What Happens When You Bet on Yourself with Ted Lasso’s Brendan Hunt

Maybe you know the feeling: everyone around you seems to be getting ahead, and every hour you spend on something "frivolous" — the hobby, the detour, the game on a Sunday afternoon — feels like falling behind. Brendan Hunt's career is proof those hours are never wasted. The detour turned out to be the path all along. Most of us know Brendan as Coach Beard and as the Emmy Award-winning co-creator of Ted Lasso. But before any of that, he was an unknown Chicago improv actor when the Amsterdam comedy institution Boom Chicago offered him something different. He moved to Amsterdam for a year… that turned into five… and he joined an alumni roster that now includes comedians like Seth Meyers, Jordan Peele, Amber Ruffin, and Jason Sudeikis. Brendan performed every night, fell head over heels for soccer ("a soccer missionary for all Americans," as he puts it), and struck up a friendship with Jason Sudeikis. Years later, all of it collided into one of the most beloved shows on television, Ted Lasso, which is back for Season 4 on Apple TV+. Brendan has also returned to his first love, the stage, with his solo show The Movement You Need. In this conversation, Brendan and I trace the wildly unplanned path from Chicago to Amsterdam to AFC Richmond… and land on a different way to think about ambition: master the craft in front of you, and let the plan catch up later. In this episode you'll learn: ➡️ The real origin story of Ted Lasso (it began as a YouTube-only commercial written by a pool) ➡️ Why Coach Beard barely talks + the improv rule that explains everything he does ➡️ The "Beatles in Hamburg" secret to mastering any craft ➡️ Why stepping away won't put you behind (everything will be exactly where you left it) ➡️ How "wasting" Sundays watching Dutch soccer created the Lasso–Beard dynamic ➡️ The surprising origin of the BELIEVE sign + who it was designed to annoy ➡️ Why the flip side of belief is trust + and how it shapes Season 4 We spend so much of our lives protecting the plan. Brendan's story is a reminder that the things worth protecting are usually the ones we never planned for at all. This… is A Bit of Optimism. + + + This episode is brought to you by SAP. Bring it with SAP GROW. The AI Cloud ERP for any size business. Learn more at https://SAP.com/GROW + + + Check out Brendan as Coach Beard on season 4 of Ted Lasso on Apple TV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/ted-lasso If you want to learn more about Brendan’s solo show, The Movement You Need, head to: https://themovementyouneed.com + + + Chapters Chapters 00:00:00 Plans vs. Imagination: The Risk of Staying Safe 00:02:43 From Chicago to Amsterdam: The Audition That Changed Everything 00:07:02 The Boom Chicago Pitch: When Amsterdam Became Irresistible 00:11:58 The Beatles in Hamburg: Getting Your 10,000 Hours 00:16:18 The Joy of the Thing: Why Not Thinking About Your Career Makes You Better 00:20:01 Real Opportunity vs. Your Imagination: Why People Stay Put 00:20:58 Strong Opinions, Loosely Held: The Art of the Flexible Plan 00:21:28 Curiosity as Currency: The Jack of All Trades Philosophy 00:22:51 The Ted Lasso Origin Story: A Pool, Some Bits, and a Name 00:25:45 The Soccer Missionary: How Amsterdam Made Brendan the Beard to Ted's Lasso 00:27:31 Everything Contributes to Everything: The Payoff of Wasted Time 00:30:31 Midwestern Chipperness Meets British Stiff Upper Lip: The Culture Clash of Ted Lasso 00:32:57 Diagnosed as Ted Lasso: When Your Company Is the Character 00:33:46 Bringing Yourself to the Character: Acting as Being, Not Becoming 00:37:23 Coach Beard Was a Placeholder: How a Play Gave Him a Name 00:44:06 The Art Couple: The Play Brendan Wishes He Could Do Forever 00:46:33 The 1986 NFC Championship: A Pure Childhood Memory 00:54:07 When Comedy Became a Need: Making Mom Laugh 00:55:59 Season Four: Belief, Trust, and Starting Over 00:57:28 Don't Pick Sides: The Gift of Knowing Your Own Mistakes 00:59:04 The Purity of Art: Why Brendan Keeps Writing + + + Website: http://simonsinek.com Leaderful: https://simonsinek.com/leaderful Podcast: http://apple.co/simonsinek Instagram: https://instagram.com/simonsinek Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/simonsinek Twitter: https://twitter.com/simonsinek Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/simonsinek + + +

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Simon Sinek?

  You're looking at real opportunity, go and do this thing in Amsterdam that's real work versus stay here for your imagination. And people choose imagination.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:08Simon Sinek?

  I I'm confused by that.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  To offer that view with some grace a little bit, because what is imagination but a but a plan? You know, a plan and a vision. I I think inarguably did not have enough of a plan. I can see the value of having a plan, but I guess it's like, don't don't be so locked into your plan that you don't recognize an opportunity.

• 0:29Simon Sinek?

  It's kind of like Strong Opinions Loosely Held, right?

• 0:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:32Simon Sinek?

  Like, have a plan, but be open to going off the plan.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  That's the way.

• 0:35Simon Sinek?

  Yeah. When we're young, we make a decision about what we want to be when we grow up. And we make a plan to make that happen. The things we study, the opportunities we pursue, all go according to that plan. But what happens if the plan is the obstacle to achieving our dreams? Worse, what if we can't see that the plan is the obstacle? Sometimes, taking the risk to go wildly off the plan is the best thing we can do for ourselves, which is exactly why I wanted to talk to Brendan Hunt. Most of us know Brendan as Coach Beard from the show Ted Lasso, which is back for its fourth season on Apple TV.

• 1:15Simon Sinek?

  Brendan also has a solo show called The Movement You Need, which may hit Broadway in 2027. But none of that would have happened if Brendan had stuck to his original plan. Brendan is living proof that trusting our gut over the plan may be the single best thing we can do for ourselves and our careers. Brendan took the crazy risk to leave America to take a job in Amsterdam of all places, a decision that nobody thought was a smart career move. And yet, it was there that he gained a love for soccer and met Jason Sudeikis. It was his choice to go off the plan that led Brendan to becoming one of the Emmy Award-winning writers, producers, and co-creators of Ted Lasso.

• 1:59Simon Sinek?

  The lesson is profound. Sometimes doing things we want to do, the things that others think are unwise, will be the best decisions we make for our lives. If you liked this episode, please remember to subscribe. This is a bit of optimism.

• 2:20Simon Sinek?

  This episode is proudly brought to you by SAP. Is curiosity natural, or can it be taught? It turns out, anyone can learn to be curious. And it's the curious ones that get more out of life, advance quicker in their careers, and just generally grow as human beings. The more we learn to be curious, it's surprising how many doors open for us. Brendan, it's so good to have you here.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  It's great to be here, Simon.

• 2:46Simon Sinek?

  Thank you. I don't think people recognize or know in how how wonderfully insane and mad and creative you are. I know some of it. Because I came to see your show in Amsterdam, your one-man show in Amsterdam, which is basically your life story.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:06Simon Sinek?

  Which is pretty nuts.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  Till that time, at least, yeah. You saw it sometime, my solo show, Five Years in Amsterdam, which I wrote, starting in 2004, after having lived five years in Amsterdam. And you saw it in 22, 23?

• 3:18Simon Sinek?

  Something like that.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  And I believe that was my official Viking funeral last performance I was doing of that show. The theater I used to work for out there, Boom Chicago, they had requested it. So yeah, it's my life story up until leaving Amsterdam. Now, I could talk about a show that none of you have seen, but what we're gonna do. I like the show very much, but it's also like clearly the show of a of a younger man. But it was fun to do, and it was fun to give it a good send-off, and I was glad you saw it.

• 3:44Simon Sinek?

  So let's back up a little bit, which is, you know, one of the things I'm fascinated about people with careers is how many people are living their childhood dreams? And how many of us just sort of like, the sort of the twists and turns of where we find ourselves? And how people learn what to say yes to and what to say no to? I think your career is a twisty-turny one. So where did you grow up?

• 4:06Speaker 01

  Chicago.

• 4:07Simon Sinek?

  So and how does a kid who grew up in Chicago end up for how many years in Amsterdam?

• 4:11Speaker 01

  My main chunk was five, but then I piecemealed two more because I kept going back.

• 4:14Simon Sinek?

  You kept going back. So and you speak Dutch?

• 4:17Speaker 01

  A little, enough to impress people who don't and frustrate people who do.

• 4:20Simon Sinek?

  So I'm impressed that you speak Dutch?

• 4:24Simon Sinek?

  Dunkerveld is like all I know. Well, I'll start as, what did you want to be when you grew up? And then what, how did you get, how did you, why did you go offshore?

• 4:32Speaker 01

  I basically knew I was gonna be at least an actor from doing the seventh grade school play, which was The King and I. I played Lewis, son of I. And then it was like, nothing really was ever considered, like that was just gonna be it. A huge night of impact for me, though, was seeing Second City for the first time in eighth grade and just being blown away by what was going on there. That cast included Bonnie Hunt, who was phenomenal that night in particular. And I think that probably introduced the notion to me of like, oh, you can write stuff, too. Then, you know, go to Illinois State for college. They have a great theater program.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  Most of the original founders of Steppenwolf all met at Illinois State. The teachers they had were some of the teachers that I still had, you know, this.

• 5:21Simon Sinek?

  And were you setting yourself up for stage or screen, or you're just actor?

• 5:25Speaker 01

  Just actor, really. But probably with nowhere near enough attention to screen, because by then I'd been exposed to a fair amount of of theater in Chicago, you know, a steady diet of of improv and Second City in particular. But Illinois State, they they hewed so tightly to the sort of Steppenwolf ethos that like, there wasn't a camera class. If there was, it wasn't required. Like, all we were working with was like, you know, kitchen sink, nuts and bolts, passionate at all times, you know, sort of gritty stage actor.

• 5:59Simon Sinek?

  Real stage work.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That helped my improv, I'd say, and my improv helped my stage acting. And I do sort of feel like I am of the stage more than anything else if I had to had to describe me. But certainly, like, I like movies and TV, too. I just, I just, for some reason, it wasn't even something I I thought about as much. And even when Steppenwolf people, who were the ones I admired, you know, the most, would show up on TV, I tended not to think of that as part of them, in a way, even though they would, they'd be great. You know, like, Laurie McCaffrey in Roseanne, you know, my my mom particularly loved Roseanne. We watched it all the time, and Laurie McCaffrey was great on that show.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  John Malkovich, I think the first movie his I saw was In the Line of Fire, which I don't think he would even call his his best performance, but he's he won an Oscar for it, I believe.

• 6:44Simon Sinek?

  Did he?

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:45Simon Sinek?

  That was a great film.

• 6:46Speaker 01

  It's fun, it's fun.

• 6:47Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Not really thinking about camera acting at all. And then in Chicago, after college, I'm I'm basically always performing every weekend. But sometimes it's with an improv company, or sometimes it's with, you know, my theater company that I had. You would hear once in a while in the improv circles about this place called Boom Chicago. And Boom Chicago, all I knew about it was it was in Amsterdam, and it was founded by some Chicago people, and so they were doing like, Chicago improv as we knew it, out there.

• 7:11Simon Sinek?

  The Second City style, that kind of.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, best I knew.

• 7:14Simon Sinek?

  Oovra, I used the word oovra.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  It's really, really, like, you know, the fact that you called attention to it.

• 7:19Simon Sinek?

  I know.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  Kind of ruined it.

• 7:20Simon Sinek?

  I mean, I didn't want people to think I was a snob.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  I'm gonna throw a French word in later, and it's gonna, we'll be even Stevens. But, you know, I knew one dude who'd gone there and come back, and like, he, you know, I didn't know him that well to like, get into it with him, but he's like, he spoke positively of it. I know another guy who had gone there and never came back, and like, oh, interesting. But one time when they came around to do auditions, you'd hear when they were in town, you know, they'd come like, once a year, and they came to see me at Comedy Sports where I was performing. Well, they saw a bunch of people, but including me, and they asked me to audition. And, you know, my knee-jerk reaction was like, no fucking way am I going to Amsterdam for a year. That's ridiculous.

• 8:00Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, for my comedy career, my improv career, yeah.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  But this is like, despite the fact that I'd never left the US, and also like, nothing's really happening to me career-wise.

• 8:09Simon Sinek?

  You're doing your small shows on the weekends?

• 8:10Speaker 01

  Doing my small shows, I had by then understudied a show at Steppenwolf.

• 8:14Simon Sinek?

  Did you have a survival job, or were you able to make money as an actor?

• 8:16Speaker 01

  No, I was temping and, oh, yeah, nowhere near making money as an actor. You're getting like 20 bucks a show.

• 8:20Simon Sinek?

  Oh, okay, okay.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  You're blowing that on the on the beer with the gang after the show. Yeah, but the context of this time when they came around was like, I'm in the middle of getting divorced. Like, I got married straight out of college, which, as some have told me since then, is a little young. And I was very soon getting divorced out of college. And I also just had my own, like, emotional, you know, childhood baggage that I'd never worked through at all in any way. I was just like, just, you know, running straight ahead, you know, shows, shows, shows, shows, shows. And so when I went to the audition, which I went to out of a sense of obligation, I'd I'd heard that like, every actor should go to every audition they can, which is now, I think, not not really a great of advice. But I went.

• 8:59Simon Sinek?

  Play the numbers.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  And looking around, it was, there were some people in the room who was like, oh, I've seen that person improvise before, they're really funny, oh, they're they're really funny, oh, okay. All right, well, this this is a good cohort. And then, you know, before they had us play any games, the artistic director, Josie O'Reilly, Australian goddess of improv and comedy in my book, she, her spiel about Amsterdam, like, just by the time she was done talking, like, I want this more than anything I've ever wanted in my entire life, and got it. And then when I went, I was only gonna go for a year. And, yeah, as has been spoiled, ended up staying for five.

• 9:33Simon Sinek?

  What was her pitch that made you want it so badly?

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Like, fragments of it. One, for one thing, the realization that I would be performing constantly, and that it would be the job, you know?

• 9:45Simon Sinek?

  That they'll pay you enough to to live.

• 9:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was like, oh, that's appealing. And then, you know, the way she was describing Amsterdam, and like, by then, Pulp Fiction had come out. Like, all I knew about Amsterdam, by then, it's like, Pulp Fiction, Anne Frank, John Lennon, and Yoko having their honeymoon there. And for all I knew, those happened simultaneously. But hearing her talk about Amsterdam made me, like, the reality of like, oh, this is, this is an opportunity to like, get the hell out of here, actually, and to do it in a place that sounds more amazing than you've given it credit for.

• 10:15Simon Sinek?

  Was this a little bit like the cruise ship pitch? Which is like, sure, it's a cruise ship, but you'll get to perform every day. Like, does it, like, did it matter where it was? Or was the was the pitch partially, oh, my God, I'm an actor, I'm an improv guy, I get to do the thing I want, make a living doing the thing I want? Was that the primary driver?

• 10:32Speaker 01

  It was Amsterdam as much as the job, I would say. If it had been a cruise ship, it would not have drawn interest from me at all. I was tempted by cruise ships often later in life, but never quite took the plunge. And.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Good night, everybody.

• 10:48Simon Sinek?

  Comedy, comedy, I mean, the improv quality here.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  I can't turn it off, Simon.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  But, uh, and I've known a lot of like, super funny people who did cruise ships and had a, had a great old time. But at that time, it wouldn't have interested me because being on a cruise ship doesn't sound, doesn't sound like real life.

• 11:03Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  I mean, it is, but, but it doesn't sound like it, but, but living in another country sounded like real life. What could that life be, be like? It was an unexpected opportunity that came my way. It had never been in my thoughts. It, you know, the amount of time between them asking me to audition and then me getting cast was maybe five days. They insisted I leave the country within a month. Like, like they, they desperately needed us to get out there and I had to like untangle myself from some things, particularly my theater company, who I, you know, felt terribly guilty about. I was pulling the rug out from, from under them a little bit, but I was also going insane. Like, that's the third element of this is like, on a, on a personal, mental, emotional level, I, I, I couldn't resist the pull of an escape.

• 11:46Simon Sinek?

  I didn't realize this until I got to the theater, to Boom Chicago, just how many people who are now famous in America have gone through that space. Can you just rattle off?

• 11:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's quite a bang average. Seth Meyers and Josh Meyers and Ike Baron Holtz and Jordan Peele and Amber Ruffin. Jason Sudeikis is there for a minute. Golly, there's, there's definitely more. And then there's some people who are like, maybe not that famous yet, but like are much respected in, in improv circles and comedy circles. People who know Alison Silverman, Heta Campbell, Pete Gross, oh, Colton Dunn. A lot of people know Colton Dunn.

• 12:18Simon Sinek?

  The reason I wanted to say that is I wanted people to recognize that for whatever they're building, whatever they built in Amsterdam, it's like a real thing. And just like most of us know Second City and being in the theater for Saturday Night Live and stuff like that back in the day, that this was a, this is a real theater for, for the US entertainment industry.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  But it was not then. It was not, it was not at all. When I started in 99, uh, very, uh, Pep Rosenfeld was one of the founders. He was writing for SNL and that was a big deal. Then he came back to, cause he, you know, was having a better time at Boom. But then in 2001, Seth got SNL and then it was like, huh? Because if you're taking the Boom job, especially back then, you're not, you're not thinking.

• 13:02Simon Sinek?

  SNL is the, yeah. You're thinking, I'm having fun. I'm honing my craft. I'm getting paid to do the thing that I love. I'm having a cool adventure in Amsterdam, then I'll come back and focus on my career.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah. And so to the fact that all these people took this objectively unwise career choice and it's ended up paying off for them all is, is pretty fantastic, you know? Cause it is the thing where you get your chops up. We would have these guest directors and a couple of times they were guys from Second City, who I had seen like in high school years, you know, who I revered. One of them was a guy named, uh, Ron West, the doctor, Ron West. And he, um, one time, I remember we were walking, I think on Queens Day, actually. And I think I asked him like, is Boom good for us? Like, is it, are we dumb for being here? And I think I was in year three by that point, two or three. And he said something I've never forgotten, which is it's like the being the Beatles in Hamburg.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  And he just meant it in the sense of like, you're not doing bad shows anymore. Like you've come here, you've, you're doing all the shows, you're going to leave here and you're not going to do bad shows anymore, which is not a hundred percent true, but it's, but it's pretty true.

• 14:05Simon Sinek?

  So what he means is you're honing your craft?

• 14:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, like I've, I've like thought about this a lot and now I refer to it in my other solo show, The Movement You Need. Uh, look, coming to Broadway in, in 2027, maybe. You get your 10,000 hours.

• 14:16Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  Uh, you're performing constantly. You are performing for people who for the most part have English as a second language. So you cannot rely on any bag of reference tricks or whatever. You can only exist in like what is in the room at this moment, basically, which is, which is a great little challenge.

• 14:32Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  But also those people who have English as a second language are probably drunk. So you have to work all the harder to get through to them, which becomes about like, like some basic stuff, like articulation.

• 14:44Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  You know, but also, um, you know, presence and, and, and, and passion and drive. And, you know, it ends up making your characters a little, a little broad. But still you're just trying to make that show happen. But then on top of that, and this is still, um, you know, analogous to, to the Beatles in Hamburg, is you, you do occasionally have the night off. And when you have the night off, it is Amsterdam and like all of that entails. So like the amount of steam we were able to let off together as a group, cause like we were doing shows together. There's usually 12 cast members at a time, five are needed per night. So you get a lot of like, you know, nights off, but then you'd also have like collective nights off and we'd all collectively go out dancing. And it was fantastic.

• 15:23Simon Sinek?

  Paul McCartney, I've heard him talk about the shows in Hamburg as like the best ever. And they were doing, they were performing for hours and hours and hours. It wasn't like come in, perform for an hour, go home. I mean, they're doing like the six o'clock show, the eight o'clock show, the 10 o'clock show, the one o'clock show in the morning. And he talks about it with such funness and love, and they're singing in German.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:43Simon Sinek?

  I mean, if, if anybody's ever seen the old footage of the Beatles performing in Hamburg, it's absolutely incredible. It's all the songs we know, but in German.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:51Simon Sinek?

  I can't remember specifically what he talked about, but he talked about the purity of the performing, that yes, it was incredible for them to be in Shea Stadium, um, performing, but they, he, he said like, you couldn't hear anything. Like we could barely hear what we were singing. There's no way anybody else could hear anything. It was the spectacle of it, but it wasn't the performance.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:12Simon Sinek?

  And he's talked about Hamburg being as a performer, just like pure magic.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  It's part of what's great about doing something where you have no thought about advancement or career. Like you're just.

• 16:25Simon Sinek?

  The joy, it's the joy of the thing, right?

• 16:26Speaker 01

  It's just the joy of the thing. It's the joy of the moment. It's the connection with that audience at that time and nothing else exists. And oddly enough, by not thinking about the future, sometimes that's how you're better in the future.

• 16:37Simon Sinek?

  I think this idea is, is really lost on, on young people today and, and it's not their fault. There's so much pressure to perform, to make it. How many followers do you have? Do you, you know, like metric, metric, metric, achieve, achieve, achieve. I mean, I've talked to people, I'm like, hey, why don't you take a, a gap year before you go to college, you know? And they're like, no, I, I could never do that. I'm like, why not? They're like, I'll be behind. I'm like, behind what?

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:02Simon Sinek?

  Like it's, everything's comparative. I just talked to somebody recently who wanted some advice, you know? She said to me, she came to me with her visions. She's like, I'm starting a podcast. I'm like, great, what's, what's the goal? She's like, um, I want to have a media empire. I'm like, okay, I love, I love a vision. I love an outside unrealistic vision. We've all had them, you know? And then, so she wants to know what steps she has to take in her podcast to serve her media empire. And of course, I mean, you know exactly where the advice is going. It's like, why don't you just start by making a good podcast and don't worry about the media empire?

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:35Simon Sinek?

  And we talked it through and I, I think is an underappreciation for the joy of the beginnings of our careers. And I see it a lot in very senior people, people who've made it. The lawyer who knows how to win the case, the investor who knows how to make a deal, the, you know, the screenwriter who knows how to write a script. I look at a lot of these people who've made it and they're bored. They're bored because sure, there's challenges now and then, but what they miss was this, was the beginning. What they miss was that was the fun and it was stressful and you're full of ambition and piss and vinegar. You had no idea where it was going and it was, it goes back to the Beatles and Hamburg.

• 18:18Simon Sinek?

  It's the purity of what we were learning to do was so much fun. And when you're good at it, it's just not as fun anymore.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that comes from, you know, perhaps the fact that you are working, you know, with the adrenaline, like to the limit of your potential, really. You know, it's like, it's that churn of.

• 18:37Simon Sinek?

  You have no fear.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  Giving your full self to something.

• 18:39Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  Because there is nothing else. And yeah, it, it rewards you. On the topic of gap year, real quick, when people would come to me here asking like, hey, should I do Boom Chicago?

• 18:49Speaker 01

  I'm like, my God, yes, you should. In fact, don't, but don't just go for one year. The first year you're adjusting, go for two years. Cause the second year, that's when you get it. That's when you should go. And they'd be like, oh God, but if, you know, I'm going to lose progress in my, in my career here. And someone had said this to me, I wish I can remember who, but I've said it to many people since then, like wherever you're leaving, when you come back, it's going to be the same. It's going to be the exact same that it was before, and you won't have missed anything. And whatever opportunities are, you know, fated for you, they are, they are fated regardless, you know? And if you just come back an even better performer than you are today, then you're going to get more gigs. And I found that to be true, you know, every time I left LA. Cause I, again, I would, I would leave often to, you know, go to Amsterdam for a while.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  And yeah, nothing changed anytime.

• 19:37Simon Sinek?

  It's, it's such, these are, these are such good and nuanced points, right? Which is we fear that we're going to miss out on the thing that's in our imagination.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:46Simon Sinek?

  Right? It's like, well, if I'm not in LA, I'm going to miss the audition that hasn't happened.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:51Simon Sinek?

  And may or may not happen. And this belief that if I stay, all the doors will open and all the auditions will go my way. And if I leave, I'm going to lose out on all those opportunities. And so you're looking at real opportunity, go and do this thing in Amsterdam that's real work versus stay here for your imagination. And people choose imagination.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:09Simon Sinek?

  I'm confused by that.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  To, uh, offer, offer that view some grace a little bit, because what is imagination but a, but a plan? You know, a plan and a vision and like, I, I, this is what I saw that I was doing.

• 20:20Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  And now you're, you're asking me to open up this part and go do this and come back.

• 20:24Simon Sinek?

  Cause my plan was Chicago.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:26Simon Sinek?

  You know, do the, do the thing, do the shows, improv, and you've thrown my plan off.

• 20:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause I think, you know, if I, you know, looking back at my path, which has worked out and, uh, in the end I wouldn't change anything, but I know where I could have made a couple smarter choices. I, I think inarguably did not have enough of a plan. Like after the spontaneity of Amsterdam, you know, had such great personal rewards for me, you know, just as a person and, and, and as a, as a grownup, I think I kind of like stayed spontaneous a little too long in, in LA. So like, I can see the value of having a plan, but I guess it's like, don't, don't be so locked into your plan that you don't recognize an opportunity.

• 21:08Simon Sinek?

  It's kind of like, it's kind of like strong opinions loosely held, right?

• 21:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:12Simon Sinek?

  Like have a plan, but be open to going off the plan.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  That's the way.

• 21:15Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:23Simon Sinek?

  We'll be right back, but first, we want to share an ad with authenticity, brought to you by SAP. Curiosity is a practice, not a personality trait. That's what I learned when I sat down with David Robinson, from engineering to innovation to cloud ERP, to his current role as President of Customer Success in North America. Every jump he made was driven by the itch, the desire to learn something new.

• 21:47Speaker 02

  I've always been very, just naturally curious. I don't, I never gave it much thought. I rarely say no. And, you know, in a lot of cases, I might learn really fast. It's not something I ever want to do again. But in other cases, that's like a great experience I can draw upon, because that experience then almost is like a currency. You now have something to talk about that you wouldn't have had otherwise.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  You know, every work review I had, they always told me I was unfocused. You know, they would say to me things like, you know, Simon, a jack of all trades is a master of none. I recently learned that that's only half the quote. The full quote is, a jack of all trades is a master of none, but a master of many is better than a master of one.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  That's the full quote.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  That's the full quote. And I realized, I'm not unfocused, I'm just curious. And I think what a lot of people don't appreciate of the value of curiosity is it doesn't have to succeed, you just have to try.

• 22:34Speaker 02

  Trying is the success.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  And trying is the success.

• 22:36Speaker 02

  Trying is the success.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  And you can't have innovation without curiosity.

• 22:40Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  Because if this is the way we've always done it, then you'll never know if there's a better way.

• 22:51Simon Sinek?

  I mean, we have to talk about it because, you know, the fifth season's, it's the fifth season?

• 22:55Speaker 01

  Fourth.

• 22:56Simon Sinek?

  Fourth season. I'm projecting, I have a plan, I have a vision.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 22:59Simon Sinek?

  That's what I want.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Oh, that could be great.

• 23:00Simon Sinek?

  That's what I want for you, yeah. But the fourth season is here now of Ted Lasso. How much of the show, because a lot of it is your own passions in that show, football being one, where did this show come from?

• 23:14Speaker 01

  In 2013, NBC asks Jason to be part of their ad campaign because they've just gotten the rights for the English Premier League. He said, all right, I'll do it if I can bring along anyone I want. And they, they said, yeah, of course. And so he grabs me and Joe Kelly. All three of us are Americans who are sports fans, who went to Amsterdam and having not given a crap about soccer before, like got into it to some degree. Now, because I was in Amsterdam for five years and because I can get really attached to a new hobby, I became a zealot, I overeducated myself. I would watch like really meaningless games.

• 23:46Simon Sinek?

  Lots of orange clothing.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  Lots of orange clothing, oh my God. My closet looks like a fucking traffic cone factory. We had a meeting with this ad company and they had like three sort of just sheets of paper of like, we think it should be a college football coach and he could be doing this thing, or he could be doing this thing, or he could be doing this thing. And this thing over here was, he's, he's the coach of a Premier League team even though he knows nothing about soccer. And Jason's like, yeah, okay, let's, let's pick that. All right, thank you. And then him and me and Joe just sat by the pool one day and like thought of bits. And Jason's like, I think his name is Lasso, Ted Lasso. Yeah, great, because Jason likes, you know, nouns is last names. You know, largely just took the job because it was like, wow, we get to go to England for three days. Go to England, shoot this thing, come back. And it's, you know, on the scale of what it was,

• 24:31Speaker 01

  because I don't think it was even a broadcast commercial, it was only on YouTube.

• 24:34Simon Sinek?

  But it was for the, an English audience?

• 24:36Speaker 01

  It was for an American audience, but aware that an English audience might be watching.

• 24:40Simon Sinek?

  Got it.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  Basically, like, we were.

• 24:42Simon Sinek?

  Because you, because you've exaggerated the American.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:45Simon Sinek?

  Stereotypes.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were, we were trying to be, you know, we were trying to be faithful to the English view of what Americans are.

• 24:53Simon Sinek?

  That's exactly what it feels like.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  In hopes that Americans would get a kick out of that.

• 24:56Simon Sinek?

  Right, yeah.

• 24:58Speaker 01

  So they had us come back and do another one the next year. And yeah, the first one, you know, was just a sketch. It was a loud character, like we got six minutes out of that character and that's all we, we could have gotten. But the second time, we found Ted Lasso in like, with a sense of like loss, like he didn't have this job anymore, now he really loved England. And also now he's coaching the girls team and he's like really sensitive to like, to their needs and stuff. And just kind of opened this new window to the character in a bigger way than we thought. And after that, Jason, you know, gathers me and Joe, like there's something else here. I don't know what it is, if it's more commercials, if it's a movie, if it's a, if it's a TV show. So we map out a season, six episodes and six episodes, I mean, really just the first six, but then we were then imagining six more and then like a special, which is the exact model of the UK office.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  We wrote a pilot and it sat there for a very long time. Now, going back a little further, part of why Jason wanted us in there is because, you know, we're sports guys who would talk about sports and then eventually about soccer, but also very specifically, by the time Jason got to Amsterdam, I was already in the weeds soccer wise and I had decided I was a soccer missionary for all Americans. And so I would be explaining soccer stuff to him through American sports terms, like, because he bought a, he bought a PlayStation and FIFA for the green room and it had classic teams on it. And I'm like, okay, 72IX, that's like the Showtime Lakers. And this Johan Cruyff guy, he's like Magic Johnson. He's like, okay, got it. And that paradigm of me using American examples to explain, you know, soccer things remains the basis for the, for the Lasso beard relationship still to this day,

• 26:27Speaker 01

  which is just another weird part of the whole payoff of Amsterdam, you know, because surely, me watching all these soccer games, you know, me watching fucking Leeds versus Burnley, you know, at three o'clock on a Sunday, was a waste of time, wasn't it? But in fact.

• 26:44Simon Sinek?

  You're wasting your life.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  But in fact, all these little, you know, data entries in the soccer encyclopedia in my brain have paid off enormously.

• 26:54Simon Sinek?

  But this goes right back to the thing we were talking about at the beginning, which is everything contributes to everything, right? Who's to know that the going deep and, you know, wasting countless hours, you know, watching Dutch football would then become the relationship between these two characters that have become beloved on American television? I mean, this is what I love. This is, goes, goes back to what we're saying before, which is, you know, you fall in love with the vision of the imagination, but what we forget is like, all of it contributes to everything. You said like, you go, you hone your craft, you come back, you're better. Everything in our lives has some sort of purpose later on, but who's to know what it will be? And without these weird decisions of spontaneity, none of this would exist.

• 27:36Simon Sinek?

  I'm sort of fascinated by the, I don't know what it is. Like, what we're talking about is things that are off the plan. And I think we're sort of too obsessed with plans. Your whole story leading up to this was like, I knew from a little kid I wanted to be an actor and the adrenaline of the stage, you know, and the adrenaline of the audience. And then you realize you could write and you can express all this creativity. And the Amsterdam thing was two things, which was, I get to do the thing that I love to do, check. And I get to run away from shit that I don't want to do, check. And there's this kind of magic, which is,

• 28:13Simon Sinek?

  they're not necessarily good quote unquote career decisions when the career coach or the, you know, parent is sitting down and they're like, this is my, this is my goal. I'm gonna, I'm gonna do English comedy in Amsterdam and I'm gonna leave all my problems here and just go start a new life and screw it. And like, nobody's looking at you going, I think, I think you got this one all figured out, bud.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:35Simon Sinek?

  Everybody's, everybody's gonna be looking at you like, what are you talking about? And I think where I'm arriving, and this is why I'm sort of enjoying this, which is, who knows?

• 28:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:43Simon Sinek?

  You know, who knows what would have happened if you stayed? Who knows, you know, who knows? You know?

• 28:47Speaker 01

  And I think about that often and like, because the flip side of it is also like, if, if once I left Amsterdam, shouldn't I have just gone back to Chicago and gotten, you know, tried to get on the Second City train?

• 28:57Simon Sinek?

  And get to, yeah, exactly, go through the.

• 28:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. But also like, you know, maybe even if I did it, maybe I was too high strung then and I would have pissed people off or, you know, like, maybe I wasn't the person yet who would have been able to make the most of, of that opportunity. The chaos theory of it, of like, the different ways that things could have gone.

• 29:16Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  Better or worse, you know, you can lose sleep over that completely. But yeah, sometimes just going with the flow is, is right.

• 29:25Simon Sinek?

  In a time where drama and, and conflict is the thing, you know, the, the great British baking show, Bake Off. I think it's probably some of the finest television that was ever made in the history of television. Not, I'm saying this to somebody who.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  No, we know our place.

• 29:40Simon Sinek?

  Okay, I was just. Ted Lasso's, I promised you a close second.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 29:46Simon Sinek?

  But the reason is, is because it's a competition. There are winners, there are losers. Somebody gets voted off the island every week and yet they help each other. And I think that is, for me, the metaphor for life, which is absolutely compete, absolutely work hard to advance yourself and help each other along the way. That, to me, is the metaphor for life and the metaphor for career. And the thing that I think we all fell in love with the Ted Lasso show, which is it's a show about optimism. It's a show about positivity. It's a show about taking care of each other, which is quite different than what, especially American television, you know, reality TV show where they make people seem evil in the editing and they create artificial conflict for our entertainment.

• 30:31Simon Sinek?

  And it's a very European thing to have a show that's quite positive without all the artificial conflict, where it's a very American thing to, you know, instigate.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:41Simon Sinek?

  And I don't know, was that because the three of you had European experience? Is it because you were frustrated in your own lives? Like, where did that doubling? Down on optimism, which is a very un-American way to make a TV show. Where was that? Because we're grateful for it.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  Well, thank you. The kernel of it for, uh, for me, and you know, my kernel is, is, you know, probably smaller than Joe's and definitely smaller than Jason's, but was, you know, if we're gonna have this show, I mean, at the time, like we, you know, after the commercials and we're making it a larger project. We're gonna have the show in this American, in this European world. How's it gonna stand out? You know, there's nothing Europeans find more annoying about Americans than their chipperness. Like, the belief sign is, is a, is an example. The belief sign is a distillation of what was gonna be a larger idea of Ted putting up like a thousand, like corporate, you know, keep at it type slogan. You know, they hang in there, meow, like, like all those.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  And just how much that would infuriate, um, uh, you know, a footballer like Roy Keane.

• 31:45Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  And, you know, that just kinda just got distilled down like, okay, well, you know, it's not like all English people are grumps. We're not saying that necessarily, but they, uh, they're not as cheery.

• 31:55Simon Sinek?

  But there's a stiff upper lip thing, you know, they, they, they put up with shit better than anybody on the planet.

• 32:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. And sort of accidentally that, that is really where the, the culture clash of the show is more than like, he doesn't know, you know, what side of the street to look at when he, when he crosses the street. Is, um, that, that was the American quality that was sort of then organically the, the part of it, like this, just this midwesternness, you know?

• 32:18Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  And this midwesternness in a, in a competitive world that wants no part of it whatsoever, until it does.

• 32:25Simon Sinek?

  We had a company offsite and we did all these personality profiles of the entire team and the entire company. And they evaluated like, you know, do we have the right mix of the right personalities to make a good team and all of this stuff? And at the end, the, the, uh, what are they called? Um, the evaluator, whatever.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  The administrator.

• 32:46Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, administrators. Yeah, exactly. They said, well, I, we've got some bad news. Like if your company were a personality, you'd be Ted Lasso. And we were all like, that's awesome. That is awesome. And we were diagnosed as Ted Lasso as a company.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  Why was it bad news?

• 33:07Simon Sinek?

  Because, because we didn't have enough like, brr, you know? Like we didn't have enough backstabby, you know? Like we, we, we scored very poorly on like aggression, cutthroaty, you know? And, and I gotta say, as, as the owner of the business, I was really proud.

• 33:27Simon Sinek?

  You know? Because, you know, we're called the damn optimism company, not that damn isn't in the word, but that, that would be hilarious. I'm changing the name to the damn optimism company.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  Oh, boy, the paperwork is gonna be ridiculous.

• 33:37Simon Sinek?

  I can do, you can do a, a DB, a DBA.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  Okay, fine.

• 33:41Simon Sinek?

  But we're called the optimism company and to be diagnosed as Ted Lasso was one of the greatest victories, I think I've, I've achieved culturally. I'm curious for actors, you know? We fall in love with the characters you play. That is sometimes the person, but sometimes way not the person. How important was it for you to make sure that, like, did you wanna play somebody completely different to you? Did you wanna bring yourself into it? You're, you're one of the writers, you can do whatever the hell you want. I'm so curious as a writer and as a performer, where is the overlap? Because, I mean, you know way more actors than I do, and they are not the characters they play. And yet we treat them as the character. Who is the guy, the guy who played Joffrey on, on Game of Thrones?

• 34:23Simon Sinek?

  I think he got out of the game because people were just mean to him the whole time because they thought he was an asshole. He's playing a character.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  He's back in, in the business now and.

• 34:33Simon Sinek?

  But he took a, he took a, a long.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  He has said that that is, that is not entirely true. He's not saying that, he really legitimately just was going to school and he wanted to go to school and focus on that. But it's also true that people did not like that dude.

• 34:44Simon Sinek?

  And people didn't like him.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, specifically.

• 34:47Simon Sinek?

  You know, they're like yelling at him while he's walking down the street, the poor kid. And that's my point, like we confuse the characters you play with who you are. I'm so curious as to, is that a good thing? Is it bad? Like, how much of you is Coach Beard? And that you did that because you wanted that? Or did you just wanna play somebody just for fun that's nothing like you? Like people who like playing bad guys?

• 35:06Speaker 01

  He's, uh, on the outside, not like me in that, you know, he doesn't talk much and he's happy to sit and wait. I am a bladder mouth and, um, and I tend to like, you know, well, like wanna go do something. But he is very much like me in that, you know, I've, he's had a typical path to his current known his career. And so have I, and so we've sort of taken that and exploded it, basically, you know? I certainly haven't been in a lumberjack competition, nor have I won a chess competition.

• 35:34Simon Sinek?

  But is this kind of like write what you know kind of thing?

• 35:36Speaker 01

  To a degree, there's a little bit of, of Jason in Ted Lasso as well, or vice versa, I guess one of the two. That dynamic we discussed earlier of, of me, you know, explaining soccer in American flashcard terms, um, is really us. So it just followed that then, you know, Beard's, Beard's just a little bit like me. And the evolution's character has been kind of another like random path. Like when we were first writing the first commercial, I had pictured it that like, I was gonna have a bunch of, you know, stuff to say, I mean, there's these back and forths. And Joe Kelly, who is a genius, um, Joe Kelly was like, bad news, man, you, you shouldn't talk. Like what? Yeah, you, you.

• 36:17Simon Sinek?

  But I'm an actor.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  I mean, he's gonna be doing like all the talking and speechifying and the coach who runs the room, you need to be the guy who comes in surgically with, with just like, you know, the word that, that hits. Like, oh, that's, that's a hundred percent right. And that also dovetails with something, uh, Josie O'Reilly would talk a lot about at Boom is like watching a scene, you know, before you enter that scene, ask what does it need? And so Beard is like, in the manifestation of what does it need? He just, he just waits and like, right now, um, Ted needs me to learn the rules of soccer. Got that. And like now, what does it need? Is I gotta go talk to this Nate guy, you know? And there's a, there's a wonderful like selflessness to that, that I think is pretty fun. But he's only named Beard because he didn't have a name in the first commercial. You know, he's never referred to. Second commercial, he's referred to and like, what should his name be?

• 37:04Speaker 01

  And again, we love nouns, so it's Coach Beard. But that's only because I had a beard in the first one and I only had that beard because I happened to be doing a play that I had written where I played a homeless person. And first time in my life I'd ever have a beard. And because I happened to write that play, now I can never shave again.

• 37:23Simon Sinek?

  So it was a placeholder. The beard was like, he's got a beard, call him beard. Was it a placeholder?

• 37:26Speaker 01

  It wasn't a placeholder so much as, as it was like.

• 37:28Simon Sinek?

  Inspiration.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was like, it was like, it doesn't really matter. The, you know, look at the thing, eh, beard, that's beard, he's beard, great, he's beard. We didn't know we were, we were gonna do even another commercial more than, you know, certainly not a whole TV series by this point. So there was no sense that it would, it would stick. In terms of the larger question of like, is it important to me for, you know, a character in this dynamic of like being able to contribute to.

• 37:54Simon Sinek?

  You get to write whatever you want, yeah.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Again, when I was in college, we were awash in Steppenwolf quotes and there was a John Malkovich quote, I remember hearing sophomore year, which was, uh, acting is not about trying to become someone you aren't, it's about being someone you are. Which I, you know, as a sophomore especially, I was like, whoa. But that's really just, you know, bring yourself to the character.

• 38:14Simon Sinek?

  Like who would I be in this position?

• 38:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. I don't, don't have a symmetrical face. Like I'm not gonna be a lead on most TV shows, which means in polite casting agent terms, I am specific. So I'm gonna be playing a lot of eccentric characters and like, sure enough, if you go to my IMDB, it's, it'll literally say evil clown, sex murderer, pitch hiker, you know? And so since I get to play all these sort of, you know, off-center people, it's a little easier then to, to bring myself to it. You know, it's not like, you're Hamlet. You're Hamlet, you were prince and your dad died, go. You know, I'm trying to find like what's different about, you know, me from this character and like inhabit that, but also, you know, on my secret insides, a little bit like me one way or another.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  And with Beard, we've just been able to extend that to like, okay, I went to college in Central Illinois, so he's from Central Illinois. I went to Europe for a while and things got a little nuts and we haven't maybe quite gotten to that with Boom. Oh no, we have with Beard because now we know that he knows Dutch and, and if you put him in Amsterdam, by the end of the night, he's gonna have a David Bowie costume.

• 39:14Simon Sinek?

  Well played, by the way.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 39:16Simon Sinek?

  That episode was, uh, well played.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  My favorite. So yeah, it wasn't really a choice or a preference. That, that is nothing, that's just the way, the way it worked out. But I, I think my instinct, even unconsciously, you know, if I was to write characters for myself going forward, I would, I would still be including my, a fair amount of myself in them.

• 39:34Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, I, I'm so fascinated by, I'm not a performer. I've never acted, although some would argue because I stand on stage, I'm a performer.

• 39:42Speaker 01

  You're a natural, baby.

• 39:43Simon Sinek?

  I'm fascinated by the art of acting and I, and the idea of bringing yourself and, you know, some of the things that I find very difficult about acting, which is how do you play a part when you know everything that's gonna happen? You know? It's like somebody's about to burst in the door and surprise you. You know that, but you have to pretend that you didn't like, that concept is mind blowing to me. And it's amazing how few people are good at it because they know, you know? And they can't help confuse it. And I'm, I'm fascinated by the, like where you want yourself in it and where you don't. Where's the line where you sort of let go? As an actor.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  Oh, well. Yeah, the notion of I would never do that is one that I think like an actor can't really let them have, even no matter how well you know this character even like, you better think twice before you say that. Because like you might not normally do that, but here are circumstances that are putting you in a position where you have to do that.

• 40:37Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  You know, whatever, whatever it is.

• 40:39Simon Sinek?

  Something horrible even.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Where is your line? Like where is your line that would get you to this point where you would do this thing that you wouldn't ordinarily do? Cause this person's line is here, so find that border for your, for yourself.

• 40:50Simon Sinek?

  I think that's where I would struggle as an actor because I struggle to disconnect myself from the character. It was like, like, you know, a character that would, you know, do something horrible, violent or immoral. And I was like, but I would never, you know? I could, I can't imagine doing this. Then I say, well, I guess I could play a character doing that. And you're like, no, no, no, no. You have to find the circumstance that you would actually do that to play this effectively. And that's what I have such respect for, that you're willing to let your mind go to some pretty dark places to find the motivation to play these characters effectively. I guess that's the craft.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and also, you know, and Jason talks about this a lot too, but like, we're very, we're very fortunate that we are having this, you know, big ride on characters who are super nice. You know?

• 41:31Simon Sinek?

  Fair point.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  Like, I'm not getting stopped in an airport for King Joffrey reasons.

• 41:35Simon Sinek?

  People are cheering you when you walk past.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're not, they're, they're not waiting to poison my drink.

• 41:39Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  Because they know that's the only way to kill me.

• 41:42Simon Sinek?

  As an actor, you know, was there a character you played where it challenged you the person?

• 41:49Speaker 01

  The hardest I've struggled was, you know, to play a part. Might not technically be what you're asking for again, because like. It is another scene that I wrote, but the play I wrote where I had the beard called Absolutely Filthy. And the conceit of it is that it's the Pigpen gang as grownups, but focused on Pigpen. Excuse me, the Peanuts gang as grownups.

• 42:08Simon Sinek?

  As far as Pigpen, yeah.

• 42:09Speaker 01

  And Pigpen is still dirty. He's so dirty that he's homeless and he's a little bit mentally disturbed. And he finds himself in front of a church where they're having the funeral for Charlie Brown. And the whole gang are coming back to this, but they won't let him in because he's disgusting. And they're all doing fine. There was a lot of me in that and what my life was at the time, which, you know, was not even conscious when I had the idea, but now looking back, it's, you know, it's not even dime store psychology. It'll cost barely a nickel is like, that was me feeling worthless because so many of my peers were doing so well. And so the, the, the play has a lot of like speeches and, you know, crazy guy revving himself up on a street corner type of stuff. And like, it was not my biography by any means, but it still was like.

• 42:52Simon Sinek?

  How you felt.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  Plumbing, you know, plumbing a bit of like, like how fucking shitty I felt sometimes about how things were. And this again was, you know, pre-therapy, you know, almost exactly pre-therapy. Cause then like a year later I got a shrink.

• 43:05Simon Sinek?

  So now you're writing happy shit.

• 43:06Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Now I'm a fucking, I'm a dreamboat.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  But.

• 43:11Simon Sinek?

  It goes from writing being a homeless guy to being a coach.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  But like getting, getting into that every single night, cause that show did pretty well, well enough to run, you know, a few different places. And by the way, the footnote, the conceit for his cloud of dirt, you know, the ever-present Pigpen cloud of dirt, was that's when I learned to be a really good hula hooper. So I had a hula hoop and we'd, I would hula hoop the whole show and no one would ever mention it or acknowledge it. And, uh, yeah, well, you know, that's when I found out, oh, hula hooping, great for the core. Oh, my abs, my abs in 2012, Simon. Oh, you should have seen them. They glistened. They're beautiful. Going into yourself can be just as hard as trying to, you know, get into someone else.

• 43:47Simon Sinek?

  What's the project that you worked on, commercially successful or not? Of all of the things you've done in your career?

• 43:54Simon Sinek?

  That if you had one thing that was like this all the time, like you'd be the happiest person alive. Like something that was just, you, you, you look back at your career and be like, I wish everything was like that one.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  The next play I wrote was called The Art Couple. And The Art Couple was basically, it was Neil Simon, before he's written The Odd Couple, before he's super famous, wanting to be a more of an artist. And so he imagines The Art Couple, or he imagines The Odd Couple, but at the same time, he finds out that Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin were mismatched roommates in the south of France. And so his first draft of The, of The Odd Couple is not about Felix and Oscar. It's about Vinny and Paulie. And the play alternated between being set in the Greenwich Village in the sixties as, as he's writing it. And then seeing some of the play, which, you know, had a degree of like shot by shot, you know, from The Odd Couple, but being these two French dudes.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  I played Van Gogh, uh, had a really good time. We had this great cast. And like right now, I'm doing the solo show Movement You Need, which might be coming to Broadway 2027. And it's so fun and so incredible to do, but if I had to pick one, I would rather have this one where I get to hang out with other people. You know, cause this was a cast of nine and everybody was great and everyone was so funny. And I, you know, made sure, I had a lot of stuff to do. But then also it got, it was about to move to a big theater in LA and it got canceled for COVID. Like we were set to open March 18th of that year. The sets were up. We were two days away from tech weekend. And then suddenly at this rehearsal, all we can talk about is a, the odd combination of Tom Hanks and Rudy Gobert, because those guys had that COVID we've all been hearing of. And the next day, everything, everything shut down.

• 45:34Simon Sinek?

  What was it about that play of all the incredible things you've done in your career? And you've had a storied career and now like one of the most popular shows on television, you know? What was it about this play that stands out amongst all those things that that's the thing you wish it was? You want more of, you want more of that please in your career?

• 45:50Speaker 01

  I guess because it was still something where I'm, you know, contributing, you know, a ton to it. I think that's, that's important. I wouldn't want to be doing something forever that, you know, I can coast on. And, um, it's not solitary. And I guess the only reason I wouldn't choose, um, Lasso per se is cause like the, the Lasso gig, like it takes a lot out of us. Like those of us especially who are like in the cast and also writers and also producers. It's a real bear, you know, and, uh, you gotta relocate your family for a long time and all these things. And like, worth it. Love it. If you're asking me what's my favorite gig I've ever had, that's my favorite gig I've ever had. But if I was to do one thing for the rest of my life, it would be a play like Our Couple.

• 46:28Simon Sinek?

  Tell me an early, specific, happy childhood memory, something specific that I can relive with you.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  Sure. In late January of 1986, which, and every Sunday back then, my, my parents divorced when I was two. My mom remarried in 83. My dad came back around and we would see him every Sunday, me and my younger sister. But this particular Sunday, mom woke me up earlier than usual. She says, get up, your dad's taking you to the game. The game was the NFC championship game between the 85 Bears and the LA Rams. I'd been to one Bears game like years earlier that I didn't even remember. And I was besotted with the 85 Bears. I absolutely loved that team. And I was looking forward to watching the game with dad. I mean, dad was not the most resourceful cat at the time. Uh, you know, he did not have a regular job as far as I knew. But for him to somehow find tickets was beyond imagination.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  And yeah, we had a, we had a complicated relationship as, as life went on especially. But that day, just a day of, of, you know, so much joy. And I never let go of the surprise of the day, like the surprise of getting that news when I woke up was part of it all the way through to Wilbur Marshall scoring his touchdown. And like, holy shit, my dad did this. Now he then, not intentionally, we sort of then traded on that success for a very long time before I began to consider some other, uh, you know, misdemeanors. But that, that was a mind blowing day.

• 47:50Simon Sinek?

  Of all the cool things, you, I mean, you had happy times in your life, in your childhood. What, what was it specifically about that one?

• 47:57Speaker 01

  Part of it was the, was the event. Part of it was the fact that they actually won. And they didn't just win, they shut out the Rams 24-0 after having shut out the Giants.

• 48:05Simon Sinek?

  But you would have, you would have had that experience if you watched it on television of the Bears winning.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  Yes, but it's, but it's magnified by being there. And, cause like the Bears weren't just something I was enjoying. Like we would watch the Bears every Sunday, you know, unless they had a Thursday night game or Monday night game. So that was married to the rebuilding of my relationship with my dad. Was going to, you know, him in my grandma's house and having these Sundays, you know, built around, you know, either watching the Bears or if it wasn't NFL season around watching like Rawhide.

• 48:36Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 48:37Speaker 01

  So for dad to come through in that unexpected way, and then for the Bears to come through. Cause like at that, at that time, you know, I still never experienced a championship. And this was still a city of, of choking teams. And 83 and 84 consecutively, the Sox and Cubs both lost in the championship series. To get the double dose of, of wins was awesome. And I remember like walking towards Soldier Field with my dad and like just the mayhem of everyone walking around. It wasn't the same as going, you know, to a, to a regular Cubs game, you know?

• 49:05Simon Sinek?

  And what was it about the play of the, what was the, the Paulie and Vinny? Vinny and Paulie. Of all the cool things you've done in your career and all like, I mean, talk to me more specifically about what it was about that, that you just cling on to with such, you know, with such nostalgia, with such, you know, you have such a connection to it.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  Definitely like, you know, it's, it's the loose end because it got canceled.

• 49:27Simon Sinek?

  Sure.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  Getting to play with others, it's sort of a sneakily personal show too, because it is, it is about, on some level, a dichotomy of like, you know, being an artist who doesn't give a shit and being someone who's very aware of their audience. Because Sam Shepard becomes a character in it as well. And Sam Shepard, who, you know, was largely popularized by Steppenwolf and like that connection there. So like it's, and Neil Simon, when he wrote this play was a, was a TV writer. It's the part of me that, that, you know, has grown up into someone who like has, you know, Lasso considerations in the world and like, you know, all this like crowd pleasing. And the part of me that, you know, came to my artistic self at a school that didn't have on camera classes, you know? Like sort of the dirty way of doing things and the clean way of doing things.

• 50:13Speaker 01

  So like, it's not, it's a comedy, but it's, it, it's not one that is removed from my soul. You know, there's, there's some of my soul in there too. And yeah, I don't know. Hearing people's laughs is, is, is more fun than, than not.

• 50:28Simon Sinek?

  But you've done comedy. You've done all those, you've heard people's laughs. You've written things before. Some of the things you wrote were semi-autobiographical. Like I'm trying to sort of get at what specifically was about that one play that you just have such warmth towards it.

• 50:43Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 50:43Simon Sinek?

  Given all the success of Ted Lasso, you'd think, you know, it's, oh, Ted Lasso, of course, you know? But this play that didn't even get to the big stage, yet you just look at it and be like, oh, more of that please.

• 50:54Speaker 01

  I mean, maybe because it was like my last thing that I, you know, loved doing before Lasso wiped out everything, you know, in a way and then took over and became the life dominer than it is.

• 51:07Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  You know, it's like, like, oh, cause, cause that, you know, that doing that play at that scale, like, I hope it comes back in a bigger scale someday.

• 51:14Simon Sinek?

  Sure.

• 51:14Speaker 01

  But, but doing shows at that scale, that's what I had been doing since, I mean, really since college. So like since 1989.

• 51:22Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 51:22Speaker 01

  And that was my last time doing that and probably will be my last time doing that. I mean, I have this one show that I've been building, et cetera, et cetera. And that kind of went through that phase, but it's more, if you're asking me to, again, to do what I'm doing the rest of my life, I don't want to do a solo show for the rest of my life.

• 51:34Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  Like, I do want to, I do want to have, you know, playmates in the playground with me.

• 51:38Simon Sinek?

  There's a, the, the thing that I'm taking away from this whole conversation with you, and I think it's the thing that I really am drawn to you as a, as a writer, as an artist, is there's a purity about you, there's a purity in your work, you know? You know, you go back to the beginnings of like, the honing of the craft, the 10,000 hours and like the fact that you have the kind of commercial success now on one of the most successful shows in television that you would think would be the dream, you know? And of course, you love it, you're grateful for it, you have fun with it. Yes, yes, yes. Notwithstanding, but as an artist, there's the purity of just, as you said, sort of playing with other creative people and the way you rattle off people's names with such respect, people who some of us know and some of us don't, but you, you carry the names of people

• 52:19Simon Sinek?

  who are, and you refer to more than one person, you know, as a genius and you have such respect for art and the craft and creative people and the making of craft. You're writing shows about other artists, about Neil Simon and Charles Schultz. You've got Peanuts and you've got The Odd Couple and you're writing, so these variations on other people's works. And you're taking a look at their characters and you said it's, it's where it's, you're not playing these characters, the homeless guy per se, but like there's the emotion. And this is the purity of art, isn't it? Which is that's finding that nugget and looking for where else you can find it and bringing it to life through these familiar things. Even the stereotypes of, of the way the Europeans and the Americans relate to each other.

• 53:01Simon Sinek?

  And I just think, you know, in this day and age of pursuit of followers, pursuit of fame, pursuit of contracts, you know, on, on major streamers, sort of like what's happening to all the artists, the purity, the purity of ours, we're not really investing in small things anymore. You know, they're taking big bets on famous people and things like that. And I really, really, really, really hope that you continue to write, whether they become big stage or small stage. I really hope you continue to write stuff like you have been writing. Like I, I want to see them. I'm kind of annoyed that they're not available.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  Well, that's all very kind of you to say. And I guess now is when I got to tell you, I, I just use AI. It's all AI now, you know? It's just so much faster. I got kids, you know? Like, let's not be purists about this, really. Like, come on, we got to be practical.

• 53:48Simon Sinek?

  And on that note.

• 53:48Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thank you so much.

• 53:49Simon Sinek?

  And on that note, I have to ask questions.

• 53:51Speaker 01

  Oh, sure.

• 53:52Simon Sinek?

  That's your milieu.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  That's my milieu.

• 53:55Simon Sinek?

  Well done.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  Been sitting on that.

• 53:58Simon Sinek?

  Well done. What's it called in comedy when you bring, when you go full circle?

• 54:03Speaker 01

  Classic callback, Simon.

• 54:04Simon Sinek?

  Classic callback. Well done. In The Movement You Need, you show how humor has been a tool to get through the hard stuff. When did comedy transform from being something you did into something you needed?

• 54:17Speaker 01

  Probably from the first times I was making my mom laugh. Like, my mom was, as I talk about Movement You Need, you know, she was, I mean, she was, she was a mom, of course, she's, she's a person. And so a, a label like this is rather reductive, but she's an alcoholic and her version of alcoholism would, would make her like a bit mean. And I know now that she was just, she was transmitting the parenting that, that she got. But the times when I made her laugh, sometimes by accident as a kid, were like the best, you know? It was like, holy shit, I just made mom laugh. Okay. And that is absolutely what has, you know, set me on my path. And it took me a very long time to realize that. I really realized it, you know, probably since writing Movement You Need. And maybe

• 55:02Speaker 01

  that's why I want to be doing art couples, because yeah, the sound, the sound of laughter is better than just shooting something and, and hoping people laugh later on their own.

• 55:11Simon Sinek?

  I get that. It's one of the bad thing, one of the sad things of like writing books or making videos is I don't get to see or hear the impact. And when people come up to me and be like, your book had an impact on me. It's like, I'm, it's, it's, I'm always exciting because I didn't get to, I wasn't there.

• 55:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. The first time we got to attend a screening of a Ted Lasso episode, which wasn't until season two because of COVID things.

• 55:30Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  It was like so jarring, you know?

• 55:34Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  Because we've been doing this show, you know, it's on our own for a while. But then hearing a full theater of 500 people, whatever it was, was like, oh shit, this is, people really do like this. Okay. This is all right.

• 55:43Simon Sinek?

  We're all very excited for season four of Ted Lasso. A lasting message from the first three seasons is that belief is something you give people before they've earned it. Now that Ted and Beard are coaching a women's soccer team, how did the believe message show up in your approach to this new story?

• 55:59Speaker 01

  You know, people sort of are like, you know, we're getting asked a sort of like question that I don't mean by, by interviews, but like by, you know, just friends and family, really. They don't quite come out and say it, but I know what they're saying of like, basically a version of like, are you going to win an Emmy, you know, again? Like that kind of stuff. And like, we never gave a shit about any of that when we were making the show. And like, we're not going to start now. But we also.

• 56:27Simon Sinek?

  You mean purity?

• 56:32Speaker 01

  Darn your data points. And, you know, here we are, we're, we're not entirely starting over, but we're starting, we're kind of starting over, you know, like with this, with this new team and, and a lot of new stuff. And yeah, you just on a base level have to, you know, the flip side of believe is, is, is trust, you know? We just got to trust the work and put our heads down and, and trust our instincts and trust the, you know, the people in the writers room and then the people in the studio and the people on the set. So yeah, just that, that's where the belief is for me.

• 56:59Simon Sinek?

  There's a great quote of yours, the conclusion you first draw about someone is often informed merely by what you're bringing to it. And it will lead to your underestimating the full depth of the people you have so judged. What's the other side of unlearning that what kind of relationship or life does it make possible?

• 57:15Speaker 01

  Wow, that is a complicated sentence for me.

• 57:17Simon Sinek?

  I mean, that is.

• 57:18Speaker 01

  Where the fuck did I say that? Yeesh.

• 57:20Simon Sinek?

  Definitely. Remember that time you said?

• 57:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, we were drunk at three clubs that time. We were recording. Jesus.

• 57:27Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 57:27Speaker 01

  I think people often forget that their shit stinks too. One of the nicest compliments I ever got was from a friend who was one side of a divorce of a marriage between two friends, you know, one of the first like, oh, two of our friends are getting married, not just your friend marrying someone who you're going to get to know.

• 57:44Simon Sinek?

  Right, right.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  And then they got divorced and, you know, because we were, you know, younger folks, a lot of people, you know, chose their side.

• 57:51Simon Sinek?

  Sure.

• 57:52Speaker 01

  I like to think that when people get divorced in their 50s, whatever, you don't do that anymore. I don't know.

• 57:55Simon Sinek?

  You do.

• 57:55Speaker 01

  But, but I did not choose a side, not really by, by conscious thought. I just never thought to, like, they're both my friends, they had a thing. Now, also though, they were not the first people of that generation that I knew to get divorced. That was me. And I got divorced because of mistakes I made. So, you know, a friend said to me like, you know what I like about, what I appreciate you, Brendan? You don't, you don't pick sides. I mean, that was, you know, the, the literal words. And I was like, oh, I guess I don't. But I, it's because I bet you made mistakes and I bet you made mistakes. And I know that because I made mistakes. And since everyone's making mistakes, let's assume that we're not bad people and assume that there's a longer journey here for us than just, you know, the, the bad thing that happened yesterday.

• 58:38Simon Sinek?

  I really, you know, the, the concept of the morality play has kind of gone, you know? And I, again, you're so thoughtful and there's so, you're so human in the words you write, the characters you play, the things you write, the ideas you bring. I just really, really, really hope you continue to write lots and lots and lots of things outside of Ted Lasso as well, especially with your new play that might be on Broadway in 2027.

• 59:00Speaker 01

  The Movement You Need, a journey into family and music.

• 59:04Simon Sinek?

  But you, you're so consistent in sort of like staying pure, giving it a whirl. And it may or may not become a thing. And like even the fact that after four seasons, with the pressures must be overwhelming on the Ted Lasso writers room, you know, that you're like, no, no, no, we're just going to write the thing that we like based on the characters we love and it'll show up how it shows up and you'll either like it or you won't. But we're going to do the best job we can with the tools we've got. And that's the way things are written the first time. Like everybody's first effort is that. But then the subsequent effort with the pressures and the money and other people involved, very, very, very hard to maintain that.

• 59:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, it was Jason's call in the long run of like, you know, we're going to make a women's team and we're going to start them at a lower level and, and, you know, change the show in this fundamental way. But I think that's the only way it would have been interesting to him.

• 59:54Simon Sinek?

  Was it something new?

• 59:54Speaker 01

  Was to start it differently. And now, yeah, not just new, but also intentionally raising the level of difficulty.

• 1:00:02Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:03Speaker 01

  Basically, of trying to pull it off. And so, yeah, it definitely was more interesting than if we'd just gone back and, you know, done the same characters again, which would have been fun, you know, to some degree, but not quite as interesting.

• 1:00:13Simon Sinek?

  I think they all aged out of playing on a professional soccer team.

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, at some point, at some point, reality, reality steps in a little bit like, no one transferred? No one? Okay.

• 1:00:22Simon Sinek?

  No one's been injured? Nothing, nothing.

• 1:00:26Simon Sinek?

  Thank you so much for coming on. Such a joy.

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  Thank you, Simon.

• 1:00:29Simon Sinek?

  Real pleasure.

• 1:00:34Simon Sinek?

  As always, thanks for listening. And if you liked this episode, please do remember to subscribe to A Bit of Optimism wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. And remember, new episodes drop every Tuesday. A Bit of Optimism is a production of The Optimism Company, lovingly produced by our team, Lindsay Garbenius, Phoebe Bradford, and Devin Johnson. And if you want more cool stuff or just to find out what I'm up to, visit simonsinek.com. Until next time, take care of yourself, take care of each other.