The Diary of a CEO

5 few things I learned, plus the one big drawback

For the last 32 evenings, I’ve been reading a chapter each evening of Steven Bartlett’s new book The Diary of a CEO: 33 Laws of Business and Life*.

I’ve heard a theory that Steven Bartlett is the gateway drug to extremism. Whilst I don’t subscribe to that myself, I do think he hosts a lot of very dubious people on his podcast (Jordan Peterson, James Nestor (breathing through your mouth can cause ADHD!), the man using his son’s blood to reverse aging, that guy who thinks the answer to everyone’s health issues is eating more meat ETC).

But he also has some really interesting guests on, and nuanced, in-depth conversations with those guests. The thing that I like about him is that he seems to be continually seeking out new interesting stuff, and seeking ways to improve his life.

So, I was curious about his new book, and decided to buy it and read it, bit by bit.

Reading the book turned Bartlett into a bit of a Nathan Barley character for me. He spends a fair bit of time in the book telling us that his media agency was cool because they had a slide in their office, for example. But, that said, the ‘laws’ he has for himself (and by extension, for us) are mostly common-sense, and I think could benefit quite a lot of people.

The five things that stood out most to me were:

1/ To master something, you have to be able to teach it

And to be able to teach it as though you were teaching it to a small child. Simple language. Clear visuals or instructions.

Marketing is an area that a lot of authors (/people in general) struggle with, and I hope that I am able to clearly break down concepts and teach them to my clients BUT I also know that there are things I take for granted, which I could do a better job at explaining.

The next time I do a live or pre-recorded training, this is something I am really going to keep in the back of my mind.

2/ You only have one mind and one body

This is something that has been on my mind a lot lately. There was a quote from Warren Buffet that I underlined (and then wrote out, and then went out and found the original quote (which you can read here, along with more context)):

“You have only one mind and one body for the rest of your life,” Buffett says. “If you aren’t taking care of them when you’re young, it’s like leaving [your] car out in hailstorms and letting rust eat away at it. If you don’t take care of your mind and body now, by the time you’re 40 or 50, you’ll be like a car that can’t go anywhere.”

This year I’ve really been trying to focus on my physical and mental health, with mixed levels of success (I still seem to pull my neck regularly just from sleeping, which isn’t ideal), so this was a good reminder for me that this is it - the only mind and body I’ll get!

3/ Don’t be wallpaper

I wrote about this a little bit when I wrote about book covers, but this is the idea that when marketing yourself or a book (/any product or service), you want to be recognisable enough that people know what you are offering, whilst not blending into the background and becoming invisible to people.

He talks about strong marketing demanding an opinion - it wants to be loved or hated, and doesn’t want people to feel ambivalent about. It should make people feel something.

This is something I know I, and many authors I work with, struggle with. Having recently experienced the ‘hated’ side of this spectrum, I would always prefer to be loved than hated, but I think I have people pleasing tendencies that mean I can end up trying to please other people to the detriment of my own wellbeing.

I know I could be more bullish in the way I help authors to market themselves, sharing some of the terrible marketing I see on a regular basis. But I don’t want the marketing that I do around my own services to a) be negative or b) generate arguing in the comments, even though I know that this would ultimately attract more eyes and likely, as a result, more clients. BUT are the clients I want to work with the type of people who would respond to this type of marketing? Personally, I don’t think so.

Having said that, I do think I could blend into the background a bit less. So. Something to ponder for myself. What about you?

4/ Proactively aim for failure

His point in talking about failure is that if you aim really big, a lot of times, you will fail. But the 10% of times you don’t, you’ll make huge strides ahead. He includes a Jeff Bezos quote here, which I really love:

Given a ten percent chance of a one hundred times payoff, you should take that bet every time. But you're still going to be wrong nine times out of ten. We all know that if you swing for the fences, you're going to strike out a lot, but you're also going to hit some home runs.

My gorgeous internet friend Liz Mosley is in the middle of a rejection challenge, where she is trying to get 100 rejections in a short space of time. Initially I think it was 30 days, but in the end she’s had to extend it indefinitely because funnily enough, she keeps getting yesses. You can hear her talk about it with Katie Chappell, someone else who has done a similar challenge, here.

Again, this is something I struggle with a bit. Work is busy, life is busy - I rarely put myself forward for things because I have a lot going on (which I am immensely grateful for). But this means that things carry on going as they’ve pretty much always been going. That’s not bad, per se, but what would happen if I aimed much bigger and higher? Again, something I will be pondering as we move into the last quarter of the year, as I think about planning out 2024.

5/ Even small progress builds momentum

This was one where I felt really good about the work that I do, both personally and with clients.

You know when you write a to do list, and you don’t end up doing anything on that list, but do end up doing lots of other things? I’m one of those people who will go back to the list, write down all the things I did, and then tick them off. Because the feeling that you have accomplished something - even if it’s tiny, even it wasn’t on the list to begin with - motivates me to keep going.

When I have a giant task ahead of me, I break that up into small chunks of half a day’s worth of work. That way I feel like I have some momentum, even if I still have a huge amount of the project left to complete.

One of the reasons why I added weekly task setting on to my Author Platform Accelerator programme is because the initial feedback I had on the audit reports I do for authors was that once they’d read through them, they weren’t always sure what to tackle first, which led to procrastination.

Now I send over 2-3 weekly tasks to get them started. Some weeks, they have other things going on, and they don’t get to any of them, but most of the time, people report starting with those 2-3 things, and then getting additional bits done, too - ticking things off the list builds momentum and further progress.

Overall…

There was a lot in this book that I found interesting, particularly in the first half, which were more about your personal life and building your brand. None of it was particularly different or revolutionary, but all together, the points hang together well. If you like a smart thinking / business book, you should add it to your list*.

Where this book falls down:

The thing that really stood out to me overall was that his confidence in himself was quite staggering at times - I wish I could buy a bottle of it and hand it out to many of my friends and clients (and myself! That’s not a bad thing at all, on its own.

Where I felt it didn’t work for me was - despite talking about failure repeatedly, is the suggestion that this is the ‘right’ way to do things. I have nothing against the laws themselves - I think they’re pretty sensible - I just really don’t like anything that is put forward as ‘the way’. There is no one way for anything or anyone (maybe that’s the only ‘law’ for me). I also don’t know if he truly thinks these are ‘laws’, as I think he’s constantly seeking improvement, so surely these will shift and change over time for him, too.

The main thing I was disappointed about when reading this book at how few women are quoted, or even mentioned. I couldn’t face doing this for the entire book, but around the second half, I was struck by how many men there were vs women, so went back and reviewed the opening chapters. In the first 5 ‘laws’, there are quotes or mentions of 31 men, but it’s fully 14 or 15 men before the first woman is even brought up (and that’s first his mother, and then his ex-girlfriend, both portrayed in a negative light).

Some of the men he highlights as being role models were dodgy (Tiger Woods and Elon Musk to name two where I was like, seriously?). His model for success feels very masculine and very HUSTLE, which is not my bag. But then, maybe that’s why he’s a millionaire and I am very much not, ha.

But really - the lack of women in this book brought the whole thing down for me. Bartlett has SUCH a huge profile, and this book was an opportunity to bring more female thinkers and scientists to light. There are quite a few out there, ya know!

While it wasn’t entirely lacking in female voices (by the end of law 5, there were 7 women mentioned (compared to 31 men), 4 of whom were actually people being quoted), this is a blindspot for him, and one I hope he and the team around him are able to bring to light and do better with in the future.

Have you read this book? What did you think? What were your highlights? Thoughts and feels on Steven Bartlett in general? Hit reply or leave me a comment!