The School of Greatness
Simon Sinek: Why FRIENDSHIP Is The Key To Your Abundance & Success
Wed, 23 Apr 2025
Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy!I am so excited to welcome back Simon Sinek who, renowned for his groundbreaking "Start With WHY" concept, reveals how modern capitalism has sacrificed ethics for profit in our increasingly binary world. He shares a raw moment about continuing a business relationship with someone his gut warned him against, costing him years of regret. Simon explains why we crave connection yet sacrifice friendships for success, and breaks down how our biology drives us to serve others—not just chase achievements. His practical conflict resolution strategies offer a refreshing alternative to our culture of comparison, showing how leaders can rebuild trust by protecting their people rather than their bonuses.Simon Sinek’s Optimism CompanySimon’s podcast A Bit of OptimismSimon’s book Start with Why 15th Anniversary Edition: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take ActionSimon’s book Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don'tSimon’s book The Infinite GameIn this episode you will learn:Why competition drives innovation but succeeding at others' expense destroys societyHow modern capitalism broke when companies prioritized shareholders over customers and employeesThe biological reason service to others delivers more lasting happiness than personal achievementA proven conflict resolution method: respond to emotions with emotions, facts with factsWhy lasting success comes from articulating a vision that extends beyond your lifetimeFor more information go to https://www.lewishowes.com/1762For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:Muniba Mazari – greatness.lnk.to/1684SCMark Manson – greatness.lnk.to/1750SCMel Robbins – greatness.lnk.to/1761SC Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy!Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX
Chapter 1: What is the key message about friendship and success?
If you're feeling any frustration, any sadness, any overwhelm, depression, if you're feeling like just, ah, I'm not catching the break, I'm getting sick all the time, I'm not creating the financial opportunities I want, I feel like people are using and abusing me. If this is part of your narrative right now and your reality,
Then I want you to know that in today's episode, we are diving into a topic on how to really create more fulfillment and happiness in your life. I'm bringing on Simon Sinning today, who's one of today's most influential thought leaders. And we're talking about perspective and how obviously comparison is the thief of joy. And social media creates a lot of comparison, feeling like we're not enough.
But how lasting happiness comes from contribution rather than achievement. And why friendship might be the most valuable asset that we're sacrificing in our pursuit of success. And let me tell you something. I have accomplished a lot in my life. And I'm grateful for my accomplishments.
But for part of this time, in my teens and my 20s, when I was accomplishing, I was not happy because I was pursuing something to try to be seen, to try to be accepted, to try to fulfill some wound and mend something from my past and never felt good. It felt momentarily like exciting. But at the end of the day, I went back into sadness and suffering and kind of
frustration and overwhelm and all that stuff. And so we need to be thinking about how can we truly create lasting happiness, lasting joy. And that comes from contribution rather than achievement. Now, let me say this. I love accomplishments. I love achievements. It's fun for me. You know, my new book just came out, Make Money Easy, and it hit the New York Times bestseller list. And I was like,
excited about it. I was like, that's awesome because we put a lot of work into putting it out there and creating the work. And I like accomplishing things. It's a nice validation. But here's the thing. I have gotten to the place where, sure, maybe I would have been let down had I not accomplished the goal I set out to.
But the thing that I'm focused on more is how can I contribute to as many people as possible in the pursuit of the goal, in the the collective effort of the pursuit of goals, dreams, and accomplishments. And if you get both, then amazing.
But if you don't get the goal, if you don't get the dream, if it doesn't happen, the thing you really want, if you don't make the certain amount of money that you want that year, whatever it is, but you're making a difference to a few people, you're contributing to someone's life, that's way more meaningful than accomplishment and feeling like it's not enough.
Accomplishment and success and feeling like you don't really have deep, meaningful relationships. So this is something we're going to be diving into and so much more. And I hope that this is coming to you at the exact right time in your life.
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Chapter 2: Why do people sacrifice friendships for career success?
And I'm very excited about today's guest. So let's go ahead and dive in with Simon Sinek. It seems like the biggest sacrifice most humans are making today is a sacrifice of not having friends for success, for career, for success. greatness, for whatever it is, people pursuing something so passionately for writing their books, for creating their business, whatever it might be.
It's like, well, I'm going to commit for this decade or two decades to being the best I can be. Yeah. At the sacrifice of friends. And at the sacrifice of friends.
All right. Well, that one's different because not a single person, when they achieve the thing that they achieve, will ever, ever, ever say that was worth it. None. Zero. I've talked to so many people who decided grades, career, money. I don't need friends. I just need people who can help me achieve my goals. And the result is loneliness. Yes. I mean, you know this as an athlete, right?
Look at Olympic, look at Olympians, right? Especially individual sports, individual athletes. Team sports, it's not really the same thing. which is they have a dream when they're fairly young and their dream is to, and you know how they put it, win the Olympics. Nobody wins the Olympics, right? That's how I'm gonna win the Olympics, right? And every relationship they have is, can you help me?
Are you gonna help me? And individual athletes, tennis players, I mean, they're very similar. Like every relationship they have is, are you gonna benefit my dream? And if not, then I have no space for you. And they don't really have friendships. They have transactional relationships, coaches, trainers, a supportive parent.
And some of them will get to the Olympics and some of them might even medal. And when it's time to retire, what they achieve is willingness. Michael Phelps becomes the most meddled Olympian of all in history. What's the immediate result?
Loneliness, depression.
Andre Agassi becomes the most celebrated tennis player of all time. What's the immediate result? Loneliness, depression. And none of them will look back and say, oh my God, I think that was worth it. The thing you're celebrated for is fleeting. You'll be forgotten. You'll be replaced. Someone else will be a new up and coming.
You know, I was walking down Avenue of the Stars here in California, here in Los Angeles. And I was reading the names of some of these movie stars. I'd never heard of them. Maybe there's two or three of like- 40 years ago, 30 years ago, whatever they were, right? 40, 50 years ago, whatever they were. These were the Ryan Reynolds of the day. I had never heard of any of them.
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Chapter 3: How do dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin influence our happiness and relationships?
You get the reward for coaching somebody, parenting somebody, supporting somebody, helping somebody, watching them achieve and sharing in their achievement. Right? It's our achievement. And that's why people give thank you speeches. I couldn't have done this without God, my parents, my coaches. They're sharing. They're sharing. The recognition that I can't achieve alone.
And then oxytocin, the magical one, which is unicorns and rainbows, mushy, mushy, love, love, right? And oxytocin comes from many, many reasons, and you can get it many ways. Physical touch gives you oxytocin. But doing something for someone with no expectation of anything in return gives you oxytocin. An act of kindness.
And that's what that guy, the Surgeon General.
That's what he did, the Surgeon General. He does something nice for somebody else with no expectation of anything in return. And he felt good. He felt incredibly good. And the best thing about oxytocin is when you have it in your body, all it does, it makes you wanna be nicer. It's mother nature's way of trying to get us to look after each other.
And so when people don't serve, when they don't give to others, they might be consumed with dopamine, which is exciting. The problem is dopamine is addictive, because you only feel good in the moment of the achievement, which is why the drug, You only feel good when the drug is in your system. And then when it's not in your system, you got to get it. Same with dopamine.
I got to keep moving the goalpost. Okay, I'll feel good when I hit this goalpost. Nope. Move the goalpost. I'll feel good if I make my second million, my third million, my fourth million, this many followers, that many followers, this many hits, that many hits, this many likes. Nope. You'll feel good for a second. It'll pass and you'll have to move the goalpost again.
And the thing that I've learned You should pursue something. You should have some sort of ambition. And I don't care what it is. You define your life however you want to define it. I want to have a family. I want to start my own business. Right? And once you've got there, once you've reached your goalpost, you have to say to yourself, I've won.
I'm not going to move the goalposts anymore because if I keep moving the goalposts, I'm never going to be satisfied.
Then what do you do for the rest of your life if you win the goal early?
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Chapter 4: Why is trusting your gut important and how can self-doubt affect decisions?
Apple used to stand for the individual creative freedom, you know, that's what it stood for. And it didn't like incumbency, status quo, or slow corporate, blah, right? So when Apple started, the thing standing in the way of them advancing their vision was IBM. Well, IBM became a non-thing anymore. And then the thing standing in the way of them becoming their thing was Microsoft.
Hi, I'm a Mac, I'm a PC. But you can see the values remain the same. Great commercials. But the obstacles to them achieving their values, the status quo, the norm, the anti-creativity, they could easily keep changing who the competitor was, but the vision remained the same. What was beyond that competitor remained the same.
It's very tempting to have the competitor, to have the enemy, but not know what's beyond the wall because it's very exciting, right? And so be careful what you wish for because what happens if that enemy goes away and now you're like, and now what? Now what do we do? Right? And you can see it in our nation. We're a nation in clearly not knowing who we are or what we stand for.
We don't know who our competitors are, right? uh where it's not communists versus democracies and capitalists anymore because now it's all a mess right um so that's not it it's something else and you can see in the population people desperately pursuing something to give them the feeling of belonging So on the left or the right of the political aisle.
So whether it's anti-Israel on one side of the political spectrum, it's anti-vax on the other side of the political spectrum, you can see people glomming onto something that is exciting and they get all the feels. They have create community, they create friendship, they have a sense of purpose. They've never felt like this before. They're making friends. They feel like their life matters.
People understand them. They feel understood in their circles. It's amazing. Until it goes away. And then what? And so you can see kind of people bouncing from thing to thing. And none of those things last for very long. I mean, they could be measured in many, many years. They could measure in months or years, but it's not lifetimes.
Like communism versus capitalist democracy, that was generations. That was worthy of going to war. You know? It was also the thing that made the left and the right come together, which is, we hate each other, but we hate that more. Let's stand together against that common enemy. We don't have that anymore. We don't have that anymore. It's all against each other.
It's all against each other, which is how empires fall. Empires fall from within. You know, the empires collapse. It's an act of suicide, not... Yeah. So empires collapse from within, where we go at each other's throats and our enemies are just loving it.
And you can see it now, whether it's the Iranians or the Russians or whoever, North Koreans, whoever is screwing around with our social media, they're not inventing any conflict. They're amplifying the conflicts that exist. They're finding the things that we're at each other's throats for, and they're screwing around on social media to turn the volume way up. They're not creating anything.
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Chapter 5: How can conflict resolution and understanding values improve our interactions?
So what needs to change in order for that to start to take place in big corporations?
We need new leaders. We need new leaders with an ethical compass. We need new leaders who are willing to make change even if the law doesn't require them to make it. We need leaders who use layoffs existentially only and as a last resort, not a first line of defense. We need leaders who build businesses to contribute to society, not just to make money, where we throw out Milton Friedman.
We literally throw him out and say, he was wrong. The purpose of a business is not just to make money within the bounds of the law. The purpose of the business is to contribute to something larger than itself, and if you are good at doing that, you will make lots of money. I like to think of a business like a car, right? We don't buy cars simply so we can buy gas.
That is not the purpose of a car, simply to get more gas, right? The purpose of a car is to go somewhere. And what do you need to make that car go? Gas, money. The purpose of a company is to go somewhere. The purpose of a company is to move a needle, contribute, make my life a little better, a little easier, a little more fun, whatever it is, a little more convenient. I don't care.
Contribute to my life in some way, shape or form, even if it's just to make me smile. And if you can do that, I will give you money and that money will fuel you to do that even more. And the CEO is the person who's sitting in the driver's seat looking out the front window, not the gas pedal, not the gas dial, and going, we're going there.
And the CFO is the one watching the gas dial going, okay, slow down, go faster, move, okay, you're fine. The CEO should be looking out the front door, out the front window. But too often we have CEOs obsessed with the gas dial, the gas gauge, right? And all the people are like, I like where you're going, can I join? Those are called employees. So we've completely forgotten why companies exist.
They're supposed to make life a little better, a little easier, a little more fun, a little more convenient, whatever it is. Right. And the competition is who can do it better.
In a capitalistic way. I always get all riled up whenever I come see you. I like it though. I like it. In a capitalistic society, I've heard you say you need competition. Yes, we like competition.
We like competition because it drives innovation. Makes us better.
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Chapter 6: What are the problems with modern capitalism and shareholder supremacy?
Why can't you just be grateful? Right? Okay, they have more money than you, but your kids are better. Interesting. Like, we don't spend enough time. This is why you have the gratitude practice. It sounds so ooey, gooey, mushy, you know, hippy-dippy.
But I swear, I swear you wake up in the morning or before you go to bed at night, especially if you've got somebody sleeping next to you and just say, can we spend a minute, even if you do it by yourself and just say five things we're grateful for, even if it's the same thing every night. I love our family. I love our home. I loved the dinner you made tonight for us.
I loved that we went on vacation, and I love that we have a vacation coming up. And you realize very quickly life's pretty good. But when we do the comparison game, all we focus on is the things that are missing. Can you imagine going to bed at night and talking about all the things I hate about my life and all the things that are lacking? Exhausting. But we'd all be depressed. Yeah.
And people do it all the time. And we do it all the time. And you know one thing that I've done that's helped me? I have to have Instagram because I need to look at it for work every now and then. I deleted it. On an iPhone, you can hide an app from anywhere on your phone. It's just hidden. And you have to search for it to get it.
And I took it out of the search suggestions, which you can do as well. So literally, it shows up nowhere unless I type in I-N-S-T and then it pops up. My use of Instagram has plummeted. Wow. Plummeted. Plummeted. Because it's just not accessible right now. You know when you're just looking at your phone because you're bored and you're just swiping through the screen and you click on Instagram.
It's just... I'm not clicking on it and I'm not searching for it because I don't need it. Oh, and I've turned off all the notifications. That's a big one. That's great. Yeah, I don't have that. I've turned off all my notifications. But just by not having it visible, I'm the happier person. Wow.
I've thought about a few things in the last few months. I don't know if I want to do them, but I've thought about this. My dad never let us watch the news. And so I don't watch the news today still.
How lucky, how lucky.
But I also don't feel anxious and stressed about like day to day, like this is all happening, the world is collapsing. Like it feels like that when you watch the news to me.
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Chapter 7: How does leadership responsibility impact employee trust and company culture?
And then a few people kind of understood what I was trying to say, Or the things that I was putting out in the world helped me articulate it. And so a bit of iceberg popped out. And people would be like, oh, I can see what you're trying to do here. That's amazing. And then they would help me because they saw what I was trying to build because they saw what was above the ocean.
But what I saw was beneath the ocean constantly. Like, oh, I still have so much more to do. And no matter how much I've accomplished, I've written a few books. I've run the internet lottery more than once, which is amazing. And more of the iceberg shows up. So people now, you kind of know what I stand for. You know the vision I have of the world that I'm trying to build.
You either buy into it or you don't. I'm pretty predictable. In other words, more of the iceberg is showing up. And people look at what's above the ocean line, above the sea line, and they go, wow. look at all this stuff you've accomplished. And I just can still see everything that's beneath the ocean. I go, ugh, still more to do. But I'm not moving the goalposts.
I'm not trying to get a different iceberg. I just know that vision is infinite. All men are created equal. I have a dream. They're all ideals that are unrealistic and unachievable, but will die trying. And that's the point. I imagine a world of world peace where we can resolve conflict peacefully. I'm never going to get it, but try.
I imagine a world in which people wake up every single morning inspired, feel safe wherever they are, and end the day fulfilled by the work that they do. Never going to achieve it, but I'll die trying. And so when I say I've won, what I mean is there's iceberg above the ocean. What I mean is I'm not living in dream world anymore. What I mean is I have momentum. What I mean is I have help.
What I mean is the movement is advancing. And this is my standard. However anybody else wants to define it is up to them. This is the worst thing you can do is pick somebody else's standard and make it your own. This is for me. For me, it was about momentum. It was always about momentum. That I wanted to do something that could survive me.
And if you look at, you know, this class of, and I hate the term, but let's use the term that people use, but thought leaders, right? Which is the mistake that so many of them make is, and I call it the Oprah problem. Right? What's the Oprah problem? Oprah's amazing. She's a force of nature. She's incredible. She's inspiring. She's amazing. We all bow down to Oprah. She's a currency.
You know, and people are like, is that person good at what they do? That's Oprah's person. You're like, oh, whoa. You know, like, if you're connected with Oprah, you've made it. The Oprah mistake, she put her face and name on absolutely everything. She was on the cover of every single issue of Oprah Magazine. She's got her face on the cover of every single book.
So what happens when there's no Oprah? What happens to the company? What happens to the movement? I can predict. It dies. Really? Do you think anyone cares about Oprah Magazine when Oprah's not around? What does Oprah's network stand for without Oprah? Force of nature who did the thing that made strategic sense, which is to leverage the brand. But at what cost?
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Chapter 8: What is the social responsibility of leaders in protecting their teams?
Like I know a guy who does stuff what we do and he is very irreverent. He curses on stage. I mean, he's like, he's raw. That's how he is in private and how he is in public. And his career's great. But I also know he doesn't get invited to certain gigs. Oh, right, right. Because of that. Because of that.
It might get him invited to certain things because of it. It might not get him invited because who knows?
I think the uninvitations happen more than the invitations. Sure, sure, sure. You know? And they just wish he would stop cursing. Right, right. Because the audience doesn't want that. Right. And... If he doesn't care, then he doesn't care. Exactly, yeah. But you know, the point is there are costs. Sure, of course. There's a price. There's a price. There's a price for everything.
100%.
But anyway, the point is not that. The point is the value of friends is that you can be yourself without judgment. Yes.
And that is really important. One of the big takeaways for me from this conversation, I always get a lot of great insights when I'm around you, Simon. We talk about a lot of topics. Yeah, it's beautiful. One of the big insights though, I think the biggest thing for me, which I think everyone can be better at, is learning the skill of conflict resolution. Yeah.
Because- We haven't talked about it much. If you can learn the skill of conflict resolution, we flirted with it. You said the first thing is listening. I think I jumped in and said, you know, learning how to express your feelings as another thing that you were talking about. You mentioned a clear sense of your values, like understanding what are my values so I can communicate my values
without throwing up on everyone. And also be able to listen to someone else and see, okay, is there any middle ground? And I think there's something else you said, which was interesting, which is managing insecurities. Like understanding your insecurities and being able to talk about it either with your friends or in a way where you can manage them.
And maybe it's not good to talk about them right away with certain people when you're in a conflict, but understanding, okay, I'm feeling jealous, I'm feeling insecure, I'm feeling not heard, whatever it might be, I'm feeling a lack. and being able to manage them so that you can hopefully communicate and express what you need to communicate at the right time in the right manner.
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