Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeEwAKeB4Ow
this is like a therapy session patricia bryant she's a creator author entrepreneur with an incredible story growing up my mum should take us to offices to clean the offices and we'll go to school and she would say like just don't tell anyone that you're working at five o'clock in the morning you just go to school in the morning and act like everything was normal there is pressure for influencers to speak up on every topic all the time bearing in mind that my forte is makeup and clothing and financed you know to an extent but we are not credible sources who know everything we just don't and i think it's really important for us to say speaking up on stuff that you know nothing about is very very dangerous i had a stalker for like three years and it was someone who would like just message me on all my platforms constantly send emails message family members so i did a meet and greet an event and then they messaged me like haha i was at your meet and greet so i remember feeling so anxious you didn't see me you look so terrible in person next time i'm gonna do something patricia bryant she's a creator author entrepreneur and a mother and she has a remarkable inspiring story growing up on a councillors day having her dad deported when she was just five years old a nigerian mother that came to this country doing cleaning jobs at night which she took patricia along to with her and that mother became a property mogul and patricia she became a superstar in her own right so it's no surprise that when i looked at the comments section on a previous podcast episode a comment requesting patricia bright to sit here with me and to be on this podcast had over a hundred upvotes and now i know why her attitude perspective ambition self-belief resilience is incredible so without further ado i'm stephen
bartlett and this is the diver of a ceo i hope nobody's listening but if you are then please keep this to yourself yes we share one big similarity with our childhoods in the fact that we both had nigerian mothers we do we do yeah i didn't know that really no i didn't actually well i still have nigerian mother so yeah yeah we both have nigerian mothers and um i believe both of our nigerian mothers moved from nigeria to the uk yeah um so they they were both born in nigeria so they're you know authentic roots are there but you know tell me about the rest of your childhood i only had one nigerian parent i heard okay you had two yeah i had both my mum and dad um growing up um but my dad was actually deported so he got deported when i was probably like six years old and i actually remember the experience of his deportation as being something very traumatic in hindsight as an adult i recognized that but growing up you know with an african mom african dad our culture was just a part of us on an everyday basis but also i was from south london as well so i kind of grew up in battersea and i came from a very diverse school but i always went back to like a very african home and um yeah i think it really shaped me to who i am today in what ways i think it's that kind of i'm going to say aggression there's something about nigerians out of all other people from say the diaspora um that i think means that we're quite aggressive and very passionate let's not say aggressive let's say passionate we're intense we know what we want and there's also a huge sense of like pride as well that we can do anything and we're good and i feel very privileged that i had a lot of that you're great you'll do well you'll be successful don't worry about what's going on don't
don't see reality as a definition of a limitation for yourself and i think that that's really made me do a lot of things that supposedly i shouldn't be able to do but that kind of upbringing made me be like no i can do it it's fine it was always fine i watched my mum do a lot of things that would be considered impossible for her and she just did it with ease and chaos in my opinion now but somehow she kind of achieved those things and i would feel very privileged to kind of grow up with that sense of confidence instilled in me which i think is really cultural as a nigerian and i bet she didn't complain either oh there was no complaining she did she just got on with it like even when my dad was deported she just got on with it and there were times that you know growing up my mom used to work on the trains so she was one of the train cleaners and my sister's three and i'm five she'd go out at night and leave us because there was no one to like look after her kids she'd go out she'll clean she'll clean offices she'll take us to offices to clean the offices when we were younger and um she just did it and we'll go to school and she would say like just don't tell anyone that you're working at five o'clock in the morning she obviously you're not going to go to school and tell people oh i've just been at foxton's like cleaning and helping my mom out you just go to school in the morning and that like everything was normal um but no there wasn't any complaining and she just kind of got on with it and do you think you know you referred to that as being that gave you kind of confidence that you could do anything but for me it sounds a lot like because that immigrant story is so connected with like survival and that's why i talked about like she didn't complain because it's like a lot of complaint comes from privilege almost doesn't it when you
feel like you have a choice yeah but what's really also really interesting is that some people still feel lucky the fact that she wasn't deported when my dad was deported she probably felt oh my god i'm so lucky i got to kind of stay here and um why would you complain when you feel like you're in a better position for yourself and your children in the long term so yeah she didn't have the privilege of wanting to complain but i think she was really like happy to still be here though she had to work hard i think she knew that she had a lot of opportunity while being here and she'd be trained and she she became a nurse and then she bought properties and then she retired in her 40s like i love england in that it's kind of like the land of opportunity for those who really want to like you know work out what to do and use it so i think she could see that that was possible for her and you talked about that that day when you were six years old when you're there's a knock on the door at nighttime at night time it might have been at night it might have been in the middle of the day to be honest what i do remember is like literally about four burley police officers officers kind of walking in um shouting like screaming like and there's me as a five-year-old my sister is a three-year-old my mom in tears and then literally dragging my dad out of the house and it was like your dad's gone like at that one moment and we didn't see him again for seven years afterwards so it was like i at the time i didn't i never processed it it's only in the last year or two i've processed how kind of maybe traumatic that kind of experience would have been for me as a child and i think it's also made me really be fearful of loss which is why i work so hard so that things like that don't happen hopefully
to me and my family in the future so in the last couple of years you've had time to reflect on that and you i guess you're saying did you choose to reflect on that or go through the journey of reflecting that because you could see things in your behavior that you thought maybe that's connected i didn't even recognize it i knew that there was like i work really hard like i'm really intense and i'm always like let's just keep going i'm always like that and until i literally you know started to have therapy as like where does that come from and it was that then got uncovered in my therapy sessions that actually the maybe one of the triggers for me like working hard was because because of that maybe fear of loss um and obviously there's other aspects as well i just like hustling that's fun but there was also maybe this thing here that was one of my drivers that i've actually used in a positive way but it's also important to kind of reflect on like dealing with things like that and i think that i came from a place of no it happened that just happened it's fine on to the next whereas like when you sit down and talk about it you're like oh that's that's not great yeah that's 50 years old that's not a great situation yeah yeah it must have taught you something about something even if that lesson was wrong that's where i think about it i'm like that must have taught you something about the nature of life because at five years old you're learning what the world means and what this means and that power and your dad and your mum i must have taught you some lesson about something even if that lesson was wrong right yeah exactly i mean i didn't even realize that it could have been teaching me something like no idea but maybe that stuff happened that's life you're not really in control of anything um but things like that can't stop you yeah i mean yeah i think if my parents were snatched out of my house i definitely wouldn't feel safe yeah i wouldn't feel safe you know because that's
parents represent the foundation of like safety in yeah this is my house and these are my parents and they just are yeah and then one of those things is snatched out it makes you i guess insecure about ever feeling too safe to somebody yeah but i think for me maybe mine was that i can't rely on the system or other people to secure my safety maybe and so i kind of i'm always trying to make sure i secure myself with the actions that i take because those are the only things i'm in control of so i'm very much like i'll do it myself i swear out myself oh don't worry because you never know what's going to happen there and i i'm like that as a person does that make you paranoid about i guess everything professionally no it makes me really objective i'm like i'm a pure realist like something that's probably going to go wrong at some point in time and that's fine like how are you going to handle that like it's almost like i prepare for something to go wrong in a way this is like a therapy session oh yeah i mean this is this is pretty much what this podcast is okay great yeah well no i just find i i think when i started this podcast i i am i was anticipating to find these like wild differences between everybody but in fact i found the opposite which is that fundamentally um we're all very very similar right when it relates to things like insecurity and safety and childhood and then um obviously because in many respects you've gone on to create a career for yourself that is so different from so many it would sometimes you think well what was the initial catalyst that caused that person to be different what was the like the environment it's almost like a cauldron what was the furnace they were like scolded in to make them then more hardworking or obsessive or whatever and um yeah i guess i mean having a nigerian
mother i already know what that part is like you could call it a cauldron yeah yeah yeah yeah that work ethic piece as well which um is quite absent in this culture um and that you know what we talked about complaining you referred to this as the land of opportunity yeah how does that make you feel when you see people who have lots of a much more let's say financially privileged start to life um and they don't fully understand the opportunity the land of opportunity so my first thought is like i roll like oh there you go moaning or complaining but i also realized that there's so many different types of privileges that people have that can actually provide them like a long-term foundation i think that if you do some people have financial privilege but they have no love they have no hope they have no no one to tell them that they're good whereas i mean i've had the financial privileges but i had a mom who was so loving and so caring and so encouraging that i was in a better position just because i had that so i don't want to ever tell someone that you're privileged because of xyz maybe in other areas they didn't have the support that they needed to actually um spur them on to be the best version of themselves um so i try not to be that judgmental anymore because there's so many different categorizations of privilege and at some point you know you said your mum she retrained herself she became a nurse which is amazing yeah um and off you went to university i did yeah i went off to university mmu we have a similarity oh my gosh i love that yeah yeah i lost one lecture but i was there for all three years but i just dropped out yeah okay great and we have that in common because i i was barely there but i was i had a great social life so it was enjoying manchester is great it was great yeah
yeah no i went to university after like leaving home and i was so ready to like get out of my house and get out of london and try something new and then find myself in like a new city i actually went in to do fashion marketing and to my parents despair because again as an african you don't do fashion that's not that's not a real course you do accounting you do law you do business you don't do fashion marketing um but i think i've always had this kind of more creative or creative streak as well as rebellious streak as well like i'm going to do what i want to do um but funny i kind of went there to do fashion but changed my course to accounting and finance because i realized that there was no financial hope in fashion i was like oh i'm not going to be broke when i leave university hell no so i changed purely on that on that basis that you purely on that basis i didn't love my course and then when they were doing internship opportunities they were paying interns 8k a year 10k a year and like graduate starting salaries were like 8k and i was like i i'm not rich enough to do this no way and then i found out about accounting and finance and they they were like the banks that had really good opportunities and i was really good at the accounting because we had a module um in the fashion marketing and i would i smashed it and i was like i'll do accounting and finance wow you said at this point that you were your parents you know typical nigerian parents my mom was the same when i actually when i dropped out is when i got help but uh yeah because you know that's even worse rather you're doing something at university just i feel like part of it's just just so she can tell her friends or something i was like do you know what i mean it's just like
it's like i'm going to university so that you get a degree as being a good mother my child is at university is what they tell all the aunties like it's very important yeah and at that point your dad was he was back in your life yes so by the time i was about 12 he came back um so fundamentally they defined his deportation as an illegal deportation but we i remember going to the court cases and my mom pleading with you know social services and lawyers and just people help us help us get my our dad back like how do we do this and then we went to the court case and she was like i don't know why this man was deported like gavel down bring him back i was like that took seven years for you guys to do that but he got back and like he just started again worked as a security guard did all of that kind of stuff and then ended up working in the home office for immigration which is so random because he was you know deported are you pissed off about that the fact that you lost your dad for seven years for what what sounds like it was a bit of a mistake or just negligence or at least a lack of empathy to take a dad from their kids for what yeah oh am i i'm not pissed off maybe i haven't processed it enough to be pissed off it just felt like it is what it is and this is how it went um i felt more upset for my mum in that i know how difficult it was for her to like have us and have responsibilities and deal with like managing this court case she managed it her entire self she represented herself because she didn't have money for like lawyers and stuff so she was under a lot of stress but she did it and she did other stuff as well so that was really the main thing that kind of upset me i'd say when did your dad come back did you have a relationship with him
it was weird it was so weird it's like this is my dad hi dad like how how do we have a relationship with a man we haven't seen for seven years but um you know he was the kind of what stoic african dad so i remember he always gave me an envelope with money at the beginning of term like well done look after yourself okay how's the weather are you reading your books yes dad yes dad okay good like it was that kind of relationship but i knew it was it was still caring it was the way he kind of communicated his care for me which is that envelope of cash and that's probably like a nigerian generational cycle of like male figures yeah just being a bit you know a bit standoffish about caring and when they ask you certain questions whether it's about the weather or your studies how are how is your studies going like that's just they don't really know what else to ask you but them asking you that is is powerful and my dad calls me every day is hi how are you fine dad how'd the kids find dad okay bye like it just it's that checking in which is really i like it i think that's probably also just a male a male issue i think men typically aren't as um emotionally open so they don't build that you know because vulnerability it's well connection seems to be built on vulnerability and they seem to have a bit of a guard up i my dad is definitely exactly the same like yeah the questions are so like you know just say hi yes are you okay yes okay goodbye yeah yeah let me know if you're not okay exactly yeah um so mmu you go there you feel a bit out of place yeah quite out of place what do you mean by that because i'd never left like london and i'd like i had to make new friends and i didn't know anyone and i wasn't really good at it and i i couldn't
really find my tribe very early on and i was on a campus really far away i was on the didsbury campus oh yeah like that was the town yeah out of town right and then there was like the main campus for manchester university that everyone was at that's where i was yeah where i was like come on um and i actually ended up like moving out of my halls of residence really and crashing with a number of girls um in that main campus and i would move from room to room so once one friend got annoyed of me after two weeks another friend would say i'd stay with them for two weeks and then i'd just go back and forth like a nomad for a bit and you you change course to accounting yeah in hindsight how important was it how like pivotal was it for you to have an understanding of finance for everything that would then come in your in your career because i feel like i feel like finance is such a neglected topic for for kids i wish someone had told me about [ __ ] credit scores before i smashed mine okay so the moving role was pivotal for my life like it set me up on a completely different trajectory that i i wouldn't have even been aware of because off the back of that role i worked at you know all the top four four companies in the world in finance i worked at merrill lynch and deloitte consulting banks all of that stuff i would have never done that if i'd stayed in fashion when it came to her from a personal finance perspective didn't prepare me at all really not a clue i owed the tax man money i i i got my taxes wrong i had to pay fines i had no clue what i was actually doing i had the degree i had the t1 great you've passed how do you actually apply financial
knowledge to running your own business to your everyday personal taxes like i didn't have a clue spent the money bought bags made extra money on the side spent it all oh the tax man and i wasn't prepared [ __ ] hell well i mean that's a great advert for manchester united university maybe it was just me maybe i was just like young and dumb but like it helped me from a career perspective but a lot of the financial courses out there don't help people be better themselves of money and that's psychology point because money isn't such an emotional thing especially as like an immigrant yeah oh yeah exactly yeah when you come and you grew up on a councillor state right growing up in a council state getting money yeah dangerous concoction for getting a lamborghini or [ __ ] up with some chanel bag or some [ __ ] exactly but like i grew up on the council estate and then my mom bought her council house rights for 17 grand sold that house for 250 grand used that money to buy it to build a property empire and that's how she ended up retiring so when i was in manchester i was actually my mom bought like four houses in manchester so i was doing property management while being a student so i was still like running businessy stuff like as a student so even though i had that came from the council background i'd seen kind of like how hustle and money could kind of be made and that i didn't have to be broke forever if i was kind of smart about it your mom sounds like all right beast she's wild she bought four houses while you're in manchester yeah no how many no three oh well yeah so different yeah yeah but they were and i can't swear they're like right can i swear of course you can swim she was just in it for the flip oh yeah exactly yeah so you start at some point blogging while at university and why did you turn to blogging why why was that a
compelling path blogging or vlogging i kind of went into it because i kind of had like a friendship fallout and i became a bit of a loner like i didn't have a big social group like people would go out without me and i would live with a group of girls and they'd all go out together and i'd be like left at home by myself so i i found like online communities so i was part of different forums before reddit was read it before youtube existed there were like forums where girls would talk to each other about beauty and makeup and i'd spend hours like writing to these girls across the world and sending them pictures and they're used to before instagram there was [ __ ] key there's all these platforms where we were communicating and then um some of the girls would send videos to each other of like their new hair and their new makeup like so random and then youtube had just launched it's like this is a great way to send videos to each other and so i kind of got sucked up in communi communicating with all the people that i met online because my real life wasn't that great and i guess when you started in youtube you never never thought it was anything more than a no it wasn't a thing at the time of me like watching youtube and kind of creating on the platform there wasn't actually that many people on there um and so like little artists could go viral and there'd be like there's a song chocolate rain i don't know if you guys remember what i remember with the the black guy with the hat yeah like yeah yeah that was like mind-blowingly amazing and then what there was michelle phan she was like the main beauty girl that was really like killing it so it was such a small little ecosystem that wasn't a business but it was genuinely about like connecting and talking to other people online why did you do so well in
hindsight on youtube honestly length of time like i was just doing it for a really long time and i was very transparent like i was so transparent i was putting a lot of information out there um i wasn't that strategic with it but i loved talking to people online like they were literally my friends and i used it a bit like a online diary in a way very earlier on um but it wasn't like a full-time thing i was like interning and working um but i think eventually i got really strategic about it and that's when i saw like more growth or huge growth um you were saying that you know you first started um like the online forums and stuff at a time when you'd like falling out with your flatmates and um i guess from what it sounds like youtube was giving you that sense of like community i guess and that you weren't getting in the real world fact yes definitely i didn't have like a huge social life after a while um after the fallout and i had so much solace with just this online community i never felt lonely because i could log in and there'd be someone on there and i could read all the forum updates and talk to the girls who are into the things that i was into they were all over the world it was just really nice to like have friends you referred to the fallout as if it was a really pivotal moment in your life it was it wasn't uh it wasn't that pivotal but it's quite hard when you're at uni and like your friends are off doing stuff and like meeting people and then you're you don't have anything to do or they they're not talking to you it feels like a big thing in in real life it's really not a big thing like but at the time it was like i'm so lonely i'll go online okay yeah wow good thing you did what a journey and you say consistency you point at consistency as being the
real factor to your success but consistency must come from you know enjoying it because there'll be a lot of people listening to this thinking i want to be a youtuber i mean everybody seems to want to be a youtuber yeah but the insanity to do it as long as you did without the um guarantee of money must have come from somewhere there was no guarantee of money it was a hobby like if you're a painter you like painting at the weekend you're gonna paint anyway whether someone pays you for your art or not you just enjoy doing it so i just enjoyed making videos that other girls watch and i could talk to the other girls so i didn't get paid for like four years but i was always uploading every weekend it was my hobby like it wasn't this is going to be my new job which is why i even struggle with it now and that i really want to enjoy it in the same way that i always enjoyed it and do i need to look for a new hobby and is now youtube my job like oh i find it really hard to kind of balance the fact that this thing that was my my escape is kind of like my job now there's we i was talking to one of the guests on the podcast a couple of weeks ago about um this study where when someone gets paid to do a task they used to love doing they lose motivation for it and it's just mental they they do the study where they give people this game people enjoy doing the game they then say we're going to ask you to do the game again but this time you're going to get paid the other group don't get paid and the group that got paid to do the thing they just enjoyed doing lose motivation doesn't it make a lot of sense you two stopped paying me i like those checks um that is insane it's you lose internal motivation when it becomes when when some of the um reason for doing it becomes extrinsic monetary so and this is a you know it's a wise oh my gosh it's tough isn't it it's really tough because people are
like oh my god like what privileged conversation it's not because like say imagine someone's like a a dart player or something right but eventually once they get into the competitive sports of darts maybe it becomes a bit more stressful maybe they don't enjoy it as much maybe the the the challenge of doing it is now i've got to perform for my management and the the crew or whatever there's a dark crew i just made that up but that becomes like i don't know more pressure than the person who just wanted to play darts on the saturday night would feel can you feel that no no but the reason being is that i'm i try to frame what i do as i've accepted that i have a huge desire to create stuff right that's it so as long as i focus on this process is creation this process is creation i'll be fine and that might mean saying no to work and no to sponsorships for a season so i can at least feel that creation because it i'm very much like how do i feel about this which is kind of bad but also it's allowed me to do what i'm doing feels like a good long-term strategy yeah right because if you're not asking that question in the short term how do i feel about this so many people in fact i think the guest that just sat in that chair last um you end up gradually becoming someone you never intended to be and ending up someone you never intended to go so that constant asking of that question how do i feel about this today which as you alluded to means turning down money sometimes but you know thinking longer term about what you're doing and why you're doing it i think is so critical so critically important you know the thing that had the biggest positive impact on me sticking to the gym has been this change in mindset and i've talked about this extensively on this podcast about how i used to view
my goals in the gym as being super superficial and attached to a season to summer looking good for summer and that the shift came in me when i started asking myself this question and i started viewing life as one season so i'd say to myself if if life is to be one season then what can i do sustainably over the next 50 years what are the healthy habits that i could maintain and that moves you from a place of intensity to consistency and one of the things that has really helped me get in great shape is the ready to drink cures in the bottles as you'll know i've had them for three to four years i've had two today alone but also huel's brand new protein product i've completely finished the salted caramel one and i'm now starting my journey with the banana milkshake and it just tastes amazing and the crazy thing is it's 105 calories some people historically you know when we think about protein shakes we look at the calorie number when we see 300 calories it's 105 calories you get all of your vitamins and minerals and it's 20 grams of protein for me this might be the best product that you would have ever created and in terms of the results well they speak for themselves you know we've got two guests that have come to watch this podcast today and sophia i said sophia you know she's she's followed you for some time i said sophia if you could ask patricia any question what would it be she said to me um how did she find the confidence to make the leap from that sort of corporate career to going full time with this thing called youtube so for me my confidence came from an excel spreadsheet so i am not a risk taker i'm more of a steady and stable person but i did a bit of maths i did a bit of a projection i looked at what my long-term potential earnings and lifestyle would look like if i stayed in the banking industry and then i looked at what my numbers
were looking like you know if i stayed as a creator where could i take it and even at that time i had no clue i could get to where i am today but the numbers looked healthy enough so i was like okay i'll take the leap even if i do it for two years it could be okay um and i didn't just jump out i kind of um took a toe dip in and i quit my job but then i took another job that was part time so i could make content and have a job as well and you call your mum you say quit my job i didn't tell her i didn't tell my mom i didn't tell anybody what you've quit your big banking job oh hell no i could never do that so i knew my parents would be worried and scared should we tell them now no no no no so mom i left my job they barely know what i do right now they're like i do this thing on the internet they're like oh wow it's fine yeah yeah so my mom but yeah so you made that you took that leap into youtube um was there a moment where you think [ __ ] how this is this is moving this is or was it just one step at a time slow and steady yeah slow and steady i was making i'd been making content for seven years and then i got to a million subscribers so i didn't have any of those really viral moments and i saw lots of people kind of steamroll ahead of me like go viral they were part of these groups and these crews and you know there was a time that there was a thing called the brick pack they were all there and i was just like in the corner by myself like plodding along and then inevitably like my my time came and it took again that seven years to one million and then one more year to another million and a half and i then had my own viral moment off the back of myself and um but i never kind of took the step back to be like oh you've made it because i never feel like i've made it not even now not yet a lot of people might be surprised by
that um maybe but it depends on someone's personal definition of making it right and what's yours domination what is mine um it's not just being popular on social media that's not my complete definition of success right i think for me it's like creating things that i want to create when i want to create them and monetizing them and bringing value so if i say my overall thing that's it what that looks like i don't know just yet and you don't think you're there yet you don't think you're creating things that you really oh i'm doing it i'm doing it but i don't think i've had like one big thing yeah does anyone have one big thing though i don't know i think that i you know i think if you'd gone back and asked patricia when she was at mmu what her making it look like you would have said you know hundred thousand followers on my yeah so maybe the goal post is just moving off into the future maybe that's maybe that speaks to what life is it's just that journey as opposed to that destination right so yeah yeah and influencers being an influencer talk to me about that when i say it you know what do you think about the lifestyle the stigmas etc etc so when people say influence i think there's a little cringe when they say it but i think this concept of being influential is has always been around but it's always been around with the hands of the upper echelon of people only certain people are are picked by certain industries to be influential but what i love is like now there's this democratization people can choose who they want to be influenced by and how i got in my position is because people liked me they decided that actually i want to hear what patricia has to say i want to see what she's buying i want to see what she likes so i think it's a really powerful tool
we've all been influenced the question is like we want to choose who those influences are it's a it's a it's a big i guess responsibility to some because i know for a fact that every time something happens in the world you get a dm patricia i thought you were with us why aren't you doing 55 instagram posts about palestine or kenya or india or oxygen in the fires in australia i thought you were one of it's a lot it's a lot that's a lot bearing in mind that my forte is makeup and clothing and and maybe financed you know to an extent i feel there is pressure for influencers to speak up on every topic all the time but we are not credible sources who know everything we just don't and i think it's really important for us to say we're ignorant on a matter and we're learning but kind of speaking up on stuff that you know nothing about is very very stupid dangerous yeah yeah and stupid yeah um and also what is really scary is that if you don't think the same way that everybody else thinks you're in trouble what if you have an alternative perspective you're not allowed to have an alternative perspective if you ask of peace whether or not it's you know in the middle east specifically or for on a certain matter oh no way because the world wants to keep everything burning but like personally i'm like can can this just chill like not just that situation specifically but a lot of situations i'm like i just wish it wasn't happening is that your approach to it you think generally if i don't have a a proper well-rounded view because it's all well people like because i get the same this is how i know you'd get the same people message me and say steve speak on this issue or black lives matter or whatever
um while i'm still processing it and what you're right what they're actually saying is share my opinion to your followers on this issue and they're trying to try and like guilt trip me into it like yeah you know especially when it's when it's a group of people that i can relate to just viscerally so like my skin color yeah yeah i'm expected to be a you know the spokesman of all black people yeah oh me too as well yeah yeah it's a lot of yeah a lot of um nastiness what what else do you think is um unappreciated about being an influencer you've obviously got a big platform the other thing i was going to say right this is what i was just thinking as we're talking um the other day i thought and i've been working out for a year and a half now i always like talking about this love it um and grace who sat behind that curtain over there i sent her a photo i'm going to post like a transformation picture okay like the before and after and me and grace had a conversation because if i was a female and i'd posted that i would have got [ __ ] ripped to pieces right i would have been told i was toxic irresponsible body image yeah i posted it fine yeah 100 of people like send us your plan like whatever yeah yeah and it really made me reflect on how tough it is to be a woman on social media with a big audience it's like the standard of perfection in terms of your like morals what you're posting how you're posting what you're saying is a high bar to reach yeah whereas i'm not held to that standard as a guy okay yeah yeah i'm not surprised but there's gonna be different standards you're held by so with the women like us there's a lot of pressure around our appearance or if we're mothers how we mother or what we're wearing i mean it's so random but i'm sure there's
definitely things that men are going to expect from you that that i can't believe you did this or something even relates to success it's like i can come on and i could come on this podcast yeah and say that i the reason i'm successful is because of me and i can talk about my big old ambitions and i'm gonna when a woman does it it's like you know what i mean it just seems like there's just a double a total double standard the fact that i can post me being kind of slightly overweight in that shape and then like nine 19 pack like do you know what i mean i saw many videos you said seven abs or whatever like seven abs whatever and the comments are like whoo but i know if if um if a woman did the same thing it would be like this is irresponsible what are you saying fat shame why is that i mean because like men and women are fundamentally different so presuming that your audience is like probably say sixty percent to seventy percent male 1 eighty percent women eighty percent with uh i think women judge men by different standards so what you'll see oh let's talk about this what you'll actually see in the world of beauty and women's fashion and um industries that are predominantly consumed by women men are always at the forefront so the biggest influences in the beauty industry are five men men who wear makeup right and that's yeah so men who wear makeup are more popular than or let's say three men who wear makeup can be bigger and get to bigger stratospheres than any women could um the fashion industry and fashion brands all of them the majority of them are owned by men and ran by men or creative directors are men not women not women there aren't a lot of brands that are run and owned by
women and i just think this is something to do with biology sociology the way in which kind of women interact with men is different to how we interact with each other i wish it was different but i've i've just noticed this like a lot and and the other point which i kind of alluded to there as well as on on this topic of gender disparities i guess is it like just discrediting success yeah do people discredit your success do you know what not so much and i think also because i'm a black woman people are so happy to see me do well because they feel like it's rare and so i think i'm afforded a bit more luxury to be a bit more like aggressive about you know i'm pushing i'm moving hard whether you like it or not that's the nigerian in me coming out and culturally i think um i'm allowed to celebrate that a lot more because brits i don't think like to celebrate people doing too well or being too much um so i can get away with it a little bit more um but i know like there is a little it can be tension when i talk about my numbers too much and i'll definitely get the messages of this is not what you should be talking about you shouldn't talk about how much you earn it's a bit rude imagine a guy doing it though oh go one what show us the lamborghini again do you know what i mean it's like that's all guys do yeah that's how they build their status is like i mean just that's what that's how it works have you put your lamborghini on no no i don't have a lamborghini but no but i can openly talk about how much money i've i've generated in my companies and no one's ever going to say oh that's so just tasteful they clap and but when women do it they people do go oh god she's not that's not good taste is it yeah and that again is a huge like ben francis he talks about he's built a one point something billion dollar company
everyone's like amazing yeah you know they can show men can show the nice things the cars the houses whatever and it's all but the minute grace beverly does a house tour you can't do it yeah i have a video called like how i made a million on youtube right and um it's firstly it's got like over almost a million views on it and um but the comments were so kind of crazy people are like i can't believe you're sharing this we're really excited but um also like um you should be putting this out there and what i actually did is there's no way i could actually share my actual numbers because i think people would judge me negatively and like fall over be like what the hell how is it possible and like almost want to stop the bag if that makes any sense like they don't people don't like to see women doing two big numbers you gotta still be humble as a woman how do you respond to that though how do you how does that impact the choices you make and does it impact the choices you make isn't that sad though that yeah it really does so i've moved away from like putting out my numbers i'm not gonna use using my numbers as a strategy or showing my things too much as a strategy i also bought a couple of properties and you know i really want to share with people about financial empowerment and properties and making money but like i can see that almost like a a sour taste sometimes in people's mouths so i show a bit less of it i i'm not going to show you the new house that i bought or or something else i'm not going to show it as much and i've tried to make more relatable content and a lot of us have to be relatable and remain humble to still be considered um a good influencer just don't show what you have are you happy with that though are you
happy to go along with that and to to do what um because when we spoke earlier about what your goal is it's to make stuff that like really matters to you and that sounds like it's driven by like my terms you know what i care about in my way and not allowing the audience to dictate what you create that sounded like your north star and this being a good influence but it doesn't sound like it's gonna make you very happy yeah i think it's all about being strategic though right so like if um eventually showing lots of glamorous stuff is gonna impact growth it would be silly for me to keep doing it right and again that's not my personal strategy anyway i'll be honest with you i don't want to be like look at my new lamborghini look at my new house that's not who i am as a person is a bit cringe for me and it's not part of my strategy but um i do want to remain authentic but i understand that showing too much of my success um doesn't always sit well for people and i'm happy to like remove that aspect if that makes people more comfortable and i think that's because i'm a woman like i want people to feel comfortable um and you know you're you start this platform called the break yeah that was it when i say when i say that there's a big smile on your face yeah that's like my like my passion project turned like great potential business opportunity and i think for me that's like where i decided to start talking about these things and we're just we're talking about this now that people don't talk about money women don't talk about money on that platform i am unapologetic and that's what i shared about the making a million in a year or making a million over a lifetime and showing how i budget my salary and showing you how i bought a house in 10 minutes i put that all on there because i feel like
you know over there is where i'm going to talk about this stuff so if you like it is there if you don't like it let's go put on makeup on my other channel and um it's been just insane to see how it's grown and how much there's a huge demand for this type of content within this demographic it was what was missing when you started out from what you said earlier exactly and that's why i created it because you were buying all those bags and being a bit reckless and no one told you so you exactly and the tax man came knocking at my door and i got fined and i was like nobody needs to do this this is how you incorporate this is how you get your pension sorted out this is how you can buy a property for your business and i was just literally doing all the stuff that i kind of learned from my accountant and from the financial mistakes that i've made i really wanted to just say here you go here's this information use this make it be valuable to you to help you on your journey do you know in black culture we um growing up you know i was watching 50 cent and all this stuff and he is a bad financial advisor because am i can you get some advice from 50 cent though [ __ ] every black young black man and what he told me about bottles and lamborghinis and stuff it really hurt me when i was 21 and i finally got money and i went to the club and i was getting five bottles of don perry on please and i blew a lot of cash and i just wish those those role models like the rappers that i followed when i was younger i wish they told me about credit scores you know what i mean i wish but that's not it's not sexy right it's not glamorous it's not fun like i have a video on pensions like 40401ks and whether or not you should be making a contribution to your sip right that is not oh this is glamorous no one wants to hear that but there are going to be a few who do take it and use it
i wish we could dress up like credit scores like give it lipstick give it a lamborghini um but we haven't mastered that yet maybe i'll do that later but they don't want people to know the truth i don't think anybody wants people to really know the truth about finances right it's not beneficial it's not beneficial to government it's not beneficial to corporations it's not beneficial to banks and lenders who actually want people to be inept in this area so they can make financial mistakes and then give them more money so like that's the reality of it like rich people aren't actually struggling financially it's actually everyone else on the maybe lower end of the spectrum who don't have this information but this information will transform their lives i guess that's why they call it financial freedom there we go yeah and you said this started as a passion project and now it's turned into a potential business opportunity exactly talk to me about that and where is it going ah this is this is a lot so where's it going so we really want to build out like a web platform which has content but also tools that people can use so one of the things that i created was a simple budgeting like template and like literally in like two weeks we had like 20 000 people download an excel spreadsheet on how to manage their day-to-day income so clearly there's more that we can do here we then launch a planner as well that just sold out in like a day or two and then we're launching more of these so for in the long run i'd like to provide more financial tools and resources that people could use to help them with managing their everyday finances the dream is like an app but that takes time to like happen but like we've got the designs and we're doing some testing now to really see how we can like build that out
further of all the work you're doing across all of these different projects and i'm sure there's many many more that we won't even talk about today is this the thing you're most excited about and it's like choosing your choosing your favorite child but i would say it's something i'm really excited about because it's so valuable so i'm very excited about it and i think it's a new challenge so as an influencer like i work for brands i make amazing content for them i get nice things but now this is my chance to kind of be a brand and create value more so so it's really like a new challenge for me that i'm excited to kind of get into and you when you're saying we you know we've made an excel document who is we so actually excel document i made but i do have like my husband who's been really supportive and like helping me build that out and then i've like recruited a ceo to like help me think about scaling this out but um i've had other team members here and there freelancers here and there but i know inevitably that scaling is something i'm gonna have to be willing to do and that's hard for myself to do yeah your husband my husband michael michael can i call him mike you can call him mike i can i can see him over there in the corner of the room follow me around what's it like working with mike so oh that's a really good question so working with mike you know what michael's been like with me for every step of my journey as a creator and he's always worked a full-time job and then he inevitably went even to more of a freelance role so that i could use him when i needed him so he will work as a contractor and i'm like mike i need your help quit your job come and help me and so throughout my entire journey he's been
there to do that however working with your significant other can be real difficult um and there are times when we're like let's not do this go back to your job make something happen go back contracting and then when we're like oh we're cool come back again so it's what's important for us is actually to establish how we communicate with each other and boundaries like when we're working together we actually don't work in the same environment so he'll work in an office and i'll work somewhere else because if you work in the same room at the same time it's not pretty we're gonna send a microphone over to mike in the audience it's not pretty yeah because i think when you're in like boss mode like you can be quite direct like i'm very like this doesn't look good i don't like this can we change this how how do we do this better this is wrong right and i think there are when it's with your partner they're going to take that personally over say someone else who is you know just working with you and i haven't developed my managerial skills to be great when it comes to you know my interpersonal skills just yet so and i think when you're working with a loved one as well you you feel like you want to be more direct like they should know just you should know this come on like but he doesn't always know and he can't read my mind and he's a man so there's there's differences there um so that's when it gets a bit difficult when we're together and how do you how do you balance like leaving work at work and not bringing that home with you because one thing i came to learn was that the steve bartlett that succeeds in a professional environment that is direct that is it's very clear and uncompromising it's not the same steve bartlett that is required to compromise and oh you want to go for a walk in the park for no reason
how do you be two different people in order to achieve two completely different objectives and how do you do that also when you're you live and work in the house right the same house because that's something that we deal with i think it's again about setting these boundaries like physically so michael won't really work in a house even if he's working on my projects and i'll try and work from an office as well as much as possible um and then it's the case of like switching off it's hard man it's really hard i think as a creator as a social media creator like you're always on i haven't mastered that yet but we have kids so the good thing about kids is that they force us to like give them love and give them attention so we have to switch off and sort the kids out and give them a bath and give them dinner so we'll always kind of i don't know switch brains because of that oh there's a really good point i never actually thought about the fact that kids would actually force some kind of balance into your life they do which is you know yes amazing and you guys have been together a long time a long time yeah we've been together for 14 14 years yeah and married for like nine years i think yeah nine years yeah i always i always think because because um because of my own experiences of being pretty useless at relationships um entrepreneurs and especially i mean creators that's a different bag because you say you're always on they're quite difficult to date yes yeah yeah and i think as well and i'm probably gonna get in [ __ ] there's a troll famous but i don't really care i'm gonna die anyway um i think from entrepreneurs from other cultures who have come up from another background and another another mother can be even more tricky to date yes you spoke to your mother you used the word yeah we'll say passionate yeah yeah yeah yeah does that really really yeah so
obviously michael's like a englishman from from manchester right and like we are very culturally very different and i think but it's so interesting i think if i wasn't with michael i'd be very single and very lonely like i've accepted that i don't know if anybody else would like actually handle me if that makes any sense i think it takes a certain kind of person to be with an entrepreneurial person let alone an entrepreneurial nigerian woman like that's like so many different layers there and yeah yeah he's like a magician to be able to handle that and we're like polar opposite people i'm very like emotional and like let's do this now and he's very logical steady stable and i think that actually is the balance that i've needed like and i think we're meant to be together to like i don't know ying and yang it's great you said he followed you here today but i heard you actually had a cyber stalker oh yeah it's not yeah it's not mike it wasn't like i found it it was actually his account disturbing me yeah no i did i had a stalker for like three years um and it was someone who would like just message me on all my platforms constantly send emails message family members really weird and nowadays i can't even remember like what their what their issue was i don't think they even had one they were just obsessive me and obsessive like my relationship to an extent because i used to put vlogs out and i used to have like content with me and my husband and i stopped like actually it sounds so bad but i think it was enough to tell me i'm not going to put myself out there in that way why i i think it takes an emotional toll having a stalker because you're worried like when you log in am i going to see their messages what are they going to do today what are they going to say today
are they going to dox me so they found out my parents name and address and say your mom's this name and she lives here so like those things and obviously it was like psychological warfare um but it was yeah it was more psychological but like when i was thinking about it i kept thinking it's because i put myself out there too much this is why they're targeting me and i think inevitably it made me want to retreat in certain aspects do you still think that was the case no i think that was one of my triggers but i think inevitably i was like putting yourself out there too much from a personal perspective um wasn't something i wanted to do like i used to show like i showed our wedding i showed me giving birth i've shown i put a lot out there okay link in the bio looking via my best story um and like the platforms love it when you put yourself out there a lot but inevitably it does take a toll on you as a person and i i just said we're going to stop this i don't want to be that person i actually care more about my real life than putting a version of my real life online i tend to think when you're reaching that many people just probabilistically just by numbers you're gonna reach at least 10 artists yeah okay just like do you know what i mean regardless it just happens yeah yeah and you're blocking this person i'm guessing every time they pop up and then they're making a new account they're making hundreds of accounts they're messaging other people so what would happen is that when i would message someone online they would like be in in the thread or they'll be watching everything i was doing so i'd have to tell people i'm really sorry i've got a stalker like if you got that message it's from it's from a stalker that like message brand sometimes it was just really weird behavior and at some point it stopped it vanished or yeah it
reduced it reduced i'd say and then it inevitably like disappeared i kind of forgot about it to be honest after a while but i learned how to like listen to their speech pattern so even if they would create new profiles i always knew it was them based on the things that they would say and how they would say it so they'll try to hide that it was them but it's like it's clearly you like and there's even like online forums where people like moan about online creators and she would like she or he would go into the forums and be like talking about me so i would stalk my stalker right so i knew it was them and then other people in the forum would be like your patricia stalker that they would know it was the stalker so yeah anyway wow what a ride that made you feel unsafe at any point there was nothing where it was like we know your home address we're gonna i'm gonna come there there was some of that oh really so there was some of so i did a meet and greet an event and then they messaged me he's like haha i was at your meet and greet you didn't even know who i was you didn't see me you look so terrible in person next time i'm gonna do something right so i remember feeling so anxious and i would i vlogged it and i remember like looking through the footage and i was like who could it be who could it be it's like racking my brain it's like which one is it which one is it and i think it made me a bit paranoid like sure a season but i was never scared because i'm from south london i'm not scared come to my house we'll see quick one i talk about fiverr.com a lot on this podcast but i think the perfect sort of illustration of the power of fiverr was actually illustrated a few weeks ago when jack who is the director and producer of this podcast was away and so we had to find someone to step in to um edit the episode with dr alex
and so we turned to fiverr and that whole episode which you would have seen on youtube was edited by a young guy who we found on fiverr and for me that's the perfect illustration of the diversity the cost effectiveness but also the sort of bandwidth that you can achieve on short notice by using fiverr.com and if you haven't used fiverr there's such a diverse array of services on the website delivered by freelancers everything from graphic design to building websites to getting subtitles done to podcasts anything check it out go to fiverr.com that's with two hours slash ceo so what's what's next for you then in your in your life as you look forward you know i'm not talking about goals i'm just saying the sort of macro the overall feeling you want from your life and where you want to be i think it's being open to more challenges that are different to what i'm used to i have been making content and creating by myself for myself four brands for so long for like 10 years and i i although i think i'm a brave person i feel like i've got very comfortable so i want to set myself out on challenges that are completely outside of my comfort zone maybe do something that you know is unexpected for me unexpected for me as a creator influencers don't do this or influences of your size don't do this or this kind of thing and i really want to work on like creating more products and really building out a brand and not necessarily being the face of everything why we're not the face of everything so i actually realized though i'm in the public eye to an extent like i don't really like being famous i don't really want to be a personality i don't want things to be about me and i don't know why i put myself out there if i didn't want that but i think fundamentally i'm happy to slink into the background yeah i think there are other people who
want it more like i don't enjoy being famous as in not that i don't enjoy but i think there are people who like really want to be famous right and there are people who just want to do what they do and do it well and like not just have their own normal friends do that their own normal things and get on with life like i get on the train every day and i i go on the underground and some people like you get on the underground i'm like yes it's quicker but i don't want to ever be in a place where i can't get on the underground people are stopping you saying hi patricia i can have yeah pitch and you're like no kovid no i always say no i was like i'm always friendly i guess you can use that fame for things that you do care about there right like i like that you're right you know what i mean it's like double double-edged sword it costs something but it gives creates an opportunity for something in a way oh yeah wow you just you just yeah you just told me off there in a good way yeah that's kind of what i can the battle i'm having at the moment because obviously just on dragon's den yeah exactly and that's going to be all over the tv and stuff and people are going to start coming up to me and pitching me their business ideas in the street which i don't want to [ __ ] yeah well i have an idea for you no but you know what i mean like you're going to get because i went out with peter jones for like dinner yeah yeah and he goes i'm just going to pop to the toilet yeah and like he takes three steps and a guy stops him hi peter i know i knew you were here pitches him the idea the percentage asks and i'm just looking at people thinking that's going to be my [ __ ] life but what so what's the upside what's the why am i doing this why have i created why have i put myself out there and i think okay all the other upsides are that it's going to allow me to build things that are more in line with the things i care about it gives you a
platform an audience well you know yeah no you're right you're right and i and i'm battling with the fact that there's clearly a reason why i'm i'm here or why i've got this audience and why i people connect with me right and actually maybe it's a good thing that i have no huge desires to be famous um so i'm gonna have to work out how to deal with that attention in a way um better and not just think about slinking into the background because that's how you feel slinking into the background i wanna i wanna be low-key like i want to make my videos and it sounds crazy and no one really watched them well i like i like the idea of when things are small because i've been very viral like so i was really bad i was getting like 8 million views a video 13 million views a video and at the time i was like oh this is quite this is a lot for me to like handle because people are like messaging me all the time like patricia and i'd be like hey guys hey um so it's not that i want to slink into the background i think i just need to be more comfortable with recognizing that you know i'm here i'm doing it um but still keep that normality that's really important for me and what have you learned over the in terms as it relates to if you because i'm thinking now about you've got an entrepreneur over there in the corner sophia and she's she's starting a meal prep business she's also working in the city in finance okay so it's very coincidental that she's she happens to be here today if you were speaking to someone like sophia and you were just giving her a bit of advice on how to um become as successful in what you do as you have been what are those underlying principles where you say that really is the thing there's no quick route but that thing there is the thing so i think the first thing is leaning into your like authentic tone
like what is the thing that makes you or your brand yours and not running away from that and not trying to be something else it's like learning to not be scared of yourself this is what we are this is who i am this is it right and then consistently putting that out all the time so that people connect with that they either connect or they don't but you only want those who are going to connect with that true version of yourself or your brand and then it's of course you know you're going to jump on trends or or things that are vital so you can get traction that's what i did i would jump onto viral trends but do it in my own tone of voice um and you know it's the consistency continue i've never done this before but i want to ask mike a question if i can you can answer one quick question he's famous mike i saw you on her instagram actually with the with the baby father today um i wanted to ask you from your perspective why do you think patricia has been so successful in what she's done well i reckon for a number of reasons partly i think it's her personality personally because she does that knowledge so patricia christian doesn't acknowledge a lot of good things about herself she's definitely 100 her biggest critic she brings a lot of energy and passion and enthusiasm and stuff so when you watch her you feel good or you feel happy or you feel interested or inspired but something that she doesn't really acknowledge but i think that's a part of it i do think there's certain fundamental like i suppose numerical things like consistency and sticking with it over time and you know all those types of factses that you can look at from a numbers perspective that help so definitely doing that and staying with it and doing you know your three uploads a week and your regular posts and all those sort of things that help but there's a lot of people that do that
and don't have the same level of success right so that's why you have to look at what's the differentiating factors so i think there's that i think there's an element of um her kind of openness and honesty and her also because of i think partly because she's done it a long time she's very natural and authentic so you don't feel like you're watching someone who's performing you feel like you're watching someone who is genuinely you know giving who they are to you and that's rare right so i asked mike there what you know what his he thought the cause of factors behind your success where he pointed at personality you being vulnerable and you being authentic and um yeah i mean that's that's kind of rare online with the world we live in with perfection filters and don't share the bad [ __ ] yeah and i think i'm lucky in that i came up in an age of making content where it was so authentic there was no business behind it and it was about connection so i had that training that was my training gown for being a creator just just do what you do don't don't think about it just do what you like so i i feel lucky that i've got that as like my basis as creating um and being an influencer well i i can certainly feel that and i think it comes through in everything you do especially the stuff you're doing on the break i've never watched videos about finance that seemed to be so entertaining and real and weren't trying to be like snotty financial like long word business [ __ ] advice yeah so it made it super like inclusive and um real and obviously that's what's absent in that space exactly is inclusion that's why we both probably bought bags we shouldn't have bought don't play on that i definitely should have bought absolutely so thank you so much patricia for your time today you're
such an inspiration to so many and much you know much of the reason for that in my view is because you're such a real person thank you and um and you're willing to share that realness with everybody um what you've done is remarkable and i'm sure this is just the beginning for you you look about 23 as well i was like you literally look 23 but that's that's part of the upside of the ethnic background um thank you so much for your time it's such an honor thank you for having me it was great to come on and have a chat thank you [Music] um [Music] you