‘You can be mentally tough and vulnerable’: How Steven Bartlett gets celebrities to open up

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Many Australians couldn’t pick him out in a crowd, but Steven Bartlett has interviewed some of the world’s biggest celebrities, CEOs and thinkers. Michael Pollan, Rita Ora, Richard Branson, Deepak Chopra and more have sat across from Bartlett on his podcast, The Diary of a CEO. And like his famous guests, the 31-year-old British-Nigerian has many lessons of his own to share.

Bartlett was born in Botswana to a Nigerian mother and English father, and moved to England at age two. His family struggled financially, and with his parents busy working, Bartlett spent a lot of time alone. “I was the poor black kid in an all-white middle-class area, in an all-white school, who didn’t feel like it was enough,” he says.

Steven Bartlett, host of podcast The Diary of a CEO.Credit: Olivia Spencer

At 18, Bartlett dropped out of university and co-founded Social Chain, a social media marketing agency. Since leaving the company in 2019, Bartlett has been involved in many business ventures, including the launch of Web3 platform Thirdweb, which received a reported $US5 million ($7.7 million) in funding in 2021. Today, he has 2.7 million Instagram followers and another 1.4 million on TikTok. Diary of a CEO, now in its sixth year, has become one of Europe’s most downloaded podcasts.

This rags-to-riches origin story is a big part of Bartlett’s self-mythology. But what sets Bartlett apart from figures like Andrew Tate is his willingness to be vulnerable. While Tate sells toxic masculinity to a generation of young men, Bartlett talks about the strength in vulnerability.

“It’s a non-negotiable,” says Bartlett. “I think you can be mentally tough and vulnerable.”

It would seem this mindset has been key to the podcast’s success, where even the most hardened of business people open up about everything from childhood trauma to their sex lives. “It’s an experiment I ran because it did feel scary when I launched the podcast, but I started talking about the most vulnerable things in my life and the sense of connection I got from that validated my hypothesis,” he says.

Bartlett also is transparent about the social and mental cost of becoming an entrepreneur at such a young age.

“I hear this over and over again from entrepreneurs – that there’s this resistance you encounter from your friendship group trying to get you to fall back in line,” he says.

“That creates a real sense of isolation, but it also creates a huge amount of uncertainty because you fundamentally don’t know what life is at 18. So, you’re taking a bet with very little evidence, and you’re removing yourself from the herd, which is difficult.”

Given his upbringing, it’s no surprise Bartlett believes we are all driven by what happens in childhood. For him, his main driver was insecurity. “It was a deep, deep desire for financial freedom because it caused me so much pain as a young man.”

The pain of childhood is not something Barlett believes we can ever escape – nor should we try to.

“I’ve interviewed hundreds of very smart people, and I used to think that you could take the shame or the trauma from your childhood and just completely make it disappear, maybe through therapy or reading a book,” he says. “And I’ve come to learn that doesn’t really happen. What you can do is become aware of it and learn how to control it.”

One of the best things he’s done to become aware of his insecurities is keep a diary.

“My podcast was essentially that. I was going through my diary for those first 20 episodes and reflecting on what I’d done that week and how I felt, and you’re able to see things you wouldn’t ordinarily see,” he says.

Bartlett’s famous guests include Richard Branson, Maisie Williams, Seth Rogen and Rita Ora.Credit: Getty Images

Bartlett, by his own account, lives a very busy life. Even his downtime is optimised and monitored for self-improvement. He loves his Whoop, a wearable device that tracks your biometric data. He is an enthusiastic promoter of (and investor in) Huel, a meal-replacement drink he turns to when there’s no time to eat.

But are there any parts of his life that exist just for pleasure? His dog and his relationship with his girlfriend. Massages, he says, are a form of meditation, while the gym a form of self-care. He’s also a huge football fan, barracking for Manchester United.

But Bartlett admits there aren’t many things he truly loves doing in his downtime. “Because I don’t have many indulgences in my life, I try and really fight for the ones that I do have, to the point that if my [football] team’s playing, I’ll change my flight.”

The Diary of a CEO: The 33 Laws of Business and Life (Penguin Random House) by Steven Bartlett is out now.

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