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

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

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My Guest: Mike Maples Jr is a co-founding Partner at Floodgate. He has been on the Forbes Midas List eight times in the last decade and was recently profiled by Harvard Business School for his lifetime contributions to entrepreneurship. Some of his early investments include: Twitter, DemandForce, Twitch, and Applied Intuition. Mike is also the bestselling author of Pattern Breakers: Why Some Start-Ups Change the Future.

Notes

• Chance favors the prepared mind. We are all visited by luck, but most of us don’t answer the door. We need to become a professional noticer. That is Mike’s favorite verb. Noticing. Most people don’t have prepared minds. Be intentional about noticing the world around you and being prepared for when luck visits you.
• Mike's dad died 7 days before we recorded. “He was a mentor, a friend, and one of the greatest inspirations of my life.” His advice: Do your best. There’s only one of you. Decide what to do with your gift of time, be intentional. Have gratitude for your time. Make the most of it. Don’t waste it trying to be someone else.
• Focus - Fishing competition when Mike was 5 or 6. Let’s find a good spot and stay there the entire time. While everyone else moved constantly, Mike and his dad stayed in their spot, caught a big carp, and won.
• Bill Gates begged Mike’s dad to “be the adult in the room” at Microsoft. Mike Sr would say to the people he led at Microsoft, "I want to know that you’re thinking about what you’re doing." He used a Socratic method. He was not prescriptive.
• Be proactive. Have an intentional strategy. Be intentional.
• Jonathan Livingston Seagull - The biggest limits in the world are the limits of your mind, your imagination, and your actions– not the limits of the world itself.
• Have to get over that voice in your head that says, “You’re not good enough.”
• We get told to be realistic or stay within the lines.
• Everybody is figuring it out as they go. Everyone is “winging it.”
• Only by being radically different can you make a radical difference.
• Great founders are like Patrick Mahomes and Steph Curry. You don’t know how they’re going to score, but you know they will.
• Practice Reckless Optimism – The world is built by Optimists. You need to be FOR something. Bet ON something, not against it.
• Mike sees himself as a co-conspirator more than an investor.
• There can’t be a recipe for a breakthrough because by definition breakthroughs haven’t happened yet.
• “Chance favors the prepared mind.” We are all visited by luck but most don’t answer the door.
• Chris Rock - Forming unexpected connections.
• Sam Beskind (Stanford basketball player where he played for Rob Ehsan) - Time management strategy. Stanford coaches had a one-pager with 3 keys to winning. Not 20. 3. If you have 20 keys, you have none. Nobody can remember all that.
• Life/Career Advice: Internalize what it means to do your best. Gratitude for your time. Avoid the trap of mimetic desire. The “T” of knowledge. Charlie Munger. Try to know what the best ideas that have ever existed in a wide range of fields. Then choose one field to know about more than anyone else in the world. Have one area where you are fanatically obsessed. For Mike, that’s startups.

Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes of The Learning Leader Show

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My guest for episode #618 is Chase Jarvis. Chase is a photographer, director, artist, and entrepreneur. He was the CEO of an online education platform called Creative Live from 2014 to 2022. He’s earned countless awards for his photography and creative work including a Pulitzer Prize for a New York Times story he contributed to called “Snow Fall.” He’s also the author of multiple books including Creative Calling and Never Play It Safe.

Notes:

• Opening Joke: "What has 52 teeth and holds back a monster?"
• We are all wildly creative. It is trained out of us as we grow older. Creativity is foundational to all human beings. It’s on us to tap into our creativity and get it out of us to help solve problems, to create optionality, and to be innovative. Regardless of your job, becoming more creative will make you better at it.
• Play infinite games with transformational people. It seems like when we give to others, genuinely try to help them, and have a service orientation, good things happen to all. There are transactional people and transformational leaders. Let’s strive to be transformative and play the long game with high-character people. 
  • Transactional leaders are infuriating. Transformational leaders are inspiring.
• “A bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking, because its trust is not on the branch, but on its own wings.” Believe in yourself and your ability to bounce back if the thing doesn’t go your way. Set up a series of experiments. Not all of them will work. You’ll be better for having tried, and tried again, and then again. We learn from both our successes and our failures.
• Initially, Chase planned to attend medical school after graduating from undergrad. A few weeks before his graduation, his grandfather died and left all his photography equipment to his grandson.
• “Security is mostly superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” - Helen Keller
• "Safety is an illusion. It does not exist in nature, so why then do we seek it?
• "Playing it safe is about fear. And fear is only optimized for survival--not creativity, happiness, joy, connection, harmony, fulfillment, or any of the gifts you have to give or receive in this life."
• Intuition is everything. What if we started paying attention to that?
• "I don't know why they call us founders. I didn't find anything. I built that shit. We are builders."
• There are 7 basic levers for life:
  • Attention
  • Time – NYU Professor James Carse. Finite and infinite games. Treat life like an infinite game. What’s the difference between systems and schedules? (why are systems better?)
  • Intuition – The benefits of compounding trust. Chase's wife Kate. First met on a beach just after high school. Sparks were present, but no fire. “She had a special quality I couldn’t quite place.” Went to college 1,500 miles apart. All along it was your intuition that kept you on notice.  How do you know when it’s your intuition speaking? Why is playing it safe the riskiest thing we can do
  • Constraints - What can we learn about constraints from Stefan Sagmeister?
  • Play -  What can we learn about play from Novak Djokovic?
  • Failure - Melissa Arnot Reid – Replaces the word “fail” with the word “live” – Instead of saying “I’m afraid to fail. She says I’m afraid to live.”
  • Practice - Purposeful practice. Anders Ericsson
• Keynote speaking - Don't be a robot. Have fun. Let it rip. Results are better in a better state of mind.
• Do tiny experiments when the stakes are low.

Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes for episode #617 with Adam Galinsky

Notes:

• 10 Words - “We are not going down. We are going to Philly.” The composure of pilot Tammy Jo Shults after the side of her airplane exploded. Leadership is needed most when things go bad. How do you respond when adversity strikes? Those are the moments when we must be prepared to share the vision and help our team stay the course.
  • EMTs asked, "How did you get through security? You have nerves of steel. You don't even have an elevated heart rate."
• The 1992 cockpit study of pilots. Did more errors happen at the beginning or the end of a 19-hour flight? You’d assume the end because of exhaustion. However, more errors happen at the beginning of the flight because the crews don’t know each other yet. How does this translate to your team? It’s imperative to genuinely care and get to know the people on your team. Host barbeque parties, ask questions, and genuinely LEARN about the people you’re leading. Those aren’t soft skills, those are essential skills.
• What did Adam learn from his parents? The idea of Kaizen, is a Japanese business philosophy that promotes continuous improvement through small, incremental changes. Kaizen means "good change," "change for the better," or "improvement."
• Transactional leaders are infuriating. Transformational leaders are inspiring.
• Great leader exercise: "Tell me about a leader that inspired you..." What qualities do they possess? "Courage, Optimism, Generous."
• Inspire - the universal path for leading yourself and others
• Build habits - floss teeth before brushing. Write thank you notes.
• Moments of Greatness -- Elks basketball
• Team thank you notes - Rob Kimbel
• Columbia football coach -- "Who can I yell at?" Need to know who can handle it.
• Ron Ullery -- Share the vision early. 1:1 conversation, bring your leaders in.
• Adam did not get tenure when most thought he deserved it. They messed up by not sharing the vision until after, but then they made it better by sharing and showing him love. He then turned down Harvard to stay at Northwestern because of it.
• Vision - Big picture. Put context for behavior. Why is consistency important?
• The Great Gatsby and his dad. Greenlights.
• When you're thinking about trying to persuade others, you persuade yourself.
• Parenting -- When you flip out, they do too. We set the tone.

Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

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Bob Stoops was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach in 2021. He was the head football coach at the University of Oklahoma from 1999 to 2016. He led the Sooners to a 191-48 record over his career. His 2000/2001 team won the national championship. He earned the National Coach of the Year award the same season. Since 2020, Stoops has been a head coach in the XFL, winning an XFL Championship in 2023 with the Arlington Renegades. He played college football at the University of Iowa, earning team MVP his senior year as a defensive back.

Notes:

• Coaches Bob has worked for: Hayden Fry at Iowa, Bill Snyder at Kansas State, and Steve Spurrier at Florida. He's worked for some amazing coaches.
  • Relationships are everything. You must connect with people. You must be authentic. Learn from other coaches, but you have to be yourself
• Sherri Coale: “One of my favorite things about him is he’s the busiest man on the planet but never appeared that way. That’s a skill and an art. That fascinates me.”
• What makes a great head coach? They relate to people. They care about them. They can motivate and influence by clearly sharing the vision of the program and inspiring others to get on board. They are decisive people. Most importantly, they know how to connect with people. All leadership is a people business. If you can’t connect with others, you’ll probably struggle.
• Creating a “coaches forest” (beyond a tree) - Mike Stoops, Mark Mangino, Mike Leach, Bo Pelini, Kevin Sumlin, Kevin Wilson, Lincoln Riley, and more. How has Bob prepared so many guys to be successful head coaches?
  • Hiring – “I always tried to hire people smarter than me.” A lot of people say this, but not all do this. Coach Stoops looked for people who had a track record of performance… And then he used his gut instincts after he spent time with him. He paid attention to how they treated his secretary, how they treated the waiter at lunch… Some call those the little things, but they were very important to Coach Stoops
• The overarching theme of the entire conversation was the simplicity of how Coach Stoops built his program. He didn’t try to overcomplicate anything. He knew he wanted coaches who were accomplished, high-character people. And he wanted tough players who loved football. Their offenses may have looked exotic but they didn’t have a ton of plays installed. They focused on what they did and then practiced it relentlessly so that they would execute better than their opponents. I think there’s something beautiful in the simplicity with how he’s built his program and the results speak for themselves.
• Great players want to be coached - Jeremiah Smith, Adrian Peterson.
• What he looked for in players: They have to LOVE football. Need to be tough and physical. Someone like Dan Cody. From Oklahoma, was skinny, and nobody on the staff wanted to give him a scholarship, but Coach Stoops did, and he turned out to be a great player. Liked to keep local guys home.
• Off-season workouts create the culture of the team. "We won because we outworked everyone."
• The attitude of the national championship team - "They were tired of being kicked around." And "I shared with them the history of Oklahoma and let them know the way it should be. When we started, they were a losing team."
• Josh Heupel - The most valuable recruit ever for Coach Stoops.
• Mike Leach was a 1 of 1. An original. He seemed relaxed and casual, but he was also very demanding that they do it right. He was also focused on just a few plays instead of trying to do everything. FOCUS. Do what we do
• Wife Carol - Impressive leader at Mary Kay. Won a pink Cadillac 16 years in a row. National Sales Director.
• Life/Career Advice - Go hard, be tough, be true to yourself, enjoy the struggle, and look forward to the fight. Nothing great happens without going through struggles first.