Steven Bartlett could have been forgiven for keeping a low profile yesterday as he celebrated his 32nd birthday.
The host of the hit podcast Diary Of A CEO and youngest ever Dragon on Dragons’ Den has been making the sort of headlines he probably wished he hadn’t.
The latest one was in The New Statesman and read ‘Steven Bartlett’s empire of bluff’ and the closing line was particularly cruel.
“He’s a door-to-door salesman flogging not a product, but a way of being – a used car dealer for the soul,” wrote journalist Clive Martin. “He is the voice of a generation, but not necessarily the voice we’ll choose to remember in years to come.”
The headline in the Daily Mail was similarly brutal. ‘Is the tide turning on Steven Bartlett?’
A week earlier the tone was set by a story in the Independent, under the headline: ‘Downfall of a CEO? The real reason Steven Bartlett became the man we love to hate.’
And there are more stories in the pipeline with community newsletter The Mill reportedly working on its own investigation.
It’s been a bad month for Bartlett, who has seen two adverts for brands Huel and Zoe featuring Bartlett, banned after Advertising Standards Authority said they were misleading.
‘Why did he think he’d get away with it?’ Bartlett slammed over banned Huel, Zoe ads
Huel and Zoe promoted the products on Facebook and despite the ‘sponsored’ label on the ad, the ASA declared the ads didn’t go far enough to demonstrate he’s an investor in Zoe and director of Huel.
In the advert for health testing firm Zoe, Bartlett – wearing a patch on his arm – is accompanied by the quote: “If you haven’t tried Zoe yet, give it a shot. It might just change your life.”
In the two banned ads for Huel, he is shown drinking a supplement beverage and claiming it is the best product released by the company to date.
It’s fair to say the response in the court of public opinion was withering.
Ryan T Williams, co-founder of It’s Gone Viral – a competitor of Social Chain, the influencer marketing agency co-founded and since sold by Bartlett – asked: “How did he think he would get away with it? This is like the guy who owns McDonald’s telling you ‘Big Macs are good for you’.”
Williams, who exited the firm in 2022, said it’s a massive own goal by Bartlett. “Steven claims to be a master marketeer – but this feels like he’s completely trying to pull the wool over consumers’ eyes,” he said.
“Cleary, interviewing a bunch of famous people has gone to his head as he thinks everyone knows who he is and what companies he’s involved with.”
And here’s the thing. You won’t find any mention of the damning ASA ruling on Bartlett’s LinkedIn account (two million followers); Instagram (3.8 million followers); Facebook (1.9 million followers); or ‘X’ platform (289,000 followers). It’s like it never happened.
However, what you will see is a lot of videos promoting episodes of Diary Of A CEO; a plethora of self-improvement quotes; and even a video of Bartlett scoring a goal at Stamford Bridge in a Soccer Aid match.
Yesterday I counted 10 Diary Of A Podcast guest video clips on his Facebook account alone! It was relentless.
I’ve interviewed thousands of entrepreneurs during my career and Bartlett is without doubt the most polarising and divisive.
For many he’s the rock star entrepreneur of his generation. A mix of inspiration, poster boy, quick-talking motivational speaker and influencer rolled into one.
However, critics accuse him of being a bluffer and say he’s vague on the detail of his early success.
So who is the real Steven Cliff Bartlett?
I got to know Bartlett during his Social Chain days – albeit I know his co-founder Dominic McGregor a lot better.
He enrolled on a business management course at Manchester Metropolitan University but famously dropped out to pursue a career in business.
Social Chain
In 2014 he hooked up with McGregor and they launched Manchester-based social media marketing agency Social Chain after identifying how social media could connect an audience with a brand.
Social Chain went on to run campaigns for global brands such as Twentieth Century Fox, Universal, MTV, Spotify, Microsoft, the UFC and Huawei.
During the company’s meteoric rise, Bartlett was the public face and McGregor was the hard-working but low-profile COO of the business.
I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who understands marketing better than Bartlett and he recognised early on the value of his own brand and his image.
Our first face-to-face interview was in 2016 and was as memorable as Social Chain’s offices, complete with sleep pods and a fully stocked bar.
My colleague Jonathan Symcox and I had been invited to interview him about the success of Social Chain but we were kept waiting for ages.
After constant updates about his whereabouts his personal assistant apologised profusely, insisted ‘Steven was busy’ and suggested rearranging our interview.
“I can see him from here,” I said, pointing an accusing finger across the office. “He’s holding a French Bulldog.”
It sounded like the big reveal at the end of a game of Cluedo. “I suspect Mr Bartlett, in the Social Chain office, with the French Bulldog.” You couldn’t make it up.
Bartlett reluctantly joined us wearing his trademark baseball cap, tight-fitting black jumper, skinny black jeans, perfectly manicured facial hair and massive watch – although I can’t remember if the French Bulldog was in the room.
He said he wore black because it limited the number of decisions he had to make in a day but my most vivid memory of the interview was an exchange over Bartlett’s impending 24th birthday.
“You’re going to be 24 by the time this piece comes out,” I said.
‘I’m 23’
“But I’m 23 now,” replied Bartlett, stony-faced.
“I know Steven, but you’ll have had your 24th birthday by the time the article is published,” I explained.
“But I’m 23 now,” replied Social Chain’s CEO sternly.
It was a seriously awkward exchange but doing things younger than anyone else is massively important to Bartlett and made me re-read my 2016 interview with him.
“Are you arrogant?” I asked. “I don’t think I’m arrogant,” he replied. “I know what arrogance would feel like if it was in me.”
Three things struck me from the Bartlett I interviewed eight years ago to the one today. The first was how much has changed; the second was how much has stayed the same; and the third was his with approach to controversy.
In 2016 Bartlett boldly predicted Social Chain could be a ‘billion-pound’ company down the line but he only tells you what he wants you to write.
For example, countless interviews refer to the fact he was born in Botswana to a Nigerian mother and an English father.
Similarly, he’ll talk a lot about his tough childhood in Plymouth, which Bartlett recalled didn’t involve birthdays or Christmases.
“My parents had no money,” he reflected. “I’d be lucky to get a card. I came to realise fairly quickly that if I was going to have stuff in my life, it was going to be down to me.
“I wanted to have a good life. I wanted to have all the things that my friends have. I wanted to create my own birthdays and Christmases.”
However, the big change can be found in his relationship with social media.
Eight years ago his Twitter timeline was full of photos of him catching planes to New York, dining with clients in LA and speaking to budding entrepreneurs. He even used to capture details of his exciting life in video blogs – or vlogs.
Today Bartlett tells you virtually nothing about himself on social media other than motivational quotes and videos of his interviews on Diary Of A CEO.
The controversy in 2016 came in the form of criticism that Social Chain plagiarised content for its hugely popular social media pages.
Bartlett openly admitted to reusing content from Twitter, Tumblr and Reddit but said it was a two-way street.
“Any publisher which puts out thousands of pieces of content every single day runs the risk of one of those images or sentences they’ve used having been used by someone else,” he explained.
“There’s a very fine line between curation and plagiarism. Some of our pages curate images so they’ll find images online, post them and tag the person who made the images. We’re probably the biggest victim of plagiarism.”
I interviewed Bartlett again at HOME Manchester a year later as part of their ‘In Conversation’ series of events and he proved what an accomplished speaker he was.
Chris Maguire interviews Steven Bartlett at Slater Heelis event
Halfway through the interview I invited the audience to come up with a subject that Bartlett would talk about for three minutes with zero preparation. We came up with ‘fake news and social responsibility’ and he didn’t even pause for breath before replying. It was deftly done.
In October 2019, Social Chain merged with German-based Lumaland AG to form The Social Chain AG and list on XETRA and the Düsseldorf Stock Exchange.
Less than a year later the announcement came out that Bartlett and McGregor were exiting the business completely.
However eyebrows were raised in 2023 when it was revealed social and digital media company Brave Bison had acquired the entire issued share capital of Social Chain Limited for an initial bargain price of £7.7m.
The revelation prompted a story in The Times headlined ‘Why Steven Bartlett is not the tycoon he claimed’, in which he was accused of ‘misdirection and half-truths’.
Bartlett took to LinkedIn to explain his position. “At the time of my departure, Social Chain Group was generating in excess of $300m in revenues. It would go on to reach a valuation of $600m+ on the stock market,” he said.
“In 2019 I made a presentation to the board that I wanted to split the group in half – separating our marketing business (five-10 agencies) and our eCommerce business (20 companies) so they could go their own ways.”
To date none of the controversies have mortally wounded his career. As well as his hit podcast he’s written the best-selling book ‘Happy Sexy Millionaire’.
Ultimately, the best metric to measure Bartlett will be how he uses his influence to affect positive change beyond just making money.
In 2023 the Guardian revealed he was planning to create a ‘money school’ for the Grenfell Tower community to advise potential entrepreneurs.
Last week he posted on LinkedIn that the money school would be launched in January 2025 with the aim of giving young people – especially from disadvantaged backgrounds – access to information about money.
Bartlett will always split opinion. Did he gild the lily about the success of Social Chain? Probably. Was he a bit naive over the Huel and Zoe adverts? Definitely. Will he fade into obscurity anytime soon? Highly unlikely.
I was struggling to know how to end this story so I decided to give Bartlett’s social media accounts a final check.
On X he posted a photo of him as a baby and picture of him now with the message: “32 years ago I was born in Gaborone, in Botswana, Africa! Spending the day with my god kids and friends feeling love and gratitude! Thank you to everyone that supports our work for the most wonderful year.”
At the same time he posted the same baby image on LinkedIn with the message: “32 YEARS AGO TODAY I was born in Botswana Africa to a Nigerian mum & English dad! Today, I wrote down 32 lessons I’ve learned in those 32 years. Thank you for all the wonderful love and support this year, I’m unbelievably grateful! Let me know if you’d add anything to this list or if any of them resonated with you!”
A quick look on Instagram and the familiar sight of his baby photo appeared with the post: “32 years ago today I was born in Botswana, Africa. Celebrating with my friends and god children. Thank you to everyone for supporting our work this year … Absolutely the best year of my life.”
Three messages, all slightly different, all very Steven Bartlett.
- BusinessCloud approached Bartlett for a comment.