Boost your sales game with Steven Bartlett's Laws of Business and Life: The Philosophy

When we think of philosophy, many will jump straight to Plato, Aristotle or Socrates. Others might think of revolutionary socialist Karl Marx or ‘Enlightenment Thinkers’ such as Immanuel Kant. However, Stephen Bartlett and his third pillar, ‘The Philosophy’, are starkly shining a light on a number of modern philosophers who hold increasing relevance and interest for business leaders and innovators.

Bartlett, as an entrepreneur, influential figure, and thought leader, is helping to revolutionise our approach to business and life as he shares his strategies for success. In this third instalment of a four-part blog series, we explore the insights articulated by Bartlett through the exploration of his 33 laws, as detailed in his book, 'The Diary of a CEO: The 33 Laws of Business and Life.' If you missed the last set of laws, you can catch up on our breakdown of Bartlett’s second pillar here.

In this blog series, we're exploring how the application of Bartlett's principles can transform your sales strategy, enhance your personal growth, and empower you to navigate the complex business landscape with confidence. Whether you've been in sales ten years or ten minutes, Bartlett's 33 laws can help you navigate the challenges and opportunities that await.

Who is Steven Bartlett?

Steven Bartlett, born in 1992 in Botswana to a Nigerian mother and a British father, had a childhood marked by a striking contrast. His mother had left school at the age of seven, illiterate, while his father was a highly educated structural engineer. His family relocated to England while Bartlett was just a toddler, but he too faced educational challenges: expulsion from school due to poor attendance and later also dropping out of university.

After overcoming his rocky start, Bartlett has succeeded in numerous roles. His experience has led him to being considered at the top of his game in roles including founder, entrepreneur, public speaker, investor, author, and the esteemed host of the UK's leading podcast, 'The Diary of a CEO'. Notably, despite being rejected at audition-level for Dragon’s Den as an aspiring entrepreneur, Bartlett persevered and defied the odds. Today, he is the youngest-ever Dragon to sit on the panel, having joined in the show's 19th series.

Through his podcast and in preparation for his latest book, Bartlett has spoken with some of the most influential experts and leaders globally. Although his audience includes a diverse range of readers and listeners, including young and aspiring entrepreneurs, creators, business leaders, and high-net-worth individuals, Bartlett’s laws and the insights from his interviewees hold universal value for anyone navigating the journey toward success and personal development.

Pillar 3: The Philosophy

Bartlett breaks his book into four pillars: The Self, The Story, The Philosophy, and The Team. In this article, we’re focusing on the third pillar. The Philosophy pillar examines how an individual’s personal philosophies guide their behaviour. For sales teams, being able to understand how your prospects will behave, both now and in the future, could save you a lot of time, help you hone your focus for outreach, and guide your pitch to tailor it in a way that will most appeal to your prospects. Bartlett believes that understanding an individual's personal philosophies will enable you to accurately forecast how they’ll behave in any situation, making the art of selling that bit more of a science.

But psychologies aren’t just influencing your prospect, they can affect and lead your whole team, your whole company. Bartlett’s third set of laws outline the importance of The Philosophy for workplace ethic, innovation, and growth. Here are the next set of nine lessons that sales professionals can take from laws 19-27:

You must sweat the small stuff

Details matter – we all know this, but the tendency in the workplace can be to overlook the small stuff as we focus on the bigger end goal. For Bartlett, this law outlines how success will be defined by your attitude towards these smaller details. He argues that the easiest way to achieve our bigger goals and tasks is by focusing on each of the small steps that get us there.

For his podcast, Bartlett has implemented this law himself. This has meant really examining the finer details such as considering the guests’ favourite music (and playing it quietly in the background when they arrive so that they feel more relaxed and will be subconsciously more open in their conversation), researching the ideal room temperature and ensuring the environment the interviews are held meets that temperature. It has also meant A/B testing all of his podcast titles to see how people respond to them, employing a data scientist to use AI to translate the podcast into languages from across the world, being mindful of his extensive audience. The list of small details he spends time considering goes on, but what this relentless focus means is that Bartlett is constantly finding tiny ways to improve the podcast experience across the board, little by little. He is considering it from both the perspective of his interviewee and his audience, to ensure the podcast delivers at its best.

This law focuses on the Japanese theory of Kaizen which centres on the principle of harnessing change for continuous development or improvement. Bartlett insists that we are all capable of making small changes, making things better in small ways, daily, and that by doing so we can achieve much bigger outcomes. The principle put into practice insists that innovation must be the everyday concern of all employees at all levels within a company. One company that harnesses the power of this theory is Toyota, who reports implementing a million new ideas every year. These ideas, just small changes, are suggested by their (largely factory-based) employees with the aim of general improvement, such as increasing the size of water bottles to support their team in drinking more and being better hydrated. Bartlett also references simple, practical changes such as lowering the height of a shelf so that more people can reach items more easily, and increasing the font on a warning poster by 1 point, simply to make the text stand out that little bit more, and to try and help avoid more accidents.

While Toyota certainly benefited from integrating this philosophy into their workplace (think reduced waste, more engaged workforce, optimised workflows, and, ultimately, increased revenue), there is much that revenue teams can take from this principle too. Not only does this law serve as a reminder that greatness is achieved through a commitment to continuous refinement and attention to detail, but can remind us as team leaders, managers, or executives, that what may seem like an irrelevant detail to you, can be a very real improvement for your wider team. By adopting a Kaizen mindset and making incremental improvements part of the everyday routine, individuals and companies can unlock substantial long-term achievements that benefit the team on an individual level while also providing the building blocks to achieve larger goals.

[If you don’t care about tiny details you’ll produce bad work because good work is the culmination of hundreds of tiny details.]

A small miss now creates a big miss later

This law outlines how overlooking one simple ongoing discipline in your life can have a big impact further down the line. Bartlett references Tiger Woods, a long-time practicer of the Kaizen theory, who decided at one point in his career that he wanted to completely change his swing. Woods understood that this wasn’t something that would just happen overnight and knew that he would need to incrementally change details about his posture, grip, etc. to really improve his swing. While going through the process of changing his swing, Woods stopped winning. For 18 months he faced a rocky overall performance. However, at the end of that period, when his swing had been completely overhauled and changed, he won 6 titles straight, and has since become arguably the greatest golfer of all time.

Arguably, nature is the best teacher of this philosophy. Scientists famously reported findings on a species of moth that adapted and changed its colouring during the industrial revolution to ensure its survival. Similarly, holly trees mutate their leaves when being eaten by herbivores to form the well-recognised spikes we associate with holly, which deter animals from eating them. These small mutations create a survival instinct.

In fact, when it comes to relationships, many of us will find a relatable example. We all have our pet peeves and, conversely, our own bad habits. Bartlett states that if you ignore the seemingly inconsequential things in your relationship, eventually, it will become a matter of contention and your relationship will fester as a result. Given enough time, that one tiny, unaddressed irk will lead you off course and cause you and your partner to drift apart. However, when you touch base with your partner, let them know what you’re thinking or how you’re feeling, when you’re addressing these tiny issues, you can readjust and keep each other on track in a healthy relationship.

Sales teams can implement the Kaizen principle with their prospects and clients to ensure any little issues or concerns can be addressed before they have time to escalate and do serious damage. By maintaining good, open lines of communication and continually checking in with them, you can keep you prospect on the right path or on track for your ultimate goal with them, to close the sale. By neglecting any issues they’ve raised, or not communicating enough, you run the risk of that prospect becoming disengaged, concerned, or even annoyed at your lack of input into the relationship you’re building with them.

“The smallest seeds of today’s negligence will bloom into tomorrow’s biggest regrets”

You must out-fail the competition

At face value, this law is jarring with everything we initially think of when we talk of success and achievement. We are hardwired to want to succeed and so the concept of aiming to fail more than our direct competition might at first seem like idiocy. However, Bartlett goes on to unwrap this law to explain that “the higher your failure rate, the higher your chances of success.” To illustrate his point, Bartlett refers to Thomas J. Watson who was president of IBM for an impressive 38 years. Watson firmly subscribed to the idea that failure serves as an opportunity for progress and advancement and that an absence of failure would therefore inevitably lead to the demise of IBM. He warned against complacency, asserting that once an individual or business decides that success has been achieved, the momentum toward progress comes to a stop. Watson understood that failure provides feedback, that feedback provides knowledge, and as the adage goes, knowledge is power. If we take this one step further then, we can directly link failure to power. So, to increase your chances of success, you must increase your failure rate.

If we look at many of the household-name companies of today, failure is a common denominator in their histories. Another example Bartlett uses is Amazon. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, said in an annual shareholder letter in 2016: “one area I think we’re especially distinctive is failure. I believe we are the best place in the world to fail (we have plenty of practice!)” While Amazon have had a host of failed experiments that likely wouldn’t sound familiar to you, one name you’ll know is AWS. AWS also started out as one of Amazon’s ready-to-fail experiments. Following on their collective belief that experimentation is needed to achieve innovation, AWS was initially nothing more than a what if moment. However, in 20 years it has become the world’s fastest growing B2B company of all time.

Perhaps the biggest hurdle in implementing this law, is getting over the preconceived idea that failure is bad. When put into perspective, countless businesses can attest to the fact that the biggest risk and indeed, the biggest cost, isn’t in failing, but is in missing the opportunity to grow. For revenue teams the lesson here is simple: if to increase your success rate you must increase you experimentation and failure rate, then to close more deals, achieve a higher click-through-rate, or grow your social media following, you must try more things, implement more ideas, make more changes, and see more fails, to in turn see more wins.

You must become a Plan-A thinker

Having a back-up plan, a plan B, is something we do on the daily. Whether it’s planning what you’re going to order for dinner at your favourite restaurant, or implementing a new sales strategy, most people will have a contingency plan. What if they don’t have that special on the menu you so enjoyed last time? You’ve already considered the other options and have mentally narrowed it down to a plan A, a plan B, and maybe even a plan C. With your sales strategy, you’ve likely drawn up multiple plans, thinking we’ll try this first and if it doesn’t work, we can always try that after.

However, Bartlett believes that your plan B can actually be the biggest hurdle to the success of your plan A. The very fact that you have a contingency plan to fall back on means the stakes for plan A aren’t so high, the pressure has been taken off, and you now no longer need it to work, because you can always try something else. Citing an extreme scenario, Bartlett refers to Nando Parrado, who, after his plane came down in the Andes leaving a handful of survivors starving and without hope of rescue, walked for days to find help. Parrado couldn’t afford a plan B, his situation was life and death, and the only way he could go was forwards or face certain death. Not having a plan B became the most motivating factor in Parrado’s life and beating all the odds, he eventually found help and secured a rescue for himself and his fellow survivors - some 72 days after the initial plane crash.

While life and death situations will no doubt bring their own pressures that may motivate, when there is only one path ahead of you, that path absorbs every moment of your focus and determination, leaving no room for hesitation. You have to believe in plan A, because there is no other. And indeed, there is no need for a plan B, because it would only distract from plan A. Bartlett teaches that the fear of failure can motivate you more than the reassurance of a backup plan. If you have no safety net to catch you if things do not work out, you will pour every ounce of focus into ensuring plan A is a success. This law can be implemented into every area of our private and professional lives; whichever path you take, commit to it fully, and stop considering the other forks in the road. Focus on the path you are on and your chances of reaching your goal or destination will increase.

Don’t be an ostrich

The ostrich effect is a commonly referenced phenomenon. It is centred on the findings that when an ostrich senses danger, it places its head in the sand. The ostrich rationalises that if it can hide from the threat, the danger will pass. Humans are sadly no different because people are not motivated as much by pleasure as they are by avoiding discomfort, challenge, or pain. Anxiety causes us to look the other way when faced with a difficult or traumatic situation, allowing us the space for creating self-deception.

For Bartlett, the Titanic acts as a cautionary tale. It was well reported, following the disaster, how many of those on board the Titanic completely ignored their impending fate, and carried on their evening as normal. Some passengers remained in different lounge-areas of the ship, listening to the band play, while violinists also went out to play on deck, as though those passengers waiting for a lifeboat were simply in the drawing room. Some passengers had to be forcibly put on lifeboats to stop them from ‘taking their chances’ and staying on board. Tragically, and in part because of this attitude, 70% of passengers on board the Titanic died.

The lesson to learn here is a stark one. Hiding from truth doesn’t change the fact that it is the truth. Avoiding confronting an issue doesn’t make it go away. For sales reps, and in revenue teams more generally, a prospect who’s gone cold presents a situation we’d rather not contemplate: those hours of hard work wasted, cultivating that prospect through the sales process, only for them to get cold feet and back out. It would be easier to ignore the situation and hope for the best. However, Bartlett suggests that in these instances you must be a lion rather than an ostrich. Face the problem head on, acknowledge that things are not right, and start the process of reviewing what you are noticing. If you can identify what has gone wrong, or the root of your prospect’s concern, you will also be able to address those issues, and stand a chance of saving the deal.

“...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”.

You must make pressure your privilege

The problem with pressure is our perception of it. Billie Jean King, American tennis player (with 39 Grand Slam titles to her name), famously said: “pressure is a privilege. It only comes to those who earn it.” What she was saying is that pressure only comes to those who are fortunate enough to be in a position of authority, seniority, or hold another important position. When you view pressure as a side-effect of that success, it allows you to use that pressure to different effect.

Another misconception with pressure is that it’s commonly confused with stress. Bartlett points out that stress is an emotion, while pressure is an environment. People may react to pressure with stress, but they are not one and the same. As we know, stress is bad for your health; however, believing that pressure is bad for your health will actually do more damage than the stress evoked from the pressure itself.

Kelly McGonigal of Stanford University has explored the relationship between pressure, stress, and pain, and teaches that we must reframe it so that we can always remember the context of the situation. She too argues that you are fortunate to be in a position of pressure as that represents your power or authority. For example, you are privileged to be a parent or an expert in your field, and by recognising this, we can control the negative impact we associate with that pressure. If we can embrace the positives of our situation, we can also continue to learn and grow, using that pressure as a positive motivation.

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In the workplace, it is easy to feel overwhelmed by impending deadlines, ever-increasing targets, or mounting workloads. However, if we reframe our perception, what seems insurmountable can be changed to a future positive and addressing difficulties will pave the way to ongoing success. As Bartlett states: “’Hard’ is the price we pay today for an ‘easy’ tomorrow.”

The power of negative manifestation

In life we all like to imagine what our future might be like if everything we dreamed of came true. We plan how we might spend our lottery winnings, or design our dream home, envisage a ‘perfect’ tomorrow. But Bartlett argues that real value can be found in negative manifestation. An important question to ask ourselves is, ‘why will this idea fail?’ There are common sayings such as, prevention is better than a cure or defence is the best offence. Both of these highlight the importance and usefulness of identifying red flags or future risks before they occur.

By considering the prospect of failure before you start working towards your goal, you provide yourself the valuable opportunity to save yourself from overstretching and neglecting other, already existing projects or responsibilities. While we recognise that our earlier law telling us we need to fail more has value, this law challenges us to also recognise the difference between experimenting with the risk of failure, and certain (or far more likely chances of) failure.

Negative manifestation is an essential form of critical thinking, which in itself, encourages creativity, self-reflection, and better decision making. At its root, critical thinking helps us to be happier in ourselves and in the choices we make. In sales and revenue teams, it’s common practice to perform a post-mortem on failed deals, but this law challenges you to do a pre-mortem to identify challenges head on so that we can prepare for them before they arise. By imagining the failure risks before they occur, you can identify potential weaknesses in your pitch, documentation, or even in your sales strategy as a whole.

Your skills are worthless, but your context is valuable

Context is everything. In law, taking evidence out of context can be the difference between winning or losing a case. In education, quotes out of context will get you marked down. And so, valuations are placed based on context too. Think of the average 1 bedroom flat in London – you might expect (in 2023) to pay anything in the region of £280,000 – but in Cardiff or Edinburgh, the same flat could cost you between £100-£150,000 less. What we can establish from this, is that value is directly influenced by context.

Bartlett, drawing on his own experience, became immediately aware that the value of his own skillset is entirely based on context, when he began talks with a biotech company. Bartlett’s skills in this field were in high demand and he realised that in the context of a different industry, he could expect to earn ten times the amount he was commanding in the e-commerce, consumer goods, and tech industries. Value is what someone is willing to pay, and so naturally, skills are worth different things to different people in different industries, depending on their varying needs.

A common example we have all experienced is in buying a bottle of water. In the supermarket, you might expect to pay 50p-£1.00 for a standard bottle of still water. However, change the context, and our expectations also change: we would readily pay £2.00 for that same bottle of water if we were buying it at the gym, perhaps we might pay £3.00 for it at the cinema, and remarkably, we’ll even cough up a staggering £5.00 for it when we’re on an aeroplane and options are limited and that circulating air is making you really thirsty. It’s the same water, the only thing that changes its value is the context and the environment in which we find ourselves wanting to buy it.

Revenue teams, and companies as a whole, can learn an important lesson here. Consider who you’re selling to – and what you’re charging. There can be a huge difference in what people are prepared to pay for your services or products, depending on their own context. Make time to do market research, understand your prospects and buyers, and make sure you’re tailoring your outreach to hit the right note with the right audience.

The discipline equation

Death, time and discipline!: one of the more unusually named laws, this one does not shy away from the uncomfortable. It probably won't come as a surprise that discipline is integral for success in any of your ambitions, but the shadow of death hangs heavy in this notion. Bartlett argues that death is almost a taboo subject; we all know it happens, and that it will happen to each of us, but somehow, we don’t really plan for it. As a species, we struggle to come to terms with finality and preparing, emotionally, for our own death. Bartlett’s reference to death serves as a reminder that time is finite, and our time and the way we spend it is the only real influence we have on the world. Because we tend to ignore the fact that we have limited time on this planet, we also squander that time, rather than using it to achieve all that we hope for and dream of.

Bartlett calls this ‘Time Betting’. It is a concept in which he imagines, much as in a casino, we spend chips with the aim of winning. Chips in this context relate to time, and Bartlett considers this ‘time betting’ to reflect that we place a chip every hour – we cannot get that chip back just as we cannot get time back. How we place those chips is the only thing we have control over, but sometimes, placing those chips well can earn you a few more – or in this case, spending your time well can earn you more time. For example, if you spend an hour a day, or one chip a day, on your health and wellbeing, you may well win more chips, more hours to spend later. Bartlett goes on to explain that how you place your chips directly impacts your health, happiness, and legacy, and so there is a need for consideration and intention when you spend each chip.

Discipline is essential in so many areas of our live, but especially for allowing the time management hacks to stick or learning new habits. Without discipline we have no constant and will end up wasting time with procrastination or side-tasks that do not directly influence our end goal. By ensuring you are clear on what your goal is and understand why accomplishing that goal is so important to you, you will be able to call on visualisation to ensure continual forward momentum toward your goal.

Key points:

Bartlett's third pillar, The Philosophy, focuses on key teaching that can impact on the happiness and productivity of entire companies, while also offering insights for revenue teams too. Building a shared ethos is a powerful way of developing a team and instilling in them a shared responsibility and focus on change, innovation, and growth. The set of laws (19-27) outlined in this article offers these lessons for sales professionals:

• Sweat the small stuff, inspired by the Japanese theory of Kaizen, highlights the significance of continuous improvement through attention to detail. Bartlett's example of implementing this philosophy in his podcast demonstrates how small changes can lead to substantial long-term achievements.
• The idea of out-failing the competition challenges traditional perspectives on success and emphasises the importance of embracing failure as a stepping stone to innovation and progress. Learning from companies like Amazon and their willingness to experiment, fail, and adapt showcases the power of failure in driving success.
• Becoming a Plan-A thinker encourages individuals to fully commit to their primary goals, emphasising the idea that having a backup plan can undermine the success of the initial plan. Bartlett's comparison with Nando Parrado's life-or-death situation illustrates the motivating force of having only one path forward.
• The cautionary tale of the ostrich effect reminds us of the dangers of avoiding uncomfortable truths. In sales, facing issues head-on, acknowledging concerns, and addressing them promptly can salvage relationships and prevent potential disengagement from prospects.
• Making pressure a privilege challenges the perception of pressure as a negative force and encourages individuals to view it as a byproduct of success. Reframing pressure positively can lead to increased motivation and better performance in the workplace.
• The power of negative manifestation stresses the importance of considering potential failures before pursuing a goal. Performing a pre-mortem analysis allows individuals and teams to identify challenges in advance, fostering better decision-making and preparedness.
• Recognising the contextual value of skills emphasises the importance of understanding the unique context in which skills are applied. In sales, tailoring outreach based on market research and understanding the context of buyers can significantly impact success.
• The discipline equation draws attention to the finite nature of time. Bartlett's concept of 'Time Betting' encourages intentional time management and disciplined actions to achieve personal and professional goals, highlighting the profound impact of how we spend our time on our health, happiness, and legacy.

In summary, Bartlett's exploration of The Philosophy pillar serves as a comprehensive guide for professionals seeking success in sales and in their private life too, highlighting the interconnectedness of personal philosophies, workplace ethics, innovation, and growth.

Interested in improving your sales technique on a practical level too? Get in touch for a demo of the Selligence platform and see how else you can start improving you processes to set yourself up for success.

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