Simon Sinek with Shane Mac

Hey everyone, my name is Shane Mac. We have Simon Sinek here. He's an optimist and the author of Start With Why. Simon, thanks for coming today, and I thank you very much for the TED Talk you gave. I think it was probably about 3 years ago now, which is when I first saw you, and since then it feels like I've never actually had the opportunity to meet you, yet all the people that I cross paths with all know you and speak very highly of you. So thank you for taking the time today.

Shane Mac.

So, what I wanted to ask you was, your whole thing is about start with why, and in business, probably in life, and I wanted to ask you like how you got to the why. How did you get to what started this whole train of, you know, teaching businesses about the why and, you know, how it comes before the what and the how, and how you as a person got there. Like your personal story up to that. And what I think people could relate to is what I would be really interested in hearing and how you found the why.

Sure. You know, the whole exercise was never an academic one nor a business one. I owned a little marketing consultancy way back when and things were fine. And after a few years in business, reached a point where I had lost my passion for what I was doing. And it was a dark time and it was really a big struggle and people would give me silly advice like, "Do what you love." It's like, "I'm doing the same thing, I don't love it anymore," you know? But for the confluence of a few events and the love of some close friends, I'm not sure where I'd be or what I'd be doing. I just remember it was a very, very, very dark period and, you know, when you're a young entrepreneur, And when you think that you have it all figured out, only to realize you don't, humble pie tastes a little peppery. And I think the hardest thing I went through was admitting that I didn't know as much as I thought I knew, admitting that I had failed even, and willing to accept help when it was offered. And I had to learn to stop pretending that I knew everything when I didn't. And, you know, I think every entrepreneur or any person who has any success in their life, quite frankly, has to reach a point where you're close to, if not completely hitting zero, to earn the strength to sort of come out of it, you know? You don't fear it as much when you've been there once at least. And my story is exactly the same. And so, like I said, I had this— I had this— it was a confluence of events. So I had this curiosity with why some marketing worked and some marketing doesn't. And I had this little idea that I had on a shelf that I even back then called the Golden Circle, that simply explained why some marketing works and some marketing doesn't. And, and it wasn't until I started to learn how the human brain works did I realize that what I had discovered was something much bigger. It was more than marketing. It's why people do what they do. And thank goodness I found that, because at a time when I was in a dark period, I realized that I knew what I did, I knew how I did it, but I didn't know why. And became obsessed with answering that question. And even then asked someone to help me figure it out, because even then I realized I couldn't have the objectivity that I thought I had. So I sort of explained to somebody my process and sort of entrusted their process and we sort of came to something. And it was at that point when I learned why I do what I do that it not only reinvigorated me and inspired me to levels that I'd never had prior, but I literally stopped talking about what I do. I literally stopped talking about what I do and only started talking about what I believe. And then this crazy journey began. Invitations to give the TED Talk, you know, the TEDx Talk, you know, the opportunity to write a book. I didn't write a proposal. You know, all of a sudden invitations to present to more and more people and invitations to the Pentagon and all this crazy stuff that I never imagined. And it was all because I was obsessed with what I believed and not what I did. But, you know, you raise the question, which is where does it come from? And, you know, I teach it to businesses. At the end of the day, it, you know, it's a very human thing, which is why I think it resonates with so many people. And a business is nothing more than a collection of people. That's all it is. And when that collection of people shares a common vision and a common bond and a common belief set, they will function like an individual, you know. And so you can apply these ideas to the group. That's the funny thing about this, which is it's really become an organizational, a group thing, but it started up just for one broken person. And that's the point, which is when the organization is dysfunctional, the people are not aligned, then you can't treat them as if they were one beautiful entity because they're not. And when they are aligned, you know, that's why we can say of a brand, you know, if you were a person, which person would you be? Because when a company or a brand or an organization is cohesive in what they believe, they can be perceived as someone, and that's kind of beautiful to me.

That's amazing. So can I go back a little bit? So what were the— what did the friends do that helped you see what you didn't see? Like, you mentioned a couple friends. You said that without them you wouldn't have been able to find it.

Like, what did—

what was that actually like? Like, what did they do, or what did you do, and how did that transpire into you understanding and getting involved in like why people do what they do?

I was in a bad place and thank goodness I had friends that I turned to and was willing to admit weakness to them. And they knew I was in a bad place and they knew that I was struggling and they knew that I hadn't figured it out. Sometimes they felt good and sometimes I put on a brave face and sometimes I felt bad. But it was a struggle. And I had one friend, God bless her, who nervously, very nervously, brought me an article that she ripped out of a magazine that she had read that says, do you have adult ADHD? And she sort of nervously hands me this article, right? And I read the article, and at the end it tells you to do a test. And if you score 11 out of 20, you should see a doctor. I scored a 19, I think.

I think a lot of us would feel that now.

Yeah, right. So I was like, ah, this may be a contributing factor to the fact that why I'm not able to concentrate long enough to get anything done. And I did go and see a doctor and just being aware of that means I could, believe it or not, just, you know, you can take control of it just by being aware of it, but being treated for that. And that started it. That started the confidence that my friends care about me and they're willing to come come to me and point things out about me that may help me. And instead of being offended by it or aggressive about it, or, you know, when people point out your weakness, very often our response is to fire back. Well, you're fat. Well, you're lazy. Well, you know, you know, like, whatever, you know, it's like we get angry, we say stupid things. And the reality is, the reason we become so defensive is because they're right, you know, because if they were wrong, we'd be like, "Nah, you're wrong." And so, like I said, I, for the first time, and I think in a long time, I listened to people who genuinely cared about me because I knew they genuinely cared about me. When I tried to go to sort of these conferences to get advice from people who knew more than me and who had already done it, and all these successful people with all their great advice and their books and their programs and all of this stuff, they were all very good and fine. But the more I heard The only thing I— the more I listened, the only thing I could hear was all the things I was doing wrong. So it actually made me feel worse. And they weren't telling me because they cared about me. They were telling me because they wanted to sell me something. So I wasn't very open to those people. I was open to my friends.

So when you talk about the why, is as much as the why figuring out why you do the things that are wrong as much as finding why you do the things that are right?

No, I'm not that interested in looking what's broken and trying to fix it. That doesn't seem like a very good use of time. I'm more interested in the things that work and working to amplify them. There are many, many things that I'm bad at. And by the way, I believe it's good to know those things. You know, I believe that you need to have two piles, you know, the things you know, the things you're really good at and things you're really bad at. And what you're supposed to do is take the things you're really bad at and you put them behind your back. And that's where you keep them. And then when people say, what are you good at? You show them all this stuff. And when they ask you to do something else that you suspect isn't, you sort of double-check and you'll be like, no, I can't do that. But we'll offer you money. You'll be like, yeah, no, I can't do that. Right? But I can do this. You know? And I tend to believe that when we talk about what we're good at and we offer what we're good at and we admit what we're bad at, We are perceived as honest brokers. You know, as a young entrepreneur with this little marketing consultancy, I would position myself as great at everything. I could do this. I even remember back in my old marketing days, you know, we'd go with these sophisticated presentations to see these large clients to win their business, and we would tell them we're good at PR and we're good at traditional advertising and we're good at guerrilla and we're good at internet and we're good at non-traditional and we're good at outdoor and, you know, Come on, really? Everything? Everything? You're good at— you're not bad at anything? It's just not believable, you know? And it's like when we meet a human being and they're like, yeah, I'm strong, I'm smart, I'm good at math, I'm really organized, I'm creative, I sing, I paint, I'm an accountant, I'm a lawyer. No weaknesses? Nah, I'm pretty amazing actually. Like, it's just not credible. It's just not credible. And so the amazing thing is we treat people and companies the same way. When, when we present ourselves as perfect in every way, we don't believe you. And so I stopped doing that and I would go into meetings and say, okay, I'm really good at this, this, and this. I'm okay at this, but if you want me for this, I would recommend you hire someone else and I'll work with them. And the amazing thing would happen is they kept asking me to do the things that I didn't want to do just because they trusted me that I would let them know if something went wrong. But I had to say, no, no, no, trust me, it won't work out. It gave me the confidence to admit things I couldn't do because, because more importantly, I had the confidence to tell you the things I could do. And until you're confident to say the things you can do, you won't admit the things you can't do.

So then, so then the interest for— I— so is finding why you do what you do for the things that you can do.

Yeah, why we do what we do is what drives us, you know. It's implicitly what drives us, and how we do it are our natural strengths. And so I want to work to my strengths, you know. And I'll surround myself with people who are good at things that I'm not good at, because I'll probably be good at things that they're not good at. And that's what makes a good team, right? If we're good at everything, we wouldn't need anybody. But I need a lot of people, a lot of people.

I think we all do, right?

Yeah, exactly.

So I just have a couple more questions. So in like a, say a startup world, I don't know if you spend a lot of time in startups or more corporations, and you know, I think at different levels there are different scales. And so from a startup context, I live a little bit more in that world and been in corporate, but in that context when you have 2 or 3 people that are trying to define like a pre-product market fit product, trying to define what would work. Is it more important to define the why before the what in a product sense? Or is it like more important to do on like a lean methodology standpoint, which is just defining a product that shows signs of stickiness and can grow? Or can they both exist, or does one kind of have benefits over the other?

No, no, there's an order. First of all, the product will change. You know, almost every company that's been successful, what they started doing and what they're doing now aren't the same. Yeah, you know, um, and the product's allowed to change. The product is flexible. What we do is flexible, sometimes driven by good or bad decisions, and sometimes driven by market change. You know, the railroads define themselves by their product. We're in the rail business. Um, had they defined themselves by the mass transportation that they were operating in, they may own all the airlines, but they all went out of business, right? Uh, all the railroads went out of business, and they were the biggest businesses in their time. So defining ourselves by what we do is a fool's game, quite frankly. And anybody who sees a product and is looking to create a market for it, it's backwards. Great ideas and great products and great services are born out of the attempt to solve real problems. Mine was to solve a real human problem, and almost every idea was to solve a real human problem, ours or someone else's. And the problem with a lot of startups today and a lot of technology especially is just because we can doesn't mean we should, you know? And we play off of people's imagination. Like, imagine that you come into a conference room and if you hit a button, the screen will come out of the wall and that's where you can project stuff from, right? Now, here's what I would ask: what problem did putting a motor on the screen solve? I can't ever remember when the string failed us, right? But we saw fit to put a motor in just because we can. And by the way, I've been in more conference rooms where the screen didn't work because of the motor other than the string, right? Uh, innovation is the application of technology or mechanics to solve a human problem. But if there's no human problem, then what are we doing? And I think we become very enamored with what we're capable of doing, even if there's no use.

So I'm pretty fascinated at this. I do, I love product and product design and behavioral like design around products. So in a case where, you know, some products get designed where you can't see the problem it's solving or, you know, a problem is kind of once it becomes something that I can't not go back to, right? Like I'm addicted to it. I have a behavioral attachment. It's a habit. And then say in a case of an Instagram, or a YouTube or something in a case where you maybe not see a problem in solving it first, or is it solving a problem, or is it more about, you know, creating new markets of just desire, ways to present yourself?

Every single one of those successful companies, go back and ask the founders where the idea came from, and there's a story. Facebook came from a kid's desire to be able to put the— to make the Facebook that was the thing that they gave out at school so that students could more easily connect with each other, right? So that you could meet people from other places, right? Born out of reality. Craigslist was a guy who was letting his friends at work know what was going on around for social life. You know, I don't know the history of Instagram, but I have to, I have to believe it was somebody who wanted to share with their friends what they were up to in a way that was easier and less bulky than sending MMSs, you know? So, you know, 100% of the time, the things that really grab us, that really become something special, were born out of something in reality. Nobody, none of those companies, none of them sat down and said, well, we read a report by McKinsey that said, and so we tried to find a way. It didn't happen. It didn't happen. You know, it's real people solving their own problems, and there's no billionaires who set out to become billionaires. You know, it was always an accident that they never imagined it would be this successful, or they never imagined everyone would like this. It's just, that's how it works. And that's why it works. It's because it's human and because it solved a problem. Steve Jobs, you know, who we hail as this technological blah blah blah, you know, he was obsessed with having technology be seamlessly integrated into our lives so the technology would adapt to the way we live our lives and we shouldn't have to adapt to the way technology works. We shouldn't have to change the way we live our lives to use technology. Technology should be adapted to make it so that we can use it. He was dogged about it. And this is what we hail as elegant and simple. Really? Maybe it's just a little more human. You know, even when Apple talks about education, you never hear them talk about digitizing the classroom. You hear them talk about how they can use their products to help teachers be more, better teachers and help students learn better. I mean, it's always about the human being, always about the human being.

Awesome. I think this is an amazing interview, an amazing talk to hear you. Is there anything else that like over the last 3 years of kind of the whirlwind ride that you've been on that you would like to share or you think is a really interesting thing that, you know, many of us may not know about you or something that you've learned that you may not share that often?

Um, I'll tell you one general one that I— because you asked two questions there, something I've learned and something about me. Uh, something I've learned is, um, all success requires people, um, and it requires trust. And the problem is, who do you trust? How do you know who to trust? Who should trust you? Are you trustworthy? And I've been doing tons of research on this subject. And as much as I would love to say that technology helps, technology doesn't help. Real trust, the bond of trust, deep, strong bonds requires the interaction of people face to face. As nice as it is to talk to you through a screen, you and I aren't connecting right now. You know, but if I was sitting with you in front of it, you know, at the table, we might have a connection, right? We might have a chemistry, whatever that means. And so we have to be very wary as we build our organizations and build our companies and look to call on others for help, that being in close proximity, getting to know someone, spending time and energy to do things for others, putting ourselves out there really, really matters. And without it, we start to feel a little bit isolated. So I cannot stress, as much as I embrace technology and I'm a gadget guy, all of that stuff, the thing that I've learned is to leave my cell phone at home when I go out with my friends. Like, who am I calling? I'm out with my friends. You know, the little things that I've learned is to turn off all the alerts and alarms that tell me when emails come in or texts come in or everything so that I don't have a Pavlovian response because I don't know. And what I've learned is that now when I have the dingers on and it dings, I don't jump. I'll get it later. And that's a big deal. Little, little things like leaving your cell phone at home when you go out with your friends, big deal, big deal. Picking up a friend, picking up the phone to call them instead of texting them, how are you? How about how are you? Has amazing impact. So that's something I've learned and I work really hard to keep alive in my life. In terms of the personal thing, what most people don't know about me—

I don't mean to put you on the spot.

Ah, it's okay. I mean, I'm just— my mind is racing of all the directions I could go in. I could tell you so much. I think most people think I'm a businessman, and I'm the furthest thing from it. I'm an artist, you know. I define myself as an artist. I have an artist sensibility. I enjoy chaos much more than I enjoy organization. I find pretty things are made and ideas come out of chaos. I like creative people. I spend a lot of time with dancers and actors and performers and those kinds of folks, and I'm very sort of involved in the dance world as well, in the modern dance world. Yeah, I'm just a nutty artist, just making stuff up, making shit up.

You're doing a great job of it. I think a lot of people would love this message. Ah, thank you.

I appreciate that. I appreciate it. That's very kind.

Well, thank you very much for coming today, and I think a lot of people would love this message. So thank you very much.

My pleasure. Thanks for helping me share it.