AI Can Do Everything… Except This (Why Humans Still Win) With Restaurateur Will Guidara

23:56Simon Sinek:But you are one of the most profitable fine dining restaurants in the world, not just number one, because of unreasonable hospitality, right? For sure. And when we say what gets measured gets managed or what gets measured gets done, That's 100 % true when we're talking about systems and processes and things like that. But you cannot apply mechanical thinking to a human being, right? It's the same reason you can level load a factory, but you can't level load people. You're like, well, if they're working a 50-hour work week, how do we get them to work 50 hours? Can we restrict bathroom breaks? Can we intravenously feed them?

24:35Simon Sinek:you know in no more water cooler chat by the way there might be some people who listen to your podcast that will actually be inspired by what you just said this is a PSA, that was a joke it was sarcasm but that's my point which is technologists always forget that people will always be people I remember in the rising days of internet and e-commerce this is the death of bricks and mortar now I understand the economic challenges of a bricks and mortar trying to compete with an online pricing and an online delivery. I get that. But that's a different conversation, right? That's an economic and supply chain challenge, right?

25:15Simon Sinek:But people still like going shopping because at the end of the day, we're hunter-gatherers. And we like going to stores, not for everything, but for a lot of things. And retail isn't going away. They're just finding new ways to remain profitable in this changing world. But I will say that if you look at the brick and mortars that really struggled, they were the ones that never cared about actually delivering the kind of experience that sparked joy for those that walked in. Because the reality is, if going to a physical store is just a utility, then yeah, do it online. Then use the internet. It's the ones that were like, hey, no, I don't want to go online because I really enjoy going there.

25:55Simon Sinek:And you can tell who trains their employees that way. Because when you feel like they basically are bots, you know there's places where you literally feel like you're annoying someone by trying to shop at the store oh I'm thinking of a store right now where I went and I'm like do you have these in you know whatever it was and they went yeah over there and then went back to their work and I'm like I don't know where there is there's like four places that could be and the stuff wasn't there I went to a store recently the same exact thing happened and I just went on Amazon while I was in the store and bought it instead and walked out and walked out I've had experience is where I'm so enjoying the person who's helping me that I literally look online and it's cheaper and I'm like, and I buy it there because I like.

26:41Simon Sinek:And you want to reward cultures that show up in the world in that way. Maybe you and I are unusual. I think there's more. Yeah, I mean, I don't want to presume everyone's like us, but I'm sure. I just need to share it with people that this is how we actually have conversations. Whether we're being recorded or not. Whether we're being recorded or not. Like this is the way we actually talk. We interrupt each other more. We're being polite. We're trying to interrupt a little bit less. We're not doing a great job. We interrupt each other less, but we actually would have this conversation without cameras.

27:12Simon Sinek:100%. The other area this applies to is marketing, and I see this all the time. You can see that. I remember back in the day, we did a lot of brand partnerships, and the question that drives me crazy whenever I'd go to someone with an idea was, okay, how many social media impressions are we going to get out of this? And that is how, still to this day, a lot of brands are deciding where to invest their money is based on how many social media impressions they're going to get. Now, why? Because that is the easiest thing to measure. What will the impact be on how much people love their brand for having done that thing?

27:54It's much, much harder to measure. So they take the easy way out, which is also the thing that is the most meaningless. in terms of people's love for that brand. I'll give you an example. When we did EMP Summer House in the Hamptons, we closed 11 Madison Park to renovate and we moved the restaurant for three months to the Hamptons. We needed a sponsor to do that because the whole point of it was 11 Madison was what it was because of my team. I could not lose them. So I had to move 120 people to the Hamptons for the summer, which meant housing for 130 people in one of the most expensive places on earth.

28:29So I had the idea to go to American Express and say, hey, will you sponsor this? This is how much money I need from you. And what I'll do is I will only accept American Express cards and cash, but no other credit cards. And I had to go through meeting after meeting after meeting with all these people, more junior in the company, and they were ready to say no because they didn't think they were getting in enough clicks. They couldn't figure out a way to measure it. Thankfully, I had a relationship with someone at the top. I ended up just going to him instead. He greenlit it. They had more people in the Hamptons sign up for an American Express card that summer than ever before.

29:08It was one of their best investments ever, and now they're doing stuff like that all the time. But it takes someone with creative vision who's able to look at things over the long term, who's less concerned with the short term. Which, by the way, is not necessarily even a testament to the people I was talking to before. It's a testament to how their compensation was structured. 100%. Like they can only operate within the confidence of how.

29:36Simon Sinek:I see it with advertisers who want to come for this show. It goes through some agency because nobody does it themselves. They all use agencies. The agencies are all compensated based on just clicks. And they'll compare me to some other podcast that does more clicky-baity stuff that maybe has more listeners. And they're just not interested. They don't think about the brand halo. They don't think about creating things Or the people that are actually listening. So yeah, I mean, I see it in publishing, where to get a book deal these days, the first thing they're going to do is look at your social media following.

30:07Simon Sinek:In other words, they're looking at the quality of your idea after they're looking at your social media following. How many follows do you have? I mean, it's embarrassing, right? Your work and my work. I'm very open about the fact that most companies do not use my work. Most companies, even if they know about it, don't care about starting with Y. They don't care about the infinite game. Like most companies do not use my work. And I know the reason why. It's because my work, like your work, is much more akin to exercise, right? If you work out every single day for 20 minutes, 100 % of people will get into shape.

30:46Simon Sinek:Yes. 100%. Yeah. Can I take a day off? Yes, you can. How many days can I take off? I don't know. Not too many, right? But if you work out every day for 20 minutes, 100 % of people will get into shape. But here's the problem. when i don't know and neither does any doctor yes but if you trust in the process if you have faith and the data proves it out then just stick with it and it will work your work is the same my work is the same and the reason most companies are not interested in my work is i cannot guarantee that the result that you want to happen will happen on the day of your financial year yeah will happen as quickly as you want it to or need it to based on whatever it may yeah but because I can't promise, and I'm going to tell you, you're going to have to stick with it regardless.

31:31Simon Sinek:Their incentive structure disincentivizes them to do what is the right thing for their business. And I know this because my entire career, your entire career, we are both guinea pigs and experiments we did on ourselves for our own ideas. And we were disciplined. And we did that, that believed in the process in the 20 minutes every day. We didn't know when it would work or when it would pop. But for both of us, we believed in it enough that we've made guinea pigs out of ourselves. Like if you want proof, here you go. I built my brand with a zero marketing budget to prove that if you learn to start with why and you obey the law of diffusion of innovations and you focus on the early adopters and the way you talk to early adopters is by starting with why, that is the way you talk to an early adopter, that at some point a tipping point will happen.

32:19Simon Sinek:and I literally when I started in the early days I restarted my business I reset I closed my office the whole thing I started from scratch because I wanted to prove the idea could work and I did it without any marketing budget and it worked not because I'm smarter not because the timing was lucky it's because I did the thing you stuck with it I stuck with it and there were days that were hard but the discipline to turn down the wrong customers the wrong clients who weren't early adopters and say yes to lower paying clients who were the right I did those things. You know? I did those things. And people say to me now, oh, but you can afford to turn down business.

32:55Simon Sinek:No, no, no. I was turning down business when I couldn't afford to. Yeah, I can afford to turn down business now. Yeah. But I was turning down business when I couldn't afford to because I needed to prove the point. Yeah. I mean, by the way, with marketing, that's why I think the overlap between our stuff is, it's very different and it's very similar. I've never spent any money on marketing ever because I just think if you spend all that money on just being relentlessly gracious with the people you serve, creating memories and giving them stories to share, one day you're going to wake up and you have legions of ambassadors out there in the world doing your marketing on your behalf far better than you could ever do it yourself.

33:36But...

33:37Simon Sinek:I mean, I'm not anti-marketing, but I also know that companies that are built solely with sale, sale, sale, promotion, promotion, promotion, the minute you stop that, the minute you turn that off, The business disappears. The good part about marketing is you do something. A lot of people see it right away. Yeah. What we're talking about, it just takes a lot more time to trickle out into the world. And I think you can, I think smart companies know that you can do both. Yeah. The dumb companies ignore the one because they, you know, they get the hit from the ad. Yeah. Let me change tax on you entirely.

34:07Simon Sinek:Okay. I wanted to share just a funny theory. Okay. That I was telling your wife yesterday and she said, you have to tell Will. I firmly believe that grades should be given as a ratio, not as an absolute. So it should be the level of accomplishment, A, B, C, D, over the number of hours you studied. By the way, as I'm listening to this, I'm trying to figure out why my... Before I even hear what you say, I'm like, my wife told you to tell this to me. and that's either a display of praise or insult from her. I know which one it is because we talked about it and we'll get there. I'm just doing it on camera.

34:53Simon Sinek:This is a private conversation that I'm going to do on camera. Anyway, so the grades to be given as a ratio, right? And that way you know much more about the kind of person, right? So if you need somebody who does a work and you're willing to give them 50 hours to do it, hire that person. If you need somebody who can work well under pressure, but you're not going to get A work, you'll get B plus work, then hire the other person. So my friends in college, one friend I'm thinking of, he was an A over 50. He's a straight A student. He worked his brains out. I was a B plus over three.

35:30Simon Sinek:Occasionally an A minus. But a solid B plus over three was me. Less investment. Pretty good results. Okay, but so now that's just from a hiring standpoint. Now let's think of it as a lifestyle, right? Now let's leave college alone and let's come into the real world, right? Which is, because I've stressed out about like, is my work good enough? Am I doing well enough? And then I realized, hold on, I'm actually very comfortable with a B plus. You know why? Because I worked three hours. And like there's, I've accepted this, that there's always gonna be people who are gonna make more money than me, sell more books than me.

36:05Simon Sinek:Like I know a guy, he sells an insane number of books. I also know he works his freaking brains out. I do well. Like my books are good. Solid A minus work. Yes. You know? I didn't do 50. And so the reason I bring this up is because I think because there's no ratio, the only thing we have to judge each other or worse, judge ourselves, is the first number. so we compare how much money we make how many followers we've got all of the very simple to to measure metrics easier to measure easier to measure and so what ends up happening is people either work extremely hard to chase those metrics followers clicks likes revenue whatever it is right or worse they're comparing their actual worth their own self-worth to somebody whose numbers are higher yeah until you add the ratio yes i was always very stressed out with people who my peers who like they're making bigger deals they're making more money their their social media following is bigger than mine i was always intimidated by it and and i beat myself up i'm not good enough i'm not smart enough i don't have the work ethic they have and that's when it occurred to me hold on that their a's over 50 and i'm a b plus over three i'm very happy with my b plus in the world.

37:29Simon Sinek:And the difference is, I really like my life. I really like my lifestyle. And if I wanted to change, and again, there's no judgment. That's really important to say, I do not judge the A over 50s. If that's the life you choose, so long as you're happy with it, go forth. But my point is, is without the ratio, we only judge our value and our worth by the level of accomplishment, but not the lifestyle we're living to get there. So if you want to have an amazing relationship with your kids, an amazing relationship with your spouse, if you want to go on vacations, if you want to have hobbies, odds are you're going to have to do B plus A minus work for the rest of your life.

38:05Simon Sinek:And if you're okay with that, that sounds like a banging good life to me. I mean, I was talking, by the way, I'm still not sure. Does my wife think I work too much or not enough? Do you want me to answer the question? You set a goal for yourself, an aggressive goal, let's call it an A. Yes. You know, and I know what your goals are and you know what your goals are. Yes. And you worked 50 hours to get your A and you got your A. Yeah. And now the question is, is why are you still working 50 hours if you got your A? That's where that came from. I was really hoping it was going to be that I was a slacker.

38:43I'm an A over 50.

38:44Simon Sinek:You're an A over 50. And there's nothing wrong with being an A over 50. But if you keep moving the goalposts and it's the same, it's the equivalent of I'm going to make a million dollars i'm gonna make two million dollars i will only be happy if and then you keep moving the goal posts then you're gonna spend your life chasing a's and always working 50s i mean at some point you have to be like i did that and now a b plus over three is the life i want to live again these are lifestyle choices yeah there's no judgment there's no right or wrong these are lifestyle choices and the only reason i wanted to bring it up is because i myself has suffered the extreme stress of let's call it chasing the grade or not even chasing it being intimidated that i was incapable of getting the grade when i could compare myself to people who were outperforming me on every metric until i recognized that my life was different and i was okay with that yeah i think the listen there's a couple things that this is i'll add one more thing which makes it even worse.

39:43For me?

39:44Simon Sinek:No, in general. Oh, she also told me to tell you that she wants a divorce. Sorry, sorry, I forgot that bit. Sorry, sorry, sorry, I forgot. My bad. Bury the lead, sorry.

40:01She wanted to do that on your podcast. Yeah, she wanted me to tell you on the podcast. That's cool.

40:07Simon Sinek:The other thing is, which is the worst part and the most insidious part about the A over 50 mentality is we pick our own metrics. Let's just compare you and me, right? Just for fun. If metrics is book sales, right? You blow me out of the water. Like the speed at which your book has achieved book sales. I mean, if I only look at my momentum in books and I look at your momentum in books at any time in my own career, I will feel nothing but dejected and lesser than and incapable if that's the metric I compare with you. But if I look at my social media following and compare it to yours, I'm a freaking rock star.

40:49Simon Sinek:Then you're the winner. And then I'm the winner. So the problem is, is we pick our own metrics. So you can be a hero or zero no matter which metric you want to choose compared to somebody else. And that's the problem. The A that you're chasing is sometimes arbitrary. And by the way, this is true for companies as well. Are you chasing revenues or profit or market share or price of your stock? Yeah. Your equity price? Like, or longevity? Over what time period? Like, those A's are very largely arbitrary. And so you either have a hero complex, which is also stupid, or you have a zero complex. The ratio solves all of those things.

41:28Simon Sinek:Yeah. I think everything that you're saying, there's a couple things that it's making me think. One, it's funny how we've talked about three different things, and they all boil down to one idea, which is how the things that are harder to measure seem to matter more. Yes. Which is just interesting, right? Like everything that goes into the grade is easy to measure. B plus over three. The thing that's not implicitly stated or not explicitly stated is what's happening with the other 47. and that's time that's being invested into things that are harder to measure. But if we actually look through what is on that list, those are the things that matter the most.

42:16Simon Sinek:And it helps reconfigure, right? Because if you're doing C minus over 50, if you're doing C minus over 50, then either you're in the wrong job, like your talent's not being leveraged, or you have to change the way in which you're working. right so again if you're doing c plus work and you're working your brains out you can understand you're not dumb yeah the ratio helps you understand where the configuration needs to be because if you have that level of work ethic you should be doing good work be and above yeah that's why both metrics matter level of accomplishment still matters it's still an indicator right but i think you're right i think the very interesting thing that we're talking about here is the stuff that doesn't get measured seems more important for the long term.

43:02Simon Sinek:By the way, in work and in life. In work and in life. Unreasonable hospitality and what I'm talking about are, yeah, they're the same thing. It almost makes me like, it's almost like everyone should be doing an audit of themselves. Yeah. Are you investing too much of your time into things that are too easy to measure? And if you are, you might be missing out on some of the best things that life has to offer. Beautifully put. And by the way, you can change. If you want to start your career, because I definitely started. When I was trying to prove my point that the Golden Circle worked out on the road doing all my speaking engagements, I joke that one year I was in my apartment for one full week once the entire year.

43:47Simon Sinek:Was that the best year of my career or the worst year of my career? I knew that I was working. I had the 50. But then I chose to change. Neither of them are absolute. their choices, then you can adapt over the course of a life. Like if you have a family, that maybe it's okay to make less money. Maybe it's okay to get the promotion slower. Like maybe that's okay. And it's also okay to work nonstop for measures as well. Like that's the one thing when you see some of these people on Instagram and they're very successful, wealthy people later in life and they're like you got to take more time to relax and it's like okay hold on what were you doing in your 20s yeah exactly and when you actually get to know them a little bit they were a over 150 right like every single week working non-stop and they earned the right to have that kind of privilege yeah and so the point i think is there's not a wrong way so long as you're aware of what's happening it's not a wrong way it's information yeah you know if we say what gets measured gets done what gets uh what gets measured gets managed yeah then if you only have half a metric yes if you only have um you need a little more information a little of accomplishment but you don't have the the ratio it's an incomplete metric and so if we say what gets measured gets done and what do i do those other 47 hours oh my goodness i went to movies yeah i traveled i have a hobby that i love i pursued friendship i pursued friendship and the irony is if if you take that mentality and now you sort of like we are in a world right now that's obsessed with like longevity and you know supplements and all these other things and the thing is people are applying that a over 50 mentality to their longevity yeah and what they're missing it's the 47 hours of time to just relax and enjoy your friends that is actually what makes you live longer there's a great irony yeah in this no i mean bob waldenker stuff like i'm like all right so hold on i don't need to work out for 20 minutes a day as long as I'm a really good friend.

45:48Simon Sinek:No, you need to work out some. No, I'm just kidding. But this is what I think is interesting. You need to work out some. I mean, I was talking to somebody who measures the inflammation of our cells. And because inflammation, you know, it's the root of a lot of problems in our bodies, heart disease, cancer, and all the rest of it. So you want inflammation down, right? You don't need to overdose on blueberries to keep the inflammation down, you know? Just reduce stress. That's what keeps inflammation down. And what they were telling me in their work and studying this stuff is that elite athletes don't live longer than the rest of us.

46:24Simon Sinek:And the people who are obsessed with their health, like their longevity nuts, who are doing intermittent fasting and an extreme workout, then a sauna and then a cold plunge, what they're doing, it's okay. All of those things are healthy, but not when you do them all every day. Not when you do so much of it. And so it's called stress stacking. So yes, a certain level of stress in the body does make you healthier, right? But stress stacking, which is what it's called, actually makes you unhealthy. So they're obsessed with the metrics that they actually cause themselves more stress when they don't hit the number of steps that they promised they would hit.

46:57Simon Sinek:The increase of stress actually outweighs, there's a great one that I read a bunch of years ago, that when we stress, like real stress about eating the chocolate cake, the cortisol that's released in our bodies from the stress is worse for us than the chocolate cake. have a piece of chocolate cake enjoy it you're fine yes and if you do it every now and then it's like if it's not like you're eating mcdonald's for every meal if you had a mcdonald's once a year it'll do a total of zero to your body yeah you know and that's the point which is exercise in a reasonable amount stress your body a reasonable amount some some stress is good stress stacking bad but all of these things come to light when you start to play with ratios so i I want to go back because the other thing that was going through my mind as we were talking about this, A, all the good stuff is harder to measure.

47:45But over the last week, I've hung out with three different people, all very successful. And there's been one conversation that's come up, which is even the most successful people I know, There's a little piece of them That no matter how well things have gone Or are going That's scared It's all going to go away And I know I feel that I feel that And so when you say You worked 50 hours You got the A Why are you still doing it? Well Because what if you wake up one day And it's all gone And by the way intellectually

48:24Simon Sinek:I know, intellect is madness It's insane Obviously I know but people have a hard time talking about it because they feel weak for acknowledging either the fear around it or the insecurity around it but that is what keeps people working 50 because they fear they will wake up one day and there's no opportunity left. I think it's more insidious yes the fear is absolutely there but I think it's actually more insidious I knew this billionaire who when the economy went into recession, he lost an unbelievable amount of money and went into serious depression. So his wife was like, can you do me a favor?

49:08Simon Sinek:You can just talk to him. And he's an arrogant guy. He's... Whatever stereotype you have in your mind of, yeah, it's all true. And I walk into the room and he's sitting on the table in the dining room with his head in his hands on the dining room table. I've never seen anything like this. I sit down and I talk to him. And he's telling me, he's going through how awful he feels and the depression, and I'm just listening. And I can't help it. I'm so curious. I say, I have to ask, like, how much did you lose? You know? And he said, 80%. So I'm doing some quick math in my head. Okay, you got a billion.

49:53Simon Sinek:You've lost 80%. you still have 200 million.

50:02Simon Sinek:It's not like you have to like start eating like ramen noodles or sell a house. You're going to be fine. Like it changes your lifestyle zero, right? Zero. So I'd said something that I thought would help, right? I said, oh, you're not upset because you lost the money. you're upset because of the score. I wanted him to see it was an abstract score and the score was down, which is why he was depressed and it made him feel worse. And that's why I say it's more insidious, which is there are some people who are so driven by the score that the money ceases to be money. It's a score that they compare themselves to each other and the humiliation of having a low score compared to other people with a high score.

50:56Simon Sinek:You know, Bezos and Musk are obsessed with each other. Why? You know? Why? Who cares? Right? And that's the point, which is when you reach a certain level, money ceases to be the thing because you have more than you could possibly, you have more than countries. Right? It's the score. And I think people who are raised, and this now goes into sort of like parenting, I guess, that the people who are raised, the grade is everything. The A is everything. You better get an A. I think confuse worth, that the score and self-worth become somehow melded together. Because, again, the score is easier to measure.

51:41Simon Sinek:When you start to combine your self-worth with the score, it's a level of accomplishment. It's not the value of the person. But it is a part of it. it is a part of it. Like you work really hard. Like you invest a lot. Like you have ideas. People react to them. You want to see fruit to your labor. And like that, that is a part of yourself. And every human being. But it's not everything. Because we're talking about people with wealth and that's nothing to do with it, right? They're just examples and they're extreme examples which is why they're easy to point to because the metrics are easy. Yeah, exactly.

52:09Simon Sinek:But every human being on the planet when you're working with the most junior person to the most senior person, everybody wants to see that the hard work that they invest pays off in some way. That the product gets shipped, that the person gets helped, that we save a life, that the blood, sweat, and tears was worth something. So yes, that's 100 % true. We want to know that our work matters. And it's harder to calculate the score of being the person that always shows up for your friends. It's hard to calculate the person who calls somebody who's already got a reservation because then they hang up.

52:46Simon Sinek:and you don't hear the, oh, oh, that was a great phone call. You don't hear that. It's one of the things that's hard about our work, which is intellectually I know, but I don't know. I don't have an instant gratification. It's kind of faith that you have to just believe in the miracle of it all and keep the faith and stay true to the belief set. you know there is an element of that that's wild it's actually one of the really funny differences between restaurant my world when i ran restaurants in my world now like restaurants you serve people a meal you're right there you can see whether they like it or not they'll tell you you put out a book you're like i think i mean like sometimes i wish i could just like sit next to a stranger and watch them read my book and be like hey do you are you enjoying the book so far like how's your how's your entree that's really interesting that you you've grown up with instant gratification yeah or or not even instant gratification instant feedback we're also if they don't like the meal they'll tell you and it's it's totally normal and expected for someone to come over and ask you while you're eating your meal yeah in so many words are you enjoying the meal right which is not really normal in almost any other industry it's not like the person from wherever i got this buck mason is gonna be like are you enjoying the sweater you know or like do you like the book but in restaurants you always and the reason is because you can make changes on the fly okay okay so what we're talking about okay now this gets interesting right which is the reason i pursue the a yes the a over 50 is not simply because it's easier to measure it's because there's no other feedback mechanism for me to know that my work is valuable other than the A so I don't know if people like wearing my sweaters but I can count how many sweaters I've sold and I can draw some loose conclusion that if they're selling a lot I'm guessing they're liking them right and so what we're talking about which is totally fair and maybe they do desire everything we're talking about And they are frustrated with the metric system, but without an immediate feedback loop.

55:05Simon Sinek:And sure, I can send out surveys that 5 % fill out, or only the angry people respond, all of this stuff, that the best I can do to know that I'm doing okay is the business is growing. And so maybe, just maybe, like my A over 50, which is, it's fine to count the revenues, totally fine. But maybe there's another metric that should serve as the ratio. This is going to end up being like 17 different things. No, I think things like repeat sales. Like I know a company, the true story, this is hilarious to me. And this is how misguided. This is a funded company spending millions of dollars, blah, blah, blah.

55:45Simon Sinek:I think they're in the financial world. and their sales team is knocking it out of the park, but the product isn't so great. And so customers aren't renewing, right? So do you know what the CEO did? Okay. Yelled at the sales team. Huh. And the sales team was like, talk to the engineers. The clients are calling us and say, we love you, but it's not working. It's just not good enough. We can't do this. So the CEO is yelling at the sales team, right? And I'm listening to this going, no, right? So like in our business, right? I am fully aware that first-time sales, that's a marketer. Like marketers drive first-time sales.

56:23Simon Sinek:Second sales, that's my product guy. If the product's good, I can only measure that on a resubscription. A first-time subscription, marketing. A second-time subscription, product. Right? But I know that. And my point is in this modern, sophisticated world, this is a modern company that's yelling at their sales team because resubscriptions are down. Which is insane. Which is insane. So this is what I'm saying. I think all metrics that we should be looking at, stock prices, revenues, all of these things need a ratio that gives us some indication of value or quality. So if A over 50 is quantity over quality, I mean, that's kind of what it is.

57:02Simon Sinek:The A is the quantity that I achieved, and the 50 is the quality of the life that it took me to get there, that there should be a quantity over quality metric for everything. So if the quantity is revenues, then what's the quality metric? Maybe it's second time purchases. Or in the case, let's play the game, you know, EMP, right? If quantity was revenues, you had a business to run, what would be the quality metric? Because it's insufficient for us to say, you know, you just have to trust. Restaurants are a little weird because four stars, this, accolade, this, all those things, which you could.

57:37Simon Sinek:Yeah, but sometimes four star restaurants go to business. What I was thinking as you started saying that was during the recession, the Great Recession, 09, we were working our butts off. We were losing money. And the people that came into the restaurant were leaving so unbelievably happy. And that's something I could measure because I was in the room with them every single night. And it was the thing that actually kept us going, which is... So could you have, and for the sake of this little hypothetical, How many tables does one server work? Five tables, 10 tables? Depends, yeah, somewhere in between those.

58:15Simon Sinek:Somewhere between five and 10. So at the end of the night, you can go to each server, and they're not judged by it, right? They could fill out a form and say, table one, on a scale of one to five, how happy were they? Or just thumbs up, thumbs down. Table two, how happy were they? Table three, how happy were they? You could keep a satisfied customer metric. For sure. And that would be an indication that even though revenues are down, we're doing good work, guys. we're on the right path we're making people happy if we stay the course because otherwise you only have revenues down and everybody's like we gotta work harder but we're working our brains out or revenues are down and we have to change the product when no maybe you need to change the sales strategy but don't change the product because it's working people are enjoying it so this is what's helping me understand this right which is the level of achievement over the hours it took to achieve that is a quantity versus quality ratio and I've always I've always wanted to do something called a Y-index, which is to measure the Y of a company or measure the Y of an economy.

59:12Simon Sinek:And so when you look at the Dow Jones, it says the Dow Jones is up X percent. Okay, at what cost? Or for a single equity. Look at their stock price going up. I'm like, but what's their Y-index? And so the whole idea is that if the stock price is going up, but the Y-index, which would be a combination of employee happiness, engagement, all those things, is going down, that's a short-term investment. Yes, yeah, for sure. If the Wyandons is way up, but the stock price is down, good long-term investment. And ideally, you want them both in parallel. And again, because even looking at stock price, it's only half a metric.

59:46Simon Sinek:That stock price is going up doesn't tell me that the company is healthy. It just tells me that the stock price is up. Same thing with the stock market and the economy. Because you know this. When you announce layoffs, stock prices go up. And when you announce R &D, stock prices go down. Yes. That makes sense.

1:00:04It is one of the cool things about the restaurant industry. It also, I mean, we're talking about how much you give of yourself to others and at what cost. I mean, in hospitality, I really like making other people happy. And if I'm not careful, I end up being an A50 for the rest of my life because I don't like letting other people down. And at the end of the day, I end up letting some of the people that are most important to me, Don.

1:00:34Simon Sinek:And that's the problem, which is there's nothing wrong with the 50. You just have to weigh the cost of that 50. And there's an entire group of people, and again, it's not a good thing or a bad thing, it's just, let's be honest with ourselves, who spends, I'll give you the real life example. Yeah. I'll use myself as the guinea pig, right?

1:00:54Simon Sinek:So for years, I had close friends accuse me of being a bad listener. That was my answer. That's exactly it. I don't see it. Never in a million years. And I would say things like, you know what I do for a living, right? You know you're wrong and I'm a really good listener. I mean, that's pretty much how those conversations went. You're like, I'm sorry, what did you just say? Yeah, exactly. Huh? What? So I took this listening class and that's when I discovered that I am an unbelievably good listener with people I will never see again for the rest of my life. But for the people closest to me, terrible.

1:01:34Simon Sinek:Wow. So all of the skills I had learned about listening and being focused and reflective listening and being present, all of that, I was doing it with strangers. I was doing it with clients. I was doing it with one-time interactions. But the people who I had regular ongoing relationships with, I applied none of those skills. I think I'm guilty of this sometimes. Right? Yeah. And I simply assumed that I was good at it because I had the capacity and knew that I could do it. And in the public world, people are like, you're such a good listener. And the random people that are more prone to praise you are saying you're really good at it because you're good at it with them.

1:02:10Simon Sinek:Exactly. And I ended up taking the people around me for granted. So that is akin to, I appreciate the 50, but who's paying for that 50? Are you paying for that 50? Like if you're unmarried, no friends, making the investment in you, and you're the only one paying the price for that 50? Great. go, go go invest in you, you 22 year old like I love it, right? but if you start having relationships and family and close friends or family in need I'm sorry I can't come to your funeral, I have a meeting I don't think you'd say sorry to the person who died I can't come to your funeral you get the idea? I'm sorry I can't come to the funeral like now who's paying the price of that 50?

1:02:55Simon Sinek:who's bearing the load of that 50? It's no longer just you. I'd also dial that back just to make sure that the idea is clear. The funeral is almost too big. I'm sorry I didn't answer the phone the last couple times you called. I've been busy at work. And you and I have done this with each other, right? Because I'm guilty of not calling my friends because you and I can't talk for less than many hours. Yeah. Right? Like the conversation we're having now, this is what people don't understand. This is like a normal conversation, you know, with fewer interruptions. But this is pretty much how it goes.

1:03:24Simon Sinek:where we start feeding off of each other. And because I crave it and love it and I laugh more with you than any other friend and I enjoy it so much that I put it off and put it off. It's like, oh, I don't have an hour. I don't have an hour. I don't have an hour. Oh, I don't have an hour. And then before I know it, three months go by and I haven't talked to Will. And I've made a very conscientious change in my life, which is as much as I crave the hour, I would rather have an imperfect 10 minutes or an imperfect five minutes. And you know this because I've done it with you. I'll call you up and be like, I'm in the car.

1:03:56Simon Sinek:I only have 10 minutes. I wanted to just call and say hi. Or you've answered the phone when I've called you, and you've said, I'm going to call in two minutes. Which, by the way, is cool. Because normally, if it's 928, you're meeting at 930, someone calls, you're not answering. Yeah, you turn it down. But just to be like, hey, I only have two minutes, but just nice of your voice. Love you. And it's amazing how little it takes for the other person to feel mattered. Yeah. It's nice when you call someone and they answer the phone. And now this goes all the way back to the beginning of our conversation about AI, which is it took two minutes of an inconsequential, useless conversation that accomplished nothing for a friend to feel like a friend.

1:04:38Simon Sinek:Yes. And think about the incredibly light lift. Like sometimes unreasonable is simply thank you, please, nice to see you, come back again. the usual? For a barista to say to you, the usual? Hey, Will, the usual? I mean, that means they know who you are. It's not even a little bit hard. It just requires trying a little bit harder. I mean, why don't we end right there? It's not even a little bit hard. It just requires trying a little bit harder. I really love you. I love you, too. You're so smart.

1:05:19Simon Sinek:Now you better call your wife. I'm so sorry. Find out who's bearing the cost of the 50. And when she starts telling you, don't say, but look what we get for that 50. Look how good the A is. Don't say that.

1:05:52Simon Sinek:visit simonsynic.com. Thanks for listening. Take care of yourself. Take care of each other.