The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

302: Nick Kokonas - How To See The Genius In People

Full show notes can be found at www.LearningLeader.com

• Commonalities of sustaining excellence:
  • Intellectual curiosity - A desire to learn.  Not for the outcome, but for the curiosity to learn more
  • Healthy degree of paranoia - What Jim Collins would call "productive paranoia"
    • In the pursuit of excellence
  • "No one is giving it away for free.  It takes effort."
• Balance -- "I get manic at times. I'm not always well balanced."  The skill is in being able to turn it on and off... Which can happen over time
• "I've always been curious about how things worked..."
• Why it was helpful to go to Colgate University
  • A Liberal Arts school forced Nick to study areas outside of just his major.  Made him more well-rounded
  • He "learned how to learn" -- Forced him to wrestle with existential questions
• Rhetoric -- Can you understand all sides of an issue? Where does ambiguity exist?
  • Need to learn to think critically -- How you do it is more important that you do it
• General advice:
  • "Learn to communicate well.  Concisely. Learn to write and speak well.
  • From a psychology perspective, analyze, "what are they really saying?"
• Why he became a derivatives trader:
  • "I got into law school, but didn't want to go."
  • He tested well, but desired his independence
  • "Prestige as part of pay doesn't matter to me."
  • To be great at anything, you must be disciplined to show up everyday -- "My money has always been at risk everyday. Some think that's crazy.  But I've always worked to have an edge."
  • How to figure out outcomes as soon as possible
• The decision to leave the world of derivatives trading to open a restaurant... Why?
  • "I took some money off the table... Then my dad died... and I thought, what am I doing?  I had no idea what I was going to do next..."
• Meeting Grant Achatz and the impact that had on Nick's life...
  • "He reminded me a lot of myself.  He was thoughtful, driven, shy (this was the opposite), and he wasn't afraid of hard work."
  • "I think I have a skill to see the genius in some people."
  • "Grant's work is of artistic genius"
• Doing what you love and are passionate about:
  • "For me the test is... When I wake up in the morning is it nagging at me to do it?"