The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and 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: Tony Dungy’s quiet strength - He never criticized without an adequate solution. As leaders, it’s on us to be thoughtful about how we help our people get better. Just yelling that someone messed up is not helpful. We need to provide an adequate solution. Dianna Nyad – She swam for 53 hours from Cuba to Florida. It looked like a solo mission. It was anything but. She needed a full team to make it happen. We need other people to help us accomplish big missions. A lot of people are afraid to win. They are afraid to put it all on the line and risk not being enough. Too many of us want to look cool and play it safe in case we lose. The people who sustain excellence over time commit 100% to what they’re doing even though they might lose. It’s worth it. It is “kind of a sin” to waste potential and the real champions never committed it. - Dan Jenkins Advice from her dad (legendary sports writer, Dan Jenkins): "Never let a thing go until it's as good as you can make it." "Interest yourself first before you'll interest anyone else." Key learning from Brian Daboll - Winning organizations are made up of people who've been doubted in the past. The "greats are a result of construction." We must be intentional. Go all in. Preparation. Practice. There must be a dept of preparation. "Never leave the field wishing you'd prepared more." "Pressure is what you feel when don't know what the hell to do." Michael Phelps was not born with an innate sense to swim fast. His body was well suited to swim but not much more than any other Olympian. "The work is what made him great." Day-to-day consistency leads to excellence. Derek Jeter built his schedule around being consistent every single day. Laird Hamilton built his resilience through doing hard things like cold plunges, saunas, and surfing tough waves. Activate your body to stress: Stress has two sides. We're meant to experience stress. Stress + Rest = Growth. We need stress to grow. Life is born without it. Pat Riley - What happens when people don't believe in their leader? They gear down their effort. Life/Career Advice: Shoe leather hard work. You can't substitute hard work. Find the thing you'd do for fun and see if you can build a career from it.   Sally Jenkins has been a columnist and feature writer for The Washington Post for more than twenty years. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2020 and in 2021 was named the winner of the Associated Press Red Smith Award for Outstanding Contributions to Sports Journalism. She is the author of twelve books of nonfiction including The Real All Americans, the story of the Carlisle Indian School, and its use of football as a form of resistance following the close of the Indian Wars. Her work for The Washington Post has included coverage of ten Olympic Games. In 2005 she was the first woman to be inducted into the National Sportswriters and Sportscasters Hall of Fame. Her most recent book is called The Right Call: What Sports Teach Us about Leadership, Excellence, and Decision Making.

Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and 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 Mark Miller started his Chick-fil-A career working as an hourly team member in 1977. Mark's cell phone number is 678-612-8441. He asked that you text him your thoughts on this episode. In 1978, he joined the corporate staff working in the warehouse and mailroom. Since that time, he has provided leadership for Corporate Communications, Field Operations, Quality and Customer Satisfaction, Training and Development, and Leadership Development. During his tenure with Chick-fil-A, the company has grown from 75 restaurants to over 2,300 locations with annual sales approaching $10 billion. Mark began writing almost twenty years ago when he teamed up with Ken Blanchard, co-author of The One Minute Manager, to write The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do. He's now written 11 books that have sold over 1 million copies. His latest is called Culture Rules.  Notes:  “Your capacity to grow determines your capacity to lead.” You must make the choice to be a learner... Let’s start with a story told by the late philosopher, David Foster Wallace. He said, “There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way who nods at them and says, “Morning boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?” Mark Miller conducted research with more than 6,000 individuals from ten countries that revealed that 71% of U.S. leaders believe culture is their most powerful tool to drive performance. However, the study revealed that enhancing workplace culture ranked eleventh on the leader’s priority list. “If your heart is not right, no one cares about your skills.” Your character, integrity, and care for others must be there to earn any type of followership. If your heart is not right, no one cares about your skills. The 3 culture rules are aspire, amplify, and adapt: Aspire - Share your hopes and dreams for the culture (Andrew Cathy, new CEO, said “Rooted in purpose, known for our care.”) Amplify - Always be looking for ways to reinforce and amplify the aspiration for your culture. Adapt - Always look for ways to enhance your culture and be innovative. The Magic Circle: It dates back to 1938 when Dutch Historian Johan Huizinga wrote about the impact of play on culture… The "Must-Have" leadership qualities Character Competence Chemistry Mark has spent a lot of time with Navy SEALs to learn about culture... Key takeaways: Shoot Move Communicate Is focusing on culture a soft skill? The data suggests it is the #1 driver of performance. Storytelling - People remember the stories more than the stats. Don't just tell... Take people there.

Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and 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 Frank Slootman is the CEO at Snowflake. Frank has over 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur and executive in the enterprise software industry. Frank served as CEO of ServiceNow from 2011 to 2017, taking the organization from $100M in revenue, through an IPO, to $1.4B. Prior to that, Frank served as President at EMC following an acquisition of Data Domain Corporation, where he served as the CEO, leading the company through an IPO to its acquisition by EMC for $2.4B. He's also the best-selling author of Amp It Up. Notes: Frank's work ethic was developed as a child in the Netherlands. In his teens, he had summer jobs harvesting tulip bulbs and walking behind a tractor ten hours a day. He also cleaned factory toilets one summer in the plant where his dad worked. “The Man In The Arena” Theodore Roosevelt – Frank put this at the beginning of Amp It Up.  After retiring from ServiceNow in 2017, Frank had no intention of taking another CEO role, but people like him “have a hard time leaving the arena.” It’s exciting to be back in a CEO role with Snowflake. Hiring -- “Hire people ahead of their own curve.” Hire more for aptitude than experience and give people the career opportunity of a lifetime. NO MBO -- “Another source of misalignment is management by objective (MBO). Which I have eliminated at every company I’ve joined in the last 20 years.” Push the pace -- Leaders set the pace. “Instead of getting back to me in a week, I asked, “Why not tomorrow?” Change the cadence. Push the pace. The leadership "must-have" qualities: A need to prove something Unbalanced They want to show the world something... They have passion High trust Need some ego, but it has to be in check Legacy? "I don't think about legacy much. When you're dead, you're dead." Frank's leadership team: We are not balanced, we are available to each other 24/7. Drivers vs. Passengers -- “Passengers are people who don’t mind simply being carried along by the company’s momentum …They are often pleasant, get along with everyone, attend meetings promptly, and generally do not stand out as troublemakers … While passengers can often diagnose and articulate a problem quite well, they have no investment in solving it.” Frank wants front-seat drivers who’ll take ownership, make trouble, and help navigate. Raise Your Standards -- Push for insanely great. A leader must always push the standard higher. Focus -- “Founders don’t have a mindset around operating companies. Focus is one of our number one things. You need to learn to have extreme, machine focus, and most people don’t even know the beginning of what that means. They think they do, and they don’t.” “I’m more of a Patton than an Eisenhower,” he says, known for constantly driving the troops forward. Sequoia’s Carl Eschenbach remembers, “When we brought Frank into Snowflake, at our first board meeting he said, ‘Let me tell you how I’m running the board meetings and how you’re going to participate. We’re going to keep this very simple. I’m not even gonna tell you anything about the good stuff that’s happening because you already know that—I’m going to dive into the shit that’s broken and how we’re going to fix it.'” Very Brief Retirement -- In 2017, Frank spent time regatta sailing, winning the iconic ocean race, Transpac. Race from Los Angeles to Oahu. (To win, “We focused on recruiting talent”). Put The Success of The Company Ahead of Your Own – If you want to build a Snowflake-sized company,  you can’t be about the celeb-CEO lifestyle. “That’s not real life. Real life is you’re terrorized and uncomfortable every day of the week. People always ask me, ‘Is this normal?’ I’m like, yep.” Snowflake - Hit the ground running on April 26, 2019.  Good news: They were on already on a tear. The bad news: “The company was quite impressed with itself.” Growth in all areas (revenue, retention rate, total customers, $1m Customers, Forbes Global 2000 Customers, Customer Satisfaction). The first 90 days as a new leader. It’s a combat zone. You must quickly assess what’s working, and what’s not. Who should stay on the bus, and who should get off?

Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and 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 Oscar Munoz served as CEO and chairman of United Airlines, previously holding several executive leadership positions at CSX, AT&T, US West, PepsiCo, and Coca-Cola. Listen, Learn, AND THEN Lead… The purpose of the listening tour was to hear from people at the ground level, listen, learn, and then make decisions. I love the simplicity in the question to his team, “Hey, what are the 10 dumbest rules we’ve put in place?” And then changing them… This is something we all should think about periodically. The father-daughter bond Oscar has with his daughter, Jessica. The traits he sees in her that are also in him are “tenacity and refusal to give in no matter what.” Before Oscar became CEO, the culture was based on a “cost-cutting, rule-obsessed, disciplinary-heavy culture." Listening Tour - In 2015, After becoming CEO of United Airlines, Munoz embarked on a "listening tour" of the company, meeting with disgruntled employees around the United States and discussing their concerns. While this phase was intended to last for the first 90 days of the job, Oscar was hospitalized after having a heart attack in October 2015, 38 days into the job. In 2015, Oscar was one of two Hispanic CEOs in the top 100 of the Fortune 500 list. Munoz has been named among the "100 Most Influential Hispanics" by Hispanic Business magazine. In March 2017, Oscar was named "Communicator of the Year for 2017" by PRWeek. How to be both a great dad and a great CEO? "Model the right behavior for your kids." Advice: Swing easy. Be yourself.

Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and 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 Derek Thompson is a staff writer at The Atlantic and author of the books Hit Makers and On Work: Money, Meaning, Identity, and the host of the podcast Plain English.   Notes: Before graduating from high school, Derek appeared in several theatrical productions at the Folger Shakespeare Theater and the Shakespeare Theater. Why do Americans care so much about work? workism is “the belief that work is not only necessary to economic production but also the centerpiece of one’s identity and life’s purpose.” Jobs, Careers, or Callings: One theory of work holds that people tend to see themselves in jobs, careers, or callings… The Bow and Arrow metaphor… We need stress, but we need to let it go. You pull back on the bow and arrow… Then you let it go. Stress + Rest = Growth “Happiness means being balanced between busyness and leisure.” The mark of a good leader? Don’t be afraid to ask the ignorant question… Have the confidence to ask it. Derek had breakfast with the prominent CEO… The CEO was deeply curious about Derek. Asked him a lot of questions, listened intently, and asked great follow-ups. Great leaders make their conversations about the other person. Follow your curiosity with great rigor. That same leader also had the emotional intelligence to not bother Derek Jeter while he was having breakfast. He knew there would be a better time to meet. The book, an anthology of Thompson’s articles for The Atlantic, includes a new adaptation of his essay on workism, a term that he defines as “the belief that work is not only necessary to economic production but also the centerpiece of one’s identity and life’s purpose.” “The decline of traditional faith in America has coincided with an explosion of new atheisms,” Thompson writes. “Some people worship beauty, some worship political identities, and others worship their children. But everybody worships something. And workism is among the most potent of the new religions competing for congregants.” How Derek earned a job writing for The Atlantic out of college? After being rejected 30 times, he applied for a fellowship with The Atlantic and got it. He then earned a job writing about economics for them even though he had no background or interest in economics. "It's like the New York Yankees offered me to play second base even though I played catcher my whole life." How Derek earned a role as a podcast host working for Bill Simmons? "Bill had me on his podcast to talk about Covid after he read some things I'd written for The Atlantic. That was sort of an audition. After he had me on, he asked if I wanted to have my own podcast on his network. We eventually came up with the name Plain English." The name of the show is very important. You want people to be able to easily say, "Hey, I listen to Plain English." How to predict the next great quarterback? It's contingent upon their surroundings (their coaching staff, receivers, linemen, etc...) Life/Career Advice: Skin thickness -- It can't be so thin that you can't accept criticism, but it can't be so thick that you stop listening. You have be somewhere in the middle. Working hours — no large country globally averages more hours of work per year than the United States. Americans work longer hours, have shorter vacations, get less unemployment, and retire later.

Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and 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 Kevin Kelly is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He is also the editor and publisher of the Cool Tools website, which gets half a million unique visitors per month. He co-founded Wired in 1993 and served as its Executive Editor from its inception until 1999. During Kevin’s tenure, Wired won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence (the industry's equivalent of two Oscars). He is the best-selling author of many books including New Rules for the New Economy, The Inevitable, and his latest is called Excellent Advice For Living - Wisdom I wish I’d Known Earlier.  You lead by letting others know what you expect of them, which may exceed what they themselves expect. Provide them a reputation to live up to. Habit is far more dependable than inspiration. Don’t focus on getting into shape. Focus on becoming the kind of person who never misses a workout. "Every great and difficult thing has required a strong sense of optimism," Prototype your life. Try stuff instead of making grand plans. The best way to learn anything is to try to teach what you know. Don’t create things to make money; make money so you can create things. The reward for good work is more work. The more you are interested in others, the more interesting they’ll find you. To be interesting, be interested. Promptness is a sign of respect. The consistency of your endeavors (exercise, companionship, work) is more important than the quantity. Nothing beats small things done every day, which is way more important than what you do occasionally.

Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and 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 The Learning Leader Show was first published on April 9, 2015. TODAY marks the show's 8th birthday! To celebrate, I kick off the episode by sharing some key learnings I've gathered over the past 8 years... And then I answer YOUR questions and did a full AMA (Ask Me Anything). If you'd like me to do more AMAs, send me an email: Ryan (at) LearningLeader dot com Here are some key things I've learned after publishing The Learning Leader Show for 8 years... Consistency > Intensity. Showing up to do the work (prep) each day is key. Become part of your routine as a listener. Consistency builds trust. You know you’re going to have a new show for your Monday morning walk or commute. Following your genuine curiosity is attractive. This parasocial relationship is built because as the listener you know I’m following what I’m actually curious about. I own guest selection 100%. They are all my call and my call alone. I only choose guests that I’m deeply curious about. The curiosity-judgemental spectrum. Talking with more people with a wide range of life experiences has helped me view the world from their eyes and be less judgemental. All the way back to episode 3 with Maurice Clarett. Approach people with curiosity, not judgment. The prep works as a forcing function to learn. Same with mindful Monday. I have systems in place to ensure I’m getting a little bit wiser each day. And that learning compounds over time. Create forcing functions on your life to intentionally get better. Don’t just wander from meeting to meeting each week. What are you doing to ensure your learning is compounding? The Charlie Munger quote; go to bed a little wiser than when you woke up. I try to live by that. Relationships with your heroes: General McChrystal. Pat Lencioni. So many others. Being pleasant to work with. Showing up prepared. Being grateful. Following up. All of that has helped me build real relationships with people I admire. The McChrystal trip to Gettysburg. Forewords to books. McChrystal and Lencioni. Dan Pink. The Kat Cole ATL show. Adam Grant. Ryan Holiday. Relationships with listeners. Some amazing friendships have been formed and fostered because of this podcast. So many of my Learning Leader Circle members. Technically they are clients of mine, but lots of them have become genuine friends for life. Communication skill - LISTENING. Thinking. Speaking, Writing. All have improved. Earned the opportunity to speak on hundreds of stages all over the world. Publish books. Meet fascinating people. Listener AMA: Learn 2 Cope (Instagram) – What was the biggest struggle you had transitioning to life after sports? Kevin Janiec (Instagram) – How do you and Miranda balance and align your competing priorities? Samantha Phillips (LinkedIn), Sales Manager at Insight Global – 1. What is 1 of your champagne toasts? (Victory Shot toast) 2. Who is 1 person you have not yet had on your show that you’d like to? Aaron Arnston (LinkedIn) - Congratulations, Ryan!  Truly blazing a trail, we’ll done! You have interviewed hundreds of guests and I have liked every show, can't recall one, not one, show I didn't like...have you ever interviewed guests that didn't make the cut or do you have a filtering process prior to the show that helps with this? Noah Vasilj (Mindful Monday email response): My question is a “3 parter”: What is your favorite part of your job? Do you generally enjoy/love what you do? What keeps you interested and going on the days when you are not at 100%? Brian Causer (Twitter) — Congrats! Love the show, Ryan. One of my top podcasts and I listen weekly. Maybe have two questions... How do you choose your guests? Referral? Follow your curiosity? Also, what is one question you wish someone would ask you that nobody has asked you before? The Greek In The Kitchen (Instagram) — Who is the guest you think about most or has had the most influence on you? Denise Kollias (LinkedIn) Hi! Congratulation! I have been listening to your podcast since 2017 and it has been a Godsend. It has taught me so much and I appreciate all your hard work to continually bring insightful conversations on leadership. My question is what episodes were your favorite to record or the top 5 that you recommend with the greatest impact to help people grow or push through? JP Botero (Instagram) - After 8 years of experience, what would you recommend to the Ryan thinking of creating The Learning Leader Show? Aaron Campbell – After 8 years of exploration along a central theme, how would you finish this sentence: “A great leader is….”

Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and 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 Dan Lyons is the New York Times bestselling author of "Disrupted," "Lab Rats," and "STFU: The Power of Keeping Your Mouth Shut in an Endlessly Noisy World." Dan was a writer for HBO's hit comedy, "Silicon Valley," and before that was a journalist at Newsweek, Forbes, and Fortune. The best sales reps spend 54 percent of the call listening and 46 percent talking. The worst reps talked 72 percent of the time. They made calls feel like conversations.  A company called Gong uses machine learning software that analyzes sales calls to find out what works and what doesn’t. Its software vacuums up millions of hours of audio data and then analyzes it to figure out how the best sales reps operate. Gong’s customers use this information to train new sales reps and help underperformers improve. In 2017 Gong analyzed more than five hundred thousand calls and found that sales calls with the best close rates were ones in which reps knew how to be quiet and ask questions instead of making a sales pitch. To be precise, the most successful reps asked eleven to fourteen questions. Fewer than that, and you’re not digging deep enough. More than that, the call starts to feel like an interrogation. Eavesdropping on happiness: The research showed that people who spent more time having substantive conversations were happier than those who spent more time having small talk, and weather conversations. Always Say Less Than Necessary – "When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike. Powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less. The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.” -- Robert Greene Researcher, Mehl joined a team that made a third big discovery: that people who suffer from anxiety and depression use the first-person singular pronouns I, me, and my more than other people. Go OUTSIDE – Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson, who hypothesized that our affinity for the outdoors and love of living things have been hardwired into our DNA by evolution and exist as innate parts of our psychological and physiological makeup. Wilson calls this “biophilia,” a name derived from the ancient Greek words for “life” and “love.” It’s the reason people watch birds, melt at the sight of baby bunnies, travel to Yellowstone National Park to marvel at the bison, and rush to the window when a deer wanders into their yard. It’s why walking through Muir Woods among giant thousand-year-old redwood trees takes your breath away. The Talkaholic Scale Test – Prior to writing the book, Dan scored a 50 (the highest possible score)… Meaning he is a talkaholic. AFTER writing the book, he scored a 40, and Dan's wife scored him at 38. Life/Career Advice: Earn attention by doing great work, not by being loud and outlandish. It’s more lasting and will help you build better relationships and a great career.

Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and 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 Dr. Mat Duerden is a Professor of Experience Design and Management at Brigham Young University. His teaching focuses on experience design and design thinking. He is the best-selling author of Designing Experiences. His research focuses on experience design in both work and non-work contexts. Mat’s publications have appeared in a variety of journals including Leisure Sciences, Journal of Environmental Psychology, Journal of Adolescent Research, and Journal of Leisure Research. Mat Duerden received a Ph.D. in Recreation, Park, and Tourism Sciences from Texas A&M University and an M.S. in Youth and Family Recreation from Brigham Young University.  Transformational Learning – "The future intrinsic use of the content." Going from theory to putting it into practice. It’s the implementation of the learning that codifies it. What to do at your next leadership retreat? Ask yourself the question, “What do you want them to say when they walk away from the experience?” And design the event based on your answer to that question. One of the must-have qualities needed to be hired as a team leader is humility and curiosity. Curiosity is the fuel for creativity and innovation. Having a broad range of interests is a good sign of curiosity. What do Apple, Costco, and Walt Disney have in common? A high NPS Score... What is NPS? Your Net Promoter Score is the percentage of customers who are promoters (those who scored 9 or 10) minus the percentage who are detractors (those who scored 0 to 6). They have a uniform type of experience Harmonizing Ques... There should be a narrative structure: Build rising action... -- Anticipation, Participation, Reflection, Climax. It's important to solve problems tied to the needs of your customer or your team. The Wonder Switch from Harris III The curiosity is becoming comfortable not knowing The Buc-eee's gas station restroom experience takes the ordinary and turns it into an extraordinary experience. For businesses: Need to develop a brand experience guide for the type of experience you want to provide. Write a brand theme statement that aligns with who we are. HEB Grocery Store: Here Everything's Better Hire the type of people who are curious and want to interact with customers. Curiosity is the fuel for creativity and innovation. A broad range of interests is important.

  Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and 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 Colin Coggins and Garrett Brown are adjunct professors of entrepreneurship at USC’s Marshall School of Business where they teach the popular class they created, “Sales Mindset for Entrepreneurs. ” They are also authors, speakers, longtime sales professionals, and best friends who met while working at enterprise software startup Bitium, which they helped lead to an acquisition by Google. This odd couple first connected over their shared obsession with the importance of selling, and have made it their mission to uncover the unexpected and inspiring mindset of the highest-achieving sellers on the planet. The most impactful sales professionals are learners. They consume information and ask lots of questions that they are deeply curious to know the answers to. They don't go down the list of sales discovery questions. It's from a place of curiosity. "Noone has ever changed the world without moving people." That's sales. An abundance mindset — Collin was meeting with a new sales rep named Matt that worked for you at Bitium. Matt sat down on the couch and loved it. He asked who made it and Collin didn’t know. So he flipped over the cushion, saw who made it, realized they were a potential customer and made a note in his phone to connect with them on LinkedIn and call them. Matt has an abundance mindset. "Great sellers see opportunity where others don't." World-Class sales professionals love the process. When making promotional hires/decisions, "create a culture that's not pulled up. It's pushed up."  When promoting someone to be a manager, look at those who are known to help others. They are pushed to management by the members of the team because they are so helpful. Being a “pathological optimist” — Colin told a story about taking the first flight with his whole family (wife Margot and two young boys) and despite the chaos of crying and trying to take care of young children, Colin loved it and told Margot "it would be a great story one day." She called him a pathological optimist (not meant as a compliment, but he took it as one). Act like a teammate, not a coach: Will Smith’s manager, JL, told him to turn down a $10m offer for a movie called 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag because it didn't help them pursue Will's goal of being a big movie star. (Even though both of them didn't have any money at the time) The Partnership: “Colin, thank you for seeing something in a slightly insecure, overly analytical introvert and deciding to throw in with me.” The class they teach is called “Sales Mindset for Entrepreneurs” Colin & Garrett don’t teach a typical sales class focused how to “build rapport,” “handle objections,” or “ask for the close.” Instead, they help students understand why the most successful people on the planet aren’t successful because of what they do, they’re successful because of what they think. We all sell, every day. Sometimes it's ourselves, sometimes it's ideas, and sometimes it's products. We truly believe that the world would benefit if EVERYONE learned how to sell authentically, whether you're a "salesperson" or not. Great salespeople are not remembered for the statements they make, they're remembered for the questions they ask.  Ask better questions, get better results. As mindset guys, we get a little bit obsessed with one-on-ones when we lead teams, so we geek out when experts like Jeanne shed light on new questions to ask that can help bring out the best in other people. At some point a long time ago, someone studying great salespeople noticed they were mirroring the people they were talking to. So they started training salespeople to mirror the body language of their customers. One MAJOR problem... These great sellers weren't connecting with people because they were mirroring, they were UNCONSCIOUSLY mirroring people 𝙗𝙚𝙘𝙖𝙪𝙨𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙮 𝙝𝙖𝙙 𝙖 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙣𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣. If you're sitting there thinking about crossing your leg when your customer crosses theirs, you can't possibly be having a good conversation. Science shows that mirroring is a natural inclination when we’re AUTHENTICALLY engaged in a conversation with someone and are relating to them. So instead of ACTING like you’re in a deep conversation by copying someone’s body language, work on caring enough to get into that deep conversation in the first place.