The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett XX
[0] Okay, so the first point of my diary this week is about lobsters.
[1] Slightly obscure point, but let me explain.
[2] When I think about winning and losing, winners and losers, for many, many years I've had this like unprovable idea.
[3] I've always thought that winners, winning teams, winning people develop this culture of winning that causes them to therefore win more often.
[4] I've seen that in my business.
[5] I've seen that in our teams.
[6] And conversely, I've also witnessed the opposite.
[7] in teams and people who think that they are losers.
[8] I've watched them, in the case of Liverpool Football Club, continue to bottle it at the last minute, continue to lose, continue to get bad results just because I believe they subconsciously, somewhere deep down inside that's hard to prove, believe that they are losers.
[9] And it's really hard to prove something like this, but if I had to give an example, as a big football fan, and specifically as a Manchester United fan, man United are the best example of this.
[10] You know, for two decades, we had someone at the helm of the football club called Sir Alex Ferguson, who was the ultimate winner, right?
[11] If there's anything you've ever garnered from a Sir Alex Ferguson interview, is that this guy is obsessed with winning.
[12] And even though we didn't always have the best 11 players on the pitch, we just kept winning.
[13] We won matches disproportionately to the skill level of the 11 players individually, because winning was established as the culture of the team.
[14] So even when we faced better teams with better players, there was this sort of invisible, intangible force, this deep sense of inevitability that we were going to win regardless.
[15] The fans felt it.
[16] So we carried on cheering as fans.
[17] The players felt it.
[18] So they carried on playing right until the end.
[19] And we felt that even if we were several goals down, we would win.
[20] And equally, the competition felt it.
[21] And you can understand the impact that had in those tight moments.
[22] we became the most successful football club in English history because of this culture of winning that I'm yet to be able to define.
[23] A couple of years ago, I read a book called The Twelve Rules to Life by Jordan Peterson.
[24] I'm sure a lot of you will know that book.
[25] If you don't, I do suggest reading it.
[26] And the first chapter of that book is called Stand Up Straight with Your Shoulders Back.
[27] And it centers on the study of lobsters, and they study lobsters because the sort of neurological makeup of the lobster is on the outside.
[28] So it's easy to observe and study.
[29] and the lobster shares many of the same neurological structures as humans, especially the areas of the brain that are concerned with like self -esteem and social hierarchies.
[30] So we can do studies on lobsters to understand humans, basically.
[31] Anyway, in the book, studies show that lobsters who lose enough fights on the ocean floor when they're young, lose their mental and social status, and they stop producing serotonin, which leads them to deep depressions and causes them to continue losing in the future.
[32] Very simply, if you're a lobster and you lose a fight when you're young, you will continue to lose forever, right?
[33] Losing can make them believe and act like losers forever.
[34] In other words, lobsters, like humans, become clinically depressed and lose their sort of self -belief as they tumble down the social hierarchy.
[35] You kind of see it in football, the Premier League table, right?
[36] And this causes them to continue to lose.
[37] And I think that winning is a momentum.
[38] I think losing is a momentum.
[39] And in the case of the lobsters, they develop a culture of losing.
[40] Conversely, the lobsters that win continue to produce serotonin, and they continue to win in the future.
[41] So technically, organisms, as I suspected for many years, do learn to lose and you can also learn to win.
[42] So think about it.
[43] Think about you.
[44] Think about your life.
[45] Think about your business, your team, the organizations that you're a part of, have you learned to win or have you learned to lose?
[46] The lesson derived from the books I've read and Manchester United as an example would suggest that we all have in some way.
[47] And that there are things we can do to change that.
[48] the book talks about how small behavioral changes, just like getting more sleep and doing exercise impact the chemical makeup of our brains.
[49] People that exercise more and get better sleep are producing more serotonin and they're winning more often.
[50] And that seems like such a crazy thing.
[51] It almost boggles our mind, I think, as human to think that how we behave can change the chemical makeup of our brain.
[52] We can change our brain by how we behave.
[53] The second thing is that there are reams of studies that show that your internal self -talk the conversation you're having with yourself in your head at all times can influence your opinion of yourself drastically and can result in a different chemical makeup, right?
[54] So if you say nice things to yourself and if you have a personality where you default to being optimistic and positive, then your chemical makeup and your brain is different.
[55] Your thoughts change the chemical makeup of your brain.
[56] And without knowing it, we're all becoming either winners or losers by how we behave and how we think.
[57] And the important part of this is winners win more and losers continue to lose more.
[58] I guess the two takeaways I have are, as the chapter says, put your shoulders up, set up straight, and believe that you're a winner.
[59] And if you believe you're a winner, once again, science shows that you become a winner.
[60] Okay, the next point in my diary is my dad getting old taught me a lesson about happiness, right?
[61] And again, slightly obscure, but I'm going to explain this point.
[62] So when you're younger, living at home, as I did for 18 years in Plymouth, growing up, it always felt like my parents didn't age.
[63] And I think a lot of you might relate to this.
[64] And it blew my mind that in 18 years, my parents never really looked any older to me. And it wasn't until I went off to university and then came home once in a while and started to notice that my parents really were aging, that it dawned on me what had really happened.
[65] Essentially, when you're at the heart of any situation, you can't recognize any progress, especially gradual progress, it's impossible to see.
[66] And in the case of my dad getting older, he was just one day older to me every day.
[67] One tiny grey hair on the side of his head every month.
[68] So I couldn't see the progress.
[69] And I guess here's the punchline.
[70] I think that explains why sometimes in life it can feel like we're not making any progress, or at least the progress we want to fast enough.
[71] There's a huge amount of studies which I've been reading on the planes that I've been on lately that show people that don't feel like they're making progress are more depressed, anxious, and they make short -term poor decisions, which leads to overall unhappiness.
[72] We live our lives focused on destinations.
[73] And I read a great piece by a guy called Joshua Becker that shows how we have a tendency to mark major achievements as the milestones that define our lives, right?
[74] So a graduation, a new job, that promotion, a wedding, babies, moving house, a target weight or size you wanted your waist to be, overcoming a really hard time.
[75] We only look back and forward.
[76] We look back with fondness on the significant major events and we desperately look forward to the significant major event.
[77] The accomplishment of a life goal, a significant desired award, a big sort of transition in our lives, or just like getting over some shit, getting over a rut we were stuck in, is everything to us, right?
[78] We tell ourselves in life that because we found joy in the previous accomplishment, that our joy exists in the next.
[79] But as Josh argues in this article I read, life isn't lived exclusively in these major destinations.
[80] And I think it's a real trap to believe that.
[81] The significant achievements are few.
[82] They happen very rarely.
[83] We know, promotion once a year, move house once a year.
[84] While the journey between these two major destinations are long, the reality is the gap between our accomplishments account for the majority of our life.
[85] We spend all of our time on the journey between one accomplishment and the next.
[86] But, and this is quite an unfortunate thing, which again, I'm fully part of, we live in an achievement -addicted world.
[87] Finding the same joy in these gaps in between can be impossibly difficult.
[88] One of the things I've really tried to do lately is to learn to celebrate the daily progress, not just the achievement, not just the big accomplishment, not just the big win, right?
[89] And we can do this by actively giving ourselves credit.
[90] Credit for how far we've come.
[91] You can actively practice something I call like mental time hopping, which is the process of concentrating on how far you've come rather than how far you have to go, right?
[92] Focused on how far you've come rather than how far that's left to go.
[93] It's a powerful way of expressing self -gratitude and you can literally get a piece of paper and a pen and write down where you were one, two, three years ago.
[94] Write down the information you had, how you felt all those kinds of things.
[95] Think vividly with your eyes closed and remember, just relive it for a second.
[96] Remember the valuable lifelong lessons you've learned in that time.
[97] Remember the things you've sort of accomplished and overcome.
[98] And give yourself the credit you deserve and need for the progress you've made.
[99] The truth is, you've come really fucking far.
[100] And it's important for your happiness, for your self -esteem, right?
[101] For you to acknowledge that.
[102] It's so important.
[103] And being completely honest with you, once upon a time, I was worried that if I gave myself credit, I would become complacent.
[104] I was worried I would be less driven and less hungry if I gave myself a pat on the back.
[105] I thought credit would stop me from achieving more, so I avoided at all costs credit.
[106] But the truth is, I've come to learn that, because life is a journey, if there was ever something to give myself credit for, it's every step every day in the five -year climb, not just the one -minute view from the mountaintop.
[107] Give yourself some credit.
[108] Okay, the next point in my diary, I've just written decision fatigue.
[109] This is something I've been suffering from, so let me explain.
[110] typical day, I will make thousands of conscious decisions.
[111] My wonderful, beautiful, the most talented person I've ever met my life, Sophie Chapman, alone will message me maybe 20 to 30 times in a day on WhatsApp, asking me for my decision on various things, right?
[112] From everything, from flights I have to catch to trains that have to be booked, right?
[113] And my manager will send me the same amount of inquiries and opportunities for me to make a decision on.
[114] The global team of 250 people will message me periodically with questions that I feel only I can answer.
[115] That's where I'm wrong.
[116] That's the first place I'm wrong.
[117] My investors, the social chain group board will message me, seeking my decision on important things.
[118] Everyone and everything will ask me for a decision.
[119] On top of this, I somehow have to try and make the simple, often neglected decisions for my own life, like what to eat and what to where.
[120] It took me today until about 10pm to have my first meal because it was just the last decision in my mind.
[121] And as I've always said, like the money you have in your bank account, our time and energy are precious, finite resources.
[122] that we need to guard and deploy them strategically.
[123] I've said this a million times in this podcast.
[124] And this week, I've learned that one of the key ways to do that is to avoid one of the most common time and energy depleting sinkholes, which is decision -making.
[125] Because you will get decision fatigue.
[126] And I suffer from decision fatigue every single day, and I never realized it until this week.
[127] This phenomenon is the result of a very, very simple, unfortunate fact.
[128] making decisions is hard fucking work.
[129] Something I didn't ever really think or acknowledge or consider consciously before, right?
[130] Because it doesn't appear to be hard work.
[131] I never really consider that thinking drains you.
[132] But you make a decision a hundred times a minute.
[133] And when you do that, you've got to weigh up all the options, which takes brain power.
[134] Then you have to commit to a choice which takes willpower.
[135] And if you think about willpower and brain power as a muscle, because they are a chemical process, right?
[136] Every time you exert that muscle, it gets a little more worn.
[137] out.
[138] And by the end of each day, after making the thousands and thousands of decisions that I unavoidably feel I have to make every single day, it's not crazy to think that I'm going to be exhausted.
[139] And these decisions range from deciding what socks to wear, tiny decisions, to major decisions like solving huge global problems.
[140] It's pretty understandable that your willpower and your brain power muscle will be depleted by the end of the day.
[141] None of those decisions are necessarily overwhelming in and of themselves, but cumulatively together, they take a huge toll on me. And they leave me increasingly exhausted as the day progresses.
[142] And, you know, like, some people were thinking, oh, like, man up, Steve, making a decision isn't hard, right?
[143] But no, really fucking is.
[144] And I think this is something that high performance people will know a lot about, something you can relate to if you've ever sat at a desk all day from like eight in the morning till eight at night, completing tasks, doing nothing physically exhausting whatsoever.
[145] Yet you've come home that day, totally shattered and in need of solitude, silence, and relaxation.
[146] This is the story of my life every fucking day, right?
[147] And I guess the simplest way to avoid it is to minimize the number of decisions you have to make each day.
[148] And there are two ways that I'm working on to do this that I'm going to share with you today.
[149] The first one is pretty simple, right?
[150] They're both pretty simple, but neither are simple for me. The first one is to automate as many tasks as you possibly can, especially the tasks that aren't directly relevant to your end goal.
[151] And it's really hard sometimes to know what's connected to your end goal and what's not.
[152] Without even realizing the power of automating tasks, I've unconsciously done this for years.
[153] This is why I always wear bloody black.
[154] It's not a fashion choice.
[155] I just can't be bothered to make a decision when I wake up in the morning.
[156] I don't want to consume my energy, my mental energy, or my decision energy with figuring out what outfits match every single day.
[157] This is also why I wore a hat every day for the last four years since starting the business, my Afro hair took too long and too much energy to sort out.
[158] And that's just the fucking truth, right?
[159] Before I started social chain, I never wore a hat.
[160] And you've seen the same thing with Steve Jobs in his famous turtleneck, right?
[161] The reason why he standardized and removed the decision is because of decision fatigue.
[162] And last month again, without really thinking about it, I applied the same automation to my diet.
[163] I now have a subscription to a service that delivers a meal every single day in a bottle to my office in New York City, which is called Heel.
[164] previously to this, I spent hours a day deciding what to eat and finding where to go.
[165] And I found it hard to make decisions anyway, which is quite surprising to some people.
[166] But with Hugh, it's become a relatively unconscious task.
[167] By automating my everyday tasks as much as I can, I've freed up more time, more energy, more willpower to devote to the higher goals in life that are more important to me. But as I said in my podcast about burnout, before you do this, you have to know what to automate, what efficiencies to make.
[168] And this is fucking dangerous if you get this wrong.
[169] because you shouldn't automate your family.
[170] Don't automate meaningful relationships.
[171] Don't try and automate time spent in nature and don't try and automate physical activity, right?
[172] Those are all things that are integral to good, solid mental health.
[173] And you know, the real secret is to automate things that don't matter in order to reserve your precious internal resources for the most important things and the most important work in your life, rather than squandering your time and resources away on things like deciding what color socks to wear in that.
[174] morning, right?
[175] So, yeah, automate your life.
[176] Secondly, the other way that I'm working on beating my decision fatigue is delegation, something I've always been dreadful at.
[177] According to Mr. Hughes, my Welsh business studies teacher when I was 14, 15 years old, who wrote in my report card, Steve is a really bad at delegating.
[178] I'm not very good at this, apparently.
[179] And perfectionists think they have to do everything, and only they can do it right.
[180] Perfectionists suffer more from decision fatigue than anybody on fucking planet Earth.
[181] resulting in low output, procrastination, and creating some kind of bottleneck in a process.
[182] I am that perfectionist.
[183] I suffer with perfectionism.
[184] And until I learn to automate more and delegate more, I'll continue to unnecessarily exhaust my mental resources.
[185] Those are just the facts.
[186] So, 2019 for Steve Bartlett, is the year of automating things that don't fucking matter and delegating things that other people could do just as well.
[187] And in order to demonstrate, delegate, I've got to learn to fucking trust people.
[188] So three things.
[189] Okay, so the last point in my diary, I've just written the word Craig with a little love heart that says Manchester.
[190] And I don't have any notes on this at all, so I'm just going to have to freestyle off the top of my head.
[191] I'm going to tell you a little bit of a story if you don't mind.
[192] So I live back home in the UK in a place in the northwest of England called Manchester.
[193] And Manchester is a wonderful place, so much energy.
[194] And it's a very, very tight sort of community when you live there.
[195] It's one of these big cities that feels very small when you live there.
[196] And this week, I woke up one day this week to the news that one of the big personalities in the city called Craig had committed suicide.
[197] And I think he was roughly around 30 years old.
[198] And he literally was the life and party of the city.
[199] I never knew the guy, but I knew the guy because I saw him all the time.
[200] Every time I saw him, he was smiling and super happy and overjoyed.
[201] and he was just this ray of energy in every single room he was in.
[202] When I found out this week that he committed suicide, I've got to be really honest with you, right?
[203] It's played on my mind.
[204] Again, you know, when you think about depression and mental illness and people getting to the point in their lives where they don't feel like they want to live or life is worth living anymore, there's this scary sort of connotation you have of people being alone and sad and miserable.
[205] That's what you think you should be looking for, right?
[206] So you think, well, I'll look for my friends, that are crying as the ones that need my support.
[207] But time and time and time again, these horrible tragedies go to show that the people that are often in the most pain are actually masking it.
[208] They're building this wall around them, which looks like positivity.
[209] It looks like happiness.
[210] And that sometimes laughter and happiness are just the mask we wear to cover up an inner pain we're feeling.
[211] And this really, really played on my mind because it made me immediately this week go, which one of my fucking friends do I need to call and see, check that they're okay?
[212] The thought that one of my friends could feel such a way and me not know before it was too late is something that really fucking troubles me. You know, I talk about my friends, but even in the team of people that work at social chain, the thought that someone could be feeling that way and not reach out to me really, really troubles me. So I guess this is two things.
[213] I want to talk about the topic generally, and I want to say that, like, what can we learn from this as a society?
[214] What can we learn from the fact that, you know, it's never the people that look like they're sad on the outside to strangers that are feeling often the worst inside?
[215] I guess the first lesson we have to learn is just to treat everyone with a certain level of caution, right?
[216] And I've said this a few times.
[217] I've tweeted it and I made that video on Facebook that reached 30 million people.
[218] Treat everybody as if they're wearing a sticker that says baby on board.
[219] Let me explain.
[220] You see a car that says baby on board.
[221] You see a car that says baby be on board.
[222] What's the first thing you do?
[223] You slow down because the sign has told you that there's someone vulnerable inside, right?
[224] And you treat them with caution, you give them space, you treat them with extra care.
[225] Humans, unfortunately, don't fucking wear signs.
[226] I wish they did, but they don't wear signs.
[227] And sometimes the signs are the reverse.
[228] Sometimes the sign says, I am perfectly fucking happy.
[229] Everything is great.
[230] In fact, I'm the happiest person in the room.
[231] That's what the sign says.
[232] And then we find out that there was someone inside who was using that sign as a mask.
[233] And so it sort of throws off your human compass of who's feeling okay and who's not.
[234] So you just have to treat everybody with care.
[235] And every single times I hear about a tragedy like this, it changes my behavior to total strangers.
[236] I find myself on the subway in New York just like looking at people that I think I once would have judged and thought, oh, get away from me, right?
[237] Because that's how fucked up humans are and thinking, how can I help this fucking person?
[238] How do I treat this human being?
[239] Like they've gone through a battle and a load of shit that I know nothing about.
[240] And taking you back to the instance that I mentioned on my mind.
[241] podcast where I found out one day that someone had committed suicide after sharing one of my videos on their Facebook wall.
[242] I learned about that guy.
[243] I spent a long time reading about him, understanding what his life was like and where he came from and all these kinds of things because I just fell into this whole of curiosity, right?
[244] And he was a club promoter.
[245] He apparently, from what I understood, ran loads of nightclubs in Norwich and he was the life of the party again.
[246] And so what's my point here?
[247] I don't know.
[248] It just really disturbed me this week.
[249] It really disturbed me. There's something going on in our society.
[250] that I just want to do something about, I want to do something to help people who are feeling miserable feel better.
[251] And I think that's what I'm doing with my content.
[252] I think with my Instagram, my Facebook, watch my podcast, that's what I'm doing.
[253] But I think I can do more.
[254] I think I need to do more because I say sometimes that humans are the only thing that exist in this world.
[255] And therefore, I guess animals as well, human and animal suffering are the only real feelings we have in this universe, right?
[256] And I think we've all got an obligation to do everything we can to protect that, to keep humans, animals feeling fucking great.
[257] This is almost a chapter of my life that is still open.
[258] I don't know where it's going to go.
[259] I don't know how I'm going to scratch my itch to help.
[260] But I know I'm going to do something.
[261] I know I'm going to start by doing more.
[262] And then I know at some point in my life I'm going to do something.
[263] I'm going to do something for people that are suffering, people that are feeling miserable, I just feel like I've got a calling.
[264] I feel like I've got this calling to do it.
[265] I can't explain it.
[266] Man, listen, take care of your friends, take care of strangers.
[267] If there's anybody watching this that knows me and is really going to do some shit, you don't want to tell anybody, you're having some bad thoughts, whatever, and you know me, I just beg you to just reach out to me and just give me a chance to talk to you, total anonymity.
[268] I would love to talk to you.
[269] And I have this weird feeling, you know, and the stats would probably support it that there are people that know me closely, very, very personally, all that work at social chain, but are going through things and they've not reached out to anybody.
[270] At social chain, one of the most important things that I think we did very early on was try and establish a mechanism for people that are feeling that way to get therapy.
[271] And do you know what?
[272] I think we could do so much more.
[273] We've got a therapist in -house which is paid for, but I still think we can do so, so much more, so much more.
[274] And I really, really want to be an example for companies and the way that they treat their employee's mental health.
[275] Can I tell you a story?
[276] This is a story I've never talked about anywhere online.
[277] I've talked about this only privately with my close friends, right?
[278] Even thinking about this, it literally gives me goosebumps, right?
[279] I'm not even sure if I'm allowed to say this.
[280] A couple of years ago, we had somebody work for us and they left social chain.
[281] So they worked for us for about three months.
[282] They're in probation, right?
[283] And in the three months that they worked at social chain, for a month and a half, they almost nearly didn't come to work, like every day.
[284] So, and they would tell me that the reason they couldn't get to work was because their parent couldn't take them to the train station, right?
[285] And I don't manage people at social chain like that.
[286] So they were telling their manager and then the manager eventually came to me when it got so bad.
[287] So we're wondering why this person is never coming to work.
[288] And one day I them.
[289] I said, hey, are you coming into work?
[290] Like, your managers told me again that you've not made it in, like what's going on.
[291] Bear in mind, this is a month and a half into your brand new job at a new company.
[292] And they say, oh, yeah, I couldn't get a lift from my parent.
[293] This is an adult, right?
[294] So anyway, that continues to happen.
[295] And eventually the decision has arrived that because of that behavior, even though they were so talented, we can't continue them past their probation.
[296] So we have a conversation and we call the person in.
[297] And in a meeting, they actually resigned because they knew what was going to happen.
[298] But after they left the company, they went on to the internet and they spread all over the internet, all over the media, without saying our name, because they would have been legally liable if they said our name, that social chain had fired them for having mental health issues.
[299] And there's nothing that I think is more disgusting than that.
[300] There's nothing I think is more disgusting than that.
[301] You know, if you've listened to this podcast long enough, you'll know that my co -founder, my best friend, the guy lived with and made this company with, like he had really serious mental health issues to the point, as he says in the podcast, where he would think about jumping in front of a train, right?
[302] So to go and say those people are insensitive to something when all of the people they're fucking referring to have mental health issues.
[303] Our managing director has talked about hers on a podcast.
[304] All of our fucking directors have talked about their mental health issues.
[305] It's a very popular conversation at social chain.
[306] I think we have 15 people at social chain currently.
[307] in seeing our therapist in some respect.
[308] It's a very open culture about the topic of mental health.
[309] It's something that we're proud of and that we champion.
[310] It's just one of the most disgusting things that's ever happened to me, and it taught me so many valuable lessons about what you believed, because everybody believed them.
[311] And why wouldn't you believe them?
[312] The thing is we have this natural bias to want to see people fail, and when these articles went round, again, not naming names, people hammered us.
[313] Just imagine being in that position where you're reading that stuff, and you deeply, deeply know that none of it's true.
[314] And you can't defend yourself.
[315] And I've got a really funny ending to this story that I'm going to give you.
[316] A couple of months later, when I posted about some of the mental health initiatives, we'd established at social chain, right, to help people that were suffering from various things.
[317] I had a lady comment on my status just, like, hammering me on LinkedIn.
[318] And she really was hammering me. And she was hammering me because she was referring to this person, right, that apparently we had released from having mental health issues.
[319] And I finally, in that moment, thought, you know what, I'm going to confront it.
[320] So I DM her and I said, like, let's have a conversation.
[321] We spoke for about seven hours, that seven hours of this woman hammering me. And I gave her so much information that after about seven hours, she realized I was telling the truth.
[322] I said to her, right, the individual you're referring to would tell me every single day their parents couldn't take them to social chain to work.
[323] So that's why they didn't come in.
[324] And after about seven hours of talking, this person turned around to me. Do you know what they said?
[325] They said, the person in question, the person that was released, some social chain that resigned technically, is my child.
[326] And the mum said to me, I told her every single day you would lose your job if you didn't get out of bed and go to work.
[327] And she wouldn't go.
[328] We had a wonderful conversation thereafter.
[329] And she finally believed me. And she finally understood the type of person.
[330] It makes me sad, man. She finally understood the type of person that I am, that we are as a company.
[331] And it was this sort of weight lifted off my shoulder.
[332] Unfortunately, are still hundreds of people that believe that shit, even though now her mom doesn't believe it and her mom has enough evidence from me that it's actually not fucking true, but there are still hundreds of people that believe it.
[333] And even if I was to post to this day on LinkedIn about mental health issues or anything at all, there would be one person that would say, well, what about that what about that person, right?
[334] As I've come to learn over the years, that stuff just comes with the fucking territory.
[335] It just comes with the territory.
[336] It's made me skeptical there.
[337] And I think if you believe me, it should make you skeptical about what you read, because that's the first time in my life that I've read something about social chain as a company and thought, you've just lied.
[338] You've just lied.
[339] You've literally just lied.
[340] Like there's no connection to the truth, right?
[341] And the scary thing is, I thought, fuck, human beings just lie.
[342] their own agenda, right?
[343] And look at the damage it can do, right?
[344] It did fuck all damage to social chain because I think the person's a very unbelievable person.
[345] And in fact, if you go on their LinkedIn and you go and look at the place they work before social chain, they lasted their three months as well, actually called that company.
[346] They told me the same thing happened.
[347] The person before them, three months.
[348] So there's a pattern there anyway.
[349] But imagine in another example, you know, you've got the Me Too movement at the moment where you've got people like Harvey Weinstein, absolute fucking monsters.
[350] You've got people like R. Kelly, absolute fucking monsters.
[351] But there's also this like frightening fucking risk that there could be somebody that says something about somebody that isn't true.
[352] And the damage it can do, it can ruin the rest of your life forever, right?
[353] So if there's any lesson, I didn't mean to go off from this tangent.
[354] I had no intention of ever telling anybody this.
[355] But if there's ever a lesson to learn, please let it just be just to be skeptical and to listen, hear both sides of the story before jumping to a conclusion.
[356] Just practice skepticism because I know what it feels like when someone just creates something about you which has no connection to the truth, no connection to what actually happened because they're a pathological liar.
[357] And watching the reputational damage it can do, it's honestly one of the most sickening feelings on fucking planet Earth.
[358] right because you can't defend yourself saying no i didn't holds no way people tend to believe the accuser yeah i can't believe i even talked about that but anyway thank you so much for listening to this podcast really do appreciate it if you're listening on iTunes or wherever you're listening spotify whatever do me one big big favor let me explain why i'd love if you did me a favor today i've probably spent 11 hours trying to get this podcast recorded right because this is the first time i've ever videoed it so it's setting up all this equipment painting the walls etc etc and today was one of those days where I thought, fucking out, this has costed me a lot of time and effort to make sure I get this done.
[359] And the reward is fucking you guys listening, right?
[360] So if you could do me a massive favourite, it'd just be to subscribe and to listen more.
[361] That for me makes it all worthwhile.
[362] And this is a platform that I enjoy for my own selfish reasons, admittedly, because, you know, it's cathartic to me. It's like therapy.
[363] But also because I get the messages from you and social media and stuff like that and you tell your friends, even though I tell you at the very start not to tell people.
[364] But yeah.
[365] So anyway, that concludes the first ever video recording of the diary of a CEO.
[366] If you're listening to this on iTunes or Spotify, do check it out on YouTube as well, because I'm really keen to get feedback on this.
[367] This is an experiment.
[368] So if you guys like this, then I'll definitely do it again.
[369] But if you think it's crap, then I'll just make my life much easier and just record it on a microphone wherever I am in the fucking world.
[370] So let me know what you think, and I love you a lot, and I hope you love the podcast.
[371] Okay, I'm going to give away that book that I mentioned about The Lobster, 12 Rules to Life by Jordan Peterson.
[372] And I'll write a little note in it as well from me. So anybody that gives five -star review in the podcast or on iTunes, leave your Instagram or your Twitter name, and I'll contact you and send out the book to you with a little note written in it from myself as a thank you.
[373] Love you so much and I'll see you again next week.