The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

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The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk
This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver. www.InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader
My Guest: Jesse Cole is the owner of the Savannah Bananas. He went $1.8 million in debt, slept on an air mattress, and built a business that is now valued at over a billion dollars. I spent half a day with Jesse in Savannah watching practice, and Jesse gave me a personal tour of their entire operation. It was incredible.
Notes:
Fans First - The sign is on every locker. And leading out to the field, "Tonight is someone's first time seeing our show."
Obsessed/Focused - Banana Ball/Serving people is his life. We didn't talk about hobbies, TV shows, or anything other than what they're doing now and in the future. He's obsessed with what he does and super focused.
Transparent - Jesse just released their full P&L as a private company: revenue, expenses, player salaries, everything. Most businesses guard this religiously. He's completely transparent. I asked why, and he said, "Fans first. They deserve to know everything."
Reps - We went to the field to watch practice. It looked just like a game. Players were dancing all the time. And every single rep they practiced as a trick play (behind the back, through the legs, etc.). They never play normal baseball. You wonder how they are so good on gameday at doing a backflip while catching a fly ball. Because they practice it thousands of times without fans so that when they're there, they put on a great show.
Hiring – "Love your people more than you love your customer." 12,000 people on the waitlist to work for the Bananas. When you hire, have them do a "fans first" essay. Then they write a future essay. 
Always Be Caring, Different, Enthusiastic, Fun, Growing, & Hungry
Fans First: The Counter-Intuitive Decision - Jesse sacrificed $6 million in ticket revenue after a system messed things up for fans. 
Merch – 787,000 fans purchased merchandise in 2025, totaling 1.96 million total items. That means the average person is purchasing ~2.5 items at checkout, with 80% of total sales taking place in person. 621,000 at live shows versus 166,000 online. It's a $50m business!
TV: The Distribution Strategy - Giving Away Value - Jesse insisted on free YouTube streaming even when ESPN wanted exclusivity. Jesse is building a zero-profit secondary ticket market. He's literally giving away things other sports properties would monetize. So, even with all of the team's games still airing for free on YouTube, the Bananas averaged 500,000 viewers on ESPN, The CW, and Roku. The team's most-watched broadcast was a July 4th game at Fenway Park, which averaged 837,000 viewers on ESPN, making it the holiday weekend's most-watched primetime sports broadcast. TV networks want exclusivity, but you demand that the games still be broadcast for free on YouTube (in addition to whatever channel they are on)
Social Media - The Bananas added 12.7 million new social media followers in 2025 alone. That pushes their total social media following across all channels north of 35 million... Roughly 2x more followers than MLB's most popular team, the Yankees, at 18 million.
You have to believe something before you achieve something. Six years ago, Jesse said, "We're gonna sell out Fenway Park," and his team looked at him like he was crazy (they were a college summer baseball team, not even doing tours yet).
You have to get through the messy to get to the great. Their first world tour was brutal: the sound was terrible, the show wasn't great, the game finished in the seventh inning because they didn't have a rule to make it go nine innings.
See what's best for the guest, not what's best for the business. Walt Disney was the first to go into full-length animation, color, sound, and with Disneyland, he focused on one entrance to control the experience, custom rides, and invested in a castle and landscaping, which made no money.
Go where others won't go. Sam Walton went to small towns, and no one paid attention to him for the first five to ten years.
It's somebody's first time every night. Fans wait three years on a waitlist to come to a game, so Jesse doesn't care if you're having a bad day. That's their first time.
Control the entire experience. Walt learned he couldn't control the experience when people watched his movies at a theater (it could be dirty, and people might not be nice), so he built Disneyland.
Who do we work for? Fans. Jesse opened the books completely (numbers, player salary, merch sales, everything) because they have a responsibility and accountability to their fans.
We have to feel our mistakes. When they sent a wrong email to 44,000 fans instead of 4,000, it cost them $6 million to take care of those fans with tickets (more than the company brought in their first five years).
We need to have bigger failures. If we're not trying things big enough, we won't have bigger failures and mistakes that cost us a lot more in the future.
Turn mistakes into moments. After the $6 million email mistake, Jesse set up a Zoom call with all 44,000 people, had everyone turn their cameras on, and apologized while looking at every single person.
Build something you wish existed for yourself. Jesse played baseball until he couldn't anymore. He put so much pressure on himself that it wasn't fun anymore, and he was told he wasn't good enough.
Design every second of the first-day experience. When players showed up, they went to a parking lot with a DJ at 8:30 AM. Three buses arrived with balloons, hundreds of people lined the streets cheering, Man-nanas served munchkins on silver platters, a custom hype video played, the host introduced from the roof, and fireworks went off.
Every player has been told they're not good enough. All Bananas players have been drafted or been top college players, and at some point, they've all been rejected, cut, told to hang it up.
Obsession is awesome. If you can find something you're obsessed with, so few people in the world get to have that.
Watch the best of the best obsess over details. Derek Hough (one of the greatest dancers) wasn't just focusing on the dance; he was producing while dancing, telling the camera crew exactly where to come, when to hit him, and where he would wink.
No one goes home excited about normal. No one says, "That restaurant was really normal, the waiter served it the same way, the food was pretty normal, the parking lot was normal."
Whatever's normal, do the exact opposite. Normal gets normal results. There's a lot of normal in the world, but not a lot of extraordinary.
Put yourself in the customer's shoes and eliminate friction. Where's the game tonight? On Amazon, Peacock, CBS, NBC? Jesse threw away millions to keep all games free on YouTube because that's a friction point.
Your fans will reward you. The Bananas sold over 1.9 million merch items last year because they built something people are proud of and want to wear.
If people don't want to wear your merch, you haven't made them feel something yet. One fan gets a new Bananas tattoo every year (he's got six logos on his leg now).
Invest everything in the experience, spend zero on traditional marketing. Make the experience so good that fans will share with everyone that this is something they haven't experienced before.
Social media growth came from trying and stumbling into learning. In 2016, an intern said he could create videos; they did a lip sync to "Can't Stop the Feeling" by Justin Timberlake. It wasn't even well-produced, but they tried.
Give energy back because of how good it feels. A woman came up to Jesse on a cruise and said she was there because he gave her a hug at a Sacramento game the day after her sister died. She came on the cruise to give him a hug back.
Do what gives you energy. Jesse's entire day is filled with things that give him energy: being with people, rehearsing shows, banana ball youth meetings, broadcast team, and talented writers.
Have people who love to execute. You do what gives you energy and have them execute at a high level. Be very involved at the beginning (get the idea and vision right) and at the end (make adjustments).

The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk
Go to www.LearningLeader.com
This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver. www.InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader
My guest: Tom Hardin was known as "Tipper X" during Operation Perfect Hedge, the largest insider trading investigation in history. After making four illegal trades based on inside information, the FBI approached him on a Manhattan street corner and convinced him to wear a wire over 40 times, helping build 20 of the 81 cases.
Key Learnings 
Ambiguity is where ethical lines blur. Tom's boss said, "Do whatever it takes," after the hedge fund lost money, and as a junior employee, Tom didn't ask clarifying questions.
The undiscussable becomes undiscussable. Leaders give ambiguous messages, then pretend they weren't ambiguous, employees get confused and don't question the boss, and you end up with a culture of silence.
Making decisions in isolation is dangerous. The information came to Tom and he didn't talk to his boss or his wife (who probably would've slapped him around for crossing ethical lines).
Psychological safety requires muscle memory. You have to practice saying "I'm just going to ask some clarifying questions here" when your boss gives ambiguous orders.
Bad decisions aren't mistakes. Mistakes are made without intent, but bad decisions are made with intent. Tom told himself for years he made "mistakes," but on a drive home from speaking at a keynote, he realized: "There's no way I made mistakes. I made bad decisions."
Never say never. Tom argues you're more susceptible to falling down your own slippery slope when you think "that would never be me."
80% of employees can be swayed either way. 10% are morally incorruptible, 10% are a compliance nightmare, and 80% can be influenced by the culture around them.
Tone at the top means nothing. Company culture isn't the tone at the top or glossy shareholder letters; it's the behaviors employees believe will be rewarded or put them ahead.
Reward character, not just results. You can't just focus on short-term performance and dollar goals without understanding how the business was made and what was behind the performance.
The question isn't "what?" but "how?" If you're just focused on the numbers and not on how you got there, you have the opportunity to end up in a slippery slope situation.
Celebrate people who live your values. Companies that spend millions on trips for people who live out shared values (not financial performance) are putting their money where their mouth is.
Leaders must share their own ethical dilemmas. We've all been in situations where we could go left or right, and sharing how you worked through those moments makes you more endearing and a better leader.
Keep a rationalization journal. When Tom and his wife have big decisions (or even little things), he writes them down in a rationalization journal and reflects on them once a month. He's still susceptible to going down another slippery slope, so checking himself on those passing thoughts improves his character over time.
It's not what you say, it's what you do. Just like kids see what parents do (not what they say), employees see what behaviors leaders actually reward.
$46,000 cost him $23 million. A business school professor calculated Tom would've made $23 million if he'd stayed on the hedge fund path, but he made $46,000 on the four illegal trades before getting caught.
His wife was his rock. 85% of marriages end when something like this happens, and she had every right to leave. They just got married, no kids yet. But she stayed. When Tom interviewed her for the book 20 years later, she said, "All I remember is you accepted responsibility immediately. You didn't make up excuses."
Running pulled him out of a shame spiral. Tom got obese as a stay-at-home dad. His wife signed him up for a 5K race (and beat him while pushing a jogging stroller). Just crossing that finish line lit a fire. He ended up running a 100-mile race. 
Doing hard things teaches you that you can do hard things. When Tom had to start a speaking business because they were running out of money, he said, "I can do this" because he'd already put his body through ultramarathons. No challenge is insurmountable.
He ended up with something better. It's not about status or money anymore; it's about who he is with his family and his relationships now.
Windshield mentality, not rearview mirror. Tom can't change the past, but he can look forward instead of backward. A lot of people in their twenties do stupid stuff (maybe not to this degree), but now, in his forties, he can learn from it. Why not embrace it rather than try to scrub it off the internet?
Eulogy virtues versus resume virtues. In his twenties, Tom only thought about resume virtues (how much money, the next job, the next stepping stone) and never about eulogy virtues (what people will say about his character when it's all over).
What will people say at your eulogy? Will they still be talking about those four trades, or will they talk about who you became after?
More Learning
#226 - Steve Wojciechowski: How to Win Every Day
#281 - George Raveling: Wisdom from MLK Jr to Michael Jordan
#637 - Tom Ryan: Chosen Suffering: Become Elite in Life & Leadership
Reflection Questions
Tom's boss gave him an ambiguous message ("do whatever it takes"), and as a junior employee, he didn't ask clarifying questions. Think about the last ambiguous instruction you received from leadership. Did you ask clarifying questions, or did you fill in the blanks yourself? What's stopping you from creating psychological safety to ask next time?
Tom argues that 80% of employees can be swayed either way by culture. Look at your organization right now. What behaviors are actually being rewarded? If someone asked your team "what gets you ahead here?" what would they honestly say?
Tom asks: "Will people be talking about the resume virtues (money, titles, achievements) or the eulogy virtues (character, relationships, who you were) when you're gone?" What's one eulogy virtue you need to start prioritizing today, even if it means slowing down on resume building?

Go to www.LearningLeader.com
This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver. www.InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader
My guest: PJ Fleck is the head football coach at the University of Minnesota. Before that, he transformed Western Michigan from one win to 13 wins and a Cotton Bowl appearance. Before his coaching days, PJ was a stud receiver at Northern Illinois and was a guy I played against in college. Coach Fleck has built one of college football's most distinctive culture-driven programs. You'll hear why he maintains an 80-20 split favoring high school recruiting over the transfer portal, how he runs practice with a 32-second clock to make it harder than games, and why he sees himself as a cultural driver rather than a motivational coach. This is a conversation recorded with all of our coaches inside "The Arena." That is our mastermind group for coaches in all sports. And it did not disappoint.
Notes:
Stop recruiting, start selecting. PJ doesn't chase the highest-rated players... He looks for fit and alignment with his values. Ask yourself: Are you trying to convince people to join your team, or are you selecting people who already want what you're building?
Efficiency beats duration. PJ runs 95-minute practices with a 32-second play clock, always moving, always intense. The principle: Make practice harder than the game. Where in your work are you confusing time spent with intensity and focus?
Internal drive trumps external motivation. PJ calls his ideal players "Nektons," always attacking, never satisfied. He's looking for people who prove their worth to themselves, not to others. If you need constant external motivation, you're not ready for elite teams.
A leader must teach and demand. A team member must prepare and perform. These aren't opposing forces—they're two sides of the same commitment to excellence.
My junior year at Ohio University. I was the quarterback of the Ohio football team. We lost to No. 17 Northern Illinois 30-23 in overtime on a Saturday night. P.J. Fleck caught the game-tying 15-yard touchdown pass late in the fourth quarter. PJ finished with 14 catches for 235 yards and a touchdown. (I threw a 30-yard TD pass to Anthony Hackett to put us up a TD right before halftime). Let your team see you played. They do"Guess that Gopher" before team meetings, where players guess which coach's highlights they're watching. Give them a peek behind the curtain. It builds credibility and connection.
PJ honors his mentor, Jim Tressel, by wearing a tie while coaching. Who are you honoring through your daily practices?
Keep your door open. PJ has no secretary. Players can walk into his office at any moment. Create fluidity between you and your team.
Transparency after tragedy is a choice. When PJ's son died from a heart condition, he had two options: never talk about it again, or let it shape him. He chose radical transparency, knowing it would get scrutinized. That's where "Row the Boat" comes from.
A losing season reveals what you actually need. After going 1-11 at Western Michigan while also getting divorced, PJ says every coach should experience a losing season. It forces you to identify what you actually need versus what you don't need.
Choose what scares you. When deciding on Minnesota, Heather asked him, "Does this scare you?" He said, "Hell yeah, it scares me." His response: "Well then, that's where we're going."
Life versus living. Living is the salary and contract. Life is about moments and memory. If you can't stay in the moment and reflect on great moments or hard moments, life will be like mashed potatoes to you.
Your expectations should match your resources. The gap between expectations and resources is called frustration. The bigger the gap, the more frustration from everyone around you.
Maintain an 80/20 model if you can. 80% high school players, 20% transfer portal. PJ has one of the highest retention rates in the country because of selection and fit, not recruiting.
"It's not about the money until it's about the money." The kids' PJ gets value for other things before the money talk. They enjoy the experience of being a college athlete.
PJ leads with "I'm really difficult to play for." PJ's opening line to recruits. He asks for a lot. This makes people who are lazy, complacent, or fraudulent run like hell. "This is going to expose me."
Start with good people, not good players. Out of 500 kids, who are the best 25 young men? PJ doesn't get five stars. He gets two and three stars who believe they can be five stars.
A chip versus a crack on your shoulder. Once you do something the media says you couldn't do, they'll set a new bar. All PJ wants is kids who want to prove to themselves that they can do what people say they couldn't.
You don't need PJ's personality. You need the internal drive to be the best version of yourself. That's what he's selecting for.
div]:bg-bg-000/50 [&_pre>div]:border-0.5 [&_pre>div]:border-border-400 [&_.ignore-pre-bg>div]:bg-transparent [&_.standard-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pl-2 [&_.standard-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,ul,ol,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pr-8 [&_.progressive-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pl-2 [&_.progressive-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,ul,ol,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pr-8"> _*]:min-w-0 gap-3 standard-markdown"> "I'm not a motivational coach. I'm a cultural driver." PJ picks their "how." He picks their journey. If someone needs constant motivation, they're not ready.
Peel back the Instagram filter. Everything you see on social media is filtered. You have to dig deeper with this generation to find out who they really are.
Hire former players back. PJ's staff has more former players who played for him than ever before. They cut their teeth in the building. In this transactional era, former players help you stay transformational.
The HYPRR System. This is PJ's hyperculture framework he created after going 1-11:
H (How): The people. Nektons who always attack. How you do one thing is how you do everything. Consistency matters.
Y (Yours): Your vision. It's YOUR life, not anyone else's vision. Players are the builders. Don't tell me you want an extravagant home and then hire bad builders.
P (Process): The work. The who, what, when, where, and why. Anyone should be able to ask those questions at any point.
R (Result): Focus on the HYP. It's not the officials' fault. It's not the other team's fault.
R (Response): How will you respond to the result?
Don't believe the hype. Everything about hype is before the result happens. Focus on How, Yours, and Process instead.
Someone will take what you were taught was horrible and create a business model. PJ uses Uber and Airbnb as examples. We were taught "stranger danger" as kids. Now we get in cars with strangers while drunk and sleep in their homes. The right people plugged into crazy visions can change everything.
Define success as peace of mind. That's how PJ's program defines success. Not wins and losses.
Train body language. "Big chest" means standing up straight. Players are not allowed to put their hands on their knees or their heads. If you can't hold yourself up, trainers need to check on you.
Teach response, not reaction. You can have emotions, but train to not be emotional. The real world wants to see you react. Train to respond properly in every situation.
Your words have power. PJ's players know the definitions of 150 words that will help them for the rest of their lives. Give substance to the filters. That's your job as an educator.
Cut all the fat off practice. PJ was from the era of 3.5-hour practices. He has ADD and needs to move. He got bored as a player, so he vowed to run practice differently.
Run a 32-second play clock constantly. Every 32 seconds, you run a play. You are always under the two-minute warning in practice. This trains your team to operate under pressure.
Never practice longer than 95 minutes. It's one thing to watch as a recruit. It's another to experience it as a player. Kids puke during dynamic warmup in the first week because it's that intense.
Make practice harder than the game. The game will eventually slow down for your players if practice is legitimately harder.
Nektons flow through water currents without being affected. Don't let circumstances dictate behavior. Train this mindset daily.
The biggest jump in sports is from high school to college. 17-year-olds playing against 24-year-olds. It's not just talent. It's experience, development, strength, and confidence all at once.
Never let any environment be too big for your coaches. Train your staff to be comfortable in all situations, not just your players.
Always be learning outside your field. PJ attends leadership seminars with SEALs and Green Berets. At one dinner, a retired military officer who looked like Sean Connery scanned the room quietly, then said: "I'm taking in all the good in the room. I'm also coming up with a plan to kill every one of you, in case I need to." He never came back to the table because he got called to active duty and left for Afghanistan. Always be ready. That's what makes you special.
Watch to learn. PJ watched "Landman" and took notes on how to run the next team meeting. His wife hates that he can never relax. Find teaching and education in everything you do. When you stop, you stop growing.
Get better at celebrating. PJ has a great bourbon and champagne collection. He celebrates more than he ever has. Balance the intensity with moments of joy.
Make transformational programs real. Gopher for Life program. Monthly educational courses. Monthly date nights where players bring their dates and learn dinner etiquette. Monthly racial education class. Weekly coach development on Thursdays, where coaches speak on any topic to advance their careers.
Don't let important things stop when the news cycle moves on. COVID and racism got put in the same bracket. When COVID stopped, racism education stopped everywhere. Not at Minnesota. Keep going.
Bring back the fun. After wins, players can't wait to pick the design for the next team shirt. PJ gives them five options, and they get into it. People are losing the fun connection that made elementary school great.
A coach's job is to teach and demand. A player's job is to prepare and perform. If you're a coach, you better be teaching things: life, sport, relationships. Elite teams are led by players. Your job is to get as many elite people to the front of the bus as possible.








More Learning
#226 - Steve Wojciechowski: How to Win Every Day
#281 - George Raveling: Wisdom from MLK Jr to Michael Jordan
#637 - Tom Ryan: Chosen Suffering: Become Elite in Life & Leadership

Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes
This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver.
My Guest: Dan Coyle is a New York Times bestselling author who's spent the last two decades studying what makes great teams great. He wrote The Talent Code, The Culture Code, and now Flourish—books that have shaped how millions of people think about skill development, team culture, and meaningful connection. He works with the Cleveland Guardians as a special advisor on culture and performance. We recorded this one together in Cleveland.
Notes:
Find your yellow doors. Most of us go through life looking for green doors (clearly open paths) and red doors (obviously closed paths). But yellow doors are different. They're out of the corner of your eye, things that make you uncomfortable or feel brand new. That's where life actually happens. We think life is a straight line from A to B to C, but it's not. Life isn't a game... It's complex, living, shifting. Yellow doors are opportunities to create meaningful connections and explore new paths. "Life deepens when we become aware of the yellow doors, the ones we glimpse out of the corner of our eye."
The craft journey always involves getting simpler. Simple is not easy. The great ones have their craft to where there's a simplicity to it. In this world of clutter and noise, it's easy to want to compete with energy and speed, but the stuff that really resonates is quieter and simpler. Be a beginner again in something. With climbing, Dan's at the very bottom of the craft mountain. With writing, he's somewhere in the middle. It's fun to have a couple of zones in your life where you're a beginner. It's liberating, but it also develops empathy. Some stuff looks very simple, but isn't.
Every good story has three elements. There's some desire (I want to get somewhere), there's some obstacle (this thing standing in my way), and there's some transformation on that journey. Teaching teaches you. Coaching Zoe's writing team helped Dan, and then Zoe ended up coaching Dan. It was never "let me transmit all my wisdom to my daughter." It was a rich two-way dialogue that helped both of them.
Suffering together is powerful. Doing hard things together with other people, untangling things together (literally and figuratively), and being vulnerable together. That's culture code stuff. Whether it's skiing with your kids, seeing them fall and get back up, or being trapped underground like the Chilean miners.
Behind every individual success is a community. Dan dedicates all his books to his wife, Jenny (except one). Growing up, he had this idea of individual success, individual greatness. But when you scratch one of those individual stories, what's revealed is a community of people. Jenny is the ecosystem that lets Dan do what he does. Going from writing project to writing project, hoping stuff works out, exploring... it's not efficient. It's not getting on the train to work and coming home at five o'clock. It's "I think I need to go to Russia" or "I need to dig into this." She's been more than a partner, an incredible teammate. 
Great organizations aren't machines; they're rivers. The old model of leadership is the pilot of the boat, the person flipping levers who has all the answers. That's how most of us grew up thinking about leaders. But Indiana football, the SEALs, Pixar... when you get close to these organizations, they're not functioning like machines. Machines are controlled from the outside and produce predictable results. These organizations are more like energy channels that are exploring. They're like rivers. How do you make a river flow? Give it a horizon to flow toward (where are we going?), set up river banks (where we're not gonna go), but inside that space create energy and agency. Questions do that. Leaders who are good at lobbing questions in and then closing their mouth... that's the most powerful skill.
Great teams have peer leaders who sacrifice. Since Indiana football's fresh in our minds... Peer leaders who sacrifice for the team are really big. Fernando Mendoza got smoked, battered, hammered, and he kept going without complaint. In his interview afterward, he talks about his teammates. That's the DNA of great teams.
Adversity reveals everything. The litmus test: in moments of terrible adversity, what's the instinct? Are we turning toward each other or away from each other? You could see it in that game. The contrast between the two teams. When things went bad, they responded very differently.
The coach isn't as important as you think. Coaches can create the conditions for the team to emerge, but great teams sometimes pit themselves against the coach. The US Olympic hockey team of 1980 would be an example. They came together against Herb Brooks. So coaching sets the tone, but it's not as big a part of DNA as people think.
Curiosity keeps great teams from drinking their own Kool-Aid. The teams that consistently succeed don't get gassed up on their own stuff. They don't believe in their success. They're not buying into "now I'm at the top of the mountain, everything's fine." They get curious about that next mountain, curious about each other, curious about the situation. They're willing to let go of stuff that didn't work.
Honor the departed. When someone gets traded in pro sports, it's like death. Their locker's empty like a gravestone. What the coach at OKC does: on the day after somebody gets traded, he spends a minute of practice expressing his appreciation for that person who's gone. How simple and human is that? How powerful?
What makes people flourish is community. It's not a bunch of individuals that are individually together. Can they connect? Can they love their neighbor and support their neighbor? That's magical when it happens.
The Chilean miners created civilization through rituals. 33 men, 2,000 feet underground, trapped for 69 days. The first couple hours went as bad as it could. People eating all the food, scrambling, yelling. Then they circled up and paused. The boss took off his helmet and said, "There are no bosses and no employees. We're all one here." Their attention shifted from terror and survival to the larger connection they had with each other. They self-organized. Built sleeping areas, rationed food, created games with limited light. Each meal they'd share a flake of tuna at the same time. When they got contact with the surface, they sang the Chilean national anthem together. They created a little model civilization that functioned incredibly well.
Stopping and looking creates community. What let the miners flourish wasn't information or analysis. It was letting go. Having this moment of meaning, creating presence. All the groups Dan visited had this ability in all the busyness to stop and ask: What are we really about? What matters here? What is our community? Why are we here? What is bigger than us that we're connected to? They grounded themselves in those moments over and over.
Getting smart only gets you so far. There's a myth in our culture that individuals can flourish. You see someone successful and think "that individual's flourishing." But underneath them, invisibly, they're part of a larger community. We only become our best through other people. We have a pronoun problem: I, me, when actually it's we and us. Self-improvement isn't as powerful as shared improvement.
Ask energizing questions. "What's energizing you right now?" is a great question. "What do you want more of?" "What do you want to do differently?" (not "what are you doing poorly"). "Paint a picture five years from now, things go great, give me an average Tuesday." What you're trying to do is get people out of their narrow boredom, let go a little, surrender a little, open up and point out things in the corner of their eye.
When things go rough, go help somebody. Craig Counsell on how to bounce back when you're having a bad day: "I try to go help somebody." That's it.
Create presence conditions. The ski trips, the long drives, the shared meals, no phones. Schedule them. This is how connection happens, whether it's with your family or your people at work.
Leaders who sustain excellence are intensely curious. Dan walked into the Guardians office expecting to pepper them with questions. The opposite happened. Jay, Chris, and Josh kept asking him question after question, wanting to learn. Leaders who sustain excellence have this desire to learn, improve, get better. Ask better questions. Actually listen. Ask follow-up questions. Curiosity is also the ultimate way to show love.
Reflection Questions
Dan says yellow doors are "out of the corner of your eye, things that make you uncomfortable or feel brand new." What's one yellow door you've been walking past lately? What's stopping you from opening it this week?The Chilean miners' boss took off his white helmet and said, "There are no bosses and no employees."
Think about a moment of adversity your team is facing right now. Are you turning toward each other or away? What's one specific action you could take this week to help your team turn toward each other? Dan emphasizes we have a "pronoun problem" (I, me vs. we, us) and that "self-improvement isn't as powerful as shared improvement."
Who are the 2-3 people you could invite into your growth journey right now? What would it look like to pursue excellence together instead of alone?

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My guest: Brad Stulberg is a bestselling author and leading expert on sustainable performance and well-being. He's written for The New York Times, Outside Magazine, and The Atlantic, and his previous books include Peak Performance and The Practice of Groundedness. His latest book, The Way of Excellence, is great. Brad's writing combines cutting-edge science, ancient wisdom, and stories from world-class performers to help people do their best work without losing themselves in the process.
Notes:
Never pre-judge a performance. When you're feeling tired, uninspired, or off your game, show up anyway. Remember the Beatles scene—they looked bored and exhausted, but Paul still wrote "Get Back" that day. You don't know what's possible until you get going.
Discipline means doing what needs to be done regardless of how you feel. As powerlifter Layne Norton says, we don't need to feel good to get going... We need to get going to give ourselves a chance to feel good. Stop waiting for motivation. Start moving and let the feeling follow.
Audit who you're surrounding yourself with. The Air Force study is striking: the least fit person in your squadron determines everyone else's fitness level. If you sit within 25 feet of a high performer at work, your performance improves 15%. Within 25 feet of a low performer? It declines 30%. Your environment isn't neutral... Choose wisely.
Treat curiosity like a muscle. It's a reward-based behavior that gets stronger with use. When Kobe said he played "to figure things out," he was tapping into the neural circuitry that makes learning feel good and builds upon itself. Ask more questions. Stay curious about your craft.
Excellence isn't about perfection or optimization... It's about mastery and mattering. It's about showing up consistently, surrounding yourself wisely, and staying curious along the way.
To the late Robert Pirsig - one of the greatest blessings and joys and sources of satisfaction in my life is to be in conversation with your work. He's the author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance— "gumption is the psychic gasoline that keeps the whole thing going."
Arrogant people are loud. Confident people are quiet. Confidence requires evidence.
The neural circuitry associated with curiosity is like a muscle: it gets stronger with use. Curiosity is what neuroscientists call a reward-based behavior. It feels good, motivates us to keep going, and builds upon itself.
Kobe didn't play to win. He played to learn and grow. Kobe Bryant said he didn't play not to lose, and he didn't even play to win. He played to learn and to grow. He said the reason he did that is because it's so much more freeing. If you're really trying not to lose, you're going to be tight. If you're really trying to win, you're going to be tight. But if you're just out there to grow, you're going to be in the moment. When you're in the moment, you give yourself the best chance of having the performance you want.
The word compete comes from the Latin root word com, which means together, and petere, which means to seek, rise up, or strive. In its most genuine form, competition is about rising together (Caitlin Clark's story against LSU).
Love: The Detroit Lions had just won their first playoff game in 32 years. Following the game was a scene of pure jubilation. During a short break from the celebrating, the head coach, GM, and quarterback all gave brief speeches. Which collectively lasted about 2 minutes. During those 2 minutes, the word LOVE was repeated 7 times.
Homeostatic regulation -- Sense it in the greatness of others and when you're at your best. What Brad calls "excellence."
Surround yourself with people who have high standards. When things don't go your way, when you're inevitably heartbroken or frustrated, it's the people around you, the books you read, the art around you, the music you listen to, that's the stuff that speaks to you and keeps you going. It keeps you on the path even amidst the heartbreak.
Process goals work better than outcome goals for most people. If you're an amateur, you should be process-focused. When I train for powerlifting, I don't think about the meet that I'm training for. I think about showing up for the session today. If I think about the meeting, I get anxious, and my performance goes down. But if you're Steph Curry and you've been doing your thing for 20 years, you can think about winning the gold medal because your process is so automatic. For 99% of people, focus on the process.
"Brave New World" turns fear into curiosity. When you walk up to a bar loaded with more weight than you've ever touched, there can be fear about what it's going to feel like. If you go up to the bar with fear, you're going to miss the lift. If you're convinced you're going to make it, you'll make it, but your nervous system knows when you're lying to yourself. The middle ground is curiosity. Instead of saying "that's heavy, it's scary," I say "Brave New World. I've never touched this weight before. I have no idea what's going to happen, but let's find out." It splits the difference. I'm hyped, I'm giving myself a chance, I'm not lying to myself, but I'm also not scared.
Curiosity and fear cannot exist at the same time in the brain. There are seven pathways in the brain defined by affective neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp. Two of those pathways are the rage/fear pathway and the seeking/curiosity pathway. These pathways cannot be turned on at the same time. They compete for resources. It's a zero sum game. You cannot simultaneously be raging and curious. You cannot be terrified and curious at the same time. If you get into a mindset of curiosity, it's extremely hard to be angry or terrified. By being curious, we turn off the fear deep in our brains and give ourselves a chance to perform our best.
Practice curiosity in lower-consequence situations first. Curiosity is like a muscle. If you're about to do something absolutely terrifying and you're really scared and you say, "I'm just going to be curious," you know you're lying to yourself. You have to practice in lower-consequence situations first. When you, as a paren,t get really upset with your kid, try to be curious about their experience. Watch your anger calm down. When you as a leader, have a board presentation where you're feeling anxious, try to have that mindset of "Brave New World." When you're an athlete going into a big game obsessing about what could go wrong, try to be really curious instead.
The best competitors have emotional flexibility. As a competitor, you would know that in the confines of the game, you're not singing Kumbaya, you are trying to kill them. Then you have the emotional flexibility the minute that game ends to respect them as a person. That is the best way to compete. That's when our best performances happen. It's not either/or, it's both/and. It's playing really hard, giving everything you can for the win, seizing on your opponent's vulnerability, at the same time as having deep respect for them.
You don't have to be miserable to be excellent. There are people like David Goggins or Michael Jordan who seem motivated by anger and a chip on their shoulder. But Jordan would put his tongue out like this primal expression of joy when he was about to dunk. And Jordan won all his championships while being coached by Phil Jackson, the Zen master of compassion. There are the Steph Currys of the world, or Courtney Dauwalter (best ultra marathoner to ever exist), or Albert Einstein (total mystic who had so much fun in his work). There are two ways to the top of the mountain. For 99.999% of people, you end up performing better with fun and joy, and you have so much more satisfaction, which contributes to longevity.
The best leaders take work seriously but laugh at themselves. The best leaders I know in the corporate world, they take the work so seriously. They are so intense. But my God, do they laugh at themselves and their colleagues and have fun.
Reflection Questions
Brad says, "The things that break your heart are the things that fill your life with meaning." What are you currently holding back from caring deeply about because you're afraid of getting hurt? What would it look like to step fully into that arena despite the risk of heartbreak?
The Air Force study showed that sitting within 25 feet of a low performer decreases your performance by 30%. Honestly assess who you're spending the most time with right now. Are they raising your standards or lowering them? What specific change could you make this month to shift your environment?
Brad uses "Brave New World" to turn fear into curiosity before big challenges. Think of something coming up that makes you anxious. Instead of trying to convince yourself you'll succeed or dwelling on the fear, what does it feel like to approach it with pure curiosity: "I've never done this before. Let's find out what happens."