Happy Sexy Millionaire by Steven Bartlett
“We have to invite gratitude into our lives and we have to do it constantly and consistently.”
3 Main Messages:
Take responsibility and ownership for your failures as well as your successes
Don’t get bogged down with comparisons - water your own grass
Life is short, be intentional about how you spend your days
I recently read how difficult it is to get the balance right between confidence and humility in leadership. Steven Bartlett seems to have that balance perfected. Anyone who has seen him on Dragon’s Den will notice how self-assured and (literally) laid back he seems. He is a young man who has seemingly lived a full life before he has even turned 30. His podcast, Diary of a CEO, demonstrates his curiosity in learning from those around him and his genuine belief that they each have something he can learn from. And then there is this book: a searingly honest and down-to-earth sharing of all he has learned so far. He seems to have it all. But then he would probably argue against that.
Happy Sexy Millionaire has a beautiful arc. It begins with Bartlett sharing his own history, as a boy who seemingly had nothing to lose, and his story about how he decided he wanted to be a ‘happy, sexy, millionaire’ and then set out determinedly and doggedly to achieve that. In his early twenties, at a time when many of us are sucked into social pressures and the regular distractions of daily life, Bartlett was able to set himself on course to achieve a bigger goal. This book tells of how he did that and the lessons he learned along the way.
Each chapter is punchy and packed with quotes, real life examples and infographics to demonstrate his points. He takes each life lesson in turn, unpicks them and explains them in layman’s terms so that they are relatable, realistic and replicable.
He explains the principles of compound interest, and the arts of both skill-stacking and of making daily choices which accumulate to a larger goal (choosing between eating waffles and having a six-pack). He celebrates the idea of following our passions whilst realising that we have multiple passions and that they change over time. There are warnings about making decisions when emotions are high and examples of strong leadership when he responded instead of reacting when disaster struck.
Perhaps the most relatable chapters are based on the philosophy of the Stoics, who advised us to be aware of our mortality to inform our decision-making about how we spend our days. This is echoed with Bartlett sharing the findings of Bronnie Ware’s book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, and the importance of “living an extrinsically motivated life, and not the life they wanted deep within.” This ties in with the importance of finding balance between work and pleasure and the importance of saying now.
Bartlett is 20 years younger than me and I am humbled by how well he appears to understand life and how to succeed in it, while I have come to some of these lessons much later. Although there are no radically new ideas in this book and some may find that his frank language and tell-all style are not to their taste, I love how it is to the point and written with a balance of self-deprecation and pride. I’ll admit it Steven - I still have much to learn from you!
