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The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

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Leaders are learners. The best leaders never stop working to make themselves better. The Learning Leader Show Is series of conversations with the world's most thoughtful leaders. Entrepreneurs, CEO's, World-Class Athletes, Coaches, Best-Selling Authors, and much more.Copyright zxs Career Success Economics Management Management & Leadership
Episodes
  • 710: Ravi Gupta - The Anti-Dabbler's Guide to Mastering One New Skill Every Year, Why Presence Isn't Enough, Bourdain's Masterclass in Humil

    710: Ravi Gupta - The Anti-Dabbler's Guide to Mastering One New Skill Every Year, Why Presence Isn't Enough, Bourdain's Masterclass in Humil
    11 Oct 2026
    The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk www.LearningLeader.com New Book - The Price of Becoming www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming Connect with me on socials Twitter/X - @RyanHawk12 Instagram - @RyanHawk12 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. He almost never hits the unreasonable one right away, but he often gets there eventually. The pairing is the point. Tim Ferriss's observation on why that works: there's less competition for big crazy goals, because so few people think that way anymore. December is the meta-learning month. Thanksgiving to New Year's, Ravi wraps up the current year and pulls together the next one: the books, the experts, the sequence, what it actually means to be great at the thing. Don't start researching it in August. He has next year's candidates in his head by late summer, but he refuses to buy books or line up coaches until December. Planning next year's passion is an elaborate way to avoid this year's. Output goals need a skill set attached. Example: hiking an outrageous number of national parks. Ravi's counter: keep the output goal, but build the skills underneath it. Pitching a tent, starting a fire, navigation, survival prep. Then the year leaves you with something beyond a number. Each year becomes a chapter. 2020: surfing. 2021: tennis. Childhood is memorable because it's divided into grades with names attached. Adult years blur into one undifferentiated stretch, and Ravi thinks that blur is part of why people get depressed looking backward and forward. The reframe on aging: turning 50 in seven years is only grim if those are seven blank years. Seven more passions is a different sentence entirely. Join an accountability group. The Invisible Posse is a group of readers all pursuing their own skills at the same time, at readinvisiblelist.com. New challenge every two weeks, a leaderboard, points for doing the work. The list is a solo project. The accountability isn't. Do the thing publicly in the first two weeks. The group's first challenge was to do your new skill in front of people immediately. The winner was a man learning to sing who sat his cousins down on vacation and performed a whole song. Once you're past being judged, you're doing it instead of planning it. The second challenge is the one most people skip: get feedback from someone who actually knows how to do it, then do it again. Protecting your time is on you. From Neil Strauss, in a writing group Ravi joined during his writing year: "It's nobody's responsibility but your own to protect your time." The complaint that nobody respects your boundaries is a complaint about your own boundaries. Which means the conversation has to be explicit. You take Saturday, I take Sunday. One of us has mornings. I've carved out 45 minutes and you know about it. Writing is especially hard to defend because it doesn't look like work. Treat your session time like a flight. Strauss again, this time on writer's block. Nobody waits to feel motivated before going to the airport. You wake up early, sit in the security line, get wedged next to someone taking up too much room, and you never treat any of it as optional. Put the sessions on your calendar and defend them the same way, whatever your thing is. The question that ended ...
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    1 hr and 3 min
  • 709: Vanessa Van Edwards - How to Connect with Anyone, Master Small Talk, and Ask the 9 Power Questions That Deepen Every Relationship

    709: Vanessa Van Edwards - How to Connect with Anyone, Master Small Talk, and Ask the 9 Power Questions That Deepen Every Relationship
    4 Oct 2026
    The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk www.LearningLeader.com New Book: The Price of Becoming www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming Connect with me on X: @RyanHawk12 Instagram: @RyanHawk12 LinkedIn - Ryan Hawk Receive "Mindful Monday" (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: 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 the work that the generic one can't. Katie Couric never asks "what do you do?" She asks "What do you like to do?" Vanessa found it in Couric's memoir. One-word swaps have major potential. Turn small talk into a treasure hunt. Everyone has gold. You don't know what it is yet. Your job is to ask the questions that find it. Treasure hunting also kills the awkwardness. Vanessa calls herself a recovering awkward person. Her problem for years was that her goal in conversation was to be impressive. No good conversation comes from that. Curiosity has to be innate. Vanessa thinks nearly everything is teachable. Not this. If you aren't actually curious about the person, the techniques will read as manipulative, and eventually you get found out. The rule on using someone's name: if you're already thinking about it, use it. If you're not thinking about it, don't. That's the whole test. Three levels of connection, and you have to go in order. From Dr. Dan McAdams. Level one is general traits: occupation, hometown, family status. Level two is personal concerns: goals, motivations, values, what drives and worries someone. Level three is self-narrative. Put your work relationships in level two. That's the practical instruction. Most people stall at level one and assume level two isn't work-appropriate. It is, and conversations get more engaged, collaborative, and productive once you're there. Level three is about frames, not facts. Two people can have identical facts and completely different stories about what those facts mean. Self-narratives are self-creating. People who see themselves as lucky approach the world as lucky people. They spot more opportunities, think more laterally, and create more surface area for good things. Unlucky people do the same thing in reverse. Narratives are editable. They're not Enneagram or Myers-Briggs. They shift, usually on an annual scale, most often through conversation with someone you trust. Journaling alone rarely does it. The five re-storying questions. Who am I now? Who do I want to be? How do I get from here to there? How do I make change stick? Who can help me? Be a loud liker. A friend asked Vanessa to assess a date named Tim. Her read: meh. Before she could say so, the friend told her Tim had loved her, thought she was fun, and bought all her books. Vanessa's opinion of Tim reversed on the spot. She was embarrassed by how fast. The lesson from Tim: when someone clearly likes you, you feel at ease, you feel more likable, and you like them back. Very few of our impressions of people are fixed. You can't like too loudly if it's authentic. Vanessa's hot take. Gushing is fine. The only failure mode is inauthenticity, or liking so loudly you prevent the conversation from happening. Warmth, then competence. Susan Fiske's research, quoted directly: "Competence without warmth leaves people feeling suspicious." Leading with data and numbers reads like you're hiding something. Warmth is the lubricant that lets people accept your ...
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    53 min
  • 500: AJ Hawk, Keith Hawk, & Pat McAfee - Influential Leaders, Keys To A Great Partnership, Living Life As A Movie, & Celebrating 500 Episode

    500: AJ Hawk, Keith Hawk, & Pat McAfee - Influential Leaders, Keys To A Great Partnership, Living Life As A Movie, & Celebrating 500 Episode
    21 Nov 2022
    Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of Mindful Monday. Join 10's of thousands of other Learning Leaders to receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right... Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12 https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 Notes: AJ Hawk is the all-time leading tackler in Green Bay Packers history. He won a National Champion at Ohio State University and was voted captain of the Green Bay Packers Super Bowl-winning team (2010-20110 He was inducted into the Ohio State University Hall of Fame in 2019. Currently, he is a co-host on The Pat McAfee Show which airs weekdays on YouTube. (AJ is my younger brother) Keith Hawk spent 30+ years as a sales leader. At one point, more than 1,000 people were in his charge. Keith now regularly speaks around the world on such topics as Leadership, Principled Negotiation, Consultative Selling, and Building Thriving Corporate Cultures. He is the co-author of two popular business books, Get-Real Selling, and Terrific – Five Star Customer Service. (Keith AKA "Pistol" is my dad) Pat McAfee is a future billionaire and the founder/CEO of Pat McAfee Industries. He's the host of "The Pat McAfee Show" which airs weekdays on YouTube from 12:00-3:00. Pat recently agreed to a deal with FanDuel which has them spending more than $140 million to be the title sponsor of his YouTube progrum. Prior to launching his media career, Pat was named the "punter of the decade" from his time booming balls for the Indianapolis Colts. Pat is also a WWE color commentator, professional wrestler (he once wrestled Stone Cold Steve Austin), and analyst on ESPN's College GameDay. In WWE, fans and critics often deem Pat as one of the greatest color commentators of all time for his humorous comments, his energy, and his charisma.
    • "When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That's a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it… Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again." - Steve Jobs quote that Pat has hanging up in his studio.
    • "I view life as a movie." - Pat McAfee
    • Keys to a great marriage:
      • Pistol - "On our wedding bands, we had "C, C, C" engraved. They stand for:
        • Communication
        • Consideration
        • Cuddling
    • Questions from fans of The Learning Leader Show:
    • Haley Erickson – CPA: What an achievement! I glean so much from your work and am thankful you share this material with the world. My question: Who is one of the most impactful people in your life and how have they impacted you?
    • Rob Stevens, Leadership Consultant: This is very personal to me. I'm curious what your dad would say about adding value as more and more people get beyond 60. I see a lot of older people, with a lot of wisdom and experience, either retiring or getting pushed to the side. I'd be interested if he has any ideas on how those of us that are over 60 can continue to make significant contributions. It's kind of the question that you like to ask about advice for kids just out of college wanting to make a difference only the other end of the spectrum.
    • David Salvador - VP at Gogo Aviation: Congratulations Ryan! "What is the most impactful investment you can make in yourself for your career?"
    • The draft: It's your birthday dinner. None of your family or close friends can make it. You can invite any person in the world and they will be there. Who are your 5?
      • Pistol: Steve Martin, Pete Rose, Paul McCartney, Al Michaels, James Taylor
      • Ryan: The Rock, Dave Chappelle, Dave Matthews, Peyton Manning, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Taylor Swift
      • AJ: Tom Cruise, Amelia Earhart, Sean Casey, Tiger Woods, Tim Dillon
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    1 hr and 24 min
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