The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

Ryan Hawk
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Leaders are learners. The best leaders never stop working to make themselves better. The Learning Leader Show Is series of conversations with the world's most thoughtful leaders. Entrepreneurs, CEO's, World-Class Athletes, Coaches, Best-Selling Authors, and much more.

  1. 3 DAYS AGO

    682: Will Guidara - Obsession, Adversity, Learning From Danny Meyer, and The Only Competitive Advantage That Lasts... Unreasonable Hospitality

    My new book is The Price of Becoming. To order, go to www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver. My Guest: Will Guidara is the former co-owner of Eleven Madison Park, the restaurant he took from a struggling two-star establishment to become the number one restaurant in the world. He's the author of the New York Times bestseller Unreasonable Hospitality, the host of the Welcome Conference, and a co-producer on the Emmy award-winning series The Bear. Notes: Key Learnings "Obsession is a beautiful thing when you can grab it by the tail." This quote is from chef Sean Brock when he opened his pizza place in Nashville. For Will, obsession is when you care so much about something that you give all of yourself to bring its most fully realized version to life. What obsession means to Will: "Loving with every ounce of my being the pursuit of something."  He can't imagine a life where he doesn't have something to be obsessed about. When you lose yourself in the pursuit of something, that's when it gets ugly. Obsession is a beautiful thing if you can grab it by the tail. For those that can't, it becomes ugly. You need to hold onto yourself while obsessively pursuing whatever it is. Find a hobby to be obsessed with before you retire. Will is 46 and has seen people he's long looked up to finally retire in their late seventies without a hobby they're obsessed with. They're feeling listless and without purpose. He's thinking about this now for his future: start to become obsessed with a hobby so that when you do one day retire, there's something else to fall into. "Adversity is a terrible thing to waste." You cannot always control what life throws at you, but you can always control how you react to those things, what you choose to learn from them, how you allow them to fuel your competitive spirit, the perspective you glean from those moments. Allow yourself and your team to feel the weight of the disappointment. When there's a moment of adversity, leaders hear "adversity is a terrible thing to waste" and immediately shift into cheerleader mode. That is not the right thing to do. You need to allow yourself to be as human as humanly possible, and give your team the grace to fully feel the weight of that disappointment.  Sometimes adversity sucks, and you just need to be able to say, "This sucks. I don't feel good. I feel bad. Let's feel bad for a moment." Suffer together. When your team is going through adversity, you want to know that your leader thinks it sucks, too. It's good to feel bad alongside a community, but then after a measure of time, that's when you say, okay, now how do we grow from this? How do we use this to compel us forward? Be thankful for the tough moments. Will can look back at every tough moment with gratitude. The girl who broke his heart two years before he met his now wife, he's so grateful that she did. Breaking up with his business partner and selling his restaurant company felt like the worst thing ever, but he wouldn't have written Unreasonable Hospitality had that not happened. "Who is a restaurateur without restaurants?" COVID forced Will to find the space to decide what he wanted to do next. When he sold the company, two days later, he had a full-blown identity crisis. COVID gave him the gift of forcing him to find the space to decide what he wanted to do next, as opposed to running back to do the thing he'd always done. Team first. "The best way to make sure that you are taking care of your customers is to start by taking care of your team." This is what Will learned from Danny Meyer. The power of language to define a culture. How beautiful and impactful it is when you take the time to clearly and succinctly articulate your values through language. Danny spoke in "isms." Every time he gave them an ism, it was clear that thing mattered to him, so it needed to matter to the team as well. Cult is short for culture. Will's friends from college joked that he worked for a cult, but cult is short for culture. The funny thing is, they worked for companies that lacked a culture. Every great team feels a little cultish, and that's because of the leader. Hospitality is the advantage. The only competitive advantage that exists over the long term comes through hospitality. Every company is trying to identify its competitive advantage: what is the thing about the business that will prevent someone else from coming in and taking away its customers? Those conversations almost always center around the quality of the product or the strength of the brand. Here's the thing: it does not just matter how good the product is, and it does not just matter how strong the brand is, because eventually someone's going to come around and build a better product or create a stronger brand. Relationships matter. Hospitality comes through consistently, generously, and creatively investing in relationships. Those take a long time to build, and if you build them in the right way, the loyalty you will earn takes a very long time to erode. McDonald's vs. Chick-fil-A. The hospitality difference. McDonald's does some of the coolest marketing things in the world. Their product is consistent, and there was probably a season for a very long time where they were the best burger chain out there. Compare that to Chick-fil-A: if you ask 10 people who makes a better chicken sandwich, a lot of people would say other people make better chicken sandwiches than Chick-fil-A. But people are still loyal to Chick-fil-A, not because of the brand, not because of the product, but because of the way that they make people feel. Little gestures go a long way. Chick-fil-A does things like "my pleasure" and refilling your drinks in the dining room. These little gestures go a long way because we are much less likely to leave one company and go to another, even if the other company is better priced and the product is a little bit better. Food is just a conduit through which to express hospitality. As many stories as you hear about Chick-fil-A doing little and big things to make people feel seen, you don't hear those stories about McDonald's. And that's not an accident. One company has chosen to invest all of itself in pursuit of that. The other one has not. If you're in the business of serving other people, these opportunities exist for you in an endless way. Find the smallest touchpoints. Every experience you're serving is filled with lots of big and little touchpoints. The problem is so many companies focus on only the most obvious touchpoints without realizing that there is impact to be made with each one of them.  Hospitality is a craft, a muscle that you can strengthen. Will created the Welcome Conference because he wanted someone who was a server at a restaurant who had dreams to own their own restaurant to have a place where they could learn about the craft of hospitality. What you can't afford to do with money, you can afford to do with time. Will can't afford the kind of speaking fees that people who inspire others on stage at his conference deserve, so he came up with a more creative way to show appreciation: a dinner the night before. It's about community, because the people who take that stage have the responsibility to create the conditions through which attendees can come together and form community. And it's impossible to form a community for others until you first feel a sense of community amongst yourselves. There needs to be a good reason for the event to exist. Will created the Welcome Conference years ago because there were chef conferences all over the world, and he was always the only dining room person speaking at them. He wanted a place for the dining room people to have community. Gift bags are a terrible idea. People think the more they put in the bag, the more hospitable they are. It's usually junk. "I look at something, design the version of that I wish existed, work obsessively to bring that vision to life, and then welcome others into my imagination."  What makes a great conference is meeting the people at those events. The best events are about the people in between the meetings. That time matters. Energy in a room is so important. Will is one of the most extroverted people in the world, but if he walks into a cocktail party and he doesn't know anyone, he seizes up. He doesn't like it. He likes to be around people he knows. Be a connector. A month before Will's event, he realized many people were coming alone, which he wasn't expecting. They sent an email to all of them and said, "We saw that you're coming alone. We have an idea. If you'd like to meet some people, let us know." They set up dinner reservations at Will's favorite restaurants in Nashville and did some matchmaking. Those 40 people ended up coming into the beginning of the conference the next day already like this one big, awesome community. Make the "yes" as easy as possible.  Will gets Emmy screeners, and some people send DVDs (which he doesn't have a player for), while others send QR codes, which make it very easy to watch. The lesson: make it easy for people to say yes to what you're offering. Shop your own business. Stay in your own hotel. Until you've actually been on the receiving end of whatever you're serving, you have an inability to see all the things you're doing wrong or the opportunities you have to do more things right. "Never let a gracious impulse pass." There's the devil and angel on your shoulder. The devil will tell you how hard it will be. Don't listen to that. If you are going to shop your own business, when an idea pops up, do something about it. Get out of the sea of mediocrity. The Unreasonable Hospitality Guide is the "how." There are exercises on how to build

    58 min

  2. 29 MAR

    681: Clark Lea (Vanderbilt Football Coach) - Rebuilding a Program, Belief as a Practice, Leading Misfits, Ownership Mentality, and Why Relatedness Is Your Edge

    Go to www.LearningLeader.com/becoming to learn more about "The Price of Becoming." -- My new book!   Clark Lea is the head football coach at Vanderbilt… He's led one of the best turnaround stories in college football. He got hired as head coach in 2021 to inherit a program that had gone winless the year before. What he's built since is remarkable: a 40–35 upset of No. 1 Alabama, back-to-back SEC Coach of the Year awards, and Vanderbilt's first 10-win season in program history. He's won games and changed the culture. Key Learnings Better people make a better team. Development in one area is development in all areas. We're trained to see life in separate lanes (coach here, husband here, father here, student here, athlete here), but when you live that way, you're in constant conflict. Instead, see each person as a circle where all those roles define who we are, and development in one area is development in all areas. Show up on time, deliver on time, engage resources. If you show up on time, turn your work in on time, and engage the resources that are here to help you, you're not just going to survive, you're going to thrive. This is what it takes to be a great football player and a great student. "We are not victims in this process." After missing the playoffs, Clark told his team: This is the ground we stand on, this is who we are. Let's be really proud of what we accomplished, but also acknowledge we've fallen short, and that is no one else's fault. Vanderbilt football doesn't need to complain loud enough to get someone to change their mind. We need to play better football. The joy we can experience is equal and opposite to the pain we can experience. In athletics, you're suspended between the pain and the joy, and the depths of that pain can be excruciating. But the joy we get to experience together in a shared way is unbelievable. The entry fee is the acceptance of that. ?This is exactly where we're supposed to be because there are no mistakes." Driving into work the day Vanderbilt didn't make the playoffs, Clark realized: this is actually exactly where we're supposed to be because there are no mistakes. As a leader, they have to know who you are. How do you coach a team and make sure your personality shows up on the field? As a head coach, being open, honest, and exposed in front of the team is essential to leadership philosophy. Take new players through your entire story. Clark does an intake meeting with new players every year that runs an hour and a half. He starts with an image of himself as a kid and takes them through high school, college, his career journey, where he met his wife, where they got married, where each of his kids was born, the highs, lows, all of it. Then he takes them through the state of the program when he got here and every team since. Share your family with them. Clark's kids are around all the time, his wife comes out to practice, and they talk about things in an open and honest way. That's a gateway to really meaningful relationships, and that's been the bedrock of this program build. "Change is hard. Change is painful. Are you willing to go to the hard places?" This job has been a personal evolution for Clark, which has allowed for program evolution. He had to change, and he didn't know about going to the hard places until he took this job. When you get so obsessed with long-term goals, you leverage the moment in such a way that makes it impossible to breathe. Clark thought he was going to be a major league baseball player. He went to Birmingham Southern, won the NAIA World Series, but his skills were diminishing. He was experiencing the yips, a mental block, because he was holding it too tight. Even though you change places, your problems will follow you. Clark transferred to Belmont for a fresh start, but his skills diminished even further. It was humiliating and challenging to his identity. That year was really difficult. "Relatedness is our edge." Brotherhood is the most overused word; family is overused. Relatedness is this shared experience we have, a sense of belonging and community, a deep respect, a foundational respect. Once we learn how to see each other at that depth and understand one another and care for one another and fight for one another, we carry that as an edge in our performance. "Belief is a practice." Clark said four years ago that they're building the best program in the country, and everyone laughed except people internally. The phrasing is important: "We are building the best." That means it's early stages. Hope is passive; belief is an active decision. Hope is passive; belief is an active decision. When you hope for something, you kind of sit back, and you go, man, I hope that's the case. Belief is, I believe this is the case, so here's the thing I'm going to invest in that puts me on the pathway to actualizing that outcome. If the belief isn't there, your tolerance for sacrifice won't be there. You're going to see the entry fee, and you're going to hope that it happens. When we take belief into a practice, we make it happen. "I don't have to be bigger, faster, stronger in my role anymore, but I need to suffer." Anyone on an aspirational journey makes sacrifices. Clark's tolerance for suffering shows up in getting in the weight room and training, eating habits, social habits. "Make sure before you give the thumbs up that you get your skis up." Clark's dad taught him water skiing: if your skis are parallel or pointed downwards, you're going to go up and over those skis and just be dragged in the wake of the boat. As a leader, once Clark gets in the building, his time belongs to everybody else. He has to have his skis up in the morning. If you're late at night drinking, you're not going to be able to have that time in the morning to prepare yourself to be what I need to be for others. There's sacrifice, but it's also joyful. Sacrifice isn't something you have to do; it's actually what makes us special. "Head, body, head, body." This is from the movie The Fighter. This is Clark's mantra that puts you in the present: no matter what's happened, I'm not going to focus on what's come before, we're not going to forecast, we're going to be right where our feet are, and we're gonna remember the plan. Body shots accumulate. You can't knock the opponent out in one punch. Be the chief alignment officer and the chief reminding officer. Mike McDonald (Seahawks HC) said these are two of his primary roles. Clark uses the spear as a representation of alignment: the spear has to move in one direction to be effective. It doesn't matter what you say as a head coach in the team room if it's not taken into the tightest echo chambers. That environment's not powerful enough to inspire action. The culture of a school is defined in the classroom. For Clark, if what he says isn't taken to the position groups and reinforced, then driven into behavior, they're going to lose alignment and lose focus. "The culture of a school is defined in the classroom. Good teachers make for a good experience. Poor teachers make for challenging experiences." You can never tire of driving the standards and behaviors. The reminding part is: how tired can you get of driving the standards and behaviors? The skill becomes, can we focus on the things that impact winning? Let me focus on the things that are most important and let me be relentless in making sure those show up. Clark is reminding coaches, players, staff, all of it, and helping them and guiding them into driving accountability within their spaces. Then he has to let the program breathe a little bit. Performance can't be tight, it can't be restrictive. Clark needs his guys to bring their unique personalities and their creative energy that makes it so much more fun, and it shows up on the field. Let me remind you of who we are and what we do and how we do these things and how it impacts winning. But then let me let you be yourself and bring your personality and help us elevate this program, not just be a part of it. "Coach, I look forward to coming to Vanderbilt to help you win championships." When Diego Pavia got off the phone with Clark after their first conversation, he said this in the most genuine way. Clark had spent a lot of time trying to convince a lot of people of what was possible at Vanderbilt, and that felt like the first time that someone was meeting him right where he was. "The world doesn't need a watered down Diego Pavia." When Diego's at his best, he's being himself. It's also important to have boundaries, and without conflict, there's erosion. So you have to fight for those boundaries.  "We really are a group of misfits." Brian Longwell, one of their linebackers, commented during a team building exercise. A five star coming to Vanderbilt is not your typical five star. That choice in and of itself is the acceptance of a challenge. The misfit ignores the external and tends to the internal." As we elevate our people, we don't ever lose our identity. As long as they're true to who they are, the people they accept in this program will quickly get in lockstep with where they're moving. Reflection Questions What area of your life are you treating as separate from the others? Development in one area is development in all areas. How would this shift change your approach? Are you practicing hope or practicing belief? Hope is passive, belief is active. What would change if you made the shift? Do you have your skis up in the morning? What sacrifices do you need to make the night before to be what you need to be for others? More Learning: #062: Jim Tessel - Servant Leadership Through Coaching #325: Ron Ullery - Demanding Excellence & Delayed Gratification #503 - Sherri Coale - The Art of Asking & Winning On & Off the Court Audio Chapters: 00:00 The Price of Becoming 01:10 The Turnaround at Vanderbilt 02:48 Coaching Network and Mentors 04:48 Winning with Academic Standards 07:48 Hav

    39 min

  3. 15 MAR

    679: Kat Cole - From Hooters Waitress to $500M CEO, You're Interviewing for Your Next Job Every Day, Learning vs. Ego, The Four Key Mindsets for Senior Leaders, and The Journey of Who You Become

    Go to www.LearningLeader.com  This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver. My Guest: Kat Cole is the CEO of AG1 (formerly Athletic Greens) and a renowned business leader known for a meteoric rise from Hooters waitress to Fortune 40 Under 40 executive. As former President/COO of Focus Brands (Cinnabon), she specializes in scaling global brands. Her career is defined by driving billions in sales, strategic innovation, and a strong, people-first leadership style. Key Learnings You can't market your way out of a bad product. AG1 has 3x'd the business in four years while being in only one channel (direct to consumer) for 15 years. 80% of retail is in brick and mortar, so they were doing that volume in less than 20% of where transactions happen. That only works when customers love the product, keep buying it for years, and tell their friends. Scale comes from trusted recommendations, not marketing spend. Real volume comes from people telling their friends, recommending it to their teams and companies. That's where real scale and sustainable growth comes from. Two questions guide every career decision. Is my work done here? Can someone else do what the company needs better than I can? If the answer to either is yes, that guides you toward pushing for change in your role, the way you show up, or finding the next opportunity. Sometimes the best move is the lesser-known role. Kat could have stayed running big franchise brands everyone knew (Cinnabon, Auntie Anne's), but becoming COO of the parent company, Focus Brands, was a bigger, more complex role. Lesser known, smaller team, bigger stretch, more learning. That bridged her into consumer packaged goods and got her ready for AG1. Consider financial needs, learning, and ego separately. Between financial needs, your ability to learn or contribute, and your ego or optics, there are questions you can ask yourself about a particular moment or opportunity that will help you be sharper in what you actually want versus what just looks like what's best next on the surface. The founder heard her on podcasts and asked for an introduction. AG1's founder heard Kat on a couple of podcasts, knew Sahil Bloom, and asked Sahil to make the intro. She just happened to be taking time off and had been a customer for two years. "You're interviewing for your next job every day." Whatever you do now, that choice of time, that tone of voice, that decision, how you show up or don't, creates an impact that leads to an experience and people's actions and then results. Eventually, it leads to the next thing. Showing kindness in the airport matters. A caring note to someone struggling, a teacher or stranger saying, "I see something in you," a compliment when someone's in a dark place. It helps people out of darkness. Or opportunistically, being the one who sent the email or made the ask means you're the one who got the opportunity. Don't burn bridges even when you feel wronged. When Kat was an executive at Hooters at 26, peers in their 50s and 60s would say things in meetings that weren't kind or appropriate. She would write letters expressing how it made her feel, but never sent them. She processed, reflected, and showed up professionally. Years later, those same people became advocates, partners, and references. Four key mindsets for senior leaders. Humility, curiosity, courage, and confidence. By the time candidates get to Kat, they've been vetted on technical capability. She spends time validating those four characteristics because leadership and style trickle far into the organization. Ask "if not for" questions to reveal humility. When someone tells you how they stood tall in tough moments, ask what enabled them to do those great things. They'll say, "I had access to this data, this team, this technical leader." Then ask: "If those people did not exist, if that resource did not exist, how would you have navigated that?" You peel back layers and see if they have the humility to acknowledge their success was due to critical factors. The best candidates do the job in the interview. When someone says, "If we're doing this, we'll absolutely need this person in this specific role," or they have people in mind they're bringing with them, that's a good sign. Hiring leaders who have people who are loyal to them shows something real. In reference checks, ask, "What does this person need to be successful?" It's a positive framing to get at what someone might lack or require around them to be effective. Help people answer "how should I think about this?" In a fully remote company, you have less context and fewer vibes. When you send a note about ending a product line or launching something you said you'd never launch, people's subconscious internal war is "how should I think about this?" Leaders should start communications with "here's how I think about this" or "here's how we should think about this." Sometimes the answer is to shut up and speak last. As teams get stronger, there's more weight on the few things the CEO says. Leave space for other leaders to lead. Kat removed herself from some meetings entirely because she has such great leaders and a strong culture. Pay attention to themes in criticism, not individual attacks. When competitors attack you, ask: Are there patterns? Is there something reflective of industry questions? Sometimes criticisms point to things you already do well but aren't communicating well enough. Comparison ads work short-term but don't build credibility long-term. Challenger brands use the playbook of "we're like the leader, but better/cheaper." Consumers see through it. People tell AG1, "I saw an ad comparing their product to yours, and they're clearly saying you're the leader." The rage bait is brief; the truth is long. Algorithms reward dopamine hits and rage bait. Something untrue or negatively spun can quickly become widely seen because the critique is brief and witty, but the explanation and truth are long. AG1 has more human trials on a single SKU than any other multi-ingredient product ever in the space, but that's harder to say in a sound bite. Don't criticize a car for not taking you to the moon. Someone criticized one of AG1's products for not doing something the product isn't supposed to do. When addressing criticism, clarify what the product is actually designed to do. Her husband will be the fourth person ever to row across three oceans. He's already rowed the Atlantic (set the US record as a pair) and the Caribbean. Now he's training for the Pacific. If he completes it, he'll be only the fourth person to have ever done it in the world.  It's about who you become while striving for the big thing. After her husband got rescued in the Caribbean, he questioned why he was doing this with two kids. But this pursuit is who he is, what drives him, it's inspiring for the kids, and it makes him a better person when he's home. It's about the journey and who you do it with. More Learning 476: Kat Cole - Raise Your Hand, Raise Your Voice 078: Kat Cole - Courage, Confidence, Curiosity, and Humility Reflection Questions Is your work done where you are? Can someone else do what the company needs better than you can? When interviewing someone, ask what enabled them to succeed in a tough moment. Then ask: if that team or resource didn't exist, how would you have done it differently? What communication this week needs context? Start with: here's what this means, what it's not about, and how we should think about it. Audio Timestamps 00:18 Meet Kat Cole  02:42 AG1's Growth Story: $160M to $500M+  03:28 Product-Led Growth Wins  05:57 Kat on Writing and Reflection  07:39 Two Questions for Every Career Move  12:25 How Kat Joined AG1  16:09 You're Always Interviewing  18:47 Neutralizing Opposition at Hooters  24:19 Hiring Great Leaders  27:43 Inside Executive Interviews  31:56 Reference Checks That Reveal Truth  32:52 CEO as the Storyteller  34:16 "How Should I Think About This?"  35:46 Speak Last, Empower Leaders  37:41 Handling Public Criticism  39:59 Separating Signal from Noise  44:49 Staying Focused Through Criticism 48:00 Champagne Question: Family First  48:45 Rowing Three Oceans  51:37 Who You Become on the Journey  56:14 EOPC

    59 min

  4. 2 MAR

    677: Erin McGoff - How to Communicate at Work, Negotiate Your Salary, Write Cold Emails, Overcome Rejection, Run Better Meetings, and Build a Career That Matters

    Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver. www.InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader The Learning Leader Show Key Learnings  Go out and dent the universe. Erin's parents didn't put pressure on her to get perfect grades or go to Harvard; they wanted her to use her privilege and beautiful upbringing to make the world a better place. Youngest child syndrome makes you quick. Being the youngest of six, Erin learned to speak very quickly to get her thoughts in at the dinner table, and she was given unsolicited advice her whole childhood (which is why she loves giving advice now). Your siblings' sole job is to keep you grounded. Erin's parents are proud and supportive, but her siblings roast her and beat her down (all in good fun) to keep her as humble as possible. Success is attributed to a sense of humor. Erin gave career advice that was funny, and nobody had ever really seen that before. You don't get that unless you're the slightly bullied youngest of six kids your entire life. Rejection rage is a choice. At a Women in Film networking event, the head of the organization paused Erin's documentary trailer 30 seconds in and said, "You need to be more realistic." Erin went on to get a Pulitzer fellowship and premiered a feature documentary at 23 with international distribution. When you get a rejection, you can either let it beat you down or say, "I'm going to show them." "Tell me about yourself" is the world's worst interview question. It's lazy, not specific, and hard for the interviewee to truncate their entire life into 90 seconds. Use the past-present-future template: 1-2 sentences about your past, 1-2 about your present role, then future (where the interviewer's ears perk up), connecting to why you're applying for this specific role. Specificity is the magic word. When sending cold emails, the chances of getting a good response dramatically increase if you're specific: specific praise, specific question. Instead of "Can I pick your brain over coffee?" say, "I watched your video about X, and when you said Y, it piqued my curiosity." Higher quality questions get higher quality answers. This isn't just for podcasts or job interviews; it's a life skill. Good professional communication is like chess, not checkers. Most people just play checkers (you said this to me, I'm going to say this to you), but chess is thinking 10 steps ahead about what your end goal is and how this person falls along the path to that goal. Don't ask for a raise; ask for an adjustment to your compensation. Your job is transactional (you do work, they pay you). When you accepted your salary, you were doing X, Y, Z. Now you're doing X, Y, Z plus A, B, C. It's no longer an equal partnership, so you need an adjustment. It's not personal, it's just professional. Know your audience and your leverage.  Emotional regulation is powerful communication. If we just act impulsively and say what's on our mind all the time, it doesn't actually get you where you want to go. Always keep your desired outcome in mind. It's about checkmate. Don't just react, think about what the end goal is and how this conversation gets you there. Humanize people, don't make them wrong. That egotistical senior VP is probably actually really insecure about where they are in their career and wakes up every morning not knowing what they're doing. Put your ego to the side. Being a great communicator requires taking a break from thinking about yourself and thinking about what the other person's life is like and what their goals are. Align your goals with their goals. Think about how you can create that authentic relationship by figuring out how your goals align with what they're trying to accomplish. Shut up and listen. We do a little bit too much talking when we're trying to negotiate or strategize. It can be very beneficial to embrace the silence and practice active listening. Curiosity is an amazing way to show love. Being genuinely curious about a person makes them like you, and it becomes more natural the more you do it. Compliments have to be genuine and specific. People are way better at sniffing out fake compliments than you realize. If you can't find one thing you truly admire about someone, don't say anything. Don't make it transactional. When people ask, "How do I not make it feel like I'm using them?" Erin says, "Well, don't use them. Just be genuine." The most loving thing you can do is respect people's time. Meeting bloat has gotten really bad since the pandemic, and a lot of time is disrespected in meetings across the world. Maybe don't have the meeting. A lot of meetings are completely unnecessary, or at least the way they're set up, the people invited, or the way they're run are really inefficient. Only invite crucial people. Make sure that only the people who absolutely need to be there are invited to the meeting. Always have an agenda. At the beginning of every meeting, say "Here are the three things we're going to cover today, and here's the goal of this meeting." Put it in the calendar link with bullet points. Don't have brainstorming meetings. Have meetings with very tangible goals at the end, state them up front, and make sure that goal has been achieved by the end. Email subject lines are underutilized. Erin's dad's company would put tags like "request," "informational," or "command" on subject lines so you knew exactly what type of email it was and what was expected. The exercise of making a five-year plan changes your brain. Erin doesn't believe in sticking to a five-year plan, but the exercise of thinking about the future creates new neural pathways that change the way you think about yourself and your life. A happy life is an intentional life. The vast majority of people float through life and act very reactionary. Sitting down and thinking about what you actually want in five years is powerful self-care. Sit down with your partner and do this together. Before you get married, make five-year plans together. They might look really different (which is revealing) or really similar which doubles down on alignment. Create multiple five-year plans if you're young. If you don't know which path you're going to take, create five different scenarios for yourself and see which one energizes you most. Financial freedom is a goal worth stating. Erin wants to be financially free in the next five years, which allows her to pursue mission-driven work on her own terms. You're just another human trying to figure it out. Even though Erin wrote the book on workplace communication, she's still winging it every day just like everybody else. Combat the knowledge curse by staying connected to real people. When you're an expert in something, it's hard to imagine not being an expert. Erin moved back to Maryland suburbs to experience people working normal corporate jobs, DMs with people daily about their experiences, and gets on free calls just to listen. The data in newsletters tells a different story than people's actual experiences, so she stays grounded by hearing real anecdotes from IT workers in North Carolina or nurses in Kentucky. Set goals really high. Erin wants her startup to help 500,000 job seekers in a year, which is ambitious, but she doesn't care if she fails as long as she tries to reach it. More Learning #507 - Jesse Cole: How to Build Your Idea Muscle #344 - Jesse Cole: How to Create "You Wouldn't Believe" Moments #365 - James Altucher: How to Become An Idea Machine Reflection Questions Good communication is chess, not checkers. Think about a difficult conversation you need to have this week. Instead of just reacting to what they say, what's your desired outcome? What would "checkmate" look like, and how can you think 10 steps ahead to get there? Who in your life keeps you humble If no one does, how might you be losing perspective on yourself? What would it look like to invite that kind of honest feedback into your life? Erin recommends making a five-year plan, not to stick to it, but because the exercise creates new neural pathways. When's the last time you sat down and intentionally thought about what you want your life to look like in five years? What's stopping you from doing that this week?

    52 min

  5. 23 FEB

    676: Jesse Cole (Owner, Savannah Bananas) - The Beauty of Obsession, Building a Fans First World, Walt Disney, Mr. Beast, Radical Transparency (Opening the Books), Do the Opposite of Normal, Turning a $6M Mistake Into a Moment, and Creating Banana World

    Go to www.LearningLeader.com The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver. www.InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader My Guest: Jesse Cole is the owner of the Savannah Bananas. He went $1.8 million in debt, slept on an air mattress, and built a business that is now valued at over a billion dollars. I spent half a day with Jesse in Savannah watching practice, and Jesse gave me a personal tour of their entire operation. It was incredible. Notes: Fans First - The sign is on every locker. And leading out to the field, "Tonight is someone's first time seeing our show." Obsessed/Focused - Banana Ball/Serving people is his life. We didn't talk about hobbies, TV shows, or anything other than what they're doing now and in the future. He's obsessed with what he does and super focused. Transparent - Jesse just released their full P&L as a private company: revenue, expenses, player salaries, everything. Most businesses guard this religiously. He's completely transparent. I asked why, and he said, "Fans first. They deserve to know everything." Reps - We went to the field to watch practice. It looked just like a game. Players were dancing all the time. And every single rep they practiced as a trick play (behind the back, through the legs, etc.). They never play normal baseball. You wonder how they are so good on gameday at doing a backflip while catching a fly ball. Because they practice it thousands of times without fans so that when they're there, they put on a great show. Hiring – "Love your people more than you love your customer." 12,000 people on the waitlist to work for the Bananas. When you hire, have them do a "fans first" essay. Then they write a future essay.  Always Be Caring, Different, Enthusiastic, Fun, Growing, & Hungry Fans First: The Counter-Intuitive Decision - Jesse sacrificed $6 million in ticket revenue after a system messed things up for fans.  Merch – 787,000 fans purchased merchandise in 2025, totaling 1.96 million total items. That means the average person is purchasing ~2.5 items at checkout, with 80% of total sales taking place in person. 621,000 at live shows versus 166,000 online. It's a $50m business! TV: The Distribution Strategy - Giving Away Value - Jesse insisted on free YouTube streaming even when ESPN wanted exclusivity. Jesse is building a zero-profit secondary ticket market. He's literally giving away things other sports properties would monetize. So, even with all of the team's games still airing for free on YouTube, the Bananas averaged 500,000 viewers on ESPN, The CW, and Roku. The team's most-watched broadcast was a July 4th game at Fenway Park, which averaged 837,000 viewers on ESPN, making it the holiday weekend's most-watched primetime sports broadcast. TV networks want exclusivity, but you demand that the games still be broadcast for free on YouTube (in addition to whatever channel they are on) Social Media - The Bananas added 12.7 million new social media followers in 2025 alone. That pushes their total social media following across all channels north of 35 million... Roughly 2x more followers than MLB's most popular team, the Yankees, at 18 million. You have to believe something before you achieve something. Six years ago, Jesse said, "We're gonna sell out Fenway Park," and his team looked at him like he was crazy (they were a college summer baseball team, not even doing tours yet). You have to get through the messy to get to the great. Their first world tour was brutal: the sound was terrible, the show wasn't great, the game finished in the seventh inning because they didn't have a rule to make it go nine innings. See what's best for the guest, not what's best for the business. Walt Disney was the first to go into full-length animation, color, sound, and with Disneyland, he focused on one entrance to control the experience, custom rides, and invested in a castle and landscaping, which made no money. Go where others won't go. Sam Walton went to small towns, and no one paid attention to him for the first five to ten years. It's somebody's first time every night. Fans wait three years on a waitlist to come to a game, so Jesse doesn't care if you're having a bad day. That's their first time. Control the entire experience. Walt learned he couldn't control the experience when people watched his movies at a theater (it could be dirty, and people might not be nice), so he built Disneyland. Who do we work for? Fans. Jesse opened the books completely (numbers, player salary, merch sales, everything) because they have a responsibility and accountability to their fans. We have to feel our mistakes. When they sent a wrong email to 44,000 fans instead of 4,000, it cost them $6 million to take care of those fans with tickets (more than the company brought in their first five years). We need to have bigger failures. If we're not trying things big enough, we won't have bigger failures and mistakes that cost us a lot more in the future. Turn mistakes into moments. After the $6 million email mistake, Jesse set up a Zoom call with all 44,000 people, had everyone turn their cameras on, and apologized while looking at every single person. Build something you wish existed for yourself. Jesse played baseball until he couldn't anymore. He put so much pressure on himself that it wasn't fun anymore, and he was told he wasn't good enough. Design every second of the first-day experience. When players showed up, they went to a parking lot with a DJ at 8:30 AM. Three buses arrived with balloons, hundreds of people lined the streets cheering, Man-nanas served munchkins on silver platters, a custom hype video played, the host introduced from the roof, and fireworks went off. Every player has been told they're not good enough. All Bananas players have been drafted or been top college players, and at some point, they've all been rejected, cut, told to hang it up. Obsession is awesome. If you can find something you're obsessed with, so few people in the world get to have that. Watch the best of the best obsess over details. Derek Hough (one of the greatest dancers) wasn't just focusing on the dance; he was producing while dancing, telling the camera crew exactly where to come, when to hit him, and where he would wink. No one goes home excited about normal. No one says, "That restaurant was really normal, the waiter served it the same way, the food was pretty normal, the parking lot was normal." Whatever's normal, do the exact opposite. Normal gets normal results. There's a lot of normal in the world, but not a lot of extraordinary. Put yourself in the customer's shoes and eliminate friction. Where's the game tonight? On Amazon, Peacock, CBS, NBC? Jesse threw away millions to keep all games free on YouTube because that's a friction point. Your fans will reward you. The Bananas sold over 1.9 million merch items last year because they built something people are proud of and want to wear. If people don't want to wear your merch, you haven't made them feel something yet. One fan gets a new Bananas tattoo every year (he's got six logos on his leg now). Invest everything in the experience, spend zero on traditional marketing. Make the experience so good that fans will share with everyone that this is something they haven't experienced before. Social media growth came from trying and stumbling into learning. In 2016, an intern said he could create videos; they did a lip sync to "Can't Stop the Feeling" by Justin Timberlake. It wasn't even well-produced, but they tried. Give energy back because of how good it feels. A woman came up to Jesse on a cruise and said she was there because he gave her a hug at a Sacramento game the day after her sister died. She came on the cruise to give him a hug back. Do what gives you energy. Jesse's entire day is filled with things that give him energy: being with people, rehearsing shows, banana ball youth meetings, broadcast team, and talented writers. Have people who love to execute. You do what gives you energy and have them execute at a high level. Be very involved at the beginning (get the idea and vision right) and at the end (make adjustments).

    45 min

  6. 16 FEB

    675: Tom Hardin (Tipper X) - The Largest Insider Trading Case, How Ambiguous Leadership Destroys Culture, Resume vs. Eulogy Virtues, Bad Decisions vs. Mistakes, and Building Psychological Safety

    The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk Go to www.LearningLeader.com This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver. www.InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader My guest: Tom Hardin was known as "Tipper X" during Operation Perfect Hedge, the largest insider trading investigation in history. After making four illegal trades based on inside information, the FBI approached him on a Manhattan street corner and convinced him to wear a wire over 40 times, helping build 20 of the 81 cases. Key Learnings  Ambiguity is where ethical lines blur. Tom's boss said, "Do whatever it takes," after the hedge fund lost money, and as a junior employee, Tom didn't ask clarifying questions. The undiscussable becomes undiscussable. Leaders give ambiguous messages, then pretend they weren't ambiguous, employees get confused and don't question the boss, and you end up with a culture of silence. Making decisions in isolation is dangerous. The information came to Tom and he didn't talk to his boss or his wife (who probably would've slapped him around for crossing ethical lines). Psychological safety requires muscle memory. You have to practice saying "I'm just going to ask some clarifying questions here" when your boss gives ambiguous orders. Bad decisions aren't mistakes. Mistakes are made without intent, but bad decisions are made with intent. Tom told himself for years he made "mistakes," but on a drive home from speaking at a keynote, he realized: "There's no way I made mistakes. I made bad decisions." Never say never. Tom argues you're more susceptible to falling down your own slippery slope when you think "that would never be me." 80% of employees can be swayed either way. 10% are morally incorruptible, 10% are a compliance nightmare, and 80% can be influenced by the culture around them. Tone at the top means nothing. Company culture isn't the tone at the top or glossy shareholder letters; it's the behaviors employees believe will be rewarded or put them ahead. Reward character, not just results. You can't just focus on short-term performance and dollar goals without understanding how the business was made and what was behind the performance. The question isn't "what?" but "how?" If you're just focused on the numbers and not on how you got there, you have the opportunity to end up in a slippery slope situation. Celebrate people who live your values. Companies that spend millions on trips for people who live out shared values (not financial performance) are putting their money where their mouth is. Leaders must share their own ethical dilemmas. We've all been in situations where we could go left or right, and sharing how you worked through those moments makes you more endearing and a better leader. Keep a rationalization journal. When Tom and his wife have big decisions (or even little things), he writes them down in a rationalization journal and reflects on them once a month. He's still susceptible to going down another slippery slope, so checking himself on those passing thoughts improves his character over time. It's not what you say, it's what you do. Just like kids see what parents do (not what they say), employees see what behaviors leaders actually reward. $46,000 cost him $23 million. A business school professor calculated Tom would've made $23 million if he'd stayed on the hedge fund path, but he made $46,000 on the four illegal trades before getting caught. His wife was his rock. 85% of marriages end when something like this happens, and she had every right to leave. They just got married, no kids yet. But she stayed. When Tom interviewed her for the book 20 years later, she said, "All I remember is you accepted responsibility immediately. You didn't make up excuses." Running pulled him out of a shame spiral. Tom got obese as a stay-at-home dad. His wife signed him up for a 5K race (and beat him while pushing a jogging stroller). Just crossing that finish line lit a fire. He ended up running a 100-mile race.  Doing hard things teaches you that you can do hard things. When Tom had to start a speaking business because they were running out of money, he said, "I can do this" because he'd already put his body through ultramarathons. No challenge is insurmountable. He ended up with something better. It's not about status or money anymore; it's about who he is with his family and his relationships now. Windshield mentality, not rearview mirror. Tom can't change the past, but he can look forward instead of backward. A lot of people in their twenties do stupid stuff (maybe not to this degree), but now, in his forties, he can learn from it. Why not embrace it rather than try to scrub it off the internet? Eulogy virtues versus resume virtues. In his twenties, Tom only thought about resume virtues (how much money, the next job, the next stepping stone) and never about eulogy virtues (what people will say about his character when it's all over). What will people say at your eulogy? Will they still be talking about those four trades, or will they talk about who you became after? More Learning #226 - Steve Wojciechowski: How to Win Every Day #281 - George Raveling: Wisdom from MLK Jr to Michael Jordan #637 - Tom Ryan: Chosen Suffering: Become Elite in Life & Leadership Reflection Questions Tom's boss gave him an ambiguous message ("do whatever it takes"), and as a junior employee, he didn't ask clarifying questions. Think about the last ambiguous instruction you received from leadership. Did you ask clarifying questions, or did you fill in the blanks yourself? What's stopping you from creating psychological safety to ask next time? Tom argues that 80% of employees can be swayed either way by culture. Look at your organization right now. What behaviors are actually being rewarded? If someone asked your team "what gets you ahead here?" what would they honestly say? Tom asks: "Will people be talking about the resume virtues (money, titles, achievements) or the eulogy virtues (character, relationships, who you were) when you're gone?" What's one eulogy virtue you need to start prioritizing today, even if it means slowing down on resume building?

    55 min

  7. 9 FEB

    674: PJ Fleck - Building Elite Culture, Nekton Mindset, Selecting >Recruiting, Intrinsic Motivation, Row The Boat, and Transformational Coaching

    Go to www.LearningLeader.com This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver. www.InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader My guest: PJ Fleck is the head football coach at the University of Minnesota. Before that, he transformed Western Michigan from one win to 13 wins and a Cotton Bowl appearance. Before his coaching days, PJ was a stud receiver at Northern Illinois and was a guy I played against in college. Coach Fleck has built one of college football's most distinctive culture-driven programs. You'll hear why he maintains an 80-20 split favoring high school recruiting over the transfer portal, how he runs practice with a 32-second clock to make it harder than games, and why he sees himself as a cultural driver rather than a motivational coach. This is a conversation recorded with all of our coaches inside "The Arena." That is our mastermind group for coaches in all sports. And it did not disappoint. Notes: Stop recruiting, start selecting. PJ doesn't chase the highest-rated players... He looks for fit and alignment with his values. Ask yourself: Are you trying to convince people to join your team, or are you selecting people who already want what you're building? Efficiency beats duration. PJ runs 95-minute practices with a 32-second play clock, always moving, always intense. The principle: Make practice harder than the game. Where in your work are you confusing time spent with intensity and focus? Internal drive trumps external motivation. PJ calls his ideal players "Nektons," always attacking, never satisfied. He's looking for people who prove their worth to themselves, not to others. If you need constant external motivation, you're not ready for elite teams. A leader must teach and demand. A team member must prepare and perform. These aren't opposing forces—they're two sides of the same commitment to excellence. My junior year at Ohio University. I was the quarterback of the Ohio football team. We lost to No. 17 Northern Illinois 30-23 in overtime on a Saturday night. P.J. Fleck caught the game-tying 15-yard touchdown pass late in the fourth quarter. PJ finished with 14 catches for 235 yards and a touchdown. (I threw a 30-yard TD pass to Anthony Hackett to put us up a TD right before halftime). Let your team see you played. They do"Guess that Gopher" before team meetings, where players guess which coach's highlights they're watching. Give them a peek behind the curtain. It builds credibility and connection. PJ honors his mentor, Jim Tressel, by wearing a tie while coaching. Who are you honoring through your daily practices? Keep your door open. PJ has no secretary. Players can walk into his office at any moment. Create fluidity between you and your team. Transparency after tragedy is a choice. When PJ's son died from a heart condition, he had two options: never talk about it again, or let it shape him. He chose radical transparency, knowing it would get scrutinized. That's where "Row the Boat" comes from. A losing season reveals what you actually need. After going 1-11 at Western Michigan while also getting divorced, PJ says every coach should experience a losing season. It forces you to identify what you actually need versus what you don't need. Choose what scares you. When deciding on Minnesota, Heather asked him, "Does this scare you?" He said, "Hell yeah, it scares me." His response: "Well then, that's where we're going." Life versus living. Living is the salary and contract. Life is about moments and memory. If you can't stay in the moment and reflect on great moments or hard moments, life will be like mashed potatoes to you. Your expectations should match your resources. The gap between expectations and resources is called frustration. The bigger the gap, the more frustration from everyone around you. Maintain an 80/20 model if you can. 80% high school players, 20% transfer portal. PJ has one of the highest retention rates in the country because of selection and fit, not recruiting. "It's not about the money until it's about the money." The kids' PJ gets value for other things before the money talk. They enjoy the experience of being a college athlete. PJ leads with "I'm really difficult to play for." PJ's opening line to recruits. He asks for a lot. This makes people who are lazy, complacent, or fraudulent run like hell. "This is going to expose me." Start with good people, not good players. Out of 500 kids, who are the best 25 young men? PJ doesn't get five stars. He gets two and three stars who believe they can be five stars. A chip versus a crack on your shoulder. Once you do something the media says you couldn't do, they'll set a new bar. All PJ wants is kids who want to prove to themselves that they can do what people say they couldn't. You don't need PJ's personality. You need the internal drive to be the best version of yourself. That's what he's selecting for. div]:bg-bg-000/50 [&_pre>div]:border-0.5 [&_pre>div]:border-border-400 [&_.ignore-pre-bg>div]:bg-transparent [&_.standard-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pl-2 [&_.standard-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,ul,ol,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pr-8 [&_.progressive-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pl-2 [&_.progressive-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,ul,ol,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pr-8"> _*]:min-w-0 gap-3 standard-markdown"> "I'm not a motivational coach. I'm a cultural driver." PJ picks their "how." He picks their journey. If someone needs constant motivation, they're not ready. Peel back the Instagram filter. Everything you see on social media is filtered. You have to dig deeper with this generation to find out who they really are. Hire former players back. PJ's staff has more former players who played for him than ever before. They cut their teeth in the building. In this transactional era, former players help you stay transformational. The HYPRR System. This is PJ's hyperculture framework he created after going 1-11: H (How): The people. Nektons who always attack. How you do one thing is how you do everything. Consistency matters. Y (Yours): Your vision. It's YOUR life, not anyone else's vision. Players are the builders. Don't tell me you want an extravagant home and then hire bad builders. P (Process): The work. The who, what, when, where, and why. Anyone should be able to ask those questions at any point. R (Result): Focus on the HYP. It's not the officials' fault. It's not the other team's fault. R (Response): How will you respond to the result? Don't believe the hype. Everything about hype is before the result happens. Focus on How, Yours, and Process instead. Someone will take what you were taught was horrible and create a business model. PJ uses Uber and Airbnb as examples. We were taught "stranger danger" as kids. Now we get in cars with strangers while drunk and sleep in their homes. The right people plugged into crazy visions can change everything. Define success as peace of mind. That's how PJ's program defines success. Not wins and losses. Train body language. "Big chest" means standing up straight. Players are not allowed to put their hands on their knees or their heads. If you can't hold yourself up, trainers need to check on you. Teach response, not reaction. You can have emotions, but train to not be emotional. The real world wants to see you react. Train to respond properly in every situation. Your words have power. PJ's players know the definitions of 150 words that will help them for the rest of their lives. Give substance to the filters. That's your job as an educator. Cut all the fat off practice. PJ was from the era of 3.5-hour practices. He has ADD and needs to move. He got bored as a player, so he vowed to run practice differently. Run a 32-second play clock constantly. Every 32 seconds, you run a play. You are always under the two-minute warning in practice. This trains your team to operate under pressure. Never practice longer than 95 minutes. It's one thing to watch as a recruit. It's another to experience it as a player. Kids puke during dynamic warmup in the first week because it's that intense. Make practice harder than the game. The game will eventually slow down for your players if practice is legitimately harder. Nektons flow through water currents without being affected. Don't let circumstances dictate behavior. Train this mindset daily. The biggest jump in sports is from high school to college. 17-year-olds playing against 24-year-olds. It's not just talent. It's experience, development, strength, and confidence all at once. Never let any environment be too big for your coaches. Train your staff to be comfortable in all situations, not just your players. Always be learning outside your field. PJ attends leadership seminars with SEALs and Green Berets. At one dinner, a retired military officer who looked like Sean Connery scanned the room quietly, then said: "I'm taking in all the good in the room. I'm also coming up with a plan to kill every one of you, in case I need to." He never came back to the table because he got called to active duty and left for Afghanistan. Always be ready. That's what makes you special. Watch to learn. PJ watched "Landman" and took notes on how to run the next team meeting. His wife hates that he can never relax. Find teaching and education in everything you do. When you stop, you stop growing. Get better at celebrating. PJ has a great bourbon and champagne collection. He celebrates more than he ever has. Balance the intensity with moments of joy. Make transformational programs real. Gopher for Life program. Monthly educational courses. Monthly date nights where players bring their dates and learn dinner etiquette. Monthly racial education class. Weekly coach development on Thursdays, where coaches speak on any topic to adv

    1hr 2min

  8. 26 JAN

    672: Brad Stulberg - The Neuroscience of Curiosity, Process vs. Outcome Goals, The Power of Consistency, Playing Like The Beatles, Focusing on Your WHO, and The Way of Excellence

    Go to www.LearningLeader.com to learn more This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver. www.InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader My guest: Brad Stulberg is a bestselling author and leading expert on sustainable performance and well-being. He's written for The New York Times, Outside Magazine, and The Atlantic, and his previous books include Peak Performance and The Practice of Groundedness. His latest book, The Way of Excellence, is great. Brad's writing combines cutting-edge science, ancient wisdom, and stories from world-class performers to help people do their best work without losing themselves in the process. Notes: Never pre-judge a performance. When you're feeling tired, uninspired, or off your game, show up anyway. Remember the Beatles scene—they looked bored and exhausted, but Paul still wrote "Get Back" that day. You don't know what's possible until you get going. Discipline means doing what needs to be done regardless of how you feel. As powerlifter Layne Norton says, we don't need to feel good to get going... We need to get going to give ourselves a chance to feel good. Stop waiting for motivation. Start moving and let the feeling follow. Audit who you're surrounding yourself with. The Air Force study is striking: the least fit person in your squadron determines everyone else's fitness level. If you sit within 25 feet of a high performer at work, your performance improves 15%. Within 25 feet of a low performer? It declines 30%. Your environment isn't neutral... Choose wisely. Treat curiosity like a muscle. It's a reward-based behavior that gets stronger with use. When Kobe said he played "to figure things out," he was tapping into the neural circuitry that makes learning feel good and builds upon itself. Ask more questions. Stay curious about your craft. Excellence isn't about perfection or optimization... It's about mastery and mattering. It's about showing up consistently, surrounding yourself wisely, and staying curious along the way. To the late Robert Pirsig - one of the greatest blessings and joys and sources of satisfaction in my life is to be in conversation with your work. He's the author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance— "gumption is the psychic gasoline that keeps the whole thing going." Arrogant people are loud. Confident people are quiet. Confidence requires evidence. The neural circuitry associated with curiosity is like a muscle: it gets stronger with use. Curiosity is what neuroscientists call a reward-based behavior. It feels good, motivates us to keep going, and builds upon itself. Kobe didn't play to win. He played to learn and grow. Kobe Bryant said he didn't play not to lose, and he didn't even play to win. He played to learn and to grow. He said the reason he did that is because it's so much more freeing. If you're really trying not to lose, you're going to be tight. If you're really trying to win, you're going to be tight. But if you're just out there to grow, you're going to be in the moment. When you're in the moment, you give yourself the best chance of having the performance you want. The word compete comes from the Latin root word com, which means together, and petere, which means to seek, rise up, or strive. In its most genuine form, competition is about rising together (Caitlin Clark's story against LSU). Love: The Detroit Lions had just won their first playoff game in 32 years. Following the game was a scene of pure jubilation. During a short break from the celebrating, the head coach, GM, and quarterback all gave brief speeches. Which collectively lasted about 2 minutes. During those 2 minutes, the word LOVE was repeated 7 times. Homeostatic regulation -- Sense it in the greatness of others and when you're at your best. What Brad calls "excellence." Surround yourself with people who have high standards. When things don't go your way, when you're inevitably heartbroken or frustrated, it's the people around you, the books you read, the art around you, the music you listen to, that's the stuff that speaks to you and keeps you going. It keeps you on the path even amidst the heartbreak. Process goals work better than outcome goals for most people. If you're an amateur, you should be process-focused. When I train for powerlifting, I don't think about the meet that I'm training for. I think about showing up for the session today. If I think about the meeting, I get anxious, and my performance goes down. But if you're Steph Curry and you've been doing your thing for 20 years, you can think about winning the gold medal because your process is so automatic. For 99% of people, focus on the process. "Brave New World" turns fear into curiosity. When you walk up to a bar loaded with more weight than you've ever touched, there can be fear about what it's going to feel like. If you go up to the bar with fear, you're going to miss the lift. If you're convinced you're going to make it, you'll make it, but your nervous system knows when you're lying to yourself. The middle ground is curiosity. Instead of saying "that's heavy, it's scary," I say "Brave New World. I've never touched this weight before. I have no idea what's going to happen, but let's find out." It splits the difference. I'm hyped, I'm giving myself a chance, I'm not lying to myself, but I'm also not scared. Curiosity and fear cannot exist at the same time in the brain. There are seven pathways in the brain defined by affective neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp. Two of those pathways are the rage/fear pathway and the seeking/curiosity pathway. These pathways cannot be turned on at the same time. They compete for resources. It's a zero sum game. You cannot simultaneously be raging and curious. You cannot be terrified and curious at the same time. If you get into a mindset of curiosity, it's extremely hard to be angry or terrified. By being curious, we turn off the fear deep in our brains and give ourselves a chance to perform our best. Practice curiosity in lower-consequence situations first. Curiosity is like a muscle. If you're about to do something absolutely terrifying and you're really scared and you say, "I'm just going to be curious," you know you're lying to yourself. You have to practice in lower-consequence situations first. When you, as a paren,t get really upset with your kid, try to be curious about their experience. Watch your anger calm down. When you as a leader, have a board presentation where you're feeling anxious, try to have that mindset of "Brave New World." When you're an athlete going into a big game obsessing about what could go wrong, try to be really curious instead. The best competitors have emotional flexibility. As a competitor, you would know that in the confines of the game, you're not singing Kumbaya, you are trying to kill them. Then you have the emotional flexibility the minute that game ends to respect them as a person. That is the best way to compete. That's when our best performances happen. It's not either/or, it's both/and. It's playing really hard, giving everything you can for the win, seizing on your opponent's vulnerability, at the same time as having deep respect for them. You don't have to be miserable to be excellent. There are people like David Goggins or Michael Jordan who seem motivated by anger and a chip on their shoulder. But Jordan would put his tongue out like this primal expression of joy when he was about to dunk. And Jordan won all his championships while being coached by Phil Jackson, the Zen master of compassion. There are the Steph Currys of the world, or Courtney Dauwalter (best ultra marathoner to ever exist), or Albert Einstein (total mystic who had so much fun in his work). There are two ways to the top of the mountain. For 99.999% of people, you end up performing better with fun and joy, and you have so much more satisfaction, which contributes to longevity. The best leaders take work seriously but laugh at themselves. The best leaders I know in the corporate world, they take the work so seriously. They are so intense. But my God, do they laugh at themselves and their colleagues and have fun. Reflection Questions Brad says, "The things that break your heart are the things that fill your life with meaning." What are you currently holding back from caring deeply about because you're afraid of getting hurt? What would it look like to step fully into that arena despite the risk of heartbreak? The Air Force study showed that sitting within 25 feet of a low performer decreases your performance by 30%. Honestly assess who you're spending the most time with right now. Are they raising your standards or lowering them? What specific change could you make this month to shift your environment? Brad uses "Brave New World" to turn fear into curiosity before big challenges. Think of something coming up that makes you anxious. Instead of trying to convince yourself you'll succeed or dwelling on the fear, what does it feel like to approach it with pure curiosity: "I've never done this before. Let's find out what happens."

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Leaders are learners. The best leaders never stop working to make themselves better. The Learning Leader Show Is series of conversations with the world's most thoughtful leaders. Entrepreneurs, CEO's, World-Class Athletes, Coaches, Best-Selling Authors, and much more.

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