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Chapter 1: Who is Stephen Bartlett and what is his podcast about?
The Diary of a CEO with Stephen Bartlett is one of the most listened to podcasts globally. It draws nearly 50 million monthly listeners and has almost 14 million subscribers on YouTube. But who is the man behind this success? Adam McGuire from RT's Business Desk is here with me to tell us just that morning. How are you? I'm good. Who is Stephen Bartlett?
Yeah, it's incredibly successful, but also very divisive figures in a lot of ways. Because on the one hand, the story follows that kind of rags to riches narrative that the business world has always loved, as well as the rise and grind culture that's become so popular on social media and people will have different views on whether that's a positive or a negative.
But he's lauded for his honesty, his drive, his business ability, but also has seemed to be an enabler of misinformation. Some critics go so far to say that he puts a digestible face on the on the manosphere pipeline and the kind of extreme views that are within that.
And more recently, he's become the figurehead of this obsessive trend towards health optimization, which is fueled by kind of wearable tech and data tracking apps. But To get an idea of who he is, Stephen Bartlett was born in Botswana in 1992 to a Nigerian mother and an English father. He said his mother left school at a young age and couldn't read or write.
His father, meanwhile, he said, was a very, very smart structural engineer. They moved to Plymouth in England when he was two to what he said was a nice white middle class area, which made for a challenging backdrop to the financial struggles that his family were facing. And he said that gave him a feeling of kind of otherness and being less than, but...
It also ended up being a big driving force in his life in business. He said it made him realise from quite a young age that if he wanted something, he'd have to go out and make it happen himself. And it kind of gave him an entrepreneurial streak as well.
He claims that while he was at school, he was constantly trying to come up with money making schemes like securing vending machines for the pupils. And then he took a cut from that or organising school trips and so on as a way of getting cash. So when does he start building his empire?
Yeah, well, he took a business management course in Manchester Metropolitan University in around 2010, but claims to have dropped out after just one lecture. He said he looked around at all the hungover students and the lecturer handing out felt-tip pens and said it wasn't what he needed. He then went on to set up his first business in 2013. So he's just 21 years of age at that point.
Then a year later, he really kind of started his empire building with Social Chain, which was a company he co-founded with a man called Dominic McGregor. And it focused on helping businesses promote their brands on this new thing called social media because they were really struggling at the time because it was just so different to traditional advertising and marketing.
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Chapter 2: What are the controversies surrounding Stephen Bartlett's influence?
So a good example is Social Chain, which, you know, he claimed to have founded a $600 million company referring to Social Chain. that actual valuation came after it merged with another bigger firm and after he had left the company. So not quite an honest portrayal of it.
While he was working at Social Chain Online, he was, you know, portraying an image of a high-flying businessman travelling from one picturesque place to another, doing deals, wearing flash clothes. But according to company results, social chain was losing millions of euro at the time. In 2019, it was somewhere in the region of 7 million euro in losses.
But still, that didn't stop him posting kind of advice to other entrepreneurs online, lots of motivational slogans like, develop your calm within the chaos and self-awareness is the thing that turns the lights on. Or seemingly contradictory advice like, long-term patience is a millennial growth hack, but then also saying winning teams are defined by their speed, impatience and smarts.
Okay, so yeah, very...
A bit confusing, all right. Which brings us to the podcast, Diary of a CEO.
Yeah, starts out in late 2017. And as the name suggests, it starts out as a kind of audio diary. He talks about his experience in running a business, but quickly then it shifts to an interview podcast where he's talking to other CEOs to get their experiences and perspectives.
And through its early years, he's quite open about his struggles, his anxieties and imposter syndrome as he's trying to get ahead in business. He talks about burnout and mental health issues and failure and so on. And it's this really potent mixture because it feeds the demand of young entrepreneurs and a rising wave of influencers who are looking for guidance and insights as well.
And it doesn't do any harm that he gets some decent names early on. You know, he has people with good online followings like Joe Wicks or the food writer Ella Mills. Eventually then he gets really big names like Michelle Obama and Richard Branson. And, you know, all of these episodes are wrapped up in that kind of motivational, aspirational, sometimes you'd say even clickbaity kind of language.
He often talks about, you know, what's the key takeaway from each guest? What's the learning here? Or he promotes the clips online with captions like, you know, here's the thing that they don't want you to know, that kind of style of promotion. And then it got another boost in 2022 because Stephen Bartlett was named as one of the new dragons on BBC's Dragon's Den at just 28 years old.
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Chapter 3: How did Stephen Bartlett start building his business empire?
He then said he podcasted worse. He didn't go to the gym for two days in a row because he felt so bad. And he said he could track all of this because he wears a whoop. fitness wearable that he is an investor in, but he did declare that at the time.
And it sparked this kind of fairly mocking reaction because it painted this picture of someone who was so obsessed with getting the best versions of themselves that they were unable to kind of live even a little bit.
But it also served as a really kind of concise representation of this growing trend towards self-optimization, become very popular with the tech bros and many others as well, where you're using wearables and tracking apps consistently. to see how you're eating, how you're working out, how you're sleeping.
And all of that isn't necessarily bad in isolation, but when you become obsessed with the data to the point where your three glasses of wine are ruining half of your week, then maybe you've pushed it a little bit too far.
Indeed. Adam McGuire, thank you so much for that update.
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