The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk.

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

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

• At 27, Anne-Laure had her dream job at Google. She quit. "Are you sure?" "No."
  • She was focusing on a narrow vision of success.
• Anne-Laure was most curious about the brain, neuroscience, and why we think the way we do. She went back to school to learn more.
• Writing - First, to clarify thinking. Works as a forcing function for that. You need to create your own version of it. You do that by writing. The generation effect. You remember it better that way. Next, it created a magnet of people to her.
• The meaning behind the name "Ness" is "The state of being."
• Goal setting - What are the traps of linear goals? We think we know what we want. We assume we'll always want the same thing. The arrival fallacy. Think we'll be so happy when we get it, but usually we aren't. Instead focus on the process, the daily behaviors. And run continual experiments. Through those experiments, you’ll probably figure out what you want to accomplish. Or you might even stumble into it.
  • Practical goals - Was it useful? Focus on the process. There is nuance. How do you hold others accountable? It's more than just the number. Do the work to understand the nuance, the details behind the number. Too many managers are lazy.
• Collaborate with uncertainty. Understand why you're scared of it. Comes from a long time ago. That's no longer a thing. You don't just want your team to survive. You want them to thrive. Don't cling to the first obvious conclusion. Do more work.
• What about vision for a CEO? Instead of focusing on being #1 in the marketplace, focus on your approach. Your values, your mission. Focus on your company's daily behaviors more than beating someone else. Be curious and ambitious. 
• Escape the tyranny of purpose. People are obsessed with finding theirs. People have more than one purpose. It changes over time. You can reinvent yourself. It can make people miserable if they haven't found it.
• I suggested that hers is what she has on Ness Labs website: "To help people become the scientist of their own lives." She said that it is for her work.
• Procrastination - Instead of getting rid of it, reframe it. Say hello, you're here again; what are you telling me? A tool for it: Triple check - Head, Heart, Hand.
• Her grandmother Oma was the final person she thanked in her acknowledgement. Moved from Algeria to France. Didn't speak the language.
• Her parents always encouraged her that she could do anything. Show up. Do it. Try.
• How do you keep going after the honeymoon of a new project or idea? Keep iterating and trying new things. Have others help you. Sergey Brin got tired of the ad business at Google, so he had someone else run it and he created a lab inside of Google for new ideas.
• Don’t let anyone rob you of your imagination, your creativity, or your curiosity. It’s your place in the world; it’s your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live.—Mae Jemison, American engineer, physician, and former NASA astronaut

Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes

The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk

Episode #625: Anthony Consigli - Digging Graves, Playing Football at Harvard, Learning From Failure, Taking Big Chances, & Growing a Business From $3 Million to $4 Billion

• Anthony's great-grandfather came from Italy and he was a stone mason. He had 6 sons. He gave each a trade. His grandfather had a business mind. Then WWII came. 4 brothers went and fought. His grandfather and blind uncle stayed back to run the business. He brought his son into it (Anthony’s dad) he was a heavy equipment operator. And did business leadership work after it.
• Hard Work: Born in 1967, 2nd oldest of 5 kids. Grew up in the 1970’s remembering his dad always working 2 jobs including Saturdays as a heavy equipment operator in construction with side jobs at night, his mom as a night nurse with his grandmother watching them during the day. Hard work and work ethic were drilled into them by their dad, grandfather, and uncles who all were in construction. All had stoic personalities. Anthony started working full-time in the Summer, Saturdays, and school vacations in the 7th grade when he was 12.
  • Cleaning the mortar off bricks from demolished buildings so that they could be reused, then digging and covering graves by hand at a bunch of local cemeteries.  Chopping wood and burning the rubber off electrical wire from demolished buildings so we could bring the copper to the scrap yard for cash. It was not your typical childhood but I can see now it gave me incredible life lessons at an early age that allowed me to flourish in business and be a strong leader.
• Anthony was a gravedigger -I was a big part of the business because it was a consistent revenue stream. Regardless of a recession, people were going to die. For that reason, his dad and grandfather never wanted to give it up. Anthony dug them by hand, year-round.
  • When I was in high school I was in charge of laying out the graves to be dug for the recently deceased. As the Catholic Church was not known for great record keeping the coordinates were often confused. I would cut the sod, save it and then start digging; 7.5’ long, 4 foot wide, about 5.5’deep. I had to take 22 wheelbarrows of dirt and wheel them up a plank onto a truck as that was the displacement from the coffin and concrete box. One night the phone rang at the house. My dad yelled at me to tell me I had buried the body in the wrong place. He may have had a few expletives in there. The next morning, I spent the day digging a new hole, moving the box to the new grave, and then filling in both graves while the family watched. I tried blaming the priest but this was a losing battle. Lessons like this taught us accountability. Own it. Do what you say you are going to do and clean up your own messes.
• Dump Truck Story - When I was 14  I was helping to demolish the interiors of an old convent and we were throwing all the old cinder blocks into a dump truck. My grandfather didn’t have anyone available to go dump the truck so he showed me the different lever and buttons; the clutch, the PTO, and gears, and told me where to go dump the truck. I knew a little about how to drive standard but had never driven a dump truck so he told me to leave it in first gear. I drove down the Main Street of the town with a long line of traffic behind me as I was going about 5 miles per hour. I got to the dump site, got the truck in position, enacted the PTO let my foot off the clutch, and got the dump body to start raising. I remember being so proud of myself. Like I had made it as a man. All of a sudden the truck jerked up violently and before I knew what happened the truck cab was in the air and the truck was upright vertically. I had forgotten to open the tailgate so the load had shifted and flipped the truck. There were no cell phones so I walked about a mile back to the site very embarrassed to call my grandfather. Construction has no shortage of occasions to be humbled as there are so many changing dynamics at hand all the time. But at the same time, being thrown into situations like this gave me this incredible tolerance for risk.  It was embarrassing but you could overcome that embarrassment.
• 1997 - Anthony became the CEO. $3m business at that time. Anthony pushed for bigger work. 25 people at the company then. 2024 - $3.4B 2,400 employees.
  • What happened? One big thing is a concept/book called Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard. Construction at the time was low bid, hard knuckles, people flipping the table, throw staplers. It wasn’t friendly. It started to get more professional over time. “Raving fans makes sense to me. Apply how you treat people in hospitality to construction. We work hard on client service skills. Being really professional. There is so much repeat business. That was harder than I expected it to be. Clients were rewarding us work over and over again. We were nice people to deal with. Raving fans stayed with us. We’ve done a lot of jobs at Harvard or hospital systems. We’ve earned that reputation. I came into the business during a bad recession. That bruised me. I had to tell people I couldn’t pay them. I worried about where money would come from.”
• The significance of their logo? The arch… The Arch is our logo and helps support these values. The arch is from the oldest surviving picture of our great grandfather who was a simple, hardworking, stone mason building this big stone arch. The arch denotes teamwork as you can’t do it alone. It symbolizes forward progress, quality, and craft. All stuff we want to be associated with.
• Take Big Chances – We got through the first recession knowing we needed to be larger to be able to withstand the ups and downs of the economic cycle. We started taking some chances on some larger jobs with more demanding clients which was extremely stressful as we had no idea what we were doing. It was new territory.  This is where all the humbling experiences as a kid like digging graves helped as it gave me the courage to take some risks.  Failure isn’t final and you can push through mistakes. 
• Football at Harvard - Learned more on the football field than in any classroom. Discipline to a process. All the players at Harvard are there for the love of the game.
  • I was admitted to Harvard with OK grades, but I could snap a football and block.  I was surprised at the time Harvard accepted me.  Looking back on it now, I should have been shocked as I was a meathead.   At the same time, I think my blue-collar work history in a small family business, my being an Eagle Scout, and generally smart kid all helped. Harvard changed me in good ways despite my best efforts not to let Harvard change me in bad ways.  I had this perception of blue-blood kids walking around with ascots and monocles or hippies protesting every earthly transgression on the planet.  But that is not what I found.  I made the best friends of my life; incredible diversity with kids from every socio-economic strata you could think of.  Our team had a kid who was in an LA street gang and a kid who worked summers second shift in a limestone mill outside of Pittsburgh yet at the same time had a kid who was fifth generation Harvard who was just a nice guy.  Really smart but normal kids.  As much as I didn’t want to change, I needed to change; be more open-minded, more curious, have better dressing and grooming habits, and manners. It meant being able to engage in meaningful conversation on heady topics; not Hulk Hogan and the WWF or how tough Chuck Norris was.  I would always say that I didn’t learn much in the classroom at Harvard but that’s not fair.  Liberal arts education is a bit under fire right now but it has served me well.  I learned more through exposure to different people, other students smarter than me who were in random conversations and late-night debates. I learned more on the football field as I learned more about resilience, how to lose, and how to prepare.  The liberal arts education gave me an appreciation for continued curiosity, learning, and study which may be a more important skill than any in a fast-changing world.  It was the well-roundedness I needed.
• Leadership in Construction - Leadership means different things to different people. It can be easy in some settings. In football, all the players wanted to play. For a job site in South Boston, you walk onto a job site, you have 300-400 that don’t want to be there, some don’t speak English, then we get a union group, or an architect has other ideas, then traffic, weather, and things you can’t control. It’s hard for a leader to keep everybody working in the same direction. That’s a huge leadership task. I was thinking about that. A construction superintendent at 6 am is thinking about all of this stuff.  What makes someone good at that job? Sense of urgency, align and motivate hundreds of people, great planners, organized. Had a former Marine Vietnam Seargent who was great. A gym teacher who’s awesome, he’s in NYC with a job several city blocks. High sense of urgency, detail-oriented, motivates and aligns people. We do personality testing, and we’ve got a lot of people who are lower A and just as successful as higher A personalities. Such team players. Can put a team together. We like people who have played sports.
• Hiking – About 12 years ago, Anthony, his brother, son, and a few guys went out to hike a 10,000-footer in Colorado.  They met their guide who was this little, old dude who looked like he smoked pot fairly regularly.  As they looked to get started, Anthony asked him for the trail map and he said he didn’t have one.  “How do you know how to get to the top?" He pointed to the top of the mountain and said “It's right up there, we just need to keep going up." But when they were at the top, Anthony realized it was just an analogy for their business. We just needed to keep taking one more step up.
• ESOP - Consigli implemented an ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan) to make the company entirely employee-owned, fostering a culture of accountability, shared responsibility, and pride among their teammates, where employees directly benefit from the company's success and feel a stronger sense of ownership in decision-making; essentially, it aimed to create a more engaged and motivated employee base by giving them a stake in the company's performance.

Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes

Notes:

• Serendipity isn’t found. It’s made. Make your own luck. The best leaders create serendipity for their teams. A success mindset precedes success.
  • From Jenny - In 2011, I was single and living in New York City. I spotted an attractive guy across the train from me. I wanted to talk to him, but I was too nervous. Then he got off the train. She met her future husband by chasing after him off a train in NYC. "I was letting life pass me by." She used some wild courage to approach him.
•  What sits between you and the thing you want is fear. Who are your dynamic dozen? The 12 people you need to meet.
• Monday mini-festo. In 15 minutes, write the 2 things you did last week that you're proud of. Write 2 things you're excited about for this upcoming week.
• Focus on doing the work that helps the company be better. Solve problems. Read the VP email. Know your stuff.
• Get to know your boss's boss. Do it the right way by talking with your boss.
• Jenny's career at Google - First 11 years in sales, Go To Market, Operations. Own your Career project. She got 2,000 people to come to her first training. Used all resources within the company to do it.
• Use "for example." Don't speak in generalities.
•  Role, Objective, Impact - ROI
• At work, say no to the small. Don’t reply all to the Happy Birthday emails. Don’t do the NAP work. NAP stands for “Not Actually Promotable” Work. Sign up for the projects that help make your company better.
• Carlye Kosiak is one of their best hires at Google. She had the courage to stand out. She was specific. Her resume indicated interest in “recipe tasting in pursuit of the perfect oatmeal raisin cookie." Personality popped off the page. She was weird, reckless, nosy, obsessed, brutal. Must be yourself. Don’t just be weird to play a role.
• Goal Setting framework - Rock, Chalk, Talk, Walk.
• Jenny's goal is to sell 15,000 books by the end of week 1 and hit the NY Times best seller list.
•  If you sell 12,000 copies in week 1, how will you feel? "You ask such great questions."
• Don't play it cool.  Play it hot. Don't decide to fit in. Stand out.
• Watermark your work. Put your name and picture on the deck. Let people know you made it.
• Lady Gaga – A group of students at NYU created a Facebook group called “Stefani Germanotta, you will never be famous." Have the courage to stand behind your work. Lady Gaga wanted to be a big star.
• Life and Career Advice - Performance reviews - Focus 75% of your time on your strengths. Say yes to 75% of the things asked of you. Start sentences with "YOU" instead of "I" - Focus on them. Build influence thru empathy.

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

The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk

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

Rob Kimbel is an owner of Kimbel Mechanical Systems, located in Fayetteville, AR. He joined KMS in 1993, and in 2001, at the age of 26, he became the CEO and grew what was then 3 local plumbers making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year into a national company with more than 750 employees and earning hundreds of millions in revenue per year. Rob is also a partner in multiple start-ups, real estate projects, and real estate funds that specialize in affordable housing across the United States. Rob is also a mentor and advisor to several local businesses and entrepreneurs in NW Arkansas. He has also served on the boards of Generations Bank, NWA Home Builders Association, and Beyond the Game, a non-profit organization serving the impoverished of the Dominican Republic.

Notes:

• Betty Joe Drive… Lived in the hood. $200/month. Rob regularly takes his children to see where they lived. "I want to remind the kids where we came from."
• They started as a 3-person plumbing company. Rob was working for his dad, making $12-$14 an hour.
  • Now, they do $260m in revenue and have 750 full-time employees.
• When Rob was 25 years old, his dad asked him to be the CEO. He initially said no.
• Strategic risk-taking as a cornerstone of growth: Rob navigates the industry challenge of balancing new work with workforce capacity by making bold hiring decisions—demonstrating a greater risk appetite than his father. "We are always hiring" reflects their proactive approach to scaling.
• Kimbel is good at growing people. They fail, and stick with them to grow. “Profits are the applause for growing our people.”
• How to be good? Show up, work hard, and finish the job. The bar is so low.
• The No Child Left Behind Act wasn’t great for the trades industry. They made it seem that every person needed to go to college. When every person shouldn’t do that. Some should go into the trades. There are high school grads who make $100K/year by their mid-20s at Kimbel.
• The Kimbel Purpose: Create opportunities to improve lives.
• Values - TEAM, Humility, Hunger, Grit, Integrity.
  • TEAM- We willingly sacrifice for the good of the team. Row together.
  • Humility - We never consider ourselves above anyone or anything. Take the back seat.
  • Hunger - We choose to continually raise the bar. Never complacent.
  • Integrity - We do the right thing, in all places, at all times. The how matters.
  • Grit - We persevere, no matter the situation. Remember the why.
• Thank you notes – Each executive member writes at least one thank you note per week. This works as a forcing function for them to look for people doing great work and living by their values.
• Touch points - Senior leaders (30 people) reach out to 2 people per week to check on them. That’s 3,000 touches per year.
• Free from all, servant to all. Tattoos on Rob's forearms. I have made myself a servant. Free from work, I don’t care what society thinks. But I have a responsibility to be a steward. To be a servant to all.
• Rob works out like a psycho. Super hard. Why?
  • Start with the end in mind. I want to hold Cheri on my shoulders when I'm 65.
  • I want to ski with my kids when I'm 80.
  • I like to compete. I want to win Spartan races. I like doing hard things.
  • It also creates clarity in my mind throughout the day. Karomy messages me that she knows I'm running the stairs when she gets emails from me with lots of ideas.
• Marriage insights: "It must be intentional. We have fun together. We are genuine friends. We still have to work through stuff."
• Parenting philosophy shaped by observing other wealthy families: "It's critical that kids do hard work. They shouldn't start in an office. They should be out with the chickens. Be in the mess. Start at the bottom. Start in the ditch."
• Family-business boundary maintenance: "We get together every other weekend for family game night. We try not to have much business talk."
• Sold 70% of the business last July. What was the feeling the moment the money was wired? It was surreal. Want to honor Dad with 25 years of GRIT.
• Excellence defined: "It's continual learning. Wanting to get better. Think, what can I do better?"
• Creating a truth-telling culture: "Have to be willing to hear it and create a space where the truth is spoken."
• Life and career wisdom: "A career is not linear just like a marriage isn't. Have patience and live in the suck. Don't quit. There will be seasons of suck. Keep going."

Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes

The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk

Notes:

• “I sensed something was terribly wrong when I dialed into the conference line at 8:00 a.m. and heard an unfamiliar voice. “Hi, Mel ody, I’m Janine. I’m with an external HR firm. Unfortunately, this call is to let you know that your employment has been terminated, effective immediately.”
• Managing up is not kissing up. Managing up is strategically navigating relationships with those who have more positional power than you, namely your boss. It’s a critical skill set for maneuvering through the complex web of power dynamics, conversations, and unspoken expectations that shape our daily work lives.
• The triple win – What is something you can do that is good for you, good for your boss, and good for the company? Focus on those issues and solving those problems, and good things will happen for you as you grow your career. Like Carly Fiorina. Run towards the fire. Solving those tough problems will help you, your boss, and your company
• Meeting with a CEO. Connect what you did with what matters. Adapt your communication to that.
• Have upward empathy. Put yourself in their shoes. What matters to them? Prior to the meeting, meet with their Chief of Staff. Anticipate objections and answer them before they are asked.
• Create a one-pager for your boss when they are doing your performance review. Highlight your wins. Remind them. Make it easy on them.
  • Do what Lee Rivas told me to do. Every week, send an email with bullet points for all the things you did to help your boss and the company.
  • For the one pagers - be proactive, start with wins, results and outcomes. it's not self-promoting; it's informing. Identify 1-3 key areas where you need their support. Help them become a trusted advisor or partner.
• Design your 1:1. Send them the topics to talk about so you can drive those discussions. Make their life easier. They have enough other things to worry about.
• Feedback can only happen after alignment, styles, ownership, boundaries... They go in order.
• Define your A B Cs
  • Assumptions, Behaviors, Change you want to see
• The advancement conversation - Be open, and share what you want to do and how you can get there. My Dustyn Kim example and how I messed it up.
• The Money conversation - You don't get a raise just because time has passed. It has to be tied to results. Don't talk about the past and what you've done. Talk about what you can do to earn the company more. Don't do the "I deserve this" thing. Bosses hate that.
• Managing up is not kissing up. Managing up is strategically navigating relationships with those who have more positional power than you, namely your boss. It’s a critical skill set for maneuvering through the complex web of power dynamics, conversations, and unspoken expectations that shape our daily work lives.
• Everything changes when you understand the art and science of influencing others while keeping your own emotions and insecurities in check.
•  “Managing up isn’t really about making your boss’s life easier. It’s about taking control of your own work experience.”
• 10 Key Conversations:
  • The Alignment Conversation How can I get in my boss’s head to understand their needs, motivations, and goals?
  • The Styles Conversation Will I earn more respect from my manager if I get to the point quickly, or should I try swapping stories and building rapport? 
  • The Ownership Conversation How can I solve the problems that make my job frustrating? How can I seize opportunities without stepping on toes?
  • The Boundaries Conversation How do I say no and push back with tact when my manager saddles me with yet another task?
  • The Feedback Conversation How can I respectfully and effectively give my manager feedback in order to improve processes and communication?
  • The Networking Conversation How can I build other allies in the workplace? How can I turn day-to-day interactions into opportunities that open doors?
  • The Visibility Conversation How can I effectively advocate for myself and show off my strengths?
  • The Advancement Conversation What do I need to do to get to the next level? 
  • The Money Conversation When is the right time to negotiate salary? How can I make sure I am getting the compensation I deserve? 

Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes

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

www.InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader

Chris Beresford-Hill is the Worldwide Chief Creative Officer at BBDO. Previously he spent 2 years as North America President and CCO of Ogilvy, where he helped bring the agency and its clients a new level of relevance. He brought Workday to the Super Bowl, led the team that brought in the Verizon account, and one of the biggest Super Bowl campaigns ever, “Can't B Broken,” featuring Beyonce, and created the most celebrated Super Bowl campaign of 2024, the social & influencer lead "Michael CeraVe," for CeraVe. Chris and his teams have won every award for creativity and effectiveness many times over. He has been included in ADWEEK Best Creatives, the ADWEEK 100, and Business Insider’s Most Creative People in Advertising.

Notes:

• Cold Emails: Be specific in your praise and specific in your ask. The lame "Can I pick your brain" type emails get deleted and ignored because they aren't specific.
• You never need permission to take responsibility. Chris learned this from Ed Catmull’s book Creativity Inc.… And he’s embodied this his entire career. The people who build huge careers take ownership of their own and regularly solve problems and improve their clients' and colleagues' lives. Chris has done this since his early days as an intern.
  • At any level taking on responsibility yourself, unasked, makes you stand out.
• Competence combined with insane follow-through. For some clients, it takes 50 ideas to get to the one that will work. Creating a culture where the team can share all of their bad ideas safely to get to the one great one.
• The creative process:
  • Brain dump everything. Purge your brain of everything it has.
  • When you think you're done, you're not. There's more. You have to get it all out.
• "A lot of creative people aren't fully aware of the process or the structure, they just feel it (Rick Rubin).
• "When you can see it lift off the page, you feel a sense of mastery over it."
• Chris's first Super Bowl commercial -- Emerald Nuts. He won it because he was both funny and added the fact that the product provided energy. Most people only covered one part, Chris did both.
• Push your edges - Chris is like Lionel Messi. He's always walking around in the office, asking questions, looking for ideas, being curious. Then he sees an opportunity and goes for it 100%.
• Chris has a standing reservation every week at the same restaurant where he meets with a mentor, mentee, or peer to deepen the important relationships in his life. That would be a good idea for us all to do.
• Chris was pen-pals with Dave Matthews for 8 years. 
  • Chris saw that they recorded at Bearsville studios and wrote a letter to Dave there. He also said, "Show up with gifts." He gave Dave a Beatles Bootlegged album.
• A leader takes what comes and then turns it into an opportunity.
• The formula is Competence + Insane Follow-Through.
• How to build relationships: Meet with people in person. Get drunk with them. Do hard work with them. Go through something bad with them. Laugh with them.
• I got hired from my internship by cold calling Mark Cuban to get him to approve of using his name in an ad.
• The best ideas are often bad in their first moments, or massively wrong, and then someone flips it or unlocks it. You have to stay on things and play around.
• I made my first ad by going through a garbage can to learn how to write a script and sending a bunch of Budweiser scripts to my boss.
• The art of finding an idea on the edge of possible, and the value of going over your skis when on the cusp of greatness - having a stomach for it. I’ve told a lie to keep things moving on every great campaign I was part of.
• I learned the best lesson in leadership when we lost our biggest account (Accenture).  I put Danny Meyer's mentality into practice, and we took that moment to put the business and clients second and play for each other. Culture carried us.
• Culture is built by the stories we tell and the behaviors we highlight.

Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes

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

www.InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader

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

Notes:

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

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

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

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

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

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

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

Notes:

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

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

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

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

Notes:

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