Book Review: “Be The Lion” by Tim Castle
- Justin Harper
If I hadn’t met Tim Castle before reading Be The Lion, I would have just put this down as another self-help book to add to the pile. Indeed, I have read a lot of self-help and motivational books in my time. But there was something about the energy and passion of the author that made me want to read his book – all 460 pages of it. Castle genuinely wants to help people become better versions of themselves, and I can imagine him breaking out into a broad smile for every person he helps achieve their goal.
Be The Lion is a compendium of all the classic self-help, business psychology and motivational books written, with a modern twist. The godfather of self-helps books is arguably Napoleon Hill (with his Think and Grow Rich classic written in 1937). Castle draws on this book along with other classics such as Steven Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People along with modern advice books.
He’s also a big fan of podcasts and I get the feeling he has listened to hundreds of hours of them. He’s a big fan of Tony Robbins and Tim Ferris, who you could argue are the godfathers of podcasting. Advice from multiple motivators and celebrity entrepreneurs are weaved into Castle’s own narrative in Be the Lion, which was partly written in Singapore where the author has been based since 2017. In fact, large chunks of the book chronicle his ambition to relocate to the Lion City, from Australia.
During this time he had a lot on his plate, including getting married, moving jobs, writing Be The Lion, completing an MBA and becoming a father to a child who became seriously ill. While full of admiration, most of the time I felt a sense of embarrassment reading about Castle’s regime, which involves getting up at 5:00am, two gym sessions and a packed day of writing, brainstorming, networking and building multiple income streams. He is clearly a driven man, an entrepreneur, and a chancer.
There are lots of personal stories that highlight what an opportunist Castle is. One of my favourites is when he once bought 100 books from the US author and entrepreneur Ryan Serhant just to secure a one-hour sit-down meeting with him in New York. Essentially the sixty-minute meeting cost him US$7,000. Be The Lion is full of such antics Castle has employed to further himself both professionally and personally.
Castle pulls lessons from a wide variety of businessmen, entrepreneurs and billionaires including Warren Buffet, Sir Richard Branson, Sheryl Sandberg and Tim Robbins. He is also a big fan of Jack Ma, particularly how he brings fun into the often stuffy business world.
The beauty of Be The Lion is that it will save you many hours as it has digested all the best motivational and self-help books into one. That should free you up to start planning how to make your first million, launch that startup or just be more focused at work.
The book is broken down into four parts: Creation (Action), Conditioning (Mind and Body), Certainty (self-belief strategies) and Connection (spiritual). The temptation may be to jump into the section you are most interested in, but I’d recommend reading it from the beginning to end. Each section includes some mental exercises for you to do and tasks to complete. Don’t worry, it’s nothing too taxing but is designed to get you from being a passive reader to taking action.
