Simon Sinek: You're Being Lied To About AI's Real Purpose And We're Teaching Our Kids To Not Be Human!

Let's say you have a fight with your girl. you want to do the right thing so you gotta chat gbt and you'll be like 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 and i care about this relationship and she says did you get this answer from chat gbt and you go i did how's that gonna Now, you did everything right, but what makes... people beautiful is not that we get everything right.

that we get many things wrong. And I think in the modern world we live in, we forget that. Simon Sinek is back. He's the visionary thinker inspiring millions to cultivate human connection, find their purpose, and overcome any modern day challenges. So So I'm not in the AI business, but I am in the humanity. And here's the problem that we never talk about. People keep telling us life is not about the destination. Life is about the journey.

But when we think about AI, we only think about the destination. And its remarkable ability to write the book, paint the painting, solve the problem. But we forget the importance of doing the work yourself. And I think in our modern day and age, we have underrepresented the value of struggle. I am smarter, better at problem solving, more resourceful, not because a book exists with my ideas in it, but because I wrote it.

That excruciating journey is what made me grow. But it's the same for love, friendships, conflict. And I think that we forget that we give up certain skills or abilities because of technology. But 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. End.

Unless we take personal accountability to teach and learn human skills, they will disappear. Sure, you can have an AI friend, trained, like the best psychologist to affirm you, the best listening skills that exist,

But my ability to know what to do when my friend is struggling. My ability to function in the world or my ability to cope with stress. These very, very human skills are suffering. So what are the other skills we need to equip ourselves with based on the way that the world is heading? Two things. One is... Quick one, just give me 30 seconds of your time.

Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week. It means the world to all of us and this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place. But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started. And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24% of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app.

here's a promise I'm going to make to you. I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future. We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show. Thank you.

Good to see you again. Why are you laughing? That's just familiar. Familiar. It's so interesting because when I sit down to talk to you, you're one of the very few people that I don't come with a preconception as to what we're going to talk about. But I come with a feeling.

And the feeling that I bring forth is the feeling of change and transition. I have lived for 32 years, but I don't think I can ever think of a time where the future has felt... unclear, uncertain, scary, exciting, and... I guess unknown. And I don't just mean with technology, but technology is one protagonist in the story, and there's many other social stories playing out from politics to relationships to all of these things. So my first question to you, Simon, is what are those things?

What are the biggest forces of changes that you see happening at the moment in all of our lives that you think we should probably talk about today? That is a big question. And I think one of the mistakes we make, and this is in general, is we like things to be very neatly organized. We like them to be black and white, yes or no, right or wrong. And as you know, the world is messier than that. It is more nuanced than that. And nothing operates in a vacuum. Everything is connected to everything.

especially in a world that's filled with this rising technology called the internet and this burgeoning technology called the social media. And desires and feeling like belonging become more and more important. We're struggling to find them. Loneliness epidemic, stress epidemic, suicide epidemics. These are all feelings of disconnection, lack of control and loneliness.

And so that only exaggerates our feeling of loneliness and despair and wanting more, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then you add in AI. And now those feelings of insecurity are just exaggerated like crazy, right? So now I find AI, there's an irony. So if you go back to the 70s and 80s, you had the rise of robotics. And so robots are now coming into our factories, and we're able to cut. employees by dramatic amounts.

And we put people out on the street who, they worked in a factory, their father worked in a factory, their father's father worked in a factory, like this is what they know. And they say, but these robots are changing, they're taking our job. And the ruling classes and the Wall Street classes and the CEO classes, they go, yeah, I know, technology. You're going to have to find a new skill. Reskill.

That's where you have to do reskill. Okay, flash forward to AI. Here's where the irony comes in. Because the world is always, nature pours vacuum and life seeks balance at all times, right? Not always immediately, but it seeks balance at all times. It's always seeking equilibrium. Okay, so flash forward to AI. Now you hear the knowledge workers. It's the knowledge workers who are going, my job. It's the coders. It's the finance people. My job. The plumber is not worried about AI.

At all. The baggage handler at the airport cares zero about AI. And so maybe the right response is, It's the future, man. It's technology. Reskill, reskill. Maybe become a plumber. By the way, money's really good. You get to work for yourself if you want. So I just find the pendulum kind of funny.

With AI, do you think it's overblown or do you think it really is cause for concern and deeper thought? The honest answer is, I don't know. Everybody falls on one side of, you're over, you're over, you're, you know, the sky is not falling, chicken little, or the sky is falling, and we're all going to die, right? The truth, like most things, is probably somewhere in the middle.

But the real answer is I don't know and neither does anybody else. And it seems that we should have some sort of controls because we didn't put any controls on the internet. They did put controls on the internet in China. Like children don't have the same access to social media like kids do here. Europe has controls on the internet. And America doesn't.

And we're the ones that seem to be suffering more because of the lack of controls on the internet. So I think some, and by the way, when people talk about deregulation and no controls, I mean, they make us wear seatbelts in our cars. We have speed limits. And it's for the greater good. And yeah, sure, your seatbelt's uncomfortable, but you'll get used to it. And it's fine. So I think the call for no reform is wrong.

There are correct limits to keep things safe. I am fascinated by AI, both the benefits and the weaknesses of it. But it is revealing to me something. more important than what other people are talking about. which is we're a result-obsessed society, right? We care about output, we care about performance, we care about numbers, we care about final product more than anything, right? And when people talk about AI, they talk about its remarkable ability to write the symphony, paint the painting.

Write the book. Write the article. Solve the problem. And by the way, the technology is incredible. I asked only a few months ago to please take this and put it in the style of me. And it was... It was fine. I did it with a friend of mine who's also an author, and we both did it for ourselves. 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 it. It was damn near flawed.

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, you know? 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. 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? 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. That sounds difficult. Boy, it's hard being you. Oh my God, it's so great being you. Have you, you know, like. It's an affirmation machine built by a for-profit company that wants you to stay on. You 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. And what made you a great entrepreneur is not that the company exists, it's that you built it with your hands and you've got the scars to show. It was 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.

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... But I would hate to lose out on becoming a better version of me. And I think that to really learn to grow. 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 type their name in. 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.

So we give up certain skills or abilities because of technology regularly. 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 belly didn't know what to do when I have a fight with my spouse. Or my partner.

I really didn't 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, you know. Writing your own book. Not for them, not for the output. Not for the output. For your personal growth.

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 receive. 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. Yeah, of course. 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, Stephen. Furthermore, can we, I'm like, you never said that to me, mate. Sorry. The end dashes. Oh, my gosh. It's funny, right? It's crazy. Yeah. But what you're talking about, have you ever heard of the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi? No. So wabi-sabi is a Japanese design concept which is beauty in that which is temporary or impossible.

Okay? So, have you ever seen Japanese ceramics? Yeah. They're wonky, or the glaze is not even... Yeah. And they're beautiful. You know why? Because they're handmade. Tree bark. Trees. You know, when you have a wooden ball. 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. Right? And you're 100% right. I now know in the art world, artists are being asked to sign affidavits that say, I painted.

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. And what we will start to desire is things that are made by hand. Because, by the way, 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. Human error. The value of human error. The value of human error. Scooter Braun said to me the other day, he said, um... We could walk.

a computer play chess with another computer he goes but the 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. but it's the human error of two human chess players who are worse, objectively worse, at chess. That makes it so fascinating. 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 day. 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, and 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. On the interview example, the minute you started describing that, I immediately flashback to an interview I had last week at our company where a young kid walks in wearing a suit and I thought, no, 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 clue.

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 same time, you don't want him to show up.

and kick his shoes off and put his feet on the table either. There's an element of respect you want, and you want somebody in that first interview to put on some effort. Now, too much effort is pretty inauthentic, but too little effort... What's that? This is my diagram. You've got perfect... Yeah, on one end, which is low. And then you've got poor, which is also low. Yeah. The sweet spot is right here in the middle. I think there's some truth to that. And so...

There's a level of... It's the same thing as we all want vulnerability in our relationships, but not on the first day. I don't need to know that quite yet. What are the other skills that you think we need to equip ourselves with based on the way that the world is heading?

Like the calculator came along and we no longer needed to be able to do complicated maths. I've completely forgotten my timetables. I can't spell any math. I'm so fine. I said to my friends, the most I can do is nine times nine. That's like the top end of my range. But with spelling, it's the same. I get like half the word correct. But again, you know. So what are those skills? I think it's all human skills. 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.

One of the concerning things was I heard Sam Oppmann, who's the founder of OpenAI and ChatGPT, launch this thing called World. a couple of years ago, when Chachupiti 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. Wildcoin is one way to help implement. That was stated by the founder of Chachi Media, Sam Altman.

Again, I'll go back to my ironic statement before. Isn't it ironic that they want to do a universal income, a 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.

I mean, yes. What happens to purpose? It's ironic. And meaning if we're being, 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 single month. A minimum of salary. So yeah, $2,000, $3,000, whatever it might be. Yeah.

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. in a world where we're just being handed money. So we're not being given wealth. There's a difference. We're being given survival money, right? And so, you know, we have to be very careful that 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, you know, 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 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 Altmans 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. He has made a point of having, I think it's 100 people or less in his company.

He doesn't have like 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 take. which means it's going to arrive very quickly and accelerate very quickly. So I think he's actually preparing not to. Yeah, but what happens to the 90 people he lays out?

When he doesn't need 100, he only needs 10. This is the question. I'm just curious. 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. You know, I keep hearing from companies. I mean, we were talking about this before we turned on the cameras, you know.

If you want a new website, I guarantee you, I don't care which company you're talking to. They will all talk about how they're 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? Because they're taking the margin. 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, you know, people work very hard to pick. The status quo exists because there are people who benefit from it.

That's why there is a status quo. And like I said, everybody's into change, the future, until it's them that's threatened. or their income. The billionaires 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 a staffer who's

head of Microsoft AI, now CEO of Microsoft AI, or people from Google, or that 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.

The right answer is no, but that is correct. And you'll always be aware of the messenger, right? Like 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 family smoke. It's like, I remember visiting Facebook in the earlier days, and I went into the cafeteria, and they had, like, 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 you're economic interest, you know, show me how someone's paid and I'll show you how they behave.

One of the scariest conversations I was privy to was a friend of mine who's a billionaire in London.

He knows the CEO of one of the biggest air 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. 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 like 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 like actually the lack of empathy yeah that makes sense to me but like the obsession with power was shocking to me 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 company.

There is only one. I mean, sure, there's competition, but not really, right? Walmart is making a run of it to threaten Amazon, but Amazon's still so damn big. All of these companies, there's only one. 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 is so aggressive, and which is why people are not being careful, and which is why they're not putting control.

is because the way that text 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... That just seems to be the way it is, which is a very scary prospect to me. The fact that we can have winners is a bad thing, especially if we pride ourselves on being capital. then there cannot be a winner. And there cannot be one that is so dominant that nobody else can even compete except for Scrap.

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. 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 sound 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... 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, all of these companies always forget, especially technology. 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. 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 and 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. I find this whole thing fascinating. When you ask me how do I feel, you know, 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 a real fear, right? When it comes to productivity and the reshaping of business, you know, technologists and people who are part of the internet revolution, they love to say, you know, 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, they seem to think, I think it's the same, which is all those people are going to lose those jobs in white collar, you know, 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 and they need to hire all the IT.

So the workforce looked different, but it didn't get smaller. And so I think it's 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. Coding was a thing for, go be a nuke. Because by the way, you're going 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're going to see energy work. I just think the jobs will change.

I don't think they're going to, like, I completely, one thing I do disagree with, you know, it's just not like you're going to be a bunch of people walking around bored. I just think the jobs will change. 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? I would say two things.

One is going back to human skills. Learn how to be a good friend to your friends. Okay, how do I learn that? You're going to really need that. How does Antonio learn that, or how do you and I learn that? A 10-year-old learns that when they go and have a play date at a friend's house, a smart parent takes away all the phones. 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 you, 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. 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 best marriages, the best relationships, they're not absent of conflict. They know how to resolve conflict pieces. 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 when I say a real skill, I 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 into ChatGPT and say, tell me what's wrong with this. Your grammar's all screwed up, you know? And like I said, I... I am smarter because I did. 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 like, and, you know, you have more confidence 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, 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.

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 creates. people talking about the age of abundance and all these things, is I'm contending with the question on a personal...

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. with this possibility or 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 one of these things and start building and creating and running off down that path to climb some ladder? What 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? Now. Right, like... Oui.

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. Like, like when you talk about money can't buy happiness, like it absolutely buys happiness up to a certain level, which is survival. 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 them. 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...

Those were their passions and their cause. And then the money came and they weren't building the thing anymore. This is the difference. It's really interesting. It also gets to the question, why is it that small companies are more innovative than big companies?

Right? Like, you think about it. When you say, what's the secret for innovation? Well, 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 have 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 in the shit market conditions, and yet they're more innovative. And then big companies innovate by buying the little companies. You know, that's basically what happens. My exit, your exit, big company kind of innovates. They just bought you, right? 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. objectively stupid. Like, 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. 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 Watch Duty, which is how we tracked the fires. It basically took all the publicly available information and put it in one place in a really amazing way. It started by this amazing, amazing, amazing entrepreneur named John.

And we were all obsessed with Watch Duty. We all were on this app the whole time. And one of the things we were watching was the wind. Because if the wind shifted, it could have profoundly impacted your life. And I remember having this experience, like we were all watching the wind and the wind went away from me. And I thought, Thank God.

And in that moment, I knew that somebody was looking at that 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 incomes. It's not one of those, I don't want my house to burn down so somebody else's house doesn't burn.

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, 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 left.

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 I had to go through the process of packing up my... 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. It's 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.

A lot of people in LA had to do that. 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. I hear this, you know, if 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... I might. And it's made me a lot more disconnected from my materials thing. especially the things I said goodbye to, because I've already 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. How did you choose? And I said, I've already said goodbye to everything here. I did it.

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

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

And I think to change our minds to gratitude. And you can, you know, it's a little bit hippy-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. 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. Like, hey, just wanted to call and just tell you I love you and 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.

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 do. 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...

Yeah, that would make sense. Then you could do that. I'm new to this. 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 what I've, 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. And I found it so repetitive that I was like, is this worth it? Sure, like every now and then something was different and new. And I've come to the conclusion, like, if it's the same three things every single day, good. 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 the 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? 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 realising just how important four or five people in my life are. And how much I neglect them. Yeah, I mean, of course. I mean, only when it's...

And you're right. If you say, give a million 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 for a 1% chance.

And people do. They quit their jobs. So many charities have been started because my father died, my mother died, my sister died, my brother died, and I've devoted my life to duh. Literally, that's the reason. And it's because it's personal. Of course, that makes sense. It's 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 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 It was a business problem, and they wanted to change their 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?

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.

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 have. 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? There's data on this. I've actually never thought about this. This is good. There's a book called, oh, it was The Wisdom of Crowds. I think it was that. I think it was The Wisdom of Crowds by Jim Serecki.

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 hell, 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. and it caught up with the other guys and burned them all to death.

Now, they didn't teach them that in fire. 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. 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 conversations, 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 like being in a fight. You want to do the right thing. So you got to chat GBT 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 down.

It's not you telling me sorry. It's ChatGBT 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 it with me and be like, babe, I don't know how to do this. I'm an asshole. you know 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, but because you got it wrong. 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've got to solve this problem now, otherwise this is going to destroy my life. And all of this is coming full circle. And it comes right back to everything we started. I think it's hilarious that you're having a conversation with me about AI because I'm not an AI expert and I'm not an 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 imperfections.

because imperfection is the sign of human. I was just thinking about how 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 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. I want human resonance. It's interesting because I've been like thinking about what my... Struggle is a good thing. Yeah. And I think in our modern day and age, we have underappreciated and underrepresented the value of struggle. And if you ask anybody in their life... 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.

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 humans.

Struggle 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 creates... We're not buying the product. We're buying the story. Yeah. Like the Mona Lisa is... You're not buying the Mona Lisa. You're not buying a piece of art. You're buying the story that goes with... destroy that attack to create

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. And the Mona Lisa was stolen from what I... I mean, we don't even know if the one in the Louvre is the real one. Because I heard much of the reason why the medalist is so valuable is because at one point it was stolen and then they, like, managed to find it again. And actually, it's just a painting, but...

The story of the painting is worth 100 million, 200 million, whatever. Whatever. I mean, and so this is what we figure. The reason famous artists are famous is because you buy the story of that artist, 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. 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 three feet either side of the eye.

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. calls into the device itself. If I'd gone into an app or

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 that, oh my God, this thing is... It's theatre. It looks like one of one. Yeah, it's theatre. 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... I found a guy who makes cashmere jerseys, and he uses the exact same cashmere as, you know, lower piano, whatever, some fancy... But the problem is, it says Dave's cashmere shop. I can 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 I'm, you know, 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. People will want to say that. It's like, you had that person write your speech for you. Wait, who did the painting? They did it themselves. 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.

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 of money. 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...

he posted a photo from his factory. It was like a series of videos. 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, I fell out of love. Exactly. Because in my head, I painted this artisan picture of them sewing it. These two guys sewing it in their bedroom. That's probably what it was on the ad too. I think that's what it kind of like used to be.

So I still had that image. Yeah, but it got too big. One thing that I've always understood, this is true for businesses, this is true for absolutely everything, scale breaks. You know, scale breaks in the military, they have special forces, special operating forces, Navy SEALs, SAS, you know, all those folks, right? And there's a saying in the special forces that's basically special. 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 and so Scale breaks things. 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. 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. 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, it was slightly different. And they had 90-something percent of the world's operating system.

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. 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.

I think B2B marketers 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. And I know, as there was a time in my career where I kept making this mistake, that many of you will be making it too.

Eventually, I started posting ads on our show sponsors platform, LinkedIn, and that's when things started to change. I put that change down to a few critical things. One of them being that LinkedIn was then, and still is today, the platform where decision makers go to, not only to think and learn, but also to buy. And when you market your business there, you're putting it right in front of people who actually have the power to say yes.

and you can target them by job title, industry, and company size. It's simply a sharper way to spend your marketing budget. And if you haven't tried it, How about this? Give LinkedIn ads a try, and I'm going to give you $100 ad credit to get you started. If you visit linkedin.com slash diary, you can claim that right now. That's linkedin.com slash diary.

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. My love. The founder of Bumble, the CEO, is a really, really good friend of mine. I think she's amazing. Whitney. Whitney, yes. I think she is amazing. Has she come on? She has. And I know her, and she's a wonderful human.

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... And you see, I mean, this is the... Well, she's had to come back. 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.

falling in love with yourself. Yeah. 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. Sure, yes. I mean, I... I agree with that. I mean, we're all broken records, right? I don't mean that as like we're all broken souls. Like, you know, your customers will never love you until your employees love you.

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. it's because she doesn't love herself. And she knows that it's a hard thing to do. So Bumble can crack that code, more power to him.

But this is the problem with a lot of these things. 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 easy. 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...

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. Every single day. Okay? Can I take the occasional day off? Yes, but not too many. Work on every single day. And 100% of you will get into shape. I know it. 100%. When? and neither does And that's my work. Yes, I can profoundly help you find

Purpose would start with why. It can help you build trust on a team with the leaders at 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 innovate? 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...

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...

Think about it, right? If I meet another entrepreneur, when I say, so tell me about your company. Like, we're hyper growth. We're a hyper growth company. We're a gazelle, right? Like, show me. Then I always say the same thing. 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. Or our egos want us to be obsessed with high speed. And if high-speed growth happens by accident, that happens for many of the unicorns. 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 company. And we're all so obsessed.

speed and immediate result. 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. By the way, cell phones, 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.

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 beat. you know, with their computers. I mean, this is like the future, right? And they said, now, what was the tagline? It was really funny. It's like, now you can leave work.

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. As you said that, I thought, do 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. 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.

and therefore the pressure to do it now because I can do it. goes up. And this is kind of maybe what I was alluding to earlier on, you know, when I was saying about how you're going to get more stressed and more overwhelmed and more isolated. That's so good. Right, we're taking work with it. I mean, it's like, you know, everybody has a story of where the battery ran out on their phone and they ended up having the best night. 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. 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 suggests, I took it off the suggestions.

Most people don't even know you can 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 and I just click it like a zombie and then I'm done for an hour, you know?

So I hit 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, you know, 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. One of the big things, talking about community, Instagram, AI, that I think a lot about is Is that...

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. And so now the people that have the other half of... 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 a community? 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. Interesting. Community is a group of people who agree to grow together, and I believe friends are at least two people who agree to grow.

In marketing, this is the absolute obsession at the moment. Community run clubs and brands becoming... Offline is the new online, right? Offline's the new black. There's a company called... 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'll just call her by her name. Her name's Ali.

But how many 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. She would come up with reasons to come together, whether it was running or this. It didn't matter what the reason was.

just a reason to come, that when you saw the ad hung up on a piece of paper at college, you know, they'd be like, I like... horror movies, whatever. I like baking. I'll go to that. 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 offline. And there's a great irony in it. She has an app that she wants people not to be on. You know?

And what is it that holds the community together? 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 that. I don't think it matters. I mean, it's shared interests as a way to start a relationship, right? Comic-Con.

You know, Nerdvana, Burning Man, all of these larger-than-life events, big and small, going to the football. It's like you're everybody's friend when you wear the right color. You see people on the tube who are going to the same game, they're wearing the same jersey.

Your friends. Your friends, right? So I think common interest 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. Do you need a shared goal in a community?

Thinking because in the football analogy, we have a shared goal. 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. 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.

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 relationships and... Shared values. Shared values. I mean... I like to think the people who really like my work, not the ones who just passively like it, but the ones who really like it.

Like, if somebody says, I love Start With Why, or I live my life by the infinite count. that it says something about who they are and how they see the world, and that we share the same values. And because I am, you know me, you know I'm an ideal. And 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 value.

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. I was invited to a group, they called it a mastermind group, where a bunch of folks like me, author speakers, this is what they told me, come together based on shared goals, shared values, how we can work together to improve the world.

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 do common good together.

They didn't invite me back. But the point is, it's like...

The money and the fame is seductive. 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. Luke Skywalker was nearly seduced away from the vision, from the journey. 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 for me. 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, no. Get over yourself. And you start becoming seduced. And I think the seduction, when we turn on social media and we watch Kardashian. The Kardashian model. And 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 that was a... 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 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. You just lost like 170 followers. I mean, maybe. You just lost like 170 blue ticks. 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 was 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?

She admitted afterwards she was 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. And, like, there's not, I don't have a problem with, it's the input, right? It's the intention. Anyway, anyway, it's not like an old man complaining about your kids these days and your influence.

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 read and interpretation on them. Okay. Adults lack of meaning and purpose, overall lonely and lonely.

Okay. I mean, that makes sense. To me, that didn't make sense. I couldn't understand how if someone is low in purpose, then they are lonely. 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, yeah, I do, and I think it's not the thing that makes you less lonely. I think it's a mechanism.

Just as you said that, that why you just gave, it becomes a magnet for me. Yeah. 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. Yeah. Versus, yeah, I'm a dentist. Or I don't know. Which is even worse. Which is even worse. Yeah. So yeah, that doesn't seem unusual. Distribution of people feeling lonely worldwide by gender. So it's about 50-50.

Are you surprised by that? I thought, for some reason, I thought more than one. Not at all lonely looks like women do better. Do you think you thought men were more lonely? I thought men would be more lonely. I also don't know what the age groups are. I want to know what age 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 it 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 who have anxiety are lonely. Do you think good mental health is a foundation for being...

Not lonely, 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 does. Can it make you withdraw from your friends of course? Amen.

So I don't think you can separate the two. 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 and Afrika

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 that's not conducive, ironically, with finding more friends, but it is conducive with survival.

and it's conducive with being able to fend for yourself. It's more conducive survival as an individual. So if you're on a deserted island, and you're lonely and all those things, and the cortisol rises, and you become better at... Being on edge, which is a survival mechanism, right? But if you live... in a community with other people than 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.

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, 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 she's, because we had a conversation and I texted her and said, oh, thank you for being so open and stuff. I was thinking about like 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 risk?

So it's easy to give the obvious advice, like, 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. 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? Like, how do I help somebody else who's dealing with that?

And it's the act of service that is so valuable. If you guys are talking and she has many clients and somebody else and her willing to admit that I'm lonely, that one of her clients might say, you know me too like 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... 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 has been my misuse for many years. And if people get to know her, they will change. 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 every stranger I meet. It took me like 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'll say why why are you so guarded with your information well if people know who really i really am and they know more about me then they'll change or

And they may not like me anymore. They'll think differently about me. So I just keep it to my... I mean, this is the age-old problem. I mean, it's everything you said when people are driven only by the thing that they want, you know, versus the giver.

And this is the age-old problem, which is 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 This goes, look, you and I both know that if somebody chooses to go on an entrepreneurial event... The statistics bear out that over 90% of all new businesses will fail in the first half.

What idiot would ever start a business? You have to be compelled by something else to make you do something with overwhelming statistical chance of failure. 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. Like, 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 like you and think you're the best thing and think you're me.

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 on to, to be like, if you can't give them anything to say, me too, then...

then it's going to be a hard road or it'll take somebody to chip away at you 20 times, you know, 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. Now she's fully open. Yeah. And we've been through everything. I know where she wants her house to be. 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.

And so one of the reasons she 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. I could see it in her face, though. I could see. But you're also curious. Yeah, I can see this. She lucked out because you're curious about people.

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? I mean, it could be values, it could be interests, it could be many things, but I think to find I think yes. Like, this is, 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 sheep. 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. 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... 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. right now, which is one group or one person

to just be curious rather than agree or disagree. There's something about relationships here as well, because my girlfriend, 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 like pass through truth and to figure and to correct truth

It is to sit and let someone get it out. So you and I have the same problem. We do. Which is we live above our necks. Yeah. And you and I both have the same struggle, which is to learn to live below. You and I are head people, and we have to learn to be more heart. And I want to understand everything, explain everything, evaluate everything, analyze everything. And when I come to my emotions, I'll give you an analysis.

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, that's the only rule, is 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 four, five, six, ten pieces that you like, and I'm going to see four, five, six, ten pieces that you don't like. And I'll 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? And so when your girlfriend opens up to you, you don't have to agree, you don't have to disagree. And you and I both have to learn to stop thinking.

And to just, like, feel something. When somebody says, where do you feel it? I'm like, that's the stupidest question I've ever heard. Where do I feel it? And they've literally, like, I had somebody take me on this journey, and she goes, you told me an emotion you have, Simon. You told me an emotion. Where do you feel it in your body? Where do you feel it? And I'm sitting there going You know? But all right, we'll go through that.

All right. And she says, so you said you feel X? I'm like, yes. All right. We're in your body. Did you have some sort of reaction? I hear what happened. It got a little tighter in my. Okay. And I went on this journey with my friend, it was my friend Bea Voce. She's, 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 like 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. It's a hard skill. Oh my God, it's hard. Especially for men. And so when you meet spiritual people, they are all below them. And we think it's stupid, but they recognize that we have an ability to feel because we want to think.

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, 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 and to me. I think it's like the biggest opportunity you have to form relationships. Change the number of posts for automation-prone jobs.

compared to manual intensive jobs. So this is a graph that shows the drop in job postings online for jobs. around automation. Yeah, the knowledge work is going to get hammered by AI. I met a guy in Japan. who is 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. He folds his own metal and he makes samurai swords the way they made them 200 years.

And we went to his little workshop. And he's this little old guy. And he's telling us the story. Like, 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. I was like, I can't. this copy of my life. And I just, I've always been enamored by sword making, so I found it. and try to learn. And, you know, I'm just starting to get the hang of it, but I have a lot of room for improvement. And we're like, how long have you been doing this?

But that's so Japanese. You know, the Japanese are like, I'll never be good at this, I'll just keep working at it. And, like, it's such hard work. But he, I think there's something to be said for, I think a lot of us, like think about how many white knowledge workers, like ask them what their hobbies are. You know? and like 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, running, cycling. 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 a 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.

Like, things can get more beautiful after they're broken. Right? I love the philosophy of it. I spent hours doing frickin' Kintsugi. Ask me how much Kintsugi I've done since we came out of lockdown. How much DJing have you done? 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 this 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, like, maybe... Maybe it's okay that we get some time back because it sounds like we've lost all of our own time.

the loneliness you'd have space for relationships 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 like Maybe AI doing some of the work for us is the thing we've been desperate for for the past 30 years. Just saying. This is quite embarrassing for me to admit, but if you know me well, there's something that you know about... which is a function of my personality.

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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. Yeah. We'll both go.

I'm doing so much right now. By the way, absolute joy. And I wish I had more time and adapt. And not in the sense that I'm deprioritizing my friends. You know, you talked about how you would give them all your money.

cure 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 like take yourself on a little bit where I, I will schedule friends like meetings in the middle of the day. Haven't seen a friend for a while. four o'clock in the afternoon. See you next time.

And I go and I leave the office. Like, I'm going to a meeting. Because nobody says, hey, Simon, where are you going? I'm 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, you have to have, like, no. Just like you wouldn't cancel my meeting.

Don't cancel. So I treat, I put it in and I give them equal weighting to things that I have to do at work because I become much more discerning. Like, do I have to have this meeting or this phone call today or can I do it next week? I can do it. And you realize we fake, we fake, we add fake urgency to things. And I have a friend who's kind of amazing. He's way busier than me. And he...

He says, I don't want to spend time with anybody. I saw it was really funny. He came out of a meeting, and he had a meeting with a very fancy person who was courting him for business, right? Or he should be courting the other guy, actually. Very fancy person. And he comes out of that meeting. I'm like, how was it? It's like a 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 was 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.

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 to 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 enjoy? What if we take meetings from people we're excited to take a meeting with, not that we just see dollar signs and 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.

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, I now am 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.

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 me takes the biggest bid, and every single one of them has written a shitty book that didn't sell. Isn't that just relationship advice as well, though? Probably, yeah.

Choose the person you're going to fight with. And the number of times that we forget about the quality of the product and we just want... 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, you know? Choose the job. Choose the job based on who you're going to work.

Choose the person. Early on in my career, HR people would say, what are you looking for? I'd always say the same thing. I'd say, the thing that I'm looking for is probably like looking for love, but I'm looking for a man. 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 gonna 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. 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 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. but I got an education and a care and a love from somebody who took me under their wing. I learn leadership from... Dennis Glennon. I learned leadership from Peter and Tamagio. 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. In my book that I wrote, I wrote the first little chapter and it talks about this idea of these five...

And I'm trying to give young kids advice on how to prioritise 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 all have these five buckets. 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 cancelled, 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.

Bucket number four is your resources can fluctuate. And bucket number five is your... 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

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 had this one kid.

stepped 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 resets you to the level of your knowledge and skills over time. So what do you think of this? I think we're saying the exact same thing you did at Morale. 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 put you in situations. and they will let you screw up and fix your own problems, fix your own mistakes, then that's what my bosses did for me. They rewarded my behavior when I got it right, as opposed to my result. Never got rewarded for my results. I always got rewarded for my...

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, wow, 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 help.

You know, Peter and Tamagio, 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 this. Peter, I'm asking you because I don't know. That's why I'm asking you. I should probably go think about that. It was the worst, but what he taught me was self-reliance. 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 it 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 remember, at the end of the day...

At the end of this, a whole thing that went wrong that was totally my fault. The 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. I 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 have at least 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. I kind of, if this happened, I thought. And it's only because of these great leaders.

And 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 at what we do, better than how we show up in the world. And AI will absolutely make our lives easier, like most technology.

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, you know, strain on the mother. You know, that's kind of what it does, you know, from the plow, you know, 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. You're writing a book about friendship that we're all waiting for. Yeah. 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...

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. There's an entire industry to help us be better leaders. There's an entire industry to help you have a successful relationship or a successful marriage or even find a partner. 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...

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 before, like 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.

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. And it doesn't mean it's always easy. I'm conflicted often.

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

Friendship is the ultimate biohack. We've talked about this before. I fundamentally believe that. And if it's so valuable, like if you know vegetables are good... You eat more veg- 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? 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. 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.

Have that conversation with them. Because I know a lot of people. Yeah, I mean, and you have deal friends. You have a lot of deal friends. Podcast friends. Podcast friends, yeah. 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... to sort out, you know, 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. I struggle to make friends.

Do you know why? I think... I... I think I'm lazy when they're lazy. So I will meet someone, I'll have a great connection with them. And then my follow-up, like I don't really know what to do next. So I'll meet someone.

This is what I mean. Like, I'll meet someone. I'll text you and maybe I'll get a response. Vice versa. I think you left me on red. But you're the same. Are you the same or is it just with me? It's just with me. It's just with you. But I think my follow-up game is like, crap, I'll meet someone, I'll go, 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 didn't prioritize it. I think also when you start having fame and money and you're used to being the boss. You get away with... So you show up late. everybody's like pissed off and angry and then you show up and they're like and you're like sorry like no no no don't worry don't worry

You get away with stuff in the world. And so I think what that does is, and I see this with celebrities all the time, 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. And so they don't have to put in the effort because other people put in the effort.

And nobody be like, like somebody who's a nobody won't say to them, yo, asshole, not respectful. Oh, 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.

They should say it to themselves. They should say it to themselves. That would be ideal. I know 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. They can at least hide behind ignorance. Yeah, I mean, friendship takes effort. Yeah, there'll be a lot of people listening now I know.

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 like what to do then. We also live in a strange world.

Where I've met people where I have all of that and I follow up like 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 like texting. And people are like, why are you calling? Like, well, we had a nice time. I thought we'd maybe talk.

And I think we live in this strange world where people put it out there, but they don't really want it. 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. Because calling is so archaic to me that when someone does it, it's like a tree.

And I was thinking, what's taking that even further would be writing someone a letter. Do you know if you wrote me a letter? Evan from Snapchat came on the podcast, the founder and CEO of Snapchat. And then by the time I 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. AI wrote that. He had an auto pen. It was with a pen, I had a signature and his phone number, and I thought, that is so beautiful. It's classic. It's classic and classy. There's a premium on being human. Simon thank you so much. Thank you for being so generous.

Always. 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. We need to go on more dates.

And I look forward to that and I look forward to our next date in London, which I know is coming up sometime soon. Yeah, we'll go out for sure. It'll be fun. We have a closing tradition which I nearly forgot. I do know the tradition. Which is the last guest leaves a question for the next guest. Yes, what's my question? 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? My team is everything right now. I want to give everything I've learned to my team. the folks on my team to benefit from all of the mistakes I've made. And one of the joys of being in founder mode when it's not. Да.

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.

You know, the old 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... It feels like there's been a change here. What was... 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. This has been 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. 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 are coming up.

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. Two medallions? Medals? Those are military challenges. I brought 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 them however 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. They put it in their hand like this and they shake your hand. Gone.

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. is because I did some work with Air Force Top Gun. It's called a weapons school, but it's Air Force Top Gun. And this is their coin, and this is their... And I did some work with them to help them get to the core of their why, what their true value is.

just to make sure that their culture stays clear and good for a long time. 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. 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.

accumulate and give and serve. And the thing that is so powerful is the commandant of the weapons school, after we did the work, he took those words and he put them on the coin. Oh, really? And they exist on the coin and they have been on there for years. And I am so proud to have given something that has longevity, that is literally on the...

Build, teach, lead. Yeah. That is such a beautiful mantra for life. Yeah. And there are wonderful people who go there. And what an honor that work that I did ended up on. And so they gave me the coin out of gratitude for the work that I did, and it had my words on it. 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 it in a coat.

Simon, thank you. Thanks. Always love our conversations, and long may they continue. Likewise. Quick one, just give me 30 seconds of your time. Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week. It means the world to all of us and this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place. But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started.

And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24% of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app. here's a promise I'm going to make to you. I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future. We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show. Thank you.