Steven Bartlett Family History

Steven Cliff Bartlett was born on August 26th, 1992 in Botswana, southern Africa to Graham and Esther Bartlett.  His father was a structural engineer from Coventry.    His mother came from Nigeria.

He was the youngest of their four children.

In 1994, when Steven was two, the family moved to Plymouth, a town in SW England.  Steven and his elder brother Jason both attended Plymstock secondary school there.  Jason went onto university at the LSE in London.  But Steven was expelled from Plymstock at the age of seventeen for poor attendance.

He then enrolled at Manchester Metropolitan University, only to drop out after just one lecture.  He said that he had looked around the room of hungover students and realised that “this wasn’t going to take me to where I needed to go.”

Early Entrepreneurship.  After leaving University Steven lived penniless for a while and even resorted to shoplifting.

Then he began to find his feet in Manchester with his laptop through the vehicle of social media marketing.  In 2013 he started up Wallpark, an online messaging board for students.  A year later came a more ambitious venture, Social Chain, which he co-founded with a friend Dom McGregor.

He said later:

“What started as a crazy and sometimes ridiculed idea in the mind of a few drop-out underdogs, at a time when people didn’t believe in the potential of a new thing called social media, turned into the most unforgettable ride of a lifetime.”

Six years after startup, this digital marketing company had grown to over 750 in staff and annual revenues approaching $200 million.  Social Chain had bases in Manchester, London, Berlin, Munich and New York and was working with global brands such as Amazon, Coca Cola and Apple.

Steven then decided to step down as CEO.  He was twenty-seven years old.

The Diary of a CEO.   What came next was The Diary of a CEO (DOAC), a podcast he first launched in the UK in 2017.  Over time episodes of the podcast would follow a format of extended interviews with celebrities, prominent business people. entrepreneurs, actors and politicians.

Steven was not shy in self-promotion.  DOAC started doing live touring shows in 2021.  In 2022 DOAC exceeded 10 million downloads over a month for the first time.

His most watched interview at that time was with Matt Hancock, the UK Health Secretary at the time of COVID.  Matt talked about his breaking of the social distancing guidance when he had been caught on CCTV embracing a woman.  He defended his actions by stating that he had simply “fallen in love” with her.  He was facing a heavy public backlash.

Steven has increased his audience greatly since then.  In 2025 he brought DOAC to America,  relocating to Los Angeles to interview political heavyweights such as Kamala Harris and JD Vance.

In the UK he has pivoted somewhat to self-help issues relating to health and nutrition.  Here he has had his critics.  The podcast has been criticised for hosting guests who have promoted medical misinformation.  However, Steven has found, just like Joe Rogan in America, that these types of discussions have been of interest, particularly for a younger audience.

Steven’s Father

Steven’s father Graham was the son of Ronald and Patricia Bartlett who had married in Liverpool in 1951.  After their marriage they settled first in Wallasey, Cheshire and then in Coventry.

Graham studied civil engineering at the University of Birmingham.  He subsequently worked as Chief Engineer for the Anglo-American company Gibb Engineering for twelve years, from 1988 to 2000.  For his earlier time with Gibb, he was assigned to their southern African office in Gabarone, Botswana.  That was where his children were born.

Steven who would know his parents later in England described them as follows:

“My English father and my Nigerian mother modelled hard work in a way that I never understood growing up.

My Dad worked a full-time job late into the evening.  When his work was done, he would go and join my Mum at her job in a small, hot, fast-paced restaurant kitchen until the early hours of the morning.  They came home when I was asleep and went to work when I was asleep.

When my Mum left the restaurant, she opened a corner shop called KJS and would work all day and all night.  She would end up sleeping in the back room of the corner shop on a bag of rice.  Otherwise local kids would break in, steal things and vandalise the shop as she was pretty much the only black woman in the area.

My Dad would finish his full time job and go straight to my Mum’s shop and help her until late into the night.  The most remarkable part of this – it wasn’t just the fact that they worked seven days a week to provide for their family.  It was their attitude towards the work.

They never ever described or viewed what they did as hard work.  I never ever heard them complain even once about “working hard.”  They seemed to view work as the ultimate privilege, honour and opportunity.

The older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve realised that they were my biggest professional inspirations and influence – not because they gave me profound advice like some parents do; but because they set a profound example without needing to say a word – one that has enabled me to pursue my own dreams with a level of focused gratitude that I would not have had otherwise.”

Steven’s Mother

Steven’s mother Esther had been born in Nigeria in 1969 and left school at the age of seven without being able to read or write.  She married Steven’s father in 1986 and ended up with their family in Plymouth eight years later with scarcely a black person in sight.  It was easy for her to feel discriminated against.

But she is a tough lady.  She started up a corner shop and fought against the injustices she perceived.  This was her case:

“My name is Esther Bartlett.  I live in a maisonette in Plymouth above a shop for which I own the leasehold.

The freeholder turned off the water supply for two years.  The law says you cannot turn off the water. The freeholder took back the ground floor area and extended the shop.  The fire authority after five years closed them and told them to return my land.  This have partly been done, but still not the full area.

After they lied in court about the water supply, they lied again about the land.  They lied again in court with their solicitor.  This is why I write this story.  I want to do something about these injustices.”

Steven Bartlett’s Family Tree

• Steven Bartlett engaged to Melanie Lopes, wellness influencer from France (b. 1993) in 2025