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The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

E202: (EXCLUSIVE) Billy McFarland: The Man Behind The Infamous Fyre Festival Disaster

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

FlightStory

Society & Culture, Business, Education

4.613.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 December 2022

⏱️ 107 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The co-creator of the infamous Fyre festival, Billy McFarland spent 4 years behind bars for lying to investors and using the mythical tropical island festival as a way to pay off his debts. You have probably heard of him from the 2 massively popular documentaries that blew up on social media.

However, what you haven’t heard is the story of Billy as a childhood entrepreneur, creating and selling companies before he was even able to cash the cheques in his own bank account. A college dropout who moved to New York at 18 with nothing but hustle and drive.

Only months released from prison, Billy brings his still raw experiences to this intimate conversation, discussing everything from the motivation for the festival, his spectacular fall from grace and how he plans to pay back his debts and build back from nothing.


Topics:

  • Early Context
  • A desire to prove yourself
  • Your entrepreneurial journey
  • Magnises
  • The start of Fyre
  • Are you a pathological liar?
  • Not wanting watch the documentary
  • Your skills sets that enabled all of this
  • The ‘urgent payment sheet/‘
  • The mental health implications of all of this
  • Your insecurities
  • When you realised everything had gone wrong
  • Did you ask Andy king to such a penis?
  • People losing their life savings
  • The FBI coming for you
  • Carrying on with the scams
  • Your relationship with lying now
  • What was it like when the FBI came knocking?
  • Ja rule
  • Going to jail
  • The worst thing the happened in jail
  • Your mental health journey now
  • What was your plan when you got out?
  • How are you doing?
  • The last guest question


Billy:

bit.ly/3FzNX7x

bit.ly/3FeD6ym


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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Will you know of us coming here today?

0:04.0

I didn't know how in depth we were gonna go. If I knew the questions, I don't think I'd go to Slap last night.

0:08.0

But you were pathological liar.

0:10.0

Billy McFarland is the man behind the infamous Fire Festival.

0:14.0

I would get away turned disaster.

0:16.0

The Fire Festival is the subject of two documentaries.

0:20.0

I will never forget.

0:21.0

When did you realize so gone wrong?

0:24.0

We were at the point where the timeline I had come up with was just so off.

0:28.0

I wake up some days and it's like we need four million dollars by 2pm.

0:32.0

Did no one say to you this is fucking craziness.

0:34.0

I just didn't have the ability to like, okay, what's actually happening? How can we prevent this?

0:38.0

And like almost like as it's on to...

0:40.0

A storm rolls in.

0:42.0

Billy McFarland pleaded guilty to fraud charges, sentenced to six years in prison.

0:46.0

You come back to a shit storm.

0:48.0

Yeah. The criminality doesn't stop then, does it?

0:50.0

But I couldn't like really understand the magnitude and the gravity of the crime they did commit.

0:54.0

You'll always try to get you off the 20th prison sentence by saying that you suffered from untreated bipolar disorder.

1:00.0

Do you have bipolar disorder?

1:02.0

Um...

1:04.0

I did two sentences solitary.

...

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