TED Talks Daily - TED Talks Daily Book Club: Start With Why, 15th Anniversary Edition | Simon Sinek

Episode Date: May 18, 2025

Simon Sinek is an inspirational speaker and author of the bestselling book, “Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action.” In this TED Talks Daily Book Club interview, with host Elise Hu, Simon reflects on his message 15 years later and explains why it’s important to stay true to your why, both in the short- and long-term. He also tells us how to identify purpose-driven leaders and shares actionable steps you can take to find your own why. The TED Talks Daily Book Club series features TED speakers discussing their latest books and exploring their ideas beyond the page. Stay tuned to our feed for more interviews like this one and for special live book club events open exclusively to TED members. Want to help shape TED’s shows going forward? Fill out our survey! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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iPhone XS are later required with additional wireless service plan. Support for this episode comes from Airbnb. Winter always makes me dream of a warm getaway. Imagine this, toes in the sand, the sound of the waves, and nothing on the agenda except soaking up the sun. I think of myself in the Caribbean sipping on a frozen drink and letting my troubles melt into the sea. Maybe Jamaica, Turks and Caicos, St. Lucia, lots of possibilities for me and my family to explore.

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Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.ca. This episode is sponsored by Google Pixel. I am always looking for tools that help me stay curious and efficient. And lately I've been exploring the Google Pixel 9, which was gifted to me by Google. What's impressed me most is how it's powered by Gemini. That's Google's personal AI assistant built right into my phone. Gemini helps me brainstorm ideas, summarize emails, even plan out my day, all just by

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It's like having a research assistant right in my pocket. If you can think it, Gemini can help create it. Learn more about Google Pixel 9 at store.google.com. Today we're bringing you a new installment of our book club series, where we check out new books from TED speakers that will spark your curiosity all year long. Author and leadership expert Simon Sinek is no stranger to TED. He's given some of the most watched TED Talks of all time, including his 2009 TEDx talk

that has completely changed the game around leadership and what it means to lead a purposeful life. His first book, Start with Why, How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action, which came out just months after his TEDx talk, quickly became a bestseller. And just a week ago, the 15th anniversary edition of Start With Why was released. So we invited Simon to come on TED Talks Daily

for a conversation about what's changed for him, his outlook on the state of things today, and how his theory of Start With Why has not his outlook on the state of things today, and how his theory of start with why has not only withstood the test of time, but may actually be more relevant now than ever before. And just a heads up, this conversation took place over video chat online, so you may hear some background noise throughout the conversation. Sorry about that. Simon Sinek, thanks for sitting down with us.

Thanks for having me. Well, you are a longtime friend of Ted and we are now kind of looking back at Start With Why. It's the 15th anniversary. Given the extraordinary success of not only your Ted Talks, but just your work generally, the idea of starting with why has clearly stood the test of time. So what was it like for you to update this book for this edition? When I first articulated the concept of why and the Golden Circle, it was never supposed to be a commercial exercise. I treated it like a scientific experiment, which is I had this little theory that seemed to have, and the reason I called it the golden circle

is inspired by the golden ratio. This one concept that seems to have sort of, you know, unlimited applications from architecture to understanding snowflakes, you know? Understanding the Mona Lisa, like this one golden ratio. And so that's what inspired me. That's like I had this little concept that seemed to have unbelievable ability to help you, you know, better write a speech or better marketing or direct your career and decision making. And so I chose to do

the scientific method, which is I had a theory, I'm going to keep testing it until it fails. That was really the idea. And so I would call people, I'd call different industries, and I'd say, I have this thing. Do you want to try it? And they'd say, well, have you ever done it in manufacturing before? And I go, no, no, but I'd love to try. Yeah. Well, how do you know it's going to work in politics? I don't, but let's give it a try. I was very honest and it just kept working. Because I wasn't trying to sell anything, it actually helped the idea spread. Long story short, less excruciatingly long, it kept working.

It just kept working. There's a point at which I was like, all right, this is a real thing. Has the idea evolved over the past 15 years though? No. Is it pretty tried and true? It's based on the biology of human decision making. So until the biology of our brains changes, it's not going anywhere.

The thing that has evolved is finding even more uses and applications obviously, because that's just an ongoing learning journey. And the thing that I'm super proud of, if there's any evolution, I think the evolution has happened outside of the idea. The evolution has happened in the marketplace, right? So when I first started,

the concept of talking about purpose at work was like, you could not say the word purpose and work in the same sentence. You would literally, you'd be laughed out. You couldn't be taken seriously in a boardroom. And that was one of the reasons I didn't use the word purpose, by the way. The reason I called it the why is because I got tired of having these debates of what comes first, mission or vision. And like literally people debate vision comes first, mission comes first, no brand comes first, no purpose comes first.

And I got tired of having the debates. It was a semantic debate. So I went to the people who believe vision comes first. I said, what's vision? They said, it's why we get out of bed in the morning. I went to the people who believe mission comes first. I said, what's mission? They said, it's why we do what we do. And they all gave me the same definitions

for all their different things. I said, great, we'll call it the why. Now we can all agree. And because I avoided poorly defined words and because I avoided words with baggage, like purpose, what ended up happening is the people who needed to listen listened. And what I'm super proud of is that concept took hold. I can open up a newspaper and it'll say, you know, this company clearly doesn't know their

why. They don't know my work, they don't know me, and yet it's become part of the vernacular, which is kind of amazing, and as important, you can talk about purpose at work now. It's a thing, like serious businesses, banks, talk about purpose at work, and I'm super proud of that. That, to me, is the more important evolution. Not me or my work.

I was a proselytizer. I was spreading a gospel of a new way of seeing the world and seeing business, I was spreading a gospel of a new way of seeing the world and seeing business. I consider myself a messenger. And the fact that the message has taken hold is the greatest thing in the world. One example you bring up a lot,

or you had brought up a lot, was Apple of a company that could lead with why, and often did lead with why. I'm curious what person or organization, politician even is inspiring you today. What do you think leading with why looks like in our modern business era or our modern society? Is it still the Apple model for you?

Or has anything changed? Yeah, no, I mean, the fundamentals are the same. The sad thing for me is we're living in pretty leaderless times. You know, there used to be many inspiring leaders in the world. You know, whether you agree or disagree with their politics is secondary, but nobody can argue that, you know, Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Margaret Thatcher, Václav Havel, these folks were powerful and inspiring voices and many of their lives overlapped.

Like Valencia, like all of these movement leaders, no one can argue that they definitely viewed themselves as being a part of something bigger than themselves. And whether I look in politics or business, that's precious few these days. To be honest with you, the loss of the Pope, you know, Pope Francis was pretty remarkable, whether you're Catholic or not a Catholic, pretty inspiring guy who definitely saw himself not as somebody trying to accumulate power. He saw himself as like us. As a servant leader.

He didn't need the pump on the circumstance. And if you go back to sort of Jim Collins' work, sort of the old classic level five leader stuff, humility ranks real high in what it takes to be one of these great inspiring leaders. And I don't fault the people, because clearly, you know, people are people whatever generation we're in. I think it's the times we live in and the incentive structures around us, but we've over-indexed on rugged individualism. We've over-indexed on sort of heroizing CEOs. They did it.

I'm like, no, they didn't. There's a whole team. We've over-indexed on short-termism. We've over-indexed on shareholder supremacy. None of those things are bad per se, but when the weight is tilted too far, it impacts behavior. Because, you know, show me how someone's paid and I'll show you how they behave. Shareholder supremacy, you get a behavior that looks like a lot of the leaders that we have today. What needs to be done to turn things around? Are there places where you are seeing pushback

or organizations that are trying to turn things around? Are there places where you are seeing pushback or organizations that are trying to turn things around? These things go in cycles. We have been in a bad Jack Welch, Milton Friedman cycle that started in the 80s, really got going in the 90s and the 2000s. Mass layoffs, for example, didn't exist prior to the 1980s. It wasn't a thing. Yeah. So we use layoffs to balance the books, which is just crazy, right? Like we missed our arbitrary projections. We're profitable, just not as profitable as we wanted.

So you get to lose your job, which is just madness. And so for every action, there's an equal opposite reaction. So what you're seeing is a young generation that's sort of scratching their heads. And I love to listen to CEOs complain about, you know, millennials and Gen Z. Gen Z, yeah. And you listen to listen to CEOs complain about, you know, millennials and Gen Z. Gen Z, yeah.

Yeah. And you listen to the language. They're entitled. You listen to the language of their disloyal. They show no loyalty to the company, right? You listen to all of these things. Okay. So let's take a step back and let's look at the world that they've grown up in, in

the 80s and 90s and 2000s, right? So they watch their parents or their friends' parents get laid off through no fault of their own. It's not a meritocracy. Okay, got it. The concept of the gold watch. Literally, there's an entire generation that when I talk about the gold watch, literally doesn't know what I'm talking about. Step back and explain it for us. I'll explain it. There was a concept which is you would get a job for a good company, they would look after you, and you would work your entire

career at one, maybe two companies. At the end of your career, you would retire and they would give you a gold watch to thank you for your decades of service. And this was a thing. Everybody got their gold watch at the end of their career from the company that they worked for. It doesn't exist anymore. And so you have this young generation who's scratching their head saying, the company's demanding loyalty from me, but if they miss their arbitrary projections, I get sacked, I watch my parents get sacked. They offer no loyalty to me.

Why should I give them loyalty? That makes sense, right? Makes sense. My generation, we would work really hard, go above and beyond, do the extra projects, stay up, you know, work late. Then we would go, go above and beyond, do the extra projects, stay up, you know, work late. Then we would go to our boss and say, hey, I've really been going the extra mile, can

I have a raise or a promotion? This generation, those in executive levels will complain, they come and ask for raises and promotions without having done the work. Well, if I were a young generation going that there's no stability and no loyalty, damn you, I'm going to cash in early and get that promotion and that raise. And that's what they say, like, give me the promotion, the raise, then you're going to see what I'm going to do. Right? Which if you think about the circumstances, the environment in which they were raised, makes perfect sense. Like got to protect numero uno, because the company's protecting numero uno, the company stopped caring about me, so I'm going to stop caring about the company's protecting me, you know, the company stopped caring about me So I'm gonna stop caring about the company. And so you're starting to see what is a more selfishly driven

work mentality Which would be the correct reaction to the environment that work has set and so to answer your question How do you solve it? I can't ask the employees to change. That's not fair. It's the companies that set the rules. And so if you want to change the way employees behave, the companies have to change the rules. And you are starting to see pressure from young people saying, I don't like the old system. I don't necessarily know what the new system has to be, but I don't like the old system. It just comes across as anti-corporate or stuff like that, right? Sure.

But there are some young and some forward thinking companies that are changing the rules. They care, listen to that ooey gooey mushy mushy word. They care about their people. They're coming up with incentive structures that promote growth, not just financial performance. And the result is the people who work in those companies are fiercely loyal. So Trek, the bicycle company, remarkable company, pushing the boundaries, changing the incentive structures.

The average tenure there is 30 years. Wow. The average tenure is 30 years. Wow. The average tenure is 30 years. Wow. Right. And that's because it's a company that cares. Barry Weymiller, a company I've written about. Bob Chapman. It's a manufacturing company. But if you ask Bob, what does your company do? You know, he talks about we're here to grow people so they can achieve their greatest

potential. He said, well, Bob, how do you measure success? We measure success by how we touch the lives of people. And he's a guy who in 2008 when the economy hit the skids and his pipeline dried up, they didn't lay off anybody. But they did do furloughs. And what they said, the public announcement was better we should all suffer a little than any of us should have to suffer a lot. Yeah. And it's that kind of shared hardship. Yeah. We're not saying that companies can't go through hard times and that we have to somehow struggle. We're not asking for the companies to give us huge bonuses when they're losing money. But if we all share in the burden, that means we can also share in the good fortune and the wealth. And if we take care of each other

and look to each other and look to each other's growth, this is a good thing. Venture capital screws things up because venture capitalists put pressure on all these CEOs to do things. They promote short-termism in a horrible way. Right. And that's where the incentives get all out of whack. And that's where the incentives get all screwed up. And there's a great irony now, which is it used to be that just the public markets, if you were a public company, would be the pressure and private was like, Oh my God, you could do whatever you wanted. And now because of the

amount of VC and public private equity, the irony is, is whether you're public or private, the pressures are the same to be short termism. So there's not as much protection as being private as there used to be. There's some obviously, but it's not the same if you're venture backed. You focus a lot on purpose, not just for organizations, but for workers, for individuals. How do you know when people are actually being true to their purpose, their why, and living, as you say,

from the inside out? Yeah, so if we talk to them, you'll find there's a calm confidence that they have. You'll find that there's a long-term mentality, sort of an infinite mindedness, that they recognize that it's all a journey, that when things are going really well, they don't think that they're the hottest thing in the world because they know this doesn't last. But when things are going badly, they're like, okay, let's work together, hunker down, take it in stride, because this won't last either. And they tend to have insane amounts of common balance. Also, they talk, the way they talk, it is sort of very hard

to distinguish between their private lives and their professional lives because they view all aspects of their lives as contributing to their purpose. You know, the way I am as a friend is the way I am as an employee. What I choose to do for work is what I choose to do for my hobbies. And in some way, shape, or form, they're all contributing to this view of the world that I'm trying to advance. Professionally, that's how they feel. Looking from the outside in, you can recognize that calm confidence. And the way they speak, for example, they don't give you resumes of how great they are. So tell me about you.

Well, I'm senior vice president of one of the fastest growing companies in my sector. Sure. You know, because they're not starting with what that's a what mentality. I've got to prove to you how great I am. They speak in lofty terms like, well, you know, at the core I'm an optimist and you know, my life is an adventure to find ways that I can inspire people to do the things that inspire them.

And I've been really lucky. I've earned a job as Senior Vice President at this company, which right now is doing pretty well. So the stuff can be in there, but it's not where they start. But if we are talking about business leaders, yeah, yeah. At the end of the day, can the why or the purpose outweigh money as the ultimate goal? Because ultimately, you do have to put food on the table, or send your kids to school. Your question is very pointed. You said ultimate goal.

And as an ultimate goal, why does absolutely trump money? You have to think of it like, why do we have companies? The purpose of company is not to make money. Money is fuel. You got to think of a company like a car, right? You don't buy a car simply so you can buy gas. That's not the purpose. Right. You don't start a company simply to make money. Money makes the company go. Gas makes the car go. The reason you have a car is so you can go places. So I started a company, I meaning generic I, you know, somebody started a

company to make our lives a bit better, to offer some entertainment, to solve a problem, right? To go somewhere, to do something, a bit better, to offer some entertainment, to solve a problem, to go somewhere, to do something, to achieve something, to advance something. That's where we're going. And we need money to make this thing that we're trying to give to the world go. But you can't have a gas-filled car with no compass, no GPS, no direction, no destination and no map. You're just gonna squirrel around saying, how do we get more gas?

How do we get more gas? Which is kind of the way companies look these days. The most beautiful companies, they have a plan, they have a map, they've got a compass, they're looking out the front window, and of course they're looking at the gas gauge. And we follow the stupid Milton Friedman definition that the purpose of a company is to maximize profit within the bound rules

In other words, don't break the law. That's a pretty low standard Right ethics is a much higher standard than the law So companies do unethical things all the time and the CEOs go in front of Congress and so like well we didn't break the law So yeah, but you're still an asshole When you raise the you have a patent on an essential drug and you raise the price of it 1500% Not nice not illegal. Yeah cool, right? When you raise the, you have a patent on an essential drug and you raise the price of it 1500%, not nice, not illegal, but not cool, right? And so we have to re-understand what the purpose of a company is. The purpose of a company is to achieve something, take care of people and community, and make money. We'll be right back after a short break.

after a short break. An Apple Watch for your kids lets you stay connected with them wherever they go. They can call you to pick them up at grandma's or text you because they forgot their lunch again. Their watch will even send an alert to let you know they finally got to school. Great for kids who don't have a phone because their Apple Watch is managed by you on your iPhone. iPhone XS are later required with additional wireless service plan. Hi, it's Morgan from Off the Shelf, and I'm here to tell you how my Google Pixel 9 has become my virtual librarian.

Google sent me the phone to try out, and naturally, the first thing I did was ask Gemini for some book recs. What book should I read if I want an enemies to lovers workplace romance? For an enemies to lovers workplace romance here are some popular and well regarded books. The Hating Game by Sally Thor. This is a classic example of the trope. As a mood reader I just tell Gemini the tropes and genre I'm feeling and it gives me a full list. You can learn more about the Google Pixel 9 at store.google.com. Are you encountering more skepticism or cynicism about whether this why matters in a time when there's so many bad leaders who are getting into and amassing so much power. There's a lot of folks who are following leaders who seem like they have compromised or unclear

why, that's for sure. Yes, but that again goes back to the incentive structures. The simple answer is no, I'm getting no pushback. Your question is sort of like, Simon, are people cynical about exercise because everybody's sitting on their couch and eating chocolate cake and getting fat? Has your theory of exercise really declined in value? No, they're not doing it. It doesn't mean it has no value. The golden circle in the concept of why is a tool.

That's all it is. It's a hammer. If you leave it on a table, it does nothing. And you can do big things or small things with it. You can hang a picture or build a house with the exact same tool, but you've got to use it. So the theory holds true. The tool exists.

The question is, is why aren't people using the tool? Why aren't they? There's a few reasons. I mean, I'm going to sound like a broken record when I talk misaligned and sentence structured. Structural, of course. But another part of it is, and I'll use the same analogy, which is the big reason why most companies do not use any of my work is because I can't tell you when it'll work.

And companies in this modern day and age with the pressures from their investors have massive pressures to make things work on certain dates. So for example, Simon, I need to get into shape. How do I get into shape? Easy, easy. I'm going to tell you how it works. I want you to work out every single day for 20 minutes. What if I'm really tired? You can skip a day here and there but that's fine. But on you know, on balance

I need you to work out every single day for 20 minutes and 100% of the time it will work But I don't know when hmm, and neither does any doctor, right? And that's my work my work you don't have to do every day. You can screw up. You can do things for short term, whatever. Just can't do it too much. Like you can be healthy. You can eat chocolate cake now and then. Just don't do it every day. Right? But it's a discipline. It's a discipline to learn to start with why. It's a practice. That's all it is. And 100% of the time it works, because I've been doing it for so many years and done it in so many industries with so many different people. I know it works 100% of the time, but because

I can't say it absolutely will work by your financial quarter, your financial year, they just don't bother. Right. But it occurs to me that knowing your why could still be really useful and helpful in confronting uncertainty or even failure. Could you talk a little bit about how knowing your why could help with this time of tumult or uncertainty, whether it's individual or organizational? Yeah. So let's define what tumult or uncertainty are, right? Tumult and uncertainty is the ground shaking beneath me. And bad news is different. Bad news we can kind of manage.

Uncertainty is the killer, right? Because I feel like I'm on shaky ground. Yeah. Right? What a why is fundamentally, it's a foundation. You only have one why and it never changes your entire life. It is literally the most stable thing.

You can change how you do it, you can definitely change what you do, but you can't change why you do what you do. You can't change who you are. You are the sum total of the experiences you had that you were raised. Now, whether you're living in balance with that cause is a different conversation,

but the ability to know who you are, even in times of uncertainty, is very grounding. The ability to say to your friends and your colleagues, you can always rely on this one thing, is very grounding. The ability to say to your friends and your colleagues, you can always rely on this one thing is very grounding. You mention or you share something in your book about a time that you lost your own sense of why, that this book or this concept came out of a darker time for you.

When did you realize that? And how did you find your way back out if you don't mind going into this a little bit? It was a profound time. The golden circle and the concept of why became what it became because of that dark period in my life. I never, ever want to go through it again, but I'm really glad it happened because like much darkness and journeys of darkness, there's learning and there's new things that come

out of it. But that is 100% true. I went through this really dark phase of my life where I had a small business. This is pre-Y, pre-Golden Circle, pre-Ted Talk, pre-book, pre-all of that stuff. I was living what some people would consider the American dream.

I was an entrepreneur. I had survived more than three years because over 90% of all new businesses fail in the first three years. So I joined this very special club in America called Entrepreneur, right? And what you start to discover is that success is actually more difficult than failure, because what I didn't realize is my business had been built on the force of personality. I didn't have much of a structure. And as the business started to grow, I couldn't make every decision and I couldn't be in every

meeting and I couldn't manage every account. And I didn't know what to do. And I was very embarrassed by the fact that I was clueless. I was afraid to ask for help. I felt that all of my reputation would be destroyed, put me into a dark depression. I didn't want to go to work anymore. I'd lost my passion. Yeah. Anybody who's ever been in a dark place will know if you're in a dark place and you keep it to yourself, it gets darker. And I was lying, hiding and faking every day of my life. I was just treading water. Everything was for show.

And it wasn't until a very dear friend of mine came to me and said, something is wrong, something is off. And I came clean. She offered me a psychologically safe environment to just admit that I didn't know what the hell I was doing. And I was clueless and afraid and paranoid and convinced I was going to go bankrupt. And all of these things were true. And just telling somebody without judgment lifted a huge weight off my shoulders. And it made me feel not alone. And she would say to me, you are not alone.

You are not alone. That's all she would say to me is you're not alone. She would text me out of the blue, YNA, you're not alone. And that feeling that I wasn't alone gave me the confidence to try and rediscover my passion. And I had this little idea on a shelf that I even called the Golden Circle back then simply to explain why some marketing worked and some marketing didn't. And it became an obsession.

I learned my why, but more important, I figured out how to help other people find theirs. If we have found our why, how do you know when your why might have gotten fuzzy over time and then what do we do in response? Most of us, the way we live our lives, it's a little bit of roulette. It's like sometimes we get it right, sometimes we get it wrong. Sometimes we're in flows, sometimes we're not.

It's kind of like you have good weeks, bad weeks, lucky breaks, unlucky breaks. And so the ability to put your Y into words dramatically decreases the game of roulette. You're stacking the deck, you're counting cards. It dramatically increases the chance that you can stay in flow more easily, more often, and more important or as important, you can explain why you made

that gut decision so that other people have context and can help you and redirect things in the right direction. Whether you're a human being or a company, even if you know your why, sometimes whys do go fuzzy where we start being coming more focused on the results human being or a company, even if you know your why, sometimes whys do go fuzzy, where we start being coming more focused on the results and we forget the reason why we set out on the journey in the first place. To go back to our previous analogy, it's like we're staring at the gas tank.

You should look down at the gas tank now and then, but you shouldn't be looking at the gas tank more than you're looking at the front windshield. So that starts to happen. I said it before, success is often the bigger challenge because the pressures increase, the obsession with money increases, the obsession with power increases, the obsession with fame increases, all of those things start to happen. It's a very Joseph Campbell journey where you become seduced. And you brought this up a little earlier about how the why in our short term might feel different than the why in the long term, which is connected to so many current global crises

like climate change, the struggle between the need for resources now, and then the longer term need to protect future generations. So how do you consolidate or balance these two ideas of kind of the short-term and the long-term game? It's such a good question. And knowing your why actually helps you understand how these things work better. So people who advocate for climate change talk obsessively about how it's manmade. And people who are climate change doubters talk obsessively about, nope, just cycles. We've had these things come and go before. Well-intentioned scientists,

unfortunately focused on what, right? So they keep telling us about temperature, which is a result, right? Yeah. And originally they called it global warming. Terribly bad marketing, terribly bad messaging. Global warming, this is the coldest. Terribly bad marketing, terribly bad messaging. Global warming, this is the coldest winter we've ever had, you're idiots. Right, right, right. No, you start to discover that they're fighting over the wrong thing.

They're actually fighting about whether it's manmade or not or whether these numbers are consistent with nature or whether they're exaggerated by humankind. It doesn't matter. That's like, you have lung cancer. Let's have a debate whether it's genetic or whether it's because you're smoke. You have lung cancer. What difference does it make? Right? We're literally talking about the wrong thing. I don't care if it's man-made. I don't

care if it's a natural climate cycle. All I know is it doesn't look good. The planet has cancer. That's like saying there's a meteor heading towards the earth. Should we intervene and try and push it out of the way? Well, no, it's just a natural cycle. You've got to let it go. Of course. Of course we're going to intervene. It doesn't matter if it's caused by human madness or not. The point is the trend doesn't look good, and whether it's true or not,

maybe we should intervene just in case, kind of like a meteor. Maybe we're completely wrong, but maybe we can tweak things a little bit, and maybe it's okay for companies to make a little less money or make money differently, you know, and change the way they do it, just in case. This is part of the thing. When you start with why, you have a much clearer foundation on how to talk about the things that are concerning you, but because why exists in that, if you're a part of our brains, what we do is we default to numbers and things that we can see and count. And now you end up debating the numbers and things we can count. And that's one of the reasons we find ourselves in the mess we're in. Right, right. And for the planet, if your why is just to continue to go on existing,

then... Well, that's the other thing. By the way, on both sides, can people stop saying we're killing the planet? We're not killing the planet. The planet's fine. What we're doing is killing the human race. What's happening is the environment is changing to the point where we may not be able to sustain... Human life. But if you come back in 10 million years, I guarantee you life will be thriving without us Right. The planet is a hundred percent fine. It's us. That's the problem. Yeah, sorry not passionate about this or anything

Let's step back and talk a little bit just about actionable advice for listeners out there who are coming to start with why for the first time What do you say to folks who are sort of like, how do I find my why to begin with? Yeah, so finding your why is a process of discovery. And you go backwards and you look for patterns of when you are at your natural best. And you will discover that when you're at your natural best, when you're in flow, where everything's going fine,

you will find that these patterns exist and you can connect those dots and that's your why. There are many ways to do it. You know, I wrote a book called Find Your Why six years after I came out with Start With Why. That was the biggest complaint when I first came out with Start With Why. People were like, got it, got it, amazing, how do I do it? So six years later I came out with Find Your Why, which is just a workbook. You know, we have all kinds of tools to help people. But I can tell you right now how to do it. It's a fun little exercise called the friends exercise. Okay.

And what you do is you find a best friend. You cannot do this with a spouse, a sibling, a parent or a child. Those relationships are too close. You do it with a best friend. The kind of person who you could call three o'clock in the morning, you do it with a best friend. The kind of person who you could call three o'clock in the morning, you know they'll be there for you and vice versa, you'll be there for them. Best friend, right? And you ask them a simple question.

Why are we friends? And they're gonna look at you like you're insane. Because you're asking them to put into words a feeling which exists in the part of the brain that doesn't control language, which is why it's hard to put emotions into words. And then you, ironically, you stop asking the question why, because the question why elicits emotional answers, and you convert to the question what.

Come on, come on. What specifically is it about me that I know you'd be there for me no matter what? And they will hem and haw, and they will try to describe you. Well, I trust you. You've always been there for me. Sure. And you play devil's advocate. That's just the definition of a friend. You have that from other people too. What specifically is it about me? You're going to go through a few rounds of this, and they're going to get frustrated, and you just keep playing devil's

advocate. And eventually they'll give up, and eventually they'll stop trying to describe you and they'll start describing themselves. Simon, I don't know. I don't know. All I know is I can sit in a room with you. I don't even have to talk to you and I feel inspired. And I got goosebumps. Because what they did is they articulated the value I have in their lives, which is my why.

It's the thing I give to the world. It's the reason not everybody loves me, it's only the people who want that in their lives, right? And I had the emotional response. So when you do this and they start saying something about themselves, you will either well up with tears or get goosebumps, and that tells you you're in the, at least in the ballpark of that's, that's what your why is. And the weird thing, fun thing is if you do with multiple friends, they will say very, very similar, if not the exact same thing, because the thing you give to the world is the thing that they need. It's the void that you fill in their lives.

That's lovely. And there's plenty of people who do like you and want to hear this message and have. So I'm curious before we let you go, do you have a story of impact that you've heard from somebody who's engaged with this book or your work that really moved you? My favorite stories are the ones where, like it made it into a school or a church. I knew it would make it into business. And I'm touched by the number of people who write in

or stop me on the street and say, I started my business or my business was built based on the start with why. It's humbling. And I love those stories. I love those stories. But one where somebody says, I was just struggling to find my way in life. And I had one just yesterday. This guy said, just things weren't working for him.

His career wasn't really working. His relationship was struggling. And instead of trying to solve all the problems, to work on the edges, he went back to the root, which is him. Him. He is the root of all of these things in his life. The only common factor in everything he's dealing with is him. And he was so lovely.

And he basically said, you know, for whatever reason, maybe it was resignation. I just decided to stop trying to solve all those problems and go back to me. And reconnecting with my why and learning what it is made clear all the mistakes I was making. And my career turned around, my marriage got better, I got happier, you know? It's stories like that that I find so profound and inspire me to keep pushing and keep coming up with new ideas because when I get to see that my work can have an impact in someone's life, I mean, that's the greatest incentive in the world. So, follow-up question, what's next for you?

I'm writing a book about friendship. I've become sort of obsessed with friendship. If you think about all the challenges that we face in the world today, people struggling with anxiety, depression, inability to cope with stress, in the worst cases, suicide, you know, all of those rising rates of all those things, friendship fixes all those things. I'm living proof of it. If it weren't for my friendship, I'm not sure what would have happened when I was in a dark place.

If you peel the onion just one layer, you realize most of us are pretty bad friends. Like would you cancel on a friend for a meeting? Would you cancel on a meeting for a friend? Oh, but my friend would understand. And you find that we start to take friends for granted. And you go even deeper, right? Like we know that if you have a struggling marriage, what do you do? You try and fix it you go for therapy

You try and make it work We know that if you're struggling at work, like you're struggling with a colleague a boss or an employee, right? What do you do? You talk to HR you talk to each other you try and fix it you struggle with a friendship There's no such thing as friendship therapy, why not? Right, right. There's entire books about how to be a leader. There's entire books about how to have successful marriages. Why aren't there books and books and books and books

about how to be a friend? Why aren't we learning how to be better friends? Great point. I agree with you and feel as though, you know, our society is over indexes towards romantic relationships over platonic ones. Yeah. So I'm so glad that we have another big idea from you to read and share. When is that coming? You sound like my publisher. It'll come when it's done. Love it. Great answer. Simon Sinek, thanks for sitting down with us once again.

Thanks, Elise. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Great answer. Simon Sinek, thanks for sitting down with us once again. Thanks, Elise. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. That was Simon Sinek in conversation with me, Elise Hu for the TED Talks Daily Book Club. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced by Lucy Little and edited by Alejandra Salazar. The TED Talks daily team includes Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, and Tansika Sangmarniwong. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Balarezo. I'm Elise Hue. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed.

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