Every entrepreneur starts with the same delusion: success is about having great ideas and working hard. Steven Bartlett certainly did. At 18, dropping out of university after a single lecture to start his first company, he believed the game was about him—his vision, his effort, his brilliance.
Ten years and countless mistakes later, the founder of Social Chain and host of “Diary of a CEO” discovered he’d been playing the wrong game entirely.
“First-time founders have a hidden bias,” Bartlett explains in a recent interview you can watch below. “They think the game is about them.” But after building a £25 million company and one of the world’s most successful podcasts, he’s learned the real game entrepreneurs play has three components: attract exceptional people, bind them with a culture that makes them do their best work, and set them a vision that’s important and worthwhile.
This realization transforms how successful entrepreneurs spend their time. Bartlett now calls himself “head of recruitment,” dedicating 30-40 hours per week to finding talent—even calling an 18-year-old applicant within three minutes on a Saturday. It’s what he calls “professional flirting”: persuading exceptional people to join your mission.
The insight feels particularly relevant in today’s challenging economic climate, where talent retention and team performance can make or break a business. As Steve Jobs observed, exceptional people only want to work with other exceptional people. Get the recruitment right, and excellence propagates throughout your organization. Get it wrong, and even the best strategies fall flat.
For entrepreneurs still caught in the “it’s all about me” mindset, Bartlett offers a sobering reality check. The founders who could save themselves years of pain are those willing to spend 20 times as many hours on recruitment as they currently do. Because in the end, your company isn’t built by your ideas alone—it’s built by the people who believe in those ideas enough to make them a reality.
