00:00:01
Speaker 1: If you've ever tried a tasty treat from Milk Bar, or tried the Cereal Milk ice cream for one of the Milk Bar bakeries, or watched Bake Squad on Netflix, or taken part in the Bake Club on Instagram, or read Dessert Can Save the World, or read any of her other cookbooks, then you know Christina Tozi. She is the powerhouse entrepreneur behind the Milk Bar brand, and she's also a dear friend. Instead of talking about what it takes to build a dessert empire, I thought we would go deep on this one and talk about what it means to be a friend. And it turns out the single most important thing is learning how to ask for help. This is a bit of optimism. The best part about doing a podcast with you is that I get to talk to.
00:00:50
Speaker 2: You and I get to see you on work time.
00:00:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is considered work.
00:00:57
Speaker 2: Hey, Simon, it's a real job to be your.
00:01:01
Speaker 3: What does that mean? I'm joking.
00:01:03
Speaker 4: I'm just joking because we get we both love what we do for a living, and it all makes the lost sense when you get to say, my favorite people to spend time with outside of working share life, welf are also people.
00:01:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's how.
00:01:16
Speaker 2: For me, that's how I know I'm on the right track. Professionally.
00:01:20
Speaker 1: You are famous because of Milk Bar. You're famous for your Netflix TV show. You're famous for your books, your cookbooks, the new books called Dessert Will Save the World. You know, you talk about those things a lot. But there's a Christina Tozi behind all of that magical stuff that I have the deep honor and pleasure of knowing. And I thought that would be a place for us to go today. Okay, anyway, I'm just going to jump right in. So here's the Milk Bar question I have. I've never asked you.
00:01:55
Speaker 2: I can't wait.
00:01:56
Speaker 1: How did you come up with Cereal milk ice cream, which is honestly one of the greatest gifts to humanity. I would put the discovery of penicillin and Cereal milk ice cream way up there.
00:02:13
Speaker 2: I heard. That's very sweet for me. It's like that, you know, when you do something that's like bigger than yourself in a way that's like, I don't know, it just kind of happens, and my only job is to be the conduit for it. Yeah, in life, for me, Cerealmulcus the representation of making someone that angry person eating ice cream on a bad dail, just making them feel like seen and loved and trust somewhere at some point in their life where they felt like calm and safe and trusted and seen without any of the other or this is my name or this is what I do. There's like a sacred moment that happens, I suppose in a pool of cereal at some point in all of our lives, no matter what the cereal is. Of course, dessert like makes people happy. It does the thing like dessert's a sacred it's space like aside from a tasting manually restaurant where someone's gonna serve it to you. Like, dessert's an opting course, right Like it's also not. It's something people choose to do, not something that people have to do. And I take that choice personally, like I take it seriously. I take it personally. That is our sacred, sacred space.
00:03:20
Speaker 1: I love the fact that that you think about that dessert is a discretionary course, so you're not actually competing against other desserts. You're competing against Let's get out of here and go watch a movie at home. You're competing against Ugh, I've put on so much weight. You're competing against like all of those things.
00:03:37
Speaker 2: You're competing with people's emotional neurosis, like their dark sides, meet their emotional childs, meet their you know, meet their intellect. Like you're in the middle of an argument largely in someone's head, or some brilliant resolution where someone us just like in the head. Be quiet, we're going. We're going to milk bar. We're doing the thing.
00:03:55
Speaker 1: So I'm going to change subjects on you. This is a dramatic shift. Now there's a dramatic shift of key. We're going to go from a major key to a minor key. I regularly on this podcast will talk about vulnerability, and I will talk about during COVID that I made a rule with all my friends that there's no crying alone. I talk about this idea of no crying alone. What I don't ever say is that during COVID, you and I called each other more than a couple times and cried together. And I remember the first time you called. You were going for a long walk, you'd left the house, you were in a difficult place. It was a difficult time, and you said I could go to my husband, but he's also in a difficult place and I don't want to add more to his plate. And so do you have a minute. I don't remember the conversation at all, but I remember we cried together. I always adored you, and I've always been a fan of yours. But it was on that day this friendship like became real. It was it was set in concrete. You know, it went from fun to solid. Do you remember that day?
00:05:28
Speaker 2: You know it's funny you asked, because you're saying that's in my head. I'm like, Simon, I remember the tree I was standing under. I remember the way when when you walk and you kind of almost walk like a soldier, where you sort of like tick your heels up a little bit, because I was just sort of like grasping for straws. And I remember the phone ringing, and I remember hearing your voice, like I remember where I walked. Yeah, I remember, I remember those steps.
00:05:58
Speaker 1: Why don't people call a friend in need? You know, I mean, here we are. I trust you with everything. I would call you and tell you I'm struggling. I would call you and tell you I'm hurting. I would call you and tell you I'm flailing. I would call and tell you I'm confused, I'm lost. I would call and tell you all of those things. And I want to know why other people don't. I have friends who don't call other people in times of need, and they have this weird sense of I don't want to burden anyone with my problems, or there's shame or embarrassment attached, especially if somebody considers themselves a high performer.
00:06:40
Speaker 2: I was going to say, there's probably part of it that also is if I say it out loud and I have to hear myself, one that makes it true, and two making it true means I have to admit it and then grapple with it and deal with it. And if you're talking about high performers, you're talking about people that implicitly don't want to admit to and confusing vulnerability with defeat right is probably like number one reason why why people that are high performers struggle. And then also if you're a high performer, the second you say it out loud and you acknowledge that it's a thing, then you have to go out and solve it. And if you don't think you have a solve for it, it's too big to even conceive of stating out loud, though of course the irony is saying it out loud. Releasing yourself of it to someone that is trustworthy is oftentimes half, if not so much more of the grappling with it and dealing with it and taking one like taking that first step is oftentimes so much of getting through it, getting into it, making way.
00:07:46
Speaker 1: It's decompartmentalizing because thinking it, you can it's still ethereal, it's a thought, right yeah, But by saying it out loud to another human being, you're decompartmentalizing and saying this is a real thing, and you kind of escape it now, right.
00:08:01
Speaker 2: You yourself on notice?
00:08:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, you put yourself unnoticed, and that's a very scary feeling if you don't have the solution ready and lined up for the problem that you're putting out there. But that's the whole point of decompartmentalizing.
00:08:14
Speaker 2: My experience with you is the most beautiful part of our friendship. Like why did I call that day? Why were you the person that I called? Because it's not like a dried six other people, Like I went on a walk. I knew I was going to call you the reason I knew that you were my person to call was because of the conversations we were having beforehand, which is, you not only gave me the space for vulnerability, but you gave me language around the fact that, like when we're having like our high times, in our high moments, you always have this beautiful way of saying, like, man, when we're high, we're high. But let's not forget that we can't feel high always right, like we're going to feel grounded. And part of feeling grounded means that we're going to dip below feeling level set and that happens, and it's frequent, and when it does, let's not run away from it. And it almost made me feel stronger to call you to say, oh shit, I'm having a moment.
00:09:15
Speaker 1: There's an insight here that is really important. Most of us and we're all guilty of this present company included right, most of us offer to support our friends when we see that they are hurting or in pain, which is like calling to buy insurance while the house is on fire. And the insight is is that we ignore the possibility of hard or bad times with ourselves or the people we love. We ignore them in the good times, because why would we. It's like when the stock market is rallying, nobody thinks about it crashing. And the one thing we did, probably by accident, in the high times and the celebrations and the high file vibes, we were pression enough to say, hey, isn't this amazing? But remember when this feeling goes away, we have to be there for each other. In other words, we bought the insurance early. You knew you had a policy.
00:10:14
Speaker 2: I had my Simon Sinek Friend policy already executed. Babe, it was filed away. I knew I had.
00:10:20
Speaker 1: You just had to be like, I know it's in here somewhere right. This is huge that in high times we're not debbie downers by reminding people, hey, this isn't going to last. We're writing insurance policies.
00:10:33
Speaker 2: Such a good inst and it's applauding the high times and being like, but to be clear, no matter what the time is, I'm always your friend, Like there's no fair weather here. Of course, things are great right now, and to be human is going to be that there's going to be a time in life and I want to show you what our friendship really needs.
00:10:55
Speaker 1: I love where this is going, but I need to take a quick break and then we'll get back into it. Were you always good at asking for help or is it a skill you had to learn.
00:11:12
Speaker 2: I'm, in fact, terrible at asking for help. I'm great at being vulnerable in certain moments with certain people, and the rest of the time I plow through it.
00:11:24
Speaker 1: What is the reason you don't want to ask for help?
00:11:28
Speaker 2: It's a pattern for sure that I think probably the tricky part of Like, depending on where you're at in life, the things that made you successful oftentimes are the things that hold you back. Weren't you made to certain tiers of you know, air quote success, And I think that's part of it. Right to be an entrepreneur, you have to be determined. You have to go at it like always stay in the game, never quit, figure it out and be okay that sometimes help doesn't come and you still have to succeed. And then all of a sudden being grown up and being like, oh, if I want the richness of life and surround sound, I have to invite other people in.
00:12:07
Speaker 1: I'd like to call bullshit if I know I know entrepreneurs who don't ask for help and they can only reach a certain level because they have to be in every meeting, they have to make every decision. And you can't achieve what you've achieved in the scale that you've achieved it without being forced, even if you did it kicking and screaming, But you had to delegate and you had to let go, and you had to ask people to do things and own things and run things and take accountability for things because you physically could not. Nobody can achieve scale without maybe not asking for help, but getting it.
00:12:44
Speaker 2: Part of the getting help for me is that you have to be fearless as you're building, and then you have to be fearless when you're scaling and you invite other people in to the party, truly into the inner circle. You have to really trust it, be fearless about the fact that people are gonna fail. You're gonna fail, people are gonna let you down. You might let people down, whether you're trying to or not, and just having like an emotional vigor about you that says, no matter what happens, I'm gonna be okay. Perhaps it's for me, I'm being very literal about them. I need help, Will you help me? Delivery versus getting help and the fear of like being like, I need help and what it implies, because that's actually the like the help me feels like I'm drowning. The help me for me, it feels like I don't know how to swim, I'm drowning, I'm in over my head, as opposed to the curiosity of inviting other people to the table and saying tell me more, like what don't I know? Tell me more?
00:13:51
Speaker 3: You know.
00:13:51
Speaker 1: One of the things that I've learned is that there's two ways of asking for help. Most people think asking for help is and you said this before, or is the admission of defeat, and so their temperament is defeated. I don't know what I'm doing, and can you help me? I need help? I need help. I'm drowning. I need help, right. And I've always thought of it as a mindset, which is to ask for help with confidence, like, hey, can somebody please like help me out here? I am completely underwater and I definitely need some help, otherwise I don't know, I'm gonna drown, or something like somebody please just help me, And to have a sense of humor or a confidence in the asking for help is a mindset, so you're asking for the same thing with the same circumstances in both ways. In one of the cases, you're ashamed of it that you equate it to defeat, where I've learned to disassociate asking for help with defeat and simply associate asking for help with I just need help. I just need some help.
00:15:00
Speaker 2: That's a powerful thing, like you know how to call it out.
00:15:05
Speaker 1: What I think this conversation is doing is I want anyone who's listening to this to recognize that asking for help is normal, and not only is it normal, it's really nice. I mean. So I'll just tell you a quick, funny story. You'll appreciate this. So a friend of mine went through a really tough time and I didn't know about it, and she's a very close friend went through a really, really hard time and I saw her and I was like, hey, what have you been up to? And she's like, I've been really depressed, I've been really happy. I'm like, WTF, I'm one of those friends you call like you've told me things before, like why did you leave me out? Like like, why didn't you call me? And she said I did. I'm like, no, you didn't. She's like, yes, I texted you multiple times. I'm like what And I go back and look at my text, like have I been horrible? Friend? And the text say what up?
00:16:03
Speaker 3: What are you doing?
00:16:04
Speaker 1: Want to come over? And I was like, you mean these? She goes yeah, I'm like you mean you mean the ones that sound like every other text you send me? Like, how the hell am I supposed to know that you're struggling when you send me? What are you doing? You know? And she came upon some research that said that when someone is struggling or in need, all they need is eight minutes from a friend to hold space with them to make them feel better. That's all they need is eight minutes. And so now we have a code word, which is what up? How you doing? But when one of us is struggling, the text is do you have eight minutes? And that simply means I need you.
00:16:50
Speaker 3: I'm gonna cry. No, it's perfect, and it's eight minutes eight minutes. When somebody texts you eight do you have eight minutes? Any of us can stop the movie, can walk out of a meeting, can walk out of a room and talk to a friend in need for eight minutes. We spend eight minutes in the bathroom, for Heaven's sakes, and we can be there for somebody for eight minutes, won't we won't. No, we don't need to fix anything. We need to acknowledge that they need help and that they just need to know that they're not alone.
00:17:22
Speaker 2: And by the way, to be crystal clear, there's no greater honor that you could give a friend than to send them a text message that says, do you have eight minutes? Like when you're in your own like darkness? Yeah, I get that you can't see clearly, But there is no greater compliment and give to let someone know how much they mean to you to send that text there is for me as as a friend, there is no greater like, no honor I am. That is the level friend that I aspire to be. And I don't have a zillion friends because I'm like the friends I have. I'm the eight minute text in the middle of the night friends. I'm the stop, drop and roll friends. And to your point, the like I don't even remember what we talked about. I just remember that making that call and that walk. It wasn't a two hour walk. No, to your points, it so much can happen, and it was probably.
00:18:26
Speaker 1: Twenty or thirty minutes. If I had to guess, maybe an hour at the absolute most, eight minutes, eight minutes and you, and you, you really said it best. Which is for anybody who says I don't want to bother anyone with my problems, like how dare you deny them the awesome honor of getting to hold space with you and sit in mud with you and give eight minutes of their life just to let you know you're not alone, just to let you know that you're not alone in whatever you're doing. And sometimes it's not deep emotional stuff, sometimes like I don't know how to solve this problem, and it's silly stuff. But the thought that we don't want to bother our friends is unbelievably selfish.
00:19:08
Speaker 2: Bother me.
00:19:09
Speaker 1: I want to be bothered by the people I love. That is what reinforces my love for them.
00:19:14
Speaker 2: Be the eight minute friends. And if someone in your life is not an.
00:19:18
Speaker 1: Eight minute friend, then they're just fun, they're just acquaintances totally.
00:19:22
Speaker 2: They just move them to a different place in your life.
00:19:24
Speaker 1: The check out have to be ejected from your life. But you just wouldn't call them in a time of need. And that's Okay. I have friends that I wouldn't call in time of need, but I love them and I think they're great fun. But they're just not on that speed dial.
00:19:35
Speaker 2: That's true.
00:19:36
Speaker 1: We have to take a quick break and we'll be right back. Can you tell me something you've done in your career and it doesn't matter if it's commercially successful or not, I don't care. But can you tell me a specific thing that you've worked on in your career that you absolutely loved being a part of, and that if every project or everything you ever worked on was like this one thing, you'd be the happiest person to live.
00:20:02
Speaker 2: Yes, I can tell you because it's like fresh in my in my brain and my life. Bake Club bag Club is a it used to be daily. Now it's a weekly club that anyone can join. It happens on Instagram live at two pm Eastern Standard time every Friday, and wherever I am, we bake something together and I won't tell you what we're baking. I'll just tell you what the basic ingredients are that you need and it's usually no more than I don't know, three, five, maybe seven, and you just show up with a cannonball spirit of whatever it is. I got my ingredients ready, set go, and we spend five minutes, fifteen minutes, thirty minutes baking. I make a playlist every week. You listen, you dance, you watch, you bake, You make mistakes, you mess up, you burn stuff, I drop stuff. Whatever it is. But it's like it's a carved out time together to be intentional and free in a very lose yourself, find yourself spirit. And it's this collect of people that Simon are like, they show up for each other. Someone at Bay Club messaged me the other day and was like, Hey, this person's mom died and she had been battling for a while and she is having a really hard time. I want to show up for her. Her favorite thing is this one thing that you made this one time. Can you send the care package to or et cetera, et cetera. But it has become this network of incredible humans and it is it's a wide open door for anyone and everyone to be the closest thing to that eight minute friend. And it's completely human. It's not choreographed, it's not rehearsed. It is me on whatever I am at two pm on a Friday. It's a good day, it's a bad day, it's a rainy day, and I'm showing up. And I am an introvert. I do not get energy from being out and about and and and and it forces me every Friday to really ask myself on a good day and a bad day, and like, what are you here for? What are you showing up for? It's a door open into anyone that wants to come into my home and just needs some company, or needs to laugh at me, or needs to laugh with me, or wants to bake or needs an excuse, or needs like a babysit, or some people put their kids in front of bake club. And it is the most I love it because to your point, there's no transaction of commerce. And I love that it's this community of people that I have everything to do with and nothing to do with. And there's just like an immense pride of its stickiness and the space that it holds in people's lives.
00:22:36
Speaker 1: Tell me an early specific, happy childhood memory something I can relive with you.
00:22:43
Speaker 2: God, this is such a good question. My favorite earliest food memory is my mom working Mom comes to pick me and my sister up from I must have been like preschool in kindergarten first grade, buckles us into the back of the car blue fur taurusts. I always sit behind the driver's seat. That that was always my seat. And I remember her like mom purse that had the multiple pockets and it was always like old tissues hanging out, and she put it in the middle because the front seat was also like a banquette bench. Yeah, the little armress down where she would normally sit. Her purse was empty, and her purse was on the dashboard instead, which was very strange. And she pulls halfway out of this like preschool kindergarten parking lot and pulls over. And when they pulled over my mom or my dad, it was because we were fighting. My older sister and I were fighting, kicking each other, and my heart goes into shock, like oh shudow shadow shit, what do we do? What do we do? And she digs into her person like, oh gook, could this be? And she pulls out a bag of sugar babies that she left in her purse on the dashboard to be warmed by the sun, and out of nowhere this makes no sense whatsoever, tears open the bag of sugar babies and you know, they are little brown sugar pieces. They're priding to this food for your tay seven, but they're very naturical, and she like doses out two to my sister, and I remember the clink of these two little pieces of like sugar coated candy clinking into my sister's hand and then into mine, and she pours a few into hers and just quietly. There's no words exchanged because we're so perplexed. And I don't know. She must have been having a good day or a bad day. I don't know. I've asked her. She doesn't remember the day at all, which is hilarious to me because it's so vivid in my memory. And we just eat these warm, brown, sugary sugar babies that had been very intentionally warmed by the sun, and I don't remember anything else about what happened that day, what happened afterwards. I remember it was done and beat silence, And it was the equivalent of when you watch someone as an adult eat something really good and they just go and you can see they're sort of like eyelids flicker and take them somewhere. Life food memory, that's like my first that's my first divid memory as a kid that was joyful and it's had to do with sugar dessert.
00:25:13
Speaker 1: So what I find astonishing about you, and we've never talked about this is that story bake club, and almost everything we've ever talked about today is the exact same story. Hell Se, who you are is you surprise people with sugar, and I don't mean literally, you surprise people with sweetness. And that you happen to be a dessert person is just poetic. But the way you describe bait club is you show up no matter what. And it's if you use the what happened when that car as a kid, it's the same experience for people. They don't know what they're going to get. They don't know what kind of mood you're in. But all you know is you show up for other people. Your mother showed up for the kids. You don't know what mood she's in. People don't know what mood you're in, but you're going to give them a little something that just brightens their day. And that's who you are. You.
00:26:23
Speaker 2: Oh stop, you're gonna make me cry.
00:26:27
Speaker 1: You are an introvert. You're also close to the vest. You're hard to read. You know, there are times I've hung out with you. I don't know if you're in a good mood or a bad mood, and then all of a sudden, biscuits come out. You have become your mother where we're kind of in the back seat going about our day and then all of sudden something happens. We don't know what's going on, and the result is something delightful and sweet. And that's what it is to be your friend, and that's what it is to be in Bait Club, and that's what it is to work at Milk Bar. You know, it's kind of like we're going through our routines and then you interrupt our routines with a little bit of magic. And that's your purpose on this planet is to perpetuate what your mother instilled in you that day. To do the extra, to go the extra length, that's what it is. It's not that she just gave you the candy. She went to the extra length of preparing the candy and warming it in the sun. You said they were heated intentionally, and that's what you do. It's with great intention that you make preparations to surprise people with a little bit of sweetness in their lives just a little bit to keep them going that day. That's what you do. Warming the candy on the dashboard has become an entire business and enterprise for you. A lot of effort, a lot of thought for a little bit of magic and a little bit of sweetness for the rest of us.
00:28:00
Speaker 2: Well so seen. I feel so seen, and also therapies.
00:28:05
Speaker 1: You know, I talk about cause a lot and sacrifice, and people always asked me, like, like I believe in quitting? You know, I don't believe in like stubbornness to a self destructive level. But the question is how do you know when to quit? And for me, the sacrifice has to feel worth it, Like I'm giving a lot, not sleeping a lot, working a lot, but the impact that I'm having, and if you ask me to do the equation, it feels worth it. You're one of the hardest working people I know on the planet. You don't rest, But the amazing thing is to you, whether it's having guests over to your house, or whether it's bake club or whether it's the milk bar enterprise, it's worth it because you get two little kids in the back seat to smile and have a little bit of joy and carry a memory for the rest of their lives. And we carry them memory of talking in the woods. And we carry the memory of our childhood when we eat cereal and milk ice cream. It's all the same story.
00:29:09
Speaker 2: It's so true. How many memories do you have?
00:29:13
Speaker 1: Not that many?
00:29:13
Speaker 3: Right?
00:29:14
Speaker 1: We only remember the things that matter tozy. I love you, hold on, hold on before you go. I want to share one more thing, which is Christina's recipe for an ice cream loaf. It's the world's simplest recipe. Anyone can make this. Take two cups of softened ice cream, which is basically one pint of your favorite flavored ice cream. Add one cup of self rising flour, add one egg. Bake it at three hundred and fifty degrees fahrenheit for forty five minutes in a loaf pan, and you will have made an ice cream loaf of your favorite ice cream flavor. Enjoy its magic. A Bit of Optimism is a production of The Optimism Company, produced and edited by David Jah and Greg Reiderschan and Henrietta Conrad is our executive producer. If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, please subscribe wherever you'd like to listen to podcasts, and if you'd like even more optimism, check out my website Simon sinek dot com for classes, videos, and more. Until then, take care of yourself, take care of each other.
Speaker 1: If you've ever tried a tasty treat from Milk Bar, or tried the Cereal Milk ice cream for one of the Milk Bar bakeries, or watched Bake Squad on Netflix, or taken part in the Bake Club on Instagram, or read Dessert Can Save the World, or read any of her other cookbooks, then you know Christina Tozi. She is the powerhouse entrepreneur behind the Milk Bar brand, and she's also a dear friend. Instead of talking about what it takes to build a dessert empire, I thought we would go deep on this one and talk about what it means to be a friend. And it turns out the single most important thing is learning how to ask for help. This is a bit of optimism. The best part about doing a podcast with you is that I get to talk to.
00:00:50
Speaker 2: You and I get to see you on work time.
00:00:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is considered work.
00:00:57
Speaker 2: Hey, Simon, it's a real job to be your.
00:01:01
Speaker 3: What does that mean? I'm joking.
00:01:03
Speaker 4: I'm just joking because we get we both love what we do for a living, and it all makes the lost sense when you get to say, my favorite people to spend time with outside of working share life, welf are also people.
00:01:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's how.
00:01:16
Speaker 2: For me, that's how I know I'm on the right track. Professionally.
00:01:20
Speaker 1: You are famous because of Milk Bar. You're famous for your Netflix TV show. You're famous for your books, your cookbooks, the new books called Dessert Will Save the World. You know, you talk about those things a lot. But there's a Christina Tozi behind all of that magical stuff that I have the deep honor and pleasure of knowing. And I thought that would be a place for us to go today. Okay, anyway, I'm just going to jump right in. So here's the Milk Bar question I have. I've never asked you.
00:01:55
Speaker 2: I can't wait.
00:01:56
Speaker 1: How did you come up with Cereal milk ice cream, which is honestly one of the greatest gifts to humanity. I would put the discovery of penicillin and Cereal milk ice cream way up there.
00:02:13
Speaker 2: I heard. That's very sweet for me. It's like that, you know, when you do something that's like bigger than yourself in a way that's like, I don't know, it just kind of happens, and my only job is to be the conduit for it. Yeah, in life, for me, Cerealmulcus the representation of making someone that angry person eating ice cream on a bad dail, just making them feel like seen and loved and trust somewhere at some point in their life where they felt like calm and safe and trusted and seen without any of the other or this is my name or this is what I do. There's like a sacred moment that happens, I suppose in a pool of cereal at some point in all of our lives, no matter what the cereal is. Of course, dessert like makes people happy. It does the thing like dessert's a sacred it's space like aside from a tasting manually restaurant where someone's gonna serve it to you. Like, dessert's an opting course, right Like it's also not. It's something people choose to do, not something that people have to do. And I take that choice personally, like I take it seriously. I take it personally. That is our sacred, sacred space.
00:03:20
Speaker 1: I love the fact that that you think about that dessert is a discretionary course, so you're not actually competing against other desserts. You're competing against Let's get out of here and go watch a movie at home. You're competing against Ugh, I've put on so much weight. You're competing against like all of those things.
00:03:37
Speaker 2: You're competing with people's emotional neurosis, like their dark sides, meet their emotional childs, meet their you know, meet their intellect. Like you're in the middle of an argument largely in someone's head, or some brilliant resolution where someone us just like in the head. Be quiet, we're going. We're going to milk bar. We're doing the thing.
00:03:55
Speaker 1: So I'm going to change subjects on you. This is a dramatic shift. Now there's a dramatic shift of key. We're going to go from a major key to a minor key. I regularly on this podcast will talk about vulnerability, and I will talk about during COVID that I made a rule with all my friends that there's no crying alone. I talk about this idea of no crying alone. What I don't ever say is that during COVID, you and I called each other more than a couple times and cried together. And I remember the first time you called. You were going for a long walk, you'd left the house, you were in a difficult place. It was a difficult time, and you said I could go to my husband, but he's also in a difficult place and I don't want to add more to his plate. And so do you have a minute. I don't remember the conversation at all, but I remember we cried together. I always adored you, and I've always been a fan of yours. But it was on that day this friendship like became real. It was it was set in concrete. You know, it went from fun to solid. Do you remember that day?
00:05:28
Speaker 2: You know it's funny you asked, because you're saying that's in my head. I'm like, Simon, I remember the tree I was standing under. I remember the way when when you walk and you kind of almost walk like a soldier, where you sort of like tick your heels up a little bit, because I was just sort of like grasping for straws. And I remember the phone ringing, and I remember hearing your voice, like I remember where I walked. Yeah, I remember, I remember those steps.
00:05:58
Speaker 1: Why don't people call a friend in need? You know, I mean, here we are. I trust you with everything. I would call you and tell you I'm struggling. I would call you and tell you I'm hurting. I would call you and tell you I'm flailing. I would call and tell you I'm confused, I'm lost. I would call and tell you all of those things. And I want to know why other people don't. I have friends who don't call other people in times of need, and they have this weird sense of I don't want to burden anyone with my problems, or there's shame or embarrassment attached, especially if somebody considers themselves a high performer.
00:06:40
Speaker 2: I was going to say, there's probably part of it that also is if I say it out loud and I have to hear myself, one that makes it true, and two making it true means I have to admit it and then grapple with it and deal with it. And if you're talking about high performers, you're talking about people that implicitly don't want to admit to and confusing vulnerability with defeat right is probably like number one reason why why people that are high performers struggle. And then also if you're a high performer, the second you say it out loud and you acknowledge that it's a thing, then you have to go out and solve it. And if you don't think you have a solve for it, it's too big to even conceive of stating out loud, though of course the irony is saying it out loud. Releasing yourself of it to someone that is trustworthy is oftentimes half, if not so much more of the grappling with it and dealing with it and taking one like taking that first step is oftentimes so much of getting through it, getting into it, making way.
00:07:46
Speaker 1: It's decompartmentalizing because thinking it, you can it's still ethereal, it's a thought, right yeah, But by saying it out loud to another human being, you're decompartmentalizing and saying this is a real thing, and you kind of escape it now, right.
00:08:01
Speaker 2: You yourself on notice?
00:08:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, you put yourself unnoticed, and that's a very scary feeling if you don't have the solution ready and lined up for the problem that you're putting out there. But that's the whole point of decompartmentalizing.
00:08:14
Speaker 2: My experience with you is the most beautiful part of our friendship. Like why did I call that day? Why were you the person that I called? Because it's not like a dried six other people, Like I went on a walk. I knew I was going to call you the reason I knew that you were my person to call was because of the conversations we were having beforehand, which is, you not only gave me the space for vulnerability, but you gave me language around the fact that, like when we're having like our high times, in our high moments, you always have this beautiful way of saying, like, man, when we're high, we're high. But let's not forget that we can't feel high always right, like we're going to feel grounded. And part of feeling grounded means that we're going to dip below feeling level set and that happens, and it's frequent, and when it does, let's not run away from it. And it almost made me feel stronger to call you to say, oh shit, I'm having a moment.
00:09:15
Speaker 1: There's an insight here that is really important. Most of us and we're all guilty of this present company included right, most of us offer to support our friends when we see that they are hurting or in pain, which is like calling to buy insurance while the house is on fire. And the insight is is that we ignore the possibility of hard or bad times with ourselves or the people we love. We ignore them in the good times, because why would we. It's like when the stock market is rallying, nobody thinks about it crashing. And the one thing we did, probably by accident, in the high times and the celebrations and the high file vibes, we were pression enough to say, hey, isn't this amazing? But remember when this feeling goes away, we have to be there for each other. In other words, we bought the insurance early. You knew you had a policy.
00:10:14
Speaker 2: I had my Simon Sinek Friend policy already executed. Babe, it was filed away. I knew I had.
00:10:20
Speaker 1: You just had to be like, I know it's in here somewhere right. This is huge that in high times we're not debbie downers by reminding people, hey, this isn't going to last. We're writing insurance policies.
00:10:33
Speaker 2: Such a good inst and it's applauding the high times and being like, but to be clear, no matter what the time is, I'm always your friend, Like there's no fair weather here. Of course, things are great right now, and to be human is going to be that there's going to be a time in life and I want to show you what our friendship really needs.
00:10:55
Speaker 1: I love where this is going, but I need to take a quick break and then we'll get back into it. Were you always good at asking for help or is it a skill you had to learn.
00:11:12
Speaker 2: I'm, in fact, terrible at asking for help. I'm great at being vulnerable in certain moments with certain people, and the rest of the time I plow through it.
00:11:24
Speaker 1: What is the reason you don't want to ask for help?
00:11:28
Speaker 2: It's a pattern for sure that I think probably the tricky part of Like, depending on where you're at in life, the things that made you successful oftentimes are the things that hold you back. Weren't you made to certain tiers of you know, air quote success, And I think that's part of it. Right to be an entrepreneur, you have to be determined. You have to go at it like always stay in the game, never quit, figure it out and be okay that sometimes help doesn't come and you still have to succeed. And then all of a sudden being grown up and being like, oh, if I want the richness of life and surround sound, I have to invite other people in.
00:12:07
Speaker 1: I'd like to call bullshit if I know I know entrepreneurs who don't ask for help and they can only reach a certain level because they have to be in every meeting, they have to make every decision. And you can't achieve what you've achieved in the scale that you've achieved it without being forced, even if you did it kicking and screaming, But you had to delegate and you had to let go, and you had to ask people to do things and own things and run things and take accountability for things because you physically could not. Nobody can achieve scale without maybe not asking for help, but getting it.
00:12:44
Speaker 2: Part of the getting help for me is that you have to be fearless as you're building, and then you have to be fearless when you're scaling and you invite other people in to the party, truly into the inner circle. You have to really trust it, be fearless about the fact that people are gonna fail. You're gonna fail, people are gonna let you down. You might let people down, whether you're trying to or not, and just having like an emotional vigor about you that says, no matter what happens, I'm gonna be okay. Perhaps it's for me, I'm being very literal about them. I need help, Will you help me? Delivery versus getting help and the fear of like being like, I need help and what it implies, because that's actually the like the help me feels like I'm drowning. The help me for me, it feels like I don't know how to swim, I'm drowning, I'm in over my head, as opposed to the curiosity of inviting other people to the table and saying tell me more, like what don't I know? Tell me more?
00:13:51
Speaker 3: You know.
00:13:51
Speaker 1: One of the things that I've learned is that there's two ways of asking for help. Most people think asking for help is and you said this before, or is the admission of defeat, and so their temperament is defeated. I don't know what I'm doing, and can you help me? I need help? I need help. I'm drowning. I need help, right. And I've always thought of it as a mindset, which is to ask for help with confidence, like, hey, can somebody please like help me out here? I am completely underwater and I definitely need some help, otherwise I don't know, I'm gonna drown, or something like somebody please just help me, And to have a sense of humor or a confidence in the asking for help is a mindset, so you're asking for the same thing with the same circumstances in both ways. In one of the cases, you're ashamed of it that you equate it to defeat, where I've learned to disassociate asking for help with defeat and simply associate asking for help with I just need help. I just need some help.
00:15:00
Speaker 2: That's a powerful thing, like you know how to call it out.
00:15:05
Speaker 1: What I think this conversation is doing is I want anyone who's listening to this to recognize that asking for help is normal, and not only is it normal, it's really nice. I mean. So I'll just tell you a quick, funny story. You'll appreciate this. So a friend of mine went through a really tough time and I didn't know about it, and she's a very close friend went through a really, really hard time and I saw her and I was like, hey, what have you been up to? And she's like, I've been really depressed, I've been really happy. I'm like, WTF, I'm one of those friends you call like you've told me things before, like why did you leave me out? Like like, why didn't you call me? And she said I did. I'm like, no, you didn't. She's like, yes, I texted you multiple times. I'm like what And I go back and look at my text, like have I been horrible? Friend? And the text say what up?
00:16:03
Speaker 3: What are you doing?
00:16:04
Speaker 1: Want to come over? And I was like, you mean these? She goes yeah, I'm like you mean you mean the ones that sound like every other text you send me? Like, how the hell am I supposed to know that you're struggling when you send me? What are you doing? You know? And she came upon some research that said that when someone is struggling or in need, all they need is eight minutes from a friend to hold space with them to make them feel better. That's all they need is eight minutes. And so now we have a code word, which is what up? How you doing? But when one of us is struggling, the text is do you have eight minutes? And that simply means I need you.
00:16:50
Speaker 3: I'm gonna cry. No, it's perfect, and it's eight minutes eight minutes. When somebody texts you eight do you have eight minutes? Any of us can stop the movie, can walk out of a meeting, can walk out of a room and talk to a friend in need for eight minutes. We spend eight minutes in the bathroom, for Heaven's sakes, and we can be there for somebody for eight minutes, won't we won't. No, we don't need to fix anything. We need to acknowledge that they need help and that they just need to know that they're not alone.
00:17:22
Speaker 2: And by the way, to be crystal clear, there's no greater honor that you could give a friend than to send them a text message that says, do you have eight minutes? Like when you're in your own like darkness? Yeah, I get that you can't see clearly, But there is no greater compliment and give to let someone know how much they mean to you to send that text there is for me as as a friend, there is no greater like, no honor I am. That is the level friend that I aspire to be. And I don't have a zillion friends because I'm like the friends I have. I'm the eight minute text in the middle of the night friends. I'm the stop, drop and roll friends. And to your point, the like I don't even remember what we talked about. I just remember that making that call and that walk. It wasn't a two hour walk. No, to your points, it so much can happen, and it was probably.
00:18:26
Speaker 1: Twenty or thirty minutes. If I had to guess, maybe an hour at the absolute most, eight minutes, eight minutes and you, and you, you really said it best. Which is for anybody who says I don't want to bother anyone with my problems, like how dare you deny them the awesome honor of getting to hold space with you and sit in mud with you and give eight minutes of their life just to let you know you're not alone, just to let you know that you're not alone in whatever you're doing. And sometimes it's not deep emotional stuff, sometimes like I don't know how to solve this problem, and it's silly stuff. But the thought that we don't want to bother our friends is unbelievably selfish.
00:19:08
Speaker 2: Bother me.
00:19:09
Speaker 1: I want to be bothered by the people I love. That is what reinforces my love for them.
00:19:14
Speaker 2: Be the eight minute friends. And if someone in your life is not an.
00:19:18
Speaker 1: Eight minute friend, then they're just fun, they're just acquaintances totally.
00:19:22
Speaker 2: They just move them to a different place in your life.
00:19:24
Speaker 1: The check out have to be ejected from your life. But you just wouldn't call them in a time of need. And that's Okay. I have friends that I wouldn't call in time of need, but I love them and I think they're great fun. But they're just not on that speed dial.
00:19:35
Speaker 2: That's true.
00:19:36
Speaker 1: We have to take a quick break and we'll be right back. Can you tell me something you've done in your career and it doesn't matter if it's commercially successful or not, I don't care. But can you tell me a specific thing that you've worked on in your career that you absolutely loved being a part of, and that if every project or everything you ever worked on was like this one thing, you'd be the happiest person to live.
00:20:02
Speaker 2: Yes, I can tell you because it's like fresh in my in my brain and my life. Bake Club bag Club is a it used to be daily. Now it's a weekly club that anyone can join. It happens on Instagram live at two pm Eastern Standard time every Friday, and wherever I am, we bake something together and I won't tell you what we're baking. I'll just tell you what the basic ingredients are that you need and it's usually no more than I don't know, three, five, maybe seven, and you just show up with a cannonball spirit of whatever it is. I got my ingredients ready, set go, and we spend five minutes, fifteen minutes, thirty minutes baking. I make a playlist every week. You listen, you dance, you watch, you bake, You make mistakes, you mess up, you burn stuff, I drop stuff. Whatever it is. But it's like it's a carved out time together to be intentional and free in a very lose yourself, find yourself spirit. And it's this collect of people that Simon are like, they show up for each other. Someone at Bay Club messaged me the other day and was like, Hey, this person's mom died and she had been battling for a while and she is having a really hard time. I want to show up for her. Her favorite thing is this one thing that you made this one time. Can you send the care package to or et cetera, et cetera. But it has become this network of incredible humans and it is it's a wide open door for anyone and everyone to be the closest thing to that eight minute friend. And it's completely human. It's not choreographed, it's not rehearsed. It is me on whatever I am at two pm on a Friday. It's a good day, it's a bad day, it's a rainy day, and I'm showing up. And I am an introvert. I do not get energy from being out and about and and and and it forces me every Friday to really ask myself on a good day and a bad day, and like, what are you here for? What are you showing up for? It's a door open into anyone that wants to come into my home and just needs some company, or needs to laugh at me, or needs to laugh with me, or wants to bake or needs an excuse, or needs like a babysit, or some people put their kids in front of bake club. And it is the most I love it because to your point, there's no transaction of commerce. And I love that it's this community of people that I have everything to do with and nothing to do with. And there's just like an immense pride of its stickiness and the space that it holds in people's lives.
00:22:36
Speaker 1: Tell me an early specific, happy childhood memory something I can relive with you.
00:22:43
Speaker 2: God, this is such a good question. My favorite earliest food memory is my mom working Mom comes to pick me and my sister up from I must have been like preschool in kindergarten first grade, buckles us into the back of the car blue fur taurusts. I always sit behind the driver's seat. That that was always my seat. And I remember her like mom purse that had the multiple pockets and it was always like old tissues hanging out, and she put it in the middle because the front seat was also like a banquette bench. Yeah, the little armress down where she would normally sit. Her purse was empty, and her purse was on the dashboard instead, which was very strange. And she pulls halfway out of this like preschool kindergarten parking lot and pulls over. And when they pulled over my mom or my dad, it was because we were fighting. My older sister and I were fighting, kicking each other, and my heart goes into shock, like oh shudow shadow shit, what do we do? What do we do? And she digs into her person like, oh gook, could this be? And she pulls out a bag of sugar babies that she left in her purse on the dashboard to be warmed by the sun, and out of nowhere this makes no sense whatsoever, tears open the bag of sugar babies and you know, they are little brown sugar pieces. They're priding to this food for your tay seven, but they're very naturical, and she like doses out two to my sister, and I remember the clink of these two little pieces of like sugar coated candy clinking into my sister's hand and then into mine, and she pours a few into hers and just quietly. There's no words exchanged because we're so perplexed. And I don't know. She must have been having a good day or a bad day. I don't know. I've asked her. She doesn't remember the day at all, which is hilarious to me because it's so vivid in my memory. And we just eat these warm, brown, sugary sugar babies that had been very intentionally warmed by the sun, and I don't remember anything else about what happened that day, what happened afterwards. I remember it was done and beat silence, And it was the equivalent of when you watch someone as an adult eat something really good and they just go and you can see they're sort of like eyelids flicker and take them somewhere. Life food memory, that's like my first that's my first divid memory as a kid that was joyful and it's had to do with sugar dessert.
00:25:13
Speaker 1: So what I find astonishing about you, and we've never talked about this is that story bake club, and almost everything we've ever talked about today is the exact same story. Hell Se, who you are is you surprise people with sugar, and I don't mean literally, you surprise people with sweetness. And that you happen to be a dessert person is just poetic. But the way you describe bait club is you show up no matter what. And it's if you use the what happened when that car as a kid, it's the same experience for people. They don't know what they're going to get. They don't know what kind of mood you're in. But all you know is you show up for other people. Your mother showed up for the kids. You don't know what mood she's in. People don't know what mood you're in, but you're going to give them a little something that just brightens their day. And that's who you are. You.
00:26:23
Speaker 2: Oh stop, you're gonna make me cry.
00:26:27
Speaker 1: You are an introvert. You're also close to the vest. You're hard to read. You know, there are times I've hung out with you. I don't know if you're in a good mood or a bad mood, and then all of a sudden, biscuits come out. You have become your mother where we're kind of in the back seat going about our day and then all of sudden something happens. We don't know what's going on, and the result is something delightful and sweet. And that's what it is to be your friend, and that's what it is to be in Bait Club, and that's what it is to work at Milk Bar. You know, it's kind of like we're going through our routines and then you interrupt our routines with a little bit of magic. And that's your purpose on this planet is to perpetuate what your mother instilled in you that day. To do the extra, to go the extra length, that's what it is. It's not that she just gave you the candy. She went to the extra length of preparing the candy and warming it in the sun. You said they were heated intentionally, and that's what you do. It's with great intention that you make preparations to surprise people with a little bit of sweetness in their lives just a little bit to keep them going that day. That's what you do. Warming the candy on the dashboard has become an entire business and enterprise for you. A lot of effort, a lot of thought for a little bit of magic and a little bit of sweetness for the rest of us.
00:28:00
Speaker 2: Well so seen. I feel so seen, and also therapies.
00:28:05
Speaker 1: You know, I talk about cause a lot and sacrifice, and people always asked me, like, like I believe in quitting? You know, I don't believe in like stubbornness to a self destructive level. But the question is how do you know when to quit? And for me, the sacrifice has to feel worth it, Like I'm giving a lot, not sleeping a lot, working a lot, but the impact that I'm having, and if you ask me to do the equation, it feels worth it. You're one of the hardest working people I know on the planet. You don't rest, But the amazing thing is to you, whether it's having guests over to your house, or whether it's bake club or whether it's the milk bar enterprise, it's worth it because you get two little kids in the back seat to smile and have a little bit of joy and carry a memory for the rest of their lives. And we carry them memory of talking in the woods. And we carry the memory of our childhood when we eat cereal and milk ice cream. It's all the same story.
00:29:09
Speaker 2: It's so true. How many memories do you have?
00:29:13
Speaker 1: Not that many?
00:29:13
Speaker 3: Right?
00:29:14
Speaker 1: We only remember the things that matter tozy. I love you, hold on, hold on before you go. I want to share one more thing, which is Christina's recipe for an ice cream loaf. It's the world's simplest recipe. Anyone can make this. Take two cups of softened ice cream, which is basically one pint of your favorite flavored ice cream. Add one cup of self rising flour, add one egg. Bake it at three hundred and fifty degrees fahrenheit for forty five minutes in a loaf pan, and you will have made an ice cream loaf of your favorite ice cream flavor. Enjoy its magic. A Bit of Optimism is a production of The Optimism Company, produced and edited by David Jah and Greg Reiderschan and Henrietta Conrad is our executive producer. If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, please subscribe wherever you'd like to listen to podcasts, and if you'd like even more optimism, check out my website Simon sinek dot com for classes, videos, and more. Until then, take care of yourself, take care of each other.
