Why read this book publicly and call it a course instead of designing a course properly, as I do for my clients?

My rationale was simply a desire to read the book and show myself processing my thoughts while I did that. I wanted this to be as original as possible. Moreover, I believe the best way to teach a course is to identify seminal works on the subject matter and read them with your students, with everyone contributing to the discussion.

I simply had a deep personal desire to study this book properly and process it in the way I learn best:

• Read slowly

• Pause

• Explain what I understand

• Connect it back to operations, assistants, and how work actually gets done

Somewhere along the way, I thought, since this is helping me think more clearly about operations and leadership, why not share it?

So, here’s what I did:

I just kept recording with my cheap setup (I wasn’t even consistent about adding a video of myself at first), though I must confess, it became boring at some point. Then I organized the videos into a YouTube Course playlist as I uploaded them.

What this “course” actually is

To be clear: this is not a polished, highly-produced, everything-perfect, curriculum-first course.

This is me:

• Reading The Great CEO Within publicly

• Stopping to explain concepts in my own words

• Translating CEO advice into operations, systems, and assistant-first perspective

• Thinking out loud about what it means for:

  • Executive and virtual assistants

  • Young/entry- to mid-level professionals

  • Founders who are still learning to run their companies like real organizations

If you’ve ever wished someone would take a practical book on leadership/operations and walk through it like a friend, this is exactly that.

What’s next?

Going forward, I’ll be creating more courses that are designed as courses from day one, go deeper into operations, systems, and the “back office brain” of a business and are more interactive, better structured, and better produced than this first experiment

Think of this Great CEO Within playlist as:

• A warm-up

• A live study group

• A way to get into my head and see how I think about operations, leadership, and the role of great assistants

Who is this for?

Since you’re here, you probably care about operations, supporting leaders, and making work actually work.

This playlist will especially serve you if you are:

• An executive or virtual assistant who wants to understand how great CEOs think, so you can support them better

• A young or mid-level professional trying to build real operational thinking early in their career

• A founder or solo operator who wants the “management operating system” behind a functioning company, not just inspiration

How to watch and follow along?

You can treat this like:

• A background course while you work, commute, or do admin

• A reference library – dip into the chapter that matches the problem you’re facing (meetings, feedback, KPIs, hiring, etc.)

I recommend:

• Picking a chapter that matches a current pain point

• Watching with a notebook or your ops doc open

• Writing down at least one small operational tweak you’ll implement after each video

Links

1. The Great CEO Within (Make a copy of my copy)

2. The Course Link

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