“How To Un-F*** Your Life” - The #1 Secret To Becoming RICH In 2025 | Simon Squibb

Summary

Podcast Summary: "How To Un-F* Your Life” - The #1 Secret To Becoming RICH In 2025 | Simon Squibb**

Podcast Information:

• Title: The Iced Coffee Hour
• Hosts: Graham Stephan & Jack Selby
• Guest: Simon Squibb
• Episode Title: “How To Un-F*** Your Life” - The #1 Secret To Becoming RICH In 2025
• Release Date: October 28, 2024

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Introduction to Simon Squibb’s Journey

The episode begins with Graham Stephan and Jack Selby welcoming Simon Squibb, an entrepreneur with an impressive track record. Simon shares his early struggles, including homelessness at age 15, which ignited his entrepreneurial spirit. He discusses the challenges he faced and how these experiences shaped his mission to help others understand business and financial literacy—fields neglected by the traditional education system.

Notable Quote:

“Purpose keeps you alive, not money.” – 00:14

The Importance of Entrepreneurship for Everyone

Simon argues that entrepreneurship is a fundamental skill everyone should possess, especially in an era where Artificial Intelligence (AI) is poised to replace many traditional jobs. He emphasizes that having purpose-driven projects can provide fulfillment beyond financial wealth.

Key Points:

• Universal Entrepreneurship: Simon believes everyone has the potential to be an entrepreneur, asserting that the current job market's instability necessitates entrepreneurial skills.
• Sales as a Critical Skill: He highlights sales as the cornerstone of success, explaining that salesmanship extends beyond traditional business roles into everyday interactions and personal branding.

Notable Quote:

“Sales is the top of it all. And it's not a dirty word. It's the word that will make you rich if you learn to embrace it.” – 01:22

Overcoming Common Traps to Success

Simon identifies several common pitfalls that hinder individuals from achieving financial and personal success:

• Content Overload: Excessive consumption of trivial media distracts from productive activities.
• Financial Instability: Constant financial stress keeps people in a survival mode, preventing them from pursuing long-term goals.
• Lack of Purpose: Without a clear purpose, individuals often feel lost despite financial security.

Notable Quote:

“Most people are missing out on an opportunity to understand what entrepreneurship is for them.” – 05:00

Defining an Entrepreneur

Simon elaborates on his definition of an entrepreneur, emphasizing that it’s not solely about wealth accumulation but about owning one’s time and pursuing passions that bring daily joy.

Key Points:

• Purpose Over Possessions: Success should be measured by personal fulfillment and time autonomy, not merely by material acquisitions.
• Adaptability with AI: As AI replaces traditional roles, entrepreneurial skills will become even more crucial for individuals to create meaningful and purpose-driven careers.

Notable Quote:

“If you're an introvert, learn introverted sales techniques. If you're an extrovert, learn extroverted sales techniques. But there will always be the same three steps.” – 71:40

The Role of Education and Homeschooling

Simon critiques the traditional education system for its rigidity and failure to equip students with practical business skills. He advocates for homeschooling and alternative educational models that focus on problem-solving and purpose-driven learning.

Key Points:

• School System Flaws: Designed to produce obedient workers rather than innovative thinkers, the current system stifles creativity and entrepreneurial spirit.
• Homeschooling Benefits: Flexible educational approaches, such as homeschooling, allow for personalized learning and foster critical thinking and independence.

Notable Quote:

“If you don’t want stress in your life, sure, never leave your house. That in itself will make you stressed.” – 05:00

Navigating Financial Success and Personal Fulfillment

Simon discusses his own financial success, including selling multiple companies and achieving significant net worth. However, he candidly shares the ensuing depression and lack of purpose that often accompany sudden wealth. His journey underscores that true fulfillment comes from purposeful living rather than financial abundance alone.

Key Points:

• Post-Sale Depression: Achieving financial milestones without a clear purpose can lead to existential crises.
• Reprioritizing Life: Redirecting focus to meaningful projects and personal relationships is essential for long-term happiness.

Notable Quote:

“When you sell your company, you've made millions and millions, you're never gonna have to worry about money ever again. And then you feel incredible depression.” – 44:12

Strategies for Hacking Luck and Taking Risks

Simon delves into the concept of luck, arguing that while certain aspects of life are unhackable, 98% can be influenced through strategic actions:

• Taking Risks: Embracing calculated risks increases the probability of encountering favorable outcomes.
• Purpose-Driven Goals: Clear objectives and a strong mission amplify one's chances of “hacking” luck.

Notable Quote:

“Luck is actually hackable. So 2% of your life, approximately 2% of your life is unhackable. It doesn’t matter how hard you work.” – 15:02

Building and Selling Businesses with Integrity

Simon shares lessons from building businesses, emphasizing the importance of integrity and ethical decision-making. He recounts instances where he chose ethical practices over short-term gains, ultimately strengthening his long-term success and reputation.

Key Points:

• Ethical Leadership: Prioritizing employees' well-being and maintaining integrity fosters sustainable business growth.
• Strategic Partnerships: Aligning with organizations like PwC exemplifies how strategic collaborations can lead to successful exits without compromising values.

Notable Quote:

“What I learned when I helped Helen is there are thousands of designers in Asia who don’t value their craft.” – 37:36

The Future of Work and AI Integration

Looking forward, Simon envisions a future where AI plays a pivotal role in reshaping industries. He advocates for proactive education and skill development to prepare individuals for the evolving job landscape, ensuring that AI serves as a tool for human liberation rather than obsolescence.

Key Points:

• AI as a Liberator: Properly managed, AI can free humanity from mundane tasks, allowing for greater creativity and purpose-driven work.
• Education Reform: Equipping individuals with entrepreneurial and financial skills is crucial for adapting to AI-driven changes.

Notable Quote:

“Humans need purpose. I think you can find purpose leveraging the entrepreneurial method.” – 02:46

Overcoming Addiction and Cultivating Positive Habits

Simon discusses the impact of addiction on personal and professional life, advocating for conscious efforts to break free from unhealthy dependencies. He underscores the importance of maintaining a balance between skepticism and positivity to foster personal growth and resilience.

Key Points:

• Identifying Addictions: Recognizing and addressing addictive behaviors is essential for maintaining focus and achieving long-term goals.
• Positive Skepticism: Continuously questioning and refining one’s beliefs ensures adaptability and prevents stagnation.

Notable Quote:

“Addiction is the biggest weakness in human. And so we can get addicted to normality.” – 83:55

Defining True Success

Simon redefines success beyond financial metrics, highlighting the significance of time, kindness, and purposeful living. He emphasizes that true success is measured by one’s ability to contribute positively to others' lives and maintain meaningful relationships.

Key Points:

• Time and Kindness: Valuing time spent with loved ones and acts of kindness as true indicators of success.
• Purpose-Driven Living: Aligning actions with a deeper mission ensures sustained fulfillment and societal impact.

Notable Quote:

“My personal definition of success is a combination of time and kindness.” – 62:56

Final Thoughts: Purpose Over Profit

In concluding the episode, Simon reinforces the idea that a life with purpose is paramount. He encourages listeners to seek out their passions, help others without expecting returns, and continuously strive for personal and professional growth.

Key Points:

• Prioritize Purpose: Ensuring that daily actions align with one’s core mission fosters lasting happiness and success.
• Community and Mentorship: Building supportive networks and seeking mentorship are crucial for overcoming challenges and achieving goals.

Notable Quote:

“The purpose of life is a life with purpose.” – 110:52

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Conclusion

This episode of "The Iced Coffee Hour" offers profound insights into the intersection of entrepreneurship, purpose, and personal fulfillment. Simon Squibb’s candid sharing of his life experiences underscores the importance of aligning one’s career with a deeper mission, embracing sales as a vital skill, and redefining success beyond financial wealth. Listeners are encouraged to cultivate entrepreneurial skills, seek purposeful living, and help others to create a more fulfilling and prosperous future.

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Note: Timestamps correspond to the moments in the provided transcript where the notable quotes occur.

Transcript

[Simon Sinek]

This episode is brought to you by Merrill. Join one of the most iconic names in wealth management. Merrill. You'll be part of a dynamic team.

[Jack]

Of advisors and specialists working hard every day to grow their clients wealth. And with the support of best in.

[Simon Sinek]

Class research, advanced digital tools and the.

[Jack]

Resources of a global institution, it's truly an opportunity you can be bullish about.

[Simon Sinek]

Learn more@careers bankofamerica.com Copyright 2024 bank of America Corporation. You sell your company, you've made millions and millions. You're never gonna have to worry about money ever again. And then you feel incredible depression. I think purpose keeps you alive, not money. And people I invest in, I'm looking for purpose. I'm building a platform to help people free learn business. Because at 15 years old I couldn't afford a consultant and I tried and they wouldn't help me unless I paid them. So I kind of logged it. One day I'm going to build a platform that helps people. What school didn't do for me, didn't give me how understand how money works. It didn't teach me how business works. One day I'm going to build something that does that. If you think you're not a salesperson, then you don't know how the world works. You either control your narrative or someone else controls it for you. When you go for an interview, you're selling. When you meet your partner, you're selling. Sales is the top of it all. And it's not a dirty word. It's the word that will make you rich if you learn to embrace it.

[Jack]

What would you say are some traps that people should watch out for?

[Simon Sinek]

They're drugged up on pointless tv, overload of content wars, being broke that most people who invite will flight this is another interesting thing. I think in this day and age I'd probably get canceled for this. So I, I say it cautiously. I.

[Jack]

Simon, thank you so much for coming on the Iced coffee Hour.

[Simon Sinek]

It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

[Jack]

So to provide a little bit of an introduction, your story is extremely impressive. You were homeless at 15 years old. You then sold a company to PwC for an undisclosed amount. You founded 18 companies and invested in over 80 more. Google estimates your net worth to be $640 million. But before we go into that, can anyone be an entrepreneur?

[Simon Sinek]

I believe everyone can be. Go further and say everyone has to be going forward. Why do you say that combination of AI is going to take away a lot of the traditional jobs? If you're a truck driver, stacking shelves, you know those jobs will be gone in the next five to eight years. If you're a lawyer or even a doctor, next five years, those jobs are gone. So what are people going to do? Universal basic income will not give you the life you want. It's kind of a mini Covid, right? Sitting around just covering your bills and surviving. Humans need purpose. I think you can find purpose leveraging the entrepreneurial method. And I think everyone can be taught it. School just deliberately didn't give people the tools to do it.

[Graham]

So should people be though? Because I've noticed, and Jack and I were actually talking about this before you got here, that we don't think everyone can or should be an entrepreneur. And there are some people out there that are just wired to want safety, security, at least to a certain degree, where they don't want the responsibility. And as someone who's been self employed since I was 18, like there's almost, I could almost look at the opposite side and romanticize just how nice it would be to have days where I could just check out mentally at 5pm and just show up, do a task and leave. No more responsibility. There seems to be something nice about that.

[Simon Sinek]

I understand you use the word wired, I'll use the word programmed. I think people are programmed to think that they can't do it or they shouldn't do it. And the honest truth is I've accidentally had jobs and I have been a boss. I choose being a boss every single day. I choose to be rich every single day. I think that the problem with this hypothesis that not everyone could be an entrepreneur is that a lot of people are missing out on an opportunity to understand what entrepreneurship is for them. So, for example, if you're an artist and you like painting, then make that. Make a living out of it now. Yes, of course. Frankly, working for someone else is stressful. Anybody listening to this podcast who works for someone else has never had a single day of stress. Of course not. Your boss comes in and they're angry. New management, come in. Maybe you're going to get fired. You need a pay rise because you can't make your new mortgage payments, but they won't give it to you. You think working for someone else isn't stress? Maybe you just haven't felt it for a long time. Working for other people is hard. I think it's harder than working for yourself. Is anything good easy? No. Is being entrepreneur yet hard? Yes. But should people learn the skill so they've got the option? Of course. The school does not teach people how Money works. It does not teach people the basic essentials of, like, things like sales, which anyone can learn. Now, of course, if you don't want stress in your life, sure, never leave your house. That in itself will make you stressed. You know, there's no way people live longer if they have stress. That's why when people retire a few years later, they die. We need stress. We need to evolve our skillset. And I think being an entrepreneur is about your owning your time, which is the most valuable thing money buys you and is the most valuable thing that you can give yourself as a gift. Own your time.

[Jack]

So I mostly err on the side of not every single person should or could be a successful entrepreneur. Maybe we're just defining entrepreneurship differently. How would you define an entrepreneur?

[Simon Sinek]

O. Owning your time doesn't have to be about being Elon Musk and making lots of money. Although cool, you can do that too. I think it's just about you get up every day and you decide what you're going to do with your day. I think success is enjoying what you do every day. And so people aren't engineering their lives that way around. They're engineering their lives around the house they want, the car they want. Then they have monthly payments. Then they have to get a job to make those monthly payments. They're not thinking about what do they enjoy to do every day and that can make money or not as much money, but you enjoy your day. Like, I just don't understand. Humans are amazing. We've got a supercomputer on our head, right? We're incredible. Literally, in Las Vegas today, I saw a guy holding a sign saying McDonald's that way. A breeze block can do that job. Why have a supercomputer if you've got a breeze block, holding it, holding a sign, holding that sign. The human is the breeze block. It's insane. So everyone's scared about AI. I'm excited. I think it's going to free the human race. But we have to get everybody ready because they're going to literally have no job. And if we don't prepare people with the new skills, which I think is understanding how money works, understanding what is your purpose, which is very deep question, but answerable if you start asking it and give people a sense of being, a sense of enjoying what their day. And that's not happening right now.

[Graham]

So why are so many people complacent without doing any of that, without ever finding a purpose, without ever finding a meeting, without ever pushing themselves? Because they're perfectly happy.

[Simon Sinek]

They're drugged up, they're drugged up on pointless tv, overload of content, wars being broke, that most people are in fight or flight, right? I would say 90% of the population are in fight or flight. They literally, when your brain is in fight or flight, you're in this mode, which is I need to survive. I can't listen to anything around me. I can't educate myself, I can't learn anything that part of my brain switched off because I have to survive. I have to pay the rent today and if I don't, my family gets kicked out. I don't have any money for food. What shall I do? They're just desperately trying to survive. They're in out there hunting mode. They're not in learn how to hunt mode. So I think that's the problem. And I personally believe that's been kind of part of the system likes it. If you're not in debt, there's no profit for the banks. The system needs you to be in that position.

[Graham]

And what about for careers like doctors, lawyers, engineers, where they're not entrepreneurs, but they could be really passionate about a career that they don't necessarily own their.

[Simon Sinek]

Own time, they are entrepreneurs, they're just trained in a particular thing. And I think it's interesting, my wife, who I met 22 years ago, we started a business together. She was a graphic designer. And when I met her, I said, you're an entrepreneur. She said, no, I'm a graphic designer. I said, no, you're an entrepreneur. You have a skill that you can apply to make money and you can own your own time. All you need to know is how to charge properly for that time and how to do a contract or how to register a company. All of this stuff is easy. So I partnered up with her to prove this point and we built one of the most successful creative agencies in Asia ever together. And I consider her an entrepreneur today. Finally, she says she's an entrepreneur. But I think that's doctors are entrepreneurs. And I would go so far as to say I believe so much in AI and what's about to happen. If you're learning to be a doctor today and you've got eight years to go when you come out, you're not going to be a doctor. You're going to be working for an AI company that are doctors. You might be a consultant. At best, you're going to be working for the AI companies.

[Graham]

So what's your prediction with AI? What do you think is going to happen?

[Simon Sinek]

If we educate people and prepare, it's going to be the best thing for humanity ever if the right people are in control of it. Because it's definitely going to be controlled by someone. Human race is going to be set free finally. But if it's not in the right hands and the right people and we don't prepare people, it's going to I think cause like a zombie life. People just wandering around pointlessly wondering what the point of their life is.

[Jack]

Which side are you leaning towards?

[Simon Sinek]

I'm fighting. I'm not leaning on either side. I'm fighting for the positive outcome.

[Graham]

What would lead people to becoming zombies?

[Simon Sinek]

Well, Covid is a good mini test you give people. You know, in England, I don't know what happened in America, but people got 80% of their income given to them and then. But certainly people got no money at all. But a large proportion of the demographic got 80% of their salary and they were told to stay in their house. Right. Because it was dangerous outside. And mental health went through the roof. 70% increase in mental health and it hasn't dropped by the way. Still huge amounts of spiking in mental health, especially for young people. So I think we had that on a mass scale if we don't find purpose for the human race. So I really believe we have to fight right now and educate people on what they could be doing with AI takes your job.

[Graham]

See, I tend to think it's going to go in the direction of AI is going to give you all the dopamine you need. It's going to give you all the experiences you need. And as long as you can maintain $1500 a month for enough food and a room, there's nothing that says you can't plug into a system. Live your dream life mentally. Sure, it might not be in the physical world, but mentally it might be indistinguishable from the real thing. And you could have the same dopamine hits as you would in the real world, but just manufactured by AI. That's where I think.

[Simon Sinek]

I think if the bad people get hold of it, that will happen. Okay, because that's what Mark Zuckerberg wants you to do. To plug into the metaverse. Plug into his head device.

[Jack]

Right?

[Simon Sinek]

I don't want humans to live that way. Do you want to live that way?

[Graham]

Would you? You know what it imagine. But imagine if it's indistinguishable. I'm taking it indistinguishable and 10 times better. Let's just say it gives you the right amount of stresses, the right amount of challenges, the Right amount of everything. And you can't tell it apart if you can't distinguish it. I'm curious.

[Jack]

No, because I would know in the back of my mind that it's all fake. And for me, that would make it impossible to enjoy it.

[Simon Sinek]

By the way, they do say in simulation theory that imagine 500 years from now, right? I mean, I was just wearing one of the recent headsets that Apple produced. It is so crazy, my brain thinks it's real. So imagine where we're going to be in 500 years time, right? So whoever's listening to this podcast now, whatever they're sitting on, however they're listening to this on, it's all a simulation. The theory is it's already 500 years from now. So you don't know. That's the thing, you don't know. This isn't real. Although that's why people have God and religion. Because they back of their mind, like, there must be more, there must be more. So they pick religion, for example, right? So you do have that. Billions of people have that splinter in their brain. This is it. Is this really it? Is this all there is? Really? What's the purpose of life really?

[Jack]

If it's just a splinter, I can take it. But if it's any more than a splinter, if I have any shred of evidence, then I think it would be a really, really catastrophic existential issue for me.

[Simon Sinek]

The thing I find really important in this debate that we're now suddenly having is I like humans to have a choice. So I don't mind it. If you give people a choice, that's fine. What I think's gonna happen if we're not careful is people are gonna, like, now social media companies have tricked you into scrolling all fucking day long. And I'm part of this, by the way. I wanna use social media for social good. But you have to have good people on the Internet and bad people in the Internet and then they're gonna have a fight, right? I feel like you need both good and bad in there to fight. But I see people already drugged up. Like, literally, I met my wife 23 years ago. We walked past each other. That wouldn't happen today. I literally walked past people in the street here in Las Vegas. Like, didn't even look at me, looking down at their phone the whole time. They're already drugged up, right? It's just somehow we've accepted it, it's built up slowly. It's immersion. We haven't seen it dramatically change, but it has changed. People are already drugged Up.

[Graham]

See, the problem is, if you give people a choice, most of them, I feel like, are gonna choose the wrong option. Like, you give people the choice already to eat healthy, to go to the gym, to stay off your phone, to not like, scroll social media endlessly. And most people are doing that. So I feel like giving the choice, it's automatically gonna be heavily sk.

[Simon Sinek]

But I think if you look at. It's a very good point. But when I. When I hear you say that, what I think is it's heavily skewed because of the heavily marketed evil side of the equation. So marketing on McDonald's just never stops. I think I've seen the McDonald's sign since I've been America every 10 minutes. So, yeah, eventually when I'm hungry, I'm like, fuck it, I'll have a McDonald's. Even though I hate that stuff. I hate it. But, like, convenience, timing, hunger, brain. So I think we've got to get the message out. That's why I'm fighting online. I think we'll get the message out in a positive way. That there is another option. There is another option. You don't have to be scrolling all day on your phone. You can build a life you want. Why don't you create instead of consume? Why don't you eat better? You know, I think that's why we need more content. Giving the other side of the equation the option to at least get people to choose it. Right now, people don't. Even most of people's choices are subconscious, that they're just doing it by default. What their friends are doing, what they see, the media tell them to do, it's not what they want to do, is what that algorithm has taught them to think.

[Graham]

What are your thoughts on the entrepreneurial grind set that hustle culture? Because as someone who's. Who's worked with so many different companies, do you feel like that could be detrimental or do you feel like that is a necessity?

[Simon Sinek]

I think there's a time and a place for grind. I mean, there's a time and a place for hustle. I think when I was younger, I hustled like crazy. But as I got more experienced in business, I realized there was a big lie that we were told. We've been told the harder we work, the luckier we get. We really believe it. That is a lie. And I discovered it by accidentally hiring someone really smart to run one of my companies. And I worked less hard and made more money than I ever made before. So suddenly I'm like, hold on a minute. And then I realize billionaires, you ask them, they might look like they work hard with their social media teams and so on and so forth, but I promise you, Elon Musk has never put a car together himself. He has never sat up all night building a space rocket, right? These people who are really successful, they work very efficiently. I mean, Elon Musk is famous for working hard. Very efficient is very different. A lot of risk is what you need to take. The truer saying is the more risk you take, the luckier you get, the harder you work, more chance of burning out, more chance you don't make it to the finish line. But there is a time and a place. And I don't think, you know, it's like a kitchen or a restaurant. Like with a restaurant has to have good food. That's not like a default. Probably working hard to be successful has a default, but I don't think it actually guarantees success, that's for sure.

[Jack]

So if taking risks is extremely important in becoming lucky, how do you know which risks to take?

[Simon Sinek]

I've studied risk and luck quite intensely. When I sold my company, I kind of retired for two years and I went deep on what is luck and how does luck work. And it's probably worth quickly explaining what I learned. It was a very long deep dive. But luck is actually hackable. So 2% of your life, approximately 2% of your life is unhackable. It doesn't matter how hard you work. Where you're born will make a difference in your life. It will definitely make a difference if you're born into certain situations where you get access to basic education and sanitary environment where you can live until you're at least 10. You know, wherever you were born will make a big difference to your life. But another factor, 98% of your life, you can hack your luck. So one part is take more risk. The more risk you take, the luckier you get. Second element, key element is know your destination, where are you going? People get in a car and they run out of fuel before they've got somewhere because they didn't know where they were going, right? And then have a purpose, like a mission, something that really drives you, something that will get you up every day, something, you know needs fixing. Whatever it is for you, it doesn't have to be a big problem. It could be a problem that matters to you, right? And I think that that ensures more luck. Those three steps ensure more like you can hack it. The nuance of being successful or not successful in luck is that if you don't prepare for luck, right? It's that whole saying, if you don't prepare for luck, you won't get lucky. So I spent 15 years building my first company and then I got lucky because the big four accountancy companies in the world, the massive big conglomerates, decided they were going to get into the creative space. And I just happened to have the largest independent creative agency in China when they were looking, right? So I was. I stayed alive long enough and we almost went bankrupt quite a few times. I stayed long enough to have that massive piece of luck, right? But I only stayed alive that long because I enjoyed what I did.

[Graham]

Can we go back and talk about your first business, like where you got started and what sparked this interest?

[Simon Sinek]

When I first started, I was 15 years old when I started a company. My father died suddenly of a heart attack right in front of me and I thought he was joking and. And then he wasn't joking, he died. And then three weeks later, I was 15 years old. Hormones, call it what you like. I had an argument with my mum and she said, get out of my house. And I did. And I never went back. And I basically slept on the street for eight weeks. I slept in friends houses, slept on couches. I didn't like to tell them my mama kicked me out, I was embarrassed. And anyway, up sleeping on the street, I tried begging. First time I ever begged, someone spat me in the face. It's like, so I'm not very good at it, clearly. And then I tried to get a job. So I went into a bar and I went into a wine shop and tried to get a job. First of all, I smelt at this point and didn't look employable and I didn't have an address. And in England you need a National Insurance card, a document that allows you to get a job. They need this number before they can give you a job. So I just couldn't get a job. There was no chance. So out of sheer desperation, I call this the moment when the entrepreneurial muscle woke up in my head. I was walking past a big house and it had a really messy garden. And I remember thinking, that's a really nice house with a really messy garden. They must have money to tidy up that garden. So just through sheer desperation, I walked up the drive, I knocked on the door and I said, if I clean up your garden and take care of it, will you. Will you pay me? And they said, sure. And they said, how much? I said, 200 pounds a month. Just picked a number and they said, sure. And I Said, I don't have any equipment. I said, use the stuff in the garage, it's fine. And that's it. I started a gardening company.

[Graham]

Was 200 a lot or a little at the time?

[Simon Sinek]

It was a huge amount. Yeah, that was like I could get a hostel for three and four nights for that money and food and live pretty, pretty comfortably for three or four or five days, maybe, maybe longer. So it's huge. But I soon realized that one garden wasn't going to be enough and that doing on my own was not possible. So I had to go knock on more doors. And no one ever taught me sales. No one ever taught me how to get a contract done. No one taught taught me to collect money, deposits and other stuff. I just did it and no choice.

[Jack]

I'm curious, being homeless at 15 just sounds horrifying. Where would you sleep when you were homeless at 15?

[Simon Sinek]

So I slept in lots of different places. I slept in a park, on a roundabout one night. Because if you sleep on the floor, animals get into where you are. So I discovered that sleeping on a roundabout, I don't even know what a roundabout is. But, you know, I forget America, what you call them, probably roundabouts. But I slept on one of those for majority because it was off the ground, harder for animals to get into where you're sleeping. Believe it or not, I slept alongside other homeless people because actually there's some warmth in it and some comfort and some community. So. So I slept with a lot of homeless folks in puddles. Like, it's really interesting. And the other really interesting thing about that time, I haven't talked about it much, but I found how kind people were that were also homeless. Because people instantly think, when you see homeless, they think drug addict, you know, bad. What? Some really kind people that literally have nothing, but they give it to me. Like I remember someone shoving their baked beans with me. Very cliche, but like that, that, that the poorest of people are sometimes the kindest because they've been there, you know, they know. They know what it's like to suddenly be out in the cold on your own. And they were showing me the ropes. Of course. I also saw bad stuff like people taking drugs, people glue sniffing. And if anyone listening, that's probably the image they have of a homeless person is a drug addict. But you sleep in the streets for four weeks, no one loves you, no one cares about you, you'll turn to drugs.

[Jack]

Did you ever feel like you were in danger because 15 is young?

[Graham]

Yeah, it is.

[Simon Sinek]

I thought I was an adult. You Know, we. I look back now and realize I wasn't, but I was, I was a strong, you know, I was, I was captain of my rugby team. Like I was a strong, you know, I was a big 15 year old, you know, like I looked like an adult. And so I, I never felt scared. In a really weird way, I felt kind of hopeful. I know that sounds really strange describing it now, but like I had no, I wasn't going to school anymore. I had none of that kind of click stuff going on. I didn't have anyone telling me what I was going to be. And I literally, I think that's when I figured out who I actually was. And I also saw stuff that I never really want to see again. So I'd love to be a part of eradicating homelessness. It shouldn't exist in this modern world. What the hell are human beings being forced to sleep on the street for? That's crazy. But the point is that I think if I hadn't had that experience, I wouldn't be where I am today. I see that bad luck as good luck now because I saw the. When you have nothing as well, you have nothing to lose. So like a lot of middle class people get trapped by their house and by their car because I had nothing. I knock on that door and that person says no to me or they say yes, no to the garden. I win. I can't get any lower. And I think that's a really powerful place to start for anyone.

[Jack]

It makes sense that you're hopeful because like you kind of mentioned, the only way is up from there. The part that's crazy to me is that you were able to. I don't even know if I would call it swallowing your pride, but you had a home that was available with a bed in it, with a shower. And you said you went to this first interview and they wouldn't hire you because you smelled bad, you probably looked pretty ragged. You still never went back to just where you knew a shower and a bed and food were.

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah, I think I think about that a lot. And without. My mum is still alive, so I want to be respectful, but she is a narcissist, if I'm being blunt about it. And when I. And by the way, narcissism follows it in my genes too, potentially so I feel like I'm fighting that gene to not be a narcissist myself. But the. I realized once I was free that she also controlled me in a very strange way. And I didn't want that control in my life anymore. So I, I was what she wanted me to be and it was all about her, especially after my father died. It was all about her now. She lost her husband, but I lost my father. So I didn't feel like I could express that. Every time I expressed my pain, my mum would make it about her pain and I just needed to express my pain having lost my father. So there's a part me didn't want to go back. It wasn't, it wasn't about the accommodation and the shower. I didn't think about that stuff. I just thought, right, I'm free. I've got to make this work. The Vikings call this, by the way. This is a business strategy I now implement in all the things that I do. It's called. The Vikings used to call it burning the boats, right? So you get England, they used to go to England. All the boats that got the Vikings to England, they burnt them all. There's no going back. You make this work or you die on this island. And I didn't realize that's the strategy I was basically employing. There was no going back. There was no going back to a life where I was told not to feel pain, told how I should act, told who I was going to be. Right? This is the life I'm going to make for myself. Even though it's painful, even though there is an easier option. By the way, again, a metaphor. In business, I say this all the time. People that have a job they hate, they have to give it up, have some pain to start a business of their own. You have pain at the beginning when you start a business of your own and over time it gets easier.

[Graham]

Although before we go into that, you might be asking yourself, what does the future hold for businesses? Because if you ask nine different experts, you're going to get 10 different answers from a bear market bull market. Interest rates are going to be going up, interest rates are going to be going down. Be really helpful if we add a.

[Jack]

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[Graham]

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[Jack]

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[Graham]

For those who elevate their desire and lead by example, the Range Rover Sport is more than a luxury vehicle, it's a statement. Discover it today @Land Rover USA.com Again, that's Land Rover USA.com with the link down below in the description. Thank you so much to the Range Rover Sport for sponsoring today's episode. And now let's get back to the podcast. What was your next business after doing the gardens?

[Simon Sinek]

So the garden business eventually failed because I didn't know in England you have a winter, so no one told me. So the winter came, the garden business completely died and I got a job for first time in my life in a hotel. When I was working in the hotel, basically the entrepreneurial muscle in my brain had now been turned on everywhere I looked. You probably all got friends that are annoying like this. Anyone listening? They've got friends that are annoying like this. Every time they see something they see an idea in it. That's what happened to me. My brain came alive. There was wasn't an idea I didn't see. So I was walking around the hotel one day doing the front of house. I was employed to do front of house and marketing there and I heard the receptionist pick up the phone and the receptionist said we're full, sorry, boom. Put the phone down. So happy that the hotel was full and I said to her well that we spent so much money getting that phone call. You look very happy that you could just tell them to sod off, right? Because she's like, well, we're full, what can we do? I'm like, well, how about we take their name and number and we help them find another hotel room, we find them somewhere else nearby, similar and book it for them and then we can get commission in that other hotel booking. So that's what we started doing. So I started a second business called Accommodation Express, doing just that. So people listening. This is before the Internet. So this is literally the telephones would ring at hotels and when the hotel was full, which is quite often in London, hotels get filled up for various reasons. The hotel would then refer the booking to me and then I would find a place for that person to stay and we'd all make money.

[Jack]

How long did it take to, like, develop the website, to create the business? All the logistical stuff? Because I know for a lot of people that have an idea and they want to start a business, that is the main obstacle for them. It's not the fact they don't think it will work out, but they. They're like, I'm just going to sink so much time and effort into learning these new skills. How am I going to find the right people to logistically make that work? How did you do it?

[Simon Sinek]

So it's so easy today. Like, you know, before I start plugging brands by accident, but like, you know, insert any web hosting company today, I work with GoDaddy, but insert any web hosting company in it today and you can. I can build a website in one minute and it will cost me nothing for a month. And they're all templates, so accounting services, they're all apps. You download it, they literally will give you three months free, nearly every single one of them. You can set up your bank account online. It's never been easier to start a business. It's just so bloody easy. And yes, you can argue, well, it's easy for me because I know it. There's YouTube videos I personally made dedicated to showing you the five things you need to do to start a company. Building a website is not complicated. Now, if you're going to build the next LinkedIn, okay, yeah, that, that's different, right? But if you're starting a gardening company, a flower business, you're starting a home cleaning business, you're starting a window cleaning business, starting a podcast editing business, trade so fucking easy. Like, it's so obviously easy and, and the best way to learn anything is start. It's like, how do you play basketball? It looks complicated to go watch a Tutorial, just stop playing. You'll find out where you're good within the team too. You better being back as defense, you better being attack, you know, just start playing and you'll learn to play the game.

[Jack]

So how successful was Accommodation Express? When did it really start, like ramping up.

[Simon Sinek]

So again, that business failed eventually. I sold, I say it failed. I didn't fail under my watch. I sold it to someone and I made a little bit of money and then it did go on to fail because it didn't innovate. And you then had hotels.com and all these big players come in and completely wipe out the telephone ringing option for people. But I sold it for a little bit of money at the time of about 50,000 pounds, which is a huge amount of money for me. And I then had the option to stay in England and build another company or you know, maybe get another job. I was really kind of open ended. And then a friend of mine told me about Hong Kong and he said to me, come and visit me in Hong Kong. Friend of mine was living there and I had the chance to go to Hong Kong at 23 years old and I never looked back. I call going to Hong Kong my second awakening. That the first awakening was when I was 15 and that entrepreneurial muscle woke up in my brain. The second time is when I went to Hong Kong and I realized how big the world was. Because sometimes where we live, we think is the world. Until you go out of where you live and you see what's really going on. And I sat in the Hong Kong harbor, looked out at that city. I don't know if you've ever been. Have you been? It blew my mind, literally. I felt my mind explode. This is a city that has no natural resources. That is incredible. Skyscrapers left and right, mountains behind, all built from human brain power. It's not like Dubai that has oil money. Complete brain power, that city. And I thought, if you can think something, you can make it real. That city taught me that. And that's then I lived there for 20 years and built my next business.

[Jack]

And the $50,000 sale price, how did you arrive to that? How much money was the business making in revenue and profit to for it to reasonably sell for 50,000?

[Simon Sinek]

Interesting. So it wasn't making much profit. And I remember thinking this at the time, like, how does a business sell for any money if it doesn't make profit? It's the first time I experienced this concept of potential, right? The business had potential. So the person that bought the business had an idea of how they could scale it. But I didn't really want to scale it. I had other ideas of my own. At that time. This was almost like a hobby to me. Believe it or not, I didn't see it as a long term business. It was a hobby. I wasn't particularly interested in hotel rooms and hotel bookings and stuff like that. I like marketing. I wanted to learn more about marketing. So to sell it and have some free time to figure out my marketing genes and what I really wanted to do. But I sold it on potential and at the time it wasn't making much money. Turnover wasn't bad, I think. I think the interesting, the turnover I think of the whole business was like £100,000. So I halved it and that's how we got to the price. But the profit was near zero because I was spending money, client list and.

[Jack]

You had all the infrastructure set up. So that was where a lot of the potential was coming from.

[Simon Sinek]

I remember when I sold it, the person who actually bought it from me, I remember the conversation so clearly because they actually sold to me what they were going to do with it next. I've had that experience since, by the way, a lot of people think you have to sell it on turnover or profit. Right. What was really interesting, it's like maybe the best way to explain it would be, I don't know if this is true in property, but if someone looks around a house and it's finished in every way, people are slightly less interested in, oh, the garden still needs work or this needs. I can put my own mark on it. They can do something to it to make it their own. So don't completely finish a house. Right. Like I bought a house in London. They deliberately left the garden untouched. The rest of the house was beautifully done. The garden wasn't done. So I could go in there and I remember walking around my wife, we can make the garden nice, you know, make it our own. And I think the business had that same thing. Like my last company is saying when PwC bought it, they're like, you know what we're going to do with Simon? We're going to do this. Like you want people to come in and feel like they can add value to the thing that they bought. If there's no value to be added, you've taken away all the potential. Then why would they just going to buy turnover then? And they're just going to buy profit percentage or profit.

[Jack]

So then you moved to Hong Kong with your friend. Tell us about this next business that you started. This is the business that sold to PwC for the undisclosed amount. How did that come about?

[Simon Sinek]

So this is another interesting thing. I think in this day and age, I'd probably get canceled for this. So I, I say it cautiously. I, I, I moved to Hong Kong. I was looking what to do. I actually started initially a logistics business, just shipping because stuff going back from Hong Kong to England. And I just started a little logistics company just to get my feet wet in Hong Kong. And then I, I met someone called Helen Griffiths, and she was a really talented graphic designer. And I remember asking her, how much are you charging for what you do? She said, some ridiculously small amount, like US$500. I was like, you should be charging US$10,000 for that. And she's like, well, I don't like to talk about money and I just like doing the work. I think I mentioned her earlier, right? So I basically said to her, look, I'll be your business manager. Let me negotiate this for you because you're undercharging, and I'll share the profit with you, the difference. So that's what I started doing. But I actually fancied her. So there's a big motivation there. She was beautiful, and she's now my wife. We have a baby together. But at the time, I was motivated by two things. I was 23 years old. She was beautiful, I wanted to date her. And also she was talented and she was undercharging for her skills. So these days I think you can only mention one of those things you're not allowed to mention, the fancy.

[Jack]

Where'd you meet her?

[Simon Sinek]

In Hong Kong. Just like how, yeah, when I moved there, I stayed. This is a bad story. I, When I moved there, I, A friend of mine, I said, a friend of mine was living there and he was in a flat with two other friends of his. So he said, simon, I'm traveling a lot. If you want to stay in my apartment for a few months until I'm back to get your feet on the ground in Hong Kong. And so I, I moved into this apartment. His two friends there, I got to know them on the first night. Tom, the guy who was living there, if he's listening now, he might hate me for saying this, but he just said to me, I'm going for dinner tonight with a group of friends. There's one girl there I really fancy. Would you like to come with me? And I was like, sure. And he took me to dinner with him. And the fan, the friend that he fancied was Helen So how did that play out? Well, interesting. I. I said, because I was. You don't where you eat, right? So I said, after the dinner, I deliberately ignored Helen at that dinner, by the way. And then after dinner, I said, tom, I said, look, you fancy her, I fancy her, she's beautiful. And. And he said. I said to him, look, I'll give you one month to make a move, and if you don't, I'm going to ask her out. So my main motivation was to get him to, like, go for it, right? Plenty of fish in the sea and all that. So, you know, it's fine, I'll let him go for it. But he didn't do it. A month went by, he didn't do it. In fact, he did worse than that. He kissed a load of girls in front of her. And then I found out later she didn't fancy him anyway. But, you know. But I gave him a chance. And that meant for the whole month, I didn't talk to Helen. And I think that's why she liked me, because it worked.

[Graham]

Yeah.

[Simon Sinek]

Everyone else, I wasn't that good at sales with women back then. I was.

[Graham]

You're playing hard to get.

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah, I know. I've never played hard to get. Except that one time because I'm normally quite honest when it comes to.

[Graham]

Very smooth Jack. You should try that.

[Jack]

Okay, so I'm curious. How did you break through that. That barrier of, like, being acquaintances to actually being a romantic interest? I know for a lot of people that's like the most difficult and challenging thing to see if they're interested in you. How'd you do that?

[Simon Sinek]

Now it's going to be a dating podcast.

[Jack]

I'm just curious because it's just, you.

[Simon Sinek]

Know, I would honestly say I'm only good at one thing. Business.

[Jack]

Okay, Anything.

[Simon Sinek]

Business relationship. I've had a marriage for 23 years, and I'm very happy. How to get a girl. Probably you need to get advice from someone else, but I only talk. My personal experience with sales in general is be yourself, be upfront, and if you really like someone, then you just have to show interest in them. Now, of course, you can end up in a friend zone in today's world, I guess, but probably being honest, the first time I went on a date with Helen, I told her everything I was, so I even showed her my bank balance, by the way. I just. Everything you showed her? Yeah.

[Graham]

How does that come up?

[Simon Sinek]

Well, it's more because I didn't. I didn't get the bank statement out.

[Graham]

Is that a Flex or.

[Simon Sinek]

No, no, it wasn't. At the time, it wasn't a flex. It was the opposite of flex. Because in Hong Kong, everyone's super rich, right? So it was the opposite of a flex. Yeah. I mean, if I was in England, maybe having £50,000 in your bank account is a flex. In Hong Kong, it's a joke. That's a weekend party in Hong Kong. Right. It's nothing. Partly. I wanted to know that, you know, I wanted to know that I'm not one of these rich bankers in this city that's here to just flash money because I was living in quite a nice apartment because my friend. It was my friend's apartment. So I just wanted her to know who I really was. I'm not. I'm an entrepreneur. I want to build things. I like building businesses. That was my thing, you know. So actually it was the opposite to a flex. I wanted her to know that I'm. I'm not any of. She had a load of rich guys. That was after as well. So I just wanted to know that I'm not one of those guys yet. I didn't say yet. I don't think at the time, but yeah.

[Jack]

That's a funny story, huh? Showing a bank statement on the first date. That's definitely a next level move.

[Simon Sinek]

I verbally told her, by the way. I don't think I flipped it out.

[Graham]

How is it working with her?

[Simon Sinek]

Well, now. Yeah, well, she's in England while I'm in the US On a tour around the US So we homeschooled our son. So I was. I. We started homeschooling him so he could travel with me around the world doing what I'm doing now. But he. My son is enjoying doing this thing called battling, which you guys probably have no idea what that is. But kids do reenactments of historical battles. And during this last two weeks, my son is doing that. So they didn't come out, which I'm really sad about because I really miss them.

[Jack]

Yeah, like LARPing, live action role play. Isn't that kind of what they do? Like, they set up some sort of like, medieval battle. Everyone dresses in their garb and then, like, goes and.

[Simon Sinek]

Interesting. Yeah, yeah.

[Jack]

Okay, let's talk about your business. What led you to starting fluid?

[Simon Sinek]

I alluded to earlier, I fancied the designer. And then I thought I could help her. And she was really talented. And what I've always had a kind of knack for is noticing someone who has talent, who's not fully fulfilling their potential. So she certainly wasn't charging enough for her skills. And she had an image in her head that she just wanted to do the work and money was a bit annoying. So I helped her. And I think what I realized when I helped Helen is there's thousands of designers in Asia in particular who don't value their craft. Because in Asia, like being a doctor is valued, being a lawyer is valued. A profession, that sort of profession has a lot of value, but creative value is very low. People almost see creative people as a bit nuts and a bit broke. So I realized there was a gap in the market to actually be the person who fought for creatives. So we end up working. My company worked for cnn, Estee Lauder. Big brands help them getting to China, come up with big campaigns to launch their brands. All the creative people just didn't think they had any value. But without them, none of those businesses would have a creative campaign that would make them successful. So I became kind of the middleman between the creators that undervalued themselves and the brands that tried to undervalue them. And I would fight for these brands. So I became like a mini agent for hundreds of designers. So that's, that's kind of how it happened.

[Graham]

And how do you eventually get to the point of selling it? And why would you want to sell?

[Simon Sinek]

So I didn't want to sell it. I think this is a lesson for people. If you want to sell your company, don't want to sell it. If you really want to sell it, just tell everyone you don't want to sell it. And so we, what we did, and this is pure accident, I'm not a genius, this just happened by accident is PwC, who are the largest accounts company in the world, wanted to offer services to their clients to add value beyond accounts, right? So creatives and strategy services. So they could see on the accounts of a brand whether it was going downhill or not. And then they knew if Nokia sales are dropping, they could go in there with a creative idea to try and turn that around before it became too dire for those brands. So they wanted to get into the consultancy and strategy business of marketing. But they, it's not their natural culture, right? So it's not their accounts firm. So they're incredibly organized, incredibly smart, but they're not creative by their own admission back then. So we partnered with them as a client partnerships. We would go to clients together and pitch our services to clients. And then I think one day they just realized they were going to make us so much money by partnering up with us. They will. It would be a much smarter move for them to buy us now. I, I, that's my side of the table. If they were listening, they probably got their own version. They probably had a whole strategy I didn't know about, but that, that, that I think they, they just, they, they, and this is the strategy I'd teach people if they were listening about. This is like partner up with the people you want to buy your company one day. It's pretty interesting. And if you can partner up with a company that isn't directly your competition, so it doesn't know what you know, it can be incredibly powerful. And then they'll probably try to buy you if there's lots of money in it.

[Graham]

Did you have any investors in the company at the time or was it just you and your wife?

[Simon Sinek]

I did have a strategic investor who was operational. So what I did, which I think was another important reason it sold, is I brought in people to run the company. So I'd been running it about 12 years and I was starting to get a bit tired of it and so I started investing in startups and I was starting to enjoy that a lot more. So the agency business started to drop off a bit because I wasn't as excited about it. So I brought someone else in to run it and instead of just bringing someone else in to run it as a CEO, I asked them to invest in the business. So I actually brought two people in in the end, mixed stories of what happened, but basically they bought a piece of the company and then they had equity if the business did well, more equity and part of the profit. So they weren't just an employee. And that was actually a key reason why I sold the company. I was able to sell the company because when PwC bought the business, if I'm running it, then they need me locked in forever. But luckily I bought senior management in who had invested in the business. So when the business sold, they made a load of money as well and then they're still there today. Guy Parsonage, who ran the business for me, is still at PwC today. He loves it. He's happy to be inside a corporation. I wouldn't have been because I'm an entrepreneur, naturally. So I bought about 12 years in other people in to invest and run it. And it's the best thing I ever did.

[Graham]

What was the feeling like to sell your company and get a check or get a deposit into the bank account and like refresh the page and like, all the money's there?

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah, yeah.

[Graham]

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[Jack]

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[Jack]

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[Graham]

Shipstation.Comich to sign up for a free 60 day trial. Again, that shipstation.comich shipstation.comich with the link down below in the description. Although before we go into that, for those that don't know, I have a coffee company. It's called Bankroll Coffee and our entire goal is to bring people the best quality coffee at the most affordable price. Of course, there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes that I don't often talk about, but part of the process of doing all of this was to find the best e commerce platform to be able to sell from. And that of course, is where I found our sponsor, Shopify. For those unaware, Shopify is home to the number one checkout on the planet, with less carts going abandoned and more sales going.

[Jack]

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[Graham]

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[Simon Sinek]

I always think that this answer is like a clip on TikTok right? You sell your company, you've made millions and millions, you're never gonna have to worry about money. And then you feel incredible depression. People wouldn't believe it. Right. That's exactly what happened to me, though. It's so unbelievably cliche that, you know, you make all the money you ever need and you think that's going to bring happiness. It brought me the opposite. There was a moment when the money dropped in the bank that was amazing. And I remember looking at my bank, I think Mark Cuban talks about this. He refreshes a million times. I also did that just like, my God, this is really, this is real now. Because on paper, I was already quite wealthy. I had a very profitable, successful company, but now I had cash in the bank. But at that point, there's two things that happened to me. One, I didn't realize how money really worked. Even, even then, I didn't really understand how money worked, even though I built companies. Once you've got a load of money, what do you do with it? You know, like before, I had a business, I put my expenses through the business. I got clients, I made revenue, I took money out when I needed it. I didn't actually know what to do with a large chunk of money. And so that was a bit of a weird experience. I've gone from making money to having to manage money, me. And so I, I didn't like that. The second thing is I would meet people. I moved out of Hong Kong back to London. I bought a really nice house, bought a really nice car. And I remember I was pushing the baby around. Hampstead is where I lived in North London. And. And then I sitting in a coffee shop, and then someone sitting next to me and says, I'm the only. That one there, or the women with their babies. I'm the only guy there with his baby. And then, and this woman asked me, what do you do? How come you, you're here with the baby sort of thing. And I like, I don't. I'm. I'm a father. I don't know what I am. I felt completely lost, to be honest. I really didn't know who I was or what I was doing, why I'm on this planet. I, I was too young as well, I think, to, to be retired.

[Graham]

How old are you?

[Simon Sinek]

I was 40.

[Graham]

Okay.

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah. So I, I was like, okay, no, this is. What, this isn't. This doesn't feel right. So, yeah, so to answer your question in a simple way, when the, when the, when the money dropped in I was like, wow, this is incredible. And slowly but surely that good luck became bad luck and I lost my mojo. I just didn't know what I was doing with my life. And did you lost it?

[Graham]

Did you buy anything?

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah, I did. I bought a fancy car. Well, Porsche Cayenne. And I also bought a Mini. Is that posh? No. And I bought a big house in North London, probably one of the nicest areas of London. The most amazing organic food. I got a personal trainer. Five days a week, you know, I buy again. That was the first time I'd really. I was spending money, not on a business. Normally when I made money, I put it back into the business. I think that's another thing people should do. This is the first time I was spending money on me and it didn't really feel. Didn't feel right. The other thing as well, I had a baby. So my whole life turned upside down and I, you know, sleep deprived, not knowing, you know, how to be a good father. All my personal demons of my father dying when I was young came up again when I was no longer working. Maybe like a shark, I had to swim. As soon as I stopped, I had to go get therapy. Like, why? Because I was scared I was going to die and my son wasn't going to see. I wasn't going to see my son grow up. When he was born, it triggered all of that. So I went and got a lot of therapy. Spent a lot of money on that. I'm glad I did. But that's it. After that, I just. You know what? I sold it all. I've got rid of all that stuff now. I don't. I got rid of my cars. I've got a Tesla, but just. And I've got solar panels in my house, so it charges a Tesla. But I still. I just basically don't think I've got any money. That's how I act now.

[Graham]

So what do you. What do you own today?

[Simon Sinek]

I own a house, a big house which I use for my business. So we use it as a content house. It's called Entrepreneur House. I've even branded it. I own the trademark Entrepreneur House and I have a Tesla, which just to get around, you need a nice car. And I just, I love that car. And I don't have to pay for fuel or take it for Tesla. Tesla Y.

[Graham]

Okay.

[Simon Sinek]

I'm not flashy. My wife owns an electric Mini. I don't know why, because Tesla's better. That's up to her. And I've got some nice paintings, but mainly they're more sentimental. So I got married in Bali and when we were there, we bought some barley. Balinese paintings that are quite valuable. But I don't. I don't look at them and think they're valuable. That's why I've got them. I look at them because they remind me of memories I've had of spending time in places like Bali. I've got a lot of nice artwork, but again, it's all in places I've visited. So I've gone to beautiful places around the world and bought art. But that's just personal enjoyment. I don't even know the value anymore of these things. The most important thing to me, and I took some inspiration from Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs said the day his company IPO'd, he had 60 million cash in the bank. Bank. And he talked about his other co founders who also made a lot of money at the time. They all kind of got drugged up and kind of lost it and died young. And he pretended he never had that money and went back to work the next day exactly the same time, did exactly the same thing. I now actually operate the same way. I think purpose keeps you alive, not money. But I will invest money in, like this trip to America. All my teams come, so I've got 18 people on my team. I pay for my team to come. If they want to come, they can all so flights, accommodation. I will invest in those sorts of things. Experiences. And building what we're building now, I invest heavily in that.

[Jack]

I've always wanted to ask this. I don't think I've ever asked someone this, but you have a net worth listed on Google. Google says it's $650 million. Is that accurate? Are they literally just grabbing a certain number that they're doing like some napkin math and just throwing it to your name?

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah. This is the thing people don't understand about net worth. Okay? So first of all, just for the record, it's bullshit, okay? I think the problem is a couple of things. Net worth is what all of your accumulated assets could be worth. This is why, like, Elon Musk jumps from being number one wealthiest man to number five to number three, suddenly he's number two. Because it's about his net worth is tied up in his stocks and shares and the value of his assets and those assets fluctuate hugely. So I think that when people are working out net worth, that it's like Donald Trump loves to exaggerate it. Right? He wants everyone to think he's worth 10 billion, depending on how you add up his asset. How much is his brand worth? Well, it's on a building in Las Vegas, so you think it's worth something, but what is it really worth? Is it worth a dollar? Is it worth $10 billion? Who knows, right? Until you sell it, you don't know the value of something. So net worth is tied up in that bullshit. So I am not worth that money. The other side of it is the media want these headlines to get clicks. So the reason that's on Google is because the sun in the uk, a scummy newspaper, what, noticed I was trending in algorithms. Simon Scribb was trending on social media. And they want that traffic. So they put up a story, right? They didn't ring me and asked me. They put up a story saying I'm worth that. And then they listed how I made my money and all the rest of it to get people to click. Simon Squibb worth 600 million. TikTok star. This is the backstory. They just. That's. They need that, you know, the thumbnails. We do it in thumbnails. I guess we do it in taglines, right? To get people's attention. You need that. Okay? And, and, and I get it. I don't mind you guys using it in a family if it gets people listening and learning, that they need to fix their brains and learn business. Right? I don't mind it. But I. I think it's the only downside to it is it's pretty dangerous. So when the sun ran that story, I had people knocking on my door. Like, literally, like, I don't. I'm not living in a gated community. Like, you've got. I. My house is vulnerable. I'm. I'm. You can break through my gate and that's what people did. Knocking on my door when I'm not there. And of course, you put yourself subject to, like, your kid getting kidnapped and all that, right? I do not have. Have 600 million. If you took my kid, I could give you. I don't. In fact, the opposite. I've deliberately locked up my money so I can't get access to it. So you won't get much. But the headlines are dangerous and it can cause a lot of pain if people aren't careful as well. You've got to be very careful.

[Graham]

Why not fact check him? Or why not have an attorney draft a letter saying, fucking ring me and.

[Simon Sinek]

Ask me, you know, like, yeah, but.

[Graham]

If they run the story and you say, and you have proof that, like, people are showing up at Your house now. And you ran this inaccurate article. Why not?

[Simon Sinek]

We can't. It's not so easy to sue, by the way, in the uk, us I'd say, but.

[Graham]

But some people won't sue, but they'll say, hey, this is inaccurate. Please change this. Here is why. Yes, signed attorney.

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah, yeah. I mean the thing is I, I think that that's already happened. By the way, the repercussions of it. Like, it's, it's. In hindsight, I'm newly. I use this word loosely. I'm newly famous. Right. When people. You're not famous, you're not famous. More people know me than I know them. That's the definition of famous for me. Right. So. So I'm newly famous. I'm discover a nightmare it is to be famous. It is not a good thing. No one should pursue being famous. It actually restricts your life. It restricts I. When I was, when I was rich and wasn't famous, I had more freedom than I do now. Right. So being famous is a pain in the ass. But I think a lot of the time I hate lawyers. I've. I've had one legal battle my whole life. I just don't want to deal with these people. And so when these people run bad stories, I've told them to take it down. I've told them it's wrong. You can't even get through to these people. Time. It's an algorithm and someone in a computer room, they don't fucking listen.

[Graham]

But some of, some of that is because they don't have a legal letterhead on it.

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah.

[Graham]

Like we've dealt with a few things, like random things where, you know, it's gone both ways too, that a legal letterhead goes a long way to getting a response versus if Jack and I just send an email, goes nowhere, gets ignored.

[Simon Sinek]

Those go in the bin, by the way. Most of the time they go in the bin. It depends how serious the legal letter is. But you know, like in England, most people just put it in the bin.

[Graham]

Okay.

[Simon Sinek]

Unless it's because there's no lawsuit structure. So unless it gets very, very serious. And then the problem is, do I want to piss off these media outlets, like go that hardcore. Because then they can come after me and slander me. They only to one fake story. Simon seen shouting at his kid, child abuse or something. I've never shouted at my kid. But conceptually, I don't want to make these people my enemy. Media is not my enemy. I don't want to make them my enemy either. So Part of me just hopes it goes away, things slow down and go back to normal.

[Graham]

I'll tell you the problem is that people continue to Google your name and that's like the first thing that comes up. I think when you type in your name, the first suggestion is net worth.

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah.

[Graham]

So it'll.

[Simon Sinek]

Which.

[Graham]

Which then just perpetuates that that gets recommended even more.

[Simon Sinek]

Okay, I'll get a lawyer on it.

[Jack]

Just famous for being rich.

[Simon Sinek]

But I'm not famous for being rich. I think. Hopefully I'm not.

[Jack]

No, you're not. No. But if you look up your name and that's like the first thing.

[Graham]

Yeah. You know, I'm sure the article is very kind. I'm sure it's like, you know, mostly.

[Simon Sinek]

I have a very fancy car that I don't have.

[Jack]

Where do they get this information? Are they literally just like, you know, they.

[Simon Sinek]

I think they go through pictures and information and sometimes even they what. They take what other people have written. So it's like a. Oh, that's, that's.

[Jack]

A lot of this stuff.

[Simon Sinek]

So it's like someone else has written about it and then they reference that as if that's their excuse for. So I don't know where it all comes from. But I mean, again though, you know, net worth. Just to be clear, if you, you know, if you take the assets of some of the companies I own at the peak and you, you know, you sold them at the peak for the exact cash amount, then maybe there's some way of getting to these numbers. You know, that's the thing. Like, I never think about net worth. I think about cash in bank and I think about like what I'm applying in my business or what my business is making. I don't really think about like how much I'm worth. If I sold everything, because I'm not going to sell all my company assets. Right. I'm not going to sell helpbank.com I mean that alone could be. Generate hundreds of millions maybe. But I'm not selling it, so what does it matter?

[Jack]

Can you say what the revenue of fluid was?

[Graham]

Do some backwards.

[Jack]

I'm trying to.

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah.

[Jack]

I'm trying to do some math.

[Graham]

And you sell it a what? Multiplier?

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah. People might be wondering why a lot of people can't tell, can't talk about the value of their company. Because when you sell a company, you sign NDAs, so those companies don't want you to publicly talk about it. There's a couple of reasons and it might be interesting for people, but like, if the clients of that company found out what we'd sold their contracts for you. So I mean like there's some, some, there's accidental brand damage done by talking, I want to talk about, about it. Right. If it was up to me, because I'm, I love sharing how business works and how businesses are built. I built that company from nothing. I'm proud of it. But legally, you, you have to see it from the people that are buying the company's point of view. They want to protect it. A lot of people don't understand that, that nuance, especially if you haven't sold a company before. Anyone that's selling a company, you're going to come up against this. It's, I'm always shocked when people can talk about how much they sold their company for. Most people who bought it don't want to talk about it.

[Jack]

Yeah. You mentioned briefly how you were feeling pretty depressed after the sale of the company. This is something that's documented pretty well. We were talking to Tom Bilyeu about this actually, after selling Quest Nutrition, and he said that he kind of had like a little bit of an existential crisis after that. How were your thoughts changed on life, money, happiness, fulfillment, all of that. Was there a certain key takeaway from that experience?

[Simon Sinek]

Well, one of my first tik toks that actually blew up was around this. So I'd sold my company, I'd never have to worry about money again in my life. And I, I was taking my son to nursery, just kind of wandering down the street and I did a tik tok, which was basically like, I'm so lucky, you know, I'm taking my son to school and I'll to pick him up. I just feel so lucky. And then in the comments someone wrote, well, I'm broke and I have to do that. And that's when I kind of realized that being broke or being rich, there's a lot of similarities actually, you know, like freedom of time. So being broke is not, is not necessarily, and I say this very carefully, having been broke myself, it's not a bad thing sometimes because you've got so many options and actually if you are spending time with your kid, if you're able to do that because you don't have a big job that's taking you traveling you around the world that's paying you hundreds of millions, you kind of are, are more successful than the person that never sees their kid. So I, I had to get to a point where I had all this money to then realize time with my kid was the most valuable thing. But a lot of people don't realize that they got time with their kids. They're probably already rich than most people that aren't able to do that because they're making money. Right. So I, I had a bit of an epiphany in that moment. I was like, I, I was lucky when I had time with my wife. I was lucky I was rich when I had time with my friends. I was rich when I got to spend time with my kids, my brother's kids. You know, like, rich is a very odd word. You know, success is a very odd word. I think they need to be more carefully defined. So when that tick tock blew up because a lot of people being quite negative about me, it's all right for you. You're rich, you can do what you like. But then some people were saying, well, I'm broke and I have to do that. I've got no choice but to pick my kids up because I've got no one to help me, blah, blah, blah. So I think that being, I guess being that, that, that moment when that video went viral was I pissed people off accidentally by saying, here I am, rich, walking around picking my kid up. But also I got a little insight into what the world is really like. And a lot of people are richer than they realize. Realize. A lot of people are more successful than they realize. So then I started making content about how to make money and have the life you want. That's how my social media started.

[Jack]

That's really interesting that you say the life in some aspects, once again, kind of walking on eggshells. Right here could be very similar between a rich and a poor person because a rich person gets to go pick up their child from school. School. But maybe a poor person, that's their only option.

[Graham]

They have to.

[Jack]

Right. But it's just like a difference of choice.

[Simon Sinek]

Exactly.

[Jack]

Have the ability to choose to do that, whereas someone else is forced.

[Simon Sinek]

Sometimes that's in your own mind, though, let's be clear. Like if you flipped your negative situation to a positive. So I say bad luck and good luck are both still luck. Like Buddha always said, we're going to have 10,000 hours of good luck and 10,000 hours of bad luck. I say it's just a matter of perspective. Right. So I had no purpose when other than looking after my son and, you know, being a good father, but I had no, like, life purpose. So I felt a little bit depressed, but I had time to go pick up my son and take him to school. So I was Looking to be grateful. I was trying to find my way of being grateful for what I had. And in that moment, I realized that I. People could be a lot more grateful for what they've got, even if it's not a load of money in the bank. Like, if you get time with your kids, I think you're lucky because that's. You can't get that time back either. Like, my kid is seven this week. He won't be seven again, you know, this week. You see what I mean? Like, I can't get that time back. So people have that time that I think. I think career should be, like, in stages. There's stages when you work really hard. And I think when you're young, you should travel the world and you should do all these crazy things. And maybe when you have a family, you just have a different life for a while. And then when your kids are grown up, you have another type of life, you know? Like, I think people should engineer their life around that as opposed to like, I want to be a millionaire at the time. I'm 30. Okay, now.

[Graham]

Now, in terms of your business success, have you ever had to compromise your values for the sake of the business?

[Simon Sinek]

Yes. I think when I was younger, I didn't really understand. I don't know what it was like in America at this time, but maybe in the 90s, you know, greed was good. You know, that whole Gordon Gecko greed is good. And there was very much a vibe of, like, you know, to be in business, you have to step on people to get ahead. And it's all about making money. You know, business is tough and don't take it personally. I think that's still kind of here today. Like, don't take it personally in business. I think it's complete. Right? But when I was younger, 15, 16, 17, 18, I just had to survive. I was very selfish. I just had to pay the bills and I wanted to have prestige and prove that I wasn't an idiot. I'm dyslexic. So at school, they told me I was an idiot, right? Because they didn't know what dyslexia was back then. So the literally teachers telling me I'm an idiot. So I had a lot to prove. And I think an example would be I remember one client in the gardening business. They went away for the whole of August on holiday, and we told them we were taking care of the garden. We did nothing till the day they came back. You know, I think that's in. That's not correct. That's not A good thing to do. But at the time I'm like, they're not going to notice anyway. And then they'll be back and we'll have it right. But we told them we were looking after everything throughout, you know, like. And I've made decisions right up until weirdly I think I was slightly unethical until I met my wife. When I met Helen, she made me a better person. So I tell people, your partner in life is probably the most important deal you'll ever do without a contract. It's so important. Like when I met Helen, I remember we, we had 2003 was SARS in honor Kong financial crisis. So we've been in business a while together at that point. And we built a business, had a big payroll and then SARS come which was basically Covid 1.0 in Hong Kong. They had it Covid long before COVID 2003 and the whole market collapsed. This disease hit Hong Kong and things shut down and our business froze. And one of our biggest clients almost went bankrupt. And they owed us a million pounds, right? Which is almost a million dollars now. Back then it was more, it's like $1.2 million. But I, I said to Helen, I like, we can't make payroll this month. We have to pay ourselves first because if we don't pay our own bills, we're stuffed. Helen said to me like cold, looked me in the eye and said, no, Simon, we're paying our people first. We'll find a way around it for ourselves. We're obligated. And I wasn't, I was self preservation. That 15 year old me just was there. I'm like, no, we have to look after ourselves. I did what she said because she was right. We paid people and then we eventually figured it out. The company made money, we collected some money and we had money come in. And we only a month or so behind on our person personal rents, right? But if I had followed my own advice, I would have pissed off everybody that trusted us. I never missed payroll ever in the 35 years I've been in business every single month and the first of the month everyone's been paid no matter what. And I'm proud of that. But I almost broke it in that moment. And it was only Helen that pulled me back and said no, that's not right, Simon. We got to, you know what I mean? She made me a better person. And I think that's a really important thing to have someone in your life that makes you a better person person. So yeah, I don't know, if I. I probably made her a worse person.

[Graham]

Now, a lot of people also define success in terms of financial numbers. Do you feel like there's a detriment to that? And how do you define success?

[Simon Sinek]

I totally think that's. It's. The world is really up in this way, actually. I think that you should not define whether someone's successful by how much money they have. I. I think that my personal, again, definition of success is a combination of time and kindness. I think if someone, like, for example, example, I interviewed someone on the street who's a nurse, and she goes to work every day to make someone's life less painful. She's not paid a lot, she works long hours. She cares about human beings. And I could see in her eyes that she's alive and she loves her work. She's underpaid, but she loves her work. She's successful in my mind, right, because she's discovered something that took me a long time to figure out, that what actually makes us happy is helping other people. The purpose of human existence is we used to live in tribes of 5,000 people, people. It wasn't transactional. It wasn't give and take. I'll help you if you help me, which is what it's like now. It was give of out take. Which is why I wear this to remind myself, right? What we do in tribes is we used to help each other. You have a problem, Jack, you come to me, I help you. Like, here's the problem. There's a solution to your problem. I'm not even the person to help you in return. But we've got this give and take mindset, right? So my opinion is that the way to be happy and the way to be successful is to help someone without any expectation of anything in return.

[Jack]

For someone that has very little or no money and they hear that and they're like, okay, well, let me give this a shot. Let me see. This actually improves my life. How? How? What is a step or something that they could do to give without. Without the expectation of something in return?

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah, Yeah. I say give about. Takes it short and it fits on a T shirt.

[Graham]

Yeah.

[Simon Sinek]

Give anything. Expectation of anything. Return is the right way to put it, I think. So I say to people, take four minutes a day to help someone with no expectation of anything in return. Anyone can do it. I don't care if you're broke, you can do it. So how could you do it? You could share someone's small business on your store. It won't cost you anything. And that person might get one new customer. You could like someone's post or comment. Congratulations, well done. Won't cost you anything. You know, you can hold the door open for someone in the street if you're really generous. You're feeling a bit flushed, buy the person behind you a coffee. You know, I say that the 10 million people that follow me online. Imagine if every single person did one kind thing for someone today. Just one kind thing without any expectation of anything in return, like the love and the passion, the purpose and the feeling of happiness that would give the world. Those 10 million people would wait up because you were kind to them. They'd want to be kind to someone else. Kind of break the chains of this commercialization we've suddenly got trapped into where every single deal was a transaction. That's not actually how we naturally are. That's not our natural state. So I think if you're. If you got nothing, you want to be successful, help someone else. Be successful in any way you can. You want to be happy, help someone else. The you guys probably felt this. And Christmas is a big thing in England. It's a big thing in America, right? I. Whenever I plan a present for someone, like, I made my wife a Christmas card this last Christmas. I designed it myself, and I'm a really bad designer. I wrote it out. It took me about a week to make it. And then I just couldn't wait to give it to her on Christmas Day. I was so excited and I gave it to her. Just seeing her joy and the fact that I was happy that I gave her something. I got so much happiness out of her getting something. Then she gave me a present. A really nice present, I would add. But I felt more excited about giving a present because humans, naturally, we're happier when we're helping someone else. Like, the hardest thing for a human actually is to ask for help that we feel really embarrassed about it. Oh, I don't need help as well. My business is fine. I don't need investment, and I'm okay. And we actually feel embarrassed to ask for help. It's helping that really is our natural instinct. But it's been suppressed by things like no good deed goes unpunished. And I helped them. And they didn't pay me back, or they avoid me now because I lent them some money. And we've been trained that somehow being kind is a bad, bad thing. But the truth is, the way we approach the kind gesture is the bad thing. If we expect something back, we expect them to do us a favor in return. You owe us something now. I helped you, remember? That's the mistake. And I learned that being with a good woman, Helen taught me that.

[Graham]

What qualities do you think makes someone successful? What do you look for?

[Simon Sinek]

When I was younger, I just wanted people that could afford to pay the bill. But now I look in entrepreneurs anyway and people that I invest in. I'm looking for purpose. You know, you can be average at something with a purpose. You will never give up until you're good at that thing and it's working. So I'm looking for like a reason that person's doing the thing they're doing. So, so my, my case, right? I'm building a platform to help people free learn business. Because at 15 years old I couldn't afford help, I couldn't afford a consultant. And I tried. They would like, if you don't pay, you don't pay attention. Like I pay attention. I desperately need the help. I don't know why I'm doing. And they wouldn't help me unless I paid them. So I kind of logged it. It's like one day I'm going to build a platform that helps people. What school didn't do for me, didn't give me how understand how money works. It didn't teach me how business works. One day I'm going to build something that does that. It's a purpose. You can't stop me. I'm broke, I'm poor, I'm. Five years ago I was so bad at social media. Now I'm pretty good. I'm still not brilliant, but I'm pretty good. I will not stop until I'm the best at it because I know if I'm good at it, I can get the knowledge to people. I won't stop. And that's what I'm looking for. When other people, I think when I was younger I invested in a lot of businesses. In the early years I made a couple of classic mistakes. So someone would say, someone really smart would say to me, I'm starting a business and filling a market gap. I'd be like, oh, that's cool. What's the market gap? It's a billion dollar market size. Okay, cool. And I invest in that business and you know what? They didn't follow through. Why? Because they didn't give a shit about that problem. They cared about making money. So what I've seen that people are really successful are people that really care about the problem. You know Mark Zuckerberg and you can love him or hate him, it's up to people he was socially awkward and he wanted to build something that made him connect to people and socially not awkward. And digital was his answer. That's why he never sold the company. This was his way of like living how he wanted to live. He wanted to solve a problem of being socially awkward. Right. So he never stops. He never stop. He'll never stop till he dies. Right. Because he felt that pain when he was younger and he basically built a company that fixed that pain for him. So I think I'm looking for that.

[Graham]

In people and on the opposite side of things, what flags do you look for that would be a deterrent for you?

[Simon Sinek]

Interestingly, and this is going to sound really judgmental, but what popped in my mind when you asked that question and people are going to maybe judge me for this is like people's partners. When I invest in someone's business, I now go on a long walk with them and get to know them and I do something called 50 minute download. I don't talk for 50 minutes and they tell me everything about their life. The big pit I'm really interested in is their relationship dynamics. And then the next stage, once I've done that 50 minute download, I don't talk. By the way, I've had 50 minute talks with people. Well, I've learned more about that person than their own partner knows. Because we find we interrupt each other when we talk. Right. Having someone talk for 50 minutes is fascinating. Anyway, the second step that I always do is I meet the person's partner. So I was going to make a big investment in quite a well known company. And I was having dinner with the person I was going to invest in and their partner and I decided not to invest him in over that dinner because basically the way the partner was talking, she was clicking her fingers for the waiter. And then when the waiter was there, she was like, I have this really expensive food, like picking all the really expensive stuff. And then during the meal she was talking about, well, we're not gonna be traveling business class anymore, are we? That's a bit annoying. I'll do it for a while, but it can't last long. And I was just sitting there thinking, this poor entrepreneur is going to have this person on their back for years. The business will not instantly make money. It's got a purpose. The entrepreneur's brilliant, but this person on their back is going to grind them down, man. You know, that person wants something different to them. That person is very materialistic. That person's going to be complaining, oh, we're going economy again. You know, it might be a billion dollar company. I know people, billion dollar companies that are flying economy. You know, I fly economy. So I just don't like wasting money on business class unless I'm doing a long haul and I need to sleep with. That side point I'm trying to make is when I see someone who's going to be grinding against and not in a good way with that person, I worry and I know that that person is going to have a very stressful business existence. And I don't want to be a part of a journey of someone that's being ground down. So I look ironically, to answer your question in a simple way, for someone with purpose and for someone that isn't with someone that's going to grind them down. Like, my wife always lifts me up. She always, she doesn't spend any money. Even now we've got money she doesn't spend. She doesn't need it. She doesn't. She's not always having a go at me for what I'm doing. If I come back late and she's made dinner, she never complains. She doesn't say, I made you dinner. What happened to you? You know, you've changed. It's 8 o'clock and you're not home. She's never done that, you know, and you don't want that in your life. You need someone that's with you, that's going to understand you, that's going to let you be you. And the partner is such an underrated part of that equation.

[Graham]

That's fascinating.

[Jack]

You have mentioned before on podcasts that you think sales is like the most important thing that people must learn. Now, people, they kind of use the term marketing, but you say sales and marketing is usually kind of the same thing. How would someone use sales that's working? Maybe like a W2 job. Why should the average person that's not working sales learn sales? And like, what would you. What is sales?

[Simon Sinek]

Sales is the way that you can make anything real. If you think you're not a salesperson, then you don't know how the world works. You either control your narrative or someone else controls it for you. When you go for an interview, you're selling. When you meet your partner, your potential partner, you're selling. When you're walking down the street picking your nose, thinking no one's looking, you're selling. Right? People don't realize personal brand is not a choice anymore. It's either something you explain what you are or someone else explains what you are. Ideally, what you explain and what they explain should be the same. Sales is just a formula. Now, you can be an introvert or an extrovert and still sell. You just use different tools. Okay? So I'm an extrovert salesperson. I can knock on a door and I can get someone to let me take care of their garden. Okay? But I didn't. I was never taught sales. I was just authentic in that moment. And I think that person probably took pity on me, right? So I think sales is the opposite to what we think it is. People think sales is a car salesman. You want to buy this car, it breaks, don't work. But I'm not going to tell you. No. True sales is just you being you and telling a story. And everyone can tell a story, right? Now, some people might tell it through music because they're shy. Some people might tell it through a drawing because they're embarrassed to talk. But storytelling is how you sell. So all you need to do is learn how to storytell. Now, I know people I just interviewed on my podcast, Russell Bruno, and he did clickfunnels, and he basically sells fruit. He's an introvert. People don't realize he's a big introvert. He sells for email. So he literally sends an email saying, hey, how you doing? Did you have a good day today? I'm going to send you an email tomorrow about how to change the world. See you tomorrow. I told you I was going to say, but I fell asleep early and I haven't written it yet. But if you're having a good day, I hope you are. See you tomorrow. Oh, here it is. Is the secret I was telling you about. I just finally got it written. You know, his storytelling in email. That's it. Sales, right? It's not a car salesman. It's not Steve Jobs. People have slightly got a misunderstanding of what sales is. Anyone can sell. Selling is just three steps. This is how you sell anything to anyone. And people get it the wrong way around. The first step is, does the person you're selling to actually need what you're selling? You can do that through research before you even send one single email. You don't need to go and sell them something they don't need, because selling something you don't need is really hard. That's a different type of sales technique, right? And that's a scammy type of technique where you sell something people don't need. I don't like that sort of sales. Do your research, Find out, does that person actually need you. The second thing you do in Sales is build a relationship. It took me nine years to get Apple as a client in my last business, right? And I never actually sold to them. I got to know the people in the organization. I got to understand their frustrations, their needs, their problems. And then nine years into that relationship, I sold something to them. So sales is a process. And does that person like you and do you like, like them? The first step that everyone knows and everyone thinks is the first step is, here's what I do, here's the price, here's the contract. Are you interested? That third step is the easiest step in the world. If you get the first two right, they need you and you need them, and they like you and you like them. I've not had a single deal that hasn't happened if I got the first two right. In fact, to an extreme, I did a deal with the Wall Street Journal to use my company in Asia. And I said to them, this is my contract. This is my price, this is my service. And the guy who was running it said, double your price, Simon. You've underpriced priced it. That's what happens if you get sales, right? Right. It's like you made a relationship. They need you, they don't. He doesn't want me to go bankrupt. He wants me to do well. He knows what the market rate is. Most people go in there with, what should I charge the client? Okay. No relationship. Understand them. Get them to know what you do so they truly need it. And don't tell the people that don't need it. Right. No salesperson can easily sell without some sort of NLP bullshit trick. No one can actually sell to someone who doesn't need something. Right? Identify the need. You know, it's the old what's. I forgot his name. Sell me the pen people do, you know, I ask people what that means, they misunderstand it, right? What that sell me the pen story is all about. A lot of people, even though they watched a movie, they don't understand it, right? People that selling that pen is about understanding whether or not the person who you've asked to buy the pen from needs a pen. So if I say to you want to buy a pen? Most people, the pen is beautiful, silver. You want to love this pen. It's the best pen I've ever seen in the world. No. I ask you, you're going to sign this contract now, and I'm going to. I'm going to invest in your company. You. You got a pen to sign it?

[Jack]

No.

[Simon Sinek]

Okay, you want to buy this pen. It's, it's $10. But we're going to sign a contract worth a million.

[Jack]

So is it a good pen?

[Simon Sinek]

I don't know, does it matter? It's going to help you get contract.

[Jack]

Okay, well if it makes me $10 million, I suppose I would pay 10.

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah. Okay.

[Jack]

Thank you.

[Simon Sinek]

It's very simple. It's, you know, it's just understanding demand side. But people jump straight to the third step because they, they misunderstood what sales is. And sales is marketing as well. People tried to distinguish it too. I mean a lot of gurus do this. Like marketing is different to sales. Everybody I ever meet is in marketing and I break down what they're doing. I'm like, you're not marketing, you're in sales. Sales sits on top of marketing. Marketing is like pr. There's loads of different elements of marketing. Pr, social meetings is a form of marketing. Brand, individual brand identity is marketing. Sales is the top of it all. And it's not a dirty word. It's the word that will make you rich. If you learn to embrace it and understand. If you learn to sales, you'll get the perfect partner, you'll get the job you wanted. And I don't want people to get a job. But still learn sales and it will help you. Right? And if you're an introvert, learn introverted sales techniques. If you're an extrovert, learn extroverted sales techniques. But there will always be the same three steps. I just said, what are the best.

[Jack]

Resources for people to figure this stuff out for themselves?

[Simon Sinek]

YouTube.

[Jack]

YouTube?

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah. And only listen to people whose lives you want. There's a lot of people out there will tell you how to do this and how to do that. Just check on their lives. Do you want their life? Because if you follow their advice, you'll have their life. Assuming they're not lying. Right? Because a lot of people out there bullshitting with, you know, Lamborghinis behind them and they actually broke, right? They rented it for the day. So do your research. So like I try to be very clear with people like only listen to people whose lives you want. That includes your parents. If you're taking advice from your parents, look very carefully at your parents life. Are they living their dream? Are they living how you want to live? Because if you listen to them, that's what you will get. Their life.

[Graham]

So how does school and society brainwash you? Because I've noticed you say this quite a bit, that society really trains you to be a certain way.

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah. And I'm very Careful. This, because I don't want to lean towards conspiracy theories, okay? But I think we all know the school system doesn't work. I haven't met anybody that doesn't actually admit it. I think the school system was openly discussed by the people that created it. Carnegie and Henry Ford, they openly discussed it. It's online, you can read what they said. They didn't want people thinking, they wanted people memorizing. They wanted people, Henry Ford in particular wanted people to be able to afford a car, go on two holidays a year, but come back to the factory, right? Sit down, shut up, don't collaborate. When you're doing an exam, don't collaborate. You've got to learn it all on your own, mate. Now in the real world it's completely the opposite. You want to be successful, stand up, be different, standard out, collaborate. Like, I wouldn't be here today if people hadn't helped me. There's no such thing as a self made millionaire. I didn't sit down and do an exam on my own. I had people help me. Everything school teaches you is exactly the opposite to how the real world works. So it's not conspiracy theory, that's just, that's fact, by the way, right? Now the other thing that school does is it frames success up. It says to you, every single school in the whole world is the same. It's fucking insane. It's insane. They ask you, what will you do when you grow up? That is a trap question. In sales we call it a trap question, right? It basically makes you instantly default fault to the natural instinct of, oh, I'll be a doctor, I'll be a lawyer. It traps your brain into a particular frame of mind around a particular thing you're going to do. Like a robot. That's how you get a, you program a robot to do a certain thing. The question that should be asked, and this is all I would change initially in the education system, is the question you ask is, what problem are you going to solve? This is the question I asked my 7 year old since he was 3, since he could talk. Well, probably going to solve, mate, what problem are you going to solve, right? HE LAUGHS at first, HE GIGGLES. Now he watches David Attenborough. You know what he says? The sixth extinction is coming. I want to try and help avoid that from happening. And he says it with calm passion. Maybe he'll be a doctor for a while, maybe he'll be a lawyer for a while, maybe he'll master AI. Maybe he'll be a social media influencer, maybe he'll do all of those things because he cares about the problem, not the pigeonhole that the fucking education system tries to pin people into.

[Graham]

Do you send your kid to public school, private school, home?

[Simon Sinek]

And again I say homeschool. What do you think?

[Graham]

Well, I feel like I grew up during a time where if you think of homeschool kids, they're usually a little awkward, socially inept. It's kind of strange, our experience of extracurricular activities. And there's a homeschool kid there who is usually by themselves afraid to.

[Simon Sinek]

Maybe they were homeschooled because they were already like that could be. But now it's different. Like homeschool. Is the revolution coming our way? I fucking hope. Hope so, because my son. Okay, there's just. Frank. This is funny how society gets so used to these frames, right? We have to reframe it. But this is a society frame we presently believe to be real. We send kids into a classroom from around. I don't know what it's like in America, but In England it's 9 o'clock in the morning till 4 o'clock in the afternoon. And on average classroom size is about 28 kids. Yeah. And they sit in that room all day together. Now, I like you guys, we just met. I like you guys. But let's say every single day for the next three years, we're in the same room. Room five days a week from 9am to 4pm and we're. No, 28 of us in this room. We're going to go fucking nuts, aren't we? Do you want to put up your hand to be different in that environment? Right. Plus the other problem with the school system is they're all the same age, okay? Because again, this isn't natural in tribalism, which I really believe is how we should be living. You have a 14 year old, a 7 year old and a 3 year old, right? Each of them have a sense of responsibility through the. You don't have bullying in this situation. By the way, the 14 year old regulates the 7 year old. The 7 year old looks after the 3 year old. The 3 year old looks up to the 7 year old. 7 year old looks up to the 14 year old. Right? You're not meant to do it by age the way they do it now. So homeschooling is the beautiful solution to it. Now I'll caveat this with saying right now because homeschooling is not mainstream. It's. It's expensive. One partner has to stay at home to look after the child. But by the way my wife is the main primary look looking after person for my son. But every single day she's out and about in some shape or form. My son lives like we live. In the morning, he wakes up, he has breakfast, he draws a little bit, and then one of his friends comes over and plays for a few hours. And they do Lego. If it's not raining, they go out for lunch in the park. In the afternoon, they go to a forest together with another friend and who happens to also be a friend of my wife's, the mother that happens to be a friend of mine. And they spend the afternoon picking daisies and talking about plants and realizing that nettles are one of the most amazing products. Nearly every single pharmaceutical product that makes people better has nettles in it. Right? So they learn all that in a day, like literally a beautiful day out. That is homeschooling. He's not sitting on his own with my wife learning maths all day. People have got it completely wrong. And now here's the real reason why this is actually presently unobtainable for people. Thirty years ago, having one income was enough. Having a second income was either a privilege or slightly weird. Right? You're not at home looking after your kids. Yeah. Now the things have got so expensive, properties got so expensive, life's got so expensive. Now there's no fucking choice but to have two parents at work. So that means that that kid can't have what I'm talking about right now. Which is why, again, I'm fighting against this because I think homeschool should be an option and communities coming together can make homeschools possible. So my wife does drop off my son at a forest school on a Wednesday day, and he's with a load of other parents that happen to be running the forest school. And then sometimes a load of parents drop people at my house, kids at my house, and my wife looks after and she does homeopathy and herbal medicine, so she'll do a little herbal medicine class. So they share the responsibility of the education, just like we used to in tribes.

[Jack]

But there are certain things that are undeniably traps. Like you said, like if, if your son was in a public school system, that would definitely work counterproductively for him. If, let's say he got into playing video games all of the time, that would be another trap that worked counterproductively for him. What would you say are some traps that people should watch out for to make sure that they're not just always like shackled by this, Like Brainwashing, you know, always attention going in certain areas and lacking the belief that they have the freedom that they have to, to live the life they want.

[Simon Sinek]

Addiction, addiction is the biggest weakness in human. And so. But we can get addicted to normality. We don't question things. I think people should question everything all the time. What I'm saying on this podcast. Question it, right? Do your research on me. Question everything. And if you have a questioning mind, it's quite freeing. So I didn't. When I was younger, I believed the media. The media made me think England was the best place on the planet. I thought England had roads and we were safe. And it wasn't until I left England I realized it's not the best place in the world. So I thought like question healthy skepticism about things I think is good. I also like to think positively. But I think having that thing where you always just double check, double check. It's what I've just been told or what I've just heard, is it true? And I think if people apply an element of skepticism in a positive way to their lives, they can figure out what's right for their, them. And I think people should check if they're addicted to things. And just if you think you might be addicted to your phone, put it away for a week. Just get rid of these things for a while, right? So I've got an addictive personality. So I've never drunk alcohol and I've never done drugs because I think those things are so powerful that if I start them, I won't be able to stop the only addiction I think I've got. And people listening audio might think I'm obese now, but it's food. I'm not obese. Just in case you're listening audio. But I love food. And you know, I realized I do eat chocolate. I don't drink alcohol, but I do eat chocolate. I do like sweet things. And I've realized that food is the only addiction I've got no choice but to indulge slightly because we have to eat, right? We actually have to eat. So I can't avoid it. I can't cut it out completely. But it is really interesting when you try to take something. If you think you're not addicted to social media, put it down for a week, right? At least start to bring yourself off it.

[Jack]

That's interesting what you say about addiction. That's how you're supposed to. That's the thing you're supposed to avoid. And it's not only being skeptical of yourself, but it's always challenging yourself because if you never go or if you're always unchallenged, I feel like you're never, you're never going to be met with resistance. You're never going to have, have to improve. So I think the skepticism is a key thing.

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah.

[Jack]

Because a lot of people also won't challenge you, like external sources. And you can't rely on that because maybe they will, maybe they won't. So you have to rely on yourself to always be challenging yourself, being skeptical of yourself, questioning things.

[Simon Sinek]

I think you should also be positive somehow. Mix it in there with positive. Like I see a lot of people spouting conspiracy theories with no solutions. You know, I feel like we, we need to be like optimistic about the world to make the world a good place in the future. If we're not optimistic, it probably won't happen. I think optimism is one of the things I've noticed in successful people. Even to the point where like, you know, like I, I actually think that the 15 year old me, I was lucky to have that life that that experience has given me. I love my life today. I'm doing a job I love, I've got a purpose, a mission, I love it. And I wouldn't have had any of that if I hadn't had bad luck. You need bad luck to have good luck. So even when, and I noticed this, really successful people in the businesses fail. They're like, they say, oh well, I learned all these lessons. I wouldn't, I wouldn't be, I've had a few businesses fail. I wouldn't be successful today if they hadn't failed. Like I've learned more from my successes that my, I'm more for my failures than my successes. And I think that's the thing that, you know, people need to be more positive about even the worst things that are happening to them. It's like, it's cheesy, but it's all happening for a reason.

[Graham]

Speaking of that, you're really known for walking up to strangers and saying, what's your dream? Is there anything that really stands out to you?

[Simon Sinek]

I think I've been doing the biggest human survey in history. It's been fascinating. The thing that stands out is how people have lost confidence in themselves. And I don't know where it gets lost in their upbringing. But like nearly everybody doesn't really believe in themselves. Very rarely people don't believe a dream is possible. Even in a country like America, where it's built in the American dream, people don't believe it's possible for them or that it's not the right time for them. It's shocking to me. And so sometimes I feel like I'm doing an intervention in their life in that moment. And do you know what I see? I see sometimes people have dead eyes. Eyes. And then when they just for a moment describe their dream, their eyes light up again. So I think some people have literally turned off the actual thing that makes us human. The ability to see the future, the ability to make something real from our head into the real world. Some people have just suppressed it so much. And I don't just blame the school system. I think it is generally like, probably, you know, parents don't basically get a real job, you know, don't be a YouTuber. Get a real job. You know, like, it. People. It's been suppressed, pressed down in people. And I. And I. But I noticed that you just give people the chance to tell their dream and you give them a few ways to make it happen. How different people can be. I've. I've seen people literally physically change. In the 90 seconds I've done the video of someone, 90 seconds, I've seen them change. They go from downbeat. The world's got them broken. They're not gonna. Their dream's not possible. They've given up on their dream. Even they don't have a dream to, like, literally a bin man. The other day I walked up to a guy was filling up the bin. People. We've all walked past this guy and not even noticed him. And I walked up to him and he was really depressed. I haven't released this video yet. He was really depressed, putting stuff in the bin. And I went up to him, said, what's your dream? And he went, I want to be a game programmer. I'm like, okay, I'm going to fund it. What do you need? It's like, what. What's his wheel, the cameras. Everything's a joke. Like, you just see people literally just. His posture changed, his eyes. Eyes changed color. Almost like light came on. It's like, this is possible. It came out of fight and flight for a second. And, you know, it's blown my mind seeing it. Like I'm addicted to it. I'm not just doing this for other people. I'm doing it for myself too. I'm addicted to seeing people come alive, you know, like, it's like I'm plugging a machine.

[Graham]

What stops people from then taking that and running with it? Because I bet if you ask a hundred people, what's your Dream. They get really excited. They have that response. There's going to be a section of people that just get excited in the moment. And then reality sets in again, like, nah, I can't do it.

[Simon Sinek]

That's why I don't really like motivational speaking. I do motivations but I don't really like motivational talks or posts because they're very short term doses of adrenaline for people. Well, that I go back to purpose and it's very fluffy word. But I think it should be asked at school if people have a purpose. They don't stop. See what the real trick is not motivating people in that moment. The real trick is figuring out their purpose and motivating them around that purpose. That's what makes people follow through. Like why do nurses go to work when they're so badly paid? Because they don't. Someone might die if, if they don't go to work, someone will be in pain. They're motivated by the purpose and they will go. Even though they're badly paid and badly treated, they'll go, right? And I think that's, that's the trick. It's not about motivation, it's about purpose. It's a word that people hear that's so fluffy. It's so important. If you get that instilled in someone. I don't need to, I, I've got a team of people. I have never once managed any of them in the present company I've got because they, I hired them all around the purpose that we have right to free humanity. I don't tell them what to do. Every day they get up before I get up, they go to bed before me, after me. You know what I mean? Point is they're motivated, right? They're so motivated and I think don't manage people manage purpose. Because a lot of people get frustrated in their businesses. I'm managing people and it's so tiring. I'm like, well you don't have a purpose then, do you? So I think that's the difference. And I'm not there to motivate people. I'm there to help them find their purpose.

[Jack]

What would you say is the biggest success story from the videos? Going up to someone and asking them what their dream is?

[Simon Sinek]

The individuals in the video, we are helping them, no doubt about it. And we have a whole system for helping them. We, we, we put them in a group of mentors. We have a platform called Help Bank.com with 160,000 people on there to help them. We promote their businesses online. And get hundreds of millions of views each month, hopefully for their dreams. But the really interesting thing is not the people in the video video. The people we are actually helping the most, the people watching the video. So on Instagram last month, I just looked at the analytics before we came in, we had 101, just over 101 million views on our Instagram content last month. When I look at the dms, it's people saying, I just saw Sarah not singing. It's made me decide, I'm going to sing, I'm going to go for my dream. Or I heard Mark say he wanted this business. He's not going to. I'm going to do. I've done it. Or people have started businesses because they watched a video and realized that I've called bullshit on their own bullshit. So it's people watching the video that were helping more than the people in the actual videos. But that being said, there's some people I'm really proud of that have started businesses and I name them all and they feel bad. If I miss anybody out on that list, I'll feel bad. But there's people I really do respect who have shared their really painful backstories and then gone out and used that pain to do something good. And I think, to me, there's a whole list of people that I'm quite proud of around that.

[Graham]

You also have another somewhat controversial take that houses are live before this came up.

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah, yeah.

[Graham]

Saving the best part to the end. Could you walk us through this? The. The train of thought?

[Simon Sinek]

Okay, so we better frame it up better for the audience because they're going to wonder what you mean. I, I have an issue with the property business, generally speaking, and not with the people in property business. With the property business. So I always kind of, maybe when I'm trying to explain this, just say, first of all, I'm not mad. This is just a theory. And just I have this theory. Doesn't mean I'm right. Okay, But Monopoly was invented by a woman. You know this, right? Monopoly was invented by a woman to highlight the problem when you put property and capitalism together too closely. So what she originally wanted to do, she had a monopoly with the land is owned by no one and people move around the board and live in the properties and everyone has a harmonious life. Or you have one where people buy the land. What happens in the end? Some. Only one winner. Right. And it would probably be some big corporation like BlackRock. That's my prediction. But one company ends up owning everything because it's all A question of price, right? So taking that kind of like example in mind, unfortunately for her, the capitalistic monopoly caught on and then a games company bought it and made it Monopoly, right. But she originally designed it to show the problem of property and capitalism together. So my main principle around property is that if you live in a house that you own, people mistakenly think it's classed as an asset, right? This is rich dad, poor dad, education. It's not an asset, it's a liability. And people really don't understand this. So I'm like, that's probably basic number one, understand how money works if you own the house you live in, even if you own it. Forget if mortgage, that's a whole different thing. Mortgage is actually slowed by the bank, right? The bank's borrowing money against your property, so you don't own it, the bank does. Maybe one day you'll pay it off if you don't have lifestyle inflation and increase the length of the mortgage or interest rates go up or you miss a couple of payments or whatever, you know, hopefully if all goes well, you'll own it. Hopefully in 30 years time. But it's not. So that's fundamentally point one, right? People make a huge mistake. They don't understand how money works. They think that the house is theirs and they think that the house is an asset. It's not, it's a liability. You think I'm right about that bit?

[Graham]

No, I think I do. I think you, you can be right and I think you could also be incorrect. Yes, I think it's a very nuanced thing. I would say for a lot of people a house is a liability in the sense that if they overextend themselves to buy the nicest house they can, if they don't keep it long enough, if they, if they buy a house living at five years, sell it, they break even maybe, and they, they buy an even more expensive house and they stay on the treadmill. Yes. I think it can be an asset if they buy it strategically to either save money on rent, live in very long term because they have to live somewhere, fix it up, which most people aren't doing, or they do the house hacking method of, of, you know, renting out bedrooms or buying multiple units and renting out the other units living in one. Most people don't do that. So I'd say for a lot of people it's a liability, but it can be an asset.

[Jack]

Isn't, isn't your primary residence like the number one wealth building? It is by all data, it is.

[Graham]

But because people are so bad at saving and investing. So it's like the one thing they're forced to do ends up helping them in the long run. And property values have trended higher. But if you invest in the S&P 500 long term, you actually outperform by many multiples. So it's like, yes, it is. It's like better to save something than nothing. But only because people are so bad at saving money.

[Simon Sinek]

Since the 1970s, if you invested in gold, you'd make more money owning gold than you would owning a property based on present property prices versus property prices in the 70s. But gold has no other than storage, no maintenance cost, but 1980s or 2012.

[Graham]

But it does, it does skew when you look at, like after the, because the 70s, you ran up in gold prices when they went off the gold standard standard. If you look at it at any other date, it starts to skew. But overall, at least in the U.S. property values have increased basically 1% beyond inflation historically. And so it's not that good of an investment, but it can be. But just about anything else could be a better investment.

[Jack]

I would say, like the one piece of advice that I would lend to people is just to be very conscious of your finances. So like, a house could be an investment in the same way it could be a liability. Credit card could be. Be an asset in the same way it could be a liability. All of these things could either serve you or not serve you. And so to be very conscious and observing those things is probably the best thing that you could be doing.

[Graham]

Here's what I. What I see right now is that a lot of people are, and I'll use the term brainwashed to believe that buying a house is always a good investment, or that buying a house is the right choice, or that you achieve some sort of social status or milestone by buying a house without doing the math and, and determining if buying a house is actually the financially sound method. Because right now renting is way cheaper, at least over the next 10 years than buying a house is. And if you buy a house and you don't do that math, you're like, oh, buying a house is better because I'm paying down the mortgage. It might not be. So that's what I see.

[Simon Sinek]

And I think people don't move where the opportunity is. They live where their house is. So I'm being general here by anyone.

[Graham]

Because there's always exceptions.

[Simon Sinek]

But I think, of course there are examples calls where people break the rules. But most people buy a house. I remember When I made that first bit of money, that £50,000, everybody said to me, buy a house, okay? And I think what I've managed to do with that £50,000, building businesses and what I've managed to see the world and experience things that if I bought a house, I'd be probably in that house now, like wishing I had a bigger house. You know, like, it's kind of like, especially when you're young, I'm really. Genuine property stuff. I'm really like, traveling is so underrated for people experiencing different places. Move somewhere where the opportunity is, don't get a house and get stuck. Right? And that's what happens to a lot of people. But I definitely, I think my problem, my personal, my personal take is when you get to 40, if you haven't made it, probably buy a house, you know, you got get a mortgage deal and maybe then when you're retired, you can have it paid off and then you can sell it to live in an old people's home. I don't know. But like, and it's not, it's not my favorite way of building a life.

[Jack]

But we also don't know necessarily what would have happened had you bought a house. So, for example, we've spoken.

[Simon Sinek]

I remember the house. I still, I look at it sometimes. I almost bought. I know exactly what happened.

[Jack]

But let's just say you bought that house and the property values went up and then you're like, okay, well maybe I can pull some money out and then you buy another house and maybe build. Because we've seen, we've had so many people that are like real estate moguls on the show, and that was exactly how they got started in real estate. And then they became an agent and.

[Simon Sinek]

Then they're talking about property is a business. So that's different. Different, right. I absolutely think property can be a business. This might lead us quite well into the podcast. We're going to do review in a minute. We can talk about this in a minute in more depth. Right. From a financial point of view, I absolutely think property can be a business. So now what you're talking about is property is a business. So people are educated enough to realize that maybe they sell that house, they take their equity and they, they buy a house. My parents did this, by the way. They bought a house, they did it up, we all lived in it, made it look like a nice family home, and then they sold it and we moved into another house and then they did it up, made it look a family home and sold it for More money, we moved to another home. And then eventually they bought five properties and then 10 properties and then 30 properties in the 90s came and the mortgage rate went up and they had to give all the keys back to the bank and they lost everything. So I've got my own personal experience with this brilliant property business, but I do think times have changed and certainly in the last 10, 15 years, properties have just kept going up, interest rates were kept low, and there's certainly been like a magical time for property. My real issue with property is the moral code sorry side of it. Okay. Because again, I talk about England better than I can America, but in England there are nurses, doctors and police who literally are on food stamps because they can't afford their rent. Okay? So what's happened is buy to rent. Businesses boomed. People have come and bought property, rent it out for huge amounts of yield, 8%, 6%, whatever people are trying to get. And then the people renting can't afford to buy because the prices have gone up. And now they're literally like the person who, who's tonight in England, a rich person landlord is going to go to an emergency award and the nurse who's going to try and save their life is eating food, going to go food stamps to eat. Can't pay their mortgage rent. Can't, can't get a mortgage, impossible to buy, can't afford their rent. Like tired, stressed out, can't look after their family properly. But don't worry, that landlord got 8% yield out of it. So my issue is more like it's definitely a business, but it's got out of control. Control.

[Graham]

Now what's the alternative to that? Because then it would be government housing. And I see this as a real estate person. And for me, I've been once to London and I've seen how packed it is. There's just not enough land to build more units without tearing them down and reconstructing the whole thing. So my understanding is that zoning regulation prohibits bigger units or taller high density housing. Right?

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah.

[Graham]

And that's a core problem that would need to be addressed or you're going to have that issue.

[Simon Sinek]

So England has a lot of green belt restrictions. Again, look, I'm not a policymaker on property. I'm not really in the property business. I'm just showing a little, I'm flaring a little bit of a warning sign because every young person I meet, when I say, what do you want to do? I want to buy property and rent it out, I'm going to borrow someone else's money and buy property and it's just got a bit out of control. And I'm just like, are you sure you want to be in this business? Because, you know, there is a limited amount of property. And being a landlord isn't as easy as it sounds either, you know, like, again, I think a lot of the time people think it's some easy thing to do. If you've got a small property portfolio and you're managing 3:00 in the morning, the washing machine's broken, it ain't an easy thing to do. So just be careful. And people see it as passive income. I'm like, no, it's not. You have to go, we have to go. So I. I tack it a little bit more from a business point of view and it's got so out of control in England in particular, that I'm just throwing up a little bit of a warning when it comes to how to fix it. I'll be honest, I haven't got the exact solution, but I think a combination of, like, releasing green belt land, probably. Yeah.

[Graham]

And for that we're talking like front yards or backyards, like, or partly.

[Simon Sinek]

But also parts of land that's been classified as there's, you know, woodlands that need to be protected, which. Yes and no. But if humans aren't, don't have somewhere to sleep. You know, In England, there's 250,000 homeless people, right? Registered. That's just a registered. So this also personally goes back to my homeless period, right. That is humans on the street, nowhere to sleep. That is madness. Right. That's the highest amount in history in England, 250,000 people. And a lot of that is mental health issues. So, you know, you need to build hospitals where mental health is taken seriously. So there's that element, drug addiction, but that comes from living on the street a lot of the time, right? Not they're not on the street because they're drug addicts. They take drugs to numb the pain of living on the street. Right. But I just think there needs to be a little bit of a different strategy. And yes, I'm a capitalist, I made all my money being a capitalist. But I think there comes a point where you get judged by a country, judged by how you treat the poorest person. And if we can't give, if we can't pay a nurse or a policeman, more money, which is fair enough, there's not more money. There's no money tree, is what you say in England, there's no money tree, then how can they afford the rent then. So if we want them to take a low salary and do that job and protect us and keep us alive, then we should give them accommodation now. Build it near the hospital, build it on the hospital, I don't give a fuck. But we can't have both ways, can we? We can't pay them nothing, expect them to save our lives and give them really expensive rent in a very capitalistic structure.

[Graham]

You also mentioned that you can pick your location. So in that nurse example, what's stopping them from going to a different location where rent is cheaper? Paper. They earn a similar or the same amount but they're able to save way.

[Simon Sinek]

More because rent is less different Human survey needed there for me to give you a, you know, an actual factual answer. But my instinct would be the hospitals in London, for example, are in dense populated areas. So to get there, suddenly you've got. And people do, by the way, they move out of London and then they've got huge train costs. I mean, again, England's a bit broken. Cost of getting from, say, you know, from one village, it's cheaper to this hospital now, you know, now the cost of the train was the same as rent. So you know, you're not saving by moving out. You're now causing yourself a commute, which is tiring. And now you're costing yourself train and public transport, which is ridiculously expensive.

[Graham]

I meant switching jobs outside of London.

[Simon Sinek]

Okay, switching jobs. That's happening.

[Graham]

Yeah.

[Simon Sinek]

You've got a serious teacher deficit in England right now. People don't want to be a teacher. It's low paid people can't afford to live. So literally there's a big. Careful. How to say this, but a lot of brilliant teachers, teachers aren't becoming teachers, they can't afford it. So they want to get into banking, you know, or they want to get into property. Right. And they're not, they're not going where they, where they would naturally go.

[Graham]

But couldn't you also say, based on your other arguments that teachers are becoming a thing of the past? In the sense that.

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah, they're not. They would, but.

[Graham]

But in the sense of the classroom setting, yeah, they should be, but they're not that sort of environment.

[Simon Sinek]

So.

[Graham]

But in the future it could be that people are learning at their own pace from something that's designed by AI based on the strengths of the student, that tailors everything to exactly what they want to learn or where they could solve problems.

[Simon Sinek]

Yes. Again, sometimes when I think about my own thesis, I split it into now, today and five, ten years from now, five, ten years from now. I hope that's the case. Right. I hope. Teachers, I'm. Weirdly, I saw something saying today that Chipotle lay, they're replacing 75% of their workforce with automated machines that are making the food. Right. When I saw it, I was actually happy because these are jobs humans shouldn't be doing anyway. They're too fucking clever. Right? So. But I think that you have to split it into two timelines. Right? Now, today there is a teacher shortage in England. Right. That's a problem now because AI is not in the classroom and people aren't being taught and most of the kids are restricted to get online anyway. Right. So unfortunately we still need teachers. And I mean that with love because I love teachers, but there's. The teachers should be in the classroom, but they can't afford to be in the classroom. So there we've got a gap already now. Hopefully technology will fill it, but I don't see the school system moving towards that. You know, literally like laptops is, you know, lately. Laptops. Most kids can't afford a laptop, you know, so it's not even the basic technology. It's been around 20 years, isn't even in the classroom for most kids. So. And then I see five years from now, 10 years from now, maybe with AI, those teachers don't need the teachers. Great. We need to find a job for those people and then maybe they can move where the opportunity is. But the other thing is that humans are tribal. You know, a lot of people, like my brother still lives in the town I grew up in because his family's there, so he doesn't want to leave. So, you know, if it's so expensive to live with your family and you have to uproot, you need everyone to uproot. It's not so easy to leave and go where the opportunity is. Although they should.

[Graham]

Yeah. I do think though, long term people are going to be less dependent on cities and so perhaps maps, dense cities. What we're seeing right now is the worst of it. And over time, as people can get more done with AI or online, they don't need to be in the middle of the city anymore. I think people can spread out as they should.

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah, that's happening most in the.

[Graham]

Most of the US is like completely undeveloped. And when you look at like the. There's like a chart that shows like the population of the United States based on where people live. And it's like everyone's crammed in like five different locations and the rest of the country is empty. I don't think it needs to be like that necessarily.

[Simon Sinek]

I'm working on a project in England at the moment where we're trying to redevelop a high street into accommodation because a lot of the high streets have died as well. Amazon's killed high streets. I'm sure it's the same here. And so there's an opportunity there. I mean if you're intellectual about it, there's loads of ways to solve it. But I just start with the basics that the people that are serving us and not being well paid for it need to at least have the ability to live somewhere. Yeah, basic human rights accommodation. We can't.

[Graham]

I would love to see higher stories, like, like higher density and underground.

[Simon Sinek]

Right.

[Graham]

I think that would be so cool to like be able to go five stories underground and you would have no idea like restaurants down there.

[Simon Sinek]

And like that's happening in certain cities where they're value. Like my house that I had in London, they dug a basement two basements down is incredible. The house is so.

[Jack]

I think, I wish tiny homes too. Like if you look at any new development, they're all like 1900 plus square feet, 2200, 2500 square feet here in Las Vegas. But if they only made starter homes which are like a thousand square feet or 1100, 1200 square feet, that would be so much more reasonable. I think it's just a little bit more profitable for the developers.

[Simon Sinek]

Elon Musk did this, didn't he? Built like he was living in it. I don't know if it was true, but there's a box house. Personally I can live in one of those. Give me a bed of computer.

[Graham]

Yeah, they're like 50 grand. One of my dreams like this was like 10 years ago. I really wanted to develop micro units that you could rent because I remember me throughout my 20s, like all I needed was a bed, a kitchen and a desk. That was it. And I, I thought that paying any money for any more than that was a huge waste. But there's nothing that exists like that. I mean you could find little small studios but they were like really seedy parts of town. But like imagine in, in the prime district of like Los Angeles, in the best location you had micro units of just 300 square feet. Just like a two car garage. It's got everything you need.

[Simon Sinek]

I would love that they do it in Japan. They have like. Yeah, like they, I think in English they're called coffins. It's not exactly. But you live in. It's like A coffin.

[Graham]

You know, I've seen it. Maybe not to that extent.

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's kind of, it's kind of interesting. But you just need someone safe to sleep at night. That kind of.

[Graham]

But the issue though with at least California, because I haven't looked into other, other districts is purely that they don't. They, they require a certain amount of parking for every unit and if you can't do that, that won't be. That's zoned.

[Simon Sinek]

It is, it's 99% invisible. Do you ever listen to those guys? It's a really good podcast I listen to. And he, he talked about how the, they came in with this parking policy so that when they built the Google Circle, they've got so much parking to justify that. Like it's, it's like 5 million cars or something. Need to be able to park there or something ridiculous like that, you know, like, because they made that rule. But this is kind of getting old now as well. Like, like we were interviewing some kids who, on scooters and they, they don't want cars. They. An Uber. They, people don't want a car, they just want to Uber, share an Uber, you know, go on a scooter. So I kind of think like there's always car parking regulations. Everything's 10 years behind in government, tropical decisions.

[Graham]

I feel like it's cool to walk places now. Like we just came back from Japan and we stayed in areas where we could walk within like a three mile radius. It was so nice, I have to.

[Simon Sinek]

Say, not selling like London. One thing I love about London is you can walk everywhere.

[Graham]

I loved it.

[Simon Sinek]

It's so easy. And I, and I really, I mean I've been trying to walk around Las Vegas, but you can't do it.

[Graham]

Hot here in Las Vegas is important.

[Simon Sinek]

Even though it's brand new, all the paths are blocked. Okay. Anyway, Las Vegas is great. Come here.

[Jack]

Simon, thank you so much for coming on the show. We have one final question to ask you before we end this, which is what is one thing you think you can say that will make the strongest and best impact on the viewer?

[Simon Sinek]

Right. Right now, the purpose of life is a life with purpose.

[Jack]

Thank you, Simon.

[Graham]

You forgot one thing though. To like and subscribe if you haven't done this already. We're going to link to all of your information down below in the description. But seriously, if you've listened to this whole thing over two hours and you've not already subscribed, please do it. It's totally free. Takes you a split second, we're going to do our best, by the way, to respond to as many comments as we can. Please subscribe. It really helps with the channel tremendously.

[Jack]

Anything you want to shout out, please subscribe.

[Graham]

Oh, your book.

[Simon Sinek]

Don't worry about that. Don't worry about that. No, yeah, we can. You can. But it's coming up January. Yeah. You can pre order it now. If you really want to help me. And all the profits are going to fund people's dreams. If you want to help, link down.

[Jack]

Below in the description. Everybody.

[Graham]

Sounds good.

[Jack]

Thank you, Simon, for coming on the show.

[Simon Sinek]

Thanks for having me.

[Graham]

Appreciate it. Until next time.

[Simon Sinek]

Thank you so much.