Minter Dialogue with Simon Hartley

I had the pleasure of speaking with Simon Hartley, a sports psychologist who’s expanded his expertise to human psychology in general. We discussed the parallels between sports and business, exploring motivation, focus, and the pursuit of excellence. Simon shared insights from his latest book, “Key to the Door,” which examines what sets global thought leaders apart. We delved into the complexities of motivation, touching on his P.E.A.R. model (Purpose, Enjoyment, Achievement, and Reward). Simon emphasized the importance of enjoyment in both sports and business, noting how it’s often overlooked in professional settings. We also explored the challenges of authenticity in the pursuit of success and fame. The conversation wrapped up with a fascinating discussion on the concept of truth and how thought leaders often progress from “my truth” to “our truth” to “the truth.” Throughout the interview, Simon’s passion for understanding human performance and motivation shone through, offering valuable insights for both sports enthusiasts and business professionals alike.

Please send me your questions — as an audio file if you’d like — to nminterdial@gmail.com. Otherwise, below, you’ll find the show notes and, of course, you are invited to comment. If you liked the podcast, please take a moment to rate it here.

To connect with Simon Hartley:

• Check out Simon Hartley’s site here
• Find/buy Simon Hartley’s book, “Key to the Door, Why some people become global thought-leaders, and others don’t,”
• Find/follow Simon Hartley on LinkedIn
• Check out Simon Hartley on Youtube

Other mentions/sites:

• My podcast with Lee Mears
• My podcast with “Coach” Paul Assaiante

Further resources for the Minter Dialogue podcast:

Meanwhile, you can find my other interviews on the Minter Dialogue Show in this podcast tab, on Megaphone or via Apple Podcasts. If you like the show, please go over to rate this podcast via RateThisPodcast! And for the francophones reading this, if you want to get more podcasts, you can also find my radio show en français over at: MinterDial.fr, on Megaphone or in iTunes.
Music credit: The jingle at the beginning of the show is courtesy of my friend, Pierre Journel, author of the Guitar Channel. And, the new sign-off music is “A Convinced Man,” a song I co-wrote and recorded with Stephanie Singer back in the late 1980s (please excuse the quality of the sound!).

Transcription courtesy of Flowsend.ai, an AI full-service for podcasters

Minter Dial: Well, Simon Hartley. Brilliant to have another sports enthusiast and a properly credentialed sports psychologist, as opposed to me, who just thinks of myself as a coach psychology. I mean, a couch psychologist, probably, or anything else. In your own words, Simon, who are you?

Simon Hartley: I. I often describe myself as. By saying my background is sports psychology, but then caveating that by saying that sports psychology is the wrong term. It is really human psychology. It doesn’t really matter whether the person is an athlete or whether they’re a teacher or a surgeon or a chef. It really genuinely doesn’t matter. The stuff that goes on between our ears tends to work the same way whatever we do for a living. So, it really is human psychology.

Minter Dial: Well, in the same vein, I’ve worked a lot with companies and we typically talk about digital transformation. In my mind, it has very little to do about digital, but everything to do with mindset and therefore between the two ears.

Simon Hartley: Yeah, yeah. I think whatever we’re doing in life, it tends to start and finish with what happens between our ears.

Minter Dial: All right, well, so you’re starting. Let’s go back a little bit, Simon, just to get some context on how on earth did you get into this world of human psychology, to use your term.

Simon Hartley: The. The routine I found is to fail some exams. That was my routine.

Minter Dial: Failure is a great learning.

Simon Hartley: It is, it is. It’s brilliant. And when I was a kid, all I wanted to do was fly aeroplanes. I wanted to be a pilot and my careers teacher at school told me, you need maths and physics. So, when I went to college to study some A levels, I chose maths and physics. I also had to take a flying aptitude test to get into the either Royal Navy or Royal Air Force to fly aeroplanes, and I failed it spectacularly. So, I failed the flying aptitude test, went back to college to do another 18 month’s worth of A levels. And I hated maths and physics. So, when I got back to college, knowing I would not be qualified to fly aeroplanes, I then failed maths and physics because my motivation to study them evaporated very quickly. And after failing all of my A levels, I had a rethink and I chose to study sport because I was interested and passionate about it. And I also found, bizarrely, that I was pretty good at it, even though, and this is the most ridiculous thing, biomechanics is pretty much physics. I was rubbish at physics, but all of a sudden I can do biomechanics because we’re talking about throwing a javelin, not just a projectile. So, I did okay at Sport, studied at university, went on to study a Master’s, started my PhD and gradually then took sports science into its sort of niche of sports psychology.

Minter Dial: How important has it been for you to actually be a sportsman in order to be able to be good at your job?

Simon Hartley: It does and it doesn’t help. So, having a background in sport does help. Having been an athlete, it does help. But I often find that I can be more effective in sports that I don’t know, because I bring what I call the power of naivety and the ability to ask the really stupid questions that nobody else asks because the answers are assumed in that environment. So, for example, I’ve never played golf. I’ve worked with lots of golfers over the years, and I find that not playing golf helps me to work with golfers better.

Minter Dial: It makes me think of two other questions. One is, and this comes from my interviews with numerous people who’ve been officers in the military, is if you don’t really understand the role of the nuts and bolts dude at the very bottom of the ladder, you can end up making lots of mistakes in your direction.

Simon Hartley: Yeah. If you’re directing, if you’re asking questions, you might ask more intelligent questions.

Minter Dial: Fair point. He does actually mention that this is the guy who did. Oh, I can’t remember. He’s a Navy guy who’s. Who turned around a nuclear submarine, which was trolling around at the very bottom of the performance spectrum. But when it started saying I know everything to I ask everything. Yeah, the whole thing shipped around. Yeah, it’s something about steering your ship. And then the second one, and, and this obviously is two white dudes talking. Is the, the difference between a male and a female coach. The context for this is that the vast majority of coaches that I run into typically are mentioned even when coaching women players. Andy Murray made a big difference on this point. And, and I think, I mean, really made a lot of great valid points about. He even had Amelie Mauresmo as his coach and talked about you. He was real champion for this. Yet I, when I, in my sport, which is padel tennis, I, I see how different it is managing a woman’s team than it is a men’s team. I thought I’d give you all that just to chew on there.

Simon Hartley: Yeah. Yeah. This, I think, speaks to the power of diversity. I know female teams who in, in some ways probably prefer to be coached by a man. I know male teams that benefit from being coached by women. I know women’s teams that benefit from being coached by women and men’s Teams that benefit from being coached by men. And, and actually when you, when you look at it, there aren’t that many coaching teams that are multi gender. Some, sometimes they’re multiracial, sometimes they have other elements of diversity in there. But the coaching teams typically, historically haven’t had very much diversity, but they could potentially. You, in, in most sports, you’re not going to get mixed gender teams that go out and perform. You know, women’s football teams, they’ll be women. Men’s football teams, they’ll be men.

Minter Dial: But Simon, open parentheses, watch out for other types of genders. And so.

Simon Hartley: Absolutely, yeah, but, but the coaching teams could be. And, and I think this is an area that probably the world would benefit from exploring, the sporting world would definitely benefit from exploring because you look at the different types of input that you can have. Now, I know sports medicine can be and, and tends to be a lot more diverse. Performance analysis is becoming more diverse. Sports psychology is becoming reasonably diverse. So, that mix is getting in there. But if you look at the sort of quote unquote, technical coaches, that’s where I think there’s a little bit more scope for having more diversity built in. And completely take your point that gender is wider than male, female. But unfortunately, when we delineate teams, we call them a men’s team or a woman’s team.

Minter Dial: Well, I mean. And you know, they’re calling a spade a spade. Simon. There’s a difference and we need to respect and glorify that difference as opposed to think that we’re all exactly the same. Yeah, that’s my perspective.

Simon Hartley: Yeah, yeah, I.

Minter Dial: So, in, in sports psychology, I wanted to get one piece in which is Atomic Habits, James Clear, who’s obviously featuring in your book Key to the Door. We’re going to talk about that in a moment. But he talks about the exquisite need to accept boring in order to perform. Riff on that. I didn’t see a lot of boring in your book, by the way.

Simon Hartley: No, there is a reference to boring in quite a few of my books because if I, if you take any elite athlete, they’ll talk about monotony and, and boring being a, not just a feature, but a dominant feature in their existence, in their experience. Swimmers often talk about staring at the black line at the bottom of a pool for hours on end. Just staring at the black line on the bottom of a pool. It’s not interesting, it’s not sexy, but it’s absolutely fundamental if you want to be successful. And one of the tricks, I think, is to look for interest within the activity not outside of. And a lot of people. Because staring at the black line at the bottom of a pool might be boring. They’ll look for interest outside of it. They’ll try and sw. They’re in training rather than key into what they’re doing. But if you get really interest in the pro, interested in the process, and you start to fall in love with the process, you start to find out that actually manoeuvring yourself through the water differently could become fascinating and you could develop some real curiosity about how to take your stroke more effectively, about how to feel the water better, about how to feel your streamlining more, about how to get into that stroke rate, that rhythm that’s most effective for you. How to, how to increase tiny sort of, and we are talking like fractions of a second. Increase your speed by breathing differently now.

Minter Dial: Well, my. Sorry, go ahead.

Simon Hartley: I was going to say if you can, if you can really start to get curious, interested and passionate about that, then all of a sudden it’s not the sort of same kind of boring, if you know what I mean. It’s taken on a different dimension.

Minter Dial: Yeah. I saw a quick hat tip to my old roommate at university who was an NCAA 50 metre swimmer and he used to take 45 minute showers because he just loved the feeling of water. And, and this idea of being really engaged within as opposed to looking without and in business, in my world, the way I equate that is having a side hustle. So, I do my job, I get paid the wages, but really my passion is over here. And how much of a sort of a brain drain or energy drain that is when you’re, when your real thing is always over there, always on the weekend and how that’s absolutely going to knock you out as far as performing in your main thing.

Simon Hartley: Yeah. And so, the question might be what if your side hustle was contained within your main hustle? Then all of your energy would be taking you in the same direction.

Minter Dial: Totally. And this next question may sort of lead into the other one about pair, but what is it that allows for a top level player to actually improve? I mean, at my level, a lot of times I’m, I’m playing with people in my padel or tennis or whatever and they, they get frustrated because they, they, they miss that shot. Oh, it was sin. It was a simple shot. I missed it. Ah, stupid me. And, and, and yet I don’t see what it is that actually makes people go from stupid me to all right, I really want to improve. What do you look at as the factors that sort of make that switch from blaming the ball or the racket or all those other silly things to, all right, I’m going to be accountable.

Simon Hartley: Yeah. And accountability, that word accountability, I think, is huge here. One of the things I learned many, many years ago is that control and responsibility go hand in hand. If you want to take control, you have to take responsibility. And although the ball might have bounced slightly differently off of the. The surface, the surface may not have been even all that sort of stuff, we’ve still got to take responsibility for what we do, because if we want to change it, if we want to hit that ball better next time, we’re going to have to change something. I actually heard years and years ago, this was a conversation between. It was in an NFL environment, in the locker.

Minter Dial: American football.

Simon Hartley: American football. That’s right. Between the coach. Well, the coach was sort of listening on, but it was between the quarterback and the wide receiver. So, the quarterback had thrown a ball, the wide receiver hadn’t caught it, and they were having a discussion and the quarterback sort of said, well, you were in the wrong place. And the receiver said, well, you didn’t throw the ball properly. And the coach was standing there, said, well, you’re both right and you’re both wrong, because whilst you keep this sort of perspective that it was the other person’s fault, you’re not going to change anything. As soon as we can flip into, I was in the wrong place and I didn’t throw the ball properly, now we’re going to go change something and then maybe we connect the past next time. So, taking responsibility, I think, is absolutely critical and looking at what we did and what we can do differently. And there’s a. A period of reflection, I think, that’s required, not just being frustrated in the moment, but actually stepping back away from it and thinking, okay, so what could I do differently? What do I need to work on? What do I need to practise? And then actually committing to doing that, because for many people, they, they make a mistake in the moment and, and hope that when they next arrive on the field or on the court and that situation presents itself, they. They’re just going to learn from it. Well, how you haven’t practised anything, you haven’t done anything differently between last time and this time. So, so nothing’s going to change.

Minter Dial: Why do you expect different results if you do the same thing? One of the things about sports, and we’ll surely navigate out of this, is that there’s an element of hyper emotion in sports that in A business world anyway, tends to be subjugated underneath rational concepts. And, and so when you’re playing the game, it feels like the emotions somehow get the better of you. Yet if you don’t have the passion and the emotion, where’s that extra spunk going to come from? And, and, and then comes this idea of self-awareness. You’re in the moment, you’re fighting for your, whatever it is you’re, you know, your last 50 metres of your 200-metre freestyle or whatever and your ability to be aware of my, my left hand is going in differently than my right or, or I really, my feet weren’t working. I, I didn’t, but I didn’t see that. Obviously having a coach’s ability to have that external viewpoint helps, but self-awareness, how, where does that play and how does one actually develop that in order to move to that next step?

Simon Hartley: One of the things I’ve learned about focus, focus follows interest, interest follows what we care about. And it’s, it’s possible to be focused on all kinds of things in the moment. So, if you take that example, swimmer in the last 50 metres of a 200 metre race, what are they focused on? 1Answ be all of the garbage that’s going on inside their head. It could be, oh my God, you know, there’s 30,000 people on poolside, there are TV cameras at the end. What if I screw this up? It could be all of that stuff. It could be this hurts. Now we’re in that part of the race where this really, really hurts and you just focus on the pain. It could be that you’re just focused on the next stroke and just making that stroke. It could be that you focused on the rhythm and you’re just trying to hold that rhythm. Because if you hold your rhythm, you hold your those nice long strokes, nice powerful strokes and, and you stop snatching at the water. That’s what you need to focus on. Now there isn’t a right or wrong answer in my experience as to what the, the right thing to focus on is.

Minter Dial: Well, excuse me if I could. I mean being fearful about up and, and worrying about the 10,000 spectators, surely that is, that is a wrong idea than, than focusing on the next stroke or, or my rhythm.

Simon Hartley: I, I, yes, I would say for, for the vast majority of people, focusing on your next stroke is a lot more productive, a lot more effective. But whether it was that you focused on the rhythm, whether it’s you focused on the feeling in your hands, that’s pretty personal.

Minter Dial: Right? I agree.

Simon Hartley: So, so finding Something that’s really going to help you. That point of focus that’s really going to help you in that moment makes a huge difference. And what we tend to find is that our emotions and our focus will sort of go hand in hand. If we were to focus on the 30,000 people and the fear of letting everybody down. And then, for example, we saw somebody at the corner of our eye and that exacerbated it. And then we set. Felt some pain. All of a sudden that’s going to spiral out of control unless we’re really good at pulling our focus back in. Yeah.

Minter Dial: Anything happens as flows, as opposed to flow.

Simon Hartley: Yeah, absolutely. But if we could, if we could get into focusing on the rhythm, the stroke rate, the, the feeling as our hands connect into that stroke, if we would focus on that, the chances are the other stuff would ebb away into the background and emotionally we’d be in a far more stable place.

Minter Dial: In terms of motivation, the motivation to win in your pear-shaped motivation book, which I haven’t read, but I only sort of saw a little snippet on, you talk about ambition. So, it’s been my observation that most teams that are about to confront one another, both teams have this ambition to win.

Simon Hartley: Yeah.

Minter Dial: What makes that different? How do you, how do you go from well, I want to win to actually winning?

Simon Hartley: I had a. I asked some stupid questions on a regular basis. As do I. I asked some stupid questions to a team. They’re the Fiji Rugby Sevens team. This is about 18 months ago. So, they were about 10 months out from the Paris Olympics. We were in Fiji on Ireland. We were setting out their Olympic year and I said to them, so you’re going to be in Paris in 10 month’s time for the Olympic Games. What do you want to achieve? And of course they said, well, a gold medal. I said, fantastic. Just for interest, what would happen if I walked into the New Zealand dressing room and we asked them, what would they say? Yeah, they probably say gold too. Australia, Argentina, France, Canada. Yeah. What would they all say? Yeah, they’d all say gold. Okay. So, the fact is everybody wants gold, but the truth is, some want it more than others. And that bit really matters. If they all want it more than we do, the chances they’re going to pick it up.

Minter Dial: What does it mean to want more? Because I did have a chat, wonderful man called Paul Asante on my podcast, and he shepherded as coach a winning streak of 200. And I think it was 62 matches in squash over 13 years without loss. But what is it that that Hunger, the desire for wanting more, especially when you have multiple players to deal with. How do you kick into more than the others?

Simon Hartley: Well, it’s often about having really stable and enduring motivation. We’re Talking about a 10 month period between that conversation and the Olympic final. The question is, what are we going to do tomorrow and the day after and the day after and the day after and the day after? Well, you were talking about sort of marginal gains earlier. Often if we’re at 85, 90, 95% every single time we train between now and then and we’re really focused on what we’re doing and we’re making the most of every single opportunity that we get and we’re doing the analysis, we’re learning from all of those opportunities like we’ve talked about with, you know, missing a shot in a padel game. If we do that better than everybody else around us, the chances are we’re going to give ourselves a really good opportunity. If we don’t, we’re going to let it slip through our fingers. Because if the other teams are all doing that better than we are, the chances are they’re going to come out on top.

Minter Dial: So, there are two things that I have in my observation, I would say qualify that angst or desire for more. One comes from the context from which we came, which means, for example, while I might be more hungry, you know, I wasn’t a spoiled child, I was brought up in a immigrant this and that and I had no food on my plate. And that, that is a long-term itch that needs to be scratched, if you will.

Simon Hartley: Yeah.

Minter Dial: And within that context, I also think of how much shit have you gone through, especially if you’re a team, because if you just only know how to win and you haven’t actually encountered the loss or the get up off the ground and, and get back in there kind of thing that tends to be fragile sense of want to win.

Simon Hartley: Yeah. And I, I think there are all sorts of motivators that can be incredibly powerful. The barking dog is the way I terminate. Having, having something on your shoulder that’s chasing you. You know, whether it’s a fear of failure, whether it’s the past that you were talking about trying to escape something. And that can be incredibly powerful. But there are, there are lots of examples over the years of athletes who have, have had that. So, their motivation was to escape poverty, for example. And they do escape poverty. They land in a very comfortable place, they’ve got millions in the bank, they’re living in a lovely house, they’ve Got that fast car outside, they bought the yacht, all that sort of stuff. And then what happens to the hunger? And it can disappear very, very quickly. And there are, there are lots and lots of examples of athletes who, whose motivation sort of went pop when they started doing well and the rewards particularly followed.

Minter Dial: Which brings up the sort of existential ten-thoUSAnd-pound question, which is, where does the sports analogy have its limitations when it comes to business? Frequently, and I do this, I’ll talk about sports and why it’s a great thing to transpose on business and all that, but I mean, as a sports person, typically at a certain age you’ve hit your prime and then there are injuries and, and then how do you bring that sense into business? Because, you know, I would say, I mean, certainly from a success standpoint, one of the biggest issues is success tends to kill curiosity and, and kill sense of self or humility and, and self-awareness.

Simon Hartley: It could, it could equally, you know, there are players and athletes who, like Roger Federer, never seem to lose that. Doesn’t matter how many Grand Slam titles he won, never seem to lose it. And actually there’s a point where, yes, you have to retire because physically your body’s not going to be able to do what it once did. And the injuries probably compound all of that sort of stuff. But, but actually was the drive, the determination, the curiosity, the passion, was it there towards the end? With some athletes, it really is. With others, I don’t think it ever was. And there are some who’ve been pretty open. Andre Agassi, Tiger Woods, they never really loved what they did. They wanted the success. They were driven by the success. Yeah, but not my, any deep passion or love for what they were doing. I can remember talking to a British Olympian, a triathlete, and asked him, you know, when you finish being a competitive triathlete, what will you do? And he said, well, I’ll go cycling up in the hills, I’ll go running, I’ll probably go swimming across a lake. That’s what I’ll do. I just won’t be competitive anymore. I might eat a few more pieces of cake when I get to the cafe at the top of the hill, but otherwise I’d like to just keep doing this, please.

Minter Dial: One of the things I really enjoyed about pair, so P is purpose, E is enjoyment, A for achievement and ambition, and R for reward and recognition, to be exact, is the enjoyment factor. It feels, you know, talking about the crossovers of sports and business is that we do pretty much everything we can in business to eliminate enjoyment. I Mean, it is in the form of efficiencies and other KPIs and ROIs. We just drill it out of people. And what I liked about the way you define enjoyment, as far as I understand it, is there’s the inherent pleasure of the task, but there’s also the ability and enjoyment of getting over shit and difficulty. And challenge.

Simon Hartley: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I know a lot of people, particularly in disciplines like engineering, for example, where easy equals boring. They don’t want the easy stuff. The easy stuff’s not interesting. And there are lots of people in lots of walks of life, I think, who genuinely enjoy the challenge. They enjoy the mental stimulation. If you think about why human beings enjoy bizarre things like golf, I mean, if you think about it on a rational level, golf’s a ridiculous game. You’ve got a little white ball and you’re going to try and hit it with a very unusual shaped piece of stick and get it into a hole in the ground. And the enjoyment comes because we want the ball to go in X direction. And when we hit it, it does. It’s mastery, really, that gives us that sense of enjoyment. It’s taking on a challenge and knowing that we can meet the challenge. And actually, if the challenge isn’t tough enough, there is no enjoyment for us. So, there’s all sorts of dimensions to enjoyment. And I completely agree with you. In many areas of business, it’s almost like we’re trying to create biological robots rather than embracing human beings and embracing the fact that actually people probably will perform better if they’re enjoying what they.

Minter Dial: Do and enjoy their peers.

Simon Hartley: Yeah.

Minter Dial: I mean, in Lee Mears conversation with me about why the Lions, one of his two Lions tours, was a great success, Elmo’s A Flop was the quality of the leader. But also this notion of going to bat with your, your, your team and have some literal personal enjoyment as opposed to just professional regardless for one another.

Simon Hartley: Yeah. And I think that you’re right. Working with great people, working in a great environment, having a fantastic culture in business, also working with great clients, you know, enjoying picking up the phone or going to meetings with clients, I think that’s huge for a lot of people. If you, if you actually drill down into it and ask people, what do you enjoy in your work? What are the enjoyable elements of your work? Often, if we’re working with great people, either who are on our team or clients or whatever, that brings the enjoyment.

Minter Dial: I, I interviewed a man who has spent his life interviewing people in the, the moment, in the lucid moments before they die and, and he’s. And his conclusion after two and a half thoUSAnd such interviews is that there are only two things that count in life and the first is relationships and the second one is the experiences. So, that speaks to that. All right, let’s spend the last portion of our time together. Simon Hartley on your latest book. So, I designed a sign that’s like your 10th or 11th book. Congratulations.

Simon Hartley: Thank you.

Minter Dial: The Key to the Door published at the end of the year. So, let’s start with why this book?

Simon Hartley: It, it was me following my curiosity, largely curiosity actually, plus frustration, which I found is a particularly potent cocktail. So, the frustration came from the fact that I share content, I share ideas, I’ve written some books, but I look around and there are some people in the world who I’ve described it as whenever they share a piece of content, they get a global standing ovation. They are people like the Brene Browns of the world and the Simon Sinek’s and the James Clears and people like that. And, and they have really great content. But I’m thinking, well, mine’s pretty good too. They, they reach millions and millions and I reach a few thoUSAnd. So, the frustration is why aren’t I doing what they do? The curiosity is, well, how could I, what are they doing differently? Because they must be doing something differently than me. Going back to the conversation we had earlier about hitting a ball if we’re playing padel or tennis or something, I need to actually look at what I’m doing rather than just bemoaning the fact that they’re getting building a greater audience than I am. What are they doing differently? So, I started to dig under the surface. I looked at a dozen or of a dozen genuine global thought leaders. Some of them are today’s thought leaders, modern day thought leaders, but we go back in history as far as Socrates to find global thought leaders. And I wanted to know, you know, what have they all got in common and what are they doing differently? And, and that’s really where Key to the Door came from.

Minter Dial: Nice. So, several of those individuals I, I know very well. I’ve even had a few on my podcast that you cite in your book. And I’m wondering to what extent, or let’s say maybe you can connect some patterns and dots because that’s a good idea with regard to what are the common factors. But specifically I was thinking about two things. One is the, the notion of purpose. How much did purpose sort of underpin it. And second of all, the desire to be famous. To what extent that ambition bled through I want to be Top of the Pops, I want to be a best-selling author in Wall Street Journal or whatever. I want to have a million followers. Those types of objectives translated.

Simon Hartley: Yeah, I think there’s probably a blend in these people that I’ve researched. There are some who probably became global thought leaders but didn’t set out with that intention. They were doing what they did and they were following their own path. They were trying to make sense of the world. And as they made sense of the world and communicated it in their own way, other people sort of hooked into that and said, I really get that. That really makes sense to me. That really resonates. And because they were doing it in a way, you know, people are not so different from each other. If they were doing it in a way that really engaged an audience, the chances are that audience would go and share those thoughts and it would start to gain a life of its own. And I suspect that people like Brene Brown, for example, find that she was essentially doing what she’d been doing for years, following that same path. But, but actually she, she just hit upon something that was, was more engaging for more people. A way of, ways of explaining this that just made sense and that it lit the touch paper almost for her. There are other people who are far more deliberate about creating and building an audience who have almost got a, a methodology to it, semi scientific people like Tim Ferriss and people like James Clear who really understand audience building and, and are probably looking for, well, what content am I going to create for this audience now? I’m going to build a massive audience and I’m probably going to hone down the content to something that I know really makes sense to them and they test and test and test and test that process. So, so for them, I think they, they arrive at the same place but through a very different mechanism.

Minter Dial: Renee Brown, I’ve never managed to get her attention, but definitely has an amazing message credentials. Can you hear me?

Simon Hartley: Yes, you disappeared just for a second there.

Minter Dial: Check the audios. We should be good. Sorry about that. So, Brene Brown did a great job, but I think of Esther Perel, the, the Belgian sex psychologist and I feel like she’s very missionary in it. Yet as you point out, in pear shape, purpose alone will not do it. So, to what extent? I mean it’s, it sort of sounds obvious for a Simon Sinek to have a why, a purpose, but do you. To what extent does purpose, the why actually figure in this success that is so elusive for most of us?

Simon Hartley: I, I think it’s a part. This is where Simon Sinek and I would probably disagree. For some people it’s a major part, for others it’s a less important element. For some people ambition really does drive them without much of a sense of purpose around what they do and they can become incredibly successful. For other people, even the greatest sense of purpose, if they haven’t got enjoyment with it, isn’t going to last long. Empower them. And it’s not that I disagree with Simon and his start with why philosophy. I just think there is more to it and there are more dimensions to it than that. And it, it will explain some, some elements of motivation for some people, but it doesn’t explain all elements of motivation for everybody. And I and my understanding of, of PEAR-shaped motivation is that we all have and all need purpose and enjoyment and ambition and achievement and recognition and reward but the denominations are different for everybody. So, I could be incredibly purpose driven, you might be incredibly ambition driven. But we’ve still got both of us an element of purpose and an element of ambition and also of enjoyment and reward and recognition. We’re not devoid of all of those. And if we, even if we look at how our motivational drivers have changed through our life, we will probably see that at some point in our life reward was probably more important. You know, I can remember back to having starting out from university, getting my first jobs, trying to afford a house when the kids came along. Actually reward was pretty important for me then. Pound, shillings and pence, dollars and cents, that was, that was pretty important. It’s different if you’re feeling pretty financially comfortable all of a sudden purpose might be a far more relevant driver to you because actually we’ve covered off reward now we don’t need it quite as much. If it’s there, great. If it’s not, it’s not a big problem. But I, when I think back to me in my 20s, yes, purpose was important but I’d have probably sacrificed a bit of that to feed people in.

Minter Dial: The sacrifices that are needed. I have this story that I’m telling myself which is you kind of need to own one thought. Nuanced thought does not sell. So, if you think of Brene Brown vulnerability, if you think of Simon Sinek you have the why purpose. If you think of Seth Godin, you think of purple cows. I mean there’s, there’s a sort of an element of just dumbing it down to a word and that of course you have content and some, some strength behind it, but that helps you. The idea of nuance and broad curiosity is fun for us but not good for Google and generally isn’t what people look for.

Simon Hartley: Yeah, and, and there’s another element that I’m, I’m pretty sure has hampered me over the years when I think about writing a 300-page book in, in my head value is to the reader is getting something from each one of those 300 pages. But actually when I read the really popular books start with Y is a great example. You could kind of get all you needed to from one page and then ask what the other 299 are there for because it really, it’s just reinforcing what I just learned on page one, isn’t it?

Minter Dial: That’s what my publisher told me to do.

Simon Hartley: And actually I think personally in my endeavours to create more value or provide more value to the reader, I’ve probably done exactly what you’ve just said, which is taken my nice simple one word book and turned it into a monster.

Minter Dial: In this there is a whole zone of questions which is around authenticity because you talk about the power of storytelling, you talk about the tension between marketing and authenticity. It surrounds us and yet a lot of these mechanisms to become famous and big are somewhat pushed and you have to force it down and you take every interview and you follow the, the flow if you will and then you get success and then somehow success and authenticity becomes a problem. A because you don’t know if the person who’s coming to see you isn’t just sucking up to you because you’re, you’re now the big swing, you know what, and, or you have money and fame and so who, who do you trust anymore Anyway, that, that seems like a whole zone. I mean the idea of being authentic, nuanced, real frail, show of failure, vulnerability to use a term is authentic, but it doesn’t seem like it’s the typical way of these bigger players.

Simon Hartley: Yeah, and therein maybe lies another barrier for a lot of people who have got enormous value to share but don’t really break out of their little bubble in the world. Because as I reflected on when I was writing the book, if becoming a mega global thought leader success phenomena required me to become a, an expert on algorithms, it’s not going to happen. That’s not me. If it requires me to dive into marketing and become a global marketing guru, that’s not me either. So, and if it requires me to become something that I’m not and it become, it requires me to be inauthentic, I’m not going to do that either. If it required Me to compromise my values. I’m not going to do that either.

Minter Dial: Certainly within that you talk about what you’re not interested in doing. No enjoyment, no maybe knowledge. And therefore, the, the key then is presumably to surround yourself with those who do have authentic, all those little other pieces if that ambition is really what you are looking for. I somehow feel as soon as you want to be successful, it doesn’t feel like that’s an authentic even ambition.

Simon Hartley: And, and I, I, I completely agree. I’ve, during this, this process I’ve been pretty self reflective. I set out, when I was thinking about this process, set out with a sort of an ambition, a goal to do more speaking work, professional speaking work in North America. And I talked to a few people who had. And my conclusion at the end of those conversations is that’s not actually what I want. It sounds good and financially it would make more sense, but do I actually want to do that? No, I don’t think I do. Going back to your earlier question about hitting that ball better, one of the questions is do you want to hit the ball better? Do you want to win more points, win more games? Yeah. The second question is do you actually want to do what it takes to hit the ball better and win more games?

Minter Dial: Yeah.

Simon Hartley: It’s like people sitting out and saying, yeah, I’d love to lose a couple of stone. Okay, great. But do you want to change what you eat? Do you want to change the way you exercise? Do you want to change what you drink? Do you want, do you want to change your lifestyle in any way? Oh, no, no. I want to keep it exactly as it is, but I just want to be two stone lighter.

Minter Dial: Yeah. I use the expression are you prepared to pay the price? And that change and uncomfortableness may be out of your comfort zone.

Simon Hartley: Yeah. And the truth is at the end of those conversations, I don’t actually want to do the, the speaking work in North America that I thought I did.

Minter Dial: I hear you. I, I’m still under that illusion for, for now. But you just mentioned the word truth, which is maybe we’ll, we’ll end with this particular zone of intrigue or inquiry, which is the idea of moving from my truth to the truth. And in a world where everybody has their own truth. I thought that was a nice little sort of eye opener for me. How can you move from my truth to the truth if such a thing as an absolute truth were to exist?

Simon Hartley: Yeah. And I was looking at the, the journey that these authors take when they present ideas and that they sort of move from My truth to our truth, to the truth. And of course, my truth is the way that I understand the world. It’s the way I see it through my eyes, the experience that I have. But if I could. If I could share that idea in a way that resonated with you, and you thought, yeah, yeah, I can see the world that way, too. I understand that. That makes sense to me. We would share it, you and I, and that would become our truth. If I could then go a stage further and show you lots of examples of this, this truth that we now share across society, across history, across cultures, then it might start to look like the truth. Now it might not be, because it’s still a perspective. And depending on what examples I use, then, you know, I could use all the ones that support this little idea that you and I share. It doesn’t actually mean it’s the truth, but it’ll start to look like it.

Minter Dial: So, I want to push back a second because I’m thinking of the transcendental values of beauty, truth and goodness, as if there were only one version of truth or beauty or goodness. In today’s world, there certainly isn’t much acceptance of a uniformity of beauty or a singular truth, or even what is good or bad. I mean, the story’s out. And one of the classic ideas of marketing is to not try to please everybody. So, the idea of having the best product for everybody is a terrible marketing idea. I want to have some kind of naysayers, some haters as part of it, and therefore people who are going to rub up against my truth.

Simon Hartley: Yeah, but if. If we trace how these ideas are presented, this. If we take Simon Sinek’s start with why as an example, his opening story is about the creation of powered flight. It’s about two sets of people in North America, one of whom had the money and the backing of lots of clever people from the Smithsonian, had funding from the War Department, Harvard professors all over it. And the others were working out of a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, as I remember it, and had none of the backing. Now, Simon Sinek will explain that by saying the only difference between them is that one was powered by passion and understood their why, and the other one was fueled by ambition, wanted to be the first and the money and the fame and all of that sort. That sort of stuff. And the. The Wright brothers from their bicycle shop were the first to create the power flight powered by their why. Now, I don’t know, honestly, whether that is the only or most significant difference between them, but if we Use that as a story to illustrate the power of understanding your why. And we use another bunch of examples from across history. Stack starts to look like this is some form of universal truth that we’ve all just sort of missed now. Now, it’s not to diminish the importance of purpose, because I believe that purpose is important. But, but how we present this idea makes a huge difference as to how people consume and understand this. And, and you know, this idea that we could tell a story in a way that shared my truth and it became ours, and then we could start to look around the world, the pair of us, and say, look at all these other examples. This is the truth, right? This is something that I’ve seen as I’ve unpicked the, the books of global thought leaders. This is a pattern that I’ve seen over time, hence why I shared it within. Within. Key to the Door.

Minter Dial: Indeed. And you know, Mike, just reminds me how in storytelling, when I was running this company called Redken, one of the things that I, I would pride myself on doing was whenever I told a story, I wanted it to be personal and I also didn’t want to bore myself. So, I didn’t want to repeat exactly the same story. But the idea of saying the same story over and over is critical for getting the narrative out there, but also relating it into a personal way so that I, I would reveal something of my personality that allowed other people to connect into it. So, I never really wanted to spell the truth. I wanted to spell a truth that other people connect into. Fabulous stuff, Simon. I’m sure that was a frustrating ending because I didn’t let you comment that, but feel free to comment on it and more specifically tell people how people can track you down, listen to you more, and of course get your book the Key to the Door.

Simon Hartley: Well, Key to the Door is available on the, the global bookstore that’s out of Seattle. Yeah, that one. Yeah. It sounds like a rainforest. So, feel free to find the book online. I love it when people connect with me on LinkedIn. So, search Simon Hartley on LinkedIn and hopefully you will find me sitting in a. A stadium full of blue seats on my profile picture wearing a Fiji shirt. If I’m wearing. Wearing the Fiji rugby shirt. Absolutely. But probably if, if you like these sorts of ideas and you want to delve deeper, our YouTube channel has loads and loads of content. So, the YouTube channel is forward slash Imon Hartley and hopefully you should find loads more thoughts, insights, ideas, plus some interesting stuff from the Fiji rugby environment.

Minter Dial: Love it. And of course there’s your website. Be-world-class.com, Simon. I’ll put all of those into the show notes. Been a pleasure having you on. Good luck with getting to your level, wherever that level may be, and hopefully we’ll stay in touch.

Simon Hartley: Thank you very much.