E21: Mental Health, Mistakes and My Apologies

**Steven Bartlett** (0:07)
The Diary Of A CEO is back. And I've waited the longest time to be able to say that. Here's the thing. After season one, You Wonderful People DM'd me, stopped me in the street, tweeted me and hounded me to bring the podcast back for another season. There is no piece of content that I produce that's had such a phenomenal, dedicated response. And because of that, we brought The Diary Of A CEO back for a second season, and I've traveled tens of thousands of miles around the world, meeting inspiring people from the world's biggest YouTubers, most impressive business people to the world's most inspiring artists. We've got an amazing mix of guests. The format is simple. This is not an interview. I want honesty, truth. I want to see into your personal diary. I want to understand you, not to advertise you. I want to hear the things that most people wouldn't have the guts to say, because in a world where everything is filtered, it's the unfiltered that people need the most. If you don't know me, my name is Steven Bartlett. I'm a dropout. I got kicked out of school. I started my first business at age 18 I'm now the 26-year-old CEO of one of the world's largest global marketing companies, Social Chain. We work with the world's biggest brands. We have five offices around the world and 270 full-time members of staff. I'm just doing my best, doing my best to be my best, but also to understand and navigate life. What a crazy, crazy journey it's been and it's still yet to be. After season one of the podcast, so much of my life changed. I moved over 5,000 kilometers away to New York City, which is where I now live, and I moved there to focus on building our company in America. And trust me when I say this, America is a big place. America is a new challenge. It's a huge challenge. But I've spent my whole life out of my depth. So right now, America is where I need to be. More on that in a second. But before I open my diary and share all of my deep, sometimes dark thoughts with you, I just want to thank you. I want to thank you for listening. Thank you for waiting. Thank you for all of your posts, shares, comments and reviews. I saw them all. And in return, me and my team have gone to extra lengths to ensure that Season 2 is by far the best season yet. This is not scripted. There's no one else in the room with me right now. I promise on everything that I'm worth, and my word and everything else, I'm recording this at 3:33 a.m. on a Sunday night alone in my hotel room. I'm going to share deep personal thoughts with you, things that have been playing on my mind, personal information that I haven't shared with another human being on earth, and ultimately all of the notes that I've written into my diary since we last spoke. I hope you're ready. So without further ado, this is The Diary Of A CEO Season 2 I'm Steven Bartlett. I hope nobody is listening. But if you are, then please keep this to yourself.
Where to start? Damn. Okay, so the first point in my diary, I've just written, mental health, the guy that committed suicide.
This is a tough one for me. I'm just going to tell you a story. I made a video on Facebook about, I don't know, six months ago. The video was called, Smiling Through Depression. The video talked about how some of the world's most adored people that brought so much happiness to so many people's lives were fighting battles that you could never ever see based on appearances. I talked about Avicii, I talked about Robin Williams, and I talked about others. My overall message in the video was just to treat everybody as if they're going through something which you know nothing about. That kindness really could be the answer to so many things in this world. The video did great, I think it's it's got 16, 17 million views and I was so happy to see that it had such a positive impact on so many people. But here's the thing, I was on, I think it was Twitter a few days after the video came out and I got a direct message from somebody called Jack Dean. Jack Dean is a well-known YouTuber, he's got millions of subscribers and followers. He said to me, Steve, I've got something pretty dark to tell you. He said, somebody I know locally has just killed themself. And they're very well-known in our area. And the last thing they shared online was your video about mental health. And he sent me a link to this guy's Facebook page. And I went on this guy's Facebook page and there is my video. And all of his friends and family have used that video as a platform to now express their condolences and so on. And in that moment, I went through a tremendous amount of thoughts to think that somebody watched my video and then within 12 hours of watching something that I had produced made the decision to end their own life was something that I struggled with a little bit. And I didn't really tell anybody this at the time, but it really messed with my head for a number of reasons. And I'm just going to try and explain all of those reasons to you. So when I released that video, I probably got about 2,000 to 3,000 messages from people who were going through mental health issues. And some of the things that people said, honestly, it makes my hair stand on edge. I spoke to an Egyptian girl stuck in her bedroom in Egypt who hadn't left the room for four months. He was trying to find a way to kill herself. I spoke to people that I knew very closely that shared their very deep personal stories about how they'd considered ending their own lives and everybody else's life in their life. Then I dealt with this guy who had shared my video and had killed himself. I think I felt everything at once. I felt sad, I felt speechless, I felt horrified.