Entrepreneur Steven Bartlett says the pursuit of his endeavours is what makes him happy – not whether they are a success.
The host of the Diary of a CEO podcast, Bartlett grew in prominence as the youngest-ever investor on BBC Two’s Dragons’ Den. One of his deals, for an energy drink brand, has recently become the most valuable company to emerge from the show, worth more than £150m.
Elsewhere, he is also a private investor or founder in a range of companies – including his latest venture Steven.com, which has attained a valuation of more than £320m and which he says he wants to grow into the “Disney of the creator economy”.
His primary podcast, meanwhile, surpassed a billion global views in 2024 and was last year included in the top five worldwide on Spotify, while this time he was speaking on Evgeny Lebedev’s Brave New World podcast.
Bartlett’s insight, therefore, tends to carry much weight, both with burgeoning entrepreneurs and those focused on self-improvement, which makes his latest foray into discussing his approach to a multi-focused working lifestyle so intriguing. He says he has “killed” the idea that his accomplishments will make him content, instead focusing on the process.
“I’m well aware nothing I accomplish will make me happier. This is ‘arrival fallacy’: this horrible thing that happens, when you believe that when you arrive [at what you’re striving for], you’ll become ‘x’ [such as happy, satisfied or elated],” he told Lebedev, who is a shareholder in The Independent and majority owner of the Evening Standard.
“I’ve killed arrival fallacy completely. At the same time, the thing that keeps me content and stable is the pursuit itself.
“I love the pursuit of things. That allows for when I’m perfectly content, as long as I’m pursuing, and I have no belief that arriving or material success is going to change me at all.”
He added: “Maybe kids? Maybe that’s a different thing. I don’t know, that’s just a hypothesis, but outside of that I love waking up every day and getting to live a life and working with cool people on things I care about that’s challenging me.
“The game of life is the process, I believe: the pedals, not the podium.”
Bartlett delved into his younger years on the podcast, discussing his upbringing and the impact that had on his approach to entrepreneurship.
He revealed the impact his mother and his home life had on his outlook towards trying new things and initially aiming for material goals, recounting stories of raising money for school trips and getting a vending machine installed for a lower price than the school was initially going to pay.
“From a very early age I’d learnt this very important thing: there isn’t really a gap between an idea and doing it,” he said.
“If I could give my kid anything, it would be that exact lesson somehow, that you can have an idea and it can appear in the world.
“In hindsight, at 16 or 18 years old, that’s the defining trait of my ideology. I remember saying to my friends, ‘If you told me I need to go to the moon next week, my default is to believe there’s a way. There’s someone going, there’s a rocket going, I just need to find out who and find a way to get on’.”
The premises he speaks around are features in an upcoming book entitled Just F*ing Do It, which is about the principles of doing a thing, regardless of a successful outcome or not.
Stories in the book, Bartlett says, are framed around lessons from interviewees, lessons around mentality and strategy and discussions of neuroscience.
Repeatedly, he highlights the importance of not focusing solely on the end goal and acknowledging that as long as he’s giving his best, automatic success isn’t guaranteed – and that’s perfectly fine.
“My default is to be empathetic with myself and to realise all I can do is my best,” says Bartlett. “If I don’t address everything [going on], it doesn’t result in me catastrophising or beating myself up. My natural inclination is to give myself a break.”
‘Brave New World’ is available on all major podcast platforms, including Spotify, Acast and Apple
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