Jake's Notebook | with Steven Bartlett & A Letter From Deciem's Co-Founder

0:00Hey everyone, welcome to something that I have never done before. Welcome to what I'm loosely calling my notebook um so i'm nearly 47 years old in fact i'll be 47 in a couple of weeks and since i was um in my teens i've done something um every single day and that's just make notes about how i'm feeling about what i've seen what i've experienced and i've never shared them with anyone so i feel kind of strange turning my notebooks into a podcast but i am i'm gonna do it because I think that you need to understand that I'm almost 47 but basically still trying to figure out what everything is about so you're about to get the unfiltered truth about my life in business my life at home and I guess in some ways I'm kind of proud to say this is probably the most unpolished and unproduced show that I've ever been involved in in my entire presenting career it's certainly the most unpolished show that high performance have ever released among our suite of shows but here's the plan okay so um harry my wife and the kids are downstairs they are watching a new jurassic movie and i've snuck up here and i'm going to do this every single week just for about 20 minutes i'm going to take a look at the notes that i've made over the last few days um in my most recent notebook i've had this notebook for a couple of months i've got the previous 100 or so in a drawer downstairs and the reason why i make notes is because they just put my brain into some sort of order they helped me to realize what I what I think about certain events um and I think that when I failed my A-levels and totally messed up my life basically I think I realized at that point that well I think someone told me that you need to be intentional you can't just float through life in the way that you are at the moment Jacob is what they said at the time and I I've sort of stumbled across the fact that what keeps me acting and thinking in an intentional way is making notes so to be quite honest with you like I think this here is about the only place you're going to get to really know me as someone who's had a 25 year media career someone who's co-founded one of Europe's biggest production companies someone who's created one of the largest and most listened to podcasts in the world someone who's tried to do it all with some honesty and some integrity and someone who's made notes every step of the way um so welcome to the show look I hope you come back week after the week I hope that this provides some real value for you and I'd love you please to reach out and just tell me what you like about this what you don't like about it I mean honestly it's so easy I can just change the way this show is put together because it's just me sitting in a room sharing my thoughts and they genuinely are just the things I've written down in the last few days so um I haven't really thought about these things either so this is kind of a bit unfiltered it's a bit unprocessed but I've got the notebook right here and it's time to open the notebook so the first thing that i wrote um at the start of this week is steven that is bloody cool and this was something that i wrote down when i saw that steven bartler who's a fellow podcaster had been on the tonight show in the united states with jimmy fallon i mean me and my wife we lay in bed and watch the tonight show okay and honestly i haven't told steven this um but i have watched that show and for about the last five years thought the ultimate for me would be to go on that show and talk about my podcast and there i am one morning going on to instagram to see steven looking a million dollars doing that thing that i've dreamed of and interestingly i had a couple of people actually send me messages going you told me you wanted to go on a tonight show and talk about high performance man you must be so pissed that steven's got there first and i'm going to be totally honest with you and say yes for the first few seconds there was that little pang of envy are like oh he's done it but you know what his success is my success his success is your success and the reason why that I think that is because wherever you are in your life whatever you're doing if there are people that are in a place that you want to be it means that someone can get there what Stephen has shown is that you can create a podcast and end up on one of the biggest chat shows in the United States therefore his success is our success it means the opportunity is there it means that that thought i had four or five years ago isn't pie in the sky and ridiculous and look i think that we could take a very different approach with high performance right which is you know the other podcast i host aside from run where it happened which is the business show and if you're listening to this then you're you're listening to this on the feed for that business show what steven's done and what steven is a master of doing and i want this show to be full of lessons and learnings right steven is a master storyteller i think what i originally thought when we created high performance right was just if we get great guests and have great conversations that's enough and what i've realized in the world of podcasting and this absolutely applies whatever business whatever walk of life you're in is that actually quality alone is not enough i think that quality means you can sleep well at night like you can lay your head on the pillow do you know i know that i've done something to take the world in the right direction or something that feels good to me but actually if you want to have impact quality alone i don't think is enough anymore i think it's also about optimizing and what steven has been a master of is hiring people working with people and himself putting the time in to understand how to fully optimize his show so you know what i think if you put one of his conversations next to one of ours and if you put one of ours next to one of tim ferris's and if you put one of tim ferris's next to joe rogan's and if you put one of joe rogan's next to fern cottons and if you put one of fern Cotton's next to Chris Williamson's and if you put Chris Williamson's next to Elizabeth Days I think you know what everyone does good interviews everyone has great conversations the trick is optimizing the trick is understanding how important a thumbnail is how important a title is how important it is to get people outside of your world to be sharing and talking about your episodes how important it is to create a moment I remember interviewing KSI once when I said to him what is the secret do you think to having an impact in life and he said to me create moments um and i know that stephen gets a lot of criticism i also get a lot of criticism and um i saw a few people criticizing him actually under the post where he was on the tonight show and it reminded me of this great quote by aristotle there's one way to avoid criticism do nothing say nothing be nothing um and i think stephen has proven that uh his way of doing it certainly it might not be my way or might not be your way but absolutely it is successful and you know it also reminded me that one thing that i've never allowed myself to slip into is this sense that i'm in this invisible race that doesn't even exist everywhere i look there are people and they feel like as soon as they go on instagram and see what other people are doing that's their competition right there is no race let me tell you there is no race okay we all end up in exactly the same place at the end i think you're exactly where you're meant to be um so don't fall for the invisible race don't avoid doing things that piss people off because actually sometimes those are the things that will have impact remember that quality alone also needs to be optimized and um Stephen congratulations um oh this is uh so what I wrote in on the next page here is Nicola Kilner is real and what I mean by this is that Nicola Kilner is um so cool so Nicola Kilner is a serial entrepreneur she was one of the co-founders and CEOs co-CEO of a business called Desiem which was a beauty brand she then created The Ordinary which was bought by a St.

7:49the Lord Company valued at over£2 billion, and I interviewed her last week. And you know, I've spoken about this before, when someone is the light in the room, you know, you've got choice, right, in your life. You can either be a thermostat or a thermometer. And a thermometer just tells the temperature in the room. A thermostat changes the temperature in the room. And Nicola came in the room, and she was the light in the room. She was the thermostat. However, I'm also a firm believer that who you really are is who you are when nobody's watching. So actually, in some ways, it's easy for Nicola to come into the room where it happened studio and see the production team and sit in front of me and be full of energy and wit and wisdom and humor and knowledge because she's on show right she's performing because she's on a podcast but who is she when no one's watching I'll tell you a quick story so Florence is my 12 year old daughter she loves dancing singing acting and she has really started to talk to me about entrepreneurship in fact the other day she asked if we could buy the village shop and if she could run it and i'm like well you're kind of busy at school but maybe we could find a way to make that work it's actually quite a cool idea um but i said to nicola look florence wanted to come she wasn't able to get the day of school but she really wanted to be here and ask you a couple of questions that was it nicola left she was uh she's heavily pregnant she was going for a baby scan so she had lots of other things on her mind about an hour after she left a bag of the ordinary skincare arrived at our offices and there was a letter with it and i just want to read this letter to you because i think this tells you everything you need to know about nicola she wrote this i mean the first bit's obviously wrong but the rest of it isn't hey flo what a legend your dad is i had so much fun on his podcast this morning thank you for introducing him to the ordinary when you were in new york which is by the way true we were on holiday and florence did she said you got about this stuff it's cool he mentioned that even at 12 you're already passionate about the world of entrepreneurship and honestly it's the best world it's not always easy but it's a great game to play constantly having to choose which move to make next be kind and good in your decisions be low ego and open to change and most importantly have positive energy to keep moving forward i was passionate about it when i was young and used to always ask for entrepreneur books as gifts being young is your superpower to bring on being young is your superpower to being an entrepreneur so i hope when you're ready you get started and give something a go i'll be waiting to hear love nicola how amazing is that who you are is what you do when nobody's watching nicola didn't need to do that that was that is a test of her as a person her as a human being she didn't need to do that for Florence she has created and sold businesses worth billions she has got a child on the way she has got a million things going on in her own life and she took time to do that for my daughter and the reason why I want to share that story with you is so many people want you to see a certain side of them and sometimes it's not the truth like when Harriet my wife worked in tv we used to lay in bed at night and I was you know a tv presenter and i would say oh so and so is really nice aren't they and she would look at me and say are you serious she was a production coordinator which is one of the the sort of organizing jobs and you're often at the beck and call of other people and people treated her like shit people who were then nice to me so those people were proving who they were when nobody's watching so did nicola kilner i love that letter it's already got florence thinking inspired and nicola i doubt you'll be listening to this but if you were i would tell you that you have done something very special there and that is a true test of you as a person okay what else have we written this week keep doing what you know is right exclamation mark you know what i wrote this because um well i haven't done any tv and this is me being very honest with you i haven't done any tv now for a couple of years and for a very long time i was like a tv presenter that was how I um that's how I judged myself so my stock in trade was am I working yes am I doing high profile stuff yes am I doing it well yes are the audience levels high yes have I am I earning a good salary yes am I using the skills I've learned to host live television yes and for the last couple of years the answer to all of those questions has been no and I think of all the things that I've right the thing that i'm most proud of is finding myself on the wrong side of the tv coin and being okay with it because actually i thought for a long time that i was a tv presenter but i realize now that i'm not a tv presenter i'm a million other things primarily a man a dad a friend a husband a colleague who was a or who presented tv programs i wasn't a tv presenter who was also a dad and a friend and a colleague and blah blah and I guess you don't really know whether your self-worth is wrapped up right in the career that you have and the job that you do until you no longer do it so it's not easy to host a Champions League final FA Cup final Premier League matches and literally a few months after you hosted your last one watch someone else do that but it's also really important for me to remember that what i'm doing is right that i've never felt more valuable than i do now creating high performance i've never had people come up to me so often saying i love what you're doing i love your posts i love your show and like i could just you know i've had meetings about doing a reality tv shows i could just go and do i'm a celeb or dancing on ice or strictly come dancing or all these myriad of shows you know i've i've turned down being a panelist on shows over the last few months you know what like celebrity mastermind and um rich osmond's house of games all these other shows because my ego is going yes of course you've got to say yes to these things you've got to get back on the telly and by the way it's painful when i when i fill up with petrol like i did yesterday and the guy in the petrol session goes oh so you're not working and i'm like well yeah i am working i'm just not really working necessarily in a place that you're seeing me but I promise you I'm doing stuff and so sometimes like my ego just gets me and it punches me in the guts and it makes me feel like shit because I see all of these fellow presenters that I worked with back in the day carrying on doing amazing things getting loads of work and sometimes that can be kind of hard but the reason why I wrote keep doing what you know is right is because I know that focusing on high performance is right I know that focusing on growing whisper bit is right I know that being here to take the kids on the school run is right I know that being able to go for walks in the afternoon with Harriet is right and if I was at a football match or a Formula One race or if I was still living in London I wouldn't be able to do any of those things so please just keep an eye on your ego and make sure that your self-worth is not wrapped up with the work that you do what nerf did i write here care if it's real it'll come easy if you care you won't lack the energy if it doesn't work it also doesn't matter because it felt right

15:14um this is about the importance of caring about what you do i don't remember writing this but i think actually I do remember writing this it was on the train on the way home so one of my rules is always coming home from London so no matter what time I finish I come home spend an evening with the kids and then often I'm on the train the next morning going back to work and I think I was struggling with something I was working on and I just was throwing it away because I was tired and I wrote down care if it's real it'll come easy if you care you won't lack the energy if it doesn't work it doesn't matter because it felt right and that was me reminding myself that reminding myself sorry that the thing that I was doing was a struggle because it wasn't the right thing and I looked at it and thought you know what I don't think I should be doing this I don't think that it was um it was it was a potential guest that I thought we should have on one of my shows and I knew it wasn't right but I also knew that if we got this guest on the headlines will be massive so I was trying to think of um an angle or a way to get this person on the show and I was just really struggling and then I wrote if it's real it'll come easy well it wasn't easy if you care you won't lack the energy and I was lacking the energy so I obviously didn't care um and then the last bit there and this is about if you if you do follow the thing that you care about if you do the thing that you love if you do the thing that feels right if it doesn't work it also doesn't matter because it felt right and I think actually in recent years I've been insulated from failure and struggle because the thing that I've been doing has felt right in truth for a long time presenting football programs didn't really feel right because I felt like I was just having to ask sort of clickbait headlines um and ask questions that I didn't really think I should be asking um and it did and I and I saw other people doing the same job loving it doing it brilliantly and I thought man you know for you it's right for me it was wrong um so now that I do something that I care about um it doesn't actually matter right whether I fail or succeed in what I'm doing because it feels right.

17:11And I hope that you're chasing the thing that feels right in your life.

17:18And the final thing I wrote down, and then I'm going to share a photo from my phone. The final thing I wrote down, anything above zero compounds. You know, I think too often people see high performance and they think it's about absolutely busting yourself until you can't move any further and like just working yourself to the bone. But it's not true. Listen to that, please. anything above zero compounds like this is absolutely not the best podcast episode that i've ever done right this is the this is the ramp sound like the ramblings of a bloody madman sitting up here in my little attic room on a sunday evening when i should be downstairs watching the people getting their heads eaten on the new jurassic film but this is just a little bit above zero right and this compounds anything above zero compounds so please just do a little something this week this week ahead of you just do something other than zero and you'll find that over time doing a bit above zero and then a bit more above zero it compounds over time um and it's all about habit formation i promise you habits are the bridge between hope and transformation so if you're sitting here listening to this um then the bridge between what you really hope for this week and the thing that can transform your week is habits so really chase down those things that you eventually won't even need to think about because they become habits anyway before i finish um there is a photo on my phone um and i snapped this and i want to share this with you this is um this is a plaque um at stanford and it's a quote from phil knight and this is what it says there comes a time in every life when the past recedes and the future opens it's that moment when you turn to face the unknown some will turn back to what they already know some will walk straight ahead into uncertainty I can tell you I can't tell you I can't tell you which one is right but I can tell you which one is more fun that's Phil Knight the founder of Nike saying that in front of all of us at some point in our life there's a moment we can either go forwards or go back to what's safe and comfortable I can't tell you just like Phil can't which is the right one for you but I can also tell you which one is more fun and I think I've spoken actually for the last 20 minutes mainly about walking forwards and not going back to those old ways those old things i'm just looking through my notes now going back to those old things that felt so right at some time and you know what it can feel very scary when what used to feel so right just suddenly doesn't and it can it can be a worrisome time um but if you're ready to walk forwards i wish you all the very best of luck um and that's it for the first episode of my notebook i will open my notebook again for you in a week's time unless of course you pepper me with messages saying never open that notebook ever again you total weirdo we don't want to hear your strange notes that you write to yourself on the train late at night um if you did like this the only way that other people are going to hear my ramblings is if you hit follow um or you share this episode with someone so that's the only thing i ask i love giving you this stuff for free i'm happy to spend 20 minutes doing this um on a sunday evening and i would just love you to do those two things for me hit the follow button and then pass this episode to someone that you think could learn a little something from this um but also please can you give me some feedback because i what i don't want is for this just to become me sitting here each week speaking wondering if anyone's actually listening and not knowing what you actually want like i can go back to my notebooks from 10 or 15 years ago i can go back to my notebooks from the time i walked away from formula one i can open up my diary from my early weeks trying to become a football presenter um i can go back to at the beginning of high performance or the start of my journey building whisper um there's loads of things that i can talk about loads of things that i can share with you but just tell me please i want this to be our place where we can connect and where i can give you real value but that is it i'm going to go watch a film um i'm going to close the notebook there it is um i will open it again in a week's time have a great week thanks for listening um speak soon