Infinite Game Live Q&A Replay | Simon Sinek

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Okay, looks like we are live everywhere. So hello Instagram, Hello, TikTok, hello everywhere else. We're just going to give it a minute or two for to leave some time for people to join, but thanks very much. Looking forward to taking live questions about the infinite mindset. How to live an infinite mindset. I'm here with my colleague Devin. Hi Devin. Hello. And she's going to feed me questions that are coming in from you. So thank you to everyone coming in. I can. Oh, I love seeing all the countries. Why don't you shout out where you're from so I can tell. Hello from Tulsa. Hello from New York. Tell me where you're from. Tell you where you're from. Boston, Germany. Netherlands. Brazil. Michigan. I love this. This always blows me away. Netherlands, Morocco. Copenhagen. Miami, New Jersey. Exotic. New Jersey. Florida. New Zealand. Australia. Man, shouldn't some of you be sleeping? Malaysia, Denmark. I love. This is so fantastic. Columbia, Chicago. Dallas, Portugal. Oh my God, it's flying in. Hello everyone from around the world. This is so fantastic. Thanks for joining. As many of you know, I've been practicing living my life, building my business with an infinite mindset. And so I thought we'd take a little time to answer your questions live here on all the platforms. Why don't we jump in Devin so you can post your questions? Hopefully I'll see them, but Devin's more likely to get them. Hello from Iraq. Hello Oxford. Hello Brazil. Hello London. Hello Ohio. Hello Hong Kong. Dubai. Islamabad. Frickin love this. Okay, Devin, first question.

Yes, we have Jennifer from Facebook who is asking the most simple question of what is the infinite game?

Okay, Jennifer from Facebook asking the correct question to get started, which is what is the infinite game? Glad you asked, Jennifer. So in the mid-1980s, a philosopher and theologian by the name of Dr. James Kars defined these two types of games. Finite games and infinite games. A finite game is defined as known players, fixed rules and an agreed upon objective. Football. For example, if there's a winner, necessarily there has to be a loser. But more important, in a finite game, there's always a beginning, a middle and an end, right? Then you have infinite games. Infinite games are defined as known and unknown players, which means you don't necessarily know who all the players are. And any player can join the game whenever they want. The rules are changeable, which means every player can play however they want. And the objective is to is to perpetuate the game, to stay in the game as long as possible. Turns out we are players in infinite games every day of our Lives, whether we know it or not. For example, you will never be number one in your marriage. You can be number two, but you can't be number one.

You. There's no such thing as winning education. You can come in first for the finite amount of time we're at school where we agree upon the time frames and the metrics, but nobody wins learning or wins education. There's no such thing as the winner of careers, and there's definitely no such thing as winning business.

But if we listen to the language of so many leaders, it becomes abundantly clear that they don't know the game they're playing. And they talk about business being number one, being the best, or beating their competition. Based on what? Based on one upon what agreed upon metrics, time frames, and objectives. And this is a problem, because when we play with a finite mindset in an infinite game, when we play to win in a game that has no finish line, there are some very predictable and consistent outcomes. The big ones being the decline of trust, the decline of cooperation, and the decline of innovation. If a company goes bankrupt, the other companies don't win anything. They have to just keep playing. And new companies can start and join at any time. These are infinite games. And if you look, a lot of the challenges that we're facing in our world, both in business and in politics, are because too many of our leaders are playing with the wrong mindset for the game that they are in. Thanks for asking, Jennifer. That's the finite game and the infinite game. And I've been practicing, living my life and building my business with an infinite mindset. Okay, Devin, next question.

Yeah, absolutely. So this is from Racia on Instagram, and she was wondering, what would you say to kids to keep them focused on living a life with no finish line?

I love this one from Finland, was it?

No, from Instagram.

Oh, from Instagram, Sorry, Instagram, from Finland. Same thing.

She asked, what do you do to teach kids about the infinite game? To teach kids. Okay, so there's a great story that really captures what it means to live in with an infinite mindset. It's a Chinese story. It's told many different ways. This is the way that I know it. There's a young man born with a remarkable natural ability for horse riding. And everyone in the village says, you're so lucky. The monk says, we'll see. And then one day he has an accident and falls off his horse and breaks his leg and ruins ends his career. And everyone in the village says, you're so unlucky. And the Monk says, we'll see. And then war breaks out and all the young men are sent into battle, but he can't go because of his busted leg. And everyone in the village says, you're so lucky. And the monk says, we'll see. And the point is, good news, bad news, who knows? The point is that life is. Life continues. And everything bad that happens to us will end, and everything good that happens to us will end. As Maya Angelou said, every storm eventually runs out of rain. And so the point is, everything is temporary. So we can't get too high and mighty about our successes. That keeps us humble. But also everything bad that happens to us will pass and sometimes, sometimes prove to be great lessons. I can tell you some of the greatest struggles I've had in my life. I never want to repeat them, but I'm glad they're happened. I'm glad they happened. And this is why I think learning to sit in discomfort is actually a really important thing. But teaching kids about that little Chinese proverb I think is. Is really, really, really helpful. Okay, who else do we have?

So we have a. From YouTube. Nintendo.

Like that. Nintendo. Cute. Very cute Nintendoes.

They wonder how, if at all, do you see the overnight boom of AI impacting the concept of an infinite game?

Ah, great question. How do I see the overnight boom of AI affecting the infinite game? So.

So if we're using it depends how we're using it, right? Which is, I think very often when machine learning comes into something. Actually, let's think this through. This one's a hard one. That's a good question. It's called Stump Simon. The question is, does it have an impact at all? Maybe that's where I'm going. Like I'm trying to think. So AI, if AI is used for constant improvement. So if we plug it into a system so it's constantly finding errors and mistakes, that we can constantly, constantly improve something and never feel that the work is done, then I really like it. And I think AI is valuable. When we use AI to try to win, to figure out formulas, even though there's no such thing as winning, then I think it only exaggerates all the ills of a finite mindset. So I guess the answer is it depends. It's kind of like money. Which is like, is money good or bad? Well, it depends how you use it. It on depends. Depends what you're doing with it. It's like rank or power. Is power and rank good or bad? Well, it depends what you're doing once you achieve it. So I think it's the application of the AI that I'm more nervous of. And I think it's important that we know about these two different games so that we apply it in the right way. So, for example, if you look at politics.

Of which is an election is clearly a finite game, there's a winner, there's a loser, there's, there's a beginning, middle and end, and we agree upon what the metrics are. But once somebody is elected to office, they have to change their mindset into an infinite mindset to be one of governance. And the problem is when politicians are constantly playing to win after they've already been elected because they're, they're, they're as if they're in the next election already. And that's where we get poor governance, which is they think they're running for election and they're not. At least not yet. So, yeah, that's a good question about the AI. I like that one.

All right, the next one is from Sandra on Instagram. She asked, what other companies have you noticed that have an infinite mindset since your book book was published?

So the question was, what other companies have I noticed are playing with an infinite mindset since the book was published? Some companies have actually been pretty public about this. Brian Chesky over at Airbnb has publicly said he wants to build an infinite company and be more infinite minded. So I, I love that. I've had conversations with some folks at Nike who said that they're trying to be more infinite minded. Walmart is trying to be more infinite minded. I think what's happening is a lot of leaders that are coming in are recognizing that some of those leaders that came before them were so excessively finite minded that they've actually done damage to the companies that they now lead, and they have to change their mindsets to actually put their companies back on a longer path. But the, the, I'm very proud that, that, that, that little idea that Dr. Cars originated and that I've been able to build upon, it's really finding its, it's finding its momentum. It's becoming more and more of a thing, which is great because I believe in it. Very, very few ideas are truths. You know, they're usually opinions or points of view. But what Dr. Kars articulated truly is a truth, and it's my honor to build on what he started. So, yes, there are more companies that seem to be embracing. There's no such thing as perfect. It's a constant struggle every day. But it is a mindset. So for example, one of the things is to stop viewing the competitors as competitors to be beaten and start viewing them as rivals to be compared to. In other words, there are other people who do what you do. Sometimes they do what you do or some things better than you. What can you learn from them so that you can constantly improve if you're trying to beat your competitors? Let me give it another way. So I was watching the Olympics, right? I was watching the ice skating, and the person who won the gold medal fell in their routine. Well, how can you win a gold medal? How can you be considered the best ice skater in the world if you fell in your routine? I'll tell you. Because the person who came silver fell twice. So they're not the best ice skater in the world. They're the best in that moment against those competitors. That's it. And. And very often we think of business like an event where we think we're the best because we ended the year where we have, you know, more profit or bigger market share. Except business is not an ice skating competition because it never, ever, ever ends. More important in business, multiple companies who sell about the same product, about the same price, about the same quality can all be wildly successful simultaneously. There is no winner. So if you're trying to beat your competition in a. In a, In a. In a game that has no end, and you get to pick the standards of what winning looks like, literally you can choose the metrics. All of a sudden, I have a. That was funny.

Then it doesn't go well. So, yes, more companies are embracing that thinking, which I really, really love.

Scott S. From Facebook asked, how is the just cause different from company values? Should we have both? And if so, how do we best communicate each?

Great question. What? Scott? Scott, Scott asks how. How is the. How is a just cause different from company values? So company values, which should be immutable are. Are the mechanisms we use to help us manage our culture, to advance our just cause. So a just cause is a vision of the future. A just cause is a. Is a vision of the future. So just that we would be willing to sacrifice our interests in order to advance towards that cause. It is an ideal. We'll never actually get there. Our values are the. Are the. Are the edges on the sandbox to help guide our behavior. So, for example, one of the things that gets companies in trouble is when they believe growth at all costs, right? So we're so driven by growth that we will take quality out of our products, put cheap ingredients in which could be healthy, affect people's health. To. Because we increase our margins. We will, we will lay people off needlessly to increase to. To. To make our, our ledger look better. Etc. Etc. This is growth at all costs. Our values manages that all cost part. So we want to achieve our vision, but not at all costs. The, the, the ends, the meat. The ends don't justify the means. They both have to be honorable. So yeah, values are the edges on the sandbox we use to help us advance towards our cause. And it's those values that help us hire and work with people to know that we, we can get along and trust each other. If we had no values, then everything, every relationship becomes more transactional values. Good. Think about it. We're not just friends with people because they can get us into a party, right? Or get us into a club. We're friends with people because we trust them and get along with them. Same thing. It's because they're shared values. It's not just because they can give us something. We're gonna have lots of transactional relationships in our lives. But anything that involves trust values matter. For example, if you go buy a cup of coffee, it's a transaction. We don't need deep trust with the barista.

So there's plenty of transactions. You don't want all the relationships to be like that. Tick tock. Keeps putting a hat and mustache on me and I don't know why. I don't know if I turned that on, if somebody else turned that on, but I'm getting a kick out of it. Every time I look at my phone. I either have a banana on my head or a sombrero. Okay, next question.

Cowboy hat and mustache. Did I do that? I don't know.

Aldrin on YouTube, speaking of just cause, wants to know what advice do you have for someone who wishes to join in your just cause?

Who is it?

Aldrin.

Hello, Aldrin. Aldrin wants to know what do I. What was I say to somebody who wants to join in my just cause?

Thank you. Well, let's articulate what my just cause is. I believe in a world. I imagine a world so you can always tell a good just cause when you hear about imagination. Something about the future, right? I imagine a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired, feel safe wherever they are, and end the day fulfilled by the work that they do. I am fully aware that for us to actually build that world, it's going to take an army of us. It's going to take millions of us because we have to undo some of the practices from the past and change the way we're building our company. Companies change the way in which we're leading our governments, change the way in which we're treating each other. And so the best thing you can do is be the leader you wish you had. The best thing you can do is embrace some of the ideas that I've talked about and start with why or leaders eat last or the infinite game. In other words, we need practitioners. I recognize that. I stand with my megaphone. I have my bully pulpit where I talk about what the future could look like, and I try and share as many of the ideas as possible that will help us get there. But it's just talk. As Thomas Edison said, vision without execution is hallucination. And so I need you, Alden. I need you, Aldrin. I need you to do the things. If you work with a small team, I need you to be that great leader so that it has ripples. We need to take care of each other and change the way things were done in the past. So the best thing you can do to be a part of the movement is to. Is to be a physical example of the stuff that I get to talk about and write about. Thanks for asking and welcome to the army. Glad to march shoulder to shoulder with you.

I have a TR on now.

On TikTok.

Hi, Tick tock.

Yeah, someone would like to know. Trying to convince family business to find our why, but what can I do if they don't listen?

Ah, I love this question. I get this question a lot. So I work for a family business. How do I convince my family business to know their why, but they won't listen? Okay, I get this question all the time. How do I get my boss's boss's boss's boss to listen to the stuff that we talk about and we agree upon? And the answer is you don't.

So the answer is you don't. Unfortunately.

We cannot control or influence people. Oh, sorry. What did I do there? I'm making a mistake here. Can you fix that?

Hi. Sorry, I'm making a mess over here. Hi. Good to see you. Sorry to. Sorry. Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh, how do you influence people that you have no influence over? The answer is you don't. We can only take responsibility for ourselves, and so we have to be the leaders we wish we had. No number of anonymously sent books to our boss will change the way that they lead. Unfortunately, what does change is that we become the examples. And when we lead, the way that we think leadership should happen, that we are the ones that put forward vision for our teams. And what you find is that morale is higher, performance is higher, and any open minded senior leaders will look down and say, what are you doing? And then we can tell them, but we've got the case first. Or if they continue to ignore us, it's okay because we're building great teams that will eventually get promoted out or move to other companies and take all the lessons that they learn from us, then eventually get promoted or move away and that take the lessons. And it's the ripple. And this is very much a part of the infinite mindset, which is accepting and learning that we may not see results in the short term, but if we keep acting true to our values, if we keep acting.

Never mind if we keep acting true to our values, if we keep acting towards our vision, that eventually, eventually it starts to ripple. I mean, look at the ripples that we form just by us, everyone showing up here today with common cause, right? Look at the ripples that we've created that we're all here marching shoulder to shoulder, believing in this different vision of the world that we all imagine. This is what I mean. So the best thing we can do is, is do it. Okay, what else we got?

So Federico from LinkedIn would like to know, how do we teach infinite mindset to Generation Z?

How do we teach an infinite mindset? Federico asks, how do we teach an infinite mindset to Gen Z? Well, frankly, we need to be teaching it to every generation. Every. And frankly, it's some of the older generations. Yeah, some of it's some of the older generations that are that struggle the most. It's, it's the boomers that are the most finite minded because that's the Jack Welch generation. But I digress.

The way we teach it is the way we teach anything, which is we talk about it, we talk about it, we talk about it. Read my book, read Dr. Carson's book, talk about it yourself. The great thing about finite and infinite games is you can tell that little Chinese proverb, you can, you can share the definition. You don't need me or my work to share these ideas. They're so simple, understandable and repeatable.

And so I think we need to also build it into our schools. I think too many schools are finite minded. So.

Yeah, I, I do think we need to teach it in schools, quite frankly. I think, you know, we teach math and science, but we don't teach mindset. We don't teach how to manage stress. We don't teach how to view the world. I think we need all of that in our curricula, if you ask me.

All right, the next question is from YouTube. What if you are flat out not a leader and just part of the game?

YouTube asks, what if you were flat out not a leader and just part of the game? Um, well, I mean, leadership. That's fine. I mean, I don't really. I'm. I'm. I think I understand. Oh, thank you very much. I think I understand the question. I mean, every one of us, it's kind of relative. Every one of us is a. Is a leader and a follower, right? The best leaders are the best followers. No matter how senior they get, they still believe that they're in service to something even bigger. The Pope, for example, is in service to something even bigger than himself, right? So believe it or not, the best leaders are the best followers. And if you're just part of the gang, then. Then that's okay. But if you're the one who says, I'm going to take care of the people in my gang, if I'm going to take care of the people on my team, don't look now, but you're a leader. But if you truly don't want that responsibility and you don't have to have it, Leadership comes with sacrifice. Then be a good follower, which means when the leader makes a decision, work hard to see that the leader's decision is successful. Work hard to see that your teammates have the resources they need. You know, work hard to be a good team member. I think good followership is something we need to talk more about. Quite frankly, good followership looks a lot like good leadership, which is care about the person to the left and care about to the person to the right. But we're not asking everybody to. To step up into rank or position, but you do get. You do. You do have to be a good team member. You do have to be a good teammate. There's something really funny about human dynamics, and I learned this when I went out to the Marine Corps. I went out to Paris island to see how they make Marines. And something really weird happens in the first two weeks of boot camp, which is the. The. The recruits that are really, really strong, that are able to run fast or lift heavier weights, do everything themselves. They don't think they need the team. The team organically ostracizes them. It's just a weird quirk of social animals, right? And the reason is, is because the team wants people on the team who will support the team. And if somebody thinks they're better than the team, the team can't rely on them. The same thing happens for somebody who is weak and doesn't try hard and, and just keeps falling back or quitting. The team will ostracize them as well, because they have to learn that the team will take care of you, but you've got to do your part. And then the Marine Corps starts putting their recruits in situations where you can't do everything by yourself. And so what starts to happen is those strong ones are taught humility and learn. They have to help the team, and the weaker ones are taught gratitude and learn to push harder, and they're welcome back into the team. And so the really interesting thing is if you really choose to be just a part of the team and not actually work towards the team, weirdly, you'll find that the team will organically push you to the sides to try and teach you a lesson, which is, come be a part of the team. It's a weird human dynamic. I think it's all mammals do it because we care about the group, and everybody knows that if you support the group, you'll live longer.

Yeah. What else we got?

Yes, Reuben from Instagram wants to know, how do we build trust with new and old players, especially when players are coming in and out of the game so frequently.

Good question. Ruben from Instagram asks, how do you build trust with new players who are. Because as we know, people are constantly coming in and out of the game. Well, think of it like making friends, which is we're constantly meeting new people. We have our old friends with the deepest trust. But, you know, we have to be open to new people. It's okay to have a little distance. It's okay that you don't have to trust, you know, you don't have to, you know, share all your deepest, darkest secrets and let them in. But you want, make. You want to make people feel welcome and you want to give people the opportunity to be a part of the team. One of the big misconceptions about leadership and team building and all this stuff is that. And I hear leaders say this bad. Leaders say, prove to me why I should trust you. No, no, that's not how it works. Which is you have to give trust and the leader has to earn it back. And so when somebody joins the team, we're. We're the leaders, right, because we're the familiar ones. So we have to give some degree of trust and earn their trust, not the other way around. We, we, we assume, we assume that they're a good person when they come in. So we have to take some risk for the, for the new people and, and allow them to, to, to, to prove that the, to allow us to prove to them that, that, that we will take care of them. Their guard is going to be a lot higher, higher than ours because they're not part of the team. They feel, you know, individual and isolated. So yeah, in other words, be nice.

In that same vein, Paul from LinkedIn wants to know, how should I respond to leaders who have an infinite mindset mindset demonstrated in their policies, but have rolled out increasingly finite measures of performance?

Oh, I love this one. Paul from LinkedIn asks how do we respond to leaders who talk a good game? They talk about the infinite game and the infinite mindset, but more and more of their metrics, their reward structures, the incentives are finite, focused, in other words, short term performance only. Well then they don't really have an infinite mindset. That's the news flash. That's like companies that put, you know, purpose statements on their websites and every company seems to have a purpose statement on their website, but do they actually make decisions based on or advancing that purpose? And you'll see that the angel is in the details. And so if a leader talks a good game but doesn't act a good game, then it's just talk. Then it's just marketing. Though no organization or leader is perfect, a true infinite mindset is a striving.

They can at least say, we're trying to figure this out or we're struggling to figure this out. We're open to ideas. This is all we know for now, but we're open to ideas. At least if they did that, I'd believe them. But if all of their incentives and rewards are finite, even though they talk a big game, then they're working counterproductively. Unfortunately, again, they, they may in their thoughts be trying to do it. They may just not have communicated to the team. So let's not assume, let's not assume that they're bad actors or liars, but maybe go to them and express curiosity, which is, hey, I'm really interested in helping our organization be more infinite minded. Have you thought about maybe creating new metrics to live alongside some of the old fashioned finite metrics? I'd love to help, then see their response. That'll be a good test.

Camille on Facebook wants to know what are the practical small steps that you, Simon, take each and every day to have and keep your infinite mindset?

Camille from Facebook asks, what are the Practical steps that I personally take to keep an infinite mindset. There's a bunch.

So if we just go through it know I follow all the practices in that that I wrote about. So number one, advance a just cause. I talk obsessively about my just cause inspired, safe and fulfilled world. You heard me talk about it today. I bring it up in meetings. I never make an assumption that people know it. And even on my own team, even though our whole team knows it, I will say it all the time. So I'm reinforcing it for. For the team, but I'm also reinforcing it for myself. So I'm saying it constantly as a reinforcement. Build trusting teams, which is. I work hard to, to embody and practice the things that I talk about. I'm on my own leadership journey. I make mistakes. I try and be accountable and open and honest when I make those mistakes. But I'm the first to admit that I'm a student. I'm just a student of leadership. That's all I am. There's no such thing as an expert. And I work hard every day to try and build the teams that I know will help advance that cause and help me be infinite minded.

The big one, which is actually the easiest one to implement, is worthy rivals. I'm not trying to beat anyone. I'm not trying to outdo anyone.

I. There are other people who do what I do. I'm not trying to sell more books than them. I don't really care. But I do admire some of them because they do some or many things better than me. And I want to learn from them because I'm always in a state of constant improvement. We also believe in partnering with some of the people that, quote unquote, are our competitors. We've reached out to the CEOs of companies who literally sell similar products as us. And we say, hey, can you teach us what you're doing so we can get better at what we're doing? And we open up our kimono and show them our product and show them how we're doing badly and show them how we're doing well. We, like, who cares? Like, we don't mind. So we sometimes do that, believe it or not. But, but worthy rivalry is the easiest, easiest place to start. And we will even talk about it in our own team. Why don't you go? If we have a new project we're working on, we'll tell somebody place to start and we will even talk about it in our own team. Why don't you go? If we Have a new project we're working on. We'll tell somebody, go worthy, rival this. In other words, find somebody who's really good at this and let's learn from them. So, yeah, it is a daily practice. And.

And I do work in it every day. It's like fitness. It's my infinite mindedness. Infinite minded fitness. I have to work in it every day, otherwise I'll slide back into finite mindedness, which is so tempting and so much more fun because it's quick thrills of dopamine. Right. Like gambling is so much more fun than saving money, for example. Same idea. Great, that was a good analogy. I'm going to use that one again. I've never used that one before. That gambling is more fun than saving money, even though saving money will help you in hard times. And that's kind of the same. Finite minded is exhilarating, but it's not necessarily good for the long term. In fact, it might do damage over the long term. In fact, I know it does.

Katie from TikTok.

Katie from TikTok. This is TikTok. Hi, TikTok.

How can I bring the infinite game to my team and turn it into an ongoing practice?

Katie asks, how can I bring the infinite game to my team and make it into an ongoing practice? What I have found, if you want to bring new ideas to a team, team, is start talking about them. I mean, literally just say, I heard this idea. Can I share it with everybody? All of my ideas started off as conversations. All of my ideas start off as thoughts. Going out for lunch with friends or with teammates. And I said, can I. Let me share an idea with you that I, that I have or that I've learned about or that I heard. And they all start off as conversations. And it all goes back to the law of diffusion, Katie, which is, which is, don't worry about converting people. Find the people who are more drawn to your, to these early ideas. So when you talk about them, some people say, you're an idiot. Okay, that's fine. We don't need to convince them. And some people say, that's cool. I love that. Where did you learn about that? I want to learn more about that. And then what you'll start to do is you start to build community of people around ideas. But talk about them, talk about them obsessively. When I have an idea or find an idea, I literally become obsessed, obsessed with the ideas. And it's all I talk about for a while. You should have seen me when I first wrote down the Golden Circle. I was drawing circles on napkins everywhere. Everywhere I went. Every meeting, every dinner I had, I was drawing circles on napkins. It was an obsession. That's one of the reasons the idea spread is because I told so many damn people about it before I had any, any TED talks or books or anything like that. I was just talking about it obsessively. So talk about your ideas obsessively.

Would you also like to talk about book club?

I would like to talk about book club, talking about ideas obsessively. So whenever I would give a talk, invariably someone would raise their hand and say, simon, it's all fine and good what you talk about, but our company, we have no budget for, for leadership curriculum, right? I talk about learning, listening, and I talk about learning how to give effective confrontations and difficult conversations and all these great leadership skills. And people would always say, we don't have the budget for it or our company's too small, or my boss has no appetite for this. And I'd always reply with the same answer. Can you afford a book? Buy a book, start a book club. A book club is one of the best. It's a hack. It's one of the best ways to start a leadership curriculum without any formal budgets or any formal learning. One of the things we found is when people did start book clubs is they, they sometimes got a little stuck, which is they'd be like, so what'd you think of chapter two? So what we did, we made a book club. And so you can, if you Visit our site SimonSonic.com if you have a little team, we built a book club that I ask the questions. We have the infinite game. We have one that's coming out on unreasonable hospitality coming out soon. Oh, look at that. Things popping up on the screen. Amazing. Uh oh, what are we doing that? Oh, I didn't even know we're doing that. Check it out. Oh, I didn't even know this. I love my team. If you go to I'll read it out for Instagram and TikTok. It says, if you go to SimonSonic.com use the code Book Club Live20 to get a 20% discount on an infinite game book club order for the next 48 hours. Someone who buys this with this code will get a surprise from me. Okay. Didn't even know that. That's awesome. I love that. I don't even. It's going to be a surprise for me. What the surprise for you is, I love it. So go to simoncynic.com book club live 20 to get 20 discount. Okay, wonderful. Anyway, as I was saying, so we made these book clubs because they come with guided conversations, they come with guided questions, and we really offer a way for you to go deep and have really good conversations. So, yeah, book club is a great way to start a leadership learning journey in your organization or with your friends. You can do all kinds of book clubs.

I love that. Surprise, surprise. The surprise is surprise. Okay, what else we got?

Yes, Daniel M. From YouTube would like to know, are the recent mass layoffs a result of finite thinking or long term infinite minded?

Ah, so good. Daniel is asking, are the recent rounds of layoffs as a result of finite thinking or infinite thinking? And the answer is it depends if the company is trying to just balance the books. Finite thinking. But unfortunately, what we did see in some companies is they got a little too full of themselves during COVID when some industries and some companies were thriving and they started to believe that it was them. Peloton, for example, right place, right time. And their business boomed during COVID and they thought it was because they were geniuses.

I'm sure they're smart people, but they were right place, right time. And they expanded too much, too quickly. And now as the market is leveling off and normalizing to pre Covid standards, turns out it's affecting their business. And so they unfortunately grew too much. And now they're, they're, they're having layoffs to, to. To correct that, that, that lack of humility. But a lot, a lot of companies unfortunately are also taking advantage of it to.

To manage. To manage books. So it really. The answer, the simple answer is it depends, I hate to say it, you have to look at the leadership. You have to look at the circumstances. If it's existential, sometimes it's existential. Like they're literally going out of business and they have to do it. But if you ask me, I think a lot of companies are using it to just clean house, which is not necessarily a good thing, but that's what they're doing.

Great Crickets. Do we have any more?

Yes, one here from Alan on LinkedIn, which is how do we write goals for an infinite game?

Somebody posted here. Larry Jenkins, PhD. Can you post the 20 book club discount information? Sure.

We'll do it later. Zach, Zach, can you do that? Bing. There it is. It's Book Club Live. 20 is the coupon. Book Club Live 2. 0 is the coupon. Okay, sorry, what was the question?

Yes, the question was From Alan on LinkedIn, how do we write goals for an infinite game?

How do you write goals for an infinite game. Okay, first of all, thank you, Alan from LinkedIn. How do you write goals for an infinite game? And so what you want is mile markers, right? So infinite games, you measure in, in momentum. There are finite games in the infinite game. The infinite game is not the absence of finite games. So for example, if the infinite game is to be healthy, right, there's many things I have to do. I have to eat, right, I have to sleep, right. I have to nurse my personal relationships, I have to exercise. There's probably 30 things I other things I have to do, can't do all of those things well all the time. So it's up and down depending on where your focus is. It's a striving. And you can absolutely have finite goals within that. So I want to lose X amount of weight or I want to gain certain amount of muscle mass, or, or I want to get eight hours of sleep every day. And you have your rings and your bracelets and whatever tracking device to measure your sleep, to hold yourself accountable, to make sure you're getting the sleep and you're practicing, you're taking magnesium and all these things. So you can have metrics, but you're measuring those metrics in order to advance something even bigger. And that's the most important thing, which is whatever finite objectives you have, whatever finite goals you have have to be directed towards the infinite. And very often when, if we take it to an organizational level, when you see companies who are growing for growth's sake, or I love it when companies come to me and say we're hyper growth. And I'm like, okay, and show me one article. I don't care if it's Harvard Business Review or Mad magazine, like show me one article that says that growing fast is good. There's literally zero literature, because it's not. The reason companies are pushed to grow fast is because it's good for an investment community. That's it. And so if you're making decisions to grow fast, what's the reason you're trying to grow fast for a liquidity event? Gross, right? That's just some short termism, right? I have no problem with most decisions that companies make. If I understand the context within which those decisions are being made and if the context sounds like it's probably the logic should be easy to understand that we need to achieve this goal because we're trying to get there. So for example, I run a for profit organization, right? And yet I'm an idealist when it comes to our vision. It's because I understand that money is fuel, that our cause and the things that we put out into the world, that we need money to make all those things happen. I need money for a team. I need money for reinvestment. And all of the stuff that we sometimes give away or sell on simonsoninc.com or other places are always geared towards trying to get towards that ideal. When we have meetings, we rarely say what's good for the company. We talk about what's good for the movement. And we're constantly reminding ourselves that the products we make, the partnerships we make, the decisions we make, have to have to tend towards that ideal. So you can have finite goals. There's no problem with that. You have to have metrics. You can't run in a marathon without mile markers. It's unnerving. So metrics are good, but they have to be a measure of speed and distance towards something bigger. We have to know the context. That's the. That's the interchange. That's the relationship. Hope that helps.

All right, and this is our last question.

Last question. No, I want to keep going. I have fun.

Samuel from Facebook would like to know, how do you balance the needs for finite wins in the context of the infinite game?

Samuel asks, how do you balance the needs for finite wins in the context of the infinite game? I think you just actually asked and answered your own question, Samuel, which is, you have to have the infinite game in mind. Goes kind of to the question I just answered a moment ago, which is, there's no problem with needing to hit finite goals. The question is, to what end? Now, sometimes, unfortunately, organizations we work for have no infinite context, and all they have are the finite goals we have to hit every year. And that's why we're talking about this. It's because we're trying to change business. We want companies to be idealistic. We want companies to have bold vision. We want. We want companies to have their metrics and their values aligned with advancing something bigger. And so that's exactly why we do the work we do, and this is why our army exists, is because we're asking these questions of our organizations and trying to make change ourselves because we believe in a world that looks a little different to the one we live in. Now.

The hook's going to come out. This has been so much fun. I can do this forever. I really do enjoy it. Thank you for joining me on Instagram. Thank you for joining me on TikTok. Thank you for joining me on LinkedIn and YouTube. And that's it on those places. And I hope this was fun. I hope this was inspiring. I hope this was helpful, and I hope to see you again sometime soon. And for those of you who are asking, that coupon is Book Club Live 20. If you want to use it to start a book club, think you're all amazing. Love you all. Thanks for joining. Thanks for taking your time to be a part of this movement. Take care of yourself, take care of each other.