Synopsis
As Kobe Bryant once said, There is power in understanding the journey of others to help create your own.Thats why the Learning Leader Show existsto get together and understand the journeys of successful leaders, so that we can better understand our own.This show is full of stories told by world-class leaders. Personal stories of successes, failures, and lessons learned along the way. Our guests come from diverse backgroundssome are best-selling authors, others are genius entrepreneurs, and one even made a million dollars wearing t-shirts for a year. My role in this endeavor is to talk to the smartest, most creative, always-learning leaders in the world so that we can learn from them as we each create our own journeys.
Episodes
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696: Dr. Zeke Emanuel - The Six Rules for Health & Longevity, The Harvard Study on Happiness, The Truth About Biohacking, Social Connection, and How to Avoid Being a Schmuck
12/07/2026 Duration: 54minThe 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 m
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695: Andy Stumpf - Leadership Lessons From SEAL Team Six, Discipline vs. Motivation, Team Guy vs. Navy SEAL, High Standards, and How To Be Drownproof
05/07/2026 Duration: 01h06minThe 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 t
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694: Clark Lea - LIVE! At The 2026 Learning Leader Growth Summit: The Mission Is Winning, Checking the Cabinets, Leading as an Introvert, Alabama Week, Decoupling Worth From Outcomes, and Building a Championship Culture
28/06/2026 Duration: 01h07minThe 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. H
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693: Tina Seelig - Fortune vs. Luck, The Power of Curiosity, Why Your Words Change Lives, Failure Résumés, Thank You Notes, and Creating Luck Through Relationships, Observation, & Daily Action
21/06/2026 Duration: 55minOrder 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
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692: Scott Harrison - Make a Bigger Ask, Design Everything with Excellence, Raising a Billion Dollars, Nobody Wants to Be Mid, and Why the Best Leaders Are Great Sales Professionals
14/06/2026 Duration: 56minRead 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
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691: Dr. Ron Friedman - The Science of High-Performing Teams, Chevy Chase, Toxic Teammates, The Succession Writers' Room, Deleting Recurring Meetings, Why Side Hustles Are Good, and Why Only 8% of Teams Make the Cut
07/06/2026 Duration: 56minThe Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk www.LearningLeader.com New Book - The Price of Becoming www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming Ron Friedman is a psychologist and researcher who has spent his career studying what separates great teams from average ones. His research, which has surveyed thousands of professionals across dozens of industries, became the second most-read article in Harvard Business Review history. He is the author of three books, including his latest, Superteams: The Science and Secrets of High-Performing Teams. 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. Key Learnings Ron's dad threw himself into impossible challenges and taught his family the dignity of hard work. A physician in Israel, he didn't want his son in the army, so he picked up the phone and started dialing hospitals in New Yor
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690: Austin Kleon - Why Activated Leaders Win, The Analog Desk, Don't Call it Art, Stay Light, Professional Noticers, Lead with Curiosity, and How To Steal Like an Artist
31/05/2026 Duration: 01h57sThe Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk www.LearningLeader.com New Book -- The Price of Becoming www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming Austin Kleon is the NYT bestselling author of Steal Like an Artist, Show Your Work, and Keep Going. He's a writer who draws, a former librarian, and one of the most original thinkers on creativity working today. His new book is Don't Call It Art: 10 Ways to Create Like a Kid Again. 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. Key Learnings Stay light. Bill Murray told ballplayers that if you stay light, loose, and relaxed, you can play at the highest level. Same with acting, writing, anything. Austin keeps a photo of Bill in his studio as a reminder. Play is the work. A lot of Austin's best work requires a sense of play. It's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.
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689: Eric Ries - The Costco Hot Dog, Why Good Companies Go Bad, Financial Gravity, Building Incorruptible Organizations, and The Lean Startup's Unfinished Business
24/05/2026 Duration: 57minThe Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk Read my NEW BOOK -- The Price of Becoming - www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming Eric Ries is the author of The Lean Startup, one of the most influential business books of the past 25 years, and the founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, the first new U.S. exchange to both list and trade multiple stocks since NASDAQ launched 50 years ago. His new book is Incorruptible. Key Learnings The more successful a company becomes, the more valuable it is as a target. Companies are worth stealing and taking over. Most founders are naive about this and don't understand what's coming for them. They've been following the so-called best practices about how companies should be built, structured, and governed. Most of those best practices are value-destroying. Sol Price was a lawyer before he became an entrepreneur. He believed a lawyer had a fiduciary duty to put the client's interests before his own. So when he became a retailer, he asked: "Who's my client?" The customer. He treated the
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688: Dr. Henry Cloud - The Difference Between a Dream & a Vision, Why Revenue Is Not a Goal, the 5-Step Model for Achieving Any Goal, and Why the Highest Performers Seek the Most Coaching
17/05/2026 Duration: 59minGo to www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming for my new book, The Price of 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. Dr. Henry Cloud is a clinical psychologist, leadership consultant, and New York Times bestselling author whose books have sold nearly 20 million copies worldwide. His titles include Boundaries, Integrity, Necessary Endings, and Trust. For three decades, he has worked with leaders, helping them close the gap between where they are and where they want to be. His newest book is Your Desired Future: The Five Essential Steps That Take You Where You Want to Go. Key Learnings Henry's five-step model for getting from here to there: Vision (clear and compelling) Talent (engaging the right people around you) Strategy and plan (how you'll win) Measurement and accountability (how you'll know) Fi
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687: Jim Collins - What To Make of a Life, The 3 Types of Luck, Inflection Points, Cliffs, Encodings, Navigating the Fog, the Art of Getting People To Want To Do What Must Be Done, and Reconnecting with an Old Friend
10/05/2026 Duration: 01h44minNEW BOOK -- The Price of Becoming Buy it -- 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. Jim Collins is the author of some of the most influential business books ever written — Good to Great, Built to Last, and Great by Choice. His concepts have become part of the leadership vocabulary. Level 5 Leadership. The Flywheel. First Who, Then What. The Hedgehog Concept. He spent more than a decade at Stanford as a professor and has advised CEOs, four-star generals, and heads of state. His new book is What to Make of a Life: Cliffs, Fog, Fire, and the Self-Knowledge Imperative. It is the product of ten years of research and is the most personal thing he has ever written. We flew to Boulder, Colorado, to record this one in person with Jim. Ke
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686: Dr. Nicole LePera (The Holistic Psychologist) - The Hidden Cost of Being Good at Everything, Self-Medicating at 13, Why Awareness Isn't Enough, Healing the Body Not Just the Mind, What a Real Boundary Actually Is, and How Vulnerability Makes Love Rea
03/05/2026 Duration: 01h34sPre-Order 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: Dr. Nicole LePera is the creator of The Holistic Psychologist, a platform with over 12 million followers, and the author of three New York Times bestselling books, including her newest, Reparenting the Inner Child. Key Learnings: Nicole was good at everything, so struggling meant failure. Her family's message was clear: success in life meant financial security through academics or athletics. The implicit message: you're worthy when you're bringing home A's, when you're winning the softball game. She quickly learned to identify things she wasn't immediately good at and just not pursue them. She filtered life, staying on the path of comfort. Your childhood adaptations don't leave.
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685: David Epstein - The Freedom Trap, Narrative Values, General Magic, The Nobel Prize Winner Who Simplified Everything, Wearing the Same Thing Everyday, and Why Constraints Are the Secret to Your Best Work
26/04/2026 Duration: 57minRead 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: David Epstein is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Range and The Sports Gene. A former investigative reporter at ProPublica and senior writer at Sports Illustrated. His new book is called Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better. Notes Be part of "Mindful Monday" -- Text Hawk to 66866 Key Learnings The easier move is to let it go. David found a factual error in Ryan's new/my new book. David was supposed to read it and write a blurb on it - but went further and challenged a factual error. The kind move, what great leaders actually do, is being willing to point things out, even if it could cause a little friction. There is
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684: Marcus Buckingham - Design Love In, The 5 Feelings Leaders Must Create, The ABCs of Authentic Leadership, and How to Unleash The Most Powerful Force in Business
19/04/2026 Duration: 59minRead my new book, "The Price of Becoming." www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk My Guest: Marcus Buckingham is a Cambridge graduate. He spent nearly 20 years at the Gallup Organization, where he co-created the StrengthsFinder assessment. He is a New York Times bestselling author of influential books, including First, Break All the Rules and Now, Discover Your Strengths. Currently, he leads the People + Performance research at the ADP Research Institute. Key Learnings When you start a business, it's all about love. Seven out of 10 businesses fail, so when you start a business as an entrepreneur, you love what you do, you love your clients, and you surround yourself with people who can love it as much as you do. You all have this passionate delusion that what you're doing is really important and it's gonna work. Marcus sold his company in 2017 and calls it the biggest mistake of his career. His company was broken down into silos, and the conversation became about maximization
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683: Nir Eyal - How to Break Limiting Beliefs, Create Your Own Luck, Transform Your Relationships, and Start Seeing Opportunities Everyone Else Is Missing
12/04/2026 Duration: 58minOrder 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: Nir Eyal is a Stanford lecturer, behavioral designer, and bestselling author who has spent his career at the intersection of psychology, technology, and human behavior. He's one of the most rigorous thinkers alive on why people do what they do, and what it actually takes to change. Notes Julie introduced Nir to the Turnaround technique. Nir and Julie met the first week of college in 1997 and have been married since 2001. A big part of the genesis of Beyond Belief came from Julie introducing Nir to this technique called The Turnaround, which comes out of the work from Byron Katie, that she used with her mother to repair the relationship she had with her mom. A limiting belief
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682: Will Guidara - Obsession, Adversity, Learning From Danny Meyer, and The Only Competitive Advantage That Lasts... Unreasonable Hospitality
05/04/2026 Duration: 58minMy new book is The Price of Becoming. To order, go to 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: Will Guidara is the former co-owner of Eleven Madison Park, the restaurant he took from a struggling two-star establishment to become the number one restaurant in the world. He's the author of the New York Times bestseller Unreasonable Hospitality, the host of the Welcome Conference, and a co-producer on the Emmy award-winning series The Bear. Notes: Key Learnings "Obsession is a beautiful thing when you can grab it by the tail." This quote is from chef Sean Brock when he opened his pizza place in Nashville. For Will, obsession is when you care so much about something that you give all of yourself to bring its most fully realized version to life. What obsession mean
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681: Clark Lea (Vanderbilt Football Coach) - Rebuilding a Program, Belief as a Practice, Leading Misfits, Ownership Mentality, and Why Relatedness Is Your Edge
29/03/2026 Duration: 38minGo to www.LearningLeader.com/becoming to learn more about "The Price of Becoming." -- My new book! Clark Lea is the head football coach at Vanderbilt… He's led one of the best turnaround stories in college football. He got hired as head coach in 2021 to inherit a program that had gone winless the year before. What he's built since is remarkable: a 40–35 upset of No. 1 Alabama, back-to-back SEC Coach of the Year awards, and Vanderbilt's first 10-win season in program history. He's won games and changed the culture. Key Learnings Better people make a better team. Development in one area is development in all areas. We're trained to see life in separate lanes (coach here, husband here, father here, student here, athlete here), but when you live that way, you're in constant conflict. Instead, see each person as a circle where all those roles define who we are, and development in one area is development in all areas. Show up on time, deliver on time, engage resources. If you show up on time, turn your work in on
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680: Scott Galloway: Action Absorbs Anxiety, Handling the Haters, Becoming an Excellent Storyteller, Reverse Engineering Your Success, The Importance of Novelty, and Why Praise Is the Most Underrated Leadership Tool
22/03/2026 Duration: 01h03minGo to Go to https://www.learningleader.com/becoming to see the pre-order bonuses for The Price of 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 Galloway is the New York Times bestselling author of books including The Four, The Algebra of Happiness, Post Corona, Adrift, and The Algebra of Wealth. Notes: Key Learnings Routine speeds up time, novelty slows it down. If you want life to go fast, just spend it alone and have a routine and never bust out of that routine. What makes life interesting is diversity in people, because people are complicated, and relationships are complicated. Lean into your emotions to slow time down. If you see something that moves you, stop, think about it, ask yourself why it moves you, and try to cement that moment in your brain. Otherwise, you're not sl
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679: Kat Cole - From Hooters Waitress to $500M CEO, You're Interviewing for Your Next Job Every Day, Learning vs. Ego, The Four Key Mindsets for Senior Leaders, and The Journey of Who You Become
15/03/2026 Duration: 58minGo 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. My Guest: Kat Cole is the CEO of AG1 (formerly Athletic Greens) and a renowned business leader known for a meteoric rise from Hooters waitress to Fortune 40 Under 40 executive. As former President/COO of Focus Brands (Cinnabon), she specializes in scaling global brands. Her career is defined by driving billions in sales, strategic innovation, and a strong, people-first leadership style. Key Learnings You can't market your way out of a bad product. AG1 has 3x'd the business in four years while being in only one channel (direct to consumer) for 15 years. 80% of retail is in brick and mortar, so they were doing that volume in less than 20% of where transactions happen. That only works when customers love the product, keep buying it f
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678: Jamie Siminoff (Ring Doorbell Inventor) - Shark Tank Rejection, Selling to Amazon for $1 Billion, Surviving $3M to $480M Hypergrowth, Hiring Passionate People Over Experts, and Jeff Bezos's Leadership Lessons
08/03/2026 Duration: 50minwww.LearningLeader.com 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: Jamie Siminoff is the founder of Ring, which he sold to Amazon for over a billion dollars. He's an inventor and builder who couldn't hear his doorbell while working in his garage, so he built a video doorbell. When his wife said it made her feel safer, he realized technology had changed, and home security needed a complete reinvention. Ring became the world's largest home security company with a mission to make neighborhoods safer. Key Learnings Jeff Bezos reads and writes his own stuff. When Jamie asked Jeff to write something for the book's back cover, Jeff actually read it and wanted his own curated quote that was from him. Jeff loves entrepreneurs, so they kept him out of negotiation
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677: Erin McGoff - How to Communicate at Work, Negotiate Your Salary, Write Cold Emails, Overcome Rejection, Run Better Meetings, and Build a Career That Matters
02/03/2026 Duration: 52minGo 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. www.InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader The Learning Leader Show Key Learnings Go out and dent the universe. Erin's parents didn't put pressure on her to get perfect grades or go to Harvard; they wanted her to use her privilege and beautiful upbringing to make the world a better place. Youngest child syndrome makes you quick. Being the youngest of six, Erin learned to speak very quickly to get her thoughts in at the dinner table, and she was given unsolicited advice her whole childhood (which is why she loves giving advice now). Your siblings' sole job is to keep you grounded. Erin's parents are proud and supportive, but her siblings roast her and beat her down (all in good fun) to keep her as humble as possible.