In this Marketing Over Coffee:

A special conversation with Simon Sinek. We talk about his book: Start with Why

Direct Link to File

Show length 27:13

Marketing Over Coffee is brought to you by our sponsors LInkedIn and Trust Insights

00:30 The book is more about leadership than business

02:19 Having PR lead with a YouTube Video

03:18 Using the “Why” to drive your copywriting home

04:38 How it works for Apple vs. Dell

06:58 The Golden Circle

08:40 Why people go with their gut

10:00 Return to “Manipulating Your Perceptions” – Manipulation vs. Inspiration

12:05 Why most innovation is really just manipulation

13:28 The Discipline of How, Consistency of What, and why you can’t get more authentic

15:15 The Celery Test – Choosing the tactics that will allow you to scale

18:12 The danger of The Split

20:20 Long Before Crossing the Chasm – Everett Rodgers’ Diffusion of Innovation

23:10 Ben’s story and why you shouldn’t waste time watching the competition, use this link to get your own copy of Start with Why.

Check us out on LinkedIn: John and Chris

Sign up for this Podcast in iTunes (and don’t be afraid to give us a review) also add the Gigadial Channel for more Podcasts

Our theme song is called Mellow G by Fonkmasters in the Music Alley from Mevio.

Transcript

Okay, I have processed the text from the PDF. Please find the edited transcript below.

This is Marketing Over Coffee with Christopher Penn and John Wall.

John Wall – 00:18

Good morning. Welcome to Marketing Over Coffee. I’m John Wall. We have a special episode today. I’m talking with author Simon Sinek about his book Start with Why, Simon. So for someone who’s written a business book, you’re uncomfortable with saying that you are in business. Tell us more about that.

Simon Sinek – 00:32

It’s true. For me, this is a cause, this is a movement. We live in a world these days where there is a lot less leadership than I think we need. There was a time not that long ago where you could rattle off the names of leaders—Lou Gerstner, Jack Welch, Lee Iacocca, Vaclav Havel, Lech Walesa, Margaret Thatcher, and Ronald Reagan. These people were all kind of contemporaries. I defy you to name one hand five great leaders that are living today that are contemporary in business or in politics. It’s really hard. And quite frankly, we lack leadership in this world in all segments of our society, especially in business. And I think we need to change that. So for me, this is a crusade, this is a cause.

Simon Sinek – 01:18

And what I understand about great leaders is that they all operate from the center, from this why. They all have clarity of why. Every single business, every single organization, even our careers are based on three things—what we do, how we do it, and why we do it. The problem is most of us are only even aware of two of them: how and what, strategies and tactics. We don’t even have a word in business for the word why. It’s just strategies and tactics. How and what. And so when you’re operating on two pieces of a three-piece puzzle, inherently things are out of balance. Out of balance manifests in multiple ways—obsession with price, obsession with what your competitors are doing, increased levels of stress, loss of passion. It just doesn’t feel the same way it used to.

Simon Sinek – 01:57

This is what happens when there’s a lack of leadership. And so my cause is simply to share that this thing called the why exists, because I know the more people that understand the third piece of this three-piece puzzle, the more businesses, the more organizations, the more careers are in balance, and quite frankly, the better the world gets. So for me, this is very personal. The goal is to share the why with as many people as I can.

John Wall – 02:20

So the very first thing that got me into this was your agent had sent out a list. You know, we get these things all the time. Check out our book. Here’s what we’ve got going on. But you had in the first paragraph, there was a YouTube link. And so I jumped to the video and caught that and that was what kind of reeled me into this. So tell me more about that. Was that, you know, where did that come from and what was the idea behind that?

Simon Sinek – 02:39

Well, it was a great honor to be invited to speak at a TEDx event. You know, it’s a room full of idealists that you get to sort of share your message with. And once we had that video, we realized that it was such a great primer. You know, in 18 minutes you could hear sort of a broad overview of what I speak about and what I talk about. This is a great primer for what’s in the book. And first and foremost, what’s important to me is to share my message, to share this concept of why. And it’s such a great way to do it. So whether it’s to media or to, quite frankly, anybody else, it’s really important to me to share that message, and it’s such an easy way to do it with the link.

John Wall – 03:14

Okay, so the first thing that came to me was how relevant so much of this stuff is for copywriting to really drive the message home and have it stick in a different kind of way.

Simon Sinek – 03:22

Well, I started in the ad business a long time ago and I was always fascinated by how companies of equal size who could hire the same agencies, the same creatives, the same consultants, the same media—why is it that some marketing worked and some marketing didn’t? I mean, I even saw it in my own agency where you could have the same creative team and it would work for one client and not another. Why was that? And so the genesis of the Golden Circle actually started out, me just quite frankly trying to understand why some marketing worked and some marketing didn’t.

Simon Sinek – 03:50

And when you looked at marketing from Apple, Southwest, Harley Davidson, all these great marketers, what I discovered is that the way that the copy, the way it is organized physically on the page, the way the message is communicated is the same and it’s different from everybody else. And it all starts with this concept of why. And all I did was write it down. It wasn’t until somebody started asking me, do you know how the human brain works? Which I didn’t. And they started telling me about the limbic brain and the neocortex and how people make decisions that when I looked a little deeper and started to understand the decision-making biology, did I realize that the biology perfectly overlapped with this little concept of the golden circle.

Simon Sinek – 04:29

So I hadn’t discovered why some marketing works and some marketing doesn’t. I discovered why people do what they do, and that became vastly more profound.

John Wall – 04:36

So if you could give us an example, tell us, you know, explain to us how it works. Well, for Apple, sure.

Simon Sinek – 04:40

Apple is a great marketing example. If Apple were like everyone else, a marketing message would sound like this. They’d start with what they do. They’d tell you how they’re different and how they’re better. And they’d expect some sort of behavior, in this case, a purchase. So if Apple were like everyone else, a marketing message would sound like this: “We make great computers.” That’s what they do. “They’re beautifully designed, simple to use, and user-friendly.” That’s how they do it. “Want to buy one?” Yeah, whatever, right? And that’s the norm. That’s the norm in the world. You know, here’s what we do, here’s how we do it. Here’s our new car. It’s got great gas mileage, tinted windows, leather seats. Here’s how we’re different. How’s we’re better. Choose us. Here’s our law firm. You know, we have the best lawyers.

Simon Sinek – 05:22

“We went to the best schools. We win all of our cases. Choose us.” But here’s how Apple actually does it. Apple starts with why. Everything we do, they say, “We believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently.” The way we challenge the status quo is by making our products beautifully designed, simple to use, and user-friendly. “We just happen to make great computers. Want to buy one?” It’s totally different. And all I did was reverse the order of the information. No trickery, no celebrity endorsements, no manipulations. All I did was reverse the order of the information. What it proves to us is that people don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it. It’s not what you do that matters, it’s why you do it, and this is the reason why.

Simon Sinek – 06:01

Every single person listening to this is perfectly comfortable buying a computer from Apple or an MP3 player from Apple or a DVR from Apple, or a phone from Apple, because it’s not what Apple does, it’s what they believe. And their products prove what they believe. Dell, on the other hand, they’ve defined themselves by what they do, not why they do it. They’ve defined themselves as a computer company, and a few years ago they came out with MP3 players and PDAs. Dell makes good quality products. They’re every little bit qualified to make MP3 players and PDAs, and nobody bought one. Why would we buy an MP3 player from a computer company? It doesn’t make sense, but we do it every day, because it’s not what you do that matters, it’s why you do it.

Simon Sinek – 06:39

And from a copywriting standpoint, to communicate from the why, to start with why talks directly to the part of the brain that controls decision-making. And then people can rationalize it with the product. To do it any other way, quite frankly, is just hard work.

John Wall – 06:52

Okay, so the core idea, the big idea of the book is the Golden Circle. Go ahead and tell me more about that.

Simon Sinek – 06:58

Sure. The Golden Circle is an idea. It’s what it is. It’s an idea. About three and a half, four years ago, I made a discovery that all the great marketers, all the organizations capable of inspiring people, what I discovered is that they all think, act, and communicate the exact same way, and it’s the complete opposite to everybody else. And so whether it’s Apple computers or Harley Davidson or Southwest Airlines, even great leaders like Martin Luther King or Ronald Reagan, what I discovered is that regardless of their size or regardless of their industry, they all think, act, and communicate the same way. And all I did was write that little system down, and that’s what the Golden Circle is. And basically what it is, it’s three levels. Imagine a bullseye. In the middle of the bullseye, the actual bullseye, is the word “why”.

Simon Sinek – 07:41

One ring out is the word “how,” and on the outside ring, the outside of the bullseye is the word “what,” and that’s the golden circle. Every single person and organization on the planet knows what they do, the products they make, the services they offer. Some know how they do it, whether you call it your differentiating value proposition or your proprietary process or your USP, whatever you call it. But very few organizations can clearly state why they do what they do. And by why, I don’t mean to make money or sell products. Those are both results. By why I mean what’s your purpose, what’s your cause, what’s your belief? Why does your organization—why did you get out of bed this morning? And why should anyone care?

Simon Sinek – 08:18

And what I learned was is that while the rest of us think that differentiation happens in talking about what we do and how we’re different, those that are truly great marketers, those that are truly great at communicating and commanding loyal followings, every single one of them, regardless of their size or industry, all starts with why.

John Wall – 08:35

There’s a lot of stuff on decision-making and marketing studies on why we make the decisions we do, why we buy, what we buy, and so much of it comes down to the bottom line is it’s—everyone believes they’re making a rational decision-making process, but in reality they’re going with their gut and they’re justifying their gut all the time.

Simon Sinek – 08:53

And that’s true. You know, the rational part of our brain, the neocortex that corresponds with the what level is responsible for rational and analytical thought and language. The why part of the brain is responsible for all of our feelings like trust and loyalty—the limbic brain, it’s called—and it’s also responsible for all human behavior, all decision-making, and has no capacity for language. In other words, when we tell people what we do, when we try to explain all the added benefits or differentiating value propositions, and yes, people can understand vast amounts of complicated information, it just doesn’t drive behavior. But when you tell people what you believe, when you tell people why you do what you do, you’re talking directly to the part of the brain that controls behavior. And then, as you said, we rationalize those decisions.

Simon Sinek – 09:38

And this, by the way, is where gut decisions come from. Gut decisions don’t happen in your stomach, and you’re not following your heart and you’re not following your soul, and it’s not in your bones. It’s happening in the limbic brain, the part of the brain that controls decision-making but not language, which is why we say of gut decisions, “they just feel right.” That’s not an accident. We use that verb because the part of the brain that controls feeling controls decision-making.

John Wall – 09:59

Right. Rides along with that. Okay, so you have a great section and it’s funny, it kind of tracks some stuff we’ve talked about in the show and even gotten a lot of heat on where we talk about manipulation because it’s really just a matter of language. We joke about the fact that we are manipulating your perceptions, whereas really that can mean exactly the same thing as giving you a convincing argument. That is technically manipulating your perception, but nobody wants to be manipulated. You actually went deep into a bunch of different things of manipulation versus inspiration. If you could talk about that, tell us about what you think there, especially very interested innovation as just a manipulation.

Simon Sinek – 10:39

Sure, there’s only two ways to influence human behavior, which is you can either manipulate it or you can inspire it. Examples of manipulation are things like dropping your price. If you drop your price low enough, people will buy from you. Fear is a great manipulator. Promotions, two for one, free toy inside. Or if you’re in the B2B space, we call it value-added. The principle is the same—giving stuff away for free to drive the behavior. Manipulations work. And what a manipulation does is it’s offering outside motivations, outside drivers to drive a transaction, a single behavior, totally possible to do. The problem is that to drive repeat behavior requires more money and often more stress to come up with new and different manipulations to do it. Inspiration, on the other hand, is completely different, which is those organizations that are capable of inspiring a purchase.

Simon Sinek – 11:27

What’s happening is the person who’s buying isn’t doing it because of some giveaway or some price drop. It’s because they feel like they have to be a part of it. And those organizations that are able to inspire are the ones who charge premiums. They’re more profitable, they are more innovative, and this is where loyalty comes from. And I always talk about, you know, there’s a huge difference between repeat business and loyalty. Repeat business means people do business with you over and over again. Loyalty means they’re willing to turn down a better product, maybe even at a better price, to continue to do business with you, and that only happens when people are inspired.

John Wall – 12:05

Right, right. And then you gave the example of the Motorola, not the Katana, but the phone before that replaced the StarTAC, and how they—could you talk a little bit about that? Because I think that’s a good story.

Simon Sinek – 12:16

Oh, it’s so fascinating. You know, I think it’s so funny, quite frankly, that what organizations think are—it’s the razor. You’re talking about the Motorola RAZR, right?

John Wall – 12:24

Right.

Simon Sinek – 12:24

Yeah. It’s so funny that what organizations think is so innovative is really just features and benefits. You know, they advertise this RAZR as being made of special titanium and being thinner and being like, “Why is that an innovation?” Real innovation changes the course of industries, if not society—the microwave, the fax machine, the light bulb, iTunes, these things changed industries, if not the way we live our lives. Making a phone slightly thinner and making it out of titanium, though wonderful ideas, though wonderful features, didn’t really change anything. And so what Motorola thought was innovation was really just a novelty. And people thought, “Ooh, it’s shiny, it’s pretty. I’ll buy it.” And it boosted their stock price and their sales, and then very shortly, that all dried up.

John Wall – 13:11

Right. And that’s the big thing with all these manipulations. You’re not instilling any loyalty. So as soon as the guy down the street has, you know, two cents less or a little bit shinier phone, that’s it. You lose the business.

Simon Sinek – 13:22

Keeping up with the Joneses, that’s what it’s all about.

John Wall – 13:24

Okay, so obviously why is it a critical component to the whole picture? But there is, you’re saying that for successful businesses, they also need to have the discipline of how and the consistency of what?

Simon Sinek – 13:38

Absolutely.

John Wall – 13:38

So how does all that stuff fit into the why?

Simon Sinek – 13:40

Well, at the end of the day, a why is just a belief. That’s all it is. It’s your purpose, it’s your cause, it’s your belief. It’s this intangible thing. It’s why you do what you do. How’s are the actions we take to realize that belief? Whether you call them your values or your differentiating value proposition or your guiding principles, right. And what’s the results of those actions? The products, the services, our marketing, who we hire, the things we say, the things we do. Now we live in a tangible world. And if it’s not what you do that matters, it’s why you do it and it’s why that drives behavior. No one will know what you believe unless you say and do the things you actually believe.

Simon Sinek – 14:14

This is the idea of consistency, and this is where the concept of authenticity comes from. Quite frankly, I’m sort of a little tired of listening to talking heads talking about the importance of authenticity. You know, people are more likely to do business with the authentic brand. They’re more likely to vote for the authentic candidate. But that’s totally unactionable. How do you go back to your desk and make your work a little more authentic? You know, if you could, please, if you could market this a little more authentically, I’d be very grateful. What authenticity means is the things you say and the things you do. You actually believe that your golden circle is in balance, that what you do and what you say proves what you believe. And the reason it works is because we’re social animals.

Simon Sinek – 14:52

You know, the human being is a social animal, and we’re very good at judging. We get gut feelings on people. And so authenticity is consistency of what? If you’re not saying and doing the things you actually believe, people can quote, unquote, sense it. They can feel it in your gut, in their guts, that you’re just trying to pull one over on them, and that certainly does not inspire. It might drive a transaction, but it certainly doesn’t drive loyalty or repeat behavior.

John Wall – 15:15

Okay, and in the book you talk about the salary test too, which goes with kind of walking the walk talking.

Simon Sinek – 15:20

Oh, absolutely. The salary test is just a metaphor. It’s great to test whether you are truly following your why, making decisions based on your why. Like I said, it’s just a metaphor. So imagine if you’re going to a dinner party, and at the dinner party, somebody you meet says to you, “You know what you need to be implementing in your business? You need to be implementing M&Ms in your business. In this economy, if you’re not implementing M&M’s, I’m telling you’re leaving money on the table.” Somebody else says to you, “Rice milk. It’s all about rice milk.” Somebody else says to you, “Oreo cookies. I made millions by using Oreos. To market my business, you’ve got to use Oreos.” And somebody else says to you, “Celery.” Now, it’s all perfectly good advice from perfectly good people from all legitimate sources.

Simon Sinek – 16:01

The problem is, which advice do you follow? And we go to the supermarket and we buy celery and rice milk and Oreos and M&Ms. We spend a lot of time at the supermarket. We spend a lot of money at the supermarket. We’re not guaranteed to get value out of all of these products. We might get some value out of some of them, who knows? But the worst part is when you’re standing in line with all the products you bought—your celery, your rice milk, your Oreos, your M&Ms—no one can see what you believe. And as we just talked about with authenticity, you have to say and do the things you actually believe so people know what you believe. So there you are, standing in line with all of your products, and no one knows what you stand for.

Simon Sinek – 16:33

No one knows why you do what you do, and they will walk past you. However, if you know your why, things are totally different. Imagine you know your why. Imagine your why is to always be healthy and only do things that protect the integrity and the health of your body. You’re going to get all the same brilliant advice from all the same brilliant experts from all the same brilliant books. The only difference is you’re only going to buy celery and you’re only going to buy rice milk. Those are the only two things that make sense. So you spend less money at the supermarket. You spend less time at the supermarket. So there’s an efficiency play. You’re guaranteed to get value from those products when you’re standing in line in the supermarket.

Simon Sinek – 17:12

Now, everyone can see what you believe because you only bought the things that help you bring your why to life. You only bought the things that help you manifest being healthy—your celery and your rice milk. So somebody walking past can look at you and they can say, “I can see that you believe in being healthy. I can see that you believe in being healthy. So do I. Congratulations. You attracted a customer or a vote or support or a recommendation simply from saying and doing the things that you actually believe.” Here’s the best part.

Simon Sinek – 17:42

You knew, in fact, every single person listening to this, as soon as I said the why, as soon as I said that our why is to be healthy and only protect the integrity of our bodies, every single person listening to this knew that were only going to buy celery and were only going to buy rice milk. That’s called scale. And when an organization can clearly articulate why it does what it does, anyone within the organization knows the decisions to make because they’re the only decisions that make sense, and that’s the power of why is that it’s scalable.

John Wall – 18:12

Right. And so you brought that up, too. There is. You talked about the danger of the split. You know, when organizations reach a certain point, they get too large. Tell us more about that.

Simon Sinek – 18:19

The greatest challenge that any organization has is success. You know, when an organization is small, it’s usually run on the passion and personality of one or a small group of people, and it’s their gut that is making all the decisions. And the few people who join the organization at the beginning are inspired by those people, and they’re inspired to take a ridiculous risk, to quit your job, cut your salary in half, work out of a basement, you know, with a 99% chance of failure, which, you know, small businesses have a very, very high risk chance of failure. And yet we do it because we’re inspired by the passion and all of that.

Simon Sinek – 18:56

The problem is, as the organization grows, as it becomes more successful, then it is impossible for that leader or that small group, that founder, to be in every meeting to make every decision. And as the organization grows even more, even to know every person in the organization. And so the split is when the organization’s why and what they do become separated and they become fixated on making the money and they forgot why and the organization was founded in the first place. And it’s unbelievable to me how many very successful organizations believe that it’s what they are doing and how they were doing it that made them successful. But if you go back in history, it’s actually why they were doing it that inspired everybody. It wasn’t—they weren’t doing any market research. There was no poll data.

Simon Sinek – 19:40

There was no focus groups that they were using to make decisions. That somebody was trusting their gut, but they never extracted that gut feeling. They never extracted that why and put it into the culture. And so the biggest challenge any organization has, quite frankly, is success. And you hear it all the time in successful organizations. The people who were there from the beginning, what do they always say? “It’s not like it used to be. Yeah, it’s not like I remember way back when. It’s not like that anymore. I miss the good old days.” What they’re talking about is not living in basements, making half their salary. What they’re talking about is the feeling they had when they came to work. And as the why goes away, so goes away that feeling.

John Wall – 20:18

We talk a lot about Geoffrey Moore crossing the chasm, and it’s just, it’s great because both Chris and I both have done tech forever, and so we’ve known that forever. And it’s so neat that is playing itself out now in every market. You know, we see the same thing across the board. But you actually turned it up another notch. You talked about Everett Rogers’ book, Diffusion of Innovation, which was done like in the 60s, I guess.

Simon Sinek – 20:37

Yeah, it’s old book, and that’s where Moore took his inspiration from, Everett Rogers.

John Wall – 20:41

Right, right. So tell us more about that.

Simon Sinek – 20:43

What Rogers identified is something called the law of diffusion of innovations. And what it is, very simply, is a bell curve. And if people don’t know the law, they’ve all heard the terminology. The first two and a half percent of our population are our innovators. The next 13.5% of our population are our early adopters. Moving from the left side of the bell to the right side, the next 34% are the early majority, then the next 34% are your late majority, and the last 16% are your laggards. And I always like to joke—you know, the laggards are the people—the only reason they buy touch-tone phones is because you can’t buy rotary phones anymore. That’s a laggard. And what the law of diffusion tells us is that you cannot achieve mass market success.

Simon Sinek – 21:24

You cannot achieve sort of the majority of people to buy into your idea or your product until you’ve achieved between 15% and 18% market penetration. That’s the tipping point. And the reason is because the early majority, that 34%, will not try something until someone else has tried it first. It’s the innovators and the early adopters that are comfortable trusting their guts, making intuitive gut decisions. They’re the ones who spent 40 and 50,000 dollars on flat-screen TVs when they first came out, even though the technology was substandard. They were the ones who stood in line to buy iPhones when they first came out for six hours, when you could have just walked into the store the following week and bought one off the shelf. It had nothing to do with the quality of the technology. It had to do with who they were.

Simon Sinek – 22:06

They wanted to be first. That’s early adopter behavior, where the majority is a little more practical. They do care about things like price and quality. So if you have to achieve between 15% and 18% market penetration for the system to tip, that means you have to talk to the early adopters and the innovators first. Now, anybody who’s—even if they get it all wrong, they’re going to get about 10% loyal. We all have about 10% loyal customers or 10% loyal employees. And I love to talk to companies when I talk about their conversion on new business, and they love to say, “Oh, we do about 11% conversion version.” They say proudly, you can trip over 10%. I mean, that’s sort of the law of averages.

Simon Sinek – 22:43

And it’s that next few percent, that 5% to 8%, that what Geoffrey Moore calls the chasm, which is, how do you get that tipping point away from the 10% of the early adopters all the way up to something that can tip? And the way you do it is by talking about why you do what you do, because when you talk about what you believe, you attract people who believe what you believe. You attract people who are willing to take a risk, pay a premium for no other reason than because it’s about them, not about you. And then eventually everyone else will follow again.

John Wall – 23:12

Longtime listeners know I am a sucker for the human interest story, but you had a tale about Ben Komen, this guy Ben Komen, and it actually illustrates competition and not having to worry about your competition. So if you could tell us about—

Simon Sinek – 23:24

That Ben offers an amazing lesson to us. Ben Komen, when he was in high school, was on the track team. This doesn’t sound particularly profound, but for the fact that Ben has cerebral palsy, and for those who know about cerebral palsy, it’s when your muscles are withered and your joints are weak and your bones are brittle and your balance is poor. And a young kid with cerebral palsy doesn’t often find himself on the high school track team. And Ben never, ever won a race, and when he would run, he would fall over a lot, and he would eventually cross the finish line muddied and bloody and bruised and exhausted. And when everyone else finished their race in 21 minutes, Ben finished his in 45.

Simon Sinek – 24:08

Now, what’s profound about Ben’s moral is this is not a story about when the going gets tough, the tough gets going. This is not a story about when you fall over, you pick yourself back up. Those are great morals, don’t get me wrong, but we can learn those from some Olympic athlete who breaks their leg and three months later comes back and wins a gold medal. That’s all wonderful. Ben’s lesson is vastly more profound, because, you see, after 21 minutes, something happens. After 21 minutes, when everyone else has finished their race, they all come back and run with Ben. And Ben’s the only runner that when he falls over, someone else helps him up. And Ben’s the only runner that when he crosses the finish line, there’s a hundred people running behind him.

Simon Sinek – 24:46

What Ben teaches us is that if we wake up every day to compete against everybody else, no one wants to help us. But if we wake up every day to compete against ourselves, everyone wants to help us. Olympic athletes don’t want to help each other, it’s because they compete against each other. And if you look at the worst companies, the ones that struggle, the ones where marketing is difficult, the ones that are constantly worried about their own differentiation, they are obsessed with what their competitors are doing, and they’re less obsessed with what they are doing. And if you look at the great marketing organizations, the Apple computers, the Southwest Airlines, they are obsessed with what they are doing. They know exactly why they’re in business.

Simon Sinek – 25:23

And you can either jump on the train or jump off, and they tend to vastly more ignore their competition. You know, from a business perspective, Apple is a—is a smaller company than Microsoft, much smaller. From a business perspective, Apple offers no threat to Microsoft. However, why is it that everybody at Microsoft wakes up every day and worries what Apple’s doing, and Apple wakes up every day and doesn’t really care what Microsoft is doing is because one has defined themselves by why they do what they do, and their train is moving fast and they’re going with you, without you. And the other one has become a software company that is now worried about what everybody else thinks about them and what everybody else is doing.

Simon Sinek – 25:56

And so really, the key to great marketing is to compete against yourself and make your own work better than it was six months ago, and work to make it even better six months from now, and don’t worry about everybody else.

John Wall – 26:07

All right, so the book available, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, all the regular places. But you do have it on your website also, correct?

Simon Sinek – 26:13

Absolutely.

John Wall – 26:14

I know we can get the website.

Simon Sinek – 26:15

Startwithwhy.com, w-h-y.

John Wall – 26:17

All right, that’s great. And then the TEDx presentation, we’ll have that. I’ll have a link to that in the Show Notes, but you can just go to YouTube, look up Simon Sinek S-I-N-E-K and that’ll come up over there. All right, Simon, thanks for spending time with us today.

Simon Sinek – 26:31

Thank you very much, and thanks for helping me share the wine.