The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

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1. 713: Ken Chenault - Leadership Lessons from 17 Years as American Express CEO: How to Earn the Top Job, Hire Great Leaders, Build Culture, Challenge the Status Quo, and Lead with Character

   2 november 2026 · 53 min

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   New Book - The Price of Becoming

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   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: Ken Chenault was chairman and CEO of American Express for 17 years, and Warren Buffett called him "the gold standard for corporate leadership." Today he's chairman of General Catalyst. His new memoir is Equal to the Task.

   Key Learnings

   "The only thing that you can control is your performance, so focus on your performance." His father's answer whenever Ken complained about a barrier. Ken says what makes it empowering rather than harsh is that it's both accountability and control at the same time.

   "Ken, never forget that you are equal to the task." First day of kindergarten, Ken froze, started crying, and ran out of the room to hide under a bench. His father found him, pulled him out, sat him on his lap, put a hand on his shoulder, and said it. At five, Ken had no idea what the words meant. They became a measuring stick anyway.

   What his father actually meant took decades to understand. Equal to the task is a challenge, not a reassurance. You still have to work for it.

   "If you wish to be a king, you need to have followers. A king looks after his people." Ken's teacher in grade school, Mrs. Lacraw, called him down and told him that isn't what kings do. It wasn't enough to protect the hill. He had to protect people.

   That became his North Star: judge a leader on the quality of their followership. Ken is emphatic that he's all about outcomes and driving results. The question is how those results were ach…

2. 712: Matt Abrahams - How to Become a Better Communicator: Speaking With Confidence, Structuring Your Message, and Thinking Fast on Your Feet

   26 oktober 2026 · 55 min

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   New Book - The Price of Becoming

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   My Guest - Matt Abrahams is one of the world's foremost experts on communication. He's a lecturer in strategic communication at Stanford's Graduate School of Business and bestselling author of Think Faster, Talk Smarter. His focus is the hardest kind of communication: not the rehearsed speech, but knowing what to say when you're put on the spot: in the interview, the Q&A, the hallway, the toast.

   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.

   What you'll learn in this episode:

   Matt's father was quiet but not shy. A lawyer, skipped a couple of grades so he was always younger than his colleagues, a man of few words and very detailed ones. Matt says what he most wants to live up to isn't the intelligence, it's that his father believed in being truthful and trustworthy.

   His parents asked two different questions about communication, and he's still answering both. His mother taught elementary school and wanted to know how you make it engaging and how you hold attention. His father wanted to know how you organize it and make it structured and understandable. They debated it constantly at home. Attention and structure are still the two halves of everything Matt teaches.

   When You're Interviewing Someone

   The best interview question he was ever asked: "If you were an onion and I peeled back the first several layers, what would I find?" It was the CEO's opening line, before anything else. Matt's answer: "Onions make me cry." He got the job. When he asked about the question months later, the CEO said he uses it to knock people slightly off center, and what he remembered was that Matt committed to an answer …

3. 711: Seth Godin - Creating Tension, Solving Problems, the Savannah Bananas, Leading Without Authority, Using AI, Hidden Entanglements, and Getting Unstuck (The Knot)

   19 oktober 2026 · 47 min

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   My new book, The Price of Becoming, is a USA Today, LA Times, Success Magazine, and Publishers Weekly Best-Seller! I think you'll find it useful.

   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: Seth Godin is the author of more than 20 bestselling books, including Purple Cow, The Dip, and This Is Marketing. He has written a blog post every day for more than two decades, and it remains one of the most widely read blogs in the world. Before the books, Seth founded Yoyodyne, one of the first internet marketing companies, and sold it to Yahoo in 1998. He later created the altMBA. His new book is The Knot: Problems Can Be Solved.

   Key Learnings

   Being early is a courtesy, not a personality trait. "I don't understand why someone would willfully waste somebody else's time."

   The knot is the point. You can't have a pretzel without the knot, and if you try to undo it you end up with crumbs. Real life isn't like that. Our knots can actually be untied.

   Teach so that people teach themselves. Seth builds everything around a metaphor that gives people scaffolding, because "the only kind of learning that really happens is autodidact self-learning." Give someone the structure to figure it out and they'll never forget it.

   Name the baggage, drop the baggage, ship the work.

   The easiest thing to do with our freedom is pretend it doesn't exist. A man with nine million dollars in the bank told Seth he has to keep doing the work he's known for, because he needs to make a living. No, you don't. Same with the student three years into a four-year degree he hates who says he has to finish. You can choose to f…

4. 710: Ravi Gupta - The Anti-Dabbler's Guide to Mastering One New Skill Every Year, Why Presence Isn't Enough, Bourdain's Masterclass in Humility, and Pairing Reasonable Goals With Delusional Ones

   12 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 3 min

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   New Book - The Price of Becoming www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming

   Connect with me on socials

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   Join 10's of thousands of leaders, subscribe to Mindful Monday

   My guest:

   Ravi Gupta is the founder of RePublic Schools, whose flagship Nashville schools became the first in Tennessee to rank in the top 5% statewide for both growth and achievement. He co-founded Arena, which trained more than 7,000 political staffers, worked on the first Obama campaign, and wrote speeches for UN Ambassador Susan Rice. Today he runs The Branch, a media company fighting polarization. His new book is The Invisible List: One Passion a Year, Every Year.

   Key Learnings

   One new passion a year, every year. When Ravi left his job running schools, he decided to treat every year like a school year with himself as the only student. He's done it for seven years. Surfing, tennis, screenwriting, a novel, Italian cooking.

   Be an anti-dabbler. The seductive version is a little boxing, a little salsa dancing, a little cooking. You get fifteen years of sampling and none of the skill. Pick the thing, commit to the year, see it through even if you come to regret the pick.

   The rule that makes it work: no new thing midyear. You can maintain old passions. You cannot start a new one.

   He broke his own rule and learned why it exists. Bored one day and avoiding his cooking, Ravi walked into a Muay Thai gym on his corner. He loved the class, walked out, and told himself it was off the table until January 1. The pull wasn't interest. It was the rush of early wins, and that rush is the most convincing form of procrastination there is.

   Trying something and quitting can be worse than never trying. Once you've tasted it, you start seeing it everywhere, and you replay the version of your life where you stuck with it.

   Pair a reasonable goal with a delusional one. Ravi almost always hits the reasonable one. …

5. 709: Vanessa Van Edwards - How to Connect with Anyone, Master Small Talk, and Ask the 9 Power Questions That Deepen Every Relationship

   5 oktober 2026 · 53 min

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   New Book: The Price of Becoming www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming

   Connect with me on X: @RyanHawk12

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   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: Vanessa Van Edwards is a behavioral researcher, Harvard instructor, and founder of Science of People. Her books Captivate and Cues have been translated into 18 languages, and her work reached more than 300 million people last year. Her new book is Conversation: How to Connect with Anyone and Make Every Interaction Count.

   Key Learnings

   Small talk is required for big talk. You can't skip it. You can do it better. Conversation is a skill with micro skills underneath it, and small talk is one chapter.

   Two traps make small talk painful. Autopilot (asking questions without actually connecting) and going for facts instead of stories.

   Awe is the best small talk ingredient. "Wow, that's amazing," or "What is that?" Positive awe is wow. Negative awe is compassion: "Everything okay? Can I help?" Both solicit stories. Both work only if you mean it.

   Awe beats a compliment. A compliment lands. Being visibly wowed by something invites the story behind it.

   Be story ready. When someone asks how you are, don't hand back good, fine, busy. Have something loaded: "Today the craziest thing happened." You break the script with your answer before anyone has to break it with a question.

   Flip your questions into story hunters. Not "how are you" but "What's been good?" or "Tell me something good." Slight change, big shift toward optimism.

   Or check in on something specific from before. "I noticed you dedicated the book to your daughters. How old are they now?" The update question does t…

6. 708: Danny Meyer - How You Make People Feel: The Founder of Shake Shack & Union Square Hospitality Group on Culture as Soil, the 49/51 Hiring Formula, and Leading With Generosity

   28 september 2026 · 54 min

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   My new book, The Price of Becoming, is a USA Today, LA Times, Success Magazine, and Publishers Weekly bestseller! I think you'll find it useful.

   Connect with me on Twitter/X: @RyanHawk12

   Instagram: @RyanHawk12

   Sign up for Mindful Monday (it's free):

   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: Danny Meyer is the founder of Union Square Hospitality Group and one of the most influential restaurateurs of his generation. He built New York landmarks like Union Square Cafe and Gramercy Tavern, and Shake Shack... He's the author of the classic Setting the Table and the new What Could Possibly Go Right?

   Key Learnings

   "Business, like life, is all about how you make people feel. It's that simple and it's that hard."

   "Optimists and pessimists die the same way. They just live differently." Shimon Peres. Danny prefers to live as an optimist.

   Most people respond to hope. A few will come out of a dark closet hopping on a pogo stick and a few will walk on the shady side no matter what. Most people start the day intending to make it better than yesterday, and they'll follow someone who shows them how that could happen.

   A growing business needs funding and leadership. It also needs soil. Like a plant needs sun and water and still needs something to grow in. The soil is the culture, and it determines whether anything you plant actually grows.

   Be explicit about which behaviors you celebrate and which you won't tolerate. Then be relentlessly consistent about both. That's how culture survives you not being in the room.

   Everyone is watching who gets hired, promoted, and paid. Every time you compromise on either the skills or the character, you send a message that you didn't mean any of the words. P…

7. 707: Andy Stanley & Sam Kaufman - Problems to Solve, Tensions to Manage, The 3 Questions Behind Every Great Decision, and The 7 Essentials of Enduring Leadership (What Great Leaders Do)

   21 september 2026 · 57 min

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   New Book: The Price of Becoming

   www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming

   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 guests:

   Andy Stanley is the founder of North Point Ministries, which he started in Atlanta in 1995 and has grown into 8 churches across metro Atlanta and a network of more than 225 churches globally, serving over 200,000 people weekly. He's the author of more than 20 books, including Next Generation Leader, Visioneering, and Deep & Wide. His newest is What Great Leaders Do: 7 Essentials for Enduring Impact. He and his wife Sandra have three grown children and live in Atlanta.

   Sam Kaufman is the Chief Revenue Officer of Insight Global, a $5.3B talent, technical, and AI services firm. He started as an entry-level recruiter in 2004 and rose through the ranks to lead the company's core sales divisions. He's played a central role in Insight Global's transformation into a global talent and technical services organization, helping the company double in size over the past five years, and in 2026, he was named to Staffing Industry Analysts' Staffing 100 North America list, recognizing the most influential leaders in staffing. He has a degree in electrical engineering from Bucknell.

   Key Learnings

   Somebody saw it in him before he saw it in himself. Andy and Louie Giglio were the troublemakers in his dad's youth group. One morning after they'd disrupted everything, Mother Mary sat them down and told them they were leaders and needed to lead. Andy's reaction at the time: then I don't want to be a leader.

   She should have kicked them out, but she didn't. She kept giving them chances they didn't deserve and didn't handle well. She's about to turn 101 years old. She never had children of her own…

8. 706: Daniel Lubetzky - KIND Snacks Founder & Shark Tank Investor on Kindness, Grit, Values-Driven Leadership. and Building a Billion-Dollar Brand

   14 september 2026 · 56 min

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   The Price of Becoming is a USA Today, LA Times, and Publishers Weekly National Best-Seller!

   www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming

   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: Daniel Lubetzky graduated from Stanford Law School. And then declined lucrative job offers to start his own business, only paying himself $24,000 a year for a decade. And then he founded KIND and grew it into a snack brand that Mars later valued at $5 billion dollars. Today he invests full-time on Shark Tank, and he's the son of a Holocaust survivor whose story shaped everything he's built.

   Find work that gives you energy, purpose, and meaning. If you enjoy what you're doing, you're far more likely to be great at it. And you're already winning, because you get up every morning doing something satisfying.

   The danger of loving your work is overworking. Daniel did it building PeaceWorks and KIND. You have to pace yourself.

   His father survived a death march out of Dachau. Twelve and a half when he entered the camp, fifteen and a half during the march. Six feet tall and under 70 pounds, and no shoes. The Nazis were walking prisoners up a mountain to push them off a cliff because they didn't have enough bullets.

   A snowstorm saved his life. His father, grandfather, and uncle hugged to say goodbye. The snow buried them and formed a kind of igloo that kept them warm through the night. They woke, dug out, and the Nazis were gone.

   The soldiers who liberated them were Japanese American. The 442nd, the most decorated unit of its size in American history, was made up of men whose own families were being held in internment camps back home. Daniel's family had never seen an Asian person and didn't understand what they were witnes…

9. 705: Dr. Martin Seligman - Positive Psychology, Learned Optimism, Grit, PERMA, Agency, Resilience, and Predicting the Future

   11 september 2026 · 54 min

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   My new book, The Price of Becoming, is a USA Today, LA Times, Success Magazine, and Publishers Weekly bestseller! I think you'll find it useful.

   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: Dr. Martin Seligman is one of the most influential psychologists alive. He's the founder of positive psychology and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where he directs the Positive Psychology Center. His research reshaped how we understand optimism, resilience, and human flourishing. His books, including Learned Optimism, Flourish, and The Hope Circuit, have sold millions of copies. His latest is Agency: The Psychological History of Human Progress.

   Key Learnings

   The three parts of agency. Efficacy is the belief you can hit a goal right now, and it drives whether you try. Optimism is the belief you can hit it in the future, and it drives persistence and grit. Imagination is the range of goals you can even picture, and it drives creativity. When a culture has all three, it progresses. When they fall, it stagnates.

   "Depression and pessimism and happiness and optimism are too important to be left to happy people." Marty calls himself a born depressive and pessimist. He founded positive psychology and still wakes at 4:00 a.m. to a voice telling him he can't do the thing in front of him. What he's built over decades is the skill of arguing back, treating that voice not as truth but as a rival whose job is to make him miserable.

   The techniques don't come naturally to anyone. A small number of people are born happy. Everyone else has to learn and practice the skills, which is why Marty spent much of his career testing them rather than assuming they work.

   How you respond to good news matters…

10. 704: Strauss Zelnick - The Leader Who Greenlit Dirty Dancing, Owns Grand Theft Auto, Loves Being Coached, and Might be the Fittest CEO Alive

    7 september 2026 · 53 min

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    My new book, The Price of Becoming, is a USA Today, LA Times, Success Magazine, and Publishers Weekly bestseller! I think you'll find it useful.

    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.

    Key Learnings

    All the greats have a coach. Strauss is one of the most disciplined humans alive, and he has had one since he was 30. His argument: Tom Brady is an amazing athlete, but would he have performed as well with no coach, or a lousy one?

    A great coach is objective, encouraging, smart, and experienced. They warn you of obstacles you can't see yet.

    Strauss doesn't want the Socratic method from his coach. He wants direct advice. He'll use questions when he's leading others. But when he brings a problem to his own coach, he wants to be told: "You have that wrong; you're missing this."

    So What? Strauss was avoiding a confrontation because he knew the other person would be really upset. His coach said, "So what?" He had the conversation. The person was upset. They got to the other side, and it was better than leaving it out there.

    Bad news doesn't get better with age.

    The most effective people are the most open-minded and self-critical. The ones who insist they don't need a coach are usually the ones losing.

    "Arrogance is the enemy of continued success."

    Humility isn't pretending you're not good. Strauss says claiming he's bumbling through the job would be silly, and he's proud of what he does well. The humility is in staying open. His team's description of him: strongly held opinions, freely shared, and a mind that changes when the facts do.

    "You're just a terrible speaker." Strauss was 31, newly president of Vestron, and had written an eloquent after-dinner speech he was proud of. He read it off …

11. 703: Angela Duckworth - Why Grit Isn't Enough, Situation Over Willpower, How Belief Gets Borrowed, John Wooden's Socks, and How the Right People and Places Bring Out Your Best

    31 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 4 min

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    The Price of Becoming

    www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming

    My guest: Angela Duckworth is a psychologist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and a MacArthur "genius" grant recipient. Her book Grit was a #1 New York Times bestseller, and her TED Talk is among the most-watched ever. Her new book is Situated: Find the People and Places That Bring Out Your Best.

    Key Learnings

    She almost lost her mom in the Atlantic. Angela took her 87-year-old mom snorkeling miles offshore. Her mom had not swum in decades. Within minutes, she had aspirated water into both lungs and was unconscious. Angela treaded water, held her mom's head up with one arm, and waved the other until help came. Her mom is 91 now and painting.

    No amount of grit would have saved them. Angela could not have swum her mother to shore. What saved them was changing the situation, which meant getting other people to their side.

    The situation is the ocean. It's that powerful, and most of us don't know what water we're swimming in.

    Grit isn't wrong. It's incomplete. Angela hasn't renounced anything. She's expanding it. Effort is what you bring. The situation determines whether that effort compounds or gets swallowed.

    Angela was a striver, and it worked for a long time. She knew she wasn't the most talented kid, but nobody was going to outwork her. She wanted to make the cheerleading squad without being able to do a split. She wanted a solo in choir while barely able to carry a tune. She worked her way to both. Most people would be surprised how far sheer effort can take them.

    Then it stopped being enough. To get as far as she actually wanted to go, and to do it sustainably for herself and the people around her, ignoring the situation was a mistake.

    The shift: stop making the best of your situation through effort alone, and make the situation better first.

    "Of all the ways you can change your behavior, willpower is the absolute worst…

12. 702: Blake Mycoskie (Founder of TOMS) - Hitting Every Goal & Still Feeling Worthless... Gratitude, Mantras, and Hiring Like a Champion

    24 augustus 2026 · 55 min

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    The Price of Becoming is a USA Today, LA Times, and Publishers Weekly Best-Seller!

    www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming

    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.

    Blake Mycoskie founded TOMS Shoes in 2006 after a trip to Argentina, where he saw children without shoes and built a company around giving away a pair for every pair sold. TOMS went on to donate more than 100 million pairs of shoes and became one of the most copied business models in the world. What most people don't know is what happened after he sold it, and I'm grateful that he was open to talking about that on this episode of The Learning Leader Show.

    Key Learnings

    Make your gratitude specific. Not "I'm grateful for my family." Name the exact thing. Blake's example from that morning: the photos the camp posted of his daughter laughing in the lake, and knowing his stoic kid does not smile like that unless she is genuinely happy.

    He kept the practice going for five years when he couldn't feel any of it. Blake could not name five things he was grateful for, and he had all the same things in his life he has now. He did it anyway. He credits it as one of the things that kept him going.

    Surfing is a great thinking practice. Surfing is mostly just sitting on the board. Three hours in the water, ten waves, maybe five minutes standing. The rest is paddling and sitting. That's why it works as a thinking practice.

    Capture the idea in the moment or lose it. Blake programmed the side button on his Apple Watch to open a voice memo. Every idea he has sitting on the board, he records. They're all waiting when he gets out.

    He hit every marker and still felt worthless. "I did everything, and I still, deep down in my soul, had this feeling like …

13. 701: Mark Pincus (Founder of Zynga) - Why We All Need a Coach, Maintaining High Standards, The Book of Life, Aggressive Ambition, and Why Your Instincts Are Almost Always Right

    17 augustus 2026 · 53 min

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    The Price of Becoming is a USA Today, LA Times, and Publishers Weekly Bestseller!

    www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming

    My guest - Mark Pincus is the founder of Zynga, the social gaming company he built from zero to $12.7 billion, pioneering a category that generated over a billion app installs and introduced hundreds of millions of people to online play. He's a serial founder who has started ten companies, taught product development at Stanford, and made early seed investments in Facebook and Twitter. His new book is Life at the Speed of Play.

    Key Learnings

    Coaches are cheat codes. Mark has hired a surfing coach, a tennis coach, a chess coach, a life coach, and the legendary Bill Campbell. None of them were assigned to him. He went and found them.

    "You throw to where you swing. You don't swing to where you throw." His tennis coach, Jorge, on learning how to serve. Commit to the natural swing first. You'll miss. You'll look stupid. Eventually your brain realizes you're serious and puts the ball where it belongs.

    You play to get better. You don't play to win. Not this point. Not this match. What am I doing right now that makes me better in the next game?

    Kill the ego so it gets out of the way of you being humble and curious.

    Don't contort the organization around one talented jerk. Colleen McCreary, Zynga's chief people officer, kept a sign on her wall: "No jerks allowed." She once vetoed an acquisition because she believed the founder was toxic. When the organization sees you refuse to bend just to win one point, they build muscle and confidence too.

    You'll have periods out of alignment. That's okay. Sometimes the person is in a crucial seat and you can't swap them tomorrow. What matters is that you're aligned with the philosophy.

    Bill Campbell's two lessons: intellectual honesty and courage. Be committed to the deep truths above everything else, and say them to your team even when it hurts. Then h…

14. 700: Keith Hawk & AJ Hawk - Conscious Competence, Delusional Confidence, Stacking Days, After-Action Reviews, Taking Big Risks, The Power of Compounding, and Modeling High-Standards

    10 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 30 min

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    www.LearningLeader.com

    The Price of Becoming is a USA Today, LA Times, and Publishers Weekly Bestseller!

    www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming

    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 Guests:

    My dad, Keith Hawk (also known as Pistol), spent decades leading sales teams at LexisNexis and has taught leadership and public speaking to audiences all over the country. He's the author of multiple books including Get Real Selling. Pistol has that rare ability to be both universally liked and 100% respected by all who know him.

    My brother AJ Hawk was an All-American linebacker at Ohio State, where he won a national championship. He played 11 years in the NFL, won a Super Bowl with the Green Bay Packers, and retired as the franchise's all-time leading tackler. Now you'll see him every weekday on ESPN as a co-host of the Pat McAfee Show

    Notes:

    Key Learnings

    Be a consciously competent leader. Pistol's framework: you have to understand the processes of the work you're asking people to do, not just the end result. First-line leaders have to know the work at a great level of detail.

    One tactical way to get there: do after-action reviews on both wins and losses. Know why you win. Know why you lose. Describe both in detail. That's how you earn vivid clarity.

    Give people vivid clarity. Don't tell your team to "go get the ball carrier." Tell them precisely how to handle each situation. Great leaders are great because they give vivid clarity to the people they're leading on how to do the thing.

    Stack days. If I can't win by being brilliant, I can win by being able to endure. Just get up and do the thing day after day. Growing up, AJ and I had an unwritten rule: no matter what we did the night before, we were going to the first …

15. 699: Jack Raines - How to Build Your Career, Increase Your Surface Area For Luck, and Find Your Purpose | Why Memories Compound Faster Than Money

    3 augustus 2026 · 49 min

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    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: Jack Raines is a writer and investor. At 24, he quit his corporate finance job at UPS, bought a one-way ticket to Barcelona, and spent the next year traveling through 25 countries while writing a newsletter that grew to hundreds of thousands of readers. He went on to earn an MBA from Columbia, help build Sherwood News at Robinhood, and join the venture capital firm Slow Ventures, where he invests in creators. His first book, Young Money: A Field Guide to Finding Wealth and Purpose in Your Twenties, is out now.

    Key Learnings

    Jack's Grandma Ruth took him to Africa when he was 11. She was in her late 60s. She had the money. She said: "I can spend it on you now or leave it to you when I'm dead. This is better."

    Money has no value until you exchange it for something. We need to decide what we want that to be.

    Every year of your 20s is worth $10 million. (Nikita Bier) You'll never have this window of flexibility again.

    Say yes to interesting experiences in your 20s. Your income is going to climb exponentially anyway. Don't save $500 at the cost of a memory.

    Move to where the action is. Jack moved to New York for business school. Then San Francisco for a job. Then back to New York. High slope of learning. High slope of contact with good people.

    Network amplifies ability. It doesn't create it. A million times zero is still zero. A million times two is two million.

    The only real risk is not doing anything.

    Every opportunity in life comes through a person.

    The best networking tool is doing great work. How did Gracie Abrams open for Taylor Swift on the Eras Tour? She wrote great music. Taylor noticed. Taylor called.

    In your 20s, potential is…

16. 698: Joanna Stern - How to Think for Yourself in the Age of AI, Why Deep Work Still Matters, Making Career Decisions With ChatGPT, and How to Stay Human on Purpose

    27 juli 2026 · 55 min

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    New Book - The Price of Becoming - www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming

    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: Joanna Stern is an Emmy Award-winning technology journalist, chief technology analyst for NBC News, and founder of the independent media company, "New Things." She is best known for her 12-year tenure at The Wall Street Journal, and for authoring the New York Times bestseller I Am Not a Robot.

    Key Learnings

    Joanna dedicated her book to her parents "who taught me to think for myself, and the AIs, robots, and machines that made me wonder if I really was." In an age when AI can do the thinking for us, the most valuable thing we can teach our kids is to think for themselves.

    Walt Mossberg invented tech journalism for humans. His first column: "Computers are too hard to use, and it's not your fault." Without Walt, we don't have a category where technology built for humans is reviewed by humans.

    AI won't replace the radiologist. It'll make them better. Joanna sat with her doctor while AI scanned her mammogram. The AI flagged three suspicious spots. Two the doctor had already dismissed as benign. But one was something the doctor hadn't caught. She marked it for follow-up. Then the doctor pointed to other cases where SHE had caught things the AI missed. It's not a replacement. It's a partnership.

    The same technology that finds cancer is the same technology that can autonomously send missiles. That's the great tension of our time. Every powerful technology has good and bad uses.

    AI colleagues are coming. Joanna has two employees and one AI agent. She predicts that within a year, she'll have full AI employees. Great management books haven't been written yet about how to lead a m…

17. 697: The Price of Becoming - The Compounding Practices of High Performance (My New Book is Now Available!). "Have a Plan. Work the Plan. Plan for the Unexpected."

    20 juli 2026 · 1 uur 14 min

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    The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk

    Buy my new book, The Price of Becoming

    www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming

    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.

    Get The Price of Becoming: The Price of Becoming is available now wherever books are sold.

    "Have a plan, work the plan, plan for the unexpected." From my old Miami football coach, Terry Hoeppner. It was posted in the locker room. He said it every day. I still think about it all the time.

    There is no hack. There is no one thing. At many keynote Q&As, someone asks me for a quick fix. The only answer is the power of compounding. Consistency, dependability, and reliability are the least sexy words of all time. And they're the whole game.

    Take your work seriously. Don't take yourself seriously. The best leaders go hard at the work but laugh at themselves. It's important to be able to laugh with your team.

    Optionality is overrated.

    "I'm trying to beef up my obituary. I'm not going to dabble." - Ed Latimore (Ep. 648)

    Live like a hawk. Hawks have eyesight eight times better than humans. They glide and observe constantly. But once they see what they want, they commit with everything they have. Be a professional noticer. Then commit fully.

    Talk to your people before big decisions. My dad. Miranda. And the wide network of high-caliber people I've built over 700 podcast episodes. Be specific. Off the record. Long conversations. Then trust your gut.

    Take bits and pieces from the best. Then find your own voice. As a brand new sales rep at LexisNexis, Rex Caswell had me interview and sit with the ten best reps in the company. I took a piece from each, mashed it together with my own personality, and eventually found my own voice. I still use that formula today.

    Use social media to…

18. 696: Dr. Zeke Emanuel - The Six Rules for Health & Longevity, The Harvard Study on Happiness, The Truth About Biohacking, Social Connection, and How to Avoid Being a Schmuck

    13 juli 2026 · 55 min

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    New Book - The Price of Becoming - www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming

    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: Ezekiel J. "Zeke" Emanuel, MD, PhD, is a prominent oncologist, bioethicist, and health policy expert. Currently Vice Provost for Global Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania, he was instrumental in shaping the Affordable Care Act and served as the founding chair of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health.

    Key Learnings

    Zeke's dad was called "Speedy." He was a Chicago pediatrician who worked 24-hour call, walked so fast the nurses had to run to keep up, and had a rule: the fourth child in any family was free. He recognized the financial strain on families and just wouldn't charge.

    Zeke's mom was the definition of the anti-helicopter parent. At the playground, she sat on the bench. At the beach, she dropped the boys off with a blanket and a snack. "You go play. Something goes wrong? Okay, that's how it goes." That's how three future powerhouse leaders learned to negotiate, create, and figure it out.

    The Emanuel brothers' group text is full of bragging. Zeke posted his 51.9 VO2 max score at 68 years old, asking, "Do I win in the family?" His kids replied that they don't even read the articles Zeke and Rahm forward anymore. Close doesn't mean uncompetitive.

    A dozen years ago, Zeke wrote his most famous article, "Why I Hope to Die at 75." He still stands by it. The point wasn't that he wants to die. The point is that after 75, he won't take medical treatments meant to prolong life.

    By age 75, 30% of adults have Alzheimer's or cognitive impairment. By 80, it's 40%. Zeke doesn't want to be remembered as a doddering old man who can't recognize …

19. 695: Andy Stumpf - Leadership Lessons From SEAL Team Six, Discipline vs. Motivation, Team Guy vs. Navy SEAL, High Standards, and How To Be Drownproof

    6 juli 2026 · 1 uur 6 min

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    Book - The Price of Becoming -- www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming

    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: Andy Stumpf is a retired Navy SEAL who spent 17 years on active duty, including assignments with one of the most elite special operations units in the U.S. military. He's a New York Times bestselling author. His newest book is Drownproof: Eight Life Lessons to Keep Your Head Above Water.

    Key Learnings

    "What you allow in your presence is your standard." It doesn't matter what your corporate ethos is. It doesn't matter what's tattooed on the wall behind you. If your actions don't align with your speech, it means nothing. Speech is debatable. Actions have impact.

    You can control almost nothing in your life, but you can control the boundaries you set and your willingness to maintain them.

    There's a difference between a SEAL and a team guy. A SEAL is there for the title and the individual journey. A team guy is there for the mission and the team. They wear the same uniform. From the outside, you can't tell them apart. Internally, everyone knows.

    Andy would rather have a group of team guys than a group of SEALs. Your ability to accomplish unbelievable things is 100% aligned with what group of people you bring into your organization.

    You'll get fooled in the interview process. People wear masks. That's just how it works. The reps come after. Set up consistent feedback. Bi-annual after-action reviews on performance and how they're showing up as a person.

    80/20 the interview. Talk 20%. Make them talk 80%. The more they speak, the harder it is to keep the mask on.

    Let people go faster, not slower. It's way easier to solve this problem six months in than six years in, when they've …

20. 694: Clark Lea - LIVE! At The 2026 Learning Leader Growth Summit: The Mission Is Winning, Checking the Cabinets, Leading as an Introvert, Alabama Week, Decoupling Worth From Outcomes, and Building a Championship Culture

    29 juni 2026 · 1 uur 7 min

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    Order my new book, "The Price of Becoming." www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming

    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: Clark Lea is the head football coach at Vanderbilt University. He spent 14 years as an assistant coach, including three as defensive coordinator at Notre Dame, before returning to his alma mater in 2021 to inherit a program that had gone winless the year before. He's now the back-to-back SEC Coach of the Year and the architect of one of the great turnarounds in college football history. We recorded this conversation live at our 2026 Learning Leader Growth Summit in Nashville, surrounded by members of the Learning Leader Circle.

    Key Learnings

    Clark inherited a Vanderbilt program that went winless the year before. He says he probably screwed up 50% of his first year. The game is how quickly you can pivot.

    Losing is a powerful teacher. It cleanses and purifies you in ways you don't want but need. You can blame other people, sink into self-pity, or ask: "What am I meant to be learning right now?"

    Fast-forward 15 years. Look at this moment from a future place of breakthrough. What did you do now that allowed change to occur?

    "What do I wanna be proud of in the attempt?" Letting go of expected outcomes is what allows you to refine and simplify the way you see the world.

    Enter the building unguarded. The clearer you are about who you are and what you want, the more obvious it becomes who fits and who doesn't.

    Different ball, same problems. Clark spends time learning from the Milwaukee Brewers, the Baltimore Ravens, and others. Different industry, same human challenges. Sometimes the different ball is the gift, because you walk in without preconceptions.

    Knowledge i…

21. 693: Tina Seelig - Fortune vs. Luck, The Power of Curiosity, Why Your Words Change Lives, Failure Résumés, Thank You Notes, and Creating Luck Through Relationships, Observation, & Daily Action

    22 juni 2026 · 55 min

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    Order my new book - The Price of Becoming Lees meer

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    The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk

    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 - Tina Seelig has spent 27 years at Stanford teaching some of the world's most ambitious people how to see and seize opportunities. She's a neuroscientist, the executive director of Knight Hennessy Scholars, and the author of 18 books. Her TED Talk on luck has been viewed over 3.4 million times. Her newest book is called What I Wish I Knew About Luck: A Crash Course on Turning Aspirations into Achievements.

    Key Learnings

    Tina's dad died at 99 and a half. Three weeks before his first great-grandbaby was born. He was still driving, going to three dinner parties a week, and talking to Tina every day. His curiosity was his superpower. He gave 66 lectures in his retirement community over 20 years, on topics ranging from nuclear weapons to climate change.

    Train yourself to be a professional noticer. When Tina's dad walked his grandkids into a new room, he'd give them a minute, then say "Shut your eyes." How many doors? Windows? What color is the carpet?

    Assume there's a million dollars in every room. It's up to you to find it. Opportunities are ubiquitous. You just have to look.

    Take the headphones off. The most powerful things happen when you engage with strangers. Standing in line. On the plane. Walking through campus.

    Tina sat next to a stranger named Mark on a plane. He was a publisher. He said no to her book proposal. She kept the relationship going. Years later, his editor approved the same proposal she had given Mark. Within two weeks, she had a contract.

    Wear something that invites conversation. A logo. A backpack from a conference. A college baseball shirt. Give the world a hook to…

22. 692: Scott Harrison - Make a Bigger Ask, Design Everything with Excellence, Raising a Billion Dollars, Nobody Wants to Be Mid, and Why the Best Leaders Are Great Sales Professionals

    15 juni 2026 · 57 min

    Afspelen
    Read my new book, "The Price of Becoming." Lees meer

    www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming

    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: Scott Harrison is the founder and CEO of charity: water, a non-profit that has raised over a billion dollars and funded tens of thousands of water projects to bring safe drinking water to millions. He previously spent a decade as a New York City nightclub promoter before a dramatic career shift led him into humanitarian work.

    Key Learnings

    Scott started a charity: water with $20 from a birthday party. Then $15,000... Twenty years later: over a billion dollars raised, 21 million people served. He says it should be 10 to 100 times more.

    The cure for water already exists. We're looking for water on Mars while 700 million people drink dirty water on Earth. We solved this hundreds of years ago. We just haven't implemented it.

    25% of the money sitting in American donor-advised funds would give every human on Earth clean water. That's parked philanthropic capital. Already tax-benefited. Just waiting.

    The goal is always 10X what you're doing. If we raised a million last year, we want ten this year. If we raise $100 million, we should raise a billion. The opportunity is always orders of magnitude larger than the moment.

    Show, don't bullet. Scott shows 210 photos in a 45-minute keynote. No PowerPoint. Single images. A story unfolds frame by frame.

    Be early to the technology. First charity on Instagram. First to hit a million Twitter followers. First to use VR. The question is always the same: how does this new thing further the mission?

    The 100% model: solve for the cynic. Public donations go to one bank account that funds only water projects. Overhead is raised separately from entrepreneurs and business leaders. Then track every d…

23. 691: Dr. Ron Friedman - The Science of High-Performing Teams, Chevy Chase, Toxic Teammates, The Succession Writers' Room, Deleting Recurring Meetings, Why Side Hustles Are Good, and Why Only 8% of Teams Make the Cut

    8 juni 2026 · 57 min

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    New Book - The Price of Becoming

    www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming

    Ron Friedman is a psychologist and researcher who has spent his career studying what separates great teams from average ones. His research, which has surveyed thousands of professionals across dozens of industries, became the second most-read article in Harvard Business Review history. He is the author of three books, including his latest, Superteams: The Science and Secrets of High-Performing Teams.

    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.

    Key Learnings

    Ron's dad threw himself into impossible challenges and taught his family the dignity of hard work. A physician in Israel, he didn't want his son in the army, so he picked up the phone and started dialing hospitals in New York City until he landed a job at NYU. He pulled his family out of a country he knew, didn't speak the language fluently, and succeeded anyway. Ron dedicated Super Teams to him. He recently passed away.

    Only 8% of teams qualify as super teams. Ron's team polled thousands of workers and asked two questions: How effective is your team at meeting its goals? And how does it compare to others in your industry? Super teams hit the perfect score.

    The only office amenity that statistically drives performance: quiet space for focused work. Not the gym. Not the ping-pong table. Most offices are an attentional war zone. That's why people prefer working from home.

    How a team works matters more than where a team works. Remote, hybrid, in-office. The data shows none of those predict performance. Intention does.

    Don't make meetings the default. Make them the last resort. Super teams are 50% better at avoiding unnecessary meetings and 54% less likely to schedule recur…

24. 690: Austin Kleon - Why Activated Leaders Win, The Analog Desk, Don't Call it Art, Stay Light, Professional Noticers, Lead with Curiosity, and How To Steal Like an Artist

    1 juni 2026 · 1 uur 1 min

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    New Book -- The Price of Becoming

    www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming

    Austin Kleon is the NYT bestselling author of Steal Like an Artist, Show Your Work, and Keep Going. He's a writer who draws, a former librarian, and one of the most original thinkers on creativity working today. His new book is Don't Call It Art: 10 Ways to Create Like a Kid Again.

    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.

    Key Learnings

    Stay light. Bill Murray told ballplayers that if you stay light, loose, and relaxed, you can play at the highest level. Same with acting, writing, anything. Austin keeps a photo of Bill in his studio as a reminder.

    Play is the work. A lot of Austin's best work requires a sense of play. It's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.

    Go to the analog desk first. Austin has a digital desk and an analog desk. Nothing electronic is allowed at the analog desk. He starts there with nothing and sees what comes.

    Most people never give themselves the time, space, and materials to make something of what's swirling inside them.

    People want to watch someone who is activated. "People will pay every night to show up and see somebody believe in themselves." (Kim Gordon, Sonic Youth)

    The market for something to believe in is infinite. (Hugh MacLeod) The world is full of people just doing their thing. They're hungry to see someone on fire for something.

    The writer's job: take what everyone is thinking and put it into words. "You gave me the words" is the highest compliment a reader can give.

    Effortless is earned. People say the Friday newsletter looks easy. Austin's reply: Do it every Friday for 13 years, then call me.

    A place to put things makes you notice more. Thoreau took morning walks kno…

25. 689: Eric Ries - The Costco Hot Dog, Why Good Companies Go Bad, Financial Gravity, Building Incorruptible Organizations, and The Lean Startup's Unfinished Business

    25 mei 2026 · 58 min

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    Read my NEW BOOK -- The Price of Becoming - www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming

    Eric Ries is the author of The Lean Startup, one of the most influential business books of the past 25 years, and the founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, the first new U.S. exchange to both list and trade multiple stocks since NASDAQ launched 50 years ago. His new book is Incorruptible.

    Key Learnings

    The more successful a company becomes, the more valuable it is as a target. Companies are worth stealing and taking over. Most founders are naive about this and don't understand what's coming for them. They've been following the so-called best practices about how companies should be built, structured, and governed. Most of those best practices are value-destroying.

    Sol Price was a lawyer before he became an entrepreneur. He believed a lawyer had a fiduciary duty to put the client's interests before his own. So when he became a retailer, he asked: "Who's my client?" The customer. He treated the customer as the person he would rather die than betray. When competitors sold a product for less, he'd put up signs in his own store: "Don't buy this from me. You can get it cheaper somewhere else." He capped his margins at 14 percent. He paid above-market wages.

    It is so much easier to destroy than to create. One day, Sol came into work and couldn't get into his office because the locks had been changed. Investors had pushed him out and forced Fedmart to practice retail best practices. Within seven years, they bankrupted the company. We've built an economy that rewards people for cost-cutting without holding them accountable for the consequences to trustworthiness, brand, or culture.

    The origin story of Costco: Sol took two weeks off, then leased the office upstairs from Fedmart and started Price Club. One of the young guys who left with him, Jim Sinegal, had worked his way up from stock boy. Jim eventually started his own company using the Sol ethos. A…

26. 688: Dr. Henry Cloud - The Difference Between a Dream & a Vision, Why Revenue Is Not a Goal, the 5-Step Model for Achieving Any Goal, and Why the Highest Performers Seek the Most Coaching

    18 mei 2026 · 59 min

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    Go to www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming for my new book, The Price of Becoming Lees meer

    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.

    Dr. Henry Cloud is a clinical psychologist, leadership consultant, and New York Times bestselling author whose books have sold nearly 20 million copies worldwide. His titles include Boundaries, Integrity, Necessary Endings, and Trust. For three decades, he has worked with leaders, helping them close the gap between where they are and where they want to be. His newest book is Your Desired Future: The Five Essential Steps That Take You Where You Want to Go.

    Key Learnings

    Henry's five-step model for getting from here to there:

    Vision (clear and compelling)

    Talent (engaging the right people around you)

    Strategy and plan (how you'll win)

    Measurement and accountability (how you'll know)

    Fix and adapt (course-correcting in real time)

    At the age of 16, Henry's daughter asked, "Dad, how do people become singer-songwriters?" Henry went out to the garage and brought in his whiteboard. Lucy rolled her eyes. He gave her the five-step model. A couple years later, she published a song called "Crash and Learn" that got bought by CBS, the CW Network, and featured on Spotify and Apple Music.

    We tend to create departments and businesses in our own image. Of the five components, we're going to be good at two, maybe three. But the others still have to happen. That's where most leaders fail.

    Only humans can picture a desired future state. Finley is Henry's Doberman. When the FedEx guy comes to the door, she runs to it, and barks every time. Henry has never seen her stop and ask herself: "I wonder if that barking will help me get to where I want to be on Thursday." Most leaders are operating like Finley. Working hard. Doing what they've always done. N…

27. 687: Jim Collins - What To Make of a Life, The 3 Types of Luck, Inflection Points, Cliffs, Encodings, Navigating the Fog, the Art of Getting People To Want To Do What Must Be Done, and Reconnecting with an Old Friend

    11 mei 2026 · 1 uur 44 min

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    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.

    Jim Collins is the author of some of the most influential business books ever written — Good to Great, Built to Last, and Great by Choice. His concepts have become part of the leadership vocabulary. Level 5 Leadership. The Flywheel. First Who, Then What. The Hedgehog Concept. He spent more than a decade at Stanford as a professor and has advised CEOs, four-star generals, and heads of state. His new book is What to Make of a Life: Cliffs, Fog, Fire, and the Self-Knowledge Imperative. It is the product of ten years of research and is the most personal thing he has ever written. We flew to Boulder, Colorado, to record this one in person with Jim.

    Key Learnings

    Jim's grandfather wrote his own death story. Jimmy Collins was a test pilot in the 1930s. He told Jim's grandmother, Dolores, that if he died, she should pull the last chapter from his desk and publish it. He died in a test crash. After the service, she pulled out the chapter. The title was "I'm Dead." The last chapter, written in first person, described the plane coming out of the sky, the screaming wings, the crash. The final words, by his own pen: "I am dead now."

    For seven decades, his grandmother never cried. When Jim asked her in her nineties to tell the story of his grandfather, she cried and said, "Thank you for that. I've never cried before." She'd been a single mom in the middle of the Depression. Of all the things Jim feels good about in his life, asking her to tell that story before she died at almost 100 years old is one he's most proud of.

    A cliff is an event that alters the trajectory of your life and forces you to reconstruct…

28. 686: Dr. Nicole LePera (The Holistic Psychologist) - The Hidden Cost of Being Good at Everything, Self-Medicating at 13, Why Awareness Isn't Enough, Healing the Body Not Just the Mind, What a Real Boundary Actually Is, and How Vulnerability Makes Love Rea

    4 mei 2026 · 1 uur 1 min

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    Pre-Order new book, The Price of Becoming www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming Lees meer

    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:

    Dr. Nicole LePera is the creator of The Holistic Psychologist, a platform with over 12 million followers, and the author of three New York Times bestselling books, including her newest, Reparenting the Inner Child.

    Key Learnings:

    Nicole was good at everything, so struggling meant failure. Her family's message was clear: success in life meant financial security through academics or athletics. The implicit message: you're worthy when you're bringing home A's, when you're winning the softball game. She quickly learned to identify things she wasn't immediately good at and just not pursue them. She filtered life, staying on the path of comfort.

    Your childhood adaptations don't leave. Nicole calls it the inner child. It doesn't matter how old you are or how far beyond your childhood you think you've gotten. It impacts you in reactions, in identities, in your way of being. What was once your best attempt at safety, security, or connection still drives behavior today.

    Not all adaptations are problems. Many continue to benefit us.

    The question isn't whether the adaptation is good or bad. The question is: are you choosing it, or is it choosing you? Nicole's drive for achievement created opportunities. It led to massive impact. But she still has the overachiever who wants to blow past her limits and say yes when she's exhausted but means no.

    The Holistic Psychologist started in 2018, and Nicole had no idea it would explode. She was living in Philadelphia, operating within a private practice model. Within the first year, people from around the world were resonating, joining, and interested in working with her in this new way. But at the …

29. 685: David Epstein - The Freedom Trap, Narrative Values, General Magic, The Nobel Prize Winner Who Simplified Everything, Wearing the Same Thing Everyday, and Why Constraints Are the Secret to Your Best Work

    27 april 2026 · 57 min

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    Read my new book, The Price of Becoming. www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming Lees meer

    The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk

    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: David Epstein is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Range and The Sports Gene. A former investigative reporter at ProPublica and senior writer at Sports Illustrated. His new book is called Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better.

    Notes

    Be part of "Mindful Monday" -- Text Hawk to 66866

    Key Learnings

    The easier move is to let it go. David found a factual error in Ryan's new/my new book. David was supposed to read it and write a blurb on it - but went further and challenged a factual error. The kind move, what great leaders actually do, is being willing to point things out, even if it could cause a little friction.

    There is such a thing as too much autonomy. After Range became mega viral, David optimized for autonomy. He individualized his whole life. He no longer was writing about what others assigned him. A year later, he realized there is a thing as too much autonomy. He missed the structure of a work day, the deadlines, the annoyances of working with other people's schedules. This total freedom ended up feeling terrible.

    "The great thing about being committed by your own choice is that you can stop wondering how to live and start living." This quote by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi hit David when he was on a dating app for book topics, just swiping and swiping. That day he said, "I'm really interested in constraints. I need some myself. I'm writing a book proposal on this." Two weeks later he was 10 times more interested because he decided to dive into it.

    Cal Newport says "system shutting down" at the end of his workday. It seems silly, but when you have all that freedom, y…

30. 684: Marcus Buckingham - Design Love In, The 5 Feelings Leaders Must Create, The ABCs of Authentic Leadership, and How to Unleash The Most Powerful Force in Business

    20 april 2026 · 1 uur

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    The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk

    My Guest: Marcus Buckingham is a Cambridge graduate. He spent nearly 20 years at the Gallup Organization, where he co-created the StrengthsFinder assessment. He is a New York Times bestselling author of influential books, including First, Break All the Rules and Now, Discover Your Strengths. Currently, he leads the People + Performance research at the ADP Research Institute.

    Key Learnings

    When you start a business, it's all about love. Seven out of 10 businesses fail, so when you start a business as an entrepreneur, you love what you do, you love your clients, and you surround yourself with people who can love it as much as you do. You all have this passionate delusion that what you're doing is really important and it's gonna work.

    Marcus sold his company in 2017 and calls it the biggest mistake of his career. His company was broken down into silos, and the conversation became about maximization, compliance, and efficiency.

    "Love is born savoring, it lives in intelligence, but it dies from neglect. Love dies from forgetting." (Pablo Neruda) When you stop talking about love, you destroy it.

    Before you sell or scale, ask: Will this lead to more customers falling in love with your company and more employees saying they love working there? If the answer isn't obvious yes, then don't do it.

    Great companies protect the founder's flame. Walt Disney, Truett Cathy and Chick-fil-A, Apple's passion for design, Southwest Airlines, and Herb Kelleher. When companies lose their connection to the founding passion, they become the machine. The machine doesn't have a soul, and people can all feel it.

    Love is the most powerful force in business. If you want to drive productive human behavior, repeat visits, advocacy, loyalty, collaboration, high performance, the precursor to that is love.

    But we don't say the word. Marcus was with 30 C-suite executives, and the…

31. 683: Nir Eyal - How to Break Limiting Beliefs, Create Your Own Luck, Transform Your Relationships, and Start Seeing Opportunities Everyone Else Is Missing

    13 april 2026 · 58 min

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    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: Nir Eyal is a Stanford lecturer, behavioral designer, and bestselling author who has spent his career at the intersection of psychology, technology, and human behavior. He's one of the most rigorous thinkers alive on why people do what they do, and what it actually takes to change.

    Notes

    Julie introduced Nir to the Turnaround technique. Nir and Julie met the first week of college in 1997 and have been married since 2001. A big part of the genesis of Beyond Belief came from Julie introducing Nir to this technique called The Turnaround, which comes out of the work from Byron Katie, that she used with her mother to repair the relationship she had with her mom.

    A limiting belief is a belief that saps motivation and increases suffering. It does that by creating short-term relief from discomfort. "I hate public speaking, I'm no good at public speaking, so I'm going to avoid public speaking." You reduce your motivation to go on stage, providing yourself temporary relief, but long-term suffering.

    The Turnaround helps you collect a portfolio of perspectives. The problem is that our minds hate changing beliefs. We use these beliefs to justify passivity. A turnaround helps you identify many different kinds of beliefs, and then you can choose the ones that serve you versus the ones that hurt you.

    Your conscious mind can only process 50 bits of information per second. Your brain is processing 11 million bits of information (the sound of a voice, light hitting your retinas, the ambient temperature of the room). Your conscious mind is not aware of all this. Your brain has to filter out and leaves you with 0.00045% of the information that's…

32. 682: Will Guidara - Obsession, Adversity, Learning From Danny Meyer, and The Only Competitive Advantage That Lasts... Unreasonable Hospitality

    6 april 2026 · 58 min

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    My new book is The Price of Becoming. To order, go to www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming Lees meer

    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: Will Guidara is the former co-owner of Eleven Madison Park, the restaurant he took from a struggling two-star establishment to become the number one restaurant in the world. He's the author of the New York Times bestseller Unreasonable Hospitality, the host of the Welcome Conference, and a co-producer on the Emmy award-winning series The Bear.

    Notes:

    Key Learnings

    "Obsession is a beautiful thing when you can grab it by the tail." This quote is from chef Sean Brock when he opened his pizza place in Nashville. For Will, obsession is when you care so much about something that you give all of yourself to bring its most fully realized version to life.

    What obsession means to Will: "Loving with every ounce of my being the pursuit of something." He can't imagine a life where he doesn't have something to be obsessed about.

    When you lose yourself in the pursuit of something, that's when it gets ugly. Obsession is a beautiful thing if you can grab it by the tail. For those that can't, it becomes ugly. You need to hold onto yourself while obsessively pursuing whatever it is.

    Find a hobby to be obsessed with before you retire. Will is 46 and has seen people he's long looked up to finally retire in their late seventies without a hobby they're obsessed with. They're feeling listless and without purpose. He's thinking about this now for his future: start to become obsessed with a hobby so that when you do one day retire, there's something else to fall into.

    "Adversity is a terrible thing to waste." You cannot always control what life throws at you, but you can always control how you react to those things, what you choose to lea…

33. 681: Clark Lea (Vanderbilt Football Coach) - Rebuilding a Program, Belief as a Practice, Leading Misfits, Ownership Mentality, and Why Relatedness Is Your Edge

    30 maart 2026 · 39 min

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    Clark Lea is the head football coach at Vanderbilt… He's led one of the best turnaround stories in college football. He got hired as head coach in 2021 to inherit a program that had gone winless the year before. What he's built since is remarkable: a 40–35 upset of No. 1 Alabama, back-to-back SEC Coach of the Year awards, and Vanderbilt's first 10-win season in program history. He's won games and changed the culture.

    Key Learnings

    Better people make a better team. Development in one area is development in all areas. We're trained to see life in separate lanes (coach here, husband here, father here, student here, athlete here), but when you live that way, you're in constant conflict. Instead, see each person as a circle where all those roles define who we are, and development in one area is development in all areas.

    Show up on time, deliver on time, engage resources. If you show up on time, turn your work in on time, and engage the resources that are here to help you, you're not just going to survive, you're going to thrive. This is what it takes to be a great football player and a great student.

    "We are not victims in this process." After missing the playoffs, Clark told his team: This is the ground we stand on, this is who we are. Let's be really proud of what we accomplished, but also acknowledge we've fallen short, and that is no one else's fault. Vanderbilt football doesn't need to complain loud enough to get someone to change their mind. We need to play better football.

    The joy we can experience is equal and opposite to the pain we can experience. In athletics, you're suspended between the pain and the joy, and the depths of that pain can be excruciating. But the joy we get to experience together in a shared way is unbelievable. The entry fee is the acceptance of that.

    ?This is exactly where we're supposed to be because there are no mistakes." Driving into…

34. 680: Scott Galloway: Action Absorbs Anxiety, Handling the Haters, Becoming an Excellent Storyteller, Reverse Engineering Your Success, The Importance of Novelty, and Why Praise Is the Most Underrated Leadership Tool

    23 maart 2026 · 1 uur 4 min

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    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: Scott Galloway is the New York Times bestselling author of books including The Four, The Algebra of Happiness, Post Corona, Adrift, and The Algebra of Wealth.

    Notes:

    Key Learnings

    Routine speeds up time, novelty slows it down. If you want life to go fast, just spend it alone and have a routine and never bust out of that routine. What makes life interesting is diversity in people, because people are complicated, and relationships are complicated.

    Lean into your emotions to slow time down. If you see something that moves you, stop, think about it, ask yourself why it moves you, and try to cement that moment in your brain. Otherwise, you're not sleepwalking through life; you're sleep sprinting.

    "The greatest wasted resource in history is good intentions that don't get articulated." No matter how famous someone is, they love affirmation as much as anybody else. Good thoughts that don't get articulated are wasted.

    Absorb when you're upset and lean into emotions, good and bad. This sort of marks the day and slows things down. Otherwise, if you get up every morning, do the same thing, eat the same thing, have the same relationship, the week's just gonna go really fast.

    Reverse engineer your success to things that aren't your fault. What are the things that played a role in your success that you had no control over? Your luck, your good fortune. For Scott: big government, assisted lunch, Pell Grants, University of California, technology financed by middle-class taxpayers, DARPA, the internet, deep pools of capital, and acceptance of failure.

    His mom told him he had value every day. Scott's mom, ever…

35. 679: Kat Cole - From Hooters Waitress to $500M CEO, You're Interviewing for Your Next Job Every Day, Learning vs. Ego, The Four Key Mindsets for Senior Leaders, and The Journey of Who You Become

    16 maart 2026 · 59 min

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    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: Kat Cole is the CEO of AG1 (formerly Athletic Greens) and a renowned business leader known for a meteoric rise from Hooters waitress to Fortune 40 Under 40 executive. As former President/COO of Focus Brands (Cinnabon), she specializes in scaling global brands. Her career is defined by driving billions in sales, strategic innovation, and a strong, people-first leadership style.

    Key Learnings

    You can't market your way out of a bad product. AG1 has 3x'd the business in four years while being in only one channel (direct to consumer) for 15 years. 80% of retail is in brick and mortar, so they were doing that volume in less than 20% of where transactions happen. That only works when customers love the product, keep buying it for years, and tell their friends.

    Scale comes from trusted recommendations, not marketing spend. Real volume comes from people telling their friends, recommending it to their teams and companies. That's where real scale and sustainable growth comes from.

    Two questions guide every career decision. Is my work done here? Can someone else do what the company needs better than I can? If the answer to either is yes, that guides you toward pushing for change in your role, the way you show up, or finding the next opportunity.

    Sometimes the best move is the lesser-known role. Kat could have stayed running big franchise brands everyone knew (Cinnabon, Auntie Anne's), but becoming COO of the parent company, Focus Brands, was a bigger, more complex role. Lesser known, smaller team, bigger stretch, more learning. That bridged her into consumer packaged goods and got her ready for AG1.

    Consider financial needs, learning, and ego separately. Between financial needs, yo…

36. 678: Jamie Siminoff (Ring Doorbell Inventor) - Shark Tank Rejection, Selling to Amazon for $1 Billion, Surviving $3M to $480M Hypergrowth, Hiring Passionate People Over Experts, and Jeff Bezos's Leadership Lessons

    9 maart 2026 · 50 min

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    The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk

    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: Jamie Siminoff is the founder of Ring, which he sold to Amazon for over a billion dollars. He's an inventor and builder who couldn't hear his doorbell while working in his garage, so he built a video doorbell. When his wife said it made her feel safer, he realized technology had changed, and home security needed a complete reinvention. Ring became the world's largest home security company with a mission to make neighborhoods safer.

    Key Learnings

    Jeff Bezos reads and writes his own stuff. When Jamie asked Jeff to write something for the book's back cover, Jeff actually read it and wanted his own curated quote that was from him.

    Jeff loves entrepreneurs, so they kept him out of negotiations. After the Whole Foods deal, Amazon learned to keep Jeff out of negotiations because he finds it tough to negotiate hard with someone he respects.

    Hardware companies can die while growing fast. Ring grew from $3M to $30M to $174M to $480M, which sounds amazing. But to go from $170M to $480M, you're buying hundreds of millions of dollars of product when you're selling less than that. If sales growth slows, you're basically going out of business.

    Going from $480M to over a billion in revenue was like being on a motorcycle at 200 miles an hour. If a leaf falls down and hits you, you're dead. At Amazon, when Ring said, "We need another billion dollars to order stuff for next year," Amazon said, "Okay, what else do you want?"

    There are different types of entrepreneurs. Jamie is an inventor/entrepreneur. There are business entrepreneurs who are maniacal business people we've never heard of that have just crushed it. Jamie is maniacal on product and brings i…

37. 677: Erin McGoff - How to Communicate at Work, Negotiate Your Salary, Write Cold Emails, Overcome Rejection, Run Better Meetings, and Build a Career That Matters

    2 maart 2026 · 52 min

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    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. www.InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader

    The Learning Leader Show

    Key Learnings

    Go out and dent the universe. Erin's parents didn't put pressure on her to get perfect grades or go to Harvard; they wanted her to use her privilege and beautiful upbringing to make the world a better place.

    Youngest child syndrome makes you quick. Being the youngest of six, Erin learned to speak very quickly to get her thoughts in at the dinner table, and she was given unsolicited advice her whole childhood (which is why she loves giving advice now).

    Your siblings' sole job is to keep you grounded. Erin's parents are proud and supportive, but her siblings roast her and beat her down (all in good fun) to keep her as humble as possible.

    Success is attributed to a sense of humor. Erin gave career advice that was funny, and nobody had ever really seen that before. You don't get that unless you're the slightly bullied youngest of six kids your entire life.

    Rejection rage is a choice. At a Women in Film networking event, the head of the organization paused Erin's documentary trailer 30 seconds in and said, "You need to be more realistic." Erin went on to get a Pulitzer fellowship and premiered a feature documentary at 23 with international distribution. When you get a rejection, you can either let it beat you down or say, "I'm going to show them."

    "Tell me about yourself" is the world's worst interview question. It's lazy, not specific, and hard for the interviewee to truncate their entire life into 90 seconds. Use the past-present-future template: 1-2 sentences about your past, 1-2 about your present role, then future (where the interviewer's ears perk up), connecting to why you're applyi…

38. 676: Jesse Cole (Owner, Savannah Bananas) - The Beauty of Obsession, Building a Fans First World, Walt Disney, Mr. Beast, Radical Transparency (Opening the Books), Do the Opposite of Normal, Turning a $6M Mistake Into a Moment, and Creating Banana World

    23 februari 2026 · 45 min

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    The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk

    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. www.InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader

    My Guest: Jesse Cole is the owner of the Savannah Bananas. He went $1.8 million in debt, slept on an air mattress, and built a business that is now valued at over a billion dollars. I spent half a day with Jesse in Savannah watching practice, and Jesse gave me a personal tour of their entire operation. It was incredible.

    Notes:

    Fans First - The sign is on every locker. And leading out to the field, "Tonight is someone's first time seeing our show."

    Obsessed/Focused - Banana Ball/Serving people is his life. We didn't talk about hobbies, TV shows, or anything other than what they're doing now and in the future. He's obsessed with what he does and super focused.

    Transparent - Jesse just released their full P&L as a private company: revenue, expenses, player salaries, everything. Most businesses guard this religiously. He's completely transparent. I asked why, and he said, "Fans first. They deserve to know everything."

    Reps - We went to the field to watch practice. It looked just like a game. Players were dancing all the time. And every single rep they practiced as a trick play (behind the back, through the legs, etc.). They never play normal baseball. You wonder how they are so good on gameday at doing a backflip while catching a fly ball. Because they practice it thousands of times without fans so that when they're there, they put on a great show.

    Hiring – "Love your people more than you love your customer." 12,000 people on the waitlist to work for the Bananas. When you hire, have them do a "fans first" essay. Then they write a future essay.

    Always Be Caring, Different, Enthusiastic, Fun, Growing, & Hun…

39. 675: Tom Hardin (Tipper X) - The Largest Insider Trading Case, How Ambiguous Leadership Destroys Culture, Resume vs. Eulogy Virtues, Bad Decisions vs. Mistakes, and Building Psychological Safety

    16 februari 2026 · 55 min

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    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. www.InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader

    My guest: Tom Hardin was known as "Tipper X" during Operation Perfect Hedge, the largest insider trading investigation in history. After making four illegal trades based on inside information, the FBI approached him on a Manhattan street corner and convinced him to wear a wire over 40 times, helping build 20 of the 81 cases.

    Key Learnings

    Ambiguity is where ethical lines blur. Tom's boss said, "Do whatever it takes," after the hedge fund lost money, and as a junior employee, Tom didn't ask clarifying questions.

    The undiscussable becomes undiscussable. Leaders give ambiguous messages, then pretend they weren't ambiguous, employees get confused and don't question the boss, and you end up with a culture of silence.

    Making decisions in isolation is dangerous. The information came to Tom and he didn't talk to his boss or his wife (who probably would've slapped him around for crossing ethical lines).

    Psychological safety requires muscle memory. You have to practice saying "I'm just going to ask some clarifying questions here" when your boss gives ambiguous orders.

    Bad decisions aren't mistakes. Mistakes are made without intent, but bad decisions are made with intent. Tom told himself for years he made "mistakes," but on a drive home from speaking at a keynote, he realized: "There's no way I made mistakes. I made bad decisions."

    Never say never. Tom argues you're more susceptible to falling down your own slippery slope when you think "that would never be me."

    80% of employees can be swayed either way. 10% are morally incorruptible, 10% are a compliance nightmare, and 80% can be influenced by the culture arou…

40. 674: PJ Fleck - Building Elite Culture, Nekton Mindset, Selecting >Recruiting, Intrinsic Motivation, Row The Boat, and Transformational Coaching

    9 februari 2026 · 1 uur 2 min

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    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. www.InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader

    My guest: PJ Fleck is the head football coach at the University of Minnesota. Before that, he transformed Western Michigan from one win to 13 wins and a Cotton Bowl appearance. Before his coaching days, PJ was a stud receiver at Northern Illinois and was a guy I played against in college. Coach Fleck has built one of college football's most distinctive culture-driven programs. You'll hear why he maintains an 80-20 split favoring high school recruiting over the transfer portal, how he runs practice with a 32-second clock to make it harder than games, and why he sees himself as a cultural driver rather than a motivational coach. This is a conversation recorded with all of our coaches inside "The Arena." That is our mastermind group for coaches in all sports. And it did not disappoint.

    Notes:

    Stop recruiting, start selecting. PJ doesn't chase the highest-rated players... He looks for fit and alignment with his values. Ask yourself: Are you trying to convince people to join your team, or are you selecting people who already want what you're building?

    Efficiency beats duration. PJ runs 95-minute practices with a 32-second play clock, always moving, always intense. The principle: Make practice harder than the game. Where in your work are you confusing time spent with intensity and focus?

    Internal drive trumps external motivation. PJ calls his ideal players "Nektons," always attacking, never satisfied. He's looking for people who prove their worth to themselves, not to others. If you need constant external motivation, you're not ready for elite teams.

    A leader must teach and demand. A team member must prepare and perform. These aren't opposing forces—…

41. 673: Daniel Coyle - Opening Yellow Doors, Mastering Your Craft, World-Class Storytelling Techniques, Great Questions to Ask, Building Your Community, The Power of Curiosity, and How to Flourish in Life

    2 februari 2026 · 58 min

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    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: Dan Coyle is a New York Times bestselling author who's spent the last two decades studying what makes great teams great. He wrote The Talent Code, The Culture Code, and now Flourish—books that have shaped how millions of people think about skill development, team culture, and meaningful connection. He works with the Cleveland Guardians as a special advisor on culture and performance. We recorded this one together in Cleveland.

    Notes:

    Find your yellow doors. Most of us go through life looking for green doors (clearly open paths) and red doors (obviously closed paths). But yellow doors are different. They're out of the corner of your eye, things that make you uncomfortable or feel brand new. That's where life actually happens. We think life is a straight line from A to B to C, but it's not. Life isn't a game... It's complex, living, shifting. Yellow doors are opportunities to create meaningful connections and explore new paths. "Life deepens when we become aware of the yellow doors, the ones we glimpse out of the corner of our eye."

    The craft journey always involves getting simpler. Simple is not easy. The great ones have their craft to where there's a simplicity to it. In this world of clutter and noise, it's easy to want to compete with energy and speed, but the stuff that really resonates is quieter and simpler. Be a beginner again in something. With climbing, Dan's at the very bottom of the craft mountain. With writing, he's somewhere in the middle. It's fun to have a couple of zones in your life where you're a beginner. It's liberating, but it also develops empathy. Some stuff looks very simple, but isn't.

    Every good story has three elements. There'…

42. 672: Brad Stulberg - The Neuroscience of Curiosity, Process vs. Outcome Goals, The Power of Consistency, Playing Like The Beatles, Focusing on Your WHO, and The Way of Excellence

    26 januari 2026 · 1 uur 12 min

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    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. www.InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader

    My guest: Brad Stulberg is a bestselling author and leading expert on sustainable performance and well-being. He's written for The New York Times, Outside Magazine, and The Atlantic, and his previous books include Peak Performance and The Practice of Groundedness. His latest book, The Way of Excellence, is great. Brad's writing combines cutting-edge science, ancient wisdom, and stories from world-class performers to help people do their best work without losing themselves in the process.

    Notes:

    Never pre-judge a performance. When you're feeling tired, uninspired, or off your game, show up anyway. Remember the Beatles scene—they looked bored and exhausted, but Paul still wrote "Get Back" that day. You don't know what's possible until you get going.

    Discipline means doing what needs to be done regardless of how you feel. As powerlifter Layne Norton says, we don't need to feel good to get going... We need to get going to give ourselves a chance to feel good. Stop waiting for motivation. Start moving and let the feeling follow.

    Audit who you're surrounding yourself with. The Air Force study is striking: the least fit person in your squadron determines everyone else's fitness level. If you sit within 25 feet of a high performer at work, your performance improves 15%. Within 25 feet of a low performer? It declines 30%. Your environment isn't neutral... Choose wisely.

    Treat curiosity like a muscle. It's a reward-based behavior that gets stronger with use. When Kobe said he played "to figure things out," he was tapping into the neural circuitry that makes learning feel good and builds upon itself. Ask more questions. Stay curious about yo…

43. 671: Jimmy Wales (Founder of Wikipedia) - To Get Trust Give Trust, Why Nupedia Failed, Assuming Good Faith, Walking the Walk, Transparency vs. Sharing Everything, Curiosity as the Ultimate Love Language, and Attracting Trustworthy People

    19 januari 2026 · 52 min

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    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. www.InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader

    Jimmy Wales is the founder of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. After his daughter Kira's birth faced medical challenges and he couldn't find reliable information online, Jimmy launched Wikipedia in January 2001. In this conversation, Jimmy shares why extending trust before it's earned creates better outcomes, how to deal with bad actors, and the seven rules for building things that last.

    Notes:

    Key Learnings (in Jimmy's words)

    Wikipedia launched 20 days after my daughter was born. When Kira was born, I realized that when you go on the internet, and you've got a question like, "what is this condition my daughter has?" It just wasn't there. There were either random blogs or academic journal articles that were way above my head. Kira was born on December 26th, and I opened Wikipedia on January 15th.

    Nupedia failed because of the seven-stage review process. Before Wikipedia, we worked on Nupedia. We recruited academics to write articles. You had to send in your CV showing you were qualified before you could write anything. We had very slow progress. I was on the verge of giving up. This top-down approach with a seven-stage review process before you publish anything that's no fun, and nobody's doing it.

    We let anyone edit and figured we'd add structure later. We thought we'd have to figure out who the editor-in-chief of the chemistry section is. You're gonna have to have some kind of authority and hierarchy. But I thought, let's just not have too much structure for as long as possible.

    "It's fun. You could be the first person to create a page."

    There was a point in time when you could write, "Paris is the capital of …

44. 670: Mike Deegan - Building a Championship Culture, Mudita (Joy for Others), Systems Thinking, Curiosity = Love, Getting Out of a Slump, and The DNA of Great Teams

    12 januari 2026 · 51 min

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    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. www.InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader

    My Guest: Mike Deegan just led Denison University Baseball to their first College World Series appearance in program history. He's been named Coach of the Year in back-to-back years and is the all-time winningest coach in school history. In this conversation, Mike shares how he uses Mudita to build culture, how to help people get out of slumps, and why discipline and consistency are superpowers.

    Key Learnings (in Mike's words)

    Mudita is a vicarious joy. Can I be happy for another's success as if it's my own? To me, that is like the secret sauce of life. Obviously, in a sports team, not everyone can be the star. One of the biggest misconceptions is that the star rotates. Yeah, you need a superstar to compete at the highest levels, but to win, you're going to need pinch runners, you're going to need the guy laying a big block. It's going to take everyone. It's really celebrating everyone's contribution.

    In recruiting, I ask parents: Can you be happy for another kid's success as if it's your own? If your neighbor gets a new car, are you happy for them? Or do you say, "Oh, I wish. I bet his parents bought that for him." There are just different ways to show up for people, where you can just have joy. By pouring yourself into others, especially in sports, I think it frees you up to perform your best.

    Envy is a natural feeling. I don't want anyone to feel that envy from me. I think what we're saying is that envy is a natural feeling. Wanting to do great yourself, those are very natural, and I want people to live in that space. But can we just stop it and be a little bit more intentional and just celebrate what other people are doing w…

45. 669: Oz Pearlman (Oz The Mentalist) - Overcoming Rejection, Getting the Reps, Always Following Up, Living with Gratitude, America's Got Talent, The Curiosity of Steven Spielberg, and Making Others Feel Seen

    5 januari 2026 · 55 min

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    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: Oz Pearlman is the greatest mentalist in the world. After leaving Wall Street to pursue his craft full-time, he's performed for Steven Spielberg's family, for Nobel laureates, and Fortune 500 CEOs. He ran a 2:23 marathon and holds the record for most laps around Central Park in a single day. With five kids and 250+ performances a year, Oz has mastered the art of reading people and understanding what separates good from world-class.

    Key Learnings (In Oz's words)

    Doug Anderson is the magician who got me into magic. When I was 13 years old, I went on a cruise with my parents. I got pulled up on stage and took part in a magic trick. (The sponge balls) After the trick, my dad and I started creating theories on how the trick worked.

    The people in every industry who make it to the top are the ones who are kind and respectful to others. As soon as you stop thinking that you can learn from others, you start dying.

    What is the recipe for success? It's getting through the tough times. When I walked up to someone at a restaurant, and I'm 14, and I have a very fragile ego, after three tables in a row at differing levels of rudeness go by, "Dude, get outta here, man. Like, I don't wanna see this," it hurts. That's a painful thing to experience. I had to learn a defense mechanism very quickly because carrying that pain, pain turns into anger. When I get to the next table, I'm angry at the next group, even though they haven't done anything wrong to me.

    I realized to get my goal, I needed tougher, thicker skin. Deflect the rejection onto someone else.

    Create separation between you and rejection. I created what I would call an agent in my own mind. When you're in sh…

46. 668: Brian Kelly (The Points Guy) - Building a Media Empire, Crafting a Big Vision, Relentless Leaders, Hiring Well, Scaling Up, & How To Win at Travel

    29 december 2025 · 51 min

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    The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk

    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: Brian Kelly is the founder of The Points Guy, which he built from a side hustle blog into a travel media empire that he sold for $28 million. At 42, he's now an angel investor in 15+ companies, including Bilt (valued at $11 billion). In this conversation, he shares lessons on manifestation, selling too early, building yourself into the brand, and why vulnerability beats wins in interviews.

    Key Learnings (in Brian's words)

    In 1995, I was 12 years old, and I was great with computers, so I started booking all of my dad's travel for work. He'd pay me $10 per booking. Then it turned into points, when my dad showed me all the American and US Air miles he had. "If you can figure out how to use all of them, we can go on a family trip." And the rest is history. That was my first real, oh wait, this points thing is amazing. Points were a way for us to live a fabulous lifestyle.

    I grew up thinking we were poor, but I really wanted to live a fabulous life. My parents were very humble and did not spend money lavishly. For me I always wanted to travel. When I was a kid, I would spin the globe and be like, This is where I'm going. I would actually research Oman. Somehow genetically, I got this gene of I need to be rich and travel the world. I used to call Mercedes, get all of their glossy pamphlets for all their new cars, and I would cut them out and stick them on my wall.

    Manifesting alone won't make you wealthy, but visioning helps. I do believe being able to visualize what it looks like and taste it and get close to it helps you take the smaller steps to actually achieve it. When I think of my investments, I actually envisi…

47. 667: Nick Gray - How to Host World-Class Events, Why Leaders Need a Personal Website, Writing Like You Talk, Mastering Introductions, the Viral Tokyo Trip, & Adding Value Before Taking It

    22 december 2025 · 51 min

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    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: Nick Gray is the author of The Two-Hour Cocktail Party and founder of Museum Hack. He's mastered the art of hosting events that strengthen networks and build genuine connections. In this conversation, he shares practical systems for hosting gatherings, why every leader needs a personal website, and lessons learned from his viral blind date trip to Tokyo.

    The Learning Leader Show

    Key Learnings

    Two Great Ice Breaker Questions:

    What's a compliment that someone has given you that you've never forgotten about?

    If you could teach any class about a topic that you're an expert on, what would it be?

    The power of a network is real: As a leader, you're probably hiring people regularly or looking for investors. By hosting simple, lightweight meetups or dinner parties, or happy hours once a quarter, you can strengthen your network, build it, and keep those loose connections or weak ties warm.

    Mix professional and personal contacts: For me, a really boring event would be all work people. Look for occupational diversity. If you're hosting a work event, invite some other random folks who you know are gonna be good conversationalists and add to the energy.

    Don't reach for the top shelf first. Most important advice for leaders: do not invite your most impressive contact to your very first happy hour or meetup. Your first party should be for your neighbors, the parents of kids at your school, those LinkedIn connections, high school buddies you haven't seen in a while. Your first party should be a comfortable meetup for 15 to 22 people that you host at your home with just cocktails, not a dinner party. Then slowly, once a quarter, you'll be adding more people to it an…

48. 666: Angie Hicks (Founder of Angie's List) - The Power of Selling Door-to-Door, Executive Presence, Being Told She Was 'Too Nice,' and Her 2-Question Career Filter That Kept Her at One Company for 30 Years

    15 december 2025 · 55 min

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    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: Angie Hicks, co-founder of Angie's List (now called Angi). She started the company at just 23, going door-to-door as a self-described introvert and non-salesperson, and turned it into a national platform trusted by millions. During our conversation, we discuss what it takes to lead with authenticity and build lasting impact.

    Key Learnings

    Lead by listening and showing up. Whether it's knocking on doors as a 23-year-old or meeting employees during office hours as CEO, Angie reminds us that being present, paying attention, and seeking feedback is the heart of leadership.

    Focus on people and learning. Angie's career filter is simple: Do I like the people I'm working with? Am I learning new things? If yes, keep going. If not, it's time to reconsider. Excellence isn't just about results. It's about the environment and growth around you.

    Take your work seriously, but not yourself. Confidence, humility, and authenticity go hand in hand. Angie shows us that you can be ambitious and driven without losing sight of the human side of leadership.

    From Angie...

    My co-founder, Bill Osterle, came to me when I was a senior in college and said, "Hey, I've got a crazy idea. Your parents are gonna hate it. But why don't we start a business?" I talked to my parents, talked to my friends, and then I ended up talking to my grandfather who was incredibly conservative. He grew up in the Depression, very fiscally responsible.

    "What do you have to lose? You're 22, your parents aren't going to let you starve, and you're not trying to support a family, so why don't you try it?"

    I was so taken aback by his response that that comment was probably what pushed me over the edge. I …

49. 665: Pat Lencioni - Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Fear-Based Success, Working Genius, Anticipating Objections, and The Hidden Cost of Proving Yourself

    8 december 2025 · 54 min

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    The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk

    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: Patrick Lencioni is the founder of The Table Group and a bestselling author of 14 books, including The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and The 6 Types of Working Genius. Behind his achievements (valedictorian, straight A's, business success) were childhood wounds that drove him to prove himself.

    Key Learnings

    "I think I'm really good at anticipating people's objections." I think about what they might be thinking and what I need to put out there. Whether talking interpersonally, giving a speech, writing a book, or on a podcast, I like to think about what the other person might be objecting to.

    Lean into empathy. I always felt like I needed to prove myself in order to be successful and to feel safe. That's not healthy.

    "When people tell you they got straight A's and were the valedictorian, the student body president, and got accepted to all the schools they wanted to get into, there's a wound there." Based on my personality type, I shouldn't have done all those things, but it was out of the need to prove myself. Which wasn't healthy for me. My parents had a hard time being affirming because of their own lives.

    It wasn't until I was 55 years old that a friend who's a psychologist said, "You, my friend, have childhood wounds you've never dealt with." I got good Christian counseling and realized that the way I grew up, I wasn't supposed to grow up that way.

    It's common in athletes & CEOs to feel like they haven't done enough. They need to do more. "You're a noun, not a verb. You are enough, and you're not defined by what you do."

    Great achievements come out of fear, but "true greatness is best when it's only in the th…

50. 664: David Adelman - 664: David Adelman - Campus Apartments CEO and 76ers Co-Owner on Losing a Big Bet, Bar Mitzvah Real Estate Deals, His Grandfather's Holocaust Survival Story, and Building Philadelphia's New Arena

    1 december 2025 · 49 min

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    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: David Adelman is the CEO of Campus Apartments, founder of Darco Capital, and co-owner of the Philadelphia 76ers. During our conversation, we discussed how losing a basketball bet at age 11 changed his life, investing his bar mitzvah money in real estate, becoming CEO at 25, his grandfather's Holocaust survival story, and why it gives him perspective on struggle, embracing failure, the trade-offs of building something excellent, and what he looks for when hiring leaders.

    Key Learnings

    "Why not me? Why not now?" David's mantra cuts through all the overthinking and excuses we make. When he saw other people building national real estate portfolios, he didn't wonder if it was possible—he asked why he couldn't do it. Stop waiting for permission. Stop waiting for the perfect moment. Ask yourself: why not me? Why not now?

    Make mistakes, just not the same one twice. David doesn't expect perfection from himself or his team. He expects learning. Fail fast, fail forward, but don't repeat the same failure. That's not growth—that's negligence. Embrace the suck, but evolve through it.

    David's grandfather survived the Holocaust after his wife and children were murdered. He escaped, joined the resistance, and rebuilt his life from nothing. When David thinks about that, he says: "No matter what, I don't know struggle." That's perspective. Most of what we call struggle is just discomfort. Understanding that doesn't make your challenges disappear... It makes them manageable. If your grandfather could survive the unthinkable, you can handle the hard day in front of you.

    At age 11, David challenged family friend Alan Horwitz to a basketball game and made a wager. Horwitz d…