Right now, your average Capitals fans is as happy as a lobbyist with a wad of cash to spend. Their team is riding the best winning streak in franchise history. Alex Ovechkin is crashing every NHL goalie’s party and leading the league in goals, points, and plus-minus, with his teammates cracking the top five in two of those categories.

You can connect the dots back to when owner Ted Leonsis, then a 28-year-old millionaire, was sitting on a plane and told it may crash in 35 minutes. He made a list of 101 things he would do to find happiness if he got off the plane alive. One of them was own a sports franchise.

Leonsis retells the story of his day of reckoning in his new book, The Business of Happiness, in which he lays out the principles he’s followed to success, and, well, happiness. Even though the book isn’t about the Caps per se (though they inevitably come up), it’s a good place to start if you’re curious about the psyche behind one of the most successful sports franchises in recent D.C. history.

“When you write a book, you put yourself out there,” Leonsis told DCist during a recent interview. He said his daughter told him after reading it, “It really is you, and there’s so many sentences and concepts and words I’ve heard from you a million times.”