Interview: Dragon Den’s star Steven Bartlett

By Sarah Tetteh

As the founder of Europe’s leading podcast The Diary of a CEO, and the stand-out star of Dragon’s Den, Steven Bartlett is flying high. So when he invited South London Press Showbiz to join him in an exclusive virtual fireside chat with Jonathan Wolf, co-founder and chief executive of ZOE, we jumped at the opportunity to get up close and personal with the man of the moment.
With so much entrepreneurial energy in South London, it was incredible that entrepreneur, investor, and author was ready to reveal his secrets on how to become the best boss possible and take your business to the next level.
He singled out resilience, surrounding yourself with like-minded people, not being afraid to experiment and learn from the outcome, and said it’s okay to fail. It’s about being resilient enough to
pursue your passion despite the knock downs.
Steven talked about his personal growth as a chief executive, and encouraged other leaders to listen to their teams too, and be open to their ideas if they are better for the business than yours.
He said: “I take great pride in personally now knowing that I’m the type of person that will change my mind. I think when I was more insecure as a chief executive as a founder, I think changing my mind added to insecurity. ‘OMG I’m wrong.’ I think now changing my mind is evidence of my mental flexibility. So, I look forward to someone proving me wrong and I hope my team would back this up if they heard me say this.
“I think you should be really proud if you put a lot of work into something, and then 18 months into it, after loads of planning, you realise that it was a bad idea because if you’ve built the business. It’s much worse than launching this thing and spending three years of your life thinking well actually, you should have listened to that person.
That’s actually what happened with my first companies. I got really good advice on an email when I was 18/19, and I was so romantic about being right and not being wrong, that I ignored the advice and persisted anyway. Two and a half years later, I realized that email was right, and I could have saved a lot of pain.
“So that was the catalyst here for me to say, actually Steve, the goal here isn’t to be right, it’s actually to be successful. They mean two completely different things. If the goal for you is to be successful, then almost anything is on the table, in terms of the solution to getting there. If the goal is to be right, then there’s only one solution that is on the table, which is yours.”
Steven continued: “The most successful leaders I have met, the ones that unify in my head, are the ones that are taking on a deeply meaningful, easily articulable, mission of sorts. Because of this there are all these downstream consequences. They are able to attract world-class talent, able to secure exceptional funding, they are able to galvanize a wider community of people to come along on that mission with them. The really exceptional founders all have this macro mission is that you don’t have to put a dent in the universe.
“Actually, most people didn’t believe in at the time. If people understand your idea it’s not one of those exceptional world changing ideas, because if it was, then you’d have to ram it down people’s throats.”
Jonathan said resilience was key.

He said: “Trying to do something new, or do anything important, it’s often hard. Lots of stuff in life is hard. If you are not resilient then eventually it breaks you down, and you give up. If you are creating something new, or are the founder of a new company, sometimes people don’t understand it to start with, and that’s really hard as you are banging your head against this rock, so unless you have this capacity to deal with what you are faced with you can break if you don’t have the capacity to deal with it.”
Steven offered a solution to this. He said: “Once you have this vision, like these exceptional founders
have a deep sense of mission and cause, then that can overcome all these boundaries.”
It’s little wonder Steven dished out his nuggets of expert advice during our call. He’s been on a mission to give back over the past few years.
Prince William’s team asked him to spend the day with the future king visiting businesses in the South of England that are doing great work to end homelessness and to partner with him and his Foundation @homewardsuk to work to end homelessness in the next five years.
Steven wrote on Instagram about the day they spent, where they started off in Pret A Manger in Bournemouth making coffees and sandwiches and meeting the team that was a mix of former refugees, former inmates and people going through difficult times.
Steven wrote on Instagram: “If you had told me as a kid, I would be spending the day with Prince William, the future King – I would never ever believed you. I grew up with a Nigerian mother and a English dad who both adore the Royal Family, one of my earliest memories is watching my mum and dad cry when Diana died. William has a wonderful way with people, and he was authentically kind both on and off camera today!
“Thank you to whatever force in the universe put me there today, I’m so grateful and a little confused.
“A day I’m sure I’ll tell my kids about.
“If you’re a business, please do check out Homewards work!
“Together as a business community we can do a lot more to get all the talent we have in this country back to work!”

Pictured top: As the founder of Europe’s leading podcast The Diary of a CEO, and the stand-out star of Dragon’s Den, Steven Bartlett is flying high Picture: Picture: Showbizmama