How to Find Your WHY and Unlock Your TRUE Potential | Simon Sinek

Call your friends you love, the ones who you know that if you called them at 3 o'clock in the morning, they would answer the phone. Do not do this with family. It doesn't work. Those relationships are too close. Do it with the friends you love and ask them the simple question, "Why are we friends?" And they're going to look at you like you're crazy because the part of the brain that controls feelings and behavior doesn't control language. Ironically, you stop asking the question "why" because the question "why" is an emotional question and it elicits emotional responses. After your friends say, "Why are you asking me this?" you switch to "what" questions. What specifically is it about me that I know that you would be there for me no matter what? It's going to be very difficult for them and they're going to struggle. Don't help them. Don't let anybody else help them. You have to let them go through the uncomfortable process, and you have to play devil's advocate. So they'll say things like, I don't know, you're funny, you're smart, I can rely on you. And you say, good, that's the definition of a friend. You have that with all your friends. What specifically is it about me that I know you would be there for me no matter what? You're going to keep at them, and eventually they'll give up and they'll stop describing you and they'll start describing themselves. And this is what my friend said to me. They said, I don't know, Simon. All I know is that I can just sit in a room with you, I don't even have to talk to you, and I feel inspired. And I got I got goosebumps. So what they did is they articulated my value in their lives, and I had an emotional response. So you'll get to the point where they'll say something that you will either get goosebumps or you will well up with tears or something will happen. You will have an emotional response. You won't get the exact words of your why, but you will get in the ballpark. What you'll find is if you do it with multiple friends, you'll get very similar, if not the exact same answer, because the value you have in their lives is the same. It's you. So it's a fun way to find your why.

Need motivation?

Watch a top 10 with Believe Nation.

Hey, it's Evan Carmichael, and I make these videos because in my first business, I quit on my business partner. I was making $300 a month and I didn't have the motivation to keep going. And the thing that got me through was studying the stories of entrepreneurs who've had massive success. And I hope that in sharing these stories with you, you find the motivation to keep going. And if I'm being honest, I still need the stories for myself today too. So today, let's learn from one of the best, Simon Sinek, and my take on his top 10 rules of success. Enjoy. Rule number 2: Do good while doing well.

I think people make— they create a dichotomy, a false dichotomy, that they have to either choose service or individual success, right? That those two are somehow mutually exclusive, um, and that service means, uh, living a, a life of suffering, um, which is nonsense. Um, and, and then you hear these silly, these silly, uh, um projections like, I'm going to do well so that I can do good. So I'm going to put myself first, and then eventually, I'll do good for others. A friend of mine who's a philanthropist, someone came to him for advice on philanthropy. And this was a former CEO of a very large company. And my friend asked him, so what are you most proud of in your philanthropy? And he said, well, you know, we started this charity in the inner city where we help kids go on to college. And he said, that's amazing. You know, how many kids have you helped? He said, 15. He says, is that the proudest thing you've done, you know, in your life? He says, yeah, I'm really proud. And my friend said, so let me understand this. You're proud of 15 kids you helped go to college. Meanwhile, you destroyed the lives of the 60,000 people who worked for you. You know, like that's what happens when you, do well so that you can do good. You put yourself at the center of the equation, and then eventually you'll try and even the scale so you can feel good before you die. And the reality is the opposite is true. Do well— sorry, do good, and you can also do well. But doing good should not be something that we save for our retirement. Doing good is something that we can do every day. And And it's remarkably easy. I mean, what your neighbor did for you just by looking out his window was good. Saying hello, asking somebody how are you and actually caring about the answer, saying please and thank you. You know, I mean, these are very, very little things that cost nothing that make other people feel like you saw them, that they matter, that they exist. And that is all steps we take to to doing good, and of course it can grow from there, it can scale from there.

Rule number 3: Share your art.

To me, art is like a gift. You know, if you have capacity, if you have talent, if you have grit and hard work and you want to produce, gifts are supposed to be given. So what's the point of giving a gift if no one gets it, right? What's the point of producing a symphony if no one gets to hear it? So I think reception is important to to give the art point, meaning as opposed to pointless. Otherwise, you're just decorating your home. Now, we could have a debate whether I'm receiving it myself, right? So we could definitely debate that. But I think— and maybe this is just the romantic in me— it has to be enjoyed. And maybe one person is fine. Maybe if you hang it in your own home and it's just for you, that's fine too. But I think art has to be enjoyed. Otherwise, what's the point? Otherwise, it's just therapy. I'm just painting for therapy. And we all do things like that. Art has to have another human being involved. To me, art is about a relationship. You can't call yourself a romantic or somebody who chooses to love another if nobody ever feels your love. You know? I think art is a type of language, right? I know people who are the world's worst communicators when it comes to their emotions when you have a conversation with them. I've dated some of them. But given the opportunity to write, it's magical. And the feelings pour out on the page. And an eloquence like I've never seen. And as everyone here knows, great art in some way, shape, or form is always personal or semi-autobiographical. It's too hard to write pure fiction. We put ourselves in it because it gives it a sense of reality, and it's what makes us passionate for the subject that we're tackling. I know dancers who, you meet them and they're like this, but as soon as they start dancing, you realize there's It's all there. So art is language, and if no one hears you, you know, if a tree falls in the woods, you know, if no one hears what you're saying, is it worth saying anything? They're just thoughts. So what's the point of writing a play that never gets shown? It's just a thought, you know? It's just an intention. So yeah, no, I think it must be shared. It's one of the ways in which people communicate.

Rule number 4: Show your potential.

What if our why scares us? And we fear that people won't see it. Do we abandon it or do we just go for it? Okay, so there's two thoughts there that are worth unpacking. Okay, if other people don't see it, okay, let's deal with that first because I think that's a little simpler. If other people don't see it, then the question is, are we showing it, right? And so many of us, all of us, especially at various times, we're all lying, hiding, and faking at various points, right? Somebody asks a question that makes us uncomfortable in a public forum. Sometimes we agree to something, we say yes even though it's not true, because we just don't want to embarrass ourselves. We're very often inauthentic. Plus, we live in an Instagram, Facebook, TikTok-able world. We're all presenting ourselves and curating ourselves as how we want to be. So we're really good at showing people the kind of person we want to be. It's kind of ironic as well, if you think about relationships. We present ourselves as as our best selves, but it's only really when our vulnerabilities and insecurities are revealed can love exist. That's that magical authenticity. So, I would argue that if the world doesn't see who you are, are there ways that you can share it with the world in a way that is inspiring to them and authentic to you? How you show up, sometimes the clothes you wear, sometimes it's silly stuff. I always I would often wear brightly colored ties in college. I know, a little nerdy. But one, because it sort of was a reflection of my independence. I didn't dress like everyone else. But it also made people smile. I would catch them seeing my tie and it would make them smile. And I liked that. And so there are lots of little things we can do personally to bring our why to life. Now, what I'm really interested in is what you said, Andrea, when you said, what if our why scares us? Now, if it's actually scary because it's dangerous or difficult, then maybe it's not fully our why. If it scares us, but because we are afraid that others will judge us for what it is, like this is truly who I am, this is why I wake up out of bed every morning, then I think you have to go for it. Now, the question is, do you have to jump in the deep end? I think that's a question of your own risk tolerance. I think there's nothing wrong with wading into the water starting in the shallow end. I mean, think about it. Look what I do for a living, inspire people that do the things that inspire them. Like how corny and cheesy is that, right? I'm fully aware of that. When I first started talking about it, people were like, "Well, that's cheesy." I'm like, "I know, I know." And so, but I still would do it. And was it a jumping in the deep end? No, I would dip my toe and I would test things out, you know, and I would try things out and I'd see how it was received. And sometimes it went well and sometimes it didn't go well. I was learning to swim with my why, is basically was my why floaties. I was wearing why floaties. That's what I was doing. So yeah, I think if it feels right, 'cause that's the test of a why, you know, does it feel right? Does it feel like who I am? Does it give you chills or goosebumps, or does it make you well up when you think about it? Does it excite you? Then it's probably accurate. And yeah, then you're going to have to at least get in the shallow end. You dip your foot in and try, try using it in certain places. And as you get more comfortable, you'll learn to swim.

Also, to make sure you're actually taking action after watching this video, I've designed a special free worksheet just for this video. The worksheet will highlight all the lessons learned in this video, as well as pull out our 3 favorite learnings and quotes that will inspire you to actually do something. The worksheet will also give you space to write down what your key takeaways are and your specific plan of action to make sure you're getting results. If you want the worksheet designed specifically for this video, absolutely for free, there's a link in the description below. Go click on it and start building the momentum in your life and your business.

I'll see you there.

Rule number 5, enact good values.

So my favorite definition of culture is culture equals values plus behavior. And so you have to have a clear set of values first. And innovation, honesty, you know, these aren't values. Those are the things we write on the wall, but those are nouns. And if it's values plus behavior, it's things we want people to do. Everybody thinks they're honest, yet everybody tells lies. So the value isn't be honest, the value, or honesty, the value is tell the truth. The value isn't innovation. You can't walk into someone's office and say, a little more innovation today, please. Right. You know, uh, it doesn't like nobody, you can't innovate. You can't execute on innovation. It's not an instruction. Um, but you can tell people, look at the problem from a different angle. Like that's something you can do. So to, to, and by the way, your values are not aspirational. They're not a bunch of executives sitting at an offsite cutting pictures out of magazines and saying, this is the company we want to be. Your values are who you are when you are at your natural best. Your culture already exists, but you're not necessarily always operating at your natural best. And that's as true for companies as it is for individuals. And so to uncover your values is not aspirational. It's a process of discovery. And then you can write down this. I've never seen more than 5, weirdly. Don't understand the biology, but when you start getting more than 5, they start to overlap enough that you could probably eliminate one of them, which I think is interesting. Um, but there's, there's, there's at least, uh, sorry, there's at most 5 values, 3 to 5, um, that are who you are when you operate at your natural best. And now the question is, is can you develop recognition, rewards, incentives to promote those values? Are you talking about those values? Are you hiring to those values? Are you firing people who may be high performers but refuse to live to those values? Because then what you're doing is reinforcing to the rest of the company that the values matter more than anything else, which is really important. Because if we talk about values, but then all we do is promote toxic team members who are high performers, and we've all had this happen. Where sometimes even management knows. You're like, you know, that person is a real asshole. They're like, I know, but their numbers are so good. Right? And then we let them be. And so that sends a message to the rest of the company that we're talking about these values, but we don't actually believe it. And so we don't necessarily have to fire the person, but we do have to coach that person.

Rule number 6: Seek opportunities.

When my career was just getting going, and I was a speaker, which by the way was not my chosen career, I fell into it. There is a, I've forgotten the name of the organization, I think it's called the Meeting Planners Association of America, something like that, where basically all the people from all the corporations and conferences who hire the speakers, like that's their job, they have their own conference. And so to get invited to this thing is like, It's like American Idol. Like, if you do well, you get a career for the rest of your life because everyone in the room will want to hire you for their conferences for the rest of years. And if you bomb, they all know who you are and you will have no career, right? Like, that's— I'm like, I've done this a bunch now. I'm, you know, I'm relaxed on stage now. You know, I got this, you know? And like, this is one of those events that makes every speaker nervous. And, uh, and it's in this cavernous place. Ironically, it was like the worst venue. It was like, it echoed. So you'd stand on the stage talking, you could hear yourself. Anyway, during my talk, I'm doing Start With Why, it was back in the early days. I got this, you know, done this a million times and don't know what happened. I lost my train of thought. Okay. I know this, I've been through this before. So I went quiet. Usually find my place, and then I pick up again. Like, I know how to do this. I've lost my train of thought before. I went quiet and nothing happened. Like, nothing came into my mind. I had nothing. And now I panicked. And as soon as the panic sets in, now, now all rational thought disappears. And now I start sweating and my heart starts pounding, and I got nothing. I got nothing. And I look at my pad and I look at the audience, and I look at my pad and I look at the audience. And then I turn to them and say, "Have you ever had that feeling where you forget what you're talking about and everything collapses? Your heart's in your stomach, your heart's pounding, you start sweating, your hands get clammy, and sheer panic?" And they're all smiling. I said, "I'm having that right now." I said, "And I got to tell you, it feels fantastic." I said, because I do this so much, sometimes I forget to be present. And I said, right now I feel completely alive. I said, I feel totally present and totally with this. It's as much as I— as crazy it is, this is amazing. I said, okay, I need someone's help. Can somebody please tell me what I was just talking about? Because I do not know what I was talking about. And they all erupted in applause. I got more applause for that than for the actual speech. But the point is, the point is, is that in every cloud there is a silver lining. In everything that happens to us, there is goodness.

Rule number 7: Aim to be a leader.

A US Marine told me the first criterion for being a leader is you have to want to be one. And if you look at the way the Marines select their leaders, select their officers, it's different than with their enlisted corps. So if you enlist in the Marine Corps, you go to Parris Island in the east, or you go to San Diego in the west to boot camp, and they will make you into a Marine. That's what it says. We make Marines. And if you change your mind, you're going to be in the Marine Corps whether you like it or not. There is no changing your mind. Once you sign on the dotted line, you're in. In the officer corps, it's different. If you want to be an officer in the Marine Corps, you go to OCS in Quantico, Virginia, and it's a 10-week training, and you only have to stay in the first 4 weeks. For the next 6 weeks, you can drop out at any time for any reason. And the reason is, is because if you don't want to be a leader, they don't want you. Yeah, they give you the choice. You know, leadership to me is like, is like, is like being a parent. Everybody has the capacity to be a parent. Doesn't mean everybody wants to be a parent and everybody should be a parent, right? Leadership is the same. Everybody has the capacity. Yeah, doesn't mean everybody wants it and doesn't mean everybody should. Yeah, it comes at great personal sacrifice. It means you have to constantly worry about other people, like being a parent. Yeah, you have to love them whether you whether you chose them or not, your team. And there are skills to being a parent, and everyone who's ever had a child starts reading books when they find out that they're pregnant for the first time. They start asking their friends, they start asking their parents for advice, and it's constant. Whether the kid's struggling at school or struggling at home or having a good time, it's all the things like, I hate hanging out with my sister and my brother-in-law when they're with their other friends who have families, because all they talk about is kids. Well, leadership's the same. Leadership's the same. The great leaders that I know are all students of leadership. They're obsessed. They're constantly talking about it. They're reading books about it. They're watching talks about it. They're reading articles about it. They get together, it's the topic of conversation. So if you want to learn the skill set, I mean, number one, you have to want to do it. And B, you're gonna have to do some work. I mean, it takes effort.

Rule number 8, learn to spark motivation.

I don't think you can motivate the unmotivated. I don't think you could motivate people. People either are motivated or unmotivated. I think you can inspire people. And you can motivate people with sticks and carrots, offer them bounty or threaten punishment, and you'll get behavior that you want. Is there loyalty? Is there love? Absolutely not. Usually, when people are unmotivated, it's not necessarily them. It might be the situation they're in. Maybe they don't belong in the culture. Maybe they feel unseen or unheard. Maybe they're scared. Maybe they're unprepared. So we have to, you know, when somebody's unmotivated, let's not label them as unmotivated first. What are the 20 other things that it could also be? Let's start there. Now, are there some people in the world who are unmotivated? Absolutely. You hired them, which means you bear some responsibility if it's time to transition them to help them find another place where they're going to be a better fit. We can't yell at them and call them stupid and unmotivated and push them out the door. We have to bear some of the responsibility. We hired them. And if we made a mistake and hired somebody who's a bad cultural fit, then we have to take care of them and help them transition to somewhere where they're going to be a better fit. You know, if we only focus on motivating people, and that's a factor, then you're only going to get very finite thinking. An excessive amount of motivating things, like hit this number, get this bonus, you'll get a motivated employee pool that doesn't care about each other, might stab each other in the back, and eventually will take a better job somewhere else. We have to inspire people. We have to give them that sense of cause and vision that their work is worth more. We have to make them feel like they matter and feel like they're seen and heard and understood. And what ends up happening is those people are not only more motivated and inspired, but if they're offered a better higher-paying job somewhere else, they turn it down because it's not just about the bonuses and the money. It's because they would rather be here with these wonderful people.

Rule number 9: Be ethical.

So ethical fading is a really amazing and fascinating social phenomenon. Uh, basically what it is is when a group of people make unethical decisions believing that they are still consistent with their own ethical framework. In other words, they don't think they've done anything unethical, right? Extreme examples of this would be things like a pharmaceutical company raising the price of an essential drug 500%, 800%, 1,000%, 5,000%. And though it may not be illegal, it's highly, highly unethical. And yet they don't think they've done anything wrong. That's an extreme example, but we see ethical fading happen all across companies all the time, where we do things that we know are good for us, where we might lie to our customers or our clients, for example, or we might lie to each other to get ourselves ahead. You know, this is all— these are all demonstrations of ethical fading. The way in which ethical fading happens, as you said, one of the ways is just a ridiculous unbalanced amount of pressure on short-term, which forces us to think about ourselves or only think about that short-term goal. And then we can rationalize, well, everyone's doing it. It's what the company wants me to do. 'How else am I going to get ahead? I have to put food on the table. It's the system.' It's, you know, like we can rationalize the behavior. Also the slippery slope. We do something a little bit once, it worked. We do it a little more, it works. We do it a little more, it works. And before you know it, you have full-blown ethical fading. And so the way you combat ethical fading— and like I said, I gave you an extreme example of the pharmaceuticals. But we see low-level ethical fading across a lot of companies, unfortunately. And the way you combat it is, one, good leadership where that kind of thing is not tolerated. So, for example, it's totally normal for people to have unethical ideas. But the question is, when do they get caught? So, in an unhealthy company, that unethical idea is implemented until social pressure or the law intervenes. Or there's a scandal, right? And then we say, "Oh, we're terribly sorry. We're a very good company," after you got caught. In a properly ethical company, somebody may raise the idea in a meeting and everybody in the meeting will go, "That's funny, but we would never do that here. That's not us. That's a little bit unethical." And it gets shut down immediately. And again, that's good leadership. Because it's the leaders who are promoting people who are ethical, who are highlighting ethical behavior and acting in a way that sets the tone. And they're not putting undue pressure on people to break the rules in order to make the numbers. You know, a lot of leaders, unfortunately, when confronted with toxicity or unethical behavior, they'll shrug their shoulders and say, I know, but the numbers are so good. And they allow it to happen. And so one of the primary ways in which you beat ethical fading, quite frankly, is good leadership. But the others are just cause, you know, trusting teams. All of these things contribute to operating in a highly ethical way.

And rule number 10, the last one before some very special bonus clips, is stay consistent.

So in the mid-1980s, a philosopher and theologian by the name of Dr. James Karse articulated 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, baseball. If there's a winner, necessarily there have to be losers, and there's always a beginning, 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 new players can join whenever they want. The rules are changeable, which means every player can play however they want. And the objective is to perpetuate the game, to stay in the game as long as possible. Turns out we're players in infinite games every day of our lives. There's no such thing as winning global politics. There's no such thing as winning marriage. You can't be number 1 in your marriage. You can be number 2, but you can't be number 1. There's no such thing as winning education. Nobody wins learning. You can come in first for the finite amount of time you're at school where we agree upon the time frame and the metrics, grades, but nobody wins education and nobody wins business. Like when Circuit City went bankrupt, Best Buy didn't win anything, right? But if you listen to the language of so many leaders— Half the room doesn't know what Circuit City is. I know. It's sort of— I realize that. It used to be a company that competed with Best Buy. Why? Same thing. Big box store, went in, bought a VCR. You don't know what a VCR is. What I love about these definitions is that when we listen to the language of so many leaders, it becomes abundantly clear that they don't know the game they're playing in. The number of leaders who talk about being number one, being the best, or beating their competition— based on what? Based upon what agreed-upon metrics, time frames, or 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 is some consistent and predictable outcomes. The big ones are the decline of trust, the decline of cooperation, and the decline of innovation. So now let's translate that to a policing organization, right? An infinite game is not the absence of finite games. It is the context within which finite games exist. Clearly, you are engaged in finite things every day of your career. You have a project that you need to complete. There's a beginning, middle, and end. If someone has committed a crime, you want to try and catch that person. There is a known objective. There's a beginning, middle, and end. There's going to be a winner. There's going to be a loser. If you're chasing somebody down for a moving violation, for example, these things are finite. But policing and the organization of the Orange County Sheriff is an infinite organization. We hope that this organization outlasts everybody here and thrives beyond everybody here. So the decisions we make and the way we conduct ourselves have to be considerate of the fact that we want this organization to thrive for the long term. I had the opportunity to work with the Navy SEALs, and within the Navy SEALs, there's actually a more elite group within the SEALs that's much harder to get into. You have to be a SEAL for like 5 years before you even can get into this even more elite group. And I asked the director of training for this group, you know, how do you choose who gets into this more elite group within your own, within your own culture? And he drew an x-y axis. He drew a graph for me, and on the vertical axis he wrote performance, and on the horizontal axis he wrote trust. The way they define performance is how good are you at your job, right? Your skill set. The way they define trust is what kind of person are you. And the way they put it is I may trust you with my money. I may trust you with my life, but do I trust you with my money and my wife? Right? So, there's— so, clearly nobody wants the low performer of low trust. Clearly. Clearly everybody wants the high performer of high trust on their team. Clearly. What they learned is that a high performer of low trust is actually a toxic team member. And they would rather have a medium performer of high trust, sometimes a low performer of high trust, it's a relative scale, over the high performer of low trust. And this is one of the highest performing organizations on the planet. And they put huge credence in the trustworthiness and the character of the team member over their simple performance metrics. In business, we're the opposite. We have a million metrics to measure someone's performance, and we have negligible to no metrics to measure someone's trust. And so you may have a selfish, driven, toxic team member who, if they're high-performing, what do we do? We promote them. And sometimes you get to the point where leadership knows that this person is toxic, and you say, you know, you probably should do something about this. You maybe want to remove them from the team. And they say the same thing. They're like, yeah, I know, but they're performance is so good. You are literally just waiting for something to collapse, meaning either other people will leave or the culture will start to crack or there's a scandal or that person will leave because they get a better job offer. They're not loyal. So they may be your highest performer, but they're not loyal. What the SEALs learn is sometimes these medium performers of high trust are your best natural leaders. The irony is, you know, if you go to any team, it's actually really easy to find these toxic team members. That's the irony. Even though we don't formally measure it, go to any team and ask them who the asshole is, and they'll all point to the same person. Okay? And that's an opportunity to coach them. I don't believe in firing them. I believe in coaching them. We let people go when they prove to be uncoachable. And by the way, if you go to that same team, you say, who do you trust more than anybody else? Who's got your back no matter what, who's always there to help you. They'll probably also point to the same person who might be your best natural leader, and they may not be your best individual performer. First and foremost, we have to understand that there's no such thing as certainty of outcome. And this is why, this is one of the, this is a huge difference between finite mindsets and infinite mindsets, right? A finite-minded leader is afraid of surprises and does not like uncertainty. Which is why they like to work in very short timeframes, because you can actually affect quite a lot of certainty if you only think quarter to quarter, maybe year to year. But if you start thinking in 5 and 10-year increments, we all know we have zero control over those outcomes. So finite-minded players like to play with very short timeframes because it makes them feel better, even though the game is infinite. So it's actually, again, sort of a stupid idea. Infinite-minded players embrace uncertainty and find opportunity in surprise. And so where something goes wrong or different, and just as an aside, I got such a kick out of when COVID struck, you know, everybody was talking about during these uncertain times. Newsflash, all times are uncertain. There's never been a time in history ever that was certain. All that happened was something that we didn't expect took place that reminded us that time is uncertain. And for the finite-minded players, the immediate reaction was panic, right? What am I gonna do? How am I gonna survive? And try to double down on the old way of doing things, hoping that if I just did it more or at least attempt to do it online, that it would survive, right? The more infinite-minded players, and this has nothing to do with stress, we can still have high stress with what was going on, But the more infinite-minded players saw the sudden change in their business and thought, ooh, okay, this is an opportunity, what can I do with this? And instead of doubling down on the way they used to do things but doing it online, they said, okay, the times have changed, the way I operate my business have changed, all the things that I used to be able to do, like having lunch with people, can't do anymore. So given what I know now, if I was starting from scratch, I have something really valuable and important important, how would I build my business today to still provide the value to the people who are looking for the thing that I offer? And that was their mentality. Their mentality was very entrepreneurial. Their mentality was very creative. And they, though it may have caused stress, there was an appreciation for the opportunity. Listening is a trust-building exercise, right? If you've, if you're in a, take it down to a personal relationship. If you've been in a, if you've ever had a romantic relationship, a loved one, right? Making someone feel heard doesn't mean you're wrong. Saying sorry doesn't mean you're wrong. It just means you take accountability for your actions. And I think it is important that when somebody objects to vaccination, that we don't demonize or villainize them, but we attempt to hear them, make them feel heard. Doesn't mean we have to agree, but they have to feel heard. And, you know, listening is not hearing the words. You know, it's making the other person feel that they were heard. It's— we don't get to decide when hearing has happened, when listening has happened. They do. And by the way, it's not 100% successful either, you know, because some people are just hell-bent on— but that's a minority. And so I think the exercise of sitting down with people and say, tell me what you're going through, tell me what you're afraid of, I want to understand, because we're trying to make everyone safe. I want to hear what your thing is. And let them tell their story. We have no answers. We're not there to object. We're not there to react. We're not there to fix or tell them that they're wrong. Women are better than this than men. Men. And I think that has to happen, and it can happen simultaneously. They are not mutually exclusive. I'll give you one example, which is I have a friend who refused to get vaccinated. And I sat down with her, and I said, tell me your reasoning. Right. She goes, well, this new technology, like, I don't want to— we don't know. It hasn't been out long enough. Like, we don't know. So what I hear is fear of the unknown. Okay. I go, go on. And she— I let her talk and say her thing and explain all the things. And I— and then— and I simply said, so you're afraid of the mRNA technology, right? Yes. I don't want them screwing with my DNA. I said, well, just so you know, it's 20-year-old technology. But then I found something I could agree with her. But, but you're right. It is the first time it's been commercialized. You're absolutely right. This is the first time we've put it in the market. So I affirmed her fear. And then I said, do you get flu shots every year? She goes, I do. I said, okay, Johnson Johnson is a good old-fashioned flu shot. It's a different technology. It's not mRNA. So you're 100% right. If you're afraid of the new technology, don't get Moderna or Pfizer. But Johnson Johnson is— it's just like a flu shot. It's the same old tech. And she went, it is? And it is. She went and got a Moderna shot because she just wanted to be heard, because most of her friends, when she said, I'm not getting vaccinated, yelled at her, told her she was told her she's an idiot, told her she's letting her friends down, told her she's making other people sick, told her she's a risk to society. That doesn't make somebody's mind open up. All I did was let her feel heard. I think we do, we can't, we have to do that. Find a friend you love, and, you know, one of those people who if you called them at 3 o'clock in the morning, you know they'd take your call and you would take theirs. Don't do this with a spouse, don't do this with a sibling, Don't do this with a boyfriend or girlfriend. Those relationships are too close. But find a best friend and ask them this simple question: Why are we friends? And they're going to look at you like you're crazy, because it's very hard for the human brain to put our feelings into words, because the part of the brain that controls our feelings doesn't control language. This is why we use metaphors and analogies and why we struggle to tell people how we actually feel. It's because it's a different part of the brain. And so they're gonna look at you and be like, "I don't know. Why are you asking me this?" And you say, "Come on, I know you've been there for me my whole life." And then you actually stop asking the question why, ironically. You actually ask the question what. You say, "Come on, what specifically is it about me that I know you'd be there for me no matter what?" And they're gonna hem and haw 'cause it's hard to put into words, Don't help them, don't let anybody else help them, and they're gonna start describing you. "I don't know, you're funny, you're smart, you're honest, you've always been there for me." You go, "Good." You play devil's advocate. "Good, that's the definition of a friend. What specifically is it about me that I'd know you'd be there for me no matter what?" And again, they'll hem and haw, and some will get through this quickly, and some will get through it slowly, and it'll be a struggle, and you have to continue to play Devil's advocate. Good, that's the definition of a close friend. What specifically is it about me? And eventually they'll give up. Eventually they'll stop describing you and they'll start describing themselves. Like my friend said to me, Simon, I don't know. All I know is that I can sit in a room with you, I don't even have to talk to you, and I feel inspired and I got goosebumps. In fact, I'm getting them right now. They will put into words the value you have in in their life and you will have the emotional reaction. You'll either well up with tears or you will get goosebumps. This puts you in the ballpark. This is where your why lives. If you do this with multiple friends, they will say the same kind of thing. In fact, sometimes they'll say the same exact thing because your why is the thing you give to the world and amongst your closest and best friends, it is the space you fill in their lives. That's a fun little way you can find your why. We don't teach difficult conversations. We don't teach conflict resolution. We don't teach de-escalation. And we don't teach how to give and receive feedback. We don't teach how to treat ideas. We don't even teach people how to have a meeting. Like, we don't teach any of these things. And so we're just leaving it up to chance to hope that somebody knows what they're doing, which we would never let somebody on the front line do. We give them tons of training on how to do their jobs. So part Part of it is the skill set that we can train. The other thing is a lot of leaders, I think, are afraid of doing things for fear of saying the wrong thing. And again, this really lends itself to the training we need to give our leaders. And especially, I think this was really exaggerated after the murder of George Floyd, where so many leaders did nothing. They're not bad people. They were just so afraid of saying the wrong thing flaming a situation or triggering someone that they chose to just do nothing. And so one of the things we need to do is teach people how to lean into tension and to learn how to de-escalate one's own anger or one's own trigger. And again, you brought it up before, which is, and replace it with curiosity. Tell me more. What else? I'm struggling to understand. Let me tell you the story that's going through my head I think is a really big one that I've learned, which is 'cause I'm reacting based on my own narrative, right? And so they're reacting to my words or my reaction. And so one of the things that's really helped me is to share what's going on in my head so that people have the context of where my reaction's coming from. Let me tell you what my history is and what my background is. I'm not saying this is right or wrong, I'm just telling you my story. And I'll say, I had this happen in the past where X, Y, and Z, and so I know I'm nervous at your suggestion because in the past this has happened. Can you help me resolve this, or do you understand where I'm coming from? And I think the more we can share what's going on in the process rather than simply, you know, responding with our answers or our reactions helps the other person see the way we're trying to see it, and it also encourages us to see the way they're trying to see it. So I think the more we share— it's that vulnerability word again, right? Let me tell you my history. Let Let me tell you my baggage. Let me tell you my background. Let me tell you my experiences. Let me tell you where my opinion is coming from. The worst thing, the one that drives me up the wall, the one that triggers me is, this is how we've always done it. Well, why do we do it that way? Because this is how we've always done it. And my rule is, if you cannot tell me why we're doing it this way, that means it's on the chopping block. That doesn't mean it has to change, but I want real explanations of why we do something this way. If somebody can't tell me, then it's open to being changed. There's another guy who does what I do. He writes books, he gives talks, etc. His work is extremely well respected, and I admire his work as well. I happen to hate him. He's never done anything mean to me, and we've always had a very cordial relationship when we see each other professionally. I have an arbitrary Hatred of him. And as a result of my hatred, I'm extremely competitive with him. I would log on to Amazon on a regular basis. No. And check my book rankings and then immediately check his. And keep in mind, I check no one else's, just the two of us. And if he was ahead, I was angry. And if I was ahead, I was smug. And whenever his name came up in polite conversation, I would seethe underneath. We were invited to speak together at a conference where we would be interviewed together. And I don't mean like, literally, we would be on the stage together. And the interviewer thought it would be fun if we introduced each other. [LAUGHTER] And so I went first. And I turned to him and I said, you make me really insecure. And I said, all of your strengths are all of my weaknesses. And whenever your name comes up, I get really uncomfortable. And he looked at me and he said, funny, I think the same thing about you. The reason I was so competitive with him had nothing to do with him. It had everything to do with me. Because his weaknesses revealed to me— because his His strengths reveal to me my weaknesses. It's more difficult to take a hard look at myself and say, here's all the work you have to do. It's much easier, and dare I say, more fun to direct all my energies at beating him. That turned out to be an extremely cathartic experience. And I learned the value of a worthy rival. And the funny thing is, after that experience, I never checked mine or his book rankings since. I applaud his work, celebrate him, want him to do well, because it turns out working together, we actually are stronger. And I think this is the same folly in business, right? I like, you know, which is we decide who our competitors are and then we obsess with beating them like ABC, NBC. ABC, CBS, and Fox were obsessed with beating each other, and all they did was look at Nielsen ratings every morning. And then Netflix came up and didn't— like, who cares? They're all— blew them out of the water because they weren't even looking. They weren't even watching. Because that's the arbitrariness of— if you— I remember back in the early days when I first started my career, I was in the ad business and I was junior dog's body to the junior dog's body. And I was on the competitive analysis team. And basically what that meant was we studied the competition and we put together decks to the executives of look what the competition is doing. And we sometimes would hire outside consultants to run, you know, research for us. If it was too expensive to study 7 of them, we'd cut it down to 4, which is hilarious if you think about it. So you're making decisions based on 4 and ignore— anyway, you get my point. So I think the value of the other players in your industry, of the other players in the game, is not to beat them because there's no such thing. As I said before, you know, Best Buy didn't win anything when Circuit City went bankrupt, but it's to recognize and respect them. There are some players who do some or many things better than you. Maybe they have a better leadership, stronger culture, better marketing. Maybe their products are better designed. Who knows what? And instead of trying to beat them, which could mean you choose underhanded things or just drop your price, you actually say, okay, let's make our product even better. They have revealed our weakness. Let's now work on that. Because the ultimate, the only competitor in an infinite game is yourself. We don't have to like our jobs every day, but we do get to love our jobs every day. It's like you don't like your children every day, but you love your children every day. So having a hard day, you know, that's fine. But the question is, is what do we fall in love with? And at the end of the day, the reason that we stay or leave a job is because of how we feel about that job. You know, I think we misunderstand when we think people just leave for money. If they just leave for money, that they never really had strong feelings of the company in the first place. Right. Because when people feel loyal to the company, they turn down jobs that offer them more money. Or if it's so tempting and the numbers are so high, Then they go to their company and say, listen, I was offered this job. It's very tempting. There's a lot of pressure, but I don't want to leave. Is there anything you can do to help me stay? Right? So, and you, and there's the point is, is they're open about it. And what makes people want to have that conversation, like I said, is that they're seen and heard. The best companies have all kinds of programs inside the company to help the person grow as an individual. Now, we talked about, you know, listening skills and these kinds of things. These are valuable for the work that we do, but it turns out It turns out that those skills also help us as parents, and they help us as spouses or as boyfriends and girlfriends. These are valuable skills in life, you know, and I think that we forget that. We talk about hard skills and soft skills as if those things are opposite. It's a— I hate the term soft skills. Hard skills and human skills. And the more that we invest in human skills in addition to the hard skills that we're teaching, the more people feel like they're growing as individuals. I'm a better version of myself now than I was when I started at this company because the company is actually helping me on a personal growth. WD-40, which is a company that I admire their culture, the lubricant company, they train their managers to be coaches. So literally like executive coaching training, that kind of thing. But they train their own people to do, to have that skill set. So that they're equipped to help their people who have challenges. And especially with younger generation, you know, the younger generation is asking companies to provide everything. You know, we wanna have our sense of belonging, our sense of community, our sense of personal growth, our sense of purpose to come from work. It didn't used to be like that 40 years ago. And so, and so there's a huge pressure on companies. And so I think what entices people into the company and into the industry is not just come and do cybersecurity, You know, there's a percentage of people who are, you know, de facto interested in that. But rather, tell them the kind of experience they're gonna have. Tell them what they get from the company, and you'll find it remarkable how many people will all of a sudden be interested in the category and the company because of what they get holistically, not just what they get from the product. One of the things that we do is creating a culture in which people understand that the reason we're giving feedback is not to quote unquote criticize them, but to help them grow as human beings. And that has to be established. Like, this is what we're going to— the advice I offer is it's not just a checklist that you do and everything goes fine. You know, you create a culture in which difficult conversations and critical feedback are welcomed or at least understood. But it's also how we give it. Usually we give it by pulling out a piece of paper and pointing out the thing that's wrong. And, you know, and saying you've got to fix something, right? We usually point to the evidence first, as opposed to starting by the human being, which is, you know, there's stuff I want to share with you. I don't know what it means, but I wanted to raise it with you in case there is an issue, because I care about you and I want to see that you grow here. But there is some evidence that things are going a little sideways, and I want to address them with them to see what opportunities there are or if there's anything wrong, because I don't know the reasons behind it. But here's, for example, the way you talked to your teammates the other day was a little harsh. And ordinarily, I'd be one to say, oh, you know, you're having a bad day, it's no problem, you know, everybody gets a bad day. But you've been really beating up on people. I don't even know if you're aware of that. Right? And sometimes they say, I'm having a hard time, and it opens up, or they'll say, I wasn't even aware, I didn't even know, or it reveals something, as opposed to saying, stop yelling at people. Nobody wants to work work for you if all you do is yell at people. You know, it's hard for people to receive. And so good feedback is not just about conveying the point we're trying to make. It's about creating a condition in which the person is more likely to listen and hear it. So we're all proud of ourselves once we've told them. Did you give her the feedback? Yeah, I told her, right? Did they hear the feedback? Different question. One of the nice things about the Infinite Game is two players or more who sell basically the same product for basically the same price for basically the same quality can all be wildly successful at the same time. Like, no one wins. And remember, we're deciding the metrics. So, we could decide that it's market share or revenue or profit, and we're making these arbitrary comparisons to arbitrary other players, and we can be all high and mighty about ourselves. You know, General Motors decided that market share was the thing, and they were obsessed with being number one in market share. Meanwhile, they were losing money hand over fist year after year after year. Not sure if that's a very infinite-minded focus, because you're clearly going to put yourself out of the game. Remember, when Circuit City went bankrupt, Best Buy didn't win anything. If anything, they had to change the way that they played because Amazon became a much more dominant force in the industry. And so, they couldn't actually do the things that they used to do. And this is what it means to be an infinite a player means you understand that it's not simply about repeating the same thing that's always worked, but it's adapting with politics and culture and technology. And it's not actually about competing against another player on, in the field, but the only true competitor in an infinite game is actually yourself. How do I make my product better this year than it was last year? How do I give better advice this year than I gave last year? How to become a better leader this year than I was, than I was last year? And it's a constant, constant education of constant, constant improvement. I can tell you a funny story which you'll recognize from the book, which really captures the difference between a finite and infinite mindset, and it comes from a personal experience. I had the opportunity to speak at an education summit for Microsoft. And then a few months later, I was asked to speak at an education summit for Apple. Now this was back in the Steve Ballmer days. When Steve Ballmer ran Microsoft. And at the Microsoft summit, the vast majority of the executives spent the vast majority of their presentations talking about how to beat Apple. Ballmer at the time was obsessed with beating Apple. At the Apple summit, 100% of the executives spent 100% of their presentations talking about how to help teachers teach and how to help students learn. One was obsessed was obsessed with their mission, the other one was obsessed with beating their competition. Guess which one was struggling with issues of trust, cooperation, and innovation? So, at the end of my talk at Microsoft, they gave me a gift. They gave me the new Zune when it was a thing. This was Microsoft's response to the iPod. And again, there's plenty of evidence and footage of Ballmer talking about he was going to beat the iPod and this was going to be the best product ever. And I have to say, this little piece of technology was quite good. It was very user-friendly. It worked very well. It was a really nice little product. At the end of my Apple talk, I was sharing a taxi with a senior Apple executive, and I couldn't help myself. I just had to stir the pot. So, I turned to him and I said, "You know, Microsoft gave me their new Zune." "and it is so much better than your iPod Touch." And he turned to me and he said, "I have no doubt." And the conversation was over. Because an infinite player understands sometimes you have the better product, sometimes they have the better product. Sometimes you're ahead and sometimes you're behind. The goal is not to beat your competitor, the goal is to outdo yourself. Where Microsoft was obsessed with beating Apple, Apple ignored Microsoft and was obsessed with outdoing itself. A year later, Apple introduced the iPhone, which rendered both the iPod and the Zune completely obsolete. I get asked very often, you know, what are the most important characteristics of leadership? Vision, charisma, you know. I know plenty of incredible leaders that aren't big Steve Jobs visionaries, you know, they're just not. And I know some fantastic fantastic leaders who do not have charisma. They're quiet and super introverted, you know, and they're just not that exciting to talk to, spend time with. When I say charisma, I mean the traditional definition of it, which is more about energy. I believe charisma is undying belief in something, and that they have in spades. But I think courage I think courage is the one thing that all great leaders have to have because we are surrounded by overwhelming forces every day of our lives pushing us to play the finite game. You know, if you're a public company, the markets, all they want for their own selfish gain is for you to make short-term decisions. The pressures are overwhelming. If you're a numbers-driven person, the pressures are overwhelming. If you're in survival mode, the pressures are overwhelming. If you have a spouse who spends more money than you can make, the pressures are overwhelming. All the pressures around us, even the way we treat competition versus rivalry, like we feel like we have to win, win, win all the time. The pressures every day on us are absolutely overwhelming for us to be finite and to prioritize the short term over the long term, to prioritize the urgent over the important. And it takes unbelievable courage to put the important before the urgent. It takes unbelievable courage to resist all the pressures coming from selfish outside parties. It comes— it takes unbelievable pressure to do the right thing. They happen to have a coffee bar in the lobby of the Four Seasons in Vegas, and so one afternoon I went and bought myself a cup of coffee, and the barista working that day was a kid named Noah. Noah was funny and charming and engaging, and I spent far too long buying a cup of coffee because I just so enjoyed talking to Noah. So as is my nature, I asked Noah, do you like your job? And without skipping a beat, Noah said, I love my job. Now, in my line of work, that's significant. Like is rational. I like the people. I like the— I like the work. You know, I get paid well. I like my job. Love is emotional. It's a higher order connection, right? Like, do you love your wife? I like her a lot, right? Clearly. It's clearly a different standard, right? So when Noah said, "I love my job," my ears perked up. This kid has an emotional connection to his work. So immediately I followed up and said, "Tell me specifically what the Four Seasons is doing that you would say to me you love your job." And again, without skipping a beat, Noah said, "Throughout the day, managers will walk past me and ask me how I'm doing, ask me if there's anything that I need to do my job better." my job better, not just my manager, any manager. And then he said, I also work at another hotel, and there the managers walk past us and catch us when we do something wrong. There the managers are always trying to drive performance and make sure we hit our numbers. He said, there I'd like to keep my head below the radar, get through the day, and just collect my paycheck. Only at the Four Seasons do I feel I can be myself. Now this is the exact same human being working at two different companies, and yet our experience of him will be profoundly different. Not because of him, but because of the leadership environment in which he works. You know, I get this question all the time. You know, Simon, how do we get the most out of our people? People are not a towel that you wring them out to see how much you can get out of them. You know, it's, it's a, it's, it's, it's. That's a good one, man. It's a flawed question. The question is, how do we create an environment in which our people can work at their natural best? And that is the art of leadership. It's creating environment in which relationships can thrive, in which trust can thrive. And we all know what it feels like to be on a trusting team, right? It means that we feel feel psychologically safe enough to raise our hand and say, um, I made a mistake, or I need help, or I'm having trouble at home and it's affecting my work, or I'm scared, or I don't know what to do, um, without any fear of humiliation or retribution, but rather to say these things with the absolute confidence that someone on our team will rush to support Unfortunately, we also all know what it feels like not to work on a trusting team where admitting any of those things could hurt your chances of promotion, could hurt your chances of— you could be humiliated. And so when we work on teams where leadership is creating an environment where trust is at a premium, we force our people to come to work and lie, hide, and fake, where they're pretending that they've made no mistakes, They're lying, hiding, and faking, and eventually things will crack and things will eventually break. And when you talk about reinvention and you talk about innovation and you talk about challenging the status quo or whatever it is, necessarily there's risk and necessarily there are mistakes and necessarily there's stupid ideas. And you have to create an environment in which that's good. The alternative is everybody playing it safe, which is not the way that leads to best outcomes. Or significant improvement. I think one of the essential skills of being a good coach is listening. And this is a skill that is not taught in school. We don't learn it at home, unfortunately, and we don't learn it at work. Listening is not hearing the words that are spoken. That's like my favorite quote that you say. Go ahead. I'm sorry. Listening is— I thought I was being original. Listening is not about hearing the words that are spoken. It's not being able to parrot back what somebody said to you. Listening is listening for meaning, right? You are a good listener. The test for being a good listener is if the other person feels heard, right? Say that again. Write that down. So I mean, we've all had— we just take it out of the context of business, right? We've all had an argument or wanted to share our feelings with a friend or a loved one, right? Spouse, girlfriend, boyfriend. You're sitting on the couch and you say something's bugging you and you say, can I just tell you something that's bugging me? And they respond by trying to fix it or they respond by pointing out the facts that may or may not align with how you feel, right? Well, that's impossible because this is what happened. And what they're missing is you are not looking for them, you're not looking for them to compare the facts of what's being said. You just want to feel heard. You just want somebody to go, "Oh my God, that's really hard. Yeah, I hear it. I hear that. Thank you for sharing that with me. That must be difficult." "Thank you, that's all I needed," right? I'll give you a very funny example of bad listening. So I used to date a girl who's an air traffic controller. Air traffic controllers are a breed unto themselves, and it's only about the facts. And I woke up one morning, I had something in my eye and I couldn't open my eye, it was hurting. And I'm like flushing it out with water and nothing's working. And I mean, I couldn't even open my eye. I have her come, I'm like, come here, come here. I mean, I'm like, look in my eye. What do you see? Anything? Do you see anything? And she looks in, she goes like this, and she goes, there's nothing there, and then walks away. And I eventually, you know, whatever it was, I eventually was okay. And I went up to her, I was like, WTF, right? I'm like, "I had something in my eye, you just walked away." And she's like, "There was nothing there, so what do you want me to do?" I was like, "A little sympathy?" She's like, "Well, that's not gonna get anything out of your eye." Listening is standing by my side while I'm flushing it out with water and go, "Oh my god, that must hurt so much." Yeah, it does. Thank you. Right? That's listening. And if somebody can learn to listen, and now this is where it gets actionable. This is not me just waxing philosophical and telling funny stories about listening. My friend Will Guidara, how many of you are restaurant people? Have you ever heard of Eleven Madison Park? So at some point in New York City, Eleven Madison Park was the best restaurant in the world, right? Ranked number one. And Will, believes in this. He was the former owner. He believes in this concept of unreasonable hospitality, which is going to what good service is and then going way, way, way beyond. And one of the core tenets of unreasonable hospitality is learning to listen. And I'll give you an example that directly impacts your business. Most agents don't listen. And I'll give you an example. What do you do for your clients after they close on a home, right? It's very common, we've all bought a home too, right? Which is, you walk into this new home that you just bought as a buyer, and there's a bottle of champagne in the fridge, there's a basket of flowers on the dining room table. The same basket of flowers that you gave to every other client, the same bottle of champagne that you gave to every client. Generic. I'm a number. It's just rote. But if you were listening while they were looking at all those homes, and they saw this one little room that was too small to make a bedroom. It was just sort of a stupid little nook that nobody really understood why that room existed in the house. And your client walked in and goes, "Oh, I could make this my yoga room." And that's the house they bought. Instead of putting a bottle of champagne in the house— this is what Will talks about— instead of putting a bottle of champagne in the fridge, why not put a yoga mat in that room with a little note that says, "It's perfect." Right? That's called listening. And every single time you go out, every single time you go out with clients, they are telling you things. They're telling you stories. They're waxing philosophical. They're telling you what they don't like and what they do like. The problem is you're listening to whether they like big windows. You're listening to whether they like the view. You're listening to whether they have 2 cars and they I need 3 cars, or whatever it is, but you're not listening to the reasons why. The why. You're not listening for the meaning. And that's— those are the little notes you want to make that make someone feel seen and make someone feel heard. How can we ensure that we're changing with times, technology, culture, politics, and tastes, rather than just trying to beat our competitor? And you see it across industries. You know, publishing, for example. The internet showed up and they saw it and they thought it was nice and they, as it took on, they sort of, I guess they were interested in it, they sort of played defense. And then Amazon showed up and Amazon went to all of them and said, "Hey, you wanna invest in us?" And they all said no. Well, now they're all playing catch-up, they're all playing defense. Netflix went to Blockbuster and said, "Wanna buy us?" And Blockbuster said no. The rest of the TV and movie industry were too busy comparing who had higher ratings and they completely miss the fact that Netflix has now completely reinvented television. I find that fascinating. General Motors was destroying its own electric vehicles in an— in a— to protect its old business, and now they're all rushing to catch up with Tesla. I think this is hilarious, and it's the little companies, the Netflixes, the Amazons, the Teslas, that get ignored, that aren't seen as a threat that end up defining and redefining entire marketplaces. Now, this is not unique to small companies. Big companies can absolutely redefine. The problem is big companies are more obsessed with their finite goals. Big companies are more obsessed with beating their competitors, and little companies are obsessed with their vision. Little companies are obsessed with this outsized vision that outstrips the resources they have, right? Somebody says, we're gonna do this, and everybody looks around and goes, We don't have the money for that. We don't have the talent for that. I guess we'll have to be creative. And I think this is one of the opportunities for big companies. As they get big, their visions get smaller. They become goals that they can just do a back plan for. There's nothing inherent that a big company shouldn't be innovative. But to your point before, they become risk-averse, they become stable, and at the end of the day, it takes huge vision. What I imagine is a huge corporation, a multibillion-dollar corporation, that someone will say, we imagine a world that's so crazy and so idealistic that in this large corporation they all look around and go, we don't have the money for that. We don't have the talent for that. I guess we'll have to be creative, which scares the heck out of the investor community. But remember, all of those companies were founded by whether it's your Steve Jobs or all of these companies, Salesforce, they all started by young people who had no experience and only had vision. And I think that's— there's no reason why big companies cannot be innovative, but I think it's about pushing their own boundaries and allowing for entrepreneurship. And inherent in entrepreneurship is failure. You can't experiment without failing. I remember talking to a CFO of a big company once, and he told me that he has two priorities for the company: innovation and efficiency. I said, good luck with that. You know, there's nothing efficient about innovation because you have to keep trying something over and over again. There's nothing efficient about that. And for some reason, I don't know what it is, companies are obsessed with growth. And everybody, they brag, we're a hypergrowth company. Show me one article, not 10, not 15, Show me one article that shows any data that hypergrowth is good for business and good for the company. There is no data to show that companies who are obsessed with growth actually build stronger companies, because they don't. And so it is a fool's errand that is promoted usually by an incentive structure that rewards short-term benefits. I think what companies can do is start to look at their incentive structures and start rewarding things like teamwork, work, ethics, and long-term gain. And guess what? You'll get the behavior you reward. There's no such thing as a perfect job, and there's no such thing as a perfect person. Of course there are things that we are doing that hold ourselves back, and of course there are things about the environment in which we work, whether it's the people or the job or whatever the circumstances, that may also be holding us back. I mean, but to see ourselves as victims is not the thing, but rather to seek opportunity. And it goes I think it goes back to that growth mindset, which is— it's what I've learned is one of the best ways to grow oneself is to actually help somebody on the team grow. Service. You know, there's an entire section in the bookshop called self-help, and there's no section in the bookshop called help others. And I think what we've done is we've over-indexed on the whole rugged individualism sort of self-helpy thing. How can I be successful? I grow my business? How can I lose weight? How can I find love? And yet we forget, how can I help somebody else grow their business? How can I help somebody else find success? How can I help somebody else lose weight and find love, et cetera? And the irony is, is the more that we set out to help somebody else, because we have more objectivity with other people, ironically, we actually learn to help ourselves. I tried this out. I did a little experiment. A dear A dear friend of mine was going through a hard, a hard time. A solopreneur, work wasn't going well. Her marriage was shaky, and she was in a bad place. And so she knows what I do for a living, so she called me up and says, would you spend some time with me? I said, of course. So every single week, religiously, we spent about 90 minutes together. She'd come over, and we would We'd talk, and I would offer her some perspective and some ideas, and she'd feel great for like a day or two, and then she'd go back. And we'd get together the next week, and she'd feel great for a couple of days, and then go back. And this repeating pattern went on for quite a while. And then I remembered my own work, which is the idea of service, and had a little idea, which is to switch it around. And I called her up and said, look, I would like some coaching. I was teaching too, and it was genuine. I said, you know me better than anybody else. I trust you completely. When we get together for one of our sessions, can it— can I— can I use up some of the time? Can I tell you what I'm going through? And what ended up happening is we spent all 90 minutes talking about my stuff. And this went week after week after week where she was just the advice giver. And strange things started to happen. She started to get more stability in her work, more stability in her marriage. Her confidence went up. And it was because she was helping me that she was gaining all the insights and perspective, because it wasn't personalized. It's like sales training. And anybody who's ever gone through sales training, you know this, which is you always do it with 3 people. You know, the person who plays the role of the salesperson, the person who plays the role of the person you're selling to, the buyer, and an observer. And it's the It's the observer that does the learning, not the people playing the roles. Well, in this case, she got to see herself not be so close to it. It gave her objectivity. So I'm a great believer in if you have a problem to solve at work, try and help somebody else solve that same problem.

Because you made it this far in the video, I want to celebrate you. Most people start and don't finish. Most people never actually follow through. Most people say they want something, but they don't ever do the work to actually get it. But you are different. You are special. Believe Nation, you made it here all the way to the end, and I love you. So as a special celebration, if you put a hashtag #believe down in the comments below on this video, I will showcase you and celebrate you somewhere on the screen in a future video because You are awesome. For 10 more amazing rules from Gary Vaynerchuk, check the video right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe, and I'll see you there.

The process of doing something you actually like is my great addiction. The fact that I am able to actually wake up day in and day out, sleep easily for 7, 8 hours a night, and wake up