Simon Sinek: How To Find Your 'Why?' In 15 Minutes

I've got a lot of things running through my head right the biggest one is this this fear that I'm not sure I'm going to be able to find my why because I'm 44 um and I've lived quite a sort of um like a transient life so I lived in the countryside messed up my exams at school and went straight into working in television so then I was only young so I was just trying to make my mind and I thought my why I guess I would have said at that time is just be great in

TV then I ended up on on television working on kids TV and again it was just about being all in in that period because it was quite intense and then I was only in my mid 20s when I got the chance to present Formula 1 for the BBC in the UK which doesn't happen to people of that age normally so it was all into that world like the the kids TV World kind of was left behind straight away and that's all I did and then I quite like taking risks so I walked away from that

after four years and got a job as a football presenter and I've just walked away from doing that after 10 years and I and like when you say ask your best friend like I don't think I have one which is a strange thing to admit when you're 44 but the life I've lived means I've just gone from sort of in intense work to intense work and I love what I've done but now I'm like what what is why why have I done it okay so did you have a childhood yes okay good so you have

a why we're good there okay so let's do a little let's have a little fun way don't we okay okay tell me a specific story is something you've done at any point in your career could have been an F1 it could have been football it doesn't matter as a TV presenter for children's television I don't care tell me a specific story of something you were part of or something you did that you absolutely loved and if every day was like this day or if every project was like this project you would be the happiest person

alive so can I just jump in here and ask why is that an important question to ask now siren let's let's let's talk about it at the end okay um oh that's a good one I think I would I would probably plump for standing in the pit Lane for my first ever Formula 1 grand prix okay and it meant a lot to me because I was working on kids Telly and at that time people on children's BBC didn't get the chance to go and work in sports broadcasting and I'd only had a meeting maybe about

a year before um where I told the story to the head of sort of talent for BBC sport M I had a meeting with her cuz I wanted to be a sports presenter and she said well what are your qualifications and I kind of jokingly said well I got e andu for my a levels hahaha to a Stern response from her and then she said what about sport you played to a professional level and again I said well I played one game for the school football team ha and it she said to me these are

the exact words BBC sport don't employ people like you so I was like wow okay and it felt like a shut door so then it was about finding a different way which meant I spoke to a friend who worked in the football department and I said just give me an opportunity and I used to go and travel to like third and fourth division football matches with an icdn kit for about1 a game and it felt difficult because when you're on kids Telly you get a false sense of like your standing in the media because you

go out and like kids are getting excited because you're there or you do an event and it's like hundreds of screaming children you're like wow this is awesome and then suddenly you're like like just doing little bits of reporting and I remember feeling this hit on my back and I remember turning around and these young like 17y olds had thrown like a meat pie at me it hit me on the back and they' gone kids TV wanker and I was like this is like is this really going to lead to anything so then when I

finally got the opportunity to to do the Formula 1 job and they offered me a one-year deal with a very very very small increase in what I was earning which would have been an awful lot less than the person doing it before but they knew I wasn't going to say no and then they said the audience will decide in 10 seconds whether you are worthy of this job or not I remember standing in the pit Lane and I just felt alive I was like now now you'll see like I'll show you and I I get

goosebumps you I get that now and I think of that moment you know and you're very cut off you're wearing ear pieces like ear Defenders cuz the cars are loud you're maybe two kilometers from the production crew you're listening to them down your ears you're working with a 13 time Formula 1 winner David kard a multi- multi-millionaire team boss in the shape of Edie Jordan and you're a 28-year old lad from Norwich who messed up his exams that for me is a moment where I go wow like that was kind of cool tell me a

so let me ask one quick question first which is you stood in the pit Lane many many times since then yeah what was it about that one that like is the reason you want to tell me about it now I think because it felt like the ultimate test and it was either I knew it was either going to be everything or nothing based on what happened okay in that you know maybe the first 10 minutes the first 15 minutes and you know it's easy to mess your words up in that moment sure tell me uh

an early specific happy childhood memory not like we went to my grandparents every weekend something specific that I can relive with you like it's a film um waking up in the back of the car with the sun coming through the window didn't have much money we only ever went camping as a kid and that feeling of you've been carried into the car by your mom and dad and I but tell me a specific one specific time um I would have been about 8 years old we were heading towards France and I opened my eyes and

my mom was there and I remember her leaning across and scratching the back of my dad's neck to keep him awake cuz he was tired and she passed me an apple and I ate the apple and I looked across my brother and sister in the car and of all of the magical things you did as a kid all the lovely memories what was it about this one that you're choosing to tell me about it now um just total con like just us five like just real connection to my parents and my brother and sister you

had connections with your parents every time you went camping in the car and you know I want one that stands out one that sort of CH happy CH man you can keep going down this road that's fine but I want to know you had that experience of sitting in the back of the car your mom probably trying to keep your dad awake you know was there something in particular about this one or is that just one you found to try and capture the general the general memory um I think it was because my parents were

really busy so my dad used my dad was a charity worker but also was doing a degree while we were kids my mom was a full-time teacher MH so there wasn't loads of like we weren't a family that did loads of stuff actually mom and dad were like they worked basically and then the weekends were a list of jobs Saturday and Sunday and they're still like that even now in their 70s they just have you go in the house they have a list of jobs all the time and I think it was just like that

was gone and it was just we were just together at those moments so that's why that stands out far more than being at home really like I wouldn't really pick up on anything so it's the the the joy of going on the adventure with the family yeah or maybe two people who are more adult than you yeah yeah kind of like the Formula 1 example yes right so those stories are very very similar which is wasn't you standing by yourself in the pit Lane right it was you said it was these two people that you're

standing with you know a race car driver and a and a multimillionaire team owner you know kind of like Mom and Dad you know a charity worker and a teacher who are highly qualified people but in that moment you're just a family and you're a part of that family and you may be the youngest least qualified person but you're still a part of the family yeah and uh those those two are exactly the same story that incredible sense of like oh my God like this is it I love this I'm in the car with them

yeah you know this is this is it and everybody's relaxed and we're enjoying ourselves and I'm I'm a part of this you know and they see me as equal yeah yeah you know they didn't look down on me and you said I feel like I've arrived you feel like I'm here but it was also that they treated you that way yeah you know and so your why is very much your why is is very much about um um feeling a part of the family feeling a part of the team um and I would venture to

say that you're at your happiest when you are working with people in common cause to do something together and where you struggle is when you're asked to do things alone yeah absolutely I mean you know no longer being a football presenter and focusing on high performance is that's exactly what you're describing basically yeah you know when you're a football presenter you're working with a load of sort of former footballers and a load of producers and VT editors and everything but you're kind of it's a very it's a lonely thing you're the you're the only presenter

right what I love about high performance is this sense of all of us whether it's myself and Damen the production team anyone this is just like what can we all do together to have these kinds of conversations to help the person on the other end of this podcast or watching this somewhere and it wasn't about the destination it was about the journey which is I don't even know where you were camping when you said it was about what you brought up as being in the car yeah and I I would say that it's being in

the studio or being in the pit Lane like it's being somewhere with the quote unquote family and her family now is a variable right people you love and who love you and you're going to do this together and even if you don't know them very well they're going to treat you like all right we're all in this together we're all going to the same place how do we work together as opposed to against each other you know very often teams the the the the players on teams will work against each other because I want them

to notice I want the producer to notice me yeah I want I I don't care about you in fact I'm going to put you down so that I get the promotion or I get the better billing you know so that flies in the face of everything I think exactly everything exactly and we're we're here it's just a group of people with different points of view in common cause basically go back to that analogy right so now we can go back to our Brian dating story when somebody says what do you do well I have a

podcast called high performance I'm a co-host blah okay that's what you do unless somebody wants to be on your podcast or produces podcast it's not that interesting um but now you have a story of love and you can talk about either one you can talk about the formula one story or you can talk about your childhood story it doesn't matter and so when somebody says what do you do you be like it's a funny story when I was a kid maybe eight years old I remember we went on a trip and my mother was always

busy she was a teacher my dad was always busy was a charity worker and here we were as a family going somewhere together and I just remember that intense magical feeling of being a part of the family because when we weren't in the car going on camping it was just work it was just lists of things to do it was just getting work and here we were now this is the time I felt like a family and if I look at all the times I've been happiest through my whole career and I can I can

I can point to all those uh times there was always a sense of a group of people in a in a in a proverbial you know sort of in a in a metaphorical car on a team where we felt like a family going in a common Direction trying to achieve something together and I love being a part of that and the amazing thing now is I love what I do now because now I'm on the Pod this podcast and I'm not the host I'm a co-host and now I might be sitting in the front seat

I might be the mom and dad and we've got all these young kids coming with us and we're going to go on this journey together and try and learn things together and it's the same magical feeling I had when I was a kid in that car I love that thank you so much so it turns out you do have a y so it seems can we explore what you've just done there s CU that's incredibly powerful just to Bear witness to it I'm interested in why did you choose to go to an childhood memory and

then a professional memory just explain that for anyone listening that might want to be ask themselves those questions so it's about pattern recognition right human beings are we a why is this deep-seated thing inside us that drives us and which means there's some consistency you do not remember all the experiences you had as a child you remember the ones that matter to you right you remember the ones that stand out in other words your brain keeps those because for some reason they're connected to you so for example you know on our website um uh like

we have a YC Discovery product and what it'll do is it'll take you through your whole life It'll ask you tons of questions about your childhood I'll ask you about your early career your middle career because if you're doing it with someone or or for yourself it you want lots and lots and lots of data points so you can find those patterns I'm just really really practiced I've been doing it for a while so I can do it with fewer examples I know what I'm looking for but that's basically what I'm looking for I'm looking

for common examples um I'm looking for connections and patterns and I'm listening to language and I'm finding the the analogies and as soon as I see a thread what I started doing when I was thinking out loud is I'm now trying to describe the thread and I'm actually paying attention to how you feel so when you said oh I'm getting Goosebumps now when I talk about the story I'm like okay this matters to him right he's having an emotional response um and I'm just watching him while I'm talking about it and he's nodding or he's

going to winse me okay I'm off I'm off track because I don't actually care what you think I wonder to know how you feel as I'm trying to describe back and mirror back to you what I think I heard um so it's it's just pattern recognition is all it is right it's incredibly powerful and and and the reason it needs an outsider to do it I couldn't do it for myself yeah right is because you have no objectivity object ity on yourself right and you'll see patterns that don't exist you need somebody who doesn't that's

why that other example said don't do it with family because they know you too well yeah right um um and they'll start filling the gaps for you as opposed to being as objective as possible um so it's much easier when you do it for a friend hey guys it's Jake K listen before you go please do me just one favor hit subscribe it makes such a difference to us the more subscribers we get then the bigger the channel becomes the bigger the channel becomes the bigger the names we can attract and the more impact we

can have for you so thanks for watching and please subscribe right now