The Infinite Game

But you know what other book I see all the time? Start With Why.

You know another one I see all the time? The Infinite Game.

Both of those books were written by Simon Sinek, and it goes without saying that he's become sort of a force within the residential real estate industry because we've all read the books.

Why have we all found them so engaging? Because there's an old proverb that if you have a big enough why, you can put up with any how, and the how in the real estate business is so intense.

We wake up every day, and we will ourselves to do activities that don't come naturally to us, and if you're not tied to the reason you're doing those things, to the big why or to the big infinite game, it can feel incredibly lonely.

Simon is a guy that speaks to our hearts because he truly loves entrepreneurs, and what I found out in the interview with him is that he loves real estate agents and has a lot of views on the real estate industry.

Friends, I caught up with Simon, and we spent twenty-five minutes together unpacking why, unpacking the infinite game, and unpacking how, as a real estate purchaser, he wants to be treated and how he thinks you can get more out of your database.

Sit back and buckle up.

Mm-hmm.

By the time you get to Infinite Game, it's a, it's a, it's a much more complex concept with much more in-depth, complex writing, and I would say more mature, and I'm really proud of it 'cause it was, it's a harder book to write, you know? Um, so there's that, you know.

But y- I, I, I think I got very lucky in that I'm not a reader.

Mm-hmm.

but you can talk yourself out of it transactionally, are bargaining.

When goals have a purpose or have a soul or, has some sort of, so Simon Sinek, if you ever want to read a book about business leadership, The Infinite Game talks a lot about this, around having a finite goal.

I want to have a million dollars.

It's a finite goal.

So I'm excited to dive into that today.

But my first question is about Infinite Game, of course, which is one of your bestselling books that's all about looking beyond immediate results.

especially in spending and money behavior, it's really hard for people to make decisions that benefit their future selves.

So why is that?

Yeah.

And the other thing is just, if you do like you and I do, I feel like the way, again, I was very influenced by the book, Simon Sinek, The Infinity Game.

And his premise of the book, I forget whatever the economist was, Milton Friedman, I think, who said that the purpose of a company is to make money for the shareholders.

That's the only purpose.

He's six and a half years old now.

And I was walking him one Saturday morning, and I was listening to The Infinite Game, which is also a book I'd recognize, Simon Sarnak, which talks about, in very similar principles, that life is not just a sequence of events.

It's a continuum, and hence The Infinite Game.

And it got me thinking.

I was like...

You can see it's called Leading Infinitely.

I, at UAB, have the opportunity of leading a workshop series that I call Lead Infinitely, named after Simon Sinek's The Infinite Game and the article that I wrote in Anesthesia and Analgesia a few years ago.

you would think that it would be pretty easy to advance a curriculum, a workshop series that's built around bringing teams together to create more trusting, more cohesive, more collectively intelligent teams.

You would think that would be an idea that everyone would go, sure, yeah, we're down with that, Matt.

Because the win will come at a later date.

Simon Sinek, the great author, explores a useful distinction in his book, The Infinite Game.

He talks about finite games and infinite games.

A finite game has non-players, agreed rules, and a defined objective.