I'm Chris Beier, the executive producer at Inc. Magazine.
I'm here with Simon Sinek, a unshakeable optimist and inspirational speaker.
Thank you for your time. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me.
So, let me ask you a broad question before we get into the nitty-gritty.
Why are you an optimist? Why do you choose to see the world that way?
Yeah, I mean I don't know if optimists choose to see it that way
I think, well I guess, you can choose to be an optimist that is a point
of view that you can take right you can look for everything bad in the world and
think the world is crashing and it will never get better or you can choose to
see the good in people and choose to see the good in the world and then that's
the direction that that will follow and you know I I tend to believe that
there's no finality in anything you know it's not like you know you're even
though we our lives are finite life is infinite you know life goes on and and
for me the goal is not to produce something that has an end point but to
produce something that has momentum that can live on beyond me and so I choose an
optimistic path where did you go to college I went to Brandeis University
just outside of Boston you go to grad school I have half a law degree oh yeah
right right I dropped out of it yeah I dropped out of Law School
what what what prompted you to drop out it's not for me and I knew that it
wasn't for me yeah you knew that it wasn't for you before
you even went to law school oh no I wanted to go yeah but once I was there I
realized it wasn't for me and I figured why waste the time yeah so when you when
you dropped out of law school and went into the real world so to speak what
what were the jobs that you were holding before you went off and started your own
thing I was living in England I went to law school in England and I not only
made the decision to drop out of law school oh so made the decision to move
back to the United States and I happen to be dating a girl who was studying
advertising at Syracuse and so she got this idea this bug in my ear about
advertising where I could do business and creative stuff all at the same time
interests and so I made the decision to go into advertising to go into marketing
and so my career started me I started looking for jobs in
advertising and I started ad agencies so most of your wisdom is about how to
better live in this corporate world yeah how did the corporate world suit you you
know I I was still an entrepreneurial I think people misunderstand what the word
entrepreneur means listen you know small business owners owned small businesses
and entrepreneurs solve problems and there are many many entrepreneurs inside
corporations yeah and not all small business owners or entrepreneurs I say
so an entrepreneur is somebody who's constantly looking for a better way to
do something there's a there's a sort of a mad scientist about them it's not
simply you know understanding structure and building business and and that's the
way I was in the corporate world which you know depending on my bus was either
welcomed or or not oh yeah I used to get in trouble for that's not how we do it
around here and really did I break any rules they're like no I'm like did I get
it done they're like yes I'm like did it get it done better than you expected
they're like yes I'm like so what exactly is the problem you know so I was
that yeah I was you know I had good relationship I was very lucky I had some
some not-so-great bosses at the beginning of my career which was
actually great because I learned I learned about the camaraderie of a team
but I had some fantastic bosses middle and later on in my career which was
really great and a lot of who I've become as a leader is very much it was
very much shaped by those people when did you start developing that first
philosophy that you were known for the Golden Circle the concept of the Golden
Circle when did that realization start to happen so I quit the ad business and
started my own marketing firm already in 2002 and throughout my entire career I
was always fascinated why some advertising or some marketing worked and
some didn't uh-huh and because having been on the inside I knew that I could
have a brilliant team and we could have come up with amazing creative ideas and
it would fail or I could have a the same team on a different thing who would come
up with equally good ideas and it would succeed mm-hmm and so I would I looked
at the great marketers the ones that we admired and the ones that I've written
about you know your Southwest Airlines your apples the ones that
perennial favorites yeah and I recognized that there was a pattern in
the way in which they spoke to us like I literally could look at their ads and
like see that there was an organization and I wrote it down and even back then I
called it the golden circle and when I when I had my own business I would you
it was just basically in powerpoints to explain why some marketing worked and
some marketing didn't it wasn't when you were first talking to a client it wasn't
a big idea yeah yet it was simply an organizing principle how to organize
information for marketing as it turns out there's a pattern as it turns out
all the great and inspiring leaders and organizations in the world whether it's
Apple or Martin Luther King or the Wright brothers they all think act and
communicate the exact same way and it's the complete opposite to everyone else
so what is it you then that decided I want to share this with as many people
as I can regardless of clients from my from my advertising agency or were
people reaching out and saying hey can you talk about this outside of your work
it's like so many of these stories it sounds like you know I was a genius but
it was much more evolutionary than revolutionary a lot more organic what I
was fascinated by this idea and it had a profound impact on my own life and my
own view of the world and like anybody when you read a great book you see a
great movie you tell your friends to read it or see it and so I would talk
about this thing obsessively because it it was like it was you know it's like
when you find a new song and all you do is listen to that one oh I've been there
it's the same eye it's the same thing you know that's just this obsession for
this one thing the difference is it didn't lose steam and my friends were
taking it to heart and we're making crazy life changes like I'd really need
jobs and starting businesses once they heard this thing because of a talk you
had with him at a bar yeah or yeah and Wow and I figured out how to help people
find their why and I would I and my friends would invite me to their homes
to share with their friends so it all started with me standing in somebody's
living room in New York City like you know with one of those those prepared
platters that you get at the at the supermarket with the celery and the
carrots and you know like one of those in the middle of the room and I would
talk about the thing called the Y and people would ask me to help them find
their when I used to do it for a hundred bucks on the side
it was extremely organic you know I kept I talked about it everywhere when
people would tell people about it people would ask me to come talk about it and
somebody invited me to come give a talk to a bunch of entrepreneurs and I said
yes Wow so what happened when when you gave their first target your first real
talk were you like oh my I should maybe this shouldn't just be the sidekick I
didn't know that being a speaker was actually a thing weirdly so and this is
we're talking 2000s I started giving these talks in 2006 because it was my
own discovery of my own why that really generated a passion for this idea and
what was your own why to inspire people to do what inspires them so together
each of us can change our world for the better which continues to be my passion
and my drive and that has not changed it one you only have one why your whole
life yeah and the opportunity is to live in balance or out of balance with that
with that why I say it's not created in the middle of your life it's created
early in your life and if you can figure out what it is you can choose to make
decisions to to bring that Y to life and that's that's what I've done as we're
here in this sort of 2006-2007 area you have your marketing firm and you're
doing this consultation work teaching people how to find their why when did
you sort of stop doing the more traditional marketing stuff and just
really focus on this is what I'm doing probably a year ish after that mm-hmm it
wasn't it was relatively quickly when I realized I wanted to only do spread this
message of the Y yeah wasn't sure exactly what form it would take I just
knew I wanted to do it and so managed to back out of my lease my back I didn't
pay a fine oh my I got out of my lease from my office yeah
and started from scratch because I wanted to I had this sort of very
scientific approach which is scientific method which is I had a theory I wanted
to prove the theory and the best way to prove the theory was to start clean yeah
and and I didn't think I was right I just think thought I had an idea and I
wanted to test it until it would fail and then I would tweak the idea and so I
kept looking for new opportunities big companies small companies different
industries public companies private companies government military I just was
looking for all the different play that I could try it waiting for it to
fail and it kept working Wow it really it was really an amazing experience to
see this theory just keep working but I kept the reason I was very honest I was
we're honest with people they like have you worked and you know politics before
I'm like nope never done it but yeah but I want to give it a try and see this
works it may not but I was always very honest about what my pursuits were yeah
and people again the early adopters said well let's give it a try so everybody
went in with open eyes me and my clients so you continue to do this and you
continue to spread this message and it kept working tell me how you got that
TED talk in 2009 well as you know I became a champion for this message and a
champion for this cause and it was and so when you talk about what you believe
people who believe what you believe recommend you or one introduce you to
people I see and so the more I talked about it the more somebody would call me
and say hey there's someone I think you should meet yeah and people found me I
don't know you know from somebody else so you did not seek out I want to do
this for know yeah so somebody somebody reached out to me and said you know they
got my name yeah and they said we've heard about you we've heard your work
we'd like to invite you to do a TEDx talk in Puget Sound in Seattle yeah and
I said okay sounds amazing you know TEDx was a there's a relatively new thing
back then and it was a big deal you know it still had a lot of real sort of an
kind of gravitas to it and so I was very excited and of course of course said yes
to the opportunity this little idea explains why some organizations and some
leaders are able to inspire where others aren't let me define the terms really
quickly every single person every single organization on the planet knows what
they do 100% some know how they do it whether you call it your differentiating
value proposition or your proprietary process or your USP but very very few
people or organizations know why they do what they do
there was a talk I'd been giving for three years already this is in 2009 I've
been giving this talk for three years I knew my stuff inside and out and so I
showed up to give the best talk I could in 18 minutes for me the challenge was
the 18 minutes none the talk how long is the talk no it was like an hour
laughs yeah I was like I had no idea how to do it in 18 minutes and but I just
gave the best talk I could and they put it on YouTube and I didn't expect it to
get as many views as it did on YouTube and it did and in a few months the Ted
people put it on main Ted calm and then things went silly Wow define things went
silly it went from hundreds of thousands of
views to millions of views and what happened were you ready for the wave to
hit what did you know where you wanted the wave to take you definitely wasn't
ready for it because everything was a surprise to me I only found out that
they put it on Ted calm the week it happened like there's no advance notice
they didn't ask permission was like they just did it and I found out about it I
didn't know what it would do it was again I was out spreading a message and
it was wonderful for me to have a yet another medium to help me spread this
message so I didn't have to be in the room all the time
yeah what I didn't expect is it would create more demand for me as a speaker I
didn't and and I never set myself on this course to be a public speaker it
was it's not really a chosen profession you know if I never give another speech
again I'd be fine with that I do it because I believe in the message and I
think it's important to go and preach that message and I see and the what the
TED talk gave me was the opportunity to spread that message at vastly greater
scale you know much bigger audiences yeah
and that's that's been a great honor did you ever have moments where you thought
wow so many people are listening to me I hope moments of impostor syndrome
moments where you doubted yourself I think I would I wouldn't call it
impostor syndrome I I was more humbled by the whole thing you know I would
catch myself laughing and giggling at myself like I can't believe that they
let me in here yeah like that happened more frequently would I stay posture I'm
more like I think they're idiots because they don't really know that I am an
idiot you know it's it's a hologram marcsa said I would never join a club
that would have me as a member it was a little bit of that you know it's like
what's wrong with these people that they think that you know it's like that that
was the only sort of impostor II thing that that crept in it do you still have
that um I yeah I do I I'm sort of I still I'm sort of amazed
by it all you know and I'm I there's a you know like when I meet
people who I know there's an author or oh I see celebrities I guess I know yeah
I know your work yeah you know my work you know yeah that's it's it's it's
humbling it's it's like people who whose books I used to read you know when I was
in the marketing business like like they're friends now like that's weird to
me yeah like that's uh that's very humbling why is there any sort of larger
flaw that you had to confront about yourself whether it's a leader or just
as a human over these last ten years and rising success
there's many mm-hmm the biggest lesson I learned was thank goodness I learned it
pretty early on which is and I think a lot of business owners make this mistake
which is because I was the boss you know in my own mind yeah I thought I had to
know all the answers and if I didn't I thought I had to pretend that I did and
that's stupid and what I learned is that just because I may have the the top
position in the hierarchy I I'm not expected to know everything and if I
pretend to know everything it diminishes the value of all the great ideas and the
great intelligence around me and when things got difficult I would never admit
it right I would just put on a brave face and show up every day and and the
the the biggest lesson I learned was to say I don't know I don't understand or I
need help at any level about any subject yeah and
amazingly I was always surrounded by people who wanted a help or who knew
answers but they never offered to help or offer the answers because they didn't
think I needed it because I kept pretending that I knew it all right not
to mention the fact that nobody likes a know-it-all
so that was huge for me and and when I was willing to ask for help and accept
it when it was offered and and sort of accept the humility of the fact that
other people know a lot more about a lot of things than I know uh I know one
thing you know and they know lots of things that's when things really started
to move because we were now a team that we were actually
working together