Authenticity and Leadership

 

My colleague, mentor, and BFAM (brother from another mother) Fahim sent me a podcast to listen to the other day, as he and I often do to encourage each other and share information, inspiration, and ideas to continue our individual growth, as well as the growth of our independent and collaborative business ventures. It’s episode 69 of Conversations with Loulou, in which host Loulou Khazen interviews Steven Bartlett at the Sharjah Entrepreneurship Festival on February 4, 2024.

The podcast description describes Steven as follows: “Steven is a celebrity in the world of podcasts, his podcast the Diary of a CEO gets 50 million monthly downloads and is the number one podcast in Europe. Steven is a successful entrepreneur, investor and author. Steven is remarkably humble, his passion is grounded in pragmatism and his story truly inspiring, a self-made, self-taught immigrant from Botswana to the U.K. who made the best out of his privileges and continues to build and be at the helm of successful ventures.”

I’ve listened to Diary of a CEO quite a few times. The episodes are longer than most podcasts (often over two hours each), so are an investment of time for sure. But, they’re always worth it in the value that bring. This episode of Conversations with Loulou is only 50 minutes long, and I highly recommend that everyone invest that time in listening to it—especially any entrepreneurs or those who are building teams, businesses, and products.

The full conversation can be watched here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHamDLiiZxs

Here are my notes from this episode and conversation: Conversations with Loulou Podcast #69: A conversation with Steven Bartlett on Fame, Authenticity, And Leadership

• Steven Bartlett is an investor on Dragon's Den (The U.K.'s Shark Tank), author (Diary of a CEO and Happy Sexy Millionaire), podcaster (Diary of a CEO), and entrepreneur in venture funding, tech, publishing, and more.
• Any leader or public figure has to find their own way to encourage calm among the chaos. You can't get too carried away with the highs, therefore you won't get too carried away with the lows. If you open yourself up to the applause, you also open yourself up to the boos.
• It's hard to do anything in life without getting both sides of the feedback ("You're the worst person that ever lived." or "You're the best person that ever lived.") Both of those are not useful. If you want to be healthy, you need to find systems and ways to keep calm in the chaos. It's not natural for millions of people to have access to you and message you on a Sunday morning, so we need to remember to pull it back to our tribe like in prehistoric times and just focus on the messages from them.
• The bridge to connection is vulnerability. It's not a repellant, but rather it's a magnet. Set down the walls of ego and pride and form bonds. It's not just a great tactic for connection, but it's healthy for the individuals doing it too. In content, be careful about too many margaritas on beaches in Hawaii, but rather show your real self as well. Be authentic and vulnerable.
• In moments of tremendous difficulty, you need to empathize with how your team is feeling.
• Happy Sexy Millionaire: Unexpected Truths about Fulfilment, Love and Success is the title of Steven's most recent book, which is a "mousetrap" to get people to open it up because it sounds aspirational, but inside it's not an aspiration to be him, but an encouragement to be yourself. You can't become anyone you admire, as you don't have their trauma, their family, their history, etcetera, but rather the only person you can become is the best version of yourself. No one can replicate your curiosity.
• None of us have the core components of being Steve Jobs, but we can all learn lessons from Steve Jobs. And that's how we have to look at and think about and learn from anyone to whom we aspire to be like.
• People buy from people.
• According to physicist Richard Feynman, "If you want to accelerate your learning, you have to create an obligation to teach others."
• Take the thing you've learned and reduce it down and simplify it to the level of a 10-year-old. If people understand what you said, then that means that you understand it yourself.
• If we're happy alone, we'll be happy together. Relationships and partnerships don't work the other way.
• More introspection will accelerate the amount of intellect that you go up way more than others who don't have much introspection.
• There are five buckets to life, which must be kept in the right order for the world to become your oyster. They must be done in the right order, because if you try to cheat the system, life will bring you back down to the level of your knowledge and skill.
• Bucket 1: your knowledge
• Bucket 2: the application of your knowledge, which are your skills
• Bucket 3: your resources, which is what you obtain when you have advanced knowledge and skills
• Bucket 4: your network, which is who you know
• Bucket 5: your reputation, or what the world thinks of you.
• The first two buckets are yours and now one can take them away, but the last three the world can take away from you at any point in time.
• The mistakes our parents make are part of our fundamental privilege.
• For Steven, a huge amount of independence and a huge amount of shame caused a huge amount of experimentation, which built knowledge, and knowledge is power.
• Where we end up in life isn't as much a product of our level of hard work and our good ideas, as is the thought of many, but rather it's a product of hiring the right people, providing them with a culture of value, setting in front of them a valuable mission, and to believe that one plus one equals three. The people you put around you are everything. Any leader needs to be involved heavily in the recruitment and hiring process, as that is any business's best asset. Exceptional people then hire exceptional people.
• Be willing to pay someone two times what you pay someone else if they bring 50 times the value.
• As a leader, your job isn't to be right, but your job is to be successful. Put people around you who challenge you, spar with you, and question you so you can become better, wiser, and more successful.
• A bad hire may help you this week, but may cost you 18 months on average: six months to find them initially, six months realizing they're bad and putting them on probation and going through the let-go process, and then six months to find a new candidate. It's better to take seven months to hire someone than to waste 18 months with a bad hire.
• When the data says that someone is wrong and that a process isn't working, then character and humility come in. Someone who isn't able to admit that they're wrong or change is a bad hire.
• Steven has learned over the years on Dragon's Den that it's much better to invest in people than in ideas, which is a concept he shares with peer Barbara Corcoran. People who have been through trauma or faced adversity in their lives are able to create a plan and pivot when needed much easier than those who haven't.
• Things that make a great guest on a podcast: expertise, a story, and if the host is curious about the person, their ideas, and their story.
• Your audience is people who are curious about the same things as you. Understand your audience, as no one going to be is for everyone.
• If someone gives you the power of their time to listen to you speak or read your writing, you must pause and consider and honor that. Remember to be grateful and happy about that.

 

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This article was written for and published simultaneously for the Ask Uncle Marty™ column at askunclemarty.com and the AYM High blog at aymhigh.com on January 7, 2025.

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Marty Johnson is the Communication and Vision Coach at AYM High Consultants, a columnist, and an editor, producing the mail and business center industry's leading magazine, MBC Today. In 2023, he sold his popular and growing brand, Uncle Marty’s Shipping Office, and retired from shopkeeper life to focus on writing and consulting.  

Subscribe to his free Ask Uncle Marty™ newsletter and read more at askunclemarty.com; follow him on socials @askunclemarty. 

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