The CEO Who Doesn't Want You To Leave Your Problems At Home with Dan Simons

The Anxious Achiever

Morra Aarons-Mele

Business, Careers, Management, Health & Fitness, Mental Health

4.7 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 21 April 2026

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What if better performance at work didn’t come from pushing harder, but from being more honest? In this episode, Dan Simons shares how he built a $100M+ restaurant group by doing something most leaders still resist. Dan explains how honesty at work actually helps people show up more present, make better decisions, and perform at a higher level. We also talk about how you can get better results, stronger retention, and more focused teams by creating a workplace where people don’t have to hide what’s going on with them. Tune in to discover how to turn radical honesty into a competitive advantage. Check out our sponsors: Shopify - Sign up for a $1 per month trial, just go to shopify.com/anxiousachiever Chime - Head to chime.com/achiever to sign up Monarch - Use code ACHIEVER at monarch.com to get 50% off your first year In this Episode, You Will Learn 00:00 Why honesty matters more than “vulnerability” in leadership. 02:20 How did you build a $100M business? 06:00 Why leaders must learn to lead themselves before leading others. 12:00 Why every team member is operating below their full capacity. 17:00 How to introduce psychological safety without forcing people to open up. 20:00 What does a trauma-informed workplace actually look like? 23:00 Why mental health conversations require skill and training. 26:00 How Dan operationalizes mental health through training and systems. 34:00 What's the difference between intention and reality inside companies? 42:00 How honesty reduces defensiveness and improves performance. 47:00 How investing in people improves profit and reduces turnover. 51:00 The #1 metric that convinces CEOs this approach works. Resources + Links Learn more about Dan Simons HERE! Get a copy of my book - The Anxious Achiever Watch the podcast on YouTube Find more resources on our website morraam.com Follow Follow me: on LinkedIn @morraaronsmele + Instagram @morraam Follow Dan on Instagram: @dansimonssays

Transcript

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0:00.0	The best thing about hosting this podcast is I get to talk to people who feel like old friends and are also colleagues.
0:12.0	People who I admire tremendously, people who walk the walk of being self-aware leaders and of promoting mental health in the workplace.
0:23.5	And so today on The Anxious Achiever is a conversation with Dan Simon.
0:30.5	Dan Simon has built a farmer's restaurant group into a well over $100 million business.
0:43.6	He runs restaurants. He is also one of the most open and honest and emotionally evolved people I've met. And the cool thing about what Dan's doing now is he's helping other CEOs build businesses,
1:01.2	where, as he puts it, you build a really good bottom line, a lot of profitability by allowing
1:10.3	people to walk in the door and be open with what's
1:16.1	going wrong for them and what's hard for them. And as Dan calls it, are glitches in life
1:22.3	as it is about trying to fake what's going right. And Jan and I, I think, get into an important
1:31.0	conversation, which I want to just frame right up front, which is that we both sort of share
1:35.4	a dislike for the term vulnerable leadership. Vulnerability is a wonderful thing, but in the
1:41.6	business context, I think that most people hear it as weakness.
1:46.0	Dan instead is an honest leader. He's an honest leader. He will tell you why if you put a bowl
1:52.9	of snickers in front of him during a meeting, those stickers will distract him and create a chain
1:58.0	of negative self-talk and bad feelings and that his brain won't be
2:03.0	firing on all cylinders because of his own glitch. So I love that about Dan. He's strong
2:09.6	and he's honest. Here's my conversation with Dan Simons.
2:22.7	Dan, I think you open your TED Talker.
2:33.9	In your TED Talk, you have this very powerful line that says that you have built a $100 million-plus business by encouraging employees to not leave their problems at the door.
2:38.3	And this sounds amazing, but also very hard.
2:42.9	It's not hard, actually.
2:49.6	The challenge of it and why people think it's hard is it's foreign.
	...

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