Together is Better | Book Club with Simon

okay here we go hello everyone and welcome back to book club you know this one is a spontaneous one um i think this might be our 12th book club something like that 12th or 13th book club we were supposed to be done two weeks ago but i was enjoying myself too much and so we decided to throw this one in spontaneously um because it's fun we're back on linkedin facebook youtube and twitter welcome everyone from around the world uh who's here today let's do uh dakota potato peel and pie literary society you guys i think you've been here a dozen times hello from new zealand uh from prague that's where my family's from cynic is a czech name um new finland newfees in the house alberta scottsdale arizona uh malaysia how are you uh socal always good to see you swindon nice to see you again romania this is insane how many people are here uh this is wonderful i just love how global we are hello iceland i love iceland i saw what do you call it northern lights i saw the aurora borealis when i was there is magical magical magical um toronto and italy where in italy i love italy um okay let's talk about together's better um i'll tell you the history of where this book came from uh as always i'm gonna tell you a little bit about the book and uh we'll take some live questions and we have some uh questions that you sent into book club so thanks very much for those okay so this book wasn't supposed to be um i was sitting in my publisher's office and i was just we were just we our meeting was done and we were just you know in it um and they were talking about twitter two two of the people at the publishing company were talking about twitter and they looked down at me and they said you have a twitter account right and i went yep they said do you use it i'm like i don't use it like everybody else i said i just post quotes i just post little thoughts that i have but that's all i do um and he looked at me and he said well how many followers do you have and i don't remember what the number was but it was a it was a couple hundred thousand and he said really i said yeah he's like i didn't know that that that you had that i'm like well you know i like sharing and so i said why don't we do something with all the quotes people seem to like them i'd like to make a quote book he said fine and that's literally how this came to be so my contract actually said untitled tweet book nobody knew it was going to be including me i just said i i have an idea there's going to be untitled tweet book and then then the craziness began um i decided i wanted to be illustrated so we found a wonderful illustrator ethan aldridge who's fantastic um and i wanted it to i was inspired by children's books i didn't want to just do a plain you know quote book although that was boring so i went to literally went to the bookshop and was looking at children's books and there was a little book called there was a book called um oh what was it called it's called how to have an idea or something there's this magical little children's book about an egg that represents an idea i just loved it and that became the inspiration for this book and because i wanted to be modeled after a children's book even though it's technically for adults i wanted it to be long so this these are my bookmarks this piece is a tissue these this is a standard size small book but i wanted to go this way which they told me i can't do i said yes come on we can do it so we got so the first the first struggle we had to have was making the book go sideways um and everybody thought i was crazy at the company my publisher believed in me but everybody thought i'd gone on my rocker and we're calling him and saying why are you publishing this this book it's a freaking children's book for adults that's not gonna sell um and then i said i wanted it scented i was at a an event and i was sitting next to this uh these two women uh dawn and samantha goldworm from a company called 1229 and i asked them what they did and they they designed scents for brands like they sent you know mercedes or something launches a new car and that the show that has a special scent things like that and i said well have you ever sent it a book they said i don't think it's ever been done i'm like can it be done they said yeah there's new technology we could do that i said well i'd like to send a book so i went back to the publisher and said and i'm getting a custom design scent from this amazing company on the smell of optimism and we should put it in the book well that was also another struggle anyway eventually the book got made and here it is and there's a few wonderful little things that you'll notice about it all of those handwritten pages i wanted i wanted the book to be human it's got all of these sensory things it's got color it's got visual it's got smell it's got a song at the end the we made the cover a little softer i purposely never brought it out in digital because i wanted to only exist in reality uh because it was the most human thing i could it could do in a book it has all these wonderful things all the handwritten pages that you see the little chapter sections that's actually my handwriting i sat there and wrote every single one of those pages they just they just printed them uh so that's actually my handwriting uh the song at the back by aloe blacc uh i asked aloe uh if he would write in his handwriting the the lyrics so you'll see all of the lyrics are handwritten uh that's actually alo's handwriting uh so all of it was was designed to be organic and human and just a lot of fun and of course the best part um i dedicated it to my sister as you see it says for sarah i'll follow you anywhere and i didn't want her to know and because we work together she sees all of the things that are happening so we had to make special you know we in in the publishing industry they come out with something called galleys which is a a soft cover pre-published edition basically so we can all see what it looks like we send it to press things like that we had to make all of the galleys all of the pdfs everything we had to make it without the dedication page because i didn't want sarah to see it so we had this whole conspiracy that she could never see it until the book came out and then when the book came out um we surprised her and showed it to her and i should introduce you to sarah sir come over here and say hello this is sarah this is my sister sarah who we work together we're like best friends the book is dedicated to her and i would follow her anywhere and follow you anywhere you make me cry i know i'll go back okay let's talk about uh together is better shall we by the way this is my favorite picture in the whole thing uh that kind of represents these three kids sitting getting ready to go on their adventure um staring at the wall i think is a is a feeling we've all had before like should i shouldn't i do i do this do i not do this do i take the plunge do i go on the journey do i do the difficult thing do i leave the the certainty of the known even if it's uncomfortable to go on the the uncertain adventure and um and i think the quote perfectly captures is a vision is like a dream it will disappear unless we do something with it do something bigger do something small but stop wondering and go on an adventure i love everything about that that that the original illustration is actually hanging in my hanging in my office from what i i mean i haven't been to my office in six months but it's there um okay uh i can tell you a couple more stories if you like but why don't we do some uh questions i'll tell you one more thing so how did i come up with the story the story is actually cut and dry based on uh joseph campbell if you know your joseph campbell hero's journey it's star wars it's uh uh lord of the rings it's it's you know this hero's journey is heroes arc where we have our heroes who go on this journey and first they meet uh someone uh a mage or something who sends them on their journey that's that's the the woman at the beginning and then they face all these trials and tribulations and then they're they don't like each other and then they come together forced to come together and they discover something wonderful and the temptation is to stay there but then they have to bring it back because the ultimate of the uh the ultimate trial of the hero is not to just discover the thing of magic but to come and share it with other people and these wonderful kids go on this journey for a better playground they find the better playground it's a magical place it's utopia and make the very difficult decision to leave utopia to go back to their old playground but what they do is they bring that vision to life for the people that they left and that is really the journey that i hope that we're all on that that we're all looking to find some magic in our lives and share it with others this is definitely the journey that i've been on when i discovered my why it created a passion and made like no other and i thought i have to share this um it's not good enough for us to find passion in our own jobs it is right for us to find ways to share that passion with other people so they can feel it too there we go okay should we do some questions um uh also by the way i love this picture because that to me represents what leadership really is leadership is not getting the crown leadership is not getting the power leadership is the ability to get it and give it away and that's what what this kid does he he's given the crown but then he immediately passes it off to someone else who he trusts and loves um i actually took that picture and put it on stationery um okay let's do some questions why don't we um and if i think of any more stories i'll tell you them uh but i do really love this little book it it turned out to be such a surprise and by the way like i said my publisher gave me top cover because his ceo called him up and said what are you doing they thought it was a big waste of money um they thought it was that it was just some vanity project that simon was doing and like it caused a lot of stink in the company and um here's the funny thing the book actually debuted on the new york times bestseller list no no but nobody expected nobody was even checking i i called the publisher and said somebody emailed me you weren't you're not going to believe this no one was looking so it turned out that um i'm not the only person who likes magical little sweet little books okay uh janet packer from yorkshire england how are you is it the person or the vision that people follow and why what a good question so visions tend to be ethereal um they exist in our imaginations and as human beings we do a lot better with tangibility right it's why we tend to lean towards finite instead of infinite it's time it's why we like uh metrics because they're easy to measure and so what ends up happening is the um uh the person the the the visionary if you want to call the person becomes the tangible representation of the vision so we say we follow the person but in reality what we're doing is following the ideals that they espouse so whether it's a whether it's business or whether it's uh politics or whether it's social change we say i follow martin luther king but what we're actually saying is i follow the vision that he represents so the person becomes the personification the representation the tangible manifestation i can't think of any more tion words the of the vision and so we follow the person but in reality we're following what they espouse um we follow what they stand for um because that's the ideal because we're only following the person if there's an absence of vision and we follow a big personality like that happens too sometimes we can mistake the two um uh sometimes people tell us what we want to hear and sometimes there's big personalities and we can follow the person but when they die usually their vision dies too the true test is when that person moves on that their vision lives on beyond them and and their vision becomes our own um it becomes a lot more tangible okay uh pete uh brambaugh from olathe kansas is it olath or olathe i'll go with olaf um i want to use this little book to motivate my council members and mobilize them around a shared purpose activating a mostly dormant alumni association of 20 27 000 individuals my question is what is the best way to use the book to accomplish this high purpose so again we put this book out there like i do with all my work i'll tell you another funny little story um uh i was i attended this luncheon once it was a couple years ago and um i went by myself and sort of in typical simon weird introvert way i sort of like kept to myself and like just walked around by myself and i was getting lunch from the buffet and i happened to be standing next to somebody and we started talking and really enjoying our conversation turns out it was director baz lerman totally cool didn't recognize him he introduced himself and um i he told me how he thinks about his work he says his work is like a child he says when he when he's producing something when he's working on a project he gives it his all he wants to raise this child he wants this project to be the best thing it can possibly be and then when it's done he puts it out into the world and it goes off and lives a life of its own and he goes on to the next project and he says people will come up to him on the street and say oh my god i love moulin rouge and he always replies oh how is he i haven't seen him in ages say hi for me it's kind of that like it's out there and does its own thing i have the same belief about my work you know and i love that i love that he he he said that so i put this book out there not having no clue what it was going to do or where it was going to go and to your point pete i've discovered that people actually use it to spur this kind of motivation and inspiration with their teams with the with uh uh with their companies um i found that companies and teams read it together uh and so one of the ways you can do it there's a few ways that i've heard that other people are doing it one is they gift it to everybody so it's sort of a little more on the on the dl uh uh where they gift it to everybody and somebody says this is great we should use this so it becomes their idea um another way i've heard it done is um bringing it to a meeting and uh and bringing out one of the quotes and saying i think this i think this inspires us like why haven't we done this like you know we this is very inspiring can we talk about what our opportunities are um so i would say whatever works for you um is the best um uh maybe even just share it with a couple people share your copy with a couple of people and say can what do you think of us using this to inspire uh some change in the next meeting um but uh but it has been used for sure um as i've heard so um definitely definitely holding something up as a prop and having it come from the book is more organic than it coming from you people for some reason are more comfortable something coming from an outside source um uh good okay sarah nicole the wrath girls from swindon good to see you again um uh we are stuck by how the how infinite the message is so we wondered uh if you had read finite ninth games by james cars when you wrote togethers better looking forward to leaders last book club hmm um okay so uh i noticed that as well i actually made reference in the back to the in this book i realized to finite and infinite i noticed um i a friend of mine brian collins gave me dr carso's book years ago and so i was already a lover of his work in a devotee to finite infinite even though i i had no idea what to do with it and it wasn't until years later that i realized an opportunity to build on dr carso's work and offer something actionable that we could use to change our mindset for the for the game we're in to really use his work as a foundation um i honestly don't remember the exact year that i was given the book but i i think it's safe to say that i did that i had read the book because i'm using the language so exactly how cars meant it so uh yes i do believe i had read uh finite infinite games uh before i wrote this book um any live amy questions hello amy davies um in regards to the publisher saying no to doing the book with people telling you no this is crazy this can't be done how do you overcome that and continue to believe in yourself and your vision to make it become a reality so um my my actual publisher the guy who actually decides to give me a contract and publish me um you know i had two books out already i had start with y out and i had leaders last out and um nobody expected either of those books to do well and they both did well and so i i i think he was a little more like willing to take a bet on me which he did and he and i were and continue to be a great partnership he's still he's still my publisher uh and we're dear friends now it's known each other for 12 or 13 years now ooh everything's moving around look at that wait i can't do it there there's the crown there's the there's the book club it's there we go anyway um uh i think you know i was this i think goes to the point of good good trust and good leadership which is i was actually shielded from a lot of the pressure um all of the when his ceo called him and said you're crazy why are you doing this don't do this i actually was unaware that that was happening until later he took a lot of the heat for me so i think that's a sign of good leadership which is he he protected me and let me go make my book um he believed that i was onto something and i kept showing him progress like here's the story that i came up with and here are the characters that we've come up with and hear the illustrations and hear the things that we're planning on doing and he could see it coming to life he though he had no imagination for what it could be at the beginning i had a kernel of an idea of what it could be um as he saw it coming to life he got more confident but he trusted me and i trusted him um i the only fights we had were you know the scented book like change the pricing structure those those were difficult conversations because they wanted to make it temporary and a promotion and but and so what i so you have to play your politics and so i never i never heavy-handed i never sort of demanded and said this has to happen and i never lost my temper or anything like that but i would make allowances i'd say well okay listen i know that the scented page adds cost to the production so why don't we make it um in the first edition and if it sells well um then we'll keep it and if it doesn't sell well are you guys okay making it promotional for the launch and all the sales team would say yes yes because they're okay with the lower sales numbers you know at the beginning and turns out it sold well so we kept it in um so i i had to believe in my own in my own product as well because if it didn't sell well we would have to reduce the cost so um it was it was it was it was a it was a journey it was life life imitating art as oscar wilde said uh he uh he actually he said i find more often that uh uh life imitates art more than art imitates life i think he said okay let's do another question victoria i just for this comment i wrote my name on the back and passed it to the person who was taking over my position i encouraged them to sign and continue to pass this book around when they were ready oh my god i love that did you hear that what was her name victoria victoria alcacer says that she when she was done with her job she signed the book gave it to the person who replaced her and they've continued to sign the book and pass it on to the to each person who's who's uh who's who's taken that job which i absolutely love and this book was about giving it was very important to me that this book would be given as a gift i didn't want i i was more interested believe it or not for people to buy this book for someone else than to buy this book for themselves which is why the very first page we put to and from by the way that is my handwriting we put to and from the book is designed to be a gift so i absolutely love that it was passed down and gifted down and it continues to be signed i adore that oh great idea chrissy simon seaman seaman um what steps can i take to help find my vision the concept sounds great but feels confusing and hard to attain can you please expand on this absolutely so let's talk about two different things let's talk about vision and let's talk about why so i talk about vision and just cause uh as synonymous terms um so uh i think we put too much pressure on ourselves that you have to have a vision come up with your vision especially especially young people today because everybody's comparing themselves to steve jobs you know uh not everybody's a visionary leader like not everybody steve jobs or richard branson or martin luther king like you know sarah sarah blakely you know not everybody is visionary it's a very small percentage of the population that we would call visionary they live in their imaginations we don't have to come up with a vision but we do have to find a vision so if there is a vision that you've heard from someone else that you believe in that inspires you that gives you goosebumps it says that's that's what i've been trying to say they put into words the way i feel then take that vision and make it your own so you can take somebody else's vision and make it your own it's like the previous question you know do we follow the person or do we follow the vision you may find the person but it's really the vision that you believe in and so you can choose to follow the person or you can just say that vision is now mine um and that is perfectly good and and and useful um uh uh you know i talk about the vision that we all share anyone who's here probably we all share the same vision which is we all believe in building a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired feel safe wherever they are and end the day fulfilled by the work that we do uh that is the vision that we all subscribe to which is why we keep coming to these book clubs and enjoying each other's companies we're all in the same path now take that vision make it your own if that's something write it down claim it that's that's the only way this thing is going to come to life is if all of us are working in our own way to bring that vision to life because certainly none of us can do it alone it's going to take all of us now that's vision a why is different a why comes from your past it is who you are it is the foundation of of what inspires you it's your spark if you want to call it that uh it's the thing that gets you out of bed in the morning and it's very often the foundation of a vision one comes the past it is objective a vision is about the future it is subjective there are many ways to find your why i wrote a book called find your why the reason i wrote that book is because for eight years people complain that they read start with why and i never told you how to find it in the book and they complained so we wrote find your way eight years later um also uh um if on our on our website start uh what is our website called simonsenic.com uh we have a start with white class of which we reserve um for uh uh for people who um um who are going through hard times right now we've allowed for it to be for free for some people which is very important um and so you can go there and there's a whole class that only takes two hours to find your why um uh which is a really really wonderful class um and i can tell you a fun way to do it really quickly it's called the friends test um find a friend you love uh who loves you back the kind of friend you could call at three o'clock in the morning and they'll take the call or you could call them at three o'clock and uh they could call you and you take the call don't do this with family don't do this with spouse don't do this with a boyfriend or girlfriend those those relationships are too close do with a friend you love and ask them this question why are we friends and they're going to look at you like you're crazy because you're asking them to put into words something that exists in the part of the brain that controls feelings and behavior but not language and then you you you say come on and you use the word what what specifically is about me then i know you'd be there for me no matter what and they're going to struggle and they're going to start describing you i don't know you're trustworthy and smart and funny and you have to play devil's advocate yes that's the definition of a friend what specifically is it about me that i know you'd be there for me no matter what and they're going to go through a few rounds of trying to describe you you're going to continue to play devil's advocate you're going to drive them crazy and eventually they'll give up and they'll start describing themselves i don't know my friends told me when i did this i don't even have to talk to you simon i can just sit in a room with you and i feel inspired and i got goosebumps in fact i'm getting them right now so the point is is they will say something that you will have an emotional response either goosebumps or you're well up um and what they're doing is they're articulating the value you have in their lives in other words that's your why it's the value you have in their lives it's who you are and you can do this with multiple friends and uh they'll give you very very similar if not the exact same answer it's kind of spooky because the thing you give to the world is the thing they value so there's a way to find your why um anything over there otherwise gary avails how are you 45 sorry i'm drinking a smoothie filled with all kinds of nonsense in it um whatever i could find that wasn't run out okay gary's asking me a very very specific question uh page 45 i'm going there yes page 45 the quote the quote is here's the picture uh if the challenge we face doesn't scare us then it's probably not that important yes gary so why do you say this and why is fear so important versus other primary emotions so he he says why do i say this and why is fear so important versus other primary emotions i don't think uh it's necessarily about fear but i think something that scares us means that it's big that it's worth it that it intimidates us um i think we can have multiple feelings at the same time we can be inspired excited and afraid at the same time we can be scared by what we have to do so when you when you when you imagine doing something different it could be something and by the way a lot of the things are in our own mind to to one person quitting your job because you're dissatisfied is an easy decision for some it's a very very difficult decision it's it's not a writer it's not a right or wrong so to say am i going to do this i really want to do this everything it's like jumping off the high dive like i really want to do this i really want to do this but my goodness it's so high up but i really want to do this and i believe that i can do this and i know it'll be an amazing experience and i know i should do this and this is going to be fun but this is i'm looking down and it's really high up okay here we go there's a leap of faith um and i think scary challenges if if a challenge doesn't scare us you know then then i you know you think about making incremental change in our lives or in the lives of others you know i think if it's difficult and and if it scares us a little bit it means it's probably worthwhile it's probably something important something small and and minuscule though important um though good uh will it produce uh profound change in our or someone else's lives or the lives of the of the world we live in so i i i i'm all and maybe this is my own personal bias but i i like a difficult problem and i like looking going how are we going to do this uh difficult things mean that you have to rely on other people easy things you can often do by yourself um and i think doing something that requires help is going to be a good is going to it's a good problem to solve and means other people want to solve it with you um let's move on there's a question here from shiny what is the meaning of the photo on the book the image of the cover shoddy yes hi what is the image on the book the crown um so the crown sitting in the glass in the grass uh the crown is the uh is the metaphor we use for for leadership and it's available to anyone it's it's i can't get it it's the way this program works i don't even know how to point there it is um we just because at the end i talked about how the the the bully the boss you know takes off his crown and gives it to to uh charlie we called him um and then charlie immediately takes it and passes it on and this crown becomes the symbol of of of of power that we give away um and so i think we were all just struck by this metaphor that we we decided to to to put on the ground and says it belongs to no one and it's available to anyone and be the leader you wish you had anyone anyone can can can hold the power and share it so i think it was just it was that metaphor that it's available it doesn't belong to anyone it never does um nice question uh laura clark asked i'm struggling she says how do you know as a leader when performance issues in your team are due to your leadership or maybe they just don't have the capability to deliver in the role you ask uh thanks uh uh for your always insightful words um this is one of the hard things about leadership um you know is it us um or is somebody actually struggling so if if more than one person is struggling we you know there might be process issues it might be us um i think feedback is important um there has to be two-way feedback so um and also being willing to accept i think i think it's how you show up as the leader as well that we'll reveal these things you know if we show up saying you've got to get your performance back up what's the problem i think we then the pressure we're exerting may actually exacerbate a problem um but to give someone help and coaching and say how are you doing you know keep me posted i'm here to help um and at some point it becomes very obvious that for example you put someone in a job to be an accountant and they're no good at math and you know you give them enough runway you give them enough time and coaching to see if they can learn the skill or if if they have the skill and and in time it starts to be become readily available that that they're struggling um and the most important thing is is if they're in a job that they can't do not only will their per not only is their performance down which which is which um which is a struggle for for the company um but they're unhappy because nobody wants to do a job they can't do and nobody wants to do a job they're struggling to do in other words there's and so to sit down and have honest conversations like are you okay and what we'll tend to find in these people is their stress is much higher than other people on the team you know we all have periods of high stress but what you'll see is continued high stress and so that may be showing up in other ways too so they may be short-tempered they may be punchy they may be um they they may be um you know just a little difficult to work with for more than uh one person and so probably a good sign that there's high stress probably a good sign that they're struggling probably a good sign good time for a difficult conversation um but yeah time time reveals it um i think one of the things you have to do is offer a little bit of patience i know in this marketplace it's a lot harder um uh sometimes we just don't have the runway but if you can that's what we want to do it is a difficult it is a difficult thing but i love that you're asking the question i really love that here's one from portugal uh from nuno uh fel guidas my portuguese is not good uh uh hello nuno uh what do you prefer social distance or physical distance um i think physical distancing is the thing we're supposed to be doing i would like us to be socially close i never want people to be socially distant we want to be socially close and physically physically apart uh during these strange times um okay what else um i don't think i can tell you any more stories oh thank you and somebody i love this one on one on one-on-one coaching one-on-one coaching from one i get it i get it one-on-one coaching i get it very good how about a t-shirt with a quote from the page with the kids looking at the big wall ah okay so juan from one-on-one coaching i was why not a t-shirt with uh with the quote from the kids looking over the big wall funny you should ask i've been wanting to do um a t-shirt inspired by this book for a while and i'll be totally honest i don't know what to do so we've decided should we we've thought about should we just do a quote and nothing else should we do one of the pictures should we do the kids should we do the the you know the kid handing the crown away just just an image should we do one of the images on the back and the quote on the front which quote should we do so if you have any ideas or suggestions uh should we do a quote on the t-shirt should we put an image on the t-shirt should we put a quote and if so which quote do you like um tell us in the comments or if you have suggestions for the kind of t-shirt we could make please email book club at simoncynic.com send us your send us your suggestions and uh we'll take a look we'll crowdsource it uh we'll take a look what your suggestions are which are your favorite quotes which are your favorite images and we'll make the t-shirt so i i definitely want to make one just been struggling what to make you know do i put the wall with kids looking at it kind of a weird t-shirt i don't know let me know what you like and we'll make the t-shirt thank you one i really appreciate that um brandi anger from wisconsin um i have an idea to ask my entire team to read together is better and refer back to it as we all look for motivation to return to the office as opposed to continuing to work remotely true i miss my team together is definitely better any other advice for me on this front i think what you just said is the best thing you can do um i'm i think to call your team and when you have the next time you have your your your next team zoom call uh tell them i think be open about it say i miss us i miss the team i miss saying hi in the hall i miss getting lunch i miss the chitta chit chat we have as we walk into the meeting and the chit chat we have as we walk out of the meeting because at the end of the day it's not the meetings that we build trust it's not the zoom calls we build trust it's what happens in between the meetings it's all those little human interactions all those little details that we've been deprived of for too long now um and uh uh i think you should tell them i think you should tell them you say and tell them you're trying to think of things to remind us that together is better and and you can have you can maybe even every every uh huddle you have if you do a weekly huddle huddle um maybe read uh one of the chapters you know one of the little sections and share the quotes and then for your huddle exercise go around and ask people how it makes them feel or what you know which is their favorite thought but but i think it is a great thing to do to simply tell your team how much you miss them and how much you love them and and try and think of the details the actual things you miss the innocuous things that nobody thinks are important like i miss it when you know sarah would walk into my office every morning and bring me a cup of coffee and then walk out like the little things that that we're missing out on try and be specific and and and and create imagery and that they can that they can remember too uh what else we got um what is your inspiration for writing for the quotes like where do i get more where do i get the quotes from even when do you write them down and how do you remember them so um so the questions were where the quotes come from how do i remember them where do i write them down so funny story uh that's kind of what how i started using twitter so when twitter was an early thing uh i signed up for like everybody else to see what all the hubbub was about and then if you remember the early days of twitter people were just posting about what they were doing like i'm eating strawberry ice cream and i tried that for like three minutes and thought it was so stupid and so i stopped using it and so i had like no tweets um and i would think of these things in in conversation i would say something to someone and i'd be like ooh that's interesting and i'd write it down and i had all these like torn off pieces of paper and napkins and sugar packets that were literally i'd keep in a binder clip all these ridiculous pieces of paper like the little bits of inspiration that i was having and the quotes that i'd be writing down and i had this horrible fear that i was gonna lose them all and so i'm like hey i have this twitter account um i'm just gonna keep them there so every time i had a crazy little thought or a little quote or something i would say in a conversation that i'd be like ooh i gotta write that down um i would turn on my twitter and just put the quote there and it became just a filing cabinet just for me it wasn't intended to have followers i literally was using twitter as a filing cabinet and i never interacted with anybody on twitter um i just kept using it as a filing cabinet and people kept following me to read these these little quotes which i thought was fantastic so it was so fun for me is there was just a repository and it became something that other people were enjoying too and more important sharing them with other people so that became my primary place to store my quotes but they very often happened in the middle of conversations um you know uh somebody's you know giving somebody advice on starting a business and i would say something like look it doesn't matter when you start it doesn't matter where you start all that matters is that you start and i'd be like ooh let's write that one down i'll i'll use that piece of advice again one day um and that's all it was i think i'm not unique in this respect i think lots of us say things that we find interesting in our own conversations with people especially when we're in a giving mode giving advice sharing trying to inspire you know uh leading like i think we often say things and the trick is to to capture them really quickly because as quickly as we have those thoughts and ideas we lose them i actually carry a notebook now um if i have ideas more than a quote um i carry a little notebook in my back pocket um well i used to and i had a back pocket uh no i just wear sweatpants um uh uh but i i write them down um you gotta write them down somewhere i phone notebook twitter whatever write them down because you will lose them and you never know when they'll come in handy uh tina lil yadal from houston texas uh when we find a vision of the world that we want to build and perhaps our contribution to the playground the organization starts small how do we build to do more for example if i am a consumer of a product i want to volunteer or work for the company who makes the product um how do i show i have more to contribute to the cause than just buying their products and giving great reviews um uh well there's multiple ways to do that um you have to you asked you gave a specific example so that's use that example any company worth that salt that has a good vision wants other people to share in that vision so airbnb for example is about connection and inclusion and so you don't have to work for airbnb to practice inclusion you can be a host and you can also not be a host you can just practice togetherness connection and inclusion southwest airlines is about you know fairness uh and freedom um and if you've ever flown southwest airlines which i know you have because you're in houston um uh uh as you know when you board a southwest airlines flight it's kind of different from every other airline like there's other airlines that are very very good that i enjoy flying and when you stand in line you kind of just stand in line and wait to board the plane and that's kind of all you do southwest everybody talks to each other have you ever noticed that have you ever noticed that in the southwest line you just talk to the people in line with you and everybody's really friendly in other words go ahead and live the southwest values because all of these organizations with the vision want want the vision to spread people ask me um often you know how can i help and my answer is always the same please practice the things i talk about please be the leader you wish you had because i imagine this world and inspired safely fulfilled other people share that vision none of us can do it alone it's going to take all of us working all over the place to do it so um if if the if the company offers council advice on on what to do follow it and if you can discern the vision uh believe in it and try and bring it to life in other other places um here's one from from malaysia from les pang fung i've been curious about this ever since purchasing the book how and why did you choose this smell to represent the optimism scent great question so the the the nose that's the official name the nose of uh 1229 is a woman named dawn goldworm she's uh apparently well known as a nose in the nose industry um uh in the scent industry and she comes from you know designing um a lot of perfumes before she started her own company and um when we uh when we got together she has a process and she took me through it she took me through this process where she asked me a ton of questions about my personality about my vision about what i want to do and then she went away and she's synthetic so she can see colors and and and smell like she smells things in color it's kind of amazing like she'll smell something and say oh that's like a greenishy blue you know um uh but she went away and she designed the scent based on the answers i gave her in this process that she took me through and she brought me back three options and she said what do you think of these and i smelled all three and the one that i fell in love with was the one she predicted i would fall in love with was this one and ostensibly it's the smell of optimism but it's really the smell of my personality so if i ask her what's it made of she'll say high notes with some low notes she'll say because she knows that i'm bright but there's a little bit of edge underneath and so she tried to capture some of those those those oaky notes in there as well those woody notes um and so i i remember when that when it first came out uh a friend of mine a few friends of mine said simon we love the scent and i told this to dawn i'm like dawn my friends love the scent and dawn smiling says of course they love the sound they love you because the sense is a representation of you i thought that was so fun but we've heard some really funny stories that have come out of this there was one story we heard uh as a as a guy we work with who uh he would get nervous before he went into big meetings and he would actually smell the scent to bring up his spirits before he had a big presentation to to give and we heard about this and we called the manufacturer who makes the pages and we said can we just buy some pages from you and we got a stack of pages with no book and we sent them to him and said here for your next set of meetings and we sent him a whole stack of smelly pages um but it really does smell is very very powerful smell more than any of our other senses is most closely related to memory um it's it's you know when we smell things it takes us back more than photographs more than things we hear um it's very closely related to memory and so we i i've loved hearing how people have used the scent um even outside the book and uh we used to have a candle i think we don't have any more left i think we're sold out we made a bunch of camels of of this scent that was the smell of optimism candle because i thought it would be fun to do that and because i wanted to burn it in my house um and i think we just sold out recently uh and i don't think we're gonna make any more um we'll do a couple more questions one one more question uh here is joanna who's the mom and emma who's her eight-year-old uh gansel uh from the for the mummy daughter book club in the uk i knew it was the uk because i could see how you spelled mummy um uh so from emma from the eight-year-old she asked uh how can you make and keep friendships during the pandemic when you can't really meet anyone it is much harder emma as you're learning to to maintain friendships uh during the pandemic we're at a distance um and it's the same for for the adults which is it's harder for us to maintain and build trust at our companies when it's when it's um when where it is it takes more work and so um ask mom if you can have permission to to just have zoom calls or or facetime calls with your friends um and uh and try and do that try and talk to people and and ask them how they're doing the most important thing is to check in with your friends say how are you you know find out say hey it's been it's been hard are you okay what are you doing to help pass the time like show an interest in in how your friends are doing um as opposed to just reporting on on you know what you've seen or what you've done um but it takes more work and and phone calls are great too you don't always have to see them it's just sometimes talking to people and giving them your full attention so when you're talking to them you're only talking to them you're only with them you're not doing something else on the side also that can help but but checking in with people and and asking them how they're doing and how they're feeling and listening it's a great time to learn to listen and and you are definitely old enough uh to learn to do that wonderful skill um so thank you emma i love i love that question and mom is on here and just says thank you simon oh great well you're welcome joanna nice to meet you emma um uh and hopefully one day we'll meet in person too uh and so i'll just finish up the question here which comes from joanna um how can i teach a a young child some basic leadership skills for surviving education and their first job how can i help them to grow an infinite mindset um so when i was researching leaders eat less i was reading about parenting and sort of the impact parents have on their children um and you know it makes you wonder like where how do kids become the kids they are you know where do they get their values you know and things like that and it turns out it's not all from the parents you know kids are very much influenced by their teachers their friends you know uh the people they meet um extended family and that's why you can have two kids from the same parents you know completely different in so many respects because kids kids come together in all different ways however what i learned from the research is that there are two things that every single child learns from their parents and this is universal around the world cross-cultural every single child learns uh how to treat themselves and how to treat others that comes from the parents and so i think if you want to grow an infinite mindset i think practicing giving practicing charity [Music] learning that sharing is a good thing and sometimes a difficult thing for a kid to learn um um and the hard skill of listening like and the way we'll get we're gonna teach listening is we're gonna practice listening and so when emma's having a bad day just you know are you a good listener are you good at saying tell me more um there's a great book it's on my desk somewhere oh it's holding the computer up so i can't show you i've talked about it before it's i'll just hold up and i'll hear it i'm going to drop down a little bit okay i had to talk to kids so lis kids will listen and listen so kids will talk it is a parenting book but it's a phenomenal book for any adult to learn how to i recommend it to in companies um and so uh uh joanna um this kind of this book how to talk to kids so kids will listen listen so kids will talk um uh will help you perfect uh your listening skills and then as you do them emma will learn them too okay and i think that's where we're gonna end um thank you so much everyone for joining um apparent lots and lots and lots of t-shirt ideas coming in thank you thank you thank you we're gonna go through them all keep the t-shirt ideas coming in uh book club at um simonsenic.com we'll go through them all and we'll let you know uh what t-shirt we come up with we'll announce it on social media uh i love this idea of crowdsourcing this um also uh just a reminder i think it's still live otherwise i'm gonna speak out a turn and we'll cause a little panic but i think we still have a discount code for book club uh if you want to go and take any of our classes we did this just for book club um get 20 off uh for any of our classes book club rules uh one word book club rules book club rules um if you want that that's just for us uh and this is officially the last book club assuming i don't do another one um thank you everyone for coming i it is the highlight of my week i love doing it i look forward to it uh thank you for all the questions i love that you came from all over the world to join and uh we'll see you real soon take care of yourselves take care of each other see you soon everyone

Channel: Simon Sinek

Views: 14,037

Rating: 4.965517 out of 5

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Id: dAJgEraA-jI

Length: 48min 20sec (2900 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 21 2020