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

Let's say you have a fight with your girlfriend. You want to do the right thing. So, you go to chat GPT and you'd 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 GPT? And you go, I did. How's that going to go? Now, you did everything right. But what makes people beautiful is not that we get everything right. It's 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, with AI and GPT, do you think it really is cause for concern and deeper thought? So, I'm not in the AI business, but I am in the humanity business. 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. And unless we take personal accountability to teach and learn human skills, they will disappear. Sure, you can have an AI friend and train 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 that we need to equip ourselves with based on the way that the world is heading? Two things. One is This has always blown my mind a little bit. 53% of you that listen to this show regularly haven't yet subscribed to this show. So, could I ask you for a favor before we start? If you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us, the free simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the subscribe button. And my commitment to you is if you do that, then I'll do everything in my power, me and my team, to make sure that this show is better for you every single week. We'll listen to your feedback, we'll find the guests that you want me to speak to, and we'll continue to do what we do. Thank you so much. Simon. Good to see you again. We are live. It's just familiar. Familiar. It's so interesting cuz 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 but I 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 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 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 and etc. etc. etc. 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 to AI. Right? So if you go back to the 70s and 80s, right? 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're they worked in a factory, their their father worked in a factory, their father's father worked in a factory. Like this is this is what they know. And they say, "But these robots are changing they're taking our jobs." And the ruling classes and the 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. Reskill. That's what you're going to do. Reskill." Okay, flash forward to AI. Here's where the irony comes in. Cuz 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. You know? Maybe maybe become a plumber. You you By the way, money's really good. You get to work for yourself if you want, you know? Um 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. Mhm. Everybody falls on one side of you're over you're over you're you know, the sky is not falling chill chicken little or the sky is falling and we're all going to die, right? The The truth like most things is probably somewhere in the middle. But the the real answer is I don't know and neither does anybody else. Yeah. And it seems that we should have some sort of controls cuz we didn't put any controls on the internet. Mhm. They did put controls on the internet in China. Like children don't have the same access to uh 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. Mhm. So, I think some some And by the way, when people you know, talk about deregulation and no controls, I mean they make us wear seat belts in our cars. Yeah. You know, there's nothing we have speed limits. You know, and and it's for the greater good and yeah, sure your seat belt's uncomfortable but you'll get used to it. Like and it's fine, you know? So, I I think the call for no reform is is wrong. Um there are correct limits to keep things safe. Mhm. I'm 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 we're a results obsessed society, right? Yeah. 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, uh solve the problem. Like it it is And by the way, the technology is incredible. I asked it 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 was It was It gave me a good start and I could edit it. I did it recently. We both did it. It was damn near flawless. It was 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's good. The art is good. The article is good. The book is decent. Like it's getting better and better and better. But here's the problem that we keep not talking about. People keep telling us that life is not about the destination. Life is about the journey. That's what we keep being told, right? But when we think about AI, we only think about the destination. We only think about the output. We never think about the input, right? 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 at pattern rec- pattern recognition, not because an a 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. Mm, that sounds difficult. Mm, boy, it's hard being you. Oh my god, it's so great being you. Have you you know, like it's it's a it's an affirmation machine built by a for-profit company that wants you to stay on. Can't neglect that. But for the fact that nobody's learning how to be a friend. It'll feel good. You'll feel like you have a friend, but you're not learning to be a friend. Right? And it's the what made you a great entrepreneur is not that the company exists. Is that you built it with your hands and you got the scars to show for it. Yeah. 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 5 years ago. 6 years ago. Yeah. Because you did it. And I think what we're forgetting is that there's something to be said for And by the way, I'm a fan of AI. I want AI to make things. But I would hate to lose out on becoming a better version of me. And I think that um 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 God, 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. Right? I just have to know their name. And so, my brain literally went on strike. It said, "Fine. Fine. You no longer have the capacity to remember phone numbers." And I can't remember phone numbers to save my life. Right? So, we give up certain skills or abilities because of technology regularly. Right? That's fine. I don't have a problem with any of those things because whether I can remember a phone number or not will not affect my relationships, my ability to function in the world, or my ability to cope with stress. But my ability to know what to do when my friend is struggling. My ability to know what to do when I have a fight with my spouse my or my partner. My ability to know what to do when my boss yells at me, but I don't want to escalate it, or my employee is acting out and I don't want to escalate it or fire them. Well, how do I resolve this? I've missed out on those skills. And simply asking AI, "How should I resolve this thing?" It'll give you an answer and it may work, and you've learned nothing. Right? And so it's the difference between It's It's 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. Mhm. 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 received had is now making the internet feel really inauthentic because people that I want 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. course. And so when I read it, my brain mentally discounts it as not being their opinion, not actually being them. Yeah. And when you feel like you're speaking to someone's AI the meaning is gone. So I was 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 you never said that to me, mate. You know the the end dashes. Oh my gosh. It's funny, right? It's crazy. Yeah. But you but you you're talking about what you're talking about. Have you ever heard of the Japanese concept of um uh uh wabi-sabi? No. So, wabi-sabi is a Japanese design concept, which is beauty in that which is temporary or imperfect. Okay? So, have you ever seen Japanese ceramics? Yeah. They're wonky. Or the the 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 bowl, wood is beautiful. Why? It's imperfect. Right? Think and unique. Things made on a machine are the same and less beautiful. And things made by hand are beautiful because they're imperfect. What makes people beautiful is not that we get everything right. It's that we get many things wrong. And what makes us fall in love is not the person who's perfect. It's the person who accepts our imperfections, and we know we're in love when we learn to accept theirs. Not learn to, want to. Right? And you're 100% right. I now know in the art world, artists are being asked to sign affidavits that say, "I painted this. I made this. Not AI. Not because it's better or worse. It's because I want to know it was touched by human hands. And so, I think you're right. What will happen is everything will be so perfect that it'll be as if we're all driving or using things that everything came off a conveyor belt. Mhm. And what we will start to desire is things that are made by hand because by the way, we think Rolls-Royce, Ferrari. You takes 39 months to get a Ferrari. You know why? It was made by hand. Yeah. 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 watch 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 and they're perfect. But it's the human error of two human chess players who are worse, objectively worse at chess, that makes it so fascinating." Yes, it's and 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 and 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 Mhm. or a first interview, Mhm. all you do is present perfection. Mhm. Put on my my best clothes, you know, dressed up. I know I don't dress like this every day. I dressed up on my date, right? My interview, I don't wear this. This is what I wore for my interview cuz I want to put out a good impression. And I practiced and I and I make myself confident I've got a great job and I've got a great personality and I love my mother and my goodness and 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 it's it's to your point, it's it's fake. Mhm. It's on the interview example, the minute you start describing that, I immediately flash back to an interview I had last week at our company where a young kid walks in wearing a suit and I thought, "Now I I have no idea who you are because I know that's not you. I know that you don't wear a suit. You're 22 years old. You do not wear a suit. So, I have no indication, I have no clues as to who you are, and therefore, it's harder for me to figure out if you fit here. And I think of because what he tried to do that was show up perfect how he 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 you at the same time you don't want him to show up and put his feet on to kick his shoes off and put his feet on the table, either. In the same way that There's an element of respect you want, and you want somebody in their first interview to put on some effort. Now, too much effort Yeah. 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. The sweet spot Yeah. is right here in the middle. Yeah, well, I think there's some truth to that. And so, there's a level of you know, like it's the same thing as like we all want vulnerability in our relationships, but not on the first day. Like I don't need to know that quite yet. You know? What are the other skills that you think we need to equip ourselves with based on the way that the world is heading? Because with you know, like the calculator came along, and we no longer needed to be able to do complicated math. I've completely forgotten my times tables. I can't spell anymore. It's all fine. I said to my friends, "The most I can do is 9 * 9. That's like the top end of my range." But with spelling, it's the same. I get like half the word correct, and then I don't know what they are, and it doesn't But but again, uh you know, So, what are those skills that I think it's all human skills. I think there needs So, I think where the world is going to go, and at least this is where I'm taking a bet, is that as the end product becomes easier to produce, it's the humanity that's going to suffer. And unless we take personal accountability both as individuals and organizations to teach and learn human skills, they will disappear for all the reasons we're talking about. So, how do I listen? How do I hold space? How do I resolve conflict peacefully? How do I give and how do I receive feedback? Those are all 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? Um 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 um 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 Altman, who's the founder of OpenAI and ChatGPT, launch this thing called Worldcoin a couple of years ago when ChatGPT really started taking off. And it has been closely tied to the concept of universal basic income. Mhm. The idea, the overarching idea is that in a world where AI and automation eliminate many jobs, UBI may be necessary. Worldcoin is one way to help implement it. That was stated by the founder of ChatGPT, Sam Altman. Yeah. I just again, I'll go back to my ironic statement before. Isn't it ironic that they want to do a a universal income, a standard universal income, now that the knowledge workers are losing their jobs, but when the factory workers were losing their jobs, those same people were massively against uh uh these kinds of things. So, I mean, yes. What happens to purpose it's ironic. and meaning if we're being cuz 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 salary. So, $2,000, $3,000, whatever it might be. Yeah. Um 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 pursuing challenge and all these things 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, you know, we have to be very careful that says, you know, everybody who's on welfare is lazy. You know, that's not true, you know? 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 who makes a a commission salary, commission, you know, works on commission and they make just enough to pay their rent and buy food and that's it. Like, that's a lot that's a lack of ambition, you know? 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. Um, but, you know, I don't know enough about it to make an argument for or against it, if I'm honest. Um, but I do find it ironic that the Sam Altmans of the world are calling for it, given the fact that it's there's going to be so many job losses when it's jobs of their kind. And like, I also think that's funny. Like, 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 takeoff, which means it's going to arrive very quickly and accelerate very quickly. So, I think he's actually preparing not to. Yeah, but when happen what happens to the 90 people he lays off? When he doesn't need 100, he only needs 10. Th- 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. Mhm. 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, you we were talking about this before we turn on the cameras. You know, you know, you talk to if you want a new website, you I guarantee you I don't I don't care which company you talk to, they will all talk about how they AI this, AI that, and you ask the question, are you using AI? Yes, we're using AI, we're doing it differently, we're the future, blah blah blah. And then you ask them for a proposal, it's going to look like all the other proposals from 2015. You know? 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 and they've got a lot of people doing things the old-fashioned way because the business model, you know, pe- people work very hard to put The status quo exists because there are people who benefit from the status quo. You know, that's why there is a status quo. And it's uh and you know, like I said, everybody's into change the future, you know, until it's until it's them that's threatened. Or their income. The billionaires that I that I know, the one consistent thing they've whispered to me about AI is that people are going to have a lot of free time. That's one of the things that's been really consistent. You're so right when you say that when I asked you about the future of AI, you said, "I don't know." The reason why I know that's probably the correct answer generally is because when I sat with the most advanced people in AI, whether it's Mustafa who's head of Microsoft AI, now CEO of Microsoft AI, or people from Google, or the CEO of Google, or Reid Hoffman who's the founder of LinkedIn, they all had different opinions. Which made me to think actually the right answer is nobody knows. The right answer is nobody That is correct. And and and you always be be 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 let them they didn't let their family smoke. It's like I remember visiting Facebook in the earlier days and they I went into the cafeteria and they had like 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 relationship. And I was like this is hilarious. You literally have a product that breaks relationships and yet you understand enough to make people eat together at lunchtime so that they'll maintain relationship. I mean the point being if your economic interest, you know, show me how someone's paid and I'll show you how they behave. You know. One of the scariest conversations I was privy to was one a friend of mine who's a billionaire in London he knows the CEO of one of the biggest AI companies in the world who I can't name and he said by the way what he tells me in private is not what he's saying in publicly. Yeah. I he 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. It's It's 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. the 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 and challenged one of my theories head-on, right? So I talk about in an infinite game you know, Jim 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. No one is going to win. The exception is in the internet. In in the like like Amazon it won. Yeah. Like you know, Google for search? Yep, they won. Right? And if you start going down like the big big tech companies there is only one. I mean, sure there's competition, but not really, right? Who you know, Walmart is making a run of it to threaten Amazon, but Amazon's still so damn big. You know, all of these companies that there's only one. And that's not good. That you can't have winners in a in a category. And so this is why I think the 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 controls is because the way that tech seems to work is there probably will be one dominant standard and then that's it. And the question is which one? Because I don't think it just seems to be the way it is. Which is a very scary prospect to me that the the fact that we can have winners is is a bad thing, especially if we if we pride ourselves on being capitalists. Then there cannot be there cannot be a winner. And there cannot be one that is so dominant that that nobody else can even compete except for scraps. What are your emotions when you think about AI and what's happening cuz I 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, Open AI released yesterday 3.0, it's the best model ever. The day after my life was the same. So we don't really notice it cuz we go back to work, our clients ask for the same thing, we have the same team members sat around us. The it almost seems like the sand timer is rotated and we're on a clock. And it's a slow disruption of our everyday lives. Sam Altman the other day on his TED Talk two three four days ago he in the short term everything will appear the same, but in the long term," he goes, "life is going to be completely different." that's right. I mean, and look at any any technology like the like AI, it was kind of the same until it wasn't. And these are evolutions, not revolutions. Like there's a revolutionary bit, Mhm. you know? Like I remember when 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 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 that's a business model thing. But we like going shopping because again, they've all of these companies always forget, especially technologists, they all forget that the end user is a human being. And most of us don't fully understand everything. Even even our iPhones, most people use a a small percentage of all the capabilities of our iPhones. Most of us don't even know how to change the damn settings to make it do something we want. Right? Even and you neither do your kids. It's not an adult thing. Right? It's not an old person thing. Like 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 I I'm 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 I I have I have both and everything in between. When I think about how it affects democracy and the ability to make deep fakes and and how it can manipulate people and their opinions to vote one way or another, I have real fear. Yeah. Right? When it comes to like productivity and the reshaping of business, you know, technologists and people who 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'll they they they'll they seem to think that I think it's the same, which is all those people who are going to lose those jobs in white-collar, you know, in white-collar jobs and knowledge workers. I they they're not 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 when it cha- completely changed the the way it looked? No. The answer is zero. Yes, they got rid of all the accountants and they needed to hire all the IT people. Mhm. So, the the the the workforce looks different, but it didn't get smaller. And so, I think it's the same thing. What it's we're we also we already know the massive, incredible amounts of energy that it takes for AI to work. Data centers that use up massive amounts of electricity like we've never seen in our lives. Like nuclear has to be a thing. There isn't enough coal or oil or solar or wind to power these things. It just doesn't exist. So, nuclear has to be a thing. So, go be a nuclear engineer. Go You want to get an advanced degree? I don't need you to be a coder. You know, coding was a thing for a Go be a nuke. Cuz by the way, you got to be just as smart to be a nuke as you have to be a a a a a So, you're going to start to see that. You know, you're going to see energy work. Um I just think the jobs will change. I don't think they're going to like it's I I completely One thing I do disagree with, you know, which is 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 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. Um uh 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 a 10-year-old learn that or how do you and I learn that? Both. A 10-year-old learns it that when they go and have a playdate 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. Um we're going to teach kids how to resolve conflict. We're going to teach kids how to take compliments. We're going to teach kids how to take accountability. And these are all the skills of, you know, well, what did you do wrong versus what did you what did what you know, like it's not like you know, it's not always the school or the teacher. Maybe your kid did 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, um 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 time. The best marriages, the best relationships, they're not absent of conflict. It's they know how to resolve conflict peacefully. By the way, I believe in world peace. I don't believe in a world without conflict. I believe a world in which we can resolve our conflict peacefully without the need to go to war to resolve conflict. This is why I like democracies cuz democracies can solve conflict without bullets. So I the human skills work, but I say a real skill mean like go do something difficult. Build something, design something, imagine something, write something, and and and and by the way, I'm totally fine even if you plug it into chat GPT 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 it. I'm the reason I'm more confident than when I was younger. And I think that's one of the things you do. People talk about you get wise with age. You know, and like and you know, you have more confident as you get older. And yes, that's all true and there's multiple reasons for it. But I think one of the reasons is 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 created, people talking about the age of abundance and all these things, is I'm contending with the question on a personal level, which is when is enough enough? And maybe this question is more pertinent now than ever in a world where creating stuff, building stuff, starting a company, launching a book, the cost of creating these things, whether they're good or not so good, has gone to basically zero. Yeah. So, we can all theoretically from our computers now become movie directors and authors and software developers. And so, with this possibility, this opportunity, and the the thing we need to deploy is intention. Like, what do I do? What is the thing that's going to lead me to happiness? Do I pursue all of these things and start building and creating and running off down that path to climb some ladder? Or do I take a second? When is enough enough? And as an entrepreneur who is in this moment has a lot of resources, could roll the dice, could start all these new companies, could do all of these things, when is enough enough? No. right? Like we 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 is $70,000 a year of income. Like you like when you talk about money can't buy happiness, like it absolutely buys happiness up to a certain level, which is survival and then a little bit more, you know? But once you reach a certain level like the there's no discernible increase in happiness that comes with money. Now, what money buys is options, you know? What money buys is time, you know? Um those things are true, and you you said it. Like some of the people that you and I know who have made generational wealth, they're not discernibly happy. The ones that are happier were happy before they made the money. And the ones who thought the money would buy them happiness, or worse, the money took away their purpose because when they made the money they were driven by something that they accidentally made the money. They built businesses that were that those were their passions and their cause, and then the money came and they weren't building the thing anymore, and you know? This this is the this is the difference is like why this it's really interesting. It also gets the question is 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 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 hire 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. Right? 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 [ __ ] 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 can't innovate, they just bought you, right? Why is that? Why is that the rule? And so, it goes directly to this, I think. I think the reason is 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. Like beyond objectively stupid. Like you look at what they have and what they've got and you 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 their capabilities, 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 if 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. Um 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, right? The I was very lucky that my house survived and I didn't have to get evacuated, but the evacuations were getting closer and closer. And two things happened that were profound that live that I will 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, right? Started by this amazing, amazing, amazing entrepreneur named John Mills. And we were all obsessed with Watch Duty. We all were what on this app the whole time. And one of the things we were watching was the wind. Cuz if the wind shifted, it could have profoundly impact 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 Oh, thank god. And in that moment I knew that somebody was looking at the app going, "Oh god, no." And it's not like service where I'll eat a little less so that somebody can eat more. I'll give up some of my income so that somebody has It's not one of those I don't want my house to burn down so somebody else's house doesn't burn down. And I asked I had to live with this paradox of how unfair the world is. That simultaneously my relief and good news was some was somebody else's stress and bad news. And there was nothing I could do to change that. So that paradox I it is horrible and I It was 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 where I live. And we didn't know if we were going to be woken in the middle of the night with a with an alarm to evacuate. We didn't know. And so we had I had to go through the process of packing up my car and making my go bag. And I put as much stuff in my car as I could. And I had to, you know, we all play that game like, "If there's a fire and you have to run out and grab two things, what would you grab?" I had to do that. Right? A lot of people in LA had to do that. Right? You actually had to make the decisions. What am I going to take and what am I going to leave behind? And I found myself bringing things that I never thought were important to me. And I found myself leaving things behind that I thought I would take. But the one thing that was amazing was stuff that I couldn't fit. But I still had love for it 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. You know, I hear this, you know, somebody loses a parent. They go, "Look, it was awful and, you know, he suffered as 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 material things. Especially the things I said goodbye to cuz I've already said goodbye to them. I had had I just sold some of my art for for charity. And people said, "How did you love your art?" I'm like, "I know. Like my art's like my babies." Like the how did you choose? And I said, "I've already said goodbye to everything here. I did it months ago." You know? And I think this idea of gratitude, gratitude for what we have, but also um like you're going to lose your parents. All of us will lose our parents. Hopefully hopefully hopefully uh they don't ever have to say goodbye to us, but we if things go well, we're going to have to say goodbye to our parents. And we can't be angry about it. We want to say thank you for the times we had. And I think to have that a level of appreciation for everything in our lives, how temporary all of this is, I think that's it makes you happier. I know it sounds it's it makes you happier to just look at someone and be grateful. You know, failed relationships, you could be angry at the other person or you can be grateful for the lessons they taught you and or for the good times you had. And I think to change our minds to gratitude, and you can you know, it's it sounds it's a little bit you know, 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. But I don't know if it works without an evacuation zone approaching. I don't know, but to go around your home and just say thank you to the things that you like is a weird thing. How many of us 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. Just tell you thank you. And you know that's all. No just a quick just 2 minutes just 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 cuz it's such an unusual thing for me to Okay. So you can do it this way. So I had a guest on the podcast and he came up with this thing that is so outside of my personality but I'm going to try it. Yeah that would make sense. And you can do that. You know? I'm I'm new to this. You know I I know for years people have been like you should have a gratitude practice and 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. You know and I found it so repetitive that I was like is this worth it? Like sure like every now and then something was different and new. And I've come to 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. Like who would you cure it for for? Would you would you spend a billion dollars to cure your your girlfriend's sickness, your your mother's sickness, your father's sickness, your whatever. Even if it was the the the risk to them was was low and you would. I'd give every pet penny I had to cure an illness that my girlfriend had even if the risk was low. And as I was thinking through that I was like but then if you look at my calendar and how I'm allocating my time against these individuals and against my priorities there's a real imbalance here. And over the last couple of weeks in particular, I've been on a bit of a journey of realizing just how important four or five people in my life are. I I and how much I neglect them. Yeah, I mean like of course. I mean we're only when it's and it's you're right. Like it's just if you say give a billion dollars and you can cure this disease that affects, you know, 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. for a 1% chance. You know, and people do. They quit their jobs when and like all 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, right? Like like literally that's the reason. And it's because it's personal. Of course, that makes sense. It's why why are some entrepreneurs good and some entrepreneurs bad? Well, how personal is the thing that you're working on to you? Because then I only like to like the entrepreneurs that I love, I want to know that they are solving a problem that they struggled with or that somebody they love struggled with or something. If they they read an article in a magazine, "Oh, 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 it's 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 it's passion and a vision that is bigger than the resources that I have. Which you know, I had a conversation with somebody recently actually where they wanted to uh we were we uh it was a business problem and they wanted to change the goals. And I said, "We can't just change the goals because they're difficult. You know, so we might miss the goal. It's true. Yes, we have a very aggressive goal and the likelihood of us hitting it is incredibly low, but why would we lower it? And they said to me, you know, I don't like to fail, they said. I don't like to fail, and I know you don't either. And I said, ah, that's where you're wrong. That's where you're wrong. I have spent most of my life a failure. And I'm very comfortable being a failure, and I think of myself not as a success. I think of myself as a failure. And that's because my ambitions are bigger than my skills or my ability to achieve those ambitions. And so, almost everything I've done, with a couple of exceptions, have fallen short of what I had hoped for. I'm very comfortable with that. Because failing at 80% is really much better than succeeding at 30%. And I think this idea of fear of failure and embracing failure, I don't want to fail. But I just I 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 There's data on this. I have actually never thought about this. This is good. There was a book called Oh, it was The Wisdom of Crowds. I think it was that one. I think it was The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki. Where people with experience knew what to do versus people who were just trained. So, I'll give you the example. This is I can't I can't Again, I might have the book wrong, but this was I remember the case. So, there was a a bunch of firemen fighting a fire in like the 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 if they looked ahead, there was a small hill, which means you're going to slow down cuz you can't run fast up a hill. And this fire is coming fast, right? The senior guy on the on the team started screaming, "Get down. Get down. Get down." And they all ignored him. They were all running for their lives. And he just stopped running and got down and put his hands over his head and just lay in a ball and the fire was going so fast that it blew right over him. And it caught up with the other guys and burned them all to death. Now, they didn't teach them that in fire school. It It was accumulated knowledge of wisdom of 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 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 conversation, stumbling and bumbling, right? The reason for it Like let's say you have a fight with your your 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 go to chat GPT and you'll 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 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 chat GPT?" And you go, "I did." How's that going to go? Right? Now, you did everything right. You did everything right. But for the fact, and it goes right back to what you said, which is it removed the humanity, it removed the personality. It's artificial. It's fake. It's everything you said about the job interview. It's everything you said about all those other things, about all the resumes, all of the pitch decks. It's not you telling me sorry, it's ChatGPT telling me sorry. And even though you went with good intention to get it right, I would rather you get it wrong and bumble and fumble 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 anybody everybody has. When you come out of the fight, you're closer. Mhm. Not cuz you got it right. 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 learned the skill for the time that you don't know when it's going to happen because you're equipped for this relationship. Mhm. And it's that investment in the relationship rather than trying to transactionally solve the problem before me. And that's the difference. Mhm. It's infinite versus finite. It's transaction versus It's destination versus journey. I'm in the journey of this relationship versus I have a destination. I got to solve this problem now otherwise this is going to destroy my relationship. And all of this is coming full circle. And it comes right back to everything we started this. I think it's hilarious that you and that you're having a conversation with me about AI cuz I'm not an AI expert and I'm not in the AI business. But I 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. Mhm. And human beings really want things made by human beings. And we are not only okay with we want imperfection. Because imperfection is the sign of human. 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 chat GPT-like responses back at me it would it would be a little bit infuriating, but also it would be completely dehumanizing as you say. And it's funny how actually even in conflict I want emotion. I want imperfection. I want res- human resonance. It's interesting cuz I've been like thinking about my Struggle is a good thing. Yeah. And I think in our modern day and age we have under appreciated and underrepresented the value of struggle. And if you ask anybody in their life you know, tell me about a time in your career where like you felt like boy, this is the most amazing thing I've ever done. I'm so glad I'm a part of this. It's not the big win. It's not the big success. It's not we finished everything on time and under budget. It's oh my god, this one thing went horribly wrong. Oh my god, it went so badly and yet the way we came together like the most important thing in my career was when I lost my passion and went into deep depression. Never want to go through that again. Really glad it happened. And all of our relationships, professional, personal, romantic, whatever they are right? All of our relationships get better when we go through struggle together. And we know we know the way the human animal works. We know that oxytocin is released when you have shared struggle. That's why when you put people in boot camp and they go through [ __ ] together or there's a a natural a national a natural disaster. Like all of all of a sudden I don't care who you voted for. I saw your house blow down in the tornado. I got you. Don't worry. We're neighbors. Right? Like we can put aside all the rational nonsense. The the the intellectual nonsense. And at the end of the day human beings are are are good at helping human beings. 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 the amount that went in the top creates value. 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 the art. The story that it took to create the art. What the artist was going through, what they were thinking. You're not buying my book, you're buying the story of the making of my book. And the Mona Lisa was stolen from what I understand. I mean, we don't even know if the the one in the Louvre is the real one. Cuz I had mentioned the reason why the Mona Lisa 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 The story is amazing. 100 million, 200 million, whatever. Whatever. I mean, and so this is what we figure The reason famous artists are famous is cuz you buy the story of that artist, not not their talent. There's a lot of famous singers and actors and painters, dancers who are a lot less talented than the unknown ones, but you buy into the story. And this is why some celebrities, as much as they talk about the paparazzi and the tabloids, they want to be in the paparazzi and the tabloids. They want the paparazzi to follow them because it keeps their story relevant. It keeps them, you know, they're worth more because they're in the zeitgeist. Apple know this better than anybody cuz you go to an Apple store and they've laid out their products as if it was an art gallery. The 3 ft either side of the iPhone create the impression in my mind that 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, pulls into the device itself. If I go into an Apple store and there was a thousand iPhones, like the old electronic stops all stacked on top of each other, I would assume the iPhone was worth less, but the story, just by the frame in which I see it, means that oh my god, this thing is It's theater. It looks like one of one. Yeah, it's theater. And 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 I can I found a guy who makes cashmere jerseys and he uses the exact same cashmere as, you know, Loro Piana, whatever, some fancy fancy ass brand. You know? But the problem is it says like Dave's Cashmere Shop. You know? I could tell you everything about where he sources the cashmere, how he makes it, that's the same everything, and you'd be like, "Yeah, Dave's Cashmere Shop?" Because you're not buying the cashmere, you're buying the brand. You're buying the story, you're buying the association. That's what's That's why brands have value. Because it's irrational. Yeah. And humans are irrational. And that's why companies invest in building brands. For the story. And so, yeah, I I I think I'm you know, as much as chat AI scares me, I still believe the thing that the technologist the technologists don't appreciate and won't appreciate, and there there will be a rebellion. And handmade will become more valuable and handmade will become more expensive. And people will want to say that. You know, it's like, "You had that person write your speech for you? You Wait, who did the painting for you? They They did it themselves?" You know? And I think that's good. You know, it's a pendulum, right? We're going to get enamored with the technology until we're 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 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. So we're 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 I don't spend money on clothes. I would spend a huge amount of money every time they came up with a new item. One day, the founder of the brand, and everybody knows this brand, he posted a photo from his factory. It was like a series of video. And what I saw in the video was the shirt I was currently wearing as I watched the video in a massive bucket with 4,000 others of the exact same shirt. And in that moment, fell out of love. I fell out of love. Exactly. Because in my head, I'd painted this like artisan picture of the of them sewing it. These two guys sewing it in their bedroom and then like sending Probably what it was Probably what it was on the ad, too. it was on the ad, too. I think that's what it kind of like used to be. So I still had that image in my head. Yeah. The one thing that I've always understood, this is true for businesses, this is true for absolutely everything, scale breaks things. You know, scale breaks things. In the In the military, there the special forces, special operating forces, Navy SEALs, SAS, you know, all those folks, right? And there's this there's a saying in the special forces that's basically um 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. Scale always So 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 They refused to clone, right? They wouldn't They wouldn't They wouldn't clone their their operating system. And they uh as a result of of refusing to to do that, they they never at For years, Apple had like, in the height of the the PC wars, maybe 4% of the world's operating systems. Microsoft said, "We're happy to clone our operating system." So, it was a little bit different on Dells, 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 systems. It's because you have to trade quality for scale. Mhm. Every time. There's a reason why buying fancy goods for a lot of money like, because as you said, the way you make things has to change, and you just have to start making them in factories, and you have to scale scale 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, gets 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 sponsor's 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 a $100 ad credit to get you started. If you visit linkedin.com/diary, you can claim that right now. That's linkedin.com/diary. Is it harder now to find love? Cuz there's lots of stats that say we're having less sex, we're lonelier than ever before. Um interestingly, this is maybe an adjacent point, but I was looking at Bumble share price. I love the founder of Bumble, the CEO is really, really good friend of mine. I think she's amazing. Whitney? Whitney, yes. I think she is amazing. Has she come on? She has. And I know her, and she's a wonderful human being. But when I was looking at the Bumble share price, it painted a really interesting picture because then you you overlay that with some of these other dating apps, 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 said she's going to revamp Bumble Yeah. to make it not about finding love with others, but 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 Yeah. 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 it's like it's I mean, we're all broken records, right? I don't mean that as a like a like we're all broken souls. Like you know, you your customers will never love you until your employees love you first. You'll never find somebody to love you unless you love yourself first. And look at failed relationships, right? Where there's so much tension, it's somebody's lack of self-love that contributes to the failing of that relationship. I mean, I have a dear friend who's going through it right now. She just can't find love, and she it's it's just but it's cuz she doesn't love herself, and and she knows it, you know, it's a hard thing to to So, if Bumble can crack that code, more power to him. It's It's a But, this is the problem with a lot of these things. You know, they're common knowledge. We just don't do them. Everybody knows how to be healthy. Everybody knows how to exercise. Everybody knows what eating right means. Don't do it. Because wrong is easier. And right takes effort. Everybody knows what we're supposed to do in a relationship. Everybody knows what we're supposed to like hold space. Everybody Everybody knows philosophically what we're supposed to do, but we don't do it. By the way, it's the reason why most people I've written all these lovely books, and it's the reason why most companies don't use them. It's because my work is like exercise, which is I can tell you every single If you want to get into shape, "Hey Simon, how do I get into shape?" Easy. Every single day work out for 20 minutes. Every single day. Okay? Can I take the occasional day off? Yes, but not too many. Work out every single day, and 100% of you will get into shape. I know it. 100%. When? I don't know, and neither does any doctor. And that's my work. Yes, I can profoundly help you find purpose with Start With Why. I can help you build trust on a team with Leaders Eat Last. I can help you embrace the infinite mindset and have this incredible calm in life. And the reason most companies won't do it this innova- This is a book for innovation, right here. You want to know innovate? Infinite Game. The reason most companies won't do it is because they need it to happen by the end of the quarter or the end of the financial year. It may or may not. I have no clue, and I cannot predict that it will or won't. It'll work 100%. I just don't know when. And the problem is, cuz right back to the beginning of this conversation, we're all so obsessed with the output. We're all so obsessed with the result that we've completely ignored the value of the journey. And people would rather hit the number at the end of the year than build a good strong company. Think about it. Right? If I meet another entrepreneur, when I say, "So, tell me about your company." Like, "We're hypergrowth. We're a hypergrowth company. We're a gazelle." Right? Like, show me Then I always say the same thing, cuz I'm an ass. Can you please give me one article from a reputable publication, just one, and I don't care the publication that says that building a hyper-growth company is good for business. Just one. And the answer is you can't, because it's not. And so, why are we so obsessed with high-speed growth? It's because our investors want us to be obsessed with high-speed growth. Right? Or our egos want us to be obsessed with high-speed growth. Right? And if high-speed growth happens by accident, that happens for many of the unicorns. Right? It was an accident. I think building a good company is better than building a fast company. I think building a good relationship is better than building a fast relationship. And we're all so obsessed with speed and immediate results. Present company included. I've had to learn this the hard way. Then I think there's something joyful and beautiful about slowing down, saying thank you, re-prioritizing friends. It's okay. I mean, by the way, cell phones and so But before cell phones, we went to work, and then we went home. And we didn't do work at home, because we couldn't do work at home. Because we didn't have computers at home, and we didn't have cell phones or people to call us. And so, you did work at work, and then you left. And I remember when cell phones started, I remember the advertising. AT&T had this campaign that they showed people working on the beach, you know, with their computers. I mean, this is like the future, right? And they said, "Now, um well, I don't remember what was the what was the tagline. It was really funny. It was like, 'Now you can leave work.'" Right? And that's not what happened. Work came with us. We never left work. Work came with us wherever This is the problem with cell phones and computers and the internet, which is we do not leave work. Work is with us in our pocket every day, every vacation, every evening, every weekend. 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 for things, right? So, in the same context with AI coming along, now I can build software throughout the weekend whether the agency's working or not. Now, I can build anything I want at any time Yeah. using the phone in my pocket, the friction has come down again. And therefore, the pressure to do it now because I can do it now goes up. And this is kind of maybe what I was alluding to earlier on in the, you know, when I was thinking about how you're going to get more stressed and more overwhelmed and That's good. more isolated. That's so good. That's so Right, it's we're taking work with us. I mean, it's like, you know, everybody has a story of like where the battery ran out on their phone and they ended up having the best night. Yeah. Or the internet went out at work and they actually got more done. Like, you hear these stories all the time. You know? That that when when we're forced not to take work with us, forced. It takes a bit of time sometimes to relax, but it's always better because you learn to stop worrying, stop checking, you know? You know, and you just I One of the things I did, I I 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 to search, it suggests I took it off the suggestions, which most people don't even know you could do that. So, I took it off the suggestions. So, when I go to cuz I realized what I was doing is I'm like, when I'm bored, I just pick up my phone and I just like and then I see Instagram like and I just click it like a like a zombie and then I'm done for an hour, you know? So, I hid it. So, the only time I go to Instagram is when I have to go to it and I have to type in I N S T, you know? And then it pops up and my usage of Instagram has plummeted. Plunged 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 the 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 the world where creating things goes to zero. Like when you know, once upon a time if you made a social network or if you made built an app or if you built a media a movie or a media company or a podcast that was half of the job and the other half of the job is like getting it out there in the world. And so now the people that have the other half of the job which hasn't gone to zero, now have this tremendous advantage cuz 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 together. 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 together. In marketing this is the absolute obsession at the moment community run clubs and brands becoming And offline is the new online, right? Offline's the new black. Like there's a there's a company called Clicks and it was started by a 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 is Alix. Um but her company Clicks she started it to solve her own problem, right? My favorite kind of company. And basically to help her friends at school, quote unquote friends, people at school make friends. And she did it by taking people offline and taking their phones away. And she would come up with reasons to come together, whether it was running or this or that. Just like it didn't matter what the reason was. Come and just a reason to come that made you that when you saw the ad hung up on a piece of paper at college, you know, that you'd be like, I like horror movies, whatever. I like baking. I'll go to that. Right? Just a trick. And then basically just And so she's built this business predominantly for young people, but it's available to everyone, but she's built this business to just bring people together to meet people without phones offline. And she wants She has a 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 a community together? Is it so like sh- We want to improve together, so we have to have some kind of shared value that we we want to improve on, presumably. It's like a community of runners. They're trying to get fit together, or they're trying to improve their I don't think it matters. I mean, it's like it's it's shared shared interests is a is a is a way to start a a relationship, right? Comic-Con, you know, you know, nerdvana, you know, Burning Man. All of these larger-than-life events, big and small. Going to the Going to the Going to the football. You know, it's like you're everybody's friend when you wear the when you wear the right when you wear the right colors. You know? You know, you see people on the on on the tube who's going to to go to the same game. They're wearing the same jersey. You're friends, yeah. You're friends, right? So, I think common interest is a is a is a trick. It's a way of getting people to come together, and it's a nice place to start cuz at least conversation is easy. Mhm. 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, do you think? Thinking cuz 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. So, there's a big difference between having an audience, which is what you might have on like a podcast or something, and having a community. And I'm as a brand leader and as an entrepreneur, I'm trying to shift from having an audience over to having a community. And that's about like relationships and Shared values. I mean, I like to think the people who really like my work, not the ones who just like passively like it, but the ones who really like my work. Like if somebody says, "I love Start With Why." Or "I live my life by the Infinite Game." That it says something about who they are and how they see the world and that we share the same values. And that if And because I am, you know me, you know I'm an idealist. And And my I I'm consistent in the way I talk about things from the day I started to to now. Won't ever change. And And I think that's the value of values. And the problem with the modern world we live in and the pressures that people face is money and fame and all the rest of it and, you know, influencer status. I think it sometimes forces us to question our values or walk away from them. I was invited to a a group of they called it a mastermind group. It was a bunch of folks like me, author speakers, who wanted to This is what they told me, come together to based on shared shared goals, shared values, how we can work together and improve the world together. And 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 are And I spoke up. I was like, you guys are just talking about making more money. I What I thought we came here to like do common good together. They didn't invite me back. But it was but the point is is like the money and the fame is seductive, you know? This is this is this is this is Joseph Campbell's hero's journey, which is you start off as the reluctant hero, and you get called to your mission for some reason, and at some point in your journey, there will be something to seduce you away from your mission, money or power. You know, Luke Skywalker was nearly seduced away from the vision, you know? From the journey. Like this is what 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. Like when you start making money and you start making money for something you didn't expect. Like I never expected to have a career from any of this stuff, right? It happened by accident. And you get to the point where you start thinking you're more important than you are. Do they know Do they Do they know who I am? No. No. Get over yourself. You know? And you start becoming seduced. And I think the seduction when we turn on social media and we watch Kardashian the Kardashian model and like you have people who pursue influence without knowledge or skill. Like those two buckets. They have the other three buckets, but they don't have the first two buckets. And it is temporary for some or unfulfilling for others. And you know, the funny thing about that job, you know, I was I was I went to a concert. And there was this this woman who walked down the aisle and some guy was taking pictures of her as she was posing. And the person next to me goes, "She's a famous influencer." And I said, "You mean she's a freelance employee of an algorithm?" And And there's 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. Uh You just lost like 170 followers. I mean Maybe. You just lost like 170 blue ticks. But Like I don't have a problem with the concept of being an influencer if you bring something of value. The only time I have a problem with it is 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 Shh. What they did is he took a dick a big book, a dictionary I think it was, and he put it over his chest, and she took a gun and shot it at the book thinking that the book would stop the bullet. And she killed him. She killed him on camera. Right? Now They admitted She admitted afterwards she he's dead, but she admitted afterwards they were doing it to do bigger and crazier stunts to get more and more followers because the financial pressures of driving at those YouTube views was overwhelming. And so it's an extreme case, obviously, of the the the the the how we will lose our minds trying to gain followers. And I don't mind if people gain followers by giving. But to gain followers by taking, look at me, look at me, look at me. Versus I have something that I think this will help you. And like there's not there's no I don't have a problem with what it's it's the it's the input, right? It's the intention. Um Anyway. Anyway, it's not like an old man complaining about No, but You kids these days and your influencers. So, I'm going to print it off some graphs which I think are absolutely fascinating and dovetail into everything you 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 only let's just say 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 lonelier. 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. Um but if you don't know why you're showing up every day, I think it it it 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 you somebody says, "So, what do you do?" You say, "I wake up every single day to inspire people to do what inspires them. What do you do?" You know? Like it's it's I yeah, I do I do and I think it's it's not the thing that makes you less lonely. I think it's a mechanism to make you less lonely. 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. Yeah. Yeah. So, so yeah, that that doesn't seem unusual. Distribution of people feeling lonely worldwide by gender. So, it's about 50/50. Mhm. Are you surprised by that? I thought for some reason I thought men would be more lonely. Not at all lonely looks like women do better. I would think 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. Cuz like I want to know what how they like what age are they to start are they starting at? Is it 18? I guess that if we just put that all aside, I mean women being slightly less lonely than men I think makes sense cuz I think women are probably better at making friends. Maybe I have that wrong. What else we got here? Adults mental health 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 uh 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 of is to lean on the people who you know love you. That will help. So I don't think you can separate the two. So does it affect it? Of course it affects it. Can it make you withdraw from your friends? Of course it can. Um So I don't think you can separate the two. I read um a couple of years ago that when people are lonely, they fall into a state of self-preservation because of some evolutionary uh sort of mechanism which meant that if we were alone on the Serengeti in Africa we would sleep worse, we'd become more selfish, we'd become more angry. 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. It is conducive with being able to fend for yourself. it's more conducive survival as an individual. Yeah. So like if you're on a deserted island Mhm. and you're lonely and all those things and the cortisol rises and you become better at being on edge. Being on edge, which is a survival mechanism, right? Mhm. But, if you live in a community with other people, then it is counterproductive, because we are social animals. And I need you to help me, and you need to help me. So, if we live in tribe together, and I'm the selfish [ __ ] I'm not going You're not going to wake me and alert me to danger tonight. Mhm. You're just going to leave me. So, so it's a it's a it's a 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, and it's But, the problem is is you don't live on a desert island. And that's one of the reasons I think it's up it's dangerous. We're increasingly being living on on islands. The islands are different now. They're four walls in a in a white city. And um it's so funny that so many of my friends are using this word loneliness. When 10, 20 years ago, it wasn't it wasn't something that I had frequently from from adults. But, now it seems to be also common. In fact, my masseuse yesterday was saying to me that she's lonely. And this is a woman that lives in Los Angeles, has people around her, but she's lonely. Yeah. And I remember when she went, and she's cuz we had a conversation on our text, and said, "Oh, thank you for 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, cuz she's had a divorce. What advice do you give someone? Is it take more risks? So, it's it's too it's easy to give the obvious advice. Like, you got to put yourself out there, right? But, when you're in a period of loneliness and stress, it you it's hard to find that that energy and that risk-taking, right? Especially when you're down on yourself. We've all been there. I've definitely been there. But, the um I think for me, what I've learned is um to put myself second. Meaning, don't worry. Don't try and solve 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 their loneliness? And it's the act of service that is so valuable. If, you know, you guys are talking and she has many clients and somebody else like 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 then hold space for them. And her ability to help somebody else manage or understand their loneliness will will help her. So interesting cuz one of the hallmarks of her personality, if you met this person, something she says to me every single time she comes over for the treatment, is that she doesn't like sharing herself with people because she thinks if people get to know her, they'll change. So literally, she's been my masseuse for many years now and If people get to know her, they will change? She's scared about people knowing how She's scared about people knowing the details of her life, so she guards it all. And it's 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. Took me She goes And when I asked her, her body language went like this. "Yes, I have kids." And I was like, "Why? Why are you so guarded with your information?" "Well, if people knew who really I really am and they knew more about me, then they'll change or um they may not like me anymore or they'll think differently about me, so I just keep it to myself." But I mean, this is the age-old problem. I mean, it's everything you said when you when people who are driven only by the thing that they want, you know, versus the givers. And this I mean, this is the age-old problem, which is I'm never going to 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 is This is goes This This is goes back to struggle, which is This goes Look, you and I both know that uh that if somebody who chooses to go on an entrepreneurial venture or adventure, the statistics bear out that the over 90% of all new businesses will fail in the first 3 years. Right? What idiot would ever start a business? Right? You have to be compelled by something else to make you do something with overwhelming statistical chance of failure. Right? And and it's opening yourself up to failure that is the thing that makes it work. Mhm. You know? At least for a small small percentage. Of course. But it's the same for love, which is or relationship or friendship, which is it absolutely comes with risk. There's nothing riskier. Like, yeah, they will they 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 amazing. And so, if you can't take the risk, you can't get the reward. If you don't play the lottery, you don't win the you know, 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 to say, "Me, too." Mhm. then then it's going to be a hard road. Or it'll take somebody to chip away at you 20 times. You know? To before you open up. But 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 and we've been through everything. I know why she wants the house to be on the list. you go. You see? That thing down 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 um 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 some 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 they that person becomes a friend. Mhm. You know? 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 could see this lucked out because you're curious about people. Is this what connection is? You when you said me, too. Finding something to say me, too with someone. Is that the essence of what like connection is? I mean, that I can 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 sheeple. And the ability to say, "Can you tell me more about how you came to your beliefs? I'm genuinely curious." And to not agree or disagree, but to be curious, to be an investigator, you know? And I and I've done this with people who have polar opposite political views with me. At some point, we will get to a level of me just chipping away trying to understand that they will say something that I'm like, "100% I agree with that." And then from that point on, there's a 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 on that validation, they become vastly more open to my point of view, also, and curious to my point of view, also. And so, yeah, the person the person like 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 you can and maybe that's what we need to heal this country or most of the countries in the world right now, which is one group or one person to just be curious rather than agree or disagree. There's something about relationships here as well because my girlfriend is you've met my partner and um 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. Get it out. So you and I have the same problem. Yeah, 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 our necks. Right? Like you and I are head people. And we have to learn to be more heart. Mhm. Right? And I want to understand everything, explain everything, you know, evaluate everything, analyze everything. And when I come to my emotions I'll give you an analysis. You know, when it comes to your emotions I'll give you an analysis. And so I have to learn to be like I feel this and that's it. And I feel the same way. It's funny because I'm good at it with art. You know, I always tell people you don't have to understand art. I'll take you to museum, I'll take you to gallery and if you look at a piece and I know you're intimidated come because you don't understand art or you don't understand music, whatever it is. And all you need to do, this is the only rule 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, 10 pieces that you like and I'm going to see four, five, six, 10 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? Mhm. You know? And so, when when your girlfriend opens up to you, you know, you don't have to agree, you don't have to disagree. You just have to And you and I both have to learn to stop thinking and to just like feel something. When somebody says, "Where do you feel it?" I'm like, "What That's the stupidest question I've ever heard. Where do I feel it?" And they've literally like I've had somebody take me on this journey, and she goes "You told me an emotion you have, Simon. You told me an emotion." Yes. "Where do you feel it? In your body, where do you feel it?" And I'm sitting there going "You've got to be kidding me." You know? But all right, we'll go through this. All right. And she says, "So, you said you feel X." I'm like, "Yes." "All right, where in your body did you have some sort of reaction?" I here. "What happened?" It got a little tighter in my chest. "Okay." And I went on this journey with my friend with my friend Bea Bea Oche. 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, heavy breathing in my chest, clenching my fists, you know? Like my body does react. Mhm. And so, I'm learning to experience feelings beneath my neck, when my inclination is to do everything above above the neck. It's a hard skill. Oh my god, it's hard. And so, I have men. And so, when you're when you meet spiritual people, they are all below the neck. And we think it's stupid, but they recognize that we have an ability to feel because we want to think about everything. And so, we both have a lot to learn from each other, which is there Thinking about things has value. Not all the time. And so, your girlfriend And I cuz I know her her ability to know her body when she has feelings I think is way more is has a lot of value to you and to me. I think it's like the biggest opportunity that I have to form relationships. Yeah. Change in 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. It's yeah, the not knowledge work is going to get hammered by AI. Um I met a guy in Japan who he's one of the very few guys left like a hundred of them left 150 of them left who make samurai swords in the traditional samurai sword way you make them you hammer the metal and he folds his own metal and he makes samurai swords they made them the way they made them 200 years ago. And we went to this 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 do this. Like this is this can't be my life. And I did I've always been enamored by sword making so I found an apprenticeship and tried to learn and you know I'm I I'm just starting to get the hang of it and but I have a lot of room for improvement. And we're like how long have you been doing this? He said 30 years. But that's so Japanese. You know the Japanese like they'll never be good at this I'll just keep working at it. And 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 look at look at lockdown. We all went through lockdown. I mean, what skill did you practice during lockdown? What did you learn? DJing, running, cycling. DJing. Right? I did Kintsugi. It's the Japanese art of fixing broken things with gold. So, basically, you take a broken plate or broken cup and you put it together and with gold paint or gold epoxy, you put it together and you make it The whole concept is you can make something more beautiful like things can get more beautiful after they're broken, right? I love the philosophy of it. I spent hours doing freaking Kintsugi. Ask me how much Kintsugi I've done since we came out of lockdown. How much DJing have you done? Zero. 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 why That's the other question. Peop- We're talking about how we're all going to have all the spare time. We've lost all of our spare time. We have no spare time because all we do is work and think about work and talk about work. Like 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 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 cuz it sounds like we've lost all of our own time. It fixed the loneliness. You 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 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 me, which is a function of my personality, and that is that I lose everything. I've lost my wallet, I've lost multiple passports. I now actually have two passports because there's a high probability of me losing one. And when you lose your wallet overseas, as I have many times, it's a particular inconvenience because you also lose your driving license and your credit cards and those kinds of things. And that's why I'm so happy that our show sponsor Ekster have invented this thing I have in my hand. They have partnered with Apple's Find My technology. So, all I have to do is open that app and play a noise, and it will tell me where my wallet is. Ekster wallets are slim, they're made of recycled aluminum, and they block various types of digital theft. And with one click, your cards can pop up and are ready to go. 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And the reason why I've invested in this company and I drink matcha is because matcha as an energy source gives me lasting energy without the big crashes that I get from other products. Grab their ready-to-drink canned matcha lattes at Waitrose, Tesco's, and Holland & Barrett and perfectmatcha.com where you can use code Steven40 for 40% off your first order. 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 in a day. And not in the sense that I'm deprioritizing my friends. You know, you talked about how you you know, you you would give them all your money to to secure them, but you don't give them any time. I actually treat a lot of I've actually gotten very good at this. It's probably when you write a book about friendship, you start to 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? Um 4:00 in the afternoon? Tea with? And I go and I leave the office like I'm going to a meeting cuz nobody says, "Hey Simon, where you going?" Well, going to a meeting. Where are you having the meeting? At that restaurant. People 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 And when somebody says, "Can I cancel this friend's tea with friend because that you that you have a phone call you've neglected?" I'm like, "No." Just like you wouldn't cancel on my meeting. Don't cancel on So, I treat I I put it in and I give them equal weighting to things that I have to do at work because I've become much more discerning. Like, do I have to have this meeting or this phone call today Mhm. or can I do it next week? I could do it next week. And you realize we fake we fake or we add fake urgency to things. And I I have a friend who's kind of amazing. He He's way busier than me. And he he says, "I don't want to spend time with anybody like I saw I saw it was really funny. He came out of a meeting and it was he had a meeting with a very fancy person who's who's courting him for business, right? Or he should be courting the other guy actually. Very fancy person. And he comes out of the meeting I'm like, "How was it?" He's like, "Total waste of time." I'm like, "You don't want to do busi- He doesn't want to work with you?" He 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?" He was like, "He's just some rich [ __ ] 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 I do not want to work with them." And I was like, "That's amazing to have that level of confidence that you would turn down money in your business. And 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 we 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 are who work at those companies. Doesn't You don't have to have a relationship with the CEO, but I really 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 I really like them because when things go wrong, I want to call that person. And And people ask me this all the time and they say, "How do I choose a publisher?" And I've seen this mistake a thousand times. I've seen people like like former CEOs who are like, "I now I'm going to write my book." I'm like, "Great. You've got a lot to say." And they've got multiple offers and there's a bidding war. And they always ask me, "Which one should I go with? Which publisher should I go with?" And I always say the same thing. Choose the one you're going to fight with best. Choose the publisher you're going to fight with best. They're like, "What?" I'm like, "The goal is to make a good book. There's going to be creative tension. There's going to be fights. Choose the the 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." They Every single one of them ignores me. Every single one of them takes the biggest bid, and every single one of them has written a shitty book that didn't sell. Isn't that just relationship advice as well, though? Probably, yeah. Choose the person you're going to fight with best. And the the the number of times that we forget about the quality of the product and we just want the It's the same It's the same for job interviews. You know, don't This is especially true for for young people. Like, when you're interviewing in in in a relatively like 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 for. Choose the person I used to in early on in my career, people, you know, HR people would say, "What are you looking for?" I would say I I'd always say the same thing. I'd said, "The thing that I'm looking for is probably like looking for love, but I'm looking for a mentor." And every time I'd evaluate a job, I didn't care how glamorous the brand was. I didn't care how much money they were going to pay me. And by the way, it's not like I had money. I knew they were going to pay me something. I knew I could pay my bills. It's not like I've got I'm not a I'm not a trust fund baby. Like, I needed I needed an income. But one company offered me, you know, $5,000 more, and one company offered me $5,000 less, but I really like the person over here, I took that job. And it was the If If I got one thing right as a as a as a 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. Cuz yes, I made less money than all my friends in the short term, but I got a I got a I got an education and a care and a love from somebody who took me under their wing. I am a I am I am I learned leadership from Dennis Glennon. I learned leadership from Peter and Tomassio. I learned leadership from Pamela Maffitt. 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 um in my book that I wrote the first chapter in it talks about this idea of these five buckets. And I'm giving I'm trying to give young kids advice on how to prioritize their career, and it sounds somewhat similar to you. So, I'm going to throw this concept at you and see see how how it lands with you. So, the idea was that we all have these five buckets when we're starting our career. And the first bucket is your knowledge. The second bucket is your skills. Now, these are the only buckets that no professional earthquake in your career can unfill. You can be fired, you can be canceled, whatever. You still have your knowledge and skills. But the other three buckets I'm about to name, they can fluctuate. Bucket number three is your network. Can fluctuate. Bucket number four is your resources. Can fluctuate. And bucket number five is your reputation. Can fluctuate. And the idea is that focusing on those first two buckets when you're young, opti- choosing jobs based on how much they're going to fill those two buckets, and also what they're going to fill them with, and how relevant that information is. And when knowledge is applied, it becomes a skill. So, you focus on fill- 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 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 step down from my company because he got a job offer at 21 to be a CEO in America. And as he departs, I'm thinking he has not got the knowledge and skills to be a CEO. Within 24 months, the company had gone bust. He was back down to doing the same job he did for me. And I thought life just like resets you to the level of your knowledge and skills over time. So, what do you think of this? Are these I think you we're saying the exact same thing. You did it more eloquently than me. You know, I think I think it's 100% right. Uh um and the people who will fill that bucket with knowledge and skills are the people who again, for some reason, they're good people, they're good leaders, they take a liking to you, and they will give you they will put you in situations, and they will let you screw up and fix your own problems, fix your own mistakes. Then that's what my bosses did for me. They rewarded my behavior when I got it right, as opposed to my results. Never got rewarded for my results. I always got rewarded for my behavior. So, if I showed initiative, I got a I got a reward even if the results didn't follow, right? And I could I can tell you a great story on that. And if I got things wrong, they would say, "Hmm, well, what are you going to do? Really screwed that one up, didn't you? Okay, what are you going to do?" And they didn't they weren't happy with me, but they let me fix my own messes, and they stood by, and I knew that they were there if I needed them. You know, Peter and Tomagio, one of the best leaders I ever worked for, annoyingly never answered a single question I asked. "Hey Peter, what should I do?" "I don't know. What do you think we should do?" "Well, I think we should do this." I'm like, "Okay, so go do that." You know? What do you think Peter I'm asking you because I don't know. That's why I'm asking you. He was like, "Ooh, well, you probably go think about that." He was he was he was the worst, but what he taught me was self-reliance. Mhm. What 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. Mhm. And may not be right. And I'll find that out myself, too. And I also learned to have backup plans from him cuz something went haywire on me. And I went so wrong, it ended up being okay, but they he made me sweat it. I remember at the end of the day at the end of this whole thing that went wrong that was totally my fault. The phone rings, I see his It's 6:00 p.m. Phone rings, I see his name come up on the caller ID, and I pick up the phone. I remember the whole call word for word, right? 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 if something does go wrong, I'm like, I'm a little bit ahead. You either have it planned or I'm like, "Okay, okay. Don't worry. I kind of if this happened, I thought about this already." And it's only because of these great leaders. And it goes This is this 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 better than how we show up in the world. And AI will absolutely make our lives easier like most technology makes our lives easier. That's kind of the rule 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 muscles. You know, that's kind of what it does, you know, from the 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 cuz I don't want to be your publisher, but um I know that they they chase and chase and chase and chase. But my my as 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. Right? There's an entire industry to help you have a successful relationship or a successful marriage or even find a partner, right? Industries, books, companies. There's very little on how to be a friend. And if you think about if you're going to have a successful career and can 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 what you need in both of those circumstances? Friends. Cuz when your marriage is falling apart, you go to a friend. When your job is falling apart, you go to a friend. When and 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 as I mentioned it 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 time with my friends because I know it feels good to them and I know it feels good to me. And I know that the only reason I can get through any work stress or personal stress I have is because of those magical human beings and I will not take them for granted. And um 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 and 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 medication and vacations and burn like there's so many theories. The one thing that fixes all of those things is friends. Friendship is the ultimate bio hack. You know, we've talked about this before. I fundamentally believe that. And if it's so valuable, like if I know if you know vegetables are good for you, you eat more vegetables. If you know exercise is good for you, you do more exercise. So if I say friends are good for you, shouldn't you do more friendships? Right? Like shouldn't you Exercise is not fun or easy and you have to get over a hump sometimes. Eating vegetables can sometimes be boring and unsatisfying, but you do it when you find new ways. And so maybe friendship is not always easy or fun, but it's still really really good for you. And it 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 it's the healthiest thing in the world. How do I know if someone's a friend? Have that conversation with them. Cuz I know a lot of people. Yeah, yeah, I mean like and you have deal friends, you know, you have a lot of deal friends, you know? Yeah. Podcast friends. Podcast friends, yeah. Uh Work friends. You know, and you and we have and like look, I'm not talking about There's all kinds of friends. There's friends that you just like hanging out with. They're just fun, but you're not going to go to them with your problems or to sort out, you know, issues. You're not You're just not. Work or personal. They're just fun, right? There's nothing wrong with that. Um 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 they 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 I give me a chance to serve. They open up to me and let me serve as well. You know? I struggle to make friends. And I think Do you know why? I think I I think I'm lazy. With it. Lazy with friendships. So I will meet someone. I'll have a great connection with them. And then my follow up like I don't really know what to do next. So I'll meet Your follow up is crap. Oh [ __ ] hell. This is what I mean. Like my I'll meet someone I'll text you and maybe I'll get a response. Vice versa. I think YOU LEFT ME ON READ. BUT YOU 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 but I think my follow up game is like crap. I'll meet someone I'll go Oh my I'll see 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 you just being the boss you get away with stuff. 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 no don't worry don't worry. Right? Like you get away with stuff in the world, right? And so I think what that does is I I see this with celebrities all the time, right? Because everybody yeses them to death and they get away with it and nobody ever holds them accountable. At some point they just get lazier and lazier and lazier because they can. Oh yeah. You know? Yeah. And so you they don't have to put in the effort because other people put in the effort. Yeah. And nobody be like like a a somebody who's a nobody won't say to them Yo. [ __ ] Not respectful. Oh you think my schedule doesn't matter? I've been waiting here for 3 hours. Uh you just because you're a celebrity you think you can just keep me waiting? Not cool. Nobody says that to them. And somebody should say that to them. But uh They should say to themselves. They should say it to themselves. That would be ideal. And then some of them have the self-awareness to know they're getting away with it. That's even worse, cuz then they're doing it on purpose. At least blindness, I think, you know, they can at least hide behind ignorance. But, uh Yeah, I mean, friendship takes effort. Yeah, I there there'll be a lot of people listening now, I know, that understand I think they'll resonate with what I'm saying, which is I'll meet someone, I'll be like, we could be really good friends. I see so much in us. I love what you stand for. We 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, "What? Why are you calling?" I'm like, "Well, we had we had a nice time. I thought we maybe talk." You know? And I think we live in a 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 on human. Because calling is so archaic to me that when someone does it, it's like a treat now. And I was thinking what's what's taking that even further would be writing someone a letter. Mhm. If someone Do you know who wrote me a letter? Evan from Snapchat came on the podcast, the founder and CEO of Snapchat. And then, by the time I'd got back to London, there was a letter on my desk from Evan. And it just said, "Had a great conversation with you. Um 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. No, it was with a pen. he had he had an auto pen. He just did it. It was with a pen. Had a signature and his phone number. And I thought, that is so beautiful. It's classic and classy. There's a premium on being human. Simon, thank you so much. Thank you for being so generous with your time always. Always. I always have fun with you. my show. You're um you always move me forward in my thinking in such profound and unexpected always unexpected way that I'll tremendous I'll value tremendously for a very very long time. In our friendship. I I'm going to text back even faster. I'm you know, we need to go on more dates. Um 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? Mhm. What are you doing in your life to mentor someone coming up behind you? And then, who is a person that you'd like to mentor, teach, or coach that needs your voice the most? I It's It's my team is everything right now. Like I want to give everything I've learned to my team. I want the folks on my team to benefit from all the mistakes I've made. And one of the joys of being in founder mode when it's not the the actual beginning is I have way more in my skill and knowledge bucket that I want to pour out. And so, I 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. Cuz I want to leave something that can survive me that, you know, if if I you know, the whole school bus test, you know, if the founder gets hit by a bus, will the company continue or will it will it not? And I really want to build something where they want to build it without me. Feels like there's been a change here. Mhm. What was the catalyst? For the past couple years, I've been just trying out a lot of different things to find to to find uh a level of excitement and energy that I think I'd lost for a little bit and I found it. Like this has been like the founder mode my team are so great and they so want to they so want to push boundaries and all I want to do is take take the reins off, like take the leash off, like 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 I just love being around all the creative ideas that they're coming up with. 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. Ooh. Two medallions, medals? Those are military challenge coins. Um I brought the one the round one just to show you what the traditional ones look like. Um uh this is the one I care about. I mean, I care about them both, but this is the one I brought. So, these are uh only generals or commanders will give these out. They're hard to get. You get them when you do something of service. It's it's less formal than a medal. They can give it out to whomever they want, and it's their way of saying thank you. And the challenge coins that I've been given, I'm very very proud of it because I feel like I earned them. And the thing that I love is when they give them to you, they don't just hand it to you. They put it in their hand like this, and they shake your hand. Go on. And that's how they give them to you. And they say, "Thank you, Simon, so much for coming here and helping us out." And that's how they give me the coin. The reason why this one means a lot to me is because I did some work with the with Air Force Top Gun. It's called the Weapons School, but it's Air Force Top Gun. And this is their coin, and this is their patch. That's And um I did some work with them to help them get to the core of their why, what their true value was. Just to make sure that their culture stays clear and good for a long time. And we came up with three words, three actions that everybody who goes through Air Force Top Gun is required to do, which is build, teach, lead. Which is the idea that you build a skill set. You teach that skill set to other people. And then you build leaders, and you lead, right? This whole idea that you have you have a responsibility to build, to teach, and to lead. Accumulate and give, and serve. And the thing that is so powerful is the commandant of the Weapons School, after we he 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 since. And I am so proud to have given something that has longevity, that is literally on the coin. Build, teach, lead. Yeah, that is such a beautiful mantra for life. Yeah. And they're they're wonderful people who go there. And uh what an honor that work that I did ended up on a coin. And so they gave me the coin out of gratitude for the work that I did and it had my words on it, so it's not my words, it's their words. I just helped distill them. It's who they are when they're at their natural best. I just helped them put it uh codify it. Simon, thank you. Thanks. Always love our conversations and long may they continue. Likewise. This has always blown my mind a little bit. 53% of you that listen to this show regularly haven't yet subscribed to this show. So, could I ask you for a favor? If you like this show and you like what we do here and you want to support us, the free simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the subscribe button. And my commitment to you is if you do that, then I'll do everything in my power, me and my team, to make sure that this show is better for you every single week. We'll listen to your feedback, we'll find the guest that you want me to speak to, and we'll continue to do what we do. Thank you so much.