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Steven Bartlett's first-ever Diary of a CEO live show was about as far away from a regular talk hosted by a successful multi-millionaire as it's possible to be.

Sold out in five minutes flat, the event that took over Manchester's iconic Albert Hall on Wednesday, July 28, was part celebration of a post-lockdown country and part confessional.

The BBC’s youngest and newest Dragon broke from his usual routine of interviewing a top CEO about their experiences and instead focused more on his emotional journey from being a kid in a bankrupt family, dropping out of university to found Social Chain and then hitting the big bucks and trying to work out what comes next.

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The 28-year-old, flanked by a gospel choir during the near two-hour show, commanded the stage as he delved deep into his experiences, transforming the event into something much more like a secular sermon rather than a simple one man show.

BusinessLive was granted exclusive access to the Social Chain co-founder's first live show. Here is what we found out.

Steven Bartlett's journey has been well told in recent years after the entrepreneur exited Manchester's Social Chain having made his millions and been added to the Dragons' Den line up for the upcoming series.

Now a published author, his following has ballooned enough to attract the likes of former One Direction member Liam Payne, football legend Rio Ferdinand and DJ and presenter Reggie Yates to his popular podcast.

Hitting in excess of 6m streams to date, Bartlett has now taken the concept on step further, creating an experimental live show with an eye on possible future performances and possibly larger venues.

Hundreds of millennials and members of Generation Z packed into Manchester's Albert Hall eager to hear him speak, with many traveling from afar just to be there.

Opening with a monologue and song from 27-year-old Manchester performer Tim Gallagher, black and white pictures and video footage of Bartlett throughout his life were thrown up on the big screen in front of the venue's dominating organ before House Gospel Choir took to the stage.

With the message 'all I can control is me' ringing out, he entered the fray with a old fashioned nod to his business background, a briefcase containing his notes for the evening.

The accessory stood out as a stark reminder of his long-standing aversion to business norms, having already vowed to not wear a suit when he settles into the Den.

Addressing the audience, he said that going to university in Manchester was "not my voice inside of me" and that he felt it was his life and "I was going to do it in my way".

Detailing the time he told his mum that he had decided to drop out and start his own business, he said she told him she would never speak to him again and would get his family to cut off all ties.

Going back home, he revealed what he had done to her, sparking his mum to bang on his bedroom door and tell him she wished she'd had an abortion.

Delivered with weight, these emotional beats cropped up repeatedly through the show, each time backed up with carefully-chosen songs for the gospel choir to perform.

He continued: "I got the Megabus back to Manchester that night, never knowing whether I would talk to mum again.

"I made my choice to live my life. There's no satnav, no map. I had a battle in my internal monologue. The dreamer in my was visualising the life I was about to have."

But, he told the crowd, you have to "understand what the risk is to work out if it's worth it".

He added that those who chose to not change their lives for the better were the risk takers, not him.

"That's a risk that I have never been brave enough to take."

Skipping ahead to when he was 23, Social Chain employed 200 people and was making millions but the former CEO said that "everything in life has a cost".

He described the cost of his early years with the company as "excruciatingly severe" and like "piloting a rocket ship to where we had never been", "keeping everybody happy but ourselves".

He said he and his business partner and best friend Dominic McGregor would lurch from "chaos to catastrophe to crisis" and they "could not find peace".

Bartlett then detailed McGregor's decent into alcoholism, how he found him one night in the laundry room of their flat drinking a bottle of red wine in the dark and then how he had an incident in public in front of a number of employees.

A crisis meeting was called between the two co-founders for the Sunday morning, after McGregor - who was in the front row of the audience at the event - had drunkenly responded to Bartlett's anger at the situation with a threat to quit.

"That broke my heart", Bartlett admitted on stage.

The two decided things must change and on that day, at that meeting, McGregor vowed to stop drinking. The former COO has recently celebrated being five years sober.

The narrative skips forward again to 2019 and Social Chain now has 700 staff worldwide.

He then described Social Chain's route to floating on the German stock exchange, how it was the first time as a founder he could see how much it was worth.

The business had a market value of $300m while his personal net worth sky rocketed into the tens of millions.

As he uttered those words the gospel choir led a rendition of "Oh Happy Day" as fake bank notes fell from the sky onto the audience.

But he stopped the choir in their stride and shouted that it "was not a happy day", adding that it was "one of the most confusing, miserable days of my life".

He described how finding £13.40 behind a chair in a fast food eatery while still at university meant more to him than suddenly being worth millions of pounds as that small amount of cash meant that he would be able to eat for a week in Moss Side.

He added: "External validation will never validate you. Only you can validate you."

Referencing the mental struggles of former Olympians Michael Phelps and Steven Holcomb, he talked about how what you think is going to be the best day of your life turning out to be one of the worst.

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The final section of the event now turned fully away from his business life and took on a fully personal tone.

He spoke about his girlfriend Melanie in greater detail in public than ever before, revealing they first met when she contacted him on Instagram after he posted a video on his feed.

She travelled from Paris to London to meet him and they started a relationship before, as Bartlett put it, he threw it away because of his immaturity.

He described how Melanie told him she was moving to Indonesia and that she would not be returning.

Determined to give it one last try, he flew 22 hours across the world to Bali to see her, hoping to win her back.

Text messages between the two were thrown up on the big screen as he was recounting the story, revealing right at the end that they were now back together, prompting a huge cheer from the audience.

Then came one of the biggest emotional moments of the whole night, a voice over from his mum, explaining her actions all those years ago, why she felt what she did back then, apologising and asking for his forgiveness.