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• “Rejection is a test if you really want something. The upside of asking is unlimited.”
  • "People are afraid of asking. The people who make it happen are willing to ask, be rejected, and keep going."
• One of the biggest lessons learned from working with Mark Zuckerberg? Pick one goal. Then focus relentlessly on reaching it. His was 1 billion users on Facebook. This is how Noah has grown App Sumo to $80m in revenue. Focus on one big goal and the system implemented to make it happen.
• Noah's parental influence:
  • Fearlessness - Ask for everything. Set rejection goals. You learn that selling copiers door to door.
  • His mom is very disciplined. Always working out in the gym. She follows through. She's persistent. She grinds. His mom also hated her job.
• "I don't want to live a 'what-if' life"
• "Are we getting what we get or are we getting what we want?"
• The law of 100 -- Do the thing 100 times before you quit.
• Get going, get started. It's about now, not how.
• Create an exciting vision: "What are we looking forward to?"
• Million Dollar Weekend:
  • Start it
  • Build it
  • Grow it
• Noah's philosophy on interviewing:
  • 1) Talk with people you're genuinely interested in
  • 2) Tell them how they’ve positively impacted your life. People love genuine compliments. And they loved to hear that they’ve helped others.
  • 3) Tell them what's in it for them. Create questions that make your guests excited to answer (set them up to tell interesting stories)
• Entrepreneurship is not risky. Risky is spending your life at a job you hate, with people you don’t like, working on problems you don’t care about.
• Freedom is about gaining control of your schedule. Money is the tool, not the goal.
• This trip was one of my highlights of the fall. Nothing like biking across America. So much good time to think and reflect. Reminds me that whenever you’re in a funk, just get moving. (Helps to be surrounded by beautiful landscapes)
• The future of big business is small teams. One person. No employees. Everything automated. Solopreneurs are the future.
• Acknowledgements:
  • Adam Gilbert for our bike ride ten-plus years ago where I shared a dream to put my knowledge into a book for other people. And for always always being my guardian angel.
  • Tahl Raz - I dreamed for years of the chance to work with you on a book. Thank you for taking a chance on me. Somehow you were magically able to take all my adventures/theories/ideas/antics and put them together in a helpful narrative better than I could have ever dreamed. Thank you! Also for being a mutual lover of schvitzing.

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• Ariel wants to be the "Howard Cosell of MMA". “I got the interview skills from my mom, who my friends would always call for advice, and the work ethic from my dad, who never gave an excuse or took a sick day."
  • "So one of the things that early on, before I became a dad was I want to be omnipresent. I believe in this quote from Woody Allen "80% of success is just showing up." I want to be at every single event. I want to be the guy that people when they think of big fights, they think of me. Howard Cosell, of MMA, all that stuff and more."
• Ariel's Parents:
  • "My mom still watches my show every week, and it's a long show about a topic she doesn't know a hell of a lot about. But she does it because she loves and supports me."
  • "She's the mom that a lot of my brother's girlfriends and stuff would stay in touch with, even after they broke up. Because she just had that connection with people. She asks questions, she listens, she has a good mind and eye for things."
  • "My dad is a workaholic, and he'd be the first to tell you that. He's the kind of guy who, every day, I'd see him Monday through Friday, wake up, go to work at around seven, come home at around seven. He would have this massive box of papers, he would sit at the dinner table, and he would work on all the papers. He would take his shower at like 9:30, go to bed, and start over again, and he couldn't have been happier."
• Syracuse: In 9th grade, he was reading Sports Illustrated and learned that the U.S.’s top sportscasting degree is earned at Syracuse. Bob Costas went there. Marv Albert went there. So he went to Syracuse.
  • Being homesick and full of anxiety in college: "I wouldn't want to go to the dining hall to eat, so I just stocked up on Blue Diamond almonds. Which I have a hard time eating till this day because it reminds me of those days. Chef Boyardee, Alphagetti, that's what I was eating. I was watching sports in my room, by myself, I had a single room, and I was just crippled with this anxiety. And every time I would leave home to come back to school, like Thanksgiving break was over, and whatnot, Christmas break, I was sad. I was down."
• When he knew he wanted to cover MMA – back home in the fall of 2006 when he found himself in Champs Sports Bar, on Saint Laurent Boulevard, where the TVs were tuned to a UFC pay-per-view special. When the Quebec-born fighter Georges St-Pierre beat up Matt Hughes and scored a TKO to win the welterweight championship, “the place explodes like the Canadiens just won the Stanley Cup. And I’m like: ‘I want to be a part of this sport.’”
• Being the Heel – He learned from Howard Cosell, who was known as a heel, the pro wrestling term for the bad guy who people tune in to see fall.  “Heelwani”
• What does it take to be a great interviewer? Be prepared. Ask thoughtful questions. Don’t script the conversation. LISTEN. Ask better follow ups. Make it feel more like a conversation.
• Feuds with Dana White: "I'm the type of person who doesn't back down, in large part because of my parents and my family, and they never back down, so how could I? And why should I? Especially if I'm not doing anything wrong. So I would say I never sought it, I always try to diffuse it, privately. I don't try to get into Twitter wars and things like that, with other people. Where it seems like they spend their life over there trying to go back and forth. That being said, to your point, which is a great point, having an understanding of pro wrestling, and storylines, and feuds. And I come out of my ESPN chapter as Helwani, and punching back, and it's "High road Helwani, no more" and all that. Yes, sure, there's a little bit of pro wrestling in there, and I love pro wrestling. And I believe that there are a lot of elements in pro wrestling in a lot of different walks of life, including politics and whatnot. Good guy/bad guy, heel/face, all that stuff."
• How conduct a great interview?
  • "You have to listen, you have to be ready to open your mind, open your heart, and not feel, again, like you're just coming out guns blazing, and hitting someone with haymakers. Listen to them, be soft, be gentle, be welcoming. But, again, Howard Stern, no one did it better, he breaks you down to the point where you think that you're just two guys sitting around, or a girl and a guy sitting around, and there are not even cameras or microphones. They forget that they're on a show, if you're empathetic, if you're warm, if you're welcoming, that's the best result."
• Make the ASK - Ariel knocked on the door of a senior executive at ESPN. The guy didn’t even know who he was. And he asked to be a sideline reporter at basketball games. The senior exec said nobody had ever done that in 20 years. If you want something, ASK for it. Steve Jobs said the difference between the people who dream about stuff and the people who make it happen is the willingness to ask. You gotta ask.
  • "I walked into his office, and there's a lesson, I think, here, for a lot of people. And I was like, "Hey, I have no credibility in the world of basketball, very few people know who I am. I don't have many sources. But if you ever need someone, in the 11th hour someone gets sick, someone gets hurt, I'll be your guy. I'll be your sideline reporter. I know to do that. And he said, "I'll be honest; I've never heard of you. I've never seen MMA. I've never seen your work. But I've been here 20 plus years, and no one has ever done what you just did, so I'll keep you in mind." Which was an amazing thing to hear, and mind-blowing that no one does that. All the offices are right there, just knock on the door."

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Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes.

This is episode #563 of The Learning Leader Show. My guest is Dr. Mike Massimino.

• The 3 Trusts - Trust your gear, trust your training, trust your team… And the 4th: trust yourself.
• Mike persisted through 3 rejections over 7 years on his way to becoming an astronaut, including overcoming a medical disqualification by training his eyes and brain to see better.
• Mike participated in a mission that significantly increased Hubble’s discovery potential and led to the award of a Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery of dark energy during a spacewalk.
• Why Mike was chosen to be an astronaut: Mike has a great combination of competence (he knows his stuff) and high character. He’s the type of guy that can get along and work with anyone. He’s honest, humble, and authentic.
• The power of having a deep passion for what you’re doing. Mike watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon when he was six years old and then did whatever he could over the rest of his life to become an astronaut. His desire to become an astronaut led him to go to prestigious universities, earn his Ph.D., become a pilot, become scuba certified, develop great communication skills, and so much more. All of that work led to him accomplishing what he set out to do when he was just 6 years old.
  • “I knew right then that I wanted to be a part of something that meaningful. I wanted to have something I was so passionate about that I'd be willing to risk everything for it. I wanted to know that if I ever got killed, I got killed doing something worthwhile. The kid who looked up at the moon and wasn't afraid to dream - I decided that part of me deserved a chance. I sat there in that reception area, watching the crash footage play over and over again on the television, and that was when it hit home for me: you only have one life. You have to spend it doing something that matters.”
• What Mike learned from Alan Bean: The most important lesson is to care for and admire everyone on your team.
  • “My favorite lecturer was Alan Bean, who flew on Apollo 12 and is one of the twelve guys who walked on the moon. After retiring from NASA, he became a painter. Alan's lecture was called "The Art of Space Exploration." He talked about the mistakes he'd made and how he learned to fix them. One lesson that took him a while to learn was that at a place like NASA you can only have an effect on certain things. You can't control who likes you. You can't control who gets assigned to flights or what NASA's budget is going to be next year. If you get caught up worrying about things you can't control, you'll drive yourself nuts. It's better to focus on the things right in front of you. Identify the places where you can have a positive impact. Concentrate there and let the rest take care of itself. The last thing Alan said to us was 'What most people want in life is to do something great. That doesn't happen often. Don't take it for granted. Don't be blasé about it. And don't blow it. A lot of times, believe it or not, people blow it.
• “Kennedy’s address announcing the Apollo program was one of the great presidential speeches of all time. He challenged us. He excited us. We reach for impossible things, he said, “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” 
• Competence + Character = Trust.
• The Right Stuff - The Original 7 Astronauts.
• If you have a bad boss, what should you do:
  • Stay the course
  • Lead by example
• “Life is funny. I'd applied to the wrong graduate program, but that eventually led me to the right grad program. I'd taken what I thought was the wrong undergraduate major, and that was the thing that set me apart and allowed me to find my niche. I don't know if there are any lessons to take from that except to realize that the things you think are mistakes may turn out not to be mistakes. I realized wherever you are, if you make the most of what you've got, you can find a way to keep moving forward.”
• “If you can learn to live with indignities in life, you can go far.”
• “That's how a team works. You help the people around you, and everybody's better off for it. The crazy thing is that most of those guys wanted to be astronauts, too, but they never saw it as a competition. We were on the same team, where you want everyone around you to be as successful as possible, because in some way or another their success will become your success. It's good karma - what goes around comes around.”
• “Right after we launched, I realized that all the training we'd on what to do if something went wrong during launch-how to bail out , how to operate the parachutes, how to make an emergency landing-I realized that all those years of training were completely pointless. It was just filler to make us feel okay about climbing into this thing. Because if it's going down, it's going down. It's either going to be a good day or it's going to be a bad day, and there is no in-between.”
• “The camaraderie that firefighters have, that brotherhood that forms among them - my father was a part of that, and it came from having a shared sense of purpose. He told me that whatever you do in life, it can't just be about making money. It's important that you work to make the world a better place, that you help improve the lives of the people around you.”
• Perspective: Mike shares how looking down on Earth from space changed his perspective and filled him with deep gratitude.

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Nikki Glaser is one of the funniest female voices in comedy today. For nearly two decades at clubs across the country, stand-up comedian, actress, podcaster, and TV host. In July of 2022, she headlined her first HBO comedy special, GOOD CLEAN FILTH, which has been nominated for a Critics Choice Award for Best Comedy Special. Nikki was a standout at the Comedy Central Roasts of Alec Baldwin, Bruce Willis, and Rob Lowe, which led to her guest-hosting JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE! Nikki is currently on her nationwide and international comedy tour, THE GOOD GIRL TOUR, which kicked off in January 2023. Before coming on The Learning Leader Show, Nikki has done in-depth interviews with Howard Stern, Marc Maron, Conan O'Brien, and Joe Rogan.

Notes:

• When Nikki is bombing on stage, she has a great method to reset. "Just say what's true." "Everyone is putting on a mask. Everyone is trying to present in a different way. If you just say what’s true, it’s the funniest.”
• Nikki is a professional “noticer of things.” This is why I think great stand-ups are modern-day philosophers. They notice things and then have a way to share them in a unique and funny way with all of us. We laugh because they’ve said what’s true, but have done it in a way that we haven’t thought of before. As leaders, we should be more aware and notice things more often.
• The writing process:
  • "You need to pay attention constantly to everything to see what could potentially be a joke. Sometimes, in the middle of a conversation with a friend, I'll tell them to hold on because I need to take out my phone and type something funny that I just saw. If you don't write it down, you won't remember it."
• Just get started. What advice for someone who wants to do something? You have to do it. The way to get good is to get going. Nikki has become one of the premier comedians in the world because she’s pushed past her fear and signed up for the things that she’s not sure she can do. Last comic standing at age 20, celebrity roasts, hosting TV shows. She wasn’t necessarily ready for any of the work she agreed to do, but she did it anyway and then figured it out. We all can learn from that.
• Nikki is the voice of Dave Matthews Band radio on Sirius/XM Radio.
• She had terrible stage fright when she was younger. Nikki would have insomnia for weeks before a classroom presentation and shake the entire time.
• Her first TV appearance was on Last Comic Standing when she was 20. Nikki waited in line at open auditions in Chicago in the snow.
• “I always wanted to be a singer. But I think that I’m also someone who’s not very comfortable with sincerity and emotions." (She placed third on her season of The Masked Singer)
  • Nikki is starting her own Taylor Swift cover band.
• Meeting Jerry Seinfeld – “We’re walking through the bowels of the casino, and I get over to his greenroom and he greets me,” Glaser said. “And he was like, ‘I’m such a fan, I’ve watched everything you do. I pull up your YouTube clips all the time whenever I want a laugh. And you’ve got it, girl, you have the voice...’
  • Jerry Seinfeld identifies “taste and discernment” as the ultimate skill of great artists. In every creative field, Seinfeld says, the dividing line between those who succeed and those who fail is the ability to discern good and bad: “It’s one thing to create,” Seinfeld says. “The other is you have to choose. What are we going to do, and what are we not going to do?’ This is a gigantic aspect of artistic survival. It’s kind of unseen, what’s picked and what is discarded, but mastering that is how you stay alive.”

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Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

• Commonalities of leaders who sustain excellence:
  • Curiosity (ask lots of questions)
  • Willingness to try something new
  • Compassion - Assume you don't know others' struggles 
• Bob worked with Ed Catmull (Pixar)
  • He was one of the best at combining curiosity, willingness to try new things, and having compassion for people
• Good Boss vs. Bad Boss
  • Good bosses ask lots of questions and then make the call (John Hennessey, Stanford President) 
• The Jumbo Grocery Stores in Holland created “slow lanes” for those who wanted to talk… They didn’t want efficiency or speed, they wanted a conversation. It’s a good reminder that sometimes we should slow down and enjoy our surroundings and the people we’re with…
• Curiosity and Compassion are skills we can build. Take the experiment where they counted the number of questions versus statements and your talking time. Surround yourself with people who will give you direct feedback about your level of curiosity and compassion… When conversing with someone else, how often are you asking questions versus talking about yourself? Think about that…
• It’s not always right to be efficient… Bob shared the Jerry Seinfeld story… The network was considering bringing in McKinsey to help Jerry become more efficient when making his show. He asked, “Are they funny?” They said, no that’s not what they do. And he said, “Then I don’t need them.” It’s not always supposed to be efficient. Sometimes, the hard way is the right way… To get the best result, it usually is.
• Some things Bob believes (we should all post an essay about what we believe):
  • Indifference is as important as passion.
  • The best leaders know what it feels like to work for them. They overcome the urge to focus attention on powerful superiors rather than their followers
  • The best leaders think and act as trustees of their employees' and customers' time. They are "friction fixers" who hold themselves and others responsible for making the right things easier and the wrong things harder. That might mean, for example, reducing friction by eliminating and revamping meetings.
  • "Am I a success or a failure?" is not useful. It is better to ask “What am I learning.”
• Noam Bardin (from Waze)
• Laszlo Bock - For hiring, "If you need to interview someone more than 4 times, then you must get written approval." This helped speed up the process.
• One of the roles of the leader is to be the editor-in-chief. Great leaders are great communicators. You must become a good writer and speaker if you want to lead. 
• Life/Career advice:
  • Seek variation each day
  • A chief of staff job could lead to big things (if you work for the right person)
  • Be kind