If I told you that you could have 5 hours with Steven Bartlett, 1 on 1, for a total cost of £20….
In that time he is going to tell you a bunch of stories from his journey, give you an insight to the tools and methods he uses to solve problems and even help you work out how to apply these lessons to your own life and business.
Well that’s what this book is — and today I’m going to share my insights from the book.
I love business books — they are really powerful resources.
Think about it — successful people write down the things in their head, their experiences, their lessons, their tools — now, while you will never remember everything in these books, I like to use them to create a version of the person in my head — my own mental board room advisor — then when I have a problem I can ask myself “what would Steven Bartlett, Steve Jobs, or Richard Branson…. say about this”. That’s a pretty amazing set of board advisors right there!
So — Steven Bartless and the The Diary of a CEO 33 Laws of Business & Life.
In the past few years Steven Bartlett has come from nowhere to be one of the most recognisable business people in the UK. Dragon, author, podcast legend, and even soccer aid player — Bartlett has turned himself into a powerful brand that is hard to avoid.
The 33 laws was an instant best seller and I was pleased to finally get around to reading it this week.
As the name suggests the book is split into laws — which are basically life lessons.
Each law has stories, insights, lessons and techniques.
The book is littered with lovely pages of quotes and sayings which I really like.
While you will no doubt find value across the 33 sections, I’m going to look at 3 laws that really stand out for me.
“Law 19 — You Must Sweat the small stuff”
Bartlett talks about how he believes the success of his podcast has nothing to do with being a better host than other podcasts, but rather their attention to detail. He and his team have considered everything possible to enhance the quality of their podcast product — from researching the perfect temperature for the room to even playing the guests fav music when they arrive to help them relax.
Bartlett talks about “Kaizen” — a Japanese term that means continuous improvement, and a tool that help Toyota become the most efficient car manufacture in the world.
I first came across Kaizen as part of the 6-sigma Lean methodology, it basically means that everyone in the company can improve the business and that small 1% improvements make a big difference overall.
It is also about setting a standard.
Get a little bit better, tiny bit better each day.
This idea of Sweat the small stuff really resonates with me — I have often found myself disproportionately focused on things that people around me think won’t matter.
A type face on a website, messy cables under the desks, the way that you might say or phrase certain things with your teams. A lot of people I have worked with would say these things don’t matter. But for me, tiny details are really important, they set a standard, they form part of a bigger picture of how you do things. Get the details right and you are putting a stake in the ground that says we do good work. Let these things go (or more often than not, not even realise they are there) and you are opening yourself up to allow mediocre work to be considered acceptable.
Sweat the small stuff — drive constant small improvements, make everyone part of constant improvement — Powerful mentality right there.
“Law 21, You must out-fail the competition”
“Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been achieved, progress stops”
Law 21 in this book is, in itself worth buying the book and the perfect example of what the mental board advisor version of Stephen Bartlett might be able to add to your decision making process.
My interpretation of this law is that it’s talking about complacency, speed of movement, culture and incentivisation systems.
The book follows some great stories at booking.com, Amazon and an unnamed e-commerce company — all to illustrate that you must keep experimenting in order to find what does and does not work.
Running tests is the only way to improve — a point echoed throughout the book and something Bartlett clearly and correctly believes strongly in — typical of his marketing foundations.
But running “tests” or “experiments” isn’t as simple as it might sound.
You firstly have to believe that everything can be better — this is hard culturally, because we like to believe that what we have already done is really good. Doing good work gets us promotions, pay rises etc So It might feel counterintuitive for teams to talk about their own work as being something that can be improved.
This is where the right reward systems, incentives and targets are really important.
You need to design an environment where people are encouraged to test ideas, not afraid of failure and rewarded for experimenting.
There is an excellent quote from Thomas J Watson of IBM fame, following an employee making a mistake that cost the company $600,000, Watson was asked if he would fire the employee to which he replied “no, I just spent $600,000 training him”
What you think is the right sales message, product packaging, thumbnail or logo might be right. But you might also be completely wrong. Law 21 says assume you are wrong, then work constantly to find something better.
“Failure and invention are inseparable twins. To invent you have to experiment. …….Big winners pay for so many experiments” — Jeff Bezos.
“Law 29, Create a cult mentality”
Bartlett is not really talking about a cult, with all the possible negatives that go with that. He is talking about a culture that is cult like.
Like in terms of a group of people who all strongly believe the same thing, they buy into a message that they believe to be important. They are willing to go further than normal to share that message and make the company vision a reality.
Bartlett talks about how the first 10 people you hire really matter, they each represent 10% of the culture.
There is a great and very famous extract from Steve Jobs talking about how A-players like to work with other A-players.
The book then gives some bullet points on how to create this culture.
In truth, this was a disappointing part of the book for me. Culture design is so much more than is discussed in the book — really it’s a book in its own right. I found it difficult to boil it down to a series of quite short steps. I wanted more from this.
I think a lot of what Bartlett talks about is right, but I found myself wanting more insight into how he actually goes about getting a team to buy into his vision. How he makes sure people are acting out of a shared sense of vision rather than simply doing what they believe he wants them to do.
He talks about having build 10 successful start ups — I would enjoy hearing more about how he built those teams and created the right culture.
For me, culture and team is everything. Nothing I’ve ever done would have even got off the ground without the right team. Culture is an area that I can’t place enough importance on for anyone building a team or a startup. It’s something that is often considered to simply be a by-product of the people, but I believe it needs to be more deliberate than that — more designed and curated. It’s super important.
My overall view of the book is that it’s an easy read. Parts of the book are thought provoking, other parts are funny.
Steven Bartlett uses lots of inspiring and attention grabbing stories to enhance and illustrate his points. He is clearly a skilled marketer and his understanding of narrative and hook combined with his easy going style of prose makes this an enjoyable read.
There are a few slightly self indulgent moments, an unnecessary flex or 2, but those are offset with some personal insights and stories with elements of humility. All that aside it’s not overly complex, the language is straightforward and it’s a nice one to dip in and out of as opposed to reading in 1 long sitting.
This is a good book. You will learn something from it and likely enjoy it.
As for Bartlett himself, I expect we will continue to see a lot of him.
Thanks for reading.
