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661: Suzy Welch - How to Identify Your Core Values, Close the Authenticity Gap, and Live with Purpose
This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver.
My Guest: Suzy Welch is known for co-founding the Jack Welch Management Institute and writing bestsellers like 10-10-10: A Life Transforming Idea. Her career includes roles as an editor-in-chief for Harvard Business Review, a crime reporter, and a professor. She teaches at NYU and is the best-selling author of Becoming You.
Key Learnings
Purpose Requires Realism, Not Just Passion - Everyone wants to be the drummer in Disturbed, but that guy's good at drumming. My whole methodology is about realism. You have to know what your values are, what your interests are, but you better be good at it or forget it. Otherwise, it's a hobby.
Values Are Choices, Not Virtues - Most people confuse values and virtues. Virtues are things like integrity, courage, and thankfulness... Behaviors we all should have more of. Values are choices about how you want to live, work, and relate. It's a value if it would drive who you married, what job you took, and where you went on vacation.
There are 16 Measurable Values - Values exist on a continuum like a DNA profile. Scope reflects how exciting a life you want. Radius is how much you want to change the world systemically. Belovedness is how important an intimate relationship is to you. Work centrism is whether you love work for work's sake or if it's just a means to an end.
Men Over 32 Value Romantic Relationships Most - We just got data showing that for men over the age of 32, belovedness is their number one value. It's much lower for women. Only 50% of people have family centrism in their top five values—we assume everyone shares our values, but they don't.
Your Authenticity Gap Reveals Your Pain - You could hold the value of scope as number one, but not be able to live it right now because of your job or family situation. That gap between what you value and what you're living—we call that your authenticity gap. If you've got a big one, you know it because it hurts.
Gen Z's Top Value Is Self-Care - 75% of Gen Z have self-care, wellbeing, pleasure, and leisure as their top value. Their top three are self-care, authentic self-expression, and helping others. Meanwhile, hiring managers want achievement, scope, and work centrism. The overlap is 2%.
Aptitudes Are Your Brain's Dominant Hand - We have nine cognitive aptitudes preset by age 15. Are you a generalist or a specialist? A future focuser or a present focuser? A brainstormer or someone who comes up with one fully baked idea per year? It's painful to be a generalist in a specialist job.
Your Personality Is How The World Experiences You - Your personality is not the list of adjectives you write about yourself. It's how the world experiences you. When I did my 360 feedback, people said I was the hurricane, not the calm at the center. I had to learn to communicate better the thoughts I had, and learn to be less chaotic.
Everyone Writes Themselves As The Hero - A police lieutenant once told me: everyone writes the story of their life with themselves at the center as the hero. No matter what story we tell ourselves, we always cast ourselves as the hero. That's why self-awareness is so hard and why we need testing, not just self-reflection.
The Aperture Problem: Kids Only Know Five Jobs - When kids come out of high school, they only know about five jobs, two of which are their parents. By college it goes up to seven. By grad school, MBAs are thinking about two or three options—banking, consulting, or tech. There are 135 industries and thousands of types of work nobody tells them about.
Great Leaders Don't Do It For The Money - I've been blessed to know many of the greatest leaders. They're doing it for love of people, excitement, work, or impact. I've never met a great leader who was doing it for the money. Jensen Huang and Jeff Bezos are examples—clarity, vision, excellence in everything, no shortcuts.
Better To Be The Author Than The Editor - When you're ambitious, you end up surrounded by voices and can become the editor of your life. You have to become the author. Paint a self-portrait of yourself standing still so that when you start running, you know where you're going and why.
Reflection Questions
What would the 5 people closest to you say about how you show up? Would their description match how you see yourself, or do you have a self-awareness gap you haven't addressed?
If you mapped your actual daily behaviors against your stated top values, would they align? Or are you living someone else's version of success while calling it your own?
Are you the author of your life or the editor? Whose voices are loudest in your head when making big decisions, and have you given yourself permission to write your own story?
660: James Clear (Live at Ohio University!) - The Four Laws of Behavior Change, Systems vs Goals, Building Better Habits, Mastering the Two-Minute Rule, Having a Great Marriage, & The Plateau of Latent Potential
This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver.
My guest: James Clear is the author of one of the most influential books of our generation, Atomic Habits. He's sold over 25 million copies worldwide and has helped millions of people transform their lives through the power of small changes. We brought the podcast to the campus of Ohio University, where we recorded live in front of 250 of the most impressive college students I've ever met.
Notes:
I loved the Morgan Housel moment - It was cool to see James' reaction to it (you can watch it on YouTube.com/RyanHawk). Morgan said, "I have absolutely not a single cell of envy for him. Because he is the nicest guy you will ever meet. You will not meet a nicer human than James Clear. You will not meet someone as successful as he is and as humble as he is. He is a saint in my life. And because of that, I adore every bit of this guy, so I cannot envy him. I am just inspired by his success, full stop." We should all strive to be that for the people in our lives.
Your WHO - "Every opportunity in life comes through a person. Relationships are usually the most important thing. If you want to achieve more, there is a relationship that can unlock better results. If you want to make a meaningful contribution, helping others is a great way to do it. If you sim
Willpower – 'People with tremendous self-control aren't that different from those who struggle. They're simply better at structuring their lives in a way that doesn't require heroic willpower.' It's not about determination, it's about design. That's liberating.
Fall in Love with the Process - "When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don't have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy. You can be satisfied anytime your system is running. And a system can be successful in many different forms, not just the one you first envision."
Make It Obvious, Easy, Attractive, Satisfying - The four laws of behavior change: make good habits obvious and bad habits invisible, make good habits easy and bad habits difficult, make good habits attractive and bad habits unattractive, make good habits satisfying and bad habits unsatisfying.
Use the Two-Minute Rule - Scale any habit down to something that takes two minutes or less. Want to read more? Read one page. Want to run a marathon? Put on your running shoes. The goal is to master showing up and make the entry point as easy as possible.
Standardize Before You Optimize - You can't improve a habit that doesn't exist. Master the art of showing up before worrying about optimization. Build consistency first, then work on increasing the dose or improving performance.
Track Your Habits Visually - I use a paper clip strategy: start each day with 120 paper clips in one jar, move one to another jar each time I complete a writing session. Visual tracking provides clear evidence of progress and makes the habit satisfying.
Habits Need to Match Your Personality - There's no one-size-fits-all approach. Morning people and night owls need different strategies. Work with your natural tendencies, not against them. Choose habits and contexts that align with who you already are.
Create Commitment Devices - Make bad habits difficult through commitment devices. I had my assistant change my social media passwords every Monday and only give them back on Fridays. This eliminated mindless scrolling during my productive work hours.
Focus on Systems, Not Goals - Winners and losers have the same goals. The difference is their systems. Goals are about the results you want to achieve; systems are about the processes that lead to those results. Fall in love with the process, not the outcome.
Build Habits That Align With Your Desired Identity - I wanted to be a writer, so I wrote every Monday and Thursday for years. Eventually, I had proof. I couldn't deny I was a writer because of the body of work I'd created. Your habits are how you embody your identity.
The Plateau of Latent Potential - We expect progress to be linear, but it's not. Habits often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold. You need to persist long enough to get through the plateau and break through to the other side.
Reduce Friction for Good Habits - I want to work out more, so I lay out my workout clothes the night before. When I wake up, they're the first thing I see. The easier you make the habit, the more likely you are to do it.
Increase Friction for Bad Habits - Want to watch less TV? Unplug it after each use and put the remote in another room. The added friction makes the bad habit less appealing and gives you a moment to make a better choice.
Automate Good Decisions - Technology can lock in good behavior. I set up automatic transfers to my investment account. Once the system is in place, the good behavior happens without requiring willpower or decision-making energy.
Student Questions
On Building Habits in College - The mess of college is actually useful because you're forced to figure out who you are. Use this time to experiment with different habits and see what sticks. You have more flexibility now than you will later in life.
On Breaking Bad Habits - Trying to eliminate a bad habit without replacing it with something else is really hard. The more sustainable approach is habit substitution. If you want to stop scrolling social media, replace it with reading for five minutes instead.
On Staying Consistent - Never miss twice. Missing once is an accident; missing twice is the start of a new habit. Elite performers aren't consistent because they're more disciplined—they have better strategies for getting back on track quickly when life happens.
On Finding Your Purpose - I think the idea of finding your purpose is misleading. You don't find your purpose; you build it through the habits you practice daily. Your life is essentially a collection of your habits, so if you want a different life, build different habits.
On Overcoming Setbacks - After my accident, I had to redefine what success looked like. Sometimes progress means recovering what you lost rather than reaching new heights. Focus on what you can control today rather than what you wish you could control.
On Reading and Learning - I read across many disciplines because insights often come from connecting ideas from different fields. Read widely, take notes, and revisit those notes regularly. The goal isn't to finish books—it's to find ideas that change how you think.
On Building a Writing Practice - I published twice per week for years before anything took off. Most people overestimate what they can accomplish in one year and underestimate what they can accomplish in ten years. Show up consistently and let time do the heavy lifting.
Reflection Questions
Are you focused on achieving goals or building systems? What's one process you could improve this week that would make your desired outcomes more likely?
What's one habit you want to build? Can you make it so easy that you can't say no—something that takes two minutes or less? How can you design your environment to make this habit obvious and attractive?
Which of your current habits align with the identity you want to build? What small votes can you cast today through your actions to prove to yourself who you want to become?
Former Episodes Referenced
#529 - James Clear - Becoming an Optimist, Creating Your System, & Setting Up Your Future Self
#655 - Morgan Housel - The Simple Formula For Happiness, Betting on Others, & Gaining Independence & Purpose
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
Shaka Sengor spent 19 years in prison for killing a man. He's transformed his life through not making excuses and taking full ownership of his decisions. Now, he's a New York Times best-selling author who has been called a "soul igniter" by Oprah. His latest book is called How to Be Free.
Notes:
The Permanence of Split-Second Decisions – At 17, shot three times on a Detroit corner. At 19, he killed a man in a conflict after creating a narrative that he would "shoot first." Sentenced to 17-40 years for second-degree murder. "I try to teach young people about understanding the permanence of a 30-second decision."
Books as Portals to Freedom – Read over 1,500 books during 19-year incarceration, starting with street literature (Pimp, Black Gangster) as a gateway to philosophy (Plato, Marcus Aurelius). "Books allowed me to escape in the most literal sense... a portal into other worlds."
Prison Mentors Changed Everything – Lifers became his guides: "These are men serving life sentences who came equipped with wisdom about what's on the other side... they guided me to books that shattered old narratives and opened possibilities."
Reading Creates Writing Excellence – Speed-reading skill from age 8 (learned during punishments with encyclopedias) combined with voracious prison reading, led to becoming a NY Times bestselling author. "You have to be a practitioner of the craft every day."
Journaling as Transformation Tool – "It was the most healing experience I've ever had to speak to my truth, speak to the pain points." Uses 20 different journals, writes everywhere - planes, shower thoughts on phone, margins of books.
Hidden Prisons We All Carry – "The most powerful prisons aren't the ones made of concrete and steel. They're the ones we carry with us, built from grief, anger, shame, trauma." Everyone has internal prisons that can be opened.
Vulnerability as Strength, Not Manipulation – Authentic vulnerability vs. weaponized oversharing. "Human beings have this innate ability to suss out the truth. Authenticity and vulnerability is the super unlock... being true to your center."
Community Through Shared Truth – Prison taught extreme friendship criteria: "Are they willing to serve a life sentence for you or die for you?" Now applies accountability standards: showing up consistently, being loyal to family first.
Violence Born from Fear – "Reactionary violence is typically born out of fear, being afraid." Prison taught him to see "the child in people" who are acting out, leading to empathy instead of escalation.
Voluntary Hardship Builds Resilience – Monthly 3-day fasts in solitary confinement prepared him for food deprivation punishment. "None of us get through life without suffering... that extra hour a week can change your life's outcomes."
Composure Through Self-Awareness – Developed through journaling about times he wasn't composed. "Once you've written it down, you own it. When you own it, you can control it. When you can control it, it's easy to become composed."
Remove All Excuses – Florence Nightingale quote: "I never gave or took any excuse." Despite a felony record, a violent crime conviction, and 20 years in prison, he chose to "lead a great life" by removing every excuse.
The Ben Horowitz Friendship – Unlikely brotherhood with VC billionaire, starting from Oprah's introduction, bonding over music and culture until 3 AM conversations. Shows authentic relationships transcend backgrounds.
Quotes:
"I try to teach young people about understanding the permanence of a 30-second decision."
"I was in prison before I stepped foot in a cell, and I was free before they ever let me out."
"The most powerful prisons aren't the ones made of concrete and steel. They're the ones we carry with us."
"Books allowed me to escape... a portal into other worlds."
"Once you've written it down, you own it. When you own it, you can control it."
"I never gave or took any excuse." (Florence Nightingale)
"Master your thinking, master your destiny."
"Violence is typically born out of fear, being afraid."
"If you can see the child in the person that's acting out... it equips you to have more empathy."
"None of us gets through life without suffering. At some point, we're all gonna go through adversity."
"I chose to lead a great life... I removed every excuse."
Life Lessons:
Face Your Internal Prisons – Identify the shame, anger, grief, and trauma that create mental prisons. Recognize that these have doors that can be opened through conscious work
Use Reading as Escape and Growth – Books provide mental freedom regardless of physical circumstances. Start with what interests you, then expand to broader learning.
Practice Voluntary Hardship – Choose difficult challenges (fasting, extra work, taking stairs) to build resilience for inevitable adversity you don't choose.
Journal for Self-Awareness – Write down thoughts, patterns, and reactions to own and control them. Use various methods - handwritten, voice memos, and margins of books.
Build Authentic Community – Surround yourself with people who will hold you accountable and tell you the truth. Apply the highest standards to friendship selection.
Transform Fear into Empathy – When facing conflict, look for the "child" in the other person. Understanding their fear reduces your reactionary responses.
Develop Composure Through Practice – Review past moments of losing control to build awareness. Use this knowledge to respond rather than react in future situations.
Remove All Excuses – Whatever your circumstances, choose to pursue greatness rather than accepting limitations. The past doesn't define the future unless you let it.
Share Your Truth Vulnerably – Authentic storytelling about pain and growth helps others escape their own prisons. Vulnerability is strength when used to serve others.
Create Evidence of Resilience – Completing self-imposed challenges builds confidence for handling external adversities. Each victory creates proof you can handle hard things.
Choose Your Narrative – You can change the story handed down to you. Reject limiting beliefs about what's possible based on background or circumstances.
Compassion - Assume you don't know others' struggles
Bob worked with Ed Catmull (Pixar)
He was one of the best at combining curiosity, willingness to try new things, and having compassion for people
Good Boss vs. Bad Boss
Good bosses ask lots of questions and then make the call (John Hennessey, Stanford President)
The Jumbo Grocery Stores in Holland created "slow lanes" for those who wanted to talk… They didn't want efficiency or speed, they wanted a conversation. It's a good reminder that sometimes we should slow down and enjoy our surroundings and the people we're with…
Curiosity and Compassion are skills we can build. Take the experiment where they counted the number of questions versus statements and your talking time. Surround yourself with people who will give you direct feedback about your level of curiosity and compassion… When conversing with someone else, how often are you asking questions versus talking about yourself? Think about that…
It's not always right to be efficient… Bob shared the Jerry Seinfeld story… The network was considering bringing in McKinsey to help Jerry become more efficient when making his show. He asked, "Are they funny?" They said, no that's not what they do. And he said, "Then I don't need them." It's not always supposed to be efficient. Sometimes, the hard way is the right way… To get the best result, it usually is.
Some things Bob believes (we should all post an essay about what we believe):
Indifference is as important as passion.
The best leaders know what it feels like to work for them. They overcome the urge to focus attention on powerful superiors rather than their followers
The best leaders think and act as trustees of their employees' and customers' time. They are "friction fixers" who hold themselves and others responsible for making the right things easier and the wrong things harder. That might mean, for example, reducing friction by eliminating and revamping meetings.
"Am I a success or a failure?" is not useful. It is better to ask "What am I learning."
Noam Bardin (from Waze)
Laszlo Bock - For hiring, "If you need to interview someone more than 4 times, then you must get written approval." This helped speed up the process.
One of the roles of the leader is to be the editor-in-chief. Great leaders are great communicators. You must become a good writer and speaker if you want to lead.
Life/Career advice:
Seek variation each day
A chief of staff job could lead to big things (if you work for the right person)
Be kind
560: Dr. Barry Posner - Model the Way, Inspire a Shared Vision, Challenge the Process, Encourage Others to Act (The Leadership Challenge)
Dr. Barry Posner, author of The Leadership Challenge and The Truth About Leadership
The 4 characteristics of leaders whom we would most choose to follow:
Honest (trustworthy, they do what they say they're going to do)
Competent (Smart, and constantly learning)
Inspiring - Energetic, enthusiastic. Inspire means to breathe life in to...
Forward-looking - They have a sense of the future. They share a compelling vision
People all have values, but not everyone knows what they are. To know what our values are, we must be thoughtful and intentional about them and do the reflective work to understand what we value most.
What is Kouzes and Posner's leadership theory? Their research, which they conducted over almost 20 years, suggested that leadership is not a position, but a collection of practices and behaviors. These practices serve as guidance for leaders to accomplish their achievements or "to get extraordinary things done.
The Leadership Challenge – Leaders drive results and achieve goals. To face the obstacles of today and tomorrow, we need leaders at a high level. The Leadership Challenge gives everyone the tools and practices to Model the Way, Inspire a Shared Vision, Challenge the Process, Enable Others to Act, and Encourage the Hearts of those around them.
"In the middle of responding to an audience question one of us was saying, "I don't know what you call something that's been the same for twenty-five years, but…," and Ken Blanchard interrupted, exclaiming, 'I'd call it the truth.'"
The Truth About Leadership
The first truth is that You Make a Difference.
The second truth is that Credibility Is the Foundation of Leadership. If people don't believe in you, they won't willingly follow you.
The third truth is that Values Drive Commitment. People want to know what you stand for and believe in.
The fourth truth is that Focusing on the Future Sets Leaders Apart. The capacity to imagine and articulate exciting future possibilities is a defining competence of leaders. You have to take the long-term perspective.
You Can't Do It Alone is the fifth truth. Leadership is a team sport…What strengthens and sustains the relationship between leader and constituent is that leaders are obsessed with what is best for others, not what is best for themselves.
Trust Rules is the sixth truth. Trust is the social glue that holds individuals and groups together. And the level of trust others have in you will determine the amount of influence you have. You have to earn your constituents' trust before they'll be willing to trust you. That means you have to give trust before you can get trust.
The seventh truth is that Challenge Is the Crucible for Greatness. Great achievements don't happen when you keep things the same. Change invariably involves a challenge, and challenge tests you.
Truth number eight reminds you that You Either Lead by Example or You Don't Lead at All. Leaders have to keep their promises and become role models for the values and actions they espouse.
Truth number nine is that The Best Leaders Are the Best Learners. Leaders are constant improvement fanatics, and learning is the master skill of leadership.
The tenth truth is that Leadership Is an Affair of the Heart. It could also be the first truth. Leaders are in love with their constituents, their customers and clients, and the mission that they are serving. Leaders make others feel important and are gracious in showing their appreciation. Love is the motivation that energizes leaders to give so much for others. You just won't work hard enough to become great if you aren't doing what you love.
Credo = Beliefs (credibility)
Leadership is a team sport. You can't do it alone.
We are all community-made.
The best leaders are the best learners.
Challenge is the crucible for greatness.
Life/Career advice:
Remain curious
Ask questions
Volunteer
559: Marshall Goldsmith - The Power of Executive Coaching, How To Give & Receive Feedback, & Attributes of The Best Leaders (What Got You Here Won't Get You There)
18 Dec 2023
00:48:35
Order The Score That Matters NOW. CLICK HERE. In The Score That Matters, Ryan Hawk and Brook Cupps show that the internal score is what matters most—it reveals whether we are living in alignment with our purpose and values. Offering both descriptive and prescriptive advice and anecdotes, The Score That Matters will help you unlock true fulfillment and happiness by discovering your purpose, identifying your values, creating critical behaviors, and living them faithfully every day in all aspects of your life.
Notes from my conversation with Marshall Goldsmith:
Attributes of the best leaders he's worked with:
They are courageous, they have humility, and they are disciplined.
Do we all need a coach?
"I don't know, but if we're honest with ourselves, we all need help. And a coach can be someone to help…"
Happiness and achievement are independent variables.
I felt we kept going around in circles because I'm a prescriptive thinker and like actionable takeaways. And I feel like Marshall was helping me understand it's more of a mindset.
With a PhD from UCLA, Marshall is a pioneer of 360-degree feedback as a leadership development tool. His early efforts in providing feedback and then following-up with executives to measure changes in behavior were precursors to what eventually evolved as the field of executive coaching.
"Fate is the hand of cards we've been dealt. The choice is how we play the hand."
"Getting mad at people for being who they are makes as much sense as getting mad at a chair for being a chair."
"Successful people become great leaders when they learn to shift the focus from themselves to others."
"People who believe they can succeed see opportunities where others see threats."
"If we do not create and control our environment, our environment creates and controls us."
"A leader who cannot shoulder the blame is not someone we will follow blindly into battle. We instinctively question that individual's character, dependability, and loyalty to us. And so we hold back on our loyalty to him or her."
"Peter Drucker, who said, "Our mission in life should be to make a positive difference, not to prove how smart or right we are."
"People will do something—including changing their behavior—only if it can be demonstrated that doing so is in their own best interests as defined by their own values."
558: Introducing Our New Book, "The Score That Matters," (With Brook Cupps)
14 Dec 2023
01:02:42
Order The Score That Matters NOW. CLICK HERE. In The Score That Matters, Ryan Hawk and Brook Cupps show that the internal score is what matters most—it reveals whether we are living in alignment with our purpose and values. Offering both descriptive and prescriptive advice and anecdotes, The Score That Matters will help you unlock true fulfillment and happiness by discovering your purpose, identifying your values, creating critical behaviors, and living them faithfully every day in all aspects of your life.
"The big question about how people behave is whether they've got an Inner Scorecard or an Outer Scorecard. It helps if you can be satisfied with an Inner Scorecard." - Warren Buffet – The inner scorecard is about eliminating comparison with others and living in alignment with what's most important to you. Your values and the behaviors to match those values.
The inner scorecard eliminates the comparison of things.
How to build trust? Laugh together, cry together, suffer together (do hard things).
Resume virtues versus Eulogy virtues. We'll get caught up in living for our resume (promotions, money, objects) if we're not intentional. We think it's better to live for your eulogy virtues (the impact you had on people, fulfilling your purpose, living in alignment with your true values)
Why a strong purpose beats a good plan: we explain how a strong purpose erases obstacles, is never about you, and is highlighted by considering death.
Why being the greatest is a mirage: While greatness is a process that is attainable for all, we share why becoming the greatest is a destination that no one can reach.
How to navigate the tricky art of building trust: Throughout 25 years of teaching and coaching Brook has refined the trust-building process to 3 simple actions every leader can use.
How to fight the poison of comparison: Our focus on a consistent process over the societal pursuit of results seems contradictory to excellence but just may lay the foundation for its attainment.
Why self-awareness is not a solo flight: The feedback we seek from special people in our life, our foxhole, reminds us that we are tougher together.
Why team captains are overrated: Brook connects how the shared ownership of a team is best when all members assume the responsibility of upholding the standards.
How plain and simple can bore you right to excellence: We like to complicate success, but we point back to a consistent return to the fundamentals.
Brook originally learned about creating and living his core values from Coach Dick Bennett's "Pillars of Success."
Brook's values are: Tough, Passionate, Unified, and Thankful.
My values are: Thoughtful, Thankful, Curious, and Consistent.
Foxhole friends are disagreeable givers. They are kind enough to give you honest feedback. And you do the same for them.
Thankful Thursdays
Send a text message, email, or handwritten note to three people you're thankful for every Thursday.
Push the pace... Full-court pressing and always running a fast break on offense is living up to Brook's value of speaking and acting with urgency (unified).
How Brook coaches his team to play: "Our anchor defensively isno comfort, no vision.We want you to never be comfortable. And we want the same thing offensively. We say simple and together, but we think of pressing you offensively too. We don't want you to be comfortable. We want you to be on your heels."
557: Hal Elrod - How To Create a Morning Routine That Works For You
11 Dec 2023
00:45:55
Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right...
The SAVERS acronym – Silence, Affirmations, Visualization, Exercise, Reading, and Scribing. If you implement that consistently, you'll probably do better.
72% of people said they were not a morning person before implementing SAVERS.
The makeup of a great sales professional:
They are coachable...
They bring energy and enthusiasm to the job...
They are consistent. They can handle rejection and keep going. They focus on the process...
Affirmations: First, affirm what you're committed to. Next, why is it a must for you, and finally, affirm the specific actions you will take and when. That's how you bring affirmations to life…
Hal died for 6 minutes, broke 11 bones, suffered permanent brain damage, and was told by doctors that he would never walk again. Then, at age 37, he nearly died again when his heart, lungs, and kidneys were on the verge of failing, and he was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive form of cancer.
"Any time you find yourself "wishing" you were further along than you are, or comparing where you are with where someone else is, keep in mind that when you finally get to point you've been working towards for so long, you never wish it would have happened any sooner. Instead, you see that the journey and the timing are perfect. So be at peace with where you are while maintaining a healthy sense of urgency to make the consistent progress each day that will ensure you get to wherever it is that you want to go. "
"Those who only do what they feel like, don't do much. To be successful at anything you must take action even when you don't feel like it, knowing it is the action itself that will produce the motivation you need to follow through."
"It's temporary. Tolerate it, accept it, embrace it, or enjoy it. Whatever it is, just know that it is temporary."
"The moment you accept 100% responsibility for EVERY aspect of your life is the moment that you claim the power to change ANY aspect of your life. I think where people get caught up with this is when someone else is to blame for a situation. But understand that accepting responsibility is NOT the same as accepting blame. While blame determines who is at fault for something, responsibility determines who is committed to improving a situation. It really doesn't matter who was at fault; all that matters is that YOU are committed to improving and creating the circumstances you want for your life, regardless of who is at fault. That's what taking responsibility is all about."
556: Morgan Housel - A Guide To Human Behavior, Telling Great Stories, Becoming a Reasonable Optimist, Writing Advice, Mr. Beast, & What Never Changes
04 Dec 2023
00:56:30
Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right...
"Your personal experiences make up maybe 0.00000001% of what's happened in the world but maybe 80% of how you think the world works."
"All behaviors make sense with enough information."
The best story wins: Good stories have an extraordinary ability to inspire and evoke positive emotions, bringing insight and attention to topics that people tend to ignore when they've previously been presented with nothing but facts.
Stories are more powerful than statistics. And most statistics are incomplete props to justify a story. Stories are easier to remember, easier to relate to, and emotionally persuasive.
Progress requires optimism and pessimism to coexist: A rational optimist. - Save like a pessimist and invest like an optimist. - Plan like a pessimist and dream like an optimist.
"It's supposed to be hard." – Everything worth pursuing comes with a little pain. The trick is not minding it hurts.
It's impossible to plan for what you can't imagine. - Invest in preparedness, not in prediction. - Realize that if you're only preparing for the risks you can envision, you'll be unprepared for the risks you can't see every single time.
Fostering envy vs. admiration. Are you creating envy by what you post on social media?
"People admire you when you are pursuing something, not when you have it."
Reasonable Optimists: Once people believe in a better future – for themselves and others – they become willing to take risks, work hard, sacrifice near-term comfort, delay gratification, and cooperate with others, all of which are the raw ingredients of economic and social progress.
A realistic optimist is someone who knows that what happens in any given day, month, or year will be surprising, disappointing, difficult, and mostly out of your control. But they know with equal confidence that what happens in any given decade or generation is likely to be pretty good, bending heavily toward progress.
The reasonable optimist expects the world to break all the time. But they know – as a matter of faith – that if they can survive the day-to-day fractures they'll capture the up-and-to-the-right arc over time.
Writing: I think "know your audience" can be dangerous advice for writers. Write stuff you yourself find interesting and entertaining. Writing for yourself is fun, and it shows. Writing for others is work, and it shows.
If you're efficient, you're doing it the wrong way (Jerry Seinfeld micro-managed everything about his show). Counterintuitive. Highlights the dangers of shortcuts.
Be careful what you wish for: A carefree and stress-free life sounds wonderful only until you recognize the motivation and progress it prevents. Hardship is the most potent fuel of problem-solving. And what makes life mean something is purpose. A goal.
Read less news and more books. If you read good books, you'll have an easier time figuring out what you should pay attention to. (News isn't timeless. Good books are)
Writing: People don't remember books, blogs, or articles. They remember sentences. That should be your goal: a collection of memorable sentences. One good line is infinitely more powerful than a few clumsy paragraphs.
Mr Beast tells aspiring YouTubers to make 100 videos and he'll give them feedback and advice. 2 things happen. 98% never get close and give up. The 2% who do, no longer need his help.
People use success as an indication of what to keep doing. But most success plants the seeds of its own demise, so what people think works and try to copy is always changing.
Keep running - There is never a time when an investor can discover an investing strategy and be confident it will continue working indefinitely. The world changes, and competitors create their own little twist that exploits and snuffs out your niche. Same with careers, job skills, relationships, and countries. It's hard to accept that you have to put in a ton of work just to stay in one place, but that's how it works. Keep running.
Acceptable Flaws -- Short-term thinking is the root of most of our problems in business, investing, and politics. But I get why it happens. It has to happen. Short-term thinking can be the only way you'll survive long enough to experience long-term results. It's an acceptable flaw.
Useful Biases -- Reasonable ignorance – intentionally limiting your diligence in order to avoid decision paralysis in a world where everything, if you dig deep enough, is more complicated than it seems. (the paradox of choice).
Progress happens too slowly for people to notice; setbacks happen too fast for people to ignore.
"Stop telling kids they can be whatever they want to be. You can be whatever you're good at, as long as they're hiring. And even then it helps to know someone." -- Chris Rock
A good test when reading the news is to constantly ask, "Will I still care about this story in a year? Two years? Five years?"
"Money buys happiness in the same way drugs bring pleasure: incredible if done right, dangerous if used to mask a weakness, and disastrous when no amount is enough."
"I'm not interested in anything that's not sustainable. Friendships, investing, careers, podcasts, reading habits, exercise habits... If I can't keep it going, I'm not interested in it."
"I know people who have a lot of money, and they get hospital wings named after them. But the truth is nobody in the world loves them. If you get to my age and nobody thinks well of you, I don't care how big your bank account is, your life is a disaster."
555: Shane Parrish - Raising Your Standards, The Difference Between Nice & Kind Feedback, The Inner vs. Outer Scoreboard, & Turning Ordinary Moments Into Extraordinary Results (Clear Thinking)
27 Nov 2023
00:55:17
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The power of believing in someone. Mr. Duncan, Shane's high school English teacher was the first person to tell him that he believed in him. He changed the trajectory of Shane's life. We, as leaders, can do that for others. Let's proactively look for opportunities to tell the people we're leading that we believe in them.
The difference between Nice and Kindfeedback. Too often, the people we ask for feedback are nice but not kind. Kind people will tell you things a nice person will not. A kind person will tell you that you have spinach on your teeth. A nice person won't because it's uncomfortable. A kind person will tell us what holds us back, even when it's uncomfortable. A nice person avoids giving us critical feedback because they're worried about hurting our feelings.
Champions: "Champions don't create the standards of excellence. The standards of excellence create champions." "Expecting high performance is a prerequisite to its achievement among those who work with you. Your high standards and optimistic anticipations will not guarantee a favorable outcome, but their absence will assuredly create the opposite."
The USS Benfold — was one of the worst-performing warships in the US Navy in 1996. The destiny of the USS Benfold changed the day Michael Abrashoff was named commander.
Shane was 13 years old. Shane was standing with a group of his friends after school and they were teasing one of his classmates and he was watching. Teachers intervened and it ended quickly. He didn't realize that your dad was parked nearby and was watching. You have to stand up for people who don't have a voice.
Warren Buffett: "The big question about how people behave is whether they've got an Inner Scorecard or an Outer Scorecard. It helps if you can be satisfied with an Inner Scorecard."
Brent Beshore: "My favorite part of the book was the section on habits, rules, and safeguards (page 101). A principle that Shane and I discussed in January changed my life and was expounded on in the book. Shane said, "It's impossible to work out very often if you have to decide every day whether or not you'll do it. That's why I just do something active every day, no matter what."
Solutions/Ego: "Solutions appear when you stop bargaining and start accepting the reality of the situation. That's because focusing on the next move, rather than how you got here in the first place, opens you up to a lot of possibilities. When you put outcome over ego, you get better results."
"Small plans don't inspire, but consistently small actions create incredible results."
KnowingYour Defaults:
The emotion default - We tend to respond to feelings rather than reasons and facts
The ego default - We tend to react to anything that threatens our sense of self-worth or our position in a group hierarchy
The social default - We tend to conform to the norms of our larger social group.
The Inertia default - We're habit-forming and comfort-seeking. We tend to resist change, and to prefer ideas, processes, and environments that are familiar.
Ancient Greek word — Phronesis— the wisdom of knowing how to order your life to achieve the best results.
Life/Career advice: "I'd give the same advice to someone who's trying to find someone to marry. Go on lots of dates. Experiment. Do stuff. Get out in the world. You can only connect the dots looking backward."
If you want to develop good judgment, start by asking two questions:
What do I want in life?
And is what I want actually worth wanting?
554: Tim Urban - Becoming a High-Rung Thinker, Being The Boss of The Ideas In Your Own Head, Writing Wait But Why, & The Best Advice He's Ever Received
20 Nov 2023
00:46:19
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High-rung thinking is independent thinking, leaving you free to revise your ideas or even discard them altogether. On the low rungs, it means you're working to dutifully serve your ideas, not the other way around.
How can I be the boss of the ideas in my ownhead?
When you're the boss of the ideas in your head, you're always willing to revise them. When there's no amount of evidence that will change your mind about something, it means that idea is your boss. Humility is the awareness that no idea is worthy of being your boss.
Best advice Tim has ever received:
"I met Chris Anderson, the head of TED, in 2015. He had read a few WBW posts and offered me the opportunity to give a TED Talk at the 2016 conference (which was six months away). Immediately full of both gratitude/excitement and dread/anxiety, I asked him if it might be better to wait a couple years until I had some more speaking experience. He paused thoughtfully for a few seconds before saying, "There's no time like the present." I took his advice. Since then, his voice saying those words has popped into my head again and again during hard decisions, and I'm yet to regret following them."
Great advice is sometimes great because it's totally original or framed in an original way. But, as in my story, a well-known platitude, at the perfect moment, can also make a huge impact. What makes Chris's advice so valuable to me wasn't that it was something new—it was that the lesson I learned from taking the advice in that particular moment turned a cliché into a mantra.
No one "builds a house." They lay one brick again and again and again and the end result is a house. A remarkable, glorious achievement is just what a long series of unremarkable, unglorious tasks looks like from far away.
"If I aired a highlight reel of your most selfish life moments and most shameful thoughts, you'd seem like an awful person. If I aired a reel of your best, kindest moments, you'd seem like a saint. But people aren't highlight reels, and the unedited cut is always a messy mix!"
Kids Asking WHY? When kids repeatedly ask "why?" they're trying to see the underlying reasoning behind what they're told by authorities. "Because I said so" rejects that instinct and says "stop reasoning and obey." We then become adults who only know how to trust authorities other than ourselves.
High Rung Thinking:
Rung 1 - Thinking like a Scientist. When you're thinking like a scientist, you start at point A and follow evidence wherever it takes you.
Rung 2 - Thinking like a sports fan. They want the game played fairly, but they really want the process to yield a certain outcome.
Rung 3 - Thinking like an attorney. When you think like an attorney, you start from point B. The client is not guilty. Now let's figure out why. They cherry-pick evidence and piece it together to make an argument that leads where you want it to.
Rung 4 - Thinking like a zealot. Their ideas aren't rugged experiments to be kicked around, they're fragile, precious babies to be adored and protected. The zealot doesn't have to go from A to B to know their viewpoints are correct– they just know they are. With 100% conviction.
Life/Career advice: "I'd give the same advice to someone who's trying to find someone to marry. Go on lots of dates. Experiment. Do stuff. Get out in the world. You can only connect the dots looking backward."
553: Eric Potterat - Mental Disciplines for Leading and Winning from the World's Top Performers (Learned Excellence)
13 Nov 2023
00:58:17
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"Amateurs focus on outcome. Professionals focus on process." And if you want to change the process, focus on just one change at a time. He used the fly fishing analogy. You don't change all three at once. Try one change and re-evaluate.
I love the idea of creating a personal checklist for yourself much like pilots fill out every time before they fly a plane. We should all create our checklist and fill it out consistently. This is a great tool to become more self-aware.
Top performers have a thirst for feedback in victory and defeat. The leaders who sustain excellence over time are intentional about surrounding themselves with a kitchen cabinet who is there to regularly provide feedback so that they can iterate and improve. That's one of the biggest differences between those who sustain excellence over time and those who don't.
Goal Setting
34%-42% chance of hitting a goal if you ideate it
62% chance of hitting a goal if you write it down
75% chance of hitting a goal if you verbally share it with others
Eric developed a psychological "resilience" test that when combined with data on the candidate's physical characteristics became a very good predictor of who would fail BUD/S (97%).
While working with the Navy SEALs in San Diego, Eric frequently had guests come to observe the SEALs and how they worked. A lot of them were professional athletes like Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong, Michael Phelps, and many more… While there, Eric asked to interview them. Over time he was able to build an extensive knowledge base of the mental approaches of the world's top performers.
"If your brain is firing, it's wiring." Learned from downhill skiers...
Commonalities of leaders who sustain excellence:
They accelerate what they value. They move from reputation to identity. They worry less about what others think.
One of the biggest regrets of people on their deathbed is that they regret what they didn't do.
Capitlize now to have no regrets later.
Create a credo (your identity)
Mindset
They have a growth mindset (instead of a fixed mindset)
They are thirsty for feedback (they want feedback in victory and defeat)
Eric is agnostic about motivations - Clean fuel vs Dirty fuel
They have different mindsets for the roles they play
Think of yourself as a dimmer switch -- Sometimes you're white hot, sometimes you need to dim down
Efficient and Consistent
They manage their time well
They sleep 8 hours
They don't let life dictate what's important to them.
Time = Currency. Block time for what's most important. Color code your calendar.
Adversity Tolerance
They control their human stress response
They have a pre and post-performance routine
They set goals
They use visualization tools
They compartmentalize well
They use positive self-talk (they believe)
They are good contingency planners
They have high levels of self-awareness
Like a pilot, they have checklists for themselves
Balance and Recovery
The more balanced, the more productive
Feed all of your pillars
Work
Health
Relationships
Hobbies
Spirituality
Legacy
Leadership role "Must-Haves"
Emotional Intelligence - "Feel for a room"
Empathy - Put our own perspective aside to understand others
Curiosity - A desire to learn, to know more
552: Brian Johnson - How To Activate Your Heroic Potential, Develop Charisma, Become Intrinsically Motivated, Build Emotional Stamina, & Live With Arete
06 Nov 2023
00:56:57
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Charisma: Presence, Power, and Warmth - Show up, be fully there. In that moment with the person in front of you. Flip the switch. Understand your power. And deeply care for others. Be warm, not cold. And it's important that each of these is expressed with authenticity. That's how to develop more charisma.
How to develop our protocol - A simple exercise. Get a sheet of paper. On one side write "DO." On the other side, write "DON'T." Think of yourself at your best, what do you do? That's your protocol. And remember that the worse you feel, the more committed you need to be to your protocol
It's always day one. Brian thinks of his time spent with the Navy SEALs. They work to earn their trident every single day. Today is the day. It's always the right day to earn it. It's always day 1.
Arete – An ancient Greek word. We translate it into English as 'virtue' or 'excellence,' but it has a deeper meaning. Something closer to 'expressing the best version of yourself moment to moment to moment.'
Inter-leaving - The basic idea is simple: If you want to learn something, you're better off varying your practice rather than grooving one identical rep after another.
Epictetus - One of his students took great lecture notes and captured his wisdom in a manual called the Enchiridion. The Greek word for Enchiridion is translated as "handbook," and it's important to note that the word literally means "within" + "hand."
Intrinsic versus Extrinsic motivation – Which motivation leads to greater levels of happiness and flourishing? Why? It's why people who get to the peak of what David Brooks calls the "First Mountain" look around and wonder why they don't feel fulfilled. They got all the stuff they were told would make them happy and… they're not.
Phil Stutz wrote the Foreword – Practice comprised of unusual people. "They refuse to be defined by any single accomplishment. Their Identity is based on a process of endless possibility. They don't stop creating."
Two primary obstacles getting in our way are fear and laziness. This comes from Phil Stutz...
AM and PM Bookends – "Get these right and you're 80% there."
Targeted thinking - What do I want? What's needed to get that done?
Consistency - "Who you are speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you say."
Unshakeable confidence -- Anti-fragile confidence. You have intense trust that you have what it takes to respond.
Anti-Fragility - The more life kicks you around, the better you get.
Emotional stamina - The worse you feel, the more committed you are to your protocol.
Protocol - Think of yourself at your best... What are you doing?
Hero - An ancient Greek word for protector
Get clear on your identity
Sleep, meditate, work out, work, love
Pilots have checklists before they fly a plane... We should use one too each day.
Create your "Do" and "Don't" list
Intrinsic vs Extrinsic motivation -- Deepend relationships, help in your community, focus on your eulogy virtues today...
Hire a coach... We all need a coach
A great coach has believable hope, they see your potential
650: Michelle "Mace" Curran - Building a World-Class Team, Running an Excellent Debrief, Rebuilding Trust, Feedback Loops, & How To Turn Fear Into Your Superpower
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.
My guest: Michelle "Mace" Curran is a combat veteran, former fighter pilot, and only the second woman in history to fly as the Lead Solo for the Thunderbirds, the U.S. Air Force's elite demonstration squadron. Now on a new mission, she's using her story to inspire others. She is the best-selling author of The Flipside: How to Invert Your Perspective and Turn Fear Into Your Superpower.
How to run "debrief" so that giving and getting feedback becomes embedded in your culture.
The biggest mistake Michelle made when she became a new fighter pilot, and what you can learn from it.
Early Exposure to Male-Dominated Environments – Michelle's dad took her hunting with guys starting at age 7, teaching her she "belonged in any room" she wanted to pursue. This early experience prepared her for being 1 of only 2% female fighter pilots.
Parents Who Believed in Wild Dreams – Parents worked multiple jobs to afford camps (criminal justice, archaeology) whenever Michelle showed interest in something new. Taught her that opportunities weren't just possibilities - "I could go after it."
The Lone Wolf Trap – When struggling in her first squadron, Michelle was afraid to ask questions because she thought it would show she didn't belong. "I wouldn't even ask questions because I felt like asking a question was just so uncomfortable."
Three Years of Struggling in Silence – Despite performing well in the air, Michelle spent three years "belly crawling, pulling myself by my fingernails" because she felt pressure to represent all women perfectly.
The Fresh Start Power – Moving from Japan to Texas gave her a reset: "No one here knows about my divorce. No one here knows all these struggles I've been going through." Sometimes you need a clean slate to rebuild.
Curiosity + Vulnerability = Community – The breakthrough came when fellow pilots asked pointed questions beyond platitudes: "How are you actually doing?" Real curiosity that goes deeper than "let me know if you need anything."
The Near Head-On Collision Story – Flying inverted at 500 mph, passing within 80 feet of another jet using only eyeballs for distance measurement. When her student pilot aimed straight at her, she had 2.5 seconds to decide whether to move or hold position.
Learning from Mistakes, Not Punishing Them – After the near-collision, Michelle chose teaching over berating: "What is the most productive way we can respond to get the most learning from that?" The student learned faster because he found the boundary.
The Debrief Culture Framework – Start with objectives, go through segments systematically, ask "why" five times to find root causes, create specific lesson learned, and share with the entire organization so others don't repeat mistakes.
Rank Comes Off in Debriefs – Even generals sit in debriefs led by mid-level captains who are the real tactical experts. "Status comes off" - expertise matters more than hierarchy when analyzing performance.
The Teaching-Learning Loop – Moving from student (year 1) to instructor (year 2) creates exponential learning: "Your students will teach you more than you probably learned when you were a student."
Time Distortion Under Extreme Stress – During the near-collision, Michelle experienced "the craziest temporal distortion" where "time slows down" but "you can't do anything faster than you normally can."
Build Competence First, Then Serve Others – Advice for young people: Spend 6-8 years building skills and confidence, then "reach a hand back" to mentor others. Both phases are essential for maximum impact.
Quotes:
"They endlessly believed in every wild dream I set my sights on."
"I learned my vocabulary of profanity expanded greatly... but I also learned I could hang in that environment."
"I went into it naively thinking that it didn't matter at all... and it's a little bit different as you get into the military."
"There's no fear when you're present. Fear is a future thing."
"Curiosity plus vulnerability equals community."
"What is the most productive way we can respond at this point to get the most learning from that?"
"More learning happens in the debrief than actually does during the flight itself."
"The egos that people see in Hollywood around fighter pilots... what they don't show is the humility that has to happen behind the scenes."
"It's not self-centered to spend that first six to eight years focused on learning and honing skills."
"You get to reach a hand back... and it becomes one of the most fulfilling things for you as well."
Life Lessons:
Expose Children to Challenging Environments Early – Like Michelle's hunting trips, give kids experience in situations where they're the minority or outsider to build confidence.
Support Wild Dreams with Action – Don't just say you believe in someone's goals - invest time and money in giving them exposure to those fields.
Ask for Help Before You're Drowning – The biggest mistake is thinking asking questions shows weakness. Everyone expects beginners to have questions.
Create Psychological Safety for Mistakes – Focus on learning from errors rather than punishing them. The response to mistakes determines future trust and performance.
Build Debrief Culture in Your Organization – Set clear objectives, analyze systematically, find root causes, create specific action items, and share lessons broadly.
Use Fresh Starts Strategically – Sometimes changing environments gives you the reset needed to implement new behaviors and shed old baggage.
Go Beyond Surface-Level Check-ins – Real community comes from curiosity that goes deeper than "how are you?" Be willing to ask uncomfortable follow-up questions.
Practice Temporal Awareness Under Stress – In high-stakes situations, your brain may speed up while time seems to slow down. Prepare for this distortion through practice.
Separate Expertise from Hierarchy – The most knowledgeable person should lead analysis sessions, regardless of their position in the org chart.
Balance Self-Development with Service – Early career should focus on building competence; mid-career should emphasize mentoring others.
Accept That High Performance Requires High Standards – Like the Thunderbirds' 70-foot separation at 500 mph, excellence often means operating with minimal margin for error.
551: Greg Harden - How To Control The Controllables and Stay Sane in an Insane World (Tom Brady's Mentor)
29 Oct 2023
01:01:48
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Greg Harden is best known for working with 7-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady. He also worked with Super Bowl MVP Desmond Howard, and 23-time Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps. Brady, Howard, and other athletes credit Harden with inspiring them to overcome obstacles and achieve success in their professional and personal lives. He's the author of Stay Sane in an Insane World: How to Control the Controllables and Thrive. The book debuted at #1 on all of Amazon and is a New York Times bestseller.
WATCH this conversation on YouTube. And SUBSCRIBE!
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The Learning Leader Show
"You need to become the world's greatest expert on one subject. Yourself." We need to do the work to better understand who we are, what we're scared of, why we say the things to ourselves that we do, and how to improve. It's hard, but very necessary work. And the fun part about it is it never ends…
Courage is not about being fearless. Courage is about facing your fears. It's about turning that fear into fire and passion. For people to say that they are fearless… That isn't realistic. We all have fears. It's about how we handle them and the courage we show in the face of fear.
Commonalities of people who sustain excellence: commitment to continuous improvement, humble, hungry, coachable, and they continue to push. They are driven and it never stops.
"My real obsession is to convince an individual that they have to determine for themselves what sort of man, what sort of woman they want to be. The goal is to make people experts on themselves."
Control the controllables... "Tom Brady turned his haters into a source of motivation."
"Surrender the ego."
Do a SWOT analysis on yourself:
Strengths
Weaknesses
Opportunities
Threats
Identify 2-3 people in your life that you trust to also do a SWOT analysis on you...
Miles Miller had a boss who fired him and an ex-girlfriend do a SWOT analysis on him and it was one of the most useful that Greg had ever seen...
Create an accountability partner for yourself
Identify self-defeating attitudes, behaviors, and language you use. They can sabotage you.
Self-Talk:
We all talk to ourselves. We need to change the internal dialogue from negative to positive.
"The greatest competition is between your ears."
Mastery:
Capture your negative self-talk on paper. You'll be surprised how much you do it and how it impacts you.
Instead of beating yourself up about it, be amused by it. Be critically conscious of it though...
Separate the behavior from the person... It's not, "You're a bad person." It's, "You made a poor choice."
Public speaking:
Understand your audience and what they need to hear
Memorize your first 2 minutes cold
There is a thin line between anxious and excitement... "Turn your feat into fire and passion."
"Courage is not about not having fear. Courage is about facing your fears."
550: Dan Patrick - The Art of Interviewing, Leaving ESPN, Working With Dave Matthews & Adam Sandler, Asking Better Questions, & Taking Care of Your Team
22 Oct 2023
00:49:05
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It feels like your eavesdropping on their conversation (he takes you inside)
He disarms them with humor
Ask shorter questions…
Take care of your people… Dan has had the Dannettes with him for many years. He listens to his teammates, Makes them part of his show, and truly cares for him. In return, they are there for him every day. It seems obvious, but it's not. Dan is evidence that this approach works…
Dan has been influenced by Howard Stern's interviewing style of always being curious... And he makes his staff part of the show.
"I love being a voice in your head. You're in your car, driving, and I love being that voice in your head."
Interviewing... Manage the tension. "Shorter questions get better answers."
Dan met Adam Sandler at Madison Square Garden and agreed that he would be cast in his next movie... He has since been cast in many more.
Dan shares the story of meeting Dave Matthews, spilling his beer on him, and then later singing karaoke with him.
Dan is the author of The Occasionally Accurate Annals of Football: The NFL's Greatest Players, Plays, Scandals, and Screw-Ups (Plus Stuff We Totally Made Up)
Leaving ESPN – Dan admitted he was hurt when good friend, Sports Illustrated writer Rick Reilly (who would move to ESPN) wrote, "Patrick was making one of the top 5 biggest career mistakes in entertainment history," ranking right under Shelley Long's leaving Cheers and Katie Couric's leaving NBC'sToday show for the CBS Evening News.
Life/Career advice:
Be humble, be hungry, have humility, and be ready to go when your opportunity presents itself. The old adage rings true, "You don't have to get ready if you stay ready." Always be ready for your opportunity.
Retirement Tour – Dan Patrick announces he plans to continue the Dan Patrick Show for the next four-and-a-half years with the intention of retiring at the end of 2027.
549: Dr. Sara Kuburic - Take Ownership, Accept Hard Truths, Discover Your SELF, & Change Your Life (It's On Me)
15 Oct 2023
00:57:33
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Change happens when we feel empowered. It's on us to take responsibility for our lives and help others take responsibility for theirs. As leaders, change is more likely to happen for the people we are serving if we help them feel empowered.
Listening is not a passive activity. Take it seriously. It starts with genuinely caring for the person you're in conversation with.
"Being disliked is a rite of passage." Being disliked is normal. Being uncomfortable about being disliked is also normal. Reminding your Self that how you feel about your Self matters more than how others feel about you is key.
Sense of self – "Sense of self is not something that is found… We create our sense of self…"
"My interest in psychology stems from my personal experience living through wars, navigating complex relationships, and continually learning what it means to be human."
This book is about facing ourselves –whatever version that might be, regardless of whether or not we like the person we see reflected back to us. It's about what's possible once we realize that we are responsible for who we become and how we live our lives (a daunting, but profoundly liberating idea). IT'S ON US to figure out the two most essential questions: "Who am I" and "Why am I here?" and then live accordingly.
"I am thankful for my struggle because, without it, I wouldn't have stumbled across my strength."
Repeat out loud: "I will stop giving second chances to people who don't want it, won't use it, or don't deserve it."
"The deepest form of loneliness comes from being estranged from ourselves, not from others."
"Comparison doesn't just steal our joy, it also screws with our perspective."
"Mistakes don't have to define you. But what you choose to do after a mistake often does."
"Just a gentle reminder: The worst-case scenario that you're playing out in your head is probably not going to happen."
"Don't confuse the snippets you get to see of someone's life (through media or a casual conversation) as their whole story. Give each other the courtesy of curiosity. Allow people to be undefined in your mind. Actively seek to see them, and allow them to show you who they are."
"If you don't have all the information, stop filling in the blanks with your imagination, fears or projections. It's better to learn to sit with an unclear picture than to carry around an inaccurate one."
"Instant gratification can be a form of self-harm."
"If you're doing the work, you deserve to be with someone who is also doing the work. It's simple."
"Relationship tip: When someone tells you what they want (or don't want) through words or actions — listen. Stop assuming you know better than they do. It's not your job to read their mind, anticipate their needs, or save them."
548: Nick Maggiulli - The Power of Compounding, Creating a Writing Practice, Building Your Career, & Proven Ways To Build Wealth
08 Oct 2023
00:53:13
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What's the Matthew Effect? The Matthew effect explains how two people can start in nearly the same place and end up worlds apart. In these kinds of systems, initial conditions matter. And as time goes on, they matter more and more.
Instead of saving a fixed percentage of your income, save more when you earn more and less when you make less.
The best way to save more is to earn more, not cut expenses to the point of being miserable.
The real question money forces us to answer is what's important to us in life.
You should savewhatyou can,whenyou can. Relying on a fixed, prescribed savings rate is nonsense.
The Dolly Varden trout, an Alaskan fish species, puzzled biologists for decades. Despite only having a brief window of plentiful food each year — when salmon laid eggs in their waters — the fish continued to thrive year-round. How did they do it? Eventually, scientists discovered that the fish shrink and grow their digestive organs depending on food availability. When the salmon show up, they speed up their metabolism so they can take in more calories. Then, when the other fish leave, they slow down digestion. This way, they get by with much less food throughout the remainder of the year.
Great Things Take Time – Focusing on the long term is more important than ever. The story of the "Dashrath Manjhi Breakthrough" – He carved a path through a mountain. He moved a little bit of rock each day for 20 years.
Nick committed to writing one blog per week in 2017. And it changed his life. He learned that storytelling is what captures a reader's attention. And the way to develop good stories is to read a lot, from a wide variety of sources. We all can do this.
One decision can change everything. NASA decided that Voyager 2 would slingshot around planets has made it the farthest man-made object from Earth. And it's still producing information for us.
The Constant Reminder – How the Right Decisions and Compounding Can Lead to Huge Results. How have the decisions made by NASA 40 years ago had a profound effect on the Voyager missions and success to this day? Once a successful process is implemented, the results can be surprising. The point is to show you that making the right choices and letting things run their course can lead to incredible results. This is what makes consistent actions and the power of compounding so amazing. "When I think about creating a new habit in my life, I like to imagine all of the future benefits from that habit discounted back to the moment when the habit is formed."
547: Dr. Michael Gervais - How To Stop Worrying What Other People Think About You (Finding Mastery)
01 Oct 2023
01:01:36
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The pursuit of mastery is part of a process. It's an orientation towards experience. It's about being fully absorbed in the moment.
Our fear of other people's opinions (FOPO) has become irrational and unproductive, and its negative effects reach far beyond performance. If you start paying less and less attention to what makes you you—your talents, beliefs, and values—and start conforming to what others may or may not think, you'll harm your potential.
Acknowledgments: "To Lisa, the love of my life. "It's because of you that I no longer pray for calm waters, but to rather test the strength of our sails."
Basing self-worth on performance – when the core motivation of pursuing excellence is proving our self-worth, mistakes, failures, opinions, and criticism are experienced as threats rather than learning opportunities.
ALearner's Mindset - A student came to a renowned monk and asked to learn about Zen Buddhism. Shortly after the monk launched into his discourse, the student interrupted him and said, "Oh, I already know that" in an attempt to impress the monk. The monk suggested they discuss the matter over tea. When the tea was ready, the monk poured the tea into a teacup, filled it to the brim—and then continued to pour—spilling tea over the sides of the cup and onto the table. The student watched the overflowing cup until he could no longer restrain himself, "Stop! You can't pour tea into a full cup." The monk set the teapot down and replied, "Exactly. Return to me when your cup is empty."
"Anchoring our sense of self in discovery is not a cop-out to avoid committing to who we are; rather, it's simply an acknowledgment that we change with time."
Harvard psychology professor Dan Gilbert points out, "Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they're finished."
Purpose over Approval – From a young age, we are conditioned to seek approval. Over time, we develop a built-in mechanism to check outside ourselves to see if everything is okay. But… we have another choice. That is our purpose…
"Purpose is the belief that you are alive to do something. It is an internally derived, generalized intention that's both meaningful to you and consequential to the world beyond you."
Optimism isn't soft. in fact, it sits at the center of mental toughness. Have you conditioned your mind for optimism?
Dr. Mike has worked with Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, and his leadership team to develop psychological principles and practices for high-performing teams and cultures.
As a sport psychology consultant, he was a member of the Seattle Seahawks team for 9 seasons, including two back-to-back Super Bowl appearances (winning in 2014). His primary objective was to assist Head Coach, Pete Carroll, to build a mindset-based culture.
For Red Bull Stratos, Dr. Mike helped Felix Baumgartner manage his mind and body under pressure for his record-setting skydive from 128,000 feet.
We need to make a fundamental commitment to practice at the edge of our capacity. One of the prompts I use in my life is, "What did I do today to push my edges?" What did I do that was uncomfortable… And making the commitment to stack day after day of pushing my edges makes that comfort zone bigger and bigger. Ask yourself, "What did I do today to push my edges?"
FOPO shows up almost everywhere in our lives—and the consequences are great. When we let FOPO take control, we play it safe and small because we're afraid of what will happen on the other side of critique. When challenged, we surrender our viewpoint. We trade in authenticity for approval. We please rather than provoke. We chase the dreams of others rather than our own.
546: Tim Ryan - Giving Stump Speeches, Using Meditation & Mindfulness, Playing Quarterback, Listening to Dave Matthews Band, and Running for President?
24 Sep 2023
00:58:25
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Gratitude – For Tim's last speech as a congressman, he said "It's an honor to be a citizen of the United States. I think we get out of this mess we're in, the polarization, the hate, the anger, the fear… The first step out of that is with gratitude."
Tim opens by sharing the impact his high school football coaches had on him and why playing quarterback at John F. Kennedy High School prepared him for life as a leader...
In 2002, Tim ran for the United States House of Representatives for the 17th District. Tim was initially seen as an underdog in a 6-way primary. He was elected at age 29.
"There is an exhausted majority in the country, and they feel like they don't have any political home at all," Ryan said, describing his target audience as those who have been "checking out." "That's maddening because that gives a bigger voice to those forces of division and hate and anger, so we want to build an organization that welcomes these people to participate."
AOC endorsed Tim for his Senate run in 2022. And he said, "It's not helpful here. Nor did I seek it."
David Axelrod said about Tim's 2022 Senate Run that "he's running the best campaign in the country. And the best campaign in the country may not be enough."
"Dave Matthews has inspired me to live a better life, to do what's right, that it's okay to care about each other."
"There may be some things where we don't agree, but I think we need to have decent people that care about us in government, and I think Tim is a decent man." -- Dave Matthews
"I'm honored to have Dave Matthews, one of my absolute favorite musicians, in the Buckeye State to fire up our team and bring this thing home."
Being in the moment – The campaign trail is grueling. Every day is a new town with new people. And you need to get up and give your stump speech, listen to people, and tell compelling stories. His mantra of "I am only in control of this stump speech," and Tim's ability to stay in the moment was critical and is a key reason why he's done so well over the years.
Tim's grandfather… And the impact he had on his life. "He was there."
Regardless of the weather or whatever he had going on, Tim felt his grandfather's presence as a servant leader. This is an excellent reminder for us as leaders that our first job is to show up consistently for those we are leading.
545: Will Guidara - The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect (Unreasonable Hospitality)
17 Sep 2023
00:58:13
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"Intention means every decision, from the most obviously significant to the seemingly mundane, matters."
"My dad says "The best way to learn is to teach." He taught me to study for tests as if I were going in to deliver a presentation. At EMP, I made teaching part of our culture."
"Public speaking is a leadership skill."
Excellence is about small details — A couple of examples of that were lighting and music.
"Maybe people don't notice every single individual detail, but in aggregate, they're powerful. In any great business, most of the details you closely attend to are ones that only a tiny, tiny percentage of people will notice."
"Some of the best advice I ever got about starting in a new organization is; Don't cannonball. Ease into the pool."
Magic: "Too many people approach creative brainstorming by taking what's practical into consideration way too early in the process. Start with what you want to achieve, instead of limiting yourself to what's realistic or sustainable."
"Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect."– Penn and Teller
"Often, the perfect moment to give someone more responsibility is beforethey're ready."
The daily 30-minute meeting: "A daily 30-minute meeting is where a collection of individuals becomes a team."
Find hidden treasures: Will's dad had his own platoon in Vietnam. It wasn't a great platoon. On it was a guy nicknamed Kentucky, Kentucky was lazy and wasn't in great shape. He wasn't that smart, but he was skilled directionally and had a great feel for being in the woods.
"A leader's responsibility is to identify the strengths of the people on their team, no matter how buried those strengths might be."
"Business like life is all about how you make people feel. It's that simple and that hard." - Danny Meyer
"In restaurants, our reason for being is to make people feel, seen, it's to make them feel welcome, it's to give them a sense of belonging. The food, the service, the design, they are simply ingredients in the recipe of human connection"
"The One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson. I still give The One Minute Manager to every person I promote. It's an amazing resource, in particular on how to give feedback. My biggest takeaways were: Criticize the behavior, not the person. Praise in public; criticize in private. Praise with emotion, criticize without emotion."
"What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?"
"What criticism offers you, then, is an invitation to have your perspective challenged—or at least to grow by truly considering it. You might stick with a choice you've been criticized for or end up somewhere completely different. The endgame isn't the point as much as the process: you grow when you engage with another perspective and decide to decide again."
"The aggregation of marginal gains," or a small improvement in a lot of areas. In his words: "The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improve it by 1 percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together."
544: Adam Bornstein - The Advisor for LeBron James, Cindy Crawford, & Arnold Schwarzenegger Shares How To Build Your Dream Job
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Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote the foreword. "I've known Adam for more than 10 years. In addition to being one of the smartest people in nutrition I've met, he's the perfect person to blaze a better path that provides a more direct, realistic, and effective way to improve your health and mindset and achieve your goals."
Take the attitude of an intern. Adam shares how he impressed Arnold Schwarzenegger. Be kind. Show up. Be consistent. Do great work. Don't be greedy. Be generous. And keep going. That great work led to the introduction to LeBron James. Adam has done a great job of making the most of the luck he's received.
Self-perception: how changing your thoughts and releasing mental baggage make adopting new behaviors, such as eating healthy, easier.
This is a thorough examination of why most diet plans fail, including research and case studies that demonstrate the inefficacy of restriction.
Book Dedication: "Dad, You were given a death sentence and turned it into a life sentence. That's the power of a different mindset. Thanks for showing me the way. I love you." Adam's dad was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and he's been very optimistic in the face of it.
"Most people fail physically because they are broken mentally."
Inversion: Start at the end. Anticipate that you didn't achieve your goal, and ask why? And then ask, how do I prevent that from happening?
The three tactical things you can do:
Self-perception - Believe you can do it
Find things you love and don't remove them
Add 1 or 2 new behaviors that are easy to win
How to manage your diet:
Slow down your eating
Create a meal boundary (have open and closed kitchen times)
Low fat vs Low carbs - Protein and fiber are needed
Have no 0% weeks. Make progress.
543: Eric Musselman - Running Great Team Meetings, Developing Your People, Building a Championship Program (Head Men's Basketball Coach at The University of Arkansas)
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Eric Musselman is the head men's basketball coach at the University of Arkansas. Prior to his time at Arkansas, he was a head coach in the NBA with the Golden State Warriors and the Sacramento Kings. He's also spent time as the national coach for the Dominican Republic National Team and The Venezuela National Team.
Learn from others. Muss shared many examples of times he's gone to other practices to watch and learn. He prefers to watch how and NFL runs practice and he's modeled his practices after NFL teams. And sends his coaches to do the same. This is something we should do in corporate America. Connect with leaders at other companies and visit them. Watch their meetings, their 1 on 1s, and embed yourself in their culture for a few days.
When Muss got fired as the coach of the Golden State Warriors, he was offered office space (from Mike Lombardi) at the Oakland Raiders facility. While there, he learned the ins and outs of running a professional program and has modeled a lot of his system from that experience.
Leadership "Must-Haves" to be on his staff:
Loyalty
Will to win
Specialty area of expertise
Meetings: PREPARE a lot. Grab their attention. Keep them on their toes with surprises. All of these things can be done in business meetings… BUT it takes time and effort to do it well.
Muss's life philosophy is to be a constant learner AND a great communicator. He takes pages of notes with him to the gym every morning and reads, takes notes, and highlights the entire time. Then he synthesizes what he's learned and shares it with his team. We all can do this. Again, it takes intentional effort, but it's worth it.
At the beginning of each practice, he does a "classroom" session with his team. He teaches a life lesson or a lesson on basketball.
Family Coaching Legacy – Musselman's father Bill was also an NBA head coach and they were the first father-son combination to become head coaches in the NBA. His sons work with him at Arkansas.
"Muss is a magician with how he communicates with referees." He works to build a genuine relationship with them.
His coaching staff has metrics they produce that help him engineer how playing time and combinations of players on the floor can produce a win.
His practices are legendary. Like a well-oiled machine. Everyone has a role. And they are open to the public.
If a player isn't in a drill, he better be on the sideline dribbling or practicing his game in some way. Always improving, always working.
Muss has a reputation for being the college coach who can get you to the NBA. He is extremely well-connected in the NBA. If a kid wants to enter the draft, Muss will do his homework to see where he thinks he'll get drafted, and then sit down with the kid and his parents to give him feedback.
He revolutionized the use of the transfer portal and is extremely organized when a new prospect pops up.
On his blog, Musselman wrote about the importance of matching an offense to the "team's makeup." Depending on the roster, a half-court offense might make more sense. In other cases, a team may be better suited for an "open offense." According to Musselman, the idea is to allow players to "play to their strengths."
542: Brad Stulberg - How To Excel When Everything Is Changing (Including You)
27 Aug 2023
01:01:35
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Proceed — Using the 4 Ps will increase your chances of responding better than reacting quickly
Non-Dual thinking. It's not this OR that. It's this AND that. It's not self-discipline or self-compassion. It can be both. As we learn more, we become more reasonable. The world is not black and white. We can live in the gray and embrace it.
Brad's core values:
Life is the doing of his life (activities, health, workouts, showing up)
Love is the being of his life (family, being there for the most important people)
A new model for navigating change and disorder – A neuroscientist and a biologist coined the phrase allostasis. Allostasis comes from the Greek allo, which means "variable," and stasis, which means "standing." Allostasis is defined as "Stability through change."
When Brad went to the University of Michigan, he couldn't go to football games. "It felt pointless to be in the stands instead of on the field, too close to something the loss of which I was still grieving."
Science shows that when you fight change, your body releases the stress hormone cortisol.
Hard Times are always hard – But with practice, they get easier… In a multi-year study of more than 2,000 adults aged 18 to 101 published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, University of Buffalo psychologist, Mark Seery and colleagues found that people who had experienced medium levels of adversity were both higher-functioning and more satisfied with their lives than those who had experienced extremely high levels of adversity as well as those who had experienced hardly any adversity at all…
Five Questions for Embracing Change:
Where in your life are you pursuing fixity where it might be beneficial to open yourself to the possibility, or in some cases, the inevitability of change?
In what parts of your life are you holding on to unrealistic expectations?
Are there elements of your identity to which you cling too tightly?
How might you use your core values– the rugged and flexible boundaries of your identity– to help you navigate the challenges of your life?
In what circumstances do you tend to react when you would benefit from responding, and what conditions predispose you to that?
10 Tools for Developing Rugged Flexibility:
Embrace non-dual thinking
Adopt a being orientation
Frequently update your expectations to match reality
Practice tragic optimism, commit to wise hop, and take wise action
Actively differentiate and integrate your sense of self
View the world with independent and interdependent lenses
Respond to change with the 4 Ps
Lean on routines (and rituals) to provide stabiliy during periods of disorder
Use behavioral activation
Don't force meaning and growth; let them come on their own time
True confidence comes from evidence, and it allows you to OWN YOUR SEAT. Owning your seat does not mean certainty, nor does it mean a complete lack of doubts. It means taking your doubts with you and stepping into the arena no less—because you've done the work.
Easy: showing up when you are at your best and everything is clicking.
Hard: showing up when you are in a hole and the current is going against you. Most everyone can do the former. But it's the latter that has a huge impact on lasting progress, fulfillment, and success.
Progress is nonlinear. Keep pounding the stone. Some days nothing happens. Some days it cracks a little bit more. Occasionally, it splits wide open. The implication of this truth is both simple and significant: If you're addicted to visible progress, then sooner or later, you'll burn out of whatever you're pursuing. This is a big reason so many people quit after the honeymoon phase of trying something new.
Brad's 3 non-negotiable daily practices for physical and mental well-being: 1. Forty-five to ninety minutes of physical activity. 2. At least one deep-focus block of sixty to ninety minutes on good, meaningful work. 3. Do not fight evening sleepiness, which usually means bed by 10PM.
Don't define yourself by what you have. Define yourself by who you are. On developing a BEING over HAVING orientation, and the strength and freedom that comes with it.
649: Sam Lessin - Type 2 Fun, Voluntary Hardship, Joy as a Competitive Advantage, Long-Term Thinking, & Life Lessons From Dad (Lessin's Lessons)
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
My guest: Sam Lessin is a Partner at Slow Ventures, with prior experience as Vice President of Product Management at Facebook and CEO of Drop.io. His career highlights include serving as a key executive at Facebook, leading product management efforts, and successfully co-founding Fin. His current role at Slow Ventures involves investing in innovative startups across various sectors, showcasing his expertise in entrepreneurship and venture capital.
Notes:
KeyLearnings
The 4:30 AM Advantage – Sam's father would be at his desk by 4:30 AM every day, saying, "It's easy to look smart if you have a several-hour head start on everyone else." Early work creates compounding advantages over time.
Either Be Early or Be Late, Don't Be On Time – Father's wisdom about timing and seasons. Start your career super early to get ahead, or strategically wait and come in later. Timing matters more than perfect preparation.
Joy as the Ultimate Competitive Advantage – "I just don't think that in the long run, angry people win." Look for joyful people in hiring and partnerships because joy is sustainable while anger burns out.
Type Two Fun Builds Resilience – Type 1 fun is enjoyable while doing it (rollercoaster). Type 2 fun "completely sucks while you're doing it, but there's joy on the other side" (climbing mountains, marathons). Entrepreneurs need Type 2 fun experiences.
Practice Voluntary Hardship – Sam ran a sub-3-hour marathon and got a pilot's license not for love of activities, but for "practice moments" of perseverance. Creates evidence that you can handle business adversity.
Right Person, Right Opportunity, Right Time – Don't ask "is this a great person?" Ask, "Is it the right person at the right moment?" Success requires all three elements to align, not just talent.
Write Publicly for Intellectual Receipts – "If you can't write the check, write me the thesis and timestamp it." Writing creates accountability, proves thinking ability, and builds reputation over time.
Nobody Knows What They're Doing – Working at Bain taught Sam that even prestigious companies "have no idea what you're doing." This is liberating—you can figure it out too.
Big Things Take Time (Slow Ventures Philosophy) – Most success isn't quick wins. Venmo took "so many turns of the crank." Be patient finding the right wind, then sail fast when you catch it.
Embrace Being Wrong Most of the Time – Seed investing means "you're mostly wrong, you mostly lose money." Success comes from being very right occasionally, not being right consistently.
The Solana 2000x Return Story – Put in $400K, returned 2000x to LPs. Success came from the intersection of thesis (looking for "Ethereum killer") and relationships (following Raj Gokal through multiple startups).
Use Humor and Authenticity as Filters – Slow Ventures website looks like a law firm in tuxedos "on purpose." If you don't think it's funny, "you're not who we want to invest in."
Writing Pushes Away Wrong People – "I really like to be not liked by the people I don't want to work with." Authentic writing attracts the right people and repels the wrong ones.
Manufacturing Hardship for Privileged Kids – "Tiger Dad" sports culture might be a misguided attempt to create necessary adversity for wealthy children who lack natural hardships.
I loved the throughline of this whole conversation being about his dad, working exceptionally hard, and having joy and excitement for the journey. Maybe it was the near-death experiences that his dad had that led to that mindset. Regardless, it's something we can all learn from. We want to be around optimistic people who have joy and love for what they're doing…
Nobody knows what they're doing. We're all figuring it out as we go. You'll never learn unless you go out and do the thing. Figure it out as you go. Just get started. And iterate. Learn. Try again. And keep going.
Advice from Sam – Write publicly. You don't know what you think until you get your thoughts out of your head onto the page. And if you publish them, you have a record of the journey. Also, you might attract someone to work with. That is how Jack Raines (guest on episode #539) caught Sam's attention, and now they work together.
Useful Quotes:
"It's easy to look smart if you have a several-hour head start on everyone else."
"I just don't think that in the long run, angry people win."
"Either be early or be late, don't be on time."
"The right question is, is it the right person at the right moment?"
"Writing is thinking. If you can't write, you can't think."
"I feel like a tenured professor of capitalism—responsible to make a lot of money over the long term by being very right every once in a while with permission to be wrong all the time."
"One of the most insulting things you can call someone is a market participant."
"The beauty of the internet is so big. The right people find you."
"Big things take time."
"Life's short. Is this really what you're spending your time on?"
10:39 Overcoming Hardships and Building Resilience
20:40 My Journey: From Harvard to Bain
26:06 Joining Facebook and Learning from Mark Zuckerberg
29:36 Balancing Joy and Competitive Spirit
30:15 The Story of Rippling and Parker
31:48 The Solana Investment Journey
34:33 The Importance of Writing and Public Thought
41:07 The Philosophy Behind Slow Ventures
52:54 Advice for Aspiring Venture Capitalists
55:46 Future Plans
541: Matt Higgins - Burning The Boats, Handling Imposter Syndrome, Investing on Shark Tank, & The Most Important Ingredient To Professional Success
20 Aug 2023
01:00:46
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Matt Higgins was an executive for the New York Jets and then the Miami Dolphins. He Co-Founded RSE Ventures with Miami Dolphins owner, Stephen Ross. Matt was a guest shark on ABC's Shark Tank (seasons 10-11), He is an executive fellow at Harvard Business School, and he recently published a book called, Burn The Boats, Toss Plan B Overboard and Unleash Your Full Potential...
Matt's Mom: "My mother, Linda, died with $100 in her bank account, but I inherited the most valuable gift a parent can give a child: limitless faith in my ability to figure anything out."
Matt gave the 2019 commencement speech at Queens College – According to Vanity Fair Contributing Editor Paul Goldberger, "This is a magnificent and truly inspiring speech that everyone should read. If you think commencement speeches are made of cliches, this one will change your mind."
The most important ingredient to professional success: "Make yourself indispensable at whatever task you're doing and you'll always have a job."
Research proves that the mere contemplation of Plan B statistically reduces the probability Plan A will ever materialize.
The advice Matt got from Daymond John on how to handle imposter syndrome on his first day of filming Shark Tank: "You belong here because you are here."
How to raise your kids to not be spoiled when you can provide anything they'd ever want?
There is nobility in work. Ensure they do hard things and do real work.
Matt's "must-have" qualities when hiring a leader:
Confidence + Humility
Empathy
They just "figure it out"
They are a servant leader -- They can "plug holes"
Matt's four-step process:
What's the worst that could happen?
If it doesn't work out, what will I do?
What's the probability the bad stuff will happen?
What pain am I willing to endure to make it happen?
"Burn the boats for goals, not tactics."
540: Alex Hormozi - Creating Confidence, The Art of Selling, Marrying Well, Letting Go of The Need For Approval, Building a Profitable Business, & Never Skipping Dessert
13 Aug 2023
00:58:33
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Alex Hormozi is an entrepreneur, investor, and author of 3 bestselling books $100M Offers, Leads, and Money Models. He's founded and exited 3 companies, the largest for $46.2M in 2021. He and his wife Leila are the managing partners of Acquisition.com - a portfolio of companies that generate in aggregate $200M per year. He also makes mistakes and candidly shares his painful lessons with other entrepreneurs. Today he publicly documents his lessons on his path from $100M net worth to $1B.
Confidence: "You don't become confident by shouting affirmations in the mirror, but by having a stack of undeniable proof that you are who you say you are. Outwork your self-doubt."
Work: "The work works on you more than you work on it."
For anyone debating whether to marry a partner. These 2 lenses were useful:
How have my stats changed since they entered my life? (wealth, health, time)
Would I go to war with them?
They flow from what Alex wants:
Growth
Hard goals
Document your life more. Otherwise, you'll forget the details. And the details are what make it worth remembering. (homework for life)
Alex shared a vulnerable story about not wanting to live anymore when he was 21. He had graduated from Vanderbilt in 3 years (manga cum laude), had a great consulting job, and was on his way up the corporate ladder. And he hated it. He was living his dad's dream, not his own. So he quit. And didn't call his dad until he was well on his way to California to start over.
"A leading indicator that someone is not an independent thinker is that they agree (or disagree) with every single point of a political party. Also applies to seeing no fault (or 100% fault) in particular leaders."
"Volume negates luck"
What makes a great sales professional:
Clear communication
Conviction
Be honest... And have a desire to help your customer
Life Lessons Alex wishes he had learned earlier:
Talk less, listen more… (He messed this up earlier in his career by talking too much)
The hardest respect to earn is one's own
If you want to control what people think, control what they say – "Equip people with simple language so that they can communicate what you do."
"You get more out of reading 1 book that's great 5 times, than out of reading 5 mediocre books." – "If your behavior doesn't change as a result of reading the book, then it means you've learned nothing."
You are going to die – 2 weeks after you die, most people will have forgotten about you.
Extraordinary accomplishments come from doing ordinary things for extraordinary periods of time.
If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well
Be willing to negotiate everything except for your values
Humility - Sacrifice for the group. Give more to the company. Give to the group.
HormoziLaw:
The longer you delay the ask, the bigger the ask you can make. The longer the runway, the bigger the plane that can take off.
"At your funeral, friends and family will argue over who gets what. People will want food to eat. The topic will shift from your life to their lives. They'll drive away thinking about their looming to-do list. Some people won't be able to make it because "something came up." A reminder of the heavy weight we place on things that matter little."
"There's no greater waste of time than justifying your actions to people who have a life you don't want."
"The easiest way to change behavior is to change your environment."
Alex's great-great-grandfather had 400 children.
"Never skip dessert."
"My life has never gotten worse by removing mediocre people."
539: Jack Raines - Playing Infinite Games, Living Life Backwards, Building Your Platform, Traveling More, & Writing Young Money
06 Aug 2023
01:10:12
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Jack Raines is a student at Columbia Business School and the writer of YoungMoney.co – Young Money is a finance blog that covers a wide variety of life topics like why we should travel more, timeless advice, the use of humor, the 6 types of wealth, and infinite games. Jack is one of my favorite writers on the internet…
Infinite Games –"The focus on outcome over everything leads to us discounting 99% of our lives for the sake of a few, small, fleeting moments that might provide some sense of satisfaction before the cycle begins anew."
It's not about getting to the top of the mountain, it's about the person you become along the way.
Why We Should Travel More –Rolf Potts,Vagabonding. "The explorer has no goal other than exploration itself."
The Opportunity Cost of Everything –The Journey IS the Destination.Life isn't a Pixar film. It's not a television series. Our life isn't some chain of events and decisions that leads to a climax. A final moment of victory. Life is the chain of events itself.
"Someday isn't a day."
The purpose of Jack's finance blog: "I write a finance blog that is really, like, idk? Maybe 40% finance? The rest is existential musings, satire, the occasional exclamation that Americans seriously need to travel more, and whatever random stuff comes through my brain."
Jack's LinkedIn satirical posts: "I take nothing seriously, but I do take the serious things pretty seriously. Linkedin isn't one of the serious things."
How Jack built a large following online: "I have published approximately 450,000 words of content in an 18-month period." Whatever it is that we want to do, in order to get good, we have to get going. We have to get the reps…
The Case for Living Life Backwards – "You should write your obituary, and then try to figure out how to live up to it."
538: Dr. Julie Gurner - Setting High Standards, Being Relentlessly Resourceful, Achieving Huge Results (Compared to Wendy Rhoades of "Billions")
30 Jul 2023
00:56:48
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Dr. Julie Gurner is a doctor of psychology and is a nationally recognized executive performance coach for individual and corporate clients primarily in finance and technology. Trusted by top percentile talent and their teams to help them achieve world-class performance in fast-paced, high-pressure, extremely competitive environments. She's been compared to Wendy Rhoades of "Billions" in The Wall Street Journal (2019), and named a "Game Changer" by IBM.
Notes:
High Standards: Holding a high bar is uncomfortable because it is "exclusionary," and most people want to make everyone around them happy & comfortable. If you hold a standard, it can't include everything... Figuring out your line & holding to it, will mean some tough conversations.
"I think that there are two ways of looking at things that have happened to you. You can be a victim or you can be a survivor. Those are two very different cognitive positions."
Balance: "People will tell you in books that you have to live a "balanced life," but if we are completely honest, almost all great things are born from periods of imbalance."
Staying Small: A concept I believe, is that most people stay small, or don't go for what they truly want...because they believe that "imaginary rules" are true
Be a Learner: The worst professionals, are the ones that stop learning the moment they graduate from school. And they are the majority. Being autodidactic - a self-learner - who also takes initiative, will have you in the top 10% of anything you take on.
Goals: If your goals are "realistic," you are operating in a box. Check yourself. "If you want to be a game changer, you can't blend in."
Know Yourself: When people are unable to commit to anything, it's because they don't know who they are. Shiny objects professionally (or personally) reflect a lack of certainty.
When you get a genuine shot in the arm from what you do...of course, it's going to be hard to stop doing it. You're on fire. So many people are living their lives with the volume turned down. They don't get it. You don't have to live that way. Crank that energy up.
"The people who rise aren't always the most talented or capable, but they are fueled by self-belief. Once you understand that, much of the business world makes sense."
The difference between persistence and tenacious… persistent people stick to the plan to get to the goal. Tenacious people may change their plans altogether.
A trait in the people who go on to do great things? Paul Graham defines it as being "relentlessly resourceful." I see it all the time. Here's a practical zero-to-one process to be relentlessly resourceful, if you want to set yourself up for some big swings.
Julie goes on a daily walk around her farm. She uses that walk to reflect, think, and be outside. It helps her synthesize information.
What makes a great executive coach?
A sweet spot between talking and listening... A great executive coach gives their clients space to talk. They listen. They ask great follow-up questions. They help unlock people. They help them become multipliers.
How to deal with imposter syndrome?
"You probably have the ability, but you're not understanding your own story." It's important to keep taking chances. To keep meeting the moment. Julie helps her clients tap in to and write their own stories.
537: Aron Ralston - The Incredible Story Of The Hiker Who Cut Off His Own Arm After Being Trapped Under A Boulder For 5 Days (127 Hours)
23 Jul 2023
00:59:43
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Aron Ralston is a mountaineer, mechanical engineer, and best-selling author known for surviving a canyoneering accident by cutting off part of his own right arm. On April 26, 2003, during a solo descent of Bluejohn Canyon in southeastern Utah, he dislodged a boulder, pinning his right wrist to the side of the canyon wall. After five days, he had to break his forearm, amputate it with a dull pocket knife to break free, make his way through the rest of the canyon, rappel down a 65-foot drop, and hike 7 miles to safety. The incident is documented in Aron's autobiography Between a Rock and a Hard Place and is the subject of the 2010 film 127 Hours in which he is portrayed by James Franco. After the accident, Aron continued mountaineering and became the first person to ascend all of Colorado's fourteeners solo in winter.
"Turn boulders into blessings."
During this conversation, Aron takes us through the 127 hours from when his right arm was pinned under a boulder until he was resting safely in a hospital bed. Along the way, he shares key learnings that all of us can take from his experience.
In April 2003, Aron was canyoneering alone through Bluejohn Canyon, in Utah, just south of the Horseshoe Canyon unit of Canyonlands National Park. While he was descending the lower stretches of the slot canyon, a suspended boulder dislodged while he was climbing down from it. The boulder first smashed his left hand and then crushed his right hand against the canyon wall. Aron had not informed anyone of his hiking plans, nor did he have any way to call for help.
Assuming that he would die without intervention, he spent five days slowly sipping his small amount of remaining water, approximately 350 ml (12 imp fl oz), and slowly eating his small amount of food, two burritos, while repeatedly trying to extricate his arm. His efforts were futile as he was unable to free his arm from the 800 lb (360 kg) chockstone. After three days of trying to lift and break the boulder, the dehydrated and delirious Ralston prepared to amputate his trapped arm at a point on the mid-forearm in order to escape. After having experimented with tourniquets and having made exploratory superficial cuts to his forearm, he realized, on the fourth day, that in order to free his arm he would have to cut through the bones in it, but the tools available were insufficient to do so.
After running out of food and water on the fifth day, Aron decided to drink his own urine. He carved his name, date of birth, and presumed date of death into the sandstone canyon wall, and videotaped his last goodbyes to his family. He did not expect to survive the night, but as he attempted to stay warm he began hallucinating and had a vision of himself playing with a future child while missing part of his right arm. Aron credited this as giving him the belief that he would live.
After waking at dawn the following day he discovered that his arm had begun to decompose due to the lack of circulation, and became desperate to tear it off. Aron then had an epiphany that he could break his radius and ulna bones using torque against his trapped arm. He did so, then amputated his forearm with his multi-tool, using the dull 2-inch knife and pliers for the tougher tendons. The painful process took an hour, during which time he used tubing from a CamelBak as a tourniquet, taking care to leave major arteries until last. The manufacturer of the multi-tool was never named, but Aron said "It was not a Leatherman but what you'd get if you bought a $15 flashlight and got a free multi-use tool."
After freeing himself, Ralston climbed out of the slot canyon in which he had been trapped, rappelled down a 65-foot sheer wall, then hiked out of the canyon. He was 8 miles from his car and had no phone. However, after 6 miles of hiking, he encountered a family on vacation from the Netherlands; Eric and Monique Meijer and their son Andy, who gave him food and water and hurried to alert the authorities. Aron had feared he would bleed to death; he had lost 40 pounds, including 25% of his blood volume. Rescuers searching for Ralston, alerted by his family that he was missing, had narrowed the search down to Canyonlands and he was picked up by a helicopter in a wide area of the canyon. He was rescued approximately four hours after amputating his arm.
The STOP acronym: Stop (pause), Think (brainstorm), Observation, Plan
Stop
Think
Observe
Plan
"Commitment is the first step."
At one point when Aron's arm was stuck under the giant rock, he filmed his "goodbyes" to each family member.
"Who would you say your goodbyes to and what would you say?" Aron realized that life is all about loving relationships.
"You can't hold despair and gratitude at the same time."
127 Hours - There is no force so powerful as the will to live.
Aron's version: "There's no force so powerful as the will to love."
"Welcome adversity. It helps you grow."
"Find gratitude for the worst thing that's ever happened to you."
"Passion. That which I suffer, allow, endure, is done to me."
536: Dave Berke - Leadership Lessons From A Top Gun Instructor (Chief Development Officer, Echelon Front)
16 Jul 2023
00:59:38
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Be on time. It's not okay to be late. As the leader, we have to set the right example.
There is a narrow path to Top Gun, but Dave made it...
Dave served as an ANGLICO Forward Air Controller supporting the Army's 1st Armored Division during extensive urban combat operations on the ground in Ramadi, Iraq in 2006. He led his supporting arms liaison team on scores of combat missions into the most dangerous neighborhoods and accompanied SEAL Task Unit Bruiser on virtually every major operation in the Battle of Ramadi. He was the only Marine selected to fly the F-22 Raptor having served as an exchange officer at the Air Force's 422nd Test and Evaluation Squadron as the Division Commander. He became the first operational pilot ever to fly and be qualified in the F-35B, serving as the Commanding Officer of the Marine Corps' first F-35 squadron from 2012-2014.
Balancing courage and confidence with humility - It's a must to surround yourself with others who continue to push you and keep your ego in check.
The attributes of a Top Gun instructor: Willing to learn and Able to teach. Great leaders seem to have those same qualities.
Dave's choice to volunteer to fight on the ground is what led him to meet Jocko Willink and thus change his life. Stepping up and doing a job that others don't want to do, and taking that responsibility can lead to amazing opportunities.
A Top Gun pilot must balance courage and confidence with humility.
You need a great support group around you to keep in check.
Your ego, however, can be helpful at times. "It allows you to do things that others say can't be done."
How to deal with negative self-talk?
"We all deal with it. Relax. Take a step back. Breathe. Detach from the situation."
535: Geron Stokes - How To Gain Clarity, Maximize People, and Live Your Purpose
09 Jul 2023
01:08:47
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Own it, live it, create it, see it, say it, change it, honor it, punish it, repeat it, evaluate it all. – The core components to building a world-class culture.
Who are your foxhole people? They are the ones who are there when it's hard and they're there to celebrate when it's great. They are honest, caring, and they love you. The best way to build a great foxhole group? Be a loving, caring, and honest friend to others.
How to build a great foundation which sets you up to build a great culture? Be trustworthy and trust-WILLING person. Be vulnerable, open, and honest, and create opportunities for shared suffering. It takes time and intentional effort, but it's worth it.
Geron was always leading the younger quarterbacks when he was in high school. "The quarterbacks stay. You need to know what's going on, for now, and in the future"
Coach Dave Carroll had a huge impact on how Geron coaches... Tough, demanding, high expectations. He wasn't for everyone.
From Brook Cupps: "From my perspective, it's been really cool to watch his progression from a self-serving arrogant kid to an ultra-impactful leader and father."
Geron's purpose is to maximize people. Here is how he lives that out...
Own It – Come to grips with my #1 Job - Get the most out of people. More than they can ever imagine. It HAS to be a love thing! Can I get them to work, care, execute, serve, give, and love more than they ever have in their life? My job. Not their's. Wake up every day knowing my responsibility. "I've gotta get the best out of these guys today."
Live It – I set the example for everything. I AM THE STANDARD! Have to be. Am I trying to maximize myself? Every. Day! How do I show up? Do I represent the values I'm trying to pull out of the people? They aren't going to do it by themselves. They can't. Stop expecting them to! I need to show them to engage them. Am I pouring my heart and soul into everything that I can?!? "The best thing you can ever give someone is a strong example," "Preach the gospel every day, and sometimes use words."
Create It - Environment matters. Cultivate relationships every single day. Do they walk in knowing we're getting better today? Energy. Enthusiasm. Struggle. Hard, Tough. Work. Demanding. Constant. Growth. Whatever level you're at. Just. Get. Better. EVERY. DAY! My relationships, time, & effort with my people is the soil! Maniacal about who, what, and how. Everybody! All the time. Daily requirement: get the environment ready for growth!
See It - See it as it is. See it better than it is. If I can't see it better, how do I make it better? Reality to vision. The best see it at a different level. Extremely high standards! Competence matters. What is an acceptable standard? Can it be done better?
Say It – Any and all feedback. Do I care enough to tell them? Usually with questions! Intent matters. Relationships matter. Make it personal! It doesn't have to be said exactly the right way. IT NEEDS TO BE SAID. They have to HEAR it & internalize it. "Good job" doesn't exist in our world.
Change It – It must improve. Whatever it takes. Fix/correct/punish/measure until it actually changes. Spend extra time. Refuse to accept excuses. I love you so we have to make this better. Continue saying it!
Honor/Punish It – Celebrate. Loudly. Be specific. Recognize it. Measure it. Reward it. Make it a big deal. Every important detail. Ingrain it into the culture of the group. "That's not how we do things here."
Repeat It – Do it over and over and over and over again. The hardest part isn't doing it. The hardest part is doing it every single moment, every single day, over and over and over.
Evaluate It All – What is working? What isn't? How do we keep getting better? What needs to be changed? CONSTANT. 24/7365. ARE WE GETTING THEIR BEST? Fanatical about improvement.
Daily Questions To Ask Yourself:
Am I at my best?
Are my intentions right?
How can I get the most out of everybody today?
I need to be on fire. Energy/Attitude is right. Seeking ways to make an impact. Is it about me or about them? Act your way into feelings. What do they need? Pushed? Pulled? Energized? Inspired? Demanded?
534: Dr. Will Cole - Healing The Shame Fueled Relationship Between What You Eat and How You Feel (Gut Feelings)
02 Jul 2023
00:59:05
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You can't heal a body you hate. We only get one body. It's all we have. If it stops working or is working poorly, that affects all other elements of our lives. It's worth it to make this our top priority.
We're looking for optimal, not average. If you're listening to this podcast, you probably do not want to be average. And when it comes to the most important thing in your life (your body), I would hope that you don't want that to be average. To be an effective leader for others, our body needs to be in optimal shape.
Cut these 5 foods:
Gluten-containing grains
Industrial seed oils
Added sugar,
Conventional dairy
Alcohol
After over a decade as a functional medicine expert, Dr. Cole discerned that shame can cause gut inflammation and sabotage wellness through what he's named "Shameflammation." When you send signals to your brain that you are overwhelmed, overworked, or overtired, your body reacts. Shameflammation can be the cause of chronic health conditions such as autoimmune disorders, depression, and more.
Chronic stress is the ultimate junk food."
Too much sugar has consequences beyond the waistline.
Functional medicine is informed consent.
75% of your immune system is in your gut.
Get back on track. Days are long, years are short.
Testosterone Replacement Therapy? Work with a doctor, get labs, and choose to use based on what your doctor and your labs say.
"Use meals as a medicine and a meditation."
"Ask yourself... Does this food love me back?"
533: Jon Gordon - Elevate Your Mind, Unlock Your Power, Heal Your Soul (The One Truth)
25 Jun 2023
00:50:22
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Consistency creates your future. Show up each day and do the work. Sounds simple, but it's much harder in practice. Consistency is not sexy, but it builds trust and it creates your future.
T.U.N.E. -
T = Trust and truth
U = Unite with love
N = Neutralize the negativity. "I do not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet." - Gandhi
E = Elevate your thinking. With gratitude, optimism, and belief
How to handle imposter syndrome - One sheet of paper. On one side write your negative thoughts. On the other side write words of encouragement. Again, this sounds basic, but it's been proven to work.
Navigate the Roller Coaster of our Mind: Take on our challenges in life with confidence and power instead of fear and insecurity.
Recognize & Overcome theFive Ds of Negative Thought:Doubt, Distortion, Discouragement, Distraction, and Division.
The root of the Greek word for anxious means "to separate and divide" When we are anxious, we feel divided. The key is to move towards "oneness".
Tune into More Positive Thoughts: Jon explains a revolutionary idea that the brain is an antenna, and we can elevate our minds with proven strategies. For example, we can't be stressed and thankful at the same time. When we appreciate, we elevate.
Override Fear with Love: Let love (the ultimate driver of grit) be the driving force behind our work and vocation, unlocking new levels of determination, devotion and success.
Improve Mental Health & Relationships: Move from disconnection, loneliness and isolation to connection, healing, and wholeness. Whether you're a recent graduate, executive, artist, parent, engineer, teacher, spouse, athlete or coach, once you know The One Truth, you'll see how it impacts leadership, teamwork, mindset, performance, relationships, addictions, social media, anxiety, mental health and your overall quality of life.
Bad teams = nobody leads. Average teams = coaches lead. Elite teams = players lead
Change management -- People follow the leader first and the vision second. People won't care about your vision if you don't care about them.
"Thoughts are magnetic. What we think about we attract."
Goals: "It's not your goals that will lead to your success but your commitment to the process." "The best teams don't focus on winning championships. They focus on being champions. This leads to championships."
"When leaders become focused on thefruit instead of the root and worry about the outcome instead of the process of developing team members, they may survive in the short run, but they will not thrive in the long run."
"As a leader, it is so important that your words equal your actions. It is imperative that you make sure that you go through a self-evaluation process on an almost daily basis to make sure that your actions are in line with your words. You must do what you say and say what you do."
"There's a difference between culture and having a theme for the year. A theme does not equal culture. Too many schools/org move from theme to theme instead of building a culture. Utilize a theme as a tool to help you build a great culture."
"They asked a bunch of ninety-five-year-olds if they could do it all over again and live their life again what would they do differently. The three things that almost all of them said were: (1) They would reflect more. Enjoy more moments. More sunrises and sunsets. More moments of joy. (2) They would take more risks and chances. Life is too short not to go for it. (3) They would have left a legacy. Something that would live on after they die."
00:35 - Lessons from Athletics
05:29 - Struggling With Adversity As a Child
07:47 - Building a Life-Changing Team from The Energy Bus
15:08 - Fear That Comes With Imposter Syndrome
20:54 - Transition from Self-Talk to Action
31:05 - How to React to Skeptics
36:14 - View Life as a Movie
40:25 - Leadership Qualities That Are Repetitive
44:18 - Advice for the Younger Generation
47:48 - Early is On Time
532: Michelle "Mace" Curran - Handling Perfectionism, Overcoming Imposter Syndrome, & Becoming A Thunderbird Pilot
22 Jun 2023
01:02:58
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Notes: Michelle "Mace" Curran has led an impressive career as a Fighter Pilot during her 13 years in the United States Air Force. From 2019-2021, she flew as the only female pilot for the Air Force Thunderbirds and performed for millions across the country and internationally. Before joining the Thunderbirds, Michelle was a combat-proven fighter pilot completing missions across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
What inspired Michelle to join the Air Force?
"I had a grandpa who was a lieutenant in the Navy. I went through his World War II trunk and tried on uniforms and looked at postcards. He got to travel all over the world. I grew up in a small town and I wanted to travel. I've always been drawn to flying. I hadn't done a lot of flying aside from commercially, but I loved it, so the Air Force seemed like a natural fit. I was also honestly looking for a scholarship for college, so the three things kind of came together."
"C3" Comm – That's clear, concise, and correct communication. How that plays a role as a pilot and how we can use that as leaders outside of the airplane.
For the solo opposing passes, each pilot is traveling at 500mph, that's 1000mph of closure toward each other. The timing that makes sure the aircraft safely pass each other at the center point directly in front of the crowd is all done through radio calls. Every call must communicate clearly, concisely, and correctly.
There are a lot of benefits to having a beginner's mindset.
What does Michelle say to young girls?
"You have to exceed people's expectations. People are going to set expectations for you based on where you grew up, the family you came from, your gender — there are all different factors that go into that. Constantly do your best, strive for perfection, exceed those expectations, and really don't shortchange yourself. Don't set boundaries that don't really exist, that you just place there for yourself. You'll be surprised at all of the things you can do if you just keep pushing."
"We wield a lot of power with our words." Let's plant a seed of inspiration. As leaders, our words carry a lot of weight. Let's use that to help other people strive for more and potentially accomplish more than they ever thought they were capable of. What an awesome use of our power.
The Debrief - It's the sacred environment of flying. Your rank doesn't matter. It's all about focusing on what happened and how we can get better. I think our companies would be better if we had consistent debriefs after a big moment to ensure we are learning from our mistakes and getting better…
The person you are today is likely much different than the one you were ten years ago. The person you will be ten years from now will probably be just as different compared to who you are now.
Michelle initially didn't feel capable as a fighter pilot. But she kept showing up. It's important that we have the courage to keep going even when we don't feel ready.
Being a female fighter pilot, Mace was in a male-dominated career... She was often the only woman in my unit and roughly 3% of fighter pilots in the Air Force are female even thirty years after combat airframes were opened to women,
Leaders and followers – A young flight lead could be in command of a general whose role is to be the wingman…
Mace has written a children's book that just came out called Upside Down Dreams. It is a story written for girls with big dreams looking for a real-world heroine.
648: Ed Latimore - Going From Zero to One, Taking Ownership, Positive Body Language, Strategic Hardship, & Hard Earned Lessons From The Hurt Business
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
My Guest: Ed Latimore is a professional heavyweight boxer, best-selling author, and veteran of the U.S. Army National Guard. He earned a degree in Physics from Duquesne University. Ed has gained recognition for overcoming personal struggles with addiction and poverty. We recorded this at our 2025 Learning Leader Growth Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona. He's the author of Hard Lessons From The Hurt Business.
Notes:
KeyLearnings
The Heaviest Weight at the Gym is the Front Door – Starting is often the hardest part. "Zero to one is the hardest part" in any endeavor. Once you begin, momentum builds, but that first step requires the most effort.
How You Feel is Irrelevant – "How you feel about doing something is irrelevant. If it is vital to your success, you've gotta bump to the wall a bunch of times." Discipline isn't about motivation—it's about doing what's necessary regardless of feelings.
Sobriety: The Hardest Fight – 13+ years sober, describing it as "the hardest fight I've ever had." The turning point came during basic training when he built an identity completely free of alcohol for the first time in his adult life.
From Being Liked to Being Respected – "When people like you, they want to party with you... When people respect you, you start getting invited back to family events." Shifted focus from seeking approval through partying to earning respect through character.
The Baby Shower Revelation – Breakthrough moment when friends showed up with gifts for his unborn child, "all because he is my human." Realized people genuinely cared about him, which became the foundation for believing he mattered.
Taking Ownership vs. Playing Victim – "A judge and a jury do not care about my terrible upbringing if I commit a crime." Despite growing up next to a crack house with family addiction issues, I chose accountability over excuses.
Net Positive Impact Philosophy – Goal with raising children: "Make sure they are a net positive, they make things better. At the very least, let's make sure they don't mess anything up." Everyone has an impact on the world for better or worse.
Practice Until You Can't Forget – Boxing taught the overlearning principle: going beyond basic competency to automatic response. "We practice until we can't forget... Either you get it or you'll make a mistake, and you probably won't make the mistake more than twice."
Tolerance for Boredom Builds Excellence – "If you can be bored, you can go really far because a lot of it is just repetition of really basic things." Elite performers master fundamentals through unglamorous repetition.
Body Language Shapes Internal State – "You smile, you feel happy... puff up your chest and the testosterone flows." Physical presentation affects how you feel internally and influences others around you.
Fear vs. Responsibility Evolution – Early motivation came from fear of embarrassment; current motivation comes from a sense of responsibility to others. Shift from avoiding personal failure to ensuring others are taken care of.
Redefining "At Your Best" – Past definition: having enough money, time, and no worries. Current definition: "Everyone in the house is taken care of." Evolution from internal satisfaction to external impact.
Strategic Hardship Introduction – For teaching children without trauma: "Introduce hardships strategically and with awareness." Like weight training—incremental challenges build strength; too much too soon causes injury.
Useful Quotes:
"How you feel about doing something is irrelevant. If it is vital to your success, you've gotta bump to the wall a bunch of times."
"The heaviest weight at the gym is the front door."
"When people like you, they want to party with you... When people respect you, you start getting invited back to family events."
"You have an impact on the world, for better or worse, that makes a huge difference in allowing a person to not destroy themselves."
"We practice until we can't forget."
"If you can be bored, you can go really far."
"I've had my ego dragged through the mud a lot."
"What do you want your obituary to say? I didn't just dabble."
"When you're completely selfless, then you're fearless. It's the 'what's gonna happen to me' that creates the fear."
"Everyone's always either walking in love or fear."
"I hope my kid remembers that I was a present happy dude."
Life Lessons:
Discipline Over Mood – Make decisions based on necessity, not feelings. Success comes from identifying what must be done and executing consistently.
Identity Building Without Vices – Spend time in environments completely free from your struggles to build new neural pathways and self-concept.
Overlearning for Mastery – Practice skills beyond basic competency until they become automatic responses under pressure.
Authentic Accountability – Find mentors who "live what they're yelling at you about." Real influence comes from demonstrated behavior, not just words.
Incremental Challenge Builds Resilience – Introduce difficulties gradually to build strength rather than overwhelming with too much too soon.
Present Moment Parenting – Model calm behavior during stressful situations because children mirror your emotional energy.
External Focus Creates Fulfillment – Shift from personal satisfaction to ensuring others are taken care of for a deeper sense of purpose.
Childhood Dreams Reveal True Interests – "What did you want to do when you were 10-12?" Often reveals authentic passions before social conditioning.
Breaking Generational Cycles – Consciously choose different patterns than your upbringing to create better outcomes for the next generation.
Humility Through Struggle – Getting "ego dragged through the mud" builds character and perspective that success alone cannot provide.
Luck Recognition Builds Gratitude – "The only difference between you and me is that I was lucky." Understanding the role of circumstances builds empathy.
531: Dr. Angus Fletcher - Building Confidence, Responding To Adversity, Telling Your Story, Exhibiting Vulnerability, & The New Science of Narrative Intelligence
18 Jun 2023
01:01:17
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Dr. Angus Fletcher has dual degrees in neuroscience (BS, University of Michigan) and literature (Ph.D., Yale). His research employs a mix of laboratory experiment, literary history, and rhetorical theory to explore the psychological effects—cognitive, behavioral, therapeutic—of different narrative technologies. He's the best-selling author of multiple books including Wonderworks: The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature, and Storythinking: The New Science of Narrative Intelligence.
"The story you tell yourself needs to be the true story of yourself."
How Angus tells his story:
Build trust
Listen
Demonstrate courage - Angus told a group of special forces operators one of the most embarrassing stories of his life. After that, he said, "I'm not scared of anything."
You must be genuinely humble to learn from your mistakes.
"Real leaders activate the leader within you."
Being a leader is all about contemplating fear. Stepping up when adversity strikes is why we exist as leaders. It's easy to lead when everything is going well. We want to be known as the leader who is there when it's hard.
Dr. Fletcher's ultimate goal of using the power of story to bring us closer to self-actualization. Seems like that's a good first step to being a great leader.
Confidence is earned by creating evidence for yourself that you can do hard things. Angus did this when he shared his story of not making it through Marine Corps boot camp. Angus's vulnerability earned trust with the military leaders.
"For the longer we suspend our judgments, the more accurate our subsequent verdicts become. This valuable fact has been uncovered by researchers who've spent decades probing the mechanics of better decision-making, only to discover that the key is simply more time and more information. Which is to say: reserving our judgment until the last possible moment."
Unlike a computer, the brain wasn't particularly data-driven. Or particularly logical. Instead, it was emotional. And creative. And powered by story.
"There are a number of judgments that we can suspend permanently, including most of our judgments about other people. Our brain is constantly making such judgments. It looks at strangers on the street—and judges them. It looks at celebrities in magazines—and judges them. It looks at family members and colleagues and friends in homes and offices and restaurants—and judges them. These judgments feel instantly good to our neurons; they deliver pleasant microdoses of emotional superiority. But in the long run, they make us anxious, incurious, and less happy, so we can improve our long-term mental well-being if we suspend them."
02:12 - Highlights of Leadership Training04:24 - How to Prevent Failure09:14 - What is a Story Scientist?
12:57 - Is Story Science Therapy?
14:22 - Tell Your Story
18:56 - Vulnerability is the Most Powerful Thing You Can Do
22:00 - Can You Go Too Far With Being Vulnerable?
25:19 - How to Be Vulnerable
32:42 - Real Leaders Activate the Leader In You
36:10 - Where Does Your Sense of Confidence Come From?
40:50 - Punch Through Your Own Fear
43:00 - Be Open About What Could Go Wrong
44:47 - Questions to Ask During the Interview Process
48:33 - Responding to Adversity IS Leadership
51:45 - How to Be Excellent at Speaking
56:27 - Advice For Younger Leaders
530: Katty Kay - How Power Impacts Our Careers, Friends, & Marriages (The Power Code)
11 Jun 2023
00:59:20
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Katty Kay is a US correspondent for the BBC and a regular contributor on MSNBC. Katty grew up in the Middle East, where her father was a British diplomat. She studied French and Italian at Oxford University and worked as a foreign correspondent in Africa and Japan before moving to The US in 1996. Katty is the best-selling author of many books. Her latest is called "The Power Code."
Notes:
The definition of power –The ability to exercise one's will, influence others, and effect change.
The ability to exercise our will—More Joy. Influencing (not controlling) others—Less Ego. Effecting change—Maximum Impact.
Redefining Power - In the past, it seems to be about dominance. About something you hold over something (people, or resources). Instead, we want it to be used to effect positive change. Let's use power for good.
Promoting on promise versus promoting on performance. The research states that more men are promoted on promise than women. And women are mostly promoted based on performance. As leaders, let's think about promise versus performance. As Frank Slootman said in a previous conversation, let's hire people "Ahead of their curve.
Most women today don't want power. The path to getting it, as it exists today, involves too many sacrifices, and power itself is unappealing, full of egos and competition. Women have all the skills, but we'd rather opt out.
Women and men don't define power in the same way. Men think of power as a finite commodity, part of a hierarchical, zero-sum game that involves having power over people. Women aren't competitive about power, and we focus more on the end result, the change we can affect with power. It's the difference between power over and power to.
Does power corrupt? Not in the hands of women. Researchers have found that women are the exception to the rule that powerful people are less empathetic–women tend to maintain their connection to others, to a ground-level reality, as we rise through the ranks–a huge leadership advantage.
Power fuels action. Neuroscientists are discovering the remarkable things power does to our brains. It can liberate its possessors, across their lives, and even create an ability to act more authentically. That offers big rewards for women and needs to become a selling point.
Women will never get power outside the home until our marriages look less like the 1950s. Our marriages aren't keeping up with society or our careers. A woman with a job does more housework than a man who doesn't work. In couples where the wife earns more than the husband, they lie about it on the US census form.
Men are stuck in a box they don't want to be in. They are pushed to play the outdated role of primary breadwinner, which is why the number of stay-at-home dads has barely grown in a quarter of a century. But increasingly men realize the zero-sum power formula isn't working for them either. A more collaborative, more humane approach to power would benefit everyone.
00:38 - How Do You Define Power?
03:18 - Challenges with Research on Gender
05:46 - Using Power for Good
08:41 - Power reveals your Character
10:22 - Why Wouldn't Someone Want Power?
13:37 - Is Power Shifting for Good?
15:31 - How Does Power Need to Change?
19:21 - Suggestions for Relationships at Home
20:42 - The Options to be a "Stay At Home"
30:58 - Characteristics of Katty's Career
33:46 - Can Fame Impact a Marriage?
35:13 - Society's Expectations for Mom & Dads
39:05 - Confidence & Imposter Syndrome
42:45 - The Common Characteristic of Every Leader
44:46 - The Impact of Female College Graduates
46:59 - Can Having Children Impact Your Career as a Mother?
49:30 - Advice for a Male CEO
52:26 - Life Advice for All
529: James Clear - Becoming an Optimist, Building Better Habits, Creating Your System, & Setting Up Your Future Self (Atomic Habits)
04 Jun 2023
01:09:02
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James Clear is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, Atomic Habits, which has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. His newsletter, 3-2-1 is shipped to more than 2 million people every Thursday.
Notes:
"The key, if you want to build habits that last, is to join a group where the desired behavior is the normal behavior."
We should champion good ideas. You need to bet on something. Bet on a business. Bet on a relationship. Bet on something. You may have less risk being a pessimist or not going all in on something, but you also limit your upside. It's worth being a champion of good ideas.
A Chilean saying: "Criticizing a musician is easy, but it is more difficult when you have a guitar in your hand." -- Don't criticize someone else unless you're willing to do the work.
Quantity and Quality – The parable of the pottery class – The University of Florida film photography professor, Jerry Uelsmann, divided his class into two groups. What happened with that experiment? We have to get going to get good. Quantity leads to quality. Be consistent. Show up, and do the work.
Priorities – We all should ask ourselves this question: If someone could only see my actions and not hear my words, what would they say my priorities are?
Steven Pressfield says the difference between an amateur and a professional is in their habits. An amateur has amateur habits. A professional has professional habits.
3 things that help luck:
Deconstructing your craft, so you know what good opportunities look like.
Remaining vigilant, so you notice when lucky breaks come your way.
Acting quickly, so you are more likely to seize luck when it arrives.
"You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems."
"Habits are like the atoms of our lives, each one is a fundamental unit that contributes to your overall improvement."
"Outcomes are about what you get. Processes are about what you do. Identity is about what you believe."
"The goal is not to read a book, the goal is to become a reader."
"Your identity emerges out of your habits."
Why We Should Write – "Many people assume they are bad at writing because it is hard. This is like assuming you are bad at weightlifting because the weight is heavy."
Writing is useful because it is hard. It's the effort that goes into writing a clear sentence that leads to better thinking.
Get Going to Get Good – Many situations in life are similar to going on a hike: the view changes once you start walking. You don't need all the answers right now. New paths will reveal themselves if you have the courage to get started.
"The most practical way to change who you are is to change what you do."
"Building habits in the present allows you to do more of what you want in the future."
528: Seth Godin - A New Manifesto For Teams: Innovation, Creativity, Hiring, Firing, & The Power of Speed (The Song of Significance)
28 May 2023
00:52:56
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Seth Godin is the author of 20 international bestsellers that have changed the way people think about marketing, leadership, and work. His blog (which you can find by typing "seth" into Google) is the most viewed marketing blog in the world. Some of my favorite books of his are… Tribes, Linchpin, Purple Cow, and most recently The Song of Significance.
Notes:
Hiring Leaders — when deciding who to hire for a leadership role: look at the careers of the people who have worked for them. And look at the careers of the people they've led. Leaders aren't managers with fancy titles. Leaders are planting the seeds for generations of impact to come.
Let's get real or let's not play.
Tension is what we seek.
It's important to show up early.
Frederick Taylor met Henry Ford and management was created.
Study bees - They leave their home and have 72 hours to find their next one.
Matt Mullenweg (Automatic CEO) - "Create the conditions for forward motion."
To create the environment for the people they're leading to flourish. How are you intentionally creating the environment for the people you're leading to do their best work?
Management doesn't just exist. It was invented. When you race to the bottom, You see people as resources, not as people. (I don't like the term human capital management)
When Paul Orfalea was building kinkos (which he later sold to fed ex for $2B), he said his best technique for growing the business was simple. He would walk into their stores and ask someone there to tell him about an innovation they've recently made. And then he'd tell all the other stores about it…
"Real value is no longer created by traditional measures of productivity. It's created by personal interactions, innovation, creative solutions, resilience, and the power of speed."
527: Sally Jenkins - What Sports Can Teach Us About Leadership, Excellence, & Life (How To Make The Right Call)
21 May 2023
00:51:03
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Tony Dungy's quiet strength - He never criticized without an adequate solution. As leaders, it's on us to be thoughtful about how we help our people get better. Just yelling that someone messed up is not helpful. We need to provide an adequate solution.
Dianna Nyad – She swam for 53 hours from Cuba to Florida. It looked like a solo mission. It was anything but. She needed a full team to make it happen. We need other people to help us accomplish big missions.
A lot of people are afraid to win. They are afraid to put it all on the line and risk not being enough. Too many of us want to look cool and play it safe in case we lose. The people who sustain excellence over time commit 100% to what they're doing even though they might lose. It's worth it.
It is "kind of a sin" to waste potential and the real champions never committed it. - Dan Jenkins
Advice from her dad (legendary sports writer, Dan Jenkins): "Never let a thing go until it's as good as you can make it."
"Interest yourself first before you'll interest anyone else."
Key learning from Brian Daboll - Winning organizations are made up of people who've been doubted in the past.
The "greats are a result of construction." We must be intentional.
Go all in. Preparation. Practice. There must be a dept of preparation. "Never leave the field wishing you'd prepared more."
"Pressure is what you feel when don't know what the hell to do."
Michael Phelps was not born with an innate sense to swim fast. His body was well suited to swim but not much more than any other Olympian.
"The work is what made him great."
Day-to-day consistency leads to excellence. Derek Jeter built his schedule around being consistent every single day.
Laird Hamilton built his resilience through doing hard things like cold plunges, saunas, and surfing tough waves.
Activate your body to stress:
Stress has two sides. We're meant to experience stress. Stress + Rest = Growth. We need stress to grow. Life is born without it.
Pat Riley - What happens when people don't believe in their leader? They gear down their effort.
Life/Career Advice:
Shoe leather hard work. You can't substitute hard work.
Find the thing you'd do for fun and see if you can build a career from it.
Sally Jenkins has been a columnist and feature writer for The Washington Post for more than twenty years. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2020 and in 2021 was named the winner of the Associated Press Red Smith Award for Outstanding Contributions to Sports Journalism. She is the author of twelve books of nonfiction including The Real All Americans, the story of the Carlisle Indian School, and its use of football as a form of resistance following the close of the Indian Wars. Her work for The Washington Post has included coverage of ten Olympic Games. In 2005 she was the first woman to be inducted into the National Sportswriters and Sportscasters Hall of Fame. Her most recent book is called The Right Call: What Sports Teach Us about Leadership, Excellence, and Decision Making.
526: Mark Miller (VP of Chick-fil-A High Performance Leaderships) - How Chick-fil-A Built A World Class Culture
14 May 2023
01:01:25
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Mark Miller started his Chick-fil-A career working as an hourly team member in 1977. Mark's cell phone number is 678-612-8441. He asked that you text him your thoughts on this episode. In 1978, he joined the corporate staff working in the warehouse and mailroom. Since that time, he has provided leadership for Corporate Communications, Field Operations, Quality and Customer Satisfaction, Training and Development, and Leadership Development. During his tenure with Chick-fil-A, the company has grown from 75 restaurants to over 2,300 locations with annual sales approaching $10 billion. Mark began writing almost twenty years ago when he teamed up with Ken Blanchard, co-author of The One Minute Manager, to write The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do. He's now written 11 books that have sold over 1 million copies. His latest is called Culture Rules.
Notes:
"Your capacity to grow determines your capacity to lead."
You must make the choice to be a learner...
Let's start with a story told by the late philosopher, David Foster Wallace. He said, "There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way who nods at them and says, "Morning boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, "What the hell is water?"
Mark Miller conducted research with more than 6,000 individuals from ten countries that revealed that 71% of U.S. leaders believe culture is their most powerful tool to drive performance. However, the study revealed that enhancing workplace culture ranked eleventh on the leader's priority list.
"If your heart is not right, no one cares about your skills." Your character, integrity, and care for others must be there to earn any type of followership. If your heart is not right, no one cares about your skills.
The 3 culture rules are aspire, amplify, and adapt:
Aspire - Share your hopes and dreams for the culture (Andrew Cathy, new CEO, said "Rooted in purpose, known for our care.")
Amplify - Always be looking for ways to reinforce and amplify the aspiration for your culture.
Adapt - Always look for ways to enhance your culture and be innovative.
The Magic Circle: It dates back to 1938 when Dutch Historian Johan Huizinga wrote about the impact of play on culture…
The "Must-Have" leadership qualities
Character
Competence
Chemistry
Mark has spent a lot of time with Navy SEALs to learn about culture... Key takeaways:
Shoot
Move
Communicate
Is focusing on culture a soft skill? The data suggests it is the #1 driver of performance.
Storytelling - People remember the stories more than the stats. Don't just tell... Take people there.
525: Frank Slootman (CEO of Snowflake) - Raising Your Standards, Pushing The Pace, Hiring Ahead Of The Curve, & Amping It Up
07 May 2023
01:05:51
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Frank Slootman is the CEO at Snowflake. Frank has over 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur and executive in the enterprise software industry. Frank served as CEO of ServiceNow from 2011 to 2017, taking the organization from $100M in revenue, through an IPO, to $1.4B. Prior to that, Frank served as President at EMC following an acquisition of Data Domain Corporation, where he served as the CEO, leading the company through an IPO to its acquisition by EMC for $2.4B. He's also the best-selling author of Amp It Up.
Notes:
Frank's work ethic was developed as a child in the Netherlands. In his teens, he had summer jobs harvesting tulip bulbs and walking behind a tractor ten hours a day. He also cleaned factory toilets one summer in the plant where his dad worked.
"The Man In The Arena" Theodore Roosevelt – Frank put this at the beginning of Amp It Up.
After retiring from ServiceNow in 2017, Frank had no intention of taking another CEO role, but people like him "have a hard time leaving the arena." It's exciting to be back in a CEO role with Snowflake.
Hiring -- "Hire people ahead of their own curve." Hire more for aptitude than experience and give people the career opportunity of a lifetime.
NO MBO -- "Another source of misalignment is management by objective (MBO). Which I have eliminated at every company I've joined in the last 20 years."
Push the pace -- Leaders set the pace. "Instead of getting back to me in a week, I asked, "Why not tomorrow?" Change the cadence. Push the pace.
The leadership "must-have" qualities:
A need to prove something
Unbalanced
They want to show the world something... They have passion
High trust
Need some ego, but it has to be in check
Legacy? "I don't think about legacy much. When you're dead, you're dead."
Frank's leadership team:
We are not balanced, we are available to each other 24/7.
Drivers vs. Passengers -- "Passengers are people who don't mind simply being carried along by the company's momentum …They are often pleasant, get along with everyone, attend meetings promptly, and generally do not stand out as troublemakers … While passengers can often diagnose and articulate a problem quite well, they have no investment in solving it." Frank wants front-seat drivers who'll take ownership, make trouble, and help navigate.
Raise Your Standards -- Push for insanely great. A leader must always push the standard higher.
Focus -- "Founders don't have a mindset around operating companies. Focus is one of our number one things. You need to learn to have extreme, machine focus, and most people don't even know the beginning of what that means. They think they do, and they don't."
"I'm more of a Patton than an Eisenhower," he says, known for constantly driving the troops forward.
Sequoia's Carl Eschenbach remembers, "When we brought Frank into Snowflake, at our first board meeting he said, 'Let me tell you how I'm running the board meetings and how you're going to participate. We're going to keep this very simple. I'm not even gonna tell you anything about the good stuff that's happening because you already know that—I'm going to dive into the shit that's broken and how we're going to fix it.'"
Very Brief Retirement -- In 2017, Frank spent time regatta sailing, winning the iconic ocean race, Transpac. Race from Los Angeles to Oahu. (To win, "We focused on recruiting talent").
Put The Success of The Company Ahead of Your Own – If you want to build a Snowflake-sized company, you can't be about the celeb-CEO lifestyle.
"That's not real life. Real life is you're terrorized and uncomfortable every day of the week. People always ask me, 'Is this normal?' I'm like, yep."
Snowflake - Hit the ground running on April 26, 2019.
Good news: They were on already on a tear.
The bad news: "The company was quite impressed with itself."
Growth in all areas (revenue, retention rate, total customers, $1m Customers, Forbes Global 2000 Customers, Customer Satisfaction).
The first 90 days as a new leader. It's a combat zone. You must quickly assess what's working, and what's not. Who should stay on the bus, and who should get off?
524: Oscar Munoz (Former CEO of United Airlines) - Listening To Your Employees, Responding From Tragedy, Swinging Easy, & Turning Around A Failing Company
30 Apr 2023
01:04:47
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Oscar Munoz served as CEO and chairman of United Airlines, previously holding several executive leadership positions at CSX, AT&T, US West, PepsiCo, and Coca-Cola.
Listen, Learn, AND THEN Lead… The purpose of the listening tour was to hear from people at the ground level, listen, learn, and then make decisions.
I love the simplicity in the question to his team, "Hey, what are the 10 dumbest rules we've put in place?" And then changing them… This is something we all should think about periodically.
The father-daughter bond Oscar has with his daughter, Jessica. The traits he sees in her that are also in him are "tenacity and refusal to give in no matter what."
Before Oscar became CEO, the culture was based on a "cost-cutting, rule-obsessed, disciplinary-heavy culture."
Listening Tour - In 2015, After becoming CEO of United Airlines, Munoz embarked on a "listening tour" of the company, meeting with disgruntled employees around the United States and discussing their concerns. While this phase was intended to last for the first 90 days of the job, Oscar was hospitalized after having a heart attack in October 2015, 38 days into the job.
In 2015, Oscar was one of two Hispanic CEOs in the top 100 of the Fortune 500 list. Munoz has been named among the "100 Most Influential Hispanics" by Hispanic Business magazine. In March 2017, Oscar was named "Communicator of the Year for 2017" by PRWeek.
How to be both a great dad and a great CEO?
"Model the right behavior for your kids."
Advice: Swing easy. Be yourself.
523: Derek Thompson - The Meaning Of Work, Responding To Rejection, Earning Your Dream Job, Impressing Bill Simmons, & How To Find The Next Great QB
23 Apr 2023
01:18:11
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Derek Thompson is a staff writer at The Atlantic and author of the books Hit Makers and On Work: Money, Meaning, Identity, and the host of the podcast Plain English.
Notes:
Before graduating from high school, Derek appeared in several theatrical productions at the Folger Shakespeare Theater and the Shakespeare Theater.
Why do Americans care so much about work?
workism is "the belief that work is not only necessary to economic production but also the centerpiece of one's identity and life's purpose."
Jobs, Careers, or Callings: One theory of work holds that people tend to see themselves in jobs, careers, or callings…
The Bow and Arrow metaphor… We need stress, but we need to let it go. You pull back on the bow and arrow… Then you let it go. Stress + Rest = Growth
"Happiness means being balanced between busyness and leisure."
The mark of a good leader? Don't be afraid to ask the ignorant question… Have the confidence to ask it.
Derek had breakfast with the prominent CEO… The CEO was deeply curious about Derek. Asked him a lot of questions, listened intently, and asked great follow-ups. Great leaders make their conversations about the other person. Follow your curiosity with great rigor.
That same leader also had the emotional intelligence to not bother Derek Jeter while he was having breakfast. He knew there would be a better time to meet.
The book, an anthology of Thompson's articles for The Atlantic, includes a new adaptation of his essay on workism, a term that he defines as "the belief that work is not only necessary to economic production but also the centerpiece of one's identity and life's purpose."
"The decline of traditional faith in America has coincided with an explosion of new atheisms," Thompson writes. "Some people worship beauty, some worship political identities, and others worship their children. But everybody worships something. And workism is among the most potent of the new religions competing for congregants."
How Derek earned a job writing for The Atlantic out of college?
After being rejected 30 times, he applied for a fellowship with The Atlantic and got it. He then earned a job writing about economics for them even though he had no background or interest in economics. "It's like the New York Yankees offered me to play second base even though I played catcher my whole life."
How Derek earned a role as a podcast host working for Bill Simmons?
"Bill had me on his podcast to talk about Covid after he read some things I'd written for The Atlantic. That was sort of an audition. After he had me on, he asked if I wanted to have my own podcast on his network. We eventually came up with the name Plain English."
The name of the show is very important. You want people to be able to easily say, "Hey, I listen to Plain English."
How to predict the next great quarterback?
It's contingent upon their surroundings (their coaching staff, receivers, linemen, etc...)
Life/Career Advice:
Skin thickness -- It can't be so thin that you can't accept criticism, but it can't be so thick that you stop listening. You have be somewhere in the middle.
Working hours — no large country globally averages more hours of work per year than the United States. Americans work longer hours, have shorter vacations, get less unemployment, and retire later.
522: Kevin Kelly - Excellent Advice For Living, The Best Way To Learn, Building Better Habits, Becoming A Better Listener, Being On Time, & Making The Big Ask
16 Apr 2023
00:54:39
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Kevin Kelly is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He is also the editor and publisher of the Cool Tools website, which gets half a million unique visitors per month. He co-founded Wired in 1993 and served as its Executive Editor from its inception until 1999. During Kevin's tenure, Wired won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence (the industry's equivalent of two Oscars). He is the best-selling author of many books including New Rules for the New Economy, The Inevitable, and his latest is called Excellent Advice For Living - Wisdom I wish I'd Known Earlier.
You lead by letting others know what you expect of them, which may exceed what they themselves expect. Provide them a reputation to live up to.
Habit is far more dependable than inspiration. Don't focus on getting into shape. Focus on becoming the kind of person who never misses a workout.
"Every great and difficult thing has required a strong sense of optimism,"
Prototype your life. Try stuff instead of making grand plans.
The best way to learn anything is to try to teach what you know.
Don't create things to make money; make money so you can create things. The reward for good work is more work.
The more you are interested in others, the more interesting they'll find you. To be interesting, be interested.
Promptness is a sign of respect.
The consistency of your endeavors (exercise, companionship, work) is more important than the quantity. Nothing beats small things done every day, which is way more important than what you do occasionally.
647: Tim Ferriss - Chasing Your Curiosity, Internal vs External Scoreboards, Effectiveness over Efficiency, Winning Even if You Fail, Fame's Hidden Costs, & The Mount Rushmore of Podcasting
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My Guest: Tim Ferriss is the author of five #1 New York Times bestsellers (including The 4-Hour Work Week, Tools of Titans, and Tribe of Mentors). His podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show, has been listened to more than a billion times. Tim was an early investor in Uber, Shopify, Twitter, Alibaba, and many others. He's the creator of a new card game called COYOTE.
Decision making - How can I win even if I lose? He viewed angel investing like his personal MBA. Instead of paying for business school, he invested in companies and learned about business by working with actual businesses. He didn't expect to make money on those investments. That was just a bonus. Think, "How can I win even if I lose?" Tim won with those investments, regardless of whether he made money or not on them.
Key Takeaways and Learnings:
Parents Who Foster Curiosity – Tim's mother created a "books are always in budget" policy despite tight finances. Used remainder tables at bookstores to expose him to random, off-menu knowledge that sparked lifelong curiosity about unconventional topics.
Curiosity-Driven Exploration – When Tim showed interest in marine biology, his mom found Frank Mundus (inspiration for Jaws character), arranged a meeting, and created low-cost adventures like crab fishing with chicken bones to fuel his interests.
The Mask You Wear Becomes You – "Be very careful what you pretend to be" - spent years presenting as overly serious to be taken seriously, which created a recursive feedback loop. Now embraces more play and laughter to avoid burnout.
Fiction and Poetry as Life Teachers – Shifted from non-fiction purist to reading more fiction/poetry. Recommends "Ozymandias" as a monthly reminder that all achievements fade: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings. Look on my works, ye mighty and despair. Nothing beside remains."
Internal vs External Scorecards – Money and fame amplify whatever's underneath, like alcohol or power. "If you have certain insecurities or paranoia, all of those are going to be amplified. If you're generous, that's also gonna be the case."
Effectiveness Over Efficiency – "Effectiveness is doing the right things, efficiency is doing things well, but doing something well does not make it important." Focus on choosing the right targets rather than optimizing everything.
Strategic Slack in Systems – Moved away from filling every 10 minutes. Takes 10 minutes each morning with coffee to read fiction/poetry/meditate to prove "you do not have to front flip out of bed and land in a full sprint."
How to Win Even If You Fail – Project selection framework: "How can I win even if I fail?" Focus on relationships built and skills acquired that transfer beyond the project if external metrics don't pan out.
The COYOTE Game Philosophy – Created a card game to address the social isolation epidemic. "People don't have a shortage of productivity advice... It's taking some steam out of the system and actually enjoying what you have worked so hard for."
Social Bonds as Foundation – "It's the relationships, stupid." Countries rated happiest fundamentally come down to social ties. In-person social interactions are down 70% in certain age groups over the last 10 years.
Podcasting as Relationship Building – "My goal is not to have 100% of my audience like any episode... but I do want 10% of my audience to love each episode." The personal is the most universal.
Fame's Hidden Costs – With the audience size of major cities comes proportional number of unstable people. "If you have a small village, you're gonna have one village idiot... "How many crazy people are there in New York City?"
"Be suspicious of what you want."
Tim read me the poem by Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley
"If more information were the answer, we'd all be billionaires with six-pack abs."
Be a talent scout - You don't need a huge network. A+ players in one area know A+ players in others. Seek out people who are great at what they do, regardless of what they do. Study what makes them great at that thing. Then you'll probably meet other A+ players. Also, it's on us to strive to be an A+ player at what we do. Be so good at whatever your thing is that other A+ players want to meet you. Tim has been very good at that.
Quotes:
"Be very careful what you pretend to be... the mask you wear often becomes the person you are."
"Be suspicious of what you want." (Rumi)
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings. Look on my works, ye mighty and despair. Nothing beside remains."
"Effectiveness is doing the right things, efficiency is doing things well, but doing something well does not make it important."
"How can I win even if I fail?"
"The personal is the most universal."
"It's the relationships, stupid."
"If more information were the answer, then we'd all be billionaires with six-pack abs."
"Follow your curiosity and obsessions with great rigor. Do that and I like your chances."
"The superheroes you have in your mind are nearly all walking flaws who've maximized one or two strengths."
"You don't need a huge network... the super A+ players tend to know other A+ players."
Life Lessons:
Cultivate Childhood Curiosity – Create "always yes" policies for learning and exploration. Use constraints (like remainder tables) to discover unexpected interests.
Embrace Strategic Experimentation – View life as a series of 6-12-month projects with 2-4 week experiments. Design studies to get feedback, not just chase outcomes.
Balance Seriousness with Play – Taking yourself too seriously leads to burnout. Build in recovery phases and "deloading" periods across all life areas.
Choose Projects for Learning – Select opportunities based on relationships you'll build and skills you'll acquire, not just potential external rewards.
Start With Personal Pain Points – Best opportunities often come from solving problems you personally understand deeply, then expanding adjacent.
Build Safety Nets First – Like Arnold's real estate, before acting, create financial/emotional cushions that allow you to say no and wait for right opportunities.
Quality Over Quantity in Relationships – Better to have deep connections with fewer people than surface-level networks with many.
Morning Rituals Create Calm – Prove to your nervous system you don't have to be frantic by taking 10 minutes each morning for something peaceful.
Scratch Your Own Itch – Whether in podcasting, investing, or any pursuit, follow genuine personal interest for sustainable energy and authentic results.
Prepare for Success Taxes – Fame and wealth amplify existing traits. Address insecurities and develop strong boundaries before scaling.
Value Present Experience – Focus on daily energy in/out rather than constantly deferring happiness to future achievements.
07:06 Influence of Mentors and Teaching Aspirations
08:45 Thoughts on Parenthood and Relationships
12:11 Balancing Seriousness and Humor
25:15 Effectiveness vs. Efficiency
30:50 Creating Slack and Self-Care
34:41 The Importance of Social Bonds and Play
41:07 Meeting a Game-Changing Partner
42:13 The Importance of Analog Social Interaction
42:55 Podcasting: A Platform for Deep Connections
43:30 The Evolution and Challenges of Podcasting
43:47 The Art of Interviewing
49:18 Navigating Fame and Public Exposure
01:04:26 The Philosophy of Risk and Experimentation
01:10:27 Spotting Talent and Following Curiosity
01:20:37 Closing Thoughts and Future Endeavors
521: Celebrating The 8th Birthday of The Learning Leader Show - Listener AMA: Consistency > Intensity, Following Your Curiosity, How To Be Prepared For Big Moments, Life As A Former Athlete, & Building Relationships With Your Heroes
09 Apr 2023
00:51:02
Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right...
The Learning Leader Show was first published on April 9, 2015. TODAY marks the show's 8th birthday! To celebrate, I kick off the episode by sharing some key learnings I've gathered over the past 8 years... And then I answer YOUR questions and did a full AMA (Ask Me Anything). If you'd like me to do more AMAs, send me an email: Ryan (at) LearningLeader dot com
Here are some key things I've learned after publishing The Learning Leader Show for 8 years...
Consistency > Intensity. Showing up to do the work (prep) each day is key. Become part of your routine as a listener. Consistency builds trust. You know you're going to have a new show for your Monday morning walk or commute.
Following your genuine curiosity is attractive. This parasocial relationship is built because as the listener you know I'm following what I'm actually curious about. I own guest selection 100%. They are all my call and my call alone. I only choose guests that I'm deeply curious about.
The curiosity-judgemental spectrum. Talking with more people with a wide range of life experiences has helped me view the world from their eyes and be less judgemental. All the way back to episode 3 with Maurice Clarett. Approach people with curiosity, not judgment.
The prep works as a forcing function to learn. Same with mindful Monday. I have systems in place to ensure I'm getting a little bit wiser each day. And that learning compounds over time. Create forcing functions on your life to intentionally get better. Don't just wander from meeting to meeting each week. What are you doing to ensure your learning is compounding? The Charlie Munger quote; go to bed a little wiser than when you woke up. I try to live by that.
Relationships with your heroes: General McChrystal. Pat Lencioni. So many others. Being pleasant to work with. Showing up prepared. Being grateful. Following up. All of that has helped me build real relationships with people I admire. The McChrystal trip to Gettysburg. Forewords to books. McChrystal and Lencioni. Dan Pink. The Kat Cole ATL show. Adam Grant. Ryan Holiday.
Relationships with listeners. Some amazing friendships have been formed and fostered because of this podcast. So many of my Learning Leader Circle members. Technically they are clients of mine, but lots of them have become genuine friends for life.
Communicationskill - LISTENING. Thinking. Speaking, Writing. All have improved. Earned the opportunity to speak on hundreds of stages all over the world. Publish books. Meet fascinating people.
Listener AMA:
Learn 2 Cope (Instagram) – What was the biggest struggle you had transitioning to life after sports?
Kevin Janiec (Instagram) – How do you and Miranda balance and align your competing priorities?
Samantha Phillips (LinkedIn), Sales Manager at Insight Global – 1. What is 1 of your champagne toasts? (Victory Shot toast) 2. Who is 1 person you have not yet had on your show that you'd like to?
Aaron Arnston (LinkedIn) - Congratulations, Ryan! Truly blazing a trail, we'll done! You have interviewed hundreds of guests and I have liked every show, can't recall one, not one, show I didn't like...have you ever interviewed guests that didn't make the cut or do you have a filtering process prior to the show that helps with this?
Noah Vasilj (Mindful Monday email response): My question is a "3 parter":
What is your favorite part of your job?
Do you generally enjoy/love what you do?
What keeps you interested and going on the days when you are not at 100%?
Brian Causer (Twitter) — Congrats! Love the show, Ryan. One of my top podcasts and I listen weekly. Maybe have two questions... How do you choose your guests? Referral? Follow your curiosity? Also, what is one question you wish someone would ask you that nobody has asked you before?
The Greek In The Kitchen (Instagram) — Who is the guest you think about most or has had the most influence on you?
Denise Kollias (LinkedIn) Hi! Congratulation! I have been listening to your podcast since 2017 and it has been a Godsend. It has taught me so much and I appreciate all your hard work to continually bring insightful conversations on leadership. My question is what episodes were your favorite to record or the top 5 that you recommend with the greatest impact to help people grow or push through?
JP Botero (Instagram) - After 8 years of experience, what would you recommend to the Ryan thinking of creating The Learning Leader Show?
Aaron Campbell – After 8 years of exploration along a central theme, how would you finish this sentence: "A great leader is…."
520: Dan Lyons - The Power of Shutting Up, Earning Attention, & Becoming a Better Listener
02 Apr 2023
00:51:32
Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right...
Dan Lyons is the New York Times bestselling author of "Disrupted," "Lab Rats," and "STFU: The Power of Keeping Your Mouth Shut in an Endlessly Noisy World." Dan was a writer for HBO's hit comedy, "Silicon Valley," and before that was a journalist at Newsweek, Forbes, and Fortune.
The best sales reps spend 54 percent of the call listening and 46 percent talking. The worst reps talked 72 percent of the time. They made calls feel like conversations.
A company called Gong uses machine learning software that analyzes sales calls to find out what works and what doesn't. Its software vacuums up millions of hours of audio data and then analyzes it to figure out how the best sales reps operate. Gong's customers use this information to train new sales reps and help underperformers improve. In 2017 Gong analyzed more than five hundred thousand calls and found that sales calls with the best close rates were ones in which reps knew how to be quiet and ask questions instead of making a sales pitch. To be precise, the most successful reps asked eleven to fourteen questions. Fewer than that, and you're not digging deep enough. More than that, the call starts to feel like an interrogation.
Eavesdropping on happiness: The research showed that people who spent more time having substantive conversations were happier than those who spent more time having small talk, and weather conversations.
Always Say Less Than Necessary – "When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike. Powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less. The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish." -- Robert Greene
Researcher, Mehl joined a team that made a third big discovery: that people who suffer from anxiety and depression use the first-person singular pronouns I, me, and my more than other people.
Go OUTSIDE – Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson, who hypothesized that our affinity for the outdoors and love of living things have been hardwired into our DNA by evolution and exist as innate parts of our psychological and physiological makeup. Wilson calls this "biophilia," a name derived from the ancient Greek words for "life" and "love." It's the reason people watch birds, melt at the sight of baby bunnies, travel to Yellowstone National Park to marvel at the bison, and rush to the window when a deer wanders into their yard. It's why walking through Muir Woods among giant thousand-year-old redwood trees takes your breath away.
The Talkaholic Scale Test – Prior to writing the book, Dan scored a 50 (the highest possible score)… Meaning he is a talkaholic. AFTER writing the book, he scored a 40, and Dan's wife scored him at 38.
Life/Career Advice: Earn attention by doing great work, not by being loud and outlandish. It's more lasting and will help you build better relationships and a great career.
519: Dr. Mat Duerden - Designing a World-Class Experience, Transformational Learning, The Wonder Switch, & Earning a High NPS Score
26 Mar 2023
00:54:28
Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right...
Dr. Mat Duerden is a Professor of Experience Design and Management at Brigham Young University. His teaching focuses on experience design and design thinking. He is the best-selling author of Designing Experiences. His research focuses on experience design in both work and non-work contexts. Mat's publications have appeared in a variety of journals including Leisure Sciences, Journal of Environmental Psychology, Journal of Adolescent Research, and Journal of Leisure Research. Mat Duerden received a Ph.D. in Recreation, Park, and Tourism Sciences from Texas A&M University and an M.S. in Youth and Family Recreation from Brigham Young University.
Transformational Learning – "The future intrinsic use of the content." Going from theory to putting it into practice. It's the implementation of the learning that codifies it.
What to do at your next leadership retreat? Ask yourself the question, "What do you want them to say when they walk away from the experience?" And design the event based on your answer to that question.
One of the must-have qualities needed to be hired as a team leader is humility and curiosity. Curiosity is the fuel for creativity and innovation. Having a broad range of interests is a good sign of curiosity.
What do Apple, Costco, and Walt Disney have in common? A high NPS Score...
What is NPS? Your Net Promoter Score is the percentage of customers who are promoters (those who scored 9 or 10) minus the percentage who are detractors (those who scored 0 to 6).