Simon Sinek nearly abandoned Leaders Eat Last after writing 150,000 words he couldn't organize. An Air Force Special Forces friend called to say Start with Why had stopped him from leaving the service during a brutal mission in Afghanistan. That conversation convinced Sinek to finish the book.
Questions this video answers
150,000 words.
Start with Why.
Chapters
I wrote a book called Leaders Eat Last, which was the most difficult thing I've ever done in my life because.
Every. I could never understand. I wrote about, like, oxytocin and dopamine, and long before it was a thing, I was writing about these ideas and cortisol. And I couldn't understand why any of the biologists and scientists that I was talking to to get information, why they hadn't written my book. I was simply overlaying the biology over a corporate culture. How come nobody. And it's. I realized it was. It was impossible to organize. Every chapter could have been its own with why. With something like 68,000 words. I was writing Leaders. I was just getting started, and I wrote 150,000 words. We just kept going and going and going. And it became to the point where I couldn't organize it. And I was a year into my life. I think I'd already lost my relationship because of the stress that I was under.
It wasn't a good thing. And so I was sitting at my desk one evening and I decided to quit. And I went for a walk to plan quitting. I'd given up. I couldn't. I couldn't solve the problem. And I went for this long walk in New York City, and I was literally just going through the checklist, which is, okay, I'd have to tell my publisher I'm not doing it, which is technically a breach of my contract, which means I have to give my advance back. Okay, check. Literally going through the list, I'd have to tell people I'm not writing another book. I'd be publicly humiliated. But whatever, I'll get over it. And I literally went through the list of. Of the exit of quitting. And I called a friend of mine who was in the Air Force Special Forces. He was still active duty at the time. I called him and.
He picked up the phone, and I'm not. I'm pretty sure I didn't even say hello. He picked up the phone and I said, what do you do when you can't complete the mission?
And as is his nature, he started telling me a story. He said.
He says, we had a mission in Afghanistan. He was a helicopter pilot. He said, we had a mission in Afghanistan where all of the intelligence said that it was a suicide mission. And not a suicide mission like we're going to kill Hitler, but we're all going to die. It was like, we're all going to die and the mission will fail. Like, literally a pointless loss of life, right? And all the intelligence said the air defenses were too good. Like, we can't even get in to do the thing we need to do. This is a pointless mission. And he's prepping his helicopter and his wingman. They both have wives. They both have kids. And his wingman says to him, what do we do? Do we refuse to go? What do we do? And he says to his wingman, this is what we signed up for. We go. Clearly, cooler heads prevailed, and the mission was scrubbed, and they didn't go, but they were prepared to. And then he says to me, is this book having more or less impact on you? Then start with why. I said, it's having more. More impact. And then he says to me, and this answers your question? And then he says to me, well, I can tell you that before I met you, I became completely disillusioned with the Air Force. And I read this kooky little book called Start with why. And it reinspired me to see the kind of leader that I wanted to be. I decided to stay in the force. I've never been happier, and I've never had greater impact on my airmen around me. And he says, if this is. If this is. If you're saying the second book is having more impact in your life, then this is what you signed up for. You have no choice.
And what was important about that is the underlying message was, and I will be with you, just as he was with me that night. And so I no longer felt alone. And I went back and finished the book.
And it was stories like that. It's a story like that where I realized that whatever stress that I had, the impact that I was having in these people's lives that I didn't even know.
