You sold the company. You hit the number. You bought the house. So why do you still feel empty?

Blake Mycoskie founded TOMS Shoes, pioneered the One for One model, and sold his company at a $650M valuation. He achieved every entrepreneurial dream. Then, he fell into a deep depression.

In this episode, Ryan and Blake deconstruct the high-achiever's curse: the constant, gnawing feeling of "never enough." They discuss why the inner critic is a liar, the danger of over-optimizing your life, and how detaching from outcomes is the ultimate unlock for peak performance.

Blake also reveals his experience using an AI therapist, his simple 15-minute morning routine, and why his current ventures (Move Lab and Morning Water) feel like "easy mode."

Stop living in the future. Anchor yourself in the present.

Links & Resources:

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iHeartMedia rolled out a new tagline: Guaranteed Human.

Not better content. Not award-winning journalism. Not bigger distribution. Guaranteed Human. Two words. That is what one of the largest media companies on the planet decided to lead with.

They have the research to back it up. 90% of listeners want their media made by humans. This includes people who use AI themselves every single day. Consumer preference for AI-generated content dropped from 60% in 2023 to 26% today. In less than two years, the floor fell out.

The AI content flood did not make creators obsolete. It created a valuable scarcity. It created an attention void. Every brand, every media company, every platform flooded the zone with AI content. Faster. Cheaper. More of it. And the consumer said no thank you. They said it loudly with their attention and their wallets.

When everything looks the same and hits the same predictable beats, the human who shows up with a real point of view becomes the only thing worth paying for.

The new scarcity is not production quality. It is not your distribution. It is not even your audience size. The new scarcity is a real human with a real point of view who has earned the right to hold it.

If you are blasting out AI slop, you are competing in a race to the bottom. If you are leaning into your specific, nuanced, contrarian humanity, you are building a moat that compounds over time.

In this episode I break down the economics behind this shift, the 2022-2026 timeline that got us here, and the three-move playbook to price yourself like the scarcity you are:

You have a voice that no LLM can replicate because it was built from your life, not some mashup of data points. Name that point of view. Put it on record. Price it accordingly.

Connect with Ryan Hanley

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You are being lied to about artificial intelligence. 

The talking heads on television and the doomers in your social media feeds want you terrified. They want you scared because fear is profitable. It keeps you docile, it keeps you buying their products, and most importantly, it keeps you late.

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I help founders & executives generating more than $10M in revenue find their Easy Mode. Start here: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanley

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The hard data from the Federal Reserve, Stanford, and Harvard tells a completely different story. Half of America is already using these tools to build, cure, and scale. Sitting this revolution out is not a conservative strategy. It is business suicide.

In this solo episode, I break down the exact numbers that prove why optimism is the only rational path forward. We will steel man the doomer case, look at the real threat of job disruption, and explain how the most safety-focused AI minds in the world are secretly betting on massive abundance.

You do not get credit for being right about the risks if you also missed the wave.

Follow Ryan:

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I help founders & executives generating more than $10M in revenue find their Easy Mode. Start here: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanley

Everyone is racing to automate everything. Emails. Content. Customer service. Hiring. Even their thinking. And the market is already correcting for it.

36.3% of new ventures launched in 2026 are solo-founded by choice. Not because people can't find co-founders. Because they've figured out what they're built to do and wrapped an AI layer around it so nothing gets in the way.

Most founders are using AI backwards. More content, more outreach, more reports, more meetings with better summaries. More output from the same broken operating system. That's not a strategy. That's faster work slop.

I break down the three decisions AI will never make for you, the three markers that reveal your Easy Mode, and the architecture that separates founders who look like they're cheating from founders who are efficiently stuck.

Follow Ryan:

This is the way.

Hanley.

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I help founders & executives generating more than $10M in revenue find their Easy Mode. Start here: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanley

UC Berkeley tracked 200 workers who loved using AI. They did not work less. They worked more. They had fewer breaks, constant context switching, and hit full burnout in six months.

Only 8% of the time saved by AI gets reinvested back into ourselves. The other 92% is taken by our bosses or by ourselves.

We are using AI to expand our surface area instead of protecting our zone of genius. That is a leadership failure.

In this solo session, I break down why direction multiplies effort. When you are pointed in the wrong direction, AI gets you to the wrong destination faster. It exhausts you.

I share the exact three-step framework to find your Easy Mode, audit your week, and deploy AI as a protector of your zone of genius.

This is the way.

Hanley.

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I help founders & executives generating more than $10M in revenue find their Easy Mode. Start here: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanley

I was 17 years old. Kitchen table my mom bought at a garage sale. I hand-wrote 17 letters to college baseball coaches with a message no teenager should have the nerve to send: my family is broke, whoever gives me the most money, that's where I'm going.

George Mack calls what happened at that table high agency. Three wheels: clear thinking, bias to action, disagreeability. This episode breaks down why high agency is not a trait you're born with. It's a state you access. And the fastest path to that state is what I call Easy Mode.

I also make the argument that most people are using AI backwards. They're speeding up hard mode. That's the low agency move. The real play is building an AI layer that protects your zone of genius so you can operate at full high agency by default.

Ryan Hanley is the host of Finding Peak, author of the forthcoming book Easy Mode, and founder of the PEAK coaching framework for founders and executives generating $10M+ in revenue.

If this episode connected with you, share it with someone who needs to hear it. That's the best way to support this work.

Follow Ryan:

This is the way.

Hanley.

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I help founders & executives generating more than $10M in revenue find their Easy Mode. Start here: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanley

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We are facing an epidemic of intellectual laziness. Leaders are handing over their creative output to machines. They are letting their problem-solving muscles atrophy. This is a massive mistake.

Ryan Hawk joins me to break down the real cost of outsourcing your thinking. We dig into why curiosity is the ultimate competitive advantage. We cover the brutal truth about excuses and how they soften your character. We get into why being coachable is the single most intoxicating trait a leader can possess.

If you want to build long-term success, you cannot be closed off to feedback. You need truth tellers in your corner. You need to pay the price of becoming.

Ryan Hawk is the host of The Learning Leader Show and author of The Price of Becoming. He has interviewed hundreds of the world's most brilliant minds on leadership and high performance. He is one of the sharpest thinkers I have had on this show.

Subscribe to his Mindful Mondays newsletter at learningleader.com.

• Website: https://learningleader.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanhawk12/
• Book: The Price of Becoming: https://amzn.to/4fz6nYt

• Website: https://ryanhanley.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/ryan_hanley
• X: https://x.com/ryanhanley_com

This is the way.

Hanley.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I help founders & executives generating more than $10M in revenue find their Easy Mode. Start here: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanley

What got you here will not get you there.

The world is moving faster than any of us expected. Jobs are disappearing overnight. Industries are getting rebuilt from scratch. And the people who are winning are not the ones with the highest IQ or the most emotional intelligence. They are the ones who can handle change, disappointment, and uncertainty without losing their footing.

That is AQ. Your Agility Quotient.

In this episode, we break down why hustle culture is a lie. We explore the difference between taste and pastiche in an AI-driven world. We dig into the four archetypes of agility and how to figure out which one you are. We talk about the end of history illusion and why your past success might be the biggest threat to your future growth.

This one is a gut check. Take notes.

Liz Tran coaches the CEOs and founders of the fastest-growing companies on the planet. Her clients have raised more than $1 billion in funding from firms like A16Z, Sequoia, and Y Combinator. She spent a decade in tech, including four years as the only female executive at one of the largest venture funds in the world. She is the author of "The Karma of Success" and "AQ: A New Kind of Intelligence for a World That's Always Changing" (Penguin Random House, 2026 ).

Take the AQ Quiz: https://aqquiz.com/

• Website: https://liz-tran.com/
• AQ (Book ): https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/786825/aq-by-liz-tran/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/liztranwrites/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liztran1/

• Website: https://ryanhanley.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/ryan_hanley

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I help founders & executives generating more than $10M in revenue find their Easy Mode. Start here: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanley

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You’ve been lied to.

Open up any business podcast and you’ll hear the same tired advice: Burn the boats. Swing for the fences. Bet it all on a moonshot.

According to Sir Richard Harpin, that’s a fantastic way to bankrupt your company.

In 1993, Richard took £50,000 and started a home emergency repair business called HomeServe. Thirty years later, he sold it to Brookfield Asset Management for £4.1 billion. He didn’t do it by being a cowboy. He did it through ruthless discipline, small bets, and a willingness to admit when he was the bottleneck in his own company.

In this episode, Richard breaks down his exact 9-step playbook: why you should copy your competitors, how to buy a "boring" business with vendor finance, the 15% rule for global expansion, and why hiring your replacement is the ultimate Easy Mode.

If you want to build a massive business without the ego, this episode is your blueprint.

This is the way.

— Ryan Hanley

• Book — How to Make a Billion in 9 Steps: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/how-to-make-a-billion-in-nine-steps-richard-harpin/1147872744?ean=9780349445403
• Website: https://www.richardharpin.com/
• Business Leader: https://businessleader.co.uk/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rharpin/

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I help founders & executives generating more than $10M in revenue find their Easy Mode. Start here: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanley

You’ve been doing it wrong.

You think negotiation is a battle across a boardroom table. You think it’s about being the loudest, the hardest, the one who refuses to budge.

Here is the truth: The most expensive negotiation you will ever lose is the one happening inside your own head before you even open your mouth.

Today on Finding Peak, I sit down with Attia Qureshi—former MIT faculty, U.S. State Department consultant, and author of Never Settle. We break down why your "hard shell" is actually costing you money, power, and relationships.

We cover:

• Why 40% of men under 30 have never asked a woman out in person (and what it means for the future of business).
• The "Lemonade Strategy" that turned a hostile neighbor into a massive real estate asset.
• How to stop negotiating with yourself and adopt the Mamba Mentality.
• The exact script to guess someone's hidden motives without setting off a landmine.

If you are tired of leaving money on the table and walking away from conversations wishing you had asked for more, this episode is your playbook.

Grab Attia's new book

• Never Settle: https://amzn.to/3P8YAWs
• Get her free Emotion Wheel tool: https://www.attiaqureshi.com/archetypequiz

This is the way.

Hanley

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