"could you do me a quick favor if you're listening to this please hit the follow or subscribe button it helps more than you know and we invite subscribers in every month to watch the show in person i r..."

"so without further ado i'm stephen bartlett and this is the diary of a ceo i hope nobody's listening but if you are then please keep this to yourself [Music] karen hello stephen um i i've spent the la..."

"and my mum said you were always defiant you always had your own mind wanted to do your own thing uh thought you knew best cut my own hair when i was six we had a um a school photo the next day and i d..."

"i guess i always felt that i had something to say and even at a young age i wanted to say it and i didn't care who heard it or how you know i just felt i wanted to stand up for myself i have no idea i..."

"one of my suspicions when i was trying to piece together this this little bit of defiance puzzle was um reading about your dad and how much of a sort of hard-working autonomous man he was and how hard..."

"was a big part of what was missing in his life and i guess he maybe he thought if you have a great education you don't have to work so hard you don't have to start so much at the bottom i think that w..."

"to keep going but i left school at 18 i had no levels in a levels as they were in those days but i had no qualifications but what i had worked has something really important and that is i'd worked out..."

"something i just i was trying to piece please um put two kind of dots together there boarding school a very restrictive place the antithesis of like freedom your childhood sounded like you had quite a..."

"things and the sort of repressive attitude of wearing the same thing doing the same thing doing what you're told not being able to explore things you're interested in and none of us could wait to none..."

"approaching it in the way it needs to be approached which is a real discipline as opposed to saying i don't want to do it and i'm not going to do it there's a difference you said earlier about how you..."

"of my life i agree also because i don't have the qualifications so it's there yeah yeah and it's a good place to start i don't know about you but i'm not particularly creative i couldn't have done any..."

"it was a good time so you meet david sullivan and he's quite well he's not spending on radio at the time when you met him and he's kind of against it i hear yeah he didn't think it particularly worked..."

"i think the package was i can't remember it wasn't a lot of money and it wasn't a multi-million pound deal that someone had to really think about it i pitched it just that it would be an impulse it co..."

"at west ham some 30 years later that is pretty um incredible did he know you were coming that day to pitch he booked in a meeting to see you i can't remember i think i'd booked in a meeting whether he..."

"happen it wasn't a case of well we'll we'll see but i'm the kind of person that never hears the word no when someone says no to me i don't hear no i hear find another way to get what you want and that..."

"the better people say to me you know what what is an entrepreneur well an entrepreneur is someone that just spots a gap in the market for a service or a product that that is either not available or av..."

"growing a great business being candid you said that talk to me about how candid you are in business very i think it's important i have a great candid atmosphere at west ham i want people to say what t..."

"candid and i think candid is good and how do i go about creating a candid culture in my company say if i've you know i'm running a business and i want people to be more candid what what what do i do a..."

"really important so say someone's in the board room with you and they they say something which is maybe even negative towards a decision you've made i guess you've got to be cautious of your reaction ..."

"tell you something i mean of course you have debates i want to do everything quickly i want to do everything with strength and power and purpose and others are like oh hang on a minute let's not go at..."

"important so how much of an organization that you you run and what parts of it are a democracy because i'm trying to see that balance between you being assertive and making the call but also operating..."

"that's how you breed great culture listening to people understanding the problems finding the solutions together having some fun while you do it so it's not all you know over charts and in in a very u..."

"i just realized i'm playing at your stadium oh is it in the um the soccer age yes yes hopefully that will uh sell it out for you but um no i just realized as you were talking then yeah you're playing ..."

"uh we went in there we we made so many mistakes but we had a great time it was such a fantastic experience you know to be given the challenge and chance of a lifetime to run a great business and chang..."

"achieve within our environment and that's why football is different because some people can't get their heads around the fact of what footballers earn and they begrudge it if they're not playing well ..."

"as well as that culture what else was it that helped you take birmingham because your stint at birmingham is seen as being incredibly successful as you say like turn the club profitable for the first ..."

"right thing for the right reason and not for any other reason and i think one of the most important things in a people business is you must never underestimate the power of kindness being kind to peop..."

"to innovate ever since they supported the very first sms text over 2g and most recently they've made history again this time through 5g internet with the uk's first holographic call but what i love ab..."

"installing in my home soon i think david sullivan and when he described you and much the reason why he had this has this huge admiration for you is exactly that i think he in an interview said you're ..."

"with so i'm not emotional from that point of view when you take on a football club as well and you've worked in football clubs for what two decades three decades three three decades now you're dealing..."

"fan base isn't of any football club isn't a fan base that's educated on business and finance and the inner workings of a club so there's lots of like misconceptions about the decisions that are being ..."

"it makes it worse do you have an objective at west ham to um be more transparent the recent event that comes to mind around transparency in football is obviously the european super league thing where ..."

"in the office so much well the thought of cooking and eating at home never occurred to me i'd always grab something on the way in or the way out would never the thought of actually buying food because..."

"and i think technology has changed how we all work i mean you know you're getting up at six o'clock in the morning to be in the office at seven and staying till eight o'clock at night you don't have t..."

"it's a sort of relief and sure my kids will always say i worked throughout their whole growing up but they learn different things from a working parent the ability to be independent have uh ambition t..."

"to do it and you tend to enjoy that balance of your life a lot more we met in saudi arabia for anybody that doesn't know that was the first time we'd met and i'd watched you on you know tv growing up ..."

"professional way it wasn't in a it was the most classy like wonderful polite way to destroy someone [Laughter] that's why i said to my team after i was like she the way she did it was so like classly ..."

"you think it's so important to you in particular i think because look at 23 i was given the challenge and chance of a lifetime and i took that and i knew that that started with someone having trust in..."

"generation who's gonna do it one of my guests pointed out to me um a couple of weeks ago that when a woman is successful and she's a mother people always ask the question like oh my god how do you how..."

"an easy thing to ask a woman and that's the lazy question you know where your kids what do you do with your kids how do you manage with your kids it's a bit like when whenever you know whenever there'..."

"pretty bad um and it started to show a little bit really over the last two months i go to the gym about 80 percent of the time so i track it with 10 of my friends in a whatsapp group and this tracker ..."

"being such a career-driven person um who's had these fairly all-consuming jobs throughout the years you know it's funny when i there's an interesting thing that happens in the comments section when i ..."

"and uh he was traveling around playing at different clubs playing for his country and i was the one staying at home looking after the kids having my career and and working around that and he was the o..."

"so i always say to paul it's much better if he's not there because i want to get up at four o'clock in the morning have a bath put the lights on turn the television on leave when i want then get back ..."

"everything we do together is is really important and i have to say if you said to me you got one day left on the earth would you do with it i'd want to spend it with my husband and my two kids because..."

"i'm like why don't you say hate the opera i couldn't think of anything i'd rather do less because when he finds out actually hate the opera and then or all you find out you've got to go more to the op..."

"uh i say to him oh i've been invited to go um to to buckingham palace for um dinner with the queen and it's white so i'm not going to that i'm not a white tie no i'm not getting a white town and he wo..."

"yeah definitely versus forever because as you say with the opera i then have to try and live out this life right now exactly exactly and i think it's important to have your own space and your own frie..."

"we we don't worry about anything we don't say don't worry about anything we don't sweat about stuff uh you know i don't care if he doesn't pick up his socks interesting the whole world is not going to..."

"date nights i don't know is there something that i should be thinking about when i get through well i think from our point of view our kids are grown-ups every night's a date night for us but i think ..."

"this is kind of a fairly new conversation that's happened in the last 10 years but have you had experiences with things like anxiety or depression within your own mental health no i haven't maybe i ha..."

"mother um has an aunt has a sister has a cousin has a female in his life that should want them to be treated equally i mean it's a it's a truth for every pound a man makes one makes 86 p and it's gonn..."

"what's driving you now what's the thing flipping the duvet and getting you out of bed if you've surpassed all those ambitions i mean the toughest thing about being a success is you've got to keep on b..."

"is there a goal or an ambition for you or is it more of the same is that the do you have like when you think okay 10 years from now i've never had that i've never set milestones i mean i did have when..."

"probably enough amen i'm reflecting on 19 18 19 year old karen that starts at saatchi and and then the person that sat in front of me today and i'm wondering based on that full life and that experienc..."

"honor and pleasure to speak to you because yeah i was in my team now i've had this like weird captivated crush on you ever since i saw you in saudi arabia because of that strength and that your wisdom..."