PDF Summary:Start With Why, by Simon Sinek

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Indeed, once the Wright brothers succeeded, Langley quickly quit his flight dreams. Had he been inspired by the WHY, he would have been excited to improve on the technology. Instead, since he cared mainly about fame, the failure was humiliating, so he quit.

Story 2: Apple, Inc.

The 1960s and 1970s in America were characterized by common people rising up and challenging people in power. That was the case for Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, who were at the forefront of the technological revolution.

Although Apple is one of the most prominent technological companies today, Wozniak built the Apple I not to make money, but to help the common man. Wozniak believed that allowing average people to buy and own computers would level the playing field and give the little guy a leg up.

Jobs’s role was to sell the computer Wozniak made. Jobs was more than just a great salesman: he also believed that revolutionary ideas would change the world.

That combined vision of accessibility, opportunity, and revolution became Wozniak and Jobs’s WHY—and it led to incredible success. In their first year, Apple made $1 million in revenue. This rose to $10 million in their second...

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Sinek uses an analogy of a group of American executives who visited a Japanese car assembly line. The executives were confused by the door installation process. In the United States, a line worker would take a rubber mallet and tap the door on the edges to fit it perfectly into the car frame. In the Japanese manufacturing line, this step was missing. The American executives were perplexed.

The Japanese guide explained: their doors simply fit without manual adjustment, because they were designed to fit perfectly from the beginning. They engineered the right outcome from the beginning.

When you know WHY you’re doing what you’re doing, you’re able to start making correct decisions from the outset.

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• GM had to discontinue some of their promotional programs, which caused their sales to decline. Customers had started to expect promotional pricing, and when it disappeared, they went back to buying from foreign auto companies.

To avoid the financial penalty of promotions, companies often design rebates to be difficult to cash in on. Nearly 40% of customers never get the rebate, since they don’t follow the steps to get the refund. While this manipulation has a short-term financial advantage, it costs in long-term reputation and repeat business.

#3: Fear

Fear is the most powerful manipulation because it taps into our survival instinct.

It’s also a common tactic: think of anti-drug advertisements or public service announcements that caution you to wear your seatbelt lest you die in an accident.

In the business world, fear is often used to convince us that if we don’t buy a particular service or product, something bad will happen to us. (Shortform example: a good example of this are pharmaceutical advertisements, where people are told that not taking a certain drug will adversely affect their longevity or quality of life.)

While often nothing bad will _really...

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Apple and Golden Circle Marketing

Apple consistently uses The Golden Circle correctly. They begin with WHY, then figure out HOW they’ll achieve their vision and WHAT they need do create to get there.

This is clear in Apple’s marketing. Think about how strange it would sound if Apple took the typical WHAT to HOW to WHY marketing approach. It might sound something like this:

“We make good computers. Our computers are easy to use, elegant, and well designed. You should buy one.”

Now, compare that to the start with WHY approach that Apple actually uses to inspire customers:

“We think differently. We want to challenge the status quo. The way we do this is by making products that are easy to use, elegant, and well designed. And we just happen to make computers as our products. You should buy one.”

The difference is that Apple’s products are a result of their WHY. Their MacBooks, iPods, and iPhones are just a physical representation of the company’s core beliefs. Therefore, when someone buys an Apple product, they’re not just buying the WHAT: they’re buying the WHY, too.

**Put another way, people don’t actually want to buy stuff. They want to buy...

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• The limbic brain controls our feelings, like trust and loyalty, but it doesn’t have any capacity for language. It also handles our decision-making processes. This corresponds to the HOW and WHY levels of The Golden Circle.

Because the limbic brain doesn’t use language, it makes it hard for us to put our feelings into words. It’s why we hard time talking about the decisions we make. When a choice “feels” right, when we make a decision based on a “gut feeling,” it’s because we’re using our limbic brain. Once the decision gets made, our neocortex swoops in to try and verbally articulate the way we feel.

• For instance, many may describe their romantic relationship with “she completes me” or “it feels right.” These statements don’t make rational sense, but they feel inexplicably true.

How We Make Decisions

To put it simply: decisions start in our limbic brain, and then we articulate and rationalize them using our neocortex. The WHY is how you win a customer’s “heart,” and afterward the WHAT and HOW is how you win their “mind.”

When you start with why, you target the emotional gut part of a person’s brain. While making decisions by gut may sound...

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To maintain the public’s belief in your WHY, your WHAT needs needs to be consistent with how you live the WHY. All of your actions--from the products you put on the market to the way you treat your employees--should support your WHY. That level of consistency proves to outsiders looking in that you actually believe in your WHY.

If you betray your WHY and are inconsistent in how you follow your principles, people won’t know what you stand for. If you say your company questions the status quo as a WHY, but you put out me-too products indistinguishable from the rest of the market, you sound inauthentic.

Authenticity is also important when it comes to sales because it helps people believe in what they’re selling. By being authentic and honest (and appealing to the limbic brain), you can build customer relationships that are based on trust, not manipulation. Consistency and the authenticity that comes from it create long-lasting relationships and long-term success.

Authenticity In Action: Apple Versus Dell

Apple believed--and continues to believe--that its products like the Mac, iPod, and iTunes challenge the status quo. As a result, people understand WHY Apple...

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In turn, having trust allows people to take risks.

• If you didn’t trust your babysitter, you wouldn’t take the risk of leaving your house to have a night out.
• Similarly, in the workplace, if you didn’t trust your leadership or team to take care of you if you took a risk and failed, you wouldn’t take that risk.
• Without trust, people will worry about protecting themselves, which is the cause of office politics.

Trust and the Limbic Brain

The feeling of trust is located in the limbic brain (our emotional center).

That’s why personal recommendations from people we trust hold so much power: it taps into our limbic brain. When we trust the person, we’re more likely to follow their recommendations, even if they seem illogical.

Trust beats out rationality. The trick to inspirational marketing, then, is to activate networks of trusted people to talk about you and your company. (More on trust and marketing in later chapters.)

Trusting Your Leadership

When a group of people with similar beliefs have a cause, challenge, or goal to chase, this creates a strong sense of teamwork. This gives employees something to work toward, which is how great ideas...

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Group 1: The Innovators

Innovators make up 2.5 percent of the population. These are the people who want to be first, so they chase new ideas and products. They’re most interested in advancing society and changing the world in some way. Innovators are the rarest type of people. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk are all innovators.

Group 2: Early Adopters

Early adopters make up 13.5 percent of the population. These people aren’t coming up with new ideas, but they see the value in them, trust their guts, and jump on board right away. These are the people who stand in line for the new iPhone or have five tablets laying around the house because they upgrade models the day they release.

Group 3: Early Majority

The early majority is a large portion of the population at 34 percent. They’re still fairly comfortable with new technologies, but they’re more practical than early adopters. Additionally, they're less likely to act on gut instinct, so rationality matters more to them.

Group 4: Late Majority

The late majority, like the early majority, makes up 34 percent of the population. Also like the early majority, they’re more practical. However, they’re even...

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When you start your message at the top and pass it through your organization, it amplifies—just like it would if it passed through a megaphone. It affects people within your organization, and then the organization uses it to amplify the message to the outside world.

Combining a Charismatic WHY With a Hard-Working HOW

Strong, charismatic leadership that starts with WHY is critical. But most WHYs need a practical HOW to help translate their vision and passion to rest of the organization.

WHYs are big-idea optimists who believe all of their ideas are possible. HOWs live in reality and are better at building the processes that bring those bold ideas to life.

WHYs have the vision and imagination needed to change industries, but they often don’t know HOW to do it. HOWs have the ability to create change, but they don’t have the vision to know what changes to make.

WHY types live in the future, and HOWs live in the present. WHYs are dreamers, while HOWs are practical.

WHY types and HOW types are capable people who can run businesses without the other. But in order to build a world-changing movement or organization, both need to exist. Without a strong HOW,...

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Put another way, as a company grows, the WHY leadership becomes the limbic brain of the company, unable to use language to express its WHY to the marketplace. That purpose is left to the WHAT level, which creates the products, the marketing campaigns, and the customer support functions.

The key, then, is to communicate your WHY clearly throughout every level of the organization. In doing so, you’ll be able to articulate your WHY to the marketplace, too.

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Take the Harley-Davidson logo, for instance The logo isn’t just a motorcycle brand anymore. It represents more than that: it symbolizes an outlaw mentality. The logo is so meaningful that merchandising makes up 12 percent of the company’s revenue.

The major takeaway for businesses is this: symbols are another way to amplify your message using the Golden Circle megaphone, because they can quickly and easily communicate your WHY.

The Celery Test

Trying to communicate your WHY effectively and make decisions in accordance with WHY can feel overwhelming. That’s why Sinek developed the Celery Test, a heuristic to determine what communications “best practices” really are the best practices for your business.

Here’s how the Celery Test works: imagine you’re starting a new health food store. Your WHY is to sell foods that are healthy and improve people’s well-being. You go to a dinner party where people give you advice about your new health food store. One person approaches you and tells you that you need more M&Ms, another person suggests adding celery instead, and a third person tells you to buy Oreos.

All of these people are successful and give good advice, so...

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Eventually, your communication with your customers isn’t inspirational. It’s just noise.

Case Study: The Problem With Walmart

When Sam Walton founded Walmart in 1962, he had one core belief: if he looked after people, then people would look after him and his company. Sam Walton believed in the power of community. That philosophy is what led Walmart from its humble beginnings as a mom-and-pop shop in Arkansas to become the biggest retailer in the world.

As the company grew, Sam Walton stayed committed to his WHY. But when he died, the Walmart became disconnected from its WHY. Instead, executives began to focus on HOW the company did business: selling products at low prices.

But in the process, it sacrificed how it treated people. As a result, Walmart has faced scandal after scandal over treating employees poorly, and it owes hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements.

Competition and changing economy isn’t what’s hurting Walmart: Walmart has become its own worst enemy because it’s success has disconnected it from its WHY.

The School Bus Test

To counter the problem of losing your WHY, use the School Bus Test: **if your CEO was hit by a...

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Apple’s constant commitment to their WHY has created incredibly loyal employees and customers who are drawn to their beliefs.

Note, not everyone is--even though Apple is a leader in the industry, they only hold about 2.5 percent of the personal computer market share. But starting with WHY isn’t about converting everyone.

And yet, Apple is still one of the most valuable tech companies in the world. And it all comes from pursuing the company’s values and vision in everything they do.

The English Longbow

Here’s a different example that shows how starting with WHY a) has always worked and b) is effective outside of business, too.

In 1415, King Henry V of England was marching into the Battle of Agincourt, one of the deciding battles of the Hundred Years’ War between England and France. Henry had already lost 40 percent of his troops, and he was about to square off against a much bigger, much healthier French army.

And yet, the English one because they had one piece of technology the French didn’t: the longbow. Archers could stand out of range of French artillery and still deliver devastating volleys of arrows onto the battlefield. The longbow created a...

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And that leads Sinek to make his final point as he sums up the impact of starting with WHY. When you start with WHY:

• You make smarter decisions more quickly
• You foster optimism, creativity, and loyalty within your employees
• You create loyalty and trust with your customers
• You inspire others and become an innovator in your industry

In other words, starting with WHY can change more than just your own life and business. It can change the world.