Simon Sinek: You’re Being Lied To About AI’s Real Purpose – DOAC Podcast (Transcript)

We did it on each other. It was really fun and it was fine. I don’t think it was good. It gave me a good start and I could edit it.

I did it recently, we both did. Was damn near flawless. It was scary good. Right now AI doesn’t know the thing I’m thinking about. It doesn’t know that the next book I’m going to write about is friendship. It doesn’t know the point of view I’m going to have on friendship. If you ask it, “What would Simon Sinek say about friendship?” it’s going to be “why this” and “why that.” So it’s derivative, right? We know that it’s not original, we know that.

But at the end of the day, the work is good, the symphony is good, the art is good, the article is good, the book is decent. It’s getting better and better and better.

But here’s the problem that we keep not talking about. People keep telling us that life is not about the destination, life is about the journey. That’s what we keep being told, right? But when we think about AI, we only think about the destination, we only think about the output, we never think about the input. Right.

The Value of Personal Growth Through Struggle

SIMON SINEK: I can tell you that, and you and I can both say the same thing, which is, I am smarter, better at problem solving, more resourceful, better pattern recognition. Not because a book exists with my ideas in it, but because I wrote it.

The excruciating pain of organizing ideas, putting them in a linear fashion, trying to put them in a way that other people can understand what I’m trying to get out of my brain. That excruciating journey is what made me grow.

And sure, you can have an AI friend. And that AI friend has been trained like the best, best psychologist to affirm you, the best listening skills that exist. “Tell me about your day.” “Mmm, that sounds difficult.” “Boy, it’s hard being you.” “Oh my God, it’s so great being you.” It’s an affirmation machine built by a for-profit company that wants you to stay on. Can’t neglect that.

But for the fact that nobody’s learning how to be a friend, it’ll feel good. You’ll feel like you have a friend, but you’re not learning to be a friend. Right.

And it’s the, what made you a great entrepreneur is not that the company exists, is that you built it with your hands. And you’ve got the scars to show for it. When things went wrong and you were forced to fix them. And think that now when problems show up, you’re quick, you’re smarter. You’re a much smarter businessman now than you were five years ago, six years ago. Yeah, because you did it.

And I think what we’re forgetting is that there’s something to be said for, and by the way, I’m a fan of AI. I want AI to make things, but I would hate to lose out on becoming a better version of me. And I think that to really learn to grow.

The Loss of Essential Human Skills

SIMON SINEK: And by the way, I used to have a steel trap for phone numbers. I knew everybody’s phone number. And then all of a sudden my phone, my PDA, I don’t need to memorize a phone number anymore. I don’t know most of the people that I love. I don’t know their phone numbers. I typed their name in, right? I just have to know their name.

And so my brain literally went on strike. It said, “Fine, fine. You no longer have the capacity to remember phone numbers.” And I can’t remember phone numbers to save my life. Right. So we give up certain skills or abilities because of technology regularly, right? That’s fine. I don’t have a problem with any of those things because whether I can remember a phone number or not will not affect my relationships, my ability to function in the world, or my ability to cope with stress.

But my ability to know what to do when my friend is struggling. My ability to know what to do when I have a fight with my spouse or my partner. My ability to know what to do when my boss yells at me, but I don’t want to escalate it or my employee is acting out and I don’t want to escalate it or fire them. Well, how do I resolve this? I’ve missed out on those skills.

And simply asking AI “how should I resolve this thing,” it’ll give you an answer and it may work. And you’ve learned nothing. Right?

And so it’s the difference between, it’s like saying, AI will provide boats for everyone, except for the time there’s a storm and you don’t know how to swim. And I’m okay, use the boat. Also learn to swim.

So I think there’s something to be said for writing your own symphony, painting your own painting, building your own business, writing your own book. Not for them. Not for the output. Not for the output. For your personal growth.

The Inauthenticity of AI-Generated Communication

STEVEN BARTLETT: Before I got here today, I was writing a post for LinkedIn and I was trying to make the case that everybody using ChatGPT to write their emails, their social media posts, their investment pitches that I received is now making the Internet feel really inauthentic. Because people that I knew for many, many years are now sending me these perfect cookie cutter emails with words that I’ve never heard them use before.

SIMON SINEK: Yeah, of course.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And so when I read it, my brain mentally discounts it as not being their opinion, not actually being them. And when you feel like you’re speaking to someone’s AI, the meaning is gone.

So I was writing this post about how actually now there’s this premium on human-written language. Like, if you make a couple of mistakes and you use the old words, you don’t use words like “forged” and “robust.” “I’d like to forge a partnership with you, Steven. Furthermore, can we…” I’m like, you never said that to me, mate.

SIMON SINEK: The em dashes.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Oh, my gosh.

SIMON SINEK: It’s funny, right?

STEVEN BARTLETT: It’s crazy.

The Beauty of Imperfection: Wabi-Sabi

SIMON SINEK: Yeah, but you’re talking about what you’re talking about. Have you ever heard of the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi?

STEVEN BARTLETT: No.

SIMON SINEK: So wabi-sabi is a Japanese design concept which is beauty in that which is temporary or imperfect. Okay. So have you ever seen Japanese ceramics?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.

SIMON SINEK: They’re wonky. Or the glaze is not even. And they’re beautiful. You know why? Because they’re handmade. Tree bark, trees. You know, when you have a wooden bowl, wood is beautiful. Why? It’s imperfect. Right?

Think unique. Things made on a machine are the same and less beautiful. And things made by hand are beautiful because they’re imperfect. What makes people beautiful is not that we get everything right. It’s that we get many things wrong.

And what makes us fall in love is not the person who’s perfect. It’s the person who accepts our imperfections. And we know we’re in love when we learn to accept theirs, not learn to want to. Right.

And you’re 100% right. I now know in the art world, artists are being asked to sign affidavits that say, “I painted this. I made this. Not AI.” Not because it’s better or worse. It’s because I want to know it was touched by human hands.

And so I think you’re right. What will happen is everything will be so perfect that it’ll be as if we’re all driving or using things that everything came off a conveyor belt. And what we will start to desire is things that are made by hand.

Because by the way, we think Rolls Royce, Ferrari, it takes 39 months to get a Ferrari. You know why? It was made by hand. Right. And one of the things that makes it expensive is the technology and the carbon fiber and all that. But the other thing is it’s slow and was made by people.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Human error. The value of human error.

SIMON SINEK: The value of human error.

The Human Element in Competition

STEVEN BARTLETT: Scooter Braun said to me the other day, he said we could watch a computer play chess with another computer. He goes, but the chess games that have the highest demand are one human versus another. Because when a computer plays a computer, the moves are predictable, and they’re the same and they’re perfect. But it’s the human error of two human chess players, who are objectively worse at chess, that makes it so fascinating.

SIMON SINEK: Yes. That’s any sporting event. Any sporting event. It’s not the perfection of the game. It’s the error that loses the game that adds the drama. And it’s like trying not to make a mistake is as powerful as trying to get everything right. And it’s the humanity of the sport, the humanity of the competition. It is the imperfection.

And I think that we forget as people what makes us beautiful. Like, when you go on a first date or a first interview, all you do is present perfection. Put on my best clothes. You know, dressed up. I don’t dress like this every day. I dress up on my date. Right. My interview. I don’t wear this. This is what I wore for my interview, because I want to put out a good impression, and I practiced, and I make myself confident.

I’ve got a great job, and I’ve got a great personality, and I love my mother, and my goodness, everything’s great. And then you get in the relationship, you get the job, and you become a slob. Right? This is what AI is. It’s to your point. It’s fake.

The Problem with Perfection

STEVEN BARTLETT: On the interview example, the minute you start describing that, I immediately flashback to an interview I had last week in our company where a young kid walks in wearing a suit. And I thought, now I have no idea who you are because I know that’s not you. I know that you don’t wear a suit. You’re 22 years old. You do not wear a suit.

So I have no indication, I have no clues as to who you are. And therefore it’s harder for me to figure out if you fit here. And I think of, because what he tried to do there was show up perfect, what he thought perfect was, and in some ways to hide who he actually was. Whereas this is why I like now on the Internet, sloppy text. I like grammatical mistakes, but at the…

SIMON SINEK: Same time, you don’t want him to show up and put his feet on, kick his shoes off and put his feet on the table either. In the same way that there’s an element of respect you want, and you want somebody in that first interview to put in some effort. Now, too much effort is pretty inauthentic, but too little effort. What’s that?

STEVEN BARTLETT: This is Mike diagram. You’ve got perfect on one end, which is low. And then you’ve got poor, which is also low.

SIMON SINEK: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: The sweet spot is right here in the middle.

SIMON SINEK: Yeah. Well, I think there’s some truth to that. And so there’s a level of, you know, it’s the same thing as we all want vulnerability in our relationships, but not on the first date. I don’t need to know that quite yet. You know, what are the other skills.

Essential Human Skills for the AI Age

STEVEN BARTLETT: That you think we need to equip ourselves with based on the way that the world is heading? Because we’re, you know, the calculator came along and we no longer needed to be able to do complicated maths.

SIMON SINEK: Completely forgotten my times tables.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I can’t spell anymore. So, fine. I said to my friend, the most I can do is nine times nine. That’s the top end of my range. But with spelling it’s the same. I get half the word correct now with AI and it doesn’t.

SIMON SINEK: But again, you know, so what are those skills? I think it’s all human skills. I think there needs, so I think where the world is going to go, and at least this is where I’m taking a bet, is that as the end product becomes easier to produce, it’s the humanity that’s going to suffer.

And unless we take personal accountability, both as individuals and organizations to teach and learn human skills, they will disappear for all the reasons we’re talking about. So how do I listen? How do I hold space? How do I resolve conflict peacefully? How do I give and how do I receive feedback? Those are two different skills. How do I have an effective confrontation?

You pissed me off. Do I know how to approach you as a friend, as a colleague, without creating a massive fight or losing a friendship over it? How to take accountability, how to express empathy. These skills, these very, very human skills are the things that we’re already starting to see just with the Internet and social media are suffering. And so I think AI will only exaggerate the loss of those skills. And those skills are more important than learning how to spell.

Universal Basic Income and the Future of Work

STEVEN BARTLETT: One of the concerning things was I heard Sam Altman, who’s the founder of OpenAI and ChatGPT, launch this thing called WorldCoin a couple of years ago when ChatGPT really started taking off. And it has been closely tied to the concept of universal basic income. The idea, the overarching idea, is that in a world where AI and automation eliminate many jobs, UBI may be necessary. Worldcoin is one way to help implement it. That was stated by the founder of ChatGPT, Sam Altman.

SIMON SINEK: Yeah, I just, again, I’ll go back to my ironic statement before. Isn’t it ironic that they want to do a universal income standard, universal income now that the knowledge workers are losing their jobs, but when the factory workers are losing their jobs, those same people were massively against these kinds of things. So, I mean, yes, what happens to purpose? It’s ironic and meaning if we’re being.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Because for anybody that doesn’t know what universal basic income is, the idea is the government, the state, whatever, would pay you a certain amount of money, every minimum salary, $2,000, $3,000, whatever it might be, because they don’t think many of us are going to have, there’s not going to be enough jobs to go around. And I wonder what happens to purpose and meaning and pursuit and challenge and all these things in a world where we’re just being handed money, so we’re.

SIMON SINEK: Not being given wealth. There’s a difference. We’re being given survival money. Right. And so we have to be very careful. That says everybody who’s on welfare is lazy. That’s not true. So we have to be very careful that just because we give somebody something doesn’t mean that they cease to have ambition or purpose or drive.

It’s like somebody who makes a commission salary, works on commission, and they make just enough to pay their rent and buy food and that’s it. That’s a lack of ambition. The cases, at least the people I’ve heard talk about it, they make a compelling case for it, especially in a world where there is plenty of wealth.

But you know, I don’t know enough about it to make an argument for or against it if I’m honest. But I do find it ironic that the Sam Altman’s of the world are calling for it given the fact that there’s going to be so many job losses when it’s jobs of their kind. And I also think that’s funny, what’s going to happen when Sam Altman’s product gets good enough that he can lay off most of his staff? Just curious, what happens?

STEVEN BARTLETT: He has made a point of having, I think it’s 100 people or less in his company. He doesn’t have a big team. And I think part of that is because when I heard his TED talk a couple of days ago, he’s saying, yeah, I think AGI is sooner than we think actually. And I think we’re going to have a fast takeoff, which means it’s going to arrive very quickly and accelerate very quickly. So I think he’s actually preparing not to.

SIMON SINEK: But when happen, what happens to the 90 people he lays off when he doesn’t need 100, he only needs 10.

STEVEN BARTLETT: This is the question, I’m just curious.

SIMON SINEK: I don’t know. And this is why anybody who has an opinion about it, the answer is we don’t know. But I think people react very differently when it’s their job on the line, when it’s their income on the line, when it’s their pride, when it’s their ego.

I keep hearing from companies, I mean we were talking about this before we turned on the cameras. If you want a new website, I guarantee you, I don’t care which company you talk to, they will all talk about how they AI this, AI that. And you ask the question, are you using AI? Yes, we’re using AI, we’re doing it differently, we’re the future, blah blah, blah.

And then you ask them for a proposal, it’s going to look like all the other proposals from 2015 and this is how many hours it’s going to take our people to program this and code this. And I was like, what happened to all the AI? Why is this slow and expensive when everything’s supposed to be fast and inexpensive?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Because they’re taking the margin.

SIMON SINEK: Of course they’re taking the margin. And they’ve got a lot of people doing things the old fashioned way. Because the business model, people work very hard to pick the status quo exists because there are people who benefit from the status quo. You know, that’s why there is a status quo. And it’s, and, you know, I said, everybody’s into change the future, you know, until it’s, until it’s them that’s threatened their income.

The Uncertainty of AI’s Future

STEVEN BARTLETT: The billionaires that I, that I know. The one consistent thing they’ve whispered to me about AI is that people are going to have a lot of free time. That’s one of the things that’s been really consistent. You’re so right when you say that. When I asked you about the future of AI, you said, “I don’t know.”

The reason why I know that’s probably the correct answer generally is because when I sat with the most advanced people in AI, whether it’s Mustafa, who’s head of Microsoft AI now, CEO of Microsoft AI, or people from Google, or the CEO of Google, or Reid Hoffman, who’s the founder of LinkedIn, they all had different opinions, which made me to think, actually the right answer is nobody knows.

SIMON SINEK: The right answer is nobody. That is correct. And you always be aware of the messenger, right? You won’t have anybody who owns an AI company talking doomsday scenarios. It’s not in their economic interest, even if they secretly harbor that. It’s like people who used to run cigarette companies didn’t smoke and they didn’t let their families smoke.

It’s like, I remember visiting Facebook in the earlier days and I went into the cafeteria and they had picnic benches, and I was like, and they were telling me with pride how they have these communal eating areas to help people maintain relationships. And I was like, this is hilarious. You literally have a product that breaks relationships, and yet you understand enough to make people eat together at lunchtime so that they’ll maintain relationship.

I mean, the point being, if your economic interest, you know, show me how someone’s paid and I’ll show you how they behave. You know?

The Private Truth About AI

STEVEN BARTLETT: One of the scariest conversations I was privy to was one a friend of mine who’s a billionaire in London, he knows the CEO of one of the biggest AI companies in the world, who I can’t name. And he said, by the way, what he tells me in private is not what he’s saying publicly.

SIMON SINEK: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: He said to me that what this particular CEO thinks is going to happen with AI is pretty horrific. And the CEO of this big AI company is totally cool with it. And it’s horrific what he thinks is about to happen. And then when I watch this guy do his online talks and give his opinion, he’s so nuanced and everything will be fine. And he’s an AI optimist.

Then I heard this scenario at this kitchen table in East London from his friend about what he really thinks, and it was chilling. Yeah, the lack of empathy.

SIMON SINEK: Yeah, that makes sense to me.

STEVEN BARTLETT: But the obsession with power was shocking to me.

The Winner-Takes-All Problem in Tech

SIMON SINEK: Yeah, the obsession with power and money and all the rest of it. Yeah. But this is because the Internet has done something really strange and challenged one of my theories head on. Right. So I talk about in an infinite game, you know, Jim Carse, his theory, you know, in an infinite game, there’s no winners or losers, right?

And so, like, nobody wins, you know, fast food, nobody wins. Cars like General Motors, Ford, Vauxhall, they can all exist at the same time, right? And they’ll have degrees of success or not success, but they can all exist simultaneously. Nobody’s going to win.

The exception is in the Internet. Like Amazon, it won like, you know, Google for search. Yep, they won. Right. And if you start going down like the big, big tech companies, there is only one. I mean, sure, there’s competition, but not really, right? Who? You know, Walmart is making a run of it to threaten Amazon, but Amazon’s still so damn big, you know, all of these companies, there’s only one.

And that’s not good that you can’t have winners in a category. And so this is why I think the race for AI is so aggressive. For AI dominance, it’s so aggressive. And which is why people are not being careful and which is why they’re not putting controls is because the way that tech seems to work is there probably will be one dominant standard and then that’s it.

And the question is, which one? Because I don’t think it just seems to be the way it is, which is a very scary prospect to me, that the fact that we can have winners is a bad thing, especially if we pride ourselves on being capitalists, then there cannot be a winner and there cannot be one that is so dominant that nobody else can even compete except for scraps.

The Slow Disruption of AI

STEVEN BARTLETT: What are your emotions when you think about AI and what’s happening? Because I feel like the moment we’re living in is a profound one and that we don’t actually realize it, because when these tools come out, OpenAI released yesterday, 3.0. It’s the best model ever. The day after, my life was the same.

So we don’t really notice it because we go back to work, our clients ask for the same thing. We have the same team members sat around us. It almost seems like the sand timer is rotated and we’re on a clock and it’s a slow disruption of our everyday lives.

Sam Altman the other day on his TED Talk three or four days ago, said, “In the short term, everything will appear the same, but in the long term,” he goes, “life is going to be completely different.”

SIMON SINEK: Yeah, I think that’s right. I mean, and look at any technology like AI, it was kind of the same until it wasn’t. And these are evolutions, not revolutions. Like, there’s a revolutionary bit, you know. Like, I remember when the Internet showed up and like brick and Internet shopping showed up and all the technologists were like, it’s the end of stores. It’s the end of bricks and mortar. Like they’re done. Like, we’ll never go to a shop again.

Well, that didn’t happen. Now shops struggle to compete against Internet. But that’s a price thing, right? That’s a business model thing. But we like going shopping because again, they’ve, all of these companies always forget, especially technologists. They all forget that the end user is a human being.

And most of us don’t fully understand everything, even our iPhones. Most people use a small percentage of all the capabilities of our iPhones. Most of us don’t even know how to change the damn settings to make it do something we want. Right. Neither do your kids. It’s not an adult thing, it’s not an old person thing. And there’s a few people who get more out of it, and good for them. Some people use it just as a phone. Fine. And it’s a bell curve.

So I think there will be a few people, a few companies that will get more value out of these things than the rest of us. But I think he’s right. I think there’ll be a revolutionary bit and then it’ll settle.

Fear and Amazement: The Dual Nature of AI

I find this whole thing fascinating. When you ask me how do I feel, depending on what subject I’m talking about, absolute fear and absolute amazement. I have both and everything in between.

When I think about how it affects democracy and the ability to make deep fakes and how it can manipulate people and their opinions to vote one way or another, I have real fear when it comes to productivity and the reshaping of business technologists and people who are part of the Internet revolution, they love to say, “20 years ago, 80% of the jobs we have now didn’t exist.” They love to say that, right?

But when you ask them now, though, they seem to think that. I think it’s the same, which is all those people are going to lose those jobs and white collar jobs and knowledge workers. They’re not going to not work. There’s going to be new jobs.

The IRS digitized a whole bunch of years ago, right? They got rid of all the accountants and they put in all the computers, right? Do you know how much money the IRS saved when it completely changed the way it looked? The answer is zero. Yes. They got rid of all the accountants. They need to hire all the IT people. So the workforce looks different, but it didn’t get smaller.

And so I think the same thing. We already know the massive, incredible amounts of energy that it takes for AI to work. Data centers that use up massive amounts of electricity like we’ve never seen in our lives. Like nuclear has to be a thing. There isn’t enough coal or oil or solar or wind to power these things. It just doesn’t exist. So nuclear has to be a thing.

So go be a nuclear engineer. Go. You want to get an advanced degree? I don’t need you to be a coder. You know, coding was a thing for go be a nuke. Because by the way, you got to be just as smart to be a nuke as you have to be a. So you’re going to start to see that, you know, you’re going to see energy work.

I just think the jobs will change. I don’t think they’re going to like. One thing I do disagree with, you know, it’s not like you’re going to be a bunch of people walking around bored. I just think the jobs will change.

Advice for the Next Generation

STEVEN BARTLETT: If there was a 10 year old kid stood here now and the 10 year old said to us, said, “Guys, what do you think I should focus on?”

SIMON SINEK: I would say two things. One is going back to human skills. Learn how to be a good friend to your friends.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay, how do I learn that?

SIMON SINEK: You’re going to really need that. How does a 10 year old learn that or how do you and I learn that?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Both.

SIMON SINEK: A 10 year old learns it that when they go and have a play date at a friend’s house, a smart parent takes away all the phones. But I would hate that the 10 year old has a phone in the first place. But if they do take away all the phones and make the kids go play, that when they have a fight, the parents make them say sorry.

You know, go over to your friend’s house and knock on the door and you’re going to say sorry for the thing that you did. We’re going to teach kids how to resolve conflict. We’re going to teach kids how to pay compliments, we’re going to teach kids how to take accountability. And these are all the skills of, you know, what did you do wrong versus what did your, what? You know, like, it’s not like, you know, it’s not always the school or the teacher, maybe your kid is disruptive, you know, and so accountability is a real thing.

And so I think if we teach those things to 10 year olds and to adults, I think it makes for a better society.

Learning Real Skills

And the other thing is go learn a real skill. And I don’t mean like that, you know, prompting isn’t a real skill. That’s not what I mean. It’s what I said before, which is it’s the excruciating, like what makes great relationships great is not that you get along all the time. The best marriages, the best relationships, they’re not absent of conflict, it’s they know how to resolve conflict peacefully.

By the way, I believe in world peace. I don’t believe in a world without conflict. I believe a world in which we can resolve our conflict peacefully without the need to go to war to resolve conflict. This is why I like democracies, because democracies can solve conflict without bullets. So the human skills one.

But I say a real skill mean like, go do something difficult, build something, design something, imagine something, write something. And by the way, I’m totally fine even if you plug it into ChatGPT and say, “Tell me what’s wrong with this? Your grammar’s all screwed up,” you know, and like I said, I am smarter because I did it.

I’m the reason I’m more confident than when I was younger. And I think that’s one of the things people talk about. You get wise with age, you know, and you know, you have more confident as you get older. And yes, that’s all true and there’s multiple reasons for it, but I think one of the reasons is the things that are happening to me now. I’ve gone through those things before. They were scary and kept me up at night the first time. And now I know how to do it. I’m not afraid of it anymore.

And so I think what happens as you gain experience is you lose fear. And if ChatGPT or whatever AI product we use does everything for us, I think you just end up scared.

When Is Enough Enough?

STEVEN BARTLETT: One of the things that I’m contending with at the moment, with this new technology that’s arrived, being an entrepreneur, seeing this huge opportunity, thinking about the dot com boom. And all the great opportunity that that created. People talking about the age of abundance and all these things is I’m contending with the question on a personal level, which is, when is enough enough?

And maybe this question is more pertinent now than ever. In a world where creating stuff, building stuff, starting a company, launching a book, the cost of creating these things, whether they’re good or not so good, has gone to basically zero. So we can all, theoretically, from our computers now become movie directors and authors and software developers.

And so with this possibility of opportunity, and the thing we need to deploy is intention, like, what do I do? What is the thing that’s going to lead me to happiness? Do I pursue all of these things and start building and creating and running off down that path to climb some ladder? Or do I take a second, when is enough enough?

And as an entrepreneur who is in this moment has a lot of resources, could roll the dice, could start all these new companies, could do all of these things. When is enough enough?

The Power of Gratitude and Perspective

SIMON SINEK: Now, right? Like, there’s something to be said for gratitude. And if you want to make it money, we know the data on this, right? I think once you reach, I can’t remember the number, $70,000 a year of income. When you’re talking about money, you can’t buy happiness. It absolutely buys happiness up to a certain level, which is survival, and then a little bit more. But once you reach a certain level, there is no discernible increase in happiness that comes with money.

Now, what money buys is options. What money buys is time. You know, those things are true, and you said it like, some of the people that you and I know who have made generational wealth, they’re not discernibly happy. The ones that are happier were happy before they made the money. And the ones who thought the money would buy them happiness, or worse, the money took away their purpose. Because when they made the money, they were driven by something that they accidentally made the money. They built businesses that were their passions and their cause. And then the money came and they weren’t building the thing anymore.

Why Small Companies Innovate More Than Big Companies

And this is the difference. This is really interesting. It also gets to the question: why is it that small companies are more innovative than big companies? You think about it when you say, what’s the secret for innovation? When you want to have resources, you want to have great people, and you want to have great market opportunities, and then you can have great ideas.

Okay, so big companies have tons of money. They hire all the best people, they have mature marketplaces that people generally know who they are, and they’re the least innovative organizations on the planet. Then you have little companies that have no money, they’re bootstrapping it. They don’t have enough people, nobody knows who they are, and there’s terrible market conditions, and yet they’re more innovative. And then big companies innovate by buying the little companies. That’s basically what happens. My exit, your exit. Big company kind of innovates. They just bought you.

Why is that? Why is that the rule? And so it goes directly to this. I think the reason is because when you’re small, your ambitions are bigger than the resources you have to achieve those ambitions. Every small business has outsized ambitions, beyond objectively stupid. You look at what they have and what they’ve got, and they tell you where they’re going to be, and you’re just like, no. And yet some of them do.

And I think the problem with big companies is their ambitions are well within their capabilities and their resources. In other words, their vision isn’t big enough. And I think your vision has to be bigger than the amount of money, resources and intelligence that you have to achieve that. And what that produces is creativity.

And so it goes right back to this, which is, if we can do so much with AI, then we need bigger visions. And so when you ask me, how do you find happiness? I think that we need to set our sights on things that are bigger than finite success. And I think we do need a gratitude practice. Regardless of how little or how much you have to be grateful for, what you do have is a profound impact.

Lessons from the LA Fires

I went through this with the LA fires. I was very lucky that my house survived and I didn’t have to get evacuated. But the evacuation zones were getting closer and closer. And two things happened that were profound that live with me now. One which is resolvable and one which is unresolvable.

We were all obsessed with this app called WatchDuty, which is how we track the fires. It basically took all the publicly available information and put it in one place in a really amazing way, right? Started by this amazing entrepreneur named John Mills. And we were all obsessed with WatchDuty. We all were watching this app the whole time. And one of the things we were watching was the wind, because if the wind shifted, it could profoundly impact your life.

And I remember having this experience. We were all watching the wind and the wind went away from me, and I thought, “Oh, thank God.” And in that moment, I knew that somebody was looking at the app going, “Oh, God, no.” And it’s not like service where I’ll eat a little less so that somebody can eat more. I’ll give up some of my income so that somebody has. It’s not one of those. I don’t want my house to burn down so somebody else’s house doesn’t burn down.

And I had to live with this paradox of how unfair the world is, that simultaneously my relief in good news was somebody else’s stress and bad news, and there was nothing I could do to change that. So that paradox is horrible. And it was right in front of me. So that’s one.

Saying Goodbye to Material Things

But it’s the second part, which is the evacuation zones were coming a little closer, and they were one zone away from where I live. And we didn’t know if we were going to be woken in the middle of the night with an alarm to evacuate. We didn’t know. And so we had to go through the process of packing up my car and making my go bag, and I put as much stuff in my car as I could.

And I had to, you know, we all play that game, like, if there’s a fire and you have to run out and grab two things, what would you grab? I had to do that, right? A lot of people in LA had to do that, right? You actually had to make the decisions, what am I going to take and what am I going to leave behind?

And I found myself bringing things that I never thought were important to me. And I found myself leaving things behind that I thought I would take. But the one thing that was amazing was stuff that I couldn’t fit. But I still had love for, like, my favorite painting in the world. It’s just, I couldn’t fit it in my car. I stood there in front of it and I said, “Thank you.” And I said goodbye. And it was like saying goodbye to a loved one.

Yeah, I hear this. You know, somebody loses a parent, they go, “Look, it was awful. And, you know, he suffered on his deathbed, but I’m glad I was with him to say goodbye.” And it was the most amazing thing to have gratitude for something that I don’t want to lose, but accepted that I might.

And it’s made me a lot more disconnected from my material things, especially the things I said goodbye to, because everybody said goodbye to them. I just sold some of my art for charity. And people said, “How did you love your art?” I’m like, “I know. My art’s like my babies.” “Then how did you choose?” And I said, “I’ve already said goodbye to everything here. I did it months ago.”

Practicing Gratitude in Daily Life

And I think this idea of gratitude, gratitude for what we have, but also, you’re going to lose your parents. All of us will lose our parents. Hopefully. Hopefully they don’t ever have to say goodbye to us. But we, if things go well, we’re going to have to say goodbye to our parents, and we can’t be angry about it. We want to say thank you for the times we had.

And I think to have that level of appreciation for everything in our lives, how temporary all of this is, I think that makes you happier. I know it sounds, it makes you happier to just look at someone and be grateful. You know, failed relationships, you could be angry at the other person, or you can be grateful for the lessons they taught you and, or for the good times you had.

And I think to change our minds to gratitude, and you can, you know, it sounds, it’s a little bit hippie dippy to have a gratitude practice, and that’s fine. You know, if that’s your thing, lie in bed every night or keep a journal and just say the things you’re grateful for. But I don’t know if it works without an evacuation zone approaching. I don’t know.

But to go around your home and just say thank you to the things that you like is a weird thing. How many of us, when was the last time you called a friend out of the blue and just said, “Thanks for being my friend”? Just wanted to call and just tell you I love you, just tell you thank you, and, you know, that’s all. Just a quick, just two minutes. Just want to say thank you for being my friend.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think if I said that to one of my best friends, they’d think I was losing my mind or something or that something was wrong. They’d be so concerned because it’s such an unusual thing for me to admit.

SIMON SINEK: Okay, so you can do it this way. So I had a guest on the podcast, and he came up with this thing that is so outside of my personality, but I’m going to try it.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah, that would make sense.

SIMON SINEK: Then you can do that.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.

SIMON SINEK: You know, I’m new to this. You know, I know for years people have been like, “You should have a gratitude practice. Keep a gratitude journal.” And I tried it. I was like, “Okay, I’m grateful for my sister, grateful for my family, grateful for my friends, grateful for the life that I live. All right, good night.” All right. Next day, “I’m grateful for my sister, grateful for my family, grateful for my friends,” you know. And I found it so repetitive that I was like, “Is this worth it?” Sure, every now and then something was different and new. And I’ve come to the conclusion, if it’s the same three things every single day, good.

Realigning Priorities

STEVEN BARTLETT: I was thinking about this a lot the other day when someone asked me, “Think about all the people in your life and imagine if they were sick. And imagine if you had a billion dollars in your bank and a billion dollars could cure their sickness. Who would you cure it for? Would you spend a billion dollars to cure your girlfriend’s sickness, your mother’s sickness, your father’s sickness, your whatever, even if the risk to them was low?”

And you would, I’d give every penny I had to cure an illness that my girlfriend had, even if the risk was low. And as I was thinking through that, I was like, but then if you look at my calendar and how I’m allocating my time against these individuals and against my priorities, there’s a real imbalance here. And over the last couple of weeks in particular, I’ve been on a bit of a journey of realizing just how important four or five people in my life are, how much I neglect them.

SIMON SINEK: Yeah, I mean, of course. I mean, we are, only when it’s, and you’re right, which is if you say, “Give a billion dollars and you can cure this disease that affects 2 million people, 10 million people,” you’d be like, “Eh, I’ll give some money.” Right. But if it was one family member, you would exhaust every resource. You would quit your job. You would do everything you can to…

STEVEN BARTLETT: For a 1% chance.

The Power of Personal Passion in Entrepreneurship

SIMON SINEK: For a 1% chance, you know, and people do. They quit their jobs when. And like so many charities have been started because my father died, my mother died, my sister died, my brother died, and now I’ve devoted my life to duh. Right? Like, literally that’s the reason. And it’s because it’s personal. Of course. That makes sense.

It’s why, why are some entrepreneurs good and some entrepreneurs bad? Well, how personal is the thing that you’re working on to you? Because then I only like to like the entrepreneurs that I love. I want to know that they are solving a problem that they struggled with or that somebody they love struggled with or something.

If they read an article in a magazine and thought, “this is a great market opportunity,” there is no passion there that is driven by money and power only. I want to know somebody that is so deeply personal to them that they will stop at nothing. They will run through a brick wall and find every creative solution.

And it goes right back to the small company versus big company. It’s passion and a vision that is bigger than the resources that I have, which, you know, I had a conversation with somebody recently, actually, where they wanted to, we, it was a business problem, and they wanted to change the goals.

And I said, “we can’t just change the goals because they’re difficult,” you know, so we might miss the goal. It’s true. Yes. We have a very aggressive goal, and the likelihood of us hitting it is incredibly low, but why would we lower it?

Embracing Failure and Ambitious Goals

And they said to me, you know, “I don’t like to fail.” They said, “I don’t like to fail, and I know you don’t either.” And I said, “ah, that’s where you’re wrong. That’s where you’re wrong. I have spent most of my life a failure, and I’m very comfortable being a failure. And I think of myself not as a success. I think of myself as a failure.”

And that’s because my ambitions are bigger than my skills or my ability to achieve those ambitions. And so almost everything I’ve done, with a couple of exceptions, have fallen short of what I had hoped for. I’m very comfortable with that, because failing at 80% is really much better than succeeding at 30%.

And I think this idea of fear of failure and embracing failure. I don’t want to fail, but I just, I think it’s important to have dreams that are beyond your skills or your resources, because that’s where creativity comes from. That’s where resourcefulness comes from. You know, when you go, “how am I going to figure this one out?”

And you told me the stories of your own team. You know, it’s the resourceful ones. And now we go back to AI. AI is not going to figure that out, right?

The Wisdom of Experience Over Training

There’s data on this. I’ve actually never thought about this. This is good. There was a book called, oh, it was “The Wisdom of Crowds.” I think it was that one. I think it was “The Wisdom of Crowds” by James Surowiecki, where people with experience knew what to do versus people who were just trained.

So I’ll give you the example. And again, I might have the book wrong, but I remember the case. So there was a bunch of firemen fighting a fire in wildfires, right? And the wind picked up, and the fire was coming really fast towards these firemen. True story.

And they all started running for their lives as this fire was approaching them unbelievably quickly. But the problem was they looked ahead. There was a small hill, which means you’re going to slow down because you can’t run fast up a hill. And this fire is coming fast, right?

The senior guy on the team started screaming, “get down, get down, get down.” And they all ignored him. They were all running for their lives. And he just stopped running and got down and put his hands over his head and just lay in a ball.

And the fire was going so fast that it blew right over him, and it caught up with the other guys and burned them all to death. Now, they didn’t teach them that in fire school. It was accumulated knowledge of wisdom that came from experience that he knew the right thing to do in the moment. He was able to read the tea leaves in a way. And his gut, whatever that means, his gut said the right thing to do is to drop down, you’ll be okay.

The Importance of Doing the Work Yourself

And this is why I’m going to sound like a broken record. The importance of doing the work yourself, of writing the book, painting the painting, choreographing the dance, you know, composing the symphony, building the business, having the difficult conversation, stumbling and bumbling, right?

The reason for it, like, let’s say you have a fight with your girlfriend, you don’t want to be in a fight. You don’t want to be in a fight. You want to do the right thing. So you get a ChatGPT. And you’d be like, “my girlfriend and I had a fight. This is what the fight was about, okay? I think I did some stuff wrong. I think she did some stuff wrong. This is exactly what happened. Tell me what to do.”

And you go, “babe, I just want you to know I want to take full accountability. I’m really sad that this happened. And I want you to know that I care about this relationship.” And she says to you, “did you get this answer from ChatGPT?” And you go, “I did.” How’s that going to go right now?

You did everything right. You did everything right. You did everything right. But for the fact, and it goes right back to what you said, which is, it removed the humanity. It removed the personality. It’s artificial. It’s fake. It’s everything you said about the job interview. It’s everything you said about all those other things, about all the resumes, all of the pitch decks.

It’s not you telling me sorry. It’s ChatGPT telling me, sorry. And even though you went with good intention to get it right, I would rather you get it wrong and bumble and fumble you it with me and be like, “babe, I don’t know how to do this. I’m an asshole.”

And then she fights with you because you get it wrong and you rumble through it together. And what happens when you come? You’ve had this happen. I know because I have and I know everybody has. When you come out of the fight, you’re closer. Not because you got it right, because you got it wrong.

Learning Through Struggle

And if you learn the skill and you get better and better and better and better. And you do learn the skill of saying the right thing and you do learn the skill, she knew it wasn’t because you asked AI in the moment, because you just wanted to resolve the problem and remove the tension. It’s because you learn the skill for the time that you don’t know when it’s going to happen because you’re equipped for this relationship.

And it’s that investment in the relationship rather than trying to transactionally solve the problem before me. And that’s the difference. It’s infinite versus finite. It’s transaction versus, it’s destination versus journey. I’m in the journey of this relationship versus I have a destination. I got to solve this problem now, otherwise this is going to destroy my relationship.

And all of this is coming full circle. And it comes right back to everything we started as. I think it’s hilarious that you and that you’re having a conversation with me about AI because I’m not an AI expert and I’m not in the AI business, but I am in the humanity business.

And I think everything we’re talking about from every angle, we’re battle testing this idea. And what we can’t get away from is human beings really want human beings and human beings really want human experiences and human beings really want things made by human beings. And we are not only okay with, we want imperfection because imperfection is the sign of human.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I was just thinking about how when I’m in an argument with my partner, if she was perfect, if she was completely composed, if she was looking at me without emotion, without expression, and if she was spewing ChatGPT like responses back at me, it would, it would be a little bit infuriating, but also it would be completely dehumanizing as you say.

And it’s funny how actually even in conflict, I want emotion, I want imperfection.

SIMON SINEK: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I want human resonance. So it’s interesting because I’ve been thinking about what my struggle is.

The Value of Struggle

SIMON SINEK: A good thing. Yeah. And I think in our modern day and age, we have under appreciated and underrepresented the value of struggle. And if you ask anybody in their life, you know, “tell me about a time in your career where you felt like, boy, this is the most amazing thing I’ve ever done. I’m so glad I’m a part of this.”

It’s not the big win. It’s not the big success. It’s not, “we finished everything on time and under budget.” It’s, “oh, my God, this one thing went horribly wrong. Oh, my God, it went so badly. And yet the way we came together,” like, the most important thing in my career was when I lost my passion and went into deep depression. Never want to go through that again. Really glad it happened.

And all of our relationships, professional, personal, romantic, whatever they are, right? All of our relationships get better when we go through struggle together. And we know, we know the way the human animal works. We know that oxytocin is released when you have shared struggle.

That’s why when you put people in boot camp and they go through shit together, or there’s a natural disaster, like, all of a sudden, I don’t care who you voted for, I saw your house blow down on the tornado. I got you. Don’t worry. We’re neighbors, right?

Like, we can put aside all the rational nonsense, the intellectual nonsense. And at the end of the day, human beings are good at helping human beings struggle.

The Story Behind the Product

STEVEN BARTLETT: Also, in many contexts is the value. So when I think about a Simon Sinek book, the reason why I value it is because I know that Simon Sinek spent years writing that thing and pulling it together. The reason why certain handmade things that we talked about earlier are valuable is because of the pain and the toil that went into them.

And when you think about the art world and other creations through history, the value comes from the fact that human beings came together for a prolonged period of time and did something. And actually the investment is the value. Like the amount that went in the top is creates.

SIMON SINEK: We’re not buying the product, we’re buying the story.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah, like the Mona Lisa is.

SIMON SINEK: You’re not buying the Mona Lisa. You’re not buying a piece of art. You’re buying the story that goes with the art, the story that it took to create the art. What the artist was going through, what they were thinking. You’re not buying my book. You’re buying the story of the making of my book.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And the Mona Lisa was stolen, from what I understand.

SIMON SINEK: I mean, we don’t even know if the one in the Louvre is the real one.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Because I heard much of the reason why the Mona Lisa is so valuable is because at one point it was stolen and then they managed to find it again. And actually it’s just a painting, but.

SIMON SINEK: But the story of the story is amazing.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Is worth 100 million, 200 million, whatever, whatever.

SIMON SINEK: I mean, and so this is what we feel. The reason famous artists are famous is because you buy the story of that artist, not, not their talent. There’s a lot of famous singers and actors and painters, dancers who are a lot less talented than the unknown ones. But you buy into the story.

And this is why some celebrities, as much as they talk about the paparazzi and the tabloids, they want to be in the paparazzi and the tabloids, they want the paparazzi to follow them because it keeps their story relevant. It keeps them, you know, they’re worth more because they’re in the zeitgeist.

The Theater of Product Presentation

STEVEN BARTLETT: Apple know this better than anybody because you go to an Apple store and they’ve laid out their products as if it was an art gallery. The 3ft either side of the iPhone create the impression in my mind that this is a piece of art and there’s only one of them.

And the fact that they’ve wasted all this space, which I know real estate costs money and that must have been expensive, pours into the device itself. If I’d gone into an Apple store and there was a thousand iPhones, like the old electronic stops, all stacked on top of each other, I would assume the iPhone was worth less. But the story, just by the frame in which I see it, means, “oh my God, this thing is.”

SIMON SINEK: It’s theater.

STEVEN BARTLETT: It looks like one of one.

The Theater of Value and Human Connection

SIMON SINEK: Yeah, it’s theater. And some would call it manipulative. But we want things to feel valuable, not just be valuable. Right?

I could tell you I’ve got a guy who makes cashmere jerseys and he uses the exact same cashmere as, you know, Loro Piano, whatever, some fancy ass brand. But the problem is it says like Dave’s cashmere shop. I could tell you everything about where he sources the cashmere, how he makes it, that’s the same everything. And you’d be like, yeah, Dave’s cashmere shop.

Because you’re not buying the cashmere, you’re buying the brand. You’re buying the story, you’re buying the association. That’s why brands have value, because it’s irrational and humans are irrational. And that’s why companies invest in building brands for the story.

And so, yeah, I think as much as AI scares me, I still believe the thing that the technologists don’t appreciate and won’t appreciate, and there will be a rebellion and handmade will become more valuable and handmade will become more expensive and people will want to say that, you know, it’s like you had that person write your speech for you. Wait, who did the painting? They did it themselves, you know. And I think that’s good. You know, it’s a pendulum, right? We’re going to get enamored with the technology until it’s boring.

STEVEN BARTLETT: This also just expands generally. I know this sounds quite big and we’re talking about these big things, but just everything that you create, it’s very, very tempting at the moment to just create something with AI and throw it up on your website, on your social media pages, or present it to the world. A presentation deck at work.

But actually, I’m already noticing I’m attributing huge value and interest in things that I can identify as human made. I had a flashback a second ago as we were talking about this idea of scarcity to one of my favorite brands in the world. It’s a clothing brand. And I was obsessed with this clothing brand. I’d spend a huge amount. I don’t spend money on clothes. I would spend a huge amount of money every time they came out with a new item.

One day, the founder of the brand, and everybody knows this brand, he posted a photo from his factory. It was like a video. And what I saw in the video was the shirt I was currently wearing as I watched the video in a massive bucket with 4,000 others of the exact same shirt. And in that moment, fell out of love.

SIMON SINEK: I fell out of love exactly.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Because in my head, I painted this like artisan picture of them sewing it, these two guys sewing it in their bedroom. And then like, it’s probably what it…

SIMON SINEK: Was on the ad too.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think it kind of like used to be. So I still had…

SIMON SINEK: But it got big.

Scale Breaks Things

SIMON SINEK: Yeah. One thing that I’ve always understood, this is true for businesses, this is true for absolutely everything. Scale breaks things, you know, scale breaks.

In the military, they have Special Forces, Special Operating Forces, Navy SEALs, SAS, all those folks, right? And there’s a saying in the Special Forces that basically, you can’t scale special, right? So you can take whatever training skills, whatever you have for the Special Forces and you give it to everybody. It’s not going to work. Special can only be small. You know, and so scale breaks things. Scale always.

I mean like Microsoft versus Apple, right? So Apple wanted the highest quality operating system in the world, right? So what did they do? They refused to clone, right? They wouldn’t clone their operating system. And they, as a result of refusing to do that, they never, for years Apple had like in the height of the PC wars, maybe 4% of the world’s operating systems.

Microsoft said we’re happy to clone our operating system. So it was a little bit different on Dell, it was a little bit different on IBM. Wherever you use it was slightly different. And they had 90 something percent of the world’s operating systems. It’s because you have to trade quality for scale every time.

There’s a reason why buying fancy goods for a lot of money. Because as you said, the way you make things has to change and you have to start making them in factories and you have to scale breaks companies. Think about how beautiful companies are. The number of companies that talk about “oh our company’s like a family” get to about 150 people, 200 people, get to Dunbar’s number. Not so much of a family anymore.

The Challenge of Modern Love

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think B2B marketeers keep making this mistake. They’re chasing volume instead of quality. And when you try to be seen by more people instead of the right people, all you’re doing is making noise. But that noise rarely shifts the needle and it’s often quite expensive.

Is it harder now to find love? Because there’s lots of stats that say we’re having less sex, we’re lonelier than ever before. Interestingly, this is maybe an adjacent point, but I was looking at Bumble share price. I love the founder of Bumble. The CEO is really, really good friend of mine. I think she’s amazing.

SIMON SINEK: Whitney.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Whitney. Yes. I think she is amazing. Has she…

SIMON SINEK: Come on?

STEVEN BARTLETT: She has, and I know her, and she’s a wonderful human being. But when I was looking at the Bumble share price, it painted a really interesting picture because then you overlay that with some of these other dating apps and you see, I mean, this is the…

SIMON SINEK: Well, she’s had to come back.

STEVEN BARTLETT: She’s just come back in yet to turn the company around. And actually, interestingly, I saw her do an interview, which is one of these ones here. And in the interview, she says she’s going to revamp Bumble to make it not about finding love with others, but falling in love with yourself.

SIMON SINEK: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And there’s also going to be this dating marketplace, but her first objective is going to be get people to love themselves through coaching and all these kinds of things on the app, and then find a partner.

Self-Love and Common Knowledge

SIMON SINEK: Sure. Yes. I mean, I agree with that. I mean, it’s like we’re all broken records, right? I don’t mean that. Is it like we’re all broken souls? Like, you know, your customers will never love you until your employees love you first. You’ll never find somebody to love you unless you love yourself first.

And look at failed relationships, right? Where there’s so much tension. It’s somebody’s lack of self love that contributes to the failing of that relationship. I mean, I have a dear friend who’s going through it right now. She just can’t find love. And she, it’s just, but it’s because she doesn’t love herself. And she knows that, you know, it’s a hard thing to do. So if Bumble can crack that code, more power to him.

But this is the problem with a lot of these things. You know, they’re common knowledge. We just don’t do them. Everybody knows how to be healthy. Everybody knows how to exercise. Everybody knows what eating right means. Don’t do it because wrong is easier and right takes effort.

Everybody knows what we’re supposed to do in a relationship. Everybody knows that we’re supposed to, like, hold space. Everybody knows philosophically what we’re supposed to do, but we don’t do it.

By the way, it’s the reason why most people, I’ve written all these lovely books, and it’s the reason why most companies don’t use them. It’s because my work is like exercise, which is, I can tell you every single, if you want to get into shape. “Hey, Simon, how do I get into shape?” Easy. Every single day. Work out for 20 minutes every single day. Okay. “Can I take the occasional day off?” Yes. But not too many. Work out every single day. And 100% of you will get into shape. I know it. 100%. When? I don’t know. And neither does any doctor.

And that’s my work. Yes. I can profoundly help you find purpose. Start with Why. I can help you build trust on a team with Leaders Eat Last. I can help you embrace the infinite mindset and have this incredible calm in life. And the reason most companies won’t do it, this is a book for innovation. Right here. You want to know? Innovate. Infinite Game.

The reason most companies won’t do it is because they need it to happen by the end of the quarter or the end of the financial year. It may or may not. I have no clue. And I cannot predict that it will or won’t. It’ll work 100%. I just don’t know when.

And the problem is because right back to the beginning of this conversation, we’re all so obsessed with the output, we’re all so obsessed with the result that we’ve completely ignored the value of the journey. And people would rather hit the number at the end of the year than build a good strong company.

The Obsession with Speed

SIMON SINEK: Think about it, right? If I meet another entrepreneur, when I say “so, tell me about your company.” “Like we’re hypergrowth. We’re a hyper growth company. We’re a gazelle,” right? Like show me then. I always say the same thing because I’m an ass. “Can you please give me one article from a reputable publication? Just one and I don’t care. The publication that says that building a hyper growth company is good for business. Just one.”

And the answer is you can’t because it’s not. And so why are we so obsessed with high speed growth? It’s because our investors want us to be obsessed with high speed growth. Right? Or our egos want us to be obsessed with high speed growth. Right? And if high speed growth happens by accident, that happens for many of the unicorns, right? It was an accident.

I think building a good company is better than building a fast company. I think building a good relationship is better than building a fast relationship. And we’re also obsessed with speed and immediate results, present company included. I’ve had to learn this the hard way that I think there’s something joyful and beautiful about slowing down, saying, thank you, reprioritizing friends. It’s okay.

I mean, by the way, cell phones. And so before cell phones, we went to work, and then we went home, and we didn’t do work at home because we couldn’t do work at home because we didn’t have computers at home and we didn’t have cell phones or people to call us. And so you did work at work, and then you left.

And I remember when cell phones started, I remember the advertising AT&T had this campaign that they showed people working on the beach, you know, with their computer. I mean, this is like the future, right? And they said, now, well, what was the tagline? It was really funny. It’s like, “now you can leave work,” right? And that’s not what happened. Work came with us. We never left work. Work came with us.

Wherever. This is the problem with cell phones and computers and the Internet, which is we do not leave work. Work is with us in our pocket every day, every vacation, every evening, every weekend.

Friction Creates Freedom

STEVEN BARTLETT: As you said that, I thought, you know what? That’s so interesting because that kind of means that friction creates freedom in that regard, if you know what I’m saying. So the friction of not being able to go home and tap away on my computer all night meant that I had a certain level of freedom because I had to kind of wait for things. Right.

So in the same context, with AI coming along now I can build software throughout the weekend, whether the agency’s working or not. Now I can build anything I want at any time using the phone in my pocket. The friction has come down again. And therefore the pressure to do it now, because I can do it now goes up.

And this is kind of maybe what I was alluding to earlier on in the, you know, when I was thinking about how you’re going to get more stressed and more overwhelmed, and that’s good. More isolated.

SIMON SINEK: That’s so good. That’s so right. It’s, we’re taking work with it. I mean, it’s like, you know, everybody has a story of, like, where the battery ran out on their phone and they ended up having the best night.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.

The Hidden Cost of Digital Distraction

SIMON SINEK: Or the Internet went out at work and they actually got more done. Like, you hear these stories all the time. You know, that when we’re forced not to take work with us. Forced. It takes a bit of time sometimes to relax, but it’s always better because you learn to stop worrying, stop checking, you know?

You know, and you just. One of the things I did – I can’t delete Instagram completely as much as I’d love to, but I hid it. So, you know, you can do that on iPhone. You can take it off the. It’s gone, it’s hidden, it says hide app. And then I. And when you go into the search, you know, when you go search it, suggest. I took it off the suggestions, which most people don’t even know you could do that.

So I took it off the suggestions. So when I go to. Because I realized what I was doing is I’m like, when I’m bored, I just pick up my phone and I just like. And then I see Instagram, like, and I just click it like a zombie. And then I’m done for an hour, you know, so I hid it.

So the only time I go to Instagram is when I have to go to it and I have to type in I N S T. And then it pops up and my usage of Instagram has plummeted. Plummeted. Because it has to be intentional. And the problem with most social media is it’s unintentional.

The Community Revolution

STEVEN BARTLETT: One of the big things talking about community, Instagram AI, that I think a lot about is, is the value of, in real life, community going to rise. And I think we might be on the precipice of the community revolution.

I say this because when I think about what’s going to remain in a world where creating things goes to zero, like when, you know, once upon a time, if you made a social network or if you built an app, or if you built a movie or a media company or a podcast, that was half of the job. And the other half of the job was like getting it out there in the world.

SIMON SINEK: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And so now the people that have the other half of the job, which hasn’t gone to zero, now have this tremendous advantage because we can all create, but we can’t all distribute. And so having community and building and fostering community, I think now is one of the things that remains. What are the values of a community? Like, how do I build the community?

SIMON SINEK: Well, I have a definition of community, and I think we said it before, which is the community is a group of people who agree to grow together.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Interesting.

SIMON SINEK: Community is a group of people who agree to grow together. And I believe friends are at least two people who agree to grow together.

STEVEN BARTLETT: In marketing, this is the absolute obsession at the moment. Community run clubs and brands becoming offline.

Offline Is the New Online

SIMON SINEK: Is the new online, right? Offline’s the new black. Like, there’s a company called Clicks. And it was started by. She’s a talented entrepreneur and she was in college and she suffered severe depression and loneliness and literally struggled, didn’t know how to make friends.

And she. Oh, I just call her by her name. Her name’s Alix. But her company, Clicks, she started it to solve her own problem, right? My favorite kind of company. And basically to help her friends at school, quote, unquote, friends, people at school, make friends.

And she did it by taking people offline and taking their phones away. And she would come up with reasons to come together, whether it was running or this or that. Just like it didn’t matter what the reason was coming, just a reason to come that made you. That when you saw the ad hung up on a piece of paper at college, you know, that you’d be like, I like horror movies, whatever. I like baking. I’ll go to that. Right? Just a trick.

And then basically just. And so she’s built this business predominantly for young people, but it’s available to anyone. But she’s built this business to just bring people together to meet people without phones, without offline. And she wants, she has, and there’s a great irony in it, she has an app that she wants people not to be on, you know, and what.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Is it that holds the community together? Is it so like we want to improve together so we have to have some kind of shared value that we want to improve on? Presumably it’s like a community of runners. They’re trying to get fit together or they’re trying to improve their.

SIMON SINEK: I don’t think it matters. I mean, it’s like it’s. Shared interests is a way to start a relationship, right? Comic Con, you know, you know, Nerdvana, you know, Burning Man, all of these larger than life events, big and small, Going to the. Going to the. Going to the football.

You know, it’s like you’re everybody’s friend when you wear, when you wear the right, when you wear the right colors, you know, you know, you see people on the, on the tube who’s going to go into the same game, they’re wearing the same jersey. Your friends, your friends, right?

So I think common interest is a, is a, is a trick. It’s a way of getting people to come together. And it’s a nice place to start because at least conversation is easy, right? You know, at least one thing about this person that you have in common with them.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Do you need a shared goal in a community? Do you think. Thinking. Because in the football analogy, we have a shared goal.

SIMON SINEK: Oh, yeah. You want to win? I think that’s a very good question. You have a shared goal even in a relationship? Yeah, I think so. That seems to make sense.

From Audience to Community

STEVEN BARTLETT: The reason why I’m asking these questions is I am building businesses and brands, and I know that community is one of the most important things that everyone building a brand or business is thinking about at the moment.

So there’s a big difference between having an audience, which is what you might have on, like a podcast or something, and having a community. And I’m, as a brand leader and as an entrepreneur, I’m trying to shift from having an audience over to having a community. And that’s about, like, relationships and shared values. Shared values.

SIMON SINEK: I mean, I like to think the people who really like my work, not the ones who just like, passively like it, but the ones who really like my work, like, if somebody says, “I love Start with Why” or “I live my life by The Infinite Game,” that it says something about who they are and how they see the world and that we share the same values.

And that if and because I am, you know, me, you know, I’m an idealist and. And my. I. I’m consistent in the way I talk about things from the day I started to now and won’t ever change. And I think that’s the value of values.

And the problem with the modern world we live in and the pressures that people face is money and fame and all the rest of it, and influencer status. I think it sometimes forces us to question our values or walk away from them.

I was invited to a group of. They called it a mastermind group, where there’s a bunch of folks like me, author speakers, who wanted. This is what they told me. Come together based on shared goals, shared values, how we can work together to improve the world together. I’m like, oh, sign me up. I’m in, right?

So I went and we sat around and you know who some of these people are, you know, and we sat around a room, and they spent all of their time talking about how they can share their lists with each other and how they can cross promote with each other and what margins are you getting on this?

And I’m like, you guys. And I spoke up. I was like, you guys are just talking about making more money. I thought we came here to, like, do common good together. They didn’t invite me back, but it was. But the point is, like, the money and the fame is seductive.

The Hero’s Journey and Staying True to Your Mission

You know, this is Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey, which is. You start off as the reluctant hero and you get called to your mission for some reason. And at some point in your journey, there will be something to seduce you away from your mission. Money or power.

You know, Luke Skywalker was nearly seduced away from the vision, you know, from the journey. Like, this is what the hero has to go through. And do you have the friends who will slap you around and keep you in line and say, no, you signed up for this. You have to stay true to what you’re doing.

Because I think none of us have the courage or the strength to stay true to our cause by ourselves. Very few of us. We need to have at least one person who believes in us to give us the strength to stick to it. Because the temptation. The temptation. You and I have both, at various times, gone through it.

When you start making money and you start making money for something you didn’t expect. Like, I never expected to have a career from any of this stuff. Right. It happened by accident. And you get to the point where you start thinking you’re more important than you are. Do they know who I am? No.

STEVEN BARTLETT: No.

SIMON SINEK: Get over yourself. You know, and you start becoming seduced. And I think the seduction. When we turn on social media and we watch Kardashian, the Kardashian model, and like, you have people who pursue influence without knowledge or skill. Like those two buckets. They have the other three buckets, but they don’t have the first two buckets.

And it is temporary for some or unfulfilling for others. And, you know, the funny thing about that job, you know, I went to a concert, and there was this woman who walked down the aisle, and some guy was taking pictures of her, and she was posing. And the person next to me goes, “She’s a famous influencer.”

And I said, “You mean she’s a freelance employee of an algorithm?” And. And somebody who chooses to be an influencer, that’s what you are. You are a freelance employee of an algorithm. And the minute they change the algorithm, you might be out of business.

STEVEN BARTLETT: You just lost, like, 170 followers. I mean, maybe you just lost, like, 170 blue ticks.

The Dark Side of Influence

SIMON SINEK: Like, I don’t have a problem with the concept of being an influencer. If you bring something of value. The only time I have a problem with it is if you make it about you. And I have to get more of everything.

In the early days of influencing, there was a young couple that were trying to get followers, and they would do crazier and crazier things. And so what they did is he took a big book, a Dictionary, I think it was. And he put it over his chest, and she took a gun and shot it at the book, thinking that the book would stop the bullet. And she killed him. She killed him on camera. Right?

Now, they admitted. She admitted afterwards, he’s dead, but she admitted afterwards they were doing it to do bigger and crazier stunts to get more and more followers because the financial pressures of driving at those YouTube views was overwhelming.

And so it’s an extreme case, obviously, of how we will lose our minds trying to gain followers. And I don’t mind if people gain followers by giving, but to gain followers by taking. Look at me, look at me, look at me. Versus I have something that I think this will help you.

And like, there’s not. There’s no. I don’t have a problem with. It’s. It’s the. It’s the input. Right. It’s the intention. Anyway. Anyway. I sound like an old man complaining about nobody. New kids these days. And you were influencers.

Purpose as an Antidote to Loneliness

STEVEN BARTLETT: Simon, I printed off some graphs which I think are absolutely fascinating and dovetail into everything you’ve said today, but also into your work generally. So I’m just going to give you all of these to give you a second to look through them, and I want to get your reading interpretation on them.

SIMON SINEK: Okay? Adults, lack of meaning and purpose Overall. Lonely London. Okay, I mean, that makes sense to me.

STEVEN BARTLETT: That didn’t make sense. I couldn’t understand how if someone is low in purpose, then they are lonelier.

SIMON SINEK: I mean, it just makes sense that when you have lack of purpose, the likelihood that loneliness comes nearby. Like, I think family gives meaning, friends give meaning. Like, you feel like you’re there for someone else, but if you don’t know why you’re showing up every day, I think it feels like a lonely existence. Like, you feel like you’re searching.

When you have a sense of purpose, it gives you a mechanism to meet people. It gives you a mechanism to make decisions. It gives you a mechanism to talk about yourself in a way that’s quite inspiring to others.

You know when you say your why and somebody says so, what do you do? You say, “I wake up every single day to inspire people to do what inspires them. What do you do?” You know, like, it’s. It’s. I. Yeah, I do. I do. And I think it’s. It’s not the thing that makes you less lonely. I think it’s a mechanism to make you less lonely.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Just as you said that. That why you just gave. It becomes a magnet for me.

SIMON SINEK: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Because then I know who your people are and I know what to talk to you about. And it throws down this bridge for me to walk across.

SIMON SINEK: Yeah. Versus, yeah, I’m a dentist or I…

STEVEN BARTLETT: Don’t know which is even worse.

SIMON SINEK: Which is even worse. Yeah, yeah. So, that doesn’t seem unusual. Distribution of people feeling lonely worldwide by gender. So it’s about 50-50.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Are you surprised by that? I thought, for some reason I thought…

SIMON SINEK: Men were more lonely. Not at all lonely. Looks like women do better, I would think. Do you think you thought men were more lonely?

STEVEN BARTLETT: I thought men would be more lonely.

SIMON SINEK: I also don’t know what the age groups are because I want to know how they, what age are they to start? Are they starting at, is it 18? I guess if we just put that all aside, I mean, women being slightly less lonely than men, I think makes sense because I think women are probably better at making friends. Maybe I have that wrong. What else we got here? Adults’ mental health ratings. 68% of people who have depression are lonely and 67% of people have anxiety are lonely.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Do you think good mental health is a foundation for being not lonely?

Mental Health and Loneliness

SIMON SINEK: I guess. No. I think having somebody who cares about you is a foundation for not being lonely. And when you’re in a period of strained mental fitness, it definitely can manifest as loneliness and anxiety. And the best way to manage through that period is to lean on the people who, you know, love you. That will help.

So I don’t think you can separate the two. So does it affect it? Of course it affects it. Can it make you withdraw from your friends? Of course it can. So I don’t think you can separate the two.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I read a couple of years ago that when people are lonely, they fall into a state of self-preservation because of some evolutionary sort of mechanism which meant that if we were alone on the Serengeti in Africa, we would sleep worse. We’d become more selfish, we’d become more angry, our cortisol levels would be up, which means more inflammation.

And this idea of self-preservation basically means that lonely people become more selfish, more bitter, more angry. And that’s not conducive, ironically, with finding more friends, but it is conducive with survival. It is conducive with being able to fend for yourself.

SIMON SINEK: It’s more conducive survival as an individual.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.

SIMON SINEK: So if you’re in a deserted island and you’re lonely and all those things and the cortisol rises and you become better at being on edge, being on edge, which is a survival mechanism. Right. But if you live in a community with other people, then it is counterproductive because we are social animals and I need you to help me and you need to help me.

So if we live in tribe together and I’m the selfish asshole, you’re not going to wake me and alert me to danger tonight. You’re just going to leave me. So though I think it’s 100% true, in a social environment it becomes counterproductive. And I think you’re right. When somebody feels lonely, they do go into survival and they become paranoid and they think everybody’s out to get them. But the problem is you don’t live on a desert island. And that’s one of the reasons I think it’s dangerous.

The Modern Loneliness Epidemic

STEVEN BARTLETT: We’re increasingly living on islands. The islands are different now. They’re four walls in a white city. And it’s so funny that so many of my friends are using this word “loneliness” when 10, 20 years ago, it wasn’t something that I heard frequently from adults, but now it seems to be also common.

In fact, my masseuse yesterday was saying to me that she’s lonely. And this is a woman that lives in Los Angeles, has people around her, but she’s lonely. And I remember when she went and, because we had a conversation and I texted her and said, “Oh, thank you for being so open and stuff.” I was thinking about what advice I could give her. She’s got no friends, she’s in Los Angeles, she’s desperate for friends, she doesn’t have a partner anymore because she’s had a divorce. What advice do you give someone? Is it take more risks?

SIMON SINEK: So it’s easy to give the obvious advice, “You’ve got to put yourself out there,” right. But when you’re in a period of loneliness and stress, it’s hard to find that energy and that risk-taking. Right. Especially when you’re down on yourself. We’ve all been there. I’ve definitely been there.

But I think for me what I’ve learned is to put myself second, meaning don’t worry, don’t try and solve my problem. But do I have somebody else who’s lonely that I can help? How do I help somebody else who’s dealing with their loneliness? It’s the act of service that is so valuable.

If you guys are talking and she has many clients and somebody else is willing to admit that “I’m lonely,” that one of her clients might say, “You know, me too.” Her ability to admit her loneliness out loud creates a safe environment for somebody else to admit the same. And then once she learns that they’re lonely now, she can say, “Tell me about it.” And then she can talk them through it and hold space for them. And her ability to help somebody else manage or understand their own loneliness will help her.

The Fear of Being Known

STEVEN BARTLETT: So interesting because one of the hallmarks of her personality, if you met this person, something she says to me every single time she comes over for the treatment, is that she doesn’t like sharing herself with people because she thinks if people get to know her, they’ll change. So literally, she’s been my masseuse for many years now.

SIMON SINEK: And if people get to know her, they will change.

STEVEN BARTLETT: She’s scared about people knowing her. She’s scared about people knowing the details of her life. So she guards it all. And it took me, and I’m someone that just asks way too many questions of everything around me. It took me 20 sessions just to figure out she had a family. I had no idea she had two kids.

And when I asked her, her body language went like this. “Yes, I have kids.” And I said, “Why? Why are you so guarded with your information?” “Well, if people know who I really am and they know more about me, then they’ll change or they may not like me anymore or they’ll think differently about me. So I just keep it to myself.”

SIMON SINEK: I mean this is the age-old problem. I mean it’s everything you said when people who are driven only by the thing that they want, you know, versus the givers. And this is the age-old problem which is, “I’m never, I’m going to keep my walls up high. I never want to love anybody because then I’ll get hurt.” And then you just end up lonely and hurt.

And this goes back to struggle, which is, look, you and I both know that if somebody who chooses to go on an entrepreneurial venture or adventure, the statistics bear out that over 90% of all new businesses will fail in the first three years, right? What idiot would ever start a business, right? You have to be compelled by something else to make you do something with overwhelming statistical chance of failure, right? And it’s opening yourself up to failure. That is the thing that makes it work, you know, at least for a small percentage.

But it’s the same for love, which is, or a relationship or friendship, which is, it absolutely comes with risk. There’s nothing risk-free. Yeah, they will. Some of them might change. Yes, some of them might not like you for that. Yes. Yes. And the odds are equal that somebody will fall in love with you and love you and think you’re the best thing and think you’re amazing.

And so if you can’t take the risk, you can’t get the reward. If you don’t play the lottery, you don’t win the jackpot. If you aren’t willing to take, I’m not telling you to open up and tell everybody your deepest, darkest secrets, but if you’re not willing to give somebody anything to latch onto, to be like, if you can’t give them anything to say, “Me too,” then it’s going to be a hard road or it’ll take somebody to chip away at you 20 times before you open up. But the fact that you did and she got it to open up a little bit, she could make a friend in you.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Now she’s fully open.

SIMON SINEK: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And we’ve been through everything. I know where she wants her house to be.

SIMON SINEK: Well, there you go, you see? So you have to point out to her that this friendship and that you know so much and that she feels so safe with you only happened because you chipped away at her and she finally wore her down and she opened up. And it can happen in two directions, right.

Which is sometimes we have to take the little risk to just tell somebody a little something about ourselves to find something. Or sometimes it’s somebody who’s so curious about us that they chip away and chip away and chip away and chip away and chip away until we give up and open up and that person becomes a friend, you know?

And so one of the reasons you should be grateful for the friendship is you kept trying. You could have just tried it three times and be like, “Forget it. I’ll just lie here quietly and have a massage,” you know? So, yeah, I mean, all of this stuff comes with risk.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I could see it in her face, though. I could see…

SIMON SINEK: But you’re also curious. Yeah, I can say she lucked out because you’re curious about people.

The Power of “Me Too”

STEVEN BARTLETT: Is this what connection is? When you said, “Me, too,” finding something to say “me too” with someone? Is that the essence of what connection is?

SIMON SINEK: I mean, it can mean it could be values, it could be interests, it could be many things. But I think to find, I think, yes. I mean, if you want to go political, you know, one of the problems in our politics is both sides think they’re right and both sides think the other side is wrong. And neither side is willing to try to even understand what the other person’s point of view is without thinking them an idiot or thinking them wrong or thinking them sheeple.

And the ability to say, “Can you tell me more about how you came to your beliefs? I’m genuinely curious,” and to not agree or disagree, but to be curious, to be an investigator, you know, and I’ve done this with people who have polar opposite political views with me. At some point we will get to a level of me just chipping away, trying to understand that they will say something that I’m like, “100% I agree with that.”

And then from that point on, there’s a simple validation. Not agreement, but a validation that your opinions do matter and we do have common ground that we can build from there. And on that validation, they become vastly more open to my point of view also, and curious to my point of view also.

And so, yeah, the ability to listen and be curious even if you disagree is one of the most underappreciated skills on the planet. And yeah, I think when you find the ability to say “I agree,” then you can find community. And maybe that’s what we need to heal this country or most of the countries in the world right now, which is one group or one person to just be curious rather than agree or disagree.

Listening Without Judgment

STEVEN BARTLETT: There’s something about relationships here as well. Because my girlfriend is, you’ve met my partner, and she’s very spiritual, but also like all of us, she’s emotional. So sometimes in those interactions when we sit down and there’s a problem and we spend the first 60 minutes to 90 minutes trying to figure out what the problem is. It doesn’t sound very logical to me.

And one of the things that I think sort of is adjacent to what you’re saying is my job in that moment actually isn’t to pass through truth and to figure and to correct truth. It is to sit and let someone get it out, get it out.

Living Below the Neck

SIMON SINEK: So you and I have the same problem, which is we live above our necks. And you and I both have the same struggle, which is to learn to live below our necks. Like you and I are head people and we have to learn to be more heart. And I want to understand everything, explain anything, you know, evaluate everything, analyze everything. And when I come to my emotions, I’ll give you an analysis. You know, when it comes to your emotions, I’ll give you an analysis.

And so I have to learn to be like, I feel this and that’s it. And I feel the same way. It’s funny because I’m good at it with art, you know. I always tell people, you don’t have to understand art. I’ll take you to a museum, I’ll take you to a gallery, and if you look at a piece and I know you’re intimidated to come because you don’t understand art or you don’t understand music, whatever it is, and all you need to do, this is the only rule: Do you like it? I do. Why? I don’t know. I just like it. That’s it. You’re done. You’re done.

I don’t like it. Why? I don’t know. I just don’t like it. Great. Excellent. And now we’re going to look at 4, 5, 6, 10 pieces that you like, and I’m going to see 4, 5, 6, 10 pieces that you don’t like. And I’d be like, you like all of the impressionists and you hate all the old masters, so why don’t we just go see more impressionists, you know?

And so when your girlfriend opens up to you, you know, you don’t have to agree, you don’t have to disagree. You just have to. And you and I both have to learn to stop thinking and to just feel something. When somebody says, “Where do you feel it?” I’m like, what? That’s the stupidest question I’ve ever heard. Where do I feel it?

And they’ve literally, I had somebody take me on this journey. And she goes, she told me an emotion. “You have, Simon, you told me an emotion.” Yes. “Where do you feel it? In your body. Where do you feel it?” And I’m sitting there going, you’ve got to be kidding me. You know, but all right, we’ll go through this. All right?

And she says, “So you said you feel X.” I’m like, yes. “All right. Where in your body did you have some sort of reaction?” Here. “What happened?” It got a little tighter in my chest. Okay. And I went on this journey with my friend, my friend Bea. Bea Voce. She’s incredible. And she took me on this journey, and she does repair with couples, and she’s just incredible.

And she helped me recognize that my body does react to my feelings. Tension in my shoulders, heavier breathing in my chest, clenching my fists. You know, my body does react. And so I’m learning to experience feelings beneath my neck when my inclination is to do everything above the neck.

STEVEN BARTLETT: It’s a hard skill.

SIMON SINEK: Oh, my God, it’s hard. And so when you meet spiritual people, they are all below the neck and we think it’s stupid, but they recognize that we have an ability to feel because we want to think about everything. And so we both have a lot to learn from each other, which is thinking about things has value, not all the time. And so your girlfriend and I, because I know her, her ability to know her body when she has feelings, I think is way more, has a lot of value to you.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And to me, I think it’s the biggest opportunity I have to form great relationships.

AI’s Impact on Knowledge Work

SIMON SINEK: Yeah. Change in number of posts for automation prone jobs compared to manual intensive jobs.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So this is a graph that shows the drop in job postings online for jobs around automation.

SIMON SINEK: Yeah, the knowledge work is going to get hammered by AI. I met a guy in Japan who, he’s one of the very few guys left, like 100 of them left, 150 of them left, who make samurai swords in the traditional samurai sword way. You make them, you hammer them metal and he folds his own metal and he makes samurai swords. They made them the way they made them 200 years ago.

And we went to his little workshop and he’s this little old guy and he’s telling us the story, “How did you do this?” He’s like, “Well, I had a desk job, I worked in a company and I woke up one day and I was like, I can’t do this. This can’t be my life. And I just, I’ve always been enamored by sword making. So I found an apprenticeship and tried to learn and you know, I’m just starting to get the hang of it and I have a lot of room for improvement.”

And we’re like, “How long have you been doing this?” He said 30 years. But that’s so Japanese. You know, the Japanese, they’ll never be good at this. I’ll just keep working at it and it’s such hard work. But I think there’s something to be said for, I think a lot of us think about how many white knowledge workers, ask them what their hobbies are, you know, and maybe there is an opportunity to learn a skill.

I mean, look at lockdown. When we all went through lockdown. I mean, what skill did you practice during lockdown? What did you learn? DJing.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Running, cycling.

SIMON SINEK: DJing. DJing, right. I did kintsugi. It’s the Japanese art of fixing broken things with gold. So basically you take a broken plate or broken cup and you put it together. And with gold paint or gold epoxy, you put it together and you make it. The whole concept is you can make something more beautiful. Things can get more beautiful after they’re broken. I love the philosophy of it.

I spent hours doing freaking kintsugi. Ask me how much kintsugi I’ve done since we came out of lockdown. How much DJing have you done?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Zero.

Reclaiming Time and Relationships

SIMON SINEK: And so maybe all this free time that we’re supposed to get, which I still don’t think will happen, maybe it’s not such a bad thing. Think about the joy you had DJing. I had so much fun doing kintsugi. I had so much fun. I would spend hours just my head down, focused. I was so relaxed, not thinking about work.

So why? That’s the other question. We’re talking about how we’re all going to have all the spare time. We’ve lost all of our spare time. We have no spare time because all we do is work and think about work and talk about work. If we go back 40 years, 50 years, there was plenty of spare time. And people went bowling and they went to the movies and they went over to each other’s houses for dinner and they cooked.

Isn’t it a good thing that we’re getting time back? You know, a lot of us got a lot of good things out of lockdown, and that’s extreme. So maybe, maybe it’s okay that we get some time back, because it sounds like we’ve lost all of our own time.

STEVEN BARTLETT: It fixed the loneliness. You’d have space for relationships.

SIMON SINEK: You’d have space for relationships. You’d have space to try things. And we couldn’t bury ourselves in work and escape from our lives that we hate by just burying ourselves in work. Maybe AI doing some of the work for us is the thing we’ve been desperate for for the past 30 years. Just saying.

STEVEN BARTLETT: This is quite embarrassing for me to admit, but if you know me well, there’s something that you know about me which is a function of my personality, and that is that I lose everything. I’ve lost my wallet. I’ve lost multiple passports. I now actually have two passports because there’s a high probability of me losing one.

And when you lose your wallet overseas, as I have many times, it’s a particular inconvenience because you also lose your driving license and your credit cards and those kinds of things. What are you struggling with in this season of life? I think I’ve asked you this in every conversation we’ve had and the answer’s evolved conversation to conversation. We’ll both go.

Prioritizing Friendships

SIMON SINEK: I’m doing so much right now, by the way. Absolute joy. And I wish I had more time in a day and not in the sense that I’m deprioritizing my friends. You know, you talked about how you would give them all your money to secure them, but you don’t give them any time. I actually treat a lot of, I’ve actually gotten very good at this. It’s probably when you write a book about friendship, you sort of take yourself on a little bit.

I will schedule friends, meetings in the middle of the day. Haven’t seen a friend for a while. 4 o’clock in the afternoon, tea with. And I go and I leave the office like I’m going to a meeting. Because nobody says, “Hey, Simon, where are you going?” “Going to a meeting.” “Where are you having the meeting?” “At that restaurant.” People are like, have fun.

Nobody will give me any kind of grief if I’m leaving to go to a meeting. Now I go and see a friend, and when somebody says, “Can I cancel this French tea with friend because you have a phone call?” I’m like, no, just like you wouldn’t cancel my meeting. Don’t cancel on. So I treat, I put it in, and I give them equal weighting to things that have to do at work because I become much more discerning. Do I have to have this meeting or this phone call today? Or can I do it next week?

STEVEN BARTLETT: I could do it next week.

The Value of Choosing the Right Partnerships

SIMON SINEK: And you realize we add fake urgency to things. And I have a friend who’s kind of amazing. He’s way busier than me. And he says, I don’t want to spend time with anybody. Like, I saw – it was really funny. He came out of a meeting and he had a meeting with a very fancy person who’s courting him for business, right? Or he should be courting the other guy, actually. Very fancy person.

And he comes out of the meeting. I’m like, how was it? It’s like, total waste of time. I’m like, you don’t want to do business, he doesn’t want to work with you. I was like, no, he wants to work with me. He wants to work with me badly. Total waste of time. I’m like, what are you talking about? I’m like, he’s just some rich asshole. Like, I learned nothing. I didn’t enjoy it, and I don’t want to work with him.

And I was like, tell me more. He’s like, I only want to work with people who, when I spend time with them, they teach me something. I laugh or I feel inspired when I walk away. And if somebody sucks my energy, I do not want to work with them. And I was like, that’s amazing to have that level of confidence that you would turn down money in your business.

And now, what if we applied that as much as possible in our lives? Like, what if we stopped hanging out with friends who just sucked our energy? Are they really friends? Rather than spend more time with people who we enjoy, what if we take meetings from people we’re excited to take a meeting with. Not that we just see dollar signs. Opportunity.

And what if we only partner with companies where we really like the people who work at those companies? You don’t have to have a relationship with the CEO, but they’ve got a good culture. I really like working with them, and we make a little less money with them versus that other company. But I really like them because when things go wrong, I want to call that person.

And people ask me this all the time. They say, how do I choose a publisher? And I’ve seen this mistake a thousand times. I’ve seen people like former CEOs who are like, now I’m going to write my book. I’m like, great. You’ve got a lot to say. And they’ve got multiple offers and there’s a bidding war, and they always ask me, which one should I go with? Which publisher should I go with?

And I always say the same thing. Choose the one you’re going to fight with best. Choose the publisher you’re going to fight with best. They’re like, what? I’m like, the goal is to make a good book. There’s going to be creative tension. There’s going to be fights. Choose the publisher who believes in your idea, believes in you, wants to make a great book. Who you’re going to fight with really well.

Every single one of them ignores me. Every single one of them takes the biggest bid. And every single one of them has written a shitty book that didn’t sell.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Isn’t that just relationship advice as well, though?

Choosing Jobs Based on Mentorship, Not Money

SIMON SINEK: Probably, yeah. Choose the person you’re going to fight with best. And the number of times that we forget about the quality of the product and we just want the – it’s the same for job interviews. This is especially true for young people. Like when you’re interviewing in a relatively junior job, entry level or slightly above. Don’t worry about how much they’re going to pay you. Like, just as long as they pay you a livable wage.

Choose the job. Choose the job based on who you’re going to work for. Choose the person I used to – early on in my career, people, HR people who say, what are you looking for? I’d always say the same thing. I said, the thing that I’m looking for is probably like looking for love, but I’m looking for a mentor.

And every time I’d evaluate a job, I didn’t care how glamorous the brand was. I didn’t care how much money they were going to pay me. And by the way, it’s not like I had money. I knew they were going to pay me something. I knew I could pay my bills. It’s not like I’m not a trust fund baby. Like, I needed an income, but one company offered me $5,000 more, and one company offered me $5,000 less. But I really like the person over here. I took that job.

And it was a simple – if I got one thing right as a young person, it’s that I always chose jobs based on who I would work for, not how much they were going to pay me or what account or what brand I was going to work on. And that’s the one thing I got right. Because, yes, I made less money than all my friends in the short term, but I got an education and a care and a love from somebody who took me under their wing.

I learned leadership from Dennis Glennon. I learned leadership from Peter Intimaggio. I learned leadership from Pamela Moffat. I learned leadership from these leaders who took a weird liking to me and took me under their wing. And they were exceptionally good leaders themselves. And I got that education. And all of them in the early days paid me less than I could have got somewhere else. And it’s the same – choose the people.

The Five Buckets Framework for Career Success

STEVEN BARTLETT: In my book that I wrote the first chapter, and it talks about this idea of these five buckets. And I’m trying to give young kids advice on how to prioritize their career. And it sounds somewhat similar to you. So I’m going to throw this concept at you and see how it lands with you.

So the idea was that we will have these five buckets when we’re starting our career. And the first bucket is your knowledge. The second bucket is your skills. Now, these are the only buckets that no professional earthquake in your career can unfill. You can be fired, you can be canceled, whatever. You still have your knowledge and skills.

But the other three buckets I’m about to name, they can fluctuate. Bucket number three is your network can fluctuate. Bucket number four is your resources can fluctuate. And bucket number five is your reputation can fluctuate.

And the idea is that focusing on those first two buckets, when you’re young, choosing jobs based on how much they’re going to fill those two buckets and also what they’re going to fill them with and how relevant that information is, and when knowledge is applied, it becomes a skill. So you focus on filling your knowledge. You apply that knowledge into skills, and that really is the essence of career longevity.

And as I noticed over time, with people that I hired and then watched them throughout their careers and what they did, it seems to me that life over the long term typically brings you back down or up to the level of your knowledge and skills. I.E. I had this one kid step down from my company because he got a job offer at 21 to go be a CEO in America. And as he departs, I’m thinking, he has not got the knowledge and skills to be a CEO.

Within 24 months, the company had gone bust. He was back down to doing the same job he did for me. And I thought life just like resets you to the level of your knowledge and skills over time. So what do you think of this?

Learning Through Self-Reliance and Struggle

SIMON SINEK: I think we’re saying the exact same thing. You did it more eloquently than me. I think it’s 100% right. And the people who will fill that bucket with knowledge and skills are the people who, again, for some reason, they’re good people. They’re good leaders. They take a liking to you and they will give you – they will put you in situations and they will let you screw up and fix your own problems, fix your own mistakes.

That’s what my bosses did for me. They rewarded my behavior when I got it right, as opposed to my results. Never got rewarded for my results. I always got rewarded for my behavior. So if I showed initiative, I got a reward even if the results didn’t follow right. And I can tell you a great story on that. And if I got things wrong, they would say, well, what are you going to do? Really screwed that one up, didn’t you? Okay, what are you going to do?

And they didn’t – they weren’t happy with me, but they let me fix my own messes and they stood by and I knew that they were there if I needed them. Peter Intimaggio, one of the best leaders I ever worked for. Annoyingly, he never answered a single question I asked. Hey, Peter, what should I do? I don’t know. What do you think we should do? Well, I think we should do this. I’m like, okay, so go do that. What do you think, Peter? I’m asking you because I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you. He’s like, ooh, well, should probably go think about that.

It was the worst. But what he taught me was self-reliance. What he taught me was, if I don’t know, then I have to go keep searching and keep talking to people. I have to have a point of view and may not be right, and I’ll find that out myself, too. And I also learned to have backup plans from him because something went haywire on me and it went so wrong. It ended up being okay, but he made me sweat it.

And I remember at the end of the day, at the end of this whole thing that went wrong, that was totally my fault. The phone rings, I see his – 6pm phone rings, I see his name come up on the caller ID, and I pick up the phone. I remember the whole call word for word, right? Pick up the phone, I go, hello. He says, “Close call today.” I said, “Yep.” He said, “Better to get shaved by the bullet than hit by the bullet.” I went, “Yep.” He said, “Have a good night.” I said, “You too.” That was the whole phone call.

And so since then, since that experience, I always have a backup plan. Now, it doesn’t mean it’s all ready to go, but I’ve thought about, if this thing that I’m trying to do doesn’t work, what will I do? And I at least thought, committed some thought to it. So if something does go wrong, I’m like, I’m a little bit ahead. Either have it planned, or I’m like, okay, okay, don’t worry. If this happened, I thought about this already, and it’s only because of these great leaders.

And it goes – this is the recurring theme of this whole conversation, which is it’s the struggle. It’s the journey, not the destination. It’s the human beings that guide us. It’s the human beings that hold space for us, that make us better, what we do better, better than how we show up in the world.

And AI will absolutely make our lives easier. Like most technology makes our lives easier. That’s kind of the rule of technology, which is to make life a little easier, a little more efficient, a little quicker, a little less strain on the muscles. That’s kind of what it does, from the plow all the way up to the Internet. And AI, it just makes life a little easier. But we’re still human beings who are forced to live with human beings.

Writing a Book About Friendship

STEVEN BARTLETT: You’re writing a book about friendship that we’re all waiting for.

SIMON SINEK: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I’m not going to ask you when it’s due because I don’t want to be your publisher, but I know that they chase and chase and chase and chase. But my closing question is, why, of all the things you could have written about Simon, you’re someone who’s able to traverse several subject matters across business and life and everything in between. But you’ve committed yourself to the struggle of writing a book about friendship.

The Power of Friendship

SIMON SINEK: There’s an entire industry to help us be better leaders, right? There’s an entire industry to help you have a successful relationship or a successful marriage or even find a partner, right? Industries, books, companies. There’s very little on how to be a friend.

And if you think about if you’re going to have a successful career and can survive the stresses of career, and if you’re going to have a successful romantic relationship or marriage and survive that, do you know what you need in both of those circumstances? Friends. Because when your marriage is falling apart, you go to a friend. When your job is falling apart, you go to a friend.

And there’s a few things that I’ve discovered about friends that I find delightful. And I have been reorganizing my life to, as I mentioned it before, I’ve been reorganizing my life to ensure that my friends aren’t taken for granted and that sometimes I do deprioritize work in order to see my friends and spend time with my friends because I know it feels good to them and I know it feels good to me.

And I know that the only reason I can get through any work stress or personal stress I have is because of those magical human beings. And I will not take them for granted. And doesn’t mean it’s always easy. I’m conflicted often, but I’m trying.

And I also know if you look at the world today, there’s so much conversation about loneliness, depression, anxiety, inability to cope with stress, even the obsession with longevity. There’s so much about these subjects and some people treat it with drugs and meditation and vacations. There’s so many theories. The one thing that fixes all of those things is friends.

Friendship is the ultimate biohack. We’ve talked about this before. I fundamentally believe that. And if it’s so valuable, if you know vegetables are good for you, you eat more vegetables. If you know exercise is good for you, you do more exercise. So if I say friends are good for you, shouldn’t you do more friendships, right?

Shouldn’t you? Exercise is not fun or easy and you have to get over a hump sometimes. Eating vegetables can sometimes be boring and unsatisfying, but you do it or you find new ways. And so maybe friendship is not always easy or fun, but it’s still really, really good for you.

And the best thing about friends is it actually doesn’t taste like spinach. It’s like you get the benefits of spinach, but it tastes like chocolate cake. If you get friendship right, it’s the healthiest thing in the world.

STEVEN BARTLETT: How do I know if someone’s a friend?

SIMON SINEK: Have that conversation with them.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Because I know a lot of people.

SIMON SINEK: Yeah. I mean, look, and you have deal friends, you know, you have a lot of deal friends.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Podcast friends.

SIMON SINEK: Podcast friends. Yeah. Work friends, you know. And look, I’m not talking about, there’s all kinds of friends. There’s friends that you just like hanging out with. They’re just fun. But you’re not going to go to them with your problems or to sort out issues. You’re just not, work or personal. They’re just fun. Right. There’s nothing wrong with that.

But I think, you know, I’m certainly guilty of spending time with people that, you know, they fill a space and they make me feel not lonely. But at the end of the day, I don’t feel smarter, inspired, brighter, lighter. When I say goodbye, I’m just like, all right, bye. That was fun.

And I kind of want to spend more time with people who lift me, teach me, support me, love me, give me a chance to serve. They open up to me and let me serve as well.

The Challenge of Making Friends

STEVEN BARTLETT: You know, I struggle to make friends.

SIMON SINEK: And I think, do you know why I think?

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think I’m lazy with it. Lazy with friendships. So I will meet someone, I’ll have a great connection with them, and then my follow up, I don’t really know what to do next. So I’ll meet you.

SIMON SINEK: Follow up is crap.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Oh, fucking. This is what I mean. I’ll meet someone, I’ll text you.

SIMON SINEK: And maybe I’ll get a response.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Vice versa. I think you left me on red. You’re the same. Are you the same or is it just with me?

SIMON SINEK: It’s just with you.

STEVEN BARTLETT: But I think my follow up game is crap. I’ll meet someone. I’ll go, oh my, I’ll see the potential for a friendship and then I won’t know what I have. Or maybe I’m just being lazy. I’m trying to, I want to be honest. Maybe I just don’t prioritize it.

SIMON SINEK: I think also when you start having fame and money and used to being the boss, you get away with stuff. So you show up late, everybody’s pissed off and angry. And then you show up and they’re like, and you’re like, sorry. They’re like, no, no, no, don’t worry, don’t worry. Right. You get away with stuff in the world. Right?

And so I think what that does is I see this with celebrities all the time. Right? Because everybody yeses them to death and they get away with it and nobody ever holds them accountable. At some point they just get lazier and lazier and lazier because they can, you know.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.

SIMON SINEK: And so they don’t have to put in the effort because other people put in the effort.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.

SIMON SINEK: And nobody will be like, somebody who’s a nobody won’t say to them, “Yo, asshole, not respectful. What, you think my schedule doesn’t matter? I’ve been waiting here for three hours. Just because you’re a celebrity, you think you can just keep me waiting? Not cool.” Nobody says that to them. And somebody should say that to them.

STEVEN BARTLETT: But they should say to themselves.

SIMON SINEK: They should say to themselves, that would be ideal. And some of them have the self awareness to know they’re getting away with it. That’s even worse because then they’re doing it on purpose. At least blindness, I think, you know, they can at least hide behind ignorance. But yeah, I mean, friendship takes effort.

STEVEN BARTLETT: There’ll be a lot of people listening now. I know that. Understand. I think they’ll resonate with what I’m saying, which is I’ll meet someone. I’ll be like, we could be really good friends. I see so much in us. I love what you stand for. We have so much in common. And then it drifts because neither party have the tools or the skill of what to do.

SIMON SINEK: Then we also live in a strange world where I’ve met people, where I have all of that. And I follow up, immediately I’m like, “Hey, I had such a good time. Let’s make a plan.” And they’re like, “What? Huh? What?” Or I call, as opposed to texting. And people are like, “Why are you calling?” Like, well, we had a nice time. I thought we’d maybe talk, you know. And I think we live in this strange world where people put it out there, but they don’t really want it.

The Premium on Being Human

STEVEN BARTLETT: Looping us right back to the beginning of this conversation. As you said that about the call, that made me think again about how there’s going to become a premium on human. Because calling is so archaic to me that when someone does it, it’s like a treat now.

And I was thinking, what’s taking that even further would be writing someone a letter. If someone, do you know who wrote me a letter? Evan from Snapchat came on the podcast. The founder and CEO of Snapchat. And then by the time I’d got back to London, there was a letter on my desk from Evan.

And it just said, “I had a great conversation with you. Thank you for being so thoughtful with the questions. Thank you for the research. Here’s my number. Would love to stay in touch.” And it blew me away.

SIMON SINEK: AI wrote that?

STEVEN BARTLETT: No, it was with a pen.

SIMON SINEK: He had an auto pen.

STEVEN BARTLETT: It was with a pen. I had a signature and his phone number. And I thought, that is so beautiful.

SIMON SINEK: It’s classic. It’s classic and classy.

STEVEN BARTLETT: There’s a premium on being human. Simon, thank you so much. Thank you for being so generous with your time. Always.

SIMON SINEK: I always have fun with you.

STEVEN BARTLETT: You always move me forward in my thinking in such a profound and unexpected, always unexpected way that I’ll value tremendously for a very, very long time in our friendship. I’m going to text back even faster. You know, we need to go on more dates, and I look forward to that and look forward to our next date in London, which I know is coming up sometime soon.

SIMON SINEK: Yeah, we’ll go out for sure. It’ll be fun.

Closing Tradition

STEVEN BARTLETT: We have a closing tradition. What’s an Emily forgot?

SIMON SINEK: I do know the tradition, which is?

STEVEN BARTLETT: The last guest leaves a question for the next guest.

SIMON SINEK: Yes. What’s my question?

STEVEN BARTLETT: What are you doing in your life to mentor someone coming up behind you? And then who is a person that you’d like to mentor, teach, or coach that needs your voice the most?

SIMON SINEK: My team is everything right now. I want to give everything I’ve learned to my team. I want the folks on my team to benefit from all the mistakes I’ve made. And one of the joys of being in founder mode, when it’s not the actual beginning, is I have way more in my skill and knowledge bucket that I want to pour out.

And so one of the reasons I’m having so much fun in founder mode is because I want to give away everything that I’ve learned so that my team can be stronger and stronger and better and better because I want to leave something that can survive me. That, you know, the whole school bus test, you know, if the founder gets hit by a bus, will the company continue or will it not? And I really want to build something where they want to build it without me.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Feels like there’s been a change here. What was the catalyst?

SIMON SINEK: For the past couple of years, I’ve been just trying out a lot of different things to find a level of excitement and energy that I think I’d lost for a little bit. And I found it. The founder mode, my team are so great, and they so want to push boundaries.

And all I want to do is take the reins off, take the leash off. I want them to experiment, I want them to try things. And I’m trying to create an environment where they’re creative, they do things. Half of them will fail. I don’t care. Let’s try again. And I just love being around all the creative ideas that they’re coming up with.

STEVEN BARTLETT: My team asked you to bring something that meant a lot to you, and you brought me this. And I don’t know what’s in this box.

SIMON SINEK: Ooh.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Two medallions. Medals.

Military Challenge Coins and Their Significance

SIMON SINEK: Those are military challenge coins. I brought the one. The round one, just to show you what the traditional ones look like. This is the one I care about. I mean, I care about them both, but this is the one I brought.

So these are only generals or commanders will give these out. They’re hard to get. You get them when you do something of service. It’s less formal than a medal. They can give it out to whomever they want, and it’s their way of saying thank you.

And the challenge coins that I’ve been given, I’m very, very proud of, because I feel like I earned them. And the thing that I love is when they give them to you, they don’t just hand it to you. They put it in their hand like this, and they shake your hand. Go on. And that’s how they give them to you. And they say, “Thank you, Simon, so much for coming here and helping us out.” And that’s how they give me a coin.

The reason this one means a lot to me is because I did some work with the Air Force Top Gun. It’s called the weapons school, but it’s Air Force Top Gun. And this is their coin, and this is their patch. And I did some work with them to help them get to the core of their why, what their true value was, just to make sure that their culture stays clear and good for a long time.

Build, Teach, Lead: A Lasting Legacy

And we came up with three words, three actions that everybody who goes through Air Force Top Gun is required to do, which is “build, teach, lead,” which is the idea that you build a skill set, you teach that skill set to other people, and then you build leaders and you lead. Right. This whole idea that you have a responsibility to build, to teach and to lead, accumulate and give and serve.

And the thing that is so powerful is the commandant of the weapon school, after we did the work, he took those words and he put them on the coin.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Oh, really?

SIMON SINEK: And they exist on the coin, and they have been on there for years since. And I am so proud to have given something that has longevity, that is literally on the coin.

STEVEN BARTLETT: “Build, teach, lead.” That is such a beautiful mantra for life.

SIMON SINEK: And they are wonderful people who go there. And what an honor. That work that I did ended up on a coin. And so they gave me the coin out of gratitude for the work that I did. And it had my words on it. So it’s not my words. It’s their words. I just helped distill them. It’s who they are when they’re at their natural best. I just helped them put in, codify it.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Simon, thank you.

SIMON SINEK: Thanks.

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