MBA2383 Must Read: The Diary Of A CEO by Steven Bartlett

0:09Heyo! Welcome to the$100 MBA show, helping you become a better entrepreneur with practical business lessons. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zinhome. I'm also the co-founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started back in 2014. And today's episode is a must-read episode. On our must-read episodes, I share with you a book that has influenced me as an entrepreneur. I share with you its takeaways, its insights, and why you should read it too. Today's must-read is The Diary of a CEO by Stephen Bartlett. This is a book I've heard about for about 18 months now. And usually when I hear about a book that's quite successful, that's quite popular, I pick it up quickly.

0:48But for some reason, it didn't hit my reading list. But I started to get to know Steven and his work through his podcast and his YouTube channel. So I decided to pick up the book and move it up the queue. And boy, am I glad I did. This is one of my favorite books of 2023, and I'll tell you why in today's lesson. This is the book that you will read and reread because of all the amazing gems he drops in the book. What kinds of gems? Well, gems like what to focus on, how to get people to see your perspective and get on your side, how to stand out from the crowd, how to make sure your business stands for something, and much, much more that I'll get into in today's episode.

1:26So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. At the start of this book, The Diary of a CEO, Stephen Bartlett shares that the best way to learn is to teach. And you can see this book as a collection of things that Stephen Bartlett learned along the way as a CEO, from other experts, from other industry leaders, and his experience, and shares it in a single volume. It's one of the best compilation of life and business advice I've seen in a long time. And as you know, I read a lot of books. I read about 50 books a year. Many of those books don't make it as a must-read on this podcast. This book does because it's fantastic.

2:02It's actually a really, really great read. I want to share with you some of my top takeaways and why you should read it too. Let's get into it. One of the strongest points that he makes in the book is that you need to prioritize certain things in your life. You should see your life as a bunch of stuff sitting on a table. Some of the stuff on the table might be your relationships, especially your relationship with your significant other. Other things on the table might be your career, might be your hobbies. We all have different priorities in our life that sit on this table. But then he says that table that all these things sit on is actually your health, your mental and physical health.

2:39Meaning if you remove the table, then everything drops to the ground. If you don't have your health, you don't have anything. It's impossible for you to actually do anything if you don't have your health. Think about it. If you got hospitalized tomorrow, it's going to be very hard for you to run your business. It's going to be very hard for you to keep your relationships or do the things you love. You might prioritize travel. Forget that. You're better at it. And I love this illustration because it really shows you, hey, you got to prioritize your health, your mental health, your physical health.

3:06I would include your spiritual health. It doesn't matter what you believe in. You got to be at peace with yourself so that you can have a content life. We say this, we know this, but do we actually do something about it? Do we actually work out every day? Do we actually eat right? Do we actually prioritize getting some sun? Do we actually reduce our stress levels? Do we do things that make us laugh? Do we keep things away from us that give us anxiety and stress? This is such an important point he makes, and I'm glad he makes it early on in the book because all the advice he gives won't really matter if you don't prioritize your health because if your health fails you, you're not going to be able to do much in your life.

3:44You're not going to be able to accomplish much. You're not going to be able to implement the advice. Now, I didn't mention this from the top, but this book is a compilation of what he calls laws. The book has 33 laws, and one of my favorite laws in the book is law number three, you must never disagree. And this is all about how do you get people to see your perspective? How do you get people on your side? How do you convince somebody of your arguments or what you believe in so that you can move a project forward or get them to sign on the dotted line or agree with what you're saying in an argument?

4:15Well, one of the things he recommends is you should never disagree. Often when we start a discussion with saying, I disagree, or you point out the differences between you and the other person, it puts a ball and there's an unlikely chance that they'll turn around and agree with you later on. It's better for you to start with what you have in common. Like, I agree with what you said here, there, and I think that's a strong point. I would add X, Y, Z, and this is where you would probably be the point of difference that you want to convey. I've learned this before, and this comes from the days of theater.

4:47the idea of yes and, where when people are doing improv, you never say no, you just say yes and. You build upon what people have suggested or said. And this is such a strong point because we need to convince people to do things constantly as CEOs, as company leaders, as innovators. Law number seven is never compromise your self-story. Your self-story is the story you tell yourself. It's probably the strongest story, the strongest belief we have. and you can make your story whatever you wanted to make it. If you want to tell yourself, I'm a winner, I don't quit, then you should never compromise that story.

5:24Meaning, if you're at the gym and you're doing reps, say, for example, you've got to do 10 reps of the set and you're on rep eight and you can't do much more. You feel like just putting the weight down. Don't put down that weight because your self-story says you don't quit. So you've got to prove to yourself constantly that you don't quit. Put up those last two reps. The little things matter because it contributes or it goes against your self-story. And you can change your self-story based on your actions and what you hold. It could be something as simple as I'm always on time. If you're always on time, then you've got to make sure anytime you're going to an appointment that you leave early.

6:01Because if you're late, you're not always on time. In this chapter in the audiobook, he shares clips from his own podcast where he interviews successful athletes like this one boxer who shares this crazy, crazy story about how he didn't want to change his self story and kept on going. I'll let you check that out in the audiobook, which is a great version of this book. I highly recommend it. In chapter 12, he advises you must piss people off. This one's a tough one for a lot of people. If you don't like confrontation, you will not make a great business. You will not make a great brand. You will not make a great CEO because it requires you to do the tough stuff, to say the tough stuff, do the things that might upset people, especially if you're trying to build a brand.

6:46He says it's better for you to offend 80 % of the people, but really resonate with 20 % of the people. Those people are going to be your loyal fans. They're going to absolutely love you. They're going to buy everything you offer. The worst thing is to be vanilla, is to have no reaction. It's better for people to love you, hate you, but nothing in between because that's not a strong emotion. That's an easy way for you to be ignored, and that's the worst thing that can happen in business or in marketing. So be willing to ruffle some feathers. It's okay. Not everybody has to love you. Law of number 14 talks about friction can be value.

7:20This chapter is mind-boggling and yet so provocative. I love it. talks about sometimes your product can be improved by making it more difficult or less intuitive than it should be. I know this sounds like it makes no logical sense, but here are some examples. Booking sites like Booking.com and Kayak used to give you results in less than a second, but people didn't believe they're actually getting you accurate results or that it would search all these different sites in just a fraction of a second. So Kayak and these other search sites said we could actually make this experience worse than we want it to, to prove it's working.

7:58So it actually delays the results on purpose and says, hey, we're searching these sites and these sites and it'll have prices kind of come down from a high price point as it's loading the results. It could load the results a whole lot faster, but it's doing it slowly so that the viewer believes it's working. The point that this chapter is making is that human beings don't make any sense. They often are not logical creatures. And you have to understand that sometimes that minty fresh taste in toothpaste has nothing to do with the cleanliness of your teeth. They put that ingredient in the toothpaste to make you feel like something's happening, like it feels cleaner.

8:37Same thing with fabric fresheners like Febreze. When it first came out, it was odorless, but people felt like this is not really doing anything. So they added this fresh scent to make people feel like, hey, Febreze is doing something. Law number 16 is called use Goldilocks to your advantage. And this is the idea of the Goldilocks effect where we only see value in comparison to something else. This is why pricing experts say that you should anchor prices to other prices, meaning you should have two years. You should never just have one price because that one price as a standalone doesn't really mean much if it doesn't have other prices to compare it to.

9:13For example, a basic pro and ultra package, all three with different prices, all three with incrementally higher prices. The basic might be$100, the pro might be$150, and the ultra might be$300. And now all of a sudden the pro doesn't seem that much. Actually seems like great value. A lot of people believe, hey, the middle one is not the worst one, but it's not the extravagant one either. So it actually allows you to charge more and give more value to your products and service just by having those price anchorings. Chapter 16 goes deep on this topic. Chapter 17 is all about let them try and they will buy.

9:57This is the idea of the importance of allowing people to experience your product or service. He gives an example of the Apple Store, how all the products are laid out in the Apple Store. You can touch them. You can play with them. They're loaded up with apps. There's Wi-Fi. None of the salespeople or the people on the floor are paid commission. And they are told not to put any pressure on anybody. And anybody can stay in the store as long as they like. And the point here is that Apple knows that if you try something, if you start using it, you're going to start feeling like it's yours already.

10:30And you're going to want it because you're not going to want to live without it anymore. So try before you buy is a huge, huge deal. This is why a lot of subscription programs have free trials or a free plan because they understand that, hey, once you start using it, you're going to start loving it if it's a great product and you're going to want it full time. So think about in your business. How can you allow your customers to try before they buy? Give them a sample of your product or service, whether it's content or coaching, a software product, even a service. How can you give them a free consulting session so they can get value and say, hey, you know what?

11:04I want this all the time. One of my favorite chapters is chapter 18, Fight for the First Five Seconds. The idea that when you're giving a speech, when you're creating a YouTube video or a sales video or writing a blog post or a tweet or whatever it might be, the first five seconds of whatever you say matters because that's what's going to allow people to make a decision to stick around or to leave. He gives the example of Mr. Beast, who's one of the most popular and most successful YouTubers of all time, and how he uses his first five seconds to hook his audience immediately, saying, hey, this is what this video is about.

11:40This is what you're going to see. Let's get into it. So people understand quickly that they're going to get value. So treat your first five seconds like gold and give them as much value as possible at the start. There's so much more value in this book I would love to share, but I want you to explore on your own. But I'm going to share one more that I absolutely love, and it's You Must Sweat the Small Stuff. This chapter is all about the Japanese philosophy of kaizen, which means continuous improvement. This is something I've obsessed about for years and actually am looking to do a very in-depth research on this in Japan to watch the space.

12:20I definitely am going to be creating some content around this area because it's something I've been studying for so, so long. And he really encapsulates the idea really well in this chapter. Kaizen, or continuous improvement, is a philosophy that many big Japanese companies and brands really embody. This has really become very popular because of Toyota preaching this day in and day out and creating one of the best companies in the world. The idea here is that you don't need to be incredibly innovative. You don't need to make these huge sweeping changes. In fact, it's actually better for you to make small, little incremental changes, improvements, and really paying attention to the details and the small stuff in your business, in your product, in what you do.

13:03The Kaizen philosophy also encourages people to be curious and motivated. You want to install this idea in your business so everybody on your team is really looking to put their best foot forward in everything they do. And they don't have to worry about the whole business. They're just going to worry about their part of the business, their duties, their job. How can they perfect everything they do? How can they improve their areas of responsibility? Because those little improvements, those little things add up to become a great thing, a great business, a great product. And this is so, so true.

13:36We know this as consumers. If you look at any experience you've had with a business, any restaurant you went to that was amazing, any holiday or hotel you went to, or even an airline that you experience, it's not one big thing. It's not this huge innovation. It's all the little things that add up that make the great experience, that make the great product. It's sweating the small stuff. I highly recommend you pick up The Diary of a CEO by Stephen Barlett. This is a fantastic book. I got it on Audible. He does the narration. It's really well done. He inserts a lot of different audio from his other content, which makes it a bit more entertaining and a bit more lively.

14:15But this is a book I will definitely re-listen to and take more notes, but I was so eager to share it with you as soon as I read it. So go ahead, pick up The Diary of a CEO by Stephen Barlett. You won't regret it. Thank you so much for listening to The$100 MBA Show. If you love this podcast, if you get anything out of this podcast, if you've got an idea or some motivation or inspiration, you can do me a huge favor and all you got to do is hit subscribe or follow. By following the podcast, you send a signal to the algorithm that, hey, this podcast is all right. And it helps spread the word and get us more listeners so that we can continue to make this show bigger and better for you.

14:55Thank you in advance for doing that. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. A lot of people hate on Stephen Barlow. He is a very successful entrepreneur at a very young age. A lot of people have a lot of, I guess, resentment because it seems like he got it easy. But no, he didn't get it easy. He worked really hard and took a lot of risks. And anybody who is successful can teach you something. He's done something right. And he can share something with you that you might find helpful. One of my favorite quotes is by Tony Robbins. And he says, success leaves clues. And most successful people are willing to share their clues, willing to share how they became successful.

15:33So you might as well pick them up, have an open mind and just love what's useful. And what's not useful, you can just put it aside. It's okay. I think the guy's absolutely brilliant and I wish him all the best. After reading the book, I've set the goal that, hey, I'm gonna get this guy on the podcast and extract some of his wisdom to share with us here on The$100 MBA Show. I'm working on it. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in Wednesday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

16:06Thank you.