Start With Why: Part 6 | Book Club with Simon

I am live.

But I don't see it on.

Am I Live showing. Okay. Technology at its best. Hello everyone and welcome to.

Number six, Part six, the final installment of Start with why. Good to see you. We are broadcasting live on YouTube and for the first time on Facebook. So hello YouTube, hello Facebook. Nice to see everybody. Thanks for coming back. It is our final installment, but let us recall the words of Dr. Seuss. He said, don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened. This has been a joy for me as well. I've been looking forward to these every week.

Let's see, we're gonna make this last one a little bit special.

Here's the reason we decided to do these. Start with why is 10 years old. And my publisher and I thought wouldn't be a good idea to update it, bring it into the modern day and do a 10 year anniversary edition. And I thought, well, why should I read the book by myself? I should invite other people to read with me. And so we decided to do book club. And the whole idea of book club was not about reading a book, it was about doing something together. Especially in these Covid times. We thought it would be really fun to do something where we wanted people to organize into book clubs. Just have a reason, have an excuse to do something together and get on the phone to talk to each other. So that's why we're doing this. So thank you for joining me. If you want to tune back to any of the previous book clubs, sections one through five, we keep them up on YouTube. They're there all the time. Please go and check them out or share any pieces that you'd like with anybody else. Today we're going to be discussing part six discovery. Discover. What's it called? I don't even remember what part six is called. I have it right here. It was oh, discover why. Thank you. And it's all about the origins.

You know, this was a nice short little section. Thank goodness. These past six weeks were the quickest I've ever reread a book. But it was a nice short little section. But what I liked about it was it really showed that why is deeply inside of us. Every single one of us has a why. It's our God given right to have a why. And our why never changes through our whole lives. Because it is fundamentally an origin story. We are all the sum totals of of how we were raised. The experiences we had when we were young, the lessons we learned made us who we are. And it's the same for organizations. A why of an organization is fundamentally, it's an origin story. There's a reason why an organization was founded and it's when it's founded with a why. That's where passion can live. When it's founded by some financial thing, because somebody read an article about some business opportunity, nobody's passionate about those things. It's hard to produce passion when there wasn't a why to start it in the first place. It's just a functional structure, just a bunch of transactions. That's why those businesses tend to be uninspiring and they don't last very long either.

And you read one of my favorite stories, which is the story of Ben Komen.

I'd seen a documentary on ESPN about Ben Komen and that's when I decided to write about it. And I reached out to Ben to talk to him and he's such a lovely kid and, and it was really this just incredible story of how when we compete against others, nobody wants to help us, but when we compete against ourselves, everyone wants to help us. And I think this goes so to the pureness of what it means to start with why, which is really, it's a personal adventure. And I talk about in my later book, the Infinite Game, that this adventure that we're on is infinite. And, and the goal is to leave something behind. Our companies, our families, you know, having children is about passing on your values to someone else so that they may continue to carry them forward long beyond our own years. Same thing with a well built organization, with a strong foundation, that's what, why and how is. It's a strong foundation of belief and cause and values. And the whole idea is that we're building our organizations, we're living our lives so that they may continue on without us, so that we can literally live on forever. And this is the beauty of starting with why. And so when we show up to compete against others, then others compete against us and it becomes a game of undermining each other. It's a recipe to have an organization end in our lifetimes. And as Ben Komen proves that when we show up for ourselves that we don't have to be the fastest runner, we don't have to be the strongest runner. We just have to keep going. And we do it to prove to ourselves that we. That we believe in something bigger than ourselves. It's amazing how many people rush in to help. Now that's my own personal story. Remember, this book came about as a personal experience. I wrote about it in here. And by the way, I purposely put it at the end. The publisher wanted me to put it at the beginning of the book. The I am a failure. They wanted me to put it right as the introduction of the book. And I remember that was the first disagreement I had with my publisher. I said, I absolutely refuse because the book wasn't about me. And so I put it as far away the people who never finished the book would never get to it. The story of how I had to come to terms with the fact that I was a failure because I was competing against other people. I was competing for the wrong things. I was judging my life by the wrong standards. And it wasn't until I hit rock bottom and had to come to terms with. With the fact that I, by those definitions, had to define myself as a failure. And that's the amazing thing. The minute I defined my value based on why I, all of a sudden wasn't a failure. Now I'm just a guy on an adventure, and the standards are very different. And even now, depending what metrics I choose, I could give you a list of metrics right now that will show you that I'm a failure. But I can also show you the adventure that I'm on that make me feel like I feel successful every day. It really is about point of view and narrative. I can show you a great little example of what narrative means, what point of view really means. I was working out the other day with a friend of mine. She was on FaceTime. We were just working out together, and we got halfway through a very, very difficult workout. And I said to her, I've got some good news and I've got some bad news. She said, what's the good news? I said, the good news? She says, what's the bad news? I said, the bad news is we're only halfway done. She says, well, what's the good news? I said, well, the good news is we're already halfway done. My point is, it's just point of view. One of them is demoralizing. One of them is exciting. And all I did was change my perspective for the exact same situation. And that's what y did for me in my personal life. It changed my perspective. I went from competing against to advancing something. And the amazing thing was when I changed that perspective, it is miraculous how quickly things changed in my life. I first articulated the concept of the golden circle and why in January of 2006. Yes, January 2006. Within less than one year. Less than one year, things were going so crazy and so strange. In less than one year, I was Standing at the Pentagon, presenting to the Chief of Staff and the Secretary of the Air Force. I had had no previous military connections before, never done any work with the military before. But that's how quickly things moved in my career. When I started talking about why I do what I do and I stopped talking about what I do, I was the same idiot. I had the same dysfunction. I still didn't know how to build the structure of a company. It's because when I talked about what I believed, people said, there's someone I need you to meet. And things kept moving quickly. I kept having champions. But if I showed up to sell something because I was special and blah, blah, blah, no one would have made any introductions for me whatsoever. Because it was about me. And this was the best lesson I learned about starting with why is that it's never about us. Starting with why is always about someone else. If you go through the process of starting with why, if you've gone through our jumpstart your why program class, you'll know that center to a why statement. It's always for others. It can never be grounded in us, in our benefit, and it can never be grounded in a product or a service. It's always a giving. And so this is the. When you. When you start with the foundation of why you're always in this giving mentality. It's such a short little chapter, but it's such a nice little chapter that just underscores the value of where we come from and remembering where we come from. As a quick aside, I'll tell you one final little thing talking about the importance of origin. I can't remember the exact study, but I remember reading a study about children who have a sense of where they come from, what their grandparents did, any sense of family tree that as simple as knowing as just where your grandparents come from. Those kids are actually more passionate in their lives and what they do because they feel like they have a legacy to advance and a legacy to protect. So teaching our children where they come from as far back in our family histories as we know is again, it's an origin story. It gives confidence to a young person to know where we come from and that we're part of a lineage, we're part of a legacy that our lives do not exist solo. We don't live in a vacuum that we are carrying forward that which came before us, and it is our responsibility to pass it on to those who come after us. This is the magic of why. What a lovely way to end the book club on that sort of discussion. I just realized also I forgot to say hello to all the wonderful people coming from all the wonderful countries and some of my favorite book clubs. So if I may, just one indulgence, just a quick couple of shout outs before we do some questions to the women of Y Book Club. Good to see you. The Grandmaster D's and the Transformics Happy Hour Book Club. There has to be an acronym for that. Welcome, welcome. The Career Professionals of Canada Book Club. Hello. The Palin Belgian Book Club. Good to see you. Very Flemish of you to be here. The Dakota Potato, Peel and Pie Liberty Society Literary Society. Once again, good to see you. Always showing up, always consistent. Nice to see you again. Bridge House Book Club from Berlin and Hamburg. Little Cross City Book Club. I love that. The rush. No more from South Dakota. An afternoon from Y group, guys and gals. Nice to see you. Also. Lots of countries represented as well. I saw as we were logging on Belgium and Lebanon and Iran and Bosnia Herzegovina and just wonderful, lots of Germans here today as well. Nice to see everyone. Okay, let's do some questions. If you have any questions, throw them up. I'm looking over here. I have the YouTube live over here so I can read some live questions. We'll start with one of the ones that you submitted. Where are my questions? Here they are. Lauren.

From the Compass Within Book Club. I like the name of your book club. What did you feel when you first discovered your why?

It's the opposite of what you would expect. You would expect this amazing sort of excitement. But my experience was the opposite. It was this incredible calm. I remember this quiet confidence that I learned, this calm that came over me, that things suddenly made sense. That when I looked back in my life at all the things that had gone well, I realized why they went well. It's because the why was present. And the things where I struggled and I didn't know, especially I didn't know why I was struggling. It's because the why was missing. And all of a sudden things made sense. And Elizabeth Gilbert did a wonderful TED talk where she talks about the concept of genius and she talks about pre Renaissance that a genius was a daemon, a spirit that lived in the walls. And if you did something remarkable, people would say you had your genius. Ah, Simon, you had your genius with you. So you could never take full credit for the things that you did well because you had this genius to support you. But if things failed, if things went badly, people would say, ah, such bad luck. You didn't have your genius with you and so you didn't have to beat yourself up either because it was always a partnership with you and the spirit that lived in the walls. And sometime during the Renaissance, having your genius became being a genius. And now we hold people to these ridiculous standards that they are a genius that work. You are a genius that you did that. So now we have unbelievable pressure on ourselves that if we had one success once, now we have to live up to that success all the time. And if we fail or falter, we are no longer the genius that we thought we were or that people told us that we were. This is what I love about why, which is it's like that genius living in the walls again, which is, I had my why with me. It was clear with me as I was doing this. Or if something went wrong, it's because I didn't have my why. I should have had my why front and center. And that's where the calm came from, which is I no longer felt totally responsible for my own successes or my own failures. When I was writing my second book, Leaders Eat Last, people kept coming up to me and saying, aren't you worried it won't be as good as the first one? Aren't you worried it won't be as successful as the first one? If you do a second TED Talk, aren't you worried that it won't be as successful as the first one? And the answer is no, of course not. The success of starting with Y was a complete accident. I didn't plan any of it. All I did was start with Y and then something happened and watched. I was just a passenger. And so for me to plan to be more successful with something that I didn't plan in the first place, that's like trying to win the lottery a second time and then beating yourself up because you didn't. And so I had no pressure writing the second book. I didn't have a sophomore slump because I wasn't comparing. That was a very long answer for a very simple question. Thank you. From the Compass Book Club. Okay. From Switzerland, the Lesser book club. That's 1s, not 2.

You say that why is an origin story and that you need to discover it, not invent it. My question then is how can kids and teenagers find their why since they're still developing? Such a good question. In my experience with the people that I've talked to, I don't believe someone's why is fully formed until their mid to late teens. So I don't think a 10 year old that their why is fully formed yet. Remember, we are products of Our upbringing.

And the things that happen to us in our lives will affect who we become. So a why is not fully formed until I think our early to mid teens. The youngest person that I've done a why discovery with successfully was 16. It might go earlier than that. That's just the youngest that I've done. But so good question. That is why it is so important for us to teach our kids values. There's some research that I stumbled upon when I was writing Leaders Eat Last that despite all parents good intentions, we don't actually get all of our values or who we are just from our parents. We get them from all kinds of things that happen in our lives. There's only two things that all human beings everywhere in the world always get from their parents, according to these researchers. One, how you treat yourself and two, how you treat others. That comes from our parents. Okay.

Let'S take a live question. Should we. What is the painting behind you?

That's the painting behind me. It's by a wonderful.

Danish artist named Lisa Lach Nielsen. I'm a big fan of her work. So there it is. Okay, another question. Oh, look at this. The very next question on my list from Denmark. That's a little weird. That's a little weird. Didn't see that happening. Didn't see that coming. Okay, question from Denmark, Lisa Lechnilsson. That's another question from her. It's from Ms. Dortemage. I don't know how to say. I don't speak Danish, so I apologize. Is it completely impossible to discover your why on your own? You know, is it completely impossible? I'm not comfortable saying it's completely impossible, but I think it's really, really, really difficult because it's very hard to be objective about ourselves. It's why having outside feedback at work is really important. We have blind spots sometimes. We don't know. Very often we don't know how we come across. We don't know sometimes when we're being rude by accident, we don't know that people find us inspiring when we didn't know we were. That's why it's hard to do your why it's very hard to see the patterns in your own life. You know, I'm uncomfortable with the word impossible, but I think it's pretty damn near impossible. Some people try and I wish them the best of luck. You can probably get in the ballpark, maybe, maybe. But it really requires the help of some objective outside observer. That's why the other reason we actually often recommend that the person you choose to partner with you to help you find your why is not your spouse, not your siblings, and not your parents. Because those relationships are so close that they too sometimes lack objectivity. They want to tell you the answer. So, yeah, I think you need, you need, you need to do it with someone else.

Charlotte Ray, It's. It seems that companies that follow Charlotte Rigg.

Hello? Charlotte Rigg.

Yes, it seems that companies that follow their why and play the infinite game are also financially successful.

Apple.

Is it possible for a company that diligently follows its why to fail?

The question was, it seems that companies that find their why, follow their why and play the infinite game are always successful and make a lot of money. Can you follow your why and not be successful? I think that success requires multiple things. Remember, the golden circle is three pieces. And I don't believe for a second that the why is more important than the other two pieces. It's as important, it's equally as important. The problem is, is that in most organizations, they're running an organization with two out of three pieces of an important essential puzzle. In other words, most organizations are run with how and what. But if you only have Y, you're also. That's not a recipe for success. You need to have the systems and processes, you need to have the values, and you need to ultimately have the product and marketing and culture that reflect the why also. So it is one essential piece of the puzzle. But if you have all those pieces in place, then the likelihood for success goes up dramatically. And even when we have sudden change, like Covid, like the Internet, that challenges our business model, organizations that start with why, that have good processing systems and adhere to a code of values and make sure that everything that they do reflects their cause, more likely will succeed and pivot through the change. Just because there has been change in the world doesn't mean that the end is nigh. We've gone through this in our own organization, where most of our income came from live events. We're not doing live events anymore, but we know that what we have is important and valuable. And the question we asked ourselves is, how can we ensure and bring our why to life in these times? And so, like a lot of organizations we were looking at, we looked to online learning. However, because human relationships and human interaction is so important to us, we made a decision, a strategic decision that we wanted to do live classes. That's why all of our classes on our website are all live. You actually have to show up on time, like a classroom, because it's a live class with real people. That was really important to us. So as we pivoted our business, we went back to our why to help inform the kind of way we wanted to do it. So, yes, you're more likely to have commercial success when you start with why. And all the pieces are in balance.

Here's one from Lawrence Seiji Abbott. Is our why simpler than we make it? If our why is about others, by helping, inspiring them, making life easier, increasing empathy for a certain cohort, we're educating or providing insight.

I think I understand.

A why should be relatively simple as a statement. The way we like to write them is to blank. So that blank. My why is to inspire people to do the things that inspire them so that together, each of us can change our world for the better.

It's a contribution and an impact. And most introspective people can very easily come up with the impact part. I want to have some sort of impact on the world. Specific is better change the world. Too broad what specific impact you want to have in the world. But it's the contribution that's really the defining part. That's the part that's really the missing part. The verb that we live by, the verb that we love so much that we would tattoo it on our arms. You know, that if they build a statue to us one day after we're gone, they will say this word of us he inspired. You know, so it has to be something simple. You see this mistake made in companies all the time. You read what they say is their why statement, and it's like a paragraph long. It's got everything in there. It's got a statement of what their product is, and that has high quality and value for our customers. And yes, those things are important, don't get me wrong. But it's not all has to go in the why statement. It's like the COVID of a book. Like, I don't have to write everything that's in the book on the COVID That's what the book is for. The only point of the COVID the title, is to make you go and want to learn more. And then you read the jacket and the jacket. The only purpose of the jacket copy is to make you. Hmm. And you open it and you read the first page like, and then you buy it. That's how it works. The why is the same way. It's not a why statement isn't supposed to do all the work. It's supposed to do its portion of the work to set the foundation of purpose, cause and belief. Then the how and the what do their role as well, I think. I hope that answers the question.

For startups that are setting up, their setting up now during this crisis.

How?

How should they structure their why? Should they then reinvent their why after this crisis situation is over?

Good question, Raj. The question was how do organizations establish their why in these Covid times? And will they have to change it when we come out of these Covid times? The answer is no. No, no, no, no. Your why will be the same regardless of the political, cultural or technological world in which we live. The world has changed since Apple was founded. The why has not changed. The world has changed since Southwest Airlines was founded. The world has changed since the United States was founded. But the why remains consistent. It remains the same. The opportunity is how to bring it to life when the times change. So your why now, Raj, and your company's why will be exactly the same. Before COVID during COVID and after Covid, or what will change is how you bring it to life. And what you do that necessarily has to change. But your rye will remain a solid foundation. That's why it's so important. And I'll tell you, as we've been going through our challenges, we've had to reinvent everything. We've had to change our product, we've had to change our website, We've had to change the way we talk out loud to the world. We've had to change our marketing inside our company. People's had to change their entire jobs. Somebody thought that this was their job. Then because of COVID they now have a completely new job. There's only one thing that has remained absolutely immobile, which is our why. Again, it goes back to how it affected me personally. It's that quiet calm, that quiet confidence. Because in a world of crazy change, where we want to be able to hang onto something, have stability, the why presents is that stable thing again, like the foundation of a house, which is the house can. Rock damage can be caused by a hurricane. The roof can blow off. In fact, you can even lose the whole house. The foundations will always remain. When we go digging for Roman ruins, we always find the foundations. Everything else is gone. It's the one permanent thing that is fixed and immobile. That is why we can keep referring to it, because it is there to help us. Okay, Peggy. Page turners. Hello. Good to see you. Hello. From the Air Force in Alabama. How can. What base is in Alabama? Do I remember? That's the big training base out there, isn't it?

Was that Lackland? Anyway, how can you help yourself or someone else open their eyes if running full speed ahead with them closed due to lack of focus and direction. Too much what and not enough why? Yes, this is hard when you are starting with why and someone else insists on starting with what. In the business world, we'll say you start with why. And all they care about is starting with a metric. If they believe everything has to be metric driven. Metrics are important. We just want them in the right order. We want them to come at the what level, not at the Y level.

So the question is, what do you do? We can't change other people. No number of anonymously sent books will ever change the minds of our leaders or our friends. We can sometimes have conversations, but even that doesn't work. The only thing we can do is be the leaders we wish we had. We can't change them, we can only change ourselves. And so number one, start with empathy. We don't know why they are stuck in what and why they insist on keeping their eyes closed. Maybe it's fear, maybe it's because they never learned anything differently. Maybe that's because that's the education they got moving up through their careers and so that's all they know. And maybe they're struggling, maybe they're insecure. So let us not default to they don't know what they're doing. So number one is lead with empathy. And you'll find opportunities, if you lead with empathy to walk into someone's office and be like, hey, you seemed off your game today. Are you okay? I'm worried about you. In other words, go to your why. Be focused on why you do what you do and you lead from why. And what will end up happening is you'll lead your group around you. It doesn't necessarily mean that the stress coming down from on high isn't difficult, but protect your own people. You know, person to the left, person to the right. And sometimes whatever pressure we feel from a what focused leader.

Is temporary. Everybody in the Air Force knows that. You know, one of the worst things about having the 18 month or two year rotation cycles is that if you have a great leader, you lose them really quickly. But everybody also knows that if you have a bad one, they leave in 18 months to two years. It's kind of like that, which is focus on the things that you can control.

Worry about the things that. Yeah, well, I just said it. Okay, let's see what else we have here.

Rishabha, thank you for joining. When you want to bring your vision to life, do you have to make a choice between advancing that vision and making money. Still gotta eat, right?

You don't have to.

So there are two currencies in the game. In the game of business, in the infinite game of business, which is will and resources, they are both essential. There's no point having a vision if you don't have the finances to advance it. There's no point having money if it's just for money's sake. You need both. But there has to be a bias and the bias has to be towards the vision. This goes back to the celery test, right? You can do things just if you remember from previous chapters we talked about the celery test.

You can do things for the money, but if it puts you out of balance, if you're eating chocolate cake, then just keep in mind that it's a short term thing. I know that when I discovered my why and I became obsessed with the law of diffusion of innovations, I had some very difficult decisions to make. I was living paycheck to paycheck. I didn't have much money at all. I was just scraping through. And I was this young independent.

Practitioner. I was a solopreneur. And people would call me and say, I'd like to hire you.

And I would always evaluate them through the lens of why. And this is when I couldn't rub two pennies together. And even back then, I would turn down business because it was more important for me to do business with people who believed what I believe. Because I trusted that those relationships would not only be longer lasting, but that those clients would be more fun to work with, that I would learn more about the why and. And more important to my business, that the likelihood that they would introduce me to somebody was very, very high. And that they would introduce me to a well qualified lead because we share the same values. Now, was it a perfect system? Of course not. There were times where I begrudgingly took jobs just for the money because I needed to pay bills. But I went in with eyes wide open. I had no illusions that this was going to be a long term relationship. I had no illusions that I was going to have fun. And I had no illusions that they were going to recommend me to other people. It was just what I needed. And in short order, you learn that all the time that you invest in these people that really don't connect with that sometimes it's not worth the money, that sometimes it was worth waiting it out to find somebody that I connected with. It's one of the reasons I became very, very Conservative in how I run my business. I've always liked to save money. In case I come across a string of people that I don't want to work with that I can say no. So ever since the beginning, I've been really good at saving in the business to give me the freedom to say no. In fact, as a quick aside, in our business, we don't actually talk about profit because profit to me is a hollow concept. We talk about freedom. We work for freedom. The freedom to give it away, the freedom to take care of our people, the freedom to reinvest in ourselves. And the freedom to say no when we come across a client that doesn't share our values. So instead of calling it money, call it freedom. Work for freedom. Okay, what else do we have here? God, there's a lot of questions.

The Midlife Crisis Book Club.

The Midlife Crisis Book Club.

Are we crazy to give up a good paying, secure job to seek out a job that helps us pursue our why?

P.S.

We have been with the company for more than 25 years.

Oh my goodness. Okay, should we give up our good paying jobs from the Midlife Crisis Book Club? Should we give us our good paying jobs and in order to pursue a more why focused job, Keep in mind, we've been working for these companies for 25 years. The answer is of course not. There are many ways to bring your why to life. And finding a job where you connect with your why, where the company's why and your why connect is not the only way. First of all, very often, if you've been working for a company that long, very often you did connect with the why. And over the years and leadership changes, the new leadership has abandoned the why to focus on to be more metrics focused. And so you often hear folks in your position saying, oh, remember the good old days when you had no money and it was more difficult and you had no rank whatsoever and you actually crave going back to those old times. Even though you're making more money than you've ever made, you've got authority that you never thought you would have. And yet you crave those old times. It's because you crave connection with the why. But sometimes having those people stick around the company is some of the best bet to get the why back. We've seen these transitions happen. We saw it happen at Microsoft. It went, it got lost for a while, but a lot of the old timers stuck around and saw it come back and proud to see it come back. You can also live your why in smaller contexts. As we just said in the previous, with the previous question, you can lead with why with your own team, you can still find great fulfillment. And leading with Y, just from a smaller group, you'll have frustration with the company for sure.

And ultimately the question is, now you're probably more senior in the organization. Can you help the company go back to Y? Can you help the company go back to its own roots and reinstill that passion not only in the veterans, but to reinspire and reinvigorate the new people who are coming into the organization?

So if you really care about the organization, you cared about the fundamental why from the beginning, you can make it your mission to bring it back. Quitting is always an option. I know plenty of senior executives who call me up excitedly say, simon, I quit my high paying job to go live my Y. And I went, oh, okay. They seem to be happy. They all find happiness. But it's not the only way. Absolutely not.

Let's see what else we have here. Yes.

High five to Barbara Kahl.

Barbara Kahl, high five.

I found my why with the help of your books, videos, the live tour in London, the Soho Theater, and finally the workshop I have attended. And my life has changed completely.

Thank you, Barbara Kahl. Thank you so much. Barbara basically is a groupie. She's attended everything, apparently. She's read everything, apparently. She's gone on our website and tried everything, apparently. And it's changed her life. And Barbara, it's shout outs like those that inspire me to keep doing what we're doing. And it inspires when we do huddle, we do huddle every Monday with the whole team. It's not a business conversation. We check in with each other, we see how we're all doing, we report on what's on our hearts and minds. And every huddle, we ask an open question. Does anybody have a story that proves why we do what we do, that gives reason why we continue to do why we do what we do? And so it's stories like yours that get read or shared in our huddle because it inspires the whole team to keep, to keep working hard and keep this thing alive because we know that it impacts the lives of others. Thank you, Barbara. It's so nice of you to share. Thank you for the shout out. Let's do another question, shall we?

The freedom to say no. Yes, Farida.

Here we go. From Dylan Smith. Simon, what is the most meaningful question that you have ever been asked in your life?

Well, I would have to say the most meaningful question I've ever been Asked in my life is probably the most meaningful question every child asks every day of their lives, which is why that's kind of. You gave me that one, Dylan. Yeah, I think the question why is a question that I like being asked. I like. I like being. I like my. I like testing my mettle. I like having an opinion. I have a lot of them. And I like when somebody says, well, explain to me where that opinion comes from. I like being able to challenge myself and see, do I get caught in a circular logic that I realized it's not my opinion? I read it somewhere, I heard it somewhere. I'd like to know where things come from. And every single one of my books came from asking the question why?

I wanted to discover passion, where passion comes from. Why are some people passionate and some people aren't? You know, how do I get my passion back? Why are. The question of where passion comes from, that's the question. Let's start with why leaders eat last. It's the same question. Like somebody said, okay, we know trust is important, but I want to know what trust was. And I kept asking, why does that work? Why does that work? Why does that work? Why does that work? Why does that work? And before you know it, I'm in biology and anthropology. I'm not satisfied with just accepting that things are the way they are. I want to know why they are the way they are. I want to know why things work. And so when I get asked that question, it's the best question because it means that. It means I'm being tested. And I really like that.

Here's a Bridge House book club from Germany.

Bridge House Book club in Germany.

How can I help a company to find its origin why? And not a wanted marketing why?

Ah. How can I help my company find its origin why? And not some marketing why? Well, I mean, you got to go through the right process, right? Like anything. You're absolutely right. So many companies use our language. They use this language of y, when really it's just marketing bullshit and we can tell the difference. To be the best provider of the highest quality with the greatest value is our why. To be the number one provider, to be the biggest. We all know that it's nonsense.

You know, they have to go through the right process. Unfortunately, there's a lot of marketing firms who are selling why? Discovery, purpose, discovery, whatever they call them, Find your DNA. They all have their own term for the same thing.

Things with the hope of producing more work. I hate to say it, I used to be in the business.

And very Often those are six month engagements and they're a lot of money. And the reality is to really find your why, even for a large company, it just takes a few hours. You can do it in a day. We've done it with the biggest organizations and we can do it in a day.

And so I guess that's part of it for the practitioners. Helping organizations find their why.

It'S the wrong process. So if you go through the right process of discovering your why, you get your real origin story why. Because it's about looking backwards, it's not about looking forwards, it's not about showing up at the company off site and putting, you know, magazine cutouts on the wall of who we want to be. Why is not aspirational. Aspirations are aspirations, they have their value. But that's not to be confused with why. Why always comes from the past. It is always an origin story, it always is backwards.

And if a why is fuzzy or the founder is gone. Another way you can find your why inside an organization is to find the zealots, the people who truly believe at every level, at every job function. And you find the common pattern of what they find, of what they. You find the pattern of the things that they value inside the organization. And when you find the zealots in an organization and you can find those patterns of behavior, it's kind of amazing. It lives in the people. It's kind of magical. So you have to go through the right process to get the right result.

There was a question that I saw a minute ago that I really like. Did I lose it.

Here? Clay Guinard asks, so where can I find the origin to be able to find my why in my taxi business, other than what I think it is?

Well, your why has nothing to do with taxis. We know that for a fact. Many of our careers are an accident. I was dating a girl.

When I decided to drop out of law school. I happened to be dating somebody, Rebecca, who was studying advertising at Syracuse. And so she was the first person to put into my head that I should look into advertising. So I had a whole career in marketing. Not because that's what I studied in school, it's because my girlfriend at the time was in advertising. Tada. I've got a whole career in advertising. I mean, we fall into things. And so your why has nothing to do with taxis unless you specifically like went to it for a specific reason other than the economics. The why is how you, how you build a company. It's the culture around the taxi company. You don't have to Have a glamorous product, to have a strong culture. I've written about Barry Wehmiller. You know, it's not a glamorous company. They're a manufacturing company. But there is strong sense of why. And if you ask Bob Chapman, why does your company exist? He says, we build great people to do extraordinary things.

In other words, it's how they. How they lead the business, how he leads the business, that you can see the why alive. It's not necessarily the physical product. It might be in the way they deliver the product, the way they build the product, the quality control, the advertising, the marketing, all the stuff. But it's definitely not the product itself.

What else do we have?

Let's do one from Livia and Neil.

I'll assume that it's in a. That's your book club. Book club of the two of you. I like that. If you were to build a library of why statements as a starting. As starting points, what would be the one to three whys you've encountered in your career? You know, there is obviously overlap in whys, and some of the same words obviously come up. But sometimes writing a why statement is actually really frustrating because sometimes the language that you're writing it in doesn't provide the right word. Like the right word doesn't exist, or the right word has been so overused that it just loses its power. So, for example, the word empower. The word empower in business is so hackneyed, so overused, that if the word empower is truly in your why, it's such a disappointment because it's just hard to inspire others with that because we've heard it so many times. So sometimes the language we speak gets in the way. And so I don't have a library of the top two or three. They're pretty unique. Yes, there's overlap. Just like human beings, we have similarities in our personalities, but we're all pretty different. A why statement is the same. It's that unique, wonderful combination of the contribution and the impact and the hows and what we do that make us who we are. So.

Don'T even know. Don't even know. Yes, I've heard lots of the same statements. For me, the fun is not the statement per se, but you can tell who are the why folks and who are the how folks. Not always, but. But you get clues in their why statements. How people tend to have more building words in their why statements.

Okay, the Road Ahead Book club. Good to see you again. You've been here before. I think Netflix has disrupted the TV and movie industries. How would you articulate Netflix's why and how they used it to achieve what they have achieved? You know, that's a, that's a good question. I what is Netflix's why? I should probably go learn that. So whoever put that question there.

Thanks for that one. I don't know the answer.

You know what I'll do? I'll go look it up.

I generally don't comment.

On newer companies.

Not because they don't have a why, they absolutely do. But I'm always fascinated if they'll be able to keep it beyond their founders.

And so I like companies to have a little bit of a. I want them to have a couple of hard times and to see if they stay true to their why before actually rendering their opinion on if I think a company is a good company or a great company. So I think Netflix is a very interesting company. I think the disruption in the market has been fascinating. But whether they're a great company, I would wait to, I would reserve to see how long it can last and to see how, if they can weather storm with their why but what the specific why is. I'll have to get back to you. Okay.

Why in a mental health point of view. Okay, the why in a mental health point of view. Bipolarity, massive mood fluctuations and you lose the why and you change your mind, ending up in the vicious cycle. Yes. There's no question that if somebody is struggling with mental health, it absolutely will affect many things in their lives, including their why. The way we articulate a why statement. A why is who you are when you're operating at your natural best. And if there's something interrupting that natural best, like mental health challenges, then of course it has the possibility to disrupt one's why. Okay, what else do we have?

Jake Penn, Hello. From the Netherlands.

Hello, Jake, from the Netherlands. The Nederlands.

Looking forward to seeing you in 2021 at the mindset Tour.

Looking forward to seeing you too, Jake, at the 2021 Mindset Tour. Yes.

What is the essential why a leader must explain to their team members.

What is the what does the say? The question again, what is the essential why that a leader must explain to their team members? So a why is a foundation. Sometimes they're pretty and can be articulated to the outside world. And sometimes like a foundation of the house, they're kind of just kind of ugly looking but really necessary. And they're really, really inspiring to the person whose why it is. But sometimes they're a little bit chunky and clunky for the outside world. And so you want the why to inspire and be the foundation of how you present it to the outside world. So it has to reflect the why. It doesn't always have to be the literal words of the why. So, for example, I don't always talk about inspiring people to do the things that inspire them, but you'll see themes in all of my work. Sometimes I use the word inspire a lot, but I use the word optimism. I use the word forward. And you see that the idea of inspiring people to do what inspires them, you'll see that I often talk about togetherness. I talk about human connection. You can see the why is the foundation of how I'm presenting things. And so if you listen to enough of the stuff that I say or you read enough of the stuff that I write, you'll start to see a pattern. Even though the words, stories, and ideas may be different, there's a pattern. There's a pattern of optimism. There's a pattern of human connection. There's a pattern of togetherness. In other words, you can see my why is alive and well because I work very hard to make sure that it shows up everywhere we do it. Even in the titling of my books. I go to blows with my publisher because they want to put my name big at the top of the book, and I refuse. I've always wanted my name really small down the side. They won't let me do that. I lose that fight. But. But if you notice, I refuse to put my name at the top of the book because to me, it's not. It's. It's. If I start with why to inspire people to do what inspires them, it's always about others. It's always about others. So in if. If I'm just the guy that wrote the book, I have to start. Start with the idea. The title always has to come first, and I always insist that my name comes second. My point is, the why influences how I show up. The why influences how I speak. And you'll see this in our great leaders. You'll find patterns in how they speak that sometimes is literally their why, but it's definitely the foundation.

Okay, what else do we have here? Daniel Ackerman. Yes.

For a fire department.

He started talking to his crew about our why and came up with an issue where we could figure out each of our whys for the crew, but we couldn't figure out a department's why. So how would you suggest we figure out our department's why when there's not a Clear one. Or a leadership vision coming from senior management.

Great question. So Daniel works for a fire department, decided to try and find the why for his crew, and they succeeded in finding the why for each of the individuals, but they struggle to find a why for the station, for the whole group. There's no senior leader per se, handing something on down the origin story of fire departments. Probably not very helpful here.

And so, as Daniel, as you know.

Each place you've worked has a different culture.

And not all stations are created equal. You have worked in stations before where you felt like you belonged and it felt great and the culture was strong. And you've been in other stations where it either had a dysfunctional culture and nobody got along, or there was a strong culture but you didn't feel like you belonged. So it's that pattern of the zealots. It goes back to what I said before, which is an organizational why, is finding the pattern of connection for those who feel like they belong. Not everyone in that station belongs, but there's probably a critical mass that really do. And so what you'll find is if you take all the people who love it here, I love it here. This is the best place I've ever worked. You guys are the best guys I've ever worked with. Right. You'll find a pattern exists in all of them. So here's an exercise that I do that has been very, very helpful. It's called left list, right list. It's better to do it if you have somebody to help take you through this process. Objective, outsider, as we talked about before. But it's very helpful. Have everybody take a piece of paper, fold it in half. Left list, right list. There's a list on the left list on the right. Number the side on the left, 1 through 5. Number the side on the right, 1 through 5. Ask everybody on the left to write.

Just the list of names. The people that you have worked with that you absolutely love working with them, they get it that you want to be more like them. And it doesn't have to actually be five. It could be two, three, it could be seven. It doesn't matter. It's just an exercise. Right? So on the left list, you put all of the people who you want to be more like or you admire, Right? On the right list, you put all the people who just don't get it and they don't have to necessarily be in this station, but the ones who. And again, you have to do this exercise with the zealots, right? Because we're looking for patterns of connection and who you are at your natural best. So on the right list, you put the people who just don't get it that when you see their name come up on the caller id, you're like, ugh, what now? Right? The ones who. Everything is excruciating, right? And they may be good people. It's just. You just struggle. It's like oil and water. You just struggle to connect, right? And then what you do next is you take all the people on the left list and you have everybody write a list of human characteristics that define everybody on the left list.

So if they write down a word, they're wonderful, dynamic people that have wonderful characteristics about them, but every word they write down has to define every person on the left list. And by the way, we ignore the right list. It's just a foil that each one of those words may define one or two of those people in the right list at best. Every word they write down in the list of characteristics has to define everybody in the left list. Then you get together in smaller groups, you compare your lists, you compare your people, and you find the overlaps in all of those words, and you whittle it down. You whittle it down. So what you're finally left with is a group of words, human characteristics, that define every single person on every single person's list. It's an amazing experience. And what you'll find is that one of those words seems to feel bigger than the others. The other ones are more functional. They're more how types. And one of those words tends to be a little bit bigger. That is your why. That is how you do an organizational why. It's how I like to do an organizational why. There are multiple ways to do it. That's how I like to do it. It's called leftless.

Right list and find your why.

Oh, we did that. Actually, of course, I could have given you a much simpler answer, Daniel, which is in the book Find you'd why. Sorry, I forgot. In the book Find you'd why, it's broken up into two sections, which is how to find the why for yourself. But we also put it in there, how to find you'd why for your organization, I strongly recommend pick up a copy of Find you'd why. You only need one copy for the whole group, and it'll take you through how to find your why for your station. Sorry about the long answer.

Let's get another live question. What do you have?

How will you update from Chikhina? How will you update chapter 13? Now that you yourself have 10 years of leadership experience and have built your own brand of business.

How will I update chapter 13 now that I've had 14 years? 13 years. How long has this been going? Too long. 14 years of experience doing this why stuff, this leadership stuff. You know, I wasn't planning on doing that, but maybe I probably should talk about my journey. I really hate talking about myself in these things, to be honest with you. But there's probably some good lessons that I should impart about the things that I got right and the things that I got wrong on this why journey and the risks that I took that were worth it and the risks that I took that weren't worth it. I've definitely learned a lot of lessons.

So, yeah, yeah, I'll do that. I'll add that to the end. Thank you. But it's definitely going at the end and not the beginning. Unfortunately, there's a statistic in publishing that we know that most people don't finish books, which was kind of disappointing because I had some really good stuff at the end here with Ben Komen and some of the origin stories. I liked the second half of this book. Maybe I got better at writing as I got. As I was doing it.

See, somebody wrote here from the. Okay, hold on. Give me a second here. The Lestaminet Book Club. Rafael, Sasha, Louis Alame and Rafaela. Once you've found your why, what's next? Well, of course, it's like commencement from when you graduate college. We call it commencement because it's just the beginning. I called the book Start with why because it's just the start. Once you have your why, then the next big question is, what do I do with it? Well, if you run a business, you want to start auditing things, which is. Let's look at our marketing. Let's look at our sales. Let's look at our hiring practices. Look at our incentive products. Incentive practices. Let's look at our physical product line. And C is our why. Showing through and everything. You want to do an audit and make sure that your why is present everywhere. A great example of this was Disney under the later years of Michael Eisner. Michael Eisner, unfortunately, he lost his partner in Frank Wells, who died in an accident. And that beautiful balance of why and how went completely sideways. And unfortunately, Mike Eisner lost sight of the why and he became obsessed. That very often happens when we lose sight of the why. He became obsessed with world domination. He became obsessed with being number one and being the best. And he'd forgotten the journey and they invested in many, many, many businesses that did very well. Some of them did well, some of them did terribly, actually.

When he left, Bob Iger and Tom Staggs took over.

They evaluated the entire portfolio and they looked at the businesses that no longer reflect the why. So for example, they were selling, they were in the movie business, making R rated movies. Did you know that a Disney company produced and made Reservoir Dogs? Like, what is a company obsessed with good, clean family fun making things like Reservoir Dogs. They had a music label that produced a band called World War Three. Doesn't sound very Disney. And so even though some of those businesses were profitable, they completely divested of them. And if you've noticed, Disney has never and will never go into gaming. They don't own casinos. They would. If they owned a casino on the Vegas strip, it would be the best casino ever. They would have Star wars and Marvel. It would be incredible. But they won't because it violates their values. And so you want to keep everything aligned. Now, if it's an individual, it's the same thing. One of the things that I did when I learned my why is I looked at the things close to me. I actually looked at some of my friends and I realized that I was actually maintaining some friendships, that I actually derived no joy from being in those friendships.

They were more work than they were worth. And that I realized that if I didn't call them, they would never call me. If I didn't make a plan with them, they would never make a plan with me. So I sent them a lovely, polite email saying I want to do things that bring me joy. And though I still care about you, I realize this is lopsided. I'll always be here if you want to reach out. One did, and amazingly a few didn't. In other words, I actually went and looked at, you know, some of the. The company I was keeping. I made decisions on what clients I did business with. And I also made sure that how I showed up and it's work. To this day, 14 years on, it's still work. I still catch myself getting emotional or reacting to things, but showing up with my why front and center in meetings or with colleagues, that I wanted to make sure that I was bringing my why to life at all times. It is a journey. It is a game of constant improvement. I have a lot of work still to do, but. But I'm way better than I was 14 years ago because I keep it front and center. And I think I talked about this in one of the previous calls. I Surround myself with symbols. The color orange. We do things. We have a sense of humor. The Inspire T shirts that we have on our website, for example, we didn't produce those T shirts for other people. The first Inspire T shirt, I just went on one of those websites that you can make a T shirt for yourself. And I made a bunch of T shirts for myself. They were gray T shirts with orange letters, really small right here in the chest that said Inspire. And I bought four of them for myself.

And so almost everything that we do, the T shirts that we sell to others, those T shirts were the T shirts that I had 10 years ago. I made them for myself. And that's why we offer them to other people. Because the whole idea is they work for me, maybe they'll work for other people. So it's a about keeping it front and center and reminding yourself every single day of why you get out of bed in the morning. I think that's a nice way to end. We have a couple of little surprises for you because you guys are so fantastic and so wonderful. I'm so grateful that you've shown up. I know I recognize a lot of names and a lot of book clubs here that you've come almost, if not every single book club for six weeks, which is really a wonderful commitment. We wanted to do our way of saying a little thank you. And so we wanted to give you guys all, if you want to go take any of the classes on our website, a 20% discount.

For everybody here. We're editing this part out of the thing. It's just for book club. So the code is ybookclub. So if you put in ybookclub, it'll give you 20% off any of our classes. So please, please come and join. Take advantage. It's just our way of saying thank you so much for showing up here week after week after week. We love you.

Once again, if you missed any part of this, want to relive any part of it, go re watch any part of it, share it with any friends. We will be posting it in its entirety with one little piece cut out on YouTube. So go ahead and check that out.

Once again. Remember, we started book club not because it was about reading a book, but it was about doing something together. Now that you have your book clubs going, I really, really hope that you will keep your book clubs going. We haven't decided yet if we're going to continue to do this with my other books, but we will definitely do other special things if we don't do book club.

But you know, maybe we'll do book club for some of the other books. Maybe. But if you do keep your book clubs, club club's going and I. Please, please, please. I wish you do. I'd like to recommend some books that you could possibly read for your book club. If you're a bunch of introverts, please go read Susan Cain's Quiet. It's a wonderful book. Everyone should read Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. I think that is mandatory reading for every human being and definitely every book club. We also like Brene Brown's.

Dare to Lead. Check that one out. Seth Godin's Tribes. These are really important books in the oeuvre of the subject, so please check those out. Start with Man's Search for Meaning. It is the foundation for everything else. And I hope you keep your book clubs going. We will obviously let you know if we restart another one from our stuff again. As you know, we have our live classes and for those of you who took Jumpstart your why, thank you very much. It was so successful. We're continuing to add more. Please feel free to go take Jumpstart yout why again. And we've added something called Office Hours. So for those of you who either went through the Jumpstart yout why workshop or you didn't, but you have a good sense of your why, but you want to work on it some more and you want some one on one coaching with one of our master trainers, please go sign up for office hours.

We didn't put any limits to the number of people that can sign up. And you can pay whatever you want. You can pay whatever you can for office hours. So please go check out office hours. If you want to get deeper into the details of your own personal why. The only thing we ask is you show up with some sort of why statement, whether you got it from one of our programs or not, which is fine. My brilliant, wonderful friend, Jen Waldman, this is very exciting, is teaching a class called how to Pivot. If you are a freelancer or if you are a small business owner. And in these Covid times you need to pivot your business. Jen is one of the people that I have called during this. This time. She has an amazing story. She has a small business herself and her business was rendered completely shut during COVID She owns, she owns a studio, an acting studio and obviously she can't do that anymore in real life. And it wasn't easy for her to simply just do it online. And so she completely changed her business model and she managed to keep every single person on her team employed. In fact, her business is actually growing because of her pivot. So we asked Jen to take everything that she did that she learned in pivoting her business and if she would share some of it with the likes of everyone else. So please check out Jen's class and go ahead and use your 20% coupon.

To take Jen's class. With that, I will say thank you for joining. Thank you for being here. It's been an absolute joy reading Start with why with you. I will. Thank you. Will all get a thank you at the end of the book and the acknowledgments in the. In the new version, Covid book club will. Will be in there to thank you for helping me. Take care of yourself. Take care of each other. Hopefully I'll see you real, real soon. Thank you, everyone.

We have a sense of humor. You know, the Inspire T shirts that we have on our website, for example, we didn't produce those T shirts for other people. The first Inspire T shirt, I just went on one of those websites that you can make a T shirt for yourself, and I made a bunch of T shirts for myself. They were gray T shirts with orange letters, really small right here in the chest that said inspire. And I bought four of them for myself.

Almost everything that we do, the T shirts that we sell to others, those T shirts were the T shirts that I had 10 years ago. I made them for myself. And that's why we offer them to other people. Because the whole idea is they work for me, maybe they'll work for other people.

So it's about keeping it front and center and reminding yourself every single day of why you get out of bed in the morning. I think that's a nice way to end. We have a couple of little surprises for you because you guys are so fantastic and so wonderful. I'm so grateful that you've shown up. I know I recognize a lot of names and a lot of book clubs here that you've come almost, if not every single book club for six weeks, which is really a wonderful commitment. We wanted to do our way of saying a little thank you. And so we wanted to give you guys all, if you want to go take any of the classes on our website, a 20% discount.

For everybody here. We're editing this part out of the thing. It's just for book club. So the code is Y book club. So if you put in Y book club, it'll give you 20% off any of our classes. So Please, please come and join. Take advantage. It's just our way of saying thank you so much for showing up here week after week after week. We love you.

Once again, if you missed any part of this, want to relive any part of it, go re watch any part of it, share it with any friends. We will be posting it in its entirety with one little piece cut out on YouTube. So go ahead and check that out.

Once again. Remember we started book club not because it was about reading a book, but it was about doing something together. Now that you have your book clubs going, I really, really hope that you will keep your book clubs going. We haven't decided yet if we're going to continue to do this with my other books, but we will definitely do other special things if we don't do book club.

But you know, maybe we'll do book club for some of the other books. Maybe. But if you do keep your book clubs going and I please, please, please, I wish you do, I'd like to recommend some books that you could possibly read for your book club. If you're a bunch of introverts, please go read Susan Cain's Quiet. It's a wonderful book. Everyone should read Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. I think that is mandatory reading for every human being and definitely every book club. We also like Brene Brown's.

Dare to Lead. Check that one out. Seth Godin's Tribes. These are really important books in the oeuvre of the subject, so please check those out. Start with Man's Search for Meaning. It is the foundation for everything else and I hope you keep your book clubs going. We will obviously let you know if we restart another one from our stuff. Again, as you know, we have our live classes and for those of you who took Jumpstart your why, thank you very much. It was so successful. We're continuing to add more. Please feel free to go take Jumpstart yout why again. And we've added something called office hours. So for those of you who either went through the Jumpstart yout why workshop or you didn't, but you have a good sense of your why, but you want to work on it some more and you want some one on one coaching with one of our master trainers, please go sign up for office hours.

We didn't put any limits to the number of people that can sign up and you can pay whatever you want. You can pay whatever you can for office hours. So please go check out office hours. If you want to get deeper into the details of your own personal why. The only thing we ask is you show up with some sort of why statement, whether you got it from one of our programs or not, which is fine. My brilliant, wonderful friend, Jen Waldman. This is very exciting. Is teaching a class called how to Pivot if you are a freelancer or if you are a small business owner. And in these Covid times, you need to pivot your business. Jen is one of the people that I have called during this time. She has an amazing story. She has a small business herself and her business was rendered completely shut during COVID She owns a studio, an acting studio, and obviously she can't do that anymore in real life and it wasn't easy for her to simply just do it online. And so she completely changed her business model and she managed to keep every single person on her team employed. In fact, her business is actually growing because of her pivot. So we asked Jen to take everything that she did that she learned in pivoting her business and if she would share.