E1: Sacrifice, Work/Life Balance & Purpose

**Steven Bartlett** (0:07)
So here's the thing, a few years ago, I was a broke university dropout, living in one of the worst parts of the country, alone, with nothing but a laptop and a dream. Fast forward a few years, I'm the 25 year old CEO of one of the UK's fastest growing companies and most exciting. And that company is called Social Chain. My world is intense, sometimes crazy, always challenging and always unpredictable. This podcast is simple. Every Sunday, I'm going to share my personal diary with you. And I want to give you an insight into what it's like behind the scenes, being an entrepreneur, the deep dark thoughts that nobody else will share with you and anything else that's playing on my mind. This is not scripted. This is off the top of my head and this is direct from my diary. 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. Okay, because this is chapter one, I thought the most sensible place to start was with the question, what does it take to be a CEO and what is it like being a CEO or an entrepreneur? And in popular culture, it's been incredibly glamourized. There's been movie upon movie upon movie, which illustrate the plight of a CEO of being, I guess, initially quite tough, but then guaranteed success, riches, partying and happy endings. And that's fundamentally incorrect. And I see this image of what it's like to be an entrepreneur really guiding a lot of people astray, but also leading a lot of people that aren't equipped and aren't fully aware into the lifestyle of being an entrepreneur. And I think much of the reason why I want to do this, this podcast is to answer some of the questions and to debunk some of the misconceptions about what it takes. I think the first thing that you have to be prepared for, if you want to be an entrepreneur or a CEO, is immense sacrifice. And when I say sacrifice, I don't mean giving up your weekends or not watching that football match. I mean transforming your life fundamentally and sending it in a different direction. I mean five years of uncertainty, pain, immense loneliness, losing relationships of people that you really, really cared about, not being able to form new relationships. And when you do losing those relationships too, because you're just too consumed and you're living your whole life in your head, I mean financial sacrifices. I mean every type of sacrifice imaginable. And those are the sacrifices that I went through. And many of those sacrifices I continue to go through in order to fulfill my duties of being a CEO. And as the company grew and we got to the point where we have hundreds of people in the teams, my reason for that sacrifice has changed. I now feel personally responsible for hundreds of people's lives. And that makes me sacrifice more, but sacrifice much easier than I ever did before. Being an entrepreneur involves immense sacrifice. I think in the initial stages, you really are saying I'm willing to give up everything that I am right now in order for this thing that I want to be. And I think that's the most important question to ask yourself is how bad do you want to be that person? How bad do you want that life? And how bad do you want to be an entrepreneur or a CEO? because you've got to want it more than you want everything you have right now. because for the next year, two years, three years, as you embark on your journey, you're probably going to have to sacrifice everything you are to become that thing. And I did. I sacrificed being a very sociable young man that was having fun to going in the complete opposite direction, living in the worst, my opinion, the worst area in Manchester, with absolutely no money. And many weekends, I would leave my house, dressed as smart as I possibly could dress, in the search for some food left somewhere by somebody. And that often meant going into takeaways. At one point, at my very lowest, it meant going into shops and taking pizzas that I hadn't paid for. And that's how bad I wanted it. And in those moments, I had a very, very clear belief as well of the reward of my sacrifice. I completely believed it was going to pay off. And that kind of links me to another point, I guess, which is in order to sacrifice, you have to believe. And I 100% always believed. And I think you have to. The next thing is as you grow your company, you have to get used to the unpredictable chaos. And unpredictability can be a great cause of anxiousness for any entrepreneur because you wake up every day and you have no idea what email you're going to get. And you could get an email. And I did many, many, many, many, many times in my journey, get an email that would make me believe that it was all over. And when you get that email, you have to be built of a certain type of material to keep going in the right direction. I remember many, many instances, especially when I was 18 years old, where the bank emailed me and told me that they would not let me open a business bank account. And so I went to another bank and they told me that I would not be able to open a business bank account. And I went to another bank and they told me that I would not. And after going to three or four banks, I genuinely believe because my credit rating was so poor, I would never be able to start a business. And that was a small thing in the early days. And then advanced two years, the company's going, well, we've got 50 members of staff. And you get an email from your investor saying that, I don't think you meant to send me that email, Steve. And I think, what the hell is that? That's at 6 a.m. in the morning. And then I get another email from another one of our clients saying, did you mean to send me that email? And what happened was every single client you have and every investor you have has been sent a malicious, very, very tailored, abusive email to them personally from your business partner Dom's email address. And in that moment, not only do you question whether you've lost your investors, but you question whether you've lost every client you've spent the last two to three years building up. In that moment, you've got to have, you've got to be made of a certain type of material. And then even further on in the company, you know, in the first year when we had some financial uncertainty, there were moments where we genuinely weren't sure how we were going to pay the bills. And you've got payday coming up, you've got bills approaching, and there's total uncertainty around how in five days' time, you're going to find six figures to pay your bills and to pay your wages.