I'm here with Simon Sinek, a unshakeable optimist and inspirational speaker.

Thank you for your time. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me.

So, let me ask you a broad question before we get into the nitty-gritty.

Why are you an optimist? Why do you choose to see the world that way?

Yeah, I mean I don't know if optimists choose to see it that way

I think, well I guess, you can choose to be an optimist that is a point

of view that you can take right you can look for everything bad in the world and

think the world is crashing and it will never get better or you can choose to

see the good in people and choose to see the good in the world and then that's

the direction that that will follow and you know I I tend to believe that

there's no finality in anything you know it's not like you know you're even

though we our lives are finite life is infinite you know life goes on and and

for me the goal is not to produce something that has an end point but to

produce something that has momentum that can live on beyond me and so I choose an

optimistic path where did you go to college I went to Brandeis University

just outside of Boston you go to grad school I have half a law degree oh yeah

right right I dropped out of it yeah I dropped out of Law School

what what what prompted you to drop out it's not for me and I knew that it

wasn't for me yeah you knew that it wasn't for you before

you even went to law school oh no I wanted to go yeah but once I was there I

realized it wasn't for me and I figured why waste the time yeah so when you when

you dropped out of law school and went into the real world so to speak what

what were the jobs that you were holding before you went off and started your own

thing I was living in England I went to law school in England and I not only

made the decision to drop out of law school oh so made the decision to move

back to the United States and I happen to be dating a girl who was studying

advertising at Syracuse and so she got this idea this bug in my ear about

advertising where I could do business and creative stuff all at the same time

interests and so I made the decision to go into advertising to go into marketing

and so my career started me I started looking for jobs in

advertising and I started ad agencies so most of your wisdom is about how to

better live in this corporate world yeah how did the corporate world suit you you

know I I was still an entrepreneurial I think people misunderstand what the word

entrepreneur means listen you know small business owners owned small businesses

and entrepreneurs solve problems and there are many many entrepreneurs inside

corporations yeah and not all small business owners or entrepreneurs I say

so an entrepreneur is somebody who's constantly looking for a better way to

do something there's a there's a sort of a mad scientist about them it's not

simply you know understanding structure and building business and and that's the

way I was in the corporate world which you know depending on my bus was either

welcomed or or not oh yeah I used to get in trouble for that's not how we do it

around here and really did I break any rules they're like no I'm like did I get

it done they're like yes I'm like did it get it done better than you expected

they're like yes I'm like so what exactly is the problem you know so I was

that yeah I was you know I had good relationship I was very lucky I had some

some not-so-great bosses at the beginning of my career which was

actually great because I learned I learned about the camaraderie of a team

but I had some fantastic bosses middle and later on in my career which was

really great and a lot of who I've become as a leader is very much it was

very much shaped by those people when did you start developing that first

philosophy that you were known for the Golden Circle the concept of the Golden

Circle when did that realization start to happen so I quit the ad business and

started my own marketing firm already in 2002 and throughout my entire career I

was always fascinated why some advertising or some marketing worked and

some didn't uh-huh and because having been on the inside I knew that I could

have a brilliant team and we could have come up with amazing creative ideas and

it would fail or I could have a the same team on a different thing who would come

up with equally good ideas and it would succeed mm-hmm and so I would I looked

at the great marketers the ones that we admired and the ones that I've written

about you know your Southwest Airlines your apples the ones that

perennial favorites yeah and I recognized that there was a pattern in

the way in which they spoke to us like I literally could look at their ads and

like see that there was an organization and I wrote it down and even back then I

called it the golden circle and when I when I had my own business I would you

it was just basically in powerpoints to explain why some marketing worked and

some marketing didn't it wasn't when you were first talking to a client it wasn't

a big idea yeah yet it was simply an organizing principle how to organize

information for marketing as it turns out there's a pattern as it turns out

all the great and inspiring leaders and organizations in the world whether it's

Apple or Martin Luther King or the Wright brothers they all think act and

communicate the exact same way and it's the complete opposite to everyone else

so what is it you then that decided I want to share this with as many people

as I can regardless of clients from my from my advertising agency or were

people reaching out and saying hey can you talk about this outside of your work

it's like so many of these stories it sounds like you know I was a genius but

it was much more evolutionary than revolutionary a lot more organic what I

was fascinated by this idea and it had a profound impact on my own life and my

own view of the world and like anybody when you read a great book you see a

great movie you tell your friends to read it or see it and so I would talk

about this thing obsessively because it it was like it was you know it's like

when you find a new song and all you do is listen to that one oh I've been there

it's the same eye it's the same thing you know that's just this obsession for

this one thing the difference is it didn't lose steam and my friends were

taking it to heart and we're making crazy life changes like I'd really need

jobs and starting businesses once they heard this thing because of a talk you

had with him at a bar yeah or yeah and Wow and I figured out how to help people

find their why and I would I and my friends would invite me to their homes

to share with their friends so it all started with me standing in somebody's

living room in New York City like you know with one of those those prepared

platters that you get at the at the supermarket with the celery and the

carrots and you know like one of those in the middle of the room and I would

talk about the thing called the Y and people would ask me to help them find

their when I used to do it for a hundred bucks on the side

it was extremely organic you know I kept I talked about it everywhere when

people would tell people about it people would ask me to come talk about it and

somebody invited me to come give a talk to a bunch of entrepreneurs and I said

yes Wow so what happened when when you gave their first target your first real

talk were you like oh my I should maybe this shouldn't just be the sidekick I

didn't know that being a speaker was actually a thing weirdly so and this is

we're talking 2000s I started giving these talks in 2006 because it was my

own discovery of my own why that really generated a passion for this idea and

what was your own why to inspire people to do what inspires them so together

each of us can change our world for the better which continues to be my passion

and my drive and that has not changed it one you only have one why your whole

life yeah and the opportunity is to live in balance or out of balance with that

with that why I say it's not created in the middle of your life it's created

early in your life and if you can figure out what it is you can choose to make

decisions to to bring that Y to life and that's that's what I've done as we're

here in this sort of 2006-2007 area you have your marketing firm and you're

doing this consultation work teaching people how to find their why when did

you sort of stop doing the more traditional marketing stuff and just

really focus on this is what I'm doing probably a year ish after that mm-hmm it

wasn't it was relatively quickly when I realized I wanted to only do spread this

message of the Y yeah wasn't sure exactly what form it would take I just

knew I wanted to do it and so managed to back out of my lease my back I didn't

pay a fine oh my I got out of my lease from my office yeah

and started from scratch because I wanted to I had this sort of very

scientific approach which is scientific method which is I had a theory I wanted

to prove the theory and the best way to prove the theory was to start clean yeah

and and I didn't think I was right I just think thought I had an idea and I

wanted to test it until it would fail and then I would tweak the idea and so I

kept looking for new opportunities big companies small companies different

industries public companies private companies government military I just was

looking for all the different play that I could try it waiting for it to

fail and it kept working Wow it really it was really an amazing experience to

see this theory just keep working but I kept the reason I was very honest I was

we're honest with people they like have you worked and you know politics before

I'm like nope never done it but yeah but I want to give it a try and see this

works it may not but I was always very honest about what my pursuits were yeah

and people again the early adopters said well let's give it a try so everybody

went in with open eyes me and my clients so you continue to do this and you

continue to spread this message and it kept working tell me how you got that

TED talk in 2009 well as you know I became a champion for this message and a

champion for this cause and it was and so when you talk about what you believe

people who believe what you believe recommend you or one introduce you to

people I see and so the more I talked about it the more somebody would call me

and say hey there's someone I think you should meet yeah and people found me I

don't know you know from somebody else so you did not seek out I want to do

this for know yeah so somebody somebody reached out to me and said you know they

got my name yeah and they said we've heard about you we've heard your work

we'd like to invite you to do a TEDx talk in Puget Sound in Seattle yeah and

I said okay sounds amazing you know TEDx was a there's a relatively new thing

back then and it was a big deal you know it still had a lot of real sort of an

kind of gravitas to it and so I was very excited and of course of course said yes

to the opportunity this little idea explains why some organizations and some

leaders are able to inspire where others aren't let me define the terms really

quickly every single person every single organization on the planet knows what

they do 100% some know how they do it whether you call it your differentiating

value proposition or your proprietary process or your USP but very very few

people or organizations know why they do what they do

there was a talk I'd been giving for three years already this is in 2009 I've

been giving this talk for three years I knew my stuff inside and out and so I

showed up to give the best talk I could in 18 minutes for me the challenge was

the 18 minutes none the talk how long is the talk no it was like an hour

laughs yeah I was like I had no idea how to do it in 18 minutes and but I just

gave the best talk I could and they put it on YouTube and I didn't expect it to

get as many views as it did on YouTube and it did and in a few months the Ted

people put it on main Ted calm and then things went silly Wow define things went

silly it went from hundreds of thousands of

views to millions of views and what happened were you ready for the wave to

hit what did you know where you wanted the wave to take you definitely wasn't

ready for it because everything was a surprise to me I only found out that

they put it on Ted calm the week it happened like there's no advance notice

they didn't ask permission was like they just did it and I found out about it I

didn't know what it would do it was again I was out spreading a message and

it was wonderful for me to have a yet another medium to help me spread this

message so I didn't have to be in the room all the time

yeah what I didn't expect is it would create more demand for me as a speaker I

didn't and and I never set myself on this course to be a public speaker it

was it's not really a chosen profession you know if I never give another speech

again I'd be fine with that I do it because I believe in the message and I

think it's important to go and preach that message and I see and the what the

TED talk gave me was the opportunity to spread that message at vastly greater

scale you know much bigger audiences yeah

and that's that's been a great honor did you ever have moments where you thought