The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett XX
[0] Hello again.
[1] It's great to be back.
[2] Last week on the podcast, we delved into Dom's incredibly inspiring diary.
[3] The feedback from that chapter has been tremendous.
[4] And I think I speak for Dom when I say we've both been pleasantly overwhelmed by the amount of tweets, direct messages and posts we've both received.
[5] Following that chapter, many people approached Dom and shared their own personal battles with him.
[6] And I guess that's part of the beauty of this format because honesty begets honesty.
[7] And we live in a world where that raw honesty is so rare, where everybody is sharing their best life and the edited, filtered, highlight reel of their life.
[8] And this podcast will never, ever be about big names.
[9] And we might have big names on and we've got a few coming on, but that's not the point.
[10] The podcast is about big stories told honestly.
[11] And this week we're reopening my diary and I'm going to apologise in advance because I've not processed most of the scribbles in front of me. So if I stumble, it's because I'm working these things out for myself as I go.
[12] Because as you know, there's no scriptor here.
[13] There's no writer.
[14] It's just me, myself and my thoughts.
[15] In the next chapter, the one after this, I've got another incredible guest coming on who a lot of you will actually know.
[16] And this guest is guaranteed to take us on a journey that we've not been on yet.
[17] I cannot wait to share that with you.
[18] Lastly, I've been repeatedly asked this week where and how I record the podcast.
[19] And just to give you a bit of context, it's currently 3am here in my house in Manchester.
[20] I record the podcast from my phone, using a mic that just plugs into my phone.
[21] I'm sat in my boxes, in my laundry cupboard, with the lights off, under the stairs.
[22] It doesn't get much more real than that, okay?
[23] But without further ado, this is Chapter 11, and I'm Steve Bartlett.
[24] This is the diary of a CEO.
[25] I hope nobody is listening, but if you are, then please.
[26] please keep this to yourself.
[27] Personality defines you.
[28] Okay, so this point in my diary was a real, real revelation.
[29] And this point is for anybody that's looking to someday start a business, someone that's currently within a business, or someone who has started their own business.
[30] This was a conversation I had with a really good friend.
[31] And it allowed me to sort of diagnose why social chain as a business has been successful.
[32] For context, for any of you that don't know the business I run, I run a company called Social Chain Group, and it's a group of companies.
[33] There's now 200 members of staff, and that's grown from zero to 200 in the space of about three years.
[34] We have five offices around the world.
[35] We work with the world's biggest brands, everybody from Apple to Coca -Cola, you name it, right?
[36] We're super, super young.
[37] When we started, we had virtually no experience in this agency world.
[38] And so I've tried to define and diagnose how we manage to do that in an industry that is incredibly, incredibly competitive.
[39] And I was sat with a friend who runs a different type of agency business in the same city.
[40] And we were discussing this.
[41] And here's what I figured out.
[42] So his business is, it's not in the marketing world, it's in a slightly different arena.
[43] And mine is in the marketing world.
[44] And I was sat with him making the point that the personality of your business, is what will make you stand out.
[45] And I said from day one, social chain has been the guy in the pub dancing on the table.
[46] And here's what I mean.
[47] When you walk into the pub, you look over, you see someone that's dancing on the table.
[48] Everybody else has sat down and there's that one person dancing on the table.
[49] The pub represents the industry, right?
[50] The people that are sat down, sipping their drink, looking at the person dancing on the table, judging them are the ones that never get noticed.
[51] right?
[52] The person dancing on the table gets noticed.
[53] And what tends to happen is the person gets on the table and starts dancing.
[54] 50 % of the pub absolutely hate him.
[55] They hate him partly because they envy his confidence for being able to get on the table.
[56] They hate him because he's different.
[57] And in life, people will always hate you when you take a different route.
[58] The other 50 % of the pub love him.
[59] They applaud him.
[60] They follow him.
[61] And eventually they're all on the pub.
[62] all of them dancing.
[63] And when they get home, they tell all of their friends that they saw someone in the pub dancing on the table.
[64] Social chain has always been the person in our industry dancing on the table.
[65] When we started out, we had unbelievable hate because we were doing things differently.
[66] Unbelievable hate to the point where members of our team would cry when we logged into Twitter because BuzzFeed and the major sort of papers were doing these hit jobs on us, right?
[67] Because we were just doing things completely differently and we really didn't care.
[68] we were dancing on the table.
[69] The other 50 % of the tweets, which is naturally the ones that you ignore, because we all only see the hate, were people praising us.
[70] They were applauding us, saying we were geniuses.
[71] But because we were the object of contention, because we were the one on the table, over time, we were the ones that accelerated out of our industry.
[72] We were the ones that drove the most attention, picked up the most business, won the most awards, and became the most notorious for what we stood for.
[73] So taking you back to my conversation with my friend, sat in the hot tub with him.
[74] I said to him, tell me three things you think of when you think of social chain.
[75] And he said, you do things differently.
[76] You're always first to do things.
[77] And you always do things fearlessly, which are sort of three of our key values.
[78] And he asked me then to ask him the same question in return.
[79] And all I could think of was, you make nice designs.
[80] I couldn't think of two other things because his agency didn't have a personality.
[81] His business doesn't have that personality as such that, you know, ours had in the early days which made ours break out.
[82] So if you're operating in a saturated industry, a pub full of people and you're just stood in the corner sipping your drink, no one's ever going to know you're there.
[83] You're never going to break out.
[84] So if you run an agent, agency business or really any type of business, your personality will define you.
[85] And funnily enough, my advice to that friend was that he should, next time he receives a budget from a big, a charity, let's say, take the budget, give all of the money away, right?
[86] Give the £10 ,000 away to charity.
[87] And then put up a landing page, for example, that says, we gave all the money away to charity to make this website, da -da -da -da -da, come up with some creative concept around that, and then make a 60 -second video explaining what you did.
[88] Push that out on social media.
[89] If you do that once a month, you're going to tell the world why you're different.
[90] You're going to show the world your personality, and it won't take long for people to think, oh, you know, that's that agency, they do things that way.
[91] That's what they're known for.
[92] They're notorious.
[93] Funnily enough, Drake this week did exactly that.
[94] He took a million pound budget he was given from his, um, record label to make a music video.
[95] He gave it away and filmed himself giving it away.
[96] And I, so this week I messaged my friend and anybody that thinks I'm lying about this, everyone around me knows this story now because I've told them, right?
[97] And there's many a screenshot, et cetera, et cetera, but I don't really care.
[98] Drake went and did that this week and he broke the internet because Drake did things differently and Drake was able to therefore define his own personality.
[99] Interestingly enough, a couple of days after having that conversation with my friend, I met a different person who knows both me and him.
[100] And I asked that person the exact same question.
[101] I said, name three things you think of when you think of social chain.
[102] He said the exact same three things my friend said.
[103] And I honestly got goosebumps because it just struck me how clear and defined our personality in the industry we operate is in.
[104] And that's the reason why we're here.
[105] And so my job is to protect, you know, our business's personality and make sure it's notorious, it's defined, and it's clear.
[106] Interestingly, again, I asked my friend, when we were sat at this restaurant, this is my second friend now, to explain what he thought of my friend's agency business.
[107] And he literally said the same thing.
[108] He said, they make really cool, clean, black and white design.
[109] And he couldn't think of anything else.
[110] And in that moment, I was converted.
[111] I was convinced that.
[112] in a saturated market where there are so many people who are reporting to be able to do a very similar thing and the barrier to entry is really just owning a laptop you will be defined by your business's personality and also sort of linking to that your business's personality will then define your culture and your culture will define your work and your work will define your success personality defines you the next point in my diary is something I've put off for my whole life.
[113] I've written in my diary personal organisation epiphany.
[114] I've been unorganised my whole life, right?
[115] And when I reflect on my life, personal organisation has cost me tremendously.
[116] And your organisation is a habit.
[117] And I've told myself for the last couple of years that I don't have time to be organised.
[118] And what I realised this week is The reason why I don't have time to be organized is because I'm unorganized.
[119] It's as simple as that.
[120] I have, over the last couple of years, put people in place around me to help deal with my total lack of organisation.
[121] So I've got a personal assistant.
[122] I've got a cleaner that sort of keeps my house tied in things like that.
[123] But the problem is that sort of mentality towards life of being unorganized and leaving mess behind you and not sorting things out is really.
[124] really, really sort of destructive.
[125] I looked in my bag earlier on this week, and it's just this duffel bag full of wires and receipts and cords and a scratch card.
[126] I can't remember doing a scratch card.
[127] There's a sock in there.
[128] It's a total, total mess.
[129] And when I think about the organization of my life, if it wasn't for these people around me, my life would look exactly like this messy, tangled up duffel bag.
[130] And nobody can tell me that I would operate better with this sort of tangled wire state of mind and this tangled wire life.
[131] And so this week, I finally tried to confront it.
[132] I'd heard for years and years and years that some of the most effective people are those that make their bed in the morning.
[133] So upon waking up this week, I made my bed every single day and I'm continuing to do so and I keep my room completely clean, not because I have to, because my cleaner will come anyway, but because I think that will be the sort of, that's, you start as you mean to go on.
[134] And if I make my bed, hopefully I'll continue that attitude throughout the day.
[135] And it really is a habit that I'm trying to break that I've always had.
[136] I reflect on my life since being in school.
[137] And I, and I try and calculate how much my lack of organisation has probably cost me. Benjamin Franklin said, which I, which I'll always remember, for every minute spent organizing, an hour is earned.
[138] And I kind of crunched the numbers in my diary this week.
[139] I imagine I lose about two hours a day being unorganized.
[140] And you might think that sounds like a lot, but I completely believe it.
[141] Because if you're not organized, that has a knock on effect to how you start the day.
[142] You miss meetings, which you have to reschedule.
[143] You overlap on meetings.
[144] If you've not done the work for those sort of situations, you then get into bed probably at a really bad time, which again causes a knock on effect.
[145] So I believe that I'm probably losing about two hours a day being unorganized.
[146] That is 730 hours a year.
[147] And in the last sort of 15 years since I've been at school, that's 11 ,000 hours I've lost since I've been at school, which is almost a year and a half of time that I've lost, right?
[148] And think about what you can do in a year and a half.
[149] I've lost a year and a half because I've, in the short term, just thought, okay, leaving that there or not sorting that out now or letting that be a mess is fine.
[150] But you don't see that compounding force over time, right?
[151] So it's not just about the amount of hours you've lost.
[152] It's the way that that could have compounded in your favour had you been more organised.
[153] So all being organised for me is a very, very serious thing now.
[154] And I'm really making an active effort to be more organised.
[155] And that starts with small things.
[156] It starts with, you know, doing the bed in the morning, getting up out of bed, having a shower, brushing your teeth, having your breakfast, going to the gym, taking the dog for a walk, all these things, right?
[157] And funnily, they're all weirdly connected.
[158] When I do my, when I make my bed in the morning, my routine then seems to happen.
[159] So I'll go and I'll brush my teeth and I'll have a shower and I'll iron my clothes and I'll have my breakfast, I'll go to the gym.
[160] And it all starts with me doing my bed, which is bizarre.
[161] I can't actually figure out how this has happened, but every day I've done my bed, I've then followed my routine.
[162] Historically, because I've been in rushes and I've forgotten stuff and I've been in hotel rooms, I would have forgotten my toothbrush, which meant that I didn't brush my teeth, right?
[163] I go into the day I'd try and brush my teeth at lunchtime.
[164] But the problem is, if I forget at lunchtime, then my teeth go a day unbrushed.
[165] And I'm just going to be completely honest, right?
[166] It's not the nicest thing to hear.
[167] But if I go for a day with my teeth unbrushed, again, over time, that causes me other problems.
[168] That means that I have to go to the dentist.
[169] and I lose more time there and I lose more money there.
[170] And if I think about the cost in money terms that I've probably wasted, I imagine with the lifestyle I have now, a lack of organisation probably costs me minimum £30 a day, right?
[171] And that is forgetting my rail card, right?
[172] Because my bag was a mess and I didn't move it into my work bag.
[173] That is losing something, right?
[174] Losing my hats, right?
[175] And you guys know that I wear hats all the time.
[176] So in the last three years, if I've lost 30 pounds a day, I've probably lost about 30 to 40 ,000 pounds.
[177] Organization isn't a joke.
[178] Organization is required, if you want to be your most effective, and I've spent so much time trying to optimize my time, and the secret that I found to really optimizing my time and maximizing who I am starts with making my bed in the morning.
[179] I challenge you to try it, and it's incredibly funny how your whole day seems to fall into place if you make your bed.
[180] So yeah, personal organisation is not a joke.
[181] The next point in my diary is a bit of a curveball to the sort of stereotypical, motivational, inspirational message you'll probably get.
[182] And I've just written, work really hard, want it so badly, and fail anyway.
[183] In popular culture, a lot of the sort of like Instagram motivation, Twitter motivation, Motivation Monday stuff says work hard, you know, want it badly and you'll get there.
[184] You just got to stick at it.
[185] That is not the truth.
[186] You can work really, really hardly.
[187] You can want it more than anybody on the face of the planet wants it and you will fail anyway.
[188] I did.
[189] In my first business, I failed.
[190] I started businesses when I was 14 years old and they failed too.
[191] and I tell you, I really, really, really wanted it.
[192] Reason, having a reason does get results.
[193] And it tends to be the case that those that have the strongest reason do stand the best chance of getting the results.
[194] But it doesn't necessarily guarantee it.
[195] You know, I know a kid that really, really, really wants to be an entrepreneur.
[196] He really wants to be a CEO.
[197] He's got these big ambitions.
[198] He wants to invent this product and take it to the world.
[199] but having a sort of a bit of an idea of what that might take in terms of skills to persuade and to pitch to investors and to build a team and all these kinds of things, I'm going to be completely honest because that's what this podcast is about.
[200] This kid doesn't have it.
[201] He just doesn't have it.
[202] And it becomes, it's a struggle for me because this kid has listened to all of my content.
[203] He listens to the podcast.
[204] He listens to everything I put out there.
[205] And he's kind of misconstrued it to.
[206] mean that if you just try hard enough and you want it bad enough, you can get it.
[207] The problem is, fundamentally, this kid has a few sort of personality disorders and he struggled in a few areas.
[208] He's unable to speak to people.
[209] He's unable to solve problems pragmatically and logically.
[210] And so he's going full steam ahead into a business which he doesn't quite have the experience or the capabilities yet to um to take on he's trying to take on one of the biggest brands in the world um he lives at home with his parents he's got no money um he's he's not got the ability to get money he's um and you see the picture i'm trying to create and i don't want to be a hypocrite because i was that kid right i was an 18 year old kid who really believed in myself who really wanted it who had no money who had bailiff letters piled up on his dad who was shoplifting food to feed myself.
[211] So when I think about the sort of our circumstances, if you looked at them on paper, we were very similar people.
[212] But I had some natural talent, right?
[213] I had a bit of experience when it came to organizing things and building events and raising, you know, raising interest for things and pitching and telling stories.
[214] Since I was seven years old, I was organizing my peers and I was a leader, right?
[215] So how do I possibly tell this other kid who on paper looks very similar to me that he shouldn't do what I did?
[216] Because I genuinely, at the very core of me, believe that he shouldn't.
[217] I genuinely believe that.
[218] I know him.
[219] I've met him.
[220] He's shown up at my office at 4 .5 a .m. in the morning.
[221] I've met him.
[222] He's done this multiple times, right?
[223] He is not ready to be doing that, right?
[224] And I often say to young entrepreneurs, do it and fail and learn.
[225] But he's not even ready for that.
[226] He's not ready to fail and learn, right?
[227] And so I wrote some notes in my diary this week to try and help myself understand how to address this situation.
[228] When my message tends to be try it, fail, learn and you won't regret it.
[229] How on earth do I then say to someone who knows my story, actually don't try just yet go and get some experience don't try and be Steve Jobs today you're not there yet and the funny thing is when I told this kid that he interestingly did again what I had advised which is he ignored my opinion and that's what I tell people to do right I tell them to make it's your life it's your choice it's going to be your regret so you get to make the choice and I was trapped in the sort of of like Frankensteinian world that I created and I think, fuck, what have I done?
[230] I hope I never ever convey the message that entrepreneurship and these kinds of things are for everybody because they simply are not for everybody.
[231] Everybody has their thing, which will make them their most happiest and deliver them their most fulfillment.
[232] And of course the journey is part of that.
[233] But also, I don't want you to undergo tremendous negative stress trying to take on Steve Jobs and Apple when you're unable to hold a conversation with another human being.
[234] Do you know what I mean?
[235] And what I've sort of realized is that if you really, really want it, naturally, that creates drive and the drive will be there.
[236] And then if you have the drive, it comes down to you having the persistence, right?
[237] And persistence is a combination of patience and determination, which is kind of the fuel, right?
[238] It keeps you going, the fuel.
[239] And the amount of fuel you have dictates the distance you'll be able to go, go through the assault course, which is the journey.
[240] As you heard from Dom's diary, the journey of making yourself a successful person or achieving your ambitions is a long, undetermined, like, undetermined length assault course, right?
[241] And if you have enough fuel, because of the persistence and the determination, which derive from the drive, which derives from the passion, you'll get through the assault course.
[242] However, your natural ability, and in this kid's case, He doesn't have the natural ability.
[243] And when I say ability, I mean talent and experience, will determine how long your assault course is.
[244] Because some people will have to learn more, more skills, and have to go through more to get there, right?
[245] And unfortunately, some people have to go further.
[246] So they require more fuel than others.
[247] And it often gets to a point where I'm the most unrealistic person you'll ever meet.
[248] I provide myself on being unrealistic.
[249] It's in my fucking Twitter bio that I'm unrealistic.
[250] But I'm not delusional, okay?
[251] These are two different things.
[252] And if your assault course is a million miles long and you don't have the fuel to go a million miles, then don't run the assault course.
[253] Don't run the assault course.
[254] Do a different assault course that is at least somewhat perceived to be achievable because you will hurt yourself, you'll waste your life in trying to do so.
[255] devil's advocate to myself, right?
[256] The upside of running an assault course you think you can achieve is you'll learn more from doing so than anything else in your life.
[257] By trying and running into that assault course, it is somewhat achievable to you, and getting to the end and failing, you'll learn a shitload.
[258] But running one mile of a million mile assault course won't teach you much.
[259] Okay, I think I've got that off my chest.
[260] I'm literally hot and flustered by sharing that with you, but it's just something that I've really battled with because, yeah, it's something that I've not really had a huge amount of time to think through.
[261] This is a quick fine note in my diary.
[262] I've just written three words, right?
[263] And there are three different things.
[264] I think all of us should do everything we can in our power to stay away from.
[265] The first one is caution.
[266] From my own experiences, people with caution live unfulfilled lives.
[267] And I, I've just embraced from a, you know, a very, very early age that very, very little is going to kill me other than life, right?
[268] So we're all going to die anyway.
[269] The greatest danger that we all fear is going to be realized anyway.
[270] I promise you that.
[271] None of us get out alive.
[272] So practicing caution in this thing called life is literally the most stupid thing you can do.
[273] It is the biggest risk.
[274] You sometimes think about, you know, taking the path less traveled or doing things that other people haven't as being the risk.
[275] No, the risk is going through this life with caution.
[276] There is nothing, nothing that is going to deliver you more guaranteed regret than being cautious.
[277] The next thing is about being pessimistic.
[278] We all know those people that try to find what's wrong instead of trying to find what's right.
[279] They look out the window at a sunset and all they see is a dirty window.
[280] right?
[281] They see the dirt on the window pane.
[282] Those people are destructive.
[283] They will ruin your life.
[284] At all opportunities, I beg you, I beg, beg, beg, beg, beg, beg, beg you.
[285] Remove those people from your life.
[286] It may be hard in the short term, but long term, you can change the trajectory of your life by letting go of that baggage.
[287] And lastly, which kind of links to the point that I just made in the previous note is about realism.
[288] And it also relates to caution.
[289] Don't be realistic.
[290] Don't be realistic with your dreams.
[291] Don't be realistic with your life.
[292] A sense of what realistic means is totally subjective to all of us, right?
[293] We're told what realistic means by school, by parents, and as we're grown up, if you want to live your very best life, stop being realistic.
[294] One thing I'll never forget is the story that Will Smith told about the Wright brothers.
[295] And everybody that has been transformative to our world and to our society, wasn't realistic.
[296] It wasn't realistic to think we could bend a sheet of metal into a tube and fly it across the Atlantic Ocean.
[297] Thank God there are people out there that are unrealistic when it comes to the change they can affect in the world.
[298] I implore all of you at all opportunities to be unrealistic.
[299] And that's why I have the word unrealistic in my bio, because my life is a journey of me being unrealistic and trying to see how that lack of realism leaves a dent in the world.
[300] Your reaction is your result.
[301] Again, a super quick point, but this week I got a couple of messages from various people and the sentiment was generally the same.
[302] They had undergone tricky circumstances.
[303] They had had a death in their family.
[304] They'd been fired from work.
[305] One girl had been rejected from her apprentice, which I've just uploaded it onto my Instagram.
[306] I've just put the screenshot up.
[307] And she was beating herself up about it, right?
[308] As people naturally do, when they undergo unfortunate circumstances.
[309] And the thing that we all know in life is that the circumstance is beyond our control, right?
[310] I, like, every time I wake up in the morning and I do the job that I have to do, I walk into work and I promise you, I get five pieces of unexpected, bad, fucking news that I have to deal with.
[311] And as you know, from listening to the podcast, that's my world, that's my life.
[312] It doesn't have an effect on me anymore.
[313] But I also know that that circumstance, that I'm handed by life isn't the outcome.
[314] That's not the bit I had much to do with most of the time.
[315] How I respond in those situations is my result.
[316] Your reaction is your result, not the circumstance.
[317] And if you can start to really believe that, you'll live a much more happy future thinking life and it will stop you from living in the past.
[318] Back in the day, when I used to get bad news, I would think the bad news was my result.
[319] I would think that the circumstance that I didn't have anything to do with was my outcome.
[320] It wasn't until I started to see it as a, I guess it's a bit of a Christmas cracker.
[321] And every day I wake up, I pull the Christmas cracker and a joke and a toy comes out.
[322] I can't help the toy I get.
[323] You know, I didn't pick it.
[324] But my perception on that toy and how I deal with a toy, how I play with a toy, how I respond to that situation is really my result.
[325] I can either be, you know, unhappy that I didn't pick a different Christmas cracker.
[326] I can beat myself up.
[327] I can blame other people.
[328] And all those things lead to less than satisfactory outcomes.
[329] Or I can pull the cracker.
[330] I can put the hat on.
[331] Okay, I got a bloody pencil again.
[332] But that's fine.
[333] You know, I can write something with that pencil and I can perceive that situation to be positive.
[334] And finally, you know, your reaction is your result.
[335] And the result can be whatever it is you wanted to be if your perception is positive.
[336] And that's also why that pessimism is one of the most corrosive things I've identified in my journey, the last three years that I've been on.
[337] I think it was Will Ferrell that said, no, it was, who's the guy from with the mask on?
[338] Jim Carrey, that's it.
[339] It was Jim Carrey that said, all of us have the story that our eyes see and the story that the world gives us, right?
[340] So there's this one story going on around us.
[341] and all of us have the second story, that's our perception.
[342] And we run that second story over everything that's happening in our life.
[343] So if something bad happens to you, that's one story.
[344] The second story, which dictates what that means to you, is your perception.
[345] And you run that over the thing that's happened to you.
[346] So your boyfriend might dump you.
[347] You might get fired from work.
[348] And upon getting fired from work, that's one story.
[349] The story you run over that is that it was unfair, because you were so good and they just were out to get you, right?
[350] That is a destructive, unhelpful story.
[351] It's a blame -filled story.
[352] A more productive story might be, how can I be better?
[353] I wasn't good in this situation.
[354] It wasn't for me. I understand that.
[355] How can I be better in the future?
[356] How can I make a better job choice for myself?
[357] And that is a productive second story to run over the circumstance that has happened to you.
[358] Your reaction is your result and your perception will, define your reality.
[359] The next point in my diary is a bit of an announcement and this is an announcement that I've not told anybody other than my immediate team just yet.
[360] And that is that I will be moving to New York permanently.
[361] Let me explain.
[362] So when I say permanently, you've got to understand that the nature of my life and the way that I, my calendar works, my schedule, I can't be anywhere permanently, right?
[363] I'm going to be everywhere always.
[364] But I'm moving my best.
[365] from Manchester in the UK to New York.
[366] I currently live in Manchester.
[367] I'm going to live in New York.
[368] Here's in a short sort of, in a short way, here's why.
[369] Our teams here are tremendous.
[370] Our leadership team here is tremendous.
[371] They are capable of solving problems without me. Honestly, most of them are significantly smarter than I am.
[372] They don't need me anymore.
[373] I'm a support system for many of the leaders.
[374] I offer my opinion, my advice on the vision, on keeping that specialness, on making sure that we dance on the table.
[375] And I'm being a bit of a soundboard to the sort of managing directors, the directors of the company, but they don't need me in the same way that the New York team, I believe, need me. And so when I think about my time spent and where my time spent would return the greatest value, the answer to me is clear.
[376] The answer is in New York.
[377] We have offices in London and in Berlin and in Munich as well, but all of those teams, have the sort of the leadership within them, the managing directors within them, to flourish.
[378] In New York, we don't currently have a managing director, although we do have a room full of incredibly inspiring leaders, I think my value there will deliver the greatest return on investment.
[379] And the prize, obviously, in the American market is tremendous.
[380] And we have the ambition to be a global, truly, truly global agency.
[381] To fulfill that mission, I have to be there.
[382] That's what I believe now.
[383] On a personal level, I've spent my whole life putting myself just outside my comfort zone.
[384] And within the UK right now, because of, you know, the incredible leaders within the business who are, who have taken on the leadership of the business, I'm closer to my comfort zone.
[385] By going into the U .S. market where we don't have the reputation, we don't have the amazing 30 ,000 foot, you know, office and the slides.
[386] and the ballpool and all the teams and all the data systems and processes and all of these things, it's a new challenge.
[387] It's a tremendous, tremendous, tremendous challenge.
[388] It's something that will make me go through tremendous pain.
[389] It will make me struggle and it will make me hopefully, and I have no doubt in this, come out the other end because that's what I've always done and that's the way that I'm built.
[390] Me moving to New York is a decision to take on that challenge, a desire to take on that challenge and in doing so further all of us as a global family.
[391] I believe that if I move there, I will help all of the other teams around the world by doing so because some of the brands and the clients we can achieve there will be global brands.
[392] Right now, the UK team are so good, you know, they're the ones that are delivering much of the work out to the US and I hope by being there we can send some work back the other way as well.
[393] So this is a big decision.
[394] It's a decision I think will probably come into effect in about April time because, again, my calendar is just absolutely rammed.
[395] And so I have to start booking my time a little bit more sensibly.
[396] What does it mean again for more sort of personal elements of my life?
[397] I've got a dog.
[398] My dog will come with me, which is pretty sad news to a lot of people, I imagine, because there's a few people in the UK teams that are in love with the dog.
[399] Becky, you know who I'm talking about.
[400] about.
[401] He'll come with me at some point.
[402] I think I'll leave him here for some time to spend time with the wonderful people within the family here.
[403] I don't have a girlfriend.
[404] I'm completely unconnected in that regard.
[405] I've always been a free spirit.
[406] I've always been a lone wolf.
[407] And it's time for that challenge.
[408] It's time.
[409] It feels completely right.
[410] I want the pain.
[411] I want I'm built for it.
[412] Deathbed thinking.
[413] I wrote this note in my diary and I've shared this thought across my social channels this week, but if you haven't heard it, even if you have, in fact, it doesn't hurt to be reminded.
[414] Here's what I wrote.
[415] Deathbed thinking.
[416] In order to become someone, you have to stop being everybody.
[417] This is probably one of the hardest things to do in today's world because society naturally rewards conformity and it talks shit behind the back of anybody that doesn't.
[418] And it's not just haters talking shit, it's your best mate, your family, your colleagues, your partner.
[419] In my personal situation, it was my mum talking shit about me. As you know, didn't speak to her for two years when I told her that I was dropping out to start a business.
[420] And it wasn't until I proved that I was right or that my hypothesis or my ambition was going to work out that she came back to my side.
[421] And right now there's that one thing your gut is telling you to do, something you would love to try or something you want to do more of, but you care too much about what people think and you started to believe too many negative voices that I've told you in their own subtle, bitchy way that you can't do it anyway.
[422] So you better stay in line and you better conform.
[423] I knew when I started making videos and I started doing my podcast and I started putting myself out there in the world that people would talk shit about me and they do.
[424] But I also knew that it would only ever matter if I gave a fuck.
[425] And thankfully, I don't.
[426] And I never will.
[427] Deathbed thinking.
[428] Stop making your decisions based on other people's opinions and start making your decisions now from your deathbed.
[429] On your deathbed, you're not going to give a fuck about their opinion.
[430] That famous study done by Bonnie Ware, where she interviews people on their deathbed, proves that the biggest regret of the dying is living a life that wasn't true to themselves.
[431] Please don't make that mistake.
[432] You can imagine people on their deathbed have a retrospective clarity that none of us have right now, believe them.
[433] Letting other people and their opinions win is a guaranteed way to regret your decisions then.
[434] And it's going to be your regret because it's your life and it's your happiness.
[435] And so it has to be your choice.
[436] Your regret, your life, your happiness, your choice.
[437] Deathbed thinking.
[438] Okay, so the last point in my diary today is about family and relationships.
[439] I tend to always in the podcast on family and relationships.
[440] The note I've scribbled in my diary today is, why haven't you gone and seen your niece, idiot?
[441] My niece has been born for a little while now.
[442] I think she's probably about a month and a half old.
[443] And my whole family has made the time to go and see her, but me. And it really does cheer away at me because the reason in my mind that I haven't done that is because I've been busy.
[444] And again, it's bullshit, isn't it?
[445] It's just a lie we tell ourselves.
[446] because we prioritize things that are important to us and the things we focus on as my friend Sam Bird once told me other things that grow and if I want to have a good relationship with my family then I've got to focus on it and I've got to invest in it and put time into it business will never be more important than family it will just never be the case but what I've struggled with is prioritising right because business will always present me with urgent immediate tasks that need to be solved right whereas family will virtually never until it's too late speaking quite frankly and I don't want it to have to be too late for my family to be a priority of mine you know and so this week on Tuesday I'm going to pop down to London I've got a couple of meetings there and then after my meetings I'm not going to get back on the train I'm going to go across and travel across to see my brother and my little niece I've become like a dad I'm like showing this picture of my niece to everybody in the fucking street so So, you know, I'm tremendously proud.
[447] I've just got to put in the time.
[448] And I cannot, cannot wait to meet her.
[449] And the next point connected to this is about relationships.
[450] Over Christmas time and January, I went out to India and Sri Lanka with my ex -girlfriend.
[451] Some of you will know, she used to also be my personal assistant.
[452] It's a long story.
[453] Go back to chapter one if you want to hear more about that.
[454] And I went out there, I guess, in the bid to rekindle.
[455] things.
[456] Over the last few weeks, we've been chatting and unfortunately we've come to the decision that it doesn't make sense.
[457] She lives in Australia.
[458] I guess we tried to make it work at distance, but again, it just doesn't make sense for various reasons, which I won't go into.
[459] She's a wonderful person.
[460] I will always love her and I'll always be here for her and she knows that, but it just hasn't made sense for various reasons.
[461] So here I am again, back on my ones with my dog and you guys thank you so much for listening to chapter 11 it's been again a sort of cathartic wonderful journey for me to offload all of these thoughts to you hopefully you've gained something from listening if you could be so kind and i won't ever ask a tremendous amount from you please please please could you leave a review in the app store um for me i really really really appreciate all of your five -star reviews they they bring a little bit of a light to my to my life and I've read every single one and feel free to tweet me your thoughts on the podcast to my to myself on Twitter or on Instagram if you do tweet me I will follow you on Twitter which is also an upside I guess and we can chat via DMs etc reach out to me let me know what you think and you guys will help me hopefully solve some of these challenges specifically on the point of family that I go through I want this to be a two -way community you know two two -way thing it's not just me sat here in my box is talking to you.
[462] Hopefully you can use Twitter to talk back to me. Thank you so much.
[463] I cannot, cannot, cannot wait to share next week's guest with you, probably one of the most interesting guests we have ever had in terms of their story and their level of success.
[464] So it's going to be amazing.
[465] I promise you that.
[466] And I will see you in Chapter 12.
[467] Thank you.