The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk
www.LearningLeader.com
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 his own family.
Living a long time is a means, not an end. It's not the goal of life. It's what allows you to be present, engaged, and useful for the years you have.
Biohacking is a lie: It suggests you know better than millions of years of evolution and the entire medical profession. The body isn't about maxing. It's about balance. Too much immune response gives you autoimmunity. Too little makes you sick. The body finds health in the median.
You're not going to be perfect over decades. Wellness isn't a four-minute figure skating routine graded on execution. It's a lifetime practice. So build habits you enjoy and can sustain without thinking about them.
Zeke's six simple rules for a long and healthy life:
Don't be a schmuck. Avoid activities riskier than driving. Smoking, vaping, base jumping, climbing Everest.
Talk to people. The number one predictor of a long, happy life.
Expand your mind. Travel. Talk to the chef. Learn something new.
Eat your ice cream. Moderation over perfection. Fermented foods and fiber.
Move. Aerobic, strength, and flexibility. All three.
Sleep like a baby. You can't will it. But you can create the conditions.
The Harvard Adult Development Study followed people for 85 years. John F. Kennedy was in it. Ben Bradlee was in it. The finding: close friends and being married correlated with the healthiest, longest, happiest lives. Not exercise. Not diet. Relationships.
Having no close friends is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. That's how bad loneliness is for you. It's not just psychological. It's physical.
Introverts get the same happiness boost from social interaction as extroverts. A University of Chicago study by Nicholas Epley found that introverts assume they won't enjoy talking to strangers on their commute. They were wrong. When they did it, they were just as happy as extroverts.
Take the headphones off. Zeke has been telling people this since the iPod era. Random encounters increase your surface area for luck, learning, and connection. You never know who you're going to meet or what they might tell you.
To be interesting, you have to be interested. Zeke asks to meet the chef at every great restaurant. He asks his Ethiopian Uber driver which tribe he's from. He talks to the person on the plane. It's virtuous. Good for you AND good for them.
Zeke's hero is Ben Franklin. Franklin came back to America at 80 after negotiating the end of the Revolutionary War. The first thing he did was build a library for his curiosity and a dining room for his social dinners. That's the way to live.
The wellness trifecta: hosting a dinner party with curious people. You're eating good food. You're getting together with people. Your mind is being stretched by great conversation. Three benefits from one activity.
Zeke is anti-wellness-industrial-complex. Peptides from your corner store: disaster, unregulated, no idea what's in them. Testosterone replacement therapy without a real deficiency: bad idea, accelerates prostate cancer. Growth hormone for aging: promotes cancers. That's being a schmuck.
Sleep is the one wellness practice you can't will yourself into. You can only build the conditions for it. Dark room. Cool temperature. No caffeine or alcohol eight hours before bed. Phone in another room. Read a book. Everything else is up to your body.
Ice cream actually decreases your risk of type 2 diabetes. The fat content softens the glycemic response. Plus, you usually eat it with other people. Social eating matters.
Zeke's champagne moment a year from now: finishing his next book on how to fix the American healthcare system, and turning 70.
Reflection Questions
Are you optimizing for length of life, or for the quality of years you actually get? 
When was the last time you turned your headphones off, introduced yourself to a stranger, or asked to meet the chef? 
Who are the friends you rely on for social interaction? Not casual acquaintances, but the ones who lift your health, longevity, and happiness. When did you last make plans with them?
More Learning
#607 - Dr. Meg Meeker - Raising Resilient Kids (Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters)
#690 - Austin Kleon - Why Activated Leaders Win
#682 - Will Guidara - Adversity is a Terrible Thing to Waste

The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk www.LearningLeader.com
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 already catastrophically impacted the culture.
Drown-proofing is not an exercise in being drown-proof. It's an exercise in self-control. You bob up and down in a pool for an hour with your hands tied behind your back and your feet bound. If you panic, you sink. If you stay calm and control your breathing, you can do it indefinitely. The test occurs in the water, but it has almost nothing to do with the water itself.
The world is chaotic. That doesn't mean you have to be. When everything around you is going sideways, walk yourself back. What can I actually control? My breathing. My self-talk. My priorities. My next move.
The circle of influence vs. the circle of concern. Draw a line down the middle of a legal pad. On the left, write everything you're worried about, working on, occupied by. That column will be huge. On the right, write what you actually have direct control over. You'll only be able to write one thing: yourself.
The most effective leadership tool is mentorship. Andy's mentor Dave Hall gave him "just the perfect amount of rope to hang myself, and then maybe he'd help me get it around my neck just a little bit." Dave would let him fall short, then crush him, then sit there and facilitate what he needed to fill the gap.
A high standard is a finely sharpened blade. It can cut in both directions. Andy's mentor, Dave Hall, ultimately died by suicide. One reason Andy believes it happened is Dave couldn't hold himself to the same standard anymore, and it destroyed him. Have grace for yourself. Not every goal is worth your life.
Focus on post-traumatic growth, not post-traumatic stress. Trauma doesn't have to destroy you. If you take the time and energy to work your way through it, it can turn you into a better version of yourself.
Motivation can be outsourced. Discipline cannot. Motivation is like the tide. It comes in and out. Discipline is doing the things you need to do regardless of how you feel.
Win the micro-battles, not the war, in one fell swoop. If you try to attack 10 bad habits overnight, you'll fail. Pick one for a week. Build momentum. Stack days. You win the war via the micro-battles.
If you don't think of yourself as a leader, you'll never step into a leadership void. You'll tell yourself you're not the person. Not qualified. Not capable.
Stop treating leadership like the DMV. You don't show up at the window and challenge the test with no preparation. You crawl, walk, run. You practice. Every interaction is either a micro-deposit or a micro-withdrawal of leadership capital.
Sustained high performers master the basics. They make no attempt to be flashy. They make no attempt to gain 50 yards at a time. They'll do one yard 50 times in a row. If they see a real opportunity with managed risk, they'll go big. Otherwise, one yard. Over and over.
Andy's champagne moment a year from now: being there with the people he loves. "Would you rather have all the things you think you want in life and enjoy them by yourself? Or be surrounded by people who truly love you for who you are? I'm taking the latter every time."
Reflection Questions
What are you allowing in your presence right now that contradicts the standard you say you hold? What's the cost of letting it continue?
If you drew the line down the legal pad today, what would be in your concern column that shouldn't be? Where is your energy going to things you cannot control?
More Learning
#234: Jocko Willink - Why Discipline Equals Freedom
#363: Admiral William McRaven - The Bin Laden Raid, Saving Captain Phillips, & Leadership Lessons for Life
#633: General Stanley McChrystal - On Standard: Choices That Define a Life
Podcast Chapters
00:00 The Price of Becoming - Pre-Order Now! 
01:13 Meet Andy Stumpf 
02:45 "What You Allow in Your Presence Is Your Standard" 
04:30 What You Walk Past in Your Personal Life 
05:59 Why He Wanted to Be a Navy SEAL at 11 Years Old 
08:54 The Difference Between a SEAL and a Team Guy 
11:38 How to Hire Team Guys, Not SEALs 
16:34 The Story Behind Drownproof 
18:23 What Drownproofing Actually Is 
22:09 The Real Lesson Is Self-Control 
25:55 Getting Shot in Iraq 
30:38 Two Years of Rehab and the Return to Combat 
33:58 Learning to Be a SEAL from Dave Hall 
37:31 High Standards Are a Double-Edged Sword 
40:05 Post-Traumatic Growth, Not Just Post-Traumatic Stress 
42:45 Motivation Can Be Outsourced. Discipline Cannot. 
47:20 Win Small Battles, Not the War Overnight 
48:33 If You Don't See Yourself as a Leader, You Never Will 
51:29 How to Practice Leadership Every Day 
54:15 Getting Tricked Into Writing the Book 
55:48 The Joe Rogan Blurb on the Front Cover 
57:38 What the Best Leaders Have in Common 
59:03 The Champagne Question: Being With the People You Love 
01:03:53 EOPC

The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk
www.LearningLeader.com
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 is limiting. Questions illuminate. Once you know something, you stop pursuing it. The questions you ask are the first constraints you put on knowledge.
Get past the touchy-feely. Ask: "Tell me what's screwed up here." Problems are always there. Your job is to be willing to look for them.
Check the cabinets. Living in a 700-square-foot LA apartment with his wife, Clark would open the cabinets and find them swarming with roaches. The building was fumigated. Two months later, they were back. You can move the pots out and stop checking, or you can keep opening the cabinets. Leaders keep opening the cabinets.
Tell people what TO do, not what NOT to do. Rick Neuheisel's lesson. Stop coaching against the bad thing. Manifest what you want to have happen.
Hire bunker guys, not logo people. Logos are easy to change. Hire people who'll fight for you in the bunker when it's hard.
The Michigan Reset. Before his first game as Notre Dame defensive coordinator, Clark told the team's mental performance coach: "We're gonna be down 50 to nothing at halftime. BK's gonna fire me on the spot. Jerome Bettis and Rocket Ismail will be screaming at me in the tunnel." She asked, "Why don't you trust your players? You think this is all about you?"
Have more captains. Clark sits in a room each summer with around 25 players he identifies as leaders. If the people at the leadership table are good, the locker room will be good. The team votes. He draws the line wherever the vote naturally falls.
When you try to go opposite of what you're trying to avoid, you eventually become it. Clark spent his first years at Vanderbilt rejecting the program's past. Going opposite. Then he realized it was just attaching his identity to the very thing he was trying to escape. Now he plots toward the vision instead.
What got you here won't keep you here. As Clark has grown, the program has grown. Once he understood that, he could sit with a player and listen first, instead of looking to them for affirmation.
The mission is winning. Clark scrapped a beautiful, eloquent, unclear mission statement and replaced it with three words. Now every dollar spent, every coach hired, and every player retained is measured against the same lens.
Well-better-learned. Vanderbilt's after-action review for every game and every process. What did we do well? What do we need to do better? What did we learn?
On Alabama week, Clark's team had the best practice he's ever been a part of. His job each week isn't to tell the team the challenges. It's to give them the plan to win. At halftime against the number one team in the country, he kneeled the team down and said, "It's on a platter for you. Go take it." They beat Alabama. 
Stewarding 17-to-22-year-olds means helping them decouple their worth from outcomes. Clark cries in front of his team. His kids are around. His wife is there. His dad is at every practice. The players see a man. A human. A son.
"An asshole in a Nike Tech Fit is still an asshole." In the NIL era, Clark fights to keep the locker room from splitting into a million-dollar club, a $500K club, a $30K club, and a $0 club. What you drive doesn't make a man. NIL value doesn't make a man. The grounding is the work.
Reflection Questions
What are you holding too tightly right now? Whose job are you doing because you don't trust them to do it themselves?
Which cabinet have you stopped checking because you're tired of finding the same problem? 
Fast-forward 15 years. Looking back at this moment from a place of breakthrough, what are you meant to be learning right now that you've been avoiding?
More Learning
#681: Clark Lea - Belief is a Practice
#281: George Raveling - 8 Decades of Wisdom, from Dr. MLK to Michael Jordan
#637: Tom Ryan - Chosen Suffering, Becoming Elite & Life & Leadership 
Podcast Chapters
00:00 The Price of Becoming - Pre-Order Now!
00:47 Welcome Back, Clark Lea
02:38 Taking Over a Winless Vanderbilt Program
04:18 What Losing Taught Clark About Hiring
07:52 The Three Things That Light Clark on Fire About Coaching
10:27 Different Ball, Same Problems: Learning From the Milwaukee Brewers
13:14 Knowledge Is Limiting. Questions Illuminate.
18:09 The Introvert Who Had to Learn to Lead the Room
20:13 Brian Kelly and the Bet on Clark Lea
23:19 Why Clark Has More Team Captains Than Anyone in College Football
28:58 The Transfer Portal Pivot and the Culture Reset
33:58 The Mission Is Winning
34:51 "If We Don't Have $3 Million by December, We Won't Have a Program"
37:26 Why Candice Lee Took a Bet on Him
39:53 Inside Alabama Week: The Best Practice He's Ever Been a Part Of
44:03 The Bye Week Reset: Penalties, Third Down, and the Ball
46:11 Beating the No. 1 Team in the Country
49:50 Replacing Diego Pavia's Locker Room Leadership
51:39 Decoupling Worth and Identity From Outcomes
56:27 Hiring Bunker Guys, Not Logo People
01:01:47 "An Asshole in a Nike Tech Fit Is Still an Asshole"
01:04:47 EOPC

Order my new book - The Price of Becoming
www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming
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 start with you.
Fortune is what happens to you. Luck requires action. Most people confuse the two and miss the chance to claim their agency.
"With my luck, it's gonna rain." Reframe it: "With OUR luck, it's gonna be a beautiful sunny day." The reframe changes what you see. 
Luck seldom sails solo. Most luck comes through other people. Cultivating meaningful relationships is the most underrated lucky behavior.
You don't get a job. You get the keys to the building. The visible work isn't what gets you ahead. The invisible work is.
Between stimulus and response is a choice. (Viktor Frankl) Within the constraints of fortune, agency is everything.
"Tina, you think like a scientist." One sentence from a professor changed Tina's life. Leaders, know the weight of your words.
Twenty years later, Tina wrote that professor a thank-you note. Twenty years after that, his granddaughter wrote back. They had read part of Tina's letter at his funeral.
When a student made a bad decision, Tina's first instinct was to punish. She paused. Said, "Help me understand what happened." The whole community learned what empathy and humility look like in leadership.
Unresolved conflict sucks the energy out of your day. Resolve it. You become taller, lighter, more open to lucky things.
Oliver Greenwald sent Tina a list of 10 ways he could help her with her book. Nothing on the list was exactly what she wanted. She hired him anyway, because of the initiative.
Build the sail to catch the wind.
Build the ship. Your internal work. Values. Story. Goals.
Recruit the crew. The people in your world.
Hoist the sail. What you do every single day.
Your core values are the keel of your ship. Without them, the first strong wind capsizes you.
Keep a failure resume. Document what didn't work and what you'll do differently. Don't perseverate. Move on.
"It's all good in the end. If it's not good, it's not the end." We're always in the middle of the story.
Tina sends thank-you notes every single day. Five or ten minutes. Three or four sentences. Closes the loop. Builds the relationship.
Don't end the dinner without making the next date. Most people drop the ball. Get it on the calendar before you leave.
The instant you think something positive about someone, tell them. Be specific. Text. Email. Call. The instant.
Tina's champagne moment: her newborn granddaughter at one year old. She just learned to turn over and looks so proud of herself.
Reflection Questions
What's on your failure resume right now that you haven't yet extracted the lesson from? Are you perseverating, or moving on?
Whose thank-you note are you going to send today? Specific, genuine, unprompted. 
Where in your life are you waiting for fortune and calling it bad luck? What is the action you've been avoiding because it requires you to put yourself out there?
More Learning
#679: Kat Cole: The Four Mindsets Every Leader Needs
#669: Oz "The Mentalist" Pearlman: Overcoming Rejection, Getting the Reps, and Always Follow Up 
#663: Priya Parker: The Art of Gathering: How We Meet & Why It Matters
Episode Chapters
00:00 The Price of Becoming - Pre-Order Now! 
01:09 Meet Tina Seelig 
02:39 Tina's Dad: A Life of Curiosity at 99 and a Half 
05:14 Becoming a Professional Noticer 
06:54 The Stranger on the Plane Who Became Her Publisher 
11:03 Wear Something That Invites a Conversation 
14:11 Fortune vs. Luck: The Difference Most People Miss 
16:08 The "With Our Luck" Reframe 
21:09 Take the Earbuds Off and Get Out the Door 
23:21 You Don't Get a Job, You Get the Keys to the Building 
27:58 The Sentence That Changed Tina's Life 
28:49 The Thank-You Note Read at a Funeral 
31:52 The Student Who Made a Bad Decision 
34:03 Oliver Greenwald and the List of Ten Ways to Help 
37:04 The Sail Metaphor: How to Catch the Winds of Luck 
39:41 What to Tell the Cynic Who Says "I'm Unlucky" 
43:01 Core Values: The Keel of Your Ship 
45:05 Why You Should Keep a Failure Resume 
47:15 Send a Thank-You Note Every Single Day 
52:06 The Champagne Question: Her Granddaughter at One 
53:36 EOPC

Read 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: 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 donation to a specific village.
Don't be mid. Scott's 11-year-old daughter says nobody wants to be mid. Excellence is a core value. There's a lot of mid out there.
Design everything. The fact cover sheet. The PowerPoint. The website. The package. "We're always dating." If the message comes in an ugly package, you're at a disadvantage before you start.
Treat the donor like a Michelin three-star guest. If a restaurant can think that carefully about a meal, you can think that carefully about a donor who can save a million lives.
The Goldman Sachs partner who changed Scott's paradigm. Before making an eight-figure ask, Scott asked a partner: "How does it feel when people ask for a lot more than you expected?" The expected answer was irritated, offended, put off. The actual answer: "I feel flattered that they think I would be that generous."
People are generous. The well is there. You just have to drill deep enough. Scott has spent 20 years asking for too little. That might be his next obsession.
People give to people, not causes. A dynamic leader who transfers their enthusiasm gets the donation. The cause doesn't. Most of the donations Scott and his wife give are to people, not topics they were already passionate about.
Talk 10% of the time. When Scott meets a donor for the first time, he wants to know their whole life story. Their marriage. Their kids. What they wanted to be when they grew up. Be genuinely curious or don't bother.
Hire for integrity, humility, curiosity, and energy... 16,000 applicants for 36 roles last year. Energy matters most. Someone who can get you fired up about pickleball, Patagonia, or a new running shoe is exactly who you want on the executive team.
The dinner test for hiring: Can you imagine having this person at your home for two hours at dinner? And wanting to keep them for another hour?
Get the whole life story. Scott wants the arc from the beginning to the present in an interview. If someone can't tell their own story coherently, they probably don't know themselves yet.
The 11-year-old with the piggy bank. He told his parents he was going to fund a whole village. They told him to set a realistic goal. He went knocking on doors. He came back with $10,000.
Scott's experience lab in Nashville. A 60-minute immersive tour. A 100-degree room with a treadmill where you carry a 40-pound water vessel. Microscopes that show you parasites. A VR film that ends in celebration. The "give shop," not the gift shop. 53% of visitors donate. 10,000 visitors. $3.9 million raised in year one.
Scott's champagne moment: a single billionaire who picks water. The water sector doesn't have one. Republicans and Democrats agree on it. Atheists and people of faith agree on it. Everyone has to drink.
Reflection Questions
What is the 10X version of your current goal? Where are you asking for too little because the smaller ask felt safer?
Who in your work or life is the Michelin three-star guest, the customer, donor, or partner who deserves your most thoughtful experience design? 
When was the last time you went 10% talking, 90% genuinely curious about someone else's story? 
More Learning: 
#290: Scott Harrison – Redemption, Compassion, & The Transformative Power Within Us
#680: Scott Galloway - Don't Follow Your Passion, Follow Your Talent
#682: Will Guidara - Adversity is a Terrible Thing to Waste

Audio Chapters
00:00 The Price of Becoming - Pre-Order Now!
01:18 Welcome Back, Scott Harrison
02:56 From a $20 Bill to Over $1 Billion Raised
04:59 Why the Goal Should Always Be 10X (or 100X)
07:54 Storytelling: How to Get People to Care About a Problem They Don't Feel
10:30 Being Early to Instagram, Twitter, and VR
16:10 Radical Transparency: The Bank Account That Built Trust
19:51 The Beauty of a Healthy Obsession
21:22 Drilling Deep for the Artesian Wells of Generosity
25:04 What It Feels Like in the Room When Generosity Breaks Through
27:01 "Nobody Wants to Be Mid."
30:56 Design Everything: We're Always Dating
32:13 Treat Your Donor Like a Michelin Three-Star Guest
35:39 Selling With Integrity: Talk 10%, Listen 90%
39:15 16,000 Applicants for 36 Jobs: What Scott Looks For
43:12 The Power of Vulnerability in Hiring
45:39 Inside the Nashville Experience Lab
50:34 The Champagne Question: A Billion-Dollar Vision
52:10 The 11-Year-Old Who Raised $10,000 Door-to-Door
54:25 EOPC