Nice Guys Finish Last? The Founder of KIND Snacks Disagrees | A Bit of Optimism Podcast

Simon Sinek 0:00 Where did, like, the drive for peace come from, and, and what are you doing to make that naive vision real?

Daniel Lubetzky 0:10 It started, uh, when I was-

Simon Sinek 0:12 And I mean that as a compliment, right?

Daniel Lubetzky 0:14 Yeah, right. [laughs]

Simon Sinek 0:15 But, you know, no, no, I mean it in a-

Daniel Lubetzky 0:16 I know. I know you do

Simon Sinek 0:17 ... I do, which is, which is the ones who succeed are the ones who naiv- are naive enough to believe that it's possible.

Daniel Lubetzky 0:21 I know. I was teasing you.

Simon Sinek 0:23 We often think of being naive as a weakness, something we want to avoid, but what if naiveté was actually a superpower? Naiveté describes the willingness to believe that things can be better even when the world around us suggests otherwise. I firmly believe that naiveté is essential for anyone who wants to build something meaningful in the world. My guest today is Daniel Lubetzky, and he proves this. Many people know him as the founder of KIND, the maker of KIND bars, but what really drives Daniel isn't just building a successful company, it's his belief that we can leave the world better than we found it, and he's just naive enough to believe it will happen, which I love. Daniel has since stepped away from KIND and is now working on his next naive project, the Builders Movement, an effort to channel curiosity and compassion into solutions that can reduce polarization in our media, our societies, and indeed, in the world. The conversation you're about to hear was actually recorded in December, before the recent developments in the Middle East. And because this episode touches on peace building and polarization, I wanted to share that context before you listen. I also reached back out to Daniel and asked what's been on his mind since we recorded, and he shared this message. "In this conversation," he said, "you'll hear about my life's mission to pursue peace in the Middle East and build bridges across the world, including through business cooperation and civic activism. I hope what you draw from this conversation," he continues, "are tools to navigate differences between people

Simon Sinek 1:54 and even differences within us, to learn to wrestle with complex issues that have no easy answers." This is A Bit of Optimism. [upbeat music] I just met you for the first time five minutes ago, and I have to say, from the minute you walk in, you exude warmth. You know, when you meet the founder of a company, you, uh, in my world, the ideal brand is a reflection of the founder.

Daniel Lubetzky 2:26 Do you know any world where it's not that case-

Simon Sinek 2:29 Oh, yes

Daniel Lubetzky 2:29 ... that the person's personality does not create the culture of the brand?

Simon Sinek 2:32 It always starts that way, but success is the biggest obstacle.

Daniel Lubetzky 2:37 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 2:37 And then whether it's through outside influence or poor management or any number of factors-

Daniel Lubetzky 2:43 Right

Simon Sinek 2:43 ... or just taking your eye off the ball-

Daniel Lubetzky 2:45 Yeah

Simon Sinek 2:46 ... or being distracted by different goals and objectives, you know, very often it starts to dilute. And so when you meet somebody who has a, literally started a company called KIND, right? And you and I have never met. All I know is you started a company called KIND, and you walk in, and you're like, and you're just like, "Yep," you know?

Daniel Lubetzky 3:04 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 3:05 It's a very nice experience when it happens, and you just happen to exude warmth, which is lovely.

Daniel Lubetzky 3:09 We should just acknowledge, if you don't mind me sharing, that I came into a very warm place, and you have a lot of fun gadgets and things that made me connect very quickly with your warmth, and there's a candle that you walk in, it smells really good, and there's little tiny Meyer lemons, and there's a lot of fun things around here.

Simon Sinek 3:28 I can tell you from experience that lots of people come in here, and this setting is always the same-

Daniel Lubetzky 3:34 And they haven't

Simon Sinek 3:34 ... but their response is, n- it's all over the place. So-

Daniel Lubetzky 3:38 Yeah

Simon Sinek 3:38 ... I'm gonna receive your gratitude and, and push it back on you-

Daniel Lubetzky 3:42 Oh

Simon Sinek 3:42 ... that it's really, it's really you. [laughs]

Daniel Lubetzky 3:45 Thank you.

Simon Sinek 3:46 The bar category is a fricking mess. There are, it's a, there are so many players. I don't know how anybody differentiates themselves. I have friends who are trying to get into it, and it's so hard. W- was it t- luck of timing, or is it something that you did that you've become, KIND bars are one of the gold standards of the category. You know, you are one of the better-known brands in the whole category, and people, people refer to other grain bars as KIND bars even when they're not.

Daniel Lubetzky 4:21 That's a dangerous situation, but I get it. But when we were designing what became KIND, we never thought of ourselves as a bar. We thought ourselves as solving for a problem to help people snack healthfully. And even today, um, we try to think of KIND as kind, not as a KIND bar. But the deeper answer to your question is I didn't know how hard that space was, and I was lucky that I didn't think about it. And the more that I look back at life, a lot of the things that I've accomplished, I'm lucky that I wasn't fazed because I didn't know what the hell I was getting into. Rabbi Brand Lurie once told me, "Daniel, you know what I love about you, is that you're so naive." And I got furious that he called me naive, and I'm like, "Why are you calling me naive? I'm just determined and, and, uh, I'm not naive." He said, "I, I mean it as a compliment that you don't know what you don't know, and that's why you try these things out." Took me decades to take that compliment, but it's very true that a lot of entrepreneurs would not pursue the paths that they pursue [laughs] if they would know how hard it is.

Simon Sinek 5:43 I think naiveté is a very undervalued asset.

Daniel Lubetzky 5:48 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 5:49 And I, I fit that category also. I, I firmly believe that one of my greatest values is that I am naive. I was an, an idiot with an idea, with no following-You know, no s- commercial success of any particular note, you know, no book, no nothing, but had this wild belief that I could profoundly change the, the way that business worked, and that's all I had-

Daniel Lubetzky 6:15 Yeah

Simon Sinek 6:15 ... was the naive belief that I could. And if I'd stopped to think about it for a minute, I wouldn't have done half the things I did.

Daniel Lubetzky 6:21 But I, I struggle with, you know, every word in addition to the word itself has a connotation, right?

Simon Sinek 6:28 Yeah.

Daniel Lubetzky 6:28 Like, that's why, for example, I say that we don't have employees or what I used to run KIND, I sold it recently, but I say that I, we didn't have employees, and we don't have employees in any other organizations. I don't mean that we don't literally hire people that work with us. The word employee has the connotation of a master-servant relationship.

Simon Sinek 6:47 Oh, it's a hierarchy, yeah.

Daniel Lubetzky 6:47 A hierarchy that's a negative hierarchy to me. And for me, I wanna have team members where all of us are equal and are working together-

Simon Sinek 6:54 Yeah

Daniel Lubetzky 6:54 ... not just because it sounds good, but because it helps empower people to challenge me-

Simon Sinek 6:57 Yeah, language has power

Daniel Lubetzky 6:58 ... and to, and to debate with you and to create the structure where-

Simon Sinek 7:01 Words matter

Daniel Lubetzky 7:02 ... everybody has a, a, can have an opinion. And so naive for me, I was having a conversation with Martin Varsavsky, who's a very dear friend of mine, uh, who started, like, 12 companies. He's one of the very few people that I know that have created mul- many multibillion-dollar companies from scratch in different industries. Very rare to do. And by the way, the fact that almost nobody has done it reminds me how much luck plays into it. We all think we're so special.

Simon Sinek 7:29 Yeah.

Daniel Lubetzky 7:29 Luck plays so much into our success.

Simon Sinek 7:32 Yeah.

Daniel Lubetzky 7:33 But he was saying when we were talking, it was, he's in his 60s and he's starting his next company, and I won't say what it is out of respect to him because it's still in stealth mode, but why does he do it? Because he's trying to solve a puzzle. And so part of what entrepreneurs do is identify a problem, identify a solution, and then try to will it into existence, and I don't think it's got that much to do with the dimension of naiveté. It's true that there's a lot that we don't know, and had we known it, maybe we wouldn't pursue it. But I think it's a greater truth that we just have the will to try to turn an idea into a reality, and it's our personality that likes to solve puzzles, that doesn't get dissuaded by hearing no.

Simon Sinek 8:23 Mm.

Daniel Lubetzky 8:23 Maybe almost like you're, like, turned on, [laughs] but like, "Oh, really? Now I'm gonna really prove it."

Simon Sinek 8:28 Mm.

Daniel Lubetzky 8:29 So I, I think it's a little more complex than just... It's true that not knowing s- how hard it would be helps you push through, but I think there's more to it than that.

Simon Sinek 8:37 And I think you, you're touching upon it, which is that an entrepreneur is a problem solver, right? And I think people sometimes confuse it that an entrepreneur is a small business owner or a business owner. You know, a small business owner is a small business owner, an entrepreneur solves problems, to your point, and you can find entrepreneurs in very, very large companies-

Daniel Lubetzky 8:53 Right

Simon Sinek 8:53 ... where they're mid-ranking people, but they're the ones who are pushing against the status quo, trying to solve problems, to your point, looking at the, looking at things slightly differently in- instead of just following the prescription. What I think is really interesting is, like, some universities, they teach entrepreneurship, and I've always f- found that curious, which is, is entrepreneurship a skill that you can teach, or is it a, is it a mental defect [laughs]

Daniel Lubetzky 9:19 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 9:20 ... that you choose to do something with the overwhelming chance of failure, [laughs] but you think that's kind of fun, you know?

Daniel Lubetzky 9:25 It's a beautiful question that I've asked myself for so many years-

Simon Sinek 9:29 'Cause I, for me, it's, it's, it's-

Daniel Lubetzky 9:30 ... and I cannot answer it

Simon Sinek 9:30 ... it's my, it's, it's very much ingrained in my personality and how I approach the world, which is-

Daniel Lubetzky 9:34 Yeah

Simon Sinek 9:35 ... and I still think naiveté is a compliment. You know, if somebody says, "You're naive," I'm like, "Thank you." You know, I, I don't know, and I kinda like that 'cause that means I get to start clean, you know?

Daniel Lubetzky 9:44 But going to your question about what makes an entrepreneur, can you teach entrepreneurship? I ask this question all the time because I trying to search for myself, did it come because I learned it from my father, from osmosis, from seeing him operate because he really was a consummate entrepreneur, and it sounds like you're that, too. I always ask where the genesis of that came from. I don't know if it's nurture or nature. I tend to think, if I have to come up with a theory, that along our, the way when we're having formative influences, somebody is encouraged to think creatively and that there's a reward for it. Having asked this question thousands of times of others, there seems to be something that happens in people's lives, in their early lives, where them thinking outside the box is rewarded, and they're like, "Let me do more of it, and let me do more of it, and let me do..."

Simon Sinek 10:39 Mm-hmm.

Daniel Lubetzky 10:39 And it might be very little steps.

Simon Sinek 10:40 Mm-hmm.

Daniel Lubetzky 10:41 And so how can we teach young kids to take risks-

Simon Sinek 10:45 Mm-hmm

Daniel Lubetzky 10:45 ... to think outside the box, and to be rewarded for taking those risks? By the way, in the United States, if you look at it, the, the big picture as a culture, one of the reasons why the United States has far more entrepreneurs than the rest of the world is that we have a culture where it's okay to fall-

Simon Sinek 11:01 Yeah

Daniel Lubetzky 11:01 ... dust it off-

Simon Sinek 11:02 Yeah

Daniel Lubetzky 11:02 ... and stand up. In some cultures, in, in most cultures-

Simon Sinek 11:05 Yeah

Daniel Lubetzky 11:05 ... if you fail-

Simon Sinek 11:07 It's shameful

Daniel Lubetzky 11:07 ... it is shameful, and, and shame on you, and you're gonna bring shame not just to you-

Simon Sinek 11:11 Yeah

Daniel Lubetzky 11:11 ... but to your family, and so people are like, [laughs] "Okay, I'm not gonna try." And it's so liberating-

Simon Sinek 11:16 Yeah

Daniel Lubetzky 11:16 ... to be okay with trying because guess what? If you don't try, if you're, if you're not falling-

Simon Sinek 11:22 Yeah

Daniel Lubetzky 11:22 ... it means you're not trying.

Simon Sinek 11:23 It's one of my favorite things about America, which is people put their failed businesses on their resume. Like, they literally have on their resume, "Oh, I started a business here," and, you know, they're interviewing for a job, they're like, "Oh, yeah, I, I-"

Daniel Lubetzky 11:32 I don't do that because it'd be too long.

Simon Sinek 11:34 I stay- [laughs] But they, they'd be like, "Oh, yeah, I started a business. We had it for about two and a half years, and it didn't work out." People are like, "Oh, okay, cool, cool."

Daniel Lubetzky 11:40 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 11:40 Like, it's so not-

Daniel Lubetzky 11:41 And, and when I look for people-

Simon Sinek 11:42 ... so not a thing

Daniel Lubetzky 11:43 ... I love people that show that because it also shows, first of all, failures teach you more than successes do.

Simon Sinek 11:50 Always.

Daniel Lubetzky 11:50 Because when you succeed, you're not 100% certain why that is, but when you fail, you have to, if you are self-... reflective, you're gonna absorb the lessons. And so you stretch yourself more, and it shows that you're comfortable with that opportunity

Simon Sinek 12:04 D- d- I, I love to tell this story. My... It's, you, you re- and you talk about, like, it's, it's, it's in you from your upbringing, from your childhood. That's where it comes from, the rewards of taking risks and things like that. So one of my favorite things about America, and this is historical, and it helps you understand how this country is so good at entrepreneurship and has so many entrepreneurs, which is we celebrate our independence on July 4th, 1776. Incorrect. That is when we signed the Declaration of Independence. The Revolutionary War continued for another seven years. We didn't win our independence until September 3rd, 1783.

Daniel Lubetzky 12:36 But we said we got it-

Simon Sinek 12:37 Right?

Daniel Lubetzky 12:37 ... let's go.

Simon Sinek 12:38 And then George Washington didn't become president and the Constitution wasn't ratified for another seven years, like 1789 or 1791. I can't remember the dates. But the point is, is, like, there's a full-on, like, you know, nearly decade, like 15 years between when we signed and celebrate our independence until we actually had it, had a Constitution, had a president.

Daniel Lubetzky 12:59 That's awesome. I had never heard that.

Simon Sinek 13:00 Yeah.

Daniel Lubetzky 13:00 That's so cool.

Simon Sinek 13:00 So our Independence Day, when we were recognized as an independent nation, s- is actually September 3rd, 1783.

Daniel Lubetzky 13:06 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 13:06 But we celebrate the day we thought about it, not the day we had it. And that tells you-

Daniel Lubetzky 13:10 In fact, we willed it into existence

Simon Sinek 13:11 ... and that tells you everything about America, right?

Daniel Lubetzky 13:13 And it's entrepreneurial spirit.

Simon Sinek 13:15 It's that entrepreneurial, it's that entrepreneurial spirit with the, with the dream is, is, is ground zero, not, not the accomplishment.

Daniel Lubetzky 13:23 I love that.

Simon Sinek 13:24 I love that, too. One of the reasons I think other nations don't have the, the same quantity of entrepreneurs is, is all these things, which is we're dreamers. We love people who try, even if it doesn't work out. Like, we think that's great. So then the question it raises is, like, is America as a nation, and I mean this for the past 250 years, is America naive? Does it have, does it ha- does, does the nation embody the characteristics of the entrepreneur, the risk-taking, the dreaming, the grit, but it i- is there a naiveté to the nation?

Daniel Lubetzky 13:56 And can it lose it?

Simon Sinek 13:58 And can it lose it? And, and I would argue it does have the naiveté. Like, the, the naiveté that this one nation can help bring sort of, you know, democracy and capitalism to around the world, and we stood up to the Soviet Union's view of how the world should work and say, "No, no, no, we think there's a better way, and we think everybody should have this 'cause it's pretty awesome." Now, whether it's misguided or true or not, you know, and how they went about it, these are all different questions.

Daniel Lubetzky 14:20 I grew up in Mexico, so I lived in Mexico from '68 to '70... to '84, 16 years. And the narrative that a lot of Latin American people had around those times was of the United States as an oppressive regime that was taking advantage of da- da- When I came to United States, I discovered a country that I love so much, and, you know, we, we are at risk of losing some of what makes us very special. We need to not take it for granted. But still, rule of law better than in most places, democracy better than in most places, kindness, civility, respect, free markets, freedom of expression, all of them under threat, but better than in most places. And it's a gift that I don't take for granted, and I do think, to your point about naiveté, when I arrived in the United States, and most of my experience in the United States has been people that do the right thing even when people are not watching, for the right reasons. Like, which country in the history of humanity went and reconstructed all of Europe after World War II, liberated Europe? My father was, uh, liberated by American soldiers. So you had countless people who sacrificed their life to liberate another continent, and then after they sacrificed so much, they invested in the Marshall Plan in rebuilding Europe. And by the way, it paid off amazing for the United States, right? It k- helped take us to a different level. But I do believe that it was done for the right reasons, to prevent that cycle of World War I, II-

Simon Sinek 16:01 Yeah, it was, it was, it was done so as to prevent them from rebuilding and becoming our enemies again.

Daniel Lubetzky 16:05 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 16:05 We spent our money to make them our friends, yeah.

Daniel Lubetzky 16:07 And-

Simon Sinek 16:07 So you, you, you're no longer... You sold KIND.

Daniel Lubetzky 16:10 I sold last December.

Simon Sinek 16:11 I, so I... Are you worried that... Who bought it?

Daniel Lubetzky 16:17 Mars.

Simon Sinek 16:18 This has nothing to do with Mars. This is a philosophical question. But you controlled KIND to be in your image, to maintain your values. Are you worried that it will break? 'Cause I have so many founder friends who've sold their businesses, whether they went public or they sold their companies or private equity took it over, and within a few years, the ingredients were replaced with cheaper, shittier ingredients. The culture was eviscerated, and some of them, the com- the company ceased to exist.

Daniel Lubetzky 16:55 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 16:55 I know one right now, the company just shut down-

Daniel Lubetzky 16:58 Yeah

Simon Sinek 16:59 ... because they get eviscerated and destroyed by these-

Daniel Lubetzky 17:01 I think about that all the time. Um-

Simon Sinek 17:04 There's nothing you can do about it

Daniel Lubetzky 17:06 ... there's some things I do about it still today to try to help them, but, um, but for example, you saw I came home, and I, I came t- to your place, and I brought you KIND bars. I don't own a stake in the company, but I love KIND so much that I still give them out, and I negotiated in my contract [laughs] that I would continue being, having a allotment. That was important to me.

Simon Sinek 17:26 Yeah.

Daniel Lubetzky 17:26 I care a lot about KIND. I'm slightly less worried about the product integrity because I think Mars is a sophisticated company that understands that if they do that, they'll destroy the product. But it's very difficult with the best intention-

Simon Sinek 17:40 And this has nothing to do with Mars.

Daniel Lubetzky 17:41 Yeah, any company.

Simon Sinek 17:42 This is a philosophical question, yeah.

Daniel Lubetzky 17:42 It, it's actually, the broader, more interesting question is the same thing that brings entrepreneurs to bring something to existence that didn't exist, where, to your point, how did you dare have the chutzpah to try to create a KIND bar in a space where-There were already so many other bars. By the way, most of the other bars are no longer in existence, the ones that were leading the way when I launched KIND. You might remember the names, but they don't-

Simon Sinek 18:05 For example?

Daniel Lubetzky 18:05 Balance Bar, PowerBar.

Simon Sinek 18:07 They don't exist anymore?

Daniel Lubetzky 18:08 They're, they're e-

Simon Sinek 18:09 Miniscule

Daniel Lubetzky 18:10 ... I've, I haven't seen them in years.

Simon Sinek 18:11 I mean, I remember PowerBar. They were kind of one of the OGs.

Daniel Lubetzky 18:14 Well, yeah, they're ... I haven't seen-

Simon Sinek 18:15 Wow

Daniel Lubetzky 18:15 ... one in a long time.

Simon Sinek 18:16 Huh.

Daniel Lubetzky 18:16 Every entrepreneur has that compunction to do things and will something into existence, and then they also ... I don't know any entrepreneur that does not think they can defy the laws of gravity.

Simon Sinek 18:30 Yeah.

Daniel Lubetzky 18:30 So when we do that partnership, we think we're gonna be the one that's gonna suspend all of those laws, and that we are gonna be able to preserve everything. And the reality is that an entrepreneurial culture and a gigantic conglomerate, it's not easy. It's not easy. I think that it's not a question about the partners. The part- the people that I work there are very, very high integrity. It is very difficult to preserve that entrepreneurial spirit. I like to invest in founder-led companies, because I notice that when the founder's no longer around, slowly but surely, you were asking at the very beginning about the founder's personality, values, and culture imbuing-

Simon Sinek 19:07 Yeah

Daniel Lubetzky 19:07 ... the culture of the company. It's fascinating to me to notice, I've met a lot of founders, and they look at their company's cultures, and it's incredibly interesting how much that person's personality is in the culture of the company and product.

Simon Sinek 19:20 But, but this is part of the problem with business in the modern day, right? Which is these founders build these beautiful brands where there's very important rules of integrity and ingredients and all of these things, and these larger companies that buy these brands, they don't really care about the ingredients. They're buying the brand. I mean, we could list off the names, Aveda, Burt's Bees. I mean, Aveda was this little Minneapolis company that built this wonderful brand. It was bought by a big company, and they've changed all the ingredients, and everybody thinks because it's Aveda. They bought the brand. They didn't buy the ingredients.

Daniel Lubetzky 19:51 But they, you even ask yourself, "Why are you buying it?"

Simon Sinek 19:54 You know? And so you still buy these products thinking that they're magical because they were magical, and they're not magical anymore.

Daniel Lubetzky 19:59 And you ask yourself, why would a big company pay so much money if they're not gonna preserve it? It's like this, because I noticed that upfront from other observations, we're talking about PowerBar and Balance Bar. So Balance Bar had a value proposition that they were about a balance between protein, carbohydrates, and, uh, fiber, so I think something like that. It had like a, a formula. It had the three circles, whatever. And then it got acquired by either by Kraft or Mondelez, and they gave it to a junior manager, and the junior manager needs to put their stamp, and they find out that around that time, organic is big, so they create something called Balance Organic. Now, Balance, the original bar, is a very functional bar. It looks like astronaut food, and it's very functional. And all of a sudden, Balance Organic, nobody believes it. What is a brand? A brand is a promise, and a great brand is a promise well-kept. And all of a sudden, you're doing the exact opposite because you have Balance Organic as opposed to the Balance original, and they have nothing in common. And then they launch, they see KIND coming up with ingredients you can pronounce. They come up with one called, I think it was called Balance Bare, and, B-B-A-R-E.

Simon Sinek 21:16 Uh-huh, uh-huh.

Daniel Lubetzky 21:17 And then they come up with the other one because there's the keto diet, and then there's the functional diet, and this, this. And they have, like, eight different versions of Balance Bars, and the consumer stops understanding what the brand stands for.

Simon Sinek 21:29 Yeah, yeah.

Daniel Lubetzky 21:29 That business went from, like, 250 million to 50 million, to my bet is that it's zero now or close to zero. I, I haven't seen w- a Balance Bar in a long time. And they trade ... Every junior manager does the same sins. Every junior manager, they don't teach you, "This is the essence that you need to respect." They teach you, "Hey-

Simon Sinek 21:48 Line extension

Daniel Lubetzky 21:49 ... line extension and make a difference and be relevant so you can get promoted." And these guys get promoted by short-term results. And so whatever mess they're creating in the long term by destroying the brand, nobody notices it, because by the time it happens, it's too late.

Simon Sinek 22:03 But we kind of got to this point in American business that I find a bit depressing, which is that, that companies aren't built to last. They're built to be sold, right? And, and-

Daniel Lubetzky 22:13 Well, not all. Not all companies

Simon Sinek 22:16 ... uh, I mean, your company lo- how many, how many years did KIND-

Daniel Lubetzky 22:19 Question

Simon Sinek 22:19 ... 'cause I would say that it was longer than most before they wanna have their, before-

Daniel Lubetzky 22:23 Yeah, but I wasn't, I wasn't being defensive about mine.

Simon Sinek 22:25 Yeah.

Daniel Lubetzky 22:25 But I'll answer mine, but then we- then we should expand it. The interesting thing about my company is it, I started in 1993 what was then called PeaceWorks, and my investors came into PeaceWorks, but they didn't like the PeaceWorks aspect, so they s- we spun it off. But that same, my employer identification numbers was 13-376-6029, 'cause I used to write all the checks. I used to file all the tax forms. I used to do all the accounting. So I still remember my employer identification number from-

Simon Sinek 22:54 Brilliant

Daniel Lubetzky 22:54 ... 1993.

Simon Sinek 22:55 Brilliant.

Daniel Lubetzky 22:55 And I, I was doing the accounting, the bookkeeping, the collections, the deliveries, everything. Every job I was doing at the beginning, and there were two of us, then four of us, then two of us, then four of us, then two of us and four of us, then eight, and then before you know it, hundreds. When I launched KIND, I did not, I personally, I promise you, I did not think, "If only I could build something to sell." I did, it never crossed my mind.

Simon Sinek 23:16 Right.

Daniel Lubetzky 23:16 And that's why KIND succeeded, 'cause KIND was just-

Simon Sinek 23:19 Agreed. Mm-hmm

Daniel Lubetzky 23:20 ... trying to fulfill that vision of something amazing. But just to your question, there are gigantic companies like the Amazons of the world, they do lose their way for oth- other reasons.

Simon Sinek 23:31 Yeah.

Daniel Lubetzky 23:31 But they're not trying to sell. I think the stock market has a bit of that problem when they're, you're trying to ... I, I, I think one of the bigger questions is, why do you always need to p- wanna grow, grow, grow? Because when you c- are growing, growing, growing, and you need to demonstrate that measurable growth, I don't have a better solution, but eventually you go into value optimization and things that are start destroying the brand in the, in the long term.

Simon Sinek 23:56 I thi- this is the real root of the, the question, right? And I think you're articulating it better than I did, which is it's not so much about the saleIt's about you're building it to sell, or you're building it to go public

Daniel Lubetzky 24:08 Or you're building it to extract-

Simon Sinek 24:10 Or you're building it to extract

Daniel Lubetzky 24:12 ... money in the short term

Simon Sinek 24:12 Y- you know, and all the great businesses were built for the joy of building it, for the thrill of the build.

Daniel Lubetzky 24:19 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 24:19 And if you decide to sell it or, you know, go public way, way down the road, that's a different conversation, but the number of businesses that literally, whether it's their own desire or the pressures they have from their investors, that there has to be this liquidity event, and that's the other thing that annoys me about the IPO, which is the whole reason of an IPO was it was one of the mechanisms available to an entrepreneur to raise money should they need it. You can take a loan from the bank, you can raise money from friends and family, or you can sell some of the equity of your company to the public market so that you can raise money to reinvest. But that's not what it is. Now, an IPO is a way to cash in, pay yourself and pay your investors, and it has nothing to do-

Daniel Lubetzky 24:59 Without you growing

Simon Sinek 24:59 ... with a cash infusion to reinvest back in the business.

Daniel Lubetzky 25:02 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 25:02 It has nothing to do with it.

Daniel Lubetzky 25:03 I completely-

Simon Sinek 25:03 And that is one of the downfalls, I think, of, of the modern American business, which is all of the companies, even the good ones, are built, so many of them, too many of them are built simply for the short term.

Daniel Lubetzky 25:12 And to make matters worse, a lot of the value that's being, quote-unquote, "value" that's being created is just financial engineering, right? There's a lot of companies buying over other companies, squeezing everything they can, then leaving them near dead, and then going on to the next one. Like, a, a lot of private equity companies, what they do is, this is like the model that's been used over the last 10, 20 years, is they identify pool maintenance companies that are such a disrupted... The, the more fragmented, the more they see the opportunity. So they start buying all of the pool companies. Or the roo- there was an article in The New York Times about the roofing companies, and they identify, oh, there's tens of thousands of small business entrepreneurs. They're not f- finding synergies. Let's start acquiring all of them, roll them up, and then make them more synergistic, which means fire all the people, just hire a smaller group of people, use centralized branding. But they're not thinking about creating value.

Simon Sinek 26:08 No.

Daniel Lubetzky 26:08 By the way, if you acquired all of them and you introduce best practices and elevated the game, fine. But they don't want, they just wanna turn it around, and so they, they buy them at 3X, uh, profits. They sell them at 6X profits. Then the next guy buys them at 6X profits, sells them at 9X profits, and then they go public at 12X profits. But along the way, you're killing entire companies because you squeeze so much value out of them, and then you no longer trust them-

Simon Sinek 26:37 So, so, so, so

Daniel Lubetzky 26:37 ... because they're just worrying about the money

Simon Sinek 26:39 ... so, so you built the, the... Y- you said you wanted to make a, a food product that was a healthy snack, right?

Daniel Lubetzky 26:46 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 26:46 There was a reason to build a company, right?

Daniel Lubetzky 26:48 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 26:48 And your business was the delivering of a healthy snack. That was the business. The companies that we're talking about, the, the private equity companies, their business is making money.

Daniel Lubetzky 26:58 Exactly.

Simon Sinek 26:59 Like, their only product is to make money.

Daniel Lubetzky 27:01 100%.

Simon Sinek 27:02 Not to make anything that has value to anyone in the world. And if I hear another finance person tell me that the value they provide is they provide employment to an economy and help drive an economy, then why do you promote layoffs so, so, so fervently?

Daniel Lubetzky 27:15 No, no, they're actually destroying all the jobs.

Simon Sinek 27:16 They're completely full of shit.

Daniel Lubetzky 27:17 That is one of the imperfections of capitalism, because free markets are very efficient, and you... Uh, the, the interesting thing for me, because I think communism, socialism, you, you see their imperfections, and they're greater than capitalism.

Simon Sinek 27:32 Yeah.

Daniel Lubetzky 27:32 But capitalism, even conscious capitalism, has a lot of problems, that the free market wins, and the free market will always, efficiency will always win.

Simon Sinek 27:41 I think this version of capitalism, this is not the... The capitalism that exists today is not the capitalism that made America great. This is not Adam Smith capitalism, right, where the customer is the center of the value. And, you know, what Adam Smith said, which is the candlemake- uh, the, the bread maker makes the best bread to compete with the other bread makers, and the butcher makes the best meat to compete with the other butchers, and the cheese maker makes... And you get the best sandwich.

Daniel Lubetzky 28:06 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 28:06 Right? And that's not what has happened because of Milton Friedman and Jack Welch, which is they've completely changed the capitalism that we have and popularized short-termism, the metrics of, of incentivizing, um-

Daniel Lubetzky 28:20 Milton Friedman popularized short-termism?

Simon Sinek 28:22 Mil- Milton Friedman was an economist in the 19th and-

Daniel Lubetzky 28:24 I know Milton Friedman. I didn't know about his short-termism

Simon Sinek 28:26 ... so Milton Friedman, so it's this combi- it's this combination of theories where Milton Friedman, this is what he wrote, "The purpose of business," purpose, "the purpose of business is to maximize profits within the bounds of the rules," which means make as much money as you can without breaking the law.

Daniel Lubetzky 28:43 And your point is-

Simon Sinek 28:44 And that's a very low bar

Daniel Lubetzky 28:45 ... if you're doing that, you're destroying value because-

Simon Sinek 28:47 Correct

Daniel Lubetzky 28:47 ... the purpose of business should be to-

Simon Sinek 28:50 To o-

Daniel Lubetzky 28:50 ... create value in the long term. That means respect the brand, respect the consumer, respect the stakeholder. That's how KIND-

Simon Sinek 28:56 Correct

Daniel Lubetzky 28:57 ... became an extraordinary success. By the way, KIND created more value on a multiples basis than any company I know of. Like, from the, my early investors, like, we almost didn't need capital. We grew, grew, grew, grew because we're thinking with the right way.

Simon Sinek 29:11 Yeah.

Daniel Lubetzky 29:12 We created, like, 3,000X returns for our, for the investors.

Simon Sinek 29:14 So, so just, but just think about that, right? Like, the current, the business mo- and you see it all the time, make as much money as you can within the bounds of the rules. So you see these companies do horribly unethical things, 'cause ethics is a higher standard than the law.

Daniel Lubetzky 29:26 But, but I think your point-

Simon Sinek 29:26 And they get dragged in front of Congress, and they all say the same thing, "We broke no laws."

Daniel Lubetzky 29:30 But to take it away from just the moral compass, to take it into the business compass, your point is right because by playing that game, in the long term, you're destroying value.

Simon Sinek 29:41 Yes.

Daniel Lubetzky 29:41 By playing that game, people don't trust your brand, they don't trust your business, and they don't trust the system.

Simon Sinek 29:47 And I think this is where we have to take a hard look at capitalism. And I'm not talking about throwing the baby out with the bathwater. But you see the rise of populism on the left and the right.

Daniel Lubetzky 29:55 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 29:56 Whether it's Bernie Sanders or, um, Mondani or, or Trump, it doesn't matter if you're on the left or right of the political spectrum. You see the rise of populism that is mistrustful of the institutionalized powers that be, right, and the status quo, and rightfully so.Because we have traded what Goldman Sachs used to call long-term greed, which was totally fine, with short-term greed. It's not so Pollyanna and idealist that there's no such thing as greed. The reason communism fails is because humans are greedy, right? But to believe in long-term greed, which is how can we build a company that will outlast us for the good of the long term, you actually make really good decisions.

Daniel Lubetzky 30:37 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 30:37 And we, for some reason, seem to be okay with the short-term extraction at the expense of the customer, the employee, the environment, the, you know, our health. There's a very large food company, who shall remain nameless. I went to this conference, and they had the chief environmental officer of this company give a presentation on how much water they were saving and how much electricity they were saving, and it was a beautiful presentation about what they're doing. And because I'm a cynical bastard, I went up to the chief environmental officer at the end of the talk, and I went up to them, and I said, "Hey, love that you're saving water, love that you're saving electricity, uh, love that you care about the environment. Question for you. If I'm really cynical, I could say you're only doing it 'cause it saves money, you know, less water and electricity saves money, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt you're doing it for, for good reasons. But here's my question for you. I love that you care so much about the environment, but how come you put chemicals that kill people in your food? You have a chief environmental officer at your food company. How come you don't have a chief health officer? Just curious." And the wh- then the, the logic of what these companies say unravels.

Daniel Lubetzky 31:51 Yeah. I think, um, I wanna strengthen what you say, and then ask you a question. When we took the fateful decision to bring a strategic partner, which is speak for saying sell a piece of KIND, which is the beginning of the process where we ended up where we ended up. But when we were evaluating it, one of the companies that presented to us literally said to us, "We love that our products don't kill you. They don't make you sick." That was their standard, 'cause they were not healthful products, but their standard was like, "At least our products don't kill you." [chuckles]

Simon Sinek 32:22 At least our products don't kill you.

Daniel Lubetzky 32:24 That, I swear to you, we were at a meeting-

Simon Sinek 32:25 Was their definition of success

Daniel Lubetzky 32:26 ... when we debriefed, though, at that meeting-

Simon Sinek 32:28 Unbelievable

Daniel Lubetzky 32:28 ... was one of the many moments when I told my team, "What are we doing?" But anyway, that's a, that's a different conversation. But I have solutions about how to handle the problems of populism in the civic space. I've thought about it in the private sector, and I have not come up with them. Do you have solutions? Like in the point that you point out to about short-termism and short-term value extraction, other than teaching people to be smarter and to build for the longer term, do you have any structural or any other-

Simon Sinek 33:01 I think it's a generational answer, right? Like, it was the '80s and '90s where they were experimenting with short-termism, you know, incentivizing executives with equity, not performance of the company, layoffs on an annualized basis to balance the books. I mean, we s- these, this is all '80s and '90s. Prior to that, there was no such thing as mass layoffs in the United States, right? Uh, unless it was for existential reasons, like we're going out of business, you know? It was popularized in the '80s and '90s, and then that style of management was taught, and continues to be taught, in business schools, and that's what got you promoted, and so that's why it became the standard, because a generation was taught to run a business that way. I think now with the rise of populism and the cynicism that young people have, that there is a generational shift where I think young people are okay making slightly less money to do the right thing, and I think that they like companies who are willing to make less money this quarter because we're gonna make the right decision for, you know, the next five years.

Daniel Lubetzky 34:00 May I, may I challenge you for a second?

Simon Sinek 34:01 Yeah, please.

Daniel Lubetzky 34:02 I, I... We agree 100% on the fact that if you build a brand for the long term and do the right thing for the long term, that's how you create enduring value, and what you're doing for short term, you're actually destroying value.

Simon Sinek 34:12 Right.

Daniel Lubetzky 34:12 We agree on that. On the thing about the layoffs, I ask myself this question all the time because I notice it happening. I get proposals for me to invest in these roll-ups, and I struggle because, to your point, there's no value being created or added. And my, my answer is, "Well, why don't we do, to the extent that we consolidate, let's make it in a positive way where we create a brand that people can trust and help empower the small business entrepreneurs for them to become stronger and be part of the family and create the culture to that." I struggle with that. But broadly speaking, unlike you, I don't oppose layoffs because I notice what happens when industries are not efficient and that doesn't happen, then your own lunch will be eaten by others. In other words, what's happening in Europe, Europe resists the layoffs and it's slowly but surely gonna die, because it, in that... That's what I, that's what I struggle with-

Simon Sinek 35:07 Look, look, look, look

Daniel Lubetzky 35:07 ... a competitive market system, that at some point somebody else is gonna be, and the Chinese most likely will be, more ruthlessly efficient, and how are you gonna compete?

Simon Sinek 35:19 My friend Bob Chapman would say that an over-reliance on layoffs is proof of a poor business model.

Daniel Lubetzky 35:24 100%.

Simon Sinek 35:25 Right? And so it's not that I'm against layoffs, because sometimes companies are stupid and over-hire. I mean, we saw it during COVID. The number of businesses that because, you know, and they s- they thought this would survive and last forever, and so they over-hired, the numbers corrected, and there's no way you can sustain the business, right?

Daniel Lubetzky 35:44 Yeah. Your point is you shouldn't have layoffs as your business model.

Simon Sinek 35:47 You shouldn't have layoffs as your business model, and to embrace-

Daniel Lubetzky 35:49 I agree

Simon Sinek 35:49 ... layoffs on an annualized basis, y- y- you know, and the, my standard line is, you know, "We missed our arbitrary projections, so in order to make the numbers work, you get to lose your job."

Daniel Lubetzky 36:00 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 36:00 "Our arbitrary projections. We're profitable, not as profitable as we promised."

Daniel Lubetzky 36:04 Well, you're gonna have a lot of not fun in the coming years.

Simon Sinek 36:07 And the r- people ignore the ripples. Great, you got a little... One of the companies, a big tech company, made the announcement that we're gonna lay off 10,000 people, we're gonna do 1,000 people every month. How much productivity do you think there was that year?

Daniel Lubetzky 36:18 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 36:18 The stupidity of the, even that strategy. And we incentivize HR leaders. An HR leader is supposed to be the voice of the people at the, at the, at the, at the desk of the C-level executives, the voice and the champion of the people. Nope.We incentivize too many HR leaders. They get their bonus for, for doing the layoffs efficiently.

Daniel Lubetzky 36:38 Yeah. Yeah, that's a-

Simon Sinek 36:38 And we eviscerated even the concept of what the value from the resource is

Daniel Lubetzky 36:42 And the culture and the, and yeah, no, I think-

Simon Sinek 36:43 I'm getting very heated. [laughs]

Daniel Lubetzky 36:45 [laughs]

Daniel Lubetzky 36:45 I agree with what you said in the business world because it reminds me of why, like something that I observed, um, in the market world that bothered me and that I think we did differently that, that is connected to your same philosophy is in most of corporate America, there is no trust in the system, and they fire you, which means you're given two weeks notice, but you're shown a box, that you put in the stuff in your box, and you're shown the door 'cause you're not trusted to be there. And I observed there was a very, very big problem in that model at KIND because everybody that do- took the struggle to bring into our team and taught them our culture, and they taught us, and we worked and built together, m- maybe in my entire existence, there were three examples out of thousands of people that I hired. There were ... It actually merited showing them-

Simon Sinek 37:46 Sure

Daniel Lubetzky 37:46 ... the door because-

Simon Sinek 37:47 Time to graduate

Daniel Lubetzky 37:47 ... they engaged in illicit behavior, or they were, they really crossed a line that-

Simon Sinek 37:54 Yeah

Daniel Lubetzky 37:54 ... really engaged in stuff that was completely inappropriate. But it's three people out of thousands.

Simon Sinek 37:59 Yeah, of course.

Daniel Lubetzky 37:59 In the vast major situations, the reality is that most times when things don't work hard is because you failed to communicate with your team member, and that because you failed to create a bond of trust so that people can communicate one another. I don't know if you found this to be true, but almost always, if you share feedback early on-

Simon Sinek 38:19 Yeah

Daniel Lubetzky 38:19 ... the person can course correct and fix it.

Simon Sinek 38:21 Yeah.

Daniel Lubetzky 38:21 So the essence for a higher order work environment is to create trust.

Simon Sinek 38:26 Yeah.

Daniel Lubetzky 38:26 'Cause if you create trust, you can create open communications.

Simon Sinek 38:30 Yeah.

Daniel Lubetzky 38:30 If you create open communications, you have much less likelihood that things don't work out.

Simon Sinek 38:34 Yeah.

Daniel Lubetzky 38:35 That means, for example, that instead of firing people, showing the door, we had a system at KIND where if you were planning to leave or if we were planning to let you go, first, you were required to have a conversation and let g- let the other person know with transparently. Think what that takes. Y- it takes enormous amount of trust. If I'm planning to leave, I need to trust you that you're not gonna do something bad with that information. I'm telling you, I'm leaving in one year because I wanna go study for graduate school, or I'm gonna get married and move somewhere else, or I wanna retire. And you don't want the company as a consequence to cut you off early, which, uh-

Simon Sinek 39:10 Sure

Daniel Lubetzky 39:11 ... most big companies when we try to introduce this methodology to them-

Simon Sinek 39:15 Yeah

Daniel Lubetzky 39:15 ... they do the wrong thing with that information. They're like, "Oh, they're leaving. They're no longer valuable to me, and they're not gonna be loyal to me, and they're gonna sell my secrets. Let's fire them within two weeks." So then the next person won't share that with them.

Simon Sinek 39:25 Sure.

Daniel Lubetzky 39:26 So instead, you create a relationship of trust, and you do it both ways. It was very weird. At KIND, every single team member was an owner. Everybody that was there more than six months was given stock options. If you were the janitor or the president of the company, everybody was an owner. A- and with that ownership came the responsibility that if you chose that you were gonna leave, not only were you needing to give us notice, you needed to replace yourself. You needed to find ... We trust you enough that if you wanna leave, you need to find your replacement.

Simon Sinek 39:57 [laughs]

Daniel Lubetzky 39:57 It's very hard to achieve that, but when you trust that person because you hired them in the first place-

Simon Sinek 40:01 Yeah

Daniel Lubetzky 40:02 ... they are doing their great job. And it elevates the culture so that everybody's in there for one another.

Simon Sinek 40:07 Yeah.

Daniel Lubetzky 40:07 And most times it worked. Almost always it worked.

Simon Sinek 40:10 Yeah.

Daniel Lubetzky 40:10 Not always, but almost always the person had that responsibility to pass the baton, to train their replacement, and think about how much more synergies you get if you achieve that higher order-

Simon Sinek 40:21 Yeah

Daniel Lubetzky 40:21 ... of functioning. Instead of you're fired and everybody-

Simon Sinek 40:23 Yeah, yeah. I get it

Daniel Lubetzky 40:23 ... doesn't trust each other, you're hiring your replacement, you're overlapping, and then if you decide that you're gonna leave, you can ask for a letter of reference. You can ask for a very warm testimonial and endorsement. And so that was-

Simon Sinek 40:36 Et cetera, et cetera. Yeah

Daniel Lubetzky 40:36 ... that was what we aspired for. My direct reports, guess what was their notice they needed to give me?

Simon Sinek 40:42 What?

Daniel Lubetzky 40:42 Two years. Two years notice.

Simon Sinek 40:45 Wow.

Daniel Lubetzky 40:45 Like, John Leahy, the president of my company, like, like for the senior people that reported to me, it was two years. And in exchange, they had undying loyalty from me.

Simon Sinek 40:54 Yeah.

Daniel Lubetzky 40:54 Like, and if I ever was unhappy, that meant also I can't fire people. I have to talk to them, talk through them, work it out, try to work it out, and do everything possible to make it work, and if not, create a transparent process so that they can start looking for an opportunity while they're still finding their replacement.

Simon Sinek 41:11 Let me change tacks here. You're fascinated by peace. I mean, the original brand name of the company was PeaceWorks, and you are committed to Arab-Israeli peace as well in the Middle East.

Daniel Lubetzky 41:23 We're working really heavily on it right now.

Simon Sinek 41:25 Where, you know, where did that come from? Where did, like, where did the desire to, the drive for peace come from, and, and what are you doing to make that naive vision real?

Daniel Lubetzky 41:41 It started, uh, when I was-

Simon Sinek 41:43 And I mean that as a compliment, right?

Daniel Lubetzky 41:45 Yeah, right. [laughs]

Simon Sinek 41:46 But you know, no, no, I mean it.

Daniel Lubetzky 41:47 I know. I know you do. I know you do.

Simon Sinek 41:48 I do, which is, which is the ones who succeed are the ones who naive, are naive enough to believe that it's possible.

Daniel Lubetzky 41:52 I know. I was teasing you. I appreciate it very much. When I was nine years old, my father started talking to me about what he went through in the Holocaust. He was a concentration camp survivor, and he shared horrible things that I think I impacted me more than I realized. Only in the last few years I've processed how much those conversations, like-

Simon Sinek 42:15 Nine is young

Daniel Lubetzky 42:16 ... for me, yeah. My mom said, "Roman, why are you telling him this stuff? He's nine years old." And he said, you know, "He needs to hear this. I was nine years old when I needed to live through it. He just needs to hear through it."

Simon Sinek 42:30 Wow.

Daniel Lubetzky 42:30 And so he was nine years old when the war started, and 12 when he was sent to a concentration camp, 15 and a half when he was liberated by American soldiers.And what's interesting about him is that in spite of the horrors of what he went through, he weighed 70 pounds and was six feet tall when he was liberated.

Simon Sinek 42:48 Wow.

Daniel Lubetzky 42:49 And, like, there's a YouTube interview of him, Roman Lubetsky, you can look it up on, on, on YouTube, and, and it's, it's very, very interesting. But what's fascinating about him is that in spite of all of what he went through, he just saw the kindness in others. And he lived his life with kindness, and that we named the company KIND after him. He passed away the year that we launched KIND, which was a very interesting, difficult year for us, for me. Ever since I was a kid, having experienced that in Mexico, I promised myself that I would do what I can to prevent what happened to my dad from happening to other human beings. And I thought that my singular mission back then was to make peace in the Middle East. I thought that's how I was gonna contribute, that the way I was gonna build bridges was by bringing Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians, Egyptians, and Turks together. And when I was in college, I stumbled upon the field of the business of peacemaking, of how you can use commerce to bring people to trade with one another, and when they trade with one another, it shatters stereotypes because they're interacting as fellow human beings. They're breaking bread together, and then they're-

Simon Sinek 44:09 And they have common interest

Daniel Lubetzky 44:10 ... and their common interest. They have cementing relationships because they have vested interest in, in, in growing together. And so I decided after law school to start PeaceWorks, a company that had Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians, Egyptians, and Turks trading with one another, run by a confused Mexican Jew getting all of these guys together, running a brand called Moshe Pupik and Ali Mishmukin's World Famous Gourmet Foods. I still don't know why it didn't work out. [laughs]

Simon Sinek 44:40 [laughs]

Daniel Lubetzky 44:41 Um, I made all the mistakes in the world, but I, I was so enamored with the concept that I, I, I launched a venture in Sri Lanka between Sinhalese and Tamils, in Indonesia between Muslim, Christian, and Buddhist women, in South Africa, in Chiapas, Mexico, and the concept was always to use market forces and Americans as... I'm a very romantic American, to use American optimism-

Simon Sinek 45:03 Mm-hmm

Daniel Lubetzky 45:03 ... to use your words, to bring people together and help them discover each other's humanity. And that's, that's been a big part of... And I still today, after this horrible, painful war, um, we're now working really hard at PeaceWorks 2.0, trying to find a way to help the people in Gaza and the people in the envelope on the Israeli side improve their lives and start building back some-

Simon Sinek 45:31 Working together.

Daniel Lubetzky 45:33 Right now, the step is just give them a sustenance and a better future and help them take baby steps. I think working together today is too much of an ask. But as a, as an aspiration, I wanna align incentives so that Palestinians, Israelis, other Arabs, internationals, everybody can work towards the same goal.

Simon Sinek 45:54 Well, what I love is you're taking everything that you've learned and you know about building a remarkable brand and a remarkable company like KIND, um, and you're applying that to these, to social good, and it's all the same thing. And so, you know, I think anybody who doesn't bet on you is naive.

Daniel Lubetzky 46:12 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 46:13 Because, um, there is empirical data here to show that you actually know what you're talking about. And if anybody can succeed in, in actually producing a lasting peace in these conflicts that seem intractable, I, I, I think you're the one. So this is pretty cool.

Daniel Lubetzky 46:34 Thank you so much.

Simon Sinek 46:34 Pretty amazing.

Daniel Lubetzky 46:35 It's, the reality is that we have no other option-

Simon Sinek 46:38 Yeah

Daniel Lubetzky 46:38 ... but to, but to figure it out. There's a lot at stake, and so I, I, it, it, I appreciate you saying that, but even more important, we need to give agency to everybody listening-

Simon Sinek 46:48 Yeah

Daniel Lubetzky 46:48 ... for them to understand they have to be the ones leading the way.

Simon Sinek 46:51 Attack, attack, attack.

Daniel Lubetzky 46:52 You have the, you have the most popular TED Talk out there. I have one that's nothing like that. But I, I did experience something interesting when I gave mine, and I talked about how everybody in this room, when I talk to the TED community, understands this problem of growing division and, and rigidity, but they see it on the other side. They don't see it happening to them-

Simon Sinek 47:14 Yeah, yeah, of course

Daniel Lubetzky 47:15 ... and their side.

Simon Sinek 47:15 Of course.

Daniel Lubetzky 47:16 And that's, I think, the opportunity that we all have to understand, that this is a threat against all of us-

Simon Sinek 47:21 Yeah

Daniel Lubetzky 47:21 ... and all of us need to join together.

Simon Sinek 47:22 Well, we need to get over this, this ridiculous notion that I'm right and they're wrong, because everybody thinks they're on the side of right.

Daniel Lubetzky 47:27 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 47:28 And everybody-

Daniel Lubetzky 47:28 And that was partly the point you made earlier

Simon Sinek 47:29 ... and bo- and both sides think the other side is wrong.

Daniel Lubetzky 47:31 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 47:31 And so until one can accept that, that I am part of the problem and they are part of the solution, you know, you c- the reason for, for the, the, a peace movement is you can't make peace with your friends. You can only make peace with your enemies. And so to accept that we are part of the problem and they are part of the solution is the only way to arrive at peace, 'cause you can't get to peace with one side.

Daniel Lubetzky 47:52 I, I notice sometimes that somebody that I respect a lot does something wrong, and a tool that helps me enormously that I, that I realize that it's a super good tool, every time I find that, I ask, "How am I also doing that problem?" Like, for example, I was with a person that I admire enormously, and I asked for time with him to consult on an issue, and he started talking nonstop, and I couldn't get a n- a word in edgewise. And I have very important things to share that could have calibrated his feedback to make it even stronger. But he was a little senior to me, and so I, I just listened. But I started reflecting, "Oh my God, I'm that person 99% of the time," because I'm with team members of mine, and I need to... If I only spoke 10% less, the quality of my feedback would be... infinitely greater. Every time I notice that somebody else did something suboptimal, I'm like, "Oh my God, I must have the same problem." H- And I try to detect it and find it, and it's hard. It's hard to find. It's so easy to observe in somebody else when they're doing it wrong. It takes harder work for you to find it in yourself, but that's how we grow.

Simon Sinek 49:02 It's good advice for peace talks, it's good advice for relationships, it's good advice for, for corporate culture. And I'll go back to what I said before, which is even in a relationship, you know, if you want your relationship to work or you want your corporate culture to work and you want your work relationship to work, you know, I am a part of the problem and they're a part of the solution. You know, if that's your mantra, versus I'm right and they're wrong, or I know and they don't, and they need to listen and I need to talk. If you just flip all of those, it... I l- I love what you said, I could do better at that, which is talk 10% less, listen 10% more.

Daniel Lubetzky 49:32 No, you're a very good listener.

Simon Sinek 49:34 Oh, you're very kind. You've never worked with me. Um, [laughs] I talk a lot. I think out loud. That's part of my challenge. And so for me to process, I need to s- say things. And very often in a meeting scenario, it comes across as me doing all the talking, which it's not. It's me thinking. And so I have to learn that it's okay to process out loud, but I can process out loud at the end of the meeting, not at the beginning.

Daniel Lubetzky 50:00 Or create the permission structure, because [laughs] I have the same issue, but I haven't processed that as well as you have. Create the permission structure for people to understand that just because you do that doesn't mean-

Simon Sinek 50:09 Yeah

Daniel Lubetzky 50:10 ... like, I- I'll give you-

Simon Sinek 50:11 I s- I say, I say very frequently, "I'm thinking out loud here," because I don't want people to think that I'm giving instructions or con- making conclusions. Uh, kindness isn't just one of your values, it's the foundation of everything you've built. Was there a moment when someone's kindness towards you made a profound impact?

Daniel Lubetzky 50:26 All the time. But I'm, I mean, I feel bad to come up with a really silly example right now, but just yesterday or day before, for some reason, I ha- I was having a, a kinda like not a great moment or day. I, I was in a, how do you say, in a rut?

Simon Sinek 50:44 Yeah.

Daniel Lubetzky 50:45 And one of my team members, Taylor, just said something really kind to me, and it just elevated me and made me soar. And my reflection, again, to the point that's like when I notice, like, I'm like, "Oh my God, I don't do enough of that," because I'm always running, running, running, running, and I don't take the time to thank team members and to elevate them. And if it had such an impact on me, and I'm the boss, if I could do that for my team, how much more effective would we all be? And so I think the power that every one of us has in our lives-

Simon Sinek 51:22 Mm

Daniel Lubetzky 51:22 ... to make this a better world is insane. Like-

Simon Sinek 51:25 Mm

Daniel Lubetzky 51:25 ... and oftentimes we, we, we forget that you may be walking on the street, and just look at that person's eyes and, and give them love and smile. And at a minimum, you've given them something positive.

Simon Sinek 51:39 Mm.

Daniel Lubetzky 51:40 But sometimes that person has really dark thoughts about what they're gonna do with their life or somebody else's lives.

Simon Sinek 51:46 Mm.

Daniel Lubetzky 51:46 Sometimes you being kind to that person could save that person's life or somebody else's life.

Simon Sinek 51:53 Yeah.

Daniel Lubetzky 51:53 You never know how powerful those tiny, tiny little-

Simon Sinek 51:58 Interventions

Daniel Lubetzky 51:58 ... interventions of kindness, how, how big they can play-

Simon Sinek 52:02 Yeah

Daniel Lubetzky 52:02 ... much bigger than you realize. All of us have so much going on.

Simon Sinek 52:06 You often say that business can be a force for building bridges. What responsibilities do you think entrepreneurs have in a divided world?

Daniel Lubetzky 52:13 The way I think about it is everybody, I don't wanna be preachy, everybody has to find what gives them meaning. For me, in this world, I find it imperative to build bridges because I don't wanna inherit to my children something worse than what I found. I feel like our generation, and I think I'm a little older than you, but they're actually, we're in the same age. I'm 57. But it's insane how good I've had it, and in the last 10, 20 years, I feel like things are moving in the wrong direction, and I owe it to my children and every entrepreneur owes it-

Simon Sinek 52:48 Mm

Daniel Lubetzky 52:48 ... to future generations to leave the world better than you found it.

Simon Sinek 52:51 Mm.

Daniel Lubetzky 52:51 So I just think it gives you so much more meanin- meaning, so much more agency, much more purpose. I'm not doing it to be preachy. I feel like it is more fun-

Simon Sinek 53:01 Mm

Daniel Lubetzky 53:01 ... to be solving these problems and to try to help make this a better world.

Simon Sinek 53:04 Mm.

Daniel Lubetzky 53:04 And so that's what drives me.

Simon Sinek 53:06 I think one of the things that you have an advantage of is you have a father who told you his story. And I don't mean because it's a traumatic story that he went through, but there's data that shows that when we understand something about our ancestry or our, even where our grandparents came from, that we don't see ourselves as beginning now. We see ourselves as continuing something that somebody began before us. The data shows that people who have a sense of where they come from make better long-term decisions. Because, you know, when people say, "Oh, I'm doing it for my children," no, that never happens. No politician or nobody's doing it for their children. They're doing it for themselves. But when there's someone who came before them and sacrificed for them to get to this point, they don't want to let down the person who came before them, and they wanna uphold that, that, that, that honor. And so, you know, that your father sat you down at nine and said, "I need you to know where you come from and what I did before you," you feel this responsibility to your own history. You cannot let your father's legacy go in vain. And I think to teach people where they come from and to uphold that legacy, I think is vital for us to make better long-term decisions.

Daniel Lubetzky 54:12 I love that, and it's very true. And it helps not just for that. It also helps for young people to reach good decisions-

Simon Sinek 54:18 Yeah

Daniel Lubetzky 54:18 ... about their health and about their wellbeing.

Simon Sinek 54:20 Yeah.

Daniel Lubetzky 54:21 To understand that they have something to give and a responsibility to give it, and that they need to be mindful-

Simon Sinek 54:26 Yeah

Daniel Lubetzky 54:26 ... about how they, the decisions they reach.

Simon Sinek 54:29 Daniel, thank you so much. A Bit of Optimism is a production of The Optimism Company, lovingly produced by our team, Lindsay Garbinus, Phoebe Bradford, and Devon Johnson. Subscribe wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts, and if you want even more cool stuff, visit simonsinek.com. Thanks for listening. Take care of yourself. Take care of each other. [upbeat music]