Advice from Elon Musk, Warren Buffet and Steve Jobs
Full transcript · Read the full conversation in order, with its original context.
Contents1 chapter
§01Transcript — part 1§01Transcript — part 1
The thing I think about most, especially when I'm on the go but also when I'm sat here in the Diary of a CEO studio, is the Wi-Fi and internet that we have to work with. In fact, anytime I'm filming away from the studio, one of the first things I do when I arrive is open up an app and do a speed test to see how strong the signal is.
The number of screenshots I've sent to my team about Wi-Fi signals at different locations is actually pretty crazy. It matters that much to me because it's such a competitive advantage to have fast Wi-Fi. On any given day, if I'm recording hours and hours of footage with a podcast guest, I then often have to have my team send that across to our London team who then do the edit.
So fast Wi-Fi and internet is not a nice-to-have; it is absolutely business-mission-critical. So, when it came to finding the best provider who could supply internet and Wi-Fi to our new LA studio, which I'm sat in right now, we looked at every single option.
And of all the providers, the one that came back with the steadiest connection, as well as being the cheapest, was today's sponsor, Spectrum Business. Spectrum Business keeps businesses of all sizes connected with fast, reliable internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, and mobile services. Millions of business owners already rely on Spectrum to keep their operations connected. So, if you want to join them, head to spectrum.com/business to learn more. That's spectrum.com/business. Restrictions apply; service not available in all areas.
Hello. Okay, so it's been a couple of weeks since we spoke, but I'm glad we're back together. I guess the question is, where have I been? And I don't want to give any excuses. That's not in my nature. That wouldn't be very Steven Bartlett of me.
But I've had a lot of situational factors when it comes to recording the podcast. Basically, because I'm always on the go, I have to find the perfect moment in the day, but also the perfect location to film the podcast. And these podcasts are often filmed at 3:00 a.m. or 4:00 a.m.
It's now 5:00 a.m. here. I'm in a hotel room in Istanbul. I'm out here speaking at a conference called Marca. I just did my presentation yesterday to 1,500 people here in Turkey. Super fun. I'll tell you a little bit about that more another time.
But the point is, it's not always easy to record for me. Right now, I've moved into my bathroom in my hotel room in Istanbul, and I'm hoping that this podcast isn't interrupted by room cleaners or loud sounds, but I can't guarantee it.
Anyway, back to the podcast. I really, really enjoy this. I really, really enjoy it. So it's not a case of me not enjoying it. I get so much from it. I find it a very cathartic, therapeutic experience. And I hope that I make these podcasts forever, irrespective of the factors of the listenership or how many of you listen, those kinds of things.
Because I've come to learn the best content comes from doing it for the right reasons and doing it for myself, and that's exactly what I'm doing. I'm also going to record this whole podcast in one take, irrespective of any bangs or sounds or anybody running in. So I apologize in advance if this is interrupted or if I stumble.
But the whole nature of the Diary of a CEO is it's a very honest, unfluffed, unedited take on my life, my time, my experiences, etc. I've had a very interesting couple of weeks and I've got a lot to update you on. The key thing in this diary entry is going to be the bullet points I've made in my diary around how I've tried to become a better person.
How I've tried to become a better CEO, how I've tried to understand myself better, and then, as always, a few personal things. A few things that are playing on my mind, a few things that I'm concerned about.
Okay, so before I get started, I wanted to share something with you. A lot of you would have listened to my podcast I did with Mark Stringer. Mark Stringer was the CEO I interviewed who had his whole team walk out on him. We talked about his story of betrayal and all of these things from his perspective.
Mark is a really wonderful guy. I've built quite a good relationship with Mark over the last couple of weeks, and we've stayed in contact long after the podcast had gone out. A lot of you had got in contact with Mark and given him your opinion and comforted him and things like this.
One of the people that got in touch with me was actually the team of people that walked out on Mark. And I said to you in the last podcast that I don't want to be Jerry Springer or anything like that. I get nothing from that. There's no interest in that for me.
However, I do believe in being fair. And so the team that walked out on Mark contacted me and asked to meet. And so they came to my office, and we sat down and we met. I felt it was important to hear their side of the story too, although I think we all agree it's not a good idea to start debates and arguments by bringing them onto the podcast.
But I wanted to give them a little bit of an opportunity to have a fair shake in some respects. I had a great meeting with them. Obviously, their perspective on the situation is slightly different. Even if it's not different, it's from their perspective, so it's different.
They were lovely, lovely people. I've got to say this: they were really, really nice guys. And they are guys that are doing their best to take care of themselves and to create a business in a world where it's incredibly hard to do so. And so I had a lot of respect for them for those reasons.
Okay, so one of the things that I've been thinking about a huge amount lately, and the first point in my diary today, is about your morning routine and mood setting. A lot of this was inspired by a friend of mine, Sean Puri, who is the CEO of Bebo. He sent me an email last week about mood setting and some of his habits and rituals.
I've done a little bit of research and I wanted to share this with you. The reason why this is so important is because we believe, and I think a lot of people believe, that the way you think dictates how you feel. And also how you feel then dictates what you do.
And what I mean by that is, if you feel tired, you'll sit on the couch. If you feel happy, you'll go up and dance. If you feel pumped, you'll go and do exercise. The thought there being how you feel dictates what you do. But also, what you do then dictates how you feel.
And athletes, they know this. They blast out music, they scream, they jump around before they have a big game. And they have a ritual of motion that creates the right emotion. And it's the same with musicians and actors. They all have a ritual they perform before they get up on stage or before they perform which creates the right emotion.
The whole thought here is motion creates emotion and the importance of movement and increasing your energy to change your state. And what most people do is they render themselves totally powerless and they do nothing. They just let the world decide how they feel.
Something bad happens, they feel bad, which leads them to perform negative actions—to be lazy and not to take action because of how they feel. Something great happens, they feel great. What smart people try and do is they think their way out of it.
Just like they use their analytical brain at work, they try to use that same analytical sort of stance to create their emotions. For example, if I feel bummed, I'll tell myself how it's not so bad and I'll tell myself to pull myself together.
The best people in the world, they don't think about it, they move. And this is one of the things that I've learned from Tony Robbins as well. He shows you his pre-show routine and it's all about movement because he believes that motion creates emotion.
And when you think about how stationary our lives are—we sleep in a bed, we wake up, we walk to the bathroom, we go to work, we sit down for eight hours, we go home, we sit on the couch and watch TV for hours—our lives are so unbelievably stationary.
So it's not hard to see how our emotions might just be following suit. And it's almost this two-way thing. Our emotions being negative or uninspired will then cause uninspired actions, which lead to uninspired emotions, and you can go on forever.
And so one of the things I've been doing over the last couple of years without realizing it is, before I have a big moment, to get myself in the right mood, I'll put on my headphones in my room, probably usually butt-naked or with my boxers on. I don't know, either one.
And I'll run around listening to my music and I'll get myself in a very sort of cocky, confident mood. And I've been doing this without thinking about it occasionally. And to improve my performance going forward, I'm going to try and do this virtually every single day.
Okay, so the next point in my diary is about emotional control. This week when I arrived here in Istanbul, I was immediately presented at 2:00 a.m. with a situation where somebody who I was dealing with in terms of the conference I'm speaking at was very, very stressed, very, very upset.
And they were venting and ranting and cussing and being very dramatic. And in that moment, I went on a bit of a mental journey. Fortunately, I didn't react to the situation. I believe one of the hardest tasks in the world for all of us is not letting other people's faults, their mood, their negativity, change our mood, our performance, our character, or our actions.
And the reason and the way I was able in that situation not to react to them was by remembering my overall objective. And my overall objective in all situations is to win. And winning means achieving my objective. And my objective is often slightly different.
But I just want to win. I want to get out of this situation with the best possible outcome. And if I had reacted and thrown a paddy and got angry at this person, it would have been because of ego. And it would have been because I felt that person was disrespecting me in some way.
But I care less about my ego than I do about my overall objective. My ego will try and take over. My ego doesn't have my best interests in mind. My ego and your ego has its own agenda, which is completely different from the overall objective.
And what I've learned over the last couple of weeks by performing little trials on members of my team, in situations like that, is that compassion always seems to win. And when we don't react and we respond, we always win.
Here's a little example which I was thinking about when I came back to my hotel room after that situation had been resolved. And I genuinely believe that situation was only resolved because I didn't react. Here's the example I was thinking about and it relates to when I was younger.
My mum wasn't very good at responding. My mum would always react. And so as a child, if I broke something, she would immediately get angry, perhaps yell, get upset at herself, at me, which would worsen our relationship. And it wouldn't make anything better. That was reacting's conclusion. It never made anything better.
The alternative would be if she responded. And in that situation, if your child breaks something, you notice your anger, you notice the reaction, you take pause, you take a breath and consider the situation. The first response is probably to see if the child is okay, if they're hurt, if they're scared, because it's kind of leaping into their world and trying to see it from their perspective.
Second, realize that the object's broken now. In the larger view of the world, this is really not that important. It's something that can be replaced. Next, you kind of let it go and you adjust to a world without it—a world where this has now happened and we're going to move on.
Third, you help them sort out the problem. So you'd help your child clean up, make a game of it, show the child that mistakes happen and that it's not something to dwell too much or beat yourself up about because it's happened now. And fourth, calmly talk to them about how to avoid this in the future, offer them some guidance, and give them a hug.
And that is the situation where your child will learn, your relationship will be stronger, and you won't take it as badly on yourself. You won't be stressed. You won't give yourself unnecessary stress and baggage in the form of that negativity.
This is something as a CEO which is so important to master. One of the most important things in business is people, right? Probably the most important thing. And because you're dealing with so many people that are unpredictable, it becomes incredibly easy to react in situations, especially when you're not thinking.
So honestly, if there's one piece of advice I can give to all of you listening to me now, irrespective of whether it's with your children or your colleagues or your teams or whoever it is, do everything you can, everything in your power to respond. And it wouldn't be right for me just to say that without offering some sort of practical advice and to share the steps I've taken within myself to help myself respond better.
And there are two simple things. The two simple things I've learned are mindfulness and pause. Mindfulness means watching yourself and watching ourselves when something happens that might normally and usually trigger that emotional reaction, and paying close attention to our mind as that happens and the feeling we get in our stomach.
The second point is about pause. So we then have to pause. We don't have to act immediately just because our internal reaction, our internal feelings, have shown up. We can take a pause and we can breathe and we can watch that urge to act irrationally rise, and then we can let it go.
And sometimes taking those few seconds makes all the difference. Other times we might have to remove ourselves from the situation. Sometimes we have to sleep on it to cool ourselves down. But the most important thing is that we arrive at the response, not a reaction.
And once we've done that—so we've taken some time—what I'll then do is I then look at the most intelligent, compassionate response and I try to execute on that. And the word "compassion," I think, is really the answer to this all. For one second, try not to blame.
Blame just doesn't seem to help anything in any situation ever. When things have gone wrong, blame doesn't seem to help. Compassion, in my personal experience of being a CEO for now for maybe six years, but three years properly in this big business where there's hundreds and hundreds of people—compassion and being able to cross over into the other person's world has changed my life.
I am not perfect at it. I make mistakes every single day on this topic. And I think you should expect to make mistakes on this too. But what's important to me is out of ten instances where something happens, I'm increasing the amount of times out of ten that I respond compassionately and I respond without ego. That's the most important thing.
Okay, so the next point in my diary is all about time control. That was about emotional control, I guess, and this is about time control. In chapter seven and chapter five, I talk at length about how I believe time is the single most important asset all of us, including me as a CEO, has to execute upon.
I talked about in my previous podcast about how I think of time as a roulette croupier who in the morning gives you 24 chips—24 chips for 24 hours in the day. He or she immediately takes eight back because you slept for eight hours, and you've got 16 chips to act upon, to place on this roulette table. The roulette wheel is then spun and you see the results of how you placed your time.
So time is incredibly important. We all have 24 hours in a day: a homeless person, a billionaire, a philanthropist—everybody. And so one of the things I've tried to do is become more efficient with my time. I realize that if I can save ten minutes a day, it'll have a tremendous impact over time.
Not today; it won't have a huge impact. But over ten years, saving ten minutes a day can literally be transformative. I believe that, and that's the whole sort of approach about the slight edge and how things compound over time. And so here's an action I've been taking in my personal life that I think might help some of you, and it's to do with meetings.
I spend so much of my time and so much of my day in meetings with people. And the nature of a meeting means that it can rumble on and on and on and take more time than either party expected or really needed. And so one thing I'm doing now is I'm creating a hard stop for all of my meetings.
And the important thing with a hard stop—and for anybody that doesn't know what a hard stop is, it's basically telling the person when you have to leave the room or when this meeting has to end. The great thing about a hard stop is if you give a person a hard stop before the meeting starts and you let them know how long you have—for instance, you walk into a meeting and say, "I have five minutes," and then you end up giving them ten—that person will be happy.
They'll also structure the things they have to say and the topics we have to discuss in terms of priority and will move faster. But if you don't say a time—say you walked into a meeting, you had, you know, five minutes and then you ended up giving them ten, but you didn't say—they'll often feel short-changed.
They'll feel like you don't care and they won't understand your position. And so what I'm doing now—I had a meeting with a kid last week and I sat down and he wanted some advice on his business. I sat down, I said, "Listen, I've got ten minutes." I ended up giving him 15, so he was incredibly happy.
Had I walked in and given him 15, he might have thought, "Christ, you know, I've traveled all this way to meet you and you've given me 15 minutes. Surely you had longer?" But I sort of prefaced it with, "Listen, I've got two other meetings coming up and I've got this, this, and this, then I've got to shoot out. So I've got about ten minutes. Is that okay?"
He agreed, he got 15, he was happy. And so usually that ten-minute meeting, that 15-minute meeting I had with that kid would have rumbled on for maybe half an hour, 45 minutes, but it didn't have to. So I could save him and me time by just prefacing it and creating an initial hard stop. I would implore all of you to give that a shot.
Okay, the next topic on my list is cryptocurrencies and blockchain. It's impossible for you to have escaped the phenomenon and the conversation around Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, and blockchain that has arisen on the internet. And I wanted to give my once and for all take on this topic.
I want to let you know exactly how I feel on all these things. The first and most important thing is that blockchain technology, I think, is going to revolutionize the world. I think we're only just getting started. I think we are .001% of the way in developing the applications of blockchain.
Bitcoin, on the other hand, I invest in. I invest in Bitcoin and other altcoins, they call them. However, Bitcoin I honestly believe is a bubble. The reason why Bitcoin is rising in price is because it's rising in price—as simple as that. The value of Bitcoin or the application or the real-world utility of Bitcoin hasn't changed, but the price is 10x, 20x.
The reason why it's rising is because it's rising. And when it rises, people post on their Facebooks telling all their friends, "Oh my God, I invested in Bitcoin and a hundred pounds and now I have a thousand pounds." And then their friends will invest and their friends will get a 10x return. It's a pyramid scheme in that regard.
That's what a bubble is. And if you understand sort of behavioral finance, which is something I've been obsessing over over the last couple of weeks, you understand it's a bubble. It doesn't mean that it's not useful. It doesn't mean that Bitcoin won't become useful. It just means the prices where it's at because of sort of manipulated or artificial reasons that are inapt to value.
Here's what I think will happen: Bitcoin at some point is going to crash. And for those that aren't aware of the bubbling of Bitcoin, it's going to end in tears for them because they're going to lose a lot of money. I'm not saying don't get involved in Bitcoin. I'm not saying don't get involved in blockchain, because I told you on my previous podcast that I think you should.
I'm just saying realize what's happening and make investment decisions based on not greed or delusion or these kinds of things. Invest money that you can lose and invest knowing that there's a high probability at some point the market will correct itself. Blockchain and crypto in general will change the world.
And if you're looking to start a business in 2017 or 2018, I implore you to educate yourself on blockchain because you will be educating yourself on the future. And growing up, I always was gutted that I missed out on the dot-com bubble and the dot-com rise and the dot-com revolution because I always thought, "Oh God, I would have... you know, that was a huge opportunity to be part of changing the world."
You now have no excuse. I'm talking to myself when I say this as well. Blockchain is going to change the world. And I implore all of you—I want all of you to go and be part of that revolution because it's super exciting and I think a lot of you will get great fulfillment out of having a big impact like that. So yeah, go become a blockchain entrepreneur.
Okay, so the next point is a fairly short one. I just wrote a scribble in my diary which says, "The best entrepreneurs care less about being liked than they do about the standard." And I watched a Jony Ive interview years ago where Jony Ive talks about something he learned from Steve Jobs. And one of the things he says—I'll just play it for you now.
I remember having a conversation with him and was asking why it could have been perceived that in his critique of a piece of work, he was a little harsh. And I was saying, "You know, couldn't we be a little bit more... could we not moderate the things we said a little bit?"
And he said, "Well, why?" and I said, "Well, you know, because I care about the team and I, you know, care about..." And he said this brutally, brilliantly insightful thing, which he said was, "No, Johnny, you're just really vain."
And he said, "No, you just want people to like you. And I'm surprised at you because I thought you really held the work up as the most important, not how you believed that you were perceived by other people." And I was terribly cross because I knew he was right.
And what this taught me is that great entrepreneurs and the most respected entrepreneurs and individuals and colleagues in the world, the most respected team members, they are the ones that care first about the standard and not necessarily about being liked.
And this isn't to say you should be rude to people because that doesn't help you achieve your objective. We've just discussed that. The thing is, sometimes it's unfavorable socially to be the person to point at the elephant in the room and say, "I think this can be better," because you know someone has put ten hours, 20 hours working on that.
You will become a great person and somebody people rely on and somebody people come to if you're the person that cares less about being liked than you do the standard. There is nothing more important than the standard. And this is something that I always try and sort of give to the younger leaders within my business.
It's this idea that sometimes you will achieve your objective—your objective is to keep people happy and to build a great business—you'll achieve it sometimes by not trying to keep people happy. And it's kind of a Catch-22; it's kind of hard to understand.
You have to protect the standard. You have to protect that shit. You have to die by that shit. You have to be prepared to lose weak friends over that shit. The standard is the single most important thing, and I'm defined by the standard. The reason why you're listening to me right now and that you care for my opinion is because I've spent the last six, seven years of my life really, really being a stickler for the standard.
The standard of everything that is associated with my name. The standard of everything that's associated with my company. And I implore all of you to do the same. I'll continue to protect my standard and I'm trying at times to find the right balance between not being an asshole but also protecting the standard. That's the challenge all of us have, right? I think if you deliver things in the right way, you won't turn people off and they'll understand that it's coming from a good place.
When your cat is acting weirder, or your dog is being louder, your turtle moves slower. Hello? Ted. Your cat seems thirstier. Whoa, slow down, bud. Or your puppy is acting clumsier. Day or night, if you don't know what's wrong, know where to go. Veg ER for Pets. This is Kate. Veg, the better, kinder ER for pets.
When your cat is acting weirder, or your dog is being louder, your turtle moves slower. Hello? Ted. Your cat seems thirstier. Whoa, slow down, bud. Or your puppy is acting clumsier. Day or night, if you don't know what's wrong, know where to go. Veg ER for Pets. This is Kate. Veg, the better, kinder ER for pets.
At least I hope so.
Okay, so the next point in my diary, I've just written, "How to become someone." And I know exactly what I meant when I wrote this. Very, very simple. You followed me over the last couple of podcasts on this journey of trying to figure out what it is that creates a thought leader or people that are heard.
And I did a tweet earlier on this week where I wrote, "Being liked by everybody requires the same actions as being totally invisible to the world." And to develop this further, what I've come to learn is that all of the people we listen to—Piers Morgan, Donald Trump, Katie Hopkins, even if you don't like them, Gary Vaynerchuk, right?
The reason why we listen to these people is because they have original thoughts, which means they're not just regurgitating what they hear other people say and posting it as their own, but they also have very, very defined thoughts.
And lastly on that point, they don't care if you don't like their thoughts. And so my advice to anybody that's trying to build a personal brand or become someone, or to be heard, is this: you have to have original thoughts. Thoughts that aren't just copied and pasted from Gary Vaynerchuk or another thought leader.
You have to have very clearly defined thoughts and you have to stop giving a fuck about what other people think about your thoughts. If you succeed in the above, you will become followed, you'll become listened to, you'll be paid to speak on stage, and you'll become a thought leader.
And also, your teams will gravitate towards you in terms of you being a leader. Originality, definition, and a lack of consideration about people's feelings on that topic are honestly for me the formula of being heard in 2017 and 2018.
And just to close off this topic, the key thing I've learned about how you become somebody and don't just become everybody is: the way you become all of the people you admire is by being you, because that's exactly what they did.
The reason why I admire Elon Musk was because Elon Musk is Elon Musk, right? The reason why a lot of you will admire a Gary Vaynerchuk is because Gary Vaynerchuk is Gary Vaynerchuk. He isn't anybody else. And so if you want to become Gary Vaynerchuk, if you want to become admired, you have to just do you, right?
And there's—we live in this whole world of everybody trying to be somebody, and we've confused, you know, admiration with aspiration, as I've said before. Really, really, really stop focusing on being somebody else. If you listen to my podcast, you shouldn't run away and start making quote pictures on Instagram with my opinion on it.
You should just work on developing your own opinion and your own perspective on the world. And the crazy thing is, once you do that, you'll have young kids just like I do who aspire to be just like you, and they'll make the same mistake. So just to reiterate because I think that's important: the way you become all the people you admire is by being you, because that's exactly what they did.
Okay, the next point in my diary is a super short one as well, and I've just written, "The grass isn't greener." One of the things I've come to notice is we live in this crazy, unreal, social media fake world, right? Where we look on Instagram and it appears that everybody is just living their best life.
But it's really—it's really a mirage. It's—it's a lie. And it wasn't until this week where I spoke to my friend who is living a life you would think everybody would want to lead, and that I know virtually everyone around me my age wants to lead, that I realized it's all bullshit.
Not that I didn't know this before, but I spoke to my friend and my friend is currently traveling the world. They're going from country to country, they're posting pictures on their Instagram of beaches and all of these wonderful things. And I know everybody looking at their Instagram is sat in their job or at work or in a cold country just wishing they could be that person, wishing they were on that beach.
But my friend told me this week he's lacking purpose. Waking up every day and going to the beach is getting boring and that he's looking for a job that has substance, where he can have an impact and do something he enjoys every single day.
I know people that are sat in jobs with substance that have something where they enjoy coming to work every single day are also looking at the guy on the beach saying, "I want that." The point here is the grass isn't always greener on the other side; it just always appears to be.
When I'm in a relationship, it appears that I want to be single. When I'm single, I want nothing more than being in a relationship. Welcome to being a fucking human being. This is just part of our human bullshit. The important thing is if you have this mindset, you'll continually always be unhappy because you live in a world of comparison where you'll go to the beach and then you'll want to be back in the UK.
You'll go to the UK, then you'll want to be back at the beach. You have to stop putting so much fucking pressure on yourself through comparison to lead someone else's life or a better life, right? Progress is important. Progress for me is success.
If you have a goal and you're moving towards it, you are successful, irrespective of all the people around you that are doing different things that appear to be good. Someone said to me once, "Everybody is looking in the mirror naked," and all of us, we only ever see our highlight reels reflected on Instagram.
No one ever shows the behind-the-scenes, right? You don't get to see the fact that I was eating pot noodles in a shit-hole house when I was 18 years old. What I posted was the brand new two iPads I bought. So all of you thought—and that's still on my Instagram today—all of you thought I was balling out of control. No, the iPads were free.
That same day when I bought those two iPads to show off to all of you, I was eating a pot noodle that I had nicked from the corner shop because I couldn't feed myself. That's the world we live in. It's fucking fake. So if you spend your time creating these false comparisons between your behind-the-scenes and that fake bullshit world you see when you log in, you will die of unhappiness, right?
And on this point of progress, what I've realized over the last couple of weeks is that I am a summation, I am the sum total of the progress I've made in the last five or ten years. The reason why I am where I am today, the CEO of a big company, is because I didn't get distracted by comparison.
I didn't compare my current situation to others and allow it to bog me down. I just focused on making progress over the last five and ten years. So the key for me in this moment right now, because I can't change the past, has to be progress. Nothing more and nothing less.
And so I'm asking myself that question all the time: how can I progress? And also, where am I not progressing? There are three areas of my life right now where I am not progressing at all. And these are—I'm sure there's more, but the three that I've been able to identify are: I'm getting incredibly out of shape.
I'm getting almost to the point where I'm getting fat. Like, I'm looking at my... the problem with having a cameraman follow you all day is you get to see yourself fall more and more out of shape. That's somewhere where I'm not progressing. In five years from now, if I allow that to continue, I will be morbidly obese. I need to address that issue immediately. I need to get back on progress.
Point number two: my family relationships could be progressing more. With my brother about to give birth—my brother's not giving birth—my brother's girlfriend is about to give... my brother's fiancée is about to give birth to a small baby girl. It's important now more than ever that I move closer to my family and invest more time in those relationships.
And three, I would say, am I really taking care of myself in terms of just, you know, relaxing more and, you know, I don't know, like getting my hair cut and, you know, having more massages? These kinds of things, right? Like taking care of me, my mental health and well-being.
I think I could make more progress there. I think I could probably take a holiday at some point. And I think that's important. I think tracking progress and lack of progress are incredibly important. And I implore you as a task after this podcast is to write three areas where you're not progressing fast enough and some key actions you can take to help yourself move further in that direction.
Okay, so my next point was inspired by a book I read, and it was a book by Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett is one of the people I respect tremendously because of—not just because of the amount of money he's made and the businesses he's built, but also his character after doing so.
And Warren Buffett I would consider to be one of my distant mentors. When I say distant mentors, I mean I've never spoke to the guy, but he's been mentoring me for many, many years. So thank you, Warren. One of the things Warren writes about in the book that I read is about character and the importance of character.
And he says, because he's an investor, "You should write down the type of character you would invest in, and also the type of character you would short." What shorting is, for you guys that don't understand investing or aren't involved in that world, is basically bet against.
So what kind of character would you bet against? So I wrote down in my diary this week four character traits that I would invest in and five character traits that I would short. And the whole idea here is, if you can identify those character traits and you find them admirable in other people, maybe other people would admire those character traits in you.
And maybe you'd be more successful if you had those character traits within yourself as well. So here are the character traits that I would invest in: someone that's hard-working, someone that's humble, someone that's nice to people, and someone that's obsessed about whatever it is they're working on.
That's the type of entrepreneur or person I would want to have 10% of. Here are, and this is more interesting to me, the type of character traits I would short: someone that lacks focus and that is easily distracted, someone that is rude or ego-driven, someone that can't see their own faults or, as Sean Puri said, the CEO of Bebo, someone that is able to believe their own bullshit, which is the most dangerous thing an entrepreneur can possibly do.
Someone that doesn't do it for the right reasons—so someone that's doing it for monetary reasons or other reasons—and lastly, someone that doesn't work hard. Just by performing this simple exercise, I realize the type of person I want to be and who I definitely don't want to be and don't believe in.
And when I looked at the list of character traits that I would short—lack of focus, ego-driven, believes their own bullshit, doing it for the wrong reasons, doesn't work hard—those are the key things I need to make sure I never, ever, ever exhibit in my character or within my performance.
I implore you again to do the same exercise and write the five things you would invest in and the five things you would short. It's certainly helped me a lot. My other mentor, Elon Musk, took a place in my diary again this week. Elon Musk wrote in one of his books that an honest criticism is as valuable as gold.
And he implores everybody to constantly seek criticism because a well-thought-out critique of what you're doing or who you are is the most important thing. And so one thing I'm going to try and do this week is I'm going to try and get anonymous and honest criticisms of me from the five people that work closest with me.
The reason why we don't do this is because of ego. I am scared of what they might say and how it might hurt my emotions. That's why we don't do this exercise. But the way that I'll get better and live in a more sort of real, honest reality is by understanding these things.
There are... I have tremendous flaws. I know some of them, but I'm sure I don't know all of them. And I think if I want to be better and I'm committed to actually being better, why wouldn't I just go and ask the five people that work with me to fill out an anonymous questionnaire and to list the things that I'm bad at, the things I could be better at, and where there's opportunities within my character or performance to be better?
And what I'm going to do in next week's podcast, once they fill that out for me, I'm going to share every single point with you, and we're going to discuss it. I'm not going to fluff it, I'm not going to take any points out; we're going to discuss it next week on Chapter 9. I also would love you guys and you girls to do the exact same thing.
The five people that work closest to you: go and give them an anonymous poll—and you can do these things online, there's loads of websites that do it—send them the link, they anonymously answer a set of questions, and it goes into your inbox anonymously. Surely that information is gold. Surely Elon is right when he said that is gold.
Those are the things that will advance you more than any book, more than anything you could listen to or hear. Please do it. Please.
And lastly this week in my podcast, as always, I always end on relationships and specifically my romantic relationships. I always give you guys an update. I've gone on a bit of a journey, haven't I? When I first started the podcast, I was dating a girl out in another part of the world. It was a long-term relationship. That ended.
I then started talking a little bit to my ex-girlfriend out in Australia, and that's kind of trundled on a little bit or whatever, but that's not really progressed for various reasons. But now I'm single—single as always, single as ever. We live in a world where there's this sort of unspoken pressure to find somebody, to say you have somebody, regardless of whether they're right for you or not.
And it's almost a micro-impatience. And I've talked about micro-impatience and macro-patience and these kinds of things before. Everything good that's happened in my life has taken time, it's taken work. And there's obviously, you know, hormonal urges and things like this which tell you to find somebody and to fuck 'em and all these things, but I can control that.
And I don't think I need to rush into a relationship just to have sex, right? Patience. Patience has created all the best things in my life and realizing that I am young, I am in beta, I am still perfecting myself—I am not perfect—and that any relationship I get into has a greater chance of success if I'm more of an advanced work in progress, let's say.
Yeah, I think... let me be completely honest for a second. Do I feel at times I would like more sort of intimacy and would I like a girlfriend? I do. I do. Do I feel that rushing it is the right thing to do? No. So my only option there is patience—patience, just waiting for the right person to come into my life.
And all the people that have come into my life that I have loved or that I've fallen in love with or that, you know, have become important to me have come out of nowhere. So the data tells me the next person will come out of nowhere too, and that I just need to be patient. I think we all need to be a little bit more patient, us single people anyway.
Anyway, that is Chapter 8 of the Diary of a CEO. I hope you've enjoyed it. Do leave me lots of feedback. Tweet me—I read every single tweet, of course, and everybody that tweets me feedback I will follow on Twitter. If you don't have Twitter, then just message me on Instagram and we can chat there too.
Please, please leave a positive review on the App Store if you can. If you can't, then I just want to thank you again for listening. I'm going to be back next week with Chapter 9 and I have a big, big surprise for you in that chapter, as well as also delivering you my anonymous personal review from the five people around me.
So join me again then. Tweet me, let me know what you think, and I'll see you again next week.
When your cat is acting weirder, or your dog is being louder, your turtle moves slower. Hello? Ted. Your cat seems thirstier. Whoa, slow down, bud. Or your puppy is acting clumsier. Day or night, if you don't know what's wrong, know where to go. Veg ER for Pets. This is Kate. Veg, the better, kinder ER for pets.
When your cat is acting weirder, or your dog is being louder, your turtle moves slower. Hello? Ted. Your cat seems thirstier. Whoa, slow down, bud. Or your puppy is acting clumsier. Day or night, if you don't know what's wrong, know where to go. Veg ER for Pets. This is Kate. Veg, the better, kinder ER for pets.