what 1000 CEOs taught me

6 contrarian insights

I speak to 15 CEOs/day since quite a while. I’m not always listening to their surface level advice, but deeply analyze them through my CharlesLens. Feeling their energy + computing thousands of data points, and making some interesting conclusions.

Deeper conclusions than the classic “work long, hard and smart”. As most of you are CEOs / founders / high performers, you already know the basics. So here are a couple of more interesting CEO insights my prompted brain came back with.

1- The best use deep tech stacks and AI heavily

The “being a good leader” and “empathy” and “HR” leaders have historically performed best, but times are changing. The most adaptable and tech-friendly CEOs are outperforming peers by 10X. “Outsource outsource outsource” leaders are extinguishing. It’s more like “systems on systems on systems”. This requires an engineering mindset, a hacker way of being, an inner geekiness.

2- Endurance Athletes make great CEOs

I cannot tell you how many ironmans I’ve ran since I finished my 3 Ironmans. Life one’s. Some days are hard and are a barrage of pain: business or personal. Top CEOs know that some days are painful and go through them without permanent damage. They stretch time. Multiple ironman’s / endurance athletes I’ve interviewed on this pod are highly successful. Direct correlation with patience and pain endurance.

4- Intellectuals / Independent thinkers make the best CEOs

I’ve read yesterday: “Best CEOs don’t talk politics, religion, news.” lol, tell this to Charlie and Warren. These guys have days-long convos about everything and anything. Everything’s related to business, in the end. Capitalism is an efficient energy-redistribution system. We top CEOs maxed out business quite quickly and talking classic business is mostly boring, other than if it’s hyper-niched, new stuff. We cross pollinate from other sciences all the time and understand this world through multiple lens. We gather dots and cross lines between them.

5- They’re open-books

They share everything as they know sharing is getting feedback + as soon as it’s out it’s old news. It forces them to go fetch more better faster. They share mass data in the name of experimentation at scale. They’re not politically correct, nor try to be. They are themselves…

6- Their weird self

if you’re not quirkin you must not be onto somethin. Every highly successful CEOs I met were very openly odd. They’re not focused on limiting their energy flow, they just flow with it. They don’t try to hard reboot themselves, but rather adapt their outer environment to their quirks. They don’t give no fucks, basically. This is what makes them them. think e-lon.