Best of: The Pursuit of Excellence with Ryan Hawk

Why discounting is a symptom of a weak pipeline

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01:11Bill Gallagher: You have ambitions. You're striving for things. You know to do anything significant, you need to be a better leader than you have been, than you are today. And that's what our show's all about today. How do we level up our leadership in pursuit of excellence?

01:30Bill Gallagher: Hey, everybody. My name is Bill Gallagher, scaling coach and host of this fine Scaling Up Business podcast. Our show comes to you every week with a guru, an expert, an author, a CEO, somebody who's got something to share to help you level up your team and yourself. And, of course, it always starts with you. As we say, you'll find more than 500 shows at scalingcoach.com along with our monthly workshops on mindset and tools for scaling, our free mini course on the stages of scaling and growing your business, and all the back catalog of shows and more. Scalingcoach.com.

02:09Bill Gallagher: Alright. Listen. I'm joined now by Ryan Hawk. Ryan is show host himself of a terrific, top top podcast, The Learning Leader Show. He's had on amazing guests, people like Jim Collins, Stanley McChrystal, Tony Robbins, that kind of thing. And he's done three books in the world of leadership management. Welcome to Management, Pursuit of Excellence, and The Score That Matters. Ryan, welcome to the show.

02:35Ryan Hawk: Thanks for having me, Bill. Appreciate it, man.

Learning leadership through sports and diverse teammates

02:40Bill Gallagher: So we're getting into all of this, and I always like to start off kind of with your personal story. Where did you have this moment or this shift for yourself that you moved from whatever into a leadership role? Tell us about that.

02:56Ryan Hawk: I was very lucky that my parents chose to move to Centerville, Ohio when I was quite young. And one of the primary reasons was because there was a legendary football coach named Bob Gregg, and I think my dad had a little foresight hoping that his sons would grow up to potentially play for him. And I don't know if he cared as much about us being athletes. It was more about being influenced by positive role models outside of the home. And luckily, it kind of worked out for my brothers and me to play football for a legend and to learn about grit and tenacity and preparation and work ethic and what it means to respond to tough moments. And we learned that through playing sports, notably football. And I think I've kind of taken everything I've done from that early experience in my life, my formative years from my head coach, Bob Gregg, and offensive coordinator, Ron. And I also learned the power of leadership. I learned what it means to believe in somebody as well as the impact a leader can have by believing in them more than they even believe in themselves and lifting them to levels of performance that they didn't even think they were capable of. And so I thought, as I've grown up and matured more, I've drawn so much from that experience that maybe I could have that type of an impact on other people and do it on a big scale, hopefully, by studying leadership and then sharing what I'm learning from the best of the best with others, usually in the form of my podcast, which I've done for the past decade as well as publishing some of those key learnings in the books that I write.

04:37Bill Gallagher: It's interesting that so many great business leaders come from sports. And some of my best clients over the years have had either sports or a military background. And there's something that we learned there about working with other people that's so critical versus some of our entrepreneurs, another huge block are very much sort of solo acts who stumble through the leadership side of things, like getting other people to work together in a coordinated fashion. Especially like sports, you're going to learn at a very early age. Military, depending on the background, might be more of a struggle as you learn to be part of a group.

05:22Ryan Hawk: You're right. So much so, especially as I progressed from high school to college. And then I met people from all over the country who had wildly different backgrounds than I did, completely different upbringings, different socioeconomic backgrounds, different religions, different races. And that was an awesome experience to learn because we really only had one goal. And the only way we were going to get to that goal was if we came together and if we collaborated really well and focused on that mission. I think that's a great lesson for life in general as you then graduate college and go into the working world, you're probably going to need to work with other people from diverse backgrounds that have different experiences than you. And so the more you can do that, the more that you can surround yourself with people, that diversity of thought, I think, is really healthy. Shane Snow writes a lot about that in Dream Teams, his book, which I've talked to him a number of times on my podcast, that that's one of the factors of building a dream team is people from diverse experiences. And so as a leader, it's really important, I think, to put yourself in those positions as much as possible so you get the reps, you get as much practice as you can around people and figuring out how to work with those who are different than you.

06:38Bill Gallagher: Yeah. It's a fascinating thing. That is something that you have to master. And yet, I know again and again, whether it's a live event, in person or a remote event with leaders, one of the biggest frustrations is the people on the team. When it's our early stage companies in the accelerator program, whether it's people at our summits and in our master classes, the frustration of dealing with other human beings and trying to get them all to pull in the same direction is an enormous challenge to do because there's so many different ways of looking at the world, different value sets, different practices, different sensitivities. Right?

Seeing the world through other people's eyes

07:20Ryan Hawk: Yeah. Exactly. I mean, that's what you learn by getting the reps by putting yourself in those positions with others. You're like, whoa, I need to get it from their eyes. I need to put myself in their shoes to understand it from their perspective. And you know probably as well, Bill, from interviewing people and having these types of conversations and doing it a lot, you realize there's a lot of different ways to get to similar positions. There's a lot of different ways to do it well. And I need to get out of my own head and kind of see the world through other people's eyes. And I think gaining that perspective makes you actually a more reasonable person. It makes you see the world in more gray and less black and white, I found, by exposing myself to lots and lots of different people who have been brought up different than I have and have a different set of life experiences. So I found that to be super beneficial and probably made me a better, I would hope, a better friend, a better person in society because I've been exposed to so many different ways that people go about living their life.

08:25Bill Gallagher: It's funny. One of the most useful bits of coaching and practices that was ever given to me, and I have in turn used with so many others, is to try to get over in the head of the other person. And then there's a good book that we've recommended often. The author passed recently after a long illness battle. Just Listen, Mark Goulston. And a lot of that book, which is about better, deeper listening, is about imagining what's going on over there for that person. What's going on over there for them? Instead of like, what do I need them to get about me, and what's their position? It's like, where are they coming from? So rather than like, where are they standing and what are they demanding and what do I want, like a negotiation, it's like, how does the world occur for them? What is going on over there? And that is a profound shift.

09:21Ryan Hawk: Right? It does. Paulina Porizkova and I were talking about this when I recorded with her, and she studies excellent leadership as well. And she's the one who kinda brought up that term. Like, the more and more people you study and the more and more people you talk to and you actually listen to what they're saying and you get a feel for what the world is like through their eyes, the more reasonable you become. The more, like, open-minded I would hope you become. The more curious you become in other people and finding them fascinating. I think that's something I've learned, is like, I think at the beginning of my work, especially when I launched my podcast almost ten years ago, I thought like, okay, I know a good deal about leadership. I kinda know what's going on. And then the more and more people I talk to, I feel like I know less and less and less, even though I'm learning more. It's like there's so much more to figure out. There's so many more perspectives to learn from and other people that it's just bizarre how it works. It's almost backwards. Like, the more you learn, you realize you have so much more to learn because of all the people that you're lucky enough to talk to. So I didn't expect that when I started doing this. And now it's like, oh man, it's endless. Right? There's an endless amount to learn. And that to me is actually kind of inspiring and exciting.

10:43Bill Gallagher: One of my company and personal core values is, I say, is never finished. And never finished is this idea that I'll always be working on myself until I take my last breath. And I always, at a younger age, thought that at some point, I'd be like, I'd be done. I'd be done learning. I'd be all grown up. You know? Like, it's very childhood kind of thought. Like, I'd be all grown up. But this persisted maybe into my early thirties. And I had this notion. Then I was getting coached at one point by this person who was expert in something in particular around speaking and coaching. And they were doing something that they were supposedly masterful in teaching me, and I watched them fuck it up. Right? And I kinda did that, like, dog side head twist, and I'm like, wait a minute. They've been doing this much longer than me, and this is so basic. And how are they screwing this up right now? And then I'm like, I'm working on this. They're actually still working on this. They're supposed to be my teacher and masterful at this. And then I'm like, maybe I'll never be done. Maybe that's the whole point of the Karate Kid, you know, Mr. Miyagi, wax on, wax off. It's like, maybe I just need to surrender to the process, and maybe there's something. And there actually was a truly liberating, like, joyful breakthrough in that moment to something that has continued to this day. It's like, yeah, I'll always be learning. I'll always be, like, getting better at stuff until the day I die. We had on Chip Conley, a modern maturity expert recently, and great conversation about wisdom and developing wisdom and moving into the second part of your life. And it's like, yeah, you're never done. You're always learning and you're growing and you're expanding in your perspective, and you're humbled by how little you know. And and then, increasingly, you're reminded of things that you have long forgotten.

The fallacy of arrival and always becoming

12:53Ryan Hawk: Yeah. Actually, that reminds me of a story, Bill. I was recording with J.J. Redick, who looks like he might become the L.A. Lakers' next coach. Yeah. Great TV guy. And he went back to Duke where he played college basketball, and he was gonna give a little speech to the players on the team. This is years ago. And as he walked up to the front, he was thinking about, like, hey, what's my core message? What is it all gonna be about? He looked in the front row and they're wearing their, like, practice uniforms, so just like tank tops. And he saw, he noticed that one of the players in the front row, he could see it tattooed actually on, like, the upper part of his torso. It said, 'I've arrived.' And J.J., like, it knocked him back for a second. He's like, what does that say? And the guy's like, you know, this guy's like a McDonald's All-American, probably gonna go to the NBA, all that type of stuff. And he's like, what does that say? And the guy's like, yeah, I've arrived, man. I'm a McDonald's All-American. I'm gonna go to the NBA after a year, whatever. And J.J. said, you know, you've never arrived. You're always becoming. And I put that quote on the back of my second book, The Pursuit of Excellence, because it resonates so much for me, Bill. It sounds like it does to you too, that this idea of no matter what happens, there's no arrival. Right? It's this always becoming mindset regardless of what you accomplish or regardless of how good things are going. There's never this arrival date. It's even weird to say, like, have you arrived? I'm like, like, on an airplane. It's like, no, no, I haven't. Like, I'm here in the location, but I have never arrived. I'm always becoming. And I think that's like an ethos, a way of life, a way of living. Like, regardless of what happens, I'm not gonna have an arrival date. I'm just always gonna have a becoming mindset.

14:30Bill Gallagher: You know, I think there's something about that. You think about the key moments in your life. Oh, I graduated from college. Oh, I started my first business. I'm a CEO now. I'm a husband. I'm a dad now. I'm a wife now. I'm a mother now. Oh, my kids are fully grown now. Oh, I made my first million. Oh, now I'm a multimillionaire. Maybe you'll be a billionaire. You know, we have these things and we're like, have this moment of like, oh, I've accomplished something. And you have in fact accomplished something. It's just not, like, permanent. Because I've also lost multiple millions of dollars. Right? And somebody asked me recently. It's like, because I had grown kids and they had younger kids. And they were like, so what's it like to not worry about them anymore? And I just broke into this really uncomfortable long laughter. And I'm like, my kids are both grown, and I'm a grandfather now. And I worry about them all the time. Never worry about them? Dealing with being a dad, I worry about my daughter and her well-being all the time. Like, I worry about every little thing where it never ever ends. And you, like, make some money, you put some in the bank, and then you might lose it tomorrow. And you marry a great person, and then it might all come apart. Like, nothing's handled.

Why high achievers struggle to celebrate their wins

15:54Ryan Hawk: I'm curious, like, this is something I struggle with. I wonder if you do, Bill. I remember after my first book, my book agent sent me this bottle of champagne, and he's like, you know, on pub day, crack this open with your wife. And I was like, okay. And that bottle of champagne is still sitting in my cabinet, and it's been, you know, now three books have been published, and I haven't done it yet. And I think one of the things that I actually want to get better at, I wonder if you are, is celebrating from time to time, is actually pausing for a second when things go well and enjoying it as opposed to just going on to the next thing. And I really struggle, and I found others do too. I'm curious, have you figured that out?

16:38Bill Gallagher: I think it's a practice to develop, like a personal discipline. I love celebrating. I have a really similar story. We bought our house. I'm in the same house that I've been in for twenty-eight years now, I think. And I never thought I'd be in it this long, but here I am. And our real estate agent gave us a bottle of Dom Pérignon champagne in a box, you know, nice, you know, it's a brand and all that. And she gave it to us, and she's like, and we thought, oh, this is really nice, and we're so busy with this and that. And then we put it aside. We thought we'll find a special occasion to drink it. Anyway, we moved it around, and we remodeled things and did whatever. We moved it, we moved it. And then at some point, we had moved it to this cabinet, and then we were changing things, we were painting the cabinets, and we're like, oh my god, look at this. We should open this and drink it. So we finally opened this thing, like, twenty years later. And, you know, if you store something right, it might be good. But this clearly was not stored like that because it was so awful.

17:44Bill Gallagher: And I think sometimes, like, why wait to celebrate? Drink that Dom now. Like, pop the Cristal and lean into it because, you know, you might not have it tomorrow. Saving, like, you want to have savings for a brighter day. You want to put things aside. You want to have reserves. Right? That is how we get return on luck is by being able to take advantage of things in Jim Collins' lesson. But there's noticing and appreciating the wins of every single day, of every single period, of every week, of every month, every quarter. Like, might as well take stock of them now. Like, we say more cowbell. That's why I have cowbell on my sound effects here, like, and the air horn. Like, we don't celebrate enough on the regular. Right? And just enjoy whatever. And sometimes people is like, I don't really know what I have to celebrate. I'm like, I know. I'm celebrating that you're still standing. I'm still celebrating that you're still here. I'm celebrating that you haven't quit or died. Right? Like, that's worth celebrating some days. Some weeks, that's a powerful thing to celebrate.

18:49Ryan Hawk: You find, though, that that takes intentional work because, like, a lot of high achievers just go on to the next thing without even kind of pausing for a second to do it. And this takes, like, coaching to make sure you do it.

19:03Bill Gallagher: In my coaching conversations, in my daily huddles, in my weekly meetings, in our quarterly meetings, always open very early, if not right away, with best news. Tell us your good news. Let's start with the good news because there'll be plenty of time to talk about the shitty things and the breakdowns. We'll dive into that soon, but let's notice because otherwise, working with you and for you is just a slog of problems forever and ever. Right?

19:32Ryan Hawk: Yeah. That's a good point, man. I like starting and ending with good stuff. Right? Or, like, what you're grateful for. Like, good prompts like that can be helpful to, like, shift your mind. And, also, I found too by using prompts like that, it almost conditions your mind to be on the lookout for good things. If you know you're gonna celebrate or you know you're going to share good news or you know you're gonna talk about things that you're grateful for, it, like, works as this forcing function to be seeking out reasons to be grateful or to be seeking out people doing it the right way or to be seeking out, like, good things happening because we know, especially if you get caught on most social media platforms, they are designed by brilliant people for us to be enraged and upset and to engage that way. And that, if you're not careful, can get caught. Right? And if you're not careful, you can get caught down those rabbit holes as opposed to saying, no, let's look for all of the good stuff out there. I feel like that could be really helpful.

Using gratitude prompts to shift your mindset

20:34Bill Gallagher: Yeah. Gratitude. You know, I had a touching acknowledgment from a family member recently. He was graduating high school. And he said, I really appreciated that one time you took me for a walk, and I was going through some stuff. And you said, look around you. What color are the leaves? What color is the sky? What do you hear? Like, he's like, just get out of your own head and look around the world and find something to appreciate, to enjoy, to savor, and that, like, to get out of your own, like, misery for a moment and, like, such a useful practice, gratitude. I have a gratitude reminder to this day, like, twenty years later in my calendar. I used to have two, and it just says grateful. But when it comes up, I pause for a minute, and I'm like, what is there to be grateful for? And there's always something. And I sometimes I am grateful, like, actively to someone else or sometimes it's just in my own head. But that moment of, like, what is it that I appreciate here? You know? Like, looking and, oh, see somebody post about their house and be like, yeah, their house is nicer than my house. Or, you know, like, their vacation's better than my vacation. Right? Instead of going, look at this amazing life I live.

21:47Ryan Hawk: Yeah. Yeah. I like too in addition to that, whenever you're thinking something positive about somebody or something, like, tell them. Send them a note. Call them. Speak positively behind their back to other people, like, and tell them. Like, make it part of, like, what you do. And so that can be a text. That can be pretty simple. But getting in the habit of just telling people like, wow, like, that was amazing, that thing that you did, or how they positively impacted you, like, letting them know. I found to deepen relationships and just be, like, a mutual feel good. You're obviously gonna lift up somebody else's day by letting them know that something that they do has impacted you in a positive way, but it also feels good to tell people that. Like, it, I think it's good on both ends. So that's like another thing to always be thinking about of, like, oh, if I see it, I'm gonna say it. If I think it, I'm gonna tell them. And I feel like it, that's brought some joy to my life as well as others.

22:52Bill Gallagher: Yeah. Anything that you can do to add and elevate a little joy because there's plenty of things that are gonna give you a little heartache. Heartache and heartburn, there's always gonna be coming around. Tell us about why you launched your podcast. I think that's an interesting,

23:12Bill Gallagher: I think I reflect often on why I launched mine.

Launching a podcast as a leadership PhD program

23:17Ryan Hawk: I'd love to hear your story.

23:17Bill Gallagher: Yeah. I was working full time in a leadership role at a company called LexisNexis, and I just finished getting my MBA.

23:28Ryan Hawk: Did they start the company LexisNexis?

23:30Bill Gallagher: Oh, yeah. Yeah. They're doing great. Use them all the time.

23:30Ryan Hawk: Yeah. Are you a lawyer?

23:35Bill Gallagher: No. I would use it for different business research. It was a great resource once upon a time to look for specific stuff.

23:44Ryan Hawk: Yeah. Still doing well, especially in the legal space, which is who I worked with. I worked in sales. And anyway, I was in a leadership role. I got my MBA. Company reimbursed me for that, and I thought, well, this is a waste to not go back to school again because they'll reimburse me for it. But it took me six years to get my MBA. I was working full time. I had to hire tutors. It's brutally hard. I'm a communication major undergrad. And I thought, is there a better way to get some form of a leadership PhD program as opposed to going to a school or university and applying and going through the process of taking the courses that they're telling me I have to take as opposed to me choosing my own professors that I could learn from directly. And I would publish those conversations and hopefully others would learn along with me. And this is before—ten years ago podcasts were obviously a thing, but not quite as big as they are now. So it wasn't as big of a thing. But anyway, I thought also give me a chance for people to say yes to talk to me if I say this is a podcast episode as opposed to me saying, hey, I just wanna talk to you, especially if they don't know who I am. But fortunately, this kind of idea of creating my leadership PhD program for myself, following my own curiosity where I'm choosing all of the professors for this PhD program with the idea to publish what I was learning along the way so that I wouldn't really be a teacher. I would just be a learner and the listeners could learn along with me. And that's still what's happening now ten years later for my show. And so to me, that's why I started it. I had no intention to leave corporate America or to leave my job. I didn't expect anything to come of it other than hopefully people would learn with me. But in 2017, that's where I was afforded the opportunity to where enough demand was coming in for speaking and consulting and advising and working with leaders and leadership teams that I was able to leave. And now since 2017, I've been doing this full time.

25:40Bill Gallagher: Yeah. It's a great story and a great path about leaning into some particular opportunity and then finding yourself in it, having it grow and develop from there. I was already a coach for a couple of years, and I was thinking about how do I build my reputation as a coach and following and impact. And I was grappling with this BHAG that I'd created for ten years out, and I had no idea how to get there. But I knew it was theoretically possible. And I was in a peer group, CEO peer group, and one of the other guys in it was this guy, Jordan Harbinger, who's a bit of a podcaster. And this was earlier in his career also. And Jordan was like, Bill, you have a background in radio. You're a former radio DJ and radio executive. And instead of doing a book or a blog, why don't you just start a show? He's like, that's how we run our whole business. At the time, he was running the business that it was a different version than the Jordan Harbinger Show today. But I'm like, oh, that's an interesting idea. Right? Can I—the same kind of thing? I'm like, oh, it was easy and fun for me by comparison to where writing was a little harder and a little less enjoyable. And I'm like, oh, I could do that. Right? And then, of course, that led to many things. And now we've had over a million downloads of our show. It's grown over time.

27:12Ryan Hawk: That's awesome. When was that conversation with Jordan?

27:16Bill Gallagher: That was probably early 2016.

27:19Ryan Hawk: That's amazing. Wow. And what was the BHAG at the time?

27:23Bill Gallagher: Well, 2014, I think I created the BHAG to be to impact 5 million business leaders before I retire. So I'm like, how do I reach, help in some way, 5 million business leaders? And at the time, I was coaching about 10 companies and doing some workshops. So I would coach 10 companies. So that's eight leaders, 80 leaders for an average of two years for any given period. And then maybe a couple thousand more people in workshops over the course of the year, but that felt really good and was good by comparison, but that isn't 5 million. So I created this 5 million thing, and I'm like, I know it will require a breakthrough, and I don't know how or where that's gonna come from. And then the show started to build and grow from there.

28:12Ryan Hawk: Wow, man. That's awesome. That's cool. I find those types of mastermind groups where you can develop real, genuine, mutually beneficial relationships with hopefully a number of people to be really powerful. Right? To just find a way—if you find the right ones, to find a way to connect with people where you're sharing the good stuff, the bad stuff, everything in between. And sometimes you just need some fresh eyes and ears to knock some sense into us or at least just to provide an idea, and maybe a little bit more than that to nudge us to go in a direction. So that's really cool that you took the step to be a part of a group and then certainly got that advice from Jordan and then ran with it.

28:56Bill Gallagher: Yeah. It's interesting today. Right? I have over 3,000 companies that are in a lesson, a class, a workshop, or something I created or I'm leading live every year. Right? That's a big delta from eight years ago in that conversation.

29:19Ryan Hawk: Massive, man. That seems like a lot to keep up with. Do you have—have you had to really grow your team and scale, I guess, yourself to do this?

29:30Bill Gallagher: Yeah. So there's a lot of people that work on causing that outreach. For each of the workshops, there's teams involved with it. Now I have a core team of about six people that help me. And I would count among that the three or four people at our podcast production company that would be part of that. And then I have folks on marketing and design, website, back office, client management. Then we have a whole bunch of people that run this accelerator program that I create lessons for. And then we have people that produce the big summits and master classes that we do. And then we have a peer group of our own that we have people for. So we have a whole bunch of little parts of it. Right? And I'm just kind of the through line to it. Like, what's the part that I can do easy and effortlessly?

30:20Ryan Hawk: Right? What's your favorite one of those things to do?

30:24Bill Gallagher: The most enjoyable thing by—well, there's two things, I guess, that are most enjoyable, but they all require to work together. So I love the podcast. It is the most fun, easy thing I do. Right? Have a conversation with somebody like you, interesting people, hear stories.

30:43Bill Gallagher: By far the most pleasurable, low effort. Like, just do it. The next one from that is any kind of speaking, master class, summit, that kind of thing. The problem with it is the connection. Like, there's a huge ego boost when you do a big event. You know, you stand on stage or you go on Zoom in front of hundreds of people. It's fun. It's an ego boost. But it's more like entertainment sharing on that end of the spectrum. And so without team and CEO coaching, I don't feel connected to what we do. So I know that there's 2,000 people, roughly, in companies in that accelerator program around the world, but I don't encounter all of them all the time. So I only have a vague sense of what they're doing with our work. Right? And I hear a story here and there, but I know that the scale is bigger. But the connection, the satisfaction comes from like the small little things. Right? That's where I get a sense of it. And then there's the scale. Right? But it's that balance, I think, that makes the difference. Right? I couldn't just do this every day.

31:59Ryan Hawk: Yeah. It's a combination of things. And it feels like I'm with you when it comes to doing the big things to lots of people. Can be fun, and they are fun. But the actual connecting with a person or a small group of people and seeing the difference that maybe all of you can make in each other's lives for the better, like, that is the real juice.

32:14Bill Gallagher: I'm with you, Bill. It feels like a rush. Like, you go talking on stage in front of a thousand people. It's fun. It's heady after you get over your nerves or whatever it is. But then somebody approaches you later, or you're at a table and they say, you know, I heard you speak last year and you said this thing and it stuck with me, and here's what I did with my life or my business. And you're like, thank you so much for saying that. Because until you said that, I'm like, I'm just making noise and hope something sticks.

32:50Ryan Hawk: You're right. You know? You need, we need that fuel, man. You gotta get fueled up. And like, it comes in different forms. But impacting, I feel like whenever anybody thinks of like, what is my actual purpose? Like, what am I trying to do? It usually involves positively impacting other people. Right? Like, whatever the wording is, some form. Yeah. Correct. Right? And so to me, like, I'm with you. Like, when you get the sense that, okay, like I'm doing that, then that is some of the fuel that's needed to keep going, especially in the days when it gets really hard. It's like remembering, like, we're impacting people in a really positive way. Okay, let's go. Let's keep going. We gotta get after it. Gotta keep going. Like, as we said before, we can't stop and be like, okay, we're done. Like, at that point, then I guess you're just done. But to me, yeah, that's super necessary to hear that and then to use it as that fuel.

33:40Bill Gallagher: Well, right. You need a break sometimes. No doubt. You need a break. You're going, going, and you're like, stop. Let me take a walk for a minute. Let me breathe. Let me do whatever. I'll pack things in my schedule some days, and then I'll be like, wait a minute. Like, move some things, cancel things. I need to go take a walk. Like, I'm not being effective anymore. I'm not being creative. I need to mix it up a little bit, that kind of thing. So when we do shows like this, recording days in studio, I'll take a walk in between the shows because I need to clear my head for a minute. I'll go down and say hi to my wife before I come back up and start up again.

34:16Ryan Hawk: We have to be intentional about understanding what we need first. You can't, you're not gonna be really effective at leading anybody else if you're not good at leading yourself first. And that's always in progress. Right? Always figuring that out. And if you're not fueled up, you're not gonna be really effective for anybody else. So it seems selfish, but it's actually not to take care of yourself first and understand what you need in order to be your best self for when you show up to do your work or to be there with your family.

34:49Bill Gallagher: What does it mean to you today? Like, what does learning look like to you today? What are all the forms and shapes that it takes in your life now? What do you do to learn now?

Teaching as the deepest form of learning

35:03Ryan Hawk: You know, I studied a lot from Charlie Munger, who recently passed away, about the idea of becoming a learning machine. It flows well given my podcast called the Learning Leader Show. So like, it's all about leadership and learning and being a learning machine. And really, like, that is about going to bed a little bit wiser than you were when you woke up. And that is a prompt I do like to ask myself at the end of each day is, like, what did I do today to intentionally be a little bit wiser now that I'm going to bed than I was when I woke up? Like, there's really just like a few parts to it when I think for me. Like, I have to constantly be taking time to fuel my intake engine. Reading, listening to podcasts, speaking with people who are far wiser than me that I can learn from. I think you also have to take that learning and put it into practice. You can't just be someone who takes notes and reads all the time. We have to take that from theory to practice. So put it in action, run experiments, actually do stuff. That's when we really learn. My background's in sports, and I certainly learned a lot from watching guys ahead of me and older than me play. But I learned the most when I was under the bright lights with 11 guys trying to kill me. Like, that's when I really learned. I think you gotta do it. Then you also have to, as you mentioned before, the step that a lot of us skip is we gotta pause. We gotta have some silence. We gotta reflect. We have to analyze, like, what worked, what didn't, from those experiments I ran based on what I learned. And then I think the fourth stage that really brings it home to ensure I'm learning is I need to teach it to somebody else. And teaching, I found, to be one of the greatest tools in the world for learning. So if I'm gonna go up and get on a stage, like, I'm gonna prepare like crazy. I'm gonna understand what I'm talking about. I'm gonna get very clear on my point of view, on my perspective, because I'm trying to be useful. I'm trying to help people. And so the process of the preparation for those big moments, whether you're working with a leadership team, you're giving a speech, whatever it may be, working with a mentee, when I teach, when I'm put in a position to teach, I learn a ton through the preparation and then through the actual execution of whatever the event is, and then the post-event feedback I get of, okay, what was most useful, what wasn't useful, what was good, what wasn't good. Right? Getting feedback from people that I'm teaching. And so I think that's like a flywheel. Right? Fuel the intake engine, run experiments.

37:14Ryan Hawk: Reflect, think, create some silence, teach it to somebody else. Around and around we go. And I found if I do that, those are good days. Those are good days to go to bed a little bit wiser than I was when I woke up. And so I try to make as many of those days as possible. And when I do, it seems like things go well, and I impact people in a positive way.

37:35Bill Gallagher: It's interesting. The teaching and coaching deepens your learning. Like, you have to know the basics of something. I, from time to time, I get asked to teach something that I have not a deep, or don't think I have a deep knowledge of. Right? And some of they'll say, hey, could you teach us some things from this book? And I'm like, me? I do know the book. Let me let me go look at it again. Let me come back to you and see what I have, right? And then I'll go look at it, and I'll realize, like, so many things. Okay, actually, the concepts of that book are really simple. The mix of them is a little bit different, but they're like, yes, I know these things deeply. And so then I'll construct a lesson around the book and the ideas from it or whatever and an exercise, maybe a worksheet or that kind of thing. And I'm like, I could put all that together. And then in the process, though, I'm teaching myself those ideas that I did know well, but in the language and the mix and the presentation of that book. And then by the time I do it with them, like, I've leveled up, and then I take it a little further. And now I can use it again and again with other people. But just preparing to teach and to coach is like levels you up in things for sure that you have to have some level of them already.

38:43Ryan Hawk: Big time. I mean, you have to have some level of them already, but for sure. But that's why I think, like, one of the questions when I work with leaders, I ask them is when is the next time you're going to teach somebody something? Like, when are you going to teach? It can be anything. Like, you could teach your, you could just go over, you read a book, and you're going to synthesize the information you learned and share it with your wife or whatever. But when's the next time you're going to actively teach somebody? And that's a prompt every time we talk because I wanted to get in their mind, I need to be regularly teaching. Right? Like, and to think about that teaching and to prepare for that teaching and to share, because that's when it cements a lot of learning. It's like, that's why writing books is really hard, but it's a, again, it's a project I sign up for as a forcing function to learn, because when you get the thoughts out of your head onto the page, it forces you to be very clear on what you believe. And so I don't fully know what I believe or what I've even learned about a topic until I write about it. And so my first book was called Welcome to Management. I was like, oh, I know this. I got this. You know? And when you do the book proposal, you only write a couple sample chapters, right. And then you get the book deal and they're like, okay, finish the book. And you've written 10,000 words and you gotta write another 50. Well, I didn't fully realize how little I knew about the topic I claimed to know a lot about until, and the publisher obviously thinks I know about, until I started, like, okay, it's time to write this thing. And so that's why I push leaders to teach and I push them to write, because it forces clarity. And I don't know about you, Bill, but from a leadership perspective, when you have a leader that isn't really like a very clear thinker, they're probably not a great communicator. And it's really tough to lead if you're not a clear thinker and you're not a good communicator. So those are skills that, again, we're never going to be perfect. So I think we always have to be working on them in order to effectively lead other people. And if we're working with leaders, we gotta push them to do it because they can get caught up in the day to day fires that they're dealing with at their company or whatever it may be. So I kind of act as an accountability person to make sure, like, they're working on the fundamentals and the skills that they need to develop to be really effective.

40:56Bill Gallagher: You know, I'm having a thought as you're speaking about all this about a swirl of things that I would bucket all as permission that we're not speaking about. And I think there's not necessarily permission to lead, permission to teach, or coach. And you mentioned spouse, but even our employees, I think a lot of times as leaders, we go right in to coach, teach, train them in some way or even lead them, and they're not interested in that. They're not, and then they reject us. And for sure, our spouses and our kids do on the regular reject that input. And I think a lot of times people who see or strive or feel like they should be leading and teaching and coaching, try to do it in a place of no agreement, in a place of no invitation. Right? And that's a, like, a regular thing that I think is important to, like, check in on. Can I teach you? Can I coach you on this matter? And sometimes the answer is no. Or sometimes it's unconsciously no, but then by asking, they say, oh, okay. And then they put themselves in a mindset that's receptive to it. But I don't know what your experience is with permission and that kind of thing, but we've been talking all around it as if it's assumed that we can teach or coach.

Getting permission before you try to coach someone

42:23Ryan Hawk: No, I think there's gotta be a level of commitment on somebody else to want it. And the timing isn't always going to be right with everybody. With a number of the groups we do, we'll have as part of the pre-launch of any engagement is ensuring some level of commitment on the other side that you want it. And it's not like the end of the world if you're not, if now is not the right time or if there's a group of 20 and a few of them are like, you know what? Like, I'm not fully ready to commit to this. I don't want to do this. And I think we'd, I'd rather learn that on the front end than have people be kind of dragged along even though they don't, this is not the right time for them or they don't want to be a part of it. So I think working with companies, there is a pre-launch portion of that kind of permission in a sense of saying, are you sure that you want this? Are you committed to this? Is now the right time to do this? And if not, it's okay. But let's get that, let's, like, let's work on that on the front end to ensure it is, and then we go. And I learned that probably the hard way, Bill, is because you just kind of, like, assume that or I assume that. And then you realize, oh, this is not the right moment or the right time for for these few people. Let's let's pick that up some other time. And for the ones who are ready and are committed, let's go with them now. And yeah, I agree with you. I think that permission on the front end makes it a much

43:50Ryan Hawk: a much more fruitful and better relationship longer term.

43:53Bill Gallagher: Sometimes people will ask you. They'll say, hey, boss, dad, honey, tell me about this thing. Fill me in. And there's a clear opening for something. But a lot of times you see a problem and then you just go in trying to teach somebody something and they're like, what are you doing, man? Get out of my business. Get out of my room.

44:18Ryan Hawk: So true. Yep. I'm with you.

44:21Bill Gallagher: It's a good conversation. Ryan Hawk, learningleader.com, if you want to know more, website, podcast, books. Learningleader.com is Ryan's website to go to. It's been a great conversation. Thanks for coming on and talking about leaders and your experience and sharing all about that. I really appreciate our conversation.

44:37Ryan Hawk: Thank you, Bill. Yeah, it's good to be with you, man. I appreciate you having me. Thank you so much.

44:37Bill Gallagher: Reminder to our listeners, if you want to come to one of our workshops, we do them on Zoom once a month. And we have a free download course that you can take about how do you move through the different stages of scaling from the early stages of just getting started through building your leadership team and then adding lots of people and going nationwide or worldwide, all that and more. There's a course in the four stages and three secrets of the biggest scale ups distilled from working with thousands of companies over ten years. So you'll find all that and more at scalingcoach.com along with this show and every other show like it, 500 or more at scalingcoach.com. Thanks again to my friend and mentor, Verne Harnish, created the whole Scaling Up framework that we use in our work. And to the folks at StoryOn, Seth, Cameron, Christel, who get our show ready in and out every week. Thanks again, everyone, for watching, for listening. Until we talk to you next time, keep scaling.

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46:36Bill Gallagher: Thanks for listening today. One last thing. If anything in this episode hit home, my book digs into it further. Busy Is Broken. Do Less. Scale More. It's all about how to stop drowning in work and build a business and a team that scales without you. Available right now with content samples at busyisbroken.com. Go grab it. Be less busy.