Seth Godin & Simon Sinek: Being Remarkable

Remarkable has nothing to do with gimmicks and it has nothing to do with what you want. Remarkable requires empathy, because remarkable means worth making a remark about not that you're going to make a remark about it, but that the people you serve will make a remark about it.

Welcome to the ReLaunch podcast today. I have two powerhouses, Seth Godin and Simon Sinek, two titans in business, leadership and innovation and my personal role models. They are the most sought after podcast guests, and this duo has teamed up as guests only a handful of times, making today a unique and rare opportunity. I gotta tell you, it is beyond beyond exciting for me. Seth Godin is known for 20 pioneering books like Purple Cow. This is marketing linchpin, and one that I have right behind me. Go make your ruckus, which, when I heard about it, I bought it for my husband. E Sass books bring a wealth of knowledge on entrepreneurship and the essence of impactful ideas. He pushes the edge of the envelope every single time I have been reading daily for years, the over 7000 blogs he's done, and it always seems like he's writing it for me. And we talked about this before we started very

kind dearly, but you didn't tell us we were gonna have to listen to you say nice things about us.

Well, I'm not even done.

I request a shorter bio.

Okay, he was Seth, I gotta say, you are inducted into marketing Hall of Fame in 2018 but now I do have one other guest. It's Simon Sinek, and His work includes, start with why leaders eat last, and also one of my personal favorites, which is on my shelf as well, together is better. They all offer these insights, inspiration on leadership and how to cultivate an environment. Simon's TED talk on How Great Leaders Inspire Action ranks as one of the most viewed presentations in the world, and I have been using it in my fired up entrepreneur course since day one. It is that impactful. I think, personally, I have read it. Larry watched it at least 100 times today on this show, we are on a journey to uncover the great relaunches that have shaped these two icons. And I also want to say, Let's tune in to the most powerful strategies and philosophies that have actually transformed them, and what they're going to share will absolutely transform you professionally and personally. So here we are, guys, I have been looking forward to this for, I mean, literally, since I heard this was going to happen. I'm not going to get into how it happened, because I probably am going to do a solo episode on how that was manifested. But Seth, I have to say I would like to Purple Cow this podcast right now. And I want to take it from the ordinary to the extraordinary. There it is. And I want to say that, and I was saying this before we got on. I had no idea that when I created the company, relaunch, and I said that I am relaunching people into this, this whole new way of reimagining themselves, that it actually came from Purple Cows. So on this podcast, I'd like to say, Forget about being guests. You guys are my co hosts. We are going to have a very interactive conversation around relaunches, around tuning in and not tuning out to what's going on in the world. Okay,

bring it on.

All right. Let's do this. Okay, so I talk about relaunch into remarkable you both have really dove into remarkable in books that you've written, talks that you've talked about, how does one become remarkable? In your mind? And let's, let's go with Seth, since we've been we've been carrying on for a little bit here. Just what do you think? How does one start to become remarkable in today's world.

Okay, first, thank you. Thank you for being philanthropist. Thank you for being patient. Thank you for leading. Thank you for all the kind things you said about Simon, a few kind things about me. And remarkable has nothing to do with gimmicks and it has nothing to do with what you want. Remarkable requires empathy, because remarkable means worth making a remark about not that you're going to make a remark about it, but that the people you serve will make a remark about it. So what people fail to mention about Simon's TED talk is it's not a TED talk, it's a TEDx talk. It's a TED. X talk that he wasn't picked by the powers that be to be on the main stage in front of all the fancy people. It's a TEDx talk of which there are many, many so how did it end up with 400 million views? And the answer is, because people sent it to someone else. Did they do that because they like Simon? Like I like Simon? No, they did it because it would make their life better if someone they cared about saw this, it's worth remarking on. And so where people get stuck is they get trapped in hustle because it's so hard to do their work. They get trapped in social media thinking that their job is to work for Tiktok or LinkedIn or whatever. No, your job to help people get to where they're going.

And what do you think, Simon, I

can't say anything more. But also I want to echo Seth's gratitude. Thank you, Louie, for giving to charity. I really appreciate you supporting the curve. That means a huge amount to me and to those you're supporting. Just to underscore what Seth said, you know, the most common compliment I would get when I first started doing the Start With Why talk was thank you so much. I've been trying to say that for years, and and being remarkable means it's not about the person doing the talking, it's about the person doing the listening. You know, that's it. That's what I've been trying to say. And as Seth said, I'm going to send it to my friends like he said, what I've been trying to tell you, and that's what makes it remarkable, is that it's helping other people either put something into words or capture a feeling or communicate an idea, whatever it is. What you'll see is a lot of the great ideas that spread help us spread our ideas, less about spreading their ideas. It's always an act of service. It's always an act of service. Those those ideas that are remarkable.

And I love what you're saying, because it's like, you know, he said what I'm thinking, and I felt that same way when I heard it 100 different times. And so I always do this at the beginning of our relaunch podcast. I like to understand and Simon, I'm going to start with you in reading so much more. And yes, I've taken your why. Course, I noticed that you always talk about your optimism and silver linings. And what you probably don't know is this podcast years ago, started out as the silver lined podcast, the Silver Line relaunch podcast. And the reason I did it was we all have relaunches in our lives. We all have transitions. We have health relaunches, global relaunches, personal relaunches and professional relaunches. And out of the 220 relaunch it, podcast, I've done, I've never had one person say, if they could go back and redo something, change something. Not one person has said I would do it. And so when I was listening to more of what you're talking about, what I found captivating was in a significant relaunch that you've had, probably one of your most significant it started you down this whole path of why. So I'd love to hear from you your relaunch story and how it literally has allowed you to be the man you are today.

That's a very interesting insight in 200 plus podcasts that nobody will have never heard that you do something. I find that fascinating.

And we're talking, we're talking the, you know, some of the worst relaunches that you can imagine, where, you know, not just death, but I had a woman that was zipped up in a body bag. I had, you know, I mean, I've had incest and rapes, and everybody that has gone through some of the literally worst things have always said. Now I wouldn't change a thing because that's who I am today, and

I think that's what it is. It's sliding doors, right? Which is any of those details would change, then everything that changes after that that I wouldn't be who I am today, and I at least like the person I am today. People are thinking where at least I like the journey I'm on, and so I don't want to, and I think that's true for me too, which is some of those tragedies and difficulties, I don't want to ever go through them again, but I'm glad they're but I'm glad they happen. And to your point, you know, my trajectory, my career, was pushed completely sideways, not on purpose, but out of pain, I'd lost my passion for my own work. I had a marketing consultancy. I used to pay money to go see Seth Godin speak on a stage and to learn how to be a better marketer. And my marketing consultancy was doing fine until I fell out of love with my own work, and people give us silly advice, you know, like, do what you love, find your bliss, follow your passion. It's like I'm doing the same thing. I don't love it anymore. Like that is completely useless advice, and what am I supposed to do with that on Monday? And so I was in a very dark period, because superficially, everything was fine. And so I was very embarrassed to admit that I didn't want to go to work. I own my own business. I had great clients. We did great work. And so I kept that darkness to myself. And anybody who's ever been in a period of darkness will know that when you keep darkness for yourself, it gets darker, and it wasn't until a very dear friend of mine came to me recognized because I was really good at faking it. Let me tell you, I was pretending that I was happy, in control, successful. I mean, I was, I was a pro, and wasn't until a dear friend of mine she saw chinks in the armor, and she said, there's something wrong. Something's amiss. And I came clean, I opened up, and it lifted a huge weight off my shoulders, and the darkness turned brighter, and that energy that went into line, hiding and faking could go into finding a solution. And the solution that I found was this thing called the why.

So, I mean, before you go into the Why was she the first person that genuinely was interested enough to ask you, like, are you okay? It's

not that she was the first person generally interested. It's the she was the first person who maybe in a moment of weakness for me, or she was just more eagle eyed than the others that she saw. She saw something that was wrong. So it's not that she was the only person who cared this. Everyone around me cared about me. I just was really good at pretending that I was happier when I wasn't. And

then, and then we're going to get into the why in a second. But I want to ask Seth, have you ever had one of those moments where you felt like, hey, nobody, nobody is really getting past as as we heard this the armor. Because I remember when I worked at Oracle for almost 10 years, and I was married and I had, you know, my three kids, and everyone's like, Oh, you're living the best life. You've got everything. And yet I was really miserable inside. Yet I kept my smile on my face. I kept showing up, and I, as you said, Simon, I kept I was going deeper and deeper into the doldrums of like, I'm really unhappy. I'm really, truly unhappy, and nobody seems to get it, including me. Why is this happening? So Seth, have you ever had this happen in any way, shape or form?

You know, I think armor could be underrated. We have armor for a reason, and I don't think anyone ever knows everything that's going on with us, including ourselves. So the real question for me is, we are already winners of 100 lotteries in a row, and here we are in this moment, with these resources, with these choices, we have sunk costs behind us, which can be ignored and forgiven if we want, and we have opportunities in front of us, and we tend to get hung up on. What will other people say? What will they say if I acknowledge that the thing I worked so hard on, I'm not going to do anymore? What will they say if we shut down our DVD division? Right? It's not my fault that DVDs were replaced by the internet, but they were so why do I need a DVD division anymore? It doesn't matter how much I spent to build it when I was a book packager. I don't need to do that anymore because it's going to cost me an enormous amount when it fills a spot that could have been filled by something else. And so I think that there's lots of opportunities for people to get a dog or a therapist and to speak their truth in a private way. But the real strategy here the analysis part is, you don't get tomorrow over again. So how do you want to spend tomorrow? And I think what has happened for me many, many times, which I know has happened for Simon, because he tells the story is he decided he wanted a different tomorrow than the one he was on track for. And maybe you need a nudge to get there. Maybe you don't. Sometimes the universe comes along and throws a pie in your face. But the point is, we have more agency than we would like to believe, because if we acknowledge how much choice we have, then we got to do something with it. So

when you talk about a significant relaunch set that's actually happened to you in your life that literally changed the trajectory of where you are. What would you say that was personal, professional.

So the word relaunch is really interesting to me, because that's not how I think about the journey. There's golf and there's surfing, and the idea of golf is an asymptotic race to 62 to get a one putt or to get on the green. There's a perfect shot. Surfing is about each wave is going to be different, and nobody who surfs wants to get on the perfect wave and stay on it forever. That would be boring. And so what you do when you surf is you don't relaunch. You just surf again, and then you get to surf again. So I've done, you know, hundreds of projects. I have a whole list of them on my blog, and most of them did not work, and they're listed too. And before we start, I was showing you the smiley dictionary, which was the before emoji. So I wrote the very. First book on smiley faces, and yeah, I made a grand total of $3,700 from that book. That's not why I did it, and I'm glad I did it, but the point is, then there was another one, and then there was another one. So yeah, I've had entire companies go away. I've had to lay people off because the whole company was gone. I've had projects that I worked on for a very long time did not work on the personal front. I've been super lucky finding the most amazing family, but in 1991 you would have found me teaching canoeing from a boat in Algonquin Park, Canada, north of Toronto, the one thing I wanted to do for the rest of my life, and then I couldn't do it anymore, and that's a shift, but I don't think Why couldn't you do it anymore? Well, because it's in Canada, and my family's here, and I had they hadn't invented teleportation yet, so I still go up for a few days every summer just to remind myself of what's possible. But I am also so glad that all these other doors have opened, because I don't do that full time, and everything is an opportunity cost. Every time we do one thing, we're not doing something else.

I think there's, there's an interesting lesson here as well, which is when, when people are afraid of that wave of the different, of the new. They cling on to the one wave that works. And I'll give you an example, right? So I was at a dinner party, and I met somebody just making small talk with one of the guests. I said, What do you do? She goes, Well, I'm a whatever she is, but I actually want to be a screenwriter. And I have a screenplay, I've written it. And I said, that's amazing. What's it about? She said, I can't tell you. I said, Why can't you tell me? She says, because you're going to steal my idea. I said, But I screenwriter, I promise I won't steal your idea. I would love to hear what your idea is all about. She goes, I'm not going to tell you. And I spent the better half of 10 minutes trying to convince her to tell me her idea, because I genuinely wanted to hear her idea, and she refused to tell me her idea. Now she doesn't know who I know. I could say this is the best idea in the world. I'm going to introduce you to every producer I know. I'm going to introduce you to all the all the people I know at Netflix. You know this has to be made, but she never told me, and so I don't know. And so I find that people who are unbelievably protective of ideas. Are afraid that they won't have another idea. The converse is a friend of mine, long time ago, when I had a job, he he and I worked together, and he sort of beckons me into a conference room. He says, I need to tell you an idea I have for for a business. And he closes the door. And I the, you know. I said, Do you want me to sign an NDA? And he laughed. He said, No. He goes, if you steal my idea, I'll have other ideas. He goes, people have one idea, make you sign NDAs, you know. And this is the idea, which, this is the point, which is the surfing, which is the ideas flow, some work, some don't work. Somebody will steal one. I've had ideas stolen. Sets ideas stolen. I got more ideas, and they can execute them, or implement them as well as me. Or maybe they can, I don't know, you know, but the point is, is, like, it's the surfing, it's the showing up, and, yeah, and people, they get so angry because somebody took my way or

no, it's worse, if you know it's worse than having your idea stolen, not having your I know

I agree that is really good, agreed.

If you have an idea worth stealing, you've got a good idea

well. And here's something else

that's a good title for a book, ideas worth stealing. And what I

do want to say is that when you finally

listen to this,

everyone's out there trying to grab it right now. What I want to say is that to that point, is that everyone you know, and I'm one of you know 1000s, if not you know 10 1000s, 100, 1000s of coaches out there now. And everyone is saying, whenever I say, oh, oh, you're a coach. And I'm like, Well, not exactly, you know, I mix in a little of the ancient wisdom and and neuroscience. And I say, but really what I do is relaunch into your remarkable and how do we do that, and here's how we're going forward. And one of the things that I've I've noticed in going through both of your works, is that you tap into something that I have coined is called Three HQ, the headquarters of you, the head, the heart, the highest self. And I'd love to hear how you're seeing, and I know Simon, with what you're doing, it's there's the why, the why, part of the heart is right there. And I'd love to hear from you first, and then Seth, I'd love to hear how you're taking this concept so that it's not just thought based you're creating. And I. Read it in all of your blogs. You have that you're doing it in your books. But Simon, how are you now that you have tapped into the why? You have the course, you have the successful TEDx. You have all these things around it. Where has that brought you now?

I don't, I don't. This is my sound flippant, but I don't care what I've done, and I like what I'm going to do. And I think of my work, I Baz Luhrmann talks about this, and I concur. I completely agree with Baz luhrman, the famous movie director. He says that he treats his his projects like his children. That when he has a project like a child, he gives it everything he's got so that it can be the best possible version of itself. And when then it's done and it's fully raised, he lets it out into the world, and it goes off and lives its own life, and he moves on with his life. And people come up and be like, Oh, my God, I love Moulin Rouge. And he'll say, Oh, how is he I haven't talked to an agent. Say hi for me, you know. And one of the things you learn about writing books, or about any anytime you ship a ship anything, which is, it'll never be perfect, but at some point you have to ship. And if I go back and read that book. Now, I'm like, Oh, I would have written it that way, but it doesn't matter. It's got to be out, and I can't relive or re edit. I have to move on. And so it's a difficult question for me to answer, because my work exists, and it lives its own life, and it's going places I never imagined it would go, and it's living its own life. And I'm I'm not trying to get too involved like an overprotective parent. I'm trying to move on to the next project, and some of it will go off, and some of them will become lawyers, and some of them, you know, will, you know, become groupies. I don't know, but it's for me, it's, it's always forwards. I build on what I've done, but I don't, I don't live, I don't live with what I've done. I don't live in the past. I love the why. I believe in the why. I live my life by the why. But that work is out.

So you're so you're constantly in forward motion,

trying to be up sometimes, sometimes it's, sometimes it's, it's, it's, it's a haziness. Sometimes I'm walking through fog, but I'm always walking forwards if I can.

So when you're talking about the why, and that heart based, and I heard the story, you know, that was so heartfelt, when you were talking to your friend, and she was saying, pushing you, and now you push other people, and you have this great course around getting to somebody's why and the importance of doing that. And as your

she didn't push me. She cared about me.

She cared about you, but she did in conversation, you talk about themes, you talk about things that were important, she kept, she kept encouraging you to go deeper. Go deeper like keep, keep having yourself, have self exploration when you talk about really getting to your ly. And I know there are, you know, everyone listening has seen your your TEDx talk, and it really is this, this heart driven, but yet you have an interesting approach to why. The why is so important. Can you? And I've seen so many of these interviews now, but I I'd love for you to share before we move to Seth, the why piece of when people are hearing this right now, and there's so many people trying to figure out, what the heck do they want to do? Why isn't their business growing? Why isn't their relationships flourishing? Relaunches, you know, health and and there's global relaunches. There's all these. So you feel like you're on the relaunch roller coaster. How can you continue to go back to your why to have kind of that, that guidance of the North Star helping you through it,

a Why is a foundation of a house. It's the one solid piece that is immobile and gives shape to whatever the house is going to be. So when you talk about relaunches or changing things, or, you know, you're talking about renovations, and you can envision a big house or small house, and you can start building a house, it'll take a short time or a long time, or the fashions may change, and you may decide to repaint and do a gut renovation, but the foundations are always going to remain the same, and that's what a Y does. It provides solidity and it provides shape to what the rest of your life will be. And you can build on top of that in any direction you like. What we do is completely subjective and malleable, and what you find is that if it fits neatly on on that cause, on that, why it's more likely to be stable. Just like the house, you can't build smaller than the foundation. You kind of build bigger than the foundation, your house will fall over. So most people start building without a foundation, and what a why does it provide

that solidity? So good, so good. Seth, all right. First off, what is your why? Simon

and I don't always agree on some of the why stuff, so I'm going to leave that to him. I'm going to tell you. You okay, give

me your heart. Give me the heart. Business I

want to talk about, I need to talk about Steve Pressfield for a minute, because resistance is everything, and we're just here to comment on it when I have spent time in places in the world that haven't had all the advantages that we have had, somebody doesn't get to wake up in the morning and say, you know, I don't really feel like threshing the rice today. They don't get to wake up in the morning and say, you know, I don't really feel like walking four miles to go get water from my family. This is what you do because you're close to an edge. And as we have become more and more insulated from survival, we've invented all these stories in our head of apparent risk, not actual risk, but apparent risk. And it's so easy to get tangled up in this internal debate that is all driven by the fear of shipping and the knowledge that we're going to die one day, that we're afraid of being judged, we're afraid of shame, we're afraid of being afraid. And we've built all of this because there are no saber tooth tigers to actually be afraid of. And so I don't spend if I catch myself spending time on this, I say, That's interesting, and then I go back to work, because what a chance we have to be a professional. And if you're getting heart surgery, the surgeon isn't, re checking in with herself about her, what her Why is she is showing up as the best surgeon she can be because she said she would. That's what professionals do. So what's a good day for me? A good day for me is pulling a rabbit out of a hat, solving an interesting problem, making things better for other people. That's not my why, but I like to spend my days doing things that light me up. And in order to do that, I make promises and I keep them, and I'm very careful about the scales of promises. So you know, I got a note a couple weeks ago from a guy who said, I have a coffee truck. I'm in like, Oregon or something, and my vision is I'm gonna be the best coffee provider in the world, and I'm gonna transform the way businesses feed their employees breakfast. And I was like, that's a very big promise for someone with one coffee truck. Why don't we begin with, I'm going to develop a route that has happy customers and is successful enough that I can hire someone else to drive the truck, because you could keep that promise, and then what would be the promise after that one, and the promise after that one, and I don't take for a second for granted what my parents gave me, or the moment in time, and they invented the internet just in time for people with limited attention spans. Oh, fuck me, like me.

Well, how lucky could that be? Like? What would happen if I had been born into a house full of accountants and it was 1842 my eyes would be bleeding from that. So we each have this thing in front of us. Here's what you got here. What are your options are? What are you going to do? Where are your promises? Go? Keep them.

I agree with Seth. I mean, the I think that these are not things that need to be thought about every day at the same time. You know to sets point, which is the life is very much a lottery. You could been born in a war zone right now, or you could be born here. That was the lottery, like you won the life lottery. And the struggles that we get to struggle with, like other other people are making fun of us, and so the one thing you have to do is not feel guilty, be grateful. You have to have gratitude. Boy, am I grateful for the for for the lot that I was given, and now I'm going to do everything I can to not to let that go to waste, you know, because what a tragedy would be to be to win the lottery and then just and then waste it and so and so we don't have to feel guilty that we've been born into this life, but we do have to take advantage and give back. And so I think you'll find this theme common in my work, and that sets work, and probably in all the work of the people that we admire, which is in some way, shape or form, there's a service. You know? You'll hear us talk about business as a given, as a helping somebody else solve their problem, you know, but when, and we get very cynical when we hear people tell us about their what they want to build the biggest, most successful, highest quality, who cares? Nobody cares about you. Yeah, you know, what have you done for me? Because everybody's selfish, and I want the businesses to worry about me, not themselves and and so it's yeah. I'm just Yeah,

well, you know what's interesting? I I'm sitting here and I'm listening, and I again, have read so much about you. I've been following both of you for so long. And I would say something that is really i. All three of us have so much of it is that optimism, right? We look at things a little differently, but there are a lot of people out there that don't, that have a really tough time getting out of their own way. Okay, last but not least, I said this at the beginning about, let's have this be like a Purple Cow type of moment. Seth, what is one question that you would like to ask Simon that you've that you've thought about maybe or haven't, but you are like, okay, he's on the spot right now, and he'd have to answer. And then Simon, you're going to be lucky, because you're going to get to do the same. All right, Seth, you're up.

Oh, Simon, you want to go steady.

I was gonna ask, When can we get together for dinner?

Well, you have to come here and that, you know you the door is open. As soon as you can walk in. You haven't met Murray yet, have you? I don't think you have no, I haven't met yet. Yeah, Murray is the new puppet. Is he here to meet you? Oh, I

mean, you're gonna meet Mark.

All right. I hope your cold feels better. Thank you very good.

Okay, guys, thank you both for being on the rebound.

Thank you so much again.

It was really a pleasure for me, and I know the listeners got a lot out of it. So thank you and I look forward to our paths meeting again in the future.

Appreciate it. Go make a ruckus.

Thanks again, guys,

bye, bye.