Up until then, I was just doing a show and I was happy to have the job and I was excited about the — I was still excited about the work, but something shifted for me and I just wanted to use the show and not be used by the show. I wanted to use the show as a force for good. And so in that intention, I told the producers, 'Do not even bring me ideas unless I'm aligned with whatever your intention is,' so that we all sync up. And so regardless of what the subject is, we're all really saying the same thing — that we're using this story or this person's life or whatever is happening in this experience as a force for good.
The golden circle that you introduced in Start With Why applies now as it applied 16 years ago, as it will apply 16 years from now. Can you explain the golden circle for the 10 people who haven't heard it?
Very simply, every single one of us knows what we do. It's the jobs we have. It's the things we do, right? I'm a doctor. I'm a consultant. I'm a barista. Like, this is what I do.
Some people know how they do it. These are the things that we think make us stand out or make us better than somebody else who also does what we do. But very, very few people can clearly articulate why they do what they do — a deep-seated purpose, cause, or belief. And what I discovered is that the best leaders, everybody from Martin Luther King to Steve Jobs, every single one of them thinks, acts, and communicates the exact same way. And it's the complete opposite to most other people. And every single one of them starts with why. So if you say, 'What do you do?' they don't say, 'Oh, I'm a speaker. I'm an author. I'm a talk show host.' They say, 'I wake up every single morning to inspire people to do the things that inspire them.' For me, the fun is finding all the ways in which I can do that.
And that's how you get to what you do.
Yes. And it's interesting because Jim Collins just recently wrote a book and he says that people like that were encoded with that — that there was an encoding for them to do that. That's not something just as you say you don't acquire it out here. You had it in here to begin with.
I think so. I agree and I would add on to it, which is it's not that some people are encoded like that. All of us are encoded like that. The question is, are we working in environments and do we have a support structure that encourages and supports us to live by that code? Very often we are seduced by money or fame or to be an influencer. We are pressured to be responsible, become an accountant because that way you can provide for yourself even though you have no desire to be an accountant, etc. So we give into peer pressure, we give into societal pressure, we give into family pressures. And so whether we're following the code is the big question.
So, and so you have truly changed the culture. You've changed how the culture speaks about itself because we're now all familiar with the phrase of 'what is your why?' What do you think it is about your message that has resonated? So, first of all, were you surprised?
I was surprised at the speed and the scale that it took off, but I wasn't surprised that it resonated with people because it's a deeply human message and it was not something that I put together for any commercial or academic reason. It was put together for me. It was the solution that I found when I lost my passion for my own work and it was only meant to help me.
Yeah. And it did, and I shared it with my friends and it helped my friends find renewed passion. So you were doing it for their friends, their friends. That's how it started. That's how it started.
That's how it started. I was giving talks in my friends' living rooms to their friends and helping people find their why for 100 bucks on the side. That's literally how it started.
So tell us where you were before you discovered it for yourself. What was actually going on with you?
I was living in New York City, living the entrepreneurial dream. I'd started a small business. I had a little marketing consultancy and I knew the statistics that the vast majority, well into the 90th percentile, of new businesses fail in the first three years. And so if you're sort of like that kind of stress and that kind of competition, you know, entrepreneurship is a crazy fun game. And we survived — like, we survived three years in business. And my fourth year in business was dark, to say the least, because I survived. I now was a member of this small group of organizations that had beaten the three-year statistic. But I was a victim of my own success because I didn't know how to build the structure for a company. It was all my personality and force of personality. And as things started to go well, I didn't know what to do. And it sort of came crashing down on me, to be honest. Not literally, but like the pressure was overwhelming. And I went into what can only be described as depression. And being happy-go-lucky and living what superficially looks like a good life, I was very afraid or embarrassed to tell people that I was struggling. And so I kept it to myself.
You were struggling. How? You were struggling?
I didn't want to — I didn't want to go to work anymore.
I didn't want to wake up and go to work.
And I was very, very embarrassed because superficially things were good and so I sounded whiny, you know. So if you've ever been in a dark place, if you keep it to yourself, it gets worse.
And that's exactly what happened. And it wasn't until a very dear friend of mine came to me and said, 'Something's wrong.' And that was the gate that opened up.
Okay. So what did uncertainty teach you about yourself?
