Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes

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Stu McLaren helps leaders and all types of business owners transform their knowledge, expertise, and influence into recurring revenue by launching, growing, and scaling membership businesses. He’s the author of PREDICTABLE PROFITS - Transform Your Business from One-Off Sales to Recurring Revenue with Memberships and Subscriptions.

Notes:

• People come for the content, they stay for the community. People want to feel a sense of belonging. This has been hard-wired in us from many years ago. We want to be part of a group. In the old days, this was the only way to survive. We have not outgrown that need and the feeling of being a part of something bigger than ourselves.
• Life advice: Listen to your gut instinct and embrace the unknown. You are not ever going to know how it’s going to pan out. You have to keep taking that next step. And I loved the story of the lengthy process of adopting his son Sam. The raw emotion in Stu’s eyes as he told that story was awesome. Watch this on YouTube and you can see. Take the next step. Keep going. You’re not going to know how it will go. Embrace that. And keep going.
• Cody Burch Story – In October, Cody’s dad was diagnosed with leukemia. Cody had been sitting with the idea of a membership. He saw the fear in his dad’s eyes that he was nervous about the financial part of it. “I wanted to take that financial fear away from him. Within a few weeks of launching my membership, I had a few hundred members, and I was making thousands of dollars per month." “The more we make, the more we can give. The more we make, the more we can help.” Stu says that all the time
  • Create “super surprises” for your friends. Create an amazing experience for them.
• Online communities must be one of the three:
  • Can I solve an ongoing problem? Weight loss, dog training
  • Can you teach a skill?
  • Can you make someone’s life easier? Provide teachers with lesson plans
• You don’t need a big platform to get started. Have founding members. Float the idea that you’re thinking of it. Momentum starts with movement. Get going.
• Pay close attention to onboarding. The first few days are EVERYTHING. His daughter’s new school was “the best school ever” because she met one friend on the first day. Help them build one meaningful relationship within the first few days. Connect them. Proactively do this.
• Sales is the most noble profession in the world. Everything must be sold. Stu learned from John Childers, but couldn’t do it like him. So he just told stories about transformation.
• People don’t care about the “stuff.” They care about the outcome. They care about the transformation.
• The objection matrix - Match every objection with a story of someone who had the same objection and overcame it. Use stories.
• The importance of building a membership around transformation, not just content. While many focus on delivering endless content. By focusing on helping people achieve meaningful outcomes, rather than overwhelming them with information, leaders can build stronger communities, improve retention, and deliver real value that keeps members coming back.

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

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

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www.InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader

• Be optimistic in the face of uncertainty. We discover who we are by doing it. We learn who we are in practice, not in theory. The only way to fully know if you can do it, is to do the thing. Take action. Fail sometimes. Then keep going.
• The explore-exploit dilemma. Do we keep on the same path and stick to what we know works or do we go out into the unknown? Do we invest in R&D with no guarantee that it will pay off? This reminds me of Scott Galloway on episode #578, In order to do anything of significance in your life, you must take an uncomfortable risk.”
• The Hard is what makes it good. From Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks) in A League of Their Own. The HARD stuff adds texture to time. The effort needed is a source of meaning. Similar to the Ikea paradox. There is more meaning in the piece of furniture if you assemble it. We shouldn’t run away from the hard things (like Dottie Hinson was doing in A League of Their Own)> We should run towards them. The effort is where find a source of meaning.
• Opened with gratitude for him helping me with my first book, Welcome to Management. 
• The beginnings of chapters/stories. What’s most important and what’s interesting? Use the best story you have. The beginning is super important.
• Time with Friction - “I don’t want it to be easier.” Challenge and complexity make it more meaningful. It’s less meaningful if it’s not challenging.
• Effort is a source of meaning.
• The Ikea Effect. A piece of furniture is worth more to you if you put it together.
• Why do you keep pushing your limits? What am I getting out of this? Is there some intrinsic pleasure?
• We are wired to explore, push our limits
  • We are also wired to be lazy, to rest in between hunts. Dichotomy there.
  • Some are nomadic and some settle. It’s useful to have both.
• Alex and his wife take their daughters with them on adventures. They earn a feeling like, “I can do anything.” Adding voluntary hardship to a child’s life can be helpful.
• If it’s a foregone conclusion, it’s not interesting. This is why people love live sports. We don’t know how it’s going to end. Uncertainty makes it interesting. The same is true for life.
• Uncertainty - We’re willing to pay a lot to not know the ending. The arc is important.
• “Bold beginning of uncertain outcomes.”
• Alex was shy and didn’t introduce himself to girls. “I would have had a better time if I wasn’t scared to ask someone out.”
• My first job getting rejected 60 times a day. Useful.
• His job as a newspaper intern having to go to people’s houses after their family member died in a car accident and talk with them. Made everything else seem easier.
• Quote to open the book: “To say that we should not change wines is heresy; the tongue becomes saturated, and after the third glass even the best bottle yields but an obtuse sensation.” – Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
• Waffles – They are great. But if you have them every day, you lose the magic. A metaphor for life.
• Life/Career Advice: Be optimistic in the face of uncertainty. Have both the exploring and exploiting mindset. Explore widely. We discover who we are by doing it. Have to do the thing.

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

This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire 1 person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world have the hustle and grit to deliver. www.InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader

Rachel Botsman has become an expert on trust in the modern world. She’s written three books: What’s Mine is Yours, Who Can You Trust, and How to Trust and Be Trusted. Her TED talks have amassed over 5 million views. And she teaches at Oxford University’s Business School where she created pioneering courses on trust in the digital age has become an expert on trust in the modern world. She’s written three books: What’s Mine is Yours, Who Can You Trust, and How to Trust and Be Trusted. Her TED talks have amassed over 5 million views. 

Notes:

• Trust is being comfortable with uncertainty.
• Capability and Character - Assholes are capable people with low character.
• Demonstrate the ability to take risks. Confidence in the unknown. Healthy challenge and push mentality.
• Trust willing – Lead with Trust. Make the trust wager. What’s the best way to earn someone’s trust? LEAD with trust. Trust them first. This also creates a highly attractive company or team. Don’t you want to attract highly trusting, capable people? The best way to do that is to lead with trust.
  • Be more trust willing. Lead with Trust. Jim Collins story. Make the trust wager. You don't have to earn it, you got it.
• Willingness to be a beginner. Be curious. Look stupid at first. Those are good qualities in a leader.
• For keynote speaking:
  • Share your expertise, but don't seek approval
  • Share your stories, but don't look for validation
  • Share your passion, but don't perform for the applause
• Don't sell from the stage. Don't show your book. Don't give your resume.
• Honor the present. If you’re running a meeting, start it on time. Honor the people who showed up on time. Leaders who are overscheduled… It’s usually their fault and it comes from ego. If you’ve hired a capable team, then you don’t have to be in every meeting. Also, if you’re always late, you aren’t reliable. And that becomes part of your reputation. That’s not something we want to be known for.
  • How can people trust you if you're always late? They won't. You aren't reliable if you're always late. Reliability is a big part of your reputation. It can become the thing you're known for. That's bad.
• The power of consistency: Intensity makes a good story. Consistency makes progress.
• Consistency builds trust.
• Leaders who are overscheduled have a problem they've created for themselves. It's usually from ego.
• Interviewing leaders for jobs. High character is a must. We can teach capabilities later.
•  Paul Simon's audiobook with Pushkin is awesome.
• Rachel's five principles for trust:
  • Competence: Having the skills, knowledge, time, and resources to do what you say you'll do 
  • Reliability: Being dependable and consistent in your actions 
  • Integrity: Being honest about your intentions and motives, and ensuring your words and actions align 
  • Empathy: Caring about others' interests and how your actions affect them 
  • Consistent action: Earning trust through how you show up, set expectations, and deliver acts of caring
• Life/Career Advice:
  • Don’t get boxed in too early and grow a career based on being able to tell people at parties that you work at a prestigious company. 
  • Look for great teams and great bosses. The industry doesn’t matter as much as the people. Culture is everything. People are everything.
  • And then when you’re younger it’s helpful to be a generalist. Know a little about a lot of things. But as you get older, it’s useful to become a specialist at something. Become an expert. Go deep on a topic. This is similar to what Mike Maples Jr said on episode #619.

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

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire 1 person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world have the hustle and grit to deliver.

Episode #620 with Steve Magness, author of Win The Inside Game

Notes:

• Clearly define your purpose and what you want to do. For Steve, it’s: "Explore interesting ideas that will help people."
  • "Those things will help me too. I'm curious about them." Defining that one sentence frees you up to say no to those things outside of your purpose and to focus on actions within that align with your purpose.
• Steve's Framework for Sustainable Excellence:
  • Be - Clarity on who you are
  • Do - Clairty in your pursuits
  • Belong - Clarity on where and how you fit in
• Steve stood up as a whistleblower after earning his dream job at Nike, showing courage and sticking to his values and ethics.
• Why don't we speak up? We have a built in preservation system. We justify, rationalize, and avoid it because it minimizes the negative feeling in the short term.
• Don't play prevent defense. Give yourself the permission and freedom to fail. Diversify sense of self. Don't intertwine a sense of self with success or fear of failure.
• Diversify your sense of self—don’t intertwine your identity solely with success or the fear of failure.
• It’s not an all-or-nothing game. Outcomes matter, but they aren’t everything. Focus on process goals and let outcomes be a byproduct of good effort.
• Set your environment up to define what success means for you.
• Big achievements, like becoming a best-selling author, rarely feel as fulfilling as imagined.
• Success can be multi-dimensional and definitionally nuanced.
• The Power of Belonging
  • When facing a challenge (like climbing a hill), it feels easier when you’re with others versus alone.
  • We need each other. We share the load. Surround yourself with compounders. "We are built to belong."
• It is a mistake to make success or failure a virtue. It's not "I'm a failure." It's, "I failed at that thing." It's temporary. It's not who you are.
• In moments of stress (e.g., choking in sports like Simone Biles), your brain defaults to survival mode and shuts down higher-level functions.
• Strategies to overcome it:
  • Narrow your focus: Break tasks into smaller, actionable steps.
  • Create a personal definition of success to shift focus from fear.
  • Try doing something unexpected or crazy to reset your perspective.
• To have a meaningful life we need to feel
  • Coherent - Life adds up. You have a cohesive story. 
  • Significant - You matter and can make a difference.
  • Directed - There’s a purpose to your life and pursuits.
  • Belonging - Part of something bigger than you.
• “This book is for those who stood up, found courage, and stuck to their values and ethics.”