Read more about our team at: https://learningleader.com/team/

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Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

• “Have I ever mentioned how much I f’n love these Phase 2 calls?!? Free cocaine. Straight outta the Dope Factory.” – Geron Stokes
• "Another thing that I found is an intense interest of the subject is indispensable if you are really going to excel. I could force myself to be fairly good in a lot of things, but I couldn’t be really good in anything where I didn’t have an intense interest." – Charlie Munger
• Our Team Values & Behaviors:
  • Curious: practice invested listening 
  • Honest: give direct feedback 
  • Intentional: provide purposeful action
• What is our edge as a TEAM? Our purpose, our values, and our behaviors. We are ACTIVELY doing it.
  • Raw and Simple: We cut through the noise and address the fundamental issues leaders face. Our straightforward approach helps teams confront what they’re not doing and empowers them to take actionable steps toward improvement.
  • In The Arena: We don’t just talk about leadership principles—we live them. Every member of our team actively practices the strategies we coach, ensuring real-world insights and practical solutions.
  • Take Risks: We’re unafraid to push boundaries and challenge conventional thinking. We help leaders take bold actions, even if it means stepping out of their comfort zones or facing tough consequences.
• Love being on a team that "makes the water rise." We all are better for being together on the same team.
• Gratitude – You can’t roll up your sleeves and clench your fists at the same time. Living with gratitude is about recognizing and appreciating what you have. This will change the lens in which you view the world. Geron (overheard from Coach Mike Gundy): “I can’t believe they pay us to do this.” It is so much fun working with this team and the reward is that we get to keep doing it. So grateful.
• The makeup of a great team… They are tough, they have fun together, they care about each other, and they have that gritty humility about them. “Humble enough to listen, gritty enough to apply."
• Our prep calls – The calls before the calls. We learn so much from our preparation together. It's an open forum to share ideas, disagree, talk through stories, and figure out how to make people better. Some of my favorite times.
• How to work with the employee who just won’t fully buy-in. Be curious, not judgemental. Ask questions. LISTEN. Care. As Sherri said, “Nobody wants to sleepwalk through life.” We need to figure out what makes them come alive and help them bring that to the team.

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of The Learning Leader Community

This is Episode #601 with the CEO of Automattic, Matt Mullenweg

Notes:

• What is your creed?
  • I will never stop learning. I won’t just work on things that are assigned to me. I know there’s no such thing as a status quo. I will build our business sustainably through passionate and loyal customers. I will never pass up an opportunity to help out a colleague, and I’ll remember the days before I knew everything. I am more motivated by impact than money, and I know that Open Source is one of the most powerful ideas of our generation. I will communicate as much as possible because it’s the oxygen of a distributed company. I am in a marathon, not a sprint, and no matter how far away the goal is, the only way to get there is by putting one foot in front of another every day. Given time, there is no problem that’s insurmountable.
    • "People need something to believe in." -- That's what draws talent to the company.
• What do you look for when hiring a leader? "The four qualities that you can't train..."
  • Work ethic
  • Taste
  • Integrity
  • Curiosity
• Coaching -- Expose your leaders to coaches.
  • Mirror
  • Ask questions
  • Reflect
• Commonalities of leaders who sustain excellence:
  • Optimism in dark times
  • Player coaches -- They can do the work AND lead others
  • Hire well -- They spot talent, hire, train, develop, and retain them
• Commencement speech -- Encourage others to think bigger. Raise their ambition. From Tyler Cowen -- The high-return activity of raising others’ aspirations - (PhD instead of Masters) At critical moments in time, you can raise the aspirations of other people significantly, simply by suggesting they do something better or more ambitious than what they might have in mind.  It costs you relatively little to do this, but the benefit to them, and to the broader world, may be enormous.
• Matt's Twitter Bio -- I can think. I can wait. I can fast– This comes from Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha. Siddartha said “if you can think, wait, and fast, you can do just about anything.”
• Don’t constrain your mentors by their availability, engage with their work! Jim Simons was a mentor for Matt. Be guided by beauty.
• Will Durant - Health lies in action, and so it graces youth. To be busy is the secret of grace and half the secret of content. Let us ask the gods not for possessions, but for things to do; happiness is in making things rather than in consuming them.”
• Matt's goals -- My goals in life are to democratize publishing, commerce, and messaging. I travel a lot. In 2023 I visited 63 cities, and 18 countries, and my average velocity was 41.9 miles per hour. I was born and raised in Houston, Texas. I write code, poetry, prose, and music, often in support of those three goals, but sometimes just to make the world a more beautiful place. I love taking photos and have posted over 30,000 to this site, hence my common username photomatt.

Read our book, The Score That Matters - https://amzn.to/4ggpYdW

Full shownotes at www.LearningLeader.com

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

We are celebrating episode #600 with Keith Hawk and AJ Hawk

• Tell a story about an awesome leader you worked with...
  • Ron Ullery – I’m a firm believer that people either live up to or down to your expectations. And most people set their expectations for themselves too low. So it’s on you as a leader to raise those expectations for them. Demand more because you know they can do more.
  • Tyler Cowen – The high return activity of raising others’ aspirations. Encouraged someone who was going for an MBA to get a Phd. At critical moments in time, you can raise the aspirations of other people significantly, especially when they are relatively young, simply by suggesting they do something better or more ambitious than what they might have in mind.  It costs you relatively little to do this, but the benefit to them, and to the broader world, may be enormous.
• What helps you give a great speech? How do you prepare?
  • Ask, "What do I want my audience to do after seeing my speech?" Interview members of their team. Learn their terminology, challenges, what's going well, what's not, what are their goals, etc...
  • Practice, practice, practice. Say it out loud. Rehearse so that once you're on stage, you can let it rip.
• What did the best teams you’ve been on do differently than the average teams? 
  • The best players on the best teams always practiced the hardest. They set the tone for the work ethic of the team. They chose extra work. They set high standards and they demanded others raise their level of performance.
  • The best teams hung out together outside of work. AJ was a Captain of the Green Bay Packers Super Bowl-winning team in 2010-2011... That team regularly hung out together outside of working hours, shared lots of meals, and knew each other extremely well. They trusted each other.
• Tell a story about how you’ve shown resilience… Failed and what did you do next?
  • The Miami/Ben Roethlisberger story - The world doesn't care what you think you deserve. The primary goal is focused on adding value to others' lives.
  • AJ shared a story from his sophomore year at Ohio State. His defensive coordinator, Coach Mark Dantonio sat with him 1 on 1 watching each play of the Michigan game. A day he’ll never forget for how hard it was, how upset he was, and how determined he was to respond. AJ never lost to Michigan again in his career after that.
  • Pistol shared a story about the time when the new CEO wanted to bring in his own head of sales (which was Pistol's job). Instead of complaining and leaving the company, he got creative and offered a new idea and a great way to leverage all the skills and knowledge he developed from being at the company for so long. It is amazingly rare for the head of sales to stay at a company after he’s been replaced. But he thrived in the role and made the company better.
• Front line obsession – Pistol’s story of the legendary Mert McGill going to the Supreme Court to demo LexisNexis and earning the most important sale in the company's history. I love stories about leaders proactively taking action and not being afraid to do the work.
• Update since Episode #500:
  • Built the Learning Leader Team -- Officially working full-time with Sherri Coale, Brook Cupps, Geron Stokes, and Eli Leiker. We are working with leaders from a wide variety of companies throughout the U.S.
• The magic of the Pat McAfee Show -- They are unafraid. They say what others are thinking but are too afraid to say. They are authentic and fully themselves. They have great role clarity. Everyone knows and embraces their roles and excels at them.
• The End of the Podcast Draft – You’re stranded on a deserted island. You have one iPad. On that iPad has 5 TV shows (and nothing else). Which shows do you choose? This is a competition with a clear winner and losers. The object is to win the draft. 

Read our book, The Score That Matters https://amzn.to/3XxHi7p

Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

• Sustaining Excellence
  • Good get at getting stuff done
  • Make a change from an expert to a learning machine
• Apply to be in my Learning Leader Circle
• Leadership is:
  • Teaching – sharing with others what they need to know, how to do something
  • Mentoring - Help them see the world from our eyes
  • Coaching - Help them see the world through their eyes. To do that, we must be good listeners, ask questions, and challenge them
• Follow what’s interesting to you… To figure out your passion, you have to do stuff. That’s the only way to fully learn what you’re good at and what you want to do. Have to be willing to try, fail, keep going, and figure out where you excel and what you’re curious about. That’s how you find your passion and do it for a living.
• They set up leadership dyads and triads at the Mayo Clinic. Group up a doctor, a nurse, and an administrator to help make decisions. This way you gain the perspective from different angles, people, and experiences.
• You have to context-shift radically, from an ER to a boardroom to a coaching session. Not everybody can wear all those hats, and yet Rick does it really well (with grace and humility).
• What’s the difference between a coach and a mentor?
  • When you mentor: You share your experience & subject-matter expertise. You help a colleague see the world & its potential—through your eyes.
  • When you coach: You help your colleague make sense of their world—from their perspective.
• Effective leaders:
  • seek diverse perspectives
  • recognize the bias of individual opinion
  • make decisions methodically
• Ineffective leaders:
  • make reflexive decisions
  • amplify the thoughts of a few
  • see alternate perspectives as obstacles
• Hiring -- What are the must-haves for a leadership role?
  • Knowledge
  • Fit with the team
  • Collaborate
  • Align with the values
• How to run 1:1s
  • Consent to an agenda
  • Ask useful questions
  • LISTEN
• Career and Life Advice:
  • Ask Who, How, What, Why
  • Seek multiple perspectives
• Atul Gawande's Checklist Manifesto is useful.

Full Show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

Read our book: The Score That Matters - https://amzn.to/3AAPyds

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

Ep # 598: Sam Parr

Notes

• Sam’s mantra (which he has tattooed on his thigh): “Bold. Fast. Fun.” It’s really hard to beat someone who moves fast, takes risks, and has fun doing it.
• Think big, but you have to get started. We see Hustle Con and the 2,500 people and think that’s just how it always was. It started as a small book club, then a small event that made a little money... And YEARS later it’s HustleCon which helped launch The Hustle, which then eventually sold for 10’s of millions. We have to get started and keep going.
• The most important skill set (according to Sam) is the ability to convince people of something. Persuading others. You have to believe in it yourself, be a clear thinker, and know how to communicate that to others to make them believe in it too. This skill will help you accomplish a lot.
• Writing – Write like you talk. Writing clarifies your thinking…
• Think in headlines – Thinking in headlines will make you a clearer thinker. It will help you see how an idea should be framed, identify different ways to tell your story, and show you the soul of your topic.
• Back against the wall - “I firmly believe in putting my back against the wall.” Deadlines, pressure, and harsh goals will pull out the best from you.
• Copy by Hand – Sam copied the best sales letters of all time by hand. Let the writing you admire pass through your fingers. This method is called copywork.
• What Sam learned backstage at his events with rich people/CEOs - "They weren't smarter than me." We're all just figuring it out as we go.: "
• Cold emails -- Work that muscle. AirBnB cold email story:
  • "I cold emailed this guy named Brian. And he had a company called Air Bed and Breakfast. I said, 'Hey, this sounds like a cool thing. I want to interview. I think I can help make it better by doing a few things.' And they said, 'Are you in the Bay Area?' 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm there.' And he said, 'Alright, great. Come to the office on Monday.' So I booked the flight and I flew out and got an interview there. That's how I got introduced to startups. And then I eventually moved to San Francisco." 
• Sports - Love them because they are objective. The time doesn't lie. Same with business. The numbers don't lie.
  • You know you're going to feel pain (before running a 400m), but you do it anyway and push through it. That's what makes them great.
• How to raise tough kids? "I'm scared. I think about this all the time. Will need to remove the things that make my life easy like all the service providers have now."
• Hiring - Freaks, weirdos. The others. Want people passionate about something. Anything. Bottom 4th of the resume.
  • Be skilled at something, not a generalist.
  • Writing/communication - No typos. Clear writing = clear thinking. We want clear thinkers. Especially for leadership roles.
• Fame - "I don't want that anymore, but I still want to be taken seriously by the big boys. I'm still insecure about building something other than a media company."
• Advice: "Be a fucking animal." Don't let anything stop you.
• Excellence - "Like your shit. Enjoy it. Must have endurance. Be like a cockroach and stay alive. Survive. Don't quit. Don't be vanilla. Do dope shit."

Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes

Read our book, The Score That Matters https://amzn.to/4dNLqoH

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

Episode #597 -- Daniel Pink

• How to give a great townhall speech:
  • Begin with the end in mind. What do you want the people in the audience to do?
  • Prepare, don’t wing it. Be ready. Practice
  • Sound like you. Don’t try to sound like Steve Jobs or someone else. When you’re on stage or presenting at work, sound like you. Be genuine.
• Ideas for persuading others:
  • Make it easy for others to say yes
  • Social proof - Show that others are doing it (this is why companies put the logos of their customers on their website)
  • Know when to appeal to the head or the heart. Typically, it’s the heart and emotion when speaking to those who work for you. And it’s your head when speaking to your boss. This is nuanced though and not black and white.
• Remember, there are two types of people: Those who make their boss's life easier or harder. Be the former.
• Pitching... Miles Teller in the TV show The Offer. Instead of trying to convince the mob boss to allow him to make the movie, he offered to show him the script and collaborate with him. The best pitches invite others to be co-creators.
• The motivation framework:
  • Autonomy: The desire to direct our own lives. Giving people more control over their work or tasks can enhance motivation and performance.
  • Mastery: The urge to get better at something that matters. People are more motivated when they see progress and can develop their skills.
  • Purpose: The feeling that what we do is important and has meaning. Connecting tasks or jobs to a larger cause can be a powerful motivator.
• "If you're not confident, don't be self-deprecating."
• To Sell is Human - "We're all in sales... Convincing, cajoling, persuading."
• Make it easy for people to say yes... That's what the best salespeople do.
• Social Cues -- From Robert Cialdini - People look around for cues. That's why companies put logos of their customers on their websites. So others look and say, "Oh, they are with them, I guess we can be too."
• Know when to appeal to the head or heart. "When managing up, it's usually their head. When managing down, it's usually their heart."
• Processing fluency - Make it sticky. Memorable. Rhyme. Repetition. Repetition. Repetition.

Read our book, The Score That Matters https://amzn.to/3XxHi7p

Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

Notes:

• Arthur grew up with one goal - To be the world’s greatest French horn player. He learned that striving for something was fungible across all fields of life. It was a great laboratory for learning.
• Intrinsic vs Extrinsic motivation - Intrinsic motivation comes from an internal desire to accomplish a goal, while extrinsic motivation comes from external rewards and praise. 
• "Misery comes from excessive auto-focus." Misery comes from thinking about yourself too much and not enough about helping others.
• The curse of the strive... All happiness comes from progress.
  • The arrival is not the goal.
• How to be happy while striving:
  • Be grateful - Write it down. Do it daily.
  • Always look to help others.
• "All research is 'me-search.'"
• The Four Idols:
  •  Money, Power, Pleasure, and Prestige/Fame. We talked through ours… What are yours?
• The Four Focus areas to help with happiness
  • Faith
  • Family
  • Friendship
  • Serving Others
• Define your purpose. Write it down. Understand why you're here. Mine = "To inspire others to value and pursue excellence." Too many people are ok with mediocrity. We should strive for more.
• Oprah Winfrey is the same person everywhere she goes. She is genuine and authentic to all.
• Arthur's column helped Oprah stay positive and happy through the pandemic. So much so that she called him and asked to meet. And eventually, write a book together. That book became a #1 best-seller.
• #1 Life Hack: "Don't lie ever."
• Arthur is jacked (in great shape).
  • Taking care of your body helps with unhappiness.
  • Wake up 1.5 hours before dawn. Work out hard. Lift weights. Do challenging cardio.
• Life/Career Advice:
  • Don't worry too much about the first job out of college. Don't sacrifice relationships.
  • Bring love to every relationship and be great at what you do. Be excellent.
    • Emanate love and show excellence.

Read our book, The Score That Matters https://amzn.to/3XxHi7p

Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com 

This episode is supported by Insight Global. Insight Global is a staffing company dedicated to empowering people. Please CLICK HERE for premier staffing and talent.

• “I looked at these guys (homeless) and demanded nothing but pure excellence from them. And it was almost as if they were waiting for someone to do that.” Set high expectations for people. Believe in them. Care for them. Support them. Love them. And watch what happens. This is leadership.
• Nobody runs by themselves. What a great life motto. We all need people. Anne believes in the importance of community and doing hard things together.
• Her mindset was fostered, in sometimes complicated ways, by her childhood home life, she says. At age 16, her parents divorced after her father gambled away their family savings. To cope, Mahlum started running and became hyper-focused on the idea of controlling her own life.
• When others are playing defense, go on offense. When others are scared, get aggressive (easier said than done). Anne did it.
• "Running is the vehicle we're using to create community and positive reinforcement."
• "If you want to make change, you have to help others see that they can do it. You can't force it on them."
• How to build a great non-profit:
  • Identity - Each group had team names
  • Need team leaders, people to map out logistics, and volunteer coordinators
  • Need to make day 1 incredible. Launch BIG.
  • Target the right people - In Anne's case, it was executives who were runners... Decision makers who appreciated running.
• Goals - Work backwards. Set a date and then do whatever it takes to hit that launch date.
• solidcore -- Anne thought big from the beginning. She was opening her second location almost the same time her first location went live. She always wanted to scale it and thought about it from Day 1.
• Important to hire great coaches. They needed a great personality and had to make every member feel welcome. Learn everyone's name. Say their name.
  • Anne learned from How to Win Friends and Influence People
• Risk-Taker - Step into uncertainty. That's how you build confidence.
  • "I always bet on myself."
• Action builds confidence. Push past the uncertainty. Create evidence for yourself. Make the things that were previously uncomfortable for you more comfortable now by taking action. When others are playing defense, go on offense. That creates your edge…
• Anne's plan was always to sell Solidcore... Her strength is in bringing concepts to life and building communities, rather than sustaining them over time. The same month she exited the company, she opened her next venture, a New York-based fitness studio chain called Ambition.

Read our book, The Score That Matters https://amzn.to/3XxHi7p

Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com 

This episode is supported by Insight Global. Insight Global is a staffing company dedicated to empowering people. Please CLICK HERE for premier staffing and talent.

• Ask deep questions – A deep question asks about someone’s values, beliefs, judgments, or experiences, rather than just facts.
  • A deep question asks people to talk about how they feel.
  • Asking a deep question should feel like sharing.
• NASA listened to how people laughed and if they possessed a genuine matching quality. Not performative or inauthentic, but people who connect with others by matching their energy.
• The 4 Rules of a learning conversation:
  • Pay attention to what type of conversation is occurring
  • Share your goals, ask what others are seeking
  • Ask about others' feelings and share your own
  • Explore if identities are important to this discussion
• The How Do We Feel conversation: What can we learn about listening from Nicholas Epley? (Psychology Professor). (Everyone knows how to listen deeply. If a podcast or something is interesting, nobody struggles to listen). Epley didn’t teach them how to listen. He urged them to have more interesting and meaningful conversations. To talk about feelings. When we talk about feelings, something magical happens. Other people can’t help but listen to us.
• Practical actions to take:
  • Ask Deep Questions: Instead of sticking to surface-level topics, ask questions that invite people to share their values, beliefs, or significant experiences. For instance, if someone mentions they are a doctor, ask them what inspired them to pursue medicine.
  • Prove You're Listening: Demonstrate that you are actively listening by asking follow-up questions or repeating back what the other person has said to ensure understanding.
  • Match Emotional Tone: Pay attention to the other person's emotional state and match it appropriately. If someone is sharing something emotional, respond with empathy rather than attempting to offer solutions immediately.
  • Understand the Social Identity: Be mindful of the social identities that might be important in a conversation. This awareness can enhance understanding and connection by showing respect for the experiences and viewpoints shaped by those identities.
• Charles shared that understanding whether a conversation is emotional, social, or practical is crucial, especially in leadership and educational settings. Teachers, for instance, are taught to ask students if they want to be helped, heard, or hugged—a reminder that recognizing the intent behind communications is key to providing appropriate support and connection.
• Time Stamps
• 01:06 Educational Choices and Parental Guidance
• 02:03 Reporting from Iraq: A Journalist's Perspective
• 03:41 The Bike Messenger Experience
• 05:47 The Harvard Study and Its Impact
• 09:23 Felix Sagala: The Art of Deep Communication
• 13:30 Mastering the Skills of Super Communication
• 20:25 Connecting with Strangers: Nicholas Epley's Experiment
• 21:20 Emotional Intelligence in Space: NASA's Challenge
• 24:51 The Matching Principle: Authentic vs. Fake
• 32:27 Insights from The Big Bang Theory Writers
• 35:36 The Art of Learning Conversations

Read our book, The Score That Matters https://amzn.to/3XxHi7p

Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com 

This episode is supported by Insight Global. Insight Global is a staffing company dedicated to empowering people. Please CLICK HERE for premier staffing and talent.

Episode #593: Kim Campbell - Contingency Planning, Responding to Adversity, Earning Trust & Respect, Flying in the Face of Fear, and How To Run a Debrief

• Aviate, Navigate, Communicate - "Aviate, navigate, communicate" is a fundamental principle in aviation that pilots learn early in flight training. It's a priority order that helps pilots stay focused and in control, even when they're under pressure or distracted: 
  • Aviate: Keep the plane flying
  • Navigate: Figure out where you are and where you're going
  • Communicate: Talk to air traffic control (ATC) or someone else as needed
• On March 20, 2003, Kim wrote letters to her loved ones in case she died in battle.
• Prepare, practice, and plan for contingencies. My college football coach, the late great, Terry Hoeppner used to always say, have a plan, work the plan, plan for the unexpected. As leaders, it’s on us to prepare, practice, and plan for contingencies. You don’t have to get ready if you stay ready.
• I love the way Kim’s dad helped support her dream to be a fighter pilot. If you want to do this, you have to put in the work. Run hills, and do pull-ups every time you go to the bathroom. He didn’t just tell her you can do whatever you want… He created opportunities for Kim to do the necessary work to achieve what she wanted.
• Kim’s telling of the story of how she was hit and how she responded. An amazing example of responding in the face of fear, dealing with adversity in a calm, poised manner, and making a tough decision. Kim’s training and her attitude is what set her apart and saved her life.
• Response to Rejection: Initially Kim was rejected by the Air Force Academy because of a low SAT score. In response, instead of quitting and moving on, she wrote a letter to them every week stating why they should accept her… Which they eventually did.
• Dealing with fear: What's most important is what we do in the face of fear. We can't freeze. We must take action.
• The Debrief:
  • Check your rank and ego at the door.
  • Write all the objectives down. Next to each one, grade it a plus or a minus. Find the root causes of each mistake.
  • What lessons can we learn from our mistakes?
  • What will we change for our next mission based on what we learned?
  • Share lessons learned beyond that room.
• Johnny Bravo - Be humble, approachable, and credible. That's how you earn trust and respect and inspire others to follow.

Read our book, The Score That Matters https://amzn.to/3XxHi7p

Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com 

This episode is supported by Insight Global. Insight Global is a staffing company dedicated to empowering people. Please CLICK HERE for premier staffing and talent.

Notes:

• Commonalities of excellent coaches:
  • Not defensive
  • Respond well to feedback
  • Ability to learn
• "Leadership can't be taught but it can be learned."
• Coaching is not therapy, but it can be therapy-adjacent.
  • It's not telling people what to do and it's not just asking questions. It's a combination of all of them.
• There is ample research on the benefits of writing. It clarifies your thinking.
• The questions to ask someone who might need an executive coach:
  • Why do you want a coach?
  • Why now?
  • What do you hope to get out of it?
• What do great leaders do?
  • First, do no harm.
  • Walk the talk.
  • Be an embodiment of the culture.
  • Have high standards
    • Take risks
    • Coach people up
    • Train people
  • "Coaching is accomplishment through others."
• "Feedback is not a gift."
  • Feedback is data. Signal and noise.
    • Signal - Important and good.
    • Noise - Byproduct of someone's distorted lens.
• "Praise, Criticism, Praise (PCP) is terrible." Don't give the compliment sandwich. It's disingenuous.
• How leaders best overcome adversity – The most critical skill is "adaptive capacity..." It’s composed of two primary qualities: the ability to grasp context, and hardiness.
• Coaching - Asking evocative questions, ensuring the other person feels heard, and actively conveying empathy remain the foundations of coaching.
  • Connect: Establish and renew the interpersonal connection, followed by an open-ended question.
  • Reflect: Having elicited a response, reflect back the essence of the other person's comments.
  • Direct: Focus their attention on a particular aspect of their response that invites further exploration.
• Support and Challenge - A client once said, “It feels like you’re always in my corner, but you never hesitate to challenge me.”
• Master the Playbook, Throw it Away - Coaching involves a continuous and cyclical process of learning, unlearning, and relearning.
• Power Dynamics - The longer I coach, the more I appreciate and value the work of Jeff Pfeffer, a leading scholar on power. philosopher Ernest Becker: "If you are wrong about power, you don't get a chance to be right about anything else."
• "Meaningful coaching is always an emotionally intimate experience, no matter what’s being discussed. In part this is a function of the context: two people talking directly to each other with no distractions... Intimacy in a coaching relationship also results from a willingness to 'make the private public'--to share with another person the thoughts and feelings that we usually keep to ourselves... And yet an essential factor that makes such intimacy possible is a clear set of boundaries defining the relationship, which creates an inevitable and necessary sense of distance..."

Read our book, The Score That Matters https://amzn.to/3XxHi7p

Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com 

This episode is supported by Insight Global. Insight Global is a staffing company dedicated to empowering people. Please CLICK HERE for premier staffing and talent.

Ryan Holiday is one of the world's bestselling living philosophers. His books like The Obstacle Is the Way, Ego Is the Enemy, The Daily Stoic, and the #1 New York Times bestseller Stillness Is the Key appear in more than 40 languages and have sold more than 5 million copies. His latest book (a #1 NY Times Best-Seller) is called Right Thing, Right Now. This conversation was recorded in person at Ryan's bookstore, The Painted Porch, which sits on historic Main St in Bastrop, Texas.

Notes:

• June 16, 2024 – Birthday and Father’s Day. How does stoicism impact you as a dad? “What’s at stake today is how they remember you 20 years from now.”
• Choose a North Star -- Choosing a North Star can function as a compass professionally, personally, and morally.
  • Most people don’t do the work to figure out what their North Star is… Most people default to what others do, and then they end up comparing themselves to others.
  • Ryan Holiday's North Star? Writing...
• Pay the taxes of life gladly: Not just from the government. Annoying people are a tax on being outside your house. Delays are a tax on travel. Haters are a tax on having a YouTube channel. There’s a tax on everything in life. You can whine. Or you can pay them gladly.
• Oscar Wilde wrote in The Portrait of Dorian Grey “The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly. That is what each of us is here for.” —- What are you here for?
• Stoicism - "A stoic doesn't control what happens but they focus on how to respond to what happened. The virtues of stoicism are courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom."
• Build a coaching tree -- Popovich reference - and his coaching tree - how do we get better at making a goal to build a forest of leaders? What’s interesting about Pop’s coaching tree is there is a huge diversity of what he’s created. What’s interesting is the coaches who have learned from him are all different - they’re not replicas of Coach Popovich. 
  • RC Buford (GM of the San Antonio Spurs) said, "We have a good coaching tree. That's what we do here. In all roles."
  • A shocking number of players have decided to stay in San Antonio, so much so that they have an alumni locker room in their practice facility because they choose to stick around afterward.
  • "I love the idea of “hey we’re an organization, and we want to win, but our ultimate job is to bring good people in, and bring them better, and learn from them along the way."
  • "We don’t talk enough about the bad coaching trees… ultimately you measure greatness about how replicable their system is and others can take it and use it as well. Don’t just judge people on their wins, but on their coaching tree… or lack thereof.
  • When you’re hiring someone, can you both be on the same page - and there’s clarity. When I get invited to something, who am I bringing? Or when it’s a specific project, who on my team will crush it with me or on their own? Understanding that this will be a tour of duty.
• Robert Greene - "Robert knew I wanted to be a writer and he knew what I wanted to do, and it allowed me to realize that he was letting me do this to understand how the whole writing process works. If somebody wants to work with someone else, what’s the best way to reach out to that person, to try and get your foot in the door."
• Mentors: (Advice to mentees) "Don’t say 'I’ll do whatever, or I’ll do anything,' I don’t need anything done, I have very specific things that need to be done. Don’t present them with the problem of you…. Present them with the problem they have and several ideas that you have to potentially help. Be specific and present a solution to a potential problem that maybe they haven’t thought about yet."
• Keep your hands clean - the difference between Patrick Reed and Rory McIlroy.
• Be kind — JM Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan said in 1902, “Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight? Always try to be a little kinder than is necessary.”
• Discipline is a “me” virtue. Justice is a “we” virtue.
• Make "Good" Trouble - "If you got into this to gain a lot of fans, you’ll never do anything to lose fans….. you don’t have the fans, the fans have you… it’s the other way around. There’s a balance, I don’t want to speak up on every divisive issue, but at the same time if you’re not speaking up on things that you think are important, and you keep silent, then you’re creating a form of death, and you’re hurting other people that could potentially learn from your words and thoughts… You have to think about how you want to use your platform and the authority you have. It’s easy to say politicians live this way, but when’s the last time you spoke up on something you didn’t agree on?"
• President Truman - "An incredible example of an ordinary person doing extraordinary things… the last president to not have a college degree. He educated himself and had core values and a sense that he was obligated by the constitution, human decency, and trying to do what was right. He had a strong moral code that guided him in difficult stances, and he had confidence and security. When we think of Presidents and Generals who have outward accomplishments, what I love about Truman is that he watched everyone else steal millions of dollars and he continued to pay off his bankruptcy debts. It doesn’t matter that everyone else is doing it… I’m not going to do it."
• Goal Setting - "I don’t set any goals…” I just do the work every day, our goals are usually outcome specific and they’re rooted in what are other people going to think about the outcome of this. If I have a goal, they’re not geared towards a win or an outcome… the goal is to wake up and do… and I do it daily."
• The desk where we recorded: Was owned by Joan Didion... "Objects of history get me excited. My vice is I collect historically significant things, at some point, I’m going to re-sell the table… now other people have sat at it, and so I’ll probably re-sell it and donate the money… ”significant objects”.. a guy buys a random piece of junk on eBay, and then he’d have a writer write a story about the item and then they’d resell it and people would pay more money for it."
• Why is his publisher having him re-do the entire audio for the 10th anniversary of The Obstacle is The Way (instead of Ryan just reading the updated parts): "My voice is ten years older. A lot has happened in those ten years."

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Notes:

Nat Eliason studied philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University. Since he started publishing his writing in 2013, his work has been read by millions of people and spun out multiple businesses ranging from a marketing agency to a cafe. He’s the author of Crytpo Confidential: Winning and Losing Millions in the New Frontier of Finance.

• How to make our days more memorable?
  • Throw parties with 3-4 different phases.
  • When taking your loved one out on a date, have 3 different parts. Implement homework for life. Write down the stories of each day. This helps you remember them more.
• Do Hard Things – Our self-image is composed of historical evidence of our abilities. The more hard things you push yourself to do, the more competent you will see yourself to be.
  • "Build up your identity of being a capable person."
• "Money corrupts quickly."
• It’s never the right time. Any time you catch yourself saying “Oh it’ll be a better time later,” you’re probably just scared. Or unclear on what to do. There is never a right time for the big things in life.
• Moonwalking with Einstein -- Memory competitions.
• Die with Zero -- Create memory dividends (Bill Perkins). Be in the moment.
• Homework for Life (Matthew Dicks).
• Nat's birthday this year was the first time he ever felt sad (on a birthday)... Why? "It feels like it's going by quicker than it ever has."
  • Create time with texture? "Mine workers have time with texture. I'm not sure that's memorable or desirable."
• Crypto Confidential is the roller coaster story of getting rich, going broke, scamming, and getting scammed. It’s a narrative of Nat’s personal journey through the world of crypto, but it’s also a revealing look at exactly how the crypto sausage gets made—and how we can all be more educated participants during the next inevitable bull run.
• Money can buy happiness. So long as you spend it on upgrading and expanding the things that make you happy, instead of using it to play status games or on fleeting experiences.

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Notes: 

• How to create a learning organization - Set the tone at the top. The senior leader needs to model this behavior. Create peer groups at your place of work. Team learning is important. Give people the responsibility to lead training sessions. Support your teammates. Pay for them to go to conferences, hire coaches, and learn.
• Commonalities among leaders who sustain excellence: They are curious. They have no confirmation bias. They have high standards. They respect all members of their team. They have a vision and goals and they share them with their team.
• GPS - Goals, Perspectives, Strategy.
• Process -- Full transparency, one meeting per week. Start with a story about a member at each meeting.
• "If you know what to do, what would you do?"
• Help high-integrity leaders make good decisions for their company, family, and community.
• Hiring "must-haves"
  • They believe in the mission
  • They don't think they're better than others
  • They listen
  • They collaborate well
• Advice:
  • Give back what you can to help others.
  • Be generous.
  • Learn.
  • Get away from bad bosses.
  • Be balanced.
• The power of being part of a peer accountability group – I’ve learned firsthand the impact this has on leaders through my Learning Leader Circles.
• The differences between leading, managing, and coaching, and why you must do all three...
  • Leader - Set direction, make sense of the outside world
  • Manager - Know the details
  • Coach - Help you activate what you already know

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• Rejection is a learned skill. Tara has gone through rejection therapy. Go out and ask for something crazy big. Get comfortable with being rejected. Hearing the word no. Go big.
• Confidence is about keeping promises to yourself. Create evidence for yourself.
• Create magical moments for the people you’re leading. Show them how much you care for them. The small touches are a big deal. The magic is in the small details.
• How to have fun at your company: Fun (and culture) cannot be outsourced. You cannot delegate “culture carriers." You (the leader) are the ultimate culture carrier. It has to come from you.
• "Ask for money, get advice. Ask for advice, get money."
• "If it's too easy, you get soft."
• It's important to set high expectations for the people you're leading. "The boss I respected the most was a hard ass and very demanding."
• The difference between nice and kind:
  • Nice = Soft, easy.
  • Kind = Set high expectations. Hold you accountable to them. You're better long-term being kind.
• Tara's "must-haves" when hiring a leader:
  • Raw intelligence - How quickly can you learn? Must be a clear and critical thinker.
  • Fantastic communicator
  • Intensity, drive, hunger
  • Sense of humor - Need to be able to laugh and have fun.
• Values:
  • Business owner
  • Kid at heart
  • Design thinking - Craft for the end-user
  • Peak performance
  • Be human
• Keys to a great off-site retreat
  • Craft for the people
  • High energy
  • Sense of connection - get to know each other
  • Peak performance workbook - set goals
  • Small touches - personalized gifts for the team (like picture frames with personalized pictures in them)
  • Create magical moments to connect
  • Focus on the arrival - make it special
  • Eliminate loneliness - Assigned seats, name tags, conversation prompts (especially helps introverts)
• Tara worked at LuluLemon while in grad school at Stanford. It was a useful learning experience for her. She worked for a world-class manager.
• What Tara learned from her parents:
  • Leadership is about modeling the right behaviors.
• Advice - "If you want to be extraordinary, you can't fit in."
• "Give way more than everybody else."
• "Follow great people and be around greatness."
• Tara created a 50-slide PowerPoint while going for a role as a part-time content writer. Going above and beyond for that leader left an impression and that woman who Tara impressed remains a mentor, investor, and friend to this day more than a decade later. You never know what will happen if you consistently over-deliver for people.

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Notes: Daniel Negreanu has earned over 52 million dollars at the poker table, which ranks him as the highest-earning player in live tournament poker history. He’s won 6 world series of poker bracelets, two world poker tour titles, and Daniel was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame in 2014. He’s often referred to as “Kid Poker” and is known for his charismatic personality at the table.

• Commonalities among the greatest poker players in the world:
  • Self-Awareness
  • Humility
• In order to avoid criticism, “say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.”
• Daniel is obsessed with the Rocky movies and the lessons learned from each one. Rocky 3 - Don’t get complacent. Rocky 4 - It’s heart versus machine. Rocky Balboa - But it ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!
• The luck factor... Dealing with things outside of our control. A victim versus an owner mentality. Victims will complain, give up, sulk, be passive-aggressive, or procrastinate. Owners will seek solutions, take action, or ask for help. Victims will focus on things they cannot control, while owners will focus on things they can control.
  • "A big mistake is a beautiful opportunity." It's easier to be a victim and not take responsibility.
  • "Failure builds muscle."
• "I don't care what others think anymore. I do not have that fear."
• Rounders (the movie) is the greatest poker movie of all time.
• Why Daniel is inspired by Sylvester Stallone...
  • He's not complacent
  • In Rocky IV it was heart versus machine. Rocky (Sly) was all heart.
• Outspoken and direct – “If you have a problem with me, text me. And if you don't have my number then you don't know me well enough to have a problem with me.” – Christian Bale
• Phil Ivey said about Daniel: “I can't think of too many people who have done more for the game of poker than Daniel.”
• When was Daniel happiest? “I would say in very high-stress situations. During the World Series of Poker main event [in 2015], when I actually was eliminated in 11th place and felt a gut punch.”
• Early life – Be Rich – At an early age, Daniel was ambitious: "From the age of four, I thought I'd be rich. I told my mom I'd build a house out of Popsicle sticks and move to California."
• Sharing both the wins and the losses with his fans: “This is what holding yourself accountable looks like. I could lie, right…or B. I could just not share this with you but then that wouldn’t be authentic and real, right? I’m not just going to share my winning years, I’m going to share my losing years."
• Daniel is willing to go outside of his comfort zone... Head's up matches with Doug Polk (a head's up specialist): On July 29, 2020, after a years-long feud, Daniel publicly accepted a challenge to a high-stakes grudge match with Doug Polk. They played 25,000 hands of No-Limit Texas Hold'em at $200/$400 stakes. The duel ended on February 4, 2021, with Polk winning approximately $1,200,000 over 25,000 hands. Then in 2023, Daniel got a rematch with Doug and beat him for $200K and a championship belt.

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Notes:

• What Erika learned from her dad: “He loved his work and was so full from it. Three weeks before he died he was doing Zoom calls with students from the ER even though it was beyond unnecessary and impractical to do so. If you love what you do it can add so much dimension to your life and the lives of others. He liked people and to learn from them. There’s something to learn from everybody. And the best control was no control - let things happen and learn from them & adapt.
• Career advice: Know what your company is paying you to do. And the better you make your boss look, the better it will be for you. Find problems and clear the path for your boss. Make their life easier. Make them look good. That’s the role when you have a boss.
• Must-Haves When she’s making a hiring decision:
  • Be able to share stories of how you’ve gone for something that failed, and learned
  • Be curious, ask thoughtful questions
  • Do research on the company. CARE. 
  • Test the product. Be able to demonstrate that you know what it does.
  • Bring a point of view. Articulate what you could bring to the role and how you could make the company better.
• Joanne— I wanted to be you until I realized I couldn’t, so I decided to be me. I studied you for twelve years. You are the architect of all my work dreams, and you are the scaffolding I built myself on. You put force into my nature, and for that I am so grateful.
• Getting the Barstool CEO role: She earned the job over 74 male candidates. “I wanted this job because they were considered too rogue, too untouchable, too badly behaved, too unproven. Dave Portnoy (the founder) was powerful, seemingly unmanageable, and volatile.”
• In 2012, when Chernin bought a majority stake in Barstool, the company was worth $12 million. You sold it to Penn Entertainment seven years later for $550 million.
• Make Your Own Luck – When Erika was nearly graduating college, she applied for an internship at Converse no less than 45 times. She never got an interview. Why? “I didn’t do anything unique enough, passionate enough, or memorable enough to deserve a chance at the job.”
• “It was a heart attack every day for nine years,” Erika said of being Barstool’s CEO.
• As the first-ever CEO of media magnate Barstool Sports, Ayers Badan led the company through explosive growth (+5000% in revenue and significantly more in audience), expanding the company from a regional blog to a national powerhouse brand and media company. During her 9 years steering the company, Barstool became a top ten podcasting publisher in the US, with the world's #1 sports, hockey, golf, and music podcasts, and a top 6 brand globally on TikTok.

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Notes:

• John Quincy Adams once said, “Gratitude… when it takes possession of the bosom, fills the soul to overflowing and scarce leaves room for any other sentiment or thought.”
• Ask yourself the question, “What good shall I do today?” When you’re upset that your social media post didn’t get as many likes as you thought it would stop and think, ‘What good shall I do today?” It can reframe how you approach others and be more servant-based (which is a mark of a great leader)
• The fox mindset versus the hedgehog mindset. A hedgehog has a single lens. It’s more rigid thinking. A fox sees the world through many different lenses. It’s more flexible and adaptive. That is a theme of this conversation. Be open, be less judgemental, and be more curious about the way others view the world. “The older I get, the less certain I get of my opinions.”
• “It's easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than think your way into a new way of acting.” AJ shared that when he was dedicated to the thank you project even on a bad day when he was focused on saying thank you, his mind eventually caught up to his body.
• Change Your Mind – the founding fathers did this a lot. Daniel Kahneman said, “No one enjoys being wrong, but I do enjoy having been wrong because it means I am now less wrong than I was before.”
• Be Humble In Your Opinions – Ben Franklin told a short parable. He said, there was a “French lady, who, in a dispute with her sister said, I don’t know how it happens, sister, but I meet nobody but myself that is always in the right. The point is that we are all that French lady. We all believe we have a monopoly on the truth. (Remind yourself that you’re wrong sometimes)
  • Flexibility of mind: Many of the Founding Fathers were open to the idea that they might be wrong, and more willing to change their minds than leaders are today. At the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin summed up this open-mindedness: “The older I grow the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment.”
• Think Slow – There are parts of modern life that would benefit from an enforced speed limit. We need fewer hot takes and more cold takes. We need more slow thinking. Writing in depth letters by hand forced ideas to be more nuanced. Thumb-texting acronyms have the opposite effect. Slow down consumption. Forced self to read the news just once a day.
  • The value of slow thinking: For the year, AJ wrote a letter with a quill instead of using social media or texts. It was a revelation. It led to a less impulsive, slower style of thinking – a waiting period for his thoughts.
• Embrace Virtue – In the founding era, virtue was a cherished ideal (now it’s often used in the phrase virtue signaling which is not a compliment). “A virtuous person puts the interests of others before their one. They focus on those two key words in the Constitution’s Preamble, “General Welfare.”
• We Control the Sun – The sun carved on the back of George Washington’s wooden chair at the Constitutional Convention. The sun was cut in half by the horizon. Was it rising or setting? At the end of the convention, Ben Franklin said he was convinced it was rising. America had a bright future (the world is built by optimists) Whether the sun sets or rises on democracy, that’s up to us, we the people.
• In The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Franklin tells a story about his father criticizing his writing."About this time I met with an odd volume of the Spectator," Franklin wrote, "I thought the writing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it."
• AJ’s goal was to try to understand the Constitution by adopting the mindset and lifestyle of the Founders for a full year. He committed to living as the original originalist as a new way of searching for answers to one of the most pressing questions of our time: How should we interpret America’s foundational document today?

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Craig Robinson is the host of Ways to Win. He’s the executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC). From 2017-2020, he served as the VP of Player Development for the New York Knicks. Previously, he was a Division I head men’s basketball coach at Oregon State and Brown. He also is the brother of former First Lady Michelle Obama.

Notes:

• What Craig learned from Coach Pete Carill about recruiting: There is a sales element to it. And one of the most important skills to develop is to become a great LISTENER. Ask questions, listen, and ask more questions. Curiosity is the ultimate form of respect. Coach Carill won over Craig’s dad because he was curious. That’s a good lesson for all of us.
• President Obama (Craig's brother-in-law) said Craig’s discipline and diligence enhanced his presidential campaign. “Craig doesn’t profess to know the specifics of politics the way he knows the X’s and O’s of basketball, but I think what he does understand is the need to wake up every morning doing your best and having a positive attitude. And him communicating that to me was always very helpful.”
• When (future President) Barack Obama was dating Craig's sister (Michelle), he told their family at Thanksgiving dinner that he had aspirations and a plan to be the President of the United States. It seemed crazy at the time, but he made it happen.
• What are the "must-have" qualities to be a coach on Craig's staff?
  • Connect with people
  • Lifelong learning
  • Curiosity
  • Fill in gaps (be strong where Craig is not)
  • Must be a good listener
• What Craig looked for in a player when recruiting:
  • Baseline talent (table stakes)
  • 2-3 "bucket-getters"
  • High IQ
  • Flexible
• After graduating from Princeton, where he played for Pete Carril and was twice named the Ivy League player of the year, Criag wanted to coach. Instead, he went to graduate school and succeeded in the financial world, including spending seven years as a vice president at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. Then, he pivoted away and took an assistant job on Bill Carmody’s staff at Northwestern. That job eventually led Robinson to Brown, where in two seasons he overhauled the program with his work ethic, tough love, and relentless demands on his players. He put a dictionary in the locker room for players to look up the words he used, a tradition that has continued at Oregon State.
  • What made him not immediately go into coaching? Pete Craill telling him to get a real job. It’s amazing the influence the people we look up to can have on us.
• Craig's fondest memory?
  • January 20, 2009. He went to President Obama's inauguration in Washington D.C. He then flew to a game on the west coast (as the head coach of Oregon State). And received a standing ovation from the visiting team's crowd as he walked out!

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• Making decisions – Decisions aren't hard — it's the moments after that are. Whenever I make decisions, I don't think about now, I think about eventually. How will this feel then, maybe a year from now. When it's real, not raw. When the complications around the concern have cleared, and distance has done its job.
• Goal setting - 37 Signals does not set long-term goals. Jason (as the CEO) helps set the direction and they work in six-week sprints.
  • Think, "What am I optimizing for?"
  • 37 Signals does not have a board of directors or advisors.
• Is it more helpful to have a chip on your shoulder to prove someone wrong or to be motivated to prove your supporters right?
  • Both can be useful.
• Keys to a great partnership? Jason works with his co-founder, David Heinemeier Hansson (a previous guest on The Learning Leader Show).
  • Mutual admiration
  • Have complementary skills (Jason is design, DHH is engineering)
• A company is essentially two things: a group of people and a collection of decisions. How those people make these decisions is the art of running a business.
• Maxims:
  • Decide what you’re going to do this week, not this year.
  • Whenever you can, swap “Let’s think about it” for “Let’s decide on it.”
  • Momentum fuels motivation.
• Just ship it. You'll figure out what needs to be fixed as you go.
• Mark Zuckerberg is coming into his own... There are lots of reasons for it. One of them (maybe)? He's working out, in great shape, fighting MMA style, and surrounding himself around others who are doing the same.
• All leaders should have a writing practice. Hopefully, you don’t feel the need to send it to a lawyer or a comms team before publishing it or sharing it with the people you’re leading. Write like you talk. Write what’s in your head. Think about what you want to say, and say it.
• You never know who is watching: Jeff Bezos sat in the front row for one of Jason’s keynotes and was so impressed that he asked to invest in his company. When you have the guts to put your thoughts and beliefs out into the world, it can work as a magnetic effect to attract people to you. It's refreshing to hear Jason talk about one of the core qualities he loves most about Jeff: he is overwhelmingly optimistic. The world is built by optimists.
• You don’t create culture. It happens. A company's culture is a 50-day moving average. It's what you've been collectively doing as a company over the last 50 days. How do you treat people? Who have you hired (or fired) and why?
• Company off-site events:
  • They do two per year (one in the United States, and one abroad).
  • Members of Jason's team meticulously design them.
  • One day of business followed by time for the team to hang out, do activities together, eat together, and bond.
• Does Jason have plans to sell 37 Signals? "No, that would be the demise of the company."

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The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

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Notes on this conversation with Cal Newport

• (Obsess over quality). Jewel obsessed over the quality of her work so much that she turned down a 1m dollar offer (even while living out of her car) because she needed time to make her work excellent. Obsess over the quality of what you produce, even if this means missing opportunities in the short term. Leverage the value of these results to gain more and more freedom in your efforts over the long term.
• Benjamin Franklin – He hired David Hall to create time freedom. He needed time to think, time to experiment. He gave up money in the short term to gain time freedom to create something for the future. There’s no guarantee that it would pay off, but we all should think about how we can make investments that our future self would thank us for.
• Have fewer concurrent active projects. Instead of focusing on 10 things, focus on 2 or 3. Make it public. Share with your team. Be known as a leader who focuses on a few important objectives instead of 10 of them. 
• Match your space to your work – Be in nature, Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote Hamilton in the Morris-Jumel Mansion, the oldest surviving house in Manhattan (served as headquarters for George Washington during the Battle of Harlem Heights, and home of Aaron Burr when he was Vice President), Neil Gaiman built a spartan, 8 sided writing shed that sits on low stilts and offers views on all sides of endless trees.
• Do Fewer Things:
  • Limit Daily Goals – Cal learned this from his doctoral adviser at MIT. She was incredulous about Cal’s attempts to switch back and forth between multiple academic papers. She preferred to get lost in a single project at a time. Cal was convinced that the slowness of working on just one important thing per day would hold him back.
  • Work at a Natural Pace
    • Don’t rush your most important work. Allow it instead to unfold along a sustainable timeline, with variations in intensity over different timescales, and, when possible, executed in settings conducive to brilliance.
    • Slow productivity emphatically rejects the performative rewards of unwavering urgency. Grand achievement is built on the steady accumulation of modest results over time, and you should give your efforts the breathing room and respect required to make them part of a life well lived, not an obstacle to it.
  • Obsess over Quality
    • By focusing intensely on the small number of activities that matter most to our jobs, you can find both the motivation and justification for slowness.
    • Improve your taste. It’s in the uneasy distance between our taste and our ability that improvement happens – aka in our drive to meet our own high standards.
    • To combat the potential paralysis of perfectionism, think about giving yourself enough time to produce something great, but not unlimited time–focus on creating something good enough to catch the attention of people whose taste you care about but relieve yourself of the need to forge a masterpiece.
    • Gather with people who share similar professional ambitions. When you combine the opinions of multiple practitioners, more possibilities and nuance emerge, and there’s a focusing effect that comes from performing for a crowd.
• It’s easy to mistake “do fewer things” for “accomplish fewer things” – but this understanding is backward. We work roughly the same number of hours each week regardless of the size of our task lists. Having more commitments simply increases the hours lost to overhead tax – the coordinating activities, such as meetings and email, needed to manage what’s on your plate.
  • The pandemic “zoom apocalypse,” in which many knowledge workers found themselves in Zoom meeting all day long, was caused in part by reaching a state in which overhead tax crowded out almost any time to actually complete tasks.
  • Doing fewer things, in other words, makes us better at our jobs–not only psychologically but also economically and creatively. 
• The Overhead Tax – A key property of overhead tax is that it tends to expand to fill as much time as it’s provided. So long as a project is something that you’ve committed to, and it’s not yet complete, it will tend to generate a continual tax in the form of check-in meetings, impromptu email conversations, and plain old mental space.
• Knowledge workers have no agreed-upon definition of what “productivity” actually means–incredibly unusual compared to other areas of our economy.
  • Lacking a precise definition they defaulted to a crude approximation: pseudo-productivity – using visible activity as a proxy for useful professional accomplishment.
• Cal argues that the current burnout crisis is due, in part, to the combination of pseudo-productivity with more recent advances in mobile computing and digital communication that made unlimited work available at all times in all places. The result was an impossible internal tug of war, where there was always more to do, and never any hope of catching up. Busy exhaustion itself became your primary signal of usefulness.
• Slow productivity doesn’t ask that you extinguish ambition. Humans derive great satisfaction from being good at what they do and producing useful things.
• Cal revisits the popular narrative of Jane Austen’s writing career; a closer look at her life reveals a powerful case study for a slower approach. Busy Jane Austen was neither happy nor producing memorable work, while unburdened Jane Austen, writing contently at a quiet cottage, after her family decided to withdraw from a busy social calendar, transformed English literature.
• The goal of Slow Productivity is to propose an entirely new way for you, your small business, or your large employer to think about what it means to get things done; to rescue knowledge work from its increasingly untenable freneticism, and rebuild it to enable you to create things you’re proud of without grinding yourself down along the way; and to offer a more humane and sustainable way to integrate professional efforts into a life well lived.

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• Never Miss a Day – In the summer, going into Paul's freshman year of high school, he was at a lacrosse camp at Loyola University… At the end of the morning session, an all-time coaching legend, Tony Seaman spoke to the group. He told them he could guarantee that they could earn a college scholarship. All they had to do? "Take 100 shots per day. Here's the catch. You can never miss a day. No excuses." What are your 100 shots a day?
• Goal Setting – Most people don’t set goals because the act alone is both a major and personal step in the direction of commitment, and it invites hope, fear, and the possibility of regret. 
  • Focus on what you can control – John Wooden was 5’10. Below average for a basketball player. He was really good at “understanding the things at which he had no control and things over which I had some control.”
  • Let Go of Outcomes – Archery master Awa Kenzo told his students to pay no attention to the target. Success and failure come from the same place, so that’s where the archer should point all of their attention: not on the outcome, but the effort.
• Therapy– Dr. Lindsey Hoskins once said that when we hurt someone we love, it’s because we fear disconnection from that someone. We hope that by lashing out, they’ll show us love, and as a result, we’ll feel safer in the relationship.”
• The Difference Between Self-Promotion and Passion - "I’m not going to convince you to like what I do. I’m going to show you how much I love what I do.”
• You won't achieve ambitious goals if you don’t set ambitious goals.
• The legendary Michael Ovitz shotgun pitch to Coca-Cola. He and his team outworked the competition, flew in a day early, practiced in the actual room the pitch would take place, bought new suits, and over-delivered during the pitch meeting. Their competitors took the meeting for granted, flew in the morning of, and didn't perform. Michael and his team won the $300m contract and earned the business for years to come.
• A true champion is intensely focused on the things they can control.
• Being coachable is rare—it’s being curious, eager, self-aware, and ambitious.
• Discover and harness your unique learning style. What might appear as an inability or perceived disadvantage could be your greatest asset in mastering your chosen field. For example, Paul grew up with a learning difference called Auditory Processing Disorder.
• The only way to learn from failures is to feel it, study them, make adjustments, a new commitment, and put it behind you.
• The Voice No One Else Hears – Performance psychologist Jim Loehr has worked with some of the top athletes in the world. He has them wear a microphone during a competition, and he asks them to honestly articulate what the voice in their head says and thinks. Whatever the circumstances, Loehr said he asks, “Is this how I would speak to someone I deeply care about? Or, if I were speaking to someone I deeply cared about, what would I say?”
  • "I've been here before."
  • "I've taken 35,000 shots."
  • Rebound... Bounce back.
• Paul loves the "up and down" statistic in golf. It refers to a golfer recovering from a bad shot and still making a par on the hole. In life, it's all about how you choose to respond.
• Paul’s Brother, Mike - “One of my favorite chapters in this book is about planting “little acorns.” (p.174) Had it not been for the biggest acorn in the family, who left his job to build the PLL with me... well, I’d just be a retired athlete, continuing the pursuit of my next professional life. Thank you for everything, Mike.”

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• The 5 Journal Prompts - What am I grateful for? Where am I winning? What will I let go of today? What does my ideal day look like? What needs to be said at the end?
• Avoid the old person flaw – Sometimes you meet an old person and they spend hours in conversation living in the past. Don’t ever believe that your best days are behind you. Have a “never peak” mindset with an upward trajectory… Always.
• Go see people in person - In Italy they say, “We are not friends until we’ve eaten together.”
• Release the energy vampires – “We feel guilt when we no longer want to associate with old friends and colleagues who haven’t changed. The price, and marker, of growth.” - Naval Ravikant
• Stop salting your food before you taste it.
• Happiness is an inside job.
• See Solitude as the new status symbol.
• A sweaty workout is never a silly idea.
• Ask Yourself the 10,000 Dinner Question: That’s how many dinners you can expect to share with your chosen mate. Does that thought thrill you, or give you the shivers? If the latter, you may not have found the one.
• Be a Perfect Moment Maker: Focus on making magical memories with those we care about so we feel rich when we’re old.
• Never be a prisoner of your past. Become the architect of your future. You will never be the same.
• “Your "I CAN" is more important than your IQ.”
• “Everything is created twice, first in the mind and then in reality.”
• “You can’t make someone feel good about themselves until you feel good about yourself.”
• “Investing in yourself is the best investment you will ever make. it will not only improve your life, it will improve the lives of all those around you.”
• Start a mastermind alliance… For years, every Friday at 6am, Robin met with his mastermind partner at a coffee shop where they’d chat for 2 hours.
• “Success occurs in the privacy of the soul.” - Rick Rubin – Success is about YOUR definition, not whatever society says it should be. It’s about understanding your purpose, your values, and the critical behaviors to match those values. The cool part about it, is you get to define it. That isn’t easy work, but it’s worth it.
• Ski instructors aren’t rich, “but we have a rich life.”

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The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

Episode #579: David Perell - Setting The Standard, Cultivating Your Taste, Pursuing Excellence, Becoming a Sloganeer, Always Working/Never Working, & Lessons From a Mysterious Billionaire

Notes:

• Set the standard – “It’s your job to have the highest quality standards of anybody you work with. Every day, you’ll face pressure to lower them. Don’t do it. If you can set a high standard and simply maintain it, you’ll do very well for yourself.”
• Have a high-quality bar. Do three things:
  • Define it: Clearly state the standards. (read The 11 Laws of Showrunning)
  • Maintain it: This is hard to do.
  • Raise it: Keep pushing.
• You need to define what quality looks like. Set the true north.
• David worked with a coach to establish his core values. And he was going to narrow it down to five and the coach said, “Nope, it’s just one. It’s the one that everything in your life orbits around... It’s The Pursuit of Excellence.
• The biggest piece of low-hanging fruit for leaders is getting funnier:
  • Nobody trains themselves to get funnier though. It’s strangely taboo. That’s why it’s such an opportunity.
  • "Laughter is the sound of comprehension." Say something memorable. Humor is memorable.
• A good way to think... Deconstruct something funny. David spends a lot of time understanding why Theo Von is so funny.
• The key to excellent storytelling: a moment of change. Conflict and suspense carry stories.
• Robert Caro writing the LBJ books... "What would I see if I was there." He moved to where LBJ lived to see what it was like to be there.
• How to cultivate taste:
  • Make a list of things you love/hate.
  • Look for things you love (but aren't supposed to), and things you hate (but are supposed to love).
  • Make things. Don't be a passive consumer. Be a connoisseur. Be discerning about what you consume.
  • Amor Tolles - History is bad for knowing what's good now.
    • Consume old things.
  • Museums - Pay attention to what elicits a reaction. Why is it a 10? Why is it a 1? What do you love? What do you hate? Why?
• Archegos is David's favorite Greek word, and it gets to the heart of good leadership.
  • Four meanings: Author, founder, pioneer, leader
  • America’s founding fathers are the canonical example
• Lessons from a mysterious billionaire mentor:
  • David asks very specific questions, listens, and takes lots of notes.
  • When meeting with a mentor, show up with energy and specific questions. They are tired of hearing the boring generic questions. Be specific.
  • The mentor talks 98% of the time and David just types what he says. He now has 18,000 words worth of notes. Some lessons:
    • CEOs are Sloganeers: CEOs shouldn’t write strategy memos. They should drive slogans. 
      • Three lines. Three words each. (Bezos: Focus on the Customer)
    • CEOs should tell the same stories over and over again, refining their pitch like a comedian.
      • Gauging reactions
      • Asking questions
      • Listening to push-back
      • Seeing what makes people’s eyes light up
        • Your message is only landing once people start making fun of you.
• Good goal in life: Always working, never working
  • Story from Patrick O'Shaughnessy. He was asked how much time he spent preparing. Initially, he said, "not much." Then he thought for a while, and said, "I'm preparing all the time. My whole life is preparing to ask these questions."

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The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

• Create surplus value - What can we do to give more than we take? "The key is to figure out what you can do that others can’t or are unwilling to do. Hard work is a talent. Curiosity is a talent. Patience and empathy are talents."
  • "Helping others makes me feel strong."
• Scott's recent experience with Ketamine Therapy - "It clarified my thinking. It's helped me stop keeping score. It also made me grateful for my wife. Did you ever get a gift when you were a kid that you weren’t expecting and you couldn’t afford it? Something you never imagined having.” I got a $45 Banh skateboard from my mom’s boyfriend Terry. It was a moment of sheer surprise and joy. My wife kept popping in my head and I kept thinking, god I get to hang out with this person, get to have kids with them, get to build a life with her. It was this overwhelming feeling of wonderful joy and surprise. It was very clarifying and rewarding for me.”
• "You Gotta Ask" - Scott met his wife at the Raleigh Hotel pool in Miami. He saw her from a distance and promised himself that he wouldn't leave the pool without introducing himself to her first.  In order to do anything of significance in your life, you must take an uncomfortable risk." Scott is married to Beata Galloway, a real estate developer born in Germany. Together, they have two sons. One of them has the middle name, Raleigh.
• Why Crying is Important - "It informs what's important to you."
• Why Scott uses crude humor - It's used to connect with people. And people are either afraid or not able to do it.
• When Scott was 13… One of his mom’s boyfriends handed him two crisp 100-dollar bills after he asked him about stocks. Terry (his mom's boyfriend) told him “Go buy some stock at one of those fancy brokers in the village." Once there, Scott met a mentor named Cy Gordner who helped him learn about the markets.
• Show up when it matters — Michael Bloomberg’s policy. "If a friend gets a promotion, there is no need to call. You’ll get dinner with them at some point. But if a friend gets fired, I have dinner with them that night in a public place where everybody can see me. Because I remember when I got fired from Solomon Brothers — I can tell you every person that called me. That meant something. When I was made partner? I have no recollection of that whatsoever."
• Last year Scott had 340 inbound speaking requests. He accepted 30 of them. His average rate is $112,000 per speech.
• “The stimulus that attracted my attention with the most urgency was money, not as a means of establishing economic security, but to feed my addiction: affirmation from others.”
• The role of Luck - Being born in America in the 1960s and two (most importantly) Scott's mom. Though she was raised in a household with little affection, she couldn’t control herself with her son. “For me, affection was the difference between hoping someone thought I was wonderful or worthy and knowing it.” (Emotional)
• Scott is a dynamic communicator: A turn of phrase is a way of expressing something, in writing or speech, that stands out in some particular way.
• One of the key indicators of long-term success is the “willingness to endure rejection.” Whether this is walking up to a stranger at the Raleigh hotel, a cold-calling sales job, or asking people to be on your podcast.
• How to build wealth? Focus (mastery, find your talent), Stoicism (this is about saving more than you spend), Time ( 21 years with your money in low-cost index funds, you will earn 8 times your money), Diversification (Your kevlar). Once you earn some money, assume you are not Steve Ballmer or Mark Zuckerberg. Use a variety of investment vehicles. Going all on one company or asset class is not the optimal choice for most of us.