A Bit of Optimism

Afleveringen

1. Revisited: The Power of Doing One Thing Exceptionally Well with Gymshark Founder and CEO Ben Francis

   20 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 1 min

   Afspelen
   Hello from Team Simon! Brand-new episodes of A Bit of Optimism are back next Tuesday, October 27. Before then, we're revisiting one last favorite: the company Simon names whenever someone asks which business actually lives the ideas he writes about. It's Gymshark, and its founder, Ben Francis. Lees meer

   Maybe you know the pull: the bigger something gets, the more it feels like it should do more. More products, more markets, more people to please. It looks like growth. But it can quietly water down the very thing that made you special.

   Gymshark didn't start with a vision. It started with a website, a list of drop-shipped supplements, and months of waiting for anyone to buy anything. Then Ben spotted his nan's sewing machine on the dining room table and started making gym clothes for himself and his friends. Years later, with the business booming, Gymshark did what growing companies do and expanded into swimwear, hiking, and sportswear. The brand started to blur. So Ben pulled it all back to three words: We Do Gym.

   Ben is the founder and CEO of Gymshark, the gymwear brand he launched in 2012 while still working shifts at Pizza Hut. Today it's a billion-dollar global brand with a devoted community, a flagship store on London's Regent Street, and one ambition that shapes every decision Ben makes: to build a 100-year brand.

   I sat down with Ben at Gymshark HQ in the West Midlands, where the company values are painted on the walls in refreshingly blunt language. And I push him on the irony at the heart of the brand: how does a company built on humility make clothes designed for showing off?

   In this episode you'll learn:
   ➡️ Why the best businesses often start with ridiculously low ambitions
   ➡️ The "small menu" rule: why selling fewer things builds a better business
   ➡️ Why Ben stepped aside as CEO, and how it made him ready to take the job back
   ➡️ How a 100-year mindset changes who you hire (+ why "have they done it before?" is the wrong question)
   ➡️ His granddad's one-question …

2. Revisited: Why Relationships Are the Secret to a Long, Happy Life with Psychotherapist Esther Perel

   13 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 2 min

   Afspelen
   Hello from Team Simon! We’re taking a few weeks off and will be back with brand-new episodes of A Bit of Optimism on Tuesday, October 27. Lees meer

   Until then, we’re revisiting some of our favorite conversations, including this one with a longtime friend of Simon’s: Esther Perel.

   For most of history, we stayed in marriages and jobs because we had to. Happiness was a nice bonus. Today we get to choose who we love and where we work, so happiness has become the glue that holds it all together.

   Few people have watched that shift as closely as Esther Perel. For four decades, she’s seen how love, family and work have been reshaped by no-fault divorce, the internet, and now AI. Her conclusion hasn’t changed: the quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives. It’s a line she first said out loud years ago, in a WHY Discovery session with Simon.

   Esther is a psychotherapist, the bestselling author of Mating in Captivity and The State of Affairs, and the host of the podcast Where Should We Begin? Her card game “Where Should We Begin? At Work,” is built to spark real conversations between colleagues.

   In this conversation, Esther and Simon talk about why one partner can’t be our whole village, what kids lose when they stop playing in the street, and why an entry-level job may be the last great playground. Simon also shares a personal update: how he made peace with the question, "Why haven’t you been married?"

   In this episode you'll learn:

   ➡️ Why happiness went from a perk to the glue, in love and at work
   ➡️ The “relationship CV” everyone brings to work (+ how it shapes the way you handle conflict and authority)
   ➡️ Why we’re asking one person to give us what a whole village used to
   ➡️ How frictionless apps are changing what we expect from each other
   ➡️ Why entry-level jobs are the best place to scrape your knees
   ➡️ The number one relationship skill Gen Z should master before their first job
   ➡️ Why play is just risk that feels fun, and how it builds trust

   And reme…

3. Revisited: Your Instincts Know What You Want with Happiness Expert Arthur Brooks

   6 oktober 2026 · 56 min

   Afspelen
   Team Simon here! A Bit of Optimism is on a short break, and brand-new episodes return October 27. Until then, we're revisiting a few conversations we keep coming back to. Lees meer

   This week it's Arthur Brooks, a longtime friend of Simon's and one of his favorite people to talk to.

   Have you ever felt like you're falling behind? Everyone else seems to have a plan, a timeline and the next rung on the ladder lined up. Any detour, like a gap year, a pivot or a job that isn't quite right, feels like losing ground.

   Arthur Brooks thinks you're running the wrong race. Chasing a finish line is one of the surest ways to end up unhappy. He argues that happiness lives in the process, not the outcome.

   Arthur is a bestselling author and teaches one of the most popular classes at Harvard Business School: a whole course on happiness. He lives what he teaches, too. He played French horn professionally from 19 to 31 and then reinvented himself as a behavioral scientist. After that, he became president of a Washington think tank without ever having raised a dollar. When he left that job with no idea what came next, he walked the Camino de Santiago to find out.

   In this conversation, Arthur explains how to know when to trust your gut, why reinvention starts with curiosity rather than skills, and why meaning has collapsed for people under 35. Simon pushes on something that worries him: if AI takes away the struggle, what happens to the wisdom that struggle builds?

   In this episode you'll learn:
   ➡️ The 80/20/0 rule for knowing a big decision is the right one
   ➡️ Why reapplying your skills isn't the same as reinventing yourself
   ➡️ Why your career is a spiral, not a staircase
   ➡️ The "arrival fallacy," and why so many Olympic gold medalists struggle after they win
   ➡️ Why life's most unwelcome changes usually look like gifts in hindsight
   ➡️ The three parts of happiness
   ➡️ Why feelings are the evidence of happiness, not the thing itself
   ➡️ Why Arthur calls AI a "dark triad," and what that means if …

4. Revisited: The Power of Saying "Screw It" with Rob Lowe

   29 september 2026 · 1 uur 2 min

   Afspelen
   Hello from Team Simon! We're taking a few weeks off and will be back with brand-new episodes of A Bit of Optimism on Tuesday, October 27. Until then, we're revisiting some of our favorite conversations, starting with one of the most fun we've ever had: Rob Lowe. Lees meer

   Maybe you know the feeling: you've got an idea, a joke, a risk you want to take… and you talk yourself out of it before anyone else gets the chance. Rob Lowe has spent four decades doing the opposite. He calls it a healthy case of the "screw-its."

   It's how he survived an industry famous for chewing people up. He went from movies to The West Wing when movie stars didn't do TV, and from TV to hosting a game show when that was supposed to be career death. His secret isn't avoiding failure. It's never letting failure decide what he tries next.

   Rob is an actor, producer, and bestselling author whose career runs from The Outsiders and St. Elmo's Fire to The West Wing and Parks and Recreation. He hosts FOX's The Floor and the podcast Literally! with Rob Lowe, and stars alongside his son John Owen Lowe in Netflix's Unstable.

   In this conversation, Rob tells the story of his infamous Oscars song-and-dance number (and the open letter from Hollywood legends that followed it). He also shares the Letterman appearance that taught him to trust his instincts for good, and explains why authenticity has become the only currency that matters. And I push him on the question under all of it: can the rest of us learn to take a punch the way he does?

   In this episode you'll learn:

   ➡️ Why a healthy case of the "screw-its" is a career strategy, not a character flaw

   ➡️ What the world's top tennis players can teach us about bouncing back

   ➡️ The one practical rule for being more authentic: stop self-editing

   ➡️ Why the thing you least want to talk about is the thing that makes you relatable

   ➡️ Why "availability" might be a better word than "vulnerability"

   ➡️ How to spot performative authenticity (+ Rob's three red-carpet poses…

5. What Mentally Strong People Do on Their Worst Days with Psychotherapist Amy Morin

   22 september 2026 · 1 uur 2 min

   Afspelen
   Be honest: you've taken a mental health day that made you feel worse. You stayed in bed, you avoided the thing, and by evening it was still waiting for you—with less of the day left to face it.
   Amy Morin thinks the problem starts with the word. We treat mental health as something you either have or you don't… and framed that way, there's nothing to actually do on a bad day. Her work runs on the opposite premise: mental strength is a practice, and you build it like you'd build anything else.
   Amy is a psychotherapist, a clinical social worker, and the author of the bestseller 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do and the new The Mental Strength Playbook. She became a therapist at 22 and lost her mother at 23. Three years later—to the day—her husband died, and the mental health agency where she worked gave her three days of bereavement leave. She built the practices that became her book in real time, from there.
   In this conversation, Amy walks through exactly what she did to get mentally fit. Not as theory, but as the small, unglamorous things that got her out of bed. And I press her on the question nobody in her field says out loud: whether an industry built to help us has any incentive to finish the job.
   In this episode you'll learn:
   ➡️ Why the mental health day you take to feel better isn’t helping
   ➡️ How to tell whether to solve the problem or solve the feeling (most of us pick wrong)
   ➡️ The 15-minute daily exercise Amy's clients say lifts the weight of the world
   ➡️ Why "I am anxious" and "I have anxiety sometimes" build two different lives
   ➡️ How to compromise with yourself on a bad day instead of going all-or-nothing
   ➡️ Why "I'm just staying busy" is avoidance we've learned to compliment
   ➡️ What playing the victim actually gives you (+ why it's so hard to give up)
   ➡️ Simon's rule for hard days: no crying alone
   Amy's argument is a hopeful one: the feeling follows the action. Do one small, ordinary thing today, and you've already started.
   This… is A Bit of Opt… Lees meer

6. The Dating Advice Making Us Worse at Love with Relationship Expert Amy Chan

   15 september 2026 · 50 min

   Afspelen
   The internet is flooded with advice for dating in the smartphone age: know your type, trust the spark, watch for red flags, protect your peace, never settle.
   It sounds like self-respect, but relationship expert Amy Chan thinks it’s a big reason dating feels impossible right now.
   Her argument: we need to correct the lessons we’ve learned when it comes to dating. The person who’s great on a first date isn’t necessarily great at a relationship. Instant chemistry isn’t always a good sign. A red flag could just be an imperfection. And keeping our options open has made a lot of us genuinely bad at choosing someone.
   Amy is the founder of Renew Breakup Bootcamp and the author of Unsingle: How to Date Smarter and Create Love That Lasts. For nearly two decades she’s looked at dating through psychology and neuroscience — why we’re drawn to certain people, why relationships fall apart, and what actually predicts whether one lasts. She started her career helping people end relationships… Now, she teaches them how to build one.
   In this episode you'll learn:
   ➡️ Why “instant chemistry” is one of the worst predictors of a lasting relationship
   ➡️ The quiet qualities research says actually predict a happy partnership
   ➡️ Why dating skills and relationship skills are two completely different skill sets
   ➡️ How the algorithm rewards red-flag advice 10X over green-flag advice (and what that’s doing to you)
   ➡️ Situationships: why the breakup hurts more when there was never a breakup
   ➡️ “Leaky energy,” micro-cheating, and the honest test for both
   ➡️ The 9-date experiment Amy gives clients who are stuck dating the same person
   ➡️ How the right relationship shrinks old wounds
   ➡️ Why discomfort is a critical skill dating requires
   Amy’s advice isn’t about finding a better person. It’s about becoming someone better at love. And that’s advice all of us could use!
   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.… Lees meer

7. Why Trying to “Sound Smart” is Losing You the Room with Strategic Story Producer Rob Willis

   8 september 2026 · 47 min

   Afspelen
   Have you ever sat through a presentation and felt your attention just start to…drift? Chances are, it wasn't the content. It was the delivery. Lees meer

   A year ago, Rob Willis was a corporate trainer with years of experience and a sharp eye for what makes people listen. He wondered if what he taught in workshops would resonate with a larger audience. So he started making short videos that break down what makes great speakers great: from their word choice, to structure, to the energy they brought to any room or conversation.

   Rob even made a video breaking down my method of public speaking. In his video, Rob dissects my signature opening line, and my friends couldn't stop sending it to me. One hundred videos in one hundred days later, Rob's videos are going viral on a regular basis, and a whole new audience is eager to learn from him.

   But what I find most interesting about Rob is where he actually learned all of this. Not in a classroom. He learned it by giving free walking tours in Berlin, where nobody pays up front and anyone can leave at any moment. If you're boring, people simply walk away — no tip, no small talk, just people voting with their feet.

   Rob and I discuss what that taught him about holding a room, why the smartest person in the room is rarely the most persuasive one, and the handful of simple, almost mechanical shifts that separate a forgettable pitch from one people actually remember.

   In this episode you'll learn:

   ➡️ Why "if I just explain it better" is the most common, and most inaccurate, assumption speakers make

   ➡️ Rob's trick for holding anyone's attention, whether it's a boardroom or a crowd on a street corner

   ➡️ What real charisma is made of (hint: it's not confidence, it's belief)

   ➡️ Why so many people suddenly sound fake the moment they step on stage

   ➡️ 5 things you can do in your next meeting to immediately present better

   You don't need a TED Talk on your calendar to get something out of this one. Any of us who wants to be understood — in a…

8. Your Limits Are Learned (And They Can Be Unlearned) with Brain Coach Jim Kwik

   1 september 2026 · 51 min

   Afspelen
   This might sound familiar: you read a full page, get to the bottom, and realize you absorbed none of it. There's a stack of books beside your bed you fully intend to finish. And the only phone number you can remember is your own. Lees meer

   Jim Kwik says none of that means something is wrong with our brains. It’s that we were taught what to learn, but rarely ever taught how to learn.

   Jim would know. A well-meaning teacher called him "the boy with the broken brain" when he was nine, and for years he believed it. He's spent the three decades since proving otherwise — as a top brain coach, a leading expert on memory and accelerated learning, and the bestselling author of Limitless. His new book, Limitless Daily, offers 366 daily upgrades to help you focus, remember, and think better.

   In this episode you'll learn:
   ➡️ Why reading faster can actually improve comprehension
   ➡️ The free technique that stops your mind wandering mid-page
   ➡️ How to prompt your own brain the way you prompt AI
   ➡️ What your "dominant question" reveals about your personality
   ➡️ Why school teaches us what to learn but never how to learn
   ➡️ What digital dementia is + how to spot it in yourself
   ➡️ Why focus is a muscle, not a personality trait
   ➡️ The one thing AI will never be able to do for you

   I asked Jim an entirely selfish question about how to actually get through the unread books next to my bed, and got an answer that goes far beyond discipline. Jim explains why the technology making us more capable is quietly making us less able.

   And by the end, we landed somewhere neither of us expected: AI could have given Jim every piece of advice that changed his life, word for word. But it wasn't the advice that changed him. It was that a living, breathing person cared enough to give it.

   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

   + + +

   If you want to buy Jim’s new book, Limitless…

9. How to Trust Yourself When Everyone Has an Opinion with Love Thy Nader's Mary Holland Nader

   25 augustus 2026 · 58 min

   Afspelen
   Maybe this sounds familiar: you finally get the opportunity you've been waiting for, and the voice in your head says, "I'm not ready, I don't belong here." Lees meer

   Now imagine hearing that voice with millions of people watching.

   Mary Holland Nader has lived it. She never dreamed of fame, but when Hulu's reality series Love Thy Nader came knocking, she traded her secure Wall Street job for the spotlight and put her new platform to work. It allowed her to launch Mary & Pip, a purpose-driven fintech company that takes a wellness approach to money, demystifying finance for those of us it usually makes feel dumb. She also brings that expertise to her new podcast, Growing Interest (where I was lucky to be among her first guests).

   On the show, Mary Holland lets us join every step of her founder’s journey… even when it’s messy. Because she never wanted to be famous, but now that she is, she’s realized fame is leverage. And Mary Holland's committed to using hers to help and inspire others.

   In this episode you'll learn:

   ➡️ How to survive a 180-degree life pivot

   ➡️ Why your gut doesn't tell you what to do — it checks your values
   ➡️ The "corny" morning ritual that transformed Mary Holland's confidence
   ➡️ How to stop making your doubts your identity (with one simple grammar change)
   ➡️ The difference between being nice and being kind — and why feedback is kind
   ➡️ The 2 questions every founder should ask before raising money

   ➡️ Why Simon gives his time to supporters instead of critics
   ➡️ The "reluctant sellout" + how financial stability protects your values
   ➡️ How to introduce yourself when you're more than one job title

   Mary Holland is a new breed of entrepreneur — proof of what happens when you use your platform for something bigger than yourself. She stopped waiting for confidence to arrive and decided to build it… in front of everyone.

   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. Le…

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

    18 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 1 min

    Afspelen
    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. Lees meer

    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 pr…

Alle 245 afleveringen →