This post is part of a series that highlights people who have influenced me. See the list of Influences here.
Who Simon Sinek is to me
Simon Sinek is the one who taught me to start with Why.
I first found him in his interview on Mixergy. (You’ll have to sign up for the newsletter to get the video, but it’s worth it to watch it over reading the transcript. Simon’s well spoken, and his enthusiasm is infectious.)
I clearly remember being so pumped after I heard his interview that I couldn’t go to sleep. I went and listened to his Ted Talk called How Great Leaders Inspire Action (incidentally, I think this was the first TED Talk I discovered as well). His framework, the Golden Circle as he calls it in the video, helps me understand and communicate how my beliefs connect to what I do (or how they should).
Examples of Simon Sinek influencing me
- The architecture of this site: I have Intro, Log, and Outro on this site, which corresponds to Why, How, and What. The Intro is my About section. It’s about what I believe, why I do what I do. The middle section, the log (or blog) is how I do what I do, the insight behind that. Finally, the Outro is what I actually do. It’s not as cleanly delineated as it once was (or what I aspired for it to be), but that was the original intent behind the setup.
- My mission statement: I don’t actually call it my mission statement. The blog post is called “Marshall in six words.” What I really call it, though, is my Why. Of course, there’s a lot behind that, a lot of other why’s, but that’s the succinct version I keep in mind. And it came as a direct result of that Mixergy interview, when Andrew asked Simon what his Why is.
Where to find Simon Sinek
I’d definitely start with the first two links in this post. After that, here’s his website at StartWithWhy.com.
