It’s hard to find valuable and practical business and life advice these days.
This book certainly breaks that theme.
Who is Steven Bartlett you ask?
Steven Bartlett is the host of The Diary of a CEO (#1 Podcast in Apple Podcasts in the UK in 2023), serial-entrepreneur, and investor.
This book distills the best insights and lessons from the 456+ interviews he has done in his show, including guests like Simon Sinek, Jordan Peterson,Β Mo Gawdat, and many more.
Filled with lessons from his business ventures and journey as founder of Social Chain, Thirdweb, and Flight Story.
This book is not about business strategy or tactics…Β it goes way deeper than that.
It is as helpful and practical to the entrepreneur as for anyone else who wants to step up in life.
These are the first principles and laws that will ensure excellence and greatness in everything you do.
My 3 favorite quotes
Here are my top three highlighted quotes, the ones that have stuck with me to this day:
"Stop telling yourself youβre not qualified, good enough or worthy. Growth happens when you start doing the things youβre not qualified to do."
Steven Bartlett Share
"Your success will be defined by your attitude towards the small stuff β the things most people overlook, ignore or donβt care about. The easiest way to do big things is by focusing on the small things."
Steven Bartlett Share
"If you want long-term success in business, relationships and life, you have to get better at accepting uncomfortable truths as fast as possible. When you refuse to accept and uncomfortable truth, youβre choosing to accept an uncomfortable future."
Steven Bartlett Share
1. Creating Your Best Self
1. The Five Buckets
You have 5 buckets that you can pour from:
- What you have (Knowledge)
- What you can do (Skills)
- Who you know (Network)
- What you have (Resources)
- What the world thinks of you (Reputation)
Life circumstances can take away your Network, Resources, and Reputation, at any point in time.
This doesn’t mean they are not important.
But especially at the beginning of your journey, you should strive to fill your Knowledge and Skills first.
Because no matter what happens, those can never be taken away from you.

2. Teach it and you will master it
This is the secret of the world’s most renowned authors, philosophers, intellectuals, etc.
If you want to deeply and truly master any topic or skill.
You have to write about it publicly and teach it.
Simplifying an idea into your own words, and sharing it with the world, is the path to real deep understanding.
"The person who learns the most in any classroom, is the teacher."
James Clear Share
The bottom line?
Itβs not about retaining knowledge, but rather being able to release it, share it, and apply it in your life.
3. Don’t disagree
When you see yourself disagreeing with someone in a conversation, never start your response with:
- βI disagree…β
- βYou are wrong…β
It turns the conversation from a cooperative tone into a competitive one.
Start by acknowledging the things that you both share, agree, and have in common, and then express your point.
Instead of:
- “Yes, butβ¦β
Say:
- βYes, andβ¦β
It may sound silly, but it plays a big role in your communication, negotiating, conflict resolution, and ability to influence others.
4. How to actually change your beliefs
There is only one way to change your beliefs.
It is creating new evidence that challenges your old beliefs and creates new ones.
For example:
If you believe that you are bad at public speaking, the way to change that belief is by stepping outside your comfort zone, into the growth zone, and practicing it.
"The most conviction sign that someone will achieve new results in the future is new behavior in the present."
Steven Bartlett Share
Everything you do in life, even if nobody is watching, provides evidence to you about who you areΒ and how you behave in the world.
Choose to do the hard thing, especially when you donβt feel like doing it, because it provides evidence to you that any challenge that life brings to you, you can take it.
5. You must lean in
When you don’t understand something, instead of avoiding it, you should lean in more.
In a rapidly changing world, don’t leaning in will leave you behind.
Don’t step away from ideas that make you uncomfortable, go towards them.
6. Health is your first foundation
Health is the pillar of your life. If it falls, everything falls with it.
Make it your first priority.
Support Steven Bartlett’s excellent work by buying a copy of the book π
- Rating: 4.5/5
2. How to Become a Storytelling and Marketing Genius
1. Absurdity Sells
The most absurd things you say, say everything about you, about who you are, and what you believe.
Absurdity does a better job at selling than normality does.
Thatβs because we have an innate habituation filter, when we are exposed to something for a long time or multiple times we tune out and stop listening, the wallpaper effect as Steven calls it.
If you wantΒ to be heard, tell stories in a unrepetetive, unfiltered, and unconventional way.
The bottom line?
Donβt be afraid to tell stories that call either to be loved or to be hated.
Because, either way, it creates better outcomes for the marketer than a story that calls for indifference.
2. The Frame
Here’s the deal:
Very often, small, cheap, superficial changes in the perception of the value of your offer, can have a bigger impact than actually changing the thing you are trying to sell.
Counter-intuitively, even adding friction to the product can increase the perceived value of the customer.
For example:
Red Bull makes the flavor of their energy drinks taste bad, on purpose, to increase the perception of it being βpowerfulβ, and to feel more like medicine.
Thatβs because the βframeβ in which your product is presented, says more about the value of your product, than the product itself.
The takeaway:
Don’t focus exclusively on your product, but pay attention to the “frame” around your product, so you can present it through the most compelling lens that increases the perceived value of the customer.
3. The Goldilocks Effect
If you want to leverage the βGoldilocks Effectβ and price anchoring:
Offer different packages (Ex: economy, business, first class) in a way that tells a story, based on the context provided, to why the standard offer is the most valuable and reasonable choice to make.

4. The Endowment Effect Bias
People, unconsciously, overvalue things just because are their own (The Endowment Effect Bias).
Why does this matter?
If you can get your product into your prospect’s hands (Ex: Sofware Free-Trial, letting them try in person) it’s likely that they won’t want to return it.
5. The Hook
In everything you do, in order to get people’s attention, you have to earn the right to it in the first five seconds.
You need a βhookβ that tells the viewer/customer the reason why they should listen and pay attention to what you have to say.
3. The Philosophy You Need for Success
1. Kaisen Philosophy
There is only one way to do big things.
And it is not by making big leaps forward.
But rather, paying attention to the small things most people dismiss.
By focusing on making small improvements everywhere you can, and having a βkaizenβ philosophy (continuous improvement) is how you achieve big things.
2. Reflect on where you are going
This is an underrated habit that yields massive rewards in the long term.
You gotta continuously and consistently evaluate what direction you are going towards, and where you want to go.
Just as a small 1% deviation in a plane flight can take you to another continent, the same happens to us if we don’t reflect and adjust our direction.
You can find yourself in a place you didn’t want to get to, but only noticed it too late.
The takeaway:
To make sure you are going where you want to go, you need to periodically and consistently reflect and assess where you are going. (Weekly Review Process for example)
3. Failure is your best friend
If you want to increase your success rate, itβs simple:
Increase your failure rate.
Failure is the fastest way yet discovered to knowledge.
If you want to incentivize it in your company, you have to measure it and actively reward such behavior.
Removing unnecessary bureaucracy that makes failing and experimentation slower.
Because most decisions are not Type 1 decisions (you canβt go back).
Most of them are Type 2 decisions (two-way doors), and those decisions should be made as quickly as possible.
4. Why you don’t need a Plan B
The reason you should not create a Plan B is that it will decrease your chances of achieving your Plan A.
Studies point out that having a backup plan, or just considering one, has been shown to lower your performance and commitment to your main goal.
"There is no reason to have a Plan B, because it distracts from Plan A."
Will Smith Share
The bottom line?
Maybe you should put your eggs in the same basket after all.
5. The Ostrich Effect
If you are looking for lasting success in business and life, you gotta get better at accepting uncomfortable truths as fast as you can.
To accept that everything around us, including ourselves, is in a constant transformation.
If it challenges your current behavior and beliefs, donβt run away from those ideas, you should lean more toward them.
Fail at this and you might behave like an ostrich hiding its head in the sand every time something challenges your current behavior,
Or like the big video rental stores when digital video companies started to emerge:

"If you want long-term success, relationships and life, you have to get better at accepting uncomfortable truths as fast as possible. When you refuse to accept an uncomfortable truth, you're choosing to accept an uncomfortable future."
Steven Bartlett Share
6. Stress is not the enemy
With 39 Grand Slam titles (Tennis), when asked how she coped with such an enormous amount of pressure she said:
"Pressure is a privilege - it only comes to those who earn it."
Billie Jean King Share
The belief in how stress and pressure affect your performance can significantly influence your body and mind’s reaction to them.
A study by Neil et al. (2016) suggests that people who perceive stress as enhancing their performance and preparing their body and mind for battle, tend to experience more positive outcomes compared to those who view stress as a debilitating and harmful thing.
Supporting this concept a well-known TED talk by Kelly McGonigal (How to make stress your friend) links the belief that stress is bad for you as being detrimental to your health and places this belief among the top twelve killers in the United States.
If you’re seeking growth, embrace the challenge.
7. Pre-Mortem Method
The pivotal question is:
Why will this idea fail?
Itβs known as the pre-mortem method. It consists of assuming the idea or project failed and then coming up with the reasons why it failed.
Gives you and your team ideas of what is most likely to go wrong to create plans to mitigate it or avoid those pitfalls.
Or even throw away the idea altogether if required.
The perspective it gives makes sure you donβt get blinded by cognitive biases such as:
- Optimism Bias – the tendency to believe that we are less likely to experience negative events compared to others;
- Confirmation Bias – the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses;
- Sunk-Cost Fallacy – the tendency to continue a venture or project because of previously invested resources (time, money, or effort), rather than current costs and benefits.
This exercise is not only useful in business but personal relationships or any other life pursuit.
8. Context is King
Your skills are worthless if you donβt put them into the right context and environment that values them.
For example:
- Writer in media vs Writer in the medical biotech industry
- Wedding Photographer vs Advertising Photographer
The core skill is the same. But the context makes it much more valuable.
In order to make your skill more valuable:
Put yourself where your employer sees you as more valuable, rare, and unique, and your efforts result in more revenue.
9. Time Betting and The Discipline Equation
We all have the same 24 chips (hours) every day.
And how we bet those 24 chips every day will determine what outcomes we will have in the future.
In our health, business, career, happiness, relationships, etc.
Time is the only real asset we have.
At the end of his speech, Steve Jobs said:
"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life."
Steve Jobs Share
By recognizing our finite nature, we start prioritizing what really matters, and living more intentionally and truthfully.
In the face of death, fear of failure and worrying about what other people think lose its significance.
Steven Bartlett defines discipline as the commitment to a goal not dependent on motivation levels.
Discipline naturally happens based on these three factors:
- The value and importance of the goal (why it matters to you, how much it matters)
- The psychological reward and enjoyment of the pursuit
- The psychological cost, pain, and friction of the pursuit

Success is inevitable if you combine: Discipline (daily efforts) + Consistency (done repetitively).
It is no easy thing. But its principles are simple.
"We donβt have to be smarter than the rest. We have to be more disciplined than the rest."
Warren Buffet Share
4. How to build a high-performance team
1. Who not How
Every company, at its core, itβs just a recruiting company.
As a founder or CEO, your job is to hire the best individuals and bind them with a culture that gets the best out of them.
If you want to build big things, instead of asking:
- How can I do this?
Defaults to asking instead:
- Who is the best person that can do this for me?
2. The Culture
Especially at the start of your startup, it should feel like you are part of a cult.
In the early days, everyone in the team must believe strongly in the thing you are building. Even when the thing itself is long from coming into existence.
As the company grows, it needs to build a culture more focused on long-term objectives, cults are not sustainable.
It should become a place where people:
- Are genuinely involved in a cause they care about;
- Trusted with a high level of autonomy;
- Presented with a sense of progress and forward motion in their work;
- Surrounded by a loving, supportive team that they enjoy working with and that offers them “psychological safetyβ.
3. Protect it at all costs
"The cost of one bad apple can be the less of many good ones."
CEO of General Electric Share
If someone becomes a bad apple and lowers the standard, you need to take swift action to prevent their influence from destroying the precious company culture.
At any point, ask yourself this:
If everybody had the same cultural values and attitude as this employee, would the bar be raised? or lowered?
- Bar raiser: promote
- Bar maintainer: keep
- Bar lowerer: fire
With every hire, you should be looking to raise the bar.
"If the company culture is strong, new people will become like the culture. If the company culture is weak, the culture will become like the new people."
Steven Bartlett Share
4. You must make people feel this
In any organization, the feeling of progress and moving forward is the most crucial factor for fostering team engagement, motivation, and fulfillment.
Small victories should be celebrated and encouraged as a sign that the team is making progress toward its objectives.
Scaling down your challenge (sub-tasks and sub-goals) is the key to creating action and solving problems.
How to increase the perception of progress in teams:
- Creating Meaning β If the work feels βmeaninglessβ, motivation fade away.
- Establishing Specific, Actionable Goals β The team needs to know exactly what they need to accomplish. And progress should be tracked and measured, to make the small wins noticeable. (OKRβs)
- Providing Autonomy β Give people room to fail and succeed; act as a helpful facilitator rather than a demanding micromanager.
- Eliminating Friction β Remove all obstacles that may kill motivation, creativity, and execution – removing bureaucracy, providing resources, asking employes what is blocking them.
- Announcing The Progress β Share the progress of the team weekly with them. Recognize and praise progress out loud in public.
5. Be a Flexible Leader
Great leaders are flexible and inconsistent with each member of the team.
They become the complementary piece that each member needs, to become the best version of themselves and stay motivated.
"A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they donβt necessarily want to go, but ought to be."
Rosalynn Carter Share
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