Diary of a CEO - Steven Barlett
How I discovered it
I knew about Steven from The Diary of a CEO. His podcast always appears between my Youtube recommandations and it is at the top of my mind when I want to watch something educational. I knew that Steven is someone curious and always looking to learn more. I bet there is something that I can learn from him too! And here I was, during lunch break buying his book.
Who should read it ?
Everyone! This book is a great guide for everyone that wants to run their own business, but more it is a great manual for everyone who wants to expand in life. His business rules can easily be applied for for personal life. It is written is a clear language, making it easier to understand and rememeber.
While reading the book it just felt that we wrere having a conversation. The book is also highly visual, great for everyone with visual memory. There are plenty of stories and examples, but not that many to make you bored.
It is a book which I always like to offer as a perfect example as it has a great balance between stories and examples, author’s personal notes and design!
Summary and notes
‘‘you will never have a greater or lesser dominion than that over yourself'; the height of your success is gauged by your self - masery, the depth of your failure by your self - abandonment’’ the first quote of this book that just changed the way I saw every day.
Diary of a CEO is divided into 4 pillars:
Pillar 1: The Self
In this pillar the author talks about the base of everything : YOU/ME/US. The biggest and the most important invest,ent we can do it to invest in us.
In this pillar he talks about 9 laws which are a combination of things he discovered that bring great results as well as lessons he has learnt.
1. Fill your five buckets in order
These buckets are at the base of everything, especially for the professional life. The way these buckets are treated represents the foundation and longevity of yourself and future.
2. To master it, you must create an obligation to teach it
3. You must never disagree
Regardless of personal or professional life we will always came across moments when we want or have to change other’s minds. We all have our own strong opinions and don’t like to change what we believe. But when we have to do it, we must never start from a place of disagreement, but rather provide new evidence that can change someone’s perspective.
4. You do not get to chose what you believe
This is part 2 of the previous law, and it means that we change our beliefs when we receive new evidence. All beliefes that we hold on to are based on paste experience. The brain always creates patterns and beliefs are a simple result of the patters the brain created.
5. You must lean in to bizare behaviour
This was one of the most powerful laws from the book, because it goes against the human nature. We have the tendency to reject new ideas especially the ones that seen bizare.
6. Ask, don’t tell - the question/behaviour effecr
If you want to change something into someone, always make them quation themselves, instead of telling them what to do. At the end of the day who likes to be told what to do?
7. Never compromise your self - story
This is one of the most important rules. How many of us made goals on 1st of January and then barely respected any of them?! Well this law is about keeping the promisesw we are making to ourselves, it’s about respecting the self story.
8. Never fight a bag habit
Don’t fight the system, but replace the reward. Each bad habit is successful because the reward feels amazing, so what about replacing the reward?
This is one of the most relatable laws because we all have or at least had one bad habit which took a long time to tackle down. For more details about creating and replacing habits I recommend you Atomic Habits - James Clear. Fabulous book!
9. Always prioritise your first foundation
This is somehow a reminder of the first law. We get one mind and one body, we must take care of them on a daily basis because we will never receive a new one.
The stories and examples in this chapter had a huge impact on me, and that’s when I realised that body movement and mental health have to be at the top of my priority list.
Pillar 2: The Story
10. Useless absurdity will define you more than useful practicalities
Humas are humans and in most cases we cannot change anything out it, so instead we should embrace the absuridity that always captures our attention.
A brand’s publicity will be determined about it’s useless absurdity than useful practicalities, the most absurd thing about you say everything about you.
11. Avoid wallpaper at all costs
Every single person that works or uses Marketing & Advertisising services should read this chapter. In this law Steven talks about habituation which is the effect of not giving importance to things that are presented to us in the same way. A brand always needs to come up with new ideas on how to stand out. And unfortunately we are surrounded by brands that became wallpaper and yet wonder why their business is not growing.
12. You must piss people off
I loved this part of the book! First of all bad or good publicity is publicity. But more important, the ky element that we tend to forget is that a brand needs to trigger an emotional response, regardless that is positive or negative. This is how we get people to rememeber!
13. Shoot your psychological moonshots first
Customers always judge the experiences or products. And this judgenement is based on two moments: the best or worst and the end. Keep the customers busy from the beginning and manage expectations in creatives ways.
Lots of great stories in this chaper!
14. Friction can create value
Ironically, making things easier isn’t always the best, sometimes we need to make things worse to increase the value. Although it’s not counter intuitive, value it’s something that doesn’t exist, it is simply a perception we reach with expectations we met.
15. The frame matters more than the picture
The way we present our stories gives the meaning. Reality is nothing more than a perception and context is king.
16. Use Goldilocks to you advantage
Brands/companies offer options, and with whatever options they offer we ae influenced to make the choice they want, but we think it’s the best.
17. Let them try and they will buy
This is one of the oldest and most successful strategies used by Apple. They let you engage with the devices, by giving a sense of ownerships which has the biggest effect into convincing the customers to purchase one of their products.
Always let people try what you have to offer!
18. Fight for the first 5 seconds
We don’t have short attention spans but we lose interest quickly. The first 5 seconds matter the most, gab their attention to have them for the next hours.
Pillar 3: The Philosophy
19. You must sweat the small stuff
20. A small miss now creates a big miss later
21. You must out-fail the competition
22. You must become a Plan - A thinker
23. Don’t be an ostrich
24. You must make pressure your priviledge
25. The power of negative manifestation
26. Your skills are worthless, but your context is valuable
27. The discipline equation: death, time and discipline
Pillar 4: The team
28. Ask who and not how
29. Create a cult mentality
30. The three bars for building great teams
31. Leverage the power of progress
32. You must be an inconsistent leader
33. Learning never ends
The last law is self explanatory, but you will have to read the book and get to know this law even better!
How the book changed me
This was the first book I read in 2024 and I believe that changed the course of my ‘‘destiny’’ this year.
The first pillar gave the motivation that I needed for the beginning of the year, it helped me to realise how important is to constantly invest in myself and that between all the investments there are, this is the one with the highest reward.
I loved this book so much that made me buy another one and gift it to a colleague, and I really hope that I get the ocassion to gift it to even more people.
Conclusion
All the above is just a summary of all the great things Steven talks in this book. Althought I don’t have the intention to open my own business, but rather work as a freelancer I got great insights about the business world.
What I really loved about that book is that it really offered unique advice which contradicts most of the business articles I’ve read recently. On top of all the great stories Steven tells his own story, his personal note take the book from good to great. His honesty and transparency give the real mening of the book.
Great reat!
