true self just slipped out and I just said what I thought that day. It was the most successful moment probably in my speaking career up until that point. It was the happiest I’ve ever felt because I was my true self. The impact that my true self had was so much greater than the pretender that was just trying to say what people wanted to hear type guy.

I guess the next point is you have to rebuild your relationship with external validation, with approval, with people-pleasing. You have to come to learn that validation is an inside job. External validation is really just meaningless attention. Sometimes this meaningless attention can make us feel better about ourselves, but that’s still you making you feel better about yourself. Hence, validation is still an inside job.

Align your time with situations that accept your true self and distance yourself from situations that require you to be something or somebody you are not. My next point would be to keep a journal. So important. Pretty much the reason I do this podcast. This allows me to become more self-aware and more understanding about my thoughts, my feelings, my dreams, and what I value. It’s that cathartic self-therapy moment, and that’s what a journal is to you.

There’s some tremendous, undefinable power in journaling, and I think everybody should do it to some degree. I guess the next point is pretty obvious: say what you mean and mean what you say. Not easy in the world we live in now, but so incredibly important. I think it’ll take you further. I think it’ll make you more successful. Next, I’d say, realize that you have to be comfortable with being vulnerable in order to become comfortable with being yourself.

Being more comfortable with vulnerability is so important because there’s such a steep adjustment period when you make changes in your life that bring you closer to who you actually are. In every walk of life, in every facet of life, in every factor, to get from who you are right now—the pretender—to your true self, you have to cross through a dark, cold, lonely, ambiguous place called uncertainty. There’s no teleportation device that will instantly send you there.

It’s a transition process. I guess my last point is that transition: transition slowly. Create a transition roadmap. This sounds crazy, but I think it’s incredibly important. Write down 20 practical things or habits that your true self wants to do, would do, does. Make it a "True Self bucket list." And when you’re confident that one of those things on the list has been achieved, when you’ve stopped conforming and saying yes to everything, tick it off the list and work on the remaining 19.

I genuinely think this will not only make you more successful in your careers, I think it’ll make you more happy and successful as it relates to your fulfillment. There’s probably nothing more important than that. This journey of being a public speaker and running a business and having a public profile, it’s what it’s taught me. I couldn’t say this in any other words. It’s the most important thing.

Most of the direct messages I get and text messages and DMs are from people who are so depressed and unfulfilled because they’ve been playing a role for ten years. They’ve been faking it. They’ve faked it so long and for so deeply that they’ve lost themselves. It’s so important.

The next point in my diary, I’ve just written: "Call off the search." Okay, so this is a very honest tale that I’m going to tell you. There’s this girl that I know, and she’s a good friend of mine, and she has pretty horrific anxiety. I think at the root of a lot of her anxiety is she is in search of something. It got to the point that her anxiety got so bad that I paid for her to have six mental health therapy sessions to better understand why she was feeling what she’s feeling.

Just from my conversations with her, I’ve been writing in my diary things that she’s inadvertently taught me. One of them relates to, I think, all of us, and I think it relates to how we’ve all been conditioned and we are being conditioned. Society has programmed us all to search. Search for something: search for purpose, for your soulmate, for happiness, for whatever. She is someone that is just constantly searching.

I’m just going to read you a little bit of a transcript from a WhatsApp conversation we had. She was explaining her situation to me and why she’s feeling anxious about everything in her life. I said to her: "But I think you’ll have everything you’re looking for when you stop looking. I think that’s one of the curses of our generation. We’re programmed to search for some shit and that drives us nuts. We aren’t meant to be like that."

"That’s society overwhelming your human. And here’s the thing: none of us will ever get there, because *there* doesn’t exist. *There* is where you are right now, but with a healthier mindset, with less unaddressed issues, and with a different perspective." At some point in my life, it dawned on me that if I carried on believing that happiness was around the corner, if it was one million dollars more away, if it was one client away, if happiness was one promotion away...

If it was one more follower away or one more award away, one more hater proved wrong away... if I always believed it was somewhere else, it would never be where I am. Let me say that again: until you give up on the idea that happiness is somewhere in your future, it will never be where you are now. We are all guilty of this. Social media, media generally, and other societal narratives convince us that happiness is at that mountaintop.

It’s at that finish line. It’s at that podium. It’s when your company goes public. It’s when you finally have money. The problem is with this belief set is that life doesn’t actually have a podium. It doesn’t have a finish line. It doesn’t have a mountaintop. It’s a continuous journey of progression and development where one goal immediately merges into the next goal once the last has been accomplished.

If you’re unable to let go of the idea that happiness is around the corner and you’re unable to focus on making yourself happy in this moment, you will never be happy right now. Happiness, just like many things in life, just like validation, is an inside job. But we still spend our lives searching externally for it. How crazy.

Maybe the most world-shattering, mind-bending words anyone ever said to me were the following six words. I literally can tell you where I was sat when someone said this to me. I remember the month, the day of the week, and literally where I was sat. They said to me the following six words: "What if you are already enough?" And this blew my mind because that goes against everything.

We’ve been told to climb. Climb the ladder, to progress, to move forward, to find our purpose, to become, to do more and more and more and more. With this conditioning, our natural state becomes always unsatisfied instead of always content. I think I’ve said that in 20, 30 interviews in my life, that I live in a state of never satisfied.

Maybe the great paradox of life is you have to call off the search to find everything you’re searching for. This is an idea that won’t sit easy with you if you’ve lived in the world I’ve lived in. It can’t possibly. But just think about that: maybe you’re already enough.

Okay, so the next point in my diary is for me pretty mind-blowing, and I hope it is for you too. I’ve just written: "How to become the best in the world at something while being the best in the world at nothing." Here’s the truth: you’ll never become the best at one particular skill. I’ll never be the best in the world at public speaking. I’ll never be the best in the world at violin, right?

But that doesn’t actually matter, because you can still become the best in your industry or the best in your profession or the highest paid just by being in the top 5, 10% at a variety of skills at the same time. This is what they call skill stacking. Let me give you an example. My friend, who I’ve spoken about in this podcast before, is widely considered by many as being the best photographer in the world—there or thereabouts.

He’s certainly one of the highest paid, probably the most well-paid. But when you look at his individual skills—his technical photography, his business acumen, his branding, his marketing—he’s not the best in the world at any of those individual skills. He’s probably an 8 or 9 out of 10 at all of them. In fact, I actually have a friend who I think is a better technical photographer than him.

But unfortunately, that guy is a 4 out of 10 at social media, a 4 out of 10 at branding, and a 3 out of 10 at business acumen. So my other friend has become the best in the world just being an 8 out of 10 at like five things. This is how skill stacking works. It’s easier and more important for you to be in the top 10% in several different skills in your stack than it is to be in the top 1% in any one given skill.

Let’s just run some numbers to prove this. If your city has 1 million people in it, for example, and you belong in the top 10% of six skills, that’s 1 million times 10% times 10% times 10% times 10% times 10%, which equals one. You’re the number one person in your city with those six skills. Bump that up to 10 different skills—not six skills now, 10 different skills—boom, you’re the best in the world at that combination of 10 skills.

Ideally, the skills will be unique skills—skills that are unique to your industry and also complementary. If you want to be the best politician in the world, your skill stack could include public speaking, fundraising, speechwriting, charisma, networking, social media persuasion, and political knowledge. That stack will probably make you president or prime minister.

In discovering and defining and building your own skill stack, consider the combination of skills. Consider the unique skills that people in your industry don’t typically have, because those will provide you with the greatest competitive advantage. Coders—people that sit at computers coding all day—aren’t stereotypically the most extroverted public speakers, for example.

A coder that has those skills would have a tremendous competitive advantage over those that don’t, which is most of them, according to the stereotype. You also want them to be related in some way, but not too similar. For example, if you’re in the top 1% in journalism, also being in the top 1% in writing skills isn’t going to make a big difference. It’s not a huge differentiator.

Most top journalists are also good writers. The most important thing about your skill stack is having skills that not only work together but are also varied and unique enough to make you really stand out. This principle applies across all fields and all industries. We even see it in sports. That football player, that basketball player, or that athlete who is technically miles ahead of everybody...

Technically they’re a 10 out of 10 at that skill, but time and time again, these prodigies—these child prodigies as well—they never seem to reach the same level of success, the same heights as someone who is maybe an 8 out of 10 technically, but an 8 out of 10 work ethic with an 8 out of 10 attitude. The best in the world is never the one considered the best at one skill.

The best in the world is those with the greatest complementary stack of skills. Cristiano Ronaldo, the football player, is a prime example of this. He’s not the fastest player in the world, but he’s fast. He’s not the best striker in the world, but you know, he’s a great striker. He’s not the best headerer of the ball in the world, but he’s in the top 5%. He’s not the hardest working player ever, but he works harder than most.

He hasn’t got the most stamina, but his stamina is great. According to popular opinion, together as a stack, this has made him the best football player in the world. Steve Jobs—at the heart of Steve Jobs' skill stack is a passion for design, be it fonts, packages, or architecture. He was obsessive about the look and feel of products based on his education and his inspirations as a young man.

He was never the best in the design world, but over time, he developed a keen understanding of winning design principles. He later combined his various design skills with his deep insights about people and tech and strategic thinking and salesmanship and his ability to extract everything from his team and his entrepreneurial skills. Together, these skills helped him to form a company that was focused on advancing technology through beautiful design.

That company is Apple, the most valuable company in the world over the last few years. So here’s my conclusion. Here’s my actionable advice—something that I’m going to do this week. I’ll do it in the morning. Write out the skills that you believe will allow you to succeed and write out the skills that you believe will set you apart in your industry.

And then audit yourself. Literally write and rank your skills as a comparison to those within your industry. Once you’ve done your little personal skill stack audit, compare it to the skills that you think you’ll need to become the best. Now focus your development on getting into the top 5, 10% at every one of those skills that you’ve defined as being game-changing within your personal endeavor.

This is maybe how you become the best in the world at your thing—in your industry, at your profession. What’s my skill stack? I can hear someone listening to this podcast wondering that. Here’s what my honest assessment of myself is: I think I’m in the top 10% at public speaking. I think I’m in the top 10% at social media, marketing, branding, storytelling, sales, inspirational leadership.

However, if I really want to become the best in the world at what I do, I need to get better at a few more practical elements of business. I think then, maybe in 5, 10 years' time, I could reasonably say that I’m number one in the world at what I do. This is not to say that there won’t be people better than me at every individual skill because there will be.

There always will be. There’ll be better public speakers. There’ll be better social media experts. There’ll be better marketers. There’ll be better people at branding and storytelling and sales and inspirational leadership. But as a stack, there will likely be nobody better. And I think that will make me the best.

Okay, so the next point in my diary, I’ve literally just written: "How do I spend my time?" I get asked all the time. Every time I do a Q&A, people will ask me: "Steve, how do you spend your time? What do you do? What do you do for fun? What do you do for downtime?" And I’m just going to be completely honest because I think this is really important to be transparent about for all of you entrepreneurs out there that are maybe feeling a little bit lonely.

The truth is I spend a shocking amount of my time on my own. If you knew how much time I spend on my own, you’d probably be pretty mind-blown. I was just thinking before I pressed record on this podcast, I’ve not seen a friend or a colleague or really anybody I know for about two and a half days. That’s pretty crazy, isn’t it?

I’ve not had like a contact with a loved one or a friend for two and a half days in person. I work all the time. I really mean that as well. I work all the fucking time. And it’s one of the tradeoffs of success, I guess, to some degree is that sacrifice. I’m not saying, before everybody piles in on me: "Steve says you have to work really hard and not see your family to be successful." That’s not what I said at all.

I’m saying in my personal situation, in my personal life, one of the sacrifices that I have made is a little bit of that social time. What do I do for downtime? I get massages a lot. I love watching the football. I love watching the UFC and boxing. I get really excited about these things now more than I ever did before, and I think it’s because they give me something to look forward to and really, really be excited about outside of work.

That’s really how I spend my time. Most of my time is spent alone. This whole weekend I was in the office just working through my to-do list. And listen, this might sound sad to people, especially people who hate their jobs. But this is my happiness. Strange, I know. Yeah, that’s all I have to say on this point.

You know, the next point is kind of similar in a respect to a point I made earlier when I was talking about being your true self and the importance of being your true self. And it’s this idea of dealing with uncertainty. One of the things that I’ve come to learn over the last, really over the last I’d say two months, is that the reason why 99% of people that message me and they’re in a bad relationship, they’re in a bad job, they’re in a bad situation, whatever the context might be...

And they know they don’t want to be in this situation anymore but they don’t know what to do. The honest thing, the honest truth is that their enemy, your enemy isn’t ever your current situation. You know, life is going to land you in a bunch of horrible situations irrespective of the chess moves you choose to make.

Your enemy over the long term will become your inability to handle the uncertainty you face by leaving that shitty situation—whether it be a relationship, whether it be a job, whatever it might be. Your enemy isn’t your current situation. Your enemy is your inability and the fear you feel at the prospect of stepping out of that situation into a place called uncertainty.

But to get from your unhappy place to a place where you feel happy, you have to travel via uncertainty. And I genuinely, genuinely believe one of the reasons why I’ve been successful in my life, if you look back over the last 10 years—dropping out of this, dropping out of that, quitting my first startup, doing this, leaving relationships that weren’t great for me...

I genuinely believe the reason why I’ve gotten to success at an earlier age than a lot of people... you know, when people, they called me out on stage when I went up on stage this week and they couldn’t believe I was 27. Running a public company when you’re 27 years old—I’ve heard this over and over again and it’s never, if you know me, you know that I don’t take any of this shit in.

Everything just goes over my head like water off a duck’s back. I’m really bad at understanding external people’s opinions. So when they say: "You are amazing, Steve," water off a duck’s back. When they say: "You’re an asshole," water off a duck’s back. When they say: "We can’t believe you’re 27 years old and you run this public company," water off a duck’s back.

The reason is because I’m inside this life. I’m not looking outside without context. I’ve been there every day. But back to my point, when people say to me: "You’re very young and for what you’re doing," the reason I think I’ve got here early is because I’ve been so good at throwing myself into uncertain situations in order to get away from a shit one. That’s the truth. These are the facts.

School was shit, so I stopped going and got expelled. University was shit after two lectures; I realized that this place was teaching me irrelevant stuff in an irrelevant way and nobody else wanted to be here, so I quit and I threw myself into uncertainty. My first business, Wallpark, I had a dispute with one of the founders and I lost belief and I quit.

And I went from being this tech entrepreneur that was on BBC and everywhere and being applauded to a total nothing in one instantaneous decision. I didn’t really think about uncertainty; I just knew I wanted to get away from the shitty situation I was in. And because of that, I think that I’ve got closer to my happiness, to my success sooner than most people—than those people who just delay.

Than those people that sit in that toxic relationship where you are so miserable and there’s no excitement. In that toxic job where you know you’re not valued and you know you’re going nowhere. I think that rapid decision to rather be in an uncertain situation than a certain miserable situation has changed my life. I think people who are able to handle uncertainty live happier, more successful, and more fulfilling lives.

Until you’re brave enough to take a step into uncertainty, I’m telling you now as a friend that might not know you or maybe, maybe I do know you: nothing will change. I’m going to say that again: until you’re brave enough to take a step into uncertainty, nothing will change and you shouldn’t expect it to. You should probably start, stop complaining about it because change happens when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of making a change. You need to make that change. You need to take that step. That’s all I have to say.

Okay, returning to tradition. In this podcast, I’m going to do something I’ve not done for a couple of weeks—maybe a couple of months, maybe a quarter, maybe six months. I’m going to talk about my relationships. I used to do this when I first started this podcast. I used to tell you about my love life, and then I stopped doing it for a number of reasons—because I broke up with my girlfriend.

But that’s like, you know, we’ve both moved on now. She’s tremendously happy. I know that for sure and I’m super happy for her. I hope I can be friends with her someday. It really, really fills me with joy to see her happy, which is a remarkable thing to say and mean about your ex-girlfriend, right? Like genuinely happy for her happiness. But that’s the truth.

And I met somebody new. And I don’t know what to say. I’m fucking getting a bit nervous now. This is quite strange. I met somebody new. I met someone and they are like a really incredible person. You know, I never thought it would be possible to meet someone who just like ticks so many boxes—is such a good human being fundamentally, someone that makes you better than you were before you met them morally, in terms of your character, that makes you want to be a nicer, better human being.

And you know, like I’ve watched so many TV shows and movies and all this shit and I think I—and also because of, you know, my mom and dad... my mom would scream at my dad for... when I tell people this they don’t believe me. My mom could scream in my dad’s face at full volume for five, six, seven hours in at a time. My mom’s Nigerian. Nigerian women are notoriously quite fiery, shall I say.

And she would scream in my dad’s face for hours and hours and hours. And so growing up as a kid, I always thought relationships meant two people just screaming at each other—specifically the woman screaming at the guy. And this led to the fact that in my adult life, whenever I fell for someone, I would immediately upon them telling me that they like me too, run. I would run away from the situation.

I literally remember this girl called Jasmine in school and the day she told me that she liked me, I felt overwhelmed with fear and anxiety to the point where I tried to dissuade her—after a two-year chase of getting her to like me—to not like me anymore. But I always thought that’s what relationships were. I thought you had to compromise on things like that. I thought you just had to put up with shit. I thought you had to put up with shit, genuinely.

But the person I’ve met now has made me realize that you don’t actually have to put up with that much shit. And really, you shouldn’t have to put up with any shit. Of course, you have to compromise, but you don’t have to put up with shit. And the reason I’m telling you this is because I know there’s a lot of people out there who are struggling to find someone—especially you entrepreneurs out there, you people that are hustling hard at your business.

And here’s the thing: if I can find someone who genuinely makes me feel this way, who makes me feel like things are just like great, you know—content, like real complete... and she’s going to hear this, so I’m trying not to be too soppy because it’ll be really embarrassed. If I can find someone that makes me feel like that, then all of you can too. And I genuinely, genuinely mean that.

There’s hope for all of us. Honestly, honestly, if I can fucking find some... you’ve got no excuse. I am a fucking weirdo, right? I just work all the fucking time. I’m a massive recluse. I’m too deep about everything. I’m in my head. I’m too philosophical. If I can find someone that’ll put up with me and make me feel content, trust me, there’s someone out there for all of us.

And let that be my parting message today. Thank you and goodbye. Okay, I’m back. Thanks for listening to today’s podcast. It’s been an absolute pleasure. I was pretty nervous about talking about a lot of these topics, but there’s always backlash in the real world, right? So every time I do a podcast and I put it out there, I’ll get a message this week from someone saying: "Arg, you shouldn’t have said that."

But as I say, I’m trying to be more of my true self, so I’m going to stop caring so much. I don’t care anyway, but other people seem to. I just need to make sure their care doesn’t impact mine. Do me a massive favor: we are nearly at 1,000 five-star reviews in the podcast store on Apple, and it would mean the world to me. If you’re listening to this on Apple, please just go ahead and give it a five-star review.

We're getting closer and closer to 1,000. And when I get 1,000, I’m going to release a podcast with maybe the most impressive guest I will ever have on this podcast—someone that I think will blow all of your minds. So if you want to get us there together and move closer to the Diary of a CEO with a very special person who I won’t name, then please go ahead and give me five-star review.

And if you haven’t already, as you know, these podcasts are quite infrequent at times, so please just hit that subscribe button and it’ll always pop up in your little notifications list. That’ll mean the world to me. I’ll never ask you for money, so that’s the only thing that I ask of you. If you’ve done that, send me a screenshot, a DM, whatever. And if you’re listening to this podcast, do the same: screenshot it, put it on your story, tag me, and I’ll put it on my story.

Tweet me, let me know what you think. Your feedback is the reason why I still do this bloody podcast because so many of you say that you enjoy it. So anyway, it’s Sunday now. I hope everybody has a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful week this week. Podcast will probably be out on Wednesday as usual—Tuesday, Thursday maybe. And yeah, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you.

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