How to Become Successful - Lessons From Steven Bartlett
I spent 6 months with social media guru, newest and youngest BBC Dragon, award-winning entrepreneur and podcaster, Steven Bartlett. I’m going to share all the secrets to success that I learnt from working directly alongside him, in his personal team.
Image source: The Independent
How To Be Successful At Anything
How his podcast made it to the No.1 spot
1) Every single day we ask ourselves “how can we be 1% better”.. and we’ve done that for 1 year. We decided that a central pilar of our teams philosophy will be trying to find a 1% marginal gain every single day and now “Let’s find the 1%” has become a daily phrase in our team.
This means we will obsess and debate over changing a tiny thing about our episode titles, how and where we promote the podcast, how we book guests, the lighting, the music that plays when the guest arrives, offering them caffeine before we begin, how we research guests, the chairs they sit in, the car we pick guests up in… everything.
We don’t believe it’s just the big decisions that make the difference - we believe it’s the small, seemingly unimportant decisions, compounding in your favour over time, that change everything.
2) We deeply believe in being consistent at all costs. Charlie Munger, one of the worlds greatest ever investors says “The first rule of compounding: Never interrupt it unnecessarily”.
This means, when you’ve found something that’s working your success becomes fairly inevitable if (and this is a big if) you can find a way to be consistent. Based on what we could see in our growth charts 9 months ago, we were able to predict that if we just managed to be consistent, we should reach the top 10 this year. We were roughly 700th in the overall chart at the time.
For us, this has meant never missing a posting date - and posting a podcast every single Monday regardless of how challenging that has sometimes been.
So ask yourself:
1) How can you be 1% better right now
2) How can we be more consistent over the long term.
Tips on Successful Content:
If you want to get results. Most of the time, it’s a numbers game. Don’t expect the results after putting out one Tik Tok, one podcast. Keep putting in the reps, the work, and eventually you’ll get the answers you’ve been looking for.
In today’s world of content, having an idea that is simple and compelling is most important. Something that seems easy but has the potential to be life-changing. That is what we are looking for when we scroll. So have a title/narrative that has a small input but a huge return. ‘6 pack in 10 days’ ‘millionaire in 1 month.’
Content should be experimented with consistently. Taking risks, making bold moves, trying different ideas. Trial and error a number of experiments over time. What small incremental changes can you make today, and make these every day.
Your messages should be conveyed in the minimal number of words possible. Imagine someone who’s car has just broken at the side of the road. Their wife is calling them and they’ve just realised they’ve forgotten to take the bins out. Your message needs to get them to stop and listen. But that means, you have a very short period of time to convey your message. Make it concise, short and impactful.
The more original your idea is the better. Millions are re-telling similar messages, saying stuff to the world it has already heard before. To stand out focus on originality.
All your content should be friendly, uncommercial, super simple. It shouldn’t have big logos taking up space from something more valuable. The message should always be within a layout so simple so the message is clear.
Your content should be highly sharable. Getting people to engage.
Other Pointers for Success:
Attitude is the most important attribute you have. It defines pretty much everything else.
If you make a choice to do something, be so focused on it, go all in, be detail orientated, care about it endlessly.
